15-Oct-2004
Title: Mirage
Author: Muffie
There was nothing blue in the menagerie tent. It was yellow and white, itself, a gaudy striping that was cheerful when it was clean. The animals were browns and golds and greys. Lions, horses, llamas, elephants. Their cages were brightly painted reds and greens. Their equipment leather or black. He'd gotten rid of everything blue. It didn't matter, really, everything was just a different shade of grey. He could lie there all day, his back against the prickly bale of straw and his eyes watching the dusty roof of the tent ripple in the wind while the circus lived outside. Inside, he was insulated with nothing but a soft breeze and the sounds of quietly dozing animals. He could lie there and not think of anything but the ceiling of the tent. He could even pretend that he was content. He could pretend that he wasn't thinking about blue.
He noticed the faint tread of a single human before the lions did. He heard Moyo lift his maned head and watch the newcomer for him. The lion would tell him if there was danger, he knew. At least that's what he told himself when he couldn't really bring himself to care. Perfume reached him, lightly floral and out of place. A townie looking for kicks? Moyo yawned just inside his line of sight, his yellowing teeth wrapping around a lazy sigh, then put his head on his paws and blinked.
"Trowa Barton."
The voice tickled his memory, he stared at the tent and couldn't muster the curiosity to look at her.
"It's been quite some time," she said softly.
Memory clicked. Une. The insane commander of various OZ forces. The current head of the Preventers. He'd last seen her a little over a six months ago, on Earth, when he'd done some freelance work for her organization, a few weeks after... after.
"Still the conversationalist." Her voice was wry, full of sad humor. "That's quite all right, I'm not here for chit chat. I'm here on business, I'm afraid." Moyo's head lifted in a lion's version of wary interest when she sat down on a bale. "Have you heard from any of the other pilots in the last few months?"
He blinked at the tent.
"I'll take that as a no."
The breeze shifted again, changing the uppermost scent from elephant to llama.
"Specifically, have you heard from Maxwell? Anything at all, no matter how odd it might seem?"
Duo. He did not flinch. Moyo's primary mate, Makali, growled and batted at Moyo's face. She rolled onto her back and settled in to snooze with heavy, machine gun purring.
"He's gone missing."
Trowa let his head roll to the side, so that she came fully into view. The blouse she wore was blue. He carefully did not frown. She was sitting ramrod straight, military starch evident in every line of her body. She was staring at him as intently as Makali had ever stared at the hunks of meat he fed her.
"It's important that he be found." Her voice was soft, almost hesitant. Her gaze never wavered. "Things are happening and, as usual, Maxwell is in the thick of it. His absence bothers me."
Moyo huffed a regretful breath. Trowa blinked again, his eyes drifting closed and then open as if it were the most important thing in the world. Duo was better equipped to take care of himself when the chips were down than any of the pilots, even himself.
"He was working freelance. He reports only to me and he's missed three check-ins. I'm concerned. I can't send an agent to check on him."
"Why not?"
"He's involved in something and his cover is important. A Preventer might--"
"Might?"
Une frowned.
Moyo's ears eased back in leonine self-satisfaction. Trowa watched Une, unblinking. "You have a leak."
"There is nothing to substantiate such a claim," Une snapped. With obvious effort, she wiped the frown from her mouth and forehead, but it had settled into her eyes to stay. "I can't risk sending an agent. After that debacle last Christmas, I obviously can't ask Winner. Yuy has gone to ground. That leaves you."
Adhama's tail slipped between the bars and lashed at the air. A moment later, she snarled at Makali. The other lioness grumbled and slapped Adhama with claws half-pulled, sending the younger one crouching against the bars. Adhama snarled again, then turned in three precise circles and sprawled.
"This investigation of Duo's is that dangerous?"
Une's eyes clouded over, the sudden worry chasing the lingering frown. "Maxwell has been trying to confirm rumors of a gundam."
Trowa let his eyes drift shut. "I'm an agent."
"Auxiliary. Your computer files have been deleted, along with Maxwell's and Yuy's. Hard copies are kept in a personal safe off Preventer property."
"You sound certain."
Une sighed. The disconsolate sound was so un-Une, that he looked at her. "It's war."
Trowa turned his head again, his eyes going back to the rippling ceiling in the tent and his ears picking out the heavy, comfortable breathing from Moyo.
"There's not a lot of time, Barton," she said, her voice ghosting barely louder than the breeze.
He could lie there listening to the lions breathe and watch the tent shift in the wind. He could pretend that he was content. The truth, though, the truth was that the only place he'd ever been content had been in the war.
"I need an answer soon."
Contentment was a blue that he'd only found in the war.
"My latest information puts Maxwell on L3 at his disappearance, but location can change quickly."
War.
"We need to make plans and decide how to communicate."
If there was war again...
"And we're certain that you're being watched, so we have to do this without anyone the wiser."
Contentment and blue. "I'll do it."
"It's going to be--you will?"
"On my own terms." He turned his head again, clearly dismissing her. Outside of the menagerie, some of the circus people were laughing. Makali heaved a heavy, lionish sigh and smacked her mouth. One of the horses stamped a foot and snorted lazily.
"I'm not going to permit you to take unnecessary risks."
"I am a gundam pilot," he murmured, as if that said it all.
She sighed. He just looked at her. Finally, she nodded once, curtly. "I will be the only contact you have. I have two gadgets for you, a passive tracker and sub-net transmitter. I'll keep scan on the regular channels." His eyes narrowed a bit. "For extraction."
"No. Reports?"
"Whatever won't blow your cover. Primary objective is finding Maxwell. If they have a gundam, we need to tie it to whoever paid for it. I will leave it to you and Maxwell, when you find him. I want weekly communication of some sort."
"How?"
"You are sufficiently talented to work a way to have it sent to me." Her brown eyes settled firmly on Trowa's face, piercing through the camouflage of his bangs. "I'm worried about Maxwell."
He wanted to look away from those eyes, darker than he was used to. He wanted to close his own. He refrained, keeping his expression neutral and his eyes empty. Duo. Blue. In his cage, Moyo shivered his skin and scooted closer to Makali. Trowa blinked, closed then open. "I'll find him."
"Please be quick, Barton." She did not wait for him to reply, she slipped a flat disk into his hand and simply left as quietly as she'd come. Only Adhama watched her go.
To say that Cathy hadn't been pleased to hear he was leaving was like saying that Shinigami could be scary, true, but woefully inadequate. He'd closed the door between them silently and packed while she threw things and raged at the top of her lungs. She terrified circus-folk when she did that; she was like an avenging valkyrie in sequins. It made him feel warm inside. Her blinding anger wasn't with him, but with the entire Earth Sphere that couldn't seem to leave him alone. After last Christmas, when... After that, Cathy had become even more protective of him. It both amused and touched him that she thought she could protect him, the Silencer, the gundam pilot, the man Une called when, as Duo loved to say, the shit well and truly hit the fucking fan.
He opened the door between them, his duffel dangling by his side and most of their crockery shattered and littering the floor. She blinked at him then, her eyes suddenly huge and full of tears she refused to let fall. The next moment she wrapped herself around him, so much like Duo and Quatre that he felt his throat constrict.
"You come back to me, Trowa Barton. Do you hear me? You come back home."
He held her tight, face buried in her soft curls, and wished he never had to let go.
She took one shuddering breath, then another. He could feel every tense muscle in her back forcing itself to relax. "I love you," she said. He smiled then, his fingers trailing on her cheek, over the tear that escaped. She smiled back. "I love you," she said again, hoarsely, then let him go.
And, as it always did, Cathy's selfless love humbled him. Following an impulse before he could think the better of it, he leaned in and pressed a kiss to her cheek, the one with the tear, then slipped through the trailer door. As much as he loved her in return, she didn't need him. Duo did.
The ride to L3's industrial center, G1709, had been as off the record as he could make it. He worked his passage on a small cargo ship and slipped past customs into the colony proper. G1709 had the warehouses, the factories, and the places where illicit MS manufacturers--like the long deceased Doctor S--could slip through the cracks.
Long force of habit had him slinking into the back of a crowd of a tourists, obviously there on a group tour, before the port belched them onto the suitably temperate street. They boarded a chartered bus like a brightly plumed group of magpies nattering about the best cheap souvenirs and photo opportunities. He slid from their ranks and into a public transit bus. He caught three connections before settling on a motel that would suit his current needs. It wasn't a pay-by-the-hour dive, but it was close enough. It was both disturbing and gratifying to set an alarm on the door, boobytrap the window in the bathroom, and sweep the place for bugs in under five minutes. He had dreams of being something more than a wolf spider. Something that flew. Like a blue--
He unpacked a nutri-bar and settled onto the bed with his palmtop. He slipped the disk into the appropriate slot and settled in to get up to speed. There was sketchy information that had nothing but suspicious movements of raw ore and titanium surrounding L3 and a single note that Duo had been contacted, on L2, by an unknown person via a friend, about mobile suits several months ago. There were no names, just shipping manifests. Two reports from Duo were included, each about two sentences long. They confirmed that there was something fishy going regarding mobile suits and power structures and that he'd effectively infiltrated the unknown power structure, though they were highly suspicious of him. The last bit of information were check in dates and times. The last was dated July 8th, roughly three weeks ago. Looking at the manifests, he decided that he wanted help. That help would have to be Heero.
He opened a portal to the web, entered a hacker BBS, and tapped out a quick poem that Duo had taught him years ago. instMirage(); I(); {dreamed(hope==dream{was}); but(dream{was}); wake(now); Exceeding(comfortless && cold && worn); {for{dream(sake);} It looked like any other of a number of clever code poems littering the BBS in between the usual hacker chatter. Yet, it didn't. It was a mild bastardization of the code that the Zero System had been written in. Only a handful of people would ever recognize Zero's code and of those, only two would recognize the bastardization. To everyone else, or so Duo claimed, it looked like it came from a tweaker who couldn't tell his TRIN from his Core. Already, he'd netted a few replies ridiculing his code. He shut the palm top off, shoved it into a cargo pocket in his pants, and headed out. Whether Heero showed or not, he had work to do.
He settled into a barstool at the Gantry and ordered a whiskey. He hadn't been here since his Nanashi days, but wasn't surprised to see it around. The Gantry and places like it were the dirty little watering holes of the savannah. They attracted the low-lifes and the scum who couldn't get into the cleaner places without thorough decontamination. They were abandoned when the storms of Preventers and officials looking to clean up the slums rolled through, only to be sludge deep in scavengers when the clean up crews turned their attentions elsewhere. He leaned his back against the bar and stared disinterestedly at his own feet.
"You muscle?" The guy sitting next to him grabbed a refill on his beer and slugged it back. He had the gibbon look of a spacer descended from generations of spacers. Long arms, short legs, and a narrow collar bone. He slugged back a little of his beer.
Trowa grunted and sipped delicately at his whiskey.
"You ain't gonna hire on here. Rivet's the place where they pick up muscle."
He played it, narrowing his eyes and flexing his shoulders so the muscle rippled dangerously, then let his arms relax, as if he just didn't care, and slugged back his whiskey. It burnt all the way down.
The gibbon snorted in amusement. "That way all over, huh?"
He slanted the gibbon a look, then slid his shot glass onto the bar.
"I'm kinda between paychecks m'self. Came in on the Dolly couple months back, but the Old Man's bitch gave me the axe. I oughta be down at Moe's, but sometimes a man just wants a drink in peace. Not much call outbound for a man of my impeccshul qualifications." The gibbon shotgunned his mug of beer.
He curled his lips into a faint smile, then signaled another shot for himself and a refill for the gibbon.
"You're a right nice fellar for muscle. Don't say I blame ya for steering clear. Muscle don't seem to be lasting 'round here."
He grunted and twirled his shot glass in circles on the bar.
"You got a job?"
He slanted an inscrutable look at the gibbon, as if classifying him. Definitely prey. He shook his head minutely.
"Name's Harl."
He grunted again and sipped his whiskey.
"Huh, you're that way. 'Sall grav to me. What's the cost of the beer?"
He eyed the gibbon again, narrowly. "Info. Just landed. Who're the players?"
The gibbon snorted. "That'll cost ye more than a beer."
He stared at the gibbon unblinkingly.
"You got three outfits running the docks and Portside. Real hush hush syndicate sorta stuff. Guy by the name of Maus hires the muscle. His people own the docks. You best steer clear 'cause he's been going through muscle lately." The gibbon chuckled and slurped his beer. "Makes me glad I'm the cargo specialist that I am. You boys got no life 'spectancy."
"That's one."
The gibbon grinned. "That's one beer."
He slipped a few creds out of his pocket and placed the on the bar between them.
The gibbon's grin grew. "One of t'others is the Hassas. They run dock station. They own everyone worth ownin' round here. Port authority types. Portside got a vice, the Hassas got their fingers in it. They're big into protection for their young'uns. They're Family, so 'less you got yourself an entree somewhere that you ain't tellin of, you ain't getting on. Last one is the Russians. They run snort and smoke and some girls. Sometimes they pay up to the Hassas, sometimes they battle it out for street."
"Who does this Maus work for?"
The gibbon shrugged and drained his beer. "Dunno. Ain't muscle."
Trowa did not frown. "Maus get on with the Hassas? Or is it looking like a war for street?"
The gibbon scratched himself and looked thoughtful. "Y'know, I dunno. Seems to be getting on okay. Not like the Hassas and the Russians. They got a, whattaya call 'em, gentleman's agreement or somethin'. One of 'em owns lowside of the docks, t'other owns highside." The gibbon shrugged. "Ain't no bodies around."
He grunted and slid the creds in front of the gibbon before slipping from the stool and making his way out.
He had some names now, familiar and new. The Hassas and the Russians had been around before Operation Meteor. They'd been quiet then, uncertain as rabbits cowering beneath a hawk as the winds of rebellion blew through the Alliance. This Maus was new. There had been other gangs working the area before Operation Meteor, two that were sufficiently large to deal directly with the Hassas and any number of smaller ones that played at toughs and were paid to do the slop-work for the others. So this third power wasn't a surprise, neither was its lack of identity. Tomorrow he would hit Rivet's.
On the way back to the room, he picked up some rations and a mass produced mystery novel. The gibbon had already placed him as muscle and that wouldn't be a bad cover. Ex-Oz at loose ends, working legit when possible, under the table when not. He was fresh on the colony from Earth, looking for a change of pace. His previous employer had gotten old and died and the replacement was putting in his own people. SOP for organized criminals. His name was, hn, Kali. The black goddess of death, destruction, and of creation. Kali was a cold man. He was a man who had been a rising star in Oz ranks, who'd worked for Colonel Une at one point, before the war was lost and he was left with nothing. Kali liked to kill, just because he had no respect for humanity, but he was ambitious enough to restrain himself. He wanted cushy where he had enough autonomy to do as he wished, but not ultimate responsibility. Kali was an alpha wolf that didn't want the bitch.
He paused minutely when he slid his key in the lock, his brow carefully not furrowing. Pressing his left side to the cinderblock wall, he slipped the Sig from the holster in the small of his back and pushed the door open. The hinges squeaked, like a bat seeking its prey, until the knob thudded softly against the opposing wall. Noisily, he worked the slide, chambering a 9mm round and cocking back the hammer.
"03."
Heero.
Leaving the hammer cocked but the barrel pointed down, he entered the room and shut the door. It was no surprise to see Heero's own weapon out and pointed at him. For some reason, it amused him. "Should we shoot each other?"
"I won't let you hurt him." Heero's tone was flat as ever, cold and angry as the tundra at dusk.
Trowa grunted to himself and settled his groceries onto the small, tilted table. He uncocked the hammer and holstered the Sig. Heero's weapon tracked him precisely to the table and then to the bed where he seated himself comfortably. Heero had always been like that, intent with a perfect, unblinking concentration that reminded him of a raptor.
"Where is he?"
He did frown this time. He hadn't expected that. If Heero was here, and close enough to drop by at what might as well have been a moment's notice, then he'd have expected him to know exactly where Duo was and, perhaps, to have gotten hip deep in whatever Duo was into. "Une lost contact with him three weeks ago."
Heero's gun dropped. "Une?"
"Someone is building a gundam."
"Kuso." Heero flipped the safety on and holstered his weapon. "Duo is undercover."
"Yes."
Heero frowned. "You left the poem."
He inclined his head for a moment. "Duo taught it to me. I need your help."
Heero simply grunted.
Trowa did not sigh, nor did he shift his weight. First Quatre and almost immediately after, Wufei. Now Heero. A year ago he'd thought that their comradeship was strong enough to weather any crisis. Look how they'd pulled Wufei back into the fold after that Mariemaia idiocy of his. They had given him trust without question. He had given Wufei trust without question, despite the sword that had been at his throat. One thing, one simple little thing had ripped them apart and destroyed that bedrock of trust. Quatre trusted no one. Wufei trusted Quatre. Heero trusted Duo. He trusted Duo. No one, apparently, trusted him. It hurt.
"Une doesn't know very much. Duo was approached while he was on L2 about mobile suits via a friend of his. He made nice and got into the group. He's been in brief contact with Une, but not enough to give any good detail. There have been a few shipments of titanium and raw ore to L3, but no group to connect them with. Whoever is doing it is well hidden. Une has a leak, even though she claims otherwise. Our jackets, other than Wufei's and Quatre's, have been removed from Preventer. I got here a few hours ago, slipped past customs, left the poem for you, and picked up a couple of names to start looking into." He folded his hands in his lap. "Your turn."
"After that morning," Heero glared at him, "I spoke with Quatre. Duo promised to wait for me. He wasn't there. I tracked him to that Schbeiker girl's salvage yard on L2 a couple of months later. They'd left for Earth a few weeks prior. They went to Beijing, then Kiev, then Brussels, then here. I arrived three days behind them. That was May 28th. I have been unable to find anything after that. I don't think they've left the colony, but it's possible they slipped through."
"He's with Hilde?" He didn't know why that surprised him. It shouldn't have. It made an eerie sort of sense.
"He's not answering email and he's only leaving crumbs on the net." Heero's glare deepened. "He isn't saying anything."
"He knows you're here."
"Aa."
"Are you going to help me?"
"Why are you trying to find him?"
He blinked, once, then twice. "He's my best friend."
Those blue eyes narrowed dangerously. "You know he didn't do it."
"I know." Trowa inclined his head. "Do you think I did it?"
Heero looked away. "I don't want to."
"I didn't."
Heero considered him again, slowly, as if he were some form of exotic predator. "You know."
"Hilde."
"Hilde? Why?"
"At first, I thought it was because she wanted him, but after thinking about it I don't know. She left before anything happened, or could happen. She didn't come back."
Heero's brow furrowed a bit more. Then he nodded. "He'll know."
"Most likely."
Heero's fists curled and the muscles in his jaw flexed dangerously.
"We have to let him play it out, Heero."
The glare on Heero's face would have fit better on an angry wolverine.
"We'll locate him and we'll be there to back him up."
"Aa."
Heero stood and shouldered Trowa's duffel. "I have a safehouse two blocks away."
It was either an offer of trust or an offer of pure distrust. Allies or keep your enemy where you can watch him. Tactically, it was a stupid idea and Heero knew it as well as he did. Heero was easily identified through his connection to the Vice Foreign Minister so being seeing with him was bad karma. He'd been on the vids behind Relena often enough, scowling and twitching at anything that so much a looked at her funny. He couldn't ignore the fact that if they'd known Duo Maxwell was a gundam pilot, it was better taken as true that they had identified the rest of them, as well. He preferred to work alone when infiltrating anything, but he just couldn't trust Heero not to do something stupid if left to his own devices now that he had confirmation that Duo was in the middle of an explosive elephant pile. Simply put, he could not keep Heero a secret if they kept in enough contact to satisfy Heero's impatience.
In his mind, Heero's hair became blonde, streaked with white. Add a conspicuous piercing or two, some henna designs on his face, a different wardrobe, and a slight shift in posture and he would look nothing like the Heero Yuy standing blankly at attention next to the Queen of the World on the vids. Meet Kali's partner, Yama.
"We'll have to do something about your appearance," he said mildly, getting to his feet and picking up his groceries.
End Part 2
(:./muffie/mirage2)
