Beaumonde hadn’t changed. It was still colourful, brash, noisy, smelly, dangerous … and Mal took a deep breath, enjoying every molecule. As much as he liked Lazarus, there was something about it that sometimes made him a little sad, something that probably reminded him of Shadow, of his home and lost family. Freya could usually win him around, make him laugh again, but there were times seeing the mountains, the plains, and it stirred too many memories. And the truth was this place was nothing like it, at least not around the port.

“You wanna call in on the twins whilst we’re here?” Jayne asked, standing with him at the open cargo bay doors, looking out into the neon-coloured darkness.

“I doubt they’ll talk to me.”

“It’s been a long time since those men came to kill ‘em.” He was talking about the time of Miranda, and the blood that had run down the Maidenhead’s walls.

“And they still blame me.”

“Fanty and Mingo weren’t even there.” Jayne growled. “Off in the mountains someplace, I heard.”

“That didn’t stop the attack.”

“Not your fault.”

Mal didn’t answer. He really didn’t want to get into the same old discussion over guilt and responsibility. That was, as he’d said to a certain preacher once, a train long gone. “Anyway, no need. That job from Badger? We pick up some crates on Aberdeen, drop ‘em off on Santo and head to Persephone to get paid.”

“What’s the weasel into now?”

“Ore mining, apparently.”

For a long, pleasurable moment Jayne entertained himself with a mental picture of Badger with a pick in his hand, swinging wildly at a rock face, but it slid away all too quickly, replaced by the usual feeling of hanging over a precipice when they dealt with the mini-tycoon. “So that’s what we’re carrying?” He glanced over his shoulder. “Serenity gonna be able to lift off with a hold fulla metal?”

“It’s not much. Just some samples.” Mal smiled. “It seems Badger doesn’t trust the surveyors he hired.”

“And he trusts us?”

“No. But we trustworthily untrustable.”