Heart of a Mercenary

by Stormwind

Chapter 2

Setting: Space, Lagrange Point 3

            The six gundams floated through space, tailing an ugly looking transport cruiser.

            “This is Duo, any sign of them yet?”

            The voice of Lucrezia Noin crackled on the radio, “No, no, no, and no. How many times have I said it!?”

            “Eight-thousand-nine-hundred-and-sixty-two times, to be exact.”

            There was a very strained silence. Everyone stared at Heero over the comm.

            “Well, I was bored and needed something to do.”

            “It was a rhetorical question Heero.”

            “Oh. Mission accepted, I will refrain from answering rhetorical questions from now on.”

            Duo slapped his forehead, “And the worst part is we can’t tell if he’s being sarcastic or not…”

            “Mission accepted, I will verbally signal you when I am being sarcastic.”

            “Anyway,” said Quatre, stepping in, “Lady Une said that backup was coming around this area, sometime in the next couple of days.”

            “Which means,” added Wufei, “that we could be here for days.”

            Duo sighed louder, “This is gonna be boring.”

***

Setting: VTI Station IUR-654FH

            The mercenary sighted down the long dark corridor. His hand gripped harder on the sword handle. There could be guards anywhere in the long passageway. How was he to know where they were?

            The words of his contractor echoed in his mind: If you die, you will have no recognition of working for us. As you have no remaining family, you will simply be incinerated by the opposing company. You of course realize that as much as we would like to give you a decent burial, you are a security risk. No hard feelings. Feel free to take any measures in infiltrating the colony. You have license to kill…

            The dark eyes stirred at the recollection, I know you want me to eliminate someone by accident, but sorry, I’m not going to allow any casualties. I have nothing against these people. Only those who are responsible… They’re the ones I’m after.

            Anyway, I still bet that I’m the only one who knows how to do Jeet Kune Do in zero gravity…

            He stepped into the hall way, clenching his Jehrico 941 in traditional “secret agent” fashion, both hands gripping, held close against his shoulder. He slowly inched alongside the wall, his soft soled shoes making almost no noise on the bare metal. Some mercs might think that using shoes instead of boots was nuts, but often stealth was more important that clunking around in big steel-toed protective gear.

            He stopped breathing for a second as he heard voices around the corner.

            “So, Rob, how’s ya’ doin’?”

            “Fine Bob. Guard duty is borin’ as heck, ain’t it?

            The mercenary relaxed. He silently slapped his forehead in disbelief. A bunch of hillbilly guards. What will they think of next?

            “So, wat we doin’ here’s anyways?”

            “Yeah, I means, who’s wanna’ sneak in ta’ a dumb farmeruhsuetecally comp’ny anyways?”

            The mercenary continued creeping along the wall, trying to think of the most effective way to silence the guards. He put the Jericho away, knowing that its power came at the price of a loud shot.

            “But anyway, did ya’…”

            CLINK

            Crud! I had to step on the wrench didn’t I…?

            “What was that?”

            Please don’t bother looking!

            “Lit’s check it out.” With this, the guards began to walk around the corner.

            Alright then…

            The merc suddenly rushed forward, dashing with surprising speed. Making a short jump, he grabbed onto the pipe embedded in the corner, and using it as a pole, careened both feet into the head of the first guard.

            He slumped to the floor without a sound.

            “Bob! Okay you little punk, you wanna’ piece of this?” The other guard had quickly raised his fists, and presumed to put up a fight.

            “Sure why not!”

            The guard lunged forward. Sidestepping him easily, the pilot swiveled on his left leg, bringing his right foot into contact with the back of the guard’s head.

            He too collapsed.

            “That was relatively easy,” he said, mock dusting his hands.

            “Now which way from here? Dang, I forgot the layout already.”

            Something in his earlobe vibrated. Grabbing it between his fingers, he cocked his head sideways and whispered quietly.

            “What is it Artemis.”

            “The door is to your immediate left.”

            A large sigh escaped the mercs lips, and he turned sharply towards the door.

            One problem. No key slot.

            “Artemis, you didn’t mention this!”

            “Just give me a second, don’t be so impatient. If you were a computer, you’d realize that it’s no piece of cake to swim around in a network, find a door, and open it!”

            “Fine, relax, just don’t hyperventilate.”

            “Actually, it would be impossible for me to hyperventilate. I am a software program, not a living organism.”

            “Fine, then don’t do the computer equivalent of hyperventilating!”

            “Why are you so obsessed with that word?!”

            “I AM NOT OBSESSED!”

            “YES YOU ARE!!” The volume of Artemis’s voice in the comlink was deafening.

            “Why I oughta…”

            DING

            The door slid open.

            “All done.” Artemis’s voice had an unnaturally cheerful ring to it.

            “Jerk.”

            “Excuse me!?”

            “Nothing, nothing…” the merc said as he stepped through the door.

            It was obviously the terminal room. Blinking diodes and screens covered every square inch of the walls, sending multicolored glows flitting across the consoles. This room controlled everything in the colony from microwaves to defensive armament systems. A hacker’s paradise…

            Locking the door behind him the mercenary sat down in one of the swiveling chairs that stood in front of one of the major monitors. He silently withdrew a very thin laptop computer from his vest. Placing it carefully on the console, he fiddled with something on it.

            A few seconds later, he was holding a slim cord, with a strange looking plug on it. He took it and slotted it into the USB port on the monitor, tapped a key, and let the games begin…

            Slumping into a chair, he wondered something, Why are there no guards?

***

Setting: Cyberspace, Mainframe Computer, VTI Station IUR-654FH

            To Artemis, the world was a swirling blur of color. Pink and green data streams whizzed past, across blue floating channeled networks, looking like floating rivers. Firewalls hovered in midair, blazing the surrounding area orange and read, while black blocks of data stood like lumps, interconnected by the networks. To a human this world was incomprehensible, totally undecipherable. To an AI like Artemis though…this was his backyard.

            Even in the swirling blocks of color, Artemis’s program stood out. It looked like a bright jade-colored star, hovering above the swirling plains, sparking and glowing. Glowing brighter for a split second, Artemis suddenly blasted off like cannon, leaving a sparking jade streak in his wake. The world around the A.I. blurred as he sped through the network, splashing through rivers of blue, pink, and green.

            Artemis silently scanned the odd landscape as he blazed along, looking for the tiniest variation that would indicate a link to a different network.

            There, the A.I. spoke, or at least the cyberworld equivalent of speaking.

            Artemis swerved off, heading towards a tiny red spot in the yellow sky. As he closed in, he noticed that it was much smaller than he originally thought.

            In moments, Artemis had reached the leak in the program.

            It’s too small. Well, there’s more than one way to skin a cat….

            Suddenly, Artemis’s program exploded, tiny glowing sparks flying everywhere. But they didn’t disappear. Instead they swarmed like a horde of wasps and nimbly slipped through the tiny hole in the network.

            The hole in the network was like a swirling vortex of data, keeping things inside the tunnel. White code whipped around in cylindrical form, blurring incomprehensibly. The pieces of Artemis’s program charged forward through the tunnel, and soon burst through the other end.

            Buzzing around like a swarm of bees, the pieces quickly reassembled themselves with a slight “pop”.

            That is decidedly uncomfortable.

            Artemis knew he was in the right place when a huge firewall greeted his eyes. In the virtual world, a firewall was, well a fire wall. The heat blazed him as he stared at the immense tower of flames.

            But do honestly think that’s enough to stop me, Artemis thought, wishing he could grin.

            Once again Artemis split like a firework, blossoming the jade embers everywhere. This time though, Artemis stayed mainly intact, merely launching pieces of himself at the firewall.

            The shining bits of Artemis smashed against the firewall, throwing hacking data into the protective barrier. Each piece sent streams of corruptive files into the security system, corrupting it in a matter of seconds. The firewall simply couldn’t take being hit in so many places at once, and was quickly defeated.

            A gaping hole opened up in the center of the firewall, and Artemis quickly jumped through it, all the while regenerating his lost data. Soon he was speeding once more through another complex network.

            This time, the passages were smaller, lit a dull orange by the still present firewall’s glow. Now data streams here, this was an encoded network, a labyrinth of tunnels, covered in shifting grid-like surfaces.

            Soon, Artemis’s target was in sight. The A.I. veered off course, heading to the glowing blue aura that lit up a small side passage.

            Found it.

            A large, ice-blue block sat on a golden pedestal, its own glow shading the walls a cold azure hue. This was the data he had been looking for.

            Artemis blasted towards it, only to be bounced off by an odd crimson sheen.

            Fine. Guess I’ll just have to hack into it…

***

            “Artemis what’s going on down there?”

            “Give me a minute. The data’s heavily encrypted. I’m going to have to drag it back manually; I can’t just slap a patch on it and transfer the code.”

            “Darn. Well hurry up, I have a feeling that something’s wrong.”

            The merc looked around the room, feeling very unsettled. Something was wrong. Why were there no guards? Something just wasn’t right….

WEOOO WEOOO WEOOO

            “Artemis, what the heck just happened!?”

            “Sorry. You see, I managed to crack the data, but it appears that I neglected the security code that activated the alarm, which in turn…”

            “SHUT UP! Get back over now!”

            A faint voice somewhere down the hall shouted, “Hey over here!”

            “Crud!”

            The merc threw back his vest, revealing a veritable warehouse of weapons and equipment. He quickly grabbed his two Jericho 941’s, slotted them back to cock them, and then swung by the door’s opening.

            Peeking out from the edge of the doorway, the merc quickly drew his head back as bullets ricocheted inches from his scalp.

            “Oh fiddlesticks…..”

            “Come on, he’s over this way, down the hall!” The voices were getting closer.

            “He’s in the mainframe room, dang! He could screw up everything from there!” Another new voice, that meant three at least.

            “Get the grenades in case he closes the door!”

            The merc’s face paled instantly, “That was the last thing I needed to hear!”

            Swinging around in zero-g, the pilot punched the door panel as hard as he could, watching it slide shut with a hiss of pneumatics.

            BANG

            Smoke trailed from the tip of the Jericho in his right hand.

            Shooting the door may be going a bit overboard, but it helped take away some stress. And it might hold them…for a while…

I freely and willfully admit that I do not own Gundam Wing, or its various little spin-offs. I do take ownership of the original character, Artemis the sentient program, ALT, Storm, and some new MS designs. If anyone has a problem with that…Talk to someone else, because I don’t really care.

Well, the third part’s here! Well, the drama part turned out to be longer than I expected, so all you eager people (if there are any), will have to wait for the next part for the MS battle and Cowboy Bebop fight sequences (I’m sorry, no really, I am)

As an addendum to the standard disclaimer, I would also like to acknowledge these…

The mention of the Jericho 941’s are a tribute to Spike Spiegel of Cowboy Bebop (one of my other favorite anime series) as is the term Jeet Kune Do, a style of fighting that is a combination of Judo, drunken boxing, and various other forms of karate. It’s notable due to its effectiveness and non-lethality. Finally, the hillbilly thing…I didn’t mean to offend any real hillbillies if they’re reading this :-)