9. Likely Crash and Kill Us All

After Miranda

The toothless man wasn’t difficult to find; he inhabited the same section of the city where Mal and his crew typically conducted their business.

They caught up to him in a brothel, where he was unhappily not enjoying the services of the ladies who lived there. Instead, he was sitting at a broadwave console in the madam’s office when the madam herself led them in.

“Thanks for this,” he said, indicating the broadwave.

“No problem,” the madam said smoothly. “You’re popular today. These folks are here to talk to you.”

Toothless’ gaze took them in as the madam stepped out, and he laughed. “Now, there’s a familiar face,” he said. “What do you want?” Saliva sprayed all over the madam’s desk with each hard consonant.

“Couple of weeks ago down at the scrapyard, you did some business involving this man,” Mal said, and laid a snap of Wash on the desk.

Toothless looked at the snap, and laughed. “That guy,” he said. “Yeah, matter of fact, I did. What about it?”

“You kill him?”

“Who wants to know?”

“I do. He’s on my crew, and I’d like to know what happened to him.”

Toothless looked at the snap, and shrugged. “Just business, you understand.”

“I understand,” Mal said, shooting a look at Zoe that said We understand, right? “All I want to know is what happened to my man.”

Toothless followed Mal’s gaze to Zoe, and considered. Finally he said, “I dumped him at a prison mine. Know the Foreman there.”

“Where?” Mal asked.

“Haven,” Toothless said. “Southern continent. Big mine, you can see it from the air. Look for guard towers when you start to get low.”

Haven! How many times had they been on Haven in the past two weeks, and not known how close they were? Mal drew a breath, let it out again. “He’s alive, though?”

“Not for long,” Toothless said. “Man who hired me for the job just ‘waved. Orders now are to corpsify your boy. You want him breathing, yo