For more than a week after the battle, Duo remained in L-237, and not entirely of his own volition. In the wake of the battle he'd limped his mobile suit back inside to find a riot of colony citizens fighting tooth and nail against the remaining military personnel. This was the last thing he remembered before unconsciousness overtook him.
When he woke again the cockpit had gone dark. As he came to himself he realized that his body was hanging from the harness, and he reasoned from this that the mobile suit must be laying on its front. This was odd, Duo decided, because last he knew the thing had been upright, watching the unfolding battle from the relative safety of the colony's shell. He did not know how it had come to be where it was now.
Groggily he attempted to fire the engines, but his commands seemed not to register, and a bright orange light began to flash in slow, even intervals. Recognizing the problem immediately, Duo brought the suit to battery power and his monitors came to life, dimly displaying the world outside. The images flickered, and then they died as well.
He was out of power.
With mounting dread, Duo braced and unbuckled himself from the harness. He fell against the console and maneuvered around it, squeezing between the monitors and the chassis where he'd installed the emergency release latch. He found the lever and yanked, pulled against it with all his bodyweight behind him, and with a great mechanical clunk the cockpit doors released and natural light flooded in. He could hear voices outside, but when he listened closely they did not have the aggressive tone he might've expected from the military, and he reckoned that if indeed military personnel were waiting, they'd have noted the opening of the cockpit and would have their guns trained on him already. All Duo could see through the small opening was grass, green and long, swaying in artificial colony wind.
He dropped down and landed more clumsily than he would have expected amid a group of aged citizens, armed with all manner of makeshift weapons from shovels to baseball bats who stared at him with expressions of utmost surprise.
"He's just a baby!" One of them shouted in alarm, a woman brandishing a spade and dressed in a flowered apron.
Before Duo could comment on the stereotype, he'd been pulled to his feet with the gentle roughness of those unfamiliar with first aid. He lurched slightly, unsteady yet on his feet, and then looked about. Two men grasped him around the arms, holding him upright, and the remaining circle of colonists crowded in close. They stared at him with scrutinizing gazes, gazes full of uncertainty and bewilderment that Duo could not understand until one of them said, "Why were you here, with that fancy mobile suit of yours? It's not military issue."
Duo could have laughed, were it not for a dull ache in his side. Instead he stood upright, or as upright as he was able, and cast command mode eyes on the gathering. "I'm Master Sergeant Duo Maxwell," he said with authority and automacity, "and I came to fight for you."
"Some of us know who you are," said another, a man with a pistol. "You blew up M-204."
With a grimace, Duo lowered his gaze. What could he say against that?
"Still, seems like he's done us a fair bit of good here. Those soldiers were running all over our colony like it was their own home turf, no regard for anything. I'm glad they're gone."
The pistol-man blew a deep and somewhat regretful sigh, and then said, resignedly, "Well, let's get him inside somewhere we can look to his wounds and get some food in him. We can talk about semantics later."
So Duo left the gundam in the middle of the colony, dead and unmanned, and limped along beside what he imagined were his captors. But as he stayed among them, eating their food, sharing their homes, and recovering physically and mentally from the fight, he learned that the men and women who'd recovered him from the mobile suit were a friendly, close-knit bunch of neighbors, who mostly served on the colony's governing council. As a whole, they were scrupulous, and though many recognized his face from the media coverage of M-204 they did not prejudge him. Rather, they thoughtfully allowed him the chance to explain himself and his cause before deciding on a course of action. Ultimately, after a day of discussion, it was decided that Maxwell could stay within the colony as long as was needed to repair and refuel his gundam, and the colonists would help him as much as they could. In exchange, he would assist them with recovery and investigation of the military suits left over from his attack which the colonists hoped could be repurposed and used for their own protection.
It was the third day after the fight when Duo finally emerged to look at the ruined mobile suits, and as he strolled among the population centers of the colony, where the military rally had taken place, he noted a stark change in activity and mood. Where three days ago had been empty streets and closed shops were now bustling markets and outdoor sales pitches, with colonists swarming antlike between the stores. Few paid him any mind, though once in a while Duo could feel eyes on him, and twice he caught people staring at him with a mix of scrutiny and disbelief. He wondered if his name was spreading.
Two mobile suits remained within the colony and exactly where he had left them: The two he'd destroyed in his initial entrance, which had flanked the rally stage. They lay in heaps, parts disconnected from the whole, and if the colonists cared that they were there they gave no indication. They seemed to have become as much a part of the colonial landscape as the tall buildings and imported trees.
With effort, Duo entered the cockpit of one of the suits. It reeked of smoke and scorched metal, and if Duo had come to expect a modicum of comfort from his cockpit interiors, this cockpit left much to be desired. Its controls were arranged in angular blocks with sharp edges and awkward tilts; the firing and control mechanisms that he traditionally built into the joystick and pedal controls were absent entirely, replaced with flat, matte finished hunks of plastic, and where Maxwell would have himself installed six or eight high quality and slightly curved display monitors, this mobile suit had only three of low quality. It seemed to him upon first glance that the suit had been built with utility in mind, as first and second generation mobile suits of old had been. Rather than considering the comfort and safety of the pilot, its construction had focused solely on efficiency and finances. And yet, as he engaged its battery power, Duo found that the suit's design was not the most alarming thing about it.
Duo watched carefully as the monitors flickered, as the operating system's boot sequence flashed across the screen, and he was struck with eerie familiarity that made his stomach writhe. He leaned forward to try and read the lines of code and text that flashed in tiny, blurred green letters, but by the time he'd made it to the version numbers it unloaded. And while camera images of the outside displayed suddenly on monitors one and three, to his left and right respectively, monitor two filled the center of his line of sight with a plain black screen with familiar program options: Sim_1, Sim_2, Sim_3; Introductory_1, Introductory_2...Space_1... And at the end of the list where Duo had expected to find Maxwell_1, was a program vaguely labeled Live_OS. He selected it, and the program launched.
"Oh no," he uttered as the left and right displays began their routine. It was too familiar. Camera views of space, panning shots of colonies and shuttles rolled slowly past. It was that system. It was the Quell system. And even through watching those first few frames, Duo could feel his blood pressure rising, the panic welling, the memories flooding back.
He killed the power at once and sat for a long while in the dark, his eyes closed tight against unwanted visions. The implications of the system were too much, he thought. The military—or the rogue operatives within the military—had created an army of deadened soldiers, emotionless machines whose sole purpose was to pilot enormous weapons in a fight against morality and ideology. A fight for money, if Heero was to be believed. Worse, if the system worked similarly to that which Duo had endured during his captivity, those men and women would've been subjected to the Quell and all of the side effects that came with it.
At least none of them had blown up a colony. Not yet.
Duo heard a call from below. It was the woman with whom he'd been most recently staying, who had escorted him to the mobile suits. Her voice had been muffled by the metal cockpit doors, but he could hear her saying, "Master Sergeant? Are you all right up there, sir?"
"Fine," Duo croaked in reply and then he repeated himself more firmly, "I'm fine." Then he exited the cockpit, slightly shaky, and cast a hard look at the elderly woman. "We're going to need to talk...And I'm going to need to issue a statement."
"Is everything all right?"
She must have noticed his nerves, Duo thought. Her expression had shifted to concern.
"We're okay," Duo replied. "And I'll be able to repurpose the suits, though I don't know how much use they'll be for you. The operating system is..." he paused. His hands were shaking. "The operating system is complicated, and it's dangerous. I can fill you in later, but I'd like to speak to the colonial council at once, and I'd like its help in drafting a release."
Next day, Duo spoke with the colonial council and explained the potency of the cockpit system and how it worked in combination with a cocktail of emotional suppressants to alter the minds of its pilots. The actual explanation of the system was simple; he'd been able to go into command mode, to talk at them with scientific precision about its function and purpose, about its ability to bring out incredible potential in otherwise average pilots, and about the long-term side effects of the drug. Yet when asked how he could possibly have such intimate knowledge of such a volatile system, Maxwell froze and the carefully conditioned front he'd maintained thus far crumbled.
"I don't know," he stammered stupidly. As soon as the question had been asked his mind had gone completely blank. He knew that the colonists understood he'd been responsible for M-204. He knew that the colonists understood he'd been captive against his will. But he'd not yet admitted the whole truth to anyone outside of the Peacemillion. He wasn't certain that he could.
But despite his doubt, there remained some tiny part of him that knew the first step to accepting reality and ultimately coming to peace with the past was to admit freely what had happened to him. He'd been trying to deny it from the start. Perhaps it was time to let go.
"I destroyed M-204," Duo began again, and with an enormous sigh he finished, "as a result of the effects of this cockpit system."
Silence lingered for a time before Duo continued.
"I was captured in...May? By a young woman who was loosely affiliated with the ESUN military—goddaughter of a captain with a lot of clout, as I understand it, as our intelligence showed it. You've got to know that before all this happened I was a test pilot. I worked in research and development and helped to design and manufacture prototype mobile suits for use in mining and terraforming. It was a profitable venture for the military, since armed mobile suits were outlawed." His explanation felt too much like a ramble, but he had to get through it. The room remained silent. "These people caught me..." without thinking he touched the spot on his side where the bullet scar remained. He knew it had long since healed, but somehow there remained a tenderness there. "They caught me and forced me to test their system. I was the one who worked out the kinks. I didn't know what they were doing at the time, it wasn't until after I was rescued that I really came to understand it all. But I'm the reason this system is installed in these mobile suits, and I'm the reason that the developers understand how it works."
Again he paused. His audience of twelve stared wide-eyed at him, as if stricken with new understanding. Duo wasn't certain what he'd expected: Pitchforks and torches; a lynch mob... Certainly he'd not expected this kind of fear.
"You have to understand the implications of this system being used on a mass scale," he said, and then he paused, coming to a new realization himself. "When I was fighting them, its use was clear. You see, there's a period of time before the system takes hold when you're fully yourself, when you're in control of your actions and you operate as normal. And I saw that. I saw the pilots executing routine maneuvers. They used typical formations that they teach us in flight school, yes? And then as time went on their movements went crazy. They weren't flying in formation any more. They didn't fight as one unit, like they're trained. The system took hold of them, it made them crazy... When that drug wears away, your senses are heightened, your emotions take over, and fear and anger dictate what you do instead of rational thought. I don't know how they're utilizing this system on such a huge scale-I can't be in that cockpit with that system running because I don't know what I'll do- but someone's got to stop it. That's why I'm here, you get it? There's this group of men and women within the military who are pushing, who want war for the sake of war, who want war in order to perfect their fighting and develop their machines and profit off of its expansion. It's economical, not ideological. I've got to stop them from doing that. They don't understand what their system will do to people."
The council looked amongst themselves and small, quiet voices broke out to discuss the matter. And for a time Duo sat-he practically crumbled-and waited for someone to offer a reply. As he waited he stared at the ground somewhat pitifully, feeling hollow and guilty, reflecting sadly upon all that had brought him to this point.
"You're certain that this is true?" asked a voice from the crowd.
"Absolutely. It's unquestionable."
"Then the matter is settled. We'll scrap the suits for parts. I don't think any of us want to introduce such a monstrous contraption back into the world if you've taken it out. So we'll scrap it and use its parts to fix your suit, to armor it up a bit more since—with due respect, sir—it's under armored. Needs more bulk to keep its parts protected. So we'll armor up your suit, refuel and fix it, and have you on your way in a few days. You leave all that work to us and rest yourself up. We'll take care of it all, and you can draft your press statement. We've done well enough to keep those vultures out of here for the time being, or at least well enough to keep them away from you and the gundam so we can control what word gets out, but at some time we're going to need to let something go. All we ask in return is that you make your statement on behalf of our colony, not only yourself. We'll have a representative work with you to make sure our interests are looked after, and to make sure your message gets to the right channels."
On the eighth day after the mission, Duo's gundam had been repaired and refueled enough for him to fire its battery and check his messages, and he set out to respond to Heero and let the Peacemillion crew know that he was still all right. There were six transmissions in total, five of them from Heero and one of them from Quatre. He read Quatre's first.
Waiting for a status update. Not sure if you're screening Heero out, but we'd really like to know if you're alive. Heero said you'd respond weekly if you were able. Please let us know you're okay. QRW.
Duo sighed, reclined in the cockpit chair, and opened the first message from Heero.
Status?
Duo cringed. He'd meant to send a status report the day of the fight, as soon as he was able. But things hadn't worked out as planned.
The second message read much the same way as the first, and the third read, Are you still alive out there or not? The fourth was a mission briefing targeting a military base in the L-3 cluster on the tenth of October. Heero had intercepted a memo detailing the projected receipt of a large quantity of titanium alloy, which he suspected would be used for the building of mobile suits. That transmission had been particularly terse, and was limited solely to the mission detail.
And then he opened the fifth and final message, expecting something similar to what he'd had before. Instead a video message opened, and Heero's tired face projected onto his middle two screens. He was leaning on one hand, his fingers pressed into his forehead as if he was frustrated, but his expression was utterly calm. Barely visible in the frame, Duo could see a tiny head bobbing gently in and out of a corner.
"This is goddamned ridiculous," Heero ranted as soon as he seemed certain that the video was recording. "Can't get a minute of sleep between worrying about you and dealing with... Well..." He paused thoughtfully and looked down, then held up a fat, blue-eyed baby. It smiled dumbly at the camera and cooed. "This is apparently my niece. It doesn't have a name yet because nobody can decide on anything around this godforsaken place, and I've been tasked with looking after it while everyone else fusses around with the records I lifted." He lowered the child back down, just out of frame, and resumed his prior, exasperated position. "Apparently they think that just because I work on a computer I'm not doing anything worthwhile. Sally said I needed to rest up still. It's only been a few weeks, Heero," he mocked Sally's voice. "You're not at one hundred percent yet, Heero. Take your time, Heero. You need to heal, Heero." Heero swore fiercely.
Duo couldn't be sure why, but somehow Heero's stubborn anger had brought a smile to his face. At this point in the message Heero took a long pause, staring down into his lap, again thoughtful, and when next he looked up his expression had softened.
"I guess I don't know what to do any more," he said flatly, with less an edge to his voice. "I've done everything I can do to tamper with the military files but nothing is coming up. Nobody's biting. My clearance won't get me any further. Relena's clearance won't get me any further...I think they locked us out." Heero looked back down. "And this damned thing..." Another pause. Heero reclined in his chair and drew the child up to his shoulder where it lay motionless, apparently newly asleep. He held it one handed, awkwardly, while his free hand tapped irritably on his armrest. "It pisses me off you're not here, you know that? And it pisses me off more that you won't respond to my messages. You've got some terrible timing, Maxwell."
Heero looked off then, staring at a point somewhere to the right of the frame with his chin resting on his free hand and an entirely distant look on his face. He'd started absently rubbing at the child's bare back with his thumb, and Duo wondered if he even knew he was doing it. When next he spoke he did not look at the camera, and was so quiet that Duo had to bump up the volume just to hear. "I don't know what I'm doing... Been thinking a lot, I guess. About this whole mess of things... I think I'm ready to be done with it, with the politics and the diplomacy and all. The intrigue, I guess. It'd be nice to have some quiet, some simplicity. And..." Heero's brow furrowed deeply and he stopped as if choking on a word. "I thought a lot lately about, you know...life beyond whatever the hell we're doing right now. Maybe I'm just tired, but...Things are big now. Out of hand. And it's terrifying." He looked at the camera, a wrinkle in his forehead, and the longer he spoke the farther his eyes dropped to the ground.
"The first night I had to spend listening to this baby crying was absolutely horrible. Couldn't drown it out. But I realized somewhere in the dark hours, with all that noise and Relena next to me snoring her damned head off that right now I'm the last person in a line of people who've existed since man stepped out of the sludge. Right? Since the beginning of time, things have reproduced, and that's why I'm here... Because they made that choice. And I keep wondering: Who the hell am I to choose to kill a tradition that's been around for millennia? Didn't I say I was going to stop killing people? How many people will I kill if I choose to go childless when I'm more than capable of..." He paused. He swore again. "I don't like that I'm reconsidering this. Relena hasn't said one goddamned word to me about it. But here I am." Heero laughed futilely, exhaustedly. "Screw the missions, Maxwell. Never mind letting me know you're alive and okay. I don't give a damn about that any more. I just need you to tell me I'm not losing my mind." He shrugged, then added in afterthought, "Or to tell me that I am losing my mind so we can find it again. At any rate, let me know about that briefing I sent you with regard to L-3 and I'll forward you all the technical documents you need. One of the few things I did manage to snag was the memo with all the details and the interior layout of the base. No surprises on this one, just straightforward. Stop the shuttle. Take the parts or shoot them into the sun for all I care. Just don't die. Don't die before we talk about this mess. I'll kill you if you do."
The transmission lingered in silence for a few seconds before ending, and Duo sat for a long time, the only light in the cockpit the soft glow of the still it had stopped on. In that frame Heero looked every bit as exhausted as he'd sounded, but there appeared a serenity in him that Duo had never seen in him before.
Duo decided then that he missed home, wherever that was, and yet he knew he couldn't go back. Not until the conflict had been resolved.
At once he opened a return transmission and composed his reply:
Mission complete L-237. Mission accepted for L-3. Send documents as you're able. Sorry for the late reply, complications with the mobile suit prevented my response. Working with L-2 colonists to repair, refuel, and be off. Sending out a presser tomorrow or the day after, be on the watch. I got some dirt, and it's pretty serious. Feel free to leave messages if you need, or if anyone needs. Worst that happens is I won't listen, but that's not out of the ordinary. Talk later. DM.
By the time Duo had finished his response he felt altogether empty. Even if he intended to return to the Peacemillion, doing so would prove an almost insurmountable task. Finding a warship within colonial boundaries would not be difficult, but locating any ship, no matter the size, in deep space without landmark or coordinates would be an entirely different story. And while he was certain that Heero could help him, it would take the kind of time and effort that no one would likely be willing to expend. So Duo settled upon the tasks at hand: Finish repairs to the mobile suit, issue the presser, and get away from the colony.
With assistance from the colonial council's chosen representative, Duo drafted his message carefully, with input to paint the colonies in the most favorable light possible. And then they recorded it for release to video outlets, and then they played it back for the council as a whole. Duo watched himself announcing the news with great interest and more awareness of his self than he'd ever had before. He noted at the outset that he looked significantly less tired than he truly felt, and when he spoke he straightened in his posture and stared intently at the camera. He delivered the message with integrity, with a powerful inflection of which he'd not known he was capable. He looked like a politician even if he wasn't dressed like one, like Howard had said he'd looked, and he sounded the part as well.
"You have been betrayed. You have been taken advantage of. You have been victimized by lies. The United Earth Sphere Military has seen to that, and will continue to see to that as long as they hold power. Worse than this is that the ESUN organization has taken advantage of young recruits, many of them colonists like you and me, people who hoped that a brighter future would come from their service. I'm here to tell you that such a future is a lie.
"I came to this colony with purpose. I came here to rid the streets of needless military demonstration and help civilian colonists take their home back. I fulfilled my purpose, and in the process of doing so made a horrible discovery: The cockpit system used by the military mobile suits I fought against is the same system that drove me to destroy a fully populated colony. It is a system that dopes your daughters and sons into numb submission. It is a system that alters the minds of the most highly trained soldiers and forces them to fire upon a target not of their own choosing, but a target selected by the orders of superiors and without the time-honored benefit of conscientious objection. This system takes a soldier's mind away. It takes away their choice. It takes away their honor and integrity, and it makes them into machines to be controlled. And the ESUN military—or at least the part of it that's been infiltrated—is employing it to their own ends.
"So now it's time to choose. Now it's time for civilians and soldiers alike to take a side in the matter and exact change. Choose to side with the corruption of the establishment or choose to help honest civilians work toward independence from a government agency which would seek to steal the identities, personalities, and emotions of their citizens. The choice is clear for me. It's been clear since the start.
"The colonial council of L-237 has graciously kept the cockpit systems of two military-issue mobile suits intact. One system will be kept here, so that civilians are able to see for themselves the terrible things that are shown to these pilots. The other will be shipped to the Earth Sphere United Nations headquarters directly for the benefit of investigation.
"And finally, it is with the full backing of the council and citizens of L-237 that we, before the eyes of God and man, declare this colony independent from the rule of the Earth Sphere Unified Nation."
