VT dragged her aching legs over the threshold of the lounge and plodded down the stairs, with Coffee just behind her. Neither had said much to the other on the way back from Mars. It seemed the bounty hunter was no more a fan of having multiple attempts made on her life in the space of five minutes than her de facto partner. VT wouldn't have gone as far as to say Coffee was in a state of shock, but she was a lot less surly and a lot more sullen than usual.
The scene in the lounge had changed little since VT and Coffee had left for Mars, save that Lo had regained some of the scant colour and vigour he'd lost after his own brush with death. The electronics salesman, perched on the edge of the single-seat chair, stared intently at the holographic screen on the coffee table, his over-sized mag-boots planted firmly on the deck. By all appearances he was beginning to get his space legs.
Andy stood at the smaller man's shoulder, also looking at the screen but with an expression of boredom rather than interest. VT had noticed that the would-be samurai rarely sat down, probably because he had yet the master the manoeuvre with a sword hanging at his side.
Zeroes drifted by VT's shoulder just as she was passing through the doorway, and merrily paddled his way into the corridor beyond.
Andy glanced up as the women descended the stairs. "You're back," he said, exercising the keen observational skills of a professional bounty hunter. "How was the mission? Did you gather any useful intel'?"
Neither woman answered. VT rounded the sofa, planted her feet and hauled her rump down onto the seat. Coffee swept across the room and vanished out the other door, probably a beeline for a washroom. It occurred belatedly to VT that that might not be such a bad idea, but her legs disagreed. Her thighs still smarted from her dash up the stairs and across the roof to escape the sniper and had complained the whole way from the hangar every time she had pulled her magnetised soles free of the deck plates.
"Well?" said Andy. "Did you find Kolarov or not?"
"Yeah, we found him," VT said; even talking was an effort.
"Great!" Andy looked about. "Where is he?"
VT pinched at the bridge of her nose. "He's outside painting the hull," she said irritably.
Andy frowned. "Umm…"
VT sighed. She took off her hat and ran her free hand over her hair. "Kolarov's dead," she said, more calmly this time. "Syndicate hitman got him."
Lo looked up at this, some of the colour he'd regained draining from his face.
Andy pursed his lips. "Tough break," he said.
"Yeah, tough break," said VT. "We might have been dead too if the hitter had known how to aim a sniper rifle."
"Sniper rifle?" said Lo in a tone of alarm. He glanced about as if looking for spots where a syndicate marksman might be concealed.
"All that trouble just to come back empty handed," VT mused.
"Hey," said Andy. "Any battle you can walk away from… or should that be landing? Or a breakup maybe?"
"Christ," said VT, ignoring Andy's babbling. She tilted her head back and stared at the ceiling. "We almost died. For nothing. Again." VT really did not like the habit of close calls she and her crew were making. "All that, and we didn't learn one damn thing." She said to the light fitting.
"Huh?"
VT looked down to see Lo had ceased his hunt for sniper nests and was looking straight at her. "I, uh, wouldn't say we didn't learn anything," he said.
"What do you mean?"
Lo grasped the base of the television and turned the unit to face VT. The screen was showing the list of deliveries to Pangboche crater that he and Andy had lifted from the Von De Oniyate place. "Check this out," said Lo. He ran his finger along the column of serial numbers on the right-hand side of the screen.
"Yeah, so?" said VT. "They're reference numbers for the deliveries."
"No," said Lo. "They're not reference numbers, they're serial numbers. Equipment serial numbers."
VT frowned at the little man and leaned forward. "How do you know that?" she asked.
"I recognise a few of them," said Lo. He pointed to one entry in particular. "This one, for example. It's an XR-0020 electronics cabinet. It's for housing cards used in communications networks."
VT cocked an eyebrow. She had an image in her head of those little punch cards that carried programs for the earliest computers, but she assumed that wasn't what Lo meant. "Oh? What else?"
"A few things. Some coax' cables, a handful desktop consoles, a communications aerial…"
That last one made VT laugh. She'd almost forgotten all about her own busted antenna. Had she just almost died for a broken antenna? Again?
"Anyway," Lo said, giving the chuckling trucker a dubious look. "Everything in here - everything I recognise, anyway - could be used to build a pretty powerful comm system. Or retrofit one, at least."
"Comm system, huh?" said VT, getting her giggles under control. "Not much of a lead. We already know the cover story about Andy's Dad wanting to talk to aliens."
"Yeah. Except that the Pangboche project was meant to listen for alien's, not talk to them," said Lo. "All this stuff isn't just designed for receiving signals, it's designed for sending them as well."
Andy scratched his head and leaned in towards the screen. "But that's just what those radio telescope things do, right? Beam Mozart and pictures of naked guys into space for aliens to find?"
"Best education money could buy, huh?" said VT.
Andy gave her a haughty look. "I read the classics."
"Actually, Andy is sorta right," said Lo.
"About the naked guys?" Andy asked.
"No, no. About beaming information over a long distance. Look." Lo turned the screen to face himself.
VT struggled to her feet and moved around to join Andy at Lo's side.
Lo scrolled through the manifest and stopped suddenly at an entry for a large, heavy container. "This one here, the M700TC."
"I see it," said VT. "What's it mean?"
"It's a Matsuura 700 Transceiver unit. Just the thing if you want to turn a big receiver dish into a big transceiver dish."
"Okay," said VT. "And this thing has enough juice to send softcore porn to Alpha-Centauri?"
Lo seemed to deflate a little. "No, not really. Maybe you could get a signal to the outer planets, but the data would be attenuated to pretty much to nothing by the time it left the Ort cloud."
VT scratched under the rim of her cap. "Then why the hell would Von De Whatsits build a transmitter in the middle of nowhere on Mars, one that doesn't even have the horsepower to leave ET a voicemail?"
Andy looked like he might be about to make another remark about naked guys when something occurred to VT.
"Unless…" she said. "The whole transceiver thing isn't just a cover. What if he really does want to send a signal, just to the other end of the system. One strong enough to make it without a relay station."
"Ok, but why not just send a signal through the Jupiter gate?" asked Andy.
"Because it's not secure," said Lo, some of his enthusiasm returning. "Neither are the relays in the asteroid belt. The governments say they don't monitor private communications through the gates and relays, but they totally do."
"So, the question is, who do they want to talk to?" said VT. "And why?"
"Well, whoever it is, it won't be much of a conversation," said Lo.
"What do you mean?" asked VT.
"I mean the Pangboche telescope has been off the Mars power grid for years. They couldn't just hook it back up without someone noticing; a set up like that would drink way too much power. No, they have to be running off of a dedicated power supply, which means they might just have enough power for a short burst of data that would arrive at the outer planets at a level above the background noise."
"One short burst of data," said VT. "What could you even send that would be worth the effort?"
"Couple of dozen music albums," said Lo. "Or half of a movie."
"Or a signal to attack," said Andy.
VT looked at the samurai. He looked back at her with a questioning expression, as if wondering what could possibly be wrong with what he'd said this time.
"Crap," VT muttered.
Suddenly it made sense. The communications equipment to boost the signal, the other unidentified shipments which must be weapons, even small attack craft; many of the containers would have been big enough. Even the timing made sense. The system was on the verge of social melt down. There were demos everywhere, riots even in some places. The depleted police forces were stretched paper thin, and even the resources of the system's various armies were barely enough to take up the slack. It wasn't just Mars that was vulnerable to a syndicate fightback, it was every major population centre in the system.
No, scratch fightback. It was a goddamn coup! And there would be a lot of people who would want in. People who could see their financial and political empires teetering on the brink of oblivion. Men like Andrew Von De Oniyate Sr., and the political movers and shakers of whom the DA had to be so careful. By throwing in the with the syndicate they'd be ensuring the survival of their interests after the power shift. The new Reds had money behind them, perhaps more than ever before. And all they had to do to be assured of victory was to get their timing right.
"Crap," VT said again.
"What," said Lo. "What is it?"
"I think we're in serious-"
A sharp whine erupted from the ship's PA system. VT, Andy and Lo all winced with discomfort. From the hallway came the yowl of an unhappy feline.
The whine subsided, leaving behind it a low hum that VT couldn't be sure was coming from the comm system or her own beleaguered ear drums.
"Aw, what now?" she complained, jamming a pinkie finger in her right ear and waggling it about.
There was a short blast of static and then a deep, male voice emerged from the speakers. "SS Bebop, registration number 268170," it said. "This is the Mars Orbital Police. We have a board and search warrant. Be aware that you are surrounded. Cooperation is strongly advised."
The occupants of the room looked at one another.
"Wow," Andy said to VT. He looked impressed. "What did you do?"
"I didn't do anything," said VT, without really thinking about all the things she had in fact done. "And how in the hell are they doing that, anyway?" she added, turning her belligerent gaze on Lo. "Isn't the comm system shot?"
Lo shrugged. "Hacked the internal comm." He said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
"Of course they did." Said VT. She gave an exasperated sigh. "I'm gonna go clear this up." She turned and clanked angrily towards the bridge.
"Hey," Lo called after her. "Aren't you gonna let them on board? What if we get in trouble?" His whining tone made it sound like they'd been caught sneaking change out of his mother's purse.
VT ignored him and made her way to the bridge with Andy in tow. The trucker arrived to find that the bridge painted in the alternating red and blue light that strobed from a squadron of police cruisers hanging in the void beyond the bulkheads. The cop in the craft nearest must have had sharp eyes, because the moment VT set foot on the deck a spotlight lanced through the window to add eye strain to VT's worsening tinnitus.
"Goddamn it," she growled, raising a forearm to shield her face. She moved to the communications console where she found an urgent hail awaiting her. VT answered. "There'd better be a damn good explanation for this," she said.
"Bebop," came the reply through the console, the same voice as before. "We have a warrant to search your ship, and for the arrest of Roberta Sullivan. Cooperation is strongly advised."
"Roberta Sullivan?" VT looked across the console to where Andy stood squinting at her in the harsh light. "Who the hell is Roberta Sullivan?"
Andy just shrugged. He didn't seem overly concerned by their current situation.
The illumination of the spotlight shifted slightly, relieving some of VT's discomfort. Another pop of static as the police comm hack took control of the Bebop's PA again. "Roberta Sullivan, you are under arrest for the murder of Cho Min-Soo."
VT looked back towards the door. There stood Coffee, picked out in the blazing white spotlight, her face clammy either from sweat or her efforts to wash away the remnants of Kolarov's insides.
"Officers will board the ship shortly to take you into custody," the voice went on. "Do not resist." The officer proceeded to read the accused her rights.
"What is this bullshit?" Coffee growled, peering out from behind the hand that shielded her eyes.
"You're under arrest for killing that syndicate goon, apparently," said VT, speaking over the police officer who was still emphasising the importance of non-resistance and full cooperation.
"What?" The bounty hunter stalked up to VT. "The price on Cho's head was 'dead or alive'. I had every right to take the gloves off."
"Tell that to them, Roberta," Andy said. His tone betrayed some obscene enjoyment from his sparring partner's predicament.
Coffee threw Andy a dirty look, then turned back to VT. "Please tell me you are not gonna let those jokers onto the ship," she said. There was steel in her words, but there was also a plea just beneath it.
VT gave Coffee a crooked smirk. "Like hell I'm letting them on board," she said. "You're right. You had every right to play rough with Cho. If there'd been a problem the police would have mentioned it straight off, not to mention the DA." She turned and glanced with squinting eyes at the police craft arrayed outside. "We're being set up. The moment we let 'em on board, we're as good as dead. Gunned down while resisting arrest, or some other horse shit."
"Then it's just like the DA said," said Coffee. "Rotten to the core."
"Yeah," VT agreed.
"So, we fight," said Andy. His face took on a solemn cast, and he grasped the hilt of his sword. "A glorious final battle in defence of our honour. We will stain the stars red with the blood of our enemies before we go to join our ancestors."
VT scratched under the rim of her cap. "Well, that's one idea," she said. "But I had something else in mind."
Andy's shoulders sank, as if disappointed that they wouldn't be mounting a suicidal last stand.
"What are you thinking?" Coffee asked.
VT turned back to the communications console and tapped the transmit button. "Mars police, this is the Heavy Metal Queen," she said, pushing the cap back on her head. "I hear you loud on clear. I'm just gonna do a couple of checks before I open the hangar. I'll have you boys aboard in no time."
"Uh, copy Heavy Metal Queen," said the officer. "You've got two minutes." The comm clicked off.
VT turned around to find Coffee staring at her, the bounty hunter's expression a twitching mixture of shock, rage and betrayal.
"Relax, Coffee," she said. "I'm not turning any of us in just yet. Andy," She looked to the samurai, who had been observing proceedings with a bemused frown. "Your horse still in the hangar?"
"Er, yeah?" Andy replied.
"Well, get him out," said VT. "We need to open up the doors for our friends out there."
"Well, okay. But it's going to take longer than two minutes to get Jiroumaru II into-"
"I don't care how long it takes," said VT. "Just get it done. The Earth gate isn't too far from here. I'm guessing they won't want to start strafing us in full view of the traffic out there, or any straight cops that might be nearby."
"Guessing?" said Coffee.
VT pulled her cap back down. "What else have we been doing up to now?" she said.
It took a grand total of seven minutes for Andy to move his mount from the hangar to his own quarters and begin strapping him to the wall with a borrowed baggage net. VT was impressed, both with the horse's discipline and the bounty hunter's knack for handling the animal. Not that she admitted it out loud. At least now VT felt she knew the answer to that old question of what to buy for the man who has everything - zero-gravity horse wrangling lessons, apparently.
Much of the procedure of moving Jiroumaru had been conducted with increasingly hostile warnings from the police as an accompaniment. VT had done her best to defer their demands to board, and she was relieved when Andy finally called in to report the success of his mission.
VT clicked open the comm channel. "This is Heavy Me-"
"Open your hangar immediately and prepare to be boarded!" said the officer.
"Sorry for the delay there, fella," said VT, keeping the tension from her voice. "Just had a few things I had to tie down before I opened the doors. They should be coming up now…"
VT reached for the controls and set the door rolling up into its housing, Coffee watching her every move intently.
"Would you relax," said VT with a confidence she only half felt. "It'll be fine."
Coffee just glared at her with an expression that said, 'I'll believe it when I see it'.
The hull rumbled and sang with the sound of the weathered door mechanism as the hangar opened. Out beyond the bow of the Bebop, the police ship that had trained its spots on the bridge had now turned its attention to the hangar doors. VT could see a pair of figures clinging to either side of the craft - SWAT officers who would be carried towards their quarry under the protective wings of the vessel.
It was a procedure VT had seen before. The police preferred to enter vessels through the widest aperture available, rather than via a narrow airlock that could so easily be turned into a kill zone. No doubt they still expected a firefight upon their arrival. In fact, they would be banking on it - 'read all about it, hero cops gun down renegade bounty hunters in dramatic siege'. Of course, VT had no intention of making their lives that easy, but for now she was content to give them the impression that all was going to plan.
The pilot of the police ship gave the thrusters a short burst, just enough to set the vehicle drifting towards the Bebop. VT watched passively as the police ship, its blue and red lights still strobing, crawled over the Bebop's bow towards her hangar, casting a dancing shadow across the landing deck. After a few seconds, the police craft disappeared out of view beneath the bridge. A couple of its fellows had shifted to give their occupants a better view of proceedings.
"Okay, officers," said VT. "Let's see just how good your friends are." She tapped the hangar door control, and the hull reverberated with the grinding of the door motors once more. The response was immediate.
"Bebop, do not close your hangar doors," the officer demanded over the PA. From the trace of panic in his voice, VT guessed he was on board the ship that had just sailed so blithely into the Bebop's belly. "Open the doors immediately, or your actions will be construed as an attempt to resist arrest."
"I bet they will," VT muttered, then opened the channel again. "Whoops, sorry officer. My bad. My head is just all over the place today. Here, just let me… umm…" she waved her finger around above the console as if intending to choose a key at random. "Ah, here we go." She stabbed her finger down, but the hangar doors didn't begin to rise.
Instead, the blast shields descended over the windows of the bridge. The shields, similar to those installed on the Queen, were intended to deal with crash landings and rough re-entry, and VT hoped they would be sufficient to stop all but the most sustained effort to shoot up the Bebop's cab. Unless the police had started arming their cruisers with military grade armour piercing rounds, which VT really hoped wasn't the case.
"Bebop, desist from you actions immediately. You are in-"
VT cut off the feed from the PA and pointedly ignored the comm system, which was lighting up with hails from a half dozen of the surrounding police vessels.
"What in God's name are you doing?" asked Coffee with a slow shake of her head. She was strapped into the chair at the navigation console as VT had instructed earlier.
VT had already explained what she intended and guessed that Coffee was just voicing her general scepticism. The trucker smiled and said, "I'm finally gonna go on my fishing trip. Wanna come?"
"Whatever," said Coffee. "Let's just get this over with."
VT went over to the internal comm and checked in with Andy and Lo. The two of them were secured in the lounge, the former unhappy at being excluded from the action and the latter just profoundly unhappy.
"Right," said VT after she'd left the men to their misery. She accepted the hail from the ship in the hangar.
"Open the doors immediately or we will be forced to use explosives to-"
"Okay, okay, I'm sorry," said VT, trying to sound like she actually believed that the police would be dumb enough to set off high explosives in a confined space. "I'm just having a few issues here. Just give me a… oops." VT grinned as she throttled the engines up to full.
Getting the Bebop moving down on Mars had been hard going, but up in space it was a different matter. She'd never win any prizes for her agility, but without the cold water and damp air to cramp up her muscles, the old ship all but had a spring in her step. More than enough to send the crooked cops in the hangar bouncing around.
The cries of the police officers, frantic and tinny through the speakers, was music to VT's ears. Less so was slap of heavy rounds against the hull that followed.
The acceleration of the Bebop was a weight against VTs chest as she shifted in her seat to look at Coffee. "Which way?" she called.
"Thirty degrees starboard," Coffee called back. "Minus ten declination."
VT followed the instructions as they came, pointing the ship in the general direction of the Earth-bound hyperspace gate.
A violent shudder ran through the hull. A couple of cannon rounds must have struck the engines. VT waited, dreading that they would cough and die, but the rumble subsided, and the Bebop powered on.
There was another barrage of fire, one round of which struck the blast shield so hard that it dented, the warped metal cracking the reinforced glass of the window behind.
Then the firing stopped. VT cocked an ear and listened, but all she could hear was the roar of the Bebop's engines; the police had ceased fire. The order must have come from within the Bebop's hangar, from the officers who were as likely to be killed in the enfilade as the Bebop's own crew.
"I guess they are good friends after all," she said.
A moment later the comm controls at the pilot's position lit up. VT answered.
"Bebop," said the police officer. His voice was ragged and a little hoarse, probably from screaming at his colleagues to stop shooting at him. "Stop the ship immediately and unseal all doors and airlocks. Everyone on board is now under arrest for-"
VT ignored the rest of what he was saying. She was imagining a huddle of SWAT officers busily cutting their way through the doors that led to the habitat areas of the ship, heedless of the fact that the hangar was still depressurised.
"-repeat, unseal the doors. Now!"
VT opened the channel. "Sure thing, officer," she said. "Let me get right on that."
Her fingers danced across the panel, overriding the airlock safeties and activating the emergency door releases. The time spent skimming the ships ops manual paid off as she heard a bark of alarm over the comm channel. VT smiled as she pictured a couple of careless SWATs being blown across the hangar by the escaping puff of air.
"Bebop, this is a grievous vio-"
VT closed the channel. "How far?" she called to Coffee.
"Five thousand klicks," the bounty hunter said.
They were close. Anyone sat queuing for the gate would now have a pretty good view if there were any more fireworks, or at the very least would see a whole mess of dots appearing on their scanners.
The internal comm clicked into life.
"Hey, VT," said Andy. "Uh, I don't want to cause a panic, but there's some pretty weird noises coming from the direction of the hangar."
Lo was clearly audible in the background and sounded as though he'd made a head start on the panicking part. "Oh Go oh God oh God oh God…"
"I see," said VT. The police had regrouped faster than she'd expected. By now they were probably working their way through the second door, having taken more care to secure themselves this time. "Leave it with me." She clicked off and began working feverishly at the controls. "Let's see if we can't scrape off a couple of barnacles."
The ship began to pitch and roll sickeningly at VT's command. Even if the SWAT team were well secured down in the hangar, they'd be getting banged around terribly at the end of their tethers. Certainly, they would be less than enthusiastic about continuing to use a plasma torch under those conditions.
VT waited for the police officer to call in to complain some more, but the call never came. Maybe he was busy trying not to puke in his helmet - another thought that brought a smile to the trucker's face.
Coffee's update brought her back to reality. "Two thousand klicks."
VT looked down at her scanner display. An uneven trail of dots was emerging from the top of the screen, stretching from left to right - the queue for the hyperspace gate. She noticed something else, too. The police craft that had been hanging around the Bebop in an angry little crowd were beginning to fall back behind the ship. This only served to confirm what VT had suspected; this little collar of theirs was unsanctioned, and they were reluctant to pursue it in full view of Joe Public. Not to mention the Hyperspace Gate Patrol, who were a separate entity from the Orbital Police.
"We're getting pretty close to the gate," said Coffee, her voice a mixture of hope and warning.
VT understood her concern. Navigating through dense traffic with only the scanner and proximity warnings would be difficult. It wouldn't be impossible - VT had years of experience handling big rigs under difficult conditions - but it definitely wasn't a good idea.
"Gotcha," VT acknowledged and tapped the command to open the foremost of the blast shields.
The shield drew up and away from the window, revealing a black square of space with a Milkyway-like haze of colourful lights trailing across its middle - the gate queue and its attendant holographic billboards.
"Come on, old girl," she said, cracking knuckles above the Bebop's controls. "Let's see who else wants to dance." She threw the throttle forward, accelerating the ship towards the gate.
The sudden burst of speed had the desired effect. The Bebop hadn't moved more than another five hundred kilometers, when yet another hail popped up on the comm.
"Bebop," VT answered. "Talk to me."
"Bebop," said a languid, bored-sounding male voice. "You are following an unauthorised approach path to the gate. Please move away and go to the back of the line."
"I'd love to," said VT. "But your colleagues back there have other ideas."
There was a pause, as if the patrol officer was only now noticing the swarm of vehicles to the Bebop's stern. "Standby," he said, and clicked off.
"So far so good," said VT, glancing over at Coffee.
The bounty hunter didn't look back, instead staring out the one exposed window towards to the approaching line of traffic. "Crazy, crazy shit," she muttered.
Coffee would probably have been happier trying to shoot her way out, or at least more in her element. Subtle manipulation of a situation was way outside her comfort zone it seemed. While VT had no compunction about wading in fists first, she'd always recognised the importance of a gentle hand where it was called for. And it was a good job too, because if the subtlety had been left to Ural, she and he would have been dead ten times over.
Again, she found herself smiling at the memory of her deceased husband.
The internal comm clicked on. "What's going on out there?" asked Andy.
"I'll tell you when I know," VT replied, and clicked off.
The Bebop was still closing on the queue. She could clearly identify individual ships now - personal vehicles, public transports, even a few rigs she recognised from their decals.
VT had begun to enjoy herself. The external comm remained silent, suggesting a very long, very interesting conversation taking place between the crooked Orbital cops and their Gate Patrol counterparts; VT wished she could listen in. The trucker knew from experience that the relationship between Orbital and Gate Patrol wasn't great, the former describing the latter as glorified traffic cops, and latter considering the former to be snooty, politicking boy racers. VT was banking that if Patrol got even the slightest sniff of foul play from the Orbitals, they wouldn't hesitate to make a big deal of it.
The internal comm piped up again. "Uh, VT?" said Andy. She could barely hear him over Lo's frantic babbling. "The police guys in the hangar have started cutting again."
"I hear you," said VT. "Sit tight."
Time was running short. It was time to make their move.
"Here we go," she said, and pushed forward on the throttle once more.
The ship accelerated towards the gate queue, the waiting ships quickly growing large before disappearing out of view behind the port and starboard blast shields.
This time it was the external comm than called for VT's attention.
"Busy today," she mused, and opened the channel. "This is Heavy Metal Queen. What can I do for you fellas now?"
"Bebop, cease your approach to the gate." The patrol officer no longer sounded quite so bored. "Repeat, cease your approach. You are-"
"Sorry, pal. No can do. Not until you can guarantee your buddies back there only have our best interests at heart. How's that going, anyway?"
A brief pause.
"We are still trying to collate our orders," said the patrol officer.
VT scratched under her cap. Collate their orders? That was a new one. "Whatever you say, chief. Give me a call when you're done 'collating'. Until then, I'm just gonna keep right on going. You might wanna warn the nice people out there that we ain't stopping."
"Bebop, you cannot-"
"Hey, don't worry. We're gonna pay the toll." She clicked off before the officer could protest further, then shut off the external comm all together to prevent another hack. She turned to Coffee. "You've got money for the toll, right?"
"Excuse me?" said Coffee.
"Just get your wallet ready. We can argue over expenses later."
They were now in amongst the garish holo-ads that flanked the queue to the gate. The bridge was washed one colour after another as the ship swerved between the flashing signs, making its way towards the head of the queue. Other hails were now coming in, this time from the pilots of the waiting ships, probably wanting to know what the hell the pilot of that big ugly brown number thought she was doing. VT was kind of wondering that herself.
A ventral proximity alert sounded, and VT pulled up before the Bebop struck whatever vessel had snuck up from below and out of sight. The view through the window swung dizzyingly, flickering neon lights sweeping from top to bottom, before VT levelled the ship out.
And there it was. The Earth gate, a shimmering sink hole in the fabric of reality, taking up most of the view through the front window. Between the Bebop and her goal were several civilian ships. The nearest was a passenger shuttle, the port wing of which was all that could be seen through the narrow viewing port.
VT decided now would be a good time to open the shields. Surely even syndicate-bought cops wouldn't be dumb enough to fire into a crowd of civilians. She set the barriers rising, all but the one that had been warped by gun fire, as it was now the only thing maintaining an air seal around the cracked window.
"Fifteen hundred meters to the gate," said Coffee. "We might actually pull this shit off."
"Don't start the party just yet," said VT. "We gotta let off our passengers first." She brought up the internal comm.
"Bebop," said an exhausted sounding police officer. "This is your last warning. If you do not unseal the doors and airlocks, we-"
"Gentlemen," said VT, cutting him off again. "We will shortly be departing through the Earth gate. The hangar will be open for the duration of the trip, so if you don't want to receive a lethal dose of hyperspace radiation, I suggest you disembark at your earliest convenience."
There was a pause while the police officer considered this. Probably he was deciding if it was more dangerous for him and his colleagues to continue with their efforts to board the ship, or to return to their paymasters empty-handed. A decision wasn't long in coming.
"Understood," came a grudging response.
"Great. Don't let the door hit you on the way out." VT clicked off and then set the door to the hangar opening.
The hull rumbled with the sound hangar door motors. Right about now, the orbital cops would be getting treated to a vertiginous view of the approaching gate, which now loomed very large just beyond a freighter and a personal yacht. VT decided to give them a little extra incentive not to drag their feet, touching the throttle just enough to produce a noticeable acceleration.
A moment later, the police cruiser came into view as it coasted above the landing deck. It lingered a moment, making VT wonder if she'd been a little premature in raising the blast shields. But the ship soon turned and cruised away, back towards its fellows and the argument with Gate Patrol that was probably still raging.
"Hope they didn't make too much of a mess down there," said VT to no one in particular. "Right, let's get the hell out of here."
She pushed the throttle forward again, and the Bebop accelerated once more, skirting past the starboard side of the freighter and eliciting an angry flash of its signal lights.
"And you're sure they're not just gonna close the gate on us?" said Coffee dubiously.
"On us, maybe," said VT. She gestured to the sleek, white yacht that was coasting lazily towards the dizzying aperture of the hyperspace gate. "But not that guy."
The nose of the yacht had just kissed the gate vortex when VT thrust the Bebop forward hard, sinking back into her chair with the force of the acceleration. She'd have to time it just right if she was going to tailgate the yacht through the gate.
"Get your credit book ready," said VT.
Coffee growled a few expletives but complied. Even she understood that now was not the time to argue. The book would transmit credit to the gate pay station; they might get into trouble for a number of things they'd done in the last few minutes, but at least toll-skipping wouldn't be one of them.
The blue-hot point of the yacht's engine grew large in the Bebop's windows, then was subsumed as the pleasure ship crossed the event horizon. A second later there was a thump that resonated through the Bebop's hull, and the neon-dashed black of normal space gave way to the weird, streaming fabric of hyperspace.
VT removed her hat and mopped her brow with the back of the same hand. "That wasn't so hard," she said.
"We are gonna have some serious explaining to do when we get out the other end of this thing," said Coffee as she stared sullenly into her credit book.
VT put her hat back on. "You've obviously never been to Earth," she said.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Put it this way, if you were a cop put in charge of a garbage dump, how seriously would you take your job?"
"Whatever," said Coffee, sounding even more surly than usual. She began to unbuckle her safety belt.
VT frowned. "Where are you going?"
"I'm going to check on the goddamn horse," Coffee snapped, and then drifted to the back of the bridge and out into the hallway.
"What the hell is her problem?" VT muttered.