“Oh, hell no.” Jayne crossed his arms for emphasis.

Mal was almost, but not quite, reduced to begging, seeing as the whole direct-order business had not gone over well.

“Jayne, it’ll be easy-peasy. Badger’s got the goods, you go get them, and bring them back here.”

Jayne scratched his chin thoughtfully for a moment.

“So lemme see. You want me to go get the goods to fix the problem that you created?”

“Pretty much.”

“Nope. Still hell no.”

And with that, he set himself down on the weight bench with an air of finality and began his chest presses.

Zoe had been watching the exchange from the doorway. She wandered on over to Mal, who was staring daggers at Jayne.

“No luck convincing him, sir?”

“Not even with my direct-order voice. My direct-order voice has always worked.”

“Much as I hate to give Jayne credit for any sort of higher-order thinking, I think he’s got the right of this one, sir. It is your…errrmmm…situation.”

“Suppose you’re right, Zoe. Was my doin’ got us into this mess. Might as well pay the piper.”

Which was how Mal found himself face to face with Badger’s shit-eating grin. Mal had to clench his fists so as not to punch that grin right off his face. Badger, for his part, was enjoying every second of Mal’s discomfort. He ran his finger along the goods.

“There’s only one reason, Captain, why a man would be lookin’ for these sorts of goods. Seems to me, ye got yerself quite the problem. And seein’ as I appear to have the answer to that problem, I might as well use that to my advantage. Price just went up to three large.”

Mal tried even harder not to just lay Badger out cold and run with the goods. Unfortunately, Badger’s goon squad, with guns trained on Mal, pretty much short-stopped that notion.

“Three…? But you said two-fifty.”

That wasn’t too whingey, was it?

Badger leaned back in his desk chair, which let out a groan of protest.

“Market value, my friend. And I guarantee you won’t find anyone else on this end of the Outer Rim who’s got th