Kaylee’s Lament

Chapter Fifteen

“There she goes,” Mal said, a wistful tone in his voice. “Never thought I’d see the day she left Serenity.”

The she that he was speaking of was a very heavy box. It was designed to withstand all manner of ugliness in the Black and survive. Serenity’s transponder. If the engine was Serenity’s heart, and the bridge her brain, then this was as close to a soul as a ship could mechanically have.

Active, it would broadcast the ship’s data to anyone who cared to look. Passive, it did little save record telemetry and do a limp broadcast of the ship’s unique transponder code, useful for proximity alarms to detect once your vessel had been scragged by Reavers, overcome with mutiny, merely exploded, or subject to the ten thousand other ailments her mortal steel was heir to. It could be shielded (and was, by smart smugglers) to avoid easy detection, but it was factory sealed against casual invasion. Wherever she went, whatever happened to her, it would be recorded here for investigators. It was record of her whole life, from the moment she came “alive” to the present moment. The radiovoltaic cell inside insured it a long, long life. And it was designed to not be removed from the ship. Ever.

Ever is a long time. Between Kaylee, Tinker, and Althea, they had removed it—after two solid days of knuckle-bruising work. But it had been necessary.

One of the main problems with the Plan was the not-getting-caught part. Dropping out of the sky on a lonesome piece of prairie on an untamed moon in the middle of the night to steal something was easy, and unlikely to get you caught. Flying right up to an Alliance supply depot, having the loot loaded on by unionized Alliance stevedores, and getting away without a trace, well, that was a little out of Serenity’s element. The Alliance port facility would latch on to Serenity’s transponder the moment she came within range, and regardless of what other fancy flying the ship did, the transponder code would be forever recorded i