The first time she found her way down there, they thought she was lost. They very kindly offered to show her the way back to the main corridor, but she surprised them.

“That’s a uranium accelerator core, ain’t it?” Kaylee had asked. “One of the latest ones. It sure is shiny.” She gazed at it, her eyes wide.

Chief Engineer Bryden Cho couldn’t help but smile. “You like engines?”

Kaylee coloured a little. “It’s what I do.” She’d explained, a little diffidently.

Cho chuckled. “Then it’s nice for us to have visitors.” He could see his subordinates nodding. “Mostly folks don’t want to see the workings. They prefer to think things happen by a kinda magic.”

“Oh, I know what you mean.” Kaylee grinned back at the grizzled man, probably as old as her father, and with more than a passing resemblance too, apart from his slightly almond eyes. “I can talk ‘til I’m blue in the face, but most of my crew don’t take in more’n one word in ten. If that.”

“Not meant to,” Cho said stoutly. “That’s for us to know, and them to marvel at.”

Kaylee laughed, delighted to be included in the ‘us’ part. “Captain dummy talk,” she said.

“Oh, that’s the truth.” Cho had twinkled at her.

From that point it was as if she was their favourite niece, or at least a good friend of the family, and they looked forward to her popping in whenever she felt she could get away from the others.

“Does she speak to you?” she’d asked at one point.

Cho nodded. “Tells me what she needs, when she needs it.” He looked at her shrewdly. “I'm guessing you’ve got the gift too, Miss Kaylee.”

She shrugged. “Serenity’s my girl. We’re like a partnership, each depending on the other, and neither of us is gonna let the other down.”

“It only seems to come to the best of us, that gift.”

She preened.

That morning, though, it was a brief visit.

“Can’t stay long,” Kaylee said regretfully. “We’re heading down to Ling Miao.”

Cho made a sound that resembled an elephant she’d seen once in a zoo on Greenleaf, then