“So you need our help?” Mal asked the woman who called herself Lieutenant Ursula Kalip.

“Yes Captain,” Ursula had a slightly confused look on her face, “Did you not read the message? Did River Tam not decode the message properly?”

“We read your message, we just…. now that is a point, how did you know that we had River ‘board my boat?”

Ursula gave him another one of her smiles, though it was clear that she found something amusing this time, “Who do you think helped Simon Tam get his sister out of the Alliance Academy?” The older man with her, Colonel Arron Chung, smiled also at this.

“Figures,” replied Mal. There was silence. Then Mal said, “So what exactly do you need our help for anyway? Seems you well organised bunch. Got yourselves a fancy looking ship,” he nodded towards their ship in the near distance, “You helped one man get his sister out of an Alliance facility. So why do you need our help?”

Ursula seemed to consider the question for a moment. “We don’t have quite the resources we once did.”

“Uh,” was all Mal said.

Again there was a silence. “Captain Reynolds, while I appreciate your caution, I must ask that we go to somewhere out of the snow, and continue this conversation.”

“I agree. We’ll go back to Serenity, talk there, though I will have to ask that we perform a search. Security you understand.”

“Of course Captain.”

“Wouldn’t want to have any breaches of security, traitors, that sort of thing.”

The two former Independent Intelligence Division Officers choose to ignore this small dig at there unit’s slightly chequered history during the war. They made their way towards the Hovermule. Mal and Zoe were in the lead. Zoe inclined her head to her Captain.

“Sir, are you sure about this?”

“We’re just going to have a talk.”

“Sir…”

“Zoe, this isn’t a discussion I want to be having right now. Where in the ‘verse is Jayne, he was supposed to be covering our backs.” He called on the radio, “Jayne! Where are you?”

Jayne’s voice came over the radio, “Err….I’m a little stuck in the sno