Trent Jacobs found himself rushing down the dark hallways in the pit without any clear conception of why he was in such a hurry. All he knew was the computer search he had set on automatic had awakened him only two minutes before with an urgent query. He came upon his office (Well, they called it an office anyway…) and shoved the door open roughly. The monitor was on and beeping in that quiet but urgent way that only machines can.

At this point, Trent had no idea of the approaching alien fleet and very little true understanding of the impact that had taken place a scant ten hours before. He only knew that in the middle of his sleep cycle, something had gone terribly wrong.

A message bordered in red flashed incessantly on the screen: Code Block Designation Omega - Seven - Doctor - One

"The hell?" Trent rubbed his eyes in confusion, making a futile attempt to rouse himself enough to deal with the problem. He pulled his seat over and plopped down in front of the glaring monitor. His mind slowly caught up enough to really see what was flashing before him.

It still didn't make any sense. Shaking his head, Trent hit the "query" key and an information screen popped up:

DIRECT INFORMATION BLOCK FOR QUERY 11796007-9466B END SECONDARY INFORMATION ROUTES HAVE BEEN LOCKED DOWN IN ACCORDANCE WITH PROGRAM FIREWALL OMEGA: SUBROUTINE SEVEN: DESIGNATION DOCTOR: PRIORITY ONE END ENTER CODE TO CHALLENGE PROGRAM LOCK Y/N?

Trent blinked owlishly at the screen. Dear god, it's too early for this! What the hell kind of firewall is this? Trent had known the Preventer database in and out for over ten years, but he'd never heard of an Omega series of Code blocks.

Y

. . . WAITING . . .

ENTER CODE :\

Trent tapped his teeth pensively.

ENTER CODE :\ \\INFORMATION QUERY FOR "OMEGA/DOCTOR"

. . . WAITING . . .

OMEGA: 1. GREEK LETTER SIGNIFYING AN END. FINAL LETTER IN GREEK ALPHABET. 2. BIBLICAL REFERENCE TO THE END OF THE WORLD. 3. THE ENDER, AN END OF ALL THINGS.

"Charming." Trent muttered.

DOCTOR: 1. A PHYSICIAN. ONE DEALING WITH MEDICAL ARTS. 2. A PERSON WHO HOLDS A DOCTORATE DEGREE IN A SUBJECT.

Trent shook his head. "Well no shit." Way too early…

OMEGA (/+) DOCTOR: HELLO WEARY TRAVELER, WELCOME TO MY NIGHTMARE. THERE ARE MANY THINGS THAT I MUST TELL YOU BUT THAT FIRST YOU MUST CONFIRM THAT YOU ARE READY.

DR. J DR. J DR. J DR. J DR. J. DR. J DR. J DR. J DR. J DR. J DR. J

CAN YOU GUESS MY NAME?

ENTER CODE :\

"What the hell?" Trent shook his head again. He reached across his desk towards a red phone receiver. The phone had a red tape across it connecting it to the cradle. That tape had a wire inlaid into it. Sighing, Trent broke the tape and lifted the receiver. A red light glowed at the bas of the cradle and the door locked with a hiss of hydraulics. The clock above the door flickered to life in red numbers.

The phone beeped three times. Then an automated voce spoke. "Seal is broken, hard-line is secured and disconnected from all exterior input. Full hard-line integrity confirmed."

Trent waited a full second before stating simply. "This is Preventer Agent Trent Jacobs. Ranked Commander first class, technician control staff. Code security blue level."

Another few seconds passed. There was a click and this time, a real person was on the other end. "Commander Jacobs, Trent. Identity confirmed. Hard-line lock down approved. State time for protocol log."

Trent cleared his throat. "Commander Jacobs, Trent. System lock-down initiating at," a glance at the red clock above the door, "0304 hours."

The voice at the end of the line returned. "As you are aware commander, you are now in a state of total containment. All outside contact, both ingoing and outgoing, will be restricted. Containment period set for twelve hours. Hard-line will be disconnected and purged at exactly 1504 hours. Now terminating outside line." The phone cut immediately and there was nothing but the hollowness of a disconnected line. Trent returned the phone to the receiver cradle. The red light continued to glow balefully from the wall.

Trent turned back to the monitor. The prompt seemed to mock him with its riddle.

ENTER CODE :\

It's too damn early and I've got twelve hours to try and figure out what this means.

DR. J

CAN YOU GUESS MY NAME?

* * *

Releena stared out from the window of her limousine. The senate hall and government building loomed high on the horizon. Heero looked pointedly at her and, though she could not see him, she knew he was looking at her and demanding to know what was going on.

He cleared his throat. "Well?"

Releena shook her head wearily. "Well what?"

"What is Code Beta?"

Releena looked angrily at the senate hall ahead. "Code Beta is a fail-safe that was built into the constitution of the United Earth Sphere Nation and the operational codes of the Preventers. It states that in the event of an emergency, more specifically, any kind of invasion, the Preventers will be able to step up patrols and weapons production. Only with executive permission, of course. If the situation is deemed extreme enough, a draft may be instituted in order to bolster the ranks of the peace-keeping forces."

Heero shrugged. "That seems like a reasonable measure."

Releena's eyes blazed angrily. "That's a soldier speaking! All you can see things from is a military stand-point. But what code beta really is, is martial law waiting to happen!"

Heero shook his head. "Une, Noin, Sally, and Zechs would not take advantage of things that way."

Releena looked bitter. "Oh, but they would Heero. They would because their soldiers. And they will take whatever 'reasonable measures' are needed to defeat the enemy. They won't see the long term ramifications. With soldiers, there will always be 'reasonable measures.' They called the atom bomb a 'reasonable measure' for God's sake!"

Heero was quite for a moment. "They called me a reasonable measure too."

Tears brimmed in Releena's eyes. A hiccup bobbed in her chest for a moment. "I know Heero. And part of me has to hate you for what they made you. I have to fight that every day because I know who you really are. But you're still a soldier Heero, and I'm still a pacifist."

Heero shook his head mournfully. "You have to go fight a bigger battle than I do now. You have to go there," he nodded towards the ever larger governmental complex, "and crucify your beliefs in front of the senate. I'm sorry Releena, but you are the one who has to tell them about code Beta. After that, you have to trust Zechs and Noin."

"Trust, Heero, is the rarest commodity of all in my world."

* * *

The supply shuttle finally arrived, but it was not carrying the sort of supplies that Gloval and his crew were used to taking on. It was escorted by a convoy of four Griffin class destroyers, each with two attendant Sphinx class frigates. The shuttle itself was a drop ship crammed to the bows with technicians and soldiers. They set to work almost immediately transforming the asteroid station into a bristling weapons platform.

Crews with laser welders and framework layers swarmed over the exterior of the asteroid like army ants building a new nest. Soon cannons protruded from every possible fixture. The Destroyers fanned into a screen and fighter patrols became a common sight from within the observation bubble.

The shuttle itself was a modular affair and was grafted permanently to the secondary airlock. The insides were rearranged to create dorms and a mess hall for the suddenly expanded crew of the station. The shuttles dorsal plain was converted into a missile platform bracket and the fusion reactor was given over to help meet the new power demands.

Gloval and his crew did their best to stay out of the way of the bustling workers. Though they were military in an official sense, they had all been out of the loop so long that they felt like outsiders who were getting in the way of the grim faced regulars who now tramped through the narrow corridors with rolls of super conductor cable and crates marked; DANGER: RADIATION HAZARD or WARNING: OPERABLE LASER COMPONENTS.

So instead of trying to get in the way, they managed to lug one of Rand's largest monitors up to the observation bubble and stared at it with dreading fascination as the one million contacts got closer and closer to mid sensor range. Mid sensor range was also the station's defense range. Shots could be calculated at mid sensor range. The war would start for sure when those ships hit mid sensor range.

Rand shook his head. "They sure are taking their sweet time getting here aren't they?"

"Do you really have a problem with that?" Gloval grumbled.

Rand stared at the screen blankly.

Jennessa heaved a sigh. "I'd just as soon they weren't coming at all."

* * *

Sand blew along the blasted tarmac strip. The paint that was still stubbornly clinging to the baking black surface was slowly worn away by the endless grating wind. the planes on the tarmac were protected to a degree from a similar fate by large canvas tarps fastened over their frames.

A small briefing bunker stood opposite the business end of the runway. Beneath it lay a secret test facility. The floor of the bunker was lined with no less than two feet of grade A plasma and Napalm explosive. Beneath that was a steel plate one foot thick, not thick enough to stop napalm from getting in, but thick enough to stop single celled organism from getting out.

Beneath this plate was a honeycomb of self-contained laboratories, each equipped with a vacuum seal and an independent air circuit. Each lab was also equipped with a ultraviolet purge system, one that would kill any organism in the chamber within two seconds.

All of these counter measures would seem pointless when the point of the lab was to distribute the contagions, but those working on the project did not want to infect themselves or their superiors.

At this moment, a lot of twenty containers of Soviet blend hyper-contagious flu were in the final test stage before the lab was "breached." The lab would not be breached, of course, until all of the scientists were clear of the planet. It would also wait until automated procedures had replicated enough of the microbe to be distributed to the various planned dispersal points.

The labs were arranged in three levels of safety. Each room was a regular hexagon. Level 1 consisted of twelve such rooms, arranged in a circle that was the perimeter of the complex. Level one was where you would find offices and labs that did not deal with live viruses. Level 1 was the only security level with access to the surface. A person could travel through level one without a containment suit.

Level 2 consisted of a circle of six laboratories that were entered using containment suits attached by air locks and umbilical cords to level one labs. Level two contained gene splicing machines and live cultures of viruses.

Level 3 was exactly one room, at the very center of the complex. Level 3 was empty except for a bed and a food tube. That of course, and the test subject. Test subject C-94 was a middle aged Caucasian male who had been captured from his Preventer patrol a week before. He had been injured in a battle and told by the doctors in the facility that he was being treated and would be released into military custody upon his recovery. The fact that he had been told this by a doctor in a white containment suit from behind a thick plate of observation glass led him to believe otherwise however.

On the third day of his captivity, subject C-94, (John, if it matters) was exposed to lot 7796 of the blended virus. On the fourth day of his captivity, he found himself with extreme cold symptoms that rapidly worsened. His fever broke thirty two hours into his illness and he dropped into semi-comatose delirium. Now, on the sixth day of his captivity, he was in no state to remember that his name had been John, or anything else for that matter. From time to time he would scream something from the depths of his destroyed mind, but the intercom was off so his words were not recorded.

At hour forty six, his immune system failed completely and the virus did its deadly work within minutes. It attacked blood vessels and rapidly weakened them. Veins, arteries, and capillaries began to rupture throughout the body, causing a chain reaction of hemorrhaging. His eyes filled with blood and it began to pour from his mouth and nostrils. His skin turned a dark crimson and soon blood was weeping from his pores. With a gurgling, sloshing moan, subject C-94 slumped forward and lay, fully dead in a rapidly expanding pool of blood.

The scientists in level one noted the time of death and filed their reports to their superior. Then they began to initiate the automatic processes of the lab. Within half an hour, the lab ha been completely abandoned and left to carry out its programmed orders.

No one had bothered to attend to subject C-94. There was no need, and it would have been a terrible risk to attempt to retrieve him. Integrity would almost certainly be compromised. Besides, soon subject C-94 would have a lot of company.

* * *

The senate hall was filled with a deathly silence. Releena bravely met the disbelieving stares of the gathered diplomats. "So there you have it. After reviewing the data with our top Preventer officials I have decided to enact Code Beta. Are there any questions?"

A microphone clicked to life at the back of the hall. Senator Brays of L3 stood and cleared his throat. "I thinks it's clear that we have to stick together now. It's us versus them. It's Black and White."