The Dr. Tam Journals – Part 2 – The Train Job

Kaylee’s tummy settled down after the second biscuit and she opened the red leather bound notebook again, hoping to finish before morning or before Simon awoke to find her missing and came looking for her. Sometimes she felt the ship shudder or groan in an unfamiliar way and she would awake with a start and rush off to the engine room. A few times he had followed her after a few minutes, groggily asking her what was wrong. He though it would be difficult to explain that the ship had it’s own sounds and rhythms but he understand very well, explaining that a patient was the same, the sound of their breathing, the heartbeat, the pulse, brainwaves, all had a peculiar pattern that if not correct, indicated something was wrong. They found this common ground bound them more tightly in that they were both specialist, although in totally different areas.

The ship was quiet now and Kaylee could relax, alone in the bowels of the vessel. The policy of not having a 24 hour watch had bothered her when she first joined the ship, afraid something would go wrong as they all slept. But as she grew familiar with Serenity and her crew she began to trust them. Wash, and now River, had always set a proper course so they wouldn’t run into a moon or asteroid field. She set the engines at a slower pace as they slept, giving them more time to response to an emergency or a proximity warning of another vessel.

The one time that failed was when Jubal Early had boarded the ship. The Capt’n suspected he had some sort of stealth device on his ship. He had also approached from directly behind in a very small vessel so that might have thrown off the proximity warning. Kaylee shuddered as she remembered the bounty hunter, the cold callous way he had asked if she had ever been raped, then forcing her to tell him where River was, then being tied up and then the fear that gripped her as she lay on the engine room floor until River managed to save them all.

Kaylee pushed these thought aside a