Does anybody else have "Space Truckin'" by Deep Purple stuck in their head?
Spike and Faye are at a truck stop in search of a bounty named Decker, who's transporting volatile explosives. Unfortunately, their sting operation results in heavy damages to their craft and puts them in contact with "The Heavy Metal Queen", a trucker named V.T. who loves heavy metal and harbours a prejudice against bounty hunters. After one of V.T.'s friends is sideswiped by Decker, V.T. pursues him into an old asteroid mine, forcing Spike and Faye to fly in after them. The trio must then work together to escape from the highly unstable mine.
The first act has a more comedic tone, with Faye staking out a family diner. She witnesses a rather burly thug and confronts him after thinking he's Decker, who's identifiable through a dragon tattoo. She promptly realises her mistake when the small man resembling Woody Allen whom she asks to get the police runs off and she notices his dragon tattoo. She promptly tears open the other man's shirt to discover that his tattoo is an eel. Apparently the guy had a thing for eels. It also establishes the danger which Decker presents, who escapes after throwing a small vial of nitro which is powerful enough to down Faye's craft, the Red Tail.
While that's going on, Spike is staking out a bar which V.T. frequents. Unfortunately, it's full of bounty hunters also after Decker. And to make things worse, Spike's got "a hangover the size of Neptune". A brawl ensues when V.T. confronts a trio of bounty hunters who harass a waitress, but Spike is preoccupied with making a prairie oyster. Until someone gets knocked into him and he spills the egg onto his trousers. At which point he steps in and single-handedly subdues the trio (although they do vandalise the Swordfish in revenge). It just shows how badass Spike is, and warms him up to V.T. (until she discovers he's a bounty hunter).
The second act utilises a lot more jeopardy, as V.T., Spike, and Faye try to escape from the mine, made more difficult due to the fact that the Swordfish and the Red Tail haven't been repaired. Although it is still kinda funny when V.T.'s method of motivation is to blast out heavy metal.
V.T. is a pretty interesting character. She's tough, but also principled. One recurring element is a sweepstake she runs in which people bet to guess her real name, which has nested her a tidy profit. It's a subplot which has an interesting payoff.
Overall, this one's pretty good.
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