Prologue

No Rest For The Wicked

It was stupid, really. As soon as he loved her – the burning kind of love, the hot, soaking, laser-pistol kind of love – he should have known she was dead. It always happened that way, and just afterward, it always seemed like he would die – like now. Only before, he had never managed to quite make it out of the game. Whoever was holding his string seemed to like dropping him right back in, and the last time – well, the last time had been the hardest drop yet.

So he should have known. But – what the hell? He was always a sucker for a pretty face, and hell knew that she had plenty more than a pretty face. Heaven might know too, but then that wasn't all that heavenly, now was it? A smirk flickered across his face like a ghost, and he reached into his pocket for a cigarette. He went through the motions without really paying attention; tap the bottom of the pack, pull out a smoke, fish around in his pockets for a lighter.

He hunkered down behind his cover, and lit it. The smoke didn't matter – they knew he was here, alright, but he didn't want any wide-eyed sniper to single out the flash of his lighter for a shot. He didn't even know if they had snipers, but now was not the moment to find out. The sound of a shot was his first warning, and not much of one, either. He pulled his limbs in around him, back behind the curving tusk of metal that hid him from view of doors and windows.

Being trapped in this courtyard wasn't going to get him anywhere, and he hadn't come here to sit around while some ass-brained rent-a-cop from Mars central tried to make him an intellectual equal. A hard smile spread around his cigarette; he finished it in four slow drags and rubbed it out on his heel as he stood, unbending slowly.

It had been enough time, now. There was no sniper, just rent-a-cops with expensive guns and bad aim. He flicked the butt of his cigarette off of one finger, and turned instantly with a slipping, whipping motion of arms and gun.

The man who had thought he was doing a good job sneaking around the inside wall of the courtyard dropped with a bullet in his eye. His buddy snuck right into a steel-fisted punch, and fell forward onto the foot that speared his groin like an empty sack.

The cigarette butt hit the ground, and rolled away. Behind him, Spike heard a low, grunting cough, and then a clang.

"Hey, old man, what are you doing? Not without me under your arm."

Jet shook his head, flinging drops of blood like sweat, and draped his arm over Spike's much steadier shoulder. Despite the blood and the pain, he managed a low chuckle, muttering under his breath.

"As though it wasn't always me saving your ass before this…"

Spike just shook his head, putting away his devil-may-care grin for later; sure, he'd need it. It was hard to remember, how they had got into this mess in the first place.

Five million bounty, they say. Illegal weapons transport, maybe some mech-tech research on the side. But whatever we just found - whatever that thing is, maybe I don't want to know anymore.

But the smile he had been hiding slipped out again, stuck on that thought.

Definitely going to find out then. I won't stop, until I find him - anyway, it's my job now.

"Think you can make it the rest of the way back to the ship, old man? We don't have far to go - "

"Yea, I'll make it. Think I'd let a little punk like you show me up? Huh, anyway, like I said - I'm the one doing the ass-saving, remember? What were you thinking, running off like this by yourself - Ah! Hey, easy, there-"

"Sorry, sorry."

Spike moved his left hand, saw that it was stained with fresh red and winced a little.

"Really - sorry. But you know, I didn't ask for you to come after me, matter of fact I remember telling you to stay put - and Faye, too -"

A thought occurred to him.

"But don't tell me - you sent her out on some crack-brained rescue mission, too, didn't you?"

"Ha! As if. That woman, she reminded me right before I left that if I decided not to bring you back, we'd be splitting all the bounty heads fifty/fifty!"

Spike laughed under his breath and hoisted Jet a little higher on his arm. They had come to the edge of the landing field where Jet had come down, but as he expected the guards and rent-a-cops were all gathered around Jet's little trolley-ship. He could see the tiniest bit of red poking out beyond the base perimeter, though. Swordfish was waiting for them, if he could just get across the open ground -

He froze. Jet felt Spike's fingers tighten on his shoulder and his waist, and then without further warning he was catapulted forward. He was caught off guard; his cheek scraped against the pavement as he dropped down on his face. The leg that had been mostly useless banged and cracked on the pavement in ways that told him it would now be completely useless. It screamed at him in new and alien languages of pain, plus all the ones he knew already.

"Dammit, Spike!"

He chose to howl his belligerence, instead of his pain - and really, he had made a mess of things, this was more than half his fault - but a sudden barrage of machine gun fire blared out loud and sharp, cutting off any further words, or the thought of them.

There was a pause, and then a second round, and another pause, and then a third. Jet turned his head again and sucked in a deep, guilty breath. Spike wasn't crawling anymore; one of his feet was sticking out just a little into the view of whoever was shooting at them, and Jet reached forward with his good arm and dragged himself forward a few centimeters.

Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit -

The word was more than a litany, it was a cascade, but the movement over the blacktop of the landing strip was excruciating, pain pushing back everything else - the guilt, the two-by-four windowed slit of his vision, Spike's body in that window, not moving - Jet reached forward one more time, and pulled, but his last thought before the black faded in was that he had been right, so right - it was all ending just like he'd always thought.

Badly. And damn me, but if it hadn't been for that woman -

He tried, but could not remember when it had all begun to go wrong...again.

A/N: Ah, fun stuff. I haven't forgotten this fic, but Faye hasn't been cooperating for the next chapter so I decided I'd do some long put off revisions instead! Much thanks to those who review, as well as all my readers in general! Also, for some reason this chapter just...disappeared! Weird. Anyway...I'm back! Woo!