Simon was in a hurry. That pregnant woman over at Determination had what sounded like a crisis, so Simon and Jing Mei ran over. And of course it was false labor yet again—or possibly very, very early labor, but nothing Jing Mei couldn’t handle for hours yet—and Simon had to get back to Fortitude before the meeting began. Maybe he didn’t need to run, they had said they wouldn’t start without him, but he wanted to be sure.

So he was rushing. But not so much that he forgot about the listening devices and the explosives on that other ship. Jayne was on the ship, but even so, Simon thought that he’d make just a quick detour and make sure that the lawmen weren’t planting any “guarantees” on Serenity while the rest of the crew was sitting in the Li’s inn, waiting for the meeting to begin.

He quietly walked up to the ship, using the trees and a wagon parked near the ship for cover, and everything looked fine. But then he heard voices, and that’s when he saw them emerge from the trees.

Annelore. Sisyphus. And Spead, who was remarkably sober for a man Simon had only recently seen being carried out of the Lis tavern, screaming about the blue balls of Buddha. The two men were looking around suspiciously, while Annelore was chatting obliviously. “Is that your ship?” she asked.

“Come on,” said Sisyphus, and she went into the ship with him.

Simon waited for them all to go in the ship. Then he cut back into the trees and approached the cargo doors from the side. He stood to one side of the doors and quickly glanced into the cargo hold. Then he realized that he had glanced too quickly to actually see anything, so he took a longer look. They had gone directly into the infirmary.

That made it a little easier, since Simon had a pretty good idea of what parts of the ship were visible from the infirmary. He crept through the hold and peeked into the window.

Annelore was on the table, in restraints. Spead had place some mechanical gadget onto the side of Annelore’s head—it looked like a spread of electrodes attac