I don't make a habit of hogging the shower in my quarters - the captain's perks are, to my mind, already a little excessive (not, however, as Kei frequently points out, pricking my conscience or my arid Martian upbringing to the point where cutting out the powerful water shower and the truly decadent hot tub were ever seriously considered…) but this time I made an exception. I'd been freezing cold and covered in substances I really didn't want to examine too closely when I'd stepped inside the shower pod well over fifteen minutes ago. Nothing short of the appearance of the entire Machinners fleet would have gotten me out of there, and frankly, it'd be a close call...

I was washing my hair for the third time and hoping this would finally see the water run clear, when the shower door hissed open and a warm, naked body pressed up against my back. Long slender arms were wrapped around my waist.

'Any longer,' Kei murmured against my neck, 'and you'll be as wrinkled as a prune.'

'Another five minutes, that's all. I might actually have thawed out and have some feeling back in my arse by then…' Nothing however was going to wash away the images burned onto my brain, and I had to resist the urge to keep scrubbing anywhere those cold, grasping hands had laid hold of me, even though rationally I knew they hadn't actually touched skin...

She slid her hand down my back, over the curve of my left buttock and gave it a squeeze. Throaty laughter tickled my ear. 'Oh, I think your nerve endings have recovered…' Her hands wandered around to the front, brushing against the treacherous part of my anatomy that had given the game away. I had to restrain her fingers before they started work.

'Oh no you don't… not if you want me out of here anytime soon,' I told her. 'Your technique is… a trifle... counter-productive,' I murmured into her ear after turning around and pinning her gently against the wall, my hands on either side of her shoulders. She's tall, so I don't have to bend my head too far to meet her lips, but I tilted her chin up slightly anyway before claiming them.

Warm and willing though she was, her shoulders told a different story. 'Not your fault it got away,' I told her firmly once I'd got my tongue back. 'It happens. We know these ships are slippery. We'll get it next time.'

She sighed against my shoulder, and I couldn't hide a slight smile. She hates to lose. 'Should have gone for the drive…' she muttered.

'Well Yanez blew it as well, so don't take the blame for the whole mess.' I kissed her forehead. 'We did have a plan B, at least. But if you feel the need to make it up to me…'

'Not up against the wall…'

'Of course not! I'm not a barbarian,' I said with a fairly good imitation of righteous indignation. 'There's a bed the size of a small continent out there, and I appreciate my creature comforts…'

'And you still have a few injuries that haven't healed,' she pointed out. She ran her hands over the more obvious signs. Bruises took rather longer to fade than cuts. 'Not a scratch, they promised me… Maybe you should just get some rest…'

'Hah! Captain Harlock does not let such trifles…' I stopped because she'd convulsed into giggles. 'You're hard on a man's ego, love, you know that?'

She gave me a peck on the cheek. 'You're my Harlock, and I wouldn't have you any other way, and you know it, you goof. Hannibal once told me that his brother's disregard for such trivia as broken bones was usually summed up by anyone who knew him in one word: Twat.'

'Hmmph. Sounds like my older brother…'

'Isora didn't mean it fondly,' she replied tartly.

No… no he hadn't… Hannibal, however put upon by having a younger brother with severe impulse control problems, had never stopped loving the idiot. I suspected even after all the shit Harlock had pulled over the last hundred years, Hannibal would still drop everything and red-line his ship's engines to get to him if there was a chance in hell of bringing him back from the limbo he'd been stuck in for the last two decades. It's what brothers do…

Kei flicked the end of my nose with her finger. 'Oi! Forgetting something?'

'Sorry.' I didn't feel like admitting that I'd suddenly wondered what kind of bastard that made me in relation to my brother's predicament… Or rather, the synth walking around with my brother's face and memories. Isora had been a dick, yes, but I'd decided years ago the best thing I could do for Lazarus was put him out of everyone's misery. And I'd been about to do just that when Nero and his BFF had yanked us off Heavy Meldar without a by-your-leave. Hannibal's loving exasperation sometimes made me feel guilty, just a little, for not maybe trying harder to redeem what was left of Isora…

'How the hell you can get distracted by that arse of a synth when I'm standing here, wet, warm, soapy and naked…' Kei interjected, with one of her heartfelt little sighs.

'How…'

'That little crinkle…' she tapped the space at the top of my nose. 'Just there. You only get it when you're thinking about your brother.'

'Unfinished business, that I really have to deal with once we get home.'

'We.'

I accepted the correction. Not much else I could do given that she was on her way towards having my undivided attention with where her hands were wandering. I'd reached a point where coherent speech was going to be a memory for the next half hour or so, when the emergency comm channel beeped.

I helped Kei to her feet, and switched the shower off, mentally cursing whoever had put a speaker in the bathroom. 'Tochiro… this had better be a matter of life and limb…'

Got Hannibal and Blaze on the line, and they sound well pissed. Khalsa's conferencing with them, they want you.

Of course they did. Half the time everyone treats me as though I was still some wet behind the ears rookie sitting in a captain's chair way too big for me, the other half apparently the universe will fall apart if I'm not there to prevent it. It's a slippery slope… I'd be rescuing cats and small children before long…

Oh wait...

I was still a little damp as I pulled on a pair of pants and grabbed a sweater from the pile on the bed. No time for anything fancy. My hair was still wet when I reached the bridge a few minutes later, and took the stairs two at a time, Kei in pursuit, having taken a little longer to pull on a flightsuit. The holographic suite projected several images on the main gantry, in front of the wheel. Hannibal, with Blaze and Ali hovering at his shoulders, and Nero, dark and brooding, with the fairer Yanez at his side. Nobody looked particularly happy, Blaze had caught a nasty cut across his forehead, and Ali was sporting a nasty bruise on his face.

'I suppose it was too much to ask we caught a few hours downtime to recover?' I asked as I dropped into the captain's chair, narrowly avoiding the two kittens Kei scooped deftly out of the way of my arse and the bird's inquisitive beak..

'We took the base, but got caught with our britches down,' Hannibal replied, sounding about as sour as I felt. 'They were waiting for us. Turns out, as I've just informed Khalsa here, that we'd got a traitor with us - and not a reboot - this one was working for Doppler.'

'You were about to tell me who,' Nero replied darkly.

'Van Guld. The backstabbing bastard turned on us when we reached orbit, and called in our position. We lost two ships, in addition to Van Guld's when we took him down. If it hadn't been for the Miranda being what she is, it would have been a lot worse. Seems he wasn't aware of some of our capabilities…'

'Told you shagging his daughter was a mistake…' Yanez mouthed to his captain.

'Tall, leggy, blonde, full of kick-ass and sass?' Hannibal asked dryly. The other pirate nodded and grinned. 'For heaven's sake, Khal - you're as bad as my brother…'

'I didn't sleep with his wife,' Nero pointed out. Hannibal glared as Nero blithely continued 'though given half a chance…'

'If we could all stay focussed?' I cut across the kibbitzing before it could pick up speed. I wasn't in the best of moods. 'I'm tired, cranky and damp, and more than ready to finish this, pick up my son and get back to equally pressing if less universe-ending matters back home. Hannibal - any news from Ventimiglia? If Doppler knew a good portion of Nero's fleet was heading that way…' I wasn't sure if it was Kei or a kitten that let out a little squeak as the question registered.

'Nothing - although Leopard and a small group of his loyalists…'

'Rebels,' Ali added helpfully. 'That boy's really in denial, isn't he?'

No argument there. Leopard's about face a couple of years ago had taken everyone - except perhaps Selen - by surprise. Declaring himself loyal to the throne as opposed to the current incumbent, he'd pretty much cleared out the human portion of their fleet when he'd left to take over the Andromedan arm of the rebellion under Emeraldas.

Hannibal swatted him, not entirely playfully. 'If I can get a word in. Leopard's on his way to help. There's been no signal from the relay in the system for twenty-four hours now. He's got at least six ships with him, plus the Queen Emeraldas.'

'Those Medusa class ships should be able to handle anything Luger and Prague can throw at them - although Luger's a bit too smart for my liking…' I mused.

'Not smart enough to break with Doppler though,' Hannibal pointed out. 'But we're going to be tied up here for at least a week…'

'We can make it back faster if we push hard,' I said, over Kei's barely audible "Mamoru…" murmured into the soft fluffballs she was still cuddling. 'Mimay?' she was already walking with her purposeful, dainty stride to the control orb. In the background of Nero's hologramme, I could see Freya's tiny form doing likewise. From the fond looks both Yanez and Nero cast in her direction, I was going to have to get firm about requesting they hand her back over, especially given their track record when it came to recruitment… 'How fast can you get us there?' I asked Mimay.

'Three days. Two if you don't get into a firefight straight away when we get there…'

I always wondered if she'd given the old Harlock the same plausibly deniable censure. Whilst her tiny mouth didn't do shit-eating-grin, her third eyelids flickered as she stared me right in the eye and dared me to deny that'd I'd ever pull such a stunt..

'Define "straight-away"…' I asked. As though it's my fault people keep trying to shoot at us.

'With the crap we've pulled on the power couplings over the past few days? Not to mention we're still getting glitches in the coolant transport?' Yattaran snorted. 'We'll be lucky if we can keep half the main battery powered up for fifteen minutes if we get tangled up in the first couple of hours.'

'Good enough,' I replied curtly. 'Doppler's fleet isn't exactly top of the line. Some of them make those mazone battleships look robust - if it takes us that long to take them out, we're slipping. And Leopard is supposedly bringing at least four ships with him. He's always so keen on pointing out the superiority of the official military…'

'Even Leopard might struggle if they have sent Luger,' Hannibal pointed out. I laid my hand on a well-worn baluster and smiled coldly. 'I'm not Leopard.'

'Oh bloody hell,' Nero muttered. 'It's genetic…' He grinned at me toothily, and I studiously ignored the bait. 'However in my opinion, the more firepower you can bring to a fight, the better. Can you wait an hour for our self-repair to finish? We got hit a little harder than you did, and I'm not keen on dropping out of normal space with our arses hanging out of our britches. Plays havoc with the life support for one thing until the big holes are sealed.'

I nodded my assent. Apparently the Arcadia's dark matter repair system was a lot faster than her sister ship's - but then, she'd absorbed a much greater amount in the original disaster… something Tochiro was practically dancing on tippy-toe to compare when he had the chance. 'Down boy…' I murmured to my ever-present ghost.

Sorry… but how often do I get a chance to see something like this?

I shushed him, because Nero was still talking. '...and on the way, we can discuss the finer points of teamwork when tag-teaming battleships,' he added, and left the field of the cameras before I could think of a suitably pithy rebuttal.

'Arse,' Kei muttered into a double handful of kittens.

He's got a point, Tochiro said, blithely unaware of the danger he was in. Neither of you is used to fighting alongside ships of comparable ability, and Yanez wasn't expecting that move we pulled, although he seems able enough with making it up as he goes almost as well as you do…

'I do not make it up as I go!' Kei's indignant squawk annoyed one of the kittens, and a little tabby furball hissed in her face.

'I think he means me,' I told her. 'That's about the only difference in our tactics. You don't like surprises, or people inconsiderate enough not to follow your battle plan…'

Two small balls of fluff were shoved into my chest and I got a claw through a glove for my pains in holding onto them. 'So I'm rigid and inflexible?' she asked tightly.

'That's the captain's job, innit?' Yattaran should know by now to keep his mouth shut. His filthy snigger sputtered to a stop almost as soon as it reached his fleshy lips.

I mentally counted to ten. And refused to take either piece of bait. Somedays, my self control deserves its legendary status… 'Just get us ready to IN-SKIP. Kei - get me the tightest course you can plot. Maji? Mimay? Every bit of extra speed you can coax out of the engines would be appreciated. Gun crews and weapons stand down for now. Yattaran?'

'Cap'n?'

'Self-repair?'

'Got a few nasty scrapes, and there's a leak on deck five near the port nozzle. Just an access corridor, but it's taking its sweet time.'

'The dark matter weapons of the Phantasma negate our healing capability,' Mimay added in her soft voice.

'Is there anything we can do about that?' I didn't like losing one of our biggest advantages. Against normal ships we could take damage that would cripple anything else. Against our own kind - or worse - that was a levelling of the playing field I didn't like.

Actually, I don't like losing any advantage.

Mimay opened her tiny mouth in what was obviously going to be a "no", because we have had this conversation before. Freya - who I'd forgotten was still on hololink - as was the holosuite of the Miranda which overlapped slightly with her fuzzy image - answered first.

'I've got a couple of ideas about that, but we're going to have to bring Yngwie in on it, when we get back to Ventimiglia.'

I turned and smiled at my young nibelung ward. Young… well… that's relative. 'I forgot you were still online.' Freya was the only one in shot, unless you counted Ali on the other link, who smirked at me. 'Ali - take that face away before Luna spots it and tears a strip off me for getting you beaten up again. Freya - if you have something we can use to level the playing field, I'll happily soften the stuck-up prig up for you.'

'Oh… I think Mimay and I can deal with him,' she said breezily. Mimay, standing next to me, didn't look quite so confident. In fact if Nibelung's had such an expression I'd have said she looked a little sick at the thought. Hardly surprising… dealing with human reaction to her mistakes was one thing. One of her contemporaries and someone directly affected by the fallout? I didn't envy her.

I nodded to Freya. 'I'll leave it in your hands.' She smiled prettily and cut the connection, leaving Ali's scarred, battered face leering at me. 'Anything else?' I asked him. 'Or are you just missing me?'

'Love…' Martinez warbled in a theatrically dreamy voice from below. 'True love…'

'Fuck off, Esteban,' Ali called out cheerfully. 'Captain - can you patch me through to sickbay? I need to talk to Luna. Got a lot of stuff to send her way about this cloning facility she'll need to take a look at. She had some contacts back on Lar Metal we could do with bringing on board. This stuff's wicked complicated and those medics of Nero's are in way over their heads.'

'Yattaran?'

'Yeah, yeah. Switching him through.' A meaty paw was waved in my direction whilst he leaned over his console and pushed buttons with the other. Ali's battered face vanished from view and the projectors powered down. I placed the kittens back in my chair and tapped the bird's beak as he leaned down to peer at them, almost toppling off his perch on the back of the skeletal frame. 'Behave. No eating the cats.' It cawed indignantly at me as if to say "would I?" and suffered one of the little fluffballs to swat that foot long protuberance. I tapped my shoulder. 'Come on.' One beady eye blinked at me, then hit cawed again and hopped over to land with a thud on my right shoulder, where it balanced precariously as it started preening under one wing. 'Mimay - a word…'

I walked with her to the glowing ball of light that controlled the dark matter engine. The organ-like array spanned overhead in a huge arc. I still sometimes expected it to start blasting out a baroque fugue everytime it started up. The bird stuck its beak out and nuzzled her cheek, to which she responded with an affectionate rub. 'Forget it,' I told the silly thing. 'There's no way in hell she's able to hide any treats in that outfit.' It ruffled its feathers gainst my hair and settled down to grumble quietly into my ear. Blue lightning flickering in the depths of the crystal orb gravitated towards the hand I reached towards it, careful not to actually touch it. Tiny wisps of the same blue drifted towards it from my fingertips, and writhed around my hand like St Elmo's fire. 'Reminds me a little of Layla Shura's giant crystal ball,' I said quietly. 'Would I see anything if I stared into this long enough?'

'When you stare into infinity sooner or later you see yourself staring back at you,' she replied enigmatically.

'The problem with looking at your own reflection is that you're always looking at a distortion, whether that's in a crystal ball or someone else's eyes,' I said softly. She glanced at me sharply, then lowered her head gracefully. Her hair fluttered in the still air of the bridge, moved by a wind only it could feel. 'We've all had to face up to our past sooner or later,' I continued. 'Now it's your turn to pay the piper, Mimay.'

She raised a hand and laid it gently on my scarred cheek, very briefly before letting it drop away again to rest on the surface of the control orb. 'It isn't just Yngwi.'

'Ah.' I reached out to cup her tiny pointed chin and tip her face upwards so I could look her in the eye. Like Kei, she's tall, it doesn't take much, but staring into those big, round, cat-like alien eyes still feels strange, even after all these years. 'You can hardly be held responsible for the Metanoids, Mimay. They were around aeons before you were even born.'

'Even your species has a concept of the sins of a people being the responsibility of their heirs…' she began.

'Ah. Well. On that score perhaps you need to speak to Hannibal, not me. Thanks to the Gaia Sanction, the religions of Earth were long dead before my father was a glint in anyone's eye.'

She smiled slightly. 'Perhaps I spent too many long nights with Harlock… he was raised Catholic, and apparently they were particularly obsessed with the subject of sin… Personal and original...'

I'd heard a lot about that from Hannibal in recent years. It explained so very, very much. 'I take responsibility for my own mistakes. Should I forever be held accountable for the sins of my forefathers?'

She touched my scar again, featherlight, and ran her long fingers over the old blaster wound, from my cheek and across my nose, to where it vanished under the edge of the eyepatch that covered a useless eye. 'Accountable? Perhaps not. But you feel responsible, or else why would you fight so hard to repair…' she stopped in mid sentence, and tilted her head on one side like a little sparrow. 'That is the wrong word. I think… the future is built upon the past, there is no repairing it. That was his mistake. You… you seek to hold those responsible to account, and to create a better now… for only then can we hope for a better future. But when the sins of our past intrude upon that now…'

'Then,' I dropped a chase kiss on her forehead, 'I will explain the folly of their ways to them at great length, generally punctuated with very big guns if they don't get the hint. You aren't alone, Mimay. We know a lot more about what we're up against than we did forty-eight hours ago, and it might just be worth almost freezing my arse off and having hordes of alien-possesed zombies try to tear my arms and legs off. For now, one problem at a time. Get my ship into space, Mimay.'

She smiled again, more warmly. 'Aye, aye, captain!' I sighed. She always managed to make it sound as though she was humouring a small boy.

I walked back to my chair, and looked down into the seat, which was still occupied. 'Jiro!'

The youngest member of the bridge crew came bounding up the stairs, a dark-haired youth with the typically mixed melting pot ancestry of one of the many abandoned worlds harvested by the Machinners. 'Sir?'

I picked up the kittens and dumped them rather more gently than they deserved in his arms. 'Take these to Luna, and remind her that they're not supposed to be roaming around. Then stop off at the mess for supplies.'

I sat down with as much grace as I could muster and leaned back against the red leather upholstery, my hands gripping the arms where they curved over two fiercely grinning skulls. Before Kei could butt in I added without looking back; 'And Jiro?'

'Sir?'

'No matter what orders anyone else gives you, if you serve me decaff, there will be consequences…' At his console, Yattaran tried unsuccessfully to stifle a snigger and it came out sounding like a piglet snuffling in a trough. 'First mate?'

'Nuthin... nuthin..'

'You'd prefer a maudlin dipsomaniac at the helm?' I asked brightly.

'Might be a bit less jittery,' he opined. On the other side of the bridge Kei's left buttock, encased in tight red leather, twitched in the unmistakable way that suggested some eyerolling was going on.

'Just prep for departure and wait for Nero's signal. At least they can keep up with us, which makes a nice change.' I wanted to pick Mamoru up and squirrel him out of the way as soon as I could - assuming we weren't too late. I had to remind myself that he was surrounded by people as ornery and able in a fight as we were, and had Selen and Rei with him, both of whom I could rely on to watch his back, whether he appreciated it or not. At sixteen he was getting to an age where parental concern was starting to chafe. Whilst I did try to be as hands-off and supportive as I could - and all of my offspring, as well as my adopted waifs and strays, were better equipped than most their age to look after themselves - they were all at an age where they were growing up far too fast for my peace of mind. Thankfully his twin Wataru's only contribution to my sleepless nights was wondering if he'd be walking up the aisle with Selen's one and only daughter under his own steam or with Blaze and Selen's gravity sabres at his back. Well, that, and a career choice that could easily end up with him trying to place his parents in handcuffs… At least Nami…

No. Scratch that. My daughter was growing up far too fast and was already a beauty who'd be breaking hearts with a smile in a couple of years… Daughters were a whole different level of sleepless, as Hannibal had warned me, and having seen the clones of his gorgeous trio, I began to understand more and more what he meant. There was a wild streak in our family and even in the quietest of us it wasn't far below the surface.

And you're happy for Wataru to marry into Selen's family? Tochiro's sub-vocal giggle broke into my thoughts.

'Eavesdropping? Kanna's a nice steady girl…'

He snorted. Selen and Rei led two planetary rebellions. Her aunt led another before deciding all life needed to be mechanised or else across two galaxies. Her cousins are too bloody scary for words… need I say more? Plus… Daisuke's got a thing for Nami…

'Dai will be keeping all of his things away from Nami for the next few years if he wants to keep them,' I muttered back inside my head. I liked Blaze's little brother; like the rest of his family he was smart and had the makings of yet another capable fighter, but there's certain niceties involved here, and besides, I planned on getting my own back for the hell Blaze kept putting poor Wataru through regarding his intentions towards his baby sister…

Think they're okay?

The note of worry in my ghostly friend's voice was telling. 'Mamoru's an old soul, and a wily little bastard. Rei's plain sneaky and dangerous, and I'd trust Selen to protect them against anything - whether that's pointy-eared eugenicists or evil from the dawn of time. And Nero's people do seem nicely competent.'

… but not so much, that little worm of worry whispered into my mental ear, if an entire fleet from Shaitan comes calling wanting their merchandise back… I batted it away. Nero had left enough ships around that small planet to cope. Borrowing trouble brought nothing but heartburn.

… but they'd found one traitor. And in my long and painful experience, such beasts didn't tend to survive long outside of a pack… Like sawfly larvae, you turn over a leaf and you usually find a whole bundle of maggots writhing around tearing the plant apart piece by piece until only its fragile green bones remain…

'Yattaran.' Anyone who heard my voice probably thought it was totally devoid of any emotion. Anyone but Kei, that is, who turned sharply to look at me, frowned, and instead of turning back to her console watched me like a hawk, her arms folded across her ample chest. 'Make some time to get a lock on the relay around Ventimiglia whilst we wait for the Thunderbolt to get herself ship-shape.'

'Expecting trouble?' he asked, rubbing the back of his head. He grimaced as he dislodged his bandanna, and tried in vain to tug it back into place.

'Of course he is,' Kei replied for me, not taking her eyes off mine. 'You think they're being jammed?'

'Don't you?'

I'll need some extra power,' Yattaran said. I tipped my head to indicate the ethereal nibelung at the side of the chair. 'Talk to the boss. I think we can spare it.'

'Can you break it?' Kei asked him. In reply he cracked his knuckles.

'Heh. You still doubtin' after all these years? Doesn't matter how sophisticated the jammer, you can't kill a signal out here. We got the best countermeasures and comms hardware and software in the galaxy on this ship, and you got me. Watch and learn, sweetie. Watch and learn…'

'Maybe,' Mimay said softly in my left ear, 'there's no signal because nothing's happened yet…' I just looked at her.

'I can plot a deeper course in Imaginary Number space,' Kei said. 'If Mimay can get the power to the engines. Should shave the time down to thirty-six hours…'

'Talk to Nero,' I told her. 'See if he can get the Thunderbolt to match our depth.'

'We have more dark matter at our disposal,' Mimay pointed out.

'Then you have about - oh - fifty minutes or so to talk Freya through some upgrades,' I told her. Her doll-like face managed an expression remarkably close to the one I used to see on my mother's, when I was a child.

If you're trying for enigmatic and stoic, I think you failed, Tochiro sniggered as Mimay just sighed and turned back to her post. I'd rate that attempt no higher than dispetic.

Jiro arrived with my coffee at that point, which at least allowed me to avoid struggling to find a pithy retort and scuttled off the gantry so fast that I frowned and paused before taking a sip, my eye carefully fixed on Kei's shoulder blades.

Her right shoulder twitched. 'Kei…'

'Anita has orders, Captain. Mine.'

'You do remember that I metabolise…'

'Yes. But not so fast as alcohol, due to that being an actual metabolic poison...And we'll need you rested.'

'You need me awake,' I muttered. I sipped the coffee, and smirked behind Kei's back. Anita had handled a conflict of interest with her usual aplomb. I'd have to suffer decaff, but at least she'd spiked it with a large slug of something distilled over a century ago.

'Harlock?'

'Hmm?' I tapped the bird's beak out of the way as the daft thing tried to dip its beak into my mug. I looked at Kei with my best poker face in place.

'Are we ever going to tell Nero that we planned on tagging that Phantasma if it looked like we couldn't stop it?'

'That rather depends on whether or not the tracking beacon you threw at it works. And that the metanoids don't find it too soon...'

'Hope for the best, plan for the worst, eh, captain?' Yattaran asked with a nasty smirk.

'Just so, first mate.' It was a pretty safe bet they'd find it, but I was fairly sure they had to have a beachhead in this universe. I was also pretty sure I knew roughly where it was. But it never hurts to confirm these things. If we were lucky we'd have another chance at that damned phantasm once we'd cleared up the mess Nero and his people were in.

A mess that several people I cared deeply for were caught up in.

I took another slug of the whiskey and coffee, and settled back in the comfort of the captain's sneakily well upholstered chair.

It was going to be a long thirty-six hours.