“*Lao tyen, boo*!”

“You did what?!?”, Wash and Simon’s voices both raised in a cacophony of yelling.

“I didn’t have no choice! *Dong ma*?” Mal said earnestly in response. “We’d a tried to take ‘em outta there with us, we’d all be dead. Zoë and Kaylee as well!”

“Oh *Wuo duh ma*!” Wash’s voice was ragged, “How could you do it, Mal? We gotta gather ourselves, get more fire power, go back in there an’ . . ”

“Yeah!” said Simon, “I think I could shoot to kill just about now!” His face was grim.

Mal shook his head. “Can’t do that neither. We go in, shoot the hell outta Badger’s place, it’ll only bring the Feds down on us. We’ll get pinched one way or another. Either Badger’ll pin us or we’ll be arrested for sure. Serenity searched. You want to lose yer sister too, Doc? An’,” he added as an afterthought, “the girls’d still get killed, like as not!”

Wash, sitting at the table, had his head in his hands, “Zoë *huh choo-shung huh tza-jiao duh tzang-huo*!” he moaned. He looked up at Mal determinedly. “We gotta do something, can’t just sit here – this is Niska all over again!” He shuddered at the memory.

“No it ain’t,” Mal shook his head, “not nothing like! Niska tortured us Wash, you an’ me, for nothing more that the jolly or the ‘reputation’ or what have you. Badger has the girls for leverage. Won’t do nothing to ‘em ‘scept we muck this up. We do the job, we do it RIGHT and we get ‘em back none the worse. End of story. So that’s just what we’re gonna do!”

“Just exactly,” said Harriet shrewdly, who’d been watching the discussion from the sidelines, a look of intense worry on her face and had rightly guessed that Mal was holding something back, “what is the “job”, Mal?”

Mal looked across the table at her, their eyes locking, a look of apology and pleading in his, stern resolve in hers. He opened his mouth to speak, when Jayne’s voice crackled over the com.

“Mal, cargo’s arrived!”

***

Harriet watched from the middle platform of the catwalk as Mal and Jayne herded the men, women and