Warnings for this section: I've taken some liberties with series timelines and plot (*gasp* GW had a PLOT?!). Gore. Un-beta'd. All mistakes are mine.
December 29, AC 199
The alarm sounded at 0147. I remember that because I was checking my chronometer at the time and re-calculating how much time we actually needed to search each of the living quarters. And since I was looking at my wrist unit anyway when the alarm went off, I immediately saw who had set it off and where he was.
Duo.
I think my heart stopped for a moment, but I am first and foremost a soldier and I would not let any of my more foolish emotions get in the way of my duty. At least, that's what I told myself at the time. It was only later that I was forced to admit that I very nearly panicked when I saw who had set the alarm.
I jetted myself out of the room and collided with Wufei in the corridor. He had been checking the room opposite mine and had obviously propelled himself out of it with as much force as I had. Our shoulders slammed together as we met in the middle and we bounced off each other and the walls for a while before we were able to right ourselves--in any other situation, it might have been humorous. But at the time, I was only angry because it was causing a delay.
Rashid was already there when we arrived at the spot where the alarm had been set off. He had one hand on Duo's shoulder and the other on Quatre's, and he was obviously trying to listen to both of them speak at once.
"Gentlemen, use the team channel, please." Wufei said.
The team com line clicked open and I was suddenly assaulted by voices. I heard something about a dead body, and a gun, and a recording device, but Duo and Quatre were talking over each other so quickly that I could not understand.
Finally Rashid bellowed, "Quiet!" in a voice that hurt my ears. Behind his visor, I could see that he was frowning sternly, but that was more for Duo and Quatre's benefit than anything else. Rashid isn't the kind of person who loses his temper. He turned to my partner and continued in a more reasonable tone, "Master Duo, tell us what you found."
Duo glanced at me. His eyes were wide and showed the whites all around, reminding me of a terrified rabbit. "There's a body in that room. It looks like there's a bullet wound to the head, but I didn't really check it that thoroughly. It looks like it decomposed for a while before the environmental controls went kaput, but Q identified it."
"It's Instructor H." Quatre said simply.
Duo nodded. "Yeah, it's old pointy-whiskers himself. I thought it might be, but the body is kinda gooshy-"
"All right, we get the point, Maxwell." Wufei snapped. "What else did you find?"
"This." Quatre held up the small metal box in his hands. It was a standard audio-visual recording device about the size of a deck of playing cards. "It looks like the data area is almost full. I found it on a table by the body." He almost stuttered out that last word. "It seems to be undamaged, so we could probably play it back on the shuttle."
"Let's go then," Wufei said, but I could not leave yet.
"No. Wait." I pressed my codebreaker to the keypad on the door. "I need to take a look."
"Heero, that isn't really necessary." Quatre put a hand on my arm to stop me.
Duo agreed. "All you are going to find in there is a dead body with a couple of extra holes in its head and a gun. It's pretty obvious how he died."
I pressed my faceplate to his briefly. I hoped that it conveyed the emotions of gratitude and affection that I wished to express. "I know, Duo, but I still have to look. I won't take long."
His sigh was loud in our ears. "I know you do, babe. Go on, do what you have to do."
My codebreaker went off and flashed green to let me know I was in, so I kicked myself toward the door.
Duo and Quatre were right; I need not have bothered. Although I had only met Instructor H once or twice, his wasn't a face that was easy to forget, even in death. The chances of two people having that same face were...well, disturbing. The cause of death was also pretty obvious. There was an entry wound in the Instructor's helmet at the right ear and an exit wound just above the left ear. I looked at the floor and saw a fan-shaped spray of old, dried blood and pale grey brain tissue there.
I flicked on my personal recorder to make a report. "I'm confirming the death of the man known as Instructor H, found aboard the abandoned resource satellite MO-III on 29 December, AC 199. Time of death: Unknown. Cause of death: Beam gun blast through the head, most likely self-inflicted. The beam gun is still in the corpse's right hand. I'm taking it with me as evidence. Yuy out."
What a waste.
December 29, AC 199
According to Quatre, there were three communications relay stations between the MO-III satellite and the Earth. There would be no problem sending the transmission home to Trowa, in other words. I felt it was important that he see this at the same time we did.
When I contacted him it was a few hours before dawn local time, but my Trowa was awake and dressed regardless. The steam from a freshly-made cup of coffee obscured his face on the view screen. All he said was, "I had a feeling you would find something today, so I waited up."
I almost smiled at that. The intuition levels among us five had certainly been running high as of late. "And Catherine?" I asked.
He shook his head. "Sleeping."
I felt relieved. "Good. This may be...upsetting." I nodded at Heero. We were all as ready as we were going to get. He hit the playback switch.
~-~-~-~-~
//Begin transmission.//
Instructor H appears on the view screen from the shoulders up. The overhead lights reflect off the visor of his faceplate and partially obscure his features, but it is unmistakably him. He makes a small adjustment to the recording device, then gives a satisfied nod and begins to speak.
"The fates of many lie in the hands of a few. That's the way it has always been. In this case most of humanity will recognize the key players in the latest round of human conflict: Treize Kushrenada, Colonel Une, the Peacecrafts, Quinze. Very few know of the players behind the scenes, though, and again, that's how it has always been.
"The Gundams were our secret weapons. They were built to be machines of war meant to stop a war." He pauses and chuckles, eyes closing and mustache quivering. "I wonder how many people felt the irony of that statement as deeply as we did? As G so crudely but aptly put it, 'fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity.'" Again, he chuckles, but when he opens his eyes this time, they are full of tears. "I'm an old man, possibly a foolish man, and very much a remorseful man. I am not proud of what I've done. I'm not so sorry for having build Sandrock, but I am very sorry for the secret weapon within the secret weapon."
He pauses to get his emotions under control.
"When I made the suggestion to my colleagues about the control chip, they were appalled. Master O went so far as to call me a monster, which is probably a well-deserved epithet considering what I had done. They argued that their protégées were quite capable of piloting their suits without further augmentation, and besides, it was inhumane and unnecessarily cruel to tamper with their minds like that. The boys would have a difficult enough time adjusting to a normal life as it was." He sighs. "I agreed. I did it anyway.
"At the time, I rationalized it by telling myself that my boy was too idealistic and kind-hearted to make a good soldier. How could he possibly work up the murderous hatred necessary to fight for our cause? It is only now, years later, that I can admit the truth: pilot 04 was a good soldier _because_ of those qualities, not _in spite_ of them. He fought because he loved the Colonies and he loved the Earth and he loved humanity in spite of all of our ugly flaws--and love is always a stronger motivator than hate."
The recording shuts off abruptly, but starts up again almost immediately. Some time seems to have passed.
"I really am a foolish old man. He must be dead by now or he will be soon, so there's no need for me to be so discreet about my protégé's identity. His name was Quatre Reberba Winner, heir to the Winner fortune, and son of the famous pacifist Ibraham Winner. I am the one who killed them both.
"Oh, I did nothing so dramatic as hold a gun to their heads, but I killed them all the same.
Instructor H gets up from his seat and begins to pace the room, moving in and out of the frame.
"Master Winner was my first casualty. Anyone watching this transmission must be puzzled by now, because it certainly looked as though OZ-friendly colonists killed the man in a riot...but I was the one who instigated the riots. It was necessary. You see, since the Winner-owned natural resource satellites provided plenty of food, water, and mineral resources to the Colonies, the colonists themselves began to feel that they were completely independent of the Earth, and it was causing a rift between the two factions. I needed to do something to jar the colonists back to their senses, and causing a disruption amid the most powerful company to provide resources seemed to be the logical way to do it.
"I have to admit that it worked quite well. Spectacularly, even. Within a month, the prices of food, water, and raw materials had risen so drastically amid the colonies that nearly ten percent of the population immigrated back to Earth." Instructor H's habitual grin broadens sickeningly. "The economy was in a complete shambles soon after, and the L3 cluster was very nearly abandoned altogether, if you will recall.
"Fortunately for the remaining colonists, my boy stepped in and temporarily took over Winner Enterprises--anonymously, of course--and that took care of that little glitch. And that was when I realized that my carefully crafted plan wasn't going as perfectly as I'd thought.
"As it turned out, he actually _cared_. I hadn't planned for that.
"My boy actually cared how the people of the Colonies were faring, and he did his best to stabilize the economy. He organized rebuilding teams, hired manual and skilled labor, and re-established trade between the Colonies. He even worked out trade routes between the Earth and the Colonies.
"What he didn't know, however, was that I was also in communication with Mr. Kushrenada, Mr. Merquise, and that incompetent Quinze fellow to wrong the rights that my boy had worked so hard for. I very cleverly--and, God forgive me--deviously played each side against each other to ensure that the Earth as a whole and as a collective of nations would resent the Colonies...and that the Colonies as a whole and as separate entities would resent the Earth.
"I was...I was also the one who worked with Tsuberov to build the Libra." He bows his head as if in shame, but when he raises it again, there is an unmistakable smirk of pride on his face. "The beam cannon on the Wing ZERO was just too good a feat of engineering--I couldn't just let it go to waste. Imagine my utter thrill when Merquise used the thing to blow away half of the Pacific islands! I though for sure that that little stunt would make the people pause and reconsider what the stakes of this war actually were.
"Unfortunately, I underestimated the general stupidity of human kind, and the war went on. I was in despair. My boy's control chip was by now in its 'peacetime' phase, and he was no longer the Trojan horse I had meant for him to be. His empathy was returning to its normal state; no longer hyper responsive or completely repressed, he was ready to return to the public eye as the Winner heir. His sense of diplomacy and strategy were being enhanced at the same time, ostensibly to help him use his newfound position for the establishment of a lasting peace.
"Instead of that, though, my boy was plunged even deeper into war. Instead of being a leader of the Colonies, he became a leader of the deadliest group of soldiers the world has ever seen. Instead of helping to bring things into balance, he helped to bring victory to what he considered 'his' side. Instead of setting me free, he almost destroyed me.
"Almost, I say. You see, I built the Libra with the foreknowledge that she would eventually be destroyed, so I stayed one step ahead and built her to be able to split into five sections with ease. Each section had its own shielded control station, from which the rest of her could be either disintegrated or maneuvered according to need." He giggles in almost childish delight. "I am a clever bastard, am I not? Actually, that was Tsuberov's addition. He wanted to be able to get away in case anything...unplanned happened."
He rubs his gloved hands together as if he is cold. "Unplanned. Yes, that explains his death. He had plans and ambitions that exceeded my scope. He was perfectly willing to sacrifice pilots 02 and 05 to achieve his plans." He shakes his head. "But I wasn't. I informed Une of those plans, and she finally saw reason. I am forever in her debt for saving them, and I will forever carry the pain of her sacrifice. I am accountable for her as well as..."
The transmission blinks out again. When it comes back on, Instructor H is grinning again.
"Pilot 02 saved us without knowing it. I'm sure he thought he was delivering us to our death when he took us to the Libra and deposited us on Section E, rather than Section S. That little maneuver allowed us to remain relatively safe while we created enough of a distraction to let the boys do their jobs...it was what they were trained for, after all."
He laughs for a moment, but it's a sad laugh.
"We never figured on a second war. I should have seen it coming. The fact that my boy played his part in the entire nasty business without a hitch is a testament to how badly I orchestrated the whole thing. He was supposed to be the peaceful diplomat, much like the Peacecraft girl, but he went his own route and resurrected the Gundams, and to fight the last battle. But he was already beginning to die by then.
"The last parts of the control chip were designed to systematically shut down Quatre's brain. He was no longer needed, I originally thought, but I needed for him to die before he was too horribly tainted by the war, but after he had restored peace. There would be no chance for him to reach Heaven if he had had to live with that blemish on his soul, and I could not possibly deny him that.
"I couldn't take away his kindness and sincerity, although this may have been a crueler destiny than Operation Meteor." He reaches for the recording device as if to switch it off, but he stops abruptly. Instead, he gives a sharklike grin and reaches instead for something out of view. It turns out to be a beam gun. He holds the muzzle of the gun to his ear, and before he pulls the trigger, he voicelessly mouths a single phrase.
//End Transmission//
~-~-~-~-~-~-
Later on, lip-reading experts agree unanimously on the good instructor's last, unvoiced words: _I will see you in Heaven, my boy_.
December 29, AC 199
The alarm sounded at 0147. I remember that because I was checking my chronometer at the time and re-calculating how much time we actually needed to search each of the living quarters. And since I was looking at my wrist unit anyway when the alarm went off, I immediately saw who had set it off and where he was.
Duo.
I think my heart stopped for a moment, but I am first and foremost a soldier and I would not let any of my more foolish emotions get in the way of my duty. At least, that's what I told myself at the time. It was only later that I was forced to admit that I very nearly panicked when I saw who had set the alarm.
I jetted myself out of the room and collided with Wufei in the corridor. He had been checking the room opposite mine and had obviously propelled himself out of it with as much force as I had. Our shoulders slammed together as we met in the middle and we bounced off each other and the walls for a while before we were able to right ourselves--in any other situation, it might have been humorous. But at the time, I was only angry because it was causing a delay.
Rashid was already there when we arrived at the spot where the alarm had been set off. He had one hand on Duo's shoulder and the other on Quatre's, and he was obviously trying to listen to both of them speak at once.
"Gentlemen, use the team channel, please." Wufei said.
The team com line clicked open and I was suddenly assaulted by voices. I heard something about a dead body, and a gun, and a recording device, but Duo and Quatre were talking over each other so quickly that I could not understand.
Finally Rashid bellowed, "Quiet!" in a voice that hurt my ears. Behind his visor, I could see that he was frowning sternly, but that was more for Duo and Quatre's benefit than anything else. Rashid isn't the kind of person who loses his temper. He turned to my partner and continued in a more reasonable tone, "Master Duo, tell us what you found."
Duo glanced at me. His eyes were wide and showed the whites all around, reminding me of a terrified rabbit. "There's a body in that room. It looks like there's a bullet wound to the head, but I didn't really check it that thoroughly. It looks like it decomposed for a while before the environmental controls went kaput, but Q identified it."
"It's Instructor H." Quatre said simply.
Duo nodded. "Yeah, it's old pointy-whiskers himself. I thought it might be, but the body is kinda gooshy-"
"All right, we get the point, Maxwell." Wufei snapped. "What else did you find?"
"This." Quatre held up the small metal box in his hands. It was a standard audio-visual recording device about the size of a deck of playing cards. "It looks like the data area is almost full. I found it on a table by the body." He almost stuttered out that last word. "It seems to be undamaged, so we could probably play it back on the shuttle."
"Let's go then," Wufei said, but I could not leave yet.
"No. Wait." I pressed my codebreaker to the keypad on the door. "I need to take a look."
"Heero, that isn't really necessary." Quatre put a hand on my arm to stop me.
Duo agreed. "All you are going to find in there is a dead body with a couple of extra holes in its head and a gun. It's pretty obvious how he died."
I pressed my faceplate to his briefly. I hoped that it conveyed the emotions of gratitude and affection that I wished to express. "I know, Duo, but I still have to look. I won't take long."
His sigh was loud in our ears. "I know you do, babe. Go on, do what you have to do."
My codebreaker went off and flashed green to let me know I was in, so I kicked myself toward the door.
Duo and Quatre were right; I need not have bothered. Although I had only met Instructor H once or twice, his wasn't a face that was easy to forget, even in death. The chances of two people having that same face were...well, disturbing. The cause of death was also pretty obvious. There was an entry wound in the Instructor's helmet at the right ear and an exit wound just above the left ear. I looked at the floor and saw a fan-shaped spray of old, dried blood and pale grey brain tissue there.
I flicked on my personal recorder to make a report. "I'm confirming the death of the man known as Instructor H, found aboard the abandoned resource satellite MO-III on 29 December, AC 199. Time of death: Unknown. Cause of death: Beam gun blast through the head, most likely self-inflicted. The beam gun is still in the corpse's right hand. I'm taking it with me as evidence. Yuy out."
What a waste.
December 29, AC 199
According to Quatre, there were three communications relay stations between the MO-III satellite and the Earth. There would be no problem sending the transmission home to Trowa, in other words. I felt it was important that he see this at the same time we did.
When I contacted him it was a few hours before dawn local time, but my Trowa was awake and dressed regardless. The steam from a freshly-made cup of coffee obscured his face on the view screen. All he said was, "I had a feeling you would find something today, so I waited up."
I almost smiled at that. The intuition levels among us five had certainly been running high as of late. "And Catherine?" I asked.
He shook his head. "Sleeping."
I felt relieved. "Good. This may be...upsetting." I nodded at Heero. We were all as ready as we were going to get. He hit the playback switch.
~-~-~-~-~
//Begin transmission.//
Instructor H appears on the view screen from the shoulders up. The overhead lights reflect off the visor of his faceplate and partially obscure his features, but it is unmistakably him. He makes a small adjustment to the recording device, then gives a satisfied nod and begins to speak.
"The fates of many lie in the hands of a few. That's the way it has always been. In this case most of humanity will recognize the key players in the latest round of human conflict: Treize Kushrenada, Colonel Une, the Peacecrafts, Quinze. Very few know of the players behind the scenes, though, and again, that's how it has always been.
"The Gundams were our secret weapons. They were built to be machines of war meant to stop a war." He pauses and chuckles, eyes closing and mustache quivering. "I wonder how many people felt the irony of that statement as deeply as we did? As G so crudely but aptly put it, 'fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity.'" Again, he chuckles, but when he opens his eyes this time, they are full of tears. "I'm an old man, possibly a foolish man, and very much a remorseful man. I am not proud of what I've done. I'm not so sorry for having build Sandrock, but I am very sorry for the secret weapon within the secret weapon."
He pauses to get his emotions under control.
"When I made the suggestion to my colleagues about the control chip, they were appalled. Master O went so far as to call me a monster, which is probably a well-deserved epithet considering what I had done. They argued that their protégées were quite capable of piloting their suits without further augmentation, and besides, it was inhumane and unnecessarily cruel to tamper with their minds like that. The boys would have a difficult enough time adjusting to a normal life as it was." He sighs. "I agreed. I did it anyway.
"At the time, I rationalized it by telling myself that my boy was too idealistic and kind-hearted to make a good soldier. How could he possibly work up the murderous hatred necessary to fight for our cause? It is only now, years later, that I can admit the truth: pilot 04 was a good soldier _because_ of those qualities, not _in spite_ of them. He fought because he loved the Colonies and he loved the Earth and he loved humanity in spite of all of our ugly flaws--and love is always a stronger motivator than hate."
The recording shuts off abruptly, but starts up again almost immediately. Some time seems to have passed.
"I really am a foolish old man. He must be dead by now or he will be soon, so there's no need for me to be so discreet about my protégé's identity. His name was Quatre Reberba Winner, heir to the Winner fortune, and son of the famous pacifist Ibraham Winner. I am the one who killed them both.
"Oh, I did nothing so dramatic as hold a gun to their heads, but I killed them all the same.
Instructor H gets up from his seat and begins to pace the room, moving in and out of the frame.
"Master Winner was my first casualty. Anyone watching this transmission must be puzzled by now, because it certainly looked as though OZ-friendly colonists killed the man in a riot...but I was the one who instigated the riots. It was necessary. You see, since the Winner-owned natural resource satellites provided plenty of food, water, and mineral resources to the Colonies, the colonists themselves began to feel that they were completely independent of the Earth, and it was causing a rift between the two factions. I needed to do something to jar the colonists back to their senses, and causing a disruption amid the most powerful company to provide resources seemed to be the logical way to do it.
"I have to admit that it worked quite well. Spectacularly, even. Within a month, the prices of food, water, and raw materials had risen so drastically amid the colonies that nearly ten percent of the population immigrated back to Earth." Instructor H's habitual grin broadens sickeningly. "The economy was in a complete shambles soon after, and the L3 cluster was very nearly abandoned altogether, if you will recall.
"Fortunately for the remaining colonists, my boy stepped in and temporarily took over Winner Enterprises--anonymously, of course--and that took care of that little glitch. And that was when I realized that my carefully crafted plan wasn't going as perfectly as I'd thought.
"As it turned out, he actually _cared_. I hadn't planned for that.
"My boy actually cared how the people of the Colonies were faring, and he did his best to stabilize the economy. He organized rebuilding teams, hired manual and skilled labor, and re-established trade between the Colonies. He even worked out trade routes between the Earth and the Colonies.
"What he didn't know, however, was that I was also in communication with Mr. Kushrenada, Mr. Merquise, and that incompetent Quinze fellow to wrong the rights that my boy had worked so hard for. I very cleverly--and, God forgive me--deviously played each side against each other to ensure that the Earth as a whole and as a collective of nations would resent the Colonies...and that the Colonies as a whole and as separate entities would resent the Earth.
"I was...I was also the one who worked with Tsuberov to build the Libra." He bows his head as if in shame, but when he raises it again, there is an unmistakable smirk of pride on his face. "The beam cannon on the Wing ZERO was just too good a feat of engineering--I couldn't just let it go to waste. Imagine my utter thrill when Merquise used the thing to blow away half of the Pacific islands! I though for sure that that little stunt would make the people pause and reconsider what the stakes of this war actually were.
"Unfortunately, I underestimated the general stupidity of human kind, and the war went on. I was in despair. My boy's control chip was by now in its 'peacetime' phase, and he was no longer the Trojan horse I had meant for him to be. His empathy was returning to its normal state; no longer hyper responsive or completely repressed, he was ready to return to the public eye as the Winner heir. His sense of diplomacy and strategy were being enhanced at the same time, ostensibly to help him use his newfound position for the establishment of a lasting peace.
"Instead of that, though, my boy was plunged even deeper into war. Instead of being a leader of the Colonies, he became a leader of the deadliest group of soldiers the world has ever seen. Instead of helping to bring things into balance, he helped to bring victory to what he considered 'his' side. Instead of setting me free, he almost destroyed me.
"Almost, I say. You see, I built the Libra with the foreknowledge that she would eventually be destroyed, so I stayed one step ahead and built her to be able to split into five sections with ease. Each section had its own shielded control station, from which the rest of her could be either disintegrated or maneuvered according to need." He giggles in almost childish delight. "I am a clever bastard, am I not? Actually, that was Tsuberov's addition. He wanted to be able to get away in case anything...unplanned happened."
He rubs his gloved hands together as if he is cold. "Unplanned. Yes, that explains his death. He had plans and ambitions that exceeded my scope. He was perfectly willing to sacrifice pilots 02 and 05 to achieve his plans." He shakes his head. "But I wasn't. I informed Une of those plans, and she finally saw reason. I am forever in her debt for saving them, and I will forever carry the pain of her sacrifice. I am accountable for her as well as..."
The transmission blinks out again. When it comes back on, Instructor H is grinning again.
"Pilot 02 saved us without knowing it. I'm sure he thought he was delivering us to our death when he took us to the Libra and deposited us on Section E, rather than Section S. That little maneuver allowed us to remain relatively safe while we created enough of a distraction to let the boys do their jobs...it was what they were trained for, after all."
He laughs for a moment, but it's a sad laugh.
"We never figured on a second war. I should have seen it coming. The fact that my boy played his part in the entire nasty business without a hitch is a testament to how badly I orchestrated the whole thing. He was supposed to be the peaceful diplomat, much like the Peacecraft girl, but he went his own route and resurrected the Gundams, and to fight the last battle. But he was already beginning to die by then.
"The last parts of the control chip were designed to systematically shut down Quatre's brain. He was no longer needed, I originally thought, but I needed for him to die before he was too horribly tainted by the war, but after he had restored peace. There would be no chance for him to reach Heaven if he had had to live with that blemish on his soul, and I could not possibly deny him that.
"I couldn't take away his kindness and sincerity, although this may have been a crueler destiny than Operation Meteor." He reaches for the recording device as if to switch it off, but he stops abruptly. Instead, he gives a sharklike grin and reaches instead for something out of view. It turns out to be a beam gun. He holds the muzzle of the gun to his ear, and before he pulls the trigger, he voicelessly mouths a single phrase.
//End Transmission//
~-~-~-~-~-~-
Later on, lip-reading experts agree unanimously on the good instructor's last, unvoiced words: _I will see you in Heaven, my boy_.