THE VALLEY

(Fan fiction based upon the characters in the television series “Firefly”)

It sounded like a pretty straightforward job. At least that’s what Mal told himself. As captain of Serenity, Mal Reynolds was the one who was supposed to get the call when you wanted to hire his ship or his crew. Not that he would necessarily turn away work that came through another door. Necessity and experience made Mal a practical man. And since the gorram Alliance had recently doubled, and in some sectors tripled, their patrols, his practical side made him willing to listen to almost any proposal. Decent smuggling jobs were getting tough to find. There was always thieving, but lately that seemed to bring an overabundance of shooting. Even with their newly acquired doctor, Simon Tam, around to mend em properly, Mal had decided to avoid jobs where it looked like a lot of gunplay was inevitable. Unfortunately, times being what they were, Mal’s newfound cautiousness left them with little to no work and a quickly diminishing fuel and food supply. The job they were heading towards was supposed to change all that. In fact, from what Mal had heard so far it might even be legal. Of course, the facts were a bit sketchy, and there was that one potentially serious flaw. The job came by way of Jayne.

It was the “Jayne” issue that made it impossible for Mal to sleep. While the others took to their beds, Mal wandered his ship from bridge to hold, thinking. Perhaps, he was being unfair. Not all of Jayne’s ideas lacked sanity. In fact, from time to time, Jayne could be pretty cunning. On the other hand, the last time Jayne cut his own deal, he damn near brought the Feds down on all of them. Mal’s instincts told him that any job brought to the table by Jayne was probably screwed up from the get go. Unfortunately, they needed money, yesterday, and to get that they needed work.

On the positive side, the trip to meet Jayne’s client gave them a legitimate reason to steer clear of the central plane