Prologue
The year is After Colony 197. The Earth Sphere Unified Nation has been united for almost a year, but rivalry battles had been appearing on both the Earth and the colonies. The Gundam pilots have newly rebuilt Gundams, each better than the original model, but they weren't the only ones. On a remote colony, a new force, unlike any other, was being created.
Book One Part 1"The skies seem to be clear, looks like you boys will be getting some sleep tonight," stated Lucrezia Noin to five tired teenage boys. Two of them smiled, while the other three sat or stood unemotional.
"Finally! Staying up through all this makes me sick," said Duo Maxwell, one of the smiling boys.
"Yes, it will be good to sleep," said Quatre Raberba Winner in a flat tone. "Can you keep an eye out for us, Miss Noin?"
"Of course, you pilots need your sleep."
Four boys walked down a hall to one side, while one went to a different hall. "Where are you going, Heero?" asked Noin.
"I need to shut down Wing Zero for the night," he answered in his usual monotone.
"But I thought you already…" she shouted, then, realizing he didn't hear, or chose not to, said quietly "…did."
"There's something out there, isn't there, Wing Zero?" Heero Yuy said to the motionless mobile suit. "I know."
Part 2"Is it finished?" said the girl in the rust-colored shirt.
"What's it to you? It'll be my Gundam, little sis," a young man answered to her.
"You're too old to be a Gundam pilot, Rush! All the other pilots are my age," Anicka said in retort, "Dolt."
"Twit."
"Jerk."
But before the young man could make another remark, an older man looked up from his welding and said simply, "She's right." The man sighed, glad he had interrupted the customary insult exchange before it soared to its usual graphic heights. Anicka looked at her brother, the young man, and stuck her tongue out at him..
"Before you say anything, Brent," said their father, the welder, directing this to the brother, "I want you to know that you can pilot anything you want here except this Gundam. We need your sister to pilot because the other pilots are not only boys, but sympathize women, from what we've heard. All we're trying to do is stop any hopes for war. As are the other pilots. It will be easier for Ani." The father smiled and went back to his welding. "You know," he continued, still welding, "we don't even know if anything is even still going on down there. All we have to go on is the transmission from a few months ago. But I feel in my bones that battles will go on forever." The man stopped talking to the rival siblings, feeling that his little speech gave them something to chew on.
Anicka walked into the storage room, where the Gundam had been completed and tucked neatly under a huge storage tarp. She pulled the tarp away from its head – green with blue eyes and blue spikes protruding from its head – and breathed a single word. "Swordsong." Tomorrow, she thought, we will join the fight.
It was the next day. Swordsong had been packed carefully into a mobile suit carrier, and Anicka was packed and ready to leave. Her father and brother hugged her to death, knowing that the last woman of the family is leaving, and knowing that they may never see her alive again. They all said their good-byes, each as sappy as the last, full of 'good lucks' and 'hope to see you agains'. As Anicka pulled herself into the massive cockpit of the carrier, she had doubts. Why was she leaving her home? Will the pilots even accept her? What will happen when she finds them? And then she saw herself in the mirrors of the cockpit, the way they would soon see her. A blue shirt and a simple pair of straight-leg black jeans. Why wouldn't they accept her? She thought, as the launch sequence reached its last stage and the carrier lifted off into outer space, carrying its single pilot and Gundam to Earth.
Anicka and Swordsong were barely out of communications range from the colony. She took a farewell look out the window at the double-wheel shaped colony, still having her doubts, accompanied by a sense of impending doom. Then it happened. She thought of her family and friends as a hail of meteors hit the oxygen generator in the center of the colony, causing a chain reaction and imploding the colony. It collapsed in on itself, then burst in a storm of contorted pieces of metal, flying out to space, flying nowhere and reaching nowhere. Anicka lost her mind in the cockpit, sobbing uncontrollably and searching for a way to join them in death. She had nowhere else to go – her mother had died when she was born, and now her father and brother were dead. Her memories of home came flashing before her eyes – the Aries she had used to train in, it had been outfitted with her light saber and Gundam program; her schooling in an all-boys school, with the exception of her; and all the good times she had. All she could do was cry as she saw the twisted fragments of the colony, burning remnants of her life, gone. Everything she had ever known was gone, and she would soon arrive on Earth.
Part 3Quatre Winner gazed up from the radar station with a look of surprised astonishment on his face. "What's going on?" asked Trowa Barton, the first to notice the change in Quatre's expression.
"The… um… the radar detects a… ah… carrier coming our way, straight for us."
"So what? Carriers come through here all the time, who cares?" said Duo, indifferent.
"It's carrying something made of…" Quatre paused and looked at his friends, "gundanium alloy."
Trowa, Duo and Wufei looked up at the Arabian with the same alarmed look he had just given them. Heero sat, unmoved by the news.
"But we're all here…" stated Wufei, trying to put the pieces of two different puzzles together. "Could there be another Gundam?"
"Apparently so, maybe it's just a shipment of gundanium," stated the hopeful Quatre.
"No, it's a new Gundam," confirmed the monotonous Heero, "Doctor J and the others left the extras plans for the Gundams on a far-away colony with one of their relatives. They must have used the plans to make another."
"How do you know?" Duo practically yelled accusingly in Heero's direction.
"I just do."
Part 4 Baby, set me free, from this miseryI can't take it no more
Since you went away, nothing's been the same
Don't know what I'm living for
"Back Here" - BBMak
"One mile to the Earth's atmosphere," stated the carrier's computer.
"One mile," Anicka said aloud, despite the fact hat she was alone. She set the computer to be ready for a descent sequence. All she had to do now was find the Gundams.
Anicka had been intercepting transmissions from soldiers and civilians and had pieced together some news – battles were still happening, but in less and less amounts. She also found that there were still people who ordered the deaths of the Gundam pilots, even though it was through them that the war ended. The computer scanned the surface for high levels of gundanium alloy, in order to find the pilots. There were high levels at New Port City in the Sank Kingdom. Anicka discerned these readings with no feeling, still registering the shock that she had nowhere to go in the world. There had to be a Gundam pilot in the same situation – no place to call home, no one to grieve for them when they die but people to meet in death – she couldn't be alone.
"Landing sequence engaged," voiced the computer. Anicka tapped several buttons to tell the computer where to go.
"We read you, carrier. Are you seeking landing rights in the Sank Kingdom?" asked a voice from the computer's speaker. So they know I'm here, they can see me now, she thought with a sigh, time to get back to civilization.
"I hear you, yes. Who is this?" she answered to the friendly voice.
"My name is Quatre Raberba Winner. Who are you?"
"I am Anicka Estralla. Are you a Gundam pilot?" As the transmitter switched the conversation to Earth, she could hear voices in the background saying "Don't tell her!" and "Why does she care?" The sound then became muted, and Anicka returned with "Well?"
"This is Quatre, and yes. I am," he emphasized the 'I' for some reason.
"Do I have landing clearance or not, Pilot Quatre?" she asked formally.
He snickered and said, "Yes, you have clearance. See you in the docking bay."
Anicka switched off the telecommunications link in order to enter the atmosphere. As the pressure increased in the cabin and fire exploded outside the carrier, she thought of this Quatre and the people she heard arguing in the background. The heat and pressure of landing made her ears pop and she was sweating while the carrier streaked through the sky to the Sank Kingdom.