Kracken
Disclaimer:I don't own them and I don't make any money off of them.
Warnings:Male/male sex, graphic, violence, attempted NCS, language
Soldier Boys
Sequel to Learning the Ropes
Compromised
"They set minimal alarms. They are fools!" Wu Fei growled as he finished setting his bomb.
"Only until they catch and shoot you," Duo retorted as he finished his wiring and then hung upside down from his knees from the scaffolding. Wu Fei scowled up at him, his inner ear comlink allowing him to hear the pilot of Deathscythe clearly. Duo saw Wu Fei's expression by the light of the young man's hand light, and snorted, "Oh, I forgot. You think I'm a fool, too."
Wu Fei looked up at Duo, hanging from two stories up on a scaffolding set against a shuttle's hull on the darkened end of a launch platform. His braid swung to and fro, the faint lights on shuttle and scaffolding making him almost indistinct. "Appearances..." Wu Fei muttered.
"Aren't everything," Duo quipped back and then swung upwards abruptly to catch a support strut. He pulled himself to safety and began climbing down with amazing agility.
Wu Fei didn't look pleased as he shoved his equipment into his knapsack and slung it onto his shoulders. "We shouldn't be partnered together. Our methods are incompatible."
Duo tisked. "Now, now! I think we're perfect together. You stop me from taking too many chances and I stop you from not taking enough. We balance each other out." He packed his own things and then surveyed the long strip of tarmac that led to the lights of the terminal and warehouses in the darkness. "And I also stop you from killing all of them, " he added almost absently.
Wu Fei glared. "I thought that you were after revenge? Why shouldn't you want them all dead as well?"
Duo raised an eyebrow and gave him a hard, sideways look. "There's certain people I want dead, not some guy filing paperwork or the janitor picking up the office trash. I want to get the guys who chose to become soldiers, the ones who chose to side with Oz and murder people."
Wu Fei looked disdainful . "You're squeamishness is a liability and misplaced. The people you speak of chose to service Oz. They knew the risks when they decided to work at a military target."
"Maybe," Duo replied darkly, "but there's a big difference between sorting paper clips and shooting a beam cannon into a church full of orphans."
"Then you are making yourself a judge and jury," Wu Fei pointed out sourly. "Will you miss your target because a paper clip sorter is in your way?"
Duo grew pensive, and then he replied, ducking his head, "No, I won't. I'll do what I have to... but... if I can miss him and still hit my target, I will."
"Winner has infected you with his 'morality of war'," Wu Fei observed in disdain.
Duo thought about that as they walked towards the woods bordering the base. "Yeah, maybe... I guess... Before I met him, I don't think I was so careful. I feel a lot better about myself, though, Wu Fei. Maybe you should try some of his 'morality of war' on for size?"
Wu Fei shook his head sharply and his small pigtail snapped with the motion. "I don't fool myself into believing that there are layers of murder; layers of violence. The weak shouldn't fight. The weak shouldn't help those who fight wars. If they dare, then they are legitimate targets."
"Cold as ice," Duo replied. "Or at least you want me to think you are."
Wu Fei glared. "Don't make the mistake, Duo Maxwell, of believing that I will not do what it takes to win this war. My honor, and the honor of my clan is at stake. I will not compromise that."
As they entered the forest and moved towards where their Gundams were hidden, Duo said in the darkness, "Life's a funny thing, and I should know. Things change when you least expect them to... and so do people."
Wu Fei pulled up the schematic of the base after he settled into the seat of his Gundam. Duo could see a small image of the man on his own view screen and he smirked at him, though he felt a bite of annoyance. "Trowa and I were real thorough when we did our recon, Wu Fei. Don't worry. Things will be right where we said they were."
"A recon is never one hundred percent accurate," Wu Fei shot back.
"Wu Fei, if I worried about everything that COULD happen, I'd never leave the safe house," Duo grumbled and then flicked off his com link. He needed to be focused, not allowing Wu Fei to get under his skin.
"Damn! That was fast!" Duo swore as troops mobilized at their appearance very quickly. He found his sycthe swinging before he had walked his Gundam more than a few strides onto the base, clearing away transports aiming guns at his Deathscythe.
Duo flicked on his com. "Something's not right, Chang!"
"Acknowledged!" Wu Fei grunted back and the com went silent again.
Duo was angry. He and Trowa had obviously missed something, a perimeter alarm, maybe. That he had just reassured Wu Fei of their competence, made his anger, his stung pride and embarrassment, that much worse. He found himself slashing through enemy forces fueled by that anger and realized , too late, that he had gone too far and allowed himself to be surrounded.
"Maxwell!" Wu Fei shouted over the com, "What are you doing?!"
Duo didn't answer. He could see that Wu Fei was cut off from him and couldn't offer any help. Anger was replaced by cold fear as Duo saw guns lift from hidden turrets and aim at Deathscythe and the cockpit where he was sitting. Oz knew a Gundam's vulnerability, the pilot. Weapons might not be able to cut through gundanium, but a pilot could only take so much stress from shocks caused by direct hits. The enemy began firing wildly and Deathscythe began shuddering under the impact.
Duo gritted his teeth, feeling every bone in his body vibrate along with his Gundam. His gut clenched and his senses became confused. Duo's eyes couldn't focus on his instruments so he swung blindly with his scythe and fired with his weapons, trying to plow an opening through the base's defenses.
A proximity alarm went off, telling Duo that a suit was nearby and coming towards him. "No, Wu Fei, stay back!" Duo shouted through the com. "This is my own damned fault. Complete the mission and let me get out of this myself!"
"You do make a good distraction," Wu Fei commented dryly, but his actions belied his tone. His Gundam was still coming towards Duo.
Duo swung a buster rifle at him. "One more step and I'll fire!" he warned viciously. "Complete the mission!"
Wu Fei paused. Duo saw a shaky image on the con screen flicker and bow and then it went out. Wu Fei retreated to attack the stored weapons cache as the bombs they had planted began exploding and showering the base with debris. They were meant to do damage but they were also designed to make Oz think that there were more of them then there were. It worked, partially, some of the troops broke off to confront what they thought was another attack. That didn't stop the constant barrage on Deathscythe, though.
"Going to pass out," Duo muttered shakily.
He wasn't going to be able to help with the mission. He was useless to Wu Fei. There was only one alternative to blowing Deathscythe up to stop from being captured. It was a slim hope at best, to think that his Gundam could get away safely, but Duo was always one to take chances if it helped him escape dying.
Using the last of his strength to find the autopilot, Duo set it for vague coordinates to the south, and then open up Deathscythe's engines to full throttle. The crushing force of gravity slammed into his body as the Gundam shot into the air in a leap calculated to carry it beyond the base and the enemy. It sent Duo spiraling towards unconsciousness.
Surrounded by forests and jagged, rocky hills, the outcome of such a blind leap was almost certainly total destruction, but that slim hope of survival, that he just might find a safe place to land during his blind leap, had been enough to convince Duo to take the chance. As his mind went black, Duo gripped his cross and thought, not of prayer or the possibility of heaven or hell in his future, but of Heero and of a future with him that was possibly about to be crushed, along with his body, when Deathscythe landed.
Duo thought bitterly, as darkness descended on his mind, 'I'm such a freakin' idiot! I didn't even tell him I loved him before I left..."
______________
Duo awoke to the smell of burnt circuits and a control panel sparking against the skin of his right arm. He jerked that arm out of harm's way as he automatically switched off the power grid. The tortured throb of his engines powering down successfully was a welcome relief.
Duo wasn't hanging in his straps, so he surmised that Deathscythe had landed on its back somehow. He checked outside optics and found them not working. When he tried the hatch control, nothing but grinding metal greeted his efforts. Air filtration was working. He wasn't suffocating. Injuries... Duo felt bone deep bruises and a few lacerations, but nothing broken.
"Pretty damned good, considering," Duo muttered as he released his straps and sat up. His head instantly exploded into pain and Duo gasped, slapping hands to his head and just gripping himself there and trying to breath through it. It slowly subsided, but it didn't go completely away and it's center was a knot and a deep cut near the back of his head. Something, he guessed, had come loose and hit him.
Duo looked around slowly and spotted a panel door. "That would be for the hatch," Duo grumbled and craned his neck to see the fist sized hole blown there from the outside. "beam rifle," he decided. "Close range too. That was too damned close!"
Duo inched out of his seat and cautiously tried to stand. It made his head hurt even more, but, gritting his teeth against it, he made his way to the hatch. He grabbed a magnetic screwdriver on his way and used it to poke at the wires and fuel cells hanging out of the hole. They were smoking and fused.
"Expecting your luck to change, Duo Maxwell?" he muttered to himself as he eyed the seals and bolts on the door that were keeping him from freedom. "You're one hell of an optimist if you were."
Duo went to take stock of his tools and then he eyed other instruments, trying to decide if he could cannibalize them for the hatch. "Well, " he said to himself, "if I'm not captured, I might be able to get my ass out of here in... oh... about .... never..." He grunted in amusement. "Not that it's ever stopped me from trying anyway."
Duo set to work, ignoring pain and ignoring the fear that his Gundam might be getting ready to blow up around him. He didn't know how bad the damage was or if Oz would find him and decide that destroying Deathscythe from a safe distance might be a good idea.
While Duo worked, he wondered about what the other pilots were thinking, what they were doing, and if Wu Fei had gotten away. Knowing the determined pilot of Shenlong, Duo didn't have any doubt that Wu Fei had his feet up at the safe house and was taking it easy. "Sipping a cup of tea, probably," Duo growled, "and telling everyone what a fucking moron I am. " He thought of Heero, imagined Heero disappointed, maybe even disgusted, with him. It wasn't hard to imagine, not hard to imagine at all.
If the hatch had been on any other machine, it would have had an emergency charge to blow it open. Dr. G had purposely not put in that option when designing Deathscythe. An open hatch on a Gundam was a vulnerability that equaled destruction. A well placed charge by an enemy could have ripped the Gundam up from the inside along with the pilot. Duo understood that it was part of the sacrifice of being a Gundam Pilot. There was only one way out of Deathscythe in an emergency and that was straight to heaven or straight to hell.
Duo wiped sweat from his forehead. His hand was shaking and he was beginning to feel nauseated. His body cried to be able to sit down. Duo firmly ignored it. When he suddenly came to sprawled on the deck with his tools scattered underneath him, he wasn't too surprised. He levered himself back up, took a few deep breaths, and gathered his tools to try the hatch again.
The comlink burst with static and a faint voice, Heero's voice, said, "Duo?"
Duo stared at the controls in the cockpit with wide eyes, not sure whether he wanted to answer that voice. He was afraid of what Heero was going to say to him. Duty, as always, though, won over fear. He had to give his position. He had to give his status. If there was a chance that they could rescue Deathscythe, he had to risk giving his position away.
Duo limped over to the comlink and brought it to life with a few flicks of switches. "Heero?"
"Status?" Came the anxious reply.
Duo looked around the darkened Deathscythe. "Bad. Deathscythe is down for the count. I have almost all systems powered down. I can't repair unless I'm outside and, right now, I'm trapped behind a busted hatch."
"Air supply?" Heero asked and he sounded almost in a panic.
Duo was more steady, as if he were discussing the weather. "Working, but it's getting hot. If I don't get out of here soon, the heat may get me before Oz does. I'm injured as well and that's messing with my repair effort."
"How badly?" Heero demanded.
Duo paused and scowled. "Heero?" he admonished angrily. "You're asking all the wrong questions. Put Quatre on the line."
He thought Heero might argue, but then Quatre's voice said, "Estimate damages to Deathscythe and repair time."
"That's more like it," Duo grunted and began listing what he though the damages were. He ached for Heero, but he was also still angry. He had a damned war to win. Now wasn't the time to indulge in a relationship and in caring about one another. Deathscythe had to be saved. The pilot, himself, was secondary to that. If they had to drag the machine to safety and forgo rescuing him out of it, then he was certain it was a death sentence, but he was ready for that, prepared to die like he was suppose to.
When Duo was done listing the damage, he could hear Quatre giving quick orders. He knew Quatre's decision and, though it gave him a chill, he was more than ready to comply. Quatre had decided to save Deathscythe. Quatre confirmed it with his next order to Duo. "Continue to work on the hatch. We will arrive and use our Gundams to transport Deathscythe to a safe location.
"Location of Oz?" Duo wanted to know.
"Closing in on your position, but chatter says they haven't found anything except some debris a few miles from you," Trowa replied. "You did well."
"Thank Dr. G's radar buster," Duo told them. "They won't be able to get a fix on old Deathscythe no matter what kind of scan they use."
"Wu Fei and Trowa will come to your position," Quatre told him. "We will ready a transport on the closest secure road that we can find."
"I'm going," Heero suddenly said.
"No!" Duo replied tightly. "Heero, I can hear it in your voice, man! You're going to come here and try and get me out. No can do. You're staying behind and letting the guys handle this!"
"I know what's necessary," Heero said, but his voice said otherwise to Duo. This was the test at last, the one to prove whether they could fight a war and watch each other die if necessary. Heero had already failed it. It made Duo ache to know that, if their positions had been reversed, he wouldn't have failed. He would have done his duty and he would have let Heero die. It wasn't the time to examine what that said about him or what that said about the both of them. It was time to do what had to be done.
"Quatre," Duo said with an edge to his voice. "Make sure Heero doesn't come here."
"Acknowledged," Quatre replied with a steely tone that still managed to have a tinge of sadness too.
Then there was radio silence and Duo began working again. Whether he lived or died now depended on how fast he could repair systems that were technically beyond repair.
Read more of Kracken's fiction and fanfiction at http://kracken.bonpublishing.com
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Kracken has a yaoi book published, The Angel Within, at amazon.com. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0974416002/qid%3D1066434868/sr%3D11-1/ref%3Dsr%5F11%5F1/102-2967152-0308168
and at her publishing website at http://www.bonpublishing.com. Thank you to
everyone who already bought the book. *hugs*