Miranda

Although only about a quarter of the Arcadia's length, the Miranda currently carried twice as many crew. Mamoru, a keen student of the history of his family's love affair with all things nautical - astro- and terrestrial - couldn't put it all down to the amount of automation the Arcadia enjoyed, with her creator's spirit animating its central computer. The same man, after all, had designed the computers that controlled the smaller vessel as a prototype for the massive, cathedral-like structure at the heart of his father's ship.

'It's mostly down to the engines.' Rei had a tendency to just cut right through his musings and take all the fun out of the research. Mamoru sat back in his chair and glared at the older boy. A waste of effort since it was mostly water off a duck's back, even when he added a credible imitation of his father's scowl.

'I was getting there…' He cursed inwardly as his voice cracked, wobbling from a pleasant tenor back into a boyish treble. And he didn't miss Rei's smirk at the slip. 'Asshole.'

'One of the perks of not going through puberty,' Rei replied smugly. 'And to answer your question…'

'Please, continue. I hate to find things out for myself.'

Rei waved a hand at him dismissively and ignored the finger flipped in his direction. 'The Arcadia's entire bow is taken up with sensors and the dark matter engine. Her standard reactors and weapons also take up proportionately more space, since she's got so many damned gun placements. Ergo, less space for a crew - although she's designed to run with about double the number your dad usually takes along. Not sure why he goes with between forty to fifty as standard.'

'Well fuck me… something you don't know?' Mamoru drawled. It was his turn to smirk and ignore an extended digit from where its owner lay, legs crossed at the ankles and other arm behind his head, on one of the four bunks in the room.

'Rations,' Freya interjected, from her chair at her workstation, where she'd been busy analysing data from the ship's sensors. 'The Arcadia's got practically infinite energy in our universe, but you still need water and food for the crew over sustained periods in space. Actually it's mostly the water supply - during the Machine Wars he did run with around seventy-five crew simply to allow everyone to stay reasonably sharp under constant battle conditions, but they were rarely in deep space for long periods of time, as the main engagements were in-system.' She looked around and flicked her light, fine hair out of her eyes with an artful, flirtatious gesture. 'What? I do my homework as well, you know.'

'Oh,' Rei drawled. 'We know… teacher's pet.'

Mamoru snorted. 'Seriously? Mr I've-got-an-organic-computer-for-a-brain is taking issue with the other person in the room who doesn't have to work his or her tushie off for class credit?'

'Bite me.'

'No thanks, I've not had my shots.'

Freya sighed. 'If the two of you are going to act like a couple of jerks, can you do it somewhere else? I'd like some peace and quiet whilst I do this. You know - work off some of that excess testosterone by beating the crap out of each other somewhere that isn't here?'

'I don't have hormones,' Rei pointed out in his most reasonable tone, which tended to come out somewhere equally placed between insolence and sarcasm.

'I'm not putting the words "beat" and "Rei" in the same sentence,' Mamoru replied, erring on the side of insolence. 'But I have to say the knowledge that you make a conscious effort to be a dick - as well as make use of your perfectly sculpted parts - doesn't really come as a surprise.'

Freya sighed heavily, put down her tablet, turned her chair so that she was facing them, and pointed to the door. 'I tried asking nicely. Fuck off. Both of you. Now.'

The youths whistled admiringly in unison. 'Such a mouth on the sweet little nibelung!' Mamoru laughed and ducked the stylus she threw at his head, caught it with his left hand and threw it back so that it landed point upwards in the empty cup next to Freya. 'Yesss!' He high-fived the empty air.

'Fluke,' Rei coughed into his hand.

'Out!' This time she snapped the word out, stamping her foot for emphasis as she jabbed her finger in the direction of the door. With as much insouciance as they could muster, the boys both stood up, getting in each other's way as they both tried to get through the door together, occasioning some good-natured - or at least not bad-natured - pushing and shoving to get out.

The door hissed closed behind them over Freya's sighed "finally". Once in the corridor they simultaneously adopted the same casual pose - leaning against the walls facing each other, hands in pockets.

'I suppose there's always the Mess,' Rei said eventually.

'For someone who derives most of his fizz from zero point energy, you eat like it's going out of fashion.'

Rei shrugged. 'My organics need it. And I'm a growing boy.'

Mamoru snorted. 'Growing outward at this rate.' He reached out and and jabbed Rei in the gut lightly, laughing off the mock growl. 'Maybe we do need to work off a bit of steam. It's been three days. And there's not much to do around here.'

'You decided to come along,' Rei pointed out. His black hair fell over his right eye and he pushed it out of the way. 'But I hear you. I don't like feeling like a fifth wheel either. The elders always seem to think we need protecting. Which in my case is bollocks…'

'Not until you finish growing and we get that motherball to stabilise your power outputs it isn't.' They both turned to see Blaze walking towards them. 'And stop experimenting when you think no-one's looking.'

'I wasn't…'

Mamoru tucked his chin in slightly to hide a smile. It wouldn't be obvious to most people - his father and Kei would probably spot it; Blaze, lacking their exposure to dark matter probably not, but although he'd stuffed his hands in his pockets, the tell-tale wisps of blue fire still trailed around his wrists before vanishing like mist.

'Yeah. Right.' Blaze aimed a slap at his brother's head calculated to just waft the hair on top of it slightly. Rei didn't even bother to duck and just grinned at his older brother. 'I know you, kiddo. Don't even think of trying it on my watch. On which note - why are you pair loitering in my corridor? The whole point of you inviting yourselves along was so you could make yourselves useful to Freya…'

'She asked us to leave,' Rei replied brightly.

Blaze snorted. 'Really? Or more likely the two of you were bugging the hell out of her and she sent you packing?'

The boys exchanged slightly guilty looks. Blaze laughed. 'I had a brother close to my age as well, remember? And I'm not so old I can't remember the shit we pulled at your age. If Freya's fed up with you, you can get down to the mess and give Anita a hand.'

'What's she doing on board?' Mamoru frowned. 'I thought we were just taking Ali?'

'If I'm going to have to run half way across known space to rescue Harlock, I'm bloody well making sure I can eat well while I do it,' Blaze replied with a grin.

Rei sniggered. 'You might want to rethink that, if you're hell-bent on shagging the arse off Hannibal's great-grandaughter… both for her sake and yours, if you want to fit in those pants for much longer, and be able to defend yourself against the Old Man when he catches you with 'em round your ankles…'

Blaze glared at him. 'What makes you think…'

'Please,' Mamoru added in his lazy drawl. 'We do know whose quarters are down that corridor, you dirty old man - Emilia's almost half your age!'

A slow blush spread over Blaze's face. 'None of your bloody business. And I'm Lar Metallian, in case you've forgotten? Double the usual lifespan?'

'Yet still,' Rei drawled in his turn, mimicking Mamoru's tone, 'Forty and change…'

'She's twenty-four, you judgemental little arses. And whilst we're on the subject…' he jabbed a finger at Mamoru's midsection.

'What? Last time I looked I wasn't shagging anyone I shouldn't...'

'I love the way you qualify that,' Rei said out of the corner of his mouth.

'Not you. Your bloody twin… has his tongue down my baby sister's throat at every opportunity.'

Mamoru sniggered. 'You do know she's not exactly an unwilling - or passive - participant, right? In fact the last time I walked in on them, Kanna was on…'

'Mamoru!' Blaze glared at him. 'Do not - if you value Wataru's life - finish that sentence in my hearing.'

'His intentions are honourable,' Mamoru pointed out. Under Blaze's baleful glare he temporised 'Eventually…'

'Baby. Sister.' Blaze glanced at Rei looking for backup, but the younger boy just shrugged.

'They're old enough for a bit of snogging, Blaze. You should realise Mamo here is just yanking your chain, and Wataru's so hell-fire bent on Doing the Right Thing he's probably got her Significant Birthday in his diary to ping him at one minute past midnight…'

'Kind of not helping,' Mamoru said, doing the sideways thing himself to make a point. He grinned. 'Though at least I'm never going to take the blame for his antics any more…' he ran a finger over his eyepatch, only slightly self-consciously. And as expected, the guilty looks on the faces of the brothers told him he'd neatly deflected the argument. Again. You owe me, bro… he thought. Rei still blamed himself for not being able to use his powers to zap the mazone who'd kidnapped him six years ago, and Blaze could always be reliably guilt-tripped. However briefly, he reflected, as Blaze's eyes narrowed. 'Mess hall. Anita. Right.' He grabbed Rei's arm and dragged him past Blaze, giving the older man a sickly grin that if he'd known it, was an exact replica of his father's as a young man.

Blaze sighed heavily and ran his fingers through his hair before knocking on the door. It opened silently, and he stepped through. 'Freya?'

The nibelung girl turned to look at him, and smiled, her tiny mouth turning up at the corners, and her wide, round eyes blinked as her nictitating membrane flickered across. He still found it somewhat awkward to talk to her - after Mimay's stoic, reserved silences, Freya's cheekier demeanour was a little bewildering. He wasn't altogether sure the nibelung as a race had the concept of "teenager", but the little girl rescued from a stasis capsule that had trapped her as the controller of a dark matter generator for over two hundred years had grown into a graceful, pretty young woman of her race - no longer a child, but demonstrably still lacking Mimay's physical maturity.

'Blaze!' Although tiny, her mouth could and did curve into a genuine smile, and her round, vertically slitted eyes held a warmth in their strangeness often missing from Mimay's impenetrable gaze. 'I was just about to call you.'

'Do you have their trail?'

'I have something,' she replied, turning back to her console, where she tapped a command into the computer and brought a hologrammatic display up in front of them, hovering over the surface of her workstation. Her long, oddly jointed fingers danced over the controls. 'Thankfully this ship has a few additions to her sensors most don't. I spoke to Mimay - she says Tochiro and her fellow Nibelung tested out a few bits of tech before they designed the Deathshadow Fleet. I was able to link it to the time radar, set for Harlock's - and Hannibal's - unique dark energy traces. Tracking just two people against the background levels isn't easy, but there is a trail, and I did find it. Following it isn't going to be easy in the Miranda, except…'

'Except?'

She beamed at him again. 'Look. The trail leads out into the galactic void, see?'

He looked, but could only see the cosmic static that reminded him of a stereoscopic picture. Even when her finger traced the faint line through space time that to her was as clear as daylight, he could only take her word for the fact that there was indeed a pattern in the chaos. But gradually, as he stared, sure enough he could slowly start to see the tiny trail. Or maybe it was the power of suggestion…

'Which one am I looking at?' he asked. The faint line - more of a series of dashes, actually, which he assumed meant serial IN-SKIP jumps - ran parallel to a second, much fainter trail in a different colour. Harlock's blue, faintly shot through with red, matched courses with another; a dark purple. 'Is this real-time or a colour-correction?'

'Real time,' she assured him. 'That's the ship that took them coming here. Before you ask, no, it isn't a dark matter ship, but it spends a lot of time in close proximity to a working engine. A powerful one at that.' Her fingers again waltzed over the control, to show a blue glow in the background microwave radiation, close by. 'This is Arcadia…' more fingertip choreography. '...and this, all the way over here, in the interstellar void, is the other.'

Not even Blaze's human senses could mistake the red glow the two trails converged on in Freya's projection. 'There's a planet there?'

Freya nodded, the gesture causing her short, fine fair to float around her head momentarily, as though in freefall. 'A small earth-type planet, mostly water. Circling a main sequence star. It's so far from anything it's not listed as inhabited, although it's perfectly suitable if you don't mind getting your feet wet. No name listed, and it's actually closer to Andromeda than the Milky Way.' She stopped, and stared up into his eyes, her normally impassive features almost displaying a tiny frown. Blaze took a closer look at the display, then reached over her shoulder to tap the controls to magnify the image.

Thick lines of a sickly, festering green converged on the red from a direction above the ecliptic plane of M31. Where the trails for the Arcadia - already moving in the opposite direction - and the mysterious ship carrying Harlock, Kei and Hannibal - ran like rivers through space-time, these were like thick threads of infection, leaving dark voids along their path.

'Phantasma class ships,' Freya said softly, her eyes sad. 'They tear their way through the universe, leaving devastation in their wake. Silence in the song of creation.'

Blaze stared at the 3d display, and bit his bottom lip. 'I thought there was only one of those things?'

'Whatever gave you that idea?' When he looked at her in confusion she patted his hand gently. 'Loki has one, yes. But these weren't nibelung warships. Phantasma were relics of the old universe. They weren't ours, we just inherited them…' She frowned, her tiny mouth pursed in a moue of disapproval. Her hand reached out to trace those sickly lines. 'They belong to the Lords of Shadow, and if they are heading to the same planet as Harlock…'

The name meant nothing to him, but her reaction was enough. 'Give navigation the vector and keep us on track. We're moving,' he told her grimly. He didn't wait for her agreement, but made straight for the door and was running by the time it shut behind him.