Big Damn Hero

6

Zoë’s comm link crackled.

“Sir?” she said, thinking — praying — it was Mal.

“Zoë?” Not Mal. Kaylee.

“What’s up?”

“‘Well, howdy there, Kaylee. Lovely to hear from you.’”

“No time for that,” Zoë said tightly. “The captain’s disappeared. Might be he’s in trouble.”

“Shén me?” Kaylee declared in shock. “What’s happened?”

“Don’t know yet.”

Before Zoë could continue, the teenage kid she and Jayne had rescued let out a low moan. He sagged to the ground.

“Kaylee? I’m going to mute you for a second. Be right back.”

Zoë hobbled over to the boy. He was in very bad shape indeed.

His face was swelling all over and his eyes had a lost, unfocused look, the pupils severely dilated. He needed medical attention, she reckoned. He might have concussion, maybe even a brain injury.

“Kid?” she said. “Kid?”

“Allister,” he mumbled.

“Allister? Is that your name?”

“Yeah.”

“Listen to me, Allister. We need to get you to a hospital.”

“No,” said Allister. “No hospital. Can’t afford. Mom… My mom. Nurse.”

“Your mother is a nurse?”

“Used to be. Got sick. Got fired. No money now. But she can help me.”

“Where does she live?”

“Our apartment. Over in the riverside district.”

Zoë ground her teeth. The kid wasn’t her and Jayne’s responsibility. Sure, they’d saved him. That didn’t mean they were stuck with him. She had more important things to worry about. Namely Mal. It was possible the captain was fine and well, just off somewhere with Hunter Covington thrashing out a deal. She didn’t think so, though. He had almost certainly said “Strawberries” over the comm link, once if not twice. The fact that she couldn’t raise him on the comms now was also worrisome. His link had already proved faulty but at least there had been some signal. Now there was none at all, implying it might have been switched off, or even smashed to bits.

“Okay,” she said. “Listen, Allister, you think you can make it back home?”

The kid nodded weakly. “Figure I can.” But when he tried to stand, he almost fainted.

“It’s no good. Jayne, you’re just going to have to take him.”

“What?” said Jayne.

“Like it or not, Allister needs our help. We can’t just leave him in the street. People are still fighting in there.” Zoë gestured at Taggart’s. The noise coming from within hadn’t quieted. If anything, it was getting louder. Things were crashing and splintering. After the ruckus was over, there probably wouldn’t be a stick of furniture in the bar left intact. “Only a matter of time before it spills outside, and Allister will get caught up in it all over again.”

“But why do I have to take him home?” Jayne groused. “I ain’t no crummy babysitter. Why don’t you do it?”

“My leg is injured,” Zoë said. “Might be broken, even. I can barely walk myself, let alone help someone else along. It has to be you.”

“What about Mal? I’d say he was more important than some kid we only just met.”

“Bad leg or not, I’m going to go look for him.”

“Two of us could do that better’n one.”

“Agreed. So as soon as you’ve gotten Allister to his house, contact me. With any luck I’ll have found Mal by then, but if I haven’t, you can join in the search.”

“And if I can’t get ahold of you?”

“Go to Serenity. I’ll be back there at some point.”

Jayne bellyached some more, but Zoë was adamant. In the end he relented.

“All right, all right. Gorramn it.” He extended a hand to Allister and unceremoniously hauled the youngster to his feet. “Which way?”

Allister waved a vague hand in a westerly direction.

“Okay, get me there, kid. Zoë, the moment there’s any word on Mal, you let me know.”

“Will do.”

Supporting Allister, Jayne headed off.

Zoë unmuted her comm link. “Kaylee? Me again. Kaylee? Do you copy?”

“Oh, good, hi,” Kaylee said. “Sorry. I got, ah, distracted. Are you guys coming back anytime soon?”

“Distracted? What’s going on there?”

“River says Serenity needs to take off. She keeps saying it over and over. She can’t exactly explain why, but she’s getting a little— well, a lot — jumpy.”

“Jumpy? Jumpy how?”

Something clattered and then someone shrieked in the background at Kaylee’s end of the transmission. Maybe it wasn’t so much as shriek as a laugh? A wild, crazy laugh. Either way, Zoë was sure it had come out of River. Wearily, she touched her fingertips to her forehead and felt wetness. Blood. She didn’t think it was her own.

“Jumpy how?” she repeated.

“Oh, like really scared,” Kaylee said. “She made a fort.”

“In her room?”

“No. The dining area. Table’s all sideways. She’s brought in her blankets and pillows for the walls.”

“What about Simon? Can’t he take care of her?”

“Well, he’s doing his best,” Kaylee said uneasily. “Inara too. We all are.”

“Okay, Kaylee. Keep a lid on things there if you can. Also, tell Wash to try to raise the captain. Let me know if, when, he gets through.”

“Aye-aye. What do you figure’s happened to Mal?”

“I wish I gorramn knew.”

Zoë set off down the street in the opposite direction from the one Jayne and Allister had taken. She estimated it had been five minutes since Mal’s alarm call. He couldn’t have gone far in five minutes.

However, Zoë couldn’t walk anywhere near as fast as she would have liked. Each time she put weight on her injured leg, it was like a jolt of electricity was shooting up from shinbone to kneecap. She told herself to ignore the pain but the pain told her it wouldn’t be ignored. Soon every step was eliciting a curse from her, while sweat broke out on her forehead and dampened her armpits. Maybe she should have listened to Jayne. Maybe they should just have ditched Allister. Mal was the priority. But then the kid was their responsibility, and even Mal, she thought, would have said she had made the right decision. The captain might be big on self-interest but he wasn’t selfish.

She pushed on, but after a good quarter-hour exploring some of the city’s grimiest, most deprived areas — neighborhoods that were run-down even by Eavesdown’s admittedly low standards — she had to stop and rest. Murmuring “Zāo gāo” to herself and panting hard, she leaned against a wall.

Just as she was preparing to renew the search, Kaylee buzzed her on the comms. “Zoë? Any luck finding Mal yet?”

“No. What’s the situation like with you?”

“Not shiny.” Kaylee sounded agitated, which, for someone as usually upbeat as her, was disquieting. “River’s getting more’n a mite antsy now.”

“What’s bothering her so? Why’s she so anxious Serenity should take off?”

“It’s the boxes we took on board. You know, Badger’s big metal crates. She’s saying they’re not safe and then all kinds of other stuff like there’s going to be a surprise, a nasty one, and that’s why she’s made the fort. It’s like the worries in her mind are suddenly too much for her.”

“Put Simon on.”

Moments later, Simon’s well-educated voice came on the comms. “Hello, Zoë.”

“Is there something you can do about River? She seems to have Kaylee spooked.”

“I’m sure she’s going to calm down soon.” He didn’t sound convinced.

“Could you perhaps tranquilize her?”

“Tranquilize her?” Simon echoed.

In the background, River cried, “No needles!”

“I don’t think that’d be a good idea,” Simon said. “As you can hear, she’s not likely to be cooperative, and when River won’t cooperate…”

“Needles!” River hollered.

Zoë knew that if Simon attempted to sedate River, she would fight back. Someone would get hurt, and it wasn’t liable to be River.

“Okay, then can you just talk to her? Maybe settle her that way?”

“What do you think I’ve been doing?” Simon’s well-to-do upbringing prevented him from giving vent to his true feelings, but Zoë could hear the exasperation underlying his words.

“River, no, sweetie, don’t touch that,” Kaylee said in the background.

Then came Inara’s voice, also gentle and soothing. “She’s right, darling. Someone might get hurt.”

There was more crashing.

“Fire the thrusters!” River cried.

“River, no!” said Simon. “Put the cleaver down. Don’t wave it around like that.” To Zoë he said, “I have to go. I think she might do something to Kaylee and Inara if I don’t stop her.”

“Okay.”

“Oh, Shepherd Book’s just walked in. Thank God.”

Book’s voice said, mock-sternly, “Taking the Lord’s name in vain, son?”

“Sorry, preacher,” said Simon. “Can you see to River? You’re good with her.”

“I am when my hair’s tied back, at least. Who are you talking to on the comms? Is it Zoë?”

“Yes,” said Simon.

“I’d like a word with her, if I may. Pass me the handset. Zoë?” Book’s warm tones fell on Zoë’s ears like honey. There was something about the preacher — an aura he had — that put you at ease. He managed to remain unruffled in even the most trying circumstances. He was a living, breathing argument in favor of the spiritual life. “I infer, from what I’ve overheard, that Mal has gone missing.”

“That’s right.” Zoë said. “He went out of Taggart’s to meet Hunter Covington alone. Now he’s gone and I can’t find hide nor hair of him.”

“Then perhaps I can bring you some succor in that regard. I’ve just come from the bridge. Your husband reports that not five minutes ago Guilder’s called. They want their loaner shuttle back. Our shuttle has been picked up.”

“Huh,” said Zoë.

“Is that not good news? The captain has collected the shuttle. He’ll be here shortly, you and Jayne can join us, we can take off, River will quieten, all will be well.”

“Yes, it’s just… If Mal’s taken the shuttle, why didn’t he let me know? Sure, we’re having comms difficulties, but it seems like at the very least he’d do is try to get in touch, especially since he could have used the shuttle’s link, which has to be working better than his own. Also, he could have come back for me and Jayne at the bar after his meeting with Covington. Why go straight to Guilder’s without us? It just isn’t like him.”

Not to mention the “Strawberries” distress signal, she thought.

“Anyway,” she went on, “wasn’t his plan for Kaylee to make sure the repairs were complete before we paid and turned the loaner in?”

“Now that you put it like that, it doesn’t seem to add up, does it?” Book said.

“Listen, Shepherd, would you do me a favor and go to Guilder’s? Check out if it really was Mal took the shuttle. Take along a picture of him and have them verify he was the one.”

“I think I can manage that.”

“Meantime, I’ll keep looking for him around these parts. I’m thinking if I head back to Taggart’s, there’s a chance things will have cooled there. If Mal isn’t aboard the shuttle and everything is in fact okay, it’s a good bet he’ll go back to try to find us the last place he saw us.”

“Cooled?”

“Yeah, the situation got a little hairy. Bit of a dustup.”

“What happened?”

“Jayne happened.”

“Say no more. I’ll contact you as soon as I have any further information, Zoë.” Book cut the connection.

Zoë was clutching at straws, she knew it. Eavesdown Docks was a vast, sprawling place, crammed with people, many of them transients passing through. The odds of her finding Mal just by wandering around looking were close to nil. The odds of him returning to Taggart’s were also pretty low. Her suspicion was that the meet with Hunter Covington had somehow gone badly wrong and that if Mal was aboard the shuttle that had taken off from Guilder’s, he wasn’t there willingly. In the absence of any other plan, though, Taggart’s it was. You never know, she might get lucky.

Lucky? Zoë said to herself as her damaged leg sent up a fresh protest of pain. She and luck had been barely on nodding terms these past few years, not least since she’d thrown in her lot with Mal as his second-in-command. The one undeniably good thing to come out of her signing on with the crew of Serenity was meeting its pilot. Hoban Washburne was hardly the handsomest man in the galaxy, nor the best built, nor even the bravest. He suited her, though. He was funny and wise and loving. He respected her and deferred to her, but without being a pushover. She and Wash were a perfect fit.

As she neared Taggart’s, Zoë saw that the fight had indeed run its course, as she’d hoped. A couple of hover ambulances had arrived and were taking on board the people most badly injured in the brawl. A paramedic was kneeling beside the man she and Jayne had tossed through the window, tending to him.

She was about to venture back into the bar when her gaze lit upon a familiar figure. It was the man in the ten-gallon hat and mustard-yellow duster, the one who had passed Mal the note to go outside. He was loitering on the sidewalk some distance from Taggart’s, looking on with a bemused detachment. A matchstick was clenched between his teeth and he rolled it back and forth in contemplation.

Zoë approached him with as much casualness as her injured limb would allow. She had her Mare’s Leg cocked and ready.

“Hey, pal,” she said, lodging the barrel of the gun in the small of the man’s back.

“Whoa there,” Yellow Duster said, raising both hands and looking over his shoulder. “Take it easy.” He squinted. “I know you?”

“Come with me.”

“Well now. Beautiful lady like you, that’s an invitation I’d gladly accept, whether or not you had a gun in my back. So what say you drop the firearm?”

“Not a chance.” Zoë ground the Mare’s Leg harder into his spine. “Please don’t think I won’t hesitate for one moment to fire.”

“With all these folks around?”

“I wouldn’t even bat an eyelid.”

“I believe you,” said Yellow Duster. “And in this part of town, chances are they wouldn’t bat an eyelid either. All right, you got me. I’ll come quietly.”

She steered him towards the alley she had scoped out earlier when she’d first realized Mal was missing. Halfway along, beside some overflowing garbage bins, she halted. Scavenging animals— rats, dogs, raccoons — had been through the bins, and trash was strewn across the alley in reeking mounds.

“Turn round,” she ordered.

Yellow Duster did as told. “What now?” he said, grinning around the matchstick. “I drop my pants?”

“You should be so lucky. All I want from you is talk.”

“I can do much better things with my mouth, you give me the chance.”

Zoë resisted the urge to clobber him. “You gave a note to someone tonight, in the bar,” she said.

“Did I?”

“Don’t even try to lie. I saw you. The man you gave it to is a friend of mine.”

“So?”

“So what happened after?”

“What do you mean? All I did was drop off a note I never read. Something go sideways?”

She scrutinized him. Yellow Duster had clearly mastered the art of the poker face. She said, “My friend is missing.”

“That’s too bad. But I promise you, I had nothing to do with it. I was paid to take the note into Taggart’s — half up front, half afterwards. I was given a description of the fellow I was supposed to hand it to. Your friend matched the description. I slipped him the note, and he didn’t seem surprised to receive it, so I knew I musta had the right man. After that, I left.”

“Who gave you the note in the first place?”

“Some guy.”

Zoë leveled the Mare’s Leg at Yellow Duster’s crotch. “You can be more specific than that.”

The man tried to maintain his cocksure air, but the matchstick drooped in the corner of his mouth, somewhat giving the game away. “Never knew his name. Never asked. Somebody offers me good coin for a simple job, I say ‘yessir’ and keep the questions to zero.”

“What did he look like, the man who hired you?”

“Well heeled. Slick. Beard. Dressed like a gentleman.”

Hunter Covington. Had to be. Not that Zoë had been in much doubt.

“He give you any clue what he intended to do with my friend?”

“None whatsoever, and I didn’t inquire. I prefer to know as little as possible about the dealings of others. The kind of people who hire me like to keep their business private, too.”

Zoë had few doubts on that front. Yellow Duster was a classic go-between, the type of guy you could rely on to be incurious about the whys and wherefores of a job so long as the money was right.

She pressed him for further information anyway. Maybe he knew something useful about Covington without knowing he knew it. “How did the man who employed you contact you? Are you part of an organization, or—”

“I’m on my own. Freelance. Sole trader. Got no organization to answer to.”

“So how did he contact you?” she repeated.

“In person,” Yellow Duster said.

“Not by wave?”

“No, ma’am. People who have a need for me can find me. They don’t necessarily invite me out for dinner and a slow dance, although it’s been known to happen. But we always meet in person. Every time you send a wave, see, it leaves a trail that can be followed. People I work for don’t like trails. That’s why they come to me in the first place. I’m known for doing odd jobs around the docks for people. I’m also known for having something of a reputation. I’m reliable. A straight shooter. You give me something to do, it gets done, no quibble, no mess. No trail.”

“Anyone doing odd jobs in Eavesdown would need consent from the criminal operators who run the docks,” Zoë said. “Such as Badger, for instance.”

The mention of Badger’s name earned a flicker of recognition from Yellow Duster, but then that was hardly surprising. You worked in the shadier edges of Eavesdown, you’d at least know of Badger, if not associate with him personally.

“Actually it’s not as simple as that,” he said, smirking. “Everything in this town — and on Persephone overall — is more like live and let live, up to a certain point. And ‘by a certain point,’ I mean the amount of platinum on the table. Folks who are careful can earn their daily scratch without answering to higher-ups, Badger or anyone else.”

“So the man who paid you for handing over the note isn’t a higher-up, then?”

“Could be. Sure looked like he was. Don’t know his name, though. Not that I’d necessarily reveal it, even if I did. Another part of my reputation is my discretion. I’m famous for it.”

“I already know his name,” Zoë said.

“Well, bully for you! Then I reckon that makes you one up on me. Look, lady, are we finished here? I’ve told you all I can. Figure it’s high time you lower that cannon of yours, an’ maybe then you and I can go somewhere, have a drink, see what develops, you know what I’m sayin’?”

In case she might misinterpret his meaning, he gave her a slow, lascivious wink. It fair turned Zoë’s stomach. She firmed her grip on her gun.

“I still have a couple more questions,” she said.

“Fire away,” said Yellow Duster, hastily adding, “Not literally.”

“Your ‘employer,’ for want of a better word. Where did you and he meet?”

“Right here,” he said, as if it should have been obvious. He nodded in the direction of Taggart’s.

“How did he know to look for you in Taggart’s?” she pressed, but Yellow Duster simply smiled. “Right, your lofty reputation preceded you.”

“Lots of dealings go down in Taggart’s,” he said. “Reckon you already know that.”

Zoë felt herself growing increasingly vexed. Time was slipping away, and the man was giving up what little useful intelligence he had in a very relaxed and roundabout fashion. Plus, nothing he’d said could be verified beyond doubt, so there was no reason to believe he was playing straight with her.

Inadvertently she shifted onto her bad leg. A spike of pain made her grimace.

“Hold your horses now,” Yellow Duster said, misreading her expression and taking it for a precursor to homicide. There was a first, faint hint of panic in his voice. “I’ve been accommodating so far, ain’t I?”

“Not nearly enough.”

“Well, I can be even more accommodating, if you’ll just let me.”

“Go on. As long as that’s not innuendo.”

“Not this time. When he hired me, the fella muttered something about this had been a long time coming. Said there’d been a betrayal. Said there was a price that was long overdue paying, and now was the reckoning.” Yellow Duster looked at her expectantly, optimistically. “Didn’t understand it myself. Guessed maybe your pal owed him money going way back. Is that what he meant?”

“It’s possible,” Zoë said. Mal doubtless had past financial debts he hadn’t honored. “Anything else?”

“That’s all, I swear.” The man was emphatic. “Of course, the remark wasn’t addressed direct to me, so I may have misheard.”

“He was talking to somebody else? Who?”

“A woman,” came the reply. “Real quiet type. Fidgety. She came into Taggart’s with him. He said it to her.”

Zoë seized on the new information. Covington had an accomplice. Maybe his wife? “What did she look like?”

“She was pretty. Light brown skin, black hair, all kind of curly and long. Not unlike you, though not as intimidating. She kept staring at me with these big greenish eyes, hard, like she was trying to tell me something. Ask me, I think she was frightened.”

“Frightened of what?”

“Who she was with. Like she didn’t want to be with him.”

“Maybe she was trying to solicit help,” Zoë bit off. “Hence the look. Sounds like she could have been a kidnap victim, or else a bondswoman. She was pleading with you to do something about her situation.”

“Why would she do that?” Yellow Duster said.

“Because she mistook you for a decent human being?”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Now, now, darlin’. Don’t get all high and mighty with me. You run your life and I’ll run mine.”

With effort, Zoë reined in her aggravation. “How long ago did this conversation happen? When were you hired to hand over the note?”

“Just a couple days ago. The guy came into Taggart’s with his lady friend, asked for me by name, and I chanced to be in that day.”

Zoë decided to take a risk and reveal her hand a little further. “The name Hunter Covington mean anything to you?”

Yellow Duster looked at her keenly. “Not a smidge. Should it?”

Zoë fancied he was mentally filing the name away for future reference, in case it proved useful income-wise. “Not necessarily,” she said. “Where did you go after you gave the note to my friend?”

“To get the second half of my money.”

“Where?”

“Some old flophouse, not ten minutes’ walk from here.”

The hairs rose on the back of Zoë’s neck. Finally, something tangible to work with. Maybe it would connect the dots. The flophouse might even be where Mal was.

“Who did you meet there?” she asked. “Covington?”

“That the gent? No, not him. Some other guy. No one special. Pale hair. Couple scars on his face. That’s about as far as it goes for distinguishing features.”

Scars were not rare in a postwar era; nor, for that matter, on a hardscrabble world like Persephone. “And do you think you can find your way back to this flophouse?”

“I look like I just stepped off the boat? Like I don’t know my way around these here parts? Course I can.”

Zoë pondered her options. Shepherd Book was heading to Guilder’s. Jayne was taking the kid Allister home. Kaylee, Inara, Simon and Wash should stay on board Serenity, all hands being needed to deal with River. That left Zoë to follow this lead, her and no one else — and sore leg notwithstanding, that’s what she was going to have to do.

“Then take me there,” she said.

“Now, I’m not the sort who does anything as a favor,” said Yellow Duster. “I think you’ve had enough out of me for free. How’s about a little cash reward for my services?”

She gave him a look. “How’s about I don’t blow a hole in you?”

He pursed his lips speculatively. “Seems fair.”

They stared at each other for a couple of seconds. Then Zoë waved the Mare’s Leg meaningfully. “Flophouse. Let’s go.”

“Ladies first,” Yellow Duster said with a mock-courteous ushering gesture.

“Couldn’t agree more,” Zoë said, stepping behind him and prodding him forward with the gun.

“But you’re a… Ohhh, I get it,” the man said. “Very funny.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Ain’t I just a barrel of laughs?”