Establishing battle lines wasn't unfamiliar territory. Push a man too far, and he pushes back. Sometimes you had nice electronic maps in a cushy command center, sometimes you had a stick and some sand drenched in blood. End result was the same. You drew a line, then you dared the universe to cross it. Oftentimes the universe was all too eager to oblige.

Back at the start of the war, Ezra had been administered by a council of the richest landowners, and unlike the armies mustering elsewhere, they had welcomed their new governor as a liaison to the more developed core worlds. He had died unexpectedly just before the war ended, and the resulting power vacuum and influx of refugees sent the planet into a downward spiral.

In the midst of increasing lawlessness, Adelai Niska retired from his position on the council to move in to the former governor's brand new orbiting skyplex and become a full time crimelord, ruling over the planet below while the Alliance bureaucracy dragged its feet trying to find a replacement appointee. As it turned out, none of their candidates would take the job, and Niska remained uncontested: the kindly looking old man in round spectacles had a reputation for ruthlessness. He considered the Chinese poet and statesman Shan Yu a mentor of sorts, inspired by legends of a warlord who had purged corruption and complacency from his homeland by terrorizing his fellow countrymen, starting World War III, and precipitating the Exodus from Earth-That-Was.

Most honest rimward smugglers and traders tried to stay clear of Niska, but Captain Malcolm Reynolds had the misfortune of having crossed the sadist three times, who was currently detailing each separate incidence: firstly returning some stolen medicine to some ailing folk in Paradiso, then being rescued from Niska's wrath by his crew, and now, apparently, just breathing.

The crimelord rose from his swivel chair, striding impressively out from behind the real cherry wood desk between them and smoothing non-existent wrinkles from