Firefly: Big Damn Hero Read online

  “Hold the beam still,” she told Harlow.

  She walked over to the spot. She couldn’t be certain but the comm link sure as hell looked like the one Mal had been carrying. Someone had stamped on it, leaving it in smithereens.

  Well, if he wasn’t incommunicado before, he certainly is now.

  Nearby she spied twin furrows in the soft dirt, roughly shoulder width apart. Furrows made by boot toes. Fresh. Other bootprints accompanied them on either side.

  She began to walk alongside the furrows, following their route but keeping a weather eye on Harlow all the while. They traced the perimeter of the yard and led towards a rusted back gate. Past the gate was an alley broad enough to accommodate a land speeder. Here the furrows terminated.

  Just then Shepherd Book connected on her comm link.

  “Yes?” Zoë said in a low voice.

  “Zoë, I’m at Guilder’s,” said Book. “The man who signed off on our repairs and paid for the shuttle was Mal Reynolds, but he was not the captain.”

  “I don’t understand. Explain.”

  “He called himself Malcolm Reynolds but it wasn’t our Mal. Sandy hair. Scarred face.”

  Same man Harlow met. Has to be.

  This was not looking good. This was looking like a shuttle robbery—and possibly a kidnapping.

  The “traitors” graffiti. Referring to Browncoats. Like Mal.

  And her.

  Zoë aimed her Mare’s Leg at Harlow and said loudly, “Don’t leave,” just to remind him, in case he got it into his head to try sneaking off.

  “Sure thing, Hopalong.”

  Lowering her voice again, she said to Book, “Did the clerk tell you anything else? Was anyone with this guy?”

  “Hold on,” Book said. “Let me put him on.”

  “Hello?” It was a young-sounding man, voice quavering with uncertainty. “Um, we don’t know how this happened. We asked for identification and the fella had it. It said ‘Malcolm Reynolds’ and there was a picture of the man who took possession of the shuttle. It’s not the same man as the Shepherd is showing me now.”

  A fake ID, doctored especially for this occasion. So this whole thing had been planned. “Were there other people with him?”

  “No, ma’am. Least, not as I saw. That ain’t to say they weren’t waiting outside. Of course, Guilder’s can’t be held liable if—”

  “Did this Malcolm Reynolds file a flight plan?”

  “No, but it ain’t compulsory for spacecraft of a shuttle’s tonnage, only for those that are category five weight-class or above. Now about our loaner—”

  “We’re keeping it as collateral until this is straightened out,” Zoë said. “Book, can you handle that?”

  “Oh, yes.” The confidence in the Shepherd’s voice gave her a little boost. Everything in her was shouting at her to find the captain immediately. Trouble was, she didn’t know how.

  “Let’s talk later.”

  “I’ll keep you posted,” Book assured her.

  She broke off the connection and turned to Harlow. “What else do you know about the man who hired you?”

  He calmly shook his head. “What was his name again?

  Covington? I’ve told you everything. I swear I have. Would you like to hire me to see if I can trace your friend?” he asked without missing a beat.

  “I want you to contact Covington,” she told him, but he shook his head.

  “He got ahold of me, like I said. I don’t know nothing about him. I could put it around that I’m looking for him, see what shakes.”

  “Do that,” she said. “But be discreet. I don’t need the entire ’verse hearing about my situation.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Give me a way to contact you.”

  “Such as my wave address? Not a chance. Waves, trails, remember? You need me, try Taggart’s. I’m not there, someone’ll soon get word to me and I’ll come.”

  “Okay. There’ll be coin for you if anything comes of this.”

  “’Bout gorramn time. I was startin’ to think you were taking the ‘free’ part of freelance much too seriously.” Harlow grinned at her and gestured with his head to the Mare’s Leg. “We finished?”

  “We’re finished,” she said. “For now.”

  “Then may I have my iron back?”

  She returned his six-gun to him.

  “Be seeing you, Hopalong, maybe.” He tipped his hat and disappeared off through the back door, back into the house.

  Watching him go, Zoë reviewed the situation. It was obvious that the flophouse had been the site of a handover. Covington and accomplices had kidnapped Mal on behalf of a third party and passed him on like so much hundredweight of lumber. A business transaction, only the goods in question were human. This jibed with the possibility of Covington being bondholder to a bondswoman— the kind of guy who regarded people as little more than a commodity to be owned and exchanged.

  Given that somebody posing as Malcolm Reynolds had lately retrieved Serenity’s shuttle from Guilder’s, the odds were good that that was where the real Mal had wound up. The odds were good, too, that wherever the shuttle was now, Mal was on it. And, moreover, that whoever had him bore no great fondness for those who’d fought on the Independent side.

  Zoë crossed the yard and headed back through the building, still favoring her bad leg.

  Out front, she spotted Harlow. His flashlight beam was flickering ahead of him.

  She had planned on following him at a distance anyway, simply so that she wouldn’t get lost trying to find her way back to the comparatively more civilized parts of town. But she was curious to know where he was going now. It was possible he had been bluffing about Covington and knew the man more closely than he was letting on.

  While Zoë kept to the shadows, guarded and cautious, Harlow ambled along as if he didn’t have a care in world. She kept the Mare’s Leg at the ready. This could be a trap set for her, after all. Maybe they’d taken the captain first, with the plan to lure her into their clutches next.

  I want this to be a big misunderstanding. I want Mal to mosey up this very street right now, she thought.

  Harlow took a different route from last time but ended up where they’d started, at Taggart’s. As he entered through the double doors, Zoë holstered her gun and took up a position across the street, where she could watch the comings and goings of the bar’s clientele without being seen.

  While she waited, she connected with the ship.

  “Hey, babe,” Wash said. “How’s it hanging?”

  “Crooked,” she replied. “This whole situation stinks, and the more I look into it, the stinkier it’s getting. How are things at your end?”

  “Been in touch with Book. He told me about the shuttle and asked me to find out from the port authorities about all recent shuttle takeoffs, but I haven’t gotten anywhere with that. Shuttles aren’t high on their list of priorities, being personnel-only with limited range, and they’ve got much bigger beasts to focus on, and lots of them, too. We could call the police, of course, but I don’t think that’s particularly wise, on account of the whole hate-hate relationship we have with law enforcement.”

  “You’re right. I learned a little more about Hunter Covington, by the way, but not a lot. He has a woman.” Zoë relayed the description Harlow had given. “Sounds like she’s not a willing partner. Could be a bondswoman maybe. Don’t know if it’s any use, but I thought it worth a mention.”

  “Got it,” said Wash. “Our resident fruitcake has calmed down a bit. You’ll no doubt be glad to hear that, but not as glad as I am. Simon’s managed to pry her out of her dining-table fort. Now she’s playing her flute in the cargo bay. Inara’s keeping her company. You’re missing all the fun.”

  “Why is River playing the flute?”

  “To make Badger’s crates go to sleep. They’re restless and they need a lullaby, apparently. Tell you this, Zoë, my blood pressure’ll be a whole lot lower once we get the band back together and are heading for our
drop-off.”

  “I hear you, dear. And I agree.”

  “You keep safe, Zoë. Got that? Don’t do anything crazy.”

  “Ditto, Wash.”

  They cut the link.

  Just then, Harlow walked back out through the double doors. Zoë merged deeper into the shadows. He sauntered down the street in the opposite direction that he had taken her.

  She swung in after him. As before, he seemed in no rush. His movements weren’t cautious—just a guy in a giant, silly hat and an ankle-length yellow coat out for an evening stroll. He entered the main square of shops and administration buildings where Alliance Day crowds packed the sidewalks and spilled into the street, waving flags and beer bottles, and yelling at each other. Harlow made a few turns after he cleared the square. Nothing evasive; he didn’t seem to be trying to shake pursuit. When he reached a warren of small, single-story buildings, he ducked down the walkway that ran between them. He stepped up to an innocuous-looking front door, opened it, and entered.

  The glass in the building’s peeling windows was painted opaque white so Zoë couldn’t see inside. She crept up to the door and pressed her ear against it. She could hear nothing.

  As she loitered in the lee of the building opposite, she tried to contact Jayne. Nothing, not even static. What if he had been kidnapped too? What if there was some conspiracy afoot to abduct every member of Serenity’s crew one by one?

  Just bad comms. Has to be.

  Then Harlow reappeared.

  Zoë kept him in her sights and herself out of his as he continued his rambling, returning the way he’d come. It was difficult to limp stealthily but she did her best. The pain in her leg was more than a mite trialsome but she refused to let it distract her. She’d been injured worse during the war and still managed to acquit herself handily on the battlefield.

  Once more she pondered all the bitterness that had been spewed at Taggart’s that night, and that was embodied in the DEATH TO ALL TRAITORS graffiti. The history of the Unification War had been rewritten to benefit the victors, Zoë knew that. She wasn’t naïve. But the Browncoats hadn’t been the aggressors. They had mustered because the Alliance had posed a threat, not because they wanted territory or power or any other thing. They just wanted to be left in peace. Nor had they betrayed anyone, unless standing up for your right to live free was considered betrayal.

  Was this what children were taught in school now? That the Browncoats as a group were just one step above Reavers? It sickened her soul.

  Pay attention. You’re on a mission, Zoë reminded herself.

  Gradually, their surroundings became more and more familiar. She started to recognize the storefronts and bars of the neighborhood. And then it dawned on her where Harlow was headed. Under her breath, she unleashed a withering torrent of Mandarin curses.

  Wincing from the pain in her leg, she closed distance as, some fifty feet ahead, Harlow calmly approached the headquarters of a certain not altogether reputable individual, who went by the name of Badger.

  Allister seemed to be recovering some of his wits as he and Jayne walked to his apartment. To Jayne it was obvious the kid had never been in a fight before. It wasn’t just that Allister hadn’t managed to land a decent blow on his opponents. He had been shocked by the violence itself, as though he just hadn’t been expecting it and didn’t know how to cope with it. That, as much as the blows he’d received, was what had left him stunned and shaken, and only now, nigh on a half-hour after the event, was he starting to get over the experience.

  Jayne, at Allister’s age, had already known his fair share of scraps. But then he’d always been a rough-and-tumble youth who let his fists do most of the talking because his mouth wasn’t so good at it.

  “Maybe,” Jayne said to him, “you can explain to me why someone as young as you was hanging out at a dive like Taggart’s.”

  “Just wanted to celebrate Alliance Day, like everyone else,” Allister said. “Taggart’s seemed as good a place as any. You never drank underage?”

  At that, Jayne could only shake his head guiltily. “Got me there, kid. But you could’ve chosen any bar. There’s plenty a whole lot nicer’n Taggart’s, and plenty where you’re less liable to get your head busted.”

  “Maybe I wanted to be where the action is.”

  “Or maybe you wanted to be nowhere near home.”

  Allister looked furtive. “Kinda.”

  “So’s you’re less likely to bump into someone who’d recognize you and could rat on you to your mom. She even know you’re out?”

  The kid shook his head. “She doesn’t pay much attention to my comings and goings, on account of how sick she is. I look after her, do my best for her, but I need a life of my own. You understand? I need to get out now and then, have a little fun. Caring for a sick person ain’t easy, ’specially one with Foster’s Wheeze. Mom’s coughin’ all the time, sometimes like as though she’s going to choke up a lung. I never know from one day to the next how bad she’s gonna be, but I do know she’s not likely to get better.”

  Jayne sympathized, perhaps more than Allister realized. His little brother Mattie suffered from an incurable respiratory disorder not unlike Foster’s Wheeze: damplung, and it blighted his life and that of their mother too.

  Eavesdown’s riverside district might once have been pretty— desirable, even—but its heyday was long past. The river itself, which had never been graced with a name, was a slow, turgid waterway clogged with weed, junk and sewage, and the houses which clustered along its banks were low, mean edifices with tumbledown roofs and sagging walls.

  Allister led Jayne up a precarious outdoor staircase to a fourth-floor apartment that was not what you might call spacious. Anyone who got it in mind to swing a cat in there could expect a lot of thumping and irate meowing.

  On a cot in a corner of the main room lay an emaciated woman whose complexion was the color of cream gone sour. Blood-flecked tissues were scattered around her like gruesome confetti, and dried encrustations scabbed her nostrils and the corners of her mouth. The air smelled of stale sweat, human waste, and, beneath it all, the faint whiff of rotten flesh.

  The woman managed, with some considerable effort, to raise herself as Allister and Jayne entered. Her hair hung lank about her face like damp seaweed, while her eyes were sunk so deep in their sockets, they were almost lost, like pebbles embedded in deep hollows. Jayne could tell she had been attractive once, before the sickness had ravaged her. She was still fairly young, although her haggardness made her look about a hundred years old.

  “Allister?” she said in a frail voice. “That you?”

  “It’s me, Mom.”

  “Your face. Those bruises.” Her brow furrowed. “What happened to you? What have you been doing?”

  “Nothing, Momma. Just had a little… mishap, is all. Got jumped by a couple guys.”

  Not far from the truth, Jayne thought.

  “They tried to take my money,” Allister continued, “only I didn’t have none, so that made ’em mad, and… Well, you can see the result. I’m fine,” he added. “Really. Just a few lumps and bumps. This man saved me. His name’s…”

  Allister suddenly looked puzzled.

  “Not sure I caught it, as a matter of fact,” he said.

  “Cobb,” Jayne said. “Jayne Cobb. Pleased to meet you, ma’am.” He removed his hat. Mama Cobb had raised him to be polite when the circumstances demanded.

  Allister’s mother eyed him up and down. “That was mighty kind of you, Jayne Cobb. I am much obliged. My name’s Barbara, by the way. Barbara—”

  Then a coughing fit overtook her. Her body heaved, wracked with spasms. She covered her mouth, but Jayne saw blood and sputum spatter against the palm of her hand.

  Allister hurried to her side, handing her a tissue. Then he fetched her a glass of water, which she sipped gratefully.

  “I thought I should return Allister home safe and sound,” Jayne said. “He told me you might be able to fix him up. And now that I’ve d
one that…”

  “Won’t you stay?” Barbara said. “We’ve food in the house. Coffee too. Ain’t much but we’re willing to share, ’specially with someone who’s helped us out.”

  It was tempting. Jayne was hungry, and he was never less than a slave to his appetites. However, there was Mal to think about. He couldn’t hang around.

  “Thanks, but I got some pressing matters need attendin’ to.”

  “You mean partyin’ with all the other fools.”

  “No. Yes. No.” Jayne was not proficient at lying, so he changed the subject. “Fools, you say? I’m guessing you’re no fan of Alliance Day, then.”

  “Ha!” Barbara swung her legs over the side of the cot. The strain of moving herself even that much showed on her face. “Well, put it like this. There’s some as reckon the war was the best thing that could ever have happened to the ’verse, and there’s some, like me, as think it was the worst. Not to mention the pain and sufferin’ it caused.

  “I used to be a nurse. Worked for the military a whiles. The Independents, only I don’t make a big noise about that owing to the fact that they were the losin’ side and folks round here don’t feel too kindly disposed towards them, as a rule. I was stationed at a number of forward operating bases—”

  She broke off to cough again. It was painful just to watch her; Jayne could only imagine how painful it was to be her, undergoing this torture. He knew that Foster’s Wheeze was invariably fatal; but the condition could be managed for years, its worst symptoms reduced almost to zero, if you had access to the right drugs and the wherewithal to pay for them. Barbara had neither, which meant she was sentenced to a purgatory of chest pain, restricted breathing and these brutal coughing fits. The disease would gradually run its course, killing her by degrees, but it might be as much as another three or four years before it finally polished her off.

  “They were just tent hospitals,” she continued. “Describing them as crude would be paying them a compliment. Sometimes it would come down to medical techniques like out of Earth-That-Was history. You know, sawing off ruined limbs without any anesthetic beyond a shot of bourbon, which we also used as disinfectant. That bad. But we made do, us doctors and nurses. Had to. It was an endless parade of misery, Mr. Cobb. Men, women—kids, even, scarcely older than my Allister—being brought in on stretchers, screaming, riddled with bullet wounds, guts mangled, maybe an arm hanging on by a shred of flesh, some of ’em pleading to be put out of their misery…” She shuddered at the recollection. “Alliance put those Browncoats through the mincing machine and didn’t even think twice about it. That’s what we were fighting against, that level of slaughter, that level of callousness. Shoulda won, deserved to, but I guess it was not to be.”