Earth Sphere, Kiev region, Soviet Imperial Territory.
0700h local time, three days after Narshe.
When Cecil came to, he was surprised and not a little disoriented. Surprised, first and foremost, to find that he was alive and that his whole body was in one piece, as evidenced by the dull ache that enveloped it. Surprised, second, that he was not in chains, but rather in soft cotton pajamas and beneath a woolen blanket, his head resting on a soft pillow. Wherever this was, it was no Soviet gulag.
His wounds had been treated, and while he was sore, and stiff, his body had survived largely undamaged. He was disoriented, though. How long had it been? Where was he? What had happened to-!
Pilot Six! Where was she? Where were Biggs, Wedge, and Celeste? Had anyone else made it out alive? The last he remembered was the Gundams fighting. Had the Arm Slaves retreated by then? What was that facility? The more he thought about what had happened, the more his head had hurt. Pilot Six had come into contact with that thing in the ice, and then everything had gone mad.
No, that wasn't quite right. Things had been mad before that point. Cecil considered the mission more carefully, and no matter how he turned it over, there had been only one point to that mission: to terminate one or more members of the team, and of course the team as a whole. The mission had always been a suicide mission. There was no way Imperial intelligence had failed to realize that Russia's Bolt Gundam was stationed there. The explosion of Yamsk-10 had been meant from the start to draw out the Bolt. Magitek Armor was skilled, there could be no doubt, but even four MAs, three of which were customized, could not hold out against an army of Savage-class ASes and a Gundam-class MF.
But who? Cecil's thoughts went first to Kefka, who was certainly violent enough to set something like this up, but then what of Pilot Six? She was his prized possession. He surely would have known that she would not have returned from that mission, even if she hadn't come into contact with whatever was in that laboratory. The Emperor, for all that he had grown distant, could never have done this to Cecil, either. The man might never trust him again, and at this stage Cecil felt the same, but he would not waste his time on such subterfuge. Perhaps one of the Princes? But why?
There were too many angles. It could have been someone hoping to off Pilot Six, himself, Celeste, hell, for all he knew it might have been to kill Biggs or Wedge. The whole mission as an obvious set-up, though, and the King of the World's Fifth had given the order to burn a city to the ground. Cecil knew that Celeste had been ordered to do something like this before, but he could not accept it, not having seen it with his own eyes. Even know the flames and screams of Narshe echoed in his ears, and they mingled with the cries of the Mysidians.
It was too much! How could the empire he had served all his life, the King who had raised him like a son, have let this happen? Had this been what happened in Area 11? Was this the true face of Baronia, the crown he had polished all his days? Was that shine the stain of blood, the glisten the fuselage of Knightmare Frames and Magitek Armors?
What a fool he had been! To trust so blindly, to allow so completely such evils to happen. To imagine himself a prince on a white steed, carrying the wisdom of the Kingdom of Light to all the world. What a foolish, childish dream! There were no princes, and no Kingdom of Light. Not in this day and age.
Cecil was removed from these thoughts as a mechanical door whirred open.
"Oh, you're awake!" exclaimed a man. He looked to be somewhere between forty and fifty, with dark brown hair parted down the middle, hanging in a way that suggested it had once been a bowl cut. He dressed in a blue lab-coat, khakis, and a conservative red shirt. "How are you feeling?"
"Like Hell," Cecil admitted. "Where am I?"
"Ah, of course. Allow me to explain! I am Doctor Steve Toros, and this is my ship, the Hover 'Cargo. We're a crew participating in the Fight. And you, my friend, are a soldier of the Baronian Empire, am I right?"
"How did you-?"
"Your accent, for one," Dr. Toros said. It was only then that Cecil noted that Dr. Toros himself spoke with an accent he could not quite pin down. He wagered from the name, though, that the man was perhaps from the Mexican States of the American Union. "But also your mech."
"My mech is not a Knightmare Frame, though."
"No, that's true, but the Red Wings model has been in the news for several days now, since the events in Mysidia." Dr. Toros raised a hand to calm Cecil before he could speak. "I'm not here to judge you. There will be plenty of time to worry about that after you've recovered, my friend. Ah! Speaking of, your friend is doing well, too. You can see her as soon as you're able to stand."
"Celeste?!" Cecil stammered.
"Why no, unless I'm mistaken, the young lady introduced herself as Terra."
Cecil did not know the name, but he made a guess, "A few years younger than myself, green hair?"
"Yes, that's right. Can you stand now? I'll take you to her, if you'd like."
Cecil's stomach turned for a moment, then he accepted. "Yes, take me to her."
Dr. Toros helped Cecil to his feet, and then out of the room and down the hall and to another. The Hover 'Cargo was not by any means a particularly luxurious ship, but compared to the military ships and lifestyle Cecil had hitherto known, it was spacious and comfortable beyond counting. He tried not to stare as they walked.
When they opened the door to the room, Cecil got his first good look at Pilot Six, the girl named Terra.
She was perhaps the plainest woman he had ever seen. Cecil, raised in the Court of the King of the World's Fifth, was used to women with extravagant hair styles, magnificently bombastic dresses, surgically augmented bosoms, and a dazzlingly array of cosmetics, and cosmetic enhancements. Each and every one of them was a tapestry, a painting, a symphony, a positively stupefying piece of artwork and testament to the thousands of years of cosmetic sciences which women had engineered in the pursuit of absolute beauty.
Consequentially, each and every one of them was more false than the last. Indeed, never before had Cecil felt such hatred for the painted women of the House of the King. Not a one of them escaped the instantaneous rage that coursed through his subconscious. None of the whores known as Queens and Empresses and Consorts. Not even the Lady Marion, who had been the jewel of the King's life. Not his daughters. Not that wretched and cold Cornelia, not her pious and sanctimonious sister Euphemia, and not any of that other gaggle of clucking hens. Not even, in that moment, his dear Celeste.
This woman, though, this "Terra," sat stripped of the jewels and paints which Charles G. Baronia and his world had adorned her. A young thing, no more than eighteen, not even finished growing, slender, her bosom hidden almost entirely by the shapeless night-gown in which she was dressed, her hair, still brilliant green, hung at the sides of her head in the messiest, sloppiest of ways, her eyes bleary from slumber, her face bandaged in several places, her lips thin and unattractive. Indeed, she was as ugly as a girl of her age could get without gaining several tons and losing all her teeth.
Yet the more he stared at her, and all this happening in yet the same instant as he first laid eyes upon her, the more he could not look away. The more he could not deny that she was beautiful. In a better state of mind he might have clarified that she would be beautiful, given time and a good amount of health, but as he was, he could not help but think her beautiful. Her eyes were the deepest shade of violet, her skin, where it was not cut or bandaged, looked smoother than polished steel. Her body looked as if she had not eaten, but then, given the hell they'd just passed through, he could only find her more attractive for it.
It was not beauty in the sense a man normally considers it, but the beauty of a diamond discovered yet in the mine. The potential, the danger, the sense of blood pumping in one's ears, the fluttering of the heart, the turning of the stomach. Filled as he was with hatred for all of Baron at that moment, Cecil could not bring himself to tarnish the girl in his eyes.
"Good morning, Ms. Branford," the doctor said, "Your friend here is awake, and, well, I'll leave you two to talk." Doctor Toros produced a chair and helped Cecil into it before excusing himself from the room.
For a full minute, they only stared at one another, neither one willing to speak. Cecil sat unsure of what to say, and Terra, for her part, remained emotionless as she stared into his face. It was she who broke the silence, though. When she did, her voice was hoarse, as if she had been screaming for a long, long time.
"I know you." She said.
Cecil, not sure how to reply to this, only affirmed, "Yes, you do."
"You are a captain, aren't you? I have seen you at the King's Court."
"Well, yes. I was your captain recently."
"Yes. You are my captain." Then she twitched slightly and asked, "What are your orders, now?"
"Orders? I—let's not think in terms of orders now."
"I don't understand."
"Doesn't it bother you? What we did? It bothers me. It bothers me."
"It does not." Terra answered, her voice hardening. "We followed orders."
"But we killed those people!"
"Yes, we killed them."
"And you don't feel anything about that?"
"Feel?" She blinked, then said, "I don't feel anything. I followed orders."
"And if someone ordered you to kill those people again, would you?"
"Are you ordering me to kill someone, captain?"
"No! I'm asking if you would kill anyone just because you were ordered to!"
"Orders are to be obeyed, aren't they?"
"And if you were ordered to kill yourself? Could you do that?"
"Yes."
"Would you want to?"
She blinked again, and then, after a maddening pause, asked, "What do you mean, 'want'?"
Cecil groaned, then slumped back in his chair. "Nevermind. We don't even know each other."
"I know you," Terra repeated.
"No you don't."
"Yes I do," she insisted. "You are Lord Captain Cecil Harvey of the Baronian Red Wings, Dark Knight, and adopted son of the King, His Majesty, Emperor Charles Gestahl Baronia."
"And who are you?" Cecil asked.
"I am Terra Branford."
"That's it? Not going to mention that you're Kefka's consort? Most women would."
At the mention of the name Kefka, the girl's face showed emotion for the first time. Fear, abject and raw, flashed across her features, and she recoiled as if she had been slapped. She began to shake as she asked, "What is a consort?"
"Something like a friend," Cecil said, worried for the girl.
"I am not Kefka's friend!" the girl shrieked. She leapt from her bed and beat Cecil's chest impotently. Sore as he was, the girl's strength seemed absent, and she could not do more than strike him weakly as she alternated between sobs and screams of "Go away!" and "It's not true!"
Cecil, unsure of what to do, forced the girl off of him and, expending more strength than he thought he had, forced her back onto her bed. Her body kept shaking as she wept.
"We killed them all," she whispered. "Those were my orders. Orders must be obeyed. But now I feel so wrong."
"We killed them all," Cecil said. "Those were our orders, and we obeyed them. And that was wrong."
The door opened, and a young woman with long hair ornaments burst in. "I heard shouting!" she exclaimed, looking at Terra, and then, to Cecil, "What did you say to her? Do you know this girl?" Cecil opened his mouth to respond when the woman said, "Then you know she was under a Slave Crown. Poor thing had it on for God only knows how long! Her memories and emotions are a trainwreck. I knew you Baronians were jerks, but that takes the cake."
A Slave Crown!? Cecil thought. Slave Crowns were the lowest form of torture. The Earth Federation and Colonies alike had outlawed them almost as soon as they'd been invented. Originally conceived of as a new and non-chemical alternative to truth serums, the Slave's Crown robbed the wearer of the capacity to refuse commands. Ignoring the way such a simple metallic circlet could wreak untold havoc in the world, they had been outlawed for the simple fact that extensive usage of one could cause serious trauma to someone's mind, usually leaving them unable to react emotionally or forgetting things for a short period of time. The longer someone wore the Crown, the longer these effects lasted.
Cecil tried to speak again, but the woman already had him on his feet and out the door. "That's it, mister soldier. Out you go. Terra needs her rest, and I'm not letting the kind of people who'd put a Slave Crown on her head anywhere near her!"
The door shut and locked behind him, and a confused and weary Cecil stood with nothing to say. Below him, in the Hover 'Cargo's meeting room gathered the rest of its crew. Dr. Toros was seated at a table in the corner, playing with two model Zoids. Zoids being a class of animal shaped mecha used almost exclusively in the Fight. Records of their inclusion dated back almost to the Fight's beginning, but most Zoids were considered a second generation of Mobile Fighters, and as Dr. Toros' favored kind of athletic mecha, they were the staple on the ship.
At the table in the center of the room, on which was a screen displaying the terrain around the Hover 'Cargo, sat the other three crew members. The first was the Hover 'Cargo's chief pilot and an apprentice mechanic to Dr. Toros: Jaime Hemeros. He was the youngest member of the crew, at no more than fifteen, but knew how to pilot a Zoid of his own. Opposite him sat the veteran fighter for the team: Brad Hunter, a man with shaggy hair and a dour disposition that did not make him a favorite at parties. Between them sat the newest member of the team, one Bit Cloud, who, previously a junk dealer, had recently filled an opening left by Dr. Toros' son, Leon.
Although Jaime was trying to discuss the upcoming battle strategy against their scheduled foe, the Ukrainian Mammoth Gundam, Bit and Brad seemed more concerned discussing the recent arrivals aboard the ship.
"I don't trust him," Brad said. He'd been in a bad mood since hearing that Cecil had woken up.
"You don't trust anyone, though," Bit complained.
"Says who?"
"Me. You didn't trust me a few weeks ago, either."
"I don't normally trust thieves."
"I wasn't stealing! I was borrowing!"
"Whatever. This is different. He's Baronian military, isn't he? That's Magitek Armor down there in the hangar, doc."
"Yeah, ain't it impressive?" Bit asked, "Doc managed to repair two suits that are top secret military weapons!"
"It's stupid is what it is," Brad pointed out, "What if they decide to get in them and torch us?"
"And do what?" Dr. Toros asked, "Start an explosion this close to a registered Battle site in Soviet territory, so far away from their home? They'd never make it out of here alive."
"You seem sure of that."
"Don't you watch the news, Brad? That's Magitek Armor in the hangar."
"Yeah, I know. I said that."
"The same suits were behind the sack of Mysidia."
"You think they did something here, too?"
"Isn't it obvious? Our match gets canceled the day before we fight the Bolt Gundam, the Russians won't let us anywhere near the place, and we find that red Magitek Armor dragging the black one through the snow, unable to even stop."
"You think they picked a fight with the Bolt Gundam?"
"Why else would the Russians pass up a chance to fight us? Team Toros is hardly a high ranking team, and against a Soviet-made Gundam we'd be slim pickings."
"Which is why we should be planning for the up-coming fight!" Jaime cut in. "The Mammoth Gundam might not be the Russian's, but it's still part of the Soviet Empire. We don't stand a chance without a good strategy!"
"Here's the strategy," Bit said, "I go in with the Liger Zero, Strike Laser Claw this thing in the face, and we make these Ukrainians look like a bunch of chumps. Easy money, no?"
"That's your plan?" Jaime moaned. "We're doomed."
"If we live that long," Brad started in again. "We've seen the faces of two undercover Baronian military, as well as their Magitek Armor, which Doc has since taken the liberty of examining. They'll kill us to keep their secrets, you can be sure."
"I wouldn't bet on that," Dr. Toros put absently, "The girl had a Slave Crown on. I don't think she's that loyal to the Emperor if that's the case."
"Oh great, because mental instability is so much safer."
"And the young man doesn't seem the type to kill us for the sake of secrets. I have high hopes for him."
"Doc!" Bit whined, "You're not looking to replace your ace already, are you?"
"Not at all, Bit." Dr. Toros assured him, "But having two suits of Magitek Armor on our team would give us an incredible edge, don't you think?"
"You can't be serious, doc," Brad scoffed, "If we use Baronian pilots—and that's a mighty big if—the Empire'd find out in a day and we'd be facing the Knights of the Round, and not just some Russian Gundams."
"What a negative view of things," Doc said, "We only need to disguise their suits and illegally register them as MFs. Nothing to it, really."
"Oooh, doc," Bit cooed, "that's so underhanded of you! I like it!"
"Plus, they're really cool looking, don't you think?"
"That's your real reasoning, isn't it?" Jaime complained.
Dr. Toros' phone began to ring before he could defend his position. He answered it, and after a brief conversation, excused himself, saying, "Leena's booted our young Baronian friend from the girl's room. I'd better go and see what's up."
Ten minutes later, he found Cecil Harvey staring out at the countryside, gazing at nothing in particular. The doctor did not speak as Cecil explained himself. He only provided a much-needed audience for thoughts pressing to be spoken.
"I've known for a while now, to be honest," Cecil began. "That the Empire was not what I believed it, and that the Emperor not who I believed him. I did not want to believe that I knew, but I did. His Majesty has grown voracious, his desire for power and for war are only matched by the apathy he displays for both once he has acquired them. Gone is the man who took me in and raised me as his own. Who had time for an adopted son amongst so many trueborn.
"At his request, I took up the dark sword, and became his Dark Knight. The sword who would lead his men through hellfire and bloodshed for the glory of our people. When that was no longer enough, I learned to pilot a Knightmare Frame, and then Magitek Armor. How naïve, I was, to think that that was all it would take to please him.
"But pleasing him meant the world to me. He is the only father I have, and as one of many of his children, and not a legitimate one at that, his attention and his praise were things I desired dearly. So dearly, indeed, that for him, I pledged to do anything.
"When he asked me to raze Mysidia to the ground, to slaughter its people and steal their treasure, I did it. I had reservations. I'd heard about Area Eleven, and before my eyes a scene of similar circumstances played out, save it be the blood was on my hands this time. My faith was shattered, but I could not admit it.
"And because I could not admit it, I went to Yamsk-10, to Narshe, and killed it as it slept. I murdered countless Russians, regardless of who they were, while they were sleeping in their beds, and I did it because that man asked me to do it."
Cecil turned to face Dr. Toros, tears in his eyes, he said, "What am I supposed to do now? The worst part is that I did it all myself, of my own volition. That girl, Terra, she's killed as many, if not more than I, but never once of her own decision. That's the kind of man I am. I've served the people who would do that to her freely, and I never lifted my hand against them. What sort of man does that make me?"
"The sort of man it made you," Dr. Toros replied after a short pause, "would rightly be called a monster by many." He sighed, and added, "But if you ask me, you're asking the wrong question. You know what sort of man you were. The question of what sort of man you are is determined by what you do next. So, Mister . . . ."
"Harvey, Cecil Harvey."
"Well, Mr. Harvey," Dr. Toros said, placing a paternal hand on Cecil's shoulder, "What are you going to do now? Who are you going to be? If you were wrong, what are you going to do to fix that?"
