The Bebop climbed towards a low orbit as she pursued her prey. VT, strapped into her seat and with her fingers resting lightly on the Bebop's controls, peered out of the front window. The dark curve of the Martian horizon split her field of view, the planet's bowed silhouette spattered with light where crater cities had sprouted and flourished like colonies in a vast petri dish. Above it all, the night sky was alive. Points of light darted across the firmament. Zip crafts and shuttles raced about their business heedless of the hour, almost indistinguishable from the bits of debris that flared as they tore through the upper layers of Mars' thin atmosphere. Now and again a dazzling point of light would rise to prominence, and then fade to nothing as a space station's solar panels turned into and then out of the Sun's glare. The stars, undisputed rulers of the void for countless eons, were lost amid a gaudy cosmos of neon advertisements.
The chase was almost at an end. The two small craft were now in a steadily decaying orbit, so close together that they registered as a single object on the Bebop's sensors. VT could only assume that one ship had disabled the other, and that the victorious pilot was attempting to take possession of their prize. That suited VT just fine, as with any luck her quarry would remain oblivious to the Bebop's approach. She glanced down at the sensor readings. The Bebop had closed to within a kilometre of the little crafts.
"Alright," she said. "Let's see what we got here."
With the flick of a switch, VT turned on the Bebop's spot lamps and brought them to bear with gentle movements of the control stalk. The lamp light was swallowed immediately by the endless void, save that which struck the hulls of the two small ships drifting up ahead.
VT had difficulty picking the ships out from one another at first, having to squint as her eyes adjusted from the low light of the bridge to the brilliant, reflected glow that lanced through the windows. The two craft were ever-so-slowly rotating about one another, linked by a grappling line that flickered and flashed in the harsh illumination. The nearest ship, the pursuer, was an ugly lump of mustard yellow metal, fashioned into a hull that looked only a little more aerodynamic that a shoe box. The other, Boxy's erstwhile prey, was a sleek affair of black and red panels, with splayed wings and a nose pointed like a blackbird's beak. It looked as though the craft might possess some sort of livery, but any identifying mark it might be sporting was obscured its homely dancing partner.
VT was still mad about the antenna, but she was also quietly impressed that the pilot of the yellow shoe box had been able to chase down what looked like a quicker, more manoeuvrable adversary.
"Well," she said to no one in particular. "Let's get this over with." She looked across at Lo.
Lo was in the same position as when last VT had checked. The tears that had marred his face earlier had dried to leave salty tracks across his cheeks, and small spots of water drifted away from his face as the ship lolled in infinite free fall.
"Hey, Lo," VT called to him.
"Mmm," Lo squeaked.
"Lo, you can open your eyes now." No response. "Damn it, Lo. Open your eyes!"
Slowly the electronics salesman opened his eyes. He looked straight ahead, gasped, and shut his eyes again. "Oh, God," he cried. "We're in space!"
"Brilliant deduction," said VT. She frowned. "Wait. You've never been into space before?"
"No, no I haven't."
"Hah! Space virgin, huh? Well, sorry to have popped your cherry like that."
Lo turned to VT, being careful that he was looking straight at the trucker before opening his eyes again.
"It isn't funny," he said. "Also, that's gross! This is exactly why I don't make house calls."
"Hey, I said I was sorry," said VT, her grin belying her words of apology.
Lo glanced aside. He'd noticed one of his electronic modules - a small, nondescript black box - drifting nearby.
"Oh Christ," he said. "There's no gravity up here, is there!"
VT considered explaining that there was still gravity, but its effects were negated because the ship was in indefinite free fall towards the dead surface of Mars. She decided against.
"Nope," she said instead.
"Oh man, I'm gonna be sick," said Lo.
VT's grin evaporated. "Okay, buddy. I think we'd all be a lot happier if you didn't do that. Just uh… take deep, slow breaths. Okay?"
Lo complied.
"This bucket's got an inertial ring," VT went on. "We'll get you back there just as soon as we've got this little situation resolved."
"Inertial what?" wheezed Lo.
"Uh, I'll explain later."
VT turned back to her console, Lo's erratic mouth breathing providing a tense score as she set to work. From what she could tell, the loss of the main antenna had cost the Bebop her long-range communications but had left her short-range systems intact. Or at least she hoped that was the case. A glance at Lo's pale, sweaty visage confirmed that this was now a race against time. VT selected a frequency that she thought would give her a fair chance of being received and began broadcasting.
"Breaker one-nine, this Heavy Me- uh, the Bebop. Is there anyone alive out there? Over."
Nothing.
She changed channels and tried again. Again, nothing. VT cycled through a number of commonly used frequencies, becoming more frustrated with each failed attempt. She had reached the fifth cycle and was about to start broadcasting obscenities across a broad range of frequencies when she finally hit pay dirt.
"Breaker one-"
"Who is that?" there came an irritated female voice. "And what in the hell is a 'Bebop'?"
"Finally," said VT with a roll of her eyes. "The name's VT. I'm aboard the Bebop. She's that big ugly brown thing a few hundred meters from you."
Confused noises followed, and then a wink of light as a helmeted head appeared above the hull of the sleek prey ship, its visor catching the light from the Bebop's lamps.
"Shit," the voice hissed.
"Actually, it's more of a rust brown," said VT, smirking at her own wit. "So, you got a handle, stranger?"
"Handle?"
VT sighed. "Name. Have you got a name?"
"My name is none of your goddamn business."
"Huh. Someone else whose parents had a sense of humour."
"You'd better back off, sister," said the stranger, her voice loaded with all the threat of a cornered animal.
"Oh, is that right?" VT laughed, rather pleased that her husky tones been identified as female by the hostile space walker.
"Yeah," came the reply. "This is my bounty head, and I am not in the habit of sharing."
"Bounty head?" VT's brow furrowed. All at once, her anger came roaring back. "A goddamn cowboy! I shoulda known. Listen, lady. You owe me for that antenna you smashed off my ship, planet side."
A moment's pause.
"Sorry, not my problem."
"Sorry," said VT, mocking the bounty hunter's tone. "But that busted fuel line of yours says different."
As the conversation had progressed, the Bebop had drifted close enough to the bounty hunter's ship for her lights to pick out a thin wisp of fuel as it dispersed into the vacuum.
Another pause. VT smiled. The bounty hunter's silence suggested she knew full well that she wasn't going anywhere. Probably she'd been trying to commandeer her captive's vessel when the Bebop had caught up.
"Occupational hazard," said the hunter, her tone implying a shrug.
"Occupational hazard, huh? Okay, how about I leave you in this decaying orbit so you can burn up on re-entry?"
Silence.
"I mean, you'd be cooked to greasy cowboy bacon," VT went on, relishing her adversary's discomfort. "But hey. Occupational hazard, right?"
The sound of exasperated breathing was all that could be heard for a long moment. Then, "How much?"
"Sorry," said VT. "Didn't quite catch that."
"I said, how much?" the bounty hunter growled.
VT told her.
"What?" the bounty hunter barked. "Was the damn thing made of solid gold?"
"Hey, don't blame me. I got a quote from a professional. Ain't that right, Lo?"
Lo let out a squeak through his nose. His eyes were still closed.
"So, what's say we drag your catch to the nearest police station and claim on that bounty?" VT said. "I'm guessing the payoff should cover what you owe me, considering all the trouble you've gone to to catch the guy." The muttered profanities that reached VT's ears suggested that it would, but only just. "Great! Now, get back in your ship and use the manoeuvring thrusters to land on my deck. You've got magnetic struts, right?"
"Yeah," came the surly response.
"Alright, I'll let you in the airlock. Oh, and you gonna tell me your name, or not?"
"Coffee."
"Um, okay then. See you in second… Coffee."
ooo
VT stood at the airlock in the hangar, waiting for the pressure to equalise on the other side of the door. She'd left Lo in the inertial ring to recuperate, having led him gently from the bridge as if he were a live bomb suspended from a birthday balloon. Fortunately, he hadn't detonated, and was now slumped on the floor of the ring, unhappily nursing a glass of water and trying to keep his eyes off the disorienting curve of the deck plates. The little man was too cowed by his first experience of extra-planetary travel even to complain about the presence of Zeros, who was already sprawled on the floor of the ring when VT and her charge had arrived. God only knew how the cat had got in there. VT had long since stopped speculating on what it was that made her companion such a natural space traveller.
An electronic chime sounded from the airlock. The pressure indicator light turned green, and the locking mechanism emitted a series of clicks and clunks at it disengaged one interlock after another. A short, sharp gasp of air accompanied the release of the final lock, and the circular door rolled aside. Standing in the airlock, one impatient fist resting on a canted hip, was a tall, slender woman clad in a figure-hugging white space suit. She still wore her helmet, a spherical affair equipped with a tinted visor that couldn't have been anymore quaint had it been a fishbowl with an aerial protruding from the top. A kit bag rested at her side, held against the deck plates by permanent magnets on its underside.
"Welcome aboard," said VT.
The woman in the airlock placed both hands on either side of her helmet and gave it a sharp twist. There was a pop and a hiss. The sharp tang of sweat came to VT's nose almost immediately.
"Thanks," Coffee replied, sardonically.
She raised her helmet to reveal a smooth, serious face, sparkling with perspiration and framed by a fire-retardant head sock the same colour as her suit. VT guessed there was a lot of hair under there; the sock bulged to almost the same size and shape as the helmet, giving Coffee the appearance of an angry light bulb.
"Need any help with your stuff?" VT asked.
"I got it," said Coffee, defensively. She stooped and plucked her bag from the floor, letting it drift up to be trapped beneath her right arm.
"Suit yourself," said VT. "So, who's the bounty head?"
Coffee, who was just stepping clear of the airlock, stopped and eyed VT. She must have decided she had nothing to lose by sharing, as she shrugged and said, "Some syndicate scumbag by the name of Cho."
VT had to bite back a harsh remark. It struck her as rich for a cowboy to start tossing around words like 'scumbag'. True, not all of the trucker's experiences with bounty hunters of late had been negative, but old prejudices died hard.
"Cho huh?" She said thoughtfully. "Funny, I thought the syndicates were spent since all that hullabaloo last year. So, how's our boy Cho doing?"
"Dead," said Coffee flatly as she stepped up alongside her host.
No wonder she was annoyed at having to split the bounty. Corpses paid less that captures if anything at all.
"That's too bad," said VT. And she meant it. Maybe she'd feel differently once she found out what the dead man in the dead ship had done to earn a price on his head, but right now he was just one more life thrown away in a universe of pointless waste.
"Yeah, too bad," said Coffee. Her shoulders seemed to sink a little, her voice softened. "You got somewhere a girl could powder her nose?"
VT smiled faintly. "Yeah, I think that can be arranged."
As she led Coffee from the hangar, VT wondered at how she was such a magnet for hard-luck cases. Lo, Coffee, the damned Bebop. But then, maybe it wasn't such a mystery.
She had married one, after all.