Truth is a point of view, and so is changeable

Hypatia

He waited at the foot of the stairs, as the banter ebbed and flowed. The chatter sometimes made his teeth ache, and was a reason - one reason - why he tended to avoid the bridge.

But he knew his people, and so he didn't need to see it, to know that Kei would be standing, arms folded, watching the main viewscreen as Ali opined loudly: 'What are we even doing here? This place is a dump!'

'Well, if that hick town down there has a population in double figures, I'd be surprised…' Kei's voice, somehow soft and husky at the same time.

'Hey - wanna bet a blow job on it?'

The rest of the crew were deathly silent. He decided to make his way to the upper gantry, his boots clanking dully on the metal grid of the stair treads and flooring.

'Ali - I wouldn't put that diseased cock of yours in the…'

'Oi - Captain on the bridge…' Yattaran hissed. Or a passable facsimile thereof, since the sentence lacked sibilants.

'Captain!' Kei at least snapped to attention.

He toyed with having a quiet word with Ali. But what was the point? There was a time he would have slapped any of his officers down hard for being such an unmitigated sexist arse. These days, it took all the effort he had to care about being in their company at all. Why bother? If all worked out as hoped, it wouldn't matter. If it didn't, they were all dead anyway…

Ninety eight down. Two to go…

There's a song that goes like that…

Shut up, my friend. Not now.

It was the look in Kei's eyes that always cut the deepest. That moment when she'd look at him (for what? Support? Guidance? Affection?) only to look away, quickly, trying to pretend that she hadn't tried to make eye contact, and that she really didn't care that some asshole was harassing her. That she didn't care that her captain let him.

He couldn't look in her eyes. That was too much to ask. The universe, when it made her, had been cruel. But then perhaps that was part of his penance? To have to sit there every day and look at that ass and those tits, outlined in red leather. At those long legs, the golden hair… And those eyes - cobalt blue, so very blue. So young, and yet with so much pain behind them already.

Her eyes.

Maya.

Would it have been kinder to tell her why he wouldn't - couldn't - be what she wanted?

You're the image of my wife.

My adulterous dead wife.

I'm lying to the lot of you.

I really don't want to care.

I'm lying to myself.

All of the above…

'Captain?'

Thankfully, her voice was her own. Deeper and more forceful than Maya's had been. More than a little strident and perhaps a little defensive.

'Put down on top of that plateau - Mount Gun Frontier. They'll see us coming in. I want half the crew to assemble in armour on the main hangar deck, with weapons.'

Yattaran smirked. 'Recruitment?'

'As you say, first mate. I only want one.'

'But we lost three hands on…'

He cut Kei off with a raised hand. 'Just one, Kei.' He stood up. 'Walk with me.'

She left her station and sashayed over to where he now stood, and followed him off the gantry and down the stairs.

'Let Yattaran do his thing - he loves intimidating potential recruits. But I want you to stand by, just in case.'

'In case of what?'

The corner of his mouth twitched, very slightly. Sometimes her exasperation almost - almost - cut through the fog of apathy he'd surrounded himself with much as the ship was wreathed in its dark matter cloud. 'There's one particular man who may or may not make the climb. If he does…'

'Captain?'

The way she could make that one word mean so many different things was something else that could pierce his gloom. So loyal. So earnest.

So gullible?

Lovely, but underneath the leather, still vulnerable despite the years she'd spent turning herself into an efficient, deadly, hyper-competent XO.

Ali's an idiot. One of these days she'll cut his dick off if he keeps pushing.

He resisted the temptation to flick his ear as though brushing off a gnat, and to answer back. The crew might ignore most of their captain's eccentricities, but talking to himself? Probably not.

'Watch to see who climbs. I'm told… he has nothing left to lose.'

He walked away then, leaving her standing with her mouth open. He didn't have to turn back to know she closed it with a snap, and stood there staring after him with her hand on her hip, probably wondering if he'd finally completely lost the plot.

You did that a hundred years ago.

'Told by whom?' she finally called out.

He declined to answer. In truth, he wasn't sure, but the man - if man it was - had never been wrong yet.

Who the hell was he? This "Hannibal"?

Search me, Tochiro said in the deepest corner of his mind. But he saved your ass in Lar Metal's system, remember?'

That was fifty years ago… he grimaced, startling Eddie, the youngest of the crew, who put his head down and scuttled past his captain as though his pants were on fire.

So? Lar Metallians are long lived.

We could have gotten ourselves out of that one. It still rankled, coming so close to destruction, but who knew that damn singularity was hidden where it was?

Oh my… it's not just that cute bit on the bridge that can get through your sulks, is it? I like this guy. He's like sand in yer underpants… You really hate owing him, don't you?

Shut up.

The voice inside his head simply chuckled.

In the dim light of the cantina, the figure seated alone at one of the tables sipped at the whiskey in his non-too-clean glass, and peered at the youth sitting at the bar from underneath a battered wide-brimmed hat. Despite the concealing beard and a few cosmetic adjustments, he took care to stay out of the light.

'Do you think he'll come?'

Even with the commlink in his ear, it was a struggle to hear his XO over the rough voice of the woman crooning in French over the soundsystem. He wasn't sure if it was the sand in the speakers or the singer's voice naturally sounded as though her throat had been sandpapered… Farah sounded doubtful, but then the man always did. It was his job, after all. 'He'll come.'

'I still don't get why…'

No… you wouldn't. He watched the young man - only just turned twenty-four - out of the corner of his eye. Not for the first time in the past few years, he did wonder if he shouldn't just go up to him and announce himself. Hell - with the right guidance, he'd make a damn good addition to the Thieves…

He shook his head slightly as he watched the way the youth stared into the tin mug of crap coffee he'd been nursing for the past half hour. No. If perhaps he'd gotten to the boy before his brother had torn the heart right out of him, maybe. But he'd been tied up with other matters, and the fate of Richard's grandsons had been long sealed by the time he'd untangled himself for long enough to make the trip to Mars.

Richard's grandsons… Aurora's great grandsons…

Ah, kid. I'm sorry. You deserved better. I'm not sure I've done the right thing, but I can't stand by and watch you curl up and die inside like this any longer.

'Why this one, anyway?' he heard Farah mutter over the link. There were times his second - newly promoted since Selen and Rei had gone back to Lar Metal to visit her sister - fussed like a mother hen.

'Because he reminds me a lot of me,' he'd answered. Which was one third of the truth.

Because he reminds me of my brother, before the war. Something in the eyes… or the slightly self-mocking tilt of the corner of his mouth on the rare occasions he'd seen the kid lift himself out of his funk long enough to take an interest in what was going on around him. Despite everything he'd endured there was a core of integrity and a determination to hang on regardless in that young man, underneath the self-pity, that could become something great, if what buried it was burned away in the right fire

Because his brother is beyond redemption. And I want to believe that mine isn't...

A loud rumbling noise shook the cantina, and the bottle on the table in front of him shivered and almost fell over, before he reached out a dusty glove to steady it.

'That sound… another refugee ship from Velda?'

Refugees? To where…? That was something he also needed to ask Selen and Rei to look into.

'No… that engine note - that's a battleship!'

He gripped his glass and took another sip, watching patiently from under his hat - the one Farah threatened to burn on a daily basis - and waited.

Come on, kid… I went to all this trouble to get you here, to give you your shot… don't give up now…

The youth slammed his mug down on the counter as though he'd come to a decision, then ran out of the bar and into the street.

Two heavyset men at another table looked at each other, shoved their chairs back out of the way and lumbered for the door. A thin, nervous youth followed them out only seconds behind them.

Unperturbed, at least outwardly, the watcher took another sip.

So young… too young to be so lost, kid. He smiled as he heard one of the older men call out about not being late. You and my brother are so alike; consumed by guilt, your fires almost burned out, to ember and ash. But sometimes, all it takes is one spark… Space is a vast and lonely place, Yama. That spark… One flash of light in the darkness touching another doesn't happen often. But when it happens...

'Do you think he will kill Harlock?' Farah, on the other end of the link, sounded unconvinced.

'Not a chance in hell,' Hannibal informed him as he stood up, stretching away the stiffness from being sat hunched over for far too long, and drawing himself back to his full height. The rest of the barflys didn't pay any attention as the old man who'd shuffled in to drink the day away at his lonely table day in, day out for six months walked out with the stride of a much younger and fitter man than his appearance suggested.

The message he'd sent had been as brief as he could make it. Yama's service record. The news clips of the explosion that had torn apart his life. The orders that had sent him out here, so far from home, with fuck all chance of ever going back, even if he lived. And the planet's designation: MX-201. He trusted in his brother's jaded curiosity being piqued enough to dispense with a covering note.

'What if Harlock kills him?'

'He won't.'

Farah grumbled on the other end of the link. 'You're awfully sure, boss. How the hell can you know what that cold blooded bastard will do? The kid won't even see it coming.'

I know… because I raised him better than that. He couldn't - didn't say it out loud. Not even to Farah. And also: 'Because he's here,' he said simply.

Because he wouldn't have come, if there wasn't some part of him that wanted to be stopped. I can't talk you out of this. Not now. After what passed between us on Herise, (was it really over eighty years ago?), I'd be lucky if you didn't just shoot me in the face, turn on your heel flicking that ridiculous cloak over your shoulder, and walk away without looking back.

But because he had come, there was still hope. If the boy had the sense to see through Harlock's pain, and his own. If he had the tenacity and the vision to reach for a future, instead of wanting to re-write the past, and take Harlock with him.

Yeah. Not even New Vegas would take those odds...

He looked up at the mountain, half-hidden in the early morning dusty haze that already obscured the twin terraforming towers in the distance. The transformed ship - and he was grateful the skeletal form was hidden behind a thinning veil of dark matter, because staring at it made him want to scream, for what it had become. What it had made of a brother he'd once loved as much as he'd loved his wife and daughters. 'Behold, I am become death, the destroyer of worlds…' he murmured. 'Oh, Khalsa… you were so right. We should have listened…'

Correction: still loved. Enough to throw two men into each other's paths and hope…

'Boss?'

'Nothing. Old memories. I'm coming in. We'll wait with the Miranda until the Arcadia and that cruiser have completed their business.'

'Oh good,' Farah replied dryly. 'Are we done here?'

'Thankfully, yes.'

'I'm burning that hat,' Farah added.

'I rather thought you would,' Hannibal replied with a smile.

He had time to shower, change and remove the itchy, patchy beard he'd affected for months, all with some relief. On board the Miranda at least he could dispense with the all-covering mantle he wore in public. These few knew his face, but not what it signified.

'They're on board,' Farah told him as he re-took the captain's chair. 'One down, three to - oh, there goes baldy!'

'And that kid…' someone else added. 'Just your boy left, boss.'

Hannibal watched as Yama, hands clasped on top of his head, began to fall as the gantry under him was retracted suddenly.

A hand, in golden armour, the form obviously female, shot out to grab Yama before he fell too far, then lifted him up and slapped him down onto the deck like a wet fish. Farah sniggered. 'Oh dear… that just has to smart.'

But Hannibal's attention was on the woman, the helmet retracted, revealing golden hair blowing in the breeze. His sharp intake of breath caused heads to turn, but when he said nothing, his crew shrugged it off.

Maya…

No. Not Maya. But close. Anastasia's granddaughter? The one he'd lost when her transport was attacked? No… too young. Her daughter then?

He laughed out loud; brief, sharp, self-mocking.

'Boss?'

'Nothing, Farah. Just it seems fate might be having the last laugh after all…'

Harlock watched from the upper balcony of the hangar as Yattaran and the crew put the four hopefuls through their paces. The big guy did so enjoy scaring the shit out of the wannabes. And in this case… well, two of them at least would have worked well enough, despite their pitiful attempts to impress. Stupid but strong. But with only two oscillators to go, he didn't need the manpower anymore.

The third… his lip curled in disdain. Tough enough to make the climb, but he was close to pissing himself. It said a lot that he'd risk so much to take any chance to get off this rock - even serve on a ghost ship. But it wasn't enough. Arcadia demanded more from her crew.

The fourth…

He stepped marginally out of the shadows for a better look, even though he'd seen the boy's picture in his service file. With his hair grown to a decidedly unmilitary length after six months on this rock, the family resemblance was even more marked. The mouth… the chin… the nose. Even the posture - nervous, but defiant.

Richard's line. After all these years… And Mamoru's, though his mother.

Your family tree never branches very far for long, does it?

Leave it, my friend. You have no room to talk.

The youth stared around with something akin to disdain. You consider yourself better than this, kid?

Didn't we all. Once.

The young man looked up, saw Harlock, and his eyes widened, then narrowed slightly, assessing.

Harlock took in a sharp breath, and slid back into the shadows, shaken, although very few who knew him would have spotted it.

He has Mamoru's eyes…

His great grandson stood with well-practiced calm, waiting as Yattaran clunked towards him. Nervous but determined not to show it.

He saw loss in those eyes. An emotional weariness he knew all too intimately. Stubbornness to rival his own, perhaps, to get him this far. But oddly, not death. Unless it was the boy's own.

You sent this to kill me, Isora? Or did you hope I'd kill him for you? Because you're good at getting others to do the dirty work for you. I've read your file too, Admiral...

He thumbed his commlink. 'Kei.'

He turned and left, not waiting to see the outcome.

Some things are a foregone conclusion.

Fate, it seems, is not done laughing at me...