“If there was maybe a building of some sort,” Wash said, “some sign of civilization, then we might have something to aim at. But there ain’t. It’s just a ghost world.”
“Can you run a sweep?”
“Already doing that. Thermal scan in a grid pattern, with the gain turned way up high. If there’s any kind of heat signature beyond natural background, it’ll register. So far, nada.”
Jayne entered the bridge, ducking under the lintel of the low doorway. “That it, huh?” he said, looking out at Hades through the viewing-port array. “Not much to write home about.”
“If you don’t have anything useful to contribute…” Zoë said.
“Just sayin’. Seen more life in a three-days-dead dog. Mal’s somewhere down there?”
“Supposedly.”
“Then we got no chance of finding him. Not unless we had a week to look, and I don’t reckon we got nearly that long. Vigilantes’ll probably have plugged him already.”
“Really, Jayne, if you don’t shut up…”
“Hey, Zoë, don’t blame me if I’m the realist round here. Somebody has to be.”
“Here’s an idea. Let’s just assume we are going to find Mal. We ought to make preparations. So why don’t you go to your bunk, fetch out Vera, give her a good clean, and then she’ll be all ready for if she’s ever needed.”
Jayne nodded. “That ain’t a half bad idea.” He retreated out of the bridge.
Wash said, “Did you really just tell Jayne to go to his bunk and polish his rifle?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You know he’ll never realize that was a thinly veiled insult, right?”
“Uh-huh.”
“My God, woman, I so want to ravish you right now.”
“Focus on the matter at hand, Wash.”
“Too late. My mind has already gone down the dirty path. I’m thinking, when this is over, you and me, we— Oh wait. Wait just one xī niú second.”
Something had flared on the thermal scan screen. Amidst the neutral grays and blues of Hades’s surface, there was a tiny blob of glowing orange.
Wash tapped instructions into a keyboard to enhance the image and zero in.
“Ohhh yeah. Attaboy.”
“What is it?” Zoë asked.
“Looks like the exhaust profile of a private yacht. Just landed. Engine’s cycling down and the thrusters are cooling but still radiating residual heat.”
“Enough to get a fix on?”
“Done. Coordinates logged in.”
“Whose craft?”
“My guess is Covington’s. According to Elmira, Covington headed out to join the vigilantes in a yacht, didn’t he? That’s him down there, parked wherever they are.”
“Book said miracles happen,” Zoë murmured.
“And so does amazing piloting,” said Wash. “I’m calculating re-entry. Every moment counts. No time for slick and smooth. We’re going in fast and we’re going in hard.”
Zoë smirked. “Is your mind still on the dirty path?”
Wash grinned. “Little bit,” he said, and yanked on the yoke.
34
“Why’re you even here?” Mal called across the cavern to Hunter Covington. “Don’t reckon as you were ever a Browncoat.”
“How can you tell?” Covington replied.
“On account of Browncoats have integrity, and you don’t.”
“For what it’s worth, I did my best to stay neutral during the war.”
“Yeah, like most gutless, profiteerin’ streaks of xióng māo niào did.”
“I was open to opportunities wherever they arose,” Covington said. “Still am. To nail your colors to a single mast is so limiting. Except, you didn’t nail your colors to a single mast after all, did you, Mal? In fact, you have no right to lecture me about integrity. Not if what Mr. Finn says about your past behavior is true, and I have no reason to believe it isn’t. You have earned yourself a reputation around Eavesdown, and elsewhere, as someone with a very elastic approach to ethics. ‘Give Malcolm Reynolds a job, chances are he’ll let you down or wind up screwing you over,’ that’s what they say. ‘Trust him no further than you could throw him.’”
“Couple of bad reviews, they stay with you forever,” Mal said. “Everyone ignores the many satisfied customers I’ve had.”
“And to answer your question, I’m here because I was invited. I’ve been in cahoots with these here Browncoat fellas for a while now, and I still haven’t yet seen first-hand how they operate. As they were going to be on Hades, practically in my backyard, I thought I’d take up Mr. Finn’s invitation and fly on over. It’s always a good idea to learn as much as you can about a business partner’s practices.”
“And I guess maybe you got an appetite for summary executions as well, huh?” Mal said. “You get off on it.”
Covington shook his head firmly but not that firmly. “I’m not that barbaric. I can’t deny, however, a certain curiosity. How will a man like you face up to death, Reynolds? With a wink and a quip, or blubbering in abject terror?”
“I’d be curious myself to see how you manage it, Covington. Because, I get the chance, you’re the one who’ll be facin’ up to death.”
“Brave talk, considering how this trial appears to be almost at an end. Didn’t I hear Mr. Finn just say you were about to get your comeuppance? Seems to me that sentence is shortly to be pronounced. Isn’t that so, Mr. Finn?”
Toby Finn nodded. “You’re quite right, Hunter. In fact, as I told you, you couldn’t have timed your arrival better. All that remains is for me to furnish the clinching proof that Mal killed Jinny Adare, and then we can get down to the punishment. I have that proof right here. But a little background first. Mal was just saying that we were called up to fight shortly after the Alliance attack on Shadow. It wasn’t even a week, was it? Jinny only just planted in the ground, and troop carriers arrived to ship us out. Only when we were aboard did we learn which regiments we’d be joining. We’d had our skills assessed at bootcamp and were assigned accordingly. Mal went to the 57th Overlanders, Jamie and I to the 19th Sunbeamers. Mal became a ground pounder, Jamie and I space commandos.”
“The Sunbeamers acquitted themselves honorably in many a battle, so I hear,” said Covington.
“I myself participated in dozens of ship-to-ship actions. I took my fair share of Alliance scalps. But Jamie? Jamie was in a league of his own. That man fought with a righteous fury that burned hotter than a sun. Alliance had just killed his sister. He wasn’t going to let them forget that. Jamie Adare never took a single prisoner. You were an Alliance trooper and got in his way, woe betide you. He was single-minded, laser-focused, deadly as hell. I overheard a major once say that if he had a hundred soldiers like Jamie, the war would be over within a week. But he was reckless, too. Jamie, see, didn’t care if he lived or died. He was just this big, seething ball of hate. Nothing mattered to him except taking out as many of the enemy as he could. He died at Sturges.”
The Battle of Sturges was one of the bloodiest of the war, rivaled in ferocity and numbers of casualties only by Serenity Valley, and was fought over money — a hoard of victory spoils being carried by a freighter, the Sublime, back to the Core from the Rim. The Browncoats were keen to get their hands on this loot in order to help fund their war effort. Just off the planet Sturges, Independent ships attacked the freighter’s armed escort, at considerable cost to their own forces. Space commandos then boarded the Sublime herself, only to discover that she had been booby-trapped, rigged to explode if a failsafe mechanism was triggered by the captain. Rather than let the loot fall into Independent hands, the captain sacrificed himself and everyone else aboard.