Author’s Notes

This fic takes place after the last episode of the show. Movie will not be happening. The story will contain five chapters and end at about 21,000 words.

The characters don’t belong to me; Joss is boss.

A huge thank you to my beta-testers: Ann, Rivendellrose, Warrior Zoe, and noandwhere.

Treasure -- Chapter Two

Mal and Zoe stared at the numbers on the balance sheet in front of them. They knew they could not force the figures to bend to their will, and could not bargain with them either.

“Shit,” Mal groaned, after both he and his first mate re-checked the calculations. “We keep this up, we ain’t gonna have enough fuel left to get to Paquin,” he added. “Or to keep eatin’.”

During their last planetside trip, they sold their cargo at an insulting price. One of their reliable buyers had been killed months before, another captured by the Alliance, and a third had disappeared. New buyers were harder and harder to come by as well, with so much of the underground either imprisoned or going out of business. To make matters worse, the money they did receive for that cargo was worth less and less with each passing week. Many colonies no longer accepted money and dealt only in barter. Most folk didn’t have much to barter with nowadays either; indentured servitude and slavery had always been common in the ‘verse and they grew more so with each passing month.

Seven months had now passed since Inara’s departure, and each week appeared more and more bleak. Every time Mal and his crew turned around, there was another report of a colony starving to death, or being hit by Reavers, or hauled off to perform slave labor. New plagues and diseases cropped up and decimated populations, leaving survivors weak and desperate. The ‘verse almost appeared to be shrinking, assaulted on all sides by terrifying forces. Even the sky seemed more empty, as fewer and fewer ships could find fuel, parts, or crew.

On board Serenity, the eight members of the crew were like a band of survivors from a wreck, hu