“Honor Among Thieves”

Or: “How Herbert Howard Harbatkin Got His Ship Back”

By Fish/Jiolee and RSB

* * *

Mal leaned forward, his elbows firmly planted on the thick wooden table he shared with Zoe, Wash, Kaylee and Jayne, and watched the sweat dripping from his chin splash into his lukewarm ale. The bar was swelteringly hot, and the various lowlifes filling it were dressed in as little clothing as they could get away with without being arrested. Kaylee in particular seemed to have embraced this trend, wearing something Mal was sure qualified as more of a handkerchief than a shirt, and he constantly had to look up from melting into his drink to scowl at the various young men that approached his scantily-clad engineer. He was damn glad that they all were bright enough to take the hint; it was way too hot for a fight.

Summers on Semele were hotter than hell, and the places on it backwards enough to lack climate control were near uninhabitable. The bar was a few technological centuries shy of air conditioning, with only a weak fan to stir the heavy, sweat-laden air. It was, however, the best place to drum up business this side of Beaumonde, so here he sat with a flat ale and four miserable members of his crew. They were all quiet, now, but the complaints had been nonstop for the hour previous; Mal figured the heat must’ve sucked all the fight right out of them, for they now merely slouched around the table in various states of stupor, and he knew none of them had managed to choke that much drink down.

“Excuse me!” A loud, if somewhat reedy, voice rang out over the whirring of the fan, and Mal slowly directed his attention to the bar. A thin, gangly man balanced precariously on top of a barstool, ducking his head to avoid bumping into the ceiling. The few conversations still going died down as everyone turned to stare at the new entertainment. “Salutations! I am looking for the owner of the standard radion-accelerator core, class code 03-K64 Firefly mid-bulk transport berthed outside this fine e