Ventimiglia

Mamoru leaned against the outside wall of the wooden hall that ran along the foot of the cliff behind him, and stared out at the sea. 'Wow… you know, if it weren't for the crisis, this would be a nice holiday spot.' He jabbed Rei in the side to get his attention. 'Look! A ship…'

Rei shrugged. 'So?'

'Sails? A proper wooden sailing ship… how often do you see that?'

'Is that a rhetorical question? Because I've been to at least two Suiseijin worlds, and they ban motorised vessels, so that's not exactly uncommon.'

'Yeah… but a real honest to goodness pirate ship?' He pointed at the flag flying over the stern - a snarling tiger's head between crossed scimitars on a red background.

'Slow and inefficient,' Rei replied disinterestedly. 'Far too much like hard work to operate. And besides, I'm not a fan of water in that quantity. Comes of being too dense to swim…' When his companion sniggered he snarled a 'watch it…' at him.

'Didn't say a word,' Mamoru replied airily. 'Oh - finally! Hi dad!' he waved at the figure strolling towards them.

In lightweight royal blue pants with a billowing white shirt open to the waist, Harlock strode towards the pair slowly. But then, Mamoru thought as another hot breeze ruffled his own hair, in this heat, rushing around wasn't much fun. 'Nice togs,' he said with a smirk as his father drew near. 'Really adds to that imposing air of bad-assery you like to cultivate… not.'

'Cheeky sod,' Harlock replied fondly. 'You're not so big I can't take you over my knee…'

Mamoru laughed. It wasn't a genuine threat - a clip to the ear was about as far as his father would go, and both of them knew it. But face to face with his father for the first time in three months, he realised that they were - for the first time - almost eye to eye. 'You've shrunk…'

'You've shot up,' Harlock replied with a grin. 'Too old to give your father a hug?'

'Never.' Mamoru embraced his father and they separated with pats on the back. 'Daiba sends his love.'

Rei snorted and Harlock's visible eyebrow almost vanished into his hairline. 'Really?'

'Well, I asked if there was a message, and he sort of grunted at me, so I figured I'd translate,' Mamoru replied breezily. 'So how's the patient?'

'He'll live, but the pair of you cold-cocked him into the middle of next week. I'm not sure he knows what century it is, let alone what day.'

'He had no call talking like that about Freya,' Rei interjected sulkily.

'No question. But I have to get that ship space worthy in less than twenty-four hours, so that means asking Freya if she minds taking his place on the Thunderbolt,' Harlock replied testily. 'Seriously, boys - try and remember there are consequences? I'd prefer it if neither of you had to learn that the hard way.'

'You're not letting Freya go alone with strangers are you?' Rei asked. Harlock turned to him with a sly smile.

'Worried about her?'

Rei flushed. 'No. I mean, yes. Not like that…' He kicked at a stone and pouted, until Mamoru laughed.

'Oh, it's exactly like that,' Mamoru told his father with a smirk, deftly avoiding the kick aimed at his ankle. 'Oi! Pack that in.'

'Then shut the fuck up.'

'You - language,' Harlock pointed at Rei. 'You -' the digit was jabbed at Mamoru '-stop being an arse.

'Can you get him to stop breathing while you're at it?' Rei asked. 'Because I find the two go hand in hand…' Something over Harlock's shoulder got his attention. 'Who's the peacock?'

Harlock didn't bother looking around. 'Sky blue embroidered shirt open to the waist? White pants? Black boots with too much shine to be natural? White waistcoat covered in gold embroidery? Tall, dark handsome with a silly little beard?'

'That's the one,' Rei replied as the figure drew level.

'It keeps following me around. Kei wants to know if I plan on taking it home…' Harlock dead-panned. 'Morgan,' he added, as the younger man reached his side.

'Harlock. Sorry if I'm interrupting, but your ship's apparently dumping delta-v and coming in fast. Should be here in a few minutes.' He stared at the boys lounging against the cliff-face. 'Are these your sons?'

'That one, yes,' Harlock replied, nodding in Mamoru's direction. With the cheeky grin the boy took a leg with a time-honoured flourish, sweeping an imaginary hat across his knee as he did so. 'Mamoru, my eldest. The surly one is Blaze's brother, Rei.'

'I am not surly!'

Both Mamoru and Harlock laughed in the face of his indignation. 'Oh. You so are,' Mamoru told him, sticking an elbow in his friend's ribs. 'He's prickly, but you can learn to tolerate him over time,' he advised sagely.

Morgan looked from one to the other, confused. 'Are you not friends?'

The boys gave him mirrored smirks. 'Of course we are. You think we'd let anyone we didn't like speak to us like that?' Rei asked.

'Doesn't stop you being an arse though,' Mamoru added, punctuated with another sly jab.

Whatever retort Rei shot back was lost in the deep rumble that caused their chests to reverberate almost painfully as it drew closer.

'What the hell is that?' Morgan yelled over the noise. The other three just shared triumphant smiles.

'My ship!' Harlock shouted back over the increasing decibels.

Overhead, a large black cloud began to blot out the sun, and horrified cries from the few souls still on the beach were lost in the rumble.

'Maybe you should have warned them?' Mamoru shouted into his father's ear, as the Arcadia tore through the sunny sky and hovered above the bay, its dark matter cloud billowing and thinning as it came to a stop above the headland and settled down with a weighty thump that rattled the ground beneath their feet.

'Now where,' Harlock shouted back, with a smirk to match either boys', 'is the fun in that?'

From his vantage point aboard the Tonnerre, anchored in the bay above the resting place of the Thunderbolt, Nero stared at the Arcadia, where it squatted above the beach and the increasing crowd gathered at the foot of the cliff to get a look at it. At rest, her dark matter cloud was reduced to a few wisps, quickly whisked away like malevolent dust-devils by the sea breeze. Without a word he handed the antique telescope to Yanez. 'I'd heard the tales… but the reality…' he shivered. 'What the hell happened to turn her into that?'

'You were there,' Yanez pointed out reasonably. 'Don't you know?'

Nero tugged on the long black waistcoat he wore, straightening an imagined crease under his gun and sword belts, and then pulled at the cuffs of his wide-sleeved black shirt. 'Once we were dragged into the maelstrom the dark matter explosion created, we were too busy trying to stay alive, and we didn't see any of the other ships after the chain reaction started.'

Across the bay, the Arcadia's red-eyed skull glared at them, a titanic rictus grin on its face. The unholy throbbing roar of its engines had dulled to a deep hum as it powered down, but it dominated the skyline, adding several hundred feet to the cliff it sat on. 'I really hope the cliff's strong enough to hold that weight,' Yanez ventured with a worried frown on his face.

'According to the scans it's bedrock.' Nero assured him. 'Harlock was pulled into the heart of the storm he created,' he whispered, half to himself. 'I wonder what he found there…'

'From what you tell me,' Yanez said, snapping the telescope down into its compact casing, 'I suspect whatever did that, he brought with him.' The deck swayed underneath his feet and he grasped one of the ropes that trailed across the gunwale. 'How the hell does a ship go from something like the Thunderbolt, to that monstrosity? It's as though…'

'...someone slew a mighty titan, flayed and hollowed out its corpse as a ship?' Nero replied with a stray smile playing around the corners of his mouth.

Yanez shuddered and slapped the now compact telescope into his friend's hand. 'You do know that no-one now gets all those references to old legends?' he told him, a twinkle in his eye. 'They died with Earth.'

'Nothing truly dies, so long as there is one man alive to remember it,' Nero replied.

'I'm sure you meant to say "man or woman", father!'

Both men turned to see the speaker - a young woman in her mid-twenties, long fair hair lightened by the sun and tied in a pony tail that reached below her shoulder, strolling towards them, flanked by two others the same age, and alike enough in looks to share a common heritage. All three were beautiful, golden haired and fair skinned, and a chorus of wolf-whistles accompanied their path.

'My pearls!' Nero held out his arms and the three ran joyfully into his embrace. 'Where's David?' he stared past them, looking for the young man who was Morgan's usual partner in crime.

'Took a skiff to the island. Didn't want Morgan to have all the fun,' the daughter closest to him advised with a smile. 'Carmaux wouldn't let us go with them…' she pouted prettily.

'Carmaux has his orders, child. I don't want you meeting these men just yet,' he said firmly.

'But why? I mean - they're helping us, aren't they?' asked the tallest. She leaned over the side of the ship so far for a moment it looked as though she'd topple into the clear blue waters.

'I have my reasons. In all these years, have I ever done or said anything that was not in your best interests?' he chided. All three sighed in unison, and he smiled fondly at them. 'I need you here, anyway. The Tonnerre needs moving to safety - we'll be launching the Thunderbolt in a few hours…'

Not without more feminine protests, he persuaded them to get to work, and he leaned back against the rigging to watch them, a happier but still thoughtful smile on his face.

'You will have to come clean at some point,' Yanez told him, watching the young women with an admiring and far less fatherly gaze. 'This is one action that might very well come back to bite you on your expanding arse, my brother.'

'He doesn't have to know,' Nero replied calmly. 'What the eye does not see, the heart cannot grieve over…' A small frown however was forming on his brow. 'I thought him dead all these years. I did not create them - it seemed right, at the time…'

'No. But you recognised them and cracked those tubes. Raised them as your daughters. He might grieve, yes, for a while, for the reminder of what was lost. But to keep them from him? From their father?'

Nero's eyes flickered to the young women laughing with the crew. 'It's not his daughters I worry about keeping from him,' he muttered darkly as he watched them. 'How the hell do I explain this - and then…' His frown deepened. 'Where's Ianthe?' He waved more imperiously to the girls. 'Dione - where's Ianthe?'

The girl looked up when her sister elbowed her in the ribs. 'Father?'

'Any one of you. Where's your sister?'

'Went with David, in the skiff.' The speaker was Erik, Liam O'Malley's twin.

All three gave the young man who'd spoken a scowl. 'Tattle-tale,' Galene hissed at him.

Yanez stared out towards the beach, where the little sailing boat was pulling into shore, with two tiny figures in it. 'You know, we could have strung up a piece of string and a couple of tin cans between here and the island,' he said amiably.

'Shut up.'

'Or a heliograph. Or even semaphore. Any of them, right now, would be capable of saving your arse from what's going to head in your direction if - or rather when - Admiral Mamoru Okita discovers who is currently shagging the arse off the clone of his brother's great grandson…'

'Shut up. Besides, they're married.'

Yanez' chortle turned into a wheeze. 'Oh, Because that makes everything better.'

'What were the bloody odds…' Nero muttered, running his fingers through his long curly hair, clutching it as though ready to yank it out by the roots.

'Karma,' Yanez coughed. He chuckled, ignoring the black look from his friend. 'And I did suggest you might not like what would be in a transport marked up as coming from Harken GenTech...'

'Yanez...'

'You really should have just told them all of it,' Yanez added helpfully. 'Probably about two seconds after you found out he was alive.'

The three sisters looked up as one at the large splash that had all heads turning on the deck. Their father strode past them, one hand on the hilt of his gravity sabre, ignoring the stares from his crew.

'Why is uncle Yanez in the water?' Dione asked, peering over the side of the ship. Halia and Galene joined her, Erik adding himself to the viewers mostly to grab a surreptitious handful of Dione's left breast. 'Ooh! language!' she called down to the splashing pirate. 'Should we drop a rope?' She slapped Erik's hand away playfully, and shrieked as he transferred his attention to her ass.

'Nah.' Erik gave her a peck on the cheek. 'He can swim for shore. The exercise'll do him good.'

Ali stopped to watch the lovely - and heavily pregnant- young woman climb out of the small wooden sailboat with the help of a tall blond man who looked suspiciously familiar. 'Bloody hell… Hank Douglas as well? I wonder how many of him there are in those tubes…'

'I daren't go there,' Blaze told him with a grin. 'Mom's going to go ballistic once she hears this one.' He frowned. 'Huh. She looks familiar as well…'

'Lot of it about, I'd stop trying to work it out if I were you. But this population problem? Not going to be made any easier by them breeding…' Ali smirked. 'Have they heard of trap-neuter-return here?'

'You're a bad man,' Blaze told him solemnly as they walked. He mopped his face with the sleeve of his shirt and pushed sweat-sodden hair out of his eyes. 'How the hell does anyone stand this?'

'This?' Ali stretched, luxuriating in the warm breeze. He'd removed his shirt a couple of hours ago and borrowed some shorts from someone close to his own build, and now slapped along barefoot through the sand. 'Bloody lovely is what it is. I grew up on New Macedonia, and this is winter weather…'

'I was born on Lar Metal during the last years of the long winter,' Blaze told him. 'This… this is unbearable…'

'Awww… just take yer shirt off. No-one around here will care.' He sniggered and elbowed the younger man in the side. 'In fact some of 'em might even enjoy the sight…'

Blaze glanced over to where a group of four identical young women were watching over about twenty ten year olds. He looked away first, flushing, when one of the women whispered something to her siblings, making them all laugh.

'Unless,' Ali added, 'You find the whole identical quadruplets thing creeps you out?'

Blaze gave him a sideways look as they moved on. 'Why would that bother me?' he asked. 'My mother's a clone, remember?'

Ali coughed, briefly considered apologising for indeed forgetting the fact, then moved on. 'So the whole Dan 'n' Hank thing…'

'They're no more Dan or Hank than my mother is Promethium. The Holy Queen treated them as interchangeable, but unless they were crowned, her clones were as individual as Mamoru or Wataru, or any normally conceived twins or multiples. Nature creates clones all by itself, remember?'

'I never heard of any woman giving birth to a thousand in a litter,' Ali pointed out. Blaze shrugged, ceding the point. 'But even natural twins have been considered taboo in ancient times.' He paused. 'Hey… if Doppler's got DNA from before the war… my great-grand parents were caught up with that rat bastard…' He shuddered theatrically. 'Running into Grandy Lizzy and Grampa Con as teenagers would be freaky…' Then he scowled and kicked at the sand. 'Fuck… they could be putting them through those life-extractor distillation factories… That's plain wrong…'

'And now you see why Harlock and Hannibal - and this Nero - are so clear on why we need to try and save these, and put a stop to the production. It doesn't matter if they're clones. Hell - you'd have to count out most of Lar Metal's surviving population if you considered them non-people, since despite the rules about miscegenation, the elite caste were constantly popping out bastards, which is why I get to call Leopard "uncle" to his eternal annoyance. And I know for a fact Shaitan's pointy-eared racist eugenicists use the technique to maintain their own numbers. They're human and for some of us it would seem, they're family. That guy back there? Technically, he's Lisa's uncle. That rather entertainingly chirpy copy of Dan? Takuma's uncle. Does how they got here really matter so much?'

He stared back along the beach, and watched the group of children they walked past earlier playing in the waves, jumping and squealing as the breakers rolled in. 'There's been so much death in the last century and a half, Ali. Should we be so cavalier about life? Look at them: They're just children. Orphans in a way no-one could ever understand who hasn't gone through that.

'Mom understands it, better than anyone. She was "bred" to be a vessel for an ancient, spiteful old woman who wouldn't accept death; to have everything she was and ever could be hollowed out and destroyed at someone else's whim. Somewhere in the bowels of Promethium's metal world, there are still hundreds of her sisters, just lying in stasis until the Bitch-queen needs them. These young men and women… the children… they're no different, Ali. That's exactly what their creators planned for them. And the extra irony? The woman who rebelled against that same fate alongside my mother is the one sanctioning this.'

Sobered, Ali watched the group playing. 'When you put it like that… It's like the captain keeps saying, isn't it? We just never learn…' He looked slyly over at Blaze. 'Was it weird? Growing up in such a fucked-up society?'

'It was dangerous,' Blaze replied soberly. 'Marin and I had to be kept hidden not only because we could have been used against our parents, but because we were doubly an abomination to the ruling class. Only the workers were supposed to breed naturally. Our mother was supposed to have been a Queen, and only breed carefully constructed daughters in vitro. Dad was the illegal offspring of an elite and his natural-born mistress, secretly raised as a true-born. And then they dared to defy the system, and had us. In a very real sense we were a living symbol of our parents rebellion to some. In the final days, with the Holy Queen closing in before our aunt threw her lot in with mom, we were almost captured - we'd have been publicly executed as a lesson to both them and to others. If not for Hannibal…' he shook his head. 'Marin and I… we owed him our lives. Fifteen of his people died getting us to safety. He was almost killed. I've never known anyone else - apart from my parents - who would fight so hard for others, to protect those who can't protect themselves. Unless it's Harlock.'

Giving up on the heat, he pulled his shirt off over his head and tried the sleeves around his waist. 'Sod it. If everyone else is walking around half naked…'

Ali eyed him up sourly. 'I've changed my mind. Can you put it back on again? All those fit lasses are staring at you instead of me.'

Blaze looked him up and down, a finger to his lips as though deep in thought. 'You know… I'm not surprised. Young, fit with nicely chiseled abs versus bit worn around the edges and going a bit to seed?' He poked Ali's middle, where despite the muscled slab of his chest, he was indeed looking a little soft around the stomach.

'Gerroff. And you ain't that much younger than me, if I remember right.'

'Good genes,' Blaze deadpanned. 'I may be a bit of a mongrel by Lar Metal standards, but the longevity gene is dominant, so…'

The young version of Henry Douglas walked by, still chatting away to the lovely honey-haired young woman from the boat, and Blaze turned to watch her walk past, his frown back in place as he watched her suddenly wave and call out to Morgan, who'd been walking towards them. The young man waved back and broke into a run, meeting her before she'd gone even ten yards, sweeping her up into a bear hug and laughing with her, before kissing her soundly and placing a hand gently on her very prominent bump with an adoring smile.

'Didn't know bun in the oven was your type,' Ali said slyly, nudging him in the ribs. 'So she's Morgan's, is she? Kinda pretty, if you like that girl-next-door look… Though pregnant? Hell no. Far too hormonal...'

'Kei's right - you are a dinosaur… She does look familiar…' Blaze mused. 'And recently familiar. Like I've seen her in the past couple of days…'

His jaw dropped open, and he choked slightly. 'Oh fuck…'

'Ooh! Language!'

'Shut up, Ali. Is Hannibal anywhere around?'

Ali did a swift three-sixty, pirouetting in place. 'Nope. Why?'

'Because I just remembered where I've seen that girl. There's a portrait of her in Hannibal's quarters on board the Miranda - I've been staring at it every night for a week.'

'You sleep in his bed? Eww.'

'Kind of missing the point,' Blaze snapped.

'Then who is she? Doesn't strike me as a candidate for a Millennial Thieves' girlie calendar… Far too wholesome.'

'The ship's namesake, you pillock. That lovely little woman over there having the breath kissed out of her by Dan's copy? That's Hannibal's first wife…'

Ali swallowed hard. 'Oh. Fuck. I gotta…'

'Do what?' The voice was so close to his ear the speaker was almost blowing into it.

Ali shrieked and jumped about a foot in the air, not having seen or heard his captain walk up behind him whilst he'd been distracted. Blaze, who'd at least been facing the right way, laughed out loud.

'Do not do that, you bastard! I swear I'll put a bell on you one day…'

'So jumpy…' Harlock tutted. 'What's got those too-tight shorts in a bunch? Besides the obvious?'

'They're not too…' Ali's eyes narrowed as he realised he was having his chain yanked. 'Arse.'

'The young lady over there,' Blaze nodded in the direction of the lovebirds.

Harlock smiled. 'Morgan's wife - Ianthe. He was telling us about her. Eight months pregnant, I gather, and he's torn between staying here with her and going on this rescue-stroke-raid of the production facility with Hannibal and Yanez…'

Blaze exchanged a meaningful look with Ali. 'What?' Harlock asked. He looked again at the couple. Sighed heavily. 'Oh. Like that is it? Okay… I can follow this through most of the way - who the hell do I have to keep away from him who'd know her?'

'Hannibal will be leading this mission, right?' Ali asked slowly. 'I'm asking because I was planning on tagging along, since… well… you know…'

Harlock huffed slightly. 'I do know. And yes, you can go along and spoil Doppler's day. I wouldn't dream of stopping you. But can I have an answer sometime before you sail? I'm getting more than a little tired with people around here giving me information on a drip-feed.'

'You know the Deathshadow Zero's named for Hannibal's wife?' Blaze said slowly. He watched the penny drop without satisfaction.

Harlock spat out a string of expletives that made Ali take a step back in admiration. 'Whoa… I don't think that first one is even possible and the third will get you arrested for just asking about it in any brothel on three planets I can name…'

'I'm not going to ask how you know that. Where the hell is that misbegotten, obfuscating, evasive son of a bitch hiding?' Harlock snapped.

A wet hand tapped him on the shoulder and he whirled round, his cosmo dragoon almost leaping into his hand, to see a dripping Yanez smiling at him. 'On the ship,' Yanez answered, pushing the muzzle of the pistol out of his face. 'Under the circumstances, I'd be tempted to let you tear a strip off him. I did warn him.'

'It's nothing compared to what Hannibal could do to him,' Harlock advised him coldly. 'Any other confessions he'd like to add?'

'I think I'd better just discuss this somewhere quiet. Just the two of us. Before we break the news to your illustrious ancestor, perhaps we need to figure out some damage limitation?'

'Like ensuring Morgan there doesn't end up without a couple of vital body parts?' Harlock replied drily, as he let Yanez lead him a short distance away, their heads together in a heated conversation.

Ali dug Blaze in the ribs again. 'See,' he grinned at his companion. 'I told you they needed a trap-neuter-return policy. Maybe Hannibal will demonstrate…'

Blaze winced and rubbed his temples. 'Rescue our friends. Maybe take down some nasty little stuff my aunt's up to. Maybe even work out how to save and re-home several hundred thousand clones. Any one of those - even all of them - are kind of well within our comfort zone. But no… once again that murky crap from before the Homecoming War just keeps on coming back on our friends there like a boomerang. It just keeps on giving…'

'Like a case of the clap?' Ali offered helpfully.

Blaze scowled. 'Could this get any more complicated?'

'If we're talking creepy twins? Two thousand copies of that homicidal whack-job of a cousin of yours...' Ali sniggered.

'Narrow it down, Ali,' Blaze snarked back. 'They both scare the shit out of me at times.' He shuddered. 'Two thousand copies of Emeraldas bearing down on you…'

Ali shuddered in his turn. 'Actually, I was thinking of Maetel…' He brightened. 'Hey - Let's just hope Luna doesn't get any ideas about the cats…'

Blaze rolled his eyes. 'Oh Lar… how does anyone keep track of your mood swings?'

'Now why,' Ali replied with a wink, 'Would I let anyone do that?'