'Careless, crewman. But then I suppose my brother doesn't keep you around for your brains.'

The knife pressed hard against my carotid hadn't broken the skin yet, but I could feel every cold steel millimeter of it, only needing the smallest bit of pressure to open up a hole that would have me dead in under minute. Seriously, I think too much about these things sometimes. 'Generally he keeps me around for my looks, charm and ability to piss off his enemies,' I replied jauntily. The blade bit a little deeper as though reminding me that a smart mouth wasn't always a smart idea. I sniffed ostentatiously. 'You know - if you're going to drool insults into someone's ear, you really ought to consider breath mints - coz, damn, it smells as though something crept in there and died…' I couldn't see much in the dim light, but the smell of charred, rotting flesh was noticeable. Well, hello to the missing asshole from the hallway…

'Where's Yama?' he snapped, ignoring me. You get a tough crowd, somedays.

I almost shrugged before I thought better of it. Knife to throat, an' all. 'I don't know anyone who answers to that name.'

The point of the knife dug in next to the artery, and a trickle of blood ran down my delicate, swan-like neck. 'Cute. You know who I mean.'

'No - really. I mean, there was that kid years ago - double agent? Picked him up on Heavy Meldar. Well, Kei did - she's always had a thing for that soppy, puppy-dog-lost look. Bit of a cry-baby, but a dab hand on the artillery. But honestly - I ain't seen him since - oooh - must be around the time the Machine Wars began… bit of a sissy. Don't miss him at all. Relative of yours, as I recall?'

'That smart mouth must get you into so much trouble,' he snarled at me.

'Oh, you have no idea…' I began brightly. 'I mean there was this time…' I gulped as the knife pressed a little harder.

'You're a pirate - why do you follow him? What coin bought your loyalty?'

'Crackers,' I replied breezily. 'Think you can match that?'

It earned me a mirthless laugh.

'I could buy and sell that phantom abomination several times over - name your price. What do you owe him? All you have to do is tell me where he is and what his plan will be.'

'You can't afford me,' I replied. 'He's my captain.'

'Everyone's for sale,' he replied coldly. 'What did you sell your soul for?'

'Loyalty, courage, integrity, honour, and freedom,' I replied bluntly. 'I told you you couldn't afford me.' The knife had eased slightly and the arm pressing against my shoulder holding it there had a slight tremor in it, barely noticable. This skin-job was more damaged that he wanted to let on, so it was likely that he'd drop this body as soon as he was cornered. The trick however was to keep him occupied as long as possible without getting my throat cut - this last not being part of the plan…

'Loyalty? Courage? Honour?' He sneered. We were back to hissing non-sibilants again. Seriously - it is a thing; don't let grammatical pedants tell you otherwise. 'What does a pirate know of such things? The crew of the Arcadia are criminals and terrorists - the worst kind of lowlives Harlock could pick up, and I suspect Yama's taste in crew is little better.'

'Criminals and terrorists? I thought we were pirates?'

He flicked the blade away from my neck and sliced my right shoulder though the jacket. I hissed and spat out a pithy little expletive that Ma Jones would have slapped me silly for. I seemed to be doing that a lot at the moment. 'I'll have you know the captain has excellent taste in men,' I added. Wait. 'Hang on, that came out wrong…'

He shifted the blade to dig into my cheek, which I took serious exception to. I can take holes in me in most places but there's a line. You don't threaten Little Ali, and you leave my beautiful face alone. 'A little help here?' I pleaded. 'Or are you just toasting marshmallows?'

'What the hell are you talking about?' He lifted the knife, presumably to find something else to mutilate.

'I wasn't talking to you, asshole.' I twisted and slammed my head back into where I hoped his face would be. I wasn't quite on target, and I slammed into his head somewhere near his ear, and it set my head ringing. But it did get me out of the line of fire, and a well-aimed shot lanced out of the darkness and disintegrated his head.

Blaze stepped out of the shadows, now sans eyepatch, and lowered his gun. 'You cut that a little fine,' I grumped at him.

He shrugged. 'Harlock asked me to wait - wanted the maximum amount of distraction.' He looked down at the smoking, headless corpse. 'You seemed to have the situation under control…'

'Control? I have bloody holes in me. Again. He cut my face. My fucking face… can you believe that? I'll give him waiting. Doesn't bloody deserve me, he doesn't.'

Blaze just waited, having holstered his pistol. 'You done bitching?'

I sighed. 'Yeah. I'm done. Where are they?'

He smiled grimly. 'We should get there in time for the showdown,' he said with malicious relish. I like this guy - he wouldn't be out of place on our bridge. Nice, quiet, but with a nasty streak. Just how the ship likes 'em… Guys who are nice - until it's time to not be nice. And there are five more like him back home - including Marin. The others aren't fully cooked yet though, so maybe it's a bit early to tell, although the middle pair show promise. Given the family history you gotta chalk that up to nurture over nature.

Yeah… I thought, somewhat sourly. So how do you explain Isora/Lazarus and Yama/Harlock? Or is it a case of when that Harlock blood goes bad, it really goes… I'd have to try and nail Tochiro down for a chat over that one. But musings had to be put aside for now. 'Where's Harlock?'

'In one of the cargo hangars.' He nudged the headless body with his boot. 'Seems he was right about this one.'

'Yeah,' I muttered, rubbing the blood away from the cut on my cheek. It didn't feel deep, and was already crusting. 'Is the other one on its way?'

He smiled grimly. 'Marin was leading it a merry dance, and Em's following on just in case. But Harlock was right - Lazarus really wants a piece of him. Is it really his brother?'

I shrugged, and wished I hadn't. All the excitement had torn the wound on my shoulder again. The dark matter in my system would heal it, sure, but slowly. And only so long as I didn't keep getting into fights. 'Now that, Blaze ol' pal, is a philosophical kettle of worms and then some. The captain is firmly in the "just memories" department. Me - I'm not so sure.'

'On Lar Metal they assured everyone soul rings ensured a full transfer of consciousness,' he told me as we ambled purposefully along the red-lit corridors.

'Maybe - I mean - how would you know? You go to sleep and somewhere something else wakes up convinced it just woke up, with all your memories - but is it really you? I mean - if you could wake the original up, would there be two? Or just one?'

'This keeps you up at night?' he asked. Over my shoulder - the undamaged one - I gave him the look.

'Hell yeah - it's not just the forced conversions that gives us the heebies. Doesn't it you? I mean - you and your family refused to support the process…'

'There's a whole lifetime of discussion in that,' he assured me.

'You, me and the captain makes three…' I muttered. Make that two bottles of scotch… I heard raised voices up ahead and raised my hand to signal Blaze to pull up. He stopped next to me, pistol at the ready. I cleared mine, and with a bit more care than I'd used earlier, stuck my head around the corner.

Marin and Lazarus were facing off, pistol versus pistol, a good fifty feet between them.

'Where's my brother?' Lazarus snarled. Marin just laughed.

'Seriously? You follow me all over this complex just to ask me that?' Marin had removed his eye patch and in the hangar lights, the resemblance to the captain was revealed to be as superficial as it was - darker hair, slightly longer in the face, the nose a little beakier, the mouth narrower.

Truthfully though, when the captain moved out of the shadows to stand next to him, I did start to wonder a bit about his dad, Zero, and just how much the old captain had gotten around in his younger days… Or maybe that floppy-fringed devil-may-care look was just a thing and I shouldn't read too much into it.

'He doesn't have a brother,' the captain said coldly. He stared down the length of his borrowed sabre rifle at Lazarus. 'My brother died as we landed on Earth, over seven years ago.'

'Presumably after I was shot in the back by that pirate you now see fit to copy?' Lazarus snarled. 'What did you do - shoot him, take his ship and his crew?'

'He died. Not long after he saved Earth,' Harlock said softly. 'The Earth Isora helped to save. My brother might have been a grade-A asshole, but he died doing the right thing. And he would never, ever do what you've been doing. Selling people for torture and sport?'

'You'd be surprised what a man might do when the right leverage is applied,' Lazarus replied icily. 'I remember the fight - do all those singing your praises as a hero know you couldn't even handle a man in a wheelchair? I remember you on your knees clutching your face and snivelling, and even after that you still didn't have the balls to shoot me - just how much of a clue that I wanted you dead did you need, you pathetic little cretin? You couldn't take the hint when you were offered that last mission. You certainly didn't get it when I ordered all ships to fire on the Arcadia with you still on board…'

'Perhaps you should have had the balls to simply face me and do it yourself,' Harlock snapped, and I winced. Lazarus gloated visibly at the slip in pronoun use. 'Even face to face Isora still tried to shoot me in the back.' A quick recovery, but I noticed the slight wince that told me he knew he'd slipped. 'Your memories end - when? After Harlock shot Isora?'

Silence.

'Or once I'd gotten him off the Oceanos?'

That sneering mouth flattened into a grim line. Bingo… Harlock shook his head sadly. 'I didn't like my brother very much, but I loved him. And you are nothing but an insult to his memory. I have no idea how the machinners got hold of the memory cube, or who had it made, but I'll make damn sure…'

'Machinners? You think the machine men are behind this?' Lazarus interrupted with a cold, mirthless laugh that sent chills down my spine. 'You damned fool - you still don't see the larger picture. Or have any idea what a hornets nest you've kicked over. My remit comes directly from Mars - and there's a new order there that despises both sides of this pathetic drama playing out in the galaxy.'

Harlock lowered his sabre and smiled coldly - and for a brief moment I saw a similarity between the brothers that I hoped desperately to unsee. There but for the grace… 'Thank you. That was what we needed to know.'

Lazarus shrugged. 'What good will it do you? The planet's under an interdict - the remnants of the fleet daren't go there, and the SDF has no jurisdiction.'

'Jurisdiction?' Harlock smiled again. 'I don't think we know what that means, do we, Marin?'

Marin grinned. 'I've always had trouble with the big words...'

Blaze sniggered, and Lazarus' attention wandered in his direction He snorted when he spotted my companion. 'Another one? How many doubles do you have, Yama?'

'Enough.' Harlock's smiled warmed slightly. 'It helps to have friends. But on the subject of duplicates, I do have a question or two of my own, Lazarus.' With no warning he strode forward and launched a blistering attack on Lazarus with his sabre, a flurry of blows which the bastard only just fended off with his own blade. Huh. I'd heard about those extendable sabres - never actually seen one in action before. But the captain seemed to have expected it, because he didn't seem surprised by it. But his initial attacks were parried easily, and then it seemed Lazarus had the upper hand, as he launched a series of fast, hard blows of his own, almost knocking the captain's blade out of his hand.

I stepped forwards, and felt a small hand on my arm. I almost jumped out of my skin before realising it was Emeraldas, sneaking around as silently as a cat. 'Damn it!' I began.

'Leave it,' she told me, in her cold little voice. 'Harlock has a plan.'

'Yeah? What? Get killed?' I was no expert on sword fighting. Hell - the gravity sabre seems a bloody stupid weapon if you ask me - if you've got the advantage of distance and can just shoot someone, why not do it? Plus - swords - they're a weapon with only one purpose: to kill a man. Everything else we ever invented can be used to hunt, or farm. But not a sword. It's a killer's weapon. Never liked 'em. Knives now… if I have to get up close and personal, a knife suits me just fine. And you can even trim your toenails with it after, if you're careful.

Now I've seen the captain fight - but usually against someone who uses a similar style. He's slim, light, fast on his feet and he keeps moving. That's how both Kei, and later Selen, taught him. Against Lazarus however he was up against a heavier, taller (and to my untrained eye stronger) opponent, and it looked as though Lazarus had him on the back foot after that initial attack.

'Don't panic,' Blaze whispered near my ear. 'He knows what he's doing. He's testing Lazarus - for all the power of those blows, none of them is close to doing any real damage, and any time now Lazarus will realise it.' He paused. 'His footwork's dreadful though. His power's all through his torso, he doesn't move as much as he should…'

He sounded puzzled, but I smirked. 'Coz he's forgotten that he's not in a hover chair,' I whispered back. 'He was crippled when he was nineteen…'

Yeah - something the captain hadn't forgotten, because now I knew what to look for, I saw it. If I ignored the clashing swords and the sizzling hum when their gravity fields meshed, and watched their bodies, it was obvious - Lazarus was stiff from the waist down, where the captain was dancing around him like a gazelle, staying just out of reach, and encouraging Lazarus to commit to ever bolder attacks, which he evaded neatly seemingly just in the nick of time.

'Come on, come on,' I muttered, my hand hovering over the butt of my pistol. 'Take your own advice and stop playing with him…'

And as if he heard me mumbling to myself - hardly likely, mind you - just like that the tide turned. In the blink of an eye the captain's posture changed, and his sword flicked out with precision to send Lazarus' blade flying off into a corner. The tip of his blade now rested against Lazarus' throat, and the smile on Harlock's face was so cold I had to swallow hard. He's so amiable most of the time that it's easy to forget he earned his inherited reputation the hard way over the years.

Lazarus relaxed though, the smile of a man who doesn't think he's in any danger playing over his thin mouth.

The captain's blade swept away and out in a tight, shallow curve, and sliced across Lazarus' face from the bottom of his left cheek, across his nose and into his right eye.

Lazarus collapsed onto the floor screaming and clutching his face, and all the captain did was flick something off the tip of his blade into a corner, where it landed with a wet plop, then turn on his heel and walk away. He stopped next to Marin. 'He's the original - make sure Colonel Ichimonji takes good care of him.'

He walked over to where I was standing with Blaze and Emeraldas. With a warm smile he handed the sabre back to Emeraldas. 'Thanks for the loan.'

She smiled back at him. For some reason, him she likes. 'You could have cleaned it first,' she muttered as she took the gun belt from him. The pistol he kept for now. He looked at me and my open jaw must have been a sight.

'Relax, Ali - I knew what I was doing.'

'You could have told me!' I screamed in his face. But he just stood there and ignored my panicked histrionics with his usual aplomb.

'I needed to be sure this wasn't another puppet. The time delay in his speech wasn't enough - but pushed in a head-to-head fight…'

'That wasn't the plan.'

He patted me on the shoulder. Patronising arse. 'I improvised.'

'My arse did you. I saw your face when you sliced his open and poked his eye out. You planned that all along...'

Marin, I noticed, had a bloodied Lazarus in cuffs by now. Blaze muttered something about helping his brother and Emeraldas shrugged and followed him, as usual not really bothered by the macho posturing. But the captain didn't say anything, although he did run his finger over his own scar when he thought I wasn't looking. Yeah… that had been a long time coming…

He did sway a little though, and I had to offer a timely shoulder, wincing as his weight landed on my damaged one. He hadn't had it all his own way in that fight, and Lazarus had, I noticed, landed some nasty blows. His left arm was bleeding and hanging limply.

'You do know I'll catch hell for this,' I told him as I helped him over to a convenient conveyor belt, currently at a standstill with a pile of luggage on it. 'You have holes in you. I have holes in me, more importantly. And what the hell are we going to tell Kei?'

I got him seated, where he sat with his hands in his lap as I ripped apart a nearby backpack and rummaged around for something to use as a bandage. Someone's chiffon nightdress tore easily into strips, and I wound one of them around his arm.

'Maybe nothing?' he offered eventually, with a wan smile. 'I mean, what happens on MetaBloody…'

I scowled at him as I tied off my makeshift bandage. 'Oh… this is going to be Grand Technologia all over again isn't it?' I growled at him. 'I still have the scars from that one…'

'As I recall we ended up against a wall in an alley on that job as well,, he pointed out.

'Yeah… you had your tongue down my throat that time as well,' I reminded him. 'At least this time you kept your hands to yourself…'

'Those bounty hunters meant business…'

I hate it when he's being reasonable. And right. 'Yeah… well, for the record, yer still grabby,' I told him with a leer. Just as Dantetsu walked past, giving us a weirded out look that suggested he'd heard waaaay more of that little exchange than he was comfortable with. The captain obviously noticed it too, coz he gave me that secretive little smile he has that told me we'd get some serious fun yanking the colonel's chain on the way home.

I settled back against a large suitcase and sighed, as we watched Selen's boys and our SDF pals haul Lazarus to his feet and out to a waiting transport. With any luck he'd be rotting in an SDF prison for a long time.

I sighed again, and watched out of one heavily lidded eye as the captain settled back against some convenient luggage and closed his eyes. Yeah. Home sounded really good about now.

No, of course he didn't stay caught… But that's a story for another day, and I wasn't there for that one… but I did get part of the story from Mamoru, who was on Herise with his parents for that mess… One day I hope to pry the rest of it out of the tight-mouthed little sod…