Title: Never Turn Your Back on the Sea (5?)
Section Title: Answers
Author: Alleyprowler
Pairings: 3x4, 2xH and 1xR
Ratings/Warnings: M for language, references to violence

Personal vehicles on Colonies were rare, not because they were particularly expensive, but because they weren't needed. Each residential Colony was constructed like a four-spoked wheel with an axle driven through it, a wheel whose rim was, on standard Colonies, two kilometers wide and seventy kilometers in the inner circumference. The two cruciform passageways that divided the wheel into quarters were twenty-two kilometers long, and the axle of the wheel was ten kilometers longer than that.

The longest distance anyone would have to travel on a colony, therefore, was forty-five kilometers, which took a maximum of fifteen minutes at peak hours. High-speed transports ran around the circumference of the wheel in both directions, at five-minute intervals. Similar transports served the spokes and axle, while somewhat slower vehicles veered off the trunk line and took travelers to the outer perimeters if they didn't want to walk the rest of the way.

And since this was all cheap, easy, and speedy, hardly anyone bothered with the expense of owning a personal vehicle.

Duo and Hilde owned two. One of the vehicles was a sleek little three-wheeled runabout with an eight-hour battery, and it was really more cute than practical. The other was the essence of practicality: a monstrous eighteen-wheel ethanol-fueled flatbed truck with a cab wide enough to seat four people, as long as they were slender and pretty friendly with each other. Even so, Wufei found himself jammed thigh-to-thigh with Quatre on his right while he tried to give Hilde sufficient space on his left. He didn't know if Duo's jealous streak extended to friends or not, and he didn't want to risk finding out.

Duo and Hilde were conversing in low tones; business-trip stuff, from the few words that Wufei could catch over the untuned grumble of the truck's engine. Both seemed subdued and Wufei felt badly for them. From what he could gather, Blue had been more than a friend to them; he'd been like family. He was glad that at least Hilde would be spared further sight of the boy.

On his other side, Quatre was also unusually remote, but that was because he was obviously feeling rotten. His injured knee and elbow seemed to be bothering him judging by the way he favored those joints when he moved, and he'd been coughing awfully hard earlier. "Quatre, you're not feeling worse, are you?" he asked over the low mechanical rumbling.

Quatre didn't look at him, only stared ahead with slightly glazed eyes. "No, I'm just tired."

He was lying. All of Wufei's instincts said so. He was tactful enough not to call Quatre on it, but he still didn't want him in the way if he wasn't operating at a hundred percent. "If you're tired, then I can deputize Duo instead. Just switch jackets with him and give him your gun."

At that, Quatre turned to face him. As the truck took a turn, a ray of simulated sunlight bounced off the rearview mirror and struck him across the face, making his green-tinted blue irises actually glow for a moment against the bloodshot whites of his eyes. The effect was startling. "Wufei, I think it would be unwise to let Duo handle a firearm in this situation."

"That gun isn't loaded," he pointed out.

"There's no such thing as an unloaded gun. Didn't they teach you that in basic training?"

Wufei was about to reply when he felt a gentle poke from his left. He turned his head to see that Hilde had finished her conversation with her husband and was looking at him solemnly. At her gesture, he bent down so that she could whisper in his ear, "I overheard something about guns...and Duo. I don't think that's such a good idea."

Apparently, Wufei thought wryly, he was being outvoted on an issue that hadn't even made it to the ballot. "Don't worry," he whispered back, "I have the only working firearm here. Hopefully I won't have to use it."

She stared into his eyes for a moment. "But if you do, Wufei, please be merciful."

In reply, Wufei simply covered her small hand with his and squeezed it gently.

The offices and workshops of the Colonyside part of Sweepers III were located behind a tall security fence with a gate that rolled laboriously aside when Duo pressed a button on the truck's dashboard. He eased the monstrous thing in carefully, then drove down an avenue lined with a mismatched collection of buildings, some of which were as large as aircraft hangars, and some no bigger than potting sheds. Contamination control units, gas wet scrubbers and HEPA filters were attached to most of the larger buildings, and parked in the spaces between them were brand new skid steers and crawler dozers for moving heavy loads. "You've expanded," Quatre said, looking out the window.

"We had to when two other outfits went bust due to environmental regs," Duo explained. "So we negotiated for their contracts, picked up a few of their employees, and bought up the lot next door."

Hilde cleared her throat rather loudly. "Excuse me? What's this 'we' business?"

Duo snickered, looking a little embarrassed. "Okay, Hilde did all the negotiating and hiring and lot-buying, but I, uh...I re-painted our sign. Hey, there's Raoul and Mimi." Duo steered the truck toward a neatly-kept little building that looked like it might serve as office space. A middle-aged and somewhat rotund man was standing outside the door smoking a cigarette and talking to a short, grey-haired woman. Both of them were wearing flight suits. The man looked up and waved when he saw the truck.

"Heya, boss!" he called out.

"Hi Raoul!" Duo said, waving back.

The man snorted. "Wasn't talking to you."

Hilde slid into Duo's lap so she could speak to the couple out of the driver's side window. "Morning Raoul, Mimi. I'll be right with you, okay?"

"No hurry, boss." The grey-haired woman said cheerfully, and went into the building with Raoul right behind her.

Duo gave his friends a long-suffering look. "You see how I get treated around here? No respect, man, no respect at all."

"Oh, shush, they all love you and you know it," Hilde said, and she kissed him warmly before he could reply.

Wufei looked away, but Quatre grinned at the sight, heartened by the display of affection.

When the kiss broke, Duo was grinning as well. Hilde turned her attention to Wufei and Quatre, her expression once again solemn. "You guys stay safe. Don't play hero."

"Yes, ma'am," Quatre said. Beside him, Wufei nodded respectfully.

Apparently satisfied, Hilde kissed her husband one more time, then opened the door and jumped out of the truck.

Duo watched her jog into the neat little building and then wrestled the truck's transmission lever into reverse. "Right. Let's go."

"Tell me again why you chose this building?" Wufei asked, stacking an empty packing crate on top of a box containing portable laser torches.

"The layout and the acoustics," Quatre said curtly. He was out of breath, even though Wufei was doing most of the actual work. "We need to make a U-shape here." He pointed to a spot roughly in the center of the building and at a right angle to the only doorway.

Wufei wheeled the box to the spot Quatre had indicated. "Wouldn't another building do just as well?"

"No, the ones that only have one door are too small, and the larger ones have too many escape routes. This is the only building with enough space, no windows, metal siding, and adequate light."

Wufei paused in the act of pushing another crate into place. "I'm sure you have a very well-thought-out plan in that weird brain of yours, but I fail to see what any of those things have to do with each other."

"Well, we need enough space so that you and I can hide for a while," Quatre said as he picked up a box. "And we need some room to maneuver. We want to build a cul-de-sac that we can work in so that Mr. Ervy doesn't have anywhere to run to, and we need to have..." Quatre stopped short, whooped in a breath, and began to cough convulsively. He dropped the box he'd been carrying and cupped his hands over his mouth.

Alarmed, Wufei went to him, but Quatre merely motioned him away as coughed. The coughing abruptly rose in pitch and Wufei backed up a few steps, worried that it was a signal for impending vomiting.

It wasn't. Quatre wiped his mouth and choked to a halt. "Ugh. Sorry about that," he said weakly. He plopped down on the crate he'd been carrying as if his knees had just come unhinged.

"You're ill," Wufei said.

"I'm just tired. I'll be fine."

Approaching, Wufei noticed that Quatre was still trying to catch his breath. He filed away the information for later use and, cupping Quatre's chin in his hand, forced the other man to look up. "You don't look good," he said after a moment of study, feeling the sick heat that radiated from Quatre's skin. His complexion was greyish and waxy.

"I'm okay, I just need to rest for a while," Quatre said. He sounded breathless.

"No, you're..." Wufei heard voices, one of which was definitely Duo's. "Oh shit, they're here."

"I have the laptop. I'll replay and record," Quatre said in a grating whisper, sliding soundlessly behind a stack of boxes.

"Good." Wufei moved swiftly to the other side of the cul-de-sac and lowered himself between two huge spools of carbon-fiber rope, making sure that he had a clear line of sight into the trap. The voices came closer, and he unsnapped the safety strap of his holster to free his pistol. "Be ready," he whispered.

"Am."

The door slammed open, and Wufei could hear the two voices clearly.

"What's in here, Duo? I thought this was just where the fliers stored their gear."

Wufei classified the voice as belonging to a young man, probably of L2 origin, judging by the accent.

"Oh, some stuff that might interest you."

Wufei recognized Duo's voice and lowered his hand to touch the butt of his sidearm. He hoped that Quatre was recording this on the laptop.

"But I've never been on a flier mission before...hey, this isn't a promotion, is it?"

The young man's voice sounded pathetically hopeful.

Duo chuckled. "Sorry, kid, but I just wanted you to listen to something." His voice went abruptly from low and conversational to loud and ringing as he called out, "Hit it, Quat!"

Wufei silently unholstered his pistol.

There was a pause, and then Wufei heard Quatre's amplified and recorded voice say: "You want me to go to the San Juan Islands? What's there?"

Trowa's voice: "Nothing but nature preserves and tourist traps, as far as I know."

Duo's voice: "Nature preserves, tourist traps, and the Bell Point Historical Society. I dunno about the first two, but the last one just declared bankruptcy and is trying to sell off some junk to get out of debt."

Quatre's voice: "Wh-what sort of junk?"

Duo's voice: "Uh...looks like some books, lots of old prints, antique furniture, twenty ingots of refined neo-titanium..."

Quatre's voice: "Oh, I see. It sounds like they could sell it to a museum, which would solve...Excuse me, did you say twenty ingots of refined neo-titanium?"

There was a pause as the recording was fast-forwarded, and then Wufei heard Duo's voice saying: "Twenty thousand was the initial asking price, but I talked 'em down to fifteen."

Quatre's voice: "Duo...that's less than half the normal price. How did you do that?"

Duo's voice: "What can I say? I'm good!"

Another pause ensued before Quatre's voice said: "Where do I send the money and what is the pickup location?"

The account number and the pickup coordinates bounced off the metal walls nicely, allowing a very clear record of the numbers. Wufei heard a moan.

"Oh...shit...you recorded it?" The young man's voice was very weak and shaky, almost close to tears.

Wufei grinned and stood up from his crouch. That was as neat a confession as he could have hoped for.

"I believe the term is 'busted', Mr. Ervy," he said, strolling into the main corridor. He heard footsteps as Quatre moved to stand beside him, effectively blocking the exit.

Duo was standing at the end of the cul-de-sac, holding a young, brown-haired man up by the collar. The boy was as limp as a kitten being carried by its mother, and he whimpered a little as Duo shook him. "So you know about this recording, huh?"

"Yeah, I..." Blue finally looked up. He gasped, staring goggle-eyed at Quatre. "You're...you're not dead!" He tore free from Duo's grasp and rushed at the blond, who took a quick step backward. Wufei flung his fist out instinctively to stop him, catching the boy squarely on the nose. Blue dropped to the floor with a howl of pain and surprise.

"Why would he be dead, Blue?" Duo asked in an icy tone, looming over the boy on the ground.

The boy's voice was muffled as he spoke from behind his hands. "I-I don't know. I don't want him to be dead, I didn't want to kill anyone, but..."

"But what?"

The boy's eyes shifted around the room nervously, checking each of their faces in turn. He was almost hyperventilating and seemed to be too frightened to speak.

"Blue," Quatre said in a low, reasonable tone, "the law rewards cooperation with leniency. You've already confessed that you had a hand in a very serious crime, and your case might sound better if it was known that you tried to work with us."

Blue's heavy breathing evened out, and he gulped. "What...what do you want to hear?" he asked, his eyes still fixed beseechingly on Quatre.

"Just the truth."

"It wasn't my idea," Blue said, sounding miserable. "I just did what I was told to do."

"Yes, I thought so," Quatre said calmly.

"But I can't tell you who it is, or he'll have me killed. He's done it before! Killed, I mean."

"I'm sure he has."

"I don't want to die, I just want a better life!"

"As we all do."

Wufei stepped forward, not bothering to display his gun. The boy seemed to be terrified enough. "Blue, did you make that phone call to Mr. Winner?"

"Y-yes. Sort of. I helped."

"How did you help?"

"I look like Duo--I mean, Mr. Maxwell--so I pretended to be him. I dressed up, and I tried to act like him. And he gave me a thing to change my voice. He let me keep it; it's in my pocket if you want it."

"Perhaps later." Wufei looked at the boy, scrutinizing him with sharp eyes. He did bear an almost familial resemblance to Duo. His ponytailed hair was thick and long, and the same rich brown as Duo's. His eyes were large and wide and blue, a shade lighter than Duo's but close enough to pass casual inspection. His face was broad across the cheekbones and he had the same wide, mobile mouth. They could have been brothers.

"Who is 'him', Blue?" Quatre asked, apparently trying to catch him off guard.

The boy shook his head vehemently and drops of blood flew from his injured nose. "Oh, no, I can't tell you that."

"Why not?" Duo demanded.

"I just can't!"

Duo growled with rage. He shook a long, curved, wicked-looking blade from his sleeve and pressed its tip to Blue's jugular vein. "You..." he hissed between clenched teeth. "You...you'd better start talking soon or you are so fucking dead."

The young man on the floor let out a strangled noise of sheer terror and shrank away from Duo. Blood continued to flow sluggishly out of his nostrils from where Wufei had hit him earlier and he wasn't even trying to wipe it away; he didn't seem to dare to move. "M-Mister Maxwell," he started to say, but the sentence died in his mouth as Duo hovered over him threateningly. Wufei shifted his position slightly to get a clear line of fire, should it come to that. Although the boy seemed incapacitated by fear, Wufei that panicked people sometimes became as dangerously unpredictable as a cornered rat.

"Don't you Mr. Maxwell me, you little shit. You betrayed me. I took you in when you had nowhere to go. I gave you a job. I gave you your goddamn life, and this is how you repay me? By sabotaging my business and trying to kill one of my friends?" Duo's voice had started out quiet, but as he listed the man's sins against him he lost control and at the end, he was nearly shouting. "You have five seconds to tell me why I shouldn't kill you!"

Blue gulped in a breath. "I needed the money real bad," he said, and he might have said more but Duo was not in a listening mood.

"THAT ISN'T GOOD ENOUGH!" he bellowed in a voice that rang off the metallic walls like judgment trumpets. His friends stared at him, stunned. Duo seemed to have actually grown into his rage, and he positively towered over the cowering man on the floor.

"B-but Mr. Maxwell, you don't know what it's like to be poor!"

Wufei winced and Quatre looked away; they knew what was coming.

"I know exactly what it's like to be poor." Duo said in a whisper that reminded Wufei somehow of snakes. "I know what it's like to be hungry and alone and to never know where I was going to sleep at night, but somehow I managed to get by without betraying my friends and trying to kill people." The bitter sarcasm in Duo's voice seemed to frighten Blue more than anything else. "Say your prayers, you twisted little fuck, I'm sending you to hell."

Concerned that Duo might actually make good on his threat, Wufei took a step forward. "All right, Duo," he said in calm, even tones. "You've scared him enough. Put the knife down."

Duo whipped around to glare at Wufei. "What? You don't think I'm going to let this son of a bitch live, do you?"

Quatre walked up to Duo and put a hand on his shoulder, never lifting his gaze from the pathetic figure on the floor. "You have to let him live," he said softly.

"Quatre!" Duo looked at him with what might have been sorrow in his eyes. "This guy almost got you killed! Now is not the time to do the mercy act!"

Quatre shook his head. "No, you don't understand. Letting him live is not an act of mercy. Think about it, Duo. If you kill him, his suffering is over. If you let him live, he goes to Bone Island for the rest of his life." Quatre took a few steps toward Blue and then crouched down so that they were nearly eye-to-eye, favoring his swollen knee. He began to speak in a low, almost hypnotic voice. "Blue, I'm sure you've heard of Bone Island before, haven't you?"

Blue nodded. "Yeah. It's, uh, some kind of penal colony, isn't it?"

"Yes, you could call it that. It's actually a small island in the Atlantic Ocean, near Africa. It's quite close to the equator. I'm told that the average temperature there is around 45 degrees. That's uncomfortably warm, wouldn't you say?"

Blue nodded again, mutely.

"And as the name implies, it's barren there. It's composed of volcanic rock, and nothing grows on rock. There are no shelters there either because of the difficulty in building anything on bare, jagged rock. The only source of fresh water on Bone Island, Blue, comes from a single small desalinization plant on the north side of the island. It produces approximately twenty liters of water a day for a population of thirty people...that is, when it's working at all. I'm afraid it isn't very well maintained. Do you know what happens to people who are sentenced to live on Bone Island?"

Blue shook his head feebly. It was obvious to anyone watching that he didn't particularly want to know, but Quatre's mesmerizing tone of voice was impossible to ignore.

"Well, the first thing that happens is that they become very, very thirsty. It would be hard not to become thirsty with the sun beating down on your head like that all day. I should know, I grew up in the desert. When you get that thirsty, Blue, the membranes in your mouth, throat and nose dry up, and it gets difficult to breathe. Your tongue begins to swell. Your eyes sink into their sockets. Imagine it--here you are on an island surrounded by water and you feel you might be dying of thirst. It's rather ironic, don't you agree? You might be tempted to drink the seawater, but that's a very bad idea. The salt only draws more water out of your cells and dehydrates you more severely."

Quatre broke into another coughing fit, but he hadn't lost his audience -- Blue's dilated eyes were locked onto him, unblinking. Quatre wiped his mouth and continued.

"I don't know if you've ever been to Earth, but the light of the sun there is nothing like the lighting in the Colonies. It burns, Blue. It burns your skin if you have nothing to protect you from it. You have fair skin, like me, and I'd judge that you'd be turning red in about fifteen minutes' worth of exposure. In an hour, you'd feel it begin to sting and tighten. In a day, you'd have blisters that break open and weep yet more fluids out of your body. You could always go into the water, but salt water is corrosive. Have you ever gotten salt into a cut? Imagine that sensation over every part of exposed, sunburned skin on your body and you'll quickly realize that hiding from the sun in the ocean is probably not a good way to cope with the problem. Sunburn can be very serious, Blue. It can make you more dehydrated, probably feverish, and it will make you crave water worse than ever. But then, there's always the desalinization unit, isn't there?

"In any society, however large or small, there's always some form of hierarchy among its members. On top, there are a small number of elite, powerful people who enjoy a relatively comfortable living, and on the bottom there are a number of weaker souls who fare worse than those above them. It's unfortunate, but that's the way it has always been. Bone Island is no exception, Blue. The desalinization unit is guarded by those on top of the hierarchy. They own it, you could say. They also get the lion's share of what it produces, and since there is no system of checks and balances on this island, you can only get what the elite feel that you deserve. If they feel you deserve to live, they might give you a liter a day. If they don't, then...well, let's just say that death by dehydration isn't a very pleasant way to go. Your nose begins to bleed as your mucus membranes dry out, causing you to lose even more fluid. Your intestines will dry out too, causing muscle cramping as your electrolytes become imbalanced. You'll start vomiting uncontrollably. Your brain will eventually start to shrink, and you'll experience seizures and loss of body functions. After that, the process is irreversible and the symptoms become quite nasty. Shall I go on?" Quatre asked pleasantly.

The boy whimpered, shaking his head rapidly. Tears splashed down his cheeks and his shoulders trembled.

Quatre started to smile, not at all nicely. "Don't look so scared, Blue. You might survive quite well there. You have a bargaining chip, you see."

"Wh-what's that?" Blue asked with forlorn hope in his eyes.

Quatre reached out and stroked the boy's cheek slowly with a single finger. "You're young, Blue, and you're quite handsome. Almost pretty, one might say. Young, pretty boys can almost always negotiate for what they want. Do you know what I mean?"

"No." But the way the young man's eyes were showing whites all around let Wufei know that Ervy had at least some idea of what Quatre was getting at. He felt a weird mixture of admiration and distaste toward his friend. Sometimes Quatre was a little too good at manipulation.

"I mean, Blue, that once in a while a man's baser urges can get the better of him," said Quatre in a near-whisper. "Especially when it comes to establishing dominance." He leaned closer until he was almost nose-to-nose with the cowering boy. "If you haven't figured it out by now, I mean sex, Blue. Sex of the lowest, most degrading type. Sex that you can't say no to. Painful, humiliating, shameful...oh dear. I seem to have frightened you." Quatre sat back on his heels and stared pointedly at Blue's crotch, where a dark stain was spreading rapidly.

Wufei thought that if Quatre ever wanted to switch careers, the Preventers would snap him up in an instant. His interrogation techniques were quite effective. "Do you feel like talking now, Mr. Ervy?" he asked, failing to keep the contempt out of his voice. Of course, he wasn't trying particularly hard.

The boy jerked his gaze away from Quatre as if a spell had been broken. "Yes, s-sir," he croaked out. "Wh-what do you want to know?"

Wufei crouched down on one knee to meet the boy eye to eye. "You may call me Agent Chang. The first thing I would like to know is, who is the man who recorded your image?"

Two fat tears leaked out of Blue's eyes and rolled down his pale cheeks. "He'll kill me if he finds out..."

"Cooperation, Mr. Ervy, can grant you safety," Wufei said in a matter-of-fact tone. "On the other hand, if you refuse to help us...well, you've heard Deputy-Agent Winner's description of what might happen to you."

Blue swallowed audibly. He glanced toward Duo, then to Quatre, but apparently he found no comfort there, so he looked back at Wufei. "Yates. It was Raleigh Yates."

"Son of a BITCH!" Duo shouted.

Blue squeezed his eyes closed. "I'm sorry, Duo, Mr. Maxwell, but he gave me ten thousand credits outright..."

Wufei, sensing trouble, stood up and pulled Duo a few steps away from the boy. "Quatre, watch him. Duo, focus. Who is this Yates person?"

Duo's face was twisted into an ugly expression of hate, but his tone was rational. "Raleigh Yates heads another scavenging operation called Green Earth Reclaim. He's been trying to establish a monopoly in this quadrant for years, but the spacehuggers keep busting him."

"The what?"

Duo huffed impatiently. "Spacehuggers. The environmentalists. You know, the guys who want to keep toxic chemicals and shit away from human-inhabited space."

"I wasn't aware that such a group existed," Wufei confessed.

"I'm not surprised," Duo said with a humorless laugh. "You're stationed on Earth most of the time, where it's not such a big deal if someone decides to dump a few liters of heavy metals into the sewers. But the ecosystems of the Colonies are so small and fragile that there's a bad air warning if enough people have beans for lunch on any given day. A major dump of cadmium or lead into the systems would be devastating, so us scroungers are required by law to pack up all our toxic crap and send it off to the sun in sealed resource disposal blocks."

Wufei nodded, beginning to understand. "I gather that Yates didn't abide by this law?"

Duo shook his head. "No, which is why he's got the most profitable salvage operation in space. Those disposal blocks are expensive. Expensive like you wouldn't believe. Half of my cash flow goes into separating the good stuff from the bad and sending the bad stuff into the sun. If I bypassed that law myself, I'd have more cash than Winner here." He smiled and nodded at Quatre, who was still crouched on the floor with his pistol trained on a sniffling Blue.

"So Yates is dumping toxic waste?"

"Well, I don't have any proof, as such," Duo said, "But most of us salvagers stay in touch and keep up with the news. Green Earth Reclaim is the only outfit that doesn't go to the meetings, so we kinda suspected they've been behind all the illegal dumping going on Earthside. He doesn't order nearly as many resource disposal blocks as he should for an outfit that size, which is pretty weird. That, and Yates has been making pretty large offers to some of the Colonyside salvaging companies. Including mine." Duo frowned darkly at the blue-clad boy on the floor.

"What kind of offers?"

"Multi-million credit offers," Quatre said. He chuckled humorlessly. "I remember the name R. P. Yates now. He tried to donate quite a large sum to some political action committee that advocated enormous funding cuts to the Earthside environmental controllers. The committee were trying to cut all the funding to a project that would ban all toxic dumping in public areas and force the companies that produced toxic chemicals to send their by-products into the sun." He shifted his attention back to Blue. "Do you see what kind of man you're working for? A man who thinks nothing of poisoning the Earth as long as it gives him a bigger profit margin."

"I didn't know that," Blue said, lips trembling and eyes still streaming tears.

"I suppose you didn't. People do tend to go mysteriously deaf when you wave large amounts of money in their faces," Quatre said dryly.

Duo seemed a bit calmer; or at least, more in control of himself, which was a different thing altogether. "But why attack Winner?" he asked.

"Dunno," Blue said, wiping his nose on his sleeve. "But he's your biggest client, isn't he? Mr. Yates was awful mad that you wouldn't sell your business to him, and he kept saying he'd get it one way or another."

Duo spat on the ground in sheer disgust. "Shit." He turned on his heel and looked at Wufei with an odd grin on his face. "Hey Wufei, do you feel up to gaining another deputy?"

It was the logical thing to do. Duo was now involved in the crime anyway, and he had a right to see it through to the end. Wufei felt himself start to smile. "Sure, why not?"

"I suppose it's too much to ask for a cool jacket and a pistol," Duo started.

"Yes, it is," Wufei cut in.

"Can I at least put the cuffs on that little asshole?"

Wufei, grinning, reached inside his jacket and took out a pair of standard-issue wrist cuffs. "Be my guest."

At the mention of the cuffs, Blue sobbed out loud. "You've been very cooperative, Blue," Quatre said by way of comfort. "We all appreciate it."

The boy looked at him with wet, beseeching eyes. "I'm really glad you're not dead, Mr. Agent Winner. Really."

"I'll just bet you're glad he's alive. If he'd died, you'd have been next," Duo snarled. He had the shining nickel-plated steel cuffs clutched in one fist and was re-sheathing his knife with the other. "Roll over on your belly, hands behind your back."

Blue gave Quatre a pleading look, but Quatre merely nodded at him. It really was in his best interests to comply. He hoped the boy could prevent himself from panicking until he was secured.

Unfortunately, Duo chose to straddle the prone figure and sit down on his thighs while he applied the cuffs, which sent the boy into full freakout mode. He began to buck and kick and flail his arms while emitting a piercing shriek that went right through Quatre's head and made him want to clap his hand over his ears. "Hold still, you little monster!" Duo shouted, grabbing at one thrashing arm. He caught it and pinned it beneath his knee, then grabbed the other and snapped the cuff around the boy's bony wrist. "I'm gonna let go of your other arm now," said Duo, "and you're gonna cooperate with me. Right?"

The word 'cooperate' seemed to work some kind of magic on Blue, and he stilled. His scratched and dirtied face turned toward Quatre, who nodded at him solemnly. "You've got nothing to gain by resisting us, Blue. I suggest you work with Mr. Maxwell. He's an honorable man and won't hurt you any more than is necessary...as long as you don't fight him."

Blue assented with a whimper and allowed Duo to handcuff him without further protests. Quatre watched as Wufei and Duo hauled him to his feet. They boy's legs were shaky.

Quatre laboriously rose to his feet, swaying a bit when a wave of lightheadedness hit him. Someone grabbed his elbow.

"You okay, Quat?" Duo asked, keeping his voice pitched low. Wufei was advising Blue of his rights as a subject of the EarthSphere Unified Nation.

Quatre didn't want to lie to him, but he didn't think telling the truth would be very productive. "I'm tired. When all this is over, I want to go home and sleep for about a week."

Duo chuckled. "We'll try and make this quick, then. If I'm right, Yates is such a dirty dog that he'll hang himself with five minutes of questioning."

"Good," Quatre said, coughing. A thought struck him. "Duo, did you recognize the account number in the recording?"

"The prefix was for the First Fleet, the biggest commercial bank in this cluster. It's the bank I use for the business, but that was definitely not my account."

"Could it belong to Yates?"

"It could belong to Green Earth Reclaim, but that doesn't mean anything. Most businesses around here use that bank because it's based on old Swiss privacy and security laws. It's pretty much hack-proof, if that's what you're thinking."

Quatre smiled, noting that Wufei was just about finished with his prisoner's rights. "But we don't have to hack it, do we? We have the account number."

Duo looked skeptical. "Yeah, but we don't have a passcode, and you're required by the rules to change it at least once every six months. If we enter the account number and screw up the passcode three times in a row, then all kinds of security starts kicking in, beginning with the account closing down for twenty-four hours and the computer being traced."

Quatre had expected that since his own bank operated on the same principles, aside from the passcode rule. "We'll just have to make our three tries worth it, then."

"What are you--"

"YES! Yes, I understand you!" The panicked, hysterical voice belonged to Blue, and all eyes turned to him in surprise. He was kneeling in front of Wufei, hands bound at his back, and he was sobbing uncontrollably. "Yes, I'll assist you in your investigation! Yes, I'll testify on your behalf! Yes, I'll do whatever you fucking want, just don't send me to B-b-b..."

"Bone Island, Blue," Quatre supplied helpfully.

The boy whimpered miserably and collaped on the ground. Wufei shot Quatre an annoyed look. "Just for that, Winner, you're sitting in the back and I'm driving us to the shuttle."

Quatre smiled. "I'll look after Blue."

Wufei's eyes glittered like obsidian shards as he looked at Quatre. "As long as you have your sidearm, I suppose it's all right." What are you up to, Quatre?

Duo seemed suspicious. He looked at Quatre, who tried to project reassurance at him, then at Blue. "You try anything, you little fuckstain, and I'll rip your arm off and beat you to death with it."

"Yes sir," Blue mumbled, looking down at his feet. Wufei and Duo led him outside, withQuatre walking behind them. It took all three of them to manhandle him into the cramped storage area behind the driver's seat of Duo's truck, and Quatre needed Duo's help getting over the back of the passenger seat; his knee had stiffened up considerably from contact with the cold concrete floor. He thought to himself that this must be what it's like to be old. It wasn't a comforting thought.

He settled himself as well as he could among the old tools, gloves, bits of hardware and fast-food wrappers littering the floor, facing Blue. He made eye contact, and, moving very deliberately, holstered his pistol. "You aren't going to give me any trouble, are you?" He coughed, trying to ignore the ache in his chest and head. It wasn't fair, he thought, that he had come down with the worst cold he'd ever had just when he needed to be alert and strong. There was never a convenient time to get sick, but he felt sorry for himself anyway.

"No sir," the boy said miserably.

"I didn't think so. Duo, can I have the laptop, please?" Quatre had left it on the front seat while he'd made his less-than-graceful climb over the seatback.

"Sure, man." Duo handed him the slim black case. "Whatcha up to?"

Quatre smiled slowly. "I'm going to put into practice something I learned from the great Heero Yuy."

At the sound of his best friend's name, Duo turned in his seat, sitting back on his heels so he could see over the seatback. "Oh, man, can I watch?"

"You bet."

The computer labs at the Peacecraft Institute were mostly deserted in the evenings. Relena's curriculum contained little that required extensive research or lengthy essays since she preferred the open seminar approach. Besides, most of the girls seemed to consider the machines uncouth somehow, gathering to do their work in the cozy libraries rather than the bleak labs.

Quatre and Heero had the run of the place. At first they had been cautious, sneaking in after hours or during mealtimes where they wouldn't be missed, but as the days went on they realized that no one really cared who used the labs when. The spyware Heero had installed on each machine indicated that no one was checking up on what they were doing, either.

"Sloppy," was his verdict as he and Quatre sat down one day to retrieve their messages and catch up on the news. "We could be selling weapons over the network and no one would notice."

"Speaking of weapons, I don't suppose you have an extra sidearm you could loan me? Mine got lost when I...you know." Though Heero had assured him many times that he harbored him no ill will for the incident with the new version of Wing and its strange cockpit system, he still found it impossible to speak about it directly.

"No, sorry. One of my...contacts can get you a new one within a few days though."

Quatre knew better than to ask about the contact, but he wasn't going to question Heero's ability to get what he needed when he needed it. "Thank you. I'll get you the credits as soon as I can. I'm feeling a little vulnerable without a gun."

Heero let out one of those low growls that passed as a chuckle from him. "Quatre, the last thing I need is any of your money. I can get plenty. You probably shouldn't be using your account anyway."

"I suppose you're right. But how will you access your account without being detected?"

Heero smirked in a particularly self-satisfied manner. "Who said I was taking the money from my account?"

Quatre raised his eyebrows even though he wasn't terribly surprised. He already knew about Heero's philosophy of property: Whatever wasn't nailed down was his, and whatever he could pry up wasn't nailed down. "Oh? Whose account are you helping yourself to?"

Heero took his palmtop from the inner pocket of his uniform jacket and began to scroll though a list of names. Each name had a number beside it, presumably a bank account number. "Let's see...Lieutenant Colonel Lafayette hasn't contributed to the cause lately. She should be good for a few hundred credits."

Quatre stared over Heero's shoulder at the palmtop. Some of the names on Heero's list looked familiar. "OZ officers?" he guessed.

"Only the ones who were careless enough to leave their account information unencrypted and then were careless with their passcodes."

Quatre frowned, uncertain by what Heero meant. "I can understand having a bank statement or a credit chip out in plain sight, but surely no one leaves their account passcode just lying around?"

"No, I've never met any soldier who was stupid enough to do that, but since banks require an alphanumeric string of five characters or more as the passcode, then most people choose a date that is significant to them." Heero said as he began to type Lieutenant Colonel Lafayette's full name into the browser on the computer's screen.

"A date?" Quatre asked, watching as the search engine picked up the OZ officer's name. Only a few of the hits listed seemed relevant, and Heero clicked on one of them.

"A date, such as a wedding date," Heero said, and paused as he scanned the vanity page of the officer in question. "Or the date of a child's birth, or the subject's own birthday...ah."

Quatre looked at the page on the screen. The word 'day' was highlighted as part of the word 'birthday', and to the right of the paragraph was a picture of a red-haired woman blowing out the candles on a birthday cake. "I assume that's Lafayette?"

"Correct. And since this photograph was taken on the second of April and that it's her twenty-ninth birthday, we can also assume that she was born in AC 166."

Quatre nodded, staring at the screen. "Yes, and so OZ formats their dates by year, month and day, her birthdate must be 1-6-6-0-4-0-2."

Heero smiled. "Correct," he said, typing.

"But that doesn't make a good password. It's all numbers, and easily guessed ones at that."

Heero chuckled again. "Not if you convert it to hexadecimal."

Quatre brought up Yates's personal page. "There," he said, pointing to the date of Yates's birth.

"And there," Duo said, pointing to the date near a wedding photo.

Quatre scrolled down the page, but they saw no other significant dates. "Let's try the birthdate," he said, typing the numbers into a calculator application. He converted the number from decimal to hexadecimal and frowned. "No good. It's all numbers."

"What about the wedding date?"

Quatre tried it. "Damn. No good."

On the other side of the cargo area, Blue cleared his throat quietly. "I-I don't think Mr. Yates is married anymore," he said.

Quatre raised an eyebrow at him. "What makes you say that, Blue?"

"He's got a dartboard in his office with a wedding picture on it, and all the darts are sticking into the bride."

Wufei snickered. "That seems to indicate a certain amount of hostility. I don't suppose divorces in this cluster are a matter of public record, Duo?"

"How the hell should I know?" Duo said, sounding offended. "I'm a happily married man."

"I was just asking," Wufei said mildly.

"I found it," Quatre said. He'd connected to the local government network and was searching through the judicial records database. "Raleigh Yates divorced Maria Russo-Yates on the nineteenth of August, AC 205." He pulled up the calculator application again. "2-0-5-0-8-1-9 works out to 1F4B03. It's good."

They had arrived at the spaceport. Wufei pulled the truck into the passenger loading zone and leaned over the seatback to watch. "Are you going to try it now?"

"Might as well," Quatre said. He went back to the login page of Yates's bank and typed in the account number. Feeling suddenly nervous and doubtful, he tabbed to the passcode text box and typed in 1F4B03, then hit the Enter key. A drop of sweat rolled into his eye, and he dashed it away.

"Well I'll be..." Duo said, almost reverently. "Heero really knows his shit."

Quatre blinked at the screen and saw that it was now filled with a list of transactions on the account of Green Earth Reclaim. "It worked," he said, trying not to sound too surprised.

Duo stabbed a finger at a line dated the previous Sunday. "There! Fifteen thousand credits were transferred into the account at 0953 last Sunday morning. Well, isn't that interesting?" he said, glaring at the boy hunched in miserable silence on the floor of the truck.

Blue burst into tears anew.

"Duo, is it really necessary to lock him in the storage cabinet?"

"Yes, it is, actually."

"Wufei's not going to like it."

"Wufei's busy piloting."

Quatre shook his head and drained the last of the cough medicine from the bottle. "Have you figured out how to work that thing yet?"

Duo frowned at the little black box he'd been playing with. "Not really. I know the settings he used to replicate my voice, but I can't make it sound like I want it to."

"What do you want it to sound like?"

Duo grinned wickedly. "Minke Fapworth."

Quatre raised an eyebrow. "The porn star?"

"Yeah. I wanna hear her say, 'Oh, Duo, give it to me hard, you great big studly chunk of manliness, you!' It's a dream of mine."

Quatre grinned. "Hand it over and I'll see what I can do."

Duo looked surprised. "Seriously? You'd use all that fancy education of yours to help me fulfill one of my all-time favorite perverted little fantasies?"

"Sure," Quatre said, taking the voice-distortion unit from Duo's hand. "Well, that and I have a plan for dealing with Yates."

Duo snorted. "A plan involving Minke Fapworth? Quatre, you are one twisted son of a bitch."

The overhead speakers clicked to life. "Fifteen minutes to arrival on L2-2XH06N, gentlemen. And Duo, I think you can let Mr. Ervy out of the storage cupboard now."

Duo's shoulders sagged. "Damn, just when I was having fun."

TBC