Unfinished Business

Chapter Fourteen

It was late at “night”, ship’s time, and on the morrow they would land at Persephone. The idea was bittersweet to Zoe – she and Wash had enjoyed some high times on that world, and it was as close to a home off the ship as they’d had. She loved the beautiful landscape of the planet, still raw enough so that it’s pre-terraformed features were still visible, not yet eroded away by atmo and aqua and the pace of human civilization. In fifty years it wouldn’t look like that. The wind and rain and the mad hand of development would smooth the rough edges until it was as close to Earth-That-Was as made no never-mind.

Zoe wasn’t nervous about the visit, not even after the last few times they’d been there. They had enemies on Persephone. And they had friends that could barely be trusted. But she didn’t care. She knew nothing untoward would happen there. Even if it did, without Wash’s laughter and bad jokes to sooth her, she didn’t much care what else happened.

She was kind of hoping for gunplay, though.

Zoe hauled out her arsenal, nearly every piece, and brought it to a tarpaulin she’d spread in the cargo bay. This late at night, with River on watch and everyone else asleep, she doubted she would be disturbed there as she performed her most intimate ritual. She brought out a bottle of premium booze, a bold bourbon from Greenleaf, and poured four fingers into a metal cup next to her left knee on the tarp.

She preferred the tarp. Mal liked to spread his gear out on the kitchen table. Jayne kept most of his toys in his room, or the armory, and tended them there. But to Zoe the tarp reminded her of soldiering, where a comfortable bunk or a cozy table was a luxury, and the tarp was just good enough to do the job. She’d cleaned her guns on tarps under a dozen skies, and she took to the ritual with all the intensity of a samurai sharpening his sword.

Or an executioner his axe.

She started with the pair of lever-action rifles she’d picked up right after the war.