A/N: Thanks for the reviews; it was great encouragement to keep on with the story! Thanks so much for reading! I hope you enjoy this chapter.

Love, Loyalty and Serenity: Ch 2

Icarus was a not a planet in its own right, but a large moon circling a giant gas planet. The solar system that was home to Icarus also contained the desert planet the crew of Serenity had recently fled but that smaller, denser planet was much closer to the star at the center of the system. Large enough to hold an atmosphere, the cold moon Icarus had been terraformed by the Alliance long ago, but was located so far from the core planets, and so far from its own sun, that living here had never really caught on. Although the energy from its star was too feeble at this distance to create a temperate climate, the surface temperature was warm enough to sustain life due to widespread geothermal activity. Now the moon was home to a few families of means who’d built formidable estates for themselves. Inara had been there before and had told Mal intriguing stories of the riches stockpiled away in the huge ancestral homes of Icarus; the stories had him itching for a chance to accompany her on a visit and see it for himself. She’d gone to visit a friend this trip, a woman who had left the Guild and married a self-proclaimed baron. Companions rarely got married, but such an event was more common out on the fringes of civilization where companionship of any type was difficult for the hard-working locals to attract. Her friend Fariah had been needling Inara for a visit for many cycles now; she was lonely, she complained, and never heard any of the Guild gossip anymore. Inara was sometimes in this quadrant and Fariah made her promise she would come visit if she ever got close to Icarus.

“Okay, Zoe, where are the Amity Mountains? We need to find the homestead of Lord Zarlock.”

“I’m pulling up the chart now; here it is. River, take us towards the north pole of the moon. Look for a chain of mountains running east to northwest. As for