Weeks Eight and Nine

"There it is, right off in the... incredible distance," Wash admitted, pointing forward through Serenity's cockpit windows. "You should just be able to make it out as a little marble."

"Yeah," Jayne agreed - he had seem this before, after all, and presumably knew what to look for. "Lots of different colors - green and gray, and blueish and brown."

"Right - I think I can just make it out," I said, "In the side of that cluster of stars that kind of looks like a big pointed hat."

"That's the one," Wash agreed. "Persephone. Three hours to go before I have to make a final approach."

"I can't wait to get there," I admitted, and Jayne shot me a look with his eyebrows raised. Jayne and I had spent a fair bit of time together this trip, and though he'd never gotten me alone in his bunk like he obviously wanted, (or gotten into *my* bunk,) we'd had one playful kissing session in the break room when no-one else was up and awake, and my resistance to his macho charms was definitely slipping. Even though Jayne was obviously a 'bad boy' type... well, there was an appeal to that, as well as nicer guys like Jonny and lazy slackers of Bester's stripe. I'd been with more than one back on Three Hills, though possibly never one quite as bad for me as Jayne Cobb.

"Hmm... are we on our course vector right?" Jayne said, looking from the window to the display on Wash's console.

Wash peered at it. "I suppose there's a good chance we'll need to make a course correction in... oh, in the next fifteen minutes or so." His fingers danced over the keyboard, pulling up sensor readings and projections and whatever else was required. "Yeah. Just a tiny little burn, but might as well take it now..." He hovered his finger over a little red button, then pressed it for about half a second and then released again.

Before he'd even taken it off, though, we could feel the boom and rumble travelling through the ship, and I knew immediately that something had gone wrong.

"What... that's not a good sound, is i