The Aristotle Transposition

(part two)

A dull thud echoed through the ship, the vibration waking me and pulling me out of my sleep.

I lay a moment, listening, wondering if I'd imagined it. You know those dreams you have, those sudden loud noises that jolt you from your sleep.

There was another thud, followed by the muffled sound of Arcadia returning fire.

I glanced at the chronometer. Still two hours till my watch, and we had plenty of crew aboard, more than enough to handle the kinds of skirmishes Arcadia was increasingly coming up against. We'd spent three years in the territories, skirting the outer ring of the galaxy as we collected men and planted oscillators, and now we were making our way around the spiral on a steady inward curve. The problem was this brought us closer to civilisation. Closer to the Gaia colonies, where the sight of Arcadia on an incoming vector was enough to mobilise even the most pathetic of planetary defences.

I rolled over, bunched the pillow over my head and tried to ignore the irregular thud of gunfire against the hull. That was easy. Ignoring my newly-woken bladder, however, was impossible.

I heaved myself out of bed, staggered on still-sleeping legs out into the corridor and made my way to the head. As I leaned over the urinal, one steadying hand against the wall and the other on little Ari and thinking the poor neglected bastard hadn't been getting out much lately, there was another thud against the hull, bigger and harder than anything any colony defences were capable of. I paused, listening. There was an almighty crack and Arcadia canted sideways, sent me crashing hard against the wall.

The klaxon sounded. A steady whoop-whoop-whoop that called all hands to stations.

'Take over!' Yattaran barked as I skidded onto the upper command. Another hit slammed into Arcadia's flank, lurching me into the console adjacent the first mate.

I hustled Dan out of the station and sent him forward to the artillery, where he'd be of more use. 'What is it?' I called across to Yattaran.

'Coalition, destroyer class.' He lurched at his post as another burst of cannon fire slammed into us, this time targeting the forward quarter.

The bridge tipped sideways, my fingers clamping around the edges of the console as I fought to stay upright. 'And you didn't see it coming?'

'We saw it coming,' he retorted, 'but by then it was too – '

'Concentrate forward fire,' Harlock shouted from his position at the wheel.

'Concentrate forward fire!' Yattaran barked down at the weapons command, a chorus of 'ayes!' sounding from the lower deck.

The Coalition ship overshot the bow, listing slightly as a burst from our forward turrets caught the hull midway. A plume of fire and escaping air erupted from the rent in her side as I turned my attention back to the console.

'Enemy status,' I reported, my voice pitched loud enough for the captain to hear. 'Port guns destroyed. Forward cannon destroyed. Life support sixty percent.'

Harlock half-turned his head. 'Engines?'

'No damage.' I studied the uplink readout. I was receiving an ident ping as the stricken ship sent out an urgent request for help and I sent out a squeal to stop it in its tracks. 'Idents as Heavy Cruiser Argus. Sending a distress call.'

'Jam it,' Harlock said.

'Done.'

Harlock turned back to the wheel and spun it violently to starboard. He had an oscillator to deploy and he wasn't letting a little thing like a Coalition cruiser get in his way. 'Target the engines.'

'You heard Captain,' Yattaran bellowed. 'Take out those damn engines!'

Another chorus of 'ayes' rose from the weapons command as Arcadia came about and we found ourselves staring down into the glowing core of Argus' thruster banks.

'All batteries,' Harlock ordered, even though the cannon were already swivelling in their mounts and aiming into Argus' engine core.

'Fire!'

The blast from Arcadia's artillery thudded dully through the ship. Multiple columns of orange shot from the cannon into Argus, the reaction of dark matter energy meeting standard matter drive so unexpectedly blinding we had to turn our heads to look away. When the blast faded we saw the entire rear section of Argus was gone. A steady stream of debris leaked from what was left, burned and blasted metal mingled with the broken and twisted bodies of men, the innards of a mighty behemoth spewing fitfully from the open wound as Argus listed in an uncontrolled dive towards the planet.

Shit. The Coalition would definitely be paying attention now.

Harlock's hands fell from the wheel. He stood for a moment, staring down at the crew on the lower deck. And then he turned and strode back to my station. 'Aristotle. With me.'

'Aye sir.' I locked down the console, shot a glance at Yattaran and followed in the captain's wake to the flight deck.

There was no need for environmental suits on Turas. It had been terraformed decades ago, and this time we were lucky – the node was right out on the surface. There was no visible indication of it, the only sign of its existence being a slight twist on the magnetometer as we came in on approach. Not enough deviation to provoke interest on a routine planetary survey, and I wondered how Harlock even knew it was there.

He seemed unconcerned as he piloted the deployment module down to the surface, the burning hulk of Argus flickering like a candle flame in the sky behind us, a mass of debris that would soon come crashing to ground. I sat beside him in the co-pilot's chair, toggling through the sensors and the comms, eavesdropping on Turas' meagre planetary communications systems, alert for any chatter about Argus and looking for any sign of Coalition presence either on the planet or off.

Nothing.

'Weird,' I said aloud, and when Harlock didn't answer I said, 'no subspace chatter, no high-frequency bursts. Nothing on the planetary grid. It's like Argus didn't exist.'

There was a jolt against the hull as we slipped through the jet stream, a buffeting that made me lean back in the chair and clamp a hand reflexively around the restraints. 'Think about it,' I said as we juddered through a layer of unstable air and I swallowed down the queasiness that was rising in my gut. 'She got at least five seconds of subspace out before I jammed her. Somebody somewhere must have intercepted that transmission.'

Harlock stared out of the forward port, his attention focussed on his flying. Not that he needed to concentrate. He was the best pilot I'd ever seen, in space or in atmosphere. At one with the machine and all that.

He angled the module on a slight turn and I glanced up from what I was doing to look out at the world. We were flying parallel to the ground now, the flat, featureless terrain of Turas slipping by in a big brown blur.

'Argus came out of nowhere,' I said, trying to draw out what he was thinking. 'Like she was waiting for us.' I looked sideways at him, saw his lips tighten.

The module dipped suddenly down towards the ground.

I keyed open the hatch, scooped up the deployment case and clambered down the ladder to the oscillator proper.

Deploying an oscillator was routine now: fire the anchor cables, power up the core, set the detonator to standby, enter the command code and lock it all down. I could do it with my eyes closed, and I might have tried it if Harlock hadn't slid down the ladder behind me. He cruised aimlessly around the deck, his boots tapping loud against the metal as he surveyed the barren landscape that surrounded us – rock and dirt, flat brown plains ending in a low rise of mountains a hundred clicks away, pale sky streaked with wisps of moisture that were trying very hard to be clouds. The footfalls ceased as he leaned his elbows against the rails and stared into the hazy distance.

'There was a town back there,' he said.

My shoulders slumped. 'I saw.' I closed the case and engaged the lock. 'Argus sent out a distress call,' I said, knowing how much it annoyed him to be reminded of the obvious. 'In an hour, or a minute, reinforcements could be here.'

I looked at him where he leant at the rail. He was wearing one of his older flight suits. The one with the blaster burn across the shoulder. 'And we'll be trapped,' I continued, staring at his back. 'Down here.'

He nodded, without turning around. 'Tell Yattaran we'll be late.'

It was a bar like any of the others that Harlock had dragged one or another of us to over the years. Although, probably, possibly, maybe, this particular specimen was the worst.

A swinging door creaked inward from the dusty street, a single step up leading to a dingy room, a rough-hewn floor dotted with stained and wobbling tables at which sat the saddest representatives of the progeny of Gaia I had seen so far. They seemed worse even than those on Heavy Meldar, and as I surveyed the dim interior I reassessed my conviction that Meldar was the arse-end of the universe. Quite possibly Turas now took out first prize as the puckered anus of the galaxy.

I paused in the doorway, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the light and my nose to adjust to the stench of stale vomit that thickened the air. I could see bullet holes tracking across the adobe walls, several of them smeared with what looked like poorly-scrubbed bloodstains. 'Bullets,' I muttered, nodding at the walls. 'They're still using bullets.'

Harlock moved in close behind me and touched a hand to my arm, a spark of dark matter stinging into me like static. I no longer jumped when he brushed against me – I'd been on Arcadia for long enough that I was making my own sparks by now, and when I took my clothes off in the dark I could sometimes see them faintly on my skin, tiny lightnings made of lilac.

'Because you can make bullets at home,' he said, steering me towards the bar. He prodded me towards a stool at the counter and raised a hand for the barkeep. 'They're cheap and easy and they'll still do the job.'

'As long as I'm not the job,' I groused, turning to survey the specimens sitting at the tables, their hard and weathered faces looking curiously at us. I gave them my best death-stare, satisfied only when the searching gazes dropped one by one to focus back on their drinks. Only then did I turn and hunch myself over the counter, the grained surface water-worn and splintering beneath my un-gloved fingers. I sighed, imagining the alcoholic delights that were about to blast the surface of my tongue. 'Delight,' of course, being an entirely subjective sentiment.

Harlock seemed inexplicably drawn to these dives, to the seediest shitholes of humanity. In the early days I thought it was the booze that brought him. But watching him I realised it was humanity itself, reaching out and drawing him in. Not that he loved humanity – the fact was he despised it. But it helped with his resolve, I think, to see how low humanity could go. To inventory all the reasons why the universe needed to do it over.

Then again, maybe it was just the booze. Something different to the red wine he soaked himself in night after night after night.

Harlock let me do the ordering, and three shots of the local firewater later had me definitely feeling the burn. I sculled down a fourth and slammed the empty glass back onto the bar. 'That shit is poison,' I croaked, choking on it. 'I think it's killed me.'

Harlock snorted at my discomfort and downed a mouthful of liquor in one smooth, unhurried swallow. 'Girl,' he said, chinking a tiny window open and letting me in.

'Bastard,' I said through the chink. He laughed, the liquor softening him, smoothing out his hard and impenetrable edges.

An unopened bottle of Twelve Worlds sat between us at the bar. He'd suggested it, I'd ordered it, and we'd paid for it together, scraping out what currency we could find in the combined bottoms of our pockets. It was a gift, for Miimé, and it would hopefully buy the both of us favours. Although I had no doubt Harlock's favours were far more interesting than my own.

The door swung open on its creaking hinges and a kid, not more than nineteen or twenty, teetered uncertainly through. He sat down at the table nearest the door, the entire bar turning to look at him as he fell heavily into the chair, and then turning away again. Except for Harlock. He remained turned on his stool, looking past me at the new arrival.

I'd glanced at the kid myself when he'd come in, but now I swivelled to look again, trying to see what was holding Harlock's attention. As I watched the bartender came out from behind the bar and took the kid's order, returned to the table a moment later with a half-glass of pale liquid. The kid nodded his thanks, reached a grimy hand into a pocket and handed over a few credits. The bartender clinked them in his hand contemplatively, then turned and walked away.

The kid didn't touch the drink. Just stared at it. His face and his body were covered in a light layer of dust, one arm and one cheek splattered with somebody else's blood that he had unsuccessfully tried to wipe away. He was wearing wind goggles, and these he now slid up onto his head to settle in a nest of thick hair. Clear of the goggles his eyes were blue and bright, and as I watched they filled with sudden tears.

I turned away, not sure what embarrassed me most – the kid's tears, or Harlock's relentless stare. Whatever, I was stuck in the middle. I shifted on the stool and positioned myself deliberately between Harlock and the kid, gave the captain the side of my head to stare at.

There was an exhalation from Harlock, a soft 'fff' that might have been a laugh. He lifted his glass to his lips and drained the last of the liquor. 'Aristotle,' he said indulgently.

'Ari,' I reminded, taking advantage of his mood.

He snorted, clinking the empty glass back onto the bar and slipping from the stool. 'You should know better by now.' He brushed past me, pulled out a chair at the kid's table and slid smoothly into it.

I turned away and concentrated on my empty glass. And then I laughed, imagining the expression on Yattaran's face when Harlock came back with another of his stray dogs.

When shit happens, it tends to happen all at once.

My personal comms started jangling in my pocket. I fumbled tingling fingers – the hooch had definitely damaged my nervous system – into my pocket, scooped out the communicator and activated the receiver. Yattaran's voice sounded from the tiny speaker.

'Ari, you've got a Coalition light cruiser on your hands. Just in-skipped onto your side of the planet.'

Shit. I swivelled on the stool to look at Harlock. 'Company,' I said to him, and then into the comms, 'Arcadia?'

'Polar orbit as per Captain's orders. Recommend you move both your butts and get back here before they get a fix on our location. Or your location.'

'Butts are on the move.' I was already off the stool and attempting to stuff the flat bottle of Twelve Worlds into my pants pocket. Didn't work, so I shoved it down the front of my pants instead.

Harlock was also on his feet and already at the door. He cracked it open enough to peer both directions down the street, closed it and turned around. 'Local enforcements,' he said, glancing at the kid still sitting bewildered at the table. He indicated with a nod that the kid was coming with us. Like I didn't know that already.

'C'mon, kid.' I strode across to the table, slid a hand roughly beneath his armpit and hoisted him into standing. His drink still sat untouched on the table. 'You're gonna wish you'd swallowed that in a minute.' I yanked him towards the door. 'What's your name, kid?'

'E – Eddie,' he stammered out as he was hustled towards the door, my hand still tight beneath his arm.

'Eddie. Stick close, do everything I say, and don't fuck it up.'

He licked his lips, his dust-smeared face now dotted with sweat, and nodded his head. His flesh was sparse beneath my fingers, but there was muscle there, the stringy kind of muscle you find on a chicken.

'How many?' I asked Harlock over the top of Eddie's head.

'Four,' Harlock said.

'Plan?'

'We're walking out.' He cracked the door open and took another look.

'Great plan.'

'They won't know what they're looking for,' he said, widening the chink in the door to let me out. 'Not yet.'

I slid my hand from beneath Eddie's arm and wrapped it affectionately around his shoulder. 'C'mon kid, you and me are gonna be friends.'

I shoved him tottering past Harlock, out through the door and stumbling into the street. What passed for the local militia had congregated about three shopfronts down. Four of them, as Harlock had said, armed and armoured but milling aimlessly. I noted the dusty armour only covered the important bits – chest, groin and thighs – and their guns were still holstered. No doubt they'd been mobilised by Gaia Command after Argus had crashed to ground, but without further instruction they had no idea what, or who, they were looking for.

As Eddie and I spilled into the street they turned to look at us, so I hoisted the kid straighter on his feet, clapped a broad hand against his scrawny arse and squeezed. 'Come on boy,' I said to him, loud enough for the militia to hear. 'You said you were gonna show me a good time.'

Eddie flinched beneath my grip and attempted to skitter away. 'Kid,' I whispered, pulling him back against me and pressing my lips close to his ear. 'You gotta make this look good.' I rubbed my groin against him. 'That aint no happy time you're feeling down there.' It wasn't a gun, either, it was only Miimé's bottle of Twelve Worlds, but Eddie didn't know that and it had the desired effect. 'Play along or we're all dead.'

He relaxed slightly, giving in to fate, I guess, and the dried blood on his face indicated that so far today fate hadn't been showing him a great time. I felt a bit sorry for him, so I lifted my hand from his arse and slid it back around his shoulders, glancing up to see the militia still staring. I gave them what I hoped was a wolfish grin and squeezed Eddie tighter. 'Hand's off fellas,' I called up the street, laughing as they turned away. 'He's all mine.'

Behind us Harlock had seen his opportunity, had slipped out onto the street and was walking casually away from the action in the opposite direction. I spun Eddie around and followed, my arm still tight around him and making sure to keep us between Harlock and the militia's line of sight. I doubted they would give us a second glance, but I kept an affectionate grip on Eddie, just in case.

A narrow alleyway appeared ahead and Harlock disappeared down it. I followed leisurely, ushering the reluctant Eddie around the corner, and when I was sure we could no longer be seen, I let him go.

'Now what,' I said to Harlock.

'We double back to the module.'

Easier said than done. 'Yattaran reported a light cruiser in orbit. What if the Coalition get to the module before we do?'

'Bad luck for them,' he said, with a glint in his eye.

The Coalition ground forces had excellent luck that day. According to Arcadia's scanners they hadn't yet got a deployment to the planet, and it was a relief to find the module in the deserted canyon where we'd left her, standing upright on her three engines and still entirely alone.

Eddie was puffing from the jog we'd hustled him into, and the layer of dust I had noted on him in the bar was even thicker after the final dash along the canyon floor. Harlock and I were equally dusty, the thickest layer being from the soles of our boots on up to our thighs with a light dusting over just about everything else. I could feel it powdered in my hair, sticking to the sweat on my face and sucking the moisture out of my eyes and my mouth.

Ahead of us Harlock had already reached the module, long legs effortlessly outpacing our efforts. Times like these he made me feel the same way Miimé made me feel – clumsy and heavy and all too human. I glanced up to see him moving lightly up the ladder towards the hatch, as though there was no gravity pressing down on him at all. But me, I could definitely feel it, the heavy atmosphere of Turas pressing me hard to the planet and squeezing the air puffing out of my lungs. I slowed my pace as Eddie caught up, let him overtake me and shoved a hand into his back as he did, angling him towards the ladder. 'Quick,' I said, because Arcadia was on her way and it was only a matter of time before the Coalition got a bead on her.

But instead of moving up the ladder Eddie stopped, both hands tight on the rungs and both legs still on solid ground. 'I can't,' he said.

'Shit kid, just move!'

The hands dropped from the rungs and he turned his dust-streaked face to look at me. 'I'm not going.' He shook his head, took two steps away from the module to let me pass.

I stared at him dumbly, wondering what the hell Harlock had said to get him this far, and what the hell I could say to get him the rest of the way up that ladder.

'Listen, kid,' I clamped my fingers around his arm and pushed him against the ladder, willing him to climb it. 'Eddie,' I amended, trying to be nice. Probably too late, given how hard my fingers were chewing into his flesh. 'Listen, whatever he promised you, he meant it. You want outta this hole?' I was still pushing at him. 'This is it, this is your ticket out. Your big chance to do something with your life.'

I butted him futilely against the ladder, body limp, arms hanging at his sides. As I glared at him his eyes brightened with tears that threatened to spill over. He sniffed and I panicked. Ah, hell no, not the tears again.

I glanced up at the cockpit. Where the hell was Harlock? Did he have any fucking idea what I was going through with his latest acquisition?

As if on cue the intakes slammed open, a high-pitched whine commencing deep inside the engines as Harlock initiated the ignition sequence, heightening my sense of urgency.

'Listen,' I said, 'Eddie. In one minute the captain is going to ignite those engines and if we're still standing here when that happens the blast is gonna roast the meat right off our bones. You're either going to climb into that cockpit willingly or I will haul you up by your scrawny neck.' And if you insist on standing here snivelling I will break your fucking neck and leave your fucking chickenshit remains for whatever fucking vermin crawls across this fucking shithole planet, I added mentally, my hand scrunching into the back of his vest and heaving him bodily up the first three rungs of the ladder.

Eddie must have seen the neck-breaking in my eyes, or heard it in my voice, or maybe felt it in the fist bunched at the back of his neck, because next thing he was hanging voluntarily from the ladder and I wasn't far behind him, rushing him with my urgency and his dirty skinny legs getting in my way. Move, I willed him, but he was already moving. Awkward, but moving.

Harlock glanced at us as we spilled into the cockpit, impatience all over his face.

'Second thoughts,' I growled, shunting Eddie towards the jumpseat and pointing at the restraints. I slid into the co-pilot's seat as the hatch locked into place and the engines ignited. 'I really thought you were about to toast us.'

'You may still get toasted,' Harlock said. 'The cruiser has locked onto Arcadia. We may have trouble getting back.'

I looked at him sharply, my mouth falling open. 'You're not seriously going to try.'

'Aristotle,' he said, in the patient, fatherly tone that he pulled out in those moments when you thought you were about to die. 'We could stay here and fight it out, two of us against a Coalition ground force. And we could pray that we get killed and not captured. Or we can run for it and hope we make it to Arcadia before their fighters are mobilised.' He relinquished the console in a gesture of surrender and turned to look at me. 'To coin a phrase… what will it be, Aristotle? Fight or flight?'

'Fuck that,' I said, buckling myself into the harness. 'Flight.'

He turned, hands back on the console, a smile crooking the corner of his mouth. The deployment module wasn't designed for combat. It had no weaponry, the most basic of shielding, and the three engine ports were definitely not designed for speed or high manoeuvrability. If this was going to work we were dependent on Harlock's skill as a pilot, and if anybody could get this bucket through a Coalition cordon, it was the captain.

I turned to Eddie as the module lifted off. 'This is going to get hairy, kid, so hold on tight.'

He stared wide-eyed at me, adam's apple bobbing as he gulped down his fear. I suddenly regretted shoving him up the ladder, hoping I hadn't shoved him to his death.