Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ The Palace of Justice ❯ 23 ( Chapter 23 )

23:

Hands gripping the bathroom sink, Trowa stared at them for a long time before finally reaching for the tap, scrubbing them hard, getting in under the nails and into each scar until they were pink and raw and he was sure there was nothing left. Clean. Or so he tried to tell himself. They were anything but, but that was not the point. He could allude himself a little longer.

Collecting himself seemed both easier and harder than before, but then he supposed most things were easier when you didn't have a shower spraying in your face and you were already standing instead of foetal on the floor with someone mockingly standing over you.

He finished washing his hands, then washed his face as well, splashing cold water against feverish skin and taking deep breaths before towelling dry and heading back upstairs. He glared at at Tracey when she just shrugged at him and didn't give back his shoe. He hadn't really thought she was serious about not giving it to him, and he wasn't attached to them enough to argue about it, but he still felt a little foolish standing at the table with one foot bare.

“It repeats,” Giles noted softly, pointing to the screen and Trowa just sighed at the length of numbers before sitting down heavily in the seat and going about staring at them studiously and hoping an answer might present itself. It was too long to be anything sensible, which meant it was definitely a code, but he had no idea how he was supposed to crack it.

The problem was it made no sense at all, and yet was naggingly familiar.

“You have no idea, right?”

“None at all,” Trowa agreed, waving off the offer of a coffee from Giles, unsurprised when the man simply drank it himself.

Hatty was still in her chair, hands clasped calmly in her lap and Trowa glared at them, pointing a stern finger at her.

“I won't forget you slapped me. That wasn't a nice thing to do.” Like he had to teach her to be polite. What was he afraid of? Raising a monster? She wasn't his responsibility. But he'd turned her on, and he knew better. No one else would care; they would look for the off switch or not even bother, just shoot her in the head or similar. He was the only one who'd bothered to switch her on, and certainly the only one who seemed to actually care what she thought.

If he was to actually admit he knew he cared. Which he wasn't.

“It's too long to be co-ordinates,” Giles noted an Trowa scowled but kept his gaze on the screen. That would have been too easy, and so far nothing about Frank had been easy. He tapped his fingers on the pile of manuals and notes Heero had left and barely kept from wishing Yuy was there to help. Like he needed his help.

Only he did. This was not the sort of thing Trowa was good at. Codes were boring! They required just sitting around doing absolutely nothing until you figured out that one tiny thing that gave up the answer.

He found himself staring at the orb again, wondering if it was failing and they had far less time than they had believed. Had Tracey known it wouldn't last that long? Was she deliberately deceiving them? What if the orb actually did nothing at all?

Paranoia. He had to stop that. Easier said than done, though. It wasn't like he could do anything about it at this point, but if she'd hurt Hatty...

What, Barton? You'll hurt her? Now he was thinking like Yuy, but maybe that was what he needed if he was going to crack the code. Or maybe the code was for him, and he had to think like himself. Frank had said he was going to need his mind, or Frank pretending to be Wufei had said so. Either way, what if it was designed specifically with him in mind?

Probably best not to try to think like Yuy. He didn't want to start dreaming about Maxwell, anyway.

He had to find his mind. Was that the clue? If it was he sure as hell wasn't going to find it staring at the computer screen.

“I can give it a try, if you want?”

His first reaction was a resounding no, if she wasn't to be trusted he didn't want her anywhere near it, but his suspicions were unreasonable and he knew it so he nodded and vacated the seat, stretching and glancing again at the manuals, blinking and then figuring what the hell. He had nothing better to do, it was worth a try.

“I'm going to Level 1.”

“WHAT?” He loved when they did it in unison like that. But Giles was frowning with that weird line he got between his brows whenever he thought too hard about something and then the old man just shrugged.

“If you can get in a SiS it's worth a try. Eyes on the outside would be handy. Not sure what difference it'll make if Preventers can see us, but...”

But it was very likely Preventers couldn't see them; that the only reason they knew they were there at all was because they'd sent Heero and Nataku to tell them in person. Besides, it would be an interesting perspective, to see Earth from Frank's personnel's perspective. To hear what they had to say about what was going on. He felt a little trapped in an ivory tower as it was, and the idea of getting back in amongst the reality of it was too great an allure.

“If I'm not back by the time Heero gets back...it's probably best not to come looking for me.” And finally he grinned because it felt good to have a simple goal again. And not to be sitting in a damn chair hoping the code would break itself, or his brain. Whichever came first.

He left before they could think to stop him and set the lift Pad to re-Molecularize in Tracey's room, as it was the closest to a shuttle that could take him to Level 1. He paused long enough to grab some shoes, only to find they didn't fit. Tracey didn't have big feet, even if he'd thought they would have to be big enough to stop her huge mouth. Apparently foot size and mouth capacity had nothing to do with one another. Who would have thought!

The shuttle wasn't cramped, quite the opposite. He sat in a carriage in the middle but it was otherwise abandoned. The odd person was scattered throughout the length but compared to a week ago, it was as though Frank had emptied itself of his inhabitants. Or they just had enough sense to stay home. Not that people usually had much sense at all.

The Level 1 shuttle was a little more popular, but not exceptionally. That might have had something to do with the fact almost all personnel were already in Level 1, or so it seemed.

It was a good thing, for him, as no one questioned him as he walked through the gates and headed for his locker, grateful for the shoes inside. He pretended to clock in but didn't dare to actually touch his ID to the pad for fear of what Frank had set his status to. Shoot on sight? Capture and bring him to Level 5? That would be ironic. Torture and imprison for life? Ouch. He didn't fancy having a pet rat at all, it just wasn't his thing.

Trowa had never seen so many men at once in Frank. Every bay was manned, when before entire sections had been empty. More importantly, every SiS was either being prepared to launch, or the red lights were on to indicate the Fighter was already deployed. He shivered inside his shirt and hurried to his bay, waving a short greeting to his Captain who just grunted and waved him toward his Fighter. Trowa was more than happy to oblige.

It felt so much more real to be going through pre-flight checks than sitting upstairs in Level 5, trying to crack a code. In his cockpit it felt like war, and that was what it was, only he wasn't quite sure what side he was supposed to be on. He knew who he wanted to win, but he didn't want anyone to get hurt. No one else should die for the machinations of a machine.

“Bloom!”

He barely froze, looking down at the floor where his Captain was standing, hands on hips, expression of annoyance on his face. At least it wasn't shoot on sight?

“You feeling better then? Was starting to think you were going to miss the war!”

Trowa smiled wanly and nodded.

“Sorry, Sir. Guess I missed a fair bit. Went to bed sick, woke up this morning...”

The man laughed raucously and shook his head.

“Bet that was a shock! Must have been about fifty updates on your board! Not to mention summonses to service!” The man rolled his finger in the signal to get on with launching and Trowa just chuckled with him and went back to running through his checks. He did spare a thought for his message board, and the fact there hadn't been fifty updates or summonses. There had been nothing at all. It had been so completely blank. Almost deliberately so.

What if Frank hadn't even thought to lock him out? What if he'd just decided not to tell him anything was going on to begin with? If a person didn't know something was happening, then he would have no need to investigate it, but would Frank really be that stupid?

If he had no concept of human nature? Perhaps. He thought of the orb and shrugged, because there really was no way of knowing and thinking about it was only wasting time he could have spent thinking about other things.

He finished his pre-flight check and sent for approval, feeling a completely out of proportion sense of satisfaction when he received approval. This was definitely much more his thing. Leave the hacking to someone else, seriously. He launched without giving it another thought, queasily coming back into being on the other side of the bay door, floating in the comforting arms of a much more familiar mistress.

Space. He adored Space. It was too easy to forget inside Frank that he was out there somewhere, still in the great expanse of nothing Trowa loved so much. It was part of what had drawn him to the mystery of Frank to begin with. The idea of a moving, fully functional colony that could go...anywhere. Everywhere. Nowhere, if that was what it chose. Forever a part of Space, and at home there. He couldn't think of anything better, unless Frank had been a giant Gundam. He wondered if Preventers would object to him mounting Heavyarms's head over the eye.

Probably. He sent through acknowledgement to his squadron that he was in position and then just opened the lines because there had been more than fifty bulletins sent to every room in Frank other than his, apparently, and he was damn curious about what they had said.

“What are we just sitting here for? We should just blow up the damn planet and move on. They're never going to stop!”

“Idiot, there are innocent people down there, just like us, that have absolutely no say in what their governments are doing!”

“Of course they have a say, they're not morons are they? They choose to do nothing!”

“So they choose to die!”

“Get real, JJ. If Preventers wasn't being controlled by Winner none of this would have happened. It's greed that's the problem here, not the government. People wanted to control everything!”

Trowa switched off his microphone and laughed. So hard he cried. A lot. An embarrassing amount really, but the longer he listened the worse their arguments became and as boredom sank in they only fought more, a horrible spiral of completely misinformed madness that did nothing but leave him hideously amused.

For people who had moved to a top secret colony to get away from violence, they didn't seem as against it as he would have thought now that push had come to shove. It made him wonder, not for the first time, just how people had been approached about moving to Frank, and what they had to do to be accepted. Had this been a possibility from the start?

Boredom won him over in the end and he switched off his comms and went about what he was actually there to do; spy. His favourite thing! Duo had once sent him a picture of his face on a squirrel peeking out a hole in a tree, with Trowa's hair drawn on it in a mad squiggle Trowa insisted looked nothing like his hair. At the time it had seemed far more ridiculous than it did now.

Earth looked small, a strange misconception he always felt whenever he got past the moon and looked back. Small and vulnerable, and he wanted as ever to protect it but there was a lack of attachment as well. It wasn't home, regardless how hard he tried to make it so. He would fight for it, but he wasn't sure he would have gotten in a Gundam to kick ass for it. He was a colony rat, through and through.

He switched on his secondary communications and linked them to the feed coming from his main comms in case anyone could pick up on it from Earth, sending it on a known Preventers frequency, but he made no attempt to contact anyone in particular. There didn't seem to be any point when they would be inside Frank in a few hours. As long as Farrar didn't hit a snag, but Preventers would be doing everything in their power to help him.

But that just made him feel useless. He wasn't doing anything other than sit in a cockpit and listen and watch. It didn't sit well with him at all and really, what would happen if he took a shot? War, or something else? What if he fired at Earth? Did they even have anything capable of firing back with now? Could they even see them or were they just going on whatever coordinates Yuy had given them? What if he fired on the other SiS? How many could he take out before they even thought to look for one of their own instead of assuming Earth was making its move?

Were they really innocent, if they were in a SiS, ready to fight if attacked? Was it really self defence if you made the first move? But it was Frank who made the first move...right?

They were the same questions he had asked himself when he sat in his Gundam, cannons loaded and finger on the switch only now he felt responsible for the choices. Now he felt too old to be there at all and it made him laugh at himself. Too old by far.

He cloaked his SiS, left a marker in his current position to distract anyone who thought to check if he was there or not and moved off, doing a lap of Frank in case anything had changed on the exterior. It hadn't, but he found himself parked in front of the eye, staring at the design and trying to figure out why they'd chosen it. If maybe it was a family crest, or if it really had a genuine purpose. How many secrets had Harrison taken to the grave? Had to have been a few; mad scientists were mad after all.

He flew further afield, blinking when he came across the evidence of a small Preventers armada launching to meet up with a small array of ships he found on the other side of the moon. Just being there brought back memories he hadn't wanted to resurface but he pushed them aside and studied the ships, trying to decide who was on them, and in the end figuring there weren't a whole lot of people he knew to begin with and they were unlikely to be on board. That didn't stop him from making jokes about bad parking.

He'd lost two hours when he decided to try to contact Giles, using his additional communications array so Frank would at least have no access from his end, even if he managed to listen on Giles's end. It was worth trying to keep it from the insane machine.

“Bloom?”

“Yeah, Giles, it's me. There's an army out here, just waiting for someone to fire.”

“I suspected as much.” Why? What about this situation made him sure Frank was planning to actually have a war? What if Trowa started it before Frank could? Would it change anything?

“Preventers have a few ships on the other side of the moon, and look ready to launch a lot more.”

“Just as long as a barricade's all they make.” Or what? Frank would have a dandy reason to destroy their home planet?

He was really going to have to do something about his paranoia. It couldn't be healthy.

“Anything else changed out there?”

“Nope. Didn't even hesitate to let me in to Level 1.” Ironic really, that as soon as the military actually had a use its training and regulations went out the door. Not that he was surprised, but still.

“We'll see you soon then.”

Trowa sighed because he supposed it was time to go back, but he was no closer to helping Hatty, or anyone else really. So they knew the SiS were mobilized and they had access, he didn't see how that was really going to help them. Yet. That didn't mean it wouldn't, it was just frustrating at the moment and he wasn't in the mood to be frustrated.

“See you soon,” he whispered but he was looking at Earth and he'd already turned off his comms. He turned his SiS back to his launch point and initiated his docking procedure, not surprised when his body moved without needing mental prompts. Everything about the SiS felt natural to him. It was a little light for his liking but the ship itself was perfect. He liked sitting in it more than he liked sitting on his own damn couch.

That didn't stop him from getting out of the damn thing while his stomach was still protesting his reintegration into gravity and the world of the living.

“Bloom? You're back early. Shifts are nine hours, Son!” I am not your Son.

“Sorry, Sir. Something wrong with my comms. I'll have a check through the manual and see if I can fix it myself.”

“I heard about you helping Giles with that wreck a few bays over,” the Captain nodded. “We need all the men we can get, and too many of the SiS are having troubles. Get it fixed.”

“Yes, Sir.” When it damn well pleases me, Sir. He climbed down and took the manual the Captain was holding out, nodding in assertion that he would repair it and waiting for the man to leave before sighing, turning and heading the other way. To the SiS he'd worked on with Giles, because that was going to be the fastest way out.

No one stopped him, too busy with their preparations for war Trowa was determined wasn't going to start. He'd rip Frank's brain out before he allowed that to happen. Maybe. That could get messy and he didn't feel like turning Frank into a giant tomb when the people inside ran out of air, but there was a way out. He just had to convince them to use it.

He used the SiS to get to Harrison's workshop and from there transferred himself through to the lift, striding out deliberately stoic. As if the Molecularization no longer phased him at all when in reality he was very concerned what it was doing to his genitalia.

“The mighty hero returns,” Tracey muttered from her desk, looking over her shoulder and pausing briefly to look him up and down. Trowa didn't like being looked at that way, at least...not by her. At the moment.

“Military suits you.”

You don't say. Did he need to get an `I was a Gundam Pilot' badge just to remind people. No one ever seemed to forget Yuy had been one. Quatre might like one too, Trowa just bet it would go down a treat in board meetings. Yes Quatre, of course Quatre, whatever you like Quatre.

“Hacking doesn't suit you?” At least she didn't look successful. She wasn't grinning at him the way Maxwell would had he done something spectacular.

“No. Building stuff suits me, and making coffee,” she rolled her eyes and waved a hand at the screen. “Far as I can tell it's a cipher, but without the key there's no way to solve a cipher.”

Of course. Trust the computer to come up with the only thing a computer couldn't solve. But who was the information even meant for? If he was making a cipher for Duo it would be a hell of a lot different to one he would make for Heero. And if it was meant for him, what the hell had the person who made it thought he might use to break it? He didn't think throwing a knife at Hatty was going to help their situation at all, even if it would make him feel better.

Was it from Frank? Should they even be wasting time trying to break it? What if he was just trying to distract them? What if even now he was in there with his orb plotting their downfall and moving all his pieces into place while they played along with his game? He didn't want to play Frank's game, he wanted to play like a Gundam pilot. Only there were no cannons, and it was so boring without cannons.

"Well, if it was meant for you it would have to be either something only you know, or something you have available to you here," Giles pointed out softly, looking around at their things strewn...everywhere.

"We're not very tidy squatters, are we."

"When have you ever heard of a tidy squatter?" Trowa asked, bemused, but the man was right. There was absolutely no order to where things were, basically piled up around the base of whatever they'd worked on at each point. The Molecularization Pad with the leftover materials they'd gathered for Farrar, the manuals Harrison had written on them, or Farrar had now that Trowa thought about it, and the bags Heero had decided not to take. The Origen capsule with it's clumps of dry goop around it and smeared across the sides and the various tools Tracey had used to install the device and get Hatty out. Little pieces of Hatty all over the place from installing her legs while she tried to flail around the room. Laptops, clothes, food wrappers, water bottles...

Not tidy at all.

"Are you suggesting we clean?"

"Nope," Trowa definitely wasn't doing that. "I'm suggesting you clean," he corrected, grinning at Tracey. "Men with one shoe can't clean. I might tread on something sharp."

She scowled at him and he was rewarded with his shoe sailing at his head but landing in his strategically placed hand in front of his face.

"Thank you."

"You aren't welcome."

Of course he wasn't, but he felt better. He went around the room, helping to pick up and at least move things into more manageable piles, but it was the books that nagged at him mostly because of the manual the Captain had shoved at him, telling him to repair his SiS. Which was perfectly fine, but Hatty wasn't.

He found himself standing in front of her, just staring at her lips as they moved, whispering the numerical sequence over and over and he started to laugh at her because really, if it was that simple he could cry.

If only because it made her so very human while being so obviously otherwise.

"What is it?" Giles, beside him, staring as if he might be able to see what Trowa was seeing. As if he could read Trowa's thoughts on Hatty's lips, but it wasn't that simple. Trowa just shook his head and went to rummage through the pile of manuals beside the desk, a little bemused by just how many there were now. On the SiS, on the military, on Frank's system, though those were more like tomes than manuals, on the Computer, on shuttle travel...It was a large pile and he had to fish deep to find Hatty's.

It was still scrawled with his notes from when he decided to turn her on and he amused himself by reading his frustrated words as he struggled to understand just what Harrison had done to make her work, and what he'd undone to turn her off. It all seemed so much simpler now and he realised he was starting to understand how Harrison had thought. He was surrounded by so much Harrison had built and all of it had a particular feel to it; a certain pattern that echoed the way it's creator thought. A sequence to how it was built.

And how it was repaired.

"What's the first number in the sequence?"

"Seven." Giles didn't hesitate, just picked up the code and waited.

Trowa turned to page seven and scanned the information, frowning then noticing the diagram.
"Next number?"

"Twenty six."

The diagram was labelled; an overall image of Hatty's components and number twenty six was a core processing unit. He relaxed, finally, just staring at her for a minute before turning her hat a little to the side, feeling...proud. Ridiculously, unbelievably proud, not of himself but of her.

"She's telling us how to repair her," he mumbled and then repeated himself more excitedly, taking the manual to Giles and pointing out the diagram, showing him the correlation and he saw Giles get it immediately they were looking for the next number.

"I'll write instructions," Tracey put in. "You just show me what's broken and read me the relevant information."

That was all that needed to be said. Giles referenced the page and diagram they needed, Trowa told Tracey about the system involved and she wrote out instructions for repair. They didn't try it as they went, wanting to have the full picture of Hatty's malfunction before they attempted a repair job, but it became clear by the end that it could be done.

"That's odd..."

"What is?" Trowa glared at Giles, not liking the interruption when it seemed to him they were finished. Tracey was just completeing the instructions and they would be ready to start.

"The last few numbers in the sequence point to parts of Hatty's manual that have nothing to do with the system the rest relate to, and the last eight numbers all have page references above 1500."

"So?" Tracey frowned but Trowa had paused, staring at the sode himself as though it might magically change and prove Giles wrong.

"So there are only fourteen hundred and fifty seven pages in Hatty's manual." Trowa recalled, cursing silently.

"So what? These aren't instructions for Hatty?"

They were all silent, staring at the long ream of information, now unsure what to do about it. If Hatty wasn't broken and they went about trying to fix her, would they damage her?

"It doesn't seem like it," Trowa muttered, but he couldn't think what else it might be.

"Maybe we got it wrong. Maybe that's not the key to the cipher after all?" Giles dared suggest.

"But these instructions make perfect sense! What, the numbers she just spat out just happen to perfectly much a repair sequence for her while meaning something else as well?" That she didn't believe it was perfectly clear in the amount of sarcasm lacing her words. Trowa just shook his head because she was right.

"It's the right cipher," he whispered, but he felt hollow and aching and he stared at the Origen capsule and felt nothing but hate. There were still otpions, of course, but life had proven that it was rare those options ended nicely.

"It's for the Origen."

"Whoever that is," Giles put in smoothly. "Could be for Nataku? Or the Orb?"

Or Wufei. None of them needed to say it. Trowa felt it sharply, as if someone had struck him in the back with a knife. Somehow it hurt all the more that Hatty was the messenger. As if she had somehow betrayed him. As if a robot could betray a human, was capable of malice and vengeance.

"Where'd she get instructions to repair the Origen? She was just sitting there and randomly realised she knew how to make it work?" The sarcasm thing was getting old, but Trowa couldn't blame her. It was his default setting too.

"No. Someone sent them to her." Because they could do that.

"So she does have wireless?" Giles asked, and Trowa would have happily punched him for the ghostly memory of stickiness on his hands.

"She has the capability," Trowa confirmed. "It just wasn't turned on. Or we couldn't tell it was turned on." Something to that effect, anyway. He didn't think he would ever get used to machines changing things behind his back. How was a human supposed to keep up with decisions being made by something beyond his control?

"Hatty? Can you hear us? We understand, we know what you're trying to tell us. You can stop now," Giles spoke so soothingly to her. As if he cared that she was in there somewhere. Wasn't she? Or was this the real Hatty, the machine.

He had no more time to contemplate it. The Pad activated, Quatre appeared, stumbled forward and promptly threw up on Trowa's shoes.