-
Faye sighed, more bored than anything. She reclined in Jet's seat on the bridge, one hand propping up her head as she drummed the fingers of her other against her bare thigh. Hours had gone by since Ed and Jet went into the lower levels of the ship to work on the Bebop's engines. So far, nothing had come of it. They were still adrift and most of the consoles surrounding them remained lifeless.
Her eyes rolled and she focused her attention on Spike. He stood by the window before her, gazing out on the planet below them. His hands were shoved into his pockets and a trail of smoke rose up from in front of him. She could partially see his reflection in the forward window and she wondered what was going through his mind.
Spike took a drag off of his cigarette, then exhaled the smoke through his nostrils as he stared at the red planet they'd been orbiting for the last three and a half hours. The closer the ship came to it, the more detail he could make out on its surface. Small communities were scattered across it, with no impressive metropolitan areas to speak of.
Though he masked it better than Faye, he was as worried about getting home, or not getting home, as she. He had too many unanswered questions, too much unfinished business to take care of. This side trip to another part of the universe threw a wrench into his long term plans.
"That planet's gettin' awfully big in the window," Faye quietly commented, drawing Spike out of his thoughts.
"Yeah," he murmured. He removed the cigarette from his mouth, exhaling another cloud of smoke. "The gravity'll have a stronger hold on us soon."
She cocked her head to one side as she studied the darkened form of Spike Spiegel. He didn't sound worried in the least that they could possibly die. Did he even care? "We can always abandon ship," she suggested with a shrug.
He puffed on his cigarette again. "And go where? You know none of our personal craft are capable of long distance space travel. As for this planet down here ... " He paused, shaking his head. "We don't know if anyone is even alive. These cities Jet picked up ... they could be remnants of a culture long dead."
"So you're giving up, then?"
"No."
"Sounds like it."
"You're the one who wants to abandon ship. I'm being realistic about our chances of survival."
She sighed, frustrated with the direction this conversation was taking. "Don't you have the slightest bit of hope?"
He remained silent as he gazed at the planet, becoming well acquainted with the geography of the place with each revolution. He hadn't felt hope for a long time. Seemed like decades ago, the concept of it was so foreign to him. When one lived the kind of life he had as an adolescent and a young adult, hope was one of the first things to go.
Annoyed that he chose to ignore her, Faye got out of Jet's seat. "You have an extra one of those?" she asked, coming up beside him. A moment later, Spike extended his pack to her and she removed one. Once she'd received a light, she inhaled deeply, letting the nicotine soothe her nerves then she looked at him.
"What?" he gruffly asked, noticing her staring.
The idea that they could die here, it had Faye doing some thinking of her own. She'd known Spike and Jet for only a few months, yet she considered them the only people in the galaxy she could trust. Especially with her life. Lately, it had occurred to her that she wasn't truly happy unless Spike was around.
For a while, she couldn't figure out why. She'd never considered the answer to the puzzle was such a simple one. In retrospect, well, it was unconscious denial. The cloud of denial lifted one day, though, when she'd overheard Spike talking to Jet about that Julia woman. The mysterious Julia whose hold on Spike was so strong, that he would cross the universe to follow up on the sketchiest lead on her whereabouts.
She blinked, her mind flashing back to the present. She saw Spike using their reflections in the window to look at her. Quickly, she averted her gaze, lowering her burning cigarette to her side. She wanted to tell him all of this. What could it hurt? He'd probably laugh, anyway. Then she could spend her final hours happily hating his very existence. It wouldn't hurt as much that way.
A few seconds later, the bridge roared to life as the engines of the Bebop re-engaged.
Faye sighed in relief as she closed her eyes. Not only because they weren't dead in the water anymore, but she'd almost revealed a well-kept, painful secret to Spike about herself. She wouldn't have been able to look him in the eye after that, if she'd have actually told him. She took quick drag off the cigarette in order to keep herself calm.
"Spike, Faye," Jet's voice came over the ship's internal comm. "How do things look up there?"
Both reviewed the ship's computers and the reads from the engines. Spike looked over to Faye who nodded that things were fine on her side.
"We're back up," Spike responded. "Way to cut it close, Jet." He stood straight, the ghost of a smile on his face when Jet replied by calling Spike a very unkind name. -
"We still need a lot of repairs." Jet used the last fifteen minutes to explain the extent of their troubles while he and Ed reset the consoles that came back during the engine restart. "We have our autopilot back, so we won't have any trouble with landing. I don't think ..." He tapped the panel and the autopilot engage light flickered a few times. He hoped it wasn't still down. That'd make it difficult on them.
"A landing?" Faye placed her hands on one of the consoles and leaned towards Jet. "You want to land on that rock?" She pointed to the window.
"I don't want to, either, woman, but I have to." Jet glanced over to Ed. "You find a suitable place yet, Ed?"
"No oceans that I can see." She turned to the others. "Only sand and rock, rock and sand. Big rocks, small rocks ... red rocks, blue rocks!"
"We get the idea!" Faye snapped. Her attention went back to Spike and Jet. "We're still screwed."
"Not necessarily," Jet said from his seat. "We can land without a body of water ... it's just ..." He glanced back at that autopilot button.
Faye took another nervous drag off of her newest cigarette. He couldn't be seriously considering this stupid idea. They'd managed a dry landing a few weeks before, but that was unplanned. And the ship wasn't battered to hell and back, then. "It's just that if you screw up, it's no longer called 'landing'. It's called 'crashing'."
"Look, the ship needs repairs and I can't do that up here with no materials. If there are people on this planet, we have to ask them for help." He paused in his preparations for the waterless landing. "Unless you prefer to drift in space forever?"
With a sigh, Faye shook her head and took one last drag on the cigarette before snuffing it out. "You're gonna get us killed."
"At this point, I'd take death over listening to you bitch." Spike placed his hands on the back of Jet's main console and looked the man in the eye. "Do it."
-
Meryl Stryfe never spent a lot of time staring up at the skies. Not these days, anyway. She had enough responsibility on the ground to keep an eye on. Yet, today, she felt as though something was 'off'. She couldn't put her finger on it; she just knew a major event was about to happen. That was saying a lot, too, when one spent the better part of a year following the 'Humanoid Typhoon'.
"Ma'am!"
Meryl blinked and lowered her gaze away from the brilliant blue sky then settled it on Milly Thompson, her partner on this mission from their employer - Bernardelli Insurance. However, she now noticed, that Milly was alone. Which she shouldn't have been.
"Where is Vash?" she asked as Milly sat down next to her on the bench.
Brightly smiling at her superior, Milly replied, "Mr. Vash is playing with the kids again!"
Like usual, Vash the Stampede, the fabled outlaw, the Humanoid Typhoon, a man so dangerous he had a bounty of sixty billion double dollars on his head, had made friends with every single citizen under the age of 14 in Illinois City, the latest town they'd saved from ruin.
Long red coat flapping in the light breeze blowing through the town square, Vash proudly balanced himself on the back of one the other benches, lecturing his captive young audience about the next game they would be playing.
"Now .. .pay attention!" Vash declared, holding up a finger as though he were giving the most important speech in the history of the planet Gunsmoke. "If you're going to play this game, you must follow the rules. Then we'll see how fast you are compared to me!" He laughed. "So .. When I give the word - "
"Mr. Vash?" exclaimed a little girl, probably 7 or 8 years old, as she popped up behind his bench. A hand latched onto the end of his coat and with one hefty tug - an attempt to gain his attention - the child threw Vash off-balance.
"Oh no," Meryl moaned as she covered her face with one hand. She couldn't watch as, yet again, Vash was humiliated in front of an entire town. She should've been used to it by now, but she still couldn't bear witness to it.
Milly gasped as Vash tumbled backwards off of the bench and landed hard, flat onto his back. "Is it over?" Meryl semi-peeked through her fingers.
"Yes. Gosh, I hope Mr. Vash is okay," she replied, her face filled with the same concern as her voice. He seemed to be all right. Some days the smallest scratch could send him into a wailing fit; while on others, he could take a bullet with nothing more than a flinch. "Should I check?"
Lying flat on his back, Vash stared up at the sky above. The wind had been knocked out of him and he'd temporarily forgotten how to move. Then, the bright blue eyes of the girl who'd tugged at his coat, looked down at him.
"M-Mr. Vash?" she asked, her tiny voice trembling with fear. Her hands clutched together in front of her and her eyes quickly filled with tears. "Are you okay? Please, be okay!"
"I'm fine," he replied, his voice a bit strained. He flexed the fingers of both hands and realized he was able to move again. He offered a smile to the girl as he sat up on the ground. "Don't cry. No little fall is going to hurt me!" he assured her as he brushed the dirt off of himself.
Breaking out into a broad smile, the girl threw her arms around him, hugging him tightly. "I'm so happy you're okay!" she cried. Her hug became tighter and Vash found himself having trouble with breathing. "I thought you were dead!"
Milly grinned as she looked to Meryl. "See, ma'am? Mr. Vash is fine!"
Meryl watched as the other children, who were also happy their new playmate wasn't hurt, pile onto Vash. "I wouldn't be so sure about that, Milly." She rested her chin in the palms of her hands, doing her best to keep from laughing at the scene before her.
Her joyous mood was short lived. A rumbling sound, coming from up above them, caught the attention of everyone in the town square. Even people who were indoors poked their heads out of doorways and windows, curious about the noise.
"What's that?" Milly asked. Her head tilted back as she searched the clear blue sky for the source of the commotion. A hand shielded her eyes from the glare of the planet's two suns. "I've never heard anything like it before, ma'am."
Meryl barely heard Milly's comments as she, too, scanned the sky. The noise grew louder and louder. Then, she saw it, a dark blob on the horizon to the east of town. It moved fast and became larger in the sky at an alarming rate. The rest of the townspeople saw it, too, and a semi-panic broke out, sending some back into their homes and shops. Whatever it was, they wanted no part of it.
"What ... what is it, Mr. Vash?" asked the little blue-eyed girl, her hands holding tightly to the folds of his coat. Her eyes were wide as she watched the flying hunk of metal drop lower in the sky. "Is it bad?"
A spaceship? Out this far? Vash wondered as he stared up at the approaching vessel. Something wasn't right, the way it descended; it didn't look like it's pilot had full control. His eyes narrowed. The ship would miss this town, but there were several others iles to the west of it. The damage a ship that size could cause with a direct hit ...
The low flying craft roared over the heads of those townsfolk who were brave enough to stay outside. Still, they either covered their heads or dropped to the ground, including Meryl and Milly. The only person who remained standing was Vash. His eyes never once left the vessel as it hurtled over the town and towards the western horizon.
Meryl uncovered her head, glanced over to Milly who did the same, then both women turned their attention to Vash. Meryl's eyebrows furrowed in curiosity when she saw he showed no fear of the unidentified flying object. She also knew that expression he wore on his face, very well.
What does he know that we don't?
-
About twenty iles west of the town Vash, Meryl and Milly had come to call 'home' for the time being, the Bebop made its rough and rocky landing on the surface of the planet. Dust kicked up by the ship's sliding stop created a cloud so thick, it would be a long time before it finally settled back to earth. The damage to the hull itself was minor. The vessel was tough and it had survived more destructive collisions than this in its day. As 'landings' went, this one could've been worse. A lot worse.
Ed's head popped up and she looked over Jet's shoulder at the control panels then out of the forward windows. She cried out in glee as she leapt over him and his chair. "Look! We've landed!" she exclaimed, pointing to the barren landscape that stretched on and on before her. She shook Faye's shoulder, trying to rouse the woman, who'd been knocked unconscious during their rough landing. "Faye-Faye! Wake up! We're here!"
Jet wiped a hand over his forehead, sighing in relief and exhaustion. That was some of the best flying he'd ever done. Minor damage and everyone was alive. He slammed a fist against the autopilot button which flickered out, then he cursed it. Everything was going fine until the son of a bitch decided to kick off halfway through their descent. After that, it was all Jet Black.
"Get off!" Faye snapped as she pushed Ed away from her. She grabbed onto one of the consoles and used it to pull herself to her feet. A wave of dizziness and nausea washed over her and she placed a hand to her head. "Oh, I feel like I'm going to vomit."
Spike accepted Jet's extended hand and let his friend yank him off of the floor. He turned to look out of the window with the other man. If he didn't know better, he'd think they were on Mars. His eyes scanned the horizon. Somewhere, not far off, there was a town. He recalled passing over one or two during their so-called landing.
"Out there," he said, directing Jet's attention to the west. "We'll start out that way."
"Where?" Faye asked as she half-stumbled over to them. Her hand dabbed at the bleeding cut on her right temple. Her eyes narrowed and focused on the horizon. "Oh. Out there."
Jet and Spike looked at Faye, whose hand dropped away from her head as she swayed uneasily on her feet.
Ed tugged on Faye's jacket. "Faye-Faye? What's wrong?"
"Nothing. I'm ... fine ... " Faye's eyes rolled back in her head as she fell forward. Spike caught her before she collapsed onto the floor.
"Let me take a look, Spike," Jet said. He pried open one of her eyelids, examined the pupil then brushed the hair back from the cut and he shook his head. "I'm sure she has a concussion. The cut itself isn't a concern," he reported. "Let's take her downstairs."
"This woman's nothin' but trouble," Spike muttered as he swept Faye into his arms then followed Jet off of the bridge.
More To Come ...
Song Title Used: "I'm Here ... Another Planet" by The Creatures.