30 Ways to Conquer Mars

#013 余計な鎖
A.C. 197, June 9, 10:56「Cold」

Gundam Wing © SOTSU AGENCY - SUNRISE - ANB
This is a work of derivative Fanfiction. No claims are made towards the ownership of intellectual rights pertaining to the metaseries.

...

They were spread thin that morning due to a mass bout of food poisoning traced back to an iffy shipment of protein substitute. Several non-essential areas of the ship were deserted, as a result, with all available manpower being redirected towards the medical bays.

"I told you that stuff will be the death of us," Zechs observed. Noin would have chuckled, but there were other things on her mind. As one of the few teams that were on duty off base during lunch and dinner the previous day, they were stuck picking up the slack.

Noin grabbed a list of priority maintenances and fled into space. She was never good around sick people, unlike Zechs.

One of the most baffling items was trimming a length of chain near one of the stabilising gravity boosters that was causing a god-awful ruckus every time that particular generator fired up. Clang, clang, clang, it went, slapping into what was basically a giant electromagnet.

This was baffling because it was such a paltry design error it should never have occurred in the first place, and because the official justification for the rush on this work order was 'public nuisance'. Whose quarters are these overhead? She had to wonder, coming up alongside the problem area. And what strings are they pulling to get this through?

She could think of a few things that needed improving in her quadrant too.

"You'll want to get it over your grip, not below, and squeeze the cutters…"

Donn was passing step-by-step instructions over the intercom. Noin considered muting him. She could do without his backseat driving— the habit was really starting to get to her— but it helped ease her mind a little to have the background chatter, not to mention turning off communications would be a breach of safety protocol. She was going to be enough trouble as it was when they found out she hadn't bothered to put on a spacesuit.

"Go easy, Lucy, firm but gentle. Remember, firm but gentle…"

Clang. Clang. Clang. Noin sighed. Why did he have to go… argh! She wasn't sure who she was angrier with. Zechs for what he did to her in his room, or herself for running away afterwards like a skittish colt. And how does he act so calm afterwards, as though nothing had happened?

"… like a kiss…"

The shriek of twisting metal blasted through the intercom as an impact shudder raked through most of the sector over the booster. Donn threw down his headphones with a cry of pain of his own and pressed them back against his ringing ears as quickly as he could.

He was greeted by a string of vicious foreign words on the other end.

"Lucy? Lu! What's going on?"

She said a word, it definitely sounded like she was swearing. "The booster… " Her voice cackled in flatly, the rest of her sentence rendered unintelligible under the hackling ambient noise.

Donn uttered a bad word of his own, scrambling for the security monitors.

"I'm going to try pull up a visual on you, Lucy. What's going on down there?" He continued yelling over the intercom, receiving nothing but metallic groans and electrical static in response.

"Turn off the booster, Donnovan," The other member of their team materialised at his elbow.

Donn stared at Zechs, dazed at his sudden appearance. "Why? It should be off. And how did you...?"

"I felt it kick in. Turn it off, now."

The cameras chose this moment to locate Noin's Mobile Suit, plastered to the side of the gravity generator housing.

"Lucy? Can you hear me? We're going to get you out of there…" He fumbled blindly at the controls on his station, sounding up the alarm.

"She can't hear you," the stoic tones of the blond pilot cut through his rising horror. "Her comms would be jammed by the EM-field. Who's the idiot that let her go out there in a Hopper?... Hello, Engineering please."

Donn twisted in his seat to find Zechs on the emergency hotline, telling the operator calmly that yes, he will hold, as though he was asking for bus times.

He fixed his eyes back on the yellow-and-black striped machine known as the Hopper, the standard suit used for general maintenance in space. Basically a cheap box on a telescopic quadrupled frame, the Hopper was mass-produced from scrap metal and sacrificed bulky components such as shield generators and heavy plating to compensate for the weight of junk alloy and preserve manoeuvrability. Four of its five arms are easily adaptable to a number of tasks through interchangeable attachments, with a fifth prehensile limb extending from directly below the main controls for precision tasks, the Suit gains its nickname from its resemblance to a frog when collapsed into storage, and apparently, while fully extended and pinned by immobilising forces. Donn paled as he realised what Zechs' eyes were narrowed on.

"How soon can we send a retrieval team?"

"Merquise," He whispered, in case she could hear. "Merquise, the hanger's operating at three percent capacity. It'll be thirty minutes before we can get anything ready to go out there… she's already venting atmosphere. She's not going to make it…"

Two men in the light blue overalls of the engineering department burst into the control room. Zechs pushed the bright red receiver he had been listening intently into at one of the men and yanked Donn away from his station with surprising strength.

The cord stretched and Donn's headphones snapped off his head, bouncing loudly off the panels, nearly ripping his ears off. By the time the pain set in, he was already in the hanger, where the panic had yet to begin.

"Get me launched, please. This Suit will do."

Sheldon Donnovan, Mechanic First-Class, partner to pilots Noin and Merquise, sputtered as the smaller man shoved him towards a Hopper sitting in the maintenance bay.

"That's crazy! We don't even know what condition it's in! If we can get down to engineering and help shut the generator down, maybe she'll be able to get to Hanger C, that's her best chance. She's got ten minutes left, probably, and it'll take that long to reach her at least…" He floundered in the feeling of helplessness as Zechs zipped himself into a spacesuit with no more agitation than a man straightening his tie to step into the office on any other routine morning.

"I can do it in three. The Suit will hold. I've only just worked on it."

"There's nothing you can do for her with the generators still on!" He protested, even as he helped Zechs pack a second spacesuit and boost him into the Hopper. It hadn't even occurred to him to ask how he knew she had gone out without one.

Zechs smirked. "Watch closely, then, Sheldon Donnovan, and I will show you a miracle."

Donn could have been knocked over by a feather.

"You're laughing? How can you be enjoying this? Someone's life is at stake!" He slammed down the seals on top of the Hopper's cockpit, shaking his head, and punched through the launch sequence. "The rumours are true," he hissed into the intercom, bitterly disappointed. "You are a cold-blooded animal."

The young pilot blinked at his mechanic, considered the explanations coming to mind, and shrugged. Noin was right, Donn wouldn't understand.

...

.

A/N:
Following up on the stolen kiss was remarkably difficult, despite all the plans I'd made prior ^^; If you've checked in the last few days, this is I think the third version posted in as many days? lol Originally I'd intended to just do the regular 30kisses thing, take a theme, take a kiss, throw it all in, and don't worry about anything. But then plot got in the way. And continuity. And symbolism. And... and...

So yea. I'm sorry this turned out more serious than I'd originally intended and if you'll bear with me, I'll try to have it all make sense as though I'd intended all this all along by the end lol