A horseshoe whirled like a discus over Book’s head. It clouted the guard in the face, just above one eyebrow, with an audible crunch. The man dropped as though he had walked slap bang into an invisible wall.
Book glanced round to see River looking very pleased with herself, clapping her hands in glee.
“Nice shot,” he said.
“I love playing horseshoes,” River said. “I was always good at it. Better than Simon.” She picked up another horseshoe from the dust at her feet. It and the one she had thrown must have been just lying around spare. “If he gets up again, I’ll just hit him again.”
“You do that. Where’s Elmira?”
“Who? Oh, her. Yes.” The girl tapped her lips, pondering. “Up there.” She gestured towards a hayloft. “Straw in her hair.”
Book shinned up a stepladder that led to the hayloft. The horses were stamping softly and whinnying in their looseboxes below, disturbed by the uncustomary activities of the humans in the stables. If luck was on Book’s side—or some higher power—the beasts would not become so agitated as to draw the attention of people in the house.
As his head rose above the level of the hayloft floor, he peered cautiously around. There might well be a third guard on duty.
But there was nobody in the hayloft save for a young woman chained to a support post, with a piece of cloth tied tight around her mouth to form a gag. Her clothing was ripped and torn. Her hair was disheveled, and yes, as River had said, there were bits of straw in it, sticking out at all angles like pins from a pincushion. She had bruises and grazes all over, and she looked terrified.
As Book appeared, Elmira Atadema began to writhe and scream, despite the gag. He put a finger to lips and smiled reassuringly.
“I’m not here to hurt you, Elmira,” he said. “I’m here to help.”
Her expression was distrustful but she did calm down somewhat.
“Mika Wong sent me.” Only the slightest distortion of the truth. “My friends and I are going to get you out of here.”
Mention of Wong’s name appeared to settle the matter as far as Elmira was concerned.
Book undid the gag. Elmira worked her jaw to ease the kinks out. The gag had been on so long it had left red welts.
“Who are you?” she croaked.
“All in good time,” Book said. “First order of business: getting these chains off you.”
The chains were secured with a padlock. Book studied it for a moment, then shrugged. It had the simplest kind of lever-and-ward mechanism. He could have opened it in thirty seconds with a paperclip or a hairgrip, but luckily he could do better than that. From his satchel he took out a compact, leather-bound Bible. Concealed within the binding, in a recess beneath a marbled endpaper that could be detached, was a comprehensive set of lockpicks. He selected one that in his judgment matched this brand of padlock and corresponded to the genuine key in length. He inserted it into the slot, feeling its teeth fit snugly against the actuators. He’d gauged right. A single clockwise twist of the wrist, and the padlock’s shackle fell open.
“A Shepherd,” said Elmira, “who can pick a lock?”
“‘And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven,’” Book said, stowing the lockpick back inside the Bible and the book itself back in his satchel, “‘and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.’ Matthew chapter sixteen, verse nineteen.”
He unwrapped the chains from around her wrists and helped her to her feet.
“Can you walk?” he asked.
“I think so,” said Elmira.
“Then let’s go. Time is of the essence.”
Outside the stable block, Simon Tam was keeping watch. His specialty was medicine, however, not sentry duty. He didn’t see the armed man stealing up on him from around the corner of the stable block. He wasn’t even aware of his presence until the man pounced on him from behind, snaking an arm around his throat. The barrel of a gun dug into Simon’s temple.
“Don’t move,” the man growled, “’less you want your brains spattered all over that there fancy vest of your’n.”
“P–Please don’t shoot,” Simon stammered.
“Don’t give me no excuse to. State your business. Quick about it.”
“I’m—I’m a guest of Hunter Collington’s. Good friend of his. Arrived just this morning. I’m only taking a stroll around, admiring the spread.”
“Hunter who?”
“Your boss. Hunter Collington.”
The man chuckled gratingly. “I have a boss, but his name ain’t Collington. You maybe wanna try that again?”
“Covington!” Simon exclaimed. He could have kicked himself. What a rookie mistake, getting the surname wrong. He just wasn’t cut out for this sort of clandestine stuff. Nothing in his upbringing or education had prepared him for a life of skullduggery and violence. “Slip of the tongue. I meant Covington.”
“A so-called good friend of Mr. Covington’s wouldn’t have gotten his name wrong, pal. I don’t reckon you know him at all. I reckon you’re some kinda spy or somethin’. We’re under orders to be on the lookout for intruders, anyone sneakin’ around looking suspicious. I’d say you fit the bill. Now tell me the truth. You got until the count of three, and then it’s brain surgery by bullet. One. Two…”
River drifted out of the stable block, hands behind her back. “Hey, Simon. Who’s your friend?”
Simon felt the man holding him stiffen in surprise. “Where’d you come from, girl?”
“In there,” River said. “I was just stroking the horses. They have such soft noses, did you know that? Apart from the bristles. And their breath, when they snort, it’s warm on your hand. I like it. It smells of friendliness.”
She took a step towards the man and Simon.
The gun moved from Simon’s head, swiveling towards River. “Best you stay where you are,” the man said to her. “I got plenty of rounds in this thing, and I only need one for the each of you.”
Simon’s breath caught in his throat. With the tiniest twitch of his head, he tried to indicate to River that she should stop moving.
Whether she saw the instruction or not, River halted. She twirled one foot, drawing circles in the dust with the toecap of her boot. The man with the gun looked down at what she was doing. When he looked up again, River had brought both hands out in front of her. The right held a horseshoe. In one blindingly swift action she flung it at the man. It connected with his gun hand, knocking the weapon out of his grasp. Before he was able to collect his wits, River sprang. Simon stumbled aside as River and the man went crashing to the ground. Straddling her opponent’s torso, she rained punches on his face and ribcage in such a rapid flurry that her arms were twin blurs, like the pistons on a locomotive pumping at full speed. The man was utterly unable to defend or deflect. Within seconds River had rendered him unconscious. Still she kept up the barrage of blows, until Simon laid a hand on her shoulder.
“River? You’ve done it. He’s out cold. Keep that up and you might kill him.”
“He was going to kill you,” she said. “And me. Fair’s fair. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a candy for a candy, a penny for your thoughts.”
“Still and all. We don’t kill unless we have to.”
River reflected on this, then smiled brightly. “Okay! That’s a good rule.”
“I like to think so.”
She picked herself up and dusted herself off. “Oh, hi, Shepherd. And straw-in-hair lady.”
Book had just come out of the stable block, one arm around Elmira Atadema to support her. He cast a glance at the man on the ground.
“No problems here, I take it.”
“None that couldn’t be dealt with,” Simon said.
“Then let’s make haste. Covington seems to have an endless supply of thugs and I’ve no idea if we’ve met them all yet.”
Inara saw them from a window: River, Simon, and Book, with Elmira,
hurrying across the front lawn. She herself had been conducting a painstaking search of the first-floor rooms, ever keeping an ear out for bodyguards or servants, to avoid any further run-ins.
It seemed she had been looking in vain. Elmira had been elsewhere.
Inara made her way back to the front door and out into the daylight. She greeted the others with a wave, joining them on the driveway that led towards her shuttle.
“A Companion too?” Elmira said. “Who are you people?”
“Right now,” Book said, “your liberators. And hopefully, in a few minutes, once we’ve made good our escape, we’re going to be the recipients of some crucial intelligence from you. Namely the whereabouts of your bondholder.”
“I can tell you that right now,” Elmira said. “Hunter isn’t on Persephone anymore. He departed last night on his private yacht, after doing some business over in Eavesdown.”
“Do you know where he’s gone?”
“Yes. He was boasting to me about it only yesterday, up there in the hayloft. He’d just been… been using me.” Her mouth downturned in a grimace of disgust.
“You mean abusing,” said Inara.
“Yes, well, same difference. And then he told me he was going away but when he came back he’d…”
“Cut you,” said River. “Cut you till you bled to death, but slow. Days-long slow.”
“Yes,” said Elmira, startled. “His exact words. How do you know he said that? Have you been speaking to him?”
“Never mind how we know,” said Book. “Where is he?”
“He was off to meet up with some associates. Bunch of renegades, I think. One-time Browncoats, now working some new angle. Hunter’s been dealing with them quite some while, providing them with intel and such. It’s what Wong wanted me to find out about, why he had me come back and infiltrate Hunter’s operation.”
“Vigilantes?”
“Yeah, I guess you could call them that.”
By now the group had reached the shuttle. Inara looked back towards the house, half expecting to see pursuers emerging. It seemed that the alarm had yet to be raised.
River climbed aboard first, followed by Simon. Inara went next, extending a helping hand to Elmira. Book was last, and as soon as they were all safely ensconced in the shuttle, Inara darted over to the controls and started the engine cycling.
“So he met the vigilantes in Eavesdown, and then what?” Book said to Elmira, raising his voice above the steadily mounting whine of power coming from the thrusters.
“Then he was going to follow them to their destination. Seems as though they had plans to take some guy captive in Eavesdown, subject him to a trial, and then hang him. They paid Hunter to help them nab the man. That’s what they’ve been doing for quite a while, all across the ’verse. They track down people they believe betrayed the Independent cause in some way or other, run them through a kangaroo court, then execute them.”
Inara’s stomach knotted. Mal…
Over her shoulder she said, “Did you just say ‘execute?’”
“I’m afraid so,” said Elmira. “Hunter’s gone to watch. They invited him along and he accepted. It doesn’t pay to turn down a client’s request, not if you want to work with them again in future. Plus, I imagine he’s curious to see the end result. In case you hadn’t appreciated, he ain’t a nice man. Got a cruel streak in him a mile wide.”
“You sound as though you speak from experience,” said Simon.
She gave him a hard, steady look. “I most certainly do. I can show you the scars, if you like. I’ll say this for Hunter. He’s a sadist but a careful one. Never leaves marks where people’ll see them. But that still means there are plenty of places where he can leave them.”
She began unbuttoning her blouse, until Simon stopped her. Mumbling an apology, he turned away. Point made, she did the buttons back up.
“Now, Elmira,” said Book, “I know you’ve been through a lot, but I want you to be very clear about this. That man you’re talking about, the one the vigilantes are going to kill, is a friend of ours.”
“Oh my God, I’m so very sorry.”
“It’s okay. All I want from you now is where they’ve taken him; wherever Covington is headed. You have to understand how important this is to us.”
The shuttle rose from the ground with a lurch, pitching forward until its nose was almost scraping the dirt. Inara corrected, too preoccupied to worry if their ascent was perfectly smooth or not.
A ricocheting bullet snapped off the shuttle’s hull with a spanggg! To the people inside, it sounded like a mallet blow. Two men were running out of the mansion, toting rifles. The alarm had been raised at last, it would appear. They were both firing at a run, which meant their shooting was far from accurate. Not only that but they must know their rounds would not penetrate the skin of a spacecraft designed with sufficient armoring to protect it from micrometeors and other small colliding objects. Presumably they thought it was better to waste the bullets than have to admit to Covington later that they had done nothing whatsoever to prevent the shuttle taking off.
Inara poured on speed. The shuttle veered away from the mansion in a wide, yawing arc.
“Hades,” Elmira said. “They’re on Hades.”
Kaylee looked for work to occupy her mind. There was no end of that to be found aboard Serenity, but the distraction of a simple, involving task wasn’t always sufficient. As she started lubricating a flanged coupler gasket on the transverse manipulator hose, digging her fingers into a bucket of grease, the cogs in her head resumed their unhappy, circular turning.
After Serenity had been flying for an hour with the cargo-bay door wide open, Kaylee and Jayne had donned spacesuits and gone down to check on the condition of the payload. Exposed to the -270 °C chill of the deep Black, ambient condensation now coated everything in the cargo bay—every surface, every deck plate, bulkhead and piece of machinery—with a shimmering, onionskin-thin layer of frost. It was like being inside a twinkling, multifaceted jewel.
The only objects in the entire place that were clear of ice were the crates of HTX-20 themselves. Their warmth had prevented the frost from forming on them. But a quick scan had shown Kaylee that the explosives within had cooled considerably, almost back to the temperature they’d originally been at when they’d come aboard. It had worked! And that was all the more remarkable an achievement because it was an idea suggested by Jayne Cobb.
Kaylee had closed the cargo-bay door, and atmo had slowly begun hissing back into the ship’s bowels.
Now she wiped the sweat from her brow with the back of her hand, smearing a band of grease across it. She was worried sick about Mal, and would start to sniffle quietly every time she thought about what he might be suffering—the more so when she allowed herself to entertain the notion that he might already be dead and lost to them forever. There was still no word from Book or Inara. Still no update on Mal’s likely whereabouts. And on top of that, Kaylee was afraid that the crew wouldn’t be able to survive this dangerous mission without Mal’s guidance. He had a way of seeing past trouble and finding a path to safety, even in the direst of situations.
Zoë’s voice crackled through the comm. “Kaylee, we need you to recheck the cargo, make sure it’s stopped simmering.”
Kaylee cleaned her hands on a rag and tossed it in the general direction of the trash can. She didn’t really want to go back near the explosives, but at least it was something to do.
After Stuart Deakins left, Mal examined every inch of his cell, searching for a way to escape. If he could find a weakness in a wall or a soft spot in the floor, maybe he could burrow his way out with his heels. He found nothing, just solid, bare rock. Then he tested the mesh door, applying pressure first with his shoulder, then with his feet from a seated position, legs straight out in front of him. He could budge it some, but not nearly as much as he would have liked. Not enough to give him hope that he could force the door out of its frame with brute strength or even bend it slightly out of true
so as to create a gap he might wriggle through.
Accepting the futility of escape, he propped himself in the corner with his elbows bent, his fastened hands in the small of his back, his knees nestled against his chest. He dozed off a few times in this awkward position—he was exhausted—but kept snapping awake. Cramping in his shoulders wouldn’t let him rest for long. He eased out the discomfort as best he could but invariably it returned.
Approaching footfalls echoed down the tunnel. They sounded purposeful. Mal hoped it was Deakins again. Perhaps something of what Mal had said to him had filtered through to the reservoir of good which he was sure still resided in the man. Perhaps Deakins’s conscience had been fully awakened and he was even now coming to set Mal free.
No such luck. The new arrivals were David Zuburi, David’s wife Sonya, and the hatchet-faced woman from before.
“Howdy, David,” Mal said. “Sonya. And you…” He looked at Hatchet Face. “Well, I know you and I have met, but we haven’t been formally introduced.”
“This ain’t no social gathering,” she retorted. “But, for your information, my name’s Harriet Kyle.”
“Miss or Mrs.?”
She kicked him in the ribs. Her boots must have had steel toecaps because it hurt unreasonably.
In strained tones, Mal said, “I’ll take that as a check in the ‘neither of the above’ box.”
“Your trial’s starting,” David said. “Up on your feet.”
Mal struggled upright. “I thought we were waiting on some latecomers.”
“We still are,” Sonya said. “They’re en route and should be here soon, but Toby couldn’t hang on any longer. Nor could anyone else.”
The low tunnel ceiling seemed to press down on Mal’s sore shoulders as he walked between his guards back to the cavern. There, a banjo was playing and people were belting out the Independents’ battle hymn with all the zeal of a platoon of Browncoats after a victory.
Firefly--Big Damn Hero Page 23