Mal, Zoe and Jayne turned slowly towards the voice, trying to see in the darkness of the warehouse but only able to make out indistinct shapes.

“Zoe?” Mal murmured.

“Five.”

“Six,” Jayne corrected, equally quietly.

Mal nodded slightly, breathing shallowly, ready to shoot when necessary.

“And I’d be beholden if you’d just drop those guns to the ground,” the voice in the gloom continued. “Else I’ll be forced to make you.”

Zoe glanced at her Captain, then followed his lead in placing her Mare’s Leg carefully onto the dirt. Jayne grumbled to himself, colourful and extremely obscene Chinese curses bitten back behind his lips, but he did the same, feeling the reassuring press of Binky’s sheath at his back.

“That’s right. Don’t do anything stupid and no-one needs to get hurt.” The voice chuckled slightly. “Well, no-one else.”

Jayne stiffened slightly. That laugh sounded all too familiar.

“You gonna apologise to the men lying dead here?” Mal asked.

“Nope. They’re just casualties of war.”

“Ain't no war here. Just folks trying to scrape a living.” Mal began, but Jayne interrupted him.

“And you weren't on any side in the war,” the big man said. “’Cept your own.”

There was movement in the gloom. “Jayne Cobb?” A man stepped forward into a small glow of light, tall and thin. “That you?”

“If it ain't I’m labouring under a misapprehension.”

The man laughed. “You always did like those big words. Never figured you to be understanding half of ‘em.”

“Well, you don’t know everything, Corcoran.” Jayne couldn’t have sounded more disgusted if he’d just trodden in jin zhi and had no way of scraping it off.

Corcoran smiled coldly. “You know, I thought you were dead.” His pale, almost translucent eyes didn’t blink.

“Wasn't for lack of you trying.”

“No, true.”

-

Freya looked up from the book she was reading, her eyes narrowed as she tasted the thoughts in her mind. It was hard, difficult to see through the static that had been miring her for weeks, but if