The Ghost Machine Read online

  “You sure about that?”

  “No, I ain’t. Could be he’ll hold a grudge against us until the end of days. But Badger ain’t the only game in town. There’s plenty others out there we can work with. Some of ’em might even possess a sense of honor.”

  “Sense of honor!” Jayne echoed with a snort. “That’s what this is, isn’t it? After all we’ve just been through, you’re stickin’ to some whole dumb I-got-principles thing.”

  “If by ‘all we’ve just been through’ you mean a brief exchange of gunfire that went in our favor,” said Mal, “then yes, after all that, nothing’s changed. Not my mind, not the situation. That thing in the flightcase, whatsoever it might be, is only going to bring us woe. Being as it was stolen from a Blue Sun black site, the Feds’ll be scouring the ’verse from end to end to get it back. Remember all those Alliance ships we had to dodge on the way in? Odds are they’re on high alert, with orders to stop and search anyone leaving Canterbury, especially cargo vessels.”

  “We’ll stash the box in one of Serenity’s hidey-holes so’s they won’t find it. Not as if we ain’t done that before.”

  “Can’t risk it. All it takes is a Fed inspector who’s an ounce smarter than average, and we’re sunk.”

  “Maybe that Koestler guy was right. Maybe you are a coward.”

  “Or maybe some jobs are just more trouble than they’re worth.” Mal gestured at the dead bodies lying nearby. “If the evidence in front of you doesn’t illustrate my point, I don’t know what will.”

  “Admittedly, this carnage was our doing,” Zoë said.

  “I’ll thank you not to point out defects in my argument, Zoë,” said Mal.

  “Felt it had to be said.”

  “Gorramn it, Mal!” Jayne thundered. “You’re forever bangin’ on about how little coin we have and how much it costs to keep a heap of junk like Serenity spaceworthy.”

  “Don’t speak about my ship like that, even if she ain’t around to hear.”

  “Right here”—Jayne gesticulated at the flightcase—“is the answer to our problems. All we gotta do is take it to Persephone, drop it off at Badger’s, and we’re golden. Money in pocket. A spot of R and R at Eavesdown. Maybe a visit to this joint I know where the booze is cheap and the women cheaper. Is that so bad?”

  “It stays and that’s that, Jayne.”

  Mal holstered his Liberty Hammer and vaulted aboard the Mule. He beckoned to Zoë, who traipsed over and climbed into the driving seat. There was a resigned, reluctant set to her jaw. The good soldier, obeying orders even if she disagreed with them.

  Mal looked at Jayne. “Coming?”

  Jayne bared his teeth and clutched at the air, as though he had his hands around an invisible throat and was strangling it. “No, I ain’t comin’! Leastways, not without that flightcase.”

  He strode over to the float-sled and started pulling it towards the Mule.

  All at once he found himself staring down the business end of Mal’s Liberty Hammer. He halted.

  “You wouldn’t dare,” he rumbled.

  “Try me,” said Mal. “I nearly dumped you out Serenity’s airlock once, didn’t I?”

  “Sir?” said Zoë, frowning. “Is this true?”

  “Back when we hit that hospital on Ariel. He was askin’ for it.”

  “Why? What’d he do?”

  “Another time. My point is, Jayne, I came within a gnat’s crotch hair of killing you once. Could be I’m that close again.”

  “Nah,” said Jayne. “You were tryin’ to scare me that time, is all. Just like you’re tryin’ to now.” He pulled the float-sled closer to the Mule.

  Mal fired.

  Jayne let out a high-pitched yelp. He patted himself all over with both hands, searching for the bullet hole. Then he glared at Mal.

  “Warning shot,” he muttered.

  “Wrong,” said Mal. “Look.”

  Jayne directed his gaze to where Mal was indicating.

  Mal had shot the float-sled’s antigravity generator. The small, cylindrical unit now had a charred perforation in it from which sparks and a wisp of smoke issued. The float-sled remained aloft but it was juddering and shimmying from side to side. All at once, with a grinding mechanical moan, it dropped to the ground. The impact jolted the flightcase hard, almost dislodging it from the float-sled’s bed.

  “Don’t go thinking that’ll stop me.” Jayne bent down, grasped the flightcase by its carrying handles and hauled it up off the float-sled. Judging by his grunt of effort and the way his legs bowed, the thing must have weighed north of a hundred pounds. He began staggering towards the Mule with his burden.

  “Zoë,” Mal said, “start her up.”

  “You mean that, sir?”

  “I sure as hell do. Jayne ain’t loading that thing on, not if I have any say about it.”

  Zoë hit the Mule’s ignition switch, and the hovercraft, with a sudden blare of its turbines, leaped into life.

  Jayne quickened his pace.

  “Let’s go,” Mal said.

  Zoë engaged reverse and started backing the Mule away as Jayne approached. Jayne broke into a clumsy, tottering run. Zoë increased speed. In no time the Mule was outpacing him, and Jayne, realizing any attempt to keep up would be futile, slowed to a stop. Grimacing in frustration and anger, he stood with the flightcase hanging from his arms.

  “Mal!” he called out. “Hey, Mal! I get it. Okay. Come back. Let’s you and me talk this over some more.”

  “No,” Mal shouted back. “You want that thing aboard Serenity so badly, you get it there yourself. We’ll be waiting.” He turned to Zoë. “Bring us about and get us back to the ship.”

  “You absolutely sure about this, sir?” Zoë said as she spun the Mule in a neat one-eighty and pushed the throttle forward. “You’re just going to leave him here?”

  “Jayne can walk ten miles.”

  “Of course he can. But what if he insists on taking that flightcase with him?”

  “He won’t. He’ll see sense.”

  “This is Jayne Cobb we’re talking about,” Zoë said. “When has he ever seen sense?”

  “When it’s in his best interests to, and now is surely one of those occasions.”

  “He can always strap the flightcase to one of those horses. Then he won’t have to carry it at all.”

  “What horses?” Mal said with a glance over his shoulder. “Ain’t none around anymore that I can see. They’ve skedaddled, every last one. Jayne’s on his own out here. Nobody’s liable to come by he can thumb a lift from. It’s hot as hell, and that flightcase ain’t no sack of feathers. I reckon he’ll last a mile at most, then give up on the whole idea and carry on without it.”

  “And if he doesn’t? If he makes it back to the ship with the flightcase?”

  Mal took one last look at Jayne, who was rapidly diminishing to a dot on the horizon, the skull rock looming at his back.

  “Ain’t gonna happen. But in the unlikely event that it does, there’s not a gorramn chance the cargo is comin’ with us on Serenity. Over my dead body.”

  “You didn’t mean a word you said to him just now, did you? About allowin’ him to bring it aboard.”

  “Not one itty bit.”

  “So much for a sense of honor.”

  “What did I tell you, Zoë, about not pointing out defects in my argument?”

  Jayne Cobb walked.

  Carrying the flightcase, he walked. And he fumed.

  Gorramn Mal Reynolds. Lousy qīng wā cāo de liú máng. Who did he think he was? First of all turning down a perfectly good payday, then stranding a crewmate out in the boondocks, in temperatures hot enough to fry the stripes off a coral snake, and expecting him to cross ten miles of desert terrain lugging a box as heavy as a small man.

  When Jayne got back to Serenity, there’d be a reckoning, that was for damn certain. Mal would be under no illusion what happened to folks who treated Jayne like that.

  The honking great big question was not whether Jayne would reach the ship, but would he get there with or without the flightcase? So far he’d gone ten minutes, he estimated, and already his arms and lower back were aching. Twice he’d had to stop to put the flightcase down and take a breather. He’d probably traveled half a mile, which meant, at present rate, he had at least another three hours’ walking in front of him.

  That was assuming he didn’t get lost, which was more than possible. He was following the furrows left by the downdraft of the Flying Mule’s turbines, but this method of navigation would only work as long as the ground was dusty soil. He knew from the inbound journey that the territory ahead got rugged and rocky, and then traces of the Mule would be all but undetectable.

  If only Koestler’s and his men’s horses had hung around. He wished the damn nags hadn’t got spooked by the shooting and hightailed it out of there. One of them was all he would have needed. Just one. Was it too much to ask?

  On he walked, and sweat stung his eyes and his hands began to cramp from holding the flightcase’s thin metal handles. He thought he could hear a weird, pulsing hum coming from the steel container, but this was doubtless the exertion of carrying it making his ears buzz. He began to feel dizzy and so paused once more to catch his breath and recover, shaking out his hands to ease the stiffness in his fingers.

  He resumed his progress. Now the muscular strain was spreading from his arms to his shoulders and even up into his neck. His feet were dragging. The lower edge of the flightcase kept bumping into his thighs, impeding his gait. Vera, slung on his back, dug its stock into his spine.

  He refused to allow any of these discomforts to get the better of him. He distracted himself with a mental image of himself giving Mal a good licking. He knew that in real life he wasn’t going to beat up Serenity’s cap
tain. The deed, though satisfying, would be unwise. At best, it would get him booted off the ship. At worst, the other crewmembers would gang up and retaliate; they were that loyal to the man. Zoë, in particular, would see to it that such an act of insubordination did not go unpunished, and if there was anyone in his life who scared Jayne—physically frightened him, to the point where he would go out of his way to avoid riling that person—it was Zoë Alleyne Washburne.

  Still, the fantasy of punching Mal repeatedly in the face and delivering the odd kick to his nethers was a pleasant one and sustained Jayne for the next mile or so of his arduous trek.

  Thereafter, his various accumulated aches and pains drowned out all thought of violent payback. To add to his sufferings, he was getting mighty thirsty. His throat had started to rasp with dryness. His breathing was becoming labored. Each step took more effort than the last. His head swam, and the flightcase seemed to be getting heavier and heavier. What was in it anyway? The lid was code-locked, so you couldn’t open it without either knowing the password or using a crowbar. The contents felt substantial. Maybe too substantial to be simply “technical apparatus.” Could Badger have been lying? Could it be bars of platinum instead?

  Even if it was, Jayne was sorely tempted to set the flightcase down and carry on unencumbered.

  But Jayne Cobb was nothing if not determined. “Pigheaded” his mother used to say. As in “That boy is so pigheaded, he could give obstinacy lessons to a hog.” Whether she meant it as praise or insult was unclear. Radiant Cobb, though she doted on her two sons, was known to chide them as much as encourage them. Nevertheless, Jayne always chose to take the remark as a compliment. Pigs were pretty smart animals, after all. Smarter than a fair few humans he’d met.

  After a further half-hour, Jayne was close to admitting defeat. His upper body was screaming with pain, every muscle a tortured knot. His legs could barely move. His lungs felt red raw. He could scarcely feel his hands.

  To add to all that, there were no visible Flying Mule tracks anymore. He was still heading in what he thought was the right direction, westward, but the sun kept dancing around in the sky, refusing to stay still so that he could take a bearing.

  Now and then he became aware of that strange throbbing hum again. It appeared to originate from inside the flightcase, but he wasn’t sure about that. This only served to increase his disorientation. Possibly the sound didn’t exist anywhere outside of his own head.

  Then a voice spoke to him.

  “Goin’ somewhere, son?”

  Puzzled, Jayne halted and looked around.

  Whoever had just addressed him, they were close by. Yet there was nobody in sight. Nor was there anywhere that a person could be hiding. No shelter, no vegetation, just barren, craggy landscape undulating in all directions.

  To make matters worse, the voice had been familiar. Intimately familiar. A woman’s voice. It had sounded just like…

  Jayne shook his head. Nah. Couldn’t be.

  A hallucination, that was all. His mind playing tricks. Not surprising, under the circumstances. The strength-sapping heat. The brainpan-pounding sun. The weight of the flightcase.

  With a supreme effort of will, Jayne trudged onwards. He was going to do this. He was going to get to Serenity. He couldn’t wait to see Mal’s face when he showed up at the ship, flightcase and all. How astonished and ticked-off the man would be. That alone would make the ordeal worthwhile. Mal could be so darned smug. It was time somebody reminded him that others in the crew deserved their say. It wasn’t all about Captain Reynolds. Maybe if he wasn’t such a stuck-up, arrogant son of a bitch, Inara Serra would have stayed on. If Mal loved the woman as much as he seemed to, how come he’d let her go? And she a Companion and all. Couldn’t he have just paid her and she’d have hung around? That was what Jayne would have done.

  “Jayne, boy, I said where you goin’?”

  This time, the voice was so loud and clear that Jayne couldn’t help but give a startled cry. He let the flightcase fall to the ground. It narrowly missed landing on his toes.

  “Momma?” he asked, looking around. “That you?”

  “Course it’s me,” said Radiant Cobb. She was standing to his left, her head cocked to one side. “Who else would it be?”

  Jayne gaped. It was his mother all right, in the flesh. A tall, angular woman, she looked like she had been assembled out of parts, like a scarecrow. Her head was too big for her neck, her shoulders too narrow for her hips, and her legs too spindly for the large feet attached to their ends. Her broad-bridged nose made it seem as though her eyes were set too close together, while her mouth was pinched and narrow, with a faint, downy wisp of a mustache on the upper lip. Nobody would ever call her beautiful but she was, without doubt, arresting-looking.

  “But… zĕn me le,” Jayne said. “What are you doing on Canterbury? Whyn’t you tell me you were comin’ out here?”

  “Canterbury? You all right in the head, Jayne? Why would I be on Canterbury? Ain’t never left Sycorax, not once in my life.”

  “Yeah, but this is…” Jayne blinked as a second figure emerged into view. “Matty? You’re here as well?”

  His younger brother nodded shyly. “Hey, Jayne. Long time, no see. How’re you doin’?”

  “Never mind me,” said Jayne, “how are you?”

  Matty spread out his hands. “Pretty good, actually. Damplung’s cleared up, would you believe. Doctor’s given me a clean bill of health.”

  Matty certainly looked chipper. Jayne couldn’t recall a time in recent memory when his brother’s complexion hadn’t been sallow or his eyes saddled with dark gray bags or his features gaunt and haunted. Ever since the pernicious respiratory disease got him in its clutches, Matty had gradually, steadily, been eaten away by it like a sandcastle eroded by the incoming tide.

  Now, though, he had color in his cheeks and he appeared to have put on several pounds. More to the point, he wasn’t wheezing or coughing. On the last occasion Jayne had visited home, Matty had been bedridden and barely able to talk, his condition had got so bad. Every breath had been a wet, sticky rattle, and all around him there had been heaps of tissues sodden with bloody phlegm and sputum.

  This Matty, the one in front of him, was a whole different proposition. His breathing was normal, unimpaired. He was standing ramrod straight, positively exuding vigor.

  Ordinarily damplung was a death sentence. This? This was like some kind of miracle.

  Jayne moved to embrace his brother. As he did so, his foot hit a rock and he stumbled, collapsing to his knees.

  When he looked up, both Matty and Radiant Cobb were gone. Vanished without a trace.

  “Gorramn it!” Jayne growled.

  Of course they were gone. They had never been there in the first place. It had just been an illusion brought on by dehydration, exhaustion, and pain, like one of those whatchemcalls, those visions you saw that weren’t real. A mirage.

  Jayne staggered to his feet.

  “You’re in danger of losing it,” he said to himself out loud. “Don’t. Keep your head together. You’re almost halfway there. Got another six, maybe only five miles to go. Ain’t far. Pick up that box and start walking again. One foot in front of the other: that’s how it’s done.”

  He hoisted up the flightcase again, ignoring the protests from the muscles in his arms and back. He set his gaze towards the horizon and urged his legs into motion.

  The sun glared pitilessly down.

  The landscape stretched before him, bleak and bare.

  Jayne Cobb walked.

  “Been best part of five hours now,” Zoë said. “Don’t you reckon we should be sending out a search party?”

  Standing beside her on Serenity’s cargo ramp, Mal gazed across the vista of scrubland. The sky was just starting to purple in the east. Not a thing moved out there apart from a couple of stunted ironwoods shivering in the late-afternoon breeze and a few bundles of tumbleweed rolling from hither to yon.

  “I’m not worried,” he said. “Come nightfall, then maybe we should start looking. Meantime, we’ll give Jayne the benefit of the doubt.”

  “What’s this all about, sir? If I might ask. You aren’t intending to take the cargo aboard even if Jayne can get it back here. So what’s the point of the exercise?”