Max had no idea how long she lay in the pilot's couch of her starfighter, just drifting among the cold, dark tatters of Serenity's outermost domains. In her semi-delirious state, the passage of time had no clear meaning. Eventually however, she became aware of an insistent and irritating buzzing, which repeated itself at short intervals, forcing her out of her nightmares and back to the world of the living.
It took her a few moments to remember where she was. Impatiently stabbing at the alarm cutoff switch with outstretched index finger, Max sat back upright and quickly composed herself, all recent mental turmoil relegated to the secret, back compartments of her mind for the time being. Grabbing hold of the long-ignored flight stick, she righted her Scorpion from its slow tumble and set it back on its proper course.
A cursory glance of the long-range sensor scope showed a ship approaching the Serenity system at high warp speed -- the reason for the alarm. By its prefix code, it was a Mulluran corvette, last reported fleeing the Battle of Rostella. Probably another suicide run by a renegade Mulluran captain unable to accept that they'd lost the war...
"Well, I'm out here to patrol..." muttered Max. "Might as well get this over with." She banked her starfighter hard over and set off at full burn on an intercept course.
"Starfighter to Mulluran vessel. Respond please," repeated Max for the third time. She was losing her patience. "If you do not respond immediately, I will assume you have hostile intentions and take appropriate action." That should get their attention.
It did.
The explosion right outside her canopy was the Mulluran captain's answer. Fighting the buffeting, Max sent her Scorpion in a corkscrew evasive maneuver away from the belligerent Mulluran ship. "Fine, we can play it that way too if you want," ground from between her clenched teeth. A tight Immelmann sent her Scorpion careening back towards her adversary, and she let loose a volley of phaser bursts sure to cripple anything in their path.
Unfortunately and to Max's infinite surprise, the corvette was no longer where it was supposed to be. Her eyes narrowed in suspicion. This was no rookie she was dealing with. And just to prove her right, another series of explosions, this time even closer, rocked her cockpit before she had a chance to dodge out of the way.
"Dammit!" Where was her vaunted Esper ability? She had always been able to sense the intentions of her opponents in battle -- known what they were going to do seconds before they knew themselves! It was impossible to outmaneuver Max or to surprise her. The Esper gift was what made her such a fearsome fighter, and had never failed her. Until now. She couldn't understand it.
She decided to put some distance between herself and the corvette, so she opened up the throttle all the way and poured on the gee's, burning back in the general direction of the heart of the Serenity system, but try as she might, the renegade Mulluran warship was attached to her tail like a shadow on the sidewalk at midday. None of her corkscrews and scissor maneuvers had the least effect. On the contrary, her gyrations were bleeding off speed, allowing the corvette to close slowly but surely.
When the first detonations from near hits began bursting outside her cockpit canopy again, she knew she was in trouble. Max suddenly realized that she might be granted her morbid wish to join Jazz in the afterlife after all! She wished she hadn't insisted quite so vehemently on going on patrol by herself, otherwise the other Banshees might have ignored her grousing and they'd be here now offering support.
In a heroic, last-ditch effort, Max flipped her Scorpion over head-over-heels while still keeping her forward momentum, and lined up the corvette in her gun sights. "Hasta la vista, baby," she hissed, and squeezed the trigger. Four smoky ion trails from a quartet of quantum missiles spiraled away from her fighter towards the oncoming ship, but a split second later they were detonated prematurely, struck by perfectly-aimed phaser blasts from the Mulluran warship.
The shockwave from the quadruple explosion slammed into Max's Scorpion, spinning it out of control. Max was smacked around inside her cockpit from the gee forces. She fought futilely to regain a grip on the joystick, but the universe was spinning insanely around her, and she found herself fighting to keep from throwing up. Alarms started wailing, and the starfighter's impassionate computer voice intoned, "Warning. Warning. Stress tolerance exceeded."
"Shut up, you damn machine!" grated Max in between gasps of air as she fought the controls. Smoke began seeping through growing cracks in the control panel before her making her cough and starting her eyes watering. She slapped the activation control on her life support belt and felt the forcefield snap on and fresh air filter past her nose. Max breathed deeply, feeling much of the vertigo-induced nausea lifting. The smoke turned oily, and a shower of sparks burst from the dashboard. The life support field absorbed the shock, but she instinctively threw up her hands to ward her eyes from the fireworks anyway.
Max felt more internal explosions through the seat of her pants as her starfighter started breaking up around her. "Eject. Eject. Eject...," intoned the infuriating computer voice through the hailstorm of sparks and smoke.
Reaching up over her head with both hands, Max grasped the ejector handles and yanked with all her might. Explosive bolts blasted the cockpit section of her Scorpion free of the rest of the stricken craft, and small but powerful thrusters sent it rocketing up and away. The force of acceleration pressed Max down in her seat, but she managed to twist her neck around to get a last view of the fighter. As she watched, it exploded in an impressive incendiary cloud of debris and plasma. Of the Mulluran corvette there was no sign.
Who was piloting that corvette? The few remaining renegade Mulluran ships out there usually picked soft civilian targets to destroy, so why did they attack her? And of more immediate concern, why hadn't they finished her off yet? She was a sitting duck -- controls dead, spinning out of control, sure to be caught in the gravity well of one of Serenity's planets very soon. And why hadn't she been able to anticipate their thoughts using her Esper ability? Too many questions without answers. She put them all out of her mind for now though, and focused on the immediate emergency.
The sensor readout, and almost everything else, on the control panel before her was dead and burnt-out, but she could see the bulk of a planetoid looming large right outside her canopy. Her escape pod's autopilot was heading that way and would land her without any intervention from her, so she morosely decided to just sit and enjoy the ride.
Max doubted that whoever was flying the corvette had just forgotten about her, so there had to be some other explanation as to why she hadn't been blown to bits. There was one thing she knew for certain though -- she no longer wanted to die; she had something to live for now. She would live long enough to get her revenge.
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