A/n, 3 July 2007: This first chapter has been revised somewhat since it was posted some years ago. The story is alternate universe—the exact setting I will leave up to the reader to guess at in these early chapters—though I've kept mobile suit technology and the basic political arrangement. (Some may notice cameo appearances by characters from other Gundam franchises, but this is not a crossover; just needed more named extras.) It was written to be a sort of epic, and originally there were intended to be twelve episodes each divided into two parts. I make no promises on if/when further ones will be completed, but present at very least the finished first half of the first episode, beginning now.


—= 1 =—

Knights of Cydonia

Sing, O Muse, of arms and of a man.

Sing of the youth, tossed about by the tides of a tenuous peace, who found his harbor upon the brutal rocks of war.

Sing, too, of the machine whose name he bore—a goliath of gundanium and steel, sixteen and a half metres tall and stronger than any mobile suit made, whose brilliant countenance under the fierce Arabian sun struck fear into the hearts of the most hardened of OZ Specials.

They called this suit, this shining gundam, and the youth who piloted it, Sandrock.

But to the mercenaries who had found the lad, without parents and without a home, who accepted him into their family and raised him on machines and honor, and on freedom, that second creed of man, he was simply Quatre.

The year was After Colonization 196. Four years had passed since the overthrow of the Global Alliance.

For four years had the young visionaries of OZ, the esteemed Order of the Zodiac, and their leader Treize Khushrenada struggled to rid the world of the last hold-outs of the Alliance, whose stagnant empire of greed and corruption had already once nearly choked the planet of its spirit, and all but snuffed out the dreams of its Pioneers.

Yet in this four-year struggle, it soon came to be, as these things inevitably do, that the Order became in the minds of the common people more and more a worse substitution for the oppressive reign of the Alliance, as slowly those nations who had aided the Specials in their fight for independence saw their briefly-won freedoms disappearing once again beneath the Order's ever-expanding fold. And Treize's once grand promise to restore the dreams of the Pioneers for humanity, those fragile dreams of independence and prosperity that fluttered like candle flames in the wind, looked less and less likely to ever become a reality, except for the privileged few.

In light of this, could anyone have blamed Captain Rashid and his Maguanacs, those heroes of the last war, for standing up, suit to suit, against these new imperialists they had once considered their allies? It was for freedom that they fought on the meteorite-ravaged plains of the Arabian continent, for whose aquifers and strategic passage to the sea the Order was jealous.

And it was for those who could not fight, those who hadn't the power to stand against the injustices that would be committed against them, that young Quatre, a boy of sixteen at the time but already possessing of skills far beyond those of any of Rashid's men, donned Sandrock's name as his own and steered the gundam into battle. For until this boy came to the Maguanacs, through all those long years had the gundam stood waiting beneath the desert sands, there had been no man or woman capable of piloting that mobile suit, for it far surpassed any other mobile suit in speed and strength, and sensitivity. Like a wild steed that could not be tamed, it seemed there was no cap to its power.

But to all who witnessed their first true battle together, the youth and the suit, it seemed in retrospect as though the gundam had simply been waiting for this boy to awaken it. To the Maguanacs, the gundam's destiny had already been writ, and Sandrock had finally chosen its pilot.

—= o =—

And now Khushrenada's dogs were once again on the move, crawling northeast through the Hiddekel along the southernmost borders of the Arabian States, where the air in Wadi Saffra was heavy and orange with dust.

A storm had sprung up in the east, blowing hot winds down from the high desert, whence Quatre and his party had entered the valley early the day before. All night the storm gathered strength as it traversed the craterlands that separated the equatorial country from the heart of Arabia. By early morning it hit them at their position, driving hard into the pass as they took breakfast, where it was captured and focused down into the canyons by the surrounding ridges of rock.

At times such as these the pureness of the desert was awe-inspiring. Sand filled everything before them and behind. Even the rocky benches and wind-hewn hoodoos that surrounded the pass like sentinels were made nearly invisible by the swirling grit. The landscape was barren for now, without a single trace of human interference. And when everything was finished and the troops departed, in a day the desert would cover up any trace of a battle and be barren once again. It was constant that way.

It put Quatre, though secure in his cockpit, in his place to know that for all mankind's ingenuity there were still forces greater at work.

The dusty wind was a blessing in disguise as it blew about the mobile suits, burying them half-way up in dunes and fading the heavy brown cloaks, which concealed their powered-down machines from infrared, to the saffron color of the desert sands. It was only a mild storm compared to those that were known to encompass much of the southern hemisphere each spring, and it would pass in less than an hour; but while it lasted it was hell for any creature unfortunate to be trapped out in it. Even their mobile suits would complain of this later, with creaky joints and pockmarked chasis.

For now the Maguanacs were upwind of their enemy, but the wind and sand blowing from their backs would leave them the advantage in the end. That knowledge was enough to make each one itch nervously for an early start to activities, while the weather was still working with them. However, each and every one was well aware, their people would not have survived free so long if they had not been masters of utilizing even the most unfavorable of conditions. This was in their blood.

"Quatre," came the voice of Rashid over the radio, a heavy reminder in the recycled air of his cockpit.

"Right." Ten minutes precisely had passed. Quatre took a deep breath, shaking himself of his anxiety. "Tafas, status report. Do you have visual?"

"That's a negative," came the static filled reply. "This damn wind. . . . Radar picking them up fine and clear, passing four-point-three-five clicks north of position, but everything's a blur from here. Switching to infrared." A brief pause. "We're cutting it close. Are you sure there's an end to this storm?"

"The weather report from HQ is saying blue skies already. But we want it to last just a little longer." Quatre flicked another switch. "Ahmad, please tell me you see something."

"I've got visual," he heard the man say. Stationed ahead of them at an outcropping of hoodoos that in this dust were all but indistinguishable from mobile suits, Ahmad would with any luck go unnoticed as the enemy passed by under his nose. A picture transmission from his position followed seconds later. The olive green and brown shapes moving across the picture were still difficult to make out. "They're heading northeast straight into the pass—right on target. Probably hoping higher ground will take them out of this wind. Five kilometers and closing to your position. Ranks are tight."

"Can you make out their numbers?"

"Yes, sir. I'm picking up thirty or forty of them this time, easily."

Quatre chewed his lower lip in thought. That made two or three enemy suits for each of them. They had faced worse odds, but with this kind of sight. . . . "You're right. They must feel confident. Are there any other vehicles, any transports?" he asked, holding his breath for the possibility this battle could be diverted. He doubted the Order's suits would be escorting anyone by land, let alone in this rough terrain and weather, but knew not to put it past them. They had made stranger decisions.

"That's a negative. Scanners showing relatively uniform mass. It's all lions and goats."

It was typical skirmish fare, a group of two or three Leo squadrons accompanied by five or six individual Tragos armed with beam rifles, not nearly enough for one of OZ's infamous peace-keeping missions; but either way they could do plenty of damage unchecked, and he could guess where they were headed.

Cassini had fallen to the Order over a year ago, and now it supported their largest base of operations east of the meridian. If the caravan were heading toward safe harbor there, prudence would have dictated they take the northerly route, cutting north and east past the southern borders of Moab where the land was more level and the passage easier. No commander in his right mind would risk the tight, winding passages of the Hiddekel, unless it was no ordinary caravan he was moving. Unless he thought he had something to hide.

The next town over the pass was Medina, nestled next to the high cliffs of the plateau, the old tunnels under which served as the Maguanacs' headquarters. Thus far Sharif Sadaul and his people had been most discrete, but the possibility of the mercenaries' discovery had long been the Sword of Damocles hanging over the town. Perhaps this battalion was an indication they had already been sniffed out. It was the town that would suffer the gravest consequences if that happened, they all knew, and the town that they were paid to protect.

It was for that reason that half their manpower remained back at headquarters, even though they were solidly outnumbered in the pass. If he and the Maguanacs could not protect those they were sworn to, if their base of operations were to be discovered, there would be no one to fight for Medina, or for Arabia.

"Three kilometers," said Ahmad.

"Hold your position," Quatre told him. "Tafas, start moving to cover OZ's rear."

"Sir!"

"Rashid, please give the order."

"Certainly, Quatre," came the instant reply. Then to the troops: "Ready yourselves, Maguanacs." Despite the wind, the old authority in his voice had a steadying effect on any Maguanac's nerves. Without a word they did as ordered.

To the untrained eye, it would appear little had changed on the dunes. But the sound would have been unmistakable, as firearms were drawn and aimed in the direction of the approaching enemy. Shoulder-mounted missile launchers, chain rifles, and beam weapons blended into the bland environment, concealed beneath the folds of the mobile suits' cloaks or wrapped in the thick, reinforced canvas-like material that suited the Maguanacs as camouflage and light armor both. Some of the suits had it wrapped around their crowns as head cloths, making them little more than obscure, dusty shapes in the thick wind, minimizing their reflective surfaces. Their commander's stood out, however, the stylized cobra on its crown pointing him out. They waited motionless with anticipation as he said to them, "On my signal."

In the distance, through the thick air which was just starting to calm as though on cue, the first lines of enemy mobile suits became visible. Olive shapes that neither clashed with nor matched their surroundings, they made no effort to conceal their movement. That would be OZ's downfall in the end, Quatre thought, as it was in every battle: they were too brazen, too self-assured, and too reliant on their fire power. The Maguanac lines went silent as the men waited tense for their commander's order, and for the enemy suits to come into firing range. Quatre rechecked his grip on Sandrock's controls, starting to feel the sweat trickling beneath his gloves.

Then Rashid gave the order:

"Fire!"

Instantly the air was bright with the golden bursts of the Maguanacs' beam weapons, and the deafening sound of the chain rifles ricocheted off the surrounding hills. Their suits rose to their feet from the dunes, front ranks raising blast shields, shaking off their layers of sand, while the wind blew their cloaks around them, creating miniature twisters that made their brown outlines difficult to distinguish in the monochrome landscape.

Ahead of them, several Leos shuddered as they were hit head-on by laser fire, some collapsing in the dust and others exploding where a head or arm had been blasted off. But their sacrifice gave the ones behind time to defend themselves and bring their own weapons to bear in retaliation. With the visibility so poor, however, many of their shots went wild. The Tragos kept back and fired between them, their wide feet planted solid in the sand and their aim much better, and their blasts tore up the ground with the power of their superior beam technology.

A few of the Maguanac soldiers fell in their first volley, one catching the beam full on in the cockpit hatch. In return they fired missiles from their center ranks, decreasing OZ's numbers a few at a time. Not fast enough, however, for their commander's comfort. They were still greatly outnumbered.

Then Sandrock rose from the dunes before the Leos' formation, and a sudden slash of his twin heat shotels caught those Leos unfortunate enough to be in the front ranks off their guard. One could even say the suits flinched visibly under the vibrant green eyes of the gundam—just before their torsos fell from disconnected legs face-first into the sand.

"Take out the Tragos!" Abdul told him as he retreated from another of their volleys, a curse on his breath, and jammed another missile into place ready for launch.

"That's the plan," Quatre answered under his breath. And opening up the thrusters, he pushed through to the center of their formation.

Bullets tore at his suit's deflective cloak, but even without it they would have done little damage against a gundam. He sliced through a Leo that stood in his way with his left shotel, cutting through the giant beam rifle of a Tragos with his right. The weapon exploded at the energy source, frying the suit's power system and incapacitating it as he turned to face another of the heavy suits that was bearing down on him.

A few hundred yards away, Auda rushed in and took out another. Holding its rifle away from him with one hand, his gundanium claw punched through the cockpit, instantly killing the pilot.

The battle waged on, ranks closing even as numbers dropped by twos and threes on OZ's side. Exchanging his rifle for a heat scimitar, Rashid charged, the heavy legs of his suit pumping overtime like a man trying to run through water. The Leos, unprepared for hand-to-hand combat, tried in vain to retreat from the commander and his men, while they continued to shower their enemy with bullets. Those who saw him coming reached for their beam sabres, but for some it was already too late. Rashid tore through them as effortlessly as would a bull elephant through their namesakes, his suit's helmet gleaming in the light of their explosions.

Meanwhile, Tafas's men had reached the enemy's flank from the south. In the excitement, no one took much notice when one of the pilots who had entered with him yelled a dumbstruck, "What the—" before his radio went abruptly dead.

At the northern end of the skirmish, Auda pushed through the Leo ranks with relative ease, crushing the heads of suits, their sensory centers, with his giant three-fingered claw and making them easy prey for the men who came behind him to finish off. Suddenly, something flashed out of the corner of his eye.

A warning light blinked on his display. He shielded the cockpit hatch with his gundanium hand just seconds before a well-aimed volley of bullets pelted his suit, striking the legs, knocking it off balance and off its feet into the sand. Auda was able to breathe a sigh of relief nonetheless, however, because at least he was still alive. He looked up at his attacker, knowing it could be no ordinary OZ pilot who had done such a thing, but what he did see made the breath momentarily catch in his throat.

Looming before him—looking down at him like a man might look down at an insect—stood a magnificent suit the likes of which he had only seen once before. Sleek white legs braced it firmly to the uncertain terrain; blue plates striped like warpaint covered its chest and massive shoulders; and a golden crest shone on its brow. As he stared down the double barrels of its almost ridiculously large guns, he knew precisely what he was looking at.

A gundam.

OZ has a gundam!

—That was his first thought. But as he watched, the suit turned away from him momentarily to dispose of a Leo that had one of Auda's comrades in its sights. Is he on our side then? he wondered, though he doubted it by the look in the machine's soulless eyes as they turned on him once again. The blue suit came toward him, hoisting one of its massive guns onto its back, and reached for Auda's suit's arm—its gundanium arm.

Auda knew instinctively the pilot of that thing wasn't simply trying to help him to its feet; he hadn't simply mistaken Auda for an enemy. Auda dug his heels into the sand, his wounded suit groaning in protest. It was no good. The gundam had to be thrice as strong. He saw its other arm bend, hoisting the heavy guns into a position to blast Auda's suit's arm off at point blank range. He did not think he would survive at this close range, let alone that the gundam's pilot would spare his life once the amputation was finished. He yelled.

The slam of metal bodies against one another threw him sideways against his harness. With relief, he realized he was free of the giant and still had his arm. He looked up at his display to see a new body bouting with the gundam and recognized the violet-gray back of one of their own suits. "Quatre!"

"Move out of here now, Auda!" Quatre yelled back between grunts. "If you can."

He punched the gundam once, putting some maneuvering room between them, and swung with his shotel.

It was a clean cut, and should have cut through the chest plates; but instead, to his shock, the blade bounced off with a piercing ring, chipping. The other suit fired on him, its chest opening up to reveal a mother lode of missiles. He braced himself, for even though he was confident the few rounds released would not fully penetrate Sandrock's armor, the impacts rocked him violently and threatened to knock Sandrock off its feet.

When the barrage stopped, Quatre expected the suit would engage him once again. But to his surprise, it just stood where it was, weapons aimed but otherwise lifeless, regarding him.

For a long moment, neither of them moved, and Quatre heard nothing but his own blood pumping in his ears. The Maguanacs had fallen silent; the battle around them had ceased minutes ago. With the air clearing fast, those suits' eyes that could had turned to watch the two gundams.

At last, under that scrutiny, the blue suit shut its chest plates. Still keeping its guns aimed at Quatre, it moved to the nearest fallen Leo, its lower torso ripped away, straddling it and grabbing it in one hand like a leopard grabs its kill.

Now that he had the chance to fully take in the sight of the blue suit, Quatre was astounded by its magnificence.

"What is it?" he breathed, although he already suspected the answer. "It's a gundam, isn't it Rashid?"

There was a moment's hesitation before the radio crackled to life again. "Yes, Quatre," his captain answered gravely, as though he did not want to believe it himself. "It's a gundam."

"Another gundam." Quatre heard his own voice fill with awe. "Incredible."

Before the others could caution him, he was opening a channel to the other suit, hailing: "Unknown mobile suit, please identify yourself."

Abdul sucked in a breath.

There was no response from the blue suit.

"I repeat, please identify yourself," Quatre tried again. Come on, tell me if you're an enemy or a friend. "You are a gundam, aren't you?"

The words were hardly out of his mouth when the grip on the massive guns was tightened with a new resolve. "I don't typically allow those who have seen me to live," said the pilot.

He could have issued no clearer warning, but Quatre felt his heart race with excitement. Through the light haze of static, his voice sounded young. The pilot was probably not much older than he was. However, there was a resignation in that voice beyond its years that, rather than frighten Quatre, made him all the more curious.

"Peace, stranger," he said with a new surge of confidence. He lowered Sandrock's hands with the heat shotels in their grip. He had no fear for his own life where the stranger was concerned, and though he knew it would be easy for the stranger to take out one of his comrades if he so desired, Quatre doubted the other pilot would be foolish enough not to realize his odds when he was surrounded. "No one's looking for another fight. We don't have to be enemies just yet."

Another long moment passed when the peace seemed to hang on the edge of a cliff.

Then, slowly, the blue suit lowered its guns, though its head never turned from the direction of Sandrock. It stood there seemingly in indecision. Quatre could guess what was going on inside the pilot's mind, his concern for his own safety conflicting with his need to collect the remains of the battle. But it would be theirs, the Maguanacs', for the taking—the pack of wolves triumphing over the lone jackal. Without another word, the blue suit turned and left, engines blazing as it sped toward the horizon with the Leo carcass under one arm.

Quatre let out a deep breath then, realizing he had tightened his grip on the controls unconsciously in his nervousness. His hands burned inside the gloves. Rashid approached him, and the steady clunk-chink of his footsteps created a comforting vibration through the ground as he asked: "Are you all right, Quatre?"

"Yes," he said, but wasn't sure if he completely meant it. "Fine."

"We lost Said," Rashid informed him. "And Yusuf. His signal went off line just before that blue suit showed up."

Silently, Quatre cursed. Death was to be expected in battle, though naturally on the other side; but even that mantra did not quell one bit the profound sense of waste. They could have done better. Still, they had only lost two lives, and only one to OZ. With the Tragos alone the Order could have inflicted much worse.

However, it seemed that Quatre had just let one of his men's killers get away.

"Six of the suits are incapacitated."

"Then we'd better get to work before clean-up arrives," Quatre said, and braced himself for the task that lay ahead of them.

—= o =—

"Very impressive."

Who had ever seen such a near-perfect victory? Seventeen mercenaries against thirty-eight of OZ's finest and the former had lost only a handful of their suits while the Order's lay in ruins. Some of the fallen machines lifted their arms feebly. Three did not move at all, but only one of those pilots emerged from the cockpit. The pilots of the others wasted no time in climbing down to search what remained of the Leos and Tragos for salvageable parts and survivors, tiny beside the machines that trod slowly through a battlefield smoking in the now-still air.

Most amazing of all was that silver giant that alone among them stood nearly unmarred. It had to be a gundam. He harbored no more doubts about that. He had seen that type of workmanship once before and it never failed to leave him in awe. And this time, to witness not just one but two gundams—even now he could hardly believe his luck, though it was a pity the other had appeared and disappeared before he could collect much data.

But that would have to do for now. He had enough information on Sandrock at least, and that was what he had come for.

No one saw him there, the young man in a havelock cap with the sharp look of a hawk as he sat watching them through a telephoto lens from a rocky ledge just south of their position. They were occupied as they were with the mobile suits. Walker, as he called himself, lowered his camera and turned to the portable computer beside him. Pressing a key, he scanned the data delivered from his sensors set up around the area: the leading mobile suit's statistics, its speed and capabilities, heat discharge, pilot's reaction time—

All of it was incredible. There really was nothing like it—the machine or its pilot.

He turned back to the battlefield to see the hatch of the kneeling gundam open, and the pilot stepped out onto it to shout a word to the commander of the army.

Walker felt his heartbeat quicken with an excitement not unlike that which Carter must have felt opening Tutankhamen's tomb. To think no one had believed him. But there was the legend right before him, out in the open where any fool could spy him. Who would have associated the legendary Sandrock with the teenage boy that stood on its hatch now?

He could not have been more than sixteen years old. He was thin and long-limbed, though still retaining that softness of features typical of an adolescent, and held himself with confidence. His clothes matched the Arab soldiers', but his complexion was fair and his hair pale blond. He had an aristocratic face, and wide eyes that implied a purity incongruous with the destruction around him. He smiled to the men who approached him, even laughed a bit at something one in sunglasses said. By all appearances, he should have been a student in the city, some foundation bigwig's son avoiding this remote desert pass in favor of oasis resorts, anything but an insurgent mobile suit pilot fighting with such merciless cunning.

And yet, there was something about him that meshed with the other mercenaries and their situation. Something Walker could not explain but that attracted him intellectually to the gundam pilot—that made him want to know the boy better: his history, his talent, his beliefs and motives. His name.

Walker glanced at the picture of the pilot as it loaded onto his screen. He would have to memorize that face and be able to pick it out of a crowd if he was ever to find Sandrock's pilot again.

When he had everything he needed, Walker packed his equipment into the saddlebags of the motorbike that awaited him down the hill, slid into the seat and started the engine. He knew the positions of the troop's scouts, and his route skirted all of them. As he drove, his mind refused to sway from what he had witnessed and what he would say when he arrived back home. For all his answers he found himself with only more questions. That pilot was even younger than he was and yet able to handle the most sophisticated mobile suit known to man with such ease.

"Who are you really," he wondered aloud, "Sandrock?"

—= o =—

On the farthest edges of the battlefield, past Auda's incapacitated suit to the sight of his duel with the blue gundam, Quatre stood alone.

At first glance, one might have noticed that his costume was that of an Arab. A long tunic of light tawny cotton, monochromatically embroidered around the row of buttons descending from the collar to his breast bone, covered his shirt and the thighs of his trousers, belted close to his narrow waist. A laser pistol, not the old-fashioned kind that still fired lead bullets, sat in its holster off his hip. And over his loose trousers were brown leather boots. A pair of goggles, the leather strap worn with age, was pushed up to rest on his brow. Hair like flax which tended to a slight wave fell over the sides of the lenses and moved in the weak breeze that was all that was left of the storm of only minutes ago.

Unlike his attire, the young man's face recalled Western nobility, from his fair complexion and translucent skin dusted by faint freckles, to the gently bowed line of his mouth and his slightly upturned nose. The line of his brow and his deep aquamarine eyes were intent under the midday sun as he gazed off toward the nebulous horizon.

The blue gundam's shell casings sparkled like jewels where they had fallen in the sand, and Quatre bent to pick one up. He studied it absently, hefting and rolling it in his palm of which it more than spanned the width and feeling the residual heat of the battle in it. He would take it with him, he decided, as a souvenir of their encounter, though he doubted there was anything unique about these casings in particular. The prospect that there might be was not what attracted him anyway. His and the other gundam's exchange of blows had been so brief. The wind was light, but already the blue suit's tracks were becoming obscured on the rise. All the proof of the blue gundam's existence lay heavy in his hand, but what little proof it was. Who is he fighting for, that pilot? Quatre wondered as he stared into the distance, across the sea of sand into which the gundam had disappeared. Will we meet again? Are there others like him—allies perhaps?

Or enemies?

His thoughts were interrupted by one of his comrades' shouts. "I got a live one over here!" someone yelled, and Quatre turned to go toward the voice, slipping the shell into a fold in his belt.

He looked up at Sandrock as he passed, and at the charred pockmarks left by the blue suit's missiles. Although they were an eyesore, they sparked in him something akin to the pride of displaying a battle scar. The knowledge they would be hammered out in less than a week's time came with a strange pang of regret.

He passed a couple of men hooking tow lines between the remains of a Tragos and their suits, to where a group of three or four had gathered around a prone Leo whose stomach was caved in. Already the handful of survivors on OZ's side were being herded together where the Maguanacs could keep a better eye on them, but for whatever reason the one in the Leo was giving them some trouble.

Quatre climbed up onto the suit and joined Khalil at the cockpit hatch. And he looked down.

The dusty face of the young pilot looked back at him from inside, calm despite his situation and the pain he must have been in. He couldn't have been more than a year or two older than Quatre. "His legs are crushed under there, from what I can gather," Khalil murmured to him. "There's no way we can get him out. At least he doesn't seem to be in much pain, but . . ."

Quatre nodded, but he barely registered the words, already turning the possible actions over in his head. How many times had he seen men in this position before? And each time he chastised himself for his inability to feel the indifference toward them that he held for their suits. Vaguely, he wondered if it would be worse to ever reach that point, if it would mean losing a piece of his humanity.

He remembered his first time in battle, thinking he knew everything there was to know, treating the war like it was a game. It was only a few years ago, but he had been such a child then. Then he came across a survivor not unlike the one before him now, and saw Rashid drawing his pistol just as Abdul tugged him away—and heard the shot that had mercifully ended the pilot's life. He had run back to his suit, shaken and angry at everything. He had refused to speak to Rashid for days. He had not been able to understand how he could be expected to act like that himself, with no feeling. It took a while to understand feelings were only part of the problem.

Quatre knelt down beside the cockpit opening. Unstrapping a canteen of water, he handed it to the pilot, who refused. "It'll just go to waste," he started.

"You might as well drink," Quatre said. "You're still alive right now, aren't you?"

Not breaking with his gaze, the pilot raised it to his lips with slow, shaking fingers, spilling a little on his dusty uniform in his awkward position. The bright gold and hunter green darkened under each spot. "Thanks," he choked as he handed it back.

But Quatre refused to accept it. "You'll need every drop until your friends arrive. We'll put a blanket over the hatch, keep you out of the sun until then. Can you feel your legs at all?" The pilot nodded slowly. Quatre didn't seem to register his hesitation before doing so, but continued, "You understand we're doing you a favor, right? I'll only ask you one small thing in return. Nothing too sensitive. I just want to know where you were heading."

The pilot winced. He said something in a low voice.

"What?"

"I said, some favor," the pilot repeated, smiling sardonically with an inner resignation. "My radio's fried and it's the one time I forgot my pistol. They say heatstroke makes you go insane before you die."

Whether it was a stall or a hint, Quatre could not be sure. "I apologize."

"Why should you? After all, you're Sandrock, aren't you?" the pilot said as though the name explained any behavior of Quatre's. He added at Quatre's slight recoil, "It isn't hard to figure out. But if it makes you feel better, we all thought you'd look different. You know, big and ugly, one eye scratched out . . ."

"If that's so, what makes you think I'm him?"

"It's obvious, isn't it? Now, anyway." He coughed then, took another sip to wet his throat, then stared at the canteen as though he could not believe what he had just done.

Quatre glanced at the collapsed part of the cockpit. The pilot should survive until the clean-up crew arrived, he judged, but then what did he have to go back to? And what would he tell his superiors about the mysterious Sandrock? Would it even matter?

The pilot seemed to read his mind. "If they had known Sandrock was just a kid they might have thought we stood a chance."

Quatre met his eyes. There was something about the Leo pilot's response he didn't like. "What do you mean?"

But the pilot checked himself quickly. "Thanks for the drink—"

"Wait a second. At least tell me where you were headed. Are you saying your commanding officer didn't even plan on getting you there?"

Quatre stood as the truth sank in. He knew something about their formation had struck him as odd, but he had not been able to say what. "OZ had no intention of backing you up, did they? I suppose they were just going to leave you here to die."

The Leo pilot shrugged. "That's what you're going to do, isn't it?"

A hand on his shoulder made Quatre turn before he would have to reply. "Rashid wants a word," Khalil told him.

Excusing himself, Quatre climbed back down, making his way toward where their commander sat in his kneeling suit, issuing orders to the crews back home. His tall frame appeared stuffed into the cramped MS cockpit, the harness stretched tight across his broad chest and shoulders. He wore his hair in a flattop that looked perpetually overgrown, and thick muttonchops and a beard hid the line of his jaw, giving him along with the hard line of his deep-set eyes the honed, intimidating look of a storybook Beduin warrior. Everything about his visage spoke of confidence and discipline.

Knowing it would be useless to try to hide his frustrations from the commander, Quatre simply said, "You wanted to see me, sir."

Rashid nodded. "I just informed headquarters of our situation," he said. "They're sending some ground transports to meet us halfway."

There was something anxious in his tone just below the surface.

"Is something wrong?"

"Headquarters says an OZ convoy is heading for Medina. They aren't carrying any mobile suits, at least not into our sight, but I still don't like the looks of it. They've taken the southern route, right over the mountains." It was common knowledge that way, though the most direct route to Cassini, was geographically impractical. There were fewer towns in the high plateau in which a caravan might hope to resupply, but at the same time the Order must have deemed it safer to pass by Foundation territory than to take a chance in a small town in the less welcoming Arab States. "They must be relying on the hope the sharif won't be able to refuse them aid after such a journey. They'll arrive before we do."

"Damn it." Quatre's fists tightened at his side. "That must have been what that pilot meant."

"What pilot?"

"A survivor. He was trapped inside his suit. I spoke with him briefly."

Rashid's eyes narrowed. "Does he know who you are?"

"Yes," Quatre said.

A few years ago, his commander would have scolded him for associating with the enemy; now it was the least of his worries and only garnered a disapproving scowl.

"It doesn't matter, though. He seemed to think OZ wasn't coming back for survivors or the suits. He was so resigned. . . ." Even Quatre was already speaking of him as a dead man. "I don't like it. OZ always cleans up their messes. You must have noticed there was something odd about their formation. Something sloppy."

"These troops were just a decoy," Rashid said as Quatre's words sank in like the final piece of a puzzle.

"More like a suicide mission," Quatre said. "But that's all OZ needs to get information. They were smoking us out—they're on to us."

Rashid nodded somberly. "I was afraid something like this would happen sooner or later." He was silent for a moment, deep in thought. "However, there may still be something we can do to make this go away peacefully, if we're cautious. They don't have anything concrete on us yet. If anything, they'll try to catch us entering the fortress. Let's hope they still don't know about it. If we hurry, we may be able to reach home before they can set up sensors around the perimeter. Get Sandrock. I want you bringing up the rear."

He raised his suit to its feet as if to say it was the end of the discussion. But, remembering the shell casing in his pocket, Quatre knew there was more to be said. "Captain, about that other suit. . . . Have you ever heard of the existence of other gundams? I mean, Sandrock came from somewhere. The Maguanacs didn't create him. Could he be from the same place as that blue gundam?"

Rashid frowned in thought, and Quatre wondered if the encounter had seemed as unreal to him as well. "We'll talk about it when we have the luxury," he said. "For now let's just worry about making it home. And as quickly as possible."

He gave the orders for them to move out and to do it fast. The battle site and its survivors secure—the Maguanacs rarely took prisoners with them, and never to their base of operations—Quatre waited for the last of his men to fall into line before he followed suit, glancing without answers one last time at the spent shells glittering more faintly now on the hill.

Despite Rashid's urging and everyone's diligence, it was slow going. The damaged mobile suits slowed them down considerably as they were dragged between those in the best working condition. Those that had broken or missing legs leaned on others for support. The OZ suits they were forced to leave behind in their haste, in the end scavenging only the working beam rifles and what few parts their captain was assured were essential. The air was still through the rocks, as the gnarled shelves of rust-colored rock drew closer together, carved by the wind into viscous formations that echoed their footsteps and did nothing to shield them from the midday sun.

Then they reached the easternmost edge of the Hiddekel canyons on the higher side of the pass, where the land opened up before them in a wide valley flanked by distant brown hills, and where they could see the eighteen wide flatbed trucks waiting down below them. They loaded the suits onto the flatbeds, interspersing parts where they would fit, even piling them on top of the Maguanac suits, and covering them with heavy tarps secured them all tight. They made much better time after that, and arrived at their underground base's western entrance by mid-afternoon.

It was a gamble, raising the doors and trusting that OZ had not set up watches in the hills around the area. However, Rashid had been assured the convoy would be concentrating on Medina and its airstrip in the north. And, in the end, it was decided better to take the risk and start in on the many needed repairs than camp outside with incapacitated suits.

The great door swung upwards out of the ground with a low rumbling and the hiss of pistons, the ramp heading down into the earth seeming to appear out of the very rock and sand. As they entered the compound they could feel the cooler air wrapping around them through the trucks' open windows. Immediately the crews surrounded the trucks, unveiling their cargo and taking a quick inventory of the damage and new parts. Those suits that had sustained the brunt of the battle and those that still operated decently would have to wait their turn. With the OZ convoy looming above them, it was those suits only missing arms, or needing a few replacement parts, that had to be made ready for any scenario.

Quatre brought Sandrock around to his place in the vast hangar, and the noise around him was muffled for those few minutes in the cockpit. Mechanics scurried back and forth, shouting orders to one another. It was a nervous atmosphere that pervaded the hangar, echoing off the high ceiling, despite that they had prepared for a situation such as this—despite their utmost confidence that the underground base could remain hidden from any sensors or topical investigation.

Abdul and Auda joined him as he was coming down from the gundam, whistling at the damage the blue gundam had inflicted on Sandrock.

"Which reminds me, thanks again for saving my ass out there," Auda said, and before his friend could open his mouth added, "And no wise cracks, Abdul."

"No pun intended," the other said as he pulled off his gloves. Auda shot him an impatient look. "What? Why is it you always pick on me, but I can't return the favor?"

"Because I'm older."

"That's your excuse?" Abdul turned to Quatre, who smiled at their brother-like camaraderie. "I mean, what the hell was that thing anyway?" he said, obviously referring to the blue suit. "Was it really another gundam?"

Quatre nodded. "I'm sure of it."

Together they made their way to the hangar floor, dodging the mechanics and pilots and carts that rushed around beneath the suits. "I asked Rashid about it, but he hasn't said anything yet what with the convoy to worry about. But I did get the impression there was something . . ." He looked down briefly in thought. "Do you think he could be hiding something about Sandrock?"

"He's always been pretty forthcoming before," Auda said. "What would there be to hide?"

That was what Quatre had asked himself. Maybe a lot. But, then again, maybe nothing. "You think I'm just imagining things?"

Abdul shrugged. "Sandrock's been here longer than I can even remember. I'm sure Rashid is just as surprised as we are that there's another one out there. I mean, did you see that thing!" He mimed the blue suit hoisting its guns as he said so, elbows spaced wide to express the hugeness of it.

Auda winced. "Yeah, I saw it all right. Would you cut it out?"

"Anyway," Abdul said putting an arm around Quatre's shoulders in a brief, reassuring squeeze, "I'm sure there's nothing to worry about."

Quatre forced his shoulders to relax, though it still bothered him. There would be time to worry later. Right now, there were more pressing issues. "You're probably right," he acquiesced and concentrated on scanning the crowd for Rashid.

They found their captain on the floor issuing orders to the men to get the exits secured. When he saw Quatre and the others, he said, "You three, get yourselves into something less conspicuous and find Sharif Sadaul. Inform him of the situation and stay with him. When you can, contact me on a secure line. I want to know everything about that convoy, understand?"

"Sir!" said Auda and Abdul.

"You're not coming with us?" Quatre asked.

The tall man shook his head. "I have to see to it everything is secure here. Also, I have no doubt that if I were to join you my presence would not go unnoticed. I don't wish to cause the sharif any more trouble than I already have."

Reluctantly, Quatre nodded his understanding. If OZ had any target in mind on their visit, chances were it was Rashid. In the past, before the overthrow of the Alliance, he had never attempted to cover up his exploits as leader of a rebel military. If OZ found him now, regardless of a lack of any other evidence, they would know for certain mobile suits were close by—if they didn't already.

"You heard the boss," Abdul said, stretching his arms over his head while they walked toward the living quarters at a brisk pace. "The sooner we can make this whole mess go away the better. It's been a long day and I could have really used a hot meal and a cold drink right about now. I was even looking forward to it being on Ahmad, since he got to sit the whole thing out."

"What about me?" the man in question asked, appearing before them. He was shorter than the other two, and older, with a bushy mustache and curly hair. Abdul grinned behind his dark glassed and Auda flashed Ahmad a wise grin, accomplished all the better for his heavy-lidded eyes and lopsided smile. "Oh, nothing," Auda said. "Say, are you coming up with us?"

"You've got your orders, I've got mine. Speaking of which, you really did a number on your suit, Auda. After all the work it's gonna take just to get that thing operational again, you're going to be owing me. Busted knee joint, ankle piston's wrecked, tension cables snapped all along the right leg— You get into a wrestling match with a Tragos or what?"

"More like a gundam," Auda said out of the corner of his mouth. Ahmad's eyes opened in surprise. "I'll explain later."

At the far end of the hangar were spartan living quarters. While the Maguanacs technically had homes above ground in the city, it remained a fact that these days, in order to keep pace with OZ, they spent most of their nights either in these subterranean commune-like spaces or in a tent in the desert. It was the Medina apartments rather that went sparsely furnished from lack of use and felt alien. No one said it so specifically, but it felt strange to eat and sleep apart from the group, even in those cases there was a family waiting at home. Their name could not have been more appropriate: despite blood, the Maguanac corps were a close-knit family all their own.

They changed out of their dusty clothing there. Quatre exchanged his local garb for an oxford shirt, his trousers for ironed slacks and boots for lace-up shoes. They took the elevator up to the basement of a grocer, and emerged from the back room with only the silent nod of the owner indicating anything in the town was out of the ordinary.

Nestled at the southern end of a wide valley between the feet of two massive, jagged-peaked craters, Medina proper remained a small, humble town. Someone generations past had named it with a vision of greatness, perhaps the same person who had excavated the massive caverns that served as the Maguanacs' hangar and headquarters. But though it might have fallen far short of the grand cities of Tempe or even northern Arabia, there was something to be said for the sense of closeness the town maintained. From the city streets to the date and wind farms beyond the town's borders, the community remained united around their greatest resource, the aquifer beneath the valley floor that had supplied them with fresh water for two centuries.

It was only a few minutes' walk to the city hall. Though tall and of a fairly lavish Turkish style, there remained something humble about the building that served as home and government offices both for the sharif. That did not seem to matter to OZ, however, whose jeeps and personnel were stationed all around the place. The sharif had never seen the need for guards before. Now there were several standing warily at the front entrance, watching the soldiers who stood about in the hunter green, dark red and gold uniforms of OZ.

It was an alien sight, and Quatre found it somewhat unnerving to see both sides with rifles slung across their chests and gripped tightly at the ready. The sharif's men instantly recognized Quatre and his companions waved them in. But as he passed, Quatre thought he could hear the OZ soldiers, clustered together, muttering under their breaths about the three of them.

As they approached his office, they could hear pieces of the conversation taking place between Sadaul and the officer in charge of the convoy. The open door seemed to be an invitation just for Quatre and his two comrades.

"Please understand our position," said the OZ officer within.

He was younger than Quatre had imagined, about the same age as their leader Treize, and not half as clean-cut with his windblown brown hair and bushy sideburns, and an expression on his long face that seemed imperturbable. How much did this man really know, Quatre wondered, and what kind of management were they dealing with? What kind of games would they play before this "visit" came to an end.

"Being forced by the storm to take the route through the highlands has put a strain on supplies we hadn't expected. In order to make it to Banadiya, we need to refuel—"

"I understood that part well enough," came the gentle but firm voice of Sharif Sadaul, "and I have no objections to helping you in that matter. Our law forbids us to withhold material assistance from anyone who asks it, given our location."

"Yes. That is why—"

"But anything further stretches even my hospitality thin. Here I must put my foot down."

The officer smiled at the interruption. "It could mean the safety of your citizens."

"Which is exactly what I have in mind by refusing. Unless I'm supposed to take that last comment as a threat, Colonel?"

Quatre rapped his knuckles on the open door. "Sharif?" he said. "You wanted to see me?"

The room's occupants looked up. Sharif Sadaul, a chubby man of about sixty with a thin, pointed mustache and dressed in the traditional garb of his forefathers, sat on one side of the table. Even under pressure, his cheery disposition held and masked his true shrewdness. Beside him sat his daughter Fatima, in a modest two-piece suit and head scarf, whose air of impassive dignity only melted when she saw Abdul and Auda enter the room behind Quatre. On the other side were Sadaul's guards. A silver coffee set had been laid out in front of them.

Across the table, before the doors that opened off to a balcony and the curtains that filtered the bright afternoon light, sat the OZ colonel, his officers seated uncomfortably beside him. When he saw Quatre and his comrades, he raised an eyebrow.

"Who are you?" he asked. He made no effort to hide his suspicion, nor the fact that it was limited to Quatre.

But they had rehearsed this scene before, and Quatre was not fazed when Sadaul motioned him forward and drew a fatherly arm around the boy's shoulders. "Forgive me, Colonel. This is my future son-in-law, Raberba." Because it seemed Quatre's looks needed explaining, the sharif continued: "He attends the University with my daughter Fatima and works for me in the off-season. Raberba, Colonel Waltfeld, of OZ's Arab Bureau."

"I hope I didn't come at a bad time," Quatre said.

"As a matter of fact, you have," said the colonel. "I have business of a rather sensitive matter with the Sharif—"

"Nonsense," Sadaul said with a wave. "Have a seat, my boy. You'll have to excuse me," he said to the colonel, "I should have told you sooner that I was expecting him. You see, as my future heir, his interests and mine are one and the same. And since your regiment is only passing through town, I doubt there's anything so sensitive to discuss that one more civilian couldn't hear."

The colonel smiled as he leaned back in his seat, but it was not without some curiosity. Of course, it wasn't all right. But Sadaul was correct: OZ's power in their town was extremely limited.

"So," Sadaul repeated for the newcomers' benefit, "we were discussing your proposal that I allow you to conduct inspections?"

The colonel's glance went once again to Quatre, but nevertheless he said, "My superiors believe it to be in your best interest that OZ takes a brief survey of the area to ensure your safety, and that would naturally include some inspections of local infrastructure. It would be entirely voluntary, of course. As I'm sure you know, there have been numerous reports of attacks by rebel mobile suit factions in this area, including a certain type of suit exceeding the legal mass limit of gundanium alloy, as determined by the former Alliance. We suspect a small number of terrorists, working independently but receiving orders from a single source, are responsible."

"Naturally," said Sadaul.

"Sharif," the man said with gravity, "two of these suits have been spotted within a five hundred kilometer radius of this town repeatedly over the last month. OZ is concerned for your town's safety. I have orders to assist you in any way possible in order to prevent you from becoming their next victim."

"Whose orders?" Quatre asked suddenly.

The colonel turned, giving Quatre a hard look for his curiosity. "His Excellency Treize's, of course," he said. "You can check if that would satisfy you—"

"Yes, it would."

"Aren't you a little young to be attending a university?"

"I look young for my age," Quatre said. The colonel nodded to himself and raised his coffee to his lips. "Why is Treize suddenly concerned with a backwater town like Medina?"

The man smiled. "You tell me," he said to Sadaul. "From what I gathered, it has to do with a certain individual who is rumored to be living in this part of Arabia." One of his officers placed a folder in his waiting hand, which he spread open on the table facing Sadaul. Glossies of the Maguanac suits including Sandrock were inside, as were old photographs of Rashid.

"What am I supposed to be looking at?" Sadaul said.

The colonel tapped the picture of Rashid. "Captain Rashid Qurama," he said. "Leader of a faction of rebel mercenaries who call themselves the Maguanacs. We thought you might have seen him, heard anything about his whereabouts."

Sadaul shook his head slowly as though thinking it over. "No. I wouldn't know anything about that."

"Yet you aided him against the Alliance, isn't that correct?"

"Yes," Sadaul said. "But that was over four years ago. I haven't seen him since."

"You think he's in some way connected to Sandrock?" Quatre said. "Do you think he is Sandrock?"

Again the colonel looked at him in surprise, but for a much different reason. It was the surprise of a man who'd had his mind read. "What do you know about Sandrock?" he said, and this time the question was aimed directly at Quatre.

"Nothing but rumors," the boy said with a nonchalant shrug.

"If we did know anything," Sadaul said quickly, "we'd tell you. We want peace in this world as much as your organization does, Colonel."

"In that case, you shouldn't mind us conducting a few investigations of our own. To set your mind at ease as well as mine."

Sharif Sadaul put his hand down hard on the table. His expression was no longer amused. "Let's stop beating around the bush," he said; "it will get us nowhere. Your coming here isn't due to any miscalculation. You intentionally came by way of the southern road knowing full well the situation it would put you in and knowing our policies regarding travelers. You think you can take advantage of our hospitality in your search for this Sandrock character or Rashid or whoever it is you're after."

"If you have nothing to hide, there should be no problem."

"Except that you are out of your jurisdiction, Colonel. This town is out of your jurisdiction. We've always cooperated with OZ in whatever way we could before. Today we've welcomed you and your convoy as guests, a relationship we hold in high regard before the eyes of God. But I know the law. I know we are under no obligation to open our private property to OZ without the appropriate paperwork—which, I take it, you don't have." The colonel pretended he hadn't heard. "We may have nothing to hide, but it's the principle of the thing, Colonel. Your Order has only ever shown us distrust. What good reason have you given us that we should oblige your demands?"

The other smiled. "You enjoy your freedoms here. I can see that."

"They are very important to us," Sadaul said. "There are two faiths that are paramount, Colonel: God and liberty. And allowing a scourge like OZ, guest though you may be, to do what it will with our town certainly goes against the latter. I cannot condone any unwarranted investigations. If you cannot accept that, I will take my complaint to Treize himself."

"Go ahead. It won't make any difference," the colonel said indifferently. "The days of the Alliance are over, Sharif. In case you don't remember, you had as much a hand in it as I did. You don't wish you could take the whole revolution back, do you?"

"If I had known then what was waiting for us . . .?"

"I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that. I've tried to make you see sense, Sharif, but . . ." The colonel sighed. "If you would rather do nothing about the rebels, if you would rather live under a constant shadow of war, then what concern is it of mine? However, I should warn you my superiors will no doubt see your unwillingness to cooperate as a signal to start giving serious thought to making this town a jurisdiction of the Order."

Fatima's chair scraped the floor as she suddenly stood. "Are you threatening my father?"

Quatre felt his hand tighten into a fist as it sat in his lap.

"Not at all," the colonel said calmly. "I am simply trying to make him realize what consequences his actions might bring." He stood abruptly, his officers doing the same. "I'll let you think it over, Sharif. I wouldn't want you to make a mistake you'll regret. In any case, I appreciate the coffee. It was superb."

With that he picked up his cap from the table, turned, and walked out of the room, followed closely by his men. Sadaul's officers who had sat in on the meeting escorted them, leaving the five alone—Quatre and Sadaul, Auda, Abdul and Fatima. They sat in silence for a long moment, during which Fatima poured cups of coffee for Abdul and Auda from the tall silver pot, distraction evident in her actions.

"I don't think there will be any relaxing this homecoming," Sadaul said at last to them, his good humor coming back, however faint. "Not for quite a while anyway. It would look suspicious if we celebrated anything tonight, even if just your safe return. They would naturally wonder what we had to celebrate."

"Oh well," Abdul said with a sigh not entirely devoid of disappointment. "As long as I stay awake, I don't mind keeping an eye on OZ. The more we help out, the fewer excuses they have to stay, right?" He downed his coffee.

"I'll do what I can, too," Fatima added, eyes downcast.

"Right. It'll be fun," Auda joined in sarcastically. "I nearly get killed by a gundam, and I come home to find OZ waiting for me. I couldn't think of a better way to end the day."

Sharif Sadaul's eyes went wide. "You met up with another gundam?" he asked Quatre in a hushed voice as the other three got up to leave.

Quatre nodded.

"Then the colonel wasn't lying about there being two."

"He took off before I could catch his name. I couldn't even tell which side he was on." Quatre looked down at his hands. "We lost Yusuf," he said quietly, "and Said, but otherwise no casualties. It was a lucky shot by the Tragos." For some reason, he could not bring himself to say it was probable the other gundam had been responsible for Yusuf's death.

"May they go with God," Sadaul said, making a small sign.

"That's not all. The mobile suits they sent through the pass were a decoy."

"To distract the Maguanacs?"

"To coax us out. They must have narrowed the Maguanacs down to this area, and they needed some proof, some leverage against you, however inconclusive the evidence was. To be able to say we went for the bait is all they need to start putting the blame on you. And we . . ."

The sharif nodded as the full meaning of their situation sank in.

"I'm sorry."

"It wasn't your fault, Quatre," he said. "How could you have known? But, I do think I need to talk to Rashid."

Quatre nodded. "On a secure line. I wouldn't trust the ground lines here after what OZ was just saying. If they suspect he's here, I can guarantee they'll be watching us all more closely." That must be why he's been acting so distracted, Quatre thought. Rashid knows he's a wanted man, and he knows he's the first one they will suspect. What great responsibility he took on for his men and the sharif without hesitation—and for Quatre, whose identity as Sandrock he seemed content to divert to himself.

"Get some rest, Quatre," Sadaul said gently. "You've had a long day, and I'm afraid it is about to become a long night as well. Now would be an opportune time to rest and conserve your energy."

"But the colonel—"

"Auda and Abdul will keep an eye on him." Sadaul smiled. "They're not so young anymore, unlike yourself."

Despite his sense of responsibility, Quatre did not want to argue. When the colonel left, he had realized how tired he really was.

On the way back to the apartment that the sharif kept for Quatre's use, he watched the OZ officers as they gathered in small groups in the streets, talking awkwardly to one another as they kept their hands on their rifles, and their eyes on the townspeople. They are more afraid of us than anyone here is of them, Quatre thought. Just as OZ—though it may not show it—is almost more fearful of dissent than anything else. It realizes how tenuous its hold on the nations really is.

The soldiers in the streets all looked so young. So, OZ was saving their more experienced for bigger fish. But they underestimated the Maguanacs. Indeed, they underestimated the Arab powers as a whole, despite that so many had already given in to OZ's bullying. What had these young men been told? That the Arabs were barbarians who needed to be saved from themselves?

One of the young men caught Quatre's eye as he passed. Though he stood with a group of other soldiers, he was apart from them as well, and his uniform seemed just slightly more faded by dust than those of the men around him. His hawk-like gaze that did not waver from Quatre unnerved him, but he forced himself to think nothing of it.

When Quatre was alone in his small apartment, he braced the window shutter open to let out the stuffy air trapped in the room, and looked out over the town. From this elevation, it did not seem invaded, nor in any way changed. The sun was in the western sky, and the remnants of the storm rustled the tops of the date palms and turned the giant white arms of the distant windmills.

Focusing on that peaceful sight, unadulterated by human complications, Quatre lay down on the bed on top of the afghan, unsure if sleep would even come to him. And closing his eyes, he let his mind wander.

—= o =—

Rigel was in the perfect position. From where he sat, he could spit down the backs of the Ozzies' necks and they wouldn't even notice. They were keeping a close eye on the goings-on around them but didn't see the man who crouched on the roof of one of the buildings, watching them through binoculars over the half-wall that bordered it. The angle of the sun at this time of day could be tricky—a reflection off the lens was all that was needed to give him away—but so far the soldiers below were too intent on their business to even glance in his direction.

This particular group was made up of five soldiers, three armed and wary, the other two carrying a rectangular box between them. The shape was something like a makeshift child's coffin, and from their effort he deduced it was heavy as well, much heavier than something of that size should be. It was close to the dinner hour, and even with the tension in the air the streets, especially this back one, were largely abandoned. He focused his binoculars as the two men gently lowered the crate and opened the lid.

It was dark in the shadows, with their bodies partially blocking his view. But Rigel needed little more then their actions to tell him what was inside as one soldier reached into the box. After a moment, the lid was replaced, and with a last glance around the five left as nonchalantly as they had come. Needless to say, this latest plot did not surprise him. He had seen enough of OZ's arrogance by now to be surprised by anything they did.

He readjusted his head set, ducking back out of view. "Rigel here," he said. "Ozzies just planted an unmarked crate near my position." He quickly relayed the section of town. "Looks like a bomb."

"Roger that," said Auda on the other end of the line. "But I'm sorry to say we've just become a little preoccupied here with one of our own."

"Tell him not to touch it!" Abdul told him, then concentrated on the equipment before him. He was hunched over another crate bomb, intent on the headphone he held next to his ear. Every movement he made, even if just a shift of his legs under him, was careful.

Behind him, the owner of the ice cream shop around the corner who had discovered the crate on a cigarette break cursed OZ to high heaven. "And you'd better make sure you don't make any mistakes and blow up my business," he added pointedly to Abdul while Auda relayed the message. "I just put a lot of money into the facade."

Abdul sighed. "Sir, I'm an explosives expert. I know what I'm doing. But if you don't get out of my light and let me concentrate. . . ."

He understood the man was angry and frustrated, but he could do without the headache. He was relieved when Fatima stepped in for him.

"Sir," she said with infinitely more patience than he could muster up for the man, "I know how you feel, but please understand we're doing our best. It would help us if you could try to remain calm about this. I'm sure the soldiers don't really intend to harm us. They are from the Arab Bureau—"

"I don't care where they're from. They're still OZ!" The man wrung his apron nervously.

"Still, they must have intended for us to find the bombs," Auda said over his shoulder. "They weren't exactly clandestine about planting these things."

"But why make it so obvious," Fatima asked, "when they know we'll just defuse them?"

"Because we can't defuse them that easily," Abdul told them as he stood. "Not without taking a serious risk. And we can't move them. They're rigged so that any movement will trigger the detonation. But," he added before the shop owner could protest, "we do know they're not set to go off until midnight."

"So, what, you're just going to let it explode and OZ get its way?" said the man. "And who's going to pay for the damage to my business?"

A lopsided grin came onto the other's face involuntarily. "Sir, I assure you the Maguanacs aren't going to sit back and let anything just happen, but at the moment I think we have more important things to worry about. Like evacuating the area. Look at the bright side: you have six-and-a-half hours to safely move your assets."

The man grumbled mordantly about not being able to move the facade, but seeing as there was nothing else he could do, he reluctantly returned to his shop, waving off a reassuring word of Fatima's. Meanwhile, Auda contacted their base's control center. "Auda to command."

"We hear you." Luckily it was Rashid who answered. "Go ahead, Auda."

"Sir," he began, "we have a bit of a situation here. The convoy is planting time bombs around the city that cannot be moved. We know of at least two, both hidden in crates, but there are bound to be more of them. This one's set to go off at midnight, and I have little doubt that when we have time to examine the other, it'll turn up the same."

"I understand," Rashid said calmly. "We'll have to start evacuating anyone living and working in those areas. Get the word out, tell our men what to look for. It would be safest for the citizens to be underground by midnight. I'm certain we could harbor all of them temporarily. However, that leaves us with another problem. We must protect the town at all costs, but we have to safeguard the fort as well. If its location is revealed, we Maguanacs might as well not be here. Proceed with the evacuations of those people within vicinity of the blasts, but be as discrete as possible."

"Sir," Auda started hesitantly, "you're not thinking of letting them go off as scheduled?" That prompted another fit from the ice cream shop owner.

"We'll think about that when the time comes, but it should be considered as a possibility if all other options fail."

As Auda disconnected, one of the men sitting at a monitor in the control room said, "Sir, you need to see this."

Rashid went to his station and looked over his shoulder as the man explained, "Our cameras at the southern entrance spotted these two MS carriers pulling into an area behind that outcropping about ten minutes ago."

"They have guts, landing without an airstrip; I'll give them that. Any sign of suits?"

"Not yet."

"Keep me posted."

"I have a transmission from air traffic control," someone at another station said, a hand on his headphones. "Two mobile suit carriers requesting permission to land at Medina's airstrip." He halted to process the information coming to him faster than he could repeat it. "They're claiming no mobile suits on board. Just supplies and fuel for the Banadiya convoy. They're inviting the sharif to inspect the cargo holds to prove it."

Rashid crossed his arms over his chest. "And I have no doubt they're telling the truth. The mobile suits are in the carriers in the valley." He put a hand to the headset again. "Auda, come in."

"Here, sir," came the reply.

"Sorry to saddle you down with more trouble, but as long as I can't get close to him I need you to relay an important message to Sharif Sadaul."

"Certainly, sir. What's the situation?"

Rashid proceeded to fill him in. He knew the sharif was going to be furious. And he prayed they would be able to get him and the townspeople through the night.

—= o =—

The tinny ring of the communicator on the bedside table woke Quatre. It took a moment to recognize the source of the noise, but then he was wide awake, pushing himself up in bed to press the answering button. "Yeah," was all the greeting he could manage over a sudden yawn. He was expecting Rashid or Sadaul, or at least one of his comrades.

Instead, Fatima's voice greeted him through the tiny speaker. He blinked in surprise. "Fatima?"

"Quatre, sorry, but we need you down here quick," she told him.

"OZ hasn't actually carried through with the inspections—"

"No," she said, much to his relief, "but it may be just as bad."

She trailed off as the set on the other end was handed to Auda. "We're talking catch-twenty-twos here, Quatre," he said. "MS carriers have landed just outside the city."

"What?" Quatre started and quickly set about gathering up his things. "How many? Do they have Leos on board?"

"Or worse. The Arab Bureau is infamous for one thing: artillery. With our luck they'll be carrying hover Tragos, maybe a few Aries waiting in the wings. Who knows? The day is still young."

"Maybe they're taking them to Banadiya."

"That's what I'd hoped at first, but then why the need to be so careful? And there's more. . . ."

He filled Quatre in on the situation with the bombs, and the young man took in every piece of information intently, a worried look forming on his brow. Hurrying into town once he had been brought up to speed, Quatre caught up with the sharif just as he was leaving city hall, accompanied by Abdul and a few straggling guards. He was not sure of where Sadaul was going, but his dark mood concerned Quatre. The determined frown seemed incongruous with his usually cheerful features, and it seemed a struggle for him to keep his composure. "Oh, Quatre, I'm glad you're here," he said with a bit of a sigh, and Quatre could tell he meant it.

"Auda told me there were MS carriers outside town—" He almost tripped backing down a stair to keep pace with Sadaul.

"Yes, and two on the airstrip. But at least the latter, my officers have assured me, are carrying no mobile suits whatsoever." Sadaul snorted. "Damn OZ, that brood of vipers! Oh, yes, I'm sure they have the good of the Arab States at heart! They have the audacity to ask us for help, while in the meantime—" He lowered his voice and grabbed Quatre's arm as he spoke to him, lest any of the soldiers lining the streets and courtyards should hear what he had to say. "In the meantime they station God knows how many mobile suits outside our city and plant bombs in our streets. They would have us running straight from the frying pan into the fire."

"I'm sorry," Quatre said automatically. "If it wasn't for Sandrock you and the townspeople wouldn't be in this—"

"Oh, for the last time, don't apologize, Quatre." The sharif's tone was gentle despite his frustration as he admonished the young gundam pilot. "Don't you think I share just as much responsibility for keeping the Maguanacs here to begin with? I knew full well I'd put you in just as much danger as the townspeople by taking the risk, but it was a risk that had to be taken. And I know for certain most of the people here wouldn't have it any other way."

"I know that."

"Then put blame where blame is due," Sadaul said into Quatre's ear, and Quatre couldn't help a small smile. As he said it, they turned down a street lined with shops and restaurants, where OZ personnel milled around the various businesses their jeeps and trucks. "Now, if I could just get my hands on that Colonel Waltfeld. . . ."

"We could still take him out," Abdul said, and the nonchalance of his offer startled the sharif. "Rigel has men on the roofs—"

"Good heavens, no," Sadaul said. "Lord knows I hate that man more than Treize himself, but he is still our guest. And something like that will only make matters worse for us."

They found the man in question seated at an outdoor table of a restaurant, under the awning that extended over the establishment's porch.

As their group approached, Sadaul waved to his guards to stand down, and said simply once he was beside the OZ officer's table, "Colonel Waltfeld, would you excuse me a moment?"

The colonel looked up, and a grin came onto his wide mouth in recognition. He swallowed what he had been chewing. "Certainly, Sharif. Please, have a seat." His deep voice was much warmer than it had been just hours before as he gestured to the chair across from him. "Can I get you anything?" He started to raise an arm as if to call over a waiter.

"No, thank you. I'd rather stand. This shouldn't take long."

"Suit yourself." The colonel cleared his mouth with a swig of coffee. "What can I do for you?"

"I was hoping," Sadaul started, his forced genial manner matching that of the OZ officer, "that you might explain to me—"

"M-m," the colonel interrupted him as he took a sip of water to clear his throat, "before you start, allow me to commend your town on such exquisite kabobs. Now, I'm not just making small talk," he said with a defensive gesture. "As a self-styled connoisseur of sorts I mean that. It almost makes me hope I have an opportunity to spend more time here, on something other than official business."

"I'm not sure whether to take that observation with pride or caution," Sadaul said genteelly.

The colonel smiled. "Perhaps a bit of both, Sharif. Now. You wanted me to explain—"

"What two mobile suit carriers are doing on my town's airstrip."

Colonel Waltfeld regarded him sceptically. "I authorized your men a look inside. They must have informed you by now that there were no mobile suits on board. The carriers were for my men. After our previous discussion I called the nearest base to say we were in desperate need of supplies and fuel. So, they delivered. And when we leave your town they'll precede us to Banadiya." He paused to take another bite, oblivious to the silence that passed as he chewed. "You and your citizens have been a great help, Sharif. Not as hospitable as we're used to, but given the abruptness of our visit, I guess that can't be helped, can it?" He smiled as if at some private joke. "In any case, with our carriers' help we'll be ready to leave your city much sooner than planned. That's what you and your people want, isn't it?"

"Of course." The sharif's smile was strained. "When does your convoy plan to depart?"

"No later than eight."

"That's awfully soon. What's the rush? People will think you're running from something."

The sarcasm in Sadaul's words could not be clearer. Quatre watched the colonel's face closely for his reaction, anxious that he might take the bait and ask point blank what Sadaul referred to. Instead, he countered with silence and a hard look of his own, though a slight smile persisted in one corner of his lips.

One of the other officers, talking to the soldiers gathered around a jeep, saw the group standing beside the colonel's table and took notice of the very tenuous patience on the sharif's face. Warily, he approached, and saved the colonel from answering.

"Is there a problem, sir?" he said, gaze flitting between the sharif and his entourage and his commanding officer.

For a brief moment, Quatre mistook him for the young soldier who had watched him in the street, but the differences were clear close up.

"Nothing I can't handle, Lieutenant," Waltfeld said with only a nod in the man's direction. "The sharif was merely concerned we weren't staying in his lovely city long enough. He thought maybe we had something to hide by leaving so soon, but I was about to reassure him the decision was nothing personal. We must be getting to Banadiya with all possible haste." And as he said so, his stare dared the sharif to question his response.

If Sadaul noticed the subtle accusation of hypocrisy, he pretended not to. "If that were the case, then why not say so in the first place?"

"Because it was none of your concern. Besides, I'm wise enough to know when we're not welcome."

Sadaul huffed. "I cannot argue with the truth, Colonel. But let it be said that the Order's treatment of the Arab States' citizens has not exactly been adequate to warrant a reception you might deem 'welcoming.'"

"Is that so?" Quite suddenly, the colonel turned his head in Quatre's direction, and asked, "It's Raberba, right?"

"Right," Quatre said slowly.

"Would you say that statement is consistent with your experience at the university? I understand that the fresh young minds who receive their education in the cities are more optimistic about OZ's plans for the future. Then again, the fresh young minds in the city are statistically more likely to enjoy the benefits of OZ's plans than those in the country, which I understand is usually opposed to its brand of rhetoric. I take it the whole . . . Religion of Man thing doesn't go over too well in a place like this."

"I— I don't really know," Quatre said. "I'm more interested in science than public opinion."

"Is that right?" the colonel said. "Well, I can't say I blame you, in this day and age, if you should naturally cling to something that is actually concrete and formulaic. I suppose that explains your business in Medina. I hear the methods of irrigation here are quite a feat of engineering. In fact, I was eager to see them for myself, but," he chuckled, "as you know, the sharif would not allow it. So, maybe some other time."

He paused, as if something were coming to him on a signal. "I see the sharif keeps you close to his side. Medina must be a pleasant change from the city. A slower pace, I'd imagine."

"I guess. But everyone has his own battlefield."

"His own battlefield, huh? Is that a local saying? It's quaint."

On the inside, Quatre struggled. He couldn't help but admire the colonel for his method of stating his accusations as conjectures, and hating him for the results that undoubtedly won him in the east. Who could argue with such a style, without either appearing guilty or becoming as false as the other? And Colonel Waltfeld, for all he made himself to look it, was anything but false.

"Well, in any case it's quite an atmosphere you people have here," he said during Quatre's silence. "Why, if I weren't with the Order I too might want to settle down in a place like this. A man could grow addicted to your fine coffee." He held up his cup contemplatively. "This one, for example, has just a hint of cardamom, very pleasant, not so unlike the brew you served me earlier, Sharif. I wish you could tell me your secret, but perhaps that's just one more thing you keep classified." Raising his eyebrows suggestively, he took a sip.

"Maybe some other time," said the sharif sarcastically.

Smiling to himself as he was accustomed to do, the colonel put down his coffee, ignoring them both, and took up his knife and fork again. "Well, then," he said, and his meaning could not be clearer, "if there's nothing else you wish to discuss. . . ."

—= o =—

By nightfall the underground fortress was filled with Medina's townspeople and their belongings. The sunset had been a red one to match the desert itself, the horizon still tinged, it seemed, with the dust of that morning's storm. Now, with little more than an hour to go, the anxiety was palpable in the cool underground air, even as the people had grown quieter with each hour. Now they stood packed together, beside their families and business associates, to hear from the sharif what would become of the Maguanacs, of OZ who had caused them this trouble, and of their livelihoods.

As Quatre stared at their faces from his place on the old brick arches the mercenaries used as walkways between the mobile suits, he wondered what their reaction would be. And he wasn't sure if he dreaded more the possibility of having their personal displeasure and anger directed at him, or being given their unquestioning support.

The decision had already been made hours ago. "Call Abdul and his team back," Sadaul had said after reports their efforts were slow going.

"And let the bombs go off?" Rashid had asked.

"The townspeople are evacuated, and I don't want to see some of your best men endanger their lives for something that could be all in vain. Buildings, businesses—these things can be replaced. In any case, it is what OZ is expecting. It was never my intention to give into their bullying and scare tactics, and I don't wish to start now, but certainly you agree we are running out of options."

He paused in his pacing, his anguish over speaking the next words clear to anyone with eyes to see. "You must leave Medina."

"With all due respect, Sharif," said Rashid, "if we were to do so, we would only be placing you and your citizens in greater danger. Leaving is just what they want us to do."

"Then you must do it."

"And allow them to take control of Medina?"

It was obvious by the frown on his face that it was just as ponderous a question for the sharif as anyone. The same thoughts that crossed the minds of those around him had already occurred to him as well. "We can deal with OZ. Other cities that have been taken over claim the Arab Bureau is by comparison a much more . . . considerate division. They prefer to operate through local government rather than occupy city hall themselves. I don't think our citizens have much to fear other than their disrespect."

"You make it sound as though they were merely a pest to be tolerated. It won't be so easy. Those towns were not harboring organized resistance—"

"I'm aware of that. But would you rather they take the town be force? Would you rather they go through every last Maguanac until they come to us with nothing left in their hearts for your wives and children but vengeance?"

"And yet isn't that what you hired us to do? Each man is prepared to give his life for the freedom of the Arab States. Otherwise, he knows, there is no place for him in the Maguanac Corps."

"But he did not join to give it in vain, Rashid! We are only one town. Why should these men waste their lives defending one small town? Further resistance now will only make OZ's grip, when it gets one, tighter."

Quatre felt for both of these men, grappling with a dilemma such as this where there was no favorable outcome, but he wondered if either saw the full ramifications of their arguments.

"Sadaul," he spoke up, "you do realize that with the Maguanacs gone, OZ will find this fortress. When that happens, when they find you've been actively opposing them all this time. . . . Sir, I think it's the ramifications of that that Rashid is concerned about."

Both the men visibly calmed, and Rashid's patient gaze told him he had been right.

"Yes. . . ." The sharif hesitated. "I didn't think we would hold them off forever. But we no longer have a choice. We will endure. Our people have always endured. But tyrants don't last, Rashid. In the end, God's will prevails, whatever it may be."

Though obviously troubled by the possibilities such a thing entailed, he did not let them overcome his hope.

Slowly, reluctantly, Rashid nodded his assent. "The Maguanacs will abide by your decision no matter what, Sharif. You know that."

Satisfied, Sadaul came closer to them, and looked up at both with conviction in his dark eyes. "I am not ordering you away forever," he said in a lower voice. "It has become apparent that this area is no longer safe for those who believe in fighting for their independence. But you may find other places more hospitable to you."

"Citizens of Medina," he said now, addressing the crowds, his small voice echoing in the vast chambers. "My dear people, as we speak, OZ's forces gather at our doorstep."

Voices whispered to one another at the reminder, and spirits seemed to falter, but he continued with a hand raised to silence them.

"At this moment, they inform me, four squadrons of Aries and Tragos, including hover Tragos, are stationed in the dunes—ready to destroy every last rebel fighter and pave a way for a total take-over of Medina. They have narrowed down Sandrock's location to this area, and they blame our city for the damage he's done. They accuse us of supporting rebels, even though if it were not for the aid of these same rebels four years ago they would never have succeeded in overthrowing the Alliance. They accuse us of harboring terrorists, while they rob nations of their sovereignty and freedom, and hardworking people of their livelihoods; and plant explosives in our neighborhoods, endangering innocent women and children."

He became grave then. "But they are at our doorstep, and we cannot win this battle. That is why I have told Rashid to take Sandrock and abandon Medina."

Uncertainty showed plainly on the myriad faces, begging to know, What will happen to us then?

"It is only for the safety of all of you that I ask him to do this. This latest trick of OZ is the final straw, the dropped gauntlet, but in order to win the peace we cannot be tempted to pick it up. Tonight, our Maguanac corps will engage the enemy. Rashid and his men will create a distraction while the fortress is cleared out.

"And we who remain must do our part and welcome the occupation of our city. Though it sounds traitorous to the memory of all those who have fought, too many times giving their lives to protect us, cooperation with OZ is the only way we can honor the sacrifices our brethren have made for us. Because cooperation with our occupiers, however temporary, is the only way we can hope for peace in Arabia at this time. In our actions we must have fortitude. But in our hearts we shall continue to oppose the tyrants and believe in a true peace, one founded on freedom rather than an iron fist, and have faith that one day Treize Khushrenada and all his generals will also see the folly of their actions.

"My fellow citizens, we must have courage! Our children may look back on these years as dark times, just as we look on the previous centuries, but we will prevail, as the Pioneers prevailed and triumphed over the hardships of the desert to found this place. Because while we still live we have faith, that one day Sandrock will return to liberate us all."

Sadaul raised his open hands in the air as though in blessing, and with his words swept the gathered townspeople up in a wave. They shouted their support against the OZ troops, men whooping, women letting out a shrill war cry that was amplified by the high stone ceilings, building upon itself like a roll of thunder.

But hearing his suit's name alone used as a rallying cry took Quatre aback. What did Sadaul think he was accomplishing by focusing on Sandrock? he wondered, disturbed by being thrust into the limelight. That he should encourage the townspeople to lay all their hopes on the shoulders of a mere adolescent boy? He was only one mobile suit pilot out of thirty-nine, gundam or not. He glanced up at Rashid, but his captain did not return his gaze.

There was much work to be done in preparing the troops for battle and evacuation. And though his mind was thinking of the future, Quatre busied his body in the present, offering his help on whatever suit repairs could be done in the time remaining before midnight. Sandrock was fine and ready for battle as it was, its wounds from the encounter with the gundam not withstanding. Quatre was not concerned about that.

He was concerned, however, when he saw his suit being loaded onto a flatbed for transport. Asking the men whose responsibility it was only told him it was Rashid's idea.

"I've decided not to put Sandrock into battle," Rashid said when confronted.

"But he's fine! And besides, I've fought with a handicap before; I can handle the damage to the chest plates," Quatre said, though he knew it was next to pointless to argue with the man who was like a father to him. "It's not that I have a problem with one of the other suits, but—"

"I'm not giving you one of the other suits," Rashid told him. "You're not fighting either. You're going with Sandrock ahead of us."

"But this is my fight, Rashid! How can you expect me to sit it out? It's because of Sandrock that we're in this mess—"

"Which is precisely why it will not be involved in his operation," said the other just as firmly. "And confirm the Order's suspicions."

Quatre clenched his jaw, wanting so much to say more, despite the logic he could see in Rashid's argument. Somehow he found himself climbing into the truck with the men who would be piloting his lift out, glancing over his shoulder as he slammed the door beside him and knowing he could do more. "What's the plan?" he barked to the man sitting next to him.

"Rashid and the others are going to engage the enemy to the north and west of the town," Beni told him. "We don't expect more than a few sentries to remain near the southern entrance after that, and Rigel's men should be sufficient to neutralize them—"

"So, we're going to steal one of the Order's own carriers."

Beni smiled. "It's going to be risky."

"Don't need to tell me twice." Slouching in his seat and steeling himself mentally, Quatre withdrew his pistol from its holster and checked it.

In another part of the hangar, Ahmad patted the leg of Auda's machine like he might pat a newly saddled horse. "Yep, she's all set and rearing to go. Didn't have much time for the nit-and-gritty work so I fixed her with a bran-new leg. From the knee down. But don't press your luck. It's by the grace of God we happened to have a spare one lying around."

Abdul whistled as he pulled on his gloves, standing and gawking on his suit's hatch. "That shine's gonna give us away."

"Nothing a good dive in the sand won't cure. Hey, I owe you one, Ahmad," Auda said, to which the other man chuckled.

"Damn right, you do." Ahmad put up a hand in salute, eager to get to his own machine. "So you and your suit better make it out in one piece."

"Auda! Abdul!"

The two Maguanac pilots turned as they were climbing into their cockpits to see Fatima running down the old brick scaffolding toward them. When she stopped, looking up at them while she caught her breath, her dark eyes said everything. "You two better be careful out there."

"If you say so, my lady?" Abdul grinned. "Of course."

"You keep safe too, kiddo," Auda added. "We're coming back."

Fatima smiled. "I know."

With brief salutes from their pilots, the suits' cockpit hatches closed up tight, and Abdul and Auda walked their suits to the door from which they would be entering the battle. "I don't know when," Auda said as though to himself, "but we're coming back."

Although his friend could not see it, Abdul smiled as he heard that tinny voice, pausing in his last-minute checks of his operating system. "Sure thing. You can't get rid of family forever. Yet somehow I have a feeling this is the last we'll be seeing of Medina for a long while. Fare thee well, sweet lady. In our absence, fare well."

—= o =—

From the driver's seat of a jeep parked on a dune far beyond the city limits of Medina, Lieutenant DaCosta looked anxiously at his watch. The city seemed asleep and peaceful from where they were, wrapped in the silence of the deep desert night, nothing amiss. Not for the first time that day, DaCosta questioned his superior's plans.

"Colonel, permission to speak frankly?"

Leaning on the back of the seat, a long coat covering his hunter green uniform, an old tin cup of coffee in one hand, binoculars held to his eyes with the other, Colonel Andrew Waltfeld let out a sound that was half way between a sigh and a snort. "DaCosta, when have you ever needed my permission for that?" he mumbled, as much to himself as the other officer.

"It's just that, I wonder if we have the right place." DaCosta paused, but the other said nothing. "Having seen the reports myself, the information is rather inconclusive."

"Intelligence has narrowed the mercenaries' location to within three hundred kilometers of Medina. How much more specific do you want them to be?"

"Some concrete proof of mobile suit activity, for one. Tracks that didn't get blown away by the wind."

"Ah, but you're missing the point. Medina itself is specific." At DaCosta's silence, the colonel elaborated. "Don't you wonder why the Pioneers would have bestowed such a great name, a name with such history on such a meager scrap of a town? Hm? Unless it's not really such a scrap. As the saying goes, you shouldn't judge a book by its cover."

But if that was supposed to explain anything to DaCosta, if it was supposed to bring to mind some buried reference, he missed it. What did ancient history have to do with finding the rebel mercenaries? He shivered in his uniform, silently cursing the desert and its extremes. "Still, we're taking an awful risk here. If Sandrock doesn't come—"

"Oh, he'll come, all right." An eerie smile crept onto Waltfeld's lips, and he lowered the binoculars and handed them to DaCosta. "Or someone will. Because these men understand the way the game is played. They've backed themselves into a corner. We have the roads surrounded. There's only one direction in which to make their move now and that's our direction. And when they make it they will lead us to their base of operations. What could be more simple than that?"

He took a sip of coffee, closing his eyes as he savored it, and once again DaCosta was left to wonder if the colonel really understood his concern.

"And what end more honorable?" Waltfeld continued. "It's high time OZ reevaluated the way they deal with the Arab States. The Order could learn a lot from such a worthy opponent. Not least among which how to make a damn fine cup of coffee."

The silence stretched on for a long moment as he took another leisurely drink.

"DaCosta, by any chance, does the name Raberba ring any bells to you?"

DaCosta hardly had to consider it. "No, sir, I can't say that it does. Why?"

"Hm." Waltfeld stared into the distance. "Perhaps no reason."

Distracted by his question, DaCosta forget to recheck the time. In comparison, Waltfeld seemed to know exactly when the seconds counted down to midnight, as if he ran on a very precise internal clock.

On cue, the humble town in the distance that all but blended into the desert around it was brilliant with fire. The lieutenant watched through the binoculars as the bombs planted in separate sectors of the city flashed and exploded in balls of flame, lighting up the night. Despite that they had been set to the same moment, they still managed to take their turns detonating, in a random, organic manner. Pillars of smoke rose in the aftermath. He imagined there to be panic in the streets as property and livelihoods went up in that smoke. With that in mind, he turned to look at his commanding officer and was somewhat taken aback by the fascinated grin on Waltfeld's face.

"Sir, won't Banadiya protest if we issue the order to attack while the city is vulnerable like this?"

"I'm not that heartless, am I, DaCosta?" the colonel said. "I don't intend to attack a bunch of evacuees with mobile suits. There would be no honor in that. The purpose of this exercise. . . ."

He trailed off and fell silent.

A minute passed and felt like many more. DaCosta began, "Sir—"

But Waltfeld cut him off with a signal. "Do you feel that?"

He felt nothing. "Feel what, sir?"

"They're coming out. Like ants out of an anthill."

DaCosta spoke without truly thinking of what he said. Simply what rose to the top of his mind.

"For revenge?"

"Precisely."

But the lieutenant saw nothing but dunes separating them from the town. Still, his superior must have noticed something. He reached for the radio handset, sitting himself down heavily in the seat.

"Attention, Specials," Waltfeld said into the receiver, a lazy edge creeping into his voice with the promise of action so late at night. "The bait has been set. Assume formations and prepare to engage the enemy. Red and Green teams will form the front lines and provide steady fire. The goal is to bring the rebels further out and into the range of the Tragos' beam cannons. Use extreme caution until we've had a chance to thin their numbers that way."

Brief affirmatives came back from the Leo and legged Tragos team leaders.

"Blue Team, keep it tight on the northerly route. The rebels may try to use it as a loading ground while we're distracted on the western side. I don't want any ground troops slipping by we'll have to hunt down later."

"I copy," came the Aries leader's reply.

Thumb off the piece, Waltfeld said as an aside to his lieutenant, "Now we sit back and wait for the fun to begin."

On the front line, like on the hill where their commanding officer sat, the night continued to tread into the silence of the desert. The faint tremors beneath the earth of a moving mobile army went unnoticed to the pilots of the Order's suits, who could not detect them over the thrum of a legged Tragos' engines, or the ubiquitous electronic noises inside an MS cockpit.

Crouched in the lee of one of the hover variations of his suit, Red Leader adjusted his goggles over his helmet's straps and waited for either radar or the clearness of the air to alert him to the enemy's presence.

Yet despite the still air, strangely calm after the tempest of that morning, none on the Order's front line was able to spot the doors of the underground fortress grinding open. Only small, random swirls of dust dislodged by the breeze in the distance obscured the blinking red lights of the town's small airfield beyond.

"Where are they?" the pilot of the suit beside him hissed to himself in frustration.

"They should be appearing on radar any moment now," Red Leader assured him. "Hold your fire 'til they're in range and wait for my signal."

As though on cue, the sky to their left lit up.

"This is Blue Leader!" came the frantic voice of the Aries pilot. "We've engaged the enemy! I repeat, Blue Team has come under attack at the northern road!"

Unleashing a stream of rapid chain rifle fire, he opened the thrusters in reverse to avoid a volley of fire, pulling higher into the sky. A couple of his teammates were not so lucky, one hit dead-center by a rocket-propelled grenade, the other plummeting to the ground as it ejected a damaged engine that exploded a moment later. The rest who were airborne continued to shower the brown suits below them with missiles, but the Maguanacs' blast shields held well, their fire undiminished.

Blue Leader cursed under his breath, and heard the colonel's voice in his ear. "Did you see where they came from? Which direction?"

"They came from all around," Blue Leader told him. "That's all I know, sir. It's like they came up right out of the ground. Like frickin' moles."

"Out of the ground, huh. . . ."

As Waltfeld trailed off, the Aries pilot felt his patience starting to wane. "Sir, we need reinforcements bad. The hover Tragos we have here won't be enough to hold them off. We need Leos."

"That's a negative, Blue Leader. You'll have to make due with what you have—"

There was a loud roar as one of the hover Tragos assigned to his group exploded, the heat of the beam cannon mounted on it sending the arcing flames high into the sky.

With frustrated, jerky movements, Blue Leader switched channels and issued his commands quickly. "Blue Three and Four, protect the Tragos near the cliffs. The rest of you, retreat to the plain and try to scatter the enemy. Be on the lookout for the first sign of air transport. If you see any, shoot them down."

A dozen reply lights blinked blue-green on his display in affirmation, and on the screen faint black shapes like bats moved across the night sky. He alighted beside the other remaining hover Tragos, bracing his legs as he hoisted his chain rifle into position. "Blue Six, you're with me."

During that time, the troops on the western road had been occupied by the first rounds of mortar fire. The roar of them pierced the night, throwing up great clouds of dust where they hit the earth that obscured the air around the ranks of Tragos and Leos. But the Order's troops held their ground. The shapes of the Maguanacs' suits could barely be made out in zoom. The red lights of their cyclopean cameras blinked off and on through interference the same as those of the airstrip as they approached. There was no sign of where they had come from.

Ranks closed, both sides exchanging rifle fire when they were able through the gaps in their shields, whittling away body parts with excruciatingly little progress. A few Leos dropped. Whether their pilots had been hit or the machines were simply incapacitated, there was no time to stop and check. They retreated steadily into the dunes, the rebels following them seemingly clueless as to what awaited them.

"Hover Team, on my mark—" Red Leader said.

He was cut off as the sound of a jet's engines roared low overhead. He looked up, and recognized the wide-bodied craft that soared over their heads from out of the southeast as one of the Order's own mobile suit carriers. But he could not believe any of their crews would be insolent or stupid enough to be abandoning the field in the midst of battle.

In their own cockpits, the Maguanacs saw the takeoff and held their breaths as the aircraft rose. OZ's mobile suits for a moment seemed stunned, unsure what to make of seeing their own vessel streaking over their ranks. Then—

"Quatre here," came the voice over the mercenaries' com channel. "Sandrock and the rest of us are all safe and sound. We'll proceed on to the checkpoint ahead of you."

The cheers from the Maguanac soldiers that preceded that bit of good news almost drowned out his "Godspeed," and some of the tension of the battle was lifted from their spirits.

"Well, Maguanacs?" Rashid's voice boomed, his renewed confidence clear in it. "You don't want to disappoint Quatre."

"No, sir!" Abdul grinned.

Some meters away, Auda's suit clenched its giant gundanium fist. "Now for a little payback."

"Red Nine, Red Thirteen, come in," Red Leader tried. But there was no answer from the guard he had left stationed near the MS carriers. "Damn," he muttered to himself. "Hover Team, fire at will! Fire!"

Beside him, the bombardment suits rocked back on themselves and made the ground tremble with every blast, kicking more sand up into the air than their hovering platforms already did. When the blasts connected inside the Maguanacs' ranks the suits in front were lit with golden halos of fire. Still they advanced. Behind his blast shield, the Tragos pilot planted the suit's wide feet and drew its beam sword, anxious for first contact.

"Red and Green teams, prepare to engage the enemy at close range!"

—= o =—

Another voice was cut off in a wave of static over the radio, cursing the hover Tragos with his last breath. Rashid called their men to rally—their troops were already beating back the enemy on the northern front—but the main line did not seem to be faring as well as they had hoped.

"Damn it!" Slamming his palm down on the panel, Quatre pushed himself bodily from the copilot's chair and dashed to the cargo hold of the plane. "Turn us around!" he yelled over his shoulder.

Exchanging a glance with the pilot, Beni raced after him. "Quatre, where are you going?"

"We can't just sit up here and do nothing!"

"But Rashid gave us specific orders to get you and Sandrock out of the area."

Quatre ignored him, however, and climbed into Sandrock's cockpit. Strapping himself in, he yelled through the open hatch, "Beni, they have hover Tragos down there! If we don't do anything, our men will get slaughtered! They already are!"

Beni knew he was right, but he didn't see that there was anything they could do.

For a moment, the same sense of helplessness grasped Quatre. Then his gaze fell on the weapon that had been left by the Specials aboard the aircraft: a hover Tragos' beam cannon. He could hardly believe such a fortunate turn of events, but it would take more luck yet if he was to make his rapidly forming plan successful. "Turn us around!" he shouted again, louder, and brought the gundam online.

When the banking began to subside, Quatre raised Sandrock to its feet. He picked up the massive beam cannon and hefted it in the gundam's hands as he stepped to the aft of the plane. Connecting the weapon to his own suit's system, he was able to charge it to near full capacity. He knew Sandrock wouldn't be able to tolerate the cannon's power demand for long on its own reserves, and that he may only get one or two shots off. But one or two would be better than none. The real trick would be making sure they counted for something.

He hoisted the gun awkwardly onto Sandrock's shoulder. "Okay, lower the ramp!"

"Yes, sir!"

A smile brightening his face as he began to see where this was going, Beni did as ordered.

With a creak Quatre could feel through the gundam's legs, the ramp eased open, the ghostly purple dunes and rocks of the desert opening up beneath him. Though it quickly passed, Quatre felt a dangerous rush as though at any moment he and his suit would plummet toward the earth. As they moved across the sky, the pilot easing them lower, the dust kicked up by the battle and the golden flashes of beam rifles moved slowly into view, dark shapes looking like miniatures inexplicably brought to life from the high altitude. Sandrock followed the flashes of beam cannons to their sources with its cameras, zooming in and confirming the rosy suits for its pilot.

Quatre aimed carefully and fired. He felt a powerful jerk as the cannon let go a volley, pushing upwards on Sandrock's joints. The air before him in the hatch opening lit up in a brilliant flash of white, then he heard the whir of the suit's generator recharging the cannon for another shot.

Below them, as Sandrock faithfully showed, the dunes lit up in bubbles of red fire and dust, explosions that could only be caused by the intense heat of the beam cannon's blast connecting with the intense heat of a Tragos core.

He aimed at another group and fired again.

The Maguanacs on the ground needed no one to tell them who had fired the shot. Such quick thinking, and stubbornness to defy orders, could have belonged to none other than Quatre. Auda paused as he tore a Leo's arm from its heavy ball socket to look up into the sky. And Abdul felt his spirits lifting already as he moved through the enemy's ranks, ramming them off balance with his thick shoulder armor, slashing at the suits' weak points with beam tonfa. Despite the deadly energy of the gunfire around them, there was an unspoken agreement among the two and others to make an effort to spare the Special pilots where possible. They were not so sure they would have done the same thing in the deep desert, however, far away from any civilian city.

As the battle waged on, the number of OZ suits still operational dropped, but it still appeared to any observer that, with their far greater numbers from the start, they had nonetheless succeeded in gaining the upper hand. After their quick advance, encouraged by the assault on the hover Tragos, the Maguanacs were now forced to start their retreat. But it was not entirely with regret.

Under the barrage of laser fire, the air had become hazy. The stamping of hundreds of heavy mobile suit feet had created chaos out of the landscape, churning up clouds of dust and sand despite what light winds there were to sustain them, like silt churned up from the ocean floor. Into that chaos, the Maguanacs shot flares. But instead of simply lighting up the space around them, the flashes reflected off the smoke and individual grains of sand like they were mirrors. The Leos who had activated night vision in hand-to-hand combat went still as their pilots struggled with their temporary blindness.

And in that confusion, the Maguanacs retreated back into the desert night.

"Colonel!" said Blue Two in his late team leader's place. "Carriers taking off to the north of Medina, sir! They're using the road as a runway!"

He tried to lift off the ground in order to proceed after them, but the left leg of his suit refused to fold itself away, and the suit shifted as the damaged leg engine faltered in takeoff.

"Let them go," Waltfeld told him instead.

"But, sir—"

"It's all right. They've already been defeated here."

Leaning back in the passenger seat of the jeep, the colonel let the wind blow hard against his face and through his unruly hair. The smell that reached his nostrils was acrid and bitter, like a whiff of strong coffee: the smell of burned ozone. So the infamous Sandrock had not shown his face, but neither had Waltfeld been proven wrong on all counts. Medina was ready for OZ's embrace, the rebels that had haunted it exorcised. To that extent, at very least, he had succeeded. "Rounding up the survivors and finding that base are our main concerns now," he told Blue Two. "The others are no longer a threat to us."

A wry smile touched Waltfeld's lips. "From this point on, they will only be a threat to themselves."

—= o =—