For Pollywantsa… who seems to think Hannibal (Mamoru) was sitting on his firm, muscular behind for ninety years after Harlock told him his little plans (see: That Which is Not).

Oh ye of little faith.


Pirate Battleship Arcadia.

Just outside the dimensional rift around Planet Filament.

Present Day.

Or: About a week after the events of Pavor Nocturnus…

'You're sure this will work?' Blaze's voice held an uncharacteristic note of suspicion as he stared out of the main viewscreen that covered the entire front of the Arcadia's main bridge. He was standing next to the Arcadia's wheel, arms folded, trying not to look nervous and failing miserably.

'Oh ye of little faith,' Yattaran muttered, jabbing away at his console. 'We got this. It's not the first time we've blown up one of these things, after all.'

'Yes… there's still a no-fly zone on the outer edge of Lar Metal's solar system,' the de facto leader of the Millennial Thieves replied dryly.

'Coz there was supposed to be,' Yattaran snapped at him. 'Sheesh. Whaddya think we are, a bunch of amateurs?'

'Do I have to answer that?' Blaze asked innocently of the Arcadia's captain, standing on the other side of the wheel; a tall, quiet figure in a dark flightsuit covered by a large leather cloak.

'Kei?' Harlock just ignored the hazing, as usual.

'Disengaging the main thrusters. Dimensional Oscillator in position in the rift. Detonation in 5… 4… 3… 2…'

They all waited, every breath on the Arcadia's bridge held simultaneously.

And just as simultaneously let out as nothing happened.

The minutes ticked past.

'Did you replace the batteries?' Blaze asked eventually. He ignored Harlock's one-eyed glare.

'Yattaran? Where's my explosion?' the pirate asked in the soft, gentle tones of a man who's trying very hard not to have second thoughts about his hiring policy. On screen the false-colour image of the rift - complete with the wispy streams of black smoke falling into it to mark where the dark matter was being pulled from their universe into another - twisted and roiled like oil on the surface of the ocean. Whether or not the sickly, nauseating colours were the product of some obscure algorithm in the ship's mainframe, or the whimsy of its capricious guiding soul, were anyone's guess. In the middle of it, maintaining its position with judicious bursts from maneuvering thrusters around its circumference, the dimensional oscillator bomb floated with almost nonchalant, insolent serenity.

'The bomb's drifting now. The dark matter current has it.'

'Too late to go over and check it out then?' Blaze asked brightly.

'Well, if you really want to go and clamber over an explosive device capable of taking out a small sun which just failed to detonate after we sent a signal to it,' Kei told him snippily, 'Be my guest. I never figured you for the kind of boy who'd run up to a dud firework to check it out…'

'I dunno,' Ali opined from his station below. 'When yer mam gives you a moniker that translates to "fire dragon" it's gotta have repercussions… I mean, you willingly go by "Blaze"...'

'Ever known anyone from my family who willingly uses their entire Lar Metallian name?' Blaze drawled back.

Ali sniggered. 'Now you come to mention it…'

'I think he was joking,' Harlock murmured near Kei's left ear. 'Ease up a little.'

'But this is the second dud. Just what is it with these things? We went over this one with a fine-toothed comb. The receivers were just fine. The detonation primers hadn't corroded…'

Maybe we were looking in the wrong place?

Tochiro's hologramme flickered into being a couple of feet in front of the wheel. Technically, he didn't have to make himself visible, but in death as in life, he was a friendly chap.

'What are you suggesting, my friend?' Harlock smiled down at the image of the shorter, bespectacled figure. 'We went over every inch of this one before launch.'

Yep. And that's what I just had second thoughts about. Turns out this isn't an engineering problem. Oy - Yattaran - punch up the code for the detonator will ya?

The rotund pirate dutifully complied, and all eyes stared at the screen as the code scrolled up. 'Anything in particular?' Harlock asked. 'You do know most of us don't speak machine code, right?'

Heheh… bear with me. Took me a couple of microseconds to analyse it, even with all the computing power of the Arcadia's databanks. It's buried deep in the comms code, not the code that regulates the energy output. Someone just switched a couple of qubits around, so the signal reaches the device, but doesn't trigger the detonation sequence. It's delicate, elegant, and so subtle, I can only think of two people who could have done it. And you're talking to one of them

'Wasn't this one logged as deployed about sixty years after the War? So wouldn't everyone else be dead by then who worked on them?' Blaze asked.

Mmmm. But then, Maya only had to create the change in the code. After that anyone with the password could get in and insert the new code. If they had a device built by, say, an expert in ICE

'Who'd have had the access codes?' Yattaran wondered aloud.

Blaze looked at Harlock. Who looked at Kei. Who looked at Tochiro.

Who shuffled his non-existent feet, staring at the scuffed toes of his non-existent boots.


Ventimiglia.

3 weeks later.

'So, Blaze picked up another bomb for you?' Hannibal asked, as he walked beside Harlock along the beach. Both men were in shorts and cut off tees, their collar length hair blowing in the breeze. Harlock pushed an errant lock off his face and glared at the silver fox walking next to him.

'We decided to pick up one placed before 2888,' he replied with studied, well practiced calm. 'To no-one's surprise, that one went off on schedule. The rift's closed.'

'Good to know.'

'Seriously. You're going to play the innocent card with me?' Harlock asked him. 'Tochiro worked it all out once he knew what he was looking for. Although in hindsight, you needn't have bothered. Once those five oscillators in the Mazone solar system were blown by that freak solar disturbance, your brother could never have succeeded. But then, you'd have no way of knowing that…'

'Mmmm.'

Harlock snorted at the non-committal murmur. 'We also went over the logs from the Arcadia's battles during the war. Funny thing… there was a section of hull with one of the IFF beacons in it we thought had been damaged way back then, causing it to be set on a permanent broadcast. Caused us a few problems in my first couple of days as captain...'

'Mmmm.'

'Turns out that section didn't get a scratch on it during either firefight of the War...'

'Mmmm.'

'So we're thinking: It would have been easy enough for an expert in communications and - say - one of the Deathshadow Fleet's top ICE experts formerly attached to Arcadia Engineering to work out how to sabotage a beacon so it wouldn't be easily detectable on board. And to come up between them with a way to disable the oscillators their own company had built in a way that only an expert - or the people who wrote the code - would find. And then only if they went looking.'

'Mmmm'

'Then Tochiro pointed out that Maya had worked in communications R&D… And of course the operations executive for the entire company who happened to be the Vice Admiral in command of the fleet based around Titan would know the override codes for both the oscillators and the Deathshadow fleet's systems…'

'Mmmm.'

'So once you had gotten your head together with Maya and Con Jones, worked out how to sabotage the bombs and a way to track the Arcadia so you could disable the oscillators she was laying like eggs, just how did you slip someone on board to set that beacon off?'

'Same way I got you on board. Present my little brother with a challenge he wouldn't be able to resist. In this case, a former fleet engineer called Sam Coyne. Only unlike you, Sam knew he was working for me.'

'You weren't afraid Harlock would find out what he was up to? Because he sure as hell had me made before I stepped foot on board.'

Hannibal paused, and closed his eyes, turning into the sea breeze and the afternoon sun to let both caress his face. 'I know my little brother better than anyone - even Tochiro - ever will. It should tell you something that he never bothered to turn the damned thing off - and it could have been done, albeit with a lot of effort, as you found out years ago.'

'I almost got cut in two getting that thing out,' Harlock told him frostily. 'So did Kei… And it'd still be broadcasting our location to anyone in range if it hadn't short-circuited when a boarding tube breached that section of the hull and damaged the shielding, making it detectable…' In the face of the older man's inscrutable silence he sighed. 'Sometimes…'

'Yes?'

'One of these days you'll outsmart yourself, you do know that?'

'Mmmm.'

Harlock rolled his eyes, the effect somewhat marred by his blind eye being hidden by his patch. He sighed. 'Never mind. Oh - before I forget, Kei wanted you to come for dinner tonight, on board.'

'I'll be there.' Hannibal patted Harlock on the shoulder. 'Relax. I knew what I was doing. Firstly, only the Miranda could track it, until I slipped Isora the frequency so he could get you on board. Second, if you hadn't found the beacon, I'd have found a way to warn you before too long. If it helps, I'll let you have the locations of the other devices we managed to locate and disable. And Maya's original code so you can re-arm them when you need them. For the record, I wouldn't have left you in the dark once you started deploying them against the Metanoid fleet.' He wandered back towards the more populated area of the beach, whistling jauntily.

I don't think he's realised what day it is, he's spent so long out here baking his brain in the sun, Tochiro murmured in his ear.

Harlock smirked. 'No. No I don't think he has.' He started whistling himself as he strolled in Hannibal's wet sandy footprints.

Are you going to tell Harlock? Tochiro asked.

'Mmmm.'

Are you going to warn Mamoru?

Harlock's smirk, if anything, grew. 'No. No, I don't think I will…' Contemplating the amusement factor of being a fly on the wall around midnight, Earth Standard Time, on the anniversary of the day the Arcadia's former captain had given his ship and his name away to its current captain over twenty years ago, Harlock's stride lengthened as he made his way back to where the crews of three Deathshadow vessels were congregating on the golden sands.