The Return Home – Part 7

Wash and Kaylee sat on the bridge of Serenity, watching with disbelief as an Alliance missile streaked away from a pursuing gunship straight for Inara’s shuttle. The little ship banked and turned through the lower atmosphere of Persephone, amidst hills and tress, and still the missile chased it, gaining on it with impeding doom. Wash pushed the VTOL’s for full power and willed Serenity toward the shuttle.

“Come on!” he yelled as he twisted Serenity to follow. Zoe was on that shuttle and his brain screamed in despair as he watched the distance closing between the shuttle and certain death for his wife and shipmates

“It’s got a heat lock!” Kaylee yelled from the co-pilot’s seat. She had just arrived after telling Simon they had incoming wounded. Simon had raced to the infirmary to get things ready and she had come on the bridge just in time to hear Wash shout to Inara that a missile was chasing them. She immediately jumped into the co-pilot’s seat and took up a scan of the sensor boards.

“Not for long!” Wash grunted as he set Serenity hard over to the right on a parallel course with and behind the shuttle and then the missile caught the larger heat bloom from Serenity and switched from the shuttle to the larger ship.

“Now what do we do?” Kaylee said to Wash in a frightened voice as the missile lock tone beeped from the control panel,

Wash racked his brain. Missile is a heat seeker, needs heat, only heat is Serenity and the shuttle, need to provide…another source of heat! “Kaylee, do we have any flares?”

“Some….oh no…that’s crazy…I…I understand. I’ll use shuttle two's door!” Kaylee quickly said as she grasped Wash’s plan and then she grabbed the intercom mic. “Simon! Meet me at shuttle two’s entrance!”

She raced from the bridge to a locker under the stairs to the bridge. It was small and had some odds and ends Kaylee kept, including a flare gun with four rotating chambers she had. It was something she had picked up just in case they ever got stranded somewhere and ne