Disclaimer thingy: Firefly/Serenity are owned by other folks and not by me, though I appreciate being able to write some stuff purely for fun inspired by the Firefly 'Verse. All constructive comments and feedback from you shiny readers out there much appreciated!

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When Mal and Zoë arrived back at the ship, they found Kaylee sitting outside in the smoggy sunshine on a folding chair, watching the life of the docks walk by. She smiled up at them as they stopped by the entrance ramp. “Hey! How’d it go? We got a job?”

“We got a job.” Mal smiled back at his engineer’s enthusiasm. “And…” He dug out the pouch of money and tossed it across to her. “We got enough cashy money for you to go get us fuelled up.”

“Shiny!” Kaylee stashed the pouch carefully and picked up her chair, folding it shut. “I’ll go get that sorted right away.”

“Take Jayne with you,” instructed Mal. Kaylee pulled a face.

“Okay.”

Mal and Zoë headed into Serenity, followed by Kaylee who quickly disappeared to dump her chair and fetch Jayne and the depleted fuel cells she would be exchanging. Mal and Zoë walked up the cargo bay stairs after her. As they moved along the fore passage Mal said, “You want to take a break? It’s pretty near my shift.”

“Okay, sir.” Zoë stopped outside the door to her cabin, leaving him to walk on to the bridge alone.

It took little time for Kaylee and Jayne to make the journey to a refueling yard on the mule, and even less time for Kaylee to fit the new fuel cells after they’d returned. Take-off clearance came through and Mal lifted Serenity up through the atmosphere and out into space, setting a preliminary course for Athens. He was checking vectors and starting to calculate a route that gave a compromise between distance and traffic, when the co-pilot’s chair beside him creaked. He turned his head to see River smiling at him. “Hey, little albatross,” he said comfortably, looking back at the charts on the console display. “Ho