My Own Kind of Freedom by Steven Brust (ebook reader color screen txt) 📖

get tired soon, and we all know what that means.”

“I’ll talk fast. I can’t let you kill this man.”

“You know who he is?”

“I knew before you did.”

“You know who he was?”

“Your old commanding officer when you fought for the Independents.”

“He was more than that to me.”

“I figured. He was your hero, wasn’t he?”

“I wouldn’t put it like that.”

“No, you wouldn’t. But it was true. He mentored you, taught you about command, showed you—”

“Shut up.”

“And look at him now. He threw away his name, his rank, and his scruples. That must be feichang bu yukuai for you. It must feel like a betrayal of everything—”

“I said shut up.”

“All right. But you don’t get to commit murder.”

Bursa/Sakarya stood there, hands clear of his body but not raised, and gave no indication that the conversation had anything to do with him, or even that he was listening to it.

“I’m not convinced you can stop me,” said Mal.

Sakarya’s office

A somewhat elderly woman sat behind a desk, speaking into a microphone with a sense of urgency.

“Hi there,” said Wash. “I need to borrow your processor for a moment. I promise I won’t hurt it.”

“Who—?”

“Sorry, ma’am. I’m in kind of a hurry. And you’re not going to be able to reach your security people anyway. So, if you’ll just let me … ugh. Which one of these … ? Okay, that’s the direct link to the Cortex, so one of these must be, ah, I see. I don’t know if I have the right connection here. Okay, this ought to—there. Yes. A guy named Mister Universe showed me how to do this. Weird name, huh? Not half as weird as the guy is. We met in flight school. Worst pilot you ever … okay, that should do it. Just give me half a second to make sure the cross-load worked. Yep. Okay. You can have your desk again. Thanks.”

Sakarya’s office

Kit really hoped the captain couldn’t tell how scared he was, or how bad he was at this whole pointing guns business. It’s funny, when they had tried to kill him in the canteen he hadn’t been scared at all; maybe he’d been too busy trying to work out what had happened. But now, when he had the gun, it was much worse.

Of course, that sawed-off carbine pointing straight at his chest might be part of the reason.

He said, “I don’t need to state the obvious, do I?”

The captain said, “You mean, the part about I shoot him, you shoot me, Zoë shoots you, and Jayne flies off into the sunset?”

“Something like that.”

“Works for me,” said the mercenary without turning his head.

“No, you don’t need to point that out.”

“So, tell me this: what do you think will do more good? Killing this guy, or making an example of him to everyone else on the border worlds who wants to try the same thing?”

“Couldn’t say,” said the captain. “I don’t conjure with more good and less good, just with what’s in front of me.”

“The Independents lost the war, Captain Reynolds.”

“Yeah, I read that somewhere.”

“Let’s suppose the cause was right. Then what?”

“You don’t believe that.”

“No, I don’t. But suppose I’m wrong. Then what?”

“Then it’s a damn shame we lost.”

“Just what I was thinking. Means some bad happened.”

“I don’t think you’re making your point real well, Agent Merlyn.”

“So, how about, if some bad happened, you let us do what good we can do, to sort of make up for some of it.”

Wash came through the door.

“Wash!” said Jayne. “I almost put one through your gorram head!”

Wash ignored him, and spoke to Kit. “I got it,” he said.

“Verify it.”

“How?”

The captain said, “Wash—”

“One second, Mal.”

Kit said, “Slide the little brown button on the back the other way, then hit start.”

Wash said, “Two green lights.”

Okay, here we go. It happens or it doesn’t.

Kit rotated his whole body until, weapon and all, he was facing Sakarya. He said, “Filo Bursa, alias Filo Sakarya, you are bound by law for violations of Alliance Labor Code section nineteen part three, forced indenture, and section seventeen part five, child labor, and additional charges to be determined by a duly authorized court.”

Then he waited.

Sakarya’s office

He so badly wanted to pull the trigger; to watch Bursa fall to the ground twitching. To shoot him in the chest, so he’d just have enough to time to know he was dying.

But it wasn’t that gorram simple.

He’d never felt this way in a firefight.

Even as a young recruit, when he didn’t know how to handle himself, he’d done as well as could be expected: keeping his head down and shooting in the general direction of the enemy. But this was different. It wasn’t clear. It wasn’t obvious. There were too many answers, and all of them had some right and some wrong.

When the fed pointed his gun at Bursa, Zoë had immediately turned hers toward the door; now he heard the report of her carbine at the same time as Jayne’s pistol, and two more of Bursa’s security force fell in the doorway, next to their companions, one of whom was moaning and writhing, while the other wasn’t moving at all.

“Sir,” said Zoë, without turning her head, “whatever you’re going to do, I’d suggest doing it soon.”

“Real soon,” said Wash, from directly behind him. “Someone’s gotten past the jamming.

Song yiqie dao ta ma de diyu.

In a firefight, he either knew the right thing to do, or he knew something to do that, at least, wasn’t wrong. The only thing worse than having to make this sort of decision was having to make this sort of decision in a hurry.

He looked over at the fed. “I don’t owe you a gorram thing,” he said.

“I know.”

“And I owe your Alliance even less.”

“I know.”

Mal lowered his pistol and heard himself saying, “Take him, then. He’s yours.”

Sakarya’s office

A tension she didn’t know she was feeling drained out of her when the Captain spoke. She held her position and kept her focus on the door while she heard a clanking sound that had to be cuffs going around Colonel Bursa’s wrists. She held her position, waiting for the order to embark.

“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.

Sakarya’s office

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.

Sakarya’s office

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