Filament

Cold… that was Wataru's impression as the small shadow coiled around him. Not the cold of a deep winter day, crisp and fresh, or even damp and miserable. Nor the cold of space. Both of these were simply the absence of warmth. Two sides of the same coin.

This…

It's a different coin altogether, he thought, fighting the tendrils of ice that felt as though they were slithering through his veins, to his heart, lungs, brain… It came from a place that didn't even know what warmth was, so how could it be the opposite of something that didn't exist?

He tried to hold his breath as it slid over his face. Pointless, he knew instinctively. This wasn't something physical, part of the universe he knew. Whatever these people had become, they no longer belonged to the world they'd been torn from.

I'm scared… the voice was that of the little girl. And he knew those words for a terrible truth even as he tried desperately to escape her cold touch, as she attempted to slide into the spaces between the matter that was Yûki Wataru. Mama… it hurts… I can't

Try, dearest. Try harder.

Where the hell was Guy? Surely there was something he could shoot at. That wasn't Wataru…

Something slid in behind his eyes like a blade; slick, colder than death, pushing, as though trying to breach some kind of barrier.

It bounced away from him with a scream of pain. He fell to his knees, as drained as if he'd finished running a bloody marathon, only dimly aware of Guy screaming something into his ear which he couldn't make out over the dead child's hysterical sobbing. He forced himself to look round, although every muscle hurt, to see Guy writhing on the ground, one of the shadows pouring over him.

He reached out, and the pool of darkness flinched.

No… not flinched, was somehow repulsed by him… He deliberately stretched his hand out and reached through the darkness to touch Guy's arm, and the shadow recoiled.

But not enough. There was no way in hell he could wrap enough of himself around his classmate to force the thing away fully. Where he didn't touch, it came back, flowing around him like water flowing past a stone in the middle of a stream. He was a minor obstacle, nothing more, and his attempts to drag Guy clear were failing miserably. His body, exhausted by its own fight against the darkness, simply lacked the strength.

'Run…' Guy forced the words out, glaring at Wataru with his usual

what-the-fuck-are-you-doing scowl. Useless, given that Wataru came from a long, if not always distinguished line of men - and women - with what might be charitably called a terminal hero complex. He kept tugging.

At the limit of his strength, close to collapsing beside Guy, he heard booted feet on the road.

Great… just great. Now the dial-heads were here to finish them off.

But instead of a blaster to the head, the soft szzaaap he heard was a blast of pure light, aimed at the pooling shadows, which sprang back from them, shrinking back into the shadows. Hands were pulling both he and Guy to the relative safety of the main road, where they were unceremoniously dumped on the pavement. Bleary eyed, Wataru stared up at his rescuers. Five men and a woman in the combat armour of the SDF stared down at him, helmets retracted.

Captain Todo stared down at him, a long-suffering sigh escaping his lips as he shook his head. 'Just what,' he ground out, 'do you two idiots think you were doing? We had to track you down when we found the plane abandoned…'

'Thought we'd try rescuing you,' Guy replied, trying to prop himself up against the nearest wall.

'Idiot!' Todo snapped. 'Do we look as though we needed rescuing? Unlike you two, although I can imagine whose idea it was to start wandering about instead of waiting for retrieval…'

Wataru kept his head down and said nothing. It wasn't as though he could actually refute the suggestion, after all.

'Help them up,' Todo told two of the men with him. They hauled the pair to their feet, none too gently. 'And let's get the hell out of this city.'

'Sir?' One of the crew pointed back down the alley. 'That shadow's on the move…'

Wataru turned to watch, and shook off the helping hand of the crewman who'd helped him up. 'That's not a shadow…' he said tightly. 'I suggest we run for it.'

'Yûki?' Todo inquired.

'That's a whole pile of corpses which that shadow is trying to animate…'

'Will the lights work on those?' The speaker was another cadet - a blonde girl who always reminded Wataru un-nervingly of his mother. She had addressed her question to a

sandy-haired youth he vaguely recognised from his class - a quiet lad who tended to sit at

the back.

'I'm not sure we should wait around to find out,' Wataru suggested, cutting over the conversation. The corpse pile was shifting ominously, but slowly, heaving and undulating, as parts tumbled off the pile as the more ambulatory corpses were animated. From the relatively and currently safe distance of about fifty feet, he could however see at least a couple of arms and a leg moving jerkily, like something out of a cheap warp vid. 'They're dropping to bits but I think some of them could do some damage. And ordinary guns don't do much except blast bits off them.'

'I'm not sure I want to ask how you know this,' the sandy haired cadet said with studied blandness.

'Your photon beams did some damage,' Wataru pointed out.

'Moot point,' Guy said. He pointed. 'The cavalry just arrived - not ours, though.'

Along the road, seven mounted machinners were riding towards them, cutting off their escape, unless they headed deeper into the town. And they hadn't a prayer of escaping a mounted charge once they were spotted. The group didn't appear to have notice anything out of the ordinary yet - possibly, Wataru realised, because they'd been busy stuffing dark matter ghosts into the leftovers from their life-force harvesting of the survey ship's crew for several days and probably mistook them for reboots.

Todo checked the charge in his pistol. 'Form up around me, people. Murase, Bulge, Reinhardt - Zombies. Everyone else, with me. Yûki - are you still toting that anti-dialhead hand-cannon your father gave you?'

Wataru took a firm grip on his pistol. 'Sir.'

'Then put it to good use. Fire at will - and try not to take out the horses.' 'Any reason?' Guy drawled.

Todo smiled grimly. 'Yes. The ATVs are drained and I'm not fond of walking five miles back to the ship.'

Guy shrugged. 'Well hell.. Why didn't you think of stealing the horses, Yûki?'

'Last time I checked, Lawrence, it wasn't his job to do your thinking for you,' Todo drawled. Guy flushed, and the sandy-haired cadet started to laugh and turned it into a cough - but he stared down Guy's evil eye without flinching, Wataru noticed.

Then the shooting started.


Murase, Wataru mused twenty minutes later, was a grade one arse with serious

impulse-control issues, no sense of self preservation and dangerously unaware of the effect of that on unlucky bystanders. An observation Captain Todo was voicing more than adequately as they rode their borrowed - stolen - steeds as fast as they dared back to where the Sirius was grounded.

One of those casualties was still lying on the dusty road of that nameless city. Another was clinging onto Guy's waist for dear life, his breathing sounding more laboured by the second. And then as if the universe didn't think they were struggling enough, the sandy-haired cadet's - Bulge's - horse put a hoof into a rabbit-hole and went arse over tip, only narrowly missing the hapless cadet, who was thrown clear of the thrashing robot.

'Captain!' Wataru hailed his commanding officer, jumping from his own horse and rushing to the youth's side, trying to avoid the flailing robotic hooves. What made it worse, he thought, was that the damn thing was so bloody quiet… a real horse would have been squealing its head off. It looked enough like a real horse to make him feel more than a little queasy, even the reminder of the large round glowing dial in the middle of its forehead.

He dragged Bulge out of harm's way, and unholstered his pistol. One quick shot was all it took to still the damaged creature. Thing. Whatever you wanted to call it. Thankfully these mechanical beasts were straight up robots, not subject to the same processes that made

their human masters. Animals tended to go completely psychotic if put through the soul forges.

Which should have told them something, Wataru mused sourly, as he checked his classmate over.

'Sorry for the unceremonious drag 'n' drop,' he told Bulge, who stared up at him glassily. 'I didn't think your head would survive both the ground and a flying kick.'

'I'm fine.' Bulge tried to struggle to his feet, fell into a heap, went very pale and promptly threw up. Wataru - a veteran of numerous nights out with his brothers and honourary cousins in the company of the Arcadia's crew or the odd slumming Millennial Thief, knew the signs well enough to neatly dodge before his boots took the brunt. 'Sorry.'

'What for? You missed. I swear my brother aims for my boots on purpose…' It earned him a sickly grin. 'Captain - we can't make him ride back to the ship like this. He can't put any weight on that leg and he's taken a knock to the head.'

'I can manage…' Bulge tried to stand but met with a firm hand on his shoulder from Wataru. He took the hint and stayed put.

'Yûki's right,' Todo told him firmly. 'Tanaka - take the rest back to the ship, then see if we have another vehicle with enough juice to make the return trip - this planet seems to be hard on the batteries. Yûki - head for that stand of trees we just passed- we need some cover.'

Wataru managed to get Bulge to his feet, his classmate clinging to the fabric of his flightsuit at his waist. A pained hiss and a flinch when he put his arm around the youth's waist to steady him suggested it wasn't just his leg and head that had taken a knock in the fall. 'Ribs?' he asked quietly.

'Probably,' was the equally quiet reply. 'I think I landed on a rock…'Sir… the shadows…' Bulge pointed at the ground near that small copse, covered by a faint grey pool with a mandelbrot feathering on the leading edge.

'Are pointing towards it - not coming from it, cadet. And you're looking greyer by the minute. You won't make it on horseback in this state. I'm amazed you've not fallen over again.'

'I'm not,' Wataru replied in a pitch-perfect imitation of his father's lazy drawl as he guided his charge carefully over to the small copse. 'He's almost crushing my ribcage… Been working out, Bulge?'

'Dont. Make. Me. Laugh,' was the raspy reply.

Dry leaves rustled overhead as Wataru helped his classmate to lie down on a pile of dry leaves against the trunk of the closest tree. Bulge's eyes were closed, his breathing shallow, with a slight hitch as he breathed in. Blood trickled from a cut that ran from his hairline through his right eyebrow. 'Hang on in there,' Wataru told him gently. 'Captain… I don't think I've got much in my pack to deal…'

'I have.' Julia Reinhardt swung a leg over her horse's back and slid gracefully to the ground. She slipped off her backpack and knelt beside them. 'I had Murase as my team leader. It's always best to be prepared.'

'Reinhardt, you were ordered…' Todo began. She waved him off with one hand as she rummaged in her pack for supplies. 'Technically, sir, you ordered lieutenant Tanaka to take us back - you didn't specifically order anyone to go with him…'

'Reinhardt, with that attention to the small print, you should have taken up a career in law', Todo told her dryly.

'Or piracy,' Bulge added from his position on the ground. His eyes fluttered open and he tried very hard not to laugh at Wataru's attempt to keep any reaction from showing on his face. 'Please, Yûki - it's the worst kept secret in the Academy. You and your brother are dead ringers for Harlock. Especially Mamoru.'

'The girls certainly noticed,' Reinhardt said as she pushed Bulge's hands away from his jacket. 'Your dad's Wanted poster is the third bestseller on campus - well, second amongst the female demographic. Swan - I need to get in there. I can assure you there's nothing under your uniform I haven't already seen in the showers.'

Wataru left them to it and drew his captain to one side. 'Sir - With all due respect, I think you should go back to the ship. Reinhardt and I should be enough to take care of Bulge until you send someone back for us.'

Todo smiled at him. 'Yûki - has anyone never told you that no sentence that starts with "With all due respect" ever ends well for the speaker?'

'Hannibal… Blaze… Yanez… Nero... ' Wataru pantomimed ticked off the names on his fingers. 'Mom… Professor Oedo…'

'Long and distinguished,' Todo replied. 'I notice your father isn't on that list…'

'Probably because he doesn't give a shit as long as people do what they have to do,' Wataru replied without thinking. 'Sir.. I didn't…'

'Relax, Yûki,' Todo told him with a laugh. 'I don't mind anyone speaking their mind either. But I've worked with your father and he would be the first to point out that when you have talented people who are very good at their jobs, you put them to work and don't get in their way. I can't help my team get the Sirius off the ground, but I can take care of the cadets in my care - and continue evaluating them to see how they perform under pressure.'

'Not looking good for the second part of that, is it?' Bulge opined from his position on the ground. 'I fall on my head, Reinhardt disobeys orders, Yuki runs into danger like it's going out of fashion, Lawrence has a stick up his ass…'

'And Murase?' Todo asked with a slight smile.

'Worst traits of all four of us,' Reinhardt responded primly. 'Without Bulge's smarts, my analytical skills, Lawrence's respect for the rules or Yuki's ability to fly by the seat of his pants.'

'Not so smart.' Bulge turned over a small device in his hands as he patiently allowed Reinhardt to patch him up. 'I couldn't get the battery on this thing to keep a charge… And that shadow's drawing closer…'

'Let me see.' Wataru knelt next to his fellow cadet and reached out a hand. Bulge handed over the object - a long, thick and heavy flashlight at first glance. 'I've seen the plans for this…'

'The SDF has been experimenting with some of the ideas the Millennial Thieves have been drip-feeding us ever since that Ventimiglia debacle two years ago,' Todo told him from his vantage point on the edge of the small copse. 'Portable photonic emitter.'

'Ray gun,' Bulge and Wataru replied at the same time, and grinned at each other. Reinhardt sighed, shook her head and carried on prodding her charge. 'One of Zee's ideas,' Wataru continued. He flipped the battery compartment and grinned. 'Thankfully, I know what your problem is.' He flicked out the dead power source, and took an almost identical one out of his utility pouch. A practiced flick clicked it into place. 'There.' He handed the device back to Bulge. 'I should have thought of it earlier when I realised my gun still worked but my torch didn't. I thought it was the light it swallowed up, but these emitters work on a different wavelength against the darkness, so logically…'

'A new battery?'

'One of the spare powerpacks from my cosmo gun,' Wataru corrected with a grin. 'My dad's engineers designed these to take a standard power pack, and our packs have the same casings as the SDF standard - just - well - a little more oomph.'

'Is that even a technical term?' Reinhardt asked dryly. 'Never mind,' she cut Wataru off before he could answer. 'Any more of those?'

Wataru pulled out a couple more and handed her one, palming another into his cosmo gun to replace the depleted power pack. 'Don't use them in your own guns,' he warned her. 'They'll work in those photon beam generators, because those are our tech - Tochiro's weapons are built to take the power, yours aren't.'

She slapped the pack into her own device. 'Gotcha. You know - you're rather more useful to have around than I thought.'

'I'm almost afraid to ask what you did think of me,' he told her.

Bulge answered. 'Decorative, I think was the word. Ow!' he glared and rubbed his arm where she'd flicked him.

'You really do remind me of my mother,' Wataru said under his breath. Bulge sniggered and Reinhardt glared at them both. 'It's a compliment!' he called out belatedly, half laughing as she left them to stride over to their captain.'

'I don't think there's a woman born who likes hearing she reminds a guy of his mother,' Bulge told him with a sly smile. 'Bad enough you never even notice her…'

Wataru spluttered slightly. 'Seriously? I'm engaged…'

A shrug, which Bulge instantly regretted, judging by his flinch. 'You can't be completely oblivious to the fact that there isn't a woman in the academy - and several guys for that matter - and I do include the faculty in that - who doesn't stare at you whenever you walk into a room?'

'I rather thought that might be because of the aforementioned problem of being related to the most notorious space pirate in the bloody galaxy,' Wataru drawled. 'My dad's poster is plastered over more bedroom walls than I care to think about, and my mother's over just as many that I really don't want to think about.'

Bulge flushed and coughed.

'Oh… for… Please tell me it's mom and not…' Bulge just raised an eyebrow and said smiled enigmatically. Wataru narrowed his eyes. 'You're not as quiet and mousey as you try to make out…'

'You're not the jock that you get taken for. Seems we both made assumptions…'

'I don't hang out with them, they insist on hanging out with me,' Wataru protested. 'Guy's been hanging around with us since we were kids.'

'We all have our burdens,' Bulge opined, totally deadpanned. Wataru spluttered. 'Schwanheldt.' Bulge held out his hand. 'My friends call me Swan for short, if it helps.'

'Wataru.' He shook the offered hand. 'You really got stuck with that, didn't you?'

'I've seen your ancestor's official record - you're lucky your family changed their name…' 'Yeah. Never been happier Dad went with Martian brevity.'

'They use one name don't they? So where does "Yûki" come from?'

'This end of space likes a bit more formality. Grampy said it was mom's grandparent's family name so we went with that for the official records.'

'Ah.' Bulge stared around, then frowned. 'Wataru… the shadows near that tree over there are flickering. The one that looks like…'

'I see it,' Wataru said quietly. 'Captain?' he called out softly. When he had Todo's attention he continued: 'Either you or Reinhardt got anything in your canteens?'

'I have.' Reinhardt tossed him the bottle, which he caught one handed by the strap with ease. 'Thirsty?'

'Nope. I think we might need an insurance policy.' He walked over to the tree Bulge had pointed out, and knelt at the foot of it, where one knotted root had worked its way to the surface, as dry and knotted as the dead tree it had once served. There he opened the water bottle and sprinkled some of its contents on the ground, where it was quickly soaked up.

'Hey!' Reinhardt snapped. 'We might need that!'

'Relax. It's just a trickle,' he told her. 'A token.' He placed a hand on the rough, flaking bark of the dead tree. 'If you're like the human ghosts… still watching,' he whispered. 'In the name of Queen Rafflesia, second of that name, we ask for your protection.'

'Yûki…' Reinhardt sounded nervous. 'The shadows…'

He could see for himself, and watched without fear as those at the foot of the great tree rippled and drew back from him. 'I know,' he replied calmly. 'This was a mazone grove. And this…' his hands wandered gently over the bark, tracing the curves and lines of what, even in the crepuscular gloom of Filament's black sun, looked like the face of a woman from the angle he was looking at. 'Was its guardian. Even in death, they protect. They're not like us…'

'I thought your experience of them wasn't very positive?' Todo asked, not taking his eyes off the shadows gathering around and outside the grove.

'That faction no longer exists. And we met a lot who were gentle and sweet natured. More since they took up their guardianship of Earth.'

'You're not afraid their ghosts might try to kill and reboot us?'

He shook his head. 'Well if I'm wrong it'll probably be too late to say "I told you so."' 'And at this point you really do start to sound like your father…' Todo drawled.

'That's no bad thing,' Bulge opined from his position on the ground. Wataru leaned against

the tree that was propping his classmate up, although he kept a weather eye out for the flickering shadows.

'You sound as though you've had first hand experience.'

'I did. About ten years ago, on New Geneva, after the Machinners' transports had gone. The Arcadia turned up to wipe out a bunch of Doppler Corp ships that moved in to mop up the survivors.'

Wataru didn't have to try too hard to do the maths. Bulge would have been nine - too young for the soulforges, but just the right age for Doppler Corps slave ships to move in and fill their holds with the children left behind. 'How long after?'

'Three months.'

Wataru laid a hand on the young man's shoulder. 'That would have gutted him. He always hates being too late.'

'Yeah. I got that.' Bulge looked up at Wataru, a bleak look on his face. 'My sister had died that morning, I was still sitting with her body. I just couldn't move, and the battle was coming closer. I was stupidly out in the open, no real cover, and he took a shot that would have taken my dumb head off. Just took a step back, rallied, and blew the bastard's head off, then picked me up like a sack of vegetables and made a run for the shuttle. I remember the look on his face then, and it scared me witless.'

'Yeah… he can be a bit intense, sorry.'

Bulge smiled. 'Oh… I get that. That's not what I remember most though. It was afterwards, when we waited for the SDF transports to arrive. Him… and your mother… along with half their crew I think, just making sure several hundred scared kids were okay. Handing out meal packets and hugs, and trying to smile for us even though you could see they felt sick to their stomachs. And there's this guy - the big bad Captain Harlock, sitting next to me with blood on his face, matting his hair telling me how he couldn't make it right, and he was sorry, but if I wanted he'd take me to see where they'd bury my sister before we left. All that hurt, after a huge battle, and he remembered one kid, and why I'd been where I was.' He smiled sadly 'I knew what I wanted to be one day, that day.'

'Not a pirate, I'm guessing?' Wataru said lightly, not sure how to react. Bulge shook his head.

'No. Someone who could make sure no-one had to have that look in their eyes that I saw in his that day. No one should have to clean up that kind of crap, let alone live through it. Our parents had either deserted us or been torn from us. Hell, most of us would never know which ours had been, and honestly - no-one wanted to know. I live in a world where people put a price on a man's head for showing them that what they're doing is wrong, and showing them what they should be doing. They hate him for it. What the hell is that about? Hell, he even paid for my fees for the Academy - I'd have thought he would have forgotten one lost kid by now.'

'There's been a fund set up since the war,' Wataru replied softly.

'Over and above that,' Bulge replied. 'A six months ago, out of the blue, I was working part time in a local café to make ends meet, because the cost of living on Destiny is bloody stupid, and he shows up - without the patch though. Bought a coffee, asked me what my plans were. Next thing I know I'm getting a call saying my fees, lodgings… everything - all paid for plus an allowance to get me through to graduation - even a bit beyond if I'm frugal - and I am.'

Six months put the time frame to not long after his parents had returned from Herise, and whatever shit had gone down there that they flat out refused to discuss, but had something to do with his ersatz ex-uncle and a machine that could show you different timelines. That his parents had seen something there that had sent their father off to expose a spectacularly dangerous use of dimensional oscillator tech wasn't much of a secret. The why however was something everyone involved been remarkably tight-lipped about. And had involved some seriously out of character hugging… His father had a lousy poker face, and that dimensional tunneling was something the SDF and the new Galaxy Railways had been involved in, so it wasn't a great leap to suspect it had to do with his future.

He really wasn't as slow on the uptake as family members sometimes laughingly accused him of. He just didn't bother shouting out to the world how great he was - he tended to leave that to Mamoru, because one overly dramatic arse per generation was enough, thank you very much. So he just shrugged and murmured something about his dad just being that kind of guy, and didn't voice the suspicion that it was highly likely Bulge had featured somewhere in that nightmare scenario, and in a good way… So much so, you felt you had to make extra sure he's close to me, dad? Inwardly he shivered slightly. What the hell did you see that was so bad you felt you had to make that call…? Because his father's feelings on interfering with time were pretty well documented.

'Wataru?'

'Hmm?'

'You look like someone just walked over your grave…'

Wataru tried to grin reassuringly at his classmate, though judging from the raised eyebrow, it failed dismally. 'Nothing much.' He caught the whisper of a noise on the wind that sounded terribly familiar. 'Do you hear that?'

'Wind in the trees?' Bulge suggested. 'No. Coming closer… Captain!'

'I hear it,' Todo assured him. 'Planes?'

Wataru grinned. 'Bulge - your flashlight thing?' he grabbed it and ran to the edge of the grove. 'Better than that - I'd know that sound anywhere - it's the Arcadia's Space Wolves!'

He flicked on the photonic emitter and started waving it around into the dark sky. 'Captain - I think the cavalry really did arrive this time!'