Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Family Ties ❯ Chapter 66 ( Chapter 66 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

Duo discovers exactly what Barton wants him to do. Back on earth, Trowa and Quatre make a significant breakthrough.

Anime/Manga: Gundam Wing Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Drama / Hentai / Romance / Suspense / Angst | Type: Continuation | Uploaded On: 11.03.2009 | Pages: 9 | Words: 8.6K | Visits: 256 | Status: Work In Progress

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“Family Ties”

January 2007 ShenLong

Chapter 66

Duo looked up as the door opened a few minutes after Young had taken Duric. A gun was leveled on him and the voice of Mathews spoke up.

“You're to come with me and don't try anything funny or I will shoot.”

“Fine,” snarled Duo as he levered himself up from the bunk and dropped to the floor. “Where are we going?”

“Just shut up and move,” Mathews snapped and stepped back to allow Duo to exit the small room. “Down that way.”

Duo began to walk in the direction indicated, keeping his mouth shut but his eyes wide open.

After traversing several corridors and passing many closed doors, they finally arrived at their destination. A large door whooshed open and Duo was pushed to step inside. He went to snarl at the man, but froze in shock as his brain tried to scramble what his eyes were telling him.

“Keep moving,” snapped Mathews and poked the gun in the small of Duo's back.

Resisting the urge to spin and deck the man, Duo moved forward again.

“Down there,” Mathews said and nodded to a set of stairs leading from the catwalk they were currently standing on to the lower floor.

Walking along the catwalk, Duo did his best to take in as much information as he could. From what he could see, they were in a large hangar of sorts, and lined up were row upon row of mobile suits. Scanning through his memory, Duo couldn't recall ever having seen this type of mobile suit before. It was similar to the Serpent that Oz had had during the war, but it was clear these were a more superior suit than the Serpent.

“In there,” snapped Mathews

Duo dragged his eyes away from the suits and spotted a doorway. The doorway led into a large, control type room, perspex windows allowed those inside to see out onto the main hangar floor. Duo entered the room and stood just inside, eyes never still as his mind cataloged everything he saw.

“Is this the guy that Barton was talking about?”

Duo turned his head to see who was speaking. To the side, a man in army fatigues stood, his piercing brown eyes fixed firmly on Duo.

“Yeah. Barton will be along shortly,” Mathews replied. “Keep an eye on him though; he's not to be trusted.”

The other man nodded. “Sit him over there until Barton gets here.”

Duo once more found himself being shoved along.

* * *

“Barton took with him a mobile suit?” Une questioned. “Where the hell would he hide one of those? And more to the point, what did he want with it?”

“That, I don't know, Commander. I've not been able to find anything else on him as yet,” Trowa replied.

All five agents were silent as their minds digested the information and theories. Une broke the silence a few seconds later.

“Gentlemen,” she began as she pulled herself upright in her chair and squared her shoulders. “Given all this information and the theory Agent Space put forward, there are two things here of utmost priority. The first is to continue our investigations into this Firecell and do all we can to prevent it from happening. The second is to locate Dekim Barton and bring an end to whatever it is he has planned.”

All agents nodded in agreement.

“Fire and Day; you two are given full, top clearance to investigate this Firecell. I don't care what you do, what resources you use, but find a way to stop it. Space and Air; I want you two to take over Fire's investigation into the shipments, the shuttles delivering those shipments and where they are now. I have a hunch that wherever those shipments have gone, we will find Dekim and Agent Night.” Seeing Yuy about to protest, she cut him off quick. “Agent Day, I do realize that it is your partner out there, but I need your expertise on this Firecell. You're the best we have and I'm relying on you to find a way to prevent it from happening.”

Swallowing his words, Heero nodded in acceptance. He knew Une was right, but it didn't mean he had to like it.

“Summer?”

“Yes, ma'am?”

“I know your area is forensics, but I'd like you to assist these agents in any way you can.”

“Of course, Commander.”

“Good. All of you get to it, and good luck. Keep me informed of anything you find. Dismissed.”

The agents stood and left the commander's office to continue in their investigation.

* * *

“Where is he?” Dekim demanded as he entered the control room.

“Over there,” came a reply.

Dekim looked to where the tech had pointed and spotted Duo and Mathews. He strode over and stopped in front of the pair. Looking Duo up and down, he gave a smirk. “You want to know what you're doing here? You also want to know what all these are for?” he said and swept an arm in the direction of the mobile suits out in the hangar.

“The thought had crossed my mind,” Duo replied with a touch of sarcasm.

“Well, I guess you should take a really good look at these suits. I'm sure that being an ex Gundam pilot you would recognize the basics?”

“They look very similar to the Serpent suit,” Duo replied.

“Correct. What you see out there in the hangar is an improvement on the Serpent. These, my friend, are the latest in Mobile suit technology. They are a hybrid, capable of being both a Mobile Doll and pilot operated. Mr. Maxwell, you are looking at the new age of Mobile Suit - the Orion.”

The reality of Dekim's words began to sink in. Suits that could be either piloted or operated from a home base. Deciding to play it cool, Duo shrugged. “Seen one mobile suit and you've seen them all.”

“Maybe, maybe not. The Orion is different. It will have superior programming.”

Duo quirked an eyebrow, he wasn't sure he was liking the look in Dekim's eye. “How so?”

“Because you will be the one to program them.”

“No!”

“Ah, but you have no choice in the matter. You've already agreed to be a part of my operation. Refuse and you will be eliminated.

Duo slumped in his chair. He really didn't have a choice, not if he wished to protect his unborn child. He looked up at Dekim. “I thought you intended to release this Firecell to take over? Why do you need these Dolls if you're so sure your Firecell will work? Or am I correct in assuming the Firecell is still just a theory?”

“Believe me, the Firecell is no theory, its very much real. No, the Suits are my enforcement. Once I have control of the Earth and the Colonies I will use the Suits to maintain my rule.”

“Violence yet again,” Duo muttered. “When will mankind learn that you can't win with violence?”

“I don't intend to use violence, I've already told you that. My army and the Suits will be used to back up my rule. Should everyone play nice then there won't be any need to use them. Didn't you listen earlier when I spoke of my plans!?” Dekim snapped.

“You rambled on about a lot of things,” Duo returned. That comment got him a hard slap across the cheek.

“You will be the one to program the Dolls, you will do exactly what you're told and you won't question any order given to you. Put one foot out of line and I promise you, you will be eliminated.” Dekim turned and faced his head technician. “Put him to work programming the Dolls. Keep him covered at all times.”

“Yes, sir!” the tech replied.

“I'll be back later.” Dekim strode from the room.

“You heard the boss you're to program these Dolls. Come over here and I'll show you what to do.”

Duo declined to say anything, but rose from his seat and followed the tech.

* * *

Wufei handed over all the information he'd gathered so far in relation to the purchases, deliveries and movements of shuttles. Quatre immediately set about tracking down all the other companies Wufei had dug up that had supplied items to the 'Barton fund' as they had dubbed it. He contacted as many as he could, others were still being investigated by other Preventer branches and Quatre even contacted them to see what they had found.

Whilst Quatre was busy tracking orders, Trowa was putting all the pieces together and a picture was starting to emerge. So engrossed in his work he jumped a foot out of his seat when the 'phone rang.

“Air here,” he said, mind still on the task at hand.

“Agent Air, it's Captain Johnston from the L2 Preventer branch. I've had my team speaking with the guy from the shuttle port, Harold, who recognized Agent Night.”

Trowa's full attention suddenly switched to Johnston. “You have something for me?”

“Actually, I think this may help you out a bit. This Harold said the group was wearing coveralls from some company and the security footage confirms that. The company name on the coveralls we did a trace on; it doesn't exist.”

“Why am I not surprised?” muttered Trowa.

“That rang a few alarm bells so we confiscated all shuttle records from the port and have traced each of the outgoing shuttles. We found several shuttles registered under this company name, no set pattern to their departures though.”

“You wouldn't by chance know where they were going?” Trowa asked and waited with baited breath.

“We also confiscated the flight plan records from flight control and checked them all against all shuttles leaving the port. What we found proved to be very interesting indeed.”

“Captain Johnston, what exactly did you discover and can I have a copy of your findings sent through to me ASAP at this secure email address?” Trowa quickly sent the address through.

“It would take too long to explain it all so I'll just email the findings through now and you can read them at your leisure.”

“Thank you.”

“You're welcome. If you need anything further, please call me and the team will do all it can.”

“The assistance is appreciated, Captain. Ah, the email is here now. Air out.”

Cutting the call, Trowa clicked on the email program and brought it back up on the screen. He opened it and began to read. As he scanned down the report, the smile on his face began to widen. Across the room, Quatre had heard Trowa's side of the conversation and was intrigued to know just what was going on.

“Trowa? What have you got?”

“I think you should take a look at this too. It looks like it might be the breakthrough we've been chasing.”

Quatre was out of his chair and beside his husband before Trowa could blink.

“Captain Johnston sent it through. It's a report on the findings from the shuttle movements at the L2 space port Duo was last seen at.”

Scanning through the report, Quatre's eyes gleamed. “Well, stuff me. You could be right.”

“This shows the reported, intended flight plans for all shuttles leaving L2. Take a look though. All the shuttles carrying the bogus company name have submitted the same flight plan.”

“Then all we have to do is check the maps to see where the destination is,” Quatre beamed.

“Um, Quatre.”

“Yes?”

“It's not quite that simple. Here, look deeper at the log from the flight control.”

“Shit!” Quatre cursed.

“The shuttles all kept in touch with the L2 control, all heading to the same destination. Once reached radar and communications limits with L2, they were supposed to switch over and be in contact with the flight control center on mining satellite XRS 14. Here's the log from XRS 14's flight control.” Trowa skimmed down the email a touch.

“They have no record of them...”

* * *

“Just how does Une expect us to stop this Firecell?” grumbled Wufei as he rubbed his tired eyes.

“I wish I knew,” replied Heero with a sigh. “There's not much here to really go on.” Heero had continued to scan through the Professor's report, and whilst he had a lot of information on the workings of the Firecell, he was no closer to learning how to stop it from happening.

“Surely there has to be something simple we are missing,” continued Wufei.

“If only I could speak with this professor, once I have the missing pieces it would be a bit easier to follow exactly how the program is designed to work and then I can figure out the way to stop it.”

“Unless Agent Dust can produce him out of thin air, I'm afraid we don't have that luxury.”

“I know.”

The pair continued to work away for another fifteen minutes before the phone rang. Wufei answered it.

“Yuy, I think you should take this,” Wufei said and passed over the phone.

“Agent Day speaking.”

“Agent Day, it's Agent Dust reporting in.”

“Dust, what have you got for me?”

“I'm afraid there's some bad news and some good news. The professor cannot be located. He's not at the University and he's not away on a field trip either. No one has seen or heard from him in over a week. I'm afraid we don't know where he is, he seems to have vanished completely.”

“I see.” Heero bit his lip, this was going rapidly downhill.

“I have been back to the professor's apartment with the intent on confiscating any and all materials we could locate that may pertain to this case of yours. Unfortunately, there wasn't much there to pick up. Most of the professor's files, as you would be aware, are on disc. We were unable to locate any discs.”

“Agent Dust, did you manage to find anything at all?”

“There was a laptop that we now have in our possession.”

“I see.”

“I went back to the University though and the Dean kindly allowed me into the Professor's office. I did a bit better there. I have a computer hard drive, several discs and also some hand written files I thought might interest you.”

Heero brightened a bit with that information. “Thank you. Could you bring them directly to my office when you get back to headquarters, please?”

“We're on our way back now, Agent Day. ETA about fifty minutes.”

“Thank you.”

“No problem.”

Heero hung up the phone and turned to Wufei. Pausing for a brief moment to gather his thoughts, Heero filled the other agent in on the conversation.

“That's better than nothing,” Wufei said upon hearing the news.

“Every little bit helps right now.”

“Come on, Yuy. It's time for a break. I'll take you to the cafeteria and buy you lunch.”

Heero looked to the other man. “No, thank you.”

“But, Yuy, you have to eat!”

“I know I do, but I refuse to eat at the cafeteria. They don't serve what is commonly known as food there. Even Duo is wary about eating the cafeteria stuff and you know Duo will eat pretty much anything.” Heero's voice faltered a touch as he spoke of his missing husband. A warm hand on his shoulder snapped him from his misery.

“We will get him back, Yuy.”

Cobalt met with obsidian.

“You know I keep my promises.” Wufei's gaze was sincere.

Heero nodded.

“There's a small, Italian place around the corner. Let's go there.”

Heero followed the other agent from the office.

* * *

Duo found himself sitting in front of a computer terminal, Mathews still with him. The tech picked up the keyboard and typed in a few commands before settling it back down in front of Duo.

“I take it you know something about mobile suits?”

“You could say that,” Duo replied.

“Good. This terminal connects with the others that are all responsible for the programming of the suits. In the data banks you will find all the suit specs...” The tech continued to drone on, explaining the set up to Duo and what he expected the man to do in relation to the programming. Duo listened with half an ear, his mind thinking of any way in which he could add a little of his own `extras' into the programming without being detected.

True, he was good with a computer. He'd hacked into many during the war; but this was a bit trickier. Right now he could have done with a little of Heero's expertise.

The tech finished explaining what was required of Duo and he left the man to get on with it, promising to return in a while to check on his progress.

Knowing that his babysitter was going to remain with him, Duo had no choice but to comply. With a heavy heart he brought up the suit specs and began to look them over.

* * *

“If there are no records of communication, arrival or departure of the shuttles to XRS 14, then where the hell did they go?”

“That is something we need to find out,” Trowa replied. A glint appeared in the one visible, green eye and Trowa cracked his knuckles. “Time to get to work.”

“Anything I can do to help?”

“Not right now, but I will probably need your assistance soon,” Trowa replied.

“No problem.” Quatre knew that when Trowa was like this it was best to leave him to it. He returned to his own investigation of the parts purchased by the stolen funds.

An hour passed and during that time, Quatre made some progress with his investigations. He now had in his possession all the invoices for purchases made through the Barton account. He'd gone through them all and separated them into armaments and electronics.

There was quite a sizable amount of both.

All invoices had been double checked and the companies they'd been delivered to also checked in relation to shipment of those parts. All had been sent to the same company based on L2.

The company that didn't exist.

Going back through the inventory of all the parts, Quatre could determine there was enough there to build several computers. The armaments were another story. From what Quatre could tell, there was more than enough shipped out to create a small army of mobile suits; with one exception.

The larger parts required to build the suits were not showing up on any of the invoices at all. Quatre puzzled over that for a while. They knew that Barton had taken a Serpent suit with him when he disappeared, but if he was planning to use that as a blue print to build other suits, he would need the larger parts. There were plenty of circuit boards, hydraulics, gyros and the other, smaller pieces that made up a suit; but the more solid parts, those that would be the armor, plating and such simply did not show up anywhere.

Surely if Barton was planning on building suits he would need the larger, framework materials too? Quatre frowned as he ran that information over and over in his mind. Where would the man have gotten those parts from, assuming he was building suits? Then a thought hit him.

Excitedly, Quatre began to type in commands to the computer.

During the war there would have been a lot of scrap floating around in space and also a lot left on earth. He knew that Hilde and Duo had worked the scrap yard on L2 after the war and quite often had suit parts salvaged come through the yard. If they did then what was to say that other salvage companies had too? Someone had to have been out there during the war and salvaging a lot of the space junk, even if it was only to keep the shipping lanes open.

After several minutes of scanning, tracing, back tracking and double checking, Quatre hit the jackpot.

His face lit up into a feral grin as he found what he was looking for. Hacking further into the records, he confirmed his theory.

Trowa was hard at work on his own computer. Figuring that the shuttles had obviously deviated from their planned course, he checked the shuttle port records for fueling, calculating how much fuel was given to each shuttle.

Taking those figures, he then looked at the flight plan and noted where the communications with L2 ceased and the ones with XRS 14 were to take over. The radar from L2 would lose tracking of the shuttles so many kilometers out into space and there was a small distance of a couple hundred kilometers before the radar and radio communications of XRS 14 would pick up and track the shuttles.

Whilst it wasn't a lot of distance when talking in terms of space travel, there was a small window of opportunity there, big enough for a shuttle to divert off course.

Calculating how much fuel would be used in getting from L2 to the place where communication ceased, Trowa figured out how much fuel would be left. He then converted that to distance and had a more accurate idea of how far the shuttles could have gone.

Armed with that result, it would be a case of pulling up the stellar maps and seeing what satellites lay within that radius.

The excitement was starting to build, knowing he had something more to work with now and he was eager to pin point where those shuttles could have gone. He raised his head to call his lover over to assist and paused. Quatre was typing feverishly at the keyboard; obviously something was going right for him.

“Quatre?”

The blonde looked up. “Trowa, I've made a pretty good discovery here.”

“I've had a bit of success with this myself,” Trowa returned. “Fill me in on your findings.”

Quatre proceeded to let his husband know of the questions he'd raised regarding the mobile suits. “With there being plenty of smaller parts for building suits, it seemed obvious they would need the larger parts too, but there's nothing on any of the invoices in relation to the plating and such. If that is Barton's intention, then he would need to get the larger parts from somewhere. There are no records of mobile suit parts being purchased in any quantities large enough to match with the smaller parts to build suits.”

“How many suits would you be looking at?”

“Given the amount of smaller parts, I'd say there would be enough small parts to build around two to three hundred suits.”

“Shit!”

“I've checked all the salvage yards that deal in large, mobile suit parts and none would have enough parts available to build that number of suits, and haven't had that quantity for over five years.” Quatre's smile turned evil. “I checked back further, going as far back to when the war was being fought. Several companies were responsible for clearing away the debris - most of it being from mobile suits.”

“And?”

“A large portion of it seems to have been snapped up by one scrap company. It was all taken to a mining satellite for smelting. Trowa, there was enough scrap purchased to build the parts for over three hundred mobile suits.”

~ * ~

tbc...