Truthsome, Part II: Blood

Part I: Shadows (follow link)

The sheriff stood still, a peculiar look on his face, as the Alliance lieutenant strode up to his side. Mal couldn't quite get a fix on how surprised--or not--the sheriff was at the Fed's presence. Two brawny purple clad drones replaced the local fellows who'd been flanking Mal. They seemed annoyed by the intrusion, muttering among themselves as they lowered their weapons and backed away. Seizing hold of Mal's arms, those fine Alliance lads roughly twisted them behind his back. Mal winced as the hwoon dahn Fed tightened the cuffs down on his wrists a notch further than necessary.

Shifting his attention to the officer, Mal didn't bother to hide his contempt as he glared at him. The feeling was clearly mutual as the Fed stepped forward to stand face to face with Mal. The officer looked him up and down, taking in the red shirt, tan trousers with the stripe down the side, and the brown coat. Mal knew exactly what the Fed was seeing as he looked at him; it was an Independent’s uniform, unabashed and unrepentant, lacking only the insignia. And Mal saw a Fed lieutenant of an age to have been one of the terrified young pups being slaughtered by the thousands in the war. This one survived the fighting but not the military order that wouldn’t let him rise through the ranks with no war to kill off the higher-ups. Now he was stuck on a backwater moon snaring low level smugglers. That was a recipe for a bitter and dangerous foe. When the Fed's eyes came back up to meet Mal's, they held an unblinking stare for a long moment. Without words, a perfect understanding passed between the two men--pure, undiluted hatred.

"Tah ma de Independent," the lieutenant growled, pulling back his fist. Mal saw the blow coming and tried to go with it but the guards held him solidly until the punch landed, then let him go. Mal crashed to the floor, unable to catch himself with his hands cuffed behind his back. Their timing was perfect, he thought bitterly, wondering how many other prisoners they'd practiced the move on.

The guards hauled him back to his feet. Mal flexed his jaw, feeling a hot trickle of blood run down his chin. Glancing at the sheriff, Mal read unmistakable anger in the man's eyes.

"This man is in my custody, lieutenant," the sheriff said, not managing to keep the polite deference in his voice that the mighty Alliance demanded of its peons. "We're charging him with a local crime--avoiding tariff--there's nothing here for the Alliance to be involved in."

Avoiding tariff? That was a nothing crime, Mal thought, looking sharply at the sheriff, really nothing more than an excuse for the local law to fine smugglers without actually putting them out of business. They usually didn't even confiscate the goods, or the payment, just charged a hefty fine and sent everyone on their way. Mal's felt a vague twitch of optimism--the goods weren't Alliance property. Kaylee had examined each piece and found no markings. Be hard to even prove they were stolen at all.

The Alliance lieutenant ignored the sheriff, gesturing one of his subordinates to the case of smuggled goods. The Fed knelt and undid the latches, opening the lid. Inside, nestled in foam packing, were a series of circuit boards of various configurations. He pulled one out, tilting it toward the light. Pulling out a small tool, he pried up one of the components, turned it over and scraped some paint off of it. Holding it out, he showed it to the lieutenant. Mal tried to lean forward to see but was jerked back by the guards.

Taking the component, the Fed showed it to the sheriff, scraping off a bit more paint with his fingernail to reveal a marking underneath. "Blue Sun logo imprinted," he said coldly. "They contract with the government and therefore fall under Alliance jurisdiction." Mal's heart sank. The Fed faced him again, continuing, "You're bound by law on charges of theft, smuggling, resisting arrest..."

"Resisting arrest?! My gorram hands were already up when you got here." The hulking purple-belly who had a hold of Mal's left arm jerked the chain of the cuffs down hard, digging the steel painfully into his wrists. "Ow."

"...assaulting an officer..." Mal opened his mouth to object again, then thought better of it.. "...and no doubt other charges to follow." The Fed turned to the sheriff. "We'll be holding him in your jail until he can be transferred to an Alliance facility."

Uncomfortable recollections of other Alliance facilities came unbidden to mind. This was just not turning out to be a good day, Mal thought darkly as the guards dragged him away.

***

Zoe had been on the verge of bursting in shooting in a damn heroic rescue when Mal clearly told her not to via the earwig transmitter. Instead she maneuvered across the rooftop of a neighboring building until she could get a view in a high window in the side of the warehouse. Flat on her belly on the roof, she peered down the sites on her rifle, evaluating her options. She had a clean shot on the sheriff, and probably could have taken out the other two on either side of Mal, but his message suggested there were more guns covering him that she couldn't see. He was right, anyhow. Better to lose the cargo and the payment than to shoot up a bunch of citizens in an otherwise friendly town. That was a rep they didn't want to get. Unless Mal could talk his way out of it--a vanishingly low probability of that--a jail break it would be.

Lowering her rifle, Zoe watched until a sound straight out of her nightmares grabbed her attention. Something about the way Alliance soldiers slung their gear made a signature noise that damn near froze the blood in her veins. Her eyes narrowed as she peered into the dark at the Feds pouring into the warehouse from both sides Mal's message came to her ear clearly, as did the twinge of fear in his voice. Few things truly scared the captain, but two, she knew well, certainly did. One fear was of being trapped in Alliance custody. The other was of losing the ship.

Quiet as a shadow, Zoe slipped back into the night, easing her way unseen out of the town. She hit the trail into the woods at a run, digging in her pocket for her comm.

"Wash!" she called into it. "Wash, can you hear me?"

"Yeah, hon....." came the reply. Zoe cut him off before he could say more.

"Fire up the ship. We're running." She tried to speed her pace through the pitch black woods. Raising the comm again, Zoe added, "And burn out the captain's transmitter. Fry it."

Wash didn't acknowledge verbally, just with a quick double click of the mic told her he'd heard and was complying. She could hear Serenity's engines starting to whine ahead of her. In her mind's eye she could see her husband throwing switches and calling Kaylee and the others to ready an emergency liftoff. When her mental image of his movements reached the point where he could spare a second his voice crackled out of the speaker. "Got it," he said sharply. "Set to lift."

Jayne stood with full arsenal at the ready as Zoe hit the ramp on a dead run. Slapping the airlock controls on her way by, Zoe yelled into her comm, "Wash. Go."

"Where's Mal?" Jayne called as Zoe ran past. Shepherd Book followed her with a questioning expression.

"Feds got him," she snapped as she took the stairs to the bridge three at a time.

Serenity was off the ground and blasting toward space by the time Zoe reached the bridge.

Wash spared a glance over his shoulder. "What's going on?"

She punched at the controls on the co-pilot's side of the cockpit, trying to call up sensor displays. Book gently nudged her aside, working the controls with practiced ease. Seeing he knew her intent, Zoe straightened, throwing a worried look at her husband.

"It was an Alliance ambush. The Feds have the captain."

Jayne cussed quietly, but with vivid imagery, behind her. Book threw Zoe a solemn glance, then continued working the displays.

"Wash. Have there been any ships? Or transmissions you intercepted?" Zoe asked.

"No, not a thing. I was monitoring all bands, which wasn't hard. Not the most high tech world down there, not much traffic on any band," Wash said. "And I'm still not picking up any ship anywhere near abouts, grounded or flying."

Fingering her holstered gun, Zoe stared out the bridge windows as Serenity broke atmo, working the problem. "So they were a detached squad with comm silence. Maybe--probably--a general trap to catch any smugglers who happen by. But just maybe one aimed at us."

"You're thinking about our fugies, ain’t ya?" Jayne growled.

Zoe nodded. "Either way, the captain's in a bad spot. They got him dead to rights on smuggling. And once they ident him, they can add all the charges in the 'verse they want, once they backtrack our trail and start adding things up."

"I'd assume Mal had a fake ident with him, didn't he?" Simon's voice came from behind her. Zoe turned. The doctor and Kaylee stood in the doorway with River behind them. The girl looked distraught but quiet.

"Wouldn't hold up," Zoe said. "Not with the Feds. Alliance can I.D. Mal--or me--six ways from Sunday once they connect to the central databases."

"They haven't."

"Huh?" Zoe turned toward Book. He straightened up.

"They haven't. Communication blackout must be part of the trap, and they haven't sent anything yet. No ship down there, so they have to call in a cruiser or transport. They haven't. Not yet at least. And if we move fast enough, they may not be able to."

Zoe looked him straight in the eye. "Talk to me preacher. What can you do?"

Without his moving a muscle, Zoe watched the shepherd step into a commanding pose. Who the hell was this man, she wondered, not for the first time, and thank the heavens he was on their side.

"Wash, Kaylee... am I right that a Firefly can generate an ionizing effect if we burn just right in the upper atmosphere?"

They both stared at him. Zoe could see their mental gears turning. Wash's lips moved in silent calculation. He looked sharply at Kaylee. The gears clicked.

"I'm on it," Kaylee called as she ran back toward the engine room.

Rapidly throwing switches, Wash changed Serenity’s course, aiming them back toward the planet.

“What are you figuring, Shepherd?” Zoe asked.

“We ionize the upper atmosphere over the area of the town. It’s like an aurora--virtually indistinguishable from the real thing. Disrupts communications. Should block the Fed’s signal to their ship.”

“How long that buy us?”

Book shook his head. “Hours. Maybe a day. The effect fades over time.”

“Enough time to get the captain out, maybe.” Zoe sighed heavily. None of the options were good. “I hate like hell the idea of getting into a fire fight with a squad of Alliance troops.”

Surprise registered on Book’s face. “You’ve fought them before.”

Zoe gave a small, frustrated laugh. “That was war, Preacher. It’s over and they got the upper hand. The way upper hand. We spill their blood now and we put the lives of everyone on this boat in perpetual peril. They’ll chase us from here to Hades. And if we fail the rescue, instead of locking Mal up for the next twenty years they’ll just hang him.”

Book frowned and looked away. “I suspect he’d prefer that,” he said, low.

Glumly, Zoe nodded. “I don’t aim for either one to happen. Just gotta work the problem. Find a way around it.”

Serenity skimmed the atmosphere, her tail lit with gold. Behind her, a ghostly spectrum danced over the planet.

Smugly pleased, Wash spun his seat to face Zoe and Book. “Made ourselves an aurora. Must be a pretty sight from the ground.”

Zoe swallowed. “Well, let’s take a look, then. Put us down a safe distance out from that town and let’s do some recon.”

***

The jail was border world standard issue. The sheriff had a desk in a small, cluttered office facing a large barred cell, probably usually used as the drunk tank. Mal thought he caught a glimpse of Jacobs, looking substantially the worse for wear, in one of the smaller cells off down the short corridor, but one of the soldiers shut the door to the corridor, cutting off his view.

Being rougher than necessary, the guards jerked Mal to a halt before the sheriff’s desk. Seating himself behind his desk, the sheriff aimlessly shuffled papers, looking gloomy while the Fed’s searched Mal.

The pat-down cost him his gunbelt, a knife, and the earwig transmitter. They latched onto that with keen interest, immediately trying to trace its signal. Mal didn’t worry. He had felt the pop as the circuits were fused--it wouldn’t lead the Feds back to Serenity. The handheld scanner the soldier ran over him cost Mal everything else, including some of his more esoteric accessories--the kind that opened locks and overrode electronics. The Feds managed to strip him bare without removing a stitch of his clothing or the cuffs still biting into his wrists.

As the lieutenant’s aid approached Mal, two of the guards seized him tightly. It wasn’t needful. Mal knew good and well there was no way to resist what was coming next. He didn’t even blink as the retinal scanner flashed in his eye, nor flinch as a blood sample for DNA identification was taken from his arm.

“Run those right away,” the lieutenant ordered. He glanced at Mal coldly. “We’ll soon know who and what you are.”

“I’m nobody, lieutenant. Just a businessman a tad unclear on the local tariff laws. Glad to pay my fine to the sheriff here and be on my way.”

The lieutenant laughed shortly; gestured to his men. “Lock him up. And post a double guard.”

As they hustled Mal into the cell, he braced his feet and held back. “You gonna take the cuffs off?” he asked the lieutenant.

The guards hesitated until their commander gestured them forward. Stirring from his papers, the sheriff stood. Again, Mal saw poorly concealed anger on his face.

“Wait,” the sheriff said, approaching. He took hold of Mal’s arm and held out his hand to the guard for the key to the cuffs. “This is still my jail and my jurisdiction.”

“Fine,” the lieutenant snapped. “But if he escapes you’ll be taking his place.”

The sheriff said nothing, but unlocked the cuffs, gave Mal a shove into the cell and locked the door. Mal perused the cell. Primitive iron bars and an ancient electronic lock on the door. Still, escape seemed unlikely, what with the two guards posted on opposite sides of the jail, looking very much like they just wished he’d tried something so they could shoot him.

Letting out a long, sighing breath, Mal sat down on the wooden bench and leaned back. Not a good day. He rubbed his sore wrists, then wiped at the blood on his chin with his shirt sleeve. Not the worst day he’d ever known, but definitely not the best.

***

“We have to get the captain before he’s transferred to an Alliance ship. They get him on one of their transports or cruisers and we won’t get him back,” Zoe explained to the crew gathered in the dining room. “We have to go in and get him out now. But first we need to know the situation we’re facing.

“So we need someone to go in for recon who won’t ident easy, or trip all sorts of alarms, and give them a clear connection to Serenity and the captain if the Feds manage to grab ‘em and do a retinal scan. An innocent, low profile. That, of course, leaves out River and Simon. And me. Wash…”

“Pilot’s license. Lots of I. D.”

“…Jayne?”

“Yeah, cuz I don’t have any kinda record with the law.”

Zoe shook her head. “Inara?”

“The word “registered” is part of my job title.”

Zoe turned toward the Shepherd who merely gave a slight shake of his head. Right. His ident might do all sorts of interesting things for them in the right circumstances, but a low profile, pretty much not.

“And that leaves…”

Kaylee’s eyes went wide. “But, but,” she stuttered. “I can’t do recon. I’m not a soldier or anything. I’m not nobody.”

Gently, Zoe knelt before her, taking hold of Kaylee’s hands. “That’s just the point, dear. You’ve got the cleanest background of anyone here. Prairie girl from a world without much Alliance presence. And, well, I really think you can charm your way into some fine info from that sheriff. You got a knack for sweetness.”

“I gotta talk to the sheriff too? Not just look around and count heads?”

Zoe nodded. “More than that. I need you to get the sheriff to come out and talk to me. Alone. And not in a mood to be trying to arrest me. Think you can do that?”

Kaylee whimpered. “No.”

*** “His ship’s gone. We found where it was down.”

“Where’s your ship? Where’s it gone?” the lieutenant snapped at Mal.

Smiling blandly, Mal said, “What ship? I walked here.” He was starting to enjoy the lieutenant’s annoyance. First it had been the fried earwig transmitter, with the burned out circuits still freshly hot (“That old thing, hasn’t worked in years. Forgot I had it on me.”). Then they’d been frustrated to the point of screaming at each other over the comm interference that wouldn’t let them call their ship or connect to the Cortex. Now, Mal didn’t know for sure that was an act of Serenity, or an act of God, but it pleased him either way.

“Gorramit! What is going on here?” the lieutenant shouted at his aid as the flustered man again protested that he couldn’t get any signals in or out. The lieutenant stormed out followed by his entourage. Only the two Fed guards, the sheriff, and Mal remained. Mal was certain he saw the sheriff’s lips twitch in a smile behind his newspaper.

Mal stood, needing to pace, and test the limits of the cell, but not willing to show even that small level of unease in the Fed’s presence.

“Don’t touch the lock,” the sheriff called, not looking up from his paper. “The charge is enough to knock you out.”

Mal pulled his hand back, the hair on the back still standing up, tingling. “Yeah, I can feel it from here.” He moved away from the door and leaned against the bars, studying the sheriff and his office. “Must get the drunks real quieted down when they hit that,” he said conversationally, hoping to engage the sheriff. He desperately needed an ally and the sheriff was the only candidate available. Mal was, however, keenly aware of the two guards. They were doing tedium-of-guard-duty blank stares, but still would be listening. He couldn’t say anything too overt.

“That Alliance lieutenant’s starting to get a mite frustrated, it seems,” Mal continued, keeping his tone mild. “Be my guess, he’s gonna want to start interrogating me pretty soon, and not much minding with niceties like questions and answers.” The sheriff looked at Mal, puzzled at the direction this was going. Mal held his eye. “I’ve been interrogated by pissed off Feds before. Didn’t much care for it.” He let that thought hang, letting the sheriff fill in the blanks as to what he meant.

Mal shifted his attention to the back corner of the office, behind the dusty Alliance flag, a corner of another banner showed. Mal recognized it. “Yeah, it was a few years back” Mal said, pointedly eyeing the banner, “Shortly after Hera.”

That got a reaction. The sheriff put the newspaper down on the desk and sat up. He seemed on the verge of saying something, then his eyes flicked significantly toward the two guards. He stayed silent, but Mal saw him swallow hard.

Mal again rubbed the red marks the too-tight cuffs had left and had just decided what he’d say next when the door to the office opened and a truly frightening sight distracted him.

Kaylee appeared as she had when Mal first met her, save that her dress was on and all the way zipped up. He clenched the bars, wanting to tell her to run, but forced himself to relax and give her no particular notice. In an instant, he knew Zoe’s intent in sending Kaylee in, but he still didn’t like the idea of the girl coming into this kind of peril on his account. The notion of her being manhandled by some hwoon dahn Feds stuck in his craw.

Smiling sweetly, Kaylee didn’t even give Mal a glance as she bounced up to the sheriff. Leaning over the sheriff’s desk, she exuded just the right combination of innocence and sexuality.

“Howdy, sheriff. I do hope you remember me. Me and my ma live out on the outskirts. We’re having some powerful odd problems with our baby geese and I was hoping you could come with me and take a look,” Kaylee said. Mal thought she hit the ‘come with me’ a touch too hard, but it wasn’t a bad delivery.

“Problems with baby geese?” The sheriff was plainly puzzled, and just as plainly didn’t know Kaylee. In a town this size, the sheriff probably knew everyone by sight.

“Yeah, sheriff,” Kaylee said. “Someone’s… uh, juggling them.”

That couldn’t have been more lame, Mal thought. Then Kaylee glanced at him, and back to the sheriff. The sheriff caught the quick move and stared at Mal with narrowed, appraising eyes. Mal returned the look steadily, willing the sheriff to understand.

“Well, now, miss,” he said slowly, still looking at Mal, “that is powerful odd. Can’t let that sort of thing be going on in my town.” He turned, smiling at Kaylee, and held out his arm for her to take.

Kaylee, bless her heart, didn’t even seem to see Mal on her way out. Good girl, he thought. Maybe, just maybe, they could get out of this without the shedding of blood.

Part III: Confessions (follow link)