The Price Paid—Chapter 5

All rights and customary disclaimers in favor of Mutant Enemy. Once again, please critique as liberally as your conscience allows, it won’t hurt my feelings and might make the story better. Please do not archive without permission

This is the next chapter in the story of how they got from Serenity Valley into the black. Finally, a bar fight and lots of baths, even a meal with some real food in it! Thanks again to Archer for his valuable editorial contribution.

Chinese Glossary

Ni bu gan kai ni de hwang chiang [You must not talk so nastily] Nah mei guan sh [That has nothing to do with it] Wo de tien ah [Dear God in Heaven] Dong ma [understand] pofu [bitch] Qu ni de [up yours] ho-tze de pigu [monkey’s ass] húndàn [asshole/bastard] Bi zui [shut up]Shenme [What?]

CHAPTER 5—ALL IN CAGES

PRESENT DAY It was getting on for supper when, shopping done, they headed to the doss. The streets and alleys, never savory, were taking on a distinctly threatening aspect. Zoe was glad they had already strapped on the weapons. They found The Pilot’s Wife, it was a small hostel that catered to the quieter space crews, a small bar and café with clean quiet rooms above. If you wanted to raise hell you were expected to do it elsewhere. They checked in at the desk to find Mike and Rafe had dropped their bags and gone out again. Zoe saw Mal lean across the counter to drop a quiet word in the clerk’s ear but couldn’t hear what he said before accepting the key.

They were on the third story. There was no lift so they walked up. As they entered Zoe realized what Mal must have been asking the desk clerk. Her lips curled into a smile as she saw that the room had separate beds and its own bath, with an honest to God tub, deep enough to actually soak in!

There was mischief in her smile as she said “Separate beds and a tub, If I didn’t know better I’d say you were trying to tell me something. Good thing I’m not the sensitive type.”

He grinned at her with the echo of the old Mal in it as he said “Run it deep! We got time before we eat.”

She didn’t need to be invited twice. She was in the bathroom with the door closed, out of the Alliance-issue togs and in the bath with the water and steam billowing out of the faucet in land-speed record time. As she sank into the bone-softening warmth she called out to him above the running water, “Mal, are we actually going to have a meal with real food in it? “

“That’s the notion.” He called out as he shrugged out of his coat and threw it across the end of the bed. “I asked Tanaka where would be the best and he said there was a road house that serves the best beef on Persephone right at the edge of the docks. Thought I’d buy you a steak. Haven’t had beef since before the Valley.” He kicked off his boots and dropped the suspenders from his shoulders as he reached into the pocket of his coat and pulled out a box wrapped in silver tissue and put it on the pillow of the other bed before he pulled the shirt from his waistband then stretched out on his own. He closed his eyes to the sound of splashing and Zoe gently humming to herself, some Irish lament from the sound of it, but somehow it didn’t sound sad at all. He drifted off to sleep.

When she came out of the bath a good while later she found him sprawled on the bed, asleep with one foot hanging off the bed snoring softly. He looked younger than he had in a long time. It was hard to believe he wouldn’t be thirty until his next birthday. Nor she twenty-eight, most days she felt like a hundred, but not today. Today had been a good day.

Humming to herself, an old air often sung at wakes on Shadow, she began to comb out the wet tangle of her hair when she saw the wrapped box. She couldn’t recall when she had last had a present. Maybe from Tet, when they were in drop training. He’d bought her perfume from the PX one time and had it wrapped up to surprise her. She’d worn the scent through action on three worlds. It smelled of gardenias. Tet had said it reminded him of home. She could never bear to wear it after.

As she reached out to take the box she felt a catch in her throat. It was like a promise that there would be a future for them. A time when getting a present would be. . . just getting a present. Not a first--everything now was a first. She pulled the tissue apart carefully and opened the blue velvet box inside. It was a heavy chased silver belt buckle in a Celtic knot. It caught a shaft of light from the bathroom that played over the intricate curves, beautiful and lovingly hand-made.

“There’s a thing—a trick to it.” She looked up to find Mal awake. He sat up and put out his hand. She handed it to him and watched as he pushed on one of the silver cords making up the intricate knot as he pulled from the opposite side and then he was holding a sharply honed 4 inch triangular blade in one hand, small but very deadly. He looked up at her as he said, “I saw it while you were in the dressin’ room. It reminded me of you, efficient, deadly, and beautiful.”

“You sure know how to sweet talk a girl, Mal.” She said it with a laugh but was touched nonetheless. “I guess you weren’t goin’ soft with the dress and all. Don’t know which I like better.”

“I know which I do.” He said it with a straight face but an unholy gleam in his eye.

“If you want a bath better get it now.” She said dryly. “You won’t want to take the time after we eat.” Responding with some innuendo of her own.

“Won’t want to take the time from what?” He said with feigned innocence.

“Mal, you been plannin’ to hit the fleshpots since before we made ‘Relocation’. I reckon you been plannin’ even harder since you need to wash away the taste of that pofu.”

“Ni bu gan kai ni de hwang chiangi! Woman, you wound me with your base insinuations. If I happened to be in a place of commerce having a quiet drink, where comely and willing women were to befriend me as part of a commercial transaction I probably wouldn’t be adverse, but I have no plans.”

“Only because you don’t know how to ask Tanaka and Rafe where a clean brothel is while they think we’re newlyweds.”

“Zoe!” He attempted to sound a note of righteous indignation but to his chagrin it was clear she wasn’t have buying it

“Wo de tien ah, just tell them what’s what. They’ll understand and you won’t have to carry on this play acting. You’re gonna be spendin’ a couple of months with them, its going to get wearisome and you are not a man of great patience. Just tell them. Dong ma?”

He had never been much of a one for whores. He wasn’t a prude about it. He’d even gone with them a few times when pushed to it by a lack of available partners, after a big battle when the drive to feel yourself alive was almost overpowering and no one else was available. But most times if there wasn’t a willing gal to spark he’d just do without.

She’d asked him once why he didn’t go like all the others did. He said all the whores he ever met were forced into the life in one way or another and he got no satisfaction in the commerce. It made the sex tawdry and he felt bad after. Better to do it himself and have nothing to confess

That was back when he’d still believed. He’d always been a man of strong appetites but an even stronger conscience. He still had his conscience—that was why he wouldn’t accept her comfort—but maybe he didn’t have the faith that underlay it anymore. She wondered if it made the prospect of purchased . . .accommodation easier. She knew for a fact that except for that pofu in ‘Relocation’ it had been close to two years since he was with a woman. There hadn’t been anyone in the camp and not for awhile before they went into the Valley. She hoped he’d get some satisfaction but she suspected he wouldn’t. He was a great one for mortifying himself when there was no need.

He went into the bath without saying any thing else and she got dressed. She wore Mal’s gift and placed the hideout gun in its small shoulder holster under her vest. Then she sat on the bed waiting for him. She thought about the fact that he was more willing to accept comfort from a stranger for cash than from her and wondered what that said about him, maybe even about her.

Tanaka was right, the Butcher’s Block did serve a fine steak. It had a very nice line in liquor, too and Mal was working his way through a bottle of sipping whiskey. She’d looked over the clientele when they first came in, realized there was a sizeable portion of diners in Alliance gray and had contented herself with one drink. Seated at right angles to each other in a corner table, they could watch the whole room inconspicuously with their backs to the wall, while they waited for Tanaka and Rafe to meet them and fill them in. They were supposed to be arranging passage for all of them. They knew most of the ships and pilots in port and would strike the best deals with the most ‘reliable’ crews. From the tone of voice when Tanaka said it, she had gathered he meant most disreputable. So they waited and ate until Zoe thought Mal might need a wheel barrow to get her out the door.

The barmaid who served them was making up to Mal in the most shameless way and he was flirting right back at her. Zoe could almost think they were back on Shadow or at least the early days of the war when Mal had been that carefree, with no one’s life in his keeping but his own.

“You know, Mal,” she said after the girl had moved off to serve a nearby table of raucous spacers, “easy to see that girl has a letch for you. If you asked she’d be more than happy to meet you after her shift. You ought to give her a fall.”

“Woman, why are trying so hard to get me laid? There’s something indecent about it given that we swore to cleave only unto each other. This here,--not in the best tradition of cleavin’.” He said it with a smile but the carefree Mal was gone for the moment.

“That your way of telling me to mind my own business?” She said with a challenge, never one to shirk the unpleasant.

“Ahh Zoe, why you pushin’ so hard? What harm if I go with a whore? Not like I never did it before, never seemed to bother you then.”

“That was before you told me you felt sordid after, that they were all in a cage of some sort. You’re the one said it left you feeling like you’d forced a gal. We just come out of a prison ourselves, occurs to me you might not want to be in the cage business.”

“Well,” he said flatly. “I’ve come to realize we’re all in cages, every last one of us and nothing I did put them there. Better to have a cash transaction then you know where you are. No obligations beyond payment for services rendered. Nothin’ offered and nothin’ expected.”

The bitterness in his voice wrung her to the heart. “Is that why you wouldn’t--?” Her voice trailed off.

“Nah mei guan shi. With us there can’t never be a question of obligation. I just ain’t looking to take on any more responsibilities. Just you and me. That’s all I plan to care ‘bout. Dong ma? Now leave it go.” There was a plea in his voice that said this wasn’t the time to push, so she sighed and decided that, discretion being the greater part of valor, she would fold her tent on this argument. There would always be another day.

Just then she caught sight of Tanaka at the door of the tavern. He met her eyes and beckoned with a nod of the head. “Time to go, Mal.” She gestured towards the door. She got up and started across the room to the door while Mal stopped to pay their shot. The barmaid was having one last go at him as Zoe crossed the room. Tanaka with Rafe beside him had withdrawn discreetly from the bar to wait in the darkness outside.

As she crossed the room she passed by a table full of uniformed Alliance troops. They had been rowdy when they arrived and had gotten louder as the evening progressed. There were six of them gathered around the table with a litter of spent bottles, uniforms disheveled and the detritus of a long drunken revel on the table in front of them.

As she passed by, one of the drunken troopers reached out to grab her by the elbow and swung her into his lap, saying thickly in the accent common to Dyton colony, “Come ‘ere then, darling and gi’e us a go!” He leered at her drunkenly then tried to use the other hand to fondle her. Mal looking up at just that moment, and seeing her, gave an oath and headed towards her at a run.

As the Fed grabbed her, Zoe grabbed the hand he was trying to grope her with and bent his thumb back to his arm at an unnatural angle causing a surprisingly high pitched squeal of pain. Mal arrived at the table at the same time as the three Feds facing his way started to rise. Zoe reared back and put both her booted feet on the edge of the table and pushed off against it. Her push shoved the whole table into the three drunks on the other side. Two of them took it in the gut setting them back down in their chairs. The third, faster off the mark, took the full force of the table lower down and folded up like a sheet of wet newspaper. Zoe, the Fed holding her, and the chair went over backwards as she did a rear somersault out of his grasp, with his thumb still held in restraint.

She came up with the hideout gun pointed at his head to see Mal grab a bottle from the tabletop with his left hand and throw it into the face of the man on her left while drawing his gun from his holster to point it at the head of the man to her right. The whole thing was over nearly as quickly as it started.

“Now, then, what’s all this?” Mal said with his lazy drawl and a look of unholy glee in his eye. “Is there some reason you fella’s felt at liberty to manhandle my wife?”

“ Qu ni de! You’ll pay for this.” The one with Mal’s gun in his face spat out.

Mall ground the barrel of his revolver firmly into the man’s temple and said in a deceptively soft voice “You know all these fine folks are here to have a nice meal and it occurs to me that it’s goin’ to spoil some appetites to see your brains spattered about. ‘Course personally I’ve finished my dinner and it’d be by way of dessert for me.”

“I’ll see you in hell ho-tze de pigu Browncoat! They’ll top you for assaulting Federal troops.” This from the one he had thrown the bottle at. It had broken on impact and cut him in a jagged line from forehead to cheek. He was going to carry a fearsome scar for the rest of his life. “Do ya think so?” He asked, almost conversationally. “The way I see it, my wife and I were havin’ a quiet dinner, bothering no one and as she crossed the room to leave she was assaulted by a drunken Fed with the clear intent to commit rapine, egged on by five of his drunken cohorts. See, I’m thinkin’ with all these witnesses the Provost Marshall will see it that way too. He won’t have any choice ‘cause none of these good folk here doubt that the next time it could be their wife or daughter.” Over his shoulder he called out to the barmaid, “What do you think darlin’? Shall we call in the Provos’?”

The look on the faces of all the Feds able to understand the implications made it clear they knew the charges would be serious and could be fatal. Attempted rape of a civilian was a capital charge in the Army of the Union of Allied Planets, though seldom prosecuted as such. The girl already had her hand on the cortex screen in reply when Mal went on.

“Or we could put it down to an excess of high spirits and spirituous liquor which overcame otherwise clean and virtuous boys like yourselves and we could call it quits right now.”

It was clear they had lost the stomach for a fight. But also clear that the shame of being bested by two civilians, one of them a woman, in front of an acre of witnesses was a problem.

“I’ll tell you how it is boys, me and the missus, we’re just passing through. We’ll be leaving port in the next day or two. Now we don’t want any further trouble but if we were to get it we’d just have to go to the Provost. And we’d still have that acre of witnesses, wouldn’t we darlin’?” The last over his shoulder to the barmaid who still had her hand on the cortex terminal.

“Sure would, and half of them are regular enough to run a tab, so I’d know exactly how to get aholt’ of them.” She said pugnaciously.

“Ya see how it is, then. What do you say? You want to put this to bed right now or keep ridin’ and see where it takes us?”

Taking silence for agreement and ignoring the moans of the incapacitated, he jerked his head at the door, motioning for Zoe to precede him. She rose gracefully and stepping on the chest of the prone hwu dahn who had started the fracas, moved towards the door with Mal covering her retreat. He kept the gun leveled at the Feds as he backed towards the door saying as he left the lighted dining room for the darkness of the street.

“Don’t forget to leave a nice tip. Y’all have been a world of trouble to that poor girl. She’s got to clean up after your mess.”

He tossed her a twenty credit Alliance coin and a smile that would have melted polar ice as they faded into the covering darkness outside. Mal gave an unrestrained crow of laughter. “Well, that was bracing! I forgot how much fun facing down those Alliance bastards could be. We’ll have to do that again!”

“Not right now.” Tanaka said dryly. “We were kind of hopin’ to keep a low profile here. We don’t want to get pinched before we even get off planet.”

“There go the the fleshpots, Mal. I told you to get the barmaid’s number.” She said with the ghost of a smile. It drew startled looks from Tanaka and Rafe.

“Zoe! Bi zui!” He replied with a strangled laugh, adding to the other men, “I’ll explain. Later—right Zoe—later? Now’s not the time.”

“We got passage.” Tanaka said, ignoring their comments for the moment “Zoe’s on the Hercules she’s scheduled to lift off at oh-eight hundred day after tomorrow. It’s a seven day run to Shadow, with one port of call before arrival. We got berths on the Rose of Absolom for Verbena, she’s shipping out the same day at eleven hundred. Should be there in four days. I reckon we should be on Boros with the Katana Maru after a couple of week’s overhaul. We pick up the cargo there for a run to the outer rings, three weeks out heavy laden, two back empty and meet Zoe back here in nine weeks, near enough.” They had been with a casual looking haste the whole while and arrived at The Pilot’s Wife as he said this.

“Sounds good. We’ll be packed and ready when you are.” Mal said, obviously still in a high spirits from the fight.

As he turned to go into the lobby with her, Zoe put an authoritative hand on his chest to stop him and said meaningfully, “I’m gonna go up and have another bath, Cap. Why don’t you have a drink with the boys and I’ll see you for breakfast.” She gave them all the same sweetly knowing smile and disappeared into the hostel.

Mal’s good humor abated somewhat at their puzzled looks but returned when he acknowledged to himself if he was going to work with these men they ought to know the truth. Lying would be a poor way to start his apprenticeship. And if necessity forced him to tell the truth, it would be better done sooner than later. Too many lies made for untrustworthy allies and he needed these men as allies.

“Your wife mad at us Mal?” Rafe inquired anxiously. “We didn’t mean to get you in no trouble.”

“Well, about the wife thing.” Mal said expansively, “Let me buy you boys a drink and tell you a funny story . . .”

After the drink and the explanation, neither was at all put out by the deception. On the contrary, both felt it a very good joke on their erstwhile captors. When they learned, upon Rafe’s delicate inquiry, that he and Zoe weren’t grappling, they felt in honor bound to show him some of those very same establishments that he and Zoe had been discussing. Which, come to think on it, was probably what she had intended all along.

And as it turned out there were some comely and willing women. One of whom did happen to be commercially minded and what with one thing and another, and another, he didn’t roll in until nearly dawn. He had the consideration to take his boots off in the hallway so as not to wake her and tiptoed in to fall in bed pretty nearly fully dressed. Though he reckoned after sleeping light on the battlefield all those years, Zoe knew to the minute when he’d come in. Still the decencies were preserved and they could both pretend otherwise.

When he woke up he found her in the bath again. “Woman, you’re gonna prune up like a raisin if you keep this up.” He hollered through the door at her. “I could eat a horse without stopping to skin it, come on out.”

She smiled serenely as she entered the room fully dressed with her curls damp around her face from the steam. She looked like the cat that got the canary and no mistake, but she forbore comment on his activities of the night before. She was like that. It was enough for her to be right, she didn’t have to rub a man’s nose in it.

They went down to the café in the hostel and had eggs and bacon and biscuits and cup after cup of real, fragrant coffee while they worked out a simple code system in case of a need to communicate over the cortex. Then they went to the bank and rented a safe deposit box, either could enter it alone using just their finger print. If need be they could leave a message there for each other if something more complicated had to be communicated than their simple code allowed for. Feeling they had made all the plans they could, they went for a final meal and a drink.

While they were sitting at the bar in companionable silence he told her, “You were right.”

“Shenme?” She looked inquiringly at him.

“I should have given the barmaid a fall.”

“Ahh” she said in comprehension. “Not what you were hoping for then?”

“Don’t misread, I got what I paid for.” He said reflectively. “It’s just what I paid for wasn’t really what I wanted, if you know what I mean.—Hell, I’m not sure I know what I mean.”

“What you wanted was for some gal to like you well enough to invite you into her bed, not someone who pretended to like you well enough because you paid her to. That gal at the restaurant did.”

“Ahh” he murmured in acknowledgement.

“It’s not really that complicated. It doesn’t have to be a great big thing. Not every roll in the hay has to be more than just that. But for you it has to be more than just commerce.” She chided him.

Ruefully he said, “I always did say you know me better than I know myself.” before lapsing back into comfortable silence. Knowing she was right might be enough for Zoe. Acknowledging it was something he had to do every now and again, just to keep himself honest.

They went home at a decently early hour like the soberly married couple they were not and got a good night’s sleep. Mal put her aboard the Hercules without incident the next morning and met Rafe and Tanaka at the Rose of Absalom for liftoff. It felt odd to be traveling without her. For close on seventeen years he and Zoe hadn’t spent more that a handful of weeks apart. It gave him an uncomfortableness. He felt adrift, lighter, as if someone had removed a limb. He found himself turning to pass a comment to her and was surprised to find her not there. He started to worry he had sent her into harms way without being there to back her play

Next Chapter 6—The Katana Maru