Serenity floated through the black, following the rainbow coloured trail of fuel, plasma, and debris leading towards a derelict ship. She and her crew were on a job for Fanty and Mingo, collecting salvage from disabled and abandoned ships.
Mal sat in the pilot's chair, flipping switches, scanning the debris as river, in the copilot's chair, steered the ship. They were going for a shipment of gold, left on the aptly named Leprechaun. The ironically unlucky ship had been hit in the engines by a meteor, had floated along for a while, then, recognized as a lost cause, abandoned by all hands. All Mal had to do was take Jayne and Zoe over, collect the gold, and come back. Easy as pie . . . which is what had Mal worried. This was an important shipment, there might be booby traps.
Later, near the airlock, Mal, Jayne, and Zoe were suited up and ready, with the exception of the rabbit's foot Jayne was attempting to affix to his space suit.
"Jayne, just leave it," Zoe said, fixing him with a dead-pan stare.
"Luck didn't help them, and it probably won't help us." Mal offered, trying to speed things up.
"I don't care, I'm taking it," Jayne said, finally clipping it to the front of his suit, "We need every gorram bit of luck we can get."
Kaylee walked up to the control panel for the airlock.
"Everything's shiny captain, you guys ready?" she asked cheerfully.
"If Jayne's finally done with his frettin'" Mal said, shooting a pointed glance at Jayne.
"Okay! Good luck with the crime!" she bubbled.
Jayne just grumbled. "So easy for you to be happy, you aint gotta do nothin'"
Mal grinned. "Kaylee's off on marshmallow mountain, where there are streams of chocolate and lumps of ice-cream as rocks"
"Stop your fighting and lets get this over with," Zoe said, interrupting the banter, "The quicker we get the goods and blow this place, the better."
Five minutes later they were floating though the derelict Leprechaun, on the way to the cargo hold. Suddenly, as they turned a corner, they found their job significantly easier.
"Well, this just gets more and more interesting," he said, perplexed, "Maybe Kaylee has a sister she never told us about."
The path the the cargo hold was marked with a long painting of a rainbow, painted by some crew member with far to much time on their hands.
"These people sure had a knack for irony, sir." Zoe said, a faint grin on her face.
Meanwhile, in the cockpit, River was flipping through a childrens' book, looking for a red and white striped tourist and his yellow and black striped nemesis. Finishing quickly, she decided to take a walk. Her brain would tell here if anything was about to happen, long before the ship's alarms would.
She wandered towards the engine room at the other end of the ship. Perhaps Kaylee would play with her, if she wasn't too busy.
Kaylee, however, wasn't in the engine room when River arrived. Turning around, she walked towards the infirmary. Perhaps she and Simon were talking in there. She stopped short when she passed Simon's room. Apparently Simon and Kaylee were both too busy.
Returning to the cockpit, she played briefly with the dinosaurs on the console before going back to her book.
Outside, in the black, Mal, Jayne, and Zoe had reached the cargo bay and melted the lock. Inside, the walls were lined with boxes. Upon examination, they all had the alliance stamp marking them as a vital gold shipment.
"Jayne, get on the comm, tell Kaylee to open the outer airlock door, this is gonna take a while." He ordered, then, turning to Zoe, "Lets get this stuff back on the ship."
Each of them attached four boxes to their suit to start. Mal, on point, was about halfway back when suddenly the path ahead collapsed in. A large piece of debris had crashed into the hull, blocking enough to the passageway to prevent them getting through with the gold.
"River," Mal said into the radio, "We have to find a new way through, warn us if anything else is going to hit, ok?"
"Roses are red
Violets are Blue
The flowers are dead
And so are you."
was her only response.
"Yeah, well, not yet, and not so long as you do your job." Mal said calmly. He could handle morbid.