The "two-part finale…"

(Back-to-back badass colonels by special request…!)

For (as always!) Pollywantsa, for encouragement, support, comments both funny and incisive, and generally for just being there. Thanks, mate!

Emeraldas looked up into the blue eyes of the man who wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and smiled weakly. 'Any sign yet of the others?' she asked. Henry Douglas, colonel (SDF) shook his head and ran a hand through his barely regulation collar-length blond hair.

'We've got five life signs under there. Unfortunately - or fortunately depending on your point of view - they're concentrated in one small area. The unfortunate part is that that's the point where the bulk of the building collapsed. It's going to take a couple of hours to shift the rubble - the whole structure's unstable.' He glanced over to where Harlock was sitting on a plascrete boulder, one of the Prometheus' med techs hovering on one side, and Blaze clucking over him like a mother hen on the other. Both men were covered in blood and dust, and Harlock's borrowed coveralls were in tatters. Harlock waved away the tech with a vague smile, and Douglas sauntered over to him, wincing as he saw the faces of the bodies on the ground. Three of the SPG team hadn't made it. 'You two were lucky - another couple of yards…'

'Only because I was slowing them down,' Harlock replied flatly. He shivered in the thin drizzle that had begun to fall, and Douglas called one of his people over to fetch some warm clothes. Someone had obviously gotten ahead of him there, as a young med tech trotted over with a set of heavy duty coveralls from the shuttle's supply cabinet, and looked on admiringly as - with Blaze's help, the young pirate stripped off what was left of his rags and dressed as quickly as he could. Douglas eyed him up and down with a rather less prurient agenda, and winced at the assorted cuts and bruises the pirate's slim body carried.

'You should let someone take you back topside,' he told Harlock bluntly. 'Either Prometheus or the Futatsuboshi, I don't care which. You're no use to anyone in this state.'

'They're my friends,' Harlock replied with equal bluntness. Douglas was easily the same height as Ichimonji, so staring into his eyes required a strain on an already stiff neck.

'Dan's like a brother to me and I've known Rei longer than you have,' Douglas replied firmly. 'Get some rest and a shower - not necessarily in that order. You're barely able to stand.' He turned to Blaze. 'And that goes for you too. I know he's your father, but we've got our best team searching the rubble, and they're professionals. Let them do their job.'

Unlike Ichimonji, he was a friendly, open man and his reassuring smile was both genuine and impossible for either of the younger men not to respond to. Blaze sat down on the same piece of rubble Harlock had found to park his backside and stared glumly at the wreckage. 'I hate just sitting around like a spare part, but be damned if I'm going back to the ship to do the same, since I know damn well Mal will only make me go and lie down.'

'He should,' Harlock replied quietly. 'You're bleeding.'

Blaze reached up to touch the sticky mass of his fringe and pulled his fingers away. He stared at his bloodied fingertips. 'Huh. Thought it stung a bit…'

'You got hit by a flying chunk of plascrete.' Harlock called over a hovering medtech and over-rode Blaze's emphatic muttering that he was perfectly fine. 'You're not fine, your pupils don't look too equal to me…' Blaze flinched as the tech shone a light into his eyes.

'Just a bit bloodshot,' the tech told them. 'But you've got a nasty cut and an egg sized lump on your head. You're out of this whether you like it or not.' He smiled as Blaze started to slump against Harlock until his head rested on the other man's shoulder. 'Cute… but don't let him fall asleep. The shuttle's gone back to the Prometheus with the critically wounded we pulled out, but I'll get him on the next one.'

Harlock would have nodded his thanks but Blaze's head was in the way. He gave his friend a slight nudge. 'Oi… no sleeping…'

'Not sleeping,' Blaze replied wearily. 'Just resting my eyes. Though you're kind of bony…'

'Well he's not pillowing on me,' Emeraldas sniped from near Harlock's other shoulder. She stood with her arms folded across her bosom, glaring at the rubble as though just hating it hard enough could make it go away. 'What's taking them so long?'

'I know you were listening, so that just has to be a rhetorical question,' Harlock replied in his best don't-fuck-with-me drawl. Emeraldas gave him a filthy look, a disdainful sniff, and sat down beside him, fiddling with the butt of her pistol. She didn't bother flicking the lock of hair that fell over her face out of the way whilst she stared at the working techs busy shifting rubble away carefully, so Harlock did it for her, and smiled to himself when she leaned back slightly against him. He placed his free arm around her and gave her a quick hug, ignored Blaze's stifled, startled snort, and winced as his recently abused shoulder protested. 'You really do like to live dangerously,' Blaze murmured into Harlock's ear. 'Fond of that arm?'

'Bite me, Blaze,' Emeraldas replied, more from habit than genuine annoyance.

'Not today, cuz, I haven't had my shots…' Blaze quipped.

She stuck her tongue out at him and he laughed, albeit a little listlessly.

'Play nice, children,' Harlock advised the pair. He sat up a little straighter when he saw Douglas place a hand to his earpiece, then point and shout out an order. 'Something's up!' Douglas was already sprinting away from the scene, his long legs carrying him at an impressive pace. 'Now where's he off to in such a hurry?' Blaze was struggling to his feet and Harlock had to follow suit to catch him before he toppled over, leaving Emeraldas to field him in her turn.

'Why don't I go and ask?' she said, already moving before either her cousin or her occasional captain could do so.

'Are we that decrepit?' Harlock asked Blaze, as the latter sat back down again.

'Worn out and past it according to her,' Blaze replied a little listlessly. 'Damn… I hope dad's okay under that…'

Emeraldas started to wave frantically at them. 'They've got Uncle Rei and the little boy!' she shouted. 'Pulling them out now!'

'Oh, thank Lar for that...' Blaze sagged on his rocky seat, elbows resting on his knees, head drooping. Harlock narrowed his eyes and peered at the scene with a small frown hovering between his eyebrows. 'Yeah… But what about Dan?' he muttered under his breath. One of the techs, in the process of trotting back to their position grinned at him as she overheard.

'Colonel's fine - he was just past the point of the worst of it when the ceiling fell in behind him. Seems he's gone chasing after those two skin jobs,' she said. 'Colonel Douglas has gone after him. At least I assume that's what "Oh for fuck's sake, not again…" loosely translated to as he took off.' When Harlock didn't show any signs of moving to follow the lanky colonel, she peered up into his eyes. 'Not planning on following? I mean, we all know you and Lazarus have a history...'

'The speed Douglas took off at?' He shook his head and smiled weakly. 'If those two can't catch a synth on foot, I've got no chance.' His frown deepened momentarily then cleared. 'I do have an idea though. If you can make sure someone sits on that hothead…' he pointed to where Blaze sat, now, in defiance of her previous edict, leaning against Emeraldas' shoulder, 'there is somewhere I need to be where I can do a little good…'

Zero had expected the entire ceiling to come down upon his unprotected head when he'd dived over the little android to protect him, as the boy rushed past him intent on reaching his motherball. As a father, it had been instinctive, if, he thought wryly, somewhat pointless since they'd have both been buried and crushed by the debris.

And the light at the end of the tunnel was a reddish colour, and surrounded both of them, enough for him to see that the roof was being held away from his head by a flickering forcefield that barely reached past the toes of his boots. Hardly the stuff of legends of near-death experiences, he reflected. Underneath him, the little boy coughed and then wriggled. He heard a muffled but defiant "gerroff, ya big bugger…" and grinned.

'Well that's gratitude for you,' he murmured. 'A little patience please, young man. I'm not sure how far your mama's forcefield goes.'

There was a momentary pause, then: 'You've got about a foot above yer head,' Zephyr replied eventually, sounding a little contrite. 'But only a couple of inches to either side, so I guess I'm staying put.'

'I rather think we both are,' Zero replied quietly. A trickle of dust slithered over and down the curve of the forcefield, and became a stream of larger pebbles that clattered to the already rubble-strewn ground in front of him. The motherball was lying a few inches in front of his nose, glowing fitfully, sputtering like a guttering candle. 'How long can she last?' he asked. There was a long pause.

'Not long,' was Zephyr's soft reply. 'She could normally draw on the zero point energy, but she was damaged in the fall, and she's maintaining this shield all the way back to where some of your other people are hurt.' Another long pause. 'Zero?'

'Yes?'

'Thanks.'

'Thank me if we get out of here. You said some of the SDF were behind us?'

'Three I think. One's hurt pretty bad mother says. But there's not much she can do beyond put out a signal. There's someone digging though. I can hear it.'

'Anyone there?' a voice called out, muted by the rubble. Zero lifted his head as far as he could and tried to clear his dry, dusty throat.

'Here!' he called back.

'Hang on, sir - we're on our way. Just don't move around too much, okay? It's a bit unstable.'

Another fall of dust slithered over the forcefield in a sparkle of twinkling pinpricks. 'You don't say,' Zero drawled under his breath, eliciting a small giggle from his charge. He settled back down again to wait, understanding Harlock's apparently irrational dislike of buildings falling on him more with every passing minute...

Under normal circumstances the chances of keeping up with - or catching up to - fleeing synths were slim to none, even for a man who made it a habit to run most of the length of a rugby pitch with two burly props hanging from his shorts for the final fifteen yards and still make it across the line in a time some sprinters could only dream of. They didn't need to breathe more than a couple of times a minute; he did. But over uneven ground, without a clear, straight run… Even androids have to scramble over piles of rubble and can lose their footing.

And those chances shoot up astronomically if the prey is taken by surprise by the fact that recent tremors had unexpectedly blocked off the route they'd planned to take. Dan ducked behind a plascrete piller with a heartfelt "fuck" as a blaster shot fizzed past his head. He returned fire in the direction of the shot, and was gratified to hear a cry of pain. Risking a quick look, he saw the taller and older looking of the pair stop to help his companion, who had a red stain spreading down his tan pants leg. 'Well that should slow you down a bit,' he muttered. He sent another shot their way but the first had been a fluke - at the current distance - about eighty yards - blaster fire was notoriously inaccurate and he missed Lazarus' head by inches just as the synth hauled his friend into the cover of a large rebar reinforced boulder against the side of a garage.

'Dan?' Henry Douglas' voice was welcome over his commlink, through the static that suggested the receiver had taken a hit from the same rock that had hit his head as he'd launched himself out of the building fractions of a second ahead of the ceiling. 'Status?'

'East side, I've got them pinned down between two storage buildings. I hit the young one in the leg. They're probably calling for backup, Hank - so where's mine?'

'On my way. Keep your head down for once, will you? Doc won't like it if I bring you back with another concussion…'

'Too late for that,' Dantetsu muttered after he cut the connection. He touched the sticky blood already congealing at the back of his head in his long hair. Scalp wounds always bled freely, and this one was no exception. The blood had trailed down his scalp and continued down his neck. He leaned back against the pillar, using his shoulder to lean on, careful to let his head rest against the plascrete gently. Both temples were being pounded by 8lb lumb hammers. 'Fuck.'

A blaster shot dinged a piece of the plascrete off the pillar above his head and he had to jerk his head out of the way of the white-hot material as it almost bounced off his long nose. Douglas slid into cover at his side as a second shot went wide, leaned over his friend and let off a rapid round of covering fire of his own. 'Missed me!' he called out, right next to Dan's ear. He turned his attention to Ichimonji. 'You look like hammered shit…'

'That good?' Dan pushed Henry's attempts to investigate his injury out of the way. 'You fuss worse than my wife. Leave it, I've had worse. Where are the troops?'

'You sound like Harlock…' Henry grinned when Dantetsu flipped him the bird. 'Tied up with the evac and the rescue work. Rei and the boy are still buried, along with three of our guys. Technically we shouldn't even be here - we're slightly out of our jurisdiction. But Hannibal showed up a few minutes ago with several transports in tow - literally - he's used that ship of his as a bloody monster rig, using the tractor beam, if you can believe that? Anyway, since he sent out a request for aid, we can kind of cover our asses.' Another shot dinged above their heads. 'Do you mind?' he shouted. 'Quality exposition being delivered over here!'

'Oh, well… let me know when you're done,' came the sarcastic response. 'We'll wait…'

Douglas snapped a new energy cartridge into his pistol. 'I really, really hate that smug bastard… Harlock's gonna give us seven hells for letting him escape.'

'Us?'

'You know what I mean.' Douglas looked up into the grey sky, and swore fluently under his breath. 'They've got a shuttle coming in.'

'Relax - they'll have to come out of hiding to get to it - no way in hell it can land between us and them on all that rubble,' Dan told him. He ran a finger around the inside of the stiffened collar of his armoured jacket. 'Bloody things still chafe… what was wrong with the old design?'

'The new helmets don't fit them,' Douglas replied with a grin. 'Not that you'd know… trying to get you to wear one is a waste of time.'

Dan snorted. 'Sayeth the other idiot in the fleet who can't stand to hide his flowing locks… I hate the damned things. Far too claustrophobic since they narrowed the eyeshield.' He placed a hand on his friend's shoulder. 'Help me up.'

'I should leave you here; I'll take any bet you can't see straight.' But he let Dantetsu lean on him - no mean feat since the two were pretty close in height and weight. 'You need to lose a few pounds,' Douglas quipped as Dantetsu straightened and leaned back against the pillar. 'This is getting tougher.'

'Fuck you. At least my flightsuit still fastens up. And you're just getting old.'

Henry Douglas, two months younger than Dan and half a stone lighter, didn't even bother to dignify that one with a reply more involved than a smirk. 'They must have a ship hidden in the radar shadow of one of the moons,' he muttered. 'We could just let the Prometheus' gun crews have a bit of target practice…'

'Jurisdiction,' Dan chided him gently. 'Humanitarian aid is one thing. We open fire, it's hell on the paperwork. But hey - go ahead, Hank. And since it's your idea…'

'Your ship.' Douglas pointed out with a grin, his blue eyes twinkling with quiet humour. 'I only tagged along because the Epimetheus is still in dry dock after that last fuck up. Oh look, they've realised they can't land. Don't you just love the "what the fuck to do we do now" hover?'

'I love it even more when the pillocks lurking behind that wall realise they've got to walk right into our line of fire when they make a break for the car park their chauffeur's heading for near those gates…' Dan grinned at Douglas, the corners of his mouth curling up into his long moustaches.

'So do we raise a sweat and take 'em, or just sit and wait?'

'Rush 'em,' Dan replied, not needing to think about it. 'The younger one's damaged, and Lazarus hasn't already abandoned it; if he hasn't already, I don't think he will, and it'll slow him down.'

'Bugger all cover,' Douglas remarked blandly. 'Crappy surface. Soooo many trip hazards…'

'Then take it up with Health and Safety,' Dan quipped at him. 'And quit bitching to me about it.' He risked a quick look around the pillar. 'Probably discussing what we're up to…' he mused. 'You want to take the left or the right this time?'

'You take the right - cut 'em off - you'll be faster than I will. I'll flush them to you.'

'On three?' Douglas grinned at his friend.

'Depends - can you count that high, flyboy?' They shared a grin, then broke and ran from behind the cover of the plascrete column.

'Colonel fucking Ichimonji fucking Dantetsu…' Lazarus snarled as he snapped off another shot, that dinged above where the colonel was crouching. 'I never liked him. My father couldn't stand that side of the family - some big rift with his uncle - Ichimonji's father - years ago. Obstructive bastard - never knew his bloody place… the SDF was supposed to be under the aegis of Gaia Fleet Command but you'd never know it the way he operated. I almost had Harlock - the real one - years ago, but he forced my people to jump through hoops to operate in that sector, by which time…'

'Could we please focus?' Pryder looked down to where his hands were pressed against his side, still bleeding pale pink blood through his fingers. 'The shuttle can't land. You're going to have to make a run for it.'

Lazarus looked down at him, almost apologetically. 'Sorry. Do you need me to try and seal that?'

Pryder shook his head. 'It's slowing, and that would take too long. You'd better go - I can cover you.'

'Not happening.' Lazarus knelt at his side. 'You're an annoying prick…'

'Hah!'

'...but you're one of the few people who's stayed by me because they wanted to, since…'

Pryder lifted a blood-stained hand and placed it on his arm' 'Stop… once I stop blushing, I'll start to think you care,' he said with a faint smile. 'Go. I got the data 'vised to the ship. No sense in both of us being caught or killed. Not that I'm looking forward to fending off that pair - have you seen the size of them?'

Lazarus snorted. 'You should have seen Harlock… I'd have gotten a crick in my neck even out of a hover chair trying to stare that bastard down.' He placed an arm around Pryder's waist and half pulled, half dragged him to his feet, ignoring his hiss of pain. 'I've already lost one person I cared about. I won't lose another. We both go.'

'Laz…'

'Set your internals to ignore the pain and use your energy reserves to boost speed. You'll crash hard when we reach the shuttle, but I can get you reset from there.'

'Reset…' Pryder murmured as he allowed Lazarus to help him to his feet and support him. 'Guess we don't merit healing anymore…'

'Complain about the functional immortality once we're off this rock,' Lazarus told him. 'Fucking Yama…' he muttered, almost spitting the words out. 'Every time that little prick tries to play hero, someone gets hurt. I wouldn't have given that blubbering screw-up command of a garbage hauler, but Harlock in his infinite wisdom thought it was a great idea to give him the single most powerful, indestructible battleship ever created and turn him loose without any oversight whatsoever? I should have just shot the lanky bastard and claimed he was trying to resist arrest…'

'Oh… I dunno… could have been worse,' Pryder muttered as he struggled to stand, all of his diagnostics complaining and flashing into the red on his HUD in front of his left retina before he turned it off. 'He could have given it to you...'

'Huh?' Lazarus, distracted by the hint of movement across the quad, where Douglas and Ichimonji were sheltering, barely spared him a glance.

'Nothing.' He called on his power reserves, already getting dangerously low, and straightened as his body responded. 'I'm good, so long as we're quick.'

Lazarus did spare a glance then, and swore under his breath. Pryder's face was almost grey in the dismal light, his light sandy hair plastered to his skull by the rain and looking almost black, making the contrast even more stark. 'I'll draw their fire - be ready to run like fuck.' With that he shot a blast into the air and ran from the scant cover they'd been using, straight towards the enemy position.

'Lazarus!' Pryder's frantic call was lost in the exchange of blaster fire. 'Runs in the entire fucking family…' he muttered angrily. Ignoring the red sensors flashing in front of his eye, he hefted his own pistol and charged out after Lazarus just as a loud rumbling noise split the air. His charge, he reflected a couple of seconds later, would have been a hell of a lot more heroic if he hadn't crashed to the ground, a blaster bolt whizzing over his head almost giving him a second parting, thanks to the earth suddenly picking that moment to heave and buck under his feet and send him sprawling.

Blaze was on his feet and running for the toiling SDF techs as soon as he heard the rumbling noise like a freighter moving through the atmosphere. He felt the earth start to shake even as he shouted to the techs, who were pulling a young ensign out of the rubble, her left leg bloodied and at an awkward angle. A dim red glow exposed by the engineers brightened as he hit the ground, cries of shock and pain all around, and Emeraldas somewhere close behind him calling his name.

The rumbling and the tremors dissipated quickly, and he lifted his head and coughed as he inhaled a large quantity of dust, a lot of which also seemed to be covering him. He sat up and looked around, seeing men and women on the ground, some unmoving, but a few getting unsteadily to their feet. The medtechs with the young ensign were next to their charge, looking groggy. 'Em?' he called out.

'Here.' She was scrambling over rubble to get to his side, but he waved her off. 'Check on the wounded, I'm fine. I'm going to look for dad…'

He left her calling out orders in her imperious manner, and scrambled over to where he'd seen the engineers working. Two were clambering to their feet, looking dusty and dazed. The senior of the two, his dark features almost beige from the dust, coughed and leaned on his colleague. 'Did you reach…?'

The engineer shook his head. 'Just got to the first three, and only pulled one out before it hit. They're under a forcefield I think, but it's getting weaker. They might still be under there, but the tunnel we made collapsed.'

'Get me a scan,' Blaze ordered as calmly as he could. 'I'll give you a hand.' For a moment he thought the SDF man would give him a hard time about taking orders from a civilian, but in the end he nodded, and limped back to where his equipment lay, the rugged equipment thankfully too tough to have taken much damage.

'Good job we make these to withstand almost anything,' the engineer said eventually, as Blaze helped his companion to sit down. 'We've still got lifesigns, but I've only got one clear, and one that's kind of a bit faint and off-kilter - I'm guessing that's the synth? It's under the strongest signal.' A pause. 'That shield's collapsing fast, but I think the quake opened up another hole over there…'

Blaze looked in the direction indicated by a bloodied finger, and saw the faint red glow pulsing erratically. 'Got it. Find me a medtech and a sapper or two who aren't bleeding too much.'

'Blaze? Blaze?' the insistent voice in his earpiece cut through in a hiss of static. 'Everyone okay back there? I'm on my way back…'

'Harlock? We've taken a few bumps and got some injuries among the SDF team. Dad's still in the rubble, under some kind of force field. It's failing, so I'm going in.'

'Blaze… wait for me. I've got more exp…'

'No time, Yama, even if you run back. Catch you later.' He killed the connection and peered into the dim light coming from under the rubble. 'Looks tight in there,' he murmured. Emeraldas, ghosting up to his side, knelt down carefully to take a closer look. An engineer - the big dusty guy - cleared his throat.

'Only that forcefield keeping it open, and it's too small for any of my guys.'

'I should be able to wriggle through…' Emeraldas reached out to touch the leading edge of the forcefield.

'Miss - I can't let you do that. Too dangerous.' The sapper was apologetic but firm.

'With respect, sergeant, I don't take orders from you. That's my uncle in there. And I think whatever's generating the forcefield will cover me.'

Blaze hauled her to her feet and practically frogmarched her out of harm's way. No easy task even for him, since she was five foot ten and no pushover. 'No way, Em. You might not take orders from anyone here, but I kind of love you to bits, and dad would kill me if anything happened to you.'

She shrugged off his restraining hand and glared at him, almost nose to nose. 'Duly noted, now get the fuck out of my way and let me get him out. You know I can do it.'

'Drag a six-foot guy out of a narrow, unstable tunnel?' The sapper spat out a gobbet of dusty phlegm. 'No offense, miss, but even one of my men would struggle under those conditions, and you're… well… you're…'

'A woman?' she finished for him. 'I'm Lar Metallian, sergeant. For over five hundred years the Queens have been bred for superior strength, intelligence, agility and…' she paused and gave him a slightly feral smirk 'a few other enhancements. Blaze here isn't questioning my ability…'

'Merely your survival instincts,' her cousin finished for her. He stared glumly at the shifting motes of dust spiralling in the red glow of the forcefield. 'Fine. Token resistance given. But for the love of Lar, Em, please be careful. I love dad, but you're family as well, remember?'

'Trust me.' She handed him her sidearm, ducked under his outstretched arm and knelt briefly at the opening, before she crawled into the narrow hole, her red leather-clad bottom briefly in the air before she slithered out of sight.

It might have been his imagination, but it looked to Blaze as though the force field bulged slightly to envelop her as she slid out of his line of sight.

Hope had bloomed, momentarily, until the earthquake had brought the tunnel down around their ears again, held at bay only by the motherball's forcefield. But now there was daylight ahead of him, and he murmured something encouraging to the little boy still sheltered under him. When the daylight was abruptly occluded, he swore under his breath.

'Uncle Rei? Is that any kind of language to use in front of small children?'

'Emeraldas?'

'Yep. I'm trying to reach you - can you put a hand out or something? You're not far from the opening, but I need to pull you out…'

'Wait.' he advised her firmly. 'Zephyr?' He felt the boy wriggle slightly. 'Can your motherball give me a bit of room so I can lift myself up for you to wriggle free?'

'She can,' Zephyr replied in a sad voice. 'But I can't just leave her…'

'She's doing her best to save us, kiddo, and we'll do our best to get her out as well, but she'll want you safe.' The field pulsed slightly and he felt the tingling sensation of the forcefield lessen as it expanded slightly. 'Okay. Em? Grab the boy first. Zephyr, out you go, nice and slow…'

It was a tighter fit than he'd have liked, but as soon as the boy had his arms free, Emeraldas didn't waste any time pulling him free. With a sigh of relief, Zero lowered himself back to the ground. A few minutes later his niece's strong fingers closed around his outstretched arm, and with some wriggling and crawling to help her, he was pulled slowly but surely out into the grey light, bleeding from several cuts and grazes but safe and sound with his son wrapping a blanket around his shoulders and Zephyr clinging to him as tough his life depended on it.

With the hole now wider, one of the sappers was already diving back down the hole to try and reach the SDF team. Working quickly if incurring the wrath of the med techs for their technique, both SDF members were soon pulled free. Not a moment too soon, as the light from the forcefield began to dim rapidly. Zephyr tried to lunge out of Zero's restraining arms. 'Mother!'

Blaze reacted faster than Emeraldas, beating her to the collapsing rubble by a second, reaching in and rolling the ball towards him. Emeraldas hauled him out by his ankles just as the forcefield collapsed, and the tunnel with it. Coughing and spluttering he rolled out of the way clutching the now dormant ball to his chest. 'Got it!'

Zephyr, released from Zero's protective hold, ran to him and took it from him, clutching it to his own small bare chest and crying. A little awkwardly at first, and then with rather more feeling, Blaze placed an arm around the little boy and pulled him into a hug and gave his father a helpless look, but since Zero's glasses had been another casualty of the blast, it went unnoticed. Zephyr's quiet sobs however didn't, and Zero gently blocked the fluttering medtech hovering over him and made his way carefully over to his family.

'Can you fix her?' Zephyr held out the now-dark motherball towards Zero, no longer the cocky street urchin, just a small, battered and bruised little boy. Zero placed an arm around his thin shoulders.

'We've got people who can try. I promise you that. She sacrificed herself to save both of us, and they tell me the SDF guys they pulled out will make it as well, thanks to her holding the forcefield over all of us. She didn't have to do that. It was bravely done.'

Zephyr looked up into his eyes - this close, Zero could see reasonably clearly. Tears still threatened to fall, but with his free hand he brushed at them angrily and just nodded his acceptance.

'Looks like mom's gonna have to make room for another one,' Blaze said quietly to Emeraldas, with a mock sigh. 'Bloody good job our place is bigger than it looks…' He looked around. 'I was about to ask where Harlock had gotten to, but I see he's been collecting strays as well…'

'Let me guess,' Zero drawled as he stood up, Zephyr clinging to his neck, the motherball cradled against his chest. 'Two young girls, one of them from Gamilas, and a baby?'

Emeraldas stared in the direction Blaze was waving his hand in and sighed. 'Partly right. Six girls and two boys, all younger than me, two with babes in arms and three children smaller than this one.'

'Guess there were more in that squat than we thought,' Zero murmured. He smiled as Harlock approached at the head of his group of refugees and handed them over to the bustling SDF medtechs. In the distance he could just make out the sounds of more shuttles coming in fast and low, heading for the fields not far out of the town, as the Thieves' transports arrived.

'Can't save them all,' Harlock replied bleakly, as he took in the scene. The sappers were carrying out the last of the bodies from under the rubble that had almost become Zero's tomb. 'But I figured I could talk a couple of them into coming along…' He looked around with a frown. 'Where the hell are those two walking mountains? Did they get Lazarus and his sidekick?'

'Captain Harlock?' one of the SDF aides had lifted his head from his scanner briefly on hearing the question. 'They're on the other side of the compound still. Haven't heard from them since the Earthquake hit. We were just about to…'

Harlock was already off at a run, Blaze only a second behind him. At Zero's long suffering and frustrated sigh, Emeraldas just smirked. 'Told you you should just suck it up and get the surgery. Or contacts…'

'Emeraldas?'

'Yes, uncle?'

'Nobody likes a smart-arse.'

Being thrown around by earthquakes was one thing, Lazarus thought as he picked himself off the ground. Being the recipient of a high tackle from six foot four of solid muscle and bone wrapped in an SPG armoured uniform was just adding insult to injury. And the bastard had a right cross that rang even his solid-state nano-core storage…

However, like his detested younger brother, Ichimonji was something of a straight arrow, and seemed to labour under the misapprehension that combat had rules. Something that a solid kick to the balls and a rabbit punch to the kidneys soon put paid to. Lazarus stumbled to his feet and added a kick to the felled colonel's midsection for good measure. With any luck the bastard would be pissing blood for a week… He would have added a kick to the head just for pure spite, but a blaster bolt sszapping over his head reminded him that in the SDF, walking tree trunks came in pairs… He ducked and returned fire, then cursed as he saw Pryder on the ground, right in the path of the blond behemoth striding towards him. 'Shit.' He leaned down and stuck his pistol in Ichimonji's ear. 'Colonel Douglas?' he called out. 'You might want to drop your weapon, if you don't want to see what passes for brains in your friend's head decorate the paving.'

'I could say the same,' Douglas called back, aiming at the prone Pryder. 'Bit of a standoff.'

Lazarus shrugged. 'Go ahead. Plenty more where that came from. But Ichimonji won't be far behind if you do. Your call, Douglas.'

His mouth quirked into a smug smirk when Douglas sighed, laid down his pistol and stepped away from Pryder with his hands behind his head as though lacing his fingers. He sighed in his own turn. 'Douglas - over your head please, palms upwards, fingers laced - do you think I was born yesterday?' Those icy blue eyes gave him a venomous glare, but he ignored it. 'Heroes… you're so predictable,' he sneered. 'Pryder? Are you planning on lying there all day?'

Pryder groaned and struggled to his feet. He did at least have the presence of mind to pick up Douglas' weapon and keep it pointed at the blond hulk whilst he backed towards Lazarus, stumbling slightly on the uneven ground.

'The moment you two turn your backs we'll be after you,' Douglas shouted. 'Just how far do you think you'll get?'

Lazarus smirked again. 'Pretty damn far, actually,' he called back. 'It's a tough call - saving your friend, or catching a couple of bad guys, isn't it? But I'm betting you're one of the good guys, so…' and slowly, deliberately, he drew a bead and shot Ichimonji in the upper leg. 'Now run like fuck!' he ordered Pryder, and set off at a blistering pace. Behind him, he could hear Douglas swearing like a trooper and calling for a medic in between screaming his friend's name. 'You have to love a sweet bromance,' he told Pryder as they ran. 'Reliable as fuck in keeping annoyances like those two off your back.'

'Did you hit anything vital?' Pryder asked.

'Who cares?'

'Point.'

They ran, Pryder obviously running on fumes, so that by the time the shuttle came into view, hovering about a foot off the ground, Lazarus had to lift him and practically throw him through the airlock. He was seconds away from swinging a leg over into the machine himself, when a blaster bolt hit the beading to his left, almost causing him to lose his balance. A mechanical arm grabbed his and hauled him on board, and he just had time to turn and see his brother - and one of the young turks from Metabloody who'd helped capture him - firing impotently at the shuttle. He raised a hand in mock salute as the shuttle leaped for the sky. 'Nice try,' he called out. 'Better luck next time!' The door closed and he sat down hard on the deck, and placed his head between his knees. 'Fuck. That was too close…'

'Plenty more where that came from?' he heard Pryder remark dryly.

'Just tell yourself I was bluffing,' Lazarus replied wearily.

'Asshole.'

'Runs in the family. Now for fuck's sake switch off until we reach the ship. I wouldn't count on Zera Sender letting me reboot you if you lose this body.'

'Oh… I don't know…' Pryder smirked as he lay lengthwise across the seats against the far hull. 'We didn't get a working "motherball" or the kid, but we did get the data from the whole damn experiment.'

'And for that, maybe he won't scrap the pair of us,' Lazarus replied dryly. 'You know… I'm starting to think this was a bad deal.'

Pryder barely had the strength to lever himself up until he could stare at his friend. 'Well, it's about time. Why don't we just take what we have and set up…'

Lazarus shook his head slowly, a spectacularly calculating smile spreading over his face. 'Not so fast. Zera Sender still has something I want.' He stood up, albeit a little shakily and made his way towards the cockpit. 'Rendezvous with the ship,' he told the dialhead behind the controls. 'Have them prepare a jump to Mars.'

'Are you mental?' Pryder almost yelped out the question. 'I thought…'

'He has something of mine, and I plan to take it back,' Lazarus said quietly, a gleam in his single grey-violet eye. 'After that, I'm sick and tired of being that AI's lapdog.'

Pryder fell back onto the seats with a groan. 'You are crazy… and you're going to get us both killed, you know that?'

'Yes, yes,' Lazarus waved him off. He smiled coldly. 'But not today, Pryder. Not today.'

He sat down in the empty co-pilot's seat and leaned back against the headrest, closing his eye.

'I cannot believe you two let him get away!' Harlock, normally one of the most even tempered of men, paced up and down in front of the stretcher the SDF med techs had loaded Ichimonji onto and that Henry Douglas was hovering next to like a hen over her chick. 'We almost had him, and you just let him steamroller over the pair of you?'

'You try getting up after taking a kick to the balls that almost replaced your tonsils,' Ichimonji replied hoarsely from his stretcher. 'The bastard blindsided me. Then shot me in the fucking leg...'

''Did you never listen when I told you he was a devious, treacherous, backstabbing little shit who doesn't play by the rules? I mean, my mouth was flapping, sound was coming out…' Harlock turned his back on them and folded his arms. 'Amateur hour… I should have gone after him myself, but I thought: nooo, they're professionals… they'll be able to handle it. One job. You had one fucking job…' Hank Douglas opened his mouth, caught sight of the look in Harlock's eyes, and shut it again with a snap, and a sideways look at his old friend. Who shrugged painfully and rolled his eyes. 'Brothers…' he mouthed.

Blaze risked approaching the somewhat cranky pilot with the rest of the bad news. 'With the increasing traffic coming to the aid of the planet's population, the ship they were on managed to evade both the Prometheus and the Futatsuboshi. Hannibal gave chase but the bastards went to IN-SKIP before he could get a weapons lock. And he says if they're going to Mars, you can go get him yourself.'

Harlock sighed, and ran a hand through his dusty, tangled hair, pulling a face when his fingers got stuck in a knot. 'Tempting.' He watched idly as Ichimonji was stretchered onto a waiting transport. 'Bugger. Maybe I shouldn't have been so hard on him…'

'Nah. He's a big boy, he can take it. Truth is those two cocky jokers did take their eye off the ball. Which is why I suspect neither of them put up a fight with you.' he draped an arm around Harlock's shoulders. 'C'mon. Dad's going up in the next transport, and there's not much more we can do down here. That little boy you rescued is in a bad way, so dad wants to run him back to Deathshadow Island, if that's okay with you?'

'He has to ask?' Harlock replied wearily. 'Sure. He's right, we've got better facilities there for handling exotic matter. Ask Marin to send a message to the Arcadia - have them meet us there. I'll need the brains trust - Yattaran, Mimay, Doc, Maji, Tochiro… And that mech doctor of yours will come in handy.' He looked around at the ruined buildings, the grey skies, still drizzling miserably onto the handful of people they'd so far been able to convince to abandon their doomed world. 'You know, that device… Boreas… it - she - sacrificed herself to save Zephyr, and Zero, and to give us a fighting chance to get people off this planet. I'm not sure that's something we can ever repay.'

'If anyone can get her working again, your people can,' Blaze said quietly. 'If not… well, her little boy has a chance, right?'

'Right,' Harlock replied absently. When Blaze waited him out, he finally added, 'Boreas was created as a copy of a human, cruelly abused, dismantled, turned into something akin to one of Promethium's machine parts, but had more humanity in her actions than my brother displayed even when he was still sodding human. Granted a second chance, he's still an asshole. But Zephyr and Boreas…' he looked over to where the boy - still cradling the inert ball in his arms, dwarfed by Harlock's oversized jacket. 'We've got a galaxy full of people desperate to give up their humanity for the illusion of eternity, yet…'

'Androids who'd give up eternity to protect those they love…?' Blaze shifted his arm so that he could give Harlock a gentle push in the small of his back. 'Beats me. I'm just a rich kid with too much time on his hands and you're a pirate - what do we know? C'mon, hotshot. You really need a shower and a shave. I'll buy you a coffee…'

'Since when did Mal start charging for his coffee?' He allowed Blaze to chivvy him along until they reached the spot where Zero was standing next to Zephyr. 'Coming?' he asked with studied nonchalance. Zephyr looked up at him miserably.

'Where?'

'Home,' Zero said softly, offering the boy a hand. 'That is, if that's what you want?'

Zephyr looked at the ball in his arms as though waiting for her guidance. Hugging it close with one arm, he held out the other for Zero to take, and the three men and the boy walked gingerly across the rubble to where the Futatsoboshi's shuttle waited.

Epilogue - 6 weeks later.

Outside the door of a ramshackle little shop that advertised itself above the door in faded letters as "Sanshoku Ramen", a tall woman brushed her long auburn hair out of her face and squinted against the fading light of Tabito's unenthusiastic sun. Several children ran past laughing and shouting, chasing a football, and she smiled at the sight. 'Daisuke! Rei!' she called out. 'Dinner!'

'Coming mom!' Two boys broke away from the pack and hurtled back towards her, decelerating at an impressive rate. The eldest looked to be about eight, dark haired and blue eyed, the younger had her colouring and was about six. 'Hands!' she called out as they charged past her barely stopping for quick hugs. She smiled, about to follow them in, when a figure in tan coveralls leaning against a nearby lamp-post pushed himself upright and sauntered over.

'I hope you made plenty - with Blaze and Marin back as well, that's a lot of healthy appetites…'

In answer she flicked the teatowel she held in her hand at him, which he dodged with a grin. 'Greedy. You'll get your share. The babies and Kanna are in bed, if you want to just put your head round the door?'

Zero dropped a kiss on her forehead, hardly needing to stoop as she was almost the same height. 'I hope I'll get more than that later…' he murmured. She laughed.

'Really? Dinner made by a princess of Lar Metal not enough for you?' she teased. In reply, he kissed her soundly, ignoring her muffled squeaks regarding onlookers - most of whom he knew from long experience would simply cheer him on. When they came up for air he held her almost casually, one arm around her waist as she leaned back against him, a brief pause before all hell broke loose inside. 'He's fitting in surprisingly well,' Selen said eventually. 'I wasn't too sure he'd fit in, never having been around other children…'

'Round here one more traumatised little boy with social issues isn't uncommon,' Zero replied sadly, watching the children as they played further down the street, in the pool of light cast by the solitary, flickering street lamp at the end of the small dirt road. 'But thank you, for trusting me. For trusting him. I know it's not easy…'

She turned so that she could look at him, and raised a hand to his cheek. 'They tried to create a weapon, a tool, and made it a little boy who couldn't grow up. It's not about trust. It's about what's right, and second chances. It's what you, and I… Harlock and Kei… it's why we made this place a haven.' She sent a brief look back over her shoulder to where her eldest sons were shepherding their younger brother and their new adopted brother into their chairs and trying to make them sit still, with all the success of an attempt to herd cats. 'What did Mimay and Tochiro say about his body? You said there was still some work…?'

'They've got the bugs out, and switched the growth programme back on,' Zero told her quietly, 'No more zapping lightning for a while, though. Without the motherball acting as a buffer there's no way his cells can handle that kind of power until he grows up.'

'About that…' she said in her soft voice.

'Boreas was badly damaged, but Harlock says Tochiro's got some ideas on that front. Whether or not anything of her core personality survived or not, they won't know for a while. Messing around with zero point energy like that… even with Nibelung assistance they were playing god in the dark, those scientists. But Mimay's confident they can adjust the system to use dark matter. It'll just be a long slow process; they daren't rush it, not given the potential for disaster in manipulating either flavour of primal energy…' He turned then himself, to watch the chaos unfolding in the dining area, and smiled when Rei's eyes met his, before the boy went back to arguing with Blaze over a rice ball, which he then handed to Daisuke.

'Zephyr's a bit too noticeable as a name,' Zero had said, sitting beside the bed where the little boy lay, covered in bandages with Harlock's acerbic medic hovering nearby, tugging on her ponytail with one hand with a large glass of whiskey in the other. 'But I guess we could make it work if that's what you want…?'

'It's just a code name,' Zephyr had replied. 'But I kinda like being a Zero…'

'Tough, kiddo, I'm using it.'

'What about "Rei"?' Luna had asked, in between swigs. 'Means the same thing, and you hardly use it. If you're gonna pass this bean off as one of yours it'd fit…'

Zero's smile widened as he watched. 'Could be an interesting few years,' he said lightly, as he followed Selen into the shop and closed the door behind them.

Author's note:

Very loosely inspired by both the 1975 manga "Diver Zero", and the appearances of Zero in "Arei no Kagami" and the recently finished Dimensional Voyage manga, the latter of which confirmed finally that the two androids called Zero with a major chip on their shoulder re: the despicable species known as "humans", are, in fact, the same character, and that the little android boy of the earlier manga seems to be capable of growing up into a rather handsome young man!

Rei (Zephyr) does show up again briefly in "Corpse Flower" - sans (until he grows up a bit more…) the ability to shoot lightning bolts from his hands. And he will have a part to play in the endgame, "Et in Arcadia, Ego". When I finally finish the research needed to write it…!

Dantetsu and Henry courtesy of Danguard Ace (well, the animated version!)

Pryder lifted shamelessly from Galaxy Express 999 where he's pretty much just another misguided or unlucky encounter of the week. I need a musician for a planned tale further down the line!