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The Legacy of Uncle Jack, ch. 6/11
Thursday, November 16, 2006

In this installment: Mal frets over the job they've just finished; Wash gets a job offer from Renshaw. There's a Jayne cameo in this one.


CATEGORY: FICTION    TIMES READ: 2436    RATING: 9    SERIES: FIREFLY

Frame story: Mal is jumpy.

Backstory: Wash is jumpy.

Author's note: There's a Jayne cameo in this one.

If you'd like to see the rest of this story (it's already written), be a dear and say so!

6.

Mal and Kaylee stepped off of an elevator on the third floor of Jack Tallis’s office building to find Wash and Zoe waiting for them at the doorway. Mal walked straight to Zoe and dragged her aside.

“Did you change out the navsats and the pulse beacon?” Zoe asked, and Mal nodded.

“Yeah, Kaylee did. Girl’s a natural with machines of any kind; all she needed me for was muscle.” He frowned sourly when Zoe snorted. “Listen. There’ve been some lawforce bulletins on the Cortex about those guns – I checked, and the ones we shipped were part of a shipment lifted from an Alliance transport about six weeks ago. Somebody just hijacked the whole ship – replaced the crew and made off with a boatload of Alliance weaponry.”

“Clever.”

“Yeah, clever. But the Alliance ain’t happy. They caught one transporter – small operator like us – carrying some of the loot, and those guys have vanished.”

“Vanished, sir?” Zoe was finally getting a glimpse of what Mal had been so jumpy about, since they finished that last job. She wasn’t really feeling jumpy herself, yet, but that could change after Mal explained what he meant by “vanished.”

“Vanished. Gone. They ain’t in prison waiting for a trial, they ain’t out on bail, they ain’t nowhere. Somebody is mad about those weapons, and taking it out on whoever they can get their hands on. I just don’t want it to be us. So look sharp today.”

Zoe decided that Mal was probably jumping at shadows, but she composed her face in a serious expression and nodded. “Yessir.”

Mal accepted that. “Wash get his moment or whatever it was he wanted, to say goodbye?”

“Yessir, he did,” Zoe replied, smiling.

“All right, then.” Mal cast a furtive glance around the corridor they were standing in – Wash and Kaylee waited by the double doors. Knots of other people were arriving for the memorial service, either via the elevators or the nearby stairs. As they watched, two uniformed Alliance officers stepped from the elevator, chatting, and walked on into the meeting room.

Mal cast an anxious glance at Zoe. “Look sharp,” he said again, and walked over to Kaylee and Wash.

Zoe followed, rolling her eyes – but also reviewing her mental inventory of the weaponry she carried.

**

1 years earlier -- 2513

Stanley Renshaw had his finger on the pulse of the 'verse.

Every morning, he woke at four a.m. Greenwich Mean Time, Londinium, no matter where in the 'verse he happened to be. He spent two hours bringing himself up to date with the daily edition of the Londinium Times while he ate his eggs and bran muffin, and drank his vegetable frappe. Then he spent an hour reviewing whatever passed for local news, while he worked on his elliptical trainer. After that, a quick shower, dress neatly, shave -- not just beard and moustache, but the unsightly ring of gray hair that ran around his skull from ear to ear, which he hated -- and then, out to do business.

Today, as fortune had it, he stepped out through the cargo lock of his ship just as the sun was breaking over the distant hills, local time. And just as his cargo was pulling up the road in a train of pony-carts from the scrapyard district.

Renshaw paused a moment to contemplate the irony. Pony carts -- six of them -- hauling secondhand ship parts to his vessel, for transshipment across space to more civilized places, where Stanley Renshaw was a small-time freelance trader captain, and pony carts were decorative contraptions whose primary function was entertainment at children's birthday parties. Pony carts!

The carts stopped, and their drivers began unloading the cargo onto the hard ground around Renshaw's ship. The ship's registered name was Imogene, but Renshaw didn't especially care. He was not one of those sentimental sorts who got attached to his ship in some emotional way. It was a business tool, no more. And here came more business tools -- his crew -- to load the cargo from the ground into the bay behind him. He stepped aside, so as not to impede their work.

A lone pedestrian shuffled out of the ponies' dusty wake, squinted around until he spotted Renshaw standing to one side of the cargo ramp, and then approached. The fellow was young, slightly disheveled, dressed in a worn flightsuit with a tropical-print shirt over the top. He shambled up to Renshaw and gestured at the cargo. "Use a hand?" he asked.

Renshaw consulted his instincts. Though unkempt, the young man didn't seem to be drunk or drugged, or ill, or even especially desperate. He could be a thief, but the cargo was in sealed crates -- Renshaw insisted on sealed crates -- and he'd have a hard time finding anything much to pocket. His help would make the work go more quickly, which would be good business, if he'd work cheaply enough.

"Thirty kwai for the job, you get paid once the cargo's loaded," Renshaw said, and the fellow nodded. He shambled toward Renshaw's crew and lent a hand, which the crew accepted after a brief glance in Renshaw's direction, to receive his nod of approval. They loaded the contents of the first pony cart, which then pulled in a slow circle and departed whence it had come.

Renshaw's mate walked over, mopping his brow with a handkerchief. "Who's the extra hand?" he asked.

"Just day labor," Renshaw said.

The mate nodded, staring back at the workers loading the ship. He looked like he was thinking hard, so Renshaw asked, "Why?"

"Seen him before," the mate said. "At least, I think I have. Except I couldn't be right."

"Why is that?"

"Because he looks . . . I swear, he's a ringer for Tanaka's pilot," the mate said, still doubting himself.

"Gabe? Really." Renshaw regarded the fellow with sudden interest.

"But if he is, then what's he doing here?" the mate wondered aloud.

Renshaw decided to find out. He walked over to the stack of cargo waiting to be loaded, and stood there until the fellow in the tropical shirt came back for another load.

"Got a name?" he asked.

The fellow looked back at him through narrowed eyes. "Jack," he said, after a moment's hesitation.

"Got a berth, Jack?"

"Do you want me to work, or talk?" Jack asked.

"Maybe I want to offer you regular work, shall we say?" Renshaw proposed. "But I'd need to know a little more about you."

Jack considered that. "No," he said. "No berth."

So if the mate was right -- if this man was Tanaka's pilot -- but he wasn't anymore -- Renshaw's nostrils flared at the scent of opportunity. "Looking for one?"

Jack shrugged. "Maybe."

"Got any skills?" Renshaw asked. "Jack?" That wasn't his real name, Renshaw was certain. Tanaka's pilot had a rep, enough of one that Renshaw had heard his name at some point, somewhere, and he was sure that it wasn't Jack, although he couldn't quite remember what it was. What he did remember was that the fellow had a rep for being able to fly a ship out of a scrape. A good rep.

'Jack' regarded him with deep concentration. Then he glanced up at the ship, studying it. He looked back at Renshaw, his expression guarded. "I can fly," he said carefully. "But you already have a pilot."

"Of course. Still. We might be able to work something out. Let me think about it," Renshaw said. He went back to take up his position next to the ramp, while 'Jack' went back to work loading crates.

"I think you're right. I think that's him," Renshaw said to the mate.

The mate nodded. "We sure could stand to --"

Renshaw shushed him with a gesture. Before he made a move, he wanted to make sure it was a smart one, and he didn't know near enough about this fellow. Tanaka was a businessman, too; could be he'd turned his pilot out for a reason. "I promised him thirty for the job," he said, taking a neatly folded stack of bills in a silver clip from his breast pocket. He pulled some bills from the stack. "Give him fifty. Find out where I can contact him."

The mate nodded, taking the bills. "Let me know when we're loaded," Renshaw said, and walked up the ramp into the ship -- into his bunk, where he did some research, and discovered some things that interested him very much. Like, that Tanaka's pilot happened to be Jack Tallis's nephew. There was a connection that could be of great value, if it could be exploited. Tanaka had once worked for Tallis; maybe that could be taken as a sign that the fellow was not on the outs with his powerful uncle. Maybe. Renshaw tried not to pin too much on speculation; there was the fact that Wash -- he called himself Wash -- was no longer working for Tanaka, but neither did he seem to have contacted his Uncle. Renshaw also discovered that Wash could not only fly, he had actual training, from the top flight school in the 'verse, which backed up at least part of his reputation. The only black mark against him was an outstanding warrant for skipping the Alliance draft during the war, which could be problematic in the Core, but that could be worked around. Nobody cared about the war anymore, after all. Well, nobody who mattered.

Renshaw rose and returned to the cargo bay. "He still here?" he asked the mate.

"No, he's gone. We're loaded," the mate replied. "Oh -- he wouldn't say where you could find him. Said he'd come back tomorrow if you want to talk. Seemed kind of anxious to be gone."

Renshaw nodded. He didn't want to wait; he needed to get in the air, and if he could do it with a new pilot, so much the better. It would be much better for business, after all, if his whole crew could load and unload cargo; as it was, he had to pay extra to one of the crew to sit on Yuri whenever they were on the ground. If he didn't, the man would be too drunk to fly within an hour of touching down. "I'll find him," he said. He gestured for the mate to follow, and they walked down the steps into the ship's passenger area.

They heard the pounding and yelling before they saw the gigantic man lounging against the bulkhead with his arms folded across his chest. The pounding and yelling came from behind the door next to the large crewman. "Renshaw! You let me out of here now! This is confinement! Kidnapping! It's illegal for you to lock me up this way! Let me out of here!"

"Stow it, Yuri," Renshaw snapped. "You know the deal." The deal was, once they were in the air, the pilot could have one flask every two hours until forty-eight hours before they were scheduled to land. Then he had to sober up again, and stay that way until they were back in the black. Which meant keeping him under guard, deep in the bowels of the ship where no passersby could hear him pounding and squawling. It was not a perfect solution, but a ship had to have a pilot, and until today, Renshaw had not had better options.

"He can go on like that all day," the big man by the door rumbled. "I never heard the like. You sure you don't want me to shut him up permanent?"

Renshaw shuddered. Here was another fine catch, he thought with an inward sigh, and another example of the reason that crewmen were nothing more to Renshaw than business tools. Jayne Cobb's idea of shutting Yuri up permanently, as he had described it to Renshaw, involved excising the man's vocal cords with a switchblade. "I won't cut his jugular," Jayne had observed blandly, "so's he won't bleed to death. And he'd be a lot quieter."

"No," Renshaw said heavily. "Take over here," he told the mate loudly. The pilot's ravings had turned wheedling in their tone, although they were still quite loud; Renshaw slammed a fist against the door, shocking a moment of silence from his captive so that he could speak normally. "Jayne, come with me. Got some tracking to do."

**

Renshaw walked down the ramp with the hulking Jayne in his wake. At the bottom, he saw two more unfamiliar faces. Armed men, disreputable looking. Gun hands. Tanaka's, Renshaw guessed. Turned out of their bunks before they'd quite got over their hangovers, from the look of it, probably to search for Wash. Which put a new cast on things; it suggested that Tanaka had not turned his pilot out at all, but rather that the man had left.

Sure enough, one of the men held out a capture that showed the scruffy blonde pilot in profile. "You seen this fellah?"

"No," Renshaw said curtly.

"'Cause we're supposed to deliver something to him," the gun hand said.

"He isn't here," Renshaw asserted. "And you better not be, either. Jayne?"

Jayne grunted, drawing his weapon.

"Just doing our jobs," the man sulked.

"Do them elsewhere," Renshaw said.

Jayne hefted his gun meaningfully.

The two men turned and shuffled away.

Renshaw led Jayne to where the pony carts had been, and said "A man came in with the pony carts, alone, on foot. He left by this same road. Where did he go?"

Jayne nodded, examining the dusty ground. "This way," he said, starting in the direction the pony carts had come from.

Renshaw followed.

Jayne led him to the back fence of the scrapyard Renshaw's shipment had come from. "He scaled the fence here," Jayne said, indicating a section of the solid-panel fence. The razor wire looped along the top of the fence hung loosely to either side at that point, and even Renshaw could see the shoe-prints in the dust at the bottom, and the dirt marking the fence where someone had scrambled up and over it.

Renshaw regarded the fence with dismay. Jayne would have an easy time with it; any man of average height would be able to grasp the top of the fence and scale it easily, there where the razor wire was cut. Renshaw, however, was well below average height. To get over the fence, he would have to do something he absolutely hated to do.

Bowing with great irritation to necessity, Renshaw said to Jayne, "Give me a leg up, then."

Jayne obliged, vaulting Renshaw easily over the fence and then pulling himself up and over. Once on the other side, Jayne picked up the trail again and led Renshaw to the cargo hatch of a '76 Carter -- an in-system transport ship, designed for short hauls, that was little more than a spacegoing barge. The big man looked up at the vessel with a skeptical eye. Even in its prime, this had not been an impressive ship. It was even less so now, when many of its worthier parts had been stripped for salvage and its cargo hatch had encountered some mishap that left it twisted and bent, clearly incapable of closing.

"Well," Jayne said, "Whatever it's worth to you, this is the place."

Indeed. "Wait here. Look sharp," Renshaw said, putting a foot on the ramp.

"For how long?" Jayne asked.

"Until I come back," Renshaw said. He expected no trouble here. No reason to plan for contingencies. He stepped up the ramp into the ship, calling "Wash? Stan Renshaw," as he came aboard, just for safety's sake. After all, the pilot might have some sort of defense set up, just in case Tanaka's men came for him.

Renshaw walked through the cargo bay and up a flight of narrow circular stairs into a small, empty common area surrounded by crew quarters. One hatch stood open; Renshaw poked his head in and saw that someone had been living here. There was clothing on the bare mattress, and two bags of cheap foodstuffs on a small ledge. A light over the bunk was on -- power. From batteries, no doubt. Renshaw mentally reconstructed Wash's past few days: walking away from Tanaka after four years of service, leaving him with a large cargo and no pilot. Deciding to lie low until Tanaka found another pilot and left -- which meant that any public lodging would be out of the question. A ship, then; a derelict in a forgotten corner of some scrapyard somewhere, something that would never fly, but with battery power for light, for cooking. Water, purloined from the yard's outdoor hoses after hours and stored in the ship's tanks.

Clever. A man might hide out like this indefinitely, from someone who lacked a good tracker.

At the sound of humming, Renshaw turned to see his prospective pilot walk into the room. The pilot didn't see him, though, because he was toweling his hair dry with a scrap of faded quilt that had fallen in front of his face. The rest of him was dripping wet and naked.

"Wash," Renshaw said.

Wash jumped, dropping the ersatz towel. "Renshaw!" he said, his eyes wide and his face pale.

"Nice place you've got here," Renshaw said.

"The price was right," Wash replied, recovering a bit. He snagged his pants off the mattress. "How did you find me?"

"Got a crewman who's a tracker," Renshaw said. "Also an ace kneecapper."

"That so?" Wash, half bent and with only one leg in his pants, glanced around apprehensively.

"He's outside," Renshaw said.

"Aha."

"I thought we might discuss that berth you don't currently have," Renshaw said, leaning back against the ledge that ran along the wall and resting the heels of his hands on it. "Nice as this place is, it isn't much of a challenge for a fine pilot like you."

"Oh, it's plenty challenging, actually," Wash asserted, buttoning his pants. "Climbing the fence, scavenging batteries that still have a little juice, filling up the water tanks in the dark."

"It'll never fly, though," Renshaw observed. "I have a ship that will."

"You have a pilot, too," Wash pointed out, pulling a ragged wifebeater over his head.

"I do. But I'd like to have a better one."

Wash sat on the mattress and picked up his shoes. "What's your offer?"

"Half share," Renshaw said. "Standard for pilots, and you get room and board without having to sneak around."

"Full share," Wash countered. "Private bunk."

Renshaw swallowed his astonishment. What cheek! The fellow was living here, scraping by on stolen power and water and occasional day labor, hiding out from a perfectly good captain who clearly wanted him back -- and demanding a full share and a private bunk to give it up? Outrageous! Even his potential value as Jack Tallis's nephew didn't merit that! "That's a lot to ask," Renshaw said levelly.

"Half share is what you're paying your current pilot," Wash said -- not a bad guess, since half share was fairly standard for pilots. And since he was correct. Although technically, Yuri wasn't getting even that. Yuri's share went into an account Renshaw had set up, to be disbursed to the pilot when he left Renshaw's employ, since he couldn't be trusted off-ship. And of course, the account was set up with survivorship rights to Renshaw. "If I'm a better pilot, I'm worth more than that," Wash went on. "And you shouldn't have any trouble providing a private bunk on an '86 Fuller and Marks 929. Plenty of room on that ship. I'll take your smallest bunk, but I want it to myself."

No mention of his uncle, Renshaw noted. Did that mean there was some kind of rift there? Did Wash really believe he could get full share and a private bunk on his own merits? Arrogance? Subtlety? Or was he really that good?

Well, test his resolve, then. "I have a cargo to deliver, and another to pick up when I get there. I'll be gone about a month, then I'll be back here to pay off my current hire. If you're still here, we'll talk again."

Wash's face was blank while he considered that. Another month of living like this, Renshaw decided, and Wash would take half share, private bunk -- he was right, after all, about the space aboard the Imogene. Private bunk was actually no trouble; all of Renshaw's crew had private bunks, save two who chose to bunk together. And the pilot wasn't likely to get a better offer in the intervening month; just hungrier and more desperate. Unless he called his uncle, or his family half the world away. It was a risk Renshaw decided to take.

"All right. One month," Wash said.

Renshaw nodded, and left.

COMMENTS

Friday, November 17, 2006 10:54 AM

BLUEEYEDBRIGADIER


Guess Wash must have found something else, since Mal clearly states Wash never joined Renshaw during the flashback in "Out of Gas";)

And I can't wait to see what kind of crazy go se happens when Jack's will is read, giving Wash something really shiny and the Alliance bust his ass for draft dodging when he goes to start the ball rolling in claiming it;)

BEB

Tuesday, June 12, 2007 9:19 AM

HERMITSREST


Like BEB, I think this is a really good story.

Tuesday, June 12, 2007 9:20 AM

HERMITSREST


oh, and I loved the Jayne cameo.


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