The laughter from the watching crew was not mocking, as once again the slight figure of the Arcadia's newest recruit hit the mat and rolled. He was back onto his feet before his opponent could capitalise on the throw, grinning smugly.

'Wipe that smirk off his face, captain!' Ali called out gleefully, cackling as the youth flipped him a middle finger before charging at his opponent - slightly taller, with a longer reach and years of experience behind him. Despite the younger man's energy and speed, the fight didn't last long, and Daiba slapped his free hand against the mat to signal his surrender after a feint left him exposed and quickly swept to the floor by a long leg, and then sat on with his other arm neatly twisted into what felt like a pretzel.

Laughing, Harlock let him loose and stood up, offering a helping hand which was eyed warily. 'You planning on pulling me over again?' Daiba asked, mindful of a trick. Fighting fair wasn't something the pirates were big on, but then, when you had the price of a year's worth of food or energy capsules on your head, fair was un-affordable... but he took the offered aid and got to his feet, breathing harder, he noticed, than the older man. Something that would have to change, he noted glumly to himself.

'You're improving. A week ago I'd have had you five moves ago.' Harlock grabbed a towel from a hovering crewman and wiped his face, pushing sweat dampened hair out of his good eye as he did. 'You still leave yourself open though. Too quick to rush in when you see what might be an opening. A skilled opponent would have you for breakfast in a real fight.'

'Maybe I should be fighting one then?' he quipped, grabbing a towel of his own from a pile on a nearby bench, and wiping down briskly. His sodden t-shirt lay on the floor and he picked it up, grimacing at the feel of cold sweat soaking the fabric.

'You really are a glutton for punishment,' Harlock told him, but the comment was friendly. 'Leave the shirt, Erik's on clean up. Kei's always on at me to leave the men something to do.' He picked up his eyepatch from the pile of his own clothing. 'That was a nasty little trick by the way, trying to blindside me. A word of caution though - any man who lives a long time after losing an eye won't fall for that easily. Always assume your enemy can see every feint coming and will have a counter. Every man I've ever fought who was in a similar position used their blind spot as a sucker. Yes, we're at a disadvantage, but we're also devious, sneaky bastards.'

'I gathered,' Daiba replied dryly as they headed for the showers. 'I thought you were trying to turn me into a eunuch at one point.' He still felt a little tender in the groin from a particularly nasty knee to the nuts... 'On which note, sorry about the hair pulling...'

'Keep telling him to cut his Earth-damned girly hair,' Ali sniggered as he strode up to them, a towel casually draped over muscular shoulders. 'His own stupid fault if you yanked a couple of handfuls out. Mind you, smacking his head into the mat like that was impressive...'

'Yes, thank you, Ali. The support of my faithful, hard working and ever loving crew is always appreciated,' Harlock drawled sarcastically.

'Any time, cap'n.' Ali waved a hand back over his shoulder at them as he sauntered past.

'Is it me, or does it just sail right over his head?' Daiba asked. He was rewarded with a brief smile. Since Tokarga they seemed to have begun to settle into a new orbit. As if Harlock had finally stopped looking for the little boy he'd watched grow up, and was now accepting the young man he'd become. For his own part, he felt more at ease than he had in over four years. He wasn't whole... but he had found a firm place to stand, at least for now.

Harlock sighed. 'Oh, he does it deliberately. Sometimes I think he still sees that snot nosed little punk Kei dragged aboard like a wet kipper. I think he needs to; I don't think any of the original crew want a repeat performance of what happened with their old captain. It's their way of keeping me safe.'

'Huh. Keep telling yourself that!' Daiba ducked the business end of a wet towel aimed at his head as they entered the showers. He might have made a further quip, but was distracted by girlish laughter, and blushed to the roots of his regrowing hair as he realised the changing rooms were occupied by Meg, Niobe and Anita, all in the process of drying off. Whilst the ample curves of the Arcadia's cook and quartermaster were just disturbing in a motherly way, the two young women were far harder to ignore, and it made his eyeballs ache attempting to keep them focused anywhere but on two very pretty girls. Both of whom were obviously aware of his discomfort and took no great haste in dressing.

Harlock took pity on him. 'Put those back in the holsters, girls; what did Kei teach you about leaving weapons out if you don't intend to use them?'

'Sorry captain.' Niobe at least was quick enough to cover up, though her cheerful grin made it clear she was enjoying making Daiba sweat. Meg as ever was less obliging.

'It's just so cute how he blushes...' she gushed slyly. 'I just can't help it.'

'Try.' Was the laconic response from their guardian and captain. He gave Daiba a merciful shove through into the cubicles, but Daiba hung back slightly, just enough to hear Anita launching into a lecture. Under the circumstances, however, he ducked into a cubicle before stripping off. Nice. Now he needed a cold shower...

'Did you ever consider spanking as an option raising that one?' He asked as Harlock joined him in the next booth. The captain laughed.

'Tempting, but no. My own father was a little free with his fists, I didn't fancy continuing the trend. Kei usually does better at keeping the girls in line. Anita's as soft on them as I am - I think she wanted daughters herself. A battlefield injury pretty much put the option of any siblings for Zack out of the running, she told me once. Ignore them - it's harmless teasing' even if a little insensitive, and your reaction just makes them worse.'

'Harmless he says - you're not the one shivering his arse off under a cold shower...'

'I have children; trust me, I'm intimately acquainted with the lower temperature settings,' was the dry response.

Once dressed again, he passed Harlock his gunbelt as he waited on his captain to finish. 'How long until we get to this fortress of yours? It's been over a week, how far out is it?'

'About twelve hours.' Harlock took the belt and cinched it into place around his waist, over a dark grey jacket. He settled the pistol into place at his hip. 'The island has better analysis facilities for the data, which will lessen the load on Tochiro's systems. Most of the Arcadia's computational power is taken up with core systems. Which yes, does include Tochiro himself. I've also asked Kei to meet us there. Otherwise I risk breaking a promise, and I'd hate to do that.'

Daiba followed him out of the showers. 'Promise?'

Harlock smiled. 'One I wouldn't break for the world...'

Harlock headed for the central computer room after leaving Daiba to the tender mercies of his crew. He smiled to himself as he walked. At least the lad wouldn't be bored...he had a quick mind once he applied himself, and good reflexes. Whether he chose a combat or a technical post, he'd do well enough.

Ali, Yattaran and Mimay awaited him, along with the hologrammatic form of Tochiro - not strictly necessary, but his ghostly friend made a point of interacting with the crew more visibly as a courtesy.

He turned his attention to Ali first. 'Did you manage to get the data I asked for?'

Ali nodded, his frown even deeper than usual, if such a thing was possible. 'Had to call in a favour or three at the observatory, but yeah. I got it.' He grimaced. 'You ain't gonna like it.'

'Tochiro?'

The four - five if you counted the ghost- were enveloped in a 3-d representation of a star chart. Guided by Tochiro, it rotated around them until they were looking at a small galaxy.

'DDO 208 - "Draco" - a dwarf galaxy approximately .258 Million light-years distant from Earth, and as the name suggests, visible in the constellation of the same name. It's a satellite of the Milky Way, and according to the records quite high in Dark Matter. It's quite faint, mostly composed of old stars, mostly red giants.' Tochiro began quietly. 'This is a representation of the state of this galaxy from before the Homecoming War, from our own databanks.'

The display changed, showing a more detailed section of the galaxy; a binary system of a Red Giant with a smaller main sequence companion had six planets, mostly gas giants, but one Earth sized planet sat in what Harlock recognised as a sweet spot, and there were several habitable moons, looking at the data orbiting the visuals in the headache-inducing display. A nearby white dwarf appeared to have three small planets.

'From our records,' Mimay chimed in. 'Five nodes were clustered in this area - two in the binary system, one in the white dwarf and two here and here,' she pointed out the two areas, both in interstellar space but astronomically practically on top of each other.

'Still seems a bit close for comfort...' Ali commented dryly. 'Even allowing for imperfect expansion during the Big Bang, that has to be a bit of a coincidence... two would be astonishing, five is stretching probabilty...'

Yattaran snorted, the sound not unlike a pig in muck. 'Wise up, Rocky, shows you know nothing about maths - especially probability and random numbers. A cluster is as likely as a wide dispersion - more so in this star cluster, given the dark matter concentrations, which I'd guess slowed down the expansion rate. it's only humans who see patterns in random scatter.' He gave Mimay a wink. 'Unless your lot were as prone to write pretty pictures in the stars, kitten?'

She smiled at him and inclined her head gracefully, her long hair floating around her like another veil. Green fireflies drifted towards Tochiro's phantom image and twinkled through it. 'I suspect all sentient life seeks to make sense in the chaos around them, first mate. We too drew pictures in the night sky in our youth.'

'Whilst this is all very nice, could we move this along a little?' Harlock asked dryly from his perch on one of the rootlike appendages in front of the trunk of the central computer.

Tochiro sighed. 'You have no soul, sometimes, my friend,' the little man twitted him. Harlock smiled.

'For plants, yes. Not so much for large rocks and big flaming balls of gas. So can we please give the poor benighted botanist the Astronomy 101 version please? In case you forget, Kei handles the big scary numbers...'

Ali rolled his eyes at him. 'Remind me again why we let you be captain?'

'Because the rest of you were too damn lazy - or saw it as a poisoned chalice,' he shot back. Ali opened his mouth to object, but then shared a look with Yattaran and shrugged.

'Yeah, I guess he has us there...' he muttered with a grin.

'Anyway,' Tochiro continued smoothly; a non-existent hand pushed equally non-existent glassed back up his nose. 'If the peanut gallery will let me continue...' The display changed again, and now where three stars had been, there was only a void. 'No planets, no debris, no dust. Not even a radiation signature,' the voice of the Arcadia's soul told them. 'This was fifty years ago.'

'Is that possible?' Yattaran asked, prodding at the image as though it personally offended him.

'Wise up, fatso - shows you know nothing about the operation of Dimensional Oscillators,' Ali smirked. Yattaran flipped him the bird. 'Those things were built to remove hazards to astro-navigation, and there's a reason they had the word "dimension" in the description. The explosion is designed to tear a whole in space-time and drop the affected area - including all debris and energy - into another pocket dimension - at least, that's the theory - personally I hope to hell non of those other dimensions were occupied - we'd have some very pissed off aliens on our front door at some point if they were...'

'It's akin to a man-made singularity,' Tochiro added, with a nod to the burly geologist. 'There's nothing there to analyse, but my guess would be that one of the devices was triggered prematurely, and a chain-reaction set off the other four...'

'Dropping an entire section of space into another dimension...' Harlock finished for him. 'How come this went totally un-noticed by anyone?'

Yattaran dragged the toe of a boot along the floor, the resulting metallic screech setting everyone's nerves on edge.

'Please don't do that,' Tochiro asked him, a pained expression on his wide, pleasant face.

'Sorry. Eh. To be fair, it isn't as though any of us were on board at the time, apart from you two,' he motioned to the hologram and to Mimay. 'Captain never asked for any monitoring once the bombs were set, I figured he'd know if anything went tits up... I mean, if this blew up fifty years ago, then...' he trailed off, looking unhappy.

'...then even before we got to Earth, his plan was a bust. It was all for nothing.' Harlock's voice was soft, but bitter in tone, and he rose to his feet to stare at the void. 'His great plan never had a hope of succeeding, did it? All those deaths, all that pain, and it could have been - was - undone by a freak accident. How many more of those things have been set off before they could have been detonated?'

'Yeah... about that,' Ali ran a hand through his short hair, and scratched at one of his long sideburns. 'You remember we used one of 'em to knock out Loki's little project... these things don't go off by themselves as a rule. They are pretty tough to detonate without the codes. A chance strike by debris or malfunction that could set one off would be a million or more to one shot. Hell, it took three of us resident geniuses to jury-rig one to blow on command...'

Harlock nodded. 'I remember... I also recall I had to make a suicidally stupid jump from the upper atmosphere of Lar Metal to rescue you and Kei afterwards. ..' he grimaced. 'I still have nightmares about that little manoeuvre...' He walked over to a side terminal and keyed up the footage from his helmet camera. 'Leaving that aside, here's the real kicker from Tokarga.'

The display showed the walls of the control room inside the wreck, each of which was covered in a frieze which showed creatures totally unfamiliar to them. Gracile, bipedal figures identical to the female form in the capsule danced across the walls, mingled with four and six limbed creatures with no known equivalent, though some bore a resemblance to the centaurs - as Daiba had dubbed them.

On another wall, a projection of a planetary surface covered one entire panel; a single continent surrounded by ocean. 'Recognise this, people?' Harlock asked.

'The break up of Pangaea,' Ali said quietly. 'Early Cenozoic era, and around the time the Tethys Ocean began to close up.' He pointed to the map. 'Here, you can see Laurasia already starting to split, and the continents are starting to take on the form from our history books...'

'That's Earth?' Yattaran asked. He peered more closely. 'You sure? Don't look like any map I've ever seen...'

'Yeah, I'm sure,' Ali replied firmly. 'The projection is centred on what became Antarctica, which is one reason it looks weird to us - usually our maps were orientated either around Europe or Asia, depending on prevailing politics, that is. But any geologist knows the Terran progression of continental drift and the history of their discipline.' He looked at his captain and grinned. 'Same goes for any biologist or botanist, I'm thinking?'

Harlock nodded. 'I studied the progression of life on Earth, and its evolution. The effects of the super-continent breaking up on ecological systems...' he trailed off with an embarrassed cough and ran a hand through his hair. 'Oh, it's Earth all right. And that ship has been buried on this planet since the dinosaur killer hit sixty-five million years ago.'

'Which suggests they - whoever "they" are - left Earth to avoid it. Perhaps.' Tochiro added. 'Presumably going here...' the display now showed another panel, this time a familiar star system. 'The Draco galaxy - and here -' another shot - 'The star system that's now history. Allowing for stellar drift...'

Yattaran gave his captain a sharp look. 'How the hell did you spot that? Topographical distortion like that ain't usually your area...'

His captain feigned a hurt look. 'I'm wounded, first mate... I'm not just a pretty face, you know.' He smiled ruefully. 'It was nagging at me... the solar systems are pretty unique in that cluster, and I've seen a couple of similar frescoes from Professor Daiba's files from Niflheim. We'd already determined that Mimay's people were aware of these plant-like aliens in the distant past. Not in the forms we've seen, however, but that's an oddity for another day.'

'So did we - the captain - blow up their new home or something?' Ali asked. He sighed and shook his head. 'Oh man... those bloody oscillators keep coming back to haunt us, don't they?' He looked over to Harlock, who leaned against the central computer core's trunk, arms folded. 'Ever wonder if you should have just persuaded Kei to make a run for it and lived out your days on some quiet little backwater?'

'All the bloody time,' Harlock replied quietly, but with feeling. 'But it seems I have a conscience.'

Mimay laid a hand on his arm, and smiled at him. 'You have never been the kind of man who runs from responsibility, even for problems that were not of your making.'

'No,' he replied softly, 'although I'd dearly like some quality time on the mats with my predecessor.' He sighed. 'We've a lot of work ahead when we reach Deathshadow Island. Hopefully Tokarga's biosphere will answer a few more questions.' With a nod to his friends, he left the computer room. Tochiro faded out quietly, leaving just the two men and their Nibelung companion.

Yattaran let out a low whistle. 'Gotta say, he's takin' it well, under the circumstances.'

Ali shook his head and shared a long hard glance with the ethereal alien at his side. 'No, he ain't. If Harlock - the old one - were in this room right now he'd be having his head stuffed through one of those servers about now.' He jerked his head in the direction their captain had gone. 'I'd be a lot happier if he'd just cut loose and take a swing at something. I get nervous when he goes all quiet-like. And he's right - he shouldn't be having to pick up the crap Harlock left behind him.'

'He didn't say that,' Yattaran pointed out.

Ali snorted. 'You weren't listenin', first mate.' He rubbed at the scar on his forehead. 'Ah, fuck... he ain't the only one who'd like a piece of the old cap'n. Bastard knew damn well Yama wouldn't run out on us, or run from the load he left on his shoulders, didn't he?' He turned a sour gaze on Mimay, who didn't meet his eyes. 'He's one of the few good'uns that family ever turned out, if you ask me.' With that he turned on his heel and stomped out, leaving a shuffling Yattaran to take his own leave awkwardly.

Mimay sighed sadly, green fireflies drifting around her in a fluttering cloud. 'As much as we loved him, they have the truth of it,' she said out loud. The central computer's swirling red lights flared in answer. She laid a pale hand on the trunk. 'So much of this we could have prevented. We knew his nature. Perhaps if we had loved him less and guarded him more from himself...'

The rumble from the core held a sorrowful note. In reply, Mimay laid her head against the cool surface of the central trunk, and closed her eyes.

Ali caught up with Harlock half way to the captain's quarters, and fell inside beside him without an invitation. 'You know, it ain't too late for me to just knock you on the head, kidnap Kei and the kids and drop the whole kit and kaboodle off on some nice quiet backwater where you can settle down to raise kids and corn, or whatever takes yer fancy...'

They reached the heavy double doors of the captain's room, and Harlock gestured Ali to enter in front of him. The burly pirate made his way over to the desk in front of the picture window, poured a large measure from the bottle on the desktop, and downed half of it in one swallow.

'Make yourself at home,' Harlock told him dryly. Ali grinned, grabbed the bottle and flopped down into the chaise longue usually occupied by Mimay, albeit with considerably less grace.

'Don't mind if I do...' he quipped.

Harlock dropped into the chair behind the desk with a heavy sigh, and unzipped his jacket. 'Too late for that by a large margin,' he said eventually. He pulled off his gloves and dropped them to the desktop. 'Live out here long enough, and it gets under your skin. Live free long enough and you expand to the point where even if you wanted to, you can't stuff yourself back into the box marked "civilisation". Stare every day at a limitless horizon and you feel constricted by the way land meets sky almost in front of your nose.'

Ali snorted. 'Been practicing that speech much to explain to Kei why we're still sticking our necks on the block?'

Harlock leaned down to open a cupboard door, pulled out a bottle of some amber liquid with a faded label, and poured a generous measure. He raised the glass to his lip and swallowed slowly, savouring. 'Shows how little you know Kei. She's the one who told me that, four years ago.'

Ali gulped down the rest of his drink and poured another. Given the timing, he didn't need to ask what had occasioned that conversation. 'Lost a lot of good people that year. Old friends. Family... shit. The Homecoming War is still the gift that keeps on giving. Pity this one don't respond to a couple of antibiotic shots and a lecture on safe sex...'

The corner of Harlock's mouth twitched, before he allowed a genuine laugh to break loose. 'Trust you to find a way of describing a situation that leaves me not knowing whether to laugh or reach for a mental scrubbing brush. You're one of a kind...'

'I know,' Ali interrupted smugly. 'Charming, drop dead gorgeous, ace pilot, crack shot, and galaxy's greatest lover all wrapped up in one perfect package...'

'... and yet strangely no-one tells barroom tales about the legend of Space Pirate Captain Ali...' Harlock replied smoothly, with a wicked smile.

Ali swung his boot legs over the arm of the chaise longue and raised his glass to his friend and captain. 'You just don't frequent the right bars, Harlock,' he said with a wink. He met Harlock's eye with his own gaze, rather more soberly. 'Every piece of shit that comes back to haunt us seems to originate there, doesn't it? Which ain't, I suppose, really your dear departed ancestor's fault either. The war, that is - not the dives I get hammered in.' Another gulp. 'If you're right about these things - plant women, whatever - trying to keep humanity in check, might well be they got hoist by their own petard on this one. In which case I ain't weeping too hard, and for once, we might just want to cut the man a little slack.'

Harlock ran a hand through his hair, pushing it back out of his good eye, which it permanently threatened to obscure. 'Maybe. But he was careless. And even at the end it was all about him. His pain, his redemption. Sometimes I'm not sure he learned a damn thing.'

Ali shrugged. 'The road to hell is paved with good intentions, they say. He was a good man once. I guess, like you, he just cared too much. Nothing worse for turning cynical than a disillusioned romantic. And after a while it's hard to give a shit if you think you can just reset to a save point like a kid's video game, innit? Just start over if you screw up, who cares? We all felt the same - didn't matter if we killed a few hundred Gaia Fleet soldiers, they were just faceless mooks, no harm, no foul.' He stared into his drink. 'Except there was a foul, and there's a conga line of people lined up waitin' to tell me what they think of Mama Jones' little boy once I finally reach the end of the game. Probably led by Ma, now I come to think of it, telling all and sundry what a horrible disappointment I've been.'

Harlock snorted and handed him a fresh bottle. 'Were you listening in on a conversation I had with Daiba a few days ago?' He tossed over the corkscrew. Whilst Ali set about pulling the cork, he reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a cumbersome device, easily gripped by one hand by a much larger man - less so in Harlock's smaller one. Ali flinched.

'I really wish you could just chuck that in the nearest star...' he muttered. 'Though with - what is it now? Eight down? Maybe it wouldn't be so risky to destroy it...'

'I'd still prefer not to.' Harlock replaced the dimensional oscillator detonator and closed the drawer again, to the accompaniment of a relieved sigh from Ali. 'This recent revelation just makes it all the more important that we decommission the rest - or at least as many as we can.' He sighed. 'Shame we can't subcontract,' he added wistfully, raising a smile from the blond pirate.

Ali gave him a sideways stare. 'I'm so glad you're joking. I don't even want to think about those things in anyone else's hands.'

'You do remember they were originally the property of the government...' Harlock drawled.

Ali raised his glass. 'And you keep making my point for me...' they shared a wry smile.

The door opened to admit Mimay, closely followed by the rustling swoop of soft black wings. The bird perched on the end of the bed and settled down to preening its feathers, beak clacking as it nuzzled deep into the primaries. Mimay hesitated, seeing Ali lounging in her spot. Ali held out the bottle and swung his legs round to sit upright. 'Room for two, sweetheart,' he told her with a wink. Her tiny mouth curled into a sweet smile, and she click-clacked her way across the floor, and sat down, curling up against him. He caught a goblet tossed by Harlock and poured her a glass, draping an arm casually over her shoulder as she leaned back against him. Ali winked at Harlock. 'Aww... we need to get you a girlfriend!' He teased.

'I'm deliriously happy with the one I have, thank you,' he replied. 'And I'll be even happier in a couple of hours when we reach the Island.' He tugged off his patch and rubbed the useless eye. 'Were you planning on staying for dinner...?' He asked pointedly.

Ali's grin got even wider. 'Thought you'd never ask!'

Harlock sighed. 'That wasn't an invitation...' he grinned as Mimay elbowed Ali in the ribs for his effrontry and turned her innocent expression on the big pirate when he objected. 'Never mind, I guess I can use the company...'

Ali settled back with a shit-eating smile plastered over his face. 'See how easy that was?'

'Don't push your luck,' Harlock mock growled at him. He reached for the comms. 'I can still ask Anita to cook your steak all the way through...' he threatened, laughing at his companion's look of horror at the suggestion.

Oi, rookie - wanna take a look?'

Daiba paused in the act of heading for the lower bridge station he'd been assigned, and looked up to the skull-fronted gantry, where Yattaran leaned over, waving at him. 'Get yer ass up here kid! First sight of this baby is always a jaw-dropper!'

Daiba looked over to Ali, nominally his boss on this watch, and the grumpy pirate waved him off. He strolled to the gantry stairs and bounded up them two at a time, arriving behind the Captain's throne with his hands stuffed casually into his pockets. 'So what am I looking at?' He asked the back of Harlock's head, as he stood at the wheel, hands apart on the balusters and legs braced. 'Gotta ask - how does that thing work on a spaceship anyway?'

Yattaran turned and glared at him through his thick glasses. 'You know, if I got a hundred credits for every smart-ass teenager who asks that question...' he growled. Daiba just turned his best shit eating grin on him.

'I know. Zack dared me to ask.'

Yattaran turned back to his station muttering. All Daiba caught was '...ing wise ass punk...'

'Daiba.' The quiet rebuke in Harlock's voice was unmistakable, and he sauntered over to his cousin's side.

'Is that it?' He asked, staring at the main screen. It was filled with a large, rather ordinary oval asteroid. Then his brain caught up with his eyes and he turned his attention back to Harlock. 'Oi - Ali - I think we have an imposter!' He ran an appraising eye over the older man's form as he stood braced behind the wheel. Burgundy pants tucked into smart black knee boots with the tops neatly turned down. A cream sweater, long sleeves for once not rolled up to his elbows, and gloves to match the pants. The cream fall of a cravat under the high collar finished off the ensemble. 'Is that cashmere? Who are you and what did you do with the captain?' He asked with a smirk.

It earned him a long-suffering look from a hazel eye, briefly turned in his direction before returning to concentrate on the screen. 'Everyone's a critic...' he muttered. 'There are more important things to worry about than my wardrobe,' he added a trifle acidly.

From the lower deck Daiba heard Ali snort. 'Yeah, but not quite so much damn fun...' he called up, to fond laughter from the crew. 'That's his lucky sweater... never fails to get Kei's paws running all over him; She usually fights a losing battle to get him to look the part of a dashing space pirate.' He sniggered. 'Not so much when he's looking to get his leg over!'

'I'm going to treat that contempt with the remark it deserves, once I can think of something suitably pithy,' Harlock drawled.

From the laughter, Daiba gathered the teasing was in good part on all sides, and shook his head. He caught the quirky smile on Harlock's face and returned it with a brief grin of his own. 'So, this is Deathshadow Island? Where do we park?'

'Watch and learn...' Harlock told him. 'Yattaran - send the gate code.'

On the screen, Daiba watched as the surface of the asteroid split open, revealing an irised gate which opened slowly to reveal a deep tunnel in the interior, well lit along all surfaces. Slowly, the Arcadia advanced towards this, nosing gently into the revealed dock.

'Holy... this thing can hold the Arcadia?' He knew the ship to be over a kilometre long, and most docks would need to be well over that that to hold the ship. Factor in the depth needed so that an interior dock would be structurally sound...

'Five klicks in diameter,' Yattaran told him proudly. 'And she can hold another three capital ships in sub-docks.' Sure enough, he watched as they gently passed the comparatively tiny form of the Futatsuboshi. Deep bell-like clangs echoed through the bridge as the docking clamps grabbed the ship and locked into place. 'It's an old battle fortress for re-supply and repairs from before the Homecoming War. Several members of a consortium within the old Gaia Sanction High Council had commandeered it and had it converted into a luxury holiday home... the old habitat was converted into a little piece of paradise - artificial seaside resort, spa, restaurant, apartments... we liberated it before the Machine Wars, in a nice little fuck-you to a couple of Councillors who didn't deserve nice things. We've been putting it to much better use.'

'We had a lot of the interior space converted to hydroponics and other growing habitats,' Harlock said softly. He released the wheel and stepped back, grabbing his jacket from the captain's seat as he walked past. 'Several experimental agricultural projects have their home here as well. We've been trying to find ways to repair the damage done to planets like Mistral during the war, when they were laid waste by the Machinners.' He smiled sadly. 'It's not just a holiday resort for cut-throats, in case you were wondering.'

Daiba followed him down the stairs and towards the main airlock. 'I do have a higher opinion of you than that,' he replied. 'I guess this is part of what you meant when you said you were fairly independent supply-wise?'

A grunted acknowledgement.

'And a place where you can get a grip on some of the information we've gathered?'

Another non-committal barely verbal reply was his only acknowledgement as he trotted to keep up with Harlock's longer legs. 'So, about my allowance...'

This at least earned a world-weary sigh. 'Nice try, I am listening.'

'Just a little distracted, huh?'

That got him a backward glance over his left shoulder. 'I'm just realising that I have this to look forward to in ten years; in duplicate...'

Daiba clapped him on the shoulder. 'But in the meantime, they're still at the cute larval stage. You've got some grace before they turn into mouthy, cocky teenagers...'

The airlock was ahead, open, with a clear view over to where a gantry linked the Arcadia to the dockside, where a tall figure with long blonde hair stood surrounded by a small crowd of children. Daiba hung back as the small tidal wave of next generation pains in the ass ran onto the gantry, almost flattening their father. They were followed by Kei; walking slowly at first, but within a few steps she was running, fielded by Harlock with practiced ease as she practically leapt into reach of his arms, and he whirled her around gently, laughing.

Daiba jumped as Ali slapped him on the back hard enough to stagger him, but the irritated glare he turned on the other man went unremarked. 'Told ya,' Ali said smugly as the pair come up for air. 'Lucky sweater.' Sure enough, Kei's hands were roaming with abandon over her partner's back.

'I heard that,' Kei called out, laughing. 'Let go of him, Ali. He's family. Get Yattaran and Anita to organise the samples and then join the first rotation.'

Ali snapped her a salute. 'Yes sir ma'am sir!' He laughed as she stuck her tongue out at him from over Harlock's shoulder. He gave Daiba a little shove when the youth stood hesitantly. 'You heard her, git goin'!'

Daiba took an involuntary step forward, and had to brace himself as four pint-sized shapes launched themselves at him and swarmed en-masse, babbling away nineteen to the dozen and leading him off the ship and into the heart of the station, following their parents.

Ali leaned back against the airlock, arms folded, watching the little group with an indulgent smile, before pushing himself back upright with a sigh. 'Enjoy it while you can, kid... Things always end up going south around us faster than a pair of saggy coveralls.'

'Mister glass half empty, much?' Doc murmured next to him. He reached over and gave her ponytail a gentle tug.

'Just a feelin... got a nasty itch right between the shoulder blades.'

'For that, I have a powder...' Doc quipped. She linked her arm with his. 'Why don't we do what the nice bossy lady XO asked and get this shit out of my lab space and into the Island's facility, and then grab a drink or three, big guy?'

He grinned down at her. 'Sounds like a plan, Doc. Just one request?'

'Hmm?'

'Can you shut the damn cat out of your room this time? I still have the claw marks...'

She grinned back at him as the door slid shut behind them. 'Ali love... you still blaming the cat for those...?'