'You're a fucking lunatic!'

I was glad it was Kei doing the screaming. However justified, the one thing Captain Harlock didn't do was scream in people's faces, no matter how tempting - or justified. Like the rest of us she was dripping wet from head to foot, her silk tunic plastered to her very shapely, athletic torso, although I seemed to be the only one noticing.

'I'm inclined to agree with her, Khal,' Hannibal added rather acidly as he pushed his hair off his face before it dripped more water into his eyes. 'A little warning?'

Nero just shrugged and looked directly at me, gauging my reaction. Well, I'd learned how to do imperturbable over the years, along with "stoic badass" and "cold-blooded bastard". The trouble was, as I soon realised, that Captain Nero had had more practice at it. Plus the effect was ruined by being dripping wet. I probably looked like a drowned rat; Nero - in only his sarong-pants - looked like this was his natural element, with water dripping off his black hair and running off tanned, muscled shoulders.

Thankfully Hannibal came from the more talkative branch of the family twig. 'Khalsa, I really hope that reaction back there wasn't as powerful as it looked…'

'Oh, it was a helium 3 fusion reaction,' Yanez answered breezily as we walked back towards the beach. 'Don't worry - there's little to no radiation from it. They have helium three metabolising mitochondria analogues. When they die they go boom.'

'Descriptive,' I added my two-credits worth in my best sarcastic drawl. He just smiled at me as though I'd just complimented him. 'What was it?'

'A metanoid.'

'I'm none the wiser,' I said dryly. Not strictly true - I had heard the word before, in connection with the origins of the Nibelung race. Some great mistake - and I gathered that should really be capitalised - from their early years. But why should I do all the work? I was still feeling pissy about being doped and kidnapped. And soaked. 'Enlighten me.'

Hannibal coughed. 'Nasty cough, maybe you should take something for it?' I snarked. He gave me the kind of look I used to associate with my father when I'd indulged in my smart mouth.

Kei sighed, linked her arm with Hannibal's, and smiled up at him. 'Ignore him. For some reason he thinks playing dumb makes him look smart.'

'Four generations and the apple didn't fall very far from the tree?' Nero sounded amused. He reached over and patted Kei's hand paternally. 'Why don't you start by telling me what you know?' he asked, flashing me a toothy smile that was far from reassuring.

'I've never seen one before, so you have the advantage,' I returned smoothly. 'Although I was under the impression they didn't look so… human…'

'A dangerous assumption.' Once again it was Yanez who picked up the ball, a significant look passing between him and his captain. 'We've no idea what they look like in their natural bodies, but they can sequester any human body and take it over.'

'Like the sequestration the Nibelung practice?' Hannibal asked.

'Not exactly. The nibelung force their way into a living mind, and impose their will upon it - hence why some of them wear masks to suppress the host personality. It's where Doppler got the tech from…' Yanez shot a rather more sympathetic glance towards the back of Nero's head as the man strode ahead of us.

'Yamori was able to resist…' I mused. 'But it cost him.'

Several years ago one nibelung - Hagan - had taken over the body of one of Queen Promethium's oldest friends and associates, a key player in her original rebellion. He'd fought off the possessor and sacrificed himself to help us prevent the wholesale slaughter that would have opened a dimensional rift in the Hourglass Nebula. The endeavour hadn't been completely successful, as we were, in between other unforeseen catastrophes, still trying to work out what the ever-loving-fuck the nibelung had been trying to do, and what was going to happen to us when it finally opened fully.

Yamori Daisuke had been a grade A dick, and I still had the scars on my back from our first meeting, but I couldn't fault his devotion to the woman Promethium had once been, or his bravery. We owed him. Hell - Selen had named Daisuke after him.

Kei expressed an opinion of the deceased which was unrepeatable in even marginally polite company; but then, she can see my scars - I can't, and it's rather adorable when she's being protective.

I outlined our previous encounter with body-hopping, briefly, to our hosts. Hannibal, since he'd been peripherally involved in the affair, knew most of it. He'd been leading the research into the Gate of Yedar ever since the rift had opened. He had a personal stake in the side-effects, after all…

That last part we both left out, as the pair quizzed us between them. They operated as a smooth team - Yanez the garrulous inquisitor, Nero listening, and only interjecting the occasional question to clarify a point. We were sitting on a grassy sand dune at the foot of a cliff, above the high water line, boots off (well our hosts were quick to remove footwear and it seemed like a good idea). Kei was apparently trying to bury my bare toes in the hot sand whilst we sat as she dug her feet into the sand, scattering it in my direction.

'It's this nano-technology that worries me,' Nero said eventually. 'That sounds altogether too much like the techniques the metanoids use.'

'Metanoids take dead bodies,' Yanez explained. 'Cell by cell, much like how Promethium's nano-form mechanisation works. But they cannot infiltrate a living mind, probably because they're not a carbon-based lifeform. In fact, they're not from our universe at all.'

'Hence the constant surveillance?' Kei asked, kicking more sand over my bare foot. 'You don't let anyone out of sight, at any time.'

Nero inclined his head. 'Just so. Here, on the island, we can control the environment more, and the dampening field should suppress their abilities. But we dare not let our vigilance drop - one of our outposts was completely over-run because we let our guard down. Never again.'

'Hence the pier?' Hannibal stared out towards the long wooden structure. 'We were outside your field, not just to make sure your weapons worked.'

'We kept one as an example. You needed to see,' Yanez explained. 'And forgive my rough treatment getting you here, but we needed to be sure you were still yourselves.'

'How?' Hannibal was genuinely curious. His eyes had a way of lighting up that gave a lie to the otherwise stoic demeanour he affected. 'Why not just test us? There must be some physical differences…'

Nero shook his head slowly. 'Not that we can detect, and it's doubly difficult for those of us exposed to dark matter. The replication is exact, down to the molecular level. The kind of scanners that can detect changes at the cellular level or below would destroy what they scan, even if we had access to that kind of equipment - which we don't. And -' he raised a hand to forestall three separate version of the same question, 'Even if we did, no - scanning a cell or a sample wouldn't work. Once separated from the whole, the cells revert to normal. We don't understand it - Yngwie mutters something about a quantum shift taking place when removed from an active field of observation...'

'Which we suspect is simply nibelung for "I don't know",' Yanez interjected with a sarcastic drawl that rivalled my own.

'But what we saw…' Kei began.

'They can self-repair at an incredible rate. Almost impossible to kill. They utilise zero-point energy the way we metabolise oxygen. It fuels them. In battle, they're almost unstoppable. Their ships are surrounded by ribbons of dark matter, and they use both dark matter and zero point energy in their weapons.' Yanez explained.

Nero took up the conversation: 'They are Shayāṭīn... Djinni. Shadows on the wall of creation. They know not hunger, or thirst. In their natural form, they are like forces of nature - dark storms that destroy everything in their path.' Nero had stood during his speech and paced up and down in front of us, his greenish-hazel eyes flashing. 'But when they take a physical form, they do have limitations. They can copy the memories they find, mimic those they kill, but they cannot hide their true nature forever. They lack empathy, for one. There is no joy in them, no laughter - but also no pain.'

'So you kept us in a lab, basically?' I glanced at my companions. 'You watched us, to see how we interacted? How we responded to your niggles?'

Yanez patted my arm familiarly. 'I'm sorry, lad. Had to be sure. Otherwise we would have just made contact the normal way.' He grinned. 'No hard feelings?'

'I'll think about it.'

Kei kicked my shin, but barefoot, not hard enough to do much more than give my calf a gentle push. 'All very well - but how do we know you're not already sequestrated?' she asked. 'We've only got your word that you're not.'

'If we were, you'd already be dead,' Nero pointed out bluntly. 'Metanoids don't tend to mess around.'

'Again,' it being my turn to ask the awkward questions, 'we only have your word for that. But let's say we agree that you're on the level, for now - what the hell do you want with us?'

Once again the pair looked to each other before one of them spoke, the gesture reminding me of the way Kei and I looked to each other for confirmation. Once again Yanez was the chatty one. 'That gate Loki opened nearly twenty years ago has been seeing a bit of traffic. Traffic that got an awful lot more frequent after Promethium relocated here all those years ago. We've got a couple of contacts in her court, and from them we know Loki's still intent on widening the damn thing. Unfortunately for him, there just isn't the population base for them to raid for souls in Andromeda - unless he wants to tip his hand and really piss the bitch queen off.'

'Not hard,' Hannibal drawled. 'She always did have a tendency to go off half-cocked.'

'And remind me again who thought it was a good idea to make her queen, and not Selen?' I asked.

I take it back. That wasn't my father's exasperated glare. It was my mother's.

'You'd prefer Selen in charge of the death-squads?' he asked sweetly.

'Selen wouldn't have fallen for Loki's crap,' I shot back.

'Selen wouldn't have had a choice, once they put that crown on her head,' he reminded me gently.

I had forgotten. The coronation ceremony involves brain-washing the next queen with the memories of her predecessors. Whilst Selen had neatly dodged her fate, Yayoi, her sister, had not. And the galaxy - two galaxies - had paid the price. Hell, we were all still paying it.

'If I may continue?' Yanez spoke with the long-suffering air of a couple of my old teachers.

'Please.' Kei, ever the peace-maker, after rolling her eyes at us. Nero's barking laugh suggested he found the whole exchange rather amusing.

'Sorry,' he said, when he was on the receiving end of two family stares. 'Mamoru, it's like watching you argue with yourself. He's far more civilised than your brother.'

'Thank you.'

I got that wide, predatory smile. 'Who said that was a compliment?'

'Never,' Hannibal advised me, 'make the mistake of thinking Harlock was always the one leading them into trouble before the war. My brother attracted a certain kind of man…'

'Now that was just gossip,' Nero joked. 'Though there was that bar on Blue Rose…'

Now it was his turn to be on the receiving end of Yanez' frown, and Kei's turn to laugh out loud. She shrugged when she noticed she was the cynosure of all eyes. 'Sorry. It's just funny to watch someone else be on the end of it for a change. Yanez - is there a reason we put up with them?'

He smiled at her, the gesture taking at least a decade off his age. 'We love them dearly. Otherwise we'd probably just kill them.' Assured that his unruly audience was quiet again, he continued: 'We've been chased off three worlds since that rift opened. This world, between the galaxies, was our last chance, since the captain didn't want to return to the Milky Way unless he had to. They attacked the first two openly, and we were able - just - to fend them off. This last time they infiltrated, and almost succeeded in killing us and taking what they came for.'

'Deathshadow One?' I hazarded. Both men nodded. 'They're coming back…' I mused. Another synchronised chin-dip. 'That's why you want us? Then why not contact us directly, have us bring our ships?'

'And risk that you were not who you appeared to be?' Yanez shook his head. 'And really, it was my call, to bring you here. You see, we were not privy to one piece of information before I left to fetch you. One that proved to be rather pivotal…'

Oh. Well. I could see where this was going. I wondered just how long I'd have to live before I was out from under this particular shadow - and semi-resident pain in my arse. 'You thought the Arcadia was still under your Harlock's control.' I shook my head 'What rock were you lot hiding under for the past few years? My wanted poster's been on more walls than that bloody band from Gamilas my kids can't get enough of…'

'Artistic Licence?' Yanez quipped. Hannibal developed another coughing fit and the other man slapped him helpfully between the shoulder blades.

Nero stood, looming over me much the way Harlock once had, only broader, heavier, darker and considerably more dangerous looking. 'Walk with me for a little way,' he said. I looked at Kei, who gave me a little what-the-hell shrug, and decided it might be worth getting him away from his more talkative half for a while.

Leaving Kei to walk back along the beach with an escort of two wily old foxes, I fell in alongside the only other surviving Deathshadow captain I'd met.

I'd expected at least a token effort at an awkward silence, but Nero jumped right in before we were even out of earshot. 'You do look a little like him,' he began. A hand was waved in the vicinity of my face, the gesture taking in - I assumed - my eyepatch and the scar across my cheek. 'And not just the scar…'

'A present from my older brother.' I rubbed it absently, and just stopped myself from fiddling with the patch. 'As was this, in a way. A blaster shot he fired across my face fried the nano-cam and transmitter I was persuaded to let someone slap on top of my eye.'

'He got his scar planting his face in the road in a motorbike accident,' Nero said quietly. 'Quite a night, that was.' I waited but he didn't elaborate. 'No, I meant around the face.'

'We don't look that much alike, if you take away the matching eyepatches...'

'I always wondered when he lost that eye...' Nero winced. 'That would have been a pisser - he loved that Space Wolf Tochiro customised…'

'I don't think it cramped his style much,' I replied drily. Which was true - that little baby had combat assistance most pilots could only have wet dreams about.

'Well, It's there if you know what to look for - and your family seem to specialise in head-turners.' He smiled. 'You must have your share of second looks, but him… dear god, the man could cause whiplash in a crowd…' His wicked grin made a reappearance. 'Not that he gave a shit, as a rule.'

I did laugh at that, because it was true enough. 'Don't you hate him?' I asked as casually as I could. 'For what happened?'

'Hate?' He shook his head slowly. 'Maybe. Once. It took a while, after Hell spat us back out, to gather my wits. Longer still to realise just what had happened to us. To Earth. And it wasn't a good time to be visible - the Gaia Coalition was very quick to track down ships that had survived their first cull - I didn't want to find out what they'd do to one of the ships caught up in the actual chain reaction… By the time I'd figured most of it out, several years had gone past. I'd heard rumours he was on the move, and we got reports of systems where Arcadia had been seen. I did try to catch up to him a few times. Not sure what I'd have done with him once I'd caught him, though.' He laughed sharply. 'Stringing him up by his testicles might have been an option, but I never did catch up to him - any time we knew where he'd been, he was long gone.' A shrug. 'Besides - we couldn't die, and recovered from most wounds, so what would be the point?'

I said nothing for a few minutes, processing his words, wondering if I'd understood correctly. 'You didn't know then? What he was doing?'

'Know what?'

'Harlock's plan. What he planned to do with the oscillators he stole?'

He stopped me with a hand on my shoulder, and I turned to face him. 'The dimensional oscillators? The bloody solar-system busters Tochiro's father designed and Hechi stole to use against us? I thought Mamoru blew that supply base to shit before he red-lined the Deathshadow trying to get back to Earth?'

Okay… that was news… I filed it for later. 'I thought they were for removing hazardous areas of space?'

'Rather depends on how you define a hazard,' he growled out. I filed that as well. Not a fan of the Doppler/Hechi card…? I'd have to introduce him to Ali...

'He took a hundred of them. Apparently Mimay told him it might be possible to rewind time, if he blew enough of the nodes of time - something about destroying the shackles of linearity…'

'Son of a fucking bitch!'

I held my position as he exploded. No easy thing with six foot four of solid muscle pacing up and down in front of you bellowing in an unknown language. He finished up standing facing the hall - still a good hundred yards away - and bellowing "Yngwie!' at the top of his not inconsiderable lungs.

We were, as everyone seemed to be in this small colony - shadowed by several other people, at a discrete distance. There must have been some communication protocol, because a tall, slender figure came sauntering out of the wooden hall towards us with that catlike grace that only the nibelung can carry off.

I'd never seen one of the adult nibelung males. The handful of living controllers we'd rescued on Niflheim since discovering that there were still some survivors some years ago had been mostly girls, and all were still very young, physically. So I'd no idea of knowing if Yngwie was typical of his kind, or his almost feminine, delicate prettiness was unique to him. And oh, Earth and Stars, he was pretty. Taller than Mimay, I judged, as he approached. His features just as delicate as hers or Freya's. Similarly blessed with that deceptively frail attenuated form, and the only concession to masculinity I could see was that he had no feminine curves. His hair was possibly a few shades lighter than Mimay's, closer to Freya's platinum shade, and shorter - only brushing the tops of his shoulders. His eyes were darker, and slightly narrower than either Mimay's or Freya's. On the other hand, it was a sunny day, he could just have been squinting…

'Nero? Any reason why you're bellowing my name loud enough to be heard on the mainland?' His voice was typically, for his people, bell-like, but in a deeper register than I expected, at odds with his almost dainty body. 'Who is this?' He looked me over from head to foot, making so secret of the fact that he found me somewhat wanting, with a supercilious air that set my teeth on edge.

'Yngwie, this is the current captain of Deathshadow Four - '

'I suppose this one calls himself Captain Harlock as well?' His tone was more than a little confrontational.

'Það fer eftir því hverjir spyrja.' It depends on who asks. 'engin mannasiði…' I added in an undertone deliberately loud enough to be heard, hoping I'd got that right. It must have been in the right ballpark at least because after the startled look I got for speaking (or mangling, as Freya often called it) his language, he did at least wince slightly at my suggestion he had no manners.

'Fyrirgefðu.' He inclined his head slightly. Since I can be magnanimous when I want to be, I accepted the apology. The look in his eyes though was anything but apologetic. I mentally marked him up in the "dick" column.

'Back down, Yngwie. This one's okay.' Nero sounded amused by the exchange. Me, I was wishing I had my sabre at the very least. The gravity blade might not work but it could still deal out some damage, if I needed it. Left alone with this sniffy little twat, I suspected I'd want it…

'If you say so. Where's the Destroyer?' He looked around as though expecting Harlock to spring up and yell "boo" at him.

'Gone,' I replied. Well… not exactly but I didn't see the point of getting into the intricacies of the existence issues of my predecessor unless I absolutely had to. For example, if it would distract his victims from trying to make me pay for his mistakes…

'A moment…' Nero drew Yngwie out of earshot, and the two began a whispered, but quite obviously heated exchange that involved a lot of hand waving in my direction, and a restraining hand on the nibelung's arm on at least two occasions.

I waited, folding my arms over my chest and doing my best to look as though my ears weren't twitching every time I heard my name mentioned. In the time they took to have this little discussion, Kei arrived with my boots. 'What's the argument?'

'Harlock's stupid plan, I think.' She elbowed me in the ribs. 'What was that for?'

'Would you have had a better one?'

'I did, remember? Save the universe, romance the girl, save the galaxy - several times I might add - travel around in the coolest ship ever built and try not to get myself killed doing it.'

The agitated discussion having ended, Yngwie practically ran back to where I stood, his tiny mouth open as though about to say something… only to bounce off my outstretched hand with a look of surprise on his face I didn't think nibelung were capable of. He'd probably have landed on his delicate derriere if Kei hadn't been feeling charitable and caught him by the arm as he pinwheeled backwards. 'Boundaries, puppy,' I tsked and wagged a finger at him. 'I guard my personal space.'

Behind him Nero looked as though he was choking on something, the corners of his mouth twitching in an effort not to smile. Rather like a cat, Yngwie did his best to draw in on himself, straighten up, and pretend nothing had happened. 'Relax,' I told him. 'The universe is still here.' For now… but why borrow trouble by going into that part just yet?

'Mimay's still alive?' he asked. Seeing his earnest expression, I revised my estimate of his relative age down considerably. A hundred and twenty years or not, he was, I suspected, a lot younger than Mimay. Still a dick though. I lowered my still outstretched hand, just in case he had any ideas about rubbing up against it like a kitten. I'd heard about this one from Tochiro - given half a chance he'd have been all over Harlock like a rash…

'Alive, and irritatingly enigmatic.'

'I thought I was the only one left…'

'Not by a long way,' I assured him. 'Though some of your race seem to have developed a nasty habit of possessing other species - one reason we have the current crisis in the Hourglass Nebula.'

'I'd suspected that the Machinners had had contact with my race…' he clutched his hair in a remarkably human fashion, as though wanting to tear it out by the roots. 'But Mimay… why would she do that? Why tell Harlock about the Nodes of Time?'

'Very long story,' I said, perhaps more sharply than I intended. But I was drying out rapidly, the sun was scorching, and I wanted to go somewhere I could get the sand out from between my toes and put my boots on. 'Table it for now. I -' I broke off because Hannibal was handing me my gun belts. I raised an eyebrow as I took them. 'Thanks.' I buckled on the sabre, but gave the cosmo dragoon to Kei, since she'd been caught without her brace of monstrous bolters. Hannibal had already strapped on the portable cannon he laughingly refers to as a pistol. Our positions meant I was the only one looking over Hannibal's shoulder, as a large cloud appeared on the horizon, heading straight for us far faster than a band of rain should be moving. Since the rest of the sky was cloudless, I stared at the phenomenon with a growing frown.

'Harlock?' Kei tugged on my shirt sleeve, concerned.

'Nero… I don't want to worry you, but there's a cloud out there…'

He looked. 'We do get rain,' he began. Then he frowned in his turn.

'Moving against the wind?' Hannibal was definitely a chip off the old block. We'd both got our weapons drawn between one breath and the next. 'Dark storms, you said?'

Nero looked as though he'd swallowed a lemon. 'It can't get through the shield… can it?'

'Nero.' Yanez turned a worried look on his captain, who just nodded. Yanez grabbed Yngwie, and ran towards the hall, nibelung in tow, shouting something as he went that I couldn't quite hear. From the pealing of bells that rang out from a tower on the far end, obviously a well rehearsed warning. Nero's people were already running for cover, and the cloud was moving in fast.

'The shield must be down...' Nero drew his cosmo flintlock, and Kei had my dragoon in hand, the four of us facing down the oncoming storm.

'Destroying that metanoid was obviously a mistake,' I muttered to Hannibal. As it approached, I could see green flashes firing in the roiling cloud - so familiar. 'That's a dark matter cloud…'

'Could it be hiding a ship?' Kei asked.

'Too small.' It might have hidden a fighter - something space wolf sized - but I doubted it. It was too protean in form, constantly changing shape. 'Centre mass, people, on my command.' I raised the sabre and sighted along the barrel even as I thumbed the power to maximum. Maximum range for the rifle was longer than the pistols - I could have fired, but I figured we'd only get one good shot. I just hoped that Hannibal's and Nero's weapons had similar specs to the dragoon, despite their different designs.

The cloud reached the point where the incoming tide lapped against the shore, coming fast. There was a static build up in the air around us, rather like the feeling just before a storm…

'Fire!'

Four of the most powerful hand weapons ever created fired simultaneously, hitting the cloud dead centre.

And the world went dark, a violent scream torn from the very depths of hell forcing us to our knees as it surrounded us. I could feel the cold - bone deep - as it surrounded me. I was blind, deaf… green flashes broke the darkness, stabbing at me. I could feel Kei at my back. I was pretty sure I knew where the others were. It might have been my imagination, but I was sure there was a darker, blacker heart to this shadow, where the green lightning was brighter. It took every ounce of strength I had to lift the sabre rifle, my arm trembling as I held it out.

I fired.