ANATEXIS

PART 10 - Brittle Failure

Silence, like that of space, descended upon Duo as he looked down the long stone-flagged aisle. This was familiar to him, recalling the church orphanage of his long-gone childhood, and yet it was alien. He had not been inside a church for years... With almost ginger steps he moved further in, the echoes from his footfalls distorted into a rustling sound by the complicated gothic surfaces. And in the echoes there seemed to be whispers.

I hurt hurt hurt hurt

Don't give up, Solo -

But I see death...

Duo's eyes darted around the dim interior of the house of worship. He was alone.

I don't believe in God God God God -

He swung round at this teasing murmur, the utterance of his seven-year-old self. Petals of coloured light were streaming down upon him; he was facing a stained glass window. Depicted in it was the usual saint, demurely kneeling in her blue gown, and seemingly unaware of the dark hooded shape behind her. Something about her wavy blonde hair, something about her heartshaped face reminded him of... reminded him of...

Lead outlines shifted. The dark hooded figure moved, and a bony hand was emerging from the folds of the cloak.

"Don't! Sister Helen - " Duo ran up to the window, uncaring of the impossibility of it, only wanting to save her from Death's skeletal embrace.

Yet as he reached out to touch the glass, it changed once more; the coloured mosaic moving as if it were a fractured crust atop a flowing liquid. The saint had disappeared, but Death remained in its thousand guises: one moment a fiery goddess, the next a crowned king. He was Hades and Helj and Anubis and Yama; he was the wielder of the great scythe; a horseman flanked by his comrades of War, Pestilence and Famine.

Hysterical laughter was becoming a habit for Duo Maxwell. He backed away, his hip scraping hard wood, and sat there at the edge of the pew, his shoulders shaking.

Well met, Duo Maxwell. Death should not have had a voice; there were no vocal cords to produce one. However, Death was speaking to him, and true to Death's nature, the voice killed all other sound when it hit the air.

Duo refused to look up. There was no fear, only an intense loathing.

Would you turn from your oldest friend, Duo Maxwell? We have served each other well.

The violet eyes slowly burned from under the chestnut fringe of hair. "Friends... or colleagues? Because you're a thief... just like I am. You steal away the most valuable thing anyone can have - life - and I've helped you do it. I have helped you do it!"

The creamy bone surrounding empty eye sockets seemed to wrinkle slightly. I am not allowed to take what is not mine. It is not permitted.

"Then maybe you've come to take me away," said Duo, the smile on his face rancorous. "You've really taken your time, you bastard."

You...? There was a loud rattle, and Duo realised that this was Death's laughter. The stained glass stretched like treacle, Death's black cloak pulled away from the stone wall, and a fleshless hand extended from it. Take back what is yours, Duo Maxwell. The gold cross shimmered against white bone, its long chain spilling between the carpals. I cannot claim credit for the work I have not done. Go ask your friend in the army and see.

Duo's eyes widened. It was his cross; not the one given to him by the earthly angels of Maxwell Church so many years ago, but the one which had been meant to replace it. He had lost the first after the brush with Sogran of White Fang, and then lost this one in his struggle with his captors at the Bar Dingo.

With a negligent gesture, he pushed Duo's arm aside, and the long-haired boy lost his hold on the slender gold chain. It sparkled as it caught the sunlight, then began its long descent down, down, down to the recycling carriages below.

The steady rhythmic crunching of the mechanical jaws was a promise that Duo would never see it again.

"My cross..." Duo's wide mouth hung open in wretched dismay for a few seconds, then twisted in anger. "You beast! That's the last straw!"

Heero actually looked surprised. "You let go."

"You pushed me!"

"You were in my way."

"You were leaving without word to anyone!" Then Duo collapsed against the handrail, pressing his forehead against its coldness. "My cross. It was given to me by people I'll never see again. And I was trying to stop you from disappearing too. Well, thank you so much, friend!"

Heero paused and looked over the rail, as if he could see where it had landed. "You were going to give it to me?"

Duo had not trusted himself to reply. After all they had gone through, all the senseless fighting and the desperate victory that followed, after the near return of chaos thanks to Sogran's ambition... it seemed farcical that Heero Yuy could still be so woundingly callous. He stared across the recycling plant, thinking of all that the cross had carried with it. Heero was already walking past him, his small bag of belongings slung over his shoulder.

No, Heero couldn't be blamed for his emotional blocks. It was Duo himself who should have learned by now...

Then a week later, Duo received a small brown parcel, meticulously wrapped and sealed. The labels had been printed, and there was no return address - however, the bar codes hailed from Asia, that much he could determine. With his usual energy, he stripped off the brown paper in one go to expose a black leather box. And when he flipped up the lid a gold cross shone up at him on the dark red velvet.

"I'm sorry, but you musn't sleep here." The clergyman managed to sound both nervous and annoyed. There was also puzzlement; the black garb and minister's collar had been in complete contradiction with the unnaturally long hair draped across the stranger's chest.

Duo opened his eyes and blinked up at the stone ceiling. The church had shrunk, its architecture less ornate than he seemed to remember. The pew was so hard he was sure he had flattened his skull against it, and he sat up, rubbing the back of his head. As he did so, an empty schnapps bottle - and his gun - clattered to the floor.

"Sweet lamb of God!" yelped the clergyman.

"Ah, it's not what you think," said Duo groggily, bending over to pick them up again.

The clergyman stood there, his round chest heaving up and down for all of three seconds, then his eyes rolled back in their sockets and he fainted dead away.

Duo wasted only a moment on contempt for the unconscious man as he traced the smooth lip of the bottle with the guntip. "Damn. Damn. Damn." His mouth pursed, and in disgust he threw the bottle away from him again. It refused to shatter, rolling happily to a mullion.

So it had merely been a dream, a drink-induced hallucination. Which was really a good thing, considering what he had seen. Rising to check the stained glass window, he found it solid, brittle, and as reverently boring as it had been before Death's dramatic appearance in it. Except -

Except that hanging from a tiny protrusion of lead at its centre was a gold chain. And suspended from the chain was a battered gold cross.

Duo's mouth worked soundlessly in disbelief. The simple raised design was distinctive, and there was a scratch on it that confirmed its ownership. But the cross had been bent out of shape, and the warping had made it split down the middle, exposing its secret: it was hollow, and contained a minute circuit plate that Duo instantly recognised as a weak signaller for a tracking device. No wonder then that the cross had been slightly larger than Duo's previous one. The ornamentation had been added to disguise the join.

Did you always know then, where to find me? Did it matter to you - where I was? His fingers closed around it, clasping it till he could feel the points digging into his hand. Is this some kind of sign?

A surge of hope? suspicion? flooded him in that instant, the same feeling that had assailed him in Bar Dingo at the sight of the boy imposter. The last words of the exchange with Death sang in his brain - I cannot claim credit for the work I have not done. Go ask your friend in the army and see.

"I'll ask him," said Duo to the stone walls, and left.

The vast tent that was Quatre's base of operations was filled with men today, all the separate groups having been recalled for detailed briefings. The last few days had seen Quatre constantly on his feet, constantly supervising. Now he was walking down the row of his assembled followers, stopping every now and then to exchange words with individuals. One particularly young recruit seemed on the verge of tears at one point, but the leader's words pulled him back from the brink.

We are only a few. But we strike a blow for the sake of many.

From the second-level metal platform that ringed the reinforced tent, electric blue eyes watched him. Like a general inspecting his troops, he seemed, and Dorothy was reminded of a sunny afternoon nearly twenty years before. She had been lifted up on the balcony so that she could see the parade, and to her delight had seen the dashing figure of her father moving down the splendid row of Specials officers.

"Next year I shall be on parade with Papa," she had declared with precocious solemnity, and her mother had arched her famously expressive eyebrows.

"Oh, you should have been born a boy, Dorothy," she had observed, completely serious. Then in a lower voice, she had added, "Yet it is better to be a woman, and watch their struggles from afar."

"Can't girls be in the parade?"

"Yes, they can... And yet it is a game for men, to dress up war in ceremonial costume and think it beautiful." Then her mother had taken her away from the balcony, to her great disappointment. "You take after both your father and mine, Dorothy..."

Back in the present, Dorothy continued to watch. Yes, Quatre Winner was more than deserving of the title of 'leader'. Because a true leader was not merely a source of command - he was a source of reassurance. In the run-up to Operation Crystallise he had made himself even more visible and accessible to his men than before, not only to drill the plans into them, but to give them confidence and courage...

Suddenly he turned his gaze upward and caught Dorothy's with his usual unnerving prescience. The unspoken message was clear - he needed to speak to her personally.

"You have not asked much of my detailed plans for the move on Brussels," said Quatre later. They were alone in the subsurface map room, the sands kept out by thick concrete cylinders. "Though I sense it is not through lack of curiosity." He went over to the wide flat drawer and produced an oldstyle paper map of the city. "It is not like you to refuse a chance to direct the course of action."

"I have not asked because I think I can already guess." She moved next to him, smoothing down the map on the table. "You will wait till Sally Po's coordinated groups launch their attacks on all the major bases. You may allow a lag time to see if the 1st Mobile Suit Division goes to the aid of any particular base - "

Quatre inclined his head. "I will allow a lag time, but not wait long. I doubt they will leave the capital undefended."

Dorothy nodded. "Fair enough. Then I think you will further subdivide your forces, using your Tauruses to target the World Nation Building, the official seat of government." Dorothy had seen the salvaged white Tauruses in the underground storage vaults; their slightly dated but nevertheless efficient design had seen some modification under the Winner's brilliant eye. "This will draw out a good portion of the 1st Mobile Suit Division, anxious to crush you."

Quatre was impressed by Dorothy's accurate surmise and smiled. "It will draw out Chang Wufei. He goes where the fight is."

"But in the meantime, you will utilise free soldiers, not using mobile suits, to invade the Dictatorial Palace. There will be no danger of enemy Serpents there; they would cause too much damage to be deployed practically. Our side will make use of stealth and speed."

"Yes. Human soldiers against human soldiers. With the capture of the Dictator as their goal." Quatre allowed himself a brief glance at Dorothy, who was scooping back tendrils of long golden hair away from her face. The gleam of enthusiasm was unmistakable, her talent for assessing the situation admirable. But had she been able to pinpoint the flaws? Would she reveal her knowledge of them, or would she withhold her knowledge, unwilling to admit their existence?

"If that is your plan, noble Quatre..." Her voice was quiet as she put a slim hand over the outlined carte of Brussels, "you... won't succeed."

"So you do see the flaws." There was both sadness and satisfaction.

"I do. Simply because your Tauruses are no match for the Serpents, no match for ANATEXIS, no match for Chang Wufei's Gundam." Dorothy's face was infinitely pained. "They will destroy your mobile suits within a few seconds, and then realise the objective of your other team. Returning to the Dictatorial Palace they will then slaughter the remainder of your forces."

Silence.

"You said that Wufei would be drawn to the fight. And I know you will be wherever Wufei is, to face him... you will place yourself with the mobile suits, no?" She pulled the map from the table in frustration, and the heavy paper hit the floor with a slap. "I am beyond my old love for tragic last stands, Quatre. Tell me that you have something - anything - to give you a chance of survival." The confidence had given way to a tone that was almost pleading.

In reply Quatre moved to the steel partition, keying in the combination to the lock. There was a loud clang of bolts falling back, and the partition slid to reveal an entrance to yet another twenty-metre-long storage vault. Dorothy had not been aware of this vault, since it was separate from the others which housed the Taurus suits. However, the single massive form that lay outstretched in the gloom was not unfamiliar to her. A gasp - incredulity, reverence and lamentation in equal parts - escaped her.

"You rebuilt it."

Quatre nodded tiredly, pushing up the lever to flood the vault with harsh lighting. "It lacks the beam buster rifle. Its weapons array is incomplete. And what is complete has taken me three years - three years of plundering the ground of resources. Three years of denial. Up till very recently, I was still feeding my fears with lies, still telling myself that I was resurrecting my Sandrock! But ah - there's an evil symmetry to it, how history repeats itself." Quatre shook his head. "No, this is not my Sandrock."

"Wing Zero." Dorothy wrapped her arms around herself as if in self-protection. "This is one secret I could not have guessed you harboured."

The rebel leader gave a surprisingly light laugh. "Perhaps I built this in the subconscious hope that I should never be able to use it. The ZERO system has not changed, Dorothy; to use it is no less dangerous now than it was seven years ago. And I am not a perfect soldier. The civilian population of Brussels will risk massacre if it is used."

Dorothy had no answer to his question, and remained staring at the mobile suit.

"And yet, to lure the 1st MSD away from the Dictatorial Palace, the ZERO system must be used. It will allow me to control my Taurus pilots as one unit, allow me to contest with the Serpents long enough..."

Now Dorothy recovered from her temporary paralysis with bitter intensity. "Because while Wufei is a frontline warrior, you are a mobiliser, a tactician? Because the ANATEXIS system was designed to optimise close combat? So what happens when Wufei moves into close-range and the ZERO system can no longer match up to ANATEXIS?"

Quatre's smile was tinged with frost. "That is all I need. As soon as he moves in close enough, I shall send us both to a higher judgement. I will self-destruct Wing Zero."

Dorothy fought to keep calm, the thin cords of tendon showing up as taut lines on her slender neck. "And suppose that the ZERO system leads to irretrievable breakdown of - "

"What you mean is, suppose I go on a crazed rampage before I even have a chance to face Chang Wufei?" he interrupted her, and saw her nod with hesitant unhappiness. "Then I count on you to activate the detonation device remotely, to save the city from needless deaths. That is the main reason I wanted to speak to you - to give you the authorisation keys. Only then can I take the ZERO system without worry for the repercussions." He began walking toward the mobile suit, and looked over his shoulder when he realised that Dorothy was not following.

She was mouthing words beneath her breath, so soft that they were hardly shapes formed by her lips. But who would save the one needless death - yours?

Whether it was his heightened empathetic ability or a simple understanding, he caught the words. "Long ago, when I was twisted by the ZERO system, there was one who was able save me... now he is gone. And there is no-one who could return me to sanity, should I succumb to the madness." He walked back towards Dorothy, his hand extended. "But there is a strong woman I can trust to return me to silence. You could say the ZERO system has always brought us together, could you not?"

She clasped the extended hand with her own, willed her fingers to cease their trembling, and forced herself to return Quatre's steady gaze. Too much depended on this for her to be weak now. "I will be your surety."

There was a deep sigh as the burden lifted from him, and in gratitude his lips brushed a feather-light kiss on her hand. "Thank you."

Dorothy Catalonia Wescott suddenly wondered if the five words of promise she had uttered had not been a lie to the whole world.

The communication unit chirped and lit up, the red diode indicating top priority.

"Stonebridge Master Control. Lieutenant Murchison speaking."

"Major Reynolds here, attached to Her Excellency's Office. Authorisation: Foxtrot. Charlie. Bravo. 3. 9. 0. 9."

"Please proceed, sir."

The formalities completed, the Major dropped to a more casual manner of speech, though the subject matter was far from casual. "There are concerns over the downtime of the Stonebridge Prison computers which occurred two days ago. The main computer here in Brussels only registered a blip, and the government network was unaffected, but... we want a check performed."

"We have performed the necessary checks. There was nothing to suggest an outside hacker. We will send down the reports at once."

"Very good. Of course, Stonebridge houses many high level security problems, and Her Excellency is naturally concerned."

"We understand, sir." 'High level security problems' was just another name for 'troublesome prisoners'.

"Reports are required regarding former Generals Rourke and Galvez."

"Yes, sir. All instructions will be sent through to Prison Commander Fischer, sir."

"Very good. Logging out."

The communication unit was carefully switched off, and there were smiles of satisfaction all round in the Master Control Room. Only one person was not smiling, though perhaps she had the most reason to do so, for she was deep in thought.

"Are you worried, Lady? They're very careless in Brussels, even though they sense the impending storm. And it's obvious they have no clue that Stonebridge has fallen to us."

Lady Une regarded the others; two were ex-Preventers, one was ex-OZ, the fourth had been unaffiliated to any faction in the wars. "Rourke and Galvez. I think it is time I talked to them in person." Only then did she smile.

Zechs studied the inventories, glad that there were tedious tasks to distract him from his growing sense of disquiet. Like Quatre's desert corps his group were making use of modified Taurus suits; ironically many of them had been reconstructed from OZ leftovers forgotten after the Eve Wars. They were a suitable guerilla weapon, being able to transform into aerial fighters, and were faster than the Serpent-(A)s which could take to the air. Avoiding the huge long-range guns of the military bases would be the real problem.

"Sally chose to fight in China. If I had a choice..." Beside him, Noin had interrupted her ammunition calculations to push her fringe back irritably.

"You would fight in Brussels?"

"Yes."

Zechs stared through the paperwork, the figures becoming grey blurs on the printouts. "I too would rather be in the assault on Brussels. That is where history shall be made." He frowned. "I hope that Relena has taken my warning seriously and has made arrangements to leave the Dictatorial Palace next week."

Noin blinked. "You have warned her? Wasn't there a danger that it would be intercepted?"

"It was an open message that only she would see the significance in." The letter had been a gushing invitation from a headmistress of some rural school, but key phrases in their last conversation had been planted into the text. [Dear Miss Darlian, we would like to tell you that we admire your efforts to further culture and enlightenment in the world. If it is not too much to ask, our little school would dearly appreciate a visit from you, for you are our best hope in the future... we remain your humble servants... ] And so on.

"Mariemaia may also take a hint from Relena's absence and prepare herself for war," Noin pointed out.

Zechs sighed. "Mariemaia has always been prepared for war. And would you have me abandon my sister to peril? I promised to take her away to safety, and I have already broken that promise. This is the least I can do."

Noin pinched the bridge of her nose. There was no perfect resolution to any of their problems.

The pounding of rubber soles against metal flooring grew louder. "Noin! No-in!" Someone was sprinting down the corridor, and a moment later an anguished face appeared at the door, pale even after the exertion of running. It was Cay, Sally's resident chief engineer. Looking at his face, Noin stood, knowing that disaster had struck.

"Word... word from China... Sa- Sally has been captured. Liu.. Wen is under house arrest."

Noin's face crumpled and she slammed both fists into the table, but Zechs was already questioning the bearer of such ill tidings.

"The rest of the Chinese faction. Are they free to move?"

"Yes! Whatever has happened... neither Liu Wen... nor Sally seem to have leaked any information...yet..."

"Has word of Sally's capture reached our other allies?" pursued Zechs.

"No. The Chinese rebels have only reported here, to us..." Cay wiped the cold sweat from his brow and looked the blond pilot in the eye. "It's over, isn't it?"

When faced with the worst, Zechs was at his always at his most calm, and this was no exception. "No. It is not over. Forgive me for my presumption, Cay, Noin... In this period of the commanding officer's incapacitation, I am putting myself forward for temporary command."

"Zechs..." Noin looked up, dark eyes approving.

Cay nodded, taking strength from Zechs' intiative.

"All communications from our allies are to be sent to me. But before that, I must make my first command."

Noin and Cay were at once alert, this in itself a natural acknowledgement of his leadership.

"We can no longer coordinate the attack at the end of this month." The line of his jaw hardened, for the difficulties posed would be enormous. Yet it was this or nothing, for there was only so much torture one could take before one broke - even with Sally's extraordinary determination and loyalty. "Contact all groups, and let them know that their preparations must be completed now. Operation Crystallise will launch within the next three days."

Forgive me, Relena - he silently added. Your brother has failed you once again.