Soldier of OZ: Walker's Account

Chapter 53 – Lady Une

The shuttle used by OZ's ambassador in Outer Space was an elegant, swept-wing civilian design that had been popularized by the political elites in L1 in the late 'Eighties. Covered entirely in gleaming white anti-radiation coating, it had a wingspan of a just under forty meters and relied on two banks of conventional liquid-fuel engines, one under each wing. It was not particularly fast, nor was it armed, but it was particularly resilient, as no such spacecraft had been completed since AC 189 when the Winner Corporation bought out the factory and put a halt to production for whatever reason. The ambassador may have had the only operational unit left.

Though it was dwarfed by the Ganymede-class battlecruiser it was docking with, it was too large to enter either of the Europa's mobile suit hangars, and instead linked with a special umbilical tunnel extending out from the ventral reserve catapult to the dorsal port on the shuttle.

Lieutenant General Gwinter Septim III, President of the Republic of Noventa, found it strange that OZ had chosen one of its own warships, rather than the presidential residence or other government buildings on L1-D-120, as the location of the armistice signing. As the military courier ship he'd taken came about and docked with the Europa, he began to understand why: attached to a pair of towing vessels, the EASFS Africana, the largest carrier in military service in Earth Sphere, was being secured by the crews of two more warships, the Tethys and the Callisto. The flagship of the Noventan Fleet, the crux of its naval superiority, surrendered with minimal damage. How depressing.

The Alliance delegation—they'd taken to calling it that among themselves, since the continued existence of the republic itself was uncertain at best—consisted of himself, his vice president Vice Admiral Walter Lewis, and Lieutenant General Gennaro, his new chancellor and provisional military chief-of-staff. Septim's previous head-of-government, a civilian by the name of Chen, had been killed in a shelter collapse in Old Town. His previous vice president, Brigadier General Ventei, had resigned following the catastrophic failure of his Capital Defense Plan.

They were joined by a detail of six presidential guards, probably unnecessary but permitted by OZ.

"The damage looks quite minimal," Gennaro observed calmly when he spied the ship through an uncovered bay window at the end of the corridor.

"You can thank our ex-defense minister for that," Septim replied gruffly.

"Sirs, if you'll follow me," their guide explained. The nine of them followed her passed rows of bored-looking sailors and to a conference room and looked like she was about to open the door when a message came over her earpiece. "Chief Representative Nguyen and Lieutenant Colonel Une will be with you shortly, if you'll wait here, sirs," she explained quickly before taking a guide rail and vanishing down the corridor.

They waited in the microgravity, surrounded by large, well-dressed honor guards. The OZ sailors, naval infantry and mobile suit crews, by comparison, looked rather shabby, their more-elaborate uniforms either missing or poorly-kept, though they did make an effort to stand at attention as they passed.

"Which one do you think we'll get?" Lewis asked quietly. "The Lady or the Ambassador?"

Ventei wouldn't have asked, Septim thought. "I don't know, Walter."

Gennaro said nothing, looking utterly relaxed in the micro-gravity. Of the three men, he was the only one who'd come close to seeing actual combat during the Battle of D-120, during the last hurrah of the Republican Guard forces he commanded.

"Let's hope we get the good one," Lewis muttered.

Septim sighed deeply. To him, there was no question of negotiation, and they were in no position to refuse OZ's terms now. The other colonies in the republic had formally seceded, and the last holdouts had been blasted out of their holes in the torus superstructure or had fled from Area 'D' entirely. Whichever persona of the commander-in-chief of OZ Space Forces appeared, it hardly mattered in his opinion.

The sliding metal doors to the conference room opened, though instead of being rushed in, another officer rushed out, this one quite an aloof beauty—had it not been for her uniform, Septim certainly wouldn't have pegged her for an officer. The pale bombshell with long, wavy black hair didn't even seem to notice the leaders of the enemy state as she floated by, compared to the sailors.

"Major, ma'am, if you've completed your briefing, we have a transorbital fighter waiting to take you directly to the Western European Military District," a junior officer announced.

"Then let's go," was the breathy response, putting her briefcase under her arm and, to their surprise, turning to them. The busty major gave the Alliance delegation one unexpected wink before vanishing around a corner, which only Gennaro seemed amused by. Lewis just shook his head repeatedly.

The doors to the conference room opened again and the three men allowed to enter, leaving their bodyguards behind. Septim drifted in first, taking a seat at the end of a rectangular mahogany table, then looked across and gave another sigh, this one in relief. At the other end, sitting in a modified maroon OZ dress uniform with gold epaulets, eyeglasses catching the ceiling lights, was their host.

Gennaro spoke first. "Good morning, Lady Une."

II

The passenger shuttle Flight Lieutenant Walker was aboard was not transorbital in the sense that it required a mass-driver to ascend to Earth orbit, but was fully capable of efficiently conveying up to sixty passengers between colonies and even to Earth in a typical spaceplane configuration. Such shuttles were the most commonly-used of their type in OZ Space Forces, minimum modifications of civilian models that were cheap and efficient to operate, if not particularly fast. Walker wasn't awake to make these technical observations—the chronically exhausted-looking officer had nodded off very shortly after boarding the shuttle and remained completely still since then, to the point where Flight Officer Kaneshiro, sitting next to him, had trouble determining if he was actually asleep or not. After a few hours of speculation, she took the time towards the end of their Hohmann transfer to Earth orbit when passengers could freely move about the cabin to pull off her tunic and stretch her legs. She first passed Flight Officer Mazuri and Pilot Officer Bishop, once again embroiled in some other stupid argument, she was sure.

"I'm telling you, if a resource satellite got hit, we'd be hearing about it. There'd be reports of wounded, troop movements, stuff like that, even if it wasn't our problem."

"There where did all these rumors come from, Ajay? The sky?"

"Well, yes, literally, but you're missing my point. Resource satellites don't just disappear. What have I always told you: things happen for a reason. 'Randomness' and 'chance' don't really exist—it's just a label for things people don't understand and can't deal with. If they knew, they'd cease to be 'random', and to people who do, they never were," Mazuri told him, pointing with his finger to emphasis his point.

Kanna shook her head at both of them as she floated down the aisle.

"Restless, Ms. Kaneshiro?"

The question was posed by an older, calmer speaker. Floating down the cabin, Kanna expertly spun herself over with a single motion to and saw Flight Lieutenant Clarkson resting in his window seat.

"Clarkson-Tai-i…"

Clarkson's lip shifted under his trademark mustache. He was probably the only officer in the cabin who had one. He gestured at the empty seat next to him. "If you're done stretching your legs, take a seat. A big girl like yourself can't be blocking the aisle, what if there was a micrometeorite impact or something else, God forbid," he muttered, his voice remaining even and steady.

Frowning, she floated over to him and sat down in the empty seat. "'Kanna' is fine, Tai-i."

"Well, Kanna, you can call me Clarkson then."

"Where're your wingmen?"

He gestured back at the cabin. "Sleeping in the back. They're an exceedingly restless bunch, hate being buckled in. Can't imagine why any of them became pilots," he explained.

Kanna eased into the empty seat and pulled down on her tank top, the loose portions of which tended to float upwards in microgravity. "Walker-Tai-i has been sleeping this whole time. I didn't want to wake him."

"You can hardly blame him," Clarkson pointed out. "If half of what I've heard he's been through actually happened."

Kanna nodded in agreement, still frowning. Clarkson reach into the pouch on the back of the seat in front of him and began looking through before pulling out a slickly-printed magazine. "Still thinking about that civilian in the spaceport, aren't you?"

That caught Kanna by surprise. When she didn't respond, Clarkson continued. "I don't blame you. It's not something we in Mobile Suit Troops see often. I've got family in the other services, during the Alliance days…every so often they'd be sent on this sort of assignment. Sometimes on Earth, more often in the colonies. And every so often, this would happen."

He bit his lip under his mustache. "I'm not sure if they ever got used to it."

"They still in the military?"

"No, no," he told her. "Smart kids, they resigned after 'Daybreak', took their pensions and lived their lives like normal people. Avoid the politics of military occupations, class, race and so forth."

The two sat in silence, Clarkson briefly stealing a glance every so often at the starfield visible through the window.

"Back when I was in high school," Kanna began finally, sounding a little wistful before pausing.

"Not that long ago," Clarkson added quickly.

She nodded. "When I was in high school, we took our local Ryukuan History course right before the international Alliance history course, as freshmen. I honestly didn't pay much attention, since I didn't like history, but it covered the Meiji Restoration, the annexing of Okinawa, the Pacific War and the American occupation Okinawa was returned to Japan. The professor then skipped a few hundred years until the Republic of the Ryukyus was declared, back in the 'Twenties, and how war was narrowly averted with Japan because the Alliance was formed and we could all coexist peacefully." Her expression twisted briefly. "Of course, even back then, lots of people thought that was propaganda, that the threat of war was made-up so the Alliance could show up as savior and peacekeeper, and that in truth, we had left peacefully and democratically and Japan had no desire or will to fight us. Why else would the republic have voted to rejoin with the State of Japan?"

Clarkson stroked his chin. "Quite a common story—I remember my own parents told me almost the exact same thing happened when they were growing in Scotland. It was enough to suggest that, perhaps, the Alliance didn't have the best interests of the Scottish or the Okinawans at heart, that it was counting on the failure of the postwar territorial lines and the resulting national and ethnic distrust to sustain itself. That was what created the Alliance, after all: the imperfect peace that came from the long war."

"But it wasn't all propaganda. We were different from the Japanese. The Alliance finally got the American bases relocated after three-hundred years, which was the unfair thing that Tokyo did, or at least everyone thought so. Barely any Ryukuan married into the Imperial family, and it'd been years since an Okinawan was elected prime minister."

"So there was something to it."

Kanna sighed. "I don't really understand the conspiracy between racism and politics, I guess."

Clarkson looked at Kanna, lip bristling under his white mustache.

"Do I mind if you I tell you a story, Flight Officer?"

She sat with her legs apart and hands on her knees. "Is it a good one?"

"Oh, I think so. It's the story of how I joined the military. See, my father was a successful entrepreneur, and his father before him, and so forth. But I didn't have the knack for it, so I went to work for an NGO in Georgia, where I'd settled after finishing school. Georgia in North America, I mean."

"What was it for?"

"Vocational training. Some nonsense about the 'skills gap', but it doesn't really matter. The point of the story is that I was hired in this NGO, more than thirty years ago, and I played the part. I mean, we all have parts to play in life, mine was of a 'would-be Southern boy'. Anyway, my superior was this very hardworking, very cunning round woman who was also from somewhere far away, and she had a part to play too. Are you familiar with the cliché of the 'sassy black woman'?"

When Kanna looked confused, he continued immediately. "Anyway, to do her job effectively, she played that cliché. Apparently, it made her more likable and approachable with her clients and so forth. It wasn't her personality at all, I learned that after working with her for some time, but it was useful. And I worked in her office as her assistant for, well, it was more than a year. But at the job interview, I realized she was lying to me—I didn't call her on it, but she was lying to me about the job to make it look better. About two months later, I realized I hated her because she used me as a tool to make her life better, and treated me like a tool."

He scratched his chin thoughtfully. "About four months in, I realized working at that job was killing me, or at the very least, the worse thing I could do to my health, since I'd given up drinking, smoking and anonymous sex," he told her, with a quick look in his right eye that suggested the final item was his injecting some humor into the story. "I knew I had to leave. But do you know what I realized six months in?"

Kanna raised an eyebrow.

"I was starting to despise my Afro-American colleagues. The women mostly, but bigotry is never rational or logical. And I realized why: I hated my supervisor so much that it was starting to cloud my perception of reality. You see, one of the lessons from this story was that bigotry, prejudice is subversive. It cloaks itself in shadows and enters the mind clandestinely. I hated sassy black women, and among the older generation anyway, there were such women in Georgia. I had no reason to though—every other such women, really anyone else I knew was genuinely kind to me, with one or two exceptions. It was my boss, who played that role, who drove me identify and hate."

His face twisted up. "God, I hated that woman more than anyone else, even today. She used to punish me for failing to ask questions, then the next day punish me for asking her a question. She threatened me for not smiling enough at my desk. Things like that, that you could only get away with towards a young person out of a misguided sense of paternalistic 'wisdom'. I don't know about you, but I'd bite down on my service pistol before being that young again."

Clarkson paused and sat back. "What did you do?" she asked.

"I quit the job. Believe it or not, I didn't care for being a bigot, and why become a racist to suffer a job you hate further? The human mind isn't rational, it's organic—associations, duality, preconceptions, those are its bedrock."

"Did it work?"

Clarkson gave an uncharacteristic shrug. "Again, the mind isn't logical. A few years later, when I was in Lake Victoria—this was before the Speciali became a thing—I had to choose between a junior officer's commission and marrying the woman from Nairobi that I cared for. She was black, but she wasn't what you'd call sassy. There were no sassy young people in my generation, it was an outdated stereotype that only existed in romantic comedies and pulp literature."

"And you chose the commission?"

He momentarily gave her a sad look. "Didn't we all?"

"So racism is subversive. What was the other lesson?"

"What?"

"You said 'one of the lessons' sir."

Clarkson pondered that briefly. "If someone offers you a job an hour after an interview, demand time to think about it. If they refuse, tell them to take their job and shove it," he explained confidently. "More a vocational lesson than a philosophical one, and one I learned the hard way. Anyone who presents you with that choice doesn't have your best interests at heart, or any of your interests for that matter. That includes the military." He frowned. "I'm not that good a pilot. I have experience, but I can't compete with you youngsters when it comes to maneuvers and ferocity, that's just a biological fact. The reason I'm still doing this job is because I learned to be selfish, to care about myself. Our culture, and this career, breeds self-sacrificial lambs among the young, because we've always held there's an unlimited supply of young people we can throw into the meat grinder. Young people fight all the wars, after all."

Kanna opened her mouth to object when he interrupted her. "Trust me, it's the dirty little secret of middle age: the old eat the young. I guess since we birthed and raised them, it's easy to justify paying them two-thirds what we pay real people, like what women were paid during capitalism." He chuckled. "Or so I think. Maybe I'm just an older man with crazy delusions."

Rather gregariously, Clarkson presented her with the magazine he had been holding. "Here: get an opinion that makes sense, from a professional paid to do just that." He gestured with a motion of his head. "I think your flight lieutenant is awake. You can float back to your seat and pretend this old man never shared any of his strange, radical delusions with you."

In his window seat, Walker ignored the glowing blue orb of Earth as it grew beneath him, keeping his attention on the fold-out tray in front of him, with a single piece of paper and a pen sitting atop it, waiting. Kanna, apparently up and about, had squeezed back into the adjacent seat, taking care to keep her elbows from jabbing him as she read a magazine copy of L'Alba Nero. OZ's military publication maintained both a daily newspaper and a weekly magazine, the latter being more focused on interest stories than general armed forces news.

Kanna's violet eyes peered at him briefly. "Interested, Tai-i?"

"No, I was just wondering, you seem rather calm. I thought this would be your first reentry."

Kanna raised an eyebrow. "I'd fought in Outer Space before." She leaned towards him, putting the magazine aside. "I think…maybe you're thinking of Dac."

Walker stared at her, his vacant expression making her more than a little uncomfortable. "Tai-i?"

"No, you're right," he said finally. "I'd forgotten, sorry about that."

Kanna cleared her throat nervously. "There's a great photo spread actually, take a look."

"Really, I'm…" he began as Kanna flipped to a particular page and stuffed the magazine into his face. Walker took it, rubbed his eyes, and looked: as she said, there was a professional-quality two-page photo spread of the pilots from the 1st Force Reconnaissance Battalion, as First Recon was formally known, just after the fall of L1-D-120. Flattening out the magazine on the tray, in the center were the forty-two still-active duty pilots in the battalion. In a separate frame to the right was full-body photograph of Flight Lieutenant Anton Petrosyan, as the caption identified him, a tall, handsome man with dark hair who cut an impressive figure in his hunter greens, arms behind his back and boots together. In a separate frame to the left was another full-body photograph, this of someone he recognized: Squadron Commander Ogasawara Emi, in formfitting hunter greens herself. Her face was clear of her famed war paint, her long, thick hair combed as straight as she could manage, assuming a less military posture: chin raised, chest stuck out, right hand on her hip by her ceremonial katana, a familiar expression of mild contempt on her face.

Kanna studied Walker, in turn studying the two pages, albeit not overtly staring at any particular part. "It's a good photo, huh?"

Walker looked up, matching her grin with an unamused but harmless stare. A tone could be heard over the cabin speakers and a voice announced, "Attention all passengers. We will be performing the burn for our final approach and de-orbit shortly, followed by our spacecraft-aircraft transition. Please ensure your belongings are secure and your seatbelts are fastened, as well as returning your tray tables to their upright position. Flight crew, begin pre-reentry checklist."

Folding the magazine, Walker handed it back to Kanna, cleared his tray and folded it up against the seat in front of him. "How are the other two?"

She glanced across the aisle: in the other two seats in their row, F/O Mazuri sat on the aisle, looking only mildly concerned. He's conducted freefall interceptions in a mobile suit before, though at only a fraction of this altitude. He's probably comparing this to that, Walker considered. Next to him, Dac Bishop was pressing himself into his seat cushions, squeezing both armrests intensely, struggling to keep his eyes closed.

"If you're so afraid of reentry, why'd you take the window seat?" Mazuri asked, his voice betraying a small amount of worry.

"Shut the hell up, that's why!" Walker shook his head and covered his eyes with his right hand, and could feel the shuttle rolling lengthwise until Earth appeared to be above rather than below them, and began de-orbiting.

III

The resource satellite 25143 Itokawa had essentially vanished for several hours before the Space Forces Signal Corps—the extraterrestrial counterpart to the communications branch of the terrestrial military—determined beyond doubt that it, along with its mobile suit and naval presence, had been completely destroyed. They relayed all their available data to the General Staff on Barge, which tried to make sense of what had happened based on the limited evidence available, until Lieutenant Colonel Une returned from the armistice signing at L1-D-120 and Chief Engineer Villemont returned from the Marius Crater Works.

"So, what was in Major Cebotari's report?" Tubarov asked. He was genuinely curious, and had been at least been endeavoring to ingratiate herself with the commander-in-chief, if only to be kept in the loop on military intelligence. He could only count on Sedici for so much, after all.

"I'll explain later," Une assured them, as the two stood in one of the command rooms overlooking the hangar that stared the Mecurius and Vayeate prototypes.

"It pertained to the Gundam pilots, didn't it?" He knew that much, but again, he tried to avoid hostility. "If so, we may need to act on it urgently, even if we do have three pilots in captivity."

"You saying I'm too lenient, Tubarov?" she asked, half-teasing and half-threatening.

"No, I'm saying it's too risky to be depending on the abilities of those pilots," he defended himself.

"Those associated with the Gundams still hold a great deal of value. In fact, Zero-One's pilot has already mastered operating the Mecurius. I hate to admit it, but he may have skills exceeding any pilot in OZ."

"Again, relying on him is too risky."

"Don't worry," she ordered. "With the colonies arming themselves, the pilots are completely isolated. They can't make any careless moves."

"With mass production of Mercurius and Vayeate ready to go underway at Luna, I really feel there's no need for them any longer."

Une sneered. "Why do you have it out for them, Mr. Tubarov? You shouldn't be too proud of your jealousy."

He had to resist rolling his eyes. "That's absurd, why would I be…" he began before an alarm tone cut them off. Immediately, every monitor in the room was flooded with new data.

"Colonels, sirs, we've made our determination of what happened to 25143 Itokawa and can confirm that the resource satellite and its associated forces have completely vanished." Une had been briefed on the early findings on the Europa, but had dismissed it as a communications failure.

Damn, I was looking forward to disciplining Usachov. "Is this an unknown enemy?"

"Affirmative, ma'am. Our determination is that it was, in fact, a previously unknown Gundam mobile suit we have no data on."

"Another Gundam?"

"To repeat, all current data suggests that the resource satellite and all personnel associated with it vanished coinciding with a Gundam attack."

"If communications were lost, what leads you to believe it was a Gundam?" Tubarov asked suspiciously.

"We've received a two-part unencoded EHF transmission from the responsible pilot—the first was an audio file where the speaker claimed they would destroy the Colony L1-E-063 next. It was followed by an encrypted image file, classified in nature."

After a brief delay, the transmitted file appeared—a high-resolution reproduction of a design blueprint, its text and numerical data removed, leaving only the schematic designs of a mobile suit. It replaced a diagram displaying E-063's typical colony torus layout and its orbit on the far side of Luna from 25143 Itokawa, along with a projected flight plan for the Gundam.

"We're certain that this is the Gundam Unit Zero-Four."

"He must mean this as a declaration of war," Tubarov growled.

"Very well—we'll respond by sending the Mercurius and Vayeate to Colony E-063."

"No, Lady Une, we should send the mobile doll company we have in reserve," he objected.

"They will remain in garrison in the Lunar Military District," she countered. "Prepare Mercurius and Vayeate for deployment!"

"But…Lady Une," Tubarov tried again.

"If properly used, those two mobile suits have greater firepower than a mobile doll company. Send them out, Tubarov!"

"Uh…right…" he muttered, wavering as Une left. He knew there was no changing her mind, and in truth, he could barely argue her decision wasn't better given the suddenness of it. Scowling, he sat at a crew station and stared at the Gundam design that the pilot had sent. He was no fan of the colonies, but that didn't change the situation at hand. In the end of the day, all of this is the fault of the colonies—or more charitably, a few shortsighted radicals who upon losing decided they'd watch the whole world burn with them—but we may very well have to save the colonies from themselves.

"Colonel Villemont, sir." An officer had entered through the sliding bulkhead door Une had exited though.

The chief engineer looked over at the approaching officer. "Has the reason for targeting E-063 been determined yet? By either yourselves or the Military Commissariat?"

"No sir. We're still waiting on an analysis on the destruction of the resource satellite." The officer looked far more concerned than Une had. "Sir, should we prepare an additional response on our part? That resource satellite was a military facility, but…"

He grunted an interruption. "Did the Ambassador not leave any further instructions?"

"I'm afraid not, sir."

"Typical. If the Gundam pilot did not make his intentions clear to the general public, I doubt us causing a panic will make him less inclined to carry out his threat. If anything, it may only escalate his aggression. Inform the Space Forces General Staff to suppress this—no other military units are to intercept the Gundam. Did they already order an evacuation of that colony?"

"Yes sir!" The officer shrank. "I'm sorry sir, it's just, I…"

"No, it's no matter—we'd have to evacuate it either way, there's no choice in the matter. Continue with the evacuation protocols, and have orders ready to go out to the civil defense headquarters in every colony in First Lagrange Point. Until then, none of this leaves the General Staff." As he stood up, another thought entered his mind. "How many Leo troops are on standby in the district right now?"

"The Entire Third Company was about to begin exercises and could be launched immediately. Fourth Company's Squadron 2 was also standing by, to play a surprise aggressor role in the exercise, so they're ready as well."

"Have them return to their carriers and prepare to launch. If the Ambassador doesn't want manned troops sent out, she can countermand the order herself!" he ordered.

"Yes sir, right away, sir." The officer seemed relieved—as he should. The rank-and-file in the officer corps might not have cared for Tubarov, but at least someone was behaving like a leader.

"I'm not leaving those two alone, whatever the case may be. And find Flight Officer Nichol, he should be on Barge with Major Bremer. Bring him here immediately."

Having pushed the earlier events of the armistice out of her mind, Une paced through the corridors of Barge alone. So, the Military Commissariat's blind guessing was correct. The shapely officer from Operation 'Citadel' that had previously briefed her, who was now on her way to Earth to make the same report to Treize Khushrenada, had told her two things.

First, that all but one of the Gundam designers in captivity had been investigated and associated with a single pilot. The third designer, the German-speaking "Herr Doktor S" with his extremely crude prosthetic nose, had been linked to Flight Officer Barton, the Colonial wunderkind. Ergo, Eva Cebotari warned, Trowa Barton was possibly the pilot of Unit Zero-Three, just as Tycho Nichol had wildly theorized earlier. Une recalled her outlining it simple, plain-spoken terms that even Une would find difficult to dismiss.

Most of Cebotari's comrades in the Military Commissariat would have taken a more accusative tone. Eva didn't seem to care, but nonetheless, Une had her pride. Maybe I always knew Nichol was right.

Second, if correct, that theory left only one Gundam pilot unconfirmed—the pilot of Unit Zero-Four. The fate 25143 Itokawa seemed to support that. Again, the information was Une's to do with what she pleased.

"I'm only a major, a mouthpiece," she said, crossing her arms over her much-larger chest conceitedly. "I hope you'll make your decision based on my comrades' findings."

Une had considered all this previously, when Nichol shared his suspicions. For once, I wish she had insisted.

Now, provided with a convincing argument, her mind wandered to the age difference. She was only four years older than the youngest of the pilots, roughly the same difference between her age and that of Major Cebotari.

"So they've kept fighting, those youths responsible for the changing times."

IV

Oliver Bradley, wearing the uniform of a Space Forces flight lieutenant, cursed his luck. He then cursed Outer Space and, for good measure, that particularly useless Colonial pilot Hilde Schbeiker too.

"We've finished evacuating the civilian population," the navy's liaison informed him, a full lieutenant who had bravely elected to stay behind on E-063, and was now in the colony's military command center. Ordinarily, he would've outranked Bradley, but with his very recent promotion that was no longer the case.

"With its stealth abilities, the enemy could attack from any directions. All forces remain on alert," Bradley ordered. The steady stream of activities, small as they were, kept his calm. "Have each section report in."

"Affirmative sir," a junior officer standing in front of him. "All torus sections, report in."

"Section One, everything's under control."

"Section Two, all under control."

Each of the eight sections in the torus signed off. Inside the torus, the artificial sky had been deactivated, hardly necessary in a ghost colony like that. E-063's tilled fields, a cornerstone of its agribusiness economy along with its orbital agriculture pods, sat unattended, and its cityscape unlit.

"All Mobile Suit Troops, remember that this colony is equipped with a full beam cannon defensive array on the outer surface, and is capable of defending itself from attack in any direction. Use that to your advantage, but watch for friendly fire," Bradley ordered the pilots outside—more Earthling than Colonial than the Space Leo Troops inside, but still rather green.

The naval liaison quietly said what Bradley was thinking. "I guess OZ doesn't want to throw away a half-battalion of veteran pilots."

Bradley signed, but didn't respond. The liaison, who seemed unaffected by all this, turned to him. "You ready?"

"Not as ready as them, but yes," he hissed in admission. He wouldn't have accepted the promotion otherwise. It was the waiting he really hated, but he wouldn't have to wait much longer.

"Incoming transmission over THF," a communications officer announced. "It's being bounced over satellites, trying to ascertain its origins."

"Just put the damn thing through," Bradley groaned. "I want Barge to see everything that happens."

"Yes sir."

As he feared, a young boy's voice came through. "Calling Colony E-063, I am about to eliminate the entire colony. There's no sense fighting back, evacuate at once. Repeat, evacuate the colony at once."

"Sir, we have a heading on a bogey now, it's almost directly above our dorsal facing!"

"Yes, I see it," Bradley growled, as a telescope caught the mobile suit finally, a tiny white speck at current magnification, which sensor officers were trying to correct upon. "You can mark it as a hostile."

"Yes sir."

The troops outside were not so composed. "The Gundam, it-it's here!"

With some work, they magnified further on the Gundam—its resemblance to Unit Zero-One was undeniable, but there were visual differences, with its massive beam cannon raised above its ornately-designed head. "All callsigns, move to intercept immediately! All beam cannons, acquire firing solutions if possible!"

"Gun crews report firing solutions, sir."

Suicide or not, I don't intend to go down without a fight. "Open fire!"

Twenty double-barreled warship-class beam turrets able to fire above the torso's dorsal facing opened fire at full power, and the Gundam broke from its position and maneuvered away. To his surprise, it then fired its vernier thrusters at high power and dropped itself less than a hundred kilometers ahead of the colony's orbit—those beam cannons moved to respond, while a nearby squadron of OZ-06SMS 'Space Leos' moved to engage. Six mobile suits were destroyed when the Gundam split its beam rifle into two separate units and fired in either direction while rotating on an axis. Two more mobile suits, moving under the cover of their destroyed comrades, were hit by vulcan fire and sent routing, though they were not strictly destroyed. Another four, attempting to flank, were caught in a torrent of charged particles from one of the beam cannons.

"Heavy losses, sir! Half of either of the two squadrons engaging have been wiped out!"

"How many times do you think it can fire those beam cannons?" Bradley asked the naval liaison.

"If the Unit Zero-One is any indication, three times each?" he speculated. He was Bradley extended three fingers on his white-gloved left hand, perhaps unconsciously. By now, the remaining mobile suits had regrouped for another attack, and the Gundam was targeted by almost half of the beam cannons on the torus when it reunited its beam cannons into a single weapon, twinkled briefly and then fired directly into the colony.

The navy liaison saw Bradley lower two raised fingers—consciously this time, as he kept his middle finger raised at the primary display defiantly—and very little after that. Precious evidence was available for full-scale space colony destruction, and none by a single beam cannon blast. No one was sure what exactly to expect.

When the beam fire struck the torus just over the equator, it had the effect of a bunker-busting thermonuclear missile. Immediately, all beam turrets ended their own fire: the entire torus began glowing brightly from the point of impact onwards. Everyone in the command center was knocked off their feet, but that was the least of their problems as the cityscape shook harder than during the most violent earthquake in human history. Then the beam penetrated completely through the torus superstructure through to the other half of the wheel, annihilating anything in its path. The atmosphere was dispersed too fast to ignite; whole city blocks squeezed against each other into powder while others lurched inwards and outwards. It wasn't over: as structural integrity was completely lost, the inertia of the torus' gravity-providing spin wrenched the wheel apart entirely just as the bracing arm burned into nothing. As its stores of thermonuclear fuel and oxygen burned away, the torus immediately did the same. In under half a minute, a multi-million tonne space colony was turned into cinders.

The pilot of the Gundam, internally labeled XXXG-00W0 by its creators at the Winner Corporation, surveyed his handiwork once the all-direction display in his panoramic cockpit began to dim, having committed a criminal act unparalleled in the history of warfare. Once he could see again, pilot Quatre Raberba Winner could see something inside his closed helmet, then spoke to himself aloud.

"That's funny—it seems I have tears in my eyes, but I'm not at all sad."

V

Tubarov Villemont was very pleased that he didn't need actual officers from the Military Commissariat on this occasion.

"Play the video from inside the common cell."

"Yes sir." The junior officer commenced the video feedback as Flight Officer Barton, joined by two men from his security detail in the Lunar Military District, entered the common cell shared by the three captive Gundam pilots. One of the pilots began to object after he spoke.

"Speed through this, get to after he leaves."

"Yes sir." In accelerated time, he watched as Barton sucker-punched the pilot in the gut, discreetly passing something to him—not visible to the two enlisted men through no fault of their own, but clearly caught on camera from above. He left with the pilot of Gundam-01 and the door shut behind them.

"I don't think that guy was acting—we have to assume he really has betrayed us."

"We don't need to worry about that, he's one guy we can trust."

"What makes you so sure?" After that, Gundam-02's pilot activated the handheld video projector, small enough to conceal in his palm, that Barton had smuggled to him and aimed it at the wall. After a second of auto-focusing, the camera could make out the schematic data that the remaining captives were watching: new Gundam designs, two of them. It also made out the audio outputted by the projector, as the second pilot grinned like a maniac at the pilot of Gundam-05.

"Duo Maxwell and Wufei Chang: this was given to me by Master O. Use it to kill time."

Tubarov gestured for the video to be paused. "Son of a gun," he muttered humorously.

"They're not very subtle, are they, Colonel?"

"That, or they've never heard of CCTV surveillance," he growled, holding back his laughter. "And the squadrons sent to intercept that Gundam?"

"Audio only, sir, but we have their point-to-point radio communications."

"That'll be fine. Bring it up."

The officer prompt up two separate audio recordings, digitally synced to the time when the force left Marius Crater to hopefully intercept the Gundam. They both began with ambient noise.

"Go forward to when they left the shuttle and switched to their radios."

"Yes sir."

"What is this?" the Gundam pilot in Barton's custody asked.

"The double-carrier for the Vayeate and the Mecurius. We've got these two, and Duo and Wufei's Gundams will both be upgraded. I'm sure the pilot of that new Gundam is Quatre," Barton explained plainly as the officer began searching the name. "The time may have come. Once we join up with Quatre, we'll strike at OZ."

"How can you be sure he's our ally? Assumptions lead to mistakes," the Gundam pilot asked.

"So does carelessness," Tubarov smirked.

"Besides, we're piloting OZ's mobile suits, right? We may have to engage him. If he is a strong enough ally, we might have the combined strength to fight OZ as you say, but if his Gundam lacks power, we'll end up destroying it," the Gundam pilot pointed out rather apathetically. "It's to our advantage for you to remain infiltrated in OZ until you can kill Treize Khushrenada."

Barton gave an unexpected chuckle. "You knew all along?"

"Whatever the case, we'll have a better idea after this battle." It seemed plainly evident that they meant either engaging the Gundam, or killing the troops that had accompanied them.

"End the audio," Tubarov ordered before looking over his shoulder. Behind him, Tycho Nichol stood at ease, a look of great consternation on his face. Tubarov grinned, by contrast. "Well, Mr. Nichol?"

"I see why you sent those Leo squadrons out with them.'

"L1-E-063 has probably been destroyed by now. The same could be said about those Leo troops very soon. Despite my reputation, I'm not particularly keen on throwing away lives, but I think you of all people would appreciate a necessary sacrifice."

He continued before Nichol could answer. "Of course, if Lady Une had simply agreed to my recommendation to send out out those mobile dolls reserves, we could have avoided all this. As usual," he growled.

"And you're convinced she knows?"

"She's delusional, not stupid, Mr. Nichol. She always has been. I used to wonder what kind of man Treize Khushrenada was to keep her company, but I think I know now." Tubarov looked upwards, then gestured at the CCTV camera in the corner. "You know what needs to be done, Mr. Nichol."

"Yes sir, Chief Engineer," he replied with apparent reluctance.

"We recall those troops, and the Gundam pilots will murder every last one of them. This new Gundam completed a Lunar orbit, it's not unlikely his next target will be in the same area. But we can't very well evacuate a dozen colonies. So whatever his next target is will likely be populated."

The junior officer spoke up. "Sirs, the Military Commissariat has a few theories, we can expect Barton to be at the most likely next target." He brought up six more colonies, including one in a rarer double-torus configuration, which he highlighted.

"What makes them think it's this one?"

"Nothing concrete yet, sir, but it is connected with the major shipping and construction conglomerate out of L4, the Winner Corporation."

"Why not attack Barge or our legation at C-102? The resource satellite and that militarized colony, E-063, were both connected to Wincomfleet," Tubarov speculated. "It doesn't matter, without the time of a half-revolution around Luna, a complete evacuation can't be completed, nor can any additional forces be scrambled aside from the fastest cruisers diverted from D-120—and they still won't get there in time, probably."

He crossed his arms over his dark blue Renaissance-style Foundation regalia. "Who knows, perhaps Barton's squadrons will actually do their duty," he said, putting heavy emphasis on the last word of the sentence.

"And myself, sir?" Nichol asked reluctantly.

Tubarov grinned uncomfortably again. "Return to Barge and debrief Bremer. He's always been reliable if nothing else. We'll be observing radio silence on our end soon, so wait for the signal—trust me, you'll know it when you see it. You may be able to save lives yet."

"And you, sir?"

"I don't mind getting my hands dirty." He glanced at the small monitor still relaying video from the common cells shared by the Gundam designers and Gundam pilots. "In more ways than one."

Nichol took several seconds to respond. For a brief moment, Tubarov feared that, against all logic, he'd refuse. He then snapped his heels together and stood at attention. "Sir, yes sir!

When he left, Nichol sighed deeply. That had been a gamble. "Connect me with the master-at-arms please."

"Right away, Colonel Villemont."

The connection took a few seconds. "This is Chief Petty Officer Duro, go ahead, sir."

"Chief Petty Officer, am I correct in assuming that your Space Forces naval detachment is in charge of the 'special prisoners' being held in the district at Marius Crater?" he asked, making it plainly clear what 'special prisoners' he was referring to.

"Yes sir, Colonel."

"Then I'd like you to join me for something. It won't take long, and you won't need a full detail—one additional man should be plenty."

"Understood, Colonel, I'll be there in less than ten minutes."

Tubarov nodded and padded the junior officer on the shoulder after gesturing for a disconnection—he always liked it when people behaved competently.

VI

Walker couldn't help himself—as soon as he stepped out onto airstair that unfolded from the shuttle after it touched down at Chièvres Air Base, he took an unusually deep breath, filling his lungs full of air. Towering behind him as he climbed down, Kanna did the same, her huge chest rising and falling under her uniform.

He almost laughed, first at her, than at himself. "You know, our shuttle's air exchange resumed somewhere in the troposphere, I'm certain."

Kanna grinned triumphantly, hands on her hips. "Oh, I know."

"Come on, Kanna, some of us want back on terra firma," Dac interjected, trying to squeeze past her.

"Remind me why you joined the Specials again?" Kanna teased over her shoulder.

As the two squabbled, Walker put one boot and then another onto the tarmac beneath him and looked around. Chièvres AFB, not far outside Brussels, was another ancient European air base from the days of the North Atlantic Treaty and a more divided world, and had all the associated trappings. Now, a dozen OZ-07AMS 'Aries' mobile suits stood outside one of the larger hangars as an airlifter taxied past them. Another military shuttle, this one a larger transorbital model, was making its final approach. The smell of burning rubber and aviation fuel was more prevalent than the scent of the surrounding woodlands, and he could make out the unmistakable chatter of a military airfield.

I should really build that model Kanna gave me. It wasn't Luxembourg, but it was much closer to home.

"Now what?" Mazuri asked, shoving Dac out his way as Kanna kept teasing him.

Walker turned. "I imagine we wait, Ajay."

"Stupendous," he muttered.

"You know, I really don't mind admitting, I'm glad to be back on Earth."

"I bet you are, sir," Mazuri muttered.

"I even miss the noise," he admitted. "There's something to be said about the dead silence of Outer Space, I don't think it's normal for humans."

"You don't say, sir?"

Walker cupped one of his ears, smiling. "You hear that?"

Mazuri rolled his eyes cupped an ear. "Sounds like aircraft, sir."

"That's not just any aircraft. That's a shuttle capable of supersonic flight, passenger liner. Probably a Tupolev," Walker said, closing his eyes and beginning to picture it.

"Like the one Treize Khushrenada uses?" Ajay replied.

"Well, yes, maybe…" Walker asked, turning to him. He saw Mazuri pointing in another direction, and turned just in time to see a very familiar spaceplane touch down, in white-and-blue diplomatic livery. After it gracefully if loudly touched down and began taxing, it turned to reveal the familiar two-letter insignia of the Order of the Zodiac, both terrestrial and extraterrestrial forces, removing any doubt from Walker's mind.

It deployed drogue chutes. It must have come from orbit. Walker didn't notice Kanna running up to him to get a look herself. Rather than descending on the formation of Aries troops, as expected, the shuttle instead taxied to an isolated motor pool only a hundred meters away, by a pair of limousines surrounded by large, well-dressed enlisted men.

"Was Treize in Outer Space? For the armistice?" Kanna asked finally.

Walker shook his head. "No, I don't think His Excellency attended in person."

A portable stairway was pushed up the forward-most cabin doors which then opened. Kanna, with the best vision of the four, squinted her violet eyes as barely a handful of passengers disembarked, all but one of them in typical private bodyguard suits. "Hey, it's that babe from the inauguration of Seventh Division! From the Yuy Foundation."

"How can you tell?" Dac asked, shielding his eyes.

"Well, how many bijin do you know with only one eye open and wear high heels and cocktail dresses?"

Ajay patted Kanna on the shoulder. "I'm going to say something none of you would expect from me, so brace yourselves: forget the woman in the cocktail dress, look who's getting out of the limousine."

By then, Walker had rooted through his luggage and found his monocular. Peering through it, he looked in time to see a huge man he recognized as Master Aircrew Serrati, bodyguard and adjutant to Treize Khushrenada, circle around and open one of the rear doors. It was less surprising then when he saw His Excellency himself exit, and greet the woman by kissing her hand. The woman remained very still, and the two exchanged words more informally, over what Walker wondered.

"Okay, sir, this hero worship of yours is starting to go a little too far," Mazuri muttered, while pulling a pair of military-issue binoculars from his own luggage. Upon hanging them from his neck, Dac took them from his hands and looked through himself to his aggravation.

"You know, for a woman with the worst lazy eye I've ever seen, she is pretty hot," Dac observed, lowering the binoculars from around Mazuri's neck, referring to her apparent ptosis.

"Agreed. What's-her-name…" Kanna began.

"Yuy, Shalua Yuy," Walker told them.

Ajay peered at Walker skeptically. "Sir, do you know her?"

Walker turned to see Mazuri staring at him, straight in the eye, and responded with an equally skeptical expression. "Excuse me?"

"Shalua Yuy, do you know her?"

"Why would I know someone from the Yuy Foundation?" Walker asked.

"That's not what I asked."

"Why would I know Shalua Yuy?" he countered.

"Well, it's not like you haven't met a lot of other sexy women," Mazuri countered, almost accusingly.

"You know Kanna," Walker fired back. Kanna looked at the two and beamed, extremely pleased with herself.

"Hey, thanks!" she chirped jovially. "You know, after all the 'giantess' and 'amazon' talk I gotta' put up with, it's kinda' nice when someone mentions my amazing legs, butt and boobs," she jibed, not sounding entirely insincere. She picked up her luggage, threw it over one shoulder effortlessly, and turned towards the complex. "Take it in, boys."

Mazuri rolled his eyes hard enough to look like he might be harming himself. "The 'united front', as usual."

Walker was about to reiterate the fact that Mazuri knew the same women he did, by and large, but said nothing as they took their luggage. Dac quickly took off after Kanna, visibly tilting his head over and glancing at her.

"You know what Kanna, you do have a really nice butt. Muscular but nice."

"I told you. Why do you think all my civilian photos have me wearing spandex?" she asked, smacking herself through her white uniform trousers loudly.

"I honestly thought it was a martial arts thing," Dac admitted, causing Kanna to laugh loudly.

Walker remained behind, watching the limousine and its escorts leave in a tight formation. The ease he'd felt briefly upon returning to had gone, and he stashed his monocular back into his bag. He quickly followed after the three, one hand in his pocket, feeling the folded sheet of paper between his fingers.

VII

Units from the 3rd and 4th Company of the 11th Separate Colonial Space Mobile Suit Battalion had descended on the double-torus layout colony, the most populous in the region, now on full wartime alert. Motion-tracking surveillance satellites had followed the new Gundam entering via a utility access tunnel—from there, it vanished once again, tracked by city safety cameras that the military lacked access to.

A lone squadron entered in pursuit, unsure of its behavior. The Gundam had destroyed one space colony, another, more-populous, less-defended one seemed as likely a target. Why enter the first of the two tori when it was capable of destroying it from a hundred kilometers away?

Inside, the found the pilot behaving only more bizarrely: passing at a leisurely pace on-foot through a street between two office complexes, the Gundam rammed its double-barred beam cannon into a nearby office building, but did not fire. It then smashed the opposite building with its shield. It stomped over a public park. Petty but unpredictable behavior.

"Hostile located! The Gundam is here!" The three mobile suits, playing the role of combat engineer, immediately took vulcan fire after spotting the Gundam on the other side of a Ferris wheel. At those distances, autocannon fire was enough to cripple the mobile suits and force them to withdraw, upon which the Gundam blasted its way back out of the torus as abruptly as it had entered.

"Quatre, this is Trowa! Can you hear me, Quatre?"

On Barge, Une monitored the anti-Gundam taskforce—the pair of prototypes and Space Leo troops—along with the status of the colony on the overbridge. In turn, space fortress commander Bremer monitored Une, just as the General Staff had ordered him to do so. Her decision, once he'd learned it, had dismayed him—for some time, he'd dismissed the suspicions and accusations concerning Une as inter-service rivalry or resentment for your youth.

Apparently, Une is exactly what everyone claimed she was. Bremer kept his face as devoid of expression as he could manage. Nichol had come back with warnings, extreme threats soon proven timely. A minute ago, communications had stopped entirely from the Lunar Military District.

"We have no communications from Mr. Barton's Vayeate, or the Leo troops pursuing the Gundam," an officer announced.

"The whole unit, including Mercurius, may have been wiped out, ma'am."

"And the colony?"

"Observation reports that the colony has still be spared from any significant damage, ma'am."

Bremer couldn't take it much longer. Tuning out Une's usual barking, he turned and left for the exit as quietly as he could manage. It wasn't a moment too soon.

"One of the Leo motherships has reestablished communications—we're getting data on the new Gundam over the network now, ma'am."

"Good—have this sent to the Gundam designers in Marius Crater, they should be able to make something of it."

A hesitant pause from the lead communications officer. "But Colonel, at this very moment, we're unable to open communications with the Lunar Military District."

"What?"

Bremer walked away. Tubarov's on the move. This is Nichol's signal. He exhaled the second he was off the overbridge and grabbed another officer by the shoulder. "Have damage control—wait, have all crews on standby. But particularly damage control. And evacuate all personnel working on the outside." He twisted his lip. "And for God's sake, man, put on a normal suit."

The same orders Bremer had just issued were being repeated in different military installations throughout the Lunar Military District. In the No. 13 Marius Crater Factory Complex, Tubarov waited patiently, staring at the massive main hangar. Three lines of mobile suit motherships, each capable of carrying twelve mobile suits, rested peacefully.

"Chief Engineer Villemont, sir, we've just received orders from Fortress Barge to reopen our lines of communication. Your orders, sir?"

As both an acting-colonel in the OZ Space Forces Engineering Corps and, by extension, the branch's chief engineer and design officer, Villemont was the de facto ranking officer on any military industrial facility on Luna.

"Ignore them. We have our orders from the military commission of the U.N.O.— and we will continue to meet the prescribed production goals for mobile dolls. That's our foremost responsibility here."

The officer gave a prompt, capable nod and, just as ordered, remained by Tubaov's side. "Unrest in the Foundation, undisciplined human officers—now we enter the age wherein mobile dolls are our new warriors," he said loud before glancing briefly at his antique wristwatch, a memento from early in his military career, that still carried the insignia of the United Earth Sphere Alliance Armed Forces on its face.

"Are the 'special prisoners' still alive?"

"Yes sir. Should I summon the master-at-arms, sir?"

Tubarov turned to the officer, actually impressed: the second lieutenant was little more than a member on the military factory staff, but was apparently made up of tougher stuff than he looked. "No, that won't be necessary. If I wanted to have them shot, I would have done so. Sometimes it's worth the patience needed to keep your hands clean, Lieutenant."

"Yes sir."

"Those would-be terrorists will be dead in thirty minutes, the old men in half that. Remember, patience."

"I see, sir."

The tone sounded over the public address system. "Chief Engineer, sir—Space Fortress Barge has engaged a burn. It's beginning a transfer to put itself within Luna's sphere of influence, sir!"

"See? Patience, Lieutenant." He looked up at the intercom. "Thank you, Captain. I'm sure it's nothing to worry about, they've probably just received orders for a new orbit. I'm sure Lady Une will request a channel again shortly, put her through that time, and then have the installation end radio silence. Convey my requests to Lieutenant Colonel Sedici to do the same."

"Yes sir."

"Colonel Une thinks she's Treize Khushrenanda. Too bad for her, I've faced Treize before, and I learn from my mistakes."

The junior lieutenant looked at him warily but nodded. I'm not going to throw away lives in a mutiny. I'll let you do that for me, Lady Une.

VIII

"Mr. Tal, has there been any word from Luna?"

Flight Officer Tal had accompanied Duke Dermail Catalonia to the Palais Royal de Bruxelles, the Royal Palace in the heart of Brussels, the residence not of the King of the Belgians, but of the Romefeller Foundation's Executive Board. He'd never seen the Duke so edgy—on the contrary, Tal was usually jittery and nervous around His Grace.

"No, Your Grace."

Duke Dermail nodded and remained sitting behind his desk, the workstation of countless European monarchs before him. From his own, much newer but smaller desk by the far wall, Tal carefully put a stack of envelopes into a drawer before turning back to him. "Your Grace, sir, is anything bothering you?"

Dermail gave him a wary look before standing and touching his chin under his beard. "I suppose there's no harm telling you what you may learn for yourself in short order—I believe my grandnephew, Treize, is going to tender his resignation at the coming summit."

At first the statement didn't really mean anything to Talik, who stood behind his desk processing it. "I'm sorry, resign, Your Grace?"

Dermail sighed. "He may intend to step down as commander-in-chief of OZ," he repeated slowly.

Then Tal understood, and some of the color visibly drained from his face. "Why, why would he do that, Your Grace? Why? Why?"

"Treize has always done too much thinking for his own good," Dermail muttered. "If he does, I'll be curious to hear his reasoning behind it in the wake of such success in Outer Space, but I'm more worried about the immediate consequences his actions might have on the military."

Tal understood that—there was no immediately clear order of succession in the event of the commander-in-chief's departure or incapacitation. The most obvious replacement for him was Lieutenant Colonel Une, a notion that made Tal feel ill.

Dermail seemed to catch on that Tal was thinking of possibly the least-liked officer in the entire armed forces. "And yes, I'm concerned how our Ambassador to Outer Space might respond as well, as is the military commission for the United Nations Organization." He gave another sigh, this one older and more tired sounding. "I really don't see what he'd have to gain from doing that, but it's a very real possibility that Treize will leave the military and leave the rest of us to pick up the subsequent pieces."

"Well, Your Grace, he must..." Tal began before immediately shutting up.

The Duke stared at him. "Go on," he half-ordered, half-encouraged. "Say your mind, young man."

"Your Grace, His Excellency must have some very good reason to resign, if…he did so," Tal managed to stammer out.

He raised an eyebrow. "Treize and his childhood friend, Zechs Merquise…they always thought too much."

Tal sat back down, slightly ashamed of himself, before remembering something. "Your Grace, may I ask why you were asking about Luna then? Isn't Lady Une stationed on Barge?"

The Duke gave a very unexpected snort. "My dear boy, Luna is our canary in the coal mine."

Less than fifty kilometers away, at Chièvres Air Base, the three other pilots of Walker Flight waited in the main lobby for their commander to finish a phone call. Kanna at least occupied herself with courier-delivered orders, while Dac and Mazuri were forced to preoccupy themselves with periodically pushing each other's shoulders as they sat.

At one of the four public terminals in the middle of the lobby, Walker waited with the handset a half-arm length from his face, as his younger sister screamed hysterically at him for waiting to until he'd arrived back on Earth to contact her in Luxembourg. Glancing back at the others briefly, he sighed and looked back at the handset, waiting for a chance to explain himself.

After being shoved away by Mazuri another time, Dac gestured to Walker. "Right now, Aretha—Walker's little sister—is probably losing her mind over how irresponsible he's been. I bet she's bringing up Mrs. Walker too, and what a horrible son he is."

"You pay the price," Mazuri muttered. "Or how does that American saying go? Behind every successful man…"

"There's a younger sister who wants to ring his neck," Dac finished for him.

Mazuri laughed. "You're right—I can't actually see the flight lieutenant actually physically involved with a woman he wasn't predestined by birth to be related to."

Kanna looked up from thin stack of documents. "Really? What about back on D-120?" she asked suggestively.

"I didn't say he had no musical talent, I said…"

"Or are you just jealous of that short girl, what's-her-name…Nabiki?"

Dac was grinning from ear to ear while Mazuri feigned astonishment. "'Jealous…of…Walker', you say these words, Kanna, but they don't make any actual sense. Perhaps you've put them in the wrong order?"

Kanna grinned too, flicking her nose with her right thumb before looking over her shoulder as Walker returned, looking largely unaffected by the twenty minutes of shouting he'd endured.

"How did it go?" Kanna asked in a sing-song tone of voice, turning in her seat, arms between her legs.

"Very well, I think."

"Well, that's a lie." Dac paused. "Sorry I meant, that's a lie sir."

Walker ignored him. "We have our orders—leave Chièvres AFB for the divisional headquarters at Leopoldsburg and remain on standby for further orders. There's a summit in Brussels hosted by the Romefeller Foundation, that's what all those VIPs were here for, all veteran units from 'Citadel' are ordered to attend."

"Hurray, more medals," Kanna said with a surprising amount of unconvincingly feigned enthusiasm. Walker nodded in agreement.

"Sounds fun," Mazuri muttered in a tone that Walker couldn't tell was immediately sarcastic or not.

"Do you think they're going to disband the Seventh Division?" Kanna asked.

"I did, but now there's been no further sign. Practically all the pilots from our company and others have been sent to Belgium and put on standby, it almost felt like they were converting us to an airborne division, except…"

"Except what?"

Sitting down, Walker remained silent before putting his hands together. "I don't know. I tried to contact my mother in Ontario but she didn't pick up—time difference, I suppose. While I waited, I browsed the 'Net…there are a lot of strange rumors coming out of L1, not out of Area 'D' but on the periphery. Some sort of mass mobilization of the civil defense and emergency fleets, or something."

"Maybe an industrial accident? A meteoroid impact on a colony?"

"I really don't know," Walker repeated before standing up. "Well, come on. There's plenty of buses to the HQ in Leopoldsburg, apparently that's where all the troops are being sent."

"Including Colonel Khushrenada?" Mazuri ventured.

"I hope so," Walker repeated. "I still have my reports to file, I'm not above bypassing the bureaucracy when possible. And I have my resignation to think about," he said.

Dac stopped in his footsteps as the three proceeded onwards towards the exit. "Wait, what resignation?"

IX

"Colonel Une, Marius Crater will be entering our bombardment range shortly. Gunners are formulating their firing solutions," a gunnery officer on the overbridge announced, while magnified footage of the Marius Crater and its associated above-ground complexes came into view under the hexagon-pattern of a naval digital gun sight, individual polygons lighting up with confirmed structures.

"Ma'am, a company of mobile doll troops are being launched from the Marius Crater garrison, already in attack formation. Attempting to confirm the unit…"

"Don't bother," Une muttered. She knew it was the unit held in reserve, the one that Tubarov asked be sent after the Gundam.

The duty officer rose from his station. "Ma'am, communications with the Lunar Military District have been restored. We're online with the Number Thirteen Factory!"

A gloating Tubarov appeared on a monitor display by the duty officer, who returned to his seat as Une approached. "Hello, Lady Une. I don't believe Barge was scheduled for a transfer maneuver, was it?" he gloated. "That automated company will engage you on my orders."

"A merciless weapon that would attack its comrades, is that what mobile dolls are?" Une retorted.

"Precisely. We've already begun mass production of superb troops that will fulfill the Foundation's goal of restoring order on Earth," he said plainly.

"Now I understand why His Excellency dislikes mobile dolls so much," she said with a smile.

Tubarov looked less impressed. "Pardon?"

"His Excellency loves humans. As such, he's fallen in love with the sacrifices of humans, of their lives. Death intensely appeals to human emotion, emotions that deny or affirm the worth of struggle. Such extreme emotions lead to equally-extreme decision, the very act of accepting death is the demeanor of a professional solider," she explained slowly.

"Isn't that how the weak would think? As a matter of fact, we created these mobile dolls as an alternative to mortal soldiers, and we are about to build the battlefield of the future in which death is no longer a factor," Tubarov countered with an uncharacteristic calm about him. As he finished, the monitor dimmed.

"We've lost communications again," the duty officer said, swallowing nervously.

"Put Barge on full alert," she ordered, turning and walking towards the exit. When the duty officer failed to respond, she glanced over her shoulder at him. "No, I suppose you won't, will you?"

The duty officer rose from his chair, standing at attention, visibly perturbed.

"Well, no matter. Major Bremer has your loyalty, but not that of the pilots. Not all of them anyway."

"Colonel, please, I…" the duty officer began as the bulkhead doors slid shut behind her.

What Une could count on—and did count on, as she donned a violet military-issue normal suit—was Squadrons 1 and 2 of the 3rd Aerospace Division. While most of Third Division's Leo mobile suits had been dispersed in low to medium Earth orbit on patrol, those squadrons had been retained on Barge under command of two flight lieutenants who were personally loyal to her. By the time she'd changed, its machines were fueled and its pilots, under Flight Lieutenant Z. Tildy and Flight Officer B. Krist, were ready to scramble. While Barge remained frozen, paralyzed in her mind, those pilots were ready to launch, and did.

"Tubarov, don't you realize—it's not that mobile dolls transcend death. They're doing nothing more but merely replacing those who are afraid to die."

Tubarov had been waiting in the Marius Crater command-and-control station when Une broadcasted her taunt. He gestured at the duty officer to reopen the channel. "One should not fight a war expecting to be defeated."

"It's irrelevant whether you win or lose. Emotions are honed by continuing to fight, until the day comes where those lost souls are rewarded."

Tubarov wasn't impressed. "I'm afraid I don't understand just what you're getting at."

"And that is exactly why you and I will be enemies."

"Really?" he asked quietly. "And here I thought it was because you've barely two dozen unlucky troops following you," he said, before gesturing for the line to be closed.

A single unmanned squadron from the 2nd Aerospace Division, left in reserve on Luna, was already on their way to meet them: once given the order, they immediately disregarded their IFF systems and engaged the Leo troops as though they were hostile targets. The skilled pilots in Squadron 1 and 2 were hardly a match for even those reserve mobile dolls, but even as they were quickly dispersed by lethal fire from the Taurii, four pilots and Une, took their opportunity.

"Remember the colonel's orders: Barge is a decoy, we're to infiltrate the Marius Crater Factory through the unguarded northwest passage by the proving grounds!" Krist ordered, switching his HUD to automatic air-to-ground.

"Acknowledged, Oddball Actual!"

"Oddball 1-3, Oddball 1-4, cover Lady Une! 1-2, you're with me!"

"Affirmative!"

"Oddball 1-2 to Oddball Actual, Troublemaker 2-1 is leading a breakout!"

"I see them!"

The Marius Crater C-and-C likewise tracked ten OZ-06SMS 'Space Leos' descended from low orbit over Luna and towards the proving grounds. And predicted flight paths appeared on the screens before him, Tubarov permitted himself to smile. "They know where our mobile dolls are situated. That's what makes this interesting."

A few OZ-01MD units had descended down with them—one confined on the surface, their advantage of maneuverability was lost, and Une and two machines from Oddball flight were able to destroy them. "Go! Secure the mobile doll production floor!" she ordered as she pulled the hatch release and grabbed the ascent and descent tether.

"Where're you going, Colonel?" Krist asked.

"I'm releasing the Gundam pilots! It's both what His Excellency and I want!" she told him while descending.

"Wait, what? Colonel, are you…" she heard him say before she switched off her radio with a smile.

At the other end of the basin, Troublemaker 2-1, 2-2 and 2-3 had blasted open the armored shutters over the proving ground entranceway and service lift. As expected, they found three mobile suits still stored in preparation for previously-scheduled proving ground exercises, still attached by cables to auxiliary power units in the ceiling. Tildy saw his target designator pop up: UNKNOWN MOBILE UNIT.

Tildy reached for the keys by an MFD and entered in a designation manually: OZ-02MD. The Virgos, large, black mobile suits with particularly bulky spherical shoulder pods and four planet defensor discs between each of them. They were armed only with a single forearm-mounted short-barreled beam cannon, but most unnervingly where their cockpit hatches should have been, there was just an armored, sealed command pod. The three mobile dolls flashed their monocameras, and turned their heads slightly, but otherwise did not move.

"Troublemaker Actual, the enemy's not pursuing!"

"Acknowledged, then we'll hold this chokepoint and…"

"Flight Lieutenant!"

"What?"

Of the trio of mobile dolls left in the service lift, the middle unit had slowly begun advancing towards them, followed soon by the machines to its left and right. "Sir, these new mobile troops are already operating!"

The center mobile doll raised its already-glowing beam cannon, and the other two soon followed suit. Between the three of them, they flooded the entranceway with supercharged particles, destroying the older Leos completely.

Une wasn't aware of the fates of either Tildy or Krist, or their pilots. She had taken advantage of the distraction they provided to sneak into the base's detention areas and locate the monitoring station for the district's eight 'special prisoners', currently down to seven. Just as I thought—Tubarov left them to choke on their own breath. More subtle than I would have expected from him.

"I just hope I'm not too late," she said before reactivating the air circulation system and the occupied common cells gradually filled with oxygen, before she heard a pistol's safety being disengaged behind her.

"Even if they're not," Tubarov told her. "We'd be executing them anyway."

That would explain the absence of guards. "Then I'd ask you include me as well. In the past, failure meant certain death in OZ," she asked, before opening the common cell doors. Of course Tubarov wanted me to come—he wanted all this. It'll give him all the justification he could ever need for the Commissariat or the Collegium. "Shoot me, Tubarov. Confirm what you believe to be just."

The much older man clad in the robes of a medieval scholar stared down the sights of an outdated Alliance service pistol. Une had fully anticipated a long, winding diatribe about how both colonels had come to this point, how Une had betrayed the letter, if not the spirit, of her orders, and how Tubarov had relished this moment ever since a detachment of young OZ officers had been ordered to assassinate in his vocational home in the Ruhr Valley.

Instead, he was remarkably concise. "Too bad, Lady Une. You were far too lenient," he told her before squeezing the trigger and putting a pistol-caliber through her normal suit.

As a soldier, yes, but as a civilian, I lived an austere life.

X

The divisional headquarters at Leopoldsburg no longer served a full division, a full four of its six Leo companies still dispersed to the Baltic Republics, Denmark and even the Sanc demilitarized zone. Large barracks and larger hangars sat unused, and 7th Division pilots and support officers—even pilots from the engineering battalion and intelligence company, and a few supply and medical personnel.

Back in her characteristic red tank top, Kanna strolled the quiet hallways of the barracks building that housed most of arriving pilots until she reached an open door. Knocking twice, she pushed it open and stuck her head through: in an overly-illuminated one-bed dormitory-style room, Walker sat the desk against the opposite wall. An open box with a TAMIYA logo on the lid sat next to him, along with several plastic runners of molded pieces, a few small jars of paint and a tiny battery-powered airbrush.

"You're kidding, right?" she asked, unable to not smile.

"Kanna, I do appreciate you checking up on me like this, but it really isn't necessary," he assured her, staring at a plastic part of the inner frame for a 1/100 scale Aries mobile suit.

Looking around the small room, Kanna found that besides the open model kit, Walker had a number of engineering volumes sitting on an otherwise empty shelf and the photo spread from L'Alba Nero pinned to the wall.

"You're really settling in, Tai-i. You think we're gonna' be here that long?"

"Maybe I should start hanging my diploma and certifications," he mused with a chuckle before putting the plastic piece into a particular pile. He turned his chair to face her; in his other hand, he held part of the Japanese-printed paper assembly manual, opened to a page featuring an unmistakable diagram of the airborne mobile suit. "You saw those Aries at Chièvres, right?"

She nodded. "To be honest, I thought they were ours."

"I know the feeling. Chièvres isn't that that big an installation. Meanwhile, Leopoldsburg has space to spare. Have you met any guys from the Sixtieth George Cross Ground Division?"

She shook her head. "Not yet. I guess I should find the biggest of them and kick his ass?"

"This isn't prison, Kanna. Anyway, I think Chièvres is being used by His Excellency as his headquarters for whatever reason. And I don't think he's alone."

Kanna followed his pointing finger to the photo spread. "First Recon?"

He nodded his head. "I read the itinerary. They're going to be at Brussels too."

Sitting down on Walker's neatly-folded bed, Kanna crossed one leg over her knee. "Makes sense. D-120 is as much their victory as ours." She gestured at a thick, bound military envelope at the end of the desk, past the model parts. "What's that?"

"My technical reports to His Excellency. I'd fallen behind, I'm hoping I can get them to him and apologize in person."

"Is your resignation in there too?"

Walker gave her an unemotional cock of the head, then turned back to his desk. Kanna sighed and shook her own head. "You want me to hand in it? I thought you were avoiding Emi."

"It's not that small an air base. I'm sure I can hand a report off just fine without running into Squadron Commander Ogasawara if I'm quick on my feet."

"You're kind of missing the point, Tai-i." There was a musical, if somewhat annoying, tone from one of Walker's pockets—he took out the new mobile and swiped the lock screen with his thumb. "This is a really nice mobile."

"Technology is great."

"I hope you kept the receipt for when you file your expense purchase," he reminded her, as he navigated the vividly-colored interface against a black background. "The news aggregator sent me an alert. I need to learn how to set alerts, this is different than my Scene Pro and…"

Walker stopped, and got that familiar look, one that immediately filled Kanna with dread. That look that made his angular features even more hawk-like and edgy. "What?"

Clenching his jaw, Walker turned his mobile around and handed it to Kanna, letting her violet eyes to saucers.

"We need to find Colonel North."

Kanna was already halfway through the door, and tossed him his uniform tailcoat hanging from the wall. He barely had time to throw on his boots and scramble after her.

Marcus North, like practically all the high-ranking officers of the Seventh Division that had returned to Earth, was roomed on the barracks top floor, in a larger bedroom with an adjoining office fit for a division or battalion commanding officer, large enough to host an impromptu meeting if necessary. Instead, North sat next to Dmitry Alexandrovich Chernenko, taking up two of the eight chairs clustered around the small table, a one-third-empty bottle of Taiwanese single malt whisky and a few crystal whisky glasses sitting in front of them as they propped their feet up and undid the collars.

A sad smile on his face, North took his glass and swished the contents around for a few moments. "So, what next? To our commander-in-chief, Ambassador Une? Or maybe the late Chilias Catalonia."

Chernenko, less relaxed and with less of a smile, thought about it. North studied his empty glass.

"You know, right up to the day I gave the order...I always thought lie awake at night while it haunt me." He set the glass down. "I haven't lost a minute of sleep."

"Really sir?" he asked optimistically.

He nodded and gave a confident, well-learned smile. "Not over the decision."

Chernenko's smile faded. "Have you ever heard of Garik Kasparov?" he said.

"To Mr. Garik Kasparov then."

"No, sir, I mean, have you ever heard of him?"

North emptied his glass. "No, not at all. Who is he?"

"He was a Soviet chess grandmaster in Before Colony-period. A very smart, very formidable man. When the Soviet Union collapsed, he gradually positioned himself as an opposition leader to the new anticommunist government in Russia, the leader of the liberal movement. A genuine target of the new government, towards but never at the top of their lists. Accordingly, he was afforded tremendous respect in North America and Europe, as the future of country."

"What happened to him?"

"Nothing. He spent the next sixty years as the future of his country, then died around his centennial. The world saw him as the great hope they wished for, not the man he actually was—an intellectual who hated corrupt politics and had no desire to participate in them, corrupt or otherwise." Chernenko sighed, sound a little less academic in the process. "So he told them what they wanted to hear, and eventually became what they, and he, needed them to hear. Instead of compromising with communists, who were also targeted by the government, he preferred waiting for them to die out."

"Did they?"

"Absolutely—a century after the liberals did, if you believe the Social Democrats who run the show now," Chernenko theorized. "Kasparov's strength was that of neoliberal world. The communists were even less liked than the anticommunists in Moscow, and they thrived on it, like rebellious children. So while they inevitably clawed their ways onto the fringes of power, the liberals ruled in their own world—it just happened to be separate from the real one."

Chernenko propped his arms onto his knees, holding his glass in his hands. "As matter of military necessity, we live in the real world sir. Not the one the All-Colony Congress or the Foundations tell us we live in. I'm urging you to reconsider your real world resignation just because you're content to resign in their world."

North leaned toward him, gesturing for him to come closer.

He spoke in barely above a whisper. "I've done what the Alliance managed not to for sixty years, a third of those blockading Outer Space, and I'd do it again. I will not become a target for controversy in the postwar settlement between Earth and the colonies. I will not be a pawn for the twisted schemes of the commander-in-chief of Space Forces just because she was appointed by Treize Khushrenada himself. I'll keep my uniform, my rank and my honor, but I won't let them strike first," he told the younger man, the rage in his voice almost boiling over.

Chernenko leaned back, his eyes wide. North's smile returned. "Thank you, Flight Lieutenant Chernenko, for your advice. I might not show it, but I'm touched by how much you care."

He swallowed, surprised by his own accelerated heartbeat. "Well, sir, I tried."

"You really did. Really, flight lieutenants nowadays never fail to impress him. When I was one, we weren't half as thoughtful as your generation is. And we were at least five years older."

"Thoughtful, but not smart," Chernenko pointed out, putting his hands together. "Three hundred years later, we know the reasons Americans failed in Russia wasn't because of anything Moscow did. On the contrary, they went all the way up to having tanks shoot at the White House on the Krasnopresnenskaya, to shoot at parliamentarians in it, what more could they have done? The East was lost because Americans didn't know the first thing about Eurasia, and didn't care to. The East was supposed to change to the West, so why should they? And the West was left with an army of armchair 'Kremlinologists' who could tell you the current leader's shoe size and eyeglass prescription but couldn't tell you when tanks were rolling down the streets of Moscow ten years earlier anymore than they could tell if they were rolling across the far side of Mars."

North smiled at him sympathetically. "I think I know more than that."

Chernenko leaned back in his chair. "I really hope you do, Colonel."

"What did you write your thesis on, Flight Lieutenant? History?"

"Political science. Submitted to Centre for Social and Political Studies at B.S.U. in Minsk."

"It shows," North told him as someone knocked on the door repeatedly. "It's open, whoever you are! Grab a glass and join us!"

Walker entered through the door, followed by the much-taller Kanna. Despite the obviously-informal circumstances, North was still surprised when Walker paced directly through the room and right up to his seat, setting his mobile down just ahead of the bottle of whisky. One look at the flight lieutenant's face was enough to sober North up.

"Walker, what's going on?"

"A civilian transit ship bound for E-063 just leaked this to BBC's extraterrestrial affiliate: the entire space colony has been completely destroyed. All of it, the torus, the bracing arm, its agricultural pods, the local Colonial militia, everything's been turned to cinders and dust."

North stared at the mobile's screen, the text on it just large enough to be legible, then gradually at Walker. "Who would destroy an entire space colony?"

Kanna answered instead. "They don't know. But we can guess, can't we?"


Author's Notes:

Posted in record time! Thankfully, I had a particular day at work where I did almost nothing but write, I got a good 80% of this chapter done then (North and Chernenko's conversation was already finished a chapter ago, more on that later). I played around with a few different names for this one, including some others that would be more appropriate for the next, probably-shorter chapter, some that bordered on the humorous ("The Irresponsible Lady Une") and a few closely inspired by episode tiles ("Une versus Tubarov"), but settled on something simpler and hopefully less corny.

Speaking of corny, it's possible that, over the next few years, celebrity chess player and respected intellectual Gary Kasparov might do something that warrants me editing this chapter accordingly. If I remember to do so, anyway. I suspect not, so you can probably consider that little passage my personal prediction for Kasparov's career in Russian politics. Krasnopresnenskaya is the name of the embankment on the Moscow River where you can find the White House, a.k.a. the Russian Parliament a.k.a. the Supreme Soviet of Russia (both pre- and post-1992). In 1993, in the middle of the Russian Constitutional Crisis, President Yeltsin ordered elite armored units of the former-Soviet Army into Moscow, and had a number of T-80U tanks fire at the building with live ammunition, a response to left-wing parliamentarians barricading themselves in the building after Yeltsin surrounded it with police when they announced their intention to impeach him. A very seminal moment in Russian political history, one that, as Chernenko notes, practically no one in America (and even much of Western Europe) knows about, including those who closely follow Russian politics. In actuality, not knowing about the Constitutional Crisis (and the hundreds, possibly thousands of people killed in Moscow, the worst fighting since the Russian Revolution a century ago) and talking about Russia is kind of like talking about Nixon and not knowing about the Watergate Burglaries: you can do it, but you sound pretty stupid. Also, I am aware that Minsk is in Belarus, not Ukraine, where Chernenko is from.

Aside from record writing time for me, this chapter actually covers nine-tenths of not one, but two episodes of the TV series (made possible by mostly ignoring Trowa and Heero's antics in Mecurius and Vayeate-watch the series for those). Considering I spent a half-dozen of the longest chapters of this story just covering events in the gap between two episodes, that's probably a good thing. As always, tell me what you think!