Firefly E-Book

Nancy Holder

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: Firefly
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Seitenzahl: 460

Beschreibung

The first original novel tying into the critically acclaimed and much-missed Firefly series from creator Joss Whedon.The Battle of Serenity Valley was the turning point that led the Independents to their defeat at the hands of the Alliance. Yet the Browncoats had held the valley for weeks against all odds, before being ordered to lay down their arms. Command stated they refused to send in airpower because the ground war was "too hot." But the soldiers who were there insist that was not true…While picking up a new cargo on Persephone, Captain Malcolm Reynolds is kidnapped by a bunch of embittered veteran Browncoats who suspect him of sabotaging the Independents during the war. As the rest of the crew struggle to locate him, Mal is placed on trial for his life, fighting compelling evidence that someone did indeed betray them to the Alliance all those years ago. As old comrades and old rivals crawl out of the woodwork, Mal must prove his innocence, but his captors are desperate and destitute, and will settle for nothing less than the culprit's blood.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Cover

Coming Soon from Titan Books

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

Acknowledgements

About the Authors

BIG DAMN HERO

COMING SOON FROM TITAN BOOKS

The Magnificent Nine by James Lovegrove (March 2019)

Generations by Tim Lebbon (October 2019)

BIG DAMN HERO

BY JAMES LOVEGROVE

ORIGINAL STORY CONCEPT BY NANCY HOLDER

TITAN BOOKS

Firefly: Big Damn Hero

Hardback edition ISBN: 9781785658266

E-book edition ISBN: 9781785658273

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

First edition: November 2018

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

Firefly TM & © 2018 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

Did you enjoy this book?

We love to hear from our readers. Please email us at [email protected]

or write to us at Reader Feedback at the above address.

To receive advance information, news, competitions, and exclusive offers online, please

sign up for the Titan newsletter on our website

TITANBOOKS.COM

This novel is respectfully dedicated to the supremely talented artists, technicians and craftspeople who created the ’verse, peopled it with such memorable characters, and left us wanting more

So here’s how it is…

We’ve been flying for about a month on fumes and tears. Zoë and I are the ones hit hardest: we carried the coffin of Tracey Smith, our comrade-in-arms, out of Serenity and into the snowfall, where his folks stood in silence. We did not tell them that Tracey had run afoul of a gang of organ smugglers and taken refuge with us. Or that he had lied to us and nearly killed Kaylee, and that Zoë and I had both shot him mortally. As he died in our arms, he remembered when we were soldiers. We had fought on the right side, even if it was the losing one, and risked our lives to make sure everyone came back. Now he’s dead, and we told his folks that he was a war hero.

War does a lot of mean, miserable things to people. Makes ’em nurse grudges. Makes ’em swear vengeance. Makes ’em tell stories about how the Browncoats went down in defeat.

And a lot gets lost in the translation.

The Unification War ended in 2511. It’s 2517 now, and my memories come in waves. Sometimes I’m back home on Shadow, signing up to join the Browncoats with my best friends Jamie Adare and Toby Finn. We were so young, just kids. We thought war meant freedom and glory. And sometimes I still dream about Jamie’s sister Jinny, and when I wake up, my heart is as hollow as a drum.

That’s all in the past, and I’ve got way more than enough present to deal with. Inara gets these faraway looks—don’t know what it means, but I know not to ask. Still got the Tams on board, and Jayne hasn’t tried to sell ’em out since we got those medical supplies on Osiris, so that’s a plus. Shepherd’s still reading his book of fairytales. Zoë’s still my first officer, and I wouldn’t have any other. Kaylee keeps us running, and Wash keeps us flying.

Is it a good life or a bad one? The answer doesn’t matter.

It’s the only life we have.

Captain Malcolm Reynolds

Why can’t things just go easy for once? Mal Reynolds wondered as he ended the communication with Guilder’s Shipwrights. After a week in dry dock, their shuttle repairs were complete—just a couple-few things Kaylee could have fixed herself if they had had the right tools. But they couldn’t afford them. And the repairs had cost more than the original estimate. Of course. Still, it would be nice to have it back. The loaner shuttle Guilder’s had given them had a faulty injector regulator and guzzled fuel like a drunk guzzled beer.

Mal was standing in the cargo bay of Serenity, and after weeks of searching for a job, any job, he was having second thoughts about taking this one, despite the hefty repair bill that loomed on his horizon. Deafening alarm bells were going off in his head—about safety and about survival.

The roaring outside Serenity’s open cargo bay spiked to earsplitting as space transports and private craft simultaneously took off and landed on either side of them in Persephone’s Eavesdown Docks. The violence of the comings and goings shook the ship’s loading ramp and peppered the hull with a rain of dirt and small pebbles blasted into the air by thundering rocket exhausts.

There was only one way to describe the operation of the docks: organized chaos. Well, not so organized. Burned-out hulks of spacecraft lay in craters of their own making, scattered here and there along its sprawling length. It was a gorramn miracle there weren’t more midair collisions.

You might think with all this dutiable trade, all these comings and goings and the excise levied on them, that Persephone would be a rich planet; but you would be wrong. The Alliance taxed businesses and citizens with a gleeful rapacity. And what did Persephonians do in response? Why, they celebrated the day they signed their lives away and joined the Alliance. The anniversary of which was today.

And how did Mal celebrate it? By taking another job from Badger.

The sleazy minor crime lord was willing to pay them a scant bit of coin for risking their lives with a dangerous load that had to be hauled halfway across the galaxy. Actually, that sounded somewhat like the last job they took from him—transporting a herd of cattle on behalf Sir Warwick Harrow. The cows were delivered fine on Jiangyin until the gunfire commenced, and then Shepherd Book was shot and nearly died from his wounds. This dangerous cargo was different from that load, because if something went wrong with it, all of them would die.

As a bonus, a small side-job had slid in alongside Badger’s offer. Mal, Jayne and Zoë would deal with the secondary job planetside once Badger’s cargo was loaded. Which meant Taggart’s Bar on Alliance Day, just about the rowdiest drinking establishment on Persephone, on the rowdiest day of the year.

Talk about combustible.

About five feet away, Zoë was saying something to Mal, or trying to, murmuring to avoid being overheard. Zoë was the kind of woman who spoke softly and carried a big gun. Mal motioned for her to come closer. She walked over with her arms crossed, and leaned in, so close that her breath brushed against his ear.

“I don’t like it, sir,” she said, biting off the words.

“Duly noted,” Mal said. He didn’t like it much either, but when the choice was bad choice or no choice, you smiled wide and said thank you.

On the loading ramp behind the two Browncoat veterans, a forklift strained to carry its oversized burden up the slope and into the hold. The weight squashed the front tires nearly flat and made black smoke pour from the tailpipe. The metal crate was easily three times as big as the forklift and rested so heavy upon the forks that they wobbled like they were made of rubber, with the result that the load teetered precariously on its perch.

Grim-faced, Zoë and Mal backed well out of the way. Zoë wore her curly darkish auburn hair gathered in a ponytail, her signature leather cord necklace hanging over her leather vest. Mal had let his brown hair grow out a mite longer than military regulation, and wore his trousers with the stripe, his customary suspenders, and a tucked-in red flannel shirt. Both had looped their thumbs under their gun belts, observing closely as the last of the five steel containers was carried across the ship’s deck by the woefully lurching forklift.

On the other side of the hold’s entrance, a pair of Badger’s men likewise kept a sharp eye on Mal and Zoë, hands hovering close to gun butts. Trusting your business partners was like trusting a rattlesnake not to bite you: noble but misguided.

Behind the wide-bodied goons stood the cocky Cockney racketeer. Badger was dressed in his own version of business casual—a black bowler, threadbare suit jacket and matching vest over a dingy white T-shirt, a jauntily arranged silk necktie, and a pin on his lapel shaped like a flamingo and made of fake gold encrusted with no-less-fake gemstones. In common with his namesake, Badger was cranky, stubborn, and tough, with something decidedly rodent-like about his face, but he was also irritatingly jovial at times. That trait seemed particularly in evidence today, which Mal couldn’t help but find suspicious.

Though it appeared the crime boss was dutifully fulfilling his side of their bargain, Mal assumed Badger would try to cut corners somehow, in his own favor, of course. If everything was completely on the up and up, it wouldn’t be commerce as usual.

“Pull ’er forward nice and slow, and set ’er down beside the last one,” Badger told his forklift operator. Then he beamed at Mal, showing yellow, crooked teeth. “Just about done with the hard part.”

“Remind me again,” said Mal. “Is the hard part loading the cargo, or is it me gettin’ over the fact that you still owe us for those cows we didn’t get paid for transporting to Jiangyin?”

“Mal, Mal, Mal.” The more genial Badger sounded, the more it made Mal’s toes curl and his trigger finger itch. “Oh mate, you still holding a grudge about that?”

“Kinda definitely.”

“Okay, so the deal went down the khazi. Wasn’t anybody’s fault. These things happen. Business is business.”

“Don’t think my understandin’ of that word is the same as your understandin’.”

“What we ’ave ’ere,” Badger said, waving an arm towards the crates, “is my way of making recompense. Your fee, in case you ’aven’t noticed, Reynolds, is well over the odds for a straightforward planet-to-planet run like this. When it’s done, you can consider the debt between us settled.”

“Just sayin’ I’d rather it’d been settled at the time.”

“What can I say? I ’ad cash-flow problems.”

“So did I, in as much as the cash wasn’t flowing from you to me.”

“But that’s all in the past. We’re chums again now, ain’t we?”

Mal grunted. He was very picky about who he was “chums” with, and Badger would never qualify for that status.

“Sir,” Zoë said, with urgency, into Mal’s ear. “Don’t want to come across like a worrywart…”

“Then don’t, Zoë.”

“But I’m going to say it again: this is a bad idea. This cargo is too volatile.”

“I know, I know,” Mal replied.

The crates weren’t big, maybe five feet a side, but they were mighty—jam-packed with chemicals used for mining.

Explosives.

Highly specialized, highly explosive explosives.

The substance in the crates was, in fact, a crystalline compound known as HTX-20, an abbreviation that according to Badger stood for something long and complicatedly scientific with more syllables than you could count. When he heard the deal Badger was proposing, Shepherd Book had told Mal that he knew about HTX-20, and his grimace had said everything Mal needed to know about what the preacher thought of the stuff.

“Not for nothing is it nicknamed Satan’s Snowflakes,” Book had commented, and yet again, Mal had found himself wondering how in heck a man of God knew about such things.

Badger had assured Mal that as long as the HTX-20 stayed in the crates, snug and tight in its flame-retardant foam packaging, there was no danger of it blowing up before it was supposed to. Oh, and everything would also be fine as long as the HTX-20 didn’t get wet. Or too hot. Or was jostled unduly. But apart from that, things were just dandy.

Mal figured Badger would be upfront about the perils of the job, since he was the one who stood to gain the most if the payload made it to its intended destination, a rhodium mining operation on Aberdeen. Still, it gave him pause to see the yellow-and-black hazard stripes on the outsides of the boxes, like a swarm of hornets, and the decals plastered every which way, saying things like:

In other words, treat these crates like newborn babies or life would no longer be interesting; it would be over. If there was one thing Mal hated, it was surprises, and an explosion counted as one of the worst kinds of surprise he could imagine. Surprise marriages being another.

But not to dwell on the negative. Mal watched Zoë flinch as the forklift operator almost took out their ball hoop. The vehicle’s twin metal tines had held so far, but the crates were burdensome, that was obvious. He couldn’t wait for this to be over.

Persephone, a middling-sized planet on the periphery of the White Sun system, served as Serenity’s primary stomping grounds when it came to the face-to-face details of life. This meant shaking hands and moving cargo, mostly, though sometimes it also included inadvertently trafficking in cryogenically frozen mad geniuses. Their resident, fully thawed mad genius was River Tam, who generally bounced off the bulkheads like a rubber ball. Her brother Simon was uncomfortable on this planet, to put it mildly, and was more than usually defensive about his sister. Even out in the Black he was quick to justify his sister’s unpredictable outbursts of screams and destruction by reminding you that the Alliance had made her insane. As in, it was not her fault. Mal found this a rather odd strategy for ensuring her continued passage on his boat. He didn’t much care why River was insane. He cared that she was insane at all.

Mal had warned Simon to keep River out of sight until Badger was gone, and Simon was happy to oblige. Alliance bulletins about two missing fugitive siblings on the run came out over the Cortex now and then, but so far Badger seemed unaware that he could make way more money turning the Tams over to the authorities than he could trafficking in cows and explosives.

Life sure had gotten complex. No doubt about it, Mal preferred staying in the sky. The silent void of the Black was ever so much more to his liking. But such was not always practical. He had to touch down from time to time, in order to take on supplies and get paying work.

Persephone had never been all that pleasant of a rock, even before the Alliance’s victory over the Browncoats there. In the years since, it had become immeasurably worse. The slums had spread like rot in a ripe peach, the stink of ramshackle dilapidation festering wide. Power supplies to the blighted areas were cut off when the residents couldn’t pay for the privilege. Folks began cooking on open fires and warming themselves at burn barrels. The haze of rank smoke permanently tinged the sky a pale yellow. To survive, most people had to steal what they couldn’t barter. Decent citizens shuffled with downcast, fearful eyes, trudging sunken cheek-by-jowl beside unbearably smug rich folk in silks and satins who flaunted their wealth as it if were God-given—not that there was a God, not to Mal, not anymore.

And if there is, He ain’t welcome on my boat, Mal thought.

Lawlessness on a planetary scale did have a plus side, though: it encouraged and facilitated the kind of work that came Mal’s way— primarily smuggling items the Alliance forbade or taxed beyond reason, that sort of thing—and loose, corrupt enforcement allowed quick escapes in case a deal went sideways.

Beyond the open cargo-bay door, Eavesdown Docks spread out in all its rusty, gritty glory. The yellow-tinged atmo stank so bad you could practically chew it—a chunky, inedible stew of rocket exhaust, carbonized garbage dump, spilled rocket fuel, unwashed humans and animals, and mountains of boiled protein blocks. As they set down and crawled back up into the Black, ships kicked up brittle tea-brown newspapers and foam plates slathered with plum sauce. On the verge of the field, brightly colored paper parasols twirled. Dogs of varied size and indefinable breed ran in packs through the potholed street. Horns honked rhythmically, or maybe it was someone’s donkey braying? Here and there, ship’s captains of ill repute casually bribed customs officials, and hordes of filthy folks crawled through and over the debris of civilization like ants—some looking for work, others looking for trouble. If he was being honest, Mal had to admit he currently had a foot in both camps.

Hoban Washburne, Serenity’s pilot and Zoë’s husband, had landed them at the docks at crack of dawn shipboard time. But it was five-thirty in the evening here on Persephone. Daylight, sickly sad as it was, had already begun to ebb away and a bruise-colored dusk was setting in. Only three quarters of an hour had passed on-planet, but for Mal, each minute spent with Badger felt like an age. He didn’t know which drove him the craziest about the man—his thuggish swagger, his blockheaded stupidity, or his chirpy attitude that masked a personality so crooked it made a zigzag look straight—but Mal could feel himself getting tetchier and tetchier. With an effort, he looked away from him.

“Sir,” Zoë prodded. “All the ‘danger’ decals, sir.”

“What danger decals? Don’t see none.”

“The ones you’ve been giving the evil eye since the moment the crates arrived.”

“Oh, those danger decals. Well, folks sometimes exaggerate. On account of the legal liability. Coverin’ their asses.” Mal tried to sound credible, but even he wasn’t buying it.

“Yes, sir,” Zoë said. “But regarding liquids, sir. If the contents of the crates come in contact with water, they’ll blow. Says so right there. And last week that toilet up by the rec area backed up…”

“Kaylee put it all to rights,” he reminded her. “And nothing got as far as the cargo bay.”

“That’s true, but even so—”

“And the crates look solid and watertight,” Mal cut in. Still not sounding entirely credible.

“Easy does it, now,” Badger cautioned as the forklift crept across the deck with its suspension-crushing load.

Everything was going according to plan, then suddenly, not so much.

Whether the temper of the right-hand fork’s steel had been damaged on a previous job or more recently compromised by the combined weight of the three other containers, it suddenly gave way, bending downward towards the deck with a hair-raising shriek. That end of the huge crate abruptly dropped, sliding off the edge of the intact fork. It smashed hard onto its nose, then toppled full length onto the hangar deck with a resounding crash that rattled Mal’s bones. As the operator leapt from the vehicle in panic, Badger dropped into a crouch, squeezed his eyes shut, and clapped his hands over his ears.

“Tā mā de!” Mal bellowed.

Seconds passed.

Then a few more.

Nothing happened.

“Oops, sorry about that,” Badger said breezily as he lowered his hands from his ears. “Why don’t we leave it there, then? Meanwhile I’ll just wait for my sphincter to unpucker.” He nodded sharply at the forklift, and the driver climbed back in, hit reverse, and quickly backed away. From under his coat, Badger pulled out what appeared to be a manifest and began pawing through it.

Zoë sighed.

“The HTX-20 isn’t supposed to explode unless it gets bumped around too much. Right, Badger?” Mal pressed.

“That’s right. Or gets wet or hot or all that other gubbins. We went over it, didn’t we? You need a refresher course?”

“No, it’s just, that crate got bumped. How do we know things are still all right?”

Badger looked at him as if Mal was the stupid one. “We’re not dead.”

Hard to argue with that.

At that moment, as if Mal didn’t have enough to contend with already, River Tam appeared on the catwalk overlooking the cargo bay.

“The box wants to dance,” she announced as she trotted down the stairs. She was holding a bamboo flute and wearing her pink sweater, ruffled skirt, and calf-high boots.

“Best go back up,” Mal said, careful not to address River by her given name in front of Badger and his employees. “Cargo bay’s going to be off-limits for a spell. Dŏng ma?”

River thrust out her lower lip in a pout. Mal supposed life on a spaceship had its dull moments for a teenaged girl. Or dull days, or even duller weeks. Still, she wasn’t just any teenaged girl. She was a kid who made her own fun, and her idea of fun wasn’t necessarily the safe, happy kind. More usually it was the “What the hot holy hell just happened?” kind.

Mal darted a glance towards Badger, who was observing the exchange with bemusement as he cleaned under his fingernails with a corner of a document.

“’Ere, I thought the little tart ’ad an accent like mine,” Badger said. “Bit of the old Dyton patois, know what I mean?”

“Oh, I does, guvnor, and no mistake,” River replied, switching to the aforesaid accent. “I ain’t seen you in ages, me old china. Mind the dirt,” she added, gesturing to Badger’s hand. “Don’t want no contamination, do we now?”

“Oi, bint, none of your lip,” Badger retorted, but truth was, he had a soft spot for River, cultivated last time they’d met, when he’d held the crew hostage. “I washed before I come ’ere today. Clean as a whistle.”

“No, luv, what I’m saying is that’s your DNA, innit?” River said. “If we’re investigated, it’s you what’ll show up, not us.”

“Well, that’s right thoughtful of you to take into account,” Badger said, with a chuckle. “But my side of this exchange is above board and legitimate.”

Mal said to Badger, “You know the drill. Half now and half on delivery.” He held out his hand. Badger plunked a leather bag full of jingling coin into his palm.

“Feels light,” Mal said as he hefted it. It actually felt just about right. Tricky customers like Badger expected you to put up a fight even when there was no call for one.

“It’s all there,” Badger said, puffing himself up indignantly.

“Maybe I should count it all out, just to be sure,” Mal said. “Anybody can make a mistake.” He didn’t dump out the coin. He just stared Badger straight in the eye. Although the crime boss didn’t blink, after fifteen seconds or so a muscle in his left cheek started to twitch.

Satisfied that he’d made his point, Mal slipped the pouch in his pocket, money uncounted.

Badger grinned, displaying those rickety, off-color front teeth again. “So,” he said, “if we’re all done ’ere, I’ll be ’eading back to town. Today being Alliance Day, I do a brisk trade in moonshine, float, angel tears and other such recreational substances. I gather you lot ’ave other things to attend to in town as well?”

“Where exactly did you gather that?” Mal said. He figured Badger was just fishing. No sense giving him information he didn’t need.

“Well, I just assumed.” Badger stuffed the manifest back in his pocket.

“Better see to your ’shine,” Mal said. “And also to mindin’ your own business.”

Unruffled, Badger strolled to the edge of the loading ramp, waving for the forklift operator to accompany him. The forklift itself was Serenity’s own and remained on board. Then Badger and the other two minions descended. One of the goons got behind the wheel of a battered land speeder parked near the foot of the ramp. Badger climbed into the seat beside him, waving at Mal and Zoë like he was the crowned king of Londinium.

“Perhaps we’ll run into each other in town,” Badger said as the speeder’s engine noisily started up. “Over a libation celebrating the end of a completely unnecessary and yet ultimately obscenely profitable war.”

“I’m thinkin’ probably not,” Mal said.

“War’s over, Captain,” Badger reminded him. He grinned at Mal. “Officially, anyway.”

Mal didn’t respond. Lot of folks enjoyed reminding him of what he already knew.

Then Badger and his lackeys putt-putted off, the gray clouds of exhaust drifting up into the haze. Mal knew he had a tendency to underestimate Badger because the man seemed so gorramn stupid. But stupid and dangerous weren’t mutually exclusive.

Look at Jayne.

“Well, that’s over,” Zoë said, the relief in her voice. “Time to chase up that other job.”

“We’re not gettin’ investigated or arrested today,” Mal told Zoë sternly. “Not calling attention of any sort to ourselves.”

“Of course not, sir,” Zoë said.

“Good,” he said. “Now let’s go into town and bust up a bar.”

She gave him a look.

“Just kidding,” he said. “Jayne, you coming?”

Jayne Cobb had just sauntered into the cargo bay. He tugged down the earflap chin ties of his yellow and orange woolen hat, seating the thing on his skull and centering the pom-pom atop it. His adoring, semiliterate mother had designed and knitted the fetching item of headgear, and it was one of Jayne’s most prized non-lethal possessions. The sidearm strapped to his leg in a tactical black nylon holster fell into the other category. Jayne had pet names for all his weapons. There was his Callahan full-bore auto-lock rifle, of course, which he had christened Vera, and there was the massive .38-caliber Civil War-styled wheelgun he was toting now, known affectionately as Boo. Scooting around River, Jayne joined Zoë and Mal at the top of Serenity’s loading ramp.

“I don’t know why you two hate Alliance Day so much,” he said. “If it hadn’t been for the war, we wouldn’t be here.”

Mal didn’t say a word. Explaining irony to Jayne was like teaching a fish to bark.

“Make us proud, you guys!” a voice called down cheerily from the catwalk. It was Kaylee, Serenity’s resident ray of sunshine, as well as a prodigiously gifted engineer. Then her eyes got huge. “Gŏu shĭ! How many gorramn warning signs are there on those things?”

“The boxes are busy,” River said in a matter-of-fact tone.

Kaylee cast a stricken look at Mal, then looked back at the crates. Then back at him. “Uh, Captain?” she said.

“We keep that powder cool and dry and it’s all good, you hear?” he said.

Kaylee nodded and returned her gaze to the crates one more time. Mal had a feeling she was counting how many decals there were. And not liking the total.

As if to distract herself, she turned to River. “Hey, River, Shepherd and I are making casserole for dinner. Wanna help?”

“Okay,” River said brightly, skipping up the stairs to join her. “I’ll do the chopping.” She made a brisk slicing motion with the edge of her hand.

“Do not let her near anything with a blade,” Mal cautioned. He beckoned to Jayne and Zoë. “You two, duty calls. Got less’n a half-hour to get to Taggart’s Bar. Better hustle.”

“Get there early, maybe we can have ourselves a little japery first,” said Jayne.

Mal shook his head. “I know what your idea of japery is, Jayne, and it ain’t gonna happen. We’re there to work, not punch folk.”

“Not even a little?”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Awww.” Jayne sounded as petulant as a child. “Remind me again why I come with you on these trips.”

“’Cause you’re so damn handsome.”

Jayne frowned, puzzling it out. He decided his captain was being sincere, and grinned. “Yeah, I am at that, ain’t I?”

“Gorramn Alliance Day,” Zoë muttered.

Alliance Day was Persephone’s own special holiday, like Unification Day, but local. It signified the signing of the treaty that welcome Persephone into the Alliance, and Mal nursed the hope that folks celebrated it with gusto only because it was a good excuse to take off the day and get drunk. But like Unification Day, Alliance Day didn’t sit right with Mal either. Not right at all.

On lines strung across the streets, between the rooftops overhead, rows of gaudy Alliance flags—one half a blue field, one half red-and-white stripes, with a swirl of different-sized yellow stars overlaid on a red square—flapped like wagging tongues. They seemed to be taunting him: you lost, you lost, you lost… Bunting with the same pattern hung from balconies and utility poles, and yet more flags were plastered inside every dirty window frame that still held glass.

Mal, Zoë, and Jayne trudged down a winding alley, forced to jink every few steps to avoid head-on collisions with the people walking the opposite direction. A lot of them sported little plastic Alliance badges pinned to their ragged coats and hats, and more than a few had dressed for the occasion in their old Alliance uniforms, proudly displaying medals won for destroying Browncoat strongholds and slaughtering Browncoat troops.

Eyes narrowed to slits, jaw clenched tight, Mal kept pace with Zoë, who could do stoic better than anyone he had ever met, mostly by virtue of looking mildly pissed about everything all the time. Some folks said Mal was hard to figure out, but he knew he wasn’t. There was a core of bitterness that ran the length of his soul and drilled down into his heart, and there seemed no way to get rid of it, ever. He supposed that was all right. It kept him going. Kept him flying.

Didn’t necessarily keep him out of trouble, though.

Least of all on Alliance Day.

Three tipsy young women dressed in matching red satin, high-necked embroidered jackets and black trousers ran towards Mal and Zoë. Their hair was wound into round little topknots on either side of their heads. They were waving a couple of little Alliance pennants on sticks and giggling at each other.

“Happy Alliance Day!” one of them cried, and they all burst into shrieks of laughter.

Zoë uttered a caustic oath as she sidestepped and pushed past them, and that made Mal smile. Zoë losing her temper was just the funnest fun ever. And under normal circumstances it would bode well for their bar run. The prospect of cracking a bushel of Alliance-loving heads and breaking up some furniture would have raised Mal’s sagging spirits. However, there was work to do, and that took precedence.

Stepping up beside Zoë, he played dumb. “What was that all about?” he asked.

“I hate stupid women, sir,” she said.

“They are truly despicable,” he agreed amiably.

“Hey, what’s the rush?” Jayne called at them.

When Mal looked back, Jayne had his arms around two of the intoxicated young women, and the third was carefully threading the stick of her Alliance pennant through the stitches of his left earflap.

“I love your hat! You look so cute!” the pennant-threader squealed.

The blondest of the three reached overhead, jumping repeatedly as she tried to touch the orange pompom crest. Grinning from ear to ear, Jayne reveled in the attention. Mal and Zoë didn’t comment, just kept on walking up the street.

“Hey, wait up,” Jayne shouted at their backs. The girls detached themselves and reeled away, laughing.

Jayne closed the gap, still savoring his moment of adulation. He adjusted the fit of his hat and the angle of its newly acquired decoration. Unable to control himself, Mal snatched away the loathsome symbol, threw it to the pavement, and ground it under his boot heel.

Jayne didn’t bend down to recover the pennant. Emotionally, it seemed he had already moved on. “After we get our business done, how’s about we spend the night in port? There’s so many parties…”

“And we have a cargo bay full of chemicals I don’t particularly want to hang onto any longer than necessary,” Mal said.

“Oh, right. On account of they might blow up on us.” Jayne smiled unpleasantly, less of a smile and more of a scowl with bared teeth. “I swear, sometimes the jobs we take—”

Irked, Mal rounded on him. “Are what, Jayne? Dangerous? Foolhardy? Scrapin’ the barrel so hard, we’ve dug right through the bottom?”

“Well, yeah. Why do we bother with ’em?”

“’Cause those are the only jobs we can get and stay under the radar. They’re what keeps us flying and out of prison, or maybe getting our necks stretched.”

Jayne waved him off. “Ease up, Mal. Don’t take it out on me. I’m not the one who lost your war for you.”

Zoë thrust herself between them, stepping toe to toe with Jayne. Chin raised, she bored her steely gaze into him. “I think you might want to shut your mouth, Jayne, before I shut it for you.”

It was a serious threat and Jayne took it as such. “Didn’t mean nothin’ by it,” he groused. His cheeks were red, this time from embarrassment. Jayne hated backing down. “You two are livin’ in the past, is all. Like Badger said, war’s over. Been over a long whiles. Might as well make the most of the peace.”

Zoë opened her mouth to speak, then seemed to catch herself. She gave Jayne a long, measuring glance, like the slowest burn a Firefly-class transport vessel could achieve.

“What?” he protested indignantly. “It’s just the plain truth. The war is over. And losing’s not so bad. Ain’t as if it’s the end of the world. I’ve lost stuff lots of times. Poker games, loot from robberies, a horse, my virginity, and…” He glanced down at the pennant Mal had stomped into the dust. His eyes widened. “Oh, no!” he groaned, reaching down and grabbing up the torn pieces. He held them out to Mal accusingly. “She wrote her wave code on it. See? Now I can’t read it. You scraped off half the writing.”

“Losing ain’t so bad,” Mal echoed. “Besides, she weren’t no good.”

“How d’you figure that?” Jayne asked.

“She liked that hat of yours.”

Jayne drew himself up to his full, considerable height. “My mom knitted this hat. You’re just jealous.”

“Keep telling yourself that,” Mal retorted.

Muttering to himself, Jayne tried to piece the pennant back together. He gave up after a few seconds and in frustration threw the tatters into the air.

* * *

“All right, listen up now,” Mal said as they drew near Taggart’s Bar. “The meet with Hunter Covington is at six sharp. We establish whether he’s above board, or elsewise. If he is, we receive whatever it is he wants us to carry, then we fetch Kaylee and have her verify our shuttle’s all fixed. I’ll pay the repair bill, we’ll get rid of that loaner, and meantime Wash’ll be prepping for dustoff.”

“Did this Covington fella tell you what he’s got for us to transport?” Jayne asked.

“Said he preferred to discuss it in person rather’n by wave,” Mal said.

Hunter Covington was one of the things that Mal liked least, an unknown quantity. He had requested a quote for shipping “a small item” to a nearby location that would be disclosed when they met. Mal wasn’t keen on the vagueness, nor on doing business with an out-and-out stranger, but had nonetheless arranged a meetup at Taggart’s since they were on Persephone anyway. Only a rich man or a dolt turned down potential paid work, and Mal was certainly not the former and trusted he wasn’t the latter.

“Crucial thing,” he added, “we don’t mention that we might get blown up before we deliver his goods. Got that?”

“That’s smart,” Jayne said earnestly.

They strolled past the store where Mal had bought Kaylee her pink, frilly layer-cake dress for that society ball a while back. Today the living mannequins were dressed in the colors of the Alliance, holding flags and waving at the window-shoppers. The folks in the street cheered and waved back at them.

At another store farther down the row, a scrap-merchant-cum-pawnbroker, Mal and Kaylee had haggled many times over parts for Serenity, while across the street was the grocery where the crew usually purchased protein blocks for the galley. Every gorramn shopfront had put up a flag to celebrate the day when Persephone had joined the Alliance. Or maybe it was just to avoid being blacklisted by Alliance loyalists. Maybe secretly they were as angry as Mal was. He could hope.

The trio cut down a narrow alley that was made even narrower by avalanches of bricks that had cascaded out of the walls of the three-story buildings on either side. High overhead, a transport barge rumbled and popped, belching a trail of smoke as it crawled up into the sky.

After a right turn into the next adjoining street, Mal, Zoë, and Jayne found themselves face to face with another gaggle of drunken girls, these wearing Alliance-flag capes and hats. After they’d filed past, one of girls called back to Mal, “Want my wave code, honey?”

Jayne let out a low growl.

From that, Mal reckoned he hadn’t been forgiven yet. But Jayne was never one to hold a grudge for long. Not because of any charity on his part; he simply had a very short—and narrow—attention span.

As they progressed along the street, the stores got shabbier and shabbier and became interspersed with boarded-up, roofless commercial buildings inhabited by a few scattered squatters. The smoke was thicker here; it rasped the back of Mal’s throat and it smelled like the inhabitants were burning dried dung. A beggar sat cross-legged on the sidewalk with a dirt-caked hand extended to passersby.

They kept going, to an even more desolate and sparsely inhabited part of town. Their destination was one of the few drinking establishments still open for business on this street. Above the entrance a hand-painted sign, hanging somewhat askew, read “Taggart’s Bar and Lounge.” It might as well have said, “Abandon hope all ye who enter here.” This was the kind of place where Mal did the kind of deals he was forced to make these days.

The rumble of music and shouting from inside could be heard half a block away. The front wall of the squat, cinderblock structure had been whitewashed once upon a time, but now it was covered by a band of graffiti from the sidewalk to as far as a person could comfortably reach, layer upon layer covering all but a few specks of the white. The green metal double saloon doors were cracked and rusting. The holographic front window hummed and shorted in an erratic, irritating rhythm. Under the window, a puddle of something on the pavement glistened purple and sticky in the dim light. Could’ve been blood.

Taggart’s was deep in the seam of urban rot, the kind of dump the authorities wouldn’t bother sticking their noses in unless someone set off a hand grenade, and maybe not even then. Exchanges of gunfire from within would be ignored: that just meant fewer lowlifes to arrest down the road. Should fisticuffs break out, the police could claim it was none of their business. The hand-to-hand battle could be prolonged and epic.

All the same, Zoë’s dander was up. Mal could see it in the set of her jaw and the take-no-prisoners look in her eyes. Wouldn’t take much to provoke her to violence. And Jayne? Well, Jayne was Jayne. Almost as volatile as HTX-20.

Persephone had been one of planets where the fighting for the Independents’ cause in the Unification War had been the bitterest and most protracted. After Earth-That-Was got used up, the human race had flown out into space to make new earths—terraforming moons and planets, like Persephone. Hopeful, gullible settlers got dumped onto the worst pieces of land while the elites staked possession of the best. The fat cats also took control of planetary governments, enacting laws that favored themselves and ultimately joined together to form an over-arching, galactic authority they called the Alliance.

Every inhabited world had to become a member, the Alliance decreed. Ninety-nine percent of the populations of the outlying moons and planets never saw a scrap of the new technologies and other benefits an expanding civilization was wont to provide, like decent housing, steady food supplies, medical care, and schooling. What they got instead was exploited for cheap labor; the natural resources stripped, and the land left polluted for pennies on the dollar. The gap between haves and have-nots widened. The already fat grew morbidly obese. Most everyone else turned into walking skeletons. It was so obviously unjust that Mal was always amazed when he met someone who had fought on the side of the Alliance—or supported it. Inara, his own shipside Companion, was such a person.

She ain’t mine, he reminded himself. Inara belongs to no one but Inara.

He had fought for justice and fairness and the freedom for every person to make his or her own way, but he had lost and been punished severely for it. Funny thing, if he had to do it over, he would’ve done it again—just with fewer stars in his eyes.

“Okay, we’re here for business only,” he reminded his two crewmates. “Not pleasure.”

“Yes, sir,” Zoë said, while Jayne blew the air out of cheeks in disgruntlement.

“Hope this Covington guy pays for our drinks,” Jayne said.

“If he does,” Mal said, “it’s because the deal ain’t fair to us and he’s trying to butter us up.”

“A free drink’s a free drink,” Jayne argued.

“Except when it’s not.”

It was clear that Jayne wasn’t tracking. No matter. Mal took point, pushing both swinging doors inward. Zoë was close behind at his right shoulder. They burst into a maelstrom of stink and noise. The reek of spilled ale, food fried in rancid lard, and tobacco smoke hung in a fog over the heads of grubby drinkers, who huddled on bar stools and chairs, or leaned against walls to keep themselves upright. Fifteen-foot-diameter circular rings marred the bar-room floor. It looked like big vats had once stood there. Acid and vats. Mal’s best guess: the place had been a tannery before it was converted to a bar, and the new owner’s redecoration had been minimal verging on negligible.

A loud, rhythmic, grating noise blared from a pair of speakers at the edge of a low stage set in one of the rearmost arches. A lone performer sat on a chair playing a computer keyboard, with a microphone duct-taped against the side of his neck. The song had a jaunty, all-too-familiar refrain:

From Core to Rim, from sun to moon,

On this we all agree:

Like oxen yoked up to a cart

United we are free!

Mal bristled. The Alliance anthem. The bastard was singing the Alliance anthem, and not just singing it but throat singing it. And the gorramn drunks packed shoulder to shoulder in front of the stage were swaying their arms in the air and tunelessly bellowing along. Despite the synthetic organ, horn section, and string accompaniment, the whole thing was about as musical as Serenity’s struggling sump before Kaylee cleared the clog, and much less pleasant to listen to.

Tamping down his ire, Mal focused on the matter at hand. He scanned the packed room for Hunter Covington. He wasn’t here yet.

Mal reached for the photo printout in his pocket, just to be sure. In the Black, out of the blue, Serenity had gotten a wave from someone—Hunter Covington—with a job offer. The money wasn’t spectacular, but work was work. Mal had run some background checks, asked around among various associates about Covington, and learned nothing that filled him with an abiding sense of mistrust but nothing that much enthused him either. It seemed the man was a fixture around Eavesdown, with fingers in many a pie. In that respect, Mal had been somewhat surprised the name was unfamiliar to him, but then he couldn’t be expected to know every trader, merchant, crook, stealer, dealer, and double-dealer in a city that had such a plenitude of them to choose from.

On the vid screen Covington had spoken in a rich, low purr, presenting a well-dressed, well-spoken figure, with a tidily knotted Ascot tie nestled above the button-down collar of a silk shirt, a tailored velvet jacket, and a shot-silk vest. His luxuriant beard merged with bushy sideburns.

“Looks like the cat that got the cream,” Jayne said, glancing over Mal’s shoulder at the photo, which had been screen-captured from Covington’s wave.

“The cat that got the monopoly on the cream,” Mal said, “and cornered the kibble market too.”

“You sure about this, sir?” Zoë said. “Is it worth the risk?”

“Badger’s mission is way riskier,” Mal replied. “Hopefully this is something we can tack onto the job to make it more profitable without much additional effort or burned fuel.”

“I don’t see Covington around,” Jayne said, squinting into the smoke.

“We’ll just settle in and wait then,” Mal said. “Free table over there.”

The table was free because the four occupants had just fallen out of their chairs, dead drunk.

“Let’s grab it quick,” Zoë said.

They pushed forward before someone else could poach the table. All around them, plastered Alliance-loving patrons were busy outdoing each other with all manner of glass-raising, back-slapping, and top-volume-pontificating on the benefits that Alliance membership had brought to their dusty world. The continuing postwar enthusiasm for all things Alliance was a phenomenon Mal found simply baffling. It was like folks had been struck blind—or bag-of-rocks stupid. The recipients of the Alliance’s “bounty” scrabbled desperately to eke out a living, accepting wages that were meager, and giving away most of what they made in taxes with nothing to show for it in return. The system had been designed to flow one way: up.

“Wonder if they’ve anything good to eat,” Jayne said as they sat down. He picked up one of the half-emptied plates that had been left on the table and sniffed the congealed contents. The chef had made an attempt to disguise the taste of protein block chunks using a cacophony of spices and sauces. Jayne looked at it twice, hesitated, then put it back on the table. “This has gone bad. I’m starving.” He looked around. “Maybe Covington’ll buy us some grub when he gets here.”

“I’m not sure that what they serve at this place is edible,” Zoë said.

“Be nice if there was some passable quim here, too.”

Zoë shot Jayne a look that could have carved a diamond in two.

“No disrespect,” Jayne added hurriedly. “Passable unmarried quim, is what I meant.”

“That’s okay, then,” Zoë drawled. “I’ll take it as a compliment.”

“You should.”

“Well, since no one else is goin’ to buy us a round,” Mal said, “guess I’d better.”

“Now you’re talking,” said Jayne.

Just as Mal bellied up to the bar, a man wearing a long, mustard-yellow duster and a dented ten-gallon hat laid a small piece of folded paper on the bar beside his elbow. Wasn’t Covington. Might well be a messenger from Covington.

Mal palmed the piece of paper, and without a word the man in the mustard-yellow duster turned away and drifted off into the crowd. Mal placed their order, and while the bartender was filling it, he teased the paper open and glanced at the note like he was checking his hand at a poker table.

Outside. Alone.

— HC

To Mal’s right, another deluded citizen of Persephone was hoisting his glass in honor of the Alliance, slopping brown ale all down his shirtsleeve, going on about “peace in our time.”

Not to mention malnutrition and radiation poisoning, Mal thought.

With an effort, Mal let it slide. Business before pleasure. He paid the bartender, picked up the order, and headed back to their table.

“…only thing the Alliance coulda done a better job of is if it had killed off a few hundred thousand more Browncoats,” the deluded citizen was saying, addressing the entire room in a slurred shout. “So-called Independents don’t value human life like we do. Don’t value it at all. Lying cowardly scum killed more civilians than soldiers, an’ you know that’s the truth! I wager every person in this room lost kith and kin on account of them savages.”

“Yeah!” chorused the surrounding folk, angrily thrusting their glasses towards the towering ceiling.

Mal couldn’t contain himself a moment longer.

“Hey, just hang on now…” he began, then buttoned his lip and carried on towards to the table. Nobody had noticed.

Zoë gave him a hard, searching look as he set the drinks down with hands that were a tad unsteadier than they might have been.

“Sir?” she said.

“Got slipped a note,” he said just loud enough for Zoë and Jayne but no one else to hear. “Came from a fella in a ten-gallon hat and a duster the color of pus.”

“I saw him. Hard to miss, with that coat. He went out the back way straight after. What’s the note say?”

“Looks like it’s from Covington, and he’s waiting outside.”

“Sounds kinda fishy, if you ask me,” Jayne said.

Mal considered. “Yes and no. It’s awful loud in here and awful busy. Maybe Covington just wants some quiet and privacy.”

“Alone, though?” said Zoë, glancing at the note. “That’s fishier.”

“I agree. But I guess if I don’t do as asked, could be the deal’s off. The two of you stay here, hold the table. We’ve all got comm links. I’ll keep a channel open. Anything sounds like trouble, come running.”

“How about an emergency code word, sir?” Zoë suggested. “Just in case.”

“Okay. I say ‘strawberries,’ that’s your cue.”

“Strawberries?”

“Strawberries.”

“But what if the word crops up in conversation?” said Jayne. “You know, Covington asks what’s your favorite fruit, and you just automatically say strawberries?”

Mal blinked. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Comms check.” He pressed the send button on his comm link. “Zoë?”

“Can’t say I’m hearing you very well,” she informed him, touching a finger to her earpiece. “Lot of interference.”

“But you can hear me a little.”

“A little,” she confirmed.

“Jayne?”

“Reading you. Just barely.”

“It’ll have to do.”

Mal added the purchase of new batteries for their comm links to his long list of supplies they could not currently afford.

“I’ll be back shortly,” he said. “Jayne, don’t misbehave. Zoë, make sure Jayne doesn’t misbehave.”

Head lowered, jaw clenched, Mal turned for the exit.

Man, them two are sore losers, Jayne thought, downing the last of his beer. The brews at Taggart’s were right tangy. War’s been over for years. What’s their beef? He thought about finishing off Mal’s drink as well since it was sitting right there in front of him and Mal wasn’t. He guessed Mal would be a mite sore if he came back and his glass was empty, so he let it be.

The singing and dancing showed no sign of abating. Jayne opened his mouth to join in, caught Zoë’s glare, and thought the better of it.

“Browncoats bombed the hell outta my village rather’n let the Alliance save it!” a tall drunk yelled nearby.

Jayne could see how something like that would piss people off. Way he figured it, the rebels were lawless and disorganized; their only real purpose was to make a mess of things. The Alliance had overcompensated for that, sure, ’cause they had had the sticks up their behinds like they did now, but the Browncoats hadn’t been no angels neither. Leastwise, that’s what he’d heard. He hadn’t taken sides during the war. He’d basically robbed soldiers on both sides of it. Neutrality was profitable.

“Killed my cattle so’s I wouldn’t provision the Alliance!” the drunk bellowed.

To everyone else in the room, Zoë looked calm as a Buddha as she sipped at her drink and studied the crowd. But Jayne knew her pretty well. Well enough to recognize a slow burn when he saw it. She was getting mad.

He wondered whether things were going to get entertaining after all.

“I got these here missing fingers on account of Browncoats!” the offended citizen raved on, spraying his closest audience members with a mist of saliva on the final, sibilant “s.” He held up a hand that was good for hitchhiking and picking his nose with but not a lot else. “They said”—more spray—“they was fighting for the common man but you know they was just a bunch of gŏu shĭ!” Yet more spray. “Tip over a rock and you’d find one of them with his hand out, threatening to kill your whole family if you didn’t pay him off.”

If Jayne had known the Browncoats were so enterprising, he might have joined them.

“Yeah,” another man chimed in, “or they’d wipe out your whole family if you didn’t agree to let ’em stash their weapons in your root cellar.”

Zoë’s lips were compressed so tight, the color had started to drain out of them. Jayne sat back and laced his fingers behind his head, watching her shift uncomfortably in her chair. Was she going to snap? No. Zoë wasn’t like Mal. She never started a fight. That wasn’t to say she wasn’t real good at ending them, though.

“All this anti-Independent talk gettin’ to you, huh?” Jayne commented.

“Nope,” Zoë said.

Jayne knew a lie when he heard one too. “Must sting like a sumbitch. Wouldn’t be surprised if you lashed out.”

“Unlike some of us, I have self-control.”

“Sure, sure.”

A guy in a patched Alliance jacket and an abnormally large forehead staggered towards their table. “Hey, you two, you hearing what they’re saying about those murdering Browncoat bastards?” he demanded.

“Yeah, I’m hearing it,” Jayne said amiably.

“Yeah, and listen to this…” Large Forehead began. He paused, swaying back and forth like a reed in a breeze, his eyes narrowing as he studied Jayne. “Hey, Earl,” he shouted over his shoulder, “come over here and look at this clown hat!”

Jayne blinked. “Huh?” he said, fingers still supporting the back of his skull.