The Queen's Winter
Introduction:
It had been a long time that I wanted to publish in English this "long" fanfiction. I also feel the duty to thank a talented Italian fanwriter who was a true inspiring muse and pushed me to try my hand at this literary genre for the first time ever. Thanks for her precious advice and help that have supported me and continue to do so in this new experience.
Thanks also to the great Master Matsumoto from whom I unworthily borrowed some of his immortal characters. This story wants to be a possible continuation of the cult anime series of 1978, with precise references and quotes from some of its episodes, which I will report in the notes.
This story is an English version of the Italian original (I apologize in advance for any inaccuracies).
Happy reading (I hope)!
Florestano
1. Memories
Meeme slowly dropped the last card on the beautiful mahogany table that was part of the captain's room furniture: -Ace of spades!
-Bad sign, she commented in a low voice, but without perturbing herself in the slightest, she finished her glass of wine and quickly poured some more.
Harlock was lying on the large bed that dominated the inside of his cabin, his hands crossed behind the back of his head, his eyes lost. He was immersed in thoughts that chased each other and got lost in time and memories ...
Three years had passed since the day he and Meeme, on board on the Arcadia, began their journey with no destination across the universe.
The planet Earth they left was starting its rebirth slowly after the painful victory over Raflesia and the empire of Mazone. They had left behind their friends and companions of a thousand adventures, and Harlock had said goodbye to his most precious good, his little beloved Mayu, daughter of his dear friend Tochiro.
The captain was thinking back on all of the events that had marked that long, all-out war, to all the times he had despaired and to how, only thanks to the strength, the stubborness of those who combine desperation with the certainty of doing the right thing for the salvation of own beloved people and of own beloved land, at last he had rised and finally had managed to win.
He thought back to the Mazonians and to that exiled population that after all had also fought out urged of some sort of desperation: to survive extinction, to seek a new home and a homeland. He thought about what would have happen if the two peoples, terrestrial and mazonian, instead of fighting each other, had agreed to live peacefully together: after all, at first the terrestrials had seemed to share an original matrix with the "vegetable" people. Unfortunately, this hypothesis was later demonstrated as clearly impossible.
All these thoughts often whirled in the captain's head, but, eventually, his focus always returned to "her", the one who for two years had become his nightmare, his obsession, his nemesis: Raflesia.
He still could not understand what perverse nostalgia, what attraction or what psychoanalytic devilry made him think about that woman so often. In the end his answer was always the same: he missed that demon!
Meeme, for her part, was careful not to act as his shrink, even if she had the tools for doing so. She did not think it was fair to intervene on Harlock with her psychic and empathic skills, not even in order to help him shed some light on the turmoils of his soul. It was something too intimate, something he alone could face and resolve but, perhaps, also a touch of jealousy towards that fearsome queen had to be added to her polite discretion.
In their lazy journey that was watched over by Tochiro, they were now proceeding at the edge of the galaxy near the Gamma 12 nebulae, a cluster of stars of which very little was known but it was reputed to have interesting planetary systems. After all, Tochiro and Harlock had returned to their old love: to search new worlds for a perfect planet, with the habit of a pioneristic passion for exploring new frontiers and for getting into trouble.
The silent meditations of Harlock were suddenly interrupted by a warning signal from the ship:
-It's a yellow alarm, he told Meeme. -Shouldn't be serious matter, but we better go check it out. He said, quickly taking the cabin door in the direction of the bridge. As usual Meeme got ready to follow him like a shadow, thinking back to that ace of spades.
The great bridge was, as always, mostly dominated by the skulls-decorated seat and by the big rudder that was now controlled almost exclusively by computer-Tochiro.
Harlock, with no crew left, had had to rely for the most part on vocal commands given to the ship through the computerized system: -On the central screen! He exclaimed.
On the big screen that opened above their heads, a small ship appeared, moving quickly.
-Identification, position and speed! He commanded Meeme who in the meantime had sat in the place that once belonged to Yuki.
- Small reconnaissance space cruiser, 114.76.4490 space coordinates, 12 km space distance, 0.7 decreasing curvature velocity, it is rapidly approaching our ship.
-Harlock! Exclaimed Meeme -It's a Mazonian one!