Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Idle Hands ❯ Six ( Chapter 6 )

Six

Trowa shifted slightly where he sat, wishing Wufei would get the point and move away a bit, then shifted again. They were in a large meeting hall with people talking about how best to proceed with catching Obsidian and the roaches, but there was no real point to them being there. The people all had ideas, but none of them had struck as overly brilliant.

...Wufei's hand was clutching his shirt.

Trowa focused on the hand in disbelief, then followed the arm...to the sleeping Asian man.

He'd fallen asleep. He had fallen asleep on Trowa.

Duo, with a light smirk, glanced sidelong at Trowa.

'Fuck you,' Trowa mouthed.

'My boyfriend,' Duo retorted with a shrug.

Trowa tried not to snicker at that.

Quatre looked around to them in a way that suggested he'd missed the commentary but had noticed the conversation. He blinked at Trowa a moment, then looked down to Wufei's hand as well. You could see the interest bring him back to life as he followed Wufei's one grasping hand to the sleeping man himself.

He blinked.

Heero shifted forward casually so he could see around Trowa, blinking at Wufei, then looking down the line to Duo and Quatre.

Quatre smirked slightly, then sat back quickly.

Duo ran a hand down his face, looking back to the speaker.

Trowa looked to Heero, raising a very slight eyebrow—Heero's eyes were already sparkling.

No...none of them got why Wufei would snuggle with Trowa, because he wasn't doing it with anyone else. The hand thing seemed very...intimate...to Trowa, though. He didn't mind them seeing that the guy was sleeping against him, but he actually wished they hadn't seen that. It didn't seem really fair, but there wasn't a lot else to do about it.

"Hey," he whispered, moving his shoulder slightly.

Wufei blinked, opening his eyes to look around the room without moving his head, then let go of Trowa's shirt. He shifted back properly onto his own seat, rubbing at his eyes before yawning hugely. He rubbed at his face again, then looked toward Duo and Quatre—both of them pretended not to notice. Wufei looked back to Trowa and grinned a bit foolishly, then looked down to Heero. Heero was giving him a curious look.

'Sorry,' Wufei mouthed to Trowa.

Trowa nodded at him, stretching out his shoulder. Duo would have just let him sleep; he should have just laid on Duo.

'You bored?' Wufei asked curiously.

Trowa shrugged.

'Good enough for me,' Wufei stood, stretching very slightly as the speaker stuttered to an uncertain silence. "I'll tell you what we're gonna do," Wufei noted, moving down the aisle as Duo took a breath that looked like he wanted to smack himself in the face. "We're going to get the troops together, bitch at them for not scrambling to be read first...and then we're going to form small parties of people from any region we suspect, and let them go to town."

"Sir, that's hardly..."

"Hardly as complicated as you want?" Wufei asked with interest, moving up the side of the room. "Hardly as time-taking as your plan? I don't get it. The whole point is to flush the fuckers into the open and arrest them...right? All the aerial support we should need will be the satellite feeds Barton has been accessing already. We don't need to waste money on aerial sweeps that show nothing. Until we feel we need them, that sort of support should be on standby."

Trowa blinked, startled. He hadn't been listening to the lecture—and Wufei knew it was about aerial sweeps?

"As for...the other plans that have been put up today..." Wufei hesitated thoughtfully. "They're all good," he shrugged. "Mostly they're all simple, and overall," he stopped beside the podium to look at the assemblage, "they're all valid. We know that. We were supposed to hear one or two suggestions today and figure out which was the best, but then like, twenty people decided that their one step variants needed to be their own blasted plan...and I honestly fell asleep. Do you have any idea how bad form that is?" he looked everyone over as they exchanged looks. "So that should tell you that this is taking too long. As we speak, my espoused is arranging a grid pattern through the satellite imagery that was taken as soon as the sun came up this morning. Yuy's espoused is collecting the information of who came from what area. As soon as they get back to us, we'll start what I suggested."

A murmur went through the group.

"We came up with this plan this morning," Wufei pointed out. "But we knew we were planning to do this today, so we started our background idea into action and figured it could be capped if a better plan came up. Either way things were started, and a change of plans usually isn't that hard to effect. So...ladies and gentlemen of the assemblage, make sure your men have been turning in the requested information and we'll send out a general call when we have things organized. Thank you. Good day."

Most of the room stood and stretched, sighing in relief and muttering cordially to each other...but there were a few people who were bitching. Those people were glaring after the five Brigadiers—and had been confused why they hadn't took the front-most rows anyway.

Heero's phone beeped.

"Oh, look," Heero muttered, "Matty got all the information and they're starting to give the quadrants numbers..." he smiled fondly, looking around to Trowa.

"Quadrants, huh?" Trowa asked happily. "You're right, he is cute."

Heero's eyebrow quirked.

Trowa laughed happily at that, stretching his arm again. "You're heavy," he informed Wufei.

"You're the one who let me do it," Wufei argued easily. "I have no sympathy."

- -

Blake and Matty were buzzing around the conference room like they belonged there as Matty's soldiers organized papers. Jinli had a large map laid in front of him...that had a long single dowel sticking out of the middle of it. His eyes were sparkling as he looked around to the group of them, and Matty paused to look up as well. He'd stopped writing on the electronic clipboard on the table in front of him to do it, and his face lit up as he bounced across the room to hug and kiss Heero.

"What are you doing?" Trowa asked Blake curiously as the young man moved to lean against him—he had an electronic clipboard, too. He, however, was carrying his.

"Watch," Blake muttered, clicking a few of the options on the clipboard. A 3-D image of the jungle rose from the thing, holograph-style.

"You've never played with one of these before, have you?" Trowa accused, taking the thing from him to consider the depth.

"Show him," Jinli suggested, his eyes still sparkling as he looked back to Wufei.

Blake pulled the clipboard down slightly and tapped the measure option.

...Eighty feet.

Wufei smacked a hand to his face as Jinli started laughing delightedly.

"That's like...the lowest level of canopy," Quatre protested, though he was also grinning. The men who'd followed them from the conference room started entering, though, and Blake glanced at them and took the clipboard back.

"This part is nearly done," Matty informed Heero, bouncing back to the table. He clicked a few things on his clipboard, looking up to Jinli.

"Right," Jinli shook his head, focusing on the lines he was laying out—with metallic string.

"What are you guys doing?" Heero asked blankly, looking that over.

"We saw that the base had some unused clipboards," Jinli explained, "so we decided to network'em," he indicated the one Blake had. "We got the scans from this morning loaded on them and printed out," he pointed at the paper laying across the large table in front of him. "And I've been using this stuff," he showed the string, "to trace everything out. We can get this loaded on a few more clipboards or laptops when we've finished, and it'll be all...high tech and stuff."

"Hm," Trowa took Blake's, then clicked through a few security locks. They all recognized him and his clearance immediately since the clipboard had the same AS technology as the phones. "I'm going to clear your...uh...low-measure," he noted to Jinli. The guy grinned at him. "I'll actually sync it up with the local stats and we'll have a real map."

"You can do that?" Blake asked, blinking up at him in amazement.

"The land has been...contoured?" Trowa looked to his lover a moment as he tried to think of a better word, then smiled and kissed the young man. "Hi."

Blake smiled back at him.

"Are you the gentlemen who startled us all with a foot-long orange frog?" one of the men asked, moving closer with a grin on his face.

Blake gave him an interested look, looking back to Trowa.

"The background on my laptop," Trowa supplied dryly.

Blake grinned at him, then smiled abashedly at the man near him. "I'm sorry, I didn't realize anyone else would see it."

"I had to load it up to show some information on screen the other day," Trowa explained, realizing that with the rush, he'd neglected to say. "There were like, a hundred people in there, and the background settings were so deep in your pictures that I just gave it up and went back to what I was doing."

Blake laughed happily at that, catching his hand briefly, then turned to the man who'd approached him. "My apologies."

"Forgive me for prying," the man noted, "but wouldn't it be easier for you to...become espoused?"

"He doesn't want to," Trowa returned casually, clicking through a few more options, then moving past them toward the table. "Matty, I need you to go into the options and..."

Blake watched him go, then looked back to the other man.

The guy bowed his head respectfully, then took a few steps back.

"Good afternoon," Jinli greeted as the line of people entering finally subsided. There were a fair few of the men with the blue mark on their temple. "I apologize for keeping you waiting, but we thought to network the program," he indicated the clipboards. "We're nearly done."

"And you are?" someone asked.

"Me?" Jin blinked up at him. "I'm Wong-Chang Jinli."

Wufei smirked very slightly at him.

"This is Wi...uh, Mattox Williams-Yuy."

"My name doesn't sound right in the old style," Matty noted in amusement.

Jin grinned briefly at him. "Williams-Yuy Mattox...it doesn't really sound Asian...and you are."

"Am I really?" Matty asked curiously in Chinese. "What a splendid thing."

Jinli, and a fair few others in the room, laughed at that.

"And this is Blake Kiardane," Jin added, indicating Blake. "We've been setting up the search stuff this morning—I'm gonna let my husband do the talking now."

Wufei would have snickered at that if he weren't suddenly the center of attention. He considered Jinli a long moment, then smacked his ass as he turned. Jinli couldn't properly retaliate without either losing the line he was making or making a huge scene...so he huffed at the other male.

More people sniggered.

"I don't know what he wants me to say," Wufei noted skeptically, looking back to the table. "Map," he indicated the thing, then Trowa and Matty, "clipboard. It's pretty straightforward."

Jinli rolled his eyes, then refocused.

"How many sections are you making up?" someone asked, stepping forward to see the map better.

"Well...more than sixteen," Wufei noted, looking down.

"Wufei," Jinli protested.

Wufei snickered happily at that, his eyes sparkling as he looked back to the people. "It looks to be about forty-eight."

"We have seventy units ready," someone else protested. "Couldn't you just..."

"We could chase them all over without finding them if they switch from quadrant to quadrant," Matty pointed out seriously, glancing up. "We figure that this way, there can be a main line moving out and they can leave people behind to watch each section. Other than that, we have no idea how to go about finding Obsidian, especially with the giant hole in the side of it—so we didn't want to use all the men here."

"So you're talking about...a line moving out," someone moved up to indicate the one side of the map, "leaving people behind...and as they go and secure, they just extend an inner line?"

Matty nodded. "That should leave a few units free to do whatever else you guys might need them to. I mean...we'll need people here for a jail of some sort, right? We can't just toss'em all in a hole."

"It'd make it go faster," Blake noted dryly.

A few more people snickered at that.

"So...why did you even let us all go make speeches?" someone else demanded.

"We were under the impression," Duo pointed out, "that there were going to be two or three people with varying ideas on how to do this," he indicated the map. "We didn't realize it was going to be a spectacle."

"I'm getting lunch for us," Quatre noted, turning from his friends to look at the rest. "We'll just all call this lunch, and then we can reconvene and get this started—you'll be done by then, Jin?"

"Should be," Jinli agreed easily, brushing his hair back from his face. "Then we can start doling out the who-goes-where." He raised his eyes to see the men looking at him skeptically. He hadn't meant to say it in a way that stepped on toes, but he hadn't planned to have a ton of brass piled on him either. "I was trying to keep the information flow set up so we could have either Heero or Trowa deciding that stuff."

"We'll figure out which one of us does it after we eat," Heero reassured him, then turned to look around at the various men with a slightly raised eyebrow. "Thank you, your help is invaluable, Jinli."

"Thank you, Heero. We all do what we can." Jin focused back on what he was doing.

Quatre started for the door, and after a few moments, everyone else followed.

"We do good, boss-man?" Jin asked Duo casually when it was just them again.

"Why am I boss-man?" Duo complained, moving around to drop in a chair.

"Because I'm not talking to Fei," Jin explained. "He totally smacked my ass for everyone to see." He tacked his string down.

"But, like, Heero and Tro are right here. Why me?"

"You're my bestest friend," Jin supplied, straightening to both meet eyes and start measuring out more string.

Duo considered that a moment, then met Jinli's eyes. "Well," he decided, "you could have just done all this on a laptop," he indicated the table.

"Not and assign units manually," Blake retorted, going to take his own seat. He grinned at Trowa. "You didn't tell me about the background."

Trowa dropped next to him. "Things got busy. First we went after Wing, then we had to deal with Heero...now everything else is falling in-line. The picture and my trying to deal with it got a good laugh, and I was able to let them all know I'm with you."

Blake smiled cutely for him, leaning over so they were close. In about a second, as far as they were concerned, there was no one else in the room but them.

Duo harrumphed, then shifted back where he sat to close his eyes and cross his arms.

"This is nice," Wufei complimented Jin, moving around the table. "Very neat."

Jin grinned a bit in appreciation of that, then remembered he wasn't talking to the man.

Wufei considered that a moment, then glanced at Heero. "I'm glad you're here," he added. "I forgot what it was like to have a good wing-man."

Heero grinned at his friend.

"Heero," Jinli asked sweetly, "would you mind telling a certain gentleman that I'm still not speaking to him?"

"Who?" the Japanese man asked with a perfectly straight face. "You seeing other dudes? Fei might get jealous."

Jinli glowered at Heero for that, and Duo started laughing.

- -

It didn't take long after Duo stopped laughing for Heero to step in and start helping Jin. The man had informed them all that he wasn't talking to Heero either, so he happily started calling the man Yuy instead. It was the sort of childish play Heero indulged in, so he joined in Wufei's game of piling on compliments. The main difference between them being that Heero was able to get straight men into bed.

Jin was giving him a seriously uncertain look when Quatre walked in.

"By that expression on your face," Quatre noted as he set the bags down on the table, "I feel I should tell you that Heero's feeling mischief. What are you doing?" he demanded of his friend pointedly.

Heero laughed delightedly, bouncing over to him. He rested a hand briefly on Quatre's shoulder, casting him a glance with his eyes alone, then smiled almost flirtatiously and took one of the boxes. He was away just as fast as he'd shown up, dropping in his chair next to Matty.

Matty gave him a look.

Quatre blinked after him, looking around to Duo.

Duo snickered, waving it away.

"That was just mischief," Quatre informed them all, seeming startled. "But damn..."

"I could do it if you wanted me to," Duo noted dryly.

"Don't you be bitchy," Quatre gave him another startled look. "Heero...is that how you do it? Is it always mischief?"

"Depends on the guy," Heero returned, grinning wickedly. "Usually it was more lust."

Quatre thought about that.

"Sorry, but I don't lust after you, so I can't properly...uh...distract you."

"I wonder why," Matty noted dryly.

"Why are you being bitchy now of all times? I outright came-on to Wufei and you rolled your eyes at me—but when you're watching me fuck around...you get possessive?"

Matty grinned and rolled his eyes at him, taking the food.

Heero huffed mildly at that, then considered what was inside the box with interest.

"So how's it going?" Quatre asked, looking to Jinli as he started laying stuff across the edge of the table. "Done?"

"One more line," Jin returned, starting to unwind the string again. "What did you get?"

Quatre shrugged, spinning a box around the edge at him. "A bunch of tacos. I got the basics we all like on it, then a bunch of sides," he pulled out another box. "So...here."

"Thanks," Matty muttered, bouncing up to gather another box and some of the toppings.

"No drinks?" Blake asked curiously.

"No," Quatre agreed. "I figure we can send runners to pick those up here—the guy at the taqueria was annoying me and I just wanted to get out."

They nodded at that.

"So what did I miss?" Quatre added as the others moved up around him to start gathering food.

"Jin isn't talking to me or Heero anymore," Wufei explained with a grin. "And evidently Trowa's drowning in Blake's eyes or something, and can't get the air to talk."

Trowa snorted at him, looking around Quatre at the other male.

"Other than that, Matty found out how to play 3D solitaire, and...what have you been doing?" he asked Duo.

Duo blinked languidly at him, then moved over to kiss Quatre. "I missed you."

Wufei made a happily gagging noise, bouncing over to sit next to Jinli.

"Get me some jales?" Jin asked.

"Wait, you're talking to me?" Wufei focused on him in confusion.

Jinli gave him a look.

"Heero! He's talking to me again!" Wufei bounced around the table to collect the jalapeños and a few other bits. "I'm so excited!"

Heero grinned back at him.

"You are stupid," Jinli noted, taking the little cup from him and starting to spread the things on his bits of meat. "You know that, right?"

Wufei started laughing, then took the jalapeños from him to start spreading them on his own food.

- -

Jaden stretched as tall as he could as he moved off the transport shuttle, looking around the little loading bay with relief. Funny to think this was already his home...

"Den!" Qingfu bounced up from the other side happily, passing him a twenty ounce of Pepsi. "Happy to be back?"

"When I can shower and collapse on my bed, maybe," Jaden agreed. "Let me rest a while, then you can show me all the crap that came in."

"Alright," Qingfu settled beside him with a happy and comfortable aire. "Hi, Armend."

"Hey, Rin," Armend returned tiredly, not quite looking at him as he passed.

Qingfu blinked after that, looking around to Jaden, but he was talking to someone else.

"So...wanna see the laptop?" Qingfu asked brightly after a moment.

"I want to finish my conversation," Jaden retorted, grinning at him.

Qingfu grinned innocently back, shifting away to greet more of the men streaming around the captain. He looked back to the man with interest a few moments later, then shifted forward. "I looked up the barnacles," he noted.

Jaden stopped talking to look at him.

"They're like...stupid things," he started to explain.

"Tell me in a minute," Jaden persisted, looking back to the now amused man beside him.

Qingfu sighed, looking to see that no one else was in the machine. He watched a moment as the men started securing the rig up to close the gate, and the site triggered a memory.

"Ooh, Den," Qingfu turned back to him, "did I tell you that we had to fix the water intake?"

Jaden blinked at him.

"I give," the other man noted in amusement. "The good second is a little too much in want of your attention for this conversation."

"What?" Qingfu protested. "I was waiting!"

"Not very well," the man retorted, patting Jaden on the shoulder. "Greet your lover properly before he explodes."

Jaden blinked after him a moment as Qingfu half drew himself up.

The guy walked away without a backwards glance.

Jaden looked around to Qingfu levelly.

Qingfu returned an abashed look, shrugging slightly.

Jaden snorted, wrapping his arm around Qing's shoulder. "Come on, let's go upstairs."

- -

"Out of fuel or are they repairing?" Duo asked, tapping the pen he was holding against the console.

"We're looking into that," Lucretzia reassured him. "The satellite images were the auto ones, so we have to get the guys to look into it—which is already well underway, I just haven't gotten the reports. They have jettisoned a fair few of their transports, though." She tapped the pen she was holding against her lips. "The images we got showed a bunch of them gone. We're looking into where they may have taken off to."

Duo nodded, drumming his pen briefly on the desk again. "We got searches started a couple hours ago. They're looking to oust any roaches we find. On a personal note, I was excited. The exact plan of how was Matty's idea."

She smiled at that. "On a personal note, Matty's smart like that."

Duo grinned and nodded thoughtfully.

"And he's cute," she persisted. "And sweet, and so very good at everything he does."

Duo blinked at her, then grinned and turned to the door.

Matty was leaning against the door, an abashedly amused smile on his face. "Hi, Lu."

"Alright...hold transcript," she noted, hitting a button. "Hi, Matty," she added, leaning forward. "I get to come down in a couple days."

"Really?" Matty moved closer to the screen. "You'll get to meet Blake!"

She nodded excitedly. "I wanna see the boy to make the great straight-man turn."

Duo rolled his eyes. He didn't understand why everyone else had to make such a big deal out of the relationship. It seemed like he and Fei were the only ones to just accept it, and Trowa was...actually straight. That wasn't to say Blake came off as effeminate or anything, what they had was...strange. Duo could admit that, but he didn't see why it was worth fussing about.

"I'm like, better," Lu was saying to Matty excitedly. "And...Zechs thinks he does want to have a baby now!"

Matty made an excited noise. "Have you decided when you'll get married yet?"

She huffed as she considered that, then rolled her eyes. "A baby, evidently, doesn't need the planning and can just be acted on."

Matty snickered at that.

She shook her head. "So anyway, we're gonna give it a month before they check my goods for scarring," she rested both her hands over her lower abdomen. "And after that...we'll see what happens."

Matty bounced a little at that. "Did I tell you Heero asked if I wanted to marry him?" he demanded, shifting forward a little more.

"No!" her tone was accusatory. "Are you doing it? Am I helping you plan?"

"I'm not ready for marriage yet," Matty protested, looking a little uncomfortable. "It just...amazed me. He actually...wants to marry me."

Duo ran a hand down his face and basically bit his tongue. Obviously Matty didn't know Heero all that well yet.

He did, however, feel a little miffed that the guy hadn't told him. Neither of them had, the assholes...

"Ooh! We found Obsidian," Lu bubbled, fumbling with something in front of her. "Flash your badge."

"You said for them to stop recording," Matty protested, pulling the badge out and holding it in front of the reader.

"No, it means...this isn't relevant to the goings on," she giggled a bit. "It's like prefacing comments with 'on a personal note'...it makes it so it's not part of the official document—there was this guy who was talking to his wife a long time ago...and they went from talking state to talking about her taking her clothes off...and it got all over reports. He almost got fired for inappropriate behavior."

Matty snickered.

"So we're taught to keep personal things personal."

"I get it, that makes sense...I'm excited...should I go into Brazil?"

"You did say you didn't want to," she mused, sitting back thoughtfully.

Duo didn't know what to make of that—as far as he knew, none of them had been talking to her.

"But there's this colonel," he persisted, shifting forward again—he was almost directly in front of the lens. After he'd say something he'd shift back from the thing. "He's been showing Blake all sorts of...pictures! Well...I mean...things to take pictures of," the young man fidgeted. "I want to, kind of..."

"You should just do it," Lu noted, meeting his eyes again. "It's not worth it to deprive yourself when that base is just gone now. You didn't want to go against your will with Timorre, right?"

Matty considered that, pursing his lips, then nodded and beamed at her.

She winked at him, then seemed to notice Duo. "Oh...Duo."

Matty giggled, shifting back to look at the other. "Sorry, I haven't talked to her in a while."

"It's alright," he reassured them both. "We're basically killing time until the updates get to her."

Matty glanced at the screen, his eyes flashing in amusement. "What did time ever do to you?"

"It left me no choice but to slay it by not meeting my standards," Duo retorted. "Don't cross me, Mattox. My will is iron."

"And rusted," Lu agreed easily...and they both started giggling.

Duo rolled his eyes.

- -

Rab stared distantly out the hole in the side of his ship, listening to the sounds of the waves and gulls. A lot of things had started to go wrong for him—had been going wrong from the start.

To begin with, they'd grabbed the only person in the universe that could jump-start the most annoying people who'd ever lived. Then, he'd decided to go after Marquise, whose connection to those annoyances was prominent.

Why had J taken off? Admittedly, he and Rin hadn't had that great a relationship, but he'd thought J counted himself among Rab's closest friends. He'd thought he'd had the man's support and understanding...but...he was wrong.

Then, of course, Ranger had gone off his rocker and decided to chase the boy down.

He'd lost the two men he'd relied on most...lost half his force...then managed to catch Maxwell—the cocky bastard. He'd thought things with the idiot pilot would work to his advantage. As much as the others had tried not to show it, the Williams boy's reaction had said it all when he'd called them. They had a good bluff, but the reality had always been that they were coming for the damned formerly braided man.

He sighed, moving closer to the edge.

It'd have been better if he'd remained in charge—he was pretty sure they could have regrouped at Lateour long before if anyone had bothered getting him in on the talks.

...that didn't matter either.

He was beginning to come to grips with a certain reality.

He was only in charge as long as they let him be.

It left a bitter taste in his mouth, because with either Ranger or J around, no one would have dared knock him out. They'd informed him that it was all they could do to keep him and them from being killed off or arrested—and with what they'd said, Rio Soma wasn't even in ruins.

Barton had razed it.

The notion left him feeling cold, and he stepped closer to the edge and further into the sun—if maybe, he just fell into that churning water...he could be done with this.

"Sir?" one of the soldiers who was always with him muttered, stepping forward. "Please...you're far too close."

"Would you try and save me if I fell?" he asked tiredly.

"Rab," the guy chided, "stop feeling sorry for yourself."

Rab turned to look at him, then closed his eyes with his face toward the sun.

He wanted to jump.

"I'm asking you again," the guy repeated. "Step away from the edge or we will forcibly restrain you."

Would they even reach him in time? Would they be able to save him?

Did he want to be saved?

Iron shot down his spine as he thought of himself afterwards, hauled into the ship and wrapped in blankets. They'd take him to the infirmary for a while, then to his room. They'd keep him there and only take him out on special occasions, when they needed a figurehead.

He was not just a figurehead.

The man made a gesture, Rab could hear the material move.

"If you touch me," he noted coldly, "I will throw you out this hole and let you drown."

The men hesitated.

"You are dismissed," he added to the man who'd been speaking. He met eyes with the startled man next to him. "Take him to his quarters, I'm sure he needs an hour's time to himself."

The guy's mouth dropped open.

Rab snapped his fingers, looking back to the churning ocean below him.

He was no coward. He was no...second-place mutt. He was Rabid-fucking-Gerrange, and he was going to be the one to show the ESA how little it took to change things entirely.

"Go gather the councilmen," Rab instructed some of the remaining men—he hadn't realized how many he had tailing him before. "Bring them to me here, I'll accept no arguments, understood?"

The man smiled grimly at him, nodding his head.

It was about fucking time they figured out how to make a breached-hull space-ready.

He didn't want his last resort taken from him...and he didn't want someone else to step up and try to take his position.

No. The ESA was mobilizing their armies, and he needed to get all his little fuzzy ducklings in a row...or watch them get run-over by a freight train.