DISCLAIMER – I do not own Gundam Wing.

Chapter Nineteen

This wasn't a Gundam, but he was good enough to take on the mass of suits that flooded from the OZ meteor base.  Over the communicator, he heard Quatre apologize to the latest victims.  They had all hoped to get through this with minimal casualties, but when Bravo sent out every suit they owned against the three attacking ex-Gundam pilots, there was little choice in the matter.  In this free-for-all, it was kill or be killed.

And so far, they were doing all the killing.  Shame, Wufei thought, bringing his curved sword down on yet another mobile suit and splitting it in half, I was hoping to fight against an enemy with greater skill. 

Together he, Quatre, and Trowa picked off the offending suits one by one.  More and more came from the meteor base, but for a military strong hold, they were horribly unprepared for this type of frontal attack. 

"May Allah take pity on your souls…"

Wufei shook his head slightly.  He would never get used to Quatre's incessant apologies.  But for some reason, he couldn't bring himself to turn off the radio.  The Arabian's small merciful prayers captured him.  The empathy radiating from the meek voice made him remember his wife, and Sally.  It made him want to be less of a predator, less of a killing machine.  It kept Wufei human in the midst of chaotic war.

Though Quatre's voice may sound meek at a time when he shouted war cries in his mind, Wufei knew that Quatre was far from weak and submissive.  Quatre was a seasoned soldier, hero, and definite leader.  Wufei had nothing but the utmost respect for all of his fellow pilots.

"Behind Dragon."  Trowa's voice warned him of a suit that had escaped his own net and was now approaching Wufei's suit.

Wufei spun his suit around easily in the lack of gravity, wielding the large curved sword and slicing through his opponent. 

"Thanks, Clown."

Trowa didn't answer.  He didn't need to.  Just as Wufei really didn't need to thank Trowa.  It was all understood. 

Focusing completely on the enemy suits ahead of him, Wufei entered a deadly dance with his two comrades.  Together, they wove in and out of crossfire, twirled around shots meant for their demise, and countered with blows of their own.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

"May Allah take pity on your souls…"

Duo reached over and turned off the radio connection to Quatre's and the other's suits.  He had his own way of praying for mercy on the enemies he slayed.  Habitually, he reached up and stuck his hand into the unzipped collar of his flight suit.  The small silver cross he wore felt warm in his hand when he closed his fingers around it. 

Amazing, he thought.  Any other time when he touched it, the cross was cold as any other metal would be.  But when he was in a mobile suit, a strange and unexplainable warmth permeated the otherwise cool metal.  It was comforting to feel that warmth.

He wondered if Jinx were warm.

Most likely she wasn't.  Duo shuddered as he thought of her, alone in that OZ base they were now attacking.  Tears formed unbidden in his eyes as he remembered her isolated fight against the interrogation chips.  Those chips would tear her mind apart and kill her. 

Little droplets of water floated in front of Duo's face.  Had he cried for her?  He must have.  It was wrong.  It was all so wrong.  She was going through slow and painful suicide.  And Jinx didn't deserve to die for them.  Angels don't deserve to die. 

Beep.  Beep.  Beep…

Duo looked down at his consol.  The base had spotted him.  He knew it was a possibility.  No matter how he bragged, he wasn't good enough to rig a complete stealth cloak from the materials available from an old mobile suit and a junkyard.  What was that he'd told Heero years ago?  Something about needing parts…Heero would remember. 

Beep…

He'd been able to make the stealth cloak good enough to hide from suits and perhaps invading spacecraft, but the detectors on the base were much stronger than those of the mobile suits.  He always knew the OZ base would be able to pick up his signal. 

Beep.

Bright light illuminated the cockpit for a split second as the cannon blast from the base whizzed past his view.  Both of his hands gripped hard on the pilot stick.

Beep.

It was a chance he'd decided to take though.  He'd assured Quatre and Trowa that the suit he was in would be completely undetectable by anything, even the base.  That marked the first time in his known memory that he'd purposefully lied.  And he'd lied to two of his best friends.

Beep.

Another bright light momentarily blinded him.  They keep aiming up and to the left, he observed.  He may not be invisible, but he was able to scramble his signal successfully.  That made his signal appear in one place, while his actual suit was in another. 

Beep.

He'd lied to his friends, but he did it to save another friend.  That made it ok, didn't it?  As if in answer, the weight of the cross around his neck (which had a habit of getting gradually heavier and heavier as he continued during a mission) lightened a little.  Yes, that made it all ok.

Beep.

The base didn't fire again.  Apparently they'd figured out that their instruments were reading his position wrong.  And now the suit was too close to the base for them to swiftly move the cannons and resume aiming at him.  Those were long-range cannons.

The beeping stopped when the base stopped tracking him with the cannons.  Supposedly, no more suits were available at the base, because none were sent out to destroy the one suit that slipped past the defenses. 

OZ realized that the three suits engaged in battle with their troops were a decoy.  And OZ realized it too late.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

Heero knew he was leaving a little trail of blood as he rushed down the hallways, frantically looking for a way to get to the storage hangar.  But thankfully, most of the soldiers in this small base were in mobile suits and fighting against a Clown, Dragon, and Sandshrew.  The hallways were uncommonly empty due to the decoy fight outside.

His feet padded softly and swiftly past an open closet.  Peripheral vision told him that a woman doctor was in that closet, checking through supplies. 

Nearly falling as he skidded to a stop, Heero scrambled back to the open closet door.  He launched himself around the corner of the doorway and reached down to hold the young woman by the throat.

"Where's the storage hangar?" he demanded, emphasizing his need for a speedy and precise answer by shoving her back against the shelves.

Her eyes were wide with horror and she only whimpered in his grip.

Taking a deep breath, Heero relaxed his hold on her throat and spoke more softly.  "Where is the storage hangar?  I need to know, now."

The unfortunate woman swallowed uneasily and lifted her hand to point in the direction Heero just came from.  "Turn left at the next hall and there's a lift chute.  Storage hangar is on the top floor."  She looked down at Heero.  "You're bleeding."

"Thanks," Heero said, dropping his hand from her neck.  "You better get out of here.  This base will blow up soon," he added as he resumed running through the hallways.

The old Heero would have analyzed and torn apart everything she'd just said.  The old Heero would have assumed that the poor doctor who came across his path was a tool of the enemy, just there to confuse him and throw him off the path to his goal. 

This Heero trusted her.  She was a doctor, after all.  Doctors weren't known for wanting to lead people to their deaths.  And he didn't have the time to second-guess her advice.  He slipped as he rounded the corner of the first hallway on the left.  The lift chutes were straight ahead.  At least that much of it had been true. 

Inside, he pressed the button for the top floor, which was actually the first floor.  This base was built inside the meteor and the top floor was located on the outside surface of the meteor while all other floors were built down into the rock.  The floor numbers increased as their depth increased. 

He took a deep breath while he waited for the elevator to rise.  Now he had the time to analyze the information the woman doctor had given him.  And he had no reason to denounce it as false.  It made sense that the storage hangar was on the top floor.  That was the floor closest to space, and therefore it was easier to open the roof of the hangar and lower supplies in rather than have them transported down into the base to some other level.  Likewise, the artillery storage and suit hangars must be on the top floors for easy access. 

Ding.

Heero crouched behind the edge of the doors and peered around into the hallway.  There was no hallway.  The doctor had been right.  He didn't have to worry about finding the storage hangar.  The top floor was the storage hangar. 

The guard's post had been abandoned in a hurry.  The station's door was open, and Heero could see the array of guns and light ammo stored in the guard station.  He crept over and loaded a handgun.  He would have chosen a larger and heavier piece, but he doubted he'd encounter much resistance in the storage hangar.  Checking to see the safety was on, Heero stuffed the gun in the back of his suit's waist. 

"Ouch," he said out loud.  Another reason not to grab a semi.  The slashes on his back were still sensitive, and a larger gun meant more aggravating rubs against his injured back.

Crouching, Heero made his way silently and speedily through the hangar, stopping behind conveniently placed at random intervals along the floor.  All the while, his eyes were searching.  Searching.

There, he thought to himself, stealing toward the wall on his left.  His mobile suit was secured to the wall by large steel clamps.  Worry about that later, he told himself as he scrambled up the ladder and to the cockpit.

Heero ignored the stinging pain he felt as his back pressed against the surface of the pilot's seat.  In record time, Heero had the suit system up and running. 

"Death?" Heero said uneasily into the radio.  He was sure someone had to be monitoring radio signals originating from the base, but he had to use the suit's radio since he'd crushed his earpiece before leaving his cell.  "Death, do you copy?"

Sighing, Heero grabbed the portable radio headset and adjusted it to his head.  He peeled his back from the seat and winced at the ripping pain.  Of course, he was making his injuries worse by ignoring them, but right now he needed to get out of this base.  He could worry about blood loss later.  First he had to make sure he got out of here to live long enough to die of blood loss. 

"Death…Death…Death…" he continued hailing into the communicator as he crawled back down the suit and began trying to hack through the locks on his suit.

The click of the safety made him draw his gun and turn around, aiming where he'd heard the sound.  The scruffy-looking officer who had made Jinx whip him stood with a gun pointed at Heero's head.  He was on the ground and a good ten feet away, but Heero could tell that the gun was aimed at his head.

"Nice to know that you're calling for what you'll receive next," the man growled. 

"I wasn't talking to you," Heero said with a snarl.  He didn't have time for this mess.  "And I don't have time for this mess."

The man ignored Heero's foul mood and continued bothering him with conversation.  "I followed your blood trail here, Yuy.  And I suppose your little girlfriend helped you escape from your cell, after she beat you senseless.  But it doesn't matter.  If the interrogation chips haven't already killed her, they soon will.  Revenge has already…"

Heero's remorseless shot echoed through the hangar, resonating off of the many smooth surfaces of walls, floor, and boxes.  The officer never got to finish his insult of Jinx.  His body lay in a growing pool of his own blood.  Heero didn't feel like the scruffy man's life was much to mourn over.  He turned his attention back to the clamp locks.

"That was loud…"  Heero's head snapped up again at the new sound in his ears.  After a split moment, he realized he was hearing through his headset. 

"Death?" he asked the voice.

"Righto, good chum.  Let's say we skidaddle out of here and get a spot of tea, eh?" a British accent answered him.

Heero rolled his eyes as the locks finally turned green and the clamps released.  "What is that?"

"An attempt at humor, my good friend," Death said, returning to his American accent and laughing out loud.  Heero found himself smiling at the sound of his friend's laughter.  "Was that a gunshot earlier?"

"Yea."

"You been shot?"

"Nope."

Heero heard a sigh of relief.  "Good.  So where are you?"

"About to bust out of this place," Heero said as he strapped himself into the pilot's seat.  He ripped off the headset and threw it across the cockpit.  Those things always got in his way when he was fighting.

"Did you just throw me?" Duo asked.

"Sorry, man," Heero said, typing in a few commands to the system.  "So what do you think?  Cut open the ceiling or just fly through the roof?" 

He heard Duo grunt before he answered, "I'm fending off a couple bad guys up here.  You might want to just fly out and avoid drawing too much attention to yourself."

"Agreed.  Warning them of my being here by cutting through the roof first seems like a bad idea."  Heero grinned as his grip tightened around the controls.  "Head on back to the boys, I'll see you in a minute."

"Kay, bud," was all he heard before the sounds of his thrusters reverberated in his ears and throughout the entire meteor base.  Dimly somewhere in the back of his mind, he was aware of the fire alarm going off milliseconds before he burst through the ceiling and out into open space.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

Quatre stared in disbelief as explosions tore along the equator of the meteor base.  He saw several specks of light streak away from the base as the entire meteor began to shake and rumble.  A violent shudder ripped the base apart as a huge fireball suddenly expelled from the center of the meteor, only to be just as quickly swallowed and quelled by the vacuum of space. 

Involuntarily, he ducked in his pilot's chair as dust particles and shards of rock, steel, and glass rattled against his suit's monitor sensors.  He felt his suit begin to plummet through the emptiness of space, not knowing which way he faced but aware only of being thrown in the direction opposite of the base. 

Hurrying with the controls and praying quickly under his breath, Quatre fought and regained control of his mobile suit.  He turned in the direction of the base, only to see that fragments remained.  The meteor was demolished, and the OZ faction known as Bravo had been destroyed along with it.