.Chapter 1
Throughout the Bebop the soft strains of guitar and harmonica could be heard, in the lounge, bounty hunter Spike Spiegel lay sleeping, stretched out on the couch. Meanwhile Jet, Spike's partner and the owner of the Bebop, strode purposefully through the ship towards the lounge and towards the sleeping Spike.
Outside the familiar streaks of brilliant yellow light flashed past as the Bebop sped towards the Gate at Jupiter's moon, Europa. To the front the blazing yellow disc of the hyperspace exit grew rapidly.
'We are now approaching the Europa Gate, upon exit please enter the queue and pass through the toll gate with sensors set to debit mode...'
The message began repeating in the other languages used in the solar system. Jet switched it off, the procedure was all too familiar. In the three years they'd been partners Jet and Spike must have used the Gate network thousands of times. He paused briefly as he entered the lounge room, sleeping as usual thought Jet.
'Oi! Spike' said Jet to his sleeping partner.
'What?' replied Spike sleepily.
'We're almost there'
Spike swung his legs off the lounge and stared at the visual set in front of him. It was too early for this sort of thing.
The huge Gate flared and colours swirled as it deposited the Bebop back into real space. The Bebop's engines thrumming as they accelerated the ship towards the toll checkpoint. In the bridge the receipt fell out of the printer and joined hundreds of it's fellows in a pile.
So who's the bounty?' asked Spike casually as Jet rejoined him in the lounge.
Jet replied by switching the visual set on.
'Oh Spike, is Jet there?' said the grizzled man on the visual set.
'Yo, what have you got for us?' asked Jet.
'You two should be interested in this one' said the man. 'You've heard about the massive damage that occurred near the Earth system?'
'You mean all those wrecked ships?' inquired Spike.
'Damn. That sure was a hell of a mess' said Jet.
'Well a corporation has released the information about what caused that to some parts of the public. Apparently one of the experimental battleships was there for repairs when it blasted off smashing it's way through every blockade, then it accelerated out of orbit and then disappeared, amazingly there were no casualties, injured but no deaths'
'I see' said Spike slowly 'What do they want us to do?'
'Find the ship, it's crew and get them back of course'
Eh?!' exclaimed Jet 'Get it back? The Bebop can't go up against a battleship'
'Relax Jet' said the man 'First of all it's been damaged, and second I'm sure you'll work out a way so you don't have to take it on in a straight fight, that's why they're hiring bounty hunters in the first place. Well I'll leave you to think about it. Oh yeah, the bounty for the ship is 60 million woolongs'
The visual set went blank. Jet and Spike were left with their thoughts, 60 million woolongs would keep them fed for a long time. Then again, what good's food if you're not around to eat it?
