Thunderbolt

I took a slow walk back from the comms suite, so lost in thought I tripped over a snaking cable that trailed down the stairs and off down the corridor leading to the boarding tube we'd come down earlier. At the top of the stairs it headed in the direction of the dark matter engine, where Yngwie was standing in front of the controller, his hands roaming back and forth across the surface of the glowing control orb as though conducting music only he could hear.

It must have been a stormy symphony, because despite the ship being powered down, the circular rings of the machine were in motion and the orb itself glowing incandescently under his pale hands.

'Harlock?' Kei moved to my side, and wrapped an arm around my waist. 'What is it?'

'Maybe nothing… but if we're not moving - what the hell is that powering?' I kept my voice down but those pointy ears twitched anyway and we were on the receiving end of a blank eyed stare - though given the nibelung facial structure, it could just have been a hiccup.

'You're right, it's odd,' she murmured as we waited for the rest of them to join us behind the captain's chair. 'And it's not the only thing. Have you noticed the crew?'

'That oddly narrow demographic? Same as on the island. A handful of older men and women, the rest all in their mid-twenties? Then a drop to late teens. I'd estimate a five year gap between groups. It isn't natural…'

'Save it for later,' she whispered as our hosts and Hannibal drew closer. 'Let it play out for a little longer.'

I agreed. But not for too much longer. If I hadn't dragged the full story out of our hosts by the time the Miranda and Arcadia were in orbit, I was going to have to get a little more insistent…

Blaze's news meant a hasty convening in the Thunderbolt's war room, one of the few parts of the ship I'd seen so far that looked like our own version. Unlike ours, it was still quite shiny, the chairs still had their upholstery and rolled nicely on their bases without sticky bits and squeaks. Most of the displays and controls on the holo-desk still worked, it wasn't chipped around the edges and didn't have coffee rings on it. Even the flooring was still springy and free of a century's worth of booted feet tearing chunks out of it, and there was no blast damage on the walls.

'Our screen's bigger,' I muttered into Kei's ear. She elbowed me in the stomach.

'Sssh. Behave,' she hissed back. 'At least this one has a remote…'

'Getting up to operate the controls is good exercise,' I replied primly. 'And who was it let the bloody cat in there anyway?' Expensive, high end electronics and furballs don't mix. An important lesson I seemed to have difficulty getting the crew to understand. Arguments about keeping down the rodent population fell on my deaf ears usually, my argument being that any rodent population that had survived over a century on board the Arcadia in her dark-matter infused bowels wasn't going to be intimidated by a few pounds of purring fluff, unless it was packing something the size of Hannibal's hand-cannon. At which point Kei would tell me I was exaggerating, and I'd recount the time I'd gone looking for stolen dimensional oscillators and had the crap scared out of me by glowing red eyes and scuttling sounds made by things the size of a hippopotamus.

'That was Eddie,' she'd told me loftily the first time. 'Scaring the piss out of rookies is a time-honoured tradition.'

'Not unless Eddie was in six places at once…' I'd snarked back, and then really wished I'd thought that one through before I'd spoken, given what had happened to the poor kid...

...and now I was wondering if the Thunderbolt had a rat problem. And then whether or not mysterious dark matter anti-lifeforms could inhabit a swarm of undead rats…

'Are you even paying attention?' Kei whispered in my ear.

'Sorry. Just thinking about rats. Giant, dark matter zombie rats from beyond the dawn of time…'

Hannibal's eyebrow WTF-d me more eloquently than words could ever express, and I shrugged. 'Train of thought. Or more of a stream of consciousness.'

'I worry about you sometimes...' he muttered. Our hosts arrived before I could frame a suitably pithy reply, and I was up.

My audience was small - just Hannibal, Kei, Nero, Yanez, Yngwie and two other men, both in their mid-twenties. Between us we only occupied half of the available seating in the room, and I asked Nero where the rest of his crew was.

'No point,' he replied laconically. 'If these ships your friends tell you are coming our way are dark matter, the only ship capable of fighting them is the Thunderbolt, and currently we're considering our options there. Yanez will brief the other heads before we take off.'

What was there to consider? I wondered. Just get her out of the water… Unless you've got other priorities…? 'You haven't introduced your other officers,' I said out loud.

He inclined his head, accepting the point. 'Apologies. Morgan -' The tall dark haired man to Nero's right offered his hand across the table. 'My first mate, and Carmaux -' this one, sandy haired and pale eyed, didn't offer his hand - he toyed with a large throwing knife, twirling it around on its point and flipping it back and forth whilst staring at me from under a shock of untidy hair. Morgan, I decided, smiled too much. Carmaux not at all. 'Weapons and countermeasures.'

'I assume you've assured yourselves of their identity?' Hannibal beat me to it by a whisker, so I sat back to let it play out. As expected, Morgan of the smiling face just shrugged off the suggestion. Carmaux, sitting next to Hannibal, stuck his blade under the old man's nose. 'Where do you get off accusing us of being reboots? Maybe I should slit you open from throat to crotch to see if you regenerate, old man,' he snapped.

The response played out so quickly I longed for a slow motion replay: Hannibal simply kicked the younger man's chair out from under him, and as he flew backwards, somehow had the knife in his hand before Carmaux's arse hit the floor.

His own backside didn't even leave his chair. Across the table Yanez leaned partly on one elbow, his fingers curled in front of his mouth to hide a smile. Nero just let out his harsh laugh and ordered his man to his feet. 'Does that answer your question?' he asked. Hannibal flicked the knife neatly and precisely so it landed point first between the man's feet, from where it was snatched up with a snarl. 'Nice moves - you haven't lost your touch.'

'Captain…' Carmaux growled out the word. 'Why are we bothering with these people? An old man, a woman and this…' he sneered at me in particular - 'half-blind fribble.' He was waving his knife around far too freely for my liking as well as being an arse, so I gave Kei the nod. She had him pinned in a chair and flicked the knife into place between his thighs with such casual disregard for his ability to father children, every man around the table flinched in anticipation as it landed. 'Play nice,' she advised him. 'Or I'll take your toys away. Permanently.'

I don't think any of them thought for a moment she meant his knives.

Yanez clapped slowly, his eyes on me and a slow smile spreading across his face under that moustache. 'Nicely played, Harlock. When do we get to see what you're capable of? Or are we supposed to lose sleep over how much more dangerous you might be?'

Busted… 'Pray you don't,' I answered amiably.

Hannibal was sitting on my blind side, so I couldn't see his face unless I made an effort, but from the eyebrow raising and lip-twitching on Nero's face opposite I had a pretty good idea there was some eye rolling going on.

I've had Hunter - a depraved, homicidal lunatic so vicious that even the Illumidas - a warlike empire deep in the heart of the Greater Magellanic Cloud - have issued a shoot on sight order - grovelling at my feet in terror begging me not to kill him. (Or maybe to kill him… he wasn't that coherent at the time…) I can make both of Promethium's tame attack dogs - Faust and Leopard - back down rather than go toe to toe in a fight.

My own family and crew? Not so much...

Time to nip this in the bud. 'I mete and dole unequal laws unto a savage race, that hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me…' I muttered as I stood up. Hannibal coughed. Under his breath I heard him mutter back 'I notice you left the preceding line off…'

'Do I look suicidal?' I murmured. 'Kei - would you play back Blaze's message please?'

The holo projector displayed the time radar footage of the three ships Freya had found. Seen in miniature, they didn't look impressive. Ribbons of black swirled around them making it impossible to see the ships within, and they looked like a child's spinning top. The ribbons were dark matter - a far more rigid, controlled version of the billowing clouds that surrounded Arcadia when she moved. With nothing sharing their space, scale was impossible to judge.

'The last one we encountered as larger than the Arcadia,' I told Nero and his men. 'At least three times our volume. It almost crippled us - it's one thing to get up close and personal with normal ships, but two dark matter vessels in combat…'

I shut my mouth like a trap, belatedly remembering who I was talking to. Nero stared intently at the footage as it played on its five minute loop, and frowned.

'I remember. Basically, we have no advantage in going against them - they can regenerate as fast as we can I assume?'

'Faster,' I told him. 'And ramming them? Not a smart move.'

He snorted and waved off that comment. 'Ramming was one of Harlock's more insane manoeuvres,' he replied off-handedly. 'Crazy bastard…' Next to him, Yanez stared at him open-mouthed, looked as though he was about to call him out on something, closed his mouth with a snap and shrugged.

Morgan leaned over the table and peered at the display as though sticking his nose in the middle of the 3-D playback would offer some greater insight. 'They could be smaller?' he asked.

'I wouldn't bet on it.' I appraised this one more closely. Carmaux, I judged to be Nero's Ali - the one he let off the leash to provoke a reaction. Yanez - his XO - the thinker. His Kei. (Maybe in all senses? I couldn't get a reading on that, but figured it was none of my business.) Morgan however… Huh. I knew my history. If that was his real name, he'd be one of the few people around this table who could claim that. And under the van Dyke beard, the long curly hair and the foppish clothes - because damn, the man was dressed to kill and seemed to love embroidery - there was something decidedly familiar about him.

Well, his roots were showing for a start - his hair wasn't naturally black - it was closer to mahogany. And his irises weren't blue - those were contacts…

Hannibal however was staring at the man as though his eyes could laser a hole right through him, making the younger man squirm in his seat.

'Hannibal?' I tapped my great-something grandparent on the arm to get his attention, whilst Kei was explaining our previous encounters. 'A word?' I jerked my head in the direction of the door, and he nodded once and followed me out.

'What is it?'

'Any reason why you keep staring at that first mate?'

He peered back inside the room, and I watched as curiosity turned into a frown. 'He looks familiar…'

'Just what I was thinking. He's wearing prosthetics to change the shape of his face and the dye job wasn't done by a pro, but strip away the paint, the padding and the beard…'

He lifted a hand to shush me, then reached inside his shirt and pulled out a scarab locket with a skull and crossbones on the obverse. He flicked it open to reveal a small holo projector, which he operated with deft fingers. A group picture appeared - a family group, in front of a large rustic farmhouse. Three women and three men - one couple older than the other four, but clearly related to the younger group. Hannibal… and Maya. The two young men were several years older than the girls, but the resemblance was plain enough.

He flicked past that still however, until another appeared. Two young men in the uniforms of the SDF from maybe thirty years ago. One blond, the other dark-haired. They stood in front of a pair of fighters bearing the mark of the elite Space and Aerobatics team for Destiny, and were holding medals up to the camera with broad smiles on their faces, arms around each other's shoulders.

Closer than brothers, even in their disappearance together twelve years ago.

Hannibal looked from locket to the young man in the war room. 'Bakana…' He shut the locket with a snap. 'Impossible. Dan would be nearly sixty…'

I knew that. My old friend Dan - Ichimonji Dantetsu - had been his great grandson. Dan's disappearance along with his closest friend Henry Douglas was still a mystery…

I think we both came to the same conclusion from different angles at the same time. 'Doppler?' I made it a question, Hannibal snarled a statement.

'Very specific age groupings,' I pointed out. 'No in-betweens.' I knew the demographic I'd seen on this island made no sense. Well… it did now - if you knew your history. I laid a hand on Hannibal's arm to stop him striding right back into the room to demand answers. 'Wait.' I told him quietly. 'We've got bigger problems….'

I really should know better. It runs in the whole bloody family after all. He shook my hand off with a scowl, and strode back into the room with me hard on his heels. He pointed at Morgan.

'Khalsa - care to tell me how the hell you got your hands on a clone of a missing SPG colonel who's wanted for treason?'

For several years, after becoming Harlock, I'd been both an orphan and an only child.

Happy days…

Instead of the reasoned, intelligent discussion regarding the oncoming threat from three Phantasma class battleships, I was now an onlooker as the founder of the Millennial Thieves - widely considered to be the voice of reason in an often unreasonable galaxy - yelled at another relic from times gone by whilst everyone else in the room - especially the subject of said argument - stood or sat by looking miserably awkward, unable to see a way to easily defuse the situation.

'If you didn't know then why is he wearing such a bloody awful disguise?' Hannibal, I had to admit, had one hell of a bellow when he was pissed.

Nero could match him for volume. 'Because he's just come back from two months undercover on one of Doppler's satellite worlds. Dammit, Mamoru - do you really think I knew who he was? We hit a cargo transport convoy we thought was carrying supplies to the Machine Empire, and it turned out the transports were stuffed to the gunwales with clone tubes. A deal Doppler's been doing with Promethium to bolster her sources of life energy in Andromeda. Millions of fast-growing clones are being shipped here. We intercepted one such shipment about eight years ago. Morgan and most of my other people were part of that shipment.'

Ohhhhh… that was news. And thoroughly unwelcome at that. I shared a look with Kei, and saw the same realisation on her face.

Nero and Hannibal were still shouting over each other. Needing to get this charlie foxtrot back under control I reached over Kei's lap, drew my pistol from her holster with an apologetic smile, and fired a bolt over their heads into the wall opposite.

See. Now I felt more at home, staring with no little satisfaction at the blast mark on the wall, and their stunned faces, as everyone else turned to face me, jaws open. I handed the weapon back to Kei with a thank you, and sat back in my chair with my arms folded. 'Better. Now that I have your undivided attention, gentlemen, perhaps we can get this out of the way so that we can work out why - for the love of Earth - you didn't lead with this?'

'You shot my ship!' Nero looked and sounded aggrieved.

'Live with it. Next time it'll be kneecaps. Now: Morgan, is it?'

The young man nodded numbly, looking as though he'd rather be anywhere than here, and I didn't blame him. 'Force-grown… so whose memories do you have?'

'None,' he replied quietly. 'Most of us are given a kind of generic template - I gather they need clones conscious for the extraction, but not necessarily as distinct individuals. Myself and a few others though… we have a base template of skills. Muscle memory.' He shrugged. 'For some reason I've got mad piloting skills.'

Mad was right. Dan had been the best pilot in the SDF bar none. Except… Morgan was shorter than Dan, who'd easily topped six foot four and been built like a bruiser. Morgan was around my six one and closer to my build. When I mused out loud it was Hannibal who jumped in.

'You don't necessarily get an identical individual. Environmental factors play a part, even with monozygotic twins. And the cloning process used can affect the outcome. Add in the fast-growth issues, which can cause their own problems… Remember, DNA is just a template, not a mould. It's about potential.'

'Since when did your skillset involve the finer points of cloning? Nero asked.

That one I could answer. 'Since he stuck his nose into Lar Metal's political problems a while ago, after he got bored rocking great-grandchildren on his lap. They've been fiddling with their DNA almost as long as Doppler's bunch and their elite caste have been using reproductive cloning almost as long.'

Nero sat back in his chair and smiled. 'The Millennial Thieves Hannibal… you do realise it took me years to make the connection...'

An answering smile.

Nero burst out laughing, startling his crew. 'I should have known… but then I didn't know you were still alive.' He smiled wolfishly. 'I thought you hated that nickname?'

'Nickname?' Both Kei and I leaned towards him. 'Do tell…'

'Back when his commission was reactivated, and he was put in charge of the remnants of the Second fleet. His remit was logistics, which covered the Deathshadow Fleet. Half the admiralty thought it was an expensive folly. Someone called them the Nibelungs' white elephants - unwanted, expensive and potentially embarrassing gifts you can't refuse - and then some wag dubbed him "Hannibal".'

'They were laughing the other side of their faces after that first engagement,' Hannibal replied with a grimly satisfied smile.

'They almost crapped themselves. Hell, so did we, and we were flying them…'

'Yes...' I drew the word out as I stared at our host. 'About the very expensive, very powerful elephant whose room we're in… why is he…' I jabbed a finger at Yngwie 'not getting this beast out of the water and into space where it belongs?'

Morgan answered. 'Because the dark matter engine is all that's powering the stasis generators on the rest of those transport pods.'

Well, that explained the power drain...

'Rest?' Kei's voice had that world-weary tone that suggested she - we - were not going to like the answer to the next question. 'Just how many are there?'

'Twenty seven. Each holding over ten thousand clone tubes, in suspension.' Morgan shot a glance to his captain. 'He's right. You should have told him.'

I'd been taking a much needed drink of water when he spilled that titbit. My spit-take went all over the table in front of me. 'Nero… I'm starting to understand how you ended up with Harlock's merry band of screwups… When you were in Intelligence did you take lessons in the art of producing obfuscating reports or was it a natural talent? How many people on this colony?' I asked, wishing I could just put my head in my hands and bury it there for the duration. I was getting the first whanging pains of a nasty headache in my right temple.

'About two thousand. All we can support for now.' Yanez ran his hands through his hair, gripping it so tightly at one point I thought he was going to yank it out by the handful. 'As I said. We don't have the facilities. We were hoping with your contacts...'

I almost choked. 'Nearly three hundred thousand clones?' My brain did a few somersaults trying to work out if there was anyone we could realistically dump that little gift on, and came up dry.

'Mostly children, as they're smaller and cheaper to transport,' Yanez confirmed bleakly. 'Pod sizes are the same but they use fewer resources, for just as much return on their investment. The convoy we attacked was shipping them in vitro. Once they reached their destination they would have processed the clones, used the transporters as prefabricated factory units, and just settled down to churning out more to feed the great machines.'

Morgan chipped in. 'The job I've just returned from was to locate the local manufacturing plant for Doppler's operation and shut it down.' He turned back to his captain. 'I couldn't go through with it, captain. I'm sorry. They're still breeding clones down there. Thousands of them. You want that place destroyed, you'll need to find someone else to do it.'

'They're dead either way,' Yanez pointed out. Even his own captain stared at him in horror for that one, but he held his ground.

'They're only clones,' Yngwie added. 'Who cares?' Morgan's fists clenched at his side but the nibelung just sneered at him. Nero laid a restraining hand on Morgan's shoulder, but the look he gave the snotty little nibelung would have curdled sour milk. Before anyone could start another argument I jumped back in.

'So… we go from a heads-up about a metanoid incursion with three incoming metanoid - or nibelung- warships to a rescue mission for thousands of clones who'd otherwise be turned into dialhead crack? Or worse? Just wanted to be sure I was on top of current events,' I added sarcastically. 'And before anyone gets any ideas, I'm with Morgan here on this one. I've no idea how we'll deal with them mind you, but they didn't ask to be brought into this world, and I'm not prepared to write them off as collateral damage.' I frowned. This entire situation was getting worse with every drip-fed revelation, and I wasn't far off wanting to wring several necks around the table. 'I ought to leave you to stew in this mess you've dragged us into,' I told Nero bluntly. 'If you'd been upfront about all of this… but no. You just had to keep pieces to yourselves. Why? Still having trust issues?'

'How could I have known what kind of man you are?' Nero asked.

'Here's a hint: one who gets very irritated by being strung along being spoon-fed vital information at the wrong time,' I snapped. 'How quickly can you get this ship in the air?'

'A local day, once I make a start on getting her ready to fly.' Yanez was out of his seat before he finished speaking, heading for the door.

'Yanez, wait… the transports…' Morgan looked more than a little anguished. 'Once you disconnect the dark matter engine and reconfigure for space flight, the stasis system goes offline. If we don't make it back, those units will begin the process of forcing the growth of their contents, and there just isn't enough power or resources for all of them to be brought to term.'

'This is why you've buried yourself on this planet for years?' Hannibal asked. Nero nodded.

'One of them. How could we just leave them? Think of it, Mamoru. A lot of the genetic stock that Doppler's people took belonged to people - families - completely wiped out in the war. Their progenitors are long dead, but they can live again… new lives in a new world. A fresh start…

Kei, Hannibal and myself all winced at that little non sequitur. 'Once you lose power to the stasis pods, how long before the clone banks reach a critical development phase? There must be a point of no return?' I asked.

'If we can keep the nutrient tanks supplied, maybe two weeks. The pods themselves will just start up again - our input is to keep the stasis fields working to stall development, and once growth starts again, we'll risk losing thousands if we try to shut down mid-cycle - they're not designed for stop-start, and the system was put together with spit and a prayer.'

'How many ships do you have?' Hannibal, the former logistics expert, was on his feet and pacing up and down the confines of the war room.

'Fifteen.'

'And how far away is Doppler's supply base…?'

'About five days each way…' Nero looked as though he was beginning to see some light at the end of the tunnel he'd fallen into.

Hannibal folded his arms and stared at me. 'Well, Harlock?'

We were getting rather well practised at tossing the ball between us. 'That's your area of expertise,' I told him. 'If you can organise a raid and resupply for those transports, that leaves the Arcadia and the Thunderbolt to take on these Phantasma.' Why do I volunteer for these things? I really ought to know better by now...

'And the Miranda.' A familiar voice added from the doorway. We all turned to see a bikini-clad brunette escorting Blaze into the war room, looking rather hot and sweaty in his flightsuit. 'Planning on having some fun without me?' he asked me with a wry grin.

'Wouldn't dream of it,' I responded warmly. 'But Hannibal might have some issues with you using his ship…' I caught sight of the four idiots hanging back behind him just a little too late to stop the storm heading their way.

Kei surged to her feet, strode over to the doorway, body-slammed Ali out of her way and stared at the three unapologetic miscreants lurking in the corridor, with her hands on her hips. 'And just what are the three of you doing here?'

I slipped the gun belt for my cosmo dragoon into place and cinched it into place. She hadn't even noticed me undo the clasp as she'd gotten out of her chair. 'Safer for everyone,' I mouthed at Hannibal. Blaze I wagged a finger at. 'Shame on you, dragging them all the way out here,' I tutted.

'Dad?' Mamoru's plea for help was tough to ignore, but this time he was on his own. I stood up. 'Blaze - grab Ali, I need to get the two of you up to date. Hannibal - I guess you know your job without me riding herd on you.'

'What about them?' Hannibal jerked his hand in the direction of the terrible trio currently getting a suspiciously quiet dressing down and looking sorrier for themselves by the second.

'If they survive, send them topside. I'll take them with me when the Arcadia arrives.'

Yngwie chose that moment to open his tiny, annoying mouth. 'What is that thing doing here? Those creatures are supposed to be confined to their control units.' He sneered, pointing a finger at Freya, his voice dripping with contempt, his face looking as though he could smell something nasty.

Kei could have stopped a pair of chivalrous idiots defending their much-adored foster-sib. Hell, any one of four other men in the room could have stepped between the dick and the two fists that connected with his thick head. None of us bothered.

And whilst watching the cretin go down as though he'd been poleaxed was immensely satisfying, he didn't look as though he'd be getting up anytime soon, and we still had a Deathshadow to prep for combat...