Frame story: Mal is jumpy.

Backstory: Wash is jumpy.

Author's note: There's a Jayne cameo in this one.

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6.

Mal and Kaylee stepped off of an elevator on the third floor of Jack Tallis’s office building to find Wash and Zoe waiting for them at the doorway. Mal walked straight to Zoe and dragged her aside.

“Did you change out the navsats and the pulse beacon?” Zoe asked, and Mal nodded.

“Yeah, Kaylee did. Girl’s a natural with machines of any kind; all she needed me for was muscle.” He frowned sourly when Zoe snorted. “Listen. There’ve been some lawforce bulletins on the Cortex about those guns – I checked, and the ones we shipped were part of a shipment lifted from an Alliance transport about six weeks ago. Somebody just hijacked the whole ship – replaced the crew and made off with a boatload of Alliance weaponry.”

“Clever.”

“Yeah, clever. But the Alliance ain’t happy. They caught one transporter – small operator like us – carrying some of the loot, and those guys have vanished.”

“Vanished, sir?” Zoe was finally getting a glimpse of what Mal had been so jumpy about, since they finished that last job. She wasn’t really feeling jumpy herself, yet, but that could change after Mal explained what he meant by “vanished.”

“Vanished. Gone. They ain’t in prison waiting for a trial, they ain’t out on bail, they ain’t nowhere. Somebody is mad about those weapons, and taking it out on whoever they can get their hands on. I just don’t want it to be us. So look sharp today.”

Zoe decided that Mal was probably jumping at shadows, but she composed her face in a serious expression and nodded. “Yessir.”

Mal accepted that. “Wash get his moment or whatever it was he wanted, to say goodbye?”

“Yessir, he did,” Zoe replied, smiling.

“All right, then.” Mal cast a furtive glance around the corridor they were standing in – Wash and Kaylee waited by the double doors.