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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: Deffinately 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 Dulin for volunteering to beta this. //... // thoughts
"Alternative Directions: Options"
Chapter 62 2nd March Station One Time: 03:12 [Approx 20:00 Mars time / 17:50 Sanc time] Raydon //I have ships en route to Mars, but the time that is required for them to reach there, I can do nothing about. Space is so vast. There must be more that I can do to give them more time. And still he has not seen fit to send me a distress signal. Why?// He glared out at the panoramic view of the celestial dance. Every now and then one of the partners in the dance would err and misstep and that misstep would rock the dance floor. The result would be a collision in the asteroid field, and that meant changes in the orbits of the rocks. They had carefully chosen the site of Station One and her sisters for the relative stability of the orbiting rocks, but even here the dance changed. His people always were on the look out for that roll of cosmic dice. Even the most subtle of changes in the dance posed a danger to the station. So many things threatened them in space. Not just the cosmic dance of asteroids. Beautiful as it was to watch, when you had the equipment to watch it, it paid for you to never forget your place in the cosmic order. Mankind was a dust speck on the cosmic beach. Puffed up with his own arrogance and sense of self worth. The simple truth was that the cosmos ignored man as the insignificant insect he was. It was not man who ordered the cosmic dance. It was not man who directed evolution. It was something far greater than man. //Why do we see ourselves as being so great and mighty? So important to the scheme of things? We all are fools. That is the simple truth of it. We are fools. We want what we can not have. We reach for that which is beyond our grasp. We hate where we should love and we love what is not ours to love. Is that not the very nature of man? To seek what is beyond him? // How else did man reach the heights that he has attained? How else did man come to be here, in the vast coldness that was space, bringing light to the dark reaches, showing up that which usually was devoid of light? How else did man leave his ancient homelands and reach to the vastness of the cosmos and set foot to another world. How else did man presume to tame another world to his hand. Mars. Why would Milliardo Peacecraft not send him the distress signal? Was he lost in his pride, unwilling to ask for help? Was he truly so prideful? Pride was all well and good in its place, but surely the man was not such a fool as to turn his back on what was possibly his only escape from imprisonment? Station One and its sisters were the only places in the ESUN where he could be free of political machinations. //No. We here are not ESUN. We are not a part of that hub world society. They cast us out, for varying reasons, and over time, but they cast us out, regardless. We have the right to claim this area for our own.// Or was he simply too frightened of the unknown? Was he frightened of what might happen? What Milliardo had told him of the Epyon system and his fears over what it had done to him showed to him how confused and alone the young man had been. How desperately alone. Did Milliardo fear that he might see something that would close even this hope of escape from him? Or does he fear that Station would become just another prison? //Or is it my fault? Did I push you too hard, too soon? Did I not give you enough time to understand what it was you were feeling? Ah, Milliardo. Is it my fault that you will not call on me for aid? You should not fear that asking me to help you means that in truth you have no choice, my friend. There is always choice, even though you might not at first appreciate your options. There is always choice. Do not discount me. Certainly not for the wrong reasons.// He sighed softly. In the past hours he had met with his commanders and the members of the Station Council. He had told them what he knew, which was precious little, and what he surmised, which was actually rather a lot. He had never lacked for a fertile imagination nor the will to use it, but it was the Gift he had been born to that guided that imagination. Guided, prodded and merged with that imagination to produce more accuracy than most would believe possible given his basic assumptions. It was what he had been bred for. He hissed softly at the thought, disgusted that he would allow the old bitterness to surface at such a time as this, when he needed clarity of thought. There was no time to dwell on the past and all of its pains. He had won his freedom from that mire and he would not return to it. Never. He had sworn an oath on that day that he had won free. He had vowed that he would use what he had not asked for and had once considered to be a curse. He would accept it and use it to free others caught, as he had been caught, in the machinations of Romefeller. As Milliardo had become ensnared. //Romefeller. Bastards. You are involved in this. Somehow. You are always involved if one peels away enough layers to get to the core. Your rotten stench is always festering in the heart of things.// Paranoid? Was he paranoid? Probably, he admitted, though not without cause. He had witnessed too much of their game playing to miss their signature stench. They had agents everywhere, and if the ESUN Council thought they were exempt from Romefeller's eye, then they were sorely mistaken. Somewhere in all of this mess he would find evidence of Romefeller. All he would have to do was look. Which offered no help to him at this time. No, that type of thought would not assist him in dealing with the intricacies of this situation. It was a fact that his people were going to be blamed for an atrocity they had not committed. How many people would be on Mars at this time? Certainly more that two thousand, he mused. All of those lives would be blamed on his people. No. No, he could not allow it to happen. Somehow, he had to devise some means by which to turn fates hand from his people. Those who bore false witness against his people could not be allowed to win. He had played games in the courts of Romefeller, at the machinations of others. He had been used and abused and he would not allow his people to be used as once he had been. His people trusted him and he could not let them down. It worried him that the Gifted had been quiet. Too quiet. His own Gift had been silent beyond a few uneasy feelings. His own Gift had given him no clue by which to work from. Not even a hint that this atrocity would happen. He knew just how erratic foresight could be, but this mass silence from all of the precogs on Station One was just plain ridiculous. An event of this magnitude and importance to the stations and their people, could not possibly go entirely unseen by at least one of the Gifted. Somewhere they must have missed something, but … //Face it. Just face the truth of it. The Gifts are erratic and never come to our need. They manifest when they will, not when I would have it happen. When they come I kick and scream enough to emulate a deprived two year old and now that they do not come, I sulk like a six year old deprived of a sweet. The others are all in the same condition as I am in. We strain and reach into that 'other' place, that other awareness, and we reach for something that just is not there.// “Why?” Why did they fail? It was a disaster in the making, this assault on Mars, not just for those poor bastards on the planet, but for his Raiders too. Once that Mayday hit the open airways and circulated throughout the ESUN, any hope he had of winning independence for the station would be gone. For many long years. The people who saw the massacre of Mars would demand the eradication of the Raiders. The ESUN would declare war on the Raiders, launch their fleets and the Raiders home bases would be methodically hunted down and destroyed. There would be no one who would believe that his people had not been involved. Well, not quite true. There would be people who would be suspicious, but either they would not be in high enough places to effect an enquiry into the affair, or they would accept what had happened, knowing that they were not likely to find information that would indicate the truth. Or … //So many or, if and buts. I don't know what to do. Why has he not asked for help?// No one who could possibly make a difference to the long term effects of this business would leap out of the wood work and offer up a magical solution to the mess. He just did not believe in fairy tales. He had out grown them so very long ago. No, no magical solution would be forthcoming. It would take something more than wishful thinking. He needed evidence that it was not his people who were doing this. Just what evidence did he have that he could use? The reports of his spies on Mars? That would be laughed out of any court. The radio transmissions? Well, yes, they were evidence, but of what use could he make of them to benefit his case? He needed more. He needed names and faces in the ESUN Security division that he could lay the blame upon. He needed proof positive that this person and this person were involved in the massacre. He needed dates and he needed names and he needed recorded conversations and written documentation that he could take before a court. That type of evidence he just did not have. “So I need to get it.” One step at a time. Approach the problem logically and hope to find the solution. At the least hope that he might trigger some Sight that he could work with to effect a change in the machinations of those bastards in the heart of this mess. How best to manage getting the hard evidence he needed? He had agents on Earth and scattered throughout the colonies that he could call upon, but he must go carefully. He must not waist a single life needlessly in this search for hard core evidence. These people looked to him for a future for themselves and for families they now had, or looked to have in the future. They trusted him. When they had taken their oaths and joined his people, coming to Station One and later the sister stations, they had given him the right to use them as best he could, to create independent worlds that would be free of the two faced attitudes that had seen them cast aside. They had told him, each and every one, that they were willing to fight again if it meant that this time they would have a secure home to return to. Or to die for. //I have had enough of wars. I do not want to fight, but there may be no choice this time. I will not allow them to come out here and hunt us. Yet the Gifted have seen no conflict arise, and they saw the Barton Incursion clearly enough.// He winced at the thought. The Barton Incursion arising when it had, had lost him the blonde he sought to win. For that alone he would cheerfully strangle that power mad old fool, but Barton would not and never had been guided by anyone other than himself. He even had considered himself to be above Romefeller. //Milliardo, you heard the whispers of what he planned and you were barely healed. You told me that you had no vision, but still you insisted on leaving and fighting. You would not listen to reason, and you went to defend the peace you fought so hard to birth. And for what thanks? Ah, why? Why do I always find some way to circle around to that stubborn, delightful man?// He could wish he had the warmth and beauty of Him here, secured and safe. Safe from the machinations of Romefeller and the breakaway factions now infiltrating the ESUN Council. When the purists learned that Milliardo Peacecraft was alive, they would act and it likely would cause another war within the ranks of the organization. Romefeller had been fighting within itself for millennia and likely would for millennia to come. He could wish that he had the blonde beauty here, on Station One instead of fighting the ESUN on that chunk of icy red dirt and rock, and know that Romefeller would be lurking, preparing to claim him. //You ran. You ran from me, not just because of the whispers you heard of the Barton incident. No, it was not just because of that that you bolted. I frightened you. It was not my intention to alarm you, Milliardo, and I cannot apologize enough for doing it. I had not realized that despite what you had been through in your life, you were still an innocent. I frightened you by touching that which had never been touched before. It happened, and I will need to work to restore your confidence in me. You need to trust me, and it is up to me to give you the chance to learn that trust.// He had wandered back full circle again, to that absent blonde and that he could not allow himself to indulge in. He forced his attention back to the disaster at hand. Forced himself to look down the throat of a war between his people, the outcasts, and the ESUN, which had cast them out. He must face and deal with this situation. The conference had resulted, thus far, in him dispatching word to his agents on Earth and in the Colonies. They were to seek out any evidence they could find of Councilors who might be involved in this mess. Both willingly and unwittingly. There had to be hard evidence somewhere, and his people had to find it. Some of those agents were of his Gifted. Their special abilities of varying forms, would enable them to have an edge in the search and of his agents it was likely to be the Gifted that would stand the best chances of picking up leads that could result in success. //The Gifted. Again I come back to them. To us. I am one of their number, one with the Sight, and my sight has failed me in this. I have glimpsed events in the past of the future, but nothing that suggested this situation would arise. I have seen Milliardo back on Station One, and what I saw does not lead me to believe that the station was in a state of war during that vision. Why?// It was all too confusing. So confusing. Why had none of the Sighted witnessed this massacre … //Unless … Could that … be possible? How? How could I turn it to our advantage? If the Sighted, all of us who have that particular form of the Gift … If we have not seen the disaster this means to the stations future, does it then mean that it will not result in the events we believe at this time? That somehow … somehow we manage to turn disaster into advantage?// They would be resuming their conference shortly. He had a few more precious minutes to rest and gather his thoughts before he needed to face his friends and compatriots. He was tired, but that was of no importance. Not now. Now he must take the opportunity to explore this new train of thought. This new possibility. Yes, he must pursue the course they had chosen to seek out evidence of their innocence, and the identities of those who were truly responsible. He needed to seek the avenues of advantage that could come out of disaster and guide events into a desired future. He needed to bend events to suit his people. He needed the Earth Sphere to see his people as … “Saviors. They need to see us as saviors, not villains. Friends at least.” Yes, that was what was needed. The Raiders were seen as villains all over the Earth Sphere. To be sure there were space pirates out there, but they were few and far between and they did not belong to Station One or her sisters. They pointed their fingers at Space Pirates, but did they have faces and names to apply to that generality? //They have cast us in the role of Pirates, lawless, vicious. Barbarians of the space age. That is how we have been and will be portrayed to the masses. That is what I have to change. I need to disassociate us from that image. We are respectable, law abiding citizens of the Asteroid Belt. We are on the rim of civilization here, not a part of the hub that is Earth.// He was vaguely aware of the com chiming near him, but so lost in thought was he by that delicious thought of being considered saviors instead of villains, that it was not until the third chime that he registered the noise as more than an annoyance. Drawing a deep breath he stirred from his revere and reached for the com controls. “Raydon.” “Captain, a transmission has been received from Mars. It has been confirmed as the emergency transponder signal, last known to be in the possession of Milliardo Peacecraft. There is a piggy backed radio signal included in the transponder signal.” He had sent it. He had sent the emergency alert. //I know what that has cost you, my friend. I will not have you regret your choice. Never will I have you regret turning to me. You have no need to fear me, Milliardo. I will make it up to you.// In sending the transponder signal he had acknowledged that the ESUN would not accept him and that he had no other place to turn. Raydon felt the wave of relief wash over him, through him, firming his resolve to do something, anything, to turn this disaster into something more. He now had even more reason to ensure the acceptance and safety of Station One and his people. “Has anyone heard the message?” “Only I, Sir, when I decoded the signal.” Nigel Hampshire's voice was quiet, confident. Oddly gentle. “I did not think you would wish to have the entire crew of the bridge hear the message, Sir.” For all his stiff backed formality the man had a heart and a head and knew when to use them both. Raydon sighed softly at the thought. He could trust Hampshire to do that much at least; to be discreet when the need arose. It was looking more and more likely that Nigel Hampshire would prove to be an asset to the station if he continued to keep his head in this manner. “Feed it to this station only.” “Transfer of signal complete, Sir.” Hampshire fell silent and was replaced with a soft static hiss. A poor reception, he reflected, hardly surprised. It was a voice he had not listened to in three years. A quiet, deep baritone, a shade rusty and very tired, he noted. A voice that lifted his resolve to effect a rescue, despite the constraints of distance and time. “Hello, Raydon. I know that I have no right to ask anything of you, but we need help, my friend, or everyone here dies. I have Hayden Giles with me and the people here, the terra formers, are already dying. They are innocent of any crime and do not deserve what is happening to them. The Wellington is on the way to finish the job that sleeper agents have started. If there is anything that you can do to help us, it would be greatly appreciated. If not, I would ask … I have no right to ask it of you, but I would hope that you would see your way towards taking custody of my children. Could you find where they take my children and free them of the misery others would make of their fate? I give them to you, Raydon, if the worst happens. I know that is not what you wanted, but it may be all that I can give you.” Soft hiss of static abruptly silenced. He closed his eyes against the sight of the celestial dance. He could so easily envisage that tall, slender physique. The warmth that radiated from his body when he had dared to stand close. That cascade of silver and white hair kissed with gold that made silk coarse to his touch. “Instructions, Sir?” He did not know how long he had been lost in visions of another time but the quiet voice, so much higher that that deep rumble he could hear so well, brought him back to crashing reality and the need to take firm action. Decisive action. Enough was enough. For Station One and for her sister stations. For the people who trusted him with their lives and futures. And for the man who had decided to trust him with his greatest treasures … to keep his children safe could he not do it himself. For all those reasons, it was time to act. He could hash it out with the council during the next few hours, but now he was going to ensure that the Wellington had more to think on than massacre. He could feel the stirring of vision, the Sight responding to the adrenaline coursing through his body. To the decision that he would drag this disaster into a success and to the vision of a silver haired toddler running at his heels. “I want the ships closest to the Wellington to report in on conference call to receive instructions. For the moment they are to plot intercept courses with the ship and lay space mines in her path at periodic intervals. I want her slowed, Hampshire, if not stopped.”
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