Crossover Fan Fiction / Gundam SEED Fan Fiction / Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Crossing Barriers ❯ Meeting: Discussion: Hacking Heero Yuy ( Chapter 20 )

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

 

 

 

Meeting: Discussion: Hacking Heero Yuy

 

He gave the Solar Assembly chamber a quiet study as he entered. If you didn't know it had happened, you would never know there had been a vicious, and short, battle fought in here thirty six days ago. If you did know though, the repairs had an odd way of standing out in your mind. Which was interesting when the repair work had blended the new with the old almost seamlessly. That the new stood out so much in his mind said something less than pleasant about how he'd come to regard this over-decorated room.

 

The Sun turned his attention to his new Assembly of Planets with a dour eye; one it was just as well was concealed by his elaborate formal mask. Things hadn't gone as well as he'd anticipated in the immediate aftermath of the former Pluto's murderous rampage. He'd only managed to secure half of the places the killer had opened for men he trusted.

 

Venus had proven surprisingly skilled at the maneuvering the situation had demanded. A cousin of hers now wore Uranus' mask and followed her lead without any public questioning. The new Mercury came from the faction that had followed the late Asteroids and was no more to be trusted than he had been. The man who now wore the Asteroids mask on the other hand was in no one's pocket. He was an arrogant bastard but he was also a very sharp one who was dedicated, not to any individual, but to the grand design of the Rational Revolution. Unfortunately, the same could now be said of both Saturn and Mars, leaving the three of them unreliable under almost all circumstances. Terra alone remained his firm ally. He had three he could trust, three he couldn't and three who chose their sides anew each meeting.

 

What fool had said it was good to be the King? In reality, it was a dangerously delicate balancing act for a `monarch' who lacked the power to be a truly absolute ruler. The Sun resented being caught in this potentially lethal dance. He'd seen others reach for power without attaining enough of it to give them the edge they needed. And he'd watched them die. Yuy the peacemaker, Peacecraft, Yuy's partner in their drive for peace, who fell with most of his family leaving only the two children behind, Khushrenada the clever but too honorable, and Barton the greedy old dog who'd even turned on his own granddaughter in the end as he made his failed snatch for glory. They'd all fallen because they hadn't managed to garner quite enough power. He was determined to avoid their fates. All he needed was a way to control his Assembly.

 

Still, as he watched the uneasy ten who were taking their chairs now that he was seated, he realized that there were keys out there somewhere. These ambitious men and women all had weak points. He was very aware that he didn't know those points well enough but that didn't mean he couldn't find out what they were. He had a sudden flash of the report he'd been given that had so neatly, and honestly, tracked the probabilities when the Gundam Pilots had escaped. Perhaps he should avail himself of that clever boy's sharp mind again.

 

He shelved that thought for future consideration as he nodded to the Planets. “We will have all the formal platitudes included in the minutes but I don't want to waste the time on them. We have a war on our hands and we need to focus there, not on fancy words for posterity. I will have your reports now. We will have lunch served when they are all presented. Use the time to digest the information even more than you do the food. I will be expecting intelligent opinions on each one after our meal.”

 

He turned to his immediate right. “Mercury, where do we stand in our production goals?”

 

If he'd hoped to jar the other by jumping straight into the meat of the meeting, he failed. Mercury quietly opened his briefcase and lifted out a stack of papers which he quickly passed around. One glance told the Sun it was a printout of the major points of the man's intended presentation.

 

“We've got a problem,” Mercury began with brutal directness and honesty. “The Preventers are proving to be better at sabotage than anyone expected. And they're doing it without the aid of the Gundam Pilots. We've heard the rumors that it was Shinigami but that's all they are; rumors. Every scrap of data we've amassed points to Colonel Saito as the mastermind here and he's no Gundam pilot! We need to keep our people focused on the facts. The facts are telling us the Gundams are still in hiding somewhere. We can't afford to pretend the Preventers are helpless without those pilots.”

 

“Damages?” Venus asked sweetly.

 

Mercury turned directly to her. “The main mobile suit plant is going to be running at ten to fifteen percent of design capacity for at least another five weeks and somewhere under a hundred for another eight. The rate will improve over time of course but the flat fact is it will be thirteen weeks at the earliest before we are turning out enough new mobile suits to allow our forces to expand their zones of control. Neither of the backup plants is ready to begin production either. I would appreciate it if you would speak to your supply people. We need the materials that are sitting on backorder in your department and we need them now or the damned Preventers will get the chance to really dig in for the long haul.”

 

“Excuse me! What do you think you are saying?” Venus snarled.

 

“He's saying quit playing politics with the war supplies.” Jupiter spoke coldly and directly, dangerously so.

 

“I will not hear this bickering!” The Sun cut in before this could get out of hand. “We have a war to fight and it isn't among ourselves. There will be no more insinuations of dereliction of duty!”

 

His voice abruptly froze. “Do I make myself clear?”

 

The Planets shifted uneasily but no one had the courage, or perhaps the stupidity, to disagree. He gave one sharp nod that came close to unbalancing the heavy mask, then sat back. A quick hand waved at Mercury got him back on track. The man had clearly heard the threat behind the order. His report was lucid, reasonably honest, and depressing but he finished it without the blatant accusations of interdepartmental backbiting he'd started with.

 

Venus delivered her supply report just as baldly. Things were improving but even the Sun knew that until they could really secure control over the global economy the Revolution's physical supply lines were going to be a potential weakness. Terra's assessment of the companies they could strong arm into supplying the Revolution without paying them what the materials would be worth was the first bright spot. Unfortunately Mars followed that with an assessment of the shifting public opinion of the Revolution. It was absurd the things the fickle public seized on to be upset about. Still it did look like they were going to have to pay serious attention to their image in the not too distant future.

 

Asteroids report on the assets the Preventers appeared to have was too good to be true. They'd have already taken Bastogne and Hawaii if their enemy was that poorly supplied. At least he ended it with some degree of honesty when he admitted that what they could prove the enemy had couldn't be counted on to be accurate.

 

Saturn's report on the morale within their own forces was interesting and disturbing. The Sun didn't like the opening rift she was noting between the regular troops and the special teams who were the Revolution's enforcers. He knew what was causing it but it was much too soon to consider reining those teams in. There were still far too many supporters of the old government left. They had to be eliminated. And everyone, from the backwaters of the planet to the dingiest slum in the Colonies had to understand to the core of their beings just how serious the Rational Revolution was about opposition.

 

Uranus laid out an entire new propaganda program for the Assembly to consider. Personally, the Sun found it simplistic and frankly boring but it wasn't aimed at him after all. When one considered the average intelligence of the population though, he rather thought it would do well.

 

Neptune's report on the internal loyalty of their own people was encouraging. Apparently the rift between the troops and the special teams was not as serious as Saturn was suggesting. Nor was there any signs of significant penetration of their organization by any enemy agents. It was nice to have something going right.

 

Pluto ran through their finances quickly. Almost too quickly. The Sun wondered just how much he was trying to siphon off for his personal account. But the numbers were very nice anyway. The estates and commercial properties seized from some three dozen of the old Romefeller families had made a very solid contribution to their overall stability. Now if only the Winner family would make some mistake and allow them an excuse to seize their assets as well, all would be nearly perfect.

 

It was exceptionally unfortunate that young Quatre Winner was so damned popular. And revealing that the boy was one of the Gundam Pilots would be very, very counterproductive. No matter what else had happened, the mysterious five pilots still had an almost cult-like status with far too much of the population. Saving the planet from the equivalent of nuclear winter had made them instant legends, returning to defeat old Barton had sealed it. Because of it, striking at the Winners would simply be too strategically dangerous at this time. He smiled grimly behind his mask; their day would come, the Revolution would take what rightfully belonged to it.

 

By common consent, Jupiter reported last. His was an in depth analysis of the war so far. The man was ruthlessly honest, making his report almost the most difficult to listen to. He was direct in his criticism of the training of all their personnel. Yes, the units had been barely formed when those fools on L2 had forced the Revolution to start early, he was willing to grant the training teams the disadvantage there, but he also pointed out how much of their training efforts were going to the special teams at the expense of their line soldiers. And it was the line soldiers who were doing the brunt of the work.

 

Venus interrupted as he began to wind up that portion of the report. “We can't afford to let down on the Special Teams! They are our cutting edge, they must be the sharpest we can possibly make them.”

 

“We can't afford to indulge them any longer.” Jupiter had no give in him on this. “They aren't doing the fighting. They aren't the troops we are depending on to take down the Preventers. Worse, they're in danger of becoming nothing more than semi-tame butchers. They resent any order that slows their slaughter and many of the teams are developing a very unhealthy fondness for torture and rape. They are beginning to see themselves as above everyone else in the Revolution, including this Assembly! Or do you fancy finding yourself in the hands of one of your precious teams if they decide you aren't indulging them enough? Because some of these men will turn on you without question.”

 

He turned to the rest of the Assembly. “We must reassert control over the Special Teams. Even if we need to use one of them to exterminate the ones falling furthest out of control. They must understand that they answer to us. And that we will decide when and where they will kill.”

 

“Jupiter is right,” Mars said sharply. “The shifting public opinion is being directly driven by the proofs of Special Team excesses. We control the majority of the global information networks but we haven't been able to shut down all the independent sources yet and probably won't for at least a year. There are too many of them and they're too good at evasion. It will take time, significant amounts of it, to silence the last of them. And until we do, the brutalities of the Teams will continue to be brought to the public's attention and will continue to damage our image in the public eye.”

 

“You worry too much about our image,” Uranus rumbled irritably.

 

“You don't worry enough!” Mars snapped. “We haven't won this war yet. And if you alienate enough people, we won't. If the public decides the Preventers are the lesser evil, we will lose now. We aren't solid enough to be able to afford to neglect the opinion of the population. And don't lie to yourself by telling yourself we are!”

 

“There is also that division growing in our own ranks,” Saturn noted grimly. “You may paint it over right now while it is still small but if we don't treat the troops with a good deal more consideration, it will become a dangerous issue within our own combat forces.”

 

“The line troops are beginning to see this Assembly as treating them as though they are second class to the Special Teams.” Jupiter sat back and waved a hand at Venus. “It is one thing for a soldier to see another unit as an elite force with the privileges that go with that status. It is quite another for that same soldier to see them as being favored at the expense of his own life. That little error, left unchecked, will destroy our soldier's morale and their loyalty. Do not forget that these men serve us in large part because we have offered them the respect the UESN did not! If they perceive that our respect is no more than a shell to use them to put us in power, they will desert us.”

 

“Where do you think they can go?” Venus sneered. “They have no one else to run to. They aren't going to desert.”

 

“Actually,” Terra said slowly, “there are a lot of them the Preventers would take in. All it would take would be an announcement from that missing Dorlian girl saying that they would be forgiven and then, yes, they would have a place to run to.”

 

She turned to Mercury. “Where do we stand in that search? That girl is a sword hanging over our heads; too many people love her and refuse to blame her for the excesses of the government. We need her dead! And those five damn boys with her!”

 

“They've found a very deep hole to hide in.” The Sun cut in before Mercury could say the wrong thing, the last thing he needed was an admission that the search was going nowhere. “Wherever it is though, it is deep enough to silence her as well as hide her. She is no threat until she emerges far enough to be heard. And once she does that, we will have her!”

 

Where the meeting would have gone from there the Sun would never know. He'd barely finished speaking when there was a heavy pounding on the main doors. They all turned to stare as Major Trident burst into the room, and none of them, the Sun noted from his place at the head of the table, without some fear.

 

“My Lord! My Lord! Please pardon the interruption but there is an electronic signal coming from this chamber! One of the prisoners Master Firebird has been using as cleaning staff is dead by her own hand! My Lord, we must sweep this chamber!”

 

The meeting dissolved into chaos.

 

* * * * * * * *

 

G studied the printout carefully but despite his personal determination, the conclusion he was forced to draw from it was unchanged. He wondered how that Saito fellow had managed to get hold of it. More importantly, he wondered if the Preventer could get hold of the follow-up that was sure to written for this.

 

“You look like you tried to eat a half-ripe lemon grove.” J noted from his comfortable chair.

 

“You will too when you finish this.” G tossed the document at his partner. “And I hope your aging brain hasn't atrophied completely because we have a problem here.”

 

“If that's the data from Colonel Saito, I've already read it.” J dismissed the issue.

 

“And I suppose you have an answer for it?”

 

“Oh, I have an answer but it isn't one we can do much about.”

 

G looked up sharply, that tone wasn't reassuring.

 

J gave him a level stare. “They really dug one out of the dustbin of history. Unfortunately, it's still a fine weapon, the first I've seen that'll actually penetrate the level of gundanium armor we have on our machines. We need a way to stop it. And that way is on the other side of the barrier. We need to make a tech trade and we need to do it fast.”

 

“How can it do that?” G suddenly snarled in frustrated fury. “It's an antique! I've read the specs for it, it doesn't have the power! Yet they've clearly tested it and it damn well works! What the hell is going on here?”

 

“They upped the power and dropped the firing rate.” J shrugged. “And spent uranium slugs are simply incredibly dense. Coat them with just enough gundanium to allow them to hold together long enough for the impact point to be forced to absorb the entire energy expenditure of the hit and, yes, even our new laminated gundanium armor will fail.”

 

He flipped the report to the surprisingly clear picture of one of the rounds. “The clever bastards have made them dum-dums too. And you'll notice the coating they used after they cut the cross in the nose is plain lead, not more gundanium. It'll control the worst of the radiation the depleted slug still has left, what little there is in the first place, and will give instantly when it's trapped between the rest of the slug and the impacted target. The gundanium jacket will hold the slug's mass in line until it's penetrated the target. They will still need very good, almost straight line strikes to break the armor of a Gundam but with a rate of fire of eighteen hundred rounds a minute, they should manage to make a few good hits.”

 

J looked up grimly. “We have only one bright light here. Those weapons need a huge ammunition reservoir. The Sagittarius suits have the reservoir but the sheer mass of that much expended uranium will slow them markedly. They would stand no chance against the fast-moving Gundams if they sent nothing but these new weapons. More importantly, they didn't do a good job of adapting the gun to space. It'll be very prone to jamming out there with no air to help dissipate the heat those seven Gatling barrels will build up.”

 

G gave him an odd stare, then an evil smile. “Why that could be a problem, couldn't it what with such a high rate of fire. I'd imagine a poor pilot wouldn't get much chance to take his finger off the trigger before the whole thing was just ripped apart on him.”

 

“Thirty rounds a second?” J grinned back. “No, I doubt the pilot would get to let go before it blew up on him.”

 

G was instantly a lot more sober. “Of course, they'll know that too and the number of rounds allowed for one burst will be controlled to prevent that delightful outcome. But, can the heat issue be compensated for? I know what we did with Heavyarms but we weren't trying to use anything like spent uranium for the ammunition. The systems aren't likely to be that comparable.”

 

“Slowing the rate of fire is about all they could do.” J said thoughtfully. “This is a mobile suit we're talking about here, not a ship. There just isn't the space to put in the kind of cooling system that weapon really needs. Even slowing it down won't really solve the problem until they bring it under five rounds per second.”

 

“Yuy will be able to deal with anyone firing that slowly easily.” G noted as he scowled. “But I'm not so sure the rest will. All of them are really set up as fairly close-order combat units. And Altron's dragon fangs won't stop spent uranium, not moving at that speed. We need a better solution.”

 

“Agreed. Not even our improvements to the Mercurius shields will be adequate although installing a set will definitely help.”

 

“Did you watch the films from that very interesting battle over Mendel?” J suddenly asked.

 

“Several times,” G noted dryly, wondering which part of the fight had inspired this question.

 

“I found the effectiveness of that light shield Yamato and Joule's suits projected rather fascinating. Tell me, what do you think of them?”

 

“What do you plan to trade for it?” G returned. “And how many replacement parts do you intend to get? We can't reproduce that canceller we took and I'd be surprised if those shields weren't even more advanced than that.”

 

“Yes, I know,” he agreed calmly. “But so is gundanium. Have you considered how much faster and more maneuverable those mobile suits of theirs would be if you lopped off about half the mass? I've given their units a very good scanning now and their armor isn't much thicker than what we use. But it is many times heavier. I'd estimate the Strike-Freedom ranges up close to eighty tons. Wing Zero is only about a tenth of that. And the biggest difference is in the weight of the armor. They use solid plates laminating a flexible core. That core isn't very thick either. The new design we're using has relatively thin layers of gundanium over cores made of five layers of thin gundanium honeycomb cores. We get strength and flexibility when a surface is struck. They are relying on the solid mass of the armor to do the job. Can you imagine the performance of Yamato's suit if he wasn't dealing with so much mass?”

 

G gave the idea some thought, letting the images from the battle play in his mind as he attempted to adjust them for such a significant reduction in energy consuming mass. And the truth was, they'd have to tone down the power plant or no one would be able to handle the suit. The reaction time would be too fast and the vector changes too abrupt for a human body to compensate for.

 

“I wouldn't mind getting hold of that energy armor they use as well.” J waved his coffee cup at the room, eyes unmistakably focused inward. “Whatever it is, it seems to be how they provide their units with their individual color patterns too.”

 

G snorted. “Now that would be very useful. Listening to Maxwell moan every time something scratches his `buddy' is annoying. At least he'd stop crying over anything but actual damage!”

 

J could only grin. He'd listened to all five of the boys whenever their machines took any damage. They all got upset. Duo was just the most vocal about it. But in actual truth, he rather listen to Shinigami reassuring his Gundam that all would be made well than having the Dragon rage about those who dared touch his beloved Nataku. At least Yuy and Barton did their `talking' mostly in furious glares at the damages as they repaired them. Winner, although he talked almost as much as Maxwell, kept his voice down as he was speaking only to his Sandrock, not the whole hanger. It was interesting though, just how much all of them seemed to see the huge machines as almost living partners, how deeply they cared about them.

 

“They've come a long way, J.”

 

The other man just nodded. “Too much of it is a long way backwards though. I'd had a delusion once that if they did survive, they'd find places and begin to grow as human beings. I thought if they could survive the war and our ham-fisted mishandling of their lives, they would be able to survive anything else life could throw at them. But while they did build lives, they were rather stunted ones and none of them was really happy. Now, they've been dragged back into war and back together. Yet now they're much closer to happy than I've ever seen them before.”

 

The coffee mug was set gently on the table before he asked a very unexpected question. “G, what should we do about those god-damned implants?”

 

The other sat quietly, gently putting his own mug on the table with a particular deliberateness that spoke volumes for the thought he'd also been giving the question. They both knew the boys suspected they were there, they had too much of that alien `safehouse' wired not to have picked up on that. The damn things had been so wrong in the first place. But given his control of both the money and the supply of gundanium, it hadn't been possible to tell Dekim no. Any more than it had been possible to avoid the other things he'd ordered done to achieve his own mad goals. It was pathetic, but the only real independent action they'd been able to take was to encourage the five stubborn pilots to take their machines and rewrite Operation Meteor to their own specifications.

 

“What can we do about them, J? We aren't medical doctors. You know how they were installed; do you honestly want to even try to touch them now? Besides, where would we do the work? It isn't like we have a fully staffed hospital to hand here.” G pointed out quietly.

 

J's eyes were haunted, a fascinating sight in a man who wore artificial oculars. “They're deteriorating. We can't just leave them in the boys.”

 

G grunted and looked away. “Noticed Barton's behavior have you then?”

 

“It's impossible to miss,” J replied softly. “The alternating pattern of desire and rejection is getting very slowly but very steadily more pronounced. The other four are stable at the moment but if Barton cracks, they'll all come apart now. They're too interdependent; the damn thing is leaking G!”

 

“I know.”

 

“Well I'd appreciate some thoughts on the matter!”

 

“My best, actually my only, idea is to get them removed by people with the skill to do it safely.”

 

“And just who would that be?”

 

G picked up his mug and took a long drink of the cooling coffee before he answered. “We need to find out what the Coordinators would take in trade for that too.”

 

J's head snapped up. “Have you lost your mind?”

 

“No, and you know it,” G grimaced. “There is no one else we can turn to. Crimson Dawn has almost completely driven the Preventers from space and into deep hiding on Earth. And they would be the only people we could trust with this information. Their doctors, well Sally Po really, would be the only one we could allow to touch the boys. And she simply isn't accessible and won't be for months yet. Barton may be the only one showing open signs of the breakdown of his implant but you know they were designed to fail, that they were old Dekim's ace in the hole, his last card to keep them under his control. Cutting a deal with the Coordinators, and their highly skilled medical personnel, is the only chance we've got now.”

 

J stared at him. “All right, suppose you can get it discussed. What could we possibly offer in trade for that?”

 

G toyed with his coffee mug for several minutes before he answered slowly. “Have you watched any of the data we've been picking up besides the news?”

 

“Not really, there just isn't time to keep up with it all and work on those machines if we plan to get them operational before the next century.”

 

“Well, I have. And I ran across one that pretty clearly was intended for a rather select audience. Thanks to your sharing the data on what was done to alter Heero, I actually understood what the subject was although I won't pretend I could follow most of the arguments. Alien terminology aside, I'm no geneticist and the speaker was a specialist in the field. But I did get the gist of his presentation. J, the Coordinators need new blood. It seems they can't really reproduce outside of a highly specialized medical lab. Oh, there are extremely rare exceptions but the vast majority are the products of direct, individual manipulation of the fertilized zygote. And their gene pool is limited by that very manipulation. Because apparently a lot of those manipulations are mutually exclusive and you can't pair two individuals who are too far apart. They've been forced to regulate their marriages based on genetic compatibility! The interests of the two people involved appear to be quite secondary to the society's need for another generation. They're getting by with immigration from Earth right now but the immigrants are as over-manipulated as the existing Coordinator genetic stock and so aren't all that much use for solving their ultimate problem.”

 

J blinked at him. “Where are we going to get suitable genetics to offer them? They aren't even human! Well, at least not on our genetic level.”

 

“Oh but they might be,” G said quietly. “I know just enough about the field to recognize that their DNA helix looks so close to ours that I can't tell where the differences are. I would be shocked out of my mind if we actually were mutually reproductive but there is an excellent chance if they cut it apart to use individual genes that we just might have a lot to offer them. And I've thought about this enough to have checked out what's left of the infirmary here. The whole blood stocks are safely frozen and come from at least a hundred different individuals. It isn't germ plasm but it is complete genetic material. So yes, we do have `trade goods' for this.”

 

The coffee seemed to have developed an intense interest for J. He simply sat staring at it for some unnumbered count of minutes. When he did look up, his face was very still.

 

“We really don't have much of a choice do we? With Barton's already failing the others won't last much longer either. And while he never admitted it, you and I both know he planted a fairly powerful hallucinogen in the center of that damn thing. He intended the whole to be a fail-safe means of getting them to destroy themselves if they were somehow lucky enough to outlive their usefulness to him.”

 

G pursed his lips for a second, then nodded sharply. “Yes, I do believe he added the hallucinogen. So, how do you want to open these negotiations? Because I damn well don't want to tell Quatre enough to have him do it!”

 

J shrugged. “We'll have to do it. This isn't something we can even tell Zechs. So we'd better hope he, Relena, and Quatre do very well indeed in their opening efforts because I don't think we're going to have a lot of time to work with here.”

 

G could only snort in agreement.

 

* * * * * * *

 

The only connection he'd made had been one to the mainframe. Any others might, no almost certainly, would be damaging to his mobile suit. As it was, he'd had to do a discouraging amount of tweaking before his suit's computer could talk to the aging and unstable mainframe safely.

 

Between the scavenger teams hacking, the Serpent Tail's work, and now the intrusions of their new visiting aliens, the poor old system was on the verge of failure. Someone was going to have to actually sit down and fix the thing in the very near future or this was going to be another dead colony. And given what there was here to find, Kira didn't know if he wanted it to collapse or be rescued.

 

However, inasmuch as he didn't think it was honestly his decision to make, he proceeded with serious care. All his work was focused on getting the data he needed without causing any more damage at all. And as he gently worked his way into the system, he found himself doing some of the many, many minor repairs the whole so critically needed just to safely gain the access he required.

 

As he worked, he kept one screen on the negotiations going on in the lounge. They were going nowhere really but everyone was being very civil about it and he wasn't seeing any signs of real strain anywhere yet. He plunged ahead as quickly as he could, all too aware that his absence was being timed. Sooner or later, someone was going to come looking for him, and here in Strike-Freedom was the first place he expected them to check.

 

Having super-administrative rights on the entire system sped up the search immeasurably. Because of the exhaustive work he'd put in when he'd given himself these rights, now he just bypassed well over ninety percent of all the defensive safeguards without even noticing them. Almost all of the rest yielded to his administrator's code immediately. Things did get a bit more interesting though when he ran into locks that did not open so readily.

 

`Picking' several of those taught him to recognize which ones were most likely set by Serpent Tail's expert and which by someone else. He took to ignoring the Serpent Tail locks, it really wasn't likely what he wanted was going to be behind one anyway. The others he opened on general principals. Then, very deep in the security system he hit a whole new kind of lock.

 

He poked at it a bit and suddenly smiled grimly. This had Heero Yuy written all over it. It was blank faced, over-armed, slyly intelligent, deadly complex, and would blow up in his face if he didn't do this perfectly. Just like the alien pilot, as described by his own friends. He settled back in his seat to do some very delicate and damned serious hacking.

 

Ten minutes later, Kira caught a bit of luck. The lock was a savagely multipart thing that was going to take significant time to get through. He'd just given the general area a quick once-over more to see how much it looked like he was going to have to go through than anything else. And there it had been, an obvious backdoor into the main program. So he cautiously tried it.

 

He found himself inside a series of interconnected programs. A bit of study told him they were designed to control and prevent the spread of the effects of a specific set of actions by a defective section of code in the mainframe. A bit more poking at it and he realized Yuy had installed a series of cascading trap programs to prevent the mainframe from making those annoying random broadcasts on the emergency channels. Thank you Captain Yuy!

 

Once he understood the nature of the programs he was exploring, Kira turned his attentions to their security from the inside. In less than five minutes he knew Yuy was, if not quite his equal as a programmer, still uncomfortably close. And he was a lot more defensive than Kira generally was. Even something as inoffensive as these trap programs had been given protection the ZAFT generally didn't bother with on anything below security level Bravo.

 

He backed out the way he'd come in, no longer so sure he was going to be able to get the data they needed. He'd been gone over half an hour; they'd be sending someone to find him any time now. He chewed his lip thoughtfully. He didn't have the time to spend cracking Heero's locks to see what he'd stashed behind them, not when he'd use security like that on something so minor. It was time to try another approach.

 

A Gundam was not a storehouse but Kira had a tendency to keep some things in a few places in Strike-Freedom anyway. His medical kit for example wasn't the standard issue one. He kept two uniforms and a set of civilian clothes stowed in here as well. There were extra rations and bottled water in places one would not expect to find them too. And he had a complete copy set of his hacking discs along with a full dozen blanks for `data acquisition', more than enough to copy some small towns' entire libraries.

 

A quick sort through the hacking discs located the one he thought might do the job. It was the work of moments to enter it and it didn't take much longer to `introduce' it to both Yuy's lock and his trap programs. It was a highly specialized search program, one that could be `taught' to recognize a style of workmanship and then sent out to search for more of the same and other work that struck it as being in the same `family'. Since all it did was identify and locate the work, it was very fast to report back. Within two minutes of being released into the mainframe, it had given Kira over three dozen specific targets to investigate with more piling up rapidly.

 

He waited until the searcher hadn't given him a new possibility for ninety seconds before he slid the next disc in. This one would sort the finds by degree of security attached to them. From some of the things said in that first discussion last night, Kira had an idea that perhaps the first work done on Mendel's mainframe might not have been Yuy's. He wanted to take a look at the stuff that didn't have Heero's signature all over it first. Merquise had admitted someone else had set up this hideout for them. There was a good chance they'd set up the language programs too.

 

He found eighteen that showed no signs of Heero Yuy's input. Four of them were older than all other programs related to the alien visitors. Two were inactive, one was being updated irregularly and one was being updated almost continuously. He smiled grimly, yes; this was where he wanted to start. He began with the smallest one.

 

The program was protected by a simple password. Well, that and being buried in among the early reports of the colony's Department of Sanitation. The other three files he was interested in were imbedded in similar unlikely to be touched spots as well. It took him less than two minutes to come up with the password for this one.

 

He found himself watching the odd old man who'd taken the n-jammer cancellers. As Kira watched, he was going methodically through the area the aliens were now occupying. If this wasn't an orientation presentation, the Coordinator would eat it. He slid a blank disc into place and just copied it. He could review it in depth later.

 

The second inactive file proved to be a history of his own universe. It had some amazing gaps in it and he was fascinated by where the people who'd assembled it had elected to put their emphasis a few times. But it was also pretty long and he didn't have time to watch all of it either. So he put it on the blank as well and went on to the one being irregularly updated.

 

Within seconds of cracking it open, Kira knew he'd found what he was looking for. This was the translation program. He didn't bother to listen to any of it, he just copied it to three of his blanks. Yzak and Dearka would each be getting one, which should both assure it got back to the Plants and make his wary Commander a lot happier about dealing with these people.

 

The fourth file however proved to be a gold mine. These were newscasts and other reports from the other universe! Here was the information the visitors were getting that was keeping them informed on how things were going back home. And even without being able to understand a word of it, Kira could see they were coming from sources biased two distinctly different ways. So they were smart enough to listen to what their enemy was saying as well as what their own people thought. His regard for their intelligence rose.

 

Kira was about to reach for another blank when a sensor on the board in front of him began to blink. He looked up. The main bay door was beginning to open.

 

Shit! He'd gotten so wrapped up in this he'd forgotten about Yuy! A glimpse of movement on his screen directed his attention to the gantry and Duo Maxwell. That wasn't the friendly loudmouth moving so quickly and gracefully toward the bay where Yuy would be parking his mobile suit in a couple minutes. This looked a lot like it might be the other persona, the one Kira wasn't so anxious to meet if he didn't have to.

 

He changed his plans instantly. He didn't have time to copy this stuff. Instead, he slid another of his hacker discs in. The program on it latched onto that file and added itself to it. The program would copy and encrypt each of those reports and the mainframe would transmit them to any of the probes that had survived the battle. The probes would relay the data back to his mobile suit. And while none of the units they'd dropped here at Mendel may have survived, the one over by Curie Colony probably had.

 

He grabbed his `duster' disc, as he thought of it, and it went to work sweeping all signs of his explorations. These people were probably just what they claimed to be but then, they claimed five of them to be former terrorists. Kira honestly didn't think Yuy would appreciate discovering just how far into his people's data the Coordinator had gone. He did leave the evidence of his picking at that cascading trap setup though. Somehow, he doubted they'd think he'd just been sitting here all this time. He'd rather they had something fairly innocent to find. They might stop looking if they did; he'd noticed they had a rather high regard for the Captain's skills. And he hadn't actually broken the locks. It should boost a few egos that they'd kept the local hacker out.

 

As a precautionary afterthought, he added the theft program to the language translation files as well. Better safe than sorry. Only then did he put all his discs back into secure storage.

 

Kira shifted his attention to another set of sensors altogether. These were his official reason for being out here. And they were his perfect excuse for being in the Mendel mainframe in the first place. After all, the scanners on a mobile suit, even one as good as Strike-Freedom, were limited compared to what a colony boasted. His suit's scanners couldn't even hope to reach the incoming rescue teams, let alone give him a count of their numbers and a solid estimate of their time of arrival.

 

While they hadn't seen human maintenance in decades now, the old colony long range scanners were still in amazingly good shape. He found an odd lump in his throat as he realized there were ten ships racing back here. ZAFT had sent all seven Nazcas. The Alliance had sent two Nelsons. But the one that mattered to him was the one leading them all. The Kusanagi was two hours ahead of the rest and putting more distance between them by the minute. Kisaka had to be either worried in his own right or hearing from Cagalli to be pushing that hard.

 

Then his eye registered an eleventh ship. This one was just clearing the atmosphere and the trajectory of her path proved she'd unmistakably launched from Aube. His hands tightened on the mobile suit's controls. Archangel, that was the Archangel!

 

***************************************************************