Wild Roses – First Blood
Chapter Eleven
Mid July AC 191
Zodiac Wing – Forward Operating Base
"Oh, my God, is it ever going to stop raining?" Otto spluttered, looking up as the door to the Mess opened and shut again in a hurry, admitting a tall figure huddled bravely against the weather.
Zechs looked up from his collar and smiled ruefully at his friend. He brushed the water off his trench coat in a futile effort to stay dry and shook his sopping head slowly. "Doesn't look like it," he replied quietly.
"Wonderful!" Otto exclaimed. "Honestly, who in God's name thought it was a good idea to put a major spaceport in what has to be the wettest place on Earth? How the hell do they launch?"
Zechs chuckled. "I have no idea, but they do," he said. He glanced out of the window of the temporary structure and shook his head again, sprinkling more water onto the floor from the ends of his ponytail.
He had to acknowledge that Otto had a point. Whoever had thought Christmas Island a good place for a spaceport needed to be shot. In the four weeks since Zechs had arrived at his new posting there hadn't been a single day without a torrential downpour and it didn't surprise him at all that everyone else was as sick of it as he was.
In truth, it was hard not to get annoyed when everything was wet, constantly. Clothing was damp and sticky, floors were running with puddles and the suits were corroding despite the efforts of the engineers to protect them because the temporary base they were on didn't have the same controlled hangers as the permanent stations like the nearby New Edwards did.
Zechs would have commiserated with his classmate but he no longer had that luxury. Glancing back at the inside of the mess hall, he shrugged and asked the question he'd come to ask. "Have you seen the Commander this evening?" he enquired politely of the room and got a sea of negative headshakes as replies.
Only Otto varied his response. Casting his friend an assessing glance and then an acknowledging smile, the dark haired pilot tilted his head as he spoke. "No, sir," he replied. "Sorry, sir. Have you tried the simulation suites?" Otto suggested.
Zechs smiled back, readily, grateful again for Otto's ready mind and affable personality. "Not yet, Officer," he said steadily. "Thank you for the suggestion."
He exchanged a meaningful glance with the other boy, and then ducked back out of the mess, leaving the smaller man to the company of his fellow pilots.
As Zechs hunched his shoulders against the rain again, he reflected that Otto had taken Zechs's promotion over his head with amazingly good grace, never showing any issue with it at all. He seemingly had no trouble with splitting his approach to his former roommate, switching between calling Zechs 'sir' in public and their more intimate forms of address in private effortlessly and never blurring the line between them even slightly. What should have placed strain on their friendship, hadn't, because Otto had refused to let it and when Zechs, in the first few days of their posting, had been about ready to scream from the stress of his new responsibilities, it had been Otto who had soothed him back to some version of normality.
Zechs only hoped Otto knew how grateful he was.
A sudden gust of wind blew icy drops of rain straight down the upturned collar of Zechs's coat and he swore viciously as he broke into a run across the compound, ducking under every available bit of shelter as he headed for the computer labs at the far end, following Otto's suggestion.
He keyed his security codes into the panel by the door swiftly, barely able to make himself stand still as he waited for the scanner to read his fingerprint. The door beeped eventually and Zechs yanked it open and skittered inside into the dryness and relative warmth.
Shucking his coat with a disgusted grimace, Zechs folded it over one arm and ran a hasty hand through his straggly hair, neatening it as much as he could under the circumstances. Treize, he thought, would probably still have something to say about his appearance – Zechs was rapidly learning the older man had a thing about his officers' presentation – but he'd just have to forgive him this once. It was not possible, as far as Zechs was concerned, to spend ten hours conducting and supervising shakedown runs on suits, and then another two running around a rain sodden base in search of an elusive superior, and still look as though one had just stepped off a parade ground.
Not that it looked like Zechs had found Treize for him to criticize the younger man yet. The computer labs just weren't that big and there was no hint of movement in either of the workshops, any of the four programming bays or in the echoing, empty simulation room.
"Hello?" Zechs called, hoping against hope, and cursed again when there was no answer. "Bugger!"
Tugging his sodden coat back on with a shiver at the wet chill of it, Zechs turned on his heel and moved back towards the main door.
He paused before he opened it, an idea coming to him. Rooting in one pocket, he found his slim little phone and pressed the fourth of his speed dial buttons, putting the phone to his ear as it began to ring.
The recipient of the call answered it swiftly.
"Captain Une," the Lady snapped. "Yes?"
"Une, is Treize back in his office yet?" Zechs asked, attempting to keep his conversation with his commander's new Equerry to the absolute minimum. There was nothing about Captain Anne Une that Zechs liked, and there hadn't been since the moment he'd first seen her dancing in Treize's hold at the Graduation Ball a month before.
He was still trying to decide whether or not it was a good thing that the feeling was definitely mutual. He and Une had begun sniping at each other almost from the moment Treize had formally introduced them, much to the older man's bewilderment, and they'd had their first full argument less than a day later.
Accordingly, Une's already chilly voice took on tones that could have frozen outer space as she replied. "No, Lieutenant, he is not," the young woman said frostily, emphasising Zechs's lesser rank heavily.
"Damn it!" Zechs swore. "Do you know where he is?" he asked unwillingly. The last thing he wanted was to be beholden to Une for anything, but he couldn't see much choice. "I've been trying to track him down for over an hour," he admitted curtly, hedging the true length of time he'd been searching as much as he could.
He could hear Une's vicious smirk down the phone. "Perhaps you should make a proper appointment, then," the Lady suggested smugly, "instead of expecting His Excellency to be at your beck and call. It would be far more appropriate if you curtailed your tendency to traipse in and out of his working spaces as the whim takes you in any case."
Zechs snorted dismissively, giving that suggestion the consideration it deserved in his view. "You'd love that, wouldn't you?" he asked darkly. "Dare to dream, Une. The devil will be ice-skating in hell before I make an appointment with you to speak to my own brother!"
Une hissed in reply and Zechs knew his trump card had, once again, won this match for him.
Within moments of speaking to her on the flight to the new base, Zechs had known Lady Une was going to be a problem. The instinctive attraction to her Zechs had seen in Treize at the Ball hadn't lessened for the seven days that had passed, and when Treize had informed the younger man that Une as his Equerry had been Valadin's suggestion, Zechs had been torn with groaning at his own stupidity and smacking Treize around the ear for his.
A bit of judicious digging had confirmed all Zechs's worst fears about Une. She wasn't just Valadin's suggestion – she was Valadin's protégé. A class ahead of Zechs, she had been the Russian woman's star pupil at the Academy during her time there – a trend continued after her graduation as she rapidly made her name as Valadin's most used and most successful Intelligence operative. Her future had seemed set until she'd abruptly withdrawn from the field to join Treize's new Wing.
The on-paper reason for the career shift had been that Une was reaching the limit of missions any wet work agent could undertake without a lengthy break. As far as the Specials were concerned, posting her with Treize made sense because it allowed her that break whilst lending the new Wing a dynamic no predecessor had ever had access to through the Lady's expertise in Covert Operations.
Zechs, however, knew full well that the on-paper reason was a load of rot. Une was Treize's Equerry because Valadin wished her to be, and Valadin had wished her to be because she'd decided her darling Treize simply couldn't be without a mistress to distract him from the stress of his posting.
The hell of it was, Zechs might have agreed with her, if she'd asked him. It was almost a year since he'd thrown a fit at finding out Treize was sleeping with his Russian fellow officer, and the lessons he'd learned in that year, both about himself and those around him, had left him a very different person to the boy he'd been then. The naïve image he'd had of the older man's perfect fairytale marriage was an idea best left as just that – an idea. Particularly in light of Leia's stunningly inappropriate attitude to her husband's career.
When it came down to it – and however much Zechs hated that Treize had to break his marriage vows for it – it wasn't fair of Zechs to whine about Treize's relationship with Valadin when his own with Otto was remarkably similar. Nor could the blond begrudge his surrogate brother the right to a comfort and a release he, himself, relied on more and more.
With Valadin now half a world away at Lake Victoria, and Leia, for the moment, almost as far away in Moscow, Zechs had actually been expecting Treize to find himself a new lover before too long. He'd steeled himself against the idea that, sooner rather than later, there would be some woman or another who would be sharing his friend's bed. He'd even braced himself to be nice about it, both to the woman, or women, in question and to Treize himself.
Une, though, Une was a different proposition. Zechs had seen Treize interacting with the young woman on several occasions and, on each one, she'd pulled the most remarkable switch in behaviour he'd ever witnessed from anyone. Zechs could never fault Une's competence as an officer but, whilst he and the rest of the wing were rapidly coming to regard her as a hard-nosed bitch, with Treize she was a completely different person, soft and girlish and entirely accommodating. It made her a wonderful fusion of Liliya's cool practicality and Leia's wide-eyed devotion, and Zechs knew full and well who would have been responsible for teaching her to act like that.
It also made her a threat that no other woman would have been. By morphing herself between the two characters, Une made herself appeal to Treize on more than one level. She was a match for his professional self – as Liliya had been before her – but she also crossed the line into territory that had previously been Leia's alone, compromising the older man's ties to his wife. There was softness in Treize's eyes when he spoke to his Equerry that Zechs had never thought would be there for anyone other than Leia, and the blond didn't like it. If Treize was that drawn to Une now, when he'd only known her a month, what was going to happen in six months or a year or two years in the future?
In accordance with his fears, Zechs had been openly hostile with Une from the moment they'd been introduced, and it hadn't taken long before she'd responded in kind. At first, it probably had been only as a response, but she'd soon realised that Zechs was more to Treize than just an officer, and that she didn't like it. If Zechs disapproved, and Treize gave the blond's opinion weight, then he was bad news for her plans to seduce her commander. She'd immediately set about trying to drive a wedge into the two men's friendship, and been more than a little upset when she'd learned why it was never going to work.
By sheer chance Une had overheard a private conversation between the two men one evening, listening in wide-eyed surprise as Treize teased Zechs with the mocking appellation of 'brat.' It was a wonderfully multi-lingual tweak on the older man's part and Une, primed by Liliya, had known enough to translate. What was a derogatory term in the English language for an annoying child, was also an affectionate Russian word for 'little brother'.
Zechs still didn't know whether she'd asked Treize about it – he suspected not – but she'd wasted no time in confronting him about it, demanding to know what Treize had meant by the phrase. The blonde's answer hadn't pleased her one little bit, particularly since he'd conveniently forgotten to mention that the relationship was adoptive only.
The fact that he'd made rather a thing about telling Une just how close he and his sister-in-law were probably hadn't helped much either. That threat hadn't needed spelling out at all.
"Your brother he may be," Une spat at him now, breaking the momentary silence that had echoed down the line, "but he is also still your Wing Commander. On duty, in uniform, your first and only response to His Excellency should be as his Lieutenant. Personal concerns have no place!"
Quite true, but Zechs couldn't admit that to her or he'd neutralise his one sure-fire weapon against her. Besides, it was a bit rich given the source and he had no trouble saying so. "You might want to remember that yourself, Une," he bit off. "You don't know where he is?" he asked again, over her sharply indrawn breath.
Une's attitude shifted from outraged to superior in the space of one breath. "I didn't say that," she answered smugly. "I merely said His Excellency wasn't in his office." She paused for a moment, giving Zechs chance to start cursing her in his head, then continued smartly, "His Excellency received a video call at just gone seven, which he had directed to his study. Since he hasn't yet signed off with me for the day, I would presume that he is still dealing with it."
His study. Of course. Zechs could have smacked himself for his stupidity. He'd thought to check the older man's official office but not the little space Treize had fashioned for himself in the suite of rooms he'd been assigned. It wasn't much more than a glorified supply closet – probably had been a supply closet or an airing cupboard at some point – but it was large enough to fit a little desk and chair, a small couch and a cupboard-come-end table in and still leave just about enough room to move around. In addition to the furniture, Treize had added several shelves of books and computer discs, and then promptly taken to spending much of his free time in the room, most often with the door firmly locked behind him.
Why Zechs hadn't thought of it earlier, he didn't know. Perhaps all the rain was rotting his brain. "His study. Right," he said and snapped his phone closed without so much as a goodbye.
Well, at least it was close. Pushing open the door of the computer suite, Zechs stepped out into the rain again and sprinted across the open ground of the base, cutting a corner of it to reach the officer's quarters as quickly as possible. The dull grey, prefab blocks were nothing like the elegant apartments of the Academy but at least they were dry and Zechs stepped inside the one that housed the senior officer's rooms with a mix of gratitude and annoyance. It was nice to be out of the rain but it was bloody infuriating that he'd spent two hours running around in it only to find his quarry less than fifty yards from Zechs's own quarters and right where it had been most obvious he would be.
Shedding his sopping coat again, Zechs strode down the narrow central corridor to the middle of three doors on the right hand side and rapped firmly on the wooden panel.
It took Treize a moment or two to open the door and he seemed more than a bit surprised to see Zechs when he did.
"Zechs?" he asked, fingers still on the door handle. "Is something wrong?"
Zechs hesitated a second before answering, casting his friend a speculative look from under his darkened glasses. Treize was still in full uniform, still as perfectly neat and pristine as he always was, the very picture of cool military discipline, and yet there was something just a little bit ruffled about him. If Zechs hadn't known Une was across the complex in the offices, he'd immediately have wondered if she were out of sight somewhere behind Treize. He'd also have wondered what the two of them had been doing when he knocked.
"Sorry, sir," Zechs apologised when Treize's raised eyebrow made him aware he'd been staring just a moment too long. "Nothing's wrong, sir. I was just wanting to give you my sign-off report."
It won him the surprised look Zechs had thought he would get, Treize letting go of his door handle to reach for his pocket watch and check the time. "Zechs," the older man said, sounding puzzled. "It's after eight. You should have gone off-duty more than two hours ago."
