Okay, it's 2:30 in the morning and I just finished Chapter 10. I so completely cannot sleep with that Kodak moment in my head. (Heavy sarcasm. You'll figure it out as soon as you read the end of that chapter.) I wrote an entire chapter in a day. That's a new recor— *collapses at keyboard.*

AC 208: The Search for Truth (Part IX)

"The Death of Optimism"

::Oh, why don't you talk? It'll make things a whole lot better for both of us.::

::Perhaps make me feel better. You know just as well what I mean by the words that haven't been spoken. You know what I think of you.::

::I do. Don't you think I'm jealous of you, that I have always been jealous?::

::Of course I know. That doesn't mean you have to be childish.::

::Who said I was being childish? I got back at you, didn't I?::

::You haven't learned a thing.::

~~@[~*,~]@~~

His knuckles were white as he clutched at whatever it was in his hand. He gritted his teeth against the pain that his nerves should have been feeling, but instead it was only his mind in anguish. He couldn't move, paralyzed with recollection and time distortion. Which was the past and which was the future? What was real, all of it? How could it have been? How could he have forgotten that? Who were all these people who'd— no, he'd paid for that arm! He remembered setting down the money for it and staring up at the surgeon and—

"No!" he screamed the first word able to escape his lips from between sharp, panicked, frightened breaths. He clutched at his head, trying to summon out the demons. There were faces, wicked faces and gentile faces and angry faces and frightened faces among the swirls of color and backdrops and underlying thought.

He didn't know how long that it was before he finally blacked out. He only knew it was welcomed.

~~@[~*,~]@~~

"Sir . . .?"

"Yes, Miss Catelonia?" Beliv turned from his overly dramatic captain's staring-into-the-distance pose and raised a dark bushy eyebrow. He seemed more and more distracted these days, easier to anger, harder to predict. She wasn't one to judge, but it seemed as if he was going mad.

She quickly saluted (just in case). "Sir, there reports that the children have been returned to their parents. I thought I should tell you personally when it was confirmed."

He nodded. "Yes, I know, thank you. It was inevitable, I suppose. No one who fights so hard goes unrewarded. Tell me, Catelonia, are we fighting hard?"

She paused. There they were, those vague words and faint noises of displeasure. "I— I believe so, Sir," she answered cautiously, trying to sound sure. God, don't tell me we're . . . losing?

He motioned her toward the window, silently ordering her to stand beside him. His heavy brow furrowed as he looked back out into space, and she wanted nothing more than to get away. "When I was young, my father told me that stars were angels watching over us so that we could sleep without fear of evil. But those stars, though they look so perfect, have more power over us than we want to believe. We make them into our protectors, our guardians, but I've found no protection among these stars. The only thing I've found is hellfire." He spat in disgust, narrowly missing a nearby officer, who recoiled, unnoticed.

"I knew Treize since I was a teen, though never as well as some. He had a group of politician's kids. Most were younger than I was, and he spent all his spare time with them. Once I heard about Mariemaia I realized he was trying to replace her. That kid we captured who came here spouting love poems to Miss Khushrenada was one, Cam Nolon. I wonder what lies he told her. No doubt no one would ever tell her the truth, the way she'd explode." He chuckled.

Dorothy held her tongue. She'd known Cam. Even as young as he'd been, their personalities were so similar in some ways and so contrasting in others that they'd fought almost like siblings. Cam had loved Treize, probably because his own parents couldn't have cared less about him. Of course, he'd known things, but her uncle had died without leaving one memoir, one scrap of information about anything except in those kids' memories. Beliv had killed several of them, as if to rid the world of Trieze's true self and rebuild the memory in his own image. The war had been declared as Treize's in the first place, had it not? It was the one part of it that angered her. She'd finally gotten rid of everything that reminded her of him, everything that made her long for violence, death and destruction. Erik had brought it back like a branding iron to her flesh, hot and burning and so incredibly unwanted.

Not only that, but she knew war was something her uncle wouldn't have wanted. What she had mistaken for obsession was only appreciation of something that he could not have changed. He saw beauty where she only saw ruthless pleasure.

"Sir, if I may ask . . .?" She hesitated. There was nothing like current events to break one's meditation.

"Ask what?" he replied, turning to her, coal-black eyes hard and a little angry. "Well?"

"What is our next move? The Phantom Runners have us trapped out here in the Saturn Territory, and with a force as large as theirs I don't think we can get around their blockade." She grimaced, realizing she'd criticized him and the Colony Alliance's military.

Instead, she saw the corner of his beard twitch in a satisfied smirk. "I'm glad someone finally asked. Yes, I've had a plan in mind for quite some time now, and no I'm not going to challenge our entire border. We don't have enough resources for that I realize, so I'm going to end this before we lose too much ground. I hadn't expected there to be a large united force against us— Thank the Holyness that Earth and L1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 are such bad co-workers or I'd have been sunk!"

"So what is your plan?" she asked him, straightening unconsciously. "Do I have new orders, Sir?"

"Indeed you do, but be patient Colonel. Let me tell you what I plan to do first."

She nodded curtly. "I'm listening, Sir."

"Very well then, follow me." Beliv set off at a brisk pace toward his Admiral's chair, raised the console and brought up a war map. Several of the crew looked up eagerly, but then feigned distraction as Dorothy shot them a berating glare.

She eagerly settled herself at his shoulder, looking over the dimensional map. She practically knew it by heart anyway, but the detail on Erik's was plainly remarkable. It was updated once an hour with reports from all over the Alliance's territory.

"I'm rapidly losing support out here in the colonies because our soldiers are sending the citizens into starvation and poverty, so our last big push will be a thrust to the heart, Colonel. Our extensions of territory that have survived the Phantom Runner's retaliations have dwindled, all but one. I've been transferring troops and equipment to aid us when we attack Earth. All of our forces will attack the planet with the intent to destroy it utterly. Once the planet is gone, the human race can rid itself of the eyesore and move on to the stars. Our true destiny is here, Miss Catelonia, and we cannot deny the calling any longer! We are going to aid ourselves by destroying a miserable place that was our first attempt at home." He raised a clenched fist and looked at her out of the corner of his beady, twinkling eye.

That sounded a lot like the Dekim Barton she remembered, the Dekim Treize had so hated. If Erik was really trying to live up to the great Treize, why was he waging war on Earth itself? Dorothy didn't buy into that "light of destiny" crap that a lot of spacers did. She'd always thought Earth was just fine where it was. For what was perhaps the first time, she was having doubts about where this war was leading.

She was an adult now, and had been for many years. She'd learned to see a future beyond war, since she had lived both able to think and observe and feel the aftereffects. She'd had a difficult time adjusting, and had finally turned back to war, hoping for something that might turn her life back to the fun, pleasurable experience it had been during her time ten years ago as a teen. So far, it hadn't been nearly as good as she'd remembered, or expected.

"How's Inimicus coming along?" Beliv asked, knocking away her contemplative mood. "Do you like her?"

"She's . . . a great Gundam," Dorothy replied uneasily. Criticizing their new acquisition probably wasn't the wisest move. "It's just— I—"

"Continue," he said steepling his fingers in front of him, his voice smooth, betraying none of his underlying anger. "There's no need to hide things from your superior officer."

Especially if you think I might deserve a little "punishment," she thought, trying hard to suppress a shiver. To tell the absolute truth, she was a bit scared of him sometimes. "I don't trust her," she stated flatly. "She doesn't talk, she hints but won't reveal, and I know there's more intelligence under there than she's showing. She's hiding something, and that she came to us still disturbs me. Aside from that, she's a wonderful fighter, don't get me wrong. There's just something about it that disturbs me."

"I too have pondered that," he assured her. "Like many people I think she's out for something herself, perhaps revenge on one of the other gundams? I wouldn't put it past the damn things to have their own internal intrigues. Ah, well, I'm sure you two will have a lot of time to bond on your little trip." He dismissed the issue with the wave of one hand.

"Sir?" "Trip?" He's sending me somewhere? So she wasn't valued anymore . . . he'd caught on to her misgivings . . .

"I have a very special mission for you two," the Admiral said, looking at her. "I want you to go secure Earth before I dedicate my forces to it."

"That's an awfully big job, sir." Or maybe he hadn't detected them. It was still best to play dumb. "Who else are you sending?"

"Oh, not a very big job, if you think about it. There is only one thing that could possibly give Earth a reason to resist strongly. It started with Ms. Darlian when she knew the planet was in trouble, and now her brother tried to take it over. He probably senses that his days are numbered, but I think you can cut that number down to zero.

"I want you to penetrate the Sanc Kingdom. I want you to see that they never get anything as large as messaging truck out of there in one piece. Kill King Peacecraft if you have to, though bring his wife to me if possible. I heard she's due for a child soon. You know the kingdom well, I believe, so I've every confidence you can handle the job. Besides, isn't one person so much more inconspicuous than even two?"

"Yes, Sir," she replied. Oooh, yay, another search, destroy and kidnap job. Just what I wanted, she thought, the mental words so laden with sarcasm she was surprised her head didn't sag. But then, she thought about what he'd said. "The Sanc Kingdom has an army, sir?"

"Indeed. They've been mustering forces for some time now. At least Milliardo appears to have been smarter than either his father or his sister in that respect." Beliv toggled the map and adjusted the setting to Earth, middle European continent. The Sanc Kindom was small, barely larger than territories the size of Luxembourg, almost like the city-state Vatican, really. "I trust you'll like setting the place a-torch," he said with a chuckle.

"I will," she assured him, picturing rows of Earthian mobile suits aflame. "When do you want me deployed?"

"As soon as you can get your equipment together, if possible Colonel."

"I'll be gone by the morning-cycle."

~~@[~*,~]@~~

"I— I just found him on the floor with a tube in his hand! I don't know what he took, but he's been moaning ever since I found him. I thought he was dead until he woke up, because I found this note," The frantic lab technician handed Heero a scrap of composition book paper, on which was written a sketchy outline of what Vincent had done to himself.

If it's gone wrong . . . destroy the beaker. If not, I don't know how I'll be feeling. Call Heero and tell him to come down here, and then tell him that I've found a substance that works on our memory problems. I took about a third of what I made. It might have been too much, as there's no judging how much I needed to take or what side effects it'll have. I'll let him make his own judgements.

"Is he still sane?" Heero asked the technician, fearing the worst. "Is he hurt in any way?"

"He's just having a hard time coping," the man assured him. As soon as I figured out what he'd done I flushed out his system. None of our medical scans showed a thing abnormal, well, except . . ."

"What?"

"His brain activity's way higher than normal. He's processing information nearly ten times as fast as the rest of us. If that capacity keeps up for too long it'll drain his energy reserves. It might kill him."

"We'll watch him for a few days, then. Where is he? Is he speaking?" Heero looked around the reception area, wishing the walls were anything but white. It made it seem clean, but so many invisibly dirty things could happen in labs.

"A little, brokenly. We can go check on him now, if you'd like. He's not off-limits or dangerous or anything."

"Please." Heero followed through a maze of halls to a corridor around back. There were offices and bedrooms behind, all with names in the slats. They had let Vincent in his own room, so he obviously wasn't that bad.

The tech knocked quietly on the door with the back of his fist. "He's been quite jumpy," he explained. "Vince, Mr. Yuy's here to see you."

The door swung open suddenly, and there he was at the door. He was trembling, enormously tense, but he seemed all right. His shoulder-length black hair was disheveled, hastily tied back, and his wiry body only added to the look of starvation and self-destruction which was made complete by tired, weary hazel eyes. "Thanks, Carter. I think I should speak him alone, if that's all right."

"I'll be back in half an hour," Carter promised. "Mr. Yuy, it was nice meeting you."

"Likewise," Heero replied, closing the door. "How're you doing, Vincent?"

The young man breathed a huge sigh and collapsed onto his bed, reaching for his hot-pack. "My head hurts, and I'm a little traumatized, but not bad for the long run. It worked Heero, but, God, I don't know if I'd recommend it. Whoev'r said ignorance was bliss was definitely right."

"What did you . . .?" Heero clasped his hands and sat down in the nearby desk chair. He was curious. Vincent had never really admitted to having lost memories, but from the broken stories he'd told it fit.

He shuddered. "Things I would have rather not. But . . . that's beside the point, and I don't really feel like telling you— no offense or anything it's just kind of private to me. Some of it may be similar to what you would remember, but I won't bet on it. It's only vaguely similar. I think why I have this headache is that I took a little too much, but it's a pretty inert substance so it cleared out with no trouble. I'm fine."

"That technician Carter told me when he found you, you couldn't have even formed a sentence." He had doubts, but none too serious. That could have been caused by a number of things, though.

"I was just so overwhelmed . . . it's like being hit with a sledgehammer between the legs, only it's all mental. So many broken connections suddenly make sense, and you realized that this world is so bleak and cruel and heartless . . . I didn't want it to be real." Vincent moaned a little and pressed his hot pack harder against his temple. "It's painful to remember those things, and I'm not so sure I wanted to know, now that I think about it. I won't stop you— there's no harm bodily, but I'd hate to think how your little daughter would handle it."

"Me, I might suffer like you," Heero said sadly. He considered himself more at stake. "But Akiko only knows the suffering Beliv put her through. All she has to remember all the happier days with her family, her friends. There are always bad things, but I'm not afraid that she'll lose anything. I'll of course tell her what happened to you. You've sure got guts, man."

Vincent laughed bitterly. "It's not like I really had much to lose."

"What do you mean? Seems like you've got a happy attitude for life, or have I missed something vital?" Now that was odd . . . he'd always seemed fairly happy, intelligent, even a ladies' man.

Vincent shook his head. "It just feels like I've outlived my usefulness. Une's stuck me on backwater jobs since I translated all Beliv's records. I still have access to them, thankfully, which is how I was able to figure out how to solve our little memory problem." Vincent explained in great detail how he'd come across Beliv's records on "mind-expanding" gasses, and how he'd used them to disrupt the neurons connecting certain memories. "He could pick and choose, so to speak, what things he wanted to be gone. It must have taken a tremendous amount of work, but it really is an admirable job."

"I'm sure," Heero replied, feeling amazed. "I didn't even know you could do things so precisely."

He laughed shortly. "Anything's possible, in my experience. I mean, look at my arm. You'd never be able to tell that it was a prosthetic if I hadn't told you. But this arm is what may have won the war against the Colony Alliance."

Heero decided to let him keep believing that. In fact, the info had been worth very little and had said nothing of Beliv's plans (if he even had a set course). The Phantom Runners were the only ones left with a chance and a prayer. " . . . Indeed."

"I think I've said everything I need to Here," Vincent said, closing his eyes. "I've already signed over the stuff to you, so I'll let you decide what to do with it. But right now I need to rest . . . and later I'll have a new boring assignment from the Lady. God help me . . ."

"I'll make sure and put in the good word for you," Heero sympathized. "Maybe she'll give you some time off."

He laughed, but this time there was less bitterness in his voice. "Fat chance. I'll just be more valuable, more durable to her! How I just wish I could fly again!"

Heero smiled. "I'll talk to her about it."

"That would be much appreciated."

~~@[~*,~]@~~

"You ready to do this?" she asked the gundam.

::That is an unnecessary question,:: the gundam replied with a suspiciously snickery undertone. ::I will do the job adequately, as ordered.::

Dorothy shrugged. "I guess I'm just nervous. I wish you'd just tell me a little more. I've got a lot of curiosities about where you came from."

::I said none of that matters,:: Inimicus said, her mental "voice" suddenly harsh. ::Why do you care where I came from, what my intentions are?::

And what had summoned up that accusation? She was a bad liar. "Because I think you're being conspiratorial. What reason would I have had to accuse you of bad intentions, except that you tried to smack them down before I even thought of it. Tell me who you are."

::I don't have to.::

Dorothy growled and slammed the control panel with her fist. She couldn't make the thing tell her— only one disadvantage of having intelligent gundams— and Inimicus would probably abandon their mission as soon as her pilot was off.

Earth hovered in her view, big and blue and white and green. She located the European continent and started her descent. She'd come too far to go back now.

~~@[~*,~]@~~

"Noin, I think it's time." Quatre stepped into the room at her beckoning, trying to keep his head low. "I don't think it'll be safe in the castle much longer."

Noin patted her stomach— a nervous gesture that had become more prominent these days. "I suppose. I wouldn't want to get into unnecessary danger. Is it really that bad out there?"

"There's been no fighting, though Milliardo's had to stomp a few fires today. I'm just nervous about you staying any longer. People just get unhappy totally peaceful, is my theory. But anyway, though you've done nothing wrong you're Peacecraft royalty, so you're in danger." Quatre looked around. "Have you got everything?"

"Yes, though most of it's already been sent down. It's all by the door. I was hoping to stay here a little longer, but I trust your judgement." Noin grabbed his offered hand and struggled to her feet. "Thanks."

"No problem," Quatre said. Niceties like that came so easily for him. "I've got an escort waiting for us outside, so let's hurry."

Noin took all she could carry and let Quatre handle the big suitcase. "What about Milliardo?"

Quatre shrugged. "You know him. He wants to be there until the end."

"I worry he'll go down like his father," Noin replied uneasily.

"Trust me, I tried. He just won't move." Quatre grunted and tipped the suitcase up on its wheels. "We're going 'round back, just in case. The Manganacs have been keeping a close guard, so it's almost guaranteed safe. They don't do a half-assed job."

Noin noted mentally that Quatre would have never used the phrase "half-assed" before this war had started. The war had taken its toll on even the docile-minded. "I wouldn't contradict you even if I wanted to," she told him.

Milliardo was waiting under the canopy, and stepped forward to say goodbye to his wife. She leaned into his sideways hug, wishing he'd gotten around to holding her more of late. It had felt like— well it had been days at least. He stroked her hair possessively, and she knew he was more frightened than he was going to say. "Stay in the shelter, okay? I don't want anything to happen to you."

"You'll come, won't you? What are you still doing here? We should leave now, together."

"I still have business here, as you well know. I can't leave unfinished enterprises."

"Don't do anything foolish. I want you to live to see your firstborn." She closed her eyes, just wishing that the moment could be an instant frozen in time, just this way forever with no worries over the future.

"There will be others?" He paused, catching the slight drift in her sentence.

"Will there?"

A long moment stretched into that slowing of time that Noin had wished for, like a warm breeze blowing all their troubles off over a field of gently flowing grass toward blue mountains But just as time, like light and matter and every other dimension, is energy, it cannot be stopped, nor adjusted. Which is why the moment felt so short, after it had passed.

He kissed the top of her head gently. "You should go. It's getting late and fires will be lit tonight. I feel it."

Noin reluctantly let him go, but snatched his arms before he could walk away. "I love you," she told him, almost choking on the words. They, too, had been long in absence.

He smiled for the first time in a very long while, and stroked her cheek with one warm, assuring palm. "I know. That's what keeps me going."

~~@[~*,~]@~~

"Master Quatre!" Abdul came running, waving something.

"Excuse me, Noin. We've been busy here. You think you can find everything?" Quatre turned to her with an apologetic expression.

"I'll manage," she told him with a little chuckle.

Quatre left her to her own devices and tried to calm Abdul down. "Hey now, what's the matter?"

"Master Quatre," the man said breathlessly, "a new mobile suit has crashed not far from here. It appears to be nonfunctional, but we've never seen this model before. We think it might be a gundam."

"Let me see." Quatre was handed the photograph, a wide panel shot that happened to have been fortunate enough to catch a clear view of it. "It's Inimicus, one of Beliv's mobile suits," he said. "I recognize it from one of the combat photos a Specials officer took a few weeks ago. Someone's here for sabotage— if they didn't die in the crash. Where's Rashid?"

"In the control room," Abdul told him. "We have been watching it, but it looks like it's dead. It did make a really hard landing. It has its own steaming crater in the middle of that field— h-hey, Master Quatre!"

Quatre rushed off and almost missed the tail end of Abdul's comment. Even so, gundams tended to have cushy cockpits and there was a good chance the pilot had survived. Take Heero, for instance. He burst in to find the Control Center completely chaotic. Apparently the fighting had started. "Rashid!" he bellowed for the man several times before someone heard and went to go fetch him. "I want an update," he said loudly over the din as he found his target (or rather, his target found him).

"Abdul told you about that gundam, right? Good. There's been some fire at the border from Earth Sphere— apparently the surrounding countries have finally stopped trying to be nice— and some internal matters. There seems to be enough guard around the castle at this point in time, but I think it'll only get worse."

Abdul came crashing back into the room, tagged by a woman at a jog. "Lady—" he gasped.

"Une at your service," she finished, clicking her heels and saluting. "Can I help out with anything, Quatre?" Une lived close to the border. He found himself hoping her house was okay.

Quatre looked at Rashid. "You guys got everything here?"

"Yes, I think we'll be all right."

"Then, Lady, if you could please go find Noin. She needs some company right now, if you know what I mean. I have to go take care of that gundam. I've got a bad feeling about it."

Une nodded, knowing better than to ask questions at this point in time. "Is she okay?"

"So far, but she's due in a couple of days. I'm getting nervous about leaving her unguarded." Quatre pulled his gun out of its holster. "We've got unwelcome visitors somewhere around here."

"Was she really that close? I hadn't realized that."

"We tried to keep it internal. No use releasing that kind of information at a time like that. I'd better get going."

She clapped him on the shoulder. "I'll see you later."

Quatre double-checked his extra clips and turned off the safety. If Beliv had only sent one person they were going to be dangerous. The guard bid him a curious fare-thee-well and opened the gate and successively the second, third and fourth security doors. Quatre looked around, and out of the corner of his eye spotted motion where it shouldn't have been. His head turned toward it and he heard someone swear.

"Stop or I'll shoot," he shouted reflexively, bringing the nine-millimeter up in front of him. His intuition hadn't failed him.

The figure tensed, but seemed to be facing an internal struggle. After a moment, she put her hands up. "God, I give up. This is too damned wrong."

"Step out into the light," he commanded, his arm not wavering. "Do it."

"Calm down, man," she said, tossing a bag of explosives and a palm-comp out in front of her. "This whole mission has been screwed from the start, and personally I don't think the Sanc Kingdom needs any help falling to its knees."

"I have a mind to disbelieve you, Dorothy Catelonia." Quatre snatched the explosives and summoned two of his security officers.

Dorthy's eyes widened, focused behind him at the crater where she'd so gently touched down. "LOOK OUT!" she screamed, dove at him and sent them both rolling into the wall.

Something brilliantly green-white flashed overhead, and Quatre turned barely in time to see Inimicus speed overhead. The bloodred gundam turned at them and paused.

Dorothy growled. "Just what the hell do you think you are? Bitch, only think of yourself, huh? And just what the hell do you plan on going? You've got Nulles and Fortuna against them, and I'd daresay you know you're weaker than they are.

"Work for yourself? What do you have to gain? Oh, you 'don't have time for this.' I see. Tell Erik we both quit. I'm sure he'll love you for it!" She huffed and looked at Quatre. "Filthy scavenging vulture. I knew she wasn't being honest."

Quatre gritted his teeth, and remembered to put his gun back up. "Was there something I missed in there?"

"You couldn't hear her talking to us?" Dorothy watched as the gundam faded off into the sky.

" . . . no."

She shrugged. "That's probably a good thing. You know, I've had a bad feeling about Erik for a while now, and that gundam he forced onto me has been the biggest disaster of my career. He ordered me to come destroy the Sanc Kingdom before it gets in his way, but I've been thinking that one, it doesn't need any help and two, I'm not so sure it's worth the risk. You know me good enough, Winner. I'm not willing to risk my own ass for excitement."

Quatre gestured the two men that emerged from the lock to the bag of sabotage equipment and told them to search her. "That wasn't necessarily my experience with you," he told her.

"I'm getting old," she told him. "It's kind of worn off."

"I would hope so." The guards took custody of her and Quatre decided his trip to the castle could be postponed for a short time.

He perched himself on a sealed crate in the storage room they'd halfway converted into a prison cell, opposite from her. "You were telling me the truth back there?"

She looked at the floor, but then up at him. Her voice had no evidence of indecision. "I'm quitting. I'm quitting this whole damn life. I'm sick of being treated like a pawn, like someone who doesn't know what she's doing. Maybe I'm just getting senile, but I don't feel like watching the pain is worth it anymore. Erik . . . I think he's slowly going insane. He talks about destroying everyone and everything, and it makes me wonder if I've been wrong all this time. All I know is that I just want this to stop. Can't someone be allowed to start over?"

"I've been wondering that myself," Quatre said quietly. "But that's beside the point. How can I trust you between long-time impressions and modern associations?"

"I don't know," she said. "I can tell you all I know about Erik's plans, but I don't have much. He's going to try to destroy Earth, and he thinks the Sanc Kingdom fuels Earth's guard for some reason. I tried to be as distant from his politics as possible, but frankly he started to frighten me."

Quatre nodded to himself. "All right. Come with me. You're going to tell it all to Milliardo."

He'd expected her to cower, to shrink in fear of being admonished by her one-time commander, but instead she nodded stolidly. "If that's what I have to do."

Maybe I misjudged her.

~~@[~*,~]@~~

"Wufei, they're withdrawing!" Ben waved at him from across the bridge.

Wufei looked up from his battle-map. "What? How many of them?"

"All of them, and I mean withdrawing without surrender. They're just leaving!"

"That doesn't make any sense," said Wufei, joining the ex-Specials at the controls. "How far are they going?"

"Impossible to tell yet. They're sure turning tail, though. It looks almost like they're trying to accelerate to cruising speed." Cam took another look at the controls. "Hey, wait a second. They're withdrawing in every sector we have watchdogs in. This— this isn't right!"

"They're gathering their forces," Wufei told him, thinking hard. "I think he's trying for a final push. That's the only explanation I can think of."

"Now?" Ben looked puzzled. "Why would they want to do that now? Hey Dennis, c'mere!"

"I know," the boy said, coming up behind them. "You might want to order all fighters back, or they'll follow them all the way back to the main territory."

Ben nodded, reddening a little. He issued the order, than looked over the new data brought back. "That's weird, everyone's evacuated, even Beliv's implant politicians. What's going on here?"

"They're most likely gathering their resources for re-evaluation. We should take the opportune moment to do the same, if you want my opinion. Do we have an updated territory map I could see?"

"Over at my station," Wufei said. He led the boy over and brought the map up again. "Wow, they really do look centralized now, don't they?"

Dennis gasped. "Oh my God . . ."

"What, what is it?" Ben came running. He'd obviously been watching for the boy's reaction. Dennis gestured with one chocolate finger. "See how all these little extensions are dwindling and shifting Solar West? The really thick one hasn't faded or retreated a bit. He's maintaining that one."

"He's going to attack something in that direction?" Now if that wasn't a real obvious course of action . . .

"Yeah, and I know it's his real plan, too." Dennis bit his lip.

"How?" Ben asked impatiently. "Are you sure he's not playing with us?"

Dennis scowled at him. "Are you dense? Look at the layout! Can't you see? Who was the war declared against in the first place, Ben? Where, if you wanted to control the colonies, would you want to invade-slash-destroy? Where is the one place that everyone claims holds us back in terms of deep space exploration and who grounds us and limits us and is greedy and selfish, a hub for human activity, a place a lot of people consider a lost cause?"

"Damn," Wufei said quietly.

Ben shook his head. "I'm not good with politics or geography. I have no clue."

Dennis sighed, looked down and punched a button on the controls. On this version of the map, everything was a colored dot and color-coordinated territory ring to save space and view angles. The look on Ben's face when the detail display enlarged the hanging point in space was enough to say he understood and was as afraid as the rest of them.

Dennis reached into the holograph, cupping the marbled blue-and-white sphere gently in his hands, as though it was more fragile than a Christmas ornament; that it would shatter at his touch. The bridge seemed to darken as they gazed half-captivated and half too scared to disturb its seeming serenity. "Earth," Dennis whispered, his young face looking so very old. "Our mother, our womb. Seeing it from space really makes you remember how beautiful it is, how little we really matter until we're so large that we have the power to make it no more. I couldn't imagine a universe without Earth."

***************************************

I think I'm gonna pass out for real this time. Next chapter, some stuff happens. Inimicus gets into a big fight with Fortuna and Pennes Nulles (I smell reunion!) and the Sanc Kingdom finally crumbles. It's extremely dark, which is why I don't think I'm gonna get sleep unless the vampire hovering in the corner knocks me out. But I know he won't, 'cause he never does. Damn untrustworthy vampires . . .

Look for the next chapter of AC 208: The Search for Truth:(Part X): "Sunset."