Big Damn Hero

36

Outside the mine entrance, Wash drove the forklift back towards Serenity. He had just deposited—verrry carefully — a single crate of HTX-20 roughly ten yards inside.

Kaylee was standing on the cargo-bay ramp. She looked jumpy, on edge, more so than previously.

“Why the face?” Wash asked as he braked to a halt.

“We need to offload the other four crates.”

“What?”

Kaylee held up a scanner. “Just taken some fresh readings. The explosives are heating up faster than ever. They’re going critical, and there ain’t nothing I can think of to do to retard or reverse the process. I’d say we have maybe ten, fifteen minutes before they blow.”

“Fèi fèi de pì yăn. You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Wish I were. Badger sure handed us a zhēng qì de gōu shī duī. Wouldn’t surprise me if he did it on purpose.”

“What for? To piss us off? If so, mission accomplished. I’m pissed off. But I’m not sure even Badger would be that much of a crap-heel, not when there’s money involved. Okay now, let’s see what our options are.”

Wash surveyed the area. The mine entrance had been dug into a mountainside. Serenity and the other three ships were positioned on the only level space available, a broad, windswept ledge with a sheer crag towering above and a steep-sided base descending to a barren plain below. There wasn’t room to deposit the crates on the ledge a safe distance away. If they went off there, all four ships would be damaged, probably destroyed, and everyone would be stranded on Hades. But if he tipped them over the edge, chances were they would explode when they hit the bottom; HTX-20 did not like nasty surprises, after all. That, in turn, might trigger a rockslide, then there’d be a tangled mess of rubble and no-longer-spaceworthy ship at the foot of the mountain.

“No alternative,” he said. “The other four crates have to go inside the mine entrance alongside the fifth.”

“That’s insane.”

“It’s that or we lose Serenity, the shuttle, the yacht, and that Komodo heap of junk.”

“We only put the one crate there in the first place in case somebody calls Zoë’s bluff and goes to check that she can seal them inside if she wants to, like she’s threatening,” Kaylee said. “It’s all a ruse, right? That’s the plan. She’s got the detonator switch only as a prop. In fact, thinking about it, we should get that crate out of the mine right now, in case it blows up of its own accord. We shouldn’t be putting another four of the gorramn things in there.”

“If we don’t, we all die,” said Wash. “If we do, there’s a chance Zoë and Jayne can still get back out, ideally with Mal, before all the crates go up. I don’t like it any more than you do, Kaylee, but I don’t see any other option.”

Kaylee gnawed her lower lip, then slowly, reluctantly nodded. “They won’t have long. They don’t hurry, they’re dead.”

“And so are we,” said Wash, gunning the forklift’s motor.