She understood that the food was better since she had come on board.

There was more money since they could sell the excess produce and some of the exotics to some of Inara’s contacts.

But the plants weren’t a magic bullet.

And the things that would really rake in the money she wouldn’t do.

Not since the last time.

She had made several million credits with that.

Still had ninety five percent of that money left too…

It was tainted money, bloody money.

She knew when Mal’d offered her a place in exchange for half of the profit that he’d found her name attached to that.

Knew he’d seen the amount of money made and looked no farther.

After all that’s what she’d seen.

He’d been horrified by the use her employers had put the enzyme.

Just as she’d been.

The Alliance was good at covering up thousands of deaths.

He’d understood when she told him that the profit from what she would do with the plants was meager.

That’s why they still took jobs.

And why she was lying in the dirt, under this stupid scratchy bush, which offered damned little in the way of shade, palms sweating as she sighted along Vera.

She smiled a little when she remembered Jayne complaining about Mal using her as their back up.

Saying as how he didn’t want to depend on her.

He gone on considerably in that vein until Mal’d told him that she’d be using Vera to watch their backs.

That had set the fox in the hen house for sure.

It’d taken Mal and Zoe nearly an hour and an ultimatum to calm him and produce the gun.

In the end Jayne had, had to admit that she was the best shot. And that Vera was the only gun with enough distance and a good enough scope to work.

But she understood Jayne’s hesitation.

Knew that Mal and Zoe had reservations for the same reason.

She’d never killed another living being before.

Not even the mice that’d frequented their basement labs.

But money was scarce, so too were jobs.

And the only one they could get brought them to Whitefall.

Made it necessary