On with the show! This chapter is a little longer than 1-3, but that's 'cause there's a ad-break cliff-hanger to get to! Enjoy...

4

Words like ‘composure’ and ‘restraint’ weren’t the sort that popped into Jayne’s head often, but they were what he’d had to use plenty of as he’d sat through Mal and Chen’s little meetin’ back on Trinity.

Seated now on his bunk, he furiously swabbed a soft cloth back and forth through Lola’s punched barrel. Seein’ to his weaponry, or workin’ out, or eatin’ some chow – those were his ways a’ tryin’ ta take his mind off a’ stuff, an’ all his ladies were in for the full wax ‘n’ wash treatment tonight.

Couldn’t make it work, though. Jayne hated leavin’ a score unsettled. Felt damn wrong, for one. Weren’t in his nature, for another.

His beef with Chen went back to long before Serenity ; before Jayne’d even left his homeworld, when he run with a gang called the Round Hill Boys – ten of ‘em, all fine, upstandin’, respectable bandits to a man. Twenty-year-old Jayne Cobb was the youngest of ‘em, but they treated him like their equal best. Taught him everythin’ they knew; how ta fight, shoot, ride, how ta look out for himself. They were his brothers back then – best he’d ever had.

Cattle was their game. They’d rustle a few cows here, doctor the brands, sell ‘em on there, never get caught. On a world like Jasmine, the steer capital a’ the ‘verse, it was easy as lyin’.

Then Jepson’d come ta the boys with a plan. Weren’t his plan, a’ course: someone else’d done the thinkin’ for him. Off-worlder, little ‘tachioed fella named Osaki Chen. Weren’t no-one called him Ossie back then. Anyways, he wanted some herd or other snatchin’, but that was fine, the Boys did that sort a’ thing all the time.

‘Cept the herd’d turned out ta belong ta some ruttin’ fancy-dan landowner with a hard-on for sendin’ armed posses about his fields, lookin’ for just such as the Boys – but Chen’d neglected ta mention that. Four a’ the Boys’d never made it home that night, an’ little Jayne C