The Ghost Machine, page 25
part #4 of Firefly Series
What he was thinking was that, if it came down to it, the Reavers would not kill his children. He himself would. Anything to spare them the abominations the Reavers would inflict on them.
Just then, Master DaSilva began to stir.
“My head,” he groaned, blinking around him. “Did you—did you hit me, Mr. Reynolds?”
“May have. It was for your own good.”
“Of all the—!”
“Think you can stand?” Mal said.
“I’m not sure. Maybe.”
“Good. Up you get. Everyone? We’ve had our minute. We gotta move.”
Mal himself was so fatigued, he could hardly go another step. The ridge might be a good spot to make a stand against the Reavers. High ground and all. He doubted he’d be able to hold them off for long, however, just him and his Liberty Hammer.
And he had the sense that they were dividing their forces, one group to make a frontal approach from the tree line, another to come around at the family from the side, along the ridge itself. Reavers might not be what you’d consider human anymore, but neither were they brainless. They could ambush. They could strategize. Certainly splitting up was what Mal would do if he was them, and fighting them on two fronts was a battle he simply wouldn’t win.
The family and Master DaSilva set off down the other side of the ridge, into a gully. The rocks underfoot grew more numerous, impeding their progress. The going got even more treacherous the further they descended, the rocks giving way to scree and loose shale. Everyone slithered and slipped, and Master DaSilva lost his footing and fell several times.
“This really is intolerable, Mr. Reynolds,” he declared at one point. “I don’t even think we’re being chased any longer. I think our pursuers have given up.”
“If you think that, then you ain’t anywhere near as smart as you’re cracked up to be,” Mal replied. “Reavers don’t give up, not until they’ve gotten what they’re after.”
After his sixth or seventh tumble, Master DaSilva simply stopped.
“I am not going an inch further,” he said. “Bad enough you hit me. I could sue you for that. I shall certainly report you to the Sihnon Union for Private Tuition Professionals. Look at me. My jacket sleeve is torn. My pants are ruined. My shoes too. These are patent leather. I refuse to continue with this ridiculousness. I am turning back.”
“Do that,” Mal said.
“I shall.”
“Mal,” said Inara. “You can’t be serious.”
“He’s holding us up,” Mal said with a shrug. “He says he wants to turn back, I say let him.”
“But—”
“He ain’t my family, Inara. You and the kids, you’re all I care about. DaSilva’s welcome to go his own way. I don’t advise it, but he’s a grown man. It’s his lookout.”
“Quite,” said DaSilva. He executed a smart about-turn and trudged upslope.
“Mal,” Inara said. “Stop him.”
“Nope. Kids? We keep going downhill. Got that?”
“Will Master DaSilva be okay?” Samadhi asked.
“He’ll be fine,” Inara said, with a guilty backward glance at the tutor. “I’m certain he will.”
It wasn’t five minutes later that they heard the screaming.
The hideous, pain-wracked screaming that echoed over the mountainside and lasted for a small eternity before it subsided into brief, gasping shouts. Pleas for mercy. Prayers to God. And finally, one last semi-demented howl before a blessed silence fell again.
“Was that Master…?” Jackson began, but Mal just grimly ushered him onwards.
A short while afterwards, they came to the cave.
Mal had been starting to think that they would never find it; that it might not even exist.
But there it was, burrowing into the side of the gully. Its mouth was roughly triangular, ten feet tall at its apex. Daylight did not penetrate far inside, only a few yards, but the cave clearly ran deeper than that.
“In there,” Mal said to his family. He was feeling the first faint stirrings of hope. A dangerous luxury, hope, but there it was. Maybe, just maybe, they were going to survive this.
“Are you sure?” said Inara. “If this entrance is the only way in and out, we’ll be trapping ourselves.”
“It’s a defensible position. Anyone comin’ in after us will have to come in single file. Then I can pick ’em off one by one.”
“Are there bears inside?” said Samadhi, squinting into the cave worriedly.
Mal would have taken an angry grizzly over a Reaver any day. “No, Samadhi. No bears.”
“It’s dark,” said Jackson.
“That way the bad men won’t see us. We’re the ones hiding from them now. Come on, in you go.”
Inara led the way, Jackson and Samadhi following. Mal entered last, having taken a final quick look around beforehand. No sign of the Reavers, but they must be close. He didn’t think they would pass by the cavemouth and not investigate. He didn’t think the family would get that lucky.
The interior of the cave smelled musty and dank. The ceiling quickly lowered as Mal ventured further in, until he was having to stoop so as not to bang his head. Then it rose again, and the tunnel broadened out somewhat.
“Inara, kids,” he said, “no need to go too far. As long as we’re out of immediate sight.”
Their three dim forms halted ahead.
“Here?” Inara said.
“That’ll do. Everyone, hunker down. Find a rock to hide behind, or a crevice to squeeze into, if you can.”
“Okay, Daddy,” said Samadhi. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to stay right here.”
Mal was still within sight of the cavemouth but just past the narrowest part of the tunnel. A perfect pinch point.
He drew his gun and dropped to a crouch, facing the entrance.
“Now listen up, all of you,” he said. “Especially you, kids. I may have to start shooting, and when I do, I want you to cover your ears. Got that? Jackson? Samadhi? Because it’s gonna get very loud in this enclosed space and it’ll hurt your hearing.”
“Got it,” said Samadhi.
“Yeah,” said Jackson.
“And if you can shut your eyes, too, that would be a good thing.” Mal fetched out his box of spare ammo, laid it within easy reach, and then waited, his every nerve taut.
With all the loose rock outside, it would be hard for the Reavers to approach the cave soundlessly. By the same token, crazed and depraved as they were, they might not trouble with stealth and just come rushing in.
What if they had another RPG? They could just blast the ceiling of the cave and trap the family inside it forever.
But that wasn’t the Reaver way. Up-close-and-personal killing, that was their way. They liked to see their victims writhe. Hear them scream. Savor their terror.
Mal’s main concern was making every bullet count. If he missed or even only winged one of the Reavers, he probably wouldn’t get the chance to make up for it. The savage would reach him and that would be the end of that. Each shot had to kill outright.
After several minutes, Inara sidled up behind him. “Where are they?” she whispered.
“Damned if I know,” Mal said, still staring towards the cave entrance, “but I ain’t movin’ from this spot until every last one of them’s dead.”
“About Master DaSilva…”
“Now ain’t the time to berate me about that. I did what I did ’cause I had to. I don’t regret my decision none, and neither should you.”
“No, I just wanted to tell you, it was the right thing. I hate myself for even thinking it, but if you hadn’t left him, if you’d stopped to argue with him, we might not be alive now. He should have realized his only chance of safety lay with you. But Mal… If you can’t hold off the Reavers… If they get to us…”
“You already know what I’m going to do in that eventuality, Inara. And if I’m in no fit state to, you’re gonna have to take this gun and do it your own self. Just make sure you leave a bullet in the cylinder for you.”
She looked at him with love, faith, and the utmost sorrow.
Then Samadhi let out a whimper.
“Daddy…” she said fearfully.
Mal spun around. It took his vision a moment to adjust to the gloom deeper in the cave. He could make out Samadhi and Jackson, both of them huddled down on the damp floor. And behind them…
Behind them were humanoid shapes.
With bladed handweapons.
And gloating grins.
And disfigured faces.
Mal felt a sudden clenching in the pit of his stomach, a stab of pure anguish.
Unbeknownst to the family, the Reavers had overtaken them.
They had got to the cave first and been lying in wait all along.
Mal!” River yelled as she charged into the cave.
Mal pivoted around.
“I’ve got this,” she said, drawing level with him.
“River?” he said, perplexed.
“River?” said Inara, in much the same manner.
As River darted past, she launched herself off the cave floor with one foot. Her other foot kicked off the wall. The move sent her bounding over the heads of Jackson and Samadhi, right into the Reavers’ midst.
She was weaponless. The Reavers were not.
She was alone. They were several.
But it was close quarters, with little elbowroom. In order to swing ax, machete, or sword effectively, you needed space. The Reavers, clustered together like this, had negated their one main advantage.
River would make sure their oversight cost them.
A throat strike to the nearest of them crushed the man’s larynx. The stimulants the Reavers were on might harden them against pain, but if you couldn’t breathe, you couldn’t breathe. The man—his face was a raw red ruin, lacking any skin whatsoever—went down choking and gasping.
Without pausing, River aimed a roundhouse kick at the next nearest Reaver. She registered that the woman’s nose was missing and that a replacement nose, someone else’s, had been stapled on in its stead. River’s boot sole connected with the back of the woman’s neck, shattering two of her cervical vertebrae. The Reaver fell stiffly, like a toppled tree.
A third Reaver jabbed his knife at River. She elbowed the blade aside, stepped closer to the man, and delivered a palm-heel strike to his sternum. Not only did bone shatter beneath her hand but the blunt-force trauma stopped his heart.
She snatched up his weapon. It was a kind of double-ended dagger whose curved blades formed a crescent. It looked crudely constructed but was well balanced and razor-sharp.
A Reaver lunged at her and River thrust the dagger upwards under his chin, through the roof of his mouth into his brain. She yanked the weapon out and, without even looking round, rammed it backwards, planting the other blade between the ribs of yet another Reaver.
The inarticulate snarls and growls the Reavers had been making gave way to uncomprehending grunts and even mutters of alarm. This girl—this tiny slip of a thing—was decimating their ranks. To them it seemed inconceivable.
Yet the remaining Reavers, four in all, were not going to back down. If anything, they became more dogged than ever in their determination to kill their foe.
River sliced. She slashed. Blood sprayed in arcs. One after another, Reavers staggered and jerked and fell.
In the end, a single Reaver remained.
And he had Jackson in his clutches.
The boy was too frightened even to scream. The Reaver, clad in ragged leather with matted hair hanging over his face, had an arm around Jackson’s neck. In his other hand was a knife.
“Fllll…” he said, struggling to form coherent words. “Fllllaaa… Flllayyyy himmm.”
His grin showed an array of additional teeth inset into his gums— other people’s teeth.
River shook her head.
Then she moved, lightning-swift. Her dagger had cut through the meat of the Reaver’s upper arm, severing all the major tendons and nerves, before the Reaver even realized. His knife slipped from suddenly flaccid fingers.
River rear-thrust the dagger hilt deep into his back.
The Reaver’s dying gasp was a mix of agony and ecstasy.
She stood, panting, dripping with other people’s blood. Jackson was beside her, trembling from head to toe. A little way off, Samadhi was slack-jawed with astonishment. Further off, Mal and Inara were too stunned to react.
“Mal,” River said. “I’ll make this quick. There is a thing in Jayne’s bunk, beneath the floor. I tried to point it out to you but you must have not been able to find it. Some kind of machine but I don’t know what it is. I call the noise it’s emitting the siren. It’s leaking through the case and it’s making everybody on Serenity dream. Hallucinate, in fact. Including you. Serenity is in trouble. She’s going to crash. I think—I hope—Kaylee can stop that happening. But you can help.”
“What in the name of—?” Mal began, but she cut him off.
“You need to go to Jayne’s bunk and break the machine. That should end the hallucinations. If you don’t, Kaylee may not be able to shake off the siren’s effects. If she doesn’t turn the ship, we all die. Got that?”
“River, don’t think I’m not happy to see you or thankful to you for saving us from those Reavers,” Mal said, “but all I’m hearing now is fēng le talk. Machine? Siren? I don’t even own Serenity no more. Sold her years ago. Been on Sihnon ever since.”
“Jayne’s bunk,” River stressed. “The machine. Find it. Break it. Tell me you’ll do that.”
“I won’t do what I can’t do.”
“You’re going to have to, and I’m going to get you to Serenity so you can.”
It had occurred to River that there was one surefire method of getting someone to wake up from their dream: visiting violence on them. Slapping Kaylee seemed to have worked. In Mal’s case, however, given how deeply he was invested in his fantasy of marriage and fatherhood and domestic bliss, something stronger was called for.
When River’s relatives had shot her, it had acted like an ejector seat, propelling her straight out of Simon’s dream.
Death was the answer.
She flung the dagger.
“Whoa!”
In Serenity’s cargo bay, Mal abruptly awoke.
He was lying on a packing crate. His back ached. His head was throbbing. He was aware of his surroundings, but nothing made sense. A moment earlier he had been in a mountainside cave with Inara and their kids. River had just rescued them from a marauding band of Reavers. Then…
Then she had thrown a dagger at him.
Straight into him.
He had felt it enter his chest.
Felt it penetrate his heart.
Felt everything just stop.
Now this.
He tried to get up. Accomplished the feat on the third attempt.
He knew there was something he had to do. Knew it was urgent.
But he knew, too, that he should be with Inara, Jackson, and Samadhi on Sihnon.
Yet he was aboard Serenity. He was in the exact same spot he had been when he had sat down on this crate for a rest, shortly after liftoff from Canterbury.
How could both things be true at once?
Answer was, they couldn’t. One or other of them was a falsehood.
He rapped the crate with a knuckle. It was solid. Real.
But the cave on Sihnon had likewise felt solid and real.
He pinched himself. Literally pinched himself.
The pain was real.
But so had been the panic, the dread, the desperation he had experienced when fleeing from the Reavers.
Jayne’s bunk.
River had said something about Jayne’s bunk. Something Mal had to do there.
Mal was a pragmatic man. He wasn’t on Sihnon now. He was on his ship. He should deal with what was to hand.
Briefly he closed his eyes.
Once again, he was in the cave. There was Inara. There were Jackson and Samadhi. There were the Reavers’ heaped bodies.
No River.
But his wife and children were looking at him eagerly, lovingly. Their terror was giving way to relief. They knew the crisis was past.
“PROXIMITY ALERT. PROXIMITY ALERT.”
Mal’s eyes snapped open. A recorded voice—female, emotionless, loud—was making an announcement over Serenity’s intercom system.
“PROXIMITY ALERT. PROXIMITY ALERT. EVASIVE MANEUVER REQUIRED.”
Amber emergency lights started revolving inside their plastic bubbles.
Serenity is in trouble, River had said in the cave. She’s going to crash.
It seemed she had been correct.
She had also told Mal that Kaylee was addressing the problem. But he needed to help.
Jayne’s bunk.
Mal set off up the staircase towards the crew’s sleeping quarters.
As he arrived on the catwalk, he heard a rasping, sinister snigger. A black figure flitted before him.
Reaver.
No. River had killed the Reavers. They had been back on Sihnon. There were none on Serenity.
Mal shook his head defiantly. He looked again. No Reaver in sight.
“PROXIMITY ALERT.”
Cautious, he traversed the catwalk and entered the fore passage. At the far end, the door to the bridge was shut. The door to Jayne’s bunk lay to his right, nearer.
You need to go to Jayne’s bunk and break the machine, River had told him.
But wouldn’t it be better if he went to the bridge first and steered Serenity out of danger?
Ahead, between him and the bridge, a pair of Reavers loomed into view. Mal recoiled instinctively, his hand going to his gun.
The Reavers trod towards him, exuding pure menace.
A noise behind Mal caught his attention.
Two more Reavers were stalking towards him from the catwalk.
There were no Reavers on Serenity.
Mal told himself this, even as he prepared to fight them.
“PROXIMITY ALERT. PROXIMITY ALERT. PROXIMITY ALERT.”
The automated warning resounded through Kaylee’s head. The phrase was exactly the same each time, delivered in a dispassionate monotone. Yet somehow, through sheer repetition, it began to sound frantic.
