BIG DAMN HERO
COMING SOON FROM TITAN BOOKS
The Magnificent Nine by James Lovegrove (March 2019)
Generations by Tim Lebbon (October 2019)
BIG DAMN HERO
BY JAMES LOVEGROVE
ORIGINAL STORY CONCEPT BY NANCY HOLDER
TITAN BOOKS
Firefly: Big Damn Hero
Hardback edition ISBN: 9781785658266
E-book edition ISBN: 9781785658273
Published by Titan Books
A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd
144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP
First edition: November 2018
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Firefly TM & © 2018 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
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This novel is respectfully dedicated to the supremely talented artists, technicians and craftspeople who created the ’verse, peopled it with such memorable characters, and left us wanting more
So here’s how it is…
We’ve been flying for about a month on fumes and tears. Zoë and I are the ones hit hardest: we carried the coffin of Tracey Smith, our comrade-in-arms, out of Serenity and into the snowfall, where his folks stood in silence. We did not tell them that Tracey had run afoul of a gang of organ smugglers and taken refuge with us. Or that he had lied to us and nearly killed Kaylee, and that Zoë and I had both shot him mortally. As he died in our arms, he remembered when we were soldiers. We had fought on the right side, even if it was the losing one, and risked our lives to make sure everyone came back. Now he’s dead, and we told his folks that he was a war hero.
War does a lot of mean, miserable things to people. Makes ’em nurse grudges. Makes ’em swear vengeance. Makes ’em tell stories about how the Browncoats went down in defeat.
And a lot gets lost in the translation.
The Unification War ended in 2511. It’s 2517 now, and my memories come in waves. Sometimes I’m back home on Shadow, signing up to join the Browncoats with my best friends Jamie Adare and Toby Finn. We were so young, just kids. We thought war meant freedom and glory. And sometimes I still dream about Jamie’s sister Jinny, and when I wake up, my heart is as hollow as a drum.
That’s all in the past, and I’ve got way more than enough present to deal with. Inara gets these faraway looks — don’t know what it means, but I know not to ask. Still got the Tams on board, and Jayne hasn’t tried to sell ’em out since we got those medical supplies on Osiris, so that’s a plus. Shepherd’s still reading his book of fairytales. Zoë’s still my first officer, and I wouldn’t have any other. Kaylee keeps us running, and Wash keeps us flying.
Is it a good life or a bad one? The answer doesn’t matter.
It’s the only life we have.
Captain Malcolm Reynolds
1
Why can’t things just go easy for once? Mal Reynolds wondered as he ended the communication with Guilder’s Shipwrights. After a week in dry dock, their shuttle repairs were complete — just a couple-few things Kaylee could have fixed herself if they had had the right tools. But they couldn’t afford them. And the repairs had cost more than the original estimate. Of course. Still, it would be nice to have it back. The loaner shuttle Guilder’s had given them had a faulty injector regulator and guzzled fuel like a drunk guzzled beer.
Mal was standing in the cargo bay of Serenity, and after weeks of searching for a job, any job, he was having second thoughts about taking this one, despite the hefty repair bill that loomed on his horizon. Deafening alarm bells were going off in his head — about safety and about survival.
The roaring outside Serenity’s open cargo bay spiked to earsplitting as space transports and private craft simultaneously took off and landed on either side of them in Persephone’s Eavesdown Docks. The violence of the comings and goings shook the ship’s loading ramp and peppered the hull with a rain of dirt and small pebbles blasted into the air by thundering rocket exhausts.
There was only one way to describe the operation of the docks: organized chaos. Well, not so organized. Burned-out hulks of spacecraft lay in craters of their own making, scattered here and there along its sprawling length. It was a gorramn miracle there weren’t more midair collisions.
You might think with all this dutiable trade, all these comings and goings and the excise levied on them, that Persephone would be a rich planet; but you would be wrong. The Alliance taxed businesses and citizens with a gleeful rapacity. And what did Persephonians do in response? Why, they celebrated the day they signed their lives away and joined the Alliance. The anniversary of which was today.
And how did Mal celebrate it? By taking another job from Badger.
The sleazy minor crime lord was willing to pay them a scant bit of coin for risking their lives with a dangerous load that had to be hauled halfway across the galaxy. Actually, that sounded somewhat like the last job they took from him — transporting a herd of cattle on behalf Sir Warwick Harrow. The cows were delivered fine on Jiangyin until the gunfire commenced, and then Shepherd Book was shot and nearly died from his wounds. This dangerous cargo was different from that load, because if something went wrong with it, all of them would die.
As a bonus, a small side-job had slid in alongside Badger’s offer. Mal, Jayne and Zoë would deal with the secondary job planetside once Badger’s cargo was loaded. Which meant Taggart’s Bar on Alliance Day, just about the rowdiest drinking establishment on Persephone, on the rowdiest day of the year.
Talk about combustible.
About five feet away, Zoë was saying something to Mal, or trying to, murmuring to avoid being overheard. Zoë was the kind of woman who spoke softly and carried a big gun. Mal motioned for her to come closer. She walked over with her arms crossed, and leaned in, so close that her breath brushed against his ear.
“I don’t like it, sir,” she said, biting off the words.