Big Damn Hero

34

“Why’re you even here?” Mal called across the cavern to Hunter Covington. “Don’t reckon as you were ever a Browncoat.”

“How can you tell?” Covington replied.

“On account of Browncoats have integrity, and you don’t.”

“For what it’s worth, I did my best to stay neutral during the war.”

“Yeah, like most gutless, profiteerin’ streaks of xióng māo niào did.”

“I was open to opportunities wherever they arose,” Covington said. “Still am. To nail your colors to a single mast is so limiting. Except, you didn’t nail your colors to a single mast after all, did you, Mal? In fact, you have no right to lecture me about integrity. Not if what Mr. Finn says about your past behavior is true, and I have no reason to believe it isn’t. You have earned yourself a reputation around Eavesdown, and elsewhere, as someone with a very elastic approach to ethics. ‘Give Malcolm Reynolds a job, chances are he’ll let you down or wind up screwing you over,’ that’s what they say. ‘Trust him no further than you could throw him.’”

“Couple of bad reviews, they stay with you forever,” Mal said. “Everyone ignores the many satisfied customers I’ve had.”

“And to answer your question, I’m here because I was invited. I’ve been in cahoots with these here Browncoat fellas for a while now, and I still haven’t yet seen first-hand how they operate. As they were going to be on Hades, practically in my backyard, I thought I’d take up Mr. Finn’s invitation and fly on over. It’s always a good idea to learn as much as you can about a business partner’s practices.”

“And I guess maybe you got an appetite for summary executions as well, huh?” Mal said. “You get off on it.”

Covington shook his head firmly but not that firmly. “I’m not that barbaric. I can’t deny, however, a certain curiosity. How will a man like you face up to death, Reynolds? With a wink and a quip, or blubbering in abject terror?”

“I’d be curious myself to see how you manage it, Covington. Because, I get the chance, you’re the one who’ll be facin’ up to death.”

“Brave talk, considering how this trial appears to be almost at an end. Didn’t I hear Mr. Finn just say you were about to get your comeuppance? Seems to me that sentence is shortly to be pronounced. Isn’t that so, Mr. Finn?”

Toby Finn nodded. “You’re quite right, Hunter. In fact, as I told you, you couldn’t have timed your arrival better. All that remains is for me to furnish the clinching proof that Mal killed Jinny Adare, and then we can get down to the punishment. I have that proof right here. But a little background first. Mal was just saying that we were called up to fight shortly after the Alliance attack on Shadow. It wasn’t even a week, was it? Jinny only just planted in the ground, and troop carriers arrived to ship us out. Only when we were aboard did we learn which regiments we’d be joining. We’d had our skills assessed at bootcamp and were assigned accordingly. Mal went to the 57th Overlanders, Jamie and I to the 19th Sunbeamers. Mal became a ground pounder, Jamie and I space commandos.”

“The Sunbeamers acquitted themselves honorably in many a battle, so I hear,” said Covington.

“I myself participated in dozens of ship-to-ship actions. I took my fair share of Alliance scalps. But Jamie? Jamie was in a league of his own. That man fought with a righteous fury that burned hotter than a sun. Alliance had just killed his sister. He wasn’t going to let them forget that. Jamie Adare never took a single prisoner. You were an Alliance trooper and got in his way, woe betide you. He was single-minded, laser-focused, deadly as hell. I overheard a major once say that if he had a hundred soldiers like Jamie, the war would be over within a week. But he was reckless, too. Jamie, see, didn’t care if he lived or died. He was just this big, seething ball of hate. Nothing mattered to him except taking out as many of the enemy as he could. He died at Sturges.”

The Battle of Sturges was one of the bloodiest of the war, rivaled in ferocity and numbers of casualties only by Serenity Valley, and was fought over money — a hoard of victory spoils being carried by a freighter, the Sublime, back to the Core from the Rim. The Browncoats were keen to get their hands on this loot in order to help fund their war effort. Just off the planet Sturges, Independent ships attacked the freighter’s armed escort, at considerable cost to their own forces. Space commandos then boarded the Sublime herself, only to discover that she had been booby-trapped, rigged to explode if a failsafe mechanism was triggered by the captain. Rather than let the loot fall into Independent hands, the captain sacrificed himself and everyone else aboard.

“Jamie was one of the first onto the Sublime,” Toby said. “I didn’t reach it. My spacesuit developed a radiation-shielding malfunction and I had to return to my ship. If not for that, I’d have gone up with Sublime, like Jamie and most of the rest of the regiment. That was the end of the 19th Sunbeamers. After that, the regiment was disbanded I got transferred to an infantry unit, the 31st Raiders.”

“A heck of a squad,” said Mal with sincerity.

“Damn straight we were. Not for nothing were we known as the Angel Makers. Wherever there was trouble, wherever the battle was at its thickest, that was where the 31st were sent.”

A couple of people in the crowd yelled “Hoo-rah!” in support. Veterans of the same regiment, Mal presumed. There was no question the 31st Raiders had been one of the scrappiest units the Browncoats could boast. Their attrition rate was terrible. Life expectancy was around three weeks, a month if you were lucky. The fact that Toby had survived as long as he had was testament to his combat skill and tenacity. The little redheaded guy had been, it seemed, capable of meeting everything the Alliance could throw at him.

“I first fought alongside Malcolm Reynolds at the Battle of Du-Khang,” Toby said. “The Raiders had taken some heavy hits lately and we were merged into the whole Balls and Bayonets Brigade along with several other regiments, the 57th Overlanders included. Mal and I eventually got to meet up. That was some kinda reunion.”

“Sure was,” Mal said. “I was right glad to see you. Friendly face from home. Felt kind of impossible that we’d both come through all we had, and now here we were, fightin’ alongside each other. Felt like it was meant to be.”

“It did,” Toby said, almost wistfully. “Even after all that happened on Shadow, I still thought of you as my friend. That was before.”

“Before what?”

“Before we were dispatched to Hera. Before we made camp in Serenity Valley. Before the day I dropped by your tent to say hi. The fighting hadn’t started yet. We were digging in on our side, Alliance was digging in on the other, both of us waiting on the attack command. Lull before the storm. I had a spare hour so I made my way along the lines, found where the Overlanders were, looked for you. Someone directed me to your tent, but you weren’t there. I decided to wait. That was when I saw your kitbag. It was open. I saw something inside, glinting. I couldn’t help it. Had to check. I just got curious. And it was this…”

Toby delved into his pocket again, as he had when producing Jinny’s homing beacon. This time he took out a silver crucifix pendant, roughly three inches long and two across, its arms as thick as a baby’s finger.

“Tā mā de hún dàn!” Mal exclaimed. “That’s where that went! All this time, I thought I’d lost it. I ransacked my tent. Went through my belongings a hundred times. Looked everywhere.” He had even accused his corporal of stealing it. Given that she was Zoë Alleyne, that had not gone down well. Mal was still amazed she had ever forgiven him.

Toby pressed a recessed catch, and the front of the crucifix sprang open. Inside lay circuitry.

“This,” Toby said, holding up the device for all to see, “is another homing beacon. Its circuitry is the exact double of the circuitry in the beacon on Jinny Adare’s body, just in a different configuration. The two units were linked reciprocally, each keyed to the other’s unique signature. I didn’t know that when I first saw it. Some instinct told me there was a connection between this beacon and Jinny’s, but I had no way of establishing that for sure. Not then. Not yet. But I took it.”

“Yeah, you thieving rat-bastard, you did,” Mal snarled.

“I took it because suddenly things were starting to make sense. Things like how the Alliance knew exactly where the arms cache was at the Adares’. How they’d been able to precision-target the cowshed. Why Mal had said, ‘She was supposed to be safe.’ Jinny was supposed to be safe because Mal had come to an arrangement with the Alliance, and the Alliance had — surprise, surprise — reneged on it.”

“That just ain’t it!” Mal cried. “Those beacons were just so that Jinny and I would know each other was okay, is all. They were a way of us keeping tabs. The plan was she’d wear hers and I’d wear mine, and that way we’d each know the other was okay. Only, that never happened because… Well, we all know why. But I still kept that crucifix with me as a souvenir, to remind me of her.”

Never once had he actually draped the pendant around his neck, however. Not only had the beacon become redundant and meaningless through the destruction of its counterpart and its counterpart’s wearer, but the crucifix itself had started to seem that way too. Mal could pretty much date the loss of whatever religious faith he’d had to the day he lost Jinny Adare.

“You’re reading this all wrong, Toby,” he went on. “You’re making out as if there was this whole terrible conspiracy, and it’s all just in your head. Come on, think about it. Why would I have one of those homing beacons too if they were for giving away our location to the Alliance?”

“To keep yourself safe,” Toby said. “Alliance wouldn’t touch you as long as they knew where you were. That second beacon is as incriminating as the first, if not more so.”

“Didn’t make much difference at Serenity Valley, for example. I damn near died there.”

“But you didn’t before then!” Toby declared. “That’s just it. You, Sergeant Malcolm Reynolds, the Alliance’s mole within the Browncoat ranks, made it through a couple dozen previous hell-storms unscathed. All because you had that beacon.”

“If you think that, then you—”

“I think,” Toby said with a sudden snap of authority, “that we have heard quite enough from you, Mal. You can protest till you’re blue in the face. The evidence is all here. These two beacons are all the verification anyone needs. You are a traitor, a saboteur, and a collaborator. Right from the very start of the war, you were disloyal to the Independent cause. Whether you intended it or not, Jinny Adare became a victim of your treachery, and in return you got a free pass from the Alliance. I have stated my case. The arguments are more than persuasive. I shall now put it to the good people before us to tell us if they agree or disagree. A show of hands, if you please.”

Hands shot up in the air. There were growls of “Yeah!” and “Yee-hah!”

“One or two abstainers, I see,” said Toby. “Stu Deakins. David Zuburi. You’ve yet to be convinced? Well, it doesn’t have to be unanimous for the motion to be carried. The yeas far outnumber the nays.”

Now the crowd swarmed forwards. The bald man who had brandished a noose earlier was once again ready with the length of rope. He and another Browncoat slung the loose end over a cross-brace of the drilling rig. Meanwhile, Donovan Philips motioned Mal to walk backwards, using Mal’s own Liberty Hammer as a threat.

“Stop there,” Philips said when Mal was next to the rig and right under the dangling noose. “Do anything dumb like try to resist, and I’ll put a bullet in you. Won’t kill you. Gut shot. It’ll hurt like hell and you’ll hang anyway. You want that?”

“Don’t much want either,” Mal said. “Everybody, listen up! I am innocent. There is no way I would have endangered Jinny’s life and no way I’d have helped out the Alliance. I am one of you. Always have been, always will be.”

But he could scarcely make himself heard above the baying of the slavering, eager mob. Their eyes were bright with bloodlust. They had come for a hanging and — by thunder! — they were going to get a hanging. This was the vigilantes’ primary purpose in life, a fire they had kept stoked in their bellies since the war ended. Someone had to pay for their defeat, and if that someone was another Browncoat, why not? There’d been bad apples on both sides, and since they couldn’t easily root out the ones on the Alliance’s, they were rooting out the ones on their own.

The noose was looped around Mal’s neck, the roughness rope scratching his skin.

“Remember Jamie, Mal?” Toby said. “Remember what Bundy and Crump tried to do to him, and would have if you hadn’t come along? Same again, only this time it’s you who’s getting strung up, and you know what? Nobody’s coming. There ain’t no cavalry, no last-minute reprieve. This is your time, Mal Reynolds. Make your peace, if you can, but believe me when I say that hellfire awaits you. You’re gonna burn for all eternity with all them other sinners, and you deserve every second of it, just for what you did to her.”

Before Mal could reply, hands tightened the noose so that the knot was hard against the back of his head and the loop constricted his throat. His airway wasn’t quite cut off, but he could only just breathe and certainly could not speak.

Mindful of the gun in Donovan Philips’s hand, he didn’t squirm or fight. He had no doubt that Philips would gut shoot him if provoked. Even if he did get out of the noose somehow, a wound like that would kill him regardless, and slow. He was alive and well right up until the noose strangled him and his legs stopped kicking. Between now and then, there was always a chance, however slim, that he might still escape. These were the mad calculations rushing through his head: how to prolong the little life remaining to him, how to postpone death until the last possible moment.

The bald man and his accomplice looked to Toby for final confirmation. Toby raised a hand and slashed it down through the air. Mal felt a tugging on the rope. All at once he was rising into the air. It was only a few inches. His feet were still in contact with the cavern floor, but just barely. He teetered on his tiptoes, the noose biting into the underside of his jaw. His vision began to blur. He felt vertebrae in his neck creaking. Breaths came in short, gasping sips of air. This wasn’t going to be a simple lynching, then. It was going to be torture. The vigilantes were going to draw out his death as long as they could.

Their faces floated before him like lurid, gloating balloons. Their cries echoed thickly in his ears, seeming to come from underwater. Mal’s toecaps scrabbled for purchase on the ground. Already his legs were starting to ache from the effort of keeping him standing. Then, all at once, one foot slipped out from under him. The clench of the noose increased. Mal felt his heartbeat pounding in his head as he struggled to regain his balance. Like some ungainly ballerina, he managed to get back up onto the points of both feet. He remained suspended just above the cavern floor, swaying ever so slightly, twisting clockwise and anticlockwise.

He heard some distant, piglike grunting noise and realized it was coming from his own throat.

So this was how it was going to be. This was how it ended. The long, wayward, wild voyage of Malcolm Reynolds, from rumbustious kid to combat-hardened warrior to ship’s captain. Along the way there’d been triumphs, tragedies, and all points in between, but only in the recent-most portion had he found something like contentment. He owed that, he knew, to his crew, that mixed company of lost souls, misfits and renegades. They were a family, of sorts, the kind you made rather than were born into, the kind that came to surround you through twists of fate and a modicum of choice. They drove him mad sometimes but he wouldn’t have had them any different. While he’d held them together as their captain and guided them safely through the ’verse, he’d been doing something right, he decided. Something good. That, set in the plus column of his life, surely balanced out everything — and there was a lot of it — in the minus column.

I’ve heard tell it can take a man up to six minutes to pass out during a short drop hanging, twenty minutes till he’s actually dead.

Sheriff Bundy’s words came to him, unbidden. How many minutes had it been so far? Mal couldn’t even begin to tell. It might only have been two or three, and the rope wasn’t even strangling him fully yet.

He felt the strength in his legs ebbing. He didn’t know how much longer he could hold out. A haze was descending. Any moment now, he was going to sag in the noose, becoming so much dead weight. He hoped he would lose consciousness swiftly, sooner than Bundy’s promised six minutes.

There was a gunshot. From a million miles away. Mal felt himself jerk. He didn’t know what it meant.

It was time to die.