“Well, I’d say it was mighty fine to see a familiar face in a desolate place like this, Haden, but I have to say that that six-shooter—mighty fine weapon that it is—is taking away some of my enjoyment of the moment.” Unobtrusively, Mal eyeballed the surroundings. There were actually at least six guns that he could see they had to worry about. Damn—Haden must have been successful since they’d last run into each other for his posse to have grown like that. And him caught with his pants down.

Well. At least that was only figuratively speaking this time.

“Just keep those hands away from your own shooter, you *niao-se-duh sagwa*!”

“*niao-se-duh*?” He smelled his sleeve. “Zoë, do I smell of piss? ‘Cause I’m not smelling it.”

“No piss, Sir,” Zoë agreed in the usual tense tone she spoke in when the situation was grim.

“*Thank* you. You see? Now, *sagwa*, that you’d have had to take up with my mother—but I wouldn’t recommend that, as she might have taken exception to the suggestion, and she was a mighty strong woman.”

“*Niou-se*! Will you *shut* the hell *up*!”

Mal shrugged. “Whatever you say, Haden old buddy.”

“We’re not buddies, Reynolds! We never were! You screwed me over!”

Somehow, he’d known he was going to hear that. “Well now. That’s not how I seem to recall it.” Getting out of this one without any bullet holes might prove to be a mite tricky. Haden Bai had always been one to hold a grudge—real or imagined—and no matter the state of his pants, Mal and the others had been caught at a real inopportune moment. “Why don’t you explain to me what you think happened?”

He, Zoë, Jayne and Kaylee had been out all that afternoon scrounging the wares of the moon’s only settlement’s scrap dealers, looking for parts that would help them to keep flying. Or at least, Kaylee had—the rest of them had mainly been standing around freezing their rumps off. Although Jayne had occasionally come in handy for some heavy lifting. The fact that he had complained about that in the tone and using the words that he had was why he was