The Aristotle Transposition

(part four)

Harlock got himself a new flightsuit. A black affair with armour plates riveted strategically into place, and a white skull-and-crossbones emblazoned square across the chest. And a cape with blood-red lining and ragged around the edges as though it had been worn a lot before, sometime in the distant past.

The effect was striking. He seemed taller. Stronger. Colder. Like he'd taken one step back from everyone. And everything.

There were days when he'd stand at the wheel and stare down at the crew in the lower command, as though it was all too much. Like it was more responsibility than he could handle.

And there were days when I fully expected him to dump us on the nearest planet and disappear into the sunset.

'Captain!'

The shout cut through the silence on the bridge, made us look up from our consoles and turn around in surprise.

There was scuffling from the entry port, a woman's voice shouting 'hands off!', the sound of an open palm meeting an unshaven face and a grunt that could only have come from Carlos. We watched incredulous as a twisting spitting ball of ragged clothes and blonde hair was dragged protesting onto the bridge and hoisted bodily in front of the captain.

Yattaran started from his station. 'Aahhh,' he said in a fluster of confusion and dismay.

'Stowaway, Cap'n,' Carlos announced, removing his hand from the scruff of the girl's neck. 'Found her in the cargo bay, inside a crate of argonite.'

Harlock's head tilted back in his chair, the single eye appraising the cause of the commotion.

Without Carlos holding her upright the girl staggered awkwardly a moment before righting herself. 'Hands off,' she spat again, throwing a contemptuous glare back at Carlos. He laughed at her. Evilly. Rubbed at the handprint reddening on his face.

'Aahhh…' said Yattaran again. Heads were going to roll for this, possibly one of them his. 'Who checked that cargo,' he demanded.

Carlos shrugged. He hadn't been dirtside when the crates were loaded. Didn't matter. Yattaran would find the culprit. Eventually.

Harlock's gaze travelled the length of the girl's body, his eye coming back to rest on her dirt-smeared face. 'The argonite?'

'Half load,' Carlos said. 'She must have dumped the rest before she got into the crate.'

The captain rose from his chair, towered a good twelve inches over the girl. She stared at his chest, at the skull and crossbones she was abruptly eye-to-eye with.

'Unfortunate,' Harlock said to the top of her head. 'Because I need that argonite.'

'You heard Captain,' Yattaran barked at Carlos. 'Get the transport back down there.'

Carlos shot Yattaran an aggrieved glare. He opened his mouth to protest, thought better of it and closed his mouth again. He turned on his heels, mouth twisting in anger as he cast a final backward glance at the girl.

Harlock continued his survey of the top of the girl's head, her hair lank and knotted and matted with something that looked like spider webs. But there were no spiders on Sertse, so who knows what that cobwebby shit was. But the hair was golden beneath the filth, and there was probably a pretty face under all that grime. For her part the girl continued to stare at the Captain's chest, the sight of the skull no doubt providing an urgent sense of seriousness to her situation – that she'd just stowed aboard the Arcadia and, if she'd been keeping up with the Coalition broadcasts, was standing one short step away from the most wanted fugitive in the galaxy.

Harlock stretched the silence out for a long uncomfortable moment, the fingers curling inside his gloves the only outward display of the thought processes going on within. His mouth twitched into what might have been the fleeting start of a smile as he stretched his fingers out and moved close enough to the girl that she tensed and swayed back, a breathy gasp escaping from her lips. And then Harlock veered away from her, moved around her, so close to her she would have felt the sting of the dark matter as he passed, the edge of his cloak catching like fingers at her clothing. He paced the length of the gantry to the wheel and placed a hand carefully upon it.

'Name,' he said, to the wheel.

We all turned to look at the girl. She hadn't moved when the captain had scraped past her, stood staring fixedly at the vacated throne.

'Hey,' Yattaran called out. 'Girl! Captain asked you a question.'

She turned, slowly, ignored Yattaran's affronted glare and said to the taciturn shadow at the wheel, 'Yuki.' She swallowed, and if we'd been able to see through the shapeless outfit she was wearing, I'm sure we would have seen her tremble. 'Yuki Kei.'

At least her voice wasn't shaking. I raised my eyebrows at nobody in particular – bigger men than she was would have crumbled well before this point.

Yattaran leaned back against his console and folded his arms. 'Yuki Kei,' he said gravely, 'what sort of punishment do you think we reserve for stowaways?'

She shot him a look and suddenly there was fire in her eyes. Whatever punishment she had coming she was apparently prepared to take it. And then some.

'What are you going to do?' She sneered as she sized him up and evidently dismissed him as a light-weight. 'Put me over your lap and spank me?'

Yattaran's eyes popped behind his glasses. His arms unfolded abruptly from his chest and he started forward in anger, one hand clenching into a fist. 'You little…' he began. 'I will bend you over – '

'First mate.'

Yattaran stopped mid-stride, fist falling thwarted to his side. Pulling rank always had that effect.

'Captain,' he acknowledged, eyes still on the defiant glare of the girl. He would never admit as much but he was enjoying it. Yattaran liked a challenge. And a pretty lady.

Harlock hadn't moved, hadn't turned. Only his cloak showed any sign of life as it lifted in the unseen draft from the recirculators. 'Allocate a berth,' he said, without turning around.

Yattaran's lips pursed in dismay, but there was no point arguing once the captain had made a decision. He shot a look of 'why me?' in my direction then lunged forward and pushed an aggressive finger into the girl's shoulder. 'I guess now we'll see what you're made of. Move.' He continued to poke her towards the nearest access. 'You'd better not fuck this up,' he muttered at her back as she quickstepped along in front of him. 'Don't make Captain regret it,' he said. And then, 'you'd better not give me any trouble.'

I shook my head as I took over the XO. Yuki Kei was going to be hearing those scintillating one-liners all the way to the crew quarters.

In the blessed silence Harlock angled around to look at me. Raised his eyebrow.

I leaned in to the mirror and slid the razor across the plane of my cheek, carefully sculpting a straight line along the edge of a muttonchop. Facial hair was fast becoming a pain in the ass. I paused the razor for a moment and briefly considered shaving them off. Or doing what some of the other men did – giving up on any pretence of caring and letting my beard grow completely wild.

'Ari.' Farris's head appeared around the bathroom door. 'Captain says suit up.' He looked pointedly at the lather on my face, at the towel tied loose around my hips and sliding with the speed of cold tar towards the floor. 'And he says now.'

I hitched the towel up with my free hand as his head disappeared again behind the door.

'Farris,' I called out. His head reappeared, a big red disembodied face bright against the pale grey of the bathroom walls. 'What's going on?'

'Trouble,' he said with his customary eloquence, adding a shrug as if I should have already guessed that.

I reached for another towel and wiped at the soap on my face. 'Care to elaborate?'

'The node. It's on the Proxima moon.'

My hands froze in their movement. 'Shit.'

'Yeah,' he said. 'Shit alright.'

I dropped the towel to the bench. 'Get going. Tell Captain I'm on my way.'

There were twelve of us in the transport as it approached the base. Thirteen including the captain, but only twelve of us were sweating inside the burnished plates of our battle armour. Harlock himself never sweated. And he had nothing other than his cloak for protection – and a gravity sabre swinging at his hip, an archaic relic of a time even before the Homecoming War.

We were crowded in the rear of the transport, all of us squeezed into the cargo bay jump seats, staring silently at each other as we swung in low over the Proxima moon. Baptiste was at the controls, and I turned in my seat to look into the cockpit, manoeuvring the body armour awkwardly in the restricted space and jostling Carlos out of his half-doze in the process. I looked at the back of Baptiste's head, the reflected light from the moon haloing through the roughly combed mop of his hair.

The Proxima moon was legend. The last stand of the sector war, the place where the forces of Tarsus and the Coalition met in one last, decisive battle. The Coalition won, of course, their resources far exceeding those of the average breakaway system. The damage to the morale of the sector was incalculable. The damage to the moon much more visible, with great black gouges dug out of the pale pink surface. Beyond Baptiste's head I could see craters and chasms, their edges charred and littered with the glint of twisted metal. Carcasses of ships lay smashed across the dead plains, broken and twisted and burned. There were probably still people aboard them, strapped in their seats, their bodies as broken and twisted and burned as their ships. Snap-frozen in their agonies and waiting, still, for somebody to come and bury them.

And in the ashes of the Tarsus defeat the Coalition had left an outpost. Settled themselves brazenly down in the middle of a graveyard. It was Gaia marking its territory, like a dog pissing against a wall.

'Baptiste,' Harlock said to the pilot, breaking my train of thought. 'Signal the base. Request permission to dock.'

Baptiste turned his head in acknowledgement, his profile dark against the light of the moon. 'Aye, sir.'

Beside me Carlos laughed and I jabbed at him with an elbow, the clank of armour against armour unexpectedly loud over the muted hum of the engines.

'What?' He tried to move away from me, butting up hard against Dan beside him on the jump seat.

'Hey,' Dan grumbled, his voice thick with sleep. I swear that dude could sleep anywhere. He shoved Carlos grunting back in my direction and back into the sharp point of my elbow.

'Ladies,' Yattaran groused from the bench opposite. 'Nix it.'

I left my elbow locked hard against Carlos and looked across at the captain, his head still turned in the direction of the cockpit as Baptiste awaited acknowledgement from the base. He was lost in contemplation, the light of the moon brushing the edge of his profile in pale lines of pink.

Carlos laughed again, a deep throaty rumble that vibrated though his armour and into mine. 'They'll never let us land.'

'Doesn't matter what they do.' Yattaran leaned forward and lifted his battle-axe from where it rested on the floor, laid it carefully across his knees. 'As long as they're busy looking at us they won't be looking at Santo and Maji deploying the oscillator on the far side.'

'And if they shoot us down,' Roy said from the far end of the bay, putting voice to what all of us were thinking, 'they'll be too busy watching the pretty fireworks.'

Bob snorted inside his armour. 'None of us are that pretty.'

That brought a laugh from all of us, quirking even the Captain's mouth into a smile and sparking off a good-natured jostling amongst the men, a lot of nudging and knee-slapping, a moment of mirth that was cut short as quickly as it had erupted.

'Captain,' Baptiste called from the cockpit. 'They have a weapons lock.'

That shut us up. Made us grip our weapons just that little bit tighter.

'Ignore it,' Harlock said. He rose, stretched out his long limbs and stooped to enter the cockpit.

Baptiste looked up at him. 'They're requesting identification.'

Harlock turned to look back at us, gave our state of readiness a quick survey. And then he nodded. 'Tell them.'

We were expecting the white armour of the Coalition space corps, but these were combat troops, a field army garrisoned in a deadzone just for their looks. A squad of twenty had arranged themselves stiffly across the deck, their uniforms padded out with laser webbing, their weapons held tensely at the ready.

'Sitting ducks,' Yattaran quipped through the suit coms as we exited the transport and stationed ourselves in opposition along the deck. He flexed his fingers confidently around the haft of his axe.

'You mean us, or them?' Bob stage-whispered back at him.

There was a chorus of nervous laughs through the coms, but I didn't join in. We were trained well, and twelve to twenty was more than good odds, but this could still go horribly wrong. I nestled the repeater into the crook of my elbow, pressed my finger close against the trigger.

The Coalition squad assumed the position in front of us, textbook formation, some of them dropping to one knee to better their aim. That would have made me laugh, except they were too close for comfort. Their faces were enhanced by the heads-up display of my helmet – I could see the whites of their eyes, the sweat at their temples, the heat bleeding through the thinner points of the webbing in their uniforms. I counted off the weak spots as my armour's targeting system followed the movement of my eyes and left little green crosshairs wherever my pupils had lingered.

Harlock was last to exit the transport, the heels of his boots clicking crisply against the metal deck as he casually strode the line. He made an imposing sight – the long, black-clad legs languid in their stride, the cloak billowing around him with a mind of its own and revealing, now and then, the lean pelvis crossed by the twin holsters, and the skull-and-crossbones stamped white across his chest. There was an easy grace in his movement, and control, and a shadowed hint of menace, and when he reached the centre of the line and turned to face the enemy, his gaze made not a few of them flinch.

The commander of the garrison, however, was apparently not the kind of man that flinched. He stood in direct opposition to Harlock, and to us, at the front of his squad and with an expression of unadulterated glee chasing across a face that was begging for the shit to be beaten out of it.

'Captain Harlock,' the commander said, his voice accented with the thick honey of culture, of a man who'd been born in the heart of the Communion. 'So the stories were true – you did survive. I never thought I would meet you in the flesh.' He cocked his head and looked the captain up and down. 'Assuming you are still made of flesh.'

A sly smile passed across his face, and he took a step forward, as if greeting an old friend. 'What an honour. And what a pleasure it will be to bring you in.' He brought his feet carefully together, slid a confident hand to rest on the weapon at his hip and bowed with solemn formality. 'I am Saito, Commander of this outpost.'

He raised his head, waiting for an acknowledgement that was never going to come. He stared at Harlock for a moment, pursed his lips in disappointment at the lengthening silence, and when the requisite waiting period had passed he cast a careful and appraising look at the rest of us arrayed behind the captain, weapons lowered a little off-target, but not quite enough. 'This is an interesting mode of surrender, I must say. But I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to hand over your – '

Harlock shifted inside his cloak. 'This is not a surrender.'

Saito paused, mouth open, eyes back on Harlock. 'What, then?' He raised a curious eyebrow. 'A robbery? Ludicrous. Look at where you are.'

The squad behind him shifted in their ranks, fingers itching on their triggers. A few of them broke out into nervous smiles, but I could still see the sweat that dotted their brows.

'No.' Harlock was still, his body tight. 'Not a robbery.'

Saito stared at him silently. Watchfully. 'What, then,' he asked again, his shoulders rising in vague confusion.

Harlock's gaze never left its target. 'Call it… a distraction.'

Saito laughed. A short sharp bark of genuine mirth. 'A comedian!' He laughed again, but the smile never reached his eyes. 'Captain, this is not what I expected. History treats you somewhat more seriously… as befits a criminal of your catastrophic standing.'

I couldn't see Harlock's face from where I stood, to his rear and to his right, and besides I was too busy scanning the squadron for signs of movement. Watching their hands on their weapons. Waiting for the narrowing of an eye, or the tightening of a lip that could indicate trouble.

'Ah,' Saito said, filling Harlock's silence with the irritating hiss of his voice. 'Not so funny anymore.' He cocked his head, surveyed Harlock's face with a cool and calculating gaze. 'You've changed since you last graced Gaia Command. We all have. Some of us have grown older,' he sighed, 'and some of us have grown… different.' He widened his smile, showed us his small white teeth, darted his black eyes beyond Harlock towards the rest of us, and back to Harlock again.

'You may not know this, but you are required reading at Officer's Academy,' he continued, enjoying the sound of his own voice and with the sickly smile still plastered to his face. 'The perfect example of what an officer must not to do.'

Harlock's head cocked to one side. Possibly he was smiling. Possibly it was a ploy to draw attention away from his hand shifting beneath his cloak, the movement faintly visible as a rippling at his elbow.

And then Saito chuckled, an evil vicious thing that echoed loud in the hanger as he returned calmly to stand at the apex of his squad. 'There are other stories, of course. Of souls sold to the devil. Or to that Nibelung bitch you betrayed us with.'

If he had any idea how close he was to danger, there was no indication of it on his face. Or in his words. Or in the carefully cultivated nonchalance of his stance. I could see Yattaran shifting on his feet, fingers opening and closing on the haft of his axe. If Harlock didn't shut Saito's dirty mouth, one of us was sure to do it.

'Captain Harlock,' Saito said, his voice hardening with the certainty that he had Harlock right where he wanted him. 'Fugitive S-00999.' He raised a white-gloved hand, encompassed the universe with a single, negligent flick of the wrist. 'We all know exactly what you – '

Time slowed. Freeze-framed into a jagged slash of movement that erupted in a whirl of black and red and blood spinning weightless into the air. There was no time for Saito to unholster the weapon at his hip. No chance even for him to register what was happening, was about to happen, as Harlock exploded into movement, the gravity sabre sliding from its sheath as he leapt the short distance to Saito, the sabre glinting through the air and slicing through the uniform buttoned tight around Saito's throat, melting its way through collar and skin and muscle and bone. Saito's words were severed in his throat at the same moment as his head was severed from his body, sent spinning blinking through the air on a fountain of rich, red blood. I watched as the commander's face whirled towards me in slow-motion, the mouth working dumbly as the eyes registered their surprise. I swear those two black eyes were looking right at me, the question that widened them silent but horrifyingly apparent – what the fuck am I doing flying through the air? I turned away from the questioning eyes, the silent gaping mouth, took a step backwards as the head landed with the sickening thud of cracking bone at my feet.

There was a moment of silence. A moment to register the head impacting hard on the deck. The hot explosion of blood from Saito's raw, quivering neck. The body, deprived of its pilot, slumping into the thick red puddle on the floor. The squadron, wiping the blood from their eyes, their voices erupting into incoherent screaming as suddenly all weapons were brought to bear in our direction. And us, impervious in our armour as we ripped efficiently through them, cutting them down before they even had a chance to aim.

There was silence as Baptiste steered us away from the base, a transport full of contemplative faces burned with the hard reality of what had happened on the Proxima moon. This wasn't a game anymore. It was a war. It was us and them and life and death and blood. Too much blood.

I looked at where Harlock sat across from me in the transport, crimson splashed wild on his boots and crusted to the end of his sabre. He slumped in his seat, head bowed, gloved fingers splayed tight across his thighs. He might have been asleep, if it weren't for the twitching of his jaw behind the curtain of his hair.

I stared at him, willed him to move with the invisible pressure of my eyes.

He stirred under the onslaught, straightened in his seat and lifted his head to meet my stare, lips forming into a faintly apologetic smile.

Midnight. Well, what passes for midnight on a ship that moves in eternal darkness.

I was alone in the mess, the last of the late diners, slouched in my chair and staring at the crumbs that dotted the table. I pushed away my plate and flattened the nearest crumb beneath a fingertip.

'Penny for your thoughts,' Miimé said, from where she hovered in the doorway.

'Nobody knows what a penny is anymore,' I said without looking up. But we still knew the saying. It was buried in our DNA – along with our hair colour and our eye colour and our pathetic penchant for clinging to the faded memories of Earth.

'Who taught you that,' I asked, wondering what sentimental bastard had been filling Miimé's head with crap. And when. And what else they'd been telling her.

She moved into the room, slid soundlessly into the chair opposite. Our feet touched beneath the table.

'I learnt it long ago,' she said, placing a half-empty bottle of wine on the table-top between us. 'When I was being taught about humans. And how to live with them.'

'So they taught you pointless words, hoping you'd fit in.' I straightened in the chair, moved my feet away from hers. 'Stupid, empty words. Stupid things of Earth that are lost and gone that we aren't allowed to forget. Like green grass and blue skies and white fluffy clouds.' I bit down on the inside of my lip and stared at the dirty table-top, swept the crumbs off it with the flat of my hand. I'd never seen a blue sky in my life.

'Your eyes are like the sky,' she said.

I snorted. 'When did you ever see a blue sky?'

'Harlock has.'

I looked up at her, let her take the question out of my head.

She shrugged. 'It's a memory he has. The place in his head that he visits the most.'

I stared at her, blue eyes challenging green. And then I asked, because I really wanted to know, 'what place do I visit the most?'

'You know.'

She lifted the bottle and proffered it towards me, her fingers blue and luminous against the darkness of the wine. I reached slowly across the table, my eyes still on hers, my fingers curling warm around her coolness as she languidly relinquished her grip. I had a vision of her suddenly, entwined with Harlock, and him burning hot and bright against the cool lightness of her being.

I stared into the cat-green of her eyes, wondered if that was a memory she had given me, or if that was the place I went to the most.

I lifted the bottle to my lips, tasted her against my tongue.

'What's happening, Miimé?' I put the bottle back on the table, let the wine fill my mouth with sweet and warmth. 'What are we doing?'

She said nothing. Silently wrapped her fingers back around the bottle.

I leaned back in my chair and stretched my legs out beneath the table. Felt them brush against hers. Felt a slim ankle press against my own.

She was playing with me. Had been playing with me since that first night in the medbay, back when I'd thought she was a ghost.

She raised the bottle to her mouth, tilted it towards her small, pale lips.

She must have known what men were like. What humans were like. How we moved according to where our blood wanted us to go. And when she leaned towards me, and breathed on me, looked into my eyes and took the thoughts out of my head, she must have known where my blood was taking me.