Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Prison Planet ❯ Chapter 1

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

Chapter One

Jesus Christ on a stick, this was not supposed to happen.

A bullet screamed past Duo's ear but he was already running for cover. The alarms started not long after that. The pilot cursed. He careened around a corner and fired his weapon once, twice. Perfect headshots. The bodies slumped to the ground after he sprinted past. He almost missed the inarticulate shouts of OZ soldiers discovering said bodies hot on his trail. "Just cee and cee the data, he says. In and out, no fire fight, no Gundam, no nothing, he says. What a fucker." He let his empty clip of ammo fall and slammed a new one in, ducked down another hallway. "It's tailor perfect, makes it sound like a fucking walk on the beach, fucking Tahiti." His deft fingers fished a flashbomb from a pocket, it was smaller than a ping-pong ball. He found a smoke bomb as well, not much larger, and spent a precious second to twist and toss them as he ducked down another corner. "Come and get your margaritas you natives!"

Dead end. Fuck. This place was worse than a rat maze. His flashbomb popped around the corner. The smoke hissed. Wait, that was an elevator. Duo slapped the button. An elevator meant stairs—he wrenched open the neighboring door. Bingo. He staggered to a halt three steps down, someone was on their way up... several someones.

"Doublefuck—" Duo backed into the hall again. The elevator dinged.

"Freeze or I'll shoot!"

No shit? Duo rolled as far as the slim hall would allow and came up in the elevator firing. His bullets took two soldiers in the gut, a third in the head, a fourth in the shoulder then he had to duck a rain of retaliation. Fire blazed up his shin. He tapped the lobby button and slammed the close doors button. Some hero tried to stick his arm in the closing doors. Duo broke it, shot the hand for good measure, and picked up the gun it dropped. The doors closed.

Soft music finally trickled into his ears. Fucking elevators. Despite the spatter of blood and other things seeping into his clothes Duo tucked his new gun into the back of his pants and pulled out a knife. His left pant-leg was gone in a second. He had a two-finger sized hole in his lower leg, no exit wound. Great. At least nothing was broken. He stripped the pant leg and wrapped the wound severely. He couldn't afford to fish out the bullet now but bleeding out would be just as bad. "Skeleton crew defense, my ass, that jerk is going to rue the day he was born."

Satisfied with the field dressing Duo tucked his knife away, secured his second gun and punched a ceiling panel. He levered himself up. The elevator sped downward. Duo wasn't stupid enough to try and catch one of the doorways. He replaced the panel instead and waited, crouched, impatiently, for the machine to come to a stop on its own.

It did, several floors before the lobby. Didn't that just figure?

Duo's fingers started working the door one floor above before the machine came to a complete stop. He levered himself upward, rolled into what seemed to be an empty hallway, and bounced to his feet. Something steel crashed into the back of his head. Duo pitched forward and saw black.

--//--

The hiss of recirculated air and steady non-turbulance of thrust informed Duo he was on a ship.

"...just seems a little overkill for a teenager."

"If he's anything like that other one we caught this kid killed more people by the time he was seven than you ever have."

He didn't open his eyes. The closest shuttleport from his target had been... a hundred? Two hundred miles away? How long was he out? Why hadn't he come to? How long had they been on this ship?

"Hard to imagine..."

"Scrawny thing like him? Yeah, my girl's pooch is bigger than this guy."

His shoulders ached dully. His wrists were wrapped in sharper pain. His head was fuzzy, too. Something had his stomach unsettled. Drugs. That explained his prolonged unconsciousness.

"Doesn't your girl have a Dane?"

"Yeah, so?"

"So her dog is bigger than most people—"

The sound of a smack reached Duo's ears but he felt no new pain. The soldiers chuckled.

"Hey I'm getting a drink. Want something?" the rookie asked.

"Sure, whatever's in reach—hey watch it, five foot berth, remember?"

"That's crazy, he's in a cage."

"The one we got before could bend steel—"

"Now you're just shitting me."

Footsteps echoed past his head. Duo belatedly realized he was horizontal, one shoulder digging into the metal floor of the ship, his other propped against, apparently, the bars of his cage. His hands were knotted behind his back, his feet were bound, his knees were bound. Duo flicked one eye open carefully and cursed the drugs in his system for dulling his mind. He was blindfolded. Now that he knew it he could feel the cloth wrapped tightly around his head. Well didn't this just beat all?

Rookie returned. Despite his earlier disbelief he gave Duo's cage a considerable berth. Duo felt a smile curl in his gut, far away from the surface where it wouldn't give away his consciousness. He let his fingers explore carefully. The bars of his cage were an inch across, probably solid. They weren't smooth, though. It took a long moment for Duo to place the sensation of long fibers running the length of the metal.

Silksteel.

These guys weren't taking any chances.

A chair squeaked. Boots on metal. The soft crunch of a drink bulb.

"Man I wish he would wake up, already. This is dull shit." Rooky complained.

"Doc said he should be out of it for the whole trip, don't get your hopes up. Did you see what they pumped into him? It was enough to knock out an elephant for a week!"

Duo curled his fingers as far as their restriction would allow until he found a loop of his braid. He probed the folds one by one. The barbed wire around his heart loosened minutely when he found the contents undisturbed.

"Overkill, I'm telling you." Rustling fabric. The stretch/groan of synthetic leather. A small thump. "Name your game."

"How did you get those past Locke—never mind you probably had to do something obscene, I don't want to hear it."

The pilot split his attention between their conversation over cards and the magnetic lock at his wrists. He had two tumblers out of place when the ship shuddered and a small alert beeped. The radio spluttered, “Mantis-class E One Four Seven I was told you’re on your way to the rock? I have a package for you to deliver.”

The pilot responded, “Does your cargo need pressurization?”

“That’s affirmative.”

“Realigning for pressurized cargo, stand by.”

The ship hissed through its own walls. The docking bay extended, locked with a dull thunk. Duo heard a heavy crate rolling over the balls in the floor, then the sounds of tie downs latching it in place for the flight. Something in the crate heaved and the rookie skittered back several steps with a quiet curse.

“It can’t get to you.” The pilot drolled..

“Still, the thing is big. What’s it for?”

“Culling the heard.”

“How are you supposed to fetch the bodies?”

“The inmates are very good at keeping their space clean of rotting organics. They’ll eventually be hauled into the recycler.”

“How long have you been doing this tour?”

Duo heard their voices move back toward the front of the ship. The dock disengaged and hissed back into place.

“Nearly 45 years I recon.”

“Have you ever brought a prisoner back?”

“People don’t come back, kid. Ships don’t land longer then unloading cargo and you can’t survive above ground except during the twilight. There’s no way off.”

“How many people are down there?”

“At the rate I’ve brought them in and with others making the same flight? Probably thousands.”

“And they haven’t just set up colony or something?”

“It’s not the same thousands from day to day.”

The rookie stopped asking questions after that and Duo felt the pit of his stomach drop away. He knew where they were headed and there was no possible way he was going to let them leave him there.

The lock at his wrists unhinged. An alarm screamed.

The two men jerked at the sound and Duo heard the pilot approach his cage, walk around. Duo concealed the released lock as best he could.

“Think it’s a glitch?” Rookie asked.

“No.”

Duo cringed inwardly, the man wasn’t going to be convinced otherwise. He sat up and removed the blindfold. There was no point in pretending if he could get better bearings.

“Shit!”

“Well you wanted him awake.”

:”I didn’t think it would actually happen.”

Duo assessed the pilot first. The man crouched to asses him back. A slim goatee wrapped around his jaw and the severe military haircut hugged his skull. Traveling greaves and a pair of dark heavy boots completed the look. He carried at least three knives. The square jaw was set. “I told them to double the dosage. They said it would kill you.” Behind him a matte black crate the size of a standing man in each direction shuddered violently.

Duo let his eyes flick to the rookie in the same, if newer, traveling clothes and a fresh haircut. He only had the standard issue knife at his belt. Typical. He looked back at the pilot. If the man had knife training he could be d hitch, the rookie wasn’t a problem. Duo was also sure he could pilot the craft without difficulty, the question was getting out of these bars all before he was dumped on Classified Prison Planet in Mercury L5, the closest solar point of colonized space in the system. Hell.

Duo began checking each bar of his cage for weaknesses. The attention of the guards didn’t deter him but after a very thorough going over Duo couldn’t figure out how they got him in, never mind how he would be getting out. It seemed as though they had welded the bars together around him. His prospects were quickly dwindling. If he couldn’t break his way out, and he couldn’t trick the guards into releasing him, how exactly was he supposed to be released on the satellite? Or were they just going to drop him on the surface and let full day boil his skin to ash?

Duo leaned back against the rear of his cage and rubbed his head where some enterprising idiot had caught him back on his mission. There was still a bruise but not the goose egg he’d been expecting. They must have had him drugged for days. The level look he received from the pilot did not encourage positive thinking. He let his head rest back against the bars and closed his eyes.

The pilot returned in measured steps to the front of the craft and Duo heard Rookie mutter, “I still don’t see why he’s such a threat. He’s just a kid.”

“In 45 years no one has ever picked the lock to magnetic cuffs. Hopefully, you won’t ever have to see why he’s a threat.”