... EDF … Maho...ba. Repeat: … lost… power... Navigation… negative… save… ...peat, this is….ba….stay...ger...

'I can't clean it up any further.' Kei pulled a face, hating to be beaten by a mere signal.

'It's decayed too much over the last hundred years,' Yattaran added. 'This is as good as it gets.'

They were back on the bridge, staring at the section of space the signal had originated. Even at maximum magnification, they could see nothing on the screen. Harlock leaned on the wheel, toying idly with one of the dark wooden balusters.

'It sounds more like a warning than a request for help,' he muttered. He grimaced. 'Haven't we seen this warp-vid?'

'What happened to the Duty of the Sea?' Ali asked facetiously. Yattaran mimed clipping him upsides the back of the head.

Harlock straightened and took a firm hold of the ship's wheel. From its perch on the back of the skull and bones decorated captain's chair, the captain's black bird launched itself into lumbering flight, to land on Harlock's right shoulder and start preening. 'We go in, but slowly. First sign of trouble, we get the hell out. No heroics - if it's a derelict, we move on and leave a warning marker. Anything that's a shipping hazard we blow to bits.'

Yattaran leaned over the balcony. 'Okay, you lazy bastards - you heard the captain! Jump to it!'

Kei sauntered over to him and tapped him on the shoulder. 'Seriously, First mate? Didn't we put a stop to all that macho bullshit?'

A ripple of laughter from the lower bridge elicited a sly smile from Harlock, and she smiled at him as she turned back to her station.

'This isn't battlestations, Yattaran,' Harlock said quietly as Yattaran took his station. 'I don't need impressing.'

'It's traditional…' The fat man scratched his stomach absently. 'You're just no fun somedays, captain.'

'No, but I like a nice, quiet, competent crew who can get their jobs done without being yelled at. When I start bellowing orders, then you can make them hop to it…'

Kei took up the slack. 'All ahead slow. All eyes on sensors. Ali, Levary - gun crews ready. First person to spot anything can have a coffee from the captain's private supply instead of Yattaran's brew!'

Laughter all round followed, especially at the captain's pained 'Hey!', although only Kei saw the wink that accompanied it.

Surrounded by wisps of dark matter, the Arcadia glided forwards, the ruby-red eyes of the skull on her prow staring into the void.

Carlos first called out a verifiable signal, as the Arcadia inched her way along the trajectory determined by the time radar trace. 'Captain - ten degrees off the starboard bow, fifteen degree elevation! I've got a mass reading!'

'Yattaran?' Harlock brought the ship about on the new heading with a delicate flick of his left hand.

Yattaran hitched up his pants and peered at his console. 'On the nose, captain. Getting stronger, but still no visual, or any other confirmation…'

Kei looked up from her own station. 'I'm getting some odd gravitational fluctuations around us though… the navigational references are going haywire!'

'I see something!' an excited call from below, from the dark-haired youth, Tadashi, who'd been helping the cook, Anita, hand out elevenses to the crew on duty. The dishes and mugs on the tray he carried wobbled alarmingly as he forgot he had his hands full and tried to point at the main viewer. 'There's a gash, right in front of us!'

Sure enough, the screen began to fill with a long, reddish gash in the void. Seemingly narrow at first, soon it filled the screen from top to bottom. Faint shapes began to appear inside it; like flickering shadows in firelight cast upon a wall.

'I don't like the look of this…' Yattaran muttered.

'My readings are getting stranger,' Kei added. She shot a questioning look at Harlock, who still stood firm behind the wheel.

'Those are ships,' he replied softly. 'Look.'

'More than one,' Ali called up from the lower deck. 'Now I'm getting distinct readings - you won't believe the read-outs on this thing!'

'Well we're going in, so just keep me posted,' his captain told him. 'All hands on alert, and steady as she goes…'

The Arcadia entered the rift.

The first thing they noticed was the light. Where space was an intense darkness, unless in-system or they used the real-time modulation on the screen to render the sensor readings into a recognisable visual, they were now surrounded by a pale red-orange glow which had no discernible source. The light came from everywhere and nowhere.

It allowed them to see the dozens - if not hundreds - of ships which lay in front of them. Lit by the flickering aurora of reds, oranges and yellows which ebbed and flowed over the scene, they were scattered over an area of about one standard AU.

Yattaran sighed almost happily as he stared at the main screen, Maji at his side looking equally entranced.

'Would you look at that?' he breathed. He pointed to a sleek, slender profiled vessel with a rectangular spinal mount cannon protruding from her bow. Even with part of her stern missing and her flank shredded, she lay gracefully amidst the debris of lesser vessels. 'Andromeda class battleship - they only built two. They were both supposed to have gone down with all hands after the battle of Neptune. And there's an old Cosmo Tiger!'

'That's the Karyu I!' Maji pointed to a similar but smaller ship. 'She's tiny - she always looked bigger in the vids!'

Ali, standing between Harlock and Kei, folded his arms across his red sweater and glared over at the two. 'Seriously - you two propeller heads are gushing over this shit like schoolboys. It's a little bit disturbing, given how many ships are here.'

'And all dead in the water,' Kei said sadly. 'No lifesigns at all so far.'

'They're not all military,' Maji said quietly, more soberly this time. 'I can see several civilian ships there as well - mostly in pieces. They're not transports though - I recognise the crane of an old construction rig, and a couple of the larger bits on the port side look like cargo transports.'

'They ain't all old, either.' Ali strolled over to Yattaran's station and casually elbowed the fat man out of the way, ignoring the elbow he got back in his own ribs by return. He brought up a magnified image on the tactical screen, and zoomed in. 'Zone Industries cargo carrier, came out about twenty years ago. Next to that, a Doppler Corporation mining transport - the hull markings show she's registered out of Shaitan, and he only moved there five years ago.'

'Less damage to those two, I notice.' Harlock pointed at the screen. 'I can see impact damage - perhaps from the debris field - but no weapon damage this side at least. Can we swing round into the graveyard and take a closer look?'

'That's a lot of debris…' Kei replied. She frowned. 'Even with shields up and self-repair, ploughing through that isn't without risk…'

'Harlock…' Mimay stepped forwards out of the shadows behind the command chair. 'There is a small but perceptible drain on the dark matter drive even here. Going deeper into this field might not be a good idea…'

'We take a Bullet in then.' He stared at the screen intently, then pointed. 'There's our point of origin - towards the centre of this graveyard. Mahoroba…'

She was a big ship, but slightly smaller than Arcadia. Similar in design to the former Deathshadow class Arcadia had once been.

'She's still a little beauty,' came a voice over the comms system. Slightly mechanical in tone, but it was a smooth, pleasant and resonant voice despite the synthesiser.

And the fact that its owner had been dead for a hundred years.

'I designed her - back when I still worked directly for the Fleet Engineering arm,' Tochiro continued. 'During what Harlock liked to call my "minimalist" phase…'

The namesake of the Central computer's old friend stared again at the screen, as Ali, without prompting, magnified the image to centre on the old battleship.

Or what was left of her. In places, the hull was completely stripped away to reveal the superstructure. Her engines were gone, leaving only gaping wounds in her stern, and her weapons mounts were similar open sores on what was left of her hull. But enough remained to showcase the sweeping curves of her lines - so much more graceful than the blocky Andromeda class ship riding off their bow.

'My poor girl…' Tochiro whispered. 'She was a sister-ship to our old Yukikaze, did you know that? I always thought the records were right, that she'd fallen in battle - I never dreamed she'd end up in a place like this… look what they've done to her…'

'She's been surgically stripped,' Ali pointed out. 'Doesn't take much of an eye to see that - see the cut marks on her hull? That's not blast damage - and around her drives… even at this distance you can see whoever stripped her knew what they were doing…'

'And it happened here,' Kei added. 'That signal originated from this part of space. She was still manned when she got here.' She scanned her console again. 'And I hate to worry you, but I don't like the way my readings are fluctuating. I can't find anything obvious to account for it, but it's as though space isn't entirely stable in this neck of the woods… both the background microwave radiation and gravity readings are changing every time I look at them.'

Yattaran hitched up his pants again and wandered over to take a look.

'Get a new belt…' Kei muttered as he elbowed her off her post. 'Please…'

'Eh, it's miniscule,' he replied, ignoring her comment, and giving Ali a stink-eye when the blond pirate sniggered. 'Could just be interference on the sensors.'

'I'd rather not take that chance,' Harlock told him firmly. 'But I still need to take a closer look. Kei - take command. Yattaran, helm. Carlos, Yasu, up here. Levary, Bob - gun crews. I'll take Tadashi, Ali, Doc, Anita, Sabu and Maji.'

Kei nodded at the choice - muscle, engineering, and medical. Even so, she stopped him before he left the bridge. 'Take the cloak. Just in case?' She lifted the heavy gravity cloak from its resting place over the back of the captain's chair and handed it to him - not without a struggle, as the red lined cloak weighed several kilos without its power on. 'I prefer to know that you have a little protection against stray shots.'

'I don't,' Ali grumped at her as he helped Harlock swing it onto his shoulders and attach it to the built-in points on his flight suit. 'Those shots have to go somewhere when this thing does its trick with the whole bendy-gravity-thing.' He glared at his captain. 'I couldn't sit down for a bloody week after that last time…' They both made for the stairs, Tadashi in tow.

Harlock snorted. 'Oh, get over it already. That was six months ago, and it was barely a scratch. And if you'd done what you were told and stayed back to cover me, you wouldn't have been in a position to be shot in the arse in the first place…'

Beside them, Tadashi sniggered and grinned at Ali. 'Really? That one never made the rounds…'

'Nor was it ever going to,' Ali retorted with a sharp look at his now innocently smiling captain. 'Since it was just me and Captain fancy-pants here, and he knows the penalty for blabbing…'

They were heading down the corridor by now, Tadashi having to almost skip to keep up with the older, taller men. Harlock ignored Ali, who winked at Tadashi. 'Two words, Captain - Grand. Technologia.'

'Is that the best you've got? Got me a week of pity-sex from Kei to make up for being forced to pretend to be your cheap man-whore in an alleyway that stank like a cess-pit after a heatwave. I had to burn that jacket - couldn't get the smell or the stains out… I have no secrets from Kei, and I'm not so insecure I need to assert my testosterone levels by denying it, so I can only assume the reason you kept it quiet was that you're in denial...'

Tadashi choked and stared at the two mens' backs as they sauntered ahead of him, bickering. 'Seriously?' he muttered.

If they heard him, they ignored him.

'Really? Did you tell her you had your hands all over my ass? Coz you're grabby…' Ali shot back.

Harlock shrugged. 'You weren't complaining at the time…'

'You had your tongue down my bloody throat at the time - it probably came out as "mmph mmph mmph"…'

Harlock shrugged again. 'You said "sell it" to the bounty-hunters following us. I used to be in Covert Ops, Ali, did you forget? The only reason my brother didn't pimp me out to a few high-ranking Gaia Coalition officials was that Martians are a little - shall we say - backward about same-sex relationships. He sure as hell had no scruples about throwing me to the cougars at any official function if he thought I could gain him an edge…'

'Can we go back in time and shoot the bastard all over again? Your brother was an even bigger waste of oxygen than I thought,' Ali replied plaintively.

Harlock reached out and ruffled Ali's hair, to a "gerroff!". Tadashi smiled at the exchange, and kept a discreet distance.

'And that's why I love you, you big oaf…' From his angle, Tadashi could just make out the edge of Harlock's quirky little grin.

Ali brushed the offending hand away. 'Stop that, not in front of the little 'uns. They'll get the wrong idea…'

Tadashi jumped in at that point - he just couldn't help himself. 'S'all right, Ali. I had the Talk - you know, about pirates, and how young men need to stay safe…' When Ali stopped in his tracks to look over his shoulder, he fluttered his eyelashes.

Harlock laughed out loud at that, and Ali glared at Tadashi. 'You little…' he turned his glare on Harlock and jabbed a finger at him. 'And you - you… see what you've started!'

They were still bickering good-naturedly when they arrived at the hangar, Tadashi almost pulling a muscle in an attempt to stop from laughing. Days like these, despite the potential danger, he liked.

Family… Albeit an extended, somewhat dysfunctional one, he thought, as Ali switched to teasing Sabu, the big guy not really up to keeping track of the repartee. Anita and Doc both took him to task about it, and Ali took their scolding in good part, earning a clip to the back of the head from the brawny cook, and eye-rolling from the slim, pony-tailed doctor.

Tadashi caught Harlock's eye from the cockpit and scooted forward to take the co-pilot seat, shooting a cheeky grin back over his shoulder at Ali, who would usually have called shotgun.

'If you're that keen on taking point, take us out, Tadashi,' Harlock said quietly. He swept the cloak out of his way with a graceful move, and sat down.

'Really?' The youth almost bounced in his seat, but managed to keep his enthusiasm in check and begin the pre-flight routine. In his enthusiasm he made a couple of errors, quickly picked up by his captain, and then they were heading out of the hangar, towards the centre of the graveyard of ships.