GW: Freeport Chapter 3 (rewrite)
Third chapter. Thanks once more for the reviews, typo-spotting and encouragements; they encourage me to fight RL to the death and drag some spare time from its steaming carcass in which to work on this *ducks as simile spins out of control*
Link to all chapters
Welcome to Tijuana
Tekila, sexo y marihuana
Welcome to Tijuana
Con el coyote no hay aduana
Bienvenida a Tijuana
Bienvenida mi suerte
Bienvenida la muerte
Por la Panamericana
(Welcome to Tijuana
Tequila, sex and marijuana
Welcome to Tijuana
With the coyotes there's no customs
Welcome to Tijuana
Welcome, my luck
Welcome to death
By the Panamerican)
--- Manu Chao, 'Welcome to Tijuana'
[Whenever possible I will put the translations of non-English songs. Translations are, more often than not, my own. Sorry for any errors :)
'Coyote' refers to a trans-border smuggler]
Freeport by Maldoror
Chapter Three
"Here we go. This shouldn't take long," Duo announced as he sent acknowledgement to the blockade and followed their docking instructions.
Wufei studied the small space station visible from the view port. It was an ugly duckling of a space object the size of a small building; a bunch of tubes, fuel containers, pods and antenna all lumped together. The blockade consisted of a dozen of these stations in a loose sphere around Freeport space. A Preventer five-man spinnet was docked there already, long, sleek and deadly as a stiletto, a contrast to the bulky unlovely space station. It was filling up with ammo and oxygen tanks at one of the station's spherical cargo pods before it left for a new patrol around the perimeter. Duo passed the spinnet carefully and approached another of the station's berths.
A clunk echoed through the hull and into the space inside the clipper as Duo docked against the station's clamp.
"Get your ID ready and let me do the talkin', okay?"
"Isn't that what I'm supposed to be doing anyway?" Wufei muttered.
"Not as far as Johnny Lawboy is concerned. I meant, our highly respected Preventer forces, of course."
"Of course."
There was a further thunk as the station's airlock fastened over Scythe's. Duo bounced up and drifted over to the door, hitting the release.
"Officer Dinkle, what a pleasure," said Duo. There was no overt irony in his words, but there was quite a lot in the subtext.
There was an answering grunt. Wufei released his harness and drifted over.
The Preventer's badge read Tyrone Dinkle. He grunted a second time as Duo handed him a sheaf of papers; the cargo manifest, Wufei supposed. Dinkle went over them quickly, eyes bored and completely unfriendly.
"Who's this?" His eyes flickered towards Wufei even as he turned the manifest's pages. He noted Wufei's collar and the look on his face, already unpleasant, degenerated into a sneer of disgust. "Does he have ID?"
"Yup. Give him your papers." The last was addressed to Wufei. He obediently handed over his usual cover ID he had ready. It showed nothing remarkable and no criminal record that should give him any trouble getting in and out of Freeport.
Dinkle scanned the ID and read the result with the air of one ready to pounce on the slightest irregularity. He handed it back without looking at Wufei, making sure the latter could take the ID without their hands touching. Charming. Then the officer turned towards the boxes.
"What do you have here, Maxwell?"
"It's in the cargo manifest, Ty." Duo's smile was sunny.
Dinkle gave the nearest box a hard kick on the lock, popping it open at the risk of making it unusable for future space flights. A gleam that only Wufei would notice went through Duo's eyes, but his smile stayed open and outrageously honest.
"I know you like your hair, Maxwell, but this is ridiculous," Dinkle said slowly.
Wufei glanced at the open box and then did a double take. It was filled with old-fashioned hair rollers, glaringly pink and ridiculous in row upon row of clear plastic bags.
His first instinct as a Preventer would have been to tear right through that lot to see what could possibly be hidden beneath them. He hoped to hell that Duo wasn't actually trying to smuggle anything past the embargo now, when they had a mission inside Freeport and could not afford to get stuck in jail for a few months to a year.
Dinkle rifled through a few rows, carelessly sending them floating. Duo caught them and waited until the officer had investigated the contents of the box before putting them back and carefully locking it as if it contained delicate instrumentation. Dinkle was already at another box, poking through clothes. Baby clothes, Wufei noted with nothing but dull curiosity, having run right out of surprise. Another box revealed several smaller boxes of cheap gyros, LED lights and such. A fourth was full of old computer parts, most of which looked trashed.
"The usual then. Apart from the curlers, which are weird even by your standards, Maxwell," the Preventer sniffed. He opened two of the small cartons, shook out the gyros inside carelessly, inspected them briefly and then stuffed them back in their box.
"You got a copy of that manifest?"
"Already downloaded to your station's computer, Ty."
Dinkle grunted again; it was apparently the level of communication he judged worthy of his visitors. He propelled himself towards the airlock without another glance. Duo didn't look surprised, merely drifted over and shut the lock behind him.
"That's all?!" Wufei stared at the airlock once it was closed.
"Yep, that's what I mostly get. Oh, sometimes they take a ship to dry-dock and take it apart, but that's only happened to me once in the four years I've been passing by this station with Scythe. I don't get hassled normally. They know I'm clean and honest," Duo explained solemnly.
"Maxwell, you've never been caught, but Trowa knows what you're up to and so do I."
That got him the clear-eyed gaze of the innocently accused. "Whatever do you mean?"
"Duo-"
"Anyway, it doesn't matter." Duo waved a dismissive hand and drifted back to the pilot's seat. "They know they're not likely to catch anything on me. I'll either hide it too well or, if I have something bulky, I would be taking it through the hide n' seek route."
Wufei knew what he meant by the hide and seek route: the smuggler's highway.
Freeport was surrounded by tiny resource satellites on small asteroids; patches of darkness against the stars, with a few warning lights to ward off incoming traffic and floodlights bathing excavation points or access zones. No other colony in space would bother with asteroids this size. The price to conduct large-scale mining operations on tiny scattered space dust like this would have been prohibitive. Freeport did it by employing a lot of manual labor instead of using automation and the huge excavation stations other colonies used. The numerous scattered objects and the space debris produced by mining were a navigation hazard to Preventer ships that patrolled the perimeter. They were also excellent cover for space pirates and smugglers to approach the colony without stopping at the blockade for the required verifications.
Wufei knew that most heavy-duty smugglers would use Freeport's debris field to dodge the blockade, but nonetheless, remembering Dinkle's negligent five-minute check..."That was still on the limit of dereliction of duty." Wufei automatically rolled the man's serial number and name around his mind, along with a half-formulated promise to have a word with him at one point. Then he gave Duo a sharp glance. "Wait a minute. You could have smuggled a mobile suit into Freeport with that laxity. Why did you say you couldn't get my Browning in?"
"Later, later. Gotta concentrate to get through the debris field," Duo muttered as Scythe broke loose from the docking clamp and scooted towards the multitude of pinprick lights that promised death by vacuum if they crashed into any of them. There was a clear path through the field, Wufei knew, but that was reserved for important cargo vessels and commercial freighters only. Small-time flyers like Duo had to sweat their way in.
The space debris and small resource satellites, towed or blasted into Freeport's sphere of influence by Sweepers for the most part, gave way to a cleared space after twenty minutes of careful navigation. This was the outer docks, the ship construction area. Wufei struggled internally for all of three seconds before he gave in to temptation and released his harness to get a better look out of the view port. He was acting like a tourist, he knew, but his fascination for vessels, particularly the deep-space explorer, won out.
The spaceships were mostly invisible in the eternal night of space; only the areas where people were working were flooded with massive directional beams. The few he could make out with any clarity were cargo vessels, earth-to-moon types. The larger Mars cargoes and the deep-space explorer for the outer planets that ESUN was working on were probably on the other side of the colony whose massive frame was blocking his view of the stars more and more as they approached.
Wufei faced that darkness like one faced the enemy. Freeport. In his mind he could see the colony as clearly as it was highlighted on Duo's scope. It was wheel-shaped, though one of its eight spokes was broken, smashed through by some space debris decades ago. The mass of small resource satellites around it and ships dancing in and about its spoke and axis put it in constant danger of similar accidents. If this worried the colony's inhabitants, it was to be supposed they'd gotten used to it. It gave Wufei, a colonist himself, chills just watching that deadly tango, but he'd have to bloody well get used to it too. The hub of the wheel, its axis of rotation, was brilliantly lit and heaving with space traffic, ships docking and leaving constantly. Way more traffic than was safe, Wufei could see at a glance. He shook his head in a mixture of horror and wonder.
The warble of a comm channel prompted him to sit back down and buckle in. Duo exchanged a few words with Freeport's flight control and requested a dry dock facility. Then he leaned back in his chair and stretched against the harness like a cat.
"There'll be a delay in getting a dry dock. It might take a few minutes, but it's been known to take days. We can leave Scythe in space dock and go in with suits if that's the case. They should tell us in a sec."
"Why so long?" Wufei asked, puzzled.
"Everybody's busy," Duo replied as if that explained everything. "And they need to have someone at customs to check us in."
"Customs? Freeport has customs?" Wufei glanced back over his shoulder as if he could physically see the blockade space station thirty minutes behind their stern. He thought that was customs.
"Hmm, sure we do." Duo rubbed his eyes. He looked as tired as Wufei felt. "Gotta make sure ships don't bring dangerous shit - or people - into the place."
"Do they do a better job than Officer Dinkle?" Wufei asked sourly. He was still angry at the man. The blockade shouldn't be such a joke. It was there to stop smuggling in and out of Freeport, and detain criminals and pirates escaping the law to hide there. The contraband it was primarily checking for was weapons. Freeport had been declared a lawless zone since long before Wufei was born, and stopping the circulation of guns in such an environment was deemed the first step to pacifying it. Except so far no government had ever gotten to that next step. They just tried to keep the worst of the scum from leaving the colony and the more dangerous contraband from entering.
"Don't knock the boys and girls of the blockade," Duo admonished lazily. "It's a shitty job. If it makes you feel better, they're a damn sight more careful about what comes out of Freeport than what goes in. That means there's only very few people in the 'coming in' section, and most of those are concentrated on the big cargo ships to make sure we're not slipping in Gundanium or suit parts or something. Officer Tiny Winkle is just some poor shmuck who's waiting for his tour of duty to end so he can go back to Earth, feel some gravs under his feet, get drunk and get laid."
"That is no excuse. If all prison wardens were so lax, every penitentiary would be a war zone."
That got Wufei a rare old glare. "Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Freeport was a penitentiary to start with, but that lasted for all of ten years. And that was eighty three years ago! Fuck's sake, we get that all the time. Penitentiary this, prison that, like every guy aboard is still an escaped convict or something. All the prisoners they had there to start with died of old age already. If they were lucky. Not that it matters a shit anymore."
Of course it mattered. Wufei's clan had been exiled from the Sino-Asian conglomerate - the one-time Chinese Democratic Republic, North Korea, Vietnam and Taiwan - sixty nine years ago, and every member still remembered the specifics of their exile down to the last detail, the politicians involved and the patriarchs that had led them to A0206, their new home where they could live on their own strength and nurture their ideals in purity and solitude. Origins mattered.
"Its origins matter to Freeport," Wufei pointed out archly. "In their case, the fact that they were a penal colony was what gave rise to their dubious status of independence, which let them-"
"Dubious independence?! Hey, mate, there's nothing dubious about it. It was even a charter under the Alliance."
"Maxwell, you know as well as I do that the Alliance used Freeport as a dumping ground for malcontents and problem cases that they didn't have quite the impetus to execute or imprison. The only reason they didn't invade and take over the damn place was that it was easier to cordon off than deal with the consequences of destroying it and then facing homeless Sweeper crews forming seditious groups all over the colonies. One of OZ's officers compared it to a relatively benign cancer that would metastasize if you hacked into it."
There was a nasty twist to Duo's smile. "And you people don't do the same?"
"Of course not," Wufei said, biting off the words. "The only reason ESUN is keeping away from Freeport and the den of criminality there is because we're a humanitarian government, and our analysts have judged that the- the illuminated lunatics in charge there are serious when they said they'd blow the place up rather than surrender to any armed forces. The death toll would be horrendous."
"It'd sure look bad on the six o'clock news, I grant ya, but you sure this decision doesn't have anything to do with the fact that Freeport builds the best motherfucking ships in the whole solar system, including the Mars shuttles? ESUN and the colonies had their fleets completely hosed during the war, They even lost most of their cargo and passenger transports. You sure the fact that the citizens of Freeport are willin' to work forty-eight hours a day to make up for war losses has nothin' to do with ESUN's patience with us?" Duo was watching him through hooded eyes, waiting for his reaction.
"I-"
"'Cause if you wanted us to give up and play nice, you could just stop all the ship orders. That'd put a stranglehold on Freeport and eventually drive all the people out without firing a single bullet. So why don't your government do that, hey?"
Wufei had wondered about that himself occasionally, and he hadn't liked the possible answers, so he gave the one that the Preventers adopted and that he'd learned to live with whenever he thought of the problem at all: "I understand that this policy is designed to give Freeport the incentive to turn to honest profit, instead of relying on- on-" Wufei gestured at Scythe's dashboard.
"Smugglers, pirates and thieves, boy, smugglers, pirates and thieves." Duo gave him a wolfish grin that reminded Wufei of the days the man was called Shinigami. "I guess you're right, Chang. We've not changed that much since the old days. We're still lifers, every one of us. The old Space Force abandoned the jailbirds eighty odd years ago when the colonies made their bid for independence and everything went FUBAR. Everybody judged that taking care of convicts was the other side's job, so nobody did and the poor bastards were left to eat vacuum. They were given independence on a technicality, so that when they all died and Pen-003 hull-breached and went to hell, neither of the two sides of that conflict would feel too guilty. And that's still the way it is! Well, those convicts survived and so do we-"
Duo interrupted his intense monologue with a look at Wufei that was rather dismissive, weaving his fingers together behind his neck and relaxing against the harness. "Yeah," he continued, "I guess ESUN and Agent Chang are correct. We're a cesspit, a bunch of death row inmates still scrabblin' for survival at the edge of the void. And you know what? We're still not ready to give up and let the good guys in to lord it over us. Your analysts hit it right on the nose. we will blow the joint sky-high at the first sign of an invasion, since that's the only weapon we have. That's the kind of insane asylum you're heading into. Still feel up to it, Preventer? 'cause it's not too late to turn back if you're willing to shell out for fuel expenses."
Wufei stared at his one-time ally. Duo was stretched back against his harness, hands behind his head and one foot on the console. His voice had been mocking on the surface. Yet underneath there'd been that strange pride that Wufei had known during the war - the 'The whole world's against me - and that's fair enough 'cause Shinigami is after its blood' mentality. The other pilots had been so serious and committed. Duo had laughed and joked and killed like a fiend, with dedication and gusto. Shinigami indeed. He'd had some grasp of the politics behind what the pilots had been trying to achieve, he'd fought for the cause, but he never seemed to take it half as seriously as the actual fighting itself. Maybe that's why he'd been such a good pilot...
He was still the same, except this time when he'd said 'we', he hadn't meant himself and the other four pilots. And Wufei found that rather worrisome. This wasn't just a place to live for Maxwell, it wasn't just a bolt hole and a base for his petty smuggling operations. This had become Shinigami's home in a much more fundamental sense. Though Duo was getting paid for this job, which showed that his practical, mercenary side was still healthy. Nonetheless, Wufei found himself rearranging his informant's loyalties in his mind.
Carver, Wufei told himself severely. Concentrate on catching Carver. Duo's allegiances mattered no more than the dubious circumstances in which Wufei was handed the mission in the first place. The only thing that mattered was that Wufei was going to put a killer behind bars. Duo's home might be Freeport these days, but Wufei had none; certainly not the small, drab temporary apartments the Preventers rented to him wherever he moved to. Wufei's allegiance was to his interpretation of justice, from the small details of stopping criminals to preventing the greater crime that was war.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
After thirty minutes of a rather heavy silence, the comm bleeped. A tired voice came through the speakers when Duo acknowledged.
//Scythe, we have a dry dock for you. Ring 10, berth 49. Got that?//
Duo made a face. "Aww, man! That's gonna put me miles from home! Can't I get anything closer? I'm bushed."
//...Scythe, the small creak you're hearing isn't the sound of my joints after a fifteen hour shift and it isn't the sound of the deck coordinator's nerves slowly stretching to a snapping point. It's the sound of my tiny violin cryin' over the fact you have to haul ass a few hundred meters more than ya want to. Now get the fuck into that cradle or get out. Over.//
"They love me on the flight deck," Duo said cheerfully as he nosed Scythe forward. "Plus, blowing off steam is good for them with the kind of hours they pull."
Wufei forbore to comment, not wanting to distract Duo as the pilot edged his way through an intricate ballet of vessels. There were a lot of small ships like Maxwell's about, and the Preventer's instinct was to start noting license plates because most of them were probably on someone's wanted list somewhere. Also present were slow, awkward cargo freighters, Sweepers hauling supplies into the station, as well as the massive company ships. The latter were bringing in the raw materials for Freeport's shipbuilding industry. Wufei noted logos on the ships' sides when he could see them; mainly Etoiles Inc (an old Romefeller company, that one) and Marsico, the other shipbuilding giant. Those companies owned the ships and brought the building supplies from all the other colonies which produced them. Freeport - the whole colony was officially its own corporation - was the contractor who put the ships together, and they could at present underbid every other competitor in the solar system, and had done so for the last fifty years.
Hearing what he'd heard from the flight deck control, Wufei wondered that Freeport had enough coordination to hold a shipyard together. A very successful shipyard, at that. But at what cost? From the very little he'd heard, Freeport workers lived in near-slavery to the conglomerate that sent crews out to the shipyards or mined the resource satellites around the colony for ores and other raw materials. It was an ugly picture. Almost as ugly as the haven for pirates that was the other side of the one-time penitentiary.
As a Preventer and a human being, Wufei had felt the urge to come and clean this place out more than once, and fuck the shipbuilding industry. They'd just have to cut a bit off the big fat profit margins they were saving for their stockholders rather than employ what was probably little better than slave labor. The savings they'd make from not having their cargo freights raided by pirates should compensate them, once the Freeport buccaneers were out of space. But like a lot of corrupt and long-living systems, Freeport and the economics that supported it had their own inertia, one that would crush a mere Preventer who tried to interfere. Une was just as helpless against it as he was. Hell, even President Peacecraft and her political system was pretty much part and parcel of the powerful commercial interests that ran ESUN now that the war was over. As for the Preventers, they had too many other hotspots to deal with first. Earth and the colonies had been savaged by war for long decades. Relena's ideals of Peace, reflected in watered down rosy pictures on the TV screen, was a symbol of what might come to be. Reality, on the other hand, had a lot of catching up to do to get anywhere near it.
One day, though...Wufei stared at the colony spinning before them, berths, pipes and com-antennas bristling out of it. One day, if ESUN held its promises, if the peace Wufei and his friends sacrificed so much for held its promises...if Relena Peacecraft held her promises...then one day ESUN would have the time, money and political impetus to address problems like Freeport and get the place sanitized. It was that sort of thing that got Wufei out of bed some mornings. He would put up with the shit if the peace held its promises...
The spinning of the colony was slowing relative to them as Duo skillfully matched velocity with an almost obscene ease. The bastard was still one of the best pilots of Wufei's acquaintance, even though he had a lot of competition in that department.
Duo spun Scythe so that he was facing a rather small entry into the colony's hull. Wufei finally reacted.
"Wait. Why are we landing in the colony itself?"
"I'm dry-docking the ship. My buddy needs some more repairs, and it's easier to do that without a space-suit."
"What about zero-G docking?"
"Oh boy, those bays are reserved for the cargo freighters, man. A tiny ship like Scythe wouldn't stand a chance to dock there, even if I waited in line for a hundred years." Duo gave the console a quick pat as he spoke, reassuring Scythe that he'd not meant anything derogatory by 'tiny ship'. "Dry dock will waste fuel getting in and out and away from the gravity, but that's better than space walking to repair stuff. Easier for you, too."
"Me?" Wufei asked, startled.
"We'll be dropping by every other day or so to give Scythe its 'repairs'. That's when you can send out a transmission to the blockade on narrow beam. A hidden program in their computer picks it up and filters it to Barton and Une so that they know you're still alive and doing your job. You'll appreciate the fact you don't have to wear a space suit to do it each time."
"Oh." Wufei had asked Trowa exactly how he was supposed to make his report and Trowa had shoved him onto the shuttle with a 'Duo will explain all that'.
Duo's acceleration and curve was starting to give Wufei faint prickles as gravity crept aboard. Scythe eased into the dock. With a skillful burst of the propulsion that used the mathematically absolute minimum of fuel required, Duo centered himself above the loosely floating cradle and let it magnetically latch on to Scythe's underbelly. The clang resounded through the ship, then the groan as the cradle was hauled in by its cables and fastened to the berthing ring. Gravity was coming back fast, giving Wufei pins and needles. He clenched his muscles then stretched, getting his mobility and G-legs back as quickly as possible. Duo was doing the same. It was an old habit they'd picked up when they were fifteen and frequently had to fight a few seconds after they'd landed at any one place.
"Right, give 'em a few minutes to flood the dock. Oh, that reminds me." Duo reached back into the loose cloth bag that was now hanging ponderously from its handle. "Here. You'll want one of these."
Duo fished out a confectionary packet from the bag and picked out a thin wooden stick. He put it between his teeth and started to nibble at it. He held one out to Wufei who looked at it as if Duo had handed him a dead herring.
"What is that?"
"Liquorice root."
"...I'm going to have to ask 'why?', aren't I," Wufei muttered, knowing Duo was waiting for it. He knew that small smirk at the corner of the mobile lips. Whatever Duo was nibbling on was giving out a pungent odor, like menthol and cough medicine.
"You'll see," Duo said gnomically. "You'll be grateful for it in a minute."
Wufei took the thing Duo was offering and sniffed it dubiously. It looked like wood, though now that he was touching it, he thought it was probably an artificial imitation. From what he could see of the end Duo was sucking on as the pilot turned Scythe's systems off one by one, it was fibrous. It wasn't meant to be eaten, just chewed. Wufei didn't have any bad habits - beyond being confrontational and stubborn - and he wasn't about to pick up this disgusting one. He leaned over and stuffed the stick into Duo's breast pocket without a word. Duo's eyebrows twitched but he didn't say anything either, his hands dancing over the controls.
"All done," Duo announced around the liquorice in his mouth. "My baby's asleep in his cradle and the sniffers await! Let's haul."
Wufei followed Duo to the airlock, picking up his knapsack and sword in passing. He hesitated as Duo grabbed one of the boxes in the cabin.
"Here Wu, take one of the other ones. These are high priority supplies. We'll unload the rest later."
"There's an urgent need for baby clothes and hair rollers?" Wufei asked dubiously, slipping on his knapsack and wishing he had a strap for his sword.
"The ways of Freeport are mysterious."
Wufei grabbed the box full of clothes and followed Duo, who'd slipped the cloth bag and duffel over his shoulder and grabbed one of the small space-proof boxes. Duo put it down next to the airlock and hit the release.
The air whistled out of the ship, to Wufei's surprise; the air pressure in the docking area was lower than in Scythe. Freeport must be cheap with their oxygen and pressure.
And then Wufei gasped and choked, instinctively covering his nose with his sleeve.
"What the-" the sentence was swallowed in a cough and a moment of panic at the thought of a coolant leak in the vicinity. Wufei fought down the moment of alarm. The air permeating the ship from the dock was icy cold, harsh and tainted with some kind of chemical. Fighting with that odor was a pervasive organic smell that turned his stomach.
"Fierce, heh?" Duo was smirking, hands in pockets and leaning against the door seal in a cocky pose. Bastard.
"I've unwrapped bodies in the morgue. I've had worse," Wufei said through clenched teeth. The smell had caught him by surprise, but it was nowhere near as bad as opening the body-bag of a five-day floater.
"Yeah, but you know how the morgue techs put a drop of eucalyptus on their surgical masks before working on the really ripe ones? This is the same." Duo had taken Wufei's discarded stick from his pocket and was twirling it agilely before the Preventer's nose.
Wufei glared at the harmless confection. But seen in that light...he reached for it only to have Duo jerk it away.
"Oh, I forgot that-..." Duo gave the stick a dubious look as if suddenly unsure of his own product. "Er, I should probably tell you - never mind, take it, you're turning green."
"I am not turning green," Wufei bit out. He was getting used to the smell once the initial shock was over. Trust Maxwell not to warn him. Duo still had that urge to score one over everybody. Childish. And stupid.
No, what was really stupid was the way Wufei couldn't resist rising to the challenge every time. He fought down the urge to just walk out of the airlock and prove to Maxwell that he could ignore the smell. Duo was chewing on the disgusting stuff so it was probably expected of people landing in Freeport. Wufei wanted to blend in. Plus he had the feeling the smell would get nauseating after awhile, and he wanted to be at his best. He grabbed the stick from Duo, who looked surprised and almost ready to snatch it back for a second.
Wufei bit into the piece of confectionary. The flavor was like a kick in the sinuses. Even the smell didn't stand a chance. It tasted like eucalyptus, as well as aniseed and liquorice and something that left a sparkly feeling on his tongue. It was fresh, if overwhelming, and a relief. Duo snickered as if he found something about the situation amusing. Wufei ignored him out of what was soon going to be fast habit, he was sure.
They carried the boxes down the ramp Scythe had extended and headed along the docking ring. Wufei shifted the box lodged under one arm and shivered, though he felt a bit warmer now. Probably just getting used to the temperature.
"The smell's not as bad in the living quarters. Still there, but not as bad. We're not too far from the factories here. Plus, recyc's everywhere. You get used to it."
Wufei followed Duo's monologue as they made their way around the ring. It was dark in the dock, lit only by emergency lighting and a floodlight near the door.
"You'll probably be in Freeport for awhile. But if we get insanely lucky you might leave in a couple of weeks. Hey, do you guys do random drug tests? Piss in a cup kinda thing? 'Cause if they do, you might want to dodge that for a bit when you get back."
Wufei walked two steps and nearly fetched up into a support pylon as he realized what Duo had just said. He whipped the stick out of his mouth with the hand holding his sword, almost dropping it and the box in the process. "What?!"
"I said you might want to-"
Wufei surged forward, slamming into Duo and pining him against the dock's wall with his sword-arm across the jackass's chest. "What the hell is in these things?!"
"Fei," Duo hissed, eyes leaping towards the door. "Hands off. Customs could be watching."
With a bitten off curse, Wufei let go and took a step back, glancing around.
"It's okay for a Blade to be cantankerous, but they rarely assault their Handler, even for a joke," Duo said mildly, shaking himself and shoving away from the wall.
"Sorry," Wufei growled.
"Sorry ain't gonna cut it if you get us killed," Duo pointed out, voice still reasonable. "As for the liquorice, relax. There's a few boosters in it, that's all."
"Boosters?" Wufei asked sharply.
"Caffeine, Lydac and Ravers ".
"Duo, those are illegal! Not the caffeine I mean, but-"
"It's very small amounts, Wu, they won't make you twitchy or high. Just enough to give you a mild buzz. It's one of Freeport's few pleasures, don't knock it. That reminds me, we don't have cigarettes here. You don't smoke, do you?"
"Of course not."
"Good," Duo said, pointedly rubbing at his chest as he led the way forward. "I'd hate to see what you're like on a nicotine withdrawal..."
Wufei glared at Duo's back in the near-darkness, then at the stick in his hand. The lingering taste of liquorice was giving way to the smell. He happened to know that Preventers ran checks for that sort of drug...Hopefully Trowa could get him an exemption; he'd already bitten into the damn thing. Wufei growled internally and stuck the stick in his mouth again, following Duo towards the light.
Duo put his box down on a little cart. When Wufei had done the same, they went back to get the other three boxes from Scythe's cockpit, leaving the cargo in the hold for later. Duo shoved the cart through a hole in the wall and went to the door. It was a typical dock door, an airlock in case the space doors behind them lost pressure. Duo glanced back, taking the liquorice stick from his mouth.
"Wufei, I'm telling you now so you don't flip out. This is a small space and it'll take three minutes for the airlock to open on the other side. Sometimes longer. You want to go in with me or wait your turn?"
"Three minutes? Why?"
Duo gave him a thoughtful look. "You're gonna be asking that a lot, aren't you...Heero never bothered. With me or after me, Wu? Make up your mind, I'm tired."
Jaws clenched, Wufei followed him into the airlock. Why three minutes when there was air on either side of the door? The boxes had gone directly through the hole to the other side. Though there was an automatic pressure door over the hole to seal the dock in case of decompression, it had been open when Duo had shoved the cart through; the air flowed freely from one room to another.
Heero would indeed not bother asking many questions. His focus during a mission bordered on single-mindedness. He'd ascertain if something was a threat, usually by his own means rather than rely on third-party information, and he'd dismiss anything non-essential. If he trusted Duo implicitly, then that would be that much less for him to question; he'd just assume Duo knew best. Wufei was trusting Duo with his life, but that didn't stop him from wondering what the hell was going on even if it wasn't necessarily mission-related. Questions, however, might prove as dangerous as ignorance in Wufei's present circumstances. Freeport was, for all intents and purposes, enemy territory.
The airlock space was tight. There were maybe five inches between their bodies, and the bags were an awkward bundle at their sides. Wufei thanked his ancestors that he wasn't claustrophobic.
There was a gentle whistle as pressure equalized, then nothing but their breathing and the chewing sounds Duo was making on his stick. Wufei tried to relax against the wall.
"These are the sniffers."
Duo's voice was loud in the silence and the enclosed space, making Wufei start. He felt his hip press against Duo's duffel and their knees touched as Duo shifted.
"What-" Wufei interrupted his question. "I thought you weren't going to explain anything," he whispered, very low.
"I'll explain stuff, but when we got the time. We got three minutes to kill now. You're new in Freeport, Wu. It's normal to have questions." Duo said this loudly with a subtle nuance in his voice. Wufei gathered that it didn't matter if someone overheard. Even as far as Wufei's cover story went, he was supposed to be new to the colony.
"So what are sniffers?" he asked, still in a low voice in case he'd misunderstood Duo's drift.
"The air in here is being put through a detector. The airlock on the 'in' side will only release if the detectors pick up no traces of explosives or dangerous substances. There's also a low-dose X-ray taken of the people inside on a random basis. To make sure we didn't swallow anything, or have something up- well, you know."
"...Oh. What about the boxes?"
"They'll be searched too."
"Oh. I didn't realize-"
A foot thumped his, and in the light of the small red 'locked' signal he saw Duo shake his head ever so slightly. Wufei swallowed the question and kept his surprise to himself; that they were being more thoroughly inspected here than at the blockade.
"Dangerous substances are, of course, drugs - hard drugs, not this candy," Duo added, lifting the stick from his mouth. "Volatile chemicals, explosives, gunpowder and stuff on the list."
Wufei wanted to ask what 'the list' was, but thought he'd better keep all questions to himself. Apparently the Blade he was impersonating was new to Freeport, but should still have some limited knowledge of the rules. Wufei the Preventer didn't have that knowledge thanks to this bloody last-minute rush-job exile of a mission. He'd better not ask too many questions; he didn't want to trip them up.
The rest of the three minutes crept by in silence. The air in the airlock warmed up a bit from their shared body heat. Wufei wondered how sensitive the trace analyzers were. ESUN had developed them as a way of screening for weapons and explosives, but since you needed to keep the people being checked in an enclosed space for a few minutes, it had been judged impractical. Too much of an imposition on the common civilian. Apparently Freeport didn't have the same qualms. But Wufei would never have thought that Freeport would be checking this thoroughly for guns and drugs.
Finally the airlock hissed, opening towards the room.
"Maxwell, I'm almost afraid to ask...why did you bring us hair curlers?" a voice asked dryly.
Wufei looked around as he came out of the airlock. The cart full of boxes had been pulled to one side of the small neon-lit room and a man was going through the first one methodically, with more attention than Dinkle had. He was middle-aged, dressed a bit like a Sweeper in practical, tough tans and warm jacket. Salt-and-pepper hair, not very well combed, hung to his shoulders along with a long moustache of the same length. He was holding up one of the hair rollers critically as Duo walked up to him.
"Hi Karl. Those are for the labs."
"But why-"
"They use the hair curlers to keep their test tubes straight. Those test-tube holders they sell on the outside are stupidly expensive. I bought the curlers for ten creds the whole box, and once wired together they'll work just as well. They strip the plastic off so they can even go through a light autoclave. Immaculata Corriendes from the pathology lab asked me for them."
"Can't someone, I don't know, just build her some test-tube holders? Can't be that hard."
"Probably. You got the time?"
"Does it look like it? Okay, are all these for the path lab?"
"Various labs in the hospital. Just send them there and they'll sort it out. Baby clothes for NICU too."
"What about the rest?"
"Here's the manifest. It's just general stuff. Quartermaster will figure it out. These boxes are the only ones to be earmarked. Do you have someone who can take them ASAP?"
"The lab ones, yeah."
"I'll take care of the others tomorrow or next day, then."
"That'd be nice."
During the conversation, the man's attention had been split between the box of curlers - he was giving it a very thorough looking through, splitting open each plastic bag of curlers and inspecting the contents - and Wufei. The latter was being finely scrutinized, from the collar, to his clothes, to his sword.
"He's new," the man stated abruptly, looking at Duo. Wufei stiffened at the rudeness of not being addressed directly before he remembered the 'Blade' nonsense. He wasn't supposed to be questioned, according to Duo.
"That's right."
"What about...whathisname? Blue-eyed guy you had before."
Duo shrugged, looking away. Karl watched him for a few seconds then dived back into the box when he didn't get a direct answer. "Lemme finish these and then I'll check you guys through. Is, ah, this one staying?"
"We'll have to see." Duo chuckled, but it wasn't a cheerful laughter. It sounded a bit damp, and his shoulders slumped at the end of a half-hearted gesture. Karl's gaze was sympathetic.
"Hm, guess you can never know, heh, Duo? Damn, if this guy's new, that means I gotta fill in a load of shit on the system." Karl blew into his moustache with an annoyed huff.
"Sorry, docker."
"Yeah, yeah." Wufei found himself pinned by another stare, and this time it was ever so slightly hostile. He kept his face neutral since he had the feeling there was a bit of context here that he was missing.
The man checked the curlers, then went through their bags professionally, rifling through their clothes and toiletries. He even reached over and took Wufei's sword from his hands. Duo put a restraining hand on the Preventer's shoulder as he was about to tear himself and his blade away.
Then Karl took Wufei's fingerprints and passed a small pocket scanner over his inner wrist, with UV light that lit up his colony tattoo, registering it in a computer system that looked antiquated. Wufei wasn't sure why the man bothered with the tattoo. It was an old custom that people had used to identify newborn babies ever since Space was colonized. Since Earth people didn't have it, it wasn't used as an ID system. In fact he wasn't even sure his own was registered anywhere, now that his colony was destroyed.
"Right." The man shoved the keyboard and terminal towards Wufei. "Put your name here. Oh- Duo, does he know how to write?"
"Ah yes, he does," Duo replied with a grin.
"Good. Put your name here. Duo will fill in the rest."
Wufei typed in his name - Wu Fei Chang, common enough in the L5 cluster to not be traced to his job - and left the space in front of the keyboard to Duo who filled in the rest: Duo's name, vessel and Freeport address. There was no requirement for Wufei's address or any other detail that he could see.
"This is his first time in Freeport?" Karl asked as he hit a few keys once Duo had finished.
"Yes."
"Has he been a Blackcap long?"
"Nope."
"Oh." Karl frowned deeply at his terminal.
"But I vouch for him," Duo said, tone serious and final. Wufei could appreciate the import of those five words when he remembered Duo would be held responsible for his Blade's infractions.
"Good enough for me," Karl answered with a nod. "Welcome to Freeport, Wu Fei." He was looking at the keys he was carefully typing rather than at Wufei when he said this, which was fortunate because Wufei had nearly bowed in response. He caught the gesture in time. Duo's eyes had flickered his way but he was now looking wholly unconcerned and innocent of any Preventer infiltration that might be going on.
"'Kay, I'm gonna go hit the sack," he announced. "Been up for over thirty-five hours running with nothing more than a nap on Scythe. C'mon, Wu. See ya, Karl."
"Be safe, Maxwell," Karl threw over his shoulder without looking up from his keyboard.
The door out of 'customs' had just closed behind them when Wufei realized two things. First, that he'd gotten past immigration procedures that put a lot of ESUN methods to shame...without once showing his identity papers.
Second, he'd made it onto Freeport.
End Part 3
Part 4
Link to all chapters
Welcome to Tijuana
Tekila, sexo y marihuana
Welcome to Tijuana
Con el coyote no hay aduana
Bienvenida a Tijuana
Bienvenida mi suerte
Bienvenida la muerte
Por la Panamericana
(Welcome to Tijuana
Tequila, sex and marijuana
Welcome to Tijuana
With the coyotes there's no customs
Welcome to Tijuana
Welcome, my luck
Welcome to death
By the Panamerican)
--- Manu Chao, 'Welcome to Tijuana'
[Whenever possible I will put the translations of non-English songs. Translations are, more often than not, my own. Sorry for any errors :)
'Coyote' refers to a trans-border smuggler]
Freeport by Maldoror
Chapter Three
"Here we go. This shouldn't take long," Duo announced as he sent acknowledgement to the blockade and followed their docking instructions.
Wufei studied the small space station visible from the view port. It was an ugly duckling of a space object the size of a small building; a bunch of tubes, fuel containers, pods and antenna all lumped together. The blockade consisted of a dozen of these stations in a loose sphere around Freeport space. A Preventer five-man spinnet was docked there already, long, sleek and deadly as a stiletto, a contrast to the bulky unlovely space station. It was filling up with ammo and oxygen tanks at one of the station's spherical cargo pods before it left for a new patrol around the perimeter. Duo passed the spinnet carefully and approached another of the station's berths.
A clunk echoed through the hull and into the space inside the clipper as Duo docked against the station's clamp.
"Get your ID ready and let me do the talkin', okay?"
"Isn't that what I'm supposed to be doing anyway?" Wufei muttered.
"Not as far as Johnny Lawboy is concerned. I meant, our highly respected Preventer forces, of course."
"Of course."
There was a further thunk as the station's airlock fastened over Scythe's. Duo bounced up and drifted over to the door, hitting the release.
"Officer Dinkle, what a pleasure," said Duo. There was no overt irony in his words, but there was quite a lot in the subtext.
There was an answering grunt. Wufei released his harness and drifted over.
The Preventer's badge read Tyrone Dinkle. He grunted a second time as Duo handed him a sheaf of papers; the cargo manifest, Wufei supposed. Dinkle went over them quickly, eyes bored and completely unfriendly.
"Who's this?" His eyes flickered towards Wufei even as he turned the manifest's pages. He noted Wufei's collar and the look on his face, already unpleasant, degenerated into a sneer of disgust. "Does he have ID?"
"Yup. Give him your papers." The last was addressed to Wufei. He obediently handed over his usual cover ID he had ready. It showed nothing remarkable and no criminal record that should give him any trouble getting in and out of Freeport.
Dinkle scanned the ID and read the result with the air of one ready to pounce on the slightest irregularity. He handed it back without looking at Wufei, making sure the latter could take the ID without their hands touching. Charming. Then the officer turned towards the boxes.
"What do you have here, Maxwell?"
"It's in the cargo manifest, Ty." Duo's smile was sunny.
Dinkle gave the nearest box a hard kick on the lock, popping it open at the risk of making it unusable for future space flights. A gleam that only Wufei would notice went through Duo's eyes, but his smile stayed open and outrageously honest.
"I know you like your hair, Maxwell, but this is ridiculous," Dinkle said slowly.
Wufei glanced at the open box and then did a double take. It was filled with old-fashioned hair rollers, glaringly pink and ridiculous in row upon row of clear plastic bags.
His first instinct as a Preventer would have been to tear right through that lot to see what could possibly be hidden beneath them. He hoped to hell that Duo wasn't actually trying to smuggle anything past the embargo now, when they had a mission inside Freeport and could not afford to get stuck in jail for a few months to a year.
Dinkle rifled through a few rows, carelessly sending them floating. Duo caught them and waited until the officer had investigated the contents of the box before putting them back and carefully locking it as if it contained delicate instrumentation. Dinkle was already at another box, poking through clothes. Baby clothes, Wufei noted with nothing but dull curiosity, having run right out of surprise. Another box revealed several smaller boxes of cheap gyros, LED lights and such. A fourth was full of old computer parts, most of which looked trashed.
"The usual then. Apart from the curlers, which are weird even by your standards, Maxwell," the Preventer sniffed. He opened two of the small cartons, shook out the gyros inside carelessly, inspected them briefly and then stuffed them back in their box.
"You got a copy of that manifest?"
"Already downloaded to your station's computer, Ty."
Dinkle grunted again; it was apparently the level of communication he judged worthy of his visitors. He propelled himself towards the airlock without another glance. Duo didn't look surprised, merely drifted over and shut the lock behind him.
"That's all?!" Wufei stared at the airlock once it was closed.
"Yep, that's what I mostly get. Oh, sometimes they take a ship to dry-dock and take it apart, but that's only happened to me once in the four years I've been passing by this station with Scythe. I don't get hassled normally. They know I'm clean and honest," Duo explained solemnly.
"Maxwell, you've never been caught, but Trowa knows what you're up to and so do I."
That got him the clear-eyed gaze of the innocently accused. "Whatever do you mean?"
"Duo-"
"Anyway, it doesn't matter." Duo waved a dismissive hand and drifted back to the pilot's seat. "They know they're not likely to catch anything on me. I'll either hide it too well or, if I have something bulky, I would be taking it through the hide n' seek route."
Wufei knew what he meant by the hide and seek route: the smuggler's highway.
Freeport was surrounded by tiny resource satellites on small asteroids; patches of darkness against the stars, with a few warning lights to ward off incoming traffic and floodlights bathing excavation points or access zones. No other colony in space would bother with asteroids this size. The price to conduct large-scale mining operations on tiny scattered space dust like this would have been prohibitive. Freeport did it by employing a lot of manual labor instead of using automation and the huge excavation stations other colonies used. The numerous scattered objects and the space debris produced by mining were a navigation hazard to Preventer ships that patrolled the perimeter. They were also excellent cover for space pirates and smugglers to approach the colony without stopping at the blockade for the required verifications.
Wufei knew that most heavy-duty smugglers would use Freeport's debris field to dodge the blockade, but nonetheless, remembering Dinkle's negligent five-minute check..."That was still on the limit of dereliction of duty." Wufei automatically rolled the man's serial number and name around his mind, along with a half-formulated promise to have a word with him at one point. Then he gave Duo a sharp glance. "Wait a minute. You could have smuggled a mobile suit into Freeport with that laxity. Why did you say you couldn't get my Browning in?"
"Later, later. Gotta concentrate to get through the debris field," Duo muttered as Scythe broke loose from the docking clamp and scooted towards the multitude of pinprick lights that promised death by vacuum if they crashed into any of them. There was a clear path through the field, Wufei knew, but that was reserved for important cargo vessels and commercial freighters only. Small-time flyers like Duo had to sweat their way in.
The space debris and small resource satellites, towed or blasted into Freeport's sphere of influence by Sweepers for the most part, gave way to a cleared space after twenty minutes of careful navigation. This was the outer docks, the ship construction area. Wufei struggled internally for all of three seconds before he gave in to temptation and released his harness to get a better look out of the view port. He was acting like a tourist, he knew, but his fascination for vessels, particularly the deep-space explorer, won out.
The spaceships were mostly invisible in the eternal night of space; only the areas where people were working were flooded with massive directional beams. The few he could make out with any clarity were cargo vessels, earth-to-moon types. The larger Mars cargoes and the deep-space explorer for the outer planets that ESUN was working on were probably on the other side of the colony whose massive frame was blocking his view of the stars more and more as they approached.
Wufei faced that darkness like one faced the enemy. Freeport. In his mind he could see the colony as clearly as it was highlighted on Duo's scope. It was wheel-shaped, though one of its eight spokes was broken, smashed through by some space debris decades ago. The mass of small resource satellites around it and ships dancing in and about its spoke and axis put it in constant danger of similar accidents. If this worried the colony's inhabitants, it was to be supposed they'd gotten used to it. It gave Wufei, a colonist himself, chills just watching that deadly tango, but he'd have to bloody well get used to it too. The hub of the wheel, its axis of rotation, was brilliantly lit and heaving with space traffic, ships docking and leaving constantly. Way more traffic than was safe, Wufei could see at a glance. He shook his head in a mixture of horror and wonder.
The warble of a comm channel prompted him to sit back down and buckle in. Duo exchanged a few words with Freeport's flight control and requested a dry dock facility. Then he leaned back in his chair and stretched against the harness like a cat.
"There'll be a delay in getting a dry dock. It might take a few minutes, but it's been known to take days. We can leave Scythe in space dock and go in with suits if that's the case. They should tell us in a sec."
"Why so long?" Wufei asked, puzzled.
"Everybody's busy," Duo replied as if that explained everything. "And they need to have someone at customs to check us in."
"Customs? Freeport has customs?" Wufei glanced back over his shoulder as if he could physically see the blockade space station thirty minutes behind their stern. He thought that was customs.
"Hmm, sure we do." Duo rubbed his eyes. He looked as tired as Wufei felt. "Gotta make sure ships don't bring dangerous shit - or people - into the place."
"Do they do a better job than Officer Dinkle?" Wufei asked sourly. He was still angry at the man. The blockade shouldn't be such a joke. It was there to stop smuggling in and out of Freeport, and detain criminals and pirates escaping the law to hide there. The contraband it was primarily checking for was weapons. Freeport had been declared a lawless zone since long before Wufei was born, and stopping the circulation of guns in such an environment was deemed the first step to pacifying it. Except so far no government had ever gotten to that next step. They just tried to keep the worst of the scum from leaving the colony and the more dangerous contraband from entering.
"Don't knock the boys and girls of the blockade," Duo admonished lazily. "It's a shitty job. If it makes you feel better, they're a damn sight more careful about what comes out of Freeport than what goes in. That means there's only very few people in the 'coming in' section, and most of those are concentrated on the big cargo ships to make sure we're not slipping in Gundanium or suit parts or something. Officer Tiny Winkle is just some poor shmuck who's waiting for his tour of duty to end so he can go back to Earth, feel some gravs under his feet, get drunk and get laid."
"That is no excuse. If all prison wardens were so lax, every penitentiary would be a war zone."
That got Wufei a rare old glare. "Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Freeport was a penitentiary to start with, but that lasted for all of ten years. And that was eighty three years ago! Fuck's sake, we get that all the time. Penitentiary this, prison that, like every guy aboard is still an escaped convict or something. All the prisoners they had there to start with died of old age already. If they were lucky. Not that it matters a shit anymore."
Of course it mattered. Wufei's clan had been exiled from the Sino-Asian conglomerate - the one-time Chinese Democratic Republic, North Korea, Vietnam and Taiwan - sixty nine years ago, and every member still remembered the specifics of their exile down to the last detail, the politicians involved and the patriarchs that had led them to A0206, their new home where they could live on their own strength and nurture their ideals in purity and solitude. Origins mattered.
"Its origins matter to Freeport," Wufei pointed out archly. "In their case, the fact that they were a penal colony was what gave rise to their dubious status of independence, which let them-"
"Dubious independence?! Hey, mate, there's nothing dubious about it. It was even a charter under the Alliance."
"Maxwell, you know as well as I do that the Alliance used Freeport as a dumping ground for malcontents and problem cases that they didn't have quite the impetus to execute or imprison. The only reason they didn't invade and take over the damn place was that it was easier to cordon off than deal with the consequences of destroying it and then facing homeless Sweeper crews forming seditious groups all over the colonies. One of OZ's officers compared it to a relatively benign cancer that would metastasize if you hacked into it."
There was a nasty twist to Duo's smile. "And you people don't do the same?"
"Of course not," Wufei said, biting off the words. "The only reason ESUN is keeping away from Freeport and the den of criminality there is because we're a humanitarian government, and our analysts have judged that the- the illuminated lunatics in charge there are serious when they said they'd blow the place up rather than surrender to any armed forces. The death toll would be horrendous."
"It'd sure look bad on the six o'clock news, I grant ya, but you sure this decision doesn't have anything to do with the fact that Freeport builds the best motherfucking ships in the whole solar system, including the Mars shuttles? ESUN and the colonies had their fleets completely hosed during the war, They even lost most of their cargo and passenger transports. You sure the fact that the citizens of Freeport are willin' to work forty-eight hours a day to make up for war losses has nothin' to do with ESUN's patience with us?" Duo was watching him through hooded eyes, waiting for his reaction.
"I-"
"'Cause if you wanted us to give up and play nice, you could just stop all the ship orders. That'd put a stranglehold on Freeport and eventually drive all the people out without firing a single bullet. So why don't your government do that, hey?"
Wufei had wondered about that himself occasionally, and he hadn't liked the possible answers, so he gave the one that the Preventers adopted and that he'd learned to live with whenever he thought of the problem at all: "I understand that this policy is designed to give Freeport the incentive to turn to honest profit, instead of relying on- on-" Wufei gestured at Scythe's dashboard.
"Smugglers, pirates and thieves, boy, smugglers, pirates and thieves." Duo gave him a wolfish grin that reminded Wufei of the days the man was called Shinigami. "I guess you're right, Chang. We've not changed that much since the old days. We're still lifers, every one of us. The old Space Force abandoned the jailbirds eighty odd years ago when the colonies made their bid for independence and everything went FUBAR. Everybody judged that taking care of convicts was the other side's job, so nobody did and the poor bastards were left to eat vacuum. They were given independence on a technicality, so that when they all died and Pen-003 hull-breached and went to hell, neither of the two sides of that conflict would feel too guilty. And that's still the way it is! Well, those convicts survived and so do we-"
Duo interrupted his intense monologue with a look at Wufei that was rather dismissive, weaving his fingers together behind his neck and relaxing against the harness. "Yeah," he continued, "I guess ESUN and Agent Chang are correct. We're a cesspit, a bunch of death row inmates still scrabblin' for survival at the edge of the void. And you know what? We're still not ready to give up and let the good guys in to lord it over us. Your analysts hit it right on the nose. we will blow the joint sky-high at the first sign of an invasion, since that's the only weapon we have. That's the kind of insane asylum you're heading into. Still feel up to it, Preventer? 'cause it's not too late to turn back if you're willing to shell out for fuel expenses."
Wufei stared at his one-time ally. Duo was stretched back against his harness, hands behind his head and one foot on the console. His voice had been mocking on the surface. Yet underneath there'd been that strange pride that Wufei had known during the war - the 'The whole world's against me - and that's fair enough 'cause Shinigami is after its blood' mentality. The other pilots had been so serious and committed. Duo had laughed and joked and killed like a fiend, with dedication and gusto. Shinigami indeed. He'd had some grasp of the politics behind what the pilots had been trying to achieve, he'd fought for the cause, but he never seemed to take it half as seriously as the actual fighting itself. Maybe that's why he'd been such a good pilot...
He was still the same, except this time when he'd said 'we', he hadn't meant himself and the other four pilots. And Wufei found that rather worrisome. This wasn't just a place to live for Maxwell, it wasn't just a bolt hole and a base for his petty smuggling operations. This had become Shinigami's home in a much more fundamental sense. Though Duo was getting paid for this job, which showed that his practical, mercenary side was still healthy. Nonetheless, Wufei found himself rearranging his informant's loyalties in his mind.
Carver, Wufei told himself severely. Concentrate on catching Carver. Duo's allegiances mattered no more than the dubious circumstances in which Wufei was handed the mission in the first place. The only thing that mattered was that Wufei was going to put a killer behind bars. Duo's home might be Freeport these days, but Wufei had none; certainly not the small, drab temporary apartments the Preventers rented to him wherever he moved to. Wufei's allegiance was to his interpretation of justice, from the small details of stopping criminals to preventing the greater crime that was war.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
After thirty minutes of a rather heavy silence, the comm bleeped. A tired voice came through the speakers when Duo acknowledged.
//Scythe, we have a dry dock for you. Ring 10, berth 49. Got that?//
Duo made a face. "Aww, man! That's gonna put me miles from home! Can't I get anything closer? I'm bushed."
//...Scythe, the small creak you're hearing isn't the sound of my joints after a fifteen hour shift and it isn't the sound of the deck coordinator's nerves slowly stretching to a snapping point. It's the sound of my tiny violin cryin' over the fact you have to haul ass a few hundred meters more than ya want to. Now get the fuck into that cradle or get out. Over.//
"They love me on the flight deck," Duo said cheerfully as he nosed Scythe forward. "Plus, blowing off steam is good for them with the kind of hours they pull."
Wufei forbore to comment, not wanting to distract Duo as the pilot edged his way through an intricate ballet of vessels. There were a lot of small ships like Maxwell's about, and the Preventer's instinct was to start noting license plates because most of them were probably on someone's wanted list somewhere. Also present were slow, awkward cargo freighters, Sweepers hauling supplies into the station, as well as the massive company ships. The latter were bringing in the raw materials for Freeport's shipbuilding industry. Wufei noted logos on the ships' sides when he could see them; mainly Etoiles Inc (an old Romefeller company, that one) and Marsico, the other shipbuilding giant. Those companies owned the ships and brought the building supplies from all the other colonies which produced them. Freeport - the whole colony was officially its own corporation - was the contractor who put the ships together, and they could at present underbid every other competitor in the solar system, and had done so for the last fifty years.
Hearing what he'd heard from the flight deck control, Wufei wondered that Freeport had enough coordination to hold a shipyard together. A very successful shipyard, at that. But at what cost? From the very little he'd heard, Freeport workers lived in near-slavery to the conglomerate that sent crews out to the shipyards or mined the resource satellites around the colony for ores and other raw materials. It was an ugly picture. Almost as ugly as the haven for pirates that was the other side of the one-time penitentiary.
As a Preventer and a human being, Wufei had felt the urge to come and clean this place out more than once, and fuck the shipbuilding industry. They'd just have to cut a bit off the big fat profit margins they were saving for their stockholders rather than employ what was probably little better than slave labor. The savings they'd make from not having their cargo freights raided by pirates should compensate them, once the Freeport buccaneers were out of space. But like a lot of corrupt and long-living systems, Freeport and the economics that supported it had their own inertia, one that would crush a mere Preventer who tried to interfere. Une was just as helpless against it as he was. Hell, even President Peacecraft and her political system was pretty much part and parcel of the powerful commercial interests that ran ESUN now that the war was over. As for the Preventers, they had too many other hotspots to deal with first. Earth and the colonies had been savaged by war for long decades. Relena's ideals of Peace, reflected in watered down rosy pictures on the TV screen, was a symbol of what might come to be. Reality, on the other hand, had a lot of catching up to do to get anywhere near it.
One day, though...Wufei stared at the colony spinning before them, berths, pipes and com-antennas bristling out of it. One day, if ESUN held its promises, if the peace Wufei and his friends sacrificed so much for held its promises...if Relena Peacecraft held her promises...then one day ESUN would have the time, money and political impetus to address problems like Freeport and get the place sanitized. It was that sort of thing that got Wufei out of bed some mornings. He would put up with the shit if the peace held its promises...
The spinning of the colony was slowing relative to them as Duo skillfully matched velocity with an almost obscene ease. The bastard was still one of the best pilots of Wufei's acquaintance, even though he had a lot of competition in that department.
Duo spun Scythe so that he was facing a rather small entry into the colony's hull. Wufei finally reacted.
"Wait. Why are we landing in the colony itself?"
"I'm dry-docking the ship. My buddy needs some more repairs, and it's easier to do that without a space-suit."
"What about zero-G docking?"
"Oh boy, those bays are reserved for the cargo freighters, man. A tiny ship like Scythe wouldn't stand a chance to dock there, even if I waited in line for a hundred years." Duo gave the console a quick pat as he spoke, reassuring Scythe that he'd not meant anything derogatory by 'tiny ship'. "Dry dock will waste fuel getting in and out and away from the gravity, but that's better than space walking to repair stuff. Easier for you, too."
"Me?" Wufei asked, startled.
"We'll be dropping by every other day or so to give Scythe its 'repairs'. That's when you can send out a transmission to the blockade on narrow beam. A hidden program in their computer picks it up and filters it to Barton and Une so that they know you're still alive and doing your job. You'll appreciate the fact you don't have to wear a space suit to do it each time."
"Oh." Wufei had asked Trowa exactly how he was supposed to make his report and Trowa had shoved him onto the shuttle with a 'Duo will explain all that'.
Duo's acceleration and curve was starting to give Wufei faint prickles as gravity crept aboard. Scythe eased into the dock. With a skillful burst of the propulsion that used the mathematically absolute minimum of fuel required, Duo centered himself above the loosely floating cradle and let it magnetically latch on to Scythe's underbelly. The clang resounded through the ship, then the groan as the cradle was hauled in by its cables and fastened to the berthing ring. Gravity was coming back fast, giving Wufei pins and needles. He clenched his muscles then stretched, getting his mobility and G-legs back as quickly as possible. Duo was doing the same. It was an old habit they'd picked up when they were fifteen and frequently had to fight a few seconds after they'd landed at any one place.
"Right, give 'em a few minutes to flood the dock. Oh, that reminds me." Duo reached back into the loose cloth bag that was now hanging ponderously from its handle. "Here. You'll want one of these."
Duo fished out a confectionary packet from the bag and picked out a thin wooden stick. He put it between his teeth and started to nibble at it. He held one out to Wufei who looked at it as if Duo had handed him a dead herring.
"What is that?"
"Liquorice root."
"...I'm going to have to ask 'why?', aren't I," Wufei muttered, knowing Duo was waiting for it. He knew that small smirk at the corner of the mobile lips. Whatever Duo was nibbling on was giving out a pungent odor, like menthol and cough medicine.
"You'll see," Duo said gnomically. "You'll be grateful for it in a minute."
Wufei took the thing Duo was offering and sniffed it dubiously. It looked like wood, though now that he was touching it, he thought it was probably an artificial imitation. From what he could see of the end Duo was sucking on as the pilot turned Scythe's systems off one by one, it was fibrous. It wasn't meant to be eaten, just chewed. Wufei didn't have any bad habits - beyond being confrontational and stubborn - and he wasn't about to pick up this disgusting one. He leaned over and stuffed the stick into Duo's breast pocket without a word. Duo's eyebrows twitched but he didn't say anything either, his hands dancing over the controls.
"All done," Duo announced around the liquorice in his mouth. "My baby's asleep in his cradle and the sniffers await! Let's haul."
Wufei followed Duo to the airlock, picking up his knapsack and sword in passing. He hesitated as Duo grabbed one of the boxes in the cabin.
"Here Wu, take one of the other ones. These are high priority supplies. We'll unload the rest later."
"There's an urgent need for baby clothes and hair rollers?" Wufei asked dubiously, slipping on his knapsack and wishing he had a strap for his sword.
"The ways of Freeport are mysterious."
Wufei grabbed the box full of clothes and followed Duo, who'd slipped the cloth bag and duffel over his shoulder and grabbed one of the small space-proof boxes. Duo put it down next to the airlock and hit the release.
The air whistled out of the ship, to Wufei's surprise; the air pressure in the docking area was lower than in Scythe. Freeport must be cheap with their oxygen and pressure.
And then Wufei gasped and choked, instinctively covering his nose with his sleeve.
"What the-" the sentence was swallowed in a cough and a moment of panic at the thought of a coolant leak in the vicinity. Wufei fought down the moment of alarm. The air permeating the ship from the dock was icy cold, harsh and tainted with some kind of chemical. Fighting with that odor was a pervasive organic smell that turned his stomach.
"Fierce, heh?" Duo was smirking, hands in pockets and leaning against the door seal in a cocky pose. Bastard.
"I've unwrapped bodies in the morgue. I've had worse," Wufei said through clenched teeth. The smell had caught him by surprise, but it was nowhere near as bad as opening the body-bag of a five-day floater.
"Yeah, but you know how the morgue techs put a drop of eucalyptus on their surgical masks before working on the really ripe ones? This is the same." Duo had taken Wufei's discarded stick from his pocket and was twirling it agilely before the Preventer's nose.
Wufei glared at the harmless confection. But seen in that light...he reached for it only to have Duo jerk it away.
"Oh, I forgot that-..." Duo gave the stick a dubious look as if suddenly unsure of his own product. "Er, I should probably tell you - never mind, take it, you're turning green."
"I am not turning green," Wufei bit out. He was getting used to the smell once the initial shock was over. Trust Maxwell not to warn him. Duo still had that urge to score one over everybody. Childish. And stupid.
No, what was really stupid was the way Wufei couldn't resist rising to the challenge every time. He fought down the urge to just walk out of the airlock and prove to Maxwell that he could ignore the smell. Duo was chewing on the disgusting stuff so it was probably expected of people landing in Freeport. Wufei wanted to blend in. Plus he had the feeling the smell would get nauseating after awhile, and he wanted to be at his best. He grabbed the stick from Duo, who looked surprised and almost ready to snatch it back for a second.
Wufei bit into the piece of confectionary. The flavor was like a kick in the sinuses. Even the smell didn't stand a chance. It tasted like eucalyptus, as well as aniseed and liquorice and something that left a sparkly feeling on his tongue. It was fresh, if overwhelming, and a relief. Duo snickered as if he found something about the situation amusing. Wufei ignored him out of what was soon going to be fast habit, he was sure.
They carried the boxes down the ramp Scythe had extended and headed along the docking ring. Wufei shifted the box lodged under one arm and shivered, though he felt a bit warmer now. Probably just getting used to the temperature.
"The smell's not as bad in the living quarters. Still there, but not as bad. We're not too far from the factories here. Plus, recyc's everywhere. You get used to it."
Wufei followed Duo's monologue as they made their way around the ring. It was dark in the dock, lit only by emergency lighting and a floodlight near the door.
"You'll probably be in Freeport for awhile. But if we get insanely lucky you might leave in a couple of weeks. Hey, do you guys do random drug tests? Piss in a cup kinda thing? 'Cause if they do, you might want to dodge that for a bit when you get back."
Wufei walked two steps and nearly fetched up into a support pylon as he realized what Duo had just said. He whipped the stick out of his mouth with the hand holding his sword, almost dropping it and the box in the process. "What?!"
"I said you might want to-"
Wufei surged forward, slamming into Duo and pining him against the dock's wall with his sword-arm across the jackass's chest. "What the hell is in these things?!"
"Fei," Duo hissed, eyes leaping towards the door. "Hands off. Customs could be watching."
With a bitten off curse, Wufei let go and took a step back, glancing around.
"It's okay for a Blade to be cantankerous, but they rarely assault their Handler, even for a joke," Duo said mildly, shaking himself and shoving away from the wall.
"Sorry," Wufei growled.
"Sorry ain't gonna cut it if you get us killed," Duo pointed out, voice still reasonable. "As for the liquorice, relax. There's a few boosters in it, that's all."
"Boosters?" Wufei asked sharply.
"Caffeine, Lydac and Ravers ".
"Duo, those are illegal! Not the caffeine I mean, but-"
"It's very small amounts, Wu, they won't make you twitchy or high. Just enough to give you a mild buzz. It's one of Freeport's few pleasures, don't knock it. That reminds me, we don't have cigarettes here. You don't smoke, do you?"
"Of course not."
"Good," Duo said, pointedly rubbing at his chest as he led the way forward. "I'd hate to see what you're like on a nicotine withdrawal..."
Wufei glared at Duo's back in the near-darkness, then at the stick in his hand. The lingering taste of liquorice was giving way to the smell. He happened to know that Preventers ran checks for that sort of drug...Hopefully Trowa could get him an exemption; he'd already bitten into the damn thing. Wufei growled internally and stuck the stick in his mouth again, following Duo towards the light.
Duo put his box down on a little cart. When Wufei had done the same, they went back to get the other three boxes from Scythe's cockpit, leaving the cargo in the hold for later. Duo shoved the cart through a hole in the wall and went to the door. It was a typical dock door, an airlock in case the space doors behind them lost pressure. Duo glanced back, taking the liquorice stick from his mouth.
"Wufei, I'm telling you now so you don't flip out. This is a small space and it'll take three minutes for the airlock to open on the other side. Sometimes longer. You want to go in with me or wait your turn?"
"Three minutes? Why?"
Duo gave him a thoughtful look. "You're gonna be asking that a lot, aren't you...Heero never bothered. With me or after me, Wu? Make up your mind, I'm tired."
Jaws clenched, Wufei followed him into the airlock. Why three minutes when there was air on either side of the door? The boxes had gone directly through the hole to the other side. Though there was an automatic pressure door over the hole to seal the dock in case of decompression, it had been open when Duo had shoved the cart through; the air flowed freely from one room to another.
Heero would indeed not bother asking many questions. His focus during a mission bordered on single-mindedness. He'd ascertain if something was a threat, usually by his own means rather than rely on third-party information, and he'd dismiss anything non-essential. If he trusted Duo implicitly, then that would be that much less for him to question; he'd just assume Duo knew best. Wufei was trusting Duo with his life, but that didn't stop him from wondering what the hell was going on even if it wasn't necessarily mission-related. Questions, however, might prove as dangerous as ignorance in Wufei's present circumstances. Freeport was, for all intents and purposes, enemy territory.
The airlock space was tight. There were maybe five inches between their bodies, and the bags were an awkward bundle at their sides. Wufei thanked his ancestors that he wasn't claustrophobic.
There was a gentle whistle as pressure equalized, then nothing but their breathing and the chewing sounds Duo was making on his stick. Wufei tried to relax against the wall.
"These are the sniffers."
Duo's voice was loud in the silence and the enclosed space, making Wufei start. He felt his hip press against Duo's duffel and their knees touched as Duo shifted.
"What-" Wufei interrupted his question. "I thought you weren't going to explain anything," he whispered, very low.
"I'll explain stuff, but when we got the time. We got three minutes to kill now. You're new in Freeport, Wu. It's normal to have questions." Duo said this loudly with a subtle nuance in his voice. Wufei gathered that it didn't matter if someone overheard. Even as far as Wufei's cover story went, he was supposed to be new to the colony.
"So what are sniffers?" he asked, still in a low voice in case he'd misunderstood Duo's drift.
"The air in here is being put through a detector. The airlock on the 'in' side will only release if the detectors pick up no traces of explosives or dangerous substances. There's also a low-dose X-ray taken of the people inside on a random basis. To make sure we didn't swallow anything, or have something up- well, you know."
"...Oh. What about the boxes?"
"They'll be searched too."
"Oh. I didn't realize-"
A foot thumped his, and in the light of the small red 'locked' signal he saw Duo shake his head ever so slightly. Wufei swallowed the question and kept his surprise to himself; that they were being more thoroughly inspected here than at the blockade.
"Dangerous substances are, of course, drugs - hard drugs, not this candy," Duo added, lifting the stick from his mouth. "Volatile chemicals, explosives, gunpowder and stuff on the list."
Wufei wanted to ask what 'the list' was, but thought he'd better keep all questions to himself. Apparently the Blade he was impersonating was new to Freeport, but should still have some limited knowledge of the rules. Wufei the Preventer didn't have that knowledge thanks to this bloody last-minute rush-job exile of a mission. He'd better not ask too many questions; he didn't want to trip them up.
The rest of the three minutes crept by in silence. The air in the airlock warmed up a bit from their shared body heat. Wufei wondered how sensitive the trace analyzers were. ESUN had developed them as a way of screening for weapons and explosives, but since you needed to keep the people being checked in an enclosed space for a few minutes, it had been judged impractical. Too much of an imposition on the common civilian. Apparently Freeport didn't have the same qualms. But Wufei would never have thought that Freeport would be checking this thoroughly for guns and drugs.
Finally the airlock hissed, opening towards the room.
"Maxwell, I'm almost afraid to ask...why did you bring us hair curlers?" a voice asked dryly.
Wufei looked around as he came out of the airlock. The cart full of boxes had been pulled to one side of the small neon-lit room and a man was going through the first one methodically, with more attention than Dinkle had. He was middle-aged, dressed a bit like a Sweeper in practical, tough tans and warm jacket. Salt-and-pepper hair, not very well combed, hung to his shoulders along with a long moustache of the same length. He was holding up one of the hair rollers critically as Duo walked up to him.
"Hi Karl. Those are for the labs."
"But why-"
"They use the hair curlers to keep their test tubes straight. Those test-tube holders they sell on the outside are stupidly expensive. I bought the curlers for ten creds the whole box, and once wired together they'll work just as well. They strip the plastic off so they can even go through a light autoclave. Immaculata Corriendes from the pathology lab asked me for them."
"Can't someone, I don't know, just build her some test-tube holders? Can't be that hard."
"Probably. You got the time?"
"Does it look like it? Okay, are all these for the path lab?"
"Various labs in the hospital. Just send them there and they'll sort it out. Baby clothes for NICU too."
"What about the rest?"
"Here's the manifest. It's just general stuff. Quartermaster will figure it out. These boxes are the only ones to be earmarked. Do you have someone who can take them ASAP?"
"The lab ones, yeah."
"I'll take care of the others tomorrow or next day, then."
"That'd be nice."
During the conversation, the man's attention had been split between the box of curlers - he was giving it a very thorough looking through, splitting open each plastic bag of curlers and inspecting the contents - and Wufei. The latter was being finely scrutinized, from the collar, to his clothes, to his sword.
"He's new," the man stated abruptly, looking at Duo. Wufei stiffened at the rudeness of not being addressed directly before he remembered the 'Blade' nonsense. He wasn't supposed to be questioned, according to Duo.
"That's right."
"What about...whathisname? Blue-eyed guy you had before."
Duo shrugged, looking away. Karl watched him for a few seconds then dived back into the box when he didn't get a direct answer. "Lemme finish these and then I'll check you guys through. Is, ah, this one staying?"
"We'll have to see." Duo chuckled, but it wasn't a cheerful laughter. It sounded a bit damp, and his shoulders slumped at the end of a half-hearted gesture. Karl's gaze was sympathetic.
"Hm, guess you can never know, heh, Duo? Damn, if this guy's new, that means I gotta fill in a load of shit on the system." Karl blew into his moustache with an annoyed huff.
"Sorry, docker."
"Yeah, yeah." Wufei found himself pinned by another stare, and this time it was ever so slightly hostile. He kept his face neutral since he had the feeling there was a bit of context here that he was missing.
The man checked the curlers, then went through their bags professionally, rifling through their clothes and toiletries. He even reached over and took Wufei's sword from his hands. Duo put a restraining hand on the Preventer's shoulder as he was about to tear himself and his blade away.
Then Karl took Wufei's fingerprints and passed a small pocket scanner over his inner wrist, with UV light that lit up his colony tattoo, registering it in a computer system that looked antiquated. Wufei wasn't sure why the man bothered with the tattoo. It was an old custom that people had used to identify newborn babies ever since Space was colonized. Since Earth people didn't have it, it wasn't used as an ID system. In fact he wasn't even sure his own was registered anywhere, now that his colony was destroyed.
"Right." The man shoved the keyboard and terminal towards Wufei. "Put your name here. Oh- Duo, does he know how to write?"
"Ah yes, he does," Duo replied with a grin.
"Good. Put your name here. Duo will fill in the rest."
Wufei typed in his name - Wu Fei Chang, common enough in the L5 cluster to not be traced to his job - and left the space in front of the keyboard to Duo who filled in the rest: Duo's name, vessel and Freeport address. There was no requirement for Wufei's address or any other detail that he could see.
"This is his first time in Freeport?" Karl asked as he hit a few keys once Duo had finished.
"Yes."
"Has he been a Blackcap long?"
"Nope."
"Oh." Karl frowned deeply at his terminal.
"But I vouch for him," Duo said, tone serious and final. Wufei could appreciate the import of those five words when he remembered Duo would be held responsible for his Blade's infractions.
"Good enough for me," Karl answered with a nod. "Welcome to Freeport, Wu Fei." He was looking at the keys he was carefully typing rather than at Wufei when he said this, which was fortunate because Wufei had nearly bowed in response. He caught the gesture in time. Duo's eyes had flickered his way but he was now looking wholly unconcerned and innocent of any Preventer infiltration that might be going on.
"'Kay, I'm gonna go hit the sack," he announced. "Been up for over thirty-five hours running with nothing more than a nap on Scythe. C'mon, Wu. See ya, Karl."
"Be safe, Maxwell," Karl threw over his shoulder without looking up from his keyboard.
The door out of 'customs' had just closed behind them when Wufei realized two things. First, that he'd gotten past immigration procedures that put a lot of ESUN methods to shame...without once showing his identity papers.
Second, he'd made it onto Freeport.
End Part 3
Part 4