I'll give Harlock his due - whilst I was staring wild-eyed at the rocky walls of the tube I'd bored, wondering when the business end of a sand-sub would end my short and to date rather inglorious life, he very calmly carried on setting the controls on his big bomb.

'Shouldn't we be - oh, you know - getting ready to repel boarders or something?' I hissed at him.

Without turning around he twisted a large handle widdershins and pushed it back down into its slot. 'We'll hear anyone boring towards us long before they get here,' he pointed out. 'Make yourself useful - start setting the shield - it's that left hand panel.'

'How the hell you can be so calm…' I muttered as I pecked away two-fingered at the console.

'Panic gets you nowhere,' he said mildly. 'What can't be changed should just be endured, until you have an opportunity to effect a change. Wait for the right moment, and what looks like an insurmountable problem can be easily turned to your advantage, not your enemy's.'

'Give me a firm place upon which to stand…'

'...and with a lever I will move the earth,' he finished for me. I looked up to see him grinning at me - briefly. Kind of a wry, self-mocking twist of his mouth there one second, gone the next. 'What might appear impossible, when the circumstances are right, becomes effortless.'

'Like Nodes of Time?' I asked.

'That's the hope,' he replied. With a grunt he pushed the cover of the control column back into place and watched it slide out of sight. 'How's my shield?'

'Up and running,' I assured him. I looked around. Funny… still visible from here.'

'Born a comedian, I see,' he replied dryly. He placed a hand against the wall and frowned. 'Damn. They're surfacing…'

Sure enough, there was that vibration again, only much, much fainter. 'That's good, right?'

He shook his head. 'If I'd detected a void in the rock with an energy signature, I'd head for the surface and send troops down the hole to take a look, not risk the QT field setting something off. That sub commander's smart, unfortunately.'

'How often outside of vid flicks are the protagonists conveniently dumb?' I asked, a little facetiously. He smiled.

'Not nearly often enough, but I'll settle for arrogant and overconfident.' He touched his commlink. 'Yattaran? Stand by with the hardsuits - I'm probably going to have company.'

'Ya think?' came the sarcastic drawl over the link. 'The sneaky bastards are using our own dark matter field to shield themselves on the bloody surface! I'd give them a shot from the cannon, but…'

'I'd rather you didn't,' Harlock replied equally sarcastically. 'Ending up on the receiving end of my own cannon wasn't on my to-do list today.'

I snorted. Harlock thumbed the link off. 'Like I said. Smart. So, Professor - you can use heavy artillery - how are you with handguns?'

I pulled the Arcadia-issue pistol out of its holster nestled against my right hip and checked it over. Full powerpack. Spares in the belt. Nice heft to it. Very gently, he reached over and pushed the barrel away from the direction I was pointing it in so it wasn't waving in the direction of his crotch.

'Finger off the trigger unless you intend to fire. And never point it at someone you don't intend to shoot.'

I flushed, because that gentle admonition made me feel about ten years old. I did know better, but… yeah. Until recently my life hadn't really depended on my gunfighting skills.

'Safety off, and brace yourself - they do pack a kick when you're not used to them,' he told me. 'Short bursts, and if you're not sure of your aim, just spread it about a bit. Even if you can't hit the inside of a barn when you're standing inside it, you'll make them flinch.'

'I can shoot straight,' I muttered. I watched the distant opening above us, wondering how long it would be before Doppler's guys began abseiling down the sides, SPG-style.

'Heads up display,' my new captain told me, not bothering to comment on my assertion. 'Night vision and magnification.' By now I just wanted to bury myself in the ground, but he didn't seem too put out by my lamentable lack of battle-smarts. 'I've got over a hundred years of practice plus OTC behind me - and had an older brother who was a bloody stickler for both gun safety and battle-readiness from the time I was five,' he said with a wry smirk playing around that oh-so-sinful mouth. 'I don't ask that you be perfect, only that you're capable of learning.'

'And if my learning curve's a bit too steep today?' I asked.

A shrug. 'It was my call to bring you down with me,' he said. He flicked his helmet control and the ornate faceplate covered his head. 'Just make sure you've got my back.'

Through the green haze of the night-vision mode, I could just make out the figures making their way down the sides of the bore, like little toy soldiers at this distance, but they were moving fast. The ropes snaked down to about twenty or thirty feet above our heads, a long drop but perfectly do-able in armour. Inside my helmet I mirked, found the targeting computer, and started zapping away at the dangling threads several metres above where they ended. I didn't, as Harlock had said, need to be precise - a sweeping blast sheared the whole bloody lot off about a hundred feet up, and they spiralled down like wet noodles to pile on the deck of the workboat. Harlock himself was picking off the Doppler commandos one by one with surgical precision using his sabre rifle, despite his own instructions; more I suspected to scare the shit out of them than for practical reasons.

He let a couple reach the end of their tethers without firing on them, and it was amazing just how quickly the remainder slammed the brakes on when their comrades screamed and bounced off the railings of the workboat and slithered over the side to land on the oscillator below it. With them dangling above us, unsure where to go next - because thirty feet? Yeah. You'll walk away from that one in power armour… a hundred feet? Forget it. And they were like fish in a barrel then.

A couple did make it, because I'd not quite gotten all of the ropes, and we faced maybe three - no, four men in carapace armour, although Harlock made short work of them with his pistol. For being one eye down, I had to admit he was one helluva shot, making each one count with barely missing a beat. But that eyepatch was a definite liability - the last one snuck up behind him on his blind side. I only just caught sight of the bastard myself, with barely time to shout a warning to Harlock and fire my blaster at the sneaky bugger. I missed, the beam hitting the sandstone side of the borehole and slagging it into instant glass. Harlock - with reflexes so fast they'd have done credit to a Martian sand-tiger, drilled him right in the visor of his helmet as he dropped and rolled.

'Shut your mouth,' Harlock advised me calmly as he got to his feet and holstered that scarily effective hand cannon in one graceful move. 'You'll catch sand-flies.' He reached out and flicked something off my shoulder. 'An ear,' he told me when I raised a quizzical eyebrow. 'And slap something on that cut before the blood runs into your eyes.'

'Cut? What cut?' I reached a hand up and managed to rub sand into the smarting slice through my right eyebrow. 'Oh. Oh. Ow!' Note to self: sharp glassy sand in a cut stings like hell. And scalp wounds bleed like hell. I tried to mop up the mess as best I could only to have my new captain tsk at me, haul a first aid pack out of his utility pack on his belt and slap something over it.

'Don't worry. I won't have to lend you a spare patch,' he quipped as I flinched when he poured something that felt like acid over it.

'Yeah? What about my face?' I grumped at him. 'I don't want my pretty face all scarred up…'

I think he might have slapped the dressing on a little harder than necessary. Oops. Yeah. Maybe that jagged slash across his nose and cheek was a bit of a sore point? Not to mention the eyepatch, although it just gave him a kind of roguish air that he rocked like it was going out of fashion.

'Man up, Jones. Yattaran will take care of that QT sub, but if there's a ship in orbit, I can't let it leave here.'

I guessed he couldn't at that. Any more than I could ever stop worrying at his scars like a dog with a rat. 'So how come the ship didn't just fix…' I gestured towards his face.

'This - ' and he touched the scar on his left cheek with a gloved finger ' -happened when I was even younger than you. Before we'd even built the ship. As for this…' and his hand strayed towards the patch but didn't touch it, 'the Arcadia's dark matter saturation can heal most wounds, but doesn't grow back anything you lose. So I'd be a little more careful of your body parts if I were you.' With that he turned his back on me and made his way back to the open hatch of the workboat. I got it. Conversation closed.

'Oh - and Jones?'

'Sir?'

'Clean off the workboat and the oscillator before you come aboard.'

I stared glumly at the assortment of scattered bodies and body parts. Well. Hell. It's a dirty job…I let out a heart-felt sigh, and got to work.

'And don't just dump the bodies - clean off the oscillator - blood and viscera in the works are a bad mix…' His voice floated out of the workboat hatchway as I rolled the first pointy-eared prick into the hole we were wedged above.

'With an attitude like that, how the fuck do you keep your bloody crew,' I muttered under my breath.

'And yet, here you are, doing what you're told like a good little deckhand…' the voice was so close to my ear I could feel his breath even as I shrieked and dropped a damp, limp arm on my foot.

'You fucking arsehole!' I reached an octave I hadn't hit since I'd turned fourteen. 'How the hell do you move like that?' I hadn't heard or sensed him cross the distance between the workboat ramp and where I was standing. My heart was beating out a tempo of my remaining life that was speeding up the day of my demise by far too much for comfort.'Someone needs to put a bell on you…'

My brain belated caught up with my mouth and asked me what the hell I was doing mouthing off to the captain… the man who could chuck me out of the closest airock (or just leave me on this dusty slice of hell…) if I stepped out of line for even the most minor of infractions. A lot of men wouldn't have taken even a fraction of the shit I'd just casually allowed to flow out of my mouth without thinking.

My own personal Lucifer just smiled - if you could call it that - a cynical, almost mocking twist of one corner of those lips. 'I think you missed a bit…' he nodded his head slightly in the direction of the body part I'd just dropped, and like that, just walked away again, still with that odd little expression on his face I couldn't figure out was amusement or mockery.

The total lack of communication must have given the QT sub commander something to think about. We made it back to the ship unmolested, and Harlock was striding out of the bullet and on his way to the bridge before my arse even left my seat. It took me a few seconds to untangle myself from the bloody seatbelt and follow him, and if my legs were a little wobbly it had nothing whatsoever to do with the speed of ascent out of that bloody pit I'd dug for us. Uh-nuh.

Maji held out a bucket as I left the little workboat.

'Whassat for?' I asked. I pushed it out of my face with a growl.

'Just in case. We just had the hangar floor cleaned.'

'Wise ass,' I growled at him. He sniggered, then patted me between the shoulder blades. 'Wait til he gets you flying co-pilot in a combat airlift,' he said with cheerily fake bonhomie. 'You'll be tossing your cookies for sure then, rookie.'

Since lunch was eyeing up the interior of that bucket and thinking "ooh… that looks comfy…" I made my way as fast as I could away from temptation. Nope. Wasn't gonna hurl. No siree. Not Mama Jones' little blue-eyed boy…

A few minutes later I guzzled from the bottle of water Maji handed me, gargled and spat into the bucket. He was kind enough to say nothing as he put the lid on and took it away. Me - I manned up and made my way to the bridge, an insanely long trek made worse by the fact that this capital class bloody battleship seemed to have been made on the cheap. Whoever heard of a ship this big without moving walkways for fuck's sake? So I arrived on the bridge just in time to hear the fat bloke - Yattaran - bellowing orders down at the laggards on the lower bridge from his post on the upper gantry.

I poked a big guy who wouldn't look out of place in a few street gangs I knew of - shaven headed and with a skull tattooed onto the side of his head - and asked what I should do.

'Just stay back for now,' he rumbled. 'Don't get in the way. We got this.'

I leaned against the embossed skull decal that graced the front of the gantry, and tried to look nonchalant. Watch and learn, I guessed. Welp. I could do that.

'What'll we do about that sub?' I heard Yattaran ask, presumably of his captain. The reply was inaudible, but the fat man chuckled. 'That'll work.'

'Captain - we've got incoming!' This from the station next to Yattaran's - a kind of Nav and comms combo, from what I'd picked up. The post of Harlock's XO was currently vacant, I'd gathered, so this must be whichever of the poor saps had drawn the short straw today. 'Three ships, no IDF…'

'Not fleet then, the big bald guy muttered.

'Ten to one, Bob old mate - Shaitan based.' This from the man at the station closest to me.

'No takers,' Bob shot back. 'Who else would be prowling around this dump?'

'All hands to primary battlestations.' Harlock's voice, although low and gravelly, could carry quite well it seemed when he wanted it to. 'Clear main cannon for firing. Yattaran - ruin that sub commander's day for me. Arcadia - lift off!'

I had a few sweaty moments at that last but one command - blowing up a QT field right on top of that oscillator sounded suicidal - but Maji, spotting my twitches, patted me on the arm as he walked past off on a task of his own. 'Settle down, rookie. He's just gonna EMP it. Once we've taken out their ships, they'll be stuck down there with no supplies and unable to move - or even leave the damn thing if they haven't got manual over-rides on the doors - and most of Doppler's ships don't. They'll die down there, and with the QT field down, there won't be much left of it in a couple of days, so no chance of them ratting out we were here.'

'Trapped in a tin can, in the dark,' I muttered to myself. I shuddered. Then I smirked nastily. 'Caught between that rock and a hard case...' I chuckled at my own joke. It was a horrible way to die, but: Doppler's bunch? Nah. I wasn't gonna cry over those bastards. I watched the screen as we took off, the ship's floorplates trembling under my feel, either in abject terror or anticipation, who could tell? There was nothing to see outside - the dark cloud surrounding the ship thinned a little as we headed out of the atmosphere, but that was all. I found out later it was generated at the bow, and then kind of gravitated towards the stern as though guided by an unseen hand - actually the massive curving antennae that arced over the ship's (literal) spine. I shivered, with that cold, clammy sense you get that someone just walked over your grave..

And then I was on the floor, the ship rocking as a second and then a third blast hit it from the enemy ships. We'd run, it seemed, headlong into their bowchasers.

'Steady… steady…' Yattaran was yelling. 'Pick yourselves up ladies - these mosquitoes won't even get through the outer hull.'

Yeah? That wasn't what it felt like from where I was sitting in a heap.

'Rookie!'

When I didn't respond immediately, someone bellowed in my ear and grabbed my shoulder. 'Oi! You! Baptiste hit his head. Get yourself over to his station!'

Still dazed, I was dragged over to one of the standing firing consoles. Someone - I later found out it was was Dan - pointed at the controls. 'Main battery, top rank. Angle. Elevation. Time on Target. Firing solution.'

'But…' I'd only ever used high-powered weaponry on stationary targets. Not something moving at battle speeds.

'The AI does the hard work, rookie. Just pick your targets. When the lights go green, fire.'

It was a literal baptism of fire, but, like the man said, you picked it up. The controls were just that intuitive. The rate of fire of the Arcadia's main cannon was insanely fast, and I had no time to look around and figure out what was happening around me - or outside the ship. All my concentration had to be on the console, on those little lights and numbers, and the little diagrams that moved so fast I had to wonder how in hell any human could be expected to keep up. I wasn't military, after all… But yes - the ship seemed to know what you wanted, and after a few bad misses, which did get me hooted at, I managed to do a creditable job. It was like Harlock had said down in the hole - if you have a big enough target, you can just spray and make them flinch... The ships where keeping a tight formation, which struck me as insanely stoopid, but it meant if I led the targets and tracked them as a group, I'd either hit something, or - once I had a flash of inspiration and wised up - I could split the pack so they couldn't support each other.

Sure enough, on my third salvo, they scattered. After that, the turret crews picked them off with ease. Yeah. Take that you pointy eared freaks…

It felt like hours later I leaned back against the nearest vertical surface and sagged. Actually, it had been less than ten minutes.

'Jones?'

Harlock's voice. I looked up to see him looking down at me from his lofty perch, cloak swaying around him as though in a strong wind, although the air con was a soft flow through the ship. 'Sir?'

'Good work.' The corner of his mouth might have twitched slightly upwards in a brief attempt at a smile. It was hard to tell. With a sharp turn and a flick of his hand to move the folds of that heavy cloak out of the way of his legs, he was gone. Just like that, and I was left standing there with a sloppy grin on my face, feeling that if I'd been a trog, I'd have been wagging my bloody tail.

I caught up with the captain a couple of hours later, as we were preparing to leave orbit. He was standing in one of the corridors, staring out of an observation port at the yellow planet below. I wasn't going to get misty-eyed about the place. Still kept feeling as though I'd got half of the planet's surface in my eyes that no amount of eyewash was gonna get out anytime soon, like my eyeballs had been sandblasted, and the less said about other areas I could feel sand rubbing, the better.

'Credit for 'em?' I asked without thinking. I didn't expect an answer. The reflection of his face in the porthole showed a man with far too much on his mind, and none of it happy.

Without turning to look at me, he placed a gloved hand on the surface of the portal, as though he wanted to reach out and touch the planet. 'Ever stood on the shore and thrown something into the ocean; watched it carried out by the tide?' He asked softly. When I looked at him blankly he sighed. 'Sometimes, when the tide turns, and you stand on the beach long enough, what you threw away comes back, washing up on the shore.' Before he walked away he added 'Live long enough, Ali, and everything you lost comes back to haunt you.'

I thought about that for a minute. 'Yeah…' I called out to his retreating back, 'so if it's gonna come back to you anyway, captain, why would you need to break linear time?'

He stopped dead in his tracks, turned, stared at me for a moment, and turned away again without saying a word. There was the strangest look in his eye, but damned if I could work it out. I might have chewed away at the thought, but… well. What with one thing and another, it kind of slipped away.

It wasn't going to wash up on the shore again for another ten years.