On the third day of Christmas my true love gave to me three french hens

Mal was tired. He, Book and Zoë spent all yesterday afternoon tramping round town trying to locate his missing crew members. They’d investigated abandoned buildings, searched every alley in the place, visited all the bars and talked to all the lowlifes trying to get a line on Jayne and Kaylee. They’d came up wanting.

He’d come to the conclusion that the mechanic and mercenary were no longer on the planet. They were out in the black somewhere on a ship. So first they had to locate the right ship. Naturally this planet had to be a popular port with ships landing and leaving atmo almost constantly.

So he sent Wash to the Port captain to get a list of all those ships which had taken off in the last day. Of course even if they got the list, they had no way of knowing which one held the culprits and his crew. Book and Zoe had gone to talk to the sheriff and see if they could find out about any other undesirables around.

There was also the matter of why would anyone snatch Jayne or Kaylee? Jayne probably had a list of enemies as long as his arm. But wouldn’t they just kill him? There’d be no point in kidnapping. And of course no-one could hate Kaylee. A worse thought, and one he was avoiding, was that his people were snatched because of some crime they’d all done.

Speculating wasn’t helping, to keep himself busy he started going through all the stuff they hauled from the alley yesterday.

All Jayne’s going to town weapons were there, guns, knives, brass knuckles, emergency grenade. The list he’d given Jayne was there too, all crumpled up from too much handling, each item painstakingly marked off. The big man had been trying gorram hard to make up for what he’d done at Ariel.

Mixed up with all the boring purchases and parts for Serenity were Kaylee’s Christmas things. The jumble of bright packages, bags and boxes didn’t mean much to him. He had no idea what to do with them. But Kaylee had her heart set on a celebration. So when