Everyone was too preoccupied to notice her and Jayne’s arrival.
“Jayne?”
“Yeah.”
“Shoot the rope.”
“Why not cut it?”
“There’s a crowd of people between us and Mal. They’ll stop us before we even get close. There’s no time. No other option. Shoot the rope.”
“That’s a hell of a tall order. Fifty yards. Dim light. Rope’s shiftin’ about.”
“Just gorramn do it!”
Jayne braced his legs apart and raised Vera to his shoulder, squinting as he peered down the rifle’s sights. He switched from heavy-caliber cartridge to light, for greater accuracy. He took a breath and let it out slowly, forefinger tightening on the trigger.
If anyone could make the shot, Zoë said to herself, it was Jayne Cobb.
BLAM!!!
Vera roared.
The bullet struck the rope about ten inches above Mal’s head.
“Damn!” Jayne growled.
He had nicked the rope rather than severed it. He readjusted his aim.
In the meantime, a couple of dozen faces had turned his and Zoë’s way. The rifle report had startled the crowd. Among them Zoë saw Harlow in his familiar—and still fashion-disastrous—yellow duster. Harlow here? And he was with Hunter Covington.
Bastard. He’d lied to her through his teeth. All along, he’d known exactly who Covington was. Her hand gripped her Mare’s Leg hard. There was going to be a reckoning between him and her.
Jayne was lining up a second shot. Mal looked as though he was just about ready to expire. He was going limp. If Jayne didn’t cut the rope this time, Mal was dead.
“Don’t let me down, girl,” Jayne muttered to his gun.
Vera roared again.
The rope snapped and Mal collapsed to the ground.
A gaunt little man up on the platform yelled “No!”
The crowd were also aghast, and now, as one, they surged towards Zoë and Jayne, the interlopers who had deprived them of their fun.
Zoë held the remote detonator switch aloft, while Jayne swiveled Vera to and fro in front of the Browncoats menacingly.
“Everybody,” she said, “stop. Know what this is in my hand? Remote detonator. Know what it’s connected up to? A crate of HTX-20. A crate that has been offloaded from my ship into the entrance to this mine. It’s sitting there right now, and all I have to do is let go of this here button, and boom! Cave-in. We performed a ground radar survey as we came in, mapping the mine layout. There’s only one way in or out, and that’s through that tunnel. The HTX-20 brings the roof down, and we’re all stuck here from now till doomsday. I am not kidding.”
The Browncoat vigilantes paused, studying her face. To them, she really didn’t look as though she was kidding.
“Shoot her!” the man on the platform cried. “One of you, shoot the bitch!”
Guns were drawn.
“Yeah, about that,” Zoë said unflappably. “If you look closely, you’ll see it’s a dead man’s switch. I told you already, all I have to do is let go of the button. Anybody shoots me, guess what? I’ll be letting go for damn sure.”
“She will,” Jayne said. “And in case you were wondering, this here’s a Callahan full-bore auto-lock. A heavy-caliber round from this bad boy hits you anywhere, even if it misses vital organs the shock of the impact’ll still kill you. So you’ve got to ask yourself one question: ‘Am I gonna be stupid enough to take the risk?’”
“Now,” said Zoë, “somebody—I don’t much care who—is going to walk over to my friend there and loosen that rope off of him.”
She waited for a volunteer.
“Someone’s got to do it,” she said. “Mood I’m in right now, I’m more than happy just to blow that high-explosive and have done with it. You people call yourselves Browncoats? This isn’t how Browncoats act. I was one, and I’m ashamed even to be around you. Trapping you all in this mine, that’d be worthwhile even if I’m stuck along with you.”
A man raised a hand. “I’ll do it.”
Zoë frowned. “Deakins? That you?”
“Sure is, Miz Alleyne.”
“Been a while. You’re with these people? I’d have thought better of you.”
“To be honest, Corp, I’d have thought better of myself. I’ll free him.”
“Don’t you do it, Stuart Deakins,” the man on the platform yelled. “Don’t you dare.”
“Oh, hush your squawking, Toby Finn,” Deakins said. “We’ve heard enough from you. If Zoë Alleyne thinks Mal Reynolds is worth rescuing—and worth putting her own ass on the line for, what’s more—then that settles it as far as I’m concerned. Mal ain’t guilty of what you’re accusing him of. The man deserves to go free.”
Toby Finn yanked a gun from his holster. “Not another step, Deakins. I’m telling you.”
Jayne swung Vera so that the gaunt little guy, evidently the ringleader of the vigilantes, was lined up in the reticle of his gunsight. “Want I should take him out, Zoë?”
“Not if you don’t have to,” Zoë replied. “But he so much as twitches his trigger finger…”
“Gotcha.”
Stuart Deakins shoulder-barged his way through the sullen crowd and knelt beside Mal. Mal lay so still that Zoë thought he must be dead. After all this, had everything been in vain? She choked back the fear. Mal was okay. Surely he was okay.
Deakins untied the noose, then rolled Mal over onto his back. Someone else Zoë recognized, David Zuburi, joined him. Together the two men conferred, then Deakins began to administer CPR to Mal, alternately pumping his chest and blowing into his mouth.
Zoë watched, her grip on the detonator switch growing slick.
Outside the mine entrance, Wash drove the forklift back towards Serenity. He had just deposited—verrry carefully—a single crate of HTX-20 roughly ten yards inside.
Kaylee was standing on the cargo-bay ramp. She looked jumpy, on edge, more so than previously.
“Why the face?” Wash asked as he braked to a halt.
“We need to offload the other four crates.”
“What?”
Kaylee held up a scanner. “Just taken some fresh readings. The explosives are heating up faster than ever. They’re going critical, and there ain’t nothing I can think of to do to retard or reverse the process. I’d say we have maybe ten, fifteen minutes before they blow.”
“Fèi fèi de pì yăn. You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Wish I were. Badger sure handed us a zhēng qì de gōu shī duī. Wouldn’t surprise me if he did it on purpose.”
“What for? To piss us off? If so, mission accomplished. I’m pissed off. But I’m not sure even Badger would be that much of a crap-heel, not when there’s money involved. Okay now, let’s see what our options are.”
Wash surveyed the area. The mine entrance had been dug into a mountainside. Serenity and the other three ships were positioned on the only level space available, a broad, windswept ledge with a sheer crag towering above and a steep-sided base descending to a barren plain below. There wasn’t room to deposit the crates on the ledge a safe distance away. If they went off there, all four ships would be damaged, probably destroyed, and everyone would be stranded on Hades. But if he tipped them over the edge, chances were they would explode when they hit the bottom; HTX-20 did not like nasty surprises, after all. That, in turn, might trigger a rockslide, then there’d be a tangled mess of rubble and no-longer-spaceworthy ship at the foot of the mountain.
“No alternative,” he said. “The other four crates have to go inside the mine entrance alongside the fifth.”
“That’s insane.”
“It’s that or we lose Serenity, the shuttle, the yacht, and that Komodo heap of junk.”
“We only put the one crate there in the first place in case somebody calls Zoë’s bluff and goes to check that she can seal them inside if she wants to, like she’s threatening,” Kaylee said. “It’s all a ruse, right? That’s the plan. She’s got t
he detonator switch only as a prop. In fact, thinking about it, we should get that crate out of the mine right now, in case it blows up of its own accord. We shouldn’t be putting another four of the gorramn things in there.”
“If we don’t, we all die,” said Wash. “If we do, there’s a chance Zoë and Jayne can still get back out, ideally with Mal, before all the crates go up. I don’t like it any more than you do, Kaylee, but I don’t see any other option.”
Kaylee gnawed her lower lip, then slowly, reluctantly nodded. “They won’t have long. They don’t hurry, they’re dead.”
“And so are we,” said Wash, gunning the forklift’s motor.
Everything was dark where Mal was. And warm. And weirdly cozy. A nice place. He wanted to stay there.
Then there was a stab of pain. Light flooded in. He heaved for breath.
There were a man’s lips on his.
“Wait, wait, wait!” Mal yelped, sitting bolt upright. “Stu? What the hell, pardner?”
Stuart Deakins sat back on his haunches. “You’re back, Mal. Thank God. Thought for a moment there we’d lost you.”
Mal’s throat felt as though it was lined with sandpaper. To speak, even just to breathe, hurt. His head seemed to be attached to the rest of him by a slender thread. Yet he was alive. Sweet Mary Mother of Jesus, he was alive!
He blinked around. There was David Zuburi. There was Hunter Covington. There was Yellow Duster. There were all the Browncoats, looking somewhat disgruntled. No sign of Toby Finn, though.
And Zoë. Jayne. They were there too?
“Sir,” Zoë said across the cavern. “Glad to have you back.”
“Me too. What kept you guys?”
“Oh, you know. This and that.”
“Stu, you just resuscitate me?”
“I did.”
“That would explain the kissing. Leastways, I hope it does.”
“I owed you one for you saving my ass at New Kasimir,” Deakins said. “It was the least I could do.”
“Next time, maybe you can show your gratitude in a less intimate manner.”
Deakins smiled. “Sure will. Weren’t no picnic for me either. You ain’t shaved lately and you’re kinda bristly.”
“Snake!” someone yelled. “Defector! Gorramn Judas!”
Next thing Mal knew, Donovan Philips was rushing towards them. He had Mal’s Liberty Hammer out, leveled it at Stuart Deakins, and fired.
The top of Deakins’s head vanished in a crimson mist. Deakins slumped sideways, nothing on his face but a look of utter incomprehension.
Mal moved faster than a man just brought back from the brink of death might reasonably be expected to. He sprang at Philips, grabbing his gun hand. The pair of them grappled, each trying to gain mastery of the weapon. Philips was at that moment the stronger of the two. He hadn’t just been hanged. Mal, however, had blinding, all-consuming fury on his side. Stuart Deakins had proved himself to be a decent human being after all, and this scum-sucking son of a bitch had shot him from behind like the coward he was.
All at once the Liberty Hammer was in Mal’s hand. He didn’t hesitate. Philips’s scar-ridden face collapsed into terror. He held up his hands in surrender, but Mal was not in a merciful mood. He shot point-blank at the heart, and Donovan Philips was dead before he hit the ground.
After that, consternation reigned. The Browncoat vigilantes bellowed in shock and disapproval. They seemed to have forgotten all about Zoë and the detonator, until she reminded them by firing her Mare’s Leg twice at the ceiling. That brought a measure of calm to the proceedings.
“Just a little reminder there,” she said. “Now you are going to let the three of us leave. You are not going to get in our way. To reiterate: I am quite prepared to let go of this switch at any time. Don’t anyone give me a reason to— Sir?”
Mal was on his feet and moving away from the drilling rig, but not towards Zoë and Jayne.
Toby Finn was gone. He had lit out while Mal was unconscious. There was a second tunnel leading out from the cavern, not towards the entrance but in the opposite direction, presumably deeper underground. Toby could only have disappeared down there.
Mal was determined to catch up to him. He and Toby needed to have words.
“Sir!” Zoë hollered behind him, but Mal paid her no heed. He headed off down the tunnel, stumbling on its rugged, uneven rock floor.
“Toby!” he called out. “Toby, I just want to talk.”
Illumination from the cavern diminished the further he ventured in. Soon he was walking more or less blind, groping his way with one hand held out in front of him, the Liberty Hammer in his other hand.
“Toby? Hey, pal, stop runnin’. We can sort things out. We were two of the Four Amigos once. Don’t see why we can’t be that way again.” The gun Mal was carrying somewhat gave the lie to what he was saying. Truth was, he would just as happily shoot Toby dead as reconcile with him. Much depended on how Toby acted now. If he showed even the tiniest amount of remorse or contrition, Mal might—just might, mind—be able to find it in his heart to forgive him. “Come on, ol’ buddy. Why don’t you—?”
If his brain hadn’t still been fogged from the near-hanging, he might have seen the blow coming; might have been able to duck out of the way. As it was, something came out of nowhere and slammed into his face, knocking him flat. The Liberty Hammer flew from his grasp, skidding across the tunnel floor. His head reeled. He had been slugged with the butt of a pistol. He gasped for air.
“No, Mal,” said Toby, a black silhouette in the dimness. “We can’t be friends again. There can’t be any Four Amigos again because you ruined it.”
A gun barrel loomed in Mal’s vision. His own gun lay several yards away, well out of easy reach.
“By killing Jinny?” Mal said hoarsely. “But it wasn’t anything to do with me. You must know that. Those homing beacons were for me and her alone.”
“Yes! And I know why!” Toby was all but screaming. “I know about you and Jinny. I knew just what you were doing behind my back.”
Mal fumbled for words. “But… What? You knew? But why didn’t you…?”
“Say anything at the time? How could I, Mal? It was almost over between Jinny and me. I could feel it, but I didn’t want it to end. Dammit, I was going to marry that woman. I had it all planned out. But I was losing her, and I began to notice little things, little clues that suggested maybe her heart belonged to someone else. You. Like, she would pause whenever your name came up in conversation. Sometimes she would avoid talking about you, steerin’ around the subject like it was a boulder in the road. Before then, her face used to light up when you were mentioned, and suddenly it started darkening instead. I wasn’t sure about it. I couldn’t be certain she was cheating on me with you. But then, why wouldn’t she be? You were the dashing Mal Reynolds, and me? I was just lowly little Toby Finn, not fit to tie the bootlaces of a girl like Jinny Adare. I’d lucked into becoming her boyfriend, but it was clear you and she were a better fit.”
“Toby, I’m sorry,” Mal said. “Truly I am.”
“You can spare me the apologies. They don’t mean squat.”
“Maybe you could have said something at the time. Maybe we could have figured it out.”
“I didn’t know for certain,” Toby said, “and I was scared to raise the topic in case I was wrong. It wasn’t until Jinny died and I saw how you were about that, how cut up, that I realized I’d been right. Even then, I’d have forgiven you, in time. But the war came and we went our separate ways, until Hera, until that day I went to your tent and found the second beacon. That’s when everything clicked into place.”
“All of this,” Mal said, piecing things together, “kidnapping me, trying me, hanging me—this isn’t about me betraying the Independent cause. It never was. You know I didn’t. That stuff about the beacons, that was just for the Browncoats. A smokescreen. This is all about revenge, isn’t it?”
Toby seemed as though he was going to deny it, then shook his head r
uefully. “Yeah. Not that I don’t believe in what me and these other Browncoats have been doing. Rounding up true traitors and bringing them to justice. It’s been a necessary evil. But you and me, Mal, this one’s personal. I’ve been waitin’ for this a long time. Only now did the stars align and everything come together.”
“You got the rest of them to go along with it, even though you know the case against me was as flimsy as rice paper.”
“Wasn’t difficult. They’re disgruntled, easily led. They’ve been at this so long, they’ve begun to lose sight of why. They just love the blaming and the accusing and the executing. Makes them feel good about themselves, and you’ve seen them. Do those look to you like people who’ve many reasons to feel good about themselves? Some of ’em needed more talking round than others, but we got there in the end. We paid Hunter Covington just about every piece of platinum we could scrape together in order to get a lead on you. Seemed a fair price. I even plundered my own savings, such as they were. Don’t have a single coin left to my name.”
“Yeah, but wasn’t what you were doing dangerous to you? Mightn’t it have backfired if the others had realized this thing was just a whole dog-and-pony show?”
“If so, what do I care?” Toby said with a hapless shrug. “My time’s running out anyway.”
Mal’s eyesight was adjusting to the gloom. Toby’s face looked pallid and haggard, a wreck of its old self.
“You ain’t well, are you?” Mal said. “You’re seriously sick. What is it? Damplung? Wilson’s palsy?”
“Cancer. The terminal kind. All over. The whole meal, soup to nuts.”
“Toby…”
“Got it ’cause of my spacesuit’s shielding failing at Sturges, most likely. Docs reckon I must’ve received a dose of cosmic radiation, not enough to fry me on the spot but enough to send a few internal organs gradually haywire. The war’s finally catching up with me, after all these years. I’m a dead man walking, but at least I finally got to see you paying the penalty for what you did to me.”
Firefly: Big Damn Hero Page 28