“We are not alone!” intoned Baker, the self-proclaimed bringer of the truth about the aliens that the Alliance was hiding. It was the same show as last time and the time before that. But people were more interested and more willing to believe now, ever since Miranda Mal was walking through the bazaar on the station. There were the smells of hundreds of different foods that were on sale at a hundred different stalls all around him. There were the shouts of a hundred different salesmen and market barterers were all around him. Mal wasn’t playing attention to any of them. Inara was with him, walking silently by his side. He couldn’t think of anything to say to her. She had stayed on Serenity after Miranda and Mal was grateful for that, but there was an unspoken……Mal couldn’t think of the word…….something was there, and it made conversation between the two difficult. He had lost, forever, two men who he had trusted, and there hadn’t been many of those, even during the war. They didn’t need more loss, not now. Sheppard Book had taught him to believe again. Not necessarily about God, but just to believe in what was good and right. A direction to live his life buy that Mal had lost, he supposed. Wash had been his pilot. Had got him out of more than a few tight spots. But he had been Zoe’s husband. Mal hadn’t cared for Wash to start with or considered him strong or good enough for Zoe, but he had come to see that he was the one to keep Zoe human. Mal had taken that from her. Not directly, but he had been to take them to Mr. Universe’s planet and the Reavers. Zoe was a soldier, and knew that it was part of the job, but she was a widow also. Mal knew that there little you could say to widow’s of the men you had under your command. “Malcolm! Well I better tell you now that you don’t have any bodies to collect, thank shén!” Amnon Duul, the postman, cried out to Mal, and chuckled. Mal smiled. The man’s cheeriness to Mal, even after the incident with Alliance Officer Womack and Tracey, was a relief from “Annon! Good to see you. We got any post?” “Yes my friend” turning to Inara, “Inara, always a pleasure to see your beautiful self. But I heard that you’d returned to civilisation, what you still doing with this bèn dàn?” “Annon. Your probably right, but zěn me bàn?” replied Inara “Anything for me?” “Yes, just sign here. And for Mal,” Annon checked his clipboard “Can you sign for everyone?” “Sure” “Then here you go then. Now get out of here before you scare my attractive customers” “Annon, you know perfectly well that me and Inara here are best looking people in all the ‘verse.” Annon laughed again and Mal and Inara started back to Serenity. Mal spotted Kaylee and Simon hand in hand examining the strawberries and other fruit available. Mal still wasn’t sure what to think of those two. As rule he didn’t agree with relationships within his crew, but it made Kaylee happy, and made the Doc a mite less… jin zhāng. Oh well. If he messed it up, everyone else on Serenity (Jayne in particular) would let him know………

***

Annon watched them go. A burly space freighter captain came up to the desk. “I’m sorry my friend, but I must close for a moment and attend for to some important.” The captain cursed and stomped off into the crowd. Annon closed the shutter and moved over to the communication terminal. He typed in the anonymous cortex address and typed one seemingly innocent word into the message section. He pressed the button marked jì and the wave was sent. Annon opened the shutters and thought about what was so important about the letter that he had just given Mal that it required all this secrecy………

***

Lieutenant Ursula Kalip sat at the cortex terminal in the café on Persephone city and opened the account she had set up 3 weeks ago with a fake ident. Aside from the junk from various companies trying to sell her sex, hair treatment products and exciting prospects for new Alliance controlled colonies on the border planets, there was one message. It was from Amnon, and contained just one word. But that word told Ursula that Sergeant Malcolm Reynolds (retired) had received the coded letter that her organisation had sent him. It was only a matter of time before the two of them met. Of course that would depend on River Tam………

***

Mal sat at the dining table on Serenity and started sorting through the mail that he had gotten form Annon. A letter for Kaylee, a parcel for Jayne from his ma, and… “Gos se.” Mall swore. It was a letter from Wash’s parents for Zoe. He knew that she had been worried about receiving a reply to the wave she had sent to them a week ago telling them that their son was dead. Mal had offered to do it for her, but no it was her duty. Wash was her husband, and Mal had left it at that. Jayne came in wearing his orange hat, grabbed his parcel off the table, shook it, sniffed it, and then ripped the outside covering off. Kaylee came in and asked. “Anything for me Cap’n?” “ ‘Dear son, I hope you are well and that this letter reaches you soon.’ ” Jayne started reading his letter out loud. “Why yes little Kaylee, you have a letter from home.” Kaylee picked up her letter and continued on to her bunk. “ ‘Thank-you again for the credits you forwarded to us. There has been little work at the plant and even your father has been laid off for the time being, so the money is much appreciated.’ ” Inara, Simon and River stepped up from the back passage into the dining room. River’s got a dozen Ice planets in her hands and a big grin on here face. Simon was carrying a large box of food and Inara a smaller one. “What you got there nyen ching-duh?” Mal asked River. “Troublesome food,” was Rivers wry reply. “ ‘Don’t worry though, little Matty has recovered from the Damplung, so he has been put out to work, and there is news of work repairing ships, coming back from belt. I am worried about you son. We saw the Miranda broadcast, and I don’t want you getting near those Reavers. I made you the enclosed to help and protect you. Love your Mother. PS Everyone says hello.’ ” Jayne opened the box and pulled out an orange coloured scarf. “Oh Snap! Matching hat and scarf. Looking pretty nifty, don'tchya think?” “Very….um…fetching.” Simon said, trying to suppress a grin. “Big orange head” said River This caused a wave of chuckles around the room, all except for Jayne, who flashed her a fake smile. Inara asked Mal, “What did you get Mal?” Mal was sat examining an open letter, a confused look on his face “Yeah, a letter. Don’t know who from, it’s got no sender mark, but it’s just a page of fèi huà.” He passed it to Inara. She examined it and screwed up her face in confusion. She passed it to Simon, who only got the briefest of glances before River snatched out of his hands at sat down at the table with, staring at it intently. “River! You didn’t give me a chance to look at it” “No need for you to look at it. You won’t be able to make sense of it.” River replied with no hint of malice, and the tiniest hint of a smile. “Well River if there is a meaning to this, and you find it, I’ll let you take a walk outside the ship in a suit next time we’re in safe part of the black. “Captain! You can’t let my sister walk around outside the ship with only an EVA suit, between her and all that…” Simon struggled for the word, “…space.” “Doctor, I have come to the opinion that your sister is considerably more intelligent that you fine educated self.” Simon didn’t have a reply to this, as round of smiles passed around the others. Mal continued, “Now Badger said that he might have a job for us, so we’re set for Persephone, and as River is other wise ocuppied, I suppose it’s up to me to get us there.” Mal left for the bridge, leaving River still staring at the letter………

***

Hoban Washburne stared at his face in the mirror in his room, that was little more than tent, and didn’t recongise it. Even his name didn’t seem like his. Or he didn’t know that it was his. He had no memory of ever being called it. He couldn’t remember anything before a week ago when he first woken up in his bed, in the camp, and Thomas had told him what his name was and where he was. An Alliance prison camp where those who had been declared dead in the war and where experiments had been conducted. How had he ended up here? He knew, from guess work and what Thomas had told him, that the scarring on abodmen was the result of having been impaled by some kind of large spike and subscently been fixed by the doctors here and where ever he had been picked up. But what about the other scars he had? The one on the right side of his head, and on other parts of his chest. He could only guess. The only other things he can see in his mind are vague impressions. He sighs and says, “Who am I?” There is a wind outside and Wash sees a leaf tumbling and soaring. He can’t help but think that that looks fun……..

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- shén – God/divine essence bèn dàn – fool zěn me bàn – what’s to be done jin zhāng – tense jì – send gos se – crap nyen ching-duh – young one fèi huà – nonsense

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Chapter 4: A meeting with old allies