"You know, for an Esper, you sure get shot down a lot," quipped Jo Schmidt.
"I also have a kill record ten times as long as the rest of yours put together!" snapped Max Vasser angrily, almost shouting and advancing threateningly on Jo.
"At ease, Lieutenant Commander!" snapped Commander Lee Carter. "And you, button your lip, Lieutenant!" she barked at Jo, clearly not in the mood for any attitude from either of her subordinates.
Jo looked sheepish, suddenly realizing that this situation was a lot more serious than she had first imagined, and did her best to make herself invisible. Max just clamped her lips shut and stared stonily ahead. Sam and Alex very wisely fled the room.
Carter shook her head in dismay and reached up to rub her temples. She could feel one of those headaches coming on -- the kind she always got when her crew screwed up royally. "Max..." she began. "What am I going to do with you? We've only had our new Scorpion planes for a few days and you've already lost one!" Carter shook her head again and sighed deeply. "It's my fault this happened."
That was the last thing Max expected to hear, but the only visible sign of her astonishment was the slight raising of the eyebrows.
Carter continued, although she was talking not so much to Max as she was berating herself for her own irresponsibility. "I should never have let you go on patrol alone, not this soon after the cease-fire with the Mullurans. If we'd all been there this wouldn't have happened."
Max had no idea how to respond to her wing commander's sudden turn of mood. She had been fully prepared to suffer a stiff dressing down and even disciplinary action, but to be instead faced with Carter's self-recriminations was completely unexpected. "Lee, I..." she began, but found no words to continue. Suddenly she felt very guilty, and that was another emotion she wasn't prepared for and in fact had little experience with.
Her failed esper ability was already affecting the squadron! How could she continue flying with the others? "Lee, I..." she began again, but again the words caught in her throat. Firming her resolve this time though, she forced herself to press on. "I request permission to be grounded."
Carter looked at her XO as though she thought Max was insane. "Grounded?" she repeated, unsure of what Max was trying to get at. "Of course you're grounded until they ship us a new Scorpion."
But Max was shaking her head. "No, I mean grounded until further notice."
"What? What the hell are you talking about, Max?"
"Never mind," growled Max. "Just ground me, will you?"
"Not a chance. Not until you tell me what's going on," replied Carter resolutely. She stepped closer to her friend and asked, "What the hell happened out there in the Oort cloud yesterday?"
Max turned away angrily. She was never one for sharing her feelings -- better to keep everything bottled up inside where it belonged. And she certainly didn't want to discuss her psychic esper troubles with anyone, not even Lee Carter. No, better she just remove herself from the equation. But when she glanced back, she saw that Carter hadn't budged, that she was still stubbornly waiting for an answer to her question. Max knew then that she had no choice.
She turned her back again and took a few steps away from Carter. In a low voice, she said, "It's my esper power..."
Carter waited for more, but when none was forthcoming, she prodded Max to continue. She knew how Max felt about these heart-to-heart talks, and didn't want to do anything to make her friend clam up even tighter, so as gently as she could, asked, "What about your esper power, Max?"
"It's gone," was the surprising answer.
"What do you mean, 'gone'?"
"Gone!" shouted Max, spinning about and facing Carter. "It's gone!" All her pent up anger was bursting forth now. "I fought a single Mulluran corvette and they beat the crap out of me! I couldn't see! The future was a blank! Do you understand what that's like?"
"As a matter of fact, Max, I do," replied Carter. "The rest of us fly like that all the time. We don't have your special prescience, and we get along just fine."
"That's exactly what I'm talking about," retorted Max. "I'm just like the rest of you now!"
Carter understood now. In Max's eyes, she wasn't unique anymore; she felt she'd lost the one thing that made her special, and it was destroying her self-confidence.
"You've been through a rough time, Max," suggested Carter sympathetically. "You lost your best friend Jazz back on Rostella for the second time, and there was nothing you could do about it except watch it happen. That's bound to affect your performance Give it a chance. I'm sure your esper sight will return and you'll be good as new."
Max didn't buy Carter's reasoning for a second, but she appreciated what Carter was trying to say. "I hope you're right," she said finally.
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