My Own Kind of Freedom

Chapter 16 My Own Kind of Health

Her reactions had been automatic. She saw a pistol leveled at the Captain, and she’d been prepared to cut down the fed; she stopped only when she realized that he wasn’t shooting.

She kept the weapon pointing at the fed and waited for the little twitch around his eyes that indicated he was about to pull the trigger, or for an order from the Captain; but as she did, it occurred to her with something of a shock that she very, very badly wanted to turn her carbine and put two rounds into Bursa’s chest. The desire came on so strong that, for a moment, her hands almost trembled.

But she didn’t do it, of course. She held her position and waited for orders, because that’s what she did.

With the corner of his eye, he saw Wash leave the ship, look around, and then head for the door of the office. Before he got there it swung open and two men dressed in green coveralls and holding rifles came through. Mal kept his attention and his weapon on Bursa while Jayne fired twice. When the bodies hit the floor, Wash continued, stepping around them.

“Where are you going?” said Jayne.

“Out for a stroll,” said Wash. “I won’t be a minute.”

Then Jayne said, “Hey!” and swung his rifle to cover the fed.

“Stay on the door, Jayne,” said Mal.

“We should probably talk,” said Kit.

“Okay. But we’re all holding guns here, and someone’s arm is going to get tired soon, and we all know what that means.”

“I’ll talk fast. I can’t let you kill this man.”

“You know who he is?”

“I knew before you did.”

“You know who he was?”

“Your old commanding officer when you fought for the Independents.”

“He was more than that to me.”

“I figured. He was your hero, wasn’t he?”

“I wouldn’t put it like that.”

“No, you wouldn’t. But it was true. He mentored you, taught you about command, showed you—”

“Shut up.”

“And look at him now. He threw away his name, his rank, and his scruples. That must be feichang bu yukuai for you. It must feel like a betrayal of everything—”

“I said shut up.”

“All right. But you don’t get to commit murder.”

Bursa/Sakarya stood there, hands clear of his body but not raised, and gave no indication that the conversation had anything to do with him, or even that he was listening to it.

“I’m not convinced you can stop me,” said Mal.

A somewhat elderly woman sat behind a desk, speaking into a microphone with a sense of urgency.

“Hi there,” said Wash. “I need to borrow your processor for a moment. I promise I won’t hurt it.”

“Who—?”

“Sorry, ma’am. I’m in kind of a hurry. And you’re not going to be able to reach your security people anyway. So, if you’ll just let me… ugh. Which one of these… ? Okay, that’s the direct link to the Cortex, so one of these must be, ah, I see. I don’t know if I have the right connection here. Okay, this ought to—there. Yes. A guy named Mister Universe showed me how to do this. Weird name, huh? Not half as weird as the guy is. We met in flight school. Worst pilot you ever… okay, that should do it. Just give me half a second to make sure the cross-load worked. Yep. Okay. You can have your desk again. Thanks.”

Kit really hoped the captain couldn’t tell how scared he was, or how bad he was at this whole pointing guns business. It’s funny, when they had tried to kill him in the canteen he hadn’t been scared at all; maybe he’d been too busy trying to work out what had happened. But now, when he had the gun, it was much worse.

Of course, that sawed-off carbine pointing straight at his chest might be part of the reason.

He said, “I don’t need to state the obvious, do I?”

The captain said, “You mean, the part about I shoot him, you shoot me, Zoë shoots you, and Jayne flies off into the sunset?”

“Something like that.”

“Works for me,” said the mercenary without turning his head.

“No, you don’t need to point that out.”

“So, tell me this: what do you think will do more good? Killing this guy, or making an example of him to everyone else on the border worlds who wants to try the same thing?”

“Couldn’t say,” said the captain. “I don’t conjure with more good and less good, just with what’s in front of me.”

“The Independents lost the war, Captain Reynolds.”

“Yeah, I read that somewhere.”

“Let’s suppose the cause was right. Then what?”

“You don’t believe that.”

“No, I don’t. But suppose I’m wrong. Then what?”

“Then it’s a damn shame we lost.”

“Just what I was thinking. Means some bad happened.”

“I don’t think you’re making your point real well, Agent Merlyn.”

“So, how about, if some bad happened, you let us do what good we can do, to sort of make up for some of it.”

Wash came through the door.

“Wash!” said Jayne. “I almost put one through your gorram head!”

Wash ignored him, and spoke to Kit. “I got it,” he said.

“Verify it.”

“How?”

The captain said, “Wash—”

“One second, Mal.”

Kit said, “Slide the little brown button on the back the other way, then hit start.”

Wash said, “Two green lights.”

Okay, here we go. It happens or it doesn’t.

Kit rotated his whole body until, weapon and all, he was facing Sakarya. He said, “Filo Bursa, alias Filo Sakarya, you are bound by law for violations of Alliance Labor Code section nineteen part three, forced indenture, and section seventeen part five, child labor, and additional charges to be determined by a duly authorized court.”

Then he waited.

He so badly wanted to pull the trigger; to watch Bursa fall to the ground twitching. To shoot him in the chest, so he’d just have enough to time to know he was dying.

But it wasn’t that gorram simple.

He’d never felt this way in a firefight.

Even as a young recruit, when he didn’t know how to handle himself, he’d done as well as could be expected: keeping his head down and shooting in the general direction of the enemy. But this was different. It wasn’t clear. It wasn’t obvious. There were too many answers, and all of them had some right and some wrong.

When the fed pointed his gun at Bursa, Zoë had immediately turned hers toward the door; now he heard the report of her carbine at the same time as Jayne’s pistol, and two more of Bursa’s security force fell in the doorway, next to their companions, one of whom was moaning and writhing, while the other wasn’t moving at all.

“Sir,” said Zoë, without turning her head, “whatever you’re going to do, I’d suggest doing it soon.”

“Real soon,” said Wash, from directly behind him. “Someone’s gotten past the jamming.

Song yiqie dao ta ma de diyu.

In a firefight, he either knew the right thing to do, or he knew something to do that, at least, wasn’t wrong. The only thing worse than having to make this sort of decision was having to make this sort of decision in a hurry.

He looked over at the fed. “I don’t owe you a gorram thing,” he said.

“I know.”

“And I owe your Alliance even less.”

“I know.”

Mal lowered his pistol and heard himself saying, “Take him, then. He’s yours.”

A tension she didn’t know she was feeling drained out of her when the Captain spoke. She held her position and kept her focus on the door while she heard a clanking sound that had to be cuffs going around Colonel Bursa’s wrists. She held her position, waiting for the order to embark.

“Wash, how’s the shuttle?”

“It’s going to be fun getting it turned around in here, but everything works.”

“You can fly us out?”

“Yes.”

“With six of us aboard?”

She heard the hesitation, then, “I don’t—”

“Five,” said the fed. “Take the prisoner. I’m staying here. I’ll come to collect him later.”

“You know they’ll kill you,” he heard the Captain saying.

“Oddly enough, they won’t. But I’d hurry if I were you. There are two Special Deputies on the way, and you’d much rather face down Sakarya’s security force than these two. Trust me on that.”

“All of you, move,” said the Captain. “Buttoned up and flying in thirty seconds.”

She took a position next to Bursa, grabbed his arm, jabbed her sawed-off into his back, and guided him toward the shuttle. He seemed reluctant to move. She dropped the barrel of the weapon, prodded him again, and said, “Colonel, if you even hesitate,” she said, “I’ll blow your balls off and we’ll drag you in. And you can’t know how much I want to blow your balls off.”

They moved toward the shuttle.

Rearguard again.

As he backed toward the shuttle, keeping his eye on the door, he saw the fed leaving, and felt a sudden temptation to put a round into him, just because he could. Then the fed was coming back through the door, faster then he’d left. After about five steps he stopped, turned, fired twice, then backed up and off to the side.

Crap.

Jayne moved forward and dropped to his belly, holding the Marauder with both hands.

“Jayne!” called Mal. “What are you doing?”

Now there was a good question. He’d just been thinking about plugging the gorram fed, just for fun, and now he was—

A whole bushelfull of them came through the door, several of them getting in each other’s way, a couple of them tripping. Not the best trained troops I’ve ever seen, he thought. Meanwhile, the little counter in the back of his head recorded that after firing six times, he had fourteen rounds left in the magazine. The captain was firing from behind him, and the agent from off to his right somewhere, though he wasn’t consciously aware of how he knew. Another voice joined the chorus; it had to be Zoë. He hoped that ruttin’ bastard in the shuttle was well secured, but it wasn’t his job to worry about that. He also made a mental note: I should really suggest to the Captain that we pick up some grenades.

He fired six more times, very fast, then the doorway was clear. Were they hanging back, waiting, or had they run? Only one way to find out. He stood up, then discovered he was on his stomach again.

What the—?

He tried to stand again, and failed.

Then hands grabbed him by the arms; Mal’s and Zoë’s, and dragged him toward the shuttle. The fed was looking at him, holding a smoking pistol, and then he was inside, and was being strapped into a chair.

“You can really get us out of here?” said Mal, which seemed very odd, because Jayne had never claimed to be a pilot, and he wasn’t even in the pilot’s chair.

“Watch me,” said Wash. “How is Jayne?”

“One in the shoulder that went straight down, one in the left calf. I’m not sure how bad. Zoë took a scratch in the hand. That’s all. Now get us out of here.”

“I’m on it.”

There was a shiver as the shuttle started up.

How is Jayne? One in the shoulder? Hey, that’s my name. Was there another Jayne he didn’t know about? Be damned funny if one of those bastards he’d shot had the same name as him.

The shuttle rose about a foot off the floor and did a neat one hundred eighty degree turn in place. Jayne wanted to ask Wash not to do that, because the motion made him queasy; but it seemed like a lot of effort to talk.

Wash guided the shuttle neatly through the hole it had made coming in with a force that pushed Jayne into his chair. As the ship slowed for a turn, he felt himself moving forward. He reached out to hold the seat in front of him. For just a second, he felt a horrible pain in his back, then he didn’t.

The Captain said, “Wash, what just happened?”

He turned his head just enough for them to hear him over the whine of the engine and the whir of the wings deploying. “I don’t know, exactly, except that I plugged a thing into a thing and pushed a button.”

“You made an arrangement with the fed.”

“Yeah, Mal. An arrangement to get us out of that place alive. It worked, too. Sorry if it hurt your feelings.”

“You knew what was going to happen.”

Wash made a minor course adjustment and gained a lot of altitude. “Can’t say as I did, actually. But I had a pretty good idea that if you went in and killed that guy, all sorts of things were going to happen, including the bunch of us probably getting shot.”

“How? How did that—?”

“Mal, the fed was not going to let you shoot his prisoner.”

“Your wife was going to shoot the fed if he’d tried.”

“Yeah, Mal. And I wasn’t really happy with that idea. And you weren’t either.”

“So you took it on yourself—”

“Yes, I did.”

“Who else?”

“No one else.”

“The fed has to have been part of it.”

“Well, yeah, the fed. Mal, if you’re going to shoot me for it, would you please wait until I’m done flying this thing?”

Zoë felt the Captain’s eyes on her from the seat to her right, but she kept her own eyes staring straight ahead. “Zoë,” he said. “I need to know where you stand. I can’t have—”

“Sir.”

A pause. “Yes?”

“I wasn’t part of it. And I wouldn’t have gone for it. But while you’re thinking this over, there’s one thing for you to consider.”

“And that is?”

“They’re right.”

“They’re right to just decide—”

“That every once in a while you have to be saved from yourself? Yes, sir.”

“And those Special Deputies he was talking about? Are they going to just fly away? You know they’re after the doctor and his sister, and you know they won’t stop until they find her.”

“Yeah,” said Wash as he leveled out the shuttle. “Well, I guess I should explain that part of it.”

“I guess you should,” said the Captain.

Zoë closed her eyes for a moment. It was starting to look like there was a horrid, ugly choice she wasn’t going to have to make. This time.

Wash’s voice came over the comm. “Kaylee, you there?”

“I’m here, Wash. How… how are you?”

“Mal is looking for someone to kill, and Jayne took a bad one, but everything is fine other than that. Have the doctor standing by. We’re coming in. Locking in three… two… one…locked.”

She wanted to know if the Captain knew about her involvement, but she couldn’t think of any way to ask the question. She thought about getting up and going to meet them as they left the shuttle; she thought about going back to the engine room and waiting there. In the end, she just notified Simon that he had a patient, then sat in Wash’s chair and waited.

The security forces had vanished, no doubt down the stairs. He felt rather like patting himself on the back; four of them had held off more than thirty, and even made them run. But in all conscience he couldn’t, because he knew they had the superior position, and he knew just who joined those security forces and what sort of training they had never received, and because now he had to deal with Miss Wuhan.

Miss Wuhan was staring at him. “You!” she finally managed. “He trusted you, and you betrayed—”

“Miss Wuhan, you have three choices. You can be bound by law, you can force me to shoot you, or you can walk out of here right now. I’d prefer you didn’t take the second option; I don’t much care about the other two.”

“You’re a federal agent.”

“That’s right.”

“What you did was illegal.”

“In fact it wasn’t. I got the evidence to convict, and I can show probable cause. Of course, if I’d failed to get the evidence, you might say I’d have been breathing metaphorical vacuum. But I got it, so all is well and happy. Now, do you want to go down with him, or go down for good, or go away?”

“The security forces will be back soon. They’ll kill you before you can—”

“Not before I shoot you if you’re still here when they arrive. I’m not big on shooting little old ladies, but I will. Trust me.”

The little old lady hesitated, then without another word headed out the door.

He sat in the chair and waited.

Security forces? She had no idea what the real danger was. To hell with the gorram security forces, there wouldn’t be more than thirty of them. But there were two Special Deputies coming; that was the real problem.

He heard a faint scuffling and raised voices coming from some distance away, no doubt down the stairs. He leaned back in the chair, and took a couple of deep breaths. He kept his pistol in his hand, out of sight beneath the desk.

There were two of them, as expected; except for odd, skin-tight blue gloves, they were dressed simply, much like he was; they could have worked in the office with him and would have fit in nicely.

“Good day, gentlemen,” he said, before they could speak. “I’m Kit Merlyn, Anglo Sino Alliance Security, Investigations Department, Identification number six three dash four one seven, reporting to Commissioner Gerald White. I’m not expecting you to identify yourselves; I know who you are and why you’re here.”

He felt himself come under intent scrutiny. The other, shorter one, spoke in a pleasant, almost melodic voice: “Agent Merlyn, why do you have a weapon concealed under that desk?”

He’d been expecting that question. “Because I know how you gentlemen work, and I have no intention of letting you kill me if I can prevent it. I have a man to prosecute, and—”

“You think we’d kill one of our own with no reason?”

“No, you’d need a reason, but I have no idea what you might decide is a reason, so I’m playing it safe.”

“Very well,” said the thinner one. “Then where are they?”

“Simon and River Tam left the world twenty-four hours ago in a Firefly class transport. They made a rendezvous in close orbit with an as yet unidentified Seagull-class transport, transferred to her, and left the world. The Firefly, Serenity, landed back here. I temporarily commandeered and searched her in order to complete my own mission. I’ll be filing a full report—”

“Did you speak with the Tams?”

“I had no contact with them at any time, only with a crew member of Serenity who intended to give them up.”

“That would be a Mister Jayne Cobb?” said the other.

“That is correct, yes.”

“And where is he?”

“To the best of my knowledge and belief, he is a fugitive somewhere in the world, having escaped the local lockup.”

“How did he escape?” said the shorter of the two.

“He had help. I don’t know more that that; it doesn’t fall within the purview of my investigation.”

They looked at each other. “We aren’t going to kill you,” said the thinner one.

“Then I’ll be equally polite,” said Kit.

“Is there anything else you can tell us?”

“The Seagull was on a heading for New Hall. They have a day’s start, but they aren’t fast.”

“You could have reported that yesterday.”

“Not my job,” said Kit.

The thinner one nodded. “When you make your final report, see to it a copy comes to Special Operations. Mark it ‘Attention Headwater.’ ”

“All right.”

The two of them nodded and walked out of the room, and Kit started breathing again. However, he didn’t move for a good five minutes, just in case. But they were well and truly gone; the only thing left would be carnage downstairs. He wished there were a way to walk past it without seeing it. For one thing, he didn’t relish deciding if he were obligated to put it in his report.

He used the comm equipment at the desk to arrange for transport.

“Sit over there,” he told Zoë. “I’ll get to you in a minute.”

“I’m fine,” she said, but he barely heard her; he was already concentrating on Jayne, who lay on the table, face down and sleeping; the bleeding had stopped for the moment.

Simon prepared his tools, then made his first examination. Pulse all right, blood pressure good—and there it was: he could see the exit wound in the trapezius. He studied the entry point, looked at the angle, and decided the bullet hadn’t done any bouncing around, which was good.

“I think he’ll be fine,” he said aloud.

“You going to fix him, doctor?” asked Mal.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Simon might have replied, but he was too busy, and the question was too stupid to deserve an answer anyway.