A dread hung over the crew of the Peacemillion. Howard had been the one to call a full-staff meeting in the galley and every body on board the ship crammed in. He explained the bad news quietly, apologized for withholding the truth, and proclaimed all current projects on hold until the missing were located, alive or dead.

When he had finished no one moved and no one spoke. They simply sat, staring at him as if waiting for further direction. But no direction was coming. As he looked back at them Howard realized that he felt old, useless, and confused. For the first time in his career captaining the Peacemillion he could offer no advice to those who needed it, to those he did not know so well. Nor could he offer comfort to those he did know well. The tragedy had hit close to home. He couldn't even console himself.

When he left he did so with purpose, and he found Heero predictably sitting in his bunk, pitch dark but for the soft glow of his monitor, and he was poring over the records of Duo's test flight. Heero had left his room only twice since the disaster, both times to entertain telephone calls, and he had done more talking in those two calls than Howard had heard in all the years he had known the boy combined. Howard expected that he would want quiet.

"How did Relena take the news?" asked the old man.

"Better than her brother," replied Heero dryly, without ever removing his eyes from the monitor.

"When will the two of them arrive?"

"Mars is a hell of a long way away," Heero said flatly, "but Relena will dock tonight near 1900 hours. She'll have heavy escort, so we'll have to clear the hangars."

"Will she make a broadcast?"

At last Heero looked up at Howard, weary eyed and exhausted. He ran his hand nervously through his hair and shrugged. "I don't know. So far it's an isolated incident. I told her not to broadcast because it might draw unwanted attention."

"I feel like there's a 'but' coming."

Heero sighed heavily and turned back to the monitor, began poking listlessly at the keyboard. "But when was the last time she actually listened to me?"

Howard offered no response, initially. Rather, he watched Heero resume his work, and after it was clear that there was no more to say he wordlessly excused himself. There were too many people to touch base with to dawdle long in one place.

Back on the bridge Howard met with Sally, who seemed still on edge and distraught. Understandable, he thought, as it had been fewer than twelve hours since she had watched Duo Maxwell die.

"How are you faring?" said Howard from behind. He watched her scroll through still frames taken from the camera feed. "Have you found anything?"

Sally shook her head. "Not much, really. The external cameras kept rolling even after Duo disconnected his feed," she replied quietly. "But they were mostly destroyed in the ensuing gunfight. Of all the two hundred stills that Heero uploaded there's just this one."

Sally brought forward a blurred image taken from what looked like the suit's left shoulder box, a square of black gradient with modestly discernable blobs in each corner. Much of the image was obscured by the gray metallic body of the mobile suit (or perhaps a bit of shrapnel floating in front of the lens), but in the bottom right hand corner of the frame was a distinctly ship shaped object, black with no trim, obvious against the lightening gray of space.

Howard leaned over Sally's shoulder and squinted hard. There was no way to sharpen the focus on the image, no way to clarify it, but even so if he looked at the thing just right the make of the vessel seemed vaguely familiar.

"It's an old model, to be sure," said Howard. "Salvage class? It looks a bit like the old Sweepers ships, but there's a turret there, isn't it?" He pointed at a blurred silver splotch on the vessel's black hull, a splotch that looked distinctly out of place, and Sally nodded.

"Looks to be that way. What did the Sweepers do with their defunct ships?"

Howard thought hard. The Sweepers salvage group had disbanded nearly two decades prior, and his memory was certainly not as sharp as it once had been.

"Mostly we scrapped them," he recalled at length. "The ones that wouldn't run or would cost too much to fix. At the end of it we might have auctioned the ones that were in good repair. But God, that was a long time ago. There's no way one would still be out there and operational. They were cheaply made by default."

"What about modifications?" Sally asked, suddenly excited. "How hard would it be to use one as the foundation for a custom build?"

Howard shrugged. "No more difficult than customizing any other, with the right knowhow."

"We'll need to find the model numbers of those old ships and see which are still operational. We ought to contact the auctioneer and see if they kept track of what happened to those ships," Sally said. "And we'll need to track all of them, not just the ones auctioned by the Sweepers. From there we might be able to gain information about what's out there."

Howard nodded, and the two went quiet.

"Any news on Noin or Maxwell?" Sally asked after a while.

"Missing in action," Howard replied.

"Presumed dead?"

The old man hadn't planned to add that to his description, but he could not deny it either.

"No records have been filed yet to list them as such. I'll bet they're both alive and giving hell to whoever it is that crossed them."

Howard didn't believe the words even as he spoke them, and neither did Sally.

"Let's hope so," said Poe, and began scrolling back through the stills.

ф

It was with great caution that a Peacemillion passenger shuttle was sent to investigate the last known location of Noin's ship. What they found was expected but still unsettling: bits of metal and glass and insulation hovered around a central point in clear sight of the L4 colony cluster. A survey of the destruction revealed little: There were no human remains, which half the crew took as good news and the other half took as bad. It was just as likely that the officer had been blown into space dust as it was that she had escaped. Either way, Noin was not there.

There was no black box to recover; the thing had apparently been destroyed along with the ship. But whatever had fired the destructive shot had left a fairly distinct trail through the wreckage, parting the debris on a clear line.

"It was either heading to L3 airspace or pushing past that into deep space," Heero reported later, after reading and rereading the reports. "The trail here is clear as day," he drew his finger along the vector on the photo.

Howard and Sally nodded after exchanging a meaningful look. It was more than likely for a rogue ship to head into the region known informally as deep space, a place beyond the boundaries of colony airspace and well outside the influence of the LaGrange points, because it was an easy place to hide. With virtually no methods of tracking, the area was rumored to be overrun with outlaws and rebels, most of who were nonviolent and meant solely to exist off grid. Still, it was not anywhere that any right-minded person would travel to by choice.

"It goes without saying that we can't pilot this monstrosity past the colonial boundaries," Heero continued, gesticulating toward the Peacemillion in general. "That would be suicide. We'd be boarded or shot down before we could ever get to the weapons vaults or man the turrets."

"What do you think we ought to do, then?" asked Howard. "None of our passenger transports has the means to protect itself."

Heero sighed and looked across the table. Relena had been stone faced and callous since she'd arrived two hours ago, bypassing all her normal formalities and friendly gestures and demanding that the crew get to business righting this grievous wrong. Yet, when it came down to making an action plan the woman had remained completely mute.

"We need permission from the council to open fire freely," Heero implored, and Relena cast him a glare. "With utmost discretion," he added hastily.

Again Howard and Sally exchanged looks. Much of the negotiating had seemed more like a mild domestic quibble between Heero and Relena, who would almost certainly never reach an agreement on the matter. Relena was too much a pacifist for retaliation, and Heero was convinced that open hostility was the only measure to take.

"I can't allow it," said Relena to a table of disapproving faces. "Authorizing hostility would only open the colonies to more conflict. We have to solve the matter diplomatically."

Heero scoffed. "Diplomacy is fine when you know who you're dealing with, when you've got a face and a name and an open line of communication. All we have is scrap metal and a few bullet casings."

"Well how do we go about finding a name and a face then?" Relena cried, exasperated. "I thought you all had been investigating this thing."

"The only way to figure out who is responsible is to track the ship," Heero reasoned. "We've got every available man on the crew contacting auctioneering agencies and looking for salvage vessels that are no longer accounted for, Sweeper ships and not. Until we get a definite word from them the only information we have is that the ship went toward deep space. If we wait too long they'll be untraceable, and we can't go in there unarmed!"

"I won't allow it," Relena repeated, a skipping record of pacifist rhetoric. "We need more information before we do anything."

Sally stood, tired of the seemingly endless back and forth. "We aren't going to solve anything with these all-or-nothing strategies," she said angrily. "If you won't let us open fire then what kinds of defensive systems do we have that can be installed on our passenger vessels?"

All eyes turned to Howard.

"There's an ion cannon already mounted on one of them."

Relena's brow furrowed at the word 'cannon,' an expression that did not go unnoticed.

"It propels a targeted burst of electromagnetic energy at a ship. Its sole purpose is to disable systems, not to damage person or property," Howard explained coolly. "It might work in a pinch."

Heero wasn't satisfied. "That cannon has a low rate of fire, though, and it's unreliable. How many defense drones do we have?"

"None."

"Anti-projectile turrets?"

"No, Heero!" Relena cried again, and Yuy looked ready to snap. He bit his lip and looked away, fists clenched to white on the table.

"We have no choice but to search," Sally pressed on. "I'll take out the vessel equipped with the ion cannon. I trust my flying enough to do the job with limited protection. I just need a crew to go with me."

Heero raised his hand immediately.

"Done."

ф

Silence pervaded the cellblock for most of the evening. Duo and Noin exchanged a few stilted words here and there, but almost any time they began to speak they were somehow interrupted, whether by crew of the ship or maintenance, and twice the man in the white coat came to administer some drug to Maxwell, who faced the event with little resistance. Still there was not much to say, not now that Noin's survival was all but guaranteed, and Maxwell seemed otherwise unwilling to answer questions about his well-being.

Noin watched for a long stretch as Duo sat against the wall of his cell, poking absently at the wound on his stomach and staring blankly at something she could not see. Sometimes he looked up at the ceiling, other times he looked down at the floor, but mostly he stared straight ahead and almost never glanced at Noin.

Truth be told, Duo was preoccupied, and understandably so. He had waked in an unfamiliar place under the control of an unknown girl and with no recollection of the events immediately preceding his capture. He'd been wounded badly enough to cause some surprise to his watchers upon waking, and he had only recently pinpointed the strange feeling in his stomach as a complete and inexplicable lack of emotional reaction to anything. He had not, since his waking, felt scared or sad or angry, nor confused or nervous or excited. There was nothing, and he knew that he should have been alarmed.

"So what do you plan to do when I'm gone?" said Noin at what she assumed was a late hour. "It doesn't seem like it'll be long now. We've been waiting here forever."

Duo shrugged and glanced toward her. "I guess I'll have to figure my own way out of this mess, unless you find a way to get some bearing on where we're at and can send in reinforcements before the ship moves too far."

"So the short of it is that you don't know."

"Not even the slightest idea."

Noin smiled despite herself, but Duo took no note. "I'm sorry you had to waste your bargaining on me," she continued, sobered again.

"Don't apologize," Duo said flatly. "There was only one deal they would take and that was you getting out of here dead or alive. It just happens that it was more beneficial for them to let you go alive than risk pissing off your husband and Heero. They've got no intention of letting me go any time soon, bargaining be damned."

"Don't you think you're being a bit pessimistic?" Noin said, offended slightly, and then she softened. "What's the matter with you? You've got no fight left at all."

Duo dared not voice his suspicions to Noin. She had enough to worry about without tacking on the fear of him being doped into submission. Still, it was the only theory that made any sense. The man in the white coat had visited twice since he woke to administer pain medication, which had done a fantastic job numbing the wounds, and if his current mood—or absence of mood—was any indication they must have administered a fairly strong and long-lasting mood suppressant along with it.

"I'm just worn out," he lied. He was as alert as ever. "But never mind that. I need you to do a favor for me when they come to send you off."

"What's that?"

"Insist they deploy the pod toward the colonies. If they shoot you toward deep space the pod's automatic mayday transmission won't ever be heard."

"Why don't you ask them? You seem to have more bargaining power than me."

"I don't. Not that they know of, anyway. I'm just a pilot. They have no idea who we are unless we tell them, their records are too outdated."

Noin looked skeptical. "What are you suggesting I do?"

"Offer them the information they're looking for in return for a guarantee of safe travel. Tell them everything you know about me. Make it up if you have to. I promise they'll eat it up and give you safe passage to the nearest colony. They have to. It'll seem like a win-win situation for them. You're getting away, so there won't be retaliation from the Earth Sphere, and they're getting the information they need."

"And if it doesn't work?"

"Then you'll have saved me a fair bit of talking to the assholes."

Noin sighed and slumped against the door of her cell, resigned. She would do what he asked without a doubt because, ultimately, he was right. Still, Noin did not like the new cynical Duo Maxwell that had waked from disaster. He was unpredictable, numb, cold, and logical beyond his normal scope, and Noin knew beyond a shadow of doubt that he would never say what was so clearly troubling him.

Hours passed in silence, until at last the door to the cellblock slid open with a hydraulic hiss and a group of shoddily uniformed crewmembers entered to escort Noin to her fate. She left the room with her eyes locked on Duo, but he never once returned her gaze.

They walked her along dimly lit hallways, past thick shatter-proof windows through which she could see a colony hanging in the distance, past a galley where two dozen men and women were taking in a luxurious meal, past the ship's tiny med bay-empty, and when she caught sight of the bridge through a slim open doorway she called for a halt.

"I want to talk to whoever is in charge," she said authoritatively when the guards looked at her with incredulity.

"What about?" replied one of the nameless men.

"I want to give her information. I want safe travel to that colony I saw outside, and I want to give information as payment for it."

The guards exchanged contemplative looks, and then one nodded to the other. Into the bridge he slipped, and within two minutes Noin was face to face with Elliott DeSchepper.

"We need to speak in private," Noin said. "I have no reason to try to trick you, not with freedom so close. It would be in your best interest to dismiss your guards and hear me out."

Elliott stared hard at Noin, sizing her up, and she placed her hand on the gun holstered on her hip. "Fair enough," she said, clearly unfazed, and then looked at her men. "Take your leave. I'll see her to the escape pod."

The men did as they were told.

"What is it you want?" asked DeSchepper as she started toward the pods. "I won't let the pilot go."

"I'm not asking you to," Noin replied, feeling strangely comfortable. "I want safe travel to the nearest colony. I'll never be found if you send me into remote space."

"And my man told me you had information to give me in exchange."

"I do."

DeSchepper looked at the floor for a moment, then again at Noin. "I won't guarantee you anything until after I've had the information. If I deem it of sufficient quality then we'll see."

An unfair deal, Noin thought, but she was not surprised. For her captor to even be speaking with her was a blessing, and at the very least she was saving Duo some effort. There was no reason to hold back.

"I want to tell you everything I know about the pilot in your hold."

Elliott's interest was piqued. She raised her eyebrows approvingly, and Noin could swear she saw a tiny grin tugging at the young girls' mouth. "Go on."

"His name is Duo Maxwell, veteran of the One Year War, code named gundam pilot 02," Noin said carefully, sticking as much to public record as she could. "Currently he is a Master Sergeant of the Earth Sphere United Military, air and space force division, and he is stationed permanently on Peacemillion II—I trust you've heard the ship, considering you sabotaged their most recent test."

"I have," DeSchepper replied, ignoring the jab. Her expression told nothing. "What else have you got to tell me? What you've provided is of little value, it's easily obtained through a search of updated records."

Noin swallowed hard, at a temporary loss. She'd had a few conversations with Duo that touched on his past, but they were long ago, in the months immediately following the One-Year War. They were fleeting and he'd remained largely guarded on the subject of his childhood. Heero had offered no real explanation beyond what Duo did, and what Heero could not provide neither could Relena. But she did know the broad strokes, a skeleton of his boyhood, and any information was better than nothing.

"He was a war orphan," she said bluntly. "There are no records of his parents, and he did not appear in any colonial registries until he was—ten or eleven, I believe—when he was registered in attendance at the Maxwell Church on L2. The name he goes by is obviously not the one on his birth certificate, wherever that might be."

Elliott cast Noin a dubious look. "Maxwell Church? The one that was annihilated in the early 90s?"

"One and the same," Noin replied. "He stole the very mobile suit that destroyed it."

"Impressive skills for a ten-year-old."

She's buying it, Noin thought happily, disbelieving.

"What else?" Elliott said. "His past isn't of much interest to me. What about his skills with a suit?"

Noin deflated. "He's very highly skilled," she said dully. "Ridiculously skilled. The most heavily requested test pilot by all standards. He's able to fly every model from Ares to Scorpio and everything between and beyond."

"Operating system fluency?"

"All of them. Even the ones we haven't made yet. He picks up on these things very quickly."

"This is good," Elliot said, and she sounded pleased. "Does he have a wife?"

"What?" Noin replied instinctively. The question had come from left field and rather blindsided her. It seemed a random question to ask considering the prior course of talk. "Why?"

"Does he have a wife?" said DeSchepper, this time more forcefully.

"No."

"Brothers? Sisters? Next of kin? Loved ones of any sort?"

This was beyond Noin's knowledge, and she floundered for a moment. "No siblings," she said at last, after a stammer or two. "He had a girlfriend once, but I haven't heard mention of her in months."

"Brilliant," Elliott said, and in the next moment she slid open the door to a room with a dozen tiny one-man escape pods. She motioned Noin through brusquely, pointing toward a door with a brightly painted 08 on the side. "This one will do nicely. Inside, if you please. The mayday will broadcast as soon as you are clear of the ship."

Noin ducked inside and stared hard at Elliott. "Did I earn my safe passage or not?"

Elliott shrugged. "Maybe," she said, and before Noin could argue the hatch was closed, and the pod ejected.