Chapter 20: Here’s a Funny Twist: No.

It took only a few hours for local lawforce to check out each of the sites Van Soren had given Carmelito, and report back. Serenity wasn’t on Haven, she wasn’t on Boros, she wasn’t on Beaumonde or the space-based way station that drifted at the edge of the worlds or a handful of Reynolds’s other known haunts.

But the call from Whitefall was more useful. It had taken longer to come in; there was no Alliance post on Whitefall; only a free-floating police station a few hours out. But Lt. Yazvac ‘waved Coles with good news indeed: Mal Reynolds was on Whitefall, with his ship. “Although it looks like they’re loading up; getting ready to leave,” Yazvac told him.

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Coles said sincerely, and cut the transmission. Whitefall. I know where you are, you devil. Now. Where are you going?

“Will we be leaving orbit?” asked Polyphemus’ captain.

“Not just yet,” Coles said. He turned to leave the bridge; he needed to walk. Or maybe throw something. Where are you going? “Soon.”

** “It isn’t going to work,” Simon insisted. He had cornered Mal in passenger dorm, which was the only place they had been able to find room to stow the bodies from Whitefall.

“Why not?” Mal asked.

“Because dead flesh doesn’t heal,” Simon said. “The microsurgical process uses a regeneration accelerator for healing that just won’t have any effect on dead flesh.”

“Doesn’t have to be perfect, doctor. Just has to be close.” Mal moved to edge past Simon, and Simon moved to block him, which Mal found intensely irritating. Simon with a bee in his bonnet could test Mal’s patience like almost nobody else.

“Another thing,” Simon persisted. “There is absolutely no way to plant the samples you had me collect from the crew on these bodies that will ensure our DNA is sampled instead of whoever these people really are. It can’t be done.”

“Have I asked you to do that?” Mal said, edging left. Simon stayed right with him.

“I expect you’re about to.”

“You’d be wrong about that,” Mal said, resigning himself to the conversation. He leaned back into the doorway of one of the passenger bunks and folded his arms across his chest.

“Then what exactly was the purpose of collecting the samples?” Simon demanded, sounding almost as irritated as Mal felt.

“The samples are so that the Alliance can have a positive ID on each of the bodies,” Mal said.

“But I just told you I can’t possibly –“

“And I just told you, I don’t expect you to,” Mal said.

Simon took a deep breath. Mal counted ten.

“This is my life on the line, too,” Simon said. “Whatever you’re planning, I want it to work. But as ruses go, this one has to be the worst-planned, least-likely-to-succeed that I have ever heard of. It isn’t going to work!”

Smart as Simon was, Mal thought, he still hadn’t grown used to thinking like a man living on the outside edge of the law. “You think it won’t work, Doctor, because you persist in thinking of it as a ruse.”

“Six dead people who vaguely resemble us on a ship that vaguely resembles our ship are not intended as some sort of ruse?” Simon said.

“That’s right.”

“Well . . . then . . . what is it?”

Mal looked him in the eye and said, “It’s a bribe.”

**

When Coles reached his quarters, he discovered that he had mail. A package, in fact, with a return address he didn’t recognize.

He knew instantly that the package was from Reynolds. Who else had reason to send him a package with an unrecognizable return address?

He wondered briefly if the package was safe to open, but the standard scan would have picked up any dangerous devices or substances before it was ever brought aboard the ship. So Coles opened it. Inside was a recording cartridge.

Coles locked it into the player on his desk. Malcolm Reynolds’s face appeared on his screen.

“Commander Coles,” Reynolds said. “We haven’t been formally introduced, so let me start there.” The criminal placed a hand on his chest. “Mal Reynolds. Nice to meet you. Hope you can say the same. Although, under the circumstances, I rather doubt it, seeing as how you’re a man with a problem, and your problem is me.

“I’m a man with a problem, too, Commander. And my problem is . . . well, I won’t say it’s you, but I will say you ain’t helping a whole helluva lot. Anyway, I was thinking, there’s a chance you and I could help to solve each other’s problems, in a mutually agreeable sort of fashion.”

He’s going to try to bribe me, Coles realized. Too bad, Reynolds. No amount of money in the ‘verse is going to drive me from your door.

“I looked at your service record – I do hope you don’t mind,” Reynolds said, “and I notice you’re originally from Ita Moon. And that you served with distinction in the war. Seemed strange to me, that a man of your obvious talents would be no more than a Commander at this point in your career. Then I realized – Ita Moon. Of course. If you’d been from Sihnon, or Ariel, or Osiris – somewhere ‘civilized’ – you’d probably be an Admiral by now. Am I right?”

Flattery. But that didn’t change the fact that Reynolds was right.

“Well. Here’s what I have to offer you, then,” Reynolds went on. “I’m going to give you what you need to advance your career without the advantage of birth. I’m going to offer you the opportunity to do what a Parliamentary operative has already failed – rather spectacularly – to do.

“I’m going to give you the chance to be the man who brought down Mal Reynolds when Mal Reynolds was the most wanted fugitive in the ‘verse.”

Coles paused the recording. He stood, and locked his door.

Then he started it again. Reynolds outlined the details of his offer, and Coles listened, fascinated.

It could work.

“Oh, and after,” Reynolds concluded. “I wouldn’t worry about those rumors you might hear about some minor criminal calling himself Mal Reynolds. Dead folk are always prone to having their identities lifted by unscrupulous men.” Reynolds smiled, and the recording ended.

Coles sat back in his chair. It wasn’t, actually, a bad offer. Reynolds had calculated well.

But what he hadn’t calculated on, when he gave Coles a place and a time to close the deal, was that Coles would also have his point and time of departure.

Whitefall.