The magnificent nine
(Book)

A cosmic cry for help. Captain Mal Reynolds is in a fix. He'd like nothing more than to find honest smuggling work that stays underthe Alliance's radarand keeps the good ship Serenity in the sky. But when an old flame of Jayne Cobb's sends a desperate plea across the galaxy, his crew has other ideas. -- A cut-throat bandit. -- On the arid, far-flung world of Thetis, the terrifying Elias Vandal is threatening to overrun the town of Coogan's Bluff with his trigger-happy army. He wants control ofthe only thing standing between its people and dustbowl ruin: the water supply. --The Magnificent Nine. --When the crew land at the hardscrabble desert outpost, they discover two things: a savage outlaw gang who will stop at nothing to get what they want, and that Jayne's former girlfrined, Temperance, is singlehandedly raising a teenage daughter, born less than a year after she an jayne parted ways. A daughter by the name of Jane McCloud ...