Darwin's First Law

PART ONE

Set one month post the end of the 2013 movie, and post the Battle of Earth.

He was supposed to be my captain.

Strike that. He is my captain. But for some reason that notion was having trouble percolating through my skull. Instead the idea just kind of buzzed annoyingly at the periphery of what I used to call my zone of rational reasoning – because my reasoning had taken a beating in recent weeks, and my rationality had apparently busted out of my head one night when I wasn't paying attention.

I should have got out of bed and followed it.

Or at least made a pretence of looking for it. Because here I was, today, stomping along the streets of Kingdom, with that annoying notion of captain buzzing incessantly against the zone of my blasted reasoning.

'Hey,' Yama said, from somewhere behind me.

I swiped a hand at the buzz in my ear, lengthened my stride and increased the distance between us.

'Ari,' he called out, injecting an element of command into his voice. If you could call it that. Because I wouldn't call it that. But since he was my commanding officer, and since I didn't think he'd last an hour on his own if I disappeared down the nearest alley, and since I didn't want to have to answer to Harlock if I returned minus Arcadia's new captain, I shortened my steps and allowed him to catch up.

'Ari,' he said again, his footsteps crunching in the gravel as he closed the distance between us. 'It might be easier if – '

I turned a scowl upon him, the look on my face shutting him precipitously up. In his scuffed and battered jacket I was struck for the umpteenth time by how much he looked like Harlock. Especially since the addition of the scar and the eye-patch. I realised, as I stared, that it was mostly his face I couldn't stand.

'Listen,' I said, 'they've got doctors here. Good ones. And we've got cash. Why don't we see about fixing that eye?'

Surprise registered on his face, whether from the sudden change of topic or the suggestion of fixing his eye I didn't know.

'What say, kid?' I said, trying to inject an edge of concern into my voice. Like I cared about anything other than my own imperative to make him look less like Harlock. 'How about it?'

A group of passer's-by jostled around us and I grabbed him by the arm and shoved him out of the flow of traffic.

'I don't think it can be fixed,' he said, shrugging my hand away. 'The dark matter had no effect, so I doubt – '

'Dark matter don't fix everything,' I said. 'And if a doc down here can't fix it, there's always a transplant. We can get you a whole new eyeball.'

He stared at me, unsure if I was pulling his leg or genuinely concerned. For the record I was genuinely concerned – for my own mental health. And if I had to grow him an eyeball in a tank in the bathroom myself, then goddamn it, I would.

'Aristotle,' he said.

'Hey!' I aimed an angry finger at him. 'Only my mother calls me Aristotle. And the capt…Harlock.' Shit. I was never going to get used to that. 'And Kei. Sometimes. When I let her. But I won't be letting you, so don't even try.'

'What the fuck is up your arse,' he suddenly challenged. 'Ever since I came aboard – '

'Exactly,' I said, taking a step closer to him with the finger still stretched out like a knife between us. 'Exactly that. You came the fuck aboard. And then you – '

Something hit me from behind, slammed me square between the shoulder-blades and stopped me mid-stride, mid-flight, mid-what-the-fuck-ever, with my finger still raised in the air and my mouth half-open with the diatribe I was preparing to unleash caught hard in my throat. I felt my heart stop, my breath catching in my lungs as every nerve in my body screamed blue bloody murder all at the same time.

'Disruptor,' I ground out as the pain was followed by a novocaine wave of numbness that buckled me at the knees.

'Get help,' I gasped as I fell into him, his hands fumbling uselessly at my sweater as I slid like lead-weight down the front of his jacket, the zipper catching at my cheek as the world tilted crazily on its axis. I caught a glimpse of Yama's crotch as I slid on by, the side of a building, a woman standing in a doorway with one hand on her mouth, and then the street was up close and in my face, a splash of drool escaping from my open mouth and spattering into the gravel.

'Ari! Move, dammit!' Yama's fingers were still caught in my sweater, his hands heaving uselessly as he tried to drag me back up from the street. His voice sounded from somewhere above my head, but all I could see was the road and the ever-widening puddle of drool. Granite, was the irrelevant thought that flashed through my mind, my eyeballs focussed uselessly on the crushed shards of gravel that lay scattered on the road. Crystals of quartz sparked bright in the sun, were obliterated by a shadow passing before my eyes, the glinting stones shattered by a pair of green-grey boots that stepped slowly into my field of view.

The owner of the boots had a voice that sounded as gravelly as the road. 'Step away, boy.'

Yama's fingers slipped out of the weave of my sweater and there was a moment of panic as I lost the lifeline of his hands.

'Who the hell are you,' Yama said from somewhere high above my head, 'and what the hell have you – '

'I said,' Gravel-voice repeated coolly, a green-grey boot poking into my face the way a man pokes at a snake to make sure it's dead. 'Step. Away.'

If the kid knew what was good for him he'd do what he was told. Instead, he said, 'I don't think I'm the one that needs to step away.'

There was an explosion of raucous laughter and I didn't need to see to know that Yama was outnumbered. From somewhere far away a jackboot slammed into my ribs and made the air whuff painlessly out of my lungs. The disruptor's effects had reached their maximum efficacy – I was nothing more than a bag of nerveless flesh and bone, my world reduced to the view through my frozen-open eyes. Another kick landed in my ribs, a sensation of movement rather than pain, and I heard a bone crack somewhere behind the thud of leather meeting meat.

'Hey!' Yama's boots scuffed through the gravel somewhere beside me, and I heard the distinct sound of his dragoon being unholstered. 'Like I said – ,' there was a faint click as the safety was disengaged, ' – I'm not the one that needs to step away.'

Gravel-voice laughed, and there was the whine of a repeater rifle powering up. 'Be a shame to mess your face up worse than it is, boy, so how's about you hustle that tight little ass back to whatever whorehouse this piece of shit picked you up in.'

'You mean the same whorehouse where your daddy met your mommy?' Yama sneered.

'Ho ho,' Gravel-voice laughed. 'Looks like I need to teach you a lesson. But first – '

The green-grey boots shifted in the gravel. Another laugh sounded from somewhere high above, and then a green-grey boot slammed into the side of my head and sent me down into darkness.

Awareness returned slowly. Mostly it consisted of pain. Electric sparks of sensation as my nerves started refiring, my muscles twitching randomly like a fish slowly dying on a cold metal floor.

I cracked open an eyelid and immediately slammed it shut again. The light was way too bright, the glare setting up an unyielding throbbing in the compartments of my head that flashed me back to a green-grey boot slamming into my face. I sent my tongue to my teeth to make sure they were all still in my mouth – they were, but there was blood coming from somewhere, and a split in my lip that stung with the unmistakeable tang of fresh meat.

I opened an eye again, found my face up close and personal with a vista of grey pressed metal. I was heaped face-down like a bag of wet sand, crumpled awkwardly on my stomach with my arms pinned beneath me and the deck sticky and wet beneath my cheek. I moved my head experimentally, felt the brittle tug of blood where it crusted beneath my face. I groaned, despite myself, and slowly peeled my cheek away from the deck.

The fish analogy suddenly became more relevant as I attempted to struggle spastically from the floor, collapsing back into a heap as I discovered my wrists and ankles were cuffed. Whoever had dumped me here wanted me incapacitated – I would be lucky if I could even manage to sit upright in this condition.

So this is how it ends, I thought stupidly to myself. Face-down in a puddle of blood…

Blood. My nose was full of it, and the cold-metal taste of it was thick on my tongue. I coughed, choked on it, gritted my teeth and tried for the second time to heave my way from off the floor. It was the longest struggle of my life, but I managed at last to prop myself against the wall and allowed myself the luxury of another groan, comforted by the sound of my own voice as the air came sighing from my lungs. I would live, or so I thought, as I stared down at the blood that was soaked into the front of my sweater.

At least they'd left me my sweater, even if they'd ripped it out of my pants and left it bunched up around my back. I'd been frisked thoroughly while I was out – the bastards had taken my belts, my gun, my knives, my comms, my gloves, my boots, and even my goddamned socks. All I had left was my sweater and my pants, and the shiny wrist and ankle jewellery that was keeping me hobbled on my ass.

A draft played against the small of my back as I stared down at my father's toes. They weren't bad toes, as far as toes go, but I couldn't feel them properly and they were waxy and white from the cold. I brought my knees up closer to my body, lifted my cuffed hands to poke gingerly at my nose and mouth. Pain chewed away at me from unexpected places, one eye swollen and watering, the crack in my ribs burning with each breath, and my arse going numb from the cold metal of the floor. I was on a ship, a small one judging from the engine that hummed at the periphery of my hearing, and it felt as though there were only a couple of feet of hull between my back and the icy wastes of space. The only contents of the cold bright cell were me and a strip-light and a surveillance cam. And a puddle of congealing blood in the place where I'd so recently been laying.

I scowled up at the surveillance cam, hoping the death stare would be enough to draw the rats out of their hole. Apparently it was, because maybe ten minutes passed – or maybe it was an hour, because who the fuck could tell when time was measured by the tick of your heart – before the door slid itself open with a pneumatic hiss and permitted the entry of a very large rat. Just the one. The one with the green-grey boots that had so recently become acquainted with my face.

'You're a popular man, Aristotle Jones.'

The voice was as gravelly as I remembered from the street, a phlegmy rasp that grated along my spine like fingernails over glass. I suppressed a shudder as goose-bumps traced their way across my flesh and kept my gaze fixed sullenly on the boots. On what looked like blood staining a green-grey toe.

The boots came closer, skirting the smear of blood that was drying darkly on the floor and stopping just inches away from my thigh. One of the boots poked at me with a toe. 'I'm going to make a lot of money out of you, Aristotle Jones. The Sanction has put quite a price on your head.'

'Your information's out of date,' I said, still staring at the boots. 'And besides, the Sanction's days are numbered.'

'Just as well,' he said, squatting down to my level. 'I never liked dealing with government organisations. Too much red tape.' He reached out a finger to scratch at the blood on my face. 'And they don't like to see their merchandise damaged.'

I didn't move. Let the finger pick at my whiskers. 'You got blood on my sweater,' I said, still not looking at him.

'Hmm,' he exhaled. 'Got it on my boots, too.'

My mouth twitched, my skin crawling beneath the squirreling of his fingernail.

'Tell me,' he said as he scratched at a muttonchop, 'what do you call these things?' The finger fell away. 'And do you remember a man by the name of Hechi?'

I turned to look at him then, leaned my head against the wall and took my measure. He smiled, gave me a glimpse of his surprisingly white teeth.

He had probably been good looking once, before acid had taken half his face, the scars twisting their way down his throat and disappearing like ropes beneath the collar of his fatigues. His eyes glinted bright in the overhead light, all the colour leached out of them so that they stared at me whitely, as though there was nothing at all living in the space behind them. I'd seen those eyes a thousand times in the mines, the end-product of generations spent living in the dark. But where the eyes in the mines had been red-rimmed and watery and filled with a hopeless despair, these eyes were dry and hard and cold, the left eye puckered at its periphery where the scar tissue twisted it into tiny, fleshy knots. He lifted a finger to the twisted eye, as though it still caused him pain. Or maybe it was my stare that was causing him pain. He was still smiling, a half-smile stifled by his scar-frozen face.

'Because Hechi,' he continued, scratching absently at his twisted eye, 'remembers you.'

I stared at him, at the smirking mouth, at the throat scarred so bad it had burnt the edges of his voice. 'Looks like you and Hechi are old friends,' I said. 'Or did you get those burns in a teahouse?'

The white eyes flashed, and I watched from the corner of my eye as his fingers curled into a fist.

'From one escapee to another,' I said, my attention tight on the clenching fist, 'Hechi never forgets the ones that get away.'

He uncurled the fist and stared down at his scarred fingers as if to remind himself of what he'd got away from.

His lip twitched, and he turned to me with a sneer. 'I suppose there's always the famous Captain Harlock,' he said. 'I'm sure he'll match whatever Hechi is offering.'

That made me laugh, a high-pitched giggle that tugged at the split in my lip. Because which Captain Harlock? The one who was locked in his room, or the one who'd left me lying in the dirt?

I coughed, the laughter choking in my throat. 'What happened,' I asked, wincing at the pain in my ribs, 'to the kid?'

'Him?' Gravel-voice snorted his surprise, an impatient disdainful sound. 'Hit him in his shooting arm and he took off.' He shrugged at me. 'You get what you pay for.'

'Thanks.' I coughed, harder, and spat up blood, aimed it for his boot and missed. 'I'll remember for next time.'

'If your captain doesn't pay up, there won't be any next time.'

I giggled again, sounding hysterical even to myself. 'You are one stupid motherfucker.' I looked into the acid-scarred face, allowed myself the pleasure of a smile of smug satisfaction. 'I'll let you in on a secret, sport, since we're getting off to such a friendly start. That kid you scared away is my captain.'

Doubt chased across his face, and I let my grin grow wider as the doubt was followed by disbelief, and then a red-hot anger that inflamed the scars on his face. He stared at me, lips working as though he was trying to swallow something that tasted really, really bad.

'Yeah, that's right,' I said. 'The biggest bounty in the galaxy and you scared him away. Tell me,' I leaned towards the twisted, tortured face, 'you really think he's gonna come back? For me?'

Gravel-voice stared at me, his lips pale with anger and the white eyes burning hot with rage. I leaned my head back against the wall, alternately giggling and choking and spitting up blood – until his hand slammed into the side of my head and wiped the smile from my face. I snarled at him, showed him my bloodied teeth.

'Hechi it is, then.' He stared down at the blood on his fingers.

'Whatever.' I spat out another dark-stained gobbet. 'I'm screwed.'

'You sure are.' He smiled, his eyes studying the swollen contours of my face. 'My team are out there rolling dice. Winner gets you. First.' He wiped his hand down his thigh and curled the fingers into a fist. 'No reason we can't take advantage of the merchandise while we have it in our possession.'

I stared into the cold, white eyes. 'Do you have a name,' I asked, 'or should I just call you 'Sick Fuck'?'

His fist darted out and made contact with my mouth, reopened the split in my lip and sent a cascade of blood down my chin.

'Oh look,' he said as I recoiled from the blow. 'I got more blood on your sweater.'

'Nnh,' I said, blinking stupidly as stars danced before my eyes.

His hand lashed out towards me, fingers snaking into my hair as he heaved me away from the wall and slammed me face-down onto the deck. I sprawled grunting onto the metal, my nose smashing into the floor as leapt onto my back and pressed his full weight down on top of me. His chin dug into my neck, his breath hot as a hand snaked between my stomach and the deck and fumbled for the zipper of my pants.

'What's my name?' he breathed, his lips wet against my ear.

'Sick Fuck,' I panted, bucking beneath his weight as I tried to dislodge him.

'Don't wear yourself out,' he laughed, one hand on the back of my head as he ground my bloodied face into the deck, the other hand still fumbling at the catch on my pants. 'Gotta lot of men counting on riding you tonight.'

I twisted beneath him, spat blood and managed to get my cuffed hands beneath my chest and heave myself up from the deck. The movement dislodged him enough for me to get to my knees, but the bastard was instantly back on me again, clinging to me like a leech latched onto blood. I managed to twist around, ribs screaming as I impacted an elbow into the burns on his face and felt him slip grunting from my back.

I heaved myself to my shackled feet, stood swaying unsteadily as he climbed grinning to his feet and wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand.

'You want it rough?' he asked, closing the distance between us.

I braced myself. I had nowhere to go, and I wasn't going to stay on my feet long with both my ankles bound and he knew it. I brought my cuffed hands up defensively, tensed myself as he laughed and then launched himself at me. The impact knocked me straight off my feet, slammed me hard against the wall with the breath whoofing out of my lungs as I collapsed again beneath him. He had a hand around my throat before I had a chance to recover, fingers closing off my windpipe with all the weight of him behind them.

'I'll give it to you rough,' he said, his other hand sliding into view and glinting with a sudden flash of steel. He pinned me beneath his body, and I felt a knife slide into the hollow above my hip with the insidious sting of metal parting flesh. He grinned and twisted the knife slowly, loosed his fingers around my throat just enough for me suck in a lungful of air.

'Son-of-a-bitch,' I choked out with the knife turning in my side and Sick Fuck's goddamned erection pushing hard against my thigh. I struggled futilely beneath him, my arms crushed uselessly between us as he smiled into my eyes.

'First I'm gonna bleed you,' he said, his breath hot and sour in my face. 'And then I'm gonna ream y – '

The room canted sideways, his fingers slipping from my throat as a great grinding sounded through the hull. I didn't feel the knife slide out of me, felt only the blood running hot down my side as the ship shuddered around us with the high-pitched screech of metal on metal. From somewhere far away I heard the familiar thud of boarding tubes impacting with the hull, felt the slow drop of pressure as the ship began to split apart at the seams. I smiled. The calm, beatific smile of a man for whom the universe is suddenly good again.

'What the hell,' Sick Fuck grunted, a panicked, animal sound as he lurched to his feet and stared at the walls, as if they could possibly tell him what was going on. The knife dripped blood in his hand as he turned to glare down at me, the pale eyes narrowing with rage.

'You,' he spat, lurching towards me with the knife raised dripping in the air. 'What the fuck have you – '

The rest of the sentence never made it out of his mouth, the door of the cell exploding from its housing and slamming hard into his back. I threw myself sideways, narrowly avoided the falling of the door and the man as they clattered in a noisy heap to the floor.

'Uhh,' Sick Fuck said as the cell filled up with the tarnished golden armour of my comrades-at-arms – and truth be told, those sons-of-bitches had never looked more beautiful in my life.

'I hope you like it rough,' I gloated into Sick Fuck's stupid, grasping face. 'Because it looks like I won't be the one getting reamed tonight.'