Millennial Thieves Battleship Miranda

He'd never seen the bridge before. On his infrequent sorties aboard it had been either directly to the war room, or the mess. Although twelve years ago he and his brother had sneaked a quick look at the Miranda's computer room, escaping unseen (they'd hoped!) before being discovered. The bridge was larger than he'd expected, given the external dimensions of the Miranda, which was barely two hundred and fifty metres long. He knew very little about her class - The Admiral class battleships had been obsolete even before the Homecoming War, to the best of his knowledge. But it was easy to see where that space went - most of the floor between the front bank of consoles under the main viewscreen and the captain's chair at the back was taken up by a second battle-screen. A glance upwards at the ceiling showed the complex array of holographic projectors which would display the 3-d real-time images if required. He whistled through his teeth. 'Nice… they don't put those in anymore…'

'Reliance on hard data is one thing, but the mark one human eyeball has its uses. Stand at the back, and don't touch anything.'

Blaze ostentatiously placed his hands behind his back and grinned at the Millennial Thieves' leader-emeritus as he took his seat. 'Wasn't think of it, sir.'

'Hmmmph.' But Hannibal carried on calmly giving orders to his crew and ignored him, so after an eye-rolling exchange with the Miranda's XO - one of his father's half-brothers, and the less stuck up one thankfully - took the time to take a look around as the crew prepared to destroy the transport visible on the main viewscreen with extreme prejudice. The destructive effectiveness of the Miranda's main guns raised an eyebrow, but he filed that away for the future. His attention was caught by an engraved plaque inside an otherwise empty frame on the wall behind the captain's chair. "Arcadia Engineering, Grape Valley, Titan 25/01/2868."... He glanced back at the man in the captain's chair, and frowned slightly.

'That's when it was re-commissioned, if you were wondering.'

'Are you old enough to remember that?' The words slipped out of his mouth before he engaged his brain, and occasioned a sharp laugh from his uncle over at the XO's seat, which was quickly converted into a cough.

'Farah - perhaps you should take something for that nasty cough.' Hannibal moved to stand next to Blaze, and placed a hand on Blaze's shoulder. 'I'll hold you to your word, Karyu.'

'I'll stand by it, you know that. But…'

'Maybe I should have added "no questions…"'

'Except you didn't,' Blaze replied dryly. 'I just have one then, for now - Arcadia Engineering?'

Hannibal's lips twitched slightly into a quirky smile. 'They came from the same shipyard, yes,' was all Hannibal replied. 'Now let's get you back to your own ship. I'm sure your brother wants you back in one piece and I'm certainly happy I don't have to tell your parents I managed to lose the pair of you. I'm quite certain your mother would find ways to make whatever was left of my life once she was done with me particularly unbearable…'

Blaze laughed. 'You she adores. I think she'd forgive anything.'

Hannibal didn't even smile at that. 'Some things are unforgivable,' he said quietly. 'Come. I'll escort you and your crewman back to the Blackstar, then I can get you and your brother up to date…'


Blackstar Seven

'I should have known there was a reason I found Blaze up to his arse in trouble rather than you,' Hannibal said as he watched Marin limp to a chair in their war-room. 'You took quite a mauling on this run - if I'd realised how bad things have gotten out here and back on Lar Metal I'd have suggested you took a larger fleet. My intelligence team dropped the ball and I'm still looking into what happened there…'

'What happened,' Marin drawled as he eased himself into a seat, waving off his brother's offer of help, 'is that we forgot Aunt Yayoi is well aware of how we operate and seems to have planned accordingly. Plus I'll take any bet you care to make that there needs to be a serious weeding out of royal loyalists in our ranks - Twenty five years ago she was on our side, but something's gone horribly wrong in the palace…'

'Your parents barely escaped with their lives…' Hannibal held up a hand to forestall the panicked questions - 'they're alive and well, and when I spoke to them had a plan to find out what's happening back home. They've also managed to find some unlooked for help, and they're in good company. I suggest you look over what they've sent at leisure - the body dump your parents found on Shadow tallies with your own findings out here. There are far too many bodies - well in excess of the numbers of mechanised men - and far too many below the minimum age for mechanisation. They're doing something with the surplus, and I'm dreading the answer to this one.'

'Parts,' Blaze said coldly. He looked from his commander to his brother and back. 'Alina - the young woman who'd been press-ganged into the ship's servers - said they were telling people they could have free machine bodies. What they haven't been telling them is what those bodies are. That poor girl only wanted a better life and all I could offer was oblivion.'

'Weapons, ships…' Hannibal mused. He sighed. 'I'm getting too old for this.'

Blaze shook his head. 'For some, maybe. For most I think those parts are far less mobile, and amount to little more than nuts and bolts. But for what kind of machine, I've no idea. And that woman - creature - who almost killed Ishikura and me back there - I've no idea what that was…' He stared at Hannibal. 'But you seemed to know something…'

'Something. But nothing concrete,' Hannibal replied. He leaned back in his chair, stretching out his long legs under the table. 'A long time ago… yes, Blaze, "once upon a time…"... My family were part-owners of the shipyards off Titan. We worked with the Nibelung to build the Arcadia and her sister-ships. It's not widely known but they were the last remnants of a race from a dying planet…'

'So that was a nibelung?' Marin asked.

Hannibal shook his head. 'No. I'm not sure what it was to be honest. But the armour resembled the Nibelung Valkyrie armour I own, and that was gifted to certain other friends of the race…'

'It didn't register on the bio-scanners, and your weapon was the only thing that took it down,' Blaze said quietly. 'And the armour on those dial-heads shook off my pistol's blasts like pinpricks…'

Hannibal unholstered his pistol and placed it on the table. The two young men both leaned over to take a closer look. 'That,' Marin said admiringly, 'is a monster…' When he reached out a hand it was promptly slapped by Hannibal.

'Paws off, youngster. That's one of a kind… At least in that configuration.' He picked it back up and hefted it thoughtfully. 'This is a Cosmo Eagle, based on a twentieth-century weapon called a Desert Eagle. The technology is based on Nibelung specifications, which might explain why it did the trick when your weapons didn't.'

'Can we duplicate it?' Blaze asked. He tried his best not to look too needy, but Marin, he noticed, was failing dismally.

'I've no intention of taking it apart so you rascals can have new toys, but there's a Nambu-style production model its maker was working on - one of the proptypes was given to my wife, and I still have that…' he trailed off, and smiled sadly. 'Maya would approve. Blaze - I'll let you have it for now, since Marin here is out of commission. As long as you don't lose it we can put it through our three-D printers when we get back to Carmilla. For now however we need to track that transport to its destination. Blaze - this "deep space facility" - I've got nothing in my databanks, what about yours?'

'I got your lot to run a time-radar trace since ours is still down.' He called up the region of space on the table-top holo suite. 'Here, as best I can tell, is where that ship came from but there's nothing obvious, just stellar dust and debris from unformed planets…'

All three men peered at the image, but as Blaze had pointed out, there really was nothing to see.

'I get them transporting machine parts in storage - maybe they're building a weapon?' Marin suggested. 'But why the bodies in cold storage? They're dumping those on Shadow, they said, and that's an ice world - but why not dump them in space and save time?'

'Great questions for our times,' drawled Hannibal. 'I'm not too sure I want to know. For now, I suggest we transfer your people to a fresh Blackstar when my backup team arrives, and we'll leave the techs to get this one home. They'll be here in about four hours. Until then I want to go over all transmissions we've had from Lar Metal, especially news reports. We know Promethium's been ramping up this mechanisation programme, so look around the edges. Hell - check the society pages! If there's gossip in the palace the paparazzi will find it, even if they don't know what they're looking at.'

'Will we?' Blaze asked. 'We don't exactly move in those circles… The little matter of our "grandmother" wanting us dead when we were children…'

'There are always patterns, 'Hannibal assured them. 'If you look hard enough. If I were surer of his motives I'd talk directly to Leopard, but you know what he thinks about us.' He snorted. 'Mercenaries. Hah! I've never sold myself, let alone that cheaply…'

'Don't take it personally,' Marin told him. 'He's a prick.'

'The delightful "Shinigami" Geran is loyal to the throne to a fault, regardless of who sits on it. Lar Else Miryu - Yamori Daisuke, or whatever he prefers to go by these days - worships the ground the queen walks on. There'll be no help from them either,' Blaze ticked them off on his fingers. 'And Ban would never turn on Yayoi so we're oh for four on her closest advisors…'

'Military and scientific,' Marin pointed out. 'What do we know about the civilian side?'

Hannibal tapped the comms console on the table and smirked. 'That's why the revision, boys. How often do I keep telling you it's not just about a rousting good fight in this business? Information is key.' He stood up and stretched. 'Damn, I was too old for all of this excitement long before the pair of you were even born,' he said ruefully as his neck cracked audibly.

'Funny…' Marin began, with a grin on his own face. 'I seem to recall mom saying you were saying that back when she was our age…'

'Brat,' Hannibal retorted, but with a smile. 'Why is it I always end up raising smart-mouthed boys?'

'Did we turn out so badly?' Blaze asked. He pantomimed a pleading face, making his brother laugh and Hannibal roll his eyes.

'You two, at least, I had something to work with. My nephews were a bloody handful in their teens and the less said about my younger brother, the better…' The pair were sitting next to each other and he stood between them, laying a hand on the shoulder nearest to him of both young men. 'Research, research, research. We've got plenty of time to put together a picture, but hop to it. I'd like time to review what we find before we reach that region…'

After the door had hissed shut behind him Marin turned slightly to look at his brother. 'Ever noticed he gets that sad look in his eyes when he mentions that brother? I wish I knew what that was about - I hate to see the Old Man unhappy.'

Blaze nodded slowly. 'I think one day he might let slip some of his secrets. Something changed, and recently. Have you noticed since he headed off to MX-201 before we left he's looking both - oh, I don't know - younger and although he seems a little sad, also as though a weight's been lifted off him…'

'I've noticed the lasses - and a couple of the lads - looking him over,' Marin muttered. 'Honestly, when he cleans up and drops the scruffy old spacer act, I swear he walks down the corridors and it's like he's strewing catnip in his wake…'

Blaze laughed. 'Most of those lasses fawning over him are his great-grandkids, nothing salacious about it…'

'The ones drooling from the sidelines aren't…!'

'Aria admiring the silver fox, was she?' Blaze thumped his brother lightly on the arm. 'You need to make a move, aniki. I'd hate for you to lose out to a man 6 times your age!'

'Git. Just for that you can have the gossip pages, and I'll take the political sites…'

'Suits me,' Blaze replied as he settled down and switched on his display. 'If you want the boring job. Oh look: "Playboy Princeling Parties with Plebs…" So much for being past all that "Elite versus Worker Caste" shite… Besides, I like that bar and I wasn't partying, I was having a quiet drink with friends…'

Marin leaned over to look at the short holo-clip that played on the article. 'Your "friends" are all very attractive young women…'

'All of whom I bloody well work with! We're just friends…'

'They're all related to the Old Man as well,' Marin pointed out with a grin.

'Yeah… maybe he doesn't need to see this one…' Blaze flicked the page over and tried to ignore his brother's snigger.


Back on board his own ship, Hannibal bit back a sigh of relief as the low-level dark matter field enclosed him. Although nowhere near the size of the engine that powered the Arcadia - and her long-lost sister ships - the prototype was more than enough to counteract the ravages of time on his body. He'd long since given up on any thought of just letting time have its way with him, although for short periods it was unavoidable. But it could only work with what it had, and the sorry fact of the matter was that he'd already been past his prime when he'd taken command, and "reset to saved game" wasn't all that much use when you were overwriting back to a point when you'd lost all your stats… Unlike his teflon coated baby brother whose angelic good looks were - had been - seemingly there to stay at a perfectly preserved thirty, judging by the fact that the recent pictures from his capture showed him looking not a day older than the night he'd shown up at the farm ten years after the war…

I've gone over the time-radar trace on that location you asked for, the Miranda's sultry tones said, coming from one of the speakers set in the corridor wall. Hannibal stepped onto the moving walkway and clasped his hands behind his back. There is a small gravitational anomaly in that system, perhaps the mass of a small moon.

'Whatever it is it'll be something they want no chance of anyone outside Promethium's inner circle finding,' Hannibal mused. 'Which means it's nothing good. The inventory of that transport ship's holds suggests a lot of connected systems, all of them controlled by a downloaded mind.'

You didn't elaborate on that to the boys

'They'll figure it out. I didn't want it looming large in their heads just yet. The moral implications of destroying that transport…' He hopped off the walkway outside his cabin. 'I can partly understand why Yayoi - Promethium - wanted to go this route for her people - there are few planets left which could support Lar Metal's population voluntarily, they have enough problems feeding their existing populations - but up until recently, mechanisation was voluntary, and limited in scope. And frankly I figured most people would be sensible enough to see it for what it is. More fool me, you'd think I'd know by now that people always like quick fixes, easy living and don't think much beyond the next meal.'

Cynic… the AI said fondly. Hannibal smiled, finding one of the wall cameras to look into. 'Like most of my family, more of a terminal romantic, I'm afraid.' The door to his cabin opened softly for him and he stepped through. 'Was there anything else from either the Gaia Fleet or from The Arcadia whilst I was gone?'

Chatter on the Lar Metal military channels about a terrorist attack on the mechanisation plant in the Capital. Apparently Geran's called Commander Lar Frankenbach Leopard back to the Homeworld.

'Huh. I'm guessing that'll be young Yama, Selen and Zero…' He stripped off his sweater and placed it in the laundry bag. Moving his left arm had caused a twinge in his shoulder and he gave the offending article a firm rub. 'Damn.' Under his fingers the old keloid scars felt far more prominent than they really were, the jagged silvery ferns from electrical burns interrupted by the chaotic patterns from zero-g flames. 'Too many battles… you'd think I'd have the sense to quit… retire to some nice quiet backwater with an ocean view and a lot of sun…'

You tried that, remember? How long did it last?

'Until Maya died,' he replied sadly. 'Albrecht used to tease me about being the homebody, but the truth is we both had a large helping of wanderlust… It took a war to bring it out in me, but somehow I've never been able to put it back in the box,' he finished ruefully.

There will be another war… the AI said quietly.

'Unavoidable,' Hannibal replied bluntly. He stretched out on his bed, hands clasped behind his head. 'Promethium wants to save humanity from itself, but she's already forgotten the first rule…'

'Gute Vorsätze gut und schön sind, aber auch umsetzbar sein sollten, und die Ziele neben dem Willen zur Verwirklichung nicht zu hoch gesteckt werden sollten.' Hannibal said quietly. 'Tell Farah to arrange the disposition of the Blackstar 7's crew when the backup fleet arrives. Wake me when it's time to set off.'

Admiral?

'Umm?'

What about your good intentions?

'Already paving the road to hell, dear girl. Why else do you think I can speak with such authority on the subject?' He closed his eyes, but sleep eluded him. Mercifully perhaps. He had a feeling it would be full of the sound of a million marching, mechanical jackboots.


Author's note: Hannibal's quote is roughly translated as:

"Good intentions are all well and good, but should also be achievable, and the goals should not be set too high in addition to the will to achieve them."

Johann Jacob Rambach 1693-1735