03-Oct-2005
Title: Alternate Dualities
Author: WingNut
Archive: GWA, anywhere else, please ask
Category: adventure, angst, romance, lemon
Rating: NC-17 overall
Warnings: AU - AAAAAAAAAAAU. Some yaoi, het, lemon, violence, language, OOC and/or death, depending on the universe. You should be a legal adult to read this. Open-mindedness helps, too.
Spoilers: maybe, depending on the universe.
Disclaimers: I don't own the characters from Gundam Wing; Bandai, Sunrise and Sotsu do. I just play with them for non-profit fun until they run screaming back to their creators.
Pairings: all over the map; Duo-centric.
Notes: started June 2001.
Sooo... It's been over a year since I posted. I swear, rl took over my life. No, really.
Many thanks to those people who emailed me, asking for more of this story. Encouragement is always appreciated...
Blurb: Set in AC201, Duo is slipping from one alternate universe to another, trying to get back home.
Part 8a ~ Project
He couldn't think, couldn't move, he could only fight for existence as the body he had invaded tried to adjust. His heart hammered and his lungs heaved desperately for air, his senses overwhelmed by the transition.
Then through the roaring in his ears, he heard a familiar strident beeping that had him groping for controls in front of him before he had even cleared his tearing eyes - the piercing tones of a proximity alarm.
The weightlessness of his strapped-in body told him he was in space. He swept his hands in front of himself, trying to find a stick, a yoke, a wheel - any familiar steering device. His flailing hands slapped against a console of some sort, banked slightly like a school desk, and he blinked furiously, desperate to sweep the mist from his vision.
His eyes were clearing, and a quick glance took in the cockpit - four seats, all empty except his, and banks upon banks of controls and indicator lights. This was no shuttle...
He shoved his curiosity away to deal with later. Survive whatever had tripped the proximity alarm first, then worry about the vessel.
A nav screen showed a computer-generated display of a planet overlaid with the flight path and planned orbit of what was presumably this ship. It also showed an ominous mass of moving dots on a collision course with the projected heading. Large red words blinked urgently over the entire display: ERROR - AUTO-NAVIGATION FAILURE.
Peachy.
The autopilot may have failed, but the receptive nav functions seemed to be working just fine. The incoming dots were travelling together at roughly the same heading and velocity, but they were spaced too randomly to be enemy ships, so what...?
A rising screech reverberated through the cockpit. Duo slapped the proximity alarm into silence in order to hear better, his heart sinking. That was the sound of something sliding along the outer hull. Those dots weren´t a fleet of ships, they were a swarm of meteors - a cloud of rocks created when an asteroid had been ripped apart by gravitational forces.
His current course would take him through the middle of the swarm. The impacts would increase in size and frequency as he neared the centre, until something with a large enough mass or velocity pierced the hull and destroyed his ship. But if he could avoid the horde altogether...
He took a second to check out the ship's silhouette on the tactical screen. He was piloting something long and boxy, more suited for deep space than landing in an atmosphere. With that much mass, it wasn't going to shift course easily or efficiently.
Even if he could adjust his flight path in time to go around all the meteors, he'd have used up all his fuel and messed up his approach to the planet. He'd never make a proper orbit - he'd be coming in at the wrong angle, and without enough fuel to correct his course, he'd end up being sucked down into the planet's gravity well and crashing on the surface.
All this flashed through his mind as he saw the vessel's outline; then his eye was caught by something else on the tactical display - a yellow glow around the front part of the ship.
Quickly, he checked the readings. It looked like some sort of modified beam shield, configured in a way he'd never seen before. It appeared to be bleeding off some of the velocity from the debris which impacted it. Maybe the field could be strengthened to stop the meteors in their tracks, but he didn't have time to play with something he didn't fully understand, and the last thing he wanted to do was power it down by mistake.
The shield was a welcome discovery, but it only protected the front part of the vessel. He needed to turn the ship to face into the oncoming swarm so that the meteors would be slowed by the shield, and impact on the thicker forward hull, rather than on the relatively unprotected sides. In fact, given the increasing number of pebble impacts he could hear pinging and scraping against the hull, he'd better make that his first priority.
He tapped the nav functions on his console, bringing up the controls for the manoeuvring thrusters. He'd never piloted anything this massive before; he'd have to be very, very careful not to overcompensate.
Gently he pivoted the ship about its centre, easing it into the new orientation with tiny nudges. His entire body was tense with the effort of keeping the corrections small, very aware that every motion would have to be exactly countered in order to leave the ship dead-on to the swarm.
The sound of pebbles and dust against the hull decreased and died as he slowly coaxed the dead weight around, but it was replaced by the occasional clang of a larger rock as the ship moved deeper into the meteor swarm.
Finally, sweating and finger-cramped, Duo was satisfied with the trim of the ship. He locked down the nav controls, but he didn't relax. The ship was continuing to take minor damage, and he still had to face the thickest part of the swarm.
And speaking of which... He switched one screen to an outside view, to get a better idea of what he was facing - computer-generated numbers just didn't cut it sometimes. Duo caught his breath as he realized the size and composition of the cloud of meteors.
He checked his projected course against what he was seeing on the screen. He was headed right for the centre of the meteors, where the largest ones - the shattered core of the asteroid - were. Given the number, size, and concentration of the meteors he'd encounter on the way, he knew he couldn't possibly make it through to the other side.
Although now facing directly into oncoming meteors, the ship was moving sideways and down relative to them, still on its original course. A sideswiping collision could still cause major damage to the thinner lateral hull. What he really needed was some sort of weapon, to destroy the meteors moving into his path.
He hunted quickly through the bewildering array of lights and switches around him for anything under a clear, raised panel - the standard method of protecting equipment which could be used offensively from being accidentally armed or fired.
'Particle Beam Array' - now that sounded useful. He reached for it, staggering as an impact shook the cockpit. He raised the cover, flipped all the switches to 'on,' and routed the operating functions to the main console in front of him.
He had four, fully-charged, side-mounted, particle beam generators, alternating fore and aft around the long axis of the ship. The arrangement insured he'd be able to bring up to three generators to bear on a single target, depending on its bearing relative to the ship. Each generator had a decent energy output, and could fire a focussed, high-energy beam, or with the flick of a switch, a more diffuse surge.
The generators and shield together brought his chance of survival up from 'no hope in Hell' to 'touch and go.' He would have to let the shield handle the smaller particles, blast the medium-sized ones, and avoid the largest rocks as best he could.
He hoped it would be enough.
There was no time to get comfortable with the controls; there were four mid-sized meteors approaching, and he had to do something about them now.
He flicked the two generators on the leading side of the ship to their highest setting, and began carving the first two meteors into smaller pieces. He was partway through when the larger rock exploded, blasting chunks in every direction. Several pieces of debris impacted the ship, shutting down the sensors in one section.
Duo swore and cut off the beams from both generators. Clearing a flight path was imperative, but did he dare continue? Could it be that these were not meteors at all, but some sort of space mines?
He considered as he set the manoeuvring jets to spin the ship, taking one of the almost-spent generators to the following side of the ship and bringing a fresh one to the leading edge.
A moment's thought revealed the answer to the riddle. He had known that meteors were made up of rock and ice, but hadn't thought what rapid heating of that mixture could mean until he had seen it demonstrated. The ice in the centre of the meteor had vaporized under the onslaught of the particle beam, and the expanding gas had ripped the meteor apart.
Duo grinned. "Just like an egg in a microwave!’
He still had 30% power in one generator, and a fully-charged one was just coming up over the horizon of the ship as it rotated. He set the fore gun to wide spread and let it play over the next two meteors in line, testing the limits of what he had learned.
He found that if he used the diffuse beam on the shiny meteors - the ones with a higher ice content - he could make them explode much more quickly than if he used the high-powered beam to cut his way through each one. Exploding them quickly also meant that they blew up farther away from the ship, and decreased the damage. Even better, he could sometimes cover a group with one shot.
He left both fore generators on dispersed beam, bathing all the meteors which would intersect his flight path in an energetic test of their microwaveable-eggness. With a bit of experimentation, he was able to find a beam intensity which depleted the generator just before the ship's rotation took it behind the curve of the hull and out of firing position, ready to recharge during the return trip up the other side.
The aft generators he fired in short, focussed bursts, blasting apart any meteor that made it past the diffuse beam. Sometimes he blew the meteor to fragments, sometimes the force of the shot alone was enough to alter the meteor's path sufficiently to take it out of impact range.
Destroying multiple targets in zero G was a familiar exercise, but long distance shooting was quite different from the close-combat scythe he had used during the wars. The good thing, of course, was that meteors didn't try to shoot back, or even dodge his shots. The bad thing was that they were like Mobile Dolls - they didn't get tired, or demoralized by their companions' destruction - they just kept coming.
Duo had known from the start that he couldn't possibly get through the horde without damage to the ship. Rocks clanged and rang against the hull, and individual sensors blacked out with depressing regularity.
He had been hoping that there might be someone else on board who could get started on repairs, but the comm was silent. No one called demanding to know what was going on, no damage reports came in from the crew. Was he flying a ghost ship? Was he the only one left alive after some sort of attack? Or, given the huge vessel and the nearby planet, maybe this was a colony ship, and he was just the only one awake. Maybe his holds were filled with sleeping human cargo, and enough equipment to start a community on another world.
He forgot his musings when he caught sight of the remains of the asteroid at the centre of the swarm. Four monster rocks - even the smallest of them bigger than his ship - were tumbling towards him in ponderous silence. Direct contact with any one of those behemoths would surely destroy his fragile vessel.
Strangely, although the size of the meteors had been increasing the closer he got to the centre of the swarm, the area around these largest meteors was home to very small debris, not the mid-sized meteors he had been blasting. With a chill, Duo realized why - any meteors drifting close to those huge boulders had been smashed to bits, the remnants either pulverized to dust or flung back out as the tiny bits he could see.
It was frustrating - except for the whacking great meteors in the middle, that field of pebbles and dust was the safest route through the centre of the swarm.
His original velocity had been diminished slightly - the classic physics 'equal and opposite reaction' equation meant that the repeated firing of the generators on the leading side of the ship had acted as a brake. What that meant in real terms was that, instead of heading for multiple glancing collisions with all four of the asteroid-remnants as he hit and bounced and was eventually destroyed, he was now looking at a direct impact with the last one of the bunch. Of course, with the size of that sucker, his ship was toast anyway.
And yet... he watched that last huge meteor, stealing glances at it between the slicing and blasting which occupied his hands and eyes. It was quite elongated, flipping end over end with a wobble. As each end came swinging mercilessly down, the wobble ensured that it followed a slightly different path than the last time, giving it a corkscrew motion which had cleared away all the debris around it in an almost perfect sphere.
Duo didn't have to check the readouts to know that his ship didn't have enough velocity to make it past the giant meteor between the downward swoop of one end and the other. The asteroid was simply too wide, his ship too slow. If he sped up to get past the big meteor then he would end up going too fast - he wouldn't have time to clear the smaller rocks out of his way before he hit them.
He cut at the meteors in his way, thinking hard. He refused to give up. There had to be some way through, some answer, some flight path... He didn't have the fuel to go around the swarm's core, so he'd have to go through. He didn't have the firepower to blast the huge meteor out of his way, so he'd have to go around it. He didn't have the speed to get past it without getting hit, and the shield wasn't enough to protect him, so he'd... he'd...
He'd end up getting smashed into atoms.
He blasted two more meteors to dust.
OK, look at the situation differently - backwards, sideways, inside out, upside down...
Upside down...
He literally gasped as the idea hit him - he could flip the ship nose over tail, following the asteroid's motion, and so avoid being hit by either end. He would have to use up precious fuel to do it, but not nearly as much as any of the other options he'd already discarded.
He kept his eyes on the meteors he was destroying and his hands on the generators' controls, but his mind was racing, estimating fuel consumption and trajectory. It was impossible to actually pivot around the same point as the asteroid - the centre of gravity was buried deep inside the rocky mass. He would have to fly a tight spiral instead, keeping as close to the asteroid's surface as possible to conserve fuel.
Keeping the ship floating 'above' the asteroid's surface as it flipped, while simultaneously adjusting for the ship's spin and lateral motion would be tricky. It was a good thing he was a damned fine pilot...
Re-entering the swarm on the other side of the cleared area would bring its own dangers. If he didn't finish the nose-over-tail flip completely, the body of the ship wouldn't be aligned behind the shield, and the oncoming meteors would have a free shot at the ship's unprotected sides. It would suck big time to fly past the asteroid perfectly and then get whacked by a smaller meteor on the other side.
He ran the calcs in his head as his fingers danced over the array controls, adjusting the aim of the wide beam, cutting through a stubborn rock with the narrow beam. How much of a flip would he be able to complete in the time it took him to cross from one side of the dust field to the other?
The answer he got wasn't great. Even flipping faster than the asteroid - catching up to the end moving away from the ship - wouldn't be enough to let him line up the ship behind the shield before re-entering the swarm. It was virtually certain that he'd be hit with sufficient force to breach the hull before he could get back into position.
Well, he'd just have to make sure he destroyed any meteors around his planned re-entry point as he was crossing the empty area. It was his only chance.
The big meteor was coming up fast - he'd have to get the ship moving before he got there. Duo fired the lateral thrusters in turn as the ship rotated, starting to bring the entire ship down a trifle, in order to duck under the asteroid's pivot point.
He cleared the space along his new flight path, destroying anything larger than a pebble. He had to start the end-over-end flip now, before he reached the asteroid, and he didn't want to collide with anything when the tail moved out from behind the shield.
He brought the main engines on line, angling the exhaust vents to their maximum lateral sweep. The manoeuvring jets would work well enough to keep the nose steady, but to get the tail moving at sufficient velocity would take the mains. He fired a long burn, adjusting the thrusters at the nose to compensate.
At first, there was that dreadful moment when the ship seemed to have no reaction to the powerful force shoving it, when the inertia of its deadweight seemed to doom it to certain death. Then, slowly, slowly, the tail began to swing.
"C'mon, c'mon!"
Duo willed the ship to move faster. He blasted one last rock out of the way and then set the generators to recharge - he'd need them all in a few moments.
The ship burst into the cleared area. The asteroid was rushing at him, the top end coming down, the bottom falling away, and the middle threatening to run right over him. He hit the manoeuvring jets again, bringing the nose down slightly.
He could hear dust rattling and screeching against the ship's sides as the aft end dipped lower and lower. He kept the burn on - the asteroid was sweeping down with ruthless speed. Ponderously, the ship began to pivot on its nose. The huge mass of the asteroid was also pivoting, the centre cruising by just above the bow of the ship.
Gradually, the ship picked up speed, the tail beginning to pull away from the elongated end of the asteroid that had been sweeping down to crush it.
Duo kept track of his rotational velocity carefully. He needed to be faster than the asteroid at this point, so he could complete as much of the flip as possible before re-entering the swarm. He cut the main engines when the tail of the ship swung past the fallover point. That should give him enough residual momentum to finish the job.
With one hand, he used the lateral thrusters to keep the nose aimed at the pivot point of the asteroid, and the tail swinging in the correct course. With the other, he flipped on the two generators on the leading side of the ship and started clearing an entry spot in the swarm. He was firing at a longer range than he had been previously, but he would need the extra time to blast everything larger than dust out of his way.
The ship was still spinning on its long axis, and Duo had to keep switching generators and thrusters to keep up with the motion. When it came time to brake the ship, he found himself wishing for an extra pair of hands and eyes - preferably attached to Heero, although Quatre was also an excellent pilot and Trowa would have no trouble blasting multiple targets...
He shook his head to clear the chatter from his mind and the sweat-damp bangs from his eyes. He flicked the main engines to life again, this time angled to brake the ship.
Again, he experienced that nerve-wracking moment when the ship didn't seem to respond, the tail rushing to overtake the other end of the asteroid. He kept the burn on, adjusting the angle of mains as the ship rotated, letting the nose rise a bit now to help line up the ship.
The tail was still out of position when the ship slid out of the asteroid's shadow and back into the swarm. Duo had blasted a clear entryway, but he was still coaxing the ship level. He was firing again now, too, blasting chunks of rock out of his path.
Finally, he cut the main engines and used the manoeuvring jets to nudge the tail into position behind the nose shield again, but he didn't dare relax. Larger rocks seemed to be more common in this trailing end of the cloud, and his eyes and hands were in constant motion.
One meteor got too close - a rogue within the cloud, travelling faster than its fellows and barging unexpectedly into the area he had just cleared. He stabbed at the generator controls, blasting the rogue apart with one shot, and then nailing three of the remnants thrown toward the ship. But the meteor had been too close and moving too fast, and he just didn't have time to blast the fourth, smallest, fragment before it impacted - with malicious accuracy - on the forward beam generator.
The wide-spread beam that had been playing over the approaching meteors winked out, and Duo swore. He couldn't hope to destroy all the meteors in his path now, not without the full complement of beam generators.
He would have to try to fly an evasive course, using the manoeuvring jets - something that would take careful long-range planning, given how slow this huge ship was to respond. He could almost wish for Zero...
Well, no, not that horror, but where was Quatre when he needed him? He made a mental note to find Q-ball's counterpart in this universe and chew him out.
He descended into a nightmare of unrelenting effort. It was not unlike a battle when 'Scythe had taken damage, in a way. It was all threat, movement, reaction - eyes, brain and hands working together to guide the ship to safety.
There was no room for anything beyond the moment - shoot and shoot again, aiming on the fly. Ease the ship up with the jets. Ignore that one, it's too small. Adjust the angle of the remaining wide beam. Fire! Fire! Ahh, remnant scraping the sides but no hull breach, it's OK. Switch generators - set the spent one to recharge. Blink the sweat from straining eyes.
Fire! Missed it, fire again! Too close - impact!! Wince at the hull breach siren's wailing. Bulkheads sealing automatically, hull integrity restored - hope no one died in there.
Fire, and fire again. Out of energy on the starboard side - roll the ship and fire the port side beam. Check the fuel - have to keep enough to brake into orbit. Course correction - ha! blast that rock with the lateral jets. One quick burst of the lateral thrusters to kill the upward momentum, slide in between two bigger rocks - shoot! shoot! - and begin a downward arc that would put the ship back on course.
Shoot, manoeuvre, fire, spin, swear, fire, fire again and again and again...
And then, miraculously, there were only little rocks to shoot, then pebbles, and then only the fingernails-on-blackboard sound of dust skittering against the ship's metal skin.
Duo took a deep breath, and then another, checking his screens. It looked like he was in the clear; he was moving away from the swarm of meteors. He locked down the beam generators and reset the proximity alarm with shaking hands - he was jittery with the after-effects of too much adrenaline.
According to the navigation display, his trajectory was just within acceptable limits for the flight plan, and he was coming up on his final course correction.
He switched the main screen to show the upcoming planet, and caught his breath. Huge and red, Mars filled the display, seeming to roll by right outside the window.
A soft beeping reminded him of the course correction - the vital, last, fine-tuning before braking for orbit - and he switched off the distracting display. He eased the ship around with the manoeuvring thrusters, one careful burst at a time. As soon as he had the ship on the correct heading, he began the delicate process of braking, balancing gravity and thrust to produce a geosynchronous orbit.
It was exacting work, but after the events of the past hour, it was almost ridiculously easy.
He was tired and tense by the time he finished, but he was satisfied that the ship was where it was supposed to be, with fuel to spare for orbit maintenance. He locked down the nav controls and sank back in his chair, trying to relax his tight shoulders.
He just had time to wonder what he should do next - was there a crew to notify? a passenger list to check? cargo to unload? - when the screens before him went blank, the console displays dying and muted lighting coming up in the cabin. Crap, now the power had gone?
A pneumatic hiss from behind him had him whirling in his seat, raising his hand against the sudden bright light that streamed in through the door that had opened.
"Not bad," said a female voice. "I thought sure you were doomed when you panicked and let the autopilot take you into the asteroid field."
He knew that voice - Noin! Blinking, Duo squinted past Noin's silhouette and through the doorway. As his eyes adjusted to the brighter light, he could see the inside of what looked like a hangar, with people bustling about.
He grappled with the impossibility of what he was seeing until the penny dropped. He felt the tension drain out of him abruptly, leaving him feeling weak as a noodle.
He was in a simulator. It had all been a training run.
End Page 39
(:./wingnut/alter39)
