GW Lightning Arc – SIDESTORIES – A Distant Place Chapter 2
Fandom: GW AC
Characters: Zechs
Warnings: References to male-male affection.
Summary: Endless Waltz summarised, Zechs having to decide how to deal with the future. In my story, MM is 15, which simply seemed to make more sense.
KhalaniK and Karina, thank you for your encouraging reviews! I hope you'll keep writing too!
xxx
It seemed all very complicated but Une's briefing was cool and clear, delivered with calm detachment. Relena had gone on a diplomatic mission to L3 to boost the colony's profile. The place was supposed to have been completed, all major building works come to an end, the colonists contentedly working away.
There had been sufficient intelligence to add a note of concern to the report that had been prepared by diplomats posted on L3. There would have been career-conscious wrangling even over this short analysis of the situation on the colony, buried deeply in the twists and turns of bureaucratic jargon. Couched in smooth, cautious terms that to Zechs sounded like shellfire, but it hadn't fitted the political sensitivities. The Earth Sphere government needed to demonstrate peace and goodwill were working and all was well.
He listened in silence as Une talked, guiding him through the most recent Preventer measures to conter the threat of unrest on L3.
"They still managed to blindside us," she said, looking pale and angry. "There aren't many ways that this could have happened."
"Intercepted communications, demotivated staff." He met her gaze, and for a moment they studied each other. "I think I know how that feels."
"I'm not debating that." She laid her hands on the battered wooden desk that held a telecom unit, a computer terminal and a holograph. Her office had not changed – a plain, unassuming room with a large window and off-white walls. Hidden in plain sight, it could have belonged to any of the teaching staff at the Academy.
"Tell me what you think."
"Excuse me?"
"I heard the official version. It's not the same, is it?"
She interlinked her fingers. "There are signs... you know that the Winner corporation owns all rights to X-18999. They've been prospecting up there and pioneered ore-extraction on nearby MO-II. L3's administration claimed rights, backed by the Barton Foundation. The Bartons have business interests and want to expand, clashing with Winner. They were refuted. The legal case has stalled because they couldn't pay their lawyers and couldn't find anyone else with the expertise and will to take on the corporation's legal team."
"Let me guess – they wanted to offer mining rights for trading privileges?"
A small, confirming nod. "There have been strikes, miners' unrest, squabbles between managers and the corporation."
"And now the satellite is crawling with mercenary troops."
Une sat back in her chair. She was pale, her face blank. "Tensions are running high – it's a powder keg and the Barton Foundation is ready to put a spark in. Relena was unreasonable. We spoke via the secure line, and I advised her to postpone the diplomatic mission. She left without notifying us. I sent Yuy, Maxwell and Barton to follow her but I am not sure where they are at present."
"You didn't know?"
"We're all human," Une said, heat rising to her cheeks. "I don't know yet what happened – whether it was deliberate, whether staff at the spaceport were intimidated or if we just made a stupid mistake."
Zechs glanced out of the window over the park at the heart of the Academy complex. It was a grey day, dripping with rain and heavy with clouds. Back home, he thought, it had been snowing. Christmas was close. "Has she been in touch?"
Une's nails whitened. "She called me from the shuttle. She said she wfanted to talk to the L3 administration to see whether negotiations could be resumed. They were about to call a general strike, and from what we know the corporation troops won't wait – they're ready to jump space and crush the strike and the colony." She drew a heavy breath. "You might not know but the gundams had been sent for destruction. They've been recalled."
"How about giving the colonists what they're after?" he challenged quietly, echoing a question from the past.
A long silence filled the space between him and Une. She rose and went to look out of the window, standing sideways – always the cautious soldier, Zechs thought – and apparently detached.
"Let me speculate a little," she said at last, without turning. "We haven't got enough proof but I think there are funding issues, media and public opinion to consider. Winner is paying for much of the terraforming work on Mars. His corporation has invested in inter-colony transport infrastructure and the latest technology to bridge space quicker and cheaper than we can at the moment. He is providing scholarships to attract the best scientists to the corporation, and there is a lot of research to improve the use of the Interplanetary Transport Network. He has a stake in the Earth defence industry. And perhaps more difficult than anything, he has aligned himself publicly with the pacifist agenda. He's reinvented himself, pushed money into charitable donations, education and public works on the colonies, and his papers and news channels help his corporation to make it all look nice." She linked her hands behind her back, and he saw that she was wearing her sidearm with the security catch snapped back. "On the other hand, we had sight of the colony administration's accounts. Their trade balance is better than they want to make us believe."
"That's the nature of bargaining, isn't it?"
"There is no sign of where the profits went."
"They could have been embezzled for private gain."
"Yes, of course. But nobody with the means to do that got rich fast, where personal assets are concerned."
Zechs leaned back in his chair, settling his hands flat on the table. "What does it have to do with me?"
"Relena has her own mind," Une said. "And she has the support of the more idealistic members of the Earth Sphere government. But you have the skills we need to deal with this situation. I don't believe there will be peaceful solution."
"I've been unwell for some time. I haven't recovered."
"I want you to go and see for yourself." Une returned to her seat, her posture mirroring that of Zechs. "There will be time for talks later." A small pause, then, "What does Operation Meteor mean to you?"
xxx
"They only need to fire the colony's main thrusters on the side facing away from us." Treize pointed the tip of his pencil at various points on the complicated technical schema that rotated in the faint glow of the holographic projector. Hovering just above the thick glass table of his staff room, the mini-colony cast a ghostly shine on his and Zechs' faces. "We wouldn't even notice because we cannot observe that side. Our sources led me to believe that in spite of attempts at rationing there is enough fuel to nudge it away from its Lagrange Point into the gravitational field of Earth."
Zechs chewed his lip. Treize looked through the transparent model at him. "Well?"
"I don't know."
"What does that mean?"
Zechs glanced up. "Why would they want to do that? Bomb Earth with an entire colony? They'd kill a lot of their own people, right?"
"The idea of sacrifice," Treize lectured, his voice clear and sharp. "Of having nothing to lose. Give people something to cling to, and they'll think twice."
"Then why not do that? I read the briefing. They sound desperate. Isn't it reasonable what they're after?"
Treize switched the projector off. For a moment, Zechs couldn't see in the sudden darkness before the office brightened again. In the pallid glow of the overhead striplights, Treize's face looked almost white and surprisingly haggard.
"Yes," he said. "It is."
xxx
There was no time to travel to the colony. The next hours were a blur of increasingly panicked newscasts, a flood of transmissions arriving via the secure Preventer network. And then everything seemed to happen at once. Skirmishes on the colony and its satellites. Barton's volunteers getting ready to fight – no nervy crowd but well-trained, educated soldiers, fired by ideals and the unshakeable belief that justice was on their side.
Zero in his mind, Zechs went through a stand-off with Dekim Barton, coolly recalculating his options when he realised after blowing up the resource satellite that Barton's Serpent MS were on their way to Earth. A shower of new model mobile suits, spewed by MO-III from its earth-near orbit, taking everyone by surprise.
While he was returning to Earth, Une briefed him on the Preventer pilots – Trowa Barton killing his alter ego, Chang Wufei howling abuse at his colleagues, his mind caught in an eternal loop, his last confrontation with Treize. She said that Yuy was keeping Chang in check and that there was no trace of Winner. She mentioned that Noin was on her way in, and that the incoming Serpents were lighting the sky up like fireworks. Her voice was calm and collected until she said, "He should not have died, not for this. What a terrible, terrible waste."
There weren't many choices left.
In the end, Zechs thought as he settled in the pilot's seat of Tallgeese III, it should have been predictable. All the boardroom wrangling, the unrest on X-18999, the protests on L3 and the first wave of mobile suits heading towards Earth – a smokescreen to disguise the real thing. It all boiled down to one thing – war.
He listened to the airlock closing, the hissing of the cockpit seals, and watched the control lights on the console blinking to life. Not much had been changed in reconstructing the giant suit, and when the pale green image of Tallgeese's neural network started to glow on the large central screen, he leaned back and drew a slow, deep breath.
He felt the suit's thrusters fire up; the ground crew's chatter died away as the countdown started, and then he gasped as he was weighed down by the g-force of the takeoff. He could feel his hands sweat, his fingertips tingle. Even through the filters of his breathing apparatus, the tough plastic cover of the seat smelled familiar in a sickening way. Images drifted through his mind – the silent bloom of the explosion that sprayed Treize's suit into space, the blinding agony of his dying moments, relayed with unfeeling clarity by Zero's neural streams. The bliss of release and the oblivion of a kiss. The brilliance of a smile and the relentless drive, the glow of hope drowning in rivers of blood...
Zechs felt the surge of the Zero system but this time it was different – instead of resisting, he welcomed it. Slowly, deliberately, he let it soak into every fibre of his body, grow into his mind, his thoughts, take over his reflexes. The dull pressure in his head subsided into an empty, glassy kind of clarity. There was no more room for anything but fight.
xxx
It was over much quicker than he had expected – the rush of the fight, his determination not to kill if he could help it, Noin's backup that felt as solid as it had always done when they had been in the field. For a short time, he came back to life, among the fire and smoke, the violence and fury of the battle. The miserable end of the coup in the presidential palace, with Barton's bullet missing Relenaf and hitting his granddaughter instead.
Zechs did not want to know. He had seen some of the first images of the palace, filmed by a pair of frontline reporters. It had raked up memories he found hard to deal with.
He took leave immediately after delivering Tallgeese back to Une.
xxx
The girl looked smaller than he'd imagined. Her arms, caught in restraints and stuck with a pair of drips for water and medicines, lay thin and pale on the sheets of the hospital bed. Sitting on a chair against the wall, Zechs had nodded off until a flicker of the system in his mind startled him awake.
She was staring at him, her eyes clear and brilliant blue. "I hate you," she whispered.
He folded his arms as if to shield himself. "Yes," he murmured.
She tried to stir but gasped in pain. "I can't feel my legs."
"Would you like me to call a nurse?"
"Screw you. Why are you here?"
Zechs rose to close the door, then went back to his seat. "There are guards outside."
"What do you want? Interrogate me?"
"No."
She relaxed, her gaze drifting to the white ceiling. "What a stupid ending..."
"Wasn't the whole plan stupid?"
She shrugged.
He leaned forward. "Would you like some water?"
"I don't take anything from traitors."
He swallowed hard and sat back, leaning firmly against the cool wall behind him.
"You of all people should have known," she went on, talking in a flat monotone that cut him more than sobs or tears could have. "But you fucked everyone. I learned about you. You left OZ, you left White Fang. My father died because of you. You're a coward."
"It's easy to judge," he said quietly, unable to keep his tone smooth.
"What happened to my grandfather?"
"He is dead."
Her fingers clenched, digging into the white sheets. "What's going to happen to me? Will I get a trial?"
"I believe there will be a closed court hearing. They're likely to be lenient because of your age."
She snorted. "You think I'm an idiot? They don't want me to talk to the press. They don't want us to be heard. Perhaps they're going to lock me away somewhere in an institution, who knows?" She turned her head, her eyes wide and burning as she stared at him unblinkingly. "You know it's true, don't you?"
"I asked for some tests," he said, his voice hoarse. "It wasn't difficult to compare the results with Treize's military records."
A smile spread on her thin face, sad, triumphant and spiteful at once. She watched him, a gaze so familiar, so precociously bright, that for a few agonising moments he felt as if she could see right into his mind.
"Why did you save my sister?" he asked, feeling as if he was grasping for straws.
There was a small pause, before the girl said, "I don't know. I wish I hadn't."
xxx
He had gone back to Mars for some time, escaping the press and those who were busy restyling him as the new hero of the Earth Sphere, the repentant, reformed sinner. The Winner corporation had its own way for restoring order on X-18999, and L3 was crawling with Preventer agents. He listened to the news in the privacy of his room at the Mars Academy until one evening he realised he was crying. Slow, silent, bitter tears.
He went home to the estate. The house, white and still, received him into its calm, empty space. News were a distant echo here, something he could tune out if he wanted peace. Christmas was over, and a new year about to begin.
He told the remaining four staff to take leave until after the celebrations in the village were over. He gave them money, a small premium to top up their wages, and a donation for the church the Khushrenadas had attended. "I'll be there, later," he said, "when I'm ready. I'm tired now, I need some time alone." It was more than he had said in months, but they were forgiving people and seemed relieved he could still speak at all.
When they had left, the stable hand taking the shaggy little horse and the sledge, the women riding the motor sledge, the house lapsed into total silence. Outside, snow piled up on the windowsills and covered the meadows, the forest, as far as he could see. He wandered through the cold, still corridors and opened doors to let the white light of the winter day in.
He moved his bed and settled in Treize's room where he turned on the old record player he had kept from the things that had been in the library. The ancient vinyl disc began to spin, slightly scratchy, and a heartbeat later the gentle, melancholy melody of a Russian folk tune rose into the stillness.
xxx
Warm lips touching his ear, a damp, breathy kiss, a quiet laugh. "Ay, Miliusha moy... why so gloomy? I'm yours. For eternity and beyond."
"You're good at grand words. I can't tell anymore when you're lying to me."
"Then let me show you exactly what I mean..."
xxx
Zechs closed his eyes and lay still, letting his memories take him.
xxx
THE END