Note: Thanks to Pollywants for comments and encouragement during the writing process, and for allowing me to make references to her story "The Aristotle Transposition". As she says, there are many paths to Arcadia...

We have different continuities, but - in the Leijiverse, the rings of time often contain similar events and people, just playing out slightly differently...

Between a rock… and a hard case

Dis. 2965

Some days, you wish you'd never bothered getting out of bed. Others, the overwhelming feeling is closer to "why did I ever leave the womb?" Today was definitely shaping up to be the latter…

Case in point, I was lying on my back, staring up at the fused basaltic rock above me, watching the mica embedded in it sparkle like tiny stars in the slowly fading light of the lantern that lay tipped over on its side next to me. It seemed to be flickering in time with my pulse, which was worrying, because I was pretty sure that was slowing as the blood leaked out of the hole someone had poked in my side some time ago. I was - or had been - only a few metres away from the cave opening when I'd been jumped, but there was precious little light from that direction, despite it still - by my internal clock at least, though hell, I could have blacked out - being daytime out there, or what passed for it on a rock that was continuously blasted by hundred-mile-an-hour sandstorms.

I was gonna die here…

That sucked: big, hairy, steaming donkey bollocks. I was too young, too smart and too pretty to die. The universe had it wrong, right? Not here. Not now. It wasn't fucking fair. And I couldn't even scream in frustration, because I still had my rebreather over my face.

Oh. That beeping noise I could hear underneath my raspy breathing, the screaming, scouring wind outside and the slow thumpthump of my heart? That would be the warning that the filter was in need of changing, because of the bloody dust. It got into everything and needed changing every couple of hours…

It was going to be a race then, between bleeding out, and suffocating. Oh joy. And maybe the little goblin inside my right temple smashing my head with a pneumatic drill… And there was blood trickling into my right eye for the win, because my goggles had been knocked off my face by whatever had hit me. Bloody. Fucking. Marvellous.

…or then again, I thought, as I heard the unmistakable click of a blaster being cocked somewhere near my left ear, my problems were going to be over long before any of them got a chance to take me out…

'You're like a cockroach, Jones. What does it take to kill you?'

'More than your fucking goons had,' I spat out behind my facemask. My voice was cracked and harsh, and muffled by the filter, but he heard me, and knelt beside me to sneer into my face. 'Andreas Harken. Figures. Those guys were far too well armed for claimjumpers.' I coughed, and tasted the coppery tang of blood in my mouth. 'Just shoot me if you're going to do it. I haven't got all day.'

'No…' he drawled in that oily tenor I really, really hated. 'You haven't, have you?' He jabbed me in the side that was leaking onto the sandy floor of the cave with the barrel of his pistol, and I screamed as he hit what felt like an exposed nerve. 'I give it a couple of hours at most.' He poked me again, but this time I barely had the breath to whimper. I couldn't even curl up around my own pain, because I couldn't feel my legs, let alone move them. 'That's a nasty stomach wound, Jones. And I think it might have hit your spine…' He leaned over me, and through the transparent faceplate of his helmet I could see his golden nostril hairs inside his entitled, aristocratic nose. Idly I wondered if he had the same golden hairs growing out of his pointy ears. 'This is not a healthy planet for your kind, Jones, even if I did swallow that shit you told my men about being a freelance prospector. The gates of gloomy Dis do not stand open day and night for you…'

I coughed again when I tried for the sarcastic, witty reply, and all I could manage was to spit out a gob of thick, bloody mucus onto my own chin. So much for famous last words. I'm not sure even the death glare I tried for worked, since I was blinking blood out of my right eye.

He laughed. 'Hechi wanted you back for questioning, but it looks as though our beloved deputy chancellor will have to swallow the disappointment. There's no way you'll make it into orbit, and the ship I'm on doesn't have a sick bay. So it seems you picked a really bad day to die, Professor.' He stood up, and then lashed out with his foot twice - once in the side, although this time I didn't feel the impact. The second time he aimed at my head, a sadistic, satisfied smirk on his pretty face leering at me as he raised his boot…

…he jerked awkwardly, like a puppet on strings that someone had pulled on, and vanished from my line of sight. His pistol landed next to my face, still in his hand - although that wasn't attached to the rest of him, since it ended just above his cuff…

I heard footsteps - heavy boots scuffing through the sand on the cave floor, the occasional click of metal on stone when their owner hit a bit of the exposed floor. I blinked, trying to see through the red haze in my right eye, but the left one was getting just as blurry.

A black rebreather covered the face that blocked my view of the twinkling stone. Something kind of swooshed against my shoulder as its owner kneeled to get a closer look at me. Heavy fabric - a cloak? Huh. You didn't see those much these days. A clear visor covered the top part of the face I stared into. One dark brown eye stared down at me, the other obscured by a floppy length of dark brown hair.

'He's right. You're not going to make it, without help.' The voice was soft, but deep. Sounded slightly put out, as though I was somehow ruining his day. Well welcome to mine, pal… I'll wager it's worse than yours… 'A Jones, huh? And on this planet?' He shook his head as though at a joke only he knew the punchline to. 'What were the odds?' A gloved hand reached out and moved the filter from my face, and I sucked in a lungful of fresh air, mercifully not too dusty, although by then I didn't really give a flying fart. 'What were the odds…' he murmured again, staring at me as though he'd seen a ghost. Although maybe that was me, because I could have sworn that in the darkness, blue lightning flickered around him as he moved.

Then without any bloody warning or so much as a by-your-leave, the bastard picked me up, and I blacked out before I'd finished screaming.

It figured, I thought, when I woke up staring up into a bright light and a white ceiling, that if you died in Hell, you'd wake up in Heaven… I was breathing fresh, clean air, my brain was nicely fuzzed by the feeling you only get normally after a serious outlay of cash in a dark alleyway and some nice quiet alone time to enjoy the buzz, and best of all, I had pins and needles in my toes.

I tried to sit up, but a strong hand on my chest held me down. 'Easy, kid. You ain't outta the woods yet.'

Oh. Not Heaven then. I didn't think any angel would be over six feet tall and sporting more tattoos on his shaved head than I'd seen in many a mugshot behind Space Sheriff reception desks. But meaty paws pulled a soft sheet over my chest and patted the side of the bed amiably. 'You were in pretty bad shape, kid. Don't try going anywhere just yet. We ain't got much of a Doc but Maji's a dab hand with the equipment at least, and the ship does the rest. Captain says you might be okay to come off the meds in a day or two.'

Day or two? No! Leave the meds! I kind of liked the soft veil between me and the pain… but he must have dialled it back up again because I sank back down into the darkness.

Funny… it seemed to flicker with a weird blue light this time…

…a bit like that guy in the cave, I remembered, just before I went under.

'I know, my friend. He does look a lot like Con, doesn't he?' The voice was soft, and masculine. The man from the cave. I recognised the tone even without the rebreather muffling it. I couldn't place the accent though, and I'd been around a lot of dives in the past few years.

I looked over, but all I could see was one figure, standing by a door, arms folded, looking at me with a slight quirk of his lip on one side of a sinfully perfect mouth. The top of his head easily reached the top of the door even though he was slouching slightly against it, so he was easily well over six foot tall if this place was a standard configuration. Maybe closer to six five? And although muscled, tattooed bruisers didn't meet my expectations for angelic guides to the afterlife, this man did. Bloody hell, even in my currently comfortably numb state, I could see that. Long dark hair curled around the collar ring of his flightsuit, which was a stark black with a large white skull and crossbones on the chest. A long dark, jagged scar ran across his left cheek from under the patch covering his right eye to his chin, across a long, patrician nose, but it did nothing to detract from the impact of staring at one of the most beautiful male faces I'd ever set eyes on. And no, "handsome" would never be enough to describe this man. There was nothing effeminate about him though - he radiated a cool, decidedly masculine vibe that screamed "do not fuck with me" even to my befuddled senses. A predator, yes. I got that. But there was also an air of almost self-deprecating amusement hovering in the faint smile around that mouth.

It was a face anyone who'd spent any time whatsoever out here had seen, plastered around lamp posts, on walls outside of semi-derelict police stations, and regularly on the news broadcasts that the Gaia Fleet posted onto the warp feeds. Subject of more sexual fantasies than most actors or musicians could ever dream of.

'Captain… Harlock?' I'm not sure why it came out as a question, for fucks sake. But he nodded in reply. I tried sitting up, and although I felt as limp as a bowl full of noodles, I managed it, and looked around for whoever he'd been talking to. But we were alone.

I shrugged it off. Whoever it was had probably just slipped out before I'd had chance to see 'em, I guessed. But… 'Whaddya 'mean I look like "Con"? That was my great-grandad's name…'

A shrug. Minimal. Dismissive. 'I knew a Con Jones. A long time ago. Strangely enough, we met on that planet.'

'That's where my great grandad met Grandy Liz…' the words were out of my mouth before I thought it through. Because it had been a source of wry amusement that the trail had led me to Dis of all places. Though I didn't know the full story - Grandy had been real old when I was a kid, and she'd not ever said much more than that on the subject. 'You're too young to have known them though…' Guy looked only a few years older than my own twenty-seven at most. Well, at least until you looked into that single brown eye… I had to look away. There was something damned… Yeah. I'd stick with "damned". 'Yeah. Anyways, I'm grateful for the save, I guess. I just don't get why…?'

A shrug. I got the feeling he did that a lot. 'I had business in the area, and we picked up the signal from your runabout - and then Doppler's people came shrieking in, and all hell broke loose. They sent three battleships after you, for some reason - you must have really upset someone…'

I winced. He smirked. 'I've been known to have the same effect on those pointy-eared bastards,' he said eventually. 'After we took out the trash I just had to take a look - partly for old times sake, but also I just had to find out what had got Doppler's boxers in a knot…'

'Hechi,' I replied proudly. 'Not the psychotic man-child. It's Hechi who wants my head - and other parts of my amazing physique - on a spike. And by extension, Prague and Gudon. Though it seems all I rated was a Harken.'

'Thought I recognised the breed,' he murmured. He had a habit of looking slightly distracted, as though listening to someone and only giving me part of his attention. It was a bit annoying, to be honest. I expected him to at least ask me why, but he didn't. Just stood there, watching me.

'What you lookin' at?' I growled eventually. Not perhaps my smartest move, but if I was being smart, I wouldn't have been in this mess. 'You've got a pretty serious rep, but I figure you'd have just let me die back there if you were of a mind to see me dead. And I somehow don't think I'm your type…'

'No. You're really not,' he replied, and the ghost of an incandescent smile flickered around those lips for a moment, and was gone.

I huffed. 'Well do you like that. What am I, chopped liver?'

'Right now bruised, cut to pieces and looking like day old road-kill,' he replied smoothly. 'Don't take it personally. But even so - I prefer blondes, not blonds.'

It took me a moment to work it out. 'That,' I told him, 'Does not work as well as you think it does spoken.' Thankfully he didn't take offence. 'What will you do with me?'

'Not sure. Bringing you on board was something of a whim. You were dying, you know.'

Yeah… I knew. I pulled down the sheet and took a look at my side. A nasty scar - puckered and still red - marred my lovely chiselled abs on one side. Dark purple and green bruises covered almost every inch of skin. 'How long…?' I reached up to touch my chin, felt only a couple of days' growth of stubble. Had they shaved me whilst I was out?'

'Three days,' he said quietly. 'The ship… seems to like you.' I couldn't figure out from his expression if this amused him, disturbed him, or he just had indigestion. 'You're free to leave the sick bay when you feel up to it. Someone will be along with some fresh clothes shortly, and you can bunk in one of the spare crew quarters for now. We'll be a couple of weeks in transit to our next port of call once we're done here. I don't take passengers…'

'I can work my way,' I assured him. I'd never been a freeloader. I'd been brought up better than that.

'What can you do?' he asked, and I suddenly felt like a kid again, up in front of the headmaster.

I shrugged. 'Whatever. Wouldn't be the first time I've worked my passage. I'm a geologist - I've usually worked mining transports…'

'Including industrial mining lasers?' he asked.

I nodded.

'There's always work to be done around the ship - I'll let you sort it out with the first mate. If you have the stomach for it though, I can always use a good gunner.'

I could zap a bore like it was going out of fashion, but I'd never fired one on a ship full of people, and it must have shown on my face. He just gave me that minimal shrug again. 'Your call. If you want off when we reach the next stop, you can go.'

The door opened behind him and he turned to go. 'Just like that?' I asked, blurting it out.

'Just like that,' he said in that soft voice. And the door slid shut behind him.

The first mate proved to be a fat guy a bit shorter than me but boy had he let himself go to seed. His stomach hung over his belt so far I doubted he'd seen his feet in years. Beady eyes glared at me through thick glasses and he kept scratching at the striped sweater stretched over that expanse of belly in a way that had me starting to feel like my skin was crawling with bugs. Since it seemed to annoy him that I was taking so long to pull my boots on, I took it even more slowly than I might have done.

'So what's your name, rookie?' he asked. I told him, and he just grunted. 'Ali?' I kept trying, but he kept mangling it in his thick accent.

'No, A…' I stopped. What was the point? And somehow, reinventing myself didn't seem like a bad idea, even if just for a few days. It wasn't worth the hassle. I wasn't going to stick around, was I? I had things to do. Pointy-eared supremacists to kill. A brother to find…

…yeah. About that one. I buried it. Again. Right under all the other shit I really wanted to forget, but couldn't. 'So,' I said brightly, once I'd pulled a dark green sweater over my head and smoothed it down, belting it in place with the black leather belt he handed me, and giving the leather a tug to settle it through the skull and crossbones buckle. Most things seem to have that mark on them, but after what I'd heard, I figured it made sense - after all, Harlock was a pirate… 'What's for dinner?'

'Not much,' he grunted at me. 'There's a stash of MREs in the mess, we usually help ourselves. Unless you fancy tying on a pinny and cooking?' He smirked at me and I gave him my best imitation of his captain's couldn't-give-a-shit shrug, which had him baffled, but at least he let it drop. Bloody good job really, because I cannot cook for shit. Why would I? That's what take out is for…

I must have still been pretty woozy, because the walk from the sick bay to the crew quarters was one seriously dark acid trip. Someone had forgotten to pay the electric bill, because the corridors were dark and shadowy, the sconces on the walls and the high vaulted ceilings didn't so much cast light, as just jostle with the shadows for real estate. And weird blue lightning flickered around the edges constantly, like will o' the wisps leading you deeper into the gloomy depths of the ship. One time we crossed a narrow bridge spanning an abyssal chasm that dropped away beneath us into some dimly-glowing machinery over a hundred feet below. I'd never seen a ship like it, and by the time Yattaran - he of the ever expanding borders and bad accent - had dropped me off outside a plain door on a corridor full of similar apertures, I was seriously doubting my sanity.

I dropped thankfully onto the bunk once the fat bastard shut the door behind him. I supposed once upon a time these must have been officers' quarters, since there was only the one bed. After a couple of minutes staring up at the ceiling, I was bored, and decided to investigate my new digs. Not much to see - one bed, actually rather comfy. Head, with vibe shower and basin. And a small closet, which when I opened it, still had someone's clothes in it. Uniforms, mostly. And vintage at that - not Gaia Fleet, but Solar System. I pushed them back in and closed the door. The drawers in the small unit next to the bed still had someone's personal effects in them - a lieutenant Coyne. There were papers as well - printed on that old-style flimsy stuff you don't see much these days. A picture - one of the cheaper holograms showing a group of officers in those same old uniforms, one of whom bore a striking resemblance to the captain, only without the eyepatch. A letter from a - what? Wife? Husband?

Dated 2875.

I gave the drawer front a tiny push to close it and watched as it slid silently shut. Oh, I'd heard the stories. The Ghost Pirate Ship Arcadia, with its mysterious, immortal captain at the helm. But I'd figured it for the sort of stories you get out here.

I took a deep breath, and pulled out that group picture again. There were several people in it, all standing in what looked like the courtyard to an old castle. There was the captain, looking about the same age, but smiling full on at the picture-taker. Next to him a short guy with glasses, the crossed spanners of the Engineering branch on his collar flashes, and ditto a smiling young man next to him. In a hoverchair was an older man with Admiral's stars just visible on his shoulders. And there, on the end of the group, a red-haired woman and a blond man…

I walked into the head and stared into the small mirror above the little sink. I was still bruised and slightly swollen, but nowhere near as much as I should be. Slightly bloodshot blue eyes, too goddamned long hair, and if I wasn't careful the start of perma-stubble which was a look I didn't care for. But if you subtracted the damage… I looked down at the picture again. Yeah. Add a couple of years and a more regulation haircut, and that was almost me I was looking at.

I pulled out my own little keepsake - a large skull-backed scarab locket that had been passed down from my great-grandfather to me by way of my grandfather and dad. Yep. There they were - Grandy Liz and Great-grampaw Con… 'What were the odds,' I murmured to my ownsome, mimicking that lazy drawl of my rescuer. 'And just what were you two doing playing with Captain Harlock before he was famous…?'

'Too many questions are not always a good thing…'

I shrieked, because in the mirror, standing looking over my shoulder, was a ghost.