Unfinished Business

Chapter Nine

“Mighty big crowd,” Zoe muttered to Mal in a prison-yard whisper they had practiced in an actual prison-yard – the POW camp on Hera. They were sitting at a make-shift table near the middle of the group, waiting to be served by the dozen or so young spacers who had volunteered for the task. “That must be some good cookin’.”

“I’m thinkin’ there’s more to it than that,” Mal muttered back. “Though Winnie’s cookin’ is worth goin’ a couple o’ light-years out of your way for.” He looked at Zoe again, a long searching look. “Where were you last night, anyway? I got in during the wee hours. You didn’t show until this morning. And looking like hell, you don’t mind me sayin’. What happened?”

“Ran into an old friend,” Zoe said, evenly. “Stayed up late talkin’ about old times.” That there was more to it than that was obvious to Mal. That she didn’t want to discuss it further was twice as obvious.

“Musta been some friend,” Mal said with a resigned sigh.

The vast cargo bay of the Sky Hawk had been cleared for the occasion, and a dozen tables and hundreds of chairs had been scraped up or improvised for the feast. Billed publicly as a “Browncoat Reunion Banquet”, Mal had noticed that not every former Independent had been invited – but the ones who had been were all prominent members of the demimonde, full or part-time criminals who had made a reputation for themselves among the dens of thieves on a dozen Rim worlds. He waved to Monty, who was talking with a pretty long-haired woman he didn’t recognize. Tanaka was there, as well, and the Stiles family. He counted at least nine or ten ships represented, and plenty of loners who had served and had found their way to Muir had been admitted as well.

The event was “invitation only”, and three rough-looking Green Militia members with submachine guns stood at the entrance of the hold to check everyone off against a list. That had made Mal suspicious up front – it wasn’t the sort of thing that the McKlintocks would have