I've seen a lot of strange things in my short life. Some of them without the help of copious amounts of home-distilled paint stripper or hallucinogenic drugs. But nothing like this.

It was almost as tall as me, and if the lights had been as dim in the head as they were in the rest of the ship, I might have passed it off as maybe one of the crew playing tricks on the newbie with the help of an old sheet and some spooky lighting. But nope, there it was, right behind me, blinking those big round cat-slitted eyes at me. It was human-shaped, for some degree of human, but that face… an almost non existent nose. A tiny mouth, and those huge eyes, the whole a kind of pale sea-green, topped off with long silky hair of a similar shade - blue or green I couldn't tell - one of those in-between shades they make such a fuss about on decorating shows on the daily warp channels. Eggshell. Yeah. I'd go with "eggshell", coz the skin had this translucent quality about it just like that - too smooth, hairless, poreless…

Alien. Except… there were no aliens. That's what they'd told us in school.

The ghost tipped its… Her. Definitely a "her"- unless ghosts had gender issues? head onto one side and looked at me like a little bird. I was still staring at the reflection, so slowly, very slowly, I turned round, wondering if it'd still be there when I did, and not be some weird phantom projection in the mirror.

Nope. Still there. Skinny, all wrapped up in a powdery blue flightsuit underneath diaphanous veils that floated around as she breathed, almost as silkily as her long hair, which rippled over surprisingly feminine - and pert - curves - over her butt to her knees…

'Harlock's right. You do look like Constantine.' That elongated head tipped over to her other thin shoulder, then she reached out a long fingered hand to touch my face, and I'd have back-pedalled out of reach if the basin hadn't rammed itself against my arse, preventing me from getting out of range. Her fingers were cool, but soft, and strangely articulated. Like too many joints… or none at all, I couldn't quite figure it out. The skin was like whisper soft silk, and when she drew her hand away I almost expected to see that my stubble had torn it, like silk rubbed against granite…

'What were the odds, right?' I croaked out, my normally dulcet tones sounding like a harsh croak compared to her bell-like soft voice.

'Now that,' she replied with what might have been a smile playing around that tiny rosebud of a mouth, 'is a very good question.' And then just like that, she turned and tripped-trapped her way across my new digs and out of the room, the door whispering shut behind the last wispy threads of her veils.

I sat down on the edge of the basin, being as it was the only thing in there to support me, and stared at that closed door for quite a while, before giving my head a shake, and making use of the shower. Someone had cleaned me up a bit in the med bay, but my nostrils didn't like the whiffs coming from various areas, I could definitely smell old, dried blood, and for some reason I felt an inexplicable urge to tidy myself up a bit.

'Mimay,' Yattaran told me after I'd plonked myself down at his table in the mess later. 'She helped to build the Arcadia, or so the story goes. Apparently she's the last of her race - the Nibelung.' He shovelled some instant ramen into his gob and around it tried to explain, but I couldn't watch him try and talk around a gobfull of noodles - it made me feel physically ill. The man really was a slob. Thankfully one of the other crew pulled his chair up from the next table over.

'Maji,' he told me, holding out a hand. I shook, and was beaten to introducing myself by Yattaran. 'Ali?' he repeated. I considered, sighed inwardly, and nodded. 'The ship's former Gaia Sanction, built before the war ended. There were four of them, but no-one knows what happened to the other three - and the captain's not saying. If he even knows himself.'

'And you know this how?' I wasn't trying to be snarky for once, it just came out sounding that way, but he seemed to get that. He grinned through his snazzy little beard at me. 'Yattaran and me - we both have a thing for old naval history and military hardware. I'm an engineer, he's more of a tinkerer, and likes model building. I just like reading about them. But somewhere along the way, something happened - we don't know what…'

'...let me guess: the captain's not saying?' I drawled. He laughed.

'Yeah. You got it, rookie. Anyway, they were built with alien tech. They use dark matter, and the ship's pretty much self-repairing and never needs to refuel. A side effect of all the dark matter is…'

I raised up the bottom edge of my sweater and checked out my fading scar. The one that should have been the death of me. 'It heals us as well?'

'Quick, inne?' Yattaran asked his crewmate in between shovelfulls. He jabbed his chopsticks at me. 'Don't rely on it though. It ain't always that reliable. We'd just been in a bit of a firefight so the saturation levels were higher than normal.'

I remembered something Harlock had said when he'd been watching me back in the sick bay. 'Harlock said something about the ship liking me…'

They exchanged meaningful looks. Both shrugged, and it was Yattaran who replied. 'He says stuff like that sometimes. Buggered if we can figure out what he means by it. He talks to the ship - and about it - as though it was a living thing.'

'There's an AI,' Maji added. 'Has to be on a battleship of this size and complexity, but he spends hours sometimes in the Central Computer Room, talking to it. But hey - I've worked on ships where the captain had worse habits.'

Yeah. So had I… But Maji was still talking: 'You don't go there though. It's off limits.'

'So how do you know he talks to his ship?' I asked.

'Because there's always someone who breaks the rules.' I almost spilled my noodles into my lap, when Harlock's soft voice sounded from behind me, which would have ruined Little Ali's day, since the water was not long off the boil. 'Jumpy, aren't you?' Tall dark and angelically - or demonically - handsome - murmured somewhere near my left ear. 'When you've finished your lunch, get someone to bring you to my quarters. I need to talk to you.'

The deck in the mess hall was rubber-coated so his boots didn't make much noise as he turned, flicked his heavy leather cloak out of the way, and sauntered out. I caught sight of a long sabre in one holster, and the butt of a pistol poking out of its matching twin on the other hip as he strode out of the mess.

Yattaran sniggered and elbowed Maji in the ribs. 'Well that's a first,' he cackled. 'Never known the captain ask for anyone to be sent to his quarters in all the time I've been on board.'

'At least he didn't ask for me to be washed and bathed first,' I muttered, keeping my face close to my noodles.

One of the crew was pressed into service by Yattaran - who didn't give me the impression he'd wander voluntarily around the several miles of internal corridors for fun - into showing me the way to the captain's quarters by way of the labyrinthine highways and byways of the ship. If the designer of this thing had ever heard of a straight line between two points, I figured it was only as a means to avoiding using one.

I thought we ended up near the stern, but I could have been wrong. The thrumming of the engines was deeper here, enough to make my lungs feel like they were going to vibrate their way past my ribcage. And tradition or not, you have to question the rationale behind putting the captain's digs right above the most volatile pieces of machinery - and its fuel - on a spaceship, right? I was left standing in front of a pair of massive wooden - wooden! - doors by a tall dark haired chap a few years younger than me, with a luxurious 'tache, who couldn't wait to scuttle off. One of the monstrously extravagant dread portal covers was slightly out of line with its mate, so I stuck my head through the gap and called out "hello?"

'Come in,' was the dry, softly spoken reply. For all that, the man's voice did have a way of carrying, I thought, when I slid in between the doors, not sure how to operate them and figuring squeezing through would do, and saw him sitting on the far side of a room much larger than I'd expected, behind a huge antique desk. A tantalus with three full decanters sat on the desk to his left, and he was leaning back in an equally ancient chair with a crystal goblet in one hand. I stuck my hands in my pockets and sauntered over to stand in front of the desk as casually as I could - no mean feat because I nearly tripped over the rug on the floor along the way, since the room was lit only be a few candelabra and freestanding fake candlesticks. The captain - and his desk - were positioned in front of what looked like the old leaded window of a sea-faring galleon of all things, although the view was strictly limited to what looked like a view of dusty Dis from orbit.

'It occurs to me,' he said, not even asking me if I wanted a drink, or to take a seat, 'that you might be able to bring your experience to bear on a slight problem I've got.'

I waited. He pointed to a chair after a few awkward seconds, a slightly mocking - self mocking - smile playing around the corners of that sinfully mesmerising mouth. Fine - I've been around a bit, and when you're on a long job, no broads and it gets dark and lonely, you'll take what's available and hey, I'm pretty open minded, me. Anyone who can deliver a mind-blowing BJ is okay in my book. But no man should have been born with that amount of unrefined sex appeal. It just ain't fair on the rest of us. Even what looked like the Universe's attempts to even things up by maiming that face hadn't done more than just highlight that sensual allure. Mind you despite that mouth, I had the distinct feeling this guy dropped to his knees for no-one.

I took the seat and hoped like hell that if he caught me staring, I hadn't been drooling…

'So?' I could do the cool as a cucumber thing as well, when I had to.

'So.'

Bastard. He was toying with me, wasn't he? I felt like a tiny rodent caught by a playful cat. I tried not to shuffle in my seat. He just smiled as though at a joke only he could hear and continued: 'Dis is a singularly unpleasant world - inimical to mechanical devices, but I have a need to place one on the planet surface. And in a place where it will stand a fairly good chance of lasting for another decade or so.'

I folded my arms across my chest and leaned back in what was a nicely upholstered chair. 'Well that's a bit of a problem, isn't it?'

He looked down at the display imbedded in the desk. 'What I've traced of your career has you raised on New Macedonia, and graduated with honours in astrogeology and mineralogy.' He looked up. 'You were very young to make full professor…'

I shrugged. 'It was dumb luck. Bad for my prof, who managed to fall down a sinkhole which opened up under his boots. Better for me. As senior research assistant, I was the best they could get at short notice - it was an out of the way school and I was cheap…'

'And yet a year later you handed in your notice and took ship outbound, and disappear from the radar until a couple of weeks ago, when my systems flag you up with a price on your head placed there by Doppler Corp.' He stared at me, then shrugged. 'Well… I rarely pry. But it occurs to me…'

'...that I might be able to help you place your doodad?' I finished for him, neatly sidestepping his next question. 'Depends on a few factors. Does it have to be precisely placed, or will anywhere do? Does it have to be above ground? And it ain't just the dust on that shithole - it's got a whole bunch of crazy going on near some huge super volcano that looks to have blown its brains out in the last hundred years or so - though how the hell that cooked off on a planet that should have been mostly quiescent…' I might have missed the look that crossed his pretty face if I hadn't been so fascinated by it. 'Oh…?' I leaned forward in my chair and smirked at him. 'Someone's got a story to tell?'

'It's hardly pertinent.'

I grinned at his very, very faint glare, as an icy self-control warred with a serious dislike of my mouthy 'tude. But I can't help myself, some days. It's what got me into most of the trouble I've found over the last couple of years. I'd normally have gone after that little chink in his armour like a ferret down the proverbial trouser leg, as gran used to say. Though I've no idea what a ferret looked like. Except… Yeah. whatever it was made him real uncomfortable. I settled for giving him my best professional speech instead. 'It is, if that volcano was triggered by something that wasn't tectonic. Natural causes I can predict within broad parameters. But if it cooked off because of man-made crap, then all bets are off. It could do anything. And that thing is still hot, captain. And I mean planet-busting hot, which might put even more of a crimp in your plans…'

He sighed, and ran a hand through his hair. 'Good point. It was a man-made disaster. Meshed QT fields exploded and triggered the magma chamber, back in 2871.'

'Quantum Tunnel fields?' I whistled through my teeth and sat back again in my chair. I tapped the arm of it idly, whilst I thought through the implications. 'Oh wait… let me guess - this was a Doppler Corp controlled world back then, wasn't it? Were they really stupid enough to play with their sand subs on this rock? Coz that's just plain stupid. All you need is one careless idiot…'

'Yes. Thank you for that assessment,' he drawled. 'QT fields meshing near unstable volcanic formations bad. I learned my lesson a long time ago and I can assure you better men than you never let me forget that one…'

Oops. I'd really hit a nerve. My bad… 'Well, as long as you don't make a habit of blowing up planets,' I replied chirpily.

Ever had that feeling that you've just put both your size elevens in your mouth at the same time and tried to stuff them past your tonsils? Yeah. You could have cut the atmosphere in that room with a knife, and it was like my words were just kind of… hanging in the air between us, and someone, somewhere had just taken a big, deep breath before whispering an "oh shit…" into your lughole. And there was that look on his face, gone so quickly I thought I'd imagined it, until a lot later (much, much later, as it turned out…) like I couldn't have said anything worse if I'd tried, and had just twisted a knife in an old wound. I made a last-ditch attempt to change the subject. 'So… what is it that needs to be put down there?'

He stood up then, and walked the few paces to the window, then stood facing out, reflected in the panes thanks to the light from all his candles. Without his cloak he was thinner than I'd thought - though maybe that was all the black. Tall though. Real tall. When I stood beside him after accepting his gracious invite to do so, he towered over me by a good six or seven inches. 'You have acid scars all over you, Doctor Jones. Tell-tale marks of a recent brush with large-scale industrial asteroid mining. A particular nasty practice I know Doppler Corp uses, despite it being…' he paused and smiled coldly, 'outlawed.'

My mouth had gone dry now, and I was glad he still wasn't looking at me, because I felt like a little mouse under a big paw. He knew… he bloody knew, somehow. My deepest, darkest sins…

'Captain…'

'I don't normally pry, Jones. But I do have standards. Hechi wants your head on a plate badly enough to send a lot of firepower after you, which might put you in the plus column, but I hear things, even all the way out here.'

I didn't need to ask what things. They kept me awake most nights, after all.

'How…' it came out as a croak.

'You have nightmares,' he replied softly. 'And on this ship, there's always someone listening.'

Fuck. Fuckityfuck with a side helping of fuck. 'Whatever story they've put out,' I told him, once I'd managed to wet my mouth enough to speak, 'it's not all true.'

'Ah.' The corner of his mouth might have quirked slightly in a brief one-sided mocking smile. Or it could have been a passing shadow. 'I know something about that…'

I took a deep breath. Let it out. 'I needed money. More than I was making on that arse-end of the galaxy trying to hammer the fruits of my brain into a bunch of ingrates still whining about being separated from the teat. So I went corporate, and figured "what the hell?" stick it out for a few months, move on. Never expected to sell my damn soul…'

'No-one ever does,' he murmured. But he'd set me off and once my mouth's off and running, it takes a lot to stop it.

'I knew the operation was dodgy. But I was cocky. Thought I knew what I was doing. The damn rock was big enough, and outside the shipping lanes…' It would have been. If someone else hadn't gotten cocky, and taken a short cut through the belt we were working. 'I screwed up. Didn't check the surveys properly, and the acid poured into a section it shouldn't have.' Fifty seven men and women that I'd worked with for six months… I still saw what was left when it poured through the bulkheads, sloshing around in the soup of body fluids and acid… 'Bad enough, but I'd weakened the shell of the damn thing, and it would have cracked and taken out the framework for the base we were living on in the belt, so I tried to move it…'

Oh… it had cracked. A five mile long asteroid with inertial dampeners on it and a bolted on drive can be moved easily enough, but when it's as fragile as an eggshell… 'I got it clear, but some idiot trying his luck at hauling refugees instead of freight had popped out of IN-space in the wrong place, and had decided to just carry on going on his new trajectory rather than use up valuable fuel and time course-correcting to the right beacon. Three thousand men, women and children stuffed into a hold on an ageing freighter, with minimal protection, and the chunk that hit them hadn't been the largest that broke free of the leaking asteroid, it had just been the one that was in the wrong place, at the wrong time… And at night, I still saw those broken bodies drifting in space…

'It was my fault. My responsibility,' I finished sourly. 'I got no excuses. If I'd done my job, it wouldn't have mattered that the damn ship shouldn't have been anywhere near where we were working. But they wanted a scapegoat, and I don't have pointy ears, so they threw me to the wolves. But then that hunchbacked monstrosity turned up and I overheard them saying the whole operation was going to be quietly "disposed of". No survivors, cover the whole thing up because if I went public with telling everyone how that process was standard operating procedure for them, it was bad for business.'

'So you led a breakout from one of their holding facilities and just happened to shoot the spiteful homunculus in the face?'

I grinned. That part didn't get old. I could relive that til judgement day… 'Hell yeah. Had hoped I'd killed the son of a bitch, but seems all I did was blow out his eyeball…'

His hand twitched - just a little, but he had it under control before it reached his eyepatch. 'Sorry,' I muttered.

'Why Dis?'

I shrugged. 'Why not? It was close, and I figured if I could get my little flyer under cover I could wait out a search, or they'd figure I'd gone down. Didn't expect to get bushwhacked - thought I'd run into some claim jumpers…'

'Hardly. Dis was - is - a resource rich hell hole. They wouldn't abandon it lightly. Seems you ran into a team trying to evaluate it for re-starting their operation there.' He turned back to his desk and called up a schematic of the planet, which hovered above the pitted, scarred wood and rotated slowly until he put a gloved finger out to stop the hologram. 'Here.' He had a deft hand with the holo-display, the image expanded smoothly to show the details of the area he zoomed in on. It usually takes me a couple of tries to steady it and get the right area in focus. I peered at the satellite image and grunted.

'Can you overlay the geo-survey, if you have it?'

'It's out of date,' he replied. And when he called it up, hoo boy was it ever. There was that caldera squatting on top of that magma chamber before some idiot - sorry - a younger and less experienced badass future space pirate - played marbles with a couple of QT subs…

'Huh. Well in that case, first off you need to un out of date it. I can't do squat with hundred-year-old data, mate. Especially after what you did to that planet.'

'Franz can show you how to run the sensors. Penetrating that dust storm isn't easy, but we've got the strongest sensor array you'll ever find.' Said without pride, just a statement of fact. 'If you're willing…'

He was still giving me an out, but I didn't take it. He'd saved my life - probably not out of altruism, but still. I owed him. What the hell. 'Just point me at it. I can't promise I'll have an answer you like, but I'll try.'

'All I ask of any of my crew,' he replied in that soft voice. I got the feeling he rarely raised it. I nodded, and just like that, I was quickly dismissed into the waiting arms of Franz - the be-ferreted young man from before, who led me to the bridge to earn my noodles.