CHAPTER 4

Kaylee sulked back to Serenity, her illusions of a relaxing walk about town quashed. A hundred feet from men handing out food and she was being asked to walk the other way. Captain going about thieving meant a fast departure, which meant Serenity needed some tuning up. But since the pirates had taken any tool in plain sight, there were a few things that just couldn’t be fixed properly. In the two days since they had been robbed, her poor Serenity had Frankensteined itself. The stove in the kitchen was down to one burner; the electrical components of the rest having been sent to other tasks. The oven was completely dismantled, but should anyone need heat, they could just go to the engine room because the cooling system was almost entirely dysfunctional. She’d managed to construct a make-shift radiator by dismantling one of the toilets and running a pipe outside the ship to cool water before running it past the engine. At one point, the water pump had broken and Jayne had pumped it manually for nearly an hour while she tried to fix it with a twelve inch screwdriver and no wrench. It only helped so much. Water was a terrible coolant for such extreme hot and cold temperatures and the anti-freeze was spread thin. That would be their biggest problem. Being in atmo, they had no way to cool the water and thus the engine would run hot.

Back at Serenity, Kaylee grabbed her last remaining screwdriver, a 12 inch manual slot. She’d been using it as hammer, a wedge, a skewer, and every now and then as a screwdriver. Scanning the dining hall, she looked at the last working burner. If they had food tonight, they’d need it. Besides, there wasn’t much she could think of that hadn’t already been done.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” Book asked, startling her.

She tapped the screwdriver on her hand, trying to look contemplative instead of clueless. “Not unless you can fix the compressor.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know how those work.”

“Then I guess the best we can hope for is that we don’t burn up on our way