“Jamie was one of the first onto the Sublime,” Toby said. “I didn’t reach it. My spacesuit developed a radiation-shielding malfunction and I had to return to my ship. If not for that, I’d have gone up with Sublime, like Jamie and most of the rest of the regiment. That was the end of the 19th Sunbeamers. After that, the regiment was disbanded I got transferred to an infantry unit, the 31st Raiders.”
“A heck of a squad,” said Mal with sincerity.
“Damn straight we were. Not for nothing were we known as the Angel Makers. Wherever there was trouble, wherever the battle was at its thickest, that was where the 31st were sent.”
A couple of people in the crowd yelled “Hoo-rah!” in support. Veterans of the same regiment, Mal presumed. There was no question the 31st Raiders had been one of the scrappiest units the Browncoats could boast. Their attrition rate was terrible. Life expectancy was around three weeks, a month if you were lucky. The fact that Toby had survived as long as he had was testament to his combat skill and tenacity. The little redheaded guy had been, it seemed, capable of meeting everything the Alliance could throw at him.
“I first fought alongside Malcolm Reynolds at the Battle of Du-Khang,” Toby said. “The Raiders had taken some heavy hits lately and we were merged into the whole Balls and Bayonets Brigade along with several other regiments, the 57th Overlanders included. Mal and I eventually got to meet up. That was some kinda reunion.”
“Sure was,” Mal said. “I was right glad to see you. Friendly face from home. Felt kind of impossible that we’d both come through all we had, and now here we were, fightin’ alongside each other. Felt like it was meant to be.”
“It did,” Toby said, almost wistfully. “Even after all that happened on Shadow, I still thought of you as my friend. That was before.”
“Before what?”
“Before we were dispatched to Hera. Before we made camp in Serenity Valley. Before the day I dropped by your tent to say hi. The fighting hadn’t started yet. We were digging in on our side, Alliance was digging in on the other, both of us waiting on the attack command. Lull before the storm. I had a spare hour so I made my way along the lines, found where the Overlanders were, looked for you. Someone directed me to your tent, but you weren’t there. I decided to wait. That was when I saw your kitbag. It was open. I saw something inside, glinting. I couldn’t help it. Had to check. I just got curious. And it was this…”
Toby delved into his pocket again, as he had when producing Jinny’s homing beacon. This time he took out a silver crucifix pendant, roughly three inches long and two across, its arms as thick as a baby’s finger.
“Tā mā de hún dàn!” Mal exclaimed. “That’s where that went! All this time, I thought I’d lost it. I ransacked my tent. Went through my belongings a hundred times. Looked everywhere.” He had even accused his corporal of stealing it. Given that she was Zoë Alleyne, that had not gone down well. Mal was still amazed she had ever forgiven him.
Toby pressed a recessed catch, and the front of the crucifix sprang open. Inside lay circuitry.
“This,” Toby said, holding up the device for all to see, “is another homing beacon. Its circuitry is the exact double of the circuitry in the beacon on Jinny Adare’s body, just in a different configuration. The two units were linked reciprocally, each keyed to the other’s unique signature. I didn’t know that when I first saw it. Some instinct told me there was a connection between this beacon and Jinny’s, but I had no way of establishing that for sure. Not then. Not yet. But I took it.”
“Yeah, you thieving rat-bastard, you did,” Mal snarled.
“I took it because suddenly things were starting to make sense. Things like how the Alliance knew exactly where the arms cache was at the Adares’. How they’d been able to precision-target the cowshed. Why Mal had said, ‘She was supposed to be safe.’ Jinny was supposed to be safe because Mal had come to an arrangement with the Alliance, and the Alliance had — surprise, surprise — reneged on it.”
“That just ain’t it!” Mal cried. “Those beacons were just so that Jinny and I would know each other was okay, is all. They were a way of us keeping tabs. The plan was she’d wear hers and I’d wear mine, and that way we’d each know the other was okay. Only, that never happened because… Well, we all know why. But I still kept that crucifix with me as a souvenir, to remind me of her.”
Never once had he actually draped the pendant around his neck, however. Not only had the beacon become redundant and meaningless through the destruction of its counterpart and its counterpart’s wearer, but the crucifix itself had started to seem that way too. Mal could pretty much date the loss of whatever religious faith he’d had to the day he lost Jinny Adare.
“You’re reading this all wrong, Toby,” he went on. “You’re making out as if there was this whole terrible conspiracy, and it’s all just in your head. Come on, think about it. Why would I have one of those homing beacons too if they were for giving away our location to the Alliance?”
“To keep yourself safe,” Toby said. “Alliance wouldn’t touch you as long as they knew where you were. That second beacon is as incriminating as the first, if not more so.”
“Didn’t make much difference at Serenity Valley, for example. I damn near died there.”
“But you didn’t before then!” Toby declared. “That’s just it. You, Sergeant Malcolm Reynolds, the Alliance’s mole within the Browncoat ranks, made it through a couple dozen previous hell-storms unscathed. All because you had that beacon.”
“If you think that, then you—”
“I think,” Toby said with a sudden snap of authority, “that we have heard quite enough from you, Mal. You can protest till you’re blue in the face. The evidence is all here. These two beacons are all the verification anyone needs. You are a traitor, a saboteur, and a collaborator. Right from the very start of the war, you were disloyal to the Independent cause. Whether you intended it or not, Jinny Adare became a victim of your treachery, and in return you got a free pass from the Alliance. I have stated my case. The arguments are more than persuasive. I shall now put it to the good people before us to tell us if they agree or disagree. A show of hands, if you please.”
Hands shot up in the air. There were growls of “Yeah!” and “Yee-hah!”
“One or two abstainers, I see,” said Toby. “Stu Deakins. David Zuburi. You’ve yet to be convinced? Well, it doesn’t have to be unanimous for the motion to be carried. The yeas far outnumber the nays.”
Now the crowd swarmed forwards. The bald man who had brandished a noose earlier was once again ready with the length of rope. He and another Browncoat slung the loose end over a cross-brace of the drilling rig. Meanwhile, Donovan Philips motioned Mal to walk backwards, using Mal’s own Liberty Hammer as a threat.
“Stop there,” Philips said when Mal was next to the rig and right under the dangling noose. “Do anything dumb like try to resist, and I’ll put a bullet in you. Won’t kill you. Gut shot. It’ll hurt like hell and you’ll hang anyway. You want that?”
“Don’t much want either,” Mal said. “Everybody, listen up! I am innocent. There is no way I would have endangered Jinny’s life and no way I’d have helped out the Alliance. I am one of you. Always have been, always will be.”
But he could scarcely make himself heard above the baying of the slavering, eager mob. Their eyes were bright with bloodlust. They had come for a hanging and — by thunder! — they were going to get a hanging. This was the vigilantes’ primary purpose in life, a fire they had kept stoked in their bellies since the war ended. Someone had to pay for their defeat, and if that someone was another Browncoat, why not? There’d been bad apples on both sides, and since they couldn’t easily root out the ones on the Alliance’s, they were rooting out the ones on their own.