'Look on the bright side,' Kei slapped Harlock on the back. 'No-one died and we didn't get dark-matter zombies coming up out of the ground…' She frowned and took a closer look at the ice-covered graveyard they were standing on, looking at the bulk of the Arcadia looming overhead, her hull still patchy and gaping with holes deep enough to see the infrastructure through, black wisps of dark matter smoking off her as she healed. 'Yet..' she added, stepping away from an outstretched frozen arm with a shudder. Kei placed an arm around her captain, and rested her faceplate against his. 'It could have been a lot worse, and at least it is healing…' She smiled. 'But if Daddy ever gets to hear what you did to his ride, you're going be grounded for eternity and change…'

'Well I'd know who told, wouldn't I?' Harlock shot back. He did manage a tentative smirk though. 'Still, it'd put a stop to the bitching about the furniture…' He shared a secretive smile with her, before he laid a hand gently on the hull. Dark smoky tendrils coiled briefly around his wrist, before dissipating, borne on the cold, icy winds that blasted the plateau. He turned to look behind them, to where the Futatsuboshi lay on the pain below, looking even tinier than usual. 'Marin and Blaze made good time. At least we won't be stuffed into the bullets for a week…'

'I've got crews on clean-up,' Kei told him. 'Though I have to say, it's going to be a while. They're hitting a few snags. Since there's nothing we can do about it other than get underfoot, what say we grab a couple of bottles from your stash and go and make nice with Marin? In the warm…' She shivered as another icy blast caused the front edge of her jacket to ripple.

Harlock shook his head. 'Later, but I will raid the cabinet first. Ali's been horribly quiet since the Futatsuboshi got here and Doc let him out of the med bay. Seeing his brother... ' he trailed off and stared over Kei's shoulder to the wintry horizon. 'There's a lot of hurt there, and even more guilt. Figured I'd stop by and lend a shoulder, one baggage-carrier to another…'

They headed for the open ramp of the Arcadia's hangar deck, in a companionable silence until Kei, halfway up the steep ramp, asked: 'What about Daiba? He looked a little shell-shocked after what went down in that room as well. Seems you all got a dose of guilt-tripping mind-screw from that thing.' She almost snarled the last word.

''That's in hand. I gave someone else a little push in that direction.'

Kei shot him a searching look, sadly lost behind her visor. 'You sound way too smug… what are you up to?'

'Up to?' His voice dripped innocence off every word.

Kei huffed at him. 'Oh - no. You do not get to use that tone with me - I know exactly what you're capable of when you decide to interfere… you can be a manipulative little shit at times. This is a Yama moment, isn't it?'

'Less of the little - and why is it you bring up my old name when you think I'm up to something?'

'Oh… I don't know - maybe it's because somewhere under the tight leather pants and the piratical swagger, the devious little prick who first came on board still lurks?' she replied sweetly.

'Kei!' His indignant reproach would have worked better, she thought, if he could have refrained from laughing slightly as he spoke.

'I know you… remember? Come on, darling - spill.' She stood in his way, tapping her booted foot on the metal floor, blocking his way, until he laughed out loud - then told her.

'Have you lost your mind?' she asked. He linked his arm with hers and led her towards their quarters. She shook her head and gave him a thump on the arm with her free hand. 'Honestly, if Ali finds out, he'll string Daiba up by his testicles if the kid does anything untoward - and he might just repeat the process with his captain - you know he's a little protective of those kids…'

'Not,' Harlock replied, 'after a couple of bottles of Andromedan bourbon…'

Kei sighed. 'No. But I might. They both need kid gloves.' She gave his arm a gentle squeeze. 'But you're avoiding - as usual. You just saw your childhood sweetheart get her face…'

'It wasn't her.' He interjected - rather more forcefully than necessary, Kei thought. As if realising he'd over-reacted he continued more quietly. 'It wasn't her. I know that. I'm fine.'

'Fine. Really? Seeing and knowing don't necessarily follow,' she sniffed.

'You worry too much.'

'That's impossible, where you're concerned. Would you rather I didn't care?' The smile he gave her was both affectionate and slightly bemused. 'Thought not,' she continued a little smugly.

'What I sometimes wonder is why the hell you do…' he teased. 'Given the whole "devious little prick" thing all those years ago…' He looked around at the battered interior of the ship as they walked, the floor lined with a fine coating of ash, and misty trails of dark matters oozing over the surfaces to repair the damage left by the invasive Mazone vine. '...plus the tendency to periodically trash our home…' he added.

'Just a fool for a pretty face and a great ass,' she replied with a laugh. She looked around at the mess and sighed. 'Though you do have a habit of being very, very good at leaving devastation in your wake. Days like this, I realise where the children get it from.'

'Not even Mamoru and Taro have wrecked a spaceship.' He paused. 'Yet.'

'It's the qualifier on the end that worries me,' Kei muttered. 'Give it time…' Reaching the heavy gothic doors to the captain's quarters, she gave the huge wooden doors a soft push and they opened silently. Once inside with the doors closed behind them they both stripped off the re-breather masks and the heavy outer jackets with sighs of relief.

Kei shook her hair out, running her fingers down through to the ends with a grimace. 'I need a shower.' Turning slightly she noticed a large lump in the middle of their bed - pale hair draped over a slender figure curled around the captain's black bird. She could just make out a small sooty smudge on the tip of the Nibelung woman's nose. 'But I think it might have to wait,' she continued quietly, with a fond smile.

Harlock looked over and smiled. 'She's exhausted. Hardly surprising since she and Tochiro had to do some tricky, delicate co-ordination with the dark matter and the self-repair mechanism to haul our collective nuts out of the fire.'

'Let her sleep,' Kei sighed. 'I'll pop over to the War room and take a look at that data drive we found. I'll set the computers to work on it and meet you over on the Futatsuboshi.' She gave him a peck on the cheek. 'I need to do something constructive…'

'Don't look at me,' he replied, putting on his best innocent face. 'I wasn't the one who hid your clipboard…'

There was ash everywhere. Hardly a space on the ship hadn't been touched by the invasive vine, and the attempt to destroy it had left charred debris everywhere. A fine, choking dust that was causing the air filters some difficulty in disposing of it, and every clean up crew was struggling to remove it, as every attempt to sweep, vacuum or otherwise remove it created clouds of fine dust which clogged the rebreather filters in no short order.

'Why don't you just turn the air on to blow, instead of suck?' Daiba had asked, after Cai had staggered past him, frantically trying to yank his mask off before he choked.

Maji and Yattaran just stared at him as though he'd grown two heads.

Patiently, he tried to explain 'It's just soot, right? I had a temporary job a couple of years back in a factory processing high quality carbon for several industrial uses - they stop it clogging the transport pipes by mixing it with air…'

'Air fluidisation… why didn't we think of that?' Yattaran muttered as he and the bearded engineer huddled over a console making some adjustments. 'All we have to do pressurise the interior and make sure each section then gets vented to space in turn…'

'...and not even a thank you,' he muttered, turning away with a sigh when it became obvious that he'd been forgotten. 'You're welcome.' Tired and worn out, he headed for his temporary quarters on the Futatsuboshi. It was, Harlock had informed them earlier, likely to be more than a week before the Arcadia was fit for human habitation again. Thankfully engineering, the bridge and the Central Computer room had been unaffected, and were ash free, but the living quarters - not so much. And the hull was healing very slowly, which was giving Harlock cause for concern.

The Futatsuboshi had a crew complement of around a hundred and fifty, at full strength. This time out she'd run on just under a hundred and twenty, leaving room for the Arcadia's crew, but her bunks were small and they were having to double up. Daiba arrived at his assigned cubbyhole to find it already occupied.

'Oh. Wrong room…' he started to back out, but Meg picked up a bottle of beer from the tiny table and waved it at him.

'No, it isn't. I just thought… the captain said you might like some company.' She held up a covered, sealed tray. 'And Anita took their kitchen staff in hand - we've got food. Not great, but a lot better than ready meals. Marin was muttering something about kidnapping her when I picked this up…'

He took the beer and got to work on one of the plates on the tray when it was offered. He sat on the edge of the narrow bottom bunk. 'Hasn't Selen been trying to persuade her to work full time in the ramen shop for years with no luck?' He peered at her before opening the bottle and taking a swig. 'How's the neck?'

She was just picking at her plate, and he gave her what he hoped was a pleading look. With some eye-rolling and a mock-sigh of "boys…", she handed it over and he shovelled it in.

She touched the medical patch that covered the cut. 'I'm tired and sore… but like you said, I'll live. It wasn't deep enough to do any real damage.' She took a pull at her own bottle. 'You know… you saved my life back there, and that thing was pretending to be someone you cared about, so if you needed someone to talk to - or not, we could just…' She waved her free hand around airily, and he almost choked on his beer when that handwave appeared to take in the bed he was sitting on.

She immediately waved off the suggestion. 'Oh. No. Not that… I didn't mean I wanted to have sex with you…'

He spluttered the mouthful he'd taken all over his lap and reached for a towel to mop up the mess. Once he had his breath and composure back he stared at her. 'That was a bit emphatic - What am I - chopped liver?'

'Were you going to drink that or shower in it?' she replied sweetly. He stuck his tongue out at her, making her laugh. Prickly girl… but funny when she loosened up…

'No, I just meant I wasn't planning on jumping your bones - not that there's anything wrong with them… I mean, you are seriously cute now your hair's grown back, and I could seriously consider licking you from head to toe and back again, but you're - well - after everything you've been through I guess anyone hitting on you would be kind of something you'd want to avoid, and - are you even listening to me?'

Yes… but somehow he felt like being contrary. 'Sorry - you kind of lost me on the licking…' he deadpanned, without a word of a lie.

This time it was Meg who choked on her beer, and he couldn't resist: 'Were you going to drink that or shower with it?' he asked sweetly.

'What I want to do is throw it at your head,' she growled once she'd stopped coughing, her eyes watering, jabbing the bottle in his direction.

'See, that's the Meg we all know and love,' he smirked. The expression was quickly wiped away when he noticed she'd started to chew on her bottom lip. 'Well - you're kinda prickly, but I would like the company.' If only to avoid the nightmares. Seeing Nana's face vanish into a spray of blood and… Yeah. Moving on. And it had been some slimy green stuff, not blood, since once the thing was dead, the illusion vanished in short order. Still. Messy.

'Look - I know I can be an ass, but I would like you to stay - even if it is because the captain said so...'

'Actually he just kind of suggested a bit vaguely…' she corrected, with a grin. 'But then I thought - what the hell?'

He rolled his eyes at her. 'Not helping, Meg - my ego might never recover…' He patted the bed beside him. 'Please? I can keep my hands to myself.'

He expected her to make her excuses and stay where she was. To his surprise however, she scuttled over and snuggled close.

Like a sister… Strangely, he didn't mind - in the bullet, he'd been holding her without thinking, after she'd been hurt. It had actually begun to feel comfortable. Natural… She didn't crowd him, and after so long without a caring hand, he found he liked the feeling.

'I know I can be difficult,' she began, speaking softly but still a little defensively. 'Doc says I have "abandonment issues" - I don't let people get too close. My parents left me and my brothers to die because they wanted to be immortal, and we were too young. And my brothers both died… then when Doppler's ships came and took us to the asteroid mines, it got so you never knew if you'd see people at the end of your shift who you'd woken up with. We'd huddle together in the dark for comfort, and sometimes the older ones would look after us. Sometimes they'd take our food, or the boys would take the older girls - and some of the little boys - away - for themselves or for the men, and we'd hear them screaming in the dark…' her voice had dropped to a whisper. 'Tadashi tried to protect us… did they tell you? He got some of us into a cargo container, but then they started dying. In the end, only me, Niobe, Tadashi and little Taro were left when Ali opened the crate after the Arcadia raided the ship we were on…'

He placed his arm around her shoulders. 'I've heard Harlock and Kei both say that ancient alien plant-women have nothing on the damage humans can do to each other. They have a point - these things can fuck with your mind and body, but it was humans who stuck me in that asylum and pimped me out to anyone who wanted to either beat the crap out of me or have a piece...But to be surrounded by corpses day after day… abandoned by your parents, enslaved and used and abused for profit… that's a whole different flavour.'

There were worse hells than his, and in a way, it seemed they weren't so different…

'Guess not,' she murmured, and he belatedly realised he'd spoken this last out loud. 'About earlier. It took some guts to make that shot, and I can't even begin to think what that cost you, Daiba.' she mumbled into his sweater. She sounded sleepy, and when he noticed the bottle start to slip through her fingers, he caught it and placed it alongside his own on the floor. Gently, he drew her a little closer - she was so tiny - and felt her relax against his shoulder.

'You're welcome,' he whispered into her soft curls, and was rewarded with a sigh and her hand on his arm. Very carefully he leaned back in the bunk, carrying her with him until he could pull the cover over both of them without waking her.

Huddled together in the dark? Not such a bad idea.

The licking however would have been a better one… Smiling to himself at the thought, he closed his eyes. Maybe having company would help if the nightmares came…

Just don't, he sent up as a prayer to anything listening, let me hurt her if they do...

In the war room of the Arcadia, Kei waited until the door cycled shut and the air purifiers kicked in to remove any soot tracked in with her, then removed her rebreather with a sigh of relief. 'Please tell me the guys have almost finished clearing the ship?'

Tochiro's voice over the comms system laughed. 'Thanks to Daiba, they seem to have a handle on it at last. A couple of hours to get the worst out, then we go over section by section to clear any nooks and crannies. Kid's got a good head on his shoulders, once he calms down.'

'Why does that sound horribly familiar?' She pulled the small Mazone chip out of her waist pocket. 'Shall we?'

A small console rose up from the console. 'In here,' Tochiro told her. 'I've created an isolated server for you, just in case - though my systems are on a dedicated system, there are still remnants of the old computers on my network.' A laser scanner ran up and down the small dumbbell shaped device. 'This is Nibelung tech… and recently created too - whoever these vegetables are, they've had contact with Loki's group in the last hundred years.'

'Why does that not surprise me?' Kei muttered. 'That body-snatcher has been at the bottom of everything piece of crap we've had to clean up since Earth. Dig deeply enough, and something pale green and nasty wriggles out of the hole…' She paused in the act of slotting the chip into the port. 'You know… that does raise a question…'

'About the Homecoming War?' Tochiro asked quietly. 'Yeah. It has been preying on my mind.'

'We know someone was pushing the human colonies past the point of collapse to trigger the conflict - what if this was all part of Loki's plan? So far everything he's done has been to reduce humanity's population, and keep what's left safely under control - and conveniently occupied with other problems whilst this gate opens. Manipulating Promethium and co-opting her mechanisation programme… the Deathshadow Plague… Even the creation of the Deathshadow ships back in your day fits…'

'Ah. That's the part where I start thinking I screwed up,' he replied. 'I trusted the Nibelung team, but if one of them was compromised… I was able to configure the Dark Matter generators to interface with human tech, but I was still reliant on my friends to build the damn things. Harlock trusted me, Kei. If I didn't spot a double cross, then everything that happened after…'

She laid a hand on the wall, the closest she could get to comforting the long-dead little man. 'If you were played, there's nothing we can do now. And I can't cope with someone else around here wading hip-deep in guilt, Tochiro. We need your A-game.'

'Heh. As usual, you're right. So. Enough navel gazing. Let's take a look at this thing. Stuff it in there, Kei - let's see what we've got.'

Marin held out a glass to Harlock, and picked his own up from a small table next to a comfortable chair in his comfortable - but cramped - quarters. With two armchairs - one of which held Harlock with Kei on his lap, there wasn't much room left. The rest of the space was taken up by a simple fold away desk and chair, and a narrow bed, neatly made.

Their host was a tall, young man - seemingly in his mid twenties, but he was actually a little more than that - he wasn't more than a year or two younger than Harlock's thirty-six. Long black hair curled down to his collar, with a tendency to fall over his left eye, and this, and its mate, were his father's blue. His long nose was Zero's as well, although the cheekbones and his mouth and chin? Those were Selen's… Harlock mused. His brother Blaze - a year younger - shared the same features to the point most people assumed they were twins. Blaze was currently assisting with settling down the Arcadia's off-duty crew, which left Marin with the meet-and-greet.

'You made good time - I expected you to take at least a week…' Harlock told Marin quietly, with a knowing smile playing around his lips.

'We had business in the area,' Marin replied smoothly.

'Smuggling?'

'Please! Free traders, not smugglers!' Marin's mock affront raised a short laugh from his guest. 'Like you have any room to talk, you pirate…'

'Please! Political dissident…' Harlock raised the glass in a toast.

'To my father,' Marin said quietly, and drank his back in one smooth motion. Harlock followed suit, and placed the glass down. 'You still miss him?'

'Don't we all?' Harlock replied quietly. 'He was like a brother to me, for the few short years we knew each other. More than a friend. We lost a lot of good people to the plague, but some haunt us more than others.'

'My mother probably won't recover,' Marin said sadly. 'She tries to hide it…' He took a long swallow from his glass and placed it on the arm of his chair, idly twirling it by the stem. 'I'm glad we could help, however. It makes a change - usually the Arcadia is coming to our rescue…'

Harlock smiled ruefully. 'We got caught with our pants down this time. This lifeform seems to have a nasty affinity for dark matter which renders most of my usual tactics not just useless, but actively dangerous to ourselves. My people say the ship should be liveable in about twenty hours, but we won't be flight-worthy for another week at least. I haven't managed to get this badly mauled since the end of the machine wars.'

'As dad would have said, that makes you kind of overdue for a warning - it could have been a lot worse, and at least you have some breathing space to get your bearings. Flying around in a damn near invincible battleship must make you a little over-confident - it'll do you good to remember you're not immortal…'

Kei snorted. 'Now you sound just like Zero…' But she smiled at the dark-haired captain and was rewarded with his brief smile in reply. She felt Harlock's leg move under her bottom, and stood up to allow him to stand in his turn.

'Places to be,' he replied to her unspoken question, dropping a light kiss on the end of her nose. 'I still need to drop in on Ali…'

'Saw him heading for the crew quarters,' Marin offered. 'Looks like hell, for the record.' He gave the pair a shrewd look. 'Just what went down on the Arcadia during this total charlie-foxtrot? Yattaran was mumbling something about women who burn like paper…'

Kei gave Harlock her "I'll-take-care-of-this" look, and watched him wander out of the room with his best insouciant aplomb before settling down to give their friend the shorter version of recent events.

Irita awoke. Through the blur he could make out that he was in his own room, his own bed. He stank of stale sweat and vomit, and something else that made his aching stomach turn over, though thankfully this time he didn't heave. The sheets were cold and clammy, and he shivered and tried to find a warm, dry spot.

He failed. Hating the sensation of damp against his skin, he tried to stand up, and failed again. His legs refused to hold him up and he landed on his knees on the floor, hands clenched into tight fists, the knuckles white.

Hands lifted him up, gently, and placed him on the edge of the bed. He sat with his head almost between his knees, heedlessly naked, whilst he heard someone pulling the sheets from the bed behind him. He moved when prompted. Sat back down when prompted. Allowed himself to be covered and pushed back into a prone position.

A puppet, with tangled strings…

He reached for his glasses, and found them where he usually left them, down to the centimetre. With trembling hands he placed them on his nose, and saw his nurse clearly.

Shizuka. The bitch had her hair tied into a tight bun at the name of her long neck, and he had to swallow back the bile again at the memory of that hair…

...he wanted his hands around that slender throat so badly. Despite his weakness he launched himself at the woman, determined to finish her if it killed him.

He had so little strength left, she should have easily fought him off. Instead, his hands found her throat easily, and she went down to the floor under his weight without protest, not even struggling when he tried to tighten his fingers around her slender neck.

And strangely, the touch of his skin on hers was invigorating, providing him with the strength he'd lost. With an effort he heaved her upright then forced her back onto the bed, straddling her and still holding onto her neck, his fingers digging into the skin.

She stared at him calmly with those haunting, seductive green eyes, and lay there, limply under him, choking for breath but not struggling to free herself.

'Why won't you fight?' He loosened his grip enough to let her breath.

'Because you need this.' she breathed. 'You've been poisoned, Irita. Not just physically. The Ampeloi can get into your head, twist what you see and hear, until you can't tell reality from the hallucination. And they feed… on your emotions, on your strength, your seed... '

He shook his head to clear it, and when the spike made a reappearance in his temple, wished he hadn't. 'Gibberish,' he sneered. He shifted his grip so that he pinned her hands above her head with his, holding her in place with his weight, only then becoming aware that he was still naked, and his crotch was pressed against her bare thigh where the white dress she was wearing had ridden up. Oddly, his body wasn't reacting to the contact.

'They're plants, Irita… like all such, they need a - "pollinator" is one word, I suppose. They are very specialised, and very addictive. Even with most of the toxin out of your system, you still feel the pull, don't you?' She shifted slightly, her thigh rubbing against him, yet his body still didn't respond. 'And unless I get this out of your system you'll always be drawn to them, and susceptible…'

'Lies!' He pulled one hand away and slapped her cheek, hard enough to split her lip slightly. 'Stop messing with my head…'

'Oh, I'm not the one doing that... ' she paused, and her tip of her tongue flickered out and licked away the trickle of blood on her bottom lip whilst he stared, unable to look away, and remembering that mouth on him… 'Well, yes, but sadly it's the only way to show you to yourself. And that's what you want, isn't it? To take back control?'

Her voice was sensual, but aggravating. Except…

Control. Yes, that he could get behind. Holding her wrists in one hand, he fumbled at the side of the bed in the top drawer, finally pulling out a set of cuffs which he quickly used to secure her hands…

...those long fingered, talented, devilish, taloned claws…

...to the uprights of the headboard.

The thin material of her dress parted easily even under his shaken grip, and she was naked under it. 'How does it feel,' he growled, 'to be on the receiving end, Director? To be helpless and forced to watch with your body not under your control?' He reached out his left hand towards one firm, ripe, plump breast…

...and his hand halted about an inch away from her skin, the fingers trembling with the effort, before his arm fell to his side, as limp as his cock, which resolutely refused to rise to the occasion.

'I never lose control, Irita,' she said softly. With a soft click the handcuffs fell away from her wrists, and she sat up, rubbing them. Without a word she slid out from underneath him and reached for a replacement dress - one she must have brought with her and left out of sight, he realised through the fog, as she pulled it on. He sat in a heap on the bed, confusion warring with anger and embarrassment.

'What did you do?' he asked dully.

She sat next to him, not touching. 'Nothing. That was all you - and it's not a side of yourself you're able to deal with, is it? All that cold control is just an illusion, and you had that stripped away yesterday. The truth is, you can't take control in a sexual situation - you just don't have the framework in place to cope with it. It means having to reach out and connect with someone, and that you just cannot do. Even if you think it's what you want, it isn't.' She picked up the cuffs from the pillow and dangled them in front of his nose. 'Look at you, all worked up and angry, but aroused? No. Not even close. Now - if I took these and chained you to the bed… we'd see a different response…' Her fingers opened slightly allowing the cuffs to fall into the drawer, which she then closed with a decisive push. 'Perhaps.'

'You know nothing…'

'I know enough, Irita. You've always been an outsider, you have no friends, no family, just your job. Hardly surprising in these times - humanity is after all spread so thinly, that normal has become the unusual for you. Family… relationships… sex - your demographics are so skewed it's a wonder any world not in the main five systems can still support a viable population. Birth rates are down not just because of lack of numbers or environmental issues, but because so many men are raised in isolation from their own kind - from women - that even if they get the chance to breed, many cannot. Is it any wonder so many younger men choose to become machines?' She looked him up and down. 'Frankly I'm constantly surprised you didn't choose that route.'

That assumption wasn't new, and it always irritated him. 'Because it's a crutch,' he replied coldly. 'You don't deal with a problem by running away from it. Those who voluntarily mechanise want an end to pain, to loneliness. They want to reduce the world to its simplest form, to take away the sharp edges and the fear. Feelings are messy, and inconvenient - but they are very human. We cannot fix the world by becoming what we are not, but by becoming better at what we are…' he broke off when he spotted the speculative look on her face. 'Get out,' he said, his voice suddenly loaded with weariness. 'Just go.'

He thought for one brief instant that she would refuse, but she stood up gracefully, re-arranged her dishevelled clothing, and left the room without a word, leaving his sitting slumped on the edge of a bed, his head in his hands, staring vacantly at the floor.

'Fuck off.'

Outside the door of one of the Futatsuboshi's crew quarters, Harlock leaned against the wall and hammered on the door again. 'Not happening, and where are your manners, Ali?'

'Fuck off. Sir.'

'Fine… I'm sure Yattaran and Maji would enjoy a genuine, Old-Earth vintage Laphroaig…' He stopped leaning and started to walk away, counting under his breath.

He got to three when the door opened. Ali stuck his head out, his short hair rumpled and sticking up at all angles, and sporting several days growth of stubble. 'You could have opened with that,' he muttered sourly. He held out his hand. 'Give.'

Harlock ignored the outstretched hand and sauntered past him, ducking under the outstretched arm blocking the doorway. 'I bought two glasses, Ali.'

'Yeah? I don't share.' He followed his captain into the room and glared at him through eyes that hadn't seen much sleep in the last few days. He eyed the bottle up covetously when Harlock set it down on the table and placed two small tumblers next to it. 'Am I supposed to just stare at it in awe or were you planning on pouring it…?' he asked testily. Once the tumblers had been blessed with the bottle's contents he lifted the one nearest him reverently to his lips. 'For this, you can stay,' he sighed. 'But no chatting.'

'Since when do I do chatty?' his captain drawled. Ali glared at him over the rim of the tumbler. 'Fine. Be like that. But if you want to talk about your brother…'

'Not about Phil.' Ali took a long swig of the amber liquid. He placed the half-empty glass back down and looked over at Harlock, until the younger man took the hint and topped it back up. 'But I'll tell you about that...that thing…' He shuddered. 'You know, they were creepy enough when they just changed form in front of us, but you have no idea what it felt like, having it crawl all over your brain…'

'It touched mine, briefly,' Harlock told him quietly. 'Something dark and old and unclean slithering over your mind in places no-one should ever go…'

'Exactly it.' Ali jabbed a finger at Harlock, then reached for his tumbler and took another swallow. 'I knew… I knew it wasn't Phil… that it couldn't be Phil… yet it played me like a bloody harp, Harlock. I knew it was wrong, that there was something not right, but I couldn't stop myself from responding, from taking it back to my cabin. It was like your brain just kept sliding away from the truth, like reality had been covered in some kind of rotting oily slime you didn't want to touch. And Gaia, Harlock… I wanted it to be Phil so bad…' He drained the rest of the glass and held it out silently again for a refill, which was duly obliged. 'You should have brought the Andromedan rot-gut…' he said with a harsh laugh. 'Wasting the good stuff on this…'

'Would you have let me in the room if I had?'

'Hell no!'

'My point exactly,' Harlock replied primly. He topped up his own glass, and swirled the liquid around gently, staring through the prismatic amber light thrown by the crystal facets. 'I'm at a loss, Ali,' he continued in his soft voice. 'We can't fight their ships, and to close with them physically risks being at the mercy of their mental tricks. How do we fight something like this? They're old… like the nibelung, they're a deadly relic of times long gone.'

'You could ignore them…'

At the sharp look from the younger man's hazel eye, Ali laughed harshly. 'Yeah. Never gonna happen, right? They made it personal for you when they killed the profs and tried to kill Daiba. They got me on board when that fuckin' weed got me spillin' my guts to the baby brother I… lost… decades ago. If they've been screwing with humans for millennia, then I say it's time for some payback.' He paused. 'They'll have a weakness, Harlock. Ya just have to find it - and that's what you do best - you prod, and poke and get in people's faces until they flip over and flash their soft white underbelly at ya.' He took a more appraising sip of his whiskey. 'I'm just scared I might have done the flippin', this time…' He looked away from his captain's shrewd singular gaze. 'It got me talkin'... for over an hour. Trouble is, I got no idea what my flappin' lips spouted.' He looked pale, drained, and a lot older all of a sudden, his usual bullish demeanor missing in action. 'None.'

'How bad could it have been, Ali? There's no proof it even had any way of transmitting anything it got from you - and what could you tell it? That we have a crew of less than fifty, and a Dark Matter powered battleship? Most of it is common knowledge.'

'Maybe… but I just got a real horrible sick feeling in my guts that tells me whatever it asked, it was your soft underbelly that I exposed.' He turned his harried gaze back to Harlock. 'A real sick feeling…' he whispered.

Harlock drained his glass to the dregs in silence.