The Ghost Machine Read online

  “That’s me,” said a man astride a pinto gelding. He had a long-distance squint and wore a wide-brimmed leather hat and a striped poncho. “You Reynolds?”

  “None other.”

  “You’re late,” Koestler said accusingly.

  Mal gave a slow blink. “Yeah, well, we’d have made planetfall sooner, only there’s a distressingly high incidence of Alliance spacecraft in this neck of the ’verse, and us and the Feds, we ain’t on what you’d call speaking terms. Our pilot had to do all manner of fancy ziggin’ and zaggin’ to keep ’em from detecting us. Frankly, you’re lucky we even made it.”

  At the periphery of his vision Mal saw Zoë clamber out of the Mule and sidle over to stand about a dozen yards away at his three o’clock. She moved casually. It looked like she was almost sauntering. Any soldier worth his salt could have told you, though, that she was now well placed to outflank Koestler and his posse if for some reason they got it into their heads to launch an attack. Her hand hung within easy reach of the sawn-off lever-action carbine strapped to her thigh, the type of customized weapon known informally as a Mare’s Leg.

  Jayne, for his part, had got out too but remained with the Mule. He was leaning against the side of the vehicle, legs crossed, elbow planted casually on the bodywork. But just out of sight, down in the passenger-seat footwell, was the Callahan full-bore auto-lock rifle he liked to refer to as Vera. If need be, he could snatch up the weapon and start firing in less than a second.

  Neither Zoë nor Jayne had been told to assume a combat-ready position. They hadn’t had to be told. They’d been in enough situations like this that it had become almost second nature. Every precaution had to be taken when there was a decent likelihood of things going awry.

  “Where’s your ship now?” Koestler demanded.

  “Holed up in a canyon about ten miles yonder.” Mal gestured back the way they had come. “Seemed sensible to park up there and travel the rest of the way by Mule. If anyone’s monitorin’ activity on the planet’s surface from orbit, no need to go giving them a big, fat, juicy target to home in on. Kinda thought you might appreciate the gesture.”

  Koestler acknowledged this with a small nod. “Just the three of you?”

  “These two’s all I need for company. I see you’ve brought friends too. And none of them short on artillery, at that. You expectin’ trouble?”

  “Put it this way, Mr. Reynolds. Your reputation precedes you.”

  “Hey now, I’m a friendly type of guy,” Mal said, putting on his most easygoing smile. “I see no reason why we can’t conduct our transaction and all of us walk away calm and contented and free from bullet holes.”

  Whether it was the sheer quantity of firearms Koestler and his sidekicks were toting or the antsiness evident in more than one of them, Mal couldn’t say. But he was getting the impression that if he wasn’t careful, the handover of the cargo might easily turn sour. A badly chosen word, a misconstrued look, the merest twitch of a trigger finger, and guns would start blazing.

  Why, oh why, couldn’t life ever be straightforward?

  Keeping his expression amiable and his gestures slow and controlled, he said, “So perhaps you could show me the goods?”

  Koestler motioned to one of his cronies. “Nine Toes?”

  The man named Nine Toes slid out of his saddle and went back to the float-sled that was harnessed to his horse. He detached the sled and activated its low-power antigravity generator. The unit rose with a whirr, to hover wobblingly just a few inches above the ground. He grasped its guidance bar and drew it over towards Mal as easily as if it weighed nothing.

  Perched on the float-sled’s bed was a brushed-steel flightcase. It was roughly three feet by two feet by one foot, with a carrying handle at either end, and was stenciled all over with the Blue Sun logo.

  The logo gave Mal no clue as to what might lie inside the flightcase. The ’verse-spanning corporation manufactured just about every product imaginable. You name it, foodstuffs, liquor, underwear, washing powder, pharmaceuticals, sourceboxes, even weaponry.

  Of course, the flightcase’s contents might have nothing to do with Blue Sun. Koestler could simply have found an old empty flightcase lying around and used it to store Badger’s “technical apparatus.”

  “Don’t suppose you’d mind tellin’ me about what’s in there?” he said to Koestler. “Thing is, I’m a mite wary when it comes to loading cargo aboard my ship I don’t know a whole heap about.”

  “Well now, there’s the difference between us,” said Koestler. “Me, I tend not to ask questions. Long as I’m gettin’ my coin at the end of the day, anything else is surplus to requirements.”

  “You must at least have some idea where it’s from.”

  “I’ll tell you this much. It was part of a consignment came out of the Blue Sun research and development facility that lies on the outskirts of Riverbend, about a hundred-fifty miles north. A couple dozen boxes just like this one were being shipped off-planet. Through a chain of circumstances about which I do not feel prompted to inquire, one less flightcase made it onto the transport vessel than was listed on the manifest. My guess is a security guard was bribed to look the other way.”

  Mal tutted. “Whatever happened to company loyalty? Seems like you can’t depend on anyone these days.”

  “At any rate, said flightcase has made its way into my custody, and now I am entrusting it to yours. Anymore’n that, I truly do not know nor want to.”

  “Figure Badger must’ve had it stolen to order.”

  “Again, not my concern, but that seems plausible. Now, Mr. Reynolds, enough of the chitchat. Are you gonna take the thing off my hands or are we gonna stand around yakkin’ until doomsday?”

  Mal deliberated. There was still time to walk away from the deal. Over the years, he had developed a gut instinct, a kind of smuggler’s sixth sense. Sometimes the risk was simply not worth the reward, and he had a strong hunch that this was one of those occasions.

  It wasn’t as if he hadn’t expected he would be handling hot property. A deal brokered by Badger? On a tiny, no-account planet on the Border? The whole setup practically screamed “iffy.”

  What Mal knew now, however, was that the flightcase’s contents had been appropriated from a Blue Sun science lab. That was bad. Worse still was the lab’s location. You didn’t establish a research and development facility somewhere way, way out on the fringes of the ’verse unless you were carrying out work there that you didn’t want decent, ordinary folk knowing about. Why else choose a world like Canterbury if not because it was sparsely populated and there was ample room to conduct experiments and trials well away from prying eyes?

  That implied the facility was some kind of black site, home to off-the-books projects, which even Blue Sun shareholders—the vast majority of them, at least—were unaware of. That in turn implied that the Alliance had fingers in this particular pie. Blue Sun and the Feds often colluded on military-related endeavors. Billions in funding went from the Alliance to the corporation’s armaments and biotech divisions, and the results bolstered the Alliance’s dominance over the ’verse and at the same time swelled Blue Sun’s coffers.

  The presence of so many Alliance ships in proximity to Canterbury now made sense. Whatever was in that flightcase, the Feds wanted it back and they were going to do their damnedest to ensure it did not slip through their fingers a second time.

  “Mal?” said Jayne.

  “Yeah?”

  “We gonna do this or what?”

  Hoyt Koestler and his men were growing impatient too. Mal knew he could not ponder a moment longer. It was poop-or-get-off-the-pot time.

  “No,” he said finally.

  Jayne did a double take. “Come again?”

  “No,” Mal repeated.

  “That’s what I thought you said. Only I couldn’t believe you actually said it.”

  “Sir?” said Zoë, frowning.

  “It’s been a pleasure making your acquaintance, Mr. Koestler,” Ma
l said, “but I’ve decided we won’t be taking that flightcase after all. Badger’ll just have to find someone else to fly it to Persephone for him.”

  Koestler looked peeved. His squint deepened. “That is most inconsiderate of you, if I may say so, Mr. Reynolds. See, I am a man of my word, and if I say I am going to deliver a certain item to a certain person at a certain time, I aim to do precisely that. If I do not hold to my word, then that makes me a liar. Would you have me be considered a liar, Mr. Reynolds?”

  “No, and neither would I have myself be considered a reckless fool,” Mal said. “The more you’ve told me about that there cargo, the less I want to be associated with it. If it helps any, you can explain to Badger that I’m the one who failed to meet their end of the bargain. No blame will attach to you.”

  “We’re operatin’ on a tight deadline here,” Koestler retorted. “Badger wants his item by the end of the week. He’s got a buyer all lined up and keen to be in receipt of said item. We have to arrange for another ship to fly all the way out to Canterbury to pick it up, that’s gonna cause delays, and the kind of people who buy from Badger don’t like delays.”

  “That’s his tough gŏu shĭ. My involvement in this matter ends here. All’s I see when I look at that box is trouble, and I may not have much in this life but trouble is one area in which I sorely do not lack.”

  Mal spun on his heel and started walking back to the Mule and the crestfallen-looking Jayne beside it.

  From behind him he heard Koestler say, “I’d never have pegged you as a coward.”

  Mal’s step faltered. Then he carried on.

  Koestler raised his voice. “I said, Reynolds, I’d never have pegged you as a coward. You deaf or somethin’?”

  With a shrug, Mal said, “I call it common sense myself, but if you wish to call it cowardice, that’s your prerogative.”

  There was the loud cocking of a pistol. It was followed by the sound of various other guns being readied. Mal looked over his shoulder to see Koestler pointing a six-shooter at him. Koestler’s men were doing likewise, some of them with both hands filled. A bristling array of ordnance confronted him.

  “The flightcase,” Koestler said menacingly. “Take it, or else.”

  Zoë and Jayne reacted instantaneously to the threat presented by Koestler and his pals.

  Zoë dropped into a crouch, unholstering her Mare’s Leg at the same time, all in a single, fluid motion.

  Jayne, meanwhile, lunged for Vera. Hunkering down behind the Mule, he lodged the rifle’s butt against his shoulder and brought his eye to the sight.

  Mal turned slowly back around to face the posse. His expression was resigned, even weary.

  “And there I was thinkin’ we’d get through this without anybody resorting to aggression,” he said. “Kinda underscores my point about there being no lack of trouble in my life.”

  “You’re taking the cargo, Reynolds,” Koestler intoned. “No ifs or buts. It’s your duty. Much as it’s my duty to see that that flightcase gets spaceborne, pronto. So how’s about you just load it onto the back of that Mule of yours, like a good boy, and we’ll forget this little altercation ever happened. What do you say?”

  “I say you had my attention right up until you called me ‘a good boy’ and then you lost it again. I’ll tell you what’s going to happen now, Koestler. You are going to let the three of us get back aboard our Mule and depart, without that flightcase and, more importantly, without so much as a single round being discharged. Otherwise, you and your buddies are going to get into a shooting match which, I grant you, you may win, given your superior numbers, but which not all of you will emerge from unscathed. The lady over there is a trained soldier and, believe you me, no one in their right mind wants to be on the wrong end of her gun. As for the big, goateed fella next to the Mule, I know from experience that he can crack off three shots faster than it takes the average person to loose just one. Added to that he’s in a strong defensive position, and you, sitting up on your horses there in a nice, neat row like coconuts at a shy, ain’t. In other words, you start this firefight, and I guarantee that this fast”—Mal snapped his fingers—“’most every one of you is going to be lyin’ on the ground, minus a goodly-sized chunk of flesh. You really want that?”

  Koestler sneered. “I’ve heard some bluffs in my time, but that one just about beats ’em all. I’ll say this for you, Reynolds. You have a solid pair of brass cojones on you.”

  “Thank you. I keep them well polished.”

  “Takes some gall, to stand there with all these guns aimed at you and tell the fellas holding them that they’re the ones’re gonna come off worst from the exchange.”

  “I like to think I’m just stating how it is.”

  Koestler sighed. “I don’t got a hankerin’ to shoot no one today. I thought we might do this all amicable like.”

  “I thought so too. And it strikes me it’d be a mite counterproductive for you to start blastin’ away at the folk you want to take that flightcase off of you. We’re dead, who you gonna get to do the job in our stead, in the time available?”

  “Is this about money?” said Koestler. “Huh? Some kinda attempt at extortion?”

  Jayne looked at Mal hopefully. He was clearly thinking the same thing, now that Koestler had mentioned it. Trying to screw a little extra platinum out of the other guy—that was the kind of tactic Jayne Cobb wholeheartedly approved of.

  “Nuh-uh,” said Mal. “It’s about self-preservation.”

  “Well, if self-preservation’s the issue,” said Koestler, “how ’bout this? I’m gonna count to three, and by the time I get to three, I want to see those two puttin’ down their weapons and you pullin’ that float-sled over to that Mule. Otherwise… Well, you know what the ‘otherwise’ is. One. Two.”

  He never got to three, because that was when the shooting began.

  Who actually started it, was unclear. It was one of Koestler’s men, that was all Mal knew. One of them must have got itchy-fingered. Maybe he hadn’t even meant to fire. He’d had his trigger on first pressure, and the count of three had made him nervous, and he’d tightened his finger a little further without realizing, and blam!

  The fact that it was an accidental discharge would account, too, for the shot going wild. The round hurtled in the general direction of Jayne but was off-target by a fair few degrees.

  Jayne, however, did not hesitate to retaliate. You couldn’t send a bullet at Jayne Cobb and not expect to get one in return.

  Or two.

  Or more.

  In fact, Vera boomed three times in swift succession.

  In the same swift succession, three of Koestler’s men were hurled from their saddles one after another by bullet impacts. The 12-gauge rounds blew an enormous cavity in each man, blood and gore spraying out behind them and spattering the ground for at least ten feet away.

  Startled by the extraordinarily loud gun reports and the deaths that followed, all of the horses bucked and reared, whinnying in distress. Koestler and his two remaining accomplices were too busy staying mounted to return fire, and by the time they’d got their steeds under control, Zoë had already put a bullet in the man nearest her. He slumped forward over his horse’s neck, and the frightened creature, feeling the reins go slack, wheeled around and galloped away. Its dead rider flopped up and down on its back as it ran.

  That left just Koestler himself and one other, a man who showed signs of liberal chewing-tobacco use.

  Koestler drew a bead on Mal with his six-shooter. It didn’t matter to him why the bullets were flying or that he hadn’t given the order to fire. Bullets were flying, that was all that mattered, and in those circumstances you were wise to join in.

  Mal, however, had his own gun in his hand now, the long-barreled Moses Brothers Self-Defense Engine Frontier Model B, which he dubbed the Liberty Hammer.

  Before Koestler was able to get off a shot, Mal fired.

  A neat crimson hole appeared in the center of Koestler’s forehead, ju
st below the brim of his hat. His squinty eyes widened for perhaps the first and certainly the last time in his life. He rolled sideways off his pinto, one foot still hooked into a stirrup. The horse, following the example of its comrade, took off at speed, dragging Koestler’s limp body behind it. The other riderless horses followed suit.

  Now Tobacco Stains was the last of the posse still alive. Sensibly, he dropped his firearm and raised his hands.

  “Peace,” he said. “I know when I’m outgunned. My pappy didn’t raise no—”

  Bang!

  Jayne shot him through the heart.

  Mal spun around. “Jayne? Really? Man was surrendering.”

  The big mercenary straightened up, slinging Vera over his shoulder by its strap. “Never know, do you? Could’ve just been a ploy to get us to drop our guard. Anyways, it’s tidier like this. What’d we do with him if we’d had to take him prisoner? We’d’ve had to tie him up, get him back to the ship, feed him, water him…”

  “Or,” Mal said, “we could have just let him go.”

  “Hmph,” said Jayne, shrugging, as if he hadn’t thought of that. “Still, doesn’t alter the situation any. We got us our cargo, just as before, and I’m presumin’ you’ve abandoned that addle-brained notion you had of leavin’ it here.”

  Mal shook his head with finality. “Then you’d be presumin’ wrong.”

  “C’mon, Mal!” Jayne protested. “Don’t tell me you’re worried on account of it’s stolen goods. We’ve moved plenty of that type of thing before now, and you ain’t so much as turned a hair. What’s different this time?”

  “I knew the cargo was gonna be hot. Just didn’t know how hot.”

  “What about Badger?” Zoë said.

  “What about him?” said Mal.

  “He doesn’t get his goods, he’s going to be less than happy. You willin’ to burn bridges with him?”

  “Badger’ll be sore about it, but his hurt feelings don’t bother me none. ’Sides, he’ll get over it soon enough. Couple of weeks, a month maybe, and he’ll be ready to do business with us again.”