War veteran Mal Reynolds leads the crew of the Serenity in hunting for a new buyer for salvage stolen from the Alliance when his buyer rejects the delivery.
Mal and the crew of Serenity must go to an old enemy in the hopes that she will buy their Alliance-marked cargo. The ship's new passengers prove to be more than they first appeared.
The crew takes a job stealing an Alliance shipment from a train, risking their lives by doing business with a notorious man -- only to discover that the cargo is desperately-needed medical supplies.
The crew plans to lay low during a trip to a planet in the Alliance Core, until Simon proposes a lucrative job to break into a hospital to help his sister.
The crew takes extreme measures after Mal and Wash are kidnapped by Niska, a psychopathic crime lord with a fondness for torture, during an ordinary mission to sell cargo.
Desperate for a real job, Mal agrees to take on his unscrupulous former wife Saffron and her plan to steal a valuable weapon from a rich man from her past.
Zoe and Mal receive a special delivery in the mail -- the body of a former comrade who served with them during the war, who wanted them to take him home to rest.
Serenity's crew comes to the aid of a house of prostitutes led by a friend of Inara's when a powerful man learns that one of the women is pregnant with his son, and plans to take him.