Must....finish....before....Dragon*Con.... (Must also rip down, rewrite and repost this part, on account of a needed change at the end.)

AMDOBELL, in the next story or three, I hope you'll find Ray a lot less of an idiot than you think. I should have made it clearer that Carabella pocketed those lawmen quite some time ago, but have done so in this part. Meanwhile, I guess it's nigh impossible for anyone to know what to expect from Mal anymore....

Jane0904, the way I figured it, Mal was trying to gather enough variables to finalise his grand scheme for victory before pitching it to everyone else. Lord knows we can't have it going south at a time like this. ;)

Angellemarcs, for a while there, I was hoping so, too! Thanks for dropping in again, and I'll try and catch up on Bullet later on today.

Katesfriend, I'm going as fast as I can! But this is where things start to get oh-God-oh-God-we're-all-gonna-die and Zoe's a lot less likely to miss something than I am. Now is Mal's planned adventure going to end well? Let's go find out.

And now - here goes nothin'!

http://www.fireflyfans.net/bluesun.aspx?bid=20808>Part 14

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The smoke, visible almost two miles distant, came at first as a confusion to the large, husky character overseeing the gang of hoods lying in wait at the rendezvous point. In the nearly five years he'd been enforcing Carabella's lawless rule on one planet or another, he had never seen an enforcee quite so readily give away their approach. It was not until the shuttle intervened between his eyes and the smoke plume that it began to make a shred of sense, but less sensible was Carabella's compunction to fly ahead of the train and meet them. His fingers twitched against his Nollmann Special semiautomatic rifle as the shuttle swooped low over the tracks, slowed and then settled to the ground, with Carabella beckoning to him animatedly even before the craft had straddled the rails.