Heero lay abed staring at the flickering of his monitor and wishing he could do more. It had been a full week since the assassination attempt on Relena, since he'd been wounded, since Duo and Quatre broke out of the McCarthy Air and Space Force Base with two heavily militarized mobile suits. Somehow the lot of them had made their way back to the Peacemillion, and the enormous ship presently floated hundreds of miles outside of colonial boundaries in a part of the universe known casually as deep space. Heero couldn't remember how they had gotten away. He couldn't remember anything after collapsing breathlessly in Milliardo and Noin's hotel room, and this annoyed him profoundly.

Sally Poe attempted to fill in the gaps as soon as Heero woke in the medical bay some sixteen hours after the incident, but he'd been too groggy to understand much outside of you were stabbed, partial lung collapse, and deep space. To her credit, Sally explained over and over again until the full picture had been made clear. They had escaped what appeared to have been a military coup orchestrated by a group Duo had come to find was called the Red Ops, who seemed to be led by an enigmatic man named Charles Benning. In fact, most of the information that Heero had found useful or interesting had come from Duo, and was simply parroted by Sally after the fact. Heero hadn't seen Duo in days, not since he, Heero, was moved back into his own quarters and ordered to stay in bed.

Everyone else had made a point of coming to visit at least once a day, even if it was simply to poke their head into the room to say hello and see how things were going. Howard often brought food, complaining the first few times that Heero was looking thin and wan. Twice Quatre had gently pulled him out of bed for a slow and often slightly painful walk around the ship. But mostly they came and simply sat, offering little in the way of conversation and more in the way of company. Relena was the only person that Heero had seen less of, and he could not honestly blame her for that. She was busy trying to figure out what to say and what to do in the wake of the terrifying experience on Earth, and even if she had wanted to sit with him, Heero had covered the bed in files and papers, plates, cords, hardware, and the general debris of extended bed rest.

To her credit, Relena stayed with him most nights, though a number of times Heero had woken to find her curled on the chair across the room. Once she'd been fully on the floor, sprawled in the space between the bed and the wall. But Relena took this in stride and without complaint, arguing that she was simply happy to have Heero alive and awake, and threatening that if he ever scared her like he had again she would kill him or divorce him on the spot. She seemed not to understand the irony in the former, and was unable to decide if the latter would be the crueler punishment.

Otherwise, Heero spent his time digging. Since the moment Sally had explained what had happened on Earth he'd been combing through every file he could lay his eyes on, searching for code names, operation titles, and anything else that might shed more light on the situation. He'd found little in public records, an occasional briefing or a private note between soldiers, but so few documents ever mentioned Charles Benning that the man seemed a ghost, and nothing ever discussed Red Ops at all. He knew he would have to dig deeper.

Just as Heero had thought to begin the long and arduous process of using Relena's credentials to gain access to classified servers, the door open and Howard entered bearing a plate and a thick-looking folder.

"How're you feeling today, kid?" Howard asked, dropping the plate at Heero's side. A fat, round-cut brownie steamed in its center.

"You know I'm scheduled for dinner in an hour," Heero replied dryly, shutting the lid of his laptop but accepting the food nonetheless. He grimaced as he shifted positions. "Sally's going to get suspicious if I don't eat."

Howard grinned broadly and plopped onto Relena's side of the bed, the side presently unoccupied by Heero's increasingly piggish lifestyle. "Live a little," he said. "Got to keep your strength up and all."

"Somehow I don't think this is really food for strength," Heero replied, but still he nibbled away. "What's the book all about?"

"Ah, I thought you'd never ask," Howard replied in mock sarcasm. He had seemed unusually upbeat since their return to the Peacemillion, especially considering he'd just dismissed all nonessential crew indefinitely. He brandished the papers at Heero and said, "I wanted you to take a look at this."

From the folder, Howard produced a misaligned stack of vellum papers and tossed them down atop Heero's laptop. Inquisitively, Heero picked up the top and stared at it for a few moments, examining the drawing of what appeared to be some kind of paneling. There were several long, curved, smooth shapes, labeled with dimensions and specifications, but Heero could not discern exactly what they were supposed to be. He replaced that paper and drew forth the next, a collection of separate but similarly styled panels with the same type of numbers labeled as the prior. He glanced at Howard, at a loss, and then back at the papers. Their style had a familiar look about them, but the labeling, angles, and arrangement was altogether mechanical.

"I'm guessing these came from Maxwell," Heero concluded with another, greedier bite at his dessert. It had a far better taste than the steamed vegetables and plain rice that Sally brought most days. "What is it?"

"Stack it up and look."

With a hard swallow, Heero gathered the papers, stacked them neatly, and tapped them atop his computer. Now aligned, he laid them flat upon its surface. At first glance the draft seemed a jumble of scribbles; all he could see was the topmost layer of paneling with heavily blurred shapes beneath. But then he flattened the vellum and pressed.

Heero had no words. Upon the papers had been layered what appeared to be a mobile suit rendering, though nothing like what he had ever known. Rather than the traditional blocked and angled structure, the body and its armored panels were curved and gracefully styled. All of its parts seemed to be standard, in typical locations, but the machine appeared somewhat more humanoid than traditional mobile suits. Two great engine mounts rose from the shoulders, outfitted with what appeared to be thrusters similar to those once equipped by the Wing gundam, though they were longer and positively svelte. Two bat-like wings, slender and gently curved, extended from a place below the thrusters, and were matched by long and delicately pointed hip panels on the front and rear. The whole suit's design was understated, except for a dual-headed, Z shaped scythe drawn on the fourth panel from the bottom, which had been illustrated off to the side as if separate from the rest of the machine, like a marginal doodle. Altogether, the suit was pleasing to the eye, though Heero doubted its practicality.

"Let it never be said that Duo Maxwell doesn't know how to have a breakdown," Howard quipped glibly. "He presented me with these plans yesterday and told me to order parts. I can't make heads or tails of it, I don't know if he's being serious or if I should let this fall through. I figured you'd be the guy to talk to, if you're up for it."

Heero turned the plans to the left, to the right, peering at them thoughtfully. He examined each layer as thoroughly as he was able with limited time. "It's…" He started, but stopped to gaze at the design, and then looked at Howard. The idea of ordering parts had just registered, leaving him feeling just as puzzled as Howard looked. "What?"

"He wants me to order the parts to build it. They're all specified on those plans there, but like hell I can read that tiny handwriting without magnification. It'll take me days to figure out a shopping list, let alone actually purchase the materials. You know, it was never unlike him to draw these ridiculous designs for machines out of fun. I kind of figured when he handed me these plans that it was an instance like that—he just wanted to show me what he'd done, get some feedback. I thought he might just be blowing off some steam. Like old days, right? But then he told me to order the parts and the way he said it was…" Howard gave a noticeable shudder. "It wasn't pleasant."

"This seems a little in-depth for something done out of fun," Heero replied.

"I know," Howard said. "That's what's got me worried. There isn't a hint of fun about any of this."

"I'd say he was probably serious, then. But I haven't seen him or talked to him since I woke up. What's he been like?"

"Nuttier than squirrel shit," Howard immediately replied, deadpan, but then he rescinded the comment. "I shouldn't say that. That's cruel. He's been quiet; too quiet for him, even after all this mess. He's not even trying to cover it up. You know how he does when something's wrong. He's been holed up in his bunk pretty much all day and all night. Came out once the day they put Hilde in the stasis chamber but otherwise nothing. You know, Trowa's in the room right next door and he's said that he can hear through the walls a little bit. Nothing weird, but there's activity at all hours of the day and the night. I don't figure Duo's gotten a full night of sleep since we got back."

"So, it's bad."

"It's real bad."

Heero dropped the plans atop his laptop and stared at them from a distance, then, in afterthought, he picked them up and scrutinized them even more closely than he had before. "Exactly what kind of materials did he request?"

"Looks like a lot of titanium alloy," Howard said thoughtfully, as if trying to remember. "Otherwise, standard components for the inner skeleton and mechanical components. Based on how little of that kind of thing he asked for, I figure he's going to utilize some salvage from the mobile suits he and Quatre got hold of."

"Gundanium?"

Howard nodded his head. "Well, yeah, he requested a little less than 1,500 pounds of it."

Heero felt his face screw up indignantly. "Fifteen hundred pounds? For this?" He gesticulated with the plans. "There's no way that little bit is going to armor a machine like this."

"I don't figure he wants it for the plating," Howard reasoned, and he leaned in to take the plans away. He rifled through them a bit and pulled out a paper of mostly writing, which Heero reckoned was the final spec sheet. "If you look here, he's only got labels for a few major parts done up with gundanium. The cockpit chassis, a little bit on the hip panels… Otherwise it's all rationed out for the protection of other small parts."

Heero considered this for a moment. Generally mobile suits came in two varieties: Mass-produced, cheap models made of titanium alloy, or expensive and extremely rare models made of gundanium. Why would someone ever consider building a suit almost exclusively from titanium, but with a few gundanium components in strategic places?

And then it hit him.

"It's a glass cannon," Heero said, his voice half a whisper. He snatched the plans from Howard and looked again. "That's exactly what it is. Gundanium to protect the cockpit, in case the suit is destroyed. Otherwise it's just there to cover the cameras and other vital components. I mean, think about the design…" He felt himself getting excited about this, and that worried him slightly. Now the truth of it had hit him, Heero realized the mad genius in the plans. "Look here," he jabbed his finger at the hip paneling and squinted at it slightly, "he's got it labeled as hyper jammers for stealth, that's his style. And here," he drew his finger along the curved lines of the thrusters and wings, "those curves will throw off radar and render the thing invisible to mechanical detection." He squinted again, thumbed through the pages. On the topmost layer he noted a scribble and read it aloud. "Prismatic particle."

"What?" Howard asked dumbly.

"Well…" Heero began, dropping the papers again. "The thing seems to be designed for stealth. It's got jammers to disrupt radar and radio feeds; this curved paneling to deflect sonar and other wave technology. It's all pretty low profile. A prismatic topcoat, if done right, would make the thing hard to spot for the naked eye, and to regular old cameras. All the bases are covered here to allow the thing to sneak up on an enemy and dispatch it by surprise. I wonder if he's got any emissions numbers to determine thermal output."

"Hm," Howard mused.

"It's brilliant."

"It's insane."

Heero nodded. "Certifiably insane. But still brilliant."

"So what do you think I ought to do?" Howard sighed. "Even if I order the parts we've got no way to get them all the way out here, and I'm sure as hell not sending one of you people to a colony for pickup."

Heero thought on this. Howard was certainly right: there could be no trips to a colony of any kind. They were already relying on Howard's contacts within colonial boundaries to deliver necessary supplies, which was risky enough without there being three quarters of a ton of gundanium alloy involved. Further, what little he'd seen in the news made it seem as though everything had been put on lockdown. The military—or the Red Ops, Heero suspected—had accused colonial terrorists of kidnapping Relena and stealing her away as a hostage. Everyone was suspect. As a result, military presence within the colonies had been increased to levels of absurdity. Every colonist seemed to be considered guilty absent proof.

"I'll tell you what," Heero said. "Just stall for now. I'll really start digging into the files tonight and see what I can find. If we can get at this without violence I think that would be best. We've got Relena, after all, and she can issue a video press release at any point using only the output on this ship. She can let people know she's okay, which she needs to do anyway but has to wait until we can explain what happened. People trust her blindly enough to believe her if she says that there's a rogue operation within the ESUN military. We've just got to figure out what to say to deescalate." When Heero paused he realized how strange such pacifistic rhetoric sounded coming from his mouth. "The military is itching for a fight. You've seen the mobile suits they deployed. I saw a picture in the paper of half a dozen of them in a colonial plaza."

"They're everywhere, for things that were supposed to have been destroyed," Howard muttered.

"Exactly. If fighting is the only way, we'll build something. If we can do something else, anything else, we should go down those roads first."

"And Maxwell?"

Heero shrugged haplessly. "You said he was going to salvage the other suits. If he's really itching to do something, let him keep himself busy with that until we know for sure that this monstrosity," he handed the plans back to Howard as he said this, "is actually going to be useful."

Howard accepted the plans and seemed to accept Heero's advice. "You better eat the rest of that before Sally gets in here," he said as he rose from the bed, his tone slightly dimmer than it had been when he'd arrived.

Heero shoved the remaining half of the brownie in his mouth, tossed the plate back to Howard, and then he opened his laptop. He had half an hour before Sally would arrive, and he meant to be waist deep in classified military files by then.

But he wasn't.

When Sally entered, bearing her portable medical kit and a tray, Heero was staring angrily at the monitor. He barely noticed she had come into the room, and only glanced up at her when she placed her belongings on the bed.

"You look excited," she said blithely. "What's the occasion?"

"Relena's credentials have been blocked. Trying to gain back door access to this database," Heero grumbled, only half paying attention. "But I can't find an access point or a vulnerability."

"Mm," Sally hummed. "I understood some of those words."

Heero didn't feel much like explaining the finer points of computer security, so he remained quiet, tapping away as Sally attempted to go about her work. This routine had become mundane now, devoid of any tenderness or modesty from either party. Heero had insisted on the second day that Sally stop treating him like a frail old man and be done with whatever it was that she needed to do, and Sally had happily complied. She methodically went about her work, occasionally wrenching his hands away from the keyboard to check this or that, poking about at his stomach and chest, touching and prodding here and there. Heero figured he'd never be used to personal contact in any way—he'd barely gotten used to Relena after so many years—but he endured silently.

"Arms up," Sally ordered, and with a great sigh Heero lay back against his pillow and folded his arms behind his head. Sally drew the blankets away from him and lifted his shirt unceremoniously. "So what's got you so worked up, then? In terms I can understand."

Heero grimaced as Sally poked about his bruised flesh, dabbing at the entry wound she'd insisted needed to remain uncovered. She said it needed to breathe, to drip and ooze and live. Though it had been disgusting—so much so that Relena had insisted his shirt stay on at all times—Heero had noticed the beginning of the healing process. It had stopped weeping and the edges of the torn skin had begun to mend themselves together. The worst looking thing about it now was the leftover bruise on his ribs, which had turned most of the right side of his torso sickly shades of yellow and purple. "No access points to this server," he said, strained. It felt like she was trying to poke into the puncture.

"Breathe."

Heero breathed deep, focused breaths.

Sally's face disappeared behind his shirt. Clearly she was examining something closely, but she still said, "I don't understand much about what you're doing, but if you can't find an access point, can't you make an access point?"

Heero's leg gave an involuntary twitch and his stomach squirmed. As she had spoken, Sally had removed something from the wound. He'd felt it sliding out, and the sensation had him feeling more than a little sick.

"Breathe," Sally ordered. "Keep your arms up."

"The hell was that?"

"Little plastic tubing," she replied, and her face appeared once more. She left one hand beneath his shirt, applying firm pressure to the area, but in the other hand she gingerly held a disgusting looking length of what once was clear plastic. She shook it at him playfully. "For drainage. Now that this is gone, we'll give you a couple days to heal up again and I'll let you off of rest."

Heero wanted to retch.

"Keep your arms up," Sally repeated, and she discarded the tubing with her free hand. "But really, can't you make an access point?"

Heero thought on this as he breathed. "Suppose I could," he said. "I'd have to send some kind of virus in and hope someone is stupid enough to open it."

"That Corporal would open anything you sent him, I'd think. Here, keep pressure on this for a few minutes. It was oozing just a little."

Thankful for the reprieve, Heero let his arms drop and pressed the spot where Sally's hand had been. "You're right, but what could I possibly send him? Whatever the message, I'd have to proxy about two dozen times to keep him off our tail."

"I don't understand what you're saying," Sally said, standing and packing her bag back up. "But it sounds like even if it's difficult, it's still possible."

Possible, Heero thought, but very stupid. It was going to be a very late night.

ф

Quatre stared dumbfounded at his monitor. Ten minutes ago he'd been working the same way he'd been every morning since arriving back at the Peacemillion: Compiling notes, updating records, monitoring Hilde's progress in stasis. He'd most recently been checking his incoming communications server when a message had appeared from Heero bearing the subject line "Need your help for some testing."

He'd opened the document without thinking anything of it. It read:

Don't panic. By opening this e-mail you've automatically downloaded a script I wrote which will provide me with back door access to your computer and, if I did it right, all of the files on your private servers. You've got a decent knowledge of this sort of thing. Figure out how to neutralize it. In the meantime, I'll be seeing how long it takes me to download all of your data. P.S.: I'll delete it once we're done here.

But the first thing Quatre had done was panic. At first, he'd not believed that it had been Heero who sent the message, but a frantic call through the intercom system verified it straight from Heero himself, who sounded remarkably coolheaded for what he'd just done. He reiterated almost verbatim what the message had said: Don't panic, and try and neutralize it.

So now Quatre sat, trying to figure out what to do. His first instinct, and the first thing he tried, was to change the access codes to his servers, to block outgoing and incoming connections, but that seemed to have no effect. Then he accessed his database to lock it down, but that, too, seemed ineffective. In fact, there appeared to be no way for him to verify that his actions were having any effect on the situation at all. There was no evidence whatsoever that his system had been compromised except for the message stating it had been done.

Ten minutes after the initial message, the entire computer locked briefly, and when Quatre removed his hands from the peripherals the computer continued operating, seemingly of its own accord. A text editor opened, and in lightning-quick fashion, "Got everything I needed. I'll delete the script in a few minutes. Thanks, Quatre," appeared on the screen. This was the last straw.

Quatre stood and marched through the docking bay and into the Peacemillion's eerily empty hallways, a man on a mission. He arrived at Heero's door in less than five minutes, and pounded as angrily as he dared.

"Open up," Quatre demanded, though his demands had always come out slightly sheepish. "We need to talk."

He could hear muffled voices from behind the door, and when it slid open, Relena stood there, still in her pajamas, staring at him. She said, "Hello," quite casually and motioned Quatre into the room, where Heero lay in bed with a smug smirk on his face, computer open on his lap. She followed, plopped down beside him, and watched his computer screen interestedly.

"What did you do?" Quatre demanded.

"I already told you," Heero replied coolly. "I back doored your system."

Quatre stammered, too flustered to form words. "But why?" He finally managed to say. "There's sensitive information there!"

Heero waved Quatre's concern away. "Relax," he said. "I didn't look at anything. I just downloaded the files."

"But why?" Quatre repeated, more irately than the last time.

Heero closed the laptop and regarded Quatre thoughtfully. "Because I need to do the same thing to military databases, and I needed to make sure that the script I stayed up half the night writing last night would work. I'm on limited time, here, and your servers are the most secure around. It only made sense to go for it."

Quatre crossed his arms. The answer didn't satisfy him, not in the slightest. "Okay," he said, resigned. "Tell me how."

"How? Well, the script automatically ran when you opened that e-mail. It downloaded a few programs to your computer, starting with a really simple key logger and remote desktop application. I could see your administrative password the minute you entered it to change your permissions, and then I used that to grant myself access to your things. Any time you tried to change something I just followed along."

Quatre didn't realize his mouth was hanging open, and it was not out of admiration or awe. It was the sheer audacity of Heero's security breach that had left him speechless.

"I don't understand what he's saying, either," Relena said, apparently misunderstanding Quatre's quiet.

"The point is," Heero concluded, and he opened the laptop and began typing away again, "that it worked. I got what I needed in less than fifteen minutes, and you were alerted to the breach right away. I imagine I'll have twice that long if I don't make mention of the script in the message I send."

"The message to whom?" Quatre asked quietly. He almost didn't want to know.

"Relena and I are coming up with a message to send to O'Keefe. He'll open it, no doubt, but he'll be too afraid to report it to the higher ups or the press. Relena's supposed to be kidnapped, after all, and I'm supposed to be dead or close to it. Anyway, he'll open it and I'll have my access point to the military servers. That way I can get all the information I need on this Benning character, correspondence between parties, and classified operations. It's pretty much the only way we'll be able to find anything out since Relena's credentials were apparently blocked."

"Delete my files."

"I'm already doing it," Heero replied. He turned the laptop around so that Quatre could see, selected a folder aptly named Quatre's Things, and deleted it on the spot. "See?" He asked pedantically as a status bar filled across his screen. "All done. No harm."

"Never again," Quatre said coldly. "If word got out that you got into my system so easily…"

Heero laughed, and Quatre felt indignant again. "No one is going to know except for the three of us in this room. Now, you go do whatever it is you're going to do. We've got a letter to write."

"And you're sure that no harm will come of this?" Quatre asked.

All Heero did was shrug. "We hope not. And if it does, we'll already be combing through the files, finding evidence, and putting this puzzle together. We'll be able to issue a statement on a moment's notice."

Quatre looked at Relena, who appeared as cool-headed as Heero. This was odd, as she'd been particularly frantic since arriving back on the Peacemillion. "And you?"

"I don't have much choice right now," Relena replied. "Until we know exactly what's going on and can tell the citizens of the colonies, this is the best we can do."

Dissatisfied, Quatre nodded with a sigh. "All right. I trust you, maybe more than I should. You let me know if there's anything I can do to help." And then immediately after he'd said the words he added, "But no more hacking into my system. I've got my hands full enough without that."

Heero laughed again, and Quatre left.

7