“Well, I’d say it was mighty fine to see a familiar face in a desolate place like this, Haden, but I have to say that that six-shooter—mighty fine weapon that it is—is taking away some of my enjoyment of the moment.” Unobtrusively, Mal eyeballed the surroundings. There were actually at least six guns that he could see they had to worry about. Damn—Haden must have been successful since they’d last run into each other for his posse to have grown like that. And him caught with his pants down. Well. At least that was only figuratively speaking this time. “Just keep those hands away from your own shooter, you *niao-se-duh sagwa*!” “*niao-se-duh*?” He smelled his sleeve. “Zoë, do I smell of piss? ‘Cause I’m not smelling it.” “No piss, Sir,” Zoë agreed in the usual tense tone she spoke in when the situation was grim. “*Thank* you. You see? Now, *sagwa*, that you’d have had to take up with my mother—but I wouldn’t recommend that, as she might have taken exception to the suggestion, and she was a mighty strong woman.” “*Niou-se*! Will you *shut* the hell *up*!” Mal shrugged. “Whatever you say, Haden old buddy.” “We’re not buddies, Reynolds! We never were! You screwed me over!” Somehow, he’d known he was going to hear that. “Well now. That’s not how I seem to recall it.” Getting out of this one without any bullet holes might prove to be a mite tricky. Haden Bai had always been one to hold a grudge—real or imagined—and no matter the state of his pants, Mal and the others had been caught at a real inopportune moment. “Why don’t you explain to me what you think happened?” He, Zoë, Jayne and Kaylee had been out all that afternoon scrounging the wares of the moon’s only settlement’s scrap dealers, looking for parts that would help them to keep flying. Or at least, Kaylee had—the rest of them had mainly been standing around freezing their rumps off. Although Jayne had occasionally come in handy for some heavy lifting. The fact that he had complained about that in the tone and using the words that he had was why he was now carrying the heavy crate full of engine parts by himself, leaving neither of his hands free to go for any of his weapons. “You took the loot and left me to hang for it, that’s what happened!” “Whoa, whoa there,” Mal said. “The deal was, you took the money, I got to take all the product. I also seem to recall that that left you with easily the more valuable share, and no hassle trying to sell it off.” “Haden! Let’s just kill’em an’take their guns,” one of the gunmen said. “I’m freezing my gorram butt off here!” “Really, let’s not be hasty—let’s just go through our options here. Now, you could just shoot us dead, but then you’d be left with nothing *more* than our guns for your trouble.” Mal noticed that Haden was listening. He’d always been easy to stall. It wouldn’t do them much good though. “Alternatively, we could go for our guns first, and there’d be a big firefight, and that wouldn’t leave anyone happy.” “Not *that* big a firefight,” one of them said, and others chuckled. Apparently it was funny because it was true. He and his crew were standing on the open ramp of his ship, but too far out to duck inside before getting perforated. In a fair fight—that was, if they could get to cover and Haden Bai’s gang couldn’t—they could probably take them. But they needed a distraction badly, to get a head start. And they were being watched too closely to allow for any sudden, or probably even slow moves. “Now, option three…” Quick. Had to come up with an option three. If Haden only had to choose between shooting first and shooting second, even that piece of cowdung would be able to make his mind up pretty quickly. “Mal,” Jayne grunted, obviously straining from holding up the crate that their attackers had told him not to put down, “we gonna do something about this *tah mah duh hwoon dahn* and his *tyen-sah* crew, or we gonna stand around here all day?” Mal glanced in Jayne’s direction. Kaylee was still standing right behind him—good. If it came to a shoot-out, Jayne would know to cover her. If he didn’t chose to ignore the obvious, like he was doing now with his suggestion. Mal ignored him. “Option three, we work out some way for me to repay you what you feel I owe you, and we all leave happy.” “Keep talking.” “Well, we’ve got some cargo on board right now that—” He started to turn to Serenity. “Don’t!—you move a muscle, Malcolm Reynolds.” Jayne spat out a quiet curse. He’d been ready to move the instant Mal had drawn their ambushers’ attention away, but while the gunmen had all glanced towards Mal when he moved, they’d snapped right back to their assigned targets when their boss had reacted. “Fine, fine—just thought you’d want to see…” That was the moment something popped behind them, in the cargo hold. It wasn’t a loud noise, but it was a suspicious one, and Haden and his men didn’t look happy with it. The sound repeated itself. Wonderful. Things obviously weren’t complicated enough yet. “What’s that?” Haden demanded. “Kaylee?” “Um… I dunno, cap’n. Sounds like… Sounds like it might be the press-coupler boltgun, eh… not a gun! No need to start shooting!” “A what?” Mal and Haden said in unison. Mal recognized the look that came over Kaylee’s face all too well. It was her ‘my captain is an engineering idiot’ look. If she hadn’t been Kaylee, he would have let that pass by even under normal circumstances. But she was Kaylee, of course. Well, at least she was distracted from being scared for a moment. “It’s a tool,” she said. “Kaylee, you been leaving tools lying around my cargo hold again?” Actually now that he thought about, Mal remembered what a… what that thing was. It shot bolts to reattach the casing on the fuel injectors, which had to be put back on tightly whenever they’d been opened up for maintenance to prevent his ship from blowing up every time they went to full burn. What he didn’t know was what happened to the thing if you left it on too long, but the way things were going, it would probably explode and empty its cartridge of bolts into the food supplies they’d just bought yesterday. “Sorry, cap’n.” Another pop came from inside, but thankfully it didn’t startle anyone anymore. “Reynolds. You were mentioning something about buying yourself out of this situation?” Haden said. “Keeping straight to the point—I admire that in a man.” “My boots’re freezing to the ground here, Reynolds. Make sure the next words out of your mouth are damn good, or I might just decide it’s not”—pop, went the boltgun, now completely ignored by all—“worth the b—” If he hadn’t been looking in just the right direction, Mal wouldn’t have seen it. Something—it must have been a bolt, nothing else made any sense—shot out of the cargo hold, hit the bottom of the cockpit where it extended out over the gathered company, and bounced straight down onto the shotgun that one of Haden Bai’s men was holding. It was the man targeting Jayne. His shotgun was only knocked aside for a second—at that distance, the bolt didn’t have enough force behind it to do any damage to man or weapon—but you didn’t need to give a man like Jayne any more than that. With a powerful lunge, Jayne thrust his crate at their attackers. Haden tried to sidestep it, but he was still winged, and went down for the moment. Mal and Zoë were already drawing arms and ducking for cover to either side, while Jayne threw himself to the ground on top of Kaylee, shielding her. A chaotic play of flying bullets followed. Mal managed to take out one of the men, and then amused himself by keeping Haden pinned down as he tried to crawl away. Eventually, after what felt much longer than it had been, the shooting stopped. “Everybody?” Mal hollered. “I’m fine, sir.” Zoë accounted for. “I… I’m OK,” Kaylee said in a breathless voice, and added more quietly, “Can you get off me now, please, Jayne?” Mal popped his head out, saw Zoë do the same on the other side of the ramp, covering the field with her gun. His pet mercenary was still lying on top of his mechanic. “Jayne?” He grunted. “Got a gorram bullet in my gorram shoulder, captain.” Kaylee gulped. That bullet might have been for her if Jayne hadn’t been there to cover her. “I’m sure you’ll live, Jayne. We’ll get you to the doc, in a bit.” Carefully, keeping his eyes on anyone who might just be playing dead—or playing squirming-around-on-the-ground-in-pain—Mal made his way to Haden. The crate had hit him on his gun arm, and Haden was obviously feeling it. Still, no need to take any chances. Mal took his weapon away from him. Nice gun, too. The man glared curses at him. “Said I’d pay you back. All considered, you life seems like a pretty good deal, better than you deserve. So let’s say we keep all of your people’s weapons and call it even? There’s a good lad. Scram.” Thankfully, even those not too badly hurt of Haden’s men had a good fright put into them, and didn’t cause any more trouble. After they had all scampered off, Mal and Zoë helped Jayne to his feet. The wound didn’t look too bad, but it spilled an ungodly amount of blood all over the three of them. “Kaylee,” he said, “you go look for that… that…” “The press-coupler boltgun?” “Just go find it and put it away properly, will you?” Mal paused for a second and frowned. There hadn’t been time to give it any thought in all the ruckus, but he realized now that after that incredible far-fetched, *jien-guay* lucky shot that had given them their break, he hadn’t heard a single pop from within the cargo hold. That was when his eye fell on River, walking up the stairs. She turned her head like she felt his eyes on her and gave him that smile of hers that said she knew more than he did, and that not all of it was *fong-luh* crazy either. Mal’s mind flashed to what Kaylee had told them about River’s marksmanship. Nah. It was impossible. Nobody could have ever… Gah! That girl was going to be the death of him yet, or at least drive him as crazy as she was.

(Read Chapter Three: True Blue, now previewing at www.BattleOfSerenity.tk )