Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Reprieve ❯ Chapter 11 ( Chapter 11 )

Chapter 11

"I don't get it! How the hell are we supposed to open the wings if we remove the secondary hydros in favour of this…pathetic little black box!" Duo waved a hand at the box, which wasn't really that little, and danced around the white prints G had left for alterations to Deathscythe.

"I don't know…" Howard looked over the print again, but there was nothing added to replace the stability that would be lost if they took off everything G indicated they should.

"Screw it!" Duo suddenly bellowed, pulling a pencil out of his hair and scribbling madly over G's precise measurements. "If we stick the box in here we can attach it to the main coms line when it passes through the left side of the chest, which will leave the cloak clean and if we put a bar through the spinal cavity at the back to stabilize its position we wont have to remove the hydros, and everyone's happy."

Howard studied the drawing. It was good, but there was still something not quite right.

"If you put the box there we'll have to remove some of the caging around the cockpit. That's why we're having all this trouble anyway, remember?"

"Then maybe G's right and it has to go! It was never in the original design anyways."

Howard smacked Duo over the head, grabbed hold of the back of his neck and planted his nose an inch from the paper.

"This," Howard traced the caging on the cockpit, "stays. Find another way."

"Grouchy old madman," Duo grumbled as Howard wandered over to Mickey and the men working on getting Heavyarms and Sandrock space-worthy. Still, Duo knew there was no way Howard would let him fight without that caging whole and in place. Which meant he had to find somewhere other than the chest to put that black box. He glanced aside at the monster and wondered, not for the first time, just what the hell it was.

Curious, Duo climbed over to the black metal, which reached his waist and was easily twice his width. Pulling a screwdriver from his back pocket, Duo quickly undid the screws on the box's side that clearly read `do not open' in big red letters, feeling a certain satisfaction in disobeying G. The old retard had, after all, tried to kill him. Payback was only fair.

The box fell open to reveal a massive set of wires that all led to the series of usb ports on the boxes roof he was expected to plug into his Gundam. It looked like the box contained an entire operating system of some kind, but for what purpose was still a mystery. Still, tracing the lines G had originally intended for those ports to run to, it seemed to command movement, controls…It was like a pilot…In a black box…

Duo stumbled back from the box, furious. Was the doctor planning on replacing him with a machine? It certainly seemed that way. Still…surely now he knew about it there was something he could do about it. He might be out of commission for a little longer than he would like, but it would be worth it in the long run.

Duo fetched a sketch pad and a box of graphic pencils and started drawing. He started with the open panel, then opened the next side of the box, then the third and last sides, sketching everything that was visible. Then he started pulling the individual circuits apart and drew each one individually, marking which it was joined to, where, why and how. It was a long process and by the time he was satisfied he had an understanding of how it worked he was furious and almost alone in the still brightly lit hanger.

Trowa Barton was the only other person in the hanger, perched on top of a crate nearby, just watching.

"Do you know what it is?"

Duo shrugged.

"I know enough. Do you know what it is?"

Trowa just shook his head and shrugged, a faint smile on his lips. Duo felt a light flood of relief to know he was still the only one in on G's horrid little secret. If he could figure it out quickly enough there might be no need for the others to figure it out.

"Are you sure you should be doing that? The Doc's like to booby trap things…if you mess with it, there's no way of knowing what it will do."

"It's not a bomb Trowa," Duo laughed in response. "It's just a system. A very…interesting system. I know what I'm doing."

"If you say so. Howard said to go get dinner when you were done."

"Yeah, in a little while."

Trowa seemed amused at that response, but it wasn't until he moved away leaving an apple and a bottle of water, and Duo glanced at his watch that he understood why. It was 3am.

"Alright, biatch! Three hours till Mickey's crew gets down here again. That's three hours to rewire you and stick you into a new box. A set of boxes, I think." He just hoped Trowa wasn't right and that what he planned wouldn't just make things worse.

*

"But, if you just…"

"NO!"

"But, otherwise a blow to the…"

"NO!"

"FINE! When someone hits you on the spine and severs your water jets and all that hot Gundanium burns you alive DON'T BLAME ME!"

Heero stopped still as let that little concept sink in and grimaced. That wasn't actually possible, was it? If so, who the hell designed Wing so that was possible? Couldn't they had put the water system through the core or something?

"Oh, so now you start listening! Look, its what I've been trying to tell you ever since you started whining about someone putting filament steel in your casing! Whoever that was, you should thank them!"

Thank Duo Maxwell? Over Heero Yuy's dead body. He scowled at Hilde, but the woman just didn't get it. She crawled up the back of Wing and started hacking open one of the spinal panels.

"See, they've double layered and overlapped all the spinal covers to allow for full mobility, but the water and cooling systems are right underneath. This layer is Gundanium, but if this second one was then the heat of the Gundanium would eventually make the water boil. This isn't iron filament, by the way, its ground sandstone cased in glue."

"WHAT?" Someone had fixed his Gundam with GLUE?

"Stop having a coronary and listen. Yes, double layers of Gundanium is stronger and hence they people who built this monster probably used it. But you have no idea how many MS I've pulled in with dead cooling lines and overheated systems that have just been hacked to bits from the inside."

Heero didn't feel like arguing, and the girl actually seemed to have some idea what she was talking about. He decided it couldn't hurt to listen to her and gave over his screwdriver when she put out her hand.

"Here, take some." She put a blob of goop in his hand and he stared at it. It was warm, and cooling in his hand.

"How does it work?"

"Simple. Drench the sandstone in water and it will hold it; it will remain cool to the core. The glue is a way to keep it hard, but flexible. The cool sand would make it hard, but when your systems are working the heated Gundanium melts the glue into a sort of putty, like what's in your hand. Take a blow and the double layers of Gundanium would split and most likely sever your water lines, but the putty absorbs the impact and fills in gaps made by the Gundanium sustaining damage, also forming a protective layer about your cooling lines."

"That makes no sense."

"That's because you're not thinking about it properly!" Hilde snapped, grabbing the putty ad shoving it back into the spine. Heero watched as she grabbed a hose from the wall and sprayed the spine panels of his gundam. He watched in quiet fascination as the sandstone chips and glue hardened into a block.

"When not overheating, the glue is hard, and together with the sandstone its like throwing yourself against a brick wall…only this wall wont crumble, it'll squish into a wall of different shape."

Impulsively, Heero smashed a fist into the substance. The shock of the impact ran through his whole body and when he looked down the imprint of his fist stared back at him from perfectly solid rock. He didn't know what to say.

"That's gotta be the dumbest thing I've ever seen anyone do. Who HITS a Gundam? You really must have fever, I swear."

"I am in perfect health," Heero snapped back, still staring at his hand print, already thinking of the possibilities.

"How did it work on the fuel systems?"

"Oh, that. It didn't. But it did work on the hydraulics by absorbing the fluid that leaked and when the system overheated and the fuel leaked in it slid off the glue because it was too thick. The longer you kept the Gundam powered down the more isolated the fuel became; it was harmless instead of beating against heated sparking metal and blowing you sky high."

Heero thought about that. It made a very odd, sick kind of sense.

"So, Gundam's cannot last for extensive periods of time in a fight."

"Oh, they can last longer than any other MS, because Gundanium still takes a surprisingly long time to heat to dangerous levels. But once it does…no, without some kind of inner protection they would be screwed. Do they break often?"

"They sustain damage in every fight, often for no apparent reason."

"Well, now you know why," Hilde replied as she slammed the spinal plate back into place. "I can mix you up a tonne of fresh stuff. We'll heat up your baby and pour it in once the repairs are finished.

"Hilde…how do you know abut this stuff?"

"Huh?" She turned around in the doorway to stare at the pile of junk in the corner she had been salvaging. "Oh, my dad was a Sweeper. They invented that crap."

Heero groaned. Why did it always come back to them?

*

Duo stared at the five small boxes in satisfaction. They were perfect and the drawings scattered about him told him exactly how they would need to be wired from within the Gundam. Grabbing the first box and its corresponding instructions, Duo climbed into the cockpit, down through the back panel to the base of the spine. There he found the point where the cooling system separated from the spine, leaving a neat space between the spinal casing and the Gundam's leg hinges.

"Perfect fit…" He fitted the box into place, but didn't bolt it down. Instead, he grabbed a fresh tub of sandstone chips and nailed in a slightly larger box over the smaller. He filled the gap between the two with the chips then poured melted glue over the lot, sealing it with only a small square for two usb ports open to the rest of the gundam.

The next two boxes found new homes in each shoulder joint, free floating in their fluids trapped between the five hinges. There was enough room between each hinge for a single wire to run through to the other boxes.

Duo was just picking up the last two boxes when Mickey and his crew arrived. Unfortunately, it was just as Duo hacked off his Gundam's face plate and began to crawl inside that Howard stormed in.

"Duo Maxwell, what the hell do you think you're doing, skipping three meals and climbing all over that thing without a harness?!"

Duo froze halfway into the Gundam's head, then shrugged. What was done was done. He would eat when he was finished.

"I found another way, Howard! Go take a look!" And with that he climbed all the way in and got his first good look at the head sensors. "Wow, it's crowded in here."

Duo built two new cases for the last two boxes and placed them on each side of the head just above the ears. He then filled them with sandrock and glue and sealed them off before climbing out. Wufei met him at the face plate.

"Looking for these?" He held out eight long wire strips, already coated with usb heads attached.

"Ah…yeah. Thanks!" Duo was not sure how much Wufei knew about what he was doing, but the less the better. This could yet backfire in the worst possible way. The last thing Duo wanted was for Wufei to be anywhere nearby if that happened, but he couldn't force himself away from the other pilot. He was his only friend. The only one left…

"Here, you better eat this before Howard has a coronary." Wufei handed him a sandwich as they plugged in the wires and threaded them down through the Gundam's neck and into the cockpit.

"Thanks."

Together they attached the other boxes to a small plate in the cockpit, which Duo was suddenly glad he had installed months ago for any `extras' he might want to add later. Later had come, and this way what exactly those `extras' were attached to was something only he would know.

"Nice work Kid…you shoulda asked for help though," Mickey patted him on the back as he admired the finished product.

"Maybe next time."

Or not.

*

"Duo. You look well."

"You expected otherwise?"

G smiled darkly as he looked at the voice on the screen. He wondered what Duo thought of his little present. Still, it had its uses, as did Duo himself.

"When do you arrive?"

"Tomorrow. We'll attack at 00:00."

"Excellent…we'll be waiting"

*

Duo stared at the blank screen in shock. We? Waiting? G was on the moon? What was going on?