The Treasure of Lei Fong Wu

Chapter Nineteen

“Wash?” Kaylee called over the intercom. She could have shouted from the engine room, and assuming all of the hatches were open, Wash could hear her in the cockpit – a Firefly was that small. But she preferred the comm. for technical issues, and this was an important one. “Y’there?”

“What do you need, monkeywrench?” He had that fake-cheerful tone in his voice he got whenever Zoe was out on an operation. He really loved her, and Kaylee thought that was wonderful.

“I been getting’ her ready to lift, like Commander Moronical said, and I was checkin’ over the upper and lower regulating capacitors, and I found something funny.”

“I take it this doesn’t involve a banana peel.”

“Not that kinda funny,” she agreed. “Those caps are burning hot.”

“They always burn hot. Or so you tell me.”

“Yeah, but there’s hot and then there’s hot.”

“I take it this is the latter sort.”

“I’m thinkin’.”

“Well,” Wash said, slowly, “What does that mean?”

“What does it mean?” asked Kaylee, exasperated? “What d’you mean, what does it mean?”

“I mean that I’m in charge of the front end of the ship, you’re in charge of the back end. That’s the deal. I tell you what I mean when I need to, and you tell me what you mean when I need to. Dong ma?”

“It means that we got about a fifty-fifty shot at blowin’ a cap and losin’ power in a crunch. I got one spare cap – just one – and both o’ these tootsies are hot enough to fry an egg on.”

“Why’s it happening? We aren’t even in the sky, yet.”

“That’s what’s got me concerned. Blowin’ a cap ain’t no big deal if we got a box of ‘em. We replace one, on our merry. But they don’t blow just for giggles. See, the main an’ auxillary power trains meet at the outtake manifold, which builds up charge on account o’ the amount o’ power it’s carryin’, and it spills that charge into the upper and lower regulatin’ capacitors, where they sit there all nice an’ happy suckin’ in all that juice. When they reach three quarters’ capacit