**

Chapter 4: Night

In Which there are Ruminations, Late Night Banter and Bonding.

**

Captain Malcolm L. Reynolds, late of Shadow, lay in his bunk. He tossed. He turned. He stared at the bulkhead. He counted rivets. He took 15 seconds to ponder the eternal mystery of why, when you were cold, the covers were never warm enough and when you were hot, you couldn’t get rid of them fast enough. Then he settled down into worrying about what was really bothering him.

The crew.

Not that he was concerned about their efficiency or their competence. It was just a little jailbreak, and every single man jack of them had planned or participated in some form of escape. Most of them in the same one, at Niska’s skyplex. Even Inara, although her feats of derring-do seemed limited to slapping the aforementioned Captain Malcolm L. Reynolds in the face. Even sweet little Kaylee-girl had tried, and River had succeeded. Not to mention their wussified doctor, whom Mal suspected had played a far more active role in his sister’s rescue (from a highly secure, top secret Alliance facility that most people wouldn’t even admit existed) than he let on. The man was just too meticulous to leave something so important to someone else. Not that Mal would be letting His Honor, the High and Mighty King of Haughtyland anywhere near this job, unless one of the crew required his professional attention. But if it was required of him, Mal knew that even the doctor would do what needed doing.

He was worrying, true, but he knew they could do it. When something went wrong, they would come through. He was worrying about exactly where and when that “going wrong” part would come in. Because this job, simple as it sounded, was made far more complex purely because of the planet on which it would take place.

Mal had only been to Hibernia once before, just after the war. It hadn’t been a fun trip.

Only good thing about the planet: no Feds. Well, ok, truth be told, there were a lot of good things about that little world. Good weather, if