Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Artificial Life ❯ Episode Zero ( Chapter 1 )

Author: Deoridhe Grimsdottir

Email: deoridhe@arabia.com

Title: Artificial Life - Chapter 02

Rated: PG, so far

Pairings: None so far; eventual 1+R, 2+H, 3+4, 5+S, 6x9, 11x13

Archives: http://www.livejournal.com/users/usuyami/

Warnings: Spoilers for Episode Zero, eventual spoilers for the entire series and Endless Waltz

Notes: Most of the characters speak multiple languages, and I assume multiple languages are used throughout the series. The language I chose to use for general communication is English, so unless otherwise noted they're speaking English.

Thanks to: Annie for an excellent beta, and the series creators to give me something so fun to work off of!

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Although the dawn was artificial, it matched many of the things I had been told about by people who lived on earth; the dew was cold and darkened my khaki pants with moisture; the air seemed fresher and damper that at noon; the light was subdued and peaceful. The only thing missing from the illusion was the sun; the light source on Colony 04 was diffused even when the sun should have been cresting the hill.

But soon, I would see a real sunrise.

My entire plan rested tenuously on a paper trail I had spent the last few months building up, hinged on the board members who had approved my leaving the colony to not speak up during their morning meeting with my father. I had played on their desire to get me out of the way and it had worked better than I initially thought it would. As I stepped forward I noticed a rock against my shoe and kicked it with unexpected force, sending a spray of moisture out in front of me. They thought I was running away again. I was fairly certain at least one of them was hoping I'd never make it back to take over my father's company. Seized with a sudden rage, I kicked the rock as far as I could and watched it arch away from me. I wasn't running away again, damn it. This time I was running to do something; I was running to protect my family before OZ could hurt them.

Several feet from the old warehouse where the Professor and I had built Sandrock, I paused to look back at where I'd come from. The large white house at the end of the street was mostly hidden behind rows of houses, but it was still a dominating white structure. Somewhere in there, my father was meeting with a delegation of one of the Earthside companies interested in manufacturing in space. "Goodbye, Father."

"Quatre, you're late. That's not like you." Professor H's eyes were kind, but the rest of his features were stern. "Are you having doubts?"

"No," I promised quickly, "I was just thinking."

"You don't have time for that now." He turned away from me, walking into the underground hanger. "You have to be out of here before your father comes looking for you."

"He won't until after his 10 A.M. meeting," I informed the back of Dr. H's dirty lab coat. "I left him a note."

"You what?" For a moment, I was almost afraid at the anger he felt, but that anger - like any emotion he experienced - retreated quickly. "That was very foolish, Quatre. Now he knows where to look for you and how to find you."

"I don't care." I braced my feet apart as I had practiced, mimicking my father's 'forceful and authoritative' stance. "I won't come back until I've destroyed OZ, and any other threat to the colonies. The Maguanarc Corps will back me on this; I know they will." My voice had slipped from stern to pleading halfway through, and I took a moment to rope in my tone. "You chose me, Professor. You'll just have to trust me from here on out."

"I do," he replied quietly, his smile almost touching his eyes. "You'll make a fine Gundam pilot, Quatre Winner."

I flashed a grin at him, correcting, "Quatre Raberba Winner," but received only the absent waving of his hand in response.

"Hurry, hurry, we haven't any time to waste. Did you pack clothing? Toiletries?"

"I brought them over a couple of days ago; they're already in Sandrock, Professor." I caught a glimpse of his oily eyebrows over the top of the bank of computers and I walked over to stand next to him, looking at the diagnostics that he was rapidly thumbing through. "Nothing's changed since yesterday, right?"

"Always best to check again," was his response.

I sighed. "I'll do the physical checks, then," was my dutiful response, already heading for the door that lead into the huge bay below us. "Is there anything else I need to carry down?"

"First aid kit, by the door."

Kit in hand, I unlocked the heavy door and slipped through it, the carbonized steel closing behind me with a dull, rubber thud. The stairs were spindly - in the last year I'd all but duct taped them together - but they held my weight and they would hold Professor H's when he finally got down here. Sandrock stood tall and proud in front of the enormous capsule we had designed to take him outside of the colony and down to the earth. "Hello, Sandrock," I greeted him, my neck straining as I looked up into his face. "It's finally time, today; we're going to the Earth." The cockpit opened as I approached, and I thumbed the combination on the transmitter in my pocket to bring down the drop-line. "I can't wait to see it; my mother grew up on the Earth, though she was born in a colony."

I hadn't been afraid of heights in years, but the sensation of rising, dangling only on a thin cord, always sent a rush to the pit of my stomach. "I won't be going to where she grew up, though," I continued as I twisted upward toward the cockpit and stepped off onto the platform. "We'll be going to the Arab Nations, where the Maguanarc Corps are based. I've told you about them." Stowing the first aid kit in the slot for it built into the back of my chair took only a moment, and then I settled back into place as Sandrock closed in around me.

"Sandrock, wake up," I commanded, and the screens began to buzz and flicker as they came to life. The first time I ever got into a mobile suit, it had been too large for me, and even though I'd done my best, Rashid's Suit had fit like an adult glove on the hand of a child. Sandrock was designed so I could shift the positioning of everything as I grew, but as of right now everything was perfectly laid out around me. Flicking my fingers across the keyboard off to one side, I watched as each system roared to life. A news feed to my upper right flickered on, the volume already a low mumble in the background. A quick glance clarified that, once again, the United Federation was having meetings, this time in Grenada about the situation there, and that guerilla fighting had broken out around the complex. "Just a few more hours, Sandrock, and we'll be on our way to the earth." I brought up a couple more news feeds, all local except for the one encrypted one I'd managed to hack a couple of days ago. That one was fairly boring, at the moment; apparently it was currently eight in the evening and the nine o'clock news was goofing off while the cameras recorded to nothingness.

"Quatre, do you read me?"

I flicked my microphone on, replying quickly, "I read you, Professor. How do things look on the outside?"

"No problems. On your end?"

"Nothing. Sandrock made it through the night just fine." He snorted; my anthropomorphism of my giant mobile suit always struck him as amusing and, I always felt, slightly childish. "I'm going to check through the back and make sure I have everything I might need if I don't catch up with the Corps quickly."

Without waiting for his reply, I dropped the couple feet down from the pilot's chair to the supports below. Behind the main console we had constructed a smaller storage area, mainly for storing anything that might be needed on a mission. It looked like a flat wall covered in doors, though actually it was a room filled with cubes of different sizes, each labeled meticulously; that had been a particularly boring weekend. The cubes were stacked two deep - the ones behind empty - with the smallest near the top. Due to a clever use of railings, I could actually remove any of these cubes to get to the ones behind; double stacking had been my idea and I was quite proud of the solution I'd come up with. I climbed up the ladder along the 'wall of storage' to check the food stores in the top compartments; most of it was dried food, but it never hurt to check everything. I also poked through the spare clothing I'd packed, sending the scent of spice through the air. Everything was disgustingly organized and normal.

I dropped off of the ladder, absorbing the force of the impact easily, and checked the water tap on the side of the cubes; although the water produced by Sandrock's thousands of processes was stored higher up - where excess steam could easily be discharged through the head - well-protected tubing brought some of it into the main cockpit just in case. A quick check of the bathroom facilities - airplane sized toilet and sink - was next, but still I found nothing wrong with any of it.

"Quatre. Quatre! Can't you hear me, boy?"

I clambered up to the pilot's chair, settling in and looking over at the open communication channel. "What's wrong?"

"You'll be the death of me," Professor H huffed, his moustache quivering. "Don't go running off when we're doing the check-up."

"I'm sorry." The contrite tone and faint, winning smile seemed natural and was entirely faked. "I want to get going, Professor. How much longer until flight time?"

"Forty-five minutes," was his prompt reply. "I've already communicated with the tower about a barge taking off from inside the colony and exiting; your supposed destination is the mining asteroid, so mind you don't say differently.

"Right." I answered, bringing trajectory up on display. "So I head in that direction, swing out slightly as if overcompensating, then keep on going, right? The asteroid field is right there, so I should be able to get lost within all of the satellites, and from there it's as simple as breaking orbit and angling toward the planet; gravity will do the rest."

"That is your plan," Professor H says heavily. "Are you sure you're not having second thoughts, Quatre? This will be very difficult; I don't want you to sacrifice everything if you're having doubts."

(tense change! Eeeek!)

"No doubts, Professor." I fix him with my best 'mature and serious' look.

"Then why the?" (maybe put ellipses here - "Then why the...?")

"Why the letter?" The question is muddled, even in my thoughts. "Because, I may never have a chance to say anything to him again... and I don't want my last words to be the argument we had last night." I close my eyes a moment, warding off that memory; it had been a particularly bad fight, especially since I was so on edge about the launch the next day. "I am right. He may not understand that now, but maybe... maybe he'll understand after he sees what good I do."

I can tell that Professor H doesn't agree with me, but he stops trying to change my mind.

* * *

There are times when I curse my own attention to detail. Those forty-five agonizing minutes pass without anything of consequence to do save for disguising Sandrock in his steel and stone cover; for all Professor H's concern about time tables, we were nerve-destroyingly efficient. Finally, I'm flying out through the colony proper, looking like a barge, with Professor H overlaying his voice and video in place of my feed, so even the fact that I was 'that young Winner boy' wouldn't work against us. Even within the colony, things look small and doll like; our house - centrally located near the government buildings - is a miniature block of sugar carved to look like a Victorian mansion. I can imagine my father in there, reading the note and cursing my stubborness; well Father, it looks like we're both stubborn. (mixed tenses in this paragraph)

I won't get anywhere if I keep dwelling on him.

Instead, I turn my mind toward the Maguanarc Corps, my new family. When I was younger, I had family that I actually knew the faces of, two of them at least. (again, tense shifts) I grew up with the two youngest daughters of Father's third wife, Rasha Al Denobah. Hadiyyah was only a few of years older than I was and took after her mother - dark with pale skin and milky green eyes, while the much older Munirah took more after my father and was the only one with his brown eyes. I had my mother's coloring, pale and blond with blue eyes, and I stuck out like a sore thumb in our predominantly dark haired colony. (Does this diverge from canon? I had always thought Quatre's sisters were all genetic clones. Or maybe I'm making a wrongful assumption that they all had the DNA of one mother and one father.) I was an equally odd duck within the Maguanarc Corps, but like those fleeting stolen days with Hadiyyah, I never felt out of place. It would be good to be in a place where I was recognized again; around my Father I was assumed to be a miniature copy of him, painted with slightly different hues. Most of his children were cooperative, joining the company proper - like Munirah who was a Vice President of Operations on one of our resource satellites - or fitting respectably into the predefined order of things - like Hadiyyah's current stint in college. According to Father, I had similarly cooperative siblings on just about every colony or resource satellite in the area; as his last created bit of progeny I would naturally fall neatly in line. Children rebel, he had assured me once, but no one escapes the expectations of their parents. Well, what do you think now Fa--

I resolutely turned my mind back to the Maguanarc Corps. My 'barge' was moving right on schedule. In fifteen minutes we'd be lost in the asteroid field and would shed the steel 'barge' cover for the stone 'meteorite' cover that would take us to earth. Twelve hours, give or take an hour, for planetfall. I was angled toward the Arabian Desert in the center of the Independent Arab Nation, the IAN. The city commanders in the two nearest cities had been alerted as to my arrival, along with the Maguanarc Corps itself. I was hoping to land somewhere near the Corps' main base in Al-Hassa, but gravity is an iffy navigational tool and it was contrary to my mission to use auxiliary guidance systems before planetfall. Secrecy was of the utmost importance; OZ was a formidable opponent that couldn't be mastered with brute force alone. To this end, there was strict radio silence until planetfall as well, so it would be simply myself and my thoughts.

Fantastic. Just what I needed.

Sandrock beeped three times, alerting me to our entrance to the asteroid field. The outer hull was controlled through radio transmitted bindings; once we were sufficiently confused among the mass of orbiting rock, I signaled the barge outer shell to release and it separated in sections. In a moment of frenzied over-planning, I had even made the edges irregular - as if the pieces had come from a ship destroyed by asteroid hits. Safely ensconced now in my asteroid shell, I used the minimal thruster power left to angle us toward the planet itself. The earth came into view, upside down, on one of the five external cameras. Looking up with it, I was caught in a sensation of deja vu; had it only been two years since my last fateful attempt to reach that planet? I was less different from that rebellious, spoiled child of then than I was willing to admit to anyone but myself; although Rashid has slapped some sense into me, I was still unsure. Compared to all of the natural, flowering life on the planet I was going to visit, would I stand out as some freak of nature? Being a blond Arab, was difficult enough, but I was simultaneously a creation of my Father. He had tried to mold me into a dutiful son and heir since before I could speak; my first memories of him were lectures on the importance of the family - and by extension the business since we're all tied up in it one way or another. I was tutored instead of sent to school. My interactions with my peers tended to be side-effects of my Father's business, where everyone knew who I was. I wasn't exactly well socialized to be around equals who weren't subsidiaries or employees of some Winner branch or another. It wasn't until the Maguanarc Corps that I met anyone other than my Father who was willing to reprimand me; despite the bruising, I think I prefer Rashid's heavy and clear messages to my Father's lectures. There was something honest in the way Rashid met me eye to eye, instead of looking away or avoiding me as my Father did. The determination in Rashid's soul sent shocks to the deepest part of me; Rashid was a Maguanarc, created by the IAN as protection against their enemies. They, like me, were test tube babies created for a purpose, but somehow they were able to find completion and wholeness through their inborn mission, whereas in mine I saw only ruin and emptiness. (meep! Tense changes! *hides*)

I had never been hit before that day, nor have I been hit since. Reflecting on it, I can see what a spoiled and stupid child I must have seemed, striking blindly out at a much older and more mature father in the only way I knew how, flailing without purpose against my own destiny. When Rashid hit me on the face, it was like the lights had been turned on in my soul; I had locked myself away so completely that I had forgotten anything outside my Father and my detente existed. And when we fought to save those people from the resource satellite the Alliance had consigned them too, I saw in a moment a destiny deeper than the one my Father and his business offered. He wanted me to protect the family, but he was blind to the forces that threatened the colonies most - OZ, an organization that had been insidiously manipulating the Alliance and destroying it from within. It would only be a matter of time before OZ turned its attention back to the colonies, to the ruin of my Father, my Family, and my company. Winner Enterprises, Incorporated was too large of a force for OZ to ignore, and my Father was too pacifistic for OZ to use. Their recourse would have to be destruction. Although it cost me my place in the family, for a pacifistic Winner should never go to war much less become a terrorist, I would protect those I love and those whom I should love, and if, as a side effect, I was finally able to be Quatre Raberba Winner, instead of that Winner heir, so much the better.

Twelve more hours to go.