Thunderbolt

'If you want my advice, you'll let our piratical botanist do his own research into the effect of those upgrades to the weapons,' Yanez advised sourly as he leaned against the doorway to the armory, watching his captain suit up. As his armour had proved less than effective in a prior engagement, this meant the all-weather flightsuits and a breather unit built into the high collar, which also housed a force-shield, all in unadorned black, and topped off with his totally non regulation gravity cloak, the latter slung from his left shoulder to leave his right arm clear.

Nero thrust his gravity sabre into its holster with a grunt, and reached for his Cosmolocks.

'You're a walking invitation for a bullet in that,' Yanez continued.

'You say that every time. The fabric's energy disruptive and the gravity field…'

'...has a nasty tendency to redirect anything aimed at you towards the closest poor bastard. Leave it to an officer to swan around in something designed to put the poor enlisted buggers surrounding them at risk. There's a reason the Fleet discontinued those stupid things after the war,' Yanez groused. Nero just smiled at him.

'My brother - you worry too much. And exaggerate. The graviton field absorbs most of the energy directed at it - EM, heat and kinetic. Tochiro improved considerably upon the original specs for just that reason.' He grinned toothily. 'Although there was that time Harlock and I got stuck bouncing one bolt back between us more times than we thought possible. Pinned down a few feet from each other at just the wrong reflective angle…'

'Yes. Well just make sure if this Harlock is wearing the same getup, you keep your angles of reflection clear of each other.' Yanez looked around the room and sighed. 'Where's your backup? Since you're making me stay behind to hold the fort…'

'Already en route to the shuttle,' Nero replied smoothly. 'I'm taking Cren, Yara, José and Erik. That's more than enough trouble.'

'I'm amazed you talked Cren into this folly,' Yanez grumbled. 'He's always complaining about his tail getting cold when we go off planet…'

'When they left, Yara was giving him some suggestions as to where he could stuff it,' Nero replied with a hearty laugh. 'Though she went very quiet at his counter suggestion…'

'I'm amazed there weren't knives involved,' Yanez replied dryly. 'That young woman has a long history of expressing her opinions with sharp objects. We should have introduced her to Kei - I think the two of them would hit it off. You would not believe the number of weapons that woman keeps secreted around her person.'

'Having read the Gaia Sanction file on her, actually, I think I would. Now - are you going to loiter there all day, or accompany me to the shuttle?'

Yanez levered himself away from the wall and fell in beside his much longer legged companion. 'Just a quick sortie,' he warned Nero as they walked. 'No heroics this time - I'll be in orbit.'

'You don't trust anyone else to guard my back, do you?' Nero asked, amusement in his tone.

Yanez was not so cavalier. 'No. And if the words "what could possibly go wrong?" exit your mouth, I'm hogtying you and throwing you in the nearest cell in the brig until we've taken out that ship.'

'Remind me again which of us had his cover blown, was drugged, imprisoned and interrogated and had to be rescued from a noose as it tightened around his throat?'

'It was a firing squad. And as I recall, that happened because I went in to rescue you…'

'I'd already escaped. It's not as if that planetary governor's men were that good…'

'And if you'd thought to send a message, instead of lingering to seduce his daughter…'

'Niece.'

'Who cares!' Yanez threw up his hands, gesticulating wildly. 'Most of the times I've almost lost vital body parts, I've done so saving your unworthy arse.' The travelator came to a stop outside the hangar doors. 'Watch your back,' he added with considerable feeling, as his captain strode through the doorway.

'Relax, Yanez. What could possibly go wrong?'

The doors slid closed before Yanez could reply, and he was left staring at the dark grey metal with a mix of frustration and exasperation on his weatherbeaten face.

Arcadia

'You should be wearing your armour.' Kei leaned against the wall of the armoury, arms folded across her breasts, and a worried wrinkle seemingly parked for the duration just between her eyes above her nose.

'According to all the data Nero supplied, the metanoids have managed to render it worse than useless. They have had millennia to come up with a way of negating its original advantages, after all,' I pointed out as I struggled with a boot. I kept my attention divided between the seals on my suit and Kei, since the alternative was a couple of bare-arsed crewmen currently squabbling over the ownership of the thermal underwear one of Luna's cats had sent flying from the bench about a minute earlier. 'Really guys? You're both a medium and practically the same height - just cover yourselves up and get dressed,' I snapped at Martinez and Franz, who shut up and took a set each - looked at them - swapped them again and set to muttering.

'Haven't you got anything better to do that loiter staring at naked men?' Franz asked plaintively of Kei. She laughed at them.

'Really? Because these days, after raising three small boys, I just get the urge to slap a nappy over the whole kit and kaboodle.' Ignoring the spluttering indignation she strolled over to give me a hand with the gravity cloak attachments to my flightsuit. After years of procrastination, I'd finally been persuaded to let Maji make a demi-cuirass in my size similar to the one my predecessor had worn, and I was still getting used to the metal plates over my back and shoulders. They were well articulated, but a little uncomfortable. I had however - to Kei's disappointment - drawn the line at thigh high boots and the upper arm bracers.

Cloak in place - and yes, the cuirass did distribute the weight of the damned thing a lot more evenly, and I didn't feel quite so inclined to topple over underneath several yards of artificial leather and embedded high end electronics - I reached for the gun belts. Cosmo dragoon first, the belt for the sabre rifle crossing with it, one skull and crossbones buckle settling under the first. I strapped the pistol's holster into place, and Kei knelt down to fasten the ties on the sabre's holster. 'You don't have to do that,' I said softly, smiling down at her.

She looked up at me, smiling slightly. 'I know. But…' I took her hand to help her back to her feet, taking the opportunity for a quick, reassuring hug. She worries, and tends to express this by fussing over what I'm wearing.

'Don't we get a hug?' Martinez asked with a wink. In reply she just rolled her eyes, and he pushed his bottom lip out. 'Awww… and we're going to be in as much danger as he is…' he pointed out.

'More,' Franz offered, pulling a jumper on over his head, his voice muffled by the fabric as he waggled his arms down to the cuffs. 'He's wearing that bloody cloak. Again.'

'Your last captain wore it all the time,' I pointed out, not unreasonably. 'I don't recall any bitching about it then…'

'No,' Franz said slowly. 'That would be because the lazy bastard very rarely moved his arse out of his chair on the bridge. And in the six years I was on board before you arrived, I can recall him leaving the ship maybe four times. You, on the other hand, apparently aren't happy unless you're getting shot at, and by extension, getting us shot at. And we don't wear fancy high-end deflector shields in our clothing.'

'Be thankful,' I replied dryly. 'If we were all wearing them it would end up like a billiard table out there.'

I should have kept my mouth shut. Unlike some of the men, these two actually thought on their feet.

'Nero will be wearing one, won't he?' Martinez asked, in an equally dry tone. Franz paused in the act of stroking the fur on top of his lip back into place after ruffling it up pulling his sweater on. Suddenly all three of them were staring at me, arms folded across their chests. Kei's foot tapped on the floor, a tip, tip tip with her toe that added volumes to the conversation her left eyebrow was currently having with me.

'Seriously? You know where not to stand, and Ali only moans about that one time because he's Ali. Just find a big rock if it bothers you.' I glared at the trio, but it was water off a duck's back. The newer recruits - and by that I mean anyone who came aboard less than eighteen years ago - can be intimidated with an arched eyebrow. My wife and the guys I used to bus tables for before their previous captain vanished in a wisp of dark matter and left me to clear up his mess? Not so much. In fact, after a couple of seconds, Martinez sniggered and Franz's lip began to twitch under cover of his lip ferret.

I gave up. 'I miss Ali…' I stage-whispered to Kei. She patted me on the arm. 'We do our best to make up for his absence,' she replied, mock sympathy dripping from every syllable.

'Remind me again why I'm taking those two jokers?'

'Hey!' Franz glared at me. 'Because with Cai and Val both gone, we're the best shots. Plus gammy leg or not, most of the others can't keep up with you. Of course if you'd rather take that dumb pair of walking brick walls…'

'I need Sabu and Yasu on the guns,' Kei replied tartly. 'They're ex artillery - you two aren't.' She gave me a peck on the cheek. 'Try not to get shot, stabbed or crushed. Or break anything.'

'You say that as though it's a regular occurrence.'

I got The Eyebrow.

'Not every time…'

Franz slapped me on the shoulder, and winced as his palm connected under the cloak with the new cuirass. 'Keep telling yourself that, captain. Kei - don't worry. Can't promise to stop him getting a scratch or two on the chassis, but we'll do our best to keep him out of trouble.'

'Please do. And if he gets killed…'

'We know,' Martinez interrupted cheerily. 'Don't come back.'

'Attaboys,' she told them, with either the world's best poker face, or with deadly intent. Sometimes with Kei, it's hard to tell. She left us then, striding away quickly back in the direction of the bridge, leaving the three of us to make our way to the lower hangar, where the shuttle awaited us.

'Why does she always sashay away like that?' Martinez was still fastening his gun belt as we walked, tugging the leather through the buckle to cinch it tight over his jacket. Where Franz and I both had fairly discrete skull and crossbone stencils in white on the left breast, his was red and covered most of the front, and sported a cutlass in its rictus grin. 'Not,' he added, after throwing an appreciative look over his shoulder, to watch her leather-clad ass saunter away, 'that it doesn't do very nice things to that amazing ass…' Franz slapped him upsides the head. 'Hey! mind the hair!' He ran his hands over a patterned buzz cut so short that nothing could have disturbed the grinning skull shaved into it.

'Behave,' his partner in crime advised. 'You never learn - how long have you known that she-devil?' He grinned. It's cute to watch though. She tries so hard to act as though she's okay with you making boneheaded plays that put you in harm's way, but hot damn, she clenches...'

"Cute" wasn't how I'd describe it. Kei had been very clear what she thought of making a target of myself down there. I'd had the devil's own job talking her out of coming along, and only falling back on pulling rank and pointing out that having both captain and first officer down there wasn't smart had kicked her in her overly professional pride. Which was a dirty move, but only one of us needed to be terminally heroic.

'You could send just us down,' Franz continued. 'You know we can handle it, right?' He was plugging his power-axe into the unit on his belt as he talked. The damn thing looks as though it'd take both hands to swing it, but it's surprisingly light - the killing power is in the blade, based on the same tech as my sabre. I helped him shift the shaft to his back and settle it in place, the wicked curved head sticking up above his head. 'Thanks.'

'Most times, yes' I told him. 'But I'll never ask anyone to do something I wouldn't. And these creatures are still unknown quantities. Tochiro, Maji and Yattaran need more data on their offensive and defensive capabilities. Mimay's knowledge of them is both minimal and possibly - and how often do you get to make statements like this - millions of years out of date. The new frequencies for the guns and force shields need testing.' We reached the hangar, where our bullet waited. 'If we get into serious difficulties, we've got two Deathshadow class battleships in orbit. Once Kei and Yanez make a move, I guarantee they won't be wasting time on us…'

Martinez gave the tip of my sabre a tap with his toe, metal sole clocking against the muzzle. 'You just want to buckle your swash with this new guy, don't you?' he smirked. 'Cloak. Sabre rifle… fancy new duds… hair neatly brushed… Admit it!' He'd checked out one of the massive (barely) man-portable assault rifles, complete with underslung bayonet - if a two foot long curved gravity blade can be called a bayonet. Personally I thought that was pushing it. It was the big brother to Kei's baroque monstrosities, relying on a swivel mount at the hip which he'd have to attach after we landed.

'Fancy new full EM spectrum absorption circuitry embedded in the leather,' I pointed out, ignoring the accusation. 'Which the pair of you are also wearing, because I'm such a wonderful captain…'

We clumped up the ramp and into the bullet. I took the pilot's seat with Franz in the co-pilot's chair. The cloak was in the way so I had to flick the heavy leather out behind me to sit down, and try to ignore the barely repressed sniggers. 'Terror of three galaxies,' I muttered as I sat down. 'Laughing stock on my own ship…'

Martinez took the seat behind me. 'Nah. We just know you better is all. Anyone else disrespects you, we flatten 'em.' He patted the massive piece of field artillery next to him. 'Alison here tends to get people's attention.'

'And we did take the piss out of all that endless poncy cloak-flinging,' Franz added. 'Just not anywhere the humourless bastard could hear us…'

There are days these guys say something that makes me remember just how much he'd changed… Tochiro said sadly inside my head. There was a time he'd have laughed along with them. Just ask Mamoru… or Khalsa. Harlock was a right little shit of a prankster in his youth. He sniggered. Oh man… the stunts the pair of us used to pull!

I forebore from pointing out that a little more discipline might have been more in order when my possibly insane, definitely socially inadequate ancestor had still been small enough for a little parental chastisement to have an effect. On the other hand by all accounts his father had been a disaster, swinging from total indifference to borderline abuse when his wayward, attention-seeking offspring had finally gone too far. Having fathered four examples of the breed, I could partly sympathise with the circumstances… but never with the solutions. His father should have known better - it's a demonstrated trait in all the branches of my family I've ever known. The more anyone tries to shut us down, the more stubborn we get.

And we also don't keep a rein on our tongues… 'Really?' I said out loud. 'You call it Alison…?'

'Ex girlfriend,' Martinez said brightly, the tone going right over his head.

I took us out of the hangar and nosed us down to the little iceball that dared to call itself a planet. 'You think you know a guy, and even after almost twenty years…' I sighed and shook my head.

'Hey - I've always named my weapons!' Martinez replied. 'What of it?'

'Well...' I added slowly, playing it for all it was worth. 'It's just...she doesn't look like an Alison…'

In my earpiece, Tochiro sniggered. In the viewscreen's faint reflection I could see both of them looking as though I'd just grown two heads. Franz twisted in his seat, looked down at the gun, then twisted back to send me a sideways glance. 'Okay… I'll take the bait. What does it look like?'

Tochiro answered for me. 'Saskia,' He said over the comms, as we dipped into the upper atmosphere. 'Definitely a Saskia…'

'I'm afraid to ask…' Martinez muttered.

'Commodore Velasky,' he said brightly. 'I was eighteen, she was forty and change, breasts like barrage balloons but the rest of her was six foot tall and built along the lines of a Titan class battleship. Could have snapped my neck with one pinky finger, and had thighs that could have squeezed the breath out of a sumo champion… Went through sub-alterns like chocolate bars.' He giggled. 'She made a play for Harlock, but… well… she wasn't his type.'

Franz choked, apparently on his own tongue, and sat back in his seat. Martinez settled for a simple "huh".

'Redhead by any chance?' I drawled.

'How did you guess?'

'Runs in the family. Taro has a major crush on Emeraldas…' My adopted son had turned out to be descended from my central computer. There are days you can't make this stuff up. Welcome to my life...

'Tall… red hair, legs up to heaven… great tits… scary dangerous…' he mused. 'Yep. He's an Oyama all right!'

'She'd eat him alive,' Franz muttered darkly. 'But what a way to go!' Martinez added. 'What?' he asked of Franz's reflected eye-rolling. 'She's hot…'

'And probably even more deadly than "Alison" there, Franz pointed out. 'Erm...captain? If we want to avoid detection you need to put down around here somewhere…'

I'd been skimming blithely through the valleys below the hard deck in a particularly mountainous region, but this was coming to an end. The flat plains ahead were snow-covered, but although an ice ball, the planet was at least blessed with a breathable atmosphere and despite its small feeble sun, did have a temperature that was just about bearable with the all-weather gear. A couple of degrees lower however and compromised or not, we'd have been in the hardsuits.

'Just tell me that's land under the ice, and not sea,' I told him. 'Or titanic beasties...I'm not forgetting Tokarga in a hurry…'

Both men laughed. Ali giving Kei the coordinates to set down our last-but-one dimensional oscillator back in the day right on top of a giant space-worm was something he'd never lived down. Franz ran a weather eye over the scanners. 'Well about two miles north it must be solid. That's where our new friends have landed. It's sheltered from the dig site by dint of being just the other side to the valley they're excavating. Bit of a walk to get there, but doable.'

The idea of a trudge through ice and snow wasn't inspiring, but neither was dropping right on top of a group of hostiles. I swung the bullet around and brought her in to drop gracefully next to an almost identical craft already parked on the permafrost.

Nero turned up the thermostat on his suit and shivered as an icy breeze tried to weasel its way down the back of his neck whilst simultaneously slapping his long black hair into his face. The downdraft was the result of the bullet craft circling above before descending to land lightly on the ground about fifty yards away, sinking slightly into the permafrost as the landing jets partially melted the tundra. 'Not my best idea,' he muttered, tugging his pistol out of its holster.

'Leaving a tropical paradise for an arctic wasteland? Who wouldn't love that?' Erik drawled sarcastically. The red-haired young man pulled the hood of his fur-lined parka up over his head. At his side, Cren's tail - encased in a fur-lined extension to his suit, lashed indignantly as its owner surveyed their surroundings.

'We seem to have gone undetected,' the chthonian said eventually. 'Still detecting movement over the ridge, but no-one heading this way.'

'Life signs?' Yara and José wandered up, checking their weapons. Yara was armed with a gravity rapier and a lighter version of Nero's antique flintlock replica, José with several force knives. It was Yara who'd spoken - a sharp faced young woman whose long brown hair was currently hidden by her hood.

'Lots of biomass, as you'd expect, but nothing living. The only reason we can detect anything is that weird-ass warping is really noticeable once you know what to look for. That robot of Harlock's is pretty damn smart…'

Yara gave him a dig in the ribs. 'He's a synth… an android, not a robot.'

'Same difference,' José muttered. He ignored her scowl. 'Captain? Looks as though Captain fancy-pants is on his way - another one,' he said with a sideways sly smile at his captain, 'who lets vanity triumph over a nice woolly hat… Oh, and he's brought company…'

Nero turned to look in the direction of the Arcadia's bullet, where three tall figures were striding towards them, the middle of them sporting a long, red-lined black gravity cloak, like Nero, his long hair blowing in the wind in defiance of the chill. He was flanked by two slim but well-built men in their mid to late thirties - one fair-skinned, sporting curling brown hair and a moustache, the other more rather more mediterranean in looks with what could be seen of his black hair under his jacket hood cropped and shaved. 'Harlock!'

Harlock lifted his hand in acknowledgement as they drew closer. 'Nero.'

'Only two?' Erik asked, eying up Harlock's two companions.

'When you've got the best, why bring more?' the mustachioed pirate replied in a sarcastic drawl. The other man bit back a snigger. Harlock introduced them simply. 'Franz, Martinez. And it would be appreciated if we could save the ball sniffing and territorial marking until we're done…'

Nero turned away to hide a smile, but not before catching Harlock's one hazel eye, brimful of amusement. 'I think I can keep my lot in order if you can?'

'Oh, they're mostly housetrained.'

'Hey!'

'Oi!'

Franz and Martinez both tried and failed to look offended, and Erik laughed. 'Good to know. So, captains - what's the plan?'

'Observe, and then start picking off the outliers, I thought,' Nero suggested, his attention on the younger captain. 'They could have just rested here to let the auto repair do its job, but they've taken the opportunity to raid the body dump. I'm interested in seeing if there are any clues as to what they want them for…'

'Or how,' Harlock added darkly. The younger man unholstered his pistol. 'It doesn't look as though it acts like a contagion, but I'd like to know for sure. How do they sequester a body? I get the why of it - the nibelung had that covered - interaction with our universe is difficult when you're made of strange matter. That's why they made them synthetic bodies back in their own universe.'

'Those would be the armoured figures we've seen?' Erik asked.

'Possibly.' Nero preferred to err on the side of caution. 'But let's not make assumptions.' He drew Harlock off to one side. 'To avoid the pissing contest as to who gets to give the orders…' he began.

'Your territory,' Harlock told him. 'We'll follow your lead - although I reserve the right to pull the plug if it all goes south.'

'Fair enough.' Nero wasn't sure if he was relieved or disappointed - his former captain would never have yielded authority so quickly, despite his complete and utter disdain for it. Something, from the sly look he saw briefly pass over this younger Harlock's face was something the other man was well aware of. 'You enjoy playing with people's expectations far too much,' he said. Harlock laughed softly.

'It has been said. Why don't we mix up the teams a bit? Send a couple of yours forward with Martinez, and we'll keep Franz and the other pair with us?'

'I'm not sure our people will mix that well,' Nero replied dryly.

Harlock shrugged. 'Have to find out sometime. And my guys might surprise you - they might goof around, but they've never let me down in the clinches. Yours look the part and talk the talk, but I'd still like to see what they're made of.'

'Not literally, one hopes,' Nero muttered as they walked back towards the small group. He flinched slightly to see Franz leaning in towards Yara, then unclenched his shoulders when his notoriously nervy crew woman actually smiled. 'Well, that's a start…' he murmured, not expecting the other man to pick up on it.

'Kei's just as twitchy. Trust Franz to spot it,' Harlock replied equally quietly. 'He's fine - likes a pretty girl but doesn't push. I told you - they talk a lot of shit, but they're good men.'

'We'll soon see.' Out loud he called out to the group. 'Cren? With... Martinez is it? take point. Yara, Franz - flanking myself and Harlock. José, Erik…'

'I know… I know…' the redhead grumbled good naturedly. 'Bring up the rear…'

'Teaming Yara with Franz?' Harlock asked quietly. Nero smiled enigmatically but said nothing, effecting to ignore Harlock's sideways glance. Instead he tossed over one of the scanners, before realising that he might have looked like a complete bastard for expecting the one eyed man to catch it.

Harlock caught it easily, and didn't even raise an eyebrow at the faux pas. As thick flakes of snow started to fall, he simply double checked the readings and pointed. 'Over the hill and not so far away,' he said in his quiet tenor. 'Esteban? You might want to let Alison there off the leash.'

Martinez patted the monstrosity on its swivel mount. 'She's ready and raring to go captain. By the way - I figured you were right. I'm calling her Emeraldas…'

'You're a dead man if she hears you, you know that, right?'

Martinez beamed at him. 'Emmy? Awww… she'd be flattered.'

Cren's heavy brows almost tied themselves in a knot above his flat nose. 'Really? You named your gun after a woman…?'

'Firstly, don't judge until you've met the woman, and what else would you name one after?' Martinez's face was a study in innocence.

Cren's tailed swished a couple of times and ended up looped over his left arm, but he took up his place a few feet to the left of the Arcadia's crewman and said nothing as they set off.

The metanoid ship dominated the skyline - over half a mile high and maybe four miles long it was a massive, black mountain standing out in stark contrast to the white snow which crunched underfoot. Even landing deeply into the permafrost hadn't diminished its imposing size by much, and its featureless, conical exterior emanated a chill that made the frigid air of this little rock almost tropical by comparison. It was a chill that buried itself in your soul, the black surface - mirrorlike in finish but non reflective - sucking in all warmth and taking hope with it.

If there was a hell, I had a strong suspicion I was looking at a good-sized part of it. The simple, clean lines on the vessel were deceptive, because despite what my eyes and our instruments told me, this thing was anything but simple. Or clean. After a few minutes I felt sick just looking at it, and every step felt harder than the one before - and not because our boots sank into the crusty surface we trudged over.

'It makes my skin crawl,' Nero said, whispering near my right ear, even though there was no way we could be overheard. Something about this sepulchral landscape inhibited talking. 'The worst thing about it is that I don't even know why it makes me feel like something dead for a century just grabbed my soul…'

'I'm starting to be a little more worried about something more recently dead grabbing my ankle,' I muttered as we walked. He looked down, seeing what I'd already noticed: just underneath a thin coating of icy snow, the scattered bodies of those who'd been dropped from the transport dumping them on this rock and missed the main drop site further on were strewn underfoot. I tried to avoid stepping on them, but it was impossible. Arms, legs… faces… broken by the fall from the lower atmosphere, a macabre carpet that crunched disturbingly under our boots. Most were well preserved by the cold, recognisable as the individuals they had once been. Here a young woman, Yara's age. There a middle-aged man, paunchy and flabby, with a look of terrified astonishment permanently frozen onto his jowly face. A child's arm. A chthonian tail… one blue-haired young man with unmistakable gill slits on his neck. Blue skin, green skin, caucasion, african, asian... the café au lait of more cosmopolitan worlds… Involuntarily, my lip curled. The machine empire didn't discriminate. Humans had achieved equality at last, and the cost was our humanity.

'I thought, during the Homecoming War,' Nero said quietly, 'that I'd seen humanity sink as low as we could go, when it came to the way we treat each other. I wish I'd been right…'

So did I… I'd seen the city sized factory plants the empire had used at the height of their operation in the Milky Way, powerless to stop the conveyors, because to do so would have killed the thousands caught in the slaughterhouses mechanisation depended on. I'd watched people march willingly into those factories, their eyes so fixed on the prize of eternal life, they never stopped to consider what the cost would be. I'd seen the planets they'd left behind, places where the old, infirm and small children - abandoned by their parents as too young or frail for either life extraction or mechanisation - died of starvation and neglect, only a few surviving, and those then preyed upon by corporations - Doppler Corp the prime example - looking for cheap labour. We didn't need to go looking for enemies in the stars. We took them with us.

To one side Yara cried out and stumbled. She'd tried to avoid a small arm sticking under the ice, and slipped. Franz fielded her expertly with one arm, and whispered something in her ear. Whatever it was at least earned him a grateful, if sad, smile.

Then we reached the top of the ridge, and at Cren's signal, dropped to the ground to avoid being seen. The chthonian and Martinez had found a large granite rock to shelter behind, and we wriggled into position, to look down into the valley below.

I took out my viewer and trained it on the scene below. The screen slowly zoomed into the details, focusing on the black ribbon that stretched between where the metanoids were working, and the titanic ship looming overhead. Gold and silver armoured figures were directing gangly robots with multiple arms which were thawing and hauling bodies out of the ice, and grading them as they tossed them either onto the top of the organic conveyor belt that wriggled in more dimensions than my brain was comfortable processing, or under it, where they vanished into the darkness that it exuded like a thick mist. I shivered inside my nice warm suit.

'What the hell is that?' Nero, lying next to me peering through his own viewer asked in hushed tones.

'It's organic, I think, for any given value of organic,' I whispered back - not sure why, because there was no way they'd hear us, but something about the scene made it hard to raise my voice. 'Those robots look familiar…'

'Doppler Corp,' Nero said bluntly. 'But Harlock - I'm afraid those aren't robots…'

I looked again. Roughly egg shaped, with long, double jointed limbs, but flat, rather than properly ovid like the Lar Matallian Aladdin class. The bodies were pale, looked like a ceramic alloy, but the top - the head, was transparent…

Oh. I put down the viewer on the rock in front of me. 'That is disgusting…' I muttered. 'And horrific. Is that what I think it is?'

'Captain?' Franz had wriggled closer, and I handed him the viewer. 'Oh. Eww. Is that…?'

'Brains,' I finished for him. He handed the viewer back and swallowed hard. 'I'd heard rumours…'

'Just vat-grown, right?' Franz asked pleadingly. I wished I could answer "yes" to that. I shook my head.

Nero answered for me. 'Why would they bother, when Promethium leaves so much raw material around? They've been harvesting neural tissue for decades, and Hechi incorporates it into organic neural networks. Turns out it's a cheaper process than mining rare earths for the basic day-to-day computing needs of the planets they own.'

'Captain…' Franz tapped me on the arm. 'Ali was right. You should have gone after these bastards harder after the war.'

'Ali forgets we had a plague to deal with, the Counts Mecha and then the Mazone,' I pointed out. 'But I take your point. We put them down hard in our galaxy, and like Promethium, they found a bolt hole out here in and around Andromeda. And it seems they have some friends in common…'

But he was right - I had dropped the ball on Doppler and his hunchbacked handler, Hechi. Taking out a mega-corporation that had had its fingers in almost every aspect of daily life in the galaxy through one ghost subsidiary or another for over five hundred years though? That would take far more effort and time to do safely than I could bring to the table… We'd toppled Promethium only because she'd not really had time to consolidate her position. Doppler Corp had its tentacles threaded throughout the galaxy, and they were dug in deep, sucking the lifeblood out of humanity.

They were also behind or involved in most of the atrocities humanity had faced in the last hundred years or more. If the Homecoming War - and Hannibal's attempts to destabilise them in its aftermath, when he'd founded what became the Millennial Thieves - hadn't been able to wipe them out, they could withstand anything I could throw at them.

I was going to have to ask Hannibal to bring his considerable resources to bear on them after this. If they were in bed with Promethium, the rebel nibelung and these metanoids, they were becoming more than a pest, and needed a short sharp lesson in over-reaching...

'That is truly disturbing,' Martinez muttered, bringing my attention back to our current predicament.

'The eldritch conveyor belt, or the creepy brains in a jar robots?' I muttered back. 'Sweet Earth, Esteban - they're feeding that thing with the leftovers…'

Only the intact, undamaged bodies were being harvested for transport into the gaping maw at the base of that giant ship, where the rippling black tentacled flatworm ended. They'd been at it for hours, and judging from the rate they were moving them along, must have taken thousands.

It didn't escape my notice that they hadn't exactly made much of a hole in the layers of bodies in the valley below - according to my readings we were about two hundred feet above the current surface, and the bedrock was about eight hundred feet below that.

'They're building an army…' Nero muttered next to my ear. 'But that doesn't make sense. Why? They could easily destroy any planet from well outside an orbital defence line…'

Something I'd read in the materials Daiba had sent from Niflheim clicked in my head. 'Terror,' I said succinctly. 'It's a weapon of terror. Blowing up planets? It's something too big for people to comprehend properly. It's the old saw about one death being a tragedy, a million a statistic. People fear what's right in front of them far more - think of the effect seeing your loved ones shambling towards you blindly intent on ripping you to pieces? Or in the case of the "fresher" - for want of a better word - reboots turning on their former associates and family. It's our worst nightmares walking and talking. We know they want our life force, to open that gate fully, but they thrive on our fear.' I shifted back to a kneeling position, ready to get to my feet. 'When we've got that ship clear and taken it out, I'm coming back and torching this body dump. I was wrong: my sentiment over these mass graves will have to take a back seat - we can't let these creatures have such ready access to raw materials.'

There was a mass grave on Tabito - though the bodies there were not preserved - the victims of the Deathshadow plague were buried under an artificial hill just outside of town. The thought of something digging up our oldest daughter, our stillborn son, members of my crew, or Zero and his youngest boys made my blood run cold. 'Hannibal's going to have to get tough with Layla Shura on the issue back home as well.' I checked my pistol for what must have been the sixth time in half an hour. I tapped Franz on the shoulder - my crewman was surveying the scene below us. 'Assessment?'

'There's a group of gold armoured things standing off the planetary east,' he said without taking his gaze away from the viewer. 'Six of them, but one's in fancier armour. Looks more female in design. At least, it's shaped in the usual way - tits, ass - and long gold hair.'

'Nibelung armour,' Nero mused. 'Did they model themselves after the Nibelung?'

'Hardly.' Yara, the young woman Franz seemed to be getting friendly with, had taken the Thunderbolt's viewer off the chthonian. 'Doesn't look like one to me. This one's a vain one - just took her helmet down.'

I held my hand out and with only a quick glance to Nero, she handed them over. I took a closer look.

Tall, golden haired - and not figuratively - it really did have a metallic sheen to it, more like a veil of soft gold rather than individual hairs. A deep widows peak over an angular face that was far too smooth and uncanny to be comfortable to look at. The forehead was too wide - the hairline was a lot further back than even the nibelung, receding back from the deep V that almost met the bridge of her nose, all the way over the crown of her skull. The body was thin and the limbs even more oddly attenuated than the nibelung form. Fingers were long and multi jointed, looking at the way her hand flexed around the hilt of a golden sword at her side. The look of bored disdain on that sculpted face with its deep set, almond shaped golden eyes however was universal.

'Change of plan…' I murmured, reholstering my pistol. Instead I drew the gravity sabre and knelt back down to sight along the barrel. 'Franz?'

'On it.' He began softly calling out the wind speed and direction, and distance to target whilst I sighted the rifle.

'Harlock?' Nero asked quietly.

'That golden haired female. She's in charge - you can tell by the way they approach her. Some things are universal…' I breathed in. Breathed out. It was a good half mile, in a strong wind, but I'd made tougher shots. Just not with snow trickling down my back and my knees and chest getting cold from being pressed against ice covered rocks…

In. Out…

I fired, the ssszzap of the energy packet sounding like a literal gunshot to my overly-alert nerves.

It should have been a perfect shot - she'd been slightly turned away from our position, the correction should have been spot on...

So when her hand shot up, snatched something out of the air and that golden eyed stare snapped round to face directly at us, it came as a complete surprise. Franz almost dropped the viewer. 'Holy shit!'

'Franz?'

'Captain… she just… I mean, it kind of vanished in her hand, like she caught a bullet!'

'That was graviton accelerated plasma,' I murmured, checking the scene through the rifle sights. The bitch's mouth twitched in a parody of a smile, and she tipped her hand over as though letting dust fall from her fingers to the ground. Around her the gold figures were pointing at our position, and others were starting to mobilise, running over the valley floor in a ground covering lope, their long legs proving to be backwards-jointed, like a wolf running on its hind legs. 'Son of a bitch. Incoming!'

They were on top of us in seconds, having covered the half mile - uphill - in less time than I could have run a hundred yards on the flat. The vanguard of silver armoured metanoids numbered maybe fifteen, and our weapons were mowing them down as they loped up the hill, cutting legs and heads off with equal facility. Yara's weapon proved ineffective - one she scythed the legs off was growing them back almost as soon as it hit the ground. I barked a quick heads-up to Franz, and he tossed his weapon to her, exchanging it for my cosmo dragoon. For my part I kept hold of the sabre rifle, and when they were too close to shoot, flicked the controls over to the gravity edge, and leaped down into the fray to lay about me with it, sending body parts flying. I was aware of Martinez yelling insults off to one side, the massive bolter spitting death. On my blind side, I briefly caught sight of Nero out of the corner of my left eye, cloak swirling around him as he ran, taking up a position at my side, his own blade flashing, alternating with his cosmogun.

'In case you haven't noticed,' he shouted, 'we're outnumbered!'

'So? At least you won't need to be a good shot to hit something!' I yelled back.

'You're as crazy as your ancestor!'

'Just watch your damn cloak!' I called back, as a blast from one of the metanoid weapons almost took my ear off, deflected by his swirling black shield. Mine had already taken shots from several directions, and the smell of singed leather was overwhelming.

Our foes didn't carry weapons - they were weapons. Energy spat from outstretched limbs - not all of them growing out of the usual places on a humanoid body. They could, if we didn't drop them on the first hit, grow their protean body parts seemingly at will. And whilst the Arcadia's weaponry was pretty effective, Thunderbolt's - lacking a hundred years of Tochiro's bored fiddling with the specs and two genius engineers with too much time on their hands - didn't have the same ability to modulate the energy frequency, and were nowhere near as powerful.

We couldn't let them close with our position. Like the reboots, these armoured versions had a tendency to explode when damaged beyond repair, although anything hit by my weapons just dropped and twitched. Franz grinned at me when I looked across, enjoying himself far too much. The three of us - myself, Franz and Nero - had been drawn further down the hill out into the open, and the rest of them were hunkered down behind the outcrop, mowing down anything stupid enough to keep running towards them, sheltering behind the rock to avoid low-flying body parts.

They'd paused after the first rush however. We'd taken down at least two dozen in that first wave, and the rest had slowed down to take our measure. They'd also modulated their energy signatures - it was now taking me two shots to bring them down.

'They're adapting to the weapons,' I called out to Nero and Franz. 'Fall back!' I pressed the button on my cuff that would bring Kei running. Time to take this fight outside…

'Too late!' Nero shouted back. He pointed.

We'd been pulled out of position, running headlong into the ruck as we had. We were a good hundred yards away from the redoubt, in the open - and two of the gold figures along with about ten more silver ones had outflanked us. They were between us and the outcrop - and Martinez and his friends couldn't risk firing and hitting us. Supporting them were several of Doppler's creepy brainbots.

'Shit.'

'My sentiments exactly,' I told Franz. He handed my pistol back and pulled his axe off its shoulder mount, hefting it lightly. Nero unsheathed his own sabre, and we stood back to back, the three of us, trying to cover all angles. Nero and myself with pistols and swords, Franz with his double-handed axe. 'Wait,' I cautioned the pair. 'Let them get in each other's way when they attack - we split up, we expose ourselves to a flank attack. Sword's length apart, gentlemen. Let's give them a taste of the pirates' way, shall we?'

We shifted our position, spreading out to allow us to swing without taking the head off the man next to us. I was at a disadvantage here, as well as a liability - one eye blind left me a lot of head-turning to do to watch my right side, and it meant Nero would be watching for two that side - if he remembered.

I missed Kei at this point - she always knew just where to stand, without any prompting. But right now she had my back and would be screaming in to the rescue any second in the Arcadia.

The metanoids charged.

Any second…

...closely followed by the Thunderbolt… No rush, guys, take your time...

Warp vids make it look so easy - the hero casually fires the guns he holds in both hands, in different directions simultaneously, and hits everything he doesn't aim at. Try it in real life and unless you're facing a solid wall of attackers, all you do is fire wildly. And let's not get into recoil issues - the cosmo guns have one hell of a kick and the gravity sabres aren't much better when used as a ranged weapon. What looks effortlessly cool in fiction just makes you look like a twat in reality. At best you get to alternate shots - especially if you're short one working eyeball.

And if your enemy is as fast as ours, you get one or two shots off before you're reduced to hand to hand - or in this case, blade to hand. Our blades hummed, pale blue lightning flashing in my peripheral vision as Franz swept another head off, or went low for the knees as a blast went over his head. My shoulder and wrist started to tire after the first three strokes - even with the powered blade, it takes some strength to slice through armour.

Where were our ships…? I was aware of movement behind me - I'd gotten separated from Nero, leaving a gap, and whirled round, cloak flaring, to compensate. Damn thing almost hauled me off balance - it's heavy - so I missed taking Erik the red-head's head off by a whisker.

'Hey!'

'Sorry - sneaking up on people not the best idea in a situation like this!' I shouted into his shocked face. I caught sight of the other three joining us. 'Afraid you were missing out on something?' I asked.

'Can't let you guys have all the fun,' he laughed, his next shot taking a brainbot in the "face", sending it tumbling into two metanoids and knocking them down the slope. 'Strike! He gets the spare…' He jabbed a hand skyward. 'That, and I think the cavalry arrived…'

I couldn't spare a glance upwards, as one of the golden figures was right in front of us. I pushed Erik out of the way and intercepted the metanoid's blade - red lightning clashed with blue, and I was face to face with the female I'd tried to take out what felt like hours ago.

Crossed between us, the blades sparked and fizzed. 'Come to do your own dirty work?' I snarked. Pointlessly, I figured, because why would they speak…

'Come to see you die, Harlock,' she snarled. Up close her face was far too smooth and angular to be anything other than plain weird. 'Your reputation precedes you, and not undeserved. You destroyed two of our ships. There will not be a third and your meddling in our affairs ends today.'

I jumped back to get some distance and disengage. 'Nice to be appreciated. Now why don't you just die like a good abomination from the dawn of time?' I had to shout above the roar and rumble of the two Deathshadows as they launched their lesser batteries against the Phantasma. Our blades clashed again, her parry inhumanly strong. My still healing wrist protested vehemently, and I dropped my pistol to toss the blade into my other hand, the move not even giving her a second's pause, as she flicked her blade over mine, and into my shoulder…

...where it glanced off the new, shiny cuirass under my cloak. Thank you, Maji…

Too late I realised the bitch was drawing me out of position, away from our small group of defenders. And something was shifting under my boots, the ground trembling and shivering. And not from the metanoid vessel readying itself to take off - that vibration was a deeper, more intense sensation. This was more immediate, closer to the surface…

I could see over her shoulder, down into the valley. That weird giant flatworm was collapsing, oozing into the ground like tar, seeping into ice, and where it vanished, the ground was heaving and bubbling. The valley floor crumbled, bodies and body parts spewed out, crawling and lurching - depending on the degree of viability - towards us.

I dodged the next blow and slipped on the now suddenly unstable ground beneath my feet, that slip saving me from the gravity blade slicing straight through my head. I managed to keep my footing, and my own blade slid straight towards her heart. I didn't wait for it to penetrate, but fired the rifle at point blank range as it slid into her chestplate. I rolled away, pushing her falling body away with my foot before she exploded, showering me with white-hot debris, though thankfully the cloak, falling over me as I rolled, covered anything vital.

I was attempting to throw back the heavy weight of leather and state of the art electronics and stand up again when a hand shot out from the ice at my feet and closed around my ankle.