TWO BY TWO BY TWO (10)
Part 10a
…and hitting…
This chapter rated K+.
Mal lay motionless on the topside of Serenity—motionless, that is, except for his right hand, in which he held a defusing tool, designed to create a highly controlled and narrowly directed magnetic field. He had taken a quick look at Serenity's 狗屎的 gǒushǐde security video from when they were parked over at the fruit market, and sure enough, there was that fuzzy, grainy saboteur climbing the hull of his gorram ship. The picture wasn't any clearer than it had been last time they were on Beaumonde, and Mal swore to himself that he would upgrade the whole gorram system as soon as he could manage it—which he knew would not be for a while. He simply couldn't afford it. He was again left with the impression that the saboteur was a woman, perhaps even the same woman—but why would his ship be sabotaged every visit to Beaumonde? Was it the same saboteur? Certainly had the same mode of operation. If it was, how would the saboteur—who had struck at Pedro Docks last time—even know that Serenity had landed at the South Sirindhorn Farmers' Market?
Slowly, slowly, he reached out little by little, until the tip of the tool made contact. The trick was to penetrate the barrier without detectable disruption to the field. Now, he just needed to—
"Mal! Mal! What the good gorram is goin' on?"
Mal froze at the sound of Jayne's voice. In the circumstances, it was a much better reaction than starting at the sound of his voice, which would almost certainly trigger the detonator and leave Mal without a right hand, maybe without a right arm.
"Shush, Jayne!" Kaylee hissed loudly. "Cap'n's up topside defusing a detonator."
"What the ruttin' hell's he doin' that for? Don't he know he could get blowed up?"
Mal slowly released the breath he hadn't realized he was holding, saving his reaction for a time when he could safely do it without getting blown up. He took another deep breath and focused on the task.
. . .
Jayne stopped only long enough to pick up a few more of his favorite weapons, and a couple of grenades. You never knew when you were gonna need a grenade, and he didn't like to go anywhere on the job without 'em. Kaylee had given him the coordinates of the warehouse, and he set out to try to catch up to the two docs before they did somethin' stupid. Couple of Core-bred 猴子的 屁股 hóuzide pìgu with that many university degrees to their names were bound to screw up a simple job like loading up cargo from a warehouse.
He jogged out the main gate of Pedro Docks onto the thoroughfare. Looking up and down the street, he spotted the mule stopped at a traffic signal six blocks ahead. As he watched, the signal changed and Doc Ip floored the accelerator and the mule shot ahead, only to come to a screeching halt as it caught up with the snarl of traffic half a block ahead. Jayne shook his head in disbelief. Everybody knew as the main road was a bad bet this time a' day—better off takin' the side streets. Still, no way he could catch up with them on foot. Looking fiercely at the driver of a passing hovercab, he raised his arm to hail it—the arm that just happened to be holding Vera—and was astonished when the cabbie instantly pulled over.
Jayne got in. "Yes, mister. Anything you want, mister. Just don't shoot!" the cabbie exclaimed.
Jayne smiled. Shiny. The cabbie saw his well-armed customer eye him with an evil grin. "Where to, mister? Don't shoot! I'm good, wherever you want!"
"See that there mule?" Jayne explained. "I want you to catch it."
. . .
The cabbie couldn't believe it. If not for the fact that he was armed to the teeth with lethal-looking weapons, the scary man had acted just like a regular fare. They caught up to two skinny men with Core accents in an open mule with a large trailer attached to it, the fare said, "Hey!" and the two invited him to join them. Scary man paid the cabbie, like a regular fare, even left him a tip. Guess you can't judge a book by its cover, the cabbie thought.
. . .
"Take a right turn here," Jayne advised.
"But that's not the most direct way," Simon objected.
"Well, I know that," Jayne replied. "But unless you wanna set here in rush hour traffic going nowhere-miles-an-hour for the next forty-five minutes, you should listen ta what I said."
Simon threw him a dirty look, which Jayne returned with interest, but Ip simply turned the yoke to the right and headed down the alley.
Looking over the Doc's shoulder so's he could see the coordinates on the chit, Jayne guided them left, right, and straight, through side streets and alleys, and once, on a street labeled "Maintenance vehicles only," until they reached a nondescript windowless building in an industrial park.
"This is it," Jayne stated definitively, and swung himself down from the mule. Simon and Ip followed. "Ya got the chit, Doc?"
Simon produced the chit and gazed stupidly at the door for a moment.
"Whattaya waitin' for, Doc? Stick it in the gorram reader."
Simon noticed that the door was outfitted with a slot, and after a moment's pause to work out the correct orientation, he inserted the card. The mechanism whirred to life and a small yellow light began blinking.
"Ain't you gonna key in the code?"
"I—I don't know it," Simon said.
Jayne looked at Ip. "I've got no clue, Jayne."
"Didn't Mal tell you the keycode?" Jayne asked in disbelief. Couldn't imagine how they'd left Serenity on a job without knowin' the keycode to the warehouse. This was just the sort of screw-up he figured the two Docs would make. He reached for his comm to wave the Captain, then paused, remembering that the 傻瓜 shǎguā was up topside of Serenity defusing a detonator and like to blow himself up if'n his comm chimed at a bad moment. "Aw, hell—" Jayne began.
"He did, he said—well, I didn't understand what he said," Ip admitted, looking at Simon.
"I—well, actually, I didn't get it either," Simon finally admitted.
"Why didn'tcha ask?" Jayne was incredulous. "Just how you two figure on gettin' into the warehouse ta do the job?" It was unbelievable. "Do you at least remember what in ruttin' hell he said?"
"He said, 'The keycode is taps'," Ip quoted. "Do you have any idea what that means? Are you supposed to—"
"Aw hell, that's easy." Jayne strode over to the keypad and punched in 114146146146146468641114. The light shifted to a steady blue and Jayne swung the door open.
"How did he do that?" Ip whispered to Simon. "That was a twenty-four-digit code."
"We would have been here all night trying to crack it, even using the new code-breaking software that River installed on my portable," Simon admitted to Ip.
Jayne knew what the two docs were whispering about. But he wasn't about to let them in on his secret. Every Tom, Dick, and Harry—but apparently not every Core-bred doctor—knows "Taps." No surprise Mal would use a bugle call from his army days. Jayne was just glad he hadn't chosen somethin' more obscure like Church Call or Officers Dress for Dinner. Alls he had to do was key in the numbers what corresponded with the pitches, and Open Sesame.
. . .
This was the third Qianxia proximity detonator that Mal had tried to defuse. The first was at a UXO training course he'd taken as a sergeant in the Independent Forces. Unexploded ordnance wasn't something the 57th Overlanders normally dealt with—there were bomb specialists, after all—but somebody in the brass had decreed that a certain number of personnel be trained in it, and Mal was the lucky winner. He'd been pulled off the line and sent for a four-week training course on Muir. The course was held at Muir Technical College, and what with staying in the pleasant dormitories on the tree-lined campus, and not getting shot at, it was as good a rest vacation as Mal had ever had, other than the guilt he felt at missing the Battle of Port Moresby, one of the nastier ones of the early part of the war. A number of his people had lost the number of their mess in that one, and he wasn't there to help.
The first Qianxia proximity detonator was the one that Mal had to defuse to pass the course. He'd managed to do it with flying colors, finding out only after the fact that the detonator, though real enough, was a dud, and wouldn't have gone off even if he'd screwed it up completely.
The second one was in the field. And definitely not a dud. Mal had managed to remember the procedure, all the steps in the correct order, and had undoubtedly saved some lives that day. Including his own. There was something about performing a task under such dire circumstances (if you fail, you die) that cemented it in the memory—he wouldn't never forget how to install a catalyzer on the compression coil, for instance. He'd examined the device attached to Serenity's topside before beginning the process, just to verify that it really was a Qianxia proximity detonator, and he'd been tempted to look up and refresh on the defusing procedure, but the cortex wouldn't have no more information than that the Qianxia proximity detonator was officially banned, and everything else about it was high-military classified. With his luck the ship would be flagged just on account of him lookin' up the name, so he didn't even try. Just had to focus and trust his memory.
Step by step, he worked his way through the procedure, moving slowly and carefully, except for the one step where you had to move quickly to bypass a timed anti-tampering device. One by one, he disabled and disarmed the subsystems, until at last he reached the moment of truth. He carefully aligned the laser field cutter.
This was it. Inara, I love you. He held his breath and squeezed.
No explosion. He pulled the core element out of the Savart shaft and disconnected the now harmless detonator from the portside navsat. I love you, but I ain't puttin' up with this 狗屎gǒushǐ. You accuse me without cause, and I'm done apologizing for something I didn't do. It's gonna be you what comes to me to apologize. You just think on it, Inara. I'll be waitin'.
. . .
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glossary
狗屎的 gǒushǐde [crappy]
猴子的 屁股 hóuzide pìgu [monkeys' asses]
傻瓜 shǎguā [fool]
狗屎gǒushǐ [crap]
A/N: We're in the homestretch here. One more chapter to go. Feedback is most welcome.