All the usual. Not mine, no money, no harm, no foul.

****

Henry Exline was minding his own business, harvesting his beans, when he heard the engine. He straightened and looked for the sound. Not a sound he heard very often, maybe once a year when the supply ship came around. He listened carefully and noted the direction the sound was coming from. Then he saw it, a little shuttle, that’s all it was, and that meant there was a bigger ship somewhere reasonably close. Not having anything close was why Exline lived on this nearly-empty moon, and he didn’t really like the idea that there was somebody there he didn’t know about.

He stood considering for several minutes before turning towards the tiny house. He went in, picked up a pack and started packing. In five minutes he was ready to go. He put on his old brown coat, walked out the door and started at a good pace in the direction the shuttle had come from.

*** Atherton Wing walked into the seedy bar down near the Eavesdown docks. It was not his regular watering hole but it was a good place for the business at hand. He nodded to the barkeep and stepped through the door at the back of the bar and into a small, smoky, not-very-clean room.

“Everything go as planned, Bothney?”

“Yessir. The boy got on the boat, the boat left and now we just wait. It’ll take them about two weeks or so to make it out to Halcion, cause them cargo boats don’t move so fast, and we’ll be waiting for ‘em when they get there.” The speaker was a non-descript man in his late twenties.

“How soon before they start getting sick?” Wing knew what he had been told, but he wanted to hear Bothney’s version.

“The fella said they’d start getting sick in a week or so, coughing, you know, mebbe the runs on account of the water, if the boy got the stuff into the water. He might not have been able to find the central water valve, but that wasn’t really important anyway. He’ll have been able to find the ductwork, no problem. A week, they start getting sick and by the time they hit Halcion they’re a mess. Nobody’s able to draw a deep breath, nobody’s slept sound in near a week.” Bothney produced this prediction with no inflection. He might have been detailing a grocery shopping expedition.

“And then what happens?” Wing prompted.

“They land, they have to tell the dockmaster that everybody on the boat is sick, he makes them stay on the boat until they’re cleared. We put a whistler in one of them boxes, so it doesn’t matter where he makes ‘em park, we’ll find ‘em.”

“And then?”

“We hit ‘em hard in the middle of the night, snatch Reynolds and the whore and beat it home.” Bothney looked excited for the first time. “Yessir, we hit ‘em hard.”

“Wonderful. When do you leave?” Wing’s lips glistened in anticipation.

“Tomorrow, first thing. We’ll run faster’n they will, but we want to make sure we get there first.” Bothney finished.

“Godspeed,” nodded Wing. “Godspeed.”

*** “Lord Warrick, a pleasure to see you, as always,” Atherton Wing gave a half-bow towards Warrick’s substantial presence.

“I wish I could say the same, Wing. What brings you out to the Persephone Equine Classic? You haven’t been much of a rider, lately. Of horses,” Warrick added, after a suspiciously long pause.

“Oh, I like to see the women in their flowered hats. And the horse girls, there is nothing like the horse girls in their jodhpurs, isn’t that what those lovely trousers are called, jodhpurs?” Wing responded. “And the company is always valuable. Horses bring out the best in a society, don’t you find?”

“I have not noticed that,” answered Warrick.

“I don’t see that buckskin gelding of yours here, Warrick. What is his name, Obese Nincompoop?” Wing offered.

“Fat Ninny, as you know perfectly well he is called, has gone out to Isabel on Halcion. She’s been managing her grandmother’s place out there for the last 36 months and I promised her that if her first calf crop was a success I would ship her Fat Ninny and her pick of the eventing mares. They’re on their way now.” Warrick said. “I try to keep the bargains I make with my daughters. They are implacable when denied what they consider their due.”

“I remember Isabel’s implacability vividly. Whom did you find that you trust to deliver that much valuable horseflesh, might I ask?” Wing had winced at the mention of Isabel Warrick. Several years ago he had briefly considered trying to persuade her to marry him, because of what her father had to offer an ambitious man, but in the end Isabel seemed insufficiently pliable to make a happy marriage.

“The beasts went out on Malcolm Reynolds’s Firefly, Serenity. They left day before yesterday and should be in within the next fortnight,” Warrick answered. He remembered Wing’s futile effort to court Isabel and Isabel’s vigorous rejection of his suit quite clearly.

“I had rather be married to that little horror Badger down at the docks,” Isabel had said, very loudly and distinctly. “At least he’s an honest crook. Wing is just a jumped-up liu kuoshui de biaozi he houzi de ben erzi.” Warrick technically disapproved of Isabel’s turn of phrase, but in essence agreed with her assessment of Wing’s moral character.

“Malcolm Reynolds’s Firefly. Dear me, I’m not sure I would consider that object reliable transport. Or its captain reliable anything. Particularly not just recently. Oh, look, there’s Fiona Woolingham – excuse me please, Warrick, I must speak to Fiona.” Wing oozed on his way, leaving Warrick a little uneasy. *end of part 6*