Now everyone…
The hour is at finally at hand; after eight long years of preparation, the 14th Gundam Fight is about to begin! There are only a few more minutes left in the official lockout, after which Neo Japan will be the final colony nation to take its place in orbit. When I give the signal, all the Gundams from across the solar system will begin their descent to their home nations, beam ropes will ignite, and I finally get to say my favorite line again!...
Ahem… But I may be getting ahead of myself a bit. A lone capsule, quite distinct amidst the vibrant collection currently overlooking the Earth, sits almost invisible amongst the stars. This is the capsule of one of the independent entries to the Gundam Fight, and its occupant will soon come to understand the unique position he finds himself in.
Also…
There appears to be a message of utmost importance for Domon Kasshu in the last minutes before he boards the shuttle that will take him to Earth, where he will wait for his Gundam to land. What new information does this message contain, why is it so late in coming, and what does it have to do with the Jack-in-Diamond, George de Sand?
Let's get things started!
Gundam Fight, all-
Ah… Sorry about that, just got a little excited.
Look, I know it's a little un-professional, but I can't help myself! This is the moment I've been waiting for eight long years to-
Hm? Oh, okay, I guess a few more minutes won't hurt. What? What is she pointing at? I have a smudge around my eyepatch? Alright, alright, bring makeup over…
"Lucky I've got all of you, huh Twenty-Three?" Derek Lorenz reclined in the spartan crew quarters of Tau Gundam's drop pod, accompanied by Drone 23. One half-bed, half-straightjacket contraption was the only real amenity of comfort the pod provided, as it was not intended for an extended stay. After spending six hours strapped in, expecting at any moment to be decelerated to re-entry velocity, the young man was now quite stir-crazy.
"Luck was not involved. We assist your efforts-" The drone was nestled into a recharge socket in another part of the capsule, and was speaking through a small virtual screen floating above Derek's reclined position. This vidscreen projection apparently had a microphone.
"Oh for pity's sake, can you please study figures of speech in your spare time so I don't need to write things in crayon for you?"
"Apologies, Master Lorenz."
"And do a vocabulary substitution on that last bit if you're absolutely incapable of remembering the alias we devised. Actually, just use 'Master' until Phalanx gets the substitution done so you don't slip up in front of someone important. Don't know how you managed to not blurt it out when the Coalition apes were rifling through our systems…"
"Affirmative Master-…" Twenty-Three very nearly continued into what had become a habit, yet another sign that the semi-organic cognitive unit was capable of astonishing levels of personality emulation.
"Good. Well, no, not good, but at least it's not going to be a problem." He wriggled in place, leg straps binding on his fluorescent orange survival suit. Lights throughout the cabin played off the silver strips of reflective tape, scattering pinpricks of greens and blues across the sterile gray walls. The sickly glow did little for the sole human occupant's fair complexion, shadows curling under scars invisible in daylight. A Tragedy, with the audience of a single emotionless drone; each nip-and-tuck adding years to what would otherwise have been a perfectly trim and youthful set of facial features. Like a diorama, designed to be viewed from a set angle.
Derek's face twisted in impotent frustration as the white pleather beneath him creaked, but did not give way. The friction against the survival suit caught the shirt beneath, tugging it up and out of place. "God I hate this bed thing! It's solid as a rock and these straps keep floating around and hitting me in the face." He stretched back, arms above his head, the very most his leathery prison would allow for.
"We don't get to ride down in a cozy luxury shuttle. Oh no, we get to ride along with the cargo. No offense, Tau." On a nearby screen, he watched as a nearly unintelligible string of text scrolled across a readout of Tau Gundam. "I love their reasoning, too. Oh, 'We can't guarantee your safety if you come down in a foreign nation, blah blah blah, a shuttle may attract unwanted terrorist attention' Pfft. Goddamn cheapskates."
The stoic parrot-face of Twenty-Three floated over on the mounted vidscreen, swinging over on its own volition. "Deploying in the Gundam will give us an edge in determining our first opponent. In the time it takes our closest potential opponent to rendezvous with her Gundam, we will have a detailed tactical appraisal of the state of Gundam deployment."
"Yeah, I see what you mean. We've already seized the initiative, now we can either run for a cover save or roll for charge distance."
A moment's pause, followed by the now characteristic fluttering of the cyclopic optical sensor indicated that at the very least, the obscure reference was being processed. Motionlessly, the seagreen vidscreen responded, "If that is how you understand things, then I will not question your meaning."
"Hey, what can I say, I'm just brilliant like that."
"On the subject of preparations, I have been instructed to relay a message from Phalanx." The arm-mounted screen minimized the view of Twenty-Three, sliding the bird head and upper torso into a corner. Strings of data crawled across the newly cleared space, coalescing into a usable infographic.
"And? What's the big brain got to say?" A graphical readout of the drop pod's orbital parameters showed a pair of trajectories, retrograde to the rotation of the planet. The first landed on the shores of Iceland, while the second fluctuated anywhere between the southern coast of Greenland all the way to the Great Lakes of Canada and the United States.
The drone's voice modulated itself downward, just enough to reach a vague approximation of Phalanx's throaty baritone. "We would strongly recommend a surreptitious docking maneuver to remove the excess weight hidden in the armor panels. If the Coalition uses disposable drones to de-orbit us as planned, rather than relying on the pod's onboard thrusters, they may not have allocated proper fuel reserves. Our throttle and reaction control systems are locked until we enter the atmosphere, and if this is the case, our projected landing site will be somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean, rather than our target destination."
"If they can force us to waste our fuel to go from a geosynchronous orbit to a retrograde one, then I think I can waste as much of their fuel as I want."
"The issue remains. However, considering the time, the Solstice does not possess the velocity to rendezvous, and resolving the issue may be a moot point." As the drone concluded, its voice returning to normal, the orbital readout slid into the background, another chart materializing out of gossamer strings of data to take its place.
"So why do you sound like you've got a bone to pick with me?" Laid out on the screen was a line diagram, peeling away the layers of ceramic composite and titanium surrounding Tau Gundam, leaving only the skeletal innards and miles of cabling and tubes which made up the Gundam's hydraulic circulatory system.
"There is another outstanding issue that I would recommend redressing at the earliest possible juncture. It concerns the hydraulic sys-"
"I've already been over this with you. We're sticking to volatiles. End of discussion." Defiantly continuing the discussion, a detailed and carefully prepared animation violently separated Tau's left arm from its body, droplets of light pouring from the mangled 'wound', spraying out and transforming into licks of digital flame.
"A breach in the hydraulic system would be catastrophic in the presence of beam weaponry. Standard procedure is to use inert compounds-"
"-which won't work in case of an emergency." Derek sat up straight, flicking away a wayward security strap as it curiously probed at his face. "I'm not suggesting Tau's unstable, we've proved that time and time again with the stress testing. But the Mars incident can't be overlooked. I don't expect another failure like that, but considering the alternative I'd like to have a failsafe just in case." He reached forward for the vidscreen, and the mechanical arm dutifully repositioned itself close enough. With a flick of the wrist the presentation was pushed aside, and he brought up the Legion's most recent network diagnostics. Musing over the artificial neurons linking each drone into the collective, he probed at the largest individual node, labelled '000'. It currently shared only one link to the collective. He carried on.
"Tau can override external shutdown commands if he really wants to, that's just how he's designed. If someone, somehow, breaks our security and tampers with our relay networks, Tau can simply ignore the commands that might jeopardize the mission. Worst-case-scenario, sending a shutdown, or God forbid a self-destruct order, might send the wrong message, and Tau would just carry on doing whatever his corrupted brain tells it to do. He can't override having his blood set on fire."
"Surely such measures are unnecessary? We have proven our integrity after rigorous simulations."
Derek pushed the screen aside, the arm folding itself back into its storage bay in the pod wall. "We will have eyes on us at all times, as you know full well. We got lucky on Mars, with minimal media coverage the whole thing was covered up easily enough. Three men can keep a secret if two of them are dead, and applying that concept to a single city wasn't that hard." Hard on the conscience, sure, but logistically fairly simple. Just a generous application of kinetic kill vehicles.
He raked his hands through his hair, his breath visible as he slowly exhaled. "Imagine Langsdorp on a continental scale. A helium refinery we can erase, cover up as the dangers of doing business, but anything bigger than that is going to attract serious attention. Nothing we have, not even the Odin batteries, would make a difference. A full-on runaway nightmare scenario. An end-of-the-world kind of thing. You can forgive me for not trusting the simulations with my life." His back itched, in that annoying place as always, just below the right shoulder. Of all the things I miss, it's not being able to scratch that spot anymore, even though I can just about reach it.
Only the gentle hum of circulation fans and the scratch of the few analog hard disks in the cabin broke the uneasy silence. Derek closed his eyes, taking in the small comfort of not being totally alone with his thoughts. The subtle syncopated ticking of the drives was enough of a rhythm to follow.
"Now, with all that grim business out of the way, I think it's time for my in-flight meal." The moment past, he twisted in his seat, reaching under the cot that more belonged in an insane asylum than a shuttle. Now that I think about it, where did I source this from, again? Could have been an asylum. I'll have to check the ledgers. After a moment's fumbling, the sound of ripping velcro heralded a plastic container from below, which Derek eagerly cracked open. The unsealing released a spray of small droplets, tinged with pale yellow.
"Master, I detect an unknown organic compound in the crew compartment."
"Relax, it's kosher. No, I'm kidding, it's not kosher, this is most definitely pig."
The vidscreen arm again detached itself from the wall, parrot-beak displayed prominently. The mono-eye was already twitching. "I beg your pardon?"
"This delicious unknown organic compound is a little something I like to call Steakon." Derek extracted a decidedly unhealthy-looking sandwich, a few token bits of leafy green protruding limply from in between multiple layers of meat. "Mmm, layers of thick-cut bacon all deep-fried in a solid slab, crispy on the outside and just a little bit tender on the inside, all warm and juicy… Mmm, Steakon."
"On closer inspection, this food item is merely an entire package worth of pre-sliced bacon, not even separated, between a pair of teleras."
"And fried. Most important part. Who wants raw bacon? Well, I do if it's going to be cooked, but just raw bacon? That's not even doing it justice."
"The estimated caloric content of that… food item… is estimated, from my perspective-" A slight crunch and squish released dozens of greasy droplets into the air. Circulation fans above began to thrum harder, drawing the endlessly recycled air through the inevitable course just that much faster.
"Can't hear you over the sound of how GLORIOUSLY DELICIOUS this is!"
The drone conceded, diverting its attention away from its master's clearly self-destructive tendencies.
Slipping the bonds of the Coalition's communications firewall, it parsed countless transmissions between ships in orbit, military communiques, and satellites loudly broadcasting their position to the dozens of house-sized missiles full of men and machine hurtling backwards toward them, in desperate attempts to avoid being shattered into Kessler's nightmares.
"Detecting new Gundam Fight registry data, beamed tightband between nearby Coalition vessels. Attempting to intercept…"
"Oh good," Derek replied, in between bites, "dinner and a show." The empty control console flickered to life, multiple screens flashing with encrypted conversations, telemetry data, all of it wholly unintelligible to human eyes. Slowly, patterns emerged, curated by the guiding hand of the ambulatory supercomputer a few meters above.
"Complete. Results of lockout preparations indicate that a significant number of competitors have been disqualified."
"Significant? Like, how significant are we talking here? Two or three? More?"
Twenty-Three shook its head as best it was able, blurring and pixellating in the vidscreen, the camera focused on it clearly not designed for tracking movement. "Current tally of disqualified competitors is seven."
"Seven? No shit… Well this makes things interesting. How many of our fellow vultures survived?"
"If by 'vultures' you are referring to independent entries, it appears as though we are the only entry remaining."
Derek's eyes were on the large console screens, as images collated from public broadcasts across the system. News outlets, bloggers, and crackpot conspiracy theorists on every civilized rock from here to Jupiter were abuzz with the same story.
"As curious as that is, I'm not worried about lame ducks missing their shot at glory right now. Run them by me in a minute, I want your take on this shit." Emblazoned on all sides by alarmist headlines, the Arc de Triomphe was engulfed by a roiling cloud of black smoke and frozen starbursts of emergency vehicle lights.
It's been four years. My, how things have changed. My writing is going to sound a little different, hopefully for the better, and you can probably tell what's new and what has been sitting in a folder for nearly half a decade. Some things are going away for good, namely the song lyrics every single chapter, and author notes, starting now.