Disclaimers: Everything belongs to Joss, except for one character of my creation. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- “Sir, the place’ll be crawlin’ with Feds,” Zoë said, and Mal nodded. They were on the bridge after finally getting off Paquin and setting course for Zargon. Wash had them at full burn, eating up their fuel supply, but it was the only way to get there in a timely manner. “You know they won’t let us park without searchin’ us,” Zoë went on. “If they let us park at all,” Wash threw in. He still looked quite unhappy with the situation. Zoë merely seemed resigned. Mal nodded again, lost in thought. “Sir, we may want to leave the doc and his sister off somewhere along the way,” Zoë continued, attempting to get something out of Mal besides a nod. “Yeah, seein’ as how they are fugitives,” Wash emphasized. Mal sighed. He was staring at the Cortex, watching yet another news wave from the prison. “If things are as bad there as they look, we may need the doc,” he said, half to himself. “Sir,” Zoë objected, “If they search us and find them, we may all end up inmates there ‘stead of just visitors.” “Yeah, and I already made one more trip there’n I ever wanted to make.” It was Jayne stepping onto the bridge. “I got no intention of becomin’ a permanent resident.” Mal looked up from the screen long enough to shoot him a dirty look. “You coulda got off at Paquin.” “I ain’t gettin’ off on Zargon, that’s for sure,” Jayne groused. “Me, I’m waitin’ on the ship.” “You’ll do what needs to be done,” Mal told him. Jayne set his jaw and looked away. “We can hide the doc and his sis in the hold behind the mule and pile crates in front of it,” Mal said. “They ain’t likely to go diggin’ deep—they got better things to do.” Zoë looked at him like his hair was on fire. “They’ll run out of air if we’re on that rock any time at all.” Jayne grinned for the first time all day. “Then it’s a good plan.” “Why don’t we talk to someone at the prison and find out what we need to do to even set down?” Wash suggested testily. “Then we can figure out the rest.” “Good idea, Wash,” Mal told him. “Work on that—I gotta see to somethin’.” He squeezed Wash’s shoulder and left the bridge.

-----------------

He descended to his bunk, needing to regroup and attempt to clear his head. No matter what he did, things always seemed to get a lot more tangled up than he intended. He felt, not for the first time, that ill fortune just might be his lot in life. If his dismal luck affected just him that would have been one thing; but others always got pulled in, and often suffered worse consequences than he did. It made him second-guess the decisions he made. Like the one he was making now. The majority of the crew did not want to make this trip; that had been made plain. He didn’t blame them. This wasn’t a paying job; it was a personal favor to him, and a very risky one. Risky because, as Zoë pointed out, the place would be crawling with Feds and they had fugitives on board. Also risky because the prison was a dangerous place even in good times. They had been in enough sticky situations lately that Mal truly regretted knowingly putting them in such a position again. Yet this was something he felt very strongly he had to do. He had told Alex before leaving her on Zargon that she should ‘wave if she ran into trouble she couldn’t handle. He’d had a bad feeling about leaving her there. True, as Jayne pointed out, it had been her decision to go, and Mal was not her keeper. But he had been going through a rough time when he met her, and he’d been able to open up and talk to her, something he could not do with the people under his authority. The history they shared helped break the ice; both had been in the war, and, in a very surreal twist, Serenity turned out to be Alex’s old wartime med ship. The physical stuff...well, that had just happened, after a lot of emotions were set free. And it wasn’t the reason Mal was going after her now. She had helped him. Now she needed his help, and he needed to help her. He only hoped that would be possible. He didn’t have a good feeling. The news waves coming out of the prison were dismal; and the fact that her ‘wave had been cut short couldn’t be a good sign. Even River, in her twisted way, was implying the worst. But he had to try. He could only hope his bad fortune, if it indeed was that, didn’t extend to her. So far, it had not spared him when it came to women any more than any other area of his life. Inara was leaving, with way too much left unsaid and unresolved between them. And it surely didn’t help that he had slept with both Alex and with a friend of Inara’s right under her nose; despite his feelings for her. And, about that friend...that had surely been the finest example of bad fortune in awhile. Nandi had ‘waved Inara and the crew about a month back to help defend her house against a hostile land baron. She was an incredible woman, fearless and independent, and Mal had felt an immediate connection with her. They had spent one night together—and she was killed the next morning in a gun battle. If Mal let his mind go way back, the last woman he’d really felt anything for had also died, in the destruction that came upon his home planet of Shadow during the war. And it was another unresolved situation, not unlike the one with Inara. What it might have been, Mal would never know, because he went off to fight in the war, and by the time he was free she was gone. He hated to be so superstitious as to think these things were any more than tragic coincidences, but...it did get a man’s mind going places it really didn’t want to go. So Mal knew he had to go to Zargon. He had to try to find Alex. He would help her if he could, but he had to at least know what had become of her. He hadn’t told the crew, but they would have made this trip even if Alex had not tried to ‘wave. One look at the news reports told him it was just something he had to do. It would take them three days minimum to get there even traveling at full burn. Mal could only wait and hope they wouldn’t be too late. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Go to Chapter 8.

Back to Chapter 6.