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"Alternative Directions: Options "Written By: Karina Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing or the lovely
boys and their girls in the series. Wish I did. Please don't sue me.
I haven't even got a brass razoo to give you. Rating: Definately PG in Australia, at the moment,
but probably safer to say R for later chapters. Not sure about international
ratings Warnings: It will be 6x2, even though it does
not start out that way. After all, Zechs and Duo never met in Gundam
Wing and only spoke briefly over a com line in Endless Waltz. I've
tried to keep them in character as I saw them in the series. A bit
of language creeping in under stressful conditions. Pairings: eventual 6x2, past 2xH, 2+H,6x9, 1+R
Summary: Directions is set post Endless Waltz
and roughly 2 years have passed. Zechs and Noin are on Mars and Duo,
after spending some time with Hilde in a relationship leaves L2 to
join Preventers. Hilde was not happy about his decision. I guess enough
said. Here t'is, and I hope you like it. This is also AU for the standard
setting, as well as the series and Endless Waltz. Spoilers: Gundam Wing Series and Endless Waltz Many thanks to ShenLong for volunteering to beta this. //... // thoughts
"Alternative Directions: Options" Chapter 204 Preventer Patrol Cruiser E106 Bounty Date 2nd March AC 198 Time: 18:55 Bounty Ship Time [14:35 Peacemission & Sanc time / Wellington time 13:47 / L1-0025 B 16:50] Duo //I hate waiting. I hate not knowing what the fuck is going down when I know something big is shitting all over my peaceful reality.// Blink. Khaki painted metal. Rivets in offset pairs rising up the seam in the wall… Blink He would not look. He refused to look. There was no need for him to look. //I hate people shitting on me and there never seems to be a lack of assholes willing to do the shitting. I fought a war already and I don’t want to fight another one. I should not have to fight another!// He closed his eyes, blocking out the bare metal wall with its khaki colour and never ending supply of rivets. //I’m tired of hurting. Tired of bleeding.// He would not look. He had better self control than that, he knew it. He could and would find other things to occupy his time whilst he waited… it was easy enough to find something to do. Blink. //What the fuck am I doing? Why am I heading out into space when I have… When I… Ah, God, life loves to shit on me. Are you enjoying your cosmic jest up there, Almighty One? Are you laughing like shit at me?// He did not want to be here, staring at the bulkhead, forcing himself not to look at ‘that’. He had a son. He had just learned that he had a son; that he had helped make a precious, innocent life. He had just met the child… and he was heading out into the solar system, away from that little bundle of humanity that would not exist if not for him. Blue eyes drifted up to the clock… 18:57 //Damn.// All of two minutes had passed since the last time he had weakened and glanced at the clock. Just two measly, miserable, boring minutes. Surely there was a malfunction? Yes, there had to be a malfunction. The stupid clock had to have a technical glitch, a gremlin. It was convenient to ignore the fact that every clock on the ship ran from the ship’s central processing system that was the heart and brain of the vessel. Every clock on board would read exactly the same time. Just two minutes had passed. He buried his head in his hands and dropped his head to the desk with a solid ‘thunk’. //Ah, crud! I’m going to drive myself crazy waiting around.// Half of his life, it seemed, involved waiting. Blink. 18:58 //Shit.// He squeezed his eyes closed, refusing to look at the clock. He really had to stop flicking glances up at the digital timepiece. Every two damned minutes… and even less this last time. His eyes inexorably found the glowing red digital numbers and for what? He knew what the time was without looking at the damnably boring, exactly precise, digital figures, and the excruciatingly painful metered blinking of the dots marking the second count between the pairs of numbers. Clenching his fists he sucked in a slow breath, holding it at its peak until his lungs felt like they would burst. This was not good enough. He had to get a handle on himself; get himself under control or he would be of no use to anyone. This was getting out of hand and he knew he had more patience than this. 18:59 “Shit.” He was an ‘action’ man; a ‘doer and shaker’ of the world, not a sit and wait kind of guy. His quiet sigh was the only sound to disturb the confines of the cabin. The room was well insulated against whatever noises might happen in the hallway beyond the door or from the adjacent cabins. The deep throbbing of the engines was not ‘heard’ so much as ‘felt’ as a vibration through the plate decking and that sound/vibration was something he was so familiar with that he did not notice it after the first few minutes. Every ship ever designed and constructed had its own unique ‘signature’ to the ‘sound’ and ‘feel’ of the massive engines that drove them through the wide reaches of space. It had never taken him long to develop a feel for the unique signature of an engine, and pick up on any variation in the sound subconsciously. When you lived on a ship and your life depended on the smooth function of the ships mechanics, you learned to react at the first hint of trouble. Any variation in that rhythmic beat was a danger signal until proven otherwise. Not that he expected there to be trouble on this particular ship. It was a Preventer’s long haul cruiser, just about brand spanking new, and Preventer had the best crews, the best training and the best mechanics money could buy. The crews were trained and psyche tested to take the long haul flights. The ships Officers of these long range patrol vessels were specially trained to observe and react to both the ship and their crew and they were strict about enforcing crew requirements. The Medical Centre watched the health of every person on board, physical and mental, with the attention of a hawk watching its next meal. He was no stranger to ships, though he had not previously hopped a ride on the long haul vessels that left the central hub of the ESUN far behind them. He had spent time on a Sweeper ship and though they had not left the Hub he had stayed on the ship for months, but that was, in all honesty, not the same. What was a few paltry months on a Sweeper ship in comparison to this long range patrol ship? Once the Bounty left the Hub they would be on their own out there for at least a year, more potentially, depending on what happened during the course of the patrol mission. Distance would isolate them and if anything disastrous happened they would be required to deal with it on their own merit. It would be unlikely they could expect any help to be close enough to come to their assistance in short order. Why was he heading out into the back of beyond, into the depths and darkness of the solar system, when he had a son to watch grow and teach? Surely Hilde would not expect him to back off after learning he had a child? When he returned… She knew how he liked kids. She knew how he hated being alone. //Okay, so maybe she does not want to get back together. I can understand that. I’m not particularly inclined to hook back up with her, but I would like to know my boy. Aidan. Yeah, I’d like to watch him grow.// Was that not why he had fought the war? Well, maybe it had not been his reason at the time, but now, with some maturing under his belt, he had a different perspective. To watch a child that was his grow and develop in a peaceful time, as he had never had the chance to do as a child…? Oh yes, he wanted that. 19: 05 “Shit!” He closed his eyes. He had looked at the clock again… but it was, at least, a bit better this time around. More than the horrid time dragging two minutes had passed. He would need to find amusements on this trip and quickly. He never had liked being idle. He would need to start before they left the Hub. There would be social clubs on the ship of course. They would have a vast library of movies, novels and games to distract the crew. He would find out about the social clubs, hobby groups, and anything else that might be on offer to distract him from the boredom he knew was the most dangerous thing he was likely to face on this trip. His eyes moved over the walls of his room, picking out every rivet flanking every join in every sheet of metal and, as expected, he felt the first stirrings of despair at the size of this - his allocated, personal space. This oversized cubicle, this glorified closet was his cabin, his hideaway from the crew when company grated on his nerves; but as much as it would become a sanctuary it would also be his prison. It was to be expected that he would run the gamut of emotions at his change in circumstances, and it should not worry him. Not at this stage of the trip. Bounty was a big ship with a large crew. There would be new faces, new people to meet on a regular, if not daily basis, if he went looking. No, it had to be ‘when’ he went looking. He would not be permitted to close himself off and hide away from the rest of the crew. His activities and interaction with the crew would be closely monitored and he could not afford to allow himself to become paranoid about Big Brother always watching him. In this situation there had to be a Big Brother, and the surveillance really was for his own good. He generally was not one to experience the restrictions or dangers inherent in claustrophobia, certainly not after so recently arriving on what was really a rather large ship. Certainly she was not huge, but she was not small either and he would have to utilise every inch of her to broaden his world for the next few… months? A year? More? //God I hope not!// It was just that there had been no real warning before this mission had arisen. He had not had the chance to prepare, to psyche himself up to face the reduced world he would be expected to deal with. //It would not be so bad if I just knew how long I would be on this tub.// 19:07 He glared at the wall, inches below the offensive sight. He did not look at the clock! He was a professional, an experienced agent. He was not a school kid with his eyes glued to a clock waiting for the doom of a test, or some other triviality, to brutalise his innocent life. Close his eyes, draw deep breaths, quiet his mind and… relax. It was doing him no good sitting here and dwelling on what lay ahead of him, imagining the deep darkness, the sheer emptiness of space. Dwelling on everything he did not know about this mission was serving only to hype him up and ignite his admittedly ‘occasionally’ volatile temper. He was strung out with waiting and not knowing. Knowing things were happening out there in the ESUN that he was somehow involved in and yet could not influence; knowing that he just had to sit on his hands and wait. Because it was all he ‘could’ do. 19:08 Damn! Damn, damn and just… just… “Fuck.” Instead of a curse with force behind it, it came out as a rather pathetic whimper. Less than a minute had passed. Maybe a bare minute. Sixty seconds could be an eternity filled with the worst kind of agony imaginable. What was happening out there? He needed to find his focus, to settle himself down and get over the vast emptiness he saw opening up before him. It would not be empty. He would fill the days, the Medical Staff would make certain of that! So get over it and move on. Stop clock watching because sitting here waiting and watching that boringly inanimate digital clock was steadily, and speedily, sending him insane… And he was obsessing on the stupid clock again! He wanted to leave his cabin and explore the confines of his metal world, but at present that was not possible. They were coming up toward a burn period. If they were to remain with the planned schedule for this patrol then that burn would take place in approximately thirty minutes. It was not worth leaving his cabin to begin exploring the ship, or to attempt to make social overtures with his crew-mates. At the present time most of the crew would be performing their vital duties in keeping the Bounty flying through space smoothly and safely. A shift change was due to take place after the burn and it was doubtful there would be any social interaction taking place until the second day of the mission. The periods when he would get to know the men and women who made up the crew would focus on when the ship was into a scheduled long flight session. He had a vague memory of there being something like a week after the initial burns took place before another course correction and burn might be required. Sometime in the next fifteen minutes or so he could expect the first of the general alerts to sound and the Executive Officer would place the crew on pre burn alert. At that point personnel who were not required for the actual acceleration operation would be required to make their way speedily to their cabins, lock their gear down and strap themselves down. Then it would be a waiting game for everyone on the ship other than the flight and engineering crews. He had already locked down his cabin for something to do, and now he was left looking at the clock. 19:10 Blink Waiting. Twiddling his thumbs. Blink. Staring at the walls. “This sucks.” What was happening on Mars? It was sure to be bloody. But Marquise was no fool and Duo doubted he would be taken unawares. And what was happening out there, not so far from the red planet, between the Peacemission and the Wellington? Had something unthinkable happened? If something happened to the Peacemission and her crew…. It would be his fault. Peacemission was a Sweeper ship, thankfully not a Family Ship with the lives of families on the line. He should not have involved the Sweepers. Technically he was not a Sweeper and Howard… Well, Howard was respected amidst the Sweeper organisation, but it was none of his affair to step between a private citizen and the ESUN government. Marquise was a private citizen when it came down to it. A dead man to boot. Dead men tell no tales and should be allowed to remain dead, but this one… this one seemed incapable of vanishing. Intentionally or not on his part he haunted the ESUN. Howard would not leave him wondering any longer than absolutely necessary. He was sure of that. Howard knew why he had called… well, not really, but he would understand. He knew that Howard had liked Marquise, that they had been together on Peacemillion before Marquise had become White Fang. Howard would not have been happy to know after the fact what was happening on Mars, and knowing he had been close enough to do something at the time. Howard was never one to prevaricate while injustice occurred around him. It had led the man invariably into troubled waters in the past and the old man had told him once that it would inevitably lead him astray again in the future. He was just that sort of individual and Duo had nothing but admiration for him. “Call me, damn it.” He pressed his face into his arms, head down on the console and after a moment found he was very gently, rhythmically, bumping his head against the desk. The movement was mirroring his heartbeat, taking comfort in the steady pulse. “Fuck this.” He refrained from glancing at the clock as he dug out his laptop and ran the connections to the console. He waited patiently for the system to load and for the multiple layers of protection to buffer him from any unauthorised prying by unknown bodies. He had to do ‘something’ or he would go berserk and they had not been in space long enough for even the greenest of space travellers to lose the plot. Loading his email he was disappointed to find there was nothing from Earth. A quick check of the ships communication systems revealed that much of Europe was still under cloud, though to his eyes it looked like the great disc of cloud had thinned considerably and certainly it had shrunk. //Well then, I guess it should not be too long before they get their act together. Guess it could have caused quite a bit of damage.// A flashing alert on the weather page drew his attention and he clicked on it, settling back to watch video footage from a news channel that had managed to get a signal through the storm conditions. It was not footage of Sanc, but it did give him enough of an idea to know how bad it could have been in that geographically small but none-the-less important country. “Damn! I am glad I was not there for the ride.” For all the years he had been on Earth the periodically wild extremes the weather was capable of reaching still made him more than a little uneasy. Twice he had been caught on a mission for Preventer in atrocious weather; whether it was called a hurricane, a cyclone or a typhoon it made no difference to him. Once experienced he had had an even healthier respect for the weather a planet could produce. There were no destructive winds and no flooding on a colony. No tornadoes, no ice storms, no sand storms. An alert for incoming mail drew his eye and he grinned, closing down the window where the announcer was talking about heavy snows and destructive winds and pictures showed the destruction the storm had left in its wake. A click of a key and he grinned. “Trowa, my man! What are you up to?” ~/ Hey. Wondering if you have been able to get into contact with dirt-side? I’m on my way to L2 and was hoping to at least chat with Q. No luck. If you get through tell him I’m thinking of him. Got a strange one to chase. That raid may not be an isolated case. T. /~ Duo sat back from the screen and sucked in a breath. There was no way… was there? Could it be that somehow Trowa had found something that might be related to the raid that had resulted in him learning about the Romefeller genetic laboratories pertaining to the information on the hard drives? And L2. He had said he was on his way to L2. But ‘that raid’ might have been any one of… oh, five or so missions they had been a part of over the last twelve months. The Captain had earlier informed him that there had been an incident on L-10025 B and he had wondered at the time if Trowa might know something about it. He had wondered if Trowa might not have been on the colony at the time of the incident, but Trowa moved around a lot, both with the circus and on Preventer business. One could never be quite sure where he might be. Duo had thought he might be on his way back to Earth, but if he was en route to L2… Trowa knew about the raid on the Romefeller laboratories and knew what they had found. He would know about the standing order for those involved in the raid to report and pursue any and all leads pertaining to the matter. If he was headed for L2, which of the colonies in the cluster was he aiming for? “Nah. The odds of it being L2-0397 would have to be… well, not so good.” But he had learned a long time ago, when he had called the streets his home, that coincidence happened with frightening regularity. He could not afford to jump to conclusions though, and really, this matter Trowa was dealing with had nothing to do with him, no matter his destination. He would need to be patient, keep an attentive ear open and stop dwelling on the emptiness of space looming large ahead of him. Trowa’s message had reminded him of the hard drive containing data he had yet to explore which might, or not, have something to do with the laboratories. Well, he knew it must have something to do with THAT laboratory, that was where he had acquitted the data in the first place, but… He had found information on the Gundam pilots and on certain Oz personnel and therefore he had an interest in anything to do with more of the laboratories they might locate. He was dead certain there was secrets that might prove world shaking, if they could just unearth them. But Preventers had taught him that people in high places wanted facts, not supposition or speculation. Facts had to be gathered, obscure clues and links had to be investigated. Links might or not exist to some of the ‘better’ families heading the ESUN, but until he could prove irrevocably that there were viable links between the data on the hard drives and the horrors of the laboratories, he would have to be careful of what he said. To discuss such matters he would not be happy unless he was standing beside Trowa and he could be assured there were no listeners to eavesdrop on their conversation. The Bounty would give him the time to dig into the drives and he could start that hunt with the new day. What the hell had he been sitting here hyping himself up for over being bored? “Later tonight, if I come out of the burn period able to move.” The unpleasantness of the acceleration would be felt for hours after the actual event, and it was best if one could sleep it off, but he might not be tired enough to do that initially. ALL HANDS. ATTENTION ALLHANDS. INITIATE STAGE ONE PREPERATION FOR PROLONGUED ACCELERATION PERIOD. REPEAT. ALL HANDS INITIATE STAGE ONE PREPERATION FOR PROLONGUED ACCELERATION PERIOD. //Damn.// Their timing just sucked. 19:18 Just when he found something interesting he was required to abandon the matter. Life was an unfair bitch at times, but he would have plenty of time to think things through. The first thing he needed to do was reply to Trowa. His friend was on Preventer business and as such he would not be at liberty to discuss the case, but that did not mean they could not exchange some information in a not quite straight forward manner. They complained too often that he had no respect for the rules but they were wrong. Duo had a great deal of respect for the rules and regulations and for why they had been drawn up in the first place. He knew them and he knew when to test them, when to stretch them and when to break them. At the moment, given the circumstances, he could do a little honest testing without breaking or stretching them more than a modicum. ~/Hey T If you find yourself stopping over on L2-0397 at any time call in and see Hilde. She has a precious package I’d like you to see. Best surprise present I’ve ever had. Luck with your chase. If I can help in any way let me know. About to get the long legs on and hurt for a bit. Definitely need to catch up with you. D /~ Dare he include anything else? No, best not. He did include the call sign for the Bounty, letting Trowa know where he was if not what he was doing. As the Bounty accelerated out of the hub communications would become protracted, drawing out as the lag set it, but that could be dealt with. It would do him good to receive ‘video mail’ from home. At any hour of the day or night he might hear from Howard. His hope it would be before the Bounty entered the long period of acceleration had come to nothing, but that was just something he would have to deal with. It would give him something to look forward to after the burn period was done and his body stopped protesting the abuse. ATTENTION ALL HANDS. NON ESSENTIAL PERSONNEL ARE TO STRAP DOWN FOR IMMINENT ACCELERATION. BURN WILL COMMENCE IN TWO MINUTES. REPEAT. ALL NON ESSENTIAL PERSONNEL ARE TO STRAP DOWN AND SECURE FOR IMMINENT ACCELERATION. BURN WILL COMMENCE IN TWO MINUTES. Duo winced and slipped the laptop safely into its cradle, locking the draw carefully and glancing around quickly to make certain nothing was loose. Satisfied, he hauled himself to the bunk and laboriously secured the straps, taking care to ensure there would be no uneven pressure to bruise or stress his musculature. Resting back against the pillow held to the bunk by strips of Velcro he settled himself down and began to regulate his breathing. ATTENTION ALL HANDS. ACCELERATION BURN COMMENCING IN THIRTY SECONDS. PERIOD OF ACCELERATION WILL BE FOUR HOURS AND FIFTEEN MINUTES. He could feel the vibration in the engines rising and was careful not to breathe out and lose his lungful of oxygen as the interplanetary engines roared into life, kicking the Bounty viciously into a higher speed. By the time the burn was finished the Hub would lie well behind them and a vast void would lie ahead until they reached Mars and the aftermath of whatever was happening there now.
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