On Board Serenity

In the Black

Harvey Breisch walked slowly around the cargo bay, examining every piece of cargo and checking it off against the inventory sheet on the clipboard in his hand. Most people preferred to use computer pads for inventory, but Harvey didn’t really trust computers. He put much more faith in a simple pen-and-paper method. Besides, he was on Serenity now, not Destiny, and he had a strong desire to prove that he was a vital member of the crew.

After marking off the last item on the sheet, Harvey sighed and wiped an arm across his brow. The temperature on Destiny had always been cool and comfortable. Captain Reynolds seemed to like things a bit on the warm side, and the bit of fat around Harvey’s midsection served as insulation. He was a bit too pudgy for his like, but his arms under his black skin were pure muscle, the result of many years spent as Load Master to seven different ships. He could bench press with the best of them, and his plan was to prove that fact.

Setting down the clipboard, he walked over to where the small crowd was gathered around the single weight bench underneath the catwalk. He looked up to the right towards the door to shuttle two. With fifteen people on Serenity, living space had been cut a bit short, so Harvey had opted to be the one without a room. Instead, he stored all his belongings in Togan’s room, which was the empty room across from River and next to Simon. He slept on a cot in shuttle two, which he didn’t mind at all. The shuttle had its own environmental controls so he could lower the temperature to where he liked it.

As for the rest of Destiny’s former crew, Etris and Rian shared the empty crew quarters by the bridge, and Spooky and Gretta slept in the spare room across from Book. That room, of course, had been a storage room before, so Harvey had moved everything from that room into an empty set of lockers next to the weapon lockers. It had originally been suggested that someone stay in Kaylee’s room for the time being, but that