by Steven Brust
Zoë poked him in the back with her carbine.
Mal took his lack of reply for agreement.
They were still in deep woods when the sun set. They kept listening for buzzboats or horses, but they heard only the sounds of whatever wildlife had been imported to make the woods seem natural.
Every once in a while, he thought as he walked, I get tired of sounding confident when I ain’t. It’s almost like lying to them, making it seem like I know what exactly I’m doing, when all I have is an idea that’s just a bit better than any other idea. And it doesn’t help that Zoë knows damned well what I’m doing, and goes along with it anyway; almost makes it worse.
He mentally shook himself. What’s going on with me? Why am I doing this now?
“Damn this whole world,” said Zoë. “I hate being on it, I hate marching on it, I hate—”
Mal looked at her.
“Sorry, sir.”
“No, it’s just I was having those same thoughts.”
It was full dark, so they had to slow down a bit; the light from two of the moons, one of them almost full, was just barely enough to keep them from walking into trees. They stopped from time to time to check the direction, and to listen.
“I think we’re getting close,” said Zoë. Jayne, blessedly, didn’t say anything.
“Once we leave the woods, we have about a quarter of a mile to cross. We go slow and steady, like we belong. Once we hit town, we head to that warehouse, and hope the fed is still there. Keep to the shadows. I doubt they’re looking for us in town, but be careful.”
He felt Zoë nod, and heard Jayne grunt, and they moved forward. The woods ended abruptly, leaving them on rocky, broken hills that reminded him of other parts of this same world. Memories wanted to flood him; he focused on the task at hand.
Gorram this whole world.
Yuva: Warehouse
Something rattled on the window.
He’d have turned the light out, but it was already off. He waited for a few minutes, then carefully looked out.
There were three figures standing there, out in plain sight, like they were waiting. Even in the dim light, he recognized two of them from their shape.
Well, all right then.
He armed himself, went down the hall, opened the door, and stepped out. He kept himself next to the wall. They were still there, and still silhouetted. Only one was holding a weapon, and that weapon was pointing squarely at the back of the largest of the three.
He stepped away from the wall. “Good evening,” he said.
“So far,” said Captain Reynolds. “Going to invite us in?”
“All right. Come in.”
He stuck his pistol back in his belt and led them inside, down the hall, past the office he’d taken over, and to a second office, which had the advantage of being windowless. He turned on a light, and waited while all of their eyes adjusted; then he focused on the big man.
“You were supposed to meet me in the canteen.”
“Figured,” he said.
Mal said, “Kit, meet Jayne. You already know Zoë.”
Kit nodded. “What brings you to my little sanctuary?”
“We need your help, and you need our help,” said the captain. “Seem like that gives us grounds to do some bargaining.”
Kit studied the captain, wishing he had access to a full psych workup of the man. He didn’t seem like the trickster sort; but a good confidence man never did. So: play it careful, pull out what intel he could, give away the minimum, commit to nothing.
“Let’s start with the part where I need your help,” he said. “I imagine you could explain that if you tried, so I’ll do the listening.”
“You have people coming to pull you out,” said the captain, as if he knew it for fact, which he almost certainly did not. Kit waited, giving him nothing one way or the other. Reynolds went on, “You don’t much cotton to leaving the job unfinished, on account of you were behind this one personal.”
Now that was either a daring guess, or some pretty sharp deduction. If it was deduction, it meant either this man had a way of tapping into some files there was no way he could get to, or….
“You know a lot about him.”
“Just what’s on the Cortex.”
“You start out lying now, Captain, and it’s going to put a severe strain on our relationship.”
“Mostly what’s on the Cortex. Some other stuff, too.”
“All right. I’m still doing the listening part.”
“So, we help you finish what you started, you help us get the gorram hell out of here alive. That’s the deal. You want it?”
“Get you out alive? Okay, now, last I heard, you had a ship. What’s keeping you here?”
“The ship got hit, and had to break sky. She’s hanging up there now with the best pilot in the ’verse fighting to keep her there. Can’t land on account of a big hole in her hull and too many control surfaces shot to hell.”
“What do you imagine I can do?”
“Get us to a safe place until my boat is working again. I know you got people coming.”
“You do.”
“I do.”
“All right, suppose I do. What do you mean about helping me finish the job?”
“We can take him out.”
“Take him out.”
“Yeah.”
“You’re offering to commit murder to an agent of the Anglo Sino Alliance?”
“What, that offends you?”
“There’s this thing called the law, Captain Reynolds.”
“Yeah. The Alliance enforces it; it doesn’t seem to much care about following it.”
“We will argue politics another time, Captain. For now, I’ll just say that I decline your offer. We do not commit murder.” As Reynolds started to speak, he said, “Very well, if you prefer, I do not commit murder.”
“You must have a nice set of problems with them that employ you.”
Kit shrugged.
“All right, so you don’t want to kill him. What do you want?”
“I’m afraid I can’t—”
“Evidence, right? Proof of forced indenture, child labor, safety violations. That’s what you’re after, isn’t it?”
“Suppose it is.”
“Suppose we can do that?”
“How?”
“That’s our business.”
“There are a couple of problems. The first is that I’m not going to believe you can do it unless you tell me how you’re planning to go about it. The second is, I have no way to get you off this world until my people show up, and that won’t be for a couple of days. And Sakarya’s people are looking for me as hard as they’re looking for you, and, between them, I don’t see any way they aren’t going to find us both before then.”
“Yeah, well, that’s a problem. How close are they?”
“From what I’ve picked up of their code, they’re going to be starting a building by building search tomorrow morning.”
“Tomorrow morning. That’s…what?”
The one called Zoë spoke for the first time. “Six hours, sir.”
“Six hours.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, isn’t that just shiny.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You were out of town, weren’t you?” asked Kit.
“Yes.”
“East?”
“Yes, how’d you know?”
“They found tracks. By now, the perimeter is sealed.”
“I see.”
“So you’ve humped yourself pretty good, Captain.”
“It’s a specialty. You have a tap into their line, I take it?”
He hesitated, then, “Yes.”
“And their code?”
“Most of it.”
“Impressive.”
“It’s a specialty.”
“I like yours better. Where’s your gear?”
“Next office down, but there’s a window, so no lights.”
“Can you se
e at all in there?”
“A bit filters in from the moons.”
“Okay. Mind if we go there?”
Kit shrugged and led the way.
When they reached the other office, he fired up the link, listened on the headphones for a bit, and said, “Nothing new.”
“Good to have, though.”
Kit nodded. “It’s how I learned about the jailbreak.”
“So, you know who we are.”
“I take it you mean, I know who you’re carrying. Yes. Simon and River Tam.”
“I see.”
Kit felt the weight of his sidearm, and wondered how long it would take the captain to draw his. Zoë had hers out, but it was still pointed at the big man.
He leaned forward to make a meaningless adjustment on the comm, and in so doing moved about two inches to his right, positioning himself so the big man was squarely between him and the sawed-off, and kept his eye on the captain.
“And what do you plan to do about that?” asked the captain.
“My only orders were to meet with your man Cobb and negotiate a deal. I’ve already reported that that fell through.”
“And so?”
“If you had a way out of here, we might have something to deal with after all.”
“What, us rescue you? That’s not what I had in mind. And if you don’t mind my saying so—”
“You’re safer with me dead.”
“Seems like.”
“Only you don’t do that.”
“I don’t?”
“Nope.”
“What, you have a psych make-up on me?” The captain almost smirked.
“For this, I don’t need one.”
Reynolds shrugged. “Maybe you’re right and I don’t much care for the idea of shooting you cold. Still don’t mean I’d cross the street to save you, even if I could, now that I know who you are.”
“I have something to bargain with.”
“What’s that?”
“Simon and River Tam.”
“I don’t—”
“I can throw them off for a while.”
He felt the intensity of Reynold’s stare. “I don’t get it,” the captain said at last. “Are you that scared?”
“No,” said Kit. “But if I live through this, I still have a chance of taking down Sakarya.”
The captain rocked back, almost as if he’d been hit. He recovered quickly, though, and said, “Okay, don’t see as it matters much; we got no means to—”
“Sir,” said Zoë.
The captain frowned and looked at her. “What is it?”
Zoë was looking out the window. “I think we have the means.”
Everyone followed her gaze. A small, close-range shuttle was settling down outside the office.
The four of them stared at it, frozen in place, until the door swung open and a small figure emerged.
Zoë was staring at the captain, as if he could produce an explanation for what she clearly considered impossible. Jayne’s mouth opened and closed.
“Na, zhan wo zai qiaokeli dang zhong, jiu song wo dao leisibian gei tamen chi ba,” said the captain.
“Let me guess,” said Kit. “I’m about to meet River Tam.”
Chapter 12
My Own Kind of Landing
Yuva: Warehouse
THE FED grabbed a small disk and stuck it in his pocket.
“The evidence?” asked Mal.
“What there is of it. Nothing else here matters.”
“All right then,” said Zoë. “Someone probably saw the shuttle land. Maybe we should move.”
Mal nodded. “Let’s hurry; she’ll take off a bit sluggish with five on board.”
“Five, sir?” said Zoë.
“I’m taking our friend the fed up on his offer.”
“Yes, sir. Five?”
“Oh.”
Mal looked at Jayne, who stared back at him. Then he turned back to Zoë.
“Five,” he said.
“Yes, sir,” she said, managing to put a full hold’s worth of disapproval into the words.
Mal ignored her, and said to Jayne, “Nothing is settled.”
Jayne grunted.
River met them halfway to the shuttle.
Mal decided that any questions would wait until they were back on Serenity. Or at least in the air. Or at least buckled in.
“River, where in the gorram hell did you learn to fly a gorram shuttle?” he said.
“The operation of an LS-seven type Coreless A-drive is implied by the width to force ratio of the main thruster, the number and position of the attitude jets, and the limited number of control surfaces. Wash has a book.”
“A book?”
River beat him to the pilot’s chair without appearing to try; he decided not to argue, and slid into the co-pilot’s seat. She turned around and looked at the fed like he was a curious species of spider. Then she turned back to the controls.
“A book?” said Mal.
River fired up the shuttle like, well, like a pilot.
“He loaned it to me.”
“When did you read this book?”
He was pressed back into the seat as the nose pointed up, then she hit it and they leaped skyward.
“About an hour ago. The book had some mistakes,” she added.
“We will never speak of this again,” said Mal.
Above Hera
She made a few mental notes to pass on to Kaylee: the calibration of the guide-scope was off enough to make lock-on bumpy if it were followed, the spinner was off-balance, and the engine kept wanting to cough. With another part of her attention, she followed the guide-scope (making mental adjustments), bringing the shuttle closer to the lockdown point. With another part of her attention she considered what design improvements might be made on the shuttle—or, more precisely, what she’d have to study in order to make reasonable suggestions for such improvements. With another part of her attention she tried not to think about the men who were coming closer with each minute; that took a fair bit of attention: not thinking about something.
And with the rest of her attention….
It was so much better when she was busy.
When her mind and body were both occupied, the voices didn’t have time to get inside her. Everything was quiet, and she could do and she could think and she could be.
People spoke about “freedom” but they didn’t know what it was. Freedom was being able to do what you were meant to do. Just that; no more.
And most of them didn’t appreciate it, because most of them had never been without it.
Simon didn’t understand that. Wash didn’t understand that, though he’d been held captive. Even Zoë didn’t understand.
Mal, though. Mal understood.
Sometimes, when she could spare the attention, she cried for him.
She made the last adjustment and the shuttle slid home with a “click” and the voices came back.
Serenity: Near shuttle bay
The Captain told Jayne to stay in his quarters when they got there.
“Can I get some food?”
“Yeah. Get it, bring it back to your bunk and stay there till I come get you.”
As the shuttle door opened, Zoë was running through the locations of the firearms on the ship, and how many of them would be between the airlock and Jayne’s bunk. At least one, she decided, which was way too many.
Simon was waiting when they stepped out of the shuttle.
“River! What did you do?”
Though River’s back was to her, Zoë could imagine the frown. “Is that a trick question?”
The doctor took his sister’s arm, and the two of them went off toward the med bay, Simon’s voice gradually climbing in both pitch and volume. Zoë shrugged and tuned them out.
She made her way directly up the stairs, past the bunks and up to the bridge, heavier by two pistols, which she set down in the co-pilot’s chair.
“Wash!”
He didn’t turn around.
“Hey, baby. Come look upon the empty shell that was once your big, powerful love machine. It’s been pretty ugly up here.”
“You’re all right?”
“Depends what you mean by all right. When this is over, I’m going to sleep for three weeks.”
“But you made it? We’re in a stable orbit?”
“You’d have had a fun time docking the shuttle if we’d still been bouncing around.”
“Yeah, did you know River was going to take the shuttle?”
“Not exactly. She asked if she could look at the LS-Seven manual, and half an hour later—”
“Yeah. The Captain almost had a coronary when it landed, and she stepped out.”
“She’s scary.”
“That she is.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re back.”
“With company.”
“Oh?”
“We brought a fed with us.”
“A fed? On the ship?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Where is he?”
“The Captain put him in Book’s old room, and asked him to stay there until we figure things out.”
“Oh. Are we ever going to figure things out?”
“Unlikely. How are things here?”
“Kaylee is trying to get us in shape to fly. Or at least limp to somewhere we can get fixed up. She’s outside now, working on a patch. We—”
He frowned at something, muttered, and flipped a couple of switches. For the next several seconds, she could see him fighting with the ship in a way she’d never seen before; some of the jerkiness of the movements penetrated the inertia field, and Zoë had to shift her feet to keep her balance. Then he nodded, scowled, shut things down again, and continued with what he’d been saying as if there had been no interruption. “The engine room is sealed off, so she’s trying to work in a suit. Can’t be fun. And I haven’t quite figured out why we didn’t just get away from this world when we could have.”
“It’s complicated,” said Zoë. Wash started to say something, and she had the sudden feeling that this was going to go somewhere she didn’t like; somewhere involving the Captain, and explanations, and loyalty. “Also, Jayne came back with us,” she said.
