El Alamein

Mamoru had to adjust the pistol in his holster as he walked - the damn thing had a tendency to bump against his leg and he made a note to replace the standard-issue holster with a tie-down.

'You know, I'd heard of a mid-life crisis,' Jones said conversationally as they walked the corridor leading to the main airlock. 'But damn, that's some serious over-compensation, captain!'

'A present from my brother and his best friend for my fortieth birthday a couple of years ago,' Mamoru replied with a grimace. 'I hadn't had time to get used to actually wearing it yet. I never need to back home.'

'Uh-huh. This would be the same brother who thinks it's a hoot to dress you like a pirate?'

As hard as he tried Mamoru could not resist the sudden urge to tug at the front of his flightsuit. Jones sniggered. 'Oh - laugh it up, Constance,' Mamoru sniped good-naturedly.

'That's Constantine,' Jones corrected. 'Just "Con", if we're being friendly.' He elbowed Mamoru lightly in the ribs. 'Hey - not that I'm one to ask to man-handle another guy's weapon, but could I take a look?'

Mamoru flipped the catch and handed over the piece, which was indeed a monster. Con Jones whistled appreciatively as he hefted it in his hand. 'Thought this was an antique at first and wondered what the hell you were doing with a percussion piece on board - but it's a rather nice little blaster underneath, isn't it?' He handled it reverently. 'Nicely balanced as well, for all the weight.' He peered at the legend engraved on one side of the barrel. 'Tochiro patent: Grape Valley Titan, 2872…' he read out. 'Serial number F-111'.'

'One of a kind,' Mamoru said as he took it back and re holstered it. 'Based on the old Desert Eagle - we have a collection of classic arms in the Schloss. My brother's a bit of a romantic - prefers the nineteenth century and earlier. I preferred a bit more reliability and stopping power. After we were attacked a few years back and ended up raiding the museum for weapons, Tochiro thought it would be a good idea to upgrade a few of the designs. Harlock got a brace of flintlock replicas that he promptly lost during some debacle two years ago. If I remember rightly Tochiro was going to replace them with a variant on the old Colt Dragoon.' He patted the sidearm fondly. 'He calls this one the Cosmo Eagle.'

'Cosmo cannon might be more like it. That looks as though it has some serious stopping power.'

Mamoru grinned. 'Hell yes. The first time I practiced with it it scared the hell out of me. Packs almost as much kick as the original.'

Con patted his own sidearm fondly. 'Gotta love that guy - one of the perks of working for you lot is the toys - we all got the new Cosmo M78s he designed. Serious firepower, just when you need it most…'

'Well hopefully we won't be going hand to hand. I'm even more impressed with the new optical cannon on the Deathshadow. I saw the trials they ran in the Kuiper belt last year. It's not just the extra firepower I'm impressed by - the recycle rate of fire is almost double the old model.'

'More efficient as well,' Con nodded sagely. 'Draws a lot less power from the engines for a bigger boom.'

They turned the last corner in tandem. 'Is that even a technical term?' Mamoru asked him.

'Is now!' Con pointed. 'I think our guest is waiting. Shouldn't his sister be here? I thought…'

'If he has information about my brother and Tochiro, I'd prefer to find out before Maya does. Whatever the news.' They drew level with the new arrival just as the anchor tube irised shut behind him. 'Manfred!' Mamoru greeted Maya's brother warmly. 'It's been too long.'

Manfred took Mamoru's offered hand and shook it, his grasp warm dry and firm. 'Blame this damn war - if you can dignify it with the term. Somedays I feel as though the rest of the human race got dropped on their heads whilst I wasn't looking. Your government doesn't give out many entry visas these days - even for those of us born on Earth. That last round of restrictions might just have alienated any moderate voices in the colonies for good.'

'It's not that easy travelling the other way,' Mamoru replied. 'Unless of course we're planning on shooting something,' he added drily. 'For some reason that's a popular pastime on both sides.' He gestured towards his quarters. 'This way - we can have a quiet talk.' He introduced Con Jones as they walked. 'Strictly speaking we're not a military vessel at the moment, so I've run with a rather more fluid structure. It seems to work so far.'

'Strictly speaking?' Manfred rolled his eyes. 'There's hair splitting, and then there's a refitted destroyer with some shiny new weapons attached strolling into colonial space on the QT. Have you been spending too much time with my father?'

'Well technically we're not active military personnel, and the ship was decommissioned and handed over to a civilian company for research…' Con offered helpfully.

'Yes… I'm sure the SDF will take that into consideration - after they have you all taken out and shot as spies - or pirates,' Manfred murmured, with a meaningful stare at the front of Mamoru's flightsuit. 'I don't envy you, Mamoru - you'd have been safer if you'd reactivated your commission for this jaunt - at least as a commissioned officer you'd be treated as a prisoner of war.'

'That didn't help my brother much, did it?' Mamoru's tone was even, but the rebuke was still there.

'Harlock was taken by a civilian outfit - albeit one with a large vested interest in keeping the fighting going.'

'Armaments?'

Manfred shrugged. 'Possibly - but the subsidiary in question actually supplies the raw materials for a lot of things. Ships, weapons… rumour has it they make use of unprotected populations in their mining operations. Unlicensed asteroid mining with acid ablation… marginal worlds where machinery isn't cost-effective...'

'Slavery in other words,' Con snarled, his hands curling into fists.

Manfred gave him a sharp look. 'And yet, they might end up the lucky ones. Freedom to starve and die is no freedom. Away from the industrialised systems, the rule of law is long gone. There's no food, no money. The economy collapsed years ago. It might be utterly reprehensible, but on some worlds, those taken are the only ones with a chance of survival at all. There's nowhere else to go - Destiny… Grand Technologia… Herise… Lar Metal… Earth… all the "civilised" worlds have closed their borders. The signs read "no vacancies", and not a single world has the resources to take in the sheer numbers of refugees out here.'

'It's just plain wrong,' Con muttered, as they entered Mamoru's office. 'Using people like that.'

'Not in question - but you have to remember that a lot of people sold themselves and their families in the faint hope of survival, and there are far worse situations to be in, out on the edge. We call this a "war", but it isn't, not really. No government or group has declared open season on another. This is a handful of the privileged fighting tooth and nail to stop a flood of desperate, starving people from fleeing intolerable conditions in the hope of a better life. And those people are being preyed upon as well by those who want nothing better than to profit from the mess, and bide their time until the inevitable happens and human civilisation implodes, so that they can feed off the carcass. Those of us trying to stop it might as well try and stop the tide from coming in.' Manfred dropped into a free chair and ran his fingers through his blond hair. 'I feel for my father - he's on Destiny right now negotiating - but it's futile. There's nothing to negotiate and no-one who can even begin to put the brakes on. We hit the tipping point years ago, and now the whole damn avalanche is rolling down the mountain.'

'A little fatalistic,' Mamoru murmured. 'There's always hope.'

Manfred shook his head. 'Only for a few, Mamoru. There are hundreds if not thousands of refugee convoys en route to the handful of worlds still viable. Each of those worlds is facing wave after wave of desperate people. Some have armed ships, some not. Some estimates are that we have maybe five hundred billion souls on the move. And if they get no welcome out here - and the mood on those worlds is overwhelmingly protectionist - then you know where they'll head. The rabble-rousers have been calling for it for years.'

'The homecoming movement…' Mamoru said softly.

Con Jones perched on the edge of the desk, ignoring his captain's pointed glare. 'But where are they getting all the ships from? Surely if resources are that poor…'

'A lot are very basic transports - some little more than hollowed out asteroids with life support and a drive,' Manfred replied. 'Most of them can barely limp along fast enough to make it to the next system. A lot don't even protect the inhabitants from the IN-SKIP translation. Despite the hysteria whipped up by Mars and Earth, most of these ships won't make it. People are already dying by the millions.' Mamoru handed him a large tumbler more than half full of whiskey and he downed it in two gulps. 'Dear god, it's beyond imagining. Herise has tasked its fleet with running a rescue task force, but we're so few and space is so vast. My brothers are doing what they can - Marius with the SDF, Marcus with the Galaxy Medical Corps. Father's trying to persuade the city-worlds to come to an agreement that doesn't involve shooting anything that comes into their space. And yet I still can't believe that we're doing anything except pissing into the wind…' He sighed heavily. 'Maybe all we can do is stand in our own small corners, and hope to survive it.' He placed a long, narrow holdall he'd been carrying on the desk. 'Mamoru - you might want these. My people found them on a planet called Golgotha, just outside of an area of space contested by one of the larger conglomerates.'

Mamoru opened it slowly, and pulled out the contents reverently. A beautifully tooled leather gunbelt and holster, with a silver buckle cast in the shape of a rectangle, containing a skull and crossbones in relief. The wooden-effect butt of what looked like an antique, long barreled revolver jutted out of the top, the barrel extending well below the bottom opening. A second pistol still nestled in the bottom of the holdall. He placed the pistol and belt on the desk and reached in for the third item, whilst Con reached out next to him to pick up the gunbelt with an appreciative whistle.

'Wow… this is one of those Cosmo Dragoons?'

Mamoru, absorbed in lifting out the final item, didn't reply, and Con's mouth fell open in awe as Mamoru lifted it free, and deftly extended the collapsed barrel to its full length: a pistol-grip sabre at first glance, with a broad guard and an extending "blade" - actually the barrel of a powerful blaster rifle. 'Okay…' Con reached out a hand and ran a finger down the barrel. 'Cute - but I don't get why you'd want to make it look like a sword…'

'If I flip the controls, there's a micro-gravity field forms around the circumference and length of the blade,' Mamoru told him softly. 'Think of it acting like a monofilament - if it cuts you, you will part company with whatever's on the other side of that blade, and this thing goes through the current top standard for Gaia Fleet armour. I've even seen it cut through the wing of a Cosmo Tiger.' A twist of his hand locked the blade into its full length. 'As a rifle it has a pretty short range in atmosphere - it's actually designed for use with one of the new "Valkyrie" suits Tochiro was working on with our new Nibelung friends. In space, it's actually quite devastating. The micro-gravity field concentrates the firepower and augments it…' He thumbed the power switch under the hilt and the blade flickered into life, a bluish-white lightning running down the blade.

Very quickly, Mamoru turned in back off and laid it on the desk at his side with a troubled frown marring his brow.

'Problem?' Manfred asked, never a man to miss the nuances. Rather like his father, Justinian.

'We got lucky. Someone's head would roll if their masters found out they'd let this tech slip through their fingers at some ordinary bazaar.' He met Manfred's startling blue gaze with his own and manufactured a reassuring smile. 'I think you'd better tell me a little more about this planet, and how it's connected to recent events…'

A klaxon sounded throughout the ship, piercing and shrill. Mamoru winced and made a note to stuff something in the siren located in his office. Since when did something that loud need to be placed in a room less that fifteen feet by twelve? Especially since even through the closed door he could hear the one in the corridor.

The communicator on his desk pinged almost at the same time. 'Okita.'

'Captain?' Komarova's voice. 'We're being fired on. A massive plasma bolt missed us by a whisker, passing about half a klick to starboard. They might have our range on the next one…'

'Shit.' Mamoru stood up. 'Manfred - later. Con - with me. Commander Komarova, sound general quarters. All hands to battlestations. How fast can we disengage from Manfred's ship and get between them and whatever's firing?' He was talking into his collar comm as he ran down the corridor towards the bridge, Con Jones barely a step behind.

'Three minutes to retract the anchor tube safely.'

'Maya - get on the line - tell their captain to synchronise with us, on Komarova's mark - Komarova -'

'On it, captain. Sending instructions to their computer now to co-ordinate manoeuvring thrusters.' The ship rocked slightly as she finished speaking, and he felt Con's hand on his lower back, steadying him. 'Thanks'

'De nada. That one felt a bit too close for comfort.'

'Half a klick's too damn close,' Mamoru muttered. He sprinted onto the bridge and slithered to a stop at his station. Jones dodged past him and dropped into his chair even before its previous occupant had fully cleared the station, and began running a weather eye over the data.

'Report.' Mamoru decided not to sit down. For some reason it felt far more natural to stand at the front of the bridge.

'Almost clear of the Falcon,' Maya informed him. 'They haven't got time to spin their engines back up for a jump, and are asking for assistance.'

'Can we plot a time radar trace for those energy bolts?'

'Galactic co-ordinates locked in - from the same direction both times, but we've no idea how far away the source is.' This from Jan at the weapons station. He'd been the slowpoke Con had almost sat on.

'Except there's nothing on the scanners,' Con griped. 'Even with the shit we're wading through left over from the battle, I can't find an energy signature big enough to account for the power of those blasts. The only thing out there is the gas giant at thirty AUs. That's way too far out…'

Another blast. This time the damage siren began to wail.

'That grazed our belly!' Komarova's pithy snarl on the end of that statement caused Mamoru's eyes to widen momentarily. Not the time, he supposed, to point out that his wife was half-Russian and he spoke it quite well…

'There's nothing that side either!' Con Jones' voice was rising in frustration. 'A blast that size should leave a trail lighting up the radar! There's nothing putting out a power signature big enough to account for that.'

'I've got a small signal,' Maya spoke up, her voice almost lost in the low-level grumbling. Mamoru raised a hand to quiet the rest of his bridge officers.

'Maya?'

'It's very faint, but just before each blast, I caught a tiny fluctuation in the background noise - as though a carrier signal was being sent. Very small, very brief, but it was microseconds before the blasts appeared and tracked us.'

Mamoru took the two steps to her station and leaned towards her. 'Can you boost the trace?'

'Now that I know what to look for. If they fire again.'

'Oh, they'll fire again. Komarova?'

'Falcon free!' she called out. They're behind us, pulling away ready to spin…'

'Away?' He swore under his breath. 'Get them back here, tell them to get closer! The moment they leave our time radar shadow…'

This time the blast missed them, but the ship was rocked by a secondary explosion. The blast shields on the viewing window slammed down, but not before a brief flash of light left afterimages on his vision.

His crew sat silently, shocked.

'That came from behind…' Jones looked up from his readings. 'How the hell is it moving so fast!'

Mamoru ignored the question. 'Ekaterina?'

She shook her head, her lined face grave. 'I'm sorry, captain. The Falcon's gone.'

'It's not a ship.'

Mamoru was the only one who heard Maya's quiet voice. He leaned in again. 'Explain.'

'The signal - I had the computer tracking for the signature frequency just in time. It's not a ship - that was a short-burst encrypted signal, and it's in the database. It's a command to open a hyperspace gate.'

He nodded and turned to Jones. 'Hear that?'

'On it.' Jones's blond head bent over his console and his hands moved frantically over the controls. 'Now that I know what I'm looking for…' His mouth turned up into a feral grin. 'Gotcha!' Then it fell into a worried frown. 'Oh, fuck…'

'You're not military, are you?' Komarova asked him drily.

'Stow it, grandma. This is bad. I'm picking up over a dozen small hypergates in our vicinity - part of a spherical formation. And there are several others in another layer beyond them… kinda like an onion, bigger and fewer the further out you get. We're in the kill-zone.'

'Kill zone for what?' This from Jan, who'd pulled off his gloves and was wiping his hands on his pants legs.

'Remember I said the only thing out there was the gas giant?' Con began.

Mamoru didn't wait for the rest. 'Montoya-'

'Aye aye, captain!' their navigator was already moving the ship as fast as he could, the drives having been spinning up since Mamoru had first called the crew to battlestations. 'Thirty seconds!'

'Gas giant?' Jan asked, more to the room than anyone in particular. He looked scared, but Mamoru couldn't take the time to reassure him just yet. He headed for his chair.

'Brace for emergency jump!'

'Those plasma blasts - the plasma had to come from somewhere,' he heard Maya tell the youth.

'Oh.' Then. 'I guess we can't take out a planet, can we?'

'Not even with these weapons,' Mamoru muttered.

'New bolt launched and running!' Komarova called out. 'Five, four, three…'

The Deathshadow shook from stem to stern as she entered IN-Space.


Dis

Tochiro stood against the wall of their cell with his arms folded, and glared down at his companion, slumped bonelessly in a corner with his head down, his chin almost resting on the one knee he had raised. From time to time he tapped his foot on the floor, but the effect was somewhat ruined by the fact that socks tend to muffle agitation. And his thick glasses would have ruined the disapproving glare even if the subject of them had been actually paying him any attention, instead of wallowing in his own self-pity.

'Are you just gonna sit there all day?'

Silence.

'Why, yes, Tochiro, I am. I'm a spoilt, self-centred, wangsting brat who's wallowing in guilt because I did my usual trick of just jumping into a fight without thinking about anyone other than myself, and now one friend just had his face blown off, and another's going to be lobotomised.' Pause. 'You know, I'd never have guessed. You're taking it so well. I'd better join you then, coz there doesn't seem to be any other option, does there?'

Harlock's head came up and Tochiro met the muted fury in a bloodshot gaze without flinching. 'Fuck. Off,' came the snarled reply in answer to his mockery.

'If it gets you off your lazy arse and gets your head back into the game, I'll keep going until Judgement Day,' Tochiro informed him breezily, his tone deliberately light. Inside, he was close to just storming over into that corner and giving his friend a shoulder to cry on. Except that didn't help anyone. Not them, not Khalsa… not the problem of Alexi-fucking-Nevich showing up… When Harlock got like this, he generally needed a bloody good thump to get him moving again, not sympathy.

'Game?' Harlock's head snapped up a little higher and his mouth compressed into a grim, disapproving line. Good. It was working… just needed to get him a little madder...

'You're a sore loser, you know. Always have been. And you've never liked anyone taking your toys away. But you didn't used to be such a drip. Sheesh. It's like marriage and fatherhood have emasculated you, these days. Then again, you've not done much of the latter, have you? You spend so little time at home I hear that Stefan's started calling Mamoru "papa". Almost makes you wonder if he's taking over any other duties - I mean, Maya's young, beautiful, and left all alone in that cold, draughty castle for months on end… I mean, how long can a girl fancy the bad boy for when she has such a pillar of the community around as an example? He's handsome, intelligent, rich, can speak in entire paragraphs…'

'Shut. The. Fuck. Up.' At least, that's what it sounded like. It could also just have been a growled threat to rip his head off.

'And he's just so damn nice. I mean - people actually like him…'

'Tochiro…'

Ignoring the warning tone, he carried on: 'You know, if he hadn't resigned his commission, he'd have been the better captain… I mean, he'd never have gotten caught with his pants down at El Alamein, now would he?' He dodged the attack when it came, remarkably agile for such a stout frame. Ducking under Harlock's outstretched arm, a short, sharp jab to the solar plexus dropped the taller man to the ground, and once there, it never took Tochiro long to sit on him.

But then again, it wasn't as if Harlock's heart was in this fight. 'Finally,' he muttered into his friend's ear. 'Are you ready to actually listen to reason now and pull your fat head out of your ass?'

'You're an asshole.'

'Yeah, but I'm your assh-' he broke off suddenly and giggled. 'Yeah. Maybe not. We get enough of that back home… and you are sooooo not my type.'

'Just get off me. You're putting on weight.'

Tochiro scrambled off and held out a helping hand. 'Well one of us has to - you stopped eating properly weeks ago.' The pair slumped against the wall, legs outstretched, staring at the door. 'This goes back even before Tiamat, doesn't it? You've been avoiding the subject for months…'

Harlock sighed and placed his head against the wall with a thump. 'You were tied up on Titan with the Nibelung delegation, sorting out the treaty. Sanada co-opted the Yukikaze for a fast reconnaissance of a fleet we'd heard was massing near Beta Orionis. It was just a small taskforce, led by a Commodore MacKenzie.'

Tochiro gave his friend a sharp look, but Harlock's eyes were fixed on the opposite wall. 'I remember. Dad wasn't too happy about it, but Shiro Sanada was adamant he wanted someone independent. You all kind of clammed up afterwards…'

'Because MacKenzie opened fire the moment we detected the ships. There was an SDF escort with them, and they retaliated. It was a bloodbath - only the Yukikaze and the Medusa got away.' His voice trailed into silence. When he spoke again it was stronger, and laden with disgust. 'MacKenzie had been adamant that Rigel was too close a staging post to Earth - less than 900 light years. The rest of us had no choice but to fire back when the SDF engaged - but that opening salvo had taken out a lot of the ships, and we soon realised that they weren't military. It was a staging point for a group of civilian transports that had gotten into trouble. The SDF had been trying to repair them and move them on to safety.' He fell silent again.

'Just like Tiamat,' Tochiro whispered sadly.

'Smaller scale, yes, but the same set-up. The intel had been manufactured - someone had wanted us out there, and deliberately manipulated a trigger-happy moron into command. We were well outside our jurisdiction, and had no right to engage. It was a slaughter. When those transports blew there were bodies and body parts everywhere… they didn't have a chance. I saw children…'

Tochiro couldn't think of anything to say to fill the awkward, painful silence. He'd seen it with his own eyes at Tiamat, after all. He just hadn't realised that for Harlock, it wasn't the first time. 'You didn't say anything when you got back… why…'

'Admit to the people I love that I fired on those ships as well?' He slammed his fist against the wall behind him and Tochiro winced. 'I followed orders. Just like I was supposed to, and didn't bother to look first to see what I was aiming at. And I'm supposed to do what after that? Go home, smile at my wife, bounce my sons and my nieces on my knee and pretend I didn't see the frozen, broken bodies of children just like them drifting past and bouncing off my viewscreen? Listen to Mamoru being all supportive and sympathetic and trying to be all wonderfully understanding and "nice"?' He was snarling the words by the time he'd paused for breath.

'So that's why you've been avoiding shore leave? And we were in an all-fire hurry to get to Sanada at Tiamat?' Tochiro sighed. 'You should have told me. We're a team…'

'Someone's trying to escalate this. I thought if we could get there in time, stop another massacre…' Harlock's head drooped again, but this time as much from exhaustion as depression. 'It didn't do any good, did it? Both we and the SDF were suckered into a killing field.'

Tochiro frowned. 'Yeah… about that. I didn't really get much of a chance to see what was going on out there - too busy trying to hold the shields up with spit and string under that console… how come our retreat ended up with both sides in the same "safe zone"?'

Harlock shrugged wearily. 'Beats me. Could be El Alamein is just a convenient way point from Tiamat… but someone was waiting for us - those bolts came out of nowhere. Before we lost sensors and comms in that second volley, I couldn't see anything. There were no ships on the scanners.'

Tochiro's frown deepened into a scowl. 'Huh. That's what Lizzie Michaelides said when you were out cold after those scavengers showed up. The SDF were as much in the dark as we were. She said it was some heavy-duty plasma fire, came out of nowhere.' He paused, then thumped Harlock lightly on the arm. 'Hey - you know, she said you did good - if we hadn't come shrieking into the middle of that clusterfuck, those ships she was guarding would have taken far more losses than they did. She couldn't figure out why the hell an Earth Alliance ship was yelling on all frequencies to pull back and cease fire at its own side, mind you.'

'Our side?' Harlock's lip lifted in a sneer. 'You still think there are sides in this?'

Tochiro shrugged. 'Maybe all we can do is just protect our own?'

'Isn't that what got us into this mess?' Harlock asked acidly. 'That's what our beloved government keeps telling us, everytime it chips away at our freedom. There are days I wish we could just take our ship and head out into the black, and never look back. Out there is the only place I still feel any kind of peace…'

Tochiro couldn't reply to that, and bit his lip to avoid saying something he shouldn't. Some things you just can't say to a friend and still stay friends… Instead, he decided to change the subject, before Harlock lapsed into another funk. 'Hey - what say you we make a start on doing some damage on our way out of this place?' he said brightly.

'Out?' Harlock snorted. 'Are you off your tree?'

'Au contraire,' Tochiro replied smugly. 'I have a plan, and it kind of needs you to be on your A game. You in?'

'A plan.'

'U-huh.'

'To get out of a secure facility located deep underground…'

'Well if you're going to get all sniffy..'

'On a desert planet out in the middle of nowhere…'

'Details, details!' he waved a hand around vaguely.

'Which has a constant windspeed that would make a hurricane weep and dust storms that can strip the skin and flesh off a man's bones in a matter of minutes if he's unprotected…'

'Well it won't be easy,' Tochiro replied cheekily. 'But as I said. I have a plan. Unless you'd rather sit here on your over-upholstered aristocratic backside and feel sorry for yourself?' He weathered the resulting glare with a mild, deliberately shit-eating smile. 'Thought not. Now, we just need out of this cell, and to get to the communications suite.'

'Just, he says… And how are we supposed to do that, without tools or weapons?'

Tochiro heaved a theatrical sigh. 'Oh ye of little faith. As it happens whilst you were butting heads with the constabulary, I managed in my own travails - and trust me, I think I can still taste the earwax - to lift a few necessaries…' he held up a small card-key and a tiny flashlight. 'With this, I can fix the electronic lock on the cell door.'

'Not without a knife to strip that wire, you won't.'

Tochiro held up one of the flint blades. 'Thankfully, since our host was caught knapping…'

Harlock cuffed him around the head for that one. 'That was bad, even for you. But once we've gotten as far as the communications room, what the hell do you plan on doing after that?'

Tochiro had already shuffled over to the door and was using the light from the corridor shining through its window to help him create his electromagnetic strip. 'You mean after we use it to - oh - call for help?'

Harlock glared at him.

Tochiro grinned. 'Well… that's where you come in. You know - one of your scream and leap fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants moments of brilliance would come in handy about now…'

Harlock got up and stood next to his friend, looming over him. 'That's your plan - your great plan - you leave the details to me?'

'You're in my light!' Tochiro complained, giving him a totally useless shove.

'You're off your rocker,' Harlock replied frostily. The door slid open and he stuck his head out, quickly checking up and down the corridor - little more than a rough-hewn tunnel. 'Give me the knife,' he ordered, plucking it out of Tochiro's fingers without waiting for a reply.

Grinning from ear to ear, Tochiro followed him into the empty tunnel. 'Ooh!' he called out as they walked. 'Boots. If nothing else, we need boots.' He cursed as he stubbed his toe on a lump of rock for the second time in ten seconds.

'You have socks at least,' Harlock growled at him. 'It's more than some of us have.'

'Want mine?' he asked gaily as they walked. He bit back a snigger at the way Harlock's shoulders tensed and shuddered at the thought. Then he caught sight of the bloody scratches and bruises on his friend's soles as he walked, and fell silent, suddenly sobered.