She drifted aimlessly her navigation pack that had been strapped to the back of her EVA suit long since run out of fuel, now all she could do was to hold still and conserve precious oxygen weightlessly floating among a sea of stars; they were all around her, their soft light glowing unwavering at her as she called out in vain for aid.

"I am sending out a distress signal to any ships within the immediate area, please respond. My ship has been boarded by pirates and destroyed. I require immediate assistance. I'm running out of time."

She looked down at her suits air feed timer on her wrist console and it mercilessly informed her that she had roughly three hours left to go until she ran out of oxygen. Once again she cut down the percentage in the feed.

"Warning," her suit's computer beeped at her. "Oxygen percentage already at critical levels."

"I know that," she muttered in groggy irritation. "It's not going to do me a whole lot of good if I'm dead now is it? I just need to hold on a little longer."

She slowly looked around her again. There was nothing here, nothing but open space. Nothing above her, nothing below her, nothing to either side of her but blackness broken by scattered motes of light. She wondered if it was a sad commentary on the nature of the universe that there was so much more darkness than there was light. Her eyes began to close again; she was groggy from lack of oxygen, but in her book groggy was better than dead.

<I'm most likely going to die here,> she thought. <No one knows where I am. This sector of space is quite a bit off the beaten path so to speak, no trade routes pass along here, no Preventors Patrols either unless they're actually in pursuit of some space pirates. My suit's transmission signal doesn't have a whole lot of range to it, it's only desighned for suit-to-ship communications, not to act as a distress beacon.>

She'd always thought that spending time in zero-G was peaceful, like floating in the womb. She'd never before feared the complete and absolute stillness that was space.

<In space, no one can hear you scream,> she thought distantly.

All of her thoughts were distant, she felt numb, most likely a result of the all-encompassing lethargy brought on by the lack of oxygen feeding her brain coupled with shock from the loss of blood due to injuries she'd sustained before she'd abandoned ship. She just couldn't bring herself to feel anything very strongly right then, not fear not pain nor hope nor sadness. She just floated there looking out into the infinite blackness and the unwavering celestial light of the stars and the only sound she could hear was her quiet breathing and the beating of her own desperate heart.

Hours ago when everything had gone wrong and she'd had to escape in only an EVA suit she had thought she might go mad all alone with only the knowledge of her death through suffocation or bloodloss to keep her company, but by this point she was too numb to feel anything. All she could do was keep sending her weak signal in hopes that some ship, any ship, would respond and come to her rescue. She was living on hope all the while trying to adjust to the idea that her luck had finally run out; that she was going to die friendless and alone, without anyone remarking her passing or ever lying her body to rest beside her family members that had passed before her. She was tired, so very weary, but something inside of her wouldn't allow her to give up. She'd always been a survivor, doing whatever it took to take care of those she loved, giving up just simply wasn't in her nature. In the face of overwhelming odds she only got more stubborn. Even though logic told her that she was going to die in a matter of hours, her unfailing resolve refused to let her give in. She'd still be sending that signal up until she breathed her very last breath. Midii Une never gave in.

*

"Hey Trowa," Quatre said from his position at the head of the bridge of his experimental space craft the Diamond Star, part of a new line in point to point space travel, ones that were built merely for space travel only and not for planetfall. Since the opening of communications between the different colony clusters and the cutting of the ribbon on the Mars Terraformation project, there had been a steadily growing market for ship designs that cut back on the numerous inefficiencies of transports that were built for both intercolonial and earth-colony Transportation. Problems like fuel and the storage thereof. The current models of interplanetary transport vessels had huge, cylindrical fuel storage tanks attached to the outside of the ship that slowed the ship down with a lot of drag. The friction created by drag created a lot of heat, which in turn weakened the metal of the hulls, forcing companies to periodically replace the outside skins at great expense. Tied into the difficulties with the non-self-renewing fuel supply made of a finite resource was the problem of waste created by the burning of fuel in engines. Tied into the problem with the inefficient fuel were the equally inefficient engines used; they relied on a kind of thrust-propulsion system that was ill suited to space travel. The reason it was so inapt was the basic matter of acceleration and deceleration. When a transport vessel of any sort started moving, it had to first fight against the pull of inertia (which was a constant both on earth and out in space) to get to a cruising speed and then fight inertia once again to decelerate when the destination was reached. This bogged down the whole system and made organizing shipping schedules and docking procedures too complicated and planned out to be efficient. Added along with the thrust propulsion engines and unsatisfactory delays with acceleration and deceleration, was a basic problem with maneuverability. Even if one was an ace pilot, hell, even if one was a Gundam Pilot, it was a fact that interplanetary vessels and were not very maneuverable at all. They weren’t very fast either. With all of these irritating problems built into the design of large and small vessels alike there was still the age old problem of there being no gravity on board the ship, sure it was fun to float around in the hallways, but Quatre disliked having to chase down his meal every time he got hungry.

Such design flaws made not only intercolonial travel a pain in the rear, but made planet to planet travel more costly than it should have been; and now that they were entering a new age they couldn’t afford to be bogged down by inefficient ways of doing things or progress on the Mars Terraformation Project could slow or even halt altogether. Quatre had been ahead of the game on this one, he already had three different prototypes ready while most other companies were still working on research and development. The ship Trowa, Quatre and a few other Preventors were using currently as a portable mid-space base of operations right then was one such experimental prototype. Quatre had been scheduled to give it a shake-down cruise anyway to test out the bugs and any potential design flaws in the Prototype. Right then, the Diamond Star was the only one of its kind anywhere in the galaxy.

Mars colony was probelematic in many ways. The actual terraformation would not begin to reshape the hostile environs of the planet for at least three generations yet so the human Colonists would be forced to inhabit either the Domes being constructed on the planet itself or the orbiting Habitations Platforms. The gravity pull was a bit greater than that of the earth so that was a toil to struggle with, the environment itself was cold, windy, the air wasn't breathable and the grit of the surface seemed to get everywhere... but despite that, everyone who came was fired up and enthused about the project. The habbie plats were mostly inhabited by technitions, skilled laborers and scientists, but there were no few businessmen as well. The settlers of the martian colony had to have somewhere to spend their off time, and something to do with all of those credits they were earning. The owners of the shops in the Colony's Zocalo were only too happy to help out with that. Despite its numerous drawback the Mars Colony was a bustling frontier community, and being hailed as a success by businessman and politician alike. Thus the demand for easier and more reliable transportation to and from the new colony had increased greatly.

The one single major problem was in traveling the route to the colony. Even in times of absolute peace, such as they were enjoying right then thanks to the diligent efforts of the Preventors and people like Vice Foreign Minister Darlian, there were still those out there who would make their livelihood by preying on the weak. The Space Pirates, a loose conglomeration composed of opportunists, thugs, thieves, and the remnants of the old earth crime families, attacked ships carrying valuable cargo from earth and its outlying colonies to Mars and sold what they had gained on the black market for a hefty profit. The ships they attacked didn't have more than a few minutes warning of their impending doom before they were overrun, boarded their crews slaughtered, and their ship stripped of everything that might remotely fetch a price. Sometimes they even took the ship, if they felt they could disguise the tags and trails well enough to make it their own. Every attack was a tragedy for the Space Pirates rarely if ever left any alive, they were ruthless in their conquests and thorough in their searches.

Since Space Pirates fell under neither Earth nor Colonial jurisdiction (as they preyed equally upon transports from both Earth and Space) the task of patrolling the shipping routes had been handed off to the Preventors o deal with.

"Yes?" Trowa questioned mildly, glancing over at his old friend from his position on navigations.

Trowa had been originally given the mission of patrolling in that sector for Pirates, but that mission had been superceded by one of greater importance. He was to proceed to sector 9 by 82 by 15 to recapture a piece of stolen technology the Space Pirates had "acquired" by means unlawful. Due to the nature of the article in question he had received orders that he wasn't to stop for anything.

"Abdul reports that we're receiving a distress signal," Quatre said in a mildly puzzled voice as he leaned over the shoulder of a nearby communications technician to see where the signal was coming from. "That's odd; there shouldn't be any one else out here in this sector. It's practically the middle of nowhere, no ports, no stations, no colonies... nothing."

"Good place to hide," Trowa remarked. "What's the origin?"

"Pin-pointing now," reported the communications tech. "It's nearby; sector 10 by 79 by 12."

"Let's hear it," Quatre said.

The message brokenly crackled through the ships com system.

"...distress signal... ips... immediate area..." crackle. "...respond... boarded by pirates and destroyed... assistance... I'm running out of time."

A woman's voice; one obviously in a great deal of trouble. Trowa looked over at Quatre (whom the ship actually belonged to) and saw worry and distress plainly written on his friend's open and expressive face.

"Navigation, alter course to intercept," Quatre ordered.

"It could be a trap," Trowa felt obliged to point out. If there were anyone in the whole galaxy who would want to get their hands on a ship like the Diamond Star it would be the space pirates.

"We'll have to take that chance. Besides, all sims indicate that there's nothing out there that can keep up with my new ship on maximum burn."

"There's a difference between simulations and real life," Trowa argued.

"Trowa, you know me well enough by now to know that even if I do look harmless, I'm never without my means of defense,” Quatre rejoined.

Trowa nodded and smiled a little grimly. His companion might be the kindest and gentlest out of all of the five boys who had once piloted Gundams most of the time, but he was a warrior every bit as much as the rest of them when it came down to cases.

One of his bridge crewmen, another Preventor whose codename was Stone to match his personality, had been set up to monitor the mission (and had been a pain in the ass since day one) had taken it into his head to object yet again.

"But sir-" Stone began to protest.

"He said alter course to intercept," Trowa said evenly, locking eyes with the objector. Anyone having met the steely and implacable gaze of Trowa Barton usually shut up and did as he told them because generally they knew what was good for them and their hopes for future survival. Apparently Stone was more dense than most. Unsurprising, he seemed to like to quibble over every little thing, the anal retentive bastard.

"Sir, I must object; this isn't within mission parameters. Let another ship handle it, we can't just-"

"That's enough Stone," Trowa said quietly. He was a man of few words because generally that was all that sufficed. In this case he'd likely have to explain.

"There are no other ships within hailing distance. Furthermore, there was once a time where I was on the transmitting end of that distress call waiting and hoping for a ship to come and rescue me before my oxygen ran out. I won't leave another human being in that same position when I can do something about it."

Quatre momentarily looked guilty, for he knew that he had been the cause of that particular incident even if he hadn't been stable at the time. Trowa locked eyes with him next and shook his head, signaling that he wasn't to go on the guilt trip that Trowa knew he was no doubt contemplating.

The ships course was changed without further incident. Meanwhile a bed was readied in med-lab in case the new and unexpected passenger was injured.

*

Trowa ventured out on a line with a nav-pack and thrusters strapped to his back to retrieve the sender as soon as they arrived on sight. He couldn't see the face through the plate of the face mask very well, but it did indeed look female. She looked at him groggily her eyes half open as if she were under the influence of some kind of drug as Trowa hooked his oxygen feed into her suit and shared his air with her. The air feed timer on her suit registered only forty seven minutes until it ran out completely. Not a moment too soon then. He attached the suit to his town line and let them haul him and the other suit back in like fish on the ends of a line.

Once they got back in the artificial gravity of the ship the occupant of the rescued suit collapsed into his arms. He supported her (for he still thought it was a her) with one arm while he cracked the airlock on her helmet one handed and slipped it off to get a good look.

His first impression was one of gold. Like sunlight spun into strands of hair that cascaded out from the confines of the helmet and over his arms. The unconcious face was pale, too pale, translucent, almost waxy looking. Long lashes swept against unnaturally pale cheeks. Full, sensual pink lips were slightly parted as she took in deep breaths of full clear air. The blonde haired woman fought again to regain consciousness and was just barely able to struggle her eyes half open once more and look up at him. That instant that her gaze met his, Trowa's world seemed to crystalize. Blue, and azure blue that would make a twilight sky weep with shame and inadequacy, blue more real and vivid than any other color in the entire universe.

He knew her. He'd seen her somewhere before...

The moment was plucked from him like a leaf from a tree in a strong wind as the small team of medics from med lab descended like a host of carrion crows carting her away from him before he could begin to protest.

*

Hours later Trowa was still on the bridge pursuing their original intended target along with Quatre, the mission hadn't stopped just because it felt like his heart had for a moment. Quatre had been shooting his best friend troubled looks across the bridge for the last hour as the search for the elusive space pirates and their stolen technology had turned up fruitless once more.

Space Pirates were one of the inconveniences that didn't fall under Earth jurisdiction or under the auspiceses of any one of the Colony clusters since they preyed on all colony cluster transports and earth transports indiscriminately so the Preventors were given the task of trying to keep their activities down to manageable levels. They seemed to delight in fining new ways to make mischief and no matter how many of the little buggers the Preventors caught, there were always more waiting in the wings. But Space Pirates had been known to facilitate terrorist activity if it served their purposes (and it often did) so no one had any qualms about trying to find their main base and wipe it out.

The last little escapade, the one that Trowa and Quatre had been set to tack, had involved a top secret microchip that stored a lot of highly sensitive data stolen out from under the noses of its creators. The chip had the capability of jamming, intercepting, tracking, decrypting, and downloading any data feed no matter what kind. Such a peice of technology in the hands of the space pirates could be devatasting. With it they could gain the ability to access any of the Preventors communications channels, even their high security ones, and know what their next movements would be. This would make it all but impossible to mobilize any of the Preventors teams against them. That wasn't even to mention all of the other trouble they could get in to with being able to tap into, track and decrypt nearly any file, sensitive information would not be safe until new security protocols could be invented to counter the threat of this new technology. All in all it was a bad situation.

Trowa was feeling unusually high strung and fidgety, and Trowa was never fidgety.

"Med-lab to the bridge," called one of the techs over the ships internal communications. Subtly, without seeming to try to, Trowa maneuvered closer in order to be able to hear the exchange better.

"Yes?" questioned one of the techs.

"The patient’s condition has been stabilized. Though she hasn't regained consciousness yet, we expect her to do so soon. You may send someone to question her if you care to."

"I'll take care of it," Trowa said quietly.

"And I'll come with you," Quatre said immediately. Trowa shot his friend a sidelong glance of inquiry.

"I'm curious," said Quatre simply. "I wonder how she got out there is all. The place we found her is precisely in the middle of nowhere, it seems odd that we’d find her floating there without even a broken spaceship nearby."

Trowa nodded as he proceeded from the bridge to the nearby med-lab.

The med lab was like much of the rest of the ship, a study in neutrals; bland, inoffensive and utterly unshocking. The decor was monochromatic of greens; designed to put the patient at ease, Trowa found that the walls reminded him of mint toothpaste, which conjured images of being strapped down in a dentist chair. Not very restful to him, but maybe he was just strange.

He looked at the young woman resting her head and upper back against the head-board. She still wore much of her original clothing minus the space suit, typical space drifter wear, plain white shirt and trousers underneath a tough durable coverall sporting the usual amount of pockets over which she wore a flak vest in a coordinating color that was obviously mainly a storage device. Judging by the way that the material of the coverall and undershirt stretched across her torso she was very very definitely female. Her hair was still a mess of wavy blonde strands splayed out everywhere like gold spilled out over her pillows.

She looked very frail lying there, her head tilted to one side and her eyes closed with monitors beeping all around her. He could see that her right hand and wrist had been wrapped in bandages and there were other spots on her clothing that showed signs of a very serious fight; plasma burns in some spots from a space range blaster, tears, even blood from where she'd obviously been wounded and it had been allowed to soak through into the cloth. There was something about the stillness of the room despite the beeping that made Trowa approach the bed as quietly as he could. It was hardly logical since he intended to awaken the sleeping woman anyway. Still as he looked at her something caught his eye and made him pause.

Peeking out from the unzipped front of her coverall winked the metallic edge of a silver cross. Suddenly Trowa felt as though the wind had suddenly been punched from his lungs as his chest constricted. Unbeknownst to him he gasped in surprise.

"What is it Trowa?" Quatre asked curiously. He had never really seen his staid and expressionless companion taken aback before; Trowa was Trowa through anything. Nothing ever seemed to faze him; he was just this mask of implacable calm through any situation.

Trowa was still struggling through a haze of incomprehensibility.

"She... I think I know her Quatre," he said finally. He reached for her breast; Quatre thinking something else entirely immediately protested.

"No Trowa, you can't just assault an unconscious-" Quatre broke off as Trowa snapped a necklace from around her neck. A silver cross, a badly abused silver cross. It looked like it had been shot with a gun, the bullet of which had snapped off the lower portion of the charm which had later been soldered back on to the rest of it.

"No doubt of it now," Trowa muttered, almost to himself. "It has to be her. I'd recognize this thing anywhere. The question is; how did she come to cross our path?" He paused. "Unless...."

Trowas expression hardened.

"Consign her to the brig!" He ordered one of the nearby security guards, his voice sounded unusually grim for the cool, overly-controlled pilot.

Quatre stared at his friend in shock for half a second and immediately countermanded the order.

"Belay that," he said over his shoulder to the approaching guard then turned to Trowa with a look of incredulity on his face.

"Trowa, what are you thinking? This woman is injured; you can't just throw her in the brig without a reason."

"She's a spy," he said flatly.

"How do you know that?"

"Because I know her, we've met before... a long time ago. She used pretty much the same tactic then, pretended to be in need of aid so that we'd take her in and she could infiltrate and send the coordinates of our main base back to her employers. Now throw her in the brig."

"We don't have positive ID on her, you can't be sure that-"

"I'm sure."

"Trowa, she's injured."

When Quatre wore one of his wide-eyed concerned looks it was damned impossible for anyone to tell him no. Even Trowa, who had been a soldier for as far back as he could remember, was no exception.

"Then post a guard. Don't let her out from under surveillance."

Before he could say anything further, the young woman on the bed moaned a little and began to stir. She weakly reached up and felt her head before trying to open her eyes.

"Mhmmhm..." she made a small raspy noise as she started to move. Trowa removed his hand gun from its shoulder holster and trained in on her while Quatre shot his friend another quelling look and went solicitously to the pretty young woman’s side.

"Oooooh, I'm alive," she rasped. "I hurt too much to be dead. Incredible... And I thought my luck had finally run out.” The girl tentatively opened her eyes which were wide and deep violet, like two perfect amethysts. “Where am I?"

"You're on board a Preventors cruiser miss..?" Quatre trailed off while Trowa continued to regard the patient suspiciously.

The woman looked over at the first person who had spoken to her, too disoriented to do more than smile a little and say

"Midii, my name is Midii Une. Thank you for coming to my aid."

"Part of our job description," Quatre said; then, thinking to put his best friends’ fears to rest he asked. "So what is it that you do for a living Miss Une?"

"Hmm? Oh... I'm a spy," she said matter-of-factly as she leaned her head weakly against the headboard. Quatre blinked twice in surprise and Trowa clicked the hammer of his hand gun back. Midii's hand flew to her breast, where her cross had once rested. Her eyes flew open when she found it wasn't there.

"Looking for this?" Trowa inquired, speaking for the first time and dangling her cross on its chain between his thumb and forefinger.

"Hey!" She said with some heat (especially for someone in her condition) "That's mine! Give it back!"

"But you gave it to me," Trowa said. His voice was as close to a snarl as anyone was ever likely to hear from him. He was usually so cool, calm and controlled that it was unusual to see him so rough around the edges.

The woman looked over at him, still groggy from her ordeal, her facial expression stubborn to the last. She tried to get up out of bed, wincing at her injuries.

"But Miss-" the nearby doctor protested.

"If you don't give it back right now, I'll come over there and take it," she warned, her stubborn expression telling him that she meant every word.

"Your condition has just been stabilized, your wounds have barely begun to heal over; you shouldn't even be moving much less out of bed in your condition!"

"I'm fine!" she snapped. Her jaw was set. She looked over at Trowa

"Well are you going to give me back my necklace or am I going to have to make this physical?"

"I told you, you gave it to me," was all he said. That was all it took. Midii's expression firmed into one of mulish resolve and it was clear she was about to do something drastic, possibly stupid. She quickly levered herself up onto her hands so that she could get her feet underneath her in a crouch on the bed then sprang herself at Trowa bodily. Instead of ducking, he merely dropped his shoulder so that it took the brunt of the impact then heaved her up before she could plant her feet on the ground for another assault. And because he was so tall, Midii could do no more than hang there, struggling ineffectually. Her struggles quickly grew weaker and weaker until she just hung there breathing heavily.

"Please sir," begged the doctor. "Put her back in bed. I don't want her doing anymore damage to herself than has been done to her already."

"Tenacious little thing isn't she?" Trowa heard one of the med-lab assistants remark out loud. Midii was still glaring at him for all she was worth as he calmly plunked her back down on the bed she had so precipitously vacated just a few moments before.

"Why's this thing to important to you?" he questioned mildly, his tone betraying nothing but cool curiosity while Midii leveled a stubborn glare at him and attempted once again to rise to her feet.

"I wouldn't," Trowa cautioned. "We'll have you restrained otherwise." She subsided with another stubborn look and said

"I won't give up on it. I'll get it back."

"You never answered my question," he said. His voice was uncommonly intense, well, for Trowa.

"Generally my main reason would be classified, but since you two are Preventors, no matter how bad mannered you are; I suppose I'll tell you. It serves as a very handy storage device and I have something that I went to a great deal of trouble to steal away from the space pirates hidden away inside of it."

"Interesting," Trowa said mildly, he examined the cross minutely, trying to work out where the catch was. "A hidden storage compartment you say? That must be where the transmitter was..."

Midii looked over at him, in surprise her gaze turned puzzled and searching before cooling into dismissal. Trowa noted absently that she had a very expressive face; he wondered how she'd ever made it as a spy if she couldn't control her expression. Ah! There it was... He deftly fingered open the catch on the crosspiece of the charm and out of the tiny compartment tumbled a small hard plastic thing, about the size of a tictac. The microchip! The very same microchip that Trowa and the Preventors had been assigned to recover.

"Good. Well I'll just keep this," he said.

"Hey! That's not fair! I nearly got killed trying to steal, I mean liberate, that thing. You can't just take it from me!" Midii protested in outrage.

"And what were you planning to do with it once you had reached civilized space Miss Une?" Trowa questioned softly, regarding her with a particularly piercing gaze from under his sweep of hair.

"Cash it in for a reward of course," she retorted, as of it should be obvious to any idiot. " I happen to be under contract by the company who created the chip. The Space Pirates went to a lot of trouble to steal that thing away, even by risking an attack on a well-armed security caravan in a well-populated sector; two conditions they usually strive to avoid when they plan their raids. I'm not going to take a loss of profit on some kind of charity mission."

"Wait wait wait," Quatre said, interjecting for the first time in a while. The young spy, theif, whatever she was, wasn't making a whole lot of sense and Quatre didn't know if he entirely trusted that look in Trowa’s eyes. Whatever history these two had, Trowa was holding an uncharacteristically long grudge and Quatre wasn’t sanguine about the safety of the young woman should his old friend take it into his head to settle whatever score might be between them. Quatre was certain Trowa wouldn’t harm her directly; Trowa just didn’t have it in him to physically inflict pain on a woman, especially a defenseless one. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t devise some other means of exacting his revenge. Quatre wouldn’t want an innocent woman to be lost in a sea of prosecution bureaucracy, from which there was rarely any escape, just because Trowa was a little personally invested in her downfall.

"Miss Midii could you kindly start from the beginning? You're only confusing the rest of us."

"Sure," she said agreeably, nobly refraining from sticking her tongue out at the young Preventor who seemed to have it in for her.

"Years ago I lived on Earth in the middle of a war zone; my family was poor and my father sick... cliched as that sounds it's true. I got desperate. Desperate enough to take any job, no matter how horrible for any amount of money. I eventually wound up in outer space working for the Space Pirates; I had natural agility so they wanted me as their... well they call them "trained monkeys;" it's like the people who go do the dangerous stuff of getting around security on a high risk job. They offered to take care of my family for me if I would agree to work for them. I agreed, I needed the money and the safety for my family. I spent six years in space under their less than benign guidance getting into and out of trouble; survived two wars, shifting alliances and some gundam attacks when I decided that enough was enough. I took my family and went solo, making money on my own as a spy or a discreet messenger or a bounty hunter or a theif that steals back stolen articles, or you know whatever else the moment requires. In the process of breaking away from my teachers I had made the space pirates my enemies, fortunately for me I had too much information about their inner workings; their personnel, their equipment, their tactics and so forth for them to really touch me. They knew that if they threatened me or mine, the consequences would be more than they were willing to pay. Yes, they had trained me well, and you know the old saying that it is always a proud day when the student surpasses the teacher. So... we had an uneasy truce, they and I."

Trowa muttered something under his breath but the woman ignored him.

"This recent mission tipped the scales you could say," she continued. "They had stolen from one of my more lucrative employers... I am on the call-up list of several major companies and corporations for… ah discrete um, I could-tell-you-but-then-I-would-have-to-kill-you type-stuff. I took the commission and started working. The job was a bad one from the start. The only time the pirates were vulnerable would be during another attack. I figured the best way to draw them out without risking innocent civilians would be to hand them the death of one of their largest threats to internal security; that would be me bunky, on a silver platter. I went out to an unoccupied sector, the one you found me in by the way, and made it look like I was having engine trouble. They hate me, but they also know that I do on occasion have valuable cargo so naturally they boarded my ship. I sent out a life pod that supposedly held me in it which was promptly shot out of the stars and turned to space dust. I snuck on board their ship via one of their airlocks in my EVA suit and stole the chip right out from under them. Unfortunately they caught me just as I was on my way out and I was forced to self-detonate my own ship in order to evade capture. This event caused an unintended chain reaction in their own engine rooms and they went up in smoke along with it. I guess it wasn't a total loss after all. That left me in the predicament you found me in. I got the chip but I was as good as dead. Luckily you guys came along and rescued me. Now I'll be taking my necklace and my chip back please."

"How do we know you're telling the truth?" Trowa questioned blandly. "You could be making all of this up to gain our sympathy and access to whatever information a spy might find useful in the Preventors database."

"Cute. Firstly, I don't generally lie unless it's part of the mission profile. I may be a spy but I'm more honest than most. Secondly if I were interested in your database this particular strategy is unlikely to be effective for several reasons; one is that the target is ill chosen, you would have a link to the database only through a tightly controlled and monitored transmission feed, access to the link would be difficult and very risky as it would be very caefully guarded at the primary systems base. And for another reason, just look at all of these injuries and the time left in the air feed timer on my EVA suit it's an awful lot of risk and trouble to go to just to hail down one ship that unless I miss my guess wasn't even scheduled to pass through this sector at this time correct? So there you have it, I'm just an innocent victim who happens to be a professional spy."

"One more question," said Trowa quietly. "Have you ever spied on the Preventors?"

"The correct answer to give to that question would be no," said Midii with equal gravity. "The honest answer to that question would be... after a fashion. I can say that I've never spied on your Preventors Agency in any official or professional capacity; I have however made it a point to keep myself abreast of your activities. It's simply a sensible thing to do to keep track of one of the more influential powers on earth and out here in space. My techniques are not invasive where your organization is concerned as you have yet to pose any real threat to myself, my business, or any of my clients."

"And if we did?" he pursued.

"I thought you said you only had one more question," she evaded. Trowa looked at her steadily. Midii looked back at him consideringly. Finally she said

"My clients can fend for themselves where your organization is concerned. I rather doubt any commission they could offer me is worth offending one of the most powerful forces for good and justice here on the starry frontier."

Trowa nodded, almost to himself as the others filed out of the room ahead of him. He examined her face for a moment longer then turned to leave with the others.

"Can I have my necklace back now?" she demanded. "I'm really not up to trying for another flying tackle; I've had a rough few days."

Trowa made to hand her the cross back which she took with an exaggerated show of graciousness that implied "it's about time." As he turned to leave she called him back.

"Hey, Preventor I-don't-know-your-name," she called as he reached the door. He paused.

"Nice picture on this credit card, oh and is this your girlfriend? She's pretty."

Trowa spun around swiftly on one heel.

She was lounging there in her hospital bed casually flipping through his wallet. She must have taken it during the scuffle when she'd tackled him.

"Here's how it works bunky," she said casually. She dangled his wallet for him to see. "You can hand me my chip back and I'll give you back your wallet."

Trowa decided not to dignify that statement with a response and reached over to take possession of his wallet by force. The woman, despite her injuries, playfully stuck it in her bra.

"Ah, ah, ahhhh," she waggled a finger at him. "Chip first."

"I'm not making compromises with you," he stated flatly. This had never happened to him before. Well, it didn't matter, she had taken what was his and he was going to get it back, and no lacy bit of material covering a very strategic portion of anatomy was going to stop him. So there.

"I'll yell pervert," she warned as his hand advanced on her. He paused, trying to consider a way to get the wallet without having to...invade her space. Midii smiled victoriously and presented her open hand for her prize.

"I won't give you back the chip, it's safer under Preventors custody," he said. "And if you don't give me back my wallet I'll have to restrain you for obstruction."

"Sounds kinky," she said with a sexy smile. "When do we start?"

Trowa breathed what could have been a sigh of frustration and glared. Midii put her arms behind her head with a widening smile and inhaled deeply, causing her impressive assets to rise prominently. She shot him a wicked grin and said

"So how about that compromise?"

"No," he said and proceeded to restrain her wrists above her head to the bar head board with his handcuffs while she smiled suggestively at him and said

"Let me guess, you're the kind who likes to be on top."

He frowned; her smile grew wider and more mischievous. He patted the area he'd seen her magic it away into professionally and felt no betraying rectangle.

"It's not there," he stated as he clinically patted his way up her arms, checking for the missing wallet. He lived in a circus after all, and he probably knew every conjurers trick in the book and then some. It was here somewhere and he'd find it.

"Are you going to make this a strip search?" she asked provocatively.

"Enough games Midii, I have work to do," he growled flatly.

"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," she replied, still smirking at him.

"One more remark and I'll get you a gag to go with those handcuffs," he said in a dangerous tone as he leaned in and worked his way around her shoulders his head bent down to examine the insides of her flak jacket.

"What handcuffs?" she asked. Trowa looked up at where he had restrained her wrists and saw that she was just holding them up in the air near the headboard. He was taken aback for a moment until she quickly took his wrists in her hands and pushed them quickly around his back in one fluid motion, then snapped the cuffs in place.

"Oh, you mean these handcuffs," she said in a playfully innocent tone. He glared again.

"You're energetic for a woman who's just gotten out of critical," he noted coolly while she worked her hands up over his chest and slid off his jacket, her manner suddenly brisk and business like as she quickly and efficiently searched him while he worked his way out of the cuffs.

"I'm as fast a healer as I need to be," she said curtly as she tried to reach down into his pants pocket and he moved his hip out of the way. In response she grabbed the front of his turtleneck and hauled him off balance halfway onto the bed. She pinned him with one knee on his back and continued her through though rough search of his person.

"Full cavity search!" she called out merrily. Trowa snarled in a very pissed off manner as he tried to maneuver out from under her. She slipped her hands into his back pockets. The woman had no shame.

"Not there…" she muttered to herself then tapped him on the back of his head.

"Hey, you'd better hope I don't run out of places to search," she said.

"I'll have gotten out of this before you do," he assured her, working the third to last catch on the cuffs. They had been designed by the Preventors to be un-pickable, but naturally there were no absolutes. And she was still no closer to finding it.

"Almost done I see," she noted. "You're good, but I hope you don't screw like you pick."

"You're unlikely to ever find out. And I knew I should have had you thrown in the brig."

"You started this you know," she said as she swung her other leg beside his head. The back of his head was now trapped between her legs. "That was my rightful property. I took it back fair and square... well, okay, I took it back. If anything you should be thanking me for doing you guys a favor! I even did it at the behest of the company who invented it."

"If that's true, then why do you want it back so badly?" he questioned. He was almost there though their relative positions was slowing down his reaction time.

"Duh, try using your head for something other than to keep your ears apart," she mumbled as she patted down his back. "If I don't show up with the chip I don't get my money. I've got a family to support and I don't do charity work, especially not after I blew up my ship to get it!"

"You probably stole that ship to begin with," he pointed out pitilessly. ANything to distract himself from the position he was in. He'd never been trapped in bed with his head between a woman's thighs before. She had absolutely no shame.

"What in the name of Allah are you two doing?!" came the voice of his best friend from the doorway. He tried to yell out something to his friend like "get this woman off me!" but his voice was muffled by the blankets. Instead he had to hear Midii Une call cheerfully

"Hello, wanna join us?"

The woman had no shame, none! He finally got to a position where he could call to his friend but embarrassingly the only thing that he could think of was

"It's not what it looks like."

To which the shameless one replied

"That's what they all say. You wouldn't happen to have seen a tiny little chip about yea big around here would you?" obviously ignoring his attempts to get out from under her and silencing him with the blanket again.

"Oh! You mean this?" Quatre said, obviously drawing out the chip that Trowa had secreted into his pocket earlier in anticipation of the woman's retaliation.

"That's the one!" Midii said brightly. "Would you be an absolute prince and give it back to me?"

"Sure!" he said cheerfully. "Though I can't for the life of me imagine how it got in my pocket."

Trowa tried to make a noise of negation but it had already happened. Midii leadned backwards and gave his friend a resounding lip smack saying

"Thanks ever so much you're an absolute doll!"

Trowa heard the door to med-lab open then close again.

"You piss me off," he informed her flatly.

"If I were in your position, pissing off isn't something I'd worry about," she said humorously.

Trowa simply stood up with her on his shoulders trying to regain her balance. She had remarkably good balance he noted.

"What position would that be?" he inquired as he started walking towards the door, both hands secured on her ankles.

"Hey! Dammit! Where are you taking me? Put me down!" she demanded.

"I intend to, as soon as we reach the ships brig. Until then, watch your head," he said feeling a tickle of laughter inside him. He had won. Well, he would as soon as he got her safely locked away and that chip back away from her that was. He walked down the halls towards the brig with Midii struggling on his shoulders.

"If you're not careful you'll fall off," he warned as she tried a particularly dangerous manuver.

"You're not going to get away with this!" she yelled down to him. "I did not go to all that trouble, nearly getting myself killed in the process, to go home to my brothers empty-handed. Why don't you just give it up and let me finish my mission?!"

"The chip is too valuable to be left in untrustworthy hands," Trowa said.

"I thought I made it clear to you earlier that I'm working for the same company that made the chip. What part of under contract do you not understand?!"

"I have a mission and I mean to complete it," Trowa said, finally regaining his deadpan demeanor after his previous embarrasments.

Suddenly he felt the weight of Midii Une suddenly lift from his shoulders, not that she was all that heavy to begin with she must have only weighed ninety pounds. He looked up in time to see her flip up over one o the bared pipings showing from the ceiling. She balanced vertically in the air like a champoin actobat with her feet up over her head and her hands and arms supporting her weight. She looked down at him and winked.

"Aside of enemy infiltration, the espionage ablility I excel most at is what you might call cat-burglary. Due to this I'm an expert gymnast," she informed him still casually upside-down.

With that she cartwheeled to the side so that her feet were on the pipe then sprung off it up to a downward-facing vent shaft which she quickly shimmied up and disappeared into. Part of him thought that her manuver was pretty cool. the rest of him went following after her, intent on getting that chip. He could hear her banging around inside the shaft, she was tiny and slight, and painfully thin (probably the result of not getting enough to eat more than a time ot two). Trowa was lanky, but his broader chest made it difficult for him to move inside the tight quarters of the vent. She was making time on him.

"Why don't you just give up?" he called ahead. "You're stuck on this ship, there's no where you can go. We won't pull into port and this sector of space is unoccupied. You can't hide out in the vent system forever."

"You'd be surprised," she called back to him. "I've lasted a couple of weeks hiding out in vent systems. And I've been on tougher missions before. I think you underestimate me Preventor who-still-has-yet-to-give-me-his-name. I do whatever I have to do to support my family. They're all I have and I'm all they have. There's no one else to take care of them or protect them. I can't pay the bills without money and this chip is my meal ticket. I signed a contract and the only way you're getting this chip is if you pry it from my cold dead fingers."

At last Trowa caught up to her and she made a muffled "oof" as he threw himself over her to hold her in place. He had to admit, the chase and exertion had made him break a small sweat. Midii, however was panting from exertion and one or two of her cuts had reopened. She glared defiantly up at him, fire and spirit in her eyes daring him to do his worst. He smiled and shook his head.

"You win," he said. "Keep the chip, just give me my wallet back."

She readily produced the leather article and when she put it back in his hand, the weight was off.

"Hey, there's a credit card missing from this," he said flatly, his face demanding an explanation and quickly.

"Are you accusing this poor helpless girl of stealing?" she inquired, making her eyes shiney and limpid.

"I'm accusing you of palming my card."

"Did you see me?" she asked expectantly.

"No," he admitted. "I can tell by the weight."

Midii blossomed into a genuine smile, tinged with respect for him, and presented his card from out of nowhere between her middle and index fingers. Trowa tried not to look amused as he took it.

"I have to admit," Midii said as she made for the nearest exit vent. "You gave me a run for my money."

Trowa said nothing as he followed behind her. It seemed that the lingering bad feelings that he'd felt towards her for the spy incident had disappeared in the wake of the chip fiasco. he'd rediscovered what had attracted him to her in the first place. She was like him in that they had the same kind of tenacity, Midii would have likely pursued him to the ends of the earth and beyond to get that chip back if that was what it took. Their main diffference was that Trowa always completed the mission because that was what he had been ordered to do and soldiers always followed orders, but Midii completed the mission because she was too stubborn to give up. She still had spirit and plenty of it. Trowa found himself admiring it, wanting to get closer to it.

"Let me get out before you," he said as they approached the exit. "I'll help you down so you don't tear your wounds."

"Now you worry about my wounds," she muttered, but there wasn't any edge to it.

"You were the one who went climbing on top of me," he pointed out as he kicked in the vent and dropped soundlessly and gracefully to the floor the reached up and grasped Midii by her tiny waist. He almost get both of his hand around her mid-section she was that small and thin. She had a build like a gymnast too; slight, svelte and willowy. he set her gently on her feet.

Off to the side the voice of his best friend Quatre Raberba Winner said

"I'm not asking either one of you how you wound up in the vent, because I really don't want to know."

Midii, irrepressible and mischievous, turned to Trowa with devilment in her eyes and said

"You hear that Preventor? He wants us to take our sexual Olympics elsewhere."

"Midii," he said her name warningly. Which only caused her to start laughing at him.

"And Trowa, you should know better!" Quatre scolded. "You shouldn't be involved in... activity when she's still in med-lab!"

"Hence the vent!" Midii couldn't resist adding. The implication being that they had only wanted to get out of med-lab first.

Trowa simply let out another sigh of exasperation and led her out of the room they had landed in; which happened to be the ships observation deck, but at that hour there was no one else on board the ship to disturb Quatre's quiet contemplation of space... no one excluding themselves of course.

"I'll show you back to med-lab Miss Une," Trowa said formally, despite that fact that they had just spent the last hour or so in embarrasing positions and she had been spending most of that time amusing herself by making crass and humiliating sexual comments towards him. She had a lively sense of humor if nothing else. It was going to get her into trouble.

He led her from the observation deck, Quatre's amused glance following him out on his journey. Trowa would explain later.

*