Millennial Thieves battleship Lady Miranda

Galactic Rim

Hannibal had brought along five of his Blackstar ships in support, but that had meant the transit time was considerably increased, as none of them could match the Miranda's speed. Not for the first time his moratorium on his engineers replicating the dark matter engine as a production model came back to haunt him. Sam Coyne, his first of a long line of genius engineers had toyed with expanding the scope of the tech to use zero point energy, but that had been in concert with Tochiro - and with the little man long dead, no-one else had even come close to cracking the problems. A lot of those who had been working on it - including the congenital morons of Doppler Corp's experimental division - had comprehensively (and explosively in most cases) come to the conclusion that safely handling such energies was currently beyond humanity. That had never stopped them though.

In the meantime, his swift little ship was forced to scuttle along at the speed of the Blackstars - which whilst considerable for their size, was still like watching paint dry as far as the Miranda's captain was concerned.

He glanced over to the navigation and comms stations in front of his seat. He'd pressed the brothers into service despite Marin's injured leg because he wanted them both to get the experience, and knew damn well the older of the pair would never stand for being sent home with his ship. He'd had the raising of both of them during the last years of the rebellion against Queen Lar Rarela and preferred to keep them both where he could see them. Injury or no, Kairyu - Marin - would have found a way to slip on board one of the ships. He'd have bet his Cosmo Eagle on that

'Bring us out of IN-Space an hour out of the designated location at standard sub-space speed,' he instructed Blaze. 'Unless I know exactly what I'm jumping into, I want to take some time to coast in and take a good look at the lay of the land first.'

'Won't that give them time to spot us?' Marin asked.

'It will - but we'll be out of firing range of most weapons, and even the Blackstars can accelerate faster than most ships this size. Something we haven't let anyone outside the organisation find out - we've never had to use that capability, so it's possible, but highly unlikely Promethium's people know about it.'

'Yes teacher,' Blaze deadpanned as he plotted their exit point.

'Cheek.'

'He does it to everyone,' Farah told them from his perch at weapons. 'Can't help himself…' He grinned at his nephews. 'But he's lived this long, so pay attention. He's the best…'

'Debatable,' Hannibal replied dryly. 'My mother was brilliant, and Admiral Sanada could run rings around me on the actual battlefield. My expertise was logistics, and staying the hell out of trouble. Hang back and let idiots charge in headlong, and you can get a feel for the enemy firepower, disposition and tactics.'

'It also has the benefit of getting the hotheads out of the way early on so they don't become a liability when you properly engage,' Blaze drawled.

'Cynic,' his brother told him.

'But not entirely wrong,' Hannibal replied. 'However, it helps to try and keep them on a leash - I hate to lose anyone. Including the idiots…'

'It's like you're the anti-Harlock,' Marin said with a grin. Oblivious to Hannibal's infinitesimal finch he continued: 'From what I hear that pirate charges in, smashes his way through anything in his path, then kicks the shit out of what's left…'

'Well I'd appreciate it if you didn't pick him as a role model,' Hannibal said icily. 'It's easy to play those games and indulge in grandstanding heroics when your ship is practically indestructible and you're immortal by most definitions. The rest of us mere mortals are more easily broken. So we wait, we watch, we hide when we have to and we are, as I think Blaze here would describe it, "sneaky".'

'Did you ever go up against him in battle?' Blaze asked. 'Just wondering - that sounded like the voice of experience…'

'We've never clashed in space.'

Blaze exchanged a glance with his brother. That wasn't actually a "no"... And was decidedly specific to boot.

'We're not pirates,' Hannibal told them firmly. 'Just try to remember that. Marin - make sure countermeasures are fully engaged, tell the Blackstars to do the same. Once we're in normal space we'll run silent unless we hit trouble. Trust the other captains to do their jobs. If they can't, you've failed in command before you've even started…'

'Every day's a school day,' Marin murmured, as he complied. He couldn't see Hannibal's faint smile behind his back, as the older man leaned back in the captain's chair.


They came out of IN-SKIP as planned, six ships in wide formation coasting towards the gravitational anomaly spotted on the time radar. It was one of the Thieves' standard battle-patterns, not to group too tightly. Unlike the Gaia Fleet Hannibal preferred a loose formation, making it harder for massed firepower to take out a target if the enemy missed a specific shot - as well as avoiding the perennial problem of avoiding friendly fire if one of the ships missed its target when engaging at shorter ranges. It also left the ships plenty of room for manoeuvre. Hannibal smiled inwardly, if sadly at a memory. He'd pioneered the use of the Deathshadow fleet's dark matter holograms to imitate the projected gravity lensing of space to act as a decoy - something his brother, it seemed, had put to good use recently… Who knew the hot-headed idiot had actually paid attention?

'Getting a visual now,' Marin called out, interrupting his brief reverie. 'Holy Lar…'

'Put it on the 3-d screen,' Hannibal instructed. He leaned forward in his seat as the image formed above the floor viewer. 'Well. I didn't expect that…'

Hovering in the holo-display was the skeleton of a massive space station. Mostly superstructure with small work craft darting in and around the construction. Weapons turrets were already in place, though not yet protected by an outset protective armour - that, they could see in places was in progress, presumably over more sensitive areas, since it seemed more complete around the engines, of which they could count four in this elevation alone.

'How clichéd…' Blaze snorted. 'A battle-station? Seriously?'

'Clichés exist for a reason,' chided Hannibal. 'A sphere is cost effective. If humans would stop worrying about which way was up in space you'd see more of them. Slow us down, Blaze, the other ships will follow our lead. Those are oscillator cannon pointed this way - I'd prefer not to find out if they're operational…'

'Like the Arcadia's?' Blaze asked. 'How the hell…?'

'Nibelung tech,' Hannibal's voice was cold and bleak. 'The Miranda has them as well, though ours are a lot smaller.' More softly Blaze only just heard him add '...so I guess I now know where those rebels went…' Out loud he snapped "All hands to battlestations! Marin - signal the Blackstars to go to full alert! Shields at maximum! Clear all weapons for firing, plot a solution and hold.'

'Why…' Blaze got no further. Hannibal interjected 'Because if they have Nibelung weapons, lad, they've likely got Nibelung sensors. There's a small cluster of debris at 36 degrees, move us into it to screen us. Minimal thrust.'

'Aye aye, sir.'

'Incoming! Marin called out. 'Energy beams launched and running.'

'Scare tactics at this range,' Hannibal told him. 'Blaze - '

'Aye sir. Evasive course plotted.'

'No countermeasures?' Marin asked. Hannibal's reply was a flat "no". 'Not for us. We're running with a very sophisticated cloaking system - doesn't do much in atmosphere, where the noise of the engines will give you away several miles out, but in space, it works like a charm…'

'In short, countermeasures are counterproductive?' Marin finished for him. Blaze groaned, even as he watched the instrument panel tracking the shots, which skimmed harmlessly past at a safe distance. 'How the hell did they spot us so fast?…' he asked once the beams were starting to decay.

'They didn't. That wasn't aimed at us. As the captain said, the Miranda has a sophisticated stealth suite,' Farah told him with undisguised pride. 'Still not quite sure how it works, but it turns us into a shadow on most scanners. Most systems record it as a scanning glitch, until it's too late…'

'Most systems,' Hannibal said bleakly. 'Not so much those built to the same spec. The Arcadia, for example, would see right through them.' He frowned. 'There wasn't enough time between us exiting IN-SKIP and that shot for the scanners to pick us up and the station to respond…'

'Scanning,' Marin said. He whistled. 'Oh… I've got a signal - an SDF IDF…'

'What are they doing this far out?' Blaze muttered. 'Which one?'

'Aquarius. She's a long way from home - her patrol area's Miraiseria…'

Hannibal sat forward again and stared at the 3-d display where a small blinking green dot showed the ship. 'She's suiseijin crewed…'

'Oki,' Blaze broke in. 'Rokuro Oki. We were in the Academy together.' He turned to look at Hannibal. 'Chief…'

'On the coded SDF channel,' Hannibal told him. 'You know the drill.'

'Sir.' He nodded to his brother who sent the code. A few seconds later the reply came back and Marin read out the decoded reply.

'"In your own time…"' he grinned. 'Is it me or is he a little testy?'

Hannibal just sighed. 'Everyone's a joker these days. Tell them we're coming. Contact our captains, tell them to get under cover and stand by.'

'Cover? Out here?' Blaze rolled his eyes.

'Those asteroids off the system ecliptic. Do I have to do everyone's thinking?' Hannibal replied a little sharply. 'But just get those rocks between us and that station - don't enter it.'

Blaze blushed slightly at the rebuke. If he'd paying attention, he would indeed have noticed the small group of rocks nearby. 'Sorry sir.' He busied himself setting an intercept course with the Aquarius. 'Speed?'

'They didn't send a distress code. Ease us forward.' Hannibal stared up at a small camera above and in front of his chair. 'Miranda - maintain the camouflage net and give me full coverage with the dark matter shield.'

Confirmed, the ship's AI replied. Five minutes to rendezvous.

'No ships being launched,' Marin said quietly. He frowned. Isn't that a bit odd?'

'Judging from that salvo, they've weapons capable of reaching at least two AUs before the beam coherence fragments to the point it's too diffuse to cause any damage,' Hannibal said. 'With a decent strategist, the battle would be over before they got here. The rate of fire should be similar to our own, so I'm guessing since there was no follow up shot they don't have the power on full yet. But they've got far more weapons on that thing than we can bring to bear. The good news is that on any one vector, they can only bring a small number to bear on a target.'

'It's a defensive structure,' Blaze said thoughtfully, as he turned in his chair to look at Hannibal. 'Fixed mounted weaponry, a lot of coverage but you can't bring more than a fraction of the total on line in any one arc. Looks great on paper but all you have to do is approach it in single file…'

'If you can get close enough without being spotted, that is… Welcome to Doppler Corp technology,' Hannibal drawled sarcastically. 'Over-engineered and impractical. But don't under-estimate it too much - you can still get caught out by an idiot.'

'You don't know for sure they're involved,' Blaze pointed out. He caught Hannibal's expression and laughed. 'Over-engineered. Impractical. Gotcha. Though do they really have a monopoly on criminally negligent stupidity?'

'Monopoly, no. But they're the only group with the reach - and the experience. I always suspected that's where the Nibelung rebels fled to, but couldn't prove it. If anyone's playing around with dark matter or photonic weapons, chances are you'll find a bigoted supremacist at the bottom of the resulting mess up to the tips of his elitist pointy ears, and some of them won't be aliens…'

'Aquarius visible on screen,' Marin called out. 'Getting a full scanner readout…'

'Damage report?' Hannibal asked.

'Minimal to the hull but their engines took a beating - looks like they red-lined them from the energy signature. They're a sitting duck and lighting up the bloody system…'

'Thanks for the running commentary, Kairyu, next time, don't lean on the mic…' The voice over the comms had a lot of reverb in it. Marin tweaked the controls to remove the effect, a consequence of the other ship being pressurised with water rather than air.

'Nice to hear you too, Rokuro,' he replied with a grin that his brother interpreted as him having deliberately left the comms on. The captain of the Aquarius appeared in the middle of the floor screen, as a life size hologram. A blue-haired young man the same age as the brothers, handsome and wearing a form-fitting version of the SDF black uniform that looked as though it was made of shimmering fish scales. His hair floated around his head in the clear waters of his ship.

'You might want to keep your distance - if that thing takes another shot at us…'

'I've got our sensors scanning for activity,' Hannibal assured him. 'But I think we've got a window before it can power up. My readings suggest it caused a massive fluctuation - power readings are unstable, suggesting they caused a feedback they weren't expecting. It happens when you overload optical oscillator cannon without proper feedback cut-offs…'

'That sounds like the voice of experience,' Oki replied. 'Captain…?'

'Schenk.' Hannibal told him. 'Alex Schenk, of the Lady Miranda. Millennial Thieves.' Marin shared a glance at his younger brother but they both kept quiet. It wasn't the first time the enigmatic founder had hidden behind an alias.

'Oki Rokuro, captain, SDF Battleship Aquarius.' He smiled. 'My wife's called Miranda. Lovely name.'

'It was my first wife's name,' Hannibal replied softly. 'The ship's named for her. You're a long way out of your jurisdiction, Captain Oki.

'So are you.' The water around the man's neck swirled and eddied as he spoke. Blaze realised that this must be his gills working - never having seen his classmate in his natural element, it did look a little odd. 'But I'm thinking we're here for the same reason? Despite your organisation's recent history, I can't see you being the defence force for this little side project of Promethium's?'

'You have the right of that.' Hannibal stood up and walked into the range of the main cameras. 'I'll send you what we have on the situation, but it's looking like a total shitstorm brewing - and since you're this far out, you're not here officially. What happened, captain?'

'An entire planet wiped clear of its colony,' Oki replied bleakly. 'We were en route, in reply to a request for assistance - Lar Metal had sent an emissary to recruit for the mechanisation programme. The population refused, and the planetary council was worried about the tone of the meeting - by the time we got there, the last battleship was exiting the bloody system. There was nothing left except for the bodies of every child under ten. The bastards turned their weapons on the seas, Schenk. The population surrendered to gain time, and they were marched into transports - we couldn't track anything but the last of the warships, and we got a time radar trace to this location.' The man looked as though he wanted to tear someone apart with his bare hands. 'It was the Queen Mother Urs, if you're wondering.'

'"Shinigami" Geran?' Blaze closed his hand into a fist. There was no love for the man in his family. The man had once been his mother's training officer, and had not taken her rejection of her heritage - or her love for a "bastard half-breed" - well. 'Seems the colonel's nailed his colours to the mast…'

'Six thousand colonists,' Oki said coldly. 'And eight hundred of those were young children. He turned his weapons onto the seas and started boiling them. The domes had no choice but to surrender or die. I want that bastard, Schenk…'

'Take a number…' Marin half-growled. Blaze shushed him. Hannibal ignored them.

'Oki - go off the reservation and Commander Shura will have no choice but to court-martial you. You're in no state to move until your engines are repaired and you're a sitting duck. My ship's defensive fields are screening both of us for now - their sensors should only pick up a shadow, unless they're really on the ball. Let my team deal with this…'

'No offence, captain - but I really don't care. And neither does my crew. We're a marginal population at best and with one attack Geran took out over a quarter of our population, and destroyed one of the few worlds suitable for us. Whatever's going on here, we're in.'

Hannibal sighed and crossed his arms. He lowered his head briefly, then looked the image of the other captain in the eyes. 'Fine. I'll let Selen deal with Shura. But captain - what I said about your ship stands - I'll have one of my ships escort you to a hopefully safe zone, you and a picked team can come aboard one of my other ships…'

'Not this one?'

Hannibal's mouth twitched slightly. 'Take the win, Oki. It's not personal but I'm picky about who I let on board.'

'Given the wisps of dark matter your ship is trailing, why does this not surprise me…' Oki replied. 'But whilst we're safe in your schattentod…' he paused and smiled disingenuously.. 'Maybe you could rethink your invitations, and I could speak to you in private when I'm aboard?'

Hannibal narrowed his eyes, then nodded curtly. 'Blaze - take the helm. Marin, call in Blackstar 17. And keep our sensors on the lookout for any activity from that station - I've not seen any trace of the Queen Mother Urs - she probably diverted en route given that all-points from Lar Metal, but be careful anyway. Geran earned that nickname.'


An hour later, Hannibal faced the blue haired aquatic captain and waited.

'I thought you'd hear me out,' Oki said smoothly. 'Before you ask, my people didn't lose their records during the aftermath of the Homecoming War, and I'm sorry, but you do appear in a lot of them under several names - Admiral Okita…' He saluted. 'I'm sure you probably won't want to share any explanations, but you're still a hero to my people after the Battle of New Atlantis. My grandfather told me so many stories…' He smiled as the older man winced. 'I had a feeling you might remember him. Don't take it so hard. I've heard rumours of the Deathshadow Zero still being out there somewhere, and you've come to our aid more than once since the War, although you seem to have kept your distance from your brother and that eldritch monstrosity…'

'For good reason. Oki - I have good reasons for keeping quiet about my past…' He gestured to a chair. 'Sit down at least.'

Oki took a seat and steepled his fingers under his chin with a wry smile. 'You look as though you bit into a bitter flutterfish. Don't worry, Hannibal. Your secrets are safe with me. Hell - you know as well as I do, my people have plenty of their own. But even cloaked and flying under a nomme de guerre, you're risking that anonymity out here…'

'I wasn't planning on bellowing out my past credentials to all and sundry,' Hannibal told him bluntly. 'The current one's going to give me enough of a headache. Did you have time to look over the data we sent over?'

'Briefly. I've got my people taking a deep dive. It's hard to believe, but the provenance is impeccable and the recordings from that young man on the Arcadia were pretty damning. Who is he, by the way? Any relation? Take thirty years or so off your apparent age and he looks oddly familiar…'

'Don't fish, Oki. I think the Gaia Sanction updated their wanted posters whilst you were in transit,' Hannibal told him. 'That's the young man who now commands the Arcadia…'

Oki's laugh held a slight reverb - the sound fluttering over his internal gills. 'Really? He looks barely old enough to have graduated…'

'Check your files - he's your age or thereabouts. The jury's out on if he's up to the task, but frankly he couldn't make a worse muck of it than the last captain. If nothing else he knows how to put together a report. There's nothing easily refutable in there. Or in Blaze's report from the armoured transport convoy he took down. Promethium's conducting a massive escalation of her mechanisation programme. I took my eye off the situation on Lar Metal - I thought mechanisation was something that would just burn itself out on that planet, but I was wrong.'

'So was Destiny's evaluation. It's looking as though we all dropped that ball. What's your plan?'

'I want to know what the hell Promethium's up to that she's hiding all the way out here,' Hannibal told him bluntly. 'Any objections?' When Oki just folded his arms and smiled grimly he continued, 'I expect trouble once we're within the more effective range of their weapons. It won't take them long to power up once they've sorted out that feedback cut-off, but at the same time guns that powerful are a liability to anything which can't move away from the warping effects of a battle.'

'Voice of experience on both the weaponry and the tactics, I gather?'

Hannibal's answering expression was grim. 'You know who I am, so you know my family developed these weapon systems with the help of the Nibelung. I was there throughout the testing phase and even with the best people on the job we made mistakes - this bunch are not the best people, and the expertise that made it work for us is long dead. When you're blending ancient alien with human tech, the results are not always predictable. Someone over there just had a sharp reminder of that.' He sat down heavily on the edge of his bunk. 'I want to take a closer look at what's going on there before I commit, though. How would you feel about a field trip - anyone you can send with a couple of my people?'

'Myself,' Oki told him bluntly. 'My second can deal with matters here. Give me Karyu and Kairyu and I promise you results…'

Hannibal had to bite back a comment about the advisability or not of a captain leading a boarding action. But it wasn't as if he had a much high ground to stand on himself on that score… 'Blaze you can have. Marin's got a leg wound. Not bad, but enough to keep him out of combat whether he likes it or not.' He thought for a moment. 'If you have no objection to non-military personnel, I can spare enough people to help…'

'Admiral, sir, I'd be honoured…'

'Rear Admiral, if we're being formal. Which we're not. And forget that name. Alex Schenk will do for now, let's just keep it at that, shall we? Ditto for "Hannibal". If anyone's listening in I don't want them to know the Thieves' founder is out here…'

Oki nodded, the gesture causing his hair to swirl around his head like delicate strands of seaweed fronds in an eddy. 'You have my word, sir.'

'That includes to young Harlock,' Hannibal added, as Oki stood up, 'should the two of you meet, and the way this is going I'd put good money on him getting involved up to his neck.'

Oki laughed again. 'Like that, is it?'

'Oh, I'd love to believe otherwise,' Hannibal said with feeling, 'but I know a convergence of fate when I feel it… I'd prefer to avoid being ground under the gears.'

'You', Oki told him, 'have spent far too much time talking to Commander Shura haven't you?'

'Now what,' Hannibal replied with his best innocent look plastered onto his face, 'gives you that idea?' He stood up and held up his hand, back facing the young aquatic captain, and Oki touched the back of his own hand to it. 'One of these days, I'll get that nice, quiet retirement I promised myself…'

'How's that ever worked out?' Oki asked facetiously.

Hannibal met the aquatic's teasing smirk with a sour grimace. 'About as well as you might expect. Since I don't seem to learn to keep my nose out of the crap everyone else throws my way… There are days I understand my brother's descent into an enigmatic, anti-social misanthrope…' he muttered under his breath.

'One Harlock is quite enough, I think,' said Oki as they walked. 'But from first impressions, this new one's quite a bit chattier…'

'Yes… that was a shock. I spent six months on Heavy Meldar keeping an eye on him, and barely heard him put more than three sentences together at a time. After a bath, a change of clothes and a couple of months with my brother, now it seems the trick will be getting him to shut up…'