Firefly--Life Signs Read online

  “What the—?”

  Tattoo Head leapt to his feet and pivoted around.

  “Who the hell did that?” he barked. He jabbed a finger at Mal. “Was that you?”

  All at once the entire refectory went quiet. Heads turned. Eyes goggled.

  “Yeah,” Mal said with his most supercilious smile. “Oops. Butterfingers. You don’t mind, do you? I just kinda tripped over my own feet. Look at it this way. You wanted second helpings? Now you’ve got it.”

  Tattoo Head seemed to swell up with rage. His eyes bulged. His cheeks reddened. A vein in one temple throbbed.

  Here it comes, thought Mal. He’s going to take a swing at me. Mal planted his feet in readiness.

  All at once, Tattoo Head deflated. The color faded from his cheeks. He wiped some of the so-called casserole off his brow. He put on a pained smile.

  “Yeah, well, accidents happen,” he said. “No harm done. I’ll just go wash myself up, fetch a clean outfit from the laundry.”

  Mal blinked. “What?”

  “You didn’t do it on purpose.” Tattoo Head could not have sounded more reasonable. “I’m kind of a klutz myself sometimes.”

  “Now hold on, wait a moment,” Mal said, confused. “I just dumped a tray-load of crap all over you, and you’re okay with it?”

  “I’m…” Tattoo Head took a deep, self-steadying breath. “I’m absolutely fine with it. Let’s put ’er there, friend, shall we?” He held out a hand. “No hard feelings.”

  Mal stared at the proffered hand in disbelief. “You ain’t angry in the least? Like, so mad you feel like punching me?”

  Tattoo Head’s eyes said yes. “Nope. No, sir. Why would I wanna do that? You seem like a decent enough fella. You made a mistake. You’ve apologized for it.”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “As good as.”

  At last it dawned on Mal what was going on here.

  Tattoo Head was desperate to fight but didn’t dare. He knew there would be repercussions. He was more afraid of what Mr. O’Bannon’s Regulators might do to him than he was of failing to be seen to defend his honor.

  This little enterprise was going to be a whole lot more complicated than Mal had thought.

  Tattoo Head had to land the first blow. That was important. Mal could not look like a troublemaker; he had to look as though he was simply an innocent victim, fending off an aggressor. That way, the Regulators would go easy on him if they weighed in, and might even have some sympathy for him. So he hoped, at any rate.

  Which meant he had to provoke Tattoo Head without appearing to provoke him.

  “It’s a funny thing,” he said.

  “What is?” said Tattoo Head.

  “Well, normally when a guy like you gets made to look a fool— and believe me, with all that grub dripping down you, you do—he reacts by beating seven shades of gŏu shĭ outta the guy who humiliated him. It’s only right and proper. Yet here you are, acting nice as pie. I’d like to congratulate you on that. See, there’s some’d call it cowardice, but not me. To me it’s self-restraint. Easily mistaken for cowardice, I know, but subtly different.”

  The big man was scowling hard. He had heard the word cowardice twice. He did not like it being tossed in his direction, not even once.

  “Those are fine and noble sentiments,” he said, “and to some extent I agree with them.”

  “I suspect you, sir, are quite unaccustomed to being called a big, fat yellowbelly.”

  “It ain’t a name I’d take kindly to, if’n I were.” The strain was really starting to show now. Tattoo Head’s mouth was a rigid oval. His teeth were bared. Without seeming to realize it—a reflex action—he had clenched his fists.

  “And I’m not gonna do so,” Mal said, “even though when a man backs down instead of standing up for himself, it’s kind of the fitting description.”

  “I. Really. Think. You. Need. To. Stop. Talking.”

  Tattoo Head was at war with himself. Every tendon and sinew in his body was stretched taut. Mal could see that the impulse to lash out was becoming almost impossible for him to resist.

  A tiny bit more goading should do it. One last prod.

  “Spineless,” he said. “It’s not often you hear people say that anymore, is it? Lacking in backbone. Gutless—that’s another one. Seems there’s a whole heap of things you can call somebody who hasn’t got the cods to retaliate when it’s required. Luckily for you, they none of ’em apply in this situation, which, if I may say, you’re handling very well. Ain’t a lot of folk who’d stand there and just take it, the way you are. Most’d hate themselves if they—”

  And now, at last, it came. Tattoo Head couldn’t keep his rage in check any longer. He lunged at Mal, fists flying.

  27

  Just in time, Mal managed to raise a forearm to deflect the first punch. Tattoo Head followed it up with another, a straight shot to the jaw, and this one Mal failed to block. He reeled sideways, head ringing.

  He came back, moving inside the other man’s arm range to deliver some jabs to the torso which, though they were pretty decent, seemed to have little effect. Tattoo Head’s muscle mass just absorbed them. Mal tried an uppercut to the chin, but his opponent shrugged it off and seized him in an almighty bear hug. He rammed Mal backwards against a wall and started squeezing. Mal linked his hands and pounded Tattoo Head’s head and shoulders. All the while the big man was bellowing, insulting Mal in a combination of English and Mandarin.

  As for the other inmates, they were on their feet and roaring their approval. A chant of “Fight! Fight! Fight!” echoed around the refectory, with fists pumping the air in time. This kind of brawl was a rare spectacle in Correctional Unit #23, and therefore all the more cherishable and thrilling when it happened. Finally, all that aggression these people were reining in, all that frustration they had to damp down, could be vented. It was like a dam bursting. They couldn’t help themselves. The two combatants were gladiators whose antics provided an outlet for everyone else’s repressed grievances and animosities. For a few precious minutes the other inmates could watch this pair tussle, clobber, pummel, wallop: basically do everything they themselves often wished to, but were too frightened.

  Mal felt his ribs creak as Tattoo Head increased the pressure. It was getting hard to draw breath. He realized he had made a serious miscalculation. The man’s muscles might be gym muscles but they were still strong and—when used to crush the life out of someone, as now—very effective.

  Only one thing for it. Mal head-butted Tattoo Head on the bridge of his nose.

  No dice. The guy didn’t even flinch.

  Mal then flattened out his hands and karate-chopped Tattoo Head on both sides of the head, just behind the ear. This succeeded in breaking his hold. The big man staggered away, stunned. Mal had struck a pair of vital nerve clusters, and the result was dizziness and disorientation.

  Temporary dizziness and disorientation. Tattoo Head quickly recovered his equilibrium and lurched towards Mal again, head down like a bull’s. Mal himself was bent over, busy catching his breath after being held for so long in that vice-like clinch. The best he could do was latch onto Tattoo Head as he charged and let himself be carried along. He slammed butt-first into a table—painfully—and the two of them tumbled to the floor, tangled together.

  In seconds, Tattoo Head was on top, straddling Mal and bearing down on him with his full weight. This was not a position Mal much desired to be in. He could scarcely move. All the wriggling and writhing in the world wasn’t going to extricate him. Tattoo Head had him at his mercy.

  And Tattoo Head was not in a merciful mood. He started raining down punches. Mal parried, but it was a case of mitigating rather than negating the force of the attack. Blow after blow got past his guard and hit home.

  Mal could take a licking, but this was worse than that, way worse. This was a downright pasting.

  Faintly he hoped that someone would intervene. Maybe Jayne would see that he was losing—badly—and come to his a
id.

  As it happened, deliverance arrived from another source.

  Suddenly the great mass of Tattoo Head was lifted from him. Mal glimpsed arms enfolding the big man, two formidable-looking figures grappling with him. They pinned him to the ground. Two of Mr. O’Bannon’s Regulators, judging by the tin-can stars each wore.

  Then a third, even more formidable-looking figure appeared. It was the heavyset man-mountain Mal had met not so long ago. Otis.

  Otis was carrying a two-foot length of wood, formerly part of a broom handle. He used this as a baton, belaboring Tattoo Head viciously and relentlessly around the head with it. Blood flowed, adding dark crimson to the palette of food stains and ink. Tattoo Head screamed.

  Mal was about to offer up thanks to his saviors when he felt himself being hauled roughly to his feet. Before he could regain his balance, a ferocious punch to the solar plexus knocked the wind out of him and doubled him over.

  Wheezing, he looked up into the face of Otis the man-mountain’s compadre, the sturdy woman called Annie.

  “Wait,” he gasped. “You got this all wrong. He started it. All’s I was doing was lookin’ out for myself.”

  Annie did not have the face of someone who cared. She rammed a fist into Mal’s lower abdomen, powerfully enough to lift him off his feet. Then, as he staggered groggily away, groaning, she swept his feet from under him with a low-level roundhouse kick. Mal collapsed. Annie stepped behind him and slipped an arm around his neck, going for a chokehold.

  Mal’s response was to grab her wrist and twist her arm away. At the same time he lashed out backwards with his heel, catching her on the shin with a satisfyingly jarring impact. Annie hollered in pain and indignation. Mal reared up, ramming a shoulder into her ribcage and sending her flying.

  He was lucky that any of these actions had worked. They were born of desperation and clumsily executed. Clouds were closing in around his eyesight, and his breath was ragged. Everything ached. He was on his last legs and he knew it.

  He tottered round to face Annie, in time to see her pulling something from her back pocket.

  A shiv.

  He tried to raise his hands in order to put up a guard, but his arms now felt as heavy as lead. His legs were much the same, like his feet were glued to the floor.

  Annie came for him, the shiv weaving in the air like a cobra about to strike. She knew how to use it, Mal could tell, and he wasn’t sure he was going to be able to stop her.

  At that moment, a familiar figure slipped between the two of them.

  Zoë.

  “Allow me,” she said.

  Mal couldn’t help but grin.

  Now this was going to be interesting. Zoë had got involved. It was going to be her versus Annie. The Regulator might have a homemade knife, but Mal still didn’t rate her chances too highly.

  Zoë, however, did not even look at Annie. Instead, she closed in on Mal.

  The punch was as swift as it was unexpected. Mal barely saw it coming. Fireworks rocketed across his field of vision. Zoë had a mean left hook. Mal had never been on the receiving end of it before, and now that he had, he very much regretted it.

  “Zoë…?” he said, his tongue feeling so thick that the word came out sounding like showy.

  “Damn you, Mal, you always mess things up for us!” Zoë said. She hit him again. “Our very first day, and already making enemies!” She hit him a third time. “Why can’t you, for once in your gorramn life, just get along with people?” And a fourth. “Is that too gorramn much to ask?”

  By now, Mal wasn’t fully registering what she was saying. Unconsciousness was creeping in, a black fog encroaching on his brain.

  In the very last second, before a fifth blow came and he was sent spiraling down into oblivion, he thought he saw Zoë wink at him.

  Thought he did.

  But he couldn’t be sure.

  28

  Somewhere out in the Black—far from Atata but not so far as to be out of reach of the signal from a mid-range transceiver—lay a cluster of debris.

  Once it had been a ship, a Leviathan-class freighter capable of hauling multiple-thousand-ton loads from one end of the ’verse to another. Then, a few years ago, there had been an accident: a meteor strike that had punctured the main body of the vessel all the way through, practically breaking it in half. Sudden explosive decompression. Instantaneous loss of all hands.

  Recovery specialists had come and collected the bodies. The damage to the Leviathan was too great, however, for them to tow it away. The freighter was simply in too many fragments, and the job wasn’t viable either practically or financially. So instead they had planted a buoy in the vicinity that emitted a radio beacon warning passing ships to steer clear.

  The Leviathan’s remains hung motionless—the sundered ship itself, along with bits of hull and framework, clumps of insulation, tangles of wiring, pieces of broken furniture, anything too busted-up or worthless to be of interest to salvagers and scavengers. All of these were suspended in a static, glinting cloud, preserved for all eternity by the vacuum of space, never to shift from this spot or alter their positions relative to their neighbors. It was like a frozen explosion, a perfectly poised snapshot of the disaster.

  And now, right in its midst, hung Serenity.

  River had maneuvered the ship into place with meticulous precision and slowness. She had been at pains not to disturb the debris, for fear that nudging one piece would send it bumping into another, which would in turn bump into another, and so on and so on, creating an escalating series of collisions that could disperse a large portion of the cluster and therefore render it less effective, if not entirely useless, as a hiding place.

  Serenity was now occupying a hollow spot near the center of this constellation of space garbage. Nestling close to the Leviathan’s shattered hulk like a baby whale beside its mother, she was practically undetectable. She was at a complete standstill, with her engine powered down and producing no heat traces, so that to the scanners of, say, an Alliance corvette she would not show up as anything but part of the wreckage; and anyone looking with the naked eye would need very keen vision indeed to spot her among so much chaff.

  Those aboard her were safe from IAV Constant Vigilance.

  For now.

  As soon as River had brought the ship to a halt, she and Kaylee lugged the still-unconscious Wash between them from the bridge down to the infirmary. They laid him out on the med couch, and Kaylee left River to work on suturing the gash in his head.

  River handled the needle and organopolymer thread with great dexterity. She had watched her brother tend to a considerable number of wounds during their time on Serenity, and thanks to her brain’s enhanced eidetic capacity she was able to remember what he had done and emulate it almost perfectly. She tied off each of the dozen stitches with a basic square knot, and when the job was complete, she inspected her handiwork and was pleased. Simon himself might have achieved a neater result, but not by much.

  ***

  Meanwhile, in the engine room, Kaylee got down to carrying out repairs of her own.

  The two women’s approaches to their respective tasks were somewhat different. Where River wore a surgical mask, Kaylee had a bandanna fastened around the lower half of her face to filter out the acrid fumes which hung in the engine room. Where River’s movements had to be small and nimble, Kaylee’s were large and mostly strenuous, involving the use of hammers, wrenches and screwdrivers in a sometimes very forthright manner. Where River’s fingers became smeared with blood, Kaylee’s gathered a patina of oil and carbon dust.

  The engine itself was not in good shape. Kaylee almost lost count of the parts that had cracked, burned out or come loose—all three at once in the case of the axial variance-bearing shaft. It pained her to see all this damage, and she derived only a small consolation from the fact that it had been inflicted in a good cause: namely, getting them away from Constant Vigilance.

  River joined her in the engine room.

  “How
’s Wash doing?” Kaylee asked.

  “Sleepy-head but no more bleedy-head.”

  “That’s good. How long do you think he’ll be out for?”

  River hummed. “Can’t say. Big bang to the cranium. It’s shaken his brain like jelly, and we’ll have to wait for it to stop quivering. You’d have to ask Simon.”

  “Simon ain’t here,” Kaylee said, sounding more than a little wistful. She mopped her brow with a rag. “Hopefully, Wash’ll come round by the time Mal signals us and we need to go fetch them. Of course, I have to get Serenity shipshape and spaceworthy first, or we ain’t going nowhere.”

  “You can do it,” River said. “Serenity loves it when you tinker with her. Did you know that? It makes her toss her mane and whinny through her nose.”

  Kaylee considered this comment. From anyone else, to anyone else, it would have sounded nuts. From River Tam, whose mind was a vortex of strange imagery and odd ways of seeing, it wasn’t unusual; and to Kaylee Frye, who had a strong affinity with all things mechanical and a particular love for Serenity, the idea that the ship responded to her touch like a contented mare was poetical and enchanting. Sometimes that was exactly how it felt: as though Serenity was a living creature that you needed to handle with respect and care, and once she’d grown to trust you, as she had with Kaylee, she would repay you by giving her all.

  “Well,” she said, “that’s good, ’cause I’m going to be working on her awhiles.”

  “I can help. Tell me what to do.”

  “See those pipes?” Kaylee had detached the engine’s six main backflow conduits and set them aside on the floor. “They need a good scrubbing out with that there wire brush. You’re gonna get yourself all grubby doin’ it. You mind?”

  “Nuh-uh.”

  “Girl after my own heart,” said Kaylee.

  As River set about cleaning the conduits, she said, “They’ll find us eventually.”