“I don’t doubt you would.” He looked down at the folder, which he was still holding. His fingers had dug into the card cover hard enough to make dents. “And I might let you and all. I require a level of deniability here. If I go in to get Elmira myself, or even using any of my known associates, people are going to draw the conclusion that I’ve been reactivated by the Alliance.”
“And that might compromise the sweet little protection racket you’ve got going here.”
Wong blinked. “How did you—? Never mind. I guess people will tell a Shepherd anything and everything, feeling confident it’ll go no further. Much like I’ve been doing.”
“It’s a gift,” Book said, “and sometimes something of a curse. Besides, I only need to look around me at this extravagant lifestyle of yours to know you’re doing far better for yourself than an ex-military officer has any right to. You must be working some sort of angle, and protection seems as likely an explanation as any.” Again, he had the waitress Saskia to thank for this apparent deduction, and again, he wasn’t going to credit her in Wong’s presence.
“So, if I give you Elmira’s whereabouts, you guarantee that you could rescue her?”
“I can be very resourceful, and I have some no less resourceful friends who, given the right motivation, will back me up. We’ll get her.” Book knew that Wong could probably steer him direct to Hunter Covington, cutting Elmira out of the equation. But Elmira seemed to know as much about Mal’s situation as Covington did, and it was information Covington was unlikely to supply willingly, whereas she might be a different story. And then there was the secondary consideration — the woman was clearly in serious jeopardy, assuming she wasn’t already dead. If the crew could pull her fat out of the fire as part of the process of doing the same for Mal, so much the better.
For a long time Wong said nothing, deep in thought.
“I wouldn’t do this for just anyone,” he said, and turned and went over to a framed oil painting, a genuine Earth-That-Was artifact that must have set him back a small fortune. The picture was on a hinge, and he swung it out to reveal a wall safe beneath. A quick but thorough biometric scan — fingerprints, retinas, breath, voice recognition — unlocked the safe. The door eased smoothly outward and Wong rummaged inside for a few moments, producing a handheld unit equipped with a tiny screen and a digital readout.
“Well, here goes,” he said, and pressed a button on the unit.
The screen lit up. A map of the ’verse and its plethora of suns, moons and planets appeared, all these elements linked by lines representing channels of communication, like a complex web. Bit by bit the image zeroed in on a single quadrant, a single solar system, a single planet, a single zone of that planet, a single subdivision within that zone, narrowing down the search for the tracking implant. As soon as it made contact, it gave a ping. The tracking implant responded to its prompting, offering as accurate a set of global positioning coordinates as it could manage.
“She’s alive,” he said. “That’s something. And even better, she’s still planetside.”
“Where?”
“Not far. Looks like some kind of spread out in the boondocks, couple dozen miles from town. Covington has a place out yonder, kind of a country retreat. Pretty sure it’s that.”
He passed the tracker device to Book.
“This is a marker of my implicit faith in you, Derrial,” Wong said. “I pray it’s merited.”
“Faith,” Shepherd Book replied, “is sometimes all we have and all we need.”
19
As Simon was making another pot of tea — purely for something to occupy his mind — Zoë appeared in the corridor from the direction of the flight deck. He had seen her looking happier and knew she was not the bearer of glad tidings.
“Alliance is tracking us,” she informed him. “Wash just confirmed it. They’re coming out of deep space and their course is straight for us. We’re hanging a U-turn and looking for a rock to hide behind, but there aren’t any big enough in these parts.”
“Back towards Persephone?” Simon’s stomach clenched. “But they’re looking for us there.”
Zoë smiled grimly. “Simon, they’re looking for you everywhere,” she said.
She could have thrown him out the airlock in a spacesuit and he might have been only slightly more afraid. Dread rendered him speechless. He was paralyzed, rooted to the spot.
River will know, he thought. Get to River.
His heart was pounding so hard he was afraid it would bruise his ribcage. He tried to swallow, to respond. Zoë narrowed her eyes at him.
“Simon,” she said, “you’re having an anxiety attack. Take a breath.”
He finally managed to give his head a little shake. He made a rough cracking sound as he tried to clear his throat.
“Breathe,” she said. “They haven’t come for us yet. We have time to make you safe. But you have to snap out of it.”
You can’t make us safe. Don’t lie, Simon thought. But the crew of Serenity had taken him and River in, had protected them before. On their own, they would have already been caught.
He finally took a deep breath. Zoë nodded approvingly and took his arm.
“You all right now?”
“It depends on your definition of ‘all right,’” he said.
“Well, you’re talking, so that’s a start. Go find River.”
“Has Shepherd Book checked in about the captain?” he asked.
“Haven’t heard a word.” Zoë’s words were clipped, the way she sounded when she was very angry or tense. She tapped the bulkhead and said, “Stay on alert. We may need to get creative.”
“I have no idea what that means,” he said.
“Keep track of your sister.”
He went to River’s bunk, but she wasn’t there, and a paroxysm of fear shot through him. He was hurrying back along the corridor when he ran into Kaylee and Zoë coming the other way. Kaylee’s face was pale and her expression grim.
“It’s no good,” Zoë said. “They’ve caught up and they’re demanding to come aboard. Wash estimates they’ll make contact in about fifteen minutes.” She looked hard at Simon. “We need to get you and River off the ship.”
Creatively, he thought, and he guessed what she was driving at. “Right, like before,” he said, as a wave of queasiness rolled over him at the mere thought. “Going outside and attaching to the hull.”
“Can’t,” Zoë said. “We had the hull degaussed at the docks.”
“Zāo gāo, that’s right.” Kaylee turned to Simon. “See, that means we neutralized the ship’s magnetic field. We have to do that now and then to clean Serenity up. Like when ships sailed on the ancient sea and they scraped off all the barnacles.”
“So?” Simon didn’t follow.
“So there won’t be any way for you to cling to the hull,” Kaylee explained. “The magnets on your suit’s boots and gloves will be useless.”
“Well, you can tether us, or glue us, or we can just hang on,” he said. He was new to spaceflight, so he knew his suggestions might be off base, but the point he was trying to make was that the crew was very good at coming up with alternative solutions.
“We don’t have time for any fancy stuff,” Zoë said. “You’re both going to get in Inara’s shuttle and leave, pronto. Wash can lay in a course for you to take so that your readouts will be shielded by Serenity’s mass until the Alliance vessel closes in on us for boarding.”
Simon’s lips parted. “But I can’t even pilot a shuttle.”