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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 65 Mars Colony Base Dome Air Lock Control Date: 1st March AC 198 Time: 18:15 MST [Mars Standard Time] Simpson There was little doubt in his mind that he had made a fundamental error. A stupid error, too. One he should have had the foresight to avoid. Still, he could not exactly turn back the hands of time, even though he surely wished that he could. It was a simple mistake really. He should have left the bitch hanging from the rafters of the control room. She had made a wonderful decorative piece, he reflected. She had been by far more attractive whilst hanging suspended in mid air from a steel rafter, than she did when she was mobile and capable of speech. Speech? No, she did not simply speak. She complained. She complained. She cursed. Fluently. Viciously and in at least six languages that he could identify. She was far more inventive and vulgar in her choice of language that the worst of the sergeants he had ever had the misfortune to meet during his military career. The gag had been the perfect accompaniment to her hanging indignity. He could well imagine the circumstances that explained just why Noin had felt the need to use it in the first place. It was less likely to be explained by Noin wanting to avoid attention and more likely she did it for simple peace and quiet. The woman had felt no qualms about trapping the building, so she must have been fed up with the sound of McIntyre's voice and not concerned with McIntyre screaming for help. That gag would have been perfect now. He really should have thought to bring it with him. In short, Shanna McIntyre was pushing her luck. He had to wonder if he really needed her? With her out of commission her team, or what was left of them, would take their instruction from him and he knew the identities of each member of that team, and their strengths and weaknesses. In his view, more weakness than strengths. Part of the briefing he had received prior to his departure for this mission had included all ESUN agents resident on Mars. One of those agents he was quite certain Ms McIntyre did not even know about. That agents' duty was to monitor the performance of the Sleepers and in particular their commander, Ms. Mouth. With conditioned agents there was usually at least one agent, unmodified, who acted as security against the modified agents going rogue. Had she known of the monitoring she might have handled this situation with far more care. When they returned to Earth, at the completion of this mission, he had no doubt that the report to be filed by that agent would not colour her rose red. More of a disgusting shade of puce, he decided. Of course, much as he would like to see her humbled by their mutual superiors, he might well have to silence her permanently should she continued in this vein. The entire trouble was her anger over her failure. In a nutshell, she wanted Noin. In no uncertain terms she wanted to get her hands on the Preventer agent and extract suitable and quite bloody revenge for the indignities heaped upon her during her confinement. He smirked, admitting if only to himself, that Noin probably could not have found a better form of detention for the bitch. It had effectively silenced her and contained her. Above all, it had humiliated her in front of her team. //It also left her hanging around, pun intended.// he mused, //No doubt she intended to save her for later questioning. Noin would have wanted answers on who was the brains behind this entire abduction. If not for the deaths of my men I could almost like this Preventer.// He sighed, tuning out the continuing tirade and turning his attention from the constantly complaining woman to watch as Frazier worked on the connections. The man was settled into a nest of component parts and a spaghetti knot of wires and cables. It was a complicated job to modify the air system of the airlocks to take their little addition to the sealed system. The additive was tasteless, odorless and very quick acting. In actual fact, he had come to consider it as mercy killing. Certainly it would prove to be far more merciful to those workers outside the dome, than the deaths her Sleepers had been dealing to the hapless population in the upper dome. //Blood thirsty bunch of bastards.// he reflected. These people had lived and worked as a part of the Mars Colony. They had co existed with these people for years in some cases. They were coldly professional killings machines and he had known this type of killer before. If his suspicions were correct, then the bulk of the Sleeper agents on Mars had undergone psyche conditioning before being placed on the planet. There would have been a trigger word arranged as part of the conditioning that would see them turn from normal, every day professional terra formers, to raging, cold blooded killers at the simple utterance of that word. No doubt McIntyre had used it and now controlled a group of emotionless monsters. He preferred his killing be done face to face, between equals. Kill or be killed between alpha males was far more his style. He was well aware of his own weakness, too. He wanted to test Merquise. He wanted to face off against the Lightening Count and find out who was better, but he had been forbidden to kill the man. His commanders knew him too well. His orders had been very specifically worded and he would not break those instructions for his own gratification. He hated associating with nutcases. Psyched out killers fell into that category. He sighed, listening with half his attention to McIntyre still expounding on the methods she would use to pay back Ms Noin for her humiliation, muttering to herself about floggings at this time, he noted. A certified nutcase herself. He tuned her out, ignoring her every attempt to get him to tell her where he had secured his biggest Ace in this game. He needed Noin and he needed her healthy. Well, he admitted, he needed her relatively healthy. She might be sweating blood about now from the after effects of the shock gun, but at least she was alive. McIntyre would change that at the earliest opportunity presented to her. If she got the chance. //What I should do is turn the pair of them loose in a room with knives, sit back and watch the show. I just might do that when this is over. If I don't kill McIntyre myself. A pair of Rabid bitches.// he glanced again at his com watch. The confirmation from the Wellington had been received, giving him the certainty that the mission pick up was a go. It would be tight timing, but the Wellington should be able to arrive around four hours before the Ore Carrier Fatima was slated to fly past Mars. Of course, if the Captain of the Ore Carrier should responded to the Mayday which would be released to the ears of any one with a radio very shortly now, then they might arrive sooner than estimated. A fatal mission of mercy, he mused, unless they altered their course and made a run from the supposed danger area on receiving the distress call. Sometimes retreat was a saving grace and in this case, it certainly would be. That transmission would not be long in coming, he noted, glancing at his watch. At least McIntyre had done that right. Normally the designated emergency radio band from the Mars Colony was designed to broadcast in a relatively small local area, so all transmissions were linked to the Daccar III system and sent to the nearest ships automatically. According to her instructions McIntyre had altered the frequency of the broadcast and when it was transmitted from the Daccar III System it would be both boosted and linked in to all frequency bands. He supposed that someone somewhere would notice the small discrepancy eventually. It was even possible that someone in the media might realize the oddity in that, but he doubted any mention of it would be made. After all, it was a good story and anyway, his grandfather and his cronies had the media in their pockets. There were a number of ships out there that could cause a problem or two with the time table. The Fatima was only one of them, and certainly the nearest, he decided. If he was to be thorough, of course, there was the Sweepers to be considered in the tally of possible problems. That he knew of there was definitely one of their ships somewhere in the vicinity of Mars. Exactly how close to Mars it would be at this time he was uncertain as unless they were in the space lanes commonly frequented by most shipping, the Sweeper Ships were notorious for flouting the beacon regulations. By law all space vehicles were to have an automatic beacon that sent out their coded registry for monitoring by the appropriate authorities. This code stated the ships colony or planetary registration number, the vessel's name and the Captain's name, as well as that of the ships owners, be it a corporation or personal ID. Other ships in the space lanes were alerted to the proximity of ships in the lanes by the use of the beacons. He knew of a number of incidents where Sweepers had flaunted this rule. Of course, there were the actual Raiders to be considered. Raiders were, after all, a law unto themselves. Their ships certainly would not be found honoring the rules of broadcasting identity. If they did, then it was a certainty the identity would be false; a ruse to allow them to cruise the space lanes seeking likely prey. He admitted that Raiders were the perfect scapegoats for this type of operation. They had been chosen to take the blame over a year ago, before Noin had become pregnant and had caused certain changes in the planned operation. As part of the long range planning that had gone into this operation, he knew of two raids performed by covert ops teams much like his own. The raids amid the asteroid belt had taken place in the last seven months. Raids that had been particularly bloody and were plastered all over the airwaves by the media and blamed soundly on the Raiders, as they were meant to be. Somewhere out there the real thing would likely not be very happy, though being raiders they would not have a very well organized community. Traditionally reavers, pirates, raiders, what ever you wanted to call them, were loners. The modern day versions had been enough of a problem that they had been chosen to take the fall for the Mars operation should anything go wrong. //Well, something has gone wrong. Christ. I'd laugh if the bastards turned up here, wanting a share in the spoils. They'd get a shock to find the Wellington here, ready and waiting to take out anyone who turns up to the party.// It would not, however, be such an amusing turn of events should the colony received a Raider visit for real, before the Wellington could arrive. No, there was nothing at all amusing about that thought. He had little fear that it would actually happen, of course. While Raider numbers were not known he knew that there could not be many of them and that they would have poor, if any, organizational skills. Raiders were opportunists. It was amusing, however, to consider just what would be likely to happen if the Raiders turned up to investigate. His instructions covered that possibility, of course. His instructions covered so many possibilities. Hold out until the Wellington arrived, his orders stated, and above all he was to allow no harm to come to those children. Entirely too many plans for the future hinged on the survival of the Peacecraft twins. Which could leave him as a glorified baby sitter while fighting a running battle with Raiders. //Great.// That was, of course, if his team survived long enough to even collect the children into their care. He knew that McIntyre was having trouble with establishing contact with her team. He was not, in all honesty, surprised. Merquise and Noin would have offered very little in the way of mercy if they came across them during their grizzly work. He was now a believer in the data contained within the reports on at least Noin's proficiency in self defense and tactics. He would reserve judgment on Merquise for now, but the silence of four members of his team suggested he could make that judgment call now. He knew that Merquise had taken down at least the two women in the medical section. Dead? Still unknown at this time, and still no word from the remainder of his men in this dome, or at the Alpha Dome. The mission was, in essence, a shambles. He glanced at his wrist watch, quickly doing some mental calculations. They were running low on time. “Time, Frazier?” The man was up to his armpits in wiring and tubes and did not even glance back over his shoulder at his commander. He was at this time rewiring the controls for the airlocks so that they could control the systems from the Shuttle Control Tower. Simpson had decided to keep the tower as his base of operations for the moment, but it meant that Frazier had his work cut out for him in rewiring the entire system. Time consuming, yes, but the Shuttle Tower was easily defended and a good base of operations. It was, at the moment, prime real estate. When they returned to the tower Frazier had some work to do on the control console there, modifying that unit to complete the job. “Another thirty minutes, Sir.” “Too fucking long! You incomp-” The click of a safety on a gun being released shut McIntyre's mouth very satisfactorily, Simpson mused. He met her infuriated glare with an arched eye brow and a bland smirk. “Only I swear at my men, McIntyre. I have had as much of your mouth as I will tolerate for the moment. If you had not taken out the entire control station in your tower, this would not now be necessary.” “Noin-” “I don't want to hear it. See if you can raise any of your people and keep out of my way while we finish setting this up.” Of all the incompetent psychopathic agents in the EUN, why did he have to be saddled with her? Did she take him for a total fool? If it had been Noin who had wiped the computers in the control room, as McIntyre would obviously have him believe, then McIntyre had not done her job in containing Merquise and Noin. The question of how Noin had received the base codes was a point he could make, of course, if he did not already know the answer. Yes, Noin was a control room operator, that was undeniable, but the master codes of the computer system had been included in the virus that had wiped the system. It was the only way the virus could have penetrated the system so quickly and that code had never been released to Noin, because of her association with Merquise. The system purge had all the earmarks of Shanna McIntyre overkill. “Sir?” Frazier was studying a small computer pad as he stirred. He glanced toward his communications officer, now his only surviving tech specialist. He needed to keep Frazier alive or they had very little chance of having this mission succeed. “Frazier?” “I've accessed the airlock records, Sir. Someone has used the lock in the last two hours.” //Interesting. So now is there more or less in the dome than we assumed?// “Entry or exit?” “One entry logged in at 16:03 and an exit logged at 17:33. Airlock three was used on both occasions, Sir, so no more than five in or out.” “How many in each? The locks have observation security.” Frazier studied the readouts on the diagnostic program he had opened to check the connections he had already made. To his adjustments he managed to tap into the surveillance cameras records and sighed. “Unknown, Sir. The cameras went down before the lock was entered.” Simpson turned to glare at McIntyre, knowing where that fault lay. Instead of taking out the control tower's security system, as he would have instructed, she had taken down the entire surveillance system with the security system for the Base Dome itself. She tended towards overkill in everything she did. His training emphasized the need to know as much as possible about the whereabouts of his enemies and any of their potential allies as being of paramount importance. The loss of the security cameras was a very sore point indeed to him. It effectively blinded him. “I followed my orders, Simpson.” she fairly spat at him, eyes flashing with rage and the pain of her body. It would take hours, if not days, for the physical pain cause by Noin's inventive torture to fade, and until then she was not likely to be civil to anyone. “Take it up with our superiors when this is finished.” //If we survive, I believe I will be taking more than that up with them. Damn fool woman. When dealing with someone of Merquise and Noin's level of training you need every advantage you can get. Every advantage. That includes seeing him coming at you a long time before he reaches you.// Something the redhead had not considered, obviously. “Quick as you can, Frazier.” “Sir.”
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