“Hitting landfall in ten minutes, Captain,” River announced.

Mal gave a slight nod and continued to look at the star charts from the co-pilot's seat. He wanted to make sure they took the quickest and less fuel guzzling trip to Beaumonde and then onto the Training House to pick up Inara, Zoe and the rugrats.

“Term does not apply. They have not reached the stage where their lower limbs move about and propel them through the ground,” River muttered.

“Say what now?” Mal looked up in confusion.

“You called Zoe's children rugrats. They cannot crawl around yet, therefore they cannot be considered rugrats,” she rolled her eyes in a manner that Mal was quickly accustoming himself. The doc hadn't been wrong when he'd described the little albatross as a brat.

“Better a brat than a brigand,” she muttered again.

“River, we gonna have to have a talk again, about you announcing to the world people's private thoughts?” he warned lightly.

“But you pay me to announce people's private thoughts,” she gave him a smirk as she descended Serenity into Harvest's atmo.

“Not mine, I don't. Now you just concentrate that genius brain a yours on getting us landed right and proper, and I'll concentrate on captainy things,” he turned back to his chart wondering why the hell he kept a reader on if all she did was annoy him.

“Because you love your pilot,” she answered amused.

“River,” he warned.

“Concentrating on landing, sir,” she said but had a mischievous twinkle in her eyes.

“Hey, Cap'n?” Kaylee came in looking somewhat worried.

“No.”

“But you ain't even heard what I was gonna ask!” she protested.

“I don't hafta. You got your 'the ship needs somethin' and I need ta ask the Cap'n for some money' look. So the answer's no,” he said without looking up from the starchart.

“How can ya tell what look I got on my face if you ain't even looked at it yet?” she demanded.

Mal looked up then back down to his chart. “There I done looked at your pretty little face and saw what I needed to see; the answer'