McCormack Firefly - Coup de Grâce

1. Auflage 2023
ISBN: 978-1-78909-842-6
Verlag: Titan Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 272 Seiten

The Serenity lands on the remote moon of Abel for a lucrative job but becomes embroiled in a young woman's quest for vengeance and a starving frontier town's fight for survival. Join Mal and the gang in this enthralling original tie-in novel from the award-winning series. The Serenity crew head to Yell City, one of the settlements on Abel, a moon in the Rim. Their job: track down the killers of a local lawyer shot dead in the streets by a local gang. Their client is Annie Roberts, the eighteen year old daughter of the murdered man. Lucky for them, Annie Roberts is more than capable of handling herself. Unlucky for them, the job is lot more complicated than they first think. Annie's father is not just the victim of local gang violence, but the target of some powerful men. Taking down a local gang is one thing, but cleaning up a whole city? That's not a job for the Serenity crew. But when their ship is impounded, and Mal and the crew find themselves trapped in Yell City, they realise they are already in deeper than they could have ever imagined...

Una McCormack is the author of The Autobiography of Kathryn Janeway, The Autobiography of Mr Spock, the Star Trek novels: The Lotus Flower (part of The Worlds of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine), Hollow Men, The Never-Ending Sacrifice, Brinkmanship, The Missing, The Fall: The Crimson Shadow, Enigma Tales, and the Doctor Who novels The King's Dragon, The Way Through the Woods, and Royal Blood. She lives in Cambridge, England, with her partner and daughter.

Autoren/Hrsg.

McCormack, Una

Leseproben

From the journal of Anne Imelda Roberts

You may call it unlikely that a girl of my age and size might find herself out in wild country chasing her daddy’s killer with a cut-price ragtag band of rebels, and if you won’t take my word there’s always the sheriff’s report, should you care to read that kind of thing. My name is Anne Imelda Roberts—Annie to those who care to call me ‘friend’—and I was eighteen years old when the events I describe here occurred. Eighteen years old, suddenly all on my own, unsure who I could count upon. Turns out friends can be found in unexpected places, and don’t always look the way you might expect. If there’s a lesson to this story, then perhaps that’s what I learned.

But that is starting at the end, and perhaps I should start at the beginning. Our family was an old one on Abel. Daddy’s granddaddy came here when the world was opening up, and made a tidy fortune, and none of us have squandered it, though my daddy’s pockets were deep when he saw folks in need. I have been left more than comfortable, and there are still many on Abel right now who cannot say that.

My daddy, Isaac Roberts, was Abel-born and Abel-bred, which counts. I don’t hold those few years away at the Core against him, and nor should you. On the contrary, the Core was where he met Mamma, Alicia, and if he hadn’t met Mamma, they wouldn’t have had me. I call that a blessing. Other folks have opinions of their own. There are some in Yell City right now who might say that my being born was a good thing, and others might say something to the contrary, but those are the kind of folks always looking to blame another for their bad fortune. I’ll say this now, and let me be plain: none of what happened over those few days was my fault, and if people expected me to behave any differently, they didn’t know my mamma and they certainly didn’t know my daddy.

Daddy was a good man, by which I mean he trusted people who were not worthy of his trust. I will never make that mistake, and I would say that the events of those few days have proven to me the wisdom of this. Mamma, when she was alive, used to say that Daddy was a fool to everyone and himself most of all. She was in no way a mean woman—quite the contrary, in fact, everyone always said she was like summer in the mountains—but I suspect that even she must surely have found Daddy a trial at times. Always taking on cases that wouldn’t bring in a penny, because of some sob story or other. A big heart, people said to me after he died, as if that’s enough to pay one’s way in the world, enough to protect you from those whose hearts have shriveled away to nothing.

Maybe I should start with the last few days of my daddy’s life, even if that comes painful to me. And to tell you about those days, I must make clear straight away that Daddy was, above all, a man of the law. He loved the law, by which I mean laws made by men and women, and seeing the right thing done was the centerpiece of his life. Well, the truth of this ’verse is that there ain’t no law but God’s law, and that truth isn’t always clear. In the end, what is clear is my daddy was not wise to put his trust in the law of mortals. In the end, we all stand before Our Heavenly Father, and it is by him that we are held account for all we have said and done in our days. What I will say, however, is that sometimes there’s no harm in giving His law a helping hand along the way, as I believe this tale of mine once told will show.

My daddy went to the Core to do his training, and when he came home to Abel (bringing Mamma), he set up in Yell City. At first folks were not sure what to make of him—Abel-born, yes, but sent off to the Core to do his studying, and coming back with a Core-born wife—in the early days, persuading people to let him represent them was a struggle. That changed when he defended a group of folks living in one of them tenements down near the space docks who were under threat of eviction. They didn’t have anything to their names, but Daddy took on the case anyway, not only did he stop their landlord from throwing them out on the street, he even got written into their lease that the building should be properly maintained, so the landlord couldn’t let the place fall to ruin and say they must leave on account of safety. Daddy won—of course he won—and his victory was a big deal in Yell City: changed how a few things were done round here (although Daddy would be the first to say ‘not enough’). The case changed everything for Daddy too. Word went round ordinary folk that this was a decent man who cared for those who found themselves in trouble through no fault of their own. Many’s the time that a fellow and his family, in trouble with the bank or the landlord, came to my daddy, and found themselves with a few weeks’ grace (and more often than not a good few credits). Daddy had a knack for finding loopholes and letting the light shine through.

So his practice was always busy—if not always profitable— and between his own fortune and the money Mamma brought with her from the Core, I daresay we did more than fine. By the time of Daddy’s death, Mamma was long gone. He and I rubbed along together very nicely: him busy with his legal practice, and me doing the books, running the house, and keeping an eye on his diary. So I knew, of course, about the case that was coming up. In the three weeks before my daddy died, it seemed as though every evening, right when Daddy and I settled down for some talk or a game or two of checkers, the bell would ring, and poor Daddy—who didn’t have a moment to himself all day—would haul himself up from his armchair and take himself off into his study for yet another late-night meeting. He was busier than ever in recent years, what with the drought happening and so many farms failing and folks in need of his help. And sometimes the folks that came weren’t so humble. That night, it was Monseigneur de Cecille (yes, we were honored by a visit by that great man). The Monseigneur came with two or three others—rich fellas, local money—and from what I heard (I would not stoop to listening at the door, although I did happen to pass along the corridor outside the study a coupla times), it was a jovial occasion. I heard Monseigneur’s deep booming laugh again and again. It was well after midnight when they left, stumbling out to their fancy hovercars, stinking of whisky, their drivers running out from our kitchen to cart them home. My daddy, looking at me hazily, said, “Oh, Annie, I ain’t sure I been wise.”

I can’t rightly tell you whether he simply meant the liquor or something else, but I knew the case was coming, and I guess knowing what I know now I should have seen that it was going to be big. A smallholder named Jacky Colson—who had lost his farm to the bank—was trying to win his land back. Exactly the kinda case my daddy took on: small chance of success and even smaller chance of remuneration. “I won the lottery when it came to inheritance, Annie,” he would say to me. “A fellow’s gotta do some good with everything they’ve been given.”

Still, even knowing what I knew, I didn’t connect the case at first with what happened, not least because it was more than a month before the hearings were due to start. The day of my daddy’s death, so far as I was concerned, was an ordinary day— particularly pleasant for autumn, but not so grueling as that summer had been. I decided I might as well go for a walk that afternoon. Daddy and I had a cheerful breakfast, and I sent him on his way to his office, me telling him not to give away all our money, him telling me not to get into trouble. He kissed the top of my head, and off he went, whistling.

That was my last sight of him.

After he left, I took myself to my desk, where I wrote to Mamma’s sister back on Londinium, giving her the news from Abel. After Mamma died, my aunt suggested I should go and live with her, and at first Daddy was of a mind to send me, saying how much he’d learned out there, and how much I might benefit from the experience, but I was having none of that. Leave Abel? Daddy? Never. Plenty to keep me busy. Daddy’s practice, for one, not to mention helping more and more around town. Many folks were in a bad way, farms failing, forcing them into the city, but there weren’t enough jobs or places to live, and plenty were struggling. Lending a hand there was taking up more and more of my time: writing and asking the great and good of the city for money; helping out some charitable people that were getting clothes and other necessaries out to these people. My days were busier than ever, which speaks to the need on Abel at that time.

Mid-morning, I went for a walk around the park on the corner, which was looking sorry these days. Another hot summer had left the flowerbeds parched dry, and there hadn’t been anywhere near enough rain as yet this autumn. Place still dry as a bone, and I saw a couple of tents at one end too. That worried me. Last couple of winters had been particularly hard, snow even here in our part of the county. Those folks didn’t want to be outdoors and freezin’ when...