12.
Tabito turned out to be a pleasant surprise. For once, although terraforming hadn't quite managed to replicate old Earth, the planet did boast a mild climate and some areas of greenery, around the main town.
Only one continent had been colonised, before the corporation funding a mining operation realised that the mineral resources of the planet were not economical enough to be worth extracting on an industrial scale. The remaining population however made a nice enough living trading with nearby worlds on a smaller scale, and the result was a close-knit, friendly community largely self-sufficient. In comparison to most colony worlds this far out, it was a success story.
With a planetary population numbering in the tens of thousands at most, it wasn't a complete success. However this small population welcomed the Arcadia with open arms because of some long-ago help from Harlock that even Yattaran hadn't been there for, so for us it was a welcome paradise.
There was a flat, uncultivated plain just outside of town big enough to land the Arcadia, already populated by a smaller, black and white craft of unknown origin. This (apparently) was Selen's old warship, the Futatsuboshi, the name of which translated to 'two stars', which was so damn lame everyone just left it as was. The aforementioned stars were emblazoned on her sides, along with a crescent moon. Zero had informed me that the ship had been one of a small fleet - hence the numerical designation.
She was a neat little vessel, about a fifth our length, but crewed by about three times the number of hands as the Arcadia. Sort of whale-shaped was my impression, her paint job being similar to the colouring of the long vanished orca of Earth's oceans. She was slightly humped in the middle section, flattening off at both bow and stern. For her size she was well armed: eight optical cannon bristled from her sides.
I couldn't resist snarking as we strolled past it on our way into town. 'It's adorable. What does it want to be when it grows up?'
Selen just ignored me, but Zero's stare from behind those dark glasses promised retribution when we sparred next.
Kei slapped my arm with her good hand. The other arm was in a sling. 'How do you ever hope to keep friends?' She shook her head and sighed theatrically. 'Honestly, you really can be a dick at times.'
Zero smirked. 'It's fine Kei. I'll just flatten him a couple of times and he can apologise. Besides, at least I'm not compensating for something with that oversized, over-armed beast he's got.'
'Inherited,' I smirked back. 'If anyone was overcompensating for something with all those cannon, it wasn't me.' Kei hit me again. 'Ow, what was that one for?' I rubbed my arm and glared at her. 'You're feeling better if you can start hitting again.'
'About those friends... you do remember Tochiro's listening in?' she smiled sweetly then dodged out of the way as I made a grab. A loud cough brought me up short, as Doc wandered into view.
'I thought I told you to keep your hands to yourself for a few more days? She's still recovering,' Doc snapped at me. I pointed helplessly at Kei.
'She started it!'
Doc glared at me. 'And you're supposed to be the captain, which makes you the responsible one. Act it occasionally.'
She stormed off and I glared at a smirking Kei. 'You're just loving this,' I accused.
Zero sniggered. 'Still being Doc-blocked are you?'
I rolled my visible eye at him. 'Seriously, did you work on that one all night?'
Kei took my arm and gave me a peck on the cheek. 'I thought it was funny. And you are a bit crankier than usual.' She pointed to the town. 'But if you two plan on throwing down and going all macho in defence of your honour, you might want to do it before we reach town. You don't want to set a bad example to the children.'
That was my cue for more eye-rolling 'Bad example? When one of them is that blood-thirsty little red-haired hellcat of Selen's?'
'Inherited,' Selen shot back with a smile. I raised an imaginary glass to her for turning that one back on me. She turned to Kei. 'But what were you thinking, stopping them from going for it? It's always a good show once the shirts come off.'
I stopped and stared at her. 'Seriously? Since when do you start playing to the peanut gallery?' I turned to Zero, who was looking decidedly shifty - not that that was anything unusual for a guy who habitually wore shades even at night. 'So, we land rather than ship down, walk rather than grab a transport, all because you two said want to look at the scenery? I don't buy it. What are you two hiding?'
They shared a mutually guilty glance. I waited. I would have folded my arms but I still had Kei wrapped around one of them, so I took a leaf out of Doc's book, and tapped my foot.
Finally Zero cleared his throat. 'We were kind of hoping we could get you settled before we had to show you...'
'Show me what?' From the hedging, I could guarantee I wasn't going to like it, whatever it was.
'Not what. Who.' Selen fidgeted with her shoulder holster, a sure sign she was uncomfortable. 'Maybe we should leave this until you've eaten at least.'
'How about not?' I waved my free hand towards town. 'Rather like ripping a sticking bandage off a wound, I tend to find nasty surprises are best dealt with quickly.'
Yet they still hesitated, and it was Kei, not me, who Selen addressed next. 'I just want your assurance that you'll hold off on shooting him until after you've heard him out.'
Kei looked puzzled, but I had a nasty feeling I knew where this was heading. My back still had the scars. 'Hagan?' I asked. Kei's fingers dug into my arm even through my newly-cleaned jacket.
'Yamori.' Zero corrected. 'Yamori Daisuke, and trust me, if that nibelung inside him rears its head again, I'll put him down myself. But you do need to hear him out.'
'Can't wait,' Kei said with a brittle gaiety. I winced inwardly. I wanted a piece of the bastard myself, but she had taken it a little personally when she'd seen the extent of my injuries. And honestly - I didn't plan on getting between Kei and her payback. I'd do the same to anyone who hurt her.
With the mood somewhat dampened, we walked the rest of the way into town in silence.
I strong-armed Zero into letting me see Hagan - Yamori - before the main event. They'd stashed him in the local gaol with the agreement of a portly local lawman who looked as though the most action he'd had in years was in tracking down a good breakfast. So this time I was on the right side of the cell looking in on the young man who'd thrashed the hell out of my back a few months ago.
He was not quite so young as I'd thought at the time. Although we looked about the same age, he was probably closer to forty than twenty-five, given that Lar Metal's elite had messed around with their genetic heritage centuries ago, extending their youth - though not, I had been told, their lifespans. Time tended to catch up with them all at once, and when it did, it hit hard. Seemed like a poor trade off to me, not knowing when your genetic timebomb would explode. Some, like Selen who was to my astonishment over sixty, could pass for thirty, and she could expect to reach ninety and look no different, based on her family history. Others, she'd said, could cash out at fifty and change.
Yamori was sitting on the bed at the back of the cell, and looked at me with a worried frown from under a shock of dark sandy hair as I entered. 'Do I know you?'
I turned to Zero. 'Is he for real?'
He shrugged. 'Seems to be. So far he doesn't seem to show any signs of possession, or to have been responsible for anything after he was arrested with us.'
'Because I wasn't. Rei, how many times do we have to go over this? They strapped me into a chair and forced that mask onto me. After that, it's all a blur until I was rolling around on the floor after one of the princesses shot me. I was a prisoner in my own head.' He stood up and walked to the bars. 'I do remember you now...' He grasped the bars and looked into my face. 'Oh crap, you're..'
'The guy you whipped. Repeatedly.' I said flatly. He flinched, and that shock of hair fell back from his face, to reveal his cheek to be a terrible, melted scar. It hadn't obliterated his eye, but it had come damn close, and the damage was all the worse because he had been a handsome young man before. I almost felt sorry for him, and it must have showed on my face because he pulled away.
'I don't want your pity,' he ground out, with a snarl that distorted the still pretty profile. Some people could get mad without looking like an idiot who'd bitten into a rice cone topped with natto. Yamori wasn't one of them. He turned his back on us. Even though he couldn't see me I shrugged anyway.
'No problem. I can do contempt.' I turned my attention back to Zero. 'So why exactly are you keeping him around? You can't trust that Hagan won't make a reappearance, can you?'
'Which is why he's behind bars for now. Well, that and the suggestion that you and Kei or one of the girls might take his actions a little personally - albeit with justification. He's a little safer in there for now, until we've properly debriefed him about his time in the inner circle.'
Yamori turned back to face us. 'I'll tell you anything you need to know, Rei. You know that. I loved Yayoi long before she became what she is now. I'd do anything to save her.'
Loyalty? I somehow doubted it. He had the intense look of a man in love with something out of his reach, when he said her name. 'If she's beyond saving?' I asked. 'I met her clone puppet recently. I'm not so sure there's anything left.'
He grabbed the bars of the dell in both hands as though trying to pry them apart. 'There has to be. It can't end like this. Rei?'
Zero shook his head, sadly. 'Yamori, Harlock might be right. She walked right into this one willingly enough. She always believed the ends justified the means, even before this. The seeds were sown a long time ago. That was always where you and I differed as well as Selen and her sister. If Ban were here...' he sighed. 'You know, I have to wonder, given your history, if you put up much of a fight against killing him...'
At the younger man's sudden flush, I figured Zero had hit a nerve there. A long standing crush? Unrequited love? If that were indeed the case, then maybe Yamori couldn't be trusted any more than the monster in his head, when it came to his queen.
But we had other considerations first, and took our leave. I found it hard to trust the guy, but maybe, just maybe, he could redeem himself, if he wanted to. Second chances don't come often, and I'd not deny anyone who truly wanted to turn their life around.
If he turned around and screwed me over again, however, I'd end the little bastard without a second's hesitation.
Most of our little cabal had assembled in the local ramen shop, a tumbledown building down one of the back streets. It had been abandoned for some time, but the place was cosy, and big enough for the interested parties to sit around the tables once they were put together in the middle of the room. Kei had even co-opted Anita to rustle up something, and she'd left several steaming pans on warmers for everyone to help themselves, before bustling back to the ship. Thankfully we got there before Yattaran and other large appetites finished the lot, though it was a close thing.
Kei, Yattaran, Maji, Mimay, Doc and Levary plus the Professors Daiba made up my complement. Selen and Zero had the two princesses in tow, pale Maetel still quiet, but her protective reserve seemed to be crumbling at the edges. My human bombshell of a cousin wasn't taking silence for an answer and eventually persuaded her into joining him, Zack and a few local children of varying ages outside in a game involving a ball, a lot of running around, and yelling. All of which resident hellcat Emeraldas ignored, sitting with the adults with a permanent glower at the world, arms folded on her chest. Ali and Carlos had been deputised to collect and sit on Yamori, though whether to stop him escaping or to prevent three very pissed off young women from tearing him a new one was still up in the air. Thankfully, although Emeraldas still carried the knife I'd given her, she settled for just glaring at the prisoner whilst running her fingers along the edge of the blade, which did cause him to stumble a little over his story as we questioned him.
Zero had found him on one of the marginal colonies the Lar Metal harvest ships had targeted. Like Selen and Zero, he'd apparently stowed away on board to make a break for it. Injured and starving, they'd found him in an abandoned house in a town deserted and dead.
'This mind inside you,' Mimay leaned forwards, staring deeply into his eyes until he turned away, looking deeply discomfited. 'How do you keep it at bay? Can it be kept suppressed?' I heard the note of hope in her voice, and wondered how long she must have mourned the loss of her brother.
He hesitated, and didn't meet her eyes. 'I don't know. I'm a soldier, not a medic. Selen suggested the pain or shock might keep him down, but for how long, I don't know. I do know I'd rather die than go back to living like that. You have no idea what it's like, day after day watching through your own eyes, unable to speak, or move. I couldn't warn my queen, no matter how hard I tried.' He faced Selen, and looked her in the eyes. 'I truly did, Selen. But he was so strong, and he enjoys my pain as much as those he hurts. He and the one called Loki, they took so much delight in the damage they were causing. Yayoi truly believes this is the best way to save us. Even after that broadcast about Earth, she said it was too little, too late. It will take centuries, if not millennia, for Earth to recover - and human populations on all but a handful of planets are too low for recovery, even if they could get the terraforming machines working with the new parameters. Loki and Hagan fed on that, twisting the reports until she felt that mechanisation was the only answer within our lifetimes.'
Truth, most of it. But not all. I shared a quick look with Kei, and she was biting her bottom lip, quite obviously not buying it. 'Quick fixes rarely work,' I interjected. 'But I can understand her despair, at least. I think we all can. It wasn't that long ago we bought into a similar argument.' Kei bowed her head sadly, Yattaran looked away, as if in shame. 'Except there's more here at work than just a desperate, misguided attempt to save humanity, isn't there?' I asked.
He nodded. 'I can't read his thoughts, so I only know what little they spoke about to each other, but there was something they wanted. They've spent decades manipulating our society. I gather it started even before the Homecoming War, but they were forced to go into hiding. The Nibelung were in a similar position to humanity: falling birth rates, a dying planet... they had a plan - to use Lar Metal's population to host their best minds, but then when Harlock and Mimay unleashed the dark matter on Earth, Loki had another idea. The trouble is, a lot of conversation was conducted in their language, and I don't understand it.'
Oh. He was a shifty little weasel... lies hidden in truth, but I just couldn't pinpoint which was which. 'Professor?' I asked. With a tug at his moustache, Professor Daiba stood up.
'If you can give me a hand, my boy?'
I regarded the holographic suite in the centre of the table with some trepidation. Technology - not my strongest subject. Botany, yes. Reasonably quick with languages, and an adrenaline junkie addicted to free climbing and base jumping. Wires and software? Not so much.
'It won't bite you,' Kei laughed. Her arm still in the sling and comfortably lounging in a chair, she pointed. 'Just push the button.'
'Or you could make sure it's connected, first,' my first mate rumbled. I was pushed unceremoniously out of the way and the big man got to work with much put-upon muttering. 'Why does no-one ever call in a professional before things get snarly?'
'Probably because your usual response is to say you're busy and cut the connection,' Kei said with mock sweetness. His reply was inaudible, but sounded pithy.
With a triumphant wave of a hand, the unit came to life, finally displaying a 3D rendering of an ancient, plant covered ruin pictured against a grey sky with thick tendrils of mist swirling over it. Professor Daiba harrumphed at us, and like a bunch of schoolkids, we sat to attention. Mimay stepped out of the shadows behind me, and walked around the table.
'This was the Hall of Records,' she said softly. 'But this area was in the heart of the main city. Even after so many years, it shouldn't be this overgrown.'
'Whatever triggered the dark matter explosion here seems to have accelerated plant growth to a considerable extent. The entire planet is covered in gigantic plants. Hiroko and her team spent weeks in the jungles that have covered the cities.' A series of pictures followed, and I walked around the display, taking in the detail.
Gigantic was right; some of the plants were several metres in diameter, and the trees looked as though they touched the sky. I'd never seen such an explosion of growth, and it was in stark contrast to the barren, hellish wasteland that Earth had become.
'Are those lichens?' I stared at the ruins draped in trailing liana-like tendrils, partially buried by mats of mossy growth the size of which I'd never seen before. The sheer scale of growth here was supposedly impossible. I zoomed in on the detail of the structures, entranced by the titanic scale. Algal mats, giant lichens, towering trees of mossy growths that should not have been possible in a gravity well. It was a truly alien environment. Compared to the handful of barren planets I'd seen in my admittedly narrow experience to date, it was mesmerising.
A polite cough brought me back to reality with a bump, and I grinned sheepishly, handing the control back to my aunt. 'Sorry, distracted.'
'Just like your mother,' Hiroko laughed. She patted my arm. 'Talk to me later. There's plenty more to see.'
Doc folded her arms across her chest. 'It's certainly interesting. But this wasn't the reason we agreed to look over this data, as I recall?' She smiled at the professor. 'Maybe we should take a look at the other item of interest?'
He tugged on a bushy moustache and asked my aunt to bring up the next set of images. 'These were the carvings we found on the walls inside the hall. Beautifully preserved, they seem to predate the buildings by several thousand years at least.'
Mimay bowed her head in sorrow. 'Alberich, my brother, and his team had uncovered an underground complex they believed to be the remnants of our first city on Niflheim. Some of the evidence suggested we hadn't evolved on this world, but our origins are lost in the mists of time. Our civilisation was hundreds of thousands of years old when humans were still ape-men wandering the savannah of Africa.'
'Not that anyone's bragging,' I heard Ali mutter under his breath.
As if she hadn't heard, she continued. 'It turned out that these ruins predated our oldest city by eons. No-one had seen anything like them. But there were concerns other than history, and like your scientists and rulers ours turned their attention to matters of survival. These murals were put on display but otherwise ignored, except by my brother. He felt they held some deep secret, and he refused to give up his studies. Even during his years of service on the Phantasm. He took the ship and his crew on long journeys, exploring long dead worlds.' She paused.
'This was about the same time we first encountered Harlock and Tochiro.' She inclined her head gracefully towards the hologram of her old friend, fainter than usual but then we were running this second lash-up on batteries, and he waved cheerily back from his position near the kitchen. 'Tochiro tried to help my people, but to no avail. In gratitude, we shared our dark matter technology with him. The rest, you know.'
'Not, quite,' I pointed out. 'I don't recall anyone saying what happened to the rest of your people. My brother told me there was one nibelung for each of the Deathshadow class ships, but nowhere do I remember hearing anyone say what happened to the rest. Surely there were more than four of you left? Otherwise any help would surely be too little, too late.'
'It would have been,' Tochiro answered for her. 'The truth is, we don't know. With the war on, getting back there wasn't really an option, and afterwards... well. It was a long time before we got our act together, and then Harlock came up with his plan...' He looked embarrassed.
'None of you could face going back and confessing to the fact that you'd taken all that advanced knowledge they gave you and blown up a planet?' This from Levary, who didn't bother to hide his disgust. The crusty old commander had little time for either side of the recent events that had left him preferring to join us rather than return to a government which had so cavalierly thrown his men to the wolves. Mimay and Tochiro both kept quiet. Amazing how chagrined a hologram and an alien could look when someone pointed out their failings.
'I don't suppose you know what these carvings say, or are showing?' I asked.
Mimay walked around the picture of the largest mural. There was a strange kind of writing on it - angular, incised letters. Since the start of each line appeared to be right justified, I took a guess that it was read from right to left. It also looked horizontal, not vertical. I did recognise a couple of letters though. 'That's Ægishjálmr - the 'countenance of terror'' I pointed to one symbol, rather like a wheel of eight pitchforks arranged to radiate out from a smaller circle in the centre, each 'fork' having three horizontal lines through it. 'It also means 'invincibility', if I remember correctly?' I looked to the professor for confirmation. He nodded, but there was a slight cough from the other side of the table where Yamori sat, an annoyingly smug smirk lurking under his long, thin, weaselly nose.
The professor laughed. 'You've a good memory. I haven't told you that story since you were about Tadashi's age.'
'It was a pretty good story, as I recall,' I smiled, remembering. 'Nami use to play the part of the sleeping valkyrie hidden behind the flames, but Isora would always try and make me be the dragon to his hero when he was around. Spent an entire school holiday once pretending to kill me...' Yeah. Maybe not so good a memory after all, and in hindsight oddly prophetic, given how things had turned out...
He smiled back, but sympathetically. I should have known he'd catch the nuances. Great practical psychologist as well as an anthropologist... 'I suppose I should have known only the exciting stories would hold children's attention. But that symbol can have many meanings.' At the baffled faces around the table he launched into an explanation. 'It's an old Norse rune, from over two thousand years ago on Earth. It's one of several linked to the old Norse myths. Often mistranslated as referring to a helmet of invisibility, but in fact referred to a kind of battle magic designed to confuse one's enemies. A kind of illusion, of sorts. It could be passive, hypnotic, or actively aggressive, in producing a kind of blind terror in the subjects. Some of these other markings are also Nordic runes, but others are quite unfamiliar. It seems logical given the age of this piece that the nibelung had contact with our ancestors at some point, but recognising the runes gives us no idea of the language used here. In fact, there are so many additional symbols that I began to suspect the written language was idiomatic, not phonetic.' He looked over to Mimay. 'Would I be right, my dear?'
Again she gracefully inclined her head. 'As you say. The language is an old one however, and I was not a linguist or historian.' She lifted a gauze-draped arm to the hologram, her fingers leaving a pattern of disrupted light in their wake. 'It's part of an old children's story, telling of a great battle, and a gate of light, beyond which the greatest darkness was sealed long ago. A darkness that can exist without light, that existed long before there was light, and life. We were told this as children, a fable to remind us that there should always be a balance between the two, without which there is only nothingness, The ultimate cypher.' She pulled her hand away. 'This appears to be a much older version, and only a part of a greater whole. The rest however was not recovered before I left. The piece Harlock points to is new to me, but it seems to speak of a terrible fear from old times, of a light that can be overcome only by darkness, and this...' she pointed to another fragment, 'speaks of a returning to darkness, of becoming one with the terror.' She paused, shook her head, her light, fine hair shimmering in soft waves. 'Maybe. I see the symbols for conjoining, but the tense is confusing. It might even be speaking of something that has already happened. Or could happen again. I could not tell you if I even have the correct syntax. The fragment could refer to something that is both past and future. It could even be allegorical, not literal. As I said. An old language, and the symbols might have meanings we no longer used by my age.'
Yattaran leaned back in his chair, chewing on a toothpick, arms folded. 'Doesn't seem like something worth killing over. And what does it have to do with dialheads?'
'Not the machinners themselves,' I suggested. 'But the need for the Arcadia and the reason why Loki has been manipulating an entire civilisation into doing his dirty work for him.' Blank looks all round, except for Tochiro, who gave me a thumbs-up. 'Loki wanted to use our dark matter engines for something, but he has his own ship. So why us? What's so different about the Arcadia's engines?'
Silence. I turned to Tochiro's hologram. 'That was your cue, by the way.' He beamed.
'Well, Mimay controls the release of the dark matter, and that's no different to nibelung ships - they always had a living interface. But on the Arcadia the central computer - that'd be me for anyone who isn't keeping up - shapes it, uses it. It's our life forces that give it its purpose. Ships like the Phantasm are powerful but the Arcadia's energy is off the charts crazy. That's one reason why although Arcadia can operate without one of the three of us short term, in the long haul it also needs a captain at the helm. Gotta hand it to Harlock, when he screwed up, he didn't do it by halves.' He must have realised the looks he was getting from around the table were not quite so admiring. 'Ah, sorry, sorry. I could be over-thinking it and maybe he's just too fond of his ship to cannibalise it.'
I took up the narrative, slowly picking my way through the scattered pieces. 'But if he builds a machine made of up living parts, controlled and powered by a combination of captured souls and dark matter, linked to an enormous antenna, pointed at a particular region of space... something similar to the Jovian Blaster the fleet tried to use on us?'
Watching the penny finally drop around the rest of the table would have been satisfying if the stakes were not so high.
'This is what goes through your head when I'm not around to distract you?' Kei murmured next to me. 'I ought to get shot more often.'
For once I didn't find the jest remotely funny, and it must have showed because she gave my arm a little squeeze. 'Sorry,' she whispered. I forced a smile, and also tried to relax over tense muscles in my neck and shoulders.
'It's fine. I guess some things just leave my skin a bit thin; if I'm being an arse, just thump me.' I turned my attention to the prisoner. 'Can you tell us anything about that tower? Anything at all?'
Yamori took a deep breath before replying, his eyes a little out of focus, as though fighting to hold onto a thought. 'As I said, it was all in their own language, but there were times Loki spoke to him about a gate. And as you suggested, the people they downloaded into parts were going somewhere, but what for and where, I have no idea. But they did have their own agenda, behind giving Lar Metal access to their technology. They couldn't care less about mechanisation, what humans do to themselves they just find amusing.'
'Maybe we could get more information out of Hagan directly,' Emeraldas suggested. She smiled at Yamori and he looked decidedly dyspeptic. There really was something terribly cold behind her lovely eyes, and I was glad I wasn't on the receiving end.
'You really want to destroy an innocent man just to get information?' Doc asked. 'Yamori is as much a victim...' Emeraldas silenced her with that cold stare.
'Innocent?' She stood up, and walked around the table until she could stand next to him, the point of her knife at his throat. Funnily enough, no-one rushed to the guy's aid. 'A victim? Oh, maybe now, that the chips are down, or if he fears that the snake lurking in his head is never going to give him his body back. But this creep used to always be hovering around my mother. Even before he was in that mask he hated papa. And I had to stay in my sister's room at night because he'd started looking at her the same way he did my mother. What - did you think that if you couldn't have her, maybe the daughter would do?' The tip of her knife pricked his skin and a thin trickle of blood ran down his neck. 'Papa always said you were an opportunistic, vindictive little prick.'
'Emeraldas!' Selen admonished. The girl shrugged, which accidentally on purpose caused the tip of her knife to dig in a little further. I refrained from pointing it out.
'Well, Maetel pretty much busted that mask, so I guess we can't get at the nibelung. Pity. I think Kei would have liked a turn with him as well.' With a mock resigned sigh she removed her knife from Yamori's throat, and he visibly sagged with relief.
'Did you want a crack at him?' I asked Kei as Emeraldas trooped out. 'Because I'm sure no-one would stop you.' With a little jerk of my head I indicated we follow Emeraldas out. Once out of earshot of the room, I continued. 'Speak now, or forever hold your peace...'
Kei shook her head. 'Actually, I rather enjoyed watching him squirming at the hands of a kid. Plus, this way, he'll be on edge waiting to see what, if anything I decide to do to him.' Her smile at this was almost as feral as Emeraldas' as she continued in a low voice. 'Sometimes the anticipation can be worse than the actuality. He'll be imagining far worse than I could probably come up with. But there's something off about the guy, I just can't put my finger on it...' She tilted her head slightly and smiled at me. 'You know, he reminds me a bit of how you were when you first came on board. Though significantly creepier.'
'I hope I wasn't that much of a weaselling little shit. He seemed to take issue with my pronunciation or translation earlier. And did you notice the little bastard didn't always answer the question put to him properly? He's lying his arse off in places. I just can't quite figure out where.'
She stared at me, a smaller, nicer smile playing around her lips.
'So: good pirate, bad pirate?'
I grinned. 'I was thinking bad pirate, worse pirate, but it's your call. Do you want to go first, or shall I?'
'You need the practice. Go get him!'
We needed to get the non-combatants out of the room, however. I didn't feel comfortable interrogating someone with former babysitters watching, and that also included former commander Levary. Not that I intended to tear the sadistic little shit a new one, but it's hard to concentrate on pulling off a badass routine with the feeling that you're being graded on your performance, or meeting with serious disapproval of your lifestyle choices from older family members.
We walked back in, and I stopped to have a discreet word with Selen, since technically Yamori was her prisoner and Zero's. She agreed promptly enough, though Zero looked as though he wanted to say something. He shut his mouth again when Selen kicked him under the table. Yattaran and Levary both gave us puzzled looks as they left, but my crew at least didn't question the request when I asked them to follow. Neither, despite a long hard look, did the professors, though neither of them looked too happy about it.
And then then were three. Yamori had been left handcuffed to his chair, and looked uncomfortable to say the least. The blood from Emeraldas' little nick had already dried in a line down the side of his throat. I walked around the table and perched on the edge next to him.
'Now that we've got a little privacy, time for some straight answers. Feel free to resist. In fact, I rather hope you do decide to stay coy. I still have the scars from the last time we met.'
'That wasn't me.'
'So you say. But I have to ask - what is it you're hiding?'
Since running around on Earth without any kind of protection against the elements, my voice had dropped into a deeper, huskier register than I'd had before. Personally I thought it sounded a little grating, but it seemed to work a lot better at delivering unspoken threats. It also helped to only have the one eye to glare through.
'I don't know what you're talking about...' He gulped as Kei stood up and pulled out a knife. 'What - I talk or you sic your little whore on me?'
I hadn't planned on getting physical with the prick, but some lines he had to learn not to cross. I backhanded him hard enough to rock him in the chair, and stopped him from crashing to the floor by holding onto the arm. I let it teeter for a moment, then let it settle. A trickle of blood ran from the corner of his lip. 'Ground rules. You don't insult Kei. For the record, she's not here to act as a threat if you don't answer my questions. She's here for your protection, to make sure there's something of you left to answer Selen and Zero's questions after I'm done with you. So you might want to stay on her good side. Are we clear?'
He nodded. The undamaged cheek twitched slightly. Amazing what you could achieve without even raising your voice. 'Good boy. Now. Let's start over, shall we? What is it you're holding back?' He looked as though he was about to piss himself and it was hard to hold back a smirk.
'Loki... after he left, it got easier to fight Hagan. Without one of his own to interact with, it was harder for him to hold onto his own identity. A couple of months ago, I managed to fight him back down,' he gasped out.
'And the mask?'
'I thought I could help Yayoi - Promethium - if no-one knew. If I carried on pretending to be Hagan, then no-one questioned anything. But what I said before, is true. He is still in here, and I've no idea if I can hold him back forever.'
'Which of you killed Ban?' I asked, coldly. He flinched. I was sorely tempted to invite Emeraldas and her sister back in at this point. 'You murderous little shit.'
'And it was also you who tortured Harlock?' Kei asked. She made her way to his other side and leaned over him. He pulled away from her as far as he could - which wasn't far, given his restraints. 'Well aren't you the clever little monster, staying so well in character...' The knife in her hand dipped to point at his groin and from the cold sweat he broke into, I guessed he remembered her threat back on Lar Metal to geld him.
'You also lied about how much you understand the nibelung language,' I added. He looked startled. ' Yeah, you need to work on your poker face, Yamori. That supercilious little sneer you get when you know something someone else doesn't is a bit of a giveaway. What I don't get is, if you're so keen to help us, why you didn't offer that up? Why hold out on us?'
He didn't reply, just lapsed into a stubborn silence. I decided to play a hunch. 'Thing is, I think you're giving us just enough to be useful to keep around, but not so much that you tip your hand about the fact that you've got some control over the monster in your head. Are you hoping we'll slip up and let you find your way back to your queen?'
He looked me straight in the eye, though not without a shiver. 'It's not that simple,' he said quietly. 'This thing inside... I have to let it think it's still in control. Hagan... he's not so used to our thought processes. Humans, that is. I can mostly fool him into thinking my thoughts and actions are his. If I let him dictate some of my actions, he relaxes. He can't tell easily where he ends and I begin. If I keep that line blurred, I stay just far enough ahead of him. If I tell you all I know, if I slip and let too much show, he'll sense it, and I won't win that fight.'
Kei shrugged and put her knife away. 'I actually think he's telling the truth.'
I was finding myself agreeing. If so, he was walking a terrifying tightrope. 'There's no way we can get all the answers we want without tipping our hand?' He nodded.
'For what it's worth, you're already too late. Loki's already set in motion the machine that will open the Gate.'
'So the legend on the ruins might well be true? ' Kei asked. 'Can we make any headway on all that talk of light and darkness?'
'The professor might, with Mimay's help. I have a few suspicions.' I turned my attention back to Yamori. 'If you had a chance to put a stop to Loki's plan...' I raised my hand to stop him replying. 'Just listen. The less you talk perhaps the more you can hold onto yourself. If we can get past Lar Metal's defenses, we should be able to take out the antenna array without too much trouble. But I need to know - is the machine still on the planet?'
He shook his head. 'It's being built elsewhere, and that location is something I don't know.'
Kei leaned towards him, grinning as he flinched. 'So how does this work? If the machine is in one system, but the power for it and the antenna are on Lar Metal? Can you answer?'
He nodded, and I noticed again that slightly distracted look that made me suspect he was having to distract his unwanted partner. He really did seem to be trying all of a sudden. 'They have hyperspace rings. We use them mostly for quick raids on the systems they lie in. Loki's been using those harvests to cover the movements of the rings to align them with the gate. Two birds with one stone - we harvested the colonists and left no-one behind to notice the rings had been moved. It's taken years to get this far.'
'Like the Jovian blaster,' Kei breathed. 'How the hell do we knock something like that off course if it's systems apart?'
I took her to one side. 'Go get Ali to take this guy back to his cell. I don't want to discuss any further plans in front of him until we have to.'
She gave me her best penetrating stare. 'You have an idea.'
I nodded. 'A bit of one. I might have a play we can make. But I need to talk to a few people first.' I left Kei to organise getting Yamori back under lock and key, and went to gather up my technical experts.
'What can you tell me about the dimensional oscillators?' I asked. We were standing in the main computer room a couple of hours later: myself, Yattaran, Mimay, Levary and Tochiro's hologram.
'It was a tool to adjust gravitational obstacles - dimensional faults, black holes - anything that could interfere with intergalactic travel,' Tochiro replied. 'There was talk back in our day of setting up an immense inter- and intra- galactic 'railway' before the war. A way of tying all the planets together in a simple, easy to navigate travel system. One of those things that just died a death when all hell broke loose. Pity. My grandfather was on the original team that brainstormed that one, and he had some really great ideas about making the ships look like old Earth tra...' he trailed off and grinned sheepishly. 'Sorry. I guess I can get just as distracted as Harlock here does when someone mentions vegetables...'
I resisted the childish urge to stick my tongue out at him. Somehow.
'But they can be used as a weapon,' Levary pointed out gruffly. 'The council were terrified of what Harlock - the old one - planned to do with them. Mind you, they never imagined just how far he was prepared to go until Isora told them about the nodes of time...'
Yeah, and I still couldn't figure out just how he'd got as much information as he'd had. One of these days I'd catch my breath and nail a few people to the floor until I got some answers. Starting with a vague alien beauty and a short dead guy.
'They could level an entire star system.' Yattaran this time. 'One reason I wasn't anywhere near as sure as Kei that the captain was telling us everything.'
Levary snorted. 'If only some of you had actually acted on your gut feelings, perhaps there wouldn't have been as many of my crew and comrades floating around the solar system in pieces.'
I headed this one off before it could spill over. 'Putting aside old grievances, I want you all to take a look with Mimay and the professor at the data from Niflheim. Loki is opening a gate of some sort - maybe an interdimensional fault, and we may need a way to shut it down again, if simply destroying the antenna array, the processing plant and their machine aren't enough.'
'All very well,' said Levary. 'But can you lay your hands on an oscillator quickly, if you need to? How close is the nearest?'
'Very close, at a guess,' I replied. 'Harlock visited Tabito, and I'm guessing it wasn't a social call?' I looked to Mimay, and she inclined her head slightly. 'Thought so.' I turned to Yattaran. 'You and Maji need to liaise with Mimay and the professor over that translation. If we can't shut that rift down by taking out the infrastructure, we might need a pretty big blast. Tochiro - you need to find the damn thing. Shouldn't be too hard to get the telemetry of that array if you talk to Selen, see what data she has. Finding those rings will be like looking for a needle in a haystack, unless we can narrow down the search areas.'
My commlink pinged just then. 'Harlock.'
'Kei. We've just picked up a signal from the Prometheus. She's been in a hell of a fight, the colonel sends his apologies, but he's not going to make it in time.'
'He's already missed the meeting,' I pointed out.
'That's not what he meant. Apparently there's a harvest ship heading this way, with an armed escort. He's a day behind it, can't possibly match delta-v in time to engage. We've got about ten hours before she's in range.'
My mind was suddenly off and racing, with a plan so damn crazy I wasn't sure I dared voice it. Oh, but it was risky... so damn risky... 'Get me a line to the Futatsuboshi. I need to talk to Selen. I'm on my way to the bridge.'
'No need,' Kei replied. 'She's on the link already. Says she's got a crazy plan, and you probably won't 't like it...'
'If it's the same one I've got in mind, damn straight I won't. On my way.'
I took off for the bridge at a run.
