Firefly--Life Signs Read online

  “What about you?” Simon asked Meadowlark.

  “What’s a nice girl like me doing in a place like this? Good question.” Meadowlark tilted her chin up and to the side, as if making a show of considering. The mannerism reminded Mal of River. “Reason I ended up here is much the same as you: I pissed off the powers-that-be. I had this graffiti protest campaign going for a while, you see, on Aberdeen. ‘Fed up with the Feds.’ ‘Screw the Al-LIE-ance,’ with the emphasis on the ‘lie.’ Spray-painted slogans like that on walls everywhere: Alliance offices, police stations, municipal buildings, monuments. I thought it was kinda harmless, you know? Like a joke, more than anything. But the Feds didn’t see it that way.”

  “They’ve never been famous for their sense of humor.”

  “Ha ha! Another joke, Simon. You keep making me laugh like this, I might get to thinking you like me. Anyhow, one day I was caught in the act. Charged with defacing public property. That’s just a misdemeanor, and I’d’ve got off with a fine, maybe probation and community service. But I was also charged with ‘promoting seditious anti-Alliance sentiment,’ and that sank me. The state’s attorney came down on me hard. It didn’t help that I was disrespectful to him at the arraignment. Suggested his mother mightn’t’ve known who his father was and that he enjoyed close relations with goats. I’ve always had a problem with authority figures, ever since I was a kid, ’cause I never met one who wasn’t abusing their position of power or on the take or something. They threw the book at me. I couldn’t believe it when the judge said ‘Atata—five years.’ Thought she must be kidding.”

  “Same at my trial,” said Simon. “I assumed I’d misheard. I had to ask the judge to repeat himself. ‘Atata, Your Honor?’ I said. ‘Are you sure?’ Turns out he was. Very sure.”

  “Gotta say, my first few days here, it felt like a nightmare,” said Meadowlark. “But you know what? It ain’t so bad, once you get used to it. It’s a lottery, which correctional unit you get sent to, but I was lucky. We all are at #23. Some of the units, it’s a living hell, or so they say. No rules, no organization, just pure anarchy. We’ve got Mr. O’Bannon, though, and he’s tough but fair. So long as you don’t cross him, you should be okay.”

  Mal mentally filed this nugget of information.

  Meadowlark leaned a little closer to Simon. “Stick with me, Simon, and you’ll be even okayer. I mean it. I can show you around, give you some idea how things work, teach you the ropes. How’s that sound?”

  She fired a quick, eager wink at him, then moved away.

  Simon turned to look at Mal, his eyebrows raised interrogatively.

  Mal gave him a discreet nod. You did fine.

  Simon canted his head in Meadowlark’s direction.

  Mal responded with another nod. Do as she says: stick with her. She could come in useful.

  The Slugger had reached Correctional Unit #23 and disappeared inside. The procession of people behind it covered the remaining couple of hundred yards, their breath vapor wreathing around their heads in gauzy wisps.

  Mal felt encouraged by Meadowlark’s description of Mr. O’Bannon as “tough but fair.” He thought of himself in much the same terms. Perhaps the man might be easier to handle than expected.

  The building loomed over him, low but casting a lengthening shadow. Small, slot-like windows peered from its outer walls like narrowed eyes. Its concrete was dark gray and weathered, with snow and ice packing every crack and crevice. Overall, the structure radiated a sense of hostility and despair, as its architects had no doubt intended. Like a hut or a cave, it promised the bare minimum: shelter from the elements, perhaps not even that.

  Above the main entrance, its official name was spelled out in whitewashed letters a foot high:

  CORRECTIONAL UNIT #23

  Just below, someone had added a single word. It was jaggedly etched, probably with the edge of a rock:

  HELLFREEZE

  Every correctional unit on Atata had a nickname. Here was #23’s.

  Not exactly “Shady Pines” or “Green Acres,” Mal thought.

  In twos and threes the group passed through the entrance. Simon, Jayne and Zoë went in ahead of Mal.

  At the threshold, he paused. This was it. No going back now.

  For Inara, he told himself.

  With a grim set of the jaw, he followed his crewmembers inside.

  A heavy door slammed shut behind them.

  For Inara.

  15

  Back in the Black, Serenity clawed her way free of Atata’s gravitational pull. As the planet receded behind her, its snow-covered landmasses and frozen oceans merged together, becoming indistinguishable from each other, a seamless white whole. Night was encroaching, the terminator between light and dark creeping westward.

  In the ship’s belly, River and Kaylee were having a heart-to-heart.

  “What I don’t get,” Kaylee said, “is why you ain’t down there with the others. You can fight. You’re good in a pinch.”

  “Put me in, coach,” River said.

  “Yeah! That’s it. Mal keeps you on the bench all the time, and it just seems odd.”

  “Secrets.” River pointed to her own head.

  “I know. They did stuff to your brain that no one can explain.”

  River frowned at her. “No. I’m not good at holding secrets inside. Secrets are like soda when you shake the bottle. They keep fizzing out. That’s not helpful when you’re trying to keep things back from other people.”

  Kaylee nodded in comprehension. “Okay. I get that. Mal and the rest want to pass themselves off as convicts. You went with them, you might say or do the wrong thing and land ’em in trouble. Makes sense. Maybe, though, if you’d gone, you could’ve kept an eye on Simon. Mal, Jayne, Zoë—this is their kinda gig. If it gets rough, they can handle themselves. But Simon…”

  “A doctor.”

  “Exactly. A doctor. He fixes people, not breaks them.”

  “What if Mal or Jayne or Zoë needs fixing?” River said.

  “There is that, I guess.”

  “Don’t be scared for him.” River reached out a hand to her.

  “Ain’t you?”

  “My big, bad brother? Never!” River said brightly. “Simon got me out of the Academy. He was brave and he saved me. A brave saver, bravely saving.”

  “I worry about him still.”

  “That’s because you love him.”

  Kaylee eyed her keenly. “Is it that obvious?”

  “Duh!” River jeered. “I’m the one with the wibbly-wobbly brain, and I can see it. And he feels the same way about you, only he’s too Simon to realize.”

  “Too Simon.” Kaylee chuckled. “Yeah, that about sums it up.”

  “Maybe you should tell him.”

  “Tell him what? That this lowly ship’s engineer has the hots for the fancy-pants doctor?”

  “That the really pretty and really smart girl deserves a boy who’s clever and kind and who’ll treat her right.”

  “Plus good-looking. You forgot to mention how good-looking he is.”

  “Ewww.” River wrinkled her nose. “He’s my brother.”

  Kaylee smiled, but the smile quickly faded. “I just want ’em to come back from Atata safe and sound, River. All of them, but Simon especially. I also want ’em to get ahold of Dr. Weng and take him to Inara so’s he can save her. Is that too much to ask?”

  At that moment, Serenity began to slow. In the vacuum of space, the ship’s artificial gravity insulated those aboard her from the effects of inertia and momentum. Acceleration and deceleration could not be felt. They could be heard, however, through an increase or decrease in the throbbing pulse from the engine. Both Kaylee and River detected the sudden lessening in the engine’s power output.

  “Why’re we braking?” Kaylee wondered. “I thought the idea was we were going to retreat beyond range of the Alliance ships’ scanners, hold position there till we get word from Mal to return and collect him and the others. We ain’t nearly far enou
gh from Atata yet. Come on. Let’s go see what Wash is playin’ at.”

  She hurried off to the bridge, River in tow.

  “Wash, what’s going on?” Kaylee asked as the two of them stepped through the doorway.

  “Nothing much,” came the reply. “Just that.”

  Wash motioned across the control console towards the forward ports.

  Hovering dead ahead of Serenity was an Alliance corvette. The silvery Hornet-class ship, with its hulking stern section and low-hung front end, had much of the intimidating sinisterness of the insect it was named after.

  “It’s Constant Vigilance again,” Wash said.

  “Tā mā de,” Kaylee groaned. “What in heck do they want?”

  “I imagine they’re about to tell us. But just for your information, they have a target lock on us.” He pointed to a warning light blinking on his console. “All weapons.”

  “Not shiny,” said River, in a pitch-perfect imitation of Kaylee’s voice.

  16

  Commander Levine looked at the Firefly that had now come to a complete stop, half a klick off Constant Vigilance’s bows.

  She cherished moments like this. She had the full weight of the Alliance behind her. Her power was absolute.

  “Tranquility,” she said over the common channels. “Thank you for saving me the bother of telling you to halt. Might we have this conversation in visual mode?”

  She was good at feigning politeness, making an order sound like a request.

  “Sure,” said a voice from Tranquility, and a moment later a face appeared on Levine’s videoscreen. It wasn’t Captain Ray Malcolm. It was a sandy-haired man wearing a lurid Hawaiian shirt. He looked unassuming, a bit naïve maybe. The type Levine felt she could easily intimidate.

  “Hi there,” said the man with an obliging but slightly nervous grin. “How can I help you, ma’am?”

  “You aren’t Captain Malcolm,” Levine said.

  “That I’m not. Name’s Race. Jed Race. That’s my name. Good name for a pilot. Which is what I am. Pilot of Ser—Tranquility.”

  “Where is Captain Malcolm?”

  “The Captain is… indisposed right now, sir. I’m authorized to speak on his behalf.”

  “That’s as may be,” said Levine. “However, I don’t wish to deal with the monkey. I wish to deal with the organ grinder. Would you do me the honor of fetching him? Right now?”

  Jed Race’s eyes shot furtively to one side. It was a tiny, unconscious gesture but it was a dead giveaway.

  “Captain’s, ah, he’s having some shuteye,” he said. “You really want me to wake him up? He gets all kinds of grumpy if you wake him up.”

  “I want you to do precisely that, and I want you to do it this instant.”

  “I’m just saying, he’s going to take it out on someone, and that someone is going to be me. He doesn’t get his full forty winks, he can be the proverbial bear with a sore head.”

  Commander Levine balled her hand into a fist and then, with some effort, relaxed it.

  “I am surprised,” she said, “that your captain has been able to retire to his sleeping quarters and nod off so soon after your ship made landfall and offloaded its cargo. That seems remarkably fast.”

  “Well, when you’ve gotta nap, you’ve gotta nap.”

  “You may not be aware, Mr. Race, but after our previous encounter I placed Constant Vigilance in geostationary orbit directly above Correctional Unit #23. We have been watching your ship the whole time, from descent to touchdown all the way through to liftoff and atmo exit. At the depot we saw three people offloading crates. Not one of them was Captain Malcolm.”

  “That’s our captain. He’s a talker, not a doer.”

  “We did not even see him supervising.”

  “That’ll be because we’re a good crew and he trusts us to get the job done without him breathing down our necks the whole time.”

  “I am still very keen to speak with Malcolm directly, and now,” Levine said. The pilot’s blithe obstinacy was starting to grate on her. She felt she had been right to accost Tranquility a second time. Increasingly her suspicions about the ship were, it seemed, being borne out. Its crew was up to something, although what that something might be, she had no idea.

  “How’s about I get him to call you later, when he’s up and around again?”

  “How’s about this?” Levine retorted. “By the authority vested in me by the Union of Allied Planets, I hereby demand that you allow me to board your vessel with immediate effect. Failure to comply straight away with this demand will be regarded as a seditious act, punishable by the instant and fully justified use of lethal force. Hold position while we move to docking distance.”

  “Okay,” said Jed Race hesitantly. “Just give me a second…”

  17

  Two minutes earlier

  “Tranquility,” came the voice of the commander of the IAV Constant Vigilance. “Thank you for saving me the bother of telling you to halt. Might we have this conversation in visual mode?”

  Wash took a deep breath. “Sure,” he said, and punched the button for video communication.

  There, on his screen, was Commander Levine, looking if anything sterner and more purse-lipped than last time. Her military-grade buzzcut seemed to have been inflicted on her by someone who hated hair and wanted to punish it. Her eyes were as hard and gray as flint.

  “Hi there,” Wash said. “How can I help you, ma’am?”

  “You aren’t Captain Malcolm,” Levine said.

  Score one for eagle-eyed Commander Levine, Wash thought. Nothing gets past her.

  “That I’m not,” he said. “Name’s Race. Jed Race.”

  Well, if Mal could have a pseudonym on this mission, so could he.

  “That’s my name,” he added. “Good name for a pilot. Which is what I am. Pilot of Ser—” He caught himself. “Tranquility.”

  Damn it.

  Levine didn’t appear to have noticed the slip-up. Or at least, if she had, she gave no sign.

  “Where is Captain Malcolm?” she asked.

  “The Captain is… indisposed right now, sir. I’m authorized to speak on his behalf.”

  “That’s as may be. However, I don’t wish to deal with the monkey. I wish to deal with the organ grinder.”

  Hurtful, Wash thought.

  So far the conversation had not gone well, and he had a hunch it wouldn’t get any better.

  He had best put in place a contingency plan. Just in case.

  “Would you do me the honor of fetching him?” Levine said. “Right now?”

  Wash fired a sidelong glance at Kaylee. Both she and River were out of shot. Levine could not see either of them.

  Kaylee canted her head inquisitively.

  “Captain’s, ah, he’s having some shuteye,” Wash said, keeping his gaze steady on Levine. At the same time, he motioned with his hand, out of sight of the camera. He jerked a thumb towards Serenity’s aft. The engine room. Then he opened his fingers out four times in swift succession.

  “You really want me to wake him up?” he went on. “He gets all kinds of grumpy if you wake him up.”

  At the periphery of his vision he saw Kaylee nod in understanding. She tapped River’s arm, and together the two of them snuck out of the bridge.

  “I want you to do precisely that,” Levine replied, “and I want you to do it this instant.”

  “I’m just saying, he’s going to take it out on someone, and that someone is going to be me. He doesn’t get his full forty winks, he can be the proverbial bear with a sore head.”

  A flicker of irritation passed across Commander Levine’s features. The woman was losing the composure she strove so hard to maintain.

  “I am surprised,” she said, “that your captain has been able to retire to his sleeping quarters and nod off so soon after your ship made landfall and offloaded its cargo. That seems remarkably fast.”

  “Well, when you’ve gotta nap, you’ve gotta nap,” Wash said, keeping a smile on h
is face and his tone of voice upbeat. It was fun, sometimes, to irk people by being resolutely chipper. Not least when you were dealing with someone who took herself as seriously as Commander Victoria Levine did. The thicker a person’s skin was, the more amusing it was to get under it.

  “You may not be aware, Mr. Race,” Levine said, “but after our previous encounter I placed Constant Vigilance in geostationary orbit directly above Correctional Unit #23. We have been watching your ship the whole time, from descent to touchdown all the way through to liftoff and atmo exit. At the depot we saw three people offloading crates. Not one of them was Captain Malcolm.”

  “That’s our captain. He’s a talker, not a doer.”

  “We did not even see him supervising.”

  “That’ll be because we’re a good crew and he trusts us to get the job done without him breathing down our necks the whole time.”

  A green light on Wash’s console winked into life. This was the sign from Kaylee that she had reached the engine room and was ready.

  “I am still very keen to speak with Malcolm directly, and now,” Levine said.

  “How’s about I get him to call you later, when he’s up and around again?”

  “How’s about this?” Levine said. “By the authority vested in me by the Union of Allied Planets, I hereby demand that you allow me to board your vessel with immediate effect. Failure to comply straight away with this demand will be regarded as a seditious act, punishable by the instant and fully justified use of lethal force. Hold position while we move to docking distance.”

  “Okay,” Wash said. “Just give me a second…”

  18

  Instead of staying put, Wash stepped on the gas.

  He pushed a lever on his control console all the way to its stop. He slapped a sequence of switches. He hauled back on the steering yoke.

  Down in the engine room, Kaylee felt Serenity lurch, and immediately she yanked on a couple of handles hard.

  River, taking her cue, turned a crank mounted on the engine itself, in accordance with the instructions Kaylee had given her on their way there.