Author: PlaidDragon
Pairings: None
Warnings: General, OC
Rating: PG
Disclaimer (lite): Not mine. Not yours either, which makes me feel a little better, since we're all in the same boat, paddling upstream with a tennis racquet. No financial gain here. (I wish.)
Careers
I enlisted just before my group hit the top of the conscription list. Didn't particularly want to join the Alliance forces; I have nothing against the Colonies personally. Hell, supposedly I was born on one. But the story was that enlistees got a better deal than those who waited to be conscripted, and I figured if I had to go, and yeah, I pretty much had to go, then I might as well try for something decent, rather than loading fuel or scraping hulls.
So, I ended up here, in an admin section. At first it was okay. I just sat at my terminal for eight hours a day, feeding in statistics and requisitions. A couple of months ago, things began to change. We got a new CO; some hard-charger with delusions of grandeur and an eye to the main chance.
Rumor is that this guy was a classmate of Treize Khushrenada's and that his nose is severely out of joint because Treize is now practically god, while Mr. If-I-Was-Running-Things is still just a major. Anyway, the base went from being a pleasant backwater to kill time in, to a super secret... something.
That's part of why I was standing in this particular corridor with a handful of hardcopy datasheets compiled from various information sources. Major IIWRT was in the room across the hall, interrogating a prisoner and he required all the information my section could find on the guy, and he required it instantly.
I really did not want to be there. Not only because the only thing I'd been able to find was one very grainy - even after enhancement - possible surveillance photo, but because I could hear the prisoner screaming, even through the damn steel door.
According to my interpretation of the rules of war, you're not allowed to make prisoners scream, regardless of what they supposedly did. Then again, I'm just a lowly clerk, so what do I know?
The door opened and the major stepped out, wiping sweat from his face with a lace handkerchief. That's another thing I don't get about some of these guys; this whole 18th century CE thing that they have going. The fancy coats and the fruity pants thing. Do they have any idea how absurd that looks on guys with beer guts and bird legs?
I'll concede that Khushrenada looks good in uniform, and the Lightning Count carries it off well too, but most of the rest of these guys... It's all I can do not to laugh when some pompous lard butt like Major IIWRT comes strutting in wearing his 'fancies'.
The major's face was beet red and he looked a couple of ticks away from a coronary or a stroke, suggesting that for all the noise coming from the prisoner, he wasn't giving anything away.
The major muttered obscenely under his breath, then spotted me.
"Hah! Now we'll find out what we're dealing with!" he crowed. I swallowed. Shit, I hope he wouldn't blame the messenger, but knowing him...
"Um... Yes sir," I saluted. "We weren't able to find very much, sir." Like next to nothing. "I don't think it'll be very helpful."
He... smirked at me. "All we need are one or two details; just enough to put a crack in his damned armor." He folded his handkerchief carefully and tucked it into his sleeve, then arranged the lace at his throat and sleeves. "What's his name?" he asked sharply.
"We don't know, sir."
He raised one eyebrow. "Well, where is he from?"
"We don't know, sir."
"Unit?"
"We don't know, sir."
"Attachments?" His voice had gone from smooth and confident to... to sharp and rising.
I swallowed again; damn, but my mouth was dry. "Sir, we have been unable to locate anything concrete about the prisoner. This is the only thing we managed to pull up and... and we're just not sure if it's even him," I said in a rush. God, this guy was going to have me shot at dawn; I just knew it.
He snatched the pages out of my hand; three different views of the same subject, grainy, out of focus and shadowy.
He stared at the pictures for a moment, turning them around, I suppose in hopes of seeing something, anything at all.
"Goddammit!" he exploded finally. He might have said more, but just then the lieutenant stepped out of the room.
"Major, he passed out again. Dr. Seivert says he might be more cooperative if we let him stew for a while." He looked irritated, but then the lieutenant always looks irritated. He's another of those if-I-was-in-charge types.
The major took a deep breath and let it out like an angry bull. "Fine. We'll just leave the little shit hang there for a few hours; see how brave he is after that. It's dinner time anyway." He turned to head down the corridor while the lieutenant stuck his head back into the room to let the doctor know that he could leave. The major looked over his shoulder at me. "You can go, corporal. Keep trying on that," he said as an afterthought.
"Yes sir," I muttered. He wasn't listening; rattling on instead about whether the officers' mess would have filet mignon or duck tonight.
The rest of us got meat loaf and were damn glad of it.
The doctor came out of the room and headed in the opposite direction. I loitered for a couple of minutes; I didn't want to be particularly close to any of them.
Then I got the idea that maybe I would have better luck hunting this guy, if I could actually see what he looked like. I'm pretty good with patterns and faces; maybe a personal look would give me some better avenues.
And yeah; I was curious.
The physical description we'd been given was accurate as far as it went. No one had thought to mention, though, that the prisoner was just a kid! He didn't look more than twelve or thirteen years old, if that.
That discovery, as well as finding that he was still suspended in the flogging frame, just made me gag. Geez, what were the Colonies thinking, sending out little kids like this, fergodsake! That was just... wrong!
And this! What the fuck was this?! Torturing a kid? What the hell did they think he could tell them? Secret nursery rhymes?
His clothes were pretty much in tatters, strips of cloth dangling from his arms and shoulders. His head hung down; I couldn't see much of his face, and I didn't particularly want to, now that I knew he was just a kid. He had a long braid hanging over his right shoulder, kind of rusty brown, or maybe that was some of the blood from his back.
I spent maybe a minute looking at him, then backed out of the room. It wasn't locked; he wasn't going anywhere. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, a little surprised when it was almost a sob. Shit; what kind of family, parents, would send a little kid out to fight? Couldn't even imagine. How bad were things in the Colonies?
I looked down at the crumpled pages in my hands. Sighed. Started back toward my office and the rest of the diggers. Wait'll I tell them about this...
~*~
"You are absolutely shitting me," I growled. "No way in fucking hell!"
"Hey, I'm serious, man!" Torelli insisted. "The guy is a Gundam pilot!"
"He's a little kid!" I shot back.
"Yeah, well, the word is they're all kids! The Colonies have these breeding farms for super kids. They're raising a super race of killers! And sending them after us!"
I growled at him. "Torelli, you are so fulla shit, it's coming out your ears. Don't you know fucking propaganda when you hear it, stupid?"
"But corporal," said Meyer from behind her terminal, "it's true! My boyfriend's mother's second cousin is from L4, and he says it's true! They've got these test tube baby farms all over! He's seen them!"
I rubbed my eyes wearily. This was just... ridiculous. I was surrounded by idiots. And I couldn't seem to get rid of the picture in my head of that kid hanging in chains, his blood dripping onto the damn floor.
I had opened my mouth to respond to the two idiots who insisted on arguing with me, when there came a booming rumble, followed immediately by the room shuddering violently.
Earthquake, I thought at first, but seconds later alarms began going off. The PA system crackled and then a voice shouted, "All hands! We are under attack! Report to your battle stations!"
The four people with me looked at each other and at me. We don't have battle stations; we're fucking clerks! We aren't even issued weapons!
"Corporal..." whispered Meyer. "What do we do?"
Shit. There really is a downside to being the senior man...
"The shelter," I began, and they dived for the door like lemmings to the sea.
The corridors were filled with real soldiers trotting off purposefully to do battle against god knows what. At the intersection, a sergeant was directing people this way and that, according to their unit badges. He just rolled his eyes at us and snarled for us to stay out of the way. We hunkered down against the wall. The shaking, vibrating wall...
Far down the corridor a door exploded into the hallway. Someone screamed, "It's a Gundam!"
People panicked. I've never seen people lose their minds so quickly and so thoroughly. It was... fascinating. And wound about that fascination was the thrill that I might see a real live Gundam. Seconds before it blew me to hell.
My coworkers were screaming right along with the real troops, none of them remembering a bit of their training. I recalled something I'd seen or heard somewhere... that the Gundams never fired on anyone who ran from them or who surrendered. They only attacked those who fired back.
Well, I sure as hell wouldn't be firing back; not without a damn weapon. If we could get out of the building before it collapsed on top of us, we might be okay.
"Get out of the building!" I yelled trying to be heard over the panic. "Drop your weapons and run! They won't shoot you if you just run!" The sergeant looked like he wanted to punch me, but then another explosion rocked the building. He looked around at the lemmings that were fighting to get to an exit and joined them. I was right behind him for a moment, and then I remembered something.
Someone. I remembered someone.
The kid downstairs. The kid who might or might not be a Gundam pilot, but who was damn sure just a kid.
A kid who was probably going to die when the building collapsed. Because it was a damn sure thing that no one was going to think twice about him now. Except me. And I don't even know why I should be the one to remember. I just knew I couldn't escape this deathtrap without trying to get him out.
The downstairs halls were deserted; all the intelligent people were running for their lives right now. Lights were popping everywhere; cracks appearing in the walls, the ceilings. The shaking was terrifying, the noise unlike anything I've ever imagined.
I found the room and yanked open the door, really hoping that someone had already released the kid. But no, he was still there; conscious now, and struggling with the magnetic shackles. He was trying to get his hand to his braid - why, I can't imagine - his face contorted and straining with the futile effort. His eyes snapped up to my face and he snarled wordlessly.
I stopped, not sure how to proceed. He could probably kill me barehanded. He had absolutely no reason to trust me and every reason to think I was one of the people who had tortured him.
Fuck, he was so damn young! I'm only nineteen, but this kid was just a baby!
"Look," I began, my voice shaking. "We're under attack. It's your friends, probably; looking for you. I came to let you go; it's not right that you should die this way." He glared at me, his lips curling dangerously.
I edged around the room looking for the magnetic passkey and not finding it. Damn! The major probably had it on him. I rifled the drawers and found a beam cutter. It was small, meant only for light duty, but it might be enough to disrupt the magnetic fields. I'm not a tech; I don't know anything about this shit.
I turned around and went toward him. He stiffened; his eyes narrowed, and I wondered if he was even lucid after what they'd done.
"I'm gonna try to cut it," I explained. "I'm not gonna hurt you; I swear it. I don't hate the Colonies; I'm only here because I didn't want to be shoveling tailings on the moon! Just let me cut you down!"
His expression didn't change, but something in his eyes did. He went still and just waited.
"Please don't kill me," I whispered. "I don't wanna die here any more than you do." He didn't move, didn't acknowledge me, so I moved in and began working at the first cuff. It took me a few seconds to find the right angle, but when I did, the circlet parted neat as you please. I moved to the second one as he flexed his hand and arm. He was surprisingly muscular for a kid. Maybe there was some truth to those wild stories.
The second came free and I took a deep breath and bent to the bands on his ankles. If he wanted to kill me, now would be the time. The back of my unprotected neck tingled with my fear, but nothing happened. I did the first cuff and then the second, and he was stepping down and plucking the cutter from my hand.
Shit. He's gonna kill me now.
A portion of the ceiling fell.
His eyes flicked that way briefly, but he didn't even flinch. He motioned toward the door; I moved. The hall was empty of course.
"Look," I said and was startled at how squeaky my voice sounded. I cleared my throat. "Everybody is running. The emergency stairs are that way. Can I... can I go now?"
He stared at me and I noticed for the first time that his eyes were purple...
He cocked his head as if listening, though I don't know what he could have heard over the rhythmic thunder of a moving mobile suit and the staccato rattle of explosions.
"As long as you run away," he stressed suddenly, "He won't hurt you. This guy has a conscience."
I blinked. His voice was deeper than I expected. Not a child's voice; a man's voice with all its rough irony and world-weariness, but underlaid with a smooth, almost amused tone. It sounded so familiar, like something I'd heard in a dream.
Maybe, I thought; maybe I've encountered this guy somewhere. At school or the mall or any of a dozen ordinary and mundane places. And then it really hit me. My god... I'm standing not three feet from a Gundam pilot! Holy shit!
I took a step back; so did he. He nodded once and turned to lope awkwardly down the hallway.
"You might want to consider a career change, man!" he called over his shoulder. "Try the underground; tell 'em Duo sent you!"
It took another explosion almost on top of me to get my feet in gear. I ran for the exit as fast as I could. When I was finally outside and running for my life from the collapsing buildings and exploding vehicles, I spotted the instrument of the destruction.
It was a Gundam! Sonuvabitch! The thing was enormous! It carried a pair of curved swords and walked deliberately through the wreckage of the base, slashing at anything that remained standing. It was literally leveling everything.
And dangling from a cable just below the 'chest' of the thing was the kid who named himself 'Duo.' I couldn't hear it from this distance, but I sure could see that he was laughing like a maniac, pointing here and there, at things for the massive warrior machine to decimate.
I watched for a minute, and then took off running in the opposite direction.
The underground, huh? Well, why not? I didn't have any particular loyalty to the Alliance, and the idea that there were assholes in the organization willing to torture a little boy just twisted my guts.
Not like I had any ties anywhere. My mother was gone. Any other family I might have had was either gone or unknown to me. My dad and my brother died years ago, according to my mother; lost to some insurrection or other trouble on whatever colony we were from.
Damn, that was a gutsy kid. A kid from the colonies... A kid willing to die for freedom.
A kid with the snarl of a rabid wolverine.
And purple eyes.
Just like my dad.
OWARI
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