Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Reprieve ❯ Chapter 22

Chapter 22

The destruction on the Shadowdiver barely registered on Wufei as he struggled to catch a glimpse of Wing from the bridge of the Peacemillion. He was aware of Trowa in the background talking to Quatre over the elaborate walkie-talkie, but had no real desire to know what was being said. He needed to know only one thing.

It seemed all his worst dreams had come true when he speakers crackled to life and a voice whispered.

"Howard?"

"Kid?" Howard responded immediately, trying to open a direct link with the pod, but it was not accepted.

Then the screams began and they all knew what had happened. The com-link was shut off but no one was fool enough to think the pain had ended. It was merely being endured alone. Wufei snatched the microphone off Howard.

"Yuy, get back here now!"

"I know Wufei."

Just like that, no argument, no growl at the tone of voice used, no commands snapped back. Just agreement; acknowledgement of what he was going through. Wufei stood there in a state of numb shock, unsure he had actually heard correctly.

The next hour passed in a kind of sick blur as Wing was hauled upright and the two pods, sealed shut by the heat of the explosion were slowly cut open. Wufei stood side by side with Heero, struggling to cut Duo free, somehow ashamed of the near silence in the hangar as they worked, knowing it was anything but silent within.

And when they finally broke through he managed only to grab Duo's hand as Sally Po's medical team grabbed hold of him, tied him to a trolley and raced him off to the nearest med-center, Wufei holding on the whole time. Then it was time for tests as Duo's voice grew weaker, the awareness in the eyes dimmer.

Then followed the hours of madness he had never wanted to re-live as he watched skin start to mend, muscle shift beneath, bones stitch tighter unseen. And Duo fought him tooth and nail the whole way.

And then came the moment when all was still; that second when he opened his eyes and realized the world had stopped spinning and only an echo remained, bounding off the walls, growing weaker with each sonic turn. He sat there, aware of Sally Po's gaze on him, and just tried to pull the world back into focus.

"He's not alright, Wufei."

"What?" Cold and unfeeling, Wufei wrapped his arms tighter about Duo's form and felt bones digging into him everywhere. Looking down he saw little more than a skeleton in his hands, skin stretched so tightly over bone it made him want to vomit. Duo had literally been devoured by the drug, but he was alive. Wasn't he? Panicking, Wufei reached his hands under to take the pulse. It was slow, sluggish, calm. Too calm.

"He' in a coma," Sally pointed to the small box beating out a flat pattern. No change, no bump, not the smallest of indentations appeared. Duo was simply not there.

"What's wrong?"

"Hard to say. It could just be too much pressure, in which case he'll wake up when his body recovers."

"Worst case scenario?" He had to know.

"Brain damage. He may never wake up."

Wufei clutched the body tighter and just stared at the ceiling, blinking back tears. How did so many things go wrong so quickly? No one even knew what Duo had been doing on the Shadowdiver; he was not supposed to be there. Had Quatre not seen him he would be dead by now. Hell, he might be as good as anyway.

Trembling, Wufei blocked out the world and fell into trance.

*

"Any change?"

Heero shook his head as he approached Trowa and Quatre, a grim, determined look on his face. It was obvious he was planning something and Trowa felt excitement brewing in his stomach at the thought they might finally be taking the initiative. The war had just gotten far too personal. They all wanted an end to it.

"We need to end this, Heero. We've taken too long as is," Quatre noted, aware Heero only needed to know they were behind him. They all knew it was time.

Heero nodded coldly, motioning for Hilde to join them as she emerged from Deathscythe's cockpit.

"Finished," she answered the look in their eyes. They knew what it meant; all the Gundams were ready to go. The time had come. Nodding to one another they each moved off toward their Gundam.

"Hilde, get Wufei." Hilde nodded once to Heero and was off, sprinting toward the med-rooms. Heero smiled to see her go, a part of their mission, but also apart from it. Safe, sound, alive and breathing. That was good; it was right. Heero liked all things to be right.

Climbing into the cockpit, Heero fired up Wing's mechanical systems and then booted the new communications system. The Gundam heaved to life, literally shifting in its restraints, struggling to break lose. Heero grabbed the controls and wrestled it to a state of stillness before connecting to the new network.

It took a few moments, but soon the small screen began to fill with new windows and he watched Quatre struggle to wrestle Sandrock into a state of calm even as Trowa glared Heavyarms into inaction.

Together they opened the link to the bridge, where Howard met their gazes evenly, took in their state of readiness and nodded. He too, had been thinking along those lines, Heero knew.

"We're not twenty mile off the Oz ships carrying Epyon and Tallgeese. We'll drop you at ten."

Heero nodded in acknowledgement and then turned his attention to the hanger outside as the door opened and Wufei slipped inside, sealing it shut behind him. He looked grim, darker somehow, filled with something Heero had never really understood. Heero fought for a dream; an ideal, for the hope that a peaceful world was possible and that he could win it. But Wufei was like Duo; he fought for people. He wanted a just world where all people could be equal and be the benefactors of righteous lives. Heero could not truly grasp such a thing, not having known many good people in his life and unable to comprehend how anyone could be truly wholly good. He did not understand what justice was, never having witnessed true injustice.

Altron shuddered to life and then the little screen came to life on Heero's monitor and Wufei stared coldly out at him. Heero nodded in reply.

"Fifteen mile," Howard said stiffly. Heero saw Sally Po at his side, Hilde just behind them. Both women had their arms folded over their chests, as if not pleased with what was happening, but neither spoke out against it. They were strong women and Heero respected them more at that moment than any previous.

"You boys have a plan, right?" Sally suddenly asked, voice cocky. Heero recognized it as her `Major. Po' attitude.

"Aa," Heero responded. And it involved the Peacemilion, though they didn't realize it. Dorothy had done them a few good deeds and if they lived to see another day Heero intended to ensure she was rewarded. But he doubted he would live to see it, or her. His reprieve was over. For all of them.

*

"Twelve mile," Howard said with a calm he did not feel. He hated battle, hated it as he hated little else. That did not mean he did not know t was necessary. Sally's quiet speech with the pilots was helping to calm his own nerves. His eyes kept swerving to the tower where Dorothy had put in a new hard drive, trying to imagine what Heero Yuy had planned, but his mind kept coming up blank.

"Eleven mile."

This was for Duo, Howard knew, as much as anything else. The Doctors were out of the way and they finally had their opening, but it was also because they feared they were down a pilot. This was revenge of a sort, or justice if you were Wufei. They were, inevitably, the same thing, in Howard's opinion. It was half the reason he suspected Wufei and Duo got along so well, not that he would ever tell them that.

"Release the Gundams!"

The screens told him the hanger doors were opening and he watched their faces, perfectly calm as they dropped, falling into darkness and it seemed an omen to Howard he could not battle again. He knew what it meant. Shinigami was walking among them, Duo would say. They would be lucky to see another day.

"Off to reap the corn old man!"

Howard gaped at the communications screens, as did most the men on the bridge. Sally was laughing. Hilde was turning red she was laughing so hard. Howard just could not comprehend that Heero Yuy had just said those words to him. Times had changed, so quickly he had not even noticed.

"Keep some dinner for me…" Wufei added quietly, a smile playing over his lips. Howard felt a similar smile tugging at his own lips, but it faded all too quickly as his men started yelling things at each other over the bridge.

The Oz ships were moving into a battle formation. Gundams were sighted. Mobile Dolls were released. The open screen revealed the red rain of gunfire, the green flash of thermal weapons, and then the world descended into chaos and madness. And all they could do was watch.

There was no apparent order to the battle waged. If anything it seemed disorder was the theme of the day, yet they were winning. Howard watched them fight in a state of awe. For all that he had designed the Gundams, helped build some of them, rebuilt and repaired all of them, he had never witnessed a battle such as this, with all working in tandem to annihilate a mechanical enemy, using its very perfection against it. It was beautiful, magnificent, and completely horrifying.

Then it all went to hell. General Trieze Kushrenada appeared on the main screen, grim and monstrous looking, ruthless and calculating as no man had been in centuries. He stared out at them all and the Peacemillion stared back in cold silence as an image appeared on screen.

An image of a colony. The L5 cluster.

"Cede this battle, your pilots and your weapons now, or I shall destroy the L5 colony cluster."

And what choice did they have, really?

*

He could hear thunder, wild drumming. He could hear echoes of screams and feel a great weariness that threatened to suffocate. He drowned in thoughts he could not catch, that flooded past untouched, and he floundered. But there was something he had to remember, and so he continued to struggle against the rising tide.

Racing against a time he was not really aware of, knowing only that something was wrong, Duo forced his body to wake, forced thoughts to align and process. At some point his eyes opened and he blinked at the blank ceiling. And then he knew what was wrong; he was alone. The ship was quiet. Too quiet. Still, dead in the water.

Struggling off the bed, he found his clothes nearby and dressed quickly, efficiently, aware of his body's new weakness; frailty. He did not care for it, but he was not about to sit and wait for it to pass. If he was alone it meant Wufei was out there, somewhere, battling, and if he couldn't hear it that battle could not be going well.

The drug had at least worked its usual miracle. He was completely clean of injury.

Fumbling his way to the hangar, and cursing the whole way that they had started the vengeance without him, Duo closed and pressurized the area by remote control as he walked. The entire ship was eerily still.

Duo forced aside evil thoughts as he entered the hangar and raced to Deathscyhe. The mecha looked smaller in the empty space, no longer a looming monolith of cold steel, but a tin boat about to be thrown into the unknown. Duo booted up the new system, struggled to get it still and then re-opened the hanger doors, hoping against hope that Howard was well enough distracted that the whole small operation had gone unnoticed. He somehow knew he was going to need to element of surprise.

"Come on buddy, let's put the devil in the unrepentant!"

Howling loudly, Duo switched on the hyper-jammers and let Deathscythe's wings balance out before slamming into full throttle and throwing his Gundam not at the battle he caught sight of in the distance, but the Space Fortress locked on the other side of the L5 colony. Some people played dirty. Shinigami played filthy.

*

Relena scowled at the men darkly, wondering why they had even bothered coming here. It was obvious they had no intention of listening. They had headed for the Oz ships when they noticed the space fortress moving into position on the opposite side of the L5 colony cluster. Taking a hunch, Dorothy had flown them in that direction instead.

Ten hours later and they were little more than prisoners to a madman, their words unheeded, a colony under threat and a battle in complete stillness. It was the strangest thing Relena had ever seen, and probably the lat she would ever see, she knew. It was obvious Heero and the others were going to give in. They would not endanger the very people they were supposed to be fighting for.

Relena was about to make one final push to see if they would listen to her when Dorothy grabbed hold of her and threw her to the floor just as the fortress bucked all around them.

"What was that?" Relena hissed, still feeling the vibrations run through the fortress.

"The fortress is under attack," Dorothy hissed back even as she hauled Relena to her feet and lashed out at their `escort', the heel of her boot connecting between the man's legs. He went down like a limp sack and they were running, Dorothy hauling Relena through the corridors, trying to follow the feeling of the explosions rocking them off their feet continuously.

"We're heading toward it!" Relena panicked, pulling against Dorothy's arm, wanting to flee. Had Dorothy lost her mind?

"Of course we are!" Dorothy bellowed at her, drawing strength from somewhere and dragging Relena as if she were nothing but a small child. "Think, Miss. Relena! What would attack a fortress? And what could get near enough to do it?"

Relena let Dorothy pull her where she would as she thought about that. Only a Gundam would dare attack a fortress…and only one Gundam could have slipped passed the fortress sensors.

"Deathscythe Hell…" She was not as sure as Dorothy that pilot 02 would welcome them as 04 had once welcomed her.

"It's him or Oz, Miss. Relena. Make up your damn mind!"

Relena started running.