Arcadia

The young man on the holo screen was in his late twenties but if I hadn't known that I'd have thought he looked about seventeen, a chirpy, wide grin dominating a pleasant face underneath a shock of light brown hair poking out of a slightly mangy fur cap. A furry tail swished occasionally against his shoulder as he spoke, a tiny pointed, grey-furred, bewhiskered face sometimes popping out from under the cover of his hair to make it clear she wasn't a part of his headgear.

'...ly problem was we don't exactly have much in the way of weapons on the Queen Emeraldas yet. Took a bit of damage ducking and diving, dodging and weaving but although they got a few hits in, I think it was more by luck than judgement. The old girl's made of some rare alloy that makes it hard to get a lock-on, plus most of her bulk is her engine up in the blimp, most of which is for show - actually targeting anything vital isn't as easy as it looks.' He laughed nervously, his hand tugging at the fur hat as though intending to pull it off his head and start wringing it in his hands. On his shoulder Lunna chittered into his ear and he absently released the hat and tickled the squirrel-like critter fondly. 'Em's not exactly happy with either of us though - the commander collared us just as we were liberating that oscillator, and gave her an earful.'

I couldn't resist a snort 'I'm guessing she gave back far worse than she got?'

Nazca's grin got even wider. 'You know those two. Poor bastard - he always looks a bit shell shocked once she's scratched the itch and kicked him back onto his own ship. If he wasn't just a stuck-up arse most of the time, I'd almost feel sorry for him.'

I didn't bother to try and hold back a snort at that one. One thing I've never felt for former Supreme Commander Ra Frankenbach Leopard is pity. 'You'd think he'd know the risks involved with tangling with either of the twins.' I tried to assay a fatherly frown at the lad. 'On which note, Nazca…'

He waved off my concern airily. 'Oh, jeez, stop fretting like a mother hen, Harlock. I'm a big boy now. Maetel and I are just friends.'

Kei's turn to snort at that bouncer. And in his case it wasn't May I was worried about - Promethium Had Plans for her daughter, and they didn't include an itinerant, cocky young engineer with a dubious past. Like her sister, Maetel had a nasty habit of managing to get people around her killed, but whilst Emeraldas' solution was to just hang out with someone she could tolerate but who a) could take care of himself and b) knew what he was getting into and didn't object too much to being used for an intergalactic booty call and occasional punch bag, May didn't seem inclined to stop recruiting the young, headstrong and overly heroic young men who tended to flock around her like moths to a flame… with about the same life expectancy.

'...nyway, you got your big boom. It collapsed in on itself with mathematical precision, and even if I do say so myself, it was a thing of beauty. The gravity wave collapsed right on target, and that ship isn't going anywhere anytime soon.'

That's ma boy… Tochiro murmured appreciatively in my head.

'I'm more concerned that it isn't destroyed,' I pointed out.

Nazca sighed. 'Yeah… but there's nothing we can do about it. Em's fizzing about not being able to wipe it out as well, but until I get those weapon systems online, we're little more than a glorified luxury yacht…'

'It was a glorified luxury yacht,' I felt the need to point out. 'And one designed by someone with way too much time on their hands for reading old tales of derring-do.'

He grinned again. 'Yeah… but it's kinda cool, you gotta admit?' He sniggered. 'And you have no need to talk, piloting that weird-ass hybrid!'

I patted the ship's wheel gently. 'Ignore him,' I said in a stage whisper, designed to carry. 'He's just being obnoxious.'

'Keep telling yourself that, Harlock. Hey - wanna speak to Meg?'

I managed not to twitch. Emeraldas' first officer had once been my ward, and although I liked the woman, she had a tendency to be a little... strident. 'Er… no, thanks. We'll catch up later. Is Emeraldas still planning to head to Ventimiglia?' and wouldn't that be fun…

'Thought we might as well - Leopard's taking a small group out there to meet up. I guess he thinks this bunch might be a good addition to his rebels?'

'He can argue that out with Selen and Hannibal,' I told him. 'And Nero's no pushover, but feel free not to give him a heads-up on that titbit. I love to watch him squirm.'

'Could be fun to watch couldn't it? Gotta go - seeya!'

He cut the connection from his end before I could reply, and I leaned against the wheel heavily, with a heartfelt sigh. Kei leaned over and patted my arm. 'They grow up so fast…' she said brightly, a chuckle escaping her as I glared at her.

Next to my other side, Yattaran shuddered theatrically. 'I'm still trying to unsee the image of Frankie-boy having actual sex…' When Kei's spit-take with her tea almost took out her console he scowled at her. 'Wha?'

'Seriously? We're all trying to forget about you and Anita… What the hell she sees in you I have no idea.'

He preened, drawing himself up to his full height and tried to suck his stomach in, without much luck. 'Some women like to have something to hold onto in the clinches.'

'...but without being smothered,' Kei muttered, loud enough to carry. Someone on the main floor sniggered and turned it into a cough.

'Besides - I built that kitchen for her.'

'Eighteen years ago,' I felt the need to add, earning a glare from my first mate. 'Are you still trading on past glories?'

'I'll have you know I keep that area in tip-top condition,' he informed me sniffily. 'Ain't no ship in the entire Thieves' fleet has a kitchen as good as ours. Or a cook, as witnessed by Blaze and Hannibal tryin' to steal her out from under us every chance they get. You guys owe me…'

'He has a point,' I told Kei, who just folded her arms and tapped her foot. 'Don't give me that, a happy cook is a happy crew, and around here I need all the help I can get some days. Best recruit I ever made…'

'You made?' Kei and Yattaran both echoed in unison. They glared at each other around my back, as ever hating to be in agreement. Even now they both liked to take credit for talking Anita into joining us, conveniently forgetting that she'd made the first move herself.

'I'm the captain, so frankly, yes. No-one comes aboard without my say so.'

'Now, yes,' Kei couldn't resist adding. Somewhere behind the captain's throne, Mimay let out a delicate snigger, and a chorus of coughing broke out on the main floor.

'Ya kinda were a bit wet back then,' Yattaran added.

The lower bridge now sounded like a terminal consumptive ward.

'Speaking of a bit wet, the pair of you do know we now have friends with a nice big sailing ship? Keelhauling isn't out of the question.'

Kei leaned over and gave me a peck on the cheek. 'How many times do I have to remind you? Never make threats you won't follow through on,' she whispered near my ear, her hair brushing against skin that was a little too sensitive when paired with the delicate scent of her.

'Try me,' I muttered back, but without any real conviction. She laughed and returned to her post, with such a deliberately provocative sway of her arse - encased as it was in form-fitting red leather, the tops of her long legs an equally enticing entrée as they disappeared into the long black boots she habitually wore - that I made a mental note to give no mercy and no quarter once we were alone later. And that I would make good on, the teasing minx. I dragged my attention back to the matter in hand and thanked the powers that be for state-of-the-art compression flightsuits. 'I don't care if that Phantasma is crippled, I want it gone. Get Nero on the comms for me.'

I tried not to growl at Kei's barely audible appreciative sigh when our new ally appeared in a life size holo in front of us, displaying an impressive expanse of carpet between the lacings of a black silk shirt that stretched across muscled shoulders. Under the weight of the gravity cloak I tried to make my instinctive attempt to straighten up and look bigger imperceptible. I folded my arms. 'Nero.' I nodded to acknowledge him.

'Harlock. We've made a sweep from the outer range of the time radar - as far as we can tell we succeeded - there's no way, given the amount of distortion, that those ships survived.'

'We weren't so lucky with the third,' I told him. 'Nazca says they crippled it, but at least negated the threat from that black hole. What worries me is that it might be capable of limping along to a safe harbour, and I'm not a fan of letting an enemy getting a foothold behind me.'

'Neither am I. Yanez?' he turned to off-camera, and held a quick conference with his second whilst I waited. 'There's a small system within reach of that singularity, if they have a functional drive. Even limping in IN-SKIP it'll take them no more than a day. It's a dwarf star with a small planetesimal orbiting in the sweet spot. The Empire has been using it as a body dump for several years - nicely out of the way so no-one comes across it by accident. They like to maintain that illusion that the poor bastards who give up their bodies can one day have them back…'

'Score one for the Evil Cybernetic Empire Marketing Department,' I replied dryly. 'That system's not on our charts…'

'Well after you and Selen basically started the Machinners' War by making those body dumps public, I gather they've gone to great lengths to make sure this stuff doesn't get out these days.'

'Never heard of burning the evidence?' Yattaran asked waspishly.

Nero's shoulders twitched. 'Because that makes it so much better?'

'Because they're still being manipulated by outside agencies,' I added, 'and those agencies have a vested interest in making sure there's a large supply of usable dead bodies.'

Nero inclined his head slightly. 'Just so.'

'You want to take out the trash?' I gave him my best let's-ruin someone's day smirk.

He grinned wolfishly in return, white teeth flashing. 'Sounds like my kind of plan. I think the grown-ups can handle things at their respective ends for a few days, don't you?'

I laughed. 'Well, it would be remiss of us to not clean up after ourselves, wouldn't it? Rendezvous with us about 2AU away from that system, on the far side of that dwarf. That should keep us out of direct line of a scan. We can make a short hop once we've located the Phantasma, catch them with their pants down with any luck.'

'We'll probably get there before them,' Yattaran pointed out. Nero shrugged.

'Good. Time to prepare a nice welcome if we do. Do you have some of that monofilament in store?'

I glanced at Yattaran, who was nodding eagerly, a ferocious, anticipatory and disturbingly predatory smile on his face. 'I think that's a "hell yes",' I told my counterpart.

'Would be remiss of us not to also leave…'

'...some nasty deterrents for anyone using that planet as a mass grave?' I finished for him. We traded smirks, and I cut the connection. Kei leaned on her console with a sigh. 'I'd hoped to head back to that nice, relaxing, tropical paradise…'

'With all those lovely, almost-nekkid cuties...' Franz called up.

'I think you meant to say "technical jailbait", you aging pervs,' Kei called down. 'You lot can just behave. And when we do get back, if persons of your preferred gender coming onto you can't provide you with proof of actual age over apparent age, and you don't make your apologies, you'll be making an appointment with Luna and her trusty spoon "rusty"... '

Nervous laughter. Not even the old timers were sure if she was joking on this score.

'Bit harsh,' Yattaran muttered. Kei gave him the stink eye, and he decided to examine his console in minute detail until she looked away.

'You really should know better,' I told him. 'Just get us underway.'

'Aye aye. Course laid in, Captain.'

I placed my hands on the wheel, already feeling the vibration as Mimay, without needing further orders, began to spin up the massive rotating arch of the dark matter drive behind us, as Kei gave the order to prepare for IN-SKIP.

'Arcadia - blast off!'

The words were no sooner out of my mouth than the ship sprang forward into the cloud of dark matter pooling around the bow of the ship, red lightning flickering around the viewing window as we left real space-time behind.

According to the scanners, the Phantasma had crash-landed on the tiny continent that lay over the equator of the small, icy world below. Underneath the thin ribbons of dark matter the ship was much smaller than I'd expected - but still easily more than double our draught. It stuck out of the glacier it was half-buried in, listing to one side, a roughly ovoid obsidian slab still gently pulsing with dark matter, rather like a heartbeat.

'I'm detecting movement down there,' Kei told me, without looking up from her screen. 'But no life signs. Plenty of biomass in that area though.'

'Can you get the drone any lower?' Nero, standing next to where I lounged in the captain's chair, leaned forward to take a closer look at the image.'

'We're at the safe limit for being spotted,' she told him. 'And the limit for magnification. I'd rather not alert them to our presence just yet.'

I can try and enhance the image. Give me a mo.

True to his word, Tochiro enlarged the image, centreing on the small figures moving around on the ice. If I extrapolate from what we can see with what we know…

The image resolved into armored figures alongside spindly machines hauling bodies out of the snow and ice. Some were being immediately discarded, thrown to one side like so much rubbish. Others were being stacked like cordwood on a sled-like object. I say "like" in the loosest sense - it looked more like a gigantic inky black flatworm balanced on rippling tentacles. 'Please tell me that's an artist's impression,' I said faintly. It stretched the length of the distance from ship to the working area - a good two hundred metres.

And the bodies discarded weren't being thrown away - they were being thrown into its path, vanishing into some hidden maw.

'It's just sitting there. Now would be a good time to attack,' Nero said quietly. He'd popped over via shuttle - more to get a good look around the ship I suspected than any real operational necessity.

'Do you carry any orbital bombardment munitions?' I asked. 'Because I don't. We don't get into that kind of fight.'

'Just blast them from orbit.' He shrugged. 'There's nothing else down there.'

''Except the dead,' I pointed out. 'The kind of firepower we can bring to bear would crack this entire planet. Apart from the shipping hazard we'd create through this zone, I don't like desecrating the resting places of the dead.'

'They're dead…' He emphasised the word wearily as though he felt he shouldn't have to spell it out to me. 'They're beyond caring.'

'No-one cared when they were alive,' I said softly. 'Do we really need to compound the injustice and indignity?' I sighed. He was right, and I wasn't going to press the point. Didn't mean I had to like it. However: 'But this might be a good opportunity to get a look at them up close and personal,' I added. 'See what it takes to confront them outside their ships. We've beefed up the cosmo guns and hand axes - are your guys up to a field trip before we blast the living daylights out of that thing?'

We'd lose the element of surprise,' Nero pointed out. 'They could lift off and…'

'...be lumbering out of the gravity well about as fast as we do. And when they do, they'll run headfirst into the monofilament mines we've spent two days laying. I'd rather take her in vacuum anyway - for the original reason - slagging this rock, no matter how out of the way it is, will not win us any friends back home. It's off the beaten path, but unexpected shipping hazards between here and Andromeda tend to piss Layla Shura off.'

'Said with the voice of experience?' Nero asked with a knowing smile.

'I don't like taking the fall for blowing up planets,' I pointed out a little sniffily. 'That kind of reputation tends to stick…' It was a low blow, but I was feeling a little mean. I was still smarting over losing so many crewmen to these things, and wasn't feeling that friendly towards the reason I was standing here at the moment.

Kei perched on the very end of her console, hands curled lightly around the edge. 'We could use a bit of action that takes us off the ship for a bit. If they are going to make use of the all-you-can-possess zombie buffet, taking them out away from their ship makes sense - and we get a chance to see just what we're up against.'

'Can't we just let the other guys do that and watch the action replay?' Franz asked plaintively.

'You learn by doing,' I quipped.

More nervous laughter, but I could already hear a couple of them discussing decapitation versus disemboweling as ways of taking down the undead. Martinez suggested taking out the legs, and a huddle next to what was usually Ali's station was embroiled in a rapidly raucous comparison of whether axes or cosmo guns would be better.

I left them to it, and accompanied Nero back to his shuttle.

'Rather… robust bunch, aren't they?' he asked companiably as we strolled. I'd been expecting a snarky comment about our lack of automated walkways given the fact it was almost a kilometre from the bridge to the main bow hangar, given the internal layout, so his non sequitur took me a little by surprise.

'Good men - and women - to have at your side in a fight,' I replied. 'A trifle rambunctious on occasion, but every single one of them will fight to the last drop of their blood.'

'Axes?' he emphasised the word with a grin. 'Takes me right back to the old days… Me, Kavanagh… Harlock… before someone - namely Okita - got the bright idea of promoting me.'

'Hannibal mentioned Kavanagh a couple of times - one of Harlock's old crew?'

'Security. He'd have fit right in on this ship. A real ginger bruiser, over a class A counter-insurgency specialist.'

'What happened to him?' Nero's tone had been a little bleak - I suspected he hadn't survived the war.

'Doppler. Or rather, one of his henchmen. A nasty piece of work called Victor Harken. We'd been taken prisoner after a nasty engagement off Tiamat. Just a handful of survivors from both sides, and only a dozen from the Yukikaze. The Captain was being a bit pissy about following orders, so Harken had Kav shot as an example.' He rubbed the back of his neck as we walked, fingers twitching as though wanting to scratch an old itch. 'If it hadn't been for Maya's brothers and Mamoru not giving up on Harlock, we'd have all died there. There have been days I believed that would have been a good thing… If I'd known what was coming...'

'You don't carry Harlock's guilt,' I said quietly as we walked. 'Was it all so bad, in the years that followed?'

He let out a short, sharp laugh. 'Cut right through the crap don't you? No. It was hard, afterwards. For a long time. But the last fifty years or so I've found a certain kind of peace I had never expected. A friend closer than a brother in Yanez. My daughters… the people who rely on me. Even, if I'm honest, a new purpose since Promethium crossed my path. There is after all a certain satisfaction in slapping down a smug, arrogant tyrant. Doppler's operation has pulled in its reach over the years… harrying that bald, pointy-eared bastard and his hunchbacked hench-thing was getting more and more difficult for little reward.'

I smiled. 'So… you're another man who's really a pirate underneath the thin veneer of civilisation?'

He laughed, more humorously this time. 'The Captain did seem to have a knack for attracting like-minded individuals. Even you, I gather…'

Inwardly, I winced. My history with Harlock hadn't been quite that promising at the time. 'Actually, I came aboard as a spy and assassin for the Gaia Sanction. I've never been able to drag out of him why the hell he didn't just have me shot on sight, since he knew from the start who and what I was…' I wanted that sentence back the moment I'd uttered it. Thankfully he seemed not to have noticed the slip in my verb tenses… I wasn't sure I was ready to explain Harlock's on-again-off-again existence issues to this old comrade of his. For one thing I wasn't quite sure yet what his response would be, and I had no idea what a well-placed cosmogun blast would do to the third member of the Arcadia's triad of genii loci…

'He was a better judge of men than even he gave himself credit for,' Nero said softly. 'Almost as good as his brother. Of course, that's on an individual level… people en masse… not so much. But whilst I can buy you as a spy… somehow, assassin isn't what I think of when I look at you. There's a certain lack of empathy needed to be willing to kill a man in cold blood, or shoot him in the back. And empathy is not something you seem to be lacking.'

I forebore to ask what he thought might be lacking. 'My older brother cornered the market in sociopathic ambition.' My brother… and the synthetic currently hosting his downloaded memories, which I'd been about to close in on when this situation blew up in my face. We reached the hangar. 'I think this is your stop,' I quipped. I offered my hand and managed to just about hold my own in the macho grip-testing that briefly followed. 'Kei will send over the rendezvous co-ordinates for a quick ground assault, if you still want to join us?'

'Wouldn't miss it,' he told me warmly.

Just as the door was about to iris closed behind him her looked back over his shoulder. 'And maybe afterwards we can share a drink, and you can tell me what exactly my old captain is getting up to.'

The hangar door shut with a soft hiss, cutting off what would have been at best a feeble attempt to deny everything.