The tunnel opened out into a wide space that dwarfed even the Arcadia's central computer room. The roof must have been a good two hundred feet or more above them, and the chamber itself maybe - at a rough estimate - seven or eight hundred yards in diameter, and as far as Harlock could see, perfectly circular. That was his first impression. The second was that in some ways, his comparison to the Arcadia's heart was truer than he'd realised. They stood in an open area of meadow which seemed to extend around the perimeter of the chamber, surrounding a perfect circle of trees, rather like the Arcadia's main servers surrounded the central computer core. Or rather, the Arcadia's central computer room resembled this glade, where the trailing cables and power conduits were analogous to the vines and roots that undulated above and across the glade's meadow, to where a massive tree stood, dwarfing its companions, soaring up into the dizzying heights of the chamber, its crown lost against the backdrop of diffuse, artificial sunlight overhead. The lack of a single lightsource meant that the trees cast no true shadows, just a dappled pattern that wandered and rippled across the grass as the trees moved in the equally artificial breeze, rather like being in the middle of a wood in summer on Mistral, Harlock thought idly. The image was completed by the pool Rafflesia had stepped out of, fern-fronded and clear.

The glade held other structures, he noted. A tall monument built of large stones stood to his left, whilst to his right, a large pool nestled at the roots of the central tree. Clear water, the surface dappled by the diffuse shadows cast by light falling through the branches, lapped against a gravelled bank as the low waves caused by a body moving through that water travelled until they hit a barrier. That body reached the bank nearest to them and stood up, the water reaching the tops of her thighs before she walked out to stand on the short grass and wait for two nymphs to towel her dry and tie a diaphanous garment around her that was even more revealing than Mimay's filmy veil. A third nymph placed a circlet of leaves around her head, bowed to receive it, and the woman straightened, and walked towards them, her head held high.

Beside him, he felt Daiba stir and heard a barely audible oath. 'Hold,' he ordered gently, raising his hand to forestall any argument. To his right, Kei moved closer, something he was always aware of, even if he couldn't see her. 'Are we standing at the foot of a slope?' he asked quietly as the woman approached, her still wet black hair covering what her clothes refused to.

'Seems level to me. Damn, she's tall…' Kei breathed. Even barefoot, standing a few feet away from them, it was clear the mazone queen was at least three inches taller than Harlock. The top of Cleo's would head barely reach her shoulder. In the dappled light that passed through the trees, her skin appeared a pale green. She moved, and the faint shadows made it look - for a moment - as though her skin was a light turquoise blue. An illusion only. As she moved out of the glade and into the encircling meadow, she was just normal, fair-skinned woman, her paleness accentuated by her black hair. Despite her height her feet barely left a mark in the springy grass, as though she passed over it rather than through it, not a blade broken or bent in her wake.

Harlock surreptitiously brushed the toe of his boot over the grass, and the left corner of his mouth twitched upwards. 'Really… illusions, even now?' he said quietly. 'Why not drop the pretence, and let us see this place as it truly is?'

She walked past him imperiously, head high, not even looking at him. She stopped at the piled stones and knelt at the foot of the heap. A pale hand reached out and rearranged the smaller stones around the base, where they'd fallen from the monument.

Not stones, he realised as he watched. They were uniform in size and shape, and a pale green in colour, with faint striations on the surface. If anything, they resembled a large ovoid pod. Before he could speak, she began to talk, her voice melodic but laden with weariness and bitterness in equal measure.

'Over a hundred years ago… Word had reached us, of the destruction of Earth, and the Gaia Sanction…' She stopped and stood up, the fabric of her gown flowing around her graceful form. 'Gaia. How dare they… How dare they? To defile her name with their actions. Our sisters - those who'd escaped the holocaust by the virtue of being on other worlds in the solar system - told of the lengths they went to to hide the truth. The ships tasked with placing the hologram projectors scuttled in secret, distant locations, their crews slaughtered. Rounding up anyone suspected of having seen the destruction. Anyone who spoke of it, or even whispered of it… And we who had watched, and waited, and hoped for a return to the world we were born on once the plague that was humanity was spent… we were forever exiled from our home.' She turned, knelt, and laid another pod on top of the structure. 'Eighty Earth years ago, a ship arrived at our new home. A ship of dark matter, not nibelung but human.' She placed another pod. 'Fifty years ago, a solar flare launched a plasma stream out into the darkness. One of our worlds was directly in its path, and so we evacuated - a few hundred ships, on their way to safety, were in the void when it hit. But when we dropped back into the real, there was nothing. Five worlds - five solar systems - gone, in the blink of an eye.'

''I've seen the readings,' Harlock said, his voice carefully neutral. 'Five nodes of time so close together that the chain reaction in the oscillators Harlock left there blew a hole in the space-time fabric in that area.' He took a step towards her. 'You had a choice though, afterwards - you built up your population again, you had the ships - you could have settled anywhere - there are more than enough planets vacant after Promethium's pogrom, after all. What you didn't have to do was set yourself a task of destroying everything you'd rebuilt - for what? Revenge? Some half-assed idea that you could pull Harlock's trick and remake the universe - roll back time and start again? Because in case it escaped you, those nodes of time - don't work that way…'

'Harlock…' Both Kei and Ben spoke together, but he raised a hand to forestall any warning.

'Rafflesia - you've driven your own people to the point of exhaustion, both physically and emotionally. They're tired, they're scared and they are raw… And your response has been to slaughter them when they start to become a nuisance. If you started out with the moral high ground, you threw it away. And for what? Your plan won't work the way you think it will…'

'And how would you know, child of an ancient line? Do you still believe everything that nibelung witch tells you? Your line… long prophesied to destroy us. The one-eyed Fury from our ancient legends… Breaker of Bonds, Destroyer of Worlds…' She turned away from him. 'If not for your ancestor, we could have returned home. If not for you, we could begin again. A universe… a paradise… an arcadia, without humanity.'

He shrugged, a gesture he'd refined over the years to just the right side of infuriating insolence, and pointed briefly to his very much present - if inoperative - right eye. 'Laying aside the fact that you just had to escalate this by kidnapping my sons, you might want to take a better look at your prophecies… right family - wrong vintage. But I'm not one to let the sins of my forefathers pass, Rafflesia. There is still time to put an end to this and find another way…'

She stood up, and towered over him, seeming to draw herself up to more than twice his height. Cleo flinched, sinking to her knees, her head bowed. Both Daiba and Ben took an involuntary step back in the face of her anger, as her black hair flowed out around her as though caught in a storm. Her voice boomed in the echoing chamber of the nemeton. Only Harlock and Kei weathered the storm, side by side, calmly staring up at the giant figure looming over them. 'Another way? What would that be? Would you have us settle on worlds unfit even for your kind? Eking out an existence until humans decide that those worlds, when fertile, would suit them better and this begins again? Would you speak of peace? Look around you and see the only peace left to us. Humans destroyed Earth, they destroyed our second home - and now you would have me put an end to the one thing that has kept us going this far? Look around, Harlock, and see what your "forefather" has left us!'

Her arms raised above her head as though in supplication, she turned her back on the small group of humans, and dropped them abruptly to her sides as though ripping aside a veil.

In place of the green glade, lit by soft yellow light and surrounded by trees, they stood in a dark, dank, muddy clearing, choked with weeds and surrounded by decaying trunks that bore no resemblance to any earthly tree Harlock had ever seen. The bark was twisted and flaking, revealing shapes in the murky light that looked like screaming faces, with bodies half-absorbed by the trees, looks of terror and anguish on each one. Branches that reached out in supplication had three fingered hands stretched out towards them. Cleo turned to look, horror on her lovely face, and sobbed as her eyes sought out and found one in particular. Ben reached down and helped the slight mazone girl to her feet, and he hid her face against his chest, sobbing. And the breeze that wafted through the nemeton was rank with the scent of decay, both animal and plant. The clear pool she had stepped out of was revealed as a stygian abyss that reflected no light.

Ben felt Cleo tremble in his arms. 'Cleome?'

Her voice was a hoarse whisper. 'It wasn't like this when I left… not like this.' She stared around the glade like a frightened rabbit. Her dark eyes widened when she stared at the black pool, as though seeing it for the first time. Then she turned her head rapidly, searching for something. A small inarticulate sound left her throat when her gaze alighted on one of the nearby trees, the face of a woman staring out of it eyes wide in perpetual terror. 'Tessius…' she whispered sadly. The word seemed to give her strength, because she straightened in Ben's arms, and pulled away from him slightly.

'Gaia…' Kei's soft exclamation went unheard by anyone except Harlock. He reached out and took her hand and gave it a slight squeeze. 'Did you know?' she asked in a whisper.

'Suspected,' was his laconic reply. Sub-vocally he added into his collar mike, 'Are you getting this?'

'In full surround,' Blaze replied over the comms. 'We're broadcasting via the warp at full blast on that frequency you got from that last bunch of refugees, for all the good it might do…'

'Just keep going,' Harlock murmured. He turned his attention back to Rafflesia, now simply a tall woman, staring around at the dank confines of her court where her attendants stood scattered around the grove in something resembling a state of shock, staring at their surroundings with the illusion finally ripped away. 'One last illusion remains, Rafflesia - are you going to continue to cling to it? Even now?'

'Would it please you to see what you already know?' she asked harshly. He shook his head.

'The land is the ruler… and the ruler the land. It's an ancient superstition in human history. But it was never about us, was it? A half-remembered thing from old times, a race memory of the mazone… Keep your illusions, if you wish. I've no need or desire anymore to humiliate you. Just to stop you. This universe is far from perfect, but it's the one we live in. What comes after is not for us, and what came before is inimical to life and light. The mazone are light, Rafflesia, even if living so long in the darkness you've forgotten that. You'll have to answer for your actions to the SDF, but no-one will make your people pay for your mistakes. If you stand down now...'

She laughed in his face, forcing him to take a step back. 'You think you can stop this? Look around you - your wife wants nothing more than to kill me, that young sapling over there stares around with hate in his eyes, and even the young emperor running away from his destiny thinks you should stop talking and kill me. Promethium has ordered her lap dogs to attack, and even your friends will destroy us if we continue. Your words are meaningless if others will not follow through on your rhetoric.' She sneered. 'And they tell me you're dangerous… the dread pirate Harlock, hero of the Machine Wars and the Deathshadow Plague stands before me, and all I see is a boy who would rather talk than raise a gun.'

'I didn't earn my reputation with my gun. And they're free to make their own choices. I won't force anyone to obey me,' he replied softly. 'But you… you lied to your people. You sold them false hope, and drove them out into the darkness in hastily grown ships, crewed by equally hastily grown clones. You fed them on lies and when they questioned, you tightened your grip until they would rather die than live in fear of your military hunting them down.

You could have led the survivors to safety - you knew this. The mazone have always lived among us, in secret. Often not to our benefit, true, but it could be done. Eventually there could have been a balance, had you reached out in friendship.' He stepped back, giving Kei's hand a tug so she followed him, stepping out of the circle of dying trees. 'But this… this isn't my fight. Not now. If I - a human - stop you, then it serves nothing - I'd be the human who forced you to do my will. This… this is something the mazone have to do for themselves. Here. Now.'

He released Kei's hand and stepped away from her with a sad nod, walking past her until he stood next to Ben, who still had an arm around Cleo. He reached out to the mazone, and smiled sadly into her black eyes as she stared up at him. 'Cleome, forgive me.' When Ben opened his mouth to object Harlock shook his head slightly. 'There comes a time in everyone's life when they have to make a stand, not knowing if they will win or lose, live or die, my friend. Sooner or later everyone has to stop running…'

Ben met his captain's eyes. Unless you knew, he thought incongruously, you wouldn't realise the right eye saw nothing… 'Do you know what you're asking of her?'

'Probably better than you do. Or at least as well. But in the end, we still have choices.' He looked down at Cleo. 'You can still walk away.'

Slowly, trembling, Cleo placed her tiny hand in Harlock's. Although over six foot he otherwise was not a big man by any means, his hand still dwarfed hers. 'Some of us,' she said softly, turning to Ben, 'Sometimes have to step forward and to give up our freedom so that others never need to.'

Daiba watched as Harlock walked Cleo over to where Rafflesia stood next to her pile of rocks, or whatever the hell they were. 'I thought they'd fight, or something. Why is he just talking? And what's Cleo doing?' The words tore their way out of him.

Kei laid a hand on his shoulder. 'What she has to, to put this right. Not all battles are fought with weapons or your fists, Tadashi. Killing Rafflesia or even defeating her in combat would change nothing. The mazone themselves have to change.'

'But…'

Ben placed and arm over his other shoulder. 'They're all linked, Daiba. Part of a whole - even the ones like Cleo - the "corpse flowers". Look at this place - with Rafflesia's illusion gone, do you really think this ship - and this grove or whatever it is - can be saved, and continue as the heart of what they are? It's dying, rotting from the inside out.'

'Blaze?' Kei quietly spoke into her comm unit.

'Yeah. The light around that thing just went out. The power readings are still strong though - the drive's using a lot of energy, probably to maintain the hull integrity and ship systems.'

'And possibly a few other tricks,' Kei murmured. 'What's the status of the other fleets?'

'Hoshino hasn't engaged yet; he's got the furthest to go. Mom's trying to talk my uncle down. Our people, Oki and Oedo are in the same stalemate we are - the ships are just sitting there, not talking. If they're listening or not, I've no idea.'

'Keep broadcasting. Even if this goes south they need to know we tried. It might be the only way to head off the disaster.' She tapped her ear comm to turn it off, and kept her eyes fixed firmly on Harlock, as he stepped back to allow Cleo to face her queen alone. The difference it attitude and size between the two women made it look as though it would be an unfair match. But then, she thought, people had a way of surprising you.

Harlock had made a career out of confounding expectations, after all.


Harlock walked a pace or two behind Cleo as she made her way to stand in front of Rafflesia. Compared to the queen she was a tiny, dainty girl, and the tall queen stared down at her with undisguised disdain. 'Out of all of them, I rather expected Papheo to challenge me.'

Cleo met her queen's black-eyed glare with her own, and refused to back down. Perhaps it had something to do with the tall pirate at her back. Or the young blue-skinned crewman. Both of them had a way of offering silent support without being overly obvious, or clinging.

Mostly however, it was the eyes that stared mutely out at her from the tree behind and to her left. Accusing. Petrified.

'She's otherwise engaged.'

Rafflesia laughed. 'Well at least I won't have to worry about the Hidden Ones. They were always a wild card. But you… Do you really think you can do this? You're little more than a seed.' Her gaze flickered over Cleo's shoulder to Harlock, who weathered the contemptuous regard by simply crossing his arms and staring back.

Rafflesia looked away first.

'So. This is the meaning, is it? To break the bonds of sisterhood? So you are emboldened to the point where you feel you can challenge me?' Rafflesia sneered.

'You broke those yourself,' Harlock said mildly. 'All I did was take back my children. Be thankful I'm willing to let Cleome settle this. Using my sons as pawns in your game was not a smart move.'

Everyone else in the chamber had their back to him, but all of them saw the colour - such as it was - drain from Rafflesia's face as he stared calmly at her, without a single sign of tension in his body.

And again, she looked away. She turned her attention to Cleome. 'Even if you succeed…'

Cleo unfastened her chiton and let it fall to the ground, and Rafflesia followed suit a moment later. 'We are One, let the whole decide,' Cleo said simply. She held back to allow Rafflesia to go ahead of her, and followed in the other woman's footsteps, until both vanished under the surface of the pool, the darkness closing over their heads without a ripple to mark the event.

Kei hesitated for a moment before trotting over to Harlock's side, with the two youths on her tail.

'What just…?'

'No idea, but whatever's down there, I don't fancy following them to find out.'

Daiba knelt at the poolside and reached out a hand. Ben's quick reaction to drop to his knees beside the younger crewman to grab the offending article, and Harlock and Kei's panicked "Don't touch that!' were almost instantaneous.

'There are,' Ben said pithily as he released Daiba's wrist, 'things you stick body parts into, and things you just don't.'

Kei and Harlock exchanged a look. Ben glared up at them as though daring them to say something. Kei's mouth quirked into a sly half-smile and Harlock did his best to look as though butter wouldn't melt in his mouth.

'It doesn't look like water.' Kei leaned over to look more closely.

'It isn't. It's dark matter.'

Everyone who wasn't Harlock took a few steps back from the edge.

'How can you tell?' Daiba peered at the pool again, this time from a position slightly behind Ben. 'Looks sort of oily…'

Harlock held a hand over the surface. 'Watch.'

After a few seconds, tiny wisps of blue smoke appeared, writhing around his outstretched hand, trailing in the wake of his fingers as he wriggled them. 'It's contained in a field I can't see, but I can feel it. Like pins and needles. Doesn't affect matter directly, but it's containing the dark matter, making it tangible.'

'Liquid dark matter?' Kei stared at the pool with a frown. 'I didn't think that was a thing - I mean not even the nibelung…'

'That Mimay knows of,' Harlock pointed out. 'And as we've found out, there's a lot about the crap her people were doing that she wasn't privy to.'

'Maybe. Could you just… move your arm? What if something grabs you?'

He smiled at her and pulled his hand away from the pool with a slow but exaggerated flourish. 'Don't worry. Safe now.'

'And how much of an effort was it to move it?' she asked, false sweetness in her tone and a tiny, almost imperceptible furrow between her eyes. When he didn't answer she laid her hand on his arm.

Ben stared down into the tenebrous depths. 'Do we understand the first thing about what's going on in there? I mean, I do get the primordial ordeal thing they've got going - but the whole primeval ooze thing is creepy - and how do we even know what's happening?'

'We don't,' Harlock replied in his quiet, slightly raspy tenor. 'We wait. An alien concept to some people, I know…' he looked directly at Ben and Dabia as he spoke, a half smile playing around the corner of his mouth. He placed an arm around Kei's shoulders and rested his head against hers when she leaned into him.

Ben grinned at Daiba. 'Fancy a hug?'

'Not the way your hands wander,' Daiba replied cheekily. 'You're a bloody menace.'

'You just don't know what you're missing.'

Daiba snorted. 'Trust me. I know exactly what you're capable of - why do you think I'm keeping my distance?

Kei leaned in closer to Harlock and tried to tune them out. Everyone, it seemed, had their own way of coping. She reined in her own impatience and desperation to get back to the Arcadia and her children, and let the sound of Harlock's breathing sink into her, trying to shut out the sounds of the mazone ship; the death-rattle of dead and dying leaves, the overhead creaking of branches moving in a wind she couldn't feel. Here and there she could just make out the high pitched mutterings of the handful of mazone handmaidens, clustered together on the far side of clearing as far away from the humans as they could get. The stick-like figures Harlock identified as leshy were bolder, darting nervously forwards to get a closer look at them, and scuttling away into the shelter of the gove's trees the moment anyone so much as breathed in their direction.

'They're scared of us,' she whispered. She felt Harlock nod, his cheek brushing the side of her forehead. She watched the little twig-men cautiously, noticing how small blue-green leaves sprouted from their brown, gnarled, gangly limbs. 'They remind me of those little centaurs on Tokarga.'

'Not so little,' he murmured back, and she laughed slightly. 'A whole new class of life, with creatures to fill most of the niches animals filled on Earth, long after they had gone. Or rather, a very old class, returned. Makes you think, doesn't it? How very young we are as a species…?'

She nudged him in the ribs, eliciting a pained grunt. 'Don't get caught up. We might still have to run with Plan B.'

'We have a plan B?' he deadpanned. 'Oof.' She smiled sweetly at him as he rubbed the rib her elbow had connected with for the second time in thirty seconds. 'At least the soldiers aren't attacking.'

'You have to wonder what they're waiting for…' Kei murmured.

The surface of the dark pool began to undulate, black waves lapping against the sides as they watched. Slowly, a figure began to emerge from the darkness. Black hair falling to cover a pale back, as the figure strode out of the pool, appearing to walk on the surface as she made her way to the bank opposite to the one the women had entered. A group of handmaidens rushed towards her and halter a few feet away, before sinking to their knees, their heads bowed in reverence.

There was a powerful crack from behind Harlock, and he turned in time to see the giant tree that dominated the glade split in two from crown to root. The light in the chamber dimmed, flickered, and did not return, except around the place where the woman who'd exited the pool stood, still naked, surrounded by her kneeling court.

A chant began, in a language none of them knew, bar one who'd heard it before.

'All hail the eternal glory that is Rafflesia,' Daiba translated, barely loud enough for the rest of them to hear.

'Shit.' Ben's pithy reply was almost spat out. He took a step forwards, his hand on his pistol. Harlock raised his hand and stopped him.

'Wait,' he ordered quietly.

Two handmaids rose to their feet with a graceful fluidity few women ever mastered, and reached for a chiton to cover their queen's nakedness. Then robed in green, very slowly, swaying slightly, the woman turned to face them.

Tall, graceful, filled with a serenity none of them had seen on her face before and illuminating the faces of those around her as she raised a hand, palm upwards to encourage them to stand, the mazone who had been Cleome smiled at them.

'All hail Rafflesia, Eternal Queen,' Harlock said softly. He dropped slowly to one knee, heedless of the muddy ground underfoot, and bowed his head. Ben immediately followed his example, Daiba a little more tardily and only when Kei poked him in the ribs before taking a knee herself as the queen stood before them, a shy smile on her beautiful face. Around the glade, the rest of the gathered mazone did the same. Soldiers stood forward and knelt in supplication. The shy leshy with their dangling limbs bowed awkwardly, almost falling over their own feet.

Harlock stood before Rafflesia reached him, sensing the others do likewise. Kei slipped her hand into his and he gave it a slight squeeze.

'Harlock.' Even her voice had changed. It was deeper, richer, and rang out like a bell. She smiled and inclined her head briefly, then turned to face Ben.

'Cleo?'

'I was,' she replied simply. 'And for your friendship, I thank you. All of you.' She turned back to face Harlock. 'There is still much to do.'

'Can you pull back the armada?' he asked. She nodded.

'Most of them - but you should know, after all that has happened, not all will follow my lead.'

'Most,' he added, quietly. 'It should be enough.'

'As you say. But without a home…'

He smiled, a fleeting, quirky, one-sided smirk that Kei knew all too well, and if she hadn't already been privy to his decision on this matter, he'd have gotten another elbow in the ribs for it. 'I think we might have a solution to that. You could say Sainess showed us what might be possible… and Niflheim.'

'Mind enlightening the rest of us?' Daiba muttered. He stared at the transformed Cleo - Rafflesia - in something approaching puzzled awe.

'Isn't it obvious?' Ben laid an arm around the youth's shoulders companionably, but didn't take his eyes off the new queen.

'Clearly not if you need to me ask the bloody question again, 'Daiba snapped back at him. But he didn't shake off the arm.

Ben smiled. 'Earth?' he asked his captain, lifting an elegant blond eyebrow.

'Earth,' Harlock replied with a sly smile.

Daiba stared at Harlock, open mouthed as the penny dropped. 'Bugger me. They're all going to bloody kill you if you try that!'

Harlock shrugged, and faced Rafflesia. 'I don't think this ship has much longer. Perhaps you'd care to transport the passengers and any other lifeforms that can be saved to other vessels, and we should return to the Arcadia to discuss our next steps in private?'

Daiba stared around, noting the increasing stage of decay that surrounded them. In the few minutes since Cleome had stepped out of the pool, alone, it had vanished, leaving only a dry dip in the surface of the glade, ringed by brown ferns. The smell of wet mulch filled the air, and the breeze that had ruffled Harlock's fine hair had dropped. The air was increasingly foetid, and still. In the centre of the glade the towering tree listed awkwardly, split in two, one side already creaking as it leaned ever closer to the far wall. 'Maybe sooner rather than later?' he jabbed a finger at the falling trunk.

'It might be best,' Harlock admitted. 'Your majesty?'

'I will arrange the evacuation,' she replied, her dark hair falling around her face as she inclined her head again in acknowledgment. 'I must speak to my people, and then I will join you.'


On board the Arcadia, the bridge crew watched as the light surrounding the Dorcas flickered and died, until the massive space-faring tree lay in space, a shadow against a shadow, the black globe of its carbon drive clutched in the talons of its roots. Blaze cut the feed from Harlock's transmitter just seconds after its owner cut the feed at his end, and the holo projector went dark. On the bridge, for once, there was total silence.

At least until Harlock's black bird, from its perch on the back of the skull decorate captain's chair, stretched its impossibly long neck upwards, raised its beak and let out and ear-splitting "caaaaaarkk"

Blaze leaned heavily on the wheel and sighed. Beside him Franz shifted slightly and rubbed his moustache, and Yattaran squirmed and began to scratch his arse, before hearing Mimay's trip-trapping heels on the deck, and stopping himself with a self-conscious grunt.

'Franz?' he asked quietly, without turning around. 'What's the fleet doing?'

The dark haired crewman peered at the readouts. 'Looks as though they're backing off - the civilian vessels are coming back this way - I guess to help with that evacuation. The military…' He punched up the image onto the floorscreen. 'We might have a problem…'

Several ships had powered down and were mingling with the civilian fleet, but one small group broke off and headed at full speed towards the Dorcas.

'Mimay…'

Her footsteps were already retreating to the dark matter engine before he'd even started saying her name. 'All hands - battlestations. Full speed ahead - get us between that ship and those rebels. Full dark matter shield. On my mark - Arcadia - go!'

He span the wheel to turn the massive ship back towards the dying tree. Several mazone warships peeled off from their support formation, and he pulled a face as he stared at the group heading towards them. 'Tactical!'

'They're not attacking' came the reply from the lower bridge. Martinez 'They're standing with us!'

'Tell them not to get in the way of the dark matter cloud or our weapons. Hopefully someone over there speaks standard.'

Streaks of energy lanced out from the lead ships aiming at the Dorcas, and Blaze turned the ship into their path, the energy dissipating harmlessly as it encountered the dark matter cloud surrounding the ship. 'Always a few ingrates,' he muttered. 'Kinda like the Machine Wars all over again…'

'You think this is bad?' Yattaran muttered darkly. He took his thick glasses off and cleaned them on his jersey - mercifully unstained for once, and pushed them back onto his nose. 'This ain't over yet, by a long shot.'

The Arcadia's oscillator cannon spoke, sending waves of fire arcing towards the enemy ships as the massive turrets ratched their way along the flanks of the ship.

Knowing some of the principals as well as he did, Blaze could only sigh inwardly. Aunt Yayoi's out for blood, Hoshino's got his nose stuck up her nanotech skirts, and my bloody uncle's an asshole martinet who'll follow his orders off a cliff...

Yeah. This wasn't over by a long way.

And that was before any of them realised what Harlock was planning...