Safely tucked away in the radar shadow of the two moons of Dis, the little battleship resembling an oversized stag beetle lurked, powered down in that hidden point between three worlds - the hellish planet and her two attendants. They had an alpha-numerical catalogue designation, but the locals called them Erebus and Terror.

That the little battleship rejoiced in the name "Deathshadow" was, to her captain, just the icing on the cake. Names, he'd learned at the knee, had meaning. His parents had disagreed on many things but they had agreed on one thing - the meaning of his name, if not its actual sound. His father had favoured his own European roots with "Alexander". His mother had preferred her native Japanese and gone with "Mamoru". Both names carried the meaning of "protector".

That agreement had been a one-off. Even more than forty years after the fact, he still went by Mamoru, but the record of his birth in a long-buried record in a church register in Heiligenstadt read "Alexander".

He had won the fight eventually with his father over the matter. Round about the time the selfish bastard had placed an unexpectedly motherless little boy in the care of that little boy's sixteen year old bastard half-brother, and taken off on a one man flight around the world for six months in a replica of an ancient biplane to distance himself from his loss.

His mother, when she'd arrived on Earth on a furlough only to find the household at Schloss Greifenstein in uncharacteristic disorder, had sighed, muttered something about the thick-headedness of a certain former fighter jock of her acquaintance who'd seemingly never bothered to grow up, rolled her sleeves up and taken charge for the few weeks she had.

'Why do you keep picking up the pieces, if you hate him that much?' Mamoru had asked her one day, once little Albrecht was sleeping.

'I don't hate him,' Julia Okita had told her only child. 'If there's one thing it's very difficult to do with your father, it's hate him. Want to strangle him or shoot him on occasion, yes. But you might was well try to scream at the wind to stop blowing. He won't change. He's a beautiful, self-centred, unstoppable force of nature. Anyone who gets into his orbit is like a moth drawn to a flame. So help me, I know what he's like - I knew it when we were screwing like rabbits before we even graduated - but you can't take offence at a hurricane. You just pick up a broom and get to sweeping up the debris when it's done its thing.' She'd smiled fondly. 'But damn, he's one hell of a fuck…'

'Mother!'

She'd laughed at his embarrassed response. And again only a few years later when instead of meeting her expectations that the apple wouldn't fall far from the tree, he'd married the 'girl next door' and never so much as looked at another woman. Her reaction to him mustering out after graduation to do so however hadn't been anywhere near as amused, and despite how much she adored her grand-daughters, it was still, more than twenty years after the fact, a sore point between them. Both sides of his family tree had long, proud military histories and he'd pointedly refused to live up to either of them.

An elbow in the ribs brought him back to the present with a grunt. 'Stand straight for god's sake,' Harlock whispered urgently into his right ear. 'She'll have a go at both of us if you slouch.'

'What are you? My drill sergeant?' he whispered back. He eyed up his brother's ensemble - shoe-horned into the spare uniform Mamoru had packed on the off chance that it would act as a kind of lucky charm, and towering over his brother in all his bottle-green glory, hair neatly brushed for once, if still touching the top of his fixed-ring collar. Harlock looked magnificent. Not even the cuts and bruises he sported on his face distracted much from that uncanny beauty, but he always held himself as though he was totally unaware of the fact.

A beautiful, self-centred, unstoppable force of nature…

Mamoru undid another button to let his jacket open further to reveal the skull and crossbones painted on the front, and ostentatiously rolled his sleeves up a little further. He ignored the booted toe that kicked his ankle.

'Well at least it won't be me she hauls over the coals,' he heard his brother mutter.

'I'm a civilian,' he shot back. 'What's she going to do to me?'

Harlock opened his mouth to make a pithy reply, and shut it with a snap as the docking tube began to iris open. It's curved petal-like sections slid back into the walls to reveal a striking woman with shoulder length, iron grey hair, wearing the Gaia Fleet uniform of a full admiral. At around five foot seven, the admiral was a lot shorter than the two men waiting for her in the corridor, but had a way of looming to fill the space which far exceeded her build. Julia Okita was stocky and looked a good twenty years or so younger than the almost seventy she had on paper. She looked both men up and down, frowned, clasped her hands behind her back and grunted.

'Admiral.' Mamoru saluted.

'Aunt Julia.' Harlock didn't.

'That would be "mum" to you, and "admiral" or "sir" to you,' she snapped at each in turn. They both tried unsuccessfully to hold back grins. 'Good grief - look at the state of you… Mamoru - how many times do I have to tell you to fasten your jacket and roll your sleeves down? And Albrecht... brawling with your men again?'

'Getting your ship shot out from under you, enslaved, beaten up and half killed trying to escape will do that to someone,' he drawled.

'Is that all?' She arched a silver eyebrow. 'The way I heard it you also managed to blow up the planet.'

'Not yet,' Mamoru muttered alongside Harlock's "not exactly". He fiddled with his cuffs but made no effort to unroll them.

She tutted. 'Just like your father.'

'I think she means you,' Harlock murmured, just loud enough for his voice to carry.

'No, I'm sure she means you,' Mamoru stage-whispered back.

'Oh dear god… the two of you are like five-year-olds when you're together.' The admiral eyed them up in turn. 'And that's one for the family album - the officer dressed like a pirate and the pirate dressed like an officer… I should send you both off to exchange clothes.'

'His won't fit me,' Harlock pointed out in his most reasonable tone.

Okita snorted. 'Well maybe you should think about working out a bit more instead of lounging around in seedy backwater dives getting pissed on the stuff I use to strip-clean machine parts. Tell me - does he still skip meals?' she asked her son.

'Starved, beaten and half-killed,' Harlock retorted plaintively before Mamoru could reply.

'My dear boy, you've never kept enough weight on you to afford missing even one meal,' the admiral told him sniffily.

'If I'd eaten the portions you used to put in front of me, I'd be the size of a small whale,' he muttered. 'I mean, just look at this one…' he poked his brother in the ribs. 'Twenty years of Miranda's home cooking haven't helped either.'

Mamoru slapped away the offending digit as they walked. 'It's all muscle, brat.'

'Keep telling yourself that, if it makes you feel better, old man…'

'Oh for pete's sake…' The admiral bulled her way between the pair and strode off down the corridor. 'I believe the captain's room is this way?' she called back over her shoulder. She vanished around the next corner and the pair turned to grin at each other.

'Was that an all time record?' Harlock asked. 'I forgot to set the stopwatch, but I think that was less than three minutes from arrival to flounce…'

'Not if we're counting that time at the opera house in Bayreuth…' Mamoru deadpanned.

'Nope. That was an accident. Doesn't count.'

'Fair enough. How long do we give her to make herself at home in my office?'

Harlock pretended to think about it. 'Three, two, one…' he counted under his breath.

'Mamoru! Albrecht!' The bellow could probably have been heard on the bridge without the benefit of a loudspeaker. 'Yep, that should do it!' he finished breezily. 'Aren't you coming?' he asked when Mamoru hesitated to follow him.

'Just wondering if I should let her tear a strip off you first for losing your damned ship and crew before I come in for the "illegal intrusion into enemy territory" talk.'

Mamoru was leaning against the wall, doing his best to feign a nonchalant pose, hands in pockets, ankles crossed. Harlock took the couple of paces it took for his long legs to cover the distance between them and leaned over his brother, hands placed on the wall on either side of his head. 'You. Are. Supposed. To. Be. My. Big, protective, brother,' he enunciated with painstaking clarity.

'You're bigger than me. I'll hide behind you.'

'She's your mother!' A note of exasperation creeping in.

'She's your superior officer…' They glared at each other.

A scuffing noise behind them made both men turn around. Tochiro was strolling towards them, smiling beatifically. 'Hey - was that Auntie Jules I just heard? Cool. I was hoping she'd come over in person. Aren't you two coming, or were you planning to stand in that "I'm about to snog you senseless" pose all morning?' He sniggered when Harlock backpedaled away from Mamoru with a speed he usually only reserved for joining in a bar fight. He'd scuttled down the corridor and around the corner before his friend could grab him.

'Oh, marvellous. Now we'll have to get a move on if only to stop him from blurting the whole sorry tale out in a way that makes us all look like total idiots,' Harlock grumbled. Mamoru slapped him lightly between the shoulder blades.

'Buck up. She never gets mad at him.'

Harlock just looked. 'Seriously. You want to bet our respective hides on that chance?'

They exchanged glances, straightened the hems of their jackets with a tug, and set off down the corridor at a fast jog.

Julia Okita sat back in her son's command chair and folded her arms. She stared at the both through the glasses she'd recently started to use in deference to her age finally catching up with her eyes. Handsome boys, the pair of them. And despite their ages she'd never really think of them as anything but her boys, even if her own son now had silver in his sandy brown hair, and Sebastian's legitimate heir had to stoop to get through most doorways.

It didn't help that like most of the family, they had a distressing tendency to never really grow up. Even Mamoru, who by the standards of Sebastian's family tree was a solid, dependable father and upright citizen, had moments when she clearly saw the legacy of his father's utterly uncontrollable nature. Albrecht, on the other hand, had moments when he had the occasional flash of dependability...

Putting the two together on a battleship in the middle of a spectacularly nasty Charlie-Foxtrot of epic proportions was just asking for trouble. Which she could have told anyone who'd bother to ask. She had - on and off, her assignments allowing - raised the pair of them after all.

She found herself wishing that Sanada had been able to leave his damned sickbed and get his arse out here to manage the pair. Dropping them in her lap was just plain sadistic and she had every intention of telling him that. At length. Assuming they survived the next few days…

'So let me get this straight… you two -' here a hard stare down her nose at Harlock and Tochiro, both of whom had chairs in deference to their still damaged condition - 'find out there's a plot to ambush Sanada's fleet, rush to the rescue, manage to hold the line long enough to get them away only to get caught in the crossfire from this strange new weapon. Picked up by wreckers picking over the carcasses, shipped off to a secret facility which just happens to be mining and refining the raw materials for these and possibly other experimental weapons, escape in a -' another pause, and a disbelieving headshake '-sand submersible using a new quantum field engine, and in the course of trying to make it to the spaceport inadvertently blow up another submersible and trigger the super volcano the spaceport sits on. How am I doing so far?'

'Well it sounded better when we told Mamoru…' Tochiro replied brightly. Not even the quelling look from the admiral was enough to put a damper on his runaway mouth. Nor the kick Harlock aimed at his ankle, which he deftly avoided by lifting his feet out of the way.

'And you…' The admiral turned her attention to her son, leaning against the far wall doing his best to look inconspicuous and at an inch or so over six feet, failing miserably, '... allow Oyama and Sanada to talk you into taking one of their prototypes halfway across the galaxy to look for these two…' she raised a hand to stop him from speaking and he snapped his mouth closed with an audible click of his teeth. 'Don't give me that flannel about the weapon. Sanada might very well think that but I know the old man better than that. He'd have told Sanada where to stick it if not for losing his best engineer and his craziest test pilot. Both of them were out of order and you bloody well know it. Sanada didn't have the authority to send you whatever the cover story, and Oyama didn't have authority full stop. If you're caught you risk being shot on sight as a spy, and your crew with you.'

'I didn't have to be talked into anything,' Mamoru said quietly. 'I'd have taken the Deathsh-'

'Stop!' Okita's raised hand cut him off mid-sentence again. 'Do not finish that sentence in my hearing, Mamoru-chan. What I don't hear, I don't have to lie about later.' She sighed. 'As it is they'll probably have to give all three of you a bloody medal after this.'

'I'm a civilian…' Mamoru began. His mother glared at him down her nose.

'Do not trade on that little get out of gaol free card too often, Mamoru. That's a situation that can be remedied at any time.'

'I'm too old to be conscripted,' he pointed out. She snorted.

'Not the way things are going, my lad. You'd be better off keeping your head down and your name out of dispatches from this point on.'

'Like that's going to happen,' Harlock muttered.

'Not helping, Albrecht,' the admiral told him firmly.

'Harlock.'

'Not according to your identity papers it isn't.'

'I think we can agree all of us might need to keep a low profile,' Mamoru interjected smoothly, wondering if anyone would notice if he gave his baby brother a much needed boot up the arse before he found himself busted down to ensign. 'But time's getting short if we want to put a lid on this situation. Mum - I know there's not much you can do officially, but Doppler's minions are running a major operation on this planet, and from the look of it, there's not much doubt this is the source of the rare earth and refined condensates being used to make the control circuits and containment fields for this plasma weapon. They also have several Earth fleet personnel used as slave labour down there, so we do have a reason to go in - it's blatant breach of the Article of Military Conduct.'

'By a private corporation, registered in colonial space, in an area we technically have no jurisdiction,' Admiral Okita pointed out. She sighed and reached for a bottle and tumbler that had lurked near her elbow since she'd sat down. 'Doppler and Zone also have close ties, and I don't need to remind any of you how tricky that gets. Zone's an arse, as is that CEO, Nevich, but between them they have a lot of golfing buddies on the council. Which means if - and I do mean "if" - we take this operation down, it has to go down completely, and we'll need cast iron proof Zone and Nevich are in this - if they're colluding with enslaving fleet personnel, I want to be sure we have them by the balls and they can't wriggle out of this on a technicality this time…'

'I can do that,' Mamoru and Tochiro said in concert. They shared a smile.

'...and it will have to be surgical. No grandstanding…' and here she aimed her glare at Harlock who shuffled slightly in his seat but said nothing. 'And nothing to say you were even here if it goes tits up. No uniforms, no ids. I can't even stay around to help you - I need to take my ships back to El Alamein and try to take out that plasma launcher. You're right about that - it's not a weapon anyone in their right mind wants in the wrong hands.'

'It's an indiscriminate weapon of mass destruction,' Harlock added, 'and in the wrong hands, as Mamoru pointed out, it's a planet killer.' His eyes narrowed. 'I hope no-one's thinking of "liberating" it and taking it home.'

'Not on my watch,' Mamoru replied. He kept a close eye on his mother's face, but saw nothing to suggest she felt any differently. Inwardly he sighed with relief. That was the problem with the military sometimes… the use of such a weapon would be all too appealing to many. His mother's integrity wasn't in doubt, but she was, in the end, a product of her training.

Even so, he still felt a tiny niggle at the back of his mind that refused to go away. He pushed it aside for now. One problem at a time. 'Closer to hand, Doppler Corp are already moving ships into position to evacuate. Do we let them go?'

'Not with our people on board,' Harlock growled.

Admiral Okita nodded slowly. 'I'd rather not - but it's down to "low profile". It wouldn't do for the Deathshadow to attack them - you'd be quite justifiably accused of piracy. And I can't leave ships with you to take them out. If fired upon, you can of course fire back - but under no circumstances are you to engage first, and I would prefer it if you didn't cause too many casualties. Plausible deniability, Mamoru.'

'That, I can do,' he replied with a small smile.

The admiral eyed her son up appraisingly. 'Your overall plan for the ground assault is somewhat risky,' she added, 'but under the circumstances it might be the only option.' She glared again at Harlock. 'You - try not to get your brother killed. Or maimed.' She leaned forward and leaned her chin on her hands, elbows on the table. 'You don't have the personnel to mount an attack, so I will leave you with about a dozen marines - I should be able to persuade that many to take some vacation days. And I'm leaving them under Mamoru's command,' she continued, raising a hand to forestall Harlock's objection before he could finish opening his mouth. 'Argue with me, captain, and you'll be hauling ass back to El Alamein with my fleet. I could use an assistant - mine's on maternity leave.'

Tochiro sniggered and quickly tried to turn it into a cough.

'You, however, are coming back with me.'

'Wha-? Wait - what? Why?' Tochiro's spluttering was mirrored by Harlock's. Mamoru's eyes met his mother's, and he nodded his understanding.

'Because someone has to take a good hard look at those rings and that plasma cannon, and work out how best to take it out,' Mamoru told him. 'It makes sense.' It also kept their best engineer and the one person the Nibelung trusted with their tech safer than letting him charge into the fray on Dis. Not something even Harlock could argue with, once he'd thought it through. Which he would. He was always protective of Tochiro.

The man in question however was frowning, deep in thought. 'I'm not sure you'll be able to, from what I've seen of Mamoru's footage and readings. It might be better to wait for the Deathshadow.'

'Any particular reason?' the admiral asked.

'Because… well… not to put too fine a point on it we did kinda fiddle around a bit with some of the stuff the Nibelung were showing us.'

'There's no dark matter engine on board is there?' Mamoru felt a little queasy at the thought.

'Nah. That'd need one of 'em to operate. But we did add some of the tech, and the ship has been parked on the docking rig next to the new ships for months. You could say it sorta rubs off…'

'Dark matter.' Okita stated flatly. 'Your pet project on Titan…' Both Harlock and Tochiro nodded. Mamoru felt like banging the back of his head against the wall, but settled for counting to ten before speaking.

'How does that help?'

'We charged the weapons with it. It negates plasma - or rather the excited quantum fluctuations of the photons. Like a fire extinguisher, only…'

'Bigger.' Harlock finished for Tochiro. 'It should also protect the Deathshadow against the plasma - she's been absorbing dark matter for months. Her hull's impregnated with it - you might have noticed she's a lot easier to patch up with her rolling hull-printer than most ships.'

He had, as it happened. He'd put it down to Tochiro's brilliance. 'Mother?'

She sighed and stood up, pushing her chair back from the desk. 'He has a point. But I'm still taking him with me. Mop up here, grab what you can, and we'll wait for you outside the system. Deathshadow's significantly faster than the Shinano or anything else in my fleet, so we won't be far ahead of you unless something goes horribly wrong.'

Mamoru sauntered over to open the door for her. 'You're not staying?'

'Can't. As you pointed out, we're up against it. Once you two start raising hell down there, I'm pretty sure they'll find a way to warn Shaitan, and that's far too close for comfort. Unless you can jam the communications?'

'I've got Maya working on it.' He kept pace with his mother's shorter legs as they walked. Behind, he could just make out the sounds of Tochiro complaining about being frog-marched off the ship sans Harlock as the pair headed off in the direction of their temporary quarters.

'Hmmph. I notice he wasn't begging me to take her off your hands and out of this…'

'Out of the frying pan?' Mamoru offered, defending his brother. Truthfully he'd had the same thought, but there wasn't much to choose between the two options, and the third - that Justinian might have been able to rustle up a ship and another of her brothers to take her off, wasn't likely given that the Rosenbachs were currently tied up on Destiny attempting to find a way out of the most recent impasse. They'd been lucky Manfred had been able to arrange for them to contact the Second Fleet. 'Besides,' he continued, 'I need her here. She really does know her way around surveillance and communications, as well as crypto. Who knew Phantom would pick a girl with a brain?'

Another snort. 'Well one of you had to.'

That stopped him in his tracks and he had to take a deep breath before he spoke. 'Don't do that. You know I hate it.'

She stopped and turned to face him. 'Really? We're doing this again?'

'You brought it up. Miranda's not some ball-breaking, career obsessed executive, but so what?'

'You could have done better.'

'I love her.'

'I like kittens - doesn't mean I want to be surrounded by them twenty-four seven and make every major choice in my life all about them. I might have understood if you'd gotten her pregnant and felt you had to do the decent thing...'

...like dad didn't? He thought, but wisely didn't say out loud. Instead he carried on walking, forcing her to keep up with him. 'You still don't get it, do you?' he asked softly, determined not to rise to the bait this time. It was always ugly, when she brought up this particular subject. Sometimes he thought it was because she saw it as a slap in the face, for both her lover and her son to marry women who were her polar opposite. 'You, and dad, and poor Henriette - it could be toxic at times. I just wanted something different for myself. Miri… she cares more about others than herself. You see her grace and her beauty and serenity as something weak? It's a strength, mother.

'You didn't see her when Nevich's men shoved a gun in her face and threatened to rape and murder her and our daughters. She didn't collapse in a corner crying and waiting to be rescued - she kept her head, and tried to keep the girls safe. She'd die - and kill - to protect them. She keeps the family together when I'm not there - all of it - mine, Phantom's, Tochiro's… she's the one the staff on the estate look to. Half the town comes to her for advice - so don't you dare look down on her because she doesn't solve problems by beating the crap out of people, or because she's happy running Schloss Greifenstein instead of taking a role on the Arcadia Engineering board or in its labs. My wife is plenty smart enough - she just doesn't see the point in trampling over other people to prove it.'

They were almost at the docking point, and the iris was open, revealing the long umbilical leading back to the Shinano. He nodded curtly in the direction of the opening. 'You know the way, mother.'

'Mamoru…'

He turned and began to walk away. 'I'm not doing this now, mother. We'll talk later. I'm tired of always having this argument. Right now I'm really not in the mood.'

He half expected her to call him back, but the only sound he could hear was the soft metallic clunk of their boots on the floor. Around the corner, he allowed himself to lean against the wall, and ran his fingers through his hair with a soft sigh, before straightening up and striding out in the direction of his rooms.

His brother was waiting for him when he arrived, seated in his chair, booted feet up on the table. For once, he couldn't be bothered to slap the offending black leather, and took the chair opposite. Harlock took his feet off the desk anyway, and pushed over a tumbler and the bottle. A half-filled glass already nestled in his right hand. 'You look like you need this. I'm guessing you had that argument again?'

Mamoru took both tumbler and bottle, but only filled the former with a finger width of the whiskey, which he then downed in one. 'That predictable?'

Harlock shrugged. 'She's like a dog with a Miranda shaped bone. I've never known her let a single visit pass without mentioning it at some point. You'd think she'd be over it after more than twenty years…' He reached for the bottle. 'She wants you back in uniform,' Harlock used his tumbler to point at his brother before downing the contents. 'That much is clear. I think she was kind of hopeful this time, seeing you out here, doing the whole battleship captain thing.' When Mamoru stared into the bottom of his tumbler, turning it this way and that to watch the scintillating scattered light that refracted through the remains of the amber whiskey, he leaned forwards. 'Dear god - don't tell me you have considered it?'

'She was right about one thing - conscription is a very real possibility now. Even for men my age. Even more so since I once held a commission. I find myself wondering if I should jump before I'm pushed - at least that way I might…'

'...control the fall?'

The brothers shared a wry smile. Mamoru placed his tumbler on the desk and sighed. 'Sufficient unto the day... ' he quoted softly. 'We have places to be, baby brother. Think you can take orders for once?'

'Hell no. Why do you even ask?' Harlock got to his feet. 'On which note I need to raid your armoury. I feel naked without a weapon…'

Mamoru stood, stretched, and made his way round to his own side of the desk. 'Move it,' he ordered with a smile. 'I knew there was something I needed to give you.' He reached underneath it and brought out a long metal storage box, placing it on the table gently. 'These, I believe, are yours?' He stepped away to allow his brother to open the box.

Inside, on a foam tray, lay Harlock's gravity sabre and his colt dragoon. His own Cosmo Eagle lay snugly against his left hip. He watched as Harlock lifted the Cosmo Dragoon from its resting place, and half pulled the pistol from its replacement holster. 'I thought these were gone for good,' he said softly. His hand brushed the butt of the pistol gently, and he slid it back into the holster smoothly. 'When they took these from us…'

'Manfred's people found them at a black market arms bazaar.' Mamoru waited whilst Harlock buckled on the pistol, settled it, and then reached for the sabre. 'That was our first clue you might have been taken alive - or at least that the Yukikaze wasn't totally destroyed.' The sabres were notoriously unwieldy. Mamoru reached out a hand and took the gun belt from his brother's hands. 'Oh for pity's sake… you always make a hash of this…' he fed the belt around Harlock's slim waist and fastened it in place, aware of the amused smile on the younger man's face.

'So now you're my squire?'

'Don't get any ideas,' Mamoru huffed at him. 'There. As neat and tidy as you'll ever be.'

Harlock settled the sabre into place alongside his leg, shifting the hilt slightly. 'That's better.' He met Mamoru's gaze with his own, the humour rapidly fading. 'So - when do we start?'

'Right about now,' Mamoru replied grimly. 'Didn't someone say Nevich was down there?'

'Oh yeah…' Harlock's smile returned with a fiendish, anticipatory twist of his top lip. 'Just remember - we're supposed to bring him back alive?'

Mamoru didn't reply, just turned and walked out of the room, the door hissing softly as it open and closed behind him. Harlock stared at the closed door for a moment and shook his head. 'Well… accidents happen, I guess.' The corner of his lip twitched again. 'Go get the bastard, aniki. I won't tell if you won't…'

Rather more slowly and stiffly than Mamoru had, since several bruises and strains were making themselves felt, he strode after his brother.