Hello Everyone! Not exactly on schedule, but I got sidetracked by lots of reading of Thor fanfiction which is a very recent obsession. Mainly with Loki. Why do I always like the Loners? Wufei, Loki. Damn.

Anyways I would like to say thank you so much for the 6 or 8 comments I recieved from the last post! I tried to work some suggestions in that were requested. So this chapter is a bit longer. It unfortunetly still has a lot of office scenes, but I hope to be out of that soon. :) Like the next chapter soon.

So thanks for the Reviews! Criticism and praise are always greatly accepted!

On with the Fic!

Ch 23

Heero stood tense next to Trowa on the tarmac of the shuttle port, eyes fixed on the awkward decent of the shuttle clamped onto the hull of the scrapped Sub-E class cruiser. The pilot was having trouble bringing the wrecked heap to ground. Using a shuttle as a towing vehicle with external clamping was an extremely rare maneuver because of the high risk involved. It was fine in space, but earth's gravity tended to make the ships fall out of the sky under these circumstances. The clamps were straining to hold onto the torn shuttle and Heero observed the emergency lines that were feeding the craft's cockpit with oxygen.

They were waiting for it to touch down before rushing in, eager to see if their friend survived. The report from the rescue shuttle said the hull was too compromised to dock with and complete an extraction while in space. The look of the craft itself seemed to confirm that as the back half had been ripped apart; the area for normal clamping and docking. The shuttle crew had clamped the cruiser and someone went external in a suit to attach the oxygen feeds to the shuttle. That had been two hours and twenty three minutes after the initial escape from the colony. Luckily the new trajectory sent him very close to earth.

It had all gone very smoothly except they had not received confirmation from inside the cockpit if Duo was inside it and alive. There had been no outgoing messages as the communication relay had been lost.

Quatre was in the sub-terrain offices with Une waiting for updates now that the three day mark had passed. Marcus said they would strike and now was the time to wait and control damages.

Trowa with the medical kit shoulder bumped Heero, who had a tool kit, a signal to start moving forward. The craft was about a foot off the ground and close to landing, might as well get a head start into the debris. The engines were powering down slowly, but they did not let the noise bother them as they started walking into the end of the sub-E class. The engine had long stopped working on this ship and luckily nothing was still overheated since the rescue crew had to enter the atmosphere slowly with the cumbersome package it had been towing. Climbing over a loose brace and into the hall they walked up the metal planks. It appeared it was the back engine that had exploded and not a decompression from the interior. That was a good sign for survival.

The walls were scraped up and missing chunks with cables exposed, but the damage was less towards the head of the shuttle. They arrived at the door to the cockpit and Trowa knocked twice. There was no response. Heero began prying out the panels to the right hand side of the door attempting to get to find the lock's manual override. Behind them a medical team was entering the broken hallway. "Do you need anything?"

Trowa looked back as Heero kept prying into the wall with a crowbar, "We may need a blowtorch." Trowa said. It'd be risky, especially if Duo's side was oxygenated and pressurized still, but if they could get the door open they'd need to melt their way through.

A runner turned to retrieve the requested equipment while the rest of the team hunkered down and waited. Heero was pulling wires quickly, bending his arm towards the door to manually release the lock. It was pressurized which was a great sign, one that Heero was glad to have his job of getting the door open be difficult for. He heard Trowa's hesitant knocking on the wall again. One, two, three, four… "Duo?" Trowa called through. "Duo if you can hear us open the locks." There should still be power routing through the emergency lines from the shuttle to the cruiser's cockpit. Heero still was ripping his way through the siding to get to the locks.

There was a hiss from the wall in front of him and he took his arm out quickly. It was depressurizing. Trowa looked over at him raised eyebrow. Heero looked at him and shook his head. It wasn't him that did it. Heero pulled his ever-present gun from his waist band and had it at the ready as the locks clanged open in the door. Trowa stepped back, pulling his own gun. They didn't necessarily know if it was Duo inside. Heero pressed forward and unlatched the door sliding it sideways into the wall and paused before raising his gun sharply.

The interior was bloody. Every wall, the floor, the ceiling - every surface had blood splatter painting the walls with a few bloody handprints smeared in. There were two bodies on the floor and Trowa rushed forward to check for life and if it was Duo, but Heero caught sight of the tail end of Duo's braid hanging off the side of the command chair that was facing towards the cockpit windows. "Command chair" Heero blurted and quickly stepped through the gooey half-dry pools of blood on the floor. Trowa turned and stood from the body he was looking at and swiveled the chair. Duo was there- eyes closed, blood smeared on cheeks and clothes drenched. Trowa felt for a pulse on Duo's neck. Heero noted a belt acting as a tourniquet on Duo's thigh. His black clothes prevented the immediate observation of injuries.

Duo's body jumped as fingers pressed to his neck and a hand shot up in a vice grip clamping around Trowa's wrist. A huge heaving intake of breathe as he struggled to get upright was the instant Heero noticed that Duo was strapped into the chair. He had seat belted himself in. Duo never did that, unless he absolutely had to. Trowa easily twisted his wrist out of Duo's grip and began speaking soothingly, "Clam yourself Duo. You're safe. It's me and Heero. You're on base. Everything is fine." Duo's eyes darted up to Trowa and he blinked and began relaxing slightly, still panting.

Heero looked around at the two bodies. Their throats had been slit and the blood coating the walls were slick, but not true to slash patterns. It clicked suddenly; the gravity controls had been knocked out. It was why Duo was strapped in and the cockpit appeared to be a scene out of a horror film. Duo had spent however long in the flight with beads of blood from his two victims floating around him and had the sense for once to strap himself in before he passed out.

Heero came close again and began to remove the belts as Trowa was checking vitals. "It's good to see you two." Duo grinned at them. "I need a patch job on the leg, but other than that think I'm good."

"Good to have you back." Trowa said. Heero nodded in agreement alongside him as Trowa hooked up a small monitor patch on Duo. "It appears that you have oxygen deprivation. We should take you to a medical facility." Duo just chose to roll his eyes at Trowa and kept breathing in deeply.

"And all I need is you to get me to Une." His voice was clear, but there was a tired tinge intertwined in his tone. Duo lifted a hand and placed it on Trowa's shoulder and he smiled at him, a calm muted smiled compared with his usual boisterous ones. "Thank you for the worry. Both of you." He locked eyes with Heero. "But I am fine and there are people in danger. Sleep when we are dead, right?"

He grinned and stood up, before falling back down immediately laughing, "My foot's asleep!" He gripped the leg that had had the belt around it.

Heero smirked and made a quiet, "Hn" of acknowledgement. "You patch him up. I will contact the others." He walked into the hall where the medics were still sitting waiting. "Two bodies need to be removed for identification and trips to the morgue. Agent Barton is handling our agent." They moved in around him to retrieve the bodies as Heero continued to the outside.

Breathing in the air once he was outside of Duo's wrecked craft, Heero paused and inhaled deeply. Duo had made it back. The escape had obviously bloody and brutal, but he was alive. Some of the tension went out of Heero's frame as he lifted his cell to his ear and heard Quatre answer on the other end.

"He's safe. We'll be down as soon as possible."

"Thank goodness. Glad to hear it Heero." The relief was audible.

"Any movements seen?"

"Nothing on the Marcus front."

Heero was silent momentarily. No move yet. It hadn't been that long past the nominated time, but still he was anxious to do something other than compile reports and map out who was networking with whom. He should be in the field working. "Duo wants to talk with Une." Short and clipped.

"He's not going to a medical facility first?" Quatre sounded slightly upset.

"No. Trowa is patching a bullet wound and we'll be down."

"Copy. Over and out."

Duo limped into the underground offices first and Une immediately yelled, "Why are you not in the medical facilities?"

Heero skirted in behind him and went to Quatre's side to see if there was any new information in the last half hour he had been waiting by the shuttle. "Relax you lady-ship. I'm fine. It's not my blood!" Duo was cheerful despite the limp and blood covering him. "It was a sticky situation so I ended up…a little sticky I guess." He poked a blood streak on his arm and grinned as it did indeed stick slightly as an example of what he was saying.

Trowa came in carrying a blanket and Preventer workout clothes that were meant for training purposes, still attempting to mop up Duo. "Your braid will be a nightmare to wash out if you don't get it cleaned soon." He warned. And Duo's face did flash mildly in concern momentarily before he shrugged it off.

"It'll be more of an excuse to be lazy and take a long and wondrous bath." But he started taking off his shirt and letting Trowa mop up the blood from his skin and find out whether it was his or someone's he had left to die on his way out. "I need to update your list of people in the organization and report what happened, yes?" Une nodded not ready to argue with the exasperating braided menace. She appeared to be slightly rattled and off white, not used to seeing Duo immediately after a brutal mission.

Heero had seen Duo many times like this. Shinigami had risen like he used to in the war and he always came back bloody. Duo was stealth as much as he liked chaos, which meant he preferred to use knives along with his bombs. It made it easy to slit throats close up and never failed to cause panic among those he was attacking. A silent knife wielding killer close enough to slit someone's throat with minimal struggle and blood splattered everywhere. There was many a soldier on Oz bases that could not hold up to the panic of seeing colleagues on the floor and not knowing where the killer was. Though the cockpit was an extreme example from the zero-g conditions, it was a typical dismantling.

Duo had not intended to leave anyone he met alive. Heero knew that as soon as he heard him speaking on the communicator.

Currently Duo was listening to the updates of what had been happening for the last couple of days. Dropping his pants when Trowa asked, not really caring who else was in the room as he grabbed the blanket from Trowa and wrapped himself in it. Trowa continued cleaning Duo up as he listened to Quatre's update.

Finally it was Duo's turn to say what had happened, "Well you sent me to go fully in. So as you know I went in with Eckpo. I had to use my reputation with the Sweepers to get involved which was unexpected. For some reason they seem to be hesitant to take new recruits. Once I was there I began running the trade routes, but they were not letting me move up and I was there for a while…they even had me work with Donovan's runs." Duo had a flash of anger come on his face before continuing, "So it's confirmed that Donovan and Eckpo are working together." This they had figured and it was good to have full confirmation of the facts. "But they appear to be keeping everything tight and organized. Rookies were tried out multiple times before they were either killed or promoted to new routes."

Duo got an unsettled look in his eyes and stared at nothing for a moment. An unsettling quiet really, before he continued. "But then everyone started acting funny. About five days before today. The crew started being quiet around me. They would still try to be friendly, but there was tightness to it. And the man called me into his office today. You heard most of what was happening. I found records in his office that Marcus was the one that tipped them off. There was a list. It was a list that had multiple agents' names on it. Mine was at the top. I killed sixteen men on the way out; four more are injured and unconfirmed in the blasts. I took two on board for interrogation." He grinned darkly to himself, "Unfortunately with the explosion of one of my engines I had to kill one immediately with the failing life support, which is why I know that the sources is definitely Marcus through the interesting life or death interrogation of, 'you may live if you tell me as much as you know'. And I also know that no one in Donovan's group is at risk. Marcus and Donovan are not working together.

"Then I could not make good on the 'you might live' because I had to kill the other before oxygen levels dropped too much further. And you picked me up. Good work Une! Glad you could pick me up."

Duo frowned as Trowa started stitching up another cut in his shoulder that he had not noticed, probably from the shuttle escape. "Can you identify the men that you dispatched?" Quatre asked, shifting over to the pile of rap sheets under Eckpo's group to bring them for Duo.

"Of course!" Duo said. "I was hanging out with them for a while." He looked over at Une and sadly shook his head. "You may need to bring me Donovan's gang sheets as well. I tool out one or two that were questionable. There was no news of Wufei. I checked with people while I was there."

Mackenzie burst in through the door. "Commander, a list was emailed to us." She was holding pages in her hand and looked somber.

"A list of what?" She said.

"A list of our undercover agents that are in Marcus's and Eckpo's group along with a few other groups."

"Who emailed it to us?"

"Unknown. But we think its Marcus." Lady Une was looking concerned and about to open her mouth to ask, when Mackenzie interrupted, "It's titled 'A list of the dead'."

"How many?"

"There are seventy four names on the list."

Duo turned, "I thought you sent messages out to you agents."

"We did. But a day and a half ago just to be on guard. Not to leave their posts. When you were cleaning house we put out an immediate evac email to those in Marcus's and Eckpo's groups."

"But the men, they worked so hard for you. For this." Duo looked shocked and began getting angry. "You knew and still risked them. You should have told them to leave immediately. How could you leave them like that?"

Quatre began in a bland tone stating, "They all know the risks of being an undercover agent, Duo. You know that."

"That may be true, but do you or she know the things we do for this organization?" Duo shouted back, "You owe those agents to try and get them out and now they're dead!" He stood up and was shaking with anger and towering with menace in his eyes despite being adorned in a blanket. "No wonder we haven't heard from Wufei! He'd have to be insane to come back here!"

Une fell back onto her commander training with a stern voice ordering, "Duo, sit and calm down!"

"What?!" Violet eyes spit venom, followed by the harsh deadly whispered "Calm down and relax?... I worked for Donovan to get intel you psychotic bitch, so I decline to calm down." He started to walk towards the door when he twitched rapidly away from Trowa's attempt to catch his arm and stop him. He glared at him and continued his rapid limping exit, "And if any of you follow me, I'll rip your throats out."

TBC...

Well I guess I ended on kind of a darker note there... That was kind of unexpected by me honestly. Don't know what my plot bunnies were thinking.

Reviews are ever so helpful! And encourage writing! I swear!

Ciao,

Silverserpent