Firefly--Life Signs Read online

  CONTENTS

  Cover

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  Title Page

  Leave us a Review

  Copyright

  Dedication

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  Epilogue

  About the Author

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  LIFE SIGNS

  ALSO AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS

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  The Magnificent Nine by James Lovegrove

  The Ghost Machine by James Lovegrove

  Generations by Tim Lebbon

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  Firefly: Life Signs

  Hardback edition ISBN: 9781789092271

  E-book edition ISBN: 9781789092288

  Published by Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark Street, London, SE1 0UP.

  First hardback edition: March 2021

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  © 2021 20th Television.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

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  DEDICATED TO

  Cat Camacho

  for keeping us flyin’

  I have clinched and closed with the naked North,

  I have learned to defy and defend;

  Shoulder to shoulder we have fought it out—

  yet the Wild must win in the end.

  Robert W. Service,

  “The Heart of the Sourdough”

  “When a battle seems unwinnable,

  a soldier has two choices: to fight on,

  or to accept the inevitable.

  Often the two are hard to tell apart.”

  Browncoat General William Hubert Cole,

  discussing the Battle of Serenity Valley

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The events in this novel take place between the

  Firefly TV series and the movie Serenity.

  1

  “You know you got one of them upside-down faces?”

  “Huh?”

  “An upside-down face. You know what I mean.”

  “Don’t reckon as I do.”

  “Bald on top, neck-beard below. You stand on your head, it’d look like your face was the right way up.”

  “You tryin’ to be funny?”

  “Merely tenderin’ an observation. ’Course, from my current perspective, your face is the right way up.”

  “You’re about to die. I really don’t think this is the time to be making wisecracks.”

  “Personally can’t think of a better time to be making wisecracks than when you’re about to die.”

  The two men speaking were Malcolm Reynolds—Firefly captain, former Browncoat, buccaneering rogue—and one Desmond Rouleau, killer for hire.

  The former was bound hand and foot and hanging by his ankles from a bough of a tall mesquite. The latter was standing in front of him, brandishing a hunting knife with a twelve-inch blade. It was night. Cicadas were singing. A trio of moons illuminated the scene, as did the headlights of a two-seater hover-gig parked nearby.

  A couple of hours earlier, the pair had had an arranged meet in a cabin in the woods a mile outside a town called Lonesome Rock. This was on Odessa, a Rim world that lay a hop, skip and a jump from the Uroborus asteroid belt. There’d been the prospect of a job. Some cargo to transport. Paid work, something which had been pretty thin on the ground lately for Mal and his crew.

  A condition for the rendezvous had been that Mal came alone. No sidekick, no backup. Rouleau didn’t want a fuss. He was a low-key kinda guy, he’d said. They would talk man-to-man. “Get a person on their ownsome, look ’em in the eye, take the measure of ’em—that’s how Desmond Rouleau operates.”

  Shots of bourbon were downed. A deal was sealed with a handshake. All at once Mal felt woozy, like he was descending a hundred floors in an express elevator. He got up from the table, fumbling for his gun…

  And keeled over flat on his face, unconscious.

  When his senses returned, he found he had been strung up from the mesquite and was dangling there like a human piñata. That was bad. Worse, perhaps, was the fact that his eyes were more or less level with Desmond Rouleau’s crotch. There were pale, crusty stains on the front of the man’s pants, and Mal didn’t much care to know where they’d come from. Food grease, he hoped.

  “Now then, Mr. Reynolds,” said Desmond Rouleau, “I bet you’re wonderin’ why you’re here, all trussed up and no place to go.”

  “Thought had crossed my mind.” The blood was pooling in Mal’s head. His face felt puffy, swollen. His temples throbbed and his sinuses ached. “I’m guessing you didn’t slip a sedative into my drink and drag me all the way out into the boondocks and drape me from a tree just to discuss, I don’t know, philo
sophy. ’Less you have, in which case I apologize for misreadin’ the situation. It’s just, you don’t look the philosophy type.”

  “You’re here,” Rouleau said, in the tone of someone whose patience was being sorely tested, “to die. Can’t put it any plainer’n that.”

  “Would’ve been my second guess. Not discussing philosophy? Then dyin’. It’s normally one or the other.”

  “Want to know why you’re going to die?”

  “Be strange if I weren’t a teeny bit curious.”

  Rouleau squatted down so that they were nose to nose. This was better than being nose to crotch, in visual terms at least. Unfortunately, Rouleau had terrible teeth and halitosis to match.

  “’Cause you pissed off a rich, powerful man,” he said, “and he wants some payback.”

  “Huh.”

  “That’s all you got to say? ‘Huh’?”

  “Well, thing is, I’ve pissed off a fair few people in my time, rich folks among ’em.”

  Rouleau nodded sagely. “Even though I ain’t but known you an hour or so, I can see how that might be possible.”

  “So you’re gonna have to narrow it down for me,” Mal said. “Who?”

  “Name Durran Haymer mean anythin’?”

  Durran Haymer. Sometime bio-weapons expert. Wealthier than God. Avid collector of Earth-That-Was artifacts. Had been the owner of a rare antique laser pistol, the Lassiter, until said weapon found its way into Mal’s hands through a complex chain of circumstances which began with an encounter with an old Browncoat friend called Monty and ended with Mal marooned in the desert, bare-ass naked.

  “Never heard of him,” Mal said.

  “Funny, ’cause he definitely knows you,” said Rouleau. “Says you took something from him. Something he prized greatly.”

  “Oh, that Durran Haymer. Yeah, come to think about it, I did maybe help relieve him of a certain gun.”

  “Gun?” Rouleau chuckled mirthlessly. “Nobody’s mentioned any gun. No, what you took from Mr. Haymer was way more valuable to him. A woman. His wife, to be precise. The love of his life.”

  That would be the lady known variously as Yolanda, Saffron and Bridget, although she had doubtless gone by many other aliases over the years. A thief, a grifter, possibly a Companion at one time in her life. Mal admired her and hated her in equal measure. He also found her damnably attractive.

  “The so-called ‘love of his life,’” Mal said, “who lit out on him and only went back, six years later, so’s she could steal from him. Even if I’d had anything to do with deprivin’ Haymer of her—which I did not—by any objective measure I did him a favor. And while we’re on the subject of favors…”

  “What?”

  “Mind lettin’ me down from this tree? Only, my head feels like a balloon about to pop.”

  Rouleau appeared to consider it, then grinned and shook his head. His knees cracked as he straightened up.

  “Nossir. Mr. Haymer, see, he’s payin’ me good money to do away with you. ‘I want it to happen somewhere remote,’ he told me, ‘and I want it to happen slow. Real slow.’ And that’s how it’s gonna be. Ain’t a soul around for miles. Nobody’s gonna hear you scream—and you will scream, Reynolds, make no mistake. I got this here knife and I’m gonna take my time. Gonna cut you up bit by bit. Gonna carve slices off of you like some kinda… some kinda…” He frowned, trying to think of a simile.

  “Christmas turkey?” Mal offered.

  “Exactly! Like some kinda Christmas turkey. And I’m gonna enjoy it, too.”

  “That’s mighty nice to hear. Can’t fault a man who loves his work.”

  “Oh, I do, Reynolds,” said Rouleau. “Very much.”

  “There’s just one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I have friends.”

  “How nice for you. I imagine they’ll be right sad when they learn what’s become of you.” Rouleau held the knife to Mal’s stomach, cutting edge upward. “Reckon here’s as good a place to start as any.” With a flick of the hand, he severed three shirt buttons. The shirt fell open, exposing skin. “This blade is finest Regina steel. I hone it daily.”

  “Still, you’re forgettin’. I have friends.”

  “So you’ve said. Don’t see none around, though.” Rouleau made a show of looking in every direction.

  “The kind of friends who wouldn’t leave a fella hangin’. The kind that’d come to his rescue. I mean, come to his rescue soon. I mean, soon soon. As in, right now. Please?”

  “Aww, ain’t that sweet?” said Rouleau. “Begging for help, even though there’s no chance any’s comin’.”

  A shot rang out.

  Rouleau doubled over, clutching his ear and hissing with pain. He drew his hand away and looked at it. The palm was covered in blood. He probed his ear gingerly with one finger. Most of its top section was missing.

  Then he peered at Mal. “Now just what the—?”

  A second shot rang out.

  Rouleau’s hand flew to his other ear. It, too, was now minus its top section.

  “Gorramn it!” he yelled, peering around. “Whoever the hell you are, stop doing that! Hurts like a mother-rutter!”

  “Drop the knife,” a gruff male voice barked from the shadows beyond the hover-gig’s headlights. “I done the right ear, I done the left. Next shot goes in the middle.”

  “Okay, okay.” Rouleau let go of the knife. It thudded point-first into the ground. “You got the drop on me, whoever you are. I ain’t gonna resist.”

  “Mal?” said the voice. “You found out what you need to know from this guy?”

  “Yep.”

  “Then I guess there’s no reason for him to stay breathin’.”

  “Wait. Wait!” said Rouleau. Blood was streaming down both sides of his neck, glistening in his beard. “What do you want? You want money? I’ll give you money. The fee from this job, plus ten per cent extra as a goodwill gesture. How’s that sound? And in return, you let me walk away. No questions asked. You won’t never see me again.”

  The unseen sniper went quiet, as though giving the matter thought. Then he said, “Mal? We want this guy’s platinum?”

  “Sure could do with it,” Mal said.

  “It’s yours, I promise,” said Rouleau, with every appearance of sincerity.

  “On the other hand,” Mal said to Rouleau, “you did go on at some length ’bout how you were going to kill me slow.”

  “That was just talk.” The killer for hire was sounding blustery and panicked again. “I’d’ve made it quick, honest I would.”

  “Decent of you. I just don’t happen to believe you.”

  “Swear to God.”

  “Way I heard it, you were gonna get your sick, sadistic jollies torturin’ me.”

  “Sometimes a fella says these things for effect.” As he spoke, Rouleau was surreptitiously slipping a blood-smeared hand behind his back. “You know how it is. Gotta sound tough and menacin’. Gotta—”

  Instead of finishing the sentence, Rouleau whipped out a six-shooter that had been lodged in the waistband of his pants, nestling against the base of his spine. He leveled the barrel with Mal’s face, cocking the hammer at the same time.

  Blam!

  Rouleau keeled over backwards. The third shot fired at him had, as promised, been aimed between his ears. Now Rouleau lay on his back in the dust with a hole where his nose used to be and another, larger cavity where the back of his skull used to be.

  And that was the end of Desmond Rouleau, killer for hire.

  2

  Serenity took off from the surface of Odessa at full burn, achieving escape velocity in under a minute.

  On board, Mal was having a debrief with Zoë and Jayne in the cargo bay. River sat on the catwalk nearby, legs dangling over the edge. She appeared not to be paying the conversation below much attention. Instead she stared into the middle distance, humming to herself and twirling a lock of her hair around a finger.

  “Haymer, huh?” said Zoë. “
Should’ve known that sooner or later there’d be blowback from that whole business.”

  “Yeah,” said Mal, “who’d’ve thought he’d mind losing one of his most precious possessions so much?”

  “You talking about his Lassiter or YoSaffBridge?”

  “You know how attached men get to their guns. Don’t they, Jayne?”

  Jayne was cradling his favorite rifle, the Callahan full-bore auto-lock he called Vera. “Ain’t nothin’ shameful about that,” he said.

  “But in this case,” Mal went on, returning his gaze to Zoë, “I mean YoSaffBridge. Guess he shoulda found someone a bit smarter to do his dirty work, though. Rouleau’s trap wasn’t any too subtle. ‘Let’s meet at a remote cabin, just you and me, nobody else.’ We knew the thing was a setup. Couldn’t have been more obvious. Just needed to know who was doin’ the setting up and why.”

  “But you surely could have come up with a better way of finding out, sir,” said Zoë. “’Less, that is, you like getting tied up and having a knife held to you.”

  “I was hopin’ to persuade Rouleau to spill the beans through the time-honored method of pulling a gun and threatening him with it. That was the plan, remember? Would have, too, if I’d gotten the chance. How was I to know the gè zhēn de hún dàn would spike my drink?” Mal was still feeling the lingering after-effects—fuzzy head, furry tongue—from whatever drug the would-be assassin had used to knock him out. “Or that he’d then hogtie me and drive several miles out into the wilderness to kill me? Good thing I had a guardian angel. That was some nice shootin’, by the way, Jayne.”

  “You’re welcome,” said Jayne.

  “Just curious, though. From the start, you were in position near the cabin. You could have taken Rouleau out as he was carryin’ me to his hover-gig. Why didn’t you?”

  “Didn’t have a clear shot. He had you slung over his shoulder. Couldn’t guarantee I wouldn’t hit you. I also didn’t know if he’d gone and spilled the beans yet or not. I assumed not, so my only option was to follow you on the Mule bike at a safe distance. By the time I caught up, Rouleau’d already hung you up and started waving his knife around.”

  “And I was busy stalling him by keeping him talking. If it weren’t for that, you might’ve been too late.”