A/N: I almost forgot to get this out, but it's not technically Monday yet where I am, so I still made it during the weekend! I feel like it's a stinky place to leave it, so chapter 11 might be up as early as tomorrow just to keep things moving.
Don't own the boys (and Jessie) of either universe. I am borrowing them. And I am reusing a few from the Quest world for my own devices – not quite as they were originally imagined. But that's okay. Horus, though, is a concept of my own invention. If you wish to use it for further GW storytelling, please credit me.
I don't often do this, but I'm going to dedicate this chapter to Wildelven Pathfinder who has been a true voice of encouragement.
Enjoy!
"So, here is where you can see what your security system caught before they shut it down," Heero pointed.
Given the now ugly circumstances of the lighthouse with the one dead attacker inside, the group had relocated to the house, finding that the library was more or less intact. Heero projected his laptop onto the screen that came down above the mantle for just this purpose and everyone found a seat to watch.
The video feed was somewhat degraded, as though it had been scrambled, and large swaths of it were pixelated beyond recognition. However, the images Heero had spliced together did manage to show a coherent picture. Several armed and masked individuals had approached the Quest compound from a small motorboat, dragging the boat ashore and making their way to the house. There were a few lost minutes as the perpetrators ransacked the house and destroyed many of the security devices, but because the lighthouse's systems were independent they could tell that the group had spent at least half an hour there before heading to the lab. After that, the first man in the door shot out the primary camera and the security feed was disabled a few minutes later.
"They actually cut most of your systems off from the internet by slicing the cords themselves, so it's no wonder you couldn't access it remotely last night," Heero added. "They also uploaded a virus to attempt to cover their tracks, but it was simplistic and unrefined. I have already purged it."
"Is that all we got?" Race asked. "That's not a lot to go on."
"Well, there was one more image, but it's still not enough," the young hacker said. He pulled up a shot obviously taken by one of the cameras mounted on the gate to the road. The image was time-stamped as just seconds before the whole system had been crashed and showed a van or truck of some kind approaching the compound.
"So they either brought in more people or were prepared to remove large amounts of your equipment and didn't," Wufei concluded. "Their timing was impeccable. They struck while the compound was empty, and also when most Preventers and other monitoring satellites were out of position."
"But this is less than useless!" Jessie exclaimed. "We can't see their faces, we can't tell where they came from or who they were, and we can't follow them!"
"Which is why you need to stop stalling me," Heero levied a near-death glare at Quatre, who flushed.
"All right, all right," he put up his hands in mock surrender. "I don't want to know how you even know about Horus. One of these days you're going to have to stop spying on me, Heero."
"What's Horus?" Jonny asked. At the blank looks, it was obvious that not only were the Quests clueless, but so was Duo.
"Horus is supposed to be top-secret," Quatre sighed. "Known only to those on the project itself. So, me and my engineers, mostly. Well, and Trowa."
"The rule is he can't miss dinner two nights in a row without telling me why," his lover smirked.
"How does Wuffie-chan know, then?" Duo pouted.
"Maxwell, that's going too far…" But before he could follow through on his threat, a look on Heero's face arrested his interest. "And how do you know anyway, Yuy? Winner swore he didn't tell you."
"Of course he didn't. But a project of that size being shared between WEI and the Preventers organization is enough to draw my attention. Quatre knows better than to assume I haven't seen anything on his computers." There was the tiniest hint of a satisfied smile on Heero's face, but only for a flicker of a moment.
"And you didn't tell me?" Duo turned to his best friend, who shrugged awkwardly.
"I wouldn't have told Trowa except he threatened to call Rashid and purge my schedule. I had to tell Wufei because he's the Preventers liaison on the project. I didn't tell Heero but he hacked into my highly encrypted work computer and found out for himself. I had to keep my promise for secrecy somewhere, didn't I?" he said with great exasperation.
"Anyway, the point is that Horus is a network of satellites belonging to WEI that will help us speed up our investigation as soon as Quatre gives me the access codes," Heero said.
"Why do you need him to give you the codes?" Hadji asked. "It sounds as though you could simply hack the system directly, if what you say is to be believed."
"Horus is too dangerous to be so easily compromised," Wufei answered. "It was Quatre's idea to ensure its security."
"Horus is, to all casual observation, nothing more than a test satellite network," Quatre explained. "It looks and functions like any communications net between the Earth and the colonies. In reality, however, it is the most advanced satellite and surveillance system ever designed. Horus has no blind spots anywhere on Earth or in space out almost to Mars. The resolution on the surveillance is ten-to-twenty times what you'll get from even the best equipment today, and it can be controlled remotely via the use of specific access codes. The downside is that, to ensure Horus wasn't used wrongly, the code must be entered correctly the very first time. If anyone or any system attempts to access the Horus mainframe without the correct code, the processors in every single individual Horus unit will simultaneously self-destruct."
"Isn't that a little harsh?" Jonny asked. "What if you type the password wrong?"
"You don't," Heero said. "Which is why I haven't tried it."
"Thanks for that," Quatre said a little wearily, "because we've had it mis-keyed by authorized personnel twice since the project began and you wouldn't believe what it costs to go out and fix every single node in Horus's network. Especially because of the Fallback Protocol."
"What's that?" Jessie found herself asking.
"If Horus were ever to be breached, the sheer power it would give whoever was using it cannot be estimated," he answered. "Preventers have it because I gave it to them, but really Horus is mine and nobody else's, and I'm keeping it as my own ace in the hole for peace, as it were. The Fallback Protocol states that no one person other than myself can ever know the locations of all the nodes or satellites or installations that house Horus. Even Wufei, who knows pretty much everything else, doesn't know where to find all of them. If Horus were ever hacked and went down, there's one node only I can locate and repair. And none of the others will come back online until I do so."
"So therefore," Hadji nodded, "even if someone did manage to find Horus at all, if they triggered its self-destruct, no one else could get it up and running again without your specific input and assistance. In essence, it has a dead-man's switch that only you can control."
"It tells you how much Une likes Winner over there that she let him get away with that little trick," Wufei rolled his eyes. "Anybody else and she'd have confiscated the whole project."
"Which is also why I didn't tell her about it until it was finished," he replied with a superior air.
"So, anyway, this system will allow you to see what our cameras missed," Dr Quest said.
"Not only that," Wufei put in. "Horus will allow us to track those who breached your system wherever they go."
"So let's do it!" Duo was enthusiastic. "Of course, now I'm never going outside in the buff again in case you and your suits are watching…" He leered outrageously and Quatre's face went bright pink.
That lasted for just a few seconds before Duo was inexplicably pelted with flying pillows. All eyes turned to where Trowa was primly sitting on a sofa by himself, without a single cushion anywhere in reach. But no one had seen him move and he returned their gazes with an even look.
"All right. I really am going to have to ask you not to watch," Quatre said, as he pulled out his own laptop. He typed furiously into it for a few seconds, then submitted an eye to the optical scanner, a finger to the fingerprint scanner, and did a voice-print check. There was a pause, and then he laboriously typed something ridiculously long and complex, given the number of digits and the careful slowness with which he inputted them. A moment later, he leaned back, relieved.
"Okay, let's see what we can see."
Wufei joined him and they began navigating the program. From the outside, it was alternately boring and entertaining to fixate on the wrong side of a laptop screen and listen to them work their way through the system, half-bickering as they did so. In the end, Heero simply attached Quatre's laptop to the projector so they could all watch the proceedings. There appeared to be an unsettling number of angles and views of the Quest compound from the air, and in many of them the black-clad men were clear, but additional resolution of the images seemed to offer few if any clues. It wasn't as if the perpetrators had worn helpful insignia on their clothing.
"That one," Duo spoke up suddenly from where he had arranged the dozen or so pillows around him into a very comfy-looking nest. But he was sitting up and staring fixedly at the images that flashed by. Quatre glanced to his friend and without another word magnified the view from the particular satellite that had caught Duo's attention.
"Second quadrant," Trowa clarified, also staring at the screen.
"I see it too," Benton put in. "Try 400 percent magnification, if it can do that."
"Dr Quest, Horus can do ten-thousand percent magnification from here. Easily." There was unmistakable pride in Quatre's voice.
As he zoomed in on the image, it became obvious what they were seeing. Sitting in the back of the covered truck that pulled up to the gates of the Quest compound was a man dressed just like all the others. But what made him unique was that he was holding a computer in his hands and the screen was just visible. On it was an image that, as Quatre increased the resolution, caused even the war-hardened ex-Gundam pilots to draw back in revulsion.
"How very…Phantom of the Opera," Race managed to quip after a moment.
"Trowa, you're the best at facial recognition," Heero said. "Can you identify him?"
Trowa moved smoothly to the computer and began isolating various features on the visage before them with practiced ease. He worked from seemingly strange facial markers as well as the common eyes and mouth structure. With the face half-covered by a mask, there was a great deal that was not visible, but Trowa focused on the chin and the jawline and estimated some cheekbones as well. The fact that the visible flesh beneath the mask was scarred and rather horrifying didn't seem to trouble him.
"While you do that, I'll track the location of our friends," Wufei said lightly. He ran a line from Quatre's laptop to his own and began utilizing Horus to monitor the men and their truck as they left the Quest compound. Since staring at the face on the projector was somewhat disconcerting, he found himself with an audience as he switched from satellite to satellite, tracking their movements. He didn't bother with the individuals who retreated back to the boat they'd landed at the start – they ended up meeting up with the truck not far from the compound anyway. And the truck bypassed the nearest obvious transportation hubs and drove for close to 4 hours before at last unloading its passengers.
"Spaceport," Wufei announced.
"They'd have taken probably a private transport," Duo considered, "since they had planned on possibly walking away with some equipment. Therefore, their earliest takeoff window would have had to have been about two hours after they arrived at the port."
"How can you possibly know that?" Jonny asked. "If it was a private transport, they could take off whenever they were all onboard whatever shuttle they had."
"Not true," the braided young man grinned. "Even private transports have to wait if there are other shuttles scheduled to take off. There are only so many launch pads at each port. The one Wufei is looking at was pretty booked yesterday with the first availability for a private transport about two hours after they arrived, like I said."
At the blank looks, Duo grinned even wider.
"During the war, I got bored one day and decided to memorize the Bradshaw. It turned out to be really useful, so I got into the habit of doing it once a month ever since."
"The Bradshaw?"
"It's the timetables schedule of all worldwide spaceports," Jessie explained. "It's a massive chart that shows all planned takeoffs and landings to and from outer space." She elbowed Duo with a grin. "That thing is near impossible to understand. I'm impressed."
"Hidden depths, Red. Hidden depths." He leaned back with a smile.
"Got him," Trowa put in. On the screen, the scarred and mangled masked face from the Horus feed had been overlaid onto a service record. All the markers Trowa had highlighted were a perfect match, assuming the person in question had been horrifically burned or otherwise mutilated in the meantime.
"Agent Ezekiel Rage," Race read. "One of OZ's top spies sent to infiltrate White Fang. Presumed killed in action."
"The service record is half blank," Dr Quest pointed out. "Even his real name has been removed from the file. Since he obviously wasn't killed, what could have happened to him that OZ would try so hard to hide?"
"Give me a couple of hours and I'll be able to tell you," Heero said.
"I could just requisition the information through official channels," Wufei raised his eyebrow.
"That will take days," Heero replied blandly. "I'm much faster."
"He's got you there," Quatre said cheerfully. "So, Wufei, where did our private shuttle go after it took off from the port?"
"Horus tracked it to an abandoned mining installation not far from L2. It's not part of the colony cluster anymore and as far as I can tell nobody uses it for anything," the Preventers agent reported. "Perfect for an underground terrorist base."
"Then that's where we'll find some answers," Jonny said decisively.
"Are you advocating our invading this location ourselves?" Hadji asked, knowing the answer all too well.
"Of course! They're going to do that anyway. Remember, Quatre said that they were the ones Preventers was sending to deal with this. That's why we're here instead of in a safehouse somewhere. Now that we know where the terrorists are, there's no way they won't be going out there themselves."
"You're not wrong, J-man," Duo said. "These guys blew up a hotel and tried to shoot at Cat. We don't usually let people do that without at least dropping by for tea."
"But you're still civilians," Wufei pointed out. "Even if you have clearance for the information you possess, that doesn't mean I have to allow you on the mission. It will be risky." But, even though he still spoke of "civilians" as though they were slime on his favorite sword, there was a challenging light in his eyes.
"These people threatened my family, broke into my home, and are likely attempting to use my research to start a new war," Dr Quest's voice rang with conviction. "You will not keep me from doing whatever it takes to stop them."
"It's going to be dangerous," and there was something solemn in Quatre's voice, almost mournful.
"We might not be Gundam pilots," Race met the blond's eyes, "but that doesn't mean we can't help you. You don't know how many of them there are. Even you can't be everywhere."
"Trust us," Jessie said suddenly. "The truth is that you can't give us anything more dangerous than what you already have. We'll be a lot less of a risk to you on this mission than we ever will be in knowing who you are."
"Perfectly sound reasoning," Trowa nodded to himself. "She's got us there. No matter how good or bad they are, they can't cause anything worse on a mission than they can just by making our identities known to the public." His eyes didn't even flit to Quatre, but the meaning was clear nonetheless.
"Quatre," Hadji focused on his friend, "you would not have shared what you did with me did you not believe it would be of value. You do not need to know why you need us for it to be true."
"That's fair," he replied.
"Two conditions," and Heero's voice brokered less than no argument. "One – you will take all your orders from us without question. If you are a risk to the mission and you are ordered to stand down or retreat, you will do so or I will kill you where you stand."
"Yeah, 'cause that makes me feel better," Jonny snorted. Duo grinned at him.
"And two – the dog does not come with us."
All eyes turned to Bandit, who yipped once and rolled over at being the center of attention, wriggling contentedly.
"How come?" Jessie asked.
There was a moment of silence and then laughter exploded out of Quatre so loudly and suddenly and brightly it could have been a sneeze. He laughed and laughed, eventually having to sit and bury his face in his hands while his shoulders shook. Trowa, Duo, and Wufei all looked at him for only a moment before their gazes shifted to Heero. Hadji, knowing that whatever had amused Quatre must have come from the Japanese man, also turned in confusion. The rest of the Quests, not privy to the knowledge of Quatre's empathy however, stared at him instead.
"Quatre…" Heero growled warningly.
"I know…I'm sorry," he gasped. "It's just…I can't help it…" And he dissolved into giggles again.
But Trowa seemed to understand and moved forward. He lifted Bandit into his arms, cradling him expertly and scratching behind his ears. There was affection in his face, unfamiliar to the Quests who had known him so little, but the others recognized the expression from his time in the circus. Trowa loved few things in life – Quatre being the most important of them – but animals always held a place in his heart.
Without warning, Trowa pivoted to where Heero sat glaring murder at Quatre and placed the dog in his lap.
Heero froze, his body becoming as rigid as the chair. Bandit, however, had no hesitation at all and padded around in a circle twice before settling in comfortably. He stretched his nose to Heero's elbow and gave it an experimental lick. The stoic young man jolted as though shocked and Bandit repeated the action. He wuffled softly and turned a beseeching face to Heero's wide eyes.
The mask cracked and Heero smiled. His face took on a light that made him look years younger as he wrapped one arm around the small dog and began stroking its head with his other hand. It was almost precisely the look Jonny wore when he cuddled his best canine friend, and it made Heero's usual cold warrior face seem out of place.
It was perfectly quiet for a moment, and Race found himself looking at Duo. He'd have expected the jokester of the five to have called out Heero for his apparent affection for the pup, but Duo was strangely silent, his own face unreadable. Race looked to Trowa, who had retreated and sat with an arm around Quatre, the latter of whom was quieted at last and smiling gently. Even Wufei's granite justice-and-business-only face had softened. And Race realized that somehow he had missed something important. Important enough that it had earned silence where he would have expected something else.
But the moment passed and Heero, still hugging Bandit, looked up with a glower that could have forced waterfalls to run backwards. There was challenge and shame and pride and burning defiance in that glare, and Race understood.
"It isn't that he doesn't like Bandit. He likes him too much," he realized. He fought a smile of his own. Still so human and young, these boys, for whatever else they might have become.
"Bandit has been helpful more than once," Benton said smoothly, trading a knowing look with his bodyguard; he had come to the same conclusion. "If you don't want him on the mission, that's fine, but he does terribly when we leave him behind in general. If he can at least join us in space, that will probably be enough. Can we keep him with us when we go to L2?"
Nobody looked at Heero, not even Jonny and Jessie and Hadji who were at the least curious if not openly near-bouncing to ask their questions, Hadji being the former, Jonny the latter, and Jessie somewhere in between. Heero pet Bandit again, earning a joyful bark in return. When he spoke, it was to nobody but the pup in his arms.
"Hai."
-==OOO==-
"Um, not to sound stupid," Jessie asked, settling into her seat, "but why are we taking the Strataquest?"
"The Preventers shuttles are too noticeable," Wufei answered. "There's no quicker way of announcing to our enemy that we are coming than to use one of the official transports."
"Yeah, but isn't this screaming for them to come get us?" Jonny wanted to know. "I mean, they were after dad in the first place. The Strataquest doesn't say 'property of the Quest family' on the side, but it's still a pretty distinctive craft."
"Good." Duo grinned. "If they come out of their holes to greet us, all the easier for us to hunt them down."
"We're not going into the mining installation in the Strata anyway," Race added. "We'll dock at L2 and take something local."
"Yes, but…" Jessie trailed off.
"If we wait for a public shuttle, not only will we have to deal with lines and officials and paperwork and everything else," Quatre said, "but we'll tip off anyone looking for a trail that proves there are Preventers following them. If we take a WEI shuttle, no matter how careful we are, we'll be met when we arrive with photographers. If we take a Preventers shuttle, it is just as Wufei says. And I don't have a private unmarked shuttle on this continent right now." He smiled. "Our adversaries must assume Preventers is tracking them, but they will think they've got more time before the official channels get things sorted. And they'd be fools not to think you yourselves would be following them after what happened at the hotel. The reputation of the Quests is well enough known. By feeding them that through the use of your shuttle, it means that we," and he gestured to himself and the other ex-pilots "go totally unnoticed."
"That's remarkably clever," Dr Quest said, settling into the copilot's seat.
"You have no idea," Wufei smirked. "Maybe if you're lucky you'll see what kind of strategist Winner really is."
"That's not what I'd call lucky, Fei-boy." Duo dodged past Wufei's seat with alacrity and chose the one farthest from the seething agent.
"MAXWELL!"
"So that's also why you're letting me pilot," Race mused, doing his final checks. "Since it'll be me talking to the control room at L2, nobody will even know the five of you are here."
Everyone had settled and Race was already moving the Strataquest into position to take off from the spaceport when Heero next spoke.
"Trust that if there is a way to pass unnoticed into a colony, Quatre and Trowa have found it," Heero commented. "Between Quatre's admirers and Trowa's reticence, they have learned many ways to get in and out without drawing attention to themselves."
Quatre and Trowa exchanged sly grins. Then, as the shuttle began its takeoff, Trowa reached out and took Quatre's hand. The blond, who had turned to stare out the window intently, closed his eyes and squeezed back. The exchange had the weight of familiarity to it, and of need.
Inside their bond, Trowa knew perfectly well what Quatre was feeling. Leaving the Earth or landing on it always had the same impact on his beloved, and from what Quatre had told him of his conversations with Wufei, it was to be expected. The Earth had a strong influence on Quatre's empathy, dulling its ability to reach those in space, and somewhat muting it with so much life everywhere – not that Quatre could sense the emotions of trees and flowers, but he did have a certain affinity for animals and their hearts. Passing from the Earth into space was always difficult for Quatre. Not only was he breaking from the dampening effect on his space heart, but he was also moving towards greater centers of population, given that 80% of people lived in space these days.
As they rushed through the atmosphere and broke from the Earth, the blue sky melting away into star-spangled darkness, Quatre's breath hitched. Through their bond, Trowa felt the momentary alarm at the much clearer feelings, the deeper layers, the multitude of souls that, even though hours away by the fastest shuttle, could echo this far. Quatre liked both space and the Earth, and he had accustomed himself to them separately, but moving from one to the other was always at least momentarily overwhelming.
Trowa anchored Quatre, gave him a steady set of emotions to hold onto, and waited. After a few minutes of what must have been extreme sensory chaos in Quatre's mind, his space heart adjusted and he began to block out the much brighter influences leaking into him. Like the defenses in his Gundam, he recalibrated his shields until they would hold against the particular threat before him. After a while, Quatre let all his breath out in a relieved whoosh and his heart beat only with contentment across their bond.
Not long after Quatre had settled, he got a call from his assistant at WEI and retreated to take it. The Strataquest, like the jet they had taken to reach the compound, had multiple sections to allow for a bit of privacy. The Quests were no strangers to space, and the private shuttle was almost as fancy as Quatre's, complete with barracks-style sleeping accommodations and some basic food supplies. While Quatre retreated to an aft section, Jonny, Hadji, and Jessie all unbuckled themselves.
"So, we've got, what, three hours before we reach L2?" Jessie asked.
"Approximately," Wufei answered, looking at the three curiously.
"Come on, boy," Jonny opened the latch on the carrier that was Bandit's safety-harness on the shuttle and the pup sprang out, doing a happy half-trot, half-swim to carry himself through the gravity-less shuttle. He bumped into Duo's legs, pushed himself off, and ended up floating towards the seats up front where Benton and Race were piloting.
"Keep him back there," warned Benton. "The last time he got up here we wound up narrowly missing the debris field when he bumped the navigation panel."
"Got it, Dr Quest," Jessie said, lightly bouncing through the cabin to catch Bandit before his trajectory carried him too far.
"So, are we up for the usual?" Jonny asked.
"Not me," Hadji deferred. "But please include our new friends in your game. This I would like to see."
"Game?" Duo's eyes lit up.
"When Jonny was much younger," Race said from up front, "he used to get very bored on long space flights. So he and Hadji came up with a game to pass the time. It also happened to be good for acclimating them to lower gravity."
"It's sort of a cross between volleyball and lacrosse," Jonny explained, digging through one of the compartments until he came up with an orange box. "We set up these goals and you have to get the ball in your opponent's net. But you can't cross the center line to do it."
"If we're going to do teams," Jessie pointed out, "it'll be more fair if Jonny and I are on opposite sides. We know the game, and, also, you guys are something else."
"That's sensible," Wufei admitted, "but unnecessary. This is foolish."
"You're just afraid you'll get your honor handed to you in itty-bitty pieces," Duo boasted. "If I challenge you, will you play?"
"Maxwell, if you challenge me, I will be forced to defeat you soundly," Wufei almost growled.
"Then what are the teams?" Jonny asked.
"Jessie, Duo, and myself," Trowa said, "against Heero, Wufei, and Jonny."
"Well balanced," Heero nodded. "I would call this a waste of time, but my computer's programs are still hacking the old OZ data. At least this will be an interesting means to see if you are better at this little sport than you are at basketball," and he made the tiniest of smirks at Duo who nearly choked on his tongue.
"Why you…?! I'm so better than you! Bring it on, Hee-chan!"
"If you don't mind," came Race's voice, "we'll close off the cockpit so we don't get any surprises up here." He laughed as he said it and the folding partition slid to life along the tracks in the floor to box in the main cabin.
Jonny and Jessie outlined the rules, the center boundary, and what constituted a fair steal from across the line while setting up the goals at either end. With five pairs of side-by-side chairs each in the cabin, there were obstacles to be avoided as well as teammates to work with. Wufei might have grumbled, but every time his superiority came out, Duo would egg him into reaffirming his challenge. Trowa would have seemed completely neutral to the whole idea except for the bright glint in his eyes.
"I think I'll take Bandit and leave you to it," Hadji commented. "It's not going to be very safe for spectators, you realize."
"Hadj, are you sure?" Jonny asked, drawing near and leaning his head close. "You don't have to…"
"My friend," his voice was warm, "I am not interested, as I plainly stated. I am not left out if I choose to excuse myself. No worries. Besides, if Quatre decides he wishes to join in, then I shall as well to keep him company in the sea of you literal types." Here he smiled genuinely.
"If Cat wants to play, he's on my team!" Duo claimed.
"I'll be sure to tell him so," Hadji laughed. He scooped up Bandit and made his way to the door, hiding a snigger at the increasingly heated talk passing between the teams. It was playful banter for Jonny and Jessie, and it would have sounded like a to-the-death duel for Wufei and Heero and Duo, and Trowa didn't say anything, of course, but even he could tell it came from the same emotion. War-hardened or not, the six of them were all indulging their competitive streaks in a mostly-harmless fashion, and it was probably as good a way as any to build cohesion between them.
And if Hadji was any judge of these things, they would need that cohesion and soon.