CHAPTER 1
Henry Evans didn’t like God. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe, just that he didn’t have much proof that God liked him either. All these years, and the big man upstairs hadn’t done much to make his life better. Despite his imagined mutual disdain, every so often Henry got the distinct feeling he was being watched, and not by the raccoons patrolling the dark back alleys of Patrick, capital city of the planet Valentine.
“You’re late,” he said into the night.
“How do you do that?”
“Do what?” Henry turned to face the direction of the voice just as the familiar figure of Lyle Horne stepped into the dim light of the alley behind Scatter Shot, the once bustling but now derelict tavern where they’d made their hideaway.
“Know exactly when I’m coming.” Lyle was not a tall man, but what he lacked in height he made up for in sheer magnetism. A sly smile twisted his lips and a flicker of gold caught in the hazel of his eyes. “It’s like you’re some kind of oracle.”
“I’m just observant,” Henry said, and uncrossed his arms, the tension in his muscles unspooling at the sight of his partner. Truth was, he’d mistaken some native possum-type creature for Lyle just a few minutes earlier, but he wasn’t about to tell him that. Let him think Henry was impressive once in a while. “So, what kept you?”
“I don’t know if I like the path this narrative’s takin’. You’re late, what kept you… You know I don’t keep a schedule, Hevans.”
“Your relationship with time is rather fluid, yes.”
“All my relationships are.”
“You gonna tell me what you got or keep me guessing?” It’d been a week since their last job and Henry was getting a tad nervous. They didn’t sit and wait, he and Lyle. That wasn’t their way. It was much harder to hit a moving target, and Henry and Lyle hadn’t stopped moving since they’d started up together a few months back. When the next job hadn’t lined up, Henry had thought it might be a welcome break from all the action, but that was six days ago and he wasn’t breathing any easier.
Henry motioned Lyle inside the abandoned tavern. Splintered wood stuck up from the floorboards, and a large ceiling beam had split the counter in two—a safety hazard if Henry had ever seen one. It was better this way, though. No one would come looking for a couple of lowlifes in a dried-up watering hole.
“Got us a job,” Lyle said, his grin as wide as his big-brimmed hat. “Well, got us some loot.”
“And you got us a buyer, I hope?”
“Surely do.” Lyle drew out one of the more stable chairs and plopped down. “A potential buyer, anyway. We just gotta track ’em down.”
“Why do I get the feeling this isn’t so much a job as a hunch?” Henry had picked up most of Lyle’s tells, but it didn’t take much to know when Lyle was hedging. He was always hedging. That was Lyle’s way, and most of the time it worked in Henry’s favor, even if it had taken him by surprise the first few times. Maybe surprise wasn’t strong enough a word for it. It took him by outrage, or by horror, the cavalier way Lyle carved a path through life, leaving bodies in his wake—sometimes enemies, sometimes friends. Henry didn’t plan to be one of them. By now, he knew better than to ask questions. With Lyle, you either followed or you didn’t, and Henry wasn’t about to get left behind.
“Do you trust me?” Lyle asked, throwing Henry a wounded look.
They were the same words he’d asked that first night when they’d met, when Henry had been double-crossed by his own crew, left bruised and bleeding and primed to take the blame for their misdeeds. “Do you trust me?” Lyle had asked without preamble. Henry hadn’t even known Lyle’s name
yet, but he had a kind smile and a gun, and Henry found he needed both desperately, so he’d said yes.
He’d kept on saying yes, and it had kept on working for him, so he rolled his eyes, drew up a chair, and said it again. “Yes, fine, I trust you. Now, what have you got?”
Lyle’s face quieted and he placed a small data card on the table between them. “Took this off a uniform at the Crooked Rose.”
Henry’s stomach dropped. There had been rumblings for months. At first, Henry had thought it was all talk—the Allied planets were so numerous, it seemed impossible that they’d all come together and actually agree on a course of action—but then the soldiers had come, and war was officially in motion. An independent movement had sprung up quickly, and no matter how hard the Alliance tried to eradicate them, they kept popping back up like weeds. Henry didn’t like to think about it if he could help it. War didn’t make work like his any easier, and the longer it went on, the more likely it was to sweep him and Lyle up in its current.
“Alliance? Lyle, what do you think you’re doing, messing with them? I thought we agreed—no war,” Henry said.
“War’s coming for us all, Hevans. I ain’t of a mind to wait around for it to get me.”
“So, you went to an upscale bar and pickpocketed an Alliance soldier?”
“Officer, at least. Might’ve been ranked higher. Wasn’t really paying attention to his medals. I was busy swiping this.” Lyle tapped the data card, a light-gray chip with nothing more than a faded Blue Sun logo on its top side.
“And what if he noticed your hands in his pockets, Lyle?”
“Oh, he noticed.” Lyle’s eyes danced with mirth. “I reckon we got a few hours’ peace before he realizes it’s gone, and by then we’ll be rid of it anyhow. Independents will be pleased as punch to get their hands on this kind of intel.”
“I don’t like this. Not at all.”
“That would have more weight if you liked much of anything.”
That wasn’t really fair, or true. Henry liked things. He liked clean socks and the scent of rosemary. He liked watching the sunrise and the sound of a city asleep. He liked fruit when he could get it, and he liked soup. And loath though he was to admit it, he liked Lyle Horne as well. He wouldn’t say so, of course—the man would be even more insufferable
than he already was if he ever got wind of anything more substantial than a begrudging agreement to a mutually beneficial partnership coming from Henry. And Henry wasn’t all that keen to alert Lyle to any fondness that his partner might find a way to weaponize against him, should their luck turn.
In truth, though Henry’s time working with Lyle Horne had been brief, from the moment Lyle had swooped to Henry’s rescue, they’d been a real team. Life hadn’t been easy since Henry left home—it hadn’t been easy before, either—but these past few months working with Lyle had at least been fun.
“All right, say I’m in. What then?” Henry asked warily.
“What then? We get ourselves a drink to celebrate.”
“To celebrate what?”
“Henry Evans, getting off his high horse.” Lyle punched him playfully on the arm. “That’s the fastest you’ve ever agreed to a job, I think. Bring out the fireworks, folks, we’ve gotta commemorate this.” Lyle gestured around as if to invite a nonexistent crowd in on their private joke.
“Very funny. You buying?”
Lyle chuckled, one hand braced on the table as he tipped his chair to balance on its back legs. The chair, as it turned out, had other plans. The wood splintered under his weight, sending Lyle crashing to the ground.
“Lyle!” Henry reached for him, their hands meeting just before Lyle hit the floor.
Laughter bubbled up from the man on the ground. “You pay,” he said weakly. “This chair ain’t the only one around here who’s broke.”
Before Henry had a chance to argue, there was a sound like a gunshot and the world around him went sideways as Lyle kicked Henry’s feet out from under him and pulled him down.
“What happened to a few hours?”
“Guess my estimations were off,” Lyle whispered. “Run.”
Henry didn’t need telling twice. He scrambled forward on his hands and knees, catching a glint of shiny metal out of the corner of his eye before he dove for one of the broken windows. Splinters of wood and glass scraped his arms, but otherwise he was unscathed when he rolled to a stop outside.
Brushing himself off, Henry ducked behind a trash can in the alley as the sound of gunfire filled the air. “I told you this was a bad idea,” he began, but Lyle wasn’t beside him. Henry
cast about for any flashes of movement, and there, illuminated by a small spotlight sweeping the tavern, was Lyle, darting back toward the table. He was visible for only a moment, as his fingers closed around the data card, before he bolted toward the alley.
“I told you to run!” he yelled, grabbing Henry’s elbow and pulling.
As Henry let the momentum carry him forward, he caught a glimpse of their pursuer. An Alliance officer, it was not. Instead, a steel, angular drone exited the Scatter Shot tavern, a low hum reverberating through the space as it speared a bright pillar of light directly at them.
Henry dipped toward another alley, slinking deep into the shadows. He knew the streets of Patrick about as well as he knew Lyle—which was to say, by instinct alone—so he let himself be guided only by the soft patter of Lyle’s boots on the concrete and the thunder in his veins.
“Lyle,” he whisper-shouted as concrete bled into a dirt path. They were in outer ring of the city now. It was darker here, and the architecture had gone from ramshackle to almost nonexistent. Encampments of unhoused people spread out to the northeast, punctuated by the occasional street lamp. Henry couldn’t hear the drone anymore, so he slowed to a jog. “What was that thing?”
“Some kind of Alliance drone, I guess.” Lyle put his hands on his knees, panting. “Too bad. I was kind of hoping that shuài young officer would come looking for me himself.”
Henry rolled his eyes. “You know we almost died, right?”
“Almost being the operative word.”
Despite himself, Henry smiled. It was a good thing it was dark. He didn’t need Lyle seeing that. “Now, about that buyer of yours—”
Lyle held up a hand.
Henry heard it before he saw it: a motor softer than a cat’s purr. The spotlight came into view, shining down on them both. There was a moment of quiet as Henry stared wide-eyed, stunned into silence by the blinding light, but at the first sound of gunfire, Henry tackled Lyle into a large bush. They rolled out of the spotlight and back into the shadows.
“How in the hell did it follow us?” Lyle asked, his whisper a furnace in Henry’s ear.
They laid still, not daring to move a muscle as the drone proceeded toward them. Moonlight illuminated the stamp on its metal plating—a blue semicircle with letters in English and Chinese above and below. Blue Sun. Henry had his answer.
“I think it’s tracking
the data card.”
“Well, shit.” Lyle tried to push himself up, but his arm buckled. Henry reached out to brace him and something dark and warm trickled down from his compatriot’s bicep between Henry’s fingers.
“You’re bleeding.”
“I’m fine. Just grazed me.”
“Yeah, but you’re bleeding.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Lyle hissed, keeping low to the ground. “We’d best find our buyer, and quick. Then it won’t be our problem anymore.”
“It’s our problem now,” Henry said, but he needn’t have bothered. Lyle was already gone into the night, and the drone wasn’t far behind.
They ran until Henry’s breath was as ragged as the slums they passed through. After several minutes, they finally shook the city. Here, at the edge of town, where Patrick nestled up against a steep drop-off, light pollution made way for dust and sky. They could see the stars, now—a wide sea of them, hosts to worlds unknown. Henry had left his own home planet behind, a thing he had never thought he’d do. Maybe someday Valentine would just be another place he’d lived once upon a time.
“It’s no use,” Henry panted. “They’ll keep on following no matter what.”
“That just means we’ve got something valuable.” Lyle held up the data card, a glint of mischief in his eyes.
Henry just stared at the chaotic churn in Lyle’s gaze, the endless depths of the unknown, not unlike the stars above. He’d seen that expression before. Nothing good ever came after. There was danger in a look like that. But there was promise, too. It would be easy to follow Lyle anywhere he went. It would probably get them both killed.
Henry deliberated for a split second, then he grabbed the data card and bolted.
“Hún dàn!” Lyle called after him. “You owe me fifty percent!”
Henry didn’t need to be a genius to know fifty percent of zero was better than dead. With all the strength he had left, he hurtled toward the cliff’s edge, weaving back and forth as he went. The whirring of the drone and the pounding of Lyle’s footsteps followed in his wake.
“Hevans, you son of a bitch, slow down!”
Henry did as he was told, not because Lyle asked but because the lip of the canyon was coming up mighty fast. He skidded to a halt in the loose dry dirt, kicking up a cloud of dust, and
held the data card high in the air.
“Track this!” he shouted, then threw the card as far as he could into the abyss below.
Almost as if the world had slowed down around him, Henry watched the data card sail into the air, flying end over end, and the drone dive after it. The card could have meant a lot of money. It could have changed the tides of war. It could have been a whole lot of nothing. Now it was just a story of one wild night he’d had on Valentine.
“Zāo gāo!” Lyle shouted, hands outstretched.
The card was too far away. There was barely a sliver of a chance he’d catch it.
Lyle jumped anyway.
His shoulder bumped Henry’s, and time—and gravity—caught up with them both. Henry’s balance slipped, his foot catching on a protruding rock, and he went down. The ground caught him, once on his knee, then on his hip. Pain rocketed through his left side as he felt more than heard something snap. He rolled until he was flat on his back, staring up at the sky. His vision blurred, tears pricking his eyes.
“Hevans?” came the gruff voice of Lyle, muffled as though from far away. “Hevans, a little help?”
Henry twisted toward the sound and dragged himself on his hands back toward the edge.
There, hanging by his fingertips, was a red-faced Lyle.
Relief unspooled from Henry’s shoulders, and he scrambled forward. “Take my hand.”
Lyle shook his head. “Can’t,” he said.
“What do you mean, can’t?” But his question was answered with a mere glance. Blood dripped down Lyle’s other arm as it hung limp at his side, fingers closed in a fist. “Wasn’t just a graze, was it?”
Lyle grimaced. “It was a good arm, too.”
“And it will be again.” Henry’s knowledge of medicine wasn’t precise, but he knew if he could just reach Lyle, he should be all right. “Just… stay there. I’ll try to get closer.”
Henry pushed himself forward, leaning out over the edge with his right foot hooked around a large rock. From there, he could just brush Lyle’s knuckles with his fingertips.
“You’re gonna have to grab me,” he said, straining. “On three?”
Lyle bit down on his lip, eyes narrowed in pain, but he nodded.
“One… two… three!"
With a heave, Lyle pushed off the cliffside, and his hand grasped Henry’s.
“There we are.” Henry gripped Lyle’s hand as hard as he could. “I won’t let go,” he said. It was more a promise to himself than to Lyle. “Now, slow and steady, all right?” He tried to pull Lyle up, but his strength wasn’t with him. Between the pain in his leg and the awkward angle, he couldn’t get the leverage he needed. “We’ll just have to keep trying. Maybe if we—”
“Hevans,” Lyle cut in, catching Henry’s gaze with his. There was a focus there that went beyond pain, beyond desperation. “I need you to listen.”
“What is it?” Henry asked.
A low whir of a motor answered.
The drone was back.
Henry’s gaze darted around, searching for the data card. Maybe he hadn’t thrown it as far as he’d thought. Then his eyes fell on Lyle’s closed fist, and his heart sank.
“You stupid man,” he murmured, words lost on the wind.
“Do you trust me?” Lyle asked.
His reply came like a Pavlovian response, even though it couldn’t have been less true. “Yes.”
It was the last thing Henry Evans ever said to Lyle Horne.
The drone didn’t fire a single shot before Lyle’s hand slipped from Henry’s. One moment he was there, hanging on to the cliff through sheer force of will. Then he wasn’t.
Henry lay there at the edge of the cliff for a long time, staring at the place where Lyle had been. He watched the dust clear. He watched the drone fly away, down into the canyon. He watched the first pink and yellow rays peek over the horizon as White Sun rose in the sky.
Henry retreated from the light as it illuminated the cliff’s edge, and he looked up at the sky. In the months, the years, the decades that followed, he would think about this moment and wonder. Was his grip not strong enough? Or was it his faith? Maybe it was neither. Maybe it was all chance, or maybe it was God’s plan.
He’d left his home, he’d lost his way, and Lyle… was gone. Henry Evans was utterly alone in the ’verse. And still, somehow, he felt watched.
And so, for the first time in his life, Henry Evans got to his knees and prayed.
CHAPTER 2
I’m gonna need you to tell me what I’m lookin’ at, little Kaylee,” Captain Malcolm Reynolds said as he eyed the obstruction in the cargo bay—a row of shipping containers, a few chairs from the dining area, and the Mule, all lined up to form a ramshackle blockade.
“That’d be a flock of geese, Cap’n.” Kaylee pulled at a loose thread on the waist of her jumpsuit, unraveling the petals of a blue embroidered flower she wore. “Nine of ’em, to be precise about it.”
“Isn’t that nice? One for each of us.” Hoban Washburne, Serenity’s pilot, said as he descended the last few rungs of the ladder with a hop and flashed Mal a winning smile. “I’ll take the one with the spot on its nose. Maybe grow back my mustache so we match. What about you, Jayne?”
“I ain’t goin’ nowhere near them birds.” Jayne Cobb, their hired-muscle-slash-public-relations-officer wasn’t difficult to spot, hiding inexpertly behind the weight rack in the corner of the bay. “I don’t do geese, Mal.”
Mal shook his head to clear it. He’d stumbled across plenty of niú fèn on his boat over the years—literally, in the case of their job transporting cattle for Sir Warwick Harrow—but a flock of pearl-white geese sure was a surprise. They toddled back and forth across the cargo bay, long curly feathers swaying.
“I’m less concerned about the what than the why,” Mal said, taking a tentative step toward the birds. One of them let out an almighty honk and Mal raised his hands instinctively. The blockade his crew had built suddenly seemed a lot more necessary than it had before.
“Arvin dropped them off ’bout an hour ago.” Kaylee said, a quaver in her voice. “Thought you had an understanding.”
“I ain’t in the business of takin’ on new jobs ’fore I get paid for the last one.” Mal turned toward the cargo-bay door and the dusty open planes of Brome, where Arvin Helios’s Knorr-class cargo freighter was stationed in the distance. ...
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