Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Resistance is Futile ❯ Assignment: Earth ( Chapter 8 )

Chapter 8 - Assignment: Earth

"You're kidding, right?" Duo asked unbelieving. "This oh so dangerous and inexorably enemy who is, as you said, conquering earth right now is to be stopped by the two of you alone? Why didn't this great Federation send it's whole fleet? After all, the Borg are your enemies and therefore your problem! We have enough enemies of our own, we don't need to import any from other dimensions!"

"Injustice," Wufei murmured in such a low voice that hardly anybody could understand him.

"Believe me, boys, if it had been possible Starfleet would have sent several ships," said the Doctor with a sad smile.

"And why hadn't it been possible?" Quatre asked.

"It is linked to the dimensional crossing," answered Seven, "The farther the dimensions are away from each other, i.e. the fewer the commonalities, the harder and more dangerous is it for ordinary people to switch between them. The distance between our two dimensions is that large that a crossing under regular circumstances would result in death."

"And how had the Borg been able to manage it?" Duo asked.

"Each drone has tiny machines in it's bloodstream which are called nanoprobes and which are injected during assimilation," Seven explained, "These nanoprobes are basically what makes a Borg. They accomplish the assimilation and connect the drone with the collective.

As it appears they are also an sufficient protection against the consequences of the dimensional crossing. Therefore the Borg had been able to bridge such an enormous distance that easily and without too many casualties."

"If this transfer is really that dangerous and supposedly deadly for humans, how had YOU been able to accomplish it then?" Heero asked suspiciously.

"Quite simply," grinned the Doctor, "Seven had been protected by her nanoprobes and I'm not a human."

"Nanoprobes? Does this mean that she is a Borg?" Wufei called and all five pilots stood up simultaneously and aimed with their guns at Seven.

Seven's only reaction was to arch her metallic eyebrow.

The Doctor raised his hands placating and said, "Take it easy, boys. You can put your guns away. Seven isn't a Borg any more. But she had been part of the collective for a long time until we had been able to free her some years ago."

Thereupon the five pilots aimed their guns synchronously towards the Doctor.

"And what precisely are YOU - if not a human?" Trowa asked calmly.

"I'm a hologram, naturally," came the cheerful reply.

Duo threw his hands in the air and put his gun away. "Yeah sure, a hologram! Why didn't I hit on it sooner? Put your guns away, guys, these two are simply outright off their trolley, nothing else!"

"You don't believe me?" asked the Doctor amused.

The other four pilots lowered their weapons likewise and sat down again. "A hologram is only a projection of light and by no means would a hologram be able to lift or move objects. Besides, I don't see any projectors right here," Wufei answered the physician, "So quit with this nonsense and tell us the truth already."

"But this is the truth. I am a hologram," said the Doctor, still amused, "and this is my mobile emitter." The Doctor pointed at a small gadget which was attached to his left upper arm. "This device allows me to take solid form outside a holodeck and to freely move everywhere."

Duo snorted snidely.

"Alright, I'm going to prove it to you," said the Doctor, shortly tapped with his right hand on the device and disappeared. The device seemed to hover a moment in midair, then it simply dropped on the floor with a silent `klack'.

"Where did he go?"

"How did he do it?"

"This is a trick, right?"

Seven let the five pilots make rampant speculations for some moments, then she lifted the device unhurriedly from the floor.

"It is not a trick. See for yourself," she said and tossed the mobile emitter neatly to Heero.

Heero held the strange device in his hands and examined it from all directions. He frowned because he wasn't able to identify the functionality of this object. And the design was totally unknown to him, too.

"Hand it over, I wanna see it, too!" Duo called, snatched the mobile emitter out of Heero's hands and held it that close to his face that he was nearly squinting. "Cool," he said in awe then he passed the device on to the others.

Finally Wufei returned the emitter to Seven. "Are you still thinking that it is some kind of trick?" Seven asked them.

"Hn," answered Heero, the others kept silent.

Seven raised the device on shoulder level, tapped a short sequence, the air blurred and the next moment the Doctor was standing in front of them again.

"Did I miss anything important while being switched off?" he asked cheerily and looked at them.

"Are you willing to believe us now?" Seven of Nine asked.

"Hn. You seem to say the truth, but if you want us to trust you we need more evidence," Heero said. The other four pilots nodded in agreement.

"We have sufficient evidence," the Doctor assured him, "but before we show them to you, you have to explain why we should trust YOU. Who are you and what is your part in this conflict?"

The five pilots looked quietly at each other for some time, nodded eventually, and then Quatre stood up. "I am Quatre, Raberba Winner and these are Trowa Barton, Chang Wufei, Duo Maxwell and Heero Yuy." He pointed at the particular pilot.

Afterwards he told the two strangers shortly but nevertheless detailed about the guerrilla war of the colonies against OZ and what role they and their Gundams were playing in it.

During the explanation the Doctor got more and more angrier. After Quatre was finished the man exploded. "Children!" he shouted, "This dimension is even more primitive than I thought, if they are that unscrupulous to send children into war!"

"We're not down-and-dirty!" Duo called furiously and jumped up, "And we're also not children! We haven't been for a long time now!"

"But at your age you should be," answered the Doctor with a sad voice.

Duo took a deep breath to get worked up some more, but Heero took his arm and dragged him back down onto the sofa.

"Don't," Heero said shaking his head, followed by a quiet "Baka." Then he turned to the Doctor. "We have to fight. We have no alternative."

"I don't think we have the right to judge them, Doctor," Seven interfered now into the discussion, too, "It would violate the Prime Directive. I think we should trust them. They could certainly help us with our assignment, after all this `children' are very efficient at what they do. I am sure, without the presence of the Borg they would have smoothly destroyed the base without our help as well."

Duo, who had been listening open-mouthed during the whole explanation, suddenly shouted "Aha!"

"Aha?" Heero looked inquiring at him. "What do you mean by `Aha'?"

"Well it explains the weird behaviour of those ten Leos, that Seven had blown up with Wing," Duo said, "They were Borg, weren't they?"

"That is correct," came the emotionless answer.

Heero stared stunned and at the same time admiring at the blond woman. How had she been able to cope Wing's controls well enough to destroy ten Leos without any help? She had to be damned good. Heero also remembered how fast Seven had broken his access codes. It only increased his respect for her. He decided to ask her later for more details about this fight. But now another question was more important.

"What were you doing at the base at all?"

"After our arrival we immediately started to scan the solar system for Borg signatures. Our scans led us to this base and we were occupied with detailed investigations when we came up against someone who seemed to watch the Borg as well. That had been you," Seven nodded in Heero's direction.

"So that had been Borg. They surely had appeared outright weird," Heero mused, "The commander… He did something really strange. Two capillary tubes emerged out of his hand and drilled into the necks of several soldiers - and after that they had been downright apathetic, like marionettes. The soldier I have been fighting with later on was one of them."

"What you saw had been an assimilation," explained the Doctor, "And that you had been able to hold out against the Borg that long is, to put it mildly, just amazing. Normally Seven and I would have been too late to rescue you."

At these words Duo grabbed Heero's hand again and firmly clung to it.

"You had been unbelievably lucky anyway," the Doctor continued, "You only had to deal with a new kind of drone. It seems that the Borg Queen had altered her tactics from straightforward attack to inconspicuous infiltration. These new drones look just like normal people what makes it a good deal harder to identify them. Thank god it has the positive side-effect that those drones are normally not able to assimilate by themselves. Otherwise you would have been part of the collective now."

Duo's grasp at Heero's hand became almost painfully hard. Heero cast him a surprised glance and noticed that Duo was looking wide-eyed, pale-faced and horror-stricken at the Doctor.

"How do the Borg normally look like?" Trowa asked.

"We have explicit data about the Borg," Seven answered, "It would be best if you accompany us outside to our ship. There we can show the data to you." With these words she rose and left the room, followed by Wufei and the Doctor.

The other four pilots stood up and followed them.

"Ship?" Heero asked and pulled at his arm to free it from Duo's firm grasp.

Duo stopped and turned to Heero. "Oh right, you haven't seen it yet," he called and ignored Heero's attempts to disentangle him. "They parked their spaceship straight in our front garden! I bet you never have seen anything that cool! Spacy design! And the interior! You're gonna like it, Hee-chan!"

"Hn," Heero growled, still pulling at his arm. "Let me go, baka, I'm able to walk on my own."

Duo grinned broadly at him. "Oh no, you don't, Hee-chan. Doctor's orders. You have to go easy on you the next days." Heero still tried to disentangle himself out of Duo's grip.

"I could also carry you," Duo threatened with a still wider grin. Immediately Heero stopped squirming and let Duo led him by the hand out of the house without any resistance.

They stepped through the front door and Heero was really anxious to see the spaceship. He raised his gaze and saw - nothing.

Before Heero could ask where this amazing spaceship was, Duo shouted, "Hey, where did it go?"

The other three pilots seemed to be as surprised as Duo.

"But it had been standing right here!" Wufei called and ran to the said area.

"Be careful…!" the Doctor called, but it was too late.

With a loud bang Wufei stopped in the middle of his run as if he had run against an invisible wall and kissed the dust.

The next moment the air seemed to flicker and blur, and suddenly the spaceship reappeared exactly at the same spot it had been standing the day before. Seven walked over to Wufei, leaned forward and held out her hand to him. "It had been disguised," she said, "That's why you could not see it."

"Injustice," Wufei mumbled and rubbed his aching head.