An hour later, when he was sure that no one was watching him, Heero found a phone. The card the Phoenix had given him was still in his pocket. He reached for it and fingered it for a second, not pulling it out of his pocket. He wasn't sure he wanted anything to do with the Rebels, and he didn't need their help - he could get off-planet on his own. But he wanted answers, and there was only one person he knew of who could give him those answers. He pulled the card out of his pocket and quickly dialed the number written on it.
He heard someone pick up on the other end of the line, but there was no talking. Assuming that someone was indeed listening, he growled, "I want to speak to the Phoenix. Now."
There was a startled squeak on the other end, then a silence. After almost a minute, a female voice said, "Wait where you are. We'll be by in three minutes."
Heero hung up and waited. In three minutes, a car with dark windows pulled up to the curb in front of him. Someone opened the door, and he saw that it was the Phoenix, wearing a dark expression. He climbed in, and she commented, "I don't suppose it would be asking too much for you not to use that name over public lines?" She sighed.
"They tried to kill me."
She didn't respond, just stared at him, and he realized something. The realization was followed by a surge of anger that she'd known all this time, that he had underestimated her, even knowing what - and who - she was.
"You knew they would." It was a statement of fact, not a question.
"The Alliance has a long history of killing first, asking questions later. There was no reason that they would change that pattern now, especially with someone as deadly as you."
It was a truthful answer. Now he had another question. "Why did you do this to me? For me?"
"Which answer do you want, the pragmatic one or the humanitarian one?"
"I want the entire answer."
"Fair enough. We'll start with the humanitarian one. You are human, despite what you have been told. No human being deserves to be treated the way you were. Also, I have some idea what it's like to be different than everyone, and I wanted to talk with someone who felt the same way." She sighed. "All right, now the pragmatic reason. I've been basically doing all of the organizational work for the Rebels for two years now, in addition to participating in several strikes. All of that is on top of going to school and making appearances as my other self. It's beginning to wear on me. That, on top of trying to keep up with the five of you..." she fell silent for a moment. "I can't keep this up forever. It's taking all I've got right now just to keep the Rebels alive. We've always been short on food and supplies, but even more so now, since you five entered the field. If I didn't try something, I estimated that the Rebels would last for no more than three or four more years. I analyzed my choices, and decided you were the biggest threat. I wanted to draw you out in the open during your search for the Phoenix, so I inserted a suggestion in the Alliance computer that you be put on the case."
"You what?!"
"I was the one who got you put on the case, looking for me. It was the only way I could think of to get you close enough to me that I could catch you. That's why I did it."
"What do you want from me now?"
She opened her mouth to answer, then closed it. Finally she said, "If it were just me, I would say nothing. After what you've been through, I should want nothing more for you than for you to do whatever you want. In some ways, that's all I do want for you. But that's just Rina talking, and I'm not just Rina. I'm also the Phoenix, and as the Phoenix, I want your help. The Rebels need us, and I'm not enough for them. So I have to ask for you help."
"And if I say no?" he asked, mentally reviewing everything he'd thought, the pain and frustration when he realized that something in his mind did not belong to him, and the anger that was now turned almost fully on the Alliance. Almost.
"Then I - as the Phoenix - will be disappointed, but grateful that at least I won't be fighting you anymore. The Rebels don't have many resources, but I can get you enough money to get you anywhere in the galaxy you want to go, so that you can do whatever you want, and Rina, at least, will be happy."
Heero stared at the darkened window for several minutes, then came to a decision. "I think I can make both parts of you happy. I'll stay and help you, because that is what I want for myself. I'll only do it on one condition, though. That the first mission you give me is to help the others." Now that he knew the truth, he had to let the others know it, too.
She smiled a little. "You mean Two, Three, Four, and Five?"
"I mean Herc, Michael, Arthur, and Kan," he corrected her. The Alliance had given them those numbers, and he didn't want to think about that right now.
"I heard something about names, but I could never find any reference to it."
"They only used our operational numbers. We were the only ones who used the names."
"That doesn't mean they aren't your names."
"So I can do it?"
"If you didn't ask me, that was going to be my next job anyway."
Heero's expression didn't change, but he suddenly felt lighter. "Thank you, Phoenix."
"Please don't call me that. Phoenix is just a title. My name is Rina."
"And mine is Heero."
----------
When they got back to her base, Heero wanted to start working on his new mission right away, but she said that she had something to show him first. To his surprise, the base she had kept him in was little more than the few hallways he had already seen, not a large hidden military establishment. It was just one small building at the edge of the colony, pressed up against the dome that made it possible for humans to live on the hostile planet. Terraforming that was taking place right now might make it possible to walk on the surface without protection some day, but that day was decades in the future, if not centuries. Then she took him to a lift, and it dropped several stories into the ground. When the doors opened, he was standing in another colony, complete with buildings, artificial sunlight, and trees. He stared. "What is this place?"
"It's called Refuge," she said. He glanced at her, and saw that while his attention had been occupied, she had changed her skin tone and put on contacts, so that she looked like a person from Earth. "It's our biggest secret. The only reason we've been able to keep it a secret so long is that few people who ever see Refuge leave it. It started out as just a few underground tunnels the Rebels used to hide in, but then we started getting refugees from small colonies that the Alliance had destroyed. When Earthlings think of the colonies, they think of the huge domed cities like Alpha. Most of them don't even know that there are literally hundreds of smaller domes where people farm and produce food and air for the major colonies to survive on. Every now and then the Alliance will eliminate one of the colonies if they think too much food is being produced, to keep prices high. So far we can't stop them, but we can evacuate the citizens. Long before we were born, the Rebels started enlarging the tunnels, building by building, farther and farther out into the Centari dirt. Refuge now extends several miles out under the Centari surface, and houses tens of thousands of people, nearly one-fifth the population of Alpha's District One. It's completely independent from Alpha - we produce all the air, food, and water we need to survive. If for some reason the dome on Alpha was breached, we could survive for years down here, if not indefinitely."
He stared around him with renewed respect. "How could you keep this a secret?"
"Like I said, few people who see this place and know where it is leave. The metals and minerals in the soil hide most of our energy traces. In addition to that, a good deal of our funds go to bribing various minor Alliance officials to look the other way, although none of them know the true extent of what their greed is concealing. Refuge is the reason that the Rebels have so few resources - most of what we have goes into maintaining this place, so there's not much left over for fighting."
"But isn't your goal to win independence for the colony? To destroy the Alliance's influence here? Aren't you wasting resources here?"
"Our goal is to protect the people, and there are over thirty thousand here, and the number is growing daily, with all of the strikes the Alliance is making now-a-days. Heero, I brought you down here because I want you to understand something. The people always come first, before defeating the Alliance, before killing our enemies, even before preserving our own lives. There are now thirty thousand innocents here, less than three percent of them have anything to do with the Rebels, people whose lives depend on you keeping the secret."
Heero found himself suspicious of her motives. "Then why are you telling me this? Why are you showing me this?"
She laughed in a low voice. "That's a good question. There are a number of my advisors who argued very strongly against me bringing you here."
"Then why did you?"
"Because I want you to understand. You wouldn't have learned this at the Alliance, and it's something very important to us. The Alliance believes that the people exist on the sufferance of the government, and that it's not wrong to sacrifice people for that government."
Heero nodded. "I know that. Mem... Yirtz told us it every time we eliminated a civilian, that it was for the good of the Alliance, to protect it so it could protect the people."
"Well, that's partially right. Heero, the government exists for the people. It exists to protect them, and because of them. But you can't go eliminating the same people you're trying to protect. If you eliminate one person, then why not ten, or a hundred, or a thousand? If you look at it the Alliance's way, there's no number of people too large to sacrifice, and if you continue on that path, sooner or later there's going to be no one left. Then what purpose does the government serve? The government has to protect the people, all the people, or it has no reason to exist. Do you understand?"
Heero thought she was exaggerating the point. "I don't understand exactly what you're saying, not yet." Heero hesitated, then added, "But I'll think about it. I'll try to understand." Rina looked worried. "And I won't betray you to the Alliance."
"It's not me I'm worried about," she said softly, looking out across the crowded street. After a few seconds, she collected herself. "Come on, there's one more person I want you to meet." She took him back up to the surface, and they drove to another hidden base, this one more what Heero had expected. It was in a bad section of town, dirty, cramped, and everyone on the base was armed. Heero found himself analyzing it's defenses, looking for weaknesses. There weren't many, which had to be Rina's doing, but it was clear that the thought of an Alliance raid was in most of the men's minds. Then he saw a group of young women standing together, practicing putting together weapons, and a minute later, an older woman standing among several of the men, talking to them.
"There are women Rebels?" As the words came out of his mouth, he realized how big a mistake that had been, saying something like that to *her*.
Rina shot him an amused glance. "The Alliance made a big mistake when they tried to get rid of me. They thought I'd be useless as a soldier because I'm female. They were wrong about me, and they were wrong about females in general. I'll introduce you to some of them, sometime. I think even your old commanders would be impressed with their *efficiency*."
Your old commanders. The words stuck in his mind, and he suddenly realized the extent of all he'd done. He'd turned his back completely on the Alliance, and effectively pledged his allegiance to the Rebels. His comrades would try to kill him on sight, as would any loyal Alliance soldier. He was now cut off from everything that he'd known for his entire life. Is it worth the price? he wondered, just for an instant. Then he again remembered repeating that damned phrase, over and over and over again, and his resolve stiffened. If nothing else, she had given him the truth, and the ability to decide his own future. He knew that she had probably done her best to convince him to join her, but the final decision had been his. That's more than my creators ever gave me.
Rina turned and opened a door. She stuck her head inside, and a second later a man came out. Heero was struck by the realization that he knew him. "Mr. Teel," he said, recognizing the man despite the passage of nearly ten years since he last saw him.
"One," the man acknowledged him stiffly with a nod. "You've grown."
"My name is Heero," he said firmly, wanting to be rid of that designation forever. He never realized how much he hated it until he heard people, real people, calling him his real name.
"Heero, then. My name is Michael Turston, not Mr. Teel."
Heero nodded. "You haven't changed much." It was true. Michael Turston had been a young man when he first joined the project, only twenty-one, and was only twenty-four when he left it. He had aged slightly in the intervening ten years, but his appearance was unmistakable.
"I guess I'll take that as a compliment. How is Four?"
"Arthur," Heero stressed the name. "Was fine last time I saw him. He overcame his weakness to become a model soldier, although he's not as efficient as the rest of us. He does have his strengths, though." Heero delivered the report the same way he would have reported to his supervisors, eyes straight forward, back stiff. "Do you want me to elaborate?"
Michael Turston grimaced. "No, that's all right." It suddenly occurred to Heero that maybe that hadn't been the response they were looking for.
"Mike taught me how to change my skin tones," Rina said with another smile at Mike. Heero also smiled grimly as something occurred to him. "He'll teach you how to do it too."
"I'd like to get started on my mission now," Heero told her.
"His mission?" Mike asked, raising his eyebrows.
"I'm going to trap my colleagues so that Rina can do for them what she did for me," Heero informed him.
"Do you need anything?"
"You still have access to the Alliance's computer, don't you?"
Rina hesitated, then nodded. "I created a back door the last time you kicked me out. I can get in and out any time."
"I'm going to need to get in and see what orders they've been given in my absence. After that I just need a few hours by myself to think."
"Come on. I'll get you into the system. Then I've got business to attend to." She lead him to a nearby room with an old computer in it.
"This is what you've been using?!"
"I've got better equipment in my house, but, like I said, we don't have many resources. We manage." He had to admire her efficiency, both in getting into the system and in doing it with the ancient system she was using.
"That's a roundabout route," he observed.
"Well Four... I mean Arthur, did a very good job with the security. If I hadn't left this back door, I wouldn't be able to get in at all. Even so, I can't take a direct route into the system. That is a straight giveaway, and they'll detect you every time. But I can get into one of the less well-guarded accesses with my program, and then work my way back from there. It's not fun, or easy, but it's doable. Here you go." She finished her typing and gave him the seat. He found himself staring at a general query in the main bank of the system.
"How did you do that?"
"The computer thinks you're Colonel Jerard U. Weston."
"How? I thought Arthur fixed it so that you couldn't make fake ID's anymore."
"He did. Colonel Weston is a real person."
"But how..."
"Maybe it would be more accurate to say that Colonel Weston was a real person. He was killed in combat eight years ago. When I got back in after you destroyed the second fake ID I made, I changed his files. The computer thinks he's still on active duty somewhere in the Kappa colony, instead of buried in a cemetery back on Earth."
"Very clever," he admitted. As she turned to leave he said, "Rina?"
"Yes?"
"I've seen what you do with your people."
She frowned. "What do you mean?"
"You use friendship the way the Alliance uses threats and emotional training. Every time you smile at them and offer them camaraderie, it ties them closer to you. It's a very good way to keep people's loyalty."
For a long minute she didn't answer him. Finally she said in a strained voice, "That's not the only reason I offer them friendship. We were born alone, you and I both remember it more than most people, and we will die alone. It's what we do, the people we're with in the middle that has any meaning."
------------
As Rina got ready to go to bed that evening, safe in her own home, she found herself thinking of Heero's words. There was more truth to them then she liked to admit. It was true that she was aware of the ties that friendship made with people, and that sometimes she did use the charm she had learned to deal with her father's friends in order to ingratiate herself with new recruits, but there was more to it than that. It wasn't just a tool, the way Heero had suggested. The difference was that she also valued the friendships just for themselves, valued being able to talk to people, not as a commander to subordinates, but just as equals. It's not the way Heero said. It isn't.
She wondered whether it really had been a big mistake to capture Heero and convert him. What if she had failed, and Alliance troops were storming through Refuge as she lay there? Rina suppressed the desire to jump out of bed and rush to the base right away. She forced herself to lay still. She didn't think she'd failed. Heero was basically honest beneath everything the Alliance had taught him. Unless he was specifically given a mission where it was in the parameters to lie to her, he wouldn't. That's more than you can say about me. He had exhibited genuine desire to help free his companions. It would be a long time, if ever, before he had fully human emotions, but he showed a desire to learn real values, and that was a start. And there was something more that was fueling him, something they'd done to his mind that had been a major factor in converting him, maybe more than anything she did. She wondered what it was, and then pushed it from her mind. Whatever the Alliance had done to him, he was free of them now. But in a way that wasn't true, because the emotional training was still holding for him. He couldn't ever be happy until it was broken, and she promised herself that she'd work on it. It was the least she could do after he joined them.
I was right to take the risk, she thought. He will be a powerful ally. I knew the Rebels wouldn't survive without his help, and the others. Now, if I can only get them all working together, and get the rest of the Rebels to trust them before it's too late...
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"I'm going after Arthur," Heero said.
"I'm going with you," Rina told him.
"I know. I need your help anyway."
Rina was surprised that he had managed to anticipate her coming along, and pleased. "What are you going to do?"
"I left a message on Arthur's terminal, telling him to meet me in a specific location, and to come alone."
"You what?!" Rina didn't bother to hide her alarm and dismay. She didn't think he was stupid, but this was causing her to have questions.
"Don't worry. He will come alone. I told him I would be unarmed. He's very honest about things like that. He'll either come alone or he won't come at all. And he will come alone."
"How do you know that?"
"I lived with him for fourteen years. I know how he acts."
Rina wasn't able to argue with that comment, so she focused on another of her arguments. "They'll know that I have a way of getting into the system."
"Once Arthur joins us, it won't matter. He's the only one who could build a defense to keep you out of the system, anyway." Heero's face was, as always, unreadable, and Rina saw why he so disturbed her fellow Rebels. He did seem more like a machine than a man at times. But right now, she sensed he was holding something back.
"Why did you pick him? Were the others confined to base?"
He hesitated, then answered. "No. Kan is out on a fact-finding mission, trying to discover what happened to me."
"Then why didn't you target him?"
"I thought that Arthur would be a better target."
"Why?!" she demanded.
"Arthur is different than the rest of us."
The many possible meanings of that statement stopped her in her tracks. "What do you mean?"
"I think that you would say he is more human than us. I think... I believe that the emotional training all of us underwent did not take hold on him properly, so that he has some normal human emotions. He doesn't like to kill, even in service of the Alliance."
"He doesn't?!" Rina repeated, astonished. Her mind flew back over what she knew about Four... Arthur.
"I'm surprised you didn't know that. It must have been in his files."
Rina concentrated on what she knew about Arthur. She did remember something about him being reported as weak. Once she had heard that, she hadn't paid as much attention to him as the others, assuming he wouldn't be as much of a threat. Stupid! She had assumed that when they said weaker they meant physically or mentally stunted, not just that he had emotions and wasn't the perfect killing machine they wanted. She'd forgotten that the analysis had been performed by Alliance doctors, who had very different values than she did.
"He doesn't like to kill, but he has other skills," Heero continued. "I think... I think it would be best to get him away from Mem as soon as possible. Mem has a cruel streak in him, and Arthur has always been a target. He's been punished more than the rest of us combined."
"Punished?" Rina had heard about this, but hadn't been able to find out what, exactly, it was.
"Put into a chamber designed to torture information out of prisoners. We were originally put into it to train ourselves not to succumb to torture, but now Mem uses it to punish Arthur when he doesn't perform at peak efficiency. I'll give you the design specifications later."
Rina, knowing how his mind worked, didn't have to ask why he would give her that information. He obviously expected her to use the information to build a chamber of her own. He couldn't know that she would never use such a thing, even on a person like Mem who would torture people for fun. But the Rebels could use the machine to train their own people to resist it.
She repressed a shiver at the cold-blooded boy she'd brought into her circle, and forced her attention on the task at hand. "All right, so you're targeting him. Are you sure he'll come alone?"
He nodded. "He knows I won't have lied to him when I said that I would be unarmed. But I won't be alone. Do you still have that dart gun?"
Rina nodded, seeing where this was going.
"How is your leg?"
"Better. Not one hundred percent, but still better than human. The muscles are still mending, but the bone is solid. As long as I don't put too much stress on it, it should hold. Why?" Because of the way she was designed, like the boys, Rina possessed incredible strength, and she healed almost ten times faster than normal humans, meaning that an injury that would have put a normal human out of commission for weeks was healed in a matter of days or hours for her. Also, her skin healed fastest, so that her injuries rarely showed. It was a good thing, too. It would have been hard to explain a series of scrapes all up and down her left side when she fell off that building, or almost got run over by that car...
"You may need to do some acrobatics to get him."
"Just tell me what I need to do. Let's get this over with as quickly as we can."
He glanced at the door to her office. "Don't they need you for something..."
"I took care of most of the business yesterday. Right now you guys are a top priority. The Rebels survived without me for fifty years, they can survive a few days' neglect."
--------------
A light flashed in the handheld unit Heero held, and he nodded to Rina. She made sure the safety on the dart gun was on, and that it was tucked into her belt, then jumped straight up ten feet. The hotel room where Heero had chosen to have this meeting was mostly empty space, but there was a narrow hallway, just two and a half feet across, right in front of the doorway. Now she pressed her feet against one wall and her back against the other, and sat there with the dart gun in her lap, waiting. She didn't have long to wait. The sensor unit that had alerted them to Arthur's approach had been stationed just down the hall. In less than a minute the door cracked open. The end of a gun was poked through, followed by the rest of the gun, a hand, arm, and finally an entire body.
A fourteen-year-old boy walked through the entranceway with all the stealth of a trained warrior, looking around cautiously as he did so. Luckily he didn't glance upwards, and when he was convinced that Heero was alone, he advanced into the room, keeping his gun pointed directly at Heero's chest. "You said you'd be unarmed," he said in a voice that trembled. It was both a question and a challenge.
"I am." Heero held his hands up, then placed them on top of his head. "You can search me if you want." Rina waited. Heero had told her he wanted to have a short conversation with Arthur.
"No, I believe you," the boy said, not relaxing in the slightest. "Why'd you do it, Heero?" he asked in a plaintive voice that sounded almost like a true child's. "Why did you betray the Alliance?"
"I didn't betray the Alliance. The Alliance betrayed us."
"You're lying."
"No, the Alliance has been lying to us all our lives. What did they tell you?"
"They told me you attacked Mr. Mem and killed several Alliance agents."
"That was only after they tried to kill me."
"They what?" the boy asked in a harsh whisper.
"I know the identity of the Phoenix. I found out the truth when I was captured, but I wasn't sure until I was released. I contacted Mem, and when I told him that I knew who the Phoenix was... I asked one question instead of obeying instantly, and they tried to kill me." He lowered his hands a little. "Arthur..."
"Don't call me that," the boy said sharply, then said in a loud monotone, "I'm on a mission, and my designation is Four. Put your hands on your head, One. I'm bringing you back to base."
For a moment Heero actually looked regretful. "I'm sorry, Arthur."
"Put your hands on your head, One. I won't give you another chance. I may be weak, but that won't stop me from killing you now. Put your hands on your head."
Heero's eyes flicked to Rina, and she fired three quick shots into Arthur's back. He managed to turn his head slightly to look at her, then looked back at Heero. "You traitor," he murmured as he collapsed.
Rina dropped down from her perch, her left leg aching slightly because of the exertion. "He lasted a few seconds longer than you did," she murmured. "He could have gotten off a shot."
"I knew he wouldn't," Heero said, staring at his fallen comrade. "Arthur can kill, has killed, but only if he's ordered to, and only if it serves a purpose. He could have killed me here, but you still would have caught him, so it didn't serve a purpose in the immediate sense. I always thought it made him weak, and I disliked him for it."
"Why?"
"I once saw some of our early tests, motor skill, reaction time, that sort of thing," he said. "Arthur had the highest of all of us. Not by much, but a little better scores. They stayed that way until people noticed he didn't want to kill, and started telling him he was weak. Then the scores started to drop, a little at a time, until he was the worst of us five. I disliked him because he was once stronger than us, and he let his weakness get in the way of his efficiency." He transferred his gaze from Arthur to Rina, still expressionless. "But from what you tell me, I think his weakness may be more of an asset among the Rebels."
Well, Heero's not quite as unfeeling/uncaring as he pretends to be, but Arthur is not in for a happy time. I'll try to get the next section out this week.
Marika
He heard someone pick up on the other end of the line, but there was no talking. Assuming that someone was indeed listening, he growled, "I want to speak to the Phoenix. Now."
There was a startled squeak on the other end, then a silence. After almost a minute, a female voice said, "Wait where you are. We'll be by in three minutes."
Heero hung up and waited. In three minutes, a car with dark windows pulled up to the curb in front of him. Someone opened the door, and he saw that it was the Phoenix, wearing a dark expression. He climbed in, and she commented, "I don't suppose it would be asking too much for you not to use that name over public lines?" She sighed.
"They tried to kill me."
She didn't respond, just stared at him, and he realized something. The realization was followed by a surge of anger that she'd known all this time, that he had underestimated her, even knowing what - and who - she was.
"You knew they would." It was a statement of fact, not a question.
"The Alliance has a long history of killing first, asking questions later. There was no reason that they would change that pattern now, especially with someone as deadly as you."
It was a truthful answer. Now he had another question. "Why did you do this to me? For me?"
"Which answer do you want, the pragmatic one or the humanitarian one?"
"I want the entire answer."
"Fair enough. We'll start with the humanitarian one. You are human, despite what you have been told. No human being deserves to be treated the way you were. Also, I have some idea what it's like to be different than everyone, and I wanted to talk with someone who felt the same way." She sighed. "All right, now the pragmatic reason. I've been basically doing all of the organizational work for the Rebels for two years now, in addition to participating in several strikes. All of that is on top of going to school and making appearances as my other self. It's beginning to wear on me. That, on top of trying to keep up with the five of you..." she fell silent for a moment. "I can't keep this up forever. It's taking all I've got right now just to keep the Rebels alive. We've always been short on food and supplies, but even more so now, since you five entered the field. If I didn't try something, I estimated that the Rebels would last for no more than three or four more years. I analyzed my choices, and decided you were the biggest threat. I wanted to draw you out in the open during your search for the Phoenix, so I inserted a suggestion in the Alliance computer that you be put on the case."
"You what?!"
"I was the one who got you put on the case, looking for me. It was the only way I could think of to get you close enough to me that I could catch you. That's why I did it."
"What do you want from me now?"
She opened her mouth to answer, then closed it. Finally she said, "If it were just me, I would say nothing. After what you've been through, I should want nothing more for you than for you to do whatever you want. In some ways, that's all I do want for you. But that's just Rina talking, and I'm not just Rina. I'm also the Phoenix, and as the Phoenix, I want your help. The Rebels need us, and I'm not enough for them. So I have to ask for you help."
"And if I say no?" he asked, mentally reviewing everything he'd thought, the pain and frustration when he realized that something in his mind did not belong to him, and the anger that was now turned almost fully on the Alliance. Almost.
"Then I - as the Phoenix - will be disappointed, but grateful that at least I won't be fighting you anymore. The Rebels don't have many resources, but I can get you enough money to get you anywhere in the galaxy you want to go, so that you can do whatever you want, and Rina, at least, will be happy."
Heero stared at the darkened window for several minutes, then came to a decision. "I think I can make both parts of you happy. I'll stay and help you, because that is what I want for myself. I'll only do it on one condition, though. That the first mission you give me is to help the others." Now that he knew the truth, he had to let the others know it, too.
She smiled a little. "You mean Two, Three, Four, and Five?"
"I mean Herc, Michael, Arthur, and Kan," he corrected her. The Alliance had given them those numbers, and he didn't want to think about that right now.
"I heard something about names, but I could never find any reference to it."
"They only used our operational numbers. We were the only ones who used the names."
"That doesn't mean they aren't your names."
"So I can do it?"
"If you didn't ask me, that was going to be my next job anyway."
Heero's expression didn't change, but he suddenly felt lighter. "Thank you, Phoenix."
"Please don't call me that. Phoenix is just a title. My name is Rina."
"And mine is Heero."
----------
When they got back to her base, Heero wanted to start working on his new mission right away, but she said that she had something to show him first. To his surprise, the base she had kept him in was little more than the few hallways he had already seen, not a large hidden military establishment. It was just one small building at the edge of the colony, pressed up against the dome that made it possible for humans to live on the hostile planet. Terraforming that was taking place right now might make it possible to walk on the surface without protection some day, but that day was decades in the future, if not centuries. Then she took him to a lift, and it dropped several stories into the ground. When the doors opened, he was standing in another colony, complete with buildings, artificial sunlight, and trees. He stared. "What is this place?"
"It's called Refuge," she said. He glanced at her, and saw that while his attention had been occupied, she had changed her skin tone and put on contacts, so that she looked like a person from Earth. "It's our biggest secret. The only reason we've been able to keep it a secret so long is that few people who ever see Refuge leave it. It started out as just a few underground tunnels the Rebels used to hide in, but then we started getting refugees from small colonies that the Alliance had destroyed. When Earthlings think of the colonies, they think of the huge domed cities like Alpha. Most of them don't even know that there are literally hundreds of smaller domes where people farm and produce food and air for the major colonies to survive on. Every now and then the Alliance will eliminate one of the colonies if they think too much food is being produced, to keep prices high. So far we can't stop them, but we can evacuate the citizens. Long before we were born, the Rebels started enlarging the tunnels, building by building, farther and farther out into the Centari dirt. Refuge now extends several miles out under the Centari surface, and houses tens of thousands of people, nearly one-fifth the population of Alpha's District One. It's completely independent from Alpha - we produce all the air, food, and water we need to survive. If for some reason the dome on Alpha was breached, we could survive for years down here, if not indefinitely."
He stared around him with renewed respect. "How could you keep this a secret?"
"Like I said, few people who see this place and know where it is leave. The metals and minerals in the soil hide most of our energy traces. In addition to that, a good deal of our funds go to bribing various minor Alliance officials to look the other way, although none of them know the true extent of what their greed is concealing. Refuge is the reason that the Rebels have so few resources - most of what we have goes into maintaining this place, so there's not much left over for fighting."
"But isn't your goal to win independence for the colony? To destroy the Alliance's influence here? Aren't you wasting resources here?"
"Our goal is to protect the people, and there are over thirty thousand here, and the number is growing daily, with all of the strikes the Alliance is making now-a-days. Heero, I brought you down here because I want you to understand something. The people always come first, before defeating the Alliance, before killing our enemies, even before preserving our own lives. There are now thirty thousand innocents here, less than three percent of them have anything to do with the Rebels, people whose lives depend on you keeping the secret."
Heero found himself suspicious of her motives. "Then why are you telling me this? Why are you showing me this?"
She laughed in a low voice. "That's a good question. There are a number of my advisors who argued very strongly against me bringing you here."
"Then why did you?"
"Because I want you to understand. You wouldn't have learned this at the Alliance, and it's something very important to us. The Alliance believes that the people exist on the sufferance of the government, and that it's not wrong to sacrifice people for that government."
Heero nodded. "I know that. Mem... Yirtz told us it every time we eliminated a civilian, that it was for the good of the Alliance, to protect it so it could protect the people."
"Well, that's partially right. Heero, the government exists for the people. It exists to protect them, and because of them. But you can't go eliminating the same people you're trying to protect. If you eliminate one person, then why not ten, or a hundred, or a thousand? If you look at it the Alliance's way, there's no number of people too large to sacrifice, and if you continue on that path, sooner or later there's going to be no one left. Then what purpose does the government serve? The government has to protect the people, all the people, or it has no reason to exist. Do you understand?"
Heero thought she was exaggerating the point. "I don't understand exactly what you're saying, not yet." Heero hesitated, then added, "But I'll think about it. I'll try to understand." Rina looked worried. "And I won't betray you to the Alliance."
"It's not me I'm worried about," she said softly, looking out across the crowded street. After a few seconds, she collected herself. "Come on, there's one more person I want you to meet." She took him back up to the surface, and they drove to another hidden base, this one more what Heero had expected. It was in a bad section of town, dirty, cramped, and everyone on the base was armed. Heero found himself analyzing it's defenses, looking for weaknesses. There weren't many, which had to be Rina's doing, but it was clear that the thought of an Alliance raid was in most of the men's minds. Then he saw a group of young women standing together, practicing putting together weapons, and a minute later, an older woman standing among several of the men, talking to them.
"There are women Rebels?" As the words came out of his mouth, he realized how big a mistake that had been, saying something like that to *her*.
Rina shot him an amused glance. "The Alliance made a big mistake when they tried to get rid of me. They thought I'd be useless as a soldier because I'm female. They were wrong about me, and they were wrong about females in general. I'll introduce you to some of them, sometime. I think even your old commanders would be impressed with their *efficiency*."
Your old commanders. The words stuck in his mind, and he suddenly realized the extent of all he'd done. He'd turned his back completely on the Alliance, and effectively pledged his allegiance to the Rebels. His comrades would try to kill him on sight, as would any loyal Alliance soldier. He was now cut off from everything that he'd known for his entire life. Is it worth the price? he wondered, just for an instant. Then he again remembered repeating that damned phrase, over and over and over again, and his resolve stiffened. If nothing else, she had given him the truth, and the ability to decide his own future. He knew that she had probably done her best to convince him to join her, but the final decision had been his. That's more than my creators ever gave me.
Rina turned and opened a door. She stuck her head inside, and a second later a man came out. Heero was struck by the realization that he knew him. "Mr. Teel," he said, recognizing the man despite the passage of nearly ten years since he last saw him.
"One," the man acknowledged him stiffly with a nod. "You've grown."
"My name is Heero," he said firmly, wanting to be rid of that designation forever. He never realized how much he hated it until he heard people, real people, calling him his real name.
"Heero, then. My name is Michael Turston, not Mr. Teel."
Heero nodded. "You haven't changed much." It was true. Michael Turston had been a young man when he first joined the project, only twenty-one, and was only twenty-four when he left it. He had aged slightly in the intervening ten years, but his appearance was unmistakable.
"I guess I'll take that as a compliment. How is Four?"
"Arthur," Heero stressed the name. "Was fine last time I saw him. He overcame his weakness to become a model soldier, although he's not as efficient as the rest of us. He does have his strengths, though." Heero delivered the report the same way he would have reported to his supervisors, eyes straight forward, back stiff. "Do you want me to elaborate?"
Michael Turston grimaced. "No, that's all right." It suddenly occurred to Heero that maybe that hadn't been the response they were looking for.
"Mike taught me how to change my skin tones," Rina said with another smile at Mike. Heero also smiled grimly as something occurred to him. "He'll teach you how to do it too."
"I'd like to get started on my mission now," Heero told her.
"His mission?" Mike asked, raising his eyebrows.
"I'm going to trap my colleagues so that Rina can do for them what she did for me," Heero informed him.
"Do you need anything?"
"You still have access to the Alliance's computer, don't you?"
Rina hesitated, then nodded. "I created a back door the last time you kicked me out. I can get in and out any time."
"I'm going to need to get in and see what orders they've been given in my absence. After that I just need a few hours by myself to think."
"Come on. I'll get you into the system. Then I've got business to attend to." She lead him to a nearby room with an old computer in it.
"This is what you've been using?!"
"I've got better equipment in my house, but, like I said, we don't have many resources. We manage." He had to admire her efficiency, both in getting into the system and in doing it with the ancient system she was using.
"That's a roundabout route," he observed.
"Well Four... I mean Arthur, did a very good job with the security. If I hadn't left this back door, I wouldn't be able to get in at all. Even so, I can't take a direct route into the system. That is a straight giveaway, and they'll detect you every time. But I can get into one of the less well-guarded accesses with my program, and then work my way back from there. It's not fun, or easy, but it's doable. Here you go." She finished her typing and gave him the seat. He found himself staring at a general query in the main bank of the system.
"How did you do that?"
"The computer thinks you're Colonel Jerard U. Weston."
"How? I thought Arthur fixed it so that you couldn't make fake ID's anymore."
"He did. Colonel Weston is a real person."
"But how..."
"Maybe it would be more accurate to say that Colonel Weston was a real person. He was killed in combat eight years ago. When I got back in after you destroyed the second fake ID I made, I changed his files. The computer thinks he's still on active duty somewhere in the Kappa colony, instead of buried in a cemetery back on Earth."
"Very clever," he admitted. As she turned to leave he said, "Rina?"
"Yes?"
"I've seen what you do with your people."
She frowned. "What do you mean?"
"You use friendship the way the Alliance uses threats and emotional training. Every time you smile at them and offer them camaraderie, it ties them closer to you. It's a very good way to keep people's loyalty."
For a long minute she didn't answer him. Finally she said in a strained voice, "That's not the only reason I offer them friendship. We were born alone, you and I both remember it more than most people, and we will die alone. It's what we do, the people we're with in the middle that has any meaning."
------------
As Rina got ready to go to bed that evening, safe in her own home, she found herself thinking of Heero's words. There was more truth to them then she liked to admit. It was true that she was aware of the ties that friendship made with people, and that sometimes she did use the charm she had learned to deal with her father's friends in order to ingratiate herself with new recruits, but there was more to it than that. It wasn't just a tool, the way Heero had suggested. The difference was that she also valued the friendships just for themselves, valued being able to talk to people, not as a commander to subordinates, but just as equals. It's not the way Heero said. It isn't.
She wondered whether it really had been a big mistake to capture Heero and convert him. What if she had failed, and Alliance troops were storming through Refuge as she lay there? Rina suppressed the desire to jump out of bed and rush to the base right away. She forced herself to lay still. She didn't think she'd failed. Heero was basically honest beneath everything the Alliance had taught him. Unless he was specifically given a mission where it was in the parameters to lie to her, he wouldn't. That's more than you can say about me. He had exhibited genuine desire to help free his companions. It would be a long time, if ever, before he had fully human emotions, but he showed a desire to learn real values, and that was a start. And there was something more that was fueling him, something they'd done to his mind that had been a major factor in converting him, maybe more than anything she did. She wondered what it was, and then pushed it from her mind. Whatever the Alliance had done to him, he was free of them now. But in a way that wasn't true, because the emotional training was still holding for him. He couldn't ever be happy until it was broken, and she promised herself that she'd work on it. It was the least she could do after he joined them.
I was right to take the risk, she thought. He will be a powerful ally. I knew the Rebels wouldn't survive without his help, and the others. Now, if I can only get them all working together, and get the rest of the Rebels to trust them before it's too late...
------------
"I'm going after Arthur," Heero said.
"I'm going with you," Rina told him.
"I know. I need your help anyway."
Rina was surprised that he had managed to anticipate her coming along, and pleased. "What are you going to do?"
"I left a message on Arthur's terminal, telling him to meet me in a specific location, and to come alone."
"You what?!" Rina didn't bother to hide her alarm and dismay. She didn't think he was stupid, but this was causing her to have questions.
"Don't worry. He will come alone. I told him I would be unarmed. He's very honest about things like that. He'll either come alone or he won't come at all. And he will come alone."
"How do you know that?"
"I lived with him for fourteen years. I know how he acts."
Rina wasn't able to argue with that comment, so she focused on another of her arguments. "They'll know that I have a way of getting into the system."
"Once Arthur joins us, it won't matter. He's the only one who could build a defense to keep you out of the system, anyway." Heero's face was, as always, unreadable, and Rina saw why he so disturbed her fellow Rebels. He did seem more like a machine than a man at times. But right now, she sensed he was holding something back.
"Why did you pick him? Were the others confined to base?"
He hesitated, then answered. "No. Kan is out on a fact-finding mission, trying to discover what happened to me."
"Then why didn't you target him?"
"I thought that Arthur would be a better target."
"Why?!" she demanded.
"Arthur is different than the rest of us."
The many possible meanings of that statement stopped her in her tracks. "What do you mean?"
"I think that you would say he is more human than us. I think... I believe that the emotional training all of us underwent did not take hold on him properly, so that he has some normal human emotions. He doesn't like to kill, even in service of the Alliance."
"He doesn't?!" Rina repeated, astonished. Her mind flew back over what she knew about Four... Arthur.
"I'm surprised you didn't know that. It must have been in his files."
Rina concentrated on what she knew about Arthur. She did remember something about him being reported as weak. Once she had heard that, she hadn't paid as much attention to him as the others, assuming he wouldn't be as much of a threat. Stupid! She had assumed that when they said weaker they meant physically or mentally stunted, not just that he had emotions and wasn't the perfect killing machine they wanted. She'd forgotten that the analysis had been performed by Alliance doctors, who had very different values than she did.
"He doesn't like to kill, but he has other skills," Heero continued. "I think... I think it would be best to get him away from Mem as soon as possible. Mem has a cruel streak in him, and Arthur has always been a target. He's been punished more than the rest of us combined."
"Punished?" Rina had heard about this, but hadn't been able to find out what, exactly, it was.
"Put into a chamber designed to torture information out of prisoners. We were originally put into it to train ourselves not to succumb to torture, but now Mem uses it to punish Arthur when he doesn't perform at peak efficiency. I'll give you the design specifications later."
Rina, knowing how his mind worked, didn't have to ask why he would give her that information. He obviously expected her to use the information to build a chamber of her own. He couldn't know that she would never use such a thing, even on a person like Mem who would torture people for fun. But the Rebels could use the machine to train their own people to resist it.
She repressed a shiver at the cold-blooded boy she'd brought into her circle, and forced her attention on the task at hand. "All right, so you're targeting him. Are you sure he'll come alone?"
He nodded. "He knows I won't have lied to him when I said that I would be unarmed. But I won't be alone. Do you still have that dart gun?"
Rina nodded, seeing where this was going.
"How is your leg?"
"Better. Not one hundred percent, but still better than human. The muscles are still mending, but the bone is solid. As long as I don't put too much stress on it, it should hold. Why?" Because of the way she was designed, like the boys, Rina possessed incredible strength, and she healed almost ten times faster than normal humans, meaning that an injury that would have put a normal human out of commission for weeks was healed in a matter of days or hours for her. Also, her skin healed fastest, so that her injuries rarely showed. It was a good thing, too. It would have been hard to explain a series of scrapes all up and down her left side when she fell off that building, or almost got run over by that car...
"You may need to do some acrobatics to get him."
"Just tell me what I need to do. Let's get this over with as quickly as we can."
He glanced at the door to her office. "Don't they need you for something..."
"I took care of most of the business yesterday. Right now you guys are a top priority. The Rebels survived without me for fifty years, they can survive a few days' neglect."
--------------
A light flashed in the handheld unit Heero held, and he nodded to Rina. She made sure the safety on the dart gun was on, and that it was tucked into her belt, then jumped straight up ten feet. The hotel room where Heero had chosen to have this meeting was mostly empty space, but there was a narrow hallway, just two and a half feet across, right in front of the doorway. Now she pressed her feet against one wall and her back against the other, and sat there with the dart gun in her lap, waiting. She didn't have long to wait. The sensor unit that had alerted them to Arthur's approach had been stationed just down the hall. In less than a minute the door cracked open. The end of a gun was poked through, followed by the rest of the gun, a hand, arm, and finally an entire body.
A fourteen-year-old boy walked through the entranceway with all the stealth of a trained warrior, looking around cautiously as he did so. Luckily he didn't glance upwards, and when he was convinced that Heero was alone, he advanced into the room, keeping his gun pointed directly at Heero's chest. "You said you'd be unarmed," he said in a voice that trembled. It was both a question and a challenge.
"I am." Heero held his hands up, then placed them on top of his head. "You can search me if you want." Rina waited. Heero had told her he wanted to have a short conversation with Arthur.
"No, I believe you," the boy said, not relaxing in the slightest. "Why'd you do it, Heero?" he asked in a plaintive voice that sounded almost like a true child's. "Why did you betray the Alliance?"
"I didn't betray the Alliance. The Alliance betrayed us."
"You're lying."
"No, the Alliance has been lying to us all our lives. What did they tell you?"
"They told me you attacked Mr. Mem and killed several Alliance agents."
"That was only after they tried to kill me."
"They what?" the boy asked in a harsh whisper.
"I know the identity of the Phoenix. I found out the truth when I was captured, but I wasn't sure until I was released. I contacted Mem, and when I told him that I knew who the Phoenix was... I asked one question instead of obeying instantly, and they tried to kill me." He lowered his hands a little. "Arthur..."
"Don't call me that," the boy said sharply, then said in a loud monotone, "I'm on a mission, and my designation is Four. Put your hands on your head, One. I'm bringing you back to base."
For a moment Heero actually looked regretful. "I'm sorry, Arthur."
"Put your hands on your head, One. I won't give you another chance. I may be weak, but that won't stop me from killing you now. Put your hands on your head."
Heero's eyes flicked to Rina, and she fired three quick shots into Arthur's back. He managed to turn his head slightly to look at her, then looked back at Heero. "You traitor," he murmured as he collapsed.
Rina dropped down from her perch, her left leg aching slightly because of the exertion. "He lasted a few seconds longer than you did," she murmured. "He could have gotten off a shot."
"I knew he wouldn't," Heero said, staring at his fallen comrade. "Arthur can kill, has killed, but only if he's ordered to, and only if it serves a purpose. He could have killed me here, but you still would have caught him, so it didn't serve a purpose in the immediate sense. I always thought it made him weak, and I disliked him for it."
"Why?"
"I once saw some of our early tests, motor skill, reaction time, that sort of thing," he said. "Arthur had the highest of all of us. Not by much, but a little better scores. They stayed that way until people noticed he didn't want to kill, and started telling him he was weak. Then the scores started to drop, a little at a time, until he was the worst of us five. I disliked him because he was once stronger than us, and he let his weakness get in the way of his efficiency." He transferred his gaze from Arthur to Rina, still expressionless. "But from what you tell me, I think his weakness may be more of an asset among the Rebels."
Well, Heero's not quite as unfeeling/uncaring as he pretends to be, but Arthur is not in for a happy time. I'll try to get the next section out this week.
Marika
