The Treasure of Lei Fong Wu

Chapter Forty

They prepared to leave Athens the next day, as the news over the cortex was all about the raid on New Lesbos “by persons unknown but believed to be raiders from the ring system”. Seven women died and ten were wounded in the raid, and twenty buildings, including the village’s majestic temple, had been damaged by fire. Local leaders pledged to rebuild, and the Archonate pledged a hefty sum for additional security. Inara felt obligated to donate a significant amount to the victims herself. None of this would have happened except for her. Debra told her she was being silly, that those men were to blame for the death and destruction. For a woman who had just lost all of her worldly possessions and been shot for the first time in a long, sedate, and boring life, she seemed to be taking the crisis rather well. “It’s something about being faced with violent death,” she explained. “You come face to face with your own mortality, it alters your perspective. I’ve lost all of my work, years worth, but I find I don’t care. I can get a new house, new things. And my work doesn’t seem as relevant as it did a few days ago. I’m going to have to give this a few months reflection before I can put it in a context of meaning, but honestly I’m looking forward to it. In a way, I feel like I should thank you, bao bei.” “Please don’t,” begged Inara into the pickup. “Seven people died – more, if you count the raiders – because . . . because of me. Of who I am. Hell, I killed one of them!” The sole surviving raider was the man that Inara had shot in the eye with the arrow. It had permanently destroyed his eyesight in that eye, but had not penetrated his brain. He was in Acropolis, now, being healed. To stand trial. For capital aiding and abetting murder, and thirty-six other charges. He would likely be executed before his eye fully healed. “Relax, my dear, relax,” Debra soothed. “I may not have your romantic lifestyle, but listen to a woman who has years more experience than you. When you get past a lot of the philosophical fe hua about good and evil and fate and predestination and free will, in the background are the Two Rules of Ecology, which underly the interplay of all things. This one falls under Rule Two. Rule One covers those bandits: what goes around, comes around. They chose a path of violence, or it was chosen for them. They were going to die violently at some point.” “What’s Rule Two?” Inara asked, tears in her eyes. “ ‘Shit happens.’ A very ancient observation that remains as accurate today as when it was first coined. The ‘verse throws things at us, darling. For no apparent reason sometimes. I’d like to think that there is a reasons for it all, but I’ve yet to discover it. That’s more the province than theology than philosophy, anyway. But this terrible tragedy happened, and the important thing now is not why it happened, but dealing with its wake. My little village is shaken, but we are strong. We’ll miss those girls. But they died defending what they fought so hard and long to build. It is very sad. But it happened. Let’s move on – you included.” “Thank you, Debra,” Inara said hoarsely. “But I think I’m going to have a lot of soul-searching about this for some time to come.” “As well you should. That’s one reason I . . . I’m attracted to you, enjoy your company. You will think long and hard about this, and you will become a stronger person for it. As for me? When this wing heals, I’m going to take up archery. You’ve inspired me. Now get some rest, dear, I know I am. That cute nurse is coming back with my painkiller. Good luck on your journey,” she said, adding a blessing in Sanskrit. “Goodbye, Debra, I’ll look in on you next time I’m in the neighborhood,” Inara said in return, sniffing back some tears. When she had disconnected she got ahold of herself and stared up at the statue of Amitaba Buddha, the Buddha of Infinite Compassion. “I take it you heard,” she announced. “Yeah,” admitted Mal, coming from behind the curtain that separated the airlock from the rest of the shuttle. “Came to check on you, my ears kinda got in the way.” He stepped in and swallowed. “You gonna be okay?” “I don’t know, Mal!” Inara exploded, the tears she had carefully concealed exploding down her cheeks. “I just killed a man, and got a lot of other people killed. Maybe that’s no big thing to you, but it’s . . . it’s not something I really . . . I’m not a . . . I’ve never . . .” “Inara,” Mal said, slowly, “You ain’t a soldier. You ain’t an outlaw. No one ever expected you to end another life, so you weren’t prepared for it. It’s never an easy thing. ‘Specially not someone who’s . . . who’s devoted so much to livin’. I hate like hell that you had to do that . . . but you had to. It was no less than he woulda done t’you, an’ that’s a certainty.” “That doesn’t make it right, Mal!” she bawled. “No, but it does make it reasonable,” he countered. “Takes a mighty strong man to turn the other cheek, give up violence as a way of solvin’ things when there’s violence bein’ done to him. Mightier than me, I know. Your life is in danger, you do what you gotta do, an’ you worry about it later!” he insisted. “It is later, Mal,” she wept. “It is later, and I am worried. Is this what is going to become of me? Out here on the frontier? I kill a man . . . and then just go on about my daily life?” “You had a cozy little safe place back in the Core, once,” Mal reminded. “You could have stayed there, never had to do . . . what you done. You had a choice. You made it. But you gotta live with the consequences of that, and the potential that it mayhap again. Ain’t no way ‘round it. Don’t rightly know why you did leave, you’ve never give cause to tell me, an’ I ain’t askin’ now. But whatever your reasons, this possibility was part of the consequences. This is real life stuff, out here. Rough folk with not much interest in lookin’ after their fellows, save to take what they can. You gotta right to defend yourself. You done that. You wanna avoid that situation, you go where it’s safe . . . for now,” he conceded. “Are we really doomed to be like that? Like animals? Killing each other, hunting each other?” “Well, there are animals, and then there are animals. There’s the fat, dumb, tasty-eatin’ kinda animal, that sits there eatin’ and shittin’ all day ‘till someone comes along to eat ‘im. An’ then there’s the kinda animal that waits for dark and does the eatin’. You gotta decide whether or not you wanna be the kind o’ animal that gets et, is all.” “And what kind of animal are you?” she asked, accusingly. “Me?” He thought on it a moment. “I’m the kinda animal what sits with the sheep until the wolf comes, then chases the sonofabitch off the farm. I’m a big mean dog.” “Dog,” Inara said. “You’re a dog. You realize what great insult material you just handed me?” “I trust your judgment not to use it unwisely.” “I’m sorry, Mal, I just . . . it’s going to take me a while. I probably won’t take on any clients until I settle this in my head. Too many . . . issues.” “Well, you ain’t gotta worry ‘bout that much where we’re going. Not many clients to be had there. Not ones that satisfy your picky ‘gotta have a bank account and a body temperature’ requirement.” “God, we aren’t going to someplace like Higgin’s Moon, are we?” she groaned. “Or some terraformer’s slave camp?” “Nope. We found the intel, fed it into the map, and it gave us the final clue. We’re going to Hecate.” “Hecate,” Inara said, turning the word over in her mouth while her mind tried to remember why she knew that name, and what it meant. When she realized it, her eyes flew open, and her face took on an expression of horror. “Hecate! Oh, God, Mal! We’re humped!” “Yeah,” Mal agreed, resigned. “That’s the general consensus of opinion.” *

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By the time Malcolm Reynolds was born on Shadow, the science and art of terraformation was well advanced, a secure engineering feat that had been replicated more than seventy times. With a profound understanding of the process it was possible to take any rotating rock over 700 miles thick (the smallest of the inhabited Border Moons) with a sun in the vicinity – making a number of assumptions about chemical composition and radiation and such – and turn it into someplace where a man could be born, live a long, full life, and die as naked as he had been born. The profit margin on real estate was just gravy. Eden, Inc. The process was so well understood that it was very, very rare for a project to be started without absolute certainty that it could be finished. There were exceptions: lonely Set had soured, its climate becoming colder and colder. Odysseus was abandoned when the capricious nature of its peculiar sun revealed itself by frying the terraforming crews into cinders during a sudden solar flare. Homestead died a lingering death from outflows of poisonous gas that turned cities into charnel houses in minutes. Huang Zi became untenable due to massive tectonic disruption, similar to the issues that had eventually rendered Earth-That-Was uninhabitable. Terraforming events happened. But those were rare, rare exceptions, and usually occurred during the earliest stages of the process. Hecate was one of those exceptions, and perhaps the most strange and tragic of them all. Hecate was a robust 7000 mile sphere, third in an eight-moon system around a strange yellow jovian planet that seemed to have two cores – one of pure carbon, one of some mixture of heavy metals, the exact nature of which was not completely understood. It was tagged as an interesting curiosity and potential scientific grant opportunity, but given scarce notice after that. Hecate was the important part. She was, it seemed, ideally suited to terraformation, and a huge return was anticipated. Thirty five years of intense work, thousands of slaves, tens of thousands of subcontractors, and billions of credits worth of investments produced a verdant world highly valued by the teeming masses of the Core who were looking for a new start. Hecate was easily Certified, and immigrants started teeming in. The Emperor of Yuan, an early investor, generously used the Empire’s holdings in the terraforming company to purchase entrance rights and land stakes for a hundred thousand refugees from Xiao who had lost everything in the war between their two planets. They joined a vigorous a population of three million and growing, at the time when the Temple was dedicated. Economic development proceeded more or less as normal. Agriculture, first subsistence and then cash-oriented, was followed by industrial development: mining, refining, light industry followed by heavy. Culture and civilized life followed the money, first in the capital, Regina Noctae, and then to smaller towns. It was a green and pleasant world. It was peaceful and fertile and the people were prosperous. Then one day, when Malcolm Reynolds was ten years old and Hecate had grown to be home to ten million souls, disaster struck. One popular theory said it was the composition of the jovian core that did it; others maintained that it was an idiosyncracy of the variable red star around which it orbited. Whatever the reason on July 29th of that year the vital gravity generators that kept the atmo and everything within it tethered firmly to the ground just . . . stopped. There was a minor tremor – not uncommon in a jovian system, with such potent tidal gravitational forces at work – but that was it. A little shaking and then everyone weighed about a third of what they were accustomed to. The terraforming maintenance team (established in perpetuity on every planet, though some, admittedly, were better than others) leapt into action, trying to diagnose the problem and correct it. They were hampered by the mass chaos around them. The moment the event occurred everyone knew exactly what it meant: the atmo would quickly leak away. How quickly was a matter of conjecture, speculation, and blind panic. No cause for the malfunction was ever found. The gravity generators were industry-standard quadruple-redundant, solid state machines that were designed to last ten thousand years before replacement. Every great while one of them would go bad due to some factory defect. But there were automatic redundancies to cover such issues. A world could lose up to eighty-five percent of its gravs and still maintain atmo. On Hecate, they all failed in that same moment. For no apparent reason. The optimists and pessimists vied for attention with doomsayers and devotees of blind panic as they discussed the situation. How long? How long before life on Hecate became untenable? Evacuating a world of ten million was going to be a difficult endeavor – every ship in the quadrant that could make the trip was ordered to aid the evacuation while experts were rushed to the scene. Even outlaw slavers joined in, though their motivation was less than altruistic. Yet to move ten million in time would require an order of magnitude more ships than were available, or a few of the gargantuan Exodus Ships that were, alas, long ago dismantled. It all depended upon just how many weeks or months it would take before the atmo became uninhabitable. Pessimists said three weeks. Optimists insisted upon six months. There was just no data on this type of event – it was unprecedented. They had five and a half days. Ten million people, minus the few tens of thousands who did manage to escape, slowly choked to death, those who did not succumb to the cold or violent craziness first. By August 3rd there were only a handful of survivors who had managed to improvise shelter. By September 1st, the atmo that was left on Hecate was one percent of what it had been a month earlier. From then on Hecate was a dead world, trapped in a moment in time. A modern Pompeii, it was a tragic snapshot of life, forever frozen in the naked sterility of vacuum. Millions of corpses littered the barren landscape. Forests reached forever skyward, crops stood forever unharvested, towns and farms and houses stood forever trapped as in the timeless amber of raw space. It was a dead world where not even the echoes of life could be heard, for there was no more wind. Only eternal, frigid, silent winter. For a few months it was a haven for scavengers and scientists, the one prying away the wealth from Hecate, the other prying away her secrets. There was even a study conducted to determine the feasibility of re-starting the gravs and re-terraforming the moon. It was soon given up when it became apparent that no one would want to live there. Apart from the inherent insecurity of tempting fate and gambling the same disaster would not strike twice, the idea of raising your children amongst ten million ghosts was too disturbing for most potential settlers to contemplate. In the end, the Alliance refused re-Certification under any circumstances. It would remain forever a ghost world. Hecate became an object lesson in the hubris of Man, who had conquered the stars and built worlds like gods. The Queen of Night reminded everyone, everywhere, that there were powers in the ‘verse yet untamed.

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They left Athens just after dawn. Mr. Universe and his mechanical fiancé saw them off, with what passed as pleasantries (most of which made the womenfolk feel the need for a long hot bath) and a few small gifts to the crew and the Imperials. He seemed genuinely touched by their presence, though he expressed it poorly. He did do them the courtesy of erasing the security cam footage that showed them playing so prominent a role in the rescue of New Lesbos – though he kept a copy for himself, as he loved the violence. Debra had already convinced the ladies of the village to “forget” them, telling the constables instead that a few visiting merchants had assisted in the counterattack. The Lesbosians were grateful enough to do that much, even after Jayne’s massive faux pas. Serenity would be protected. The trip to Hecate was a six-day journey, a minor event after their great voyage to the transnuclear facility, and if those six-days were more subdued, due to the nature of their destination, they were also more purposeful. Hecate was discussed as a potential home for the Treasure, and some who were convinced of it also became convinced that whatever riches that might lie there were long-ago looted. Others denied this, saying that such a find would have been in the news regardless of who made it. Either way, the journey had taken on a much darker tone. Inara’s spiritual crisis didn’t help. Despite the fact that she was a Buddhist, and spent considerable time in meditation, she also consulted Shepherd Book and Heavenly Master Lei several times, both alone and together. The conversations were laden with deep meaning and light humor, and if they did little to heal the hurt to her soul, they at least lightened her heart. As disturbing as Inara’s struggle was, the greater implications of the attack on New Lesbos worried Mal more. Inara would heal. He’d seen it before. It may take time, and she might not do it gracefully – though he had every confidence in her – but she would recover from her spiritual wound. But the attack told him that they were still being tracked. The only question was how. The ‘why’ was easy enough to figure out. He convened a private war-council in the bridge, after most of the other had gone to bed. The Washburnes were there, as was Jayne. Simon had been included not only because he was one of the objects of the hunt, but because despite his arrogant, Core-worlder attitude he has brilliant and informed and he had surprised Mal over and over with his quick wits and bravery. Not that Mal would ever admit that. “How the hell could they do it?” he demanded, once the hatch was closed against eavesdroppers. “How? The ambush on Salisbury I could almost buy – lookin’ back, I can see where we dropped some sloppy hints. But how?” “Wouldn’t it have to be some sorta beacon we’re sendin’ out?” asked Jayne, as if it was obvious. “No, but it could be your body odor,” Wash shot back. “I’ve checked. Every millimeter of the spectrum I’ve checked. We aren’t sending out any signal that I don’t want us to.” Jayne ignored the dig. “Then maybe it ain’t on a band you’re checkin’!” he shot back. “Maybe our nav sig? Our cortex routing code? Breadcrumbs?” “Our nav sig is tight. So is the routing code,” Zoe said, shaking her head. “I think it was spies.” “Spies? We got . . . spies aboard?” Jayne asked, suspiciously. “It’s been known to happen,” Mal said wryly. “Y’know, someone gets anxious about reward money, gets stupid . . .” “Hey, I ain’t goin’ down that road no more!” insisted Jayne. “I learned my lesson. You can’t trust those gorram Feds worth scat.” “Your loyalty does you credit,” Simon said sarcastically. “And I don’t believe it was you. But we have a number of strangers on board – they’ve proven to be friends so far, but how do we really know . . . ?” “Because I’ve looked every man o’ them in the eye,” insisted Mal. “And that’s a sufficient background check?” Simon asked incredulously. “For me it is.” “And how do you figure that?” Simon continued scornfully. “Eyes can lie, you know.” “Not to me. Can you once think of a situation where I was wrong about someone?” Mal asked with confidence. “Saffron,” Simon said instantly. “That Fed that came on board with us at Persephone.” Mal’s face fell a mite, and he looked a little guilty. “Any others?” he asked, weakly. “Just give me a moment.” “I take the captain’s point,” Zoe said. “I also take his position.” “Color me surprised,” Wash mumbled under his breath. Zoe ignored it. “I do, too. Those few aside, I’ve known Cap to smell a rat’s ass when there was nothin’ ‘round but roses.” “And yet he hired you anyway,” Wash said. “Oops! Hold that snappy retort, Jayne, wave coming through. Coded. For . . . it’s for you, Mal. Madonna.” “Huh,” Mal grunted. “Go ahead, let’s see who it is.” He leaned forward to stick his face in front of the pickup. In seconds the swarthy, toothy face of Jorge Sanchez. “Jorge! Don’t tell me you forgot to put somethin’ on my ship!” “Of course, not, Malcolm. This is a . . . business call, but your business, not mine.” “Huh?” Mal asked, eloquently. “About a month ago we got a big job. Ship came in with battle-damage – I have not seen the like since . . . well, in a long time. Bounty hunters, big professional outfit. They were flying—” “A frigate,” Mal supplied. “Gorram it.” Jorge raised his eyebrows. “You know of this ship?” “Yes, he’s been hot on my tail for months, now. It has to do with my . . . special passengers. Where is he now?” “He shipped out this morning,” Jorge assured. “Headed for Athens. But I was arguing with the puta about my bill – blanca tried to cheat me! – when he gets a wave from a lackey. Seems he’s hired every low-rent skip-tracer in the ‘verse, looking for Serenity. Told the man to wait for him at Athens, keep his eye on you.” “That explains a lot. The sonuvabitch didn’t wait. He tried to take Inara.” “Donna Inara is safe?” Jorge asked with concern. “Yes, Jorge, no one from Serenity was hurt. But the bounty hunter stirred up a hornet’s nest. Killed some folk. Made a big ugly splash.” Jorge sighed. “These amateurs!” he spat, bitterly. “Thanks for the heads-up, though, Jorge. I owe you one.” “You owe me several, Malcolm. I took the liberty of . . . fixing his ship,” he explained. “Ain’t that what y’all do?” “There is repairing, and then there is fixing. When the blanca puta tried to cheat me, I had Juan, mi electronico, add some special circuits to his avionics.” He explained in more technical detail what the shipfitter had done. Mal grinned widely. “You’re right, Jorge, I do owe you several!” “You can pay me in this mastodon penis, if you like,” Jorge commented with a smile. “I sold most of it for a handsome profit, but . . . well, I had to try some. It is working very nicely. But I am almost out. So if you get the chance . . .” “I’ll see what I can do,” agreed Mal. “Might take a while.” “No hay problema. It is just . . .” he looked around, apparently to ensure he wasn’t overheards. “Please, do not tell mi espousa. She says if I come near her one more time this week . . . well, she implied that it would be my penis that would be shriveled and dried up.”

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Serenity reached the system where Hecate lay without further incident, and without any sign of being followed. Only a few lonely monitoring satellites were in evidence – unmanned, automated, scanning the moon eternally for some sign, some reason for the terraforming event. In over thirty years there hadn’t been a nibble. Wash easily evaded the scanners and found the ruins of Regina Noctae. The landing was a breeze – because there was no breeze. The ghost of the atmo that was still clinging to the planet was almost too thin to be labeled as such. There was no heat, no turbulence – Wash found the temple, a prominent building near the center of town, and set down within fifty meters of it. The landing was not without incident. From the moment that the ship was within the magnetic field of the moon River had become disturbed. She had gotten more and more agitated the closer they came, until Simon was forced to sedate her – she was raving about a planet of ghosts, but not these ghosts, and demons, and all manner of mythological references. But by the time that Serenity’s insect-like legs settled into the frozen tundra of Hecate, she was near-comatose. Just as well. The place was creepy as hell. It was hell. Jayne, Mal, Master Lei and Johnny donned EVA suits and stepped out of the airlock onto the frozen crust. Their boots made strange sounds – faint knocking on the permafrost-covered concrete that was the plaza. In front of them was the Temple of Ta-Shih-Chi, an elaborate pagoda in the ancient style. “Anyone feel like a moment o’ prayer afore we continue?” Jayne asked, a tremble in his voice. “No,” Mal answered, simply. “I wanna get this thing and get back to where it’s warm as quick as possible.” “I concur,” Master Lei said. “But if you are disturbed, Mister Cobb, then I will be happy to . . .” “Nah, don’t sweat it. Place is just creepifyin’, is all. Hey, that a body?” he asked as they approached the steps. Sure enough, the freeze-dried corpse of a shaven-headed monk in lotus position, a begging bowl in his lap, sat eternal vigil in front of the temple, a serene expression on his face. There was still a few coins in the bowl, and some very cold rice. Jayne started towards it, then caught himself. Even he wasn’t so mercenary as to steal the offerings to a dead monk. The interior of the temple was worse. The main level was crowded with sprawled, frozen corpses of petitioners locked in eternal prayer in front of a large bronze dai-Butsu. It was dark in there, and they had to use hand-torches, which only magnified the macabre effect. “Where we gotta go from here?” asked Jayne. “According to the Map, we go past this room and go up to the belfry. There is a stairwell just to the side of the statue. “That ain’t gonna be easy,” Mal warned. “Looks like every square o’ floor is . . . occupied.” “Ain’t there another way?” whined Jayne. “No,” insisted Master Lei. “These temples are simply built. We must go this way. It will not be the first time that someone has had to walk a path of bones to gain a treasure.” “That’s just . . . unsettlin’,” muttered Jayne. “I’m with you,” Johnny added quietly. “These folk are dead,” reminded Mal. “Y’all have seen corpses before.” “Ain’t rightly stepped on one, though,” Jayne commented. “I don’t think they’re going to mind. You want I should lead?” “If you insist,” Jayne said, his breathing a little ragged. “Master, you figure this is what hell looks like?” “Stuck forever in a Buddhist temple? Yes, I’d say that would be hell. For me, at least. And likely for you.” “Let’s quit whining and do this,” Mal insisted. He raised one booted foot and took a step onto the nearest parishioner. Cautiously he put his weight on it. It held, partly because of its frozen solid state, and partly because of the light grav. Exhaling a little more noisily than he intended, he took a step forward onto the next corpse. It was a grisly walk. The frozen bodies crunched under their boots, a combination of flesh and frost that was disturbing at best. Nor was it even. Johnny tripped over an outstretched arm, only to be caught by Master Lei before he fell. Jayne wasn’t as lucky. In his haste to cross the morbid carpet, he, too, tripped, and fell so his faceplate was pressed up against the hard-frozen face of an old Chinese woman’s mummified remains. He let out a yelp and got to his feet quickly enough. The door to the belfry was frozen shut, but they had anticipated this. Using a propane torch they worked the hinges until it opened, and they ascended past one more frozen monk before they came to the bell tower. The bell itself was a massive bronze object, ornately cast with Buddhist motifs and covered with a thick frost.. Various Chinese characters celebrating select verses of scripture could be made out through the frost. Mal started wiping away the residual atmo crystals, but made little progress. “Here, let me,” Jayne said, pulling back the wooden striker. Before anyone could stop him he let it fly, and for a few long minutes the low and mournful bell sounded through the thin atmo, and the vibrations shot through the floor and relayed the sound up their boots. It was a sad, depressing, sorrowful toll, and Jayne took a deep breath after the last of it dissipated. “Idiot!” Master Lei said, scornfully. “You could have shattered it in this cold!” “Hey, I got them frosties off, didn’t I?” he shot back. Sure enough, the vibrations were enough to shake most of the accumulated frost off the bell, revealing even more elaborate castings. “So which o’ these ‘Buddha says’ expressions is the right one?” “I’m getting views of all of it,” assured Johnny, who was wielding a capture. “Could be any one of them.” “No,” Master Lei said, studying the bell. “I think I know which it is.” “How?” “Simple. All the rest are in Chinese. That one,” he said, pointing a gauntleted finger towards the top of the bell, “is not.” “I can’t make it out,” Mal murmured, taking the torch off of his belt. He activated it and swept it gently over the area the Master had indicated. The ice crystals instantly melted, flowed a few inches down the face of the bell, then re-froze. But the inscription was revealed. “Res Doo-rah et . . . This ain’t English!” “It is Latin,” observed Johnny. “What does it say?” “Res dura, et regni novitas me talia cogunt moliri, et late fines custode tuer,”supplied Master Lei. “Well,” Jayne said patiently. “I knew that. What does it mean?” “Latin was never my best tongue,” admitted the old monk. “Maybe we can call the Shepherd?” suggested Johnny. “What? He might know this? I thought it were a dead language.” “The Bible was written in Latin, once,” explained Johnny. “It means, ‘against my will, my fate, A throne unsettled, and an infant state, Bid me defend my realms with all my pow'rs, And guard with these severities my shores,’” explained Mal. “It’s from . . . Virgil, I think. But it was quoted in ‘the Pince’. I haven’t read Virgil since High School, but I believe that’s what is says.” “You’ve studied Virgil? And Machiavelli?” asked Master Lei, surprised. “You went to High School?” asked Jayne, surprised. Mal shrugged. “I read a lot. Ma was big on classical literature. And they issued a copy of the Prince in advanced combat training in the War. Don’t really know why – not much helpful in it – but it kept us busy.” “So what’s that mean?” repeated Jayne. “It’s about how when you gain control of a kingdom, sometimes you gotta perpetrate some powerful ugliness to keep it safe.” “That makes sense,” agreed Johnny. “If this was commissioned by our ancestor, then it is likely that that was the type of decision he was faced with. He always claimed he took the throne to protect the people from the Tyrant, and not out of any personal ambition. Not sure how much I believe him,” admitted Johnny. “He was correct. He only thought of his people, and how to save them from another suicidal war. And protect them from the madman,” commented Master Lei. “Well, hopefully this will shake the final restin’ place outa that gorram computer,” Jayne said with a growl. “Me, I’m getting’ kinda tired o’ runnin’ around the ‘verse lookin’ for my two-percent.” “Let’s get back to the ship,” agreed Mal darkly. “We got what we came for.”