Soldier of OZ: Walker's Account
Chapter 84 – The Price of Loyalty
The last Cardinal Secretary of State was a tall, almost swarthy man with wide shoulders and a muscular build, the sort of presence that, even in his formal dress, made him seem younger, maybe even more handsome, than he was. Dominic Amaral. Standing in front of her now was a short, stocky man, with a large mole and thick, plastic framed glasses that he occasional fidgeted with immediately after checking his mobile device, another undignified habit. His daily dress, like the uniform of an officer in OZ, gave him some ambiguity, a black cassock with scarlet piping, a matching skullcap, and his visitor's badge hanging on a lanyard from his thick neck. He in his sixties, even by the standards of the College of Cardinals
Since she made no effort to disguise it, he inevitable saw her studying him, and in an almost comical fashion, raised his sleeves before patting his side, like an impatient customer waiting to be called up to the counter of a bank. "There you are," he declared, in clear if slightly strained English. "I was afraid I would be kept waiting even longer, and I am busy."
His mood improved. "You were not expecting me, though."
"You're the Vatican's new secretary of state, Cardinal…"
"Angelo Vivaldi." He did something vaguely resembling standing at attention, heels clicking momentarily, hands at his side as he pocketed his mobile somewhere in his cassock. "After the World Nation's State Assembly forced my predecessor to resign on account of his known ties to the Romefeller Foundation, I gladly returned to my post…on behalf of the Holy See." He paused. "Maybe you are not aware, it is not a secret but you are young, I was also Cardinal Secretary for the whole of the 'Eighties, going back to the current Holy Father's election."
The word current stood out. Cardinal Vivaldi twitched and looked at the nearby sitting table. "I'm sorry, may we sit? Like the rest of the College of Cardinals, I hate standing," he confessed.
She blinked and glanced over at the two expensive chairs next to table and without a further word, sat down. Vivaldi did the same, awkwardly jostling the chair out further than necessary, then noisily jostling it back so he could easily lean forward into the table.
"Thank you for seeing me, Colonel Armonia." He didn't sound particularly grateful, though nor did he sound very insincere. Indifferent, more so. "That is correct, no? Or are you Baroness?"
"Either is fine," she muttered, putting a gloved hand against her cheek. "Speaking of which, should I…?"
"Anything is fine," he quickly insisted, interrupting her. "Just don't call me 'Mister' or 'Angelo', you're a bit too youthful for that. I'll even accept 'Señor'," he said, his lips twitching briefly into a grin.
"Cardinal it is then." She lowered her hand to her lap. "So, as the chief diplomat of the Holy See, the oldest monarchy in continental Europe, you've come all the way to visit us in Luxembourg in person."
Her eyes flicked over to his empty right hand. "You know, you could've just called."
He seemed to enjoy that. "Of course, but for this task, I was sure it would be worth making the trip in person. I'm not that old, in fact."
That's true. He's younger than the pope, after all. "And that task is?"
"With the abdication of Queen Relena and the appointment of Treize Khushrenada as Lord Protector of the Realm, in other words military dictator of the World Nation, it is not surprising that he—or his immediate subordinates—would take revenge on the European monarchs and other political leaders who sided with the loyalists either under the late Dermail Catalonia or with Relena Peacecraft, who sought their destruction." His explanation was quick, like an impatient teacher with an inconvenient pupil. "It was a miscalculation, let me assure you. There are prices for miscalculations, but it was a miscalculation. It was not done out of malice."
"I don't think OZ, as you think of it, wants an apology," she told him, eyebrow raised.
"Oh, if only it could be so convenient." The more Cardinal Vivaldi spoke, the more apparent his familiarity with English became. "OZ wants what it wants, the State Assembly what it wants, and His Excellency the Lord Protector what he wants." He gestured in resignation.
Soris stared at him through her orange-tinged bangs. "And?" She knew that wasn't the end of his explanations.
"And what would it take to keep His Holiness as pope? As far as OZ is concerned."
She let her eyes widen with surprise. Despite the sour disposition he seemed to carry since he entered the room, he seemed to be bracing himself for her response whatever it might be.
"Forgive me for being another pedestrian example of a lapsed Catholic, Cardinal, but doesn't the pontiff remain in office until, you know, he should…" She made an awkward, waffling gesture with one white-gloved hand, which Vivaldi watched studiously. To him, it looked like an incompetent bird.
"Die?" he offered helpfully. "You know for a lapsed Catholic you are surprisingly squeamish when it comes to the topic of morality, but because that is the influence of military or royalty."
He stopped abruptly, with the expression of rapidly shifting tracks of thought. "Also, I don't think OZ will kill a sitting pope. Or any cardinal, if they can help it. Nor your upcoming Committee for the Prevention of Subversion and Sedition, which by the way is a really terrible name for a government body," he explained, as if doing her a not-insignificant favor, before continuing. "Yes, admittedly we have not had a papal resignation in more than two centuries and that is a streak that us cardinals, on the whole, would prefer to keep rather than break, but there is Canon Law, et cetera, allowing for it."
"Didn't the last one resign on account of old age?"
Vivaldi looked amused. "Not so lapsed, ah? Or just well versed in Before Colony history. But His Holiness is the image of his health for his age, so it is irrelevant. Let's not beat around the bush any further—what I am asking, on behalf of my pontiff and my good friend, what will it take to keep OZ from forcing a…renuntiatio."
He pursed his thick lips together and waited. Soris stared at him through his eyeglasses. I bet you're just glad I'm not Une. She was about to give an answer when she switched tracks herself. "Cardinal O'Connell is your good friend?" she asked skeptically. "Didn't he fire you?"
Vivaldi raised both hands defensively, showing off his rings momentarily, before raising one naked index finger. "Dermail Catalonia, requiescet in pace, was a good friend of mine," Vivaldi declared. He sounded genuine, at least to her. "He was the best chairman of the governing board the Romefeller Foundation could've asked for. Yes, he made mistakes, quite a few of them in the end, but he was human, and now he's dead."
Soris leaned forward. "It almost sounds like he was your protégé."
Vivaldi gave a single, delicate laugh. "No, Dermail was a few years my senior. But I first met him long before you were born. Marticus Rex…the last King Peacecraft…he was a friend of mine as well."
His face immediately turned dour again. "Until he killed himself when the Alliance military occupied the Sanc Kingdom. I would not consider myself a friend of such a man who'd do that to his family, especially two young children."
Soris felt uncomfortable, which she suspected was Vivaldi's goal. She tried to casually brush her blond hair aside with one hand. "Even for his country and his ideology?"
"Especially for country and ideology," Vivaldi snorted. "Scandinavian total pacifism. Bah. What nonsense."
His mood improved again. "But that was a distraction. Are you able to answer my question? Or must I go crawling for an audience with the Lord Protector himself?"
She forced a half-smile. "What the Order wants in a Bishop of Rome is what the World Nation wants. That is, a completely amenable and cooperative papacy, especially as it is personified in the man himself. And yes, we want that to remain true even if His Excellency should resign the regency after the end of this current crisis. I know, and we know, that this is might seem hypocritical given the pope's previously enthusiastic endorsement for the queen that was, that it might damage the prestige of the papacy…"
"Say no more," Vivaldi interrupted, contented. "I appreciate your pragmatism and honesty, you're far easier to deal with than your civilian bosses. I can't compliment that enough. This is, of course, just a completely unofficial conversation between a high ranking officer in the World Nation military…"
"And the current Cardinal Secretary of State," Soris finished for him, leaning back in her chair and stretching out her long legs. "Cardinal, do you mind if I ask you a question? Even more unofficial and off the record?"
"Not about your soul, I hope." Vivaldi seemed to be enjoying himself.
"How do you do it?" She cocked her head. "I've seen those books written about you, though never finished them, it's a busy job."
"Which one?" He was definitely enjoying himself now.
"The one by the Swiss journalist, what's-her-name."
"Ah, her." He slapped an irreverent hand on his knee. "She was good. Better than the Italian writers, on average."
"So, how do you know Peter Paul will agree to this? And not become the pope who took a valiant stand against the tyranny of OZ and the World Nation after they wronged his favorite little princess? Miserable as it sounds, that might be worth it in the eyes of the World Nation."
Vivaldi gave her a look so patronizing that Soris had to loudly stifle laughter in response. "Really? Does the Order of the Zodiac really think so little of us, the elders of the church?"
Soris felt tears welling in her eyes. "Well, I have to ask these things, otherwise I'd be a very poor diplomat, wouldn't I?"
He gave an annoyed sigh and leaned back in his chair, hands on his knees, silent. After regaining her composure, Soris took a posture demonstrating her superior height—an easy task—while relaxing one elbow in the surface of the table, and waited. Despite what the cardinal might've expected for a lieutenant colonel in OZ, she was in no hurry. She could see his small eyes flicker at her underneath bushy eyebrows, as if he expected a response, until there was a vibrating and then melodic chirp from somewhere in his cassock.
"Excuse me," he immediately announced, sounding nearly sincere, as he reached somewhere into his loose clothing and produced a black, glass-like slate. Soris felt herself reveal surprise; for some reason, she'd never considered that a cardinal might own a mobile phone, much less interrupted by one while they spoke. Either he didn't know how to silence his mobile, or more likely, didn't want to, as he glanced at its screen through his eyeglasses.
"Should I give you a moment?" she offered.
"No, no," he assured her, still staring at the mobile before he managed to tear himself away. "Napoli is playing Milan tomorrow, it's just…oh, never mind. I don't mean to be rude, just that it's the Coppa Italia, and you know…" he explained.
Football? Soris raised her eyebrows as far as she could manage. "Do I know?"
Vivaldi gave one last wistful look at his mobile before pocketing it. "Colonel, I'll tell you a secret, as you may call it, though I would not. And naturally you will pass it on to the Lord Protector and whatever people in OZ's Military Commissariat are redundantly listening to our conversation: I run the Church in Rome. I've done so since the death of Heero Yuy, a coincidence I assure you. So coincidentally, I am also the man OZ should come to if they decide they want a new pope." He eased away from her, back into the chair. "The Roman Catholic Church will not make an enemy of the World Nation, regardless of who leads it today or leads it tomorrow. We are part of the World Nation, after all. It would be unseemly, but worse, it would be wasteful and counterproductive. And I really hate those things above all."
Soris stared at Vivaldi's wrinkled expression, full of self-importance, but a somber, restrained kind. Ego kept in check by necessity, or at least a genuine belief in necessity. She decided to believe the rather extraordinary claim.
"So if I understand you correctly—if the World Nation needs a new pope to replace Peter Paul II, you're the man to ask."
"If there is such a man, yes, I am he," he repeated with that same note of urgency. She reminded him of an aircrew preparing a civilian passenger for their first flight to the frontline: not a guaranteed possibility of danger, not even a likely one, but a chance nonetheless.
She was impressed. Either Vivaldi was who he said it was, or he was an excellent deceiver, and either would make the returning Cardinal Secretary of State someone to be taken seriously.
"I'll pass the word to His Excellency."
"Personally?" he asked, surprising her. "Lately I've come to hate intermediaries, that's how we dealt with the former queen."
She nodded slightly. "Personally, then, as soon as I'm able to do so."
Vivaldi gave an almost forlorn sigh of relief, and then rose to his feet slowly. "Good. You know, when Luxembourg told me who they were sending, and I had never heard of you, I was more than a little bit worried that I was not being taken seriously. That the World Nation decided it no longer needed the church, when we still have much to offer the World Nation."
"Try not to confuse impartiality with dislike. Since Hanukah, Luxembourg's communications office has been flooded with requests from leading religious officials across Earth Sphere, now that the Romefeller Foundation is no longer around," she offered while rising. "Sorry they couldn't send a name more familiar to you."
"They should be," he bristled. "Not to discount your own military career, apparently, you were more than decorated for your valor in the invasion of the Noventan Republic. But you don't seem like someone of any religious authority to compliment your career." It was an accusation, but not one directed at her.
She laughed shortly. "Well, Cardinal Vivaldi, most of the other surviving lieutenant colonels aren't Catholic. And those who are, are in even bigger trouble than I was," she said with a wink.
Surprising her again, Vivaldi laughed, very abruptly and very shortly. Apparently, she'd underestimated her own sly joke. "You know, I'm not unsympathetic. Catholic or not, I can't imagine you actually enjoy spending this much time talking to me for my own charisma. And on top of that, there is a serious military crisis looming in Outer Space that demands your time," he said, clearly apologetic. "I won't forget this favor."
She laughed in turn, slowly and leisurely before looking back at him. "Oh, trust me. I'm about to do something much worse. I wish you could stop me." She grinned again. "If you knew what it was, you'd see why."
II
The reunion with Kaneshiro Kanna, brief as it was, came with consequences, ones more unpleasant than the joy of the reunion itself. For Flight Lieutenant Walker it was a reminder that he had a life, friends, family, comrades, before Treize Khushrenada's resignation and an armed revolt by the First Recon Battalion had turned that all upside down. Kanna didn't need to say as much—her mere presence was a reminder of a past that he was only months or weeks removed from.
He wanted to call Michael Wú, the closest thing he had to a father figure for most of his life. He couldn't recall the last time they'd spoken. He spent almost an hour—longer than the actual telephone call could possibly take—sitting in an empty office trying to think of what he'd say. Naturally, Walker felt overwhelmingly dismayed when Michael wasn't even the one to answer the answer the video call when he finally worked himself up to making it.
"Mr. Wú, I…I'm sorry I didn't call sooner." He stopped himself. It wasn't Mr. Wú. It was his mother, in a grey-blue turtleneck sweater, her hair in a ponytail behind her, fumbling with the handset unnecessarily.
"Oswald?" she asked, sounding as much annoyed as surprised.
"Mo-…mother? Mother, why are you…where is Mr. Wú?"
"Michael almost died!" Now she sounded accusatory, as if he'd pushed him down a flight of stairs at some unseen point.
"Anna, please, don't be so dramatic," Michael Wú's slightly-awkward voice cut through commandingly. "I did not almost die. I slipped and fell and broke a bone. It happens."
"You almost broke your hip!" Walker's mother snapped back off camera. Walker could feel his hand sliding over his face.
"Oswald, please do not listen to your mother. I am almost eighty years old. I was an old man before you were born. Old people sometimes hurt their hips, this is not abnormal." With an unshakably positive expression, Michael hobbled towards the camera with his cane and carefully sat down in an armchair. Aside from the cane, and a cast around his left foot, he looked as he remembered him.
"Well, I'm relieved to hear that, Michael, but may I ask what my mother's doing there?"
"What do you think, I'm taking care of him!" Anna snapped back before he could answer.
"Is that true?"
"Mostly," he conceded after a pause.
"Walker!" another familiar voice snapped. The whole camera shook as someone manhandled the console, and Aretha Walker's face filled the feed as she screamed into it. "Walker, where's my fiancée?"
"I have no idea what you're talking about Aretha." His sister, wearing a similar sweater to the one worn by his mother but baggy enough to hang over her thin frame loosely, was glaring at him. The white streak was missing from her hair, he noticed.
"Where…is…Ross?" she growled.
"Don't call your brother 'Walker', you sound ridiculous, Aretha! This isn't the army!"
"Yes, it's actually the Space Forces," Walker mumbled, an immediately-unappreciated attempt at levity as Aretha started to threaten him, trying to take the handset from their mother.
"Will both of you please. Leave!" Michael snapped loudly, some edge now in his voice, apparently enough to force Walker's mother and sister into silence. "I'm an old man. I have a broken bone and a bruised hip. Will you please give me a moment with him?"
He watched Michael stare sternly at his sister and mother until they finally relented and left the phone's field of view.
"And the handset please." His mother handed him the wireless handset, which he clasped before looking back at Walker, his expression softening back to its typical softhearted courtesy.
"That's better. Where are you now, or can you not tell me?"
"I can tell you, I'm back in Luxembourg," he explained, soon considering what little distinction that might've meant to the general public. The first revolt that split OZ between its two European capitals had been overshadowed, first by the declaration of the World Nation and then by the much more distinct revolt by the space colonies under the banner of the White Fang. "I'm with the military staff at UESAEUCOM," he added, thinking of the sixty-year-old organization from the Alliance.
"So you're not planning on going back up into Outer Space?"
"No, not at all," he assured him. It didn't sound very convincing to him either.
"Well, that is very good news," Michael concluded contently. "Maybe once this whole thing with the colonies is resolved, you can get a weekend leave."
"Yes, I'd like that," he said, trying to keep the skepticism out of his voice. He could hear the rising voices of his mother and sister. "Michael, I need to go. You and mother can write me over the 'Net, I'll be able to answers those now. Goodbye now, and please be careful with your hip!"
"How is that boy Dav-…." His voice cut off as Walker dropped the handset back on the receiver with a sigh.
"It's good to see this whole experience hasn't left me any less uncomfortable around my friends and family," he muttered under his breath before leaving the public videophone kiosks in the lobby of the Haerebierg Centre Militaire, a complex of modest old barracks and halls at the top of Herrenberg Hill outside the city of Diekirch, only remarkable now for being the home of the Luxembourg General Staff. Through the window, two of the rectangular buildings in a line of four to the west were surrounding by scaffolding, having been destroyed during the most recent Battle of Luxembourg.
Walker found himself trying to clear his mind as a lieutenant in a staff officer's uniform under a greatcoat approached him from the hallway, as though he'd been patiently waiting for him to finish his call. "Flight Lieutenant Walker? Ground crew from Melsbroek Airbase have been waiting for you in your office with a technical readout."
"I have an office?"
The lieutenant blinked. "You have office space allocated to you, yes sir."
Rather than the main hall on the eastern edge of base grounds, apparently his office was in a smaller, two-story T-shaped building on the northwest edge, three rows of eight identical dormitory buildings, reserved specifically for World Nations Space Forces personnel—Walker admitted that it made sense if he had an office in Luxembourg, it would be here. It was also completely devoid of anything beyond a few pieces of the same furniture found in every building at Herrenberg.
"Sir?" one asked. The two vaguely-familiar lower-ranking officers wearing hunter green air force uniforms—unmistakably from Findel Airport, even without their unit emblems—looked up at him from the desk where they their materials arrayed in neat piles.
"I'm sorry, I didn't realize I had an office here," Walker confessed, tearing his sight away from the walls.
"Where have been working from?"
"Melsbroek, with you two." He frowned. Why did they send two of you?
"But when you're not at the airbase, sir," the other insisted.
He didn't know the answer to that. Wherever I can manage? "And you have…?" he decided to ask instead.
One of the ground crew officers produced a compact digital notebook from his the satchel hanging under his coat which he wirelessly synced with the thin display monitor hanging from the wall that Walker thought was a generic-looking watercolor landscape under glass.
"It's been some time since you asked, but we're confident about completing the second…or rather, the third…Tallgeese mobile suit," he explained, as three schematic images smoothly appeared in the display's wide aspect ratio, one after another, followed by an actual image of the unit in a hangar labeled OZ-00MS2. Walker felt his eyebrow twitch, and the lieutenant set the notebook onto the desk.
"Assuming the chassis remains unchanged, we're actually confident we'll beat our initial timeline." Walker couldn't fault any of the technical staff at Melsbroek AFB he'd drafted into his work with Tallgeese with a lack of diligence, even if they seemed more than a little nervous around him. "But…there is a problem."
"We're changing that," Walker interrupted, absentmindedly taking the notebook.
"Excuse me?"
He tapped a few keystrokes. The labels on the image changed in unison: OZ-00MS2B. Walker saw their eyes still on him. "Avoiding confusion with the chassis Corsica had completed."
The other lieutenant opened and then closed his mouth. "Yes sir. So…"
The lieutenant cleared his throat and continued. "So we are optimistic about delivery before our deadline this month. As for the intended armament."
His looked at his colleague, and Walker understood why the airbase had sent two officers for what he assumed could've been done by one or even by digital message. So this is what it's like to have a high rank?
The other began explaining. "We've reviewed the arsenals here and in Corsica, which has you know produced the Leo and Space Leo. OZ-00MS2 was outfitted the same as the original OZ-00MS deployed to the Jutland Peninsula, the combined Leo long range and anti-mobile suit package."
"I know, I'm the current test pilot," Walker pointed out.
"Yes sir," he continued unfazed. "Sir, it's the same thing brought up in the memo written after the Battle of Mirny."
"A memo written by the supply and technical company from the First Recon Battalion that was maintaining OZ-00MS when it engaged Unit Zero-One, one that you signed off on," the other added zealously.
"There is no substantially better armament for Tallgeese than was already mounted on the Leo for the special mission role. Even if the limited-use weapon they developed, the Type 00 'Tempest' anti-Gundam lance weapon, could be recreated or adapted, what use is that going to be against overwhelming numbers of mobile doll battalions? Or divisions?" he asked in an almost accusative tone.
Walker could feel the surprised look on his face. He didn't even remember the memo. What he remembered, vividly in the eye of his mind, was Tallgeese fighting the Gundam-01 to a standstill until Une had made her dangerous gambit—and then the Gundam severed Tallgeese's left arm.
"Flight Lieutenant, sir, what are we going to outfit either of the Tallgeese mobile suits with? The powerplant output isn't anywhere near capable of using the beam cannon from Vayeate, and even if all Type 12 beam cannon production wasn't being taken up by the Taurus production line, it'd still need a redesign at least."
"That leaves the adapted armaments taken from the Space Leo for extraterrestrial combat," the other reminded him.
Walker could picture the look of trepidation on his face. In his test thus far, he had barely considered armament, not in the least because Tallgeese normal armament was a known fact. Is this what I'm doing? Of course it is, it sounds like the exact sort of thing I would've complained about when I found Tallgeese in the first place. Did I complain about it? He could, it seemed, ensure one or both Tallgeese mobile suits airworthy and by extension, spaceworthy. But if he couldn't make them capable combat machines what was even the point?
"Well, don't you want the weapons for Tallgeese?"
That was what Eugene Brillié had asked him back at Corsica. In truth, he had dismissed it largely out of hand; he wasn't thinking of Tallgeese back then, and when he was, he wasn't thinking of what to do with a defunct Alliance mobile armor.
"There's a phone in here isn't there?" he asked. "I've been taking my calls in the lobby out of ignorance, not necessity, right?"
Neither man seemed to understand the question as Walker looked around the desk, then opened a drawer and produced a typical secured military telephone set, simpler than a videophone on its own, probably intended to function in tandem with the display monitor. After confirming it was connected, Walker lifted the handset and dialed a number rapidly. The men from Melsbroek watched him, perplexed, as he was connected.
"Corsica? This is Walker at Diekirch, I need Flight Officer Miyamoto please."
A moment later, he pressed the button for the speakerphone option and returned the handset. "Yoshitsune? It's Walker," he explained redundantly.
"Yes I heard, Walker," a voice answered after a little delay. "Whose number is this?"
"Mine, apparently." Walker pursed his lips. "I'm here with people from the airbase. Listen, about the technical analysis of the mobile armor, Epidendrum, I'm not sure how much progress you've made…"
"Probably about the same amount as your test flights of the completed Tallgeese," Yoshitsune countered playfully.
Walker laughed shortly. "About that. Wherever you are, do you remember what Chief Brillié said? About the mobile armor's weapons?"
Another delay. "Walker, what are you getting at?" he asked skeptically.
"Say we had to outfit one of the Tallgeese mobile suits with weapons from Epidendrum, as quickly as possible. What would it take, and what could we use?"
A longer delay before responding. "Geeze. Well, aside from the airframe, mass and powerplant constraints, there's the necessary conversions. You'd need a specialist in conversions, one with experience in manufacturing wouldn't hurt."
"Manufacturing?" one of the groundcrew asked.
"Epidendrum was being transported with one armaments package and no spare parts," Walker explained, turning to him. "Quite reasonably, even if you could convert its equipment to use on a mobile suit, you'd want spares…"
"…for training and actually combat use," the other interrupted. "Excuse me, sir."
"And you and I were both trained primarily in battlefield maintenance, even if we did both work at the Corsica Factory. But I'm sure there's somebody here with the experience, I mean, it's the Corisca Factory for god's sakes!" Yoshitsune exclaimed. "You didn't just invent deadlines!"
"Sometimes it feels like I did," he muttered absent-mindedly and an aggrieved Yoshitsune. "You know, I wonder how Valentin Andropov is doing." Someone with his expertise would've been invaluable right now.
III
From his seldom-used office in the No. 14 Mobile Suit Works, Captain V. V. Andropov could stare at the still-unfinished skyline arching up and away from him inside the torus of L3-X-18999. Either side of his desk was flanked an armed military policewoman in the distinctive OZ Space Forces Army field dress paired with a white helmet, submachine gun against their chest.
"I guess I should come up here more often. Enjoy the view while I can," he mumbled to himself.
"Sir?"
Andropov turned and looked at the dozen subordinate administrators from the factory he'd called in, uniformed junior officers and civilian employees in dull grey boilersuits. He took a deep breath, expelling it before he sat down on the front edge of his desk and crossed his maroon sleeves over the plastron of his uniform.
"How many?"
"Excuse me?" A surprised look appeared on the face of Warrant Officer Tynes, which he shared with the others in the room.
"If mobile suit production at this factory ended today, how many OZ-17MS could potentially be delivered?" he asked, cocking his head to the right.
"We have the better part of one-hundred and eighty units finished, almost half of those having completed testing and the remainder awaiting it. And then remainder of order in knocked-down condition or close to it. Potentially that means as many as four hundred and eighty Serpent mobile suits," a civilian explained behind Tynes, putting as much confidence as he could manage into his voice.
"Combat troops equal to two mobile suit battalions, per the original order placed by Earth Forces Mobile Suit Troops," a 2nd lieutenant next to Tynes explained.
"Five hundred," he corrected him. "You're forgetting the twenty fabricated for the original production run at Luna, shipped here for inspection," he explained without waiting.
"So, five hundred," another repeated suspiciously. "Captain, what's this about?"
"He's shutting down the production line," a civilian announced, rising anger behind his voice. Andropov playfully gestured with one hand as if to confirm his suspicions. Tynes stared at him, eyes wide.
"You can't do that."
"I'm sorry, why couldn't I do that, Lieutenant?" Andropov asked, raising an eyebrow. "There isn't another production order that I'm aware of, is there?" he asked sarcastically.
"Val, I'm not sure if you've kept up with the news, but…"
"Oh, oh! Here it is!" Andropov barked animatedly, surprising Tynes. "I want to hear this, explain to me how delaying production of this new terrestrial assault machine is somehow going to, what, doom our war against the Colonial Liberation Organization? Or do you have a less stupid lie to change my mind?"
Tynes looked taken aback. Andropov was starting to twitch, his hands buried beneath his crossed arms.
"Sir, we…and the rest of the arsenal staff…formally object to this decision and will be lodging our complaint with L1-C-102."
"Go right ahead."
"You shut down the production line, and you'll be dismissed, Captain."
"I think that's the least of my problems, but this isn't about me. You're not producing any more Serpents, not in this colony," he explained stiffly.
"Because you already have, sir."
"Because I already have," Andropov repeated coolly.
Tynes looked across the bewildered faces of his colleagues. "When?" he asked finally.
"And how?" another questioned.
Andropov gave a contemptuous gesture with the same hand and turned his head. "You know, I used to think of myself as…what? A peacekeeper?" he asked, ignoring them. "As the only commissioned officer here who was in the Speciali, I can tell you, none of us ever knew what would happen if the Order split between the House of Catalonia and the House of Khushrenada."
They kept staring at him. From the back of the group, Andropov could hear whispering.
"Sir, if this is about the White Fang, I assure you, no one in this room has loyalties to that…" Tynes began.
"It's not about the White Fang!" Andropov snapped abruptly, surprising even himself. "Do we really need to go through this, Tynes? Maybe I'm just some dumb kid out of Omsk, maybe I don't know anything about the colonies, but I've been in this colony long enough to know what a farce our attempts at secrecy have been, under the Alliance, under the U.N.O. and now under the World Nation," Andropov growled. "Nothing stays secret from the Barton Security Service or the Foundation, not for long."
With a gloved hand, he reached behind him on the desk and moved a thin stack of printouts to his side in a single motion. "I know about Mariemaia Barton."
The hushed whispering stopped with declaration, and all eyes were once again on him. "You know, it shouldn't surprise me. All these years, especially in the Mobile Suit Troops, we've hated the Military Commissariat, considered them nothing more than meddlesome litigators, lawyers and would-be private detectives in uniforms. The so-called 'political officers'. Figures it would take Treize Khushrenada's dismissal for them discover he's hiding his own progeny here in Outer Space," he muttered distastefully.
He waited a moment for a response before he continued. "And with that, so many more things make sense again. Like why build a complete mobile suit arsenal in some juvenile colony in the X-Area of the Third Lagrange Point, to manufacture the first third-generation mobile suit, in an irresponsible amount of secrecy. If the explanation weren't so outlandish, I'd blame myself for not seeing it sooner."
With his other hand, Andropov pulled at the stiff collar of his uniform, suddenly conscious of his own voice, hearing himself talk for so long without interruption.
"Not about the White Fang, what a joke." He sighed. "So, an uprising of Treizist Colonials have seized the Number Thirteen Mobile Suit Factory at the Marius Crater, along with a portion of the OZ Space Forces Navy including the nearly-completed super-battleship Libra. This White Fang is intending some form of attack on the World Nation on Earth."
He crossed his arms again, fists balled up. "And what will the Old Man offer me for my service, besides making me a major in L3-X-18999's new militia?"
There was some chuckling from the back of the room, almost breaking up the tension. Tynes looked back at Andropov, an almost apologetic look on his face. "They could probably make you a lieutenant colonel overseeing all engineering and technical services for the Serpent troops," he offered cheerfully.
"And?" Andropov cocked his head in the other direction.
Tynes looked back and forth. "Valentin Viktorovich, sir, you know as well as I do that this World Nation, declared by some deposed monarch and her royal backers in a purged aristocracy, isn't going to survive. Frankly, I'm surprised His Excellency would assume the role of Lord Protector in the first place."
"Me too," Andropov declared impatiently.
"Well, I know you don't sure our loyalty or even our values, but I think you might be able to share our vision. " There was some scoffs of disbelief from his side of the room, which he turned to face. "No, no, hear me out, he deserves to know."
He turned back. "Listen to me, sir. This could save your life."
Andropov shook his head. Tynes continued. "Like you said, the White Fang has a clear shot on Earth. There's no missing a target that big. The say I see it, you have two options: you leave this factory, and this colony, and go rally to folly that's been hoisted on Treize Khushrenada."
"You can't take it with you," a civilian pointed out dryly.
"That's up to debate," Andropov grumbled. "Or?"
"Or you stay here, and you help us pick up the pieces after Treize Khushrenada and Zechs Merquise are done murdering one another." Tynes removed his folding cap and held it against the chest of his uniform. "I mean, when you think about it, doesn't that really tell you everything you've ever known about OZ?"
"Who is 'us'?" Andropov asked before shaking his head. "Never mind. Even an idiot like myself can see that now. So I have to choose between Earth, and death, and life in some pocket Colonial fiefdom under Dekim Barton. Like living in Winner Corporation space before the revolt," he grumbled.
"We don't plan to make the same mistake," the 2nd lieutenant explained.
"Really? Well how's this for mistakes: all of you are out of jobs." He grinned as cruelly at them as he could manage. "Everyone in room not in uniform is fired, effective immediately. Enjoy your pensions while they last. And everyone else, you'll be receiving reassignment orders by the end of the day. No, I won't be sending any of you to die fighting the White Fang, though god knows you probably deserve it. You'll just have to content yourself with subversion and possible treason where it matters less." I've heard MO-V is lovely this time of year, he thought.
"You can't do that," a civilian objected.
"Oh really? Because I already did. I'd invite you to go check, but a military police detail will be escorting some of you off the premises and the rest of you to your quarters." Taking this as a signal, the military policewoman to his right spoke into radio attached to the white leather harness over her uniform tunic. Andropov tapped his wristwatch with a finger twice before looking back at them. "Oh, and if you should ask why, because it was a convenient way to get all of you in a room together. And because I want to make a dramatic statement to Dekim Barton."
The officers other than Tynes began to loudly object as more military police entered through the door, Andropov watching them lead each of the accused conspirators out one-by-one before shutting it after them a strained sigh at the end as he circled behind his desk.
"Flight Lieutenant Bancroft didn't show up," one of the MPs pointed out.
"I know." He was hoping no one else noticed, but if she had, that seemed unlikely. At any given time, Bancroft was deployed with the Space Leo troops from the 1st Aerospace Division's combat engineers, or his actual squadron the 2nd Aerospace Division, after the rest of his company was sent to fight and die at the L1, ending with the defeat at C-00421.
Unlike the Serpent mobile suits, those troops were actually operational; Bancroft was the highest ranking officer among them and to Andropov's dismay a Colonial with local connections. A greater sense of dread filled him as he reached into the top drawer of his desk and stopped the digital audio recorder that had captured their discussions since he started it earlier that afternoon. He tried to force himself into an optimistic mindset and took the telephone handset on his desk. Maybe it's not too late to stop him. "While I still have something resembling authority at this installation, I'm grounding all patrol and test flights and recalling all mobile suits and spacecraft to the bracing arm. Set up a secure line with the highest encryption possible over long-range UHF. If it's the last thing I ever do, I'm going to tell them that they were right."
IV
"I have to say, you're the last person I expected to see."
"I would say the same to you, Lieutenant Colonel Sedici."
Not moving from behind his small desk, Jarilo Sedici stared at the young woman who had entered his quarters within a short distance from the command center aboard Libra. Dorothy Catalonia, in her immaculate, outdated Alliance Space Forces uniform, stared around his modest cabin, ruggedly furnished and filled with number of open office file boxes, their printed contents arranged around haphazardly on his desk and the nearby furniture.
"They took away my computers," he answered her preemptively, ordering a stack of papers nearest to him with one hand. "I don't plan to sit idly by during our revolution, so this is what's available to me."
Dorothy stared back at him with a slight smirk on her pale face. "Have we met before?" she finally asked, unapologetically.
"Once. Almost two years ago, during a Romefeller Foundation benefit gala for veterans of the Alliance Space Forces, after the end of the Blitz."
She clasped her gloved hands behind her in a very feminine fashion. "Yes, the conclusion of the Colonial missile attacks on eastern hemisphere urban centers, I remember that. You were one of the guests of honor from the Alliance Space Force's detachment of Specials."
"I was still a major. And you were your grandfather's guest, and still a girl." He lifted his large hand from his desk and rested it on one knee, turning in his chair. "I was sorry to hear about that, by the way. Your grandfather's death on Luna."
He hadn't even guessed how she'd respond to that. A single long, thin eyebrow went up. "Why is that?"
"Your grandfather, Dermail Catalonia," he began, feeling the need to say his name outright, "…well, he was our enemy, obviously, but he was a civilian, and he had a family. And even if he never bragged about it, he was always good to those of us in the military, especially in the Order. Especially when it came to the Foundation's money." He clasped his knees through the trousers of his working uniform, then looked up at the ceiling. "He didn't deserve to be buried alive on Luna."
Sedici winced before slowly looking back at her; he wish he hadn't put it that way, and he didn't hide his expression that said the same. But Dorothy's pale, oval face framed by her blond hair simply stared back at him, unimpressed. He swallowed before taking a pen that he'd left floating by his left hand. "So, I should be calling you Second Lieutenant Catalonia now, shouldn't I?"
"That really won't be necessary, Colonel," she assured him, overtly grinning now. "I don't claim to be deserving of even that modest rank, so much as I managed to make it convenient to be given it by your leaders."
Our leaders, you mean. "I suppose that's an accomplishment in its own right," Sedici muttered. "And what is it I can do for you, Dorothy? I know you have a past history with Commander Milliardo, but I don't think he'd send you to convey the message all is forgiven."
"No, he didn't. I'm here of my own accord: Major Ishikawa, the commander of your mobile dolls, told me to find you."
"For what?" He raised one of his own thick eyebrows.
"I have something planned for the mobile dolls—specifically, the new ones."
Something about her saccharine tone of voice instinctively caused him to flatten his hand on the document he'd begun jotting with in pen, as if to hide the contents from her. He tried to brush that off. "Explain further, Lieutenant."
Dorothy reached for one of the thick stacks of bounded printouts, using a single delicate finger to lift it slowly in Libra's microgravity. "I know that you are preparing to field an improved design of OZ's Virgo mobile doll, and that preparations to do so have been the sole priority of the Marius Crater arsenal, even over repairs to existing mobile suit inventories." She lifted another and then another bound book with her finger, before taking one and flipping through it briefly before presenting it, page first, to Sedici. "The improved assault space mobile doll, designated WF-02MD."
"Virgo II," Sedici added with a sigh. You could've said so sooner.
"And I know you've been taking deliveries of as many of them as are on hand, as this battleship's main compliment."
"Then you seem to know everything," he joked darkly.
"Oh, not everything," she said with glee. She floated the short distance to his desk and halted behind his large frame, staring over one shoulder. "You see, unlike Major Ishikawa, you're intimately acquainted with the final assembly and launching of Libra, more so than any single person alive with the death of your superior in OZ, Tubarov Villemont. And so I believe you're acquainted with OZ's last plan for the mobile dolls."
"Plan for what?" he asked stiffly, sliding his chair towards his desk and away from her.
"To fix the mobile dolls."
"I think you need to get your story from Major Ishikawa straight, Dorothy."
She ignored that rebuttal. "In this ship's hangar, you have a few complete squadrons of Taurus mobile suits—terrible color, by the way—all of which feature mobile doll functionality. But as I understand it, none of that programming and experience was particularly useful for the first models of Virgos OZ deployed in Operation 'Nova', because…"
It was obvious she wanted an answer. "Because the software package for high-mobility space mobile suits wasn't useful for slow machines intended for terrestrial combat, yes," he grunted back.
"So OZ made sure to use the Virgos properly and Relena got her kingdom, until the Treizists snatched it out from under her," she replied gleefully. "Tubarov may've been an autocrat in the making but he was no fool, and the improvements to the Virgo were intended to make it as maneuverable as OZ's inventory of older Space Leo troops. And that means you need all new programming computer package, while of OZ's artificial intelligence experts…"
"Are still on Earth," Tubarov grunted. "You've done your research. Well done."
She gave a mocking curtsy. "And what was your solution, Colonel Sedici? Was it the auxiliary measure?"
That surprised him, and he was unable to disguise the fact. She has done her research. Even Ishikawa didn't know the full details of the auxiliary measure. "The fact that you know this is proof of Milliardo Peacecraft's approval. I won't be doing very much besides reviewing test data from Luna while I'm in this room, so I suppose, in the interest of the revolution and the war effort, I ought to accommodate this fancy of yours."
He expected Dorothy to gloat more obviously, but she instead smiled her pale, uncolored lips and stared at him. She does cut a handsome figure in uniform, I'll give her that. You wouldn't expect someone groomed that well to be disturbed unless they were a Khushrenada. He gave an aggravated sigh, held his head with one hand and with the other reached over to another stack of documents in the corner. "While we were searching for Tubarov and your grandfather's corpses, we also recovered what was left of the Chief Engineer's prototype remote operations equipment. It was a step beyond the software control that was running on the OZ-00MD testing models at the Ruhr Valley Factory, as well as the control software standard equipped to Taurus commander units for Virgo troops and other Taurii. There was no evidence Tubarov ever used it in combat, but it was effectively remote unmanned vehicle operation software. The so-called auxiliary measure."
He opened an unremarkable book of printouts and opened it to a particular page, which he tapped resolutely. "The problem was the same as when the Taurus mobile dolls were first deployed before Operation 'Citadel'—you'd need dozens of human operators just to manage a single company, and ideally one operator per mobile doll. That's why the Ruhr Valley staff rejected it out-of-hand for less granular control over remote piloting." He turned several pages. "Tubarov had gotten to the point where he could remotely issue commands to an entire battalion single-handedly with the right thirty-six character key, which I can tell you was a serious security liability," he growled.
"I take it you don't approve?" she asked with another grin.
"Well, it didn't save his life during the Artemis Revolution, did it? Besides, it was a waste of military capability. No one, much less Tubarov, could effectively command that many combat units. According to the tests by the Ruhr Valley and the trails at Marius Crater, even with the most skilled operator possible the problem was combat data. There is no way to supply a single operator with sufficient usable situational battlefield information to overcome the trade-offs versus multiple operators. And at that point, you might as well just rely on pre-programmed routines."
"Is that your conclusion, or Tubarov's?" she asked with genuine curiosity.
"Both of ours. Even back when he was still my boss."
"And Tubarov certainly knew mobile dolls," she said with a very unmilitary shrug, thin arms raised.
"Well, he did write the book on them." Sedici tossed her a large, bound volume and she read the embossed title on the cover: The Political and Social Consequences of Battlefield Automation. "Don't let the title fool you, it's as relevant today as when he wrote it before you were born."
"And of course, as the man in charge of Libra's construction, his expertise was reflected in this battleship's design, correct?"
"You mean the automated flight control center? Below the main control center?" He gave her an almost pitying look. "Just another symptom of Libra's skeleton crew, it looks like. We're better off issuing instructions directly from the overbridge over the usual EHF, or field commanders in Taurus machines over datalink."
She gave a haughty nod in spite of that. "And what if you could solve the data problem?"
"But you can't," he reminded her gruffly. "There's no way to effectively present a small, coherent body of operators, much less a single operator, with the total sum of relevant data from the battlefield just captured by mobile dolls, much less recon ships, satellites, and what have you. And even if you could, you couldn't adequate process the feedback from the human element. That's why pilots are indispensable."
"Yes, but what if you could?" Dorothy repeated.
V
He was an old man, old in appearance by Space Forces standards, old in fact by Space Mobile Suit Troops norms. A solid grey mustache matched the grey of his receding hairline, still managing to outgrow his military haircut. Despite this, he still kept his unwavering military bearing, a battered sky-blue OZ Space Forces normal suit helmet under one arm and his other raised in a salute over his brow.
"Omar Clarkson, requesting permission to come aboard," he announced routinely.
Another aged, though not as old, officer in a Space Forces Navy uniform smiled back at him, a stout, even burly-looking man who was straining the seams of his winter space navy uniform. "Flight Lieutenant Clarkson—welcome aboard CVA-40, the Africana. Flagship of the remaining E.S.U.N. Space Forces Navy," he declared with just a hint of slyness behind his deep voice.
Shaking the sailor's hand, Clarkson looked around the bank of dorsal airlocks forward of the carrier's massive command superstructure. The carrier's traffic control had directed the courier shuttle he'd been traveling on to dock there, rather than the actual mobile suit hangars, and it became readily obvious why.
The last of the surviving Europa-class ships after the sinking of the Asiana, the largest prize seized from the Alliance Space Forces Navy was now the de facto flagship of what was left of OZ's combined fleet in Earth orbit. He'd come in time to see the Africana taking on an innumerable number of fuel tankers, ammunition and mobile suit transport freighters.
"You were expecting more?" the sailor asked with a grin.
"From the outside, yes, to be honest," Clarkson answered as he released his hand.
The sailor, rather than being offended, gave a cheery laugh. "Give us time. We'll get you a new normal suit to start. Then we'll see about getting you a new machine."
The path the senior sailor lead Clarkson through the Africana took him through a corridor that ran alongside one of the reinforced walls of the forward hangar; gliding past a series of armored windowpanes, he caught a glimpse of a line of OZ-12SMS 'Taurii' being unloaded from cargo transports into storage racks by the hangar's complex system of cranes and tracks. He counted at least sixteen mobile suits, in good condition from what he could tell, before the guide rail's transport handle pulled him past the bank of windows
"You're taking this seriously," he observed finally.
"Why wouldn't we be?" he retorted. The executive officer seemed to be enjoying himself, but nonetheless, Clarkson felt apologetic.
"I didn't mean to imply on account of your…history," he muttered stiffly as he followed the XO. It was no secret that the majority of the Africana's senior crew had only come over towards the conclusion of the Noventan Strategic Offensive Operation, when the whole carrier had switched sides. That had been before the end of September. What had been a few months of uncomfortable tension had suddenly become the opposite of a liability: when other ships, other squadrons had defected in the Artemis Revolution, the Africana, with its compliment of the last Alliance Space Navy veterans from Earth and the colonies, hadn't budged. So somehow, the ship that betrayed the cause of the Republic of Noventa has become one of the pillars of loyalty against the White Fang's…betrayal? No, you probably couldn't call it that. Clarkson could feel his mustache twitching with the thought.
The XO assured him there was no offense. "I'd be more paranoid if I were in your position. Though ask yourself, how exactly do you think the Colonial Liberation Organization has in mind for us, the last holdouts of Alliance rule in Outer Space?" He gave an almost evil grin. "Nothing good, you can be sure."
"I believe they're calling themselves the Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of the Habitats," Clarkson responded coolly. The XO barked a laugh.
"God, what is with the politics of today and terrible names?"
Through increasing crowded corridors climbed to the top of the Africana's massive "island" command superstructure, atop which sat the rebuilt primary bridge, the most extensively damaged portion of the entire flagship, and not from OZ; when the ship had switched sides immediately before L1-D-120's fall, a Noventan mobile suit had fired a single hypersonic penetrator at barely over contact shot distances, well below point blank range. Clarkson had studied the after-action report: the pilot had died, more than a dozen officers, including at least one who had their small arms on the commanding officer, had died, ripped from the ship during the explosive decompression in their uniforms or unsealed normal suits. The seemingly disloyal officers who survived had been unceremoniously shot by the rest of the command staff sometime between them regaining control of the ship and surrendering it to OZ Space Forces.
Entering the expansive bridge through the primary accessway doors, Clarkson was unsurprised to see almost no evidence of the violent betrayal that had occurred inside and outside on that September day, with an obvious exception.
"Helena Arroway," he announced, in spite of himself. "This is quite a surprise."
"And you are?"
"This is soon-to-be Squadron Commander Clarkson," the burley senior sailor explained. "He was part of the First Recon Battalion that fought at D-120, then apparently stayed behind in Outer Space."
Clarkson looked at him with a raised eyebrow. "Oh, by the way, you're being promoted by the staff at C-102 to the role of senior officer in the First Aerospace Division, following the dissolution of the Second Division. Congratulations," he told him dryly.
Rolling his eyes, Clarkson turned back to the woman sitting in the higher-raised of the two command seats behind the consoles and work stations. A long leg was draped out the side in a very unmilitary-like manner, clad leggings and belonging to a woman in a stylish khaki miniskirt and a matching jacket over an expensive sleeveless blouse. If her point was to establish her civilian lifestyle, she was succeeding.
"So, our situation is really so bad the Military Commissariat would drag the D-120's defense minister out of whatever expensive hole she was hiding in?" he asked the XO calmly.
Long, dark hair framing either side of her face, Arroway looked him over. "Barge is sunk. The Asiana is sunk. The Lunar Military District is lost or in the process of being lost." Crossing her legs, Arroway looked away and propped elbow against the armrest and her chin in her palm. "So how does OZ plan to sink Libra on the field of battle?"
"You'd have to ask Treize Khushrenda, we're just his backup," he assured her.
Arroway gave a devilish laugh, eliciting smiles from the bridge crew. Her bridge crew. For the first time, Clarkson entertained the possibility that bringing the retired commander of the Nonventan Navy aboard the Noventan flagship could've been too careless, that it wasn't just paranoia by what was left of the OZ Space Forces brass, but an actual risk.
But it's probably just paranoia.
Eventually the laughter stopped. "Aren't you a little old to be a mobile suit pilot?"
Clarkson raised his eyebrows, an exaggerated indication of surprise. "Probably, I was shot down by a pair of children after all."
She smirked and began rocking her left foot, in a dark-colored high heel, back and forth in amusement. "Well, at least you're honest, I'll give you that Clarkson."
"So, I have been given operational authority over carrier and its compliment?" Clarkson asked the XO carefully.
"For the time being, yes. It's not like we have a skipper."
Clarkson nodded. "Then Citizen Arroway is free to leave. Arrange for a courier ship or transport to bring her wherever she'd like in E.S.U.N. space, within reason."
"Squadron Commander, come on…" the XO began sympathetically. "It's not like you can afford to be choosy."
"I'm just here following orders, Warrant Officer, won't you do the same?"
The XO put out a hand. "How about winning a war?" Clarkson rolled his eyes at him.
Arroway leaned out from her elevated seat. "I'm only going to say this once—you people, OZ, the World Nation, whatever you call yourselves, you severely fucked up the cause of keeping Earth's boot on the colonies."
"I wouldn't dispute that," he admitted. "But as I explained, I'm here following orders, unlike you and anyone else not in uniform. Didn't you enjoy civilian life? Why even engage in the appearance of helping us now?"
"You mean aside from the pair of armed officers from the commissariat who told me I had no choice? Because a year ago, in a saner time, this would've been my job." She turned back to the observation view in front of her. "And I would've done it better."
With a sigh, he crossed the deck and took the executive officer's offset seat, easing into it in his weathered normal suit and letting his helmet hang from one of the arm rests. "I'll admit I can't reasonable dispute that. But…"
He paused and she looked down at him. He glanced at her out of upper corners of his eyes. "You did choose the more pragmatic approach in your last engagement. The one that involved leaving your political and military life, not to mention this ship." He turned his eyes forward again. "I hope you have some further wisdom besides repeating to us how badly we've managed the Heero Yuy problem, because otherwise, I'd like you to leave this ship immediately."
"So would I. Unfortunately, I might."
He looked at her directly this time. "And how so, Citizen Arroway?"
She rolled her eyes. "By the book, aren't we, Squadron Commander Clarkson?" She leaned over her armrest, bringing her face closer to his. "You didn't salute me when you entered. Unlike the warrant officer here, and the rest of the bridge."
"Tattling, ma'am?" the executive officer asked, flashing a grin. Clarkson suppressed a chuckle.
Arroway leaned back into her seat. "You know practically no one in the White Fang navy wears a service uniform?"
"Well, I assume they all still salute, hats or not," he muttered back.
"They salute the man at the top at the least, which returns to the matter of why I'm here." She eased back into her seat and was resting her forehead against one hand, apparently tired. "While the rest of the OZ Space Navy prepares to address the self-created problem of Libra, I've been asked to find a way to neutralize Milliardo Peacecraft."
Clarkson was staring at her again, expression frozen. "What do you mean, neutralize?" Arroway's former-executive officer, and the current XO aboard the Africana, barked a deep laugh.
"Neutralize," she repeated. Clarkson kept looking at her, the first and last defense minister of the short-lived Republican of Noventa, briefly the single most powerful colony-state in Earth Sphere. Before that, prior to the death of her mother, Vice Admiral Eleanor Arroway, she'd been the commander of one of an Alliance Space Force's hastily-created naval task forces in the First Lagrange Point, a subordinate unit under her mother's space fleet. And before that…
She was a mobile suit squadron leader for the Alliance Space Navy, he thought.
"You're going to try and destroy the Luxembourg Gundam, with Milliardo Peacecraft in it."
"Slow on the uptake, isn't he?" Arroway snickered at the warrant officer.
"Yes, but I was brought here to do something about the disarrayed squadrons of survivors from the Space Mobile Suit Troops and avoid another wasteful embarrassment like C-00421. I fail to understand how a civilian when a checkered reputation is going to defeat the greatest living mobile suit pilot in Earth Sphere, armed with a Gundam," he growled.
"Oh, I'm not going to fight Zechs Merquise," she smirked at him.
"Then who?" Clarkson could feel himself growing a shade paler, a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. "No…"
"Relax yourself, old man. Weren't you already shot down by a Gundam or two?"
The memory flashed by in his mind's eye, the silhouette of the so-called stealth Gundam, the rebuilt Unit 02, sending one of its beam emitter-equipped melee shields into his Taurus' center-of-mass. Luck, and a functioning ejection system set to automatic mode, were the reasons for his survival he believed.
"Then who?" he repeated. Arroway continued to smirk at him.
VI
Upon meeting Zhou Jun, Walker felt an instinctive need to conceal his expression at his impatient, anxious face. Flight Officer Zhou was as proper a young man as you'd see attached to the general staff at Diekirch, go-between for no less than the Lord Protector nowadays, even if he had very little actual combat experience. He remembered Abraham Tal, a relatively inexperienced pilot from the Ruhr Valley arsenal in Germany, who'd gone on to serve a similar role for no one less than the Duke of Liechtenstein in Brussels, then followed him to Outer Space. For the first time, he wondered whatever happened to Tal, that diminutive but handsome, wide-eyed pilot. Probably dead, Walker concluded.
Zhou was more cautious, and accordingly more alive. From the observation level, he was gesturing angrily at the completed OZ-00MS2 behind them. If he sees I'm actually glad to have him yelling at me, I'm finished, he reflected.
"Flight Lieutenant Walker, are you listening to me?"
Walker unclenched his jaw, now apparently part of his neutral expression as it were. "Yes, Mr. Zhou."
"So, who would you recommend then?"
At least he'd been paying attention mostly. "Walther Farkill."
That caught Zhou by surprise, as intended. Before he could answer, he cut him off. "But he's dead, of course, not far from here in fact. As is most of the 'Prize' unit, except for the Armonia sisters, and they're not available, which is a shame. They were the best hunter-killer pilots available to OZ after…" he heard himself trail off.
Zhou looked at him impatiently. "And then?"
"I would say the most decorated aces in the Recon Battalions, what's left of them, the ones that are still alive," he offered, mentally calculating the known attrition of those units.
"And you know the ace who basically runs First Recon, don't you? Ogasawara?"
He wanted to not answer that. "It would take some convincing."
"Then try harder," Zhou snapped, almost losing his temper. "Please!"
He nodded and tried to look contrite for the flight officer.
Zhou sighed. "Anyone else?"
"You know, Mr. Zhou, we don't know for a fact that His Excellency…"
Zhou shot him a sharp look, giving him pause. "I was going to say that His Excellency doesn't already have a pilot in mind."
He sighed. "You're right, we don't. In the old days, there was someone so obvious there could hardly be doubt in our minds: the Lighting Count." Zhou paused, frowning. "I'm sorry, I know the two of you had a history."
Walker pushed past it. "Acknowledging Tallgeese's symbolic value against the…supreme commander of the White Fang, I don't intend to presume what His Excellency had in mind when he had me restore these machines." He could feel his expression darkening. "I learned that lesson from Epyon. So should've you."
The statement came out harsher than he anticipated. Zhou visibly shrank. I've given up trying to predict Treize Khushrenada's decisions, even when I should.
The remains of three aerospace divisions were being mustered in what was left of the Space Force's navy, particularly the supercarrier Asiana and the battlecruisers Tethys, Callisto, Calypso, and the Europa, a Ganymede-class that shared the name with supercarrier sunk by OZ back in May. The Ganymede, leadship of its class, had just been surrendered by the Noventan Republic and would join them. Opposing them would be, at least, one Ganymede-class battlecruiser and another seized during retrofit on Luna, alongside the super battleship Libra. At least for now, OZ enjoyed an advantage in smaller support ships.
With a flick of his uniform tailcoat, the Lord Protector entered the same small workshop under the New Castle of Ansembourg where the completed OZ-13MS had waited for its Gundam pilot. Behind that same observation gantry, waiting to be transported to a proper proving ground like the airbases at Corsica or elsewhere, was the completed, but still unpainted, second Tallgeese mobile suit.
Walker was closer to the door, and as was his habit, Treize Khushrenada addressed him first, despite the glimmer of the mobile suit in his eye. "Good afternoon, Flight Lieutenant Walker," he said, very appropriately.
"Your Excellency, sir." Walker saluted quickly and was about to launch into his engineering speak when, the image of decorum, the colonel turned to the other officer present.
"And to you as well, Mr. Zhou. And is this it?" Treize stopped just a meter or so before the railing.
"Yes sir. Walker completed the test flights and the like, and it's ready to be outfitted with its original armament package."
"What Mr. Zhou is referring to is the problem supplying upgraded weapons and equipment after the Tallgeese support base was shut down," Walker explained. "We're hoping to repurpose some operational equipment seized from the Alliance, but even that's taking time."
"These things happen," Treize replied somberly. "I've seen the reports on outfitting the Space Leo troops, we're short on anything that isn't their standard older model beam rifle."
Zhou looked surprised at the observation. Walker nodded. "This sort of thing is inevitable when you spin-up a production line to maximum capacity after winding it down. The Taurus troops, by comparison, are much better outfitted but not being replenished in the same number. It won't take long before the entire usable inventory is in the field with the navy."
"That we control," Treize noted, turning back to him. "I've seen the reports from our sources onboard Libra, they're prepared to field their own Taurus squadrons."
"As command units for the Virgo mobile dolls?" Zhou asked quickly.
Walker shook his head. "I don't think so. This isn't like Operation 'Nova', with men like Disraeli commanding mobile doll companies. The improved Virgo model is equipped for space combat more like the Taurus, and with better antennae and without the problems of atmosphere interference, they'll probably be directed from their command ship itself. They…the White Fang…may intend their Taurus troops as a reserve force to fill in gaps left by the mobile dolls, or in support of their navy."
Zhou looked bewildered. "I believe that's correct," Treize said, approvingly. Walker felt the urge to beam, and fought it.
"All the same, it's a magnificent machine," Treize declared, looking back at Tallgeese. "Even compared to the museum piece I saw years ago sitting in Corsica." He didn't bother hiding his admiration.
"Thank you, sir," Walker finally forced out of him, almost stammering.
"Fine work as usual. I know you're quite a few years removed from your work at the Corsica Arsenal, Walker, but I can't think of a better piece of machinery to rally our Space Leo troops behind for our defense against Libra and the fleet."
Walker looked at Zhou out of the corner of his eye, now clearly distressed behind Treize. "Your Excellency, if I may share an opinion as a technical layperson."
"Of course." Treize kept his eyes forward.
"Even with the best of Flight Lieutenant Walker's work, based on all the data I've seen I don't think this individual machine is a capable opponent of the White Fang's Gundam, with or without a mobile doll escort. Not as it is. I believe, for the most part, the chief engineer agrees with me." Zhou gave him an urgent glance behind Treize's back. He didn't return it.
Treize stood in contemplative silence for a while longer before part way to face them. Walker braced himself for the question like a blow, but it didn't come. "I'd have to agree, Mr. Zhou, but I defer to Walker's expertise, as he knows Tallgeese better than anyone else in the armed forces." He gave a confident, almost playful half-smirk before turning back to continue admiring it. "We'll have to make do with what we have available, like in every other war in history."
The inquiry hadn't come but the blow had been struck anyway. Treize's inference was undeniable. Walker glanced back at the flight officer, and watched Zhou's panicked demeanor change flawlessly. It was hard not to be impressed by it. No matter what happened, he, Walker, was always Walker, for better and worse. Zhou almost looked like a different man.
"Your Excellency, sir, it's really too dangerous for you to command from the front."
Treize put his right hand on his hip and his artistic pleasure seemed to fade. "Milliardo Peacecraft, as supreme commander of the White Fang, is fighting on the front line. You can interpret this sortie as a courtesy towards him."
We've abandoned the pretense of doubt finally. Walker felt himself frozen. "Gentlemen, remember this well: a war in which decorum is forgotten gives rise to nothing but butchery," Treize declared, almost saddened.
Zhou gave no response, but it was hard to imagine him not screaming at Walker internally, behind that façade. Walker steeled himself and literally took a step forward. "But, sir, you're the Lord Protector and commander-in-chief," he said in a small voice.
"Well, they're just titles, Walker," Treize said, abruptly relaxed.
They won't be if you die. Walker almost said that aloud, but he was lost for words.
The meeting did not go on much longer after that; Treize was taken away by the selection process of a premier, the head of government for the World Nation after Relena Peacecraft had left the post unfilled but probably intended it for the Marquise Weridge, her adoptive grandfather and most loyal supporter. Aside from eliminating him as a possible candidate, there were few obvious choices for a prime minister.
Zhou had gone back to something resembling resigned defeat. "Well, that's it, I suppose. There's nothing to be done about it now." He was sitting, almost slovenly, in a folding chair in the working office between the gantries and the façade of the New Castle's library outside, where Dorothy Catalonia had forced herself, shaking, after emerging from the OZ-13MS. "Not unless you take some actual initiative, anyway."
Leaning against a wall, arms crossed, Walker turned to him with an openly hostile look. "Initiative? Initiative?"
"The point is he trusts you complete, Walker!" Zhou snapped back.
"Is that what we're calling it, Jun?"
"Well, I didn't have you pegged for some kind of sanctimonious…" Zhou's words failed him, and Walker grinned back cruelly, something even he couldn't remember the last time he did. Probably to a member of the First Recon Battalion at the height of the Treizist revolt.
There was a single, pitched alarm tone, through the door hidden behind a pair of bookshelves that led into a sitting room, a noncommissioned officer entered in his hunter greens. Walker ignored them and kept an eye on Zhou.
"I don't know what you want me to do, Jun. In fact, I'm not sure what any human being on Earth could possibly do to dissuade the Lord Protector from a particular decision," he reminded him. "Never mind suggesting I lie to the commander-in-chief of the armed forces…"
"I didn't say lie," Zhou hissed back before his eyes widened. Walker turned in the direction he was looking: familiar features of the large, imposing young man with perfectly kept features emerging from a formfitting uniform of the Fusiliers-Grenadiers Regiment.
"Master Aircrew Serrati! I see you're back on the job!" Walker declared, more than a little forced, standing upright.
Fidel Serrati looked at both of the officers with visible skepticism. "Mr. Zhou, Chief Engineer Walker," he said courteously. "It's been a while."
"Yes, it has. In fact, last time we met was…upstairs, I think." Walker looked at Zhou, who had an expression of contempt mixed with defeat directed at no one in particular. "Don't mind him. Congratulations on living this long," he said, almost out of obligation.
Serrati seemed to take it in good humor, looking through the officer windows into the workshop hangar. "So that's it, is it? I wanted a chance to see it before I left."
"And that is it," Walker repeated rather uselessly.
"And we're trying to convince Walker to break it before another Tallgeese machine ruins a worsening situation," Zhou announced nonchalantly. Walker wasn't able to control his response, which came out as a sort of awkward hissing gasp through his clenched teeth. "Oh, come off it, Walker! You think he's stupid just because he's a bodyguard and not a slide rule jockey like you? No offense, Master Aircrew."
"Uh, none…" Serrati began slowly and carefully before he was cut off.
"He's going to figure it out if he hasn't already."
Walker groaned softly before turning away from them and to the windows. I couldn't just sabotage it. That might not even stop this anyway. They could find someone else to finish the job. And if it was someone worse, then what? How did I even come to this point?
At least that was a familiar question. Part of Treize Khushrenada's ostensible inner circle. Part of a revolt against the official, legal military leadership. Under the thumb of the likes of Ogasawara Emi, or before that, Lieutenant Colonel Une. Now here he was, avoiding not just his family, what was left of it, but the matter of people who he actually cared about, like David and Ajay, the two of them, jostling and laughing in his mind. People who'd actually cared about him.
Serrati gave no obvious indication of where he stood on the matter beyond a single question. "Then what now, sirs?"
One thing I do know: Zhou Jun is useless.
Resisting the urge to plant his forehead against the glass pane in front of him, Walker propped his arms up on the windowsill. "I need to find a pilot of sufficient reputation that His Excellency would have to acknowledge their superiority, and convince them to volunteer to pilot Tallgeese against the White Fang."
Then he planted his forehead against the glass with a thud.
"Because if I don't, Treize is going to going to use it instead, and Zechs'll kill him."
Author's Notes:
Not quite six months (nothing to be proud of), and a little longer than planned—this wasn't an easy chapter to write, in what is the run-up to the actual end of this story, those last handful of episodes and the final volume (or two or technically three, considering Treize's statement is taken straight from the final stages of volume 12). Given how I handled D-120 (probably still my favorite arc in this story, or close to it), stretching out this conclusion should come as a surprise to no one given how little of it there is that doesn't involve the Gundam pilots. Did I mention it wasn't easy to write? No matter, I'm finishing this thing! Add some time lost to updating previous chapters (and sharing this story on other websites), and working on other stories (which are languishing under even worse delays for the most part), and that's the sum of my excuses. How fitting, considering we leave with a reminder of Walker's rather messed up view of his own loved ones. Dorothy gets her last moment in the spotlight (as in the series, more or less), a reminder of how much I enjoy writing her in the highly unusual situations she puts herself into. This chapter's highly melodramatic but at least relevant title is the third one I chose, at least. Believe it or not, the others were worse.
To repeat the redundant, it's been an unusual year for all of us, especially those of us in North America. A few new readers (or potential readers) have been great motivation for me when I've been severely lacking it (which is often), for this and other stories—so as always, thank you for reading and please let me know what you think!