The cool glass neck of well chilled beer between fingers and thumb, the crate had been well deserved. Mal never expected a bonus from his customers, especially ones as dirt poor as the colonists on Dyton, but this run had been a pleasant exception. Eight crates stacked in the hold and a private special reserve under his bunk rigged with a device designed to give Jayne’s thieving fingers pause. Mal sat back down upon his stool and when prompted by Wash to continue, fell back into the distant look that clouded his eyes when he talked of times long past.

“In your worst nightmares you couldn’t dream of such a thing, Wash. They just kept on coming, wave after wave of them. I called for back up, but it seemed as if they had left me there to suffer. The waves of sound pounded my ears ‘till I thought my eardrums would burst. The flashes of light blinded me, as I staggered from one end to the other, trying to serve out what they had coming – but I was running low on supplies, precious low. I don’t know how I got out alive. It was a hell, a hell I have no intention on revisiting.”

“My God,” whispered Wash in a voice heavy with a wondering sympathy, “it must have been… really, really bad.”

Mal took a swig of beer and shook his head sadly. “Last time I ever worked in a bar. The rest of the staff off sick with some stomach bug they picked up from the hyena sandwiches and yours truly left to serve five dozen customers on a Saturday night. And the music policy was awful, absolutely gorram awful.”

“And this was the same sort of beer they served?”

“It was the one thing going for the place. They had the best brew on the colony. Glad to see it’s still popular this end of the ’verse.”

Wash nodded and took a deep swig.

It was then Serenity took it upon herself to kick a deep jagged shock that threw Kaylee from her hammock and made the length and breadth of the ship tremble, tumbling table and chair and pounding upon the bridge.

Wash cursed in colourful Chinese as the beer spilled and stained his shorts. Mal was