Authors Note: I don't own Gundam Wing. Just playing with the characters for a wee bit. Mine however, are mine. Nuff said. Happy reading!
On Hidden Wings: Chapter 2:
He was born in a clap of thunder, his mind empty but for one thought. Preventors. He had to find the Preventors. The thought drove him towards the form of a darkened house. The thought led him onto the porch, folded his left hand into a fist, forced the fist to pound on the door until his skin was bruised and red.
The thought gave him answers. Of a sort. He needed the Preventors because someone wanted him dead. But like all pure things, the thought eventually broke down.
"You can start by telling me who you are, and how you made it through my perimeter security." The feminine voice from the speaker held rising frustration.
A frustration he could only match. "I…I…"
Something loud, metal, and heavy, landed behind him. Blinking in the sudden light, he turned towards the noise. Mobile Suits.
"Your name?"
"My name is…" He searched his
mind frantically for an answer. What sort of person forgot his own name? "My
name is…" He stepped forward and felt his knees turn to water. He fell against
the wall, defeated. "I don't know."
"Well Mr. John Doe, I'd take my hands out of my pockets and put them up, if I were you." The voice sounded jovial, but beneath it lay the undertone of a killer.
He felt strange, scared, as he unclenched his right hand from around the box it gripped. He raised his hands over his head.
"Turn around slowly." The second voice lacked any attempt at humor.
John, for lack of a better name, wondered if he'd ever been this scared in his life. His hands shook. They were pale, calloused between his index finger and thumb, calloused across his palms.
Behind him, a hum and thud. A teen in a beige Preventor uniform stepped in front of him. His eyes were purple, his hair braided down to his waist, and he held a gun in his right hand. "My name is Duo Maxwell." He said. "Now, we can do this easy, or we can do this hard. Your decision buddy."
"I am prepared to cooperate."
"Good." Duo smiled. It was a manic smile, manic and slightly insane. "Now, I'm going to take two steps closer to you, and check you for firearms. So please, remain still." Duo glanced back meaningfully at the other Taurus suit. "Heero tends to get a bit jumpy on the trigger, early childhood training and the suchlike."
"Oh." Had he not seen the teen's expression, he would have assumed either the boy was lying, or that he still held the fantasy of immortality that typified youth. But he seemed far too calm; the sort of calm that came from living close to death for so long, that the thought of it became routine. John knew, with certainty, that he lacked this calm. He feared death. So he stood very still as Duo patted him down, only flinched when the boy fumbled in his pocket and pulled out the black box that held the key to his memories, and his life.
"What's this?" Duo asked.
"I'm not certain, but I think that's why I'm here."
****
Desperiox found his missing chunk of the docking bay a day later, on the colony news.
"Mrs. Lessig, am I correct to say that a three foot shard of warped metal simply appeared in your living room sofa?" The reporter looked like she would have felt better to hold more than a microphone between herself and the grey haired woman she interviewed.
"I couldn't believe it!" Mrs. Lessig wore a sea green felt robe and clutched a small dog in her arms. "Another inch to the right, and it would have stabbed poor Excalibur straight through."
"Excalibur?"
The dog gave a cheerful yip.
Mrs. Lessig blinked, averting her eyes for a second from the camera. "My son thought it appropriate. Alan had a love of the ancient legends."
"I'm sorry."
"One of Treize's boys. The Honorable Kushrenada insisted I call him that, you understand, at the funeral. Alan graduated with honors, and served well to the last. As did they all, those poor boys." She took the reporter's hand. On the bottom of the screen flashed 'Cynthia Matthews: reporting from Endameba, New Sank'.
Cynthia seemed at a loss. New to the job, Desperiox assumed. Young too, statuesque, with red hair that seemed natural and makeup that failed to measure up. It had been three years since the Eve wars, not a long time, but most preferred to pretend the wars, like Arthur's round table, were a thing of ancient history.
The camera zoomed in on the sofa. The metal was twisted, but a piece of a serial number remained: '873'.
It was enough. Desperiox tapped the screen, turning it off, then punched in Caldwell's code.
"Caldwell." The admiral looked up from a stack of papers. After four years of working with the man, Desperiox knew that --- contrary to rumor --- the stack of papers were no ruse to impress those in his command. Caldwell preferred hard copy. Given the chance, he painstakingly printed and filed all his important paperwork, a fact that would have dramatically cluttered the life of a less disciplined man.
"I've found the missing section of our docking bay. It's in New Sank, fifteen miles from Preventor Main HQ. Permission to assemble a recovery team."
Caldwell nodded. "Get that team together. Our benefactors will be most pleased."
*****
Samantha Keton waited for her father to tap out his statement, then spoke in a clear soprano. For once, she didn't need to change his words. "The first phase is complete."
"One might say your son worked out too well. He moved more than a month ahead of schedule." Ugari Deshig, brown skinned, grey haired, and the most outspoken of the ten representatives, addressed Edwin Keton as though Samantha didn't exist.
As technically, she didn't. She served here as her father's mouthpiece, no more. Her father had been exposed to a deadly nerve toxin in a near successful assassination attempt ten years ago. Extensive physical therapy and illegal regeneration procedures meant he could now move his right index finger enough to punch commands into a keyboard designed for that purpose.
For most things, he relied on Samantha, his plain, if loyal daughter. If asked, all of these men would have agreed the accident enhanced Edwin Keton's aura of command. Any who objected had been removed years ago. Still, Samantha waited patiently for her father to finish typing out whatever he intended to say. These remnants of Romafeller's allies had no problem following an invalid who needed his daughter to periodically wipe the drool from his chin, but they would never take the word of a woman, especially one who had only lived twenty eight years.
'KILL HIM NOW. HE SEEKS TO BETRAY US.' Edwin typed.
Samantha smiled. Good advice, but her father had become far too rash in recent years. Imagine, if she'd followed his orders two years ago, they'd all have been eliminated with that stupid Barton and his marionette child.
She said, "As well you know, the implanted suggestion was designed to initiate anytime after three months of his arrival on the station. We're well within specs."
"And the weapon?" Ugari left the rest of the words unsaid; Andrew wasn't supposed to 'escape' until the after final tests.
Her father hit two buttons, 'KILL HIM.'
Samantha shook her head. "We never needed it."
In fact, they were no closer to turning the transport theory into a weapon than five years ago. Which was to say, nowhere. Unfortunately, the destruction of the 'weapon' roughly equaled three times the amount of living matter transported when the device was activated. Which meant that a person had to find his way into the center of a target, then transport himself elsewhere. Transport himself and approximately the six meters of matter around him, which could reappear anywhere in a twenty mile radius of the person's transport location.
An expensive and stupid idea which had yet to be improved upon by the best scientists money could buy.
In fact, it served her far better not to have such a weapon. Greater threats tended to create greater heroes. She didn't want heroes. She wanted the Earth Sphere to fall from the inside. For that, she would take what mattered most.
But first, she had to clean house. Her father typed. She didn't even read his words. She said, "Mr. Deshig, as your concern for the weapon is so great, you will be best suited to supervise the final tests."
"Of course." Ugari nodded, a predatory gleam in his brown eyes. He would be eliminated in the Preventor attack on the station. After all, the 'insurgents' would self destruct rather than allow their research to be taken by the Preventors. They really didn't have a choice, now did they?
'CLEVER GIRL.'
A year ago, she would have felt warmed by his praise. Now, she simply nodded and said, "The second phase begins tonight."
And so it went.
CHAPTER 3 – IN PROGRESS!
Hope this entertains. Feedback, as always, welcome and appreciated. J