Chapter 5

Mal squinted through the darkness at the nondescript door before turning to Jayne with skepticism. “You sure this is the right place? Looks just like every other door we’ve passed in the last twenty minutes.”

“Uh-huh, Mal, an’ every other door has a pile of feathers for a gorram welcome mat.”

Mal glanced down to where his mercenary was pointing. “Oh, good point,” he muttered. “Nice trackin’, Jayne.”

“Weren’t trackin’. I followed babies were harder to track than that trail of gunk and feathers were.”

Zoë stepped between the two men, the stone-cold expression on her face hard to see in the blackness, but they didn’t have to see to know it was there. Just standing next to her they could feel the temperature drop a few degrees. “Sir, we gonna go in, or we gonna chat?”

Her tone snapped Mal back to business and he nodded. “We’re goin’ in, but not here. I’m bettin’ on these guys havin’ a back door. Guests use the front door, but after all that time they spent gettin’ to know my pilot today, we ain’t guests. I think we rank an unexpected visit through the back door.”

Jayne hefted Vera up higher on his shoulder and grinned, and Mal knew it was an unspoken nod to how the merc truly felt about the eccentric pilot. He might snarl and sneer at the little man, but he didn’t pull Vera out for just any job.

“Can I do the knockin’, Mal?” he stage whispered, his finger resting near the trigger.

“No blowin’ holes in things and givin’ away our presence before need be, Jayne,” Mal said firmly, moving swiftly around the building as he spoke, the other two following. He glanced back once at Zoë and actually shuddered at the hardness in her eyes. “Besides,” he added quickly, “I think Zoë wants to knock.”

Mal noticed a patch of wall darker than the rest and motioned for the others to be quiet. Silently, they approached. It was roughly seven feet high and four feet wide and made of a darker metal than the surrounding walls.

“Door?” he asked Zoë, tilting his head to get a better view.

“Door,” she agreed.

“Got a proposition on a way to be openin’ it?”

Jayne shifted Vera to point forward. “I got one, if ya’ll wanna step back a bit…”

“A quiet way of openin’ it,” Mal stressed, fighting the urge to roll his eyes. “I thought mercenaries were supposed to be schooled in stealth.”

“Heck, Mal, I tole ya before, I ain’t got no use for schoolin’.”

“Pro’bly got a hidden switch or trigger, Sir,” Zoë replied, ignoring Jayne as she stepped up to the wall and ran her fingers along the right side. Mal followed her lead on the left, leaving Jayne to cover them. About halfway down he felt his fingers catch on something. He tugged on it and a small metal flap snapped open revealing a box set in the wall that housed one thing, a large button.

“Bingo.” He turned and faced his two crewmembers. “Alright, we go in quiet and we go in smart. Ain’t got no idea what or who’s waitin’ for us on the other side and I don’t plan on walkin’ into any trap. You need to shoot, shoot to disable, not kill. I got questions needin’ answers and corpses don’t talk so well.” He said the last bit to Jayne, but he was looking at Zoë. He waited until she gave him an almost imperceptible nod, then went on. “Jayne, you take the right, Zoë, the left, I’ll steer down the middle. Cover me if I signal. Now, remember, heavy on the quiet part, dong ma?”

Confident in their plan and ability to pull it off, Mal stepped forward and pushed the button.

Instantly, the high wail of a security alarm pierced the night air. The door however stayed firmly shut.

“Huh,” Mal said, staring stupidly at the unopened door, then back at his comrades. Zoë was glaring daggers at him, but she couldn’t quite hide the twitch of her lip.

“Plan B, Sir?”

“Uh, yeah, sounds good.” He moved aside and gestured sweepingly with one hand at the door. “Jayne?” he offered. “And nix the quiet part. Our schedule just got a mite tighter so more on the quick and less on the quiet would be just fine.”

Jayne’s grin was eager and the slightest bit evil as he shouldered his gun. After two blasts from Vera, the metal door gave way, twisting painfully back on its hinges and leaving a yawning black entrance in its place.

Drawing his gun, Mal strode through, eyes straining to see through the smoke and the darkness, expecting trouble and looking for cover. Zoë slipped in silently behind him, and then Jayne. The merc was finally quiet, proving that despite everything else that might be said about him, he really was the best at his job.

The inside of the building was pitch black; they couldn’t see a thing, and with that blasted alarm still wailing in the background, they couldn’t hear much either. “Find the lights,” Mal ordered Zoë through clenched teeth. “An’ turn that darn alarm off while yer at it.”

“Sir, you sure ya want me to do that?” Zoë questioned. “Give away our position pretty fast…”

“Position’s already been made, if anyone’s in here wonderin’. Light’ll mean they can see us, but we get a fair crack at seein’ them as well. An’ the alarm’s makin’ me cranky. Cranky enough as it is, don’t need any help in that area.”

Wordlessly, Zoë melted back into the darkness. A few seconds later the dimness of emergency lighting flashed on, and shortly after that the alarm suddenly switched off, leaving Mal’s ears still ringing. He ignored them, however, and gave his attention to their surroundings, knowing any element of surprise had long since passed.

The building was huge. A few crates and boxes littered the edges of the warehouse, but for the most part their movements echoed off the concrete emptiness of the large space. On the far side, just visible in the limited lighting, Mal could make out the other door. Warily, Mal crouched behind a crate for cover as he listened and watched for any sign of trouble, but after only a minute or so he stood up. The building had that hollow emptiness that told him better than anything that they were the only ones there, which unexpected alarms and blasts from large guns included was probably a good thing as far as their health and safety was concerned, but did nothing to relieve the burning desire to hurt someone he’d had growing in his gut since he’d walked into that infirmary and seen Wash.

“Sir.”

Zoë’s voice was flat and dead. Mal jerked around and followed her eyes and the muzzle of her gun to the left-hand corner she was pointing at. His eyes went hard and his lips pressed together into a thin line as he moved forward to get a closer look.

Two barrels impertinently labeled “Tar” were pushed together, a small mound of feathers piled at their base. Leaning causally against them was an old, wooden fence post and a neatly coiled whip. Mal felt the darkness claw even further up inside him as he realized the whole thing had been “artfully” arranged, like a trophy.

And the pièce de résistance? Sitting on top of the first barrel of tar, crisply folded and pressed, was Wash’s bright, floral shirt.

Mal really, really wanted to shoot something. Or someone. And it was getting to the point he wasn’t all that picky about who, as long as they fit the category of generic bad guy slash scum of the ‘verse.

While the captain remained frozen in his spot with disgust, Zoë stepped neatly around him and up to the display. Her face was cold as ice but her hands were surprisingly gentle as she reached out and gathered up her husband’s shirt. She sensed the captain’s eyes and spoke to him without moving.

“He’s got too few clothes as it is, an’ it’s one of his favorites. Ain’t leavin’ it here for their pleasure.”

She turned back to face Mal and held the shirt out to him purposefully. For a moment he just stared at it, stupid-like, then it dawned on him that she wanted him to pocket it. Her vest might be good for holding little things, like say an ear or two, but not bulky, garish Hawaiian shirts.

“It dawned on you his wardrobe might be improved considerable by leavin’ it here?” he asked, not completely in jest as he took the shirt while throwing her a wry look, wondering as he did at the strange bond between his first-mate and pilot that drove the usually stoic and practical Zoë to rescue something so silly; a bond he still didn’t really understand even after years to study it. The look she gave him in return he had no trouble understanding, however; it was the one that said just shut up and don’t ask questions. “Right,” he replied, balling the shirt up into a smaller wad, “but just so’s ya know, I draw the line at cartin’ any of his plastic creatures around.”

“Wouldn’t dream of askin’, Sir.”

Mal started to shove the wadded up shirt into one of the pockets of his old coat, but stopped when something hard and unyielding met his fingers through the cloth. Puzzled, he searched around until he found the shirt’s breast pocket. He reached inside and withdrew a recorder, just like the one they had found on Tracey not so long ago. Wordlessly, he shared a grim look with Zoë.

Jayne had wandered back to them after making a quick sweep of the building. He eyed the offending display curiously, taking in Mal and Zoë and the shirt, then shrugged and turned his attention back to the rest of the building, not entirely convinced they weren’t still walking into a trap.

“Maybe it’s Wash’s?” he suggested, nodding to the little message recorder.

“It ain’t,” Zoë replied darkly.

With a deep sense of foreboding, Mal clicked it on.