Firefly: Big Damn Hero Read online

  “Sir,” Zoë prodded. “All the ‘danger’ decals, sir.”

  “What danger decals? Don’t see none.”

  “The ones you’ve been giving the evil eye since the moment the crates arrived.”

  “Oh, those danger decals. Well, folks sometimes exaggerate. On account of the legal liability. Coverin’ their asses.” Mal tried to sound credible, but even he wasn’t buying it.

  “Yes, sir,” Zoë said. “But regarding liquids, sir. If the contents of the crates come in contact with water, they’ll blow. Says so right there. And last week that toilet up by the rec area backed up…”

  “Kaylee put it all to rights,” he reminded her. “And nothing got as far as the cargo bay.”

  “That’s true, but even so—”

  “And the crates look solid and watertight,” Mal cut in. Still not sounding entirely credible.

  “Easy does it, now,” Badger cautioned as the forklift crept across the deck with its suspension-crushing load.

  Everything was going according to plan, then suddenly, not so much.

  Whether the temper of the right-hand fork’s steel had been damaged on a previous job or more recently compromised by the combined weight of the three other containers, it suddenly gave way, bending downward towards the deck with a hair-raising shriek. That end of the huge crate abruptly dropped, sliding off the edge of the intact fork. It smashed hard onto its nose, then toppled full length onto the hangar deck with a resounding crash that rattled Mal’s bones. As the operator leapt from the vehicle in panic, Badger dropped into a crouch, squeezed his eyes shut, and clapped his hands over his ears.

  “Tā mā de!” Mal bellowed.

  Seconds passed.

  Then a few more.

  Nothing happened.

  “Oops, sorry about that,” Badger said breezily as he lowered his hands from his ears. “Why don’t we leave it there, then? Meanwhile I’ll just wait for my sphincter to unpucker.” He nodded sharply at the forklift, and the driver climbed back in, hit reverse, and quickly backed away. From under his coat, Badger pulled out what appeared to be a manifest and began pawing through it.

  Zoë sighed.

  “The HTX-20 isn’t supposed to explode unless it gets bumped around too much. Right, Badger?” Mal pressed.

  “That’s right. Or gets wet or hot or all that other gubbins. We went over it, didn’t we? You need a refresher course?”

  “No, it’s just, that crate got bumped. How do we know things are still all right?”

  Badger looked at him as if Mal was the stupid one. “We’re not dead.”

  Hard to argue with that.

  At that moment, as if Mal didn’t have enough to contend with already, River Tam appeared on the catwalk overlooking the cargo bay.

  “The box wants to dance,” she announced as she trotted down the stairs. She was holding a bamboo flute and wearing her pink sweater, ruffled skirt, and calf-high boots.

  “Best go back up,” Mal said, careful not to address River by her given name in front of Badger and his employees. “Cargo bay’s going to be off-limits for a spell. Dŏng ma?”

  River thrust out her lower lip in a pout. Mal supposed life on a spaceship had its dull moments for a teenaged girl. Or dull days, or even duller weeks. Still, she wasn’t just any teenaged girl. She was a kid who made her own fun, and her idea of fun wasn’t necessarily the safe, happy kind. More usually it was the “What the hot holy hell just happened?” kind.

  Mal darted a glance towards Badger, who was observing the exchange with bemusement as he cleaned under his fingernails with a corner of a document.

  “’Ere, I thought the little tart ’ad an accent like mine,” Badger said. “Bit of the old Dyton patois, know what I mean?”

  “Oh, I does, guvnor, and no mistake,” River replied, switching to the aforesaid accent. “I ain’t seen you in ages, me old china. Mind the dirt,” she added, gesturing to Badger’s hand. “Don’t want no contamination, do we now?”

  “Oi, bint, none of your lip,” Badger retorted, but truth was, he had a soft spot for River, cultivated last time they’d met, when he’d held the crew hostage. “I washed before I come ’ere today. Clean as a whistle.”

  “No, luv, what I’m saying is that’s your DNA, innit?” River said. “If we’re investigated, it’s you what’ll show up, not us.”

  “Well, that’s right thoughtful of you to take into account,” Badger said, with a chuckle. “But my side of this exchange is above board and legitimate.”

  Mal said to Badger, “You know the drill. Half now and half on delivery.” He held out his hand. Badger plunked a leather bag full of jingling coin into his palm.

  “Feels light,” Mal said as he hefted it. It actually felt just about right. Tricky customers like Badger expected you to put up a fight even when there was no call for one.

  “It’s all there,” Badger said, puffing himself up indignantly.

  “Maybe I should count it all out, just to be sure,” Mal said. “Anybody can make a mistake.” He didn’t dump out the coin. He just stared Badger straight in the eye. Although the crime boss didn’t blink, after fifteen seconds or so a muscle in his left cheek started to twitch.

  Satisfied that he’d made his point, Mal slipped the pouch in his pocket, money uncounted.

  Badger grinned, displaying those rickety, off-color front teeth again. “So,” he said, “if we’re all done ’ere, I’ll be ’eading back to town. Today being Alliance Day, I do a brisk trade in moonshine, float, angel tears and other such recreational substances. I gather you lot ’ave other things to attend to in town as well?”

  “Where exactly did you gather that?” Mal said. He figured Badger was just fishing. No sense giving him information he didn’t need.

  “Well, I just assumed.” Badger stuffed the manifest back in his pocket.

  “Better see to your ’shine,” Mal said. “And also to mindin’ your own business.”

  Unruffled, Badger strolled to the edge of the loading ramp, waving for the forklift operator to accompany him. The forklift itself was Serenity’s own and remained on board. Then Badger and the other two minions descended. One of the goons got behind the wheel of a battered land speeder parked near the foot of the ramp. Badger climbed into the seat beside him, waving at Mal and Zoë like he was the crowned king of Londinium.

  “Perhaps we’ll run into each other in town,” Badger said as the speeder’s engine noisily started up. “Over a libation celebrating the end of a completely unnecessary and yet ultimately obscenely profitable war.”

  “I’m thinkin’ probably not,” Mal said.

  “War’s over, Captain,” Badger reminded him. He grinned at Mal. “Officially, anyway.”

  Mal didn’t respond. Lot of folks enjoyed reminding him of what he already knew.

  Then Badger and his lackeys putt-putted off, the gray clouds of exhaust drifting up into the haze. Mal knew he had a tendency to underestimate Badger because the man seemed so gorramn stupid. But stupid and dangerous weren’t mutually exclusive.

  Look at Jayne.

  “Well, that’s over,” Zoë said, the relief in her voice. “Time to chase up that other job.”

  “We’re not gettin’ investigated or arrested today,” Mal told Zoë sternly. “Not calling attention of any sort to ourselves.”

  “Of course not, sir,” Zoë said.

  “Good,” he said. “Now let’s go into town and bust up a bar.”

  She gave him a look.

  “Just kidding,” he said. “Jayne, you coming?”

  Jayne Cobb had just sauntered into the cargo bay. He tugged down the earflap chin ties of his yellow and orange woolen hat, seating the thing on his skull and centering the pom-pom atop it. His adoring, semiliterate mother had designed and knitted the fetching item of headgear, and it was one of Jayne’s most prized non-lethal possessions. The sidearm strapped to his leg in a tactical black nylon holster fell into the other category. Jayne had pet names for all his weapons. There was his Cal
lahan full-bore auto-lock rifle, of course, which he had christened Vera, and there was the massive .38-caliber Civil War-styled wheelgun he was toting now, known affectionately as Boo. Scooting around River, Jayne joined Zoë and Mal at the top of Serenity’s loading ramp.

  “I don’t know why you two hate Alliance Day so much,” he said. “If it hadn’t been for the war, we wouldn’t be here.”

  Mal didn’t say a word. Explaining irony to Jayne was like teaching a fish to bark.

  “Make us proud, you guys!” a voice called down cheerily from the catwalk. It was Kaylee, Serenity’s resident ray of sunshine, as well as a prodigiously gifted engineer. Then her eyes got huge. “Gŏu shĭ! How many gorramn warning signs are there on those things?”

  “The boxes are busy,” River said in a matter-of-fact tone.

  Kaylee cast a stricken look at Mal, then looked back at the crates. Then back at him. “Uh, Captain?” she said.

  “We keep that powder cool and dry and it’s all good, you hear?” he said.

  Kaylee nodded and returned her gaze to the crates one more time. Mal had a feeling she was counting how many decals there were. And not liking the total.

  As if to distract herself, she turned to River. “Hey, River, Shepherd and I are making casserole for dinner. Wanna help?”

  “Okay,” River said brightly, skipping up the stairs to join her. “I’ll do the chopping.” She made a brisk slicing motion with the edge of her hand.

  “Do not let her near anything with a blade,” Mal cautioned. He beckoned to Jayne and Zoë. “You two, duty calls. Got less’n a half-hour to get to Taggart’s Bar. Better hustle.”

  “Get there early, maybe we can have ourselves a little japery first,” said Jayne.

  Mal shook his head. “I know what your idea of japery is, Jayne, and it ain’t gonna happen. We’re there to work, not punch folk.”

  “Not even a little?”

  “Nuh-uh.”

  “Awww.” Jayne sounded as petulant as a child. “Remind me again why I come with you on these trips.”

  “’Cause you’re so damn handsome.”

  Jayne frowned, puzzling it out. He decided his captain was being sincere, and grinned. “Yeah, I am at that, ain’t I?”

  “Gorramn Alliance Day,” Zoë muttered.

  Alliance Day was Persephone’s own special holiday, like Unification Day, but local. It signified the signing of the treaty that welcome Persephone into the Alliance, and Mal nursed the hope that folks celebrated it with gusto only because it was a good excuse to take off the day and get drunk. But like Unification Day, Alliance Day didn’t sit right with Mal either. Not right at all.

  On lines strung across the streets, between the rooftops overhead, rows of gaudy Alliance flags—one half a blue field, one half red-and-white stripes, with a swirl of different-sized yellow stars overlaid on a red square—flapped like wagging tongues. They seemed to be taunting him: you lost, you lost, you lost… Bunting with the same pattern hung from balconies and utility poles, and yet more flags were plastered inside every dirty window frame that still held glass.

  Mal, Zoë, and Jayne trudged down a winding alley, forced to jink every few steps to avoid head-on collisions with the people walking the opposite direction. A lot of them sported little plastic Alliance badges pinned to their ragged coats and hats, and more than a few had dressed for the occasion in their old Alliance uniforms, proudly displaying medals won for destroying Browncoat strongholds and slaughtering Browncoat troops.

  Eyes narrowed to slits, jaw clenched tight, Mal kept pace with Zoë, who could do stoic better than anyone he had ever met, mostly by virtue of looking mildly pissed about everything all the time. Some folks said Mal was hard to figure out, but he knew he wasn’t. There was a core of bitterness that ran the length of his soul and drilled down into his heart, and there seemed no way to get rid of it, ever. He supposed that was all right. It kept him going. Kept him flying.

  Didn’t necessarily keep him out of trouble, though.

  Least of all on Alliance Day.

  Three tipsy young women dressed in matching red satin, high-necked embroidered jackets and black trousers ran towards Mal and Zoë. Their hair was wound into round little topknots on either side of their heads. They were waving a couple of little Alliance pennants on sticks and giggling at each other.

  “Happy Alliance Day!” one of them cried, and they all burst into shrieks of laughter.

  Zoë uttered a caustic oath as she sidestepped and pushed past them, and that made Mal smile. Zoë losing her temper was just the funnest fun ever. And under normal circumstances it would bode well for their bar run. The prospect of cracking a bushel of Alliance-loving heads and breaking up some furniture would have raised Mal’s sagging spirits. However, there was work to do, and that took precedence.

  Stepping up beside Zoë, he played dumb. “What was that all about?” he asked.

  “I hate stupid women, sir,” she said.

  “They are truly despicable,” he agreed amiably.

  “Hey, what’s the rush?” Jayne called at them.

  When Mal looked back, Jayne had his arms around two of the intoxicated young women, and the third was carefully threading the stick of her Alliance pennant through the stitches of his left earflap.

  “I love your hat! You look so cute!” the pennant-threader squealed.

  The blondest of the three reached overhead, jumping repeatedly as she tried to touch the orange pompom crest. Grinning from ear to ear, Jayne reveled in the attention. Mal and Zoë didn’t comment, just kept on walking up the street.

  “Hey, wait up,” Jayne shouted at their backs. The girls detached themselves and reeled away, laughing.

  Jayne closed the gap, still savoring his moment of adulation. He adjusted the fit of his hat and the angle of its newly acquired decoration. Unable to control himself, Mal snatched away the loathsome symbol, threw it to the pavement, and ground it under his boot heel.

  Jayne didn’t bend down to recover the pennant. Emotionally, it seemed he had already moved on. “After we get our business done, how’s about we spend the night in port? There’s so many parties…”

  “And we have a cargo bay full of chemicals I don’t particularly want to hang onto any longer than necessary,” Mal said.

  “Oh, right. On account of they might blow up on us.” Jayne smiled unpleasantly, less of a smile and more of a scowl with bared teeth. “I swear, sometimes the jobs we take—”

  Irked, Mal rounded on him. “Are what, Jayne? Dangerous? Foolhardy? Scrapin’ the barrel so hard, we’ve dug right through the bottom?”

  “Well, yeah. Why do we bother with ’em?”

  “’Cause those are the only jobs we can get and stay under the radar. They’re what keeps us flying and out of prison, or maybe getting our necks stretched.”

  Jayne waved him off. “Ease up, Mal. Don’t take it out on me. I’m not the one who lost your war for you.”

  Zoë thrust herself between them, stepping toe to toe with Jayne. Chin raised, she bored her steely gaze into him. “I think you might want to shut your mouth, Jayne, before I shut it for you.”

  It was a serious threat and Jayne took it as such. “Didn’t mean nothin’ by it,” he groused. His cheeks were red, this time from embarrassment. Jayne hated backing down. “You two are livin’ in the past, is all. Like Badger said, war’s over. Been over a long whiles. Might as well make the most of the peace.”

  Zoë opened her mouth to speak, then seemed to catch herself. She gave Jayne a long, measuring glance, like the slowest burn a Firefly-class transport vessel could achieve.

  “What?” he protested indignantly. “It’s just the plain truth. The war is over. And losing’s not so bad. Ain’t as if it’s the end of the world. I’ve lost stuff lots of times. Poker games, loot from robberies, a horse, my virginity, and…” He glanced down at the pennant Mal had stomped into the dust. His eyes widened. “Oh, no!” he groaned, reaching down and grabbing up the torn pieces. He held them out to Mal
accusingly. “She wrote her wave code on it. See? Now I can’t read it. You scraped off half the writing.”

  “Losing ain’t so bad,” Mal echoed. “Besides, she weren’t no good.”

  “How d’you figure that?” Jayne asked.

  “She liked that hat of yours.”

  Jayne drew himself up to his full, considerable height. “My mom knitted this hat. You’re just jealous.”

  “Keep telling yourself that,” Mal retorted.

  Muttering to himself, Jayne tried to piece the pennant back together. He gave up after a few seconds and in frustration threw the tatters into the air.

  * * *

  “All right, listen up now,” Mal said as they drew near Taggart’s Bar. “The meet with Hunter Covington is at six sharp. We establish whether he’s above board, or elsewise. If he is, we receive whatever it is he wants us to carry, then we fetch Kaylee and have her verify our shuttle’s all fixed. I’ll pay the repair bill, we’ll get rid of that loaner, and meantime Wash’ll be prepping for dustoff.”

  “Did this Covington fella tell you what he’s got for us to transport?” Jayne asked.

  “Said he preferred to discuss it in person rather’n by wave,” Mal said.

  Hunter Covington was one of the things that Mal liked least, an unknown quantity. He had requested a quote for shipping “a small item” to a nearby location that would be disclosed when they met. Mal wasn’t keen on the vagueness, nor on doing business with an out-and-out stranger, but had nonetheless arranged a meetup at Taggart’s since they were on Persephone anyway. Only a rich man or a dolt turned down potential paid work, and Mal was certainly not the former and trusted he wasn’t the latter.

  “Crucial thing,” he added, “we don’t mention that we might get blown up before we deliver his goods. Got that?”

  “That’s smart,” Jayne said earnestly.