Millennium Thieves' Battleship: Blackstar 7
In an attempt to reduce the strain on the life support, Marin had ordered all non-essential crew to the bridge, which was now, outside of engineering and the kitchen, the only pressurised part of the ship. Anyone needing to go anywhere other than the nearest head had to grab a rebreather.
'That joke about string and tin cans isn't looking so funny anymore,' he said as an aside to his younger brother a few hours in. He tried to resist the temptation to scratch at the wound under a bandage in his left leg. Their ship's doctor tended to get a little sniffy about tearing out his stitches, but he was starting to feel it would be worth it. 'Any news from Tanuki on the ETA for getting the main engine back online?'
'Another hour at least,' Blaze replied quietly. 'Then we have to hope we can spin it back up before the circling shark out there spots us. That's the good news.'
'The bad?'
'There's no way in hell we can get weapons back up and running. It's either life support or cannon. We don't get to have both.'
'They're just sitting there as well,' Ishikura pointed out, turning round in his chair. In the cold of the bridge his breath hung in the air. 'Presumably making repairs. Why don't we take the fight to them?'
'In case you hadn't noticed,' Marin replied a little snippily, 'their guns seem to be working just fine. They just don't have a target - until we start moving…'
'We can drop away from the ship in one of the shuttles,' Ishikura continued excitedly. 'I've been thinking about it - the manoeuvring thrusters are just gas. If we push away from the hangar hard enough we won't affect the ship enough, but the shuttle's smaller mass means we could get some serious thrust before we need to engage its drive. They might not even notice it until we're within their safety margins… A couple of bombs placed just in the right places…'
'He has a point,' Blaze interjected before his brother could come up with all the ways this was a bad plan. 'If we can get on board, get a look at the ship and its systems, figure out how it works with apparently no crew…?'
'I've been thinking about that as well,' Ishikura added. He blushed when both brothers stared hard at him. 'Well there's not much else to do when nothing's working,' he said, a little defensively. He pointed at his console where the lights remained stubbornly dim. 'Wasn't there some chatter recently about the expansion of the mechanisation programme on Lar Metal? I mean… the planet's climate's just getting worse, and it isn't as though there's a lot of choice of planets to move an entire population to that are any better.'
'That's a civilian plan,' Rai said. The little man leaned back in his chair, arms behind his head. 'Isn't it?' he added, looking from one brother to the other, a look of apprehension spreading across his broad features.
'There have been some rumours that mechanisation was spreading to the military,' Blaze told him slowly. 'But mostly the programme was aimed at civilians - at least publicly…' He stared at the image of the ship and frowned.
'Assuming the ship's even from Lar Metal,' Marin said. 'We're a long way from home…'
'Except it does look a little like the design of the Empress Wu class, at least from this angle.' Blaze got to his feet with a bounce and grabbed his gun belt from where it hung from the back of his chair. 'Bugger this for a lark. Aniki - I'm going over for a look, and Ishikura? Put a small team together. We might as well do some damage whilst we're over there…'
'So I get to stay here and wait?' Marin pulled a face. 'Next time you can take the piece of shrapnel to the leg…But little brother…'
'Yes?' Blaze paused in the act of placing a rebreather helmet on his head.
'Watch your back.'
'Always.'
Once in the corridor on the way to the hangar, Ishikura trotted to keep pace with his taller and longer-legged commander. 'If it is crewed by cyborgs, that would explain the lack of life readings, wouldn't it?' he asked, slightly breathless from the exertion.
'Check your flow,' Blaze advised him. 'It could. But the Queen only approved the plan for civilians - and only on a voluntary basis - because of concerns over the effects of mechanisation. You don't want - and I quote my mother here - "soulless monsters running your military…" Except where would that leave "Shingami" Geran or (and he could never get his father's description of his uptight uncle out of his head here…) "The Platinum Pated Prick"… He kept that thought to himself, but allowed himself a somewhat grim smirk.
'You don't approve of the programme?' the younger man asked.
Blaze slowed his pace, shortening his stride. 'Not really, no. None of us do. My aunt… she cares deeply for her people, I don't doubt that for a moment. She always has. But the idea that humanity can overcome the problems we face out here by shucking off our bodies and replacing them with tech? I don't buy it.'
'You don't want to live forever? I heard some of the nanotech bodies are are self-repairing and indistinguishable from the real thing…'
'And realistically, how many people can afford them?' Blaze asked softly. 'Most of the bodies are low end, basic models. No-one knows how long they'll last. How often they'll need repairing. And from what reports I've been seeing, it takes a toll on the downloaded minds. The human brain… the mind… we evolved to belong in our bodies, Ishikura. Flesh and blood, awash with proteins and hormones and all the messy things that make us who we are. Our instincts…our emotions… everything that drives us. The idea of some post-human singularity has been around for a long time - it's never come to anything in close to a thousand years. Ever think there might be a reason for that?'
'The soul-ring tech's new,' Ishikura pointed out, just as they reached the hangar doors. 'Maybe they've finally cracked it?'
'Show me a soul and where it resides,' Blaze replied bluntly, 'and I'll give it some more thought.' He glanced over at his crewman and wondered idly when he'd started to feel so old.. Ishikura was only a few months younger than his own twenty-four, but there were days - like now - he could mistake the youth for being several years younger. But then, Ishikura hailed from one of the worlds that had largely escaped the land-grab by the old queen, and hadn't grown up always looking over one shoulder for the next assassin trying to wipe out the concrete evidence of a princess's heinous crime…
Musings on the metaphysical however he had to put to one side for now, as they approached the small shuttlecraft selected to take them across to check out the mysterious battleship. The small crew selected to accompany him were already inside and belted in, which just left himself and Ishikura to take the pilot and co-pilot seats and get the mission underway.
He hoped no-one saw him cross his fingers as he gave the instruction to launch.
The closer they drew to the stationary ship, the less Blaze liked it. Something about the thing gnawed at his soul, the way it just floated there, impassive, uncaring. There was of course an argument to be made that any massive hunk of machinery gave off a similar vibe, but something about this ship just ran icy cold fingers across his sensibilities. Most of the time, a ship was just a ship. But this… He shivered, and it earned him a concerned glance from his co-pilot, which he shrugged off as nonchalantly as he could, but from Ishikura's answering snort, he wasn't fooling anyone.
'It's just not… right… is it?' Ishikura whispered. Not, Blaze sensed, from a desire not to be overheard - or at least, not by the two men and three women sitting behind them. But he understood the sentiment. Even though the ship appeared to be ignoring him he felt as though something was watching them, listening, waiting. He'd spent time - they both had, he and Marin - on board Hannibal's decidedly freaky little ship, with its uncanny AI, and that felt nothing like this.
The Miranda felt like a friend, if a decidedly odd one. Or a relationship conducted long distance over warp, never meeting in person. The sense he had from this ship was one of utter malevolence. And for something so new - up close now as they sailed close to the hull, looking for a boarding hatch, he could still see the marks where the machining of the plates was still visible - this felt old…
'Oh for fuck's sake,' he muttered. 'Get a grip, it's just a ship…'
'Sir?'
He winced. 'Sorry, Ishikura. That one was for me, not you.' Changes in the passive scan of the ship's hull caught his eye and he gently guided the shuttle to a slow stop, then backed her up slowly until they were level with a hatch. 'Well… there's the door. Once we make a seal the clang alone could alert whatever's on board. People - helmets locked, guns ready. Aria, Eloise - take point. Nohara, Baptiste - take over in the cockpit. Ishikura, with me. Amaryllis, take the rear.'
'How come we get the dangerous jobs?' Eloise - one of Hannibal's numerous and apparently endless number of (great-something) grand-daughters asked him with a laugh. Her sister, Amaryllis, hauled her out of range as she leaned in uncomfortably close to his left ear, just enough that her breath brushed past it and across his neck suggestively.
'Sorry sir,' Ryl said, a twinkle in her own eyes. 'Honestly, Ellie - how many times do you need telling not to sexually harass the commanders?'
'But he's so cute…' Eloise pouted at her sister, who just rolled her eyes and thumbed the control for the helmet, cutting the young woman off short before she could do more than give a muffled protest before the comms kicked in. Blaze tried not to look flustered but the once over Ryl was giving him was no less flirtatious than the teasing her sister doled out.
'Tough being you…' Ishikura murmured under his breath. Blaze decided to ignore that.
'Just get your heads in the game, people,' he chided gently. The quiet rebuke was a trick he'd picked up from both his parents and Hannibal over the years, and in his reckoning it worked a lot more effectively than Marin's take-names-and-kick-ass approach. You got them mixed up at some point, didn't you? Hannibal had opined with considerable amusement to Selen when they were ten and nine respectively. The one you named for fire has hidden depths and the one named for water's the firebrand… Their Lar Metallian names "Karyu" and "Kairyu" meant "Firedragon" and "Seadragon" respectively so he had a point… though at eighteen and seventeen they'd decided less flamboyant names were more appropriate in their chosen careers. Inwardly he sighed as he unholstered his pistol. He'd give his right arm to have either of his parents or the Old Man with them right now… Whilst they'd relished the opportunity to take this mission on their own, the freedom was starting to look a lot less attractive… 'Crank it open,' he said out loud, and waited for the airlock to iris open, pressing back against the wall of the boarding tube as hard as he could, and wishing not for the first time that there was more cover to be had in the damn thing…
'No air. Minimal heating,' Ishikura said over the comms as they entered the empty corridor beyond the airlock. 'Makes sense I guess - you don't want any delicate mechanics freezing up.'
'No living crew then,' Eloise said. She shivered. 'Anyone else got goosebumps?'
'Could just be robots under the control of an AI main computer,' Amaryllis said quietly, sounding as though she didn't believe it for a moment. Blaze felt the disorientating cold chill that was generally described as someone walking over your grave. In his earpiece Marin's reply was far pithier than anything he was thinking. 'Got to love an optimist,' his brother murmured on his private channel.
'Robots would be bad enough,' Blaze pointed out over the same channel as they made their way as stealthily as you could up a metal corridor whilst wearing magnetic boots. 'Remember those things from Shaitan a couple of years ago?'
'Those weren't robots, according to Hannibal,' Marin pointed out. Brains in jars… right. So things could get even squickier… Blaze pulled a face behind the concealing faceplate of his helmet. Oh… sod this for a lark. 'We might as well just pick the pace up, people - one soft clank each from five people adds up to a lot of noise, so who are we kidding?'
'Maybe we should have just done this the way Captain Harlock does,' Ishikura replied. 'It'd take the fight out of most enemies - plus it's just sooo cool…'
'We are not slamming our ship into the hull just because you think it looks cool,' Blaze told him bluntly. 'The Blackstars are not self repairing, unlike that eldritch monstrosity, and neither are we.'
'He doesn't ram them head-on, just kind of just rips them open along the side like a can opener…' Marin added on the personal channel. 'Or uses the forward batteries to soften them up a bit first…'
'Are you fanboying again?' Blaze twitted his brother over their private line.
'Sod off, Kar. I'm not the one who tripped over an old curtain he was using as a cloak when he was seven…'
Blaze grinned at the use of his old pet name. His brother tended to slip when rattled, and their new nommes de guerre - suggested by Hannibal once they'd joined the Thieves officially - still rubbed like new boots, even after six years. 'Can't deny though that ship would come in mighty handy in our line of work,' he replied. 'Can we?' His grin grew. 'Ever noticed Hannibal's response when it's suggested that someone ask Harlock if he wants to join up?'
'I'm never losing the mental image when he suggested that working with the man would be akin to standing outside on dusty Dis with your cock out…' Marin drawled back. 'A simple "hell no!" would have sufficed.'
Closer to hand, Ishikura was speaking. 'Anyone else getting totally creeped out by this?'
'You've been on automated ships before,' Aria pointed out. She shivered, and not, Blaze suspected, because of the chill from the ambient temperature. 'But there's a bad vibe about this ship, and no mistake.'
'I've got a signal from the next compartment,' said Amaryllis. 'Biological, but no life signs.'
'Well that can't be good…' Ishikura said. 'Commander?'
'Open the door but stand well clear,' Blaze advised them. 'No life signs does not necessarily mean no surprises.'
Eloise thumbed the door control, and they waited - Amaryllis and Aria to one side with Blaze, Ishikura the other with Eloise - for the door to iris open. When nothing came out weapons blazing, Blazing risked a quick look around the doorway. 'No cameras,' he said quietly. 'No guards, human or otherwise. But I don't think they expected anyone to escape…' When the other three crowded him to take a look he raised a hand. 'This is bad, people. Take a deep breath, but I'll blame no-one for freaking out.' He had to steel himself to walk through the door, having seen what was in the room. Behind him he heard the gasps and cries of his comrades as they saw what he'd seen.
Bodies. Stacked in piles like so much cordwood - in fact, on closer inspection, they had been bundled together, as though they'd been sorted according to length, thickness and weight on an assembly line. Here a bundle of small children. There a mix of young men and women.
Young and old. Male, female, everything in between. Dark skinned, light skinned. Thin. Fat. The bodies were chilled, preserved by the frigid temperature (and now he understood why the ship had been kept so cold…). The stack nearest to him contained at least a dozen young women stripped naked, as all seemed to be, stiff and frozen.
'What in the name of Lar is this?' Ishiura whispered. 'There must be thousands of people in here…'
'I make another three compartments on this ship of the same size,' Eloise said faintly. 'I don't understand…'
'Aniki - are you seeing this?' Blaze asked. He moved around the open floor slowly, letting his helmet cam take it in.
'Seeing yes. Believing… Kar - we knew the mechanisation process was expanding… but this? It's just… There wouldn't be that many people left on Lar Metal if this and the other ships were all full… where have they come from?'
Blaze knelt next to one smaller bundle. These were all children, as were the ones above it Stack in descending size, the topmost layer little more than five-year-olds. 'The process doesn't work on anyone under ten,' he said quietly. 'So why the hell are there so many small children here?' He touched the frozen face of a little dark haired girl. 'It doesn't make sense…' He brushed the frozen strands of her hair back from her temple. 'No signs of the marks from the soul-ring machinery… but there's severe bruising to the base of the skull. Eloise, Aria, help me take a closer look at some of the bodies, would you? I want to check something. Ryl - Ishikura -stand guard.'
'There's been no alarm sounded,' Ishikura pointed out. 'And why patrol a ship full of corpses?'
'We don't call out any alerts if boarded either,' Blaze pointed out. 'Hannibal's long standing orders - why give your opponent any help? And because Promethium has never been stupid, and it's always possible someone could happen upon these ships, just as we've done…' He moved from stack to stack, checking the bodies for the tell-tale marks left by the machines which performed the somewhat uncanny task of transferring someone's consciousness into a mechanical body. 'Ellie?'
'Same,' she said quietly, standing up from where she'd been looking at the body of an old man. 'Even in this small sample that we can get at, none of these bodies went through the download process. The damage is to the base of the skull, and some of them have injuries that suggest they went down fighting. What the hell is this? These aren't the discards from the soul rings…'
'We're a long way out from Lar Metal as well,' Blaze pointed out. 'I want to get into this ship's flight log. Mal - stand by. I'm going to get Ellie to record what we've got here. Ryl, Aria - stay with her, check more of the compartments out, then head back to the ship. Ishikura - with me. I'll need your skills on the flight deck.' He took off at a brisk pace, not waiting for the younger man to catch up.
Millennial Thieves Admiral-class battleship "Lady Miranda"
Fast, she certainly was, but even the Miranda needed time to reach the last known location of the Blackstars, so they were still en route when Hannibal was awakened by the ship's AI a week out of their last port.
Admiral… I've got a call coming in over the warp comms
He was about to ask her to patch it through when his sleep-addled brain caught up with his ears. 'Are we still in Imaginary Number space?'
Yes.
He muttered a curse under his breath. 'Only four other ships had that capability… I'm guessing this isn't One, Two or Three?' He rummaged in his bedside drawer for a voice modulator. 'Patch it through to here, but leave the video off'
The young man who appeared in the middle of his room via holocam still looked a lot more the worse for wear than he had only a few weeks ago on MX-201. His handsome face was marred by that short blaster scar which ran from the middle of his left cheek, over his nose and under the black leather patch which covered his right eye. More glad than ever that he'd taken the precaution of leaving the cameras off, and hoping the modulator at his throat would mask his shock, he addressed the caller: 'Captain… Harlock, I presume?'
'Well it's starting to look that way.' The weary exasperation almost made Hannibal laugh. Yeah… dumped you in it, did he? he asked mentally. He was good at that…
'I'd heard rumours. But how did you get this frequency, Captain? It's only known to my people…'
'Yeah… about that.' He gestured to someone offscreen, and Selen and Zero sidled into view, both looking like death warmed over. 'I'll let them tell it. Don't worry - I don't listen in.' He strolled out of the camera view, not, Hannibal noticed, without some difficulty. The last couple of weeks had obviously been tough on the kid…
He buried the sympathy. And the instinct to reach out. Now was probably not the best time to swoop in and confess the whole sorry story. He turned his attention to Selen and Zero. 'You two look like you've been through the wringer. I was getting worried when you didn't check in after your visit home. What happened?'
'Not worried enough to hang around?' Zero asked. 'Do you have any idea how far out you are? I'm amazed the Arcadia could get through - we were about to tell Harlock to give up and just call Carmilla…'
'Blaze and Marin's team haven't been in touch. I've got a Blackstar squadron on my tail heading for their last known location. The last message we had said they'd encountered some strange ships that appeared to be remote-operated…' He couldn't miss the look that went between Selen and Zero. 'Oh. Do I need to sit down?'
'It might help,' Selen drawled. 'And why are you using that modulator?'
'Eavesdroppers,' he replied evenly as he sat back down on the edge of his bed, again glad he'd left the cameras off. No-one needed the sight of him in his boxers, after all…
'I'm hardly going to be telling you anything Harlock doesn't already know,' Selen pointed out.
Harlock… he winced. Hearing someone address the kid by his brother's chosen cognomen was like a knife to the heart. Too soon. Too bloody soon… 'It's more that my face and voiceprint might be on file in the ship's database. Let's just leave it there, shall we? Now - talk to me, people.'
One thing he could rely on these two for, after so many years, was they'd mastered the art of the brief, to-the-point mission summary.
And what they had to tell him made sense of a few rumours he'd heard over the last ten years or so. 'I kept hearing about refugee ships,' he said quietly. 'But that seemed odd - even if you allow for operators like Doppler Corp or the sick bastards who space their passengers as soon as they're clear of the regular shipping lanes… but how the hell did Yayoi start rolling out the mechanisation on such a scale? Even on Lar Metal it wasn't that extensive..'
'I suspect a base out in the darker regions near the Andromedan Rim,' Zero said. 'The factory on Lar Metal is huge, but there's no way a body dump of the size we saw could have come from there - our people would have noticed the traffic. That valley was full, Hannibal - hundreds of thousands of bodies. And a lot of them very young - too young for the soul ring tech. Harlock and I have a plan to get inside the Lar Metal plant and find out what's happening that end, but we really need you to try and make sense of what's going on out here.'
'Harlock? Are you sure that young man's up to it?' Hannibal had come to a few conclusions about this young addition to the family tree several months ago, but it never hurt to have a second, unbiased opinion.
'He's only about our sons' age, but there's a quiet strength about him,' Selen replied for them both. 'I gather he's got the background in covert ops, and there's something about him that makes you want to trust him. I'm not sure he knows yet who he is - but I'm pretty sure he knows the kind of man he wants to be, if that makes sense?'
'The crew's still shaky,' Zero added, 'After what went down on Earth, and I gather they are none too happy about some shit the previous captain pulled, but he's winning them over. And even some of his toughest nuts are horrified by what they saw on Shadow. So many of those bodies were children, Hannibal - far too many. Yayoi - Promethium - has crossed a line here. I'd normally wait for backup from our own teams, but Harlock's here, the Arcadia's even better armed than the Miranda, and he wants to help. I think he feels he has to do something - with himself… that ship… Why, I'm not too sure. But I don't trust Leopard, Ban's missing, Geran's strutting around with that masked prick Hagan and whispering in Promethium's ears, and I'm worried about the girls - if Promethium wants to ramp up her mechanisation of Lar Metal, the twins are of age to be mechanised. I don't think I can wait.'
When he hesitated, Selen spoke up. 'I think we've got this end, Hannibal - go get my boys. If they've stumbled onto another part of this operation, they need you more than we do.'
He was also past the point of no return for a quick turn-around to head back to Lar Metal in Zero's suggested timeframe - and realistically - what did he expect to do if he did so? Reveal who he was to Yama, and try not to strangle that treacherous little Nibelung who'd allowed herself to be talked into Harlock's reckless attempt to protect Earth? Numbers wouldn't help Zero get in and out of that facility, and the kid did have the training. Out loud he simply said: 'Take care - both of you. I mean it.'
'You too, Boss,' Zero replied. Selen as ever was more gracious.
'Stay safe, Hannibal. Don't let my boys drag you into too much trouble.'
He laughed. 'Oh - I've handled far worse than that pair in my time. They've got level heads, the pair of them - I don't think we'll come up against anything we can't handle…'
He could almost hear his brother's derisive snort at that one, as though the lanky bastard was standing over his shoulder and muttering something about tempting fate…
