Unfinished Business

Chapter Twenty-Six

“So . . . you’re planning a robbery in the middle of an invasion?” Inara asked, incredulously. She was preparing lunch, a light protein stir-fry with rice-like protein on the side, wearing her new shapeless coveralls, her hair up in a simple pony-tail. She still looked more elegant cooking in mufti than most women did made up for a formal affair.

“More of a burglary than a robbery, for those of a technical bent,” Jayne replied, digging something unidentifiable out of his teeth with his thumbnail while he watched her. “Only a robbery if there are folk to get robbed. No folk, it’s a burglary.” He suddenly looked up at Inara as if she had just printed “stupid” on her head. “Didn’t you learn nothin’ in whore school?”

“I skipped ‘Basic Thuggery’ and took ‘Advanced Muscular Control Techniques’, instead,” Inara shot back, rolling her eyes. Then, just to get a dig in, she hit Jayne where he was weakest. “The things I can do with a ping-pong ball . . .”

Jayne stared, open mouthed, at a complete loss for words.

“I think it’s a dandy idea,” Kaylee said, slouching in a kitchen chair. “Give Cap’n something to think about, rather than, y’know, Simon and Zoë.”

“Robbing a vault is a dandy idea in a firefight?” Inara asked, skeptically.

“Actually, no better time,” Kaylee affirmed. “Folk are like to be too busy duckin’ and shootin’ to pay much attention to a simple little burglary. Alarms won’t be an issue, guards either. We get the location, it could go shiny.”

“Remember who’s planning this?” Inara pointed out. “Zoë’s not around to be the voice of reason. That leaves Mal in charge of the heavy thinking.”

“Ain’t much o’ that to be done,” Jayne said, shaking his head. “Might reconsider, if it weren’t so simplistic. Don’t need no voice o’ reason when the plans pretty fair reasonable at the start!”

“But . . . does he really want to be that far from the ship when . . . it happens?”

“Everyone’s gotta be somewhere,” Jayne agreed, then paused. “A . . . ping