Firefly--Life Signs

by James Lovegrove

  “An asshole who’s right.”

  “Still an asshole.”

  Zoë let her shoulders slump. “Okay, well, we are where we are.” Her tone was pragmatic. “There’s no great advantage in staying put, so we might as well do as Mal says and move on. As far as carrying food’s concerned, best thing for it is to make a travois. We can do that using branches lashed together with strips of bark.”

  She charged Jayne, Simon and Meadowlark with gathering those items. The branches, she told them, needed to be the straightest they could find.

  As they set about their task, she leaned in close to Mal.

  “Sir.”

  “This an apology?”

  “What do you think?”

  “From the looks of you, I’m figurin’ not.”

  “My respect for you goes back a long ways, Mal. I’ve always trusted in your leadership. But so help me, you ever pull a dick move like that again, you will regret it.”

  Mal touched his shoulder gingerly. “I already am. Please understand, Zoë. I only did what I had to.”

  “That’s just it. What you had to, and to hell with the rest of us. Inara dying is bad enough, but if one of us dies here on Atata because Malcolm Reynolds is too stubborn to see reason…”

  “Nobody’s dying on Atata.”

  “Let’s damn well hope not.”

  She turned to go and help the others. Mal caught her by the arm.

  “Zoë, you remember what General Cole said about Serenity Valley?”

  “I remember, when he was being tried for war crimes, he made out as though we’d have won if only we’d fought harder.”

  “Cole was one of the few Browncoat brass who didn’t want to surrender.”

  “I’ll give him that. Makes him one of the few who didn’t deserve to face an Alliance firing squad.”

  “But what he said about Serenity Valley, it’s stuck with me ever since. ‘When a battle seems unwinnable, a soldier has two choices: to fight on, or to accept the inevitable. Often the two are hard to tell apart.’ And it applies here.”

  “Does it, Mal?” said Zoë. “’Cause if you still can’t tell the difference, maybe you need to take a long, hard look at yourself.”

  So saying, she strode off.

  Mal watched her go, and only then, when no one was looking, did his face soften. Where his expression had been truculent before, now it was rueful. Zoë’s words had hit home.

  * * *

  Unbeknownst to Mal, or to any of the others, they were being observed.

  Eyes peered out at them from the depths of the forest.

  Orange-red eyes set above pointed snouts.

  Snouts belonging to large, lupine bodies with fur the color of woodsmoke.

  The terrafreak wolves had caught up.

  For several minutes, crouching low to the ground, their ears pricked, the wolves had watched the pack of humans. The giant animal the humans had been riding on had come to a halt and appeared dead. The wolves had seen tensions within this other pack of creatures boil over and a snarling, yapping fight ensue between two of them.

  Now, as the humans went about their strange foraging activity, the wolves continued to watch.

  Hungrily they licked their chops and bided their time.

  The patriarch and matriarch would together choose the moment to attack.

  And when it happened, the slaughter would be swift and merciless and glorious.

  45

  Ornery Annie exited Hellfreeze with a look on her face that could have soured milk.

  She wasn’t mad at Mr. O’Bannon.

  She wasn’t even mad at Zoë.

  She was mad at herself.

  Hungover, too. Excruciatingly so. Her head felt split open like someone had taken an ax to it.

  But that just made her madder.

  Zoë had played her, all right. Had acted like they were friends. Had said things like, “I reckon that a gal like you might want to have a gal like me keeping the peace alongside her.” Had got Annie drunk. And Annie had gone and told her about Mr. O’Bannon and Dr. Weng. Blurted it all out.

  Annie prided herself on being nobody’s fool, but this time she had dropped her guard. She had let herself down. Worse, she had let Mr. O’Bannon down.

  Annie loved Mr. O’Bannon. She loved him like a father. Her own father had been a loser and a deadbeat, with a mean streak a mile wide. She wouldn’t have spit on him if he’d been on fire. Mr. O’Bannon, on the other hand, although he could be strict, was never unjust. Annie was happy to serve under him, and hated that he was dying.

  Mr. O’Bannon didn’t seem to know that it was Annie who’d spilled the beans about Dr. Weng to Zoë. It wasn’t a betrayal, as such, but it was careless, unworthy of her, and she bitterly regretted it. The more so since he had selected her to accompany him off-planet as his personal guardian.

  This spurred her. She was going to run down two-faced Zoë and her pals, and she was going to make certain they learned what it meant to abuse Mr. O’Bannon’s hospitality and trust. Her boss may have specified that one or two of them had to be kept alive, but that still left some who didn’t have to—and one of those could, and should, be Zoë. Mr. O’Bannon must never find out who had told them about Dr. Weng. Annie could not afford the truth getting back to him. Zoë had to die.

  As she strode out through the snow, Annie cast a look back at her fellow Regulators. There were Michael Pale Horse and Otis, close behind her. Both of them were reliable, dependable. They would do as they were told.

  Next came Cleavon. Poor addle-brained Cleavon, dumb as a box of rocks. But he, too, was a good follower of orders.

  Pops was maybe not so easy to boss around. He was quick-witted and sly. Needed keeping an eye on.

  And then there were the twins, Belinda and Matilda Hobhouse, who were taking up the rear of their little procession. They hardly spoke with anyone else, those two. Kept themselves to themselves, like they were living in their own shared world, a private place nobody else could enter. They had ferrety little faces, and their fingernails were filed to sharp points, like talons. They went around hunched over all the time, more like they were skulking than walking, and often they tittered to each other, for no apparent reason.

  Annie had never been quite clear what Mr. O’Bannon saw in the Hobhouse twins, why he thought they deserved to be Regulators. Other than, maybe, they were creepy as heck and you didn’t want to have anything to do with them, so you kept your head down and minded your own business when they were around. They were on Atata because they’d murdered the extended family who lived next door. Using their bare hands, they had slaughtered them all, from the grandparents down to a couple of very young kids. They’d even killed the pet dog. All because the family had been having a big birthday get-together and had become rowdy, and this had annoyed them. And after the massacre Belinda and Matilda had danced barefoot in the blood that covered the floorboards, singing a made-up song of their own.

  Which was all the more reason to toe the line in their presence. You didn’t want it to be your blood they danced in next.

  These six were Annie’s to command now.

  But it didn’t hurt to reinforce the point from the outset.

  “Pick it up, you two,” she said to the twins straggling at the back. “This ain’t a job for dawdlers.”

  Belinda and Matilda Hobhouse shared a glance, and Annie could easily imagine the unspoken message passing between them, something along the lines of Shall we kill her or not? Then they turned back to look at her and nodded in unison, before jogging to come alongside Pops. The way the pair of them mirrored each other’s actions was downright unnerving, and Annie shivered a little inside her thermal gear.

  At least the tracks left by the Slugger were clear. There was no doubting where the impostors had gone. The marks of the caterpillar treads were like two unending ladders in the snow, flanking the parallel grooves dug by the trailer’s closer-spaced skis.

  “We can’t overtake a Slugger on foot,” Otis
observed. “Not unless we run, and nobody’s able to run for long in snow this thick.”

  “They’ll have to halt sometime to rest,” Annie said. “Can’t just keep driving and driving.”

  “Can if they take it in turns at the controls.”

  “Otis, ’less you’ve got something useful to say, don’t say nothing.”

  “It’s just… I don’t want the same thing to happen this time as happened last time.”

  “Then you’d better keep walking, hadn’t you?” Annie said curtly, and accelerated her own pace to a brisk semi-trot.

  The others emulated her, and that was a good sign. She was leading by example and they were following.

  The group entered the forest, and Annie drew some comfort from the fact that a Slugger’s top speed would be significantly reduced when you had to steer a course around trees all the time. Despite the considerable lead already built up by Zoë and company, the Regulators only had to keep doggedly pursuing them and they would have them in sight soon enough.

  Annie believed this.

  She had to.

  46

  Wash’s first word as he regained consciousness was “Ouch.”

  This was followed by a groan, another “Ouch,” and a succession of oaths.

  Dà xiàng bào zhà shì de lā dù zi! He had the mother of all migraines.

  He pressed a hand to his head and snatched it away again because it made the pain sharper and fiercer. He had felt coarse-textured fabric beneath his palm. Bandages. So, not a migraine. Worse.

  He searched his memory, piecing things together. He recalled the missile attack on Serenity. Playing a game of chicken with IAV Constant Vigilance. The explosion. He couldn’t recall actually being injured but obviously that was what had happened. Serenity must have taken a hit, and her pilot had been collateral damage.

  Wash blinked around. Everything was blurry and doubled. He could just about make out that he was in the infirmary, lying on the med couch. He tried to sit up. The effort sparked fresh pain, more intense than ever, like a lightning bolt zigzagging down through his brain into his spine. He collapsed back onto the couch, dizzy and nauseated. The pain gradually abated from magnesium-flare whiteness to mere lava-hot redness.

  A little while later, a face appeared in his field of vision. It was a fuzzy pale blob but Wash could tell it belonged to River Tam. It bobbed around in front of him like a will-o’-the-wisp.

  “Wash.” River’s voice was faint and echoey as though reaching him from the far end of a drainpipe. “You’re back with us.”

  “River.” Wash’s own voice reverberated through his brain like a drill. “You okay? And Kaylee?”

  “We’re both fine.”

  “Serenity?”

  “She’s fine too. ’Least, she will be once Kaylee gets done fixing her.”

  “Where are we? Where’s that Alliance corvette?”

  “We’re safe. And secret. For now.”

  “I feel like a steaming pile of gŏu shĭ. Did something hit me?”

  “It rained indoors. Hard.”

  “Huh?”

  River mimed an object dropping onto her head, knocking her unconscious. She did it a few times, ever more emphatically, until Wash latched on.

  “A piece… of the bridge’s ceiling… fell on me? Yeah?”

  She put her finger on her nose and nodded. “Yeppity-yep.”

  “Makes sense,” said Wash. “And I’m guessing we haven’t heard from Mal and the others yet.”

  “Noppity-nope.”

  “Well, I’m ready to fly us down to grab them when we need to.”

  “I don’t think so, Mr. Washburne,” River said in a singsong tone. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

  Wash peered up at her, squinting hard. However much he tried, he couldn’t get his eyesight to settle down. Everything shimmered and swam, as though he was underwater.

  “Uh, three?” he guessed.

  “Wrong. None.”

  “That was going to be my next answer.”

  “No, it wasn’t,” River said with solemn certainty. “Looking at you right now, do you know what I see?”

  “A monkey on a unicorn, waving a cavalry saber?” Wash thought this was a pretty safe guess, given who he was talking to.

  “Not at this precise moment. And anyway it’s a mermaid, not a monkey.”

  “What then? Tell me.”

  “I see someone not even fit to be in charge of a tricycle.”

  Wash couldn’t deny the truth of this. He could barely see, let alone stand. “So who’s going to go fetch the guys off Atata if they need us?”

  River’s hand shot up, like a schoolkid in class. “Ooh, I know the answer to that one.”

  “Yes, River? Who?”

  “You. But only if you’re well enough.”

  “Right. But what if I’m not well enough?”

  River’s hand shot up again.

  “Yes, River?” said Wash.

  “Me.”

  “You?”

  “Yes. Me. I got us away from Atata, didn’t I?”

  “No way. You?”

  “Who else do you think did it?”

  Wash frowned. Even frowning hurt. “I guess… I’m not sure. It was really you?”

  “It was,” River said. “And I can get us back there, in case you can’t. Promise I can.”

  It was difficult for Wash, with his reeling, aching brain, to process what River was saying. “You can…?”

  “Just rest,” River told him. “Relax.”

  Wash slumped back onto the med couch, too sick and in too much pain to keep talking.

  Rest?

  He could do that.

  But relax?

  He wasn’t so sure.

  Zoë was down on Atata, along with Mal, Jayne and Simon, and she was counting on him for evac. He’d had no idea that River could fly Serenity and it wasn’t clear how skilled she was as a pilot. Returning to the planet would require dodging the IAV corvettes, and that was a feat Wash himself would find tricky to pull off, never mind an untested flyer like River. And then there was navigating, and landing…

  He could only hope he recovered in time to do the job.

  47

  River quit the infirmary and headed aft to the engine room.

  Kaylee had been up all night, toiling away. River had helped her out as best she could, while also checking on Wash intermittently and monitoring for Alliance ship proximity on the bridge. Kaylee, however, had done the bulk of the repair work, and she looked exhausted. The dark circles beneath her eyes merged with the grease smudges that covered the rest of her face.

  “How soon?” River inquired.

  “Till Serenity’s ready and raring to go again?” Kaylee glanced around. The floor was littered with engine parts. “Can’t say. I’ve patched up what needs patching up. Now it’s a case of putting it all back together. Maybe another four, five hours?”

  “You should take a break.”

  “I am pretty bushed, but it ain’t nothing strong coffee can’t fix. How’s Wash doing?”

  “He’s awake now, but his brain is all…” River rotated a forefinger in the air. “Spin cycle. And you.” She lowered the finger and pointed it at Kaylee. “I poke you in the chest, you’d fall over. You need to take a time out. Grab some shuteye.”

  Kaylee turned her gaze towards her rainbow hammock. A sudden, enormous yawn overcame her.

  “Maybe a few minutes,” she said. “No more’n half an hour. Wake me up after that, promise?”

  “Promise,” said River, crossing her heart.

  Kaylee staggered over to the hammock, crawled into it and was asleep in seconds.

  River went forward to the bridge. She stepped over the fallen section of steel cladding that had knocked out Wash and plumped herself down in the pilot’s chair. The mid-range scanner showed that two of the four Alliance corvettes patrolling Atata had left their prescribed mission routes and were roving away from the prison planet. They were conducting a grid-patte
rn sweep of the immediate area, moving further and further out in a widening spiral. The search was methodical, thorough, painstaking. River thought of two lionesses prowling the veldt, hunting for zebra. It was only a matter of time before the corvettes caught the scent and homed in.

  Serenity might be hard to distinguish amidst the wreck of the Leviathan-class freighter but she wasn’t completely invisible. There was every chance one or other of the Alliance vessels might spot her if they came close enough. Then she would be a sitting duck.

  Worried though she was for herself, River was even more worried for Simon. Simon looked after her, it was true, but equally she looked after Simon. More and more River was realizing that her big brother needed protecting as much as she herself did, and that she was capable of providing that protection. She wished she could be with him right now, down on Atata. She had a feeling— not quite an intuition, more like a nagging certainty—that he was in danger. Some kind of predator was close by him, dogging his footsteps, eager for his death. He wasn’t defenseless, she knew. He was with Mal, Zoë and Jayne, all of them tough, resilient and resourceful individuals. None of them, though, would ever fight on his behalf as fiercely as she, River, would. None of them loved him so much they would be willing to die for him.

  “Be safe, Simon,” River whispered.

  48

  Simon was cold. Colder than cold. Despite the thermal outerwear, his limbs were growing numb and starting to seize up. He could scarcely feel his fingers anymore. His feet were like lumps of frozen concrete.

  The thin shafts of sunlight that speared down between the trees brought some respite—moments of relative warmth—but they were few and far between. Mostly there was bluish dismal shade, and the constant trudge through shin-deep snow, not to mention hidden tree roots lurking within the snow, keen to trip you up.

  To his rear, at a distance of some several yards, were Zoë and Jayne, a pair of sullen presences. Meadowlark Deane was next to him, while up ahead, Mal pulled the travois. The makeshift framework of branches and bark juddered behind him. With its strapped-in cargo of cans it must have weighed a couple of hundred pounds, and the effort of lugging it along was clearly immense. Then there was the stress it must be putting on Mal’s traumatized ribs, an added impediment. Yet still Mal persevered. Hands clamped around the ends of the two main struts, he strained forward, back bent, head down, like some sort of human packhorse.