Jayne planned to sing Kaylee’s praises for days. Months even. The platform system she’d developed lowered him to the top of the train smooth as an elevator. A very windy, unstable, but overall quite safe elevator. It was really no more than a small, sturdy rectangular floor with four poles rising about a foot from each corner and connecting to four cables that met on the hook of the crane. A rim of cables attached to the tips of each of the four poles, binding them together, creating a low wall to keep things from sliding off if the wind shifted the level too much. But Jayne felt like the Captain of his personal platform with the wind whipping through his hair like it was. Unable to resist, he propped one boot on the lower rail and reached one hand out to touch the support cable. Yep. All the needed was a parrot and an eye patch and the picture would be complete. That and a boat, some nice ocean water, a salty sea breeze, cheap rum, and a crew… but damn if he didn’t feel like a pirate king with the wind whipping through his hair like that!

He grinned fiercely and a bug smacked against his teeth. With a loud hock, he spit it out over the side, just shy of the edge of the train. Serenity matched the velocity of the train car and when the platform was a mere inch above it, Jayne called up to Kaylee to stop, then stepped out onto the roof of the box car. Easy as pie. Nothing broken or jammed. Wind thankfully not knocked out of him. The rest would be so much easier now, going in clean. Mal’s hands appeared through the roof, tipping up the access panel on the top of the car. Jayne called up for slack, then passed his platform through the roof to Mal before climbing down to help. Zoë was straining to move a pair of thick green boxes toward their platform. Jayne and Mal joined in with hardly a word. The boxes were heavier than Jayne thought they should be. It took all three of them to lift and shimmy the first into place.

“Maybe we should do two loads,” Jayne suggested.

Mal shook his head. “Not enough time.”

O