Soldier of OZ: Walker's Account
Chapter 55 – Rubicon, II
When Marcus North arrived on Barge, the space fortress was not at all as he expected—compared to the divisional base at Leopoldsburg, life on Barge seemed utterly normal, even with the fortress only recently standing down from battle stations. It confused him until he realized what had changed since the last time he'd been there: Lady Une was gone, and her erratic, unpredictable reign of terror with her.
"Colonel North, sir, I'm...surprised to see you here," Major Bremer greeted the senior officer after saluting dutifully. "I wasn't expecting you.
"No, I know you weren't," North admitted as they stood at the back of the overbridge. "Sorry, I'm a bit tired from my trip—this is Chernenko from the Seventh Division's Third Company, I believe you've met."
Flight Lieutenant Chernenko, with bags under his eyes, managed to give a smart nod. "Good to see you well, Flight Lieutenant."
"Likewise, Major. If I may?" Without waiting for a response, Chernenko floated away and out of the overbridge.
"I thought the whole division had been relocated to Western Europe, what are you doing here, sir?" Bremer asked.
North didn't look him in the either—instead, he surveyed the command center slowly, from one end to another, pausing only briefly on the main monitor. "What happened to Une?"
Bremer's face did something strange; it went from acknowledgement to feigned confusion to believable helplessness. Then he bit down on his tongue shortly and forced a smile. "I actually don't know what happened to Colonel Une," he whispered carefully. "For that matter, I don't know what happened to Pilot Officer Barton either, nor do I care."
North raised an eyebrow and gave him skeptical if friendly look, despite looking quite exhausted himself. "I bet it's made your life a lot easier, Leo."
"You have no idea Marcus," he said, relaxing a little. "Seriously, what are you doing up here? No one just makes house calls to a space fortress."
North put a hand on Bremer's back and led him away from the officers on duty at their computer stations. "Would you level with me, Leo?"
"Of course."
"What happened to Colony L1-E-063?" he asked.
Bremer sighed—he should have known that question was coming, yet somehow it still surprised him. "That space colony was destroyed. The E-Area government, and the space fleet, are in the middle of massive refugee relocation mission, the likes of which we haven't seen since the 'Seventies." He glanced around and considered whispering. "So we're just offering refueling services, this is a space fortress after all, they have to have it under control without us."
"Was it a Gundam?'
More sighing from Bremer—he'd never been a skilled liar. "We're certain that it was a new Gundam. Lady Une was discussing it with Colonel Villemont before she left for C-102 or wherever the hell she is."
North nodded, apparently grateful. "That's a hell of a thing. When was the last time a whole colony was destroyed?"
Bremer shrugged. "Before the Alliance instituted martial law? I can't think of a case where a colony was actually destroyed. Heads are going to roll, aren't they?"
"One very specific head in particular, it seems," North replied softly.
Bremer looked confused again. "Who?"
At Leopoldsburg on Earth, Flight Lieutenant Walker was still standing in the barracks he'd been ordered to remain in. As his tea cooled, he stared at one of the few survivors of House Yuy, once the second most powerful family in Outer Space, only behind the Winners. The beautiful but maimed Colonial finished the last of the tea he'd poured for her, apparently unfazed.
"So what do we do, Yuy-san?" Flight Officer Kaneshiro asked after staring at Walker's clenched jaw.
"Nothing," she told her. "There's nothing you can do until Treize arrives at Luxembourg for his confinement. The sooner everyone realizes this, the better."
Flight Officer Mazuri stood up jerkily and began pacing along one wall of the room, back and forth, before stopping abruptly halfway and pointing at the door, past Mr. Hale. "Right now, those 'Rifles of Ghent' are moving to enforce a curfew. If we're lucky. And you want us to sit around and wait?"
"Damn it, Ajay, cool it!" Kanna hissed. "They're not going go across every military building in Leopoldsburg and shoot anyone wearing a uniform."
"How do you know that?" Mazuri shouted back.
"Because this isn't Nairobi. It's not 'Daybreak'," she retorted, not bothering to hide the warning in her voice.
"Everyone needs to calm down," Walker interjected. He rose to his feet, wincing as he did, and looked around coolly. "Bickering among ourselves isn't going to accomplish anything."
He gestured to Yuy. "Ms. Yuy was kind enough to share her expectations to the Foundation forcing the Supreme Military Council to accept Treize's resignation, instead of kicking it down the road for someone else to deal with. She knows both the Romefeller Foundation and the World Congress of the U.N.O. better than anyone else in here," he explained authoritatively. "That means her expectations have a realistic worth."
She raised an eyebrow at Walker's rather methodically-worded praise. "So what's this 'grounding' then? Their version of house arrest?" Dac asked.
"The generic response to an 'unplanned' crisis, anything that the General Staff can't adequately prepare for. Just like in May," Mazuri grumbled.
"They can't place a whole division under 'house arrest', so this is probably just a precaution against any pilots getting a little loaded one night and deciding to vent their disapproval of the leadership on the Belgian countryside with a twelve-tonne war machine," Walker explained. "I mean, there's food, supplies, cooking and cleaning staff. The only limit to how long anyone can stay in the barracks is their own patience."
"In other words, a few days," Dac added. "I'm already starting to get stir crazy."
"You hide it well," Kanna offered.
"Really?"
"No."
"That aside, I'm not going to start on mutiny to prevent another of sorts," Walker repeated, raising his voice. "But as your commanding officer, if only by technicality, I'm going to take command—if anyone else in the barracks asks, don't repeat any of this to them. If a ranking officer asks, either fob them off or send them to me," he explained with clear reluctance.
"And in the meantime what do we do, Tai-i?"
"Exactly what Luxembourg said we do: we wait and remain on standby for an alleged drill. The General Staff's orders will always countermand mine," he reminded them. "Dismissed."
His three subordinates looked at him strangely for a few before Kanna assumed a military posture, bowed at either Walker or Yuy, and left past Hale, the other two following her. Shalua Yuy waited until they'd closed the door behind them to speak again. "What's wrong with your back?"
He feigned ignorance. "Nothing, just a slight knock on my back from last week."
Yuy didn't look convinced, but just gave an accepting tilt of her head. She turned to Mr. Hale, who'd remained so quiet that Walker had almost forgotten his presence. "Treize has already left Belgium under escort. I still don't know if I can follow him, but I'm going to try."
"I understand, ma'am. May…I ask you one last question?"
She crossed her legs again. "Go ahead."
"Have you spoken to any other company-grade officers about this? I mean, you obviously possess valuable insight that those of us who're only here because of our commissions must lack," he admitted warily.
She shook her head. "Only you—Treize asked for you by name after all," she told him, a thin smile briefly appearing on her face. "I tried to speak officers I knew in the First Recon Battalion, but it didn't work…as well."
Walker gave her a confused look.
"I barely had any time with him, thanks to the Foundation. But he did tell me, unlike yourself, they'd do whatever they wanted. Whatever they thought was right. And you don't want to upset people like that."
Mr. Hale, who'd put one leather-gloved hand to his discreet earpiece, stepped forward with some urgent reluctance, taking Yuy's attention. Self-consciously, Walker adjusted his collar and took a step away, seemingly out of earshot, though evidently not—aware that eavesdropping was generally considered rude, he could still hear most of what Hale whispered into his superior's ear.
"The bodyguard regiment has started causing trouble in South Brussels. Army units have been withdrawn to confront them."
"Well, you did warn me that it'd be easier getting in here than out. We'll take the highway."
"What about the rest of your luggage?"
"I really couldn't care less," she admitted, at normal volume. Yuy smiled for the first time, perhaps aware that Walker could hear them from the other side of the room, and subtly extended her right hand. Walker immediately strolled over to her and shook it, still holding Treize Khushrenada's letter in his other.
"I have to go, Flight Lieutenant. Thank you for your time."
Walker wasn't sure how to respond. "The…privilege was mine, ma'am," he managed to stammer out with only some perceptible difficulty.
II
The general orders issued by Luxembourg had turned Chièvres AFB into a ghost airfield—that, and the departure of Treize Khushrenada's staff. In spite of that, a 4WD military vehicle left the motor pool behind the officer's barracks, passed the half-dozen landed OZ-07AMS 'Aries' mobile suits, only to stop immediately next to the primary ATC tower. An Internal Army section on patrol watched them come to halt—when the four occupants seemed to stare at them directly, the patrol leader just saluted awkwardly before continuing on their way across the airfield.
Squadron Commander Ogasawara exited first, followed by Flight Officer Tsujimoto. The two backseats were occupied by Master Aircrew Serrati and Flight Sergeant Eshkol, both of the Fusiliers-Grenadiers Regiment. Between them sat a combat-grade field EHF/THF radio set, its long-range antenna extended to its full height, and a bulky power cell.
"You think they're going to come back after getting ahold of their platoon leader?" Tsujimoto asked.
"Did a Gundam destroy E-063?" Ogasawara replied rhetorically. "How's it sound?" she asked as Serrati and Eshkol egressed after checking the radio again.
"Still on schedule, ma'am. Say what you will about Transport Corps, they're very punctual," Eshkol explained, referring to the OZ's Terrestrial Transportation Corps, one of the branches of the armed forces that provided transportation for hardware in wartime in the place of civilian contractors.
"Good. We'll have about a half-hour, maybe twenty minutes after things start looking strange before they respond."
"That'll have to be enough to get those Aries."
"It's not too late to change your mind, Fidel," Ogasawara reminded him, her left arm underneath her cape and her presentation katana clinking as she reached into the 4WD and took out a 36 mm smoothbore flare launcher, commonly used by the army and air forces.
"Again, not a chance, Squadron Commander. I'm just sorry we can't stay longer," Serrati replied, taking the flare launcher and slinging it over his back.
"Call me 'Emi'," she told them as they departed from the vehicle.
They entered the base of the ATC tower, greeted by saluting armed enlisted men at the door. "Squadron Commander, ma'am!"
"I need access to the tower control," she announced, right to the point.
"Ma'am! I'm sorry ma'am, access to the tower is restricted, orders from Ghent Headquarters," he explained, sounding a little nervous.
"Don't do this, Corporal," Emi warned.
"Ma'am, I can't let you enter this building, now I have to ask that you leave and…" the corporal began, reaching forward towards her. Just before he reached her, she glanced over her shoulder at Serrati, who gave a slight nod. In a blur, he reached past her, grabbed the corporal's arm, and dragged him over his own shoulder and threw him over his shoulder with a loud thud.
The other enlisted man panicked and, aiming his carbine from the hip and switching off the safety. Nabiki took a step backwards away from him and Emi lunged forwards, her cape dropping onto a pile by the floor—in a single motion, she quick-drew her blade from its sheath and sliced him across the waist, splattering a thin trail of blood on the wall behind him. The man dropped with a sharp cry in pain, along with his weapon.
"Brilliant Iaijutsu, Emi," Serrati announced, fixing his uniform while Eshkol took the corporal's weapon and his shortwave radio, which he tossed to Nabiki. Emi flung the blood off her presentation katana against the floor and sheathed it, taking a deep breath.
"Just don't ask me to do it twice. I haven't done that in years."
"I was wondering why you had them give it an edge," Nabiki resopnded, drawing her own sidearm from the leather holster on her belt.
Emi nodded. "Eshkol, cover the entrance and see if you can do something for him—there's a first aid kit on the far wall, should be useful."
"Yes ma'am."
"First casualty of OZ's civil war," Nabiki muttered with a malicious grin, before following Serrati and Emi up the stairway. She flicked on the radio in her other hand, changing the frequency settings. "Damocles 1-2 to Damocles 2-1 and Damocles 3-1. Standby for emergence and ground action—look for the signal."
"Acknowledge, Damocles 1-2."
At the top of the tower, the lone pair of air traffic controllers immediately rose from their seats and tossed their side arms across the metal floor to Serrati as he entered first, carbine in his arms.
"Thanks boys," Nabiki chirped, sliding past the comparatively huge noncommissioned officer as she took one of the empty seats behind the center console and donned a headset. Emi led the two controllers to the windows past the controllers, where they stayed, and Serrati covered the entryway.
"This is Chièvres Tower to military shuttle, tail number Oscar-Zodiac-Delta-Two-Six-Nine-Seven on approach. Please respond."
Emi couldn't hear the response over the headset and instead surveyed the still-empty airfield. There was nothing to suggest that atypical emptiness wasn't going to continue as nightfall came.
"Acknowledged, shuttle. Continue on your approach, you are clear to land on runway two. We're going silent, so please hurry." After a short pause, she took off her headphones. "It's done."
"No offense, Fidel, but I'll take a half-shuttle-worth of CAST over two of Treize's bodyguards."
"I would too," he replied, switching places with Nabiki and charging his carbine. He shouldered it and looked like he was about to fire a sweeping burst across the computer consoles when he instead slung it over his back and looked at bank of controls, then carefully flipped the topmost row of switches. Immediately, all the consoles inside the air tower went dark, as did the overhead monitors.
Chambering a round with her own service pistol, Emi surveyed stood alone in the darkness, before turning to give Serrati a wary smile. "All right, now it's a war," she announced, the roar of a transorbital shuttle on final approach clearly audible through shaking window panes. The shuttle touched down on its landing gear, deployed its breaking chutes, and slowed down as its forward canards retracted back into its fuselage.
Nonetheless, the airfield remained conspicuously empty—a point that unnerved Serrati, who unslung the 36 mm launcher and fired a single red flare into the darkening sky.
"You think after this, they'll start restricting access to flare guns?" Nabiki asked, grinning.
"You think they would. Shoot someone in the chest with a thirty-six millimeter flare, it'll kill them," Emi muttered.
"I'm not going to ask how you know that," she replied as Serrati dropped the flare launcher and took out a pocket monocular. She watched a small group of ten officers, followed by a dozen enlisted in military police gear, maneuver from building to building towards the hangars. She looked forward of them, at the furthest hangar.
"I see 'em." Southwest of the tower, one of the three primary aircraft hangars doors retracted upwards. With a visible urgency, Chièvres Airbase ground crew were towing out a pair of supersonic Eurasian interceptor jets and a lone light military courier jet by means of three aircraft tractors. In short order, an airfield fuel tanker followed behind them.
"Top off that shuttle to a third fuel—just enough to get it to take off and to top cruising speed," Emi shouted at the ground crew.
"Yes ma'am!"
Emi put a gloved hand to her forehead. How much fuel would that be? I really have no idea, we need someone who knows these sort of things.
All three aircraft were already brought together in a line by the time the shuttle finished its taxi and came to a halt, its airstairs folding out near the rear.
Warrant Officer Cameron, in a hunter green daily uniform with bright red collar versus the maroon worn by the Mobile Suit Troops and the sky blue worn by the Terrestrial Air Forces, descended down the airstairs to meet the waiting officers, whom he saluted.
Emi took his saluting arm and pushed it down. "Save it, Cameron, I doubt they'll let us keep this airfield for long. You bring your combat gear?"
"Everything except our weapons, yes. Getting this shuttle from Barge was hard enough, Bremer and Nichol still have the station on full alert," he explained. "And then Colonel North shows up…"
"How'd you do it?" Nabiki asked suspiciously.
"You wouldn't believe all the hardware Une stockpiled under the table before she deserted. Not much in the way of rifles though." He looked over his shoulder as the other Colonial and Asteroid Strike Troops filed down the stairway and whistled. "Let me introduce our ship-to-ship ops expert. Carver, front and center!"
A relatively tiny, red-haired woman who managed to strain the buttons of her formfitting tunic slid down the airstairs handrail and landed flippantly on the tarmac next to them. Standing next to her, she was a few centimeters shorter than Nabiki. "This is Corporal Carver. Her age aside, she's actually well-built for this sort of operation, believe me."
"What's the prize, ma'am?"
Emi snapped her fingers and Eshkol brought up radio set, presenting it to Carver, who pulled the compact headset she was wearing around her collar over her ears, plugged into the audio jack and began adjusting the volume dial. Her large, blue eyes narrowed as she listened.
Cameron examined the radio set. "A gift from friends of His Excellency?"
"More the codes we needed to use it," Emi corrected him.
He looked around the runway and tarmac, still deserted except for the small number ground crew, the remaining mobile suit pilots and themselves. "So you really think it's going to come to this?"
"We can all kiss our military careers goodbye if it's doesn't," Nabiki smirked. "Actually, I think we can do that either way."
"That'll be the least of our problems if I'm wrong," Emi muttered, as she watched the ground crew drag out a missile carriage carrying four long-range supersonic air-to-air missiles, the purposefully-designed primary armament on interceptor aircraft. With impressive speed and efficiency, they started mounting them onto the two interceptors.
A military firing squad seemed likely, even guaranteed, depending on what happened next. She turned to Cameron. "Tell your troops to gear up and get ready to launch, the tower might be out of commission but that's not going to stop the army. I'm going up with you," she said, pointing at one of the Aries mobile suits.
"And the rest?"
By now, Cameron could see MS Troops officers gathering underneath the black-and-grey mobile suits, the furthest from him grabbing onto tethers and pulling themselves up. Pulling off her white gloves, Emi reached into one of her trouser pockets and took out what looked like a tube of lipstick, to Cameron's surprise. She surprised him again by drawing a red line on either side of her nose down her cheeks. Combined with her rather cold eyes, it gave her an almost-demonic appearance.
"They'll make sure we have somewhere to come back to, even if only for a few hours. Dermail Catalonia's going to regret locking up this battalion with someone else's mobile suits."
III
When Flight Officer Tal explained the situation to her, Dorothy Catalonia went from warmly cordial to rigidly hostile in the time it took for to circle around her sitting table and storm directly up to him. When she opened her mouth to speak, Tal preempted her, just as her grandfather had instructed him to.
"I'm sorry, Ms. Catalonia, but this really isn't up to debate. The Foundation Board of Governors has your next assignment waiting for you at their Copenhagen Legation. As a Foundation envoy, you've been ordered to report in immediately for training."
Dorothy looked away. "Copenhagen. But Denmark isn't…" she said, before stopping and looking back up. She seemed less angry at least. "So they finally sending me to the Scandinavian Theater. After all this time pleading."
"Yes ma'am."
"I suppose they went through this trouble to make me feel better about missing the battle that'll decide the future of my family as well as Earth-Sphere," she said accusingly. "Very well, Mr. Tal. Give me a few minutes to pack."
"Of course, Ms. Catalonia," he replied, as Dorothy promptly left for an adjoining room. Tal looked around the lavish penthouse in downtown Brussels, bit on his tongue and cleared his throat. "Just so you know, ma'am, we have the building under guard. So please don't…you know, try and escape via the fire escape."
Across the southern border, the same orders given to the Seventh Division had gone out across combat units deployed in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. In his office in the United Nations Department of Military Affairs in Luxembourg City, a first lieutenant escorted a senior officer to the Luxembourg Press Secretary. He found Lieutenant Colonel Andrews busy at his desk, his uniform coat hanging draped over the chair.
"Colonel Andrews, sir!"
Andrews looked up, his face pale and visible bags under his eyes. "Yes, what?" he shook his head. "I'm sorry, you called for me, didn't you? I had all the phone lines disconnected, the switchboard was completely overwhelmed for all four of my direct lines."
The first lieutenant stared at Andrews. "Sir, when was the last time you slept?"
"Two days ago. Eva, is that you? Oh thank god, it is you."
Behind Andrews' assistant, Major Cebotari, wearing a light coat over her uniform, stared warily at Andrews. His normally tidy appearance was disheveled and he'd neglected to shave as well. Eva had never seen him like this before, and he stumbled over to her and clasped both her hands.
"Hello Thomas," she said finally.
He gave an exhausted smile before frowning. "Where's that boy of yours, the mean one?"
"Second Lieutenant Parsons is at the Commissariat itself."
"Of course. I won't keep you any longer than I have to." He dismissed the officer who'd escorted Eva in and gestured at an empty chair. While his desk was a cluttered mess, the rest of his office looked neat as usual. "Can I get you anything? Water?"
"I'm fine, thank you," she insisted in a deep, breathy tone.
Andrew nodded and reaching over to his desk, poured a tall glass of cold water than he immediately emptied. "You saw the orders, right? To all the Mobile Suit Troops in here, Belgium, France, the Demilitarized Zone?"
"I did. You know they won't follow them for long?" she asked.
"Things are already starting in Belgium, where those suicidal hotshots in the First Recon Battalion aren't reporting in for orders," he stammered, almost dropping the glass. He stared at Eva, visibly panicking. "I have to say something to the press! I can't even leave this building!"
"I saw the crowd outside, it looks bad," she said, taking off her coat and neatly folding it before putting it on a small table near the door.
"What the hell do I tell them? There's still word that all of this is about the destruction of E-063, but it's not going to stay that way for long." He circled his desk and slumped down in the chair, his head in his hands. "Oh God, this is really happening. Treize just had to resign."
After a short roll of her eyes, Eva paced to his desk, crossed her arms underneath her chest. "It's not like this is your fault."
"Oh, I know that! Doesn't change the fact that it's happening though, does it? God, and Diekirch isn't even trying to stop it. Or they are and it doesn't make a damn difference."
Arms still crossed, she leaned towards him over the desk. "Thomas."
He looked up, biting down on his lip.
"It doesn't really matter what you tell them. This is an ideological rivalry, not a popularity contest."
"You think so?"
Eva actually wasn't really trying to hide her uncertainty—Thomas didn't seem to notice. She nodded calmly.
"What should I say?"
"Something convincing. They're after the blood in the water."
"Have you spoken to Treize?"
"A little. I know he's on his way back, eventually."
"Somehow, that will make things worse. I know it."
"Do you have another spot lined for him on a Taiwanese talk show?"
Andrews looked up and saw Eva smiling. She'd actually made a joke. He snickered before laughing loudly. "No, I really don't. I should call that woman, what's-her-name, Shion."
"Just do what you have to, Thomas. You handled the revolution that brought down the Alliance, you can handle Treize Khushrenada's resignation."
Thomas stared at her. He understood that her words of encouragement were largely meaningless, but he found them comforting nonetheless. "All right, I'll do it."
After shaking Thomas's hand once more, Eva dismissed herself, left the office and climbed back into a military car. In the ten minutes it took to drive to the Military Commissariat in Kirchberg, one of the northeast quarters of Luxembourg City, she checked her mobile for messages—among those she'd received, one marked urgent came from Edward Parsons.
Where are you?
"To the point as always," she said to herself.
Just turning onto Chilias Catalonia Avenue, she messaged back, referring to the major throughway that ran alongside d'Coque, home of the National Sporting and Cultural Center, the University of Luxembourg's Kirchberg Campus, and the former offices of the French National Bank in Luxembourg, now the Military Commissariat of OZ.
Then she saw three junior officers carrying large cardboard boxes out of the building, one after another. One dropped his box on the sidewalk and ran over to the car as it stopped, getting the attention of the driver.
"Great timing, we'll have enough boxes for you in just a minute," he shouted at the driver, before turning and saluting Eva as she exited the car.
"What's going on?"
"Major, ma'am! The archives department has already begun the off-site data transfer, so we're just moving all our physical copies for shipment."
Eva had to follow the junior officer back up to the entranceway after he dropped off his box, which the others began loading into the car she'd exited.
"Wait, what do you mean, off-site transfer? What are we shipping?"
"Everything, ma'am. Emergency departure protocol." His eyes widened—she hadn't heard. "The order came down from the Undersecretary General of the Supreme Military Council: the whole Commissariat is being relocated to the U.N.O. military councilor's office in Whitehall."
Eva stared at him. It was a very rare thing for to be shocked into silence, but that had done it.
"Ma'am?" he repeated. She gave a wordless nod, which he took as permission to department and bring out more boxes from the marble-floored lobby of the former bank.
When she entered herself through the still-manned security checkpoint, she found the chronically-understaffed Commissariat was completely preoccupied with packing up the data-bearing contents of each office—not just books, but also portable computers, discs, and even spare mobiles—into clearly-labeled boxes and bringing them outside. When she found Second Lieutenant Parsons, he was already unceremoniously sweeping the contents of the top of his desk into a mostly-filled box, including a number of pens and a stapler, smashing the lid on it and taping it up.
"There you are! Took your time, huh?" E.P. shouted to be heard over the noise the building practically being emptied, room by room.
"I just got in, I stopped by the press office to see Colonel Andrews," she said, watching him toss the box onto a stack of similar ones. "When did the order come in from the Undersecretary General?"
He checked his wristwatch unnecessarily. "Two hours, thirty-two minutes ago. Welcome back to Earth, by the way. You should probably see that one of the custodians who stays behind feeds those fish of yours."
"What?" she asked, sitting on the edge of his now-empty desk.
"You know, in your aquarium," he said, turning away and walking to the corner. By a now-empty bookshelf, a lone server tower, roughly the size and weight of a short filing cabinet thanks to its shielding and redundant network modems and power supplies, sat undisturbed. He flipped a large switch on the side and its various status-indication lights dimmed and unplugged the cables in the back before he began pushing it away from the wall. "Hey, could you find me a dolly or something, I think I saw…"
The cabinet abrupt slammed back into the wall it had been resting against, and E.P. looked to see Eva's left boot pressed against the front panel, then turned to see a pair of menacing red eyes staring back at him.
"Why?"
He had a feeling she wasn't referring to the server itself. "News travels fast. The emergency orders issued by the General Staff are already starting to fall apart. Treize's barely out of Belgium before his bodyguard regiment stops checking in. Then those blowhards in First Recon start doing reconnaissance outside their mobile suits around Brussels, because to hell with the General Staff apparently. God knows what they have up their sleeve, but we'll learn what it soon enough." He held his arms apart. "If that's happening in Belgium, what do you think is going to happen here, in Luxembourg, Khushrenada's own back yard?"
"They think the battalion's going after the Western European Air Army's Aries mobile suits?"
He shrugged. "We're not bloody waiting around to find out. Orders are orders. And if turns out to be nothing, hell, Whitehall's real nice this time of year anyway, isn't it?"
'Orders are orders' was the last thing she expected to hear out of Parsons' mouth. She removed her boot from the server tower and turned to the door, walking out slowly.
"You really need to pack, Major!" he shouted after her. "Last flight for all offices leaves Luxembourg City at twenty-two hundred hours! After that, it's…" he said, trailing off. When she didn't respond, he just shook his head and began to try moving the heavy piece of equipment.
"She better not do anything stupid," he mumbled before taking a deep breath and dragging it towards the door.
IV
"Where did Yuy-san go?"
Walker was sitting at the small desk in his own room, a nearly-completed plastic model of an OZ-07AMS 1/100 scale sitting in front of him. "Back wherever she came from. Maybe to scare other officers," he speculated. "Do you remember that surface combat exercise we were part of on Luna, back in August?"
"Sure."
"I ran into her inside the Marius Crater Factory. Though we'd met once before, briefly in Bremen.'
Kanna looked impressed and worried simultaneously. "Really?"
"I didn't really have any idea of who she was until now. And I still don't understand why she was there of all places, though it's not like I had a good reason either."
Her chest heaving with a deep sigh, Kanna touched a finger to her forehead and closed both eyes. "So, according to her, the colonel resigned because of the new mobile dolls developed by Tubarov's design bureau on Luna, which were going to be bring about an end to the different anti-Alliance campaigns on Earth."
Finger still against her forehead, she opened one eye. "But the Foundation probably knew he was going to do that. So the only way to demonstrate that the military isn't entirely dependent on him to lead it is to have the Supreme Military CouncilSupreme Military Council arrest him for insubordination. They're probably not going to charge him or anything, but they can't just take insult sitting down. There's probably a secret list of possible replacements from among the lieutenant colonels on Earth and in the General Staff."
She opened her other eye and lowered her arm, now looking at Walker. "So the order goes out to have the whole Mobile Suit Troops, really where most of OZ's veterans from the Alliance are serving and where you'd find most of the loyalists to Treize Khushrenada from the old days, stand down, from Central Europe outwards. By the time all orders circulate, a new commander-in-chief for OZ, or at least a provisional civilian administrator, should already be appointed by the commission."
"And the General Staff agrees because the colonel told them to agree to it, and because they don't want a bloodbath where officers are murdering each other in their barracks," Walker finished for her. "They're using the physical limitations of the military bureaucracy like it was a car bumper, hoping to minimize the force of His Excellency's resignation. That's the gist of it."
As usual, Kanna got straight to the heart of matter. "Do you think she's right?"
Walker made no attempt to hide his uncertainty this time. "I really don't know. I don't know how she would know, but I can't argue that she must be incorrect either." He crossed his arms and scowled. "Didn't I once say something about the importance of knowing what you didn't know?"
Kanna likewise crossed her arms over her chest. "If Treize…His Excellency was going to resign, or did, wouldn't it have to do with E-063, that the military seriously screwed up? And since Lady Une is either missing or useless, it would be his responsibility?"
"That's what I would think to. But to hear it from her, this whole thing sounds like some family squabble that's risen to the surface."
"But how would she know? What do the Yuys have to do with the Khushrenadas or the Catalonias?"
"Nothing, I always thought." He recalled that time he'd spent in at the Heero Yuy Memorial Library on Luna, studying books he'd never have looked at on his own.
Why can't you show up when I want you to, Eva Cebotari? "Maybe he just…told her?" Walker guessed helplessly. "I guess it doesn't matter how she knows, just what she knows."
"There must be someone we could ask," Kanna muttered, making it clear who she meant.
Walker nodded. "Jun Hono."
"Who?" Kanna asked. Less a question and more a bit of self-certain teasing.
Walker shook his head. "I know who you mean, and as much as I've been avoiding her, if I could, I'd ask her. I suppose the First Recon Battalion is still at Chièvres, could we just…call them? Ring up Squadron Commander Ogasawara, ask if there's been a mutiny, and if so, what side she will be on?"
Kanna had already taken the handset off a wall-mounted phone and presented it to Walker, a nonchalant smile on her face. He suppressed his own chuckle. "In that case, I might as well call His Excellency himself, except I don't have the number for the aircraft he would've taken." He cocked his head. "Do you think she'd even tell me if I did ask?"
Kanna raised an eyebrow. "To be honest, no. I think she hates your guts."
Walker did chuckle at that, pressing a key for the operator and holding the handset to his head.
"You'd be better off calling the colonel."
"It's engaged," he announced upon hearing a busy tone.
"Of course, what were we expecting?"
"That, or they cut the lines and I can't tell the difference," he admitted. "Dac swore he saw a pair of interceptors taking off from the direction of Chièvres a half-hour ago, right after Ms. Yuy left."
"Dac swears he sees a lot of things," Kanna muttered back as she took the handset back.
Putting his hands together and nodding, Walker turned his chair to face her directly. "Assume it was all true. That we're on the cusp of a civil war on Earth that'll drag every soldier, officer and pilot in OZ into it. What would you do?"
Kanna subtly flexed her arm muscles over her chest. "I'd follow your orders."
Walker laughed abruptly. "Now you're cheating."
"No I'm not!" she laughed back.
Walker shook his head and looked back with a melancholy smile. "You know what I'd like? If none of this were happening. If His Excellency and the Romefeller Foundation and the Supreme Military CouncilSupreme Military Council could all just keep playing nice. If you put a gun to my head and asked me," he said, illustrating with his right hand, "I don't mind the mobile dolls. At least, not as much as I probably should as an active-duty unit commander. I wanted out of the Mobile Suit Troops anyway, didn't I?"
Kanna just shrugged to convey her disagreement. Her sympathies were clear and unmistakable, a welcome change.
"Of course, I doubt anyone—not Duke Dermail, not Treize Khushrenada, not even Tubarov Villemont, wants to see everything burn to the ground. They may hate one another, but not enough to jeopardize everything OZ has worked towards. At least, I thought that was the case." He frowned. "I'm not suited to be a politician, and wonder if I'm even suited to be a pilot."
Kanna put her hands on her hips. "This again. You're a better pilot than you give yourself credit for—you destroyed one Gundam and almost destroyed another."
"I disabled a crippled Gundam that could not fight in space, and was killed trying to destroy another Gundam," he reminded her.
She rolled her eyes. "Whatever, sir."
Walker looked back at the plastic model before pressing in the clear yellow-colored plastic of the viewport for the main camera housing with a small screwdriver. "It's not something you forget when you were in the same class as Zechs Merquise. I knew I'd never be half the pilot Zechs was—and I was fine with that. I thought I might be able to be as good an officer though. As if the choices were between a leadership unit called an officer and a combat unit known as a pilot." He looked back up at her. "Now's the time to be an officer."
After the audible clicking of the plastic, he put down the screwdriver and the model and stood up. "Whatever we do—fight or run—we owe it to one another to stay together. We've come this far together, haven't we?"
She nodded in agreement. "I know I don't feel the same way about Treize Khushrenada, but I can tell there's something people see in him, that you see even if I don't, and part of you wants to answer the call when it comes." She cocked her head. "You're more a warrior than you realize, sir."
Walker gave her another incredulous look. "Whether you believe it or not, we're with you, Tai-i. Ajay and Dac might never admit it, but we are."
Walker managed to at least look convinced and appreciative. "You always look out for me, Kanna."
She gave him a soft punch on the shoulder by her standards. "'Course I do. But I won't always be around."
"Oh, I know you won't, you're meant for greater things I'm sure. And when you're a flight lieutenant yourself, I can only hope your second seat reaches that bar you've already raised."
She grinned cockily and put touched a finger just under her nose. "Hah! Don't count on it!"
Walker was still laughing at her response when Mazuri barged into the room, very agitated and with Dac in tow. Mazuri was nearly out of breath. "Something's…going on, sir."
"I can see that Mazuri," Walker replied sardonically.
"Hah…hah," he growled back, trying to recompose himself while waving his right hand. "Pen, I need a pen, sir."
Glancing at his desk, Walker pushed aside the remaining plastic runners and model parts and found a red pen, which Mazuri took before leaning against the adjacent wall where a regional map was pinned. Yanking off the cap with his teeth, he circled Brussels.
"The military in Belgium, the OZ military anyway, consists of Sixtieth George Cross Ground Division, and the Second and Third Battalions."
"Paracommando," Dac added.
"Yes, Paracommando. We snuck next door, where they've got a working military shortwave. Everyone was going nuts over seeing E-SPAN and the BBC covering all the fracases in Brussels proper, and after we found our mobiles were all offline…"
"Wait, what's going on in Brussels?" Walker asked.
"Our mobiles are offline?" Kanna asked, yanking her own out and checking the display.
"Jesus Christ, do none of you watch the news? Dac watches the news!" he barked, pointing at the younger pilot.
Dac stuck is tongue out briefly before taking over, as Mazuri slid into an empty chair. "So, that bodyguard regiment of Colonel Treize's, the ones we saw? Apparently since he left, they took their trucks downtown and started getting a rise out of people, you know sir, driving real fast, confiscating Belgian government property, that sort of thing. So the Second and Third Paracommando Battalions, which were southwest of Brussels, were ordered to 'restore order' or whatever."
Walker's features had turned cold, but he said nothing, so he continued. "That was all on the news. What they didn't mention was that something's going on at Chièvres Airbase, where those two battalions were originally posted near, and where the Mobile Suit First Recon Battalion is being housed."
Mazuri stood up and began drawing. "Dac got the uncharacteristically clever idea to see if anyone else was going stir crazy. Turns out Winthrop's boys are, and they're just across the street and they've been trying to follow the news ever since all the Network access went down and all the phone lines got disconnected or whatever." He drew two lines indicating the Paracommando Battalions. "Minutes after those Paracommando troops were in Brussels city limits, First Recon started pulling something at Chièvres"
"What do you mean, something?"
"What do you think, sir? Actually, we don't know. What we do know is that the Sixtieth Division, which is dispersed all over Belgium awaiting leave, was called back up and some units are already descending on Chièvres, including the one that was posted here at Leopoldsburg to babysit us," Mazuri finished, circling Leopoldsburg on the map and drawing lines from it to Chièvres. "The bastards left so quietly we barely noticed, the Europeans know how to build some quiet troop trucks. There's barely a company of MPs left behind."
"Yeah, no kidding. The lieutenant's bike is louder," Dac jeered.
"So?"
Walker looked at Mazuri, his face having returned to a familiar calm but concerned neutrality. "I'm sorry?"
"Oh, don't give me that, sir! This is the start of it, the ram has touched the wall! Like Shalua Yuy warned us, the zealots from the Recon Battalion aren't going to take Treize Khushrenada's forced retirement standing down, and what are they an hour down the road from? The bloody headquarters of the Romefeller Foundation. Someone's going to pay, and we're going to be in the middle of it." Mazuri warned, his eyes extremely wide and his voice manic.
"Yeah, and our orders are to, what? Hide under our beds while the descendants of European nobility get into a shooting war with the other descendants of the same nobility?" Dac asked.
"'Doesn't look like it's just them, boys," Kanna announced from the room's window.
The three crowded around and behind her in time to see another Seventh Division officer—Flight Lieutenant Kim, still wearing a bandage on the side of his head—accompanied by three other pilots being accosted by white helmets and holsters after a short shouting match.
"Oh, well, that's is just bullshit," Mazuri declared. "What, do they think with the colonel gone, they're the General Staff now?"
"Try and see it from their perspective," Walker mumbled softly. "I'm sure they're tired of dealing with prima donna pilots too."
"Well, this isn't gonna' work," Kanna announced, pulling off her tunic and shirt to reveal a wrinkled, bright red tank top underneath. "Just sitting here, we won't know if we're following orders or engaging in mutiny or what. Inaction's only correct one-third of the time."
"Japanese proverb?"
"No. A Kanna-ism," she boasted. "It's….what, eighty meters to the next building? Do Winthrop's boys still have that radioset?"
"For now, probably," Dac guessed.
"Then I want to hear this myself. Between Kenyan aces and Colonial bijin, I'm tired of always getting the secondhand story. Now move it, Dac!"
Groaning softly, Bishop nodded heading for the door, before Mazuri grabbed his shoulder. "Wait, you're taking Dac?"
"Ajay, you barely made it up the stairs."
"We had to take the…I'm fine!" he insisted defensively, undoing his collar. "I'm fine, really!"
Dac raised an eyebrow. "I really don't know if I should be offended or grateful."
Walker straightened his back and begun unbuttoning his tailcoat. "I'm coming too."
"Tai-i, no, please stay here," Kanna asked, tying her tunic around her waist.
"Why?"
Kanna sighed. "Because if we're found, at least we can claim we were only disobeying you."
Walker nodded reluctantly and sat back down. "Very well then, I'll wait for the call from the military police then," he said with a smile. He didn't sound like he was joking, further confirmed when he checked his wristwatch. "How about twenty minutes before I assume everything's gone wrong?"
Kanna blinked before sticking out her own wrist, with the same general issue-quartz wristwatch they'd both received upon being commissioned into the Speciali years ago, but a few seconds behind. Walker counted down from three, and the two synchronized their timepieces as much out of force of habit as anything. In time with their watches, Mazuri took several deep, controlled breath.
"There's some wine and cheese in the mess hall if you need to post our bail," he said, forcing a familiar grin just as Kanna grabbed him by the shoulder and dragged him out of the room.
"Come on, funnyman."
Walker and Dac watched them leave, the later resisting the urge to comment on Mazuri's statement.
"Good luck."
V
Two mobile suit strategic airlifters belonging to the 12th Transportation Brigade, subordinate to the 6th Transportation Battalion out of Lake Baikal Cosmodrome in the Siberian Military District, took the 'safe route' circling most of the Lolland Demilitarized Zone on their way Casement Airbase, outside Dublin. This, combine with the departure of the surviving Gundams from Earth, allowed for a much lower density of escort for them compared to Operation 'Amur'—a mere four fighters, two of which broke off over Baltic Sea to be replaced by another two when the aircraft reached the North Sea.
During that period of a few minutes with only two aircraft escorting, the aircrews aboard either Antonov remained at ease. The pilot and first officer of the lead aircraft undertook a shift change, while the flight engineer drummed his hands along to the soft rock tune playing audibly from a pair of headphones he wore along with his actual aircraft headset.
The new pilot and first officer rolled their eyes at him as the later took his seat at the front of the flight deck, then glanced down the long, narrow cabin lined with instruments on either side.
"Michele."
The flight engineer raised a hand in response, still bobbing his head in time to the music.
"Michele, if you're going to enjoy yourself so much, would you consider something a little more recent, not from the stupid age?" she asked, eliciting a chuckle from the first officer.
He pulled off his headphones, leaving his headset around his neck as he did. "Oh, come on, the best part is coming up!" he said, pulling the cable out of the jack and quickly turning the volume control near it, filling the flight deck with the melody.
"I highly doubt that," the first officer muttered, which got an approving hand slap from the pilot before she snickered and glanced out the flight deck windows—one of the two escort jets was visible keep a near-constant distance of about 320 meters.
"If I knew you were drowning, I would not lend a hand….I've seen your face before, comrade, but I don't know if you know who I am…" the flight engineer began singing softly, stretching his legs out in his swiveling seat.
"Oh my god," the navigator/radio operator announced, not taking his eyes from his station but shaking his head nonetheless. "That doesn't even make any sense, what is that, a song for sociopaths?"
"You know why six is an ideal aircrew?" the first officer asked him.
"Why?"
"So the radio operator can hold down the senior flight engineer while the secondary engineer beats him."
The navigator laughed, only to be shushed by the engineer. "Here's it is, best drum solo in any song, ever," he told them, holding a pen in either hand like a drumstick. "But I-I-I know the reason why you keep your silence, no you don't fool me! Well the hurt doesn't show, but the pain-n still grows, it's no stranger to you and me!"
With maximum dramatic flourish, Michele struck an imaginary drum set in time with the subsequent fourteen notes. During the last two 'snare' notes, an alarm blared in the cockpit and an explosion ripped the back of the escort fighter with shrapnel in a clearly visible firewall. Michele fell out of his seat when shockwave from the blast shook the aircraft.
"What the hell was that?!" he snapped before picking himself up.
"Was that a missile tone?"
"Bogeys, two, just came up on radar, heading one-seven-three, altitude approximately one-three-thousand, distance one-eight-zero-thousand!"
"Parachutes spotted from escort fighter!"
"One hundred and eighty kilometers? That must have been a long range interceptor, since when does the Alliance still have any of those?"
"Our other escort's being targeted!" the first officer shouted, pointing at it visually through the windows as the aircraft rapidly turned and banked, another missile rapidly accelerating past the transport aircraft and towards it at no slower than Mach 5. Both soon left their field of view.
"Other escort's hit, engine dead!" the navigator announced, clutching his headset.
"Wait, that's not two…three hostiles, same heading. One of them's a mobile suit!"
The pilot and first officer simultaneously pushed the throttle bar to full power and the aircraft lurched as its four massive Progress EA-28T high-bypass turbofans propelled it to its top attainable speed with its load. The radio operator was sending out a distress call when an incoming broadcast came through over THF.
"Attention, transport aircraft tail numbers Oscar-Zodiac-Tatyana-One-Nine-Nine-Two and Oscar-Zodiac-Foxtrot-One-Eight-One-Five. This is the black mobile suit closing in on you. Ignore the two interceptors you've now confirmed, they are not pursuing you. At maximum speed, you cannot outrun me. Change altitude to nine-thousand and throttle down to cruising speed of eight-hundred and remain on your designated heading. Attempt no maneuvers or evasions. I will now fire a warning burst. If you intend to comply, wait until after my burst and blink your landing lights twice, one short, one long," a woman's voice commanded sternly.
Good on its pilot's word, once the Aries closed in to within 60 kilometers of both aircraft, it fired a single burst of 90-mm APFSDS fire, its tracers visibly passing between them. Without another word, the pilot toggled the runway lights twice as instructed.
"Good. I'm addressing the pilot of OZ-T1992 now. Respond."
She swallowed before flipping the switch and touching her mouthpiece unnecessarily. "This is First Lieutenant Olga Nemerova, Twelfth Transportation Brigade responding. May I ask who I'm speaking to?"
"This is Damocles One, Olga," the woman replied quickly. "You're should now have seen lone courier aircraft approaching, heading two-thirty. It will match speed approximately a hundred meters ahead of you, upon which you will both decrease your speed to six-hundred and you will be boarded via your dorsal hatch. After which, commandos in armored normal suits will board your aircraft. They will be armed, and will take control of your aircraft. Attempt no resistance. Attempt no evasive maneuvers, or I will jeopardize the other aircraft and shoot you down. Do you confirm?"
"I acknowledged, Damocles One."
"Engage your autopilot now."
"Acknowledged," she muttered before punching the designated airspeed and altitude into the autopilot control panel above her instruments. It was barely a few minutes before the courier aircraft appeared directly ahead, and second afterwards the loud clang of an aerial soft dock followed by the mechanical locking of a hard dock, with the aircraft literally resting on top of their own. Through the closed door of the flight deck cabin, they could hear hatches opening and a ladder striking the floor, before it swung open itself.
On the other side was a rather short, almost coquettishly-shaped armored female spacesuit in dark green and grey colors, carrying a machine pistol mounting a bulky anti-personnel sensor with a visible display.
"What the hell, it's CAST," the flight engineer muttered, instinctively raising his hands over his head.
The shapely spacesuit tapped the insignia on its arm twice as it to confirm it. "Any of you armed?" a slightly shrill, mechanically-processed but clearly feminine voice asked while another, larger spacesuit dropped into place behind it after some difficulty getting through the hatch.
"No, everything's in the armory safe. There are six loading crew in the main hold and another two aircrew in the rear cabin."
"We know ma'am," it assured her, before it reached for its helmet seals, demagnetized and unlocked them before pulling off its helmet.
Underneath was an almost comically young and definitely non-frighteningly-looking woman with a crop of longish, crimson-red hair, large blue eyes and a few small bandages adorning her face. She gave a genuinely apologetic, even embarrassed look. "I'm sorry to hafta' ask, ma'am, but would ya' mind getting into the back with them?"
The aircrew exchanged looks and slowly began undoing their restraints, with the exception of Michele, who stared Corporal Carver, as the name sewn into her armor identified her, in the face as he slowly walked filed passed her. "What are Colonial Strike Troops doing boarding an OZ transport aircraft over the North Sea?" he muttered in bewilderment, the most obvious question coming to mind.
"Yeah, again, sorry about that sir," she apologized. Behind her back, she gestured at two boarders, who waited as the aircrew slowly filed out of the flight deck before taking the pilot and first officer's seats. Machine pistol still raised from the hip, she slowly led them through the short hallway and down the extended stairs into the repair and work stations that lined the huge cargo compartment. Another pair of CAST were already waiting for them in an adjacent rest area for mechanical staff, where the loading crew was waiting in their grey working uniforms, alongside the pilot and first officer whose shifts had ended just a few minute earlier.
"So, you're going to board the other aircraft as well?"
With a slightly guilty expression still, Carver put her hands up in a disarming manner, a gesture made useless by the automatic weapon she was carrying, before turning for the door.
"What does CAST need with twelve mobile suits?"
She seemed to ignore that inquiry and kept proceeding forwards. "They're not for them," the first officer muttered finally before adding, "…dumbass."
"Where are you even taking us? Are you even going to let us go then?" Michele demanded in indignant panic.
This time, Carver turned, revealing a handkerchief clutched in her left hand. She was biting onto it, pulling it taunt with her teeth, tears welling up in her eyes. "I…I can't believe you'd think we'd do that to you!" she whimpered through her teeth.
The twelve imprisoned crewmen and officers stared at the corporal until one of the troopers standing by the door began snickering uncontrollably under his helmet, turning into laughter. Carver turned to him, cloth still in her mouth and gave an accusing stare. "Oh, come on, Carver, we already got their plane, you want the shirts off their backs next?"
She spat the handkerchief out and threw it at him. "Bite me, Sergeant. It would have totally worked," she snapped back, slamming the door shut behind her. "All right, guys, let's take the other one. I'm sure the glorious squadron commander didn't hire us to sit around, basking in our own superiority," she declared, taking a glance over the edge at the six black mobile suits sitting in their support cages, powered down and still wrapped in canvas for transport.
She shook her head. "Never get me in one of those tin cans."
VI
As it turned out, barely five minutes sitting in the same room as his friend-turned-unit commander was too much for Dac Bishop to comfortably tolerate, and after that he excused himself to drink some of the slightly-burnt tasting coffee in the large pot in the first floor common area. He took a sip from an out-of-box dark blue mug bearing the Earth Forces insignia, frowned at the bitterness, only to drink the rest of it and feel the urge to have another cup. On what would have been his third cup, he now felt the urge to grab another new mug, rinse it out, and pour a cup for Walker. He was close to wondering if Walker would want cream and sugar when he realized what he was doing and dropped the cup into the sink loudly before stormed back up to the stairs, blaming the coffee for altering his judgment.
He found Walker still in his room, the door opened, snapping the last few parts of the plastic model into place with an almost serene air. Without looking back, he checked his wristwatch, then rested both arms on the desk and sighing deeply. "How was the coffee?"
Dac reckoned he must have heard the banging from the sink. "Pretty…average, I think," he admitted before adding, "…sir."
"You don't call me 'sir' around Kanna or Ajay, I don't see why you'd do it in private, Dac," Walker said, still staring at the black plastic model. He poked it with the thin model knife, as if testing its stability.
"Right…" Dac glanced around the small room, looking for another chair. He ended up sitting on Walker's immaculately-made bed. "No word from either of them, huh?"
"Not yet, no."
He stared at the back of Walker's head with its short, straight, slightly shaggy brown hair. There was barely a year between the two of them, but staring at the back of his head, it didn't quite feel like that little. Biting down on his lip, he fell backwards onto the bed, bouncing a bit before speaking. "Do you remember how I got the idea for taking the career path into the officer corps?" he asked, overly loudly and stiffly.
Walker looked up from his wristwatch, then turned and looked over shoulder. Dac expected him to look genuinely surprised, only to be disappointed when he didn't. "I remember you won an apprenticeship at Lake Victoria as part of a musical scholarship, that your grandfather was a colonel in the Alliance Space Forces, making you and Rani, as with myself, preferential if not legacies."
He wasn't missing a beat. "Do you remember winter of 'One-Ninety?"
Walker frowned. "I…believe I do, why?"
Some satisfaction. "You remember that week I vanished during winter break?"
Now he looked genuinely confused. "You went home while Rani and I joined the Christmas camping trip at Victoria Falls. Why?"
"I didn't go home. Well, I did, but not for the reasons you think. I was going through the Main Library, just bored because I hated camping and passed on the trip. I also remember you and my sister and everyone else lecturing me about 'wasting' my time listening to music for hours, and I wanted to prove to you I could read a book of my own accord. So I finally finished Storm of Steel when I found a copy…"
"It would have been better if you'd done when it was an assigned reading."
"Will you let me finish? Anyway, I finished Storm of Steel, I finished the practical texts on mobile warfare that were assigned for the spring semester, and so forth. I was probably at the library for sixteen hours a day, at least."
"When did you go home?"
"It was after I found a book—not a reference text or a biography or anything. It was just sitting in the fantasy section on the fiction shelves," he said, gesturing with his fingers. "A long one. Probably unread for ages. I think it was called The Black Swordsman, and it was a translated adaptation from either Before Colony Chinese or Japanese. Anyway, it was this amazing, horrifying medieval fantasy story, the most terrible thing I'd ever read. It took those overused ideas of loyalty between comrades, knightly loyalty, chivalry, courtly love and so forth, and turned them on their head in the worst possible way imaginable. But I couldn't tear myself away from it."
He saw Walker staring at him, actually looking somewhat confused. "It really wasn't something a thirteen-year-old should read. I had nightmares for weeks after it, and would just start crying for no reason during the day. But I kept reading it because I had to know how it ended."
"How did it end?" Walker asked predictably.
"That's the worst part—it didn't. It was the first volume of an adaptation, like some sort of horrible, terrible version of John Tolkien filled with betrayal, torture and rape. You know, that officer from the Lancashire Fusiliers in the Twentieth Century, except none of his stories left mental scars. By the end of it, I couldn't take it anymore, so I took a flight back to North America and showed up on my parents' doorstep. I guess I just really wanted to see that they were alive, unharmed like they always were, with my own two eyes."
Dac looked genuinely disturbed but continued. "I eventually found out there were other volumes out there, that the story continued for many more books. I could never bring myself to read them though, the more time passed the more terrified I was of the story. As though just remembering it gave it some sort of supernatural power.
"That aside, Rani complained to me that you told her you were going to finish your cadetship and apply for a commission, and how disappointed she was. I was a year behind you, so I had time to think about it myself, and I decided I'd try to stay at Lake Victoria as well. So I managed to pass the USCE by the skin of my teeth and became Officer Cadet Bishop."
Walker frowned. "So that book…?"
"Before the book, I didn't know if I was cut out to serve in the Alliance military of all places, but the idea of joining the Special Mobile Suit Troops was incredibly exciting. And somehow, it looked like I might just manage to beat the million-to-one odds. But that story, about war and torture and betrayal—it scared the hell out of me."
"But you stayed with it, you beat those odds, and got your commission?"
He nodded. "I had this inescapable fear that if I followed Rani and just finished my apprenticeship, that if I just went back to my normal life in Windsor and passed up the chance of a lifetime, it would have been because of that book. Not because I wasn't the best at theory, or the best pilot, or wasn't a genius when it came to doctrine, or was unlucky. But because one day on winter break, I just happened to be in the library. That I happened to walk down that particular aisle. That I happened to stop by that particular shelf and that I happened to pick up that particular book." He sighed. "It's a lousy reason, of course, and not the only one, but I couldn't stand the idea that some book by chance scared me out of my future, whatever it might be."
Walker stared at him and was about to speak, only to be cut off.
"Yes, I know, it was only a book. Of course, in the end of the day, the book might have won."
"I'm sorry?"
"I spent two years as an officer cadet. With my scores, I could have been an active pilot in the Alliance Air Force, but I wasn't good enough to be reserve and support in the Specials. If it wasn't for 'Daybreak', I might never have become a full pilot officer at all, and permanently put in a support role." He gave a cynical, almost-barking laugh and put his hands together. "Like I was during all of 'Citadel'."
He shook his head. "God, how I hate determinism," he muttered before adding, "…and the dark fantasy genre."
Dac spun about and sat, slumped, on the edge of the bed when he felt a touch on his back. Walker was smiling over him, a hand on his shoulder, sad but sympathetic. "You could still do great things."
He feigned a laugh. "Thank you."
"For what?'
"Having the decency not to lie to me. That I had done great things, when I obviously haven't."
Walker stopped smiling, but kept his hand on his shoulder.
"You still finished a junior officer cadetship at the Lake Victoria Academy. That's not…something people can just do," he repeated. "People don't just walk in off streets in Kampala and decide they're going to become mobile suit pilots. You're in the company of people like Zechs Merquise and Lucrezia Noin."
Dac nodded. "I guess that's true," he admitted, clearly appreciating the compliment.
"Don't ever forget that, David. You, your sister, we all accomplished something great just by getting here," he insisted.
Dac sighed, though he was smiling now. "And here we are. On the edge of a civil war, staring into the abyss. I wonder what great things I'll do amid that."
"No one wants to die, David."
He sighed deeply. "Tell that to the maniacs in the First Recon Battalion."
Both men literally jumped when the door to Walker's room slammed open and Kanna appeared, chest heaving and dragging an exhausted Mazuri behind her. "Hey guys," she said finally between breaths.
"Kanna! Ajay! What happened?" Walker asked, rushing up to Kanna and taking a limp Mazuri from her shoulder and onto his with some effort.
"Don't worry, he's fine…we were literally in the next building twenty second ago, apparently he hadn't limbered up."
"Cardio's important," Dac added as Walker hobbled Mazuri to his bed and set him down. The flight officer finally raised his left hand with his thumb extended, as if to offer assurance. Kanna put a hand on her hip and arched her back momentarily as her breath gradually returned to normal.
Walker snuck a glance at his wristwatch and sighed. "You're late, by the way."
She nodded a few times before snatching a bottle of water from the counter near the door, yanking off the cap and emptying it in one long gulp before tossing it away. "Winthrop wasn't there. We found Squadron Commander Sun, he was with Flight Lieutenant Khanum. They had a working radio, different one than before, but still worked." She took another deep breath. "Kim's in a cell, along with pretty much any other officer caught outside. But that's only the start—shooting's started."
"In Brussels?"
She shook her head. "No. At Chièvres. Pretty sure Treize's bodyguard pouring into Brussels was just a distraction, of course the Sixtieth Division can't really just let an entire armed regiment pour into the capital of Belgium in troop trucks and motorcycles."
"And that's the Recon Battalion's feint," Walker mumbled.
"Hai! And it's just the start—apparently, the Sixtieth Division's started bringing in SPAA vehicles, Eurasian ones," she explained, her violet eyes growing very wide.
"You're kidding," Dac said.
"She's not," Mazuri muttered, still lying down. "We heard them moving in heavy mechanized infantry stuff, infantry fighting vehicles, personnel carriers. No tanks, yet."
"What the hell could the First Recon Battalion be doing that they'd need to bring in vehicle support?" Dac asked, glancing back at Walker before recoiling in surprise. A lot of the color had drained from his face, his jaw hanging slightly open.
"Sir…"
"They've taken the Aries mobile suits left at Chièvres AFB. The First Recon Battalion's not mutinying, they're starting a war against the Romefeller Foundation and the rest of OZ," he whispered softly.
"Holy God. It's another revolution," Dac muttered.
"It's another coup d'état," Mazuri corrected him.
"And they've got Treize's bodyguards helping them," Kanna added.
There was a few painful, awkward moments of silence. Kanna glanced around her three comrades, each with varying degrees of dread visible on their face. "Well?"
Walker hid his clenched jaw behind his right hand. "We…we have to get out of here."
"No shit," Mazuri muttered.
"What about the MPs?"
"No, I mean we have to get out of Belgium. We're down the road from the European center of operations for the Romefeller Foundation and their board of governors. The fact that there aren't a dozen divisions rolling across every highway in the country is because no one's supposed to be unreasonable enough to actually try what's about to happen."
Dac broke the heavy silence this time. "Fine, we're all thinking it, so I'll go ahead and say it: thanks, First Recon Battalion. You've killed us all."
"I wasn't thinking that," Kanna fired back.
"No they haven't," Walker growled. "Not yet. All of you know how I feel about the colonel, and I'm not going to hide that fact, but sitting in this barracks with an entire division of officers who have already been declared sympathetic to the enemy, while a shooting war breaks out down the road seems like a very bad idea."
"Well, we're just following orders, right?" Dac asked. "We're doing what they told us to."
"Except for all those times we snuck out," Mazuri pointed out.
"You know what I mean!" he shouted.
"They've done the calculus. That's how the bureaucracy plans for contingencies. For all we know, they really do appreciate us for having beaten the Alliance, but they did the math and it told them that if something happened at a certain time, we, as a group, would behave in a certain manner. Which is the most math can tell you about any sort of human behavior," Walker explained, sounding increasingly manic and even disoriented as he continued.
"In this case, that if Treize Khushrenada resigned, we—the troops, the division as a whole—wouldn't take it well."
"And the Recon Battalion decided to take over a whole airfield for God knows what reason."
Walker turned, his eyes as wide as Kanna's. "I don't want to find out. We're getting out of here, all of us." He spun around once, surveying his room before running to the nearby closet and throwing out his luggage. The other three stared at him as he began throwing in the few possessions he still had into the traveling bag, mostly notebooks and a few sets of clothes. He turned and stared at them. "Should we vote on it democratically?" he asked.
"I vote in favor," Kanna said immediately.
"Me too," Mazuri added reluctantly.
"Wait, hold on—so, where do we go? I mean, we're not going to the airfield, right? So are we just going to drive out of Belgium?"
"Why not? We don't have any countermanding orders, except for the ones they knew we'd break, do we?" Walker asked, his tone now clearly frantic. "So we leave danger for the Netherlands. Or Germany. Or wherever, so long as it's not here or Luxembourg. And when the new military hierarchy is established, we'll take or orders then. Or not. Or whatever, the point is we won't be here," he finished, shouting.
He stared at the three of them agitatedly. "Well, don't you have packing to do?" he barked, immediately chasing all three out of his room.
VII
The overall atmosphere north of Chièvres Airbase had the feeling over a failed demilitarized zone or a contentious border checkpoint between rival nations—from there, it was assumed by both sides, it would escalate to an actual combat zone.
For its part, the 60th George Cross Division had treaded carefully, bringing up self-propelled anti-aircraft vehicles to their main position north of the town itself, then running a perimeter down the length of the Chaussée de Mons two-thirds of the way to the town of Lens.
"Our two best avenues of insertion are through the town, by way of the Rue de la Chapelle, or cross Chaussée de Mons past the airbase barracks, near the primary runway," an Earth Army captain, the North American executive officer to the division commander, explained while gesturing at a map illuminated in a field tent.
"Isn't that where elements of the Third Paracommando encountered fire from the mutineers?" the division commander, a tall Walloon who'd traded his daily uniform for dark green combat fatigues, asked.
"Yes sir—only light fire from small arms and one light machinegun."
"Second and Third Paracommando are ready, sir," a Paracommando lieutenant announced, in a yellow-brown-green camouflage pattern offset by a blood-red beret that would have to be discarded in combat.
"And those mobile suits?"
"We're not certain that the mutineers will use them, but if they do, we can target them with our 5K22 anti-aircraft vehicles or our AMGM if they remain on the ground," the captain explained.
"They're in position on the north perimeter?"
"Yes, sir. Here, here, and here," he said, gesturing to three points on the map. "We're barely six-hundred meters from them, well beneath their optimal range we should be able to fire before they can even begin targeting us from the ground level or go airborne."
The division commander glanced out the tent's open door to the south—near where the secondary and main runways crossed, he could see a number of mobile suits, their yellow camera eyes glowing in the night. "Make sure to target the mobile suits first and only relent until they're confirmed crippled. Those cockpits should protect the pilots in any case, and naturally the Western European district will want plenty of live mutineers for the investigation."
"Understood, sir."
"Is the tower still unpowered?"
"As far as we can tell, yes sir."
"Good, no one fires on it until I give the order. Also, I want a company of men to cover our flank, anything from the city itself will…" he ordered being cut off by an explosion. Several bursts of fire cut through the cloudy overcast above, and the defensive positions hastily constructed around the SPAA vehicles exploded when struck by precisely-aimed ninety-millimeter HEAM ammunition. No sooner had they spotted the explosions to their north did the mobile suits at Chièvres begin their own barrage of less-effective ground fire. The division's troops responded in kind, joined by spotlights that bathed the darkened airfield in streaks of light.
Flight Officer Syed Khan checked her headset, quickly scanned the horizon on her displays, then squeezed the trigger, sending a cluster of air-ground missiles into a grass-covered knoll she suspected housed a number of AMGM. The entire area vanished in an explosion. "Damocles 2-1 to all callsigns, check your datalink! Only target the defensive lines as sent to us by Damocles 1, I repeat, do not fire on any retreating units! And will someone shoot those damn spotlights?"
"Acknowledged, Damocles 2-1!"
"Okay, now this is like a war," she muttered with a grimace as the five Aries turned the whole enemy perimeter north of them into scorched earth and smoking craters. Three pairs of infantry fighting vehicles had responded with their own autocannons, dimmer but still bright bursts of flashing light—the mobile suit to her right turned and fired a long burst from its chain gun, punching them full of holes and liquidating any troops or vehicle crews inside. It was one of the more accurate shots from the mobile suits at Chièvres, where even their directed fire generally failed to meet its mark.
"Are we clear?"
"On second, Damocles 2-4. Damocles 2-1 to Emi, target the clearing between buildings at fifty-thirty-five-twenty-five at three-forty-nine-eight, there's artillery there we can't hit from the ground."
"Acknowledged, firing for effect."
Along the Grand'Rue was the Caserne Daurmerie, a collection of buildings that once housed an ancient United States Army Garrison but had been hastily occupied by the Sixtieth Division. Near the main complex of orange-roofed buildings, two self-propelled howitzers were returning firing at the airfield until a burst of fire from above filled them and the nearby monument aircraft, a preserved Gloster Meteor dubbed EG-18, with gaping ninety-millimeter holes. The howitzer's ammunition exploded, and everything vanished in a fireball.
"Enemy forces are in full retreat to the north and east, ceasing fire."
"Acknowledged. ATC, clear the carriers for landing."
In the darkened top floor of the Chièvres Tower, an airbase ordnance chief wearing a headset gestured at his assistant, who set down his flashlight and immediately flipped a bank of switches on one of the console, bringing the surrounding consoles and monitor back to life, before donning a headset himself.
"This is Chièvres Tower to aircraft on north approach, do you read…"
By the time Flight Officer Syed Khan was able to exit her newly-acquired mobile suit, the two Antonov airlifters had completed a hasty landing in record time, with ground crew assisted by the large men from the Fusiliers-Grenadiers Regiment who could at least help with the heavy lifting. Their rear cargo ramps were already lowered when the sixth Aries mobile suit, raked by light fire by otherwise undamaged, touched down near the main hangar.
Approaching the illuminated loading area, Syed Khan adjusted the combat armor vested she'd taken earlier, pulling at the straps repeatedly and she ran up to the Aries. Ogasawara Emi, clad in a black crop top and her warpaint slightly smeared, descended on a tether.
"Diwali came early this year," she joked earnestly, trying to sound cheerful.
"In that case Indira, consider this gift for the festival of lights from Terrestrial Forces," Emi jibbed back, dropping the last two meters and landing within arm's reach.
"Well, what did you bring me then?"
Chièvres remained under-illuminated by any sort of military working standard, but the grenadiers managed to obtain a number of standing torchlights which they aimed up into the cavernous cargo compartments, their contents finally visible, if not clearly.
"A dozen OZ-12AMS 'Taurus' airborne mobile suits, including two commander variants, four flights worth and their associated beam cannons and rifles," Emi announced with a sort of academic disinterest.
"According to the manifests, these were going to your unit, to be based out of the headquarters for the North Atlantic Air Army," Corporal Carver announced from the hood of a 4WD car, helmet in one hand and thick military folder in the other.
"So technically we didn't do anything wrong," Emi joked humorlessly.
Indira wasn't listening, and instead clasped her hands together and stared at the short enlisted woman with twinkling eyes. "Oh my god, aren't you the most adorable little trooper I've ever seen!" she cried before trotting right up to Carver and pinching one of her surprisingly-elastic cheeks. Carver winced in pain and jerked her head, but otherwise didn't respond. "She is just too cute for words," Indira declared.
"Please stop doing that, ma'am," Carver said, her cheek still pulled out.
Indira ignored her. "These machines were packed for transit, not aerial deployment. Otherwise, you could probably take over all of Brussels for at least a few hours with twelve Taurii."
Emi nodded. "We'll probably need someone from First Recon's supply or transport companies," she admitted. "Maybe even battalion headquarters."
Carver finally broke free from Indira's pinching, while the pilot gave Emi a knowing look. "Really, Emi?"
"In the meantime, we've got the loading crew and engineers from either aircraft."
Indira's indicting stare was only growing more judgmental. "Really? A dozen loading crew and two flight engineers from the Sixth Transportation Battalion? How long do really think they can keep twelve Taurus mobile suits working? Even outside of combat conditions?"
Emi cocked her head and touched the back of her neck under her long hair. Carver stopped rubbing her cheeks and spoke up. "Ma'am, I think I should add that none of them seemed particularly reliable from what I saw of them."
Relenting, Emi heaved a sigh and put her hand to her forehead. "Fine. We'll go get some real engineers, including him. Is that what you wanted to hear? Did Nabiki put you up to this?"
Indira gave a cocky shrug, further annoying Emi, who unslung her machine pistol and jammed it into Indira's chest. "You two find Walker. He's probably still in Leopoldsburg, pulling his hair out. That's an order."
Looking briefly like she regretted her action, Indira slung the weapon over her shoulder awkwardly and nodded. "I'll get Nabiki."
Emi scoffed. "You better hurry up," she called back. "We're not occupying Chièvres Airbase, after all."
VIII
"You know, I hate being the one who says it but someone ought to—what if we just surrendered to the MPs?"
The three looked at Dac, who looked impressively calm when he posed the question. They were standing in the common area on the ground floor of the barracks, luggage in their hands and uniforms either buttoned or, in Kanna's case, tied around her waist.
"I mean, we haven't really done anything that wrong yet. I'm pretty sure leaving our posts, if not desertion, is considered wrong. What if we just walked over to the MPs?"
"Damn it, Dac, do you really think the Foundation would do all this just so that we could go to the military police, apologize sincerely, and that'd be the end of it?" Mazuri barked angrily. "What kind of stupid…"
"If we do that, we should do it together," Walker cut him off.
They both looked at him. Dac looked taken aback, and immediately he felt the need to elaborate."Dac's not crazy—I mean, just because Kim or Sun or Winthrop are all sick of this political-divorce-turned-grandstanding, that doesn't mean we're obligated to respond similarly. These are not orders from above," he told them, as calmly as he could manage.
"As a unit, we decided that waiting in the barracks, as though this were the worst leave granted in the history of warfare because, as military officers, we repudiate indecision. But we could acknowledge these extenuating circumstances as what they are and offer ourselves…" he said, before catching himself. "…appeal to the actors on the stage."
He permitting a second's thought about the completed plastic model sitting on his desk a few floors above. "But we do it as a unit, as a flight, as a team."
He sat down on the top of the nearby couch, traveling kit and luggage over his shoulder and under his arm, resisting the urge to check his wristwatch.
"I'm not giving up," Kanna announced abruptly. "I'm sorry, but I'm not. I've always hate giving up, I can't stand it. I don't agree with the Foundation, but even if I did, that's not the whole point. If they want to put me out of a job, fine, I mean, it's not like none of us saw this coming."
Out of the corner of his eye, Walker glanced at Dac and Mazuri, trying to judge their surprise at the statement. It wasn't as overt as he would have thought.
"But I really hate giving up. When I got into the Specials, I decided stubbornness was a good quality," she said, pressing her right hand against her head.
Walker nodded mildly in agreement and glanced at the other two. To his credit, Dac didn't looked embarrassed, just thoughtful.
"Democracy's not perfect, naturally. But as the party vanguard, it's essentially the bare minimum of whatever we can do," he explained with a little rhetorical flourish added.
"God, what it is with you and history, sir?" Ajay asked in feigned exasperation.
He rose to his feet and smiled. "I've never had to rule a society but I found, as a commissioned officer in wartime, a Marxist revolutionary understanding of organization and internal discipline to be invaluable," he admitted.
"Well, if we're all done patting ourselves our back for our social consciousness, let me paraphrase Lenin," Ajay announced with biting impatience. "What is to be done?"
"That I think I can answer," Walker said, walking to a nearby window and glancing through the blinds. "There's a vehicle motor pool behind the last building, four-wheel-drive, unused troop trucks, and a military post vehicle. I'm sure it's loaded with Earth Forces magazines, undeliverable mail or even those new dark blue uniforms, something hard to miss."
His three subordinates stared at him.
"It has plates out of Dusseldorf, Valley—the Ruhr Valley No. 4 Factory," he emphasized.
Kanna gave Mazuri a rousing slap against the back. "Damn, that's our Taichō! Planning to make the impossible possible," she laughed.
"So we just drive across the border, away from Brussels, in a post truck?" Mazuri asked in disbelief. "Like we have an urgent delivery of undeliverable mail to the Fourth Mobile Suit Factory?"
"This could work," Dac interjected. "I mean, when was the last time you saw anyone barred from making a delivery? It's not like you can drive a bomb into factory, there isn't a bomb in existence that can't be detected by military spectrometers. People are just lumps of water and carbon."
"And they don't trigger alarms typically," Mazuri muttered, still unconvinced.
"I saw that motor pool earlier—there's basically the same concentration of military police around it too," Kanna added.
"I'm still open to any other suggestions," Walker added.
A shorter silence. "All things remaining the same," Mazuri confessed, "I'd rather be arrested in Dusseldorf than Brussels."
"And that's your party consensus," Kanna announced. "So we have a plan."
"Of sorts. It's not my best work," he explained, pulling off his tailcoat. "But on short notice it's passable."
Taking their cue, the three used what articles had been left behind in the common area—primarily Earth Army field jackets and supply company caps—to disguise themselves as anything except Space Mobile Suit Troops. The effect came most naturally to Kanna, who found it easy to carry herself as something besides a pilot, but after a few minutes Dac and Mazuri had made themselves passable as they could manage. It was Walker, with his tailcoat open and underneath a field jacket, who seemed most out of place, despite a past in the Engineering Corps.
"Well, it'll have to work," Walker muttered, peeking through the window blinds again. "It's not like they can't just bring up our facial data anyway."
"I'd kill for an underarm holster," Dac muttered Mazuri. "My dad still crosses his arms when he talks, from his days as a Dominion agent," he reflected, gesturing with his arms—left crossed over right, in a manner of grabbing a holstered sidearm under his coat with his right.
"I'd settle for a sidearm," Mazuri replied.
"No shooting!" Kanna hissed. "Don't you get it? We start shooting them, and you think they're gonna' care about taking us unharmed?"
"It'll be clear in thirty seconds. When we're outside, stay in the shadows, single file, against the buildings. No standing out in the open. Don't cast shadows. A few seconds of footsteps is can be less damaging than a long, continuous shadow."
"Hey, wait, what about your motorcycle?" Dac asked.
"Oh, who gives a damn about it? Let the piece of trash sit there," Walker snapped back, shutting him up.
The four pressed themselves against the wall by the door. "A journey of a leagues begins with a first step," Kanna mumbled.
"Japanese proverb?" Walker asked.
"No. Lao Tze."
With an agreeing nod, Walker tore his stare from between the blinds and gently pulled the door opened. The military base at Leopoldsburg had normal evening lighting—nonetheless, teams of two and four MPs took slow, relaxed patrols with flashlights along the roadways and along the outermost perimeter. The motor pool was three hundred meters away, and did not appear under particularly high surveillance.
Taking a deep breath, Walker exited first, followed by Kanna. They pressed themselves against the brick wall of the barracks hall just as they had from the other side.
"Remember when I said when we first met," Walker whispered. "No glory hunting. Don't get killed."
They kept in a slow moving line, single file, scrambling underneath the ornate lamps that hung from the brickwork. They stopped when a pair of MPs came around the corner, waited until they were sufficiently far away, then ran across the roadway between the halls. But in the time it took to repeat the process past the remaining two residence halls to the motor pool at the end. As Kanna recounted, the vehicle pool was actually empty of guards, though a half-dozen MPs with flashlights were visibly walking on patrol on either side of it.
"It's actually empty," Mazuri whispered in disbelief.
This seems too easy. But it's too late now. Walker said nothing but pointed at the rectangular truck marked as property of the Terrestrial Forces Post Office. Falling to the gravel, the four lingered just outside the motor pool, behind a waist-high brick just passed the barracks, waiting for a military policeman to pass on his patrol.
With the MP departing, Walker tapped Kanna in the stomach and shook Mazuri's shoulder, getting their attention. "The truck'll be unlocked. Whoever's in first, turn the ignition and hit the accelerator, and don't stop for anything," he whispered.
Kanna nodded and began counting down with her fingers—four, three, two—and all four scrambled back up to their feet and over the wall. As he vaulted over it, Walker felt a sharp pain in his lower back and despite himself cried out, almost tripping in his boots. Not very loudly, but enough that a military policeman on the edge turned and aimed his flashlight in the direction of the nearest residence building.
"Is er iemand?" he called out nervously. The other MPs heard him and paused in their steps.
Walker froze, barely four meters from the truck on the edge of the motor pool, aware of the mistake he'd made. He looked at the other three, still in the relative darkness of the truck's shadow in the dim light, clenched his jaw as he unmistakably mouthed a single word.
Oh no, he's going to do it, Kanna thought.
When the light shone close to him, he leaped out and ran for it, away from the motor pool and back to the line of barracks halls. The MPs exchanged confused shouts in Dutch, and one ran up to the center torchlight mast and flipped the switch just as Kanna, Dac and Mazuri ducked underneath the nearby truck. Even with the entire motor pool lit up from there, they couldn't see much besides the legs of the military police as they took off after Walker.
Lying on her chest, Kanna looked at the two to her right. "You know, amid all that panic and hysterical justification back there—I wonder if he always knew this'd happen. That we'd all be separated like this," she whispered.
"Does that make all that bullshit about doing this as a unit better or worse?" Mazuri wondered, the usual conceit missing from his voice.
Walker kept running, impressed by his own pace even when he'd neglected to drop his luggage, as a pair of enlisted men chased after him in their white helmets and belts. But after passing the residence halls he could tell he was running out of steam and came to a stumbling halt within sight of the base perimeter, a tall chain-link fence he was under no delusions he could scale.
The two MPs came to a stop just under ten meters away, similarly out of breath. In the bright light, he was surprised to see how young they were, two or three years younger than him and likely still cadets in training.
The one who recovered his breath earlier touched the radio on his shoulder. "Company Headquarters, this is Unit Eight. We've found Flight Lieutenant Walker." He looked up. "You are Flight Lieutenant Walker, correct sir?" he gasped.
Walker nodded, still out of breath, and pressed his a hand against his back, arching it. With everything that'd happened, he'd missed his dosage of tramadol.
"I repeat, we've located Flight Lieutenant Walker."
"Sir, would you mind coming with us?" the other asked while his comrade waited for a response.
Walker nodded meekly but froze upon hearing the unmistakable putter of a petrol engine. In a moment of optimism, he thought it might be the others taking advantage of his meager distraction and making their escape by truck, but quickly recognized the high-pitched putter as characteristic of a much smaller single cylinder engine.
The MPs heard it too, and looked behind them in time to be blinded by a headlight shone directly at them, cursing in Dutch. Walker was blinded, grasping for goggles as the sound grew louder, even deafening, when a motorcycle buzzed between the two and up to him.
"Get in!" a muffled voice commanded, and he felt someone grabbing him by his arm and dragging him over the rear of the seat. While the two MPs swore and narrowly avoided being struck by themselves, the three pilots who'd remained in the now-illuminated motor pool had crawled out from their hiding spot and piled up inside the post truck which, while unlocked, was failing to come to a start. As they struggled with it, another 4WD car pulled up to the gate and stopped, its five military police occupants quickly disembarking and watching something just out of eyeshot struggle with a vehicle that had been abandoned there for a reason.
Resisting the urge to helpfully shout that the truck was out of service, the noncommissioned officer taking the lead tapped his radio. "Unit Four to Company Headquarters, securing motor pool. Located three officers, investigating."
He heard a tinny voice respond back quickly. "Affirmative Unit Four. Reporting three more to be detained: Kaneshiro, Flight Officer, large South Asian woman with red hair. Mazuri, Flight Officer, East African man with black hair and eyeglasses. Bishop, North American Caucasian man with blond hair. Special care is to be taken to avoid any injury them."
The sergeant felt his handset, keeping his eyes forward, towards the truck. "This is Unit Four, I think I see all three, in vicinity of the nonworking truck in the vehicle pool. Moving to detain," he whispered before gesturing at them with a tilt of his head. The four military police cadets followed closely behind them, armed with batons. Only their NCO had a visible white holster.
"Here come more gendarmes," Mazuri muttered, sitting between Dac and Kanna in the front seat.
"Shit," Dac added, still trying to turn over the engine.
Kanna bit down on her lip for a second before opening the door. "I'll deal with them. Wait for my signal, then run for it. Clear?"
"Kanna, I know you're badass and all, but I don't think splitting again up is such a great idea," Mazuri began, before punching Dac in the arm as he continued struggling with the ignition.
"Shut up Ajay," she hissed as the sergeant approached. "You'll pick me up," she commanded quietly before shutting the door after her. As relaxed as she could manage, she took a few leisurely steps along the vehicle pool gravel, pulling off the surplus cap and coat she'd been wearing.
"Sirs, ma'am. If you'd please come with us, we'd like to take you to station until we can put you back in contact with the rest of your division. You'll be safer with us until then."
"Are we under arrest?" Dac shouted from the cabin of the truck.
The sergeant managed to keep calm as he looked past Kanna. "No sir."
"Then I think we'll decline!" he shouted, inching behind Mazuri in his seat, who put a hand over his face. Kanna said nothing, resisting the urge to roll her eyes.
The sergeant looked at the two before advancing with small, nonthreatening steps. The four boys that had arrived with him followed behind like nervous ducklings. "Sirs, ma'am, I'm afraid we have to insist. There's been a state of emergency declared, all officers and troops have been recalled to their barracks…"
"I don't buy it Kanna," Mazuri shouted unnecessarily.
"Just hold on…" Kanna whispered through her teeth, standing with her legs apart and her right hand on her hip.
The sergeant stared back at her and slowly drew his baton from his belt. "Ma'am, for the last time, I…"
Once he was within a meter of her, Kanna lunched forward on one foot, grabbed him by the wrist and then by the arm, and threw him swiftly over her shoulder. Mazuri and Dac winced as he was slammed onto the ground and Kanna yanked his baton away and turned to the four remaining MPs, who looked particularly taken aback.
"Ugghh…" the sergeant writhed between deep breaths, the breath knocked out of him.
"That's the signal you morons," Kanna hissed, a tense, lock-jawed smile on her face. Mazuri popped open the door and literally toppled out of the truck cabin, though recovered admirably and was back on his feet before he reached down and took the sergeant's radio. One of the MPs watched both of them circle around them before a piercing whistle from Kanna regained his attention. Kanna twirled the baton in her right hand by its lanyard for a further few seconds before snapping her wrist and bracing it against the length of her forearm, eyes trained on the other four, her posture relaxing slightly.
"Oh great, she has a tonfa now," one of the cadets announced loudly from the back, recognition and worry in his voice before he touched his radio. "This is Unit Four, our sergeant is injured, requesting backup!" he stated as calmly and mechanically as he could manage.
"Come on, boys, are we gonna' do this?" she asked, flicking her nose with her left thumb. Dac and Mazuri scampered at a distance, towards the 4WD car.
"Get her you idiots!" the sergeant shouted as he rolled himself over and tried to rise to his feet, and the cadets reluctantly but obediently drew their batons before circling their NCO and trying to surround Kanna. Looking strangely at ease, she tapped her own baton against her elbow twice and watched the sergeant go for his holster. A cadet swung with his baton—she caught it, snapping the lanyard off his wrist and threw him at the sergeant, whom he landed on with a loud groan, knocking the wind out of him once more.
Even with Kanna in her element, it was obvious what Dac and Mazuri were attempting—another MP who barely escaped her after having his baton flung away spotted and immediately leapt for Dac, who managed to get an opportune bash against him with his luggage before Mazuri opportunistically kicked him in the shin. He stumbled backwards just enough for Kanna to grab him by the collar and throw him into his comrade.
Dac got into their 4WD first, taking the wheel. "Kanna, Kanna's there's no key in the ignition!" Normal procedure was to store vehicles with the necessary materiel to operate them, including fuel and things like coded or mechanical keys, but unsurprising, this 4WD was missing it. "Kanna!"
Two increasingly-battered cadets had jumped her at the same time, taking her by the waist. She managed to bring her elbow down on the first ones back but the second one behind her was clasping her neck.
"Kanna!"
"All right, I heard you damn it!" she shouted. She kicked another advancing MP, turned in the opposite direction of the sergeant and fell backwards, squashing the smaller cadet throttling her in the process. He immediately released her and rolling over, she gave the sergeant a precautionary elbow in the face, after which she ripped the key from his white belt and tossed it at Dac's raised, waiting hand. Another cadet lunged for her and she dodged just as she heard the 4WD's engine come to life, snapped to her feet and narrowly avoided the baton swing of the MP she'd struck in the back earlier. He struck again quickly, and she managed to block it with her left baton.
Putting his foot down, Dac nearly hit another MP, who tumbled out of the way of the 4WD as it stopped in front of Kanna before he struck the horn four times. Getting the picture, Kanna ducked underneath a high swing from an MP, parrying another before kneeing him in the stomach. The second attacker slipped and lost his footing, giving Kanna her opportunity: she toppled over into the back seat of the 4WD before Dac put it in reverse, spun out of the vehicle pool and onto the main road, leaving a cloud of dust and gravel behind him.
Lying on her back and breathing deeply, Kanna didn't say anything.
"You looked like you were enjoying yourself," Dac admonished her angrily.
She gave a tired laugh in response. "Usually I can tire them out. They weren't tiring out."
"That's the difference between gendarmes and pilots," Mazuri shouted, taking off the useless jacket he wore over his uniform and throwing it out of the car. "Now what?"
Kanna was still laughing, but her voice and an edge. "What do you think?"
Dac slammed down on the breaks, Kanna nearly rolling out of the seat.
"So we're going back?"
"No, you idiot!" Mazuri shouted, backhanding him. "We're going on N73 and across the border!"
"Stop hitting me!" Dac shouted back, shoving Mazuri into his seat with both arms. The older officer seemed surprise and didn't respond after a soft grunt in pain, and Dac looked over his shoulder. "Kanna, we have to go back, right? Maybe we can still grab him?"
"Well, Kanna?" Mazuri asked, adjusting his glasses. Kanna remained lying across the backseat, muscular arms slung over the seats, not giving a response.
IX
When the Luxembourg Press Office announced a midnight conference at the Military Affairs Department, the building itself was almost entirely empty. Andrews wasn't convinced anyone would show up, nonetheless, he showered, shaved, changed into a new uniform and tried and failed to get a little sleep as midnight came. To his annoyance, he was proven wrong, and there was standing room only in the press room when he met his Pakistani adjutant behind the stage.
"God, don't any of these people have lives?" he demanded quietly. "We're in the armed forces, we have to be here. What's they're excuse?"
His younger adjutant grimaced. "I suppose they want a good story, sir. Do you still want the whole speech?"
"No, cut everything but the last paragraph," he mumbled angrily. He'd been prepared to address an empty room, not a packed one. "Tomorrow I might not have a boss, but tonight, they're still not my bosses."
"Yes sir," he said, using a tablet computer to set the teleprompter.
He gave a sigh and straightened his tailcoat. "Sometimes I wish I was back in Ulster, you know that?"
He nodded. "Don't we all sir?"
"Karachi, wasn't it?"
"No, I meant Ulster sir," he replied, not missing a beat. Andrews stared at him a few seconds longer before giving a much-needed laugh and his adjutant guided him towards the stage. By the time he was behind the podium he still had a few traces of a smile on his face.
"Good evening, I'm sorry so many of you had to come out this late," he began with rehearsed rigidity. "As you're apparently aware, His Excellency Treize Khushrenada has not yet returned to Luxembourg City. I will address some of the most obvious issues: there has been no appointment of a new commander-in-chief of the Order of the Zodiac. The military is still under the overall leadership of the Supreme Military Council—this is their building, after all—even if currently there is currently no commander-in-chief for overall forces. There has been any reported change in the commander-in-chief of OZ Space Forces."
One of the reporters Andrews recognized in the crowd raised his hand and he called on him.
"So, you're confirming Treize Khushrenada has resigned as head of OZ?"
Andrews sighed. This was the trouble with discarding most of his pre-written speech, and there was no backing out of it now. "I've been told that Colonel Khushrenada has resigned as the Supreme Military Council's appointed commander-in-chief. Anything further than that concerning His Excellency I won't be speculating on."
A few blocks away across Chilias Catalonia Avenue, on the northeast edge of the city, almost every floor of the Military Commissariat had been cleared out, two helicopters rising from landing platforms that had once housed opulent glass pyramids. Parsons watched the long, window-lined wings of the building darken behind him one by one, before turning back to the Sikorsky military helicopter that had set down on the west courtyard.
"And that's everything," Officer Cadet Perez announced, carrying a labeled box under arms and a briefcase in his right hand. "I'm gonna' miss Luxembourg."
Next to him, another cadet nodded in agreement. "Me too. Where do you think they'll move us?"
"Whitehall, probably. Maybe Kensington," Parsons mumbled softly.
"Oh, Kensington's nice," Perez pointed out.
"Well, Whitehall's hardly Atlanta either," the other responded.
"I can't believe the Chasseurs Regiment hasn't already surrounded the building. Have either of you seen Eva?" Parsons asked, ignoring them.
The two were silent. "I…think Major Cebotari got into an earlier helicopter. Her office was empty, last I checked," Perez said finally.
"I think so too."
Parsons stared at either of them, then walked up to one and dropped another box on top of his before turning back and running into the building. "Wait here."
"E.P., I mean, Lieutenant Parsons, I think…"
"No one cares, Perez!" Parsons shouted back before running back to the entrance. The rest of the building was darkened to the point of making navigation difficult, but after running a stairwell he found at least one corner office still had power. As he suspected, it was the office he was looking for.
"How is it your breaker isn't flipped yet? Of course, your fish," Parsons thought aloud. Major Cebotari was standing behind desk at the far end of the room, the flickering glow of the lone monitor display at her workstation illuminating the two rows of uniform buttons on her chest.
Putting a hand on his hip, he waited for a response. When it didn't come, leaving him standing in the doorway, he sighed and gestured at the desk. "What is that, Eva?"
She looked up at him briefly. "My digital tablet," she told him in her usual deep, measured tone.
He forced a smile. "Why is it connected to your workstation?"
"Edward…I really don't have time to explain how computers work to you," she told him, slow and drawn-out.
More angry smiling. "The Fusiliers-Chasseurs Regiment'll be here in minutes. The last helicopter's about to leave, shouldn't you be on it?"
Eva didn't respond immediately; he didn't think he'd get an answer at all and was about to taunt her when she did speak. "I've been thinking about that, E.P., and I've decided I'm not joining you in London."
He titled his head sharply, eyes wide, still smiling. "I'm sorry? You're ignoring orders?"
Her fingers danced over the clicking keyboard for a few seconds as the glow of the screen changed. "I checked my mail, I'm wasn't very impressed by Undersecretary General's choice of words."
"I…don't think it matters what you think of her choice of words, in fact, I'm quite certain it doesn't. You have orders from the civilian authority above the Military Commissariat, this isn't any different than if Treize Khushrenada personally ordered us to move to London," he insisted, his voice rising.
Eva looked up at him, ill-disposed red eyes illuminated by the screen. "And what can you do to stop me?"
There were a few things: he could walk up to Eva's desk and rip the cables out of the visible portion of the computer processor. He could leave the room, find the nearby service panel and flip the breakers to her office, aquarium fish be damned. He could even attempt to access her computer and abort all ongoing activities, along with erasing whatever had been stored on that small tablet.
Parsons did none of those things, opening the leather holster on his belt—unlike the cadets, he carried one—pulling out his sidearm and aiming at in her direction. The red eyes regarded him and Eva stifled a laugh before looking back at her station.
He tightened his grip. "What is it that they say? Political power comes from the barrel of a gun?"
Once again, Eva took her time responding, the keyboard clicking a few more times. "If you paid attention in school, you'd remember the rest of Mao's statement—that the Party commands the gun, and allowing the gun to command the Party is its undoing. Somewhat ironic given our current situation," she told him in a calm, breathy, even academic tone.
Parsons almost fell for the bait, barely catching himself snidely retorting about Eva's understanding of irony, before he clenched his teeth to stop. "You're coming with us, Eva," he asked, slowly pacing along the walls of the office until he was nearly at Eva's side. As he thought, Eva wasn't wearing her own holster, but that didn't mean she didn't have some sort of concealed weapon.
"Or what, you'll shoot the computer?" Eva asked, not looking away from the monitor. From his new angle, he could see the screen changing at a more rapid pace, and her hands spent more time on the keyboard then before.
"If necessary, yes. It's just furniture."
"Then we're in agreement. Then do it and bill the Foundation," Eva said. More rapid clicking.
He forced a smile again. "The Foundation, the Foundation. Weren't you the one who vetted Treize Khushrenada at their behest? Isn't that how you got your start?"
"I guess you could say I failed in my duties then," she said without a hint of humor.
"That was years ago. If anyone's to blame, it's those old men for using him in the first place. What I don't understand is why you still seem to care now."
When Eva didn't answer, he flipped the safety off with his right thumb. "So who do I owe an explanation to? You or the Romefeller Foundation?"
"Well, I am the one with the gun," he reminded her.
She looked up again, this time with an obviously unfriendly smile. "Then explain this to me—do you really think the Foundation will welcome a grinning caballer like yourself?"
"After what you've done, they might."
She put one hand on her hip, the other rapidly tapping keys. "Don't you remember anything, Parsons? You arbitrarily obliterated one of their most trusted political officers and one of their most dependable squadrons just to incriminate Zechs Merquise further, because you wanted to see if it could be done. How do you think they'll take that?"
Eva started grinning, white teeth catching the reflection of her screen. "Or are you just going to keep…"
She was cut off when Parsons sighted his pistol and shot her in the right leg, just above the middle of the thigh. The major gave a short, high-pitched gasp before tumbling over in a hunter-green-and-white clump behind her desk, face hidden by her long, wavy black hair. Still holding the sidearm, he stepped towards the desk, taking care to avoid stepping on her, and held down on the workstation's power key until the computer shut off completely before taking the tablet computer with him as he left. Just outside her door, he took one look over his shoulder, turned completely and fired two more shots back into her room, one-handed.
Towards the center of Luxembourg City, an unenthusiastic Andrews had been delayed by question after question that followed his short address, and had given up on a quick departure. He hadn't given up on gracefully avoiding answering those questions, however, and instead stood behind his podium, propped up on his arms.
"Colonel Andrews, you are the Luxembourg Press Secretary, aren't you? Won't you say something? Anything?" a journalist in the front row pleaded exasperatedly.
Something in Andrews snapped, and he lifted his head from its stare at the podium. "Actually, I have one thing to say, not as Luxembourg Press Secretary," he said after a loud sigh. "I know that not everyone agrees with OZ, or our mandate, or the United Nations Organization itself. And that's the right of people in a free society. But I would like to say something directly to those who consider themselves allies of the Gundams, their pilots, and the Colony Liberation Organization."
He slammed his gloved hands against the podium. "Seventy thousand. It's a high number, isn't it? That's just over the estimated civilian and military casualties given by the independent observation groups, and the Yuy Foundation, from the beginning of May right up to the Gundam attack the day before last."
He reached into a pocket and produced a small piece of paper that he unfolded. "Seven million, four hundred and thirty-eight thousand, five-hundred and sixty. That's the listed population of the colony destroyed by the new Gundam as of their last census. Seven million people evacuated by OZ. If those people hadn't been evacuated by the Space Forces Navy and the local Colonial Militia, a single Gundam pilot would have committed a war crime unheard of in recent history.
The press room had finally gone silent, as he wanted it. Andrews looked at his adjutant, who simply shrugged back from behind the curtain, rubbed his forehead for a second before looking up again. "And that's all I have to say—that, and that and I hate all of you. Good evening."
The silence terminated, and the press corps was alive once more, verbally if not physically chasing after him with nonstop chatter as he left the stage. Andrews gave a sigh and undid his crimson uniform jacket.
"Well, that was…something sir," his adjutant told him.
Andrews glanced at him with wide, bloodshot eyes. "What day is it today?"
"Excuse me, sir?"
"I've been awake for almost sixty hours. For me, that's a long time."
"It's 24 September," he said slowly. "Thursday."
He nodded. Treize Khushrenada had resigned the morning of 23 September, A.C. 195, now it was past midnight after that. It made sense, even if he didn't have any immediate recollection of the day of the week any more than he knew his comrade Eva Cebotari was lying in a pool of blood behind her desk several blocks away, as the last helicopter departed from the Military Commissariat.
"Do you remember officer's school, how the Foundation and the U.N.O. would send all those civilian management experts to lecture us? Do you remember what they would say in those stress management courses—'Most heart attacks occur around zero-nine-hundred on Monday'?" He folded his uniform coat and held it between his arms. "Do you think that's true?"
The other officer frowned. "Possibly sir. Not in our profession, probably, but under normal circumstances."
He tugged at his collar. "If you're going to die, Monday morning sounds like a pretty good time to do it. If you weren't in our profession."
"I completely agree, Colonel."
Author's Notes:
Another record long chapter (blame a creeping uncertainty of where I could break it in half for better consumption), with I hope a strong beginning and an ending, if a somewhat dragging middle. This chapter had to set up a lot of things that happen in the immediate future, things I'm still not completely sure how to handle, like Walker's "departure" if you could call it that. I'm happy where it finally ended, at least, but it could be better. It also took longer than it should have to produce.
On the bright side, I can promise with some certainty that the next chapter will be shorter. Remember when a major purpose of this story was to bring together disparate story arcs and the plot conflicts between the TV series and The Glory of Losers manga? Yes, I do to, I haven't forgotten. The next chapter should bring back the plot lines from, among other things, G-Unit/The Last Fortress and a few other things.
But here we are! The catastrophic OZ split begins, between loyalists and the Treizists (or "Treize Faction"). I've literally spent months trying to figure out how this happens in a believable fashion, especially given what we do see (for example, Treize spending a short time under house arrest in the recap episode). What we see in the series is something of an unusual event: unlike OZ's coup against the Alliance, which has clear historical analogs, military uprising like what happens against the adoption of mobile dolls are certainly common in their own right, but muddled and unclear. In some respects, we're something similar to famous uprisings like the Potempkin in 1905, but implemented on a worldwide scale but without a clear political goal (aside from the vindication of Treize himself, and for what? "Fire Treize, and all hell will break lose?" If so, clearly they were right.).
Well, we'll see where this goes, the Treize Faction storyline continues for several more episodes before Queen Relena's downfall. In the meantime, I'm not going to promise more Relena as of yet, but you can expect some fun times with Pope Peter Paul II and his ruling on this whole military catastrophe (I bet you thought, after the whole Utah angle, I wasn't going to do anything religious anymore-think again!). Think of famed actor Peter O'Toole in his part of Pope Paul III in The Tudors (really, one of the best things of that whole show, hands down), and you might have an idea what to expect. As always, let me know what you liked and what you hated, and thanks for reading!
