The next night Mal found himself having a quiet drink with himself in his own galley. Hot coffee swirled in the mug sitting on the worn table next to him, and he took a sip as though the concoction could clear the questions from his mind.

Simon’s talk with him the night before rattled the captain a little. Sure, after the near-death experience at the stake on Jiangyin he and the doc had had a little discussion about things, but Mal never figured that the younger man had carried that around with him that long.

“You don’t even like me,” Simon had insisted. Mal took another sip of coffee. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. Yes, at first he hadn’t liked Simon very much—bringing Alliance trouble onto his boat had certainly not helped matters—but over time the doc had proven himself as both a competent medic and a trustworthy though not entirely understanding of the ‘verse sort of fellow. The captain fingered a small, thin scar near his right shoulder—one that was almost barely there thanks to Simon’s ministrations.

The boy had worried that he and his sis were costing them money. That was true, to a point. Mal had turned down a few choice jobs since taking the Tams on board, but the ones they’d managed to get kept them flyin’. Truth be told, Mal preferred taking on the slightly riskier jobs—made life all sorts of interestin’ afterwards. Plus, should they need a big payday, they could always look to the resident criminal mastermind that lived mostly in the ship’s infirmary for a good score.

But what really rankled the captain as he sat looking into his coffee that night was Simon’s revelation about his folks. They had disowned the kid for having the guts to stand up to the government and get little River out of that place. Somethin’ about a dinner party being ruined or some such.

Mal could make no sense of that. River was a trial at times, sure—never knew what creepifyin’ thing might come out of the girl’s mouth—but on the whole she was just a sweet kid who’d been taken adv