Remember Me – Part One

After serving aboard the Firefly-class transport Serenity as Chief Engineer and Morale Officer – titles granted to the petite young woman not by Serenity’s master and commander but by the bubbly mechanic herself – for almost 4 years, Kaylee was quite aware of how things usually turned out when someone wished for some excitement to happen or when Mal stated he thought a job would go smoothly. This still didn’t stop her from wishing for a bit of the former while in the midst of completing her monthly maintenance check on her girl’s dorsal cargo hatches. Later, in hindsight, Kaylee wished Lady Luck hadn’t resembled her bao bei quite so much at that moment.

The young mechanic was just wrapping up her task inside the ship’s belly airlock when Serenity’s intercom crackled with static before Mal’s agitated voiced boomed over the speakers lodged in bay’s ceiling, causing her to quickly lift her head mere inches from the lip of the upper dorsal hatch and listens for the anticipated order for her to man the ship’s engine room.

Instead of hearing Mal’s usually brusque command for Wash to take off as soon as the Mule was aboard and for her to attend Serenity’s temperamental systems, the voice yelling for Book to open the main cargo doors and for Simon to get his skinny, Core-bred pigu to the bay yesterday. The rest of the message – presumably including the order for her to get her own pigu to the engine room – went unnoticed by Kaylee, as the sudden deafening rush of blood in her ears drowning out her captain’s voice.

The petite woman quickly shook off her fearful stupor, scrambling quickly to get herself and her tools out of the metal pit before the battered ground transport roared into the bay with her four crewmates aboard, the high-speed entrance a result of either being chased by the victims of a failed double-cross or because one of her friends was injured. Once out of the pit, Kaylee dashed over to the controls for the doors, jabbing the button to close the hatch and leaving the met