Big Damn Hero

9

Cold. Cold, cold ground. And hard.

Mal’s hips, shoulders, knees, and head bounced as tremendous explosions roared, shaking the earth under him. Out in the open, where there was no cover within reach, the falling firebombs burst in successive waves. They gouged out massive pits, sending tons of rock and debris into the air. The pressure of the detonations crushed the air from his chest. He wanted to run, but his legs would not support him, and there was nowhere to go anyway. Death fell randomly from the skies, and the flashes of the explosions flickered orange against the overhanging clouds.

Serenity Valley. Where the Browncoats lost sixteen brigades and twenty air-tank squads, near as. Where the two thousand warriors Mal was leading got whittled down to a hundred and fifty. Where the 57th Overlanders, his platoon, was all but wiped out. Where High Command obliged the troops on the ground to surrender when, given air support at the crucial time, they could maybe have won.

In the deepest recesses of his brain, Mal knew he was reliving a past moment. But it sure as hell felt real. Vividly, viscerally so, like he was experiencing it for the first time. Instant obliteration lay on all sides. The terror and paralysis he felt was genuine. As falling rocks pelted him, he curled into a fetal position with hands covering the back of his head.

Then, in the midst of the hellish bombardment, the flying dirt and the dark smoke, a white chicken appeared out of nowhere. Oblivious to the danger, it strutted up close to his face and, cocking its head to one side, said, “Evenin’.”

At that shocking moment Mal concluded he had to be dreaming. In his experience, no chicken had a voice that deep. But he was sure someone had spoken because now that he was wide awake, heart hammering up under his chin, the sound of it was still ringing in his ears.

He couldn’t see anything. Everything was so inky black, it made Mal wonder if he had somehow, someway, suddenly been struck blind. He couldn’t tell if his eyes were open, nor move his hands to find out one way or another.

Then, as his brain stopped tumbling like a juggling ball inside his skull, the scratchiness at his ears and the end of his nose put the lie to that assumption. Well, damn it, there was a bag over his head. From the coarse feel of it, a burlap bag. No mistaking one thing: it smelled like… chickenfeed. He was lying on his side on a grated or ribbed surface, perhaps a metal deck.

Explosions weren’t squashing his chest; it was the shifting g-force mashing him down. And the explosions weren’t explosions at all, but the sustained din of rocket exhaust. For sure, he was on some kind of ship, maybe even his own boat, lying on the floor with his hands cinched up behind his back and his ankles tied too.

That would likely mean I’m in trouble.

Last thing he remembered, and that only foggily, was fighting Hunter Covington and his three goons outside Taggart’s. And holding his own until Covington zapped him with some kind of knockout gas from his cobra-head cane — a dirty trick if ever there was one. Whatever happened to a good old-fashioned whack on the noggin with a gun butt?

His Liberty Hammer was gone, of course. He couldn’t feel its familiar weight on his hip. Confiscated, no doubt. A sensible precaution on his captors’ part. Not that he could have reached the weapon anyway, with his hands fastened as they were. He tested the bonds, feeling the roughness of rope around his wrists. Whoever had done the tying had done it right. The knots were so tight, his fingers were numb. Same went for the ropes around his ankles.

Over the sound of the engines, Mal heard the shuffle of boots on the metal deck.

“Evenin’ to you, too,” he said affably to whoever the heck it was had spoken to him a moment ago, although it most definitely was not poultry. “Could you please remind me what I did to piss someone off so much?”

The burlap sack was yanked off his head, and a gust of sour whiskey breath hit him square in the face. He blinked from the floor, staring up into a bright light, in the middle of which was the silhouette of a man’s head with a feathery halo of sandy-colored hair. Mal squinted harder, trying to make out the man’s features, but the contrast between the head and the bright light was too extreme.

“Evenin’,” the man said again.

“Is it?” Mal said. “Hard to tell the time when you’ve got a sack over your head. Just sayin’.”

The man bent over him. When he moved his face closer, the details of it became clearer. A set of heavy jowls formed the foundation for a block-shaped head. He wasn’t Covington, or for that matter one of Covington’s trio of thugs. Mal had never seen him before.

But he had seen the interior of this vessel before. It was Serenity’s shuttle, the one that had been sent to Guilder’s Shipwright for repairs and that he, Jayne, and Zoë had been planning to pick up after the meet at Taggart’s.

Gorramn. Don’t this beat all.

“We going somewhere?” he inquired cheerily, like he was on some kind of excursion into the countryside, with maybe a picnic thrown in. “In my shuttle?” he added.

“We sure as hell are,” the sandy-haired man said, squatting on his haunches, hairy hands dangling between his legs like a baboon.

Mal’s vision finally adjusted to the light and he saw that his captor had bloodshot brown eyes. His face was scarred, with what looked like knife cuts or blast wounds on the right side from jawline to temple, although his right ear below the patchy, straw-like hair was still pretty much intact. He had perhaps half the regularly mandated quantity of teeth, and those he possessed were browned, thin as rice, and only just clinging on to their foundations in his gums. The well-worn gun belt around his waist held two pistols, and they were as roughened and ugly as his mug. A third gun — Mal’s own Liberty Hammer, in a lot better condition than the others — protruded from the belt.

“Nice piece,” Mal said, nodding to it. “I’ve got one just the same, only I appear to have mislaid it.”

Scarface smirked. “I agree, it’s a nice gun. Have me a mind to keep it, once all this is over.”

“‘All this?’ Care to enlighten me about that?”

“You’ll find out soon enough.”

“Well then, I don’t suppose you’d mind answering my earlier question. Where we headed? Not Pelorum, by any chance? Ain’t so far from here, and I hear it’s lovely whatever the season but especially at this time of year. Sun, sea, gambling, and so many folks lookin’ for a casual hook-up, I reckon even someone as deficient in the looks department as you could get laid.”

Anger flickered like lightning across Scarface’s distorted features. “We’re deliverin’ you to justice,” he grated.

That sounded ominous.

Mal tried to sit up, and failed. The man’s upper lip curled in amusement as he savored the struggle and defeat.

“Hmm. Justice,” Mal repeated. “Can you be a little more specific? I like justice, big fan, but I hadn’t planned on any side trips today. Did you take back the loaner shuttle? And do you know Hunter Covington?”

“He was right about you. You are stupid,” Scarface said.

“Covington insulted me? I’m crushed. I thought we were pals.”

“No, not him. Someone else.”

“Who?”

“You’ll find out soon enough.”

Mal was putting up a confident front, but he was right uneasy. It was now pretty obvious to him that Covington had never planned for him to deliver anything to anybody. That talk of a lump of metallic ore and somebody called Professor Yakima Barnes had been just so much hogwash. Covington had lured Mal out of Taggart’s for the sole purpose of shanghaiing him. And like a big dumbass, Mal had fallen for it.

“Maybe,” he said, “if you could explain to me what your beef is, I’m sure I could clear things up.”

“And maybe you could just shut up, traitor,” Scarface snapped.

“Traitor?” Mal wrinkled his forehead. “Who’s calling me that?”

“Donovan Philips,” Scarface said, slapping his chest. “That’s who’s calling you a traitor.”

“Glad to make your acquaintance, Donovan Philips.”

“And I ain’t alone in holdin’ that opinion of you,” Philips spat. “There’s a whole passel of us that think scum like you are the lowest form of life and should be exterminated.”

“Call me sensitive, but I’m picking up a distinctly hostile vibe here, Donnie ol’ pal. I’m reckonin’ you’ve got me confused with somebody else. There another Malcolm Reynolds in your address book? This could turn out to be one of those embarrassing mix-ups we all stand around and laugh about it afterwards over a beer or two.”

“No misunderstanding,” said Philips. “We got the right man.”

“But I ain’t no traitor. Never have been. A traitor to who? Or is it ‘to whom?’ Never could get that one straight.”

“You’re being called to account. And you’ll pay for what you done.”

“Been a lot of places, conducted a lot of business,” Mal said. “Fairly or not, I suppose I riled some of the folks I dealt with. They were expectin’ more, got less. But as to treason, maybe you could do me the kindness of dabbing a bit more paint on that canvas?”

“You ain’t the first and you won’t be the last to face the music for that particular crime.”

“Now that’s starting to sound a touch serious.”

“You’d be right in thinking that and wise not to be so flippant about it.”

Mal was still no nearer an understanding of what the gū yáng zhōng de gū yáng this was all about. What was clear was that there didn’t seem to be any room for negotiation with his captor. Donovan Philips hadn’t subtly floated the possibility of ransom, to be paid cash or barter. It was very much like the sentence of death had already been read and all that was left was the manner of execution.

Mal knew better than to show fear, even when helpless, with no cavalry in sight. “Where might this account-calling be located?” he said. “Can you at least tell me that? Is it far from Persephone? Am I going to be able to take my shuttle back? As I think I might have mentioned, I’m in the middle of a few important things—”

“Shut up.”

“No, listen. I really think there’s been a case of mistaken ident—”

“I said shut up!” Philips balanced himself on one hand and punched Mal square in the face with the other.

A searing flash of light filled Mal’s skull, blinding him as completely as the chickenfeed sack so recently had. In a world of hurt, with the taste of blood in his mouth, his head dropped, slamming hard on the metal.

Back to the black, the drifting black, tumbling, tumbling, tumbling.

Explosions.