11-Jan-2006
Title: Launch 5/?
Author: TB
Archive: GWA
Category: Yaoi
Pairing: 3x4
Disclaimer: The characters and storyline of Gundam Wing are used here
without permission. I do not profit by their use.
Rating: PG13
Spoilers: This story takes place three years after Endless Waltz and
will
reference it and the series.
Notes: This story was influenced by reruns of seaQuest: DSV. It is
not a
crossover with that series. I am not a marine biologist, but I live
with
one, so any mistakes are her fault. For anyone interested, Quatre's
symptoms as portrayed in this fic are related to mitral valve prolapse
syndrome, a congenital condition that affects predominantly women and
soldiers.
'We're not talking mandatory maximums here,' Quatre said, turning around and sticking his foot over the edge, fumbling blindly for the first rung on the ladder. He finally caught it, and began his descent to B Deck. He continued to speak, heedless of the confused look he caught from Dmitri Rosacis, one of the marine techs. 'Lowering the sales multiplier to three-seven put too much pressure on our reps in the field. We threw them into sales-based bonuses last year to cover a bad quarter and it's not WEI's policy to fluff profits by punishing its employees. Well, I don't agree. Target earnings don't exist to create unreasonable growth expectations. Sixty-eight million was achievable, eighty isn't.' He hit the deck, and had to go fifteen feet to the left to get the ladder to C Deck. He began the climb again. 'I'm not cutting from the bottom. This smells like bad leadership. I'm not letting go two engineers making seventy thousand a year when I can get rid of a VP making three-fifty and eliminate the source of the problem.'
He landed on C Deck, and ducked inside, the automatic door shutting behind him. Out of the sunlight, his skin began to tingle, meaning he'd probably been burned, definitely across the shoulders. He adjusted the microphone over his ear, and paused to glance up the metallic corridor to get his bearings. He headed to his right. 'That's the joy of being in charge, isn't it?' he retorted, lifting a hand to greet one of the graduate students passing by with a shallow bowl filled with sea water and coral samples. He got another look, but ignored it. 'No, put him through to me. I have time after three. Three thirty. No, I agree that ambition can be a virtue. I'm not trying to put the fear of God into anyone. I think my attitude has been remarkably consistent. I put my employees first.'
He passed the dry lab before he realised he had, and had to backtrack. Ehrlich, the woman he'd actually been looking for, was there, slumped in front of the underway data systems. She didn't look up at him when he entered, but one of the researchers quietly excused herself from the room. Quatre moved aside to let her pass, not noticing her jump when he said, 'We're not in an economic boom!'
He found himself one of the rolling stools and shoved it toward Ehrlich. She glanced up at him when he sat beside her; she looked good, slim but muscled in a dark blue bathing suit, her paprika hair in a tail low on the neck. Quatre himself wore only a pair of lycra trunks. The sun shone brightly from the starboard side ports. He put a hand over the microphone and in a low voice told her, 'I need to talk to you. I'm sorry to interrupt.'
In his ear, Badra demanded, 'Are you ignoring me? I said this isn't the time to get conservative.'
He moved his hand and leaned away from Ehrlich. 'I believe I'm trying to hold stable. Or I would have been except that now we've got production up, profit halved, and there's not enough sheet metal in the colonies to get us through all the sales.'
'All right,' she groused. 'You'll get that call from Bagot, three thirty on the dot if I have to flog him.'
'That's all I ask,' he told her. 'I have to go. I'm in a meeting.' He winked at Ehrlich, whose face didn't remotely acknowledge his joke. 'Good-bye.' He slipped off the earpiece and turned it off, rubbing the juncture of cartilage where it ached. 'Sorry,' he told Ehrlich. 'The bad calls always last forever.'
She turned back to her screen. 'You're going to walk into a wall one day when you're on that thing.'
'Or fall off the boat.' Quatre nodded toward the three flat screens that comprised the UDS. He rested an elbow on the counter that held it. 'What are you working on?'
Her eyes didn't lift from the keyboard. 'Mapping the fifty-foot coral mound from yesterday. Trying to make a half-way decent bathymetric image.'
There was a stack of fathometre transects of the South Sandwich Trench lying beside the computer. Quatre lifted them and leafed through. He said, 'I want you to do the first broadcast.'
The clicking of the keys stopped. Ehrlich rested her pointer fingers where they had halted, and her ponytail swung gently across her back as she turned her head toward him.
Quatre set the printouts back in their spot. He met her gaze calmly.
She said, 'What in all hell convinces you I can talk to children?'
He grinned at that. 'You're the Chief Biologist,' he reminded her. 'You can certainly order one of the graduate students to help you, but for our first broadcast, I think it would make the right impression to introduce the best we have on board.'
Her mouth, never smiling, dipped into a frown. 'Do you ever stop thinking about what you can get out of people?'
'I'll pretend you meant that in a nice way.'
She finally faced him. 'You didn't come all the way down to the dry lab to convince me to go on live. What do you want?'
Quatre idly scratched his chest, then dropped his hand with a sigh. 'I have a favour to ask you.'
'I'm sort of busy.'
'It's an easy favour.'
'Really?'
'I have no idea,' he admitted. 'I have a nephew who's interested in marine biology. I thought I might convince you to recommend the best programmes. As an insider.'
Ehrlich lifted an eyebrow. 'How old is this nephew?'
'Twenty-seven,' Quatre said. 'He's just sold his business. He says he wants to do something productive.'
She blinked. 'All right,' she agreed after a moment. 'I guess I can do that. Does he have any background in science?'
'Double honours in chemistry and modern languages as an undergraduate,' Quatre recalled. 'He's had a little trouble finding what he's good at.'
She leaned back on her stool, her expression darkening. 'Are you asking me to play guidance counselor to this kid? Why not just hand him some cash and send him to art school? Why me?'
'Because,' Quatre said, smiling broadly. 'I'm sitting in front of the Chief Biologist of the premier oceanic exploration team in the ESA. Who else am I going to ask?' He stood, rolling the stool back to the table where he'd gotten it. 'Suki's quarters tonight, for the game. It's not too late to join the pool for Notre Dame. Stephan bet lobster dinner for the entire crew.'
He was almost at the door when her voice stopped him. He turned back to watch her say to the UDS, 'You're not just 'one of the guys,' you know.'
He wasn't sure how to answer that. 'I sort of thought I was,' he said at last. 'No?'
After a moment, she swivelled her stool to face him. 'No. You try hard, but you're the outsider.'
'This colonial business?' he demanded. 'I'm not the only one on the ship. Louis Timmins is from L1. Nishi Bheruhmal is from L3.'
'It's because you bought the damn ship,' she snapped. 'It's because you're always trying to do things for people. Like everything is a transaction! Because you can't sit through a meal without having to answer five calls. Because half the news coverage we get for this project is about your involvement.'
His shoulders were tense and tight, and he made a conscious effort to relax them, to keep his hands immobile at his sides. 'If I didn't know better, I'd think you resented me,' he said. 'And I'm sorry, but I can't do anything about that.'
She made a contemptuous noise. Stung, he glared at her, but she turned her back on him. His gut told him to leave the room before it got worse, but his head and feet weren't listening. He was back across the room before he knew it, in her space where she couldn't dismiss him. He kept his voice low, but he couldn't keep the heat out of it.
'You seem to be under the impression that I'm some kind of-- of sleazy, lazy rich boy,' he said. 'I do have a lot of money, that's true. I earned most of it, but I don't think that's your problem. Your problem is that I don't give it all away and live like a hermit. That I didn't devote my life to doing the hard research for the small rewards and the esteem of my peers, like you did. That's the basis of your objections to me, isn't it? Would I upset you less if I were a--a poet, or something? Anything but someone who runs a business for profit?'
She didn't meet his eyes until the last word. When she did, hers looked like blue steel.
'My grandfather built WEI out of a few government contracts,' he told her. 'He gave it to my father five times the size it was when it was created. My father worked his entire life to make it even bigger. So have I.'
'Good for you,' she sneered. 'I'm surprised they haven't nominated you for a Nobel. It's so generous of you to be interested in science, so kind of you to donate to charities. You talk a big game about putting the people first, but it's all corporate bullshit!'
'You don't understand the first thing about me or my motives,' he corrected her hotly. 'You think I talk a big game? My father put me in charge of my first company when I was thirteen. Asteroid mining. In the first quarter I almost ran it into the ground. The trustees wanted to cut two hundred jobs. Well, my father made me do it personally. Two hundred people, all losing their livelihood because of my mistakes. That's what I think about when I try to 'do things' for people. I think about the families I destroyed when I lost those jobs. I think about the miners going home and having to tell their children that it'll be okay, somehow.'
She was biting her lip when he made himself stop. 'I'm sorry,' she said, lower than him and more strained. 'I didn't know that.'
He looked her, thinking not for the first time that she was every doubt he'd ever had about himself made into a walking accusation. 'Do you know how many people WEI employs currently?' he asked her. 'In the colonies, it's about two and a half million people. On Earth, the figure is closer to eight. That makes me personally responsible to ten and a half million people. Some of them are scientists, some of them are lawyers, and some of them are probably corrupt managers trying to line their own pockets. But most of them are fifteen-credit-an-hour, two-and-three-job people like those miners. I think it ought to be easier and better for them and I spend most of my day trying to make it that way, but I don't see how it gets any better if I sell all my worldly possessions, give up my titles and move into a cardboard box under the highway. If I'm not doing it, someone who cares less might, and I don't find that an acceptable solution.'
Ehrlich was struggling with it. 'I just--' She pushed to her feet, glaring at him when he didn't move back. 'I just feel like you've got a hand in everything, and everything new you look at you start trying to fit into your grand scheme. I can't move on this ship without being reminded of something you did to it. For it. Whatever. And it kills me to think that you have all of it because you were born into it!'
'Designed,' he said flatly. 'Actually.'
Her mouth closed hard.
'Didn't know that either,' he guessed. 'You think I don't have days where I resent it too? There was never going to be a way for me to choose out.'
He hadn't meant to say that. It was more personal than he wanted to be with this woman who still, after four weeks of close acquaintance, had made no effort to be friendly, to be understanding, to welcome his presence in any way. He'd had absolutely no intention of revealing his secret shame, a confession he had never even made to his family.
'Forget it,' he made himself say, as politely as possible. 'You've got a right to your feelings. I'm sorry if I made it sound like I didn't respect that.' His lips were dry, and he licked them. 'And forget about the thing with my nephew. He can do the research on his own.' He pulled himself together, and nodded his good-bye. He made to leave, realised he'd left his earpiece on the counter, and went back for it. He couldn't quite look at Ehrlich as he passed her a second time. He had never been more grateful for the existence of a door than when he passed through the one closing him off from the dry lab.
He turned the corner, and ran head-on into Suki. She grinned at him, reaching up to wiggle her cap suggestively. 'Going to be a killer game tonight!' she cheered.
He found a grin somewhere, and plastered it on. 'I'm sure it will be,' he replied. 'I'm terribly sorry, but something's come up. I don't think I'll make it to the game.'
Her face fell. 'Really? Quatre, that's awful.'
'You'll never even notice I'm gone,' he assured her. He touched her elbow in apology, and awkwardly manouevred them about so he could continue down the corridor. 'I can't wait to hear how it goes. Don't let anyone surprise me!'
'Well, try to make it if you can,' she called after him. He waved without looking back, and dodged for the stairwell down to the crew cabins. He managed to avoid meeting anyone else between the stairs and his own bunk, threw the door closed, and stood staring at it for a long time.
Not one of the guys. There was going to be a day, Quatre thought, staring at his blank wood-paneled walls, when comments like that didn't shrivel him down to the lonely little boy he'd once been. It was clearly a long way off.
He thought about calling Duo or Wufei, maybe even Trowa, and remembered he had to stay open for three thirty. He put himself down for a short nap, instead, and wondered why he felt so tired suddenly. He fell asleep listening to his own pulse.
He was up again and working on the language of a contract for a business he was negotiating to buy. He'd gotten down to the minutia of transferred debts, and the words and numbers were swimming before his eyes. It was well past midnight, and the empty top deck was calling him, though he was trying very hard not to listen.
He reached too quickly for his water glass, and gasped when he felt like he'd been stabbed in the chest. The pain was so sudden that it brought tears to his eyes, but it was gone only seconds later. His heart had barely had time to react to the onslaught, and didn't even speed its beating.
He hadn't had an attack like that in years. 'It must be anxiety,' he said aloud, needing to hear the innocuous reasoning. He made sure he took his pill that night, worried that he couldn't remember whether he'd done so the night before. He went to his bed without looking at the contract again, and promised to schedule himself more time away from business.
End Part 5
(:./erin/launch5)
