Disclaimer: I don't own them and I don't make any money off of them.
Warnings: Male/Male sex, graphic, language, violence,past NCS.
Support a starving writer, buy Kracken's new yaoi book, The Angel Within, at http://www.bonpublishing.com . ^_^
Shini III
Sequel to Lair
Finding Heero
Duo stepped over the bodies as he nursed the bullet crease in his arm. It burned like fire, but hadn't penetrated. He looked over the security system, nodded to Heero, and Heero made short work of the heavy gage panel guarding the innards of the system.
"Trip wire," Duo muttered as his hands worked. "Two alarms. One.... Two.... and there we go..." The door whooshed open and Duo aimed his gun and jumped inside, ready to surprise any guards. There were none and his men kept wisely sitting, not moving until Duo had registered that there wasn't any threat.
"Calvary has arrived," Duo quipped just as an alarm began sounding. Duo started and then looked at Heero. "Battle station siren. You call for backup, Heero?"
Heero looked ashamed of himself. "Yes."
Duo tisked. "You need to have more faith in our ability to kick the bad guy's butt, Heero."
"I only had handful of system operators," Heero replied defensively. "It seemed the right thing to do at the time."
Wu Fei stood up, looking very reserved, almost angry. His coat and shirt were torn and he had a makeshift bandage around his middle. A large bruise almost shut one of his eyes. "Situation?" He demanded.
"Well, it's just us and an unknown amount of bad guys. The usual," Duo replied, knowing that the adrenalin rushing through his veins was turning him into the smart mouthed, hyper, overly cheerful Duo Maxwell from the war. He saw Heero and Wu Fei exchange looks, both of them realizing that they had Shinigami with them.
"This is not the war, Maxwell," Wu Fei warned. "I won't have a slaughter here."
"I'll stay by his side-," Heero began to promise and then shots rang out behind them and Duo felt hot lead thud into his back. He ducked instinctively, but it was too late.
"Duo!" Heero shouted out in panic and Duo yelled out "Shit!" as they both turned and fired at the same time. Three men went sprawling, piled up in the doorway they had tried to breech.
Heero grabbed hold of Duo, face white with fear. "Where are you hit?"
he demanded even as his hands found the gaping holes in Duo's clothes.
"So'kay," Duo panted, grimacing and almost bent over double from the
pain.
"Maxwell?!" Wu Fei exclaimed, just as frightened as Heero.
Duo held up a hand. "So'kay," he panted again as Heero peeled up his jacket and flack jacket. "Got tangled in the weave," he continued, "just hurts like hell."
"It looks like hell, too," Heero commented as he pulled the jacket back into place, but he was looking relieved and his hands were shaking with reaction
"You can kiss it and make it better later," Duo groused, to break Heero's mood, to get him focused again. "Let's get the hell out of here. Are you mobile, Chang? Any other wounded?"
Wu Fei scowled self deprecatingly. "They gassed us as soon as we entered the building. I was the only one left standing since my tolerance is higher. They overwhelmed me by numbers, the cowards, and then beat me into submission. I can travel, but I'm limited in range of motion."
"You only need to work your trigger finger," Duo chuckled as he tossed a gun to Wu Fei from one of the dead men. Wu Fei caught it deftly and then turned to his men. "Group according to your squads. We need to split up and continue with our operations."
"And, hopefully, who's ever out there, will keep them busy long enough..." Duo began, but different sirens began to sound. "Well, all out frontal assault has always been my style," he amended ruefully. "Looks like they know we're loose and that none of their door and seal systems are working."
The building rocked with a blast. "The Preventers have breached the building, I think," Heero said in trepidation, knowing that such an action could trigger the enemy into doing something desperate.
"We need to get to systems power NOW!" Duo barked. "Wu Fei, you take the men and run a distraction."
"Done," Wu Fei responded promptly.
"Heero?" Duo asked.
"Got your back," Heero responded with a grim smile.
"Let's move!" Duo shouted and he and Heero began running for what they hoped was the right direction for the systems power grid; the Achilles heel of the weapons system. The maps hadn't been very accurate so far, Duo was working on a contingent plan just in case this turned out to be wrong as well.
"There," Heero said and they ducked into an access room after Duo quickly hacked the security lock.
Duo swore and then looked back at Heero. "This is wrong. It's only minor systems panels."
Heero grimly replied, "The other access panels are going to be heavily guarded now and the corridors will be full of men looking for us. I remembered this place. I know that you can hack into systems from here."
Duo smiled. "Nice of you to be so confident of my skills."
"Just returning the favor," Heero replied and let Duo see in his eyes how much Duo's confidence in him had meant.
Duo went to work then, pulling off panels with Heero's help. It wasn't hard to find the programming system panel and to shunt it to main systems through a series of patches with a tenuous line that had to do with the air conditioning unit.
"They never learn," Duo said with a dark chuckle. "Some idiot didn't want to have to move from his station to change temperature controls, so they installed it in a main control panel, which leads.... to weapons systems and security protocols. "Duo frowned. "Limited access, of course.... but maybe enough to keep them busy trying to find out why they have some red lights instead of green ones. Of course, I can't tell what those red lights are on. I can only signal system failures on random leads."
"It will have to do," Heero said and opened the door again. "Let's-" he started violently and his gun aimed at something outside. "Don't move or you will die."
Duo looked over Heero's shoulder and saw Shy standing before them, shivering and hunched fearfully, eyes very wide on the barrel of Heero's gun.
"I-I was j-just going to hide..." Shy stammered. "Please, just let me go..."
Duo narrowed his eyes at the blood covering Shy. "How did you get away from your guard?'
"He was shot by the Preventers," Shy replied. "I-I ran."
Heero's gun didn't waver. "Duo?"
Duo moved around Heero, scanned the corridor carefully, and then patted Shy down. He found a gun tucked up under Shy's shirt. It was clear that it had been fired recently. Shy went very pale, looking as if he knew he was about to die.
"You didn't think we were going to trust you?" Duo snorted in disgust.
"Do you know him?" Heero wondered.
"He was part of the case we were working on, "Duo told him. "His name is Shy. Seems he was running errands for these guys and some drug dealers."
Heero put his gun against the young man's head. "You will now tell me what they have been working on here and what their plans are."
"Like they would tell me!" Shy retorted nervously. "I-I just do what I'm told. I don't know nothing about what they're doing here."
Duo shrugged as he pocketed the gun. "It's not like he can doing anything now, Heero. Let's get out of here." He glared at Shy. "I'll catch up to you when all this is over and you are going to answer my questions then, got that?"
Duo's deadly expression terrified Shy. He swallowed hard and nodded.
Heero and Duo moved cautiously up the corridor. Heero wasn't pleased. "You're going to just let him go?"
"No," Duo said. "There's no place for him to go."
Heero thought about that as they edged to an intersection and peered cautiously around a corner. "You are not naive, Duo."
Duo chuckled. "Yeah, I know he can get us into trouble, but I'm banking on there being so much for the bad guy to worry about that they aren't going to listen to a junkyard whore."
Heero heard the edge to Duo's voice and recognized it like an old familiar pain, an indicator that Duo was on the edge. He was remembering his past, triggered, without a doubt, by the young man that they had just left behind them.
"Focus," Heero urged. "Stay here with me, Duo."
Duo looked at him and his face was pinched, his eyes shadowed with memory. "With you is the only place I want to be, Heero."
Heero took hold of Duo's braid and brought it to his lips. He kissed it, rubbed it between his thumb and fingers, and then let it drop. For Duo he would focus as well. For Duo he would force his mind to stay sharp, to keep his memory clear, and to win the battle and bring his lover safely home again.
An explosion rocked the building and almost threw them to the floor. They both staggered and then looked at each other nervously. When another followed and they were forced to grab onto a wall for support, they were certain what was going on.
"I bought them the time and now they're going to bring the building down with us in it," Duo surmised angrily. "Things haven't changed much from the war, have they Heero? Nice to be expendable again."
"They must think the danger to Earth outweighs getting us out," Heero replied and there was that air of sacrifice, pure martyrdom, about him that Duo remembered from the war as well and had always hated. It had always been followed by Heero trying to get himself killed.
"Don't start that shit!" Duo snarled and punched Heero hard in the arm. Heero rubbed it, surprised. "Think with your brain, not your dedication," Duo told him. "At no time are we better off dead, got that? We still need to get in there and win this thing and we need to be intact to do it."
Heero nodded, but he looked resigned still. "There isn't much that we can do-"
"Sure there is!" Duo snapped and then began dragging Heero down the corridor. "Since they've decided to bring the place down, we can concentrate on getting Wu Fei and the men the hell outta here!"
Heero shook his head. "No, they may be unsuccessful. We should make sure that the weapons here aren't used against them."
Duo shook his head back in exasperation. "I did my best, Heero, and that's that. You have to accept that we didn't do so good on this mission and that someone else is going to have to mop it up for us."
"No," Heero replied stubbornly. "I'm not going to accept that. Our job isn't finished here."
And there it was, finally, and Duo had been dreading it. Heero was willing to give up his life and Duo wasn't. Maybe during the war, when he hadn't seen anything in his future except ugly memories and loneliness, but now he had a life, had Heero, and had his friends. Duo had a life that he loved and the past rarely came knocking any more. He could see their way out of their present situation. He wanted to take it. He could see by the set of Heero's tense body, though, that Heero wasn't going to follow him if he tried it.
"I won't leave you," Duo found himself saying and meant it.
It was a burden on Heero and he could clearly feel it, but he wasn't going to turn aside from doing his duty, even for his lover. It was something that was bone deep in Heero. Though he wanted Duo safely away from that place, he couldn't buy that freedom at the high price of endangering so many other people.
"Got your back," Duo said firmly, ending Heero's thought. "What's the plan?"
"Reach the hanger, the original target of the mission," Heero told him. "We know that it is heavily fortified from aerial attacks. Only a breach inside, just as we had planned, will bring it down."
"Lead on, baby, I'm following," Duo told him.
"Wu Fei will come to the same conclusion," Heero said as they slipped through corridors and cleared their way once or twice with gunfire.
"I know," Duo replied. "So let's try and not get shot by our own guys."
They found the doors to the weapons bay wide open and men running in an out looking pale and frantic. No one seemed to be guarding the doors and that had Duo and Heero instantly on the alert. That meant desperation; men not caring about anything other than delivering payback to the forces attacking them.
"Foolish!" Wu Fei sneered.
Duo looked back and saw the man and his troops limping down the corridor cautiously, weapons bristling and ready for action. If they had been the enemy he and Heero would have been dead. Duo hadn't heard them coming over the constant sounds of sirens and battle.
When Duo saw Heero look frustrated, he growled at him, "I didn't hear them either, Yuy, so freakin' stop it!"
Heero winced, but nodded as he said, "Point," declaring his position.
"Demolition," Duo said on the heels of that.
"Interference," Wu Fei said with grim satisfaction, liking his role almost too much as he turned to his men and gave deployment orders.
Duo tried not to notice how many men weren't with Wu Fei any longer. The ranks of his men were definitely thinned, though, and they all had a light in their eyes, the one that spoke of wanting revenge.
Surprise was out of the question when several men came out of the bay, stopped dead in their tracks when they saw them, and then turned and ran back inside in a panic. Heero was sprinting after them with phenomenal speed, and he was through the bay doors and effectively taking them out before they could close the doors in their faces.
Duo knew that was his cue. He slipped into the bay even as Wu Fei and his men rushed past him to take the heat and allow him to get to his targets. His target, he amended to himself and stopped when he saw the large cluster of men crawling all over a large block of machinery underneath a closed sky hatch. Not a mobile suit, as they had thought, but some sort of mother of all laser cannons.
Doing a quick calculation in his head, Duo came up with a range and strength that had him shivering. If that weapon was deployed before Preventer troops could intervene, then the Earth was in serious danger.
The men working on the machine were already panicking. They could see Wu Fei's troops and they didn't seem to have any troops of their own to defend them. With a laser weapon like that, Duo surmised, it wasn't any wonder that they hadn't bothered with ground troops. It would have seemed like the ultimate defense to them.
"Amateurs!" Duo growled under his breath, but he was grinning too. Clustered around the machine, they were leaving it's power source completely undefended. Duo followed the thick lines from the machine, taking cover behind other machinery until he found where the lines entered a very large, metal box secured to the wall.
"Surrender!" Wu Fei was shouting over the gunfire. "You are surrounded! Preventer troops are entering your base and will be lenient if you put down your weapons now!"
His answer was a rain of bullets and Duo ducked down as return fire splattered the wall near him. "Shit!" he exclaimed. "What now?" He glared at the featureless casing of the box. "Come on, Maxwell!" he urged himself as he examined it and wasn't surprised at how secure it was.
The building rocked and Duo gripped at the wall and the box to keep from being thrown to the floor. He could imagine chunks of the building being incinerated. The Preventer's were taking no chances. He hoped that the control center wasn't as fortified as the weapons bay and that at least one of his troubles, the rebel commander and his technical men, were toast. If the men working on the machine had to launch manually, it was going to slow them down. Without the positioning and tracking systems in the command center, they were either going to be firing blind or trying to take the world out wholesale.
"Son of a bitch! Die, you fucker!" A voice snarled and Duo heard the powering up of a beam gun. He ducked, even as he turned to fire his own gun, but a deep throated, animal snarl of fury, let him know that the situation was under control as he also heard his attacker's scream of pain.
"Keep working!" Heero ordered curtly as he straightened from an unconscious man and fended Soda off with a sharp, "Yellow, Soda."
Duo was surprised when Soda wagged his tail and obeyed his lover. Duo didn't have any time to think about the appearance of his dog or the dog's bloody bedraggled state, as he turned back to the box, still trying to decided what to do.
"Idiots are everywhere," Duo muttered to himself reassuringly, looked the box over, and then felt underneath the casing. Sure enough, his searching fingers found a spare key card. Someone had forgotten his pass card enough times to have gotten tired of going back for it. He had planted a spare. "Major idiots are everywhere," Duo grunted, pleased, when he saw the passkey code scribbled very small in one corner.
"Hurry!" Heero shouted, but didn't come close to help. He was guarding Duo now, with Soda crouched at his side.
Duo heard the sky hatch begin to open, doors grating in their relentless movement in their tracks to open. Duo quickly swiped the passkey and keyed in the code. The box door popped open with a beep and Duo had sudden access to an array of systems. His mind calculated and ran possible system setups within seconds and he chose the most likely one and began working furiously. He didn't have long to get it right.
Heero's gun fired and Soda snarled. Duo shut that out of his mind and his fingers punched buttons and flicked switches. When the building went as dark as a tomb except for the open doors of the sky hatch, Duo grunted, switched them back on, and then tried another set next to them. The sound of the deadly machine powering down, and the sudden, dead silence, was a relief. It was a relief until Duo heard men shouting orders and curses. He knew that they were going to be found any second and probably, messily dispatched.
"A doesn't really doesn't like to lead to B sometimes," Duo chuckled and made the connection. The box exploded with electricity. Duo hadn't expected that and his hands, already leaving the console, took a violent charge. It threw him backwards and he fell, sprawling almost at Heero's shocked feet.
"Duo!' Heero shouted, but then ducked low, covering Duo with his own body as the laser machine shuddered and began to overload. It's circuits blew, one after another, throwing metal shards into the air.
"Run!" Duo croaked out. "NOW!"
Heero was in action in a millisecond, shouting to Wu Fei, "BUG OUT! NOW!" even as he jerked Duo to his feet and all but dragged him towards the weapons bay doors. Soda followed tensely, but he was limping. Their progress was too slow.
"Heero!" Duo warned. "Faster!"
Heero grunted as he slung Duo over his shoulder in a fireman's carry. "Wu Fei!" he shouted again, afraid that the man might not have heard him. "GET OUT!"
Wu Fei and his men came rushing up to them just as Heero reached the doors. The laser machine bucked and they heard the sound of metal reaching its stress limit. The enemy was frantically trying to stop the overload, but Duo had locked them out of the system. It said something for their dedication that they stayed rather than tried to escape.
As they all surged through the doors, Wu Fei manned the door seals and shot them into place as the thick doors closed. They were racing down the corridors then as fast as the wounded men allowed them.
"Down!" Duo panted. "I just got a shock, that's all. I'm okay now."
Heero lowered him and Duo managed to carry his own weight even though his legs were wobbly and he felt the sting of his burned hands and lower arms. Soda nuzzled his thigh and Duo grinned down at him wearily. "Glad you could make it, boy."
Part of the building was gone, a smoking ruin of jumbled metal. They climbed out, hoping that their own planes didn't shoot at them as they heard the sound of engines overheard.
"This way!" A voice shouted.
Everyone turned and trained weapons at a small, slim figure shivering and pointing at an open hatch that led underground. Shy was wide eyed in terror, his face smudged by smoke and cut and bleeding from flying debris.
"It's a fortified bunker!" Shy shouted. "Hurry!"
"No choice!" Duo grated, knowing that they had only moments. He had been secretly settling up with his maker, too certain that either their own men or the machine overloading behind them would be their death. Any hope, even offered by the enemy, was better than none.
Wu Fei and Heero looked at him, not liking it one bit, but they trusted his judgment and they all rushed down into the darkness of the underground bunker. The hatch, three feet thick, slid closed just as the world rocked beneath them.