Chapter 1: Cultivating Peace
CE 71 December, Orb
Green eyes squinted in concentration, mirrored by blue and purple pairs, in other heads viewing other screens. The noise of construction continued in the background, the reconstruction of Orb obvious from anywhere on the mainland, and just as clear on most of the surrounding islands.
In the wake of the war, Orb found itself wounded, battered, and weary, and a hotspot for immigrants beyond anything seen since the construction of the PLANTs. In a world where citizens of either side had to come to terms with attempted genocide, both by and against them, the promise of a country that had stood and bled to prevent it was enthralling, kicking off a popultion surge and contruction boom unlike any in the history of Orb.
The three sets of eyes each belonged to such immigrants, at least they were immigrants temporarily. Athrun Zala, Dearka Elsman, and Yzak Joule each Red-Coats in ZAFT's mobile suit forces, each a deserter, at least officially, or so they thought.
Three pairs of eyes glanced up at the same time, each turning towards the others. Athrun, relaxed on the couch, Dearka on the floor on his stomach, and Yzak at the writing desk by the new housing's only window. Each had a computer with them, each with the same communication from ZAFT, essentially a list of names. A full list of everyone who had yet to report back in after the war, with presumed causes. Athrun and Yzak were both listed as deserters, Dearka as a prisoner of war.
More important was the message that followed, reading simply that anyone who reported back in would be accepted back, no questions asked about their prior whereabouts or reasons.
"They must be desperate for pilots," Athrun opined, shifting in a way that let his navy hair fall in front of his green eyes for a moment before it was brushed aside.
Dearka was next to speak, rising and closing the laptop, stretching languidly. "They must really be hurting. Everyone was volunteers. How many went home after the war?"
Yzak picked up the question, distaste crinkling his blue eyes, silver hair still wet from sneaking a shower in early in the day to manage at least lukewarm water. "It must have been the majority. It's taken three months for them to get enough records together to send this out."
"You're both reporting in?" the tone made clear Yzak's question.
Dearka shook his head slowly, blonde hair a few shades lighter than his well-tanned skin shifting with the motion, kept too short to really move. "I'm going to see how things shake out here, besides, I'm a prisoner." He finished with a shrug of his shoulders.
Incredulous, Yzak looked from Dearka to Athrun, shock etched into his features. "What about you Zala?"
Athrun hesitated, and then was slow to answer, pondering the hesitation. He had never intended to leave ZAFT, he'd deserted and stolen the Justice in the process to try and stop a war that wouldn't end without genocide. He'd meant to return, but now. A vision of a blonde in a white Orb dress uniform, amber eyes sparking, haunted him. The old pressure of his father, the demand to perform, to excel settled against his shoulders for a moment and then with his decision lifted again.
"No, I don't think so."
Yzak looked aghast for a moment, before schooling his features into a glare. "Why? What's making you abandon your home?"
"Not much of a home anymore," Athrun admitted glumly. "And there's things here I don't want to abandon."
"You mean the girls," Yzak surmised. "You're deserting over a girl!"
"So is he!" Athrun argued pointing at the third Coordinator. "Why weren't you this mad at him?"
"Hey, prisoner of war, remember? I can't go back without getting released, and since everyone holding me prisoner deserted, I can't get released." Dearka looked all too pleased with his reasoning. "Besides, bailing over a girl is almost expected of me. For you, by the book Athrun Zala though, it's steamy gossip. I can picture the fangirls swooning already."
"I don't have fangirls!" Athrun insisted, his voice rising slowly in volume.
"You didn't have public fangirls before," Dearka agreed. "When you were engaged to a literal princess. Now the engagement is off, and you're a war hero to boot. Ladies will be dropping their panties where they stand." A vulgar wink did nothing to reassure Athrun about the bold statement.
Closing his computer Athrun rose from the couch, setting the device aside as he moved towards the small kitchen. "I'm grabbing lunch, if you promise not to make me lose it."
At the mention of food, Dearka let the obvious deflection go, joining the bluenette in his journey to the kitchen, leaving Yzak to grapple with what should have been an easy decision.
Behind the pair, Yzak turned to glare at the computer before leaning close to type, starting his long-delayed report.
CE 71 December, Orb
A loud particularly improper sigh from a woman with blonde hair and warm amber eyes heralded the Chief Representative of Orb's arrival at her lunch meeting. The lunch was held on a restaurant patio not far from the beach, the sort of small mom and pop establishment that relied on tourists to survive, and kept a few simple steel mesh tables and chairs beneath umbrellas at their door for visitors so enamored with the sea that they would take the view over quick and easy service.
A natural born Orbite, the view was lost on Cagalli, but since her appointment she had come to appreciate the relative privacy of the arrangement. The other four noble houses, each too busy fixing their own internal affairs to make a play for power, had appointed the last Athha Chief Representative quickly, only to immediately styme her, using her to keep the seat from each other until they were ready.
It had taken appointing a regent to start the wheels of the government moving again, with any attempts to block Ledonir Kisaka's actions required to follow normal procedure, without the easy out of "helping" the child Representative. Even still, Cagalli had to be present for every meeting and every last discussion if she wanted to have her agenda taken seriously.
Newly mindful of the public eye, Cagalli was careful to avoid slouching in her chair, adjusting the Orb naval uniform she wore, itself a compromise between bending to others and getting her own way. Cagalli refused to dress up and primp and preen to push her agenda, and as technical commander of Orb's military she could justify the white and blue uniform for any state affair.
Her lunch partner, Lacus Clyne, Songstress of the Plants dressed more conventionally, though no less ostentatiously in what could best be described as a princess dress. Cut from a shiny fabric of pink cloth the exact shade of her hair the outfit started with bubble sleeves at the shoulders, falling in carefully arranged folds until it ended just shy of the floor just high enough to avoid being dirtied. Faint cerulean lines, carefully colored to match the Songstress' eyes highlighted each fold, some magic of the dress keeping each fold precisely where it went. A high ponytail, apparently secured with white ribbon and complemented by her ever-present hair clip, and a pair of strappy sandals in palest white completed the look.
"If I have to let the Seiran's fawn over me for one more minute, I'm going to break something," Cagalli almost growled to start the conversation, only the threat of being heard keeping her from more dire threats.
"If we want to keep the peace we have to work with anyone who is willing," Lacus coached, stifling a giggle with one hand as she continued. "What have they done now?"
Cagalli ignored the light tease, nose wrinkling in annoyance. "They keep trying to push one of them on me for a wedding. First it was Yuna, and after I scared him off they keep parading cousins and nephews and uncles around, using any excuse they think of to get them into meetings. Today, they had the audacity to bring Unato's niece in, and make comments about how single and desirable she was, and how the family was 'encouraging her alternate lifestyle'. Surely I can't just be uninterested in marrying a Seiran, I must be gay, of course."
Another giggle was stifled by Lacus, an almost disturbing grin finding her lips. "Well, you and I have had more lunch dates than anyone they can force on you. We know it's just to keep us both from screaming at the people we have to work with, but to them…"
"Don't you start Lacus," Cagalli bemoaned. "By the time I could find an excuse to get away, they'd half convinced me of it. I don't know how the Athha-Seiran alliance has made it this long. If I didn't need them I'd have strangled one by now. Kisaka might not have even argued."
Cagalli made an effort to look at the menu, before the waiter arrived, but every muscle she had remained tense, clearly waiting for something. "Tell me the peace talks made some kind of progress today. As soon as they're finished I can announce Athrun, and if that doesn't stop them either he'll give me a ring or I'll propose to him. I just need to know it won't 'ruin the sanctity of Orb's neutral ground' while we still can't get ZAFT and the Alliance to meet anywhere else."
Lacus' merriment slowly gave way to the seriousness at hand, and finally she answered her lunch partner. "We have not. ZAFT wants proof the nuclear mobile armors were dismantled, the Alliance wants their military to inspect every ZAFT base for another GENESIS, and neither is willing to move an inch."
"The Provisional Chairwoman of ZAFT has been working on a middleground, but the other council members, and their cities, are scared. We thought we might make some real progress today, but the Atlantic Federation representative accused ZAFT of poaching their Biological CPU program, and when they denied it, called them liars. I could expect better behavior from the kids at the orphanage, and worse, I would get it."
Seizing on a chance to avoid the subject of work, Cagalli motioned for Lacus to continue. "How is the orphanage?"
"No one attacked Athrun the last time he visited," Lacus teased, her tone light. "Kira is great with the kids. Patient, kind, caring. Everything I could hope for. He's even opening up more. I think the time there is as healthy for him as it is for them. If this peace lasts, I could even see us taking care of some of them."
"Aren't you missing a step?" Cagalli suggested with a grin that meant she'd found a way to torment her friend. "Already thinking about kids, and not only is there no ring to be found, you aren't even officially dating. How immodest. What will your fans think?"
"Not all of us are lucky enough to have the guy we like just decide we're dating when they get interrogated," Lacus almost hissed back.
"I can send Kisaka to interrogate your crush," Cagalli offered. "It only took five minutes for Athrun to decide that we were dating, you could be on your first date tomorrow even."
"You told Kisaka that Athrun had slept in your room. Twice. If Athrun had given any other answer you would need a new boyfriend right now," Lacus argued. "Somehow I don't see death threats getting Kira out of his shell."
"It was the truth," Cagalli protested. "You've heard the story. After I kept him from blowing himself up, I wouldn't let him out of my sight. And my room was comfier than his, with a bigger bed." Switching seamlessly to the attack, Cagalli offered a cheeky wink. "Just don't fall behind Miriallia," she teased. "Her strategy for romance is aggressively rejecting Dearka, and then demanding all his time, and she's still making more progress than you."
A warm flush suffused Lacus' cheeks, almost the shade of her hair, as the Songstress raised her menu, making a point of looking over it to be clear the conversation was done.
CE 71 December, Orb
The sun was sinking towards the waterline by the time Kira Yamato arrived at the small research facility. Owned by Morgenroete, the stocky building sat at the end of a low concrete pier, half-height stone walls running along the perimeter. The walk from the closest bus stop had been short and easy, a pleasant warmth settling into the Coordinator's muscles as he finished his journey, knocking on the red-painted door, the only color on an otherwise whitewashed building.
Before Kira's knuckles could rap against the door a third time, it swung inward, revealing a woman just past the cusp of youth, no more than thirty, perhaps younger, with clear youthful skin that could only come from money or good genetics. Her honey-brown hair, a few shades darker than Kira's, coiled in a tight bun, with two fringes left free to frame her face. Two eyes the color of dark leaves alit with joy as they met Kira's violet.
"Thank you for coming, Kira." Her voice was warm and inviting as Erica ushered him inside, the first room in passing being something like a reception area, unstaffed and empty.
"Of course, Miss Erica," Kira voiced, almost bashful. "I want to learn more about the seed as much as you do." He trailed the engineer, a half step behind her as she led him to the same back room as on each of his weekly visits.
This time, the room held the same patient's chair as always, and Kira took a seat. A tray beside the seat held an arrangement of wireless sensors, some for pressure, others for tracking eye movement, and still others for reflex tests.
At the other end of the room, barely three feet from the central seat, Erica settled into her own customary spot, seated next to a simple laptop linked to the sensors. A few keystrokes started a recording program, and while Erica recorded her intro, Kira set about organizing the sensors.
Once each of the pair was ready, Kira set to using the sensors to collect all his baseline data, a simple grip strength test being the first, squeezing against a rounded pressure sensor. While he went through the motions, Erica started a series of questions, each recorded for later use. "Kira, you possess what we've been calling SEED Factor. Would you describe for me what using it is like?"
Passing the sensor to his other hand, Kira looked over at the scientist, clearing his throat before answering. "When I let it happen, I see a glowing violet seed fall and shatter, and I feel… cold. All the distractions fade, I don't see or hear better, but I can recognize more, faster, and more confidently and that's just the smallest part. It makes me faster, better, able to do more…" Kira trailed off at last, dropping the sensor and reaching for a simple reaction time test, a light that would flash at random with a button to push.
"Thank you," Erica acknowledged, twisting a circular control set up by the laptop that let her trace the pressure graph and save the data points she chose. "When we first met about this you added that the SEED worried you, why is that?"
A frown crept across Kira's face before the question finished, making clear he expected the question, and dreaded it. "At first, it scared me. It was so… intense. And so easy. With it and the Freedom I could do incredible things, and terrifying things. By the end of the war, I wasn't killing anymore, at least not many, and never deliberately, and it was still so easy. Only the other Gundams really were a challenge and even against them I always won."
A faint shiver rocked the Coordinator's body, his eyes crinkling in worry. "I thought, if I kept using it, and doing things like that, eventually, I wouldn't hate it anymore. I don't worry about it as much now."
"Why is that?" the question rolled smoothly from Erica's lips, rehearsed.
Kira flicked a switch on the back of the reaction test, killing the light and making it emit a high wine, stopping at random to prompt the button. "This testing. It's still tempting to use it for, well everything, but using it for this and for the work you've let me do around Morgenroete has convinced me it doesn't have to be a weapon. And if it isn't a weapon, then when I slip and use it for little things it isn't a problem, just a mistake."
The next question was measured, paced in the way that meant Erica was deciding her wording as she went, careful to keep it even for the recording. "Since you have continued to use the SEED Factor, have you noticed any side effects, mental or otherwise?"
Reaching for a data tablet next, Kira started scrolling through basic long computation problems. Not difficult, but time consuming, with a clock tracking his progress. "No. I'm still me. I still enjoy the same things. I'm not angry, or aggressive, or violent. The only side effect is when I stop using it, I get really tired, like it's hard to find the energy to move." Kira's jaw shifted in a tiny sign of stress, grinding tooth on tooth. "I still get sick at the thought of touching the Freedom again, of using a Gundam again, of fighting again. But I know I have to. Cagalli and Lacus both are giving up so much for peace to work. If things get bad again I have to do it."
Tapping a control, Erica deleted the last few seconds of the recording, and used another shortcut to pause it, looking at Kira with worried eyes. "Are you worried about using SEED again, or about piloting a mobile suit?"
"Both," the teen admitted, moisture in the corners of his eyes. "Nothing good happens when I pilot. I kill, and I can't protect people. But it helps end the wars, so I have to."
"Kira," the voice was motherly, reassuring. "If you have to pilot again, you'll be able to protect everyone you need to. Making sure of that, is my job. And Cagalli has kept the funding coming, somehow. If this peace doesn't last, Orb will be ready."
Moving towards Kira, Erica readied a needle and vial for a blood draw. "Are you comfortable with me drawing some blood this time? While you use the SEED Factor for the tests? I want to send it to a friend in medicine to see if there's a clear chemical component to the effect."
At Kira's nod, the scientist went to work.
CE 71 December, Eurasian Federation
A faint chill hung in the air of the facility, straining heaters enough to keep the air livable, but not comfortable. It was a minor annoyance to most, but one more weight on Director Michael Stourton's shoulders, leaving them slumped and weary. The same worries traced lines onto his tanned face, darkening his blue eyes with sorrow, and adding to the visible stress.
A glance to his left as Stourton rushed down the hall gave a glimpse of his reflection in the glass of a passing door, dark circles under the eyes, stringy hair greasy from one too many missed showers, and a suit that hadn't lost a single wrinkle to pressing or ironing. A whispered curse died on his lips. It would have to do.
The director turned right at a T-junction of hallways, stopping at the first door past the corner. A few long moments steadied his breathing, and he straightened his suit, forcing the appearance of calm. A few more moments of fumbling found his keycard in one pocket, and after proffering it, a reassuring beep heralded his arrival to the room.
When the heavy door swung open, it revealed a simple infirmary with three beds made up in white along one wall, each with an individual in their late teens dressed in simple, white undergarments. Leads and sensors adorned the trio, feeding data into bedside monitors and to a monitoring station on the far wall staffed with two nurses in khaki military dress.
At the scraping sound of the door against the floor, the nurses looked up, and Stourton noted bemusedly that all three of his assets were already watching the door. "How are the assets?" he asked the nurses, tone firm and businesslike. "All as we promised?"
The male of the two nurses was the one to speak, while the female turned back to the monitoring. "They're very… stable," he offered at last. "What little intel there is on the first set marks them as volatile, aggressive, and controlled only through drug addiction. Why are these different?"
Stourton's answer was scant seconds after the question, rolling off the tongue with the ease of an expected question and rehearsed response. "Our last backer, Murata Azrael, was a fanatic. Each of our Biological CPUs has an immense cost in resources and time, and rather than follow our recommended procedures, he rushed the product out, and abused it."
The director gestured with one hand towards a case that lay open on the monitoring station, three vials of light liquid cushioned in thick padding. "The Gamma Glipheptin we use for the program is a performance enhancer yes, but the cocktail we provide also includes immune-suppressants and required chemicals for the cybernetic implants to function. Murata was a fool who saw it as a tool for control, and denied it to the BCPU-1s on multiple occasions. The inevitable result was breakdown, both of physical and mental capacities."
As the nurse started to speak, Stourton raised a hand, stopping any argument and bullying forward with his speech. "If you check the combat logs you will see that in the Battle for Orb the assets did splendidly, hamstringing the defense, and making the Gundams that defected to Orb ineffectual. Over the following months the BCPU combat performance degraded swiftly, suffering more with each new engagement and each missed dose. With Murata dead, I was free to seek a new backer for the program, and chose to look at options outside the Atlantic Federation to avoid further issues."
Again, the nurse made to speak and was cut off with a gesture. "You were both sent to verify that there would be no risk to a field exercise with my assets. You've done that. Now if you'll report that fact to your commander, I will finish the preparations and see them to the hanger."
Reluctantly the pair left, leaving Michael alone with his charges, each watching him expectantly. In the time it took the man to reach the case that sheltered their Gamma Glipheptin, Michael found every one of his more than forty years, letting the façade drop now that only his projects could see. One by one, he delivered a vial to each of them, sealed, not to be had yet, but soon the times on the monitors all agreed the time for the next dose rapidly approached.
The first vial went to Linda, tall and lanky with pale blonde hair, trapped and pinned at the nape of her neck, and with dark brown eyes surrounded by skin almost as pale as her clothing. Underdressed as she was, Michael's eye could trace every one of the scars from her operations, far too many, a sign she'd nearly become one of the failed candidates. "Not a simulator this time," he offered to the room. "Field exercise, like we discussed. Daggers and linear tanks, with no surprises." A faint "mhmm" from Linda was the only response forthcoming, each of the three engrossed in their own heads as they prepared.
The next vial was handed to another woman, nearly as tall, and far more filled out, womanly in all the right ways. Warm olive fingers wrapped around the vial quickly, brushing his hand in minor reassurance. Black hair hung down past where it would normally tuck under the collar of a uniform, enjoying the fact helmets wouldn't be required for the exercise, and dark eyes shifted in the subtle way that showed a lingering question. "Eurasian Federation, Helen," Michael explained. "You three slept through the journey. But if we succeed here, then we'll have backing again, no more sedations, and the Gundam's can be finished."
When Michael turned away from Helen, her eyes bright with excitement at the thought of her Gundam, Kenneth was already off the bed, hand out for the vial, cutting his eyes back towards the director to hide his appraisal of the monitors. Dark almost shaved hair barely stood out from the caramel of his scalp, bright blue eyes the only vibrance on the only male of the trio.
"What are the objectives, sir?" he asked, tone carefully blank, task-minded and planning already. With the chemical cocktails handed off, Michael started the short process of removing monitors and disconnecting leads. "The Eurasian Federation wants super soldiers, and is worried all we have is rabid killers. You three will be deployed in Strike Daggers against a numerically superior force, with limited support. You'll be outside the normal chain of command, and taking orders directly from the ranking officer on site. Whatever orders he gives, complete them."
Gesturing towards the vials, Michael found a water flask in his other pocket, raising it to his lips to encourage the three. "Bottoms up."
"BCPU-2 Linda Campbell, ready for launch," the pilot intoned softly, the cockpit quiet enough even whispers would be carried across the comms. A moment later, she heard first a boisterous and excited, "Helen Torres, BCPU-2, launch ready," scrambled in the heat of the moment, and then a cool tone not unlike her own sounding off in a deep voice, "BCPU-2 Kenneth Carter, ready for launch."
Magnetic rails along the sides of her unit crackled with power. Linda found herself tensing her stomach, holding her breath in the second the G-forces hit, and pressing down against her seat as the mobile suit was launched forward through a repurposed mobile armor rail. It was fired out with its chest towards the ground, requiring a single dizzying moment for her to right the Dagger at speeds beyond anything the unit could reach alone.
A moment later, the parachute on the unit deployed, breaking the dizzying rush of speed, and keeping the impact with the ground to merely a bruising instead of bone crushing, making the entire unit ring and rattle as parts shifted in the little room they had. As the mag-locks on the parachute disengaged, Linda ran through the briefing, mulling over the intel they had: her team in Daggers, supported by twelve linear tanks, against fifteen daggers. The initial objective was simply to hold the line, and keep any enemy from reaching the command post.
A quick glance at her unit's status confirmed the new armaments were showing ready. For the exercise they were under orders not to damage military hardware, so they'd been issued what the BCPUs called waterguns and flashlights—rifles that fired magnetically contained paint and sabers that couldn't generate any more than a soft glow, enough to see, but harmless even to a unarmored unit. Even the underbarrel grenade launcher was accounted for, though its strikes would have to be fully simulated, taken care of by the practice software.
A twitch of one finger on her control sticks keyed up the intra-unit frequency, letting her talk to just her squad. "Linear Tanks are guarding the flanks, we have centerline. Kenneth, find concealment. When the enemy advances you're on priority." A second Dagger struck the ground beside her, gouging up dirt and stone, as it stilled. A quick glance at the terrain map provided showed mostly open ground, with slight hills towards the rear and flanks.
"Helen, you're with me, we're advancing. Bait a skirmish and break the enemy line quickly. Remember, paint only, and blades set to tag. Weapons are not hot."
A pair of responses echoed confirmations, and the deployment commenced.
The next few minutes passed quietly, each second ticking by agonizingly as the two Daggers advanced, shields and beam rifles ready, always spread to avoid a missile or artillery shell striking both. Behind them, Kenneth found a spot crouched behind a gnoll, watching over their advance, and by the time the linear tanks were in position, only five of the enemy Daggers were visible, advancing directly for the pair. "Enemy sighted, permission to engage?" Linda asked on command frequency, the full deployment channel.
"Granted. Stop their advance."
Immediately the pair gunned the thrusters, shifting both units into long leaps, separating to come in from the sides, and Linda focused on her own piece of the combat, trusting her squad to handle themselves.
The enemy was slow to respond as her Dagger arched through the air towards them, glowing paint shots streaking past harmlessly until Linda was nearly atop them. A lucky shot forced the pilot to use her shield in the instant after she fired her first shot, the paint splattering against it and sliding off the anti-beam coating. When her shield shifted away from her primary camera, her enemy was inactive, a glowing green stain across the torso marking a shot that would pierce the cockpit. One kill.
Another Dagger came at her from the side, beam saber in one hand, rifle in the other, only to suddenly power down, helpless before the paint from Kenneth's covering fire finished painting it green across one shoulder, and the side of the chest in line with the battery system. Two more showed as inactive in Helen's area, reporting beam-saber damage to manipulators and cockpits, a pair of glowing flashlights showing Helen must have confiscated one's weapon. Before the fifth could target anyone, Linda's unit gunned the thrusters for a single moment, veering to land on top of it instead of behind it. A panicked shot from the enemy splashed against her shield again as Linda tagged both camera and battery system with her watergun. "Enemy advance halted, further instructions?"
The line was silent for over a minute, and Linda was ready to key up again by the time instructions finally came back from command. "Advance, take the enemy command post."
In sync, the two Daggers began their advance, cutting paths towards each other to rejoin. The third was several hundred meters behind, and getting further. "Kenneth, what's the max range on your grenade launcher?" Linda asked, eyeing the join of two hills a few dozen yards away. A few actions highlighted a point just beyond the hill for her partner. "Can you land a grenade there?"
Only hemming and hawing came through the line while the pair continued their slow approach, alert for an ambush. "Can. Let me make the computer agree," came the answer. "Stay put."
The mission clock in one corner of her screen slowly counted upward, every hair on Linda's body standing on end as she watched for any threat. Until at last, "Grenade's away. Damage incoming." Almost immediately on the heels of the call, three mecha reported simulated damage. In a burst of speed, Linda and Helen were through the join and among them, each handling four in as many seconds, every squeeze on the trigger a kill, the limited return fire splashing against shields, the last staining Linda's with color and making her drop the shield as useless before the mark finished spreading.
"Thirteen confirmed down. Missing two combatants. Eyes open," Linda called as the pair moved beyond their third's ability to cover. The command post was visible ahead, topping another hill, and undefended, which meant… "Kenny, fun's headed your way," Helen called, before darting towards the target. "We'll finish it before things get explody back there."
A faint touch of her gauntlet against one of the buildings sent tremors through it, almost collapsing the hastily erected structure, and brought the exercise to an end. The last two Daggers reporting from the flanks, each ready to engage one wing of linear tanks, as confident in their superiority as the team had been against the other Daggers.
"Return to base all. Exercise complete."
CE 71 December, Maius Five
Footsteps echoed in the quiet halls of Maius Five's military installation, two Red-Coats alone in the facility. A yawn snuck past one's lips, her hand rising to stifle it a moment too late. The woman tried for a few moments to blink the water and sleep from her brilliant yellow eyes, before giving up and rubbing at them with her sleeve.
"This is why the Supreme Council doesn't want to put you in front of a camera you know," her companion teased, an edge of real scolding in his voice. "Ten minutes in uniform and you're using it like a tissue."
"Shove it, Heine," Julia Mazur demanded brushing at the sleeve with one hand. "No one else is here this early, and it won't stain. Besides, if they want to make you the face of the program, I'm all for it. You look like something off a recruitment poster, four in the morning and not a hair or crease out of place," she finished her statement with a cheeky wink, begging for a reply.
A faint smile twisted Heine Westenfluss' lips as the pair reached their door and slid inside. A tap on the controls by the door shifted mirrors throughout the PLANT's shaft and interior, reflecting real sunlight to illuminate the room and three simulator pods inside it, one tagged in shades of his own preferred orange, and one other in the yellow-gold of sunlight, with blue edging and trim. The third, furthest from the entrance, was without color, still the standard hues it was built with.
"No instructor again today," Julia mused, eyeing the third pod, indistinguishable from the others by anything but color, but with the extra tools to direct the training within. "That puts you in charge again, Mr. Almost Had a Gundam."
Heine kept a faint sigh from being heard at the dig, watching as his partner climbed the rig and disappeared through the top hatch. "Set it for a one-on-one, space. Freedom for my pod. Justice for yours."
Julia's head poked back up through the hatch, eyes narrowed in suspicion as she redid her ponytail, forcing locks of hair almost the same warm tan as her skin into place. "How come you get the Freedom? The Resolve is built off the Justice frame. They aren't even similar!"
"Because, Miss Medical Leave," Heine explained, slowly removing his uniform in favor of the orange pilot suit worn beneath, "as you love to point out, the Freedom was supposed to be mine."
"That's no fair," Julia argued, petulant, but slowly removing her own uniform to reveal a standard red pilot suit. "My ship was shot down before I could launch, and I got injured when it went up. And I didn't take medical leave! I was a ship CiC for the rest of the war. I got as much action as you did, after your suit got stolen. That's how I got this job."
Heine climbed into his own pod, a confident smirk on his face, taking the helmet left there the prior day and locking it into place. "Okay. Remind me of the score then? How many of these have you won?" Without waiting for an answer the Coordinator sealed the hatch, settling into the controls.
By the time Julia was in her pod and ready, the simulation was finished generating, dropping both of them into the battleground. "Well done," Heine called on an open frequency once they'd loaded in, forced to agree her choice gave her the edge. Instead of empty space they'd loaded into the aftermath of the second battle of Jachin Due, wreckage from countless GINNs, Alliance mobile suits, and even a few Orb units and GuAIZ drifted without direction, pushed by whatever force had destroyed them. Most even had power left in the systems, lighting up his HUD with countless false threats.
Hundreds of meters away from the Freedom, Julia finished her modifications to the Justice, the phase shift flickering as it restarted, turning the unit from red to cable-flame yellow, with the pale blue of the skies on wingtips and V-fins. "Ready for your first loss, Heine?" she asked, detaching the Fatum backpack, devoting little time to her own unit as she focused on it, guiding the pack on a circuitous route along the edges of the wreckage.
A few taps of the thrusters let the Justice slowly drift amongst the ruin of the battlefield as she slowly brought the power generation of the reactor down, eighty percent, to fifty, and finally twenty. Low enough to barely register on most sensors, with just enough power generation to keep the Phase Shift going as long as she didn't use power elsewhere.
Through the wrecks and discarded units, Julia caught glimpses of the Freedom, thrusters glowing as it searched the battlefield. "Having trouble, Heine? It's only a little wreckage," Julia teased, provoking him. He'd won every battle they'd had because he was just better. Which meant she had to get him off balance, worried, too focused on finding her to think straight if she wanted to win.
"What wreckage?" Heine decided, the plasma cannons deploying over his unit's shoulders, the railguns unfolding from the skirt armor. "You should know the issue with concealment is it doesn't last." On the heels of his taunt, the Freedom let loose with its firepower, full burst mode enabled, ruined hulks of suits vaporized by plasma or skewered by railgun fire in the instant before they detonated.
A huff escaped Julia, annoyance at Heine ruining her plan, and another, this time over an open line, drawing a chuckle from her opponent. Fine then. If he didn't want to play it slow, she wouldn't. Slaving the Fatum's control to her own system, Julia brought it about, streaking in towards the Freedom at an angle. A squeeze of her triggers fired the machine guns on the backpack, fixed mounts and turrets.
The first rounds sparked harmlessly off the white and blue Phase Shift armor, drawing Heine's attention, and then losing it as he decided the kinetic munitions were a feint. Raising her beam rifle, Julia sighted in on her target, her free gauntlet grabbing the first one, and then the other beam boomerang to set them adrift nearby. The moment the Freedom turned back towards the Fatum, raising its own beam rifle, she fired, a beam of green plasma piercing the darkness of the area and deflecting harmlessly against the Freedom's laminated shield as he swung back towards her.
Bringing her reactor back up to forty percent, and tasking a program with bringing it up to full over time, Julia sent the Fatum into a roll, drawing attention towards it as it got within optimum range. Sparks highlighted where the CIWS of the Freedom struck. Two more beams from the Justice deflected harmlessly off an interposed shield, and the Freedom's weapons slid back into place, wings switching to mobility as Heine charged forward, eager to finish the fight.
Taking a few deep worried breaths to stay calm, Julia discarded her own shield, drawing a beam saber with that hand and igniting it, tapping the thrust to slide to the side, putting a GINN missing one arm and the cyclopean helmet between her and the Freedom. Two more shots from her rifle were only vaguely on target, fired only to keep the laminate shield facing her, while the Fatum triggered its own beam cannons, rapid, on target, and forcing the Freedom to tumble and veer to avoid them, making his own shots harder to land.
Another tap on the thrusters, now supplied with a full eighty percent power, jerked the Justice back, a shot from the Freedom's beam cannon detonating the GINN before she was fully clear, scorching the Phase Shift armor. A glance to one side showed the damage as minor, inconsequential. More worrying, somehow during his tumble, Heine had gotten a shot off at the Fatum, punching into one wing and causing a secondary detonation.
Panic shot through Julia, tensing her fingers and forcing a shot before she was ready, a wide miss. The Fatum still responded to command though, damaged but functional, at least in vacuum where lift didn't matter.
Before Julia could fully refocus, the Freedom reached her, a beam saber out in a flash and cutting through her rifle, Heine abusing his knowledge to target the weapon she was better with. A few frantic cuts and parries kept her in the game, while her thrusters fired again for distance Heine wouldn't give her. A button triggered both the boomerangs, bringing them to life, active and propelling at the Freedom, each cutting deep, detonating one plasma cannon and the wing with it, and destroying a railgun on one hip.
Precious seconds Julia didn't have redirected the boomerangs for another pass, only the arrival of the Fatum, saved her primary camera, the backpack ramming the Freedom to knock the beam saber awry, the weapon still leaving a trail of slag along the side of her helm.
Bringing her empty gauntlet up, Julia grabbed for the Freedom's saber, losing the gauntlet and sounding alarms in her cockpit, but opening Heine up to a counter that pierced the main camera, robbing him of most sensors.
Proper connections damaged, the Justice flung its remaining arm out, catching hold of the wounded Fatum, using the combined thrust for distance, firing the one remaining turret-mounted beam cannon and destroying half the Freedom's remaining wing before Heine could regain his momentum.
A few breaths and the accompanying motions sent the boomerangs in again, for what would be their last pass, their thrust then spent until they could be retrieved. One was blocked by the Freedom's saber and then cut apart, the other taking one leg at the knee before its thrusters petered out, sending it spinning into the distance.
As the Freedom raised its rifle Julia held the trigger down for her only serious ranged weapon, three bursts of green plasma hammering into the Freedom as it turned to shield the rifle, too many thrusters destroyed to evade. One blast finished the second wing, another scorching away a skirt arm, the last puncturing the lower torso, leaving the legs barely attached.
As the Freedom turned back, firing a single shot Julia couldn't avoid she thumbed the comms, offering a final opinion. "Next time."
CE 71 December, Februarius Two
When the heavy automatic door swung shut behind Dr. Casimir Nemec, it cut off the background of groans and whimpers overlaid with the frantic beeping, whirring, or pumping of the tools to keep the wounded alive. Instead almost silence ruled, disturbed only by the faint sound of the ventilation running, ever present in the PLANT. The last section was where the heavily wounded were kept, those with recovery times measured in months or years, many of them with injuries barely beginning to heal. The worst burn victims, those with limited exposure to hard vacuum, the ones who lost limbs to beam weapons or were too close to the radiation from GENESIS, all gathered in one collection of pain and need.
Here though, was where the true worst cases went. The ones who took direct hits from warship guns, or lost most of their skin to plasma burns, or spent long minutes airless after being disabled early, left to gasp away the air in their pilot suits before the battle drew near its end. This was the Februarius Medical Experimental Treatment Facility, where the dead went to realize it.
The doctor's walk took him slowly past the endless empty rooms, the beds made, the supply cabinets full, and no patients to be found. In the days immediately after the war, every bed had been full, every patient beyond hope and still being treated, every doctor awash in more human pain than could ever be cured.
Now though, it was a grave, the patients all dead but one, and the doctors transferred, all save him.
Dr. Casmir made his way at last through what was once a security checkpoint, scanner present, but without power, and a single guard who waved him through without a glance. Once, this had been where the important were kept, potentially important prisoners of war, aces who could not be placed at risk and the like. Now, a single one remained.
A heavy, world-weary sigh broke the silence as the doctor glanced at the data tablet he kept at hand. If only one success was to be had, at least it was the best and brightest. Finally, he turned into a room, only two doors down from the end of the hall, the screen to the right of the door reading R.C. above a slow heart rate.
Within, the patient was centered in a white bed wrapped from head to toe in bandages, only a few stray wisps of blonde hair escaping, ratty with time and poor hygiene. A gap in the bandages showed closed eyes, even the lids marked with dark red radiation burns, while another allowed a breathing tube through.
As the heart monitors counted time away in slow beeps, the doctor tended to the machines that dominated the room, each crucial, supplying air to the breathing tube, or nutrients intravenously. With some curiosity, Dr. Casimir noticed a fresh uniform hanging by the entrance to the room's bathroom. A white coat, with black collar and shoulders and gold ostentation, with the rest of the uniform to match.
"Someone's watching the reports on you," Dr. Casimir voiced to the room, his patient unconscious and silent. "I came as soon as we got the last round of tests, and they've already delivered your uniform."
Moving to one of the tubes that stretched from patient to a holder at the bedside, Dr. Casimir slowly prepared a syringe of medicine, needleless, with a tip that secured to the end of already run tubes. "This will burn going in. Not that you care. You've been out since you got brought here. Must be nice getting to sleep for months with no cares. You might even regret it when we get you back.".
After depressing the plunger, letting the medicine find its way to the body, Dr. Casmir turned away, bustling about preparing a flush for the tube. A groan, hoarse with disuse and muffled by a breathing tube made him turn back, to see his patient with one eye open, clouded with pain and hazy blue. As if the magic was broken by seeing his patient conscious every monitor went crazy, blaring alarms and ringing warnings as he ducked back towards the bed, deft hands finding another prepared syringe in a compartment in the bedside and injecting it, the monitors slowly calming as the eye started to blink… slower each time… drifting away.
"Get some sleep. You've got a long recovery ahead of you, but you'll make a full one, Rau Le Creuset."