Disclaimer: I do not count Gundam Wing or its characters amung my possessions.
Author's Notes: My goddess....I have nothing to say. A definite first. Excuse me...I have to go think of things to say....
Dedication: To Clifton. Even though he left me all by myself on the Fourth of July with just the dog, the cat and the bird to keep me company. The bird squawked all day, the cat hates my guts and the dog ate a candy bar wrapper. Happy Independence Day. To quote one of my favorite movies, Dazed and Confused, "remember what you're celebrating is the fact that a bunch of slave-owning, aristocratic white men didn't want to pay their taxes."
****
A Thing More Precious
by Kristen Elizabeth
****
"Hey!! We have cable!!"
Heero tossed his duffel bag onto one double bed in the motel room he and Duo had just taken. "Great. 120 channels that we won't be watching."
Duo instinctively located the television's remote control and plopped onto the other bed. "Fuck the mission. We've got the Playboy Channel." His friend said nothing. "Aww...c'mon, Heero! Hilde never lets me watch this channel, so I know that Relena probably has it banned from your TV, too." When Heero still failed to reply, Duo cocked an eyebrow in his direction. "Right?"
"What Relena and I watch on our private television set is of absolutely no relevance to this mission."
"You kinky bastard", Duo breathed with an air of admiration. "Sheesh...you think you know a couple and then..."
Heero pulled his gun out of his bag. He simply held it in his hand, making no threatening movements, but it was enough to quiet his braided companion. "The lights on L1 are dimmed at six PM. That gives us two hours to get to the warehouse and familarize ourselves with its layout." With his other hand, Heero pulled a rolled up blueprint out of his bag and tossed it towards Duo. "While you were sleeping on the shuttle, I circled the areas of the building that are weak in both security and structure. We'll scout out each place before dark and then come back later."
"One question." Duo turned the blueprint around in his hands. "Which end of this thing is up?"
****
The big men were getting ready for something. Ame lifted her head from her knees and watched them. They moved around the little cabin with clipped, precise movements, speaking in low, hushed tones. A machine was being hooked up. Ame's natural curiousity won out.
"What is that?", she asked.
The man named Jay looked at her. "It's a telephone, kid." He adopted a mean smile onto his face. "We're calling your mommy."
"Mommy..." Ame's eyes lit up.
"Only, you can't talk to her. Not yet anyways." Jay turned back around.
Ame's chin wobbled. "I want to talk to Mommy! I want to talk to Daddy!!"
The other man swung around. "Shut up! You're going to wake up your sister and if you do that, I swear to god....I'll throw your dinner out the fucking window."
Jay shook his head. "You're really a bastard, man."
Mike twisted wires around inside the old-fashioned phone. "She's the same age my little girl was when she...when they killed her. Fucking White Fang shitheads..." He slammed the phone onto the makeshift table. "They're going to pay....and if this kid is the key to doing that, I'll be the meanest bastard in the whole fucking world." He glanced back at Ame who had tucked herself back into a little ball. "It's not my fault, kid. It's your mom..."
Ame's cheeks were wet. "Mommy...I want Mommy. And Daddy...when Daddy finds us, you're going to be very sorry you were mean!"
Jay smiled. "Every kid thinks their dad is a hero. It's better you realize it now....there's no such thing."
"We're ready", Mike announced. He picked up the phone and dialed.
****
"...matter what, we'd always be friends. Right Dawson?"
"...amazing cleaning powers! Just a spray of this incredible..."
"...doesn't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world..."
"...and it's in the dirt. Ball one."
"...on tour next month. Tickets for most of their shows are already sold out, so..."
Relena muted the TV set with a careless flick of her thumb. Three hours of flipping channels had done nothing but dry out her eyes and kill off a few of her brain cells. The noise was empty; it did nothing to fill up the silence in the house. Even Millardo and Noin's presence, a comfort though it was, couldn't make up for the tremendous loss in her life.
Out of habit, Relena reached her hand to his side of the bed, reaching for him. Her fingers found nothing but cool sheets. Empty space. A fresh tear escaped the corner of her eye. "Heero..." She gripped his pillow, bringing it up to her face. His scent still lingered. Clean shampoo with a trace of cologne, the cologne being entirely for her benefit. Relena buried her face in Heero's pillow. At the core of her being, she ached. Smelling him was delicious torture.
From the hall, she could hear her brother's voice. "Relena...there's a call for you."
Her reply was shaky. "Tell whoever it is that I'll call them back."
There was a pause. "I think you want to take this call."
Relena sat up straight. Her heart lept into her throat. *It could be the kidnappers. It could be...Heero.* Her legs wobbled a bit in anticipation as she slid off the bed.
Millardo was standing in the hall waiting for her. "It's not Heero", he said right away, as though to keep her hopes from soaring only to come crashing down again.
She bit back a stab of pain. "I'll take the call in the study."
Minutes later, she was seated in her study with a hand-held audio phone hooked up to a recorder which was being manned by a Preventer technician. When the man gave the signal, Relena began to speak to the men who held her children.
****
"Well...that was nice and fun."
"A nice, fun waste of time."
"Look on the bright side, Heero. We now know way too much about how to build earthquake proof buildings with gundanium support beams."
Heero sat on the edge of his bed and pulled off his shoes. "We also know that Miller and Ross Construction Inc is not supplying gundanium to anyone it shouldn't be."
"So...we put a little check mark....here." Duo crossed the first name off the list of gundanium suppliers provided by Wufei. "Mission....ongoing."
With a noiseless sigh, Heero laid back against the stiff motel pillow. He glanced at the clock on the nightstand between the two beds. It was two thirty AM on L1. On Earth, it was still early evening. *She's probably having dinner with her brother and his wife. I hope she's eating well.* His thoughts strayed to the other bright spots in his life, his two little girls. *I hope they're eating at all.* Unconciously, Heero balled up his fist.
"Whoah...buddy. What did the bedspread ever do to you?" Duo pointed to the tacky motel spread, twisted and threatening to tear under the pressure of Heero's hand.
He released the material. "There's one more supplier on L1. I want to start first thing in the morning and be off this metal heap as soon as possible."
"Metal heap? Is that any way to talk about your own colony?" Duo kicked off his boots and tugged his shirt out of the waist of his jeans.
Heero snorted into his pillow. "I don't belong to this place because I was born here anymore than it belongs to me because I was raised here."
"You know..." Duo threw back the cover on his bed. "That might be the most I've ever heard you say about your childhood."
"I hope you enjoyed it. Because it's all you're ever going to hear."
After shedding his jeans, Duo slid into bed with an exaggerated sigh of contentment. "If Hilde were here, this place wouldn't be half bad." He looked at the ceiling. "I take that back. Hilde would hate this place."
"Relena too", Heero said before he could stop the thought from surfacing. He bit the inside of his cheek, tasting his blood. As though his mouth had suddenly developed a mind of its own, he continued. "She wouldn't say anything, of course. She never really complains about anything." He stopped.
"Not the same little girl who jumped in front of my gun, eh?"
Heero pulled at a loose thread on the comforter. "I'm not the same guy she tried to protect. And you're not the same guy who she tried to stop on my behalf."
"I guess not." Duo was quiet for a long minute. "When did you figure out that she had changed?"
He expected Heero's reply to be a long time in coming. If he replied at all. He was surprised when Heero spoke right away. "On the day I fell in love with her."
"Which came first? The love or the realization?"
Heero shrugged. "It doesn't really matter. Maybe it was simultaneous. Just one day...I saw her....differently." Once again, he stopped and gave no sign of continuing.
"Jesus, Heero. You can't just stop there! What day? What difference? What the hell is that on the ceiling?"
His best friend gave a soft, laughing snort. "A soldier sees people with different eyes than a normal man. One day, I stopped being a soldier and became a man. That was the day I fell in love with her. That was the day I *let* myself fall in love with her."
Duo tore his eyes away from the ceiling and glanced over at the other bed. "Then what happened?"
Heero plucked the remote from the nightstand and threw it onto Duo's bed. "If you need to know, I suggest channel 69."
"And people say *I'm* sick??" Duo shook his head, sadly. After a moment, he grabbed the remote and turned the television on.
The screen lit up, revealing the solemn face of a news anchor, reading the day's news. Duo was about to flip channels when a picture of Relena appeared beside the anchor's face.
"The Earth Colony Alliance is up in arms tonight after the Foriegn Minister, Relena Peacecraft-Yuy, canceled the summit meeting with Minister Charles Houghton, chairman of the Eve Wars Justice Commission. Minister Peacecraft-Yuy's office had no official comment on the cancellation except to say that the Foriegn Minister would reschedule the meeting as soon as possible. Still, the sudden withdrawal of the Foriegn Minister has many politicians questioning her motives. Minister Houghton had this to say earlier today."
The anchor was replaced by an older man, standing behind a podium, surrounded by cameras...very obviously loving the attention. "It's quite obvious, ladies and gentlemen, that our Foriegn Minister is afraid to stand up to views and opinions other than her own. The summit meeting that would have taken place two days from now would have been my opportunity to present my case before the Earth Colony Alliance. She has taken that away from me because of her own inability to present a logical, opposing viewpoint."
Minister Houghton's face faded and the anchor reappeared. "The case he is referring to is, of course, the Eve Wars Justice Bill, a piece of legislation that calls for the arrest and arraignment of known war criminals, namely ex-White Fang soldiers and guerilla warfare practitioners such as the infamous Gundam pilots. Minister Houghton proposed the bill to the ECA five months ago on the tenth anniversary of the cease-fire. Since then, he has been battling opposition from both Earth politicians and colony delegates, but his primary source of opposition has come from Foriegn Minister Peacecraft-Yuy who had this to say two months ago at the Preventer Peace Conference on L3."
Taped footage of Relena, eight months pregnant, began to play. "The war is over. The war has been over for a very long time. Minister Houghton claims to want to make reperations for crimes committed, but I have to wonder...who will benefit from those reperations? And I have to ask myself if it's right for people who fought for a cause they believed in to be punished for their actions ten years after the fact. In case I have not made myself clear, I stand firmly against Minister Houghton and his bill. As long as I am the Foriegn Minister, I will do everything in my power to see that this warped idea of justice is never realized."
Once more, Minister Houghton's face filled the screen. "Time will tell whether or not the Foriegn Minister is as dedicated to eradicating my bill as she has previously claimed. Only one thing is for certain: hiding isn't going to make it go away. The leaders of the world, not to mention the citizens of both Earth and Space, will not stand for a leader who buries her head in the sand when the going gets..."
With the push of one button, Duo muted the man. "Nice how they edited that there to make it look like some sort of debate." He tossed the remote to Heero who caught it expertly. "What do you think Relena is doing?" When Heero said nothing, Duo continued. "Cancelling that meeting isn't like her. I mean, kids and..um..you nonwithstanding, it's not like Relena to shirk any sort of committment."
It was a long minute before Heero finally replied. "I'm going to tell you why I'm doing all of this...my reasons for doing this the way I'm doing it."
Duo swallowed. "Um...okay."
"I realized it as soon as I heard Relena say the children were gone. Before we got home, before I saw anything....I knew why they had been taken."
"For money?", Duo made a half-hearted guess. Deep down, however, he already knew the reason. He let Heero continue.
"Relena is the only thing standing between Houghton and his goal." Heero paused. "What do you think it would take for her to change her mind...to give in?"
Duo punched his pillow. "Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck..."
Heero ignored his obscenities. "Relena is also the only thing standing between us and punishment for our crimes. If I'm right...which I know I am...or if I can't find them, she'll be trapped. Forced to choose between me and our children." His short nails dug into his palms. "I will not put her in that position. If she hates me, if she thinks I don't care about her...her choice will be easier."
"Heero..." Duo trailed off, for once unable to think of anything to say.
"So, you see..." Heero turned the lamp off. "It's better this way."
****
The hand holding the phone trembled violently. Relena could literally feel the blood draining from her face, leaving her cheeks moist with cold sweat. The Preventer technician looked at her strangely; he had been forced to cut off his audio recording at the kidnapper's request. Only Relena could hear the kidnapper's demands.
"Is that understood, Minister?" The title was spoken sarcastically and with much contempt. "If you want to see your children alive again...you know what you have to do."
Relena found her voice. "How much...time do I have?"
There was a muffled discussion that she could not understand. Finally, the one kidnapper replied, "Three days. You will reschedule the summit conference that you cancelled. During your welcome speech, you will announce your decision to the world and *renounce* your former position on the subject. After the conference, you will drive *alone* to the old Alliance operation base just outside the border. There, we'll have your children waiting for you. How well you follow these instructions will dictate in what sort of condition your children are returned to you."
"Please don't hurt them", Relena whispered.
"That is entirely up to you, Minister. Three days. Until then..." The line went dead.
The Preventer gave her a frantic look. "Minister....Minister, did they hang up? I almost had their location pinpointed..."
Relena didn't hear him. She lowered the phone from her ear with a dead arm. Three days. She had three days to choose.
Save her children....or save her husband.
****
To Be Continued...
Author's Notes: My goddess....I have nothing to say. A definite first. Excuse me...I have to go think of things to say....
Dedication: To Clifton. Even though he left me all by myself on the Fourth of July with just the dog, the cat and the bird to keep me company. The bird squawked all day, the cat hates my guts and the dog ate a candy bar wrapper. Happy Independence Day. To quote one of my favorite movies, Dazed and Confused, "remember what you're celebrating is the fact that a bunch of slave-owning, aristocratic white men didn't want to pay their taxes."
****
A Thing More Precious
by Kristen Elizabeth
****
"Hey!! We have cable!!"
Heero tossed his duffel bag onto one double bed in the motel room he and Duo had just taken. "Great. 120 channels that we won't be watching."
Duo instinctively located the television's remote control and plopped onto the other bed. "Fuck the mission. We've got the Playboy Channel." His friend said nothing. "Aww...c'mon, Heero! Hilde never lets me watch this channel, so I know that Relena probably has it banned from your TV, too." When Heero still failed to reply, Duo cocked an eyebrow in his direction. "Right?"
"What Relena and I watch on our private television set is of absolutely no relevance to this mission."
"You kinky bastard", Duo breathed with an air of admiration. "Sheesh...you think you know a couple and then..."
Heero pulled his gun out of his bag. He simply held it in his hand, making no threatening movements, but it was enough to quiet his braided companion. "The lights on L1 are dimmed at six PM. That gives us two hours to get to the warehouse and familarize ourselves with its layout." With his other hand, Heero pulled a rolled up blueprint out of his bag and tossed it towards Duo. "While you were sleeping on the shuttle, I circled the areas of the building that are weak in both security and structure. We'll scout out each place before dark and then come back later."
"One question." Duo turned the blueprint around in his hands. "Which end of this thing is up?"
****
The big men were getting ready for something. Ame lifted her head from her knees and watched them. They moved around the little cabin with clipped, precise movements, speaking in low, hushed tones. A machine was being hooked up. Ame's natural curiousity won out.
"What is that?", she asked.
The man named Jay looked at her. "It's a telephone, kid." He adopted a mean smile onto his face. "We're calling your mommy."
"Mommy..." Ame's eyes lit up.
"Only, you can't talk to her. Not yet anyways." Jay turned back around.
Ame's chin wobbled. "I want to talk to Mommy! I want to talk to Daddy!!"
The other man swung around. "Shut up! You're going to wake up your sister and if you do that, I swear to god....I'll throw your dinner out the fucking window."
Jay shook his head. "You're really a bastard, man."
Mike twisted wires around inside the old-fashioned phone. "She's the same age my little girl was when she...when they killed her. Fucking White Fang shitheads..." He slammed the phone onto the makeshift table. "They're going to pay....and if this kid is the key to doing that, I'll be the meanest bastard in the whole fucking world." He glanced back at Ame who had tucked herself back into a little ball. "It's not my fault, kid. It's your mom..."
Ame's cheeks were wet. "Mommy...I want Mommy. And Daddy...when Daddy finds us, you're going to be very sorry you were mean!"
Jay smiled. "Every kid thinks their dad is a hero. It's better you realize it now....there's no such thing."
"We're ready", Mike announced. He picked up the phone and dialed.
****
"...matter what, we'd always be friends. Right Dawson?"
"...amazing cleaning powers! Just a spray of this incredible..."
"...doesn't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world..."
"...and it's in the dirt. Ball one."
"...on tour next month. Tickets for most of their shows are already sold out, so..."
Relena muted the TV set with a careless flick of her thumb. Three hours of flipping channels had done nothing but dry out her eyes and kill off a few of her brain cells. The noise was empty; it did nothing to fill up the silence in the house. Even Millardo and Noin's presence, a comfort though it was, couldn't make up for the tremendous loss in her life.
Out of habit, Relena reached her hand to his side of the bed, reaching for him. Her fingers found nothing but cool sheets. Empty space. A fresh tear escaped the corner of her eye. "Heero..." She gripped his pillow, bringing it up to her face. His scent still lingered. Clean shampoo with a trace of cologne, the cologne being entirely for her benefit. Relena buried her face in Heero's pillow. At the core of her being, she ached. Smelling him was delicious torture.
From the hall, she could hear her brother's voice. "Relena...there's a call for you."
Her reply was shaky. "Tell whoever it is that I'll call them back."
There was a pause. "I think you want to take this call."
Relena sat up straight. Her heart lept into her throat. *It could be the kidnappers. It could be...Heero.* Her legs wobbled a bit in anticipation as she slid off the bed.
Millardo was standing in the hall waiting for her. "It's not Heero", he said right away, as though to keep her hopes from soaring only to come crashing down again.
She bit back a stab of pain. "I'll take the call in the study."
Minutes later, she was seated in her study with a hand-held audio phone hooked up to a recorder which was being manned by a Preventer technician. When the man gave the signal, Relena began to speak to the men who held her children.
****
"Well...that was nice and fun."
"A nice, fun waste of time."
"Look on the bright side, Heero. We now know way too much about how to build earthquake proof buildings with gundanium support beams."
Heero sat on the edge of his bed and pulled off his shoes. "We also know that Miller and Ross Construction Inc is not supplying gundanium to anyone it shouldn't be."
"So...we put a little check mark....here." Duo crossed the first name off the list of gundanium suppliers provided by Wufei. "Mission....ongoing."
With a noiseless sigh, Heero laid back against the stiff motel pillow. He glanced at the clock on the nightstand between the two beds. It was two thirty AM on L1. On Earth, it was still early evening. *She's probably having dinner with her brother and his wife. I hope she's eating well.* His thoughts strayed to the other bright spots in his life, his two little girls. *I hope they're eating at all.* Unconciously, Heero balled up his fist.
"Whoah...buddy. What did the bedspread ever do to you?" Duo pointed to the tacky motel spread, twisted and threatening to tear under the pressure of Heero's hand.
He released the material. "There's one more supplier on L1. I want to start first thing in the morning and be off this metal heap as soon as possible."
"Metal heap? Is that any way to talk about your own colony?" Duo kicked off his boots and tugged his shirt out of the waist of his jeans.
Heero snorted into his pillow. "I don't belong to this place because I was born here anymore than it belongs to me because I was raised here."
"You know..." Duo threw back the cover on his bed. "That might be the most I've ever heard you say about your childhood."
"I hope you enjoyed it. Because it's all you're ever going to hear."
After shedding his jeans, Duo slid into bed with an exaggerated sigh of contentment. "If Hilde were here, this place wouldn't be half bad." He looked at the ceiling. "I take that back. Hilde would hate this place."
"Relena too", Heero said before he could stop the thought from surfacing. He bit the inside of his cheek, tasting his blood. As though his mouth had suddenly developed a mind of its own, he continued. "She wouldn't say anything, of course. She never really complains about anything." He stopped.
"Not the same little girl who jumped in front of my gun, eh?"
Heero pulled at a loose thread on the comforter. "I'm not the same guy she tried to protect. And you're not the same guy who she tried to stop on my behalf."
"I guess not." Duo was quiet for a long minute. "When did you figure out that she had changed?"
He expected Heero's reply to be a long time in coming. If he replied at all. He was surprised when Heero spoke right away. "On the day I fell in love with her."
"Which came first? The love or the realization?"
Heero shrugged. "It doesn't really matter. Maybe it was simultaneous. Just one day...I saw her....differently." Once again, he stopped and gave no sign of continuing.
"Jesus, Heero. You can't just stop there! What day? What difference? What the hell is that on the ceiling?"
His best friend gave a soft, laughing snort. "A soldier sees people with different eyes than a normal man. One day, I stopped being a soldier and became a man. That was the day I fell in love with her. That was the day I *let* myself fall in love with her."
Duo tore his eyes away from the ceiling and glanced over at the other bed. "Then what happened?"
Heero plucked the remote from the nightstand and threw it onto Duo's bed. "If you need to know, I suggest channel 69."
"And people say *I'm* sick??" Duo shook his head, sadly. After a moment, he grabbed the remote and turned the television on.
The screen lit up, revealing the solemn face of a news anchor, reading the day's news. Duo was about to flip channels when a picture of Relena appeared beside the anchor's face.
"The Earth Colony Alliance is up in arms tonight after the Foriegn Minister, Relena Peacecraft-Yuy, canceled the summit meeting with Minister Charles Houghton, chairman of the Eve Wars Justice Commission. Minister Peacecraft-Yuy's office had no official comment on the cancellation except to say that the Foriegn Minister would reschedule the meeting as soon as possible. Still, the sudden withdrawal of the Foriegn Minister has many politicians questioning her motives. Minister Houghton had this to say earlier today."
The anchor was replaced by an older man, standing behind a podium, surrounded by cameras...very obviously loving the attention. "It's quite obvious, ladies and gentlemen, that our Foriegn Minister is afraid to stand up to views and opinions other than her own. The summit meeting that would have taken place two days from now would have been my opportunity to present my case before the Earth Colony Alliance. She has taken that away from me because of her own inability to present a logical, opposing viewpoint."
Minister Houghton's face faded and the anchor reappeared. "The case he is referring to is, of course, the Eve Wars Justice Bill, a piece of legislation that calls for the arrest and arraignment of known war criminals, namely ex-White Fang soldiers and guerilla warfare practitioners such as the infamous Gundam pilots. Minister Houghton proposed the bill to the ECA five months ago on the tenth anniversary of the cease-fire. Since then, he has been battling opposition from both Earth politicians and colony delegates, but his primary source of opposition has come from Foriegn Minister Peacecraft-Yuy who had this to say two months ago at the Preventer Peace Conference on L3."
Taped footage of Relena, eight months pregnant, began to play. "The war is over. The war has been over for a very long time. Minister Houghton claims to want to make reperations for crimes committed, but I have to wonder...who will benefit from those reperations? And I have to ask myself if it's right for people who fought for a cause they believed in to be punished for their actions ten years after the fact. In case I have not made myself clear, I stand firmly against Minister Houghton and his bill. As long as I am the Foriegn Minister, I will do everything in my power to see that this warped idea of justice is never realized."
Once more, Minister Houghton's face filled the screen. "Time will tell whether or not the Foriegn Minister is as dedicated to eradicating my bill as she has previously claimed. Only one thing is for certain: hiding isn't going to make it go away. The leaders of the world, not to mention the citizens of both Earth and Space, will not stand for a leader who buries her head in the sand when the going gets..."
With the push of one button, Duo muted the man. "Nice how they edited that there to make it look like some sort of debate." He tossed the remote to Heero who caught it expertly. "What do you think Relena is doing?" When Heero said nothing, Duo continued. "Cancelling that meeting isn't like her. I mean, kids and..um..you nonwithstanding, it's not like Relena to shirk any sort of committment."
It was a long minute before Heero finally replied. "I'm going to tell you why I'm doing all of this...my reasons for doing this the way I'm doing it."
Duo swallowed. "Um...okay."
"I realized it as soon as I heard Relena say the children were gone. Before we got home, before I saw anything....I knew why they had been taken."
"For money?", Duo made a half-hearted guess. Deep down, however, he already knew the reason. He let Heero continue.
"Relena is the only thing standing between Houghton and his goal." Heero paused. "What do you think it would take for her to change her mind...to give in?"
Duo punched his pillow. "Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck..."
Heero ignored his obscenities. "Relena is also the only thing standing between us and punishment for our crimes. If I'm right...which I know I am...or if I can't find them, she'll be trapped. Forced to choose between me and our children." His short nails dug into his palms. "I will not put her in that position. If she hates me, if she thinks I don't care about her...her choice will be easier."
"Heero..." Duo trailed off, for once unable to think of anything to say.
"So, you see..." Heero turned the lamp off. "It's better this way."
****
The hand holding the phone trembled violently. Relena could literally feel the blood draining from her face, leaving her cheeks moist with cold sweat. The Preventer technician looked at her strangely; he had been forced to cut off his audio recording at the kidnapper's request. Only Relena could hear the kidnapper's demands.
"Is that understood, Minister?" The title was spoken sarcastically and with much contempt. "If you want to see your children alive again...you know what you have to do."
Relena found her voice. "How much...time do I have?"
There was a muffled discussion that she could not understand. Finally, the one kidnapper replied, "Three days. You will reschedule the summit conference that you cancelled. During your welcome speech, you will announce your decision to the world and *renounce* your former position on the subject. After the conference, you will drive *alone* to the old Alliance operation base just outside the border. There, we'll have your children waiting for you. How well you follow these instructions will dictate in what sort of condition your children are returned to you."
"Please don't hurt them", Relena whispered.
"That is entirely up to you, Minister. Three days. Until then..." The line went dead.
The Preventer gave her a frantic look. "Minister....Minister, did they hang up? I almost had their location pinpointed..."
Relena didn't hear him. She lowered the phone from her ear with a dead arm. Three days. She had three days to choose.
Save her children....or save her husband.
****
To Be Continued...