On with the fic...

Ch 20

The crowd was getting more restless as they waited for the governor's speech. It was a similar to the buzzing of several hives of angry bees. Signs of protest against the recent attempts to appease the locals on colony four of the L2 district were waving in time with chants. Their economy was tanking, many were starving as supply ships had not yet made it through the raids by pirates trying to pull the supplies. The Preventers were now conducting armed escorts through the particularly bad area on ships that were containing extremely valuable supplies, while most of the others were left to fend for themselves. The cost was just too high.

There had been talk of shutting down the colony entirely until they had the resources to properly sustain the population instead of letting plague and starvation run rampant. But there were of course hundreds of factors that made this impractical.

If they were to abandon the colony entirely, then it would undoubtedly be stripped for parts and scrap metal, by the same raiders and rings that were already cutting off the supply lines. Another possible problem would be that instead of stripping it for parts, it could be taken over for use as a base of operations for countless criminal networks and it would be very difficult to extricate them afterwards. It would take a full frontal scaled assault on a colony. That would only give violent flashbacks to the public about the wars they had just suffered through not long ago.

Abandoning it was not a good plan. Especially considering it would be hard to get the colonists on this particular colony to participate anyways. It didn't seem to matter that the colony was falling apart at the seams with the drug trafficking, lack of supplies, and no hope for economic rehabilitation that would be necessary to get the colony up and running. The colonists were stubborn like Duo and they called this colony, the furthest one out from earth other than the mars terraforming domes, home. They were not about to be moved by some government branch that was telling them they had to.

And now Heero was here on a concrete building looking down at the agitated masses. There had been no fighting yet today, but that was not what Heero was here to do. He scanned the crowd and spotted Trowa across the plaza in the crowd. He was searching slowly for their target.

Heero scanned the crowd further. Neither of them was on crowd control or the security detail for the governor today. They were looking for two targets from Eckpo's group which had been growing since the jailbreak in Detroit. Wufei's jail, Heero's brain automatically interjected.

Duo had been deep in the connections had decided to go with the drug running aspect, since he was more familiar with it and was therefore entrenched in the knowledge for Eckpo's group from the jail. While gun running was more of a priority, Duo did not bother trying to infiltrate there, because Marcus would recognize him instantly and he would either not advance further in the ranks or he would be dead. Most likely the latter.

Either way Duo's investigation had helped to open up a brand new set of problems for the Preventers. Apparently Eckpo and Donovan decided to work together since their time in jail. The heads were trading tips and trade routes for smuggling.

The two people that Heero and Trowa were here today to find were small fry, one from each group. This colony was too high of an asset to let sit in peace so the bosses had ordered the group to agitate the crowd into a full blown riot. If the government were to lose control that would keep their drug trafficking and human trafficking route well established with possible increases their trade levels.

And the drug trade and sex trade were definitely thriving on this colony. No matter where you went in the ESUN, both decimated and pristine rebuilt areas, those two businesses always seemed to be thriving. Heero spotted the first target close to the podium. He grabbed the throat microphone that was linked to Trowa's ear piece. "Up front off center left side of podium. Echo target acquired."

Heero watched as Trowa's weaving trajectory changed and he slowly started heading to the front of the crowd. Heero looked him over. The bruise had healed over completely and his profile showed none of the reconstructed surgery that he had done. It had taken quite a lot of time to heal. Too much time had passed since then.

Good, Trowa would be heading forward to collar that one. Heero began scanning the middle and back area of the crowd. They would split up to work the crowd better. Heero was scanning as the music came on over the noise of the crowd. The governor would be making his grand entrance soon. Looking as fast as he could, Heero spotted a tall someone near the back of the crowd who seemed to be standing quite still compared to the rest.

Heero began moving along the top of the roof trying to get a better view of the man. He could not move without confirmation. The speaker volume rose and the chanting started getting louder. The crowd moving more and Heero watched as the local forces assigned to crowd control began tensing up. The first man in the governor's task force stepped up to survey the crowd and Heero saw his target's profile. Heero moved to the side of the building and began scaling his way down using the external pipes. When he hit ground he whispered into his microphone, "Delta target acquired. Moving to intercept."

He weaved in and found the man standing quietly still he seemed to be waiting for something. The governor took this minute to step out onto the podium and Heero touched his throat mic. It would sound like a pop to Trowa. A signal.

Heero stepped forward wrenched the man's hand back and cuffed it and grabbed the man's other hand and place it into the other cuff, before he could react. He began forcing the man out of the crowd as smoothly as possible. It was difficult considering he was thrashing quite a bit and yelling, "Illegal arrest! Let me go! You have no warrant!" and trying to attract the crowd's attention. Many people stared and Heero flashed his Preventer badge at them, but most were distracted, by the presence of the governor and his attempts to calm the crowd with words.

Heero didn't bother waiting and took the man to a van that they had parked and ready. Trowa would be along shortly with his package. He forced the man to sit down in the van and restrained him with the chains intended for prisoner transport.

Trowa arrived shortly after and escorted his prisoner into the van. They slammed the door on the two identified criminals and leaned against the van quietly. Trowa spoke softly stating, "Well that went a lot smoother then the last time."

Heero had to agree. The last time they were sent into a possible riot situation to apprehend people. One got away and Heero had to take out some civilians who had taken it upon themselves to try and free Heero's target. There had been gun fire in the end, but that was because of the riot. Several buildings had caught fire. All that happened at a colony in L3 district and that was supposed to be one of the calmer colony groups. They hadn't even had their supply routes cut off. Heero ended up with a gash in the scalp, from a pipe. He would have ended up with more serious injuries if it had not been for Trowa stepping and disarming the civilian.

The security force would be having problems today. It's not like L2 would ever be a walk in the park.

They moved to the van and began driving to the shuttle port where they had a shuttle waiting for them to transport their two new prisoners. Heero was watching the buildings go by as Trowa drove and he didn't feel that mission successful adrenaline buzz that he got normally. True it was a mission and all missions were important in some way, but these two that they had apprehended were in the lower levels of the organization. They might be able to give them new information on the quickly organizing rings that were being re-established, but Heero just didn't feel they were vital to the organization.

Perhaps he really was tired and run down. Trowa had made a joke half way through his facial recovery that at least he still looked better then Heero and perhaps there was truth to that.

Heero still hadn't been sleeping much and there was still no sign of Wufei or word from Wufei. It had been seven weeks since the escape and not a word. Heero was starting to form the suspicion that Wufei indeed was not going to contact him or any of the other pilots. Where ever he had gone, he appeared to want to be left alone.

Another half of the frustration Heero attributed was that Duo seemed unable to deposit any larger information then minor players within these organizations. None of the target they had acquired knew much and they were not even people in the initial break out. Duo was definitely entrenched in Eckpo's group, but he didn't seem able to alert them to any big moves.

And another concerning factor, was the group that Marcus ran was suspiciously quiet. There were no tags or trails that would lead to them in any way. But knowing his past experience with Marcus, that man was not someone who would sit around to do nothing. He must have been planning something, but if he was it did not seem to be linked to Eckpo or Donovan's crew. At least not that Duo had sent yet. It was a good sign for Duo's survival, but a bad sign for the Preventer's intelligence network.

They pulled into the shuttle port and Heero flashed his badge at port's crew who allowed them by. Heero pulled open the back and yanked the two out. They were still struggling, but Heero tightened his grip, which caused one of them to yelp and he easily deposited them into the onboard holding cell and he settled into the pilot's seat ready for take-off. He started up the thrusters and eased out of the bay and plotted in a course for Berlin.

Une had since moved her base of operations back to Europe since there was no longer any new information to be pulled from the jail break. They were bringing these two targets in for questioning and processing.

Once the route was plugged in, Heero accessed the network and sent a message to confirm a mission successful. Trowa picked up an inbound transmission and frowned. They opened a secured channel for the message and an image of Quatre's face appeared on the screen. "Good work you two" his face was tight and not at all the calm business like Quatre that was normally projected. "Une and I were able to get the video footage released for Wufei's trial."

Heero felt himself tense up. They had tried for months to get the data. By law all trials had to be documented, even if they were closed trials. If it wasn't the verdict would be overturned and the defendant would walk free. Heero had tried to track down where the footage would be but was unable to do so.

Quatre looked grim, "I'll wait to brief you on the outcomes of this information." He shook his head and stated plainly, "Une is not pleased with this recent development."

Trowa spoke up, "That bad?"

"You'll see for yourself soon enough. I am not happy with this at all. See you soon." The connection went silent as Quatre had disconnected the screen at the other end. Heero looked over at Trowa with an eyebrow quirked.

He shrugged back. It was pointless to speculate they both knew. So with the ship headed earth side and a meeting to attend upon arrival Heero looked over at Trowa to decide who would get to sleep first.

Trowa nodded at him. Heero knew that he needed to sleep and he was contemplating the pills Sally had given him. But he felt that he was still operational. There was no need to get those out. He moved back to the bunk area of the shuttle and turned out the overhead lights as he lay down closing the curtain to the space that opened into the hallway. There wasn't enough room on board for separate rooms. It wasn't like the ship they were on was Peacemillion. Rare to have ships that big unless it was a cruiser class shuttle or a cargo shuttle.

He lay back on the foam mattress and sighed a little. He did not know if he would be able to sleep; he hadn't been able to lately anyways. All the reports from Une had been status updates with no information pertinent to finding Wufei. And there had been no contact on his email from Wufei. Duo had been right. Wufei did not want to be found. And now Duo was running silent as well… he had been for two weeks, which wasn't uncommon. But it wasn't exactly good news either.

He twitched and rolled on his side. Almost eleven months of constant searching for Wufei to tell him he was wrong and it turned out Wufei didn't even want to be near enough to hear it regardless. Heero let out a breath and tried to relax a little. Trowa was a silent presence in the adjacent cockpit, one that steadied him and grounded him a little.

Trowa's reaction to this appeared to be abnormal as far as Heero could deduce. He seemed to have taken his beating well and refused to speak of finding Wufei. Not that he didn't want to it just seemed that he believed they were going to be finding him when they were meant to find him. Some sort of fate. Heero shook his head to clear his thought once more. It was his turn to sleep. He focused on the vibration of the shuttles hulls and the texture of the scratchy fabric over the foam that was misshapen, and the stale smell of the recycled air.

It relaxed him slowly and Heero felt his eyelids closing on their own. Transport shuttles always did have a soothing quality to them reminded him of Wing's cockpit in the powered down mode. He missed how simple the war days were sometimes, when it was easy and they were all allies.

TBC

Sorry for the wait...

I will try to be better.

-Silverserpent