Disclaimer – Everything either does belong to Joss or it should. I’m just borrowing his shiny ‘verse for a while.

The 21st Lancers belong to the British Army so I’m borrowing them too. I hope they don’t mind

* * *

Serenity/Granite Gorge – Deep Space – 2520AD

Mal returned to the bridge River in tow ‘Zoe’s handing out weaponry. Jayne thinks it’s Reavers like always’ the Captain said.

‘I don’t think so unless they’ve taken to following folks around for months on end’ Wash replied.

‘Months?’

Wash nodded. I checked Serenity’s computer logs and I found random radar anomalies stretching right back to when we left Toulouse. Maybe we stayed there too long’

‘Why did you never spot it before?’

‘A Trance’s Radar is slightly better than a Firefly’s in raw power output but they would know that and would back off a bit more to counter it. What it wouldn’t know is that the only real upgrade the Raiders ever made was to the software drivers running the computer on this thing. The actual radar signal is exactly the same but how the ship interprets the data that bounces back is different. When it comes right down to it thanks to the better drivers we’re spotting our “glitch” so much more often now it didn’t look like random noise like it did on Serenity’

Wash tapped on the screen. ‘I’ll say one thing though. I think they must have used a lot of Radar Absorbent Materials in the ship following us because it’s a very fuzzy return and the improved software should have even better resolution that it does’

River looked puzzled ‘If we were being followed for that long I would have felt it’ she said.

‘It’s a long way out River’ Mal pointed out.

She looked at him ‘I outrange the Radar’ she said ‘at long distance I don’t get a clear image of peoples thoughts but even that far out I’ll pick up stray emotions and I should have if it’s been that long’ she paused ‘Automated Vessel’ she stated. ‘If there were crew onboard I would have known it was there’

‘A rutting AI ship?’ Mal said