The Peacemillion had never been known for its speed. The closer the ship crept toward the boundary separating the deep from colonial airspace, the tenser Heero became. He stared at the surveillance monitors on the bridge with unflinching attention, watching and waiting for the inevitable.
Though Howard, Milliardo, and the others had largely agreed that the Peacemillion would be well protected on its reentry, Heero had never once abandoned his doubts. As far as he was concerned, until they were docked safely on an allied colony or offloaded onto a Preventer passenger ship, danger was imminent.
An hour before rendezvous, a call came in from Une. Heero summoned all hands to the bridge, where Une briefed them on the plan: Peacemillion would be escorted by a healthy contingent of Preventer and UESM ships to the nearest colony cluster at LaGrange point three, where the crew would be invited to disembark, issue statements for the press, and determine how to proceed. There were no questions of security. Une reassured them that the space was secure and that her own ships had been patrolling the area around their rendezvous point for twenty-four hours.
The crew went their separate ways, and Heero sat in silence, alone on the bridge, watching the convoy of allied ships grow larger in his field of view with a mounting sense of anticipation. In a few moments it would be over, he thought. In a few moments, life would get back to normal, and the constant fear of danger would be gone, at least for a while.
At rendezvous time, Une called again, though this time Heero did not summon the rest of the crew. When her smiling face appeared before him, Heero allowed himself to feel relief, and he sighed freely.
"See?" Une said smugly. "I did tell you everything would—"
All at once, the Peacemillion gave a mighty sidelong lurch that threw Heero roughly from his chair. By the time he oriented himself, all of the lights on the bridge had flickered and died, and his monitor had gone black. Heero listened for the hum of the backup generators but heard nothing, not even the beeping of the ship's warning systems. He strained to feel the vibrations of the ship's enormous engines, but felt nothing. The Peacemillion had no power, no throttle, and no backup, and Heero was alone.
Twice in memory Heero had seen the Peacemillion without primary power. Once had been intentional, when Howard cut the main circuit to test the newly installed and highly upgraded backup generators. At that time, the darkness and the silence had lasted for only a few moments, and Heero had not ventured into the hull. The second time was Maxwell's fault, when he accidentally tore through the cabling while making repairs. Being that he was already at work, mending the problem took so little time that the backup generators had never even powered on.
This time was like nothing Heero had experienced. In the moments after he scrambled from the floor, moments spent pounding against his keyboard and computer attempting futilely to reboot the thing, a million thoughts flew through his mind. No power meant no doors. No power meant no lights. No power meant no communication, inside or outside the ship. No power meant no water, food, or sanitation. No power meant no security or alarm system. No power meant no surveillance. No power meant no oxygen.
And why had the ship jerked so violently? Heero's first conclusion was enemy fire, but Une had seemed entirely too relaxed, too happy for such to be the case. And she had guaranteed protection. Perhaps they had blown an engine: Catastrophic to be certain, but the ship was designed to withstand heavy damage, and the engines were far enough removed from the hull that an explosion would not be life-threatening if it was contained and isolated from the rest of the ship. Some kind of engine failure would be expected considering the Peacemillion's long stretch in deep space without routine maintenance.
Then the ship lurched again, and Heero fell against his console, overturning the monitor and splaying the peripherals all about. No way it was an engine. Not twice.
Heero paused and counted ten. He inhaled deeply, and then counted ten again. There would be no thinking in panic, he knew, and so he exhaled and counted ten a third time. The generators would power on in a moment. He would get communication from Une in a moment. He would be able to check on the others. He would be able to verify that all was safe.
Still, he reached for the gun on his hip and took small comfort in its presence.
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From her place aboard the Preventer's Mothership, Special Officer Une could see clearly the mayhem unfolding around her, though she remained too dumbfounded to issue orders. From nowhere the mobile suits had swarmed, dozens of them, in a coordinated strike which decimated her fleet. For only a moment, fifteen ships lit the void with bright orange fireballs before the oxygen faded and all that was left was flying debris. Even the Peacemillion was struck in its port engine, which blew spectacularly above the rest and set the great ship to awkwardly listing, completely dark and floating off course.
She did not know if it was by luck or by design that her own ship had not been hit, and in the moments of stunned silence following the explosions she waited for impact, counting every heartbeat and praying that the hull would withstand the artillery.
But the strike did not come, and Une's senses returned.
She called for status and the report came back: Fifteen ships confirmed destroyed, nine online and armed. Communication with the Peacemillion had been lost completely. Near seventy mobile suits had been estimated, though the numbers were unreliable at best. With the movement Une was presently watching, there could be no accurate count.
"Fire at will!" she cried, and to no one in particular. "Get those mobile suits offline!"
Within ten seconds her own ships had begun to return fire, but it was ten seconds too long. Nine ships had dwindled to five, five to three. And then the mothership was alone.
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Heero pulled mightily at the table leg he'd dislodged from his workstation, prying at the bridge door in the pitch darkness. He'd given himself a hundred count to panic, to rationalize, and finally to formulate a plan to obtain a status check of the Peacemillion and its skeleton crew. The backup generator remained offline, and the only way out of the bridge was a single hydraulic door.
At once, Heero had made for the emergency panel. He tore the black plastic cover away and blindly fumbled for the release lever, the lever he knew would disengage the door from its seal. At length he found it, turned it, and rushed to the door. For the first moments he'd tried to pry it open with naught but his hands, and to no avail. He could not jam his fingers deep enough to gain the leverage he needed, and wound up with his hands slipping futilely against the cold metal.
It was at this point that Heero turned to his desk. With no regard to the computer atop it he bowled the table over and worked at the leg like a madman, pulling and pushing until it snapped away. Then, chest heaving, he forced the broken edge between the door and its jamb, and had been pushing for some minutes.
At last, with one great forward heave, the door kicked open and Heero flopped to the ground atop the table leg, and even as he lay sprawled he knew the situation had grown dire. Where normally he would feel a rush of air between the bridge and the adjoining hallway, he had felt nothing. There was no circulation. No fresh oxygen was being pumped into the system.
Another count of ten and Heero stepped into the hallway, his hand resting on the grip of his gun.
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Une knew at once that the day was lost when she heard gunshots aboard her own vessel, and though she herself was fearful, she ordered the crew around her to stand firm and let her do the talking. Everything had ended in disaster, she knew. The last time she had peered out at the scene beyond she had watched mobile suits breaching the Peacemillion's hangars, and she assumed that the ship had already been boarded. She knew her own ship would end up the same.
The last thing Une did before the bridge door opened was to send the ship's S.O.S. signal, a looped, one-way message she hoped would project far enough into space to be noticed. And then she came to face the enemy.
"Order your men to stand down at once," said the man at the party's point, a young uniformed soldier brandishing a fully automatic weapon. "You have been breached and surrounded, and as we speak our associates are taking captive the Secretary General and her colleagues. You're outmanned and outgunned. It'll do no good to fight."
Without breaking gaze, Une motioned for her own crew to lower their weapons and drop them to the floor.
"What do you want?" Une asked the young man. "What's the purpose behind all of this?"
But the soldier did not respond. Instead, he and his squad set to motion. Four of them went about collecting the discarded weapons into a pile while the remaining six formed a flank on either side of the bridge door. At length they all fell into formation, the lead soldier raised his wrist to his mouth and said, "All clear."
Une leaned against her own console, arms crossed over her chest, and watched as another five men entered the room. First came three grunt soldiers with weapons in sling position, and behind them followed the men Une knew to be Captain Charles Benning and Corporal James O'Keefe, neither of who seemed particularly on edge.
"Gentlemen," Une said dryly, "welcome aboard Preventer One."
O'Keefe's fat face twitched in what Une might have called irritation, but Benning's thin mouth remained motionless. The two men were as much opposite as one could imagine: While O'Keefe was short, round, and pink of face, Benning stood confident and tall, lean, and pale, and his eyes pierced.
"Send your men away," Benning said coolly. "We'll need to discuss the terms of your surrender."
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Heero moved through the halls of the Peacemillion as fast as he was able in the darkness, making his way toward the dormitories at the back of the ship and lamenting entirely that the bridge sat on the complete opposite end. On a normal day he could have navigated the ship's winding passages blindfolded, but there was something about this scenario that put him off center and out of focus. He moved cautiously, looking and listening for any sign of life.
As he walked, the bubble growing in Heero's stomach swelled. This was no mere mechanical failure, he knew. If it had been, the halls would be swarming with Preventer's officers looking to help. Une would have found a way to open a line of communication, even if it meant sending a courier. But his footsteps and his breathing were the only sound he could hear.
Until they weren't.
Heero stopped immediately, mid-step. Were there voices? Something metallic. Something foreign. He held his breath and strained hard to listen, tilted his head to the left, to the right, and caught the noise again. Yes, there were voices, and none of them familiar.
Even as Heero stood still he could hear the voices growing louder, could hear the footfalls of what sounded like a dozen or more men. He could see the reflections of distant flashlights on the metal walls. Whoever it was had entered through the hangars, Heero realized, and as they had not yet announced themselves he guessed that they were not friendly.
On light feet Heero pressed forward toward the reflections, keeping close to the wall. There was a hallway just ahead, and he knew that if he could duck into it he might be able to find a hiding spot, a spot where he might eavesdrop and gain some understanding of what was going on.
"Branch out!" a man's voice commanded authoritatively from somewhere in the dark. "Find Peacecraft and capture her, and if anyone tries to interfere, kill them."
Voices responded in an echo of yes, sir, and Heero watched as the reflections of light began to spread. Some turned down toward the bridge, some toward the galley. Still others came straight for him, shining along the floor and along the walls.
There could be no hiding now. He would have to stand and fight.
