Assorted notes.
1.I don't own Gundam and am not making money off this.
2.This is a censored version of a story finished in March of last year. Bumping it off ff.net was a blessing in disguise, since it forced me to go back to it and revise. There were a number of errors in there, so now I'm going back and repairing them.
3.There are no italics or boldfaces because Mandrake Linux sucks and won't do them for some reason. We're not willing to use Windows, so I just suffer.
/////////////////////////////////////
It was strange how quickly the world could change, Kishiria Zabi thought to herself. One day, Jion was holding strong, the only dark spot being the death of her brother Garma. The next, the fortress of Solomon had been taken by the Federation, Dozel was also dead, they had retreated to a place called A Bao A Qu---and her pants didn't fit around the waist anymore.
She'd expected that last thing, just as she'd expected the nausea. She'd engineered the whole event, after all. It was still hard keeping it a secret, but she didn't think the generals, most importantly her brother Giren, would take lightly to a pregnant woman being among them. They'd blame any decisions of hers that they didn't like on her hormones and send her packing. She couldn't allow that to happen. Although it did give a whole new meaning to the term "war pigs".
She finished dressing and went out to the dining room for a quick breakfast before getting back to work. She'd only slept a few hours the night before, being up late in video conferences. Kishiria's lady-in-waiting Maria had already set the table and put her pot of coffee there. Kishiria knew she wasn't supposed to be drinking coffee, but she had cut down to begin with and needed the boost desperately..
Kishiria sat at the table and waited for Maria to bring her her breakfast. Instead of just the toast she usually ate, there was a bowl of oatmeal, a fruit salad, and a hard-boiled egg there.
"That's not my usual," Kishiria observed.
Maria, a tall woman of Mexican origin, shook her head and her long braid swayed along her back. She was elegant in the customary Jion court dress of a long-sleeved gown with a floor-length flared skirt. "No, ma'am. But Consuelo and I have been very worried about you. You need to eat better."
Consuelo was Kishiria's housekeeper. She hadn't told either of them about her condition. "You're probably right. Being in the middle of a war puts personal maintenance as a low priority. I wouldn't want the soldiers to eat as badly as I do."
"We're concerned for more reasons than that, ma'am." Maria dropped into the chair by Kishiria and put a hand on her shoulder. Suddenly the clipped accent and court manners vanished. "M'hija, you're pregnant and it's taking too much out of you."
Kishiria dropped her spoon. "How did you know that?"
"I live in these same quarters as you. When two women share a bathroom, there's no secrets between them. Consuelo cleans the bathroom and she figured it out herself. I don't know what you're going to do about this, but unless you eat right, you're not going to have enough strength to see us through this war."
Kishiria laughed a little. "Why research New Types when we have Mexican household staff? You're right of course. You always are, damn you." She picked at her fruit salad. "I'll tell you the truth. This pregnancy was planned. I'll tell you why later, but you're totally correct, I need to eat better if I'm going to go through with it. Please don't tell anyone. This war only has about a week or two left in it, and I don't want to be at the centre of a rumour mill and criticism just yet."
Maria stood up. "Of course, ma'am. I'll go make you some yerba buena tea. My curandera grandmother swears by it."
"Curandera. That's a cure-woman, right?"
Maria nodded.
"It figures your grandmother would be a witch. Carry on."
Maria smiled and went back to the kitchen.
A few short days later, General Delaz's fleet had defected, half of Kishiria's own was destroyed, A Bao A Qu had fallen, and Kishiria's father Degin was dead at the hand of Giren, who Kishiria herself executed.
There was only one thing left to do, and that was to retreat back to Side 3. Kishiria re-boarded her Gwazine and settled on the bridge. She felt numb. In a short 24 hours, she had been propelled to the highest rank in her country under the worst possible conditions. The nightmare was far from over, and although it was not in her nature to retreat, the only way they would pull through was with her re-organizing from the safety of their inner boundaries.
As the engines began to hum, a familiar figure in a red normal suit floated up in front of the Gwazine's front window. Kishiria frowned. It was Colonel Char Aznable, the Red Comet, the officer closest to her in more ways than one. After failing to protect her brother Garma, Dozel had had Char dishonourably discharged from the military with every intention of finding a way to kill him later. Kishiria had rescued him by restoring him to her command, and bringing him along on a romantic forest holiday, the real purpose of which he was unaware.
Something wasn't right, though. Char had been hurt; there was blood on his face and a bazooka over her shoulder. Any pleasant recollection of their nights together in the forest cottage faded as the bazooka began to come off his shoulder. Kishiria's eyes widened in terror as she drew in a breath to scream.
//NOT MY BABY!//
Char paused with the bazooka in his hand and looked shocked. Then he recovered and flew away.
"What was that about?" the captain asked irreverently.
"I've no idea," Kishiria sighed. "Get us out of here."
"Aye aye, ma'am. Gladly."
Once her ship was away from the fallen fortress, Kishiria told her captain she was heading for her office. She strode away decisively and half-collapsed as soon as the doors closed behind her. Lower gravity kept her from hitting the deck. It'd been nearly four days since she'd eaten a real meal, slept for more than an hour here and there, or bathed. Perhaps it was time for a break.
So she went to her quarters instead. Maria was waiting to take Kishiria's helmet, snapping out the cloth lining and throwing it away before putting the helmet on its shelf near the door. Consuelo was standing outside the bathroom with an armful of towels and Kishiria's bathrobe.
Once inside the bathroom, Kishiria pulled off her uniform and kicked it into a corner, grimacing as she got a whiff of herself. Four days of nervous sweat was disgusting beyond words. It only got worse as she unpinned her hair. Normally it would have cascaded down her back, but this time it flopped slowly downwards, stiffened by its long imprisonment inside her helmet.
The shower was heaven. Kishiria didn't have the energy to luxuriate under the hot water, so she merely enjoyed scrubbing her scalp until it tingled and washing the filth off her skin. It took three tries to make her armpits smell clean, but at last the goal was accomplished and she emerged wrapped in her robe with her hair swathed in a towel.
A fat sandwich and a glass of orange juice were waiting for her. She sat down at her dining room table and reached for it, then looked up at her household staff and her secretary Margaret.
"I know you four didn't have to stay on board," she told them. "The Feddies would let three domestic servants off easily although I'm sure Margaret would have had a harder time. I want to thank you for staying with me. We have a hard road ahead of us, I'll warn you. We haven't lost the war, but we're hurt badly enough that we can't keep fighting either. I'm returning to Jion to try to salvage something from this mess Giren left us in. It won't be easy and the results might not be totally palatable, but I know that with you behind me, I can achieve much more than I could otherwise. Thank you."
Margaret looked at her co-workers. "So what are we waiting for? Three cheers for Her Majesty the Queen! Hip hip, hooray!"
Kishiria felt her face turn red and she waited until they were done to start eating. Roast chicken with lettuce and tomato on sourdough bread. Her favourite.
"Margaret," she began to her secretary after having tucked away some food, "I need you to send a message to General Delaz. Tell him that I beg him in the name of the Jion people to remember the loyalty he showed to my father and put aside the differences he has with me. I ask him to bring his forces back to Side 3. The people are disheartened and afraid and it would be wrong to start a civil war now. Instead, we should be regrouping in order to protect them. Sign it 'your obedient servant, Kishiria Zabi'."
Margaret read it back and Kishiria made a couple of changes before starting the next letter. "Send a letter of condolence to the Federation congress for the death of General Reville and all aboard his ship. Say that as a grieving daughter who lost her own father in the same villainous attack that I share their pain and hope they will take some comfort in the knowledge that the traitor and regicide Giren Zabi has been executed. Sign that one, 'Sincerely yours in sorrow'...um...pattern the signature after the way my father did his."
Margaret frowned a bit. "Kishiria, DG Queen of Jion?"
Kishiria wrinkled her nose. "Too much for this. Would 'Kishiria of Jion' do?"
"That'd be appropriate, ma'am. Humble, but don't let them forget who you are."
"Excellent. Send those out as quickly as you can. Now, I must get some sleep."
Maria insisted on drying her hair first, so Kishiria allowed her to do that. Afterwards, she slipped into her nightgown and climbed into bed. She was asleep before her lady-in-waiting could turn off the light.
In her dreams, Kishiria was in uniform, trying to run across a battlefield. Bullets were whizzing past her and bombs exploding around her. In her arms was a terrified Jion child, clinging to the front of her tunic. She held him close, whispering promises that she'd get him home safely. Her feet skipped lightly over the ravaged ground, leaping over impossibly huge trenches, until she stepped on a mine. She screamed as it threw her through the air, but she only landed on the floor of Degin's sun room. She saw then that the child in her arms wasn't a child at all but her brother Garma, who looked at her and said, "Oh good, Kish, you're awake."
When she awakened, it was 14 hours later. Kishiria reached for a notebook and wrote her dream down because it had left her with a curious sense of hopeful resolve that didn't replace her fear but comforted her nonetheless.
After that, the nausea hit, sending her running for the bathroom. When she emerged, Maria was there, telling her, "Ma'am, you have a visitor. Colonel Aznable wishes to know when he could speak to you."
1.I don't own Gundam and am not making money off this.
2.This is a censored version of a story finished in March of last year. Bumping it off ff.net was a blessing in disguise, since it forced me to go back to it and revise. There were a number of errors in there, so now I'm going back and repairing them.
3.There are no italics or boldfaces because Mandrake Linux sucks and won't do them for some reason. We're not willing to use Windows, so I just suffer.
/////////////////////////////////////
It was strange how quickly the world could change, Kishiria Zabi thought to herself. One day, Jion was holding strong, the only dark spot being the death of her brother Garma. The next, the fortress of Solomon had been taken by the Federation, Dozel was also dead, they had retreated to a place called A Bao A Qu---and her pants didn't fit around the waist anymore.
She'd expected that last thing, just as she'd expected the nausea. She'd engineered the whole event, after all. It was still hard keeping it a secret, but she didn't think the generals, most importantly her brother Giren, would take lightly to a pregnant woman being among them. They'd blame any decisions of hers that they didn't like on her hormones and send her packing. She couldn't allow that to happen. Although it did give a whole new meaning to the term "war pigs".
She finished dressing and went out to the dining room for a quick breakfast before getting back to work. She'd only slept a few hours the night before, being up late in video conferences. Kishiria's lady-in-waiting Maria had already set the table and put her pot of coffee there. Kishiria knew she wasn't supposed to be drinking coffee, but she had cut down to begin with and needed the boost desperately..
Kishiria sat at the table and waited for Maria to bring her her breakfast. Instead of just the toast she usually ate, there was a bowl of oatmeal, a fruit salad, and a hard-boiled egg there.
"That's not my usual," Kishiria observed.
Maria, a tall woman of Mexican origin, shook her head and her long braid swayed along her back. She was elegant in the customary Jion court dress of a long-sleeved gown with a floor-length flared skirt. "No, ma'am. But Consuelo and I have been very worried about you. You need to eat better."
Consuelo was Kishiria's housekeeper. She hadn't told either of them about her condition. "You're probably right. Being in the middle of a war puts personal maintenance as a low priority. I wouldn't want the soldiers to eat as badly as I do."
"We're concerned for more reasons than that, ma'am." Maria dropped into the chair by Kishiria and put a hand on her shoulder. Suddenly the clipped accent and court manners vanished. "M'hija, you're pregnant and it's taking too much out of you."
Kishiria dropped her spoon. "How did you know that?"
"I live in these same quarters as you. When two women share a bathroom, there's no secrets between them. Consuelo cleans the bathroom and she figured it out herself. I don't know what you're going to do about this, but unless you eat right, you're not going to have enough strength to see us through this war."
Kishiria laughed a little. "Why research New Types when we have Mexican household staff? You're right of course. You always are, damn you." She picked at her fruit salad. "I'll tell you the truth. This pregnancy was planned. I'll tell you why later, but you're totally correct, I need to eat better if I'm going to go through with it. Please don't tell anyone. This war only has about a week or two left in it, and I don't want to be at the centre of a rumour mill and criticism just yet."
Maria stood up. "Of course, ma'am. I'll go make you some yerba buena tea. My curandera grandmother swears by it."
"Curandera. That's a cure-woman, right?"
Maria nodded.
"It figures your grandmother would be a witch. Carry on."
Maria smiled and went back to the kitchen.
A few short days later, General Delaz's fleet had defected, half of Kishiria's own was destroyed, A Bao A Qu had fallen, and Kishiria's father Degin was dead at the hand of Giren, who Kishiria herself executed.
There was only one thing left to do, and that was to retreat back to Side 3. Kishiria re-boarded her Gwazine and settled on the bridge. She felt numb. In a short 24 hours, she had been propelled to the highest rank in her country under the worst possible conditions. The nightmare was far from over, and although it was not in her nature to retreat, the only way they would pull through was with her re-organizing from the safety of their inner boundaries.
As the engines began to hum, a familiar figure in a red normal suit floated up in front of the Gwazine's front window. Kishiria frowned. It was Colonel Char Aznable, the Red Comet, the officer closest to her in more ways than one. After failing to protect her brother Garma, Dozel had had Char dishonourably discharged from the military with every intention of finding a way to kill him later. Kishiria had rescued him by restoring him to her command, and bringing him along on a romantic forest holiday, the real purpose of which he was unaware.
Something wasn't right, though. Char had been hurt; there was blood on his face and a bazooka over her shoulder. Any pleasant recollection of their nights together in the forest cottage faded as the bazooka began to come off his shoulder. Kishiria's eyes widened in terror as she drew in a breath to scream.
//NOT MY BABY!//
Char paused with the bazooka in his hand and looked shocked. Then he recovered and flew away.
"What was that about?" the captain asked irreverently.
"I've no idea," Kishiria sighed. "Get us out of here."
"Aye aye, ma'am. Gladly."
Once her ship was away from the fallen fortress, Kishiria told her captain she was heading for her office. She strode away decisively and half-collapsed as soon as the doors closed behind her. Lower gravity kept her from hitting the deck. It'd been nearly four days since she'd eaten a real meal, slept for more than an hour here and there, or bathed. Perhaps it was time for a break.
So she went to her quarters instead. Maria was waiting to take Kishiria's helmet, snapping out the cloth lining and throwing it away before putting the helmet on its shelf near the door. Consuelo was standing outside the bathroom with an armful of towels and Kishiria's bathrobe.
Once inside the bathroom, Kishiria pulled off her uniform and kicked it into a corner, grimacing as she got a whiff of herself. Four days of nervous sweat was disgusting beyond words. It only got worse as she unpinned her hair. Normally it would have cascaded down her back, but this time it flopped slowly downwards, stiffened by its long imprisonment inside her helmet.
The shower was heaven. Kishiria didn't have the energy to luxuriate under the hot water, so she merely enjoyed scrubbing her scalp until it tingled and washing the filth off her skin. It took three tries to make her armpits smell clean, but at last the goal was accomplished and she emerged wrapped in her robe with her hair swathed in a towel.
A fat sandwich and a glass of orange juice were waiting for her. She sat down at her dining room table and reached for it, then looked up at her household staff and her secretary Margaret.
"I know you four didn't have to stay on board," she told them. "The Feddies would let three domestic servants off easily although I'm sure Margaret would have had a harder time. I want to thank you for staying with me. We have a hard road ahead of us, I'll warn you. We haven't lost the war, but we're hurt badly enough that we can't keep fighting either. I'm returning to Jion to try to salvage something from this mess Giren left us in. It won't be easy and the results might not be totally palatable, but I know that with you behind me, I can achieve much more than I could otherwise. Thank you."
Margaret looked at her co-workers. "So what are we waiting for? Three cheers for Her Majesty the Queen! Hip hip, hooray!"
Kishiria felt her face turn red and she waited until they were done to start eating. Roast chicken with lettuce and tomato on sourdough bread. Her favourite.
"Margaret," she began to her secretary after having tucked away some food, "I need you to send a message to General Delaz. Tell him that I beg him in the name of the Jion people to remember the loyalty he showed to my father and put aside the differences he has with me. I ask him to bring his forces back to Side 3. The people are disheartened and afraid and it would be wrong to start a civil war now. Instead, we should be regrouping in order to protect them. Sign it 'your obedient servant, Kishiria Zabi'."
Margaret read it back and Kishiria made a couple of changes before starting the next letter. "Send a letter of condolence to the Federation congress for the death of General Reville and all aboard his ship. Say that as a grieving daughter who lost her own father in the same villainous attack that I share their pain and hope they will take some comfort in the knowledge that the traitor and regicide Giren Zabi has been executed. Sign that one, 'Sincerely yours in sorrow'...um...pattern the signature after the way my father did his."
Margaret frowned a bit. "Kishiria, DG Queen of Jion?"
Kishiria wrinkled her nose. "Too much for this. Would 'Kishiria of Jion' do?"
"That'd be appropriate, ma'am. Humble, but don't let them forget who you are."
"Excellent. Send those out as quickly as you can. Now, I must get some sleep."
Maria insisted on drying her hair first, so Kishiria allowed her to do that. Afterwards, she slipped into her nightgown and climbed into bed. She was asleep before her lady-in-waiting could turn off the light.
In her dreams, Kishiria was in uniform, trying to run across a battlefield. Bullets were whizzing past her and bombs exploding around her. In her arms was a terrified Jion child, clinging to the front of her tunic. She held him close, whispering promises that she'd get him home safely. Her feet skipped lightly over the ravaged ground, leaping over impossibly huge trenches, until she stepped on a mine. She screamed as it threw her through the air, but she only landed on the floor of Degin's sun room. She saw then that the child in her arms wasn't a child at all but her brother Garma, who looked at her and said, "Oh good, Kish, you're awake."
When she awakened, it was 14 hours later. Kishiria reached for a notebook and wrote her dream down because it had left her with a curious sense of hopeful resolve that didn't replace her fear but comforted her nonetheless.
After that, the nausea hit, sending her running for the bathroom. When she emerged, Maria was there, telling her, "Ma'am, you have a visitor. Colonel Aznable wishes to know when he could speak to you."