Firefly--The Magnificent Nine, page 25
***
And disillusioned and downcast was exactly how Shem was feeling.
Shem’s long-harbored suspicion that Elias Vandal was a fraud had at last been vindicated. That stuff Vandal spouted about being a former Reaver had impressed him at first, but the more time he had spent in the man’s company, the more he began to think that it must only be a boast. You didn’t come back from being a Reaver. Once you were a Reaver, you stayed a Reaver until you died. Vandal was a miscreant, yes, and vicious, but there was always a level of calculation in anything he did. His savagery was never without purpose, and Reavers, by all accounts, were purposeless, driven only by instinct and appetite, pure chaos made flesh.
By the time these doubts set in, however, Shem had got in too deep. He had invested heavily in Vandal’s legend. He had come to derive much of his self-esteem, his identity, from being Vandal’s second-in-command, the one who had been with Vandal from the outset, the first Scourer. The respect other Scourers accorded him was respect earned from his closeness to their leader, not for anything Shem himself was or did, but he took it nonetheless. He knew he didn’t deserve it but it was better than none.
The offworlders had reduced Vandal to a broken, blubbering wreck. By rights, Shem should hate them for it.
But he had watched these same offworlders give four Scourers a Christian burial when they had nothing to gain from doing so. The offworlders—not only their Shepherd but this man Malcolm Reynolds too—had a kind of decency about them.
Perhaps, Shem was thinking, they had done him a service by bringing Elias Vandal low. Perhaps here, at last, he had a chance to assert himself, be his own man. Be free.
***
“Shem,” Vandal croaked. “Shem…”
“It’s over,” Shem said to him sorrowfully. “I can’t go on. You’ve been like a father to me, Vandal.”
“Yes. Yes. A father.”
“And I hated my father. Hated him like hell.”
Jayne Cobb stepped forward, holding out Vandal’s boomerblade. “Maybe you’d like to use this,” he said. “It’d be appropriate.”
Shem looked round at his fellow Scourers. “Any of you want to grab this knife off me, stop me doing what I’m about to do, go ahead. But think about this. You’ve been followin’ this man for months, some of you for years. Ask yourselves, did you do it ’cause you admired him or ’cause you were terrified of him? Did you do it ’cause you wanted to be part of something or you just didn’t know what else you wanted out of life? Me, I got swept up in Vandal’s slipstream. But I look at him now, the way he is, and I wonder why. Maybe there’s some of you feeling the same.”
Nobody said anything in reply, but Mal saw a few Scourers nod their heads.
“I’m tired,” Shem said. “Sick and tired. I imagine there’s a fair number of you itchin’ to start shooting again. The folk of this town ain’t going to forgive us in a hurry, and us Scourers are probably afraid that if we don’t take care, don’t stand up for ourselves, they’re not gonna show us any mercy. You may or may not have seen that there are as many of them around here now as there are of us. They’ve got their act together like no town before, and that’s mostly down to these offworlders. Comes a time when you just have to accept that what you’ve been doing all along—even though you enjoyed it, maybe thought it made you a big shot—is wrong.”
He straddled Vandal, boomerblade held high.
“And here’s where I put it right,” he said.
“I shoulda known you’d turn on me, Shem,” Vandal rasped. He looked too exhausted and in too much pain to do anything but speak. “That day we met and you almost shot me in the back—I shoulda killed you then. And now the time’s come. Now you’ve got your chance again and I can’t do anything about it. Well, go on then. Do it. Do it, you useless piece of horsecrap. Just remember, you’d have been nothing without me. Nothing! And when I’m gone you’ll be nothing again.”
Shem brought the boomerblade down on Vandal like an executioner’s ax.
A spasm passed through Vandal’s entire body from head to toe. Then he lay still.
“Nothing?” said Shem, lifting the bloodied knife. “Yeah. Maybe I am. But now so are you.”
Mistrust simmered in the air. Townsperson stared at Scourer; Scourer stared at townsperson. Mal had a nasty feeling violence was about to break out once more. Even with Elias Vandal dead, there was still plenty of animosity to go round. The residents of Coogan’s Bluff scented victory. The Scourers feared defeat. It was a highly combustible mix, as unstable as nitroglycerine, and any second now it might just explode.
He glimpsed Zoë and Jane peering out through the bullet-riddled window of Billy’s Bar. He was minded to tell them to take cover. Same went for Wash, who was looking on from the doorway of the shuttle. This was far from all over.
Then came a high-pitched roar, the sound of jet engines.
Lots of jet engines.
A flotilla of aircraft loomed into sight above the rooftops. Leading them was a shuttle, the twin of the one already parked in the town square.
Inara’s.
The other half-dozen aircraft were high-spec personnel transportation skiffs. Each bore a corporate logo on its fuselage: the words “Dragonwing Protection Services Inc.” below a roundel containing a simplified image of a dragon offering a human figure its wing to shelter under.
Dragonwing. Mal recognized the name. It was a private security company. Presumably the one Inara’s friend hired from time to time. He guessed Inara had got word from her friend that the security specialists were en route and had gone out to meet them in her shuttle and accompany them on the last leg of their journey to Coogan’s Bluff.
The skiffs were narrow-bodied enough that, with a little bit of skilled aviation, they could set down in the middle of Main Street, while there was room in the square—just—for Inara’s shuttle to alight alongside the other shuttle.
Hatches opened in the skiffs, and scores of security specialists filed out onto the road. They mustered, and proceeded to enter the square, marching in lockstep. They were well-armed and neatly uniformed with black tactical vests, iron-gray fatigues and peaked caps with the Dragonwing logo emblazoned above the brim.
Their commanding officer made straight for Mal. The look on his face—not to mention the snub-nose 50-cal submachine gun he was carrying at waist height—said he meant business.
“You,” he barked. “Unholster that pistol and drop it on the ground.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” said Mal.
“You have to the count of three to comply, Mr. Vandal.”
“Mr…? Now hold on a second. This is a case of mistaken identity.”
“One,” the commander said.
Several of the security specialists had joined him. Mal was looking down the barrels of more submachine guns than he cared to count. At the same time, the bulk of the Dragonwing employees were fanning out throughout the square, taking up positions whereby they had everyone covered and all the exits controlled.
“Two.”
“Okay.” Mal moved his hand slowly towards his holster. “I’m complying.” He drew the Liberty Hammer with forefinger and thumb around the base of the butt and held the gun up so that everyone could see his hand was nowhere near the trigger. Though he would have liked to shoot the hell out of these goosestepping ex-soldiers and soldier-wannabes, he knew he was hopelessly outgunned. However much lead he put into them, they would return the favor tenfold.
“Put it on the ground,” the commander said.
As Mal bent to do so, Inara came hurrying across the square from her shuttle. She placed herself between him and the security specialists.
“Commander Rodriguez, this isn’t Elias Vandal,” she said. “That’s Elias Vandal.” She pointed to the corpse. “This is Mal Reynolds. You know, one of the people you’ve come here to help?”
Commander Rodriguez squinted at Mal. “Sure looks like a lawless bandit leader to me.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Mal said, “seeing as how it comes from such a fine, upstanding figure as yourself, who is in no way a glorified gun-for-hire. That’s a very pretty uniform, by the way. Hangs off you nicely. Tell me, was it tailored? And those buttons—so well polished.”
“Ah,” said Rodriguez. “Yes. It must be you. Miz Serra said that Mal Reynolds was a wiseass.”
“I like to think of myself as endearingly witty.”
Rodriguez motioned to his subordinates to lower their guns. “Then who are the bandits here?”
“The raggedy fellas,” Mal said. “The ones who look in need of a bath. Only, while in a sense you and your people have come in the nick of time, Commander Rodriguez, in another sense you’re too late. There’s kind of a détente going on right now, and I’m worried you may have upset the balance of it.”
“No,” said Shem Bancroft. “No, Reynolds, we know when the jig’s up. We are not taking on a private security army as well as the rest of you. No way. That’d be insanity.” He let the boomerblade fall to the ground and raised his hands. “We yield.”
One after another, across the square, his fellow Scourers likewise discarded their weapons and raised their hands. Some did it willingly, some reluctantly, but all did it.
Mal felt the last of the tension ebb out of him.
As the Dragonwing specialists began singling out and rounding up the Scourers, Zoë and Jane emerged from Billy’s Bar. Jane sprinted over to Temperance and flung her arms around her.
“Oh my God, Mom! Are you okay?”
“Better now, my love. So much better. You?”
They hugged hard, Jane burying her face in Temperance’s chest, too overcome with joy and relief to answer.
Now a man sashayed over from one of the Dragonwing skiffs towards Inara and Mal. He was tall, well dressed, and exceedingly handsome, and moved with a grace a ballet dancer might envy. Mal didn’t know whether he admired him or resented him.
“Who’s this?” he asked Inara.
“My friend Stanislaw.”
“Ah. Him. He came good on his promise, then.”
“Did you ever doubt it?”
“Being as I’ve never met the guy and have no idea what he’s like, I maybe did.”
“Stanislaw?” Inara said as the new arrival drew level with them. “This is Malcolm Reynolds. Malcolm Reynolds, Stanislaw L’Amour.”
The two men shook hands. L’Amour’s grip was firm and dry, and he smelled terrific, like sandalwood and cloves.
“Mr. Reynolds,” he said. “Inara’s told me… well, nothing about you.”
“Oh.”
“I jest. She mentions you all the time in her waves.”
“She does?”
“Fondly, for the most part. Sometimes with exasperation.”
“I have that effect on people.”
“What she never mentioned was quite how good-looking you are.”
“Uh, thanks,” said Mal. “And you, er, are wearing a nice cologne.”
Inara grinned at his discomfiture.
“So, not to quickly change the subject or anything,” Mal said, “but you came through for us. Earlier than scheduled, what’s more.”
“It’s not always ideal to arrive prematurely,” said L’Amour. “At parties it’s downright impolite. And in bed. But in these circumstances it’s no bad thing.”
“Just sayin’ it’s appreciated. The Scourers have a camp in a ravine north of here. Your Dragonwing guys may want to check that out. And there’s a bunch of towns and villages up-county where there’s a Scourer presence. I imagine the people there’d welcome some security specialists coming in and kicking bandit butt.”
“Consider it done. Now, Inara dear, I’m parched. Where can a fellow get a drink around here?”
“That looks like a watering hole,” Inara said. “Let’s see if they’re serving.”
Inara linked her arm with L’Amour’s and together the two of them strolled off in the direction of Billy’s Bar, heads together, chatting conspiratorially.
Zoë ambled over to Mal’s side. “Why are you looking at him like that?”
“At who?”
“The beautiful man.”
“He so great? I mean, what does he with his perfect haircut, chiseled chin, and hefty bank balance have that I don’t have?”
“Nothing, sir. Nothing at all.”
Mal scowled. “Him and Inara look like just friends to you? They don’t to me.”
“If Kaylee is to be believed, you needn’t feel threatened by him. Not where Inara is concerned.”
“Who’s threatened?”
“Not you, plainly,” Zoë said with a wry smile. “Now, sir, with your permission, may I go and kiss that blond fella over there in the palm-tree shirt who’s hopping up and down to get my attention? I think he thinks he’s done something brilliant that deserves a reward.”
“Permission granted, Corporal.”
That night the residents of Coogan’s Bluff put on a shindig because, well, why not? A terrible burden had just been lifted from them. They had been reprieved from a communal death sentence. There were loved ones to be buried, of course, and mourned; and there was damage to be repaired. But those were concerns for another day. Now it was time for a party.
In the town square, a five-piece band—fiddler, accordionist, guitarist, banjo player, jug-blower—led a rollicking hoedown. Everyone danced, their faces flushed in the firelight. A hog roast sizzled on a spit. Billy Kurosawa did a roaring trade in booze. Plenty of water was drunk, too. The town’s wellheads had yet to be repaired but the discovery of a hoard of water stored in jerry cans at the Scourers’ camp meant there was a decent quantity of the stuff to go round in the meantime. To the thirsty townsfolk, the liquid was almost as intoxicating as alcohol.
Partying as hard as anyone were the crew of Serenity. Simon tried to teach Kaylee some of the formal dance steps he had learned in school; Kaylee tried to teach Simon how dancing could also be about just letting your hair down and having fun. Zoë and Wash swayed slowly together in a clinch, in spite of the up-tempo music, their eyes closed. Shepherd Book showed himself to be rather nimble-footed, to the great amusement of River and Jane. Inara and Stanislaw L’Amour were definitely the most elegant couple there, each gliding around the other with consummate poise.
Mal sat contentedly on the sidelines with a beer in hand, until a local lady insisted he be her dance partner. She was the mature woman who was perennially escorted by a much younger man, and as she and Mal capered together, Mal took the opportunity to ask her if the fellow, Horace, was her husband or son. The answer was son. The woman, it turned out, was a widow and clearly in the market for remarrying. Mal had a clear impression he was being sized up as potential bridegroom material. He’d been here before with a certain YoSaffBridge and for that reason alone the situation made him more than a tad uncomfortable. He was relieved, therefore, when Commander Rodriguez beckoned him over and requested a moment of his time.
Away from the celebrations, Rodriguez told Mal that his team had found three young women at the camp at Brimstone Gulch.
“They’re in pretty poor shape—bedraggled, malnourished, abused,” he said. “You could call them ‘camp followers,’ except there was nothing voluntary about the role. We’re going to return them to their families in their respective hometowns.”
“And the Scourers? What are you going to do with them?”
“It’s a tough one. We’re not law enforcement. We have no formal powers of arrest. Technically we’re breaking the law by detaining these people. If I had my druthers, I’d cull the lot of them like vermin. They don’t deserve to live after all they’ve done.”
“How about handing ’em over to the Feds?”
“Can be done, but it’s tricky getting the Feds interested in what happens on a remote planet like Thetis.”
“Talk to Mr. L’Amour. I imagine he can fix it. With his resources he can fix most anything.”
“Not a bad idea,” said Rodriguez. “He’s already making arrangements for civil engineers to come and rebuild the town’s wells. He’s a useful person to know.”
“But if you do take the Scourers to the Feds, Commander, I’d consider it a personal favor if my name was never mentioned in connection with any of this.”
“Understood. And, Mr. Reynolds? I’d like to apologize for nearly shooting you earlier. I’ve heard what you and your crew did for this town. You have my respect.”
He tipped his cap to Mal.
Mal saluted him back.
***
Elsewhere in the square, Jayne sat on a bench, nursing a bottle of whisky. Simon had advised him against drinking on top of all the analgesics he had taken. Mixing booze with pain medication was, he had said, a bad idea. But the way Jayne was feeling, anything that numbed him—whether it came from a pharmacy or a liquor store—was worth putting inside him.
Several women asked him to dance but he turned them down. He wasn’t in the mood.
When another woman came up to him, he was all ready to make his excuses. Then he saw that it was Temperance.
“Hi, Jayne.”
“Hi, Temp.”
“Not joining in the fun?”
“Dancin’ ain’t for me. Anyways, my side hurts. Dancing’ll only make it worse. I like listening to the music, though.”
“Mind if I…?”
Jayne patted the bench beside him.
Temperance took the whisky bottle from him and had a swig. Wiping her mouth, she said, “There’s something I need to tell you.”
“Okay.”
“About Jane.”
“You going to say sorry for not telling me about her before? It’s fine. I’m all right with that. You had your reasons, I guess. The main thing is I know about it now, and I’m here, and I want to do what’s right by both of you.”
“If I can stop you right there…”
“No. Let me have my say. I’m thinking I’m going to stay on Thetis. I’m not saying you and me, Temp, we have to get back together necessarily. Don’t even have to live together. But I’ve got a daughter and I need to be around for her.”
“Oh, Jayne.” Temperance’s tone was rueful, wistful.
