Crossover Fan Fiction / Gundam SEED Fan Fiction / Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Crossing Barriers ❯ Gathering ( Chapter 2 )

Crossing Barriers

 

Gundam Wing and Gundam Seed are the sole property of their creators and distributing studios. I have no financial interest in either series. Nor am I receiving any financial gain from this fan fiction work. I do however own all plot elements not part of the original and all self-created characters. Thank you. Enjoy.

 

Special note: Yaoi (homosexual pairings) is a plot element of this story. There will be NO explicit material but there will be sections where it is reasonably clear that sex is happening or has happened.

 

Beta Reader: T'Amara

 

 

Gathering

 

 

It had been a damn good trip! He looked at the last of the scavenged Taurus mobile dolls Howard was unloading into the yard with pride. This time, he'd been right about where to look.

 

“Oh, quit grinnin' like you swallowed a canary!” Howard ordered.

 

“Hey! Was I right or was I right this time eh?” Duo crowed.

 

The old man gave him a sour look. The chestnut haired ex-pilot had been insufferable from the moment they'd found the cluster of eighteen mobile dolls drifting just where he'd said they should be. They ranged from not to only moderately damaged too, making them valuable salvage indeed. Duo's share was going to be a very nice bit of change; he was already telling anyone who'd listen how he intended to spend it.

 

“You were right.” Howard agreed, hoping to get rid of his too-eager help for a bit. “Now, will you just go on in and tell Hilde the good news? The market for parts off these suits has been booming for months, it'll end eventually. We need to know what to strip off first. I don't want to have a yard full of wrecked mobile suits the day the market goes bust.”

 

“Sure!”

 

Wonder of the ages! It worked! The old Sweeper turned his full attention to arranging their newest finds so they could be quickly disassembled for their currently precious parts.

 

Duo Maxwell let himself in the back door of the main shop building. The store occupied only about the front fifth of the space while the rest held their offices and the warehouse for the most expensive of the smaller parts. He checked the offices but Hilde wasn't in either of them. As he approached the door to the store, he heard voices, one of them unmistakably hers. He intended to just walk out and join the sales pitch until he heard the visitor ask about gundanium.

 

“Nope,” Hilde answered, “we haven't recovered any of that. Far as I know, the only things build out of it were the Gundams and they were all wrecked at various places down on Earth. I've never heard there was any out here to scavenge. Believe me, we'd grab it if we found it!”

 

“I understood there was a rather generous supply shipped to a lunar factory.” The stranger remarked.

 

“Oh, that, yes. They built more Gundams out of it. Those were destroyed down on the planet too from what I've heard.” Duo grinned as she lied so smoothly he heard nothing of it at all in her voice. “The Preventers went through that place right after the war and stripped it back to the rock walls. The Sweepers still drop by from time to time hoping to find something that was missed but if they've ever turned up any gundanium, they didn't brag about it or bring it to me for resale.”

 

“I see. Well, here, take my card. I am interested in any more complete sets of thrusters you might obtain and if you ever should locate any gundanium, I would meet and exceed any other bid you might get.”

 

“Be glad to. My partner is out right now following up a story about some mobile dolls. We may have more thrusters for you before too long.”

 

“Mobile doll thrusters are very acceptable. I look forward to hearing from you.”

 

Duo leaned forward just far enough to get one eye around the doorway. All he saw though was a rather tall, fairly thin man dressed too well for the neighborhood walking out the door. He did make note that the man had a slight tendency to favor his left leg and that he had hair so black it didn't look real.

 

He turned and gave a thoughtful look at a half dozen very small crates on a nearby bottom shelf. They were dust covered and if you bothered to wipe off the label it would tell you the contents were duralloy nuts and washers. What was really in them was strip ingots made from the few pieces of armor off various Gundams he'd found and stashed after the war. After all, he'd known where in space to look for more of it than any other salver out here.

 

So someone wanted to buy gundanium. Why? Not that there weren't a billion and one uses for the stuff, but the idea that someone who was buying many sets of mobile suit thrusters also wanted gundanium set off alarm bells in the back of his head. Just how many of their sets had he bought? And what other mobile suit or doll parts had he picked up?

 

“Duo!” Hilde jumped, obviously startled to find him just standing there staring at the shelf.

 

“Hi.” He grinned. “Sorry, didn't mean to surprise you like that.”

 

“Its nothing, I wasn't looking. How did the trip go?”

 

“We found eighteen dolls in pretty good shape. There's going to be lots of usable stuff to get off of them! Howard's out back with the guys getting them set up to tear down.”

 

He paused, looked out into the shop, then turned back to her. “I happened to catch the end of that sale you just made. Just how much stuff did that guy buy?”

 

“All nine full sets of thrusters we had on hand. Paid asking price too.” She replied quietly.

 

His eyebrows rose. “Asking price?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

Something was going on here. This was a salvage yard. People came here to dicker for what they needed. There was damn little here that they could fix a price on and hope to get it. Too many other salvers were out there right now scavenging too much material. The market was viciously competitive. A complete set of thrusters from a mobile suit was valuable yes, but hardly unique. So why would anyone pay asking price? Especially since everyone knew they couldn't get it and set it artificially high to start the bargaining.

 

“Tell you something else Duo. I didn't like him. He was a perfect gentleman and as polite as they come and something about him just creeped me out. He's a false front and I don't think I want to meet what's behind it.”

 

“Gottcha.” He agreed. “Did he buy anything else?”

 

“No, nothing. And he wasn't interested in looking either. It was as though he was getting only one part here. There are enough yards like ours in the colonies that he could probably build an entire mobile suit by buying one part at each yard. If he is, I bet he doesn't look the same at any two.”

 

“Or at least not the same at any two on any one colony.” Duo suggested, thinking furiously.

 

“Before you get caught up in worrying about this guy, you need to check your mail. Two huge files came in for you, both of them from Earth and neither of them signed. The virus scanner says they're clean but you know what its worth if the worm is something really new. The first one came in almost a week ago; I don't think you'd been out the door an hour. The other arrived this morning.”

 

That got his attention. Massive mail from Earth was likely to have very limited origins. Unsigned massive mail suggested unpleasant things. He retreated to the main office and the computer there.

 

He pulled both the enormous files off the main computer. They hadn't been opened and his sweep of his machine said if they were contaminated, it was something you had to access the file to activate. Well, that was what the portable was for, taking the risks he couldn't afford to have on the company's machine.

 

He opened the older one first. And damned near fell off his chair when he found himself staring at Professor G's unlovely face. What the hell! He was dead!

 

“Hello Maxwell.” G said grimly. “`Pestilence' needs the `God of Death' again. Tell me, does Shinigami still live inside you? We will all hope so. Pay attention. This information has been collected by Doctor J over the last two plus years and yes, he's alive too. You will not enjoy any of it.”

 

G had that right. The facts were thin to none but the pattern was deadly clear. And now he knew just who the guy buying thrusters represented. He had a very good idea why he was looking for gundanium too. He committed the instructions on how to reach the rendezvous to memory. No way he wasn't going.

 

“You're going, aren't you?”

 

He looked up, not terribly surprised to find both Hilde and Howard sitting there. “Yeah, I don't have much choice. They'll get my name eventually and that'll lead them here. Both of you are going to have to find places to vanish into as well. And don't tell anyone where those places are! Above all, do not tell each other! If one is found, they must not be able to betray the other.”

 

“Boy . . . .”

 

“No, don't start with me Howard. No one comes with me this time. It's going to be just the four of us, five if anyone can find Heero to warn him. We can't afford to have friends with us now. You're liabilities in the fight we're going to end up in.”

 

“Can you win that fight Duo, just the five of you, alone, without your Gundams?” Hilde asked softly.

 

“No.” The self-proclaimed God of Death replied with brutal honesty. “And that's why you are not coming.”

 

“Lets see what's in the second message before you go handing out orders like that.” Howard suggested. “Looks like G has a whole lot more data for you.”

 

He nodded and opened it, to find a pair of dark blue eyes he would never forget staring out at him. The face was a bit longer, the planes more sharply defined and what there had been left of the child in his face a few years ago was completely gone. The brown hair was pulled back as tightly as Wu Fei's although enough of the bangs had escaped to hang over the eyes in the familiar way.

 

“Maxwell.” The voice was deeper now too but still somehow the same. “You should have already heard from Doctor J. I'm sending you what I've been gathering that backs his data up. Pay attention. I expect to see you at the rendezvous point.”

 

His hand slapped the pause button of it's own volition. It knew his brain wasn't in any shape to obey that order to pay attention yet. Heero, they'd found Heero. And he was coming too. Oh shit. This was worse than he'd thought. Yuy didn't believe he could keep himself hidden.

 

* * * * * * *

 

“You're going. Just like that.” Catherine was angry, he hardly blamed her.

 

“Yes. I let you see them both. You aren't stupid, you know why.”

 

“They don't know you from a monkey!”

 

He turned to her quietly. “But too many others do. Whoever these people are, they have money and connections. They will find my name eventually. And it will lead them here.”

 

“We can hide you! We hid you from Oz.”

 

“These people are something more serious than Oz was.” Trowa Barton replied quietly. “These are the fanatics, the lunatic fringe of Romefeller. You can see it in their writing and how they use words.”

 

“I'm not afraid of them.” She snapped.

 

He turned suddenly angry eyes on her. “You should be! Catherine, do you understand what Heero's message means?”

 

She blinked. “What do you mean? It was a huge pile of bits and pieces just like the one from Doctor J. Both of them were short on facts and long on circumstances. I fail to see why you think you have to run off because of something with so little substance in it!”

 

“I see.” He continued to pack as he gave her ignorance some thought. “Let me ask you this; do you think Heero Yuy is a brave man?”

 

“I think he's stupidly foolhardy! He doesn't know when to run away! He scares me, he's so `mission' focused.”

 

“Good. Then maybe you'll understand when I tell you that by sending me that message Heero was admitting he couldn't handle the situation. That he believes he can't keep himself hidden from them. That they will find him, and they will kill him. Catherine, this time, even Heero is scared.”

 

She stared at him, slowly going white. She hadn't been able to like Heero Yuy but she'd accepted Trowa bringing him back with him the once when the other boy was so badly broken he really should have died. He'd frightened her. There had been so little humanity in those haunted, deep blue eyes. The idea that there was something out there that could frighten someone like him was frankly terrifying.

 

“What do you expect me to do?” she asked quietly.

 

“When they come, and they will, just give them both of the messages. I've already erased the brief visuals on the front of them. They won't get any look at Doctor J or at Heero. And I moved the audio with the instructions for reaching the rendezvous to the end along with Yuy's remark about meeting me there. The data will be of little use to them really without those faces. I washed both tapes through a good system here in town, that's where I was last night, and now neither the Doctor's voice or Heero's is quite what is should be. If they're going to try lifting a voice print, well, they won't get a reliable one from anything you could give them.”

 

“Just hand over the tapes.” She sounded completely confused.

 

“You can't hide the circus.” Trowa said wearily. “And the circus is not equipped to fight people like these. Give them what you have and they should let you go. The alternative is to see everyone here dead. The tapes aren't worth that.”

 

“I, . . . . . ., I see.”

 

He picked up the backpack. “I'll do everything I can to survive and to come back Catherine. Please, don't get yourself killed while I'm gone.”

 

“How, Trowa, how? You don't have a Gundam any more.”

 

“I don't know. I simply know that I can promise that I will do everything I can.”

 

He had no answer for her question really. What he'd said wasn't an answer so much as it was words to fill up the empty space so she wouldn't notice it was empty. He gave her one last hug and slipped out of the trailer. His scooter started on the first try and he turned his back on the life he'd build for himself after the wars. If he was going to save any of it, he had to get away from it now, before the shadow came looking for him here. He needed to be in Bucharest by morning. There was supposed to be a ticket waiting for him there.

 

* * * * * * *

 

“I oppose this Master Quatre.”

 

“I know Rashid.” The young blond head of the Winner empire looked up to meet his angry friend's eyes. “But there is no other choice open to us. Anything else puts the entire family and all our people at risk. I can't do that. We both knew something like this was a possibility. I am a Gundam pilot. There are a lot of people with a lot of very emotional responses to the Gundams, and to us. Not all of them are happy ones.”

 

“We can protect you! It is our responsibility to do so!”

 

Quatre Winner just shook his head. He stood by the window, eyes thoughtfully surveying the complex of residences and shops that made up the town that existed in the shadow of the tower of the Winner office building. Those people, they were all in danger as long as he stayed here. He was too public a figure.

 

“I can't hide here Rashid. There are too many innocents around. I've been responsible for too much death already. I won't add to that toll needlessly. There is no place I own that I could go to hide that wouldn't entail endangering more innocent people. I don't have the right to do that. I never really did. No, the Maganac are needed to protect our people as a whole, not me as an individual.”

 

“You are the leader of the Maganac. Why don't you understand that we feel an obligation to protect our leader? And you are well loved. The thought that strangers would threaten you over this, years after the Sandrock was gone, it angers us.”

 

“I understand. I truly do. But in turn you must also understand that this isn't like the war was. Nothing will be done in the open. There will be no formal battles where weapons can be used casually and whole areas laid waste by fighting. This will be a shadow war. And they have already hired the Old Man of the Mountain. We are strong in many things but we aren't assassins and it is an assassin's war we're facing. The best we have has already admitted this is more than he can master. If Heero can't handle it, then none of us can. He is the best trained of all of us for this kind of conflict and he's coming to the meeting, not staying away to watch from the outside.”

 

The older man just glared. Quatre looked right back, his own gaze much softer but no less determined. And in the end it was the younger who won. Not so much because he was the head of the Winner family as because this time, he was right.

 

“You will at least take the company plane.” Rashid said flatly. “I will insist on that much.”

 

“I will accept that much.” Quatre replied calmly. “And I want one of the older work shuttles prepped and ready to leave on very short notice too. I have a feeling this is going to take us all back into space. I don't think we should be depending on public transportation if it does. I want the load on the shuttle to consist of survival supplies, including lots of water. We may have to pretend to be war junk for a while, I don't want to get too hungry or thirsty doing it. Oh, include a wide variety of games too. You don't know what terror is until you've been cooped up in a small space with a bored Duo Maxwell and an irritable Wu Fei Chang.”

 

The Maganac vice-commander grinned. He'd met the long-haired American space colonist. He liked the boy, but a birthday party for a dozen six year olds on sugar highs had less stray energy than Maxwell did. He could only imagine what being trapped on a small shuttle with him would be like. He'd also met the Chinese Preventer and could easily picture the disaster of forcing the one into close proximity with the other. Yes, he would definitely include many forms of diversion.

 

When he finally got his subordinate out of his office, Quatre opened a drawer and lifted a heavy folder out of it. He picked up his favorite pen and flipped the folder open. He was going to have writer's cramp before this was done but the only way he could disappear had to include proper, legal, distribution of the power he held as head of the family. These documents would assure that the Winner interests were protected no matter what happened to him. He started signing papers.

 

* * * * * * *

 

The intercom on her desk chimed quietly. General Une, commander of the Preventers, gave it a dirty look. She was busy, damn it! And she'd left orders not to be disturbed with only a handful of possible exceptions. That her secretary was calling meant one of those exceptions had happened.

 

“General Une here. What are you calling for?” She managed not to snarl at the inoffensive bit of machinery.

 

“General, Captain Chang is here.”

 

Oh, that exception. “Send him in.”

 

Seconds later the door opened and the slender Chinese officer entered. He closed the door firmly behind him and marched briskly to a point about four feet in front of her desk. There he stopped, saluted, stared over her head and announced, “Captain Chang reporting as ordered.”

 

She wasn't pleased to have him staring off into space. It meant he was mad. Well, so was she.

 

“Sit down, Captain, we have some things to go over.”

 

He obeyed, back straight as a laser shot. Once forced down onto her level, he met her eyes coldly and with his usual fearlessness. Very little ever seemed to startle or upset the former Gundam pilot. She wondered if this conversation would prove to be an exception to that rule.

 

“Captain, I sent for you because our computer network was hacked last night.”

 

“I do not see a connection. I am not a programmer.”

 

“No but your friend Yuy is.” That got the reaction she had been hoping for as his eyes widened for a split second before he could regain control of his face. “I had our IT people do some checking. It seems you and I were the recipients of a pair of very large mail messages from Yuy last night. What he sent me actually confirms some things I've noticed on my own. I've already begun some preparations in case this situation deteriorated as badly as it looked like it could. He's confirmed my judgment. I am now confident it will be even worse than I was expecting and that it will happen sooner than I can be fully ready for it.”

 

“Crimson Dawn.” Wu Fei said quietly. “Or perhaps it will be called the Red Flood.”

 

Her eyes narrowed sharply. “So, we did get the same data. At least this time. Would you care to tell me about the message from Doctor J?”

 

The still face gave nothing away. Then he reached into his shirt pocket. Two discs came out, held in his fingers. He offered them to her. She accepted them.

 

“They hold the entire message. I've edited nothing.”

 

“Yuy said something about seeing you at the meeting. What is he talking about?”

 

“Doctor J has asked all of us to meet him. However he has the trip broken into stages for security's sake. At the first one, where we will all get together, he will have instructions for the next stage. At that one, for the one after. When we've played connect the dots long enough to make him happy, we will meet him. He has a plan that he claims will make us impossible to find. Given the resources of our enemy, it seems all of us are willing to listen. I have put in a request for emergency leave, beginning this afternoon.”

 

“I'll sign it.” Une said firmly and leaned over to call her secretary. Only when she was sure the woman knew what she wanted and knew where in the system to find it did she hang up and turn back to the still form of the ex-Gundam pilot.

 

“I suppose I'll have to send Ramirez and his team out in your place.” She grumbled.

 

“Send Hooper. Ramirez can't find his plate with his fork and his pilots are no better. Sending them up there is an open invitation to every smuggler in the district to run through that sector.”

 

“I can't send Hooper. His father died unexpectedly last week, heart attack. He's on bereavement leave for another ten days. I have no valid reason to call him back early. Captain Ramirez is fully qualified; on paper.”

 

Chang's head tipped very slightly and his eyes went out of focus for a second. “I wonder, . . . .”

 

“Yes?” She prompted when he stopped there.

 

Eyes sharp again he smiled tightly. “Given what we know now, I wonder just how bad Jose really is, and who he really works for.”

 

She grunted. It was time to get Chang out of here. He saw too much. He was going to say too much one of these days and get himself killed. She told him as much and he gave her a smile she'd never seen from him before. It was something very dark, very merciless, and very bloody. She suddenly realized she'd just seen the real pilot of Gundam Altron for the very first time since the Eve War.

 

Someone had made a major mistake. Someone had let the Gundam pilots know they were hunted. They were driving the team back together. Worse, they were driving them back in time mentally. It would take perhaps two or three days together and they were going to be the kind of never-say-die enemy they'd been before. They were older now, better trained in the ways of the world and far better balanced as human beings. If they had been deadly before, the fools who were forcing them back into the old ways were going to find they had something even more dangerously competent on their hands now. All they lacked was their machines. And if Doctor J was really alive, they might not lack those long. For the first time since she'd heard what the government was going to do to the Preventer's budget this year, General Une began to see a glimmer of hope on the horizon.

 

The secretary delivered Chang's request for emergency leave shortly afterwards. As promised, she signed it, and formally filed it, leaving him free to depart at once. Une shook his hand and wished him a good trip. He managed to say thank you without stumbling over the words and fled.

 

She looked down at the discs he'd given her. They were a bomb waiting to explode. But like a bomb, if used properly, they could become a tool. She was going to have to share this information with at least four officers. She couldn't be everywhere or do everything herself. Indeed, there were places it would be completely unnatural to find the Commander, places someone was going to have to access if they were going to start siphoning off resources to stockpile against the coming trouble. She slipped the discs into her personally coded safe. They would have to wait until she knew who she was sharing them with.

 

* * * * * * *

 

Relena sat quietly in the dark study, alone with her thoughts. The office was busy outside her door, the night shift hard at work keeping the functions of government going. They had no idea she was there and she had no intention of letting them find out. They thought she'd gone to bed hours ago like a good girl. Her mother thought that's what she'd done.

 

But she had too much to think over to do any such restful thing. Heero was alive. Her feelings on that alone would take weeks to sort out.

 

However, in typical Heero fashion, when he surfaced after an almost three year vanishing act that no one had been able to penetrate, he'd brought a nightmare with him. She didn't want to believe in this shadow threat, this `Crimson Dawn'. She wanted to believe in the peace she'd spent the last years working every waking hour of the day to try to build into something that would last.

 

“Damn you Heero! You have so few facts and so much circumstantial evidence. No court in the world would hear a case built on whispers and shadows like yours.” Her voice barely reached the far side of her desk.

 

“But no court knows you like I do. I've seen the recordings Zechs had from the Tallgeese of the day you self-destructed the Wing. There was no fear in you that day, only determination to carry out the mission. The idea of dying didn't frighten you at all. But there was something that looked a lot like fear in the back of your eyes on that message you sent me. Somehow, I don't think it is your own death you fear now. You believe these people exist. You believe they are even more dangerous than these little bits and pieces you have can show. You expect them to kill people who matter more to you than your own life does. You've come back to protect those people as best you can.”

 

She stared sightlessly at the light-washed paleness that was the city's version of the night sky. “You intend to die with them if you can't save them. I wonder if you, any of you, understand that none of you will be happy about that. You all want to save each other. You all are willing to die yourselves to do it. You are all idiots!”

 

“Gundam pilots!” She muttered in a tone that suggested they were all complete fools even though she knew better.

 

They had been true child-soldiers; taken young, held away from all others and trained ruthlessly. No wonder they'd become so effective and so efficient by fifteen! It wasn't their fault! Every study of such children ever done pointed out how completely emotionally dependent they became on their handlers. If you had to blame someone, blame the right someone! Blame Dr. J, not Heero. Or Professor G; he was the one really guilty of anything Shinigami had ever done. You couldn't honestly begin to hold Duo Maxwell responsible until he'd broken free of that control. It was the same for the others. Trowa hadn't even been accorded a name until he grabbed one for himself from a dead man!

 

She'd practically demanded that they give up their Gundams and embrace her ideals of total pacifism. And, they had. They had sent them into the Sun once. The outbreak of unexpected war had forced them to reclaim them before they were destroyed but once that was over they had unhesitatingly accepted her order to demolish them. The pilots themselves had sought out ways to live without weapons or fighting. Only Chang hadn't but he'd chosen to take his need for battle into the Preventers, into the service of humanity. They deserved a chance to be left alone to become normal people.

 

Relena's glance flickered across the two discs sitting in lonely splendor in the center of her otherwise empty desktop. Heero had sent his message. Another had come from someone else who was supposed to be dead as well. She might, just might, have been able to talk herself into ignoring Heero's warning. But not when Dr. J backed it up with one of his own.

 

So the pilots, her friends really, weren't going to get the chance they deserved. The world wasn't going to get the chance for peace it had worked so hard for either. And she was going to have to decide where she was going to stand in all of this very, very quickly.

 

For while Heero had sent her a warning, Dr. J had sent her a promise of war. And he'd made it quite clear what he thought her fate would be if she stayed where their enemies could find her. She had the directions to where to meet the Gundam pilots, to join them on their way to meet with the Doctor. Now, was she going?

 

* * * * * * *

 

 

The room was completely unlit. The four who sat at the table didn't need light. They wore shapeless capes and infrared goggles. The first provided disguise for the body and the other allowed vision while hiding most of the face. A voice distortion mask completed their ensemble.

 

“The Sun is demanding a progress report on locating the former Gundam pilots. Blade, what do you have?”

 

“Nothing.” `Blade' spat. “I've wined and dined every senior government official I can without generating suspicion. We discuss a wide range of topics. We always manage to touch on the Gundams but none of them will admit to knowing any names.”

 

The leader waited but Blade added nothing. Perhaps more important, neither of the other two offered a word of criticism. So, they had nothing either. Damn! This wasn't amusing.

 

He went through the motions but, as expected, neither Sword nor Rapier had any more to offer than Blade had. He knew how they all felt. He'd come up dry as well. Perhaps it was time to change the focus of the search.

 

“We've been at this for almost six months now. Between the four of us, we've pretty much combed the top ranks of government and society. It has gained us nothing. We know at least two people who know the names we need but they will not speak casually and the time is not ripe to move more forcefully against Dorlian or Une. It is time to look elsewhere.”

 

“Where?” Sword challenged. “Where would you have us look now? We're searching where we are because these are the people who should know!”

 

“Yes, in a rationally organized society, the leaders would know. But we must keep in mind that the society we are currently dealing with is not rationally organized. It is very clear that those who should be accepting the responsibility of leadership, who should have the information at their fingertips, are abrogating their responsibility and are letting others keep the data for them. We are looking too high. We must step back and assess each of these so-called leaders to find their key information people. Those people are now our targets. Each of you is to change your appearance and activate your level three cover persona. I want you ready to move locations in two days, set up in your new site by five.”

 

“Are you mad?” Rapier demanded. “What do you expect me to do with my current cover?”

 

“You kill it off.” He replied coldly. “I don't care what kind of accident or incident you devise but in the next three days your current persona must be legally dead. Am I understood?”

 

“Will you accept four days?” Blade asked. “I will have an unparalleled opportunity to not only `kill' myself but to remove an entire caravan of useless parasites at the same time. I am supposed to go with Senator Locke to Flatwoods Gorge to attend the dedication of the new bridge. A properly timed rock fall and no one will even question the lack of a body or two.”

 

“For such a tailor made situation, yes, four days is allowable. Sword, Rapier, do either of you have anything like this you can use?”

 

“Only if you are willing to grant a serious extension.” Rapier replied. “I'm scheduled to attend the Air Show in Paris but that's not until the end of next week. However, I could use it to bring a plane down on the reviewing stand. You have said repeatedly that you wished someone would just kill Prime Minister Le Beau. Given that he and his entourage will be in the center of the stand, well, it is very doubtful they could escape.”

 

“That's, . . . . , that's very tempting.” He admitted.

 

“Take it Cutlass. You're not going to get a better shot at the bastard before Crimson Dawn itself.” Blade said quietly.

 

“You have a point. All right Rapier, you have your extension. Sword, what about you?”

 

Sword shrugged. “Nothing that I can make happen in less than three weeks. Even then it would only be a single car accident. But I would be taking Director Knoop with me. It would open that hole you wanted to advance someone onto the Dorlian bitch's cabinet. Or I could have a drunken accident on my own tomorrow night. Your preference, sir.”

 

“Actually, it will be his Excellency's decision.” Cutlass replied. “Again, you offer too good an opportunity to simply turn down. But I can not accept this on my own authority, the time frame is too long. I will get back to you by tonight.”

 

It was the end of the meeting. They left singly until only Cutlass remained. He folded and stacked the chairs against the wall and closed up the table to lay it over them. This room was rarely used by anyone other than the four of them but it was unwise to take chances and leaving the chairs and table set up would be taking a very large one.

 

He left through the main door, sliding the night goggles off as he did. The dim lights of the locker room were almost painfully bright to his night adapted eyes. He hung the camouflage cape on its hook, put the mask in the bin with the others and dropped the goggles onto the shelf above his own locker and took out the paperwork he'd supposedly been working on the past few hours. By that time his eyes were adjusted and he was ready to face brighter light. He settled his jacket neatly across his shoulders and stepped out into the hallway.

 

He was perhaps half way to his office when he heard someone calling him.

 

“Captain! Captain Ramirez!”

 

He turned to see Colonel Stoner's driver trotting over. The boy stopped the correct distance out from an officer and saluted. Pleased to see he'd finally learned something, Ramirez returned it.

 

“Captain, the Colonel wants to see you as soon as possible sir.”

 

“Did he happen to mention why corporal?”

 

“No sir, not to me.”

 

“Is Captain Chang coming as well?”

 

“Oh no sir! He requested and has been given emergency medical leave. He left base over two hours ago.”

 

“Chang? A medical emergency?”

 

“That's what everyone is saying sir. General Une herself signed his papers. It must be immediate family.”

 

“I see. I need to drop these fitness reports in my office. Tell the Colonel I expect to be there in five minutes.”

 

“Yes sir!”

 

So Wu Fei Chang was off on emergency leave. That was interesting, very interesting. Especially since he'd never heard the other man ever mention family or even friends. Talking about home was the number one pastime in the military and in the Preventers. But Chang didn't discuss his home. Or his past for that matter either. Everything anyone knew about Captain Chang began the day he'd first put on a Preventer uniform.

 

Where had he come from? Where had he picked up his formidable skills with hand weapons? He was a superb martial artist. Who had taught him? For that matter, who taught him to fly a space fighter? He was posting top scores from the day he walked in the door, no one did that without serious training and experience. But a Crimson background check hadn't turned up any Wu Fei Chang in any of the military organizations of the Eve War or the Mariemaia revolt. There was a Chinese Gundam pilot but not even the Mariemaia records had included his name. Nor had there been a picture as he recalled.

 

Ramirez trotted up the steps to the office, mind racing furiously. He'd never paid much attention to Chang. The man had a stick up his ass and was boring on top of it. He ate, slept, and breathed his own abstract notion of `justice'; something that seemed to be just close enough to the Preventer code to allow the inflexible Asian to work within the organization.

 

He was sarcastic, critical, and had a nasty habit of being right that he made no effort to hide. He had little tolerance for failure and none for stupidity. He did grasp being out-gunned but seemed to have trouble with the idea of being out-thought. Weakness in any form irritated him. Why had someone like Chang ever enlisted in the Preventers in the first place? It seemed so out of character really.

 

But his team was fiercely loyal to him. They accepted his ridiculously high standards and worked furiously to rise above them. And he was as loyal to them. One did not strike at any of the Chang team without striking at all. And if you did, they all struck back. Their unity made them the single most effective unit in the entire organization.

 

Something had been overlooked here. Unfortunately it was beginning to look like it might be something significant. After all, how many nineteen year olds were there who could do all the things Chang could do at the level he could do them? And perhaps most interesting of all the questions, why would General Une sign his leave papers personally? Captain Jose Ramirez found himself staring at the painfully neat desk, devoid of all personal touches that sat across from his, a very unhappy suspicion beginning to bubble in the back of his mind.

 

“Just who are you Wu Fei Chang?”