Firefly - The Ghost Machine E-Book

James Lovegrove

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

The third original novel tying into the critically acclaimed and much-missed Firefly series from creator Joss Whedon.Some hot propertyMal's crew desperately need another payday, but not desperately enough to transport a Blue Sun flightcase to Badger, no questions asked, when the area is swarming with Alliance spacecraft equally keen to regain the stolen property. Yet Jayne refuses to miss out, and sneaks the case aboard Serenity.Lucid DreamsWithin hours of secreting the case Jayne suddenly finds himself back on the Cobb homestead with his brother Matty miraculously cured of the damplung. Wash is at the controls of the highest-spec cruiser money can buy, the billionaire head of a 'verse-spanning business empire. All of the crew but River are soon immersed in vivid hallucinations of their deepest desires, while their bodies lie insensible on the ship.Fantasties gone sourWash's empire begins to crumble; the Cobb ranch is under attack by merciless bandits. As everyone's daydreams turn nightmare, Serenity floats on a crash course towards a barren moon, with only River standing between the crew and certain oblivion.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

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Title Page

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Copyright

Dedication

Author’s Note

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About the Author

THE GHOST MACHINE

ALSO AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS

Big Damn Hero by James Lovegrove (original concept by Nancy Holder)

The Magnificent Nine by James Lovegrove

Generations by Tim Lebbon (October 2020)

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Firefly: The Ghost Machine

Hardback edition ISBN: 9781789092240

E-book edition ISBN: 9781789092257

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London, SE1 0UP.

First edition: April 2020

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 & © 2020 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.

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DEDICATION

For Lou

the Zoë to my Wash

the Kaylee to my Simon

the Vera to my Jayne

We are such stuff

As dreams are made on; and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep.

– Prospero

The Tempest, Act IV, Scene 1

AUTHOR’S NOTE

The events in this novel take place between the

Firefly TV series and the movie Serenity.

Hoyt Koestler shaded his eyes and stared westward. Where the gorramn hell was Mal Reynolds?

Fella was supposed to have shown up a whole half-hour ago. Would it kill him to be punctual? Hoyt had better things to do than stand out here in the blazing midday sun waiting for some low-rent Firefly captain to arrive and pick up a package.

For Hoyt, “better things” meant, well, nothing useful. Hoyt Koestler was the kind of guy that devoted as little time as possible to work so he could have as much free time as possible to do as he pleased.

But somebody turning up late to a meet? It was disrespectful, was what it was.

Truth be told, it wasn’t Reynolds’s tardiness that was bothering Hoyt so much. It was his reputation.

Badger, the broker behind this particular deal, had warned Hoyt about Reynolds. “Slipperier than a greased eel, ’e is,” he had said via wave. “You need to watch out for the bloke. Sit down to barter with Mal Reynolds, you’d best count the platinum in your pocket when you stand up.”

The description slipperier than a greased eel could equally have applied to the Persephone-based black marketeer himself. It was funny, Hoyt thought, how people tended to deplore in others the behaviors they themselves were guiltiest of. It was even possible Reynolds wasn’t as bad as Badger claimed. Maybe a crook like Badger saw only crookedness wherever he looked.

Reynolds was still late, though.

Hoyt continued to scan the horizon, his horse shifting its hooves restlessly beneath him.

The six men he had brought along with him were getting restless too.

“How much longer are we gonna be sittin’ fryin’ our asses out here?” grumbled one of them, Callum Trinder Jr. He spat a wad of used-up chewing tobacco onto the dusty ground and thumbed a fresh chunk of the stuff into his mouth out of a leather pouch. Trinder’s fingers, lips, mustache, and teeth were stained deep yellow. His father had encouraged him to take up the tobacco habit when he was barely five years old, saying it was the mark of a real man. Callum Trinder Sr. had died of mouth cancer at the age of forty, almost certainly as a result of inserting plugs of tobacco between cheek and gum and masticating on them all day long—but that didn’t seem to have deterred the younger Trinder any.

“We’ll be sittin’ here until he comes,” Hoyt replied firmly.

“What if he don’t come?” said another of Hoyt’s posse, Cicero “Nine Toes” O’Malley. Given his fondness for the booze, Nine Toes had come by his nickname in a perhaps predictable way: shooting off part of his foot in a drunken sidearm-discharge incident.

“He’ll come,” Hoyt said, thinking, He darned well better.

All six of the men with Hoyt were heavily armed, as was Hoyt himself. That was in accordance with another piece of advice Badger had given. “Mal Reynolds can be free and easy wiv the gunplay,” he had said. “Fings don’t go ’is way, ’im and ’is crew are apt to shoot first and ask questions never. Make sure you ’ave backup when you meet ’im, plenty of it, and they’re loaded for bear and willing to get stuck in if the bullets start flying. I bloomin’ well do.”

Now Hoyt heard a faint hiss-whine—the sound of a distant jet engine.

“About gòu cào de time,” he muttered under his breath. To his men, louder, he said, “Look sharp, boys. We have company. Let’s do this, let’s do it right, and we’ll be back in town and hoisting whiskies at Mama Rosebud’s within the hour.”

The Flying Mule sped across arid plains towards the prearranged rendezvous point.

Zoë was piloting, with Mal up front beside her and Jayne in the backseat. All three were wearing goggles against the dust-heavy air blasting into their faces. Mal could feel the dust crusting up inside his nostrils and fought the urge to insert a forefinger and pick.

“What do we know about this Hoyt Koestler guy anyway?” Zoë asked.

“Badger vouches for him,” Mal replied.

“Minds me to dislike the fella already,” Jayne said.

“Aside from that, he’s spent his whole life here on Canterbury. Fancies himself a wheeler-dealer, but really he’s just a middleman. Doesn’t greatly care who he works for, but no Alliance ties as anyone knows of.”

“Not much to go on.” Whereas Mal was resisting the temptation to pick his nose, Jayne had given in to it shamelessly and enthusiastically. “And the cargo?”

“Badger was pretty cagey when we spoke. ‘Technical apparatus’ is all he’d tell me.”

Zoë said, “When Badger’s cagey about something, it fair sets my—”

“Nutsack to shrivelin’?” Jayne cut in.

“I was going to say nape hairs to prickling, but each to their own.”

“Mine too,” Mal agreed. “Nutsack and nape hairs. And when I pressed him about it, you should have seen his grin. Sort of grin that means ‘You’re better off stayin’ ignorant, old chum.’”

“Other than ‘technical apparatus’ he didn’t give you a clue?” said Zoë.

“None. But you could tell a lot from how excited he was sounding. Whatever the item is, it’s valuable, it’s hot, and Badger can’t believe his luck that he’s going to get his grubby paws on it. Reckon people are making a fortune out of this deal all along the line.”

“Yeah,” said Jayne. “Shame none of those people are us.”

“We’ll be gettin’ paid the going rate,” Mal said. “It’s enough.”

His tone was faintly forlorn, however. Mal had pushed Badger as hard as he could to increase the transportation fee, but no dice. Badger had simply said that there were any number of other ship’s captains he could go to who’d be glad of the employ. He’d come to Mal first because the two of them had history and he felt they had developed a solid working relationship, albeit one that wasn’t without its ups and downs.

“Of course,” Badger had added, “if you don’t want the job, Captain Reynolds, you only ’ave to say. But I imagine that flying rustbucket of yours could do with a few replacement engine parts. Then there’s fuel, and your crew can’t survive on thin air, can they? Even if you’re down to seven, now that the Companion and the priest ’ave buggered off, everybody’s still got to eat.”

How Badger knew that Inara and Shepherd Book had both quit Serenity, Mal had no idea. The man had connections, that was for sure. Lines of communication reaching everywhere, and they fed back news to him from all across the ’verse, information he used to further his own ends and, where possible, feather his nest.

A month ago Book had departed for Haven, Deadwood’s moon, where he was now bringing enlightenment and holy succor to a small settler community. His reasons for leaving were many but boiled down to a desire to keep a lower profile. “I could tell you that, since I am but a humble, honest preacher, I want no part of the violence and criminality which we on this ship seem to encounter at every turn,” he had said to Mal. “However, as you should have gathered by now, I am no stranger to violence and criminality, and to pretend otherwise would be specious. I have a checkered past and I have been doing my best to run away from it. Unfortunately, the longer I spend in your company, the more my past is in danger of catching up with me. Therefore for my sake, yours, and everyone else’s, it’s better if I am elsewhere.”

As for Inara, in the wake of events at the Heart of Gold bordello she had decided to return to House Madrassa and take up a position training Companions there. As far as Mal could tell, she desperately missed the closeness she had felt with her fellow Companions, the mutual understanding they had all shared. The death of Nandi, her one-time protégée, had instilled in her a need to be among her own kind again. Or at least, that was her excuse.

“The residents of House Madrassa,” she had said, “they’re like family to me.”

Mal had thought he and the rest of Serenity’s crew were also like family to her. Maybe not the happiest of families, but they all rubbed along together and had one another’s backs. Obviously that wasn’t enough for Inara. Not anymore.

Could he have made her stay? He wondered what it would have taken. There were things he had wanted to tell her, had been meaning to tell her for some while. And he had tried to say them, but he hadn’t said them well enough, or soon enough, or directly enough.

She’d given him a fair few chances afterwards to change her mind, and maybe he could have.

Trouble was, it had hurt when Inara had told him she was going to leave. Hurt bad, like his heart had been stabbed with an icicle. And from then on until she actually did go, Mal had acted cool towards her, because he didn’t want her to see how much pain he was in.

Pride.

Malcolm Reynolds mightn’t have much, but what he did have, by the gallon, was pride.

And in this instance, that pride had cost him.

Cost him the woman he now knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he loved.

Stupid, foolish, stubborn-ass pride.

Zoë took her eyes off the terrain ahead to glance over her shoulder at Jayne.

He had finished with the nose picking and had started in on gnawing at a hangnail, gazing out absently at the landscape all the while. The distracted look on his face told her that he had drifted off into his own thoughts. What those might be, Zoë neither knew nor cared to speculate. He was, however, not paying attention to her or Mal, and this gave her the opportunity for a quick heart-to-heart with her captain.

“Penny for ’em?” she said, lowering her voice so that Mal could still just hear her above the thunder of the Mule’s turbines.

“Doubt they’re worth even that much,” he replied.

“You’re looking wistful. Like you’re missing someone.”

“Book? Yep, sayin’ Grace before meals, gettin’ chided for cussing, always being reminded how the Lord is looking out for me—miss it like crazy.”

“I’m not talking about the Shepherd, and you know it.”

Mal pondered. “Can’t miss someone who doesn’t miss you.”

“You honestly believe that?” Zoë said. “That she’s there on Sihnon not thinking about you every gorramn day? Woman was crazy about you, Mal. Anyone with eyes could see it. Even him.”

She jerked a thumb behind her at Jayne, who was still oblivious to their conversation. He was really getting stuck into that hangnail, his brow furrowed like he was working out some complicated math equation.

“And you,” Zoë continued, “were crazy about her. Don’t even try to deny it. You’ve been moping around like a dog with a broken tail ever since she left. Know how Wash described you to me the other day? ‘The dictionary definition of miserable.’ And this is coming from a man who’s so bad at reading people he can’t even tell when I’m mad at him.”

“To be fair, you’re mad at him quite a lot of the time,” Mal pointed out.

“But there’s mad and there’s really, genuinely, with-good-cause mad, and Wash can’t tell the difference. Anyways, this ain’t about us. It’s about you and Inara.”

“Inara did what was right for her,” Mal said, tight-lipped. “Ain’t our place to judge. All’s we can do is accept the choice she made and move on.”

“You first.”

“’Sides, I don’t recall as it’s any of your business, my feelings about Inara. So I’d thank you, corporal, to keep your views to yourself.”

“Pulling rank now, huh? War’s over, in case you’ve forgotten.”

“I’m still your captain, if nothing else. And as such, I’m inviting you to drop the subject.”

“Inviting or ordering?”

“Same difference.”

“Then yessir, consider the subject dropped,” Zoë drawled, firing a sardonic salute at him.

Mal folded his arms and stared ahead.

Moments later, a bunch of people on horseback appeared in the near distance, shimmering into view through the heat haze. They were stationed beside a dried-up arroyo, near a large limestone outcrop that wind and weathering had sculpted into a rough facsimile of a human skull.

“That’s them,” Mal said. “Gotta be.”

Zoë glanced at a screen on the Mule’s dashboard and nodded. “These are the coordinates Badger gave us, more or less.”

“Plus, big hunk of rock that looks like a skull. Badger said that’d be our landmark.”

Jayne had finished with the hangnail, a hard-won victory, and was on the alert now. “Why do so many of these meets have to happen in the middle of ruttin’ nowhere?” he groused. “Why can’t we arrange to get together at a titty bar or something?”

“’Cause when you’re doing a trade that ain’t wholly legit, it’s best to conduct your business well away from the public,” said Mal. “And from titties.”

“I know that. I’m just saying, it’d be nice if we did this stuff somewhere civilized for a change. Maybe even a nice restaurant.”

“Nice restaurant?” said Zoë. “You’ve been spendin’ too much time around Simon, Jayne. Next, you’ll be drinking tea with your pinkie finger raised.”

“You saying the Doc’s rubbin’ off on me?” Jayne shook his head, aghast. “Uh-uh. No way.”

As if to prove his point, he resumed his nose picking once more.

Zoë decelerated, the Mule’s engine roar gradually diminishing. She coasted to a halt some twenty yards from the gathering of a half-dozen riders. The Mule settled to the ground, its turbines kicking up a last billow of dust, which drifted sideways in the light breeze.

She braced herself.

Here we go. Showtime.

“Now, which one of you fine gents is Hoyt Koestler?” Mal said, clambering out of the Mule and pushing up his goggles. With his dust-caked face and the pale silhouette left around his eyes by the goggles, he looked like a reverse raccoon.

“That’s me,” said a man astride a pinto gelding. He had a long-distance squint and wore a wide-brimmed leather hat and a striped poncho. “You Reynolds?”

“None other.”

“You’re late,” Koestler said accusingly.

Mal gave a slow blink. “Yeah, well, we’d have made planetfall sooner, only there’s a distressingly high incidence of Alliance spacecraft in this neck of the ’verse, and us and the Feds, we ain’t on what you’d call speaking terms. Our pilot had to do all manner of fancy ziggin’ and zaggin’ to keep ’em from detecting us. Frankly, you’re lucky we even made it.”

At the periphery of his vision Mal saw Zoë clamber out of the Mule and sidle over to stand about a dozen yards away at his three o’clock. She moved casually. It looked like she was almost sauntering. Any soldier worth his salt could have told you, though, that she was now well placed to outflank Koestler and his posse if for some reason they got it into their heads to launch an attack. Her hand hung within easy reach of the sawn-off lever-action carbine strapped to her thigh, the type of customized weapon known informally as a Mare’s Leg.

Jayne, for his part, had got out too but remained with the Mule. He was leaning against the side of the vehicle, legs crossed, elbow planted casually on the bodywork. But just out of sight, down in the passenger-seat footwell, was the Callahan full-bore auto-lock rifle he liked to refer to as Vera. If need be, he could snatch up the weapon and start firing in less than a second.

Neither Zoë nor Jayne had been told to assume a combat-ready position. They hadn’t had to be told. They’d been in enough situations like this that it had become almost second nature. Every precaution had to be taken when there was a decent likelihood of things going awry.

“Where’s your ship now?” Koestler demanded.

“Holed up in a canyon about ten miles yonder.” Mal gestured back the way they had come. “Seemed sensible to park up there and travel the rest of the way by Mule. If anyone’s monitorin’ activity on the planet’s surface from orbit, no need to go giving them a big, fat, juicy target to home in on. Kinda thought you might appreciate the gesture.”

Koestler acknowledged this with a small nod. “Just the three of you?”

“These two’s all I need for company. I see you’ve brought friends too. And none of them short on artillery, at that. You expectin’ trouble?”

“Put it this way, Mr. Reynolds. Your reputation precedes you.”

“Hey now, I’m a friendly type of guy,” Mal said, putting on his most easygoing smile. “I see no reason why we can’t conduct our transaction and all of us walk away calm and contented and free from bullet holes.”

Whether it was the sheer quantity of firearms Koestler and his sidekicks were toting or the antsiness evident in more than one of them, Mal couldn’t say. But he was getting the impression that if he wasn’t careful, the handover of the cargo might easily turn sour. A badly chosen word, a misconstrued look, the merest twitch of a trigger finger, and guns would start blazing.

Why, oh why, couldn’t life ever be straightforward?

Keeping his expression amiable and his gestures slow and controlled, he said, “So perhaps you could show me the goods?”

Koestler motioned to one of his cronies. “Nine Toes?”

The man named Nine Toes slid out of his saddle and went back to the float-sled that was harnessed to his horse. He detached the sled and activated its low-power antigravity generator. The unit rose with a whirr, to hover wobblingly just a few inches above the ground. He grasped its guidance bar and drew it over towards Mal as easily as if it weighed nothing.

Perched on the float-sled’s bed was a brushed-steel flightcase. It was roughly three feet by two feet by one foot, with a carrying handle at either end, and was stenciled all over with the Blue Sun logo.

The logo gave Mal no clue as to what might lie inside the flightcase. The ’verse-spanning corporation manufactured just about every product imaginable. You name it, foodstuffs, liquor, underwear, washing powder, pharmaceuticals, sourceboxes, even weaponry.

Of course, the flightcase’s contents might have nothing to do with Blue Sun. Koestler could simply have found an old empty flightcase lying around and used it to store Badger’s “technical apparatus.”

“Don’t suppose you’d mind tellin’ me about what’s in there?” he said to Koestler. “Thing is, I’m a mite wary when it comes to loading cargo aboard my ship I don’t know a whole heap about.”

“Well now, there’s the difference between us,” said Koestler. “Me, I tend not to ask questions. Long as I’m gettin’ my coin at the end of the day, anything else is surplus to requirements.”

“You must at least have some idea where it’s from.”

“I’ll tell you this much. It was part of a consignment came out of the Blue Sun research and development facility that lies on the outskirts of Riverbend, about a hundred-fifty miles north. A couple dozen boxes just like this one were being shipped off-planet. Through a chain of circumstances about which I do not feel prompted to inquire, one less flightcase made it onto the transport vessel than was listed on the manifest. My guess is a security guard was bribed to look the other way.”

Mal tutted. “Whatever happened to company loyalty? Seems like you can’t depend on anyone these days.”

“At any rate, said flightcase has made its way into my custody, and now I am entrusting it to yours. Anymore’n that, I truly do not know nor want to.”

“Figure Badger must’ve had it stolen to order.”

“Again, not my concern, but that seems plausible. Now, Mr. Reynolds, enough of the chitchat. Are you gonna take the thing off my hands or are we gonna stand around yakkin’ until doomsday?”

Mal deliberated. There was still time to walk away from the deal. Over the years, he had developed a gut instinct, a kind of smuggler’s sixth sense. Sometimes the risk was simply not worth the reward, and he had a strong hunch that this was one of those occasions.

It wasn’t as if he hadn’t expected he would be handling hot property. A deal brokered by Badger? On a tiny, no-account planet on the Border? The whole setup practically screamed “iffy.”

What Mal knew now, however, was that the flightcase’s contents had been appropriated from a Blue Sun science lab. That was bad. Worse still was the lab’s location. You didn’t establish a research and development facility somewhere way, way out on the fringes of the ’verse unless you were carrying out work there that you didn’t want decent, ordinary folk knowing about. Why else choose a world like Canterbury if not because it was sparsely populated and there was ample room to conduct experiments and trials well away from prying eyes?

That implied the facility was some kind of black site, home to off-the-books projects, which even Blue Sun shareholders—the vast majority of them, at least—were unaware of. That in turn implied that the Alliance had fingers in this particular pie. Blue Sun and the Feds often colluded on military-related endeavors. Billions in funding went from the Alliance to the corporation’s armaments and biotech divisions, and the results bolstered the Alliance’s dominance over the ’verse and at the same time swelled Blue Sun’s coffers.

The presence of so many Alliance ships in proximity to Canterbury now made sense. Whatever was in that flightcase, the Feds wanted it back and they were going to do their damnedest to ensure it did not slip through their fingers a second time.

“Mal?” said Jayne.

“Yeah?”

“We gonna do this or what?”

Hoyt Koestler and his men were growing impatient too. Mal knew he could not ponder a moment longer. It was poop-or-get-off-the-pot time.

“No,” he said finally.

Jayne did a double take. “Come again?”

“No,” Mal repeated.

“That’s what I thought you said. Only I couldn’t believe you actually said it.”

“Sir?” said Zoë, frowning.

“It’s been a pleasure making your acquaintance, Mr. Koestler,” Mal said, “but I’ve decided we won’t be taking that flightcase after all. Badger’ll just have to find someone else to fly it to Persephone for him.”

Koestler looked peeved. His squint deepened. “That is most inconsiderate of you, if I may say so, Mr. Reynolds. See, I am a man of my word, and if I say I am going to deliver a certain item to a certain person at a certain time, I aim to do precisely that. If I do not hold to my word, then that makes me a liar. Would you have me be considered a liar, Mr. Reynolds?”

“No, and neither would I have myself be considered a reckless fool,” Mal said. “The more you’ve told me about that there cargo, the less I want to be associated with it. If it helps any, you can explain to Badger that I’m the one who failed to meet their end of the bargain. No blame will attach to you.”

“We’re operatin’ on a tight deadline here,” Koestler retorted. “Badger wants his item by the end of the week. He’s got a buyer all lined up and keen to be in receipt of said item. We have to arrange for another ship to fly all the way out to Canterbury to pick it up, that’s gonna cause delays, and the kind of people who buy from Badger don’t like delays.”

“That’s his tough gŏu shĭ. My involvement in this matter ends here. All’s I see when I look at that box is trouble, and I may not have much in this life but trouble is one area in which I sorely do not lack.”

Mal spun on his heel and started walking back to the Mule and the crestfallen-looking Jayne beside it.

From behind him he heard Koestler say, “I’d never have pegged you as a coward.”

Mal’s step faltered. Then he carried on.

Koestler raised his voice. “I said, Reynolds, I’d never have pegged you as a coward. You deaf or somethin’?”

With a shrug, Mal said, “I call it common sense myself, but if you wish to call it cowardice, that’s your prerogative.”

There was the loud cocking of a pistol. It was followed by the sound of various other guns being readied. Mal looked over his shoulder to see Koestler pointing a six-shooter at him. Koestler’s men were doing likewise, some of them with both hands filled. A bristling array of ordnance confronted him.

“The flightcase,” Koestler said menacingly. “Take it, or else.”

Zoë and Jayne reacted instantaneously to the threat presented by Koestler and his pals.

Zoë dropped into a crouch, unholstering her Mare’s Leg at the same time, all in a single, fluid motion.

Jayne, meanwhile, lunged for Vera. Hunkering down behind the Mule, he lodged the rifle’s butt against his shoulder and brought his eye to the sight.

Mal turned slowly back around to face the posse. His expression was resigned, even weary.

“And there I was thinkin’ we’d get through this without anybody resorting to aggression,” he said. “Kinda underscores my point about there being no lack of trouble in my life.”

“You’re taking the cargo, Reynolds,” Koestler intoned. “No ifs or buts. It’s your duty. Much as it’s my duty to see that that flightcase gets spaceborne, pronto. So how’s about you just load it onto the back of that Mule of yours, like a good boy, and we’ll forget this little altercation ever happened. What do you say?”

“I say you had my attention right up until you called me ‘a good boy’ and then you lost it again. I’ll tell you what’s going to happen now, Koestler. You are going to let the three of us get back aboard our Mule and depart, without that flightcase and, more importantly, without so much as a single round being discharged. Otherwise, you and your buddies are going to get into a shooting match which, I grant you, you may win, given your superior numbers, but which not all of you will emerge from unscathed. The lady over there is a trained soldier and, believe you me, no one in their right mind wants to be on the wrong end of her gun. As for the big, goateed fella next to the Mule, I know from experience that he can crack off three shots faster than it takes the average person to loose just one. Added to that he’s in a strong defensive position, and you, sitting up on your horses there in a nice, neat row like coconuts at a shy, ain’t. In other words, you start this firefight, and I guarantee that this fast”—Mal snapped his fingers—“’most every one of you is going to be lyin’ on the ground, minus a goodly-sized chunk of flesh. You really want that?”

Koestler sneered. “I’ve heard some bluffs in my time, but that one just about beats ’em all. I’ll say this for you, Reynolds. You have a solid pair of brass cojones on you.”

“Thank you. I keep them well polished.”

“Takes some gall, to stand there with all these guns aimed at you and tell the fellas holding them that they’re the ones’re gonna come off worst from the exchange.”

“I like to think I’m just stating how it is.”

Koestler sighed. “I don’t got a hankerin’ to shoot no one today. I thought we might do this all amicable like.”

“I thought so too. And it strikes me it’d be a mite counterproductive for you to start blastin’ away at the folk you want to take that flightcase off of you. We’re dead, who you gonna get to do the job in our stead, in the time available?”

“Is this about money?” said Koestler. “Huh? Some kinda attempt at extortion?”

Jayne looked at Mal hopefully. He was clearly thinking the same thing, now that Koestler had mentioned it. Trying to screw a little extra platinum out of the other guy—that was the kind of tactic Jayne Cobb wholeheartedly approved of.

“Nuh-uh,” said Mal. “It’s about self-preservation.”

“Well, if self-preservation’s the issue,” said Koestler, “how ’bout this? I’m gonna count to three, and by the time I get to three, I want to see those two puttin’ down their weapons and you pullin’ that float-sled over to that Mule. Otherwise… Well, you know what the ‘otherwise’ is. One. Two.”

He never got to three, because that was when the shooting began.

Who actually started it, was unclear. It was one of Koestler’s men, that was all Mal knew. One of them must have got itchy-fingered. Maybe he hadn’t even meant to fire. He’d had his trigger on first pressure, and the count of three had made him nervous, and he’d tightened his finger a little further without realizing, and blam!

The fact that it was an accidental discharge would account, too, for the shot going wild. The round hurtled in the general direction of Jayne but was off-target by a fair few degrees.

Jayne, however, did not hesitate to retaliate. You couldn’t send a bullet at Jayne Cobb and not expect to get one in return.

Or two.

Or more.

In fact, Vera boomed three times in swift succession.

In the same swift succession, three of Koestler’s men were hurled from their saddles one after another by bullet impacts. The 12-gauge rounds blew an enormous cavity in each man, blood and gore spraying out behind them and spattering the ground for at least ten feet away.

Startled by the extraordinarily loud gun reports and the deaths that followed, all of the horses bucked and reared, whinnying in distress. Koestler and his two remaining accomplices were too busy staying mounted to return fire, and by the time they’d got their steeds under control, Zoë had already put a bullet in the man nearest her. He slumped forward over his horse’s neck, and the frightened creature, feeling the reins go slack, wheeled around and galloped away. Its dead rider flopped up and down on its back as it ran.

That left just Koestler himself and one other, a man who showed signs of liberal chewing-tobacco use.

Koestler drew a bead on Mal with his six-shooter. It didn’t matter to him why the bullets were flying or that he hadn’t given the order to fire. Bullets were flying, that was all that mattered, and in those circumstances you were wise to join in.

Mal, however, had his own gun in his hand now, the long-barreled Moses Brothers Self-Defense Engine Frontier Model B, which he dubbed the Liberty Hammer.

Before Koestler was able to get off a shot, Mal fired.

A neat crimson hole appeared in the center of Koestler’s forehead, just below the brim of his hat. His squinty eyes widened for perhaps the first and certainly the last time in his life. He rolled sideways off his pinto, one foot still hooked into a stirrup. The horse, following the example of its comrade, took off at speed, dragging Koestler’s limp body behind it. The other riderless horses followed suit.

Now Tobacco Stains was the last of the posse still alive. Sensibly, he dropped his firearm and raised his hands.

“Peace,” he said. “I know when I’m outgunned. My pappy didn’t raise no—”

Bang!

Jayne shot him through the heart.

Mal spun around. “Jayne? Really? Man was surrendering.”

The big mercenary straightened up, slinging Vera over his shoulder by its strap. “Never know, do you? Could’ve just been a ploy to get us to drop our guard. Anyways, it’s tidier like this. What’d we do with him if we’d had to take him prisoner? We’d’ve had to tie him up, get him back to the ship, feed him, water him…”

“Or,” Mal said, “we could have just let him go.”

“Hmph,” said Jayne, shrugging, as if he hadn’t thought of that. “Still, doesn’t alter the situation any. We got us our cargo, just as before, and I’m presumin’ you’ve abandoned that addle-brained notion you had of leavin’ it here.”

Mal shook his head with finality. “Then you’d be presumin’ wrong.”

“C’mon, Mal!” Jayne protested. “Don’t tell me you’re worried on account of it’s stolen goods. We’ve moved plenty of that type of thing before now, and you ain’t so much as turned a hair. What’s different this time?”

“I knew the cargo was gonna be hot. Just didn’t know how hot.”

“What about Badger?” Zoë said.

“What about him?” said Mal.

“He doesn’t get his goods, he’s going to be less than happy. You willin’ to burn bridges with him?”

“Badger’ll be sore about it, but his hurt feelings don’t bother me none. ’Sides, he’ll get over it soon enough. Couple of weeks, a month maybe, and he’ll be ready to do business with us again.”

“You sure about that?”