Harlock stood staring out of the leaded windows of the captain's room, a crystal goblet filled with a light amber wine in his left hand. Stripped to the waist and barefoot, he sipped at the glass absently as he watched the Arcadia's cannon fire at the drifting wreck of the Futatsuboshi floating off to starboard.

It only took two salvos from the main battery to completely destroy the little ship.

'The ship was too badly compromised to fly again,' Mimay said. She lay on the chaise longue in the centre of the room, draped languidly over the upholstery, a gold-chased goblet full of the same pale amber wine as his in one long-fingered hand. Reflected like a ghostly shadow in the windows, it was difficult to read her expression - but then her elfin features were always hard to read. 'Selen would not wish you to leave the ship for scavengers to find. It deserved better, after such long service.'

'And as a grave for her oldest son?' He drained the rest of the goblet in one go. 'I wish I'd been in time to save him. I wish to hell I'd never asked him to help…' He bowed his head.

'He was a fighter - like you, he wanted to do the right thing, to fight for what he cared for. Would you have taken that choice away from him?'

He had no answer to that. From its perch on the chair behind the desk, the black bird lifted its head from beneath its wing, stared beady-eyed at him, cawed softly and stuck its impossibly long beak back under its wing again.

'I remember Zero introducing us,' he said quietly. 'Blaze and Marin both, when Selen was recovering after what Geran did to her on Lar Metal. It seemed weird at first, him having sons my age - he never looked a day older than I am now until the day he died. The four of us went out and found a bar the brothers knew... The three of them were more like brothers than father and sons… or friends. Selen said later that was how things tended to work on Lar Metal - they'd played around with longevity, and the result was an odd society, which raised its children at a distance. They hadn't meant to be absent parents, but the rebellion…'

'Events can often get in the way of the best of intentions,' Mimay told him. 'Blaze and Marin were none the worse for it - they knew their parents loved them.' She raised her glass, a pale blur in her reflection. 'As do your own.'

'I'll settle for them forgiving me, one day,' Harlock replied sadly. 'And now, I have to tell Selen her son is dead, and Blaze, Rei, Dai and Kanna that I lost their brother… after we've already lost so many, will it ever end?'

'Not whilst life endures,' Mimay replied. She emptied her goblet, reached for the bottle and refilled it.

'That's… not really very uplifting…'

She smiled at him. 'Life… death… two sides of the same coin. As are sorrow, and joy. Laughter and tears. Without one, the other cannot exist. My race is long-lived, but far from immortal. We knew this long ago - to live without death is merely to exist. Without death, there is no change, there is stagnation. Without light and dark, there is only shadow. Without despair, what value does hope have?' She took another drink. 'What do you fight for, if not against the gathering darkness in men's hearts? What courage would you have in a world with nothing to fear?'

'Adversity does not make everyone a better person,' Harlock observed wryly.

'And yet,' Mimay replied, the ghost of a teasing smile playing around her tiny mouth, 'Here you stand, so determined that the examples set by others will not define you… Not Harlock's despair, not your brother's spite. Yet without them, where would you have been, when the Machines came for humanity? Or when that creature who still walks and breathes wearing my brother's body tried to use the souls of thousands to let in the darkness from beyond time? Who would stand between this Queen Rafflesia - this corpse flower, if not for the pain and loss which you stand in front of and always, always say "no more"?'

He let out a soft huff. 'You credit me with far too much in the way of both courage and intent. What I felt on that ship… on the bridge… it unmanned me. For a moment, something of that darkness leached through to our world, and it crawled over me like a leech, trying to make me give in to despair, trying to find what I feared most. It could not take our lives - I think… I think we have to surrender them to it.' He shivered. 'If not for Harlock…'

'Harlock?' In the mirror of space, her saw her raise her head to stare at him with her large unblinking eyes.

'Probably… I think our resident ghost saved me back there… either that or my inner space pirate has his voice and attitude. Thus far our worst-kept secret haunting next to Tochiro has only ever manifested here, on the anniversary of our Battle for Earth…'

'If this breach indeed touches that dark dimension, then anything is possible,' Mimay replied, a speculative tone in her dulcet voice. 'And no man - nibelung or human - before or since has ever been touched so deeply by dark matter. Not even you.'

'For that,' he muttered, 'I'm eternally grateful.' He turned and placed his goblet on the edge of the desk, deliberately avoiding a slate coaster by the tiniest of margins. He continued his turn to smile at Mimay, who stared pointedly at his delinquency and sighed heavily, shaking her head and causing ripples in her silky fine hair like water falling down her back. 'I'd better get dressed and get to the bridge before Kei sends someone to lock me in for the night. She seems to think I need to rest.'

'You do,' Mimay called after him, as he headed for the bathroom, grabbing a sweater from the bed along the way, to the complaints of little Trouble, who hissed as his blanket was gently slid from under him. She sighed again as he shut the door behind him, and drained her glass again. 'And yet… we would not love you so much if you were the kind of man to lie down when the universe tries to bring you to your knees,' she whispered to the empty room.

Almost empty. The bird regarded her with one beady eye, the rest of its head and beak still buried under a black wing.

'You do know there's sod all cover if we stay on the road?' Ben said as he dropped down lightly from the tree he'd been using as a lookout post. Sweat glistened on blue skin, and he pushed damp hair back off his face as he sat back down next to Ali.

'There's fuck all if we try to get into it any other way,' the burly crewman grunted. 'Take yer pick.'

'The good news is there don't seem to be many patrols - they've got everyone in the main street that I can see - but that smoke's coming from the street where the shop is, which doesn't bode well.' When Ali didn't reply immediately he prodded: 'Well?'

'I'm thinking.' Ali chewed his bottom lip as he stared down at the small town. He frowned, and rubbed the old scar next to his eyebrow. 'About two dozen men, well armed. They weren't expecting much in the way of trouble because they took out the electrics, and the town's cut off from three sides because of the flooding. Alliance uniforms - so these tossers are well outside their comfort zone. This isn't a legal op - someone's gotten creative, which means hopefully he'll be as twitchy as little Mii in a room full of rocking chairs…'

'They picked a time just after lunch - most people are out working - the town's pretty empty.' Ben added. 'That suggests they've had some advance intel. But what are they after?'

'Right now I don't care. It doesn't matter - I just need a plan to take them out - or at least distract them long enough to allow Selen to do something. You're from a military background - any suggestions, Blue Boy?'

Ben rolled his eyes. 'I left a military planet, remember? Free spirit and all that?' He grinned. 'I'm a lover, not a fighter…'

'Yeah, yeah… life and soul of the party, you are. But you grew up in a palace, yer dad's a major hardcase, and your bloody godfathers are apparently a selection of your homeworld's best generals - so don't try to sell me that crock that none of it stuck… the capn's the same breed - another sensitive little soul who hated the military, but he picked a shitload of stuff up by osmosis at the teat.' Beat. 'Besides - I've seen you fight, you dirty lil scrapper. You ain't helpless.'

Ben stared down at the town, a crinkle forming on his normally unmarked forehead, right above the bridge of his nose. 'There's a store for the old mine workings this side of town just before you hit the main road, isn't there?'

Ali took the monocular from where it lay between them and peered through it. 'There's a shed off to the right as you go in - off on its ownsome a bit?'

'Well, you wouldn't want explosives lying around next to a row of houses, would you?' Ben added tartly. When Ali turned to stare at him, he smiled sweetly. An answering smirk began to spread over Ali's face in reply.

'I think I see what you might be getting at…'

Ben patted his thigh. 'See - always knew you weren't just a pretty face, Ali.'

Irita watched from the side of the road as his men rounded up the town's handful of inhabitants. At this time of the afternoon, very few people had been around, since most of the workforce had been busy trying to contain the flooding. Tabito was a marginal world, according to Alliance intelligence - a former mining colony that had never paid off its initial investment and had subsequently been depopulated by the Homecoming War, and then by the Machine Empire's first conversion wave. Repopulated more recently by outlaws, rebels and malcontents.

Including the proud, but oddly quiet woman in front of him.

He was still unsure what to make of this woman. She'd apparently led a rebellion against her own mother, for unknown reasons, sixty years ago, in favour of eventually putting her younger sister on the throne - only to then rebel against that sister in turn when the woman had begun her drive to mechanise humanity.

She had to be at least eighty, but looked no more than thirty five at most. Her auburn hair was cut to shoulder length, and had no trace of grey. Her stillness he almost envied - the emotionless facade he tried to project came so effortlessly to her. Even under fire and in restraints, she simply looked at him with a calm patience that made him start to sweat.

As though she was just waiting for him to make a mistake.

'Captain?'

He turned to look at the speaker - one of the young women Shizuka had insisted on bringing along - an IntSec operative from her staff. Since most of them looked alike, he couldn't bring a name to mind. THey were all dark haired, slender and young. 'Yes?'

'Message from the director on the tight beam - they've acquired the targets.'

He nodded and smiled. 'Good. We'll soon be out of this flea pit.' He called Kiruta over, and the girl trotted up, clipboard in hand. 'Corporal - any success with the wanted lists?'

She nodded. 'Yes sir - seventeen men match the descriptions on file with regional Space Patrol offices as being fugitives for assorted offences - assault, theft, debt, tax evasion, embezzlement… deserters... '

'Is that all?' He tried to keep the disappointment out of his voice, but a snort from his prisoner suggested he hadn't succeeded. 'Something amuses you?'

'What did you expect? Murderers? Rapists? Pirates?'

'Since you consort with the latter, it's not an unreasonable assumption.' He pushed his glasses up his nose and strode over to stand in front of her. 'This planet is noted for harbouring a large criminal element.'

'Those who've made mistakes… who've had to run for their lives. Who want to make a fresh start.' She smiled, not warmly. 'Anyone who is a danger to others is not welcome. Any that slip through our checks, we deal with ourselves. We protect our own.' Her smile was cold now, her eyes icy as they bored into his. 'You, for example, are not welcome here.'

'And yet you seem powerless to deal with me,' he couldn't resist replying.

Her laugh felt like icicles running down his spine. 'Captain Irita - don't be so sure you've gotten away with this yet. If ever. I have a long reach…' she paused. 'Harlock's is almost as long, and we both have friends in high and low places. Something that in this area of space, I think you'll find you do not.'

'I've never needed friends.' He snapped it rather more sharply than he intended.

The look she gave in in reply was pitying. 'Needed? Or had?'

His attempt to ignore her jibe was derailed as both of them were hurled to the ground by a massive explosion. Face down in the dusty road, all he could do was cough and blink as a series of smaller explosions rocked the area. Shouts and screams from his men and the assembled townsfolk added to the confusion. Gunshots rang out, but in the confusion - and from his position - who was shooting at what remained a mystery.

The cacophony began to die down, and he was helped to his feet, brushed off and handed his glasses as confusion still reigned all around. 'Thank you,' he told his helper automatically.

'Don't mention it,' Selen replied dryly.

He blinked through his glasses. She stood in front of him quite unconcerned, and dropped the restraints at his feet. 'Nice try,' she added. 'But my husband and I always made a point of making sure we could get out of anything.' She paused, a nostalgic smile playing around her lips. 'When we wanted to…' She strode away from him, calling out orders. His men were quickly rounded up, and heavy, calloused hands belonging to a slab of muscle twice his width pulled his arms behind his back and clicked his own restraints around his wrists.

'Sit tight,' a deep voice rumbled. 'Boss will want to have words with you.'

Selen breathed a heavy sigh as she watched her people mop up the Alliance soldiers. A few of the civilian townsfolk were looking shellshocked, but apart from Marco and a handful of injuries, the casualties weren't as bad as they could have been.

She stared around at the mess. The ramen shop and the houses along the same row were all gone, still smoking. Windows all along the main street had been blown out by the force of the first blast, and she could see fires raging on the outskirts of the town - one large sheet of flame still rising along with a column of black smoke from the explosives store.

'A good diversion, but someone's going to have to replace all of that,' she muttered.

'Anytime, Boss!'

She recognised the voice before she turned to look at the speaker. 'Ali!' She smiled a welcome at the Arcadia's chief troublemaker. 'I suppose I should have known…'

'Hey - it worked!' He grinned at her. 'Figured you guys could take care of the rest if we just gave those pissant little tits a distraction. Your people are better motivated for one thing.'

She leaned over and gave him a peck on the cheek. 'Thank you. But there's another group, and I fear they went after the children. We have to…'

'Incoming!'

She wheeled round as Ben, his blue face now grey where it was covered by dust, called out and pointed. A small group was running down the main road towards them. Three of her men immediately took up the weapons they'd taken from the Alliance and pointed them at the runners, until she stepped in front of them and gestured for them to stand down. 'It's Blaze.'

Her son ran up and pulled up in front of her, breathing heavily. The two younger men behind him slithered to a halt and were rather more out of breath. Daiba… and Zack. She took in their haunted expressions and tried to calm her suddenly wildly beating heart. 'Blaze?' She took a step towards him. 'Rei? Kanna? Dai?'

'All safe,' he assured her. But the sadness in his eyes was almost tangible. 'But they got away, mother - I'm sorry.'

'They got the twins,' Daiba spoke up, breathless. 'They took Mamoru, Wattaru and Taro.' He was at that age, she thought, where he wanted to cry, but wouldn't, swallowing the tears before they fell.

'So much for your security,' Irita called out from the sidelines. He couldn't prevent a smirk from stealing over his face watching the horror dawning in their eyes.

'Shut the fuck up, you skinny four-eyed little shit.' Ali strode over and back-handed the Alliance captain, who was only prevented from hitting the ground again because the gorilla holding him kept a tight hold on his arms. 'This is your doing, I'm guessing? I thought you were a poisonous little shit when I saw what you did to Daiba back on Hakidame...'

'The Mazone took them,' Zack added. 'We have one of them.'

'Mazone, huh? What - one mouth round your deeply repressed virgin cock and suddenly you're giving it up and selling out humanity to a bunch of cabbages?' Ali sneered.

Irita straightened and looked the pirate in the eye. 'Jones, isn't it? I wouldn't be so quick to pass out the blame. If it hadn't been for a member of the Arcadia's crew "giving it up" we'd never have found the brats. Although apparently all it took was for an infiltrator to impersonate someone's younger brother... Tell me Jones - do you carry so much guilt around that something so pathetic could make you spill everything to a cabbage?' he sneering in turn.

Ali's backhanded crack across his face jerked him out of his captor's grasp and he landed on the floor in a heap, his glasses crooked on his nose and his lip smarting as blood trickled down his chin. A boot thudded into a kidney and he grunted in pain. 'Shut up. Just shut up! There's no way… no way in hell…'

Daiba watched, bile rising into his throat as Blaze and Ben both tried to pull Ali off the slim Alliance captain, both getting caught by flailing punches as their friend hit out indiscriminately, still screaming. 'Oh, fuck…' he muttered indistinctly, thinking back to a night just after their battle near Earth… the boarding pod… the Mazone vine that had compromised the ship…

...and the Mazone that had made him see Nana. When Ali had been getting in Harlock's face and screaming that it was his brother… not to shoot his brother…

...and he remembered this grey-haired man, in his cell on Hakidame, asking questions...

'Daiba?' Selen's gentle voice interrupted his reverie, and he stared up at her numbly.

'I think he might have told them something…' he replied miserably. 'But I think we both might have…'

Selen placed an arm around his narrow shoulders and held him close, not saying anything, as she watched Ben finally sit on Ali as her son pulled the Alliance captain out of the fray.

The mood on the bridge was still subdued when Harlock finally made his way up the stairs. As usual he walked past the skull-festooned captain's chair and made his way to the front of the gantry, taking his place behind the wheel. Sabu was at Yattaran's station, but Kei stood behind hers to his right, and gave him a weak but welcoming smile. Her eyes were red and a little puffy, but her voice was as firm and professional as ever as she ran down the list of business.

'Have we managed to make contact with Tabito?' he asked. Kei shook her head.

'Nothing. But even though we seem to be out of the worst of the warping caused by the explosions, we might have difficulty getting a signal out. I've tried Carmilla instead, since it's in a different direction. We should have Hannibal online anytime now.'

'Signal coming in now, Miss Kei!' Sabu called out from the opposite console. 'Putting it on.'

A hologramme filled the area in front of the wheel, obscuring the main screen from view. A tall, dark figure, mantled and hooded, bowed slightly. 'Harlock'

'Hannibal.' Harlock inclined his head slightly and folded his arms. 'It's good to see you - I just wish it was under better circumstances.'

'It seems we almost always talk only when we have bad news.' Hannibal's voice was deep and gravelly, hoarse and somewhat forced. Harlock had never met the man in person, but his shrouded form and hints Selen and Zero had let slip over the years suggested his seclusion and tendency to keep his body and face hidden was not an affectation. The man had once been a famous hero on Lar Metal - though the circumstances surrounding his retirement were a mystery. 'I understand you found the Futatsuboshi?'

Harlock quickly detailed the situation, and waited for a reply. 'I'd prefer to tell Selen in person, before we get home, but we've been having trouble establishing communication with the system due to the current anomalies in this sector. We were going to try again once we're en route…'

'It might not be purely due to the damage to space-time in your area,' Hannibal broke in. 'Your call came just before I was going to try to contact you. We've had a report from one of the ships patrolling the outer system - several hours ago they lost contact with Tabito. At first they thought it was just a glitch - there has been heavy flooding near the town. But when the Seventh Star didn't report in after landing, and they couldn't raise her, they headed in-system. I'm hoping to hear back shortly.'

Harlock exchanged a worried look with Kei. 'We're at least a week out, even if we red-line the drive... '

Hannibal's hooded head bowed slightly. 'I'm sending my own people, and given orders to two of the other ships in-system to head for the planet. But Harlock - we're not the only people worried - I had word from Destiny that the Cassiopeia pulled out of orbit leaving the Machinners' ambassador stranded with no warning, shortly after a message was relayed from one of their nearby listening posts.'

'Leopard's ship?' Harlock's sudden grin was almost incandescent with a feral glee. Kei punched him on the shoulder.

'Down boy. We've had three run-ins with Promethium's pet attack dog and he's almost had you each time. Didn't Zero warn you about fighting outside your weight class?' she whispered.

'I'm lulling him into a false sense of security…' he murmured back.

She snorted at him. 'Selen's known for years Promethium had some kind of watch set over the old ramen shop,' Kei continued out loud. 'It was her home - one of the few places she had fond memories of. Her adopted parents are buried on the planet as well - no-one really minded - it meant it was one place Promethium would never attack, so long as we treated it with respect. If anything happened…'

Harlock stepped closer to her, and placed his hand on top of hers, where it rested, clenched into a fist on the brassy surface of her console. 'Don't start imagining the worst just yet,' he whispered. 'We need to keep focused.' He turned back to face Hannibal's shadowy image. 'We'll be underway immediately. Warn your people the Arcadia will be coming in hot, and close.'

Hannibal bowed again, and cut the connection. Harlock, his attention on Kei, quietly gave the orders. 'Sabu - send someone to get Yattaran out of bed. Kei - set course for Tabito. Niobe - give Mimay a call, tell her…' The tell-tale clicking of dainty heels at the back of the bridge, heading for the dark matter engine, reached his ears. 'Never mind. Belay that. Mimay - prepare for IN-SKIP - maximum submersion. I want the fastest speed we can get without shaking ourselves to pieces.'

He left Kei's side, with a reassuring squeeze of her shoulder first, and took the wheel. 'My friend…' he whispered.

I can do it in four days… came the reply. But we won't be going far afterwards for at least a week. It's your call…

'What about five?'

We'd be drained still, but we could fight and give chase if we had to. Not fast, but we could do it.

'My children are there. And Daiba… Ali… Ben, Maji and the brats…'

Tochiro was silent.

Harlock gripped the wheel and bowed his head. 'All the speed in the universe does us no good if we're just a big target when we get there. Five days it is, my friend. I'm in your hands.'

'That's one hell of a tight course you want me to plot,' Kei murmured. She glanced back over her shoulder as Yattaran clumped heavily up the stairs yawning.

'I have faith,' Harlock told her quietly. He felt the tell-tale build up of power as the dark matter engine responded to Mimay's hands as they danced over the control globe. Faint wisps of blue energy - like St Elmo's fire - danced around the bridge, outlining the controls, the pipe-like soaring conduits for the engine, the pulley system in the walls, and even the crew - the blue fire strongest around Kei, Yattaran and himself, fainter around the newer members. Outside the bridge window, the view began to be obscured by the thickening dark cloud that surrounded the ship as it prepared to warp.

His hand glowed with it as his closed his gloved hand around the baluster of the wheel. 'Arcadia - let's go!'

Since the town gaol had been partially destroyed by the fires, and the Seventh Star didn't have a brig, Irita and his men had been moved to a makeshift facility in one of the abandoned mines. Blocked by a rock face on three sides and a quickly improvised - but effective - iron grill on the fourth, his fifteen surviving men and Director Namino now shared cramped quarters underground, lit by aging lamps powered by a generator which had seen better days, judging by the number of times the lights flickered or winked out for minutes at a time.

Rank having its privileges, he'd taken one of the cots provided, and currently lay back on a thin, lumpy mattress and tried to get comfortable.

He also hoped that the itching under his uniform was just psychosomatic, although he didn't put it quite outside the realms of possibility that the filthy, rough pad was already inhabited with a population greater than that of all of human space…

The architect of his current problems sat on the next cot, looking a little the worse for wear, her normally impeccable facade now dusty, torn in places, and looking a little bruised. Her captors hadn't been too gentle when handling her. Plus as time trickled by, she looked paler and more sickly every time he looked over. Almost as if she was wilting, he thought uncharitably, looking at her lank, tangled red hair.

His men had largely gathered in the opposite corners of their prison, ignoring their commanding officer.

'So tell me, director - was this according to plan?' he asked, unable to resist dripping sarcasm into his tone.

'If you'd done your part and subdued the town properly, we'd already be out of here,' she replied smoothly. 'You didn't even think to isolate that ship - you relied on the flooding to keep the town isolated, and under-estimated your opposition. And you totally failed to scout out the area before making your move - you should never have overlooked that explosives store - this was - and is - a mining planet. Selen caught you with your pants down when Harlock's men blew the explosives store. In short, not your finest moment.'

He gritted his teeth to hold back the immediate retort on his lips. 'Yet the children are now in the hands of the fleet, at least?'

She shrugged. 'They're on their way, yes.' She didn't elaborate as to which fleet they were being taken to. Assuming Cassandra delivered the boys alive and well to Rafflesia, her plan was still salvageable, even if the involvement of Mazone was no longer deniable.

She smiled secretively. It was a calculated risk, setting Irita (and by extension the Alliance) up as Mazone collaborators, but it served the same purpose as her original plan: distract Harlock, and set the rest of Human space against each other… Hopefully Harlock would deal with Cassandra - who could be relied upon at least to do one thing right...

… annoy the hell out of everyone involved to the point where she'd have no-one on her side.

Isolated and under fire, the military faction could be dealt with.

'Just what,' Irita snapped, 'Is so damned funny?' He'd lost his glasses in the scuffle with Harlock's men, and was peering myopically at her.

She allowed herself a little sigh of satisfaction, and settled back to wait developments.

He always loved the way Kei moved with him when they made love. Her hips arched to meet him as she kissed him hungrily, her hands wandering over the scarred muscle of his back, lingering at his waist and the dimple at the base of his spine, before her fingers explored his buttocks and her hands pulled him closer, urging him to go deeper, faster, harder….

He raised his head from where he'd been giving one perfect, hard nipple his undivided attention, and smiled at her as he gazed into her eyes…

Was it true he could see himself reflected in those cobalt blue eyes? Collar length dark hair, almost black in the candlelight of the room. A wide, generous mouth, a patrician nose and a long scar curving down his left cheek down to his jawline…

...his jawline…? Wait...

Kei smiled up at him. 'Oh, Captain…' she sighed.

He looked at her flushed face through another man's eye, and pulled away, scrambling off the bed and falling to the floor in a tangle of sheets...

'Harlock! Harlock!'

He sat bolt upright in bed, the covers falling to his waist, and struggled to get his bearings. Kei ran a hand through his hair to push it out of his face, and leaned her head against his shoulders, one arm around him. 'You've not had a nightmare for a while,' she said eventually. 'Ugh. You're all cold and clammy…'

'Fffhhht. You weren't complaining about me being all sweaty earlier,' he replied, deflecting on autopilot. He stared at his reflection in the window: collar length medium brown hair. A scar that reached to the middle of his cheek. Two eyes - even if only only of them still worked properly.

'Care to share?' she asked, ignoring his flippancy, as always. He loved her for it, but how to explain this one? "I was making love to you and turned into your old captain…"?

But she never gave up, which was another one of the hundred or so reasons he adored this woman. He tried the description on for size and tried not to wince when her eyes widened.

'Well… that's a new one,' she said eventually. She gave him a peck on the cheek. 'Not to mention slightly creepy…'

'For me or for you?' he replied with feeling.

She wriggled round so she was sitting in his lap. 'Both.' She twined her arms around his neck and settled into his lap, placing her cheek against his. 'When you first came round from whatever that darkness did to you on the Futatsuboshi, you said something about it making you feel your worst fears and insecurities… was that one of them?'

He didn't answer.

'Oh my love… I thought we had this out years ago. You're my Harlock…' She nibbled his earlobe and smiled when he responded. She shifted a little for the best spot to sit on and wriggled her hips just a little. His sharp intake of breath was gratifying.

'Kei…' he warned her softly.

'What? It could have been worse - I could have turned into him…'

'Oh Gaia - you just had to go there didn't you?' he pulled her closer. 'Not. My. Type. And certainly not what wakes me up at the equivalent of four in the morning…'

'You said that darkness - whatever it is - needed you to surrender, to give in before it could - what? Feed off you? Drain you?'

He nodded. 'The dark matter was drawn to it, but it wanted something else… something intrinsic to us… Fear was its way in, I think - well, fear and those little insecurities we all have. The magnified little dreads that creep into your head in the darkest hour just before dawn. You know the time when you lie awake and every tiny doubt suddenly seems like the most insurmountable problem in the universe…?'

'The one I used to get, wondering if I was just the rebound girl from Nami?' she asked softly.

He pulled her as close as he could and kissed her, gently at first, then demanding, until her tongue flicked over his and tangled with it. When he finally came up for air he stroked her hair gently, letting the silky strands run through his fingers. 'Never. You were never that.' He smiled at her. 'I thought we had this out years ago?' he continued, throwing her own words back at her.

She smiled. 'See. It works both ways, you dope. For the record, if he did show up whilst I had you at my mercy, the only thing he'd get is a flea in his ear - or a right cross. No-one gets between me and my Harlock…'

Her mock ferocity on the subject always made him laugh. 'Is that why you "accidentally" pushed Mimay off the bed in the middle of the night last week?' He smiled fondly at her when she adamantly refused to answer that one. 'Strange… He was better looking than me… more sophisticated… had that whole archangel ruined thing going on…' he teased.

She huffed at him. 'Fine. Maybe I should leave the two of you alone next time he haunts us.'

He kissed her again. 'I already have enough arguments about who gets to top...' He felt her smile into his neck. 'You know… it's not just the heebie jeebies that that hour of the night is known for,' he mused. 'Wasn't it supposed to be the time most people die?'

'If it was, there might be some ancestral mythical-memory-thing going on,' Kei replied thoughtfully.

'Is that a technical term?'

She bit his earlobe gently. 'Talk to a psychiatrist - or Doc - I'm just your wife.' She snuggled again. 'Not sure if all those old biorhythms still apply in space though… But now that you're awake, maybe you could distract me?'

'Can't sleep?'

She nodded. 'It's just… four more days… every time I try to sleep I keep seeing the boys and Nami.'

He felt guilty at that. 'And here's me scaring myself witless with pointless identity issues…'

'The inside of your head is a scary place,' she assured him. 'But I'm happy to reassure you that you are who I want you to be… if you'll take my mind off what might be happening on Tabito.' She looked him in the eye. 'I'm terrified.'

She hated admitting weakness, even to him. He wrapped his arms around her as tightly as he could. 'I know. I'm trying not to think about it. If I did I'd never get anything done.' But Selen and her people were there, and the Seventh Star should have landed two days ago… and who even knew to look for the children? Their names were known to only a few...

The communicator pinged at that point, and he felt like growling at it as he put it on speaker. 'Yes?'

'Yasu, sir. We've got an incoming communication.'

'From Tabito?' he asked, suddenly hopeful.

Yasu coughed and cleared his throat. 'No sir. It's not giving out a recognised IFF, but given that it's reaching us in IN-SKIP, it's powerful.'

'And it has our number…' Harlock muttered. 'I don't like people cold-calling. How the hell did they get our frequency? Keep the line open, we'll be right there.'

The woman whose hologramme stood at the front of the bridge was unknown to him. Tall, slender, with that willowy form that suggested a lack of a proper skeletal structure. Her black hair was long and swept back from a deep widow's peak. She wore - or perhaps it was just part of her - a pale teal green form fitting one piece that covered her from her long neck to her feet.

Her eyes were without iris or white - just black pits that reminded him of looking into one of Arcadia's portals - although if there were star-like flickers in those inky depths, they were far colder than the stars.

Her face had human-like features, but the resembled those of a cheap plastic doll - the nose was just a protuberance running down the midline of her face towards the scarlet slash of a mouth that had never touched food. For all that artificiality, there was nothing fake about the aura of disdain she wore the way Mimay wore her gauzy veils.

This one knows how to hate… was his first thought.

'Am I addressing the one known as Captain Harlock?' she asked imperiously.

One hand toying idly with the wheel he shrugged minimally. 'I have had that distinction,' he drawled. Let her work for it… 'Who are you, and what do you want?'

'Cassandra. Supreme Commander of the forces of Her Majesty Queen Rafflesia's fleet, all Glory to her name!'

'Fond of the sound of her own voice, in't she?' Yattaran sniggered from his left.

'I've heard of you,' he replied. 'Your name features quite prominently in some very interesting communications passed onto us by a lovely young girl called Sainess… Quite the little opportunist, it seems - when firing on your own civilians.'

'The words of traitors have no meaning,' the Mazone snapped. 'And those of aggressors against our kind even less.'

Harlock heaved a theatrical sigh, and tried to ignore Kei's eye-rolling next to him. He leaned even more casually against the wheel, a study in jaded ennui. 'Aggressors - against a race who were responsible for my mother's death? For the destruction of her life's work? For crippling my brother and putting a girl I loved in a life-support capsule for the rest of her short life? For murdering my family and driving my cousin almost insane?' He straightened, and stared straight at her image, all pretense of boredom gone. 'A race which has existed since the earliest days of life on Earth and always held a grudge against us? Who's prompting might well have led to the most sickening loss of life in human history?' He shook his head sadly. 'Tell me, Cassandra - who are the aggressors here?'

'You have fought and killed our kind!'

'In self defence or out of ignorance. Can you say the same?' he countered. She glared at him. 'You wanted to talk, Cassandra. Talk. Or perhaps I should bypass the flunky and go straight to the Queen - will she come to the camera and say hello? Or does she prefer to hide in the shadows ond only speak through puppets?'

Cassandra sneered. 'She does not lower herself to speak to vermin. The task of dealing with you was given to me. I have an ultimatum, Harlock - remove yourself from our path. What comes is no business of yours. Continue to get in our way, and you will pay a heavy price.'

'No business?' He stepped away from the wheel slightly. 'Protecting people is what I do, Cassandra. The Mazone threatened those I care about, and your queen's actions threaten everything.'

Cassandra smirked at the camera, her face flushed with triumph. 'Pull back, Harlock. Or what happens next will be entirely upon your head. What has humanity ever done to earn your loyalty? You're an outlaw. Exiled forever from your home and family, hunted for the pittance that would keep barely keep one Machinner alive for a year. You owe them nothing.'

'I don't do it for them,' he replied quietly. 'I have a home and a family. My loyalties are not to any government or people: they are to my friends, my family, my ship and my crew. I fight for them, and to ensure they have a future worth living in.'

Her cruel sneer grew. 'To your family, you say? How curious you should say that. How much would you sacrifice for them, I wonder? How far would you compromise your precious principles for their safety?'

Yattaran watched from the sidelines, a sick feeling growing in his stomach as the Mazone reached down out of the camera's range and hauled up two struggling figures. Another was wriggling in the arms of one of the ampeloi footsoldiers.

Wattaru, Mamoru and Taro.

'How far, Harlock?' Cassandra gloated. She handed the twins to her soldiers. 'I have your precious family, so what now? You can't find us to take them back by force… so what will you do?'

'You let them go, I might just let you live.'

The words were said quietly, but even from his vantage point Yattaran could see the grip the captain had on the baluster of the wheel he held in his left hand. The other was reaching out to lay a restraining hand on Kei's arm, as she gasped in horror and took a step forward.

'Bold words.' By now Cassandra was sneering as though it was going out of fashion. 'I think not. Back off, Harlock. Keep that abomination out of our way and we'll consider handing your sons back to you. If not... well... I'll start sending them back to you in pieces.'

'They'll never let them go,' Yattaran whispered, half to himself. At his side, Mimay sighed sadly.

'Do you really think I'm that stupid?' Harlock asked tightly. Under his hand the wooden baluster creaked ominously. A cold draft began to breeze through the bridge, ruffling his hair slightly. The ship's omnipresent heartbeat began to increase, and Yattaran felt goosebumps forming on his arms. He shivered.

'I think you might need some persuasion that I'm deadly serious,' Cassandra replied. She drew a knife from her belt. 'Hold one of them out.' She ordered coldly. Obediently the Mazone nearest to her held out the boy she carried. 'Which body part can they most do without, you stinking meatsack? A finger? A hand? An eye? Or should I perhaps geld him? I hear human males make good pets if castrated young enough. It makes them tractable.'

'You lay one hand on any of my sons and I promise you I will personally rip you apart and feed you into a composter!' Kei snarled at the screen and broke free of Harlock's grip. 'There's no place in the universe you'll be able to hide, you mildewed freak!'

Hearing his mother's voice the boy began to struggle harder, and the mazone holding him couldn't keep a grip on a determined nine year old. The boy fell into a heap, and Cassandra, furious, slashed down at him, only to be blind-sided by his brother, who wriggled free and leapt at her, trying to deflect the blade aimed at his twin. His gag slipped and he yelled as he jumped.

The result was utter confusion, and somehow in the mess, Cassandra's blade hit a mark, the camera quickly partially obscured by the bright spray of blood. Yattaran caught a glimpse of one of the twins clutching his face and screaming. Taro was wriggling frantically, kicking and biting at his captor, and the second twin - Yattaran couldn't tell which - was trying to hold his brother, and being dragged away by one of the masked mazone. On instinct, he left his post, moving quietly for such a bulky man, and stationed himself on the other side of his captain.

The entire ship trembled from stem to stern, and the roar of rage from the Arcadia was deafening, but failed to mask the sound of Kei's wordless scream of anguish, anger and denial. She leapt towards the screen largely on instinct, and only Yattaran's quick thinking allowed him to catch her before she leapt the rail to what would have been a nasty fall to the lower bridge. She thrashed and screamed in his arms for him to let her go.

Mimay had taken a step towards the captain, uncertain. Harlock simply stood there, silent, unmoving. Unmoved?

No. There was an audible crack and the baluster he held broke off in his hand.

The screen went dark, and with it Kei's desperate rage turned to anguished sobs.

Next to Harlock, Mimay took a sharp intake of breath.

Harlock handed the baluster to Sabu, who'd gone as white as a sheet. 'Fix this.' He stepped over to Kei and took her from Yattaran, holding her tightly as she fought to get free, until she collapsed against him, her sobs shaking her entire body.

'Shush, Kei. We'll get them back.' Harlock held her as tightly as he could, looking, to Yattaran's eyes, oddly helpless. He hadn't seen his captain look this defeated in… well…

He hadn't seen this captain look so defeated. But he'd seen the look before, in another man's eye. Just before he pushed himself out of his chair and began a maudlin, self-pitying rant against his fate.

Yattaran waited. Either for the storm, or the rain.

His captain raised his head from where he'd rested it next to Kei's. His single visible hazel eye looked straight at Yattaran, and the first mate shivered.

Storm it is then...

'Get us to Tabito, first mate. Now…'

'Tabito?' Yattaran scratched his head through his tatty bandanna. 'We ain't going after them?'

Harlock's face was grim. 'To go after them, we have to track them. Something they think we can't do.'

Yattaran opened his mouth to say that they bloody well couldn't, and closed it again as Mimay's long fingers closed around his arm. 'We need to pick up the trail, first mate,' she said in that soft, musical voice that had a way of plugging straight into his libido. 'So long as Mamoru's with them, we can find them, no matter where they go.'

'Mamoru?' he scratched his ass whilst he tried to process that one. 'But…'

'Dark matter,' Harlock said softly. 'We used the dark matter to save him when the plague…' in his arms, Kei gave a small cry, and he shushed her again. He picked her up in his arms and cradled her tenderly. 'The Arcadia can find him. There's a link between them. Get me to Tabito, Yattaran. We'll pick up the rest of the crew…'

'And then?'

Harlock was already walking towards the stairs, Kei held surprisingly easily in his arms, given she wasn't exactly dainty. 'And then, the Mazone are about realise that when it comes to aggression, I haven't even started yet…'

Yattaran stared at his captain's back as he walked away, ramrod stiff. He turned to Mimay, but the Nibelung woman shook her lovely head sadly and busied herself with the dark matter engines.

The only other person on the bridge now was Sabu, who stood with a dull-eyed look on his stupid face as he stared at the broken baluster in his hand. Yattaran reached out and took it from him, reverently. 'Well, fuck,' he muttered, as he went back to his station to start shouting orders.

Unbidden, without anyone at the helm, the Arcadia thrummed with energy and he thought - despite it being physically impossible - that he could actually sense the ship speeding up. Untended, the wheel moved gently, but purposefully, as though guided by unseen hands.

It felt like hours, shut inside a small room - if he could call it that - running water down the walls and a carpet of moss made it more like some kind of soggy tree-house. They put him and Taro in there, despite their screams for Mamoru, and just left them.

Then they'd come for them both, tied them up and frog-marched them off the ship, across some kind of wobbly anchor tube that looked as though it was made of rolled-up leaves - sort of green, see through and he really didn't feel like sticking a foot or hand through what looked like tissue-paper thin walls… He guessed they must have swapped ships.

Wattaru kicked and fought all the way to the door of the room they carried him to. Beside him, in the arms of one of the other strange green women, Taro hung limply. They stopped outside a plain wooden door, and the boys were dropped unceremoniously into the room when it opened. Once the door shut behind them, Wattaru reached out to his older brother. 'Taro?'

Taro groaned, and slowly opened his eyes to peer short-sightedly at Wattaru. 'I'm okay. What did they do with Mamoru?'

'Here,' their sibling's voice called out weakly. Both boys looked around, to see a small shape lying on the middle of three beds. On shaky legs they both ran over.

Mamoru's face was a mess. The cut across his left cheek had been neatly stitched, and his face was still streaked with blood. The right side of his head, covering his right eye, was swathed in a white bandage. Even so he reached out to his brothers. 'Hey, you two, don't cry. Dad and Mom will be along. These bitches just made a huge mistake, right?'

Taro, always the optimistic one, grinned and nodded. Wattaru just looked miserable, not even calling his twin out on his language for once.

'Wattaru?' Mamoru reached out to his brother, who flung himself at the bed and clutched his twin, sobbing.

'I'm sorry, Mamoru... if I hadn't run into her like that she wouldn't have cut you.'

Mamoru shared a look with Taro over his twin's head. 'Hey, she was going to cut me or kill me one way or the other. C'mon. We're Harlocks... we don't cry like girls, right?'

Wattaru looked into his brother's uncovered eye. 'But your face...' he wailed.

'I dunno,' Taro said chirpily. 'He looks like dad now!' He peered at his brother. 'Though mom's gonna totally freak when she sees it. How bad is it? Is it totally gross?'

'Taro!' Wattaru slapped the smaller boy's hand away from his twin's bandages. 'He's hurt!'

'S'okay. Hurts like hell but they gave me something. No-one will tell me how bad it is. Taro?'

Taro peered, his eyesight poor at more than three feet without his glasses, which had been lost somewhere along the way. 'Dunno. The cut's quite bad. Longer than dad's. Almost reaches your chin. Guess I'd better not mess with your eye. Might be okay under there?'

Mamoru shook his head carefully. 'Don't know. Didn't dare prod it. Mom always said to leave stuff alone. I think it's gone though. Feels kind of wrong.' He didn't add that the thought of that left him feeling cold and sick. The other two were going to need him to hold it together. Taro couldn't see shit without his specs, and although a scrapper usually got the snot kicked out of him in a fight. And Wattaru...

He sighed inwardly. Wattaru was wallowing in guilt so hard he sure wasn't going to be thinking straight. He always did whenever one of his well intentioned escapades went tits up and either he or Taro got hurt. Usually his response was to continue charging along headfirst and hope sheer momentum could get him out of trouble.

Months of enforced bedrest had given Mamoru far too much time to watch the people around him. There'd been little else to do other than read, and try to put on a good front to stop his parents from worrying. It had made him a lot more introspective than his impetuous twin.

Or as Uncle Ali had put it one night when he thought he couldn't be overheard: 'that one's a devious little bastard...'

Which when he looked it up, he rather liked.

'Listen. This lot are trying to use us to stop dad from blowing them to shit, right?'

Wattaru's eyes widened. 'You can't say...'

Mamoru cut him off. 'Can. Did. Get over it, you big crybaby.' Taro gave him his best what-the-fuck look, as Yattaran had called it, but Mamoru shook his head slightly at him, and tried to hide the wince at the pain in his eye. .. or where his eye had been. He needed to shake his twin out of his funk quickly, or the little dope would be angsting for days. 'Man up, Wattaru. Unless you've gotten soft with all that snuggling with Kanna...' he added slyly.

Wattaru blushed. 'That's none of your..'

Mamoru started chanting scornfully: 'Wattaru and Kanna, sittin' in a tree, k-i-s-s-i- ow!' He rubbed the spot on his arm where his brother had landed a pretty decent punch. He grinned at him. 'There you go! Found your inner Harlock!'

'Prick.' Wattaru snapped at him. Mamoru's grin got wider.

'See. Knew you had it in you. Now. Both of you listen up. We're trapped, but we can cause some trouble between us, right? I mean, it's every officer's duty to disrupt the enemy, in all those stories Uncle Ali tells us... and we're the sons of the biggest badass in space!' He looked at his brothers. 'Taro's even got the Arcadia's builder as his great-something grandaddy, so we're all kinds of awesome...'

'We're just kids,' Wattaru pointed out, not unreasonably. 'We're not ten for another six months and Taro's only eleven. Even if...'

Mamoru waved him off. 'That's what everyone thinks, but they'll think we're stupid and too young, right? I mean, we can drive hardened pirates nuts with a bit of planning, and they know not to take their eyes off us .. these skanky space hoes should be a walk over!'

Taro looked thoughtful. 'If I had some tools it would be better.'

'Would a knife be a start?' Wattaru asked innocently. The other two stared at him as though he'd suddenly grown two heads, and he gave them a mirror image of Mamoru's sly smirk. He pulled a slender knife out of his sleeve. 'I palmed it when they were fussing over you,' he told his twin, holding out the blade that had maimed him. He handed it to Taro. 'Will this help?'

Taro snatched it with an eager, conspiratorial grin. 'Oh yeah. That's a start...'

The three boys shared a triumphant smile that would have given their parents nightmares if they'd seen it.

More so if they'd heard the conversation a little later, when all three were cuddled up together. Wattaru whispered quietly; 'I just want dad and mom to come get us...' his voice trembled, and so did Mamoru's when he whispered back: 'so do I.' Taro nodded and Mamoru continued: 'But we have to be strong. It's okay to be scared, but we aren't gonna show it to them, are we?'

'I won't cry,' Taro whispered. He placed his hand over Mamoru's and Wattaru added his on top. The three nodded at each other silently, as if sealing a pact.

When Taro was snoring softly, Wattaru snuggled up to his restless twin. 'Are you really okay about this?' He whispered, placing his hand gently on the bandage that covered the injured eye.

'Hurts like fuck,' Mamoru said quietly, using a word that either parent would have had conniptions over hearing. 'I guess dad's scar isn't so cool after all.' He added.

Wattaru flinched slightly. 'Mom said our dead uncle did that to him. He hated dad coz of an accident and...'

Oh. So that was what was bothering him? 'I love you, Wattaru. I'd never hate you. No matter what happens, we'll all be there for each other. Always.' He hugged his twin as hard as he could. 'We're part of each other. How can I ever stay mad at myself?' And then because this was getting way too touchy feely, he added: 'Even if I do want to thump you senseless sometimes...'

'Jerk.' Was Wattaru's muffled reply.

'Crybaby.'

They grinned at each other, but there was no humour in it. Mamoru gave his twin another hug. 'We're going to be okay. Dad and Mom will come - they'll find us. We just have to find a way to help them.'

'I'm scared,' Wattaru whispered.

'Me too,' Mamoru admitted after a pause. 'It's okay to be scared. We can do this.'

He didn't add: we have to… that was pretty much a given.