reikah
in
inmyvortex
Fic: Not Quite Paradise [8/?], R,
Title: Not Quite Paradise [8/?; ongoing]
Fandom: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Pairing: Fai/Kurogane/Yuui
Author: Co-write between mikkeneko & reikah
Rating: R
Word count: 7,815 this chapter (53,091 so far)
Notes: "In a future where science and psionics rule the skies, and both are controlled by the iron fist of the Earth government, two young men make a desperate leap into the unknown in order to evade capture and slavery. AU, Kurogane/Yuui/Fai."
Part One - Earth: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]
Part Two - Mars: [8] [9] [10] [11]
← back to chapter seven
Part two: Mars
a renegade survivor
Space unrolled a deep black velvet canvas for the next chapter of human history; painted, as ever, with the conflicts and politics of human experience. Those who had hoped that extrasolar space would provide humans with a uniting frontier quickly realized that where there were profits to be made and territory to be claimed, the brotherhood of common man held not much sway.
Japan was the first to establish a permanent space habitat; of all the wealthy, industrialized nations they had the greatest command of robotics and automation. It was they who built the first space docks, the floating castles of metal and plastic balanced at the fulcrums of gravity between the Earth and the Moon. Although the United States retained their tenuous legal ownership on the Lunar outposts, they owned no ships or shuttles to transport people or goods, so the claim was hollow; the moon might fly an American flag, but it spoke with a Russian accent.
For years the Japanese zaibatsu - megacorporations run by interlocking family groups - ruled the skies above Earth. They dispatched satellites to Earth orbit, automated mining robots to the asteroid belt, terraforming robots to Mars, survey robots to the outer solar system. Their wealth and power grew along with a strange new spacer culture - born half of old cultural traditions and half of their new, deadly environment - and the games between each clan grew ever more bloodthirsty as the stakes grew higher.
But as the infrastructure in close-Earth space grew, more and more players fought to take their space on the board. The zaibatsu had wealth, but not manpower, and despite great strides in artificial intelligence their automation could only do so much. In time, the zaibatsu could no longer provide enough warm bodies to fill the demand for habitation and work; eagerly other countries stepped up to fill the gap. The terraforming of Mars had barely begun, but sturdy domes were easy enough to build, and soon provided an outlet for the crowded cities Earth.
And so began a new kind of space race: for Mars soon declared itself a democratic protectorate, and the nation that had the most citizens would de facto own the Red Planet. The country that could build the most ships and send the most bodies to Mars would be the victor, and rich, populous China very quickly came to dominate the race and the planet. Other nations - India, America, Europe - fought to claim corners of the red planet for their own, but the momentum was against them.
For a time, China boasted that with Mars as its foothold, China would soon command all the heavens; for a time, it seemed like nothing could stop that destiny from being carried out. Yet the larger the empire, the sooner its dissolution; political scientists argued whether it was the War of Martian Independence that triggered the Chinese Civil War, or the other way around. Rumors whispered of shady dealings, corruption and sabotage orchestrated by the shadowed organization of the Triads - but then, rumors always prefer to blame criminal masterminds for the stupidity and inefficiency of everyday men.
Even as solar habitation flourished - colonies leapfrogging from Mars to the asteroid belt to the distant gas-giant moons - the old terrestrial powers descended into chaos. By the end of the century the central Chinese authority collapsed, and more than a dozen new states emerged from the chaos claiming independent legitimacy. Led by Taiwan, the new countries clamored for entry into the United Nations - and, with the loss of China and withdrawal of America from the voting board years earlier, quickly voted themselves into positions of leadership - although European Union remained a stubborn minority block, as it does to this day.
The new power that rose from the ashes called itself the Eurasian Federation - not the only government on Earth, certainly, but by far the most formidable giant of military and economic might that the world had ever seen, easily eclipsing the fading memory of American and Russian superpower. Now, at last, after years of indifference and laissez-faire, the new Earth government sought to reclaim the unruly children scattered throughout space.
Although Martian and Lunar independence was an established fact, still the Federation fought to extend the eminent domain of its authority over all of solar space. Senior Minister Fei Wong Reed, head of the Eurasian Federation's Department of Extraterrestrial Affairs, has even gone on record as saying that all human habitations - even the far-flung settlements of the deep-space colony pods - should be brought under the common mantle of Earth governance.
How he intends that Earth should enforce that, when travel to even the closest interstellar colony is a matter of decades and the only possible communications is through the network of telepaths - remains a mystery.
Yuui pulled himself up the ladder to the control room. After ten days on board the Mokona he had gotten used to the funny little flip of his stomach when the gravity turned over, and stabilized himself with an automatic combination of telekinesis and his own natural grace. It was surprising to realize how natural and unconscious the use of his talent was becoming.
But then again, he thought, this is what they trained me for.
"Good morning, Yuui-san," Syaoran said, lifting his head from his control panel. "Your timing is very good, we're just making a holding orbit now."
"Just now?" Yuui turned to peer at the display screens, as though they were windows he could see out of; they were currently showing a number of tracking projections and scrolling walls of text. "I thought we were supposed to arrive last night."
"In Mars planetary space, yeah," Kurogane grunted, not turning around in his Captain's chair. "We took a correction around Deimos, and then it took ten hours to get out of the Kajitori controlled space."
There was a distinctly unpleasant note in his voice on those last words, like he was spitting out something bitter, and the slice of his face that Yuui could see was drawn in an angry scowl. He quickly looked away, as though afraid that he could somehow have been responsible for the captain's foul mood.
He hadn't taken Kurogane up on his strange… proposal. A part of him felt guilty that he hadn't - it was as much as saying that he'd only tried to get in Kurogane's pants in the first place for his own benefit - and another part of him felt guilty for even being tempted. Kurogane was a striking man, and the brief kiss had been electric; Yuui had still felt the other man's taste on his tongue and his hands on his skin for hours afterwards. He was too confused to know what he wanted, but he could no longer deny that he wanted something.
But no matter how tempting the offer, he just couldn't do that to Fai. He couldn't forget the joy, the bliss of being in his twin's arms, just the two of them making everything else in the universe go away. He couldn't stand the thought of cheating on Fai, betraying him by opening his body to someone else. It was one thing if it was just business - furthering the aim of protecting them both - but if it was just for his own indulgence? It was impossible.
And a third part of him was appalled that he was even considering it in the first place. He was a criminal and a fugitive, on the run from all the law he had ever known into the wild unknown of out-system space, his brother was sick and sleeping and crazy, and here he was worrying about dalliance.
So he hadn't approached Kurogane again, and he watched anxiously for the man's reactions, to see if he was offended or angry by Fai's refusal. But the big man hadn't said anything, hadn't made any move to pressure him or even shown any disappointment. Did he just not care at all? Or what? He was a tough shell to crack, his guarded glower defying all of Yuui's guesses.
"We always use the Mino controlled airspace instead of the Kajitori," Syaoran explained cheerfully, breaking into Yuui's thoughts. "They're smaller, and out of the way, and a little more expensive, but they're also more private. And the views are wonderful! Would you like to see?"
Yuui's heart lifted. "Could I?" he said hopefully, glancing back at the displays.
"Oi," Kurogane said sharply, looking up from his own panel. "Some of us are trying to do work here, you know. This is business, not tourism."
"It'll just be for a moment, and just the big screens," Syaoran returned. He stood from his pilot's chair with one hand on the ceiling bar for balance, reaching above the bulky row of cabinet-like consoles to flip some unseen switches. The text and graphics winked out from the glass windows on all side, to be replaced by the deep, star-shot blackness of space.
Yuui shivered, feeling once again the bone-deep fear of that endless void, the vertigo of falling forever and the claustrophobic terror of vacuum… but only for a moment, before his attention was captured by the vast, softly glowing orb of Mars above them.
It took up half the screen, hanging sideways and slightly above them; the planetary curve was just barely visible at the edges, tinged by the ozone-blue haze of the atmosphere. Yuui drifted forward, staring in avid fascination at the first new world he'd ever seen.
The surface was awash in colors and patterns, slashed by broad white bands of ice-water clouds. The predominant color was a sort of light salmon-orange of rock and sand, wrinkled by darker bands of mountain ranges or deep gorges far more massive than any found on Earth. The northern pole was capped with brilliant white, and gleaming smooth ice-fields crept outwards across the hemisphere in irregular sheets that would one day be oceans.
But here and there, especially around the equator, were the dark grey-green smudges of Mars' primitive forests, planted and nurtured by the massive terraforming that pulled the planet inexorably away from the cold desert it had been and breathed new life into the world. Light flashed and twinkled along the horizon, as the planet turned from nightside into daylight; Yuui squinted a bit and was able to make out the corrugated gray spread of a major city nestled along the equator.
"That's Olympia, in the Tharsis sector," Syaoran supplied for him, saving Yuui the embarrassment of trying to remember his areography from school. "It's named for the mountain, but of course it's not on the mountain - there's a shuttle that runs on weekdays, though, you can make a day trip of it. I went once on a school trip. But if you want to know more you should really ask Sakura. She grew up in the city, I only visited there a few times."
"It's incredible," Yuui said with feeling, but then found himself at a loss to say more. He groped for words to express his awe, his wonder, at being confronted with a whole new horizon unlike anything he'd ever seen or imagined. "I'd expected something… more red."
Kurogane snorted, and Syaoran laughed. "Well, when I went to Earth, I was expecting it to be all blue," he said.
"After three hundred years of global industrialization?" Yuui asked. "Really?"
"From a distance it still looks blue, just like from a distance Mars looks red," Syaoran said. "The first stage of terraforming locked down a lot of the iron oxide in the air - we only get rust storms sometimes now, and everything looks a lot redder then. But the iron harvesting crawlers have been at work now for over a century, you know. Mars is changing."
Syaoran put his hand on the display and looked out over his homeworld, a distant look in his eyes and a wistful little smile on his face. "Mars is changing," he repeated in a quieter voice, his soft voice a strange combination of joy and sorrow. "A little bit every day. I'll never see it complete, but it will never be like it was, either."
"I wish I could go and see it," Yuui said, turning back to the display. A whole new world… it wasn't Earth, but that wasn't a bad thing.
"Well, why don't you?" Syaoran asked. "We usually go downside at least once while we're here - we're on the wrong side of the planet to visit my family, but there's still lots to see. The Mokona will be in dock for at least a couple of days, right?" He looked at Kurogane.
"Yeah," the captain grunted, flipping open a thin electronic notebook and scrolling through it.
"I couldn't," Yuui said, startled by the suggestion even as a hopeful surge lifted in his chest. "I mean - it would be dangerous, wouldn't it? I'd have to go through security, and - and I'm sure they're still looking for us -"
"This is Mars, son," Kurogane said sardonically. "There's more than one way to get down to the planet's surface."
"Besides, the Martian security database is separate from Earth's," Syaoran put in. "And they don't extradite criminals to Earth anyway. We've never had any problem with Earth security here."
Yuui wondered if that meant that they had problems with Mars security instead, but his mind was thrown into tumult by the unexpected offer. The prudent part of his brain told him to hang back, stay out of sight, on the ship where it was safe. But the rest of him seized gleefully on the chance to get out of this crowded tin can before he suffocated. He was growing more comfortable on the Mokona, and was endlessly grateful to its crew for taking him in and offering him and his brother protection… but it was a small ship, and his room was a cupboard. Sometimes he felt like the walls were pressing in on him, squeezed inwards by the ominous weight of the vacuum outside… physically it was the opposite, he knew, but he couldn't shake the choking sensation.
"I'd like that," he said. "I'd really like that."
"Great!" Syaoran cheered. "Just as soon as we get our flight plan cleared with the Mino, we can get going."
"Get going where?" Sakura's head poked above the control room's hatch, strands of ginger hair flying everywhere. "Oh, so here's everyone! I was wondering why the ship was so empty. Are we having a trip?"
"Yuui wants to go downside," Syaoran said. "I thought I'd go with him to Olympia, since I won't have anything to do once our flight plan is booked. Will you come?"
Sakura's face screwed up in indecision, then settled into a disappointed pout. "Not this time," she said. "I have to do some maintenance on the engine block if we're going to go on a long out-system trip. We aren't stopping anywhere in the Belt, are we?" She climbed the rest of the way into the control room and leaned against the railing, gazing at the high-definition display of Mars turning gently in space.
"Shouldn't," Kurogane said. "We're going directly to Jovian space, and there aren't any Belt nodes to speak of on our route this time of year."
"Then I really ought to get this done today," Sakura said. "And I really don't want to risk running into anyone who might know me in Olympia. But if you make a second trip later, I'll definitely want to come!"
"Oh, speaking of which, what's our next cargo going to be?" Syaoran wanted to know. "You haven't already booked it yet, have you?"
"Not yet," Kurogane replied. "Going to set up a meeting with our next client while you two are out of the way."
"Who with?" Sakura wanted to know.
There was a long moment of silence before Kurogane grudgingly let out, "With the Triads. They've been trying to get me to do them a cargo for years now."
"With the Triads?" Sakura stood bolt upright, staring at the captain, as Syaoran turned around in his chair so fast his neck audibly cracked.
"Captain, are you serious?" Syaoran said in astonishment. "You've never dealt with them directly before! Three-fourths of everything they export is black-market pharmaceuticals!"
"Drugs, yeah," Kurogane said in a reserved voice. "There's a three thousand percent profit margin for narcotics right now on Ganymede station -"
"But, Captain, you've never run drug cargoes before!" Sakura protested. "You always said you wouldn't deal in poisons! Why would you suddenly change your mind?"
"This isn't a democratic process," Kurogane snarled. "My ship, my decisions; it's none of you guys' business why!"
Yuui's surprise at the captain's unexpected announcement was eclipsed by a jolt of comprehension - Kurogane was covering for him. He was protecting Fai's privacy by refusing to reveal to the kids what Yuui had told him about the tox screens. "It's all right," he said suddenly, and Syaoran and Sakura's surprised gazes transferred to him instead.
He fought the urge to squirm under their wide, innocent eyes, and he couldn't help but look down at the deck plates as he mumbled, "It's for my brother. For Fai. He - because of all the things they did to him, back in the labs," he had to swallow hard to continue. "He's addicted to a lot of different compounds. I want - to cure him, but he's going to need more of the drugs while he gets off of them."
Sakura made a little "oh!" sound, while Syaoran sat back in his chair, eyes wide. "But is it going to be all right - to take stuff from the shipment?" he said, his voice concerned.
"That's why the Triads," Kurogane admitted unwillingly. "They always throw in a bonus for their dealers. It should be plenty for what your brother needs."
"But Captain, the Triads are -" Sakura started, and Kurogane cut over her.
"I'll talk to them," he said, in an iron tone that left no room for argument.
"Oh," Sakura said. She and Syaoran exchanged a long, troubled look, and Yuui wondered what it was about the Triads that Kurogane didn't want to talk about. Aside from the obvious part about doing business with a sinister organization of smugglers, assassins and thieves, of course.
He'd heard the name before, of course, but only in the context of wild stories and shadowy rumors. The basics - that they were a high-powered crime syndicate on Mars - seemed likely enough. Organized crime was a reality; the Japanese Yakuza, the American Mafia, the Italian Cosa Nostra were only three of the most modern examples. But some of the things that got said about them - that they were responsible for the downfall of Old China, that every member of their organization was marked with an elaborate tattoo, that they routinely blew up ships or bombed city blocks to get back at individuals who had crossed them, heedless of how many innocents were caught in the crossfire - seemed beyond the pale. Every crime or suspicious death on Mars, and many on Earth, was attributed to the mysterious Triads - surely much of it had to be exaggerated, simply because no one could be everywhere all the time!
Somehow, though, this didn't seem the time to ask.
"Well," Sakura said, forcing cheer through the suddenly frigid atmosphere of the control room. "I'll just… go get started on that engine work then!"
"I'll help you," Syaoran added hastily, and the two teenagers scrambled down the hatch in almost undignified haste.
It was the first time Yuui and Kurogane had been alone together all week, and Yuui's pulse was suddenly much too loud in the silence. "I, ah," he said. "I'll get ready to go downside, shall I? First time seeing a new planet and all that."
"Do that," Kurogane said, not looking up from his control screen.
"Captain, I -" Yuui stumbled, for once not attaching any frivolous nicknames to the title. "I really appreciate what you're doing for him. For us. I know that it's not something you're happy about, and I'm really grateful. If there's anything -"
"Don't be stupid," Kurogane cut him off, looking up long enough to give him a glare that would curdle milk. "Watch out for yourself."
He returned pointedly to his work, shutting Yuui out of his attention. "Okay," Yuui said to the room at general. "I promise," he added, and followed Sakura and Syaoran out of the control room.
Once the shuttle had detached and Kurogane finally had some quiet to work with, he shut down the flight plan he'd been working with and began setting up the meeting he was not looking forward to.
Another advantage of staying in the Mino space lanes, out of the bulk stream of traffic, was that it put them in moon shadow; it was possible to bounce a signal off the smaller moon and create a very nearly untraceable connection. The positioning allowed for much better business secrecy, as well as better security. Not, Kurogane thought darkly, that he would have flown in Kajitori space or given them a single yen of his money willingly no matter what advantages their company had to offer.
He sent out the initial ping and sat back in his chair, drumming his fingers on the armrest as he waited. There would be an inevitable delay as the recipient of the message verified who he was and dug up someone appropriate to field his call, but he didn't expect the wait to be long; they'd been wanting to hear from him for a long time, after all. On the other hand, it would be just like them to keep him dangling in order to hammer home his position - not long enough that he could justify giving up and doing something else, but long enough to make him angry.
Well, angrier, anyway.
His mind wandered back to his blond passenger, much to his internal exasperation. Wasn't the man a thorn in the side at all hours anyway, without intruding on his thoughts when he wasn't even onboard? But he was such a mix of contradictions; quick yet ignorant, fragile-looking yet insanely powerful, abrasive and then unexpectedly vulnerable. He hadn't approached Kurogane again after that night they'd argued about the drugs, and he wasn't sure whether to be glad or sorry. At least he was no longer trying to sell himself out at every opportunity, and yet Kurogane kind of regretted the missed opportunities.
Oh, well. He'd made his position clear; the ball was firmly in the idiot's court. The last thing Kurogane intended to do was press the issue - that would only muddle the message he was trying to send. And it wasn't like he didn't have better things to think about at the moment.
He heard the hiss of the cabin door behind him, and glanced over his shoulder as Sakura swung up over the railing. "Oi," he said. "I'm conducting negotiations here. I don't want them to see you."
"It'll be at least ten minutes before they get back to you," Sakura said with certainty. "This won't take long. There's just something I want to upload while we're still connected to the main planetary network."
Something in the tone of her voice caught Kurogane's attention, and he swung his chair around to scrutinize her as she seated herself at the engineer's station and began accessing the terminal. Her mouth had an unusually serious slant to it, and there was a faint shadow of worry on her forehead.
"All right," he said. "So what's the real reason you didn't go planetside with the kid and the idiot? You know Mars security wouldn't bother you, and there's no risk that anyone in Olympia would recognize you in person."
Sakura flickered a look up at him, then back down at the screen. "I had a feeling I had better stay up here," she said quietly.
Kurogane felt his spine stiffen. "You had a feeling or a 'feeling?' " he asked intently. "Did you see something happening?"
"No," she said, but then immediately changed it to "Yes. Maybe - oh, I don't know. Not - not on this shopping trip specifically."
"Something else, then?" Kurogane pressed her. "The Triads? I can still break off this deal now, but the further it goes, the more dangerous it will be to back out."
"No, the deal seems fine - I think. I'm just getting a bad feeling about this whole stopover in general. The sooner we finish our business and leave, the better I'll feel." She looked up and flashed him a wan smile, hands twisting in her lap. "Maybe I'm just overreacting, or making things up, I don't know. Mars always makes me feel a little uncomfortable, but this - this is different somehow. I wish I could tell you exactly where the danger is coming from. But I just don't know!"
In the three years since Sakura and Syaoran had come on board, it had proven damn useful sometimes to have a precognitive as part of the crew. Her 'feelings' had steered them out of more than one dangerous situation. However, just because it was a useful talent didn't mean it wasn't also a very frustrating one. Her warnings were often muzzy and unclear, and trying to get specific information out of them usually just left Sakura more confused and doubting her own visions.
"I'm not surprised," he said in a neutral tone. "There's been nothing but trouble since we took that idiot and his guest on board. Can you tell if we'll be safe after we leave Mars space?"
Sakura frowned, concentrating intensely, then lifted her head and shrugged helplessly. "I don't know," she said. "I don't feel anything as strongly, not good or bad, but - but I've been seeing some awfully strange things from after that time. I mean, making even less sense than usual."
She keyed up something on her console, and a datafile sprang to life on her screen. Kurogane stood up and crossed the cabin to look over her shoulder. His eyebrows rose in surprise despite himself. "What is this?" he said. "Astronomical archives? Planetary survey data? What does this have to do with anything?"
"I don't know, Sir." Sakura shrugged. "Most of the time I just see flashes - little snippets of a daily routine without any context. Twice now I've seen myself looking at this file. I don't know why, but it feels like a good future - one we should go towards, not away. So I thought I should load the file while we have a planetary datalink, just so Mokona will have it."
Kurogane started to speak, but the captain's console bleeped insistently at him, and he hastened back to his chair. "Out of the cabin," he told Sakura firmly, as M0K0NA's avatar informed him that the conference he'd requested could now be initiated. He didn't turn around, but a quick scamper of light feet and the hissing of the cabin door told him he'd been obeyed - just as he liked it.
The room that came up on the other side of the screen was carefully blank, a grey-toned conference room devoid of any identifying features. That much was expected, but Kurogane frowned as he took in the image of the woman seated across the vidscreen from him. She was a stranger to him, but there was something naggingly familiar about her features.
The woman had dark hair, cut in a distinctive slanting style from the left side to the right, and attractive Asian features. Her clothes were aggressively businesslike, as grey as the room she sat in and with broad shoulders to accentuate her presence, and expensive-looking gems glittered in her ears. She smiled when she saw him, an artificial smile showing rows of pearly white teeth.
"Greetings, Suwa no You-ou," she began, not waiting for him to speak. "The family is delighted to receive overtures from you at last."
Kurogane gritted his teeth. "Don't call me that," he said in a taut, low tone that barely suppressed his murderous rage. He was doubly glad now that he'd evicted Sakura from the room; she didn't know him by that name. Nobody should have known him by that name, and the only thing that kept him from cutting the conversation right then and there was that she probably hadn't known how badly it would piss him off.
"Why not?" She actually sounded a little surprised and, God help her, amused by his evident anger. "There is no reason to be ashamed or hide from that name. That clan had a great and noble lineage, and that individual had a brave and remarkable history."
If he ever had any doubts about what kind of cold-blooded bastards he was dealing with, Kurogane thought cynically, the type of person who could describe that incident as 'brave and remarkable' instead of any other adjectives would just about hammer it home. "I don't. Do business. Under that name," he said, biting off each syllable distinctly. "My name is Kurogane, and that's the only one you're going to get a deal out of today."
As though he would seriously soil the name his parents had given him by using it for smuggling and drug-running. Kurogane… Kurogane was a different person, and it didn't count.
"Very well, Ship's Captain Kurogane," the woman said, her eyelashes sweeping down over her cheeks. "If you insist. If you came to join our ranks, of course, you would need feel no shame in using your family's name."
I'll bet, Kurogane thought bitterly, but did not say aloud. Instead he said, "What happened to Xing Hua? She was the one I always dealt with before."
The woman's demeanor abruptly went icy-cold. "Xing Hua is no longer with us," she snapped.
"What, you mean she's dead?" Kurogane said, somewhat taken aback. "Or what?"
"She believed that it would be more beneficial for her to join forces with Earth's dirtsucking Minister of Space than to remain loyal. She believed that she had more to fear from Fei Wong Reed than she did from us." The woman regained her composure somewhat, and her subsequent icy smile little smile made Kurogane's belly go cold. "She will be proven wrong."
"Sorry to hear it," Kurogane said, completely insincerely; he let the implied threat of what happened to deserters wash off his back. After all, he didn't work for the Triads. Yet. "Who are you?"
"My name is Sonomi," she said briskly.
Kurogane's lingering, bitter fury was abruptly swept away as the sense of familiarity clicked into place. "Amamiya Sonomi?" He couldn't keep the startlement out of his voice. "Then you're Masaki's -"
"Grandfather was most interested when he heard you had actually initiated contact with us this time," Sonomi interrupted. "Of course, we are always happy to honor such a treasured ally. You will want a face-to-face meeting, then to arrange the terms of the contract."
"I haven't agreed to any contract yet," Kurogane shot back. "I said I'd be interested in one job. No strings attached."
"Certainly," Sonomi said in a slightly chillier voice. "If that continues to be your wish. We shall set up a meeting for three Martian days from now, then. We will transmit the location of the meeting to your ship on the appointed day."
"Why wait so long?" Kurogane said. The planetary rotation of Mars was close enough to Earth's that most close-space business kept approximately the same clock; seventy-two hours seemed like an excessive delay. Especially given Sakura's bad 'feelings,' he didn't really want to be stuck here that long.
"Your drop shuttle is currently downside, along with two of your crew," Sonomi told him pleasantly; it wasn't a question. "We are simply giving you time to get prepared."
"They'll be back by tonight," Kurogane said. "I can meet you tomorrow."
Sonomi blinked at him in apparent innocence. "Can you really guarantee that they'll be back on time?" she cooed sweetly. "After all, Mars is dangerous. Anything could happen to them down there."
"Now wait just a damn -" Kurogane started.
"Three days, Captain Kurogane, will give you plenty of time to consider our offer. We will see you then." The screen blinked off.
The skies of Mars were as crowded as those over Earth, despite the fact that Mars had only a half its size and a tiny fraction of the population. But the volume of satellites, stations, orbital and sub-orbital traffic made the smaller atmosphere of Mars seem lively and cluttered. By contrast, the surface of Mars was almost pristine; huge swathes of rolling, virgin land were only intermittently decorated by roads or cities. Earth had built from the ground up; Mars had built from the sky down.
And the sky, Yuui marveled through the windows of the shuttle as Syaoran piloted it down to the surface, was as blue as he'd ever seen it on Earth.
The city of Olympia followed the same principle of design, buildings surging upwards to take advantage of every cubic meter of available space. The city was capped by a dome, and the limits of the glass circumscribed how far out they could build; they could always add onto the dome, and they did, but in the meantime the city grew to fill its confines like a pot-bound plant. Buildings and roadways stacked in layers, cluttering up the sky to almost obscure the sight of the dome overhead and plunging into deep subway tunnels below.
Syaoran seemed happy to play tour guide, and as the morning progressed - the light of the sun and the two mirrored moons dim by comparison to the lights of the city itself - he took them around all the most attractive and historic places to see. They rested for a few minutes in the city's largest garden - 'largest' being a relative term, since it seemed quite modest to Yuui. The greenery was all native earth-plants, and it made him feel a surge of nostalgia - not quite homesickness, as he had no desire to go back - for Hong Kong. That great city had parks of its own, which Yuui well remembered - there had been more than one night where he and his twin had camped out there, not daring to go home…
"Are you all right, Yuui-san?" Syaoran asked him conscientiously.
Yuui jolted back to himself, and gave the boy a bright smile. "I'm fine, it's just been a while since breakfast," he said easily. "Can we stop somewhere and get something to eat?"
"Sure!" Syaoran leapt to his feet with the enthusiasm of the young, and Yuui followed him out of the park and down a side street into a maze of narrow streets. "I know this place, they have really great Earth-style cakes and pastries."
"Earth-style?" Yuui asked, puzzled. "Does Mars still import a lot of food from Earth, then? I thought -"
"Oh, Mars is completely self-sufficient by now," Syaoran said proudly. "We can grow anything we need on the farms, and make anything we want in the cities. But there's still a market for Earth imports, you know, as a luxury…"
Indeed, the area of town they were entering seemed to have a lot of Earth 'novelty' shops. They passed by one large glass storefront bearing the sign 'Terra Miscellanea' in intricate script - Yuui caught a glimpse of a large, claw-footed bathtub crammed with a set of golf clubs. "FOR DISPLAY ONLY," the blazing sign above them read, although it was unclear which item it was referring to.
They rounded a corner and came face to face with a quaint-looking storefront. A plate-glass window outlined a collection of cakes and cupcakes so elaborately decorated that Yuui couldn't imagine actually eating them. Twin Crullers, proclaimed the name of the store above the entryway, and a tiny bell tinkled somewhere as they pushed open the door.
A tall woman in an apron-fronted dress, long black hair spilling over her shoulders, appeared from some back room. "Hun ying, hun ying… Oh, excuse me," she said, reverting to accented English as she caught sight of Yuui's blond hair. "Can I help you find something? We have only the finest cakes and cookies, made with real Earth flour…"
"It's all right," he said, smiling warmly at her. "Cantonese is fine - I grew up in Hong Kong. Thank you, but we're just looking around for now. We'll call you if we need anything, miss...?"
"Matsumoto," she said, smiling back. "Maki Matsumoto. I am the owner of the store, so if you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask. We can also do special orders. Are you looking for something to remind you of home?"
"Nothing in particular," he said, and then laughed. "Besides, it all looks so delicious. I don't know how I can choose!"
Syaoran was browsing along a row of sculpted sugar pastries when Yuui joined him. He looked up and smiled. "Yuui-san, you should choose something you like," he said. "This one's on me."
The price tag on a couple of the cakes caught Yuui's eye, and his inner child - the one who had gazed longingly at much simpler buns and rolls in the street market - quailed. "Are you sure it's all right?" he said. "They're awfully expensive…"
"Don't worry about it, Yuui-san," Syaoran said with a smile. "The Captain pays us well, and we don't get many opportunities to spend it. Even expensive cakes are still pretty cheap, compared to other things. And this is your first time on Mars! You deserve something special!"
Eventually they settled on a slice of thick chocolate cake, the top spread with glazed raspberry icing, on Yuui's insistence that they would share it. While they waited for Miss Matsumoto to bag and seal the cake, Yuui caught Syaoran's eye running over the rows of confections with a longing in his eye that had nothing to do with hunger.
"Are you going to buy one to take back to Sakura?" Yuui prompted helpfully. "She might like that."
"Oh, do you think so?" Syaoran turned to Yuui with relief. "I'm just not sure which one she'd like the most. They're all so beautiful…"
"How about this one?" Yuui moved down to the end of the row, pointing to a cluster of small cupcakes frosted and decorated in the shape of animals. The closest one to them was in the shape of a bear, small black eyes and tiny lines delimiting the mouth, and large round ears. "They're awfully cute, and they look delicious."
"They are!" Syaoran said, leaning over to admire them. "And she loves animals. Thank you, Yuui-san, I'll get these."
For a moment Yuui lingered over the row of pastries, wishing he could bring something back for Fai… but he had no way of knowing when Fai was going to be able to wake up, and he'd likely be in no condition to appreciate sweets when he did. He sighed and turned back to his companion. "What about the captain? Should we bring him souvenirs? He's Japanese, after all," Yuui said.
Syaoran laughed. "We might pick up something else later, but the Captain absolutely hates sweet things," he said as they gathered their packages and left the store.
"Oh, really?" Yuui said. A spark of mischief flared in his brain. "You know, maybe we should go shopping for some supplies before we go back up to the ship. Right now we don't have the right kind of flour, or enough sugar to make it practical, but I could try my hand at some baking recipes. We have to show Captain Killjoy what he's missing, after all…"
"Really?" Syaoran gave him a wide-eyed stare of amazement. "You can do that? But the gallery doesn't even have a proper oven, let alone muffin tins or a springform pan… We just don't have the space to spare for baking equipment."
"Oh, you'd be amazed what you can bake up in a simple microwave oven," Yuui told him airily. "As long as you're not trying anything especially complicated, like flaky tarts or anything that has to rise especially. But I could certainly turn out simple cookies or cakes."
"I never thought of that!" Syaoran shook his head wonderingly. "My brother - Kimihiro - he's a fantastic cook, and he bakes, too. His croissants were just incredible. His kitchen was always half-full of special baking stuff, and I never imagined you could bake without needing them."
"We should stock up on ingredients before we leave today, then," Yuui said, beginning to feel cheerful at the prospect. "After all, who knows how long it'll be before we next make planetf-"
He cut himself off midsentence as something flickered in the corner of his eye. He whipped his head around just in time to see two dark silhouettes disappear down the nearest alley. Unnerved, he turned his head straight again, in time to see Syaoran looking at him in puzzlement.
"Yuui-san? Is something wrong?" he asked.
"Nothing," he said, trying to make his voice sound normal and not as shaken as he felt. "Um… let's head back towards the shuttle, how about that? We can eat the cake there."
"Why? I thought you wanted to go shopping some more," Syaoran said in confusion. "There aren't any stores on the way back to the -" He broke off as his head swung behind them, and Yuui didn't have to turn around to know that the shadowy figures were back.
"They're following us, aren't they?" Yuui said quietly.
"Um…" Syaoran said, which wasn't the most encouraging of responses. "This way, Yuui-san - keep it to a walk until we round the corner."
Yuui tried to keep to a normal pace, even as terror buzzed in his head and made his chest feel tight. They'd found him, somehow - who knew how? He shouldn't have told Miss Matsumoto that he was from Hong Kong, that narrowed things down too much. He should never have come planetside, he should never have taken the risk. "I thought you said the Mars security network wasn't tied into the Earth one," he said tightly to Syaoran.
"It isn't," Syaoran said. "Not directly, anyway. I'm not sure this is - I need to get a better look at them."
They rounded the corner then, and Yuui hardly needed Syaoran's urging to break into a run. The two of them pounded down the alleyway, blood thudding in Yuui's ears as they ran. Only two - or only two that they'd seen? Yuui had no doubt he could take out just two men, no matter what weapons they carried, but police were like cockroaches; where you saw one, a dozen more were lurking just out of sight. He would never be able to kill -
Horrified, Yuui brought his train of halt to a screeching stop. Killing - again? It was just like Kurogane had accused him of, he reverted to killing his enemies because it was so easy. Because he didn't know what else to do. "What should we do?" he asked Syaoran, panting.
Syaoran skidded to a stop, his neck cranked backwards. He gestured wildly at the roof of catwalks above them. "We need to get higher up!" he said. "There's a fire escape right there - if you can give me a lift so I can grab it and pull it down -"
Without a second thought Yuui reached up and grabbed the trapdoor with his telekineses; metal shrieked as he yanked the ladder down to their level.
"Oh," Syaoran said, giving him a look of startled respect. "Or you could do that, yeah."
Yuui and Syaoran swarmed quickly up the ladder to the next level; Yuui took a moment to drag the ladder back up behind him. The fire escape went up several stories, and then abruptly flattened out into a wide series of walkways - the city's second-story street-level.
"Earth must have sent out the APB along all the interplanetary channels," Syaoran said. "They don't normally do that - it costs a fortune - they must want you really bad!"
It's not me they want so badly, Yuui thought grimly, although he saved his breath for running. Although he supposed it might have been; with the sheer number of deaths he had racked up behind him, the Feds must be howling for his blood.
"I don't know this part of the city as well," Syaoran confessed, "but if we stay above them, they should-"
Syaoran jerked to a stop, and Yuui skidded along loose gravel behind him - it took a quick expenditure of their power not to tip over the side. The roof above them abruptly dropped away, the road opening like a canyon in front of them.
Their shadowy pursuers were on the roof across from them, waiting for them. They were both tall, one blond and one black-haired, wearing dark coats that fell almost to their ankles. Despite the dimness of the sunlight that managed to filter through the dome and the haze overhead, they were both wearing sunglasses.
The shorter blond one lifted his arm; something in his hand flashed brightly. A camera? A signal flare? A tracer? Yuui wondered dizzily. If they jumped, could his power protect Syaoran from the fall…?
"Okay," Syaoran said, grabbing his arms tightly. "Don't panic. I know what this is. Just keep calm."
"How much more calm do you want me to be?" Yuui said, fighting the hysterical laughter that tried to bubble up in his throat. "We're being chased by Fed goons and -"
"It's not the Feds," Syaoran said forcefully. "Calm down. Listen. This is local security, and that means everything's going to be okay."
"How?"
"Listen to me. Just… Yuui-san, you need to use your talent."
Yuui stared at him uncomprehendingly. "To do what?" he said. "To jump? Or I could - I could pull them over the edge if that's what you -"
"No, definitely not!" Syaoran said sharply. "To - just do something so that they can see. Something that makes it obvious that you're the one doing it. Here - " He thrust the plastic bags from the bakery into Yuui's hands. "Make these float."
Now utterly confused, Yuui raised his hands slightly and levitated the bags. It was easy - easy enough, in fact, that it was hard to restrain his panic-fueled power not to send the pastries skyrocketing through the dome. "What will this do?" he said in a choked voice.
"Okay, that's enough. You can stop now." Syaoran nodded over towards the other street. "Look."
The shorter thug had lowered his hand, and both of them had taken off their sunglasses. When they were certain both Yuui and Syaoran were looking at them, the taller one nodded once.
And then they both turned and walked away into the alleyway.
After a short pause, Yuui asked, "What just happened? Have they - have they gone to get reinforcements?"
"No. We should be okay now." Syaoran took a deep breath, and exhaled shakily. "We should go back to the ship now. I'll explain on the way."
As they turned away, a bleeping noise sounded from Syaoran's pocket. He slapped it, then pulled out his mocom; it had the blinking light of a waiting message. He read it, and pulled a wry face.
"What is it?" Yuui asked, confused and still shaken. As he picked up the pastry bags, he realized with some dismay that his mental grip had squashed the cake inside completely flat; it was oozing strawberry jam from the seams.
"It's for you," Syaoran said, handing the little machine over to him.
A text message was scrolling across the screen. In blinking green letters it read, WELCOME TO MARS MR FLOWRIGHT. ENJOY YOUR STAY.
Onto chapter nine →
-tbc
Fandom: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Pairing: Fai/Kurogane/Yuui
Author: Co-write between mikkeneko & reikah
Rating: R
Word count: 7,815 this chapter (53,091 so far)
Notes: "In a future where science and psionics rule the skies, and both are controlled by the iron fist of the Earth government, two young men make a desperate leap into the unknown in order to evade capture and slavery. AU, Kurogane/Yuui/Fai."
Part One - Earth: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]
Part Two - Mars: [8] [9] [10] [11]
← back to chapter seven
Part two: Mars
a renegade survivor
Space unrolled a deep black velvet canvas for the next chapter of human history; painted, as ever, with the conflicts and politics of human experience. Those who had hoped that extrasolar space would provide humans with a uniting frontier quickly realized that where there were profits to be made and territory to be claimed, the brotherhood of common man held not much sway.
Japan was the first to establish a permanent space habitat; of all the wealthy, industrialized nations they had the greatest command of robotics and automation. It was they who built the first space docks, the floating castles of metal and plastic balanced at the fulcrums of gravity between the Earth and the Moon. Although the United States retained their tenuous legal ownership on the Lunar outposts, they owned no ships or shuttles to transport people or goods, so the claim was hollow; the moon might fly an American flag, but it spoke with a Russian accent.
For years the Japanese zaibatsu - megacorporations run by interlocking family groups - ruled the skies above Earth. They dispatched satellites to Earth orbit, automated mining robots to the asteroid belt, terraforming robots to Mars, survey robots to the outer solar system. Their wealth and power grew along with a strange new spacer culture - born half of old cultural traditions and half of their new, deadly environment - and the games between each clan grew ever more bloodthirsty as the stakes grew higher.
But as the infrastructure in close-Earth space grew, more and more players fought to take their space on the board. The zaibatsu had wealth, but not manpower, and despite great strides in artificial intelligence their automation could only do so much. In time, the zaibatsu could no longer provide enough warm bodies to fill the demand for habitation and work; eagerly other countries stepped up to fill the gap. The terraforming of Mars had barely begun, but sturdy domes were easy enough to build, and soon provided an outlet for the crowded cities Earth.
And so began a new kind of space race: for Mars soon declared itself a democratic protectorate, and the nation that had the most citizens would de facto own the Red Planet. The country that could build the most ships and send the most bodies to Mars would be the victor, and rich, populous China very quickly came to dominate the race and the planet. Other nations - India, America, Europe - fought to claim corners of the red planet for their own, but the momentum was against them.
For a time, China boasted that with Mars as its foothold, China would soon command all the heavens; for a time, it seemed like nothing could stop that destiny from being carried out. Yet the larger the empire, the sooner its dissolution; political scientists argued whether it was the War of Martian Independence that triggered the Chinese Civil War, or the other way around. Rumors whispered of shady dealings, corruption and sabotage orchestrated by the shadowed organization of the Triads - but then, rumors always prefer to blame criminal masterminds for the stupidity and inefficiency of everyday men.
Even as solar habitation flourished - colonies leapfrogging from Mars to the asteroid belt to the distant gas-giant moons - the old terrestrial powers descended into chaos. By the end of the century the central Chinese authority collapsed, and more than a dozen new states emerged from the chaos claiming independent legitimacy. Led by Taiwan, the new countries clamored for entry into the United Nations - and, with the loss of China and withdrawal of America from the voting board years earlier, quickly voted themselves into positions of leadership - although European Union remained a stubborn minority block, as it does to this day.
The new power that rose from the ashes called itself the Eurasian Federation - not the only government on Earth, certainly, but by far the most formidable giant of military and economic might that the world had ever seen, easily eclipsing the fading memory of American and Russian superpower. Now, at last, after years of indifference and laissez-faire, the new Earth government sought to reclaim the unruly children scattered throughout space.
Although Martian and Lunar independence was an established fact, still the Federation fought to extend the eminent domain of its authority over all of solar space. Senior Minister Fei Wong Reed, head of the Eurasian Federation's Department of Extraterrestrial Affairs, has even gone on record as saying that all human habitations - even the far-flung settlements of the deep-space colony pods - should be brought under the common mantle of Earth governance.
How he intends that Earth should enforce that, when travel to even the closest interstellar colony is a matter of decades and the only possible communications is through the network of telepaths - remains a mystery.
Yuui pulled himself up the ladder to the control room. After ten days on board the Mokona he had gotten used to the funny little flip of his stomach when the gravity turned over, and stabilized himself with an automatic combination of telekinesis and his own natural grace. It was surprising to realize how natural and unconscious the use of his talent was becoming.
But then again, he thought, this is what they trained me for.
"Good morning, Yuui-san," Syaoran said, lifting his head from his control panel. "Your timing is very good, we're just making a holding orbit now."
"Just now?" Yuui turned to peer at the display screens, as though they were windows he could see out of; they were currently showing a number of tracking projections and scrolling walls of text. "I thought we were supposed to arrive last night."
"In Mars planetary space, yeah," Kurogane grunted, not turning around in his Captain's chair. "We took a correction around Deimos, and then it took ten hours to get out of the Kajitori controlled space."
There was a distinctly unpleasant note in his voice on those last words, like he was spitting out something bitter, and the slice of his face that Yuui could see was drawn in an angry scowl. He quickly looked away, as though afraid that he could somehow have been responsible for the captain's foul mood.
He hadn't taken Kurogane up on his strange… proposal. A part of him felt guilty that he hadn't - it was as much as saying that he'd only tried to get in Kurogane's pants in the first place for his own benefit - and another part of him felt guilty for even being tempted. Kurogane was a striking man, and the brief kiss had been electric; Yuui had still felt the other man's taste on his tongue and his hands on his skin for hours afterwards. He was too confused to know what he wanted, but he could no longer deny that he wanted something.
But no matter how tempting the offer, he just couldn't do that to Fai. He couldn't forget the joy, the bliss of being in his twin's arms, just the two of them making everything else in the universe go away. He couldn't stand the thought of cheating on Fai, betraying him by opening his body to someone else. It was one thing if it was just business - furthering the aim of protecting them both - but if it was just for his own indulgence? It was impossible.
And a third part of him was appalled that he was even considering it in the first place. He was a criminal and a fugitive, on the run from all the law he had ever known into the wild unknown of out-system space, his brother was sick and sleeping and crazy, and here he was worrying about dalliance.
So he hadn't approached Kurogane again, and he watched anxiously for the man's reactions, to see if he was offended or angry by Fai's refusal. But the big man hadn't said anything, hadn't made any move to pressure him or even shown any disappointment. Did he just not care at all? Or what? He was a tough shell to crack, his guarded glower defying all of Yuui's guesses.
"We always use the Mino controlled airspace instead of the Kajitori," Syaoran explained cheerfully, breaking into Yuui's thoughts. "They're smaller, and out of the way, and a little more expensive, but they're also more private. And the views are wonderful! Would you like to see?"
Yuui's heart lifted. "Could I?" he said hopefully, glancing back at the displays.
"Oi," Kurogane said sharply, looking up from his own panel. "Some of us are trying to do work here, you know. This is business, not tourism."
"It'll just be for a moment, and just the big screens," Syaoran returned. He stood from his pilot's chair with one hand on the ceiling bar for balance, reaching above the bulky row of cabinet-like consoles to flip some unseen switches. The text and graphics winked out from the glass windows on all side, to be replaced by the deep, star-shot blackness of space.
Yuui shivered, feeling once again the bone-deep fear of that endless void, the vertigo of falling forever and the claustrophobic terror of vacuum… but only for a moment, before his attention was captured by the vast, softly glowing orb of Mars above them.
It took up half the screen, hanging sideways and slightly above them; the planetary curve was just barely visible at the edges, tinged by the ozone-blue haze of the atmosphere. Yuui drifted forward, staring in avid fascination at the first new world he'd ever seen.
The surface was awash in colors and patterns, slashed by broad white bands of ice-water clouds. The predominant color was a sort of light salmon-orange of rock and sand, wrinkled by darker bands of mountain ranges or deep gorges far more massive than any found on Earth. The northern pole was capped with brilliant white, and gleaming smooth ice-fields crept outwards across the hemisphere in irregular sheets that would one day be oceans.
But here and there, especially around the equator, were the dark grey-green smudges of Mars' primitive forests, planted and nurtured by the massive terraforming that pulled the planet inexorably away from the cold desert it had been and breathed new life into the world. Light flashed and twinkled along the horizon, as the planet turned from nightside into daylight; Yuui squinted a bit and was able to make out the corrugated gray spread of a major city nestled along the equator.
"That's Olympia, in the Tharsis sector," Syaoran supplied for him, saving Yuui the embarrassment of trying to remember his areography from school. "It's named for the mountain, but of course it's not on the mountain - there's a shuttle that runs on weekdays, though, you can make a day trip of it. I went once on a school trip. But if you want to know more you should really ask Sakura. She grew up in the city, I only visited there a few times."
"It's incredible," Yuui said with feeling, but then found himself at a loss to say more. He groped for words to express his awe, his wonder, at being confronted with a whole new horizon unlike anything he'd ever seen or imagined. "I'd expected something… more red."
Kurogane snorted, and Syaoran laughed. "Well, when I went to Earth, I was expecting it to be all blue," he said.
"After three hundred years of global industrialization?" Yuui asked. "Really?"
"From a distance it still looks blue, just like from a distance Mars looks red," Syaoran said. "The first stage of terraforming locked down a lot of the iron oxide in the air - we only get rust storms sometimes now, and everything looks a lot redder then. But the iron harvesting crawlers have been at work now for over a century, you know. Mars is changing."
Syaoran put his hand on the display and looked out over his homeworld, a distant look in his eyes and a wistful little smile on his face. "Mars is changing," he repeated in a quieter voice, his soft voice a strange combination of joy and sorrow. "A little bit every day. I'll never see it complete, but it will never be like it was, either."
"I wish I could go and see it," Yuui said, turning back to the display. A whole new world… it wasn't Earth, but that wasn't a bad thing.
"Well, why don't you?" Syaoran asked. "We usually go downside at least once while we're here - we're on the wrong side of the planet to visit my family, but there's still lots to see. The Mokona will be in dock for at least a couple of days, right?" He looked at Kurogane.
"Yeah," the captain grunted, flipping open a thin electronic notebook and scrolling through it.
"I couldn't," Yuui said, startled by the suggestion even as a hopeful surge lifted in his chest. "I mean - it would be dangerous, wouldn't it? I'd have to go through security, and - and I'm sure they're still looking for us -"
"This is Mars, son," Kurogane said sardonically. "There's more than one way to get down to the planet's surface."
"Besides, the Martian security database is separate from Earth's," Syaoran put in. "And they don't extradite criminals to Earth anyway. We've never had any problem with Earth security here."
Yuui wondered if that meant that they had problems with Mars security instead, but his mind was thrown into tumult by the unexpected offer. The prudent part of his brain told him to hang back, stay out of sight, on the ship where it was safe. But the rest of him seized gleefully on the chance to get out of this crowded tin can before he suffocated. He was growing more comfortable on the Mokona, and was endlessly grateful to its crew for taking him in and offering him and his brother protection… but it was a small ship, and his room was a cupboard. Sometimes he felt like the walls were pressing in on him, squeezed inwards by the ominous weight of the vacuum outside… physically it was the opposite, he knew, but he couldn't shake the choking sensation.
"I'd like that," he said. "I'd really like that."
"Great!" Syaoran cheered. "Just as soon as we get our flight plan cleared with the Mino, we can get going."
"Get going where?" Sakura's head poked above the control room's hatch, strands of ginger hair flying everywhere. "Oh, so here's everyone! I was wondering why the ship was so empty. Are we having a trip?"
"Yuui wants to go downside," Syaoran said. "I thought I'd go with him to Olympia, since I won't have anything to do once our flight plan is booked. Will you come?"
Sakura's face screwed up in indecision, then settled into a disappointed pout. "Not this time," she said. "I have to do some maintenance on the engine block if we're going to go on a long out-system trip. We aren't stopping anywhere in the Belt, are we?" She climbed the rest of the way into the control room and leaned against the railing, gazing at the high-definition display of Mars turning gently in space.
"Shouldn't," Kurogane said. "We're going directly to Jovian space, and there aren't any Belt nodes to speak of on our route this time of year."
"Then I really ought to get this done today," Sakura said. "And I really don't want to risk running into anyone who might know me in Olympia. But if you make a second trip later, I'll definitely want to come!"
"Oh, speaking of which, what's our next cargo going to be?" Syaoran wanted to know. "You haven't already booked it yet, have you?"
"Not yet," Kurogane replied. "Going to set up a meeting with our next client while you two are out of the way."
"Who with?" Sakura wanted to know.
There was a long moment of silence before Kurogane grudgingly let out, "With the Triads. They've been trying to get me to do them a cargo for years now."
"With the Triads?" Sakura stood bolt upright, staring at the captain, as Syaoran turned around in his chair so fast his neck audibly cracked.
"Captain, are you serious?" Syaoran said in astonishment. "You've never dealt with them directly before! Three-fourths of everything they export is black-market pharmaceuticals!"
"Drugs, yeah," Kurogane said in a reserved voice. "There's a three thousand percent profit margin for narcotics right now on Ganymede station -"
"But, Captain, you've never run drug cargoes before!" Sakura protested. "You always said you wouldn't deal in poisons! Why would you suddenly change your mind?"
"This isn't a democratic process," Kurogane snarled. "My ship, my decisions; it's none of you guys' business why!"
Yuui's surprise at the captain's unexpected announcement was eclipsed by a jolt of comprehension - Kurogane was covering for him. He was protecting Fai's privacy by refusing to reveal to the kids what Yuui had told him about the tox screens. "It's all right," he said suddenly, and Syaoran and Sakura's surprised gazes transferred to him instead.
He fought the urge to squirm under their wide, innocent eyes, and he couldn't help but look down at the deck plates as he mumbled, "It's for my brother. For Fai. He - because of all the things they did to him, back in the labs," he had to swallow hard to continue. "He's addicted to a lot of different compounds. I want - to cure him, but he's going to need more of the drugs while he gets off of them."
Sakura made a little "oh!" sound, while Syaoran sat back in his chair, eyes wide. "But is it going to be all right - to take stuff from the shipment?" he said, his voice concerned.
"That's why the Triads," Kurogane admitted unwillingly. "They always throw in a bonus for their dealers. It should be plenty for what your brother needs."
"But Captain, the Triads are -" Sakura started, and Kurogane cut over her.
"I'll talk to them," he said, in an iron tone that left no room for argument.
"Oh," Sakura said. She and Syaoran exchanged a long, troubled look, and Yuui wondered what it was about the Triads that Kurogane didn't want to talk about. Aside from the obvious part about doing business with a sinister organization of smugglers, assassins and thieves, of course.
He'd heard the name before, of course, but only in the context of wild stories and shadowy rumors. The basics - that they were a high-powered crime syndicate on Mars - seemed likely enough. Organized crime was a reality; the Japanese Yakuza, the American Mafia, the Italian Cosa Nostra were only three of the most modern examples. But some of the things that got said about them - that they were responsible for the downfall of Old China, that every member of their organization was marked with an elaborate tattoo, that they routinely blew up ships or bombed city blocks to get back at individuals who had crossed them, heedless of how many innocents were caught in the crossfire - seemed beyond the pale. Every crime or suspicious death on Mars, and many on Earth, was attributed to the mysterious Triads - surely much of it had to be exaggerated, simply because no one could be everywhere all the time!
Somehow, though, this didn't seem the time to ask.
"Well," Sakura said, forcing cheer through the suddenly frigid atmosphere of the control room. "I'll just… go get started on that engine work then!"
"I'll help you," Syaoran added hastily, and the two teenagers scrambled down the hatch in almost undignified haste.
It was the first time Yuui and Kurogane had been alone together all week, and Yuui's pulse was suddenly much too loud in the silence. "I, ah," he said. "I'll get ready to go downside, shall I? First time seeing a new planet and all that."
"Do that," Kurogane said, not looking up from his control screen.
"Captain, I -" Yuui stumbled, for once not attaching any frivolous nicknames to the title. "I really appreciate what you're doing for him. For us. I know that it's not something you're happy about, and I'm really grateful. If there's anything -"
"Don't be stupid," Kurogane cut him off, looking up long enough to give him a glare that would curdle milk. "Watch out for yourself."
He returned pointedly to his work, shutting Yuui out of his attention. "Okay," Yuui said to the room at general. "I promise," he added, and followed Sakura and Syaoran out of the control room.
Once the shuttle had detached and Kurogane finally had some quiet to work with, he shut down the flight plan he'd been working with and began setting up the meeting he was not looking forward to.
Another advantage of staying in the Mino space lanes, out of the bulk stream of traffic, was that it put them in moon shadow; it was possible to bounce a signal off the smaller moon and create a very nearly untraceable connection. The positioning allowed for much better business secrecy, as well as better security. Not, Kurogane thought darkly, that he would have flown in Kajitori space or given them a single yen of his money willingly no matter what advantages their company had to offer.
He sent out the initial ping and sat back in his chair, drumming his fingers on the armrest as he waited. There would be an inevitable delay as the recipient of the message verified who he was and dug up someone appropriate to field his call, but he didn't expect the wait to be long; they'd been wanting to hear from him for a long time, after all. On the other hand, it would be just like them to keep him dangling in order to hammer home his position - not long enough that he could justify giving up and doing something else, but long enough to make him angry.
Well, angrier, anyway.
His mind wandered back to his blond passenger, much to his internal exasperation. Wasn't the man a thorn in the side at all hours anyway, without intruding on his thoughts when he wasn't even onboard? But he was such a mix of contradictions; quick yet ignorant, fragile-looking yet insanely powerful, abrasive and then unexpectedly vulnerable. He hadn't approached Kurogane again after that night they'd argued about the drugs, and he wasn't sure whether to be glad or sorry. At least he was no longer trying to sell himself out at every opportunity, and yet Kurogane kind of regretted the missed opportunities.
Oh, well. He'd made his position clear; the ball was firmly in the idiot's court. The last thing Kurogane intended to do was press the issue - that would only muddle the message he was trying to send. And it wasn't like he didn't have better things to think about at the moment.
He heard the hiss of the cabin door behind him, and glanced over his shoulder as Sakura swung up over the railing. "Oi," he said. "I'm conducting negotiations here. I don't want them to see you."
"It'll be at least ten minutes before they get back to you," Sakura said with certainty. "This won't take long. There's just something I want to upload while we're still connected to the main planetary network."
Something in the tone of her voice caught Kurogane's attention, and he swung his chair around to scrutinize her as she seated herself at the engineer's station and began accessing the terminal. Her mouth had an unusually serious slant to it, and there was a faint shadow of worry on her forehead.
"All right," he said. "So what's the real reason you didn't go planetside with the kid and the idiot? You know Mars security wouldn't bother you, and there's no risk that anyone in Olympia would recognize you in person."
Sakura flickered a look up at him, then back down at the screen. "I had a feeling I had better stay up here," she said quietly.
Kurogane felt his spine stiffen. "You had a feeling or a 'feeling?' " he asked intently. "Did you see something happening?"
"No," she said, but then immediately changed it to "Yes. Maybe - oh, I don't know. Not - not on this shopping trip specifically."
"Something else, then?" Kurogane pressed her. "The Triads? I can still break off this deal now, but the further it goes, the more dangerous it will be to back out."
"No, the deal seems fine - I think. I'm just getting a bad feeling about this whole stopover in general. The sooner we finish our business and leave, the better I'll feel." She looked up and flashed him a wan smile, hands twisting in her lap. "Maybe I'm just overreacting, or making things up, I don't know. Mars always makes me feel a little uncomfortable, but this - this is different somehow. I wish I could tell you exactly where the danger is coming from. But I just don't know!"
In the three years since Sakura and Syaoran had come on board, it had proven damn useful sometimes to have a precognitive as part of the crew. Her 'feelings' had steered them out of more than one dangerous situation. However, just because it was a useful talent didn't mean it wasn't also a very frustrating one. Her warnings were often muzzy and unclear, and trying to get specific information out of them usually just left Sakura more confused and doubting her own visions.
"I'm not surprised," he said in a neutral tone. "There's been nothing but trouble since we took that idiot and his guest on board. Can you tell if we'll be safe after we leave Mars space?"
Sakura frowned, concentrating intensely, then lifted her head and shrugged helplessly. "I don't know," she said. "I don't feel anything as strongly, not good or bad, but - but I've been seeing some awfully strange things from after that time. I mean, making even less sense than usual."
She keyed up something on her console, and a datafile sprang to life on her screen. Kurogane stood up and crossed the cabin to look over her shoulder. His eyebrows rose in surprise despite himself. "What is this?" he said. "Astronomical archives? Planetary survey data? What does this have to do with anything?"
"I don't know, Sir." Sakura shrugged. "Most of the time I just see flashes - little snippets of a daily routine without any context. Twice now I've seen myself looking at this file. I don't know why, but it feels like a good future - one we should go towards, not away. So I thought I should load the file while we have a planetary datalink, just so Mokona will have it."
Kurogane started to speak, but the captain's console bleeped insistently at him, and he hastened back to his chair. "Out of the cabin," he told Sakura firmly, as M0K0NA's avatar informed him that the conference he'd requested could now be initiated. He didn't turn around, but a quick scamper of light feet and the hissing of the cabin door told him he'd been obeyed - just as he liked it.
The room that came up on the other side of the screen was carefully blank, a grey-toned conference room devoid of any identifying features. That much was expected, but Kurogane frowned as he took in the image of the woman seated across the vidscreen from him. She was a stranger to him, but there was something naggingly familiar about her features.
The woman had dark hair, cut in a distinctive slanting style from the left side to the right, and attractive Asian features. Her clothes were aggressively businesslike, as grey as the room she sat in and with broad shoulders to accentuate her presence, and expensive-looking gems glittered in her ears. She smiled when she saw him, an artificial smile showing rows of pearly white teeth.
"Greetings, Suwa no You-ou," she began, not waiting for him to speak. "The family is delighted to receive overtures from you at last."
Kurogane gritted his teeth. "Don't call me that," he said in a taut, low tone that barely suppressed his murderous rage. He was doubly glad now that he'd evicted Sakura from the room; she didn't know him by that name. Nobody should have known him by that name, and the only thing that kept him from cutting the conversation right then and there was that she probably hadn't known how badly it would piss him off.
"Why not?" She actually sounded a little surprised and, God help her, amused by his evident anger. "There is no reason to be ashamed or hide from that name. That clan had a great and noble lineage, and that individual had a brave and remarkable history."
If he ever had any doubts about what kind of cold-blooded bastards he was dealing with, Kurogane thought cynically, the type of person who could describe that incident as 'brave and remarkable' instead of any other adjectives would just about hammer it home. "I don't. Do business. Under that name," he said, biting off each syllable distinctly. "My name is Kurogane, and that's the only one you're going to get a deal out of today."
As though he would seriously soil the name his parents had given him by using it for smuggling and drug-running. Kurogane… Kurogane was a different person, and it didn't count.
"Very well, Ship's Captain Kurogane," the woman said, her eyelashes sweeping down over her cheeks. "If you insist. If you came to join our ranks, of course, you would need feel no shame in using your family's name."
I'll bet, Kurogane thought bitterly, but did not say aloud. Instead he said, "What happened to Xing Hua? She was the one I always dealt with before."
The woman's demeanor abruptly went icy-cold. "Xing Hua is no longer with us," she snapped.
"What, you mean she's dead?" Kurogane said, somewhat taken aback. "Or what?"
"She believed that it would be more beneficial for her to join forces with Earth's dirtsucking Minister of Space than to remain loyal. She believed that she had more to fear from Fei Wong Reed than she did from us." The woman regained her composure somewhat, and her subsequent icy smile little smile made Kurogane's belly go cold. "She will be proven wrong."
"Sorry to hear it," Kurogane said, completely insincerely; he let the implied threat of what happened to deserters wash off his back. After all, he didn't work for the Triads. Yet. "Who are you?"
"My name is Sonomi," she said briskly.
Kurogane's lingering, bitter fury was abruptly swept away as the sense of familiarity clicked into place. "Amamiya Sonomi?" He couldn't keep the startlement out of his voice. "Then you're Masaki's -"
"Grandfather was most interested when he heard you had actually initiated contact with us this time," Sonomi interrupted. "Of course, we are always happy to honor such a treasured ally. You will want a face-to-face meeting, then to arrange the terms of the contract."
"I haven't agreed to any contract yet," Kurogane shot back. "I said I'd be interested in one job. No strings attached."
"Certainly," Sonomi said in a slightly chillier voice. "If that continues to be your wish. We shall set up a meeting for three Martian days from now, then. We will transmit the location of the meeting to your ship on the appointed day."
"Why wait so long?" Kurogane said. The planetary rotation of Mars was close enough to Earth's that most close-space business kept approximately the same clock; seventy-two hours seemed like an excessive delay. Especially given Sakura's bad 'feelings,' he didn't really want to be stuck here that long.
"Your drop shuttle is currently downside, along with two of your crew," Sonomi told him pleasantly; it wasn't a question. "We are simply giving you time to get prepared."
"They'll be back by tonight," Kurogane said. "I can meet you tomorrow."
Sonomi blinked at him in apparent innocence. "Can you really guarantee that they'll be back on time?" she cooed sweetly. "After all, Mars is dangerous. Anything could happen to them down there."
"Now wait just a damn -" Kurogane started.
"Three days, Captain Kurogane, will give you plenty of time to consider our offer. We will see you then." The screen blinked off.
The skies of Mars were as crowded as those over Earth, despite the fact that Mars had only a half its size and a tiny fraction of the population. But the volume of satellites, stations, orbital and sub-orbital traffic made the smaller atmosphere of Mars seem lively and cluttered. By contrast, the surface of Mars was almost pristine; huge swathes of rolling, virgin land were only intermittently decorated by roads or cities. Earth had built from the ground up; Mars had built from the sky down.
And the sky, Yuui marveled through the windows of the shuttle as Syaoran piloted it down to the surface, was as blue as he'd ever seen it on Earth.
The city of Olympia followed the same principle of design, buildings surging upwards to take advantage of every cubic meter of available space. The city was capped by a dome, and the limits of the glass circumscribed how far out they could build; they could always add onto the dome, and they did, but in the meantime the city grew to fill its confines like a pot-bound plant. Buildings and roadways stacked in layers, cluttering up the sky to almost obscure the sight of the dome overhead and plunging into deep subway tunnels below.
Syaoran seemed happy to play tour guide, and as the morning progressed - the light of the sun and the two mirrored moons dim by comparison to the lights of the city itself - he took them around all the most attractive and historic places to see. They rested for a few minutes in the city's largest garden - 'largest' being a relative term, since it seemed quite modest to Yuui. The greenery was all native earth-plants, and it made him feel a surge of nostalgia - not quite homesickness, as he had no desire to go back - for Hong Kong. That great city had parks of its own, which Yuui well remembered - there had been more than one night where he and his twin had camped out there, not daring to go home…
"Are you all right, Yuui-san?" Syaoran asked him conscientiously.
Yuui jolted back to himself, and gave the boy a bright smile. "I'm fine, it's just been a while since breakfast," he said easily. "Can we stop somewhere and get something to eat?"
"Sure!" Syaoran leapt to his feet with the enthusiasm of the young, and Yuui followed him out of the park and down a side street into a maze of narrow streets. "I know this place, they have really great Earth-style cakes and pastries."
"Earth-style?" Yuui asked, puzzled. "Does Mars still import a lot of food from Earth, then? I thought -"
"Oh, Mars is completely self-sufficient by now," Syaoran said proudly. "We can grow anything we need on the farms, and make anything we want in the cities. But there's still a market for Earth imports, you know, as a luxury…"
Indeed, the area of town they were entering seemed to have a lot of Earth 'novelty' shops. They passed by one large glass storefront bearing the sign 'Terra Miscellanea' in intricate script - Yuui caught a glimpse of a large, claw-footed bathtub crammed with a set of golf clubs. "FOR DISPLAY ONLY," the blazing sign above them read, although it was unclear which item it was referring to.
They rounded a corner and came face to face with a quaint-looking storefront. A plate-glass window outlined a collection of cakes and cupcakes so elaborately decorated that Yuui couldn't imagine actually eating them. Twin Crullers, proclaimed the name of the store above the entryway, and a tiny bell tinkled somewhere as they pushed open the door.
A tall woman in an apron-fronted dress, long black hair spilling over her shoulders, appeared from some back room. "Hun ying, hun ying… Oh, excuse me," she said, reverting to accented English as she caught sight of Yuui's blond hair. "Can I help you find something? We have only the finest cakes and cookies, made with real Earth flour…"
"It's all right," he said, smiling warmly at her. "Cantonese is fine - I grew up in Hong Kong. Thank you, but we're just looking around for now. We'll call you if we need anything, miss...?"
"Matsumoto," she said, smiling back. "Maki Matsumoto. I am the owner of the store, so if you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask. We can also do special orders. Are you looking for something to remind you of home?"
"Nothing in particular," he said, and then laughed. "Besides, it all looks so delicious. I don't know how I can choose!"
Syaoran was browsing along a row of sculpted sugar pastries when Yuui joined him. He looked up and smiled. "Yuui-san, you should choose something you like," he said. "This one's on me."
The price tag on a couple of the cakes caught Yuui's eye, and his inner child - the one who had gazed longingly at much simpler buns and rolls in the street market - quailed. "Are you sure it's all right?" he said. "They're awfully expensive…"
"Don't worry about it, Yuui-san," Syaoran said with a smile. "The Captain pays us well, and we don't get many opportunities to spend it. Even expensive cakes are still pretty cheap, compared to other things. And this is your first time on Mars! You deserve something special!"
Eventually they settled on a slice of thick chocolate cake, the top spread with glazed raspberry icing, on Yuui's insistence that they would share it. While they waited for Miss Matsumoto to bag and seal the cake, Yuui caught Syaoran's eye running over the rows of confections with a longing in his eye that had nothing to do with hunger.
"Are you going to buy one to take back to Sakura?" Yuui prompted helpfully. "She might like that."
"Oh, do you think so?" Syaoran turned to Yuui with relief. "I'm just not sure which one she'd like the most. They're all so beautiful…"
"How about this one?" Yuui moved down to the end of the row, pointing to a cluster of small cupcakes frosted and decorated in the shape of animals. The closest one to them was in the shape of a bear, small black eyes and tiny lines delimiting the mouth, and large round ears. "They're awfully cute, and they look delicious."
"They are!" Syaoran said, leaning over to admire them. "And she loves animals. Thank you, Yuui-san, I'll get these."
For a moment Yuui lingered over the row of pastries, wishing he could bring something back for Fai… but he had no way of knowing when Fai was going to be able to wake up, and he'd likely be in no condition to appreciate sweets when he did. He sighed and turned back to his companion. "What about the captain? Should we bring him souvenirs? He's Japanese, after all," Yuui said.
Syaoran laughed. "We might pick up something else later, but the Captain absolutely hates sweet things," he said as they gathered their packages and left the store.
"Oh, really?" Yuui said. A spark of mischief flared in his brain. "You know, maybe we should go shopping for some supplies before we go back up to the ship. Right now we don't have the right kind of flour, or enough sugar to make it practical, but I could try my hand at some baking recipes. We have to show Captain Killjoy what he's missing, after all…"
"Really?" Syaoran gave him a wide-eyed stare of amazement. "You can do that? But the gallery doesn't even have a proper oven, let alone muffin tins or a springform pan… We just don't have the space to spare for baking equipment."
"Oh, you'd be amazed what you can bake up in a simple microwave oven," Yuui told him airily. "As long as you're not trying anything especially complicated, like flaky tarts or anything that has to rise especially. But I could certainly turn out simple cookies or cakes."
"I never thought of that!" Syaoran shook his head wonderingly. "My brother - Kimihiro - he's a fantastic cook, and he bakes, too. His croissants were just incredible. His kitchen was always half-full of special baking stuff, and I never imagined you could bake without needing them."
"We should stock up on ingredients before we leave today, then," Yuui said, beginning to feel cheerful at the prospect. "After all, who knows how long it'll be before we next make planetf-"
He cut himself off midsentence as something flickered in the corner of his eye. He whipped his head around just in time to see two dark silhouettes disappear down the nearest alley. Unnerved, he turned his head straight again, in time to see Syaoran looking at him in puzzlement.
"Yuui-san? Is something wrong?" he asked.
"Nothing," he said, trying to make his voice sound normal and not as shaken as he felt. "Um… let's head back towards the shuttle, how about that? We can eat the cake there."
"Why? I thought you wanted to go shopping some more," Syaoran said in confusion. "There aren't any stores on the way back to the -" He broke off as his head swung behind them, and Yuui didn't have to turn around to know that the shadowy figures were back.
"They're following us, aren't they?" Yuui said quietly.
"Um…" Syaoran said, which wasn't the most encouraging of responses. "This way, Yuui-san - keep it to a walk until we round the corner."
Yuui tried to keep to a normal pace, even as terror buzzed in his head and made his chest feel tight. They'd found him, somehow - who knew how? He shouldn't have told Miss Matsumoto that he was from Hong Kong, that narrowed things down too much. He should never have come planetside, he should never have taken the risk. "I thought you said the Mars security network wasn't tied into the Earth one," he said tightly to Syaoran.
"It isn't," Syaoran said. "Not directly, anyway. I'm not sure this is - I need to get a better look at them."
They rounded the corner then, and Yuui hardly needed Syaoran's urging to break into a run. The two of them pounded down the alleyway, blood thudding in Yuui's ears as they ran. Only two - or only two that they'd seen? Yuui had no doubt he could take out just two men, no matter what weapons they carried, but police were like cockroaches; where you saw one, a dozen more were lurking just out of sight. He would never be able to kill -
Horrified, Yuui brought his train of halt to a screeching stop. Killing - again? It was just like Kurogane had accused him of, he reverted to killing his enemies because it was so easy. Because he didn't know what else to do. "What should we do?" he asked Syaoran, panting.
Syaoran skidded to a stop, his neck cranked backwards. He gestured wildly at the roof of catwalks above them. "We need to get higher up!" he said. "There's a fire escape right there - if you can give me a lift so I can grab it and pull it down -"
Without a second thought Yuui reached up and grabbed the trapdoor with his telekineses; metal shrieked as he yanked the ladder down to their level.
"Oh," Syaoran said, giving him a look of startled respect. "Or you could do that, yeah."
Yuui and Syaoran swarmed quickly up the ladder to the next level; Yuui took a moment to drag the ladder back up behind him. The fire escape went up several stories, and then abruptly flattened out into a wide series of walkways - the city's second-story street-level.
"Earth must have sent out the APB along all the interplanetary channels," Syaoran said. "They don't normally do that - it costs a fortune - they must want you really bad!"
It's not me they want so badly, Yuui thought grimly, although he saved his breath for running. Although he supposed it might have been; with the sheer number of deaths he had racked up behind him, the Feds must be howling for his blood.
"I don't know this part of the city as well," Syaoran confessed, "but if we stay above them, they should-"
Syaoran jerked to a stop, and Yuui skidded along loose gravel behind him - it took a quick expenditure of their power not to tip over the side. The roof above them abruptly dropped away, the road opening like a canyon in front of them.
Their shadowy pursuers were on the roof across from them, waiting for them. They were both tall, one blond and one black-haired, wearing dark coats that fell almost to their ankles. Despite the dimness of the sunlight that managed to filter through the dome and the haze overhead, they were both wearing sunglasses.
The shorter blond one lifted his arm; something in his hand flashed brightly. A camera? A signal flare? A tracer? Yuui wondered dizzily. If they jumped, could his power protect Syaoran from the fall…?
"Okay," Syaoran said, grabbing his arms tightly. "Don't panic. I know what this is. Just keep calm."
"How much more calm do you want me to be?" Yuui said, fighting the hysterical laughter that tried to bubble up in his throat. "We're being chased by Fed goons and -"
"It's not the Feds," Syaoran said forcefully. "Calm down. Listen. This is local security, and that means everything's going to be okay."
"How?"
"Listen to me. Just… Yuui-san, you need to use your talent."
Yuui stared at him uncomprehendingly. "To do what?" he said. "To jump? Or I could - I could pull them over the edge if that's what you -"
"No, definitely not!" Syaoran said sharply. "To - just do something so that they can see. Something that makes it obvious that you're the one doing it. Here - " He thrust the plastic bags from the bakery into Yuui's hands. "Make these float."
Now utterly confused, Yuui raised his hands slightly and levitated the bags. It was easy - easy enough, in fact, that it was hard to restrain his panic-fueled power not to send the pastries skyrocketing through the dome. "What will this do?" he said in a choked voice.
"Okay, that's enough. You can stop now." Syaoran nodded over towards the other street. "Look."
The shorter thug had lowered his hand, and both of them had taken off their sunglasses. When they were certain both Yuui and Syaoran were looking at them, the taller one nodded once.
And then they both turned and walked away into the alleyway.
After a short pause, Yuui asked, "What just happened? Have they - have they gone to get reinforcements?"
"No. We should be okay now." Syaoran took a deep breath, and exhaled shakily. "We should go back to the ship now. I'll explain on the way."
As they turned away, a bleeping noise sounded from Syaoran's pocket. He slapped it, then pulled out his mocom; it had the blinking light of a waiting message. He read it, and pulled a wry face.
"What is it?" Yuui asked, confused and still shaken. As he picked up the pastry bags, he realized with some dismay that his mental grip had squashed the cake inside completely flat; it was oozing strawberry jam from the seams.
"It's for you," Syaoran said, handing the little machine over to him.
A text message was scrolling across the screen. In blinking green letters it read, WELCOME TO MARS MR FLOWRIGHT. ENJOY YOUR STAY.
Onto chapter nine →
-tbc