Purgatory

Against West's advice, Max Vasser takes on a simple bounty-hunting job, but uncovers instead an ancient legacy of cold-blooded murder and manipulation. Faced with a shocking foe, she finds her most basic moral convictions called into question, and now she must choose between risking her life and losing her very soul!

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St^r Trek: B^nshee Squ^dron

TThhee WWoorrsstt ooff WWooeess

Richard A. Merk

An "Inimitably Superfluous" Publication

Temecula, California Visit us on the web at: banshees.merknet.com

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T^ble of Contents The Worst of Woes .................................................................3

Table of Contents ...............................................................5 Chapter 1 Margaritaville.....................................................7 Chapter 2 The Hunting of the Snark.................................16 Chapter 3 A Little Information Is a Dangerous Thing .....31 Chapter 4 The Worst of Woes ..........................................44

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Ch^pter 1 M^rg^rit^ville

Wastin' away again in Margaritaville, Searchin' for my lost shaker of salt. Some people claim that there's a woman to blame, But I know -- it’s my own damn fault. - Jimmy Buffett, Margaritaville

Space. It was a dark, cold, and empty place. Just like the food locker aboard the small cargo ship

Rocinanté. Max Vasser shut the locker door and sighed, though anyone within earshot would have heard the rumble of her empty stomach instead.

A dark frown marred the woman's face. How long had it been since her stomach had been rumble-free? She brushed an errant strand of long, brown hair out of her eyes and turned her head towards the sound of marimbas coming from the other corner of the cargo hold. Her frown deepened. Their situation was grim --

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one could almost say desperate -- and growing worse every day they drifted here in orbit with an empty cargo hold, but it was clear the solution wouldn't come from 'Mr. Caribbean Music' over there, so it would be up to her. As usual.

Max picked her way between the big empty packing crates

piled in the center of the hold towards the music. The unmistakable reek of yorna berries punched her in the nose despite the fact that it had been more than three months since they had transported a shipment of that noxious delicacy to Oo-oo-ah. Their last paying job.

She rounded the last stack of crates and was greeted by blue skies, warm tropical sun, turquoise waves lapping a sandy beach, and the unmistakable tinkling of steel drums, and in the middle of it all, sprawled in a hammock stretched between two palm trees, lay the source of her continual vexation.

West. He was dressed in white pants, flowery Hawaiian shirt, and

big straw hat pulled low over his face. His eyes were closed and an empty margarita glass threatened to slip from the fingers of

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the limp hand that dangled over the edge of the hammock, but he was clearly awake because the twitching big toe on his shoeless right foot almost kept time with the saucy Latin rhythm.

The rumble of Max's stomach was superceded by the sound of her grinding teeth. How this man had managed to stay in business as long as he had -- or even to stay alive! -- was beyond her capacity to divine. Why she had quit Starfleet to join him in his quixotic crusade across the galaxy to plant the bootprint of justice on the buttocks of evil (and maybe make some money on the side) was an even bigger mystery.

"West." The only sign that West had heard her was a scrunching of

his nose. He readjusted his position in the hammock, but otherwise didn't budge.

Determined not to be ignored, Max punched the wall control

beside her, and immediately the tropical paradise around them vanished, replaced by the bare gray metal walls and floor of the Rocinanté's cargo hold.

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West turned his head slightly and cracked one eye. "Easy, sweetheart," he drawled from underneath the hat's tattered brim. "It cost me a fortune to have these walls covered in video paint. You'll bust the power tap if you treat it that way. Why do you always have to interrupt my siestas anyway?" Ever since this madwoman had joined his formerly one-man operation, she'd done nothing but complain about his lack of discipline and initiative. Sure, in the beginning the sex had been great, but that had quickly given way to the quagmire of veiled disappointment and resentment in which they found themselves trapped now. They had ceased to function as a team, and each was convinced that he or she knew the best way to go about things, and that the other one was a complete moron.

"Your siesta? You're always on a siesta! That's the problem!" West frowned and adjusted his position in the hammock

again. Max's foul temper was threatening to spoil his mellow mood. "What the hell's buggin' you, Max?" he grumped. "I know working on a small freighter isn't as exciting as flying a starfighter blowing up Nausicaans for a living, but live with it, will you? You're harshing my buzz."

"We haven't had a new job in weeks, West," said Max. "How many credits are left in your bank account? Do we even have enough for our next refueling?"

"Relax," admonished West through an impressive yawn. "Something'll turn up for us. That's the way it goes in this business. You've got your boom times and you've got your slack times. Right now it's a slack time, so just relax an' enjoy it. We're stocked up on supplies. Something'll turn up eventually. It always does."

West settled himself deeper into the hammock again and pulled the straw hat lower over his face, obviously satisfied that his pat reassurances had settled the matter.

Max, however, was of a different opinion, and she knew the one thing that would get him off his butt.

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"We're out of margarita mix."

=/\= Thirty seconds later, West and Max were crowded around the

library computer terminal in the Rocinanté's small living cabin, located in the nose of the ship immediately aft of the control cabin. The actinic glare from the computer bathed their intent faces and half the small room in a spectral glow. West's long-time companion, a cantankerous tribble named Gromit, skwunched his way across the top of the terminal looking for crumbs of food, ignored for the moment by the two humans.

Max was at the computer's controls. She flipped through the New Canada System job ads looking for anything that even remotely seemed like something the Rocinanté could do, but wasn't having much luck, and as the minutes ticked on, was becoming increasingly anxious.

West saw another stern lecture coming his way, so he leaned back on the Queen-sized bed on which he was sitting and just waited for it.

Finally, Max sat back from the terminal and threw up her hands. "There's nothing to do in this backwater system!"

"Like I tried to tell you," said West. "Great Bird of the Galaxy, why did I ever move here?" "Because this is where Starfleet assigned you as part of

Banshee Squadron," said West matter-of-factly. "Me, on the other hand--" he dramatically folding his hands behind his head and smiled "--I like the peace and quiet."

Max scowled. "You would." She returned to the terminal, determined to find something for the Rocinanté to do, some income to support their floundering enterprise. Glowing patterns

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from the screen played across her face in a rapid succession of light and dark as the pages flashed by.

"Hey, what about this?" West craned his neck to see what was on the screen.

"Romulan Ale is illegal, sweetheart." "Didn't think a little technicality like that would bother you.

Hmm... What about this one?" "That's on the other side of the Briar Patch." "Okay, what about this? A bio-shipment of glommers to

Polon II." Gromit emitted an indignant squawk. "I don't think that would be in our best interest."

Max flipped past a dozen more pages. She came to a new

section. The dark gleam in her eyes suddenly burned hotter. "This is interesting..."

West levered himself up on an elbow and peered around Max at what was on the screen.

"No. Absolutely not." "Why not?" asked Max. 12

"No bounties," replied West. "I am not a bounty hunter," he declared resolutely.

"We need the money." "Not that badly." Max swiveled her chair away from the computer terminal to

face the bed. She folded her arms across her chest and said, "You sure about that?" To her eye, West's customary self-assurance was on the verge of wavering, so she decided to press the advantage while she had the chance. She pointed to one particular entry on the display. "Take a look at this one. It's an easy mark, there's plenty of data on the guy, and there's a huge bounty offered. The guy calls himself the Snark! How tough can he be? Ten-thousand Federation credits for one afternoon's work, and we'll be ridding the sector of one more criminal."

West sniffed in distaste. "If his bounty is 10,000 credits, he's probably tougher than he sounds," he said, but leaned forward to read the details of the contract anyway. His face grew ever more displeased as his eyes traveled down the page. "You should forget about this one," he said.

"Why?" "Just trust me." Max wasn't buying it. "You're gonna have to be a little more

forthcoming, West." "I've heard of the Snark. He's no pushover," he said. "Neither am I," replied Max. "No... You're not..." West paused thoughtfully a moment. He

saw that Max wasn't bending so he tried a different approach. "Look, Max, I've gotten to know you well enough to know that you've got a deep-seated sense of right and wrong and a passionate need to dispense justice. It's what made you such a force for good with the Banshees, but it's also what drove you out of Starfleet when you found out about the corruption surrounding Section 31. But now you work on a freighter with a shady character like me and you're dying for some action! To

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deliver the bootprint of justice to the buttocks of evil! To stick a thumb in the eye of every criminal this side of the Briar Patch!"

West's enthusiastic delivery was contagious, for Gromit started squeaking with excitement from his perch atop the computer terminal, and even Max felt the stirrings of righteous fury deep within her breast. But it wasn't enough to squelch the disappointment she felt at West's disapproval of her plan.

"I get the picture, West," she said, her feelings showing. West felt a pang of sympathy for the fiery woman who had

become his business partner, his friend, and maybe something more (though he wasn't prepared to admit that possibility to himself just yet.) Still, she was definitely a special part of his life. He stood from the bed and stepped over to her. Placing his hands on her shoulders, he pulled her up to a standing position in front of him and gently kissed her on the forehead. Max closed her eyes and leaned into him.

"I feel the same way as you do," he said. "Believe me. But bounty-hunting is no kind of life." He released her shoulders and stepped towards the aft hatch leading back out to the cargo holds. "Tomorrow we'll head this bucket out to Tosnoqua and see what we can stir up at the outposts there. I promise. They've always been good to us in the past, I'm sure they'll come through for us again."

With that, the hatch slid shut behind him leaving Max alone with her troubled thoughts.

She desperately wanted to believe in West, in his noble ideals and lofty principles. Underneath his carefully crafted façade of carefree and irresponsible buffoonery, he was a good man with a heart of gold. He was her business partner, her friend, and maybe even something more, but she wasn't sure if they could afford his methods any longer. They needed credits, and they needed them now!

Against her will -- or was it? -- she felt her eyes being drawn once again towards the glowing characters on the library

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computer screen that still displayed the police record and the 10,000 credit bounty for the criminal known as the Snark.

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Ch^pter 2 The Hunting of the Sn^rk

"For, although common Snarks do no manner of harm, Yet, I feel it my duty to say, Some are Boojums—" The Bellman broke off in alarm, For the Baker had fainted away. - Lewis Carroll, The Hunting of the Snark

'It was a dark and stormy night on the little ball of rock that I

call home. An ion storm was in the air, lighting up the sky like a phaser bank on overload.'

That was the sort of idiotic tripe these stories usually started with, thought Max to herself, and in this case -- unfortunately -- the cliché was entirely appropriate.

She pressed herself farther back into the shallow doorway in which she stood, the slight overhang of the old building the only protection against the cold relentless rain. She wished for the forty-seventh time that she had had the foresight to bring along a weathershield, or even an old-fashioned umbrella, but after

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sneaking off the Rocinanté she couldn't very well go back without having to explain herself to West.

She pulled away the wet hair that was plastered to her face and reached down to her side with one hand, testing to see if the cold unyielding lump concealed beneath her leather jacket was still there, and felt reassured. As long as she had that, she had all she really needed. She hoped she wouldn't have to use it, but feared that circumstances would dictate otherwise. That the bounty for the Snark would be paid 'dead or alive' was meager consolation.

Leaving the Rocinanté had been no trick at all -- after all, West trusted her. She had simply waited until West once again lost himself in Caribbean music and booze, then snuck around the other side of the cargo hold to the transporter alcove. The steel drums and marimbas had completely drowned out the brief harmonics as she beamed herself down to the planet Serenity, the Snark's last known whereabouts.

She made planetfall in Serenity City, in the section called simply 'The Zone' by those in the know. It was a ribbon of city a dozen blocks long and two wide where the Commercial Quarter bordered the Warehouse District. The area was a bizarre and sometimes dangerous amalgamation of seedy dive bars and trendy nightclubs; of sleazy, backroom brothels and exclusive, social hotspots; of glittering casinos and dark, dirty alleys; of ritzy tuxedoes and gowns, and filthy, torn rags. It was a place to go with a large group of friends for a night out on the town. It was not a place to wander the streets alone at night.

In a brief moment of weakness, Max wished West was at her side, but he'd made his choice and she'd made hers. She viciously pummeled back another attack of guilt for deceiving him, but with any luck, she'd be back aboard the ship before West woke up tomorrow morning with a fistful of credits to justify her actions.

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=/\= After the whine of the transporter had died down, West

swung out of his hammock, fully awake and alert, and shut off the music. He walked across the cargo hold to the transporter alcove and checked the beam-down coordinates in the buffer, then proceeded forward to the living cabin and the library computer terminal. All was done in complete silence, but his eyes spoke of the hurt and betrayal he felt. He wished Max would trust his judgment more, but he got the impression that sometimes she thought of him as just an overgrown child without a clue how to run his own life, and that hurt more than anything.

Maybe we're just too different, he thought glumly. He wondered if he and Max truly had a future together, or if their affair was just a brief flare in the night, hot as a supernova at first, but quickly fading until everything was sucked into the black hole that was left.

When he sat down in front of the library terminal, Gromit, who was still scrunching around looking for crumbs to vacuum up, squeaked in sympathy, as if to say, "Dames..."

West activated the computer and established a secure datalink with the Serenity City Police HQ computer. The sophisticated law enforcement A.I. system threw up thick firewalls and Boolean booby-traps at his unauthorized intrusion, but a special series of codes from West blew through the defenses like a congested elephant's sneeze through used tissue paper.

He checked a few facts from the police files, looked up his own record just out of old habit, then closed the link, leaving the police computer dazed and confused, and went forward into the cockpit to warm up the Rocinanté's engines.

Max would never forgive him if he overtly interfered in the 'mission' she had set herself, but he was damned if he wasn't going to watch her back. He hoped that in her haste to sneak

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away Max had paid enough attention to the details of the Snark's rap sheet, but he'd be ready in case she hadn't.

Because where there was a Snark, there was also a Boojum.

=/\= Serenity City, even The Zone, was a huge place, with far too

many people to be able to find one lone fugitive, and one as slippery as the Snark could blend in like a nudist at a Betazoid wedding if he wanted to. But Max had a plan. The Snark might be a lowdown thief and hired killer wanted on a dozen worlds for a score of gruesome crimes, but Max knew his weakness.

The Snark was well known to be gunning for another of the Briar Patch Sector's shady underworld characters, a mysterious figure known by a name as whimsical and incongruous as the Snark's -- 'Boojum'. The trouble was that no one actually knew who the Boojum was, since no one who had ever discovered the truth was still breathing. Still, the whereabouts of the man suspected of being the Boojum were no secret. All Max had to do was make like a retired racehorse and stick to the Boojum like glue, and the Snark was sure to show his ugly face sooner rather than later.

The rain was letting up a little, so Max turned up the collar of her jacket, stepped out from her sheltered doorway and made her way up the sidewalk. The streetlamps threw long, sinister shadows before her hurrying feet, and sinuous tendrils of vapors escaping from vents in the sides of buildings writhed along the ground seeking to entwine her legs in their chill, serpentine embrace.

Max suppressed a shiver and forced her feet to maintain a steady walking rhythm.

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Finally she emerged from the shadows into a slightly more upscale part of The Zone where the grime and disrepair were deliberate and chic, designed to contribute to the faux atmosphere of danger and excitement that the late-night partygoers craved. Flickering streetlamps gave way to gaudy neon marquees, noxious vapors drifting from steam vents fled before the smells of cooking food and fine Ferengi cigars, and people became much more plentiful.

Max fell unobtrusively into step behind a loose grouping of spiky-haired, teenaged techno-punks, and it quickly became clear they were headed for the same place she was, as apparently were most of the other Zone denizens.

Some seemed just ordinary citizens of Serenity City -- the kind you wouldn't give a second glance to -- but they were considerably outnumbered by the exotic, the unusual, and the outright bizarre that The Zone typically attracted.

There were dapper, tuxedo-wearing gentlemen escorting striking ladies in bejeweled evening gowns walking alongside gangs of rough, leather-clad teenagers sporting odd hairdos in primary colors. There were young men in modern business suits carrying attaché cases walking alongside longhaired, denim-vested, old hippie dudes spacing out on ganja. There was a gaggle of teenage girls just come from shoe shopping at the mall giggling and following a pack of boys wearing toques, and there were strutting ladies of the evening leaning on lampposts waiting for their Johns. There were a few foppish, garishly attired Ferengi, a hulking Klingon warrior in ceremonial finery, and a close group of orange-robed Bajoran monks. There was even a pair of hoofed Megans wearing the styles of 17th-century Earth walking down the sidewalk followed by what looked to Max like a giant asparagus with eyes wearing a zoot suit.

But no matter the age, lifestyle, sex, race, or dimension of origin, all were headed for the Bolian Blues Club, that infamous Mecca of the galaxy's riff-raff, ne'er-do-wells, and hep cats that

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was the very heart and soul of The Zone. Part jazz club, part clandestine meeting place for anyone needing to make any sort of illicit deal, and part 'all-you-can-eat' buffet, the Bolian Blues Club was the hip place to be whether you wanted to listen to good music, hire a hit man, score a kilo of Red-eye, or just go hog-wild at the barbeque ribs counter.

Max wondered if the anonymity afforded by the converging crowds would give the Snark the courage to show himself or if the press of people would keep him away. She hoped it would be the former, otherwise she had a tribble's chance on Kronos of ever finding him on her own.

Finally, the garish, flashing neon on the marquee hanging above the door of the Bolian Blues Club materialized out of the night's mist. The big letters read

DANNO CHIMERON One Night Only!

"Well, that explains the crowds," muttered Max. She elbowed her way past the techno-punks, flashed the

maroon-skinned gorilla at the door an indecipherable look while slipping him a 20-credit note, and at a barely-perceptible nod of the massive block that served as his head, shouldered her way through the narrow entrance into the dark interior of the club.

It took a few seconds for her eyes to adjust to the dim lighting -- darker than the neon-lit night outside -- but what she saw was exactly what she had expected. Dozens of small, round tables each with a tiny blue lamp in the center crowded the floor almost the entire way from the door to the small curtained stage at the far end of the joint. Hardcore Jazz and Blues aficionados and beatniks of every sort sat round the tables, their hushed murmurs mingling with the tinkling ice cubes in their drinks. Smoldering

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cigars, pipes, hookahs, and more exotic paraphernalia fed a permanent shroud of purple haze that all but obscured the slowly rotating ceiling fans near the ceiling. Through it all, unhindered by the bewildering array of tables, chairs, arms, legs, hoofs, antlers, tails, tentacles, and smog, slipped efficient, uniformed servers carrying a steady supply of drink-laden trays from the bar at the right wall.

Max secreted herself in a small booth way back at the rear where she had a clear view of the main entrance, the stage, and the majority of the club floor, while at the same time being herself safely obscured by smoky shadows.

A tall figure suddenly materialized out of the smoke and loomed over her table. Her hand moved instinctively to the bulge under her jacket, but then she realized it was only one of the uniformed servers. She forced herself to relax and ordered a gin on the rocks. Just as the server returned with her drink, the house lights went down, a spot lit the stage, and the curtains parted to reveal a mop-headed young boy who couldn't have been more than twelve years old. His eyes were downcast and his blonde hair hung over his face, hiding it from view, but Max knew it could only be one person.

Danno Chimeron, orphan, child prodigy, musical genius, undisputed master of dozens of instruments ranging from the blues harp to the gigantic Rigelian tubulum, consummate performer in styles ranging from old Earth Blues to the latest techno-tribal beats popular along the Tzenkethi border, immensely famous from the Serenity system all the way to the Klingon border -- and legal ward of the man suspected of being the Boojum.

And there was the man himself, the Boojum, waiting backstage, just visible from Max's vantage point, partly concealed behind the stage curtain. He sat unmoving, hands in his lap, a tattered fedora pulled down over his forehead and dark

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sunglasses hiding his eyes, but he was unmistakable, being that rarest of rarities in the 24th century -- a man in a wheelchair.

With his arch rival so relatively out in the open, the Snark was sure to be here somewhere. Max scanned the faces in the crowd -- those she could see in the near-darkness -- but came up empty again, but then her attention was pulled back toward the stage by the Boojum's young protégé.

Danno Chimeron reached inside his coat and withdrew a slender object and placed it to his lips. It glinted faintly as the stage lights reflected from facets of its metal surface. You could have heard a nanite drop the audience had fallen so absolutely still. To her surprise, Max found herself holding her breath, waiting for what was to come.

Then Danno played. The tiny flute he held in his small hands trilled gently, quietly at first but with slow, building crescendos that incremented steadily towards a towering zenith before breaking and crashing over the helpless listeners like ocean waves, sweeping them out to sea as the melody receded again. Its clear voice whispered in Max's ear a mournful melody of such profound melancholy that she felt herself literally overcome by the emotions. The cascading notes gripped her soul and pulled her down into a black abyss of despair and sorrow from which there was no hope of escape, then just as quickly carried her spirit back aloft to indescribable ecstasy on clear, bright notes like golden wings of angels.

That a mere child could soar so high or plumb to such depths of emotion, could harbor such inner pain and tortured anguish in his little body was almost more than Max could bear, the callous façade she normally perpetrated and relied on be damned. The intricate and captivating melody flew to the tops of mountains and fell gently like rain, swelling through every fiber of her being, filling her heart with unutterable joy and sadness until nothing else in the universe existed -- the music was the universe. Completely forgotten were West, the Boojum, the

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Snark, the 10,000 credit bounty... even her own individuality was submerged and become one with the music.

How long the music held the audience swaying in its

numinous thrall was impossible to tell, but the ice cubes in Max's gin were melted by the time the performance was over. The last note faded to silence and Danno Chimeron slowly lowered the flute from his lips. For long seconds that seemed to stretch into eternity, the silence continued, then a few brave souls dared to start clapping, breaking the spell, but were quickly joined by the entire rest of the audience. Max joined them with unrestrained enthusiasm.

Danno Chimeron bowed low, and as the curtains closed on him the spotlight faded and the house lights came back up.

Max realized with astonishment that she had tears on her cheeks. She hurriedly wiped them away before anyone saw, and was glad that West wasn't here to witness her soft side. In another way though, she was sorry he hadn't been here to share the amazing experience with her.

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Any further regrets and self-recriminations were stifled however, when a lumpy-headed bruiser of a Ktarian slunk through her peripheral vision, and he was headed for the side stage entrance.

Finally! There was no mistaking who the big Ktarian was -- Max had

memorized every crevice and pock, every lump and cranial ridge of the Snark's face from his police record. It was the same rhinoceros-headed man now steadily making his way towards the Boojum's backstage hiding place at the rear of the club. Through a chink in the stage curtain, she spotted young Danno Chimeron slowly wheeling the Boojum towards the club's rear exit, the two of them completely oblivious to the approaching threat.

Was the Snark going to kill the Boojum right here in front of all these witnesses? No, that would be suicide. He'd wait until they were outside the club with no one looking on, then he'd do it. With sudden horror, Max realized he'd have to kill the boy too if he wanted no witnesses! A gruesome vision of two bodies -- one cripple and one innocent young boy -- lying in the gutter in pools of their own blood flashed through Max's mind. The stakes had gone up -- this was no longer just a simple bounty hunt! She had to stop the Snark at any cost!

She snatched the untouched gin glass from the table and tilted her head back, quickly slamming down the entire drink in one huge gulp. The liquid fire burned down her throat rekindling her resolve and incinerating any vestiges of sympathy she might have felt for the Snark. Thus fortified with the gin under her belt, she slid out of her booth and set off in hot pursuit.

Max mercilessly pushed, elbowed, punched, clawed, and chewed her way through the press of people, but simply couldn't make enough headway towards the rear exit and the Snark. Amidst growing anxiety, she had to beat back the momentary temptation to pull out the bulge beneath her jacket and just start shooting, but decided that would cause more problems than it

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was worth. Instead, she switched tactics and ran for the front exit.

As she bolted through the front door, she careened into some drunken Nausicaans and bowled them over like a human cannonball. She barely heard the snarls and curses they hurled at her receding back as she ran around the outside of the Bolian Blues Club.

She squeezed between the buildings and emerged seconds later somewhat scuffed on a quiet street behind the club just in time to see Danno Chimeron and the Boojum get into a limo. The door slid closed and the long, sleek, black vehicle sped off into the night.

A split second later, the rear door of the blues club exploded

outward and disgorged the Snark. Max coiled and sprang out onto the sidewalk, pulling her

weapon in the same action, and shouted, "Hold it right there, Snark! I'm takin' you in!"

But the Snark was so focused on his escaping prey that he didn't give any indication he'd heard Max or even notice that

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there was a woman standing there pointing a gun at his head. Instead, he dove into a taxi idling at the curbside, shouting directions to the driver before he was even inside to "Follow that car!"

With a screech of tires on wet plasticrete, the old-fashioned taxi sped off sending up a sheet of water from the puddles of rain in the road. The spray cascaded over Max's head, soaking her anew. She was left standing flatfooted in the street with her jaw hanging open, dripping wet, sucking exhaust fumes, and steaming under the collar at being completely ignored and humiliated in what should have been her moment of victory.

"Damnit!" she exclaimed once she'd gotten over the absurdity of the situation. She couldn't let the Snark get away that easily. She viciously wiped the wet hair out of her face and jammed her phaser back into her shoulder holster. Then, placing her fingers to her lips, she let rip with a shrill, ear-piercing whistle, and as another of the retro style taxicabs pulled alongside the curb she dove in and shouted to the driver, "Follow that taxi!"

=/\= Max had lucked out. With the proper pecuniary inducement,

her driver turned out to be willing to bend (and break) any traffic law he had to in order to stay on the Snark's tail. Max sat in the center of the taxi's back seat gripping the armrests with white knuckles. She would have been having the time of her life if it hadn't been for the still very real danger of the Snark murdering both the Boojum and Danno Chimeron.

As the taxi weaved through traffic like a drunken slalom skier through the gates, she looked sideways out the window at the buildings careening by. They were headed north through the city, away from the dingier parts of town and towards the skyscrapers

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and high-rise hotels at the city core. Overhead, the rain clouds were breaking apart, and a few stars were already visible through the tattered openings. Serenity's big moon, Yukon, was a pale, gibbous orb low on the horizon, and lent the wet cityscape a silvery sheen.

But despite a performance by her driver that would have gotten him at least an honorable mention at the annual Ganymede Pod Race 5000, Max's taxi skidded to a stop at the curb in front of Serenity City's ritzy Plaza Hotel a full three minutes behind the Snark's. Max threw a fistful of credits at the young man and bolted from the cab, but she knew she was already too late.

She didn't even know where in the building the Snark and the Boojum were, or even which floor. How was she supposed to stop a murder that was probably happening even as she stood there frittering away the precious seconds?!?

Max's indecision nailed her boots to the ground. She stood there in front of the grand entrance, panting, in a near panic, helpless to save a child, when the sound of shattering clearplaz reached her ears from high above her head. Her neck snapped back in an automatic reaction and her eyes scanned upwards.

There, in midair and silhouetted against the stars and clouds, was the body of a man. His arms and legs twisted in the wind as though he were a boneless rag doll. In a surreal moment of absolute shock, Max watched the limp, mannequin-like form drift earthward from the twelfth-story window as if in slow motion, surrounded by a thousand pinpoints of light where the moonlight glinted off the broken clearplaz through which he had been thrown.

She almost didn't snap out of it in time, but at the last second her instinct for survival took control of her legs. She gathered all her strength and dove out of the way just as the body came crashing to the pavement amid a deadly hail of razor-sharp polymer shards.

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Pedestrians ran. Men shouted. A woman screamed. Max

picked herself up, ignoring the pain from the rough scrape across half her face that she got from kissing the sidewalk.

It was a terrible sight. There was blood everywhere, leaking in slow, thick, crimson rivulets from the broken body in the middle of the sidewalk. Max forced herself to look, and breathed a small sigh of relief when she realized the body was adult-sized. Not the boy.

But neither was it the Boojum as she had expected. To her surprise, it was the Snark!

She saw his bloody hand twitch. He was still alive! Quickly, Max ran to the Snark's side and knelt in the pooled

blood and broken window shards, and cradled his head in her hands. She tried to keep her eyes away from the smoking phaser burn in the center of the man's chest, from the charred and blistered flesh, but the stench of it assailed her nostrils, making concentration difficult and threatening to bring up what she'd eaten for dinner.

The Snark's eyelids fluttered and opened, and his eyes focused on Max's face. He sputtered and coughed feebly, and a

29

new rivulet of blood dribbled from the corner of his mouth. He opened his lips to say something, and Max bent closer to hear.

"Don't be fooled by him... by the way he looks," whispered the Snark, then convulsed in a spasm of pain.

"Don't talk," said Max softly, surprising herself with the amount of compassion she heard in her own voice. "Medical teams will be here in a few minutes. Just hang on until they get here. Help is on the way."

The Snark shook his big head ever so weakly. "Not me... Him. He needs the help... Help him," he pleaded faintly but earnestly.

With his last remaining strength, he pressed a small object into Max's hand, then his eyes closed for the last time and he exhaled in a long gurgling sigh.

Max lowered the Snark's head gently to the ground, wondering at the man's strange and nonsensical last words. Help who? Who did he mean? The Boojum? But he had just tried to kill the Boojum and the Boojum had blasted him out an upper-story window.

She stood and absentmindedly stuffed the object the Snark had given her into a pocket, then wiped her bloodstained hands on her pants legs. In the distance, she could hear the distinctive wailing of the police and ambulance vehicles' sirens. In a few minutes the official questions would begin, but she had more questions than answers herself.

"Should'a' listened to West," she muttered.

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Ch^pter 3 @ Little Inform^tion Is ^ D^ngerous Thing

Evil is a maze of deceit, and the cheese it hides is never worth the running.

- Minsc and Boo "I'll bet that really smarts," commented West. His tone of

voice was borderline smug, but not unsympathetic. Every time he looked at the rough scrape covering most of the right side of Max's face he winced in sympathy.

"Ya think?" snapped Max. The whole right side of her face had turned purple, little bits of skin hung loosely from her cheek, and it stung so bad it made her eyes water. She was rummaging through the lockers at the rear of the Rocinanté's cargo hold. "Where's the damn dermal regenerator?"

West sighed and grabbed hold of Max's elbow and gently but irresistibly pulled her away from the lockers towards the nose of the Rocinanté, into the cramped but cozy living compartment. Max didn't resist as he pushed her gently into a chair. She

31

watched in sullen silence as he went to a desk drawer and pulled out the sought-for medical device and returned to her side.

As he began applying the soothing beam to her raw cheek, Max forced herself to relax. "Aren't you going to ask me what happened?" she asked eventually.

West smiled and said, "Nope. I figured you'd tell me when you were good and ready."

Max frowned. West wasn't going to make this easy on her. Fine. Two could play that game. "It's a long story," she said.

West's reply was an aggravating, noncommittal grunt. He finished with the dermal regenerator and set the device down on the tabletop, then stepped back to survey his handiwork. "There," he said. "Back to your lovely, smiling self."

"I didn't get the bounty," said Max, ignoring his sophomoric attempt at flattery.

West sat down on the other chair in the small room. "So what happened?"

Max shrugged. "The cops said I wasn't the one who brought down the Snark, I just happened to be standing there when he landed, so I wasn't entitled to the reward money."

"So who did get the Snark?" "The Boojum!" spat Max. "What?!? How the hell did that happen?!?" Max told West the entire story. She finished with the strange

words the Snark had spoken in her ear right before he died -- 'Help him.'

"Oh -- and he gave me this," she said, suddenly remembering the small object the Snark had pressed into her hand with his last remaining strength. She had 'forgotten' to tell the police about it. She reached into her pocket and retrieved it and tossed it to West, who caught it deftly with one hand.

He held it up in front of his face and examined it critically for a few seconds, then delivered his assessment. "It's a marble."

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"The man's powers of observation are uncanny," quipped Max, a measure of good humor creeping back into her voice.

From his perch atop the replicator panel, Gromit squeaked in sarcastic agreement.

West pretended to ignore the barb, but in reality he was glad that yesterday's argument and Max's solo op last night hadn't permanently ruined their relationship. He leaned back in his seat and mused, "I wonder why a dying man would place so much importance on a marble..."

Max stood and said, "There's more going on here than we know about, and I know just the person to ask. But first I'm gonna take a shower... wash off the blood and police station stench..." She paused by the door of the cabin and turned back, intending to suggest that maybe West would like to join her, but when she saw him still sitting staring at the enigmatic marble and lost in thought, she changed her mind and disappeared through the door.

=/\= Max leaned casually on the front counter at Serenity City's

favorite fast food restaurant, the 'El Taco'. It was the middle of the afternoon, so there was only one other customer sitting at the far end of the dining room. Across the stainless steel surface, the ruggedly handsome manager had his back turned to her and was busy putting the moves on one of his young female employees, a sporty number with shoulder-length, strawberry blonde hair, a tight chassis, and dimples from here 'til next Tuesday.

Max watched in wry amusement for as long as she could take it, then cleared her throat noisily.

The ruggedly handsome manager stopped in mid-sentence and turned. On laying eyes on Max, a genuine smile quickly

33

shouldered out the slick, Casanova veneer he was wearing for his young female employee's benefit.

"Of all the taco joints on all the planets in all the galaxy, you walk back into mine," he paraphrased charmingly. "How's it hangin', Max?"

"Not too bad, Rick," replied Max. "I see you’re still bothering the female help. Having any luck?"

"Same as always," replied Rick with a lopsided grin. "That bad, huh?" "'Fraid so. Speaking of which, heard from Lieutenant Beckett

lately?" Max shook her head. "It's been a while since I talked to any

of the old Banshees, but last I heard, Sam was still on Earth working on her Starfleet Medical schooling."

"Well, good on her," said Rick. Max thought she detected a trace of wistful longing flash across the man's face, but when she looked again all she saw was the usual self-assured grin. "But enough chitchat," continued Rick. "Can I get you something? Hasperat burrito? Or how 'bout a nice cold schplict?" He waggled his eyebrows in deliberately comical parody of lechery.

At the mention of the noxious beverage, Max found herself suddenly in the alarming situation of simultaneously being about to lose her lunch and wanting to laugh at the juvenile antics of the El Taco manager. Luckily for all concerned, Rick's face was funnier than schplict was disgusting.

"You sure know how to wine and dine the ladies, but I think I'll pass, thanks," she managed to say after she'd regained control. "Sam was the only one of us who could ever stomach that stuff, and only because her olfactory sense was mostly cybernetic and she could switch it off."

Rick smiled and shrugged. "Okay. Since you didn't come here for the usual gastronomical obstacle course, then to what do I owe the superfluous pleasure of your inimitably beauteous presence in my humble restaurant?"

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"I just need a little info," replied Max. She lowered her voice and leaned further over the counter. Rick automatically leaned in from the other side until he and Max were almost nose-to-nose. "What do you know about the Snark and the Boojum?" asked Max.

Rick's eyes widened in surprise and his cocky smile wavered for a second. He quickly straightened up again and tried to cover over his momentary display of discomfort with a carefree chuckle. "What do you think a simple restaurant manager knows about two such dangerous criminals?"

Max waved off his evasion. "You're a lot of things, mister restaurant manager, but 'simple' isn't one of them." She cast a quick glance at the only other customer in the place to make sure he was still minding his own business, and lowered her voice to a near whisper before continuing. "I have no idea who you really are or who you really work for -- and I don't want to know," she added hastily on seeing him about to protest, "but you know things that no one else knows, including the police and Starfleet Security. When Sam was kidnapped by the Mind Rippers last year, you seemed to know what was going on and you helped us find her. Surely what I'm asking of you now is peanuts compared to that!"

Rick had grown completely serious during Max's impassioned plea. He closed his eyes and sighed as though the weight of the multiverse bore down on his shoulders. When he opened his eyes again, Max saw something in them she could ill define, though the memory would haunt her for years. It was an epic sorrow, or the foreknowledge of an inescapable fate perhaps. She felt a chill run up her spine.

"You don't know what you're asking," Rick said so quietly Max almost missed the words. Then, louder, he said, "If you really want my advice, walk away from this now and forget about it. Please, for your sake!" His eyes were almost pleading with her.

35

Something inside Max screamed at her to listen to this man's advice, to just beam back up to the Rocinanté and West and fly away to Tosnoqua like West had planned yesterday. But another part of her couldn't take that road. A life was at stake.

"I can't do that," she replied simply. "I have to find out what the Snark's last words meant. He asked me to do something and I have to find out what the hell he was talking about. More importantly, there's a young boy involved, and I have to make sure he's all right."

Rick sighed again, this time in resignation. He said, "Well, I know there's no talking you out of something you've set your mind to, so I won't try. Just be careful, Max. You run the risk of losing more than just your life if you follow this course."

Max frowned darkly at the dire, mysterious warning, and would have demanded an explanation, but Rick cut her off.

"Here's what I can tell you about the Snark and the Boojum..."

=/\= After Max had finished cleaning up and had beamed back

down to Serenity, West had fixed himself a sandwich and coffee, though he would rather have had a margarita. Unfortunately, like most of the other equipment aboard the Rocinanté, the replicator was surplus Starfleet equipment and so was programmed to produced only synthahol. West swore to himself for the hundredth time that one of these days he was going to have to jury-rig the thing to make some real drinks for him and not that swill that passed for tolerable on so many 'civilized' worlds these days.

36

He got a couple of jelly donuts out of the replicator for Gromit, who wasted no time but tore into them like he hadn't eaten for minutes!

Sandwich in hand, West planted himself in front of the library computer and set about hacking into the security systems of Serenity City's Plaza Hotel, the site of the Snark's ill-fated foray into human-powered flight. He cursed under his breath when some crumbs from his sandwich fell into data port on the console top. He tried brushing away the remainder, but succeeded instead in almost knocking over the cup of coffee. He cursed again, louder this time, but froze solid when the computer bleeped a quick series of beeps at him. Luckily, it was just signaling that it was ready to begin its cyber-assault against the Plaza's A.I. system, so he relaxed again.

With sudden inspiration born of clever ingenuity and finely-honed male laziness, he picked up Gromit from where the tribble was already polishing off his second donut and put him on the library computer console, confident that the insatiable eating machine would clean up every last crumb it found.

The computer would take a little while to wage its cyber-war, so West returned to the little marble the Snark had given Max. He turned it over and over in his fingers and wondered at its unusually small size -- only half a centimeter across. He tossed it in the air and watched as it flickered darkly in the cabin's electric light. West caught it and looked closer, squinting as he held it up in front of his face. The edges danced with energy, but the center of the tiny glass sphere boiled in a myriad of pinpoint eruptions of darkness, like a miniature galaxy of swirling black holes. The unnatural 'un-light' seemed to absorb the light and warmth from the very air surrounding the marble.

Intrigued, he got up from his chair and retrieved his surplus Starfleet tricorder from a dresser drawer. Setting the marble on the tabletop, he pointed the tricorder at it. The marble's aura of

37

un-light increased as the scanning beams hit it, as did the arcing electrical activity.

West's right eyebrow went up in a very Vulcan-like mannerism as he watched the marble interact with his tricorder, and a few seconds later, his left eyebrow joined its fellow in surprise when the tricorder bleeped in frustration and delivered a completely blank scan result.

"Now that's interesting..." he murmured, delighted by this

new mystery like a little boy just introduced to a new game. "What are you made of, my little friend?"

"Sugar and spice and everything nice," said Max's voice from the cabin door behind West. "But let's keep that our little secret."

West turned and smirked. "Who'd believe me anyway?" he asked.

"Funny. What have you got going here?" "I just tried to scan your marble," replied West, pointing to

the little glass bead resting on the tabletop. The tricorder came up blank."

"What do you mean 'blank'?" 38

"I mean just that. Blank. No result. Nada. Zip. Zero. Zilch. Goose egg. A big fat--" At Max's black look, West decided to cool it. No use risking his life, especially given the recent rockiness of their relationship. He elaborated on his initial statement. "If you look really closely, the marble is actually a hollow glass sphere, and there's some sort of clear liquid inside. Whatever it is, it completely absorbed the subspace radiation of the tricorder's scanning beams.

Max eyed the marble suspiciously. "Is it dangerous?" West shrugged. "I hope not. I've had the damn thing in my

pants pocket since you left!" He picked up the little glass sphere and tossed it to Max. "It's not giving off any radiation -- just absorbing it."

"This just gets weirder and weirder." Max peered into the marble's strange black depths.

"What did you find out from your buddy Rick?" asked West. "He wouldn't tell me much," replied Max, putting the marble

back on the table, "but he did mention that the Snark and the Boojum were once partners in crime instead of rival crime lords."

"Ya don't say." Max nodded and sat on the edge of the bunk. "Seems they

had a parting of the ways right around the same time they raided some sort of super-top-secret Federation R&D facility hidden somewhere deep inside the Briar Patch. No one knows what the scientists were cooking up there, but rumor has it that it was some kind of genetic or bio-research lab and that they were using the weird metaphasic radiation in the Briar Patch somehow. No one knows why two crime bosses would want to raid a place like that, or what happened when they did, but ever since that day, the Snark has been trying to kill the Boojum."

"Hmm..." grunted West thoughtfully. The library computer beeped for attention. West moved

Gromit off the now crumb-free keypad and sat back down in 39

front of the screen. Max stood behind him and looked over his shoulder.

"What are you doing?" she asked. "I've tapped into the security camera footage from the Plaza

Hotel room where the Snark was killed." "Y'know... for someone who absolutely forbade me to take on

this bounty hunting job, you sure are helping a lot." West shrugged. "Morbid curiosity," he replied with forced

airiness. "I still think you should leave it alone, but I know you won't listen to me." West finished the sentence in a tone of voice that straddled a very fine line between resignation and accusation.

Max was spared the necessity of defending herself, at least for now, by the library computer. The machine beeped again and a grainy image of a luxury hotel suite appeared on the screen. The corners of two turned-down beds, a small mahogany table and a wall decoration could be seen, as well as the window wall overlooking the Serenity City skyline, the window through which the Snark would very shortly be thrown. The time stamp in the lower right corner indicated it was just before the Snark's murder.

A powerfully built Ktarian burst into the camera frame, skidded to a stop, and leveled a big, mean-looking disruptor pistol at someone off camera. He was wild-eyed and breathing heavily, and a sheen of sweat glistened on his horned forehead. His gun hand shook harder than a drunken Californian during the Hermosa Quake of 2047.

"Boojum!" rasped the image of the Snark on the computer screen. "The charade is over! You know I'm doing it for your own good! Don't fight it!"

The response was immediate and as subtle as a proto-Klingon in an Elaysian crystal shop. A brilliant full-power disruptor beam slammed into the center of the Snark's chest, yanking the enormous Ktarian backwards off his feet and throwing him

40

against the big window. The shatter-proof safety plaz might as well have been made out of smoke for all the obstacle it posed -- the pane exploded outward in a thousand razor shards under the combined effect of the disruptor and the Snark's tonnage -- and suddenly, the Snark was airborne.

Max turned away from the screen. She didn't need an instant replay. She'd had a front-row seat for the live performance.

"Looked like self-defense to me," commented West after

switching off the computer. "The Snark was going to shoot the Boojum. Or maybe even the kid."

"Then why did he say he was doing it for his own good?" countered Max. "He was going to shoot the Boojum for the Boojum's own good? Or shoot Danno Chimeron? That doesn't make sense." Max thought furiously for a few long moments, remembering the Snark's whispered plea moments before he died for Max to 'help him'. She could come to only one conclusion. "We're still not getting the whole picture. There's got to be something else we can do!"

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West got up from the library computer and faced Max. His face was lined with worry. "Listen to me, Maxine. You're getting too involved in this." He took her hands in his. "You're letting it become personal. Danno Chimeron isn't your concern. He's the legal ward of a man suspected of being one of Serenity Sector's biggest crime bosses -- which probably isn't the best way for a kid to grow up -- but there's nothing you can do about it! Just let it go. You're letting your obsession blind you to just how dangerous these people are!"

Max angrily snatched her hands away from West. "How can you be so cold?" she stormed. "This is a little kid's life we're talking about here, and you want me to just turn my back and forget about it?!? I can't believe you! Whatever happened to applying the bootprint of justice to the buttocks of evil? Or poking a thumb in the eye of evildoers?" Her scathing look cut into West like a thousand Klingon daggers. "Apparently you're not the man I thought you were..."

West turned his face away from Max to hide the pain he felt at her stinging rebukes and clenched his teeth to keep himself from lashing out in verbal retaliation. She didn't understand...

West turned back towards Max and looked into her eyes. When he answered, his voice was subdued and grave, betraying none of his inner grief. "I just have this terrible feeling, call it a premonition..."

Max glowered and began to turn away in angry dismissal, but West surprised her by grabbing her shoulders hard and dragging her back. She struggled against his grip but he held her fast, forcing her to listen to his words.

"If you see this through to the end, nothing will ever be the same again," he said with uncharacteristic forcefulness. "You'll get chewed up and spit out on the other side a different person. The Maxine Vasser who's standing in front of me right now will be dead and gone forever. Or maybe you won't come out the other side at all... and I don't want that to happen to you." That

42

was as close as West could come to admitting his true feelings for Max.

Max stopped struggling against West. There was something in his voice she'd never heard before, and it made her pause. She looked into his eyes and saw only concern for her there, but for some reason that just made her more furious. How dare he worry about me like I'm unable to decide for myself what's right and wrong! she fumed.

She yanked herself away from West, stepped to the bed and picked up her leather jacket. "I'm going," she said simply.

West's eyes remained focused on an invisible spot on the opposite wall of the cabin as Max shrugged into her jacket and checked the charge in her phaser before jamming it into her shoulder holster.

"If you go, I won't back you up," he said gravely, still without looking at her. "You're on your own."

Max closed her eyes for a second, but when she opened them again the stubborn determination was still there. "That's your call," she replied.

"And don't bother coming back." Max picked up the Snark's strange radiation-absorbing

marble, and left the cabin without looking back.

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Ch^pter 4 The Worst of Woes

No one is so old as to think he cannot live one more year.

- Cicero, Roman orator, philosopher Max Vasser pulled her rented zipcraft alongside the old

warehouse beneath a long row of grime-covered windows and switched off the engine. She unfolded herself from the cockpit, pulled off her helmet, and gave the area a quick visual once-over. This was the address Rick the ruggedly handsome El Taco manager had told her belonged to the Boojum, but the place looked like it hadn't been used in a century. Quite a trick considering that Serenity City was only twenty years old.

Aside from the gibbous, silvery moon partially hidden behind tattered clouds, a lone yellow streetlight at the far end of the block was the only illumination. The only sounds in the night air were the distant hum of any modern city, and beneath that, the crashing of ocean waves along the breakers down by the docks.

44

Max was alone. That simple thought evoked a brief flash of regret over her

sharp words to West and her hasty departure from the Rocinanté, but she angrily beat at the unwanted emotion with a solitary vengeance until it was banished from her conscious thoughts.

Max suddenly felt old, but she had no time for such frivolous distractions. She was here to do a job, albeit a self-appointed one -- to get to the bottom of the mystery of the Snark's strange and seemingly contradictory actions. Why had he given her that weird marble? Why he had asked her to 'help the Boojum' even though he had seemed intent on killing him? And even more importantly, was the young boy, Danno Chimeron, safe?

The quick application of a phaser beam set on narrow-beam disrupt defeated the lock on the door and she was inside the ramshackle building. She stayed in the shadows by the door for the few seconds it took for her eyes to adjust to the gloom, but as soon as she could see, she realized that the building wasn't as abandoned as it appeared on the outside.

45

The floor was free of accumulated dust and debris, the storage shelves were in perfect repair and lined up in straight rows along the entire length of the ground floor, the catwalk that circumscribed the upper level above her head looked sturdy. Large nondescript crates of imports and exports were stacked in orderly groups throughout the warehouse. This place was obviously in current use.

Phaser held at the ready, Max stealthily penetrated further into the structure. She could hear the blood pounding in her ears, could feel the adrenaline pumping through her veins, heightening her senses until her nerves felt like they were on fire. The thrill of the hunt always filled her with such intense euphoria, whether she was in a starfighter cockpit or on a ground mission made no difference.

Suddenly and without warning, the lights above her came on, momentarily blinding her in a flood of white light. She instinctively froze in place like a rabbit caught in the headlights of an oncoming vehicle, but her esper sense screamed for her to move! That subtle yet unmistakable glimmer of precognition, that mystical yet scientifically documented prescience that warned her of danger and had saved her life on so many occasions in the past, was yelling at her to move her feet or die.

Max dove to the side into a smooth shoulder roll and wound up back on her feet just as a disruptor beam whined past her ear and into the warehouse floor blowing a small crater into the plasticrete. She spun and whipped her phaser around to point at the source of the attack and came face to face with the villain himself -- the Boojum.

He was at the top of a flight of stairs leading to the upper level storage areas, sitting placidly in his old-fashioned wheelchair as though he were taking in a nice spring day or listening to a light opera instead of trying to kill her. His hands were folded in his lap and his head was slightly lowered, his face hidden by the dark glasses and fedora he always wore.

46

And there, standing behind the Boojum, was the young Danno Chimeron. The boy's face was calm, but otherwise inscrutable.

Max bristled at the sight, righteous indignation welling up inside her at the Boojum's callousness. Her fury was a raging floodwater assaulting a dam with primordial ferocity, but she forced the waters to calm. The Boojum wasn't making any hostile moves, and she guessed that his first shot had only been meant to get her undivided attention.

To Max's surprise, it was the young boy who called down to her, and not the man in the wheelchair. In a high-pitched voice whose ingenuousness matched the cherubic face yet at the same time was as hard as steel, he asked, "Who are you?"

"Someone with a lot of questions for your father," called back Max.

"What are you doing here?" Again it was the boy who spoke while the Boojum just sat and watched in silence.

Max decided there was nothing to be gained by deception. "Right before he died, the Snark asked me to help the Boojum."

There was no visible reaction from the Boojum, so Max decided to press her luck and see how far it would get her. She didn't lower her phaser or adjust its aim, but she held out her other hand to the boy and said, "There's nothing to be afraid of, Danno. Why don't you come down here and we'll talk."

The reply from the top of the stairs was a disruptor blast aimed at Max's gun hand. She would have lost a limb in that instant, but once again her esper ability warned her. She dodged aside, but not fast enough. The searing lance of energy struck a grazing blow on her hand burning and blistering skin. The edge of the disrupt effect deadened the arm's motor nerves but had the opposite effect on the pain receptors. Max strangled back a scream of pure agony and jerked her hand away. She caught a glimpse through the pain of her phaser flying across the

47

warehouse and skittering to a stop behind a pile of crates far out of reach.

She spun to face the stairs again, ready for the next shot, but once again the Unexpected froze her muscles by sheer force of confusion. The disruptor that had just nearly sheared off her arm was not in the hands of the Boojum, who still sat unmoving and silent in his wheelchair, but by Danno Chimeron, the young boy she had come to rescue!

There was a thin smile on the boy's face, and his black eyes were like two open graves. The big disruptor looked absurdly huge in his small hand, but it never wavered from the bull's-eye painted on Max's chest. Max didn't need her esper sense to know that something was horribly wrong with this entire situation.

"You should've minded your own business, lady," chided

Danno in a voice as cold as death. "People who come looking for the Boojum usually wind up floating out in the asteroid belt."

Max grimaced in pain and cradled her wounded arm with the other. "Don't gimme that crap, kid!" she spat in defiance.

"I'm not a kid." 48

"Yeah... all kids say that!" retorted Max. Danno appeared to consider Max's words for a moment, then

said disdainfully, "I know what I look like, but I was alive when this planet was nothing but an insignificant El-Aurian farming colony and humans still crawled on the face of only the Earth."

Max's eyes narrowed. El-Aurians had farmed Serenity 300 years ago. Humanity had left the Earth 400 years ago. What was the kid telling her? That he was 500 years old? Ridiculous! But the malevolence and hatred she saw in his eyes was something no mere boy of twelve could harbor. She remembered the Snark's dying words: Don't be fooled by him... by the way he looks...

"I was born on Earth in the year of our Lord 1349 in the great city of Constantinople," Danno Chimeron intoned decorously. "Humanity was dying off by the millions in Europe and Asia. The Black Death lay over the land like a funeral shroud. I had nine brothers and sisters. They all died. As did my mother, as did my father... as did I.

"Only I didn't stay dead. I arose from the ashes. But were my remaining relatives and friends happy I survived? No, they abandoned and betrayed me! Those ignorant, superstitious peasants branded me a demon and tried to stone me to death! I didn't understand at the time, of course -- I was only twelve years old -- so I just ran.

"The years went by, but I never grew any older. I lived on and under the streets of the world's most crowded cities. It was a hard life and I was mortally hurt many times, but I always recovered. Earth's unique magnetic fields and environment gave me eternal youth and instant cell regeneration. I outlived everyone I ever knew, everyone I ever loved, everyone who had betrayed me. I was immortal.

"So I preyed on the weak to survive, relying on humanity's foolish and misplaced compassion for a poor little orphan boy with big sad eyes, taking what I needed from those around me,

49

killing anyone who got in my way, slowly building my secret empire--"

"How can you be so callous?" hissed Max through her pain. "Callous? How?" Danno Chimeron seemed genuinely

surprised by her question. He shrugged. "An ordinary human's life is so short and filled with disease and suffering, it hardly seemed like a crime to me! I was simply putting them out of their misery -- I did them a great service!"

Danno's eyes took on a faraway cast and his voice became momentarily more melancholy. "Besides, what do short-lived humans know of life and death -- of losing loved ones to the great enemy Time? Of being left alone? Their lives are so short, they have no concept of what death truly is, since they barely experience life. Don't feel anguish for them. The death of a mortal is no great woe to those he leaves behind. You cannot begin to fathom the truly worst of woes as only I can know it..."

Being a mere mortal, Max had no idea what the hell Danno Chimeron was talking about, but she felt herself torn in opposite directions, pulled on the one side by compassion and sympathy for the tortured, lonely child that had suffered so much, and on the other by horror and disgust for the vile, lonely monster that had committed such evil.

The Snark's voice rang in her ears. He's not what he seems... She suddenly felt a chill hand grip her heart and squeeze as a few of the puzzle pieces fell together.

"You're the Boojum!" whispered Max in horrible realization. Danno Chimeron's melancholy lifted and his sinister smirk

widened to a demonic grimace as he watched the war of emotions on Max's face, as he saw understanding dawn there too late.

"Yes. I am the Boojum," he confirmed proudly. "The most powerful crime lord in the trans-Briar Patch sectors!" He coolly contemplated the helpless fly caught in his web.

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"How can someone like you have escaped notice for so long?" demanded Max, desperate to make some sense of things.

"I learned long ago to keep a low profile, living in one place for a while and then moving on. In a few years, Danno Chimeron, child musician, will disappear and I'll become someone else. In my life I have done nothing noteworthy, fought in no wars, made no discoveries, gave no interviews, signed no autographs, interacted with no one important. History has never heard of the true me, only the facades." He smiled with diabolical pride at his cleverness. "I had wealth on Earth, and when humanity finally went to the stars, I went along. I have a whole galaxy to plunder now thanks to you puny mortals!

"Still, every so often someone learns my little secret. They all lived to regret it."

Max's eyes shifted automatically to the man seated motionless in the wheelchair at the top of the stairs.

Danno noticed her glance and answered her unasked question. "Yes, like this poor fellow here. I don't even know his name, but he was the head researcher at a Federation R&D facility I raided some years ago." He paused and thought back for a few seconds. "I think this is the sixth or seventh guy I've used this way." He waved his disruptor in the air while he spoke. "A quick stun blast at point-blank range to the bottom of the spinal column and voila! Instant mute quadriplegic!" His fiendish smile and pitiless glee were awful to behold. "I can get around a lot easier if I have a 'parent' with me, you see."

Don't be fooled by him... by the way he looks... Help him... He needs help... Had the Snark been talking about the boy or the victim in the wheelchair?

The pitiless delight with which Danno tortured this poor man made Max sick to her stomach. She had never felt such pure evil emanate from anyone or anything before, not even from the monstrous Jelly Brain the Banshee Squadron had fought at the bottom of the dilithium mines on Rostella IV, the one that had

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murdered Jazz Phoenix and tried to devour their souls. The intense revulsion at what the boy had done to the poor scientist and so many others before him was almost overwhelming -- she could feel the bile rising as she imagined what it would be like to live trapped inside a completely paralyzed body, fully aware of everything that went on around you, forced to be the puppet of the very monster that had crippled you and unable to do anything about it or even call for help!

Max had never felt such primal fear in her chest as she did right now standing before this ancient twelve-year-old. And yet, he was just a child...

"And the Snark?" she managed to whisper. Danno's evil smile vanished. "The Snark knew who I was, but

we were a good team so I let him live. I even looked up to him in a strange way. Maybe in some twisted way he was the father figure I never had. But then he turned on me with those insane notions about helping me!"

"What do you mean?" The longer Max could keep the boy talking, the longer she had to come up with an escape plan.

"The R&D lab had developed a synthetic compound that completely neutralizes all electromagnetic and subspace radiation, including, presumably, the kind that sustains me," Danno the Boojum explained. "The Snark was planning to use it on me out of misplaced sympathy, so I killed him."

The marble! realized Max. The liquid inside was what the scientists had developed. That's why the Snark had given it to her!

Danno Chimeron took a step forward toward the edge of the catwalk and leveled his weapon at Max again. "And now, since I've explained my entire evil plot to you like every story's arch-villain is required to do... time for you to die! But first-- where is the pellet the Snark gave you?"

That marble was Max's ace in the hole. She couldn't give it up. "What pellet? I don't know what the hell you're talking

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about," she lied. "The Snark died before he had the chance to give me anything." She hoped her act was convincing enough.

Danno's youthful brow knit into a fine-lined frown. "Too bad," he said, then squeezed the trigger.

Max had been expecting it, but even so she was barely ahead of the blast. She dove to the side and sprinted for the stacking of crates behind which her phaser had been flung. Every jarring movement was a new stanza in the throbbing symphony of pain in her burnt right hand and forearm, but she bit back any outcry and forced herself to ignore it. If she could retrieve her own weapon she might have a fighting chance to stay alive. Then she could scream all she wanted.

Explosions chased her all the way to the shelter of the big crates, her running feet just barely ahead of the Boojum's enthusiastic disruptor blasts. She could feel the heat of the radiation on the back of her neck like a bad Vulcan sunburn. At last she saw the phaser lying in the shadows. She made a mad scramble through disruptor bolts as thick as last week's plomeek soup, and at last the fingers of her undamaged left hand closed around the familiar, comforting hilt of the weapon.

There was a lull in the Boojum's wild firing as he sought his elusive target, so Max gritted her teeth, said a lightning-quick prayer to the Great Bird, and leapt out from behind the wall of crates. There was no time to aim and the phaser felt awkward and unwieldy in her left hand, but she relied on her training, instinct and good old-fashioned blind luck, and fired a rapid series of shots up at the catwalk.

Her luck held true. One of the phaser beams hit an upper support strut and snapped it loose. In a shower of sparks, the heavy metal girder swung down and struck Danno Chimeron on the side, knocking the small boy a dozen feet. He landed flat on his face, stunned, and the big disruptor jarred loose from his little fingers and fell off the catwalk into the shadows among the crates on the floor below.

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Max pressed her advantage. She ran towards the steps leading up to where Danno and his 'father' were, meaning to capture the notorious Boojum and put an end to his murderous rampage across the galaxy once and for all.

Danno shook his head to scatter the tweeting birds and spinning stars, and saw Max coming, and worse, saw the expression on her face. "Damnit!" he cursed in a very un-cherubic manner. For a split second, he almost felt fear before he managed to shake off the last effects of the daze he was in.

As Max's foot hit the bottom step on the stairway, Danno jumped to his feet with the energy of youth, grabbed the handles of the helpless scientist's wheelchair and shoved. There was nothing the paralyzed man could do to stop it. The wheels rolled off the edge of the top step and the whole thing, immobile scientist and all, went toppling down on top of Max.

Max's eyes widened in alarm as she realized she had just become an unwilling contestant in a game of dodge-the-avalanche. She might have won that game, but she instinctively tried to catch the research scientist to keep him from being killed in the fall, and by doing so she put herself directly in the path of the heavy metal wheelchair.

The limp scientist plowed into her outstretched arms and knocked her backwards, and a second later, the wheelchair crashed into her shins snatching her legs out from under her. Down they all went together, but Max somehow managed to keep the scientist from smashing his brains out on the hard plasticrete floor.

Above on the catwalk, she heard the high-pitched tittering of insane, maniacal laughter as Danno Chimeron the Boojum made his escape. Her phaser was still clutched in her left hand, so she brought it up and aimed as well as she could from the bottom of the dogpile and fired. In the heat of the moment, she forgot the weapon was still set on the disrupt setting.

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Danno had reached a doorway leading out of the building, but turned back to gloat one last time just as the phaser hit. The beam struck him square in the forehead, snapping his head back. He didn't even have time to cry out, but his face registered surprise at the unexpected turn of events. He tipped over backwards, teetered over the catwalk railing, and fell with a wet thump to the warehouse floor a dozen feet below.

Max hurriedly crawled out from underneath the scientist and his wheelchair and lay the man's head gently on the floor. She ran around some intervening crates to where the Boojum had fallen. When she got there, however, her heart sank into her boots and her stomach turned into a knot.

There was a wide pool of fresh blood on the floor, but Danno Chimeron was gone.

=/\= Max sat in sullen silence on the back of the ambulance as the

medic from Paladin Hospital worked on her disruptor burns. "You know--" the young man was saying as he wrapped her

hand in a sterile bandage, "--being grazed by a disrupt effect like this would've been fatal a couple hundred years ago..." But Max wasn't listening to the man; she was lost in her own thoughts.

Danno Chimeron the Boojum's terrible tragedy haunted her. Orphaned at age twelve when his family died one by one

from the Black Plague, hounded as a demon because of his regenerative powers, forced to live in the streets, watching everyone he knew grow old and die while he stayed young... It was no wonder his soul had become so dark. Max wondered if she would have turned out any different had she been in his place. Was it even possible for an immortal to live a normal,

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healthy life in human society, at least for any length of time? She doubted it.

Danno had called it 'the worst of woes'... Max's mind was recalled from the melancholy netherworld it

wandered by the repeated calling of her name by the head police inspector. The officer was standing right in front of her saying, "Miss Vasser... Miss Vasser..."

She had been 'Commander' Vasser for so long that being called 'Miss' just didn't register in her brain yet. She was pretty sure she'd never get used to it.

"Yes? What is it?" she replied distantly. "I just wanted you to know, ma'am," said the officer politely,

"that the scientist you rescued is going to get the best of care, though he'll remain paralyzed for the rest of his life. There was no sign of a twelve-year-old boy though. The only other thing my detectives found was another dead body."

Max's ears pricked up and her heart went cold. "Who was it? Where?" she asked.

The officer hitched his thumb over his shoulder and nonchalantly said, "Around the back of the warehouse. Looks like a local cab driver. Shot with a disruptor at point-blank range. His cab's stolen, and whoever did it tore the transponder out of the dash so it'll be hard to locate it."

The inspector checked a PADD he was carrying. "We've got your statement. We'll call you if we need anything else." With that, he began to turn away, but a lingering suspicion made him turn back.

"You wouldn't know anything about the dead cabbie, would you, Miss Vasser? Or where the murderer might be headed?"

Max shook her head. "No," she lied. She couldn't tell if the police officer completely believe her,

but the man grunted and turned away again to leave. Max called to his retreating back. "Say... Where's the nearest

sporting goods store?" 56

=/\=

After a brief stop at the local sporting goods store, Max was

back on the road. Her sleek zipcraft cut a swath through the night, heading north. Serenity City was already behind her and outlying farms and expensive country villas doted the landscape along this section of the long speedway to Lake Town a thousand miles away. There was no traffic to impede her at this time of night, so she pushed the speedometer up to 250. The zipcraft surged ahead with unbridled enthusiasm like a racehorse on steroids -- riding a rocket sled.

According to Rick the ruggedly handsome El Taco manager guy, the Boojum owned a small private spaceport a few hundred miles north of the city near the old Vesputian Monastery. If that was indeed where he was headed now in his stolen taxi, she should catch up to him soon.

Max's mind churned. Tracking Danno Chimeron would be so much easier using the sensors aboard the Rocinanté, but that wasn't an option anymore. And after bailing out on the Banshees without any warning, she didn't feel she had the right to go to them for help either, although she knew Lee Carter would be happy to lend a helping hand to her old friend and XO if she could. No... Max had baked her cake, and now she'd have to sleep in it.

She felt old and alone again, and the lonely road disappearing into the dark uncertain infinity in front of the windshield didn't help her mood in the least.

But then, there ahead in the far distance, two orange taillights materialized out of the night mist. It must be the Boojum's car! She pushed the zipcraft's accelerator all the way to the redline.

Max felt her heart begin to beat faster. How did you stop an immortal like the Boojum -- one who was dedicated to evil, who

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was beyond salvage? Throw him in prison for all the rest of eternity? Deport him to another part of the galaxy where he'd be someone else's problem? No... Max had no illusions about how their encounter would end. There was only one way to stop an immortal like the Boojum once and for all.

But could she bring herself to kill a child...? Would that be a deed for which she would ever be able to

forgive herself? Which was the lesser or greater evil -- killing Danno Chimeron, or letting him live? Would she be able to live with herself if she killed a child? Would she be able to live with herself if she let his evil remain free?

Max felt a tightening pressure in her chest as her conscience wrestled with the terrible moral impasse. She wasn't used to this sort of ethical ambiguity. As a Starfleet fighter pilot during wartime, her course had always been clearly defined in her mission orders -- find the bad guys and shoot 'em down. It had been simple, requiring no independent thought on her part, and she had been very, very good at it. But now for the first time, the big decision was fully in her hands. The fate of a thousand-year-old boy rested squarely on her shoulders. Her conscience -- her soul -- would have to bear the consequences of whatever she decided.

Was this the dilemma West and Rick the ruggedly handsome manager guy had been trying to warn her about? That had only been yesterday, but it seemed like an eternity ago. Had they known?

Max squeezed her eyes shut, letting the zipcraft steer itself, and fervently willed an easy answer to present itself to her, but the Cosmos remained silent and unhelpful this night.

What would West do? She opened her eyes and made her decision, and hoped she

could deal with the consequences afterwards.

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The speeding taxi was only fifty yards ahead now. Danno Chimeron had spotted his pursuer in his rear-view monitor and was pushing the stolen vehicle beyond its limits, but there was no outrunning fate.

Max took one hand off the zipcraft's controls and pulled her phaser from its holster. She fought to point the weapon against the tremendous force of the wind, took as careful aim as she could, and squeezed off two shots before the buffeting gale knocked her hand aside.

The first phaser beam went wide, narrowly missing a surprised cow, and turned a tree by the side of the road into a smoking pile of kindling, but the second beam struck true.

The left rear aerofoil of the Boojum's car was sheared off, and as the wreckage pulled away from the body of the vehicle, it tore a long gash in the side. Sparks flew, and, its aerodynamic stability ruined, the taxi swerved wildly out of control straight for the edge of the road. It smashed through the roadway's magnatomic containment railing and careened headlong into an inconveniently located automatic refueling station. The skidding

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taxi plowed over one of the recharge kiosks, and the many sparks instantly ignited the liberated hydrogen.

Everything inside a hundred foot radius instantly went up in a blistering mushroom cloud that rose into the night sky in a huge orange column. The boom from the explosion was deafening, and the shockwave punched Max in the kidney and knocked into her zipcraft so hard she almost lost control.

Max skidded sideways to a stop at the edge of the conflagration, and the zipcraft's pilot restraints were already retracting before the vehicle was at a complete standstill. Max unfolded herself from the saddle and threw herself headlong towards the Boojum's flaming car wreck, but whether that was to make sure he was dead or to try and save him from being burned to death she was never sure of afterwards, but the intense heat of the burning fuel kept her back.

She yanked her helmet from her head and let it drop to the ground, and peered into the bonfire. The wind from the rising heat whipped her long, brown hair around her face, and she had to squint to see anything from the glare. It was hard to tell if there was movement inside the flames or if the waves of heat refraction were just playing tricks on her eyes, but a moment later her question was answered and her nightmare came true.

The small black silhouette of Danno Chimeron coalesced out of the fire's glare and strode toward her. The boy was singed and most of his clothing had been burned off, but considering he'd just been at the center of a massive explosion, he looked miraculously unscathed. He stopped advancing once he was away from the worst of the heat and squared off against Max. His oversized disruptor was in his hand.

Max planted her feet apart and flexed her fingers in tense anticipation.

It was a scene out of the Ancient West, or a madman's twisted nightmare of the Ancient West, were it transposed to the last Circle of Hell. The roaring flames had spread to nearby

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outbuildings, and bathed the entire landscape in an infernal, flickering, orange light. The billowing smoke obscured the moon and stars in the sky and hung over the land in a choking umbrella, while smoldering cinders and ash drifted in great flurries and stung their eyes.

"I have to give you credit!" yelled Danno Chimeron above the

roar. There was a grudging smile on his face, as if this whole thing -- all the death and destruction -- had been just a game to him. "You're the first one in a few hundred years to get this close to actually killing me!"

"You could come with me peacefully!" yelled Max, unable to completely give up all hope. "You could turn yourself in! No one has to die here tonight!" But she knew that was a lie. One of them would be dead in the next few minutes. Time would tell which one.

Danno shook his head and smiled wider, but it was a smile of pure evil, born of the supreme certainty that he was impervious to anything Max could possibly do, and that he would shortly be adding her name to his very long list of victims.

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"To honor a worthy opponent," he called magnanimously, "I'll give you a free shot!"

Max replied with a barely perceptible steely-eyed nod. It was more than she could have hoped for, but that didn't make what she had to do any easier. She tensed every muscle in her body, wishing there was some other way, but finally she couldn't delay any longer.

Quick as lightning, she reached an arm around behind her back and whipped out the hidden pellet gun she had bought at the sporting goods store. Before Danno Chimeron reacted, she took careful aim -- because she only had one shot at this -- and pulled the trigger.

The white puff of expelled carbon dioxide from the muzzle, the pistol's sharp kickback in her hand, the Snark's marble flying towards its target, the impact, the small wound flowering right in the center of Danno Chimeron's chest -- all happening within the span of a single heartbeat.

Danno looked down at his chest and the brand new bullet hole there. The bleeding had already stopped and the surrounding skin was already closing over the wound as his cells regenerated his body at an incredible rate. The blinding pain he had felt at the bullet's penetration was already a memory. He grimaced in ecstatic triumph and raised his eyes back up to Max and cackled with unholy glee. He leveled his disruptor at the impotent mortal before him.

"Now we end this," he said in deadly earnest. But something was wrong! He felt a sharp stab of pain in his

chest where the bullet had entered! A confused frown appeared on his face. The pain shot outward like wildfire until it consumed every inch of his body. His muscles jerked in uncontrollable spasms, yanking him around like an epileptic puppeteer's marionette. The disruptor dropped from his unresponsive fingers. The look of confusion on his face was replaced by fear and panic.

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Max looked on, horrified and mesmerized at the same time by the powerful effect the strange elixir was having on the boy. A particularly violent spasm shook the Boojum. He raised supplicating arms to the heavens and cried out in utter abandonment and betrayal, then toppled over backwards into the dirt. Max ran to his side.

As she watched, Danno Chimeron's body began to change. Before her unbelieving eyes, he began to age, slowly at first, but the years flew by with increasing speed. As he writhed on the ground making guttural sounds, his thick shock of blond hair turned wispy and gray, his hands bent into arthritic claws, his flesh became emaciated, and his skin turned leathery and stretched over the protruding bones underneath. In thirty seconds he had turned from a twelve-year-old boy to a thousand-year-old mummy.

Once the transformation was over, Danno Chimeron took a long, painful breath and shuddered with the effort. He opened his eyes and stared up at the sky through the thinning smoke. "Finally... I can die," he whispered. The relief in his voice was palpable. "I finally feel... at ease..."

Through the haze of centuries, he caught sight of Max standing over him.

"What is the worst of woes that wait on age?" he quoted in a breathless whisper. "What stamps the wrinkle deeper on the brow? To view each loved one blotted from life's page, and be alone on earth, as I am now."

Danno Chimeron, the Boojum, turned his head a tiny fraction to look in Max's eyes. "Do you understand?" he whispered. He was without breath, yet his tone was urgent. In his last moments, he desperately needed someone to whom he could bequeath the one great gem of wisdom that he had learned during his long life. "Do you... underst...?"

His filmy eyes drifted closed and his last breath hissed from his lips.

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Max looked skyward and saw a fast-moving pinpoint of light. She thought of West and the Rocinanté.

She understood.

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