Disclaimer: All recognizable characters, etc. belong not to me, but to Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, and Fox, and no money is being made here. The story, however, is mine.

The trip from Osiris to Persephone was only supposed to take 11 hours with the grav assist I had going for me. Now, it’s taking the better part of two days. In case you couldn’t tell, cruisers ain’t the fastest things in the ‘verse. I did get to see places on a cruiser I hadn’t seen in a while though. Tobias was right in that he had connections. And believe me when I say that not much has changed in the past five years.

And jen dao mei, the one place Tobias didn’t have access too was storage. Guess where my package was? Yep, storage. Oh, and guess where storage was? All the way across the ship from my dock. Talk about pain-in-the-ass.

Not all was bad. Tobias was able to convince the pilot that bought him up to give him access to storage. Turns out he was a mechanic due in Persephone for a cushy Alliance job. But hey, never look a gift horse in the mouth. Getting into storage was now easy. Getting out and getting my package to Liberty was the tough part. Alright, it was kuang qi de. Suicide even.

We got lucky. Not very, but it could be enough. I was invited up to the bridge with Tobias to observe operations. And they had just run into a dead carrier. I arrived just in time to hear an ops officer inform the captain. “…blew out a few months back. Lost all hands, but it was only run by a skeleton crew anyway.”

The captain actually showed concern. “Damn shame. No point in checking for survivors?”

A pilot interrupted. “Sir, there is a reading on that thing. Some residual heat.”

The captain was looking over his shoulder. “Do a sweep.”

The pilot indeed found something. “It’s a transport ship. Firefly class.”

Then, the idiot ops officer piped up. “They still make those?” Now you see why I said idiot.

The captain did know what was happening though. “Illegal salvage. Low-life vultures picking the fl