The Treasure of Lei Fong Wu

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The patient was lying handcuffed to the hospital bed, a tracking anklet already snapped around his left ankle. Julian stood at the foot of his bed and shook his head sadly for ten minutes before he spoke one word. When he did, the word was telling. “Idiot,” he swore as he began to pace. He looked up, and there was little reaction. Of course, any reaction would be hard to gauge. The man’s jaw was covered in reconstructive monofilament, knitting the shards of bone that used to be his face back together. In three weeks he’d look – more or less – the way he did before today. They had good doctors here, for a frontier world. His right wrist was in a more old-fashioned splint. The man – Corporal Newton Jaeger, Alliance Special Operations, Retired – was on morphine, of course. He was lucid, but just barely. Julian hated that. He wanted Jaeger awake for the chewing out he was about to give him. “You stupid son-of-a-bitch,” Julian said, disgusted. “Cao ni zou zong shi ba dai! I give you a second gorram chance after the crap you pulled on Hera, and you do this . . . you go and do about the stupidest thing you possibly could. Gan ni lao shi. You tipped them off, when I had people in place to deal with it. You were running surveillance, asswipe – surveillance, not apprehension!” Jaeger flinched, and the keyboard the doctors had placed under his left hand clicked a little. The screen above his bed went blue, and white letters appeared. Tap tap. Sorry. “You sure as hell are sorry,” Julian said, in a low, dangerous voice dripping with contempt. “Sorriest piece of shabi go se . . . but we’ll get to that later. “You got a positive ID. I got that much before you went apeshit. You were ordered to maintain your distance and wait for backup – I know that much. Where it gets fuzzy to me is where you seem to have forgotten that order thirty seconds after you got it, you burst into a shoe shop brandishing a weapon with no appropriate credentials, violating the secrecy of the entire operation and alerting the subjects that we were in the area. That’s where it gets fuzzy.” Tap tap. Sorry! “Shut up,” Julian snapped. “I want to know how two young girls, who were apparently unarmed except for a pair of black leather heels, managed to crush your wrist and turn your face into a convenient sack to hold the pieces of your jaw in.” Tap tap. There was a man. “That’s what the shopkeeper said. A Chinese man, young. Armed with a stick.” Tap tap. It was a bat. Cricket? “Baseball, actually. Any idea who he might be?” Tap tap. Didn’t see his face. “You’re telling me he crushed your jaw and broke your wrist . . . from behind you?” Julian asked incredulously. Tap tap. I blacked out. “Really,” Julian said with icy sarcasm. “So you can’t tell me anything of value except that you’re too stupid to follow simple directions? Hell of a time to tell me that. I wished I had known that before you signed your gorram contract. A dozen kids on Hera would be alive today if I had known that. And you wouldn’t be in a hospital with your face looking like a sack of marbles. You’d be safe and sound as a night security guard in some gorram warehouse full of dog food or discount underwear, where the only threat to your welfare would be the very real possibility of shooting yourself in your gorram foot!” Tap tap. I know something! “You don’t know shit,” Julian spat. Tap tap. I do! She knew! Julian sighed. “Okay. I’ll bite. She knew what?” Tap tap. About Hera. She knew about Hera. That didn’t make sense. “How the hell could she know about that? The only people who knew you were such a murdering chou wang ba dan are on our team. Or on Hera, wondering how come they sent their baby off to school one morning in a sweater and they came home in a gorram pine box!” Tap tap. She knew! I swear! She said something about it! Julian paused. “How could she know that? There ain’t no way. How?” he asked, his mind racing. If true, the implications of that were . . . troubling. Tap tap. Don’t know. She said Hera, said I killed kids. Said I had to pay their moms. Julian’s mind worked furiously with the implications of that. The Hera affair had been hushed up tight: the right people had been paid off, and it had been kept almost completely out of the media. If River Tam knew about it enough to know that Jaeger was the one who had personally made the payments . . . “You know what that means, Jaeger?” Julian said. “That means we got a leak in our operation. That means that they not only know we’re here, now, they gotta know who we are – and I ain’t talking our gorram corporate mission statement. If she really does know about your little faux pas on Hera, then she’s gotta know our gorram personnel files, our gorram classified case files, everything. Which means they know about our government work, and no one is supposed to know that. Which means she knows about our lucrative corporate work. Which means we’re in a world of go se.” He let the man tap out a response while he thought furiously – where was that leak? If the Tams knew about his operation to that level of detail . . . they were in deep, deep go se. He and his people had been involved in a decades worth of covert shenanigans, everything from extra-judicial killings, subverting local governments, kidnapping, and that whole supersecret Pax project that was a death sentence even to speak about. Their Blue Sun and Carlton contracts alone would be enough to see them all hang – and that was their bread-and-butter. He shuddered at the thought of an outsider having intimate knowledge of their work. But how? Only he and Sinclair had full access to those files. They were buried so deep in their system that you needed six separate identity checks to access. The hardware was stand-alone secure aboard their ship. To be able to access that . . . well, that bespoke a level of competency and technical accomplishment that was unimaginable. The Tams, he was starting to realize, weren’t your average run-of-the-mill villains. A genius doctor. A teenaged super-genius researcher whose file was coded black, so secret only Members of Parliament and their Operatives had complete access. A disaffected Browncoat smuggler. An outlaw Imperial warlord-turned-crime boss. And lots of money. And now, to keep things interesting, now there was this unprecedented access to his secret, personal files and God knew what else. What the hell were they planning? When his men had interviewed the cops on Wuhan, they had mentioned a bank robbery on Xiao – that was a feint, of course. Instead, the warlord’s ship had led an Alliance task-force on a merry chase through the backwoods of the ‘verse, disappearing somewhere on the other side of the Boros. Yet the warlord was believed to be here – when it was known for a fact by the Alliance’s best people that he was on his ship. The damn Firefly had made a stop on Madonna, he’d found out yesterday. Owned by a mining corp. Was this a gambit on the part of one of the big corporations? Blue Sun was into the Tams up to their eyeballs – was this all part of a research defection from one corp to the other? Or was it something more . . . sinister? He was starting to lean towards the latter. As much as he would like to believe that the Tams were simply fishing for a better deal than they got from the Alliance, that didn’t fit the facts he had. Not now. Because if the Tam’s gang had access to his files, they could theoretically have access to any secret file in the gorram ‘verse. Which gave them power the likes of which hadn’t been known since the days of the Great Captains of the Exodus Ships. Millions could live or die on a whim, with that power. Governments could collapse. Civilizations could fall. And since the Tams were associating with rebels and renegades, he had to expect the worst. He considered calling for backup, turning over everything he had to the Alliance, let them sort it out. But he didn’t trust them to handle this properly. With all their resources, they were still a bureaucracy. Even if they assigned an Operative – or several – it would take them months to get up to speed. And right now he was sitting not three miles from the greatest threat to civilization in the ‘verse. He would handle it. That’s why he had put together his team, built his organization. They were the best of the best, men with superior skills across the baord. He had spared no expense to get the best – the elite, in all their fields – and the best was what he had at his command. Every one of his men had earned their lucrative place on his team, and all of them could be relied on utterly. With one exception. “Jaeger,” Julian said slowly, “I’ve decided the firm is going to pay for your medical expenses on this, despite your screw up.” Tap tap. Thank you! “But I can’t have this kind of incompetence on my team. You’re a decent tactical operative, Jaeger, don’t get me wrong. You took some initiative, and I can appreciate the value of that. But you have crappy instincts, a reactionary outlook, and a casual disregard for authority that makes you a danger to your team and my organization. I give everyone a chance to screw up. You had yours on Hera. And that screw-up put you in debt to the company close to a million. If you had succeeded here – well, we’d be having a whole different conversation. But you didn’t, and you probably blew our whole op. “So you’re sacked. I’ve sold your debt and contract to a local company – at a loss, mind – which translates into a sixteen-year indenture. After you heal the company will take possession of you. You’ll get tattooed, processed, and put to work – probably something disgusting and back-breaking, I’m sure. Dangerous, too. They won’t let a strong buck like you go to waste.” Frantic tap tap. Wait! No! Sorry! Another chance! “No, I’m sorry,” Julian sighed. “I gave you another chance. I’ll have your paperwork sent over this afternoon. I’d do it myself, but because of your incompetence I’m going to have to try to salvage the op and clean up your mess. Wish it could have worked out, Jaeger.” As he turned and walked away, the blue screen above the bed was flashing, complete with an attention-getting audio signal, over and over. The sound of the tapping keys was desperate, and accompanied by pathetic whimpering from the broken man’s throat. Julian spared one glance over his shoulder before he left the hall. Jaeger’s eyes were filled with hopelessness and tears. The blue screen was throbbing. Tap tap. PLEASE!! Tap Tap. PLEASE!! TAP TAP. PLEASE!!! “Dumb son-of-a-bitch,” Julian murmured to himself before snapping open his phone. “Lewis. Get your team ready. We’re going to have to accelerate things.”

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Inara sat in booth in the corner of the club, meeting her potential clients one at a time for ten minutes, the time kept by an ornate hourglass in the center of a table next to a sweetly scented Unity Candle and one of the local wines. It wasn’t unusual for a Companion to interview, of course – before anyone could be entered into the Registry, they had to undergo an interview by a qualified Companion and present their medical record. Some Companions even required their clients to submit to personality tests of one sort or another – Inara preferred to trust her intuition and ability to “read” clients, rather than rely on an objective test. There were some things that tests wouldn’t reveal, but five minutes of conversation would. The gentleman before her was a good example. Sir Lucas Tremayne, a local aristocrat (Knight of the Steward’s Order of Salisbury, his calling card read) who owned a large cocoa plantation eighty miles north of Lincoln, among other interests. Fifty-two years old, robust, good health, impeccable breeding, educated on Ariel, and a prominent business leader. Unmarried. Not likely to be married until he needed an heir. Everything about his record said yes, yes, yes. But . . . In the first two minutes of conversation, Inara discovered that he had a strong dislike of everything Asian – one reason he had chosen here to settle, and this bar in particular to frequent. There was virtually no trace of Chinese, Indian, Tibetan, or other Asian culture here. The signs alone had tiny Chinese subtitles. He was a bigot, an arrogant, sexist letch who saw women as vehicles for his own pleasure and occasional birth canals, nothing more. By the time five minutes had passed, he had confirmed his status by bragging about the six indentured girls who worked his plantation that he knew for a fact carried his bastards. He was not even particularly lusty – a quality Inara could appreciate – but cared for sex only for the power it gave him over those in his control. Inara chatted politely, smiled a lot, and told him that she would consider and let him know when she might become available. Or the dashing young Eric Clydesdale, a solicitor who worked for the Steward’s office, who was very handsome, very well-off, extremely charming, impeccably dressed – and thoroughly sly, to her practiced eye. Yet he would never admit his attraction to men, likely because of some father issues or religious guilt. He sought out Inara, she realized, because of her glamour, not out of any real desire to be with her sexually. Doubtless he would perform in bed, perhaps even do a credible job, but his heart would not be in it. She might keep him in mind for a non-sexual rendezvous, though, if he was amenable. He had kind eyes and a gentle humor she found enchanting. Or Nathaniel “Nate” Kane, a local mercantile agent who vainly tried to hide his wedding band. He was a likeable man who hid his Rim-world drawl admirably behind the derivative Core-world accent in favor among the Salisbury gentry. He was a veteran, she guessed, but not an officer: a non-com, and she doubted he had worn purple during the war. Very serious, prone to temper, she saw, and parts of his psyche were hopelessly tangled by the War. She wished she could help him. Many, many men in uniform suffered from that affliction, and it was one of the most important ancient functions of a Companion: assisting the Warrior in the transition from the brutal horror of war to the gentle needs of a peaceful life among civilized folk. It was the most direct application of her feminine power, her Caritas. Some Companions even made it a specialty, catering exclusively to the military. It was a challenge, getting behind the walls of insensitivity necessitated by military training and providing emotional relief for a man in profound pain from the trauma of loss and specter of his own mortality. It was doubly so if the man’s side in the conflict was not victorious – and Inara could detect enough of that in Nate’s voice to decide with whom he had served – but sometimes victory, too, brought problems. Pain and guilt and shame from the atrocities imposed by warfare. To untangle that knot could take years, if left unquenched by loving Caritas. A man’s mind could harden into vitrified inflexibility, condemning him to a life of suppressed emotion that was a daily torture for him and all who loved him. It could leave him emotionally stunted, spiritually crippled, and often made coming home from war impossible: he would bring the shade of war back with him and live with it every day of his life. His family and friends would know he had changed, but would not realize that he was damaged. They would assume that he was relieved that he survived when he was guilt-stricken for that very reason. They would wonder at his insensitivity and inability to engage in intimacy, and blame it on military discipline and a “worldliness” one acquired in military service. What the actual trouble was, though, was an incomplete transition. There was no time or space for him to alter his psyche from that of an obedient killer to that of a loving husband and father. One day he’s out in a field on some nameless moon, shooting at the enemy and fighting for survival, and the next he’s applying for a job and expected to be proud of what he had done. Some gifted individuals would find a way on their own, of course. Their psychological journey might include several cycles of painful expression, wherein they would communicate their pain through art, or hard work, or sheer force of will. In many cases they would turn to chemicals to numb the pain, hempflower, alcohol, drops . . . if they were fortunate they would find a way out of the dark place. In extreme cases they would be utterly incapable of the transition, and return to the life of violence and chaos they couldn’t leave behind. If they were lucky, they would do so far from their homes. If they were not, then tragedy often ensued. Healing the warrior was an intense, time-consuming process for a Companion. She offered her sexuality in sacrifice to his rage and pain. In the beginning, the journey was passionately sexual and physically demanding. A warrior fresh from battle sees no humanity around him, he sees only foes and the spoils of victory. The Companion must endure his verbal and physical assaults, be willing to abide crude language, rough play and unrefined attitudes until he had spent his emotional energy on raw sexual heat. She gradually took the flame of his embattled soul, bit by bit, and tempered it with the heat between her thighs. She used the cauldron of her vagina to transmute his rage back into passion in an ancient alchemy of love and lust. Then she quenched his soul with the soft water of Caritas – the unconditional love expressed by a mother to a child, reflected in adulthood as the passionate grace a woman bestowed upon a man by her favor. To many women, untrained in the Arts, the needs of lovers who had never been to war were misunderstood and callously handled through their ignorance. They chalked up the implicit difficulties in male/female sexual relationships to the simplistic idea that “men never grow up”, and never progressed from there. They despaired of a man needing her to be his “mommy” when he most needed to be a man, not realizing that it was her love, her Caritas, her unconditional approval and acceptance which enabled his strength. They dismissed their gross misunderstanding of male sexuality by decrying men as insensitive sexual beasts, motivated only by brutish lust and untouched by reason or love. Those poor, untrained and ignorant women had not realized that nearly every man needs the regular application of Caritas in order to feel whole, to feel loving, to be able to feel anything but rage and frustration. They rarely realized that they even had that vital, precious power, much less how to artfully wield it. Instead, they held their sexuality like a crude club, ignoring their own vital needs for healthy sexual expression and using men’s desires as leverage, as a threat, as a bargaining chip in the interplay of a relationship to get what they wanted. Some ignorant few even denied their husbands or lovers out of spite, or out of their own frustration with their relationship, not realizing that a properly nurtured and fulfilled man could well provide the strength, gentleness, and caring that they needed. That punished both of them for the sin of ignorance, and turned many a happy union into a seething hell of emotional despair. And that was just civilian life. The needs of the Warrior were yet more profound. There were few women who understood their role in his return implicitly, without Companion training. There were fewer still who could naturally give so freely of themselves so often, to ease the emotional journey back to a peaceful home with the soft landing of her breasts. The Companions who specialized in such clients were incredibly strong women who had committed themselves to the process, which often took months and was emotionally and physically demanding. But the reward was as profound as the challenge: for a man newly returned from battle and successfully brought back into peaceful family life in this way often brought back the strength forged in war and the mature wisdom of the warrior. Those were rare and special gifts to his family. No, she could not help Nate. She had not the time, energy, nor the strength to do so. But she didn’t think she needed to. He had a woman, she could see, though he hid his ring, a woman who cared for him deeply. She was working loose that knot, a little more every day. He had a child, she could see, for he possessed the maturity that only fatherhood brings. And he had the glow of expectation that made her think his woman might well be pregnant again. She spoke to him kindly, laughed at his jokes, fed his ego without damaging his pride, and when the last grain of sand fell she bade him farewell with a kiss on the cheek. He was surprised at that – a dash of tenderness from someone she knew he considered a cold-hearted businesswoman. But the Returned Warrior needed occasional ego stroking like that, from someone other than his wife. It re-affirmed his desirability and strengthened his self-esteem, which empowered him to strive that much more earnestly, and cleave that much harder to the woman he knew loved him. It was a little thing, but a man so wounded was deserving of a little respect, a token of love from an acknowledged mistress of the Art. And it was her welcomed duty as a priestess in the temple of Caritas. She made a note on the sheet in front of her and awaited her next interview. A burly hand stretched out and flipped the hourglass, and he flopped down into the chair and proceeded to sprawl lazily. “Hey, gorgeous, you come here often?” came a familiar voice. “You!” Her heart sank, then leapt, and then sank again. “Oh, go se. Mal, what the hell are you doing here?” she demanded in a harsh whisper, her shoulders tensing. “Careful, now, little muffin, don’t scare away the customers!” he chided with a grin. “You invited me to stop by, remember?” “Since when do you ever listen to me?” she asked in exasperation, plastering a fake smile on her face to keep the other interviewees from getting the wrong idea. “To be truthsome, toothsome, pretty much only when I feel like it,” he admitted. “But I figgered, ‘hey, how often do you get to watch a seasoned pro at work?’” he shrugged. Then he leaned forward. “Am I coming on too strong?” he asked in a stage whisper. “Look,” she said, her face smiling but her eyes shooting lasers, “this world is virgin territory—” “Been a while since you seen that, I s’pose!” he quipped. “Shut up!” she hissed. “This place is so far from the Core that I’m the first Companion that’s ever been here. A lot of potential clients. You hump this up for me and sohelpme—!” “Calm down, Ambassador, I’m just along for the ride. Just want to have the same opportunity as these other fellas, chat up the new bird, try to get some play . . .” “I don’t service crew, remember?” she stabbed back. “We ain’t on the ship,” he reminded her. “Hey, I just want to go through the process. Get on the Big List of Wealthy Boners. Might could take one o’ your spiritual sisters for a spin some day . . .” This could get embarrassing, she knew. Best to appease him on this one little joke than to risk her professional reputation before it had even gotten established here. “On one condition . . .” she said, iron in her voice, after due consideration. The lasers didn’t leave. “What?” “We can play the game – it might even prove entertaining, in a pathetic sort of way. But you use . . . that word . . . even once, then I jump up and start screaming, and every sword in here’s going to get drawn.” “Well,” Mal said, rubbing his chin, “since you sweet-talked me, I guess I can agree to that.” “Fine,” she said, acidly. “Name, occupation . . . income, or lack thereof, I know these things. Let’s start with . . . your preferred style.” “Like to leave my boots on, if it’s all the same to you.” “‘Brutish,’” she noted on the sheet. “Any preferences for music, literature, or the arts?” “Hmmm. I am partial to the works of Monet, Mozart, and Mao,” he decided. “Mal,” she said with exasperation, “you don’t even know what the Mona Lisa is.” “Oh, yeah. Better put ‘Rim-World cultural barbarian’ down in your notes. Cave painting, square dancing and fart jokes.” “Any personal fetishes? Kinks, fixations, obsessions,” she asked disinterestedly. “Like bondage and discipline. Or bisexuality. Or scatophilia?” “Actually, I do,” he said, fixing her with a stare and that damnably boyish infectious grin. “I like my women to be strong.” “Strong?” she asked with a little more interest. “Physically?” “Well, yes, that too,” he admitted. “Hate to see them come apart at an inopportune moment. But I mean emotionally strong. “I need a woman with the emotional fortitude to behold my passionate nature without flinching,” he said, staring fixedly into her eyes. “One who can recognize my strength of feeling for what it is, and bear the burden of my . . . ardent desire without recourse to mental strategizing in an effort to subvert me from my . . . often intense goals. I need a woman of strong character, one who will tell me what’s on her mind, insist I do the same, and share the natural complexities of deep and abiding adoration. I need a woman who is strong enough to be treated like a goddess, accept it with grace, and yet be soft and supple enough to respond to the lightest of touches and softest of whispers. I need a woman who can master my heart while respecting my innate frailties. Who could see my earnest desire to love deeply, thoroughly, and completely without losing respect for me for showing a core of tender emotion that a lesser woman would mistake for weakness . . . and . . .” he fumbled. “Yes?” Inara asked breathlessly, her eyes wide with surprise . . . and interest. “What is it?” “I liked to have my big toe sucked on a little. Just as foreplay, mind, no need to spend all night about it, but dang it sure gets the lead in m’pencil somethin’ powerful!” “I . . . see,” she said, seething. And breathing a little heavy. “I was thinking more perhaps of your crossdressing hobby. But I’ll make a note. So . . . how big is it?” she asked, returning to disinterest. “You should know that . . . you saw me starkers on Bellarophon, ‘member?” “Well . . . I didn’t see it . . . angry. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and say it was chilly that day.” “Was, a bit,” he admitted. “Stamina?” “Not very good. Can’t go for more’n a couple o’ hours. Four, tops, without rest. And no more than thrice a day,” he insisted. “Not as young as I used t’be.” “Weight?” “A lady never tells,” he said, shaking his head. “Any . . . aversions?” “Jayne Cobb. ‘Part from that, bring on the meatloaf an’ the sticky tape!” “Any allergies? Health conditions?” “Allergic to oppressive government tyranny. An’ I get a little stiff in th’back when it’s gonna rain. Old war injury,” he confided. “Just a little shrapnel.” “Noted. Do you enjoy anal play?” “I pay taxes, don’t I?” “Only when you can’t avoid it,” she said, shaking her head. “Consider that an answer.” “What do you like to do for recreation?” “Harass the tenants.” She made a face. “Last sexual experience?” “With another person?” “Yes.” He looked at her, the game done, suddenly serious. “I think you know the answer to that as well as I.” Neither one wanted to mention Nandy. It was too painful, to close. It reminded him that she had said she’d leave, and reminded her why she’d said it. “Time’s almost up, Miss Serra,” he said in a low tone. “Got one little thing to let you know. Right after you came in another fella did, big man who smelled like a cop. Showed me a picture of River and asked if I’d seen her. That can only mean one thing: there are bounty hunters or Feds skulkin’ about, and unless I miss my guess they’re gonna come a’callin’ on us soonish. We may well have to depart, and since your buggy is still attached, you might want to stick close to the ship. “Or not,” he continued before she could protest. “If things go our way, we might be gone a month or two – and I’ve no clear notion where. No place where you’re likely to find as many well-appointed, well-monied, well-hung gents as these, if I had to wager. And unless I miss my guess by a far piece, I’d say we’re likely to see more lead in the air than is rightly considered healthy. So you may do yourself a favor by stayin’ here. We don’t come back within three months, shuttle’s yours, cause we’re all dead. You decide to go, best stock up on toothpaste and unmentionables. I figure we got at least three hour before they track her back to us, so best have some alacrity to your decision.” “Mal, I—” “Sorry, time’s up,” he said, nodding toward the hourglass. “Hope I made the cut. Things go well, I might could afford a Companion’s rates. See you later. Or not.” He stood, leaving Inara staring open-mouthed. He stopped just long enough to grab the next gentleman in line, a young fellow who was eager and nervous in equal portions. “She’s a mighty fine woman, if you can afford her,” he assured. “Just don’t get her started about her grandkids – won’t shut up about ‘em!” he said, slapping him collegially on the shoulder and heading out the door with a wave, a wink and a shrug – to Nate, of all people. Inara watched him go, and watched the door long after he had disappeared through it. There was a war of emotions bubbling inside her, and she was only brought back to reality when her new potential client gently prodded her elbow. Damn Malcolm Reynolds.

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“Wash?” Mal said into the pickup the moment he was out of earshot of everyone. “Wash, come in!” “Wash here,” came the tinny answer. “Trouble, Cap?” “Our stock-in-trade,” Mal agreed. “Kaylee come home yet?” “About ten minutes ago,” Wash said, apparently understanding what he was saying – and not saying. Wash was good like that. Picked up on subtleties that would leave Jayne sputtering and scratching his head. “Said she and Johnny were playing down by the River. But they didn’t get wet.” “Glad they’re back,” he said with some relief. “Tell Kaylee to do her business and keep the stove warm, in case we want to make some tea, later. It looks like rain, so everyone should wear their raincoats. Oh, and tell Zoe she should keep an eye out for salesmen. They’ve been known to knock on a body’s door at the most inconvenient times.” “Uh, yeah, Cap, got it. Jayne and Zoe came back with the party supplies, and I stocked the fridge with the good stuff. We’ll be ready for a really long shindig. Anything else?” “The Ambassador might come home early, so be prepared. And tell Jayne to wake up Vera – you know how cranky she gets if there’s a party and she ain’t prettied up. I’m on my way now, be there in ten. Make it twenty. Gotta cravin’ for some Chinese food. Gotta make a wave.” “Loud and clear, Cap. We’ll leave the porch light on. Wash, out.” He put away the pick-up and looked for a cortex kiosk. He needed to let the General know about these new developments. Just the sort of thing a man in his position would want to know. Mal clapped his hands together in the night’s chill, and felt a little surge of energy. This was starting to get interesting.