Engine Blues

part one:

Hammerhead's Tune

The hum of Hammerhead's engine greeted him with its usual timber; steady and reliable. When Jet thought about it, it was the Hammerhead that had received the least damages in their career, and definitely was the least likely to break down or get hacked. Of course when you counted Ed, the Bebop had been the safest.

Jet revved the engine loudly to drown out Ed's voice in his head. Start thinking about Ed, you'll think about Ein. Start thinking about Ein, you'll think about Spike.

That damn Spike was nothing but trouble. He always tried to drag everyone down with him. Lousy jackass. "Better off without him." He voiced aloud, folding his arms and leaning back in the seat. "One less mouth to feed."

"Hey."

Jet started. He didn't jump. He wasn't paranoid. He turned his head to see Faye, his arms slowly unfolding and falling on his knees. "What?" He asked gruffly.

Faye had her hands on her hips, leaning forward slightly as though she were reprimanding a teenager. This didn't help her neck, seeing as she was on the floor and Jet was up in the cockpit. "You're talking to yourself."

Jet didn't feel he should honor that with an answer. Queue the 'you got a problem?' stare.

"Are you just going to sit there all day?"

"I don't see you rushing off in your ship."

"Well I would, but it's not fixed yet."

"Who said I was going to fix it?"

"How are we going to catch any bounties without the Redtail!"

"Next time I'll take my ship out then!"

"Aren't you getting a little old for that?"

"If you don't like the way I run this ship, you can leave anytime you want, I'm not stopping you!"

The two stared at each other stubbornly. Faye's hands were now fists at her sides, and Jet was bracing himself against the door. They weren't exactly yelling yet. They knew enough to stop before then. Better to fume silently and go on living then fighting and doing shitty on their own. After a while both averted their eyes, Faye turning her gaze upon a spare wheel for the swordfish.

"Go on then, before the store closes."

"Right." Jet closed the hatch and prepared to take off. The air was thick with fumes from the engine; which had been running the whole time. He flipped the switch for the recycler before gunning the jets.

----------Yippie-ka-yea----------

As he passed over the city lights, Jet's radio died. "Oh, Fucking……Great."

He slapped the thing a couple of times, and managed to knock it lose from its precariously duct-taped position. He stared at it. "The one thing in this ship that keeps me from going insane and it breaks. Nice."

After a long period of silence, Jet found himself deep in conversation, as he often did when he was alone. "…Hell, everyday I said to myself that you wouldn't come back, and I was right. It would've all worked out great if the girl hadn't come along."

He adjusted his grip on the handles. "you were just fine with leaving her here with me. She doesn't belong on the Bebop. She shouldn't be a bounty hunter, and she's not good enough o' one to keep herself out of trouble. She doesn't have you to come save her butt anymore." He paused. "She's a pain in the ass. Always relying on us…me, for help. One day I'll get fed up and no one will rescue her."

He leaned back in the seat. "But that's the price she pays for dragging me around. I feel like some stray dog dragged through the mud. I'll be burning both ends of the candle to keep us afloat, while she'll go off and blow our money on the races, like she always does…" He whittled himself down into lonely silence again.

Jet felt old. Real old. Like give him rubber pants and call him geriatric old. He figured that one of his old friends from the I.S.S.P. could stand a chat with an elderly ex-pig for a couple of minutes.

"Jet! Man it's been a long time. Heard you're dabbling in the westerns now. What in hell on earth possessed you to do that?"

Jet smiled the slightest bit. "I don't know. I'm still waiting for it to pay off, but I just keep getting screwed over."

"Jet Black never calls someone just to kill time. I'm guessing you want info on the newest mugs, right? What with Big Shot getting cancelled and all…"

Jet blinked. "What? Well I guess so. Didn't really cross my mind at all…"

Sidney leaned closer to the screen, smiling devilishly. "Sure thing, not crossing your mind; you tactician. Well to tell you the truth, most of the officers here are working on the Jane Doe case. We're letting Mars worry over the bounties for a while, we've got our own problems now. It would a good break from all the stupid syndicate crap, in a morbid sort of way."

Jet succeeded in not flinching at the mention of the Martian syndicates. Just Barely. "Jane Doe?"

"Don't tell me you haven't heard, Jet! She's been all over the networks!"

"…I haven't been following things as much."

The detective merely shook his head. "You've still got at least thirty years to retirement…" He withered when he saw the look on Jet's face. "Alright then……Geez, where to begin…Well she appeared on the map about four months ago. There was a fight over at Hermopolis. Real dodgy bar, lots of mugs. Turns out a boozer attacked her…"

Jet looked. "And?"

Sidney shook his head. "Not a pretty sight, the guy's in critical. Pretty much his entire rib cage is broken, as well as a chipped skull and damage to the spinal column. The doctors' guess is that when he wakes up, or rather, if he wakes up, he'll be paralyzed from the waist down. The strange thing is she didn't want anything to do with the guy, from what the witnesses say. Apparently he swung a chair at her. Hadn't moved from her stool until then. The whole thing was over in about five seconds. Never once landed a punch or pulled out a weapon."

Jet frowned. "So? That's barely enough to put a bounty on someone."

"The bartender had enough common sense not to clean her glass. We took the fingerprints and DNA back to the lab. The DNA wasn't readable. She probably gets those new black market masker shots. Anyway, we ran a standard check on the fingerprints. We couldn't identify them, but they matched up with prints from other crimes. Way too many too count. I know what you're going to say Jet, but for some reason her prints weren't in the living records."

"What about the deceased? It doesn't make sense, but maybe she tampered with the records somehow. The files can't be stolen, but they can be moved, can't they?"

"They're not there, either. Besides, we only started to save the records of dead people in the past few years. She could've faked her own death. It's nearly impossible to do it nowadays, but a person with as much skill as hers could pull it off."

"Skill? How is being able to beat someone within and inch of their life a 'skill'!"

The cowboy asked, propping his elbows up on the monitor.

"This is the first recorded act of violence we have. She deals mainly in thefts, but big time stuff. Her thumbprint was confirmed in numerous government cases; lots of it was stuff that no one wanted to touch until the bar fight. After the pattern was uncovered, the government called it a priority and all the high-up amoral cowards in the I.S.S.P. tried to get their greasy paws on it.

"Most of the stuff is surveillance tech and little compact weapons. All of the articles are very Bond-esque. Bug-sized macrochips, sunglasses with hacking programs, yadda yadda, It's more of a shock that the government makes some of this shit than it is that she stole it. Granted, none of that gets out to the public, or at least not yet."

Jet was getting increasingly impatient. "What about the money card? She paid for the drinks right?" He interrupted.

Sidney smiled humorlessly. "I was getting to that. Yea, she paid for them. Tossed the bartender the card after the fight, and left. We tried to track it, and at first it seemed pretty valid enough. When we tried to find the creator, or the brand, it sent us through a maze with no way out. This tiny piece of plastic had some pretty advanced shields. It was actually able to hack into, and disable the security, and run enough programs to crash the I.S.S.P. mainframe. Took us two days to reboot. Thankfully, only a few guys took advantage of that. We were able to bust them easily. We have no idea what she knows, though. She could be connected to the system right now and we wouldn't know it. She could've done anything to it.

"And the thing has no code. The card can be wiped blank, and replaced with new information daily. It would be impossible to track."

"We guess that she's not working alone. We're guessing she has a partner. Evidence leads to some connection to the mob, but we're not sure about the level of intimacy between them. You can go after her if you're crazy enough Jet."

Jet frowned. "How much." He said, his speech was merely on autopilot; his mind was off on a runaway train of thought.