The Aristotle Transposition

(part seven)

I lowered the datapad, since Harlock didn't seem interested in status reports, and tapped it absently against my thigh as we walked.

'There's a heat bleed in the port exhaust,' I said, not yet willing to give up my report and the neat little graphs I'd spent the morning colour-coding. 'It's marginal, but we'd better – '

Harlock held out a hand for the pad and I handed it over, watched as his eye tracked across the screen. He handed the pad back, saying nothing about the pretty graphs. 'I'll take care of it.'

'Captain,' I said, my fingers closing reflexively around the device as he deposited back into my care. 'Short of crawling into – '

'Aristotle.'

I shut my mouth and glanced back at Miimé, floating a few steps behind as we paced the darkened corridors, and she smiled at me. A Cheshire Cat grin that made the blood rush burning to my face. I looked away before I could embarrass myself, glancing briefly at the location marker posted on the junction wall. Level sixteen, aft. I'd only been here before in passing, and even that was a long time ago. The science area was off-limits and we all of us respected the captain's wishes. There were plenty of other ways to get where we needed to go.

But not, apparently, today.

'I think Kei is ready for command,' Harlock said, out of nowhere.

I walked in silence beside him, watched as the lights flickered on in the corridor ahead of us.

'You don't think that's a good idea,' he said as the lights behind us faded to darkness.

I sucked in a breath, weighing my words. 'She's young. And she hasn't been with us very long. Not as long as some of the others.'

'And she's a woman.'

'A girl,' I corrected. 'At least, that's how the men think of her.'

He glanced sideways at me. 'Is that how you think of her?'

I shook my head. 'Not anymore.'

'You don't think the men will accept her command?'

I shrugged. I really didn't know.

He turned his gaze downwards, paced along in silence.

'Yattaran,' he said to the floor, 'will object.'

I laughed, a quiet snort at the thought of Yattaran's face when Harlock delivered the news.

'Kei's good,' I said. 'She's quick and she's smart.' And ridiculously beautiful. 'Better than most of them. First Mate will just have to deal.'

Harlock exhaled in that quiet way he had, a subtle sound that could express anything from agreement to disagreement, or from amusement to scorn and back again. The expression was situation-dependent, and it had taken me a lot of years to work my way through the myriad of meanings. 'He won't have to deal for long,' he said. 'There are only nine more oscillators to deploy.'

'About that,' I said. 'Suggest we delay the deployment on Tokarga. Permission to remind the captain that we'd have to pass through the MX sector and the Coalition might still be patrolling the area.'

'I haven't forgotten,' he said.

'Yeah. Seemed like you had.'

He didn't answer, his hands disappearing beneath his cloak as he settled it closer around him. Ahead of us the lights flickered on, illuminating the pressed metal floor, the dull grey walls, the door to the science lab with its multiple notices and warnings.

'You asked for time to find out what the Coalition were doing,' he said.

'I did.'

'And I gave you time.'

'You did.' During which Yattaran had aggressively penetrated every Coalition firewall from the MX sector to Sol and back again, and only managed to come up with a hand full of burnt fingers.

'And what did you find?'

'Nothing,' I said, 'and you know it.'

Silence. Just the sounds of our boots on the floor and the rhythmic pulse of the ship, as steady as a heartbeat.

'Maybe there was something on the datachip,' I ventured, since Harlock still hadn't returned it for analysis. 'Something on the runner's logs that was overlooked. Maybe if you gave it to Yattaran… '

He looked at me, and damn him if his lips didn't crook into an apologetic smile. 'There was nothing,' he said.

I exhaled through my nose, loudly. It wasn't possible that the Coalition could bury something deep enough that it couldn't be found, and it bugged the hell out of me.

He slowed in his steps, paused, brought his feet together and turned to face me. A hand emerged from the depths of his cloak and reached towards me, fingers resting on my shoulder. I looked up into his face. This man was my friend – over the years we had become close. Well, as close as a man can get to an island when he's adrift in a boat about a mile away from it. That's how it felt with Harlock, how it had always felt, as though I was forever drifting around him. Coming closer when the tide permitted, and alternately being dragged back out again to sea.

'Aristotle.' His fingers pressed into my shoulder. 'It's time to face fate and end the cycle.'

I looked into his eye, saw the dark matter spark into purple flame. Said, warily, 'what do you mean?'

He blinked the flame away. 'I always thought it was about Time, but now I realise it's only ever been about – '

He stopped, narrowed his good eye as the door to the lab slid abruptly open. I turned, stared into the darkened space that had opened up behind me, felt a shiver run up my spine as I wondered yet again if the ship wasn't haunted by damned ghosts, a thought that was reinforced when the laboratory lights blinked on in a sudden blaze of illumination.

'Huh,' I said, with feeling, as Harlock's hand fell from my shoulder. He moved silently around me, disappeared through the open door and left me standing in the corridor.

'Discussion over,' I muttered to myself and made as if to move away, but Miimé stepped in close behind me, blocking me with the pins and needle sting of dark matter.

'You've been invited inside,' she said, a firefly drifting from her hair and fluttering cool against my face.

'I have?' I said, raising both eyebrows and turning again to the open door. 'By whom,' I murmured, taking a step towards the lab with the expectation of the door slamming hard in my face. It wouldn't be the first time Arcadia had slammed a door in my face – we were all of us used to having the skin grazed from our curious noses.

Only this time the door stayed open.

'You sure?' I asked, hesitating on the threshold with my eyes fixed suspiciously on the treacherous door. 'I thought the science lab was off-limits…'

'It is,' Miimé said from close beside me, her fingers curling soft around my arm as she steered me through the open door.

I blinked in the hard tungsten brightness, inhaled on air that was musty and stale and tainted with the ozone tang of dark matter and a hundred years of time. I looked around, curious as to why the room had been sealed for so many years, and wondering why, now, it had so inexplicably thrown itself open.

That it had been a working lab was obvious – the place was untidy, equipment scattered haphazardly over benches, datapads and dirty rags discarded randomly amongst the debris of another time. It looked lived-in, as though the owner had only recently stepped away and would shortly be returning to his work.

I walked across to the nearest bench and inspected the objects that were randomly strewn across it, watched from the corner of my eye as Harlock paced the contours of the room, his steps measured and slow, one hand on a benchtop as he trailed his fingers contemplatively along it. He stooped to retrieve some papers that had spilled to the floor and placed them carefully on the nearest worktop.

I moved to another bench, bare but for a set of schematics that was unfurled and tacked flat to its surface. I took off a glove and placed my hand on the parchment, pressed it beneath my bare fingers, leant down to smell the paper and the ink and the passage of the years. Only then did I comprehend what was drawn upon it.

'Arcadia,' Miimé said from somewhere behind me. 'How Arcadia was meant to be.'

I stared down at the plans, at the ship that was drawn in precise lines on the parchment. It was Arcadia, of that there was no doubt, with the same grinning death's head carved bold on her prow and the sterncastle still perched anachronistically at her rear. But between those points she was different, her lines cleaner and smoother and minus the black bony edges. My fingers traced their way across the paper, stopping only at the architect's name.

'Oyama,' I said, eyebrows creasing as I dredged the recesses of my memory.

'Oyama Tochiro,' Miimé said, peering over my shoulder. 'The creator of the Deathshadow fleet.' She leaned against me. 'Arcadia was Harlock and Tochiro's dream. When the war ended, they were going to – '

'Miimé,' Harlock said from across the room. She pulled away from me, but not so far that I couldn't still feel her through my sweater, those tiny tendrils of otherness that made my skin jump and crawl – and not in a bad way.

'Captain has too many memories,' she murmured, 'and no way to escape.'

Harlock moved towards us, came to stand on the opposite side of the bench and stared down at the plans that were stretched across them.

'When the war ended,' he said, finishing what Miimé had started, 'the dream became a nightmare.'

I looked across at him,the bitterness so strong in him I could taste it. 'What happened? To Arcadia? To Oyama? Where did he go?'

Harlock looked stricken suddenly. Bereft. He lowered his head, let his hair fall across his face.

'He didn't go anywhere,' Miimé said, moving to stand beside me. 'Tochiro is still here.' She lifted a hand, set loose a drift of light that filled the room. 'He's all around us.'

I stared at her, at the gossamer of her, at the fireflies that drifted golden from her body and dissipated in the air.

She lowered her hand, smoothed it carefully across the schematics, her fingers stopping millimetres from my own, from the name 'Oyama' scribed carefully into the corner of the page. I stared down at her fingers where they rested pale next to mine, the skin smooth and pure compared to the rough and calloused texture of my own. Not for the first time I felt ashamed to be human.

'The release of the dark matter changed everything,' she sighed, and fireflies drifted again before my eyes. 'It transformed Deathshadow according to Tochiro's will, but the process was contaminated with organic matter from the remains of the dead.' She looked abruptly up at Harlock. 'And the dying.'

Organic matter… That explained a lot. Arcadia's ability to heal… the bony edges of her… the steady drum of the heartbeat that pulsed even now through my feet.

Miimé's hand moved away from mine, cascaded like liquid from the table. 'Arcadia is not how she was meant to be. She is not how Tochiro wanted her to be.'

'She's not how any of us wanted her to be,' Harlock said, his voice thick as the bitterness of the years bubbled abruptly to the surface. He leaned over the opposite side of the table, placed his hands upon it, stared down at the Arcadia of his dreams. 'None of this is how we wanted it to be.' He looked up at me then, gave me a glimpse of his defeat. 'None of it.'

'Captain…' I said, started to say, then closed my mouth against the futility. What could you say to a man who had been robbed so cruelly of his dreams… and lived far too long with the consequences.

He straightened at the bench, his hands falling from the table as the emotion fell visibly from his skin. He changed before my eyes, transformed into something cold. Something unreachable. 'We're nearly at the end,' he said, from a thousand miles away. 'If the crew could trust me a little longer…'

I looked at him, at the emotionless mask of his face. Realised that after all these years I didn't really know him at all.

'It would help if we understood what you were doing,' I said. 'Resetting the universe… It's a lot to wrap our heads around.'

He nodded. He got it, but he still wasn't letting anyone in on the mystery. 'When we reach Earth,' he said, 'you'll understand.'

I stepped away from the schematics, away from the dream, away from the life that, in this universe, Harlock would never have. But maybe, when the oscillators were deployed and the universe was reset, it might once more be within his reach.

'I hope so,' I said. I slid my glove back onto my hand. Beneath my feet Arcadia's heartbeat pulsed steadily, a great ticking clock in which time was running out.

I never got to see Yattaran's face when Harlock delivered the news, but he managed to deal with Kei's promotion well-enough in public. Privately he bitched like a banshee for the space of about ninety seconds, until the look on my face precipitously shut the tirade down. But he took it in good humour, grinning sheepishly when my scowl cracked smugly into a conspiratorial smile – secretly he was as sweet on her as the rest of us. And also like the rest of us, he was already used to having her bossing him around. There was something about a woman with boobs and boots that inexplicably made men roll over and say die. If I knew as much about biologicals as I did about rocks I'd write a paper about it, specifically the gender-imperative dominatrix sub-routine that squirrels away at the Y-chromosome brain, the unfortunate end result of which is a total paralysis of the frontal lobes whenever a woman in a pair of patent-leather thigh-highs enters a room.

I sat back in my chair and surveyed the room under the pretext of stretching my neck, then leaned back over the datascreen set into the table top. I was sat in a bar on Tellar, one of the more expensive bars, with – according to the sign on the wall opposite – the cleanest cathouse in the hemisphere situated conveniently just one floor above. And Tellar was all about clean. The whole fucking planet was all about clean. Too bad that beneath the nicely swept streets existed an underground of kink and contraband that was administered better than most municipal governments.

I swiped a finger across the screen, searching the vidfeeds for any mention of Arcadia and the Coalition's intensifying vendetta on Harlock. I'd been rewarded twice, the most recent being a sighting of Arcadia in the Nima system, which I'd had to file away in the mystery basket since we hadn't been anywhere near Nima. The other mention hit closer to home, with a grainy surveillance capture of what looked like me and Dan and Santo on a street in Helio. The image had caused my gut to twist with an emotion I wasn't used to feeling and didn't know how to translate into any kind of coherent thought. Was it shock, learning that we had been so easily tagged? Or was it dread, realising that the Coalition was closer on our heels than we thought, and that in short order my handsome mug would be on a wanted poster gracing a wall next to Harlock's.

I tapped the screen and assigned the item to the trash. I was glad mom was dead, so she never got to see what became of her golden-haired boy. Aristotle the pirate, wanted in twenty-seven sectors and soon to have his very own poster on a wall in a transit lounge near you. I took a swig from the ale that sat warming on the table, but had a hard time swallowing around a sudden swell of self-loathing. Poor mom. One son turned pirate, the other… well, the other disappeared over a decade ago on a survey mission out by Mizar. Dead or alive, there were too many light-years in the way for anybody to find out. I'd had just as many light-years to accommodate my brain to the mystery, but now and then it tugged at the old heart muscle, knowing what I know now about all the ways space has of making a man die.

I lifted the glass to my lips, swallowing forcefully around the lump in my throat as I tamped down feelings I'd put way too much time and effort into not feeling. This, I thought, is why a man should never drink alone. It brings up way too many –

I put the glass down carefully on the table and reached for the pistol holstered at my side. The conversation in the bar had hit a sudden lull and there was every possibility the authorities were about to catch up with Mrs Jones's little boy and give his mother something to really be proud of. I glanced sideways to see a group of men poised with their drinks half-way to their mouths as they stared slack-jawed towards the door, and recognised instantly the hallmark symptoms of collective frontal lobe paralysis. I snorted to myself, loosening my grip on the pistol as I followed their gaze to see Kei's bosom silhouetted majestically against the open swing-door. I beckoned her over with a flick of the head, returning my attention to the screen as those patent-leather thigh-highs confidently clickity-clicked their way across the floor.

'And what have you been doing?' she asked as she slid like a cat into the chair opposite.

'Nothin',' I grunted, swiping a hand across the screen to shut it down.

'Nothing?' she repeated, taking the half-drunk glass of ale from the table and grimacing as she downed a swallow. 'At all?'

'Well,' I said, taking the glass out of her hand and draining what was left in one long gulp. 'Apparently we were spotted a week ago out by Nima.'

She rubbed at her lips, attempting to wipe the taste of the ale away. 'But we haven't been anywhere near Nima.'

'Isn't that what I just said?'

She blinked at me. 'In your head, maybe. Although it sounds more like something's crawled up your nose. Give me a look. Show me what's up your nose.'

'Piss off.' I turned my head to stop her trying to look up my nose and banged the empty glass back onto the table. 'Get what you wanted?'

'Mostly,' she said, ignoring the bang and depositing a bag of unmentionables on top of the darkened vidscreen. I glanced at it and grunted. Girl things. I wasn't going to ask and I sincerely hoped she wasn't going to tell.

Her closed fist slid slowly across the table towards me. 'And this,' she said, opening her fingers and depositing a little bundle of shimmer on the table top.

'What's that,' I asked, squinting at it suspiciously.

'A gift,' she said. 'A thank you for all the training. For… all the… you know…' She broke off, shrugging her shoulders.

'No, girl,' I said. 'I don't know.'

A patent-leather toe made sudden contact with my shin. 'Don't be an ass, and don't call me girl. Just look at it.'

I smirked at the fire in her eyes, reached a finger towards the little pile and poked, pulling back as the mound of shimmer resolved itself into a burnished skull on a heavy chain. 'Is that… jewellery?'

She nodded. 'I noticed some of the other guys were, you know, wearing it.'

'You bought jewellery,' I said.

'Uh-huh.' She was positively beaming.

'For me.' I poked at the little pile with my finger.

'For Chrissakes.' She scooped the chain up and proffered it impatiently towards me. 'Aren't you going to put it on?'

I shook my head. 'No.'

'C'moooon,' she said, making the doe-eyes at me. 'Put it on.'

I can never say no to the doe-eyes. 'What the hell,' I shrugged. 'It beats a smiley-face badge any day.' I slipped the chain over my head and adjusted the skull so that it looked right at her. 'What do you think? Does it make me more manly?'

She grinned, and I grinned right back.

'I guess I should say thanks,' I said.

'I guess you should.'

'Thanks.' I fingered the little skull.

'So buy me a drink.'

I signalled to the barkeep and leaned my chair back on two legs as she looked around the room.

'Any word from Yattaran?' she asked.

'Nope.' I let the chair fall forward.

'Shouldn't he have made contact by now?'

'You're taking this promotion way too seriously,' I said. 'Yattaran is sourcing an encryption code from somebody he coyly described as an 'old friend.' I don't think he'll be checking in any time soon.'

'Oh,' she said, the roses in her cheeks flaring into sudden brilliance.

'Exactly,' I said. 'Although I prefer the much more expressive ew.'

Her perfect lips curled a little in disapproval. 'You're disgusting. What about Dan?'

'Old mate Dan did report in. The consumables have been secured and he's waiting for Bob and I to assist with the loading.'

'Bob!' She looked around the bar as she suddenly realised the big guy was nowhere to be seen.

'Relax. He's upstairs. Scratching an itch between the thighs of a not unattractive woman.'

'Ari!' she burst out, clapping her hands over her ears and squeezing her eyes shut.

I leaned in and took hold of both her lovely wrists. 'Darlin',' I said, taking her hands away from her ears and waiting till those baby blues popped open. 'Closing your eyes won't get the image out of your head. Believe me, I've tried.'

'Ew,' she said as the barkeep deposited the drinks on the table. 'You're right. Ew is much more expressive.' She took a sip of the ale and grimaced. 'Tell me again why you make me drink this crap?'

'Because all proper pirates drink ale.'

'All proper pirates drink rum,' she corrected.

'True, but there hasn't been any real rum since Earth was sanctioned a hundred years ago.'

'Earth,' she said, with the faintest of sighs. 'Ari, do you think we'll ever really see it?' Her voice was dreamlike, as though she were asking me if I thought she'd ever see an angel.

'That's the plan.'

'But Earth…'

'Yeah. I know.' Earth was the Holy Grail. Shangri La. A place that existed only in people's imagination. Who knows if it was even really there or not.

She slid a finger through the condensation that had started to collect on her glass. 'What do you think will happen when we get there?'

I took a swig of ale and swallowed, my throat recoiling from the bitterness as it tracked down my throat. I looked at her, felt myself drowning in those big, beautiful eyes as they silently asked a question I didn't want to answer.

'Ari?'

I lowered the glass back to the table top. 'I think,' I said carefully, 'that we're all going to die.'

She stared at me, her mouth twitching just the merest of degrees.

'Think about it.' I leaned across the table to stop her from talking. 'The Earth has been sanctioned – by the Sanction. Nobody's been there for a hundred years. Everything on the inside of Mars' orbit is patrolled. Nothing and nobody gets past Mars. Nothing and nobody gets to Earth. And we're just one ship. Against who the fuck knows how many.'

'But Arcadia…'

'Yeah,' I said. 'Sure. The Arcadia can hold her own. If anybody knows the capability of her firepower it's me. But she's on her own, and she'll be trying to pass through the most heavily guarded sector in the galaxy. Not just the galaxy. The entire fucking universe!'

'But Ari – '

'And then,' I said, cutting her off because I was on a roll and I didn't want to listen, 'what if we make it to Earth? What if we make it through the Coalition's vanguard? We somehow get the deployment module down to the surface – through what I can only assume will be closely guarded airspace – and deploy the oscillator?'

'Ari – '

'And then what happens? Have you thought about it, Kei? Have you really thought about it?'

If she was pissed at me, she held it in magnificently. In fact the only thing I sensed in her was disappointment, because I was crushing her dream. Crushing everybody's dream.

'I don't need to think about it,' she said, her fingers tight around the glass. 'I trust the Captain.'

'I know.' I fingered the skull she'd given me, felt the metal growing warm beneath my fingers. 'Just… don't mistake love for trust.'

'What's that supposed to mean?'

'Don't worry Kei, you're not alone. There isn't a one amongst us who doesn't love the unreachable bastard. But,' I leaned in close and looked into her eyes, 'love does not equate to trust. The two are not mutually inclusive.'

'Alright you miserable bastards,' Yattaran's voice boomed out loud across the bridge, 'oscillator 99 is waiting out there with Tokarga's name on it. Prepare for in-skip – '

'Wait.'

Yattaran paused, mouth open, shot a backwards glance at Harlock and waited quietly for the rest.

The captain's voice emerged from out of shadow. 'We need one more man.'

Yattaran sucked his bottom lip into his mouth and turned to face the captain. 'More crew?'

Harlock's fingers curled around the carved skulls that punctuated the arms of the chair. 'Just one.'

Yattaran glanced at where I stood at Kei's station and shot another look back at the captain. 'Understood,' he said, though it was clear that he didn't from the twin patches of red that had risen into the meat of his cheeks. 'Destination?'

The captain's head fell to one side and it looked like he was sleeping. Dreaming.

'Heavy Meldar,' he said.

Yattaran's eyes met mine, his displeasure writ large on his face. He nodded at me. You heard him.

'Aye,' I barked in response, though I was just as confused as he was. 'Heavy Meldar. Coordinates locked in.' I glanced uneasily at Yattaran as he resumed his bellowing.

'Prepare for In-skip. Engage dark matter engines.'

There was a chorus of ayes from the lower command, and I glanced back at the dark matter generator that filled the space behind the captain's chair. Miime's fingers slid over the control orb as the machinery powered up, the pressure in the air increasing as the generator prepared to unleash its power. In the deep of his chair Harlock stirred and I watched, not for the first time, as the dark matter worked soft tendrils across his skin.

There was no sign of Coalition presence as we pierced the atmosphere of Heavy Meldar, Arcadia's engines raising the dust from the streets and shaking the shingles from the roofs as we overshot the miserable settlements scattered haphazardly in the planet's ever-present dirt. We weren't exactly operating on stealth mode, not with all the commotion of atmospheric penetration over a resident population – not that we were ever concerned with standard planetary entry procedure. To complete the grand entry, a plume of dark matter trailed in billows behind us and was left hanging in the moistureless air – a big, black finger following in our wake and pointing all the way to the absurdly christened Gun Frontier Mountain. I stared down at the summit as it passed beneath the forward viewscreen – one of a series of massifs formed during Meldar's last volcanic hurrah, before the planet subsided into the same kind of apathy that infected its dead-end population.

I reached an arm out, clamped my fingers around the back of Eddie's neck and hauled him over to my station.

'Kid,' I said, stabbing a finger towards the scanner array, 'keep your eyes on this screen and don't look away for a second. Not one second, y'hear? Don't even blink. You see anything bigger than a bicycle coming towards us on this screen and I want to hear about it.'

He nodded mutely, shrugging out from under my grip as I turned to face the command.

'Well,' I said to Yattaran, 'the fire has well and truly been lit on the mountain. Let's see what rats crawl out of their holes this time.'

He licked his lips and grinned wetly at me. I didn't agree with the new recruitment process, but Yattaran enjoyed it thoroughly, declaring that it deterred the greedy and the lazy, and let's not forget the mercenary. But I knew it was really so the little prick had a chance to make men tremble in their boots the way men must once have made him tremble in his own.

I glanced at where the captain sat, lost in shadow. Harlock didn't care either way. His end-game was closing in, the ultimate goal that he always hinted at but never quite declared.

Four hopefuls had hauled their way to the top of the mountain, only four, and I could just imagine what must have been running through their minds when they heaved themselves panting onto the summit of the mountain and were greeted by Arcadia's crew in full battle armour, the faceless masks leering and laughing as the crew poked and prodded and hauled the four roughly aboard Arcadia's cargo bay.

I watched from the rear of the bay as our four potentials were lined up at gunpoint along the edge of the cargo ramp, grinning to myself as they one-by-one realised Arcadia had shifted position and they discovered the couple of kilometres of empty air that stretched out beneath their feet. It was hard to not feel pity for the poor stupid bastards, their lungs still heaving from the effort of the climb and their faces pinched with the cold of the mountain and something, maybe, that approached disillusionment and fear. Unfortunately for our hopefuls, fear was what we were aiming for. The disillusionment was simply an unexpected by-product.

I swaggered my way across the deck, repeater at the ready as I leaned in close to their faces, inspecting each potential recruit and not particularly liking any of what I saw.

'Don't forget to ask if any of 'em can cook,' I said through the closed comms, stopping at the end of the line to stare into the quiet face of a kid who for some reason did not seem to be feeling the fear. I pushed my helmeted head close to his nose to try and upset his balance, but he swayed back only marginally, his pale eyes staring at the faceplate of my armour curiously. Occasionally his gaze darted beyond me, focussing on random points around the bay as if he was looking for something. Or someone. I studied him suspiciously as I fought down an urge to push him all the way off the edge of the ramp.

'If you've got a problem with the food,' Yattaran retorted as the potentials were relieved of their arms, the weapons dropped spinning out into the air, 'learn to cook yourself.'

'Do it, Ari,' Santo cut in. 'With that pretty face you'd make me the perfect wife.'

'Prettiest face on the ship,' I agreed, turning away from the inquisitive eyes of the kid and still struggling with the overwhelming urge to send him hurtling into space.

'Which makes me what?' Kei said. She was stationed to the rear, to the left of the big-arse chair Yattaran had positioned ceremonially in the centre of the deck and ostentatiously lowered himself into. Bob had stationed himself solidly to the right, a cannon even more big-arse than Yattaran's chair perched nonchalantly on his shoulder. Personally, I thought the cannon was overdoing it.

'Sorry darlin',' I grinned to myself, ' but you can't fight the laws of nature. Not my fault I've got the most kissable mug in the sector.'

A chorus of retching sounded across the channel, along with the high tinkle of Kei, laughing.

'Get off the damn comms!' Yattaran barked over the snorts and sniggers.

'Aye sir,' I replied, sarcastic emphasis on the sir. 'Just don't forget to ask if any of 'em can cook. If I have to swallow one more mouthful of Santo's beans – '

'That's not all you'll be swallowing,' Santo chimed in, 'once I make you my bitch.'

'Oh yeah?' I said.

'Oh yeah,' Santo said.

'Oh for fuck's sake,' Yattaran groaned over an even louder round of guffaws.

'We heard you're recruiting,' one of the four hopefuls suddenly called out. 'Take us with you!'

That shut us all up. I turned again to the potentials, focused my gaze on the one who had spoken up so presumptively. He was your average Meldar grifter, struggle etched hard on his face along with an unappetising element of ego and arrogance. I didn't like the look of him. And I didn't like the annoying bandanna that was tied around his annoying head.

If I had to choose, Tubby was my pick. The expression of befuddled innocence that was plastered across his chubby face indicated an eagerness to please – he'd be easy to order around, and he looked like he definitely knew his way around a kitchen. He perched next to Bandanna, swaying in the breeze as the layer of flab around his middle drifted according to its own unseen tide.

But it didn't matter what I thought. Or what I wanted. The outcome all depended on the Answer.

Yattaran chuckled to himself inside his armour and leaned pompously forward in his chair to contemplate the four hopefuls that balanced precariously on the tongues of the ramp's locking mechanism, their hands folded atop their heads and only the soles of their boots keeping them from falling into the void.

'We only need one,' he announced, his voice booming from the armour's speaker and modulated down a range. The green dial of his faceplate surveyed the potentials with cool and menacing purpose as he prepared to ask the Question, and then turned decisively to Bandanna.

'Answer me,' Yattaran said. 'For what reason do you want to board this ship?'

It was a ludicrous sight. Bandanna, undoubtedly the scourge of the streets of Heavy Meldar, with his hands clasped behind his head and the hairs of his armpits waving in the wind as he tried to pull the Answer to the Question out of the myriad responses that must have been flooding through his brain.

Tubby shot him a look, a patent 'what the fuck are we doing here?', and Bandanna glanced back at him, wavered on his feet, and pulled the wrong answer out of his head.

'Fame!' he said.

Yattaran's contented sigh filtered through the helmet comms. He raised a hand and gave the signal, and I could almost hear the smile spread across his face as Bandanna's perch fell away and the first potential dropped screaming into space. Tubby peered over the edge to watch his friend go, the motion tilting him off-balance so that he swayed first one way and then the other as he tried to regain his balance. I held my breath with something that I'm ashamed to admit was anticipation, fully expecting him to fall headlong into space. But a moment or two of wavering and finally he was secure again on his perch and Yattaran had left his chair and was up close and in his face.

'Why do you want to board this ship?'

Tubby smiled, ducked his head apologetically and said the best most stupid thing he could possibly think of. 'Money?'

This time it was me who sighed. In disappointment. Yattaran gave the signal and I watched as my hopes dropped flailing away.

It was clear by now that the next candidate down the line, the one I'd mentally christened the Weasel, had crapped his pants, and it was no surprise that no Answer was forthcoming. But I don't think any of us expected the Weasel to be upended by his own terror and topple screaming over the edge before the Question could even be asked. His thin, drawn-out wail was audible for six long seconds before it ended as abruptly as it began.

A shadow moved on the gantry behind me and I glanced back briefly – Harlock – but my attention was now all for the kid. For the first time he looked concerned, his gaze darting around at the faceless armoured suits that were crowded around him. He looked at Yattaran, and then past him, the pale eyes fixing intently on Harlock where he watched, silent, from the upper deck. And then Yattaran was in the kid's face, up close, and waiting for the Answer.

The kid faltered, hesitated just one second too long, and Yattaran had lost his patience three recruits ago. Yattaran raised an arm into the air and sliced it ceremoniously to the side. There was a glimpse of the kid's pale face in the split second that realisation hit, and then his voice rang out, loud and clear and freezing us all in our tracks.

'Freedom!'

Too late. The deck fell abruptly out from beneath him, his feet suspended in space and his hands flailing hopelessly for a grasp on thin air.

The kid screamed. A guttural wail that dopplered away at the same speed as his flailing hands disappeared over the lip of the ramp, followed by an unexpected blur of movement on the deck.

Kei darted suddenly forward, one hand reaching over the edge and preventing the kid from disappearing completely into the void. I felt like kicking her.

'Name?' she demanded as the kid hung in the air, suspended in her grip with his feet swaying precariously in the wind.

'Yama,' he said.

She heaved, tossing him bodily back into the cargo hold. A whoof of air exploded from his lungs as he slammed onto the deck, the momentum sprawling him winded at our feet.

Kei turned, retracting her helmet to let her hair dance in the wind. 'Don't forget what you said,' she told him as he sprawled there blinking. 'It's the standard of this ship.'

Yattaran muttered a curse beneath his breath as his own helmet retracted. 'You look after him,' he said to Kei, loud enough for the kid to hear.

'Why?' she challenged, pelvis arching forward in that way she had of signalling trouble.

'You saved him,' Yattaran gruffed,'you take the responsibility.'

He was right. Kei had made the choice, so technically the kid was her problem. She knew the rules. But she argued, as she always does, while the kid crawled stiff to his knees and bay door hissed closed on its hydraulics and Yattaran absolved himself of any responsibility by sauntering casually away. I followed in his wake because, like Yattaran had just said, the kid was Kei's problem. But Harlock still watched from the upper deck, with more interest than I'd seen him take in anything for more time than I cared to remember.

I glanced back. The kid was still struggling to his feet, the process made all the more difficult by Kei's impatient prodding at his back, and his legs still shaking from having dangled weightless in mid-air. He teetered off-kilter, looked up, and his eyes locked with the captain's.

I watched as recognition passed across the kid's face, his skin paling a shade just before his lips tightened in determination, and I understood in that moment that he wasn't going to just be Kei's problem.

He was going to be everybody's problem.

A thousand thanks go to Helen Fayle, for keeping the faith and for providing the name of Ali (among other things) from the 2013 movie production notes. Ali is the chunky blond-haired crewman in the CGI movie who gets not enough screen time but just enough action to get the imagination going. And while 'Ali' is a perfectly serviceable name for the handsome SOB, for the purposes of this story I decided he might wear Ari/Aristotle better…