Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ The Palace of Justice ❯ 2 ( Chapter 2 )

2:

 

Of all the people Trowa expected to see waiting for him to have lunch with, Heero Yuy was perhaps the last person on the list. But then, he wasn't really there to have lunch with Trowa, but rather with Duo, who, Trowa discovered, didn't necessarily eat lunch, but rather inhaled it, or so it seemed. One moment there was a plate with three times as much food as was on Trowa's, the next it was empty and Duo was leaning back, a hand smoothing over his extended belly while he groaned about being full. That he was full, Trowa did not doubt at all. Nor did he make any comment, preferring to sit quietly and sip his juice.

 

“You've seen It?” It was the first thing Yuy had said to him that didn't involve `fuck' and `busy'. Trowa was beginning to wonder if he had sauce on his chin.

 

“I've told you a hundred times, it's not an `it'; he has a name!”

 

Trowa blinked and looked from Heero to Duo expectantly. It did? Heero's jaw tightened and it was rather obvious this was not the first time they had discussed the matter.

 

“The big floating black box…is a he?”

 

“Yes,” Duo huffed, at exactly the same time Heero said “no.” Trowa raised a brow, amused. The box was and was not a he.

 

“It's a hermaphrodite?”

 

“No!” Well, at least they agreed on something. Trowa took another, much longer, sip of his juice.

 

“Its name is Frank!” Duo declared this as if it were of some sort of odd importance. Trowa shared a sympathetic look with Heero and took a bite of his sandwich. It didn't taste all that great and he could only assume that they had spent so much money on building the building that there was nothing left for a sandwich maker. Heero seemed to understand his pain, putting down his sandwich after just a few bites, taking a long swig of milk and getting up, grabbing his jacket and looking to all intents and purposes very ready to get back to work.

 

“How come you're in such a hurry? Got a date?” Duo seemed rather sure of himself, in Trowa's opinion. Heero, on the other hand, simply smirked.

 

“Yeah. I always had a thing for big black shiny Franks.”

 

Trowa dutifully devoured his sandwich and avoided Duo's glare. The juice was very good. Really. When he at last pushed the remains of his lunch away, Duo was already on his feet, ready to go. Trowa followed him back to their office, not really surprised to find Heero already there, typing away on his laptop somewhere toward the far end of the table. Duo hopped up on the table edge and slid down to his side with what seemed like practiced ease. Trowa wondered if he did that when Une was around.

 

“We have clearance.”

 

Trowa smirked a little, amused at the way Duo straightened, a slight almost imperceptible change from fun to serious. It was a vague sense of focus that hadn't been there just a moment before. It was like watching something finally come out of its shell.

 

The folders were still spread out in every direction across the table, so Trowa once again ignored the seats and slid along the length of wood, getting comfortable, cross legged somewhere in the middle. He picked up the first document he could reach and flipped it open. He was aware of Heero's fingers hitting the keys and Duo flicking through image after image on the monitors, but he didn't look up, merely listening to the sustained aural presence while he read.

 

There wasn't much known about their target, which had been appealing at first but the more Trowa read the less he liked about it. After three hours he understood why Duo had called him. Or rather, he could only assume Duo had called Heero, who had told him to call Trowa, and not even Duo bothered to argue with Heero. Or something to that effect. Whatever. Trowa was simply pleased Duo would not be going alone.

 

Trowa saw no way in, other than the airlock on the front, which was why Duo had shown it to him first, obviously. The doors in the bottom were everywhere but it was impossible to tell how they opened and they couldn't take the risk. With the front at least they had some idea of the actual mechanics involved. It was the only thing that appeared to function externally. Unfortunately, Trowa had his suspicions that this meant it wasn't actually attached to the internal area of the box at all but he couldn't plan a mission based on suspicions.

 

Well into the fifth hour he found a report from an outreach team that had encountered Frank somewhere in the vicinity of Pluto. Intrigued, Trowa read slowly through the collected data, which appeared no different to the other encounters, despite the fact the outreach ship made several notes of their own troubles in the outer reaches. There were many forms of speculative technological advancements as a result, but as with everything nothing concrete.

 

Well into the eighth hour Trowa put aside a report on a missing satellite, and then picked it up again just as quickly, flicking back through the last few pages he had read. He frowned, then slid off the edge of the table, wandering over to Duo's laptop and typing with one hand while he kept reading. He was aware of the tapping of Heero's fingers stopping, and of Duo hovering near his shoulder, watching him, but he didn't pay much attention to them, too busy inputting the codes for a communications satellite printed across the top of the page. He punched in the appropriate dates and frowned again as the screen agreed with the piece of paper in his hand.

 

“What you got?”

 

Trowa wandered back to the table, and dumped the report where they both could see it, a little amused at the way Heero snatched the report and Duo damn near sat in his lap to get a look. They both frowned, puzzled. They had both obviously read and discarded the report, in much the same manner Trowa had been about to.

 

“Our communications satellites are state of the art; they were all replaced or upgraded at the end of the war.”

 

“Yeah, we know. They came before some of the colony repairs even…” Duo was still frowning at the report, but Heero was reading a little closer, brows furrowed darkly.

 

“So why did it take a state of the art communications satellite seven hours to receive a `non-response' signal from a dead satellite?”

 

Duo swore loudly, snatching the paper out of Heero's hand and stalking down the length of the table with it. Heero just sat in his chair and studied his knuckles. Trowa didn't blame him; they were looking a little pale.

 

“Heero, the seat's going to break if you keep doing that,” Duo muttered distractedly, head still buried in the report. “So they took the satellite on board Frank…while it was still functioning. And then they spat it out and destroyed it.”

 

Stagnant air settled between them. Trowa had the odd urge to file his nails, but refrained.

 

“Why?”

 

Was that really something that mattered? Trowa didn't bother answering, simply waiting, almost hoping someone else would try to answer. No one did. They went through every other report instead, looking for any other sign that anything at all had ever made it inside Frank, but there was nothing. Just the white and black drone and the lull of the computer hum.

 

Trowa woke to a hand, firm and immediate on his shoulder. Had it been any lighter, there probably wouldn't be an arm there. As it was, Trowa looked idly up at Heero, as if he hadn't been asleep a few seconds ago. Heero gave the look right back at him but there was sleep dust in the corner of his eye. Trowa just smiled lazily and stretched, lean and languid, watching in some amusement as Heero woke Duo and was dragged down into a long morning kiss. Ah yes, the wonders of domestic life. Trowa doubted the lunch juice tasted that good right now.

 

The lines of the report folder he had been reading were imprinted on Trowa's cheek. He rubbed at them distastefully and was just grateful he hadn't drooled on anything and smudged the ink. Having to explain that to Yuy would be bad enough; explaining it to Une was inconceivable.

 

“Gah, this is stupid! There is nothing else in here, we've been through it dozens of times. We should just get on a damn shuttle and fly it there. We'll have plenty of time to think of a plan while we're flying!”

 

Apparently frustration had gotten the better of Duo. Trowa sat back and watched as he rocked back and forward on his heels, ready to move at any moment, but for the moment contained. It was like looking at Yuy holding a trigger. Explosion imminent.

 

“Okay.”

 

Both Trowa and Duo stared at Heero. Trowa was sure he hadn't heard correctly, and was still waiting for someone to laugh when Heero spoke again, voice low and steady and terribly ready.

 

“We're not getting anything done just sitting here and there is no guarantee it'll stay where it is. We should just…get on a shuttle and go.”

 

Just like that. Trowa smirked, but waited until the sudden whirlwind of movement that was Duo Maxwell had left the room before getting up himself.

 

“We being…all three of us,” he noted, amused.

 

Heero just pushed past him and went off to file the application with Une. Trowa leant against the table for a long time, getting one good last look at all the information laid out before him. Then he left, heading for the weaponry which wasn't exactly the easiest place to find. There were a hell of a lot of signs and arrows, and only one little room right at the end of them all. Understandable, certainly, but Trowa found something about it rather odd. Still, he handed over his ID and wandered in, looking through the various racks and drawers, trying to find anything of interest, but sadly they didn't have a Gundam in the closet.

 

They did have a lovely set of knives though, polished to perfection as if they had never been used. For all Trowa knew, they hadn't. He claimed the whole set as well as a pistol and several grenades before rummaging through the different weapons packs available. He was almost finished going through the third pack when Duo arrived, a wide grin on his excited face as he grabbed a machine gun, several rounds of ammo and two packs. Apparently he already knew what was in them. He sat on the front desk, waiting for Trowa to make up his mind.

 

“Pressure, pressure,” Trowa murmured under his breath, the soft snort from Duo's direction the only indication anyone had heard. He wandered around the room on silent feet, hands barely moving, bag magically getting fatter. He could see Duo's slight frown, could feel the way Duo's eyes were boring into him, trying to see what went in, but Trowa was good at his job, and Duo knew he wasn't going to see anything. That wasn't the point; it was the game of trying that mattered. So Duo tried and Trowa packed and when he was done they shared a small upturn of lips that was neither a grin or a smirk but rather just a knowing and they went to the garage together, neither surprised to see Heero with a bag packed on the back seat of the tank-like Hummer they were taking to the launch bay. Trowa didn't feel like pointing out that bicycles would have gotten them there just as easily. Explaining the concept of overkill to Heero Yuy had never worked in the past, after all.

 

The launch was set and ready by the time they arrived and it seemed almost too simple a thing, to just climb out of a vehicle and walk onto a ship, strap yourself in and listen as Yuy counted down. It wasn't a large shuttle, but it was roomier than anything Trowa was used to and he sat quietly, turning idly in his chair and taking in the details. State of the art, everything new and shiny and hardly used at all, maybe just for a few patrols. Decent weapons system but nothing too scary, certainly no cannons, which was a shame in his humble opinion. Nothing said who was in charge like a nice big cannon.

 

“I know, not exactly the scariest thing out there, right?” Duo rolled his eyes, seat position unlocked so that he could spin in dizzying circles while they waited for the launch. Trowa just shrugged and picked at a piece of lint on his shirt.

 

“They should come in black.”

 

It was Duo's turn to roll his eyes, spinning back in his chair, a twist of his knee locking it into the forward position as the call came through that they were go. The calls were fast, efficient, well practised but not rehearsed. They flowed off the tongue simply, like hi and how are you and have a nice day. Go, thrusters, boosters, releasing, prepare. Easiest cocktail party Trowa could imagine. The shuttle didn't even shake that much as it spurted up through the launch capsule and was spat out on the other side of the ozone, in free space, rocketing toward its co-ordinates.

 

There was no point sitting there watching while they punched in the destination to the automated systems. Trowa got up and wandered into the back room, grabbing his pack and quickly tossing his laptop on the table, booting it up and downloading the few interesting files they'd found from the Preventers database. He stared at the image of Frank on the screen, looking so small, benign, almost innocent, blending in with it's surrounds, hunting satellites and eating them up, spitting them out.

 

“Why?”

 

It made no sense. He sighed heavily and slumped back in his seat, just staring, hands limp, fingers hanging off the ends of the armrests as he stared, long and white like the tendrils of a jellyfish, boneless in their limpidity. He was absorbed by the image, and by the idea of it; an enclosed colony, an isolated world, supposedly far more advanced than anything he could imagine. It was enchanting, mystifying and just a little terrifying. He wanted in, badly.

 

“You keep staring at that screen you're gonna need specs. Not that a man in glasses isn't hot as hell, I'm just sayin' is all.” Duo sat down next to him, sprawling in the chair and staring at the screen with the same wanton expression, though for a different reason. Duo wanted to crack it open; to prove he could defeat it from the outside. Trowa wanted to sneak inside, envelop it from within and overcome it from the heart. But ultimately they did, perhaps, have the same goal in mind, whatever that goal actually was.

 

“If it's so much smarter than us…what does it need with the satellites? If it's completely contained, why interact with us at all?” It made no sense, it didn't fit any pattern Trowa could think of and he nervously tapped his finger on the arm rest, his stare slowly transforming into something that might almost be considered a glare.

 

“Information? I mean, the ones out there ain't got nothin' else on `em. Just a bunch of footage, a herald message and information getting relayed from the colonies to earth.”

 

Information. What information? Trowa sat up and typed quickly, bringing up the dates of each satellite disappearance, the period of time between its first failure in communication to it's destruction, then cross referenced it against every missive being relayed between those satellites at that time.

 

A small screen came up and blinked at him.

 

“Two hours?” Duo blinked, sighed heavily and slumped down onto the floor, sprawling anew, looking for all the world like someone had done him a grievous wrong. “Well that sucks.”

 

Trowa agreed, but he sat, watching the computer running its diagnostics, trying to find his answer, feeling each beat of his heart as it pumped the blood through his body, aware of every inhale and exhale of breath, perfectly still, content to wait for his reward.

 

After twenty three minutes, Duo fell asleep, snoring softly at his feet. Heero came in and set up his laptop across from Trowa's. The rhythm of his fingers hitting the keys was exactly one hundred and seventy six keys a minute; his fingers never tired and he didn't hesitate on a single word. Trowa didn't care to know what he was writing, afraid to look away from his screen as if the seconds might suddenly disappear and he might see his answer a split second after it appeared. Split seconds, Gundam pilots knew, could be all the difference.

 

At exactly one hour and nineteen minutes, Duo woke himself up when he turned and scraped his nose on the cold floor, resulting in a loud, rather pig-like snort that had Heero pause and only manage to type one hundred and twenty four letters that minute. It also made Trowa's pulse increase by the tiniest of moments, which meant his pulse was no longer in time with his counting down of the minutes. It took a further four minutes and thirty three seconds to get it in time again.

 

“Are we there yet?” Duo yawned loudly and rolled to his feet, stretching languidly and prowling out to the cockpit, a heavy sigh indicating that no, they were not there yet.

 

At exactly one hour, forty seven minutes and fifty nine seconds Trowa's computer screen froze, for exactly nine seconds. Oddly the same amount of time it took for Trowa's heart to take its next beat. He sat up in the chair as it spat out two lines.

 

Line one.

La Pasionaria.

 

Line two.

Origen.

 

Staring at the screen, Trowa immediately turned it so both Heero and Duo could also see. He was now breathing exactly three times faster than he had been less than a minute ago and it annoyed him, but the screen had his near undivided attention.

 

“The Passion Flower?” Duo frowned, tugging harshly on his braid as if the pain of it pulling on his scalp would induce an influx of brain activity. Trowa doubted it, but didn't want to exclude the possibility and so didn't point out the possible ridiculousness of the action. Besides, he was thinking about passion flowers. Somehow he didn't think Frank was a fan of Valentine's Day.

 

“Origin is spelt incorrectly,” Heero noted coldly, pen tapping exactly nine times every seven seconds, fingers no longer typing. Trowa watched the pen nib rise and fall distractedly, but he was thinking of Origen. He doubted the computer had made a typo.

 

The computer screen froze again, for exactly nine seconds but this time Trowa's heart matched the pulse of the screen's lighting as his green eyes stared wide at the screen.

 

Line three.

Hello, Trowa Barton.

 

There is a certain quality to silence that isn't silent at all.

 

“Dude…Frank knows your name!” There was no question as to where the third line of text had come from, nor even any questioning as to how Frank might have traced one small query from a single line computer in amongst the billions, traced it back to one tiny shuttle currently far from port and somehow mysteriously known it's current occupant and user. There was no questioning anything, when one was first questioning Frank.

 

Hesitantly, Trowa reached out and typed. He only typed on eleven keys in one minute, but he didn't feel a lesser man for not managing the apparent quota of one hundred and seventy six.

 

Line Four.

Hello, Frank.

 

A pause in the air and yet no one held their breath, it was more like there simply wasn't breath to hold. As if air took a moment before it breathed, if indeed air breathed at all. They simply stared, waiting, poised for the unknown.

 

“Dude, Frank doesn't even know his name is Frank…”

 

“Why do you keep saying dude?” Heero frowned at Duo, obviously annoyed. People didn't frown when they were not annoyed, after all. Trowa, at least, thought this was obvious, but there were some things that simply never seemed obvious to Duo Maxwell.

 

“I watched a crappy old school movie a few days ago,” Duo shrugged. “They said it a lot.”

 

“And you thought it bore continuous repeating,” Heero noted flatly, answered with a grin and a smacking kiss on the cheek.

 

“Dude.”

 

Line Five.

I see you.

 

“Funny I don't see Frank. Kinda hard to miss him too. I mean, you know…being the size of a whole colony and all, it's kind of hard to play hide and seek. Though, I'll admit, this is Frank we're talking about and you know…Frankly…” Duo smirked and rolled his eyes. “Anything's possible? But really…not seeing the Frank here, and I don't see how Frank can see tiiiiny little us when we can't see not so tiny little Frank. Not that I'm saying the guy is fat or anything! He's just…Frankish.”

 

“Like Frankenstein?” Heero didn't sound impressed. Didn't look it either.

 

“Exactly!” But Duo's middle name was apparently impressed, with himself if that smirk was anything to go by.

 

“You named perhaps the greatest scientific achievement of our age Frank…after a monster from a fictional work that isn't even in publication now?” Heero almost sounded incredulous, if he even knew how. Trowa was not convinced he did, and didn't have time to ask.

 

“One hour, fifty eight minutes and thirty three seconds is the exact amount of time that lapsed between Quatre's team's arrival at the station and the explosion of the satellite they were investigating,” Trowa noted, frowning.

 

“Yeah….so?”

 

“One hour, fifty eight minutes and thirty three seconds, minus one hour, forty seven minutes and fifty nine seconds, leaves eleven minutes twenty six seconds…” He checked the clock coldly. “Minus three minutes nineteen seconds…”

 

“Eight minutes seven seconds,” Yuy noted, still frowning. Trowa wondered if he was going to have those cute little frown lines Peacecraft was starting to show. Duo would probably get a kick out of that.

 

“Reverse.”

 

They were still, just looking at him and Trowa growled softly, bolting up from his seat and rushing to the cockpit, aware of them following him.

 

“Reverse! We have to reverse now!” He switched to manual control as Heero and Duo dropped into the pilot and co-pilots seats, switching to reverse immediately, Duo glancing over the back of the seat, face a mask Trowa had hoped to never see again. So much for the simple life.

 

“Care to tell us why we're going backwards?”

 

“We're in the zone! Reverse!” He checked his watch and felt his stomach lurch. Three minutes. His fingers raced on the navigation, guiding them, drawing a map in his mind's eye, trying to calculate the area, mass, volume, distance of empty space.

 

“We're going, we're going!” Duo harped, over and over, a bored, annoyed litany as the seconds ticked by. Two minutes. One. Seconds…

 

“Stop!” The shuttle came to an immediate halt and both Heero and Duo grunted as the thrusters protested the harsh treatment. Their mouths opened, as if to say something, perhaps even the same thing, but the space in front of them altered, twisted, the darkness changing, almost shining but not. Pitch turned black; familiar. Five seconds.

 

The small pyramid with its shining rays lit up in front of them, the sword slicing through its heart and the closed eye slowly changed, a light appearing in the fold.

 

“Dude, the eye is opening!”

 

“Stop with the Dude!”

 

“But it's opening!”

 

“We can see that!” It was interesting to Trowa, that Heero engaged Duo these days. He hoped that was a good thing; a sign that Heero was bowing to life in general. A sign that even he could change. Change was good, it meant things were getting better. Or worse. But at least they were changing and not just stagnating. Stagnation was boring and led to complacency. Complacency was bad.

 

Trowa stepped forward to look up at it, in the space they had been, waiting, laying the bait, setting the trap, expectant. It had never looked so huge in the pictures; no image could begin to describe the feeling. The shuttle seemed not to exist in the face of it. In fact, the whole world seemed not to exist.

 

“I see you,” he whispered softly, aware of Duo looking up at him but he didn't look down, didn't dare blink as the eye opened, counting down the seconds, pulse in perfect synchronization with time as it seemed to slow and eventually…end.

 

The light was blinding, as if it weren't light but truth or some other intangible thing, blasting existence into infinity and leaving nothing but the warm enveloping feeling of completeness, of coming home.

 

It wasn't light, so much as an epiphany. Trowa could feel tears in his eyes, burning, needing to close, but he couldn't move, couldn't look away, couldn't begin to recall his own name, lost to it; lost in the light in the darkness.

 

I see you, Trowa Barton.

 

I see you, Frank.

 

He was aware of the light closing, of the eye sealing, of Duo and Heero blinking, talking rapidly before they quieted, looking over their shoulders at the empty space, at the doorway to the next room and the nothing between them and it. He was aware of them calling his name, but it didn't sound like his name at all, their voices blurred, blended, reformed into new shapes until he wasn't sure he had ever heard his name before, was not even sure he had a name. A name, what was a name? What was it for?

 

The eye closed and his opened. He stared at the white ceiling for a long time as a gentle hand brushed the hair back off his face. He felt warm, almost wet with it, as if he had just been born, which he wasn't sure he hadn't. He wasn't, in fact, sure of anything. It made him frown and try to focus on his surroundings; to see beyond the white.

 

He caught a glimpse of raven hair, a vague wisp that slid out of his line of sight for a moment before returning. A face hovered over him, all clean, soft lines, large dark eyes, as black as the nothing that hid inside the light; light as creamy as the soft undertone to the caramel skin. A brief smile as gentle fingers stroked his cheek, somehow welcoming.

 

“Who are you?”

 

“I am Nataku.” A smooth voice, low and soothing; beautiful.

 

“And I am?”

 

“You are Triton.”