SDF Fast Response vessel Sirius.
Murase and Lawrence practically jumped on Wataru the moment his feet hit the hangar deck after exiting the Arcadia's bullet craft. 'We thought you'd be going with your dad, not back slumming with us,' Lawrence told him, punctuating the comment with a thump to his upper arm.
'I'm a serving officer with the SDF,' Wataru pointed out.
'As are the pair of you,' Todo said as he strode down the ramp, before Wataru could continue. 'Which means you should be at your posts, not cluttering up my hangar deck.'
'But you're letting pirates clutter it?' Lawrence asked with a smirk, pointing at Ali and Yara, who'd followed their captain out of the small craft, supporting a limping Bulge between them. 'Trust Swan here to get his arm around a beautiful woman…'
'What am I then?' Ali asked, mock indignation plastered all over his face. 'Chopped liver?'
'Well you're sure not a beautiful woman,' Wataru told him, struggling to keep a straight face. 'And Yara here isn't a pirate, she's one of Khalsa's people.'
'And yet… hobnobbing with pirates...' Lawrence replied with a smirk.
Murase leaned his elbow on his friend's shoulder. 'And yet… remind me where you spend your leave? And who your dad used to work with?' His shit eating smirk rivalled Guy's.
'Just who kicked your cage, Ryūsaku?' Lawrence kicked at the mesh grill of the flooring as he growled at his classmate.
'Gentlemen!' Todo's voice rapped out the work with uncharacteristic disapproval. 'If I could have less loitering and more action, it would be greatly appreciated.' He strode towards the group. 'Murase - help Bulge to sick bay. Yûki, Lawrence - with me to the bridge. Ali - Miss Yara? I think perhaps you'd better come with me as well - we'll need to liaise with the Arcadia.'
'We can do that from the bullet,' Ali pointed out.
Todo raised an eyebrow. 'No doubt. But I can't spare the manpower to keep an eye on you.'
With his pair of ducklings in tow, he left the hangar, leaving Ali and Yara no choice but to follow in his wake, Ali tutting and muttering under his breath. 'Well, how do you like that? And I thought we were getting along so well…'
'We are,' Yara pointed out. 'He hasn't just tossed you in the brig.'
'Don't you mean "us?"'
Yara shrugged. 'You heard Wataru - I'm not a pirate. So no, I don't.'
Ahead of them, Guy nudged Wataru in the side. 'He never bloody shuts up does he?' he asked in an arch whisper.
Wataru grinned. 'Not noticeably. But you should know by now not to buy into that schtick. Since Dad feels duty-bound to play the stoic, silent Space Pirate to the hilt, Ali reckons it's only fair someone plays the fool to distract the onlookers and let dad do his thing. About eighty percent of that bluster and Cosmic Arsehole routine is as fake as Ben's Cosmic Slut routine. You know Dad - he doesn't tolerate anyone who can't throw down and drop the act when it's time to get dangerous.'
Todo spluttered slightly. 'It never ceases to amaze me how you refer to some of the most dangerous men and women in the galaxy - or its near neighbours - so casually.'
Wataru shrugged. 'Back in the GMC he's Dessler. Once he gets his boots under Dad's table, he's just Uncle Ben. If the two ever collide, I might have a problem, but as Dad says: until then…' he shrugged again, then smiled to himself. 'Hard to find fault with a guy who came all the way out here with Dad to save our collective asses…'
'Would either of them have bothered if you weren't on this ship?' Lawrence asked.
Wataru glared at him. 'I'm not sure you learned a thing growing up with us, some days, Guy. Dad might have kicked up about being treated as an interstellar tow-truck a bit more, but he'd never leave anyone in danger like this. He's got… issues… with the crap this whole dark matter mess has created.'
'Not his mess though, was it?' Lawrence pointed out.
'It might not be his mess, but it threatens everything he's ever sworn to protect. So. He does what he does, and somehow manages to drag the damndest people into his crazy world along with him. Even you, captain…'
Todo couldn't hide a rueful smile. 'I fought alongside him during the Machine Wars. The Alliance Fleet lost a fine commander there.'
Wataru snorted. 'You do know he absolutely hates fighting, don't you? Or rather, "soldiering". It's the last thing he ever wanted to be. He's happiest just pottering about with his botanical projects.'
Lawrence's snort was derisory rather than amused. 'He's also a loose cannon and a lone wolf. Hardly a military role model. It's easy to get away with that shit he pulls when you're at the helm of a self-repairing, over-powered monstrosity. And you have contractual immortality to boot. Mere mortals are not so lucky - and tend to pay the price.'
Ali smoothly intercepted Wataru before the lad could land his balled up fist into his classmate's surly face, shoving Wataru out of the way in the same easy movement that pinned Lawrence up against the wall and wagged a warning finger at Todo to stay out of it.
'Ali…' Todo trailed off in the face of Ali's implacable expression as he pressed his forearm under Lawrence's jaw, forcing the younger man to raise his head to breathe.
'As you said, Todo - I'm a pirate. Why don't you just let me deal with this one?'
'This is my ship, Ali,' Todo replied quietly. 'And whilst you can take issue with his attitude, he is entitled to his opinion.'
'If my father hadn't known Harlock, do you think he'd have been rebooted?' Lawrence snapped at Ali. He pulled away from the finger Ali flicked at his nose. 'Asshole.'
'You and your sister would never have been bloody born if it wasn't for Harlock,' Ali snarled at him. 'Yer mom was rounded up and on one of those transports heading for Lar Metal's distillation factories, with yer sister inside if I recall correctly. And Rick would have died alongside the other fighters on Mistral if we hadn't showed up.' He let the younger man go and sneered at him as he rubbed his abused throat. 'Get a grip, Guy. The shit we've all gone through would have been a hell of a lot worse without Harlock, and that includes the current mess we're in. Rules and regulations can only get you so far, kid. Sometimes you've got to learn to cut loose and fight on a wing and a prayer. And the best commanders are those who understand when to chuck away the manuals and bring as many as possible back home safe.'
'I like the sound of that.' Bulge's tired voice from behind them caused the small group to turn to look at the young cadet, still leaning on Murase's shoulder.
'I thought you were supposed to be taking him to sick bay?' Wataru asked of the burly upper classman. Murase shrugged with his free shoulder. 'Slight change of plan… have you been too busy coffee-housing to check the lights?'
Behind him, the lighting in the corridor seemed to be fading towards almost Arcadia-like levels of gloom, slowly inching its way towards them like the tide advancing up a sandy beach. Todo frowned, and reached for the comms. 'Bridge?'
No reply. The others tried theirs, even as Bulge shook his head. 'We tried. Just static. The main corridor to the sick bay is in complete darkness, so we turned around to see if we could warn you.' In his hand he clutched one of the Arcadia's spare Nambu style cosmo guns, which he had to have lifted at some point from the armoury rack in the bullet. He spotted Wataru's pointed stare and shrugged. 'I'd have given it back once we got out of this mess.'
'Keep it,' Wataru told him with a grin. 'I think dad would eventually let you have one anyway. Captain?'
'Bridge,' Todo replied firmly. 'And fast. No more dawdling. Bulge…'
Ali stepped forwards. 'Cross carry,' he said in a tone that didn't allow for any discussion. 'Murase is it? You look like you've got strong arms.' The two men linked arms and got the protesting cadet seated between them. 'Now hang on for dear life,' Ali told him. 'Captain likes you, he'd have my hide if anything happened.' He nodded to Murase. 'Now which way is it?' he quipped, as they headed down the corridor.
Guy stepped slightly towards the creeping darkness and frowned, analysing the lighting sconces in the walls and ceiling.. 'Can we do anything with the lighting? Make it more hostile to it?'
'Not from here, Todo replied.
'I've got one of the Arcadia's photonic flashlights,' Wataru said softly. 'I took a spare as well…' he tossed it to Guy. 'Maybe Engineering can do something with the wavelength of the ship's interior lighting. Captain - I'll hang back with Yara and try and give some cover. We're both dark matter contaminated, I think we might have more protection against that shadow.' He held his cosmo pistol in one hand and the torch in the other. Yara did likewise. 'Guy - protect the captain. You don't have a cosmogun…'
'Why would I need…' Guy stared into the darkness, remembered what it actually held, and paled. 'Never mind. Sir?'
Todo, sensible enough to defer to the cadet's experience, nodded once to Wataru, then turned and made his way alongside Guy at a surprisingly respectable clip for a man his age. Thankful that the corridors are smooth and hazard free - unlike the Arcadia's hazard strewn walkways where you were as likely to trip over an impromptu game of shogi as you were trailing cabling - Yara and Wataru kept pace as much as they could, trotting backwards with the occasional glance to make sure they didn't find an unexpected trip hazard - a habit picked up, Wataru through ruefully, from spending far too much time on board the rather more cluttered Arcadia...
'Do you really think there are sequestered people in that?' Yara whispered as they kept a weather eye on the fading light. The lights in the corridor were being swallowed by the darkness as it followed them, their torches casting their blinding light into the gloom but instead of either the tunnel effect or shining their beams onto a hard surface, when they met the boundary, the light just… stopped. But at least the photonic wavelength used seemed to be slowing the advance a little.
'Maybe. I hope not, but I'd rather not risk it. But I don't think they can easily take over a living being - I think that's why the machinners were doing the hunting. And I don't hear footsteps, do you?'
'Not until you mentioned it, no,' she replied drily. She shivered, the gesture making the beam of her torch bounce off the walls, floor and ceiling in random flashes. 'Why is this shadow here, not outside, chasing the captain?'
'If you found several hundred potential replacements neatly packaged in a tin can, as opposed to a handful of free-range victims, where would you be?'
She gave him a brief, sour look. 'I thought we had enough problems with those metanoids taking over the bodies of the dead. Now we have our own dead trying to take the bodies of the living?' She sniffed. 'It seems your ancestor opened a door that was best left locked and bolted.'
'To be fair, I don't think he opened it. The Nibelung were doing that all on their own without his help.'
'No? Maybe. But from what Captain Nero tells us, I would think you need to look long and hard at what happened to the crews of all four of those ships. Two captains lived, potentially immortal. Three if you count Hannibal. One at least was an undead corpse - I wonder what you might find if you ever locate the other one.'
He was still thinking about what potential horrors that might include when a bulkhead opened unexpectedly and a tall figure in grey flight leathers almost ran him over.
The two space wolves hovered over the Sirius keeping a safe distance away from the shadow-wreathed ship.
'That doesn't look good…'
'Your capacity for stating the blindingly obvious remains impressive,' Harlock replied acidly. 'I've got static across the comms, on their channels and ours.'
'And somehow I don't think firing on that is going to help.'
'Not with our weapons, no. If the Arcadia can work the bugs out of the optical cannon upgrades, we might have a chance… Yattaran? Any luck?'
'Not without frying the Sirius,' Yattaran replied over the commlink. 'Our array was designed to back up the oscillator cannons - they'll go through a hull like a hot knife through plastic. What we need is something that can deliver an area effect, and so far, we can't modify the cannon to deliver it. We're victims of precision engineering…'
Harlock swore under his breath. 'We need something more like a sprinkler than a pressure jet?'
'Ever the gardener?' Ben twitted him. 'Can we even get the crew out?'
'Unknown, but even if they did try to leave, they'd be walking right into the shadows.' Harlock's fist landed on the console in front of him hard enough to make Ben jump on the other end of the commlink. 'Give me a physical enemy to fight… I can't tilt at shadows!'
'Would our own dark matter cloud push away this one?' Ben asked. 'The two forces do seem to be incompatible…'
'That's what we thought, but we just can't get any closer to the planet,' Mimay replied over the link. 'It's taking all we have to stay within the effective range of the tractor beam. I'm having to dampen our dark matter output to do so. And even if I unleash the dark matter array, we've no mechanism for controlling it. I daren't… not with Wataru…'
'And Ali and Yara, not to mention the crew,' Harlock finished for her. 'I'm going to take my plane in for a closer look. Ben - stay on overwatch and monitor whatever happens, will you? Mimay - see if anything pops out on the sensor feed. It's possible we might spot a weakness…'
'Or you could just get your arse back to your ship and let the cavalry deal with it?'
The voice over the comms was as familiar to Harlock as his own. 'Mamoru?' he bellowed.
On his dashboard, the IFF for an unfamiliar - but not unknown - ship popped up. He raised his head and starred out of the top of his canopy, at the vessel currently gliding across the sky. Like the Arcadia she sported a skull and crossbones on her bow, but this was a white moulding, not the red eyed integrated extension of the Arcadia's. The ship's hull was a dark blue with gilded scrollwork along her flank, and her wings swept back towards her stern - which, like the Arcadia, had an ancient galleon's rear end above the rear engine nozzles.
Unlike the Arcadia, she didn't trail clouds of dark matter in her wake. Instead she glowed slightly with the wispy blue light that often surrounded the Arcadia's crew.
'Dad? I meant it, you and Ben really need to get out of the way. We've had a couple of weeks en route to test this, but Zero says it's still not something you want to sit in the way of.'
'Mamoru… whatever that is you're planning - that's your brother down there…'
'Chill, dad. We know.' This was Taro, butting in. 'But the space wolves haven't got the same shielding as the Sirius. So with all due respect, could you back the hell off and let us save the day here? You can tear a strip off me later.'
'I'll be doing more than that to the pair of you,' Harlock promised coldly. 'Who the hell suggested taking a prototype out of the dry dock without permission?'
'That would be me.'
'Daiba?' Ben grinned as he heard the voice of an old friend. In the background he was fairly sure he could hear Harlock's teeth grinding. 'Zero finally prised you out of those musty ruins?'
'Hi Ben. Freya's with us as well. We've got this, I promise. We got the Arcadia's warning several days out, we've had time to work out a plan, thanks to the time dilation - which, by the way, is increasing, in case you hadn't guessed. We all need to get out of here fast. We can't tow the Sirius though, so we need to work with the Arcadia.'
'We're already on top of it, captain.' Yattaran's voice was a welcome sound. 'Tochiro says he can handle the calibration, but could really use you on the helm. Oh - and the comms signal from the Sirius is fading in and out - can barely lock onto the carrier wave now.'
Harlock frowned, then nodded to himself. Faced with a fait accompli, there really wasn't much he could say. Yet. 'Understood. Ben - back to the barn. I'll check on Kei and the others then head back.'
'Given the lack of comms down there, I was going to suggest that someone should try and contact Todo the old-fashioned way,' Ben replied. 'We might not get an audio or optical signal through, but I could get on board, and persuade them to evacuate…'
'That could be suicide…' Harlock began.
Ben cut him off. 'Not really. I went over everything Wataru told us - if I'm right, that shadow is really just that. A shadow. At least to some of us - you proved that when you stuck your hand in it - or tried to. It's fucking scary, but I think that's all it is. Wataru said it couldn't take him over…'
'Wataru went up against the "ghost" of a small child. And he has more dark matter in his system…'
'After months away from the Arcadia, as opposed to - oh - say - a man who only recently left Earth and travelled here on a dark matter powered ship? And he also said that the only successful sequestration he saw was on the recently dead, after the machinner hunters had drained the poor bastards of their life force. The machinners are busy with Kei and her little gang, Harlock. I think I'll be reasonably safe so long as I keep my wits about me. And you know how damned stubborn I am. I grew up in my father's harem and court: whispering in my ear doesn't scare me, it just annoys the fuck out of me. I know I can get in - and I'm pretty sure I can lead the crew out. Once we've cleared that cloud, the Sirius' crew should be good to go. And if we can't save the ship, we now have two battleships to split them between.'
'Ben… that's my son, but I'd never ask you to go…'
'Harlock. Shut the fuck up and delegate, will you? You can't be everywhere at once.' He was already taking the space wolf into a shallow dive towards the shadow-wreathed battleship. 'Look at it this way, you'll have the pleasure of listening to Talan and Erich bitching at each other about my shortcomings if I'm wrong.'
'And the lamentations of your tailor and personal stylist?' Harlock asked drily. 'Please do me the greatest of favours and come back in one piece, still breathing.' He broke the space wolf out of its current course and headed for the Arcadia, hovering at the limit of its ability to get close to the planet in a stationary orbit, Ben's laughter still ringing in his ears. 'Daiba?'
'Harlock?'
'Give Kei a call, you might be able to quickly test the photonic weapons on her problem. Then get them back up and out of here as fast as you can. I want us all off this rock and back into normal space as soon as possible.'
'Will do.'
Harlock watched as the ship peeled away, seaking towards the location of Kei's small team. 'Can't fault it on looks and speed,' he murmured to himself as his space wolf headed for the troposphere. 'Still pissed they did this without permission…'
Not as though they could have asked though, right? Tochiro asked him over the comms, laughing. Young Taro's a chip off the old Oyama block though - did you know they'd started calling him "Little Tochiro"?
'Probably pisses him off as much as being called "Little Harlock" does Mamoru,' Harlock replied. 'Could people at least wait until we're dead and buried before passing the torch to the next generation?'
Yeah… about that, Tochiro drawled. Harlock laughed. 'Good point.' He guided the fighter gently into the hangar bay, bringing it to a stop in the centre of the large floor. No need to bring it in on a combat line, as the hangar deck was clear of other planes, all but the ones piloted by Ben and Kei still in their racks up the walls. His flight crew quickly ran towards the plane as he popped the canopy, but he'd hopped out, onto the wing and to the ground before they reached him.
Kind of like handing your horse over to the groom… Tochiro mused. Though Harlock and Mamoru both preferred to "do" their own mounts, back in the day.
'Thankfully I don't have to hand these things a nosebag,' Harlock twitted him as he nodded to his crew, handed someone his helmet, and strode off towards the bridge. 'You know… any chance you could think about remodelling the travelators back in? That's one thing I do envy Nero for…'
Lazybones. Tochiro snorted. Two peas in a bloody pod somedays, you and my Harlock…
The black bird swooped down from the shadows of the rafters with a loud squawk, and settled on his shoulder as he approached the steps to the main bridge. Idly, he reached a hand up to smooth the feathers on its head, and it settled down to caw softly at him as though chiding him for leaving it alone for so long. Chatter from the main stations on the lower bridge washed over him as he clanged his way up the steps. He smiled fondly as he thought of the new Deathshadow class vessel's layout… no bloody stairs on those, thank you very much. No gothic, baroque, funereal decor either… Clean lines, good lighting, and an open plan bridge with the helm where it should be, on a level with the rest of the crew stations, and a nice, modern, captain's chair that not even the overly-efficient Kei could find fault with.
He smiled and nodded to Mimay, standing as she always did next to the control orb for the dark matter engine, the massive organ pipes of the alien device rotating slowly behind her as they curved up towards the dark vault of the ceiling and down into the bowels of the ship.
Tochiro sniffed. Seriously? You prefer that sterile tin box?
Harlock laughed silently. 'Don't get me wrong - I like what the three of you did with the place, but… even you have to admit, it's not "me"?' It was hard to keep his thoughts to himself - he hated to upset the little man, but despite over twenty years as the Arcadia's captain, he still felt like something of an interloper. On any other ship it wouldn't have mattered, but her three "surviving" crew from the time of her descent into the maelstrom of dark matter were bound to it in ways he could never be.
Living in the shadows, yearning for the light…
Half sick of shadows…? Tochiro murmured, as his hands closed on the balusters of the ship's wheel. Sensing his confusion, the ship's guiding genius loci laughed. Pre-atomic poet, he explained. You're not just a replacement goldfish, ya know? Layla Shura had the right of it, when you got lost in that time skip a couple of years back. You are Harlock. It's just on this ring of time, the two of you - and maybe Hannibal as well - are just like one of those two-slit experiments, where the photons overlap in a weird interference pattern…
'Next thing I know you'll be sticking me in a box with one of Luna's cats…'
'Eh?'
Realising he'd spoken this last out loud, much to Yattaran's confusion, he made the effort to concentrate on the helm. 'First mate? Where are we with that tractor beam?'
'Assuming the Shin Arcadia can clear that shadow? It's ready to deploy. Ben's on board the Sirius… what we can't figure out is if it's safer for them to leave the ship or stay on it.'
'Kei?'
'Clear of the barn. A handful of survivors, in real bad shape. She's headed up to the Shin Arcadia with 'em. Luna says out of the five, two ain't gonna make it, and the others are dicey.'
'That's a mouthful… Are we really calling it that?' Harlock muttered under his breath. 'Never mind. Franz - put me through.'
The dark haired man at Kei's station complied, and a hologramme formed in front of the wheel. 'Dad.'
'Mamoru.' His son stood beside the wheel of the new bridge, under bright lights that caught the highlights in his hair, darker than his father's. At his side, about a head shorter than his adopted brother, stood Taro, stockier than the willowy Mamoru. Neither youth looked as chirpy as they usually did, their normally cheeky demeanours replaced by a seriousness he wasn't used to seeing in either of them. At stations behind the pair, he could just make out the features of the young synth, Zero, and his nibelung ward, Freya.
'Mum's on her way up to the flight deck,' Mamoru told him. 'Won't that be fun…' His tan had faded over the months he'd spent working on the dock in Earth orbit, and the scar across his cheek and nose wasn't so noticeable unless you looked for it - or the way his right eye didn't quite react to the light the way his real eye did.
Interference patterns…
Harlock thrust away the notion. 'How long until you can clear the optical cannon for firing?'
'Daiba's just going over the last results with Zero and Freya.' Behind the youths, one hand - its owner out of shot - waved. 'Two minutes to test fire…' Taro pulled his glasses - an affectation, since Harlock and Kei had had his natural short-sight corrected at an early age - and cleaned them with the edge of his sweater before pushing them back into place on his wide face. 'Relax, Dad - we've got this. You've had the Arcadia's brains trust, Khalsa's people, Hannibal's bunch and two brilliant Nibelung engineers crawling all over these ships for months. You gotta just go for it at some point…'
That's my boy! Tochiro added brightly, in his head. You know your problem is you have Kei for a wingman, not an Oyama. It's made you a bit over-cautious…
'Remind me again how that worked out?' he replied sotto voce.
…
The silence from his ship's central computer was more guilty as charged than hurt feelings, but he still had to resist the urge to apologise to the little guy. They might not have gone through hell together as lifelong friends, but Tochiro was - even in his current state - impossible not to like. However the latest generation still demanded his attention. 'Dad?'
'Sorry, Taro. We're just waiting on Ben - though if he can't get the crew off the Sirius…'
'Her shields will hold,' Mamoru replied confidently. 'I've been over the specs. I wouldn't risk Wataru - you know that.'
'You sure Dessler has this?' Zero's voice held more than a trace of doubt.
'I trust him to look after his own hide,' Harlock replied dryly. 'He's not going to throw his life away just to look good. If there's a way off, he'll find it. If not - he's smart enough to work out what Todo and his crew need to do.'
'You sure he gets the stakes?' Yattaran muttered. 'He's not been privy to the specs for the new ships…'
Harlock smirked, reached over, and thumped his first mate's muscular arm. 'It's so sweet that you think that…'
'Yeah,' Franz called over from the station on Harlock's right. 'Did you really think he'd cross two galaxies just for a booty call? I mean… he has an entire harem at his beck and call, and Cleo - sorry - Queen Rafflesia's hot, but not that hot…'
Yattaran scowled and scratched his left ass-cheek. 'You knew that?' he asked his captain, 'and you still trust that sly little blue weasel?'
'Better him than the alternatives,' Harlock pointed out.
Yattran peered at his readings and harraumphed. 'That's not a ringing endorsement,' he pointed out.
'As long as we aren't in competition or getting in each other's way, we get along just fine. Whether or not I'd care to test the relationship outside of those param…' The screen was lit up by a dazzling flash of light, that left afterimages flickering across the sight of his one good eye. 'A little warning would have been good…'
The hologramme in front of him showed a sudden burst of frantic activity. Harlock leaned on the wheel with his right elbow, and idly toyed with a baluster with his left hand - at least until he caught the filthy snigger from his left hand side and stilled it's rather suggestive motion. 'What went wrong?'
'Not wrong, per se…' Zero strolled over to the camera and elbowed Mamoru out of shot. He pushed his black hair out of his eyes. 'It performed according to projections…'
'But there's not much left of the barn, or the area around it for about two hundred metres in diameter,' Taro added, sneaking into view. 'Any lower on the power, there's no effect. But I don't think I can risk…'
Harlock nodded thoughtfully. 'No way of knowing if the Sirius will raise her shields, let alone if they'll hold?'
'Needs something like an optical silencer,' Franz opined. 'Keep the power, but maybe not quite so concentrated?'
'We already have a pretty wide area effect, rather than a concentrated beam,' Zero began, snapping a little defensively, and ignoring the warning hand on his shoulder from Daiba, standing behind him.
'Diffusion…' Harlock mused. Something Yattaran had said earlier struck a chord. 'Mimay?'
He never needed to raise his voice to call her over. Her footsteps trip-trapped across the decking to his side, and raised a hand to fuss the bird who'd reached down with his beak to nuzzle her ear.
'The dark matter emitters,' he began. 'If we were to place a cloud of our dark matter - a thin one - between the photon beam and the Sirius, would that act to diffuse the light? Light can't pass through dark matter - it scatters it, we know this from the Jovian Plasma Accelerator. But if it acted like…'
Yattaran was already bouncing up and down on the spot, a disturbing sight as his stomach obeyed its own laws of Newtonian motion. 'Hell yeah - like an interference pattern - we don't want to destroy something, we just need to disrupt it… the combination of our dark matter and the Shin Arcadia's photon emitters…'
Mimay smiled up at Harlock. 'Glad I could help,' she told him, in her soft voice. 'Freya?'
As the nibelung girl sashayed to stand with the overly-enthusiastic youths on board the other ship, Harlock shared a wry smile with Mimay and prudently took himself off to his chair, sitting down with far less of a thump than he really wanted to indulge in. 'Now it's up to you, Ben,' he murmured under his breath, as he watched his experts talking over each other, and the next generation of troublemakers.
You've got that part of the job down pat.
'Which bit?'
Getting some shuteye when everyone else is flapping around like a headless chicken doing all the work? Tochiro replied with a giggle. Honestly…
'I think someone once told me that command is nine-tenths getting the right people into the right jobs, and then standing back and letting them get on with it,' Harlock drawled in reply.
You've spent far too much time with Hannibal… But on that note… I need to get my arse in gear and get working on those equations. Work, work work…
Harlock leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes and tuned him out. What couldn't be changed had to be endured. He'd take the breather, for however long it lasted.
And as ever, it was never long enough.
Sirius
His bravado over the comms aside, Ben wasn't quite as confident of his plan as he'd tried to sound. The little voice in his head asking him what the hell he thought he was doing sounded annoyingly like his cousin and closest confidant since childhood, Talan. He couldn't even blame Harlock for the pirate's tendency to go off and just do his own thing rubbing off, because truthfully, he'd been doing that long before he'd met the man. They were, as both Talan and Erich often pointed out, cut from the same cloth. But where Harlock had found his freedom by being able to cut loose from the ties that bound him and travel the universe beholden to no one, Ben…
Ben had taken another route. Freedom for him had meant not only removing those who threatened him, but taking up a role that meant there were precious few people left who would ever threaten him again. But the shackles he'd placed around his own neck were a high price to pay for that freedom.
As he loped easily towards the shrouded bulk of the Sirius, a few hundred feet away, he laughed. Harlock had escaped from under the yoke, sticking two fingers up to authority. He'd become that authority. Or at least the public face of it. He knew which of them had the better deal. Hint: It wasn't the one running into a dark matter cloud of the souls of the dead… And yet, here they were, both in the same place, with the same goals. The universe, sometimes, must be laughing at the pair of them - the emperor and the pirate, both determined to save their respective worlds…
...one ship at a time? He hesitated as he reached the leading edge of the shifting shadows. Shadows under a black sun that shouldn't even exist. He stopped and reached out to place his hand over that shivering event horizon, and flinched slightly as flickers of blue flame ran up and down his arm, and the shadows pulled away from him, licking at his leather-gloved hand, but repelled by the dark matter in his system. 'At least I was right about that…' he muttered. He pulled his flashlight out of its belt loop with one hand, and kept his other hand on the butt of his cosmogun. Taking a deep breath he stepped into the shadows.
What appeared from the outside to be a solid cloud was nothing of the sort. He'd been right about that, at least. It was no darker beyond that quivering line than it was outside it. Used to the planet's peculiar unlight by now, he could see his way easily to the nearest airlock. The shadows were wispy trails of smoky mist that curled around him but did nothing to impede his advance. He risked a glance behind, to see if the cloud was visible from inside, like the inside of a dome, but there was nothing. The phenomena was one way, it seemed.
Faces emerged in the fragile shadows, mouths open in eternal screams. Hands clawed impotently at his arms, his legs, passed harmlessly through his hair, snatched and grabbed like writhing brambles, but they were, ultimately, powerless. But they whispered, as he walked, a multitude trying to make themselves heard, like wind in dry grass. Smoky dust devils whirling and turning in tormented gyres, forever sobbing in a darkness that would never let them go.
He smiled grimly as he forced himself to shut out the pitiful pleas and threats, and made his way to the airlock. 'Wrong person,' he said out loud as he walked. 'If there's one thing guaranteed to piss me off it's someone trying to manipulate me. I don't like flattery and I sure as hell don't scare..' The chittering increased in volume, and the shadows seemed to press closer, until he swept the torchlight round in a sweeping arc, and they pulled away, gibbering incoherently, although it didn't keep them away for long.
He had to place the torch in his teeth to key in the access code the Arcadia's computers had provided before he'd landed the fighter. He smiled grimly around a mouthful of metal casing, wondering what Layla Shura thought of a pirate having an access all areas pass to her battleships… Shadows crowded back into his personal space. He turned his head to sweep the teeth-held torch towards them, and they squirmed out of range of the fading beam. The airlock cycled open and he let out a "hah!" and caught the device in a gloved hand. Once inside the ship shutting the hatch was a matter of just slamming a hand down on the large button next to it, and jumping back as a smoky tendril coiled towards one of his boots. He kicked at it impotently, more relieved than he'd ever admitted when it was dispelled by the soft whoosh of air as the inner hatch opened. Rather faster than he'd normally have done, he backed into the corridor - and almost fell over someone.
'Wataru?' He was clutching the younger man's shoulders, his fingers curled around the epaulettes of his black uniform, and the youth's hands were splayed on his chest as he tried to stop himself from falling backwards. 'Better not see your father with your paws all over me,' he quipped, as he pushed the lad away and regained both his balance and his savoir faire.
'Oh… honestly…' Then Wataru grinned at him. 'You're lucky no-one blew your annoying head off, Ben.'
Ben slapped the young man on the shoulder. 'I'm too pretty to die,' he replied in the voice he reserved for imperious proclamations. 'Your brothers are here, with a weapon that might work, but I need Todo - and fast.'
'Bridge is this way.' Wataru led the way at a run, Yara following, the pair of them keeping Ben between them. Seeing the girl's light fading, Ben handed her his, without a word, and plucked the faint light from her hand in return.
'They're in the ship already…' he noted, casting a quick, wary eye over the shadows.
'Working on it,' Wataru grunted. They slid to a halt at the bridge door and Wataru tapped in his code to let them in.
They stumbled into the much brighter light of the bridge, blinking in the sudden change of light level.
'Lord Dessler…' Todo began to stand up, and Ben waved him back down.
'Harlock's lads and strays are here with one of his new ships - they might get the shadows dispersed outside, but you'd better off evacuating…'
Todo shook his head. 'I've got people trapped in at least three areas,' he replied quietly. 'We can't get through those shadows to get them. One man tried, and didn't come back out. Wataru was lucky - it looks as though only someone touched by the Arcadia can get through them.'
'Or Earth…' Ben murmured.
'I've got Engineering working on the lighting wavelengths,' Todo continued. 'But whatever Harlock has planned, it's going to have to risk our shields being up to it, which I assume he's relying on in the last resort?' Ben nodded grimly, catching Ali's studiously calm mien.
'I can send Ali, Yara and Wataru out,' Todo continued, quietly, so that only the small group near him could hear.
'No.' Wataru folded his arms in a gesture reminiscent of his father's, his expression just as mulish. 'My place is here.'
'I could knock him out…' Ali muttered into Ben's ear.
'I trust Mamoru and Taro,' Wataru retorted. 'Can we get a message out?' he pointed to the comm unit on Ben's collar, looking hopeful, until Ben shook his head. 'Nothing doing, kid. But I had the comms on until I was cut off - Harlock's got a plan to use the Arcadia and the Shin Arcadia in tandem.'
'Because the Arcadia's weapons have such a great track record…' Guy muttered. When that earned him an elbow in the stomach from Bulge, who was leaning wearily on a nearby console, he just muttered something about "another apologiser for pirates", but under his breath.
'Sir!' one of the crew called out. 'Engineering have the wavelength isolated - they'll flood the ship on your comm…'
'Consider it given,' Todo replied. 'Dessler, Ali - we're not going to get clear. Can you get through to Harlock at all?'
Ben shook his head. 'Not on the comms…'
Ali grinned nastily. 'But the guns work, right?' He winked at Wataru, who first looked confused, until the penny dropped and he grinned back. 'Oh… hell yeah! Should have thought of that!' He loped over to an empty gunnery console and dropped into the seat. 'Dad used an old binary code to send a message to let the Gaia Fleet know he'd made it on board the Arcadia - he used the point defence guns to send it…'
'Do it, Cadet,' Todo ordered. Wataru nodded and began plotting a firing solution. 'Do you have a message in mind?'
'Stuck. Try not to kill us…?' Wataru replied brightly.
'Hardly a military code,' Guy pointed out. Bulge rolled his eyes at him.
'I don't think they have a code to cover this,' he pointed out dryly, as the guns fired a rapid rat-a-tat into the smoky mist outside the bridge viewscreen.
Arcadia class prototype Mk2
'Got a signal coming in!' Daiba called out to Mamoru, who'd taken the helm by reason of having won a coin toss Daiba still had his doubts about. He laughed. 'Oh, man… that just has to be Wataru - he's used the ship's guns to send that binary code! They can't get off the ship. Asks us to be careful.'
Zero snorted. 'As if we'd do anything else…' He went back to peering at the numbers on his screen, Freya at his shoulder as the two conferred on whatever esoteric calculations they needed to perform, Mimay's hologramme next to the pair offering advice as they worked, and Taro frantically converting the discussion into action at the next station.
Mamoru appeared to be leaning on the wheel in the same nonchalant pose his father often adopted, but Daiba didn't miss the white knuckles on the hand gripping one of the balusters. 'Hey!' he called out softly, getting the younger man's attention. 'You know, I think that's why everyone else wears gloves…' he said, nodding at the tell-tale hand.
Mamoru made an effort to relax the offending extremity and gave his cousin a rueful grin. 'There's several hundred people down there,' he replied. 'Not just Wataru. I just… don't want to screw this up.'
Daiba reached over and punched him on the arm. 'We've got this. You're not your great-whatever grandfather, okay?'
Mamoru rubbed the scar where it ran over the lid over his prosthetic eyeball, but said nothing.
'We're ready,' Taro called out. His round face lacked his usual beaming grin - a sure sign he was as worried as the rest of them. 'Dad says we're good to go on his mark.'
'Daiba?' Mamoru didn't need to make it an order, he was already synching the optical array to the data from Zero's station.
'Ready.'
On the viewscreen, they saw the over-arching antennae of the Arcadia unfurl, and wispy trails of dark matter begin to gather between them as they untwisted into two massive structures, like strands of DNA unravelling. A diffuse cloud formed between the two ships in the lower atmosphere, and the grounded Sirius, sparking with faint, flickering pulses of blue lighting.
'Target saturation in 3...2...1… mark!' Daiba fired, and the deliberately attenuated beams from their optical cannon streaked away from the ship, vanishing into the thin cloud of dark matter. From this angle they couldn't see through the cloud to the Sirius, and Mamoru's grip on the Baluster looked tight enough to do what his father had done on more than one occasion, and break it right off. However, it held.
It seemed as though everyone on the bridge held their breath, until Harlock's voice came over the comms: 'Sirius is clear! Mamoru - head for the rift, we're going in with the tractor array for the Sirius.'
The crew cheered, several people high-fiving each other. Zero settled for giving Freya a hug, which Taro immediately glomped. Mamoru slumped slightly against the wheel for a moment, then pulled himself together and gave it a hard spin, sending the ship on a fast one-eighty as Daiba called up the maneuvering engines to get them out of orbit.
'Blaze'll be waiting for us,' he told Mamoru. 'Poor man'll be having kittens…' He grinned. 'At least it won't be Hannibal - he's gonna tear a strip off us for taking the ship out early!'
They headed through the rift, the ship seeming to spring out of the sub-universe and into normal space as though desperate to escape. Mamoru shuddered as they passed through the peculiar light that marked the edges. 'I just hope he brought that oscillator - the sooner this thing's sealed off, I think the happier we'll all be. Is dad…'
'Right behind us!' Taro called out cheerily. 'Got comms from the Sirius - they're ok!' Noticing that Mamoru was oddly quiet, he sauntered up to his adopted brother. 'Hey,' he said quietly. 'They're okay, Mamo.'
'I know… but…' Mamoru stared at the rift, visible through the viewscreen in all its deadly, sickly colourful glory. 'Some things are destiny, right? That's what Layla said on Herise. Fate… and Wataru got caught in a rift… maybe not the same one, but…'
'Things are different,' Taro assured him quietly, careful not to be overheard except by Daiba, who was busy checking the status of the new weaponry after its firing. 'Wataru's fate on that timeline doesn't have to be the same here…' He nudged the taller youth in the ribs. 'You and dad… you haven't told him yet, have you?'
'Would you?' Mamoru asked. 'I watched my - our - brother die, Taro. I can't unsee it. And dad and I… we won't always be around to save him.'
Taro thumped him gently on the arm. 'He's gotta go his own way, Mamo. Dad's done his best to close off one cause of that future. Now - game face on, bro - looks like we're rendezvousing with the big boys.'
They both watched as the Arcadia drew alongside and released the Sirius. Gliding slowly to meet them was Blaze's ship, the Kairyu, named after Blaze's brother, whose Lar Metallian name that had been. 'Blaze didn't get to save Marin…' Mamoru said under his breath, so that only Taro caught it. Taro, more astute than most onlookers gave him credit for, reached up and gave Mamoru's shoulder a quick squeeze, then plastered a cheery grin over his homely features to welcome the "seniors", and prepare for the fallout.
