10-Jun-2000
Title: Breaking Predestination 5/?
Author: TB
Archive: yes please GW Addiction
Catagory: AU, some yaoi
Pairing(s): R+1, 2x1, 5xSally and other pairings that
haven't come in yet but will, even if they're not the
focus
Rating: R
Warnings: The confusion should be clearing now;
language and unhappiness still apply
Spoilers: yes
Notes: This fic takes place in AC 202. I am borrowing
heavily from Star Trek for spacey stuff and
military-ish ranks and whatnought. Also, I now have a
pic of Captain Maxwell up on my web page. If you have
some spare time to be bored in, go check it out! ^_^
Feedback: please and thank you!
Notes: Hi hi! Well it's finally finished--the first major
hurdle of this fic -_-; My beta readers will no doubt
be utterly amazed by the content of this
chapter--because NONE of it resembles the rough draft
I sent them! Thanks to the many kind people who helped
me out, among them Marsh and Meqa (whose quick replies
were helpful in the decision to scrap that draft). But
anyway, here it is, revised, rewritten, and to my
satisfaction if not my boundless joy, part 5. Thank
you to everyone who has replied to this fic. It really
makes a body feel special! Love to everyone! ~TB
Disclaimers: I don't own GW, and I'm not profiting by
using it, so please don't sue me. I'm a big crybaby
and I'd probably just annoy you with my hysterical
sobbing all through prosecution.
Quatre's fingers flew over the keyboard of his laptop, sending numerous emails and dozens of copies whirring off to all regions of the globe and the colonies. When the last bit of business was seen to, he sighed with relief and firmly shut down the bane of his life, leaving it to charge in peace under his seat on the shuttle.
Zechs Merquise looked up from his magazine, and offered a smile. "All done?" he asked.
"Amazingly enough." The Arabian stretched his arms over his head, relishing the clearly audible pops from his spine and shoulders. "Just as well, too. I want to have my mind completely clear for this meeting. I'm so pleased that you asked me to join you, Zechs."
"Not at all." The tall Preventer laid aside his reading and regarded Quatre with a look that was more serious. "It's not everyday that one has access to an empath--or manages to drag him away from his business. All thanks go to you."
"You might be saying something else by the end of the day," Quatre returned with a grimace. "I may not be all that useful. After all, I don't know these people, and the satellite has a good-sized population. There might be a lot of... " He searched for a word to describe the problem. "Interference," he settled on.
"Interference?" Zechs looked intrigued. "You speak of it as if your abilities were--some kind of homing device."
"'My abilities' as you call them are really beyond my control," he warned. "The emotions have to be very strong for me to feel them. And sometimes, if there's too *much* feeling around me, it all becomes scrambled, and that part of me just... shuts off."
"Basically, it's a gamble, is what you're saying." Zechs raised a feathery eyebrow. "Well, then I'll have to rely on your more prosaic gifts--you're far better known for your ability to judge a person's character, and your observations, coupled with mine, will give a broader perspective to my report back to HQ."
Quatre nodded, and laid his head back to catch just a few moments of relaxation before they docked at Reubena. After a while, he said, smiling, "It's terribly exciting, though, isn't it? This is history, happening right before our eyes."
Zechs grinned. "I think you might be saying something else by the end of the day," he teased. "Haven't you had enough history in the past seven years?"
The docking engineers were friendly and helpful, remembering Zechs from his infrequent visits and familiar with Quatre's widely known name. A young woman oblingly examined Zechs' authorisation to see the "quarantined" Angel-5 crew, and led them to the a lift that would take them to the correct level. Quatre chatted easily with her, allowing Zechs to take silent stock of the satellite's mood. It was clear that no one on the station knew that the battered ship docked here was from the future. Apparently, Captain Maxwell's men had simple cloistered themselves in quarters right beside the the hold where their ship was undergoing repairs, and kept to themselves. Not altogether a bad idea, Zechs mused.
The lift doors opened, and the friendly woman waved them out. "Good luck," she called.
Quatre was looking around with a certain amount of curiosity. "You know," he said, "It's awfully bare here. I wonder if anyone has looked into making it more comfortable for all the people who have to dock here?"
Zechs shot a glance at the other man, positive that he was being had--but the look of sincerity in the Arabian's face forestalled any comment. Well, just a little bit more evidence that Maxwell was telling the truth. Zechs would have bet a great deal of money that in about a year, Quatre Winner would own this satellite, just as the Captain had claimed he would.
A man in a stained and worn jacket passed the lift, then stopped and came back when he saw there were people by it. "What are you doing here?" he demanded.
Zechs answered him. "We're here from Earth. We've come to see how the repairs to your ship are going."
"It's none of your business," was the brusque answer. "Who are you with?" His eyes searched Zechs' person, looking for a badge or mark of indentification. The tall blonde produced a Preventers collar pin, and the man grudgingly allowed that it looked official. "Did you get permission from the Captain?" he asked suspiciously.
"Of course," Zechs replied smoothly. It wasn't *entirely* a lie--Zechs had, after all, gotten permission from *his* captain--Lady Une. The man relaxed, and muttered something that sounded like, "Well, just stay out of the way. It's busy, here, and whoever isn't working is trying to rest."
Quatre's polite tenor interjected. "I was wondering," he said almost conversationally, "if you could show us to your highest ranking officer? Whoever is in charge? A courtesy call, you understand. We don't want to offend anyone by seeming to overlook their authority."
That pleased the man. Zechs silently scored one for the ever-diplomatic Winner executive, as he followed the gesture that invited them deeper into the Angel-5 crew's level. As the man had indicated, there was little to see--here and there a weary-looking crewman stumbled into or out of his bedroom, but there was no activity in the halls. All that changed once they reached the cargo hold.
"Take a head count," Zechs muttered to his companion. His own first estimate put the crew at around sixty. Large for a transport or trading vessel--small for a fully outfitted war ship. Angel-5 did not impress him; it was a fairly old design, had seen better days--probably before Zechs had taken leave of his mother's womb--and in several places appeared to be literally falling apart.
Their guide returned, bringing with him a thin young man carrying a high-powered welding torch and wearing a protective face guard. This was removed as the young man approached.
Zechs started to hold out his hand; and his voice caught in his throat. Mouth hanging open, he stared at the boy in front of him--the double of the man he'd flown to the satellite with.
"Lieutenant Commander Winner," the teenager introduced himself disinterestedly. "It's a pleasure. Stay out of our way and don't touch anything--"
Quatre turned from his head count, and he froze. "Allah," he whispered, strangled.
Shai Winner turned toward that voice, and his blue eyes widened. "Dad!"
Maxwell took the coffee offered to him by Noin, and swallowed a large gulp. The scalding liquid seemed to wake him up a little. "Thanks," he said.
"Not a problem." Noin sat across from the Captain in the informal meeting room that Une had chosen for this morning's meeting; sofas and overstuffed couches replaced the stiff-backed chairs of the formal room, and a knee-level table, battered and with one leg propped up by a book, contributed to a much less intimidating atmosphere. Une could be a very wise woman.
Hirde looked half-dead. Coffee wasn't doing much to revive her; and Maxwell was being much more solicitous of her this morning than he had the day before. One of his hands inconspicuously rubbed her tense back, and he often watched her when he spoke. Noin, looking at them, felt rather left out by the closeness she sensed between them (the way other people had often explained they felt around her and Zechs, but it was one thing to hear it and another to experience it).
A little after eight, Une arrived with Sally and Wufei, who she had met in the hallway. The two Chinese Preventers looked rather more fresh than the others; as a team, they were cool-head, practical, and almost humming in anticipation of learning more about the strange circumstances they found themselves in.
Une was blunt. She took a seat on one of the couches facing Maxwell. "I've contacted President Brussels," she told him, arranging her long legs in front of her, "and notified him of your presence here. He has given the Preventers the authority to deal with you."
"Deal with us?" Maxwell seemed amused by that phrase. "We're neither hostile entities requiring negotiating tactics, or a problem that needs solving. We've been honest with you."
"Maybe honest, but not as generous with your information as you might be," Wufei interjected. He had settled on the couch, and his wife perched on the arm of the couch beside him. "He's right," she added. "You've told us very little, when it comes right to it."
"That's what today's meeting is for, isn't?" Maxwell shrugged off his reticence. "Where is Heero?"
"Right here." The door opened, and Heero Yuy entered. His eyes met the Captain's for a moment; it was Maxwell who looked away, to Hirde, who refused to look at either of them. Heero quietly took up a position against the wall.
Maxwell, flustered for a moment by that odd exchange which had the Preventers glancing at each other with raised eyebrows, gathered his thoughts and launched straight to the point.
"Relena Peacecraft is in serious danger," he said.
Immediate tension filled the room.
"In the year AC 202, Relena Peacecraft was assassinated," Hirde told them softly. "Her death brought about the greatest bloodbath in the history of humanity. It didn't happen right away--it wasn't even a direct result of her death. But the war that began--will begin--has gone on, with no end in sight--all of that started with the demoralisation her death brought to the Earth and the colonies."
"Relena was so well-respected," Maxwell murmured, staring down at his boots. "Well-loved, I'd even say. Her dedication to peace and coexistence between Space and Earth were legendary."
"When she died, there were no real successors to her stand against militarism," the Commander continued. "Political dissendents had a chance to be heard, because people were willing to listen. No one else grabbed a crowd quite the way Relena did. So there were a number of groups, some violent, some non-violent, some just--dissatisfied, all vying for dominance in the governments, all butting heads over ideology or protocol, all escalating their protests until one day, everything snapped."
"War was not immediately declared," Maxwell paused to note. "We were still a generation that had seen the kind of devestation and horror that war brings. We didn't want to take that step. In the end, that's what gave the aggressors their chance to wipe out so many of their enemies before the real conflict even began."
Noin guessed, "And so there wasn't anyone around when an attack *did* come, right?"
"There were people around," Maxwell corrected. "The pacifist era was over by 216. L2 had been training and supplying a colony defence fleet for about two decades. My ship, Angel-5, is a part of that fleet. Some of the other colonies had similar fleets. Ships don't have the maneuverability of mobile suits, but there were laws strictly forbidding the production of suits. Consequently, the few that were still around were old and outmatched. On Earth, it was worse. Vigilanteeism, the kind of guerrilla hit-and-run tactics that the Resistance to OZ employed during the War of 195, was having devestating results. Whole populations gone. Nations ruined. Sank, Relena's kingdom, was preserved... for a while. But nothing survives a war of seven years. Not with the kind of technology we have."
Heero frowned. "What are you saying?" he demanded softly. "Don't mince words."
Hirde flashed him a hard look. "You want it blunt?" she retorted. "Fine. Earth--gone. The colonies--gone. All of humanity is just drifting in space now, and let me tell you, it's lonely out there. There is *nothing* left but battle and slow death."
Maxwell, for once, did not try to silence her. He gave maybe a minute for her harsh words to sink in--and then he quietly added, "Perhaps you understand, now, why we felt we had no choices left. When the idea of jumping time was raised again, it quickly became imperative that our plan succeed. Otherwise, in a few decades--what's the phrase? 'Civilisation as we know it.' Everything we know, everything that we have fought for and loved and died for, will be gone. The only possible measure we can take now is to destroy our time before it happens."
The silence this time was haunted.
Une broke it with her cool, calm voice. She had spent the night coming to grips with this future; all of it was outlined, in agonised detail, in the papers Maxwell had delivered to her from her future self. "Tell me now," she said, "tell me now what your plan is."
Maxwell nodded. "In three weeks, Relena will die."
"Unless... we do something to stop her assassination," Wufei guessed, catching on.
Something had stiffened in Heero's spine as he, too, made the connection. "Where?" he demanded briefly.
"Sank," Maxwell replied, "in her own home, the night of her birthday celebration. The assassin stood in the crowd, and fired a bullet through her left breast, and a second bullet through her right temple, in the middle of a speech she was giving from a raised platform at the head of the room."
The chilling scene played itself out in several imaginations while Heero asked another clipped question. "Who?"
"A former resistance fighter. He felt he'd been wronged by Relena's political actions and attitudes." Maxwell paused. "He--killed himself, after he shot her. He didn't wait around to be questioned."
Une nodded slowly. "You came back in time to... stop this from happening. You think that by saving Relena Peacecraft's life, you can alter the future?"
Hirde said, "We do."
"It seems that's something we can all agree on," Noin replied grimly.
Heero stared at Maxwell. The Captain was once again staring down at his boots, his greying hair falling forward to hide his eyes, his hands clasped between his knees.
"Then we'd better get to Sank," Sally murmured. "Seems clear enough to me."
Maxwell let out a sigh. "It's a start."
End Part 5
(:./erin/break5)
