Rina never found out what Arthur said to convince the Snake, but whatever it was, it worked. The next night, after Brenden and the other hardheads had retired for the night, she was approached by the Snake and the others he had spoken for. They apologized for doubting her, and Rina saw a smug smile on Arthur's face and decided not to ask questions, even though he had succeeded in what she would have thought to be an impossible task. Unless... she frowned. Unless he'd manipulated him, something she'd been trying to avoid. Though more sensitive and human than the others, Arthur could be as expedient as anyone when he chose, and he very well might have decided that this cause was worth bending a few rules to convince the Snake. Another good reason not to ask. If he had manipulated them, she wouldn't know what to tell the Snake, anyway. The result was all that she could have hoped for, though, and without the Snakes' mistrust or Brenden's ridiculousness, they got more accomplished in those late nights and early mornings than in many of the hours they met during the day.
Rina found herself fascinated by these people, and the Snake in particular. All of her life had been spent around people who were not nearly as smart as she was. There were a few who were brilliant, of course - Mike was one of them, as was the late Dr. Green, and her father was no slouch himself (in fact, all of her top advisors were bright enough to qualify as near-geniuses in their own fields) but no one like the Snake, who was easily the most intelligent and insightful human she'd ever met, and in many areas. He wasn't as quick mentally as she or the boys, didn't have perfect recall, and didn't have much experience, but he was close in the first two categories, and the third would be fixed in time. There was a good reason that he rose to power so young, and she thanked her lucky stars that he hadn't risen to power in the Alliance. He would have made a very dangerous enemy, maybe even more dangerous in some ways than the boys because he wouldn't have been tricked into it. All the same, it was a fascinating experience, to be with a person whose mind worked that fast, and who wasn't created like she was. It also made her wonder - it seemed as if humanity, in general, was getting smarter. It was a slow process, of course, but there were more and more geniuses like Mike and her father showing up, at least in the colonies, and now there was the Snake, who was on another level altogether, like them, except that he was a natural mutation. She wondered if this general patter was also present on Earth, and if humanity normally went through cycles where people got smarter or not. This was the sort of thing that she would have liked to study if her entire life was not taken up with fighting the Alliance. But it wasn't a choice for her, so she tried to put the matter out of her mind.
She also took them - and only them - to see Refuge. They were all suitably impressed, and several left with plans to try to start their own cities. They also left with plans for Dr. Green's invention. That alone could have an enormous impact on the lives of the people in the colonies, because if the Rebels were no longer struggling to find food, they could concentrate on other things, like hurting the Alliance. The plans for the devise she also gave to the other representatives, although she didn't explain that they were already in use or where they came from. Even those idiots could appreciate obvious technology improvements, and they might even use it. Still, Rina was very relieved when they returned to their respective colonies. This meeting had been both more helpful and more difficult than she ever could have imagined.
-----------
After the other Rebels left, business got back to normal, strikes against the Alliance's bases, attacks on soldiers stationed in the streets, the propaganda war, and intelligence operations. They heard little from the other Rebel groups, although it soon became apparent that the Snake, at least, hadn't hesitated to implement her ideas. As time passed, some of the others followed suit, and Rina felt that the meeting, tedious and difficult as it had been, had been worth the effort.
One day, almost a year after Kan joined them, they were having a meeting discussing - theoretically - what would be necessary to take over. There were a number of things blocking them, the most important of which was the Alliance's most heavily guarded secret - the location of its headquarters. Out of concern for attacks just like the one the Rebels were trying to plan, the headquarters of Alliance leaders for each of the colonies were located somewhere outside the colony, probably underground just a few klicks from the dome, but that still left a lot of ground to cover. The boys didn't know anything about it, because they'd been stationed either in the colony itself or in a small colony outside the main dome, but not in the main base. There was no data about the location or building of the headquarters in the computer, and like Refuge, few people who ever entered base ever left it. Even the soldiers lived there all the time, and all the transportation of supplies was done by drones. So while the headquarters gave orders to all of the Alliance soldiers for Alpha colony, no one actually knew where it was. The Chancellor of Alpha colony lived on the base - Rina knew for a fact that he did not live in the heavily guarded grounds of the official residence, and that the transmissions from him (for purposes of propaganda) were all routed through the house to make it look as if he was actually there. The Chancellor made only one public appearance a year, probably because of fear for his own life. His face and voice were widely publicized though. The lack of a position to attack was the main thing blocking their ability to make that strike.
"Don't forget there's also the satellites to think of," Heero reminded the meeting. Every colony had several military satellites positioned in geosynchronous orbit above them. If the Rebels took over, the Alliance might very well chose to bomb the colony's dome, rather than loose control of it. That was another threat that had to be dealt with. Rina sighed at the inescapable fact that she would in all likelihood never see the freedom of the Alpha colony.
-----------
"We'll have to destroy them before we can strike," Herc said matter-of-factly.
"Not necessarily," Kan told him. "The satellites are controlled by computers. If we could find some way to take them over..."
"Those computers have manual overrides just in case that happens," Michael interrupted him. "We try to take over the system, they can override us and still launch missiles."
"Do we know where the manual overrides are?" Brandon asked.
"Not yet," Heero told him. "But we know there's at least one in their headquarters. The rest are spaced out around the city." Saying that there was one at the headquarters was the same as saying it was inaccessible. They might be able to take out the others, but it would take time to beat the headquarters' security, once they found it, and in that time they might be able to launch missiles at the colony.
"Can I see the program?" Arthur asked, and Heero handed over the sheets. Arthur studied it for a few minutes, then said, "I think I might be able to do something with this. It'll take some time, but I think I can make some changes to the system without them noticing. Specifically, I can remove their ability to perform a manual override. After that, it's pretty simple to take over the system. But making the changes so that they don't notice and so that I don't set off any alarms won't be easy. It may take some time. In fact, it's going to take a lot of time, maybe months."
"It doesn't matter until we find the headquarters anyway," Heero said. "The changes will stay once you've made them?"
"Yup. They'll be there permanently, or at least until I go back in there and change them."
"It would be good if we don't destroy those satellites," Patricia said thoughtfully. "If we have control of them, we can defend ourselves against anything else they might send at us. The missiles don't only aim at the colony."
Heero nodded. It was a good point - Rina had chosen her aids and companions well. He glanced at Rina, who always had the OK on projects like this, even if she had nothing to do with them. It was good to have at least one person who knew everything that was going on, to coordinate.
Then he noticed how that she was clenching her teeth as if in pain, and gripping the sides of the chair tightly. Her eyes were fixed on a point in the air in front of her, and he wondered if she'd heard anything they'd said. "Rina?" When she didn't respond, he asked, "Phoenix?"
Suddenly she started to shake violently and fell out of the chair. She was lying on the floor now, gasping for air. Heero was dimly aware of Mike getting out of his chair and running out of the room, but his attention was fixed on Rina, who was undergoing some sort of convulsions, throwing her arms all over, struggling to breathe.
"Rina!" Arthur shouted, and Heero could hear the fear in his voice. Heero was surprised to find that his heart was also beating fast, that he was also afraid for her. What's wrong with her? he thought. They didn't get sick, because of what they were, they were born immune to almost every disease out there. Even serious injuries healed in a matter of days or weeks. What was going on?
Mike came running back into the room, carrying a hypospray. He knelt by Rina's side and tried to reach her neck, but the wild thrashing of her limbs prevented him. One fist caught him in the shoulder and nearly sent him flying across the room. He looked up, saw the boys. "Hold her!" he snapped. "I need to give her an injection!"
The five boys were already clustered around her, and now they grabbed her arms and legs and tried to hold her still as gently as they could. Mike reached in and injected something into her neck, and after a minute, her arms and legs stopped shaking, and her breathing returned to normal. She opened her eyes and slowly sat up. She was shivering, and her skin was hot to the touch. Arthur was on one side of her, supporting her, and Heero found himself on the other. They lifted her up and carried her to the nearest room with a cot in it, and gently lay her down. For a moment she lay there, not moving at all, then she tried to sit up. Her attempt failed, and for a second Heero was really afraid - he'd never seen her weak like this. Finally she did sit up, and looked at Mike, who stood in the door. "How much did you give me?"
"Fifty microliters," he replied. "It's losing effectiveness."
"Well, we knew that was coming," Rina said slowly. "Thanks."
Mike nodded and left them alone with her. "Rina, what's going on?" Arthur asked.
"What was that? What's happening to you?"
"I'm dying." Rina smiled weakly.
"What?!" Arthur gasped. "How?"
"A disease."
"That's impossible. We're immune..." Rina reached out and touched Arthur's shoulder, silencing him.
"I wasn't entirely honest with you when we first met. I probably should have told you, but I wanted to wait..." she trailed off.
Heero couldn't believe what he was hearing. He forced himself to ask the question. "What didn't you tell us?"
"I told you that I escaped being killed because I'd been adopted by the ambassador, that the man who took us to the orphanage thought we wouldn't be a danger because we were just babies. He did, however, accept the fact that if we grew to adulthood, we could somehow become a danger to the Alliance. He managed to get his hands on a disease that our creators had made specifically for us, working around our immunities. I don't know why they did it - I think that the disease was originally intended to be used as a threat to keep you in line, but they decided to use other forms of persuasion... well, you know what they ended up using. In any case, the disease was designed, a vial of it was created, and then they decided not to use it. But when Kevins was ordered to dispose of us, he got his hands on that vial. He injected all of us girls with the disease before he delivered us to the orphanage, so even though I escaped, I didn't."
"He said the injection was loosing it's effectiveness," Michael said quietly. "What did he mean?"
"The disease is adapted from a genetic disorder that some humans used to have. It's activated by the presence of certain hormones in the host, specifically, the hormones associated with puberty. I've been taking pills and more recently, injecting myself with shots of hormonal suppressants, so that I don't start manufacturing those hormones and go through puberty."
Heero suddenly realized why, at the age of fifteen, she still had a body that was almost indistinguishable from a boy's except in the most important region. "That's why you haven't started to develop yet."
"I've been holding off nature now for two years. I should have gone through puberty at the age of thirteen," she said. "That's exactly average, and that's the way the doctors designed me. By taking the suppressants, I've managed to extend my life by over two years. But I can't hold nature off forever. As Mike said, the suppressants are losing their effectiveness. Sooner or later I'm going to go through puberty, and then I'll die."
"How long?" Arthur asked in a whisper.
"Six months," Rina replied carelessly, as if it didn't matter. "Maybe eight, but I doubt it. I'm not going to make it to my sixteenth birthday, that's for sure."
"How long have you known about this?" Kan asked.
"Since I was eight. After the car hit me, and I started looking at my own blood work, I noticed the traces of the disease in my bloodstream. It had multiplied, and was in remission. It took almost a year for me to figure out what it was. I've known since then."
"That's the real reason you came after us," Heero said, speaking as understanding came to him. "Besides all of the reasons you told us, about not wanting us in the hands of the Alliance. You didn't really need help. You needed replacements."
"The Rebels will be hunted down and killed without me. This isn't vanity on my part, it's just a fact. The Rebels were infested with Alliance agents before I started here, and it's only a matter of time until they are again after I'm gone. The only reason the Rebels have been able to keep up at all in the last years, what with their lack of resources, was because of me. My going after you, it was a move of desperation. But then, most of my most brilliant schemes are. People don't realize that if you don't tell them, they think it's just bravery."
"Why didn't you tell us?" Arthur asked again, still not raising his voice.
"I don't know. I should have, but... I try not to think about what's going to happen to me, and I wanted you to become Rebels because you wanted to, not because you felt sorry for me. The disease hasn't affected my performance until the last few weeks, when the convulsions started. It wouldn't be so painful, except that I'm resisting. If I had allowed the disease to take its course, I would have just gone quietly while I slept. This way is going to be considerably more painful, but I won myself a few more years."
"Who knows about this?" Heero asked, still forcing his mind forward, still refusing to think about how he felt, trying to imagine his new life without Rina present.
"All of my advisors, my father, my household, and my doctor," Rina said. "All of them are completely trustworthy. They won't tell what happened to me. The press, of course, will notice the death of Rina Krace, but everyone else, including most of the Rebels, won't even know that the Phoenix has died, because he won't." She stared at Heero, and he suddenly realized what she was saying.
"No. I can't do that."
"I've left strict instructions," she said, ignoring his comment. "When I die, you're the Phoenix. You know enough about my mannerisms that you should be able to fake any messages you need to send during the first few months following my death, and after that, it won't matter if the Alliance suspects that there has been a change in the Phoenix, although they probably won't notice at all. No one has any problems with my choice - I've already discussed it with all of my advisors. When I die, you're the new Phoenix."
"No."
"Please, Heero. Don't argue with me about this."
He was silent. Accepting the fact that he would be the new Phoenix would be accepting the fact that she was going to die, and he wasn't ready to do that. She seemed to understand, though, and didn't ask for his agreement, yet. "The Phoenix rises from the ashes. I rose from the ashes of my sisters, and now you will rise from my ashes. There's a certain rightness to it."
"Isn't there anything you can do?" Arthur burst out. "There has to be something!"
"Arthur, if there was anything I could do, don't you think I would have done it?" she asked softly.
Arthur fell silent, although Heero doubted that he'd really accepted what Rina said. Even now Heero could see Arthur's mind working at full speed. Whether he could come up with anything was anybody's guess.
"That sounded like a good idea at the meeting," Rina said. "I heard you, even if it didn't look like it. Go ahead with it, Arthur. That way you'll be ready to strike when you find their headquarters."
You'll be ready... The words echoed in Heero's mind. She really is going to die. He thought of all the times he'd seen her speaking of the future, she had always been very careful to say 'we' and 'us'. It was like when he'd been taught to play a character; she'd been playing the part of a healthy leader who intended to see this through to the end, even though she knew that she wouldn't see the fall of the Alliance, not even in this one little region. Somehow he found that the saddest thing of all. She had known when she joined the Rebels that she only had a little time - had she foreseen the desperation that would lead her to her most dangerous enemies in search of allies?
Rina sighed, then swung her legs around off the cot. "I'm all right now. We'd better get on with the meeting."
"Are you sure?" Arthur asked.
"Yes. I want to get as much done as possible today." That was a common enough statement from her, but now it took on more serious overtones. ...because I might not be here tomorrow.
----------
A few nights later, while Rina was back at home with her father, Heero found Arthur working in a secluded room by himself. "What are you doing?"
"Work." That vague answer alone would have been enough to tell Heero that Arthur wasn't working on any mission Rina had given him.
He walked over to the computer terminal Arthur was working on. Arthur didn't make an attempt to hide it. "You're looking for something."
"Someone," Arthur corrected him. "And I've found him."
Heero looked closer. "You've found Dr. Ethen!" he exclaimed.
"He was one of the three doctors who created us, and he also made the disease that's killing Rina" Arthur said. "Dr. Smith is dead, and Mem... I mean Yirtz wouldn't help us. But if anyone knows how to cure her, it would be him."
"Hasn't Rina checked this out herself?" Heero asked, not able to believe she'd leave out such an important possibility.
"Rina has some bad habits," Arthur commented. "She's so used to being on her own, trusting no one but her aides and expecting no help from anyone at all, she forgets that there are other people out there who might want to help. Ethen was ejected from the project because he knew what Smith had done and because he wouldn't do the things to us they wanted to. I think he'd want to help her, if he knew, but she would never allow us to take such a risk if she knew about it."
"If," Heero repeated. "When are you leaving?"
"Tonight. The others have agreed to cover for me. They'll tell her that I went off to do some intel work on my own, for something that might hurt the Alliance a lot."
"Keeping Rina alive would hurt the Alliance a lot," Heero agreed.
"They'll cover for you, too," Arthur said hesitantly. "If you'll go with me..."
"Where are we going?" Heero said, ignoring the way relief showed clearly on Arthur's face. It was just like Rina had first told him, Arthur's emotions didn't get in the way of his work, or his efficiency, so they shouldn't matter. Now what happened to my emotions?
"It's a small dome a few dozen klicks outside Alpha," Arthur said, bringing up a map. "It's an old one, a remnant of the original colonists. They lived there while they were building Alpha, then abandoned it. The Alliance stuck him down there a few weeks after we were born, and he's been there since. We'll have to get suits rated to vacuum travel, and a shuttle that won't be detected."
"Not a problem," Heero said. He knew where they could steal both of those. "We leave now?"
"We'd better. It's a few hours there and back, and we still have to convince him. If we're lucky we'll be back by midday tomorrow, but I doubt it." He stood up, and Heero noticed a vial of blood in his left hand. "Is that Rina's?"
"Yes. If he does help us, he'll need this. I got it from Mike - Rina won't realize we've taken it, and Mike won't tell her."
"You realize we're taking a big risk. This doctor could still be loyal to the Alliance. If we hand over her blood to him, he'll be able to identify her."
"If we don't do something, she'll be dead anyway. But I don't think he's really loyal to the Alliance - he didn't want to work for them in the first place, and they've kept him locked up for the past fifteen years. This is just another desperation move, you know."
"I know," Heero said, considering the alternative - Rina dying. "Let's go."
----------
There was little trouble when they stole the suits and short-range shuttle from the Alliance base. Those sorts of things went missing all the time, and most of the time it was because of the bureaucracy, forgetting to file reports to say that the things were being serviced or upgraded or something. The only things that they kept careful track of were weapons. Suits and short-range shuttles weren't exactly weapons. The shuttle they'd stolen wouldn't get them to another colony, which was the target of most thieves and smugglers. The longer-range shuttles, the ones that could reach other colonies were more well guarded. The shuttle they stole was usually used to check the outside of the dome for any problems.
The ride was uneventful, and Arthur even caught a few minutes sleep in the back of the vehicle, catching up on the time he'd missed because of the theft. They only needed a few hours of sleep every night anyway, and if they had to skip, they could do without for several days at a time. When they got to the tiny dome, only a few hundred meters in diameter, they stopped outside the air lock, hiding the shuttle among some rocks. "There's an alarm on the door," Heero muttered to himself. "It'll go off if we try to enter without a pass code."
"Can you bypass it?" Arthur asked.
"Yeah, just give me a minute." Heero set to work, his fingers slightly clumsy in the oversized gloves. It couldn't be helped - no one thought to make spacesuits their size. The Alliance had a couple made for them so they could train in vacuum environments, but a standard base wouldn't carry those, so they had to make due. It took Heero nearly five minutes to bypass the security on the door, five minutes while Arthur waited silently, watching the counters on their oxygen tanks drop down. Finally they got into the airlock and sealed it behind them. There was a large notice pasted on the next door. "NO SPACESUITS BEYOND THIS POINT! HIGHLY DANGEROUS PRISONER!"
Arthur looked at Heero. "Do we care?"
"Not normally, but they may have rigged lasers around the door to shoot anything with the material of a spacesuit that passes through. We'd be better off leaving them here."
Arthur nodded. The chances of them having to make a quick exit were slim to none. No one came out here. They both stripped out of their spacesuits and left them hanging on the wall. Underneath both wore the black stretch suits they'd been wearing for the theft of the shuttle. They both pulled masks over their faces, checked to make sure their guns were ready to be drawn from the holsters under their arms, and stepped through the door.
And into a garden. Arthur stared around him. He'd never seen such a place, except in pictures. It was somewhat like he imagined Earth would have been, many years ago before the spread of the cities back there. There were no animals that he could see, but flowers and bushes of every imaginable shape crowded close together around a small stone path. He also saw Heero looking around. "What is this place?" Heero asked rhetorically.
"It's a garden."
"What would a garden be doing in an old colony on Mars?"
Arthur shrugged. "He's been here a long time. Maybe he makes plants in his spare time, now."
Heero shook his head in disbelief, then drew his gun and started out down the path. Smiling to himself, Arthur followed suit. Heero really had changed a lot in the last year. It would take someone who knew him very well to tell, but he was a lot more relaxed. He talked more, and even showed caring for someone every now and then.
The path wound its way back and forth for a while, and finally stopped at what was left of the original colonists' main dormitory. The dormitory had obviously been converted into a large house, while the rest of the buildings had been destroyed. Artificial sunlight shown down on a small clearing in front of the house, and in that clearing sat an older man, his hair already white with age, his movements slow and deliberate. He didn't turn or look up as they moved silently towards him, but before they could reach him, he said, "So, they finally sent you to kill me. I'm surprised. I would have expected them to just blow the dome. Much quicker that way, less messy. They always were a bunch of cowards."
"We aren't here to kill you," Arthur said in a low voice, wondering how the old man had heard them.
That caused him to turn around, and they faced an old man with a thin face and glasses perched on his nose. "Don't lie to me!" he snapped. "Why else would the Alliance send you? Not to try to convince me to work on another of their 'projects', they gave that up a long time ago. Even if it was to try to convince me by offering me a glimpse of my children, this is an awkward way to do it, wearing masks like that. Did they think that I wouldn't recognize you with those stupid things?" There was disgust in his voice.
Arthur was stunned - no one had ever referred to them as someone's children. They were experiments. Heero said in a low voice just above a growl. "The Alliance didn't send us."
"Don't lie. Who else would send you?"
"We left the Alliance a year ago."
"You what?" Arthur saw surprise and a flash of hope pass across the man's face before he frowned again. "No. This is some sort of trick. Why are you doing this? What could the Alliance hope to gain?"
"It's true," Arthur said, regaining his voice. He fed honesty and enthusiasm into the words. "We left the Alliance because we found out the truth about what they were doing to us, and to the colony, what their real motives were."
"I did hear something big happened a year ago," the man said, talking to himself. "No, that's impossible. How did you find out?"
"The Phoenix captured us and exposed us to the truth about the Alliance," Arthur told him.
"The Phoenix!" the man repeated, and then said it again. "The Phoenix. Hmmm. They censor most of what little information I receive here, but even I've heard of the Phoenix. He's supposed to be the new leader of the Rebels, right? Brilliant tactician, really irritating the Alliance - good for him!" He glanced at the two boys as if judging their response. "Give me some proof that you're not with the Alliance."
"Your name is Dr. Richard Ethen. You worked on us with two doctors, Dr. Marcus Yirtz, whom we grew up knowing as Mr. Mem, and Dr. Karen Smith, who was executed at our birth because of what she did to our genes."
The man leaned back in his seat. "The Alliance would never have told you that," he murmured. "But how on Earth did you learn it?"
"The Phoenix broke into our records and retrieved that data," Heero told him.
"If all that's true, why are you wearing masks?"
"We didn't know if you still served the Alliance," Arthur told him.
"We still don't know," Heero said with a frown that Arthur could see under the mask. But Arthur did know. No one who worked for the Alliance would call them his children.
"Serve the Alliance!" the man repeated as if it was the most unbelievable thing he'd ever heard. "I didn't want to serve the Alliance fifteen years ago, but they threatened my family. I did what they told me, but they still locked me up here. My wife was with me for a while, but she died eight years ago. My son and daughter are still alive, on Earth I think, but they think I'm dead. The only thing keeping me here is the vacuum on all sides and this," he held up his wrist. There was a metal bracelet around it, the type the Alliance used on dangerous prisoners. "If I try to leave this place, that will blow me into nice little pieces. No, I have no loyalty to the Alliance, no more than you do, I believe. There's no danger in me telling you this, of course. The Alliance already knows how I feel, but my brain's too valuable for them to kill me yet. I still know more about you guys than anyone else alive, including Marcus, and I don't... I can't cause any trouble here, so they keep me alive. Besides that, I've already disabled every camera they have in here. They used to come out and replace them or fix them, but they gave up years ago. There's really nothing I could do with the bit of freedom it gives me."
Arthur responded by pulling off the mask. Ethen's eyes widened, and Arthur even thought he saw some tears in the man's eyes. Either he was a better actor than any person Arthur had ever seen, able to control his heartbeat and every part of his body for the part he was playing, or he was telling the truth. "I never thought I'd get to see any of you in the flesh," he said, smiling happily, then got control of himself. "All right, if the Alliance didn't send you, what are you doing here?"
"We came to ask a favor," Heero asked, also pulling off his mask.
"A favor? What could I do for you?"
"Sixteen years ago, while you were still designing us, the Alliance also had you design a disease, specific to our genes."
He frowned. "Yes, but they decided not to use it, because the disease wouldn't become active until puberty, and they wanted something that would kill immediately." He froze. "Oh my God, is one of you five...?"
"No," Arthur told him. He hesitated, then added, "One of us six."
"Six!" the man repeated in a whisper. "That's impossible!"
"There were ten of us, originally, weren't there?" Arthur asked.
"Yes, that's why they killed Karen," the man agreed. "But they killed the other five."
"They only managed to kill four," Arthur said. "The fifth was adopted and raised as a normal human, or at least as normal as one of us could be. She became the Phoenix, and she's the one who captured us and showed us the truth about the Alliance."
"One of the girls is alive?" the man asked, tearing again. "I thought that it would take an extraordinary human to trap you guys..."
"It did, but now she's dying because of your disease," Arthur told him.
"Wait, how can that be?" he asked. "The disease was supposed to kick in at puberty. The way we designed her, that should have happened years ago."
"She's been taking hormonal suppressants since she found out, when she was eight. But they're beginning to loose their effectiveness. She's going to die unless we can find a cure. You said you have knowledge that no one else alive has - you're the only one who knows enough about us to be able to make a cure."
"I don't know if I could make a cure," Ethen said unhappily. "It was years ago, and they weren't interested in something that could be cured. I'm not even sure I remember what I did."
"Here," Arthur said, pulling the vial of blood out of his belt. "Here's a sample of her blood. It has both her genes and the disease in it, everything you should need. Do you have a lab here?"
"Yes, I have one. I do a little tinkering now and then, to keep myself in practice," Ethen said, eying the vial. "Do you realize what you're giving me? If that really is her blood, I could use it to identify her."
"You could," Arthur said as the man took the blood. "But you said you wanted to hurt the Alliance. Can you think of any better way to hurt them than by saving the life of their greatest enemy?"
Ethen nodded, and there was a hint of anger in him. "I'll do everything I can, but I can't promise miracles."
"We aren't asking for miracles. We just want your best effort," Arthur told him.
"That you have."
"She only has six months to live," Heero said. "Eight, maybe. We'll be back in one month to see how you're doing."
"Six months! The disease took years to program!"
Arthur hesitated, realizing just how slim their chances were. "Just do your best. We'll be back in a month. Come on." He jerked his head at Heero, and they left.
-----------
Rina stared at the screen in front of her, trying to concentrate, but the words kept blurring, so that she couldn't read. Then her hand started to shake slightly, and she couldn't make it stop. Using her other hand she picked up her injector, waiting to see if she'd need another injection now, but the shaking subsided in a few minutes, and her eyesight returned to normal. But now she couldn't concentrate, not for a few minutes, at any rate. She stood up and walked out of the little room where she kept her computers and did all of her secret work, and into her bedroom, flexing her hand to get rid of the stiffness.
The convulsions were getting worse, although no one but she knew it. Not even Mike knew how much stronger they were now, compared to when they first started. She smiled grimly - when you were that much stronger than normal humans, it was impossible to tell between a strong convulsion and a really strong one. But that she'd managed to keep it hidden all this time didn't change the fact that they were getting worse. Eight months was generous, she thought to herself. Far too generous. I'll be lucky if I make six or seven, the way this is going. She stared thoughtfully at the red moon. It looked something like a baleful eye, glaring at her, and she shivered before she got control of herself.
Baleful eye, my foot. It's a big piece of rock, probably broke off of Centari eons ago. Nothing spooky or mystical about it. Maybe my mind's beginning to go. But even as the thought occurred to her, she dismissed it. There was nothing wrong with her mental faculties - she was alert to that danger. The worst thing she could do would be to start making stupid mistakes as her disease progressed. What was the point of living longer if she started to hurt the Rebels through her carelessness? No, she checked herself each day for any signs that she was slipping. There was no indication that she was operating at anything but her peak efficiency, aside from the convulsions.
No, the reason that she was starting to see mystical symbols in everyday objects was philosophical, not physical, in nature. After all this time, she still wasn't sure if she was human. Humans had been fascinated with death since the species first came into being, which was why, she was convinced, religion had been created. It explained the unexplainable, and provided hope both for the dying and for those left behind that there was something after life. That was all well and good for true humans, but what about something like her? She was quite certain that some all-powerful, omnipotent, omnipresent being had little to do with *her* creation.
Did that mean she didn't have a soul? Did that mean that she would simply cease to exist when she died, that nothing of her would survive? The thought frightened her, more than she would admit, even to herself.
For several minutes she simply stared at the single red moon, not planning, for once not even thinking about anything at all. Just staring.
Then she came to her senses. Stop wasting time, she scolded herself. I'll live on in the lives I save, helping the Rebels, and that won't be done standing here, staring at the moon like some kind of love-sick idiot and feeling sorry for myself. It was doubly stupid because it left her open to possible attack and certain notice by any unseen watchers.
Rina closed the window and went back to work.
----------
Several months passed. At first, Rina was almost normal - the attacks came once every few weeks, and she started carrying an injector around with her. Then they started getting worse. It was a gradual process, but four and a half months after her original prediction, she was having the attack two and three times a day as the effectiveness of the injections lessened and lessened. She had to stay in bed a good part of the time. They began to see other changes, as her hips widened slightly and she began to develop breasts. In anyone else this would have been a time for celebration, but for her it was only a sign of her impending death.
Dr. Ethen hadn't come up with anything yet.
Then, one day, approximately six months before her sixteenth birthday, she didn't arrive at the base after school. Word came from her home that she wasn't feeling well enough to come. The base ran smoothly enough without her, thanks mostly to Michael, who had quietly started taking over the basic day-to-day administrative duties, but they all felt her loss. That night, all five boys managed to sneak into her house, and they met her father for the first time.
Getting past the security she'd designed to keep the Alliance out was tricky, and involved them scaling thirty feet of flat walls to get into a side room. They got inside, and almost immediately found themselves face-to-face with three gun-wielding guards. The boys could have taken them easily, but they didn't - these were people Rina had picked because of their loyalty to her and hate for the Alliance. There was no way for them to know that the boys meant no harm, so they raised their hands in the air. "We came to see Rina," Arthur told them.
"You did?" said a voice behind the guards, and Ambassador Krace strode over. "You!" he exclaimed. He waved a hand at the guards. "It's all right, they mean no threat to me or Rina. Go back to your posts." The guards instantly obeyed, leaving the five boys alone with the Ambassador.
"Where's Rina?" Heero asked, looking around.
"She's in her room, her regular room, asleep," Krace said. "She was expecting you, but she had another attack and fell asleep right afterwards. She asked me to convey her apologies that she wasn't able to join you today." The Ambassador seemed tired, worn out.
He really does care about Rina, and this is hurting him, Arthur thought. He'd never had much of a chance to observe parent-child relationships. He spent more time in Refuge than any of the others, but that still didn't make him human.
"May we see her?"
"I don't think that's such a good idea. She needs rest."
Arthur nodded at the wisdom of the suggestion, although he was disappointed at not being able to see her. "When she wakes up, please tell her that everything ran smoothly in her absence. Just like she intended." His voice caught in his throat.
The Ambassador nodded, tears in his own eyes. "I'll tell her."
As they snuck back out of the house, Arthur heard the distant sound of crying.
Rina came back the day after, and was there for several more days, but then she couldn't get up again. And again. By the beginning of the sixth month, she was bedridden most of the time. Word had gotten out to the press that the beloved daughter of Ambassador Krace was ill, although no one knew the reason. After that it got harder and harder to sneak in, because of the press camped out on the lawn. This was big news even on Earth, because of all the controversy surrounding Alpha colony.
All this time the boys had continued to work for the Rebels, leaving messages and hints that indicated that the Phoenix was still in control and all was well within the Rebels' ranks.
Then, at almost the seven-month mark, she took a turn for the worse.
Rina found herself fascinated by these people, and the Snake in particular. All of her life had been spent around people who were not nearly as smart as she was. There were a few who were brilliant, of course - Mike was one of them, as was the late Dr. Green, and her father was no slouch himself (in fact, all of her top advisors were bright enough to qualify as near-geniuses in their own fields) but no one like the Snake, who was easily the most intelligent and insightful human she'd ever met, and in many areas. He wasn't as quick mentally as she or the boys, didn't have perfect recall, and didn't have much experience, but he was close in the first two categories, and the third would be fixed in time. There was a good reason that he rose to power so young, and she thanked her lucky stars that he hadn't risen to power in the Alliance. He would have made a very dangerous enemy, maybe even more dangerous in some ways than the boys because he wouldn't have been tricked into it. All the same, it was a fascinating experience, to be with a person whose mind worked that fast, and who wasn't created like she was. It also made her wonder - it seemed as if humanity, in general, was getting smarter. It was a slow process, of course, but there were more and more geniuses like Mike and her father showing up, at least in the colonies, and now there was the Snake, who was on another level altogether, like them, except that he was a natural mutation. She wondered if this general patter was also present on Earth, and if humanity normally went through cycles where people got smarter or not. This was the sort of thing that she would have liked to study if her entire life was not taken up with fighting the Alliance. But it wasn't a choice for her, so she tried to put the matter out of her mind.
She also took them - and only them - to see Refuge. They were all suitably impressed, and several left with plans to try to start their own cities. They also left with plans for Dr. Green's invention. That alone could have an enormous impact on the lives of the people in the colonies, because if the Rebels were no longer struggling to find food, they could concentrate on other things, like hurting the Alliance. The plans for the devise she also gave to the other representatives, although she didn't explain that they were already in use or where they came from. Even those idiots could appreciate obvious technology improvements, and they might even use it. Still, Rina was very relieved when they returned to their respective colonies. This meeting had been both more helpful and more difficult than she ever could have imagined.
-----------
After the other Rebels left, business got back to normal, strikes against the Alliance's bases, attacks on soldiers stationed in the streets, the propaganda war, and intelligence operations. They heard little from the other Rebel groups, although it soon became apparent that the Snake, at least, hadn't hesitated to implement her ideas. As time passed, some of the others followed suit, and Rina felt that the meeting, tedious and difficult as it had been, had been worth the effort.
One day, almost a year after Kan joined them, they were having a meeting discussing - theoretically - what would be necessary to take over. There were a number of things blocking them, the most important of which was the Alliance's most heavily guarded secret - the location of its headquarters. Out of concern for attacks just like the one the Rebels were trying to plan, the headquarters of Alliance leaders for each of the colonies were located somewhere outside the colony, probably underground just a few klicks from the dome, but that still left a lot of ground to cover. The boys didn't know anything about it, because they'd been stationed either in the colony itself or in a small colony outside the main dome, but not in the main base. There was no data about the location or building of the headquarters in the computer, and like Refuge, few people who ever entered base ever left it. Even the soldiers lived there all the time, and all the transportation of supplies was done by drones. So while the headquarters gave orders to all of the Alliance soldiers for Alpha colony, no one actually knew where it was. The Chancellor of Alpha colony lived on the base - Rina knew for a fact that he did not live in the heavily guarded grounds of the official residence, and that the transmissions from him (for purposes of propaganda) were all routed through the house to make it look as if he was actually there. The Chancellor made only one public appearance a year, probably because of fear for his own life. His face and voice were widely publicized though. The lack of a position to attack was the main thing blocking their ability to make that strike.
"Don't forget there's also the satellites to think of," Heero reminded the meeting. Every colony had several military satellites positioned in geosynchronous orbit above them. If the Rebels took over, the Alliance might very well chose to bomb the colony's dome, rather than loose control of it. That was another threat that had to be dealt with. Rina sighed at the inescapable fact that she would in all likelihood never see the freedom of the Alpha colony.
-----------
"We'll have to destroy them before we can strike," Herc said matter-of-factly.
"Not necessarily," Kan told him. "The satellites are controlled by computers. If we could find some way to take them over..."
"Those computers have manual overrides just in case that happens," Michael interrupted him. "We try to take over the system, they can override us and still launch missiles."
"Do we know where the manual overrides are?" Brandon asked.
"Not yet," Heero told him. "But we know there's at least one in their headquarters. The rest are spaced out around the city." Saying that there was one at the headquarters was the same as saying it was inaccessible. They might be able to take out the others, but it would take time to beat the headquarters' security, once they found it, and in that time they might be able to launch missiles at the colony.
"Can I see the program?" Arthur asked, and Heero handed over the sheets. Arthur studied it for a few minutes, then said, "I think I might be able to do something with this. It'll take some time, but I think I can make some changes to the system without them noticing. Specifically, I can remove their ability to perform a manual override. After that, it's pretty simple to take over the system. But making the changes so that they don't notice and so that I don't set off any alarms won't be easy. It may take some time. In fact, it's going to take a lot of time, maybe months."
"It doesn't matter until we find the headquarters anyway," Heero said. "The changes will stay once you've made them?"
"Yup. They'll be there permanently, or at least until I go back in there and change them."
"It would be good if we don't destroy those satellites," Patricia said thoughtfully. "If we have control of them, we can defend ourselves against anything else they might send at us. The missiles don't only aim at the colony."
Heero nodded. It was a good point - Rina had chosen her aids and companions well. He glanced at Rina, who always had the OK on projects like this, even if she had nothing to do with them. It was good to have at least one person who knew everything that was going on, to coordinate.
Then he noticed how that she was clenching her teeth as if in pain, and gripping the sides of the chair tightly. Her eyes were fixed on a point in the air in front of her, and he wondered if she'd heard anything they'd said. "Rina?" When she didn't respond, he asked, "Phoenix?"
Suddenly she started to shake violently and fell out of the chair. She was lying on the floor now, gasping for air. Heero was dimly aware of Mike getting out of his chair and running out of the room, but his attention was fixed on Rina, who was undergoing some sort of convulsions, throwing her arms all over, struggling to breathe.
"Rina!" Arthur shouted, and Heero could hear the fear in his voice. Heero was surprised to find that his heart was also beating fast, that he was also afraid for her. What's wrong with her? he thought. They didn't get sick, because of what they were, they were born immune to almost every disease out there. Even serious injuries healed in a matter of days or weeks. What was going on?
Mike came running back into the room, carrying a hypospray. He knelt by Rina's side and tried to reach her neck, but the wild thrashing of her limbs prevented him. One fist caught him in the shoulder and nearly sent him flying across the room. He looked up, saw the boys. "Hold her!" he snapped. "I need to give her an injection!"
The five boys were already clustered around her, and now they grabbed her arms and legs and tried to hold her still as gently as they could. Mike reached in and injected something into her neck, and after a minute, her arms and legs stopped shaking, and her breathing returned to normal. She opened her eyes and slowly sat up. She was shivering, and her skin was hot to the touch. Arthur was on one side of her, supporting her, and Heero found himself on the other. They lifted her up and carried her to the nearest room with a cot in it, and gently lay her down. For a moment she lay there, not moving at all, then she tried to sit up. Her attempt failed, and for a second Heero was really afraid - he'd never seen her weak like this. Finally she did sit up, and looked at Mike, who stood in the door. "How much did you give me?"
"Fifty microliters," he replied. "It's losing effectiveness."
"Well, we knew that was coming," Rina said slowly. "Thanks."
Mike nodded and left them alone with her. "Rina, what's going on?" Arthur asked.
"What was that? What's happening to you?"
"I'm dying." Rina smiled weakly.
"What?!" Arthur gasped. "How?"
"A disease."
"That's impossible. We're immune..." Rina reached out and touched Arthur's shoulder, silencing him.
"I wasn't entirely honest with you when we first met. I probably should have told you, but I wanted to wait..." she trailed off.
Heero couldn't believe what he was hearing. He forced himself to ask the question. "What didn't you tell us?"
"I told you that I escaped being killed because I'd been adopted by the ambassador, that the man who took us to the orphanage thought we wouldn't be a danger because we were just babies. He did, however, accept the fact that if we grew to adulthood, we could somehow become a danger to the Alliance. He managed to get his hands on a disease that our creators had made specifically for us, working around our immunities. I don't know why they did it - I think that the disease was originally intended to be used as a threat to keep you in line, but they decided to use other forms of persuasion... well, you know what they ended up using. In any case, the disease was designed, a vial of it was created, and then they decided not to use it. But when Kevins was ordered to dispose of us, he got his hands on that vial. He injected all of us girls with the disease before he delivered us to the orphanage, so even though I escaped, I didn't."
"He said the injection was loosing it's effectiveness," Michael said quietly. "What did he mean?"
"The disease is adapted from a genetic disorder that some humans used to have. It's activated by the presence of certain hormones in the host, specifically, the hormones associated with puberty. I've been taking pills and more recently, injecting myself with shots of hormonal suppressants, so that I don't start manufacturing those hormones and go through puberty."
Heero suddenly realized why, at the age of fifteen, she still had a body that was almost indistinguishable from a boy's except in the most important region. "That's why you haven't started to develop yet."
"I've been holding off nature now for two years. I should have gone through puberty at the age of thirteen," she said. "That's exactly average, and that's the way the doctors designed me. By taking the suppressants, I've managed to extend my life by over two years. But I can't hold nature off forever. As Mike said, the suppressants are losing their effectiveness. Sooner or later I'm going to go through puberty, and then I'll die."
"How long?" Arthur asked in a whisper.
"Six months," Rina replied carelessly, as if it didn't matter. "Maybe eight, but I doubt it. I'm not going to make it to my sixteenth birthday, that's for sure."
"How long have you known about this?" Kan asked.
"Since I was eight. After the car hit me, and I started looking at my own blood work, I noticed the traces of the disease in my bloodstream. It had multiplied, and was in remission. It took almost a year for me to figure out what it was. I've known since then."
"That's the real reason you came after us," Heero said, speaking as understanding came to him. "Besides all of the reasons you told us, about not wanting us in the hands of the Alliance. You didn't really need help. You needed replacements."
"The Rebels will be hunted down and killed without me. This isn't vanity on my part, it's just a fact. The Rebels were infested with Alliance agents before I started here, and it's only a matter of time until they are again after I'm gone. The only reason the Rebels have been able to keep up at all in the last years, what with their lack of resources, was because of me. My going after you, it was a move of desperation. But then, most of my most brilliant schemes are. People don't realize that if you don't tell them, they think it's just bravery."
"Why didn't you tell us?" Arthur asked again, still not raising his voice.
"I don't know. I should have, but... I try not to think about what's going to happen to me, and I wanted you to become Rebels because you wanted to, not because you felt sorry for me. The disease hasn't affected my performance until the last few weeks, when the convulsions started. It wouldn't be so painful, except that I'm resisting. If I had allowed the disease to take its course, I would have just gone quietly while I slept. This way is going to be considerably more painful, but I won myself a few more years."
"Who knows about this?" Heero asked, still forcing his mind forward, still refusing to think about how he felt, trying to imagine his new life without Rina present.
"All of my advisors, my father, my household, and my doctor," Rina said. "All of them are completely trustworthy. They won't tell what happened to me. The press, of course, will notice the death of Rina Krace, but everyone else, including most of the Rebels, won't even know that the Phoenix has died, because he won't." She stared at Heero, and he suddenly realized what she was saying.
"No. I can't do that."
"I've left strict instructions," she said, ignoring his comment. "When I die, you're the Phoenix. You know enough about my mannerisms that you should be able to fake any messages you need to send during the first few months following my death, and after that, it won't matter if the Alliance suspects that there has been a change in the Phoenix, although they probably won't notice at all. No one has any problems with my choice - I've already discussed it with all of my advisors. When I die, you're the new Phoenix."
"No."
"Please, Heero. Don't argue with me about this."
He was silent. Accepting the fact that he would be the new Phoenix would be accepting the fact that she was going to die, and he wasn't ready to do that. She seemed to understand, though, and didn't ask for his agreement, yet. "The Phoenix rises from the ashes. I rose from the ashes of my sisters, and now you will rise from my ashes. There's a certain rightness to it."
"Isn't there anything you can do?" Arthur burst out. "There has to be something!"
"Arthur, if there was anything I could do, don't you think I would have done it?" she asked softly.
Arthur fell silent, although Heero doubted that he'd really accepted what Rina said. Even now Heero could see Arthur's mind working at full speed. Whether he could come up with anything was anybody's guess.
"That sounded like a good idea at the meeting," Rina said. "I heard you, even if it didn't look like it. Go ahead with it, Arthur. That way you'll be ready to strike when you find their headquarters."
You'll be ready... The words echoed in Heero's mind. She really is going to die. He thought of all the times he'd seen her speaking of the future, she had always been very careful to say 'we' and 'us'. It was like when he'd been taught to play a character; she'd been playing the part of a healthy leader who intended to see this through to the end, even though she knew that she wouldn't see the fall of the Alliance, not even in this one little region. Somehow he found that the saddest thing of all. She had known when she joined the Rebels that she only had a little time - had she foreseen the desperation that would lead her to her most dangerous enemies in search of allies?
Rina sighed, then swung her legs around off the cot. "I'm all right now. We'd better get on with the meeting."
"Are you sure?" Arthur asked.
"Yes. I want to get as much done as possible today." That was a common enough statement from her, but now it took on more serious overtones. ...because I might not be here tomorrow.
----------
A few nights later, while Rina was back at home with her father, Heero found Arthur working in a secluded room by himself. "What are you doing?"
"Work." That vague answer alone would have been enough to tell Heero that Arthur wasn't working on any mission Rina had given him.
He walked over to the computer terminal Arthur was working on. Arthur didn't make an attempt to hide it. "You're looking for something."
"Someone," Arthur corrected him. "And I've found him."
Heero looked closer. "You've found Dr. Ethen!" he exclaimed.
"He was one of the three doctors who created us, and he also made the disease that's killing Rina" Arthur said. "Dr. Smith is dead, and Mem... I mean Yirtz wouldn't help us. But if anyone knows how to cure her, it would be him."
"Hasn't Rina checked this out herself?" Heero asked, not able to believe she'd leave out such an important possibility.
"Rina has some bad habits," Arthur commented. "She's so used to being on her own, trusting no one but her aides and expecting no help from anyone at all, she forgets that there are other people out there who might want to help. Ethen was ejected from the project because he knew what Smith had done and because he wouldn't do the things to us they wanted to. I think he'd want to help her, if he knew, but she would never allow us to take such a risk if she knew about it."
"If," Heero repeated. "When are you leaving?"
"Tonight. The others have agreed to cover for me. They'll tell her that I went off to do some intel work on my own, for something that might hurt the Alliance a lot."
"Keeping Rina alive would hurt the Alliance a lot," Heero agreed.
"They'll cover for you, too," Arthur said hesitantly. "If you'll go with me..."
"Where are we going?" Heero said, ignoring the way relief showed clearly on Arthur's face. It was just like Rina had first told him, Arthur's emotions didn't get in the way of his work, or his efficiency, so they shouldn't matter. Now what happened to my emotions?
"It's a small dome a few dozen klicks outside Alpha," Arthur said, bringing up a map. "It's an old one, a remnant of the original colonists. They lived there while they were building Alpha, then abandoned it. The Alliance stuck him down there a few weeks after we were born, and he's been there since. We'll have to get suits rated to vacuum travel, and a shuttle that won't be detected."
"Not a problem," Heero said. He knew where they could steal both of those. "We leave now?"
"We'd better. It's a few hours there and back, and we still have to convince him. If we're lucky we'll be back by midday tomorrow, but I doubt it." He stood up, and Heero noticed a vial of blood in his left hand. "Is that Rina's?"
"Yes. If he does help us, he'll need this. I got it from Mike - Rina won't realize we've taken it, and Mike won't tell her."
"You realize we're taking a big risk. This doctor could still be loyal to the Alliance. If we hand over her blood to him, he'll be able to identify her."
"If we don't do something, she'll be dead anyway. But I don't think he's really loyal to the Alliance - he didn't want to work for them in the first place, and they've kept him locked up for the past fifteen years. This is just another desperation move, you know."
"I know," Heero said, considering the alternative - Rina dying. "Let's go."
----------
There was little trouble when they stole the suits and short-range shuttle from the Alliance base. Those sorts of things went missing all the time, and most of the time it was because of the bureaucracy, forgetting to file reports to say that the things were being serviced or upgraded or something. The only things that they kept careful track of were weapons. Suits and short-range shuttles weren't exactly weapons. The shuttle they'd stolen wouldn't get them to another colony, which was the target of most thieves and smugglers. The longer-range shuttles, the ones that could reach other colonies were more well guarded. The shuttle they stole was usually used to check the outside of the dome for any problems.
The ride was uneventful, and Arthur even caught a few minutes sleep in the back of the vehicle, catching up on the time he'd missed because of the theft. They only needed a few hours of sleep every night anyway, and if they had to skip, they could do without for several days at a time. When they got to the tiny dome, only a few hundred meters in diameter, they stopped outside the air lock, hiding the shuttle among some rocks. "There's an alarm on the door," Heero muttered to himself. "It'll go off if we try to enter without a pass code."
"Can you bypass it?" Arthur asked.
"Yeah, just give me a minute." Heero set to work, his fingers slightly clumsy in the oversized gloves. It couldn't be helped - no one thought to make spacesuits their size. The Alliance had a couple made for them so they could train in vacuum environments, but a standard base wouldn't carry those, so they had to make due. It took Heero nearly five minutes to bypass the security on the door, five minutes while Arthur waited silently, watching the counters on their oxygen tanks drop down. Finally they got into the airlock and sealed it behind them. There was a large notice pasted on the next door. "NO SPACESUITS BEYOND THIS POINT! HIGHLY DANGEROUS PRISONER!"
Arthur looked at Heero. "Do we care?"
"Not normally, but they may have rigged lasers around the door to shoot anything with the material of a spacesuit that passes through. We'd be better off leaving them here."
Arthur nodded. The chances of them having to make a quick exit were slim to none. No one came out here. They both stripped out of their spacesuits and left them hanging on the wall. Underneath both wore the black stretch suits they'd been wearing for the theft of the shuttle. They both pulled masks over their faces, checked to make sure their guns were ready to be drawn from the holsters under their arms, and stepped through the door.
And into a garden. Arthur stared around him. He'd never seen such a place, except in pictures. It was somewhat like he imagined Earth would have been, many years ago before the spread of the cities back there. There were no animals that he could see, but flowers and bushes of every imaginable shape crowded close together around a small stone path. He also saw Heero looking around. "What is this place?" Heero asked rhetorically.
"It's a garden."
"What would a garden be doing in an old colony on Mars?"
Arthur shrugged. "He's been here a long time. Maybe he makes plants in his spare time, now."
Heero shook his head in disbelief, then drew his gun and started out down the path. Smiling to himself, Arthur followed suit. Heero really had changed a lot in the last year. It would take someone who knew him very well to tell, but he was a lot more relaxed. He talked more, and even showed caring for someone every now and then.
The path wound its way back and forth for a while, and finally stopped at what was left of the original colonists' main dormitory. The dormitory had obviously been converted into a large house, while the rest of the buildings had been destroyed. Artificial sunlight shown down on a small clearing in front of the house, and in that clearing sat an older man, his hair already white with age, his movements slow and deliberate. He didn't turn or look up as they moved silently towards him, but before they could reach him, he said, "So, they finally sent you to kill me. I'm surprised. I would have expected them to just blow the dome. Much quicker that way, less messy. They always were a bunch of cowards."
"We aren't here to kill you," Arthur said in a low voice, wondering how the old man had heard them.
That caused him to turn around, and they faced an old man with a thin face and glasses perched on his nose. "Don't lie to me!" he snapped. "Why else would the Alliance send you? Not to try to convince me to work on another of their 'projects', they gave that up a long time ago. Even if it was to try to convince me by offering me a glimpse of my children, this is an awkward way to do it, wearing masks like that. Did they think that I wouldn't recognize you with those stupid things?" There was disgust in his voice.
Arthur was stunned - no one had ever referred to them as someone's children. They were experiments. Heero said in a low voice just above a growl. "The Alliance didn't send us."
"Don't lie. Who else would send you?"
"We left the Alliance a year ago."
"You what?" Arthur saw surprise and a flash of hope pass across the man's face before he frowned again. "No. This is some sort of trick. Why are you doing this? What could the Alliance hope to gain?"
"It's true," Arthur said, regaining his voice. He fed honesty and enthusiasm into the words. "We left the Alliance because we found out the truth about what they were doing to us, and to the colony, what their real motives were."
"I did hear something big happened a year ago," the man said, talking to himself. "No, that's impossible. How did you find out?"
"The Phoenix captured us and exposed us to the truth about the Alliance," Arthur told him.
"The Phoenix!" the man repeated, and then said it again. "The Phoenix. Hmmm. They censor most of what little information I receive here, but even I've heard of the Phoenix. He's supposed to be the new leader of the Rebels, right? Brilliant tactician, really irritating the Alliance - good for him!" He glanced at the two boys as if judging their response. "Give me some proof that you're not with the Alliance."
"Your name is Dr. Richard Ethen. You worked on us with two doctors, Dr. Marcus Yirtz, whom we grew up knowing as Mr. Mem, and Dr. Karen Smith, who was executed at our birth because of what she did to our genes."
The man leaned back in his seat. "The Alliance would never have told you that," he murmured. "But how on Earth did you learn it?"
"The Phoenix broke into our records and retrieved that data," Heero told him.
"If all that's true, why are you wearing masks?"
"We didn't know if you still served the Alliance," Arthur told him.
"We still don't know," Heero said with a frown that Arthur could see under the mask. But Arthur did know. No one who worked for the Alliance would call them his children.
"Serve the Alliance!" the man repeated as if it was the most unbelievable thing he'd ever heard. "I didn't want to serve the Alliance fifteen years ago, but they threatened my family. I did what they told me, but they still locked me up here. My wife was with me for a while, but she died eight years ago. My son and daughter are still alive, on Earth I think, but they think I'm dead. The only thing keeping me here is the vacuum on all sides and this," he held up his wrist. There was a metal bracelet around it, the type the Alliance used on dangerous prisoners. "If I try to leave this place, that will blow me into nice little pieces. No, I have no loyalty to the Alliance, no more than you do, I believe. There's no danger in me telling you this, of course. The Alliance already knows how I feel, but my brain's too valuable for them to kill me yet. I still know more about you guys than anyone else alive, including Marcus, and I don't... I can't cause any trouble here, so they keep me alive. Besides that, I've already disabled every camera they have in here. They used to come out and replace them or fix them, but they gave up years ago. There's really nothing I could do with the bit of freedom it gives me."
Arthur responded by pulling off the mask. Ethen's eyes widened, and Arthur even thought he saw some tears in the man's eyes. Either he was a better actor than any person Arthur had ever seen, able to control his heartbeat and every part of his body for the part he was playing, or he was telling the truth. "I never thought I'd get to see any of you in the flesh," he said, smiling happily, then got control of himself. "All right, if the Alliance didn't send you, what are you doing here?"
"We came to ask a favor," Heero asked, also pulling off his mask.
"A favor? What could I do for you?"
"Sixteen years ago, while you were still designing us, the Alliance also had you design a disease, specific to our genes."
He frowned. "Yes, but they decided not to use it, because the disease wouldn't become active until puberty, and they wanted something that would kill immediately." He froze. "Oh my God, is one of you five...?"
"No," Arthur told him. He hesitated, then added, "One of us six."
"Six!" the man repeated in a whisper. "That's impossible!"
"There were ten of us, originally, weren't there?" Arthur asked.
"Yes, that's why they killed Karen," the man agreed. "But they killed the other five."
"They only managed to kill four," Arthur said. "The fifth was adopted and raised as a normal human, or at least as normal as one of us could be. She became the Phoenix, and she's the one who captured us and showed us the truth about the Alliance."
"One of the girls is alive?" the man asked, tearing again. "I thought that it would take an extraordinary human to trap you guys..."
"It did, but now she's dying because of your disease," Arthur told him.
"Wait, how can that be?" he asked. "The disease was supposed to kick in at puberty. The way we designed her, that should have happened years ago."
"She's been taking hormonal suppressants since she found out, when she was eight. But they're beginning to loose their effectiveness. She's going to die unless we can find a cure. You said you have knowledge that no one else alive has - you're the only one who knows enough about us to be able to make a cure."
"I don't know if I could make a cure," Ethen said unhappily. "It was years ago, and they weren't interested in something that could be cured. I'm not even sure I remember what I did."
"Here," Arthur said, pulling the vial of blood out of his belt. "Here's a sample of her blood. It has both her genes and the disease in it, everything you should need. Do you have a lab here?"
"Yes, I have one. I do a little tinkering now and then, to keep myself in practice," Ethen said, eying the vial. "Do you realize what you're giving me? If that really is her blood, I could use it to identify her."
"You could," Arthur said as the man took the blood. "But you said you wanted to hurt the Alliance. Can you think of any better way to hurt them than by saving the life of their greatest enemy?"
Ethen nodded, and there was a hint of anger in him. "I'll do everything I can, but I can't promise miracles."
"We aren't asking for miracles. We just want your best effort," Arthur told him.
"That you have."
"She only has six months to live," Heero said. "Eight, maybe. We'll be back in one month to see how you're doing."
"Six months! The disease took years to program!"
Arthur hesitated, realizing just how slim their chances were. "Just do your best. We'll be back in a month. Come on." He jerked his head at Heero, and they left.
-----------
Rina stared at the screen in front of her, trying to concentrate, but the words kept blurring, so that she couldn't read. Then her hand started to shake slightly, and she couldn't make it stop. Using her other hand she picked up her injector, waiting to see if she'd need another injection now, but the shaking subsided in a few minutes, and her eyesight returned to normal. But now she couldn't concentrate, not for a few minutes, at any rate. She stood up and walked out of the little room where she kept her computers and did all of her secret work, and into her bedroom, flexing her hand to get rid of the stiffness.
The convulsions were getting worse, although no one but she knew it. Not even Mike knew how much stronger they were now, compared to when they first started. She smiled grimly - when you were that much stronger than normal humans, it was impossible to tell between a strong convulsion and a really strong one. But that she'd managed to keep it hidden all this time didn't change the fact that they were getting worse. Eight months was generous, she thought to herself. Far too generous. I'll be lucky if I make six or seven, the way this is going. She stared thoughtfully at the red moon. It looked something like a baleful eye, glaring at her, and she shivered before she got control of herself.
Baleful eye, my foot. It's a big piece of rock, probably broke off of Centari eons ago. Nothing spooky or mystical about it. Maybe my mind's beginning to go. But even as the thought occurred to her, she dismissed it. There was nothing wrong with her mental faculties - she was alert to that danger. The worst thing she could do would be to start making stupid mistakes as her disease progressed. What was the point of living longer if she started to hurt the Rebels through her carelessness? No, she checked herself each day for any signs that she was slipping. There was no indication that she was operating at anything but her peak efficiency, aside from the convulsions.
No, the reason that she was starting to see mystical symbols in everyday objects was philosophical, not physical, in nature. After all this time, she still wasn't sure if she was human. Humans had been fascinated with death since the species first came into being, which was why, she was convinced, religion had been created. It explained the unexplainable, and provided hope both for the dying and for those left behind that there was something after life. That was all well and good for true humans, but what about something like her? She was quite certain that some all-powerful, omnipotent, omnipresent being had little to do with *her* creation.
Did that mean she didn't have a soul? Did that mean that she would simply cease to exist when she died, that nothing of her would survive? The thought frightened her, more than she would admit, even to herself.
For several minutes she simply stared at the single red moon, not planning, for once not even thinking about anything at all. Just staring.
Then she came to her senses. Stop wasting time, she scolded herself. I'll live on in the lives I save, helping the Rebels, and that won't be done standing here, staring at the moon like some kind of love-sick idiot and feeling sorry for myself. It was doubly stupid because it left her open to possible attack and certain notice by any unseen watchers.
Rina closed the window and went back to work.
----------
Several months passed. At first, Rina was almost normal - the attacks came once every few weeks, and she started carrying an injector around with her. Then they started getting worse. It was a gradual process, but four and a half months after her original prediction, she was having the attack two and three times a day as the effectiveness of the injections lessened and lessened. She had to stay in bed a good part of the time. They began to see other changes, as her hips widened slightly and she began to develop breasts. In anyone else this would have been a time for celebration, but for her it was only a sign of her impending death.
Dr. Ethen hadn't come up with anything yet.
Then, one day, approximately six months before her sixteenth birthday, she didn't arrive at the base after school. Word came from her home that she wasn't feeling well enough to come. The base ran smoothly enough without her, thanks mostly to Michael, who had quietly started taking over the basic day-to-day administrative duties, but they all felt her loss. That night, all five boys managed to sneak into her house, and they met her father for the first time.
Getting past the security she'd designed to keep the Alliance out was tricky, and involved them scaling thirty feet of flat walls to get into a side room. They got inside, and almost immediately found themselves face-to-face with three gun-wielding guards. The boys could have taken them easily, but they didn't - these were people Rina had picked because of their loyalty to her and hate for the Alliance. There was no way for them to know that the boys meant no harm, so they raised their hands in the air. "We came to see Rina," Arthur told them.
"You did?" said a voice behind the guards, and Ambassador Krace strode over. "You!" he exclaimed. He waved a hand at the guards. "It's all right, they mean no threat to me or Rina. Go back to your posts." The guards instantly obeyed, leaving the five boys alone with the Ambassador.
"Where's Rina?" Heero asked, looking around.
"She's in her room, her regular room, asleep," Krace said. "She was expecting you, but she had another attack and fell asleep right afterwards. She asked me to convey her apologies that she wasn't able to join you today." The Ambassador seemed tired, worn out.
He really does care about Rina, and this is hurting him, Arthur thought. He'd never had much of a chance to observe parent-child relationships. He spent more time in Refuge than any of the others, but that still didn't make him human.
"May we see her?"
"I don't think that's such a good idea. She needs rest."
Arthur nodded at the wisdom of the suggestion, although he was disappointed at not being able to see her. "When she wakes up, please tell her that everything ran smoothly in her absence. Just like she intended." His voice caught in his throat.
The Ambassador nodded, tears in his own eyes. "I'll tell her."
As they snuck back out of the house, Arthur heard the distant sound of crying.
Rina came back the day after, and was there for several more days, but then she couldn't get up again. And again. By the beginning of the sixth month, she was bedridden most of the time. Word had gotten out to the press that the beloved daughter of Ambassador Krace was ill, although no one knew the reason. After that it got harder and harder to sneak in, because of the press camped out on the lawn. This was big news even on Earth, because of all the controversy surrounding Alpha colony.
All this time the boys had continued to work for the Rebels, leaving messages and hints that indicated that the Phoenix was still in control and all was well within the Rebels' ranks.
Then, at almost the seven-month mark, she took a turn for the worse.
