Firefly: Big Damn Hero

by James Lovegrove

  “Browncoats, look up to the skies!

  Browncoats, hail the dawn!

  Today will see tyranny

  Dying with the morn.

  “Browncoats, are you weary?

  Browncoats, rise and sing!

  Your time has come, your war is won.

  Victory takes wing.”

  The battle hymn had heartened Mal on many a hopeless-seeming night. On this occasion, his spirits were not lifted. The song seemed more like an accusation than a rallying cry.

  David, Sonya, and Harriet escorted him through the crowd to the old, disused drilling rig and shoved him up the stairs. On the platform beside it, Toby Finn stood with his arms outstretched, almost as though he was conducting the music. Mal kept his face impassive, wondering all the while just how short and one-sided this “trial” was going to be.

  “All right, Browncoats, simmer down,” Toby said, spying Mal and his escort. “The moment we’ve been waiting for is here.”

  The group burst into cheers, raising their hands above their heads, high-fiving each other, applauding.

  Mal looked for Stuart Deakins. Their gazes met. Deakins looked away.

  Toby gestured for the Browncoats to be quiet, and eventually they wore themselves out. Then Mal’s former friend said, “I declare this trial open.”

  A few stray hurrahs were quickly quashed. Aware that eyes were on him, Mal maintained his neutral expression, fixing it on like an iron mask.

  “Here’s how this will work,” Toby said. “I will call witnesses and present evidence against the accused. And the accused will defend himself.” He slid a glance towards Mal. “Since no one volunteered to defend you.”

  “What are the charges?” Mal asked.

  “You are out of turn,” Toby snapped. “You will speak when you are invited to. Do you understand?”

  Mal said nothing.

  “I said, do you understand?”

  “Oh hey, were you inviting me to speak?” said Mal. “I’m really not clear on the protocols. This is all new to me. Never had to defend myself in a trial before.”

  That drew a few chuckles, most of them derisive but one or two amused. Toby narrowed his eyes and wagged a finger. Mal got the message: no playing to the gallery. Although if that would save his life, he’d do it, of course.

  Toby cleared his throat. “Malcolm Reynolds, formerly of the 57th Overlanders, you come before this court facing four major charges. One: high treason against the Independent Planets. Two: murder. Three: sabotage during wartime. And four: collaboration with the enemy.” He counted off the alleged crimes on his fingers. “Three of the charges carry with them the penalty of death. The charge of sabotage carries with it the sentence of life imprisonment without possibility of parole.” He stared intently at Mal. “Do you understand these charges?”

  Since arriving in the mine Mal had not been this physically close to Toby before, and as he held Toby’s gaze, he realized that his former friend was not simply much thinner than he remembered— he was sick. His eyes were bloodshot and his skin was sallow, his cheeks tinted gray. His brown coat hung loose on him. During those years that they had lost touch, what had happened to the strong, fearless fighter Mal had known? Or, for that matter, the puppy-eager youngster?

  Mal realized that this was not the time for flippancy, not now. He needed to step up and tackle Toby head-on, meeting fire with fire, else he was doomed—doomed as a rat in a nest of rattlesnakes.

  “I mean no disrespect, but I do not understand the charges at all,” he said. “This ain’t a true trial. Where’s the jury of my peers? Where’s the judge in robes? Don’t see none of those, just some jumped-up veteran spouting trumped-up charges and a roomful of folks who oughta know better lapping up his words like it’s mother’s milk. Listen to me, Tobias Finn, and listen good. We have history, you and I. We both know it. We both know we did things back on Shadow that neither of us is best proud of. I’m not referring to how we misbehaved and got up the noses of Sheriff Bundy, Deputy Crump and all those other stick-up-their-ass types in Seven Pines Pass. I don’t recollect any of that with anything but fondness; they were good times. It’s Jinny Adare I’m referring to specifically.”

  Something sparked in Toby’s eyes, briefly there, then gone.

  “And if it’s any consolation,” Mal said, “I’m sorry. Truly I am. It was never my intention for anyone to get hurt. Least of all you.”

  Grimness tightened Toby’s face. “The charges have been read,” he said.

  “Toby…”

  “Shut up. I know, Mal. I know.”

  “What do you know?”

  “That you’re guilty. Guilty as sin.”

  “That’s it? You know?”

  “That’s all I need. It’s all any of us here needs.”

  “Is it? ’Cause I look out over this gathering and I don’t see the same certainty on all of the faces.”

  He could tell that Stu Deakins was harboring doubts, if the way Deakins couldn’t meet his eye was anything to go by, not to mention the benevolence he had shown back in the cell. And David Zuburi, who had earlier tried to restrain his wife from hurting Mal, was shuffling his feet. A couple of others seemed less firm in their resolve than the rest. It appeared that there were vigilantes here thinking for themselves and that not everyone was one hundred percent convinced of Mal’s guilt. This could yet evolve into a real trial, despite the presence of a hanging judge.

  “Maybe if we just, y’know, hash this out,” Mal went on, “we might come to some resolution about how things happened from your point of view and from mine. I can’t help but think there has been a massive misunderstanding—”

  “That is not how we are doing this,” Toby shouted, overriding him.

  “Just kill him now!” shouted one of the onlookers. “We know—”

  “You don’t know anything,” Mal shot back, “or I would not be standing here falsely accused. I would have given my life to our cause and there’s people here who can be in no doubt about that.” He found Deakins again and focused in on him. “And I don’t know what has happened in your life since to make you this hard-hearted and bitter, but I guarantee you killing me ain’t going to make you feel better.”

  “You shut the hell up!” Sonya Zuburi shrieked at him. “Do not try to confuse us, Malcolm Reynolds. We have searched the ’verse for you and you will not escape justice.”

  “Justice has not shaken hands with any of us,” Mal said. “In a just ’verse, we would have won.”

  “You saw the Browncoats were going down at Serenity Valley, and you cut your losses and ran, Mal,” Toby said, seizing the reins of the conversation. “Like a rat off a sinking ship.”

  “Huh? I never did anything of the kind.”

  “You did!” Sonya shouted.

  “I challenge you to prove even one iota of that statement to be true,” Mal said, and Toby smiled a sickly, sinister smile—the smile of a fanatic so convinced of his own righteousness that no power in the ’verse would dissuade him from it.

  “Oh, I shall, I shall.” Toby waved a hand out at the crowd. “And you will understand, my fellow Browncoats, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that we’ve got the right man and we will be doing the right thing.”

  The planet Shadow, long ago

  “Mal! Mal! They have Jamie!”

  Jinny Adare came galloping on horseback across the field where Mal was working, breaking up the rocky, hard-packed soil for planting. Mal cut the motor on the rotavator and mopped sweat from his brow with his sleeve.

  “Who has Jamie?” he said.

  Jinny reined in. “Bundy. Crump. They cornered him outside Camacho’s Grain and Feed. Said they’d had a call about someone shoplifting. Jamie was coming out lugging a sack of cobnuts. He said to Bundy he’d paid for them fair and square and if he was a shoplifter he’d steal something way less bulky than a forty-pound bag of horse feed. Bundy and Crump took him away at gunpoint anyway.”

  “Who told you this?”

  “Cat Ca
macho herself. She saw it all, and called me straight away. Bundy’s had a mad-on for Jamie ever since we tried busting Willard Krieger out of jail.”

  “Had a mad-on for all of us,” Mal said, recalling the number of times either Bundy or Crump or both of them had hassled him in the street, at the Silver Stirrup, lots of other places, while he was innocently going about his business. Several times Bundy had baldly stated his desire to run Mal and the other Amigos out of town, or worse. He was itching for some payback after the humiliation of the jailbreak incident and Marla Finn’s thwarting his attempted prosecution of the culprits.

  This campaign of harassment had been going on for months, and all of the Four Amigos had done their best to ride it out, hoping the sheriff and his sidekick would tire of it eventually; but now Bundy seemed to have ratcheted things up a gear.

  “They taken him to the jail?” he said.

  “I don’t know. That’d be the first place to look, I guess.”

  “Okay. Let me get a horse and saddle up…”

  “No time. You can ride with me.”

  Mal heaved himself up behind Jinny, and she spun her horse round and spurred it into motion.

  It was no hardship sitting with his arms around Jinny’s trim waist, her back against his chest, smelling her lavender-scented perfume at close range and a slight but heady tinge of sweat beneath it. Despite the circumstances Mal wished the ride could have lasted longer. He’d had only sporadic contact with the Adares since the jailbreak and practically none at all with Toby. As far as he knew, Jinny and Toby were still an item. But in that moment, feeling this strong, beautiful woman in front of him, so capable, so determined, Mal’s passion for her was rekindled. There was nothing he wanted more in the world—in the ’verse—than Jinny Adare.

  The town jail was locked up. Empty. The sheriff’s office was shut too. Mal and Jinny made inquiries all over town, and eventually they learned that Bundy and Crump had driven out of Seven Pines Pass in their official police hover cruiser, headed towards Sageville on Arroyo Road.

  Mal and Jinny raced in pursuit. They had no idea what the police officers’ plans were for Jamie, but they were sure Bundy and Crump intended no good.

  Four miles out of town they came across the hover cruiser parked by the roadside. Three sets of footprints led away from the vehicle, out into the wilderness.

  “We walk from here,” Mal said, dismounting.

  “Why? Riding’d be faster.”

  “Noisier too. My hunch is it’s better if they don’t hear us coming. We can get the drop on them then.”

  Jinny dismounted too and tethered her horse, then accompanied Mal as he began following the trail of footprints. Sheriff Bundy’s heavier, deeper tread was discernible on the right of the three—the man could do with losing several pounds—and Mal could only assume the trudging set of footprints in the middle were Jamie’s. The two police officers were manhandling Jamie along between them. This had all the hallmarks of a prisoner being walked towards the gallows.

  Suddenly Mal gestured at Jinny to hunker down. He had heard voices up ahead.

  They crept forward on all fours through the sagebrush until they caught sight of Bundy and Crump standing beside a tall mesquite tree. Jamie was with them…

  And he had a noose around his neck.

  Jinny bit back a gasp of horror. “They wouldn’t…”

  Mal hushed her. “They won’t,” he whispered, “not if I have anything to do with it.”

  As they watched, Bundy was jeering at Jamie, whose hands were cuffed behind his back. “This has been a long time coming, kid. Ever since the Finn woman got you off the hook, you and your deadbeat pals have been asking for it. Now the chickens are coming home to roost.”

  “You’re not going to do this, Sheriff,” Jamie said. It wasn’t clear if he was making a prediction or a wish. “You wouldn’t dare. You’re just trying to scare me.”

  “Am I?”

  “Yeah, and just so’s you know, it’s working. I’m scared. Okay? So can we call it off now? You’ve accomplished what you set out to.”

  Crump tugged on the rope, cinching the noose that little bit tighter around Jamie’s neck. The rope was slung over a bough of the mesquite, tied off around the tree’s trunk.

  “Have you got a gun?” Jinny asked Mal.

  “Nope, only a knife. You?”

  “No. Didn’t think to bring one. I was too panicked.”

  “It’s probably for the best. Don’t want to give Bundy and Crump cause to shoot us in ‘self-defense.’ Not that they’d need much excuse, by the looks of things.”

  “What are you going to do? Do you have a plan?”

  “Definitely.”

  “Is it a good one?”

  “Definitely not. Just stay low. When I give the signal, move.”

  “Move where?”

  “I don’t know. Just do something.”

  “Mal?”

  “Yeah?”

  She kissed him. Just once. Lightly, an inch to the side of his lips. It made him feel ten feet tall.

  Mal rose from the sagebrush, waving his arms over his head. “Oh, hi there, Sheriff. Deputy,” he said at the top of his voice. “Fancy bumping into you guys out here in the middle of nowhere.”

  As one, Bundy and Crump turned and drew on him.

  “Whoa,” Mal said, striding out towards them. “Easy, fellas. I’m not packing, as you can see. I’m here to parley. I see that we have what some’d call a good old-fashioned lynching.”

  “What you see,” said Bundy, not lowering his gun, “is the due process of the law. We caught Jamie Adare red-handed, in the commission of an act of thievery. We are well within our rights to sentence and punish him in the manner of our choosing.”

  “Not sure I recall there being a trial.”

  “Not sure I care what you think, Reynolds. You could say my deputy and I are teaching you owlhoots a lesson. We’re fed up to the back teeth with your games and your tomfoolery. I run an orderly town, and I won’t stand for any sort of misbehavior.”

  “And you know what?” Deputy Crump chimed in. “When the Alliance comes and incorporates Shadow into the Union—and it’s gonna happen any day now—you’ll find there’ll be even stricter law enforcement. Those Alliance folks don’t tolerate troublemakers. We’ve seen it on some of the Red Sun planets already, Alliance troops cracking down on anyone as gets too uppity. They call ’em insurgents but we all know they’re just crooks and criminals.”

  “And what do they call that cracking down?” said Bundy. “They call it a ‘police action.’ So we, as police ourselves, are only emulating their example. Starting with you miscreants.”

  Mal shrugged. “I tell you, Sheriff, I’d already been giving thought to joining up with the Independents. Seems as though you’ve just pushed me a few steps further in that direction. But let’s not bring politics into this. Let’s keep things strictly personal. How’s about this? You take that there noose off of Jamie, then we all shake hands and walk away, no harm, no foul.”

  “Or how’s about I just plant a bullet in you right now?” said Bundy. “On account of you’re committing an obstruction of justice. What do you say, Orville? Reckon that’d fly?”

  “Reckon it’d fly right nicely,” said Crump.

  “Better still, you can halt there, Reynolds, exactly where you are. Don’t come a step nearer.”

  Mal did as bidden, in the full knowledge that either Bundy or Crump would drill a hole in him if he disobeyed. He was now within ten paces of the mesquite tree, and somewhat closer to Crump than to Bundy.

  “Good boy,” said Bundy. “Stay put, and you can watch your pal Jamie dangle, knowing there ain’t a thing you can do about it. Knowing, too, that it’ll be your turn next.”

  Jamie cast Mal a frantic look. Both of them had come to the same realization: Bundy and Crump were not kidding around; this was not all just some piece of theater. They were going to go through with the hanging. Because they could. Because they were the law. Because
the prospect of war in the ’verse, which over the past few weeks had become less of a possibility and more of a cast-iron certainty, seemed to have given them the courage to act as intemperately and self-indulgently as they liked. Because when chaos loomed, reason and accountability went out of the window.

  Behind his back, Mal flapped his hand at Jinny. He trusted she would interpret the gesture correctly. He was telling her to get out of there. Nothing was to be gained by her remaining. He and Jamie were as good as dead. No point her making it three for three.

  In the event, the vagueness of his plan—the nonexistence of it, really—worked against him. Jinny, instead of fleeing, stood up out of the sagebrush.

  “Well, well, well,” said Bundy, pushing his wide-brimmed hat back on his head with the barrel of his pistol. “Lookee here. Got the whole gang, just about, apart from the Finn brat. Now we got us a proper audience. Ain’t no one going to be more upset about Jamie Adare’s neck getting stretched than his kid sister.”

  “Please, Sheriff Bundy, I’m begging you,” Jinny said. “Let him go.”

  “You got something you wanna bargain with, girl?” Bundy’s leer made it patently obvious what he was hinting at. “’Cause tempting though that’d be, I think I’d much rather watch you watch your brother die. Talk about satisfying. Orville? I’ll keep my gun trained on these two. You set about doing what needs to be done.”

  Deputy Crump holstered his sidearm and unlashed the rope from the tree trunk. Then he took the strain and started to pull, using the trunk like a pulley to mitigate the weight on the other end of the rope. Jamie’s feet left the ground. His legs kicked. The noose tightened and he began making horrendous choking, gargling noises. His face rapidly purpled.

  Mal knew he had one shot at this. He might die as a consequence. He might die even before he was able to achieve what he was setting out to do. But either of those fates was better than allowing Bundy and Crump to get away, unopposed, with what was unarguably cold-blooded murder.

  He whisked his knife from its sheath and slung it through the air.

  The blade cleaved clean through the rope, inches above Jamie’s head.