The crowd had fallen silent, as if in respect for the dead. Exhausted, out of gas, Mal hung his head and mourned everything that had happened between Jinny and him, and everything that had not happened.
After a long moment, Toby stretched out a hand and pointed at Mal. “When they told him that she’d died, the first words out of the mouth of Malcolm Reynolds were, ‘She was supposed to be safe.’”
Mal recalled the moment. Those were his exact words, spoken to Jamie and Toby. Someone — he forgot who — came running into the Silver Stirrup to announce the missile strike. They’d all heard the detonation not ten minutes earlier, and seen the accompanying far-off flash in the sky; and they all had speculated what it signified, whether it was simply the onset of a thunderstorm or something more sinister. The moment they learned it was a missile aimed at the Adare ranch, they sprinted out that way. The farmhouse itself was intact, save for the fact that every single windowpane in it had been blown out and the roof was missing several shingles. Mr. and Mrs. Adare were likewise shaken but unhurt.
However, no sooner did Mal see the impact site, and Jinny’s body, than he fell to his knees and uttered the sentence Toby had just quoted.
What he didn’t grasp was why it mattered. What significance “She was supposed to be safe” carried for Toby.
That was when Toby slid a hand into his pocket and retrieved a small, rounded lump of metal that had been distorted out of its original shape by intensely high temperatures. It was roughly the size and shape of a fob watch, and for a moment Mal could not fathom what it was or why Toby had produced it.
Then it dawned on him.
It was the locket. The gold locket with the ornate “J.” The one he hadn’t given to Jinny, and then, later, much later, had.
Toby levered open the lid, with some difficulty. The hinge barely worked.
Inside was a mass of circuitry, fused into so much silvery goo.
“See that, everyone?” He displayed the locket to the crowd. “See that, Mal? A homing beacon. The homing beacon that you put there. The homing beacon which gave the Alliance the exact coordinates for the arms cache. Thanks to you, they couldn’t miss. Thanks to you, Jinny Adare died.”
31
“Hades?” said Zoë, leaning over the comms panel on Serenity’s bridge. “You sure that’s right, Book?”
“That’s what Elmira says,” Book replied. His voice crackled, distance distorting the signal.
“As in the lesser of Persephone’s two moons,” said Wash. “Sibling to the larger, brighter Renao, and usually part-eclipsed by it.”
“Sure,” said Zoë, “but what in hell are they doing on Hades? There’s nothing there.”
“I think that’s kind of the point,” said Book. “If you take someone prisoner and have malicious designs on them, the best place to spirit them off to is somewhere remote and undesirable, somewhere no one goes.”
“And the intel’s sound?”
“Elmira has nothing to gain by lying. Put it this way. Hunter Covington enslaved her, abused her, threatened to kill her — it isn’t in her interests to cover for him. In fact, her exact words were, ‘If your friends catch up with him and manage to put a bullet in him, I’m not going to shed a single tear.’”
“Well, you can tell her from me,” Zoë said, “if I see him, I’ll do just that. Him and anyone else involved in Mal’s kidnapping.”
“I’m already plotting a course towards Hades, Shepherd,” Wash said, stabbing buttons on the control console. “Just one question. Where precisely on Hades? Any idea? Because it’s not the biggest rock in the ’verse but it’s not the smallest either, and if we don’t have any clear idea where to put down, we could be searching a long time.”
“I asked Elmira that myself. She doesn’t know. But you’ll find the location, Wash. I’m sure of it.”
“If I do, it’ll be some kind of miracle.”
“Miracles happen,” said Book.
“Not in my experience,” Wash muttered as Zoë cut the connection. He hit the ship’s intercom. “Kaylee?”
“Yeah?”
“How are the engines doing?”
“Shiny… ish.”
“Good enough, ’cause I’m about to go for maximum burn. We think we know where Mal is.”
“Oh my God! For real?”
“Yup. You just make sure Serenity keeps spaceborne.”
“On it!”
“Buckle up, honey,” Wash said to Zoë. “I’m going to give you the ride of a lifetime.”
“Promises, promises,” Zoë said, strapping herself into a seat.
Wash thrust the yoke forward, and Serenity’s tail end lit up like a Chinese lantern, coruscatingly bright. The ship diverted sleekly round onto her new course, Wash pouring on speed, extracting every ounce of thrust her engines could provide.
“Shouldn’t take us more than an hour,” he said to his wife. “Assuming nothing breaks or blows up.”
Zoë laid a hand on his arm. “Just shut up and fly, Wash. This is what you do, so do it.”
32
The planet Shadow, long ago
A week before Jinny died, Mal came over to her house and gave her the locket.
“What’s this?” she said, staring at the trinket. “A love token?”
“Yes. I mean, no. No. Nothing like that. I saw it in a shop in Da Cheng Shi.” He didn’t say when he’d seen it. “Saw the ‘J’ on it and thought of you.”
“Well, that’s, er… mighty nice of you.”
“Weren’t it just. I want you to have it, not to remember me by or any of that stuff. That’s not what this is about at all. Look inside. I’ve added a little something.”
Jinny pressed the tiny catch which opened the locket. Inside lay a gleaming knot of technology.
“It’s… a hearing aid?” she said, frowning at him, half smiling.
“A homing beacon,” Mal said.
“And why do I need a homing beacon?”
“’Cause when the war hits Shadow, who knows where I’m going to end up? I may not even be planetside. And you may get called away too. I don’t believe for one moment that you’re going to stay put and tend to this arms cache of yours indefinitely. Those weapons’ll be gone soon enough, and the Jinny Adare I know isn’t going to be content living at the old homestead splitting logs and shoveling cow dung.”
“You got that right.”
“No, she’s going to become a… what are they calling us? A Browncoat.”
“Ain’t such a pretty name, is it?” Jinny said.
“No. And that reminds me — I need to buy myself a brown suede coat, otherwise I’m not going to fit in. But to my point. When you’re a Browncoat and I’m a Browncoat, we could be light years apart, at opposite ends of the ’verse. But that there homing beacon is linked to a matching homing beacon which I have in my safekeeping, and if ever we want to find each other, or simply know where each other is, those two little doohickeys will be able to tell us. They’re powered by thermoelectric energy, using the differential between body heat and the ambient temperature to keep them charged. As long as we’re wearing them, they’ll have juice. And if one of them stops working… Well, then the next time the other person activates their beacon, they’ll know the worst has happened.”
“Oh Mal.”
He couldn’t tell if she was touched or perplexed. Then he saw tears falling from her eyes, splashing onto the locket.
He took the trinket from her hands and draped it around her neck.
“Just wear it,” he said. “For me. Doesn’t mean we’re engaged to be wed or anything. Ain’t that at all.” No way, definitely nothing of the sort. “But know that I will always have my own beacon with me at all times, whether or not you have yours. If I want to check if you’re safe, or you me, this is how.”