Steven Brust - My Own Kind of Freedom

“Wash, how’s the shuttle?”

“It’s going to be fun getting it turned around in here, but everything works.”

“You can fly us out?”

“Yes.”

“With six of us aboard?”

She heard the hesitation, then, “I don’t—”

“Five,” said the fed. “Take the prisoner. I’m staying here. I’ll come to collect him later.”

“You know they’ll kill you,” he heard the Captain saying.

“Oddly enough, they won’t. But I’d hurry if I were you. There are two Special Deputies on the way, and you’d much rather face down Sakarya’s security force than these two. Trust me on that.”

“All of you, move,” said the Captain. “Buttoned up and flying in thirty seconds.”

She took a position next to Bursa, grabbed his arm, jabbed her sawed-off into his back, and guided him toward the shuttle. He seemed reluctant to move. She dropped the barrel of the weapon, prodded him again, and said, “Colonel, if you even hesitate,” she said, “I’ll blow your balls off and we’ll drag you in. And you can’t know how much I want to blow your balls off.”

They moved toward the shuttle.

Rearguard again.

As he backed toward the shuttle, keeping his eye on the door, he saw the fed leaving, and felt a sudden temptation to put a round into him, just because he could. Then the fed was coming back through the door, faster then he’d left. After about five steps he stopped, turned, fired twice, then backed up and off to the side.

Crap.

Jayne moved forward and dropped to his belly, holding the Marauder with both hands.

“Jayne!” called Mal. “What are you doing?”

Now there was a good question. He’d just been thinking about plugging the gorram fed, just for fun, and now he was—

A whole bushelfull of them came through the door, several of them getting in each other’s way, a couple of them tripping. Not the best trained troops I’ve ever seen, he thought. Meanwhile, the little counter in the back of his head recorded that after firing six times, he had fourteen rounds left in the magazine. The captain was firing from behind him, and the agent from off to his right somewhere, though he wasn’t consciously aware of how he knew. Another voice joined the chorus; it had to be Zoë. He hoped that ruttin’ bastard in the shuttle was well secured, but it wasn’t his job to worry about that. He also made a mental note: I should really suggest to the Captain that we pick up some grenades.

He fired six more times, very fast, then the doorway was clear. Were they hanging back, waiting, or had they run? Only one way to find out. He stood up, then discovered he was on his stomach again.

What the—?

He tried to stand again, and failed.

Then hands grabbed him by the arms; Mal’s and Zoë’s, and dragged him toward the shuttle. The fed was looking at him, holding a smoking pistol, and then he was inside, and was being strapped into a chair.

“You can really get us out of here?” said Mal, which seemed very odd, because Jayne had never claimed to be a pilot, and he wasn’t even in the pilot’s chair.

“Watch me,” said Wash. “How is Jayne?”

“One in the shoulder that went straight down, one in the left calf. I’m not sure how bad. Zoë took a scratch in the hand. That’s all. Now get us out of here.”

“I’m on it.”

There was a shiver as the shuttle started up.

How is Jayne? One in the shoulder? Hey, that’s my name. Was there another Jayne he didn’t know about? Be damned funny if one of those bastards he’d shot had the same name as him.

The shuttle rose about a foot off the floor and did a neat one hundred eighty degree turn in place. Jayne wanted to ask Wash not to do that, because the motion made him queasy; but it seemed like a lot of effort to talk.

Wash guided the shuttle neatly through the hole it had made coming in with a force that pushed Jayne into his chair. As the ship slowed for a turn, he felt himself moving forward. He reached out to hold the seat in front of him. For just a second, he felt a horrible pain in his back, then he didn’t.

The Captain said, “Wash, what just happened?”

He turned his head just enough for them to hear him over the whine of the engine and the whir of the wings deploying. “I don’t know, exactly, except that I plugged a thing into a thing and pushed a button.”

“You made an arrangement with the fed.”

“Yeah, Mal. An arrangement to get us out of that place alive. It worked, too. Sorry if it hurt your feelings.”

“You knew what was going to happen.”

Wash made a minor course adjustment and gained a lot of altitude. “Can’t say as I did, actually. But I had a pretty good idea that if you went in and killed that guy, all sorts of things were going to happen, including the bunch of us probably getting shot.”

“How? How did that—?”

“Mal, the fed was not going to let you shoot his prisoner.”

“Your wife was going to shoot the fed if he’d tried.”

“Yeah, Mal. And I wasn’t really happy with that idea. And you weren’t either.”

“So you took it on yourself—”

“Yes, I did.”

“Who else?”

“No one else.”

“The fed has to have been part of it.”

“Well, yeah, the fed. Mal, if you’re going to shoot me for it, would you please wait until I’m done flying this thing?”

Zoë felt the Captain’s eyes on her from the seat to her right, but she kept her own eyes staring straight ahead. “Zoë,” he said. “I need to know where you stand. I can’t have—”

“Sir.”

A pause. “Yes?”

“I wasn’t part of it. And I wouldn’t have gone for it. But while you’re thinking this over, there’s one thing for you to consider.”

“And that is?”

“They’re right.”

“They’re right to just decide—”

“That every once in a while you have to be saved from yourself? Yes, sir.”

“And those Special Deputies he was talking about? Are they going to just fly away? You know they’re after the doctor and his sister, and you know they won’t stop until they find her.”

“Yeah,” said Wash as he leveled out the shuttle. “Well, I guess I should explain that part of it.”

“I guess you should,” said the Captain.

Zoë closed her eyes for a moment. It was starting to look like there was a horrid, ugly choice she wasn’t going to have to make. This time.

Wash’s voice came over the comm. “Kaylee, you there?”

“I’m here, Wash. How… how are you?”

“Mal is looking for someone to kill, and Jayne took a bad one, but everything is fine other than that. Have the doctor standing by. We’re coming in. Locking in three… two… one…locked.”

She wanted to know if the Captain knew about her involvement, but she couldn’t think of any way to ask the question. She thought about getting up and going to meet them as they left the shuttle; she thought about going back to the engine room and waiting there. In the end, she just notified Simon that he had a patient, then sat in Wash’s chair and waited.

The security forces had vanished, no doubt down the stairs. He felt rather like patting himself on the back; four of them had held off more than thirty, and even made them run. But in all conscience he couldn’t, because he knew they had the superior position, and he knew just who joined those security forces and what sort of training they had never received, and because now he had to deal with Miss Wuhan.

Miss Wuhan was staring at him. “You!” she finally managed. “He trusted you, and you betrayed—”