Ventimiglia

Mamoru opened his eye and very quickly wished he hadn't. Bright sunlight streamed in through the mouth of the cave, Ventimiglia's slightly off-sequence star seemingly determined to rob him of his remaining eyesight. He blinked rapidly, trying to get rid of the afterimage. Shaking his head, he found out, just made things worse, because it hurt like hell.

He also couldn't hear what the young woman kneeling at his side was trying to say as she helped him to sit up, because his ears were ringing. 'What?' If it came out sounding a bit snappish, he thought, at least he couldn't be held accountable…

'I asked if you were all right.' It was Hallie, shouting in his ear. He nodded back and gave her an OK sign with his left finger and thumb, and let her help him to his feet. 'Rei?'

Some of the ringing in his ears was starting to subside at least. Yay for dark matter contamination… He just about made out a faint "over here", and made his way unsteadily to where his friend leaned against the cave wall, trying to fend Ianthe off, as she tried to dab away the blood on his face from a nasty scalp cut above his right eye. Motherball, lights dimmed, lay at his feet, glowing intermittently. 'I'll take it,' he told the heavily pregnant young woman, taking the cloth from her hand. 'There are probably others who need you more.'

'You're saying I don't deserve the attention of a pretty girl?' Rei said, summoning up some attempt at levity with difficulty. Mamoru considered continuing to dab at the offending wound, but changed his mind and pressed harder. 'Damn it, Mamoru! Give me that!'

Mamoru ignored him and continued his ministrations amid a torrent of increasing abuse. 'Quit whining, Zero. Your head's your least vulnerable spot, according to Blaze and Dai…'

Rei grabbed the bloodied rag out of his hands before he made another swipe over the injury. 'Take your own damned advice and go help some of the others. You know I heal fast - on account of - you know - not being quite human?' He looked around. 'Holy shit…'

The machine had left a massive crater in front of the cave when it had exploded, white hot shrapnel still littered the beach and the black volcanic sand had fused to obsidian in places. Children were crying all around them, and some of the adults and teenagers looked more than a little shell-shocked. There were bodies outside the cave - he could see broken bodies and parts scattered over almost as wide an area as the machine. But most of the inhabitants of the cavern appeared unharmed, apart from a few cuts and bruises.

'We should be dead…'

'We would have been, if not for you and Boreas here,' Mamoru replied softly. He knelt down and laid a hand on the quiescent mechanical ball. 'That was quite some shield. There seem to have been a few people who didn't make it into the cave in time, but most of those bodies are wearing khaki, so I'm guessing they're Doppler's goons.'

'Wasn't just me,' Rei told him. He tried to push himself off the wall, and Mamoru had to catch him before he fell down, 'Shit.'

'Sit. You must have dug deep into your zero point energy reserves to pull that off.' Mamoru helped him to slump to the sandy floor next to Motherball. 'Which is dumb. Brave as all hell, but as dad would say, dumb.'

'It's not that bad - just tapping a load all at once is tough. And it wasn't just me,' Rei said again, staring past Mamoru, out of the cave mouth. 'I didn't have a prayer of containing that explosion, I just tried to block off the entrance - and even then, the shock wave…' He looked around again at the cavern, where Nero's daughters were ministering to the injured. 'We should be strawberry jam…'

He scrambled to his feet, ignoring Mamoru's efforts to restrain him. 'Oh hell… Mom! Mom!'

Cursing his headache, Mamoru followed him out of the cave, as he staggered in the direction of the pier. Given Rei's weakened state he arrived behind him just as the older boy reached the breakwater and dropped to his knees with a wordless, agonised cry.

Platinum hair, no longer military, regulation length, flowing in the soft sea breeze, Leopard walked towards them slowly, a body held in his arms, cradled surprisingly gently by the usually cold, stern officer. As he came closer, Mamoru could see tears streaking his face, his eyes reddened from weeping.

Which was odd, he thought numbly, because Leopard was a stone cold bastard on a good day…

It took another couple of seconds to register that the limp form he held so gently was Selen.

'No…' he whispered. He took a couple of steps forward. Reached out a hand as Leopard stopped in front of him. She looked as though she was sleeping, a slight smile on her lovely face.

'She held back the explosion,' Leopard said without prompting, his voice harsh. 'Oh Lar, she tried to hold it back, and she wasn't wearing a crown…'

There was a burn across the man's sharp featured face, from his ear, across his left cheek and down his chin. His right arm - the artificial one - was exposed, the uniform fabric scorched and tattered, the inner workings exposed, at least one servo severed. Mamoru reached out, ignoring the snarl that greeted his attempt. 'Let me take her,' he said firmly, in his best imitation of his father's calm manner. His voice still had a tendency to waver a little so the effect wasn't as authoritative as perhaps it could have been. 'Commander? Please?'

'I'll take her.' Rei was on his feet, his sharp-featured face bleak. He reached out for the woman who had taken him in as her own, and after a silent exchange with the older man, lifted her from his arms and drew her close. Relieved of his burden, Leopard stood with his damaged arm now cradled by his good one, and stared blankly at the scene around them as Rei walked away, back towards the cave, his back ramrod straight. Pale green lights flickered around him as he moved, almost like an afterimage.

'Commander?' Mamoru, not normally moved to feel much beyond irritation at the former commander of Promethium's fleet, felt he had to break that terrible silence with something. He placed a hand on the man's shoulder. 'Someone needs to take a look at that arm…'

'It can wait. It's been dead for years.' Leopard looked down at him as though seeing him for the first time. 'Harlock's son? Mamoru?'

'Because we're so hard to tell apart?'

Leopard laughed harshly. 'The mouthy one.' He raised a hand to his face, only for it to be stopped partway by Mamoru.

'I wouldn't touch that burn. It needs a dressing.'

'Burn?'

Mamoru led him over to the breakwater and sat him down. He flagged down a passing soldier in a blue uniform and told him to send for a medical kit. Then he sat down beside Leopard, and waited. Inside…

Inside, he felt numb. Part of him wanted to go running after Rei, feeling for his friend. His own grief was sort of... walled off inside… His most coherent thought was to wonder how his father and mother were going to take the news, and the only answer he had was "badly". 'What happened?'

'Saw her holding it back… knew she'd be in trouble. She was down when I got there… her and a man I didn't recognise. Then it was as though a searing wind came at me from off the ocean… Didn't stop to think, just picked her up and got the hell out.'

When Mamoru got to work with the burn kit someone trotted up with, he said nothing for several minutes, as Mamoru cleaned his face. Were those tears leaving clear trails through sand, dust and blood? Who'd have thought it. 'Fuck. Why did they have to do that? Throwing their lives away, and for what?'

'For a man who did just that a couple of years back, that's a question you should be able to answer,' Mamoru replied a little more tartly than he'd intended. Don't bait the bear, his father would have told him. But Leopard was well past taking offence.

'She should have been my queen…' Leopard whispered. And in that statement, Mamoru realised part of what drove the man.

'You poor bastard…' he murmured. 'You loved her too?'

Leopard didn't look at him. 'Who didn't? Who wouldn't? Farah was destined for Promethium, but I would have been hers - if she hadn't thrown it all away, walked away from her destiny.' He laughed coldly. 'Promethium spurned one brother for a homely ephemeral, and Selen…'

A gust of wind almost tore the bandages out of Mamoru's fingers and he swore under his breath. 'You're not wrong about those winds,' he said quietly. The light was changing as well, but when he looked at the sky, there wasn't more than a faint trace of a storm cloud, except near the Tonnerre, floating calmly at anchor in the caldera's deep waters, and there was something about that that he felt he should remember…

Footsteps in the sand drew his attention before he could get a rip on the wispy thought, and he looked up from securing the fluttering dressing across Leopard's face to see two people walking towards them. A young man, average all round, a fur hat pulled down over curly brown hair that refused to be contained and stuck out at the sides, and a tall woman who appeared to be about the same sort of age, but was, he knew, several years older. Whilst the young man was busy pulling off his jacket and yanking that ridiculous hat off his head to stuff into his pants pocket, she strode down the beach in scarlet and black flight leathers, gravity sabre on one him, cosmo dragoon on the other, and her long red hair flowing around her shoulders. She held herself like a queen, but then - why not? She was after all a princess…

'Frank?' It was hard to tell with Emeraldas if she was asking if he was all right, or asking him what the problem was. Mamoru decided the answer was probably "both", since she didn't tend to waste words. He nodded a greeting to Nazca, whose cheery grin in reply slid off his face as he looked at the scene.

'What…?' he began.

Leopard stared up into Emeraldas' eyes and said just one word. 'Selen.'

Emeraldas' wordless cry echoed Rei's of a few minutes previously. 'Where?'

Mamoru found himself wishing at this point that one of the grown-ups would show up and take over. 'Rei took her back to the cave. I think… I think he could use…'

She didn't run. Far be it that the empress' stone cold, unloved, unwanted daughter would ever run, but her strides were longer and faster than those she'd taken walking towards them.

Nazca sat down beside Leopard, pulled his cap out of his pocket and started twisting it in his hands. 'What happened?'

'I'm not really sure…' Mamoru began. Leopard cut him short. 'There was a death-machine of Doppler's - took a hit and fell off the cliff, right where the refugees are sheltering. She reached out… contained the explosion with her TK, but without a crown… without the amplification, she had to dig too deep.' He slammed a fist, still encased in a formerly white glove, into his thigh. 'Dammit, she knew better than that. All the queen candidates are taught - without the crown...even with them… it's too dangerous. She was right there when Yayoi almost killed herself shielding that island that blew its top during that last pass of the black hole…'

Feeling uncomfortable watching a man so famed for his composure so close to losing it, Mamoru got up and moved away from the breakwater, leaving Nazca - who knew the man rather better and could probably offer more in the way of moral support than a sixteen year old youth - to say a few words in private.

He rubbed away the tears that fell from his remaining eye, scrubbing his face as hard as he could as though trying to erase the evidence. Salt in the air, he told himself, knowing it for a lie. The legendary family stoicism was eluding him.

He didn't want to think about it right now. He wanted - in no particular order - Taro, Wataru, his mother, his father, and yes, his baby sister. He wanted Selen back, standing next to him, her arm around him, telling him it was all just a big mistake. And Uncle Zero… grinning at him from under his dark glasses, ruffling his hair and telling him everything was going to be just fine.

'But it isn't fine,' he whispered to himself. 'It hasn't been fine in a long time…' Without thinking, he rubbed the skin under his eyepatch. It itched terribly in the heat. Distracted by the irritation, and his vision blurred with tears he couldn't stop, he could perhaps have been forgiven for not noticing the man striding towards him until he was almost on top of him. Tall and broad shouldered, wearing just a pair of tight shorts, his longish blonde curls bouncing slightly against his bare tanned shoulders.

David, he realised, whilst the man was still about twenty feet away. Mamoru raised a hand in greeting, or at least began to.

She was down when I got there… her and a man I didn't recognise.

The clone of Henry Douglas lacked his usual wide grin, but under the circumstances, that wasn't unexpected. There was something about his eyes though… normally a blue almost as vivid as his mother's… they seemed blank, cold… like the depths of the sea, not the glittering surface...

And then he remembered the significance of the storms.

'David!'

Galene's voice, full of relief, came from close behind Mamoru.

David's hand had barely begun to raise the pistol he held when Mamoru's Nambu drilled him right between those cold steel eyes - metanoid eyes - and the reboot fell to the ground. Mamoru had barely enough time to turn and throw himself onto Galene, pushing her to the ground underneath him, before the thing exploded.

And having peeled himself off the bikini-and-sarong clad lovely now sobbing against his shoulder as he patted her bare back awkwardly, he had to wonder just how much more shit was to head his way today.

Rei didn't even raise his head when the second, smaller explosion sent people scurrying to the entrance of the cave, weapons drawn. He knelt beside the body of the woman who'd been a mother to a scared, angry little-boy-who-wasn't so many years ago, and held one slender, cold hand in his own. 'I can't cry,' he whispered as Emeraldas knelt next to him. 'Did they make me so wrong I can't cry?'

'Then that makes two of us,' she replied, her voice rough and throaty. Her arm was just touching his, and he could feel it trembling- whether from the effort of holding back grief or anger, he couldn't tell. It didn't make much difference either way. The results would be the same: Somebody, somewhere, would be paying dearly for today. The only question would be who'd get there first. 'Huh. Something's wrong…' She stood up abruptly, her gaze snapping towards the entrance. Several of Nero's people shoved past her, one of the O'Malley twins the only one bothering with a muffled "excuse me" as he ran to the cave mouth, yelling for everyone to take cover.

'What the…'

Ianthe approached her before Rei could warn the pregnant woman off. 'If you are any good with those…' she nodded towards Emeraldas' holstered dragoon and sabre 'then please - we'll need every weapon we can get.'

Never one to waste time on the niceties she nodded once. 'Zee?' He heard her, but it was an effort to tear himself away from Selen's serene form. 'Hey! Mourn later, Zee. Firefight.'

He almost - almost opened his mouth to reply that he'd drained himself to the point he could barely stand up, but this was Emeraldas, and so long as he could be propped up against a wall and point a pistol at the enemy, she'd offer little in the way of sympathy. Sometimes he wondered which of them was the synth… 'Get me over there,' was all he said eventually, and with a sharp nod she placed an arm around him and helped him over to a large rock, behind which three people were already sheltering in between bursts.

'I thought we got them all?' Rei asked, spotting Dione slapping a replacement cap into her pistol.

'Doppler's men retreated, but we've got reboots incoming…'

Two more dropped beside them, scattering sand over everyone. 'They got David,' Mamoru said shortly, giving Galene a push towards her sister. 'Nazca and Leopard are heading back to the fighters, told us to stay put - anything on the beach in the next five minutes is going to be slagged.'

'Reboots?' Emeraldas asked in between shots. 'That would be the people lurching towards us with the blank eyes?' Rei popped his head over the rock long enough to get a bead on one and dropped it, drilled between the eyes. Doppler's soldiers had taken a lot of casualties it seemed, judging from the number of khaki-clad corpses lurching towards their position. In amongst them however were far too many faces he'd seen around the place over the past days. And to top it off… well, he supposed those brains in the battlebots must by definition have been sort of "dead", so of course organic tech would be open to sequestration, wouldn't it.

'Long story. It's a metanoid thing.' He explained briefly, and wondered if that extended to synthetic cells...

'Metanoids? They can take over people now?'

'Dead ones,' Mamoru added. Then all three of them looked back to where Selen lay. 'Oh… shit…'

'I'll do it,' Rei said quietly. He handed Mamoru his pistol. 'Motherball and I can do this much, at least.'

'Zee…'

Rei shook his head and handed over his last two energy caps to Mamoru. 'Help hold them off. If anyone's going to do this, it should be me - might as well do the rest if there are any?' He scuttled back into the depths of the cavern, keeping low and behind the rocks for cover, until he reached Ianthe, who was busy shouting orders to a group of decidedly makeshift medics. 'Ianthe?'

It took a couple of tries to get her attention, and he briefly laid out the new situation.

He had to hand it to her, she cursed like a sailor. 'You're right… we can't take any chances… I'm so sorry, Rei. She seemed an amazing woman. Are you sure?'

'You need the bodies destroyed at the cellular level. If you can gather…'

'Everyone but your mother's already at the back of the cave, but we don't have anything we can use. Tony?' She caught the attention of a youth in his late teens. 'Bring Lady Selen over to the holding area - gently, please.' She turned her attention back to Rei. 'Please - if there's something you can do…'

Rei reached out a hand without looking back. 'Mother,' he called softly. Silently, glowing very faintly, Motherball floated over to them.

'Can you do this?' Ianthe asked. She laid one hand on his shoulder. 'You look pale, and your ball here…'

'My first mother,' he said, reaching out to touch her. Green lights blinked slowly and faintly under his fingers. 'My makers cannibalised parts of her form and her software to make me. We're kind of… attached.' The ball drifted within reach of his arms and he hugged it to his chest. It didn't help with the hard knot deep inside that felt as though it was drawing tight around his heart. 'It won't need a blast - we just have to loosen the bonds at the molecular level.'

Slowly, so as not to cause a reaction similar to that of the metanoids when they let go of their cellular hold on their bodies, he linked with Boreas and sent a wave of zero-point energy to wash over the - thankfully small - group of bodies, then use Motherball to convert the released energy back to zero point and absorb it, before it caused a reaction. It was harder than he'd let on, and they were both drained, but through Motherball he could at least draw on the energy released by the mass conversion for power and use it to contain the rest and let it bleed away safely. And really, as the glow faded and dust settled to mingle with the back sand on the cave floor, it should have been a lot harder to erase the existence of people who only a few hours earlier had had the whole of their lives in front of them.

'I have to…' He struggled to get to his feet, but Ianthe held him back with ease.

'You've done your bit. Shush. It's okay to cry.'

She held him as closely as Selen might have done, smoothing his hair and letting him rest his head on her shoulder. Which was wet, he noticed idly.

With Motherball in his lap and his head on Ianthe's shoulder, in the darkness of the cave, he wept.

Arcadia

We came out of Imaginary Number space in our customary cloud of dark matter, which cleared from the front viewscreen to show the planet looming much too close as we frantically tried to dump delta vee. In cosmological terms we were slamming the brakes on hard, and I could feel the strain the ship was under as we did the equivalent of sliding to a stop with inches to spare before we hit a wall. At least, that's the mutterings I could hear from my first mate, who was bracing himself against his console, probably white-knuckled inside his gloves.

'Really, Yattaran?' I leaned casually on the wheel. 'You do know we have inertial dampeners?'

'Yer cut that one a bit too fine,' he grumbled, pointing at the blue marble filling the viewscreen.

Since we were actually about half an AU away and drifting in nicely, I chose to ignore him. 'Kei? Anything on the scanners?'

'Transponder readings from ships behind the planet match the Medusa and the Queen Emeraldas. I've got two other vessels in pursuit of something matching the description of a Satan-class warship, which is trying to make an IN-SKIP jump whilst leaking energy signatures all over the spectrum…'

'Leave that to Leopard's people,' I told her. 'It should be within their ability.' Laughter from the lower bridge was faint and muted. 'What about the planet?'

'The EM field's down, I think they've taken some fire on the island. I've got multiple energy readings though from that ocean caldera holding the transports - a lot of small spikes and at least four fighters in the air.'

'Harlock?' Nero's voice on the comms hailed me. 'I'll take the island, if you can check out the caldera?'

I didn't waste time arguing - that was, after all, where my son and my friends had been going, to help with the clone storage issues. 'Kei - with me. We'll take the fighters.'

'Want any backup?' Yattaran asked. I shook my head. 'Franz and Esteban are still recovering. It looks as though they're just mopping up, so we'll be fine with two - if I need any more, I'll shout.'

'Just make sure you keep all sensors at max,' Kei warned him as I fell in beside her to head for the stairs. 'And get Franz up here to take my post…' I took hold of her arm and gave her a hard tug to keep her moving. 'And don't…'

'Kei?'

'What?'

She doesn't snap at me that often these days, I don't take it personally. 'They can do their jobs.' I gave her a little push and she stumbled slightly.

'But…' She gave one last, almost despairing look over her shoulder as we descended, and I kept one hand on her back all the way down. 'We don't know how bad it is down there, stop borrowing trouble.'

No. At that point in time I didn't know how bad it had been, but we were of course far too late.

We always had been.

The speed the Space Wolf can reach from orbit to the lower atmosphere is something that never gets old. The fighter is as much at home in atmosphere as it is in space, and whilst it can only attain a fraction of its vacuum speed in air, it outflies most surface to air fighters by a considerable margin, and handles like a dream. They're horribly misnamed, because they're not wolves, so much as birds of prey, soaring effortlessly and taking down their prey with insolent grace. Doppler's battle cruiser had left a handful of fighters behind and the clumsy, lumbering machines were plucked out of the air by our guns like fat pigeons before they even saw us coming.

The insector fighter that they'd been about to take down hailed us with a grateful welcome that I waved off. 'Got caught with your britches down? Oh wait… you guys have to fly those things buck naked, don't you?'

'Like I never hear that one, Harlock,' the voice that came back sounded mildly irritated. 'Ever try out some new material?'

That sounded suspiciously like Leopard's wing commander. 'Bernbarell? Since when did Frankie-boy persuade you to drop your pants in a good cause? Nevermind. Can you give me the sitrep - what's going on down there?'

'A few stragglers from Doppler's ship, but there's something else going on down on the ground. The commander asked me to get my arse down here…'

'...so you took him literally and left your pants behind?' I deadpanned. Insector ships are fast and deadly, but they're organic, and filled with an oxygen rich emulsion that's an acceleration buffer, a liquid neural conductor, and breathable. But here's the kicker - you have to fly them naked. Cover your modesty with as little as a thong, and forget keeping control of the damned things.

'You don't know?'

The tone sobered me up pretty quickly. 'Bernie…'

'They've got zombies down there - or something like it. We've got orders to firebomb the beach. Place is infested.''

'Where are Nero's people in all of this?' I snapped.

'Hiding in a cave - they're pinned down.'

'And that moron gave the order to do what exactly, with civilians in the area?' I was already heading below 10,000 feet even as we talked. 'Belay that order - without a shield you'll fry whoever's in that cave.'

'The ship's anchored in that caldera as well,' Kei pointed out. 'Scanning now. I make several dozen warm bodies on the beach, and about two hundred cold ones moving. They're in the middle of a pitched battle.'

'What's Leopard's plan?' I asked Bernbarell sarcastically. 'Kill them all and hope some benevolent deity will sort them out?'

'He's down there himself…'

'Oh. And that makes it all right…' I muttered as I cut the transmission. 'Kei?'

'Plotting a course. We can't fire into that mess.'

'Wasn't planning on it. Can you raise anyone?'

'Negative. The energy spikes are playing hell with reception.'

'Then we drop down behind those rocks to the east, and take the rifles. Once we take a few out with the long guns, hopefully Nero's people will get the message.' I sighed. 'Not enough I have to deal with these things in a freezer, now I have to get sweaty…' I put the space wolf into a landing approach and dropped her down neatly onto the flattest piece of real estate I could find, Kei dropping in behind me. 'And Kei?'

'Tell the boys to get down here?'

'Get them to bring Anita. I rather feel the need for a very big gun beside me on this one…'

A couple of hours later, as chunks of an unlucky insector ship rained down on us where we sheltered, hot, sweating and fondly reminiscing mentally about the same running battle fought only a few days ago on an ice planet, I at least could thank my forethought for having my cook along. A former SPG gunnery sergeant, Anita was a formidable figure in our heavy, rotund armour, especially when wielding the servo-mounted rail gun that had just taken out a rebooted organic insector fighter…

'Organic ships?' She lowered the weapon to its resting position on its swivel mount and tutted. 'They'll be wanting to rethink that particular tech…'

'Zombie battleships… now there's a thought I'd rather not have,' Kei added, from near my left knee. I brushed a piece of slimy hull - at least, I hoped it was hull - off her armoured shoulder. 'Tell me that was the last of them?'

I tapped the commlink at the side of my helmet. 'Yattaran? Anything on the scanners?'

'Negative, cap'n. I think that's the lot for now - unless those sunken transports are harbouring any surprises…'

I was pretty sure they'd held at least one… 'One horror story at a time, first mate,' I told him. He cackled. Well, so he might - since he'd managed to avoid both recent running battles since he was pretty indispensable on the bridge with me off ship. I flicked slime off my sabre rifle and pulled a face inside my helmet. Some unlucky sap would be cleaning this stuff out of the cracks in my armour for a week. 'Ladies, I think we can make our way down to the beach.' I started moving only to be pulled up sharply by Anita, her spiked gauntlet clamped around my arm.

'And just where do you think you're going?'

'Down. To. The. Beach.' I replied very slowly and carefully. I tried peeling her metal fist off my arm but the old, brassy diving suits have much stronger servos than my lighter, valkyrie style armour.

'Taking point?'

'I'm the captain,' I pointed out, not unreasonably.

'Precisely why you should put someone else in front,' she pointed out, very reasonably.

'How many times do I need to have this argument?' I muttered as she pushed past me, swivelling that monstrosity attached to her suit-mount belligerently as she strode down the rocky path.

'Not nearly often enough if it still needs hammering into your thick head that getting yourself shot at isn't part of the job description,' she called back. 'Sir.'

That'll teach me not to turn off the comms…

Kei was equally unsympathetic. 'You don't have to charge full tilt into every situation, you know.' She gave me a shove in the small of the back that sent me stumbling slightly, and strode past me, a delightful sway in her armoured hips.

'And yet… here you are, right up there with me,' I drawled.

'Where else would I be?' she shot back. 'I couldn't live without you.'

To which there wasn't really a lot I could say. And pointing out the fact that I was now bringing up the rear, which wasn't that much of an improvement over taking point, would probably not have gone down too well…

And that little exchange was the last bit of levity we were to have for some considerable time.

Yanez guided the little flyer around the caldera for a second time and swore under his breath as the sensors picked up the aftermath of the battle. 'How the hell did we get caught with our arse hanging out of our britches so badly? As if Doppler's hit squad wasn't bad enough, that shadow cloud's wreaked havoc down there!'

Nero leaned over the dash to look down through the viewscreen. 'There's something wrong with the Tonnerre… I'm getting odd readings coming from her vicinity… and is it me, or does it look like she's floating in air upside down from this angle?'

'Fata Morgana…' Carmaux said over his shoulder. 'Light refracted through a thermal inversion. I've got ghost images all over the sensors back here.'

Yanez snorted. 'Those are polar phenomena over cold water… You ever know the sea temperature round here to get that low?'

'Maybe the inversion is just that damned hot,' Carmaux replied smoothly.

'Take us in for a close pass,' Nero told Yanez. 'Harlock seems to have the shore under control, but if there's anything around the ship, it's likely to compromise the transports if it gets through the outer defences and down the docking tube.' To Carmaux he added: 'If it was that hot, would there be anything left of the ship?' To himself he murmured: '...and upside down in air were towers, tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours…' he shivered. 'Damn me if it hasn't got chilly in here…'

Yanez shot him a sideways look, but said nothing. The craft banked over the tops of the Tonnerre's masts, but they could see nothing on the deck below through a thick mist that seemed confined to the limits of the ship's deck, and stopped just above the top of her tallest mast. 'Illusions to the side, mist from above. That just isn't normal…'

'Life signs?' Nero asked. Carmaux checked the readings. 'Maybe twenty. And several bodies.'

Without needing an order, Yanez guided the small craft down to the beach, landing it next to the pier. Several figures were already running over to the craft almost before her engines had been shut down. At the top of the ramp as it lowered, Nero recognised Harlock in the lead, narrowly ahead of Kei. They reached the foot of the ramp just as he did. 'Harlock.'

'In case you hadn't noticed, something uncanny seems to have taken residence on your ship,' Harlock told him. 'There's a skiff, but we'll be sitting ducks out there on the way to it, unless you have any better ideas?'

Nero slapped him on the back and grinned at him. 'It's only about what - two hundred yards from the end of the pier? Surely you can swim that far?'

'And haul myself dripping wet, half naked, out of the water, climb up onto the deck of a three masted barque, and conduct a running battle with undead energy beings from a previous universe?'

'Well,' Nero said, not bothering to hide a smirk in his beard, 'if you put it like that… how are you with ropes?'

Harlock just smirked back. 'Pretty good, but now that I think about it, if we're coming in hot from above, don't you think that you and I can do rather better than abseiling?'

Well… it wasn't the first time I'd made a combat drop using only the gravity cloak to save me from an untimely attempt to decorate the ground. It was however the first time I'd done one in tandem. Firstly because gravity cloaks are in short supply these days, and secondly because finding someone as insane as I am isn't easy…

We were on board the Arcadia, simply because our messy, billowing dark matter cloud would hide our descent as it buzzed the Tonnerre, hopefully concealing us until it was too late. The plan was for us to distract the - whatever it was - cloud? Metanoid? Shadow? from the group who'd be heading out from the shore in an improvised motor launch courtesy of the inventive Nazca and the ship's skiff.

I settled my cloak onto my cuirass with Maji's help. The bird perched on Mimay's shoulder nearby, keeping up a running commentary, not at all happy that she had his legs in one hand, preventing it from taking up residence on my shoulder. Yattaran was helping Nero into his - shorter than mine, asymmetrical, but just as heavy judging from the way he shifted his shoulders occasionally as though to adjust the weight. We both wore black flightsuits and had cosmo pistols in one hip holster, and sabres in the other. I reached over and pulled the black, broad-brimmed hat adorned with a jaunty black feather off his head. 'I think that's just a step too far,' I told him. He just smiled, more from habit, I suspect. News of the losses on the caldera had hit hard for both of us, but we had no time to indulge in sorrow. 'It's a low drop, so we'll be going in fast. I hope you're not out of practice?'

'How many drops have you made, exactly?' he asked.

I didn't reply, mostly because it was in single digits, as far as combat went.

'That's what I thought.'

I ignored him and spoke to Mimay in a low voice. 'It's up to you and Freya to fine-tune the array to disperse that cloud…' We'd got a plan… flying by the seats of our respective pants as usual.

'You should really get clear - there's no telling what it could do to you, or to Khalsa.'

'We'll get the crew off. Leave it to us. From the readings they're huddled below decks, probably under guard.' I glanced over at Nero. 'He's been good in a fight so far, too late to wonder if he'll keep up?'

Her third eyelids flickered over her round eyes. 'Harlock trusted him with his life, once, and they went through a lot together before I met Harlock. If he regretted losing anyone outside of his family, or Tochiro, it was Khalsa.' She paused and then laid her hand on my chest, on top of the skull and crossbones painted onto the leather. 'Keep him safe, Harlock.'

'Trust me,' I told her, 'I don't want to lose anyone else today.' She bowed her head, and said nothing. The bird cawed half-heartedly at me, as though sensing the mood. I stroked its head and then strode away, back to my partner in insanity.

'Ready?' I asked him.

'Hell no… but that never stopped me.'

'Then let's get this thing.'

Under my feet I felt Arcadia hit the atmosphere, and then we were diving down to the ocean surface.

The high altitude combat drops are easy compared to what we had to do… the Arcadia flew in low over the ocean, heading straight for the Tonnerre, and we had to calibrate our trajectory and speed to hit something that was comparatively the size of a gnat, without getting tangled in the damned rigging even if we did hit the target. Oh, and visibility all but non-existent thanks to jumping out of a dark matter cloud, and into the hazy fog surrounding the sailing ship. Thankfully, we had help. With Tochiro plugged into both out cloaks' firmware, at least we didn't have to fly ourselves in on manual, as it were.

Even so, we both hit the rigging, and were forced to slide down the ropes to the deck, myself from the mainmast, Nero from the mizzen. We landed at about the same time on the wooden deck, the boards cracking under the impact, sabres out and hot as we'd cut our way down. I let go of the rope I'd been holding onto with rather more elegance than Nero managed, as he had to slice his way out of the last few feet and drop hard to the deck.

The mist that surrounded that ship didn't cover the deck, unfortunately, and the reanimated crew were onto us almost before we got to our feet. More proof, if we needed it, that the entire situation was completely unnatural.

'Like old times!' Nero shouted over his shoulder as he charged headlong into the six dead crewmen running towards him from the bow. I had my hands full with a group from the stern and couldn't manage much more than a grunt in reply, and the thought that the man was enjoying himself far, far too much…

Back to back, and side by side, we fought our way through, pistols and sabres making short work of the possessed men and women who attacked us. I held off the last handful as Nero pulled open the door that led down to the crew quarters, where we hoped to find the still living members of his crew. I stumbled through backwards, firing wildly at the last group of reboots, before Nero pushed the door closed and braced it with a nearby spike. 'That won't hold them for long!'

'Just as long as it holds.' I sheathed my sabre, it being too unwieldy in the close quarters below decks. ''I'll check the rooms, you head for the hold. Remember - we've got less than fifteen minutes before the Arcadia makes its return pass. We have to have everyone off the ship and into that docking tube.'

Lucky for me he didn't stop to question who was giving the orders - since by both seniority and age, I was lagging well behind. He took off down the narrow corridor at an impressive pace, given the lack of headroom, and I began a room to room search for something I was really hoping not to find.

I walked into the wardroom to find I'd been half-right, at least. Yngwie's dead body lay on the floor, a neat hole drilled right between his wide open eyes. The nibelung woman standing over the body didn't bother to raise her weapon to cover me, though I didn't extend her the same favour. 'What happened - he wouldn't play along with you?' I asked. 'I lose my bet - I was convinced he had to be the traitor…'

Her weapon snapped up so fast I hardly had a chance to register it, and she fired…

...past my left ear, and took out the reboot that had been sneaking up behind me.

'Okay…' Now I was confused.

'You're half right.' she said in a softly fluting voice. 'Only I'm the one who wouldn't listen.' She trip-trapped over to me in the same manner Mimay did, alien and graceful. 'But I expect you're not inclined to believe me?'

'There had to be someone behind the metanoid attacks here… I was pretty sure it was Yngwie, more because it made more sense that a nibelung would be much better at coordinating it… Right now I only have your word that you're the good guy here. So…' I raised my pistol and aimed it at her delicately pretty face, and she stood so close to me I could almost extend my arm and press the muzzle against her forehead. 'Convince me.'

Nibelungs can't roll their eyes the way we can, but if she could have, I had the sense she would. She simply tapped my gun out of her face with an irritated sniff. 'From the conversation I heard between you and Khalsa in the corridor, I don't think we have time to indulge your paranoia. This ship is overrun with Metanoids…'

'Was…'

She slipped past me without so much as a by your leave and into the corridor, tripping along so fast I had to stride out to keep up with her. '...and that shadow isn't done yet. We need to get off this boat…'

'Ship.'

'Whatever.'

She was starting to sound like Emeraldas. Only taller, more willowy, and with pale pink hair. Maybe it was a redhead thing? 'Just who are you and where did you come from?'

Nero was heading back up the corridor, a dozen or so of the crew behind him looking the worse for wear. 'Maer!'

Well, that was one question answered…

'Where the hell… We looked for you, after… but Titan base had been cleared out.'

'A ship picked up my transport on the way to Titan from Pluto. I never made it back. The next thing I knew, I woke up with Yngwie standing over me,' she replied curtly.

'I guess we know what else those transports were carrying,' I told Nero, as we struggled to re-open the door we'd wedged so well a few minutes earlier. 'I wonder if Doppler was after her or the cargo?'

'Neither,' she replied, striding out onto the deserted deck. 'That would be…' she pointed her pistol at the darkening mists that writhed around the masts, shot through with that sickly green lightning.

'Well this is going to be a fascinating debriefing,' I drawled, fixing Nero with my good eye. Through the mists, the boarding crew appeared - Kei, Nazca, Emeraldas and two of Nero's daughters, who I still couldn't quite get straight, flanked by Carmaux and Yanez. 'Please tell me that that - ' I pointed at the fog - is all we have left to deal with?'

'Not for long,' Kei told me. 'The Arcadia's coming in fast, everyone to the launches!'

Yanez, Nero and I were the last to drop into the craft bobbing up and down alongside the Tonnerre, the rope ladders swaying as the ship rocked into the gentle swell. I could hear the ship coming - she does tend to announce herself with something of a roar half a planet away. Nazca was at the engine of our little craft, and soon we were bouncing along the top of the sea towards the platform that held the docking tunnel for the transports, and running like hell for the entrance.

The doors irised shut behind me, as the last in line, and we continued our headlong pelt down the old boarding tube, into the control centre for the transport power systems. Kei was already, with Nazca's help, bringing up the outside cameras for us to get a look at Mimay's handiwork.

It was a gamble, but then what wasn't with these things? The Arcadia, trailing black smoke like an ancient internal combustion engine long past its prime, came hurtling towards the tiny Tonnerre, her massive arching dark matter antennae uncurling into the double-helix formation, then expanding further into a large black dark matter around the ship grew wispier, and vanished, and as she reached the ship, it expanded out again and enveloped it. I would have sworn on oath later that something screamed as it passed overhead. And then our ship was heading back into space on a vertical twin plume of dark matter and fire, and the Tonnerre rocked gently on the sea, all trace of the green-lit mists gone.

Nero had Maer in a bear hug, and I was a little surprised to see the nibelung didn't seem annoyed by it.

'Well,' I said quietly to Kei as she joined me. I put my arm around her shoulders and hugged her surreptitiously. 'At least he won't have a leg to stand on if he tries to keep Freya…'

She thumped me on the arm, and then twisted in my embrace until she had her head buried in my shoulder. 'Oh… you…' Then: 'Selen…'

I held her silently whilst she wept, and buried my good eye in her hair so that no-one would see my tears.

Epilogue

Two days later I stood on the edge of the wooden pier as the pale sun went down behind the sharp curtain of the caldera, watching the Tonnerre bobbing up and down as the waves lapped against her hull. Her sails furled, her rigging looked almost skeletal in the deepening twilight. The clank of metal on wood, keeping time like a metronome, clued me in to the fact that my self-imposed solitude was about to be invaded. Not Kei's footsteps - those I knew like my own heartbeat. I didn't bother to turn around. Whoever it was would introduce themselves.

'Blaze and the others are asking after you.'

Leopard. I'd have preferred Emeraldas, and that's saying something. 'I'll be along in a minute. I just needed a moment.'

'You've been out here staring at the sea for almost an hour.'

'Well I'm not sure I could look a few people in the eye right now,' I replied, a little acidly. He grunted, and I turned slightly to look at him. He'd let his hair grow since leaving the regular military - like mine it now curled around his metal collar, and looked a pale pink in the fading sunlight, having little to no colour normally.

'You don't get to take responsibility for this,' he said flatly. 'She made her own choices. We should all be so fortunate, to choose where, and how, and to make it count for something.'

'That's what she said to me, the night Zero died,' He was standing to my left, so I could look at him out of the corner of my one working eye. He didn't look convinced by his own words.

'It's how they lived their lives,' he said. 'I can honour that, at least. But I can never understand why they did what they did, for people who could never be worthy of such a sacrifice…'

'What you don't get,' I interjected, 'What you've never understood, is that it's not up to you - to any of us - to decide who is or who isn't worth dying for.'

'They're just clones!'

The impassioned outburst was uncharacteristic. It wasn't often that he let his calm, mannered persona slip. The man was an icicle in human form. In that he was a lot like - uncomfortably like - my dead brother. It was one reason I'd never really liked the man. 'So was she, Frank.' He flinched at the rebuke, even though I didn't raise my voice. 'You still haven't figured out who or what you're fighting for. You're still looking for a cause, and because of that you're still making judgement calls you've no right to make, and sacrifices of people you only see as pawns. You say she made her death count for something, then turn around and question whether it was worth it? You're missing the entire point.'

'Which is?'

'She made her life count for something. We all die, Frank. As you said - we don't always get to choose where, when or how - or why. That was the part you didn't quote back at me. That was what she told me about Zero. Why she could live with his death, no matter how hard it was to carry on without him. Not because his death mattered, but because his life did.'

His silvery eyes looked confused, a frown above those platinum eyebrows. I unfolded my arms and sighed. 'When you understand that, you'll understand that it's easy then to let go, to accept that some fights you just can't win, but you have to go anyway. When it counts the most. And when that time comes, it doesn't matter if you die for your own children or for someone else's. Because in the end, it's all the same.'

He laughed harshly, without humour. 'You sound like Hannibal.'

'Who do you think she learned it from?'

Neither of us had heard the man pad up behind us. The waves slapping against the wood had covered the sound of footsteps, since he wasn't wearing spaceboots, but soft shoes. In fact, I hadn't been paying much attention to anything for a while now, and had obviously missed the shuttle flying in. 'Hannibal.'

'Harlock. Kei said I'd find you out here.'

'If you'll excuse me…' Leopard turned to leave, but Hannibal placed a hand on his arm.

'You don't need to leave on my account.'

Leopard looked puzzled. One side of his face was still taut from an injury he'd taken earlier, but the other wrinkled in a frown. 'The two of you are family.. I don't…'

'We all knew and loved Selen, Frank. I think that counts for more than blood, here.'

He flinched again at the word, and tried hard to hide it. I wasn't sure why he bothered - we all knew he'd held a torch for a long, long time, even if the silly sod would never have admitted it if you tried to drag it out of him with one of our bullet craft.

'Stay, Leo.' Blaze walked up, and I stepped forward to meet him. The brother of my heart, if not my blood. The last now, that his father and older brother were gone. I stood only a couple of feet in front of him, mutely, because whilst I could find words to throw at Leopard, in his steel-eyed misery, for Blaze I could find nothing to say. He broke the silence. 'I was with Rei… he's taking it pretty hard. We all…'

He choked at that point, and I reached out a hand, a clasped shoulder quickly turned into a hard hug, which neither of us was ready to break quickly. 'Oh, Harlock… I thought I knew what it was to hurt so much I can't breathe… but nothing ever hurt like this…'

Over his shoulder, silhouetted on the rocky beach, I could see the tall figure of the man who'd gotten us into this mess. Nero - Khalsa - standing proud and tall, his black hair whipped around his face by the breeze, the more dapper form of Yanez at his side. Keeping his distance, and then again, well he might. We still hadn't had that "talk".

I broke away from Blaze before it felt too awkward, and he, knowing me so well after all these years, turned to follow my gaze. 'Not his fault,' he said eventually, 'though I was tempted to remind him rather pointedly about the law of unintended consequences.'

A wailing, high pitched cry, like a yowling cat, split the air, and in spite of everything I smiled, albeit a little sadly. 'I think Ianthe just demonstrated some impeccable timing,' I said quietly. Remembering belatedly that one of us might have a different view on the subject. Hannibal smiled bleakly.

'Morgan will at least have something to take his mind off losing David.' And unsurprisingly, it was our older statesman who led the way back along the pier to shore. He was passed on the way by a running figure who ran towards us waving his hands and yelling.

'Hey! Harlock! Hannibal! It's a girl!' Ali called out at the top of his not inconsiderable voice. Unfortunately as he drew level and tried to stop, he forgot that the wooden decking was treacherously slippy underfoot, slid past me, and unceremoniously dropped into the sea arse first.

Hannibal stared down at my spluttering crewman and sighed. 'Isn't this the point where you mutter something about being surrounded by witless minions?'

I knelt down to offer my hand to Ali, and hauled him back onto the pier with Blaze's help, landing him coughing and gulping like a carp. 'I should be so lucky,' I muttered.

'Oi! I was just trying to cheer you all up a bit. Oh - and Ianthe wants to ask Blaze something. It's kinda personal…'

Blaze shrugged. 'Might as well see what she wants, I guess.' He wandered off a little too listlessly for my peace of mind. I turned my attention to Ali, who was grinning up at me.

'Ali… really? This is hardly the time…'

'She wants to call her Selene,' he gabbled out in a rush.

Hannibal leaned down and helped him to his feet, hauling him up with precious little ceremony. 'Does she now…' he said, very gently. His eyes met mine and we both smiled.

Leopard, largely forgotten, just stared at us. 'At a time like this?' he muttered.

I took a deep breath, and let it out again slowly. 'Sometimes,' I told him, 'you just have to take the little victories…' Like Mimay's reunion with the sister she'd thought long dead… I wasn't sure I'd be prising the two of them apart any time soon. Who knew?

Little Selene continued to greet the end of the day sounding most put out about the whole business, as the four of us headed towards the shore. A timely reminder that life went on, and, I thought, with a surreptitious stare at Hannibal's rigid back, that sometimes… sometimes, despite something being lost, it can be found again.

Life goes on… no matter how much it hurts. When the wind's in your face you turn and face it head on, and brace yourself. To do anything else is to surrender. There was another hole in our hearts today, and it wouldn't be the last before this was done. The metanoids wouldn't stop coming just because we lost a friend, a sister, a mother. They had a foothold in our universe, and allies.

Well. So did we. We'd had only one Deathshadow a couple of months ago. Now we had two. Three if you counted the Miranda.

They created death from death. We created new life even as we mourned those we lost.

I left my squelching crewman and turned to face Leopard. 'You want to know why?' I asked him. 'Why we fight? What we fight for?' I jabbed a finger in the direction of the squalling. 'That is at once the best and most annoying sound you'll ever hear. That's what it's all about. What we stand for. Me. Hannibal. Selen. Zero.'

'You have to be kid…' he snapped. Then I watched as he remembered. And really, he should have remembered… He'd been around for the aftermath. How a young Ra Andromeda Selenium, chosen as the next queen of Lar Metal, had snuck out of her shining, crystal palace to see how the other half lived. Had witnessed all the messy, painful, noisy delights of one of the natural born slaves that kept the elite in their shiny palaces giving birth - something the elite would never lower themselves to do… And it had changed her forever.

'I don't think he quite gets it,' Ali muttered as we watched Leopard slouch off in the opposite direction. I glanced at his face, still battered and bruised, several shades of purple and yellow. I winced as a particularly piercing wail split the air. 'Do you?' I asked.

He pulled his tee off over his head and started to wring it out, splashing the rocks at his feet. 'I always get it, captain,' he replied plaintively, as though hurt that I even needed to ask. 'We all do.'

'Can't ask for more than that,' I said as we walked towards the rest of the crowd gathered on the beach. Torches were being lit along the shore. Tonight, we'd mourn the dead. All of them, shades new and old.

Tomorrow…

Tomorrow we'd be putting our shoulders back to the wheel and figuring out where we went from here. To do anything else would make the lives of those we'd lost meaningless, and that… that was unthinkable.

But that was tomorrow.