Millennial Thieves' Battleship Lady Miranda

Hidden behind the comparative safety of the asteroid field - a convenient anomaly in such a otherwise empty area of space, and one Hannibal wasn't altogether sure he trusted, although beggars couldn't be choosers - the small fleet of Blackstars was tasked with helping the damaged Aquarius replenish her water supply, and supplied extra hands to repair the damage to her hull.

'It has been a while,' Oki said as he stood beside Blaze on the walkway carrying them to the war room. 'Caused a bit of a stir when the pair of you dropped out…'

'Fishing for info?' Blaze grinned at his former classmate. 'We just realised we could do more in the Organisation. We're both a little too independent for the SDF. And there were rumblings from back home that as we're now discovering, we should have paid a lot more attention to…'

'Don't feel so bad about that part,' Oki replied. 'It seems everyone missed the warning signs. Even your mysterious captain, He of Many Names…'

Blaze shot the aquatic a sharp look but Oki had cleaned up on poker nights in the pub for a reason. 'Just what do you know?'

'Probably more than you. We weren't caught up in the Homecoming War so our records survived… but I gave the man my word. Let's just say we're damned lucky to have him on this job.'

'Grampy always plays his cards close to his chest,' This from Eloise, who was also on escort duty. 'Don't take it personally, Blaze. Even his own family doesn't know that much more than the rest of the Thieves!'

He rubbed the length of his long, thin nose - inherited from his father - but said nothing. Oki however seemed happy enough to talk for both of them.

'I get that we can't just blast the hell out of Promethium's shiny new toys. What I don't get is why she's doing all of this? Why force people to mechanise? Why the expansion? No-one really liked the solution to Lar Metal's problems but we got it… wandering planet, hundred year ice age coming and a serious reluctance of other air-breathers to share…'

Blaze gestured for Oki to enter the war-room first. 'That one we'd all like the answer to,' He replied sourly. 'Queen Lar Rarela thought she could solve it by putting everyone - sorry - all the elite - into cold storage and having slave labour work their arses off keeping them all nice and cosy, with a few pretty lady overseers to watch over them and keep them in line. My mother and my aunt led the rebellion against her, and you'd think Aunt Yayoi would have learned some pretty strong lessons about not being a dick from that. But apparently not…'

Hannibal leaned back in his chair looking far more relaxed than either of the younger men. 'She did wear the crown, though. Still does. She didn't see much harm in having access to the knowledge of the previous queens, even though your mother and I both warned her. She was adamant the personality matrix was disabled, but knowledge… can change people. That tech isn't reliable. Doppler Corp use a variant of it for their Masked Men programme.' He shook his head sadly. 'That crown's centuries old - there's no way of knowing what's in there. Your mother knew enough to steer well clear of it.'

'Mom was afraid of losing herself to it. She said it whispered to her,' Blaze said quietly.

'It's possible it's not even human in origin…' Hannibal frowned. 'I have my suspicions… I had long talks with Verdani, Maer and Mimay when we first befriended the nibelung… this all sounds very like the problems the nibelung had, and some of their failed solutions. Be careful, people - there was a large contingent of the Nibelung race who went rogue and vanished over a hundred years ago… we never found a trace of them, but some of the tech floating around Lar Metal now - and some of the things Doppler Corp and their less militant public face, Zone Industries have been playing with owe a lot to nibelung science. And before you can argue that they could have plundered Titan Base after the war, I can assure you I went through the place like a wrecking ball, and left nothing behind in the computers. A few pieces of tech I couldn't remove remained, but I did my best to render them inoperable.'

'Someone managed to get those dark matter scrubbers operational recently…' Oki murmured.

Hannibal pulled a face. 'I don't need reminding. Another item in a long line of shit coming back to land in my inbox. For now, let's just deal with the Lernean Hydra - I'll have to clean the Augean stables another day…' When three young captains stared at him blankly he sighed theatrically. 'Never mind… they don't teach the classics these days.'

'No, but we do seem to be locked on repeat for mission parameters…' Blaze replied with a smirk. 'Ah well, they say the reward for a job well done is having to do it again…'

'Get used to it, lad. It's most of what we do here. Get in, find out what that structure's for, and get out.'

'Getting in's what worries me,' Blaze said as he leaned back in his seat. 'Last time I pulled a sneaky boarding action it was in an area already warped by a nasty little scuffle, and the other ship had its pants down. That structure has active sensors and a hell of a spread on those "defensive" guns. The Miranda's scans haven't found a weak spot yet in that defence grid?'

'Which is why I've had my engineers prepping a couple of our fighters. I'm not keen on hanging out a big flag by waving vintage Cosmo Wolf SW-190s in Promethium's face, but need's must. They're the only things that'll get you in suitably shielded, and stand a chance in a firefight…'

He was interrupted by Oki's fist pumping "Yes!"

Blaze patted his arm. 'Easy, tiger. Get so much as a ding on one of those babies and you'll be grounded until you're thirty…'

'Six years? I can do the time,' Oki replied gleefully. 'Those planes are legendary…'

'Behave,' Blaze advised him with a grin of his own he couldn't hide. 'I rather suspect if we lose one, being grounded would be the least of our problems…'

'When the pair of you wing-heads have finished fanboying over the transportation,' Hannibal drawled icily. 'My Space Wolves are saturated with dark matter, so hard for conventional sensors to spot, but there's always a chance those sensors are Nibelung tech, so don't rely on that. Fly crafty. Oki - Blaze is well versed in flying under the radar, but…'

'You forget - I also trained under Colonel Ichimonji,' Oki assured him. He sat back in his chair and smirked. 'I don't think even Ichimonji has ever had his arse in one of those…' He caught Hannibal's stern warning glance and coughed. 'Yeah.. I know, I know… I'll never be able to tell anyone…' he sighed theatrically.

Hannibal ran a hand through his silvering hair. 'Marin and I will be on standby - but hopefully repairs to the Aquarius won't take long. I've got the rest of the ships on point, keeping a weather eye out for reinforcements. Last thing we need is Geran or Leopard showing up with half the fleet.' He pulled a face. 'It's hard to break the habit of micro-managing. All of you know what you're doing. I'm counting on you.'

'No pressure…' Blaze murmured. 'And haven't I just done my annual recertification in boarding and sneaking?'

'Think of it as having all that recent experience to draw on,' Hannibal replied without missing a beat.


He watched the two fighters leave the hangar via the screen a little while later, standing with arms folded in front of the captain's chair - if he'd known it, in the same pose his younger brother had learned to copy. Both pilots made a barrel roll as they cleared the ship's hangar. 'It's either hard-coded into the DNA of the average fighter jock, or bloody contagious,' he muttered. 'Can't fly in a straight line without the flourishes…'

'Tell me you never pulled the odd stunt in your youth,' Marin twitted from his station at comms. When Hannibal just stared down at him without saying anything, he rolled his eyes. 'No… of course not. What was I thinking?'

'We don't all indulge a need to grandstand,' Hannibal replied a little frostily. 'My father flew like a bloody maniac and it got him killed in the end. My brother was cut from the same cloth. I lost track of the number of planes he totalled as a test pilot.'

'Relax,' Marin said. 'Colonel Ichimonji used to say you need to put a plane through a few manoeuvres to see how it handles…' Realising belatedly that citing the most infamous stunt pilot in the SDF as a role model probably wasn't the best idea, he cleared his throat and concentrated on his console instead. But he did have to wonder why he heard Hannibal mutter "congenital…" again behind him.


Battleships were all very well, Blaze thought as he led the way towards the half-competed station, but there was a lot to be said for the intimacy of a fighter… Some people never took to being in space with only a small armoured tin can between them and the vacuum, or felt dwarfed by the infinite dark, but he'd always found it invigorating, if a little intimidating. Out in space, there were no horizons, something that yes, you could appreciate from the relative comfort of a ship, but out here, there was just the cockpit, and the black… it was as close as you could come - bar maybe a powered suit - to moving through the void under your own steam.

And in this case, making very precise changes in direction to avoid the sensor arrays and weaponry of their destination. Stealthed coatings and electronic countermeasures only got you so far, after all. The rest relied on piloting a tight path through the blind spots, adjusting with split second timing as they went. Not unlike one of Ichimonji's favourite canyon runs back in the Academy, he mused. Only with moveable canyons… And wouldn't the mean bastard have loved to be able to pull that one on his unsuspecting vic… trainees… He grinned to himself. The colonel would love every minute of this run..

Closer in to the structure, he could take a leaf out of the playbook from his recent escapade and shut down all but the thrusters. Oki he trusted to follow suit, but he felt a little uncharitable that he had the aquatic at his back, rather than his brother. Things were so much easier when you shared a few little genetic enhancements from the queens' heritage after all… When there was no-one around to make note of the fact they didn't actually need to use the commlinks, it made life so much simpler…

Hey, I'd rather be behind you as well, Marin said in his head. Bloody leg

Just have my back, Aniki.

Always came the soft mental reply. Then: Rokuro's a good man, but don't let him get too trigger happy. He's got a lot of skin in this game, and he can cook off once his blood's up

I'd be going ballistic as well under the circumstances, Blaze replied quietly. He eased the Space Wolf into position against one of the internal girders, and checked for a suitable point where he could board the station. Nothing on this strut, but the next one over ended in a half-finished corridor with a solid looking hatch at the end of it. And thankfully it was more than wide enough to take the Space Wolves and allow both pilots to descend and make their way to the hatch once they'd soft-tethered the planes to the station. A little work with a nice binary explosive Hannibal had slipped him, which worked nicely in vacuum (and he'd love to know where the old man had gotten that little gem…) and they were in, quickly apply a fast-acting sealant to the small hole they'd cut which was just enough to let them in. The temporary patch would stop any further pressure leaks, but would be quickly removable when they headed back to the planes. Assuming all went well…

Even more so than in the ship he'd boarded only a few days ago, Blaze had the feeling someone was watching them as they made their way through the corridor. But even his most careful examination couldn't find any camera in this section, nor in the more finished area they entered after the second intersection. 'I wish I knew what had me twitchier than a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs…' he muttered. They'd both flipped back their visors, now the section they were in was pressurised. It made communication safer than the radio link, but even so the feeling that they were overheard wouldn't leave him. His hand gripped the borrowed pistol more firmly, the ribbed grip almost embossing its pattern into his palm. He forced his fingers to relax, but couldn't do much about the tight spot between his shoulder blades.

Next to him Oki seemed almost relaxed by comparison. 'I learned in the Academy to take you and your brother seriously when you had a gut feeling about something. I just wish you could be a bit more specific…'

'So do I,' Blaze replied with feeling. 'Normally it's something I can point a finger at. Here it's like being battered from all sides.'

'As though the place itself was watching?' Oki asked.

Blaze shuddered. 'Yeah… something like that…' He squared his shoulders and gave himself a mental shake. 'Unless my sense of direction's off, the next left should take us further in…' he stopped in his tracks with a frown crinkling his brow. 'Did you hear that?'

Oki listened, and shook his head. 'My hearing's better underwater… but…' he tilted his head to one side slightly. 'For a moment it sounded like a child crying…' He gestured with his pistol. 'That way…'

'Well we were heading down that corridor anyway,' Blaze said, a little more glibly than he felt. He reached out mentally. Mal…?

Nothing. Which only added to his sense that something was very, very wrong. There wasn't much that could block their telepathy… But Oki had moved ahead of him and was now moving more confidently in the direction of the cries, which were getting louder. 'Wait! Rokuro! Not so fast. Just because we've met with no resistance yet…'

The aquatic was standing outside a closed door. 'It's coming from inside. Didn't you say there were a lot of children's corpses on that ship?'

'Yes… but…' That bad feeling was almost screaming at him now… but why whywhy? He stood back to cover Oki without being asked, and at his nod the aquatic opened it, taking care to stand out of the line of sight of anyone inside.

The sound of sobbing was now clearer, and Oki peered around the doorway. 'It's okay… just a little girl,' he called back. He holstered his pistol and walked into the room, kneeling in front of a small narrow bed on which a little fair haired girl - no older than maybe eleven or twelve - sat, hands in her lap, her face hidden by her hair, which fell over her face. 'It's okay, little one. We're here to help you.' He reached out a hand to brush her hair away from her face, smiling kindly at her. Blaze entered the room just as her features were revealed, and brought his pistol to bear with a heartfelt expletive. 'Rokuro… move away from her, carefully…'

'Blaze?' Oki pulled away from her slightly but frowned when he saw his friend pointing his gun at her. 'Blaze - she's just a kid…'

'Oh… she really isn't. Are you - Aunt Yayoi?'

The child smiled, and even Oki scuttled back at the venomous expression on her face. Blaze didn't wait for explanations. He fired, the child falling back onto the bed without a sound, the blast wound from the Cosmo Gun leaving a massive charred burn on her red dress.

'Blaze!'

'We have to leave, now,' he said brusquely, ignoring the shocked look on his friend's face.

Too late

The voice came it seemed from all around them. Feminine, but mechanical. And to Blaze at least so, so familiar. It was too late from the moment you stepped aboard, Karyu.

'Run,' he told Oki bluntly. When the aquatic stood there running a hand through his long blue hair and staring at the body of the girl, he pulled on his arm. 'Rokuro - it was a clone puppet, and we're in big trouble. Come on!'

They ran, but the formerly empty corridors now teemed with mechanised soldiers, and not even his borrowed handgun blasting through them could do much against overwhelming numbers, although the cyborgs made no attempt to open fire. In the end they were herded into a cul-de-sac, nowhere left to run, and forced to their knees and restrained as another young girl - this time in a blue dress, moved through the ranks of emotionless, featureless machine bodies and stared down at them before turning on her heel and with an imperious wave of her hand ordered their captors to drag them to their feet and follow her.


Stripped of armour and weapons, they were periodically poked in the small of the back or between the shoulder blades by the gangly dial-faced drones of Her Majesty's armed forces. In front of them, stiff-backed and regal, marched the form of the second girl, long golden hair flowing down her back to her knees. Blaze stumbled as another shove in the back pushed him off balance, and with his hands tied behind his back he couldn't right himself in time. 'Will you stop that? I'm going in the right direction, aren't I?' His gaze when he looked at the small figure in front of him was saddened. 'The clone banks were supposed to have been shut down when Aunt Yayoi took the throne. At least that was the official story. My mother said none remained - the old queen purged hers and her sister's batch…'

'Too many rebels,' the young/old voice of the Queen in front of them said, without turning round. 'But the ones which remained were far too precious a resource to waste, after all.'

'If so then they deserved their own lives,' Blaze snapped. 'Not to be turned into your puppets…'

They followed the girl-queen through an open doorway and into a large room, empty except for a large throne placed on a dais at one end. A hood trailing various cables hung over it, and Blaze shuddered. 'I thought you'd destroyed that as well…' he snarled. 'Evil thing…'

The girl took her place in the throne and rearranged her long blue skirts. 'I learned a long time ago to waste nothing, Karyu. Everything and everyone can have its uses.' She smiled and on that childish face, the expression was disturbing. 'Even you and your brother could have a place in my new world. Your parents however..' she sighed. 'No. They've made their choices. But you, and Kairyu? The two of you are something unheard of in Lar Metal's long history. No males were ever allowed to be conceived. I'd wondered how to get my hands on one or both of you, and here you are, walking right into my new body…' She laughed, a disturbingly adult sound. The dichotomy between the girl's body and the adult queen's mind controlling her was unpleasant. Even Oki seemed unnerved as the girl-queen waved a hand around in the air. 'As my sister and that red-haired little bitch I spawned are just discovering, I am no longer bound into one form. Mechanisation is freedom from the frailties and small horizons of biology….'

'And yet,' Blaze interjected, 'you're interested in my biology… funny, that…' …and she feels the need to keep control of the clones… Out loud Blaze said quietly: 'I have to wonder… did conversion strip away your abilities? Those were part of your frail, disgusting biology after all, and not your mind, or whatever it is you think still exists in whatever form you take…'

Oki leaned over and nudged Blaze with his shoulder 'Exposition please for those of us coming late to the show? What in the deeps does she mean by us "walking into her"?'

'This station,' Blaze replied patiently. 'It is the queen - or part of her at least. This is her mechanised body… We thought we were being so clever avoiding the outer defences, but she's here, all around us.'

'Well,' the girl-queen said, sitting back in her throne lazily. 'I have help…' At their puzzled stares she laughed again. 'A machine mind can occupy a body of any size that can hold it, Karyu. It can be as big as a planet, or as small as a single nut and bolt… something this large however requires subsidiary systems. Think of it as my new court… every piece of this station that has a purpose beyond the simply static walls has a mind - they are my attendants, my advisors, guards…'

'Your slaves,' Blaze snarled. 'Parts for the machine…' he said coldly. 'You promise these desperate people hope and immortality and this is what you offer them?'

'Oh please, Karyu… isn't it an ancient truth that you can't con an honest man? Everyone wants something for nothing… Perhaps I should say it's "Caveat Emptor..". But I don't lie. They get their immortality. And a body.' She smiled coldly. 'It works best with the stronger willed humans… It seems you cannot beat pure bloody-minded stubbornness for producing a strong, durable part…'

'Until they rebel against you?' Oki asked grimly.

She left her throne and walked over to them. A small hand reached up to stroke Oki's cheek and he flinched from the contact. 'Oh my dear, beautiful suiseijin… that's the beauty of the process - they forget their humanity if it isn't fed, and one cannot imbibe the Flame of Life as a mere part… The strength remains, but not the purpose…' She made her way back to her throne and sat, her hands resting on the arms of the device. 'Take the amphibian to processing - I'm thinking we could place him in water reclamation. Lar Alcaeus Karyu... you, however…' she paused theatrically, her head slightly tilted as she regarded him with that oh-too-adult twisted smirk. 'I think I need to conduct some tests first. Take his highness to Holding… My sister was always so tight-lipped about her offspring… One has to wonder if the telepathy and telekinesis bred into our line bred true, even though their father was a mongrel…'

Blaze, who been watching helplessly in the grip of mechanical arms as Oki was marched towards the door saw a small glimmer of hope as her words sank in. His borrowed pistol was on a table between him and the throne, and although he'd never thought of trying it before, there was the possibility…

and why didn't I ask Mom how it works…? The mental link with Mal had been a part of them both for so long, they didn't question it… like walking or talking, they didn't even remember how or when they'd learned to do it. But to want an item in your hand…?

in your bound behind your back hand

will the restraints to break… how hard could that be? As carefully as he could he put strain on his bonds, testing the strength of the bonds holding him. Ignoring the pain, just visualising the polymer rope fraying… weakening… was willing it or trying to visualise it enough? No… don't over think it…

The rope snapped abruptly, causing him to stumble slightly, and this distracted his guards - and the young clone-queen - long enough to reach out a hand and see the pistol in it.

It slapped into his palm hard enough to sting, and he barely had time to bring it to bear before his captors could aim…

He picked the biggest target, and fired at the throne.