June 2000
Category: Adventure, Angst, Romance.
Setting: About 2 years after the events of AC 195
Pairings: 3+4(Established), 1+2(Getting there)... Wufei is here as well.
No archiving yet please.
Disclaimer: No money is being made off this, just a little bit of fun in
someone else sandbox. I'll leave the toys unbroken.
::Grins impishly:: Alright.. little bit of a cliffhanger.
Wufei executed a neat flip and landed silently behind a stack of crates. So far things had gone according to Quatre's plan. They had been able to drift up close to the satellite on the near derelict scout ship, then space walk to their separate destinations. Wufei had been glad to get rid of the bulky space suit, pleased that the satellite's environmental controls were active. Sometimes gravity could be made to work to your advantage.
Peering around the crates the Chinese boy narrowed his dark eyes thoughtfully. The room was more active then he had anticipated. With no less then five men and two women moving about within. Wufei leaned back behind the crates, sneering inwardly. Sneaking around was not his style. A direct assault would have been preferable to him. This subtle approach smacked too keenly of weakness. Of course, the truth was they were in the weaker position. Wufei chafed under this restraint.
Giving himself a shake and silently apologizing to Nataku for his cowardly actions, Wufei began to creep silently along the wall, seeking out the most obvious places to plant explosive devices. Take care of the obvious first, then work on the other possibilities.
Elsewhere in the satellite Duo and Heero moved like two shadows from cover to cover. They had also found the actual act of getting onto the satellite child's play. There didn't seem to be much organization to the radicals and this made slipping by them that much easier.
The engine room was a little daunting. It was half finished and scaffolds ran all along the rocky sides. The scaffolds also scaled the interior walls nearly 100 feet into the air. Stopping behind a piece of equipment Heero turned and motioned towards Duo. The American pilot squatted down behind a large drill bit. Heero made a few short gestures with his hands. Over the past few months, Heero had worked with Duo on a couple of salvage jobs and the two had come up with their own silent language, since trying to talk over working salvage equipment was next to impossible. Duo nodded and flipped about heading back into the shadows, his braid snapping lightly before disappearing with him.
Heero turned and moved on forwards towards the ladder that would lead up to the scaffolds.
Trowa ghosted silently around a corner and stopped. Checking out the hallway in front of him, he motioned to Quatre who nimbly crossed the open expanse of corridor and tucked himself against the wall at Trowa's side.
"It was unfortunate that the service tunnel was blocked. We're a level too high." The small blonde whispered to his partner. Trowa nodded, indicating he'd heard and checked the hallway once again. They were badly out of position. Each attempt to find a way down a level had been met with either too much foot traffic, or unfinished tunnels.
Trowa was about to move forward when the hiss of a door opening stopped him. Three men exited the room at the end of the hall, talking amongst themselves. All three were heavily armed. Trowa debated with himself for a moment. He had no doubt that he and Quatre could take them but if those guns went off, or if one of those men had a communicator on them, the whole mission could be jeopardized. Cursing silently at yet another blocked avenue Trowa waved Quatre back and silently followed him.
Heero sighed deeply as he turned from disarming one device to deal with another. The radicals had these scaffolds rigged up to the point of overkill. These people were amateurs. Heero snorted to himself. He hated dealing with amateurs. In a lot of ways they were worse then professionals. You could never tell how an amateur would react and they tended to be about as subtle as lead bricks. Point in fact, the amount of devices on this scaffold.
Heero was just reaching for the last device when a shaky voice sounded behind him.
"Hey, what are you doing?"
Heero ground his teeth. He did not have time to deal with some baka at the moment. Keeping his arms tucked against his body, he subtly switched out his wire cutters for his weapon.
"Deactivating these bombs." Smoothly intoned as Heero rolled gracefully off to the side and somersaulted around, bringing his gun up to bear. Two shots rang out close on each other's heels.
Down the scaffold a little ways a young man's eyes widened then rolled up as if trying to look at the neat hole in the center of his forehead. Then he was pitching forward onto his knees and crashing to the floor. In the shadows Heero hissed. Reaching up towards his left shoulder, the boy probed at the wound inflicted by the radical's gun.
Nothing life threatening, just a damn inconvenience at the moment. 100 feet below him Heero heard shouts starting to go up. Damn! They didn't have time for this. Looking towards the small device he had yet to disarm Heero came to a quick decision. He and Duo would have to take the engineering room immediately before someone got on the horn to the other parts of the satellite. The explosives tied to the last detonator were minor and couldn't inflict much damage.
"Heero!" Duo's voice brought Heero up short. Spinning around the Japanese boy's eyes widened. Duo was racing along the scaffold from the other side, heading towards him.
"Duo! Get back!" Heero snapped, waving his good hand.
Seeing Heero waving the gun, Duo misunderstood. Thinking Heero was trying to draw a bead on someone behind him, Duo quickly dove and rolled. In retrospect the dive probably saved the American from a chest full of flying metal as the small bomb went off. Heero cursed, grabbing at a support to hold his balance as the scaffold bucked wildly beneath the force of the explosion. Most of the debris blew downward, the bomb really was ineffective doing no more then loosening the scaffold and breaking it into two halves.
Unfortunately, the scaffold split right beneath the rolling Duo, sending the braided boy right over the edge. Out of position, Duo couldn't get his body twisted around in time to catch hold of the ragged metal as he felt thin air open beneath his feet. There was a moment where he seemed to hang in midair before Duo felt gravity grab at him, yanking him downwards into a 100 foot fall.
End Part 4
Well... continue?
Laekin
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