VT pushed her cap back and looked up at the hull of her new acquisition. The Bebop, resting in her berth at the end of a wooden quay in a marina on the West side of town, had turned out to be a bloated heap of pitted metal bolted to two of the biggest, ugliest, most outdated engines VT had ever seen. The design of the trawler-cum-spaceship was every bit as confused as the vessel's dual nature suggested, looking like the result of a fender bender between an old-timey space shuttle and a garbage scow, the whole shebang set off by a coat of nauseating rust-brown paint. The ship barely seemed worth the price of the long, sweaty taxi ride to the marina through rush-hour traffic, let alone the one-point-five mil she'd paid for her.
"Wow," she breathed. "What a hunk of crap. Zeros, buddy, I think we've been had." Zeros meowed loudly. Possibly in agreement, possibly with excitement at the strong stink of fish that drifted from the sun-warmed waters. "Well, guess we better take a look around inside. Give that Jet character the benefit of the doubt before we hunt his ass down."
A set of sturdy steel rungs, set into a rut in the ship's side, ran in a gentle curve from the deck above to the murky water below. With great effort, VT hauled herself up to the deck, taking care not to accidentally drop her cat overboard. On reaching the top the trucker took a moment to catch her breath.
"Thanks for the leg up there, Zeros," she said sardonically. Zeros, for his part, had fallen asleep halfway through the ascent.
VT walked across the deck, the centre of which was dominated by a reinforced landing pad that bore a passing resemblance to one half of a basketball court. She stopped at the far edge and squinted out across the water. The sun, now low in the sky, shed a peach pink light that dazzled the trucker as it danced across the gently shifting waters. The marina was about the size of a city park and around its edges, small boats, mostly pleasure craft, huddled at the many quays. From here, it was easy to get a sense of just how comically out-sized the Bebop was by comparison to her planet-bound brethren. The big craft stood lonely and sullen at its berthing, the other boats crowding away from it, creaking and whispering to each other in the evening light.
"Like the unpopular kid at a high school party," VT reflected quietly, and was taken with a sudden guilt at her earlier derisiveness towards the ship. "Been there, old girl," she said, and patted the bulkhead next to the bay door.
VT pulled the fob from her jacket and thumbed the button on its face. For a long second nothing happened. Then there was a loud groan followed by an unhealthy rattle, and the bay door began to rise. Taking care not to dislodge either her hat or her cat, VT ducked beneath the still-moving shutter and stalked into the shadowy bowels of the Bebop.
The interior of the ship came as something of a pleasant surprise. Every corridor and room, every closet and maintenance hatch VT explored was perfectly ordered and spotlessly clean. Door hinges were oiled, cupboard contents were regimented, light fittings were dust-free. The Bebop's innards weren't exactly a triumph of interior design, continuing the brown and grey motif from the ship's exterior, but they were well cared for.
VT spent over an hour poking about the ship's cavernous belly. During her adventures she found a huge cargo bay, which despite its apparent cleanliness still retained a faintly fishy odour; four bedrooms, three of which were empty and almost surgically clean, the fourth still occupied by what VT assumed were Jet's belongings; and a sitting room complete with ugly yellow furniture and small holographic TV set.
Finally, with the sun large and red and cut into a ragged half by the city's skyline, VT found herself standing on the bridge, overlooking the landing deck where she'd begun her tour earlier that afternoon.
"Not as bad as I was expecting," she said, slumping into one of the swivelling seats that flanked a large navigation table at the bridge's heart. "Seems our buddy Jet is a bit of a clean freak." She carefully plucked Zeros from her shoulder and placed him on the flat expanse of the table, musing as she did, "My guess is he was a marine, or maybe a cop or something." VT warmed to that idea as she thought about it. It certainly explained Jet's clunky prosthetic, and the distant look he got when questioned about his past. Zeros seemed less interested, slumping down onto his belly and falling asleep immediately.
"Alright, Zeros," VT said. "Guess we better get ourselves cleared for take-off. We'll have to make it to the gate pronto if we want to get to Earth by tomorrow morning."
Zeros stretched out his forelimbs and rolled onto his back, carrying out the whole delicate manoeuvre in his sleep.
VT turned her chair to face the nearest screen. "LCD?" she exclaimed. "Geez, who built this thing? Noah?"
As outdated as the display was, the interface was at least easy to decipher. She pulled up the comms window and dialled for the Martian Air Traffic Authority. Her efforts were rewarded with a succinct response from the display.
ERROR
"What the hell?"
The trucker tried again. Again, she was presented with the same uninformative message.
"God damn it," she hissed. The faint smell of smouldering plastic reached her nose. "God damn it!" she barked. VT quickly switched off the display and hopped out of the seat. A wisp of pale blue smoke snaked out from behind a panel near her shins. She sighed and placed a sympathetic hand on the dead console. "Guess your old owner was better with a mop and bucket than he was with a soldering iron, huh girl? Well, shouldn't be too tough to fix."
VT was confident she could sort out the problem. She'd spent enough time running long haul jobs to know how to fix a malfunctioning comms unit. That confidence lasted right up until the moment she pulled away the panel. "What the…"
The interior of the comms unit looked like a theme park ride designed by a lunatic. Wires and cables of every conceivable colour and thickness looped and twisted and coiled through a ghostly haze of fumes. Obsolete electronic units bumped up against more modern modules, and there was evidence of heavy improvisation throughout. (One component looked to have been cobbled together using electrical tape and the ring-pull from a beer can.)
VT rocked back on her haunches and scratched beneath the rim of her cap. "Scratch that about Jet being a neat freak," she said. "I think he might have been a mad scientist. Or maybe he was rooming with one." She heaved herself upright. "Well, I sure as hell can't fix this. Guess we better consult the Good Book."
One of the things VT had questioned Jet about when they'd been exchanging details was the location of the Bebop's bible. Every well-run ship had one - a book or binder containing all the information relevant to the operation and upkeep of the craft - and the old trawler was no different. A compartment in the foot well of the pilot's position housed a large binder that contained a ten-centimetre-thick stack of paper, the pages within perfectly collated and clearly labelled.
"Ah, now there's the Jet we all know 'n' love," said VT with a smile.
A bright red tab marked the start of the chapter on the comms unit. The information within was every bit as indecipherable as the trucker had expected, but luck was on her side. A dog-eared business card clung to the top of the final page of the chapter, held in place by a bent paper clip.
"Looks like Jet had a guy for this," VT said. "Hey, and we're in luck. His shop's just the other side of town, and he's open late. Whaddya say, Zeros? Up for another expedition?"
Zeros gave a loud snore.
"'At's my boy."
ooo
VT paid the rickshaw driver from her dwindling stack of ones. She included a tip, even though she couldn't really spare it. She thanked the driver - a bony middle-aged man with skin like old leather - who gave her a gap-toothed grin in return. He and his vehicle then rattled off into the balmy evening.
The trucker now stood at the intersection of two long, narrow streets, each of which were made even narrower by the clutter of storefronts that spilled out onto the pavements. Stacks of fruit and racks of clothes jostled for the attention of passers-by, their origins and prices varying with the asker. Delicacies of every description flipped and sizzled and rotated at stands all along the thoroughfares in each direction, the proprietors using grease-stained fans to waft the sweet, savoury or outright unidentifiable odours of their wares out into the street.
VT made her way along one of the quieter paths available to her, nudging and squeezing and excusing herself through the slow-moving human traffic. Night was closing in, the sky above showing as a violet line that zigzagged crazily between the mismatched awnings that overhung the street on both sides.
Zeros - a cat, and thus ostensibly a nocturnal creature - was alert now, if otherwise as sedentary as ever. He would mew plaintively now and then, usually as his owner passed by a food stand. It occurred to VT that she hadn't fed the little guy since that morning, but the not inconsiderable press of his weight on her shoulder indicated that he wouldn't starve to death anytime soon.
"Easy fella," she said. "I'll grab you something on the way back. Business first, okay?"
Zeros gave a derisive feline snort that suggested it wasn't okay at all.
VT walked for several minutes, her eyes hopping from one side of the street to the other before spotting the tell-tale signage. "Aha, there's our guy," she said.
Lo's Bargain Electronics was a small, gloomy crack-in-the-wall located between a ramen stand and an adult bookstore. Its faux rice-paper frontage was partly hidden behind stacks of battered electrical items and tattered sales posters. The sliding door stood open, revealing a dimly lit floor space cluttered with mildewed cardboard boxes that showed signs of rotting in the humid air. The proprietor, sitting side-on behind a counter at the back of the store, was just about visible through the gloom, his profile picked out in the cold glow of a hidden TV set. VT guessed this was the titular Lo.
"Wow," she muttered to herself. "What a dump."
VT entered the store and began to pick her way carefully across a space littered with the detritus of humanity's technological progress. Towering racks of old AV kit loomed threateningly from the shadows to either side, prompting the occasional sideways glance from the trucker to make sure she wasn't about to be buried in an avalanche of plastic and Bakelite. Crumby as the place was, VT found the sight of Lo's store oddly reassuring; it was exactly the sort of place she would expect to find spare parts for a ship like the Bebop. And what was more, the place didn't stink. It looked like it should (VT had been tempted to hold her breath as she entered), but the air was near odourless, if a little close.
VT reached the counter and leaned across casually to address the proprietor. "Hey, buddy," she said.
"Shh," said Lo, waving his hand in VT's face without ever looking away from his TV. He was a dumpy little man in a green sweater, with greasy hair that hung lank from beneath a grubby red beanie.
VT frowned. She hadn't expected to be given the red-carpet treatment, but her understanding of the retail industry suggested she was entitled to expect better than being told to 'shh'.
"Hey, pal," she said, impatiently, "how about a little service here."
"Yeah, yeah," said Lo. "In a second."
Irritated as VT was at being waved away, her curiosity got the better of her. Lo's store wasn't exactly heaving, so the trucker was interested to know what could be more important than a potential customer. She leaned over a little further and peered at the screen - a CRT, funnily enough.
It was a cartoon. A damned kids' show!
"Oh, oh, this is the best part," Lo squeaked.
VT watched incredulously as a sword-wielding man in a bathrobe set about a hapless trio of robots. The scene of kid-friendly violence looked to have been rendered in crude, hand-drawn images.
"God, I am so into this stuff right now," said Lo, gleefully. "Turn-of-the-century animated shows are just the best!" He picked up a little black box which, incredibly, appeared to be connected to the video player by a wire, and paused the show. The screen froze on the flickering image of the robed man panting over the broken mechanical bodies of his adversaries. Lo dabbed at his glistening brow with the towel that was draped round his shoulders and turned to VT. "So, what can I do for you?"
"About time," VT breathed. "Yeah, I need a-"
Lo's eyes widened, and his jaw dropped open revealing a wide gap where his front teeth used to be. Apparently oral hygiene was a bit of an issue around here. "What," he squealed, "is that?"
VT frowned in confusion. Her gaze followed the line of Lo's two extended index fingers to her shoulder.
"What, this?" she said. "This is my cat, Zeros."
"Y-you can't bring that… that thing in here!"
"What? Why the hell not?"
Lo gestured to the shelves of old electronics that surrounded them as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
"Yeah," said VT. "And?"
"Cat hair," said Lo. His voice was a hoarse whisper, as if he invoked some forbidden name. "Cat hair is death for retro electronics. It's almost as bad as cigarette smoke."
"Oh," said VT with a smirk. "Well, lucky for you, Zeros here quit last year."
"It's not funny!" the shopkeeper lamented. "You need to take it outside, right now!"
"Hey! Listen, buddy," said VT, her patience wearing thin. "Zeros here is my wingman. Where I go, he goes."
"B-but… cat hair… electronics…"
"Look, I'm already late for my fishing trip. Now, I don't want to hang around here any longer than I have to, but I ain't going anywhere until I get what I came for." Lo made to protest, but VT cut him off. "The quicker you make with the service, the quicker we'll be out of your... hair." She was careful to draw out the last word a little.
Lo glared at VT for a moment, then at Zeros, and then at VT again. "Fine," he said, his shoulders slumping. "Just… just don't let him touch anything."
VT glanced at Zeros. "I don't think that's gonna be a problem." The cat had slept soundly throughout the exchange.
VT spent a minute or two describing what she needed as clearly and succinctly as she could. "Yeah, I've got what you need," said a surly Lo, once VT had finished. "Hold on." He turned to go into the backroom, then stopped suddenly. "And don't-"
"Don't let him touch anything," said VT with a roll of her eyes. "Yeah, yeah."
Lo scowled and disappeared into the back of the store. A short time later he reappeared carrying a stack of flat boxes. They were arranged from top to bottom in ascending order of size, forming a pyramid with the base resting on Lo's forearms and the peak wedged beneath his chin. He placed the stack carefully on the counter.
"There," said Lo. His tone was a little happier now. Obviously, the chance to demonstrate the depth of his stock and expertise was a source of some consolation. "This should be everything you'll need."
"Great," said VT.
She looked over the boxes. All of them appeared to be unopened, their ends still held shut by little circles of tape. The only evidence of their age was a slight discoloration of the box art, which on the topmost box featured a bland-faced woman grinning broadly, presumably with satisfaction at having acquired a brand new CommCorp PX-3300 PCB.
"How much you want for all this?" VT asked. Lo told her. VT sucked her teeth. She was running dangerously close to the red, but she thought she should just about have enough to cover it.
"Gotta say," said Lo as he rang it all up. "This is some pretty antique kit. There aren't many people left in the system who know how to install it."
"Uh, yeah," said the trucker. "About that..." Lo looked up from the register. "Do you do installations?"
"What, you mean like a house call?" said Lo. "Oh no. No, no, no." He raised both hands, wagging them from side to side to emphasise his point.
"Why not?" asked VT. "If you're worried about payment-"
"No," said Lo. "I can't leave the store. I have customers to think of!"
VT looked over her shoulder. The only occupants of the store were herself, Zeros, Lo, and the ghost of last century's electronics industry. "So I see," she said, sardonically.
"Hey," said Lo indignantly. "There could be a rush at any minute."
VT sighed. "Listen. If it's payment you're worried about, how about I pay your call out fee up front?" She reached into her pocket and, with some reluctance, pulled out what remained of her name pool money.
Lo was about to protest again, but his gaze snagged on the bills as VT placed them on the counter. He must have realised that they were all ones, but his jaw sagged open, nonetheless. That Lo could be mesmerised so by such a modest sum of money was a testament to just how likely he was to experience a sudden rush of customers.
"Ok, fine," he said at length, his eyes still fixed on the cash. "But you've got to keep that… that cat out of my way."
"No problem," said VT. "Zeros here'll be good as gold."
"And you have to provide transportation."
VT grimaced at this; she had been about to ask Lo if he had a car. "Uh, sure," she said, and wondered if that gap-toothed rickshaw driver would accept credit. At this rate she would barely have enough to feed herself and Zeros and fuel the Bebop. VT hoped Lo wouldn't ask to be fed as well.
"Cool," said Lo. "I'll just go get my tools."
"Wait," said VT, "you want to go right now?" With the window for a night flight already closed, the trucker had envisaged a morning appointment, maybe get started for Earth early in the afternoon.
"Might as well," said Lo. "Place is dead anyway. Back in a sec!" With that he vanished into the backroom again.
VT scratched under the rim of her cap. "Cool," she muttered.
ooo
VT yawned widely. Midnight was approaching and she was standing idle on the bridge of the Bebop, leaning against the nav table as she watched Lo work. It had taken a lot longer than she'd hoped to get back to the ship. She and Lo had walked for some time before reaching a street wide enough to accommodate a conventional taxi-cab and waited longer still before spotting one with that all important 'credit transfers accepted' sign in the passenger-side window.
All in all, it had taken the better part of two hours to get back the Bebop, and VT had spent most of that time listening as Lo provided a detailed blow-by-blow of what would be required to get the Bebop's comms system functioning again. His lecture had been both boring and incomprehensible, and the man simply couldn't be persuaded to shut up, regardless of VT's assurances that she neither understood nor cared how he planned to carry out his task. But at least he'd been willing to carry all the gear. In fact, Lo had insisted upon it; he'd all but told VT to her face that he thought she looked clumsy. She might have cuffed him for it had she not already been lectured into bleary-eyed submission.
"Holy crap, it's crazy in here," said Lo, for the billionth time. "I tell ya, whoever improvised this system was either a lunatic or a genius."
The dumpy electronics salesman was lying on his back with his head halfway inside the comms unit maintenance hatch, the cover propped to one side. Components of every description cluttered the deck plates around his prone body. A few bits and pieces even lay scattered across his chest. It looked like the console had puked all over him.
Lo reached deep into the console, extracted something that to VT appeared invisible between finger and thumb and flicked it away. "God," he said. "It's no wonder the thing shorted out. It's full of animal hair!"
"Hey, don't blame Zeros," said VT. "We only just got here this afternoon." She placed a sheltering hand on the back of her cat. VT had left Zeros in the sitting room so Lo could work unhindered, but the cat had snuck back onto the bridge while Lo was occupied and was now fast asleep on the nav table just a couple of feet above man's face.
"Whatever you say," Lo muttered sceptically.
VT turned and looked out of the window. Beyond her unhappy reflection, the warm orange glow of streetlamps washed across the darkened cityscape. The water, muttering to itself quietly in the darkness, showed occasionally as a wink of reflected light. The sky faded from grubby tangerine at the skyline to near black overhead. There were no stars.
"Say. How much longer is this gonna take?" the trucker asked.
Lo didn't answer, continuing to chatter contentedly to himself about connecting this to that and calibrating the something-or-other.
VT rested her backside and both hands against the nav table and let her head rock back. She closed her eyes and tried to clear her mind of any worries about fishing trips and finances. It was only then that she noticed the vibration. Her tired mind wondered for a moment if she'd left the ship idling, but quickly remembered that she had yet to even start the Bebop's engines.
"Hey, Lo," she said, stepping away from the table. "You feel that?"
"Feel what?" asked Lo, but his words were already becoming lost amid a building roar.
Spacecraft engines.
What had been a faint vibration moments before had risen to a teeth-rattling crescendo, causing the smaller components at Lo's sides to dance in little circles on the deck plates and turning the bridge into a cauldron of painful noise.
A small ship, visible only as a silhouette and two circles of livid yellow light, burst into view through the forward windows and swept out across the marina. It dropped briefly towards the water, throwing up a wake that glittered in the lights of the surrounding city, and then hurled itself skyward with a bellow of its engines.
"Christ," said VT over the fading noise. "Cut that a little close didn't ya!" Now she was standing at the front of the bridge, following the path of the craft as it headed for the light-smothered stars.
The trucker was about to make some profane statement about the quality of the driving on Mars when the sound of engines began to build once again. This time the sound was shot through with a high whine, as if the craft to which it belonged was not at all happy about being pushed so hard. Seconds later, the bridge shook again as yet another ship raced overhead. This time the cry of the passing craft and the roar of its wake were accompanied by a single, ear-splitting crack, and a jolt that could be felt even above the violent shuddering of the Bebop's hull.
A second silhouette, blockier than the last and punctuated by a single large circle of orange-red light, swept low across the water before thrusting skyward in a sparkling fountain of displaced water. At the same moment, something long and crooked cart-wheeled into view, bounced twice across the Bebop's landing deck and then arced from sight as it left the faint puddle of light that spilled from the Bebop's windows. A faint splash followed.
"What the hell was that?" VT asked of no one in particular. She grimaced. Whatever it was, it had looked expensive.
"I think that was your primary comms antenna," said Lo, now standing alongside VT and watching the afterburners dwindle into the night.
"Can you fix it?" asked VT.
"Probably, but I'll need to special order the parts."
VT gritted her teeth. "Ballpark estimate?"
Lo provided one.
"The hell with that!" VT roared. She turned and stormed over to secondary pilot position.
"Uh, what are you doing?" said Lo dubiously as VT settled herself at the console and started booting up the flight systems.
"What does it look like I'm doing?" said the trucker. "I'm going after the jackass that just wrecked my antenna." The screen in front of her flickered to life. A few quick keystrokes pulled up the radar display. Two points representing the craft that had just passed overhead blinked just north of centre on the radial plot, their ascent denoted by the rapidly climbing numbers alongside each one. "Gotcha, y'little bastards."
"Hey, wait, what?" said Lo.
"Better strap in, pal," said VT. "I've not flown one of these things before so it could get a little bumpy."
"No! No, you can't take off. You have to let me off first!"
"Sorry, no time."
The Bebop's engines were spinning up, filling the ship's interior with a low rumble that rattled this deck plate and that as it climbed through one resonant frequency after another.
"Oh God oh God oh God," said Lo as the Bebop lurched into motion. "Oh shit oh shit oh shit!" he added, as the sound of the Bebop tearing away from her moorings rolled through the bulkheads.
"Oops," said VT absently, too focused on her quarry to worry about some snapped cables or a crushed wooden quay.
Empty boxes and their erstwhile contents began to slide towards the back of the bridge as the Bebop accelerated out into the marina. Lo glanced about with a look of building alarm, as if searching for an escape route.
"I'm not kidding, Lo," said VT over the rumble of the ship. "Buckle up or you're gonna end up spread real thin across the back wall."
Lo let out an unhappy squeak, then clambered into the comms seat and hastily fastened the harness.
VT, still familiarising herself with the controls, gnawed at her bottom lip as she coaxed the old trawler up to speed. It was tricky working with such an old-school interface. Even her old rig, with its outdated console and displays, possessed touch screens and voice recognition. The Bebop had push buttons. Actual honest-to-God push buttons! It was like being on the set of a hundred-year-old B movie. But in spite of the lack of a decent set of controls, VT's piloting skills won out and the Bebop hauled herself from the water and began to climb. Her head dropped back against the headrest as she brought the ship almost vertical, her body weight building uncomfortably as the ship laboured skyward.
Belatedly, the trucker thought about her cat, and where he might be just at that moment. She wasn't unduly worried, though; Zeros had a knack for space travel that most humans lacked. He'd have found himself a safe spot to hole up the moment it became apparent they were taking off, just like always.
The ascent was steep. Too steep. For one nauseating moment, it seemed that the Bebop might flip over and go cartwheeling back into the marina. VT corrected quickly, dialling in a shallower angle and taking the ship into a slow spiral.
"Whoops," she said, glancing over at Lo with an apologetic smile. "Almost lost her for a second there."
Lo wasn't listening. He was sitting with his fingers clamped around his harness straps, his eyes scrunched shut and his head drawn down between his shoulders. He looked like he might fold in on himself at any moment, like a beer can slowly crushed underfoot. Tears streamed down his face.
VT shook her head. "Lightweight."
She checked the telemetry again, and then looked up through the window ahead. There, visible through the central pane, two points of lights danced across the starless sky, looping about one another like courting fireflies.
"There you are," she muttered.
A faint line passed between the glowing dots as they circled one another. It lasted only an instant, and appeared hair thin at that distance, but to a pilot of VT's experience the sight was unmistakable.
Tracers.
"Interesting," she said to herself.
And convenient. It meant that the pilots would be too concerned with each other to bother with the shortest route of escape, giving their bigger, slower pursuer a chance to chip away at their lead.
VT set her jaw and squared her shoulders. With a dance of her fingers and the thought of that very expensive, very broken antenna in mind, she ramped up the power and plunged the Bebop nose first into the Martian night.