Perseus’ Arm looked like just about every other Rim world settlement that Simon had seen so far in his travels with Serenity. It was a mining/farming settlement with about two thousand people living either in town or on one of the many outlying farms. Perseus’ Arm wasn’t the largest settlement on the planet of Calabus, that honor belonged to Cassiopeia, the capital city that lay over four hundred miles from Perseus’ Arm. Thankfully, Calabus was a Rim world, and the Alliance presence was minimal. According to Captain Reynolds’s the closest Alliance patrol was at least five days away. Because of that, Captain was allowing Simon and River to accompany Jayne into town for supplies while he and Zoë met some potential clients for a nice smuggling job.

Simon would have liked to be with Kaylee, Serenity’s genius mechanic, but said mechanic had work to do on the ship, and Serenity’s infirmary needed supplies. He couldn’t trust Jayne to get the supplies correctly since the big merc couldn’t even pronounce or spell penicillin, much less any of the other drugs Simon needed to keep the infirmary stocked.

Simon was speaking to the general store owner getting an idea of what medical supplies the store had and comparing it mentally to the list he had. Behind him Jayne was gathering the other supplies they needed for the ship, foodstuffs mostly. They had just come off a good smuggling job that had paid rather well, and Captain had given Jayne enough money to buy some fresh vegetables and food staples like sugar and coffee that the crew had been doing without for quite awhile. Jayne also had clear instructions to get a receipt that the Captain could compare to the change that Jayne would return with.

River was walking behind Jayne, playing some type of game that Simon was finding amusing. She kept stepping in Jayne’s shadow moving quickly whenever Jayne did trying to always step in the big man’s shadow. What was amusing to Simon was the fact that River’s game was annoying Jayne.

The owner of the general store we