"Open up! I need to see Bryting!"
Heero slammed both his fists into the door, producing a dull metallic thump and a satisfying twinge of pain. It felt good to do something, even if the outcome was uncertain. He hated inactivity, hated helplessness worse. He hammered on the thick metal of the door again with the side of his fist, shouting to the guards outside in the hope that some sound would filter through the panel.
At length he was rewarded with the jangle and creak of the door opening, and backed away hastily with his hands in the air.
"What?" The guard who spoke was unfamiliar; he had a slight Northern European accent and was outlined tall and rake-thin against the light from the corridor. Heero couldn't see more of his eyes than a suspicious narrowing.
"I need to see Bryting," he said again, keeping his voice calm and his hands where the men could see them. On the bed behind him he could hear Marie stirring restlessly, obviously wondering what he was doing, but he spared no further attention for her. Better that they think he had no connection to her beyond these circumstances; they might be less quick to suspect her if he was caught.
The guard stared at him for a long moment, obviously nonplussed. "Why?" he asked finally, fingering the barrel of his rifle as he glanced warily around the cell. Heero recognised the type � paranoid, suspicious of everything, likely to shoot first if he even thought someone was trying something. The other man seemed calmer, but he stayed in the background and let his partner do the talking.
"I have information for him." Heero spoke slowly, dividing his gaze between the two of them. The suspicious one looked as if he would have liked to argue the point, but he pulled his communicator off his belt anyway. Heero made a mental note of its position, adding it to his list of items to acquire as soon as possible.
He didn't see which keys the man pressed, but the tone of his voice as he spoke into the device was a great deal more respectful than the one he'd been using to Heero. "Sir? I'm sorry to disturb you, but Mr Yuy is insisting on speaking with you�" There was an oily, unctuous texture to his voice which told Heero that Bryting held a great deal of power over this man.
"Yes, sir� yes. Thank you, sir." The guard flipped off the communicator and glared at Heero. "You, up against the wall." He gestured angrily with his rifle barrel while the other man pulled a pair of handcuffs from his belt. Steel again, Heero saw, which meant his plan would be at least partially effective. Obediently, he stood and turned to face the plain tile wall, placing his hands behind his back and letting the guard restrain him roughly.
He caught a single glimpse of Marie's face as they marched him out of the cell, the paranoid dark-haired one slamming and bolting the door behind them. She seemed so terribly alone there, and small, hunched into herself on the narrow bed. Obviously these people weren't worried about her escaping, as both of the guards accompanied him through the hallways he had memorised earlier.
As his sandy-blond jailer punched the elevator call button and the three of them stood around waiting, Heero ignored the rifle barrel pressing into his side and surreptitiously wrapped the fingers of one hand around the chain joining his cuffs, testing its strength. Satisfied that he could break free fairly easily when the time came, he meekly went where he was prodded, standing with his head down as the lift car rose all the way to the ground floor again. He was led through the same corridors, and to the same room, where his 'escorts' shoved him through the doors and into a seat at the large conference table.
It was somewhat uncomfortable to sit in a high-backed chair with his hands fastened behind him, but Heero didn't complain. He was too busy cataloguing the features of the place. Several screens and projectors had been set up at the far end, as though in preparation for a meeting or presentation, and the communication equipment had been removed from the table. He and the guards were currently the only people in the room, although the door in the far wall was ajar, and he could just faintly hear the murmur of voices issuing through the gap.
The guards took up position at the door behind him, one on either side. Heero could feel the glare of the suspicious dark-haired one trying to bore into the back of his neck. He made a conscious effort to appear cowed; it was necessary to make them think he posed as little threat as possible. He hunched his shoulders, pulling in on himself just a little and carefully relaxing his muscles, breathing slowly as he ran through his objectives in his mind.
Escape from the guards, retrieve Mariemaia, extract from the facility while evading capture� Heero knew that the only sensible solution would be to leave this station as soon as possible. There were enough colonies in the lower L3 area to hide a hundred escaped fugitives, and he had at least one provisional plan for getting the two of them the hell away from the area. But any long-range plans had to rely on the success of the extraction itself, and there were far too many obstacles for his peace of mind.
If it had been just him, Heero wouldn't have hesitated for a moment, relying on his speed and strength to outmanoeuvre his enemies and not bothering to plan much at all. But Marie's safety had to be his main priority in this situation, and that called for extra precautions. His primary mission objective thus became the survival of one small, red-headed twelve-year-old. It didn't inspire much optimism about his own safety.
Heero shifted uncomfortably in the chair, looking up as the door in the opposite wall creaked open and Bryting sauntered into the room. He was wearing the same neat three-piece suit and supercilious smirk that he'd had on before, and looked as though he'd just come from lunch at a five-star restaurant. He settled himself in a chair across the table from Heero, sweeping dark hair back from his forehead and pushing his glasses up his nose before folding his hands neatly on the table before him.
"Agent Yuy." He gave Heero a vaguely superior nod. "What can I do for you today?"
Heero consciously pushed back his irritation at being addressed as though he was a guest of very little importance. "I have information for you."
Bryting lifted a bushy eyebrow. "Indeed? I assume you want something in return for your� intelligence?" He all but made quote marks with his fingers, his words dripping contempt and managing to imply that Heero had very little intelligence at all. The ex-pilot gritted his teeth and swallowed the desire to throttle the man, telling himself that this wasn't about him.
He shrugged stiffly, hampered by the cuffs. "You're operating under false assumptions. Relena Peacecraft is not my girlfriend."
Bryting went absolutely still for a very long moment, and when he finally leaned back in his chair Heero could tell that it was forced. "With the greatest respect, Agent Yuy, why should we believe you? Her Highness has made it clear that she wishes to keep you intact, and considering the regularity with which you are seen together�" He trailed off delicately, that little pause implying all sorts of things. Suddenly, unaccountably, it made Heero angry.
"We are friends." That's all. I don't love her, I love�
"Why are you telling me this?" Bryting tipped his glasses forward and peered down his nose at Heero. "You must know that it will make no difference to your circumstances; we can't afford to take any chances with this."
"I know." Heero affected a careless shrug. "I thought you might want to know that the gossip columns are just that � gossip. It's an inconvenience, but�"
"Inconvenient for you, certainly." The man smirked, gesturing eloquently at Heero's bound body. "Perhaps you should take more care in choosing your friends in the future, Agent." He shook his head once in mock regret, then looked up, summoning the guards with a lifted finger. "Take him back to his cell. I have business elsewhere."
"Sir." The guards saluted fancily and dragged Heero to his feet, starting back the way they'd come. Beneath the denser camera coverage of the upper levels, Heero bowed his head and tried to think himself into the mindset of a model prisoner. Duo had always told him that to play a role convincingly you had to believe in it yourself.
Smiling wryly to himself, Heero acknowledged privately that he'd never had much success with that trick. It had taken him so long to understand the emotions he was feeling, and now pretending otherwise was impossible for him. Another of Duo's rules: people see what they expect to see. And Duo had never expected Heero to�
The chime of the lift car arriving cut into his musings, and Heero squared his shoulders as the wary-eyed guard prodded him through the doors. It was almost time.
Fifteen seconds, and then the elevator slowed smoothly to a halt and disgorged its passengers, the shorter blond guard bringing up the rear with his rifle on Heero while the other went ahead. Timing would be of the essence for this. Heero kept one eye on the camera at the intersection ahead, counting along with it and taking a good grip on the handcuffs as it fixed its eye on them for long seconds. The moment it passed the mid-point of its arc, he moved.
Arm muscles tensed, then flexed, pulling hard against the chain linking the handcuffs he wore. Steel bit into his wrists, but before the guard behind him could give more than a blurted cry of warning, chain links broke with a sharp crack and Heero was whirling, lashing out with one booted foot. His heel caught the man square in the temple, and he hit the wall and toppled like a felled tree. Snatching the rifle from his hands as he fell, Heero completed the spin, jamming the butt into the other soldier's midsection, then clubbing him in the head as he curled around himself.
A quick glance to the camera showed that it was still monitoring the other end of the corridor. Switching the M72 to his left hand, Heero made it to the nearest door in one long stride and tested the handle. Luckily for him, it opened, revealing an empty, darkened room furnished with nothing more than a plain table and single chair. Wasting no time, Heero bent and dragged both unconscious guards into the room, only just managing to get their feet out of sight before the camera returned to bear on them.
Closing the door and wedging it firmly shut with the chair, Heero searched unsuccessfully for the light panel for a few moments before deciding that he had no time to waste. Unbuttoning the front of his coverall, he pulled out the fabric strips he'd torn earlier and considered the best way of securing his prisoners. Testing the table with a shove, he discovered that it was bolted to the floor. Acceptable. Yanking first one and then the other guard into a sitting position, he swiftly bound their wrists with the cloth, winding the strips around the table legs for good measure to keep the men where he'd put them.
The taller, paranoid man began to come around as Heero was binding his legs; he hastily yanked out another piece of material and shoved it into the man's mouth, gagging him before he could begin to protest. Having secured both of them to his satisfaction, Heero then took the time to go through their belts and pockets, adding a pair of knives and a semi-automatic to the two assault rifles he'd already amassed.
At first, when he'd been considering escape plans, Heero had hit on the idea of stealing the clothes of one of the guards in an attempt to avoid detection, but he decided now that there were too many snags for the method to be viable. Marie was too small to look believable in uniform, and neither of the men he'd captured were close to his size, the one being too slender through the shoulders and chest, and the other too short. He would simply have to 'wing it,' as Duo would have put it.
Removing the chair carefully, Heero cracked the door open no more than an inch, ignoring the muffled protests of the groggy guards behind him. They'd have no more than headaches to show for their misadventure unless someone decided to punish them for letting him escape.
There was no sound from the corridor, so he slid the door open a little wider, poking his head around just far enough to get a look at the camera. He had to duck back immediately, cursing himself for not keeping count of the time he'd spent in here. Another ten painfully slow seconds, and he opened the door again, slipping out into the hallway and sprinting as silently as he could down to the intersection, pressing himself up against the wall directly beneath the camera as it swung around again.
Back into motion almost immediately, only waiting until the camera angle was too narrow for it to capture him as he slunk down the corridor towards the door to the cells. There was another camera coming up, but it was still pointing away � he made it with scant instants to spare, ducking around the corner against the wall and knowing that he would be too far distant to show up as anything more than a vague blur on the first camera's recordings.
Another three seconds' wait, and he was slipping into the recess that housed the door, slinging one rifle across his back and shouldering the other as he tapped the memorised code into the keypad. A single agonised second of waiting, hoping, and then the hiss of compressed air as the door began sliding aside.
Heero took aim through it before it had even opened the whole way, putting three bullets into the cameras that were trained on the cell doors. The angle of the final shot, though, was almost directly upwards, and it gave the blue-uniformed guard lounging against the wall the precious seconds needed to return fire. A bullet drew a line of fire along Heero's left biceps, and he gritted his teeth against the pain of the graze as he brought the rifle around again, squeezing off a single shot that hit the unfortunate guard in the chest. He collapsed, folding in around himself, and Heero didn't spare the time to check his status. The mission he had given himself was more urgent.
It was the work of a moment to unbar the cell door, but finding the keys among the guard's pockets took longer. Heero could almost feel the time trickling past him as he fumbled with them, cursing himself mentally as his fingers, slick with his own blood, refused to work quickly enough for him.
At last the lock turned, and he dragged the heavy door open. Mariemaia looked up at him from her position on the bunk; she didn't seem to have moved since he'd left her, and Heero felt a slight pang of worry that he instantly repressed.
"Heero?" Her eyes widened as she looked up at him, taking in his appearance. "You're bleeding!"
He spared a disinterested glance for the wound on his arm; it was still bleeding sluggishly, so he ripped up the remnants of his sleeve and wrapped it around as a makeshift bandage, turning to check over his shoulder. "Come on, we don't have much time before they'll be down here." He couldn't hear any alarms yet, but he had no doubt that someone had noticed his abrupt destruction of the cameras. Speed was most definitely of the essence.
He wiped the blood from his hand onto the dark fabric of his coverall, wondering if there would be time for him to get hold of some kind of garment to cover the ripped sleeve and bloody bandage. Marie had slid off the bed and joined him, gnawing on her lip as she regarded the fallen guard from the corner of her eye.
"Is he dead?"
Heero didn't bother to look, beckoning her to the open doorway at the end of the corridor. "I hope not." It was just lucky that these lower levels weren't as frequented as the ground floor; it was probably why their captors had installed the cells here in the first place. "Stay close to me," he told the girl as they paused in the doorway. "We can stay out of the cameras' range if we're careful."
Marie nodded tensely, clutching at her arms as though she was cold. Heero hoped he wasn't doing her any further psychological harm by dragging her along in his escape attempt, but it was probably the best chance they had. He frowned down at her for a minute, then took one of the knives from his pockets.
"Here. Take this. If anyone tries to hurt you�"
"I know how to use it," she told him with perfect composure that was belied by the fear in her eyes. "I've had self-defence lessons."
"Good," Heero approved, then stuck his head quickly out of the recessed doorway to check the position of the camera. Luck was with him; it was just completing its arc away from them, so he grabbed hold of Marie's sleeve and dragged her into a sprint towards the intersection. They pressed themselves against the wall beneath the camera, waiting until it was turned away from them, and then moved quickly on to the next junction.
They weren't more than half a corridor away from the stairwell doors when the sound of boots on concrete made Heero freeze. Whirling, he made the split-second decision to chance one of the doors lining the walls.
"Quick," he hissed to Marie, shoving the door open and yanking her through after him. Not a moment too soon; the footfalls became suddenly louder and a door crashed open, running feet passing their hiding place. As they faded, he heard someone shouting indistinctly in the distance, though he couldn't recognise the voice.
As soon as it was quiet again Heero slid the door open, preparing to move out of the cramped closet, but Mariemaia's hand on his arm stalled him for a moment.
"Here." She handed him a cleaner's fluorescent-green smock jacket. "It'll cover your arm." Heero eyed the colour sceptically, but didn't protest, slinging the plastic thing over one shoulder as they resumed their sprint through the halls. He could hear the girl breathing hard behind him, though he was deliberately slowing his pace to accommodate her.
They made it to the main corridor just as the elevator chimed its arrival and the doors began to open. Disregarding the cameras completely � it would do no good to hide from mechanical eyes if they got caught by human ones � Heero pulled Marie hastily through the door into the stairwell, pushing her ahead of him as he took the stairs to the next landing two at a time. He could hear the tramp of more military boots in the corridor below, and flashed back abruptly to the war. He'd raced through occupied colony corridors then, too, but it had been Duo at his side rather than Mariemaia. Not for the first time, Heero wished futilely for the reassuring presence of his partner.
Duo would have laughed his ass off at the very idea of being considered reassuring. The thought made Heero smile grimly as they paused in the corner of the landing. There didn't seem to be cameras on the stairs, but he wasn't going to take anything for granted.
"Are you okay?" he asked Mariemaia, who was panting for breath, clutching the knife he had given her as though it were a lucky talisman.
"Yeah." She nodded once, jaw set and eyes haunted, and shuffled up against the wall next to him, craning her neck to follow his gaze.
"We've got to go up three flights," Heero explained quietly. "I'll be in front, but you'll need to keep an ear out behind." She nodded tightly, her eyes widening as he drew and cocked the second gun. Heero tightened his grip on both weapons, taking a deep breath before starting up the stairs at a jog. He would have preferred to rely on the blades, if only to keep things as quiet as possible, but he knew the situation was too urgent for that. He could at least go for non-lethal shots where possible, and aiming for arms or hands prevented enemies from returning fire.
They made it past the second sub-basement landing before a clatter of shoes on metal risers overhead warned that someone was approaching. Heero put his back to the wall, gestured Marie into the cover of his body and took aim at the turn in the stairs. From the sound it appeared to be no more than two people, moving fast�
He fired left-handed as soon as the first body appeared around the corner, wincing only a little to discover that he had just shot Marie's former bodyguard in the shoulder. Katrin pitched back against the concrete-block wall with the force of the shot, her head cracking sickeningly loudly against the unyielding surface before she slid down to the floor, a bloody trail marring the paintwork in her wake.
Her partner � the blond corporal who'd been guarding them yesterday � managed to get off a single shot before Heero nailed him through the abdomen with his right-hand shot. He crumpled with an agonised moan even as concrete dust showered into Heero's hair from where the bullet had hit the wall over his head. Heero transferred one gun to his belt as he hurried up to snatch the communicator from the writhing man's hand, hoping that he hadn't just given away their location to the whole of the building.
"Come on." He tossed the small device to Marie, starting up the stairs again at a trot. Their own feet made far too much noise on the thin sheet-metal floors for his liking, and the sound echoed in the bare white-painted stairwell. That was probably why he didn't hear the guard coming up below them until a shot resounded through the cramped space. Marie screamed, stumbling forward into him as he halted and whirled, hands coming up automatically. He had no time to aim, and while the first shot went wide the second took the unfortunate guard through the forehead.
"Damn." Heero felt like borrowing some of Duo's favourite expressions as he propped Marie up, giving her a quick once-over. She seemed whole, but was limping slightly on one ankle. Heero suppressed his automatic horror as he saw the frayed rip in the leg of her coverall. Later he would have time to shake and curse and berate himself, but now was the time for action. He examined the injured leg and sat back on the step with a sigh of relief as he realised that the bullet had only grazed the skin; it was barely bleeding.
"You're all right." He squeezed the girl's shoulder; she was shaking and refused to look him in the eye. "We'll make it, Marie," he told her, lifting her easily to her feet. "Come on."
Heero kept one hand on her arm as they took the final flight of stairs at a swift trot. As he had hoped, instead of the customary single-door arrangement that linked the other floors into the stairwell, the ground floor boasted a wider landing that extended along one wall, complete with another door opposite the main one.
"Here." He led Marie over to it quickly, knowing that if this building followed customary construction codes then this plain, narrow door would be a fire exit. Still, he put his ear to it first, verifying that no sound emerged from beyond. His mind chafed at the delay; every second spent here was risky since the main door leading out to the ground floor was half-glassed.
Heero took a deep breath and firmed his grip on his guns, gesturing Marie to get in as close to him as possible. "Ready?" he asked softly as he took his stance; there was no handle on this side of the door. Mariemaia nodded, still not looking at him, and Heero set his jaw, leaning back and kicking the locked door as hard as he could.
Metal groaned and splintered under the force of his boot, and with a second kick the lock gave way, the door slamming open to reveal not the open air, as he had hoped, but a long narrow room that seemed to be half-full of cleaning supplies. The other end, though, was taken up by a red fire door and a tiny, filthy window that barely let in enough light to see by.
Heero exhaled in relief, hurrying his charge into the room and pushing the door to behind him. It was somewhat dented after his assault on it, but it stayed closed. Up against the other wall, Marie had climbed onto a plastic crate and was wiping some of the dirt from the glass panel, trying to see out. Heero peered over her shoulder, not seeing much except a narrow alleyway between two buildings. There didn't seem to be anyone in sight, so he pushed down on the safety bar to open the door and ushered the girl out.
The recycled Colonial air tasted like freedom. Heero breathed deeply as he made a quick examination of their surroundings. Marie, beside him, laughed in semi-hysterical relief, stuffing her knife into a pocket. Heero deposited both rifles carefully to one side of the fire exit, stuffing his other weapons into pockets and checking to see that they left no outlines as he unfolded the far-too-visible green jacket and shrugged into it.
They were standing in what appeared to be nothing more than a narrow passageway between two large buildings. Heero tipped his head back, somewhat startled to find that the building they'd been held in was actually more than twenty storeys high. It didn't seem familiar, though, so this wasn't a place he'd had cause to visit or research in the past.
Marie interrupted his concentration, tugging nervously on the bright green jacket. "I can hear people over that way," she all but whispered, as though enemies would descend on them again if she spoke too loudly. Heero frowned, realising that the sounds he had been hearing were indeed made by a large number of people.
"I think that's the front of the building," he murmured thoughtfully. It was likely that their enemies had called a fire drill or some other such manoeuvre in an attempt to better search the building. Either way, Marie with her bright hair and he with that ridiculous jacket were far too noticeable. "This way," he decided, turning and beginning to make his way towards the other end of the alleyway. In his mind he enumerated the steps they would need to take next � finding a bank machine, taxi, clothing, spaceport� D5150 suddenly seemed a lot further away than it had in that cell.
Duo would tell me to look before I leap, he realised with a smirk. It was a refrain his partner seemed fond of for some reason.
The alleyway gave out onto a confusing jumble of smaller roads, none of them signposted. It seemed like an industrial area, so Heero decided to take the largest of the roads and hope for the best. He hustled Mariemaia along at a fast walk, just slow enough to look natural. If one discounted her size, they might even pass unnoticed, he thought grimly.
"Where are we?" Marie asked as they turned the corner into an open lot. Heero frowned, looking about them. There was a 'for sale' sign by the edge of the fenced-off area, and it seemed to back onto a collection of large buildings. The resounding emptiness was almost oppressive. He tipped his head back, looking up at the swirling mist of cloud that revolved in the open centre of the colony. Through breaks in the patchy cover he could see the occasional glimpse of the buildings, parks and infrastructure of the other face of the torus, but there were no landmarks that stood out to him.
"This way." Heero picked the road � more of a track, really � that led around the far side of the large prefab structures. Time was definitely becoming a concern; by now their former captors must have realised that Heero and Mariemaia were no longer inside the building. If they were lucky, they would view a blatant search as too risky. If they were lucky.
His arm was beginning to ache, the adrenaline of their escape ebbing from his veins. Heero hunched his shoulder experimentally, hoping he still retained full range of movement. Marie was limping a little more now, the strain beginning to show. They both looked thoroughly ragged and disreputable; they needed to get off the street as soon as possible.
Heero winced internally as he watched the girl's halting step. It had only been a graze, but even the whisper of a bullet's kiss was too much. He was supposed to be protecting Mariemaia, no matter if it hadn't been a formal assignment. She shouldn't have to hurt, to bleed for the crimes and ambitions of others. She shouldn't have to suffer for his failures.
Heero was beginning to think that he might have made a serious error of judgement in his haste to escape captivity. The situation was so different; usually his partner was there to back him up, to stop him from reacting too quickly and taking unnecessary risks. Duo was the one who could temper Heero's drive and determination with practicality and realism, the one who could keep him from going off half-cocked in his need to act. There was no threat so great that it could make Heero risk Duo's life, but he was beginning to realise that Mariemaia's presence didn't provide him with the same psychological safety net. End result, he had leapt before he looked again.
"Heero!" Mariemaia was tugging at his arm, and he turned, following her pointing finger with his eyes. The narrow road they were following crossed another that gave out onto a small shopping centre, nothing more than a few cheap stores huddling on either side of the street. Still, he could see the welcome blinking light of an ATM and almost collapsed with relief.
"Come on," he urged, setting out at an almost-run. It seemed to take forever to reach the cashpoint, and by the time they were there a middle-aged woman had materialised in front of him, taking money out of what seemed to be half a dozen different accounts. Heero chafed his hands against the slick fabric of the jacket at the delay, tense and sure by now that he could feel eyes on them. Marie leaned against the wall at his side, looking utterly exhausted, red hair hanging limp over her brow. He would have to do something about disguising her, but the immediate priority was to get out of the area.
At last the dumpy woman shuffled away from the machine and Heero took his turn, inputting the codes for one of the Preventer open accounts. It required his badge number and passcodes as authorisation, and he would have to account for every credit he spent to Une, but this was an emergency and he'd been relieved of his wallet by the kidnappers. Finally, after an agonising wait during which he was expecting shouts of discovery to echo from behind him at any moment, the slot opened and a bunch of credit notes disgorged into his hands.
Marie's eyes visibly popped at the amount. "Heero!"
"Hush." He kept his eyes front as he stuffed the money carelessly into a side pocket of the jacket; the area didn't look all that prosperous and he didn't want to stand out from the crowd. Not that there was one; only a few people shuffled desultorily up and down the narrow street, and most of those looked like housewives in the middle of shopping. Far up at the end of the street Heero could see a taxi rank; he led Marie in that direction, hoping that the lone vehicle resting beneath the sign wouldn't be commandeered by someone else before they could arrive.
The driver rolled down his window as the pair came alongside, peering out suspiciously at them from beneath a black baseball cap that was far too reminiscent of Duo for Heero's peace of mind.
"Where to?" he asked in a gruff voice, pausing to spit out a wad of gum onto the pavement at Heero's feet.
"Spaceport." Heero kept himself from looking nervously over his shoulder, though Marie was fidgeting badly by now, twisting her hands together and tugging at the pale blue fabric of her coverall. At least the small stain of blood on the ankle wasn't immediately obvious with the way she stuck next to him like glue.
"Get in." The taxi driver released the auto-locks and Heero piled into the back seat, dragging the girl after him. They drove off almost immediately, the man taking the corners at almost reckless speeds, but Heero didn't complain; he was too busy counting himself lucky that the driver didn't seem to be the garrulous type. He kept an eye on the meter, realising almost immediately that it was fixed � the price grew in regular increments despite the fact that the cab continually accelerated and slowed as traffic increased towards the spaceport.
Finally they had reached an area that Heero recognised. The bulk of the spaceport tower � utterly anachronistic in the midst of a closed colony station, but designed to act as a landmark � loomed steadily closer with each passing second. D4993 � but why here? Now he realised why the colony seemed so run-down; L3-D4993 had been a thriving commercial centre a few years ago, but its wealth and trade had been based on the weapons industry. The advent of peace had thrown more than a few companies into bankruptcy and liquidation. Heero abruptly wondered whether the situation here had anything to do with the motives of their kidnappers; it was likely that a lot of people here resented the ESUN government for taking away their jobs and prosperity.
"Here ya go." The taxi driver pulled up outside the main terminal entrance with a squeal of distressed brakes. "Thirteen-seventy." He stuck his hand under Heero's nose rudely; the Japanese Agent pulled two notes from his pocket and handed them over.
"Keep the change." He unlocked the door himself without bothering to wait for the man's okay and helped Marie out, hustling her inside the terminal building quickly; there were far too many people standing around the doors for his liking. Once inside he headed immediately for the concierge desk.
"I need two seats on the next available flight to D5150," he told the professional-looking young woman, thanking every god he had never believed in that identification wasn't needed for intra-Colony travel. If they'd needed to get to L1 or L4 he'd have been stuck.
"Right, sir." The woman addressed her computer, checking the availabilities. "There are still seats free on the 1320 shuttle, if that's acceptable sir? Boarding begins in approximately fifteen minutes."
"Acceptable." Heero nodded and she stabbed at the key to print the tickets off for him.
"That will be one hundred and thirty-seven credits, sir." She gave him a slick, false smile. "How would you like to pay?"
"Cash is fine." Heero pulled the wad of bills from his pocket and counted out the correct amount; the woman was too well-trained to show any curiosity or disbelief over the amount of money he was walking around with.
"Here you go sir." She handed him the tickets with his change. "Have a good journey."
Heero nodded abrupt thanks as he manoeuvred Mariemaia away from the desk, heading towards the commercial section of the plaza. "Here." He looked her up and down quickly as they entered the small department store, deciding that his hastily formulated plan had at least a small chance of success. "We'll have to get clothes and change before we try to take the flight, and you'll be less noticeable dressed as a boy."
Ignoring her startled glance, he led the pair of them on a quick tour of the shop's ground floor, picking out plain jeans and t-shirts for each of them, a pair of sunglasses for himself and a large black cap for Marie. She wasn't yet old enough to have developed much in the way of breasts, so the t-shirt would be baggy enough to hide any tell-tale signs. He also stopped off in the luggage department of the store, purchasing a small aluminium briefcase that would serve to hide the weapons.
"Here." He handed Marie her new costume and pointed her at the ladies' restrooms. "Be quick, we only have five minutes." He struggled out of his own coverall in the men's room, cursing as crusted blood flaked from his wounded arm and the gash threatened to reopen. By the time he was done, the hideous green jacket donned over the top of the new clothes to hide the makeshift bandaging, and had secreted the guns beneath the tattered coverall in the briefcase, Marie was already waiting for him outside.
Heero had to give her excellent marks for quick thinking; she had the brim of the cap pulled down over her eyes, hiding her bright hair, and was lounging against the wall with her arms folded insouciantly. "Are we going now?" she asked as he took the remnants of the blue coverall from her and shoved them into the briefcase.
"Yes." Heero pulled the shop tag off the sunglasses and slid them onto his face. "Come on." He jerked his head at her, beginning the long walk across the wide plaza to the boarding gates. The security guards gave him something of a pang for a moment, but the metal-detector arch didn't so much as beep as he walked beneath it, and neither of the bored-looking men bothered to open the briefcase before handing it back to him.
As they began walking down the row of bay entrances Heero felt a prickling between his shoulderblades. He tensed imperceptibly; they were unmistakably being watched. It took every ounce of control he possessed not to speed his pace, and the urge to look around became almost undeniable. His fingers were twitching for the familiar grip of the USP Elite that had been taken from him; Heero gritted his teeth and fixed his eyes on the shuttle-bay doors ahead. They were almost there, and the place was too crowded for anyone to try anything� they were almost there�
The woman at the door tore off their ticket stubs with a lack of reaction that made cold sweat break out on Heero's back. He nodded to her, joining the queue of other passengers waiting to board the shuttle, and didn't relax for a moment until they were seated near the back of the economy cabin.
Shuttle flights between neighbouring Colonies were run almost like a high-tech bus service. The small 'hopper' craft they were travelling on would make stops at several stations in the L3-D sector, eventually circling around to return to D4993 again. D5150 � New Anselm � was the first stop on the route, and Heero had hardly managed to shake off the itchy feeling of being watched before the shuttle was decelerating into the landing bay and they had to debark.
He had been right, he thought as he collected the briefcase from the luggage compartment and exited the tiny shuttle with Marie in tow. This had been a bad idea. If they had been watching him at the spaceport, they would know where he was now. And by removing their hostages he might have pushed them into even more extreme action�
"Where are we going now?" Mariemaia demanded, bewildered, as Heero steered her out of the stream of people heading for the terminal exit and over to a narrow door set in a plain wall. It was marked 'Staff Only,' but if he remembered the spaceport plans correctly�
He did. Heero breathed a sigh of relief as the door gave way under creative violence to reveal a wide parking lot filled with commercial shipping containers. Beckoning Mariemaia to follow him, he made his way quickly through the maze to the low building on the other side of the lot; he'd never been here before, but he knew what it had to be.
There was no one in the foyer, and they passed only one man on their way down the corridor to the private bays. Inwardly, Heero was running through the patchy memories of a conversation over two years old, trying to dig as much information from the past as possible. Duo had told him the docking number, but�
"Twenty-seven." Heero came to a halt outside the airlock door, regarding the code-lock thoughtfully. This was it, the long shot he had been counting on. In all probability Duo was going to kill him for this. Assuming no one else did first, of course.
Eventually, the locks yielded to his hacking abilities, and he all but stuffed Marie into a spacesuit while the pressures equalised in the bay. As the inner airlock irised open, Heero had his first sight of the black gundanium skin of his partner's Inferno and couldn't hold back an almost reverent gasp. The ship was perfect; it was Duo from nose to tail-fins, sleek and elegant and deceptively innocent-looking.
An inhalation of shock from behind him made him turn. Mariemaia looked like a child in its parent's clothes; the spacesuit was designed for an adult and the legs and arms were rucked up in stiff folds that had to be uncomfortable. Still, if it kept her safe�
"Put your helmet on," Heero told her, lifting the glass-fronted bubble from the shelf and helping her secure it to the neck of the suit. She said something, her eyes flicking to the sleek black shuttle, but it was muffled by the helmet and Heero shook his head, picking up the briefcase that still concealed the weapons they had taken from the guards.
The gravity in the bay was low, and Heero abruptly wished that he had bothered to don the other suit; Marie walked with ease in the magnetised soles, but he was forced to take carefully deliberate steps. Still, it made it easier for him to make the jump to the edge of the main airlock and enter the code. The long seconds of pressure equalisation made his spine itch again with nervousness, and he all but dragged Marie into the ship as soon as the airlock door slipped aside.
Leaving her to struggle her way out of the suit, Heero made his way to the cockpit, sternly forbidding himself from pausing even a moment to admire the strength and subtlety of Duo's design. He couldn't think about Duo, not now. Not in this place where echoes of his partner were all about him, rocks to trip his faltering conscience.
Pre-flight checks went without a hitch, but Heero had expected nothing else. More difficult was hacking into the docking computers and triggering the emergency override on the shuttle-bay doors. As the lights began flashing outside and depressurisation began, the communications board beeped urgently at him, demanding his attention. Settling himself in the pilot's chair, Heero wrapped his fingers reverently around the controls and ignored the desperate summonses of the colony control. As the giant doors of the bay began to cycle open, a narrow slice of star-peppered space slowly widening in the viewscreen, Heero took a deep breath and engaged the secondary engines.
The deep hum of charging verniers shivered through his bones and he almost gasped at the feeling. No refuelling was needed for the Inferno; Duo had only got permission from Une to build her after the last of their G5 missions, which had successfully taken out a rebel group in Old China. The rest of them had received pay rises, but Duo had emerged from a long meeting with Une and Howard, special dispensation received.
It wasn't as though the Inferno was, in itself, any more dangerous than the next spacecraft. Its speed was primarily what set it apart; Heero had seen the specs on more than one occasion, and knew that Duo's pride and joy was actually even faster than Deathscythe Hell had been. He smirked to himself as he felt the engines reach performance pitch, the vibrations shaking through the hull easing to a barely discernible whine. His partner, the speed junkie.
Heero wouldn't change him for the world. His fingers hovered over the ignition key as he made one last survey of the boards and screens. What he saw on the port-side monitor chilled him to the bone.
A space-suited figure was arcing through the bay towards the emergency airlock in the Inferno's underside. Even as Heero watched, a glove stabbed out at the controls and the hatch popped with an outrushing of air, the bulky figure worming its way inside the ship.
Heero could feel the cold mantle of utter determination settling over him as he locked their course into the nav computer. Already they had exited the bay, and were gathering speed despite the desperate beeping of the com console. Even more than himself and Marie, the Inferno could not be allowed to fall into enemy hands. Not Duo's ship.
Briskly, efficiently, he unbuckled himself from the harness and rose to his feet, unlocking the briefcase and retrieving one of the guns. One enemy� he could manage that easily. Palming open the cockpit door, he took a quick look around. Marie was sitting in a jump-seat, staring around herself. Heero made a swift calculation; the intruder would have to wait for the airlock pressure to stabilise, so he had time.
"We have company." He was surprised at how dead his voice was as he gestured peremptorily to the girl. "Get in the cockpit and stay there." She scrambled to obey, and he let himself ignore her, moving swiftly towards the back of the small cabin area and the narrow corridor that led to both the sleeping quarters and the emergency airlock.
Ghosting up to the turn in the corridor that concealed his objective, Heero paused with the gun held ready, listening as intently as he could. At first there was only silence, punctuated by the thin whisper of his own indrawn breath, but after a moment there was a mechanical noise as the airlock opened, and the soft sound of a spacesuit boot on shuttle flooring.
Taking a deep breath, Heero lowered the gun to chest level and set his jaw. Another two steps and the intruder would be at the bend in the passageway, practically point-blank range. There was no way he could miss. For Duo, he told himself quietly as he spun out into the centre of the corridor and fired at the blur of green-blue motion that filled his vision.
The crack of the shot seemed very loud in the sudden silence, but Heero didn't notice it at all. Everything in him was abruptly focused on the figure that resolved out of the blur � the brown-braided, indigo-eyed figure whose face was more familiar than his own.
Duo!