Zechs groaned as he opened his eyes. The impact had been brutal, even for him. His own machine had been on the bottom of the two when they had plowed violently in to their target, and part of his cabin had been crushed. Pieces of shrapnel were deeply imbedded in his left shoulder, and his left leg was trapped between well mutilated metal. Blood flowed freely from his left temple, and he was certain that at least a few of his ribs were broken.

But he had no time to tend to his own wounds. He needed to find out immediately if either of the two men in the other suit were even alive. If not, then he would tend to his own wounds before bitterly calling in a defeat to headquarters. If they were alive, though, they would most certainly be in critical condition. They would need help, and they would need it instantly.

The former blonde groaned as he used his good arm to pry his own leg free. As soon as he could, he escaped from his cockpit and forced his way on top of the other suit. He made quick work of the lock on the door and opened up Matthew's cabin. His top priority was certainly Malthis, but he couldn't even get to Malthis without access to the controls. The mobile suit certainly could not fly without fuel, but if he was lucky, Zechs could use the remaining electrical power to roll the machine over and obtain access to Malthis.

He just had to pray that the man was still alive.

Zechs pulled Matthews unceremoniously from the cockpit. Vital signs would have to be checked later. The less experienced pilot was dumped just out of range of the suit before Zechs powered up the mobile suit and turned it as delicately as he could.

As quickly as he could, the tall man opened up the back hatch. He sprinted around as quickly as his battered body would allow him to and crawled inside. His fingers went straight to the general's throat, checking for any sign of a pulse.

Nothing.

With a snarl, Zechs pulled Malthis clear out of the hatch and lay the body on the ground. "Shit," he muttered, positioning his mouth above Malthis'. He steadily began CPR, hoping against long, if not impossible, odds that there was a chance at resuscitating the general. The suits had not been fully equipped for battle, so Zechs was forced to do what he could without a proper med kit. No adrenaline, nothing to jolt the heart back into life, nothing at all but his own body and knowledge.

Seconds passed, then minutes. No response was made by the general.

"Shit…"

/////

Noin grumbled as she finished up her latest report. It had been several weeks since she had been confined to her apartment, and she had been tasked with what in her mind felt like an endless string of high school reports. Une would send her raw statistics, and Noin would write out the details in a more comprehensible form.

For a former pilot and well honored soldier like Noin, it was hell.

"That's it," she grumbled, closing her laptop, "I need to get out."

From across the living room, Hilde paused the workout she had been doing. "Where should we go?"

Noin raised a dyed eyebrow at her 'sister'. "We?" she asked.

"Yes, we," Hilde affirmed. "I know it's been, like, a day and a half since I got here, but I was actually sent as part time helper and full time bodyguard. You go nowhere without me except the bathroom."

The elder woman groaned. "I am more than capable of taking care of my self," she countered.

Hilde offered a shrug before putting her weights down. "Look, sweetie, I don't doubt that for a second. Believe me, when I was going through my training to become a soldier, it was your picture I stared at, dreaming of someday reaching your level. The guys in the academy may have talked about how blondie was the number one graduate, but all the girls knew that it was because you let him."

That was hardly the response Noin had been expecting. She shifted her weight in her chair. "You can't really think that, can you?"

The smaller female walked up to her inspiration and grabbed her hand gently. "Noin," she very quietly spoke, "you were a better soldier than any other female in the academy has ever been, including Une. You were the best of the best, and everyone knew it. So yes, I know you can protect yourself, but please, let me have the honor of fulfilling my duty of protecting you."

"You've practiced this speech, haven't you?" Noin chuckled.

Hilde blushed slightly, dropping her gaze. "Um, maybe a little…" She shook out her head and quickly regained her composure. "Look, regardless of all of that, I am not going back to Une and tell her that I let you out of my sight. She's as good a shot as you, but she's definitely more likely to actually shoot you."

Noin laughed at the statement, understanding all to well what it felt like to have Une mad at her. Back during the war, Noin had honestly been a little afraid of the older woman's temper. Une had a dangerous combination of strategic brilliance, military power, and a complete lack of conscience in the beginning. That woman really was likely to shoot someone for a slip up, though Noin honestly did believe that the woman's violent tendencies had most certainly become contained after the war ended.

That still didn't mean that she would want to tick the woman off…

"Fine," she eventually consented, "you can come to."

Hilde pumped her arm in victory as she hopped back up. "Great! I'll go take a shower to get this sweat off of me, and you decide what we're going to do." Without waiting for a reply, the younger woman practically bounced toward the bathroom.

Noin shook her head. "I swear," she muttered, "sometimes, it's like she and Duo are one person…"

Ten minutes later, the 'sisters' were finally ready and heading out. "So," Hilde asked, climbing in to the passenger's seat of the car, "where are we going?"

"Lunch and a movie?" Noin asked.

"Perfect!"

/////

Une paced back and forth, a furious look on her face as she awaited news. The last time Zechs had contacted her had been a week earlier, and the intimidating woman was more than aware of the fact that the man was running on limited resources and a potentially devastating circumstances.

He should have checked in already…

Leaning casually in his chair, Duo rolled his eyes. "I know you're going to shoot me for asking this," he finally said, an hour after she had arrived, "but don't you have the largest agency in the history of non-wartime civilization to be running?"

Heero and Quatre, who had been sitting next to the braided pilot, both very casually slid away from him. No sane man, not even seasoned warrior like themselves, should willingly be in that woman's potential line of fire.

At the moment, Une was tempted to live up to her reputation. If it weren't for the fact that she relied heavily on the former Gundam pilots to help maintain the peace, Duo would probably have been shot by her years ago.

"This is the most pressing issue Preventers is working on," she growled, glaring at the young man. "And, as I'm sure you understand, if this mission does not turn out well, we will not be in good shape. Of course, by 'we', I mean humanity."

Duo just shook his head. "Yeah, I get that and all, but there are other missions going on right now, Ma'am, and you always have at least three of the five of us on this one at all times. Isn't there anything better you could be doing with your time than pacing around in this room?"

Quatre nervously cleared his throat. "Um, what I believe my friend here is trying to say is that we have things covered here, so if you wanted to take a break or maybe check in on some of the other missions, you will have nothing to worry about. I assure you, Ma'am, we will inform you the moment we hear anything."

Although Une hated the severe lack of respect her subordinates were showing her at the moment, even she had to admit that they had a point. Her job was to maintain Preventers, and she could not do that adequately pacing anxiously in a small, secluded communications room.

"You are to have, at absolute minimum, three of you manning this station at all times." Duo opened his mouth, ready to comment on the fact that they were already doing that, but Quatre used remarkably fast reflexes to clamp a hand over the brunet's mouth.

"Absolutely," the Arabian quickly agreed. "Go rest for a while, Ma'am, and we'll take care of everything down here."

As the clearly agitated woman left, Quatre removed his hand from Duo's mouth. The American stretched out his jaw for a moment. Quatre had been gripping that jaw so hard that the braided man actually thought there might be some bruising. "Damn, man," he groaned, cracking his sore jaw, "why'd you have to do that so hard?"

Quatre gave Duo an only mildly apologetic look. "If we wanted to have any chance of getting her to leave," he calmly pointed out, "then we needed to do it diplomatically."

Off on the side, Heero continued to stare at the communications devices. "She has a valid concern," he neutrally stated, more so to himself than to the others. "Zechs should have said something to us by now."

The room went quiet for a moment. It was a fact that they had already known, but to hear it out loud seemed to require a moment of thought. Severely uncomfortable with awkward silences, Duo struck up a conversation with Quatre about Trowa's increasing recovery.

But thoughts of an endangered mission were not far from any of their minds.

/////

Three more weeks passed, but it felt like months to all involved. No word came from Zechs. No signal, no message, no sign at all that he was even alive. If it weren't for the fact that the former blonde had a history of disappearing for a while during missions, a search team would have been sent out immediately.

But even for Zechs, three weeks was a disturbingly long time to be missing in action.

"I say we hunt him down," Duo bluntly said to his fellow pilots.

Trowa, though not nearly strong enough to go on another mission any time soon, was deemed well enough to leave his hospital room. "I agree," he calmly stated. "There is no reason for Zechs to have been gone for this long with no signs of him that do not point to a compromised mission. I believe it would be in our best interest to go to the area that we knew he was headed."

"But we don't have exact coordinates," Quatre counseled. "All the information he had been able to get to us about his destination was that he was heading to the L2 area. There are half a dozen colonies in the L2 cluster, and any one of them would take weeks to months to check thoroughly.

Wufei crossed his arms as he considered what was being said. "Well, we could shave a lot of time off a search by ruling out largely civilian areas," he reasoned out loud. "If Malthis really has a large military installation, it would be impossible to set up in a densely populated area without anyone noticing."

"Even if we do eliminate those areas, we're still talking a multi week search to cover any possible locations," Heero pointed out. "Every single colony out there had some sort of military installation on it during the war. There are certain areas, even with a civilian population, where it would not be unreasonable to set up military equipment."

"And there are dozens of resource satellites out there that are also potential candidates," Quatre added. "It would require more than the five of us to have any reasonable chance at finding him before it would simply be too late to be worth it."

Duo grumbled, but had to admit that they had a point. The only ones who even knew the mission existed were the five of them, Une, Zechs, and…

"Hey, does anyone know exactly where Noin's been?"

The other four froze in whatever position they had been in. They had spent the past few weeks working every potential threat from Malthis and only made contact with those they absolutely had to. They had asked about their senior soldier several times in the past few weeks, but Une had always casually dismissed their questions, simply stating that the woman was busy working on something.

But it had been weeks and weeks since any of them had actually laid eyes on her…

Heero got to his feet and stormed toward Une's office. It was time to get some answers.