Part 27 - Remove junk files
~AC 197, March 17th, Outer Rim of the L4 Cluster, Mining Satellite BK-137, 6:35am~
The cameras were showing the same thing as usual, the blackness of space punctuated by stars. The only things that the radars picked up were meteors and satellites. No alarm sounded as the image displayed by the control room screens rippled and froze for less than a second. The techs never noticed it. They couldn't know that the place they were in would be destroyed in less than two hours.
"The hyperjammers are on," Duo said. "They can't see us. I'll begin the descent while Heero isolates the maintenance hangar from the rest of the system and opens the door."
Sally frowned.
"Jammers? Are they…"
"The same technology that was on Deathscythe, yeah."
"What about the radars?"
Duo stood up with a grin.
"Simple," he said. "This," he banged on the shuttle wall, "is not neo-titanium."
"I should have known," Sally answered, smiling too. "But processing Gundanium for any other use than civilian is strictly forbidden by the Anti-militarization Act. And this is not a civilian shuttle."
"Howard and his guys are Sweepers. They do not consider themselves under the authority of the ESUN."
"And you serve as a liaison between Preventer and the Sweepers, am I right?"
Duo shrugged.
"Une does a good job. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a shuttle to pilot."
Ten minutes later, the shuttle was sitting in the middle of the dark maintenance hangar. From his laptop, Heero was navigating in the system, checking the displays of cameras.
"The back-up system is completely shut off from the satellite mainframe," he eventually said.
Trowa carried Quatre to one of the bunks in the back of the shuttle, while Duo powered the shuttle down.
"You and Dr Carter are staying here with Quatre," Wufei said to Iria once they were all in the main compartment again. "We will stay in radio contact with you, and you will be able to follow us on the screen."
"Without Quatre, there's only five of us," Heero pointed out. "One of us won't have back-up."
"I'll go alone," Wufei said. "Finding and deactivating life support and intern communications doesn't take two people. Sally, you'll go with Trowa to locate our targets."
Sally didn't protest. Wufei was the only one who wouldn't require any kind of medical attention. It was his operation. It fell on him to take that kind of decisions.
"Iria," Wufei kept on, "Heero will show you how to activate the program. You will start it in ten minutes. Any questions?"
There weren't any.
"If all goes well, we'll be back in an hour with a prisoner. If things go wrong, prepare for an emergency takeoff. This operation starts now. I want to see you all in one piece at the end of it, agents. Watch your hide."
Once they were left alone with Quatre, the first thing Iria and Carter did was check his vitals. He was still soundly sleeping.
"His heartbeat is a bit too slow," Carter said.
Iria made a face.
"It is not surprising if Trowa used one of Sally's sedatives. It takes a lot to knock one of them down, and she has some really powerful stuff."
"Is he going to be okay?"
"He will sleep it off. Now… now we only have to wait. And hope that everything will go as planned."
"What are you going to do with… Selim?" Carter asked apprehensively.
"If you are asking me this question, you are assuming that he will still be alive two hours from now. And no matter how much I dislike saying it, I doubt it will be the case."
"Which way?" Duo asked, crouching against the wall.
"Technically, it should be straight ahead, but…"
Duo sighed.
"Let's just go this way and take a right as soon as we can. And if we keep running into walls, then we'll just…"
He stopped talking abruptly.
"How many?" Heero asked in a whisper.
"Eight with a scout ahead. They'll be on us in less than a minute."
Heero raised an eyebrow, the only noticeable sign that he was surprised. Eight guards for a simple security patrol was a bit too much. Even Oz had never taken as many precautions.
"We can't go back and try to find another way," he said, extracting a small, black device from the back pack he was carrying and sticking it on the wall next to the floor. "We don't have time."
Duo put his gun back in his waist holster.
"Let's go, then. I'd like to be out of here when the place is blown to hell."
The guards certainly weren't expecting to meet anyone in that corridor. It took them two seconds at the very least before they realized that the two teenagers in the black spacesuits should not be there and were therefore intruders. They raised their weapons, deploying themselves so as to completely block the way.
'Trained soldiers,' Heero thought immediately. 'Maybe ex-Oz or Alliance, or even White Fang.'
"Who are you?"
Duo kept walking, Heero on his heels. The man leading the squad was obviously not expecting this either.
"Don't move or I'll shoot!"
Duo stopped a few meters away from the man, smirking.
"Oh yeah? You and what army?"
The squad had begun to regroup around their leader, all of their weapons trained on Duo. The pilot shook his head.
"Would you mind pointing those things somewhere else? They're dangerous. You might hurt someone."
As if obeying Duo's words, the squad leader's arm suddenly started to shake and then to bend, slowly. He tried to resist, his eyes gradually widening, until the gun he was carrying came to rest under his own chin, his finger still on the trigger. He began to sweat, and the shivers in his arm spread to his whole body. The guards had taken a few steps away from him, weapons all but forgotten. Only one of them maintained enough of a composure to jump to the nearest control panel.
"Your alarm system has been deactivated," Heero said.
The man stopped dead.
"Good," Duo said. "I suggest that you don't move and listen to me very carefully. In exactly one hour and fifty-two minutes, this satellite will be destroyed by fifty explosive charges that will reduce it to tiny little pieces. If you do not wish to go with it, you know where the escape pods are. Good luck."
"Who… who are you?" the squad leader asked, his breathing heavy and labored.
"You don't need to know," Duo said grimly.
He walked up to the man until he was almost face to face with him.
"Duo…" Heero began, but Duo held out his hand.
"I know," he said.
"You… you… won't get… out of it alive…"
"Look who's talking."
Heero wouldn't have been able to say exactly what triggered the following events but it was probably the loud clatter of the machine gun falling on the floor as one of the guards let go of it and started running down the corridor.
The squad leader's head exploded.
"Now you can move," Duo said. "Run."
'Seven… no, eight men.'
Wufei was leaning against a metal wall, his eyes closed, his fingers splayed on the cool surface behind his back.
'They are not exactly in my way, but…'
He opened his eyes and checked his watch. Four more minutes until Iria activated the program. He knelt down and extracted one of the black explosive charges that Heero had given to all of them and pressed it against the wall.
His eyes lost focus for a moment. His breathing rate slowed down, as well as his heartbeat.
The guards took aim as soon as Wufei stepped out of the shadows.
"Freeze!"
Wufei ignored the command.
"If you do not wish to die, you might want to listen to what I have to say, gentlemen. This satellite has been rigged and will explode in…" he stopped long enough to look at his watch "one hour and fifty-two minutes. I believe that you are all knowledgeable about standard evacuation procedures. Now might be a good time to demonstrate just how much."
"Get him!"
They opened fire on him all at once. Wufei sighed. Someone was bound to hear that racket.
He didn't even wince when a bullet embedded itself deep into his right arm. Blood spurted out and the leader of the group took it as the sign that they had won. He held his hand up and his men stopped shooting.
"I don't know how you managed to get in here, but now you're going to be nice and follow us if you don't want us to hurt you more."
Wufei snorted. The man frowned, gun trained on the intruder.
"Come closer and keep your hands where I can see them!"
Wufei used his left hand to apply pressure on his wound. He took a step forward, and stopped.
"Come on!" the man said impatiently.
Wufei's fingers dug into his wound with a revolting squishing sound, and the eight men cringed and blanched.
"What do you think you're doing?!"
Wufei's eyes did not leave the leader's as he searched and probed under his own skin until he found the bullet. He pulled it out and let it fall from his bloodied fingers. It fell on the floor with a resounding clanging sound.
"Are you done? Is it my turn now?" he said, flexing his shoulder and ignoring the sensation of bones and muscles mending themselves at inhuman speed.
It actually was a very weird sensation. It had been difficult to get accustomed to it at first. It itched and stung and burned at the same time, and the scarring process itself, which was unpleasant enough in normal circumstances, was so rushed that it sometimes fell like the injured parts were stretched to their limits as they reconstructed themselves. It was even more unpleasant when blood was involved. Wufei had learnt soon enough that he couldn't re-create the damaged cells, just accelerate their healing by producing new ones. It meant that his blood had to go through the whole coagulation process in a matter of seconds. Calling it unpleasant was the greatest understatement ever.
The guards were petrified.
"You… you… You're not… human!"
Wufei shrugged and took his sword out of the scabbard he had been carrying on his back.
"Maybe not," he admitted, and he closed his eyes.
He could see them, burning flames against the dull background of the cool walls. He could hear the mad beat of their hearts pumping blood as fast as possible.
"Who wants to go first?" he asked, his voice even.
One of the men dropped his weapon and started to run in the opposite direction, screaming.
"Good choice," Wufei commented as he attacked.
No one was paying any attention to Neelah. No one ever did, really. Not that she noticed. All that mattered to her was that Selim would say nice things and praise her whenever she did something well, and so she wanted to do well a lot so that he'd praise her even more. When she did something bad, the man in white hurt her. Not for very long, but enough that she'd cringe when she passed him by. Most of the time, she pretended she didn't see him. She imagined he was a wall. Or a piece of furniture. Or one of the blinking consoles that were scattered everywhere here. And she imagined her brother in the chair, and she was connecting him to the man in white who was a computer, really. And her brother screamed and begged, but she didn't listen. This was for his own good. That's what Selim said too, whenever she cried and she didn't know why.
"Something's coming our way…" she whispered, and as usual no one listened to her. "They're coming, coming, coming…"
No one paid attention to her when she got up and walked out of the room.
When Trowa stopped for what had to be the fortieth time and glanced back at Sally as if to ask if she was okay, the blond woman snapped.
"Do I need to bang your head on the wall to remind you that I was a major in the Alliance army or do you think you can remember by yourself, Barton?!"
Trowa blinked, as if unsure of whether she would carry out her threat, but apparently decided to play things on the safe side and nodded once.
"Sorry," he said with a shrug.
"I know I'm not as skilled as your usual partners, but I can take care of myself, so get a move on!"
Trowa didn't say anything, but his speed gradually increased as they scouted the next corridors. Sally admitted to herself that yes, she had difficulties to keep up with him, but she managed, and that was all that mattered. They needed to be out of the place when it would explode, after all.
They carefully avoided human presence, going around whenever there was hint of someone crossing their way and evading direct confrontations as much as possible. It was doubtful that Heero and Duo would make it to the control room undetected, no matter how good they were, and the same went for Wufei, heading for life support and com. But scouring the satellite for the suspects actually required going in circles as stealthily as possible.
"Stop."
The soft command startled Sally and she almost bumped into Trowa's back. She had to steady herself on the wall.
The room into which the corridor led was a sealed offloading bay, but there wasn't any kind of shuttle in it. Just rows and rows of computers, and about ten people in white lab coats going from one to another and typing commands and talking to each other so softly that Sally couldn't catch anything.
"What do we do now? We have to go through!" she whispered.
"I know," Trowa said, and he stopped blinking.
Sally covered her mouth with her hand to stifle a gasp. Trowa's eyes were sweeping the bay, right and left, up and down, so fast that it looked like they were vibrating. Sally held back a nervous laugh, of the kind that gets out because the thing in front of you is too grotesque for your mind to process it.
Trowa didn't notice. It felt like ages before his eyes closed again, only for a fraction of second.
"You stay here. I'll be done soon."
Sally didn't even have time to hold him back.
"Trowa!"
She cursed under her breath and did her best to hide herself in the small corner between the wall and the door while trying to keep an eye on him. He was good, she granted him that, but not that good. The space suit made it kind of obvious that he wasn't a part of the regular staff, after all. She only stayed where she was because she knew that whatever he would be doing next, she'd be in his way. And if there was one thing she had learnt in those last two years, it was that one should never be in the way of a Gundam pilot unless one wanted to be very dead, very quickly.
She gave a start as the first lab attendant noticed Trowa and greeted him as if he had every right to be here. Trowa nodded in answer, and graciously signed the piece of paper that was shoved under his nose. Then he knocked the guy out with a swift blow to the back of the neck, and caught him just before he fell, laying him down on the floor with care.
"What the hell…"
She could only stare as Trowa made his way through the little crowd, taking the men out one after the others without anyone paying attention to what he was doing or the fact that he wasn't even supposed to be here.
She almost jumped out of her skin when he turned around and fell back on her ass.
'That's not…'
The person looking at her was Trowa and he was not. Or more exactly, she knew it was Trowa, but that was not what her eyes told her. There was a physical resemblance, the same lithe build and tall stature, and the same startlingly green eyes, but the long white lab coat covering a neat tidy suit and the shorter hair shouldn't have been there.
And then, Trowa blinked. Sally blinked too, and it was just Trowa standing there in his black space suit.
She swallowed and rubbed her eyes. Trowa remained at a reasonable distance, which was probably for the best, because Sally needed to gather her brains into a semblance of functioning unit right now.
"What the hell was that?"
She had not meant to say it that way, but it summed up her thoughts quite effectively.
"I think you know what it was."
"Why… why didn't they… they weren't seeing you, were they? I mean they were seeing you, but not really you…"
Trowa shrugged once more. Sally was beginning to hate that shrug.
"You'd be surprised at the number of things that human beings can overlook when they don't want to see."
"Wait a minute. Are you telling me that the reason why they didn't notice you weren't one of them was because they didn't want to?"
This time, Trowa smiled. It was even more exasperating than the shrug, Sally thought.
"Well, they needed some help from little old me, but basically, yes. They are convinced that the satellite is so well guarded that no intruders can come in. Therefore I cannot be an intruder. So it means that I have a legitimate reason to be here, so there is no reason to panic or think differently. I'm just giving a hint. They constructed the image they saw themselves."
Trowa could probably see the wheels turning in her head, but Sally didn't care. When she finally arrived to some kind of logical conclusion, she smiled back at him.
"Then I guess Une really didn't stand a chance, heh?"
She took his hand without hesitation when he held it out to help her to her feet.
Heero and Duo knew that it was only a matter of time before one of the guys that they had scared shitless recovered enough to sound the alarm in person, since the normal option of pushing a button was out. Thankfully, finding the control room didn't take them much more time. Emptying the control room took even less time, after the first person was carried out by legs that didn't answer to his own commands.
They were in the middle of rigging the computer mainframe when Duo felt the first stab of pain. He ignored it at first, but it came back, insistent. He frowned and wiped the sweat off his brow, gritting his teeth. Heero didn't notice anything until he heard a soft moan and turned around to see Duo clutching his head, fingers digging into his hair.
"Duo?"
"Damn it, not now!" Duo hissed.
When he looked in Heero's direction, the Japanese couldn't miss his dilated pupils and the paleness of his skin.
"I guess Murphy decided to make me pay for all the times I flipped him the bird…"
Duo's breath was too shallow.
"Sit down on the floor and put your head between your knees. I'll finish here and we'll contact Iria and the others to let them know we're done."
"Didn't mean to go all dead weight on you, partner…"
Heero rolled his eyes.
"Shut up and do what I tell you for once. We only have one minute left before Iria activates the program. I need to change the codes on the inner doors and isolate the emergency issues."
"Cat's going to kill us," Duo mumbled from the floor as he slowly sat down to do as he was instructed.
"Probably," Heero said.
"Maybe he'll do it quick and we won't feel the pain."
Heero snorted.
Iria rushed to the laptop when the little green light indicating an incoming transmission blinked. Carter had to jump out of her way.
"Base in!"
"05 in. All clear. All units come in."
"01 and 02 all clear," Heero's voice answered.
"Water all clear."
"03 all clear. Targets not located. Moving to cockpit."
"Base, start operation. Alarm might be sounded soon. Over and out," Wufei said, and silence followed as they all disconnected their radios.
Iria slumped back in her seat in front of the laptop, but her hand did not shake when she pressed the enter key.
"I hope they are alright," she whispered, and she wiped the sweat of her brow.
Carter frowned.
"Why wouldn't they be?"
Iria made a face.
"Duo didn't say anything. Something happened that they don't want to talk about on the radio."
"What is going on?"
Unfortunately for Selim, none of the techs in the cockpit had an answer for him. They were all frantically typing on their keyboards to try and unfreeze the screens of their consoles, or, in some cases, to get rid of the static.
"We've lost radio contact with the patrol units!"
"I can't activate the emergency generator! No reading on the status of the satellite!"
"No feedback from life support!"
The frazzled guard who came into the cockpit at that very moment would have made a dramatic entrance and given an answer if not for the screens, who decided to crackle exactly at the same time before displaying the image of a blond woman whose resemblance to Neelah was almost frightening.
"Good morning, ladies and gentlemen."
"Where is Neelah?" Selim snapped.
He looked around, but she was nowhere to be found. He glared at the man in the white lab coat, who was standing a bit away from the agitation and just shrugged
"I am the new CEO of Winner Enterprises, Iria Winner. I have some good news, and some bad news. The bad news: you are on private property without permission, you have sold dangerous chemical products on the black market under the Winner name, and you have accessed a private database without permission. As such, you are guilty of breaking and entering, loitering, grand larceny and identity theft as stated by article twenty-four of the Digital Crime Act. The good news: if you don't wish to face charges, this satellite will be detonated in exactly one hour and fifty minutes. Have a nice day."
The screens died all at the same time and repelled any attempt to be switched on again.
"Find Neelah!" Selim bellowed.
The first thing that Quatre felt as he gradually woke up was how parched his mouth was. He didn't open his eyes, watchful for any kind of sound that could indicate he wasn't alone.
/virus detected/
/can't proceed to elimination/
/waiting for feedback from mainframe/
There was no mistaking the heaviness of his body or the dizziness.
/we've been drugged/
Zero had awoken too, like it always did when he wasn't in complete control. God only knew why some people insisted of pumping him full of drugs when they captured him. He had a lower tolerance to them than the other Gundam pilots. He had only had two years to build up his immunity, and H had covered the basics and the products that were most likely to be used during interrogation. He had developed a good resistance to most of those, as well as for drugs more commonly used in medicine but that could be toxic if overdosed.
There were still things that could knock him out, but only a few people knew about those, including Sally, who had spent a large part of the last year devising a sedative that would have the desired effect on the pilots' bodies without too many side effects. But Sally wouldn't have…
/trowa/
/estimated time of recovery: thirty minutes/
/we don't have thirty minutes/
/recalculating parameters/
Quatre could feel himself coming back. Zero was still there, running in the background. He had to keep it in check, and not give it free rein. Zero would prey on any weakness if it thought it might be in danger.
/time of recovery cannot be shortened. Mainframe will purge itself of the virus in due time/
/nevermind/
Trowa had drugged him and left him behind.
'I'm going to kill him.'
Zero remained silent this time. But there was another noise, very subtle, of cloth rubbing against something solid, and this time Quatre was certain that he wasn't alone.
'Tricky, but possible.'
He was working on the assumption that he was still in the shuttle. It was unlikely that he was elsewhere if it was indeed Trowa who had orchestrated this. But since he was lying down on something, he wasn't in the main compartment anymore. The cabin in the back, then.
His ability reached out tentatively, just enough to know that his sister was in the cockpit and was feeling increasingly nervous, and that Dr Carter still didn't know what exactly he was doing here and hoped that Quatre wouldn't wake up too soon.
He was going to be disappointed, but Quatre couldn't see another way, and each minute would make it more difficult for him to escape.
Things happened so fast that Carter didn't have the time to be afraid. One moment, Quatre was sleeping peacefully, his pulse still sluggish enough to indicate that he would stay unconscious a while longer. The next, he was standing in front of Carter and looking at him with sorrowful eyes.
"I am very, very sorry, Dr Carter."