Big Damn Hero

21

The planet Shadow, long ago

The day Mal realized he truly loved Jinny was the day he caught her and Toby kissing.

He had been away from Seven Pines Pass awhile. His mother had sent him off to Da Cheng Shi — the largest city on Shadow, although not quite the major metropolis its name might suggest — to buy engine parts for a beat-up old combine harvester she had bought from a scrapyard and was hoping to sell to Bo Hopkirk on the next-door farm. She and Mal had been restoring the vehicle together for the past few weeks, and Bo Hopkirk’s crops were just coming ready and his own combine was on its last legs, so she was expecting he would jump at what she was offering and give her a decent price for it, too.

The journey to and from Da Cheng Shi was forty-eight hours each way by train, and Mal came home travel-weary and sore to his bones from poorly upholstered bench seats. He hadn’t been able to afford a berth in a sleeping car and had been forced to sleep sitting upright. Still, he had the parts they needed, and he’d haggled long and hard not to pay over the odds for them. He felt pleased with himself, and was looking forward to getting reacquainted with the gang.

Sure enough, the Four Amigos arranged a meet-up that evening at the Silver Stirrup Saloon. Toby even told Mal that he had an announcement to make. That ought to have been a clue as to what was coming, but Mal was too exhausted to see it. Mal himself, during the long, fitful nights on the train, had been coming to the conclusion that now was the time to make his move with Jinny Adare. He knew how much Toby liked her, and he knew that him horning in on Toby’s plans was going to cause ructions, and no mistake. It might even mean the end of the Four Amigos.

But Jinny was so gorramn beautiful, so perfect. Her sense of humor was as dark and acerbic as Mal’s own. He felt weirdly elated whenever she smiled his way. He couldn’t help himself. He had to let her know what was in his heart.

In a cold, calculating corner of his mind, Mal was confident that Jinny would favor him over Toby. Carrot-topped Toby Finn, all earnestness and gawky immaturity, versus Mal Reynolds, the broad-shouldered, chisel-chinned swashbuckler who made girls go weak at the knees and warm in the nethers just looking at him. It was no contest. Jinny, given a choice, wouldn’t even think twice.

Just to make sure, however, he had bought a gift for her at a pawnbrokers in Da Cheng Shi. It was a gold locket engraved with an ornate, curlicued “J” and suspended on a fine gold chain. It cost more than he could reasonably afford, but the moment he laid eyes on it, he’d known he had to buy it. The “J” was like an omen, something he just couldn’t ignore.

Mal was taken aback, then, when he walked into the Silver Stirrup shortly after nightfall to find Jinny and Toby already there, at a table. That in itself wasn’t so surprising. What was surprising was that they were engaged in a passionate embrace, lips locked.

Mal rocked back on his heels, as though swamped by an ocean wave. His head reeled. A herd of elephants could have thundered by and he wouldn’t have noticed.

Toby and Jinny? Together? An item? How? Why? When? What?

Recovering some of his composure, he sashayed over to them. “Howdy all,” he said, touching forefinger to forehead like some sort of cowpoke.

“Mal!” they both cried as one. Jinny leapt to her feet to hug him. Toby shook his hand, wringing it with all the strength in his body.

“Hey, hey, hey!” Mal said. “I’ve only been away four days. Ain’t like I’m returning from a visit to the Core or nothin’.”

“My round,” said Toby, scampering over to the bar.

Mal sat down. “No Jamie?”

“On his way,” said Jinny. “He said he’d be a little late. So, how was Da Cheng Shi?”

“Ah, you know. Dirty. Smelly. Full of folks looked like they wouldn’t spit on you if you were on fire. Never mind that, though. I see what I thought I just saw?”

“What did you see?” Jinny asked coyly.

“You and Toby being a big old smoochy pair of lovebirds.”

She looked at him sidelong. He’d tried to hide a note of jealousy in his voice but hadn’t, he thought, done too good a job of it. “Wouldn’t go so far as to say we’re lovebirds, exactly, but yeah, we’ve kinda gotten together.”

“Kinda?”

“Early days yet.”

“How long’s this been brewing?”

“A while now. Toby’s been more and more attentive. You must have noticed.”

“Can’t say as I did.” But perhaps he just hadn’t been concentrating. Perhaps he’d been so wrapped up in his own growing feelings towards Jinny that he’d overlooked the way his rival for her affections was flourishing right under his nose.

“He’s so sweet, Mal. Cute, too. He took me to a shindig over at Sageville the day before yesterday. We danced till sunup.”

“A date?”

“I’d call it that. At the end, as we were leaving, he just up and kissed me. I wasn’t expecting it, although I sorta sensed it might be coming. And it was a good kiss. I liked it. And it’s just snowballed from there.”

“So this is only two days old, this thing?” Mal said, reckoning the relationship was still young enough and tentative enough for him to nip it in the bud if he wanted.

“But it feels right,” Jinny said. “Feels like it’s been there much longer, bubbling under, only neither of us has realized it.”

I think Toby realized it even if you didn’t.

“What’s Jamie think?” he said.

“Jamie doesn’t know yet. You weren’t supposed to know yet either. Toby wanted to tell the both of you tonight.”

“Yeah, he mentioned a big announcement. I guessed he was maybe going to try and grow a beard, or dye his hair blond. That or something a mite more dramatic, like signing up with the Independents.”

Jinny’s expression turned sour. “Don’t say that. Don’t even mention the war.”

“Ain’t a war yet,” Mal pointed out. “Right now it’s just the Rim worlds making noises about secession and the Union of Allied Planets bragging and bullying and browbeating.”

“Long may it stay that way.”

“But it ain’t gonna. Everyone knows that, and those who think otherwise are living in a fool’s paradise. Sooner or later — and my money’s on sooner — the outer planets are going to form an alliance of their own and mobilize, and the Union’ll surely regard that as provocation, even justification for war. You can feel it coming. It’s inevitable. Over in Da Cheng Shi, it’s all anybody’s talking about. There are even recruitment offices popping up. They’ve got all these slogans. ‘Join the cause before it’s too late.’ ‘A timely militia is a ready militia.’ ‘Don’t get caught napping.’ ‘The outer planets need you.’ You can pretend it’s not going to happen, but that’s not going to prevent it happening. Events have a way of developing, faster than you expect.”

“You sound like you’ve half a mind to join up yourself.”

“Half a mind is about half a mind more than most folk think I have,” Mal said, “but yes, I’m givin’ the idea headspace at least. For too long the Core’s been exploiting the rest of the ’verse, strip-mining planets like ours for resources, sometimes literally, and leaving us with precious little for ourselves. It’s way past time that ended, and if armed opposition’s what it takes to make the Union sit up and take notice, so be it.”

Just then, Toby returned to the table with their beers.

“Everyone looks very serious,” he said. “What’s up?”

“Nothing, Toby,” Jinny said. “Nothing you need concern yourself about.” To Mal, it sounded like something a parent might say to quell a fretful child’s fears.

“Well, this here’s a celebration,” Toby said, raising his glass. “In case it escaped your attention, Mal, Jinny and I — we’re boyfriend and girlfriend now. Ain’t that great?”

“Just dandy,” Mal said, clinking his glass listlessly against Toby’s. “I’m happy for you both.”

Toby might not have marked the stiffness with which he spoke, but Jinny certainly did.

“Mal’s cool with it,” she said. “I’m sure he is. He’s taking a moment to adjust, is all.”

When Jamie showed up, he, too, was taken aback when Toby told him he was now officially dating Jinny. He coped with the shock better than Mal had, though. “Of all the guys in this neck of the woods,” he said, “she could do a lot worse than you, Toby. And, given her track record, has.”

“Hey!” Jinny slapped him playfully.

“Some of the losers you’ve stepped out with in the past, sis,” Jamie said. “It beggars belief. What was the name of that one, looked like a pig?”

“Marcus, and he did not look like a pig.”

“If he didn’t, how come you knew who I was talking about? And then there was the fella with the overbite. Chipmunk guy. Not forgetting the one whose nose squeaked when he breathed. Gary? Glen? Gil? Something with a ‘G,’ anyway.”

“Greg couldn’t help it with the nose thing.”

“Like a gorramn pennywhistle it was,” said Jamie. “You don’t look like a pig, Toby, you don’t have an overbite, and your nostrils don’t make a noise, far as I’m aware. That puts you leagues ahead of the rest. Congratulations.”

Later, Toby and Jinny danced together to the plinking honky-tonk of the player-piano while Jamie and Mal hatched plans.

“Sheriff Bundy made an ass of himself today, as usual,” Jamie said. “Willard Krieger was saying stuff about the Union, badmouthing ’em. You know how that old coot is. Got an ornery streak in him a mile wide.”

“Only reason Krieger moved to Shadow was to escape ‘Union meddling,’ as he calls it,” said Mal.

“Right, and now he’s incensed ’cause that meddling’s spread as far out as here. He was saying his taxes have gone up threefold.”

“Everyone’s taxes have gone up.” Hence Mal’s mother’s combine harvester restoration project. Anything to make a little extra cash on the side.

“But Krieger’s now got to pay extra duties on the goods he imports for his hardware store. He’s putting his prices up, of course, but he ain’t best pleased, and neither are his customers. Anyways, he decided to go out into the town square and tub-thump for a spell. He stood on an actual soapbox and harangued passersby. Got himself a fair-sized audience, in fact. Then Bundy wanders along and arrests him on the spot.”

“What for? Man has a right to free speech.”

“Not if it’s what Bundy considers ‘seditious talk.’”

“There a law against that?”

“If there ain’t, it doesn’t bother Bundy none.”

“So Krieger’s in jail now.”

“He is. And you know what, Mal? The Four Amigos are going to bust him out.”

Mal was in such a cranky, belligerent frame of mind just then that Jamie’s proposal didn’t sound at all wrongheaded to him. It sounded, instead, like a very fine suggestion indeed. Not least because it would peeve Sheriff Bundy, and Mal was still smarting from the way the lawman had backhanded him at the Hendrickson place a few months back.

Jamie soon roped Jinny in on the jailbreak scheme, and naturally, where Jinny went, Toby was sure to follow.

“If Jinny’s up for it,” he said, “I don’t need asking twice.”

Jamie’s plan involved a small amount of plastique, some detonation cord, a wheeled motor vehicle, a towrope, and a whole heaping of chutzpah. The barred windows of the cells in the town lockup were in back of the building. Jamie affixed a pencil-thick length of the putty-like explosive around the outside of the window frame, inserted the det cord, and attached one end of the towrope to the bars and the other to the rear fender of a quad bike. It all happened in an instant. Jamie lit the fuse. The plastique blew, loosening the brickwork around the window. Jinny gunned the quad bike’s motor and torqued the throttle. The quad bike leapt away, hauling on the towrope and dragging the window-bar assembly loose. Before the dust even began to settle, Toby sprang into the hole, set to tell Willard Krieger he was free and should scramble out while he could.

Only problem was, they had got the wrong cell. Toby’s face said it all. “Krieger ain’t here. No one’s here. Cell’s empty.”

In that moment of frantic incredulity, as it dawned on the Four Amigos that all their efforts had been for naught, a familiar voice yelled at them.

“Hold it right there!”

Sheriff Bundy came huffing around the angle of the building, with his deputy, Orville Crump, close on his heels. Where Bundy was fat and aggressive, Crump was lanky and sly. They were the proverbial chalk and cheese, yet somehow they got along together and made a good team.

Both had their government-issue sidearms out and leveled at the miscreants.

“Oh, you’ve gone too far this time, my friends,” Bundy said. “You’ve really screwed the pooch. Destruction of public property? Attempting to aid and abet the escape of a felon? Unauthorized use of explosive materials? You are going down!”

They didn’t, in the event, go down. Marla Finn, Toby’s lawyer mother, managed to get them off on a technicality. She and her husband, however, were furious with their boy and forbade him ever seeing the others again. Mal and Jamie, at least. They made an exception for Jinny, after Toby pleaded with them. He spoke about her so enthusiastically, with such evident ardor, that they couldn’t bring themselves to keep her from him. They were, frankly, just glad that Toby had got himself a girl. They had begun to worry he might never find love. And Jinny was, all said and done, something of a catch.

It was, in effect, the end of the Four Amigos, although as far as Mal was concerned the end had already come, the moment he walked into the Silver Stirrup and the castle of hope he had been building for himself came crashing down around his ears. He consigned the gold locket with the fancy “J” on it to the back of a drawer and forgot about it — for a time, at least.

Seeing Toby Finn again after so long had brought back these memories of Mal’s youth on Shadow. They played in his head like mind movies as he lay in that subterranean cell, cold, trussed up, miserable. They swirled like stirred-up sediment in the riverbed of the past, muddying his thoughts.

Toby. Jinny. Jamie. Himself. And how it had all ended in disaster and a fireball and a ton of recrimination.

Mal was only dimly aware of the clunk of a bolt being drawn back, door hinges creaking open. Footsteps shuffled towards him. He braced himself for another beating. There wasn’t much he could do to prevent it, so he was better off just withstanding it, weathering it.

“Reynolds?” someone whispered.

Mal turned his head. He saw a vague silhouette in the semi-darkness of the cell, a man bending over him.

“Here,” the visitor said. “Drink this.”

Mal was being proffered an enamel mug. He struggled up to a sitting position.

“What’s in there?” he said. “Poison? Piss?”

“Just water. Reckoned you’d be thirsty.”

“You reckoned right.” But Mal remained wary.

“Go on,” the visitor urged, casting a look over his shoulder. “I ain’t got long. Someone’s bound to come by. Drink.”

Mal put his lips to the mug. The visitor tipped it and he sipped the water. It was stale, brackish, but welcome nonetheless.

A glimpse of a busted-to-hell nose confirmed the man’s identity.

“Stu?” he said.

Stuart Deakins nodded.

“Thought so. Why’re you being nice all of a sudden? Couple of hours ago, you belted me in the gut, then spat at my feet.”

“Yeah, about that… I kinda had to.”

“I figure hitting someone’s usually a matter of choice. As is spitting at them.”

“But I had to show willing,” Deakins said. “Had to show I’m part of the gang. Didn’t want anyone to think I wasn’t loyal.”

“Well, my aching belly muscles would certainly seem proof of that,” Mal said.

“And here’s a protein block.” Deakins unwrapped the foodstuff and held it up for Mal to munch on. Barbecue spare ribs flavor. Not Mal’s favorite, but still he did his best not to guzzle the whole thing in one go. He was starving hungry. When had he last eaten? He could barely recall.

Meanwhile Deakins said, “Whatever else they’re saying about you, Mal, I remember what you did for me on New Kasimir. If it weren’t for you I wouldn’t be here today and still sucking air. That earns you some latitude, far as I’m concerned.”

“Enough latitude,” Mal said around a mouthful of protein block, “that you’d untie these ropes and let me go?”

“Nuh-uh.” Deakins shook his head regretfully. “Can’t do that.”

“Can’t fault a man for askin’.”

“They know I’ve come to see you. I asked for some time alone with you. They think I’m working you over. They find out I’d freed you, I’d be dead. That simple.”

“Could always stage a fight. Maybe I freed myself, overpowered you, got away under my own steam.”

“No, Mal. That ain’t how this is gonna play out. I’m showing you some compassion, but it has its limits. You’re still a traitor in these people’s eyes. In mine too, if what I’m told is true.”

“And what have you been told?” Mal said. “It’s a mystery to me, that’s for damn sure. What is this huge betrayal I’m being accused of committing? Been rackin’ my brains and can’t think of none.”

Deakins studied him skeptically. “I can’t tell if you’re being straight or scamming. You can’t surely be ignorant of your crime. I find that hard to believe.”

“Trust me, if I knew what I’m supposed to be guilty of, I’d be the first to hold my hand up and admit to it.”

“You really don’t remember? Too bad. I’m sure it’ll come back to you.”

“You ain’t even going to jog my memory a little?”

“Why? You’ll find out when the time comes to face judgment for it — and it’s coming soon. Might be best if you just acclimatize yourself to that reality.”

Mal could see he wasn’t going to get far with Deakins. The man had mercy in his soul, but a finite quantity of it. He felt he owed Mal something, even if it was just the kindness of a little food and water.

“Gotta go,” Deakins said. “I was told I could only give you a few licks. I’m gonna refrain from doin’ that, but if I stay any longer, people are bound to get suspicious.”

“One thing,” Mal said. “I’m bursting for a pee.”

“Bucket over there.”

“Sure, but my hands are tied behind my back. Kind of makes it difficult for a fella to get the old pecker out, know what I mean?”

“You want me to untie you? I ain’t falling for that. You’d cold-cock me for sure.”

“Okay, but I’m gonna piss my pants if I don’t do something about it right soon. You want that on your conscience?”

Deakins was in two minds, Mal could see.

“Man to man,” he pressed. “If the roles were reversed, I’d do the same for you. Swear.”

“Tell you what,” Deakins said. “I’ll unbutton your fly. But that’s as far as it goes. You’ll have to manage the rest by your ownsome.”

He fumbled gingerly with the front of Mal’s pants, like someone fearful of touching a live wire. Mal then shuffled over to the bucket on his knees. He managed, through some awkward maneuvering and hip-gyrating, to liberate the part of him that needed liberating. What followed was a full minute of blessed, bladder-draining relief, after which, with a bit more wriggly dancing, he was able to stow everything away again back where it belonged.

“Thanks, Stu,” he said, sincerely, as Deakins re-buttoned his fly.

“Don’t mention it. Seriously. I mean it.”

“I guess you couldn’t see your way to slipping me a knife now? A gun, even?”

“Ha ha. No chance.”

“Or you could just, you know, accidentally-on-purpose leave the door ajar.”

“Not gonna happen.”

“Stu, you do realize this is real bad company you’re keeping, don’t you? These people, these Browncoats in name only, they ain’t playing fair. They’re crazy. Toby Finn especially. I know Toby from way back when.”

“Yeah, he said as much. Said he used to run with you when he was a kid. Trusted you. Loved you like a brother. And that’s why you’ve been top of his list of turncoats for a long while. Backstabbing’s all the more painful when it comes from someone you were once close to.”

“Toby used to be a good kid. Don’t know what turned him, but it’s clear he’s picked up some harum-scarum notions since then. That face of his? That’s the face of a madman. Toby ain’t someone I’d pledge my allegiance to, is what I’m saying. Someone as fēng le as that is liable to turn on the people around him at the drop of a hat. I don’t reckon any of you’s safe while you’re around him. If he’s calling me a traitor, I imagine he could do the same to anyone. All’s it’d take is him getting some twisted fancy about you into his head, and that’s it, you’re next for the chop.”

Deakins appeared to take this on board. “So you say.”

“Think about it, at least,” Mal said. “I mean, come on, you’re so scared of these people you’d thump a defenseless man just to keep in with them? What does that say about them? Or you?”

Deakins did not reply. Instead, with a heavy tread, he left the cell, shutting and locking the door behind him.

Alone once more, Mal contemplated his situation. It looked bleak. Trying to turn Stuart Deakins against the rest of the vengeful Browncoats had been a long shot. Mal might have planted a few seeds of doubt in the man’s mind but he doubted they would germinate into anything fruitful.

His main hope, slender though it was, was the crew of Serenity. Somehow, against all the odds, they would find him. He had to believe that. The only alternative was utter despair.

He sank back onto the floor and into reverie again.