Niska came back through the door at a run, a stand-in goon a bit less imposing than the originals a step behind him. That cost them a moment of trouble when Niska stopped dead, peering at Mal all tied up like a Christmas present with an intense, confused re-evaluation, as though he hadn't expected to be seeing him there at all. The goon almost knocked him flying and spent a stretch of time gesticulating frantic-like with both arms trying to placate him, 'til finally Niska lost patience and flailed a hand at the fellow in slapping blows that couldn't have connected with much force until he backed off.
"She was here," Niska said, not in any way a question.
Mal made an aggravated sound from behind the gag, and hissing air through his teeth in irritation, Niska stepped up and yanked the gag loose without even taking the pause to instruct his help to up and do it for him. "Yes," Niska said, harder than his usual wheedling, gentle-old-grandpa tone, while Mal worked his dried out mouth. "She was here. For a moment there, I think perhaps you are working together, but then - here you still are." Wrinkling his nose up, he tossed the mangled white belt into the corner of the room.
"Yeah, here I still am. Turns out she just came here for a spell of bragging on her way to make a getaway, which by the by I noticed you boys making a fine job of not preventing." He hacked on the last few words, turned his head aside inasmuch as was possible, and spat, trying to rid himself of the cloth fibres sticking to the inside of his mouth.
Niska gave it a look that said it wasn't the preferred fluid to be decorating those floors. "My people are scouring the compound for her," he said. "They will find her."
"Good. Hope they do... you really still think I'm spoiling to give a damn about that woman? Stick a claw in her gut and turn up the power, I don't care."
"No." Niska shook his head and sighed falsely. "I don't believe you do. Still... maybe it adds interest for both of us. Maybe I let you watch, yes?" He grinned, finding his own twisted kind of enthusiasm in the idea. Held up a finger. "Ah. Or maybe I let her watch. That, you would not like so much. Very interesting... We see, perhaps, who breaks first? Or maybe you do not really like the thought of your wife being hurt when you are watching. Maybe she likes it less, too. See, we can discover these things. A little pain... ah, pain is knowledge. Without it, we stagnate, we disappear, we are nothing. It is tragedy that defines greatness, Mister Reynolds."
"I guess you might not be wrong," Mal said noncommittally. "Shan Yu come up with that charming little ditty as well?"
Niska gave a dismissive shrug. "I paraphrase." Broke off and turned as one of his men entered the room with the kind of demeanour didn't suggest any pats on the back awaited the news he was bringing.
Niska rolled off a sharp line of exasperated Chinese. "What has gone wrong now?"
"Ennert and Grabonik are dead. We cornered her, but she got a gun from somewhere." The man took an unhappy pause for breath. "They're gone, Mr Niska. Her and Fenro both. They took one of the sub-atmosphere skimmers. Munif and Sorensen went after them, but..."
"What? What?" Niska pressed. "No more delays!"
The beleaguered fellow swallowed. "Sabotage, I think. I saw the flames and the smoke from one skimmer crashed on the horizon. The second - I think it was Munif - I think he managed to keep a lock and keep in the air. If he's put out a tracer signal - "
"Ah! We can follow. Yes." Niska nodded. "You will find Gunald and tell him to prep Eunice. Tell him to run a thorough check. Quickly! Go!"
Mal had watched the proceedings with cautious interest, but wiped his face clean of expression as Niska turned back to him. "Mister Reynolds," the old bastard said. A curt gesture to his attending goon saw an ugly, barbed knife obediently placed in his hand, and he set its tip to Mal's chest, point digging in just enough to break the skin, just beneath the band of rope. "Your wife, it seems you are right. She proves more trouble than she is worth." A slice of upward motion severed the bindings easily, leaving Mal trying not to fall forward as his weight caught for an instant on his still-tied wrists. "I think that it will not be a problem for you, to help me find her, yes?"
Eunice, as it turned out, was a spacecraft - moreover, a zippy little modified Alliance bomber with a few years on her. Looked like one of the models commissioned just after the war in the push to recoup munitions losses. Given how a few body alterations and a few more cute additional touches to her paintwork in typical psychotic Niska style didn't come close to disguising what she was, it made a fellow wonder just how much influence the old bastard had to wield, that he could flaunt some serious black market Alliance hardware with no apparent fear of consequence. Hell, maybe that was the whole point.
Wherever Niska kept her housed it couldn't be too far off or secret, considering she was setting down in the dusty courtyard within ten minutes of him sending his man off to make the arrangements. When her retractable feet touched ground and her weight settled, her ramp lowered with the kind of smooth mechanical purr Serenity could only dream of, and Mal was hustled aboard after Niska, a situation he had no particular problem with given it meant they were headed away from Niska's House of Fun.
Inside of her gleamed. All the shine and glitter of any real honest-to-God Alliance boat, and Niska positively simpered over her, patting a console and turning to Mal with a beam crossing his face ear-to-ear. "Ah, you like? Yes?"
"Very nice," he said dryly. "'Eunice'?"
Niska looked all the more fond. "My mother's name. She is dead many, many years, I fear."
"Ain't that a shame," Mal said, all conciliatory. "Still, fancy she'd be right appreciative of you naming your pretty warship for her." Which was likely naught but the honest truth, what he'd heard of Niska's family so far.
She sounded as smooth from inside as outside, when she lifted again, the serious fellow positioned in the pilot's seat working with a diligent sort of a focus managed to ignore his psychotic employer attached to his shoulder like some kind of sucking leech. 'Course, she didn't have half the manoeuvrability Serenity did, nor even for that matter the sub-skimmer Saffron'd took, for all Niska could coax from her a turn of speed few vessels could match. Take-off barely caused those of them on their feet to sway, interior grav systems perfectly balanced to compensate on exterior stresses.
Mal backed up a fraction, placing himself behind all the rest so that none of them could have a decent angle on his tied hands. The tiny retractable knife Saffron had left him, all but useless how he'd been tied before - and wasn't that girl's humour just as hilarious as an ornery bag of snakes? - had been the very devil to keep concealed from the goon who'd tied his wrists behind his back. He eased it down now from where he'd since wedged it between his wrist and the ropes, and slowly, blindly, worked back the blade, using minimal motions and trying to keep his face blank and fixed.
At front of ship, Niska's folk were getting a lock on the tracer put out by the man in pursuit, no thanks to Niska himself seeming convinced his own constant second guessing and running commentary necessary to the operation.
The bridge was overlarge, taking up a good half the space available in the vessel. Typical Alliance practicality, placing function over people. Gave Mal pause to re-evaluate the Alliance crews who'd in the war used just such a boat as this to raze Independent troops on the ground. Four-man crew living on top of each other in this kind of a space wouldn't have been having too much fun in transit. Probably hadn't glittered so much either after a couple months cut off from supply bases, having to manually re-supply over land when fuel got scarce.
In the heat of battle the running could take up every man of that crew in properly balancing out weapon systems, piloting and navigation for complex manoeuvres. Current crew being two fellows looked like they knew what they were doing, one goon with a furrowed brow and Niska, Mal couldn't help but get to thinking on how Eunice didn't make for the most practical of toys.
Distraction aside, they finally succeeded in isolating the tracer signal and programming it into the nav, and the view forward of the ship changed as they shifted course without any feel of movement at all. Landscape of Ezra might be racing beneath them, but all visible through the screen was sky and cloud bands scudding past.
Mal got the blade to a fully retracted position and winced as it took itself a slice out the skin of a fingertip. He must have made some small sound, or else some flicker crossed his face that the goon caught from the corner of his eye, because the fellow stopped looking quite so out of his depth and all of a sudden took an interest. Mal returned him a sullen look appropriate to a condemned prisoner. Even so, the goon continued to watch him warily until the pilot said, "Got them," diverting his attention.
Niska and the pilot poured over a screen, their bodies blocking it from view. Saffron's stolen craft was too distant yet to be visible out front. Niska said, "I will speak to them."
The pilot reached for a control, then paused. "They're hailing us."
A noise of irritation at being pre-empted, then Niska said, exasperated, "Yes."
Mal settled the blade of the knife against a loop of rope as Saffron's voice chirped onto the bridge. "Howdy, boys. Niska - nice barge you got there. Bet you're even thinking you can catch me, hmm? I'm guessing you've my good-for-nothing husband on board, too. Hello again, Mal."
"Gratified, 'honey'." He slowly sawed the edge of the blade as he spoke up.
"There is nothing I have to say to you," Niska interrupted sharply, a very particular quality of anger in his voice Mal hadn't heard from him before. "I wish to speak to Fenro."
A brief commotion just carried over the comm in the form of unintelligible whispers that sounded agitated and mostly female, then Saffron said, "I'm sorry, Mr Niska, sir. Fenro doesn't want to talk just now about which wine you're planning to serve with his liver. Guess that means you're stuck with little old me."
Niska slammed his hand down hard on the panel, cutting her voice off.
It was possible to see the sub-skimmers now in front of them, two black dots that advanced speedily after that first sighting. A hail from the pursuit came through, requesting instructions, while Saffron's sub-skimmer tucked itself into an easy nosedive. As they themselves dipped, following her progress, Mal saw the ground was riddled with ridges and canyons, like a maze built on an enormous scale. The pilot murmured worriedly to Niska, and Niska barked into the comm, "Don't lose them! There are hot springs and geysers in the Srohin. Heat tracers will be useless to track them if they set down. We might never find them."
The second sub-skimmer peeled down into the canyons, sticking close to the tail of the first. With no weapons, there was nothing could be done on the unfortunate skimmer's part but to follow. The way the fields that controlled those things interacted if they got too close, any kind of shoving and they'd both be a fireball on the desert floor. Niska wound his hands in a tight ball and compressed them together in front of him, eyes fixed forward, as the more manoeuvrable little vessels headed where they couldn't easily follow.
Mal dragged the knife across the rope again, and this time felt it give. He parted his hands, just enough to feel the ropes loosen and begin to fall. He caught them and carefully wound the loops back over his wrists, hopefully looking genuine enough to convince.
Now all he had to do was wait his moment. Which wouldn't be happening while his hands were still a numb crackle of sensation, and wouldn't be while facing four-to-one odds on a ship he couldn't fly poised above a landscape the effective equivalent of a pit of spikes.
To his pilot, Niska said, "Stay above the canyons, but keep them in sight! We do not lose them." His grip of the pilot's shoulder was white-knuckled. How the hell much money had he been keeping at the compound? Mal tucked the knife up his sleeve, starting to appreciate the inherent entertainment possibilities of the situation somewhat better.
Niska's instruction took the bomber into a dive down toward the canyons, giving a real good view as they settled in to a flat course skirting the canyon tops. Jagged sand-coloured peaks plummeted down into shadowed abysses almost black by contrast to the sun-drenched teeth above. The two skimmers whirled into view before them, then disappeared again into the shadow where just a glint of light off metal betrayed the position of one or other. They emerged only in time to be blocked off by a slice of peak. Then, once more into view, and the pursuing vehicle, manoeuvring riskily to cut the other off, skirted a shelf of rock the wrong side of a blind bend, only to lose control and spiral end-over-end into the rock face. The resulting fireball expanded across the canyon and had barely registered upon those aboard the bomber before they were passing through its rising tower of smoke.
"Wo de tian a," the pilot said.
Niska, agitated, ground on his shoulder hard enough that even the stoic fellow winced. "Don't lose them! We must bring them down intact!" He peered at the scene, eyes searching, not finding.
Mal grimaced. Neck stretched taut for better view, his attention fixed on the smoke cloud below. A moment later the smoke cleared enough that he saw Saffron's sub-skimmer, still rocking a little on its coarse from proximity to the blast, forced to rise up out of the dangerous terrain in order to regain control in the open sky. Rising a mite too close to the bomber.
"Ah, we have them! Force them down, here." Niska tapped something on the readout screen with one finger. His delighted smile seeped back into place as he stopped mauling his pilot a moment to watch over the shoulder of the man at the main laser canon console who manipulated the controls into a weapons lock. Fellow bit off a curse as the sub-skimmer dipped again in its path, trying to turn back as the land dropped away from high, rocky terrain into rolling desert plains. He adjusted slightly and fired a concussion blast under the skimmer, forcing her nose back up.
Niska punched the comm. "My dear Mrs Reynolds, this has all been very entertaining, but I think you may find it advisable to set down now. Or at the touch of the button I could - " he cleared his throat as though uncomfortable with the threat as un-gentlemanly " - reduce you, too, to a fireball. And that would be most unfortunate for us both, I am sure you agree."
"Go for it, you dried-up old husk," her voice shot back, raw in challenge. "Blow your rutting money sky-high." The sub-skimmer tried to peel off upwards in a smart manoeuvre unconventional as all hell to boot. The gunner responded before Niska'd even barked his command, and the next shot fired just managed to explode above them without atomising them.
"I assure you, I will do that before I see you escape," Niska said.
A string of irate Chinese drifted back to them.
"Time you start earning your keep on this expedition, Mister Reynolds." Niska's wave of a hand saw the goon grasping Mal's shoulder and pulling an arm back to take a swing. "After all, the woman is your wife - you know her best."
Mal twisted and ducked, hooked a foot around the goon's ankle and put all his weight behind a shoulder in the gut that sent the man to the deck with a heavy crack of stressed alloy. He stepped around the downed fellow, flicking his gaze across to Niska, who was looking mighty peevish while the gunner on his right emotionlessly drew a pistol.
"First thing I'd say," Mal suggested easily, "Is don't the hell trust it - not nothing comin' from that gorram crazy woman. 'Sides from that, can't tell you a thing. You gotta know by now she ain't really my wife." He threw Niska a twisted smile and a shrug.
"So you say," Niska snipped, eying the goon on the floor. He started to say more, but an exclamation from the pilot diverted his attention.
They were setting down on a rocky landscape layered with pale dust, in a flat, shallow bowl caught between the sheer rock cliffs of the Srohin and the gentler sand slopes of Ezra's desert. The thin, winding ribbon of a dried-up river bed ran through its middle, and at a point where it pinched in sharply to the cliff face, Saffron had landed the sub-skimmer with a neat precision. While Niska's pilot completed Eunice's landing sequence, Mal watched two small figures, the smaller a distinctive flash of white and orange, climb down from the skimmer, linger a moment at its side, then move out of sight along the cliff.
"Looks like our 'Mrs Reynolds' there ain't finished yet," he observed.
The goon at his feet groaned and stirred. Niska tutted down at him and instructed the pilot as he cut the engine, "Help poor Ranulf to stand." He crossed to the door with the gunner at his flank and paused, fingers poised on the control. "Mister Reynolds - you will be so kind as to lead the way."
With an ornery goon coming up on his back harbouring likely no small amount of grudge, Mal was happy enough to oblige. Let Saffron take a few pot-shots at him if she was so inclined. He had the notion she'd be saving her ammunition for those best warranted it, if all the weapon she had was his own damn pistol. He incautiously stepped down the ramp onto the sand.
A hail of gunfire damn near took his head off, one bullet passing so close he felt its wind against his ear. "Tzao gao!" He flung himself down while shots were still firing and would have discarded all pretence his wrists were still tied secure 'cept for the gorram rope catching and refusing to pull clear, sending him off balance and dumping him on his belly into the sand with his arms still wrenched behind him. Craned his head up to see Niska and his boys were ducking back inside the ship, all aside from the gunner who was pinned down at the other side of the ramp. Looking the other way, he saw the stolen sub-skimmer and not a soul in sight. As he stared, a shot pinged off the near side of the vessel.
Coming from the other direction - ?
He whipped his head 'round, fingers twisting and picking away at the loops on his wrists as he did, and found he could see them now: maybe three of them, taking cover in the boulders at the banks of the dried-up river bed. Looked like Saffron hadn't set herself down anywhere she hadn't been full well planning on all along.
He tore the ropes from his wrists, came up into a crouch and took a diving roll landed him behind a keen-looking set of rocks should serve as decent cover. Felt a smile not entirely lacking any trace of smug break through his face as Niska's outraged cry sounded behind him.
"Hey, Niska" he called, setting his back to rock and gauging the distance between himself and the sub-skimmer. "I'd stick around, but - well, you know. Guess it just ain't your day." Distance looked workable, though not overly pleasing. He surveyed the ground. Not much else placed well for offering cover 'tween here and there. Well... no sense in loitering around all day...
Mal broke cover, keeping low. Niska's man was returning fire, which did him a likely unintended kindness, and he felt just the tug of a bullet pass through his sleeve before he nipped past the narrow ledge left between the dry river bed and downed sub-skimmer into relative cover.
The door of the sub-skimmer was left open, and Mal reckoned on it providing an interesting sort of choice for Niska - try to catch him, or stay and catch the money.
"No you don't, you dumb piece of crap!" A shrieking orange-haired fiend took him down in a flying tackle as he made to haul himself inside the hatch, and the two of them rolled in the dust.
"Hey!" Mal scrabbled at the ground, trying to gain some purchase and mostly shredding the skin of his fingers as their momentum kept them rolling. "Saffron, wait, you don't want - "
Ground vanished from under them as they fell five feet down into the river bed. Landed on ground baked hard as rock by the sun - he landed a mite easier than Saffron did on account of he had something soft underneath to break his fall. She swore in Chinese and kicked him until he rolled off her.
They lay side by side on the river bed a moment, gasping for breath, before a bullet bounced off the baked mud in the gap between their bodies. Next moment they were both of them on their feet pressed against the sheer side of the river bed. "Gorram it!" Mal yelled, and Saffron flashed him her thigh again as drew his pistol.
She held it in her left hand, out of his reach, but it didn't seem she had much of an intent to use it on him: far more threatening targets on hand. Mal craned his head to see over to where Niska's people and the bunch of new folk were shooting at each other. Looked like they were counting a draw just now with a man down either side, though the tall fellow in charge of the second group was limping a little. Saffron craned too, raising the pistol and sending a shot across to wing Niska's pilot, causing a commotion among them all wondering how come they were getting shot at from a whole different quarter all a sudden.
Heard the gunfight heat back up as he ducked down again, dragging Saffron with him. "You want to tell me what the hell's going on now and who the heck is leading the gorram rescue party?"
She turned and batted her eyelashes up at him. "Couldn't you guess, Mal?" she said sweetly. "He's my husband."