Lost Boy - 3
Zero's torch cut through the gloom of the interior somewhat reluctantly, the shadows crawling at the edges as though searching for a way into the light it cast. It lit on broken machinery and electronics, shattered plexi tubes large enough to hold a grown man, and control panels ripped out of the walls.
'Reminds me of a cloning facility back home,' Zero said quietly. 'More specifically the queens' chamber.'
'Sexaroid manufacture,' Harlock replied tersely. He knelt down to examine the wreckage more closely. 'This isn't bomb damage though - no scorching…'
'Our intel was about some kind of super-weapon.' Zero swung the torch over so Harlock could get a better look. 'Not skin-jobs.'
'Did your source explain what the weapon was? Other than "dangerous" and "you don't want it in enemy hands"?'
Zero shook his head, forgetting Harlock wasn't looking at him. 'No. Although now I'm wondering why they needed so many synths… there are at least ten growth chambers in here. Dozens of bodies out there… Androids aren't cheap, so whatever it is can't be handled safely by humans…?'
'Make that "at all" Harlock replied as he straightened. 'Human labour is cheap, and if you have the stomach for the slave trade, plentiful. You only resort to using android labour if the turnover rate is high and you need skilled labour.' He moved over to one of the less badly damaged consoles, and tutted. 'Well, no chance of a fortuitous hard drive holding some information we could use. The system's been trashed.'
'Offsite backup?'
'Do you know where it is?' Zero glared at him. 'Nope. Neither do I. But there might be a clue or two…' he wandered over to a side door. Like the rest this was hanging at an angle not even a deranged avant-garde architect would countenance. 'I recognise some of that equipment…'
Zero pointed the beam dutifully in the direction Harlock was pointing. Long curving pipework, once silvery but now blackened and scorched, slumped at the far end of a large chamber. Smashed baubles the size of a football littered the floor. 'What am I looking at?'
'A mock-up of a dark matter engine.' Harlock moved into the room. 'Or should I say: a copy, using inferior materials…' He studied the tangled pipework with a thoughtful expression. The he knelt and picked up one of the baubles. 'Looks like the plans have been getting into the wrong hands again. Huh. Crystalline tectite... you don't see that everyday. It took some serious force to break these. This one's intact…'
'Should you be handling it?' Zero stared at Harlock's hands as though they held a live sandsnake. 'It's glowing…'
Harlock peered into the depths of the ball. 'Red. Not blue…' he stared at the machinery again, a deep crinkle forming between his eyes. 'Not dark matter… something else. Tochiro tried to explain it once but I think my eyes glazed over.' He placed the bauble back on the ground and stepped away. 'Westwind was the name of the company… Project Cipher.. And if I remember my uncle's stories right, "Zephyrus" was the name of the god of the west wind, and both of them mean "zero"...' He turned suddenly, grabbed Zero's arm and gave him a push towards the door.
'What…?'
'You do not want to be standing around here too long,' Harlock replied, giving him a shove. 'We get out, now. This wasn't an experiment with dark matter, it was zero point energy…' he paused in the doorway, then turned and ran back to where he'd left the bauble. He picked it up and scurried back to where Zero waited patiently. 'Let's get the hell out. Although I think I might prefer to be a planet or two away…'
Once outside the facility - using the front door this time, they slowed to a walk and Harlock took off his jacket, carefully wrapping it around the crystal globe. 'If it's that dangerous, why carry that?' Zero asked.
'It's a control device for the energy. I want Tochiro and Mimay to take a look. Don't worry - it's safe. I think.'
'So full of confidence,' Zero muttered as they walked. 'So… Zero point…?'
'It used to be thought of as the path to free energy. Tochiro had been experimenting with it when he met the Nibelung and they pointed him towards dark matter instead. With something of a wagging finger I hear, due to the inherent instability of zero point energy.'
'I'm guessing unstable but powerful?'
'So I'm told. Quantum energy systems are in constant flux - something to do with the Uncertainty Principle. If you want an idea of how bad an idea it is to mess with it, this is the raw sewage of the universe from which dark matter comes. And dark matter is the domesticated flavour…'
'Too unstable for humans to interact with…' Zero mused.
Harlock nodded. 'But the more resilient bodies and faster computational ability of an android brain…'
They both glanced over their shoulders at the ruin. 'So. someone thought it was a good idea to blow that place up?' Zero grimaced. 'Should we be worried?'
'I think if it was going to blow it would have done so by now.' Harlock frowned. 'You're right though: unless what I know is woefully inadequate and you can add a massive influx of thermal energy to an unstable quantum state power source…' He kicked at an innocent piece of plascrete. 'Oh for some kind of sensor…'
'Can we detect zero point energy?'
'How the fuck do I know? I just fly the big scary battleship and try not to look confused when my trio of geniuses use long words. But If it's possible, I'd bloody well like to have one in hand…'
'So the fact that we have a small scary battleship hovering behind a moon trying to look inconspicuous…' Harlock glared at him, and Zero smiled beatifically and reached under his lapel. 'Marin?'
'Oh - hi dad. Wasn't expecting you to call in until the scheduled time. Problem?'
'Nothing I can't handle. We need to scan for a specific energy signature. Get on the warp radio to Yattaran and see if he and Tochiro can suggest a way the Futatsuboshi can scan for higher than background levels of something called zero point energy.'
'Zero point…' Marin's voice trailed off. 'Dad - what the hell have you gotten into? Do you need us down there?'
'Sit put. Both of you. Harlock and I can actually look after ourselves…'
'Really? Because the last time you two pulled a job together, you both got captured and tortured…' another voice, similar to but slightly deeper than Marin's.
'Blaze - ' Zero trailed off, and turned away so he wouldn't have to see Harlock's smirk. 'That was six years ago, and we couldn't have predicted someone spotting us who knew me. It's not likely that the same thing would happen twice.'
'Really?' Even without video, Zero could almost see his son's eyebrow rising.
'Whilst you're on line,' Harlock interjected to head off the family argument, 'Get Ichimonji on line and ask him to stick his head out of his oriface long enough to check if Lazarus is still safely behind bars.'
'You really want me to phrase it like that?' Marin's voice suggested he was having a hard time holding back a laugh.
'Lazarus? Your brother's here?' Blaze, less amused but going to get his neck wrung when Harlock saw him next. What was possibly a hand over the mic wasn't enough to stop both Harlock and Zero hearing Marin calling his brother an idiot. Zero thumbed off his comms and turned to Harlock.
'Your brother…?'
'It's complicated.'
'You don't say. I thought Lazarus was just a high-end skin-job? Your brother died, didn't he?'
'A few weeks before we met.' Harlock scuffed at a loose rock with his foot and started walking in the direction of the spaceport. 'Apparently the Council had been experimenting with recording the memories and personalities of top officials. Isora was one of them, and I suspect without his knowledge. It must have been built into his hover-chair.'
'So who resurrected him?'
'At a guess, someone back on Mars. Given that the syndicate he's running traces back there, Ichimonji thinks it's the new Administration - of course, since Mars is now under an interdict we don't know for sure.'
'Our sources think it's a rogue AI. But we've not been able to get an agent in since they moved all those holographic projectors that survived Harlock's attack from Earth to Mars. Interestingly, the projectors point towards the surface and the weapons they stuck on them point both ways... '
Harlock snorted. 'The Coalition just washed their hands of it, but they'd already moved to Enceladus by then. He paused, frowned, and then started walking again, more slowly this time. 'Zero… don't look round but I think we're being followed…' he said softly. In his normal voice he continued: 'Lazarus has my brother's memories, a copy of his body and his personality, but my brother died on board Arcadia six years ago.' His hand slipped to rest on the butt of his cosmo dragoon.
'Ever wonder why it seems only the worst traits of people survive the process? Even with a soul ring?'
'You're implying Isora had any good ones? Thinking that was how I ended up here, blind in one eye and half my face slashed open… to my right, Rei. Scrabbling in that pile of rubble.'
'Selen thinks it has to do with the personalities best suited to surviving being mostly narcissistic with serious sociopathic tendencies to start with.' Zero shifted position fluidly, ambling with a casual saunter so that he was now covering Harlock's blind side, and drifting a little towards the rubbish heap. 'Are you sure it's not just a large feral dog?'
'Only if large feral dogs say "shit" when they slip,' Harlock replied dryly.
Zero eyed the piles of rubble and debris they were traversing. 'Huh. Well, watch my back a minute will you? I need to shake it out…'
Hiding a grin Harlock folded his arms and sighed. 'You couldn't hold it until we got back to the shuttle?' he called out as Zero made his way towards a loose pile of rebar and plascrete.
Zero just waved back over his shoulder without looking round and loosened his coat as though he was just another spacer about to take an impromptu slash. 'Has to make a bloody production number out of everything,' he muttered. 'I blame the cloak…' He stepped around a small pile of split rubbish bags, wrinkling his nose as the stench. Something squished under his boot and he sighed. 'That'd better not be anything that sticks... ' Old memories of long, wet, miserable stake-outs flooded back. 'You know,' he called back over his shoulder. 'I'm remembering why I started smoking… it was to cover the smell…'
Scrabbling noises grew louder as he approached, as something slithered down the scree out of sight, Bounding up the slippery pile he reached down and grabbed for their follower, even as he lost his footing and went flying, face down. His hand slipped off the shoulder of someone very small, and very naked. 'It's a kid!' he called back down, 'Just a kid!' His hand slid down the thin arm of a small boy - no more than seven or eight years old, and grasped a bony wrist as firmly as he could. 'It's okay, kid. I'm not going to hurt you.'
'Like you could!' Green eyes glared at him from under a thick mop of matted black hair, and that was the best look he got of the boy before he tore free of his grip with phenomenal strength, twisting Zero's arm in the process hard enough to force a hiss out through gritted teeth. He had no choice but to let go and the child scuttled back out of reach…
...right into Harlock's waiting arms.
On board the Futatsuboshi, Marin, in the captain's chair, turned to his brother in the pilot's as the warp feed to Arcadia was cut off. 'Well… that put the wind up them. I've never heard Maji swear before.' He rubbed a little self-consciously at the moustache he'd recently started growing.
His brother Blaze chewed on his (bare) top lip and sat back in his seat, staring glumly out of the viewing window, currently displaying a view of the southern hemisphere of the planet. 'Purely out of academic interest - is there a spot in the universe where mom and Kei won't find us if we don't bring them back unhurt and breathing?'
'Not even in your lifetimes,' a female voice replied. Red leather clad arms rested on the back on Blaze's chair, and red hair brushed against his cheek. He flicked it away and leaned back to smile up at her.
'What makes you think you'd be exempt, Em?' He grinned at his cousin. 'None of us would dare go home if anything happens to dad and Harlock.'
She snorted. 'Those two can take care of themselves. Uncle Rei's been doing this for decades, and Harlock's practically teflon-coated when it comes to getting out of trouble.'
'Ah… but my dearest Emeraldas, you're forgetting that we know this because they always end up in trouble up to their eyeballs,' Marin teased her. She tossed her hair back and ignored him. 'Well, the least we can do is prepare for the worst, I guess. Yattaran is sending over some instructions for modifying the sensors, so you two can configure the array. I'll bet a goodly portion of the profits for our next run that if those two get into trouble, a big puddle of zero point is energy should be our first place to start looking…'
'If?' Emeraldas stopped leaning on the back of Blaze's chair and folder her arms across an impressive expanse of leather-wrapped cleavage.
'Then the pair of you had better hop to it, and get those censors reconfigured.' Marin stood up and headed for the doors of the bridge. He stretched and yawned.
'And you'll be doing what, precisely, you lazy sod?' Blaze asked, a cheeky smirk on his face.
'Going to the head and grabbing a much needed coffee. Why? Do you feel you need to hold my hand?' Marin quipped back.
'I think you're a big boy now… you can hold your own - or so I hear…' Blaze heaved a sigh. 'Though why dad always puts you in charge, you slacker…'
'Because I'm the oldest?'
'By eleven months…'
Marin sauntered out of the door, with just a wave over his shoulder as it irised closed behind him. Blaze turned back to his console and pointed at the free seat next to him. 'C'mon, coz - sit and give me a hand here, will you?' Noticing his cousin's frown as she sat he tapped her shoulder lightly. 'What gives?'
'You two… I keep forgetting that you're not twins - most people assume you are…'
Blaze laughed. 'Yeah - no one ever asks… allegedly, Marin was the shock "is that where babies come from" surprise package and I was the "post-danger life-affirming nookie" parcel.'
She just looked at him down her long, elegant nose. 'Aunt Selen isn't that stupid…'
'Well, true. It's more that coming from a culture where natural birth is almost unheard of, contraception wasn't something that loomed large in my parents minds at the time. Needless to say after years of trying to protect the pair of us from unwanted attention from the nastier elements of our grandmother's - and your mother's - courts, they wised up real fast.' He pointed at the console. 'Whilst I'm re-wiring this, run the seismic scan Ali suggested.' He vanished under his console and his bottom wriggled energetically as he started to pull apart the console, to the amusement of the rest of the bridge crew.
After a minute or so he wriggled his way out from under, a circuit board clutched in one fist. Emeraldas was staring straight ahead, lips clamped in a thin line, her hands clenched into fists resting on her thighs. He placed the board carefully on top of the console and very gently turned her chair so she was facing him. 'Em…'
Normally she maintained a stoic facade that too many people misread as cold and aloof. Occasionally, however, that mask slipped, although only those who knew her best would spot it. Blaze spotted the unshed tears in her green eyes and reached out to lay one hand on top of her closed fist. 'Hey…'
'She wanted you. Even when you weren't part of her plans,' Emeraldas whispered. 'Protected you both. And you and Marin… have each other - and you're not even twins... Sometimes…'
'It hurts.' Blaze kept his voice down, but the rest of the bridge crew were friends and knew not to intrude. 'I know. But mom isn't Promethium - she's only ever wanted to be normal, and live her life on her own terms. Your mother… well.' He lifted his hand and placed a finger under her chin, tilting her face upwards slightly until she was looking him in the eye. 'And May tried to protect you, kiddo.'
'But she's in Andromeda…' the despairing declaration was all the more poignant for being delivered in a harsh whisper. Blaze pulled her into a quick, hard hug, and to hell with the onlookers.
'Ahh, Em. It's safer this way. The Queen would chew you up and spit out the pieces - she can't control you unless she breaks you. And she would, believe me. Maetel she thinks she can mould in her own image - but you - you're a constant reminder of what she could have been… what she should have been, if she'd stood her ground. She can't handle that.'
She hugged him back. Briefly. Then pulled away with an almost imperceptible sniffle. Sometimes, he reflected, it was easy to overlook she was still only eighteen. He smiled at her. 'Hey - you've got my mother, and dad… and two gorgeous, intelligent, heroic older brothers…'
She thumped his arm and turned back to her console. 'Modest with it,' she muttered. But she did give him a grudging half-smile, and he took the win. 'There are spare wafers in the console,' he told her. 'Pass me one will you?' He waited patiently whilst she opened up the drawer and ferreted around inside for the small box that held tiny, wafer thin slivers of gallium arsenide, and used the tweezers inside to hand him one. Very carefully, he slid the extra circuit into place, and fed the board back into its slot.
'So how will that…?'
'Bose-Einstein condensates. Very sensitive and delicate superconductors formed in microgravity using cold atom physics at near absolute zero. That one is a blank, so all I have to do is load up Yattaran and Tochiro's programme, and that should align the…'
'Blaze,' Emeraldas sniffed haughtily. 'What will it do…?'
He blinked and looked up. 'Oh. Right. Detect zero point energy fluctuations - the programme will modify the sensory input and output; imprinting the steady-state on the wafer at the quantum level so any change from the background level will…'
'It's a geiger counter for this zero-point energy.'
'That's what I said…'
She shook her head. 'Next time - just jump to the important bit,' she told him flatly.
He grinned. 'Well in that case, cuz, why don't you point the main sensor array down towards where dad and Harlock's signal came from, and let 'er rip?'
Seconds later the entire console began flashing red lights across the board. Emeraldas pointed a long, gloved finger at the display. 'Should it be doing that?'
'Well… it is supposed to tell us if it detects what we ask it to,' he explained with exaggerated patience. 'Ow!' he rubbed his upper arm where she'd thumped him. 'So the answer to that question is yes. What you should have asked is "do we want to see that reaction…' he looked at the readout and swore under his breath. 'And the answer to that is a total, unqualified, "hell no"...'
