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The wrench slipped again. Jet's knuckles scraped against the heat exchanger, adding fresh red to the constellation of old scars mapping his hands. He didn't curse. Didn't have the energy for it anymore.
The Bebop groaned around him like she was tired too. Metal fatigue in her bones, same as his. Thirty years of gravity wells and hard burns, of patching what should've been replaced and replacing what should've been junked. Ship was a mirror. Both of them held together by stubbornness and prayer to gods they didn't believe in.
He wiped the blood on his tank top, already filthy with three days of grease, and reached back into the guts of the cooling system. The parts they needed were two systems over, cost more woolongs than they'd seen in six months. So he improvised. Again. Always again. Story of his life since the ISSP, since Alisa, since everything went to hell and he decided a fishing boat in space was better than a badge that meant nothing.
"Still fixing that?"
Jet didn't turn. Spike's voice drifted down from the catwalk, lazy as smoke. Kid probably just woke up, three in the afternoon by ship time. Some people got to sleep.
"Someone's gotta keep us flying."
"We could just land somewhere. Stay a while."
"And eat what? Air?" Jet's jaw worked, a muscle jumping under the stubble he hadn't shaved in a week. Maybe two. Time blurred when you lived in the guts of a ship. "Got a bounty waiting on Callisto. Small time, but it pays."
"How much?"
"Three hundred thousand."
Spike snorted. "That'll cover fuel. Maybe."
"It'll cover food and fuel if we're smart about it."
"When are we ever smart about it?"
Silence. Then footsteps fading. Spike knew better than to push when Jet got like this. All sharp edges and silence, the black hole where optimism used to live. There was a time Jet would've laughed at that, would've made some crack about the kid's gambling debts or his taste in women. Now he just tightened bolts and bled on machinery.
The cooling coil finally clicked into place. Temporary fix. Everything was temporary now. Even the crew, scattered like bullets from a ricocheted shot. Ed gone chasing satellites and dreams, hadn't sent so much as a message in four months. Faye showing up when the mood struck and the money ran out, staying just long enough to raid the fridge and vanish again. Spike...
Spike was still here. That was something. Even if the kid spent half his time staring into space like he was seeing ghosts, even if his mind was clearly somewhere else. Somewhere with a woman who was probably going to get him killed. But at least he was here. At least there was someone to argue with, someone to cook for, someone to keep the ship from feeling like a tomb.
Jet straightened, vertebrae cracking like gunfire. His back hadn't been the same since Europa, since that warehouse job went sideways and thirty feet of fall got cushioned by nothing but luck and concrete. He'd walked away. That used to mean something. Used to mean he was tough, resilient, the kind of man who could take a hit and keep moving. Now it just meant waking up sore. Meant mornings where he stood in the shower for twenty minutes just to get his spine to unlock. Meant sleeping on a heating pad and eating pain medication like candy.
Fifty wasn't supposed to feel like seventy. But then again, he'd lived hard.
His reflection stared back from the polished metal housing. Face like worn leather, lines carved deeper than they had any right to be on a man not yet fifty. When'd he get so old? Somewhere between the ISSP and here, between having a pension plan and having nothing but a ship full of hungry mouths and empty pockets. The beard was more gray than black now. The bags under his eyes had set up permanent residence. He looked like his father. That was a depressing thought.
The cybernetic arm whirred softly as he flexed his left hand. Phantom sensation where flesh used to be, ghost of a past that wouldn't stay buried. Some scars you couldn't see in mirrors. Some scars lived deeper than skin and bone, buried in the meat of who you used to be. He could still feel it sometimes, the hand that wasn't there. Could still feel Alisa's fingers interlaced with his, back when he believed in things like forever and happy endings.
Stupid. All of it. The job, the trust, the love. Phantom pain for a phantom life.
He hauled himself up, joints protesting, and surveyed the engine room. Functional. Barely. Like everything else on this rust bucket. Like him. The coolant lines would hold for another month if they were lucky, two weeks if they weren't. The compression couplings needed replacing yesterday. The entire electrical system was a fire hazard held together by electrical tape and wishful thinking. But she'd fly. The Bebop always flew.
That was the deal they had, him and the ship. He'd keep her together, and she'd keep moving forward. Didn't matter where. Forward was enough.
The bonsai trees in his quarters were probably bone dry again. He should water them. Should do a lot of things. Sleep. Eat something that wasn't three day old leftovers. Call Alisa, though what he'd say after all these years escaped him. Sorry didn't fix anything. He'd learned that the hard way. Sorry didn't bring back trust. Sorry didn't explain why he'd chosen the job over her, why the badge mattered more than the ring. Sorry was just noise.
His boots echoed through empty corridors. When had the ship gotten so quiet? Used to be noise everywhere. Ed's fingers on a keyboard at three in the morning, rapid fire typing punctuated by triumphant shouts when she cracked some impossible firewall. Faye's high heels clicking toward the bridge, trailing cigarette smoke and expensive perfume she couldn't afford. Ein's claws on metal grating, the corgi trotting after Ed like a furry shadow. Now just the hum of recycled air and the thrum of engines that should've been replaced a decade ago.
The silence was a living thing. It pressed against his ears, filled his head with thoughts he didn't want to think.
The galley was a disaster. Spike's cigarette butts overflowing the ashtray. Someone's empty ramen cups colonizing the counter. Coffee rings on every surface. A plate with something fossilized on it that might've been eggs once. Jet cleared a space and put water on to boil, muscle memory taking over. His special bell peppers and beef sat in the freezer, vacuum sealed and waiting for a day that might never come. For a crew that was barely here anymore.
He'd cooked it last month. The whole dish, the real thing, not some half assed approximation. Spent two days prepping, tracking down the right ingredients across three moons. Cost him most of his share from the last bounty. But it was Ed's birthday, or near enough. The kid deserved something special.
She'd been gone before he served it. Packed up her stuff and disappeared into the night with Ein at her heels and not so much as a goodbye. Just a note on the fridge in her chaotic handwriting. "Ed is going now! Thanks for everything Jet person! Don't be sad!"
He'd stood there holding the note for an hour. Didn't eat the bell peppers and beef. Couldn't stomach it. Just packed it away in the freezer where it sat now, a monument to good intentions and bad timing.
He was so goddamn tired.
Not the kind of tired sleep fixed. The kind that lived in your bones, settled in the spaces between who you were and who you'd become. The kind that made every sunrise feel like a sentencing. Another day of the same. Another day of scraping by, of empty nets and dry wells, of bounties that slipped through their fingers like water. Another day of watching Spike walk deeper into whatever death wish was eating him alive. Another day of waking up alone in a ship built for a family that scattered to the wind.
The water boiled. He made instant coffee, black and bitter, because they were out of the good stuff and had been for weeks. It burned going down. He welcomed it. At least it was something to feel, some sensation that wasn't just the dull ache of existing.
Through the galley porthole, Ganymede hung in the black like a rusty marble. They'd dock there tomorrow if the cooling system held. Pick up the bounty if the mark was still there. If Spike bothered to show up for the job. If any of this mattered.
The mark was a small timer. Ernie Scalzo, wanted for fraud and embezzlement. White collar punk who thought he could disappear into the colonies and live off his stolen fortune. Not worth much, but worth enough. They'd track him down, Spike would do his thing, and they'd haul him back to the ISSP for processing. Same song, thousandth verse. Jet could do it in his sleep at this point.
Used to be the hunt excited him. Used to be he felt something when he closed a case, some satisfaction in seeing justice done. Even if the justice was just a paycheck and the cops who processed the bounty were corrupt as the criminals they locked up. At least he was doing something. At least he mattered.
Now? Now it was just fuel money. Just a way to keep the lights on and the ship flying. The righteous anger that drove him out of the ISSP, that made him think he could be better than the system, had burned out years ago. Now he was just tired.
Jet drained the coffee and set the cup in the sink with the others. Dishes piled high, a week's worth at least. He'd wash them later. Always later. Tomorrow. Next week. Eventually they'd run out of clean dishes and he'd have no choice, but until then, he'd let them pile. Let the evidence of his failure accumulate.
Failure. That was the word rattling around his skull lately. Failed cop. Failed partner. Failed lover. Failed captain. What was he now except a janitor on a flying garbage scow? What was the Bebop except a monument to bad decisions?
He shuffled toward his quarters, every step an negotiation with his body. The ship was cold. Climate control was on minimum to save power, which meant it hovered somewhere between uncomfortable and freezing. He should adjust it. Should do a lot of things.
His room was exactly as he'd left it that morning. Bed unmade, sheets twisted from another night of bad sleep. The bonsai trees lined the shelf above his desk, six of them in various states of health. The maple was doing well, leaves still green despite the ship's recycled air. The juniper was struggling, branches brittle and dry. He should water it. Should trim it. Should care.
He picked up the watering can and made the rounds, giving each tree a careful measure. The ritual soothed him, focused his mind on something simple and immediate. Something he could control. The trees didn't judge him. Didn't ask questions. Didn't leave in the middle of the night. They just grew or died based on what he gave them.
Simple. He liked simple.
The desk was buried under data pads and old case files. Bounties they'd never collected, marks that got away, leads that went nowhere. He should file them. Should update the database. Should accept that some fish got away and it wasn't worth cluttering his workspace with ancient history. But he kept them anyway. Evidence that he'd tried. That he'd cared once.
One file stuck out. Udai Taxim. The man who cost him his arm. Cost him more than that. Cost him his faith in the system, his belief that the ISSP meant something. The case was ancient history, but the file sat on top of the pile where he'd put it last night after another bout of insomnia drove him to the desk.
He knew every word in that file. Every detail. Udai's face was burned into his memory. The smirk. The casual way he'd shot Jet and walked away. The way the system protected him because he was connected, because he had money and friends in high places. The way Internal Affairs closed the case and told Jet to take his medical discharge and be grateful he was alive.
Some days he wondered if grateful was the right word.
The Bebop shuddered, a familiar vibration running through her frame. They'd dropped out of the gate, back into normal space. Ganymede was close now. Close enough to feel the moon's gravity well pulling at them.
Jet made his way to the bridge. Spike was already there, sprawled in his usual seat with his feet up on the console. Kid made it look easy, the way he lounged like he didn't have a care in the world. Maybe he didn't. Hard to tell with Spike.
"We good?" Spike asked without opening his eyes.
"We're good. Docking in two hours."
"Cool."
That was the extent of their strategic planning. Once upon a time, Jet would've briefed the crew, would've gone over the mark's profile and planned three contingencies. Now he just hoped Spike showed up and didn't get them killed. Low bar, but it was the bar they had.
Jet slid into the captain's chair and pulled up the navigation console. Ganymede's docking authority was already pinging them, automated queries demanding registration and docking fees. He transmitted their credentials and winced at the fee schedule. Highway robbery, but what choice did they have? Can't catch bounties without landing.
The woolong account was anemic. Forty thousand left after the last fuel bill. The docking fee would take ten. Food would take another ten if they were careful. That left twenty thousand to float them until they collected on Scalzo. Tight. Too tight. One emergency and they'd be begging for credit or selling ship components.
Again.
"How bad?" Spike asked. The kid's eyes were open now, watching Jet with that unreadable expression he wore when he was actually paying attention.
"Bad enough."
"We could always hit up that casino job Faye mentioned."
"And split the take how many ways when she vanishes with the cash?"
Spike shrugged. "Fair point."
They lapsed into silence. Not uncomfortable, just empty. The kind of quiet that happened when two people had nothing left to say to each other but weren't ready to admit it.
Ganymede grew in the viewscreen, rusty and pockmarked and unwelcoming. Home to three million people and not a single one Jet wanted to see. They'd dock at the industrial port on the dark side, cheap and anonymous. Track down Scalzo at whatever rat hole he was hiding in. Haul him back to the ship. Collect their money. Leave.
Same as always.
The approach was routine. Jet had done it ten thousand times, could dock the Bebop in his sleep. The ship settled onto the pad with a groan of stressed metal and a hiss of hydraulics. Home sweet home for the next few hours.
"I'm gonna hit the street," Spike said, already halfway out of his seat. "See what I can see."
"Scalzo is holed up in Sector Seven. Apartment complex called the Meridian."
"I know. I read the file."
Did he? Jet wasn't sure. Spike paid attention when it suited him and ignored everything else. But he usually came through when it mattered. Usually.
The kid disappeared into the ship's depths, probably to grab his gun and his cigarettes. Jet sat in the captain's chair and stared at Ganymede through the viewscreen. Ugly moon. Ugly job. Ugly life.
But it was his life. For whatever that was worth.
He pushed himself up, ignored the protest from his back, and headed for the airlock. Time to work. Time to pretend it mattered. Time to keep the Bebop flying one more day.
The bonsai trees could wait. The dishes could wait. Everything could wait.
Everything except the slow, inevitable grind forward into whatever came next.