Jayne was a lot better driver than he led Simon to believe. He was purposely taking corners a little too quickly, just to see if he could make Simon sick. It wasn’t that there was anything wrong with Simon to make Jayne dislike him. He just had a real tendency to make things much more complicated than they needed to be.

Simon was apparently trying to speak, but the wind was much louder than he was, so Jayne found it convenient to pretend that he couldn’t hear him.

“I said,” Simon was yelling now, “how much longer?”

If it’ll shut him up, Jayne thought. “It’s just past this next hill.”

Simon was relieved that he would soon be out of the cold wind. He didn’t expect that this facility would be up to core world standards, but it would at least be better than being outside in this weather.

The town they were visiting was actually a bit more developed than either Jayne or Simon was used to seeing in recent times. It was a bit of a surprise that there was no where to land Serenity that was closer to town.

Jayne brought the mule to a halt in front of one of the shinier buildings and locked it down.

“We have one hour,” he told Simon.

Simon didn’t answer. He was already headed inside. Jayne checked that his pistol was still holstered securely and followed him in.

“I brought a list of supplies we’ll need,” Simon was telling the man at the counter. “Mostly basics, but one woman is expecting a baby.”

“This looks like it shouldn’t be too difficult,” the man said. “Some of these maternity supplies are a bit expensive, though.”

“Just do the best you can,” Simon said. His negotiating skills had improved a bit. He wasn’t going to tell the man he wouldn’t pay full price for these things, but he wasn’t about to tell him that he would either. The price negotiation would wait until the man had already taken the time to pull everything out.

“What’s this?” Jayne asked as he picked something up. He didn’t actually seem to be asking any one in particular, but Simon felt it best to respond.

“That,” Simon said as he took it from him as gently as possible, “probably costs more than you make in a month.” He set it down slowly.

“Well, sorry,” Jayne said sarcastically. “I’ll try not to touch anything then.”

“Please do.”

They emerged from the supply store about 30 minutes later. Jayne was actually rather surprised that it hadn’t taken Simon any longer than that to haggle over the price. It even came out lower than they had planned on spending. And somehow Simon had convinced the manager to bring the supplies out on a hand truck.

Then Jayne saw that Simon had his hands in the air. The man from the store quickly followed suit.

“What in the gorram…” Jayne started to complain, but he was interrupted by the men that had their guns trained on Simon.

“We’ll be taking your hovercraft here,” one of them said, “and those supplies.”

Jayne wasn’t about to put his hands up as quickly as Simon had. “And here I was hoping that this would be a quick trip into town.”

There were four men, all of them with standard pistols, but no body armor. One had a knife. There didn’t seem to be any sign of a sniper or the like, and even if there was, the visibility was pretty low in the snow. One of them was standing just a bit closer to them than the rest. He was probably their leader.

“Just take that shooter out of the holster nice and slow,” the apparent leader said, “and toss it over here.”

“You folks might want to rethink your strategy there,” Jayne said as he put his hand on his gun. “Cuz I can guarantee that at least 3 of you won’t be going home if I pull this gun out.” He walked forward a bit in order to keep Simon and the merchant out of the line of fire. He didn’t really like Simon much, but he didn’t want to see him dead either. That would be way too hard on Kaylee.

“Are we going to have a problem?” their leader asked.

“That’s up to you,” Jayne told him. “Cuz you’ll be the first to die if there’s any shootin’ here today.”

For the next few moments even the wind couldn’t break the silence coming from Jayne and their leader. The cold was getting painful on Simon’s face and hands, as he hadn’t had a chance to bundle up completely yet. Jayne had to be even worse, as his coat was still open, but he didn’t show any sign of it.

Suddenly Simon realized that Jayne was less than a meter away from the man in the front of this group of thugs. That was about the same instant that Jayne yanked the man to him, spun him around, and put his knife to his throat.

“Throw your guns in the mule,” he said, gesturing at the hovercraft. The three he was facing did so reluctantly, but the man that Jayne had a hold of did not. He pressed the blade a little harder into his skin, and soon that pistol was in the mule as well.

“Kwai jio kai,” Jayne told them as he pushed the man away. He kicked him in the back for good measure, which nearly knocked him into the snow.

It took a moment for Simon to realize that he could put his hands down.

The man with the hand truck seemed as if he hadn’t been breathing the whole time. “Thank you,” he said to Jayne. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it,” he replied.

Simon seemed like he wanted to say something to him, but he didn’t. They just got their supplies loaded up and headed back for Serenity.