Quixotic
Chapter 14
Heero hit the metal surface hard, buckling his knees and letting himself down into a crouch position, absorbing some of the impact. He didn't know what he'd been expecting, but complete silence was not it.
It was nearly pitch-black, the only light being a soft white glow around certain ports embedded in the ceiling, reflected in the smooth, round walls. Eerie. It was like being inside a giant ball bearing.
He straightened up and took a few steps forward. The cockpit was empty; not even a pilot's chair. How did she move the suit without any controls?
Squinting, he could see a thick collection of wires coming down from the top of the sphere-like cockpit, trailing down to be lost among the pitch-black shadows.
Heero inched forward, trying to see where they led.
For a split second he saw eyes; glowing, vivid, violet eyes in the dark, before a tiny blur of violence launched itself towards him. It hit him square in the chest, knocking him back against the now-closed hatch of the cockpit, cracking the back of his head against the smooth metal.
.
.
Relena stood long enough to watch the Leo disappear over the city. As with every time he left her like this, Heero had taken a part of her with him. Not until he was back, staring at her enigmatically and covered in grime- when she was younger, in her fantasies, she'd be staring down the barrel of a gun, too—would she feel entirely at ease.
She turned on her heel once the suit winked out of sight, heading back up the steps. Wufei was helping Duo into the backseat of Sally's cruiser, the two snapping at each other.
"Watch the suit, man, geez…"
"Don't be such a child."
"Dorothy has to make an address." Both pilots turned to stare at her. She set her jaw. "As President she can use the Emergency Alert system; get evacuations in order. If we— We need to alert the colonies; ground all inbound and outbound space flights. If I can get to the Presidents' compound, that would be the best scenario. Although Preventer's headquarters is closer…" She tried to imagine which route the protestors would take. Local officers would be on scene, but something deep in her gut told her Ferox hadn't played all his cards yet. No one would put all their eggs in one basket. She could still be a target. Dorothy could.
Duo's chuckle bit off into a groan as he reclined against the back seat, car door propped open with his knee. "Damn. Well. Better do what she says, Wufei. Get the lady a jacket and a radio."
The other man side-eyed him, like he was trying to decide if Duo was being serious or not.
Relena scanned the crowd. "How many Agents do we have on scene?"
"Fifteen," Sally said, coming around the front of the cruiser, having been instructing the cleanup crew. "We can spare two cars for an escort and send the rest downtown." She and Wufei exchanged glances over the roof of the car. She gave him a tight smile. "Good to have you back."
"We need to assemble a rescue team," he countered, without preamble. Relena learned in on the balls of her feet as Sally's expression broke into familiar concern. "There's no way Yuy's beating that Gundam." There it was. He'd said what they were all thinking. "He better have some kind of plan, because that Leo is a wreck."
Sally met Relena's eyes with a sense of pity Relena wasn't sure she appreciated or not. Duo wouldn't look at her.
"C'mon," the American said, a tired rattle in his voice "let's get back to base."
Wufei took the front passenger seat, his legs and arms folded, silent as they took their seats. Sally bounced the cruiser down the curb and took a left out of the plaza, and headed south-east. Relena sat primly with her hands in her lap. Despite how firm her resolution looked, she was plotting inside. What could she do to avoid loss of life? What could she do to restore order? How could she help him?
She had a roll to play. What would it be?
"Don't look so worried, Princess," Duo nudged her ankle with the heel of his boot. He was scrolling through his cell without looking at her. A quarter-sized stain of blood had dried where his arm and torso met. Despite the casual words, his tone was dubious. They'd been taken by surprise; all of them.
"Hey," Duo said, before Relena could muster a reply, waving his phone at the back of Wufei's headrest."Those bastards just put out a press briefing."
Sally didn't turn around. "What does it say?"
"Looks like they're telling people to join them and they'll 'be spared' and 'taken to paradise'. Pretty compelling argument when you're the only one with functional mobile suit…. An advanced one at that," he added, passing Relena the phone.
Officers of the Meteor will begin patrolling at six o'clock. All those who wish to join the cause—
She realized Wufei had twisted in his seat to stare, his hand outstretched. She took an extra moment to finish the statement, a deep line appearing between the man's brows as he watched impatiently, before she handed the phone over.
"Preventer's business," she said quietly. "I understand."
Wufei's mouth twisted even further downward, eyes narrowed, before he rounded back into his seat.
"Yuy was a fool to take you long," he said to the front dashboard, eyes on the phone in his hands.
"C'mon man," Duo groaned, face pressed up against the window while he watched the city go by, cheek pulled slightly where he'd slumped against the glass. "Don't blame her."
"I am not blaming her. It's simply fact. He should know, by now, how to separate his professional and personal life. Admittedly, it would be difficult to bodyguard for someone who's liable to get themselves involved anyway. I don't know how Yuy stands it."
Duo pointed with his good hand in Relena's direction. "You know she's sitting right here." There was a beat of silence before he scoffed. "'Personal and professional life'… We can't all work with our girlfriends, ya know."
Sally made a choking noise from the front seat.
Wufei passed the phone back without turning, voice tight. "The part about 'paradise'."
"Yeah?" The American grimaced as he sat forward to take it.
"Wonder just where that 'paradise' is, don't you?"
.
.
Against the backdrop of throbbing pain radiating from his skull, Heero felt long, thin fingers begin to close around his neck. As his vision righted, fuzzy at first, the light from Aoi's eyes reflected off her barred teeth, exposed by her curled back lips, face inches from his.
Given the position he was in, he couldn't put much force behind it, but he did manage to haul back and punch her squarely in the jaw. The girl reeled, grip loosening but not letting go. As her head snapped back, he could see the cord of wires from the ceiling did indeed connect to the back of her head and neck.
Heero's hand throbbed as uncomfortably as the back of his head did, but he was still able to use her momentary confusion to free his other hand, gripping her wrists to try and prey her fingers off his neck.
She growled, the noise seeming to come from the cockpit itself rather than the girl in front of him.
Heero grunted in exertion. He was strong, but she had this unnatural weight to her, as if she herself were made with Gundanium. There was no way he would be able to keep her at bay for very much longer.
"Now now, didn't I say to try and take him alive? We need him, if you remember. Preferably still breathing."
A familiar, infuriatingly calm voice came through the cockpit speakers.
A muscle twitched in Heero's jaw.
"Ferox," he growled.
He wanted him alive? But she nearly had him.
Aoi's hands were pinching inward milliliter by millimeter.
She was stronger than him, Heero thought in all sincerity. In this form, in hand-to-hand combat, he was sure he couldn't win. The realization sent a momentary pain through him. He wasn't a soldier anymore.
In a howl of rage, Aoi hauled him forward and slammed him down again, clocking him right in the back of head for a second time. Things began to grow a little fuzzy at the edges of his vision. When she went to do it again, he was ready, using the momentum to lurch forward and crack her right in the forehead.
The force sent her sprawling away from him onto the ground of the cockpit.
Slowly, he got to his feet, touching gingerly at the back of his head, feeling a sticky trickle of blood among his hair.
All around them, the cockpit began to tremble.
The mobile suit was moving.
Aoi sprang like a cat onto her haunches, watching him from the ground like a predator.
"Are you done?" He said tonelessly, taking a defensive stance. She snarled at him. "What, can't you even speak anymore?" Or are you the Gundam now, he thought but didn't say, deciding instead to chew at the words in the back of his mouth.
Perhaps the machine was taking her over completely.
"She's marvelous, is she not? She's flying the machine right now, even as she's prepared to rip you apart. Quite the achievement. Quite the upgrade from previous versions of all those so-called perfect soldiers, don't you think?"
"I'm going to kill you." Heero muttered into the darkness, he and Aoi at a standoff as Nova flew them off to parts unknown.
.
.
Relena waited until Sally left the small office, most likely to get a hold of Dorothy and Une, before she brought up her idea to the two pilots.
"You want to do what now, Princess?" Duo, freshly bandaged, asked from the office couch.
Relena crossed her ankles and tried again. "I believe that if we contact Ferox directly, then perhaps I can meet with him and discuss his terms. He must have demands. Perhaps we can negotiate."
Wufei lay his hands on the table behind which he sat. "Terrible idea."
Duo closed his eyes, shaking his head like he were trying to forget it all. "Forget 'terrible idea', although I'm not exactly sure I disagree, but geez, you're not exactly the most inconspicuous agent we have." He blinked. "Hell, what am I saying? You're not even an agent! You just get mixed up with 'em."
"Worse than that," Wufei snapped. "She's a client. She's a client who is also a government official."
Duo tapped his foot, thinking. "The tiny, angry man is right. There's no way we're letting you speak to Ferox. Or let you within a hundred feet of wherever they're keeping Heero. If we knew where he was. Which we don't."
Well of course she was expecting that kind of answer. She had no real field skills to speak of, at least that's what they thought. But wasn't there something to be said for negotiating? Surely she was considered, if not an expert, truly apt in the realm of deal-making.
"Sometimes I wonder," she said with more needles in her words than the situation probably warranted, "if you pilots don't forget the value of diplomacy over physical force."
"We have Une for that," Wufei countered sharply.
"Of course," Relena nodded, staring at her lap, "she is the spokeswoman of the Preventers." She looked up then, catching Wufei's gaze and holding it. "But I am the one who helped form the new ESUN government, who's served in several iterations of said government. The Preventers may be apt in putting out fires, but when it comes to this, I am the expert." Her effect worked. He looked stunned.
Behind her, Duo laughed. "Damn! She has been hanging out with Heero too long." Wufei glowered at him over her shoulder. "But think about it Princess. Wouldn't that task fall to Dorothy anyway? She's the President after all."
"As much as Heero would like to believe I am the most important government official ESUN has to offer, you and I both know I am more expendable than Dorothy." She glanced at Wufei again. "It's simply fact."
"I say let her got for it," Duo supplied.
Wufei slowly opened and closed his mouth before taking a moment to collect himself. He didn't get a chance to shoot down the idea, because at that moment, her phone rang in the front breast pocket of her overcoat with a muffled buzz. Pulling it out and looking down at the screen, the name came up as Unknown Number.
That was… odd.
Relena calmly stood, tilting the phone toward her chest to conceal the screen.
"I'm sorry to have made either of you uncomfortable with my request."
Duo rubbed the back of his neck. "Really?"
"If you both would excuse me," she continued, grabbing her bag from the back of the chair. "I have to take this call." With a polite nod of her head, she made her way out the door as quickly as she could without seeming hurried.
Exiting into the hall, she slung her back over her shoulder, swiping at the phone and bringing it up to her ear.
"Hello?"
"Good evening, Miss Darlian."
The voice on the other end of the line nearly made her stop in her tracks, but she made it to the elevator.
"Ferox," she said as the doors closed, as evenly as possible. A million questions ran through her mind, but almost by instinct, her first was, "Where's Heero?"
The man tut-tutted. "Come now dear, you can't possible expect me to answer such a direct question. Why, that would completely defeat the purpose of me calling you in the first place."
She pressed the Lobby elevator button. "I won't bothering asking how you came across my private number."
"I have my ways."
"He's stronger than you think, but you might have guessed that by now. He won't give you what you want." Relena watched the number of floors tick down as they descended.
After a moment, he spoke, and his flippant attitude seemed to be replaced with something akin to businesslike. "I can assume you'll be able to keep our conversation private, Miss Darlian? Just between us?"
Relena pressed her tongue against the roof of her mouth. She didn't want to promise him anything. The smartest choice would be to take this straight to Une.
"Do I need to remind you that we're in possession of something quite dear to you? Or should I say someone?"
"Fine. Just between us. But I want a guarantee that you won't harm either of them."
There was a pause.
"Them?"
Relena blinked. She'd actually caught him off guard.
"Heero and Aoi," she replied with a bit of force.
"Oh but of course, of course!"
He was trying to sound assured, but she really did make him stumble just then.
He had no intention of giving Aoi up. Or maybe she was just expendable to him.
"Go ahead then," she prompted, straightening her spine. "I'm listening."
The elevator doors opened, and looking out into the crowded lobby she realized that with Heero gone, she had no bodyguard. No escort. If she moved fast, she could be out of the building before they even thought to check on her. Quickly, she jabbed the button for the garage. The doors closed again.
"Excellent," Ferox sounded at ease once more. "Now, Miss Darlian, I assume you know of the mining operations that are being conducted on Mars."
"And I assume you are aware that we are currently preforming only simple terraformation tests of the martian surface. Nothing more."
"Oh my dear… out of all the things I hate, I loathe lying most of all."
.
.
They were in space. He knew. Like a sixth sense, he knew. He could feel it pressing into the sides of his brain.
Gravity, Heero noted, did not change in the cockpit. Nova must have been made with some kind of new, upgraded stabilization system.
He glanced over at the Gundam's pilot, who had since retreated to sulk in the back of the cockpit. "Do you know where we're going?"
Aoi's nose curled, her arms crossed, and stuck out her tongue out him.
Well, at least she wasn't trying to choke him to death anymore. At least Ferox had some kind of power of suggestion over her. Enough to keep him alive. For now.
The uncertainty of their destination did nothing the alleviate the dull throbbing in his head; if anything, it only added to the migraine he was sure to have until this whole thing was dead and buried.
With a frown in the girl's direction, he took a seat on the floor, legs folded under him. If she wanted to have a staring contest, far be it from him to deny her.
.
.
The document came through on her tablet within just enough of lag time, Relena suspected Ferox was already off planet.
"Are you ready to depart, Miss Clark?"
Relena looked up at the older man, who'd come back to check on her from the small aircraft's cockpit. At the sound of the alias, she smiled. "Yes, of course."
"Time to the Mars outpost should be a few hours at most. You… you said they aren't expecting you?"
"Yes. Seeing as my company is a major stakeholder in the Mars project, I like to drop in from time to time announced. See what goes on behind the curtain, so to speak."
The man chuckled, fixing his cap. "Whatever you big-shot business folk get up to is your own business. And you must be a big-shot, let me tell you."
Relena frowned. "Why do you say that?"
The man scratched his chin. "Well… there was a grounding of all space-bound flights, but for some reason our flight plan just cleared. Someone's looking out for your best interests, huh?" The man winked and rubbed three fingers together. Relena flushed. "Anyway, we'll be leaving shortly." With a curt salute, he headed back into the small charter plane's control room.
Someone had approved their departure? But who…? Had Ferox hacked the system?
Relena squirmed slightly in her seat.
Two alerts, in quick succession, pinged up on her phone. A text from Une and a separate message from Dorothy. Both wanted to know if she had rendezvoused successfully with the other. They were bound to find out she was using them each as an alibi sooner rather than later.
More lying.
"Uh, ma'am
The empty cabin shuttered as the ship began to accelerate down the slingshot runway that would catapult them into space. The force of the acceleration pressed her back into the seat as she put her phone on silent and stowed it away, looking back a the document pulled up on the tablet.
Definitive Treaty of Peace Between the United Earth Sphere and Children of the Meteor, Autonomous Governing Colony of Mars
Ferox's name, and the name of his organization was already printed and signed. The space where her own signature was meant to go remained blank.
That was his game all along.
Set up a cult of disenfranchised citizen on Mars, declare independence, and reap the spoils of the martian mining operation. They'd have a complete monopoly of any resources of the small, red planet, and with their own Gundam to protect them, too. Ferox could be a veritable King. No doubt a thorn in the entire Earth Sphere's side, vying for increased economic power as demand for raw mianed materials grew.
And here she was, staring down at the document that would legitimize— all but solidify in stone— Ferox's rule.
The stakes?
Continued terrorist attacks on Earth, promises of attacks on the colonies, and one very high-level Preventer hostage.
Relena cast an apologetic glance toward the closed cockpit door. That poor man. He had no idea they wouldn't be reaching the port of Mars after all.
Hours later into the flight, the intercom buzzed politely before the pilot's voice came on.
"Uh, ma'am," he sounded agitated, and more than a bit confused. "We're being hailed by another private vessel. They're saying they've got authorization to board us?"
Relena depressed a button on her armrest. "That's correct."
"But ma'am… it's highly unusual—" He broke off for a moment. "They're saying if we don't stop they're going to fire on us! What are they, pirates?!"
"Stop the ship immediately. I don't want anyone getting unnecessarily hurt. Simply do what they say."
"I don't think… Are you sure about—" Brief static interference interrupted the pilot, and then the intercom went dead. The plane's lights flickered and died as the engines were immediately cut, the craft going suddenly still and eerily quiet.
Relena's heart leapt into her throat, a wave of panic setting in before she pushed it down again.
In the darkness, small emergency running lights flicked on, illuminated the walkways toward the exits. The only other source of illumination was the red planet outside the cabin windows, hanging silently out in space.
Relena waited there, strapped into her seat, hands folded patiently in her lap, listening to the noises of someone attaching something to the outside of the cabin's main door.
After a moment or two and a long hiss of air, the door's seal gave a low sucking sound as someone pulled it into an open position.
She sat up straighter as a tall figure passed over the threshold.
H-hi...
Don't look so shocked, geez!
...um... thanks for reading? XD