Kracken
Disclaimer:I don't own them and I don't make any money off of them.
Warning:Violence, language, male/male sex, graphic.
Mortal
Perfection
"Stop!" Duo growled as two men shoved him back and forth between them.
"Maybe he cut a suit down for you, but that doesn't make you space worthy," Dinkins snarled back. "You're just what the doc said, killer street trash. We ain't workin' with you!"
The group of men filed into the air lock, tools slung onto shoulders, and left Duo staring at the wrong side of the air lock door as it closed. He fisted his hands in anger and then scrambled to retrieve the parts of his suit that they had cast to the four corners of the work bay.
An idiot didn't throw on a suit, that had just been manhandled, and go out into vacuum. Duo checked his seals and pressurized the suit for air leaks first. It took time, but his small fingers still did the job faster than anyone else. "Fuck you, nobody tells me what the hell to do!" Duo swore as he suited up at last and grabbed his own tools. Dr. G had named his price for getting Deathscythe. Duo was determined to pay it. If this outing was part of his training, then no one was going to stop him from completing it.
Born in space, Duo was accustomed to low gravity. Work in simulators had given him some idea how to move in zero gravity. He thought that he could cope. He wasn't prepared for the depressurization, the feel of the suit squeezing him from all sides, and the cold that seeped into his bones even with suit heat generators. When the hatch opened, he had a moment of claustrophobia, that warred with a dizzying panic, at suddenly being in space. He clutched at the ship's handholds, panting, and feeling utterly alone in his danger.
"I'm used to that," Duo finally said through gritted teeth, finding his courage long minutes later. His eyes glinted fiercely as he forced his hands to obey him, easing his death grip on the handholds. Yes, the universe was frightening in it's immensity. Yes, a person could let go and float for an eternity as a perfectly preserved corpse. Yes, a suit leak, at this stage, could make his end very messy. That was fucking life on the edge and that's the way he had always lived. Location meant nothing. The name of the game was still, 'do what had to be done, no matter what'.
"He's doing it," a technician told Dr. G.
Dr. G leaned to look at the display of vid pick ups. Duo was crawling along the metal hull to reach the men who were trying to repair an array of communication pods. He grunted, not surprised that Duo had passed yet another test. With every foot he managed, Dr, G saw him grow more and more confident in his movements. "Use that marvelous brain of yours, boy," he murmured. "Working in space is all about calculation, something that is your forte'."
"Go back, kid!" Perggy snarled as he spotted Duo. "We don't need a kid mucking everything up. This is dangerous business."
"I have my orders," Duo replied and he sounded... not angry. He sounded as if he were laughing, grinning, maybe, and enjoying the disruption he was making.
What's his game? Dr. G wondered, not having any doubt that it was one, and he began to feel a stir of trepidation. Cats liked to play with their food before they ate it. If Duo was thinking about violence, zero g was a place rife with murderous possibilities.
"Stay out of our way!" Perggy tried again. "We don't need you out here, no matter what G says."
"Afraid I'll fix it better than you?" Duo taunted as he continued to come closer. "I mean, look at the way you're hooking up that relay. You're going to blow it, if you aren't careful. That might be pretty, seeing you and your suit in itty bitty pieces, it'd be real shiny, but I'm thinking you'd rather not put on a show?"
"I've been fixing these things since before your mama opened her legs to the john who made you, little fuck, so don't you try and tell me-", Dinkins began snarling.
Perggy was eyeing the array though. "Why do you think it's gonna blow?" he wondered. A man with a healthy respect for his life, Dr. G thought.
"'Cuz that jump box you put in is failing," Duo pointed out, swinging down and starting to climb out onto the metal arm that held the pods. "You lazy bastards forgot to replace it after you used it for a patch. I can see the plastic oozing out of the seams from here. It's been burning. Soon as you put full power to the array, it'll overload and blow."
Perggy started towards it. "Hey, I think he's-"
"Shut the hell up and get back to work!"Dinkins shouted. "I put in that box myself. It's sound! If you're gonna pee your pants, maybe you should get the hell outta my way and I'll do the work myself!"
"I can do it!" Perggy growled, "So get the fuck outta MY way. You get back to momma G, kid, before I kick you all the way there."
"Your funeral," Duo told them as if it were all a joke. "I'll
make sure they play nice music."
"Think you're so damned smart, don't you?" Dinkins shouted back. "Why
don't you sit your ass here and watch how experts do it, kid? That'll teach
you to keep your mouth the hell shut!"
"Experts, huh?" Duo shot back, "When are they showin' up?"
Dinkins swore, but Perggy was laughing even as he began working. Strapped to a hull, with the universe showing them how small and insignificant they were, and death at every hand, it was something that a kid could have enough courage to trade insults with them.
From his safe view point, Dr. G laughed with them as Duo joined the two men. Perggy began to explain what he was doing, while the rest of the crew scrambled to complete their own jobs.
"Where did he learn that, I wonder?" Dr. G said aloud as he marveled at the way Duo had wrapped the two men around his finger. Dinkins shouldn't have caved, shouldn't have started treating the boy like any other apprentice thrown his way, but he was, and somehow Duo had known how to 'speak his language', despite every indication that he was only infuriating the man. Between Perggy and Dinkins, Duo was given a first class crash course in communication pod arrays. He listened intently, did as he was told, but still returned to his earlier assertion as soon as Dinkins began to call in his crew to reconnect the power.
"It's gonna blow," Duo warned.
"Didn't we just teach you that we know better?" Dinkins snapped back, regaining some of his temper.
"At least make everyone back off first," Perggy suggested. "I think... Well, I can see some plastic oozing, just like the kid said..."
Dinkins glared at the box in question, grunted, and then ripped off the cover with an angry, violent move. His tether kept him from flying off into space, but he was jerked roughly. He hauled himself back in close, after slapping the cover onto a magnetic tool pad on his hip, and surveyed the insides.
"I need a new box, " Dinkins growled suddenly. "Get me another air tank and let's get to work, Perggy."
No thanks were ever going to pass the man's lips. Pride was stung. Duo was there, though, and pointing at a few connections. "That's good. How did you manage that?"
"Used the tip of my laser and connected it to the pulse k randomizer," Dinkins growled back sullenly.
"Show me," Duo asked, no demanded, Dr. G thought, his sponge like mind seeming to hate what he didn't know.
"Get outta my light and I will," Dinkins told him and he began to explain his jump to Duo.
Watching men, seeming to move in slow motion, for hours, was tedious, but Dr. G was interested in other things. Duo had proven that he could adapt, that he could deal with difficult personalities. He could also admit that there were things that he didn't know. Dr. G supposed that it had to do with survival on the streets of L2. Adaptability would have been key. Being able to talk a person into giving to a poor street child, or talking a person into not hurting that same child, would have been a survival skill as well. He imagined that Duo had probably excelled at those skills.
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"Stay in the core!" Dr. G shouted to Duo. "It has the strongest bulkhead!"
Duo was wide eyed with alarm. Taking the small ship to test Duo's piloting skills, outside of a simulator, had seemed a safe trip. They hadn't expected a lone Oz scout to try and board them. Dr. G knew that he couldn't give away his own identity or that of his fledgling pilot. Any minimal print scan would raise questions that he wasn't ready to answer. Flight had seemed the best course, and opening their meager weapons on the unsuspecting craft. The nervous pilot had failed to score a hit, though, and now they were under a return barrage.
"You're fucking up!" Duo shouted at the pilot, as he used the backs of the seats to pull himself forward in the zero g. His long braid floated behind him as he gripped the pilot's jacket.
"Get off kid!" the pilot shouted back in a clear panic. "I'm trying to keep us from dying!"
"You're trying to kill us, is all I see!" Duo snarled back, purple eyes alight with desperation, "And I don't wanna die here! Let me pilot!"
"Like hell!" The pilot retorted.
Duo exchanged a look with Dr. G. "Let me pilot," he begged. "I know I'm better. You know I'm better."
"Stand down and turn off your engines!" the com unit blared, "or we will destroy your ship. We have an arrest order for one male adult traveling with one male child. The man is a known collaborator with terrorists." It was automated. Things had gone far beyond a simple request for a boarding and a search.
It was irritating that he had become tangled in another, fellow rebel's, business, Dr. G thought. He had warned the man, repeatedly, that none of them were ready to begin missions, but he had been adamant about the skills of his young protege. This was the end result. Somewhere, they had drawn the notice of Oz, and escaped. Dr. G and his crew were about to pay the price.
Duo was the better pilot, in a simulator. Allowing him to test under fire fight conditions was madness. Dr. G smiled and it was chilling and confident. "Pilot."
The pilot craned his neck around in shock, but met the slamming force of Dr. G's bony knuckles. Dr. G knocked the man out cold and then unstrapped him from the chair. Duo was crawling into the seat and strapping in before he even had the lax body of the pilot free.
Duo read the monitors quickly and then warned, "Strap in," as he banked the ship in a maneuver that Dr. G hadn't known that it could perform. The ship turned tail, and that was the only way to describe it. Calculating the thrust and control should have taken hours, or even days, not seconds. Any pilot would have claimed it impossible, but Duo had the ship facing their pursuers and firing all weapons before Dr. G could do more than grip the pilot tightly and find a handhold.
Space isn't like moving through air. Firing weapons, firing thrusters, and every motion of the ship took immense calculation to control. Dr. G could see Duo's lips moving, equations running from them like water without sound as his eyes flickered with rapid eye movement and his hands moved in perfect coordination with his hyper mind. The Oz ship never had a chance. It couldn't compensate to avoid the weapons, or the ship suddenly skimming over it's hull and taking out it's arrays. They left them dead in the water, as Duo opened up the engines and allowed a controlled over load to propel them out of range of the now, dead ship.
Duo was out of his seat then, as soon as he had the ship slowed and on autopilot, and he was spitting angry at the slowly recovering pilot. "You almost got me killed, fuck head!"
"Thank the boy for saving our lives," Dr. G suggested.
The pilot rubbed at his neck, looking stupid, and then he slurred, "Thanks..."
Duo scowled, sat cross legged on the back of the pilot's chair, his braid floating all around him, and confronted Dr. G. "You knew what that was all about. I could tell. Who's the kid? He my competition?"
It might have been advantageous to lie, to say that, yes, Duo had to prove himself to win his Deathscythe, or be replaced, but Duo had proven, without a doubt, his right to be in Deathscythe's pilot chair. When the boy could out think a ship's computer...
"He's part of another operation," Dr. G told him. "One that I think is going to fail. His instructor is using a far different method than mine to train him. I don't approve."
"How different?" Duo wanted to know, completely un-phased by the fact that he had nearly died.
"Let's just say, that I approve of your... humanity," Dr. G chuckled as he levered the pilot off of him and into a chair.
"Yeah?" Duo replied, puzzled, and rubbed the back of his neck. "What's that mean?"
"Maybe you'll find out one day," Dr. G told him. "Now, get us back home and show me that you know how to do something other than tear my ship apart on the way. You still have a pilot's test to pass."
"I think he passed it," the pilot said, looking awed.
"Dog fighting is a lot different from landing, taking off, and making certain that your cargo doesn't end up paste before the end of their journey," Dr. G snapped back. "Now, Duo, if you please. get back in the pilot seat and show me how to rotate the docking clips into position."
Duo snorted. "If you say so, doc, but those Ozzies aren't that stupid.
They just might be looking for us."
"Not until they reach base," Dr. G assured him."That gives us
time. Now, docking clips, please."
Duo rolled his eyes and began performing the simple procedures.
TBC
It may be a few weeks before I manage another update. We're renovating. ^_^
Thanks for all the nice reviews, by the way. I appreciate them all, and you
for reading.
On to Chapter Four
Back to chapter Two