Big Damn Hero

35

Zoë and Jayne hurtled along the tunnel, following the far-off roar of voices. The anger in that sound was palpable. She prayed she and Jayne weren’t too late. No mistake, they were getting closer to where they needed to be, but she couldn’t help thinking there had been too many delays along the way. A delay in Serenity departing from Eavesdown Docks. A delay when the feds boarded. A delay in finding a reliable source of intelligence about Mal’s whereabouts.

That she and Jayne were in the right place was no longer in doubt. Zoë, in fact, had been certain of it as soon as Wash set Serenity down at the mine entrance. Three spacecraft had been sitting there, one of them Serenity’s own shuttle. Another was a yacht, which must have been Covington’s, while the third was a Komodo-class resupply vessel, a war relic with the rust stains and impact pepperings all over the hull to prove it. Parts of it were salvaged from other ships, welded clumsily into place, giving it a patchwork appearance. She guessed it was the vigilantes’ mode of conveyance and felt an odd tug of admiration. Anyone who traveled the ’verse in a flying death trap like that deserved respect. Or locking up in a lunatic asylum.

She and Jayne hastened out of Serenity. Jayne was more mobile than her and moved faster, loping along in limber fashion. Hampered by her bad leg, she struggled to keep up but was determined not to lose ground to the big man. She had her Mare’s Leg; Jayne had Vera and Boo. They were both anticipating a gun battle and, each in their own way, looking forward to it. Zoë was also carrying something else: a remote detonator switch.

While she ran, she pictured Wash and Kaylee in the cargo bay, firing up the forklift. They had their roles to fulfill, and if all went according to plan, there wouldn’t be the need for anything except threats. Not even gunplay.

Yeah, since when did anything ever go according to plan?

She and Jayne burst out of the tunnel into a cavern. Zoë took stock of the situation at a glance. The crowd. The platform. The drilling rig. Mal suspended from a noose, his eyes bulging, his face magenta.

Everyone was too preoccupied to notice her and Jayne’s arrival.

“Jayne?”

“Yeah.”

“Shoot the rope.”

“Why not cut it?”

“There’s a crowd of people between us and Mal. They’ll stop us before we even get close. There’s no time. No other option. Shoot the rope.”

“That’s a hell of a tall order. Fifty yards. Dim light. Rope’s shiftin’ about.”

“Just gorramn do it!”

Jayne braced his legs apart and raised Vera to his shoulder, squinting as he peered down the rifle’s sights. He switched from heavy-caliber cartridge to light, for greater accuracy. He took a breath and let it out slowly, forefinger tightening on the trigger.

If anyone could make the shot, Zoë said to herself, it was Jayne Cobb.

BLAM!!!

Vera roared.

The bullet struck the rope about ten inches above Mal’s head.

“Damn!” Jayne growled.

He had nicked the rope rather than severed it. He readjusted his aim.

In the meantime, a couple of dozen faces had turned his and Zoë’s way. The rifle report had startled the crowd. Among them Zoë saw Harlow in his familiar — and still fashion-disastrous — yellow duster. Harlow here? And he was with Hunter Covington.

Bastard. He’d lied to her through his teeth. All along, he’d known exactly who Covington was. Her hand gripped her Mare’s Leg hard. There was going to be a reckoning between him and her.

Jayne was lining up a second shot. Mal looked as though he was just about ready to expire. He was going limp. If Jayne didn’t cut the rope this time, Mal was dead.

“Don’t let me down, girl,” Jayne muttered to his gun.

Vera roared again.

The rope snapped and Mal collapsed to the ground.

A gaunt little man up on the platform yelled “No!”

The crowd were also aghast, and now, as one, they surged towards Zoë and Jayne, the interlopers who had deprived them of their fun.

Zoë held the remote detonator switch aloft, while Jayne swiveled Vera to and fro in front of the Browncoats menacingly.

“Everybody,” she said, “stop. Know what this is in my hand? Remote detonator. Know what it’s connected up to? A crate of HTX-20. A crate that has been offloaded from my ship into the entrance to this mine. It’s sitting there right now, and all I have to do is let go of this here button, and boom! Cave-in. We performed a ground radar survey as we came in, mapping the mine layout. There’s only one way in or out, and that’s through that tunnel. The HTX-20 brings the roof down, and we’re all stuck here from now till doomsday. I am not kidding.”

The Browncoat vigilantes paused, studying her face. To them, she really didn’t look as though she was kidding.

“Shoot her!” the man on the platform cried. “One of you, shoot the bitch!”

Guns were drawn.

“Yeah, about that,” Zoë said unflappably. “If you look closely, you’ll see it’s a dead man’s switch. I told you already, all I have to do is let go of the button. Anybody shoots me, guess what? I’ll be letting go for damn sure.”

“She will,” Jayne said. “And in case you were wondering, this here’s a Callahan full-bore auto-lock. A heavy-caliber round from this bad boy hits you anywhere, even if it misses vital organs the shock of the impact’ll still kill you. So you’ve got to ask yourself one question: ‘Am I gonna be stupid enough to take the risk?’”

“Now,” said Zoë, “somebody — I don’t much care who — is going to walk over to my friend there and loosen that rope off of him.”

She waited for a volunteer.

“Someone’s got to do it,” she said. “Mood I’m in right now, I’m more than happy just to blow that high-explosive and have done with it. You people call yourselves Browncoats? This isn’t how Browncoats act. I was one, and I’m ashamed even to be around you. Trapping you all in this mine, that’d be worthwhile even if I’m stuck along with you.”

A man raised a hand. “I’ll do it.”

Zoë frowned. “Deakins? That you?”

“Sure is, Miz Alleyne.”

“Been a while. You’re with these people? I’d have thought better of you.”

“To be honest, Corp, I’d have thought better of myself. I’ll free him.”

“Don’t you do it, Stuart Deakins,” the man on the platform yelled. “Don’t you dare.”

“Oh, hush your squawking, Toby Finn,” Deakins said. “We’ve heard enough from you. If Zoë Alleyne thinks Mal Reynolds is worth rescuing — and worth putting her own ass on the line for, what’s more — then that settles it as far as I’m concerned. Mal ain’t guilty of what you’re accusing him of. The man deserves to go free.”

Toby Finn yanked a gun from his holster. “Not another step, Deakins. I’m telling you.”

Jayne swung Vera so that the gaunt little guy, evidently the ringleader of the vigilantes, was lined up in the reticle of his gunsight. “Want I should take him out, Zoë?”

“Not if you don’t have to,” Zoë replied. “But he so much as twitches his trigger finger…”

“Gotcha.”

Stuart Deakins shoulder-barged his way through the sullen crowd and knelt beside Mal. Mal lay so still that Zoë thought he must be dead. After all this, had everything been in vain? She choked back the fear. Mal was okay. Surely he was okay.

Deakins untied the noose, then rolled Mal over onto his back. Someone else Zoë recognized, David Zuburi, joined him. Together the two men conferred, then Deakins began to administer CPR to Mal, alternately pumping his chest and blowing into his mouth.

Zoë watched, her grip on the detonator switch growing slick.