'Harlock! Harlock!'

I opened my eyes, and for a moment, felt that surge of panic upon waking when the lights weren't on. Slowly, very slowly, the darkness cleared as I blinked, and I was staring blearily into Hannibal's face.

'Harlock!' Kei's voice, sounding just as worried as our ancestor's. I struggled to sit up, assisted - or hindered - by hands on both sides of my back and one dainty little set of fingers on my bare chest that I could only hope were Kei's.

Once upright, but still on my arse on freezing cold sand, I swallowed had and wondered when the world would stop spinning. I was also shivering in thirty-five degree heat...

Someone placed a jacket over my shoulders - my own - and I drew it around me gratefully, until I noticed Kei's shivers against my torso. I drew her close and covered her shoulders with it as best I could, the gesture a convenient cover for the fact that she was the only thing keeping me upright. Around us, all was chaos, as people ran around shouting orders; children were rounded up by their elders, urging everyone towards the shelter of the large hall. Nero's people fell into very distinct age groups. Most were young adults, between maybe twenty to twenty-five. There were very few children under ten. In all the scurrying I spotted - out of over two hundred adults - maybe a dozen who were older than thirty.

File that one for later...

The cold seeping into my backside via the thin silk pantaloons I was wearing brought my head back into the more important game. With Kei's help, I got to my still rather shaky legs. Hannibal looked only marginally less crap than I felt, Kei was a white as a sheet, and Nero was being helped to his feet by his bosom companion, looking pale even under his dark tan.

Interesting… the two people most compromised by dark matter had been hit hardest, and it had made its way unerringly towards the four of us.

I looked around, seeing no sign of the thing that had attacked us. There had been several people on the beach between us and it, before it hit, and there was no sign of any activity indicating casualties.

'It wanted us…' I murmured. 'Huh.'

'You noticed that as well?' Hannibal asked in his quiet voice. He passed me my gravity sabre - I must have dropped it after firing - and examined his own piece closely. 'I think Tochiro just saved our hides… Again.' He holstered the massive piece he laughingly calls a pistol, but the rest of us have frequently suggested should be swivel mounted on the bow of his ship. Modelled after a serious piece of masculine over-compensation from the Twentieth Century, his Cosmo Eagle packed enough of a punch to knock the unwary totally off their feet - occasionally to the amusement of its owner and interested bystanders when someone attempted to deprive him of his weapon and use it against him. Though to be fair, limp-wristing any of Tochiro's handguns is a good way to badly sprain said wrist at the very least. I turned over the weapon I held, although the skull-shaped hilt didn't show any sign of the inner workings. It had taken three Cosmo pistols and a gravity sabre to take out that shadow - something that didn't bode well for future interactions.

'It headed straight for us,' Kei said weakly, still leaning against me. I wasn't too sure who was holding who up. She holstered my cosmo dragoon. 'What the hell was it?'

'A shadow,' Nero replied darkly. 'A dark storm…' Mister life and soul of the party… no wonder he'd gotten on so well with his Harlock...

'And here I thought you were being metaphorical,' Hannibal drawled. 'Did we kill it?'

'Was it even alive?' I poked the sand - still chilly under my bare feet - with the tip of my sabre. 'Whatever it was is gone, but we did something to it. There's a substantial temperature differential that wasn't there before. It's as though it sucked up all the heat in the area around us. I think it might have killed us by cold alone, if we hadn't fired on it. Whether we destroyed it, or simply fed it, I've no idea.' I gave Nero and Yanez searching looks, but they looked as puzzled as I felt. 'Surely you must have had some contact…?'

Yanez shook his head slowly. 'They were already embodied. This… this was new.'

'Do you know if this means there are more of them out there?' Kei waved towards the horizon, bobbing up and down in the distance between the blue sea and the even bluer sky. 'And not to be overly negative, but that thing - just came right through your precious shield as though it wasn't there.'

'It isn't,' Yanez muttered, looking as though he'd just swallowed something nasty. 'Someone took it offline just before we were attacked…' At the news, Nero looked equally dyspeptic, and I didn't blame him. It meant someone else he knew was dead - murdered - and replaced by a doppelganger.

'You need to review your security protocols,' Hannibal informed him, which personally I felt was a little unfair, as well as stating the bloody obvious. I waded in.

'I've watched his people, Hannibal. The overlaps are well coordinated - no-one here's out of line of sight. Unless more than one person's been sequestrated and they're covering for each other, the most likely time for insertion would have been when you were on Heavy Meldar. Did you keep up your surveillance policy there?'

I could guess the answer, because Yanez looked sicker by the second. I felt for the guy, despite spending several days as his unwilling guest. No-one enjoys screwing up that badly. As a former poster boy for the trope, I sympathised.

Just a little..

'It's a waste of time indulging in recriminations,' I continued briskly. 'You've got a problem, and you need to find these things as fast as possible. I take it your ship's around here somewhere?'

Nero nodded. 'Underwater; there's a docking tube extended under the hall.'

I slapped him on the back. 'Right. Then I need two things - your nibelung, and a secure warp link to my ship.' I cut him off as he opened his mouth to protest - or thank me - I neither knew nor cared. 'You brought me here for my help? Then you're getting it. Or rather, you're getting Tochiro, because if there's anyone who can get you out of this, it's the little guy - and the rest of my brainiacs.'

He sent a pained look in Hannibal's direction. 'Who put him in charge?'

Hannibal gave him a shrug worthy of his brother's best I-don't-give-a-shit attitude. 'You did, when you brought him here, Khal. For fuck's sake - what did you expect?'

'That you'd be the one calling the shots?'

Hannibal - and I loved him for this - burst out laughing. 'Khal… seriously - do you think he just put on an eyepatch and a cloak and swans around playing pirate just for fun? He's earned the name, Khal. Men don't piss themselves at the mention of my brother's name - they piss themselves at the mention of his name. You wanted help - you've got it, god help you.'

I fell back to let Nero lead the way, his head lowered to talk to Yanez quietly as they walked. At my side, Kei nudged me in the ribs to get my attention. 'Why are we helping him?'

'Because if they were compromised on Heavy Meldar - and I'm betting that was the weak spot - what does that tell you?'

I waited longer than I expected for the credit chip to drop - she's usually faster than that. 'Oh. Oh, shit…'

'Precisely,' I muttered. 'Heavy Meldar's a moon in a system just outside our galaxy, so not patrolled much by the SDF, a growing centre for trade and transport, and one of our favourite stop-over points. A place we know and trust, so we let our guard down - witness the ease with which we were scooped up by these jokers.'

'You really think we've been infiltrated?' Hannibal asked. From the look on his face he didn't want to believe it. Hell - I wished I didn't.

'Think it? I know it,' I replied coldly. Not to be unfriendly, but because there was a growing ache in my heart at the knowledge. These things had almost twenty years head start on us. 'The Arcadia's potentially the only thing that can stop what they've got planned. We're the only people - apart from maybe Layla Shura - who are working on the problem. Where would you strike?'

And the bit I didn't add, although I knew they'd both figure it out: how better to sow dissension and discord in your enemies, than to hide among them, wearing the face of a friend. We'd always known the nibelung could do it - we just figured it was too hard for them to suppress the real personality for long without technological help. But something that could kill, and then replicate a person - copy their memories, mimic them perfectly down to the cellular level… if that news got out, it could sow distrust amongst men far better than we could claim to be.

Kei nibbled on her bottom lip as we walked, a sure sign she was deep in thought. 'There's something else,' she said eventually, gaining the attention of both of us. 'Dark Matter is another relic from that universe, right? We have to assume it has something to do with whatever they are… what they can do?'

'A fair assumption,' Hannibal said quietly.

'So… just how dead do you have to be? Before they can… you know…'

It was reassuring to see Hannibal force his hand away from the grip of his pistol, as he stared hard at Nero's back, several yards in front of us. Had to love the old man's instincts. 'No. It's Khalsa, I'd stake…'

'Not Khalsa,' she said softly. She looked up at me, and I cursed inwardly for not seeing it myself. 'He came back. Twice. The Captain… but how would we know, Harlock? How would we know? How do we know what the dark matter has done to us? Yanez was looking at us to see how we react, but we've been who we are for a long time - so what would he see? Do we really know for sure we're us? The Captain says he can't remember what happens… where he is in between those times when he somehow comes back. What if we can't rem…'

I shut her up with a finger to her lips. 'You always overthink things,' I told her gently. 'Stop borrowing trouble. We are who we are, Kei. And our crew are far too idiosyncratic, annoying, crazy and downright cranky to have been replaced by soulless replicas.'

'That covers Ali,' Hannibal drawled. 'What about the rest of them?' He fell in beside us, his long legs keeping pace with us easily, despite his age. It was hard to remember that he was only about fourteen years older than Harlock. Our former captain had been permanently "frozen" in his thirties - and had looked a good few years younger, something that ran in the family. Mamoru - Hannibal - had been in his late forties, and the Deathshadow Zero had been hit by far less dark matter than her bigger, deadlier sisters. He could pass for a young sixty-something, but it must suck, being in your sixties for the best part of a century… Hell, he'd been Hannibal for a lot longer than he'd been Mamoru Okita. And we think we've got existential problems…

'It won't be anyone close,' I murmured, more to myself than to them. 'But if it were me, I'd want someone close enough to be useful, not so close to the main players that they come under scrutiny.'

'Leopard?' Kei suggested. Since she absolutely despises him, I let that one pass. Besides, I had my suspicions that he was probably Nero's inside man.

'Closer,' I grunted. We were at the wooden hall by now, ducking under the sun-bleached arch of the front doorway. 'If it was my operation, I'd have replaced someone no-one would really notice.'

'Someone claiming to be a former artillery gunner, perhaps?' Kei asked archly. I didn't get a chance to retort as we reached an airlock - the covering wooden panel flipped back to reveal the smooth sides of a boarding tube leading down into the darkness, lit by a handful of glow-tubes placed along the wall at irregular intervals. With a hand resting on the hilt of the sabre - and for the life of me I had no idea what I thought I was going to do with the damn thing if things turned ugly - I followed Nero and his nimbler companion down into the belly of the beast, Kei's slim hand in mine.

I stepped out of the boarding tube into a twilight that made the Arcadia back in the days I'd first come aboard seem like bright daylight. I almost stumbled into Nero's broad, silk encased back because our host had stopped in the middle of the corridor.

'Did you forget to pay the utility bills?' I asked snarkily. But it was Yanez who called for the lights, and I had my first look at the interior of one of Arcadia's sisters that wasn't the victim of a nasty makeover.

The Deathshadow Three - I'd never known what its ill-fated captain had called her - had been a dark, dank, sepulchral temenos; crewed by the undead, her form, inside and out, reflecting her terrible fate. It wasn't a sight I ever wanted to see again.

My own ship… well, after a century or so of Tochiro playing around with her innards, her configuration wasn't exactly in the manual. But as we followed Nero along deserted, echoing corridors towards the bridge, I did notice a lot of similarities. Except…

It was more a sense of scale, I realised. The layouts, the designs were similar - almost identical, but it was as though the Thunderbolt was more cramped. An odd sensation, because as far as I knew, the ships were the same draught. I asked Hannibal.

'It's the Arcadia that's changed,' he said softly, as though compelled to speak in an undertone. 'A lot of the internal architecture was removed and reconfigured to accommodate the central computer core Tochiro inhabits, along the central axis towards the stern. This was more how she was originally - more of a standard battleship layout. The moving walkways were also removed from Arcadia at some point…'

I had been a little surprised to find I didn't need to do much walking. The central strip of the corridor was indeed a moving walkway, carrying us along at a slow but decent clip towards the bridge. The walkway was marked by yellow chevrons, which struck me as somewhat frivolous on such a dark ship. I felt rather silly standing there letting the machines do the work, if I was honest.

The bridge, when we arrived, was pleasantly familiar. And I do mean "pleasant". The design was mostly identical - a long gantry overlooking the main bridge crew stations below. Aft the massive arc of the dark matter generator spun overhead like a giant, gothic waterwheel, the blue glowing control orb sparking in front of it. Between the wheel and the dark matter generator was the captain's chair - a much less dramatic version than my own - less skeletal, no red leather for a start. A rather boring gunmetal black with a control panel to one side. Otherwise, the controls were mostly the same - navigation to one side, sensors to the other, wheel in the middle (sans skull decals, it looked rather ordinary, and a little out of place against the gleaming, more contemporary fittings surrounding it.) Oh - the walls were still adorned with the massive gears and pulleys that did... something or other impressive with the secondary turrets, or so I'd been told. There was a part of me that still thought they were just there to look cool. I walked towards the bow, taking in the design of the interior with more than a little interest. I couldn't have looked casually disinterested if I'd tried by this point. At the railing, I stopped, rested my hands on its cool metal, and looked out over the top elevation of the ship.

She was under several hundred feet of water - she'd have to be, to cover her so completely from keel to top of conning tower. Normally this should have been as black as space, but Yanez' command had also turned on the external lights, and I had a pretty good view over her top deck - and here the differences between Thunderbolt and Arcadia were the greatest.

I had of course gone up against their sister ship, and despite her condition, Number Three hadn't been that different from her original plans. Thunderbolt's top lines however were spread out before me in all their original simplistic glory, and it was an impressive sight. At rest, her gun turrets were aligned facing her bow, and the sensation was how I'd imagined looking down on the deck of one of the old sea-faring battleships she'd been inspired by. Unlike the Arcadia, which sported a massive spinal column along her top spine, flanked by her smooth, grey-green surface which curved smoothly and fluidly to make her seem grown, rather than built, Thunderbolt's lines were sleek and elegant, narrowing from the widest part of her midsection in the vicinity of her bridge, to a narrow bow. The lights were arranged in lines, currently glowing a brilliant white against her hull, making it look as though she were inlaid with shining circuitry. Occasionally blue flickers ran along her edges and across the viewscreen, following her lines with mathematical precision.

'She's in amazing condition.' Kei had quite naturally gravitated towards her station, and was running her hands over the controls. 'It's as though she came out of the dock yesterday…'

True enough. Arcadia was self repairing - mostly - but inside she did show the signs of hard living over the past hundred and twenty or so years. Jury-rigged repairs were the constant bane of Maji's and Yattaran's existence, and there was always some piece of kit with its innards hanging out, or a trip hazard that had never heard of an accident book.

'She was the first keel laid down,' Hannibal said, striding slowly over to my position, where he stood beside me, hands clasped behind his back, taking in the view. 'Normally Harlock would have taken her as his command, but Tochiro had had time to refine a few things by the time Deathshadow Four was being completed. He ran a hand over the railing, and frowned. 'You're right though - she looks as good now as she did the first time I stepped aboard. I know she's only had one careful driver, Khal, but seriously - have you ever had this beast out for a spin lately?'

The tone and the question were light enough, but over the past few years I'd come to know the man fairly well. A tendency to lead with a seemingly frivolous or innocuous question to encourage someone to unburden was one of his stock of tricks. I watched Nero surreptitiously to see how he responded, because I did have a theory of my own.

'She's a hell of a pain to get ready to sail.' Yanez, again, speaking for his friend and captain. 'There's not much we face we can't deal with using the rest of the fleet.'

'If you're relying on that relic you brought us here in,' Hannibal replied drily, 'I'm amazed you've survived this long…'

I waited, my eyes still on Nero, who stood next to the captain's chair, one hand resting lightly on the high back, but making no move to sit in it, or to move to the helm. If I had to make a guess, from the expression on his face, this was a man who'd rather be standing in front of a firing squad than where he was right now. I'd have made a decent case for suggesting he was only a moment's lapse of control away from bolting off the bridge, if not the bloody ship. For a man who gave off the impression of so much strength and virility, it was something of a shock.

...and also rather humbling. I caught Hannibal's eye, and walked casually over to our host. 'Captain…' He looked up, and smiled grimly. 'These ships…' I continued quietly. 'They're amazing… but one hell of a burden. And not the sort of thing you can hand over easily to someone else.'

He ran a hand over the polished metal of the chair, his hand coming to rest on the control panel on the armrest. 'I started out in Intel and Security. Did you know that?' I shook my head. I'd had my start in a similar capacity, so I had a pretty good idea where this would go. 'After Tiamat… El Alamein… Beta Orionis... we lost a massive number of experienced captains and four admirals. The Admiral here - ' he nodded in Hannibal's direction - 'put me forward for promotion within his fleet. We were Solar System based - mostly logistics, and it wasn't so bad. Not until the first waves finally breached the Pluto Defense line.'

I nodded my understanding. Calling it a "line" is a bit misleading - technically it's more of an arbitrary bubble around the system, between the orbit of Pluto and the Kuiper Belt; a massive network of manned listening posts and weapons platforms, supported by the Outer System - now the only System, since the whole Mars debacle - Fleet.

I'd heard reports, both in History classes (heavily redacted, I'd found out years later) and first hand accounts - mostly from Tochiro, or via Harlock's logs. The waves of ships heading for Earth had been huge - thousands if not hundreds of thousands of ships, large and small. And without any discrimination at all between civilian, unarmed transports and military vessels, the Alliance Fleet had massacred the lot, taking heavy casualties in the process.

Nero's eyes told the story even more eloquently that his voice could, and his throat was working overtime to try and get that voice out. I laid a hand on his shoulder. 'I do get it,' I told him. 'We've all seen - and done - terrible things in battle…'

He looked over at Hannibal, and for a moment I saw that same terrible void in his eyes that I saw in Nero's. 'Not like this,' Hannibal said hoarsely. 'Dear God, Harlock, not like this…'

There was a reason those first hand reminiscences didn't come from the living eyewitnesses.

'We'd not long launched the Deathshadow Fleet,' Nero continued. 'The First Wave was their trial by fire… we were originally held back, in support - the Admiralty didn't want to tip their hand so early on…'

'They were outnumbered, and panicked,' Hannibal took up the narrative in his usual calm manner. 'My Fleet Admiral - Sanada - overruled the decision and had them advance to the front line. None of the captains had ever flown anything like them before - the space trials hadn't even been fully completed, so they'd not even fired the main turrets outside of simulation. The captain of Deathshadow Three was killed in the first sally - went out alone to protect the Pluto Forward Base and got himself and half his crew killed doing it.'

'The ships were self-repairing,' Nero added bleakly. 'The crew… not so much.' He glanced again at Hannibal. 'The first time we opened fire with those new cannon… it was like something out of legends: Brahmastra… weapons capable of destroying whole worlds. Ships fragmented under just the first barrage, and they were so frail they didn't even slow the beams down - one barrage would just keep on going; there wasn't enough mass to stop them… I wasn't sure they would stop when I watched it. Just four ships, in a lethal dance, as though we were the nataraja incarnate: Shiva dancing the world into ruin.' He shuddered.

Knowing all too well the lethal effectiveness of the Arcadia's main guns, I kept silent. They could go through most normal ships like a cheesewire through butter, and I could still see the way they'd cut through my brother's fleet almost twenty years ago, taking out over ninety percent of the Gaia Fleet's finest in less than ten minutes. And that was one ship.

Somedays, I really wish I didn't have such an active imagination.

'Most of those ships were unarmed,' Nero continued. 'Just desperate people tricked into folly. Sold the promise of a fresh start on our only real home. And we slaughtered them by the millions in that so-called battle. They kept throwing themselves at us as though they thought that if they kept coming, we'd eventually wear ourselves out. They had no idea what they were up against - how could they? We didn't really appreciate what we were flying until then. Because the Deathshadow Fleet didn't need to refuel. It didn't need to stop for repairs. We could pull back, regroup, let the hulls heal and head straight back into the fight. Even if they took eighty to ninety percent casualties, the AIs kept the systems going. You could fly the damned things with a crew of about six if you had to, as long as the nibelung kept the dark matter engines running.'

'Kodai did, when he made that suicide run near Pluto,' Hannibal muttered. 'Brave, stupid fool…'

Nero's reply was a wry, twisted smile. 'Things might have gone down differently later if he'd lived. His kid brother wasn't the best choice for a replacement…'

'He was the best I could find, from a very small pool of candidates,' Hannibal replied flatly. 'I can't second-guess my choices now. Besides - Phantom approved the selection.'

Well that should have warned you… Wisely I kept that sentiment to myself. I kept my attention on Nero. 'You don't want to fly this ship, do you?' I asked softly. 'It terrifies you…'

Hannibal gave me a sharp look, echoed by Yanez, but neither spoke. Nero, miserable under his stern exterior, nodded.

'What would I use it for, unless as a weapon of terror? When we were cast out of hell, thrown clear of the maelstrom, it was a long time before I regained my sense of self. In that time… we did fight, when attacked. And we did terrible things, this ship and I…' His fingers clamped around the armrest, his knuckles showing white through his dark skin, until I expected the metal to crumple. 'At first, I didn't care. Later… with time to heal, and reflect.' He looked over to Yanez with a rare, gentle smile, 'with friends who could talk some sense into me, I came to realise it was too powerful to play with so cavalierly. A sledgehammer to crack a walnut, as the old saying goes. I came back to myself, and in the process, realised I didn't much like who I was when I'm at the helm of this ship. Power corrupts, and this kind of power…'

He looked me straight in the eye, as if trying to see behind the facade, to whatever lay behind my skull. 'You can't just walk away from these ships. They're a part of us, forever.'

'Harlock called it a curse,' Kei said sadly.

Nero's reply was unsurprisingly blunt. 'He was right. Even if I walked away, I couldn't let it fall into the wrong hands. It gets inside your head… whispering… changes you in ways you never thought possible. The kind of man - or woman - who can stand at the helm of one of these ships without going mad is a rare thing. I'm amazed Harlock managed it. He must have seen something in you… the right kind of strength, to take this on.'

I thought back to the moment Harlock had made his decision, so long ago. That moment he'd lifted his gravity sabre from pointing at my face and let out that tiny little huff of amusement. Because I hadn't walked away from the people I'd handed over to be executed? Because I was the kind of man who'd always look for a better solution? Because I'd been adamant that no matter how bad things got, I wouldn't resort to pushing a button on that damned detonator…?

I suspected if the moment was recreated, knowing what I did now I'd have blown his fucking head off and walked off the bloody ship to give myself up…

Except… I looked over to where Kei stood, her bottom resting on the edge of the console to my left, her fingers drumming idly on the edge as she watched us warily. Imagined a future without her...

No… I really was that much of a sucker. I'd do it all again, regardless.

No wonder he'd laughed.

But I couldn't take all the credit: 'I had help,' I replied softly. 'So did he. Tochiro was merged with the Central Computer Core. He can - did - talk to Harlock all the time. Never bloody shuts up, to be honest. But you're right. It's a struggle. It's all too easy to just let rip, and solve your problems by force, when there are so few personal consequences to doing so. These ships make it so easy to feel like a god.'

He nodded his understanding, but Kei was staring at me as though I'd just grown two heads. 'I knew it was hard, but you've never said…'

'I never wanted you to know,' I replied sadly. 'You've always borne so much for my sake, I felt I could keep this one off your shoulders.'

'Idiot,' she accused.

'Guilty as charged,' I replied fondly. She rolled her eyes at me and leaned back a little more against the console with a heavy sigh. Even Hannibal was looking at me with rather more approval that I usually saw. I gave my attention back to Nero. 'You didn't walk away, you didn't destroy the ship or yourself, and you're standing here now - somewhere I get that you'd rather not be - because I suspect you know damn well you're going to have to take her out sooner rather than later. That takes balls of steel. ' I took a deep breath. 'You might have gone looking for old friends, and I have to say you've got a damned peculiar way of making new ones, but you might now have a better chance than the one you went looking for. Now - where's my warp link? The sooner I contact my ship, the faster we can get some checks started. I don't know about you, but I'm not sure I want to let your crew on board until I'm happy there aren't any ringers in the group…'

Yanez led me to the communications room, located as ours was, below the front end of the upper bridge. Locating the Arcadia's beacon took a few minutes, but not as long as I'd thought.

I'd expected her to be on her way, so her replying so quickly wasn't the surprise. Being answered by Selen however… now that was more of an eye-opener.

Blaze's news about three incoming Phantasma was something I could have done without.

The news that the Miranda and the Arcadia were only about six and twelve hours away respectively was better.

I decided not to tell Kei straight away that Mamoru and Freya were on board the former: I figured I'd let Blaze have the pleasure of explaining that one...