Litlle by little the story progresses. I keep forgetting to mention that anyone who wants to archive these stories by me is welcome to. Just give me credit if you post them anywhere. Feedback is most welcome!

THE JOB (Part III)

Zoe looked over the group sitting at the table and stopped at River. "You OK now?"

"He hurts so bad,." she replied.

Zoe’s mothering instincts made her want to hold River and tell her it would be OK. But she had a job to do first; she’d promised Mal. And anyway, it wasn’t gonna be OK as far as she could see. "I know River," she said quietly.

This exchange made everyone focus on Zoe. Obviously something was up and Zoe and River both knew something bad. The room was suddenly filled with tension. There was a long silence as Zoe tried to find the words.

Kaylee broke the silence first. "Where’s the captain? Ain’t he gonna eat dinner?"

"He’s not hungry and I need to talk to you all about the reason for that." This was going to be harder than she thought. She glanced down as Wash sitting beside her. He caught the pain in her eyes and grabbed her hand.

"Honey, what’s wrong?"

God, how she loved this man. It was good to see the concern on his face. Good to know he would be there for her anytime she needed him. And she surely needed him right this minute. She squeezed his hand to reassure him.

"Mal has arranged our next job. I think it’s legitimate work this time. He wasn’t really clear on the details though. Just said we’d be hauling goods to Shadow."

They all looked at each other confused. Shadow was considered to be a prime location and legitimate work wasn’t usually dangerous, so what was wrong?

Tears started running down River’s face. Inara saw it first and reached out to hold her. "What’s wrong with the job, Zoe?" she asked quietly.

"Ain’t the job so much that’s wrong. It’s the location. Mal would never have gone there if we didn’t need the money so bad." Kaylee remembered the long list of needed parts she gave Mal three day ago and hung her head. She was the reason for this, she just knew it.

So what’s the big deal with Shadow? I hear tell it’s a pretty nice place. I hear they got really pretty whores there, too." Jayne had to add his own brand of humor to the conversation. The way he leered at Inara when he said whores might have been funny if the tension wasn’t so thick in the air.

"Mal don’t discuss his past much, so you all don’t know. But he’s from Shadow." She shot a look of apology to Wash. She felt bad keeping secrets from him, but they weren’t her secrets to tell. Without Mal’s permission ,she wouldn’t be saying this now. He squeezed her hand. Wash understood that she had secrets to keep.

"So is he mad at his parents or something? Is that why he don’t want to go there?" Kaylee was such an innocent sometimes. She should know better by now that Mal wouldn’t let an argument with family bother him as much as this obviously did.

Simon looked at Kaylee. He had a feeling this was going to get bad and he wanted so badly to protect her from whatever it was. He couldn’t do that, of course, so he settled for just putting his arm around her for support.

"Any of you ever hear about the Massacre of Chesapeake Glen?"

Book winced. He knew that one and it was real bad. He’d made sure the man responsible had been court-martialed. But that didn’t bring back the dead. "Yeah," he drawled " about 250 civilians were herded up as traitors for having family fighting for the Independents. Things got out of hand and the ranch house they were in got burned to the ground. There were no survivors. Mal knew some of those people?" Kaylee gasped at the horror of the picture he’d drawn.

"Mal knew all of those people. They included his mother, his two younger sisters, all the ranch hands, his next door neighbor and his first girl friend. The massacre happened on his mother’s ranch. No one he grew up with survived."

Inara and Kaylee were crying with River now. Simon was white as a sheet thinking about how he’d feel if River was dead. Book was praying softly to himself and even Jayne looked uncomfortable. Wash threw his arms around Zoe and held tight. She leaned into the embrace and the pain was suddenly too great and Zoe, strong as she was, started to cry.