Down the Desert
The Archangel slowly settled alongside the pier, up against jury-rigged fenders. As the personnel hatch opened and Kira stepped out along with the other Reds, he found himself overpowered by the acrid stench of actinic smoke. He gazed in wonder up at the black, glassed hills of the countryside. It had taken a day for the captured assault ship to make its way back to Orb. The captured Earth Forces mechanics had even been released to coax the ship to its maximum speed.
But now that they had arrived, they found a massive search and rescue operation underway by the surviving ZAFT and Orb forces. The targets of the orbital strike had been the three main cities of Orb, and with luck the bulk of the military forces, at sea or refitting at Onogoro Island, were protected from the awesome destructive forces of the weapons. Many of the citizens, too, had found protection in the maze of shelters running deep into the volcanic rock of the island, but a few had still been on the surface, aiding in the aftermath of the Earth Forces attack and more had been trapped when the entrances to their bunkers had bee sealed shut. Even still, the damage was profound: the large and modern cities of Orb had been completely obliterated, rendered a charred mass of lumps and scrap, littering black impact craters.
"Sir!" The five pilots turned to see a Green approaching them quickly. "Are you Athrun Zala of the Le Creuset team?"
"I am," replied Athrun, surprised at being addressed especially out of the group.
"I have orders from Commander Le Creuset. You and your fellows are to use your mobile suits to aid in the rescue efforts under the command of the ZAFT fleet commander."
"Thank you," said Athrun, taking the paper copy of the orders. He turned to the other pilots and shrugged. They quickly jogged back into the Archangel.
"What are those?" asked the blonde as five strange mobile suits arced over her head.
"Ah, those are the G-Weapons we, erm, liberated from the Earth Alliance," said the ZAFT fleet commander. "But shall we get back to what we were discussing?"
"Yes, of course," she replied, turning to sit at the table beneath the awning. The various officers also standing waited until she settled to sit. "Well then, I suppose you'll want use of the Kaguya mass driver?"
The commander raised his eyebrows, surprised out how direct the new leader of Orb was being.
"Is something wrong?" she asked.
"No, nothing is wrong. It's just… your father was a little more subtle, Representative Athha."
"Well, we hardly have time for political games, do we?" said Cagalli Yula Athha, flicking at the gold braid on her tunic shoulder.
"Right… Well, yes, it would be very helpful in recovery operations and in withdrawing from the area."
"If that's part of your requirements, then that's fine," said Cagalli, shrugging.
"Oh, no, Ms. Representative. We're not putting any demands on our offer of aid," said the commander hurriedly. "It would just be helpful. The transport ships will be here in a day anyways, whatever you may decide. This is as much an action by the Oceanic Union as ZAFT or PLANT."
"Fine, fine," said Cagalli.
"Will you be waiting here for some time, or will you go with the transport ships?"
"The government will join the transport ships for the time being, before returning to organize reconstruction." She paused and looked directly into the older officer's eyes. "But I need to go into space. There are… things of Orb that I need to secure." The officer flinched at the cold hatred in her eyes. "And we have unfinished business with the Earth Alliance."
"What's that?" asked Nicol as they flew over the VIP delegation on the ground, indicated by the amount of gold braid dangling from the shoulders of the assembled officers.
"That's the fleet commander… and I don't recognize that girl," said Athrun, frowning at the zoomed-in portion of his view screen.
"I've met her before… on Orb right before the incident," said Kira also examining his screen.
"That's Cagalli Yula Athha," said Yzak scornfully. "Didn't any of you bother to read the political brief before the operation started? Hmph. I guess not. Her father, Uzumi Nara Athha, was the former Representative of Orb. He died along with most of the old government during the bombardment. They refused to leave for some stupid reason."
"So is she the new Representative?" asked Kira.
"Probably, but who cares; we have a mission, in case you'd forgotten," replied Yzak.
Dearka, flying point in the Buster, lowered the Guul to the ground where indicated by a ZAFT Search and Rescue Team, his fellows landing beside him.
"Mobile suits, this is Alne Riebert of the Galway Team. We need you to excavate ahead where we began the excavation. There's a 5000 person shelter behind there."
"Roger that. Get your people out of the way," replied Athrun. The five mobile suits drew beam swords and set about the task of carving and carting away solid rock. The extreme heat from the kinetic energy of the Earth Force's orbital bombardment had caused a lot of rock to melt, and nearly 20 meters of it covered the shelter's entrance. But the mobile suits were more than up to the task, and soon they were backed off to let technicians activate the manual override on the large hatch.
Whatever doubts Kira may have had about piloting the Strike again after his discoveries on the Archangel were soothed as he watched the thousands of people he had helped save stream out of the mountainside. He smiled, momentarily forgetting the killings he had been carrying on his conscience for the past two days.
"Alright, we have another team that needs help to the north," radioed Athrun. "Let's go." The mobile suits bounded back to the Guul fliers and soared off.
"Reds to the bridge. Reds to the bridge." Kira snapped out of his light sleep and threw on his uniform tunic. They had just returned to the Archangel after 10 hours of rescue operations and all of the pilots were exhausted, but they nonetheless were all present on the bridge five minutes later.
"Commander Le Creuset?" said Athrun in surprise as he exited the lift next to Kira.
"Athrun. Mr. Yamato. You have done very well," replied the commander. He looked around at the bridge. "This is quite an amazing ship, don't you think? Finally capturing it was very well done."
"Thank you, sir," said Yzak, who had arrived with Dearka and Nicol ahead of Kira.
"Might we ask what you are doing here, sir?" said Nicol.
"You may," replied Le Creuset with a grin. "I am here to escort Ms. Clyne back to the PLANTs. You, as her rescuers, will accompany me as well. You will need to have your mobile suits ready to leave this ship in thirty minutes. There is a heavy cargo shuttle waiting for us at the Kaguya driver to take us into orbit, where we'll meet the Vesalius." He cocked his head and looked around at them from behind his mask. "That is all." As one the pilots saluted and turned to exit the bridge. "Mr. Yamato." Kira turned. "Should you wish it, please feel free to bid goodbye to the captive Earth Alliance officers you knew. They and this ship will eventually make it to PLANT as well, but not for quite some time." Kira nodded, saluted again, and left the bridge.
"Ms. Clyne. Ms. Clyne."
Lacus murmured in her sleep, rolling over in her bunk.
"Ms. Clyne, please wake up."
All at once, she sat up, looking around.
"Ms. Clyne, we'll be arriving at the ZAFT Military Station in one hour."
Blinking sleep out of her eyes, Lacus was finally able to focus on the speaker.
"Oh, thank you Mr. Yamato," she said to the brunette. "Please tell Commander Le Creuset I'll join him in ten minutes."
"Of course." Lacus watched the young man nod and turn, leaving her borrowed quarters on the Vesalius. But just before the door, he stopped and his head drooped.
"Ms. Clyne… I wanted to thank you for before… for when… on the Archangel," he said, without turning. "I was… you were… well, thank you."
"You are very welcome, Mr. Yamato," Lacus said, smiling at his back. "I hope you are feeling better now." The young man nodded slightly. "Well, you'll have to stay with Athrun at my father's estate when you have leave," she said happily. "Any friend of Athrun's is a friend of mine."
"Thank you," said Kira, turning to give her a small smile.
As he left and the door finally slid shut, Lacus arched her back, stretching as she stood up and walked toward the small bathroom attached to her quarters. Quickly dressing and brushing her hair, Lacus left her room and made her way to the bridge. Having had three days to learn the layout of the warship, she only took one false turn before finding the bridge.
"Commander Le Creuset, we will be arriving soon?" she asked of the tall blonde sitting in his command chair ahead of her. She felt a faint chill ripple down her spine as he turned to look at her. Steady, Lacus, she thought to herself. He's done nothing wrong… yet.
"Imminently." His smooth tone almost made her shudder again. As much as she appreciated being rescued, having to spend three days around this man was not something she liked. He had been perfectly attentive and polite, but there was something about him, something she could not put her finger on, that disturbed Lacus. Shaking off such thoughts, she smiled at him.
"Will we be taking a shuttle from there?" she asked.
"Yes. You and Mr. Zala will leave as soon as we dock. But I and the other pilots will join you on Aprilius One as soon as the ship is secured," he said.
Still smiling, Lacus moved forward to look at the main view screen, which was displaying the star field ahead of them, dotted with the much larger shapes of the PLANTs ahead.
"This view is almost worth protecting by itself, isn't it?" asked Le Creuset, with an almost-smirk.
"I'm afraid I don't think any mere view is worth war, Commander," said Lacus. She quickly hid a grimace, reprimanding herself for her momentary lapse of manners.
"Of course, Ms. Clyne. You are correct," said Le Creuset, the smirk now writ large on his face hidden from her view behind her back.
Lacus continued to silently watch the colonies growing slowly larger for several minutes. It is a very comforting sight, she admitted silently. But then she thought of Kira and what she had heard of the destruction of Heliopolis. This is certainly not worth war by itself. She continued to think of Kira, until the lift door to the bridge whooshed open.
"Ah. Here is your escort, Ms. Clyne," said Le Creuset. "If you'll gather your things, we will be docking within 30 minutes."
She nodded her understanding to him and entered the lift. As the doors closed in front of her, she momentarily found herself wishing that it was Kira, and not Athrun, that was beside her. He's your fiancé, Lacus, she scolded herself. Why are you so obsessed with that young man anyways? Not being able to answer herself, her interest as uninformed by actual knowledge as her dislike of Le Creuset, she tried to banish such thoughts from her mind for the time being.
"We'll see you at the barracks later, right?" asked Nicol.
"Yeah," said Kira, nodding at the friendly younger boy. Dearka nodded at Kira as well and took off after Yzak, who was already making his way out of the arrivals lobby.
"Alright then. See ya." Nicol ran off too, catching up with the others, as Kira set off in the opposite direction. While the other pilots would be taking the high-speed elevators to the Transient Officer's Quarters of one of the ZAFT installations on one side of Aprilius One, Kira would be heading to the other side to meet Athrun… and Lacus. Ms. Clyne, he thought. She's Ms. Clyne to you. You've spoken to her for all of thirty minutes, and that while you were having a break down. And she's your best friend's fiancée. Sighing, he tugged at the high collar of his Red uniform and entered the queue for the elevators.
The large, glass walled elevator car was empty of all but him and a middle-aged women with two girls, both apparently just a few years younger than him.
"How are you young man?" she asked, smiling. "On leave?"
"Yes," he said, surprised at her politeness.
"My husband's the logistics officer for the Galway Team. What team are you with?" she said.
"The Le Creuset Team," replied Kira. "We worked with the Galway Team briefly on Earth."
"No way!" said the elder of the two girls in surprise.
"Really," said Kira, taken aback by her vehemence. "They were working on rescue operations in Orb."
"No, no. I mean, you can't be a part of the Le Creuset Team!" said the girl. "You're not Nicol Amalfi, and you're certainly not Athrun Zala, Dearka Elsman, or Yzak Joule!"
"Umm… I know?" said Kira, a little unsure about the girl's forcefulness.
"Lunamaria!" said the older women sternly. She smiled up at Kira and extended her hand. "I'm sorry. I'm Eliza Hawke and these are my daughters, Lunamaria and Meyrin. I'm afraid Lunamaria gets a little excited about these things."
"But Lunamaria's right," said the other girl. "There are only four pilots in the Le Creuset Team."
"Yeah, the other ones died at Heliopolis." Kira's expression fell upon hearing those words, but Lunamaria didn't notice and continued. "They just released the information yesterday, so you have to be lying."
"Lunamaria, that is enough!" said her mother. "I'm very sorry, Mr…"
"Yamato. Kira Yamato." Kira tried to clear his expression of pain to smile back at her, but couldn't. "I'm… I'm a new member of the Le Creuset Team. And I… I know all about the deaths of the other pilots."
"Lunamaria, apologize to Mr. Yamato right now," said her mother. "You've clearly upset him about his friends!"
"It's nothing. I didn't really know them," said Kira, with a weak smile.
"But there really are only four pilots!" insisted the girl. "Which mobile suit do you claim to pilot?"
"I… I pilot the GAT-X105 Strike," said Kira. Forget about it. She's just a young girl. She's not blaming you for their deaths.
"See!" cried Lunamaria triumphantly. "The Strike was the mobile suit that they couldn't capture!" She glared at Kira accusingly while Meyrin nodded her head in assent.
"That's right, until Athrun captured me… I mean, it," Kira said, dejectedly.
"That's enough, girls," said Mrs. Hawke, noticing Kira's expressions. "I'm terribly sorry, Mr. Yamato. The information we receive is usually old. It has to be declassified, so as far as the general public knows, the girls are right. But I'm sorry for their rudeness. You obviously are hurting and they should no better than to act like they are," she said, glaring at the girls.
The elevator slowed and stopped and the four passengers exited in awkward silence.
"Well, Mr. Yamato, it was nice meeting you," said Eliza.
"And you, ma'am," replied Kira.
"Kira!" The call interrupted Lunamaria, who was just opening her mouth with another comment. Athrun was walking up, dressed in civilian clothing. "Are these all of your bags? You know you'll be at the Clyne's with me the whole time, right?" he asked, gesturing at Kira's belongings.
"Yeah, that's it." Noticing Athrun's curious look toward the Hawke's, Kira spoke up. "We were just talking in the elevator. Her husband is the logistics officer of the Galway Team."
"Galway Team, Galway Team…" said Athrun pondering. "Oh, yes!" He extended his hand with a friendly smile. "Athrun Zala. Please tell your husband we appreciated his team's work during recovery operations." Not noticing the shocked expressions on the girls' faces, he turned. "Kira we've got to go, we'll be late."
Walking across the wide lawn of the Clyne estate, Athrun sighed. He had watched Kira in the car with his peripheral vision since they had left the central shaft, and his friend had sat blankly staring the entire time.
"Kira, what is it?"
Kira turned and looked at Athrun, a puzzled look on his face.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"I mean," Athrun said, sighing again, "Why do you look like someone just killed your puppy?"
"Oh." Kira was silent for a moment, a brooding look on his face. "It's just that… one of the girls in the elevator… She said that the information on the Battle of Heliopolis was just released. She thought I was lying when I was said in the Le Creuset Team, because the report said that there were only four pilots in the team… after the others were killed."
Athrun nodded, understanding now.
"Kira, I'm sorry but I talked to Lacus and your Captain Ramius after what happened on the Archangel." He shrugged. "It sounds like everyone understands. They're not blaming you for any of those things that happened. I mean, Yzak is the only one still holding Miguel's death against you."
"But being forgiven for the deaths of two or three or even twenty people doesn't matter!" insisted Kira. "It made me realize how many people I have killed. I can't even imagine how many died in those ships we destroyed at Orb, Athrun. How many lives we ended. And it was unnecessary."
"No, Kira, it was necessary. They would have killed everyone in Orb," said Athrun.
"But we didn't need to kill them instead," replied Kira. "We could have disabled the ships, destroyed their communications equipment."
"This is war! Kira, they would have killed you in a second if they had the chance. When it gets down to it, it's kill or be killed," Athrun said heatedly.
"It sounds to me as if you don't want to be in ZAFT anymore."
The two friends turned and found Lacus and an older man approaching them.
"Mr. Yamato, I would like you to meet my father, Siegel Clyne," said Lacus.
"It's an honor to meet you, sir," said Kira, taking Siegel's extended hand.
"And you young man," he replied. "I've heard a lot about you. First, the young Coordinator in the Strike. Then your exploits with your fellows at Orb. And now from my daughter, about her rescuers."
"It wasn't…" began Kira.
"I'm afraid, as her father, I'm going to have to disagree that her rescue was 'nothing,'" said Siegel with a smile.
"But father, could you have Kira, I mean Mr. Yamato discharged from ZAFT?" asked Lacus, blushing a bit at her slip-up.
"I would, if that is what you wished, Mr. Yamato." Rubbing his temples, he sighed. "But I'm afraid I don't have that power anymore. Athrun, soon enough, by tomorrow probably, your father will become Chairman."
"What?" asked Athrun, floored.
"It's traditional that the Chairman pass on his seat when he is opposed in a measure by nine or more Council members," he said calmly. "Oh, I could retain my position, but your father could introduce a motion of no-confidence and force a vote throughout the PLANTs, but I won't let something like that happen, especially in a time of war. No. By tomorrow your father will be the Chairman." He turned to Kira with a sad smile. "And that means I don't really have any power anymore, especially not enough to allow a talented pilot to be discharged at a time like this."
"I understand, sir," said Kira.
"But let's discuss this later," said Lacus. "Dinner will be served soon, so Athrun, please show Mr. Yamato his rooms."
The group walked slowly up to the large house.
A/N: Lunamaria and Meyrin will be actual characters once we get to the Destiny timeline portion of the story. The elevator exchange was to show two things, hopefully: that the Le Creuset Team is pretty famous, both for having Le Creuset and the sons of four council members as pilots, and that information about these things is released to the general public of PLANT. This is supposed to become a bigger issue later, but of course I may change my mind. As is, this is a bit of foreshadowing. I hope this was somewhat evident from the writing, but I'm a little insecure about how well I'm writing. A small taste of KxL in this chapter; more to come. I haven't said this before, but I do really appreciate all of you who have commented on the course of the story. As I say on my profile page, I've been writing fan fiction and original fiction for a while for personal enjoyment, but I decided to start publishing things here to get some feedback. It's really gratifying to hear some of the things you've said. And I'm not just looking for "Good work. More soon, please." I am completely, 100 open to criticism: if I make a Mary Sue, call me on it; if I make someone wickedly OOC (i.e. beyond the bounds of possible character development), call me on it; if I'm just doing a really shitty job of writing, well, tell me that too. And feel free to speculate/suggest where the story is/should be going. At any rate, thanks again to you all.
