Note to readers… I had to pull and re-write the latter half of this chapter, so if wondering what the hell Pollywantsa is referring to in her review, sorry guys, but that bit just had to go! Not permanently… just… not in this story!

Sometimes I really need someone who'll pull me up on over-egging my puddings before I write myself into a corner!

Also - earlier chapters were amended very slightly to consistently refer to a certain character by his chosen nomme de guerre...!


I am half sick of shadows, said the Lady of Shalott

Tennyson


Filament

The strange black sun was starting to sink below the horizon as the young men approached the walls of the town. They'd almost got used to the peculiar "black light", with its strange negative glow, and its loss left them stranded in their tiny island of torchlight, with the shadows around them deepening with every passing minute. Which, as Guy pointed out, was patently ridiculous, because how could you have shadows without light? That was just good old fashioned darkness.

Wasn't it?

'Try telling that to this place,' Wataru muttered as they trudged onwards. 'There's something seriously wrong with a world where darkness casts its own shadows. I never knew there could be so many different shades of black. All this place needs is a mass of writhing tentacles and somewhere an insane interior decorator with a love of strange angles and multidimensional horrors is cackling with glee.'

'Had to say it, didn't you. You just had to say it…' Guy took a deep, shuddering breath, and let it out again, a small plume of mist that hung in the air, before joining the rest of the vapour trails than surrounded them, weaving in and around them as tiny dust devils stirred the dust ground underfoot, and caused the shadows to dance and quiver in time to a peculiar music only they could hear. 'I swear if something long, thick and slimy tries to violate me, I'll blame you.'

Nineteen years of his twin's never-ending shit had largely left Wataru immune to the constant bitching. He'd also realised a long time ago that some people just had a way of coping with fear that included a non-stop torrent of trash-talk that could, for the most part, be safely ignored.

It was the quiet ones you had to watch for, not those who broadcast their anger to the world with every breath. Some of the most dangerous people he knew had that calm, outwardly relaxed attitude to whatever the universe threw at them. His parents, Selen and Zero, Blaze and Marin, Hannibal, Professor Oedo… and that terrifyingly quiet sister of Emeraldas'...

Right about now he wished he had even a fraction of their relaxed approach of danger. His stomach was tying itself in knots, and he might have taken a slug of Mamoru's "come and have a go if you think you're hard enough" attitude to go. Maybe a few days spent finding out how his father made it look so easy wouldn't be a bad thing…

'How the hell do you manage to stay so damn calm?' Guy waved his torch around in front of Wataru's face, 'How come you're not freaking out? Sometimes you're just so damn quiet it's unnatural…'

'I was wondering what dad would do if he was here,' Wataru answered without thinking. The admission made him blush, because a grown man - only six months away from his commission - did not wish for his dad to come and pull his ass out of his latest scrape…

Guy surprised him. 'Honestly? I wish Harlock was here. No-one else knows more about dealing with this kind of shit - both dial-heads and dark matter. He'd just grab that cosmo dragoon in one hand, sabre in the other, give you that "what-the-fuck-are-you-waiting-for" stare and stride right in through that gate…' He chuckled. 'At least until your mom grabs him by the scruff and tells him not to be an idiot, hauls out that pair of baroque cannons that should not be man portable, and charges in right up there next to him.'

Wataru had to laugh. 'Yeah. She does that a lot.' He had to push a lock of hair back off his face, that threatened to fall over his right eye. 'Fine.' He took a deep breath. 'What are you waiting for?' he quipped, and strode forwards as purposefully as he could.

'You to either cut your bloody hair or start using some product,' Guy grumbled at him as he jogged to catch up. 'I could lend you some…' Guy wore his hair - just as borderline regulation length as Wataru's mane - slicked back and controlled to within an inch of its life. Which meant unlike Wataru's soft tumble, his just stuck up and out in all directions at the moment.

'No thanks. Kanna likes to run her hands through it.'

The thought of his fianceé brought her face to mind. She'd cut her long blonde hair after her mother's death a couple of years ao, and he thought it suited her. Her quiet calm was the centre of his universe, despite his twin's teasing about him marrying the girl (literally) next door, and settling for boring domesticity. He also remembered the way Hannibal had verbally slapped Mamoru for the comments so hard that his normally couldn't-give-a toss attitude had taken a week to recover.

The memory stiffened his spine as they moved towards the gates, hugging the wall. He reached up to touch the breast pocket of his flightsuit, where he kept the little storage chip that held vids of his family, and more recently, Kanna. Words of his father's came to mind: Fight only for what's in your heart, and give it everything you've got… 'Keep to the wall,' was all he said, keeping his voice low.

Guy grabbed his arm and hauled him to a standstill. 'Sticking to the shadows isn't advice that fills me with confidence right now,' he whispered back. 'Do you really want to walk into that dark patch?'

Wataru stared at the way the darkness pooled at the foot of the wall, a total absence of light against the greys and ashen tones around it. What the hell even caused these shadows anyway? It was night, there were no stars, and the small moon that seemed to have accompanied its planet into wherever or whatever this was reflected only the black light of the black sun. And on a still night, what the hell made them shiver and wander the way they did?

There was something, lurking just out of reach, that he'd heard once, about shadows… Extra shadows, where there was nothing to cast them…

Marin.

More specifically, the old Futatsuboshi, lost with all hands. Nine, or was it ten years ago? Their father had rushed to the rescue just before he, Mamoru and Taro had been taken by the mazone. The ship…

...had been caught in a rift caused by a massive explosion that had torn a hole in space-time. Time had run more slowly and the shadows… he'd overheard their father describing it as something reaching out to rip away his soul...

He swallowed hard, tempted to reach for their dwindling water to wash away the taste of bile from his empty stomach. 'I think we've got to find the Sirius as fast as we can. We have to get through that gate…'

'Have to? No. Need, maybe. But I'm not walking in these shadows, Yûki. Not for anythi..umph.' His pained grunt as he was pushed down to the ground for the second time in the last couple of hours was muffled by a mouthful of dry weeds. 'Yûki!'

'Horses,' Wataru hissed into his ear.

The hoofbeats thundered closer almost as soon as Wataru finished speaking. The scrubby wasteland here was thin and patchy, not the deep meadow they'd hidden in before, and both youths felt their hearts pounding in their ear almost as loudly as the mechanical hooves, as the group of machinner riders swept past and into the town, not bothering to slow down as they passed the open gates.

They both let out huge sighs once the last rider had vanished. 'Close call,' Guy muttered. 'I'm amazed they didn't spot us.'

'Ever know an entitled bastard on horseback to look down at what he might be trampling underfoot?' Wataru replied.

Guy pulled a face. 'Yeah, good point.' He stood up and dusted himself off. 'Can you hear that?'

Wataru stood up gracefully. 'What?'

Guy turned a full three-sixty, pistol ready but pointing down. 'Crying and sobbing - like listening to someone crying a couple of rooms away through the walls… More like several someones, getting to that bit with the frustrated screaming…'

'It's just the wind,' Wataru said, sounding unconvinced even to his own ears. 'Come on. We need to find the Sirius. If those dial-heads can function, there must be some electronics still working, somewhere. A working comms system would be good.'

'That streak of chirpy optimism… how the hell do you come by that, in your family?' Guy asked him in a low voice as they tiptoed warily through the gates, Wataru on point, Guy constantly sweeping the rear and sides. 'Even a small planet like this is a lot of territory - they could be on a different continent altogether. And we have no comms, no transport…'

'How do you get anything done with that attitude?' Wataru whispered back. 'As dad would say, don't borrow trouble. If nothing else, we might be able to borrow what we need.'

'Borrow.' Guy muttered. 'Borrow, he says. You mean steal.'

'I said borrow, and I meant borrow,' Wataru snapped at him. 'I don't plan on keeping anything.'

Taken aback by the uncharacteristic vehemence, Guy backpeddled, but only slightly. 'Hardly planning on asking permission though are you? Or were you just going to leave a note?'

'We're on a ghost planet full of shadows, and dial-heads who hunt the living down for their life-force. I think the only person splitting hairs over the issue is right behind me.' If not for the need to constantly check their surroundings and peer through the unnatural gloom, he'd have lengthened his stride and left the steel-eyed youth in his wake. That, and the eerie wailing that came at them from all sides, and made him reluctant to move far from the comforting proximity of another living human, and to stay as far away as possible from the shivering shadows that seemed to keep pace with them. As if to hammer home their unnatural origins, neither he nor Guy cast any kind of shadow that he could see. Whatever strange unlight that cast these, it had no interest in them.

The shadows, however, were a different matter. Several times Wataru thought he saw parts of those dark pool reach out towards them as they inched cautiously down the road, keeping - by an unspoken agreement - to the centre of the roadway, away from the pavements and buildings that lined it, like hands reaching out to touch them, but drawing back as soon as they were noticed, only to edge forwards again the moment their attention was focussed elsewhere.

Wataru remembered the way the shadows had fallen on the dead body of the survey ship crewman, and shivered. 'Maybe they can only touch the dead?' he said out loud.

Guy gave him a peculiar look. 'They certainly waited until that bloke was dead. But I'm not planning to test it.' He frowned. 'They're avoiding you more than me… they pull back a lot quicker and don't get so close.'

Wataru swallowed, only a thin trickle of saliva to moisten his suddenly very dry mouth and throat. 'I've been around dark matter a lot more than you have. Maybe that's it?'

'Better hope it is a deterrent - the other option is you'd be catnip to them.'

Wataru shot Guy a dour look. 'Work on those motivational skills, do you?' A particularly heart-rending wail split the chill air, the sound of a small child crying. 'That came from down that sidestreet…' He'd barely gone two steps when Lawrence's hand on his collar yanked him to a halt.

'You really think there's anything alive on this planet that isn't us or the crew of the Sirius?' Guy whispered harshly in his ear. 'Stay on mission, Yûki - this is no time for heroics. Even if it is a child - just what the hell do you think you'll achieve? It'd only slow us down…'

Wataru reached up and prised Guy's fingers off his collar, giving the other man a slight shove as he did so. Guy might have also taken an inadvertent step back as the shadows played on the lines of Wataru's normally calm, handsome features, which only rarely displayed any emotion worse than annoyance. His usually hazel eyes looked closer to a dark, stormy sherry-brown and the look in them, combined with the tight thinning of his lips was, for a moment, a tranquil fury that left goosebumps on his skin.

He had to look away from that flinty gaze, just for a moment. When he looked back, it was just Wataru… calm, mild-mannered, never-raised-his-voice Wataru Yûki. Just the shadows… he told himself, as Wataru strode away towards the alleyway he'd laughingly referred to as a sidestreet, into the darkness outside the pool of greylight they currently stood in as the dark sun (and hadn't it gone down only a short time ago?) rose into the black sky.

Wataru, for his part, kept a firm hand on his cosmo dragoon as he walked into the shadows with far more confidence than he actually felt, following the sounds of the sobbing child - a girl, he thought, from the pitch. His torch - normally so powerful - still only illuminated a small area in front of him, a narrow tube of light bounded by shadow, as though he walked down a tunnel, not a road. That niggling itch at the back of his neck that accompanied the internal voice of reason that suggested Guy had a point, he tried to suppress. Stiff necked, stubborn, Harlock pride, his mother would have called it.

...and then would have done exactly the same thing, he thought with a wry grin. He stopped well clear of the gathering shadows in the sidestreet, and listened. He could still hear the sounds of a little girl crying, but despite his bravado to Guy - whose footsteps he could hear behind him - he wasn't going to just stick his head into those quivering shadows.

Guy was right though, he noticed. The shadows didn't seem to want to get too close. Apart from one small patch… 'Hello?' he called out tentatively. 'Are you hurt?'

Was it a little hiccup he heard? He shone the light towards the patch of darkness, and watched it be swallowed up by the shadows. Were they edging closer? Or just absorb the light? There was a smell in the still air as well, he noticed. Faint at first but growing stronger as he walked. Unmistakable to one who'd grown up during the seemingly endless battle against the machines: the sickly sweet stench of decay, mixed with the acrid taint of urine, faeces and the coppery, sour aftertaste in the back of the throat of old blood.

He tripped over the first body. 'Shit.' He pinwheeled to keep his balance, and his foot struck something soft, his boot sinking into something that squelched underfoot.

'Yûki?'

'A body…' he swung the torch around, and even the faint light that fought its losing battle against the shadows had no difficulty picking out what his left boot had stepped in. 'Make that several…' He suppressed a shudder as he pulled his boot clear, and tried not to gag on the smell he'd accidentally released.

'Oh, man… what the hell did you step in?' Guy wasn't so lucky, and wretched as the smell hit him.

'There are bodies here… the streets full of them.' It was, in fact, impassible; the bodies lay presumably where they'd fallen, all facing towards him (and the road behind, he assumed). But there was a gate ahead, and they were piled against it, where they'd tried to climb over both the wire and each other, trying to escape something.

'This planet was lost ten years ago - did people survive this long?' Guy asked, braving the stink to get a closer look. 'It shouldn't be this… fresh… and yes, I do use that term loosely.' He kept his torch swinging from side to side as though to hold back the shadows with its feeble beam.

Wataru knelt beside the closest body - a woman, he assumed from the skirt she wore, and the length of her fair hair. There was a smaller body underneath hers - a child; a little girl maybe eight years old. One arm was thrown protectively over the little girl's face. 'I don't think so. Time's weird here - haven't you noticed?'

Time… said a voice from the shadows, is all we have, here.

The volume of whispering in the darkness increased, and the young men instinctively moved closer, until they were back to back, weapons and flashlights at the ready. Part of the shadows nearest to them detached from the rest. The voice rustled like wind in the dry grass of Tabito. Our bodies lie where we fell, decaying, whilst we are forced to watch. We cannot escape, we cannot feel, we cannot die.

'What do you want from us?' Wataru asked. 'Are you ghosts?'

Ghosts are dead, the voice whispered. Are we the dead? Our bodies rot, but here we are. We exist only in the shadows now, but the machine men have shown us a way… for a few. A way we can leave this place. A smaller shadow grew out of the larger, the shape of a small child. A different voice asked Mama?

'I'm sorry,' Wataru replied softly. 'I truly am, but this is not the way…'

'Yûki?'

'The machinners let the shadows have the body of that poor bastard they tore the lifeforce out of. Did you read the briefing on the metanoid incursion on Ventimiglia?' Wataru took a step backwards, nudging Guy slightly to indicate they needed to retreat. 'They can possess the dead.'

'That's metanoids,' Guy pointed out. 'Not…' he waved his torch at the shadowy woman and her child. 'I mean… they're dead, right?'

'Dark matter,' Wataru replied slowly, thinking it through. 'It underlies all life… all matter, all energy.'

'But then why isn't Earth overrun with ghosts?'

'I can think of one it spawned,' Wataru said under his breath. Out loud he replied 'Don't look at me, I just work here.' To the shadowy pair, he added, 'I would help, if I could, but not like this. Killing us won't make this right.'

I cannot touch my daughter! The shadow woman's voice was an anguished scream. She cannot feel me, nor I her! We do not hunger, we do not thirst, but there is nothing for us. Every day we lose a little more of ourselves to that… the shadow of an arm, clad in a ragged sleeve, pointed to the main mass of darkness they'd appeared from. Soon we will forget… lose everything we were, even each other. Only the shadow will remain. Just pain, and mindless yearning for what we can never again be. A shadow of a shadow. I too am sorry, but I must do this, before stronger minds find you. You are our only hope.

She gave the smaller shadow a push, and the little patch of darkness fell against Wataru and both he and the shadow cried out in pain as her shadow wrapped itself around the faint shadow of his own that pooled at his feet in the light of Guy's flashlight.


Arcadia

The ship shuddered from stem to stern as Harlock bounded up the stairs to the bridge, Ben close on his heels. Both men had to grab a railing to keep their footing.

'I'd forgotten just how often that happens around here,' Ben said as he gave his former captain a shove in the small of the back to stop him from toppling backwards. Although slim, he knew from past experience the man was all lean muscle and nowhere near as lightweight as he looked. Being flattened by eleven stone of solid space pirate was no laughing matter, especially with ten feet of staircase at his back. Harlock grunted a thank you and pushed back to regain his momentum. 'Inertial dampeners on the blink? On a ship this age…'

'I do the jokes,' Harlock told him with a glimmer of humour. 'Kei? Why are we being tossed around like a cork on the ocean?'

'The inertial dampeners are on the blink.'

Ben bit back a snigger and plastered an innocent look onto his face when Harlock glared at him.

'Not funny, Kei.'

'Do you see me laughing?' she half-growled at him. 'We're caught in a current of some kind, and the central computer seems to be somewhat… preoccupied. It took a few picoseconds for the AI to compensate.'

Both men stared at the main viewscreen. The rendering on the screen of data collected by the ship's powerful sensors resembled the image seen through a kaleidoscope, fractured and twisting constantly, as though they were looking at the infinity of images in an myriad of tiny mirrors. Harlock stared down at the floorscreen, his arms folded across the skull and crossbones on the chest of his jacket. 'This looks horribly familiar…'

'Isn't that what you described to me when you found the Futatsuboshi? After those black body drives of a mazone fleet blew?' Ben had to look away from the screen after a few seconds. The churning, fractured image was making him feel a little queasy.

'Similar,' Harlock replied grimly. 'It's a rip in space-time, into a sub-space dimension. Hard to spot, even with our sensors. But the Arcadia doesn't quite fully belong in normal space - her little trip through the nether regions of reality over a hundred years ago left her a little bit out of kilter.'

'So you can see this stuff because…'

'By "stuff" you mean those wavelengths inducing dry heaves? We know what to look for and our sensors can compensate for the lensing effect of the rift. A dark matter wave hit this region of space hard enough to fracture reality. The reason the Arcadia can sense it? She's partly still got a link to that sub-space. Right, my friend?' The central computer was uncharacteristically silent. 'Tochiro?'

Kei scanned her console. 'The central computer's now on the default backup. Tochiro's retreated. It's almost like the way we lose him on the anniversary of the battle for Earth…'

'That's weeks away.' Yattaran scowled and tapped away at his own station. 'Tracking the AI sub routine though the system… he's with us, just seems to be tied up with something. As though there's a massive data spike…'

'Define massive.' Harlock leaned on the wheel and gave his first mate a sideways stare. 'Surely you can cope with a denial of service attack?'

'Bigger,' Yattaran grunted at him. 'It's close to overwhelming the entire central server banks. The AI's operating from the back-ups.'

'Can you stop it? Purge the systems?' Kei asked him.

'It ain't a virus, Kei.'

'He's trying to process this space,' Harlock interjected softly. All eyes turned to the captain, slumped against the ship's wheel, his face ashen. Kei closed the short distance between them and placed a hand on his shoulder. 'I can feel it. Just as I did on the Futatsuboshi all those years ago. A pressure in my head, like a voice that won't go away… last time it was yelling at me to haul as and get the hell off the ship…'

'And now?' Kei asked.

'It's screaming…' Even the wheel wasn't enough to hold him up as he slumped to the floor under the weight of the pain he felt. A cool, delicate hand touched his cheek gently, and even through the fog of that second-hand torment he could feel it trembling. 'You feel it too?' he asked, his voice hoarse. Mimay nodded. 'What…?'

'This place… it touches something. Something that should never have been opened. It's directly in the path of the dark matter stream from the Gate of Yedar…'

'We've done that before,' Kei pointed out, kneeling at his blind side. 'It's never affected him like this.'

'There were tens of thousands of people on that planet,' Mimay said quietly. 'And they're all…'

'In agony,' Harlock finished for her. He sagged slightly and leaned into Kei's gentle embrace with a tight smile. He allowed Kei and Mimay to help him to his feet.' He took the few steps that took him to Kei's console and did a sweep of the readings. 'We're drifting closer to the source of the rupture, and in the direct path of whatever it's emitting. Yattaran?'

The rotund first mate had already taken the helm without prompting, elbowing Ben out of the way, though he dodged the half-hearted blow with the practiced ease of a long-serving crewman. 'Bit late for that - it's like being caught in a rip-tide. No way in hell even we can pull free of this easily, and we're only holding our course because of our dark matter cloud dissipating the worst of it.'

Mimay was almost running back to her control globe before he'd finished speaking. 'I can intensify the dark matter, maybe deflect this current…'

'No!'

It was Harlock who spoke, snapping out the command with uncharacteristic intensity. 'It's too late to stop it, we're committed.' He took the wheel back from Yattaran who stood away from the helm with noticeable relief. 'Besides, we're going in that direction anyway. All ahead full! All hands to emergency stations!'

'Do you need me to plot a course through the current?' Kei asked. Hands firm on the wheel he shook his head.

'No. I need to feel my way through this.'

'You look like shit,' Ben murmured near his ear. 'Are you sure…'

'There's no-one else, Ben. I can feel the currents…' Currents hell… what he could feel, like the nagging ache of a tooth, was the screaming of people more than a decade dead, and the more closely they followed that current, the louder it got. 'Stop yelling at me…' he muttered quietly.

From the lower bridge came pained grunts and curses as the pressure from the rift began to affect the crew. Ben, momentarily torn between Yattaran and Kei, chose to cross the gantry to the lovely XO's side and place a steadying arm around her.

'Thanks.'

'My pleasure.'

'Better not be,' he heard Harlock mutter from the wheel. A stream of creative invective from below suggested Ali had finally succumbed to the rift's murderous siren call. Blue lightning flickered around every surface of the ship and she plunged closer to the heart of the tear in space - now visible on the main viewer as a sickly red and green, pulsing glow, visible even through the billowing cloud of dark matter that enveloped the ship, which was being torn away like clouds on a windy day, almost as fast as it was generated. The ship bucked like a horse stung by a Tabito sand-fly, and Ben reached out to help Harlock steady the wheel. 'Thanks.'

'De nada. Gaia's tits, Harlock… Ever considered a nice, old-fashioned console? You're going to pull something holding onto this beast…'

'With Tochiro occupied, it can get a little… feisty…' Harlock replied through gritted teeth. For what was actually a precision instrument, the ship's wheel could sometimes feel like it really was wrestling with the mass of a kilometre-long battleship. The resistance was actually induced by the circuits that responded to the exterior conditions and the complex calculations made by the AI - Tochiro - on a continuous basis that the helmsman learned to interpret with experience. With Tochiro occupied, the baseline AI was a lot more sluggish. 'You can let go, I've got this,' he told Ben. In his head he felt the tiny murmur that told him Tochiro had switched a part of his consciousness back to the controls, and breathed a sigh of relief as the ship began to respond with something close to its normal sensitivity.

But… It was a timely warning that Project Thanatos would need that update Halia had brought them. The original specs for the AIs had been off the charts over a hundred years ago, but that was dealing with normal battle conditions. The Arcadia functioned at a speed and effectiveness far greater than her remaining sister-ship and her prototype because of Tochiro. Harlock had shot Hannibal's alternative proposal down in flames during their last discussion on the subject, and the reminder that in fact the old silver fox might have been right was a bitter pill to swallow.

'It won't be enough,' the old man had told him bluntly.

'It has to be. Who could you possibly ask to make that sacrifice?'

He'd left the room before Hannibal could answer, because in all honesty, he knew what the old man would suggest, and he hadn't wanted to hear it.

The creaking of the ship, always in the background, subsided to a less ominous level, and the ship calmed as they passed through the turbulence, and into the space beyond the rift. The voice in his head was quieter, although the dull, nagging pain was being replaced by the beginnings of a hellish headache.

The last few drifting wisps of dark matter did nothing to obscure the view from the main bridge screen. There in front of them was the tiny system missing in "real" space - the small planet orbiting a strangely dark star, with one companion moon visible, the other two only - as Kei quickly confirmed - detectable from the gravitational disturbance they created.

'Is that supposed to look like that?' Ali pointed at the star. 'I mean… I can see it's illuminating the planet and that little bitty moon, but it looks…'

'Black,' Harlock completed for him. Still holding onto the wheel he frowned. 'The computers fill in false-colour images based on the spectral readings. That should be a white dwarf, but the image…'

'Looks like an ancient photographic negative,' Yattaran piped up.

'More like the life's just been sucked right out of it,' Ali pointed out gruffly. 'I thought black suns were just allegorical… then I remembered what sodding universe I live in.' Thin laughter rippled through the lower bridge personnel, but it quickly petered out.

'Kei, Yattaran, any signal from the Sirius yet?'

'You're lucky we can even see out of the view screen,' Yattaran replied sourly. 'Our computers are only making sense of what's out there because we have some previous frame of reference. And our little pal in there is working his insubstantial tushie off to do it.'

You have no idea… Tochiro sounded as though he was speaking through gritted teeth. You remember trying to push two magnets together with the same polarity facing? That's us - dark matter versus dark matter, trying to get to that planet - the current's carrying us there, but what happened to that planet…

'Is what happened to us?' Mimay stood next to Harlock, staring at the screen with unblinking eyes.

I can push us there, but

''It's taking everything you have?' Harlock asked softly. He tapped the baluster with a gloved hand, thoughtfully. 'What about we just hold and send in the bullets or the Space Wolves?'

I can hold. Tochiro's voice sounded more than a little relieved. I don't think we can make a close orbit, and I'm not sure landing would work. We'd probably fly off like a cork out of a champagne bottle if I took my eye off the ball even for a second.

'Do it,' Harlock ordered. He scanned the watchful faces around him. 'Who's with me? Volunteers only.'

Kei raised a hand, followed by Ali, Halia and Ben. Down on the main floor several hands were raised. Harlock looked down and shook his head. 'Sorry Franz - not this one. You hold Ali's station. Esteban - take over for Kei. Anita, is your hand up or are you trying to hand me that croissant?' Thin, strained laughter accompanied the feeble sally. Anita grinned. 'You need some muscle, captain darlin', it's me you need.'

'And you might need me.' Luna stepped forwards, a cat on her shoulder purring into her pony-tail. 'No way of knowing if the crew of the Sirius are hurt.'

'Fine. Get to the bullet. Yara - you've been asking for a chance to prove yourself? You go with them. Ali - you're piloting. Kei, Ben - space wolves, with me. Hopefully it's only the Arcadia that's strongly repulsive, not us.'

'Depends on who you ask!' Martinez said cheekily as he bounded up the steps to take over from Kei. 'Who's at the helm?'

Harlock stepped away from the wheel. 'Tochiro?'

I've got it. Between us Mimay and I can work out a way of balancing the dark matter to keep us in place.

'If we get into trouble, could you at least manage a fly-past and a fast pickup?'

Can you try not to get into trouble? Tochiro asked. Just once?

Ali snorted, folding his arms across the front of his sweater. 'Did you really just ask that?'

Ben slapped him on the back, between the shoulder blades. 'It has happened, right?'

'Not,' Ali retorted, 'In living memory. And where did you get my t-shirt from, you thieving git?'

The article in question read "Make love not war, see wearer for details" with a skull and crossbones printed inside a bleeding heart on the left breast, stretched tightly across broad shoulders and a firm six-pack. Ben just smirked at him. As Ali narrowed his eyes, Kei stepped between the pair before clothing became a casualty.

'Boys - if you don't mind, my son is down there?' she reminded them tartly. Both of them earned a slap to the back of their blond heads as she strode past. 'Hangar deck. Now.'

Ben cocked his head to one side to watch her sashay down the stairs. 'Ow!' He rubbed the back of his head as Harlock strode past him, having delivered another timely slap.

'That's my wife's ass you're leering at, your majesty.' Ben fell into place behind him, with an equally appreciative stare at Harlock's equally tight-fitting leather pants. 'And don't think I can't feel your hot sticky eyes on me, Ben.'

Ali caught up with his captain as they reached the foot of the steps, shoving past Ben to do it and ignoring the other man's growl. 'Why the hell do we put up with him? I mean… this isn't some game, where you can just up and go home whenever we want, but he just…'

'...that's kind of the point, Ali,' Harlock replied quietly. 'He doesn't have to stay, or put himself in harm's way. You see it that he's playing at pirate because he can walk away any time he wants, and we can't? Ask yourself rather what kind of man lays his life on the line when he does have another choice?'

Ali cast a look back over his shoulder at the handsome gamilan and sighed. 'One with far too much time on his bloody hands,' he grumbled. 'Why can't he just have one flaw? Butt ugly... batshit insane... warts on his face… a sadistic murderous bastard…'

Ben leaned into him as they walked. 'Because two Zworders is more than one universe can handle?' he asked brightly, before strolling ahead of them, hands in his pockets, whistling.

Harlock patted a snarling Ali on the back. 'Let it go and just thank our lucky stars he is sane and rational. That much power in the hands of anyone less capable and we'd all have a problem.'

Ali gave his captain a sharp, appraising look. 'You want him to wade in on our side in this, don't you?' he accused, jabbing a finger into Harlock's midsection. 'Is that why you let him tag along?'

'It's the only reason I'd take a very annoying warp comm from both Domel and Talan at two in the bloody morning to reassure them I'd take good care of the mastermind behind their secret little triumvirate,' Harlock replied a little testily. 'We're going to need a much bigger fleet to fight back against that growing metanoid fleet, or we'll never even get close to reaching the Gate of Yedar to close it.'

'Yeah, but what we're building…'

'Isn't going to be even near enough,' Harlock told him sadly, as they reached the hangar doors. 'Not even close. Before we're done we're going to have to figure how to get Andromeda on side with this as well as the Gamilans. Hell, maybe even the full resources of all of the GMC…'

'You don't think small, do you?' Ali asked under his breath as they walked towards the waiting transport and fighter planes on the hangar floor.

'Ali - we haven't had that luxury for over twenty years.'

Ali watched as he walked over to Kei and laid a hand briefly on her cheek, before heading for his black and red space wolf. Idly, he rubbed the spot on his stomach where an old wound often gave him a bit of gyp before a nasty fight. 'Not sure we ever did,' he muttered. Then he plastered a suitably chirpy grin over his face and strolled over towards the bullet. 'Just let the kid still be in one piece and breathing…' he added under his breath. 'Or someone's gonna pay…'