"K82.B" A/N: Hmm. I'm really not happy with the writing in "Diamond Dust." Too much filtering, goddammit, and I let myself get slap-happy with the introspection. I'll go back and edit it and reupload it. Bah. –kicks story-

This here thing is winding down, just so you know. Probably two more chapters and an epilogue. The reason for the three bounty arcs is to show how Faye and Spike work together—or don't—throughout each one.

KARMA: K82.B

The Redtail and the Swordfish fly from the hangar.

Jet plucks a button off the console. Fake iridescent mother-of-pearl. A yellow thread dangles from one of its four holes.

A shirt button. Spike's. Jet closes it in his fist.

Those two. He's sent them out in starships and spacesuits with nothing more than their wits and a few lousy guns against a bounty who feels nothing about abrading the skin off her enemies with diamond dust. If there really is an infant something between the two of them, the stakes are higher. It's not about money; but then, it never has been. It's about winning, about survival, about identity. They are bounty hunters. If they aren't hunting, they aren't anything.

Except those two have apparently given each other a new role. Jet envies them. It's been a long time since anyone looked to him that way. And the one who did, rejected it. Alisa. Faye reminds him of her in appearance, though not in behavior. The button shines on his palm.

He relies on them more than they rely on him. Stray cats lapping milk, allowing him to scratch them behind their ears as a courtesy. It's always been that way. Now's not the time to become depressed about that fact. There's work to do. Jet slips the button into a vest pocket and opens the comm channel.

X

"Where are you?" Faye sings. "Where are you, my two hundred million woolong bountyhead?"

"Don't get careless," Spike says.

His scanners don't show a damn thing. No heat sources. But that doesn't mean much; space suits are made to keep body heat in, so someone in a space suit won't show on infrared. He tightens his grip on the steering, the muscles in his arms twitching. He grins fiercely. In spite of his caution to Faye, he's every bit as eager as she is to get this thing done.

And if that nut does anything to the Swordfish, there will be trouble.

X

"Incoming!"

Faye jerks at Jet's voice over the comm. Her scanners are blank. "Where? What? I don't see anything."

"Just move!"

"Wait a minute—!" The Redtail jolts and shakes.

"Faye, get out of there!" Spike's voice is an agonized scream.

The Redtail. Her ship. She's been hit.

Time slows. Mom! Mom! I made the cheerleading squad, Mom!

Call me after school so we can study, all right, Faye?

Don't forget your piano lesson.

Shattered glass refracts the moon.

You have GOT to be kidding me!

I seem to be very generous.

You were afraid of losing them.

Don't get shot again. It's not good.

Oh God, this will kill him.

Jupiter burns itself on her retinas, the hurricane like a bloody wound on its face. Huge, spinning gas giant. As a child, she used to ponder what would happen if she flew by it and threw just. One. Match. Down into that enormous sleeping sun.

She finds out as the Redtail explodes around her.

X

"Faye!"

Spike can't separate his shout from Jet's. The Redtail a coal of fire, red and yellow and orange.

A glass bulb separates from the ball of flame.

"Get her, Spike!"

Spike leans over the controls and guns the engine. A blue streak of energy pops the fragile cockpit like a soap bubble, glass sprays, Faye's red space-suited body arcs against the backdrop of Jupiter. He logs this one-two-three in the three seconds it takes to reach her.

She's adrift, limp; he can't tell if she's conscious or unconscious, dead or alive. He opens the Swordfish's cockpit. Air rushes out, shoves her away, but he snatches one ankle and draws her in.

The cockpit clicks shut. Lucky thing they were both already in space suits, else they would have died of decompression. He opens both their helmets and presses his fingers against her neck.

She's alive.

He gasps for air. He didn't know he'd been holding his breath.

"Spike!"

No time. Spike twists the controls wildly and the Swordfish leaps under his command. McAfee's shot misses.

"Where's she firing from, Jet?" he asks.

"I don't fucking know, all right?" Jet sounds panicked. "These triangulations don't make any goddamned sense."

Jupiter spins as Spike sends the Swordfish into spastic gyrations. He can't allow even one hit, going from what happened to the Redtail.

"Spike, it's the autobots!"

Spike doesn't need anymore than that. He reconfigures his scanners. His screen blooms with red and green triangles, all the information he'd previously been seining out: asteroids, space junk, and the autobots.

"What are the autobots packing, then? Nuclear warheads?" he asks.

"High-yield lasers. Meant to zap asteroids or anything else that could interfere with them. Got more bad news for you, Spike—if you take out even one of 'em, we lose the bounty."

"Terrific," Spike says. He grits his teeth. "So what am I supposed to do, Jet?"

"Hold on, I'm working on it."

"Yeah, well, while you're working on it, I'm getting lit up." It's easier to evade now that he has the autobots' positions, but without knowing which one McAfee is in, all he's doing is buying time and wasting fuel.

Faye moans. "My head. Ugh. Why's everything spinning?"

"Because we're in a serious dogfight," Spike says. He keeps his attention on what he's doing. Jupiter falls away, replaced by the star-spattered backdrop of deep space. The Swordfish loops and spins over blue tracers.

"I thought I was dying. Why am I in the Swordfish? What happened to my ship?"

"Gone."

Faye doesn't say anything, but he senses her mourning.

"I've got it! She's in K82.B. That's the boss autobot that sends all the others their orders. It's the only place she could be hacking from."

Spike skims the information on his screen. "There's no dock."

"No dock and no gravity, either. You'll have to go in the hard way."

"How am I supposed to get there without getting blown to shit, huh?"

Faye closes her helmet. "Let me out of this thing."

"No deal," he says.

"It's the only way. Get beneath that boss autobot. I'll jump out, use my momentum to get to it while you draw the others' fire."

"Faye." He wishes he could look at her. One hard glare would be enough to convince her of the stupidity of this plan. But he has to keep his eyes on navigation if he wants to make it out of this mess.

"I hate to say it, Spike, but she's right. You can't shoot that boss autobot, I can't hack into it, and the Swordfish is the only ship we can use. They aren't firing at the Bebop, which means they're only targeting one thing at a time."

Overlapping Jet, Faye says, "I'm going to do this."

Spike looks at her for a split second. Her face behind the helmet is blue-tinged by tracer fire. Her lips are set, eyes serious. There's no greed, no deathwish in her expression. Just determination.

Softly, she says, "She blew up my ship. I want to be the one to take her down."

He nods then, once, sharp. "Just don't screw up."