Cowboy Bebop: A Syndicate Story: Red Planet Requiem

by Sean Cummings

Genres: Media Tie-In; Westerns; Noir

Synopsis

Discover the origins of the classic rivalry between Spike and Vicious amongst the dark underbelly of Mars, 2061, in this prequel novel to the upcoming Netflix series Cowboy Bebop.

The year is 2061. The Red Dragon Crime Syndicate is king, and for all those lucky enough to be members of this crime family, life is damn good.

Well, not for everyone … For two entry-level gangsters in Tharsis City, Mars, life in the Syndicate isn’t quite all guns and glamour. That’s right. Long before they were mortal enemies, Spike Spiegel and Vicious were just two friends clawing their way up the crime ladder and trying to have a little fun while doing it.

But when an opportunity to pull a job for their boss arises, it’s make-or-break time. Literally. All they have to do is deliver a suitcase. How hard could it be?

You ready for some history tellin' … space cowboy?

Release date: December 7, 2021

Publisher: Titan Books

Print pages: 288

Sample

-ONE-“JANITORS”

Inever understood why they called it blood splatter.”

This wasn’t the first time Fearless had thought about this. To be honest, he’d probably thought about it more than any normal person should. Spray, maybe. Or mist, even. Because when you spent your days disposing of dead bodies, and with that, a myriad of body fluids (but mostly blood, given the human body’s propensity to carry quite a bit of it at a given time) you began to crave a word for the whole experience that was a bit more dignified.

One that didn’t sound like a toddler got into a box of crayons and later upchucked them onto the wall. Splatter.

“What about blood squirt?” offered Vicious. He was crouched opposite Fearless, his snow-white hair glistening with sweat. They were positioned on either side of a man freshly deceased from a single bullet to the dead-center of his forehead. It was eerily precise. The work of a professional. But not just anyone.

This was the work of the Red Dragon. And when it came to the business of murder, they were the best.

The aforementioned splatter decorated the living room wall of a four-bedroom, high-rise condo with vaulted ceilings, imported marble floors and other high-end finishes including, coincidentally, a Pollock that the owner had stolen from Earth during the chaos of the Gate Disaster. And now, ironically, the splatter seemed to hang next to it, like some kind of morbid, abstract piece of modern art.

“Of all the words you want to go with squirt?” Fearless’s lips curled to a grin. Disarming, irresistible. He knew the effect it had on people. And later in life, women. As a young boy he had learned to weaponize it. When you grew up on the streets, facial expressions were more than emotions. They were a physical currency. A way to lure in the unsuspecting and pluck their wallet from their back pocket when they were most vulnerable. It wasn’t just a grin. It was a survival tactic.

Vicious sighed and shook his head. “Get your mind out of the gutter and keep rolling. I wanna get out of here at a decent hour. Unlike last night. When you forgot to duct tape your end of the rug. And the body slipped out right onto 12th Avenue in front of a bunch of cops. Or did you forget about that?”

Fearless scoffed. As if to say, Who, me? Then grinned. “You’re an asshole.”

The thing was, Fearless was right. Vicious was an asshole. But not in the derogatory sense. He was an asshole in the hereditary sense, a rich asshole descended from a long line of rich assholes from various parts of the rich asshole tree. So, yes, he was an asshole. But he was not an asshole. There was a difference.

“3… 2… 1… !”

They team-lifted the body into position atop a nearby burgundy and gold flecked oriental rug that the poor bastard would be rolled into, duct-taped and disposed of. In the Red Dragon, they were known as “janitors” for a reason. The cleanup crew a veteran assassin called in after a hit so they didn’t have to get their hands dirty. It was part of the organization’s hierarchy.

And Fearless and Vicious were planted firmly at the bottom.

“Let’s get this over with,” Fearless replied with about as much enthusiasm as you’d expect from a guy who spent the better part of his day disposing of dead bodies.

They rolled the dead man, careful to do it slowly, until they ran out of rug and the poor sap was snug in its center, like the soft, fleshy, ooey-gooey filling of a Swiss cake roll.

And as they secured both ends with the duct tape, Fearless’s eyes ticked to the still-smoldering bullet hole in the drywall. He studied it closely with an educated glare, like an archaeologist carefully examining the contents of a dig, careful not to disturb what priceless treasure lies underneath.

“A thousand woos says it was a .32.”

This was another game they played. Albeit a higher stakes one. Vicious raised an eyebrow to the wager and turned his attention to the bullet hole. He studied it closely. Not convinced. And proclaimed, with the utmost certainty: “It’s a .380. Fired from a Sig Sauer. Double or nothing.”

Fearless took in the bullet hole again. As close as his eye allowed. He turned back to Vicious. Incredulous.

“Bull-fucking-shit. Do you even see the condo we’re in? A .380 is going to wake up half the building. Before you know it, you’ll have a housewife wearing a silk robe with a Bichon tucked under her arm banging down the door and half the ISSP in the lobby. You’d need a suppressor.” Fearless smirked. Then delivered the punch line, “And what kind of dumb fuck mounts a suppressor on a Sig-fucking-Sauer?”

When, as if on cue from the other side of a nearby bathroom door, a toilet flushed. The color drained from Fearless’s face. Shit. He was still here. The door opened. And a voice boomed: “This kind of dumb fuck.”

The voice belonged to Spider, a veteran Red Dragon assassin. He was also an asshole. Not the rich kind of asshole. The other kind. An asshole-asshole. The kind that wore a tie with a matching pocket square and sunglasses indoors. At his side was his partner, Karma. He too, was dressed like an asshole. But he wasn’t much for words. He preferred that Spider did the shit-talking. And so did Spider.

They were made men. Red Dragon royalty. The kind of guys that had a table at Ana’s Bar where the upper echelon of the organization wined and dined with a monthly tab that would rival most people’s mortgages. The extracurricular activities that they enjoyed as part of the Red Dragon was the reason that Vicious and Fearless signed up to be a part of the organization in the first place. Their personalities? Not so much.

“Every assassin worth his paycheck knows that you can mount 9mm suppressor onto a .380, if you know what you’re doing. Which I do. Which also explains why after two years you two career underachievers are still janitors.”

Spider pulled a pack of cigarettes from the inside of his jacket and plucked one out. It dangled from his mouth as he lit it with a gold-plated lighter. It was one of those vintage ones with a flip lid that made a metallic grinding sound when lit. Flick. Flick. Flick. After a few tries, the cigarette finally took. Spider took a long drag and looked over their handiwork with a skeptical eye—

“Hurry up and get rid of that rug. I don’t want to have to come back and put a bullet in the building’s super because you two took too long debating the word splatter and he walked in on you two rolling up his tenant.”

Fearless turned to Spider, facetious. “The term is blood squirt.”

Spider headed for the door to leave, but not before he turned back to them. A grin on his face. Far different than the one Fearless wore. This was your regular old douchebag shit-eater.

“Oh, and Vicious. A penthouse, huh?”

Vicious clamped his jaw down. If you listened closely, you could hear his teeth slowly grinding away. It was all he could do to keep it bottled up. The darkness. The part of him, if Vicious allowed it, that would shatter the vintage Bordeaux that sat mere feet away on the floor-to-ceiling, temperature-controlled wine rack and use the tinted French glass to dig Spider’s eyes out from their sockets.

“Pretty nice digs for a fucking janitor.”

Fearless locked eyes with Vicious and slowly shook his head with an almost imperceptible subtlety. He knew this part of Vicious well. He’d had a violent streak inside him since they were teenagers. Fearless called it the darkness. It was the only thing about Vicious that scared him. It wasn’t the fact that he’d murder someone without warning that frightened him—it was how far he took it. It was never enough for him to just kill a man. He had to render them unrecognizable. Destroyed. It was more than a temper. It was something else entirely. It was vicious. And it had gotten them in enough trouble over the years that Fearless had learned to see the darkness lurking below the surface—like a shark’s fin that ever so poked above the water—even before Vicious did. Most of the time.

Fearless faced down the assassin. “Don’t worry, Spider. One day you’ll make enough cash so you can stop jerking off in your mom’s basement and get a place of your own.”

Spider took a drag on the cigarette. He shook his head with a chuckle, then exhaled a plume of smoke. “That’s the difference between you and I, Fearless. One day, the Red Dragon is going to place a bloodstone ring on my finger and make me an elder—and you’ll still be rolling bodies in rugs and making jokes.”

Fearless considered this for a moment. He scrunched his face in thought, then turned back to Spider. “But if the Elders give you a bloodstone ring… then how will you fit your finger up your asshole?”

“Fuck you, Fearless,” Spider snapped back. He flipped a middle finger in Fearless’s direction as he stomped off toward the door. Karma followed close behind, as Karma did.

Fearless exhaled. His eyes ticked to Vicious. The blood drained from his cheeks. The darkness had retreated back to its quiet little cave.

For now.

*   *   *

The Tharsis skyline shined down on the Tharsis City crush yard, the place where old cars and the bodies of the Red Dragon’s handiwork went to disappear. The lights of the city’s many unoccupied luxury apartments and fluorescent floating billboards advertising the latest advancements in genetically engineered bio-meat illuminated the discarded bits of automotive chrome and glass scattered about.

Mars’s biggest city was to be the first step towards colonizing the entire solar system. It was the brainchild of the most accomplished architects and builders from across Earth with grand buildings of glass and steel that were reminiscent of Dubai and with the footprint of two Manhattans. Those who visited it in the early days hailed it as the next great metropolis. But to live there felt like living inside a decorative snow globe, the kind you bought for your grandmothers at a Christmas shop. The city was filled with the constant hum of street sweepers buffing and polishing the asphalt. The skyscrapers were architectural marvels, but on the inside they remained unfinished and likely to stay that way. The rain was scheduled. All that was missing was a steam engine with a delightful conductor that circled the city every few minutes. It felt about as real as a movie set.

“How the hell do they know where I live?”

Fearless and Vicious slowly swayed back and forth, each clutching one end of the now 180-pound oriental rug. It was quiet at this time of night, albeit for the sound of the industrial compactor grinding away just inches from their feet. The one that by day could devour an entire car in mere seconds, and by night destroy any trace of a dead body. They built up enough momentum and each let go of their end of the rug, watching in morbid fascination as it hit the compactor’s rotating, interlocking steel teeth with a tremendous thud.

And within seconds, it was gone. The rug—and, with it, the body—was ground into an unrecognizable paste. Some bits of skin and hairy flesh would remain, but it was enough to conceal what had taken place in the vaulted-ceiling condo with the stolen Pollock. Not that anybody would care enough to go looking for the poor bastard.

Fearless dusted his hands off, then shrugged. “Of course, they know where we live. They know our blood type, how much cash we have in our bank account—hell, they probably know what color our piss is in the morning. But it just so happens that my shithole apartment with the roaches as big as rats and the toilet you have to sit side saddle on if you want to take a freaking dump with the door closed isn’t as of much interest to assholes like Spider as your penthouse.”

Vicious quickly corrected him. “It’s not my penthouse.”

Fearless sighed. Goddamnit. Vicious always did this. Every couple months, he needed an it’s-OK-to-be-born-into-generational-wealth pep talk. After all, it was Fearless who was the one who was born on the streets of East Tharsis. The one who was left alone as an infant, in a second-hand bassinet, in front of a nightclub. The one that no one wanted. The one who was made to scrap for a bowl of cold noodle broth and an awning to sleep under that would protect him from the artificial rain that coated the city once a week.

But sure, Vicious wanted to talk about his problems.

“Look. You were born a rich kid. And that’s OK. It’s not your fault that you grew up eating lobster at Francona’s on Saturday nights and spent your summers gravity sailing in Europa with an instructor named Claude. But it is your fault that you let mediocre dicks like Spider get under your skin. And the sooner you accept what you came from, the sooner you’ll grow into the man you were always destined to become.”

Vicious chewed on his semi-inspirational words for a moment. Yes, Fearless had given him this exact speech—many times—before. The truth was, as Spider had reminded them, they had been stuck at the bottom rung of the Red Dragon ladder for almost two years now. They had never been promoted, but a few weeks before, their role had been “adjusted.” Meaning, in addition to spending their nights cleaning up after career-dicks like Spider, during the day they now had to drive around a sweaty, swollen-fingered capo named Dodd.

Fearless sighed. Again. Hoping his friend would pick up on it. He could only play to Vicious’s insecurities for so long.

“Look, we can either stand here and you can continue to contemplate hanging yourself in a motel bathroom where you have to swipe a credit card to flush the toilet or whatever it is you fantasize about when you stare into the abyss like this or we can go get drunk and try to convince women we’re much more important than we actually are so they’ll sleep with us. It’s your call.”

Vicious continued to stare. Into the abyss. Then said, “It was Monroe.”

Fearless scrunched his brows Vicious turned to him. With a slight grin.

“My gravity sailing instructor. His name was Monroe.”

Fearless laughed. Maybe he’d got him wrong. Maybe he really was the other kind of asshole.

*   *   *

Three tumblers were lined up on the bar as a shimmering gold liquid splashed into the bottom of each. A tattooed hand poured a few fingers in each. A more than generous pour, given who it was for.

Fearless grinned as he took all three glasses. “I’ll get you next time, Felix.”

The bartender, the one with the aforementioned tattooed hands, rolled his eyes. “I won’t count on it.”

He held the bottle high. The bright yellow label was emblazoned with a red, fire-breathing dragon. Above it was the word KUDO. One part tequila, one part absinthe and three parts bad idea. He gave the golden liquid a careful swirl. “Lucky for me you’re the only one that drinks this pirate piss.”

Fearless winked. Given his paltry entry-level Red Dragon salary, it was lucky for them both indeed.

He returned to the high-top next to the street-side window where Vicious stood with a raven-haired, take-no-shit Red Dragon sophomore by the name of Goldie. A former jewel thief, the organization recruited Goldie to join their ranks after she knocked off a string of diamond dealers with ties to the organization. They were impressed by her work.

Vicious and Goldie winced at the sight of the glasses. Kudo. Great.

The three of them tapped the table with the bottom of their glasses and then gulped the liquor down their gullets in unison. Goldie recoiled from the aftertaste. Kudo tended to linger on the palette like burnt gasoline, even to the previously initiated. It wasn’t the kind of thing you got used to.

She shook her head. “Last time I drank Kudo I woke up naked in the bathroom of an orbital casino outside of Io.”

Fearless raised an eyebrow. Goldie put that to bed. Quickly. “You even think about me naked and I’ll slit your throat and dump your body in the acid reservoir outside of East Tharsis.”

“Fair enough,” Fearless replied with a chuckle. Goldie was their best friend within the organization. Fearless had secretly pined for her for some time, but he kept that secret buried deep inside him. There was an unspoken rule among them that they wouldn’t dip their pen in the company ink, so to speak, in order to maintain the status quo and not let things get messy. Well, at least that’s what Fearless told himself. The truth was, he’d never had a meaningful relationship with a woman and the idea of baring his soul to Goldie—or any woman, for that matter—scared the shit out of him. In Fearless’s mind, it was better to have lost than to have never loved at all.

Across the street, a white-hot sign flickered to life. The sight of it through the bar window immediately caught Fearless’s attention. The lettering was styled in simple cursive neon reminiscent of the one that hung above Rick’s Café Américain. The exterior of the joint didn’t need to be particularly eye-catching. Every pirate, scoundrel, and outlaw worth their salt knew what was inside. It was called ANA’S BAR. Named after the prickly owner who oversaw the joint—and the exclusive list of its members. And then, as if drawn up by the universe just to torture Fearless, at that exact moment Spider and Karma strolled by and glad-handed the doorman as they disappeared inside. ...