Big Damn Hero

2

“Gorramn Alliance Day,” Zoë muttered.

Alliance Day was Persephone’s own special holiday, like Unification Day, but local. It signified the signing of the treaty that welcome Persephone into the Alliance, and Mal nursed the hope that folks celebrated it with gusto only because it was a good excuse to take off the day and get drunk. But like Unification Day, Alliance Day didn’t sit right with Mal either. Not right at all.

On lines strung across the streets, between the rooftops overhead, rows of gaudy Alliance flags — one half a blue field, one half red-and-white stripes, with a swirl of different-sized yellow stars overlaid on a red square — flapped like wagging tongues. They seemed to be taunting him: you lost, you lost, you lost… Bunting with the same pattern hung from balconies and utility poles, and yet more flags were plastered inside every dirty window frame that still held glass.

Mal, Zoë, and Jayne trudged down a winding alley, forced to jink every few steps to avoid head-on collisions with the people walking the opposite direction. A lot of them sported little plastic Alliance badges pinned to their ragged coats and hats, and more than a few had dressed for the occasion in their old Alliance uniforms, proudly displaying medals won for destroying Browncoat strongholds and slaughtering Browncoat troops.

Eyes narrowed to slits, jaw clenched tight, Mal kept pace with Zoë, who could do stoic better than anyone he had ever met, mostly by virtue of looking mildly pissed about everything all the time. Some folks said Mal was hard to figure out, but he knew he wasn’t. There was a core of bitterness that ran the length of his soul and drilled down into his heart, and there seemed no way to get rid of it, ever. He supposed that was all right. It kept him going. Kept him flying.

Didn’t necessarily keep him out of trouble, though.

Least of all on Alliance Day.

Three tipsy young women dressed in matching red satin, high-necked embroidered jackets and black trousers ran towards Mal and Zoë. Their hair was wound into round little topknots on either side of their heads. They were waving a couple of little Alliance pennants on sticks and giggling at each other.

“Happy Alliance Day!” one of them cried, and they all burst into shrieks of laughter.

Zoë uttered a caustic oath as she sidestepped and pushed past them, and that made Mal smile. Zoë losing her temper was just the funnest fun ever. And under normal circumstances it would bode well for their bar run. The prospect of cracking a bushel of Alliance-loving heads and breaking up some furniture would have raised Mal’s sagging spirits. However, there was work to do, and that took precedence.

Stepping up beside Zoë, he played dumb. “What was that all about?” he asked.

“I hate stupid women, sir,” she said.

“They are truly despicable,” he agreed amiably.

“Hey, what’s the rush?” Jayne called at them.

When Mal looked back, Jayne had his arms around two of the intoxicated young women, and the third was carefully threading the stick of her Alliance pennant through the stitches of his left earflap.

“I love your hat! You look so cute!” the pennant-threader squealed.

The blondest of the three reached overhead, jumping repeatedly as she tried to touch the orange pompom crest. Grinning from ear to ear, Jayne reveled in the attention. Mal and Zoë didn’t comment, just kept on walking up the street.

“Hey, wait up,” Jayne shouted at their backs. The girls detached themselves and reeled away, laughing.

Jayne closed the gap, still savoring his moment of adulation. He adjusted the fit of his hat and the angle of its newly acquired decoration. Unable to control himself, Mal snatched away the loathsome symbol, threw it to the pavement, and ground it under his boot heel.

Jayne didn’t bend down to recover the pennant. Emotionally, it seemed he had already moved on. “After we get our business done, how’s about we spend the night in port? There’s so many parties…”

“And we have a cargo bay full of chemicals I don’t particularly want to hang onto any longer than necessary,” Mal said.

“Oh, right. On account of they might blow up on us.” Jayne smiled unpleasantly, less of a smile and more of a scowl with bared teeth. “I swear, sometimes the jobs we take—”

Irked, Mal rounded on him. “Are what, Jayne? Dangerous? Foolhardy? Scrapin’ the barrel so hard, we’ve dug right through the bottom?”

“Well, yeah. Why do we bother with ’em?”

“’Cause those are the only jobs we can get and stay under the radar. They’re what keeps us flying and out of prison, or maybe getting our necks stretched.”

Jayne waved him off. “Ease up, Mal. Don’t take it out on me. I’m not the one who lost your war for you.”

Zoë thrust herself between them, stepping toe to toe with Jayne. Chin raised, she bored her steely gaze into him. “I think you might want to shut your mouth, Jayne, before I shut it for you.”

It was a serious threat and Jayne took it as such. “Didn’t mean nothin’ by it,” he groused. His cheeks were red, this time from embarrassment. Jayne hated backing down. “You two are livin’ in the past, is all. Like Badger said, war’s over. Been over a long whiles. Might as well make the most of the peace.”

Zoë opened her mouth to speak, then seemed to catch herself. She gave Jayne a long, measuring glance, like the slowest burn a Firefly-class transport vessel could achieve.

“What?” he protested indignantly. “It’s just the plain truth. The war is over. And losing’s not so bad. Ain’t as if it’s the end of the world. I’ve lost stuff lots of times. Poker games, loot from robberies, a horse, my virginity, and…” He glanced down at the pennant Mal had stomped into the dust. His eyes widened. “Oh, no!” he groaned, reaching down and grabbing up the torn pieces. He held them out to Mal accusingly. “She wrote her wave code on it. See? Now I can’t read it. You scraped off half the writing.”

“Losing ain’t so bad,” Mal echoed. “Besides, she weren’t no good.”

“How d’you figure that?” Jayne asked.

“She liked that hat of yours.”

Jayne drew himself up to his full, considerable height. “My mom knitted this hat. You’re just jealous.”

“Keep telling yourself that,” Mal retorted.

Muttering to himself, Jayne tried to piece the pennant back together. He gave up after a few seconds and in frustration threw the tatters into the air.

“All right, listen up now,” Mal said as they drew near Taggart’s Bar. “The meet with Hunter Covington is at six sharp. We establish whether he’s above board, or elsewise. If he is, we receive whatever it is he wants us to carry, then we fetch Kaylee and have her verify our shuttle’s all fixed. I’ll pay the repair bill, we’ll get rid of that loaner, and meantime Wash’ll be prepping for dustoff.”

“Did this Covington fella tell you what he’s got for us to transport?” Jayne asked.

“Said he preferred to discuss it in person rather’n by wave,” Mal said.

Hunter Covington was one of the things that Mal liked least, an unknown quantity. He had requested a quote for shipping “a small item” to a nearby location that would be disclosed when they met. Mal wasn’t keen on the vagueness, nor on doing business with an out-and-out stranger, but had nonetheless arranged a meetup at Taggart’s since they were on Persephone anyway. Only a rich man or a dolt turned down potential paid work, and Mal was certainly not the former and trusted he wasn’t the latter.

“Crucial thing,” he added, “we don’t mention that we might get blown up before we deliver his goods. Got that?”

“That’s smart,” Jayne said earnestly.

They strolled past the store where Mal had bought Kaylee her pink, frilly layer-cake dress for that society ball a while back. Today the living mannequins were dressed in the colors of the Alliance, holding flags and waving at the window-shoppers. The folks in the street cheered and waved back at them.

At another store farther down the row, a scrap-merchant-cum-pawnbroker, Mal and Kaylee had haggled many times over parts for Serenity, while across the street was the grocery where the crew usually purchased protein blocks for the galley. Every gorramn shopfront had put up a flag to celebrate the day when Persephone had joined the Alliance. Or maybe it was just to avoid being blacklisted by Alliance loyalists. Maybe secretly they were as angry as Mal was. He could hope.

The trio cut down a narrow alley that was made even narrower by avalanches of bricks that had cascaded out of the walls of the three-story buildings on either side. High overhead, a transport barge rumbled and popped, belching a trail of smoke as it crawled up into the sky.

After a right turn into the next adjoining street, Mal, Zoë, and Jayne found themselves face to face with another gaggle of drunken girls, these wearing Alliance-flag capes and hats. After they’d filed past, one of girls called back to Mal, “Want my wave code, honey?”

Jayne let out a low growl.

From that, Mal reckoned he hadn’t been forgiven yet. But Jayne was never one to hold a grudge for long. Not because of any charity on his part; he simply had a very short — and narrow — attention span.

As they progressed along the street, the stores got shabbier and shabbier and became interspersed with boarded-up, roofless commercial buildings inhabited by a few scattered squatters. The smoke was thicker here; it rasped the back of Mal’s throat and it smelled like the inhabitants were burning dried dung. A beggar sat cross-legged on the sidewalk with a dirt-caked hand extended to passersby.

They kept going, to an even more desolate and sparsely inhabited part of town. Their destination was one of the few drinking establishments still open for business on this street. Above the entrance a hand-painted sign, hanging somewhat askew, read “Taggart’s Bar and Lounge.” It might as well have said, “Abandon hope all ye who enter here.” This was the kind of place where Mal did the kind of deals he was forced to make these days.

The rumble of music and shouting from inside could be heard half a block away. The front wall of the squat, cinderblock structure had been whitewashed once upon a time, but now it was covered by a band of graffiti from the sidewalk to as far as a person could comfortably reach, layer upon layer covering all but a few specks of the white. The green metal double saloon doors were cracked and rusting. The holographic front window hummed and shorted in an erratic, irritating rhythm. Under the window, a puddle of something on the pavement glistened purple and sticky in the dim light. Could’ve been blood.

Taggart’s was deep in the seam of urban rot, the kind of dump the authorities wouldn’t bother sticking their noses in unless someone set off a hand grenade, and maybe not even then. Exchanges of gunfire from within would be ignored: that just meant fewer lowlifes to arrest down the road. Should fisticuffs break out, the police could claim it was none of their business. The hand-to-hand battle could be prolonged and epic.

All the same, Zoë’s dander was up. Mal could see it in the set of her jaw and the take-no-prisoners look in her eyes. Wouldn’t take much to provoke her to violence. And Jayne? Well, Jayne was Jayne. Almost as volatile as HTX-20.

Persephone had been one of planets where the fighting for the Independents’ cause in the Unification War had been the bitterest and most protracted. After Earth-That-Was got used up, the human race had flown out into space to make new earths — terraforming moons and planets, like Persephone. Hopeful, gullible settlers got dumped onto the worst pieces of land while the elites staked possession of the best. The fat cats also took control of planetary governments, enacting laws that favored themselves and ultimately joined together to form an over-arching, galactic authority they called the Alliance.

Every inhabited world had to become a member, the Alliance decreed. Ninety-nine percent of the populations of the outlying moons and planets never saw a scrap of the new technologies and other benefits an expanding civilization was wont to provide, like decent housing, steady food supplies, medical care, and schooling. What they got instead was exploited for cheap labor; the natural resources stripped, and the land left polluted for pennies on the dollar. The gap between haves and have-nots widened. The already fat grew morbidly obese. Most everyone else turned into walking skeletons. It was so obviously unjust that Mal was always amazed when he met someone who had fought on the side of the Alliance — or supported it. Inara, his own shipside Companion, was such a person.

She ain’t mine, he reminded himself. Inara belongs to no one but Inara.

He had fought for justice and fairness and the freedom for every person to make his or her own way, but he had lost and been punished severely for it. Funny thing, if he had to do it over, he would’ve done it again — just with fewer stars in his eyes.

“Okay, we’re here for business only,” he reminded his two crewmates. “Not pleasure.”

“Yes, sir,” Zoë said, while Jayne blew the air out of cheeks in disgruntlement.

“Hope this Covington guy pays for our drinks,” Jayne said.

“If he does,” Mal said, “it’s because the deal ain’t fair to us and he’s trying to butter us up.”

“A free drink’s a free drink,” Jayne argued.

“Except when it’s not.”

It was clear that Jayne wasn’t tracking. No matter. Mal took point, pushing both swinging doors inward. Zoë was close behind at his right shoulder. They burst into a maelstrom of stink and noise. The reek of spilled ale, food fried in rancid lard, and tobacco smoke hung in a fog over the heads of grubby drinkers, who huddled on bar stools and chairs, or leaned against walls to keep themselves upright. Fifteen-foot-diameter circular rings marred the bar-room floor. It looked like big vats had once stood there. Acid and vats. Mal’s best guess: the place had been a tannery before it was converted to a bar, and the new owner’s redecoration had been minimal verging on negligible.

A loud, rhythmic, grating noise blared from a pair of speakers at the edge of a low stage set in one of the rearmost arches. A lone performer sat on a chair playing a computer keyboard, with a microphone duct-taped against the side of his neck. The song had a jaunty, all-too-familiar refrain:

Mal bristled. The Alliance anthem. The bastard was singing the Alliance anthem, and not just singing it but throat singing it. And the gorramn drunks packed shoulder to shoulder in front of the stage were swaying their arms in the air and tunelessly bellowing along. Despite the synthetic organ, horn section, and string accompaniment, the whole thing was about as musical as Serenity’s struggling sump before Kaylee cleared the clog, and much less pleasant to listen to.

Tamping down his ire, Mal focused on the matter at hand. He scanned the packed room for Hunter Covington. He wasn’t here yet.

Mal reached for the photo printout in his pocket, just to be sure. In the Black, out of the blue, Serenity had gotten a wave from someone — Hunter Covington — with a job offer. The money wasn’t spectacular, but work was work. Mal had run some background checks, asked around among various associates about Covington, and learned nothing that filled him with an abiding sense of mistrust but nothing that much enthused him either. It seemed the man was a fixture around Eavesdown, with fingers in many a pie. In that respect, Mal had been somewhat surprised the name was unfamiliar to him, but then he couldn’t be expected to know every trader, merchant, crook, stealer, dealer, and double-dealer in a city that had such a plenitude of them to choose from.

On the vid screen Covington had spoken in a rich, low purr, presenting a well-dressed, well-spoken figure, with a tidily knotted Ascot tie nestled above the button-down collar of a silk shirt, a tailored velvet jacket, and a shot-silk vest. His luxuriant beard merged with bushy sideburns.

“Looks like the cat that got the cream,” Jayne said, glancing over Mal’s shoulder at the photo, which had been screen-captured from Covington’s wave.

“The cat that got the monopoly on the cream,” Mal said, “and cornered the kibble market too.”

“You sure about this, sir?” Zoë said. “Is it worth the risk?”

“Badger’s mission is way riskier,” Mal replied. “Hopefully this is something we can tack onto the job to make it more profitable without much additional effort or burned fuel.”

“I don’t see Covington around,” Jayne said, squinting into the smoke.

“We’ll just settle in and wait then,” Mal said. “Free table over there.”

The table was free because the four occupants had just fallen out of their chairs, dead drunk.

“Let’s grab it quick,” Zoë said.

They pushed forward before someone else could poach the table. All around them, plastered Alliance-loving patrons were busy outdoing each other with all manner of glass-raising, back-slapping, and top-volume-pontificating on the benefits that Alliance membership had brought to their dusty world. The continuing postwar enthusiasm for all things Alliance was a phenomenon Mal found simply baffling. It was like folks had been struck blind — or bag-of-rocks stupid. The recipients of the Alliance’s “bounty” scrabbled desperately to eke out a living, accepting wages that were meager, and giving away most of what they made in taxes with nothing to show for it in return. The system had been designed to flow one way: up.

“Wonder if they’ve anything good to eat,” Jayne said as they sat down. He picked up one of the half-emptied plates that had been left on the table and sniffed the congealed contents. The chef had made an attempt to disguise the taste of protein block chunks using a cacophony of spices and sauces. Jayne looked at it twice, hesitated, then put it back on the table. “This has gone bad. I’m starving.” He looked around. “Maybe Covington’ll buy us some grub when he gets here.”

“I’m not sure that what they serve at this place is edible,” Zoë said.

“Be nice if there was some passable quim here, too.”

Zoë shot Jayne a look that could have carved a diamond in two.

“No disrespect,” Jayne added hurriedly. “Passable unmarried quim, is what I meant.”

“That’s okay, then,” Zoë drawled. “I’ll take it as a compliment.”

“You should.”

“Well, since no one else is goin’ to buy us a round,” Mal said, “guess I’d better.”

“Now you’re talking,” said Jayne.

Just as Mal bellied up to the bar, a man wearing a long, mustard-yellow duster and a dented ten-gallon hat laid a small piece of folded paper on the bar beside his elbow. Wasn’t Covington. Might well be a messenger from Covington.

Mal palmed the piece of paper, and without a word the man in the mustard-yellow duster turned away and drifted off into the crowd. Mal placed their order, and while the bartender was filling it, he teased the paper open and glanced at the note like he was checking his hand at a poker table.

To Mal’s right, another deluded citizen of Persephone was hoisting his glass in honor of the Alliance, slopping brown ale all down his shirtsleeve, going on about “peace in our time.”

Not to mention malnutrition and radiation poisoning, Mal thought.

With an effort, Mal let it slide. Business before pleasure. He paid the bartender, picked up the order, and headed back to their table.

“…only thing the Alliance coulda done a better job of is if it had killed off a few hundred thousand more Browncoats,” the deluded citizen was saying, addressing the entire room in a slurred shout. “So-called Independents don’t value human life like we do. Don’t value it at all. Lying cowardly scum killed more civilians than soldiers, an’ you know that’s the truth! I wager every person in this room lost kith and kin on account of them savages.”

“Yeah!” chorused the surrounding folk, angrily thrusting their glasses towards the towering ceiling.

Mal couldn’t contain himself a moment longer.

“Hey, just hang on now…” he began, then buttoned his lip and carried on towards to the table. Nobody had noticed.

Zoë gave him a hard, searching look as he set the drinks down with hands that were a tad unsteadier than they might have been.

“Sir?” she said.

“Got slipped a note,” he said just loud enough for Zoë and Jayne but no one else to hear. “Came from a fella in a ten-gallon hat and a duster the color of pus.”

“I saw him. Hard to miss, with that coat. He went out the back way straight after. What’s the note say?”

“Looks like it’s from Covington, and he’s waiting outside.”

“Sounds kinda fishy, if you ask me,” Jayne said.

Mal considered. “Yes and no. It’s awful loud in here and awful busy. Maybe Covington just wants some quiet and privacy.”

“Alone, though?” said Zoë, glancing at the note. “That’s fishier.”

“I agree. But I guess if I don’t do as asked, could be the deal’s off. The two of you stay here, hold the table. We’ve all got comm links. I’ll keep a channel open. Anything sounds like trouble, come running.”

“How about an emergency code word, sir?” Zoë suggested. “Just in case.”

“Okay. I say ‘strawberries,’ that’s your cue.”

“Strawberries?”

“Strawberries.”

“But what if the word crops up in conversation?” said Jayne. “You know, Covington asks what’s your favorite fruit, and you just automatically say strawberries?”

Mal blinked. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Comms check.” He pressed the send button on his comm link. “Zoë?”

“Can’t say I’m hearing you very well,” she informed him, touching a finger to her earpiece. “Lot of interference.”

“But you can hear me a little.”

“A little,” she confirmed.

“Jayne?”

“Reading you. Just barely.”

“It’ll have to do.”

Mal added the purchase of new batteries for their comm links to his long list of supplies they could not currently afford.

“I’ll be back shortly,” he said. “Jayne, don’t misbehave. Zoë, make sure Jayne doesn’t misbehave.”

Head lowered, jaw clenched, Mal turned for the exit.