~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tapestry - Chapter 1
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The actions of the five Gundams were a direct reflection of the will of all the colonies. The Gundams were Mobile Suits created to deal with the threat posed to the colonies by OZ, a secret organization hidden inside the Federation Armed Forces. After Colony Year 195, OZ finally emerged as the leading force in history. OZ's leader, Treize Khushrenada, carried out massive operations to devastate and take over the Federation Armed Forces. Having been tricked into the confrontation, bloody battles between OZ and the colonies' five Mobile Suits began....
...however...
...as the gundam pilots and their supporters defiantly screamed and sprayed bullets at OZ, more than just general interest in their activities was kindled in the minds and souls of their opponents. It was precisely due to the fierceness of their battles, the challenge of their untamed spirits and their untapped potential as pure warriors that they they appeared so special... and desirable... to an elite few.
And to those few beings who were aware, it became rather obvious rather quickly that a major elemental force – something far deeper and more insidious in scope than nearly any other power on Earth – had separated himself from the predictable patterns of human warfare and was now watching the newcomers, unfeigned predatory interest gleaming in his bronze eyes.
As his considerable attention turned toward the pilots and those beings surrounding them, he narrowed his focus, honed his concentration ... and found an unexpected, priceless treasure...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Huge, smoking hulks that were blasted mobile suits littered the battlefield. The ruins of machines belonging to warriors less skilled than the Gundam pilots lay half buried in sand dunes for miles in every direction, vital electronic parts blown apart, exposed to the abrasive effects of sand and wind.
Hardened OZ and rebel soldiers alike gaped in astonished shock when Dr. J's likeness flashed across the viewscreens of their mobile suits. And although those pilots did not know it, they were not alone; their plight was broadcast live to virtually every location on Earth, to anyone with a viable plasma screen. Dr. J's supporters - angry, cold-eyed colony rebels - literally pirated the airwaves, jammed all the signals across the globe they could and replaced them with their own.
Immediately after the scientist's astounding declaration - that he was the only person attacking OZ, not the rest of the colonies - the perspective of the satellite feed changed. Dr. J's picture dissolved and gave way to a view of Gundam 01; its hatch opened and a slight male figure stepped out, his thin shoulders squared and set, his expression unreadable. A riot of dark brown hair covered his head and fell across eyes that were as steady and cool as if cast from stainless steel. Wedged firmly in his right hand with his thumb held directly over the button was a small detonator, its casing flipped open.
"A boy..." Zechs Marqueis stared unblinking at the viewscreen, his hands stilled on Tallgeese's control board, his mouth completely dry. "That - little boy - that child - is Gundam 01's pilot?!"
Very deliberately, Heero Yuy walked to the end of the catwalk and extended his right arm in front of his chest. With his chin raised and his face a mask of calm certainty, the pilot took a deep breath, locked his gaze on some remote area in front of his machine that only he could see and clearly intoned, "Mission. Acknowledged." There was no change of expression on his face - no flicker of fear, of relief, of anger, or even regret - as his thumb deliberately struck the detonator switch.
Yuy's gundam exploded with a deafening roar. His body, hurled from the catwalk of the vessel by forces strong enough to rupture the ship's hull, tumbled violently in midair with millions of scalding pieces of gundanium alloy before plummeting to the ground. Chunks of debris and molten metal rained down on the desert, heated silver streaks ravaging the coarse sand of the dunes immediately below. The concussive force of the blast flattened nearly every structure in the immediate area that wasn't made of an amalgam created in outer space, designed to take that kind of punishment.
The bystanders – those eyewitnesses in mobile suits and gundams and those watching via the satellite link — were struck dumb by the spectacle as the enormity of Yuy's casual sacrifice slowly bled into their consciousness.
"The 01…" started Lieutenant Noin, her face turning a shade paler in the unearthly glow of the computer equipment .
"….blew itself up…" finished Lady Une, staring. "Destroying the gundam in exchange for the colonies…?"
Noin closed her eyes briefly, acknowledging the pain that pushed against her throat. "Killing himself so easily ... without hesitation ..." He looked so vulnerable, yet fought so fiercely ... as if this time was his last ... The officer was caught between her admiration for the pilot's single-mindedness and exasperation at his futile efforts to stop gundam technology from falling into their hands.
Fool, Noin thought grimly. We would have had the information anyway; if not from you, then from someone else. You people are too idealistic for your own good.
Another officer was working hard to bring the rest of OZ's hardware and software back on line. The force of the explosion had completely overwhelmed many of their internal systems, and had literally blown everything offline except for visuals of the battle site.
"The remaining gundams are leaving the battleground, ma'am." The soldier squinted at the plasma screen, counting the number of large mobile suits still on the battlefield, determined to account for each and every one. He glanced across at his superior officer, wanting to insure that Une heard his report.
Hatred and loathing, thick and heavy, stared back at the soldier from Une's eyes. The poor man swallowed and blinked, not wanting to believe what he saw; he had to be wrong, there was no possible way that the colonel would permit herself to be anything less than professional with anyone under her command ... Her gaze drifted across his body, barely registering his physical presence before reacting to the news that the battleground was clearing out.
My failure ... is YOUR fault, she thought, hating and blaming the retreating forms of Zechs Marqueis and the other OZ operators for her inability to yet again capture the rebellious gundams and their pilots. ALL your fault.
I've been cheated ... and I've let His Excellency down ... again .... Remorse edged with shame tinged her thoughts as she watched the small screen in front of her. Unable to express her true feelings, Une allowed her disappointment to turn to anger and resentment in a moment.
"Don't think that I'll let you get away like this, gundams!" she raged, her eyes unpleasantly small and narrowed. "And you, too, Lieutenant Noin!"
Noin glanced over at her commanding officer, one hand holding her small comm headset to the right side of her head. Quietly, she spoke into the transmitter, listened for a response, then nodded. Slipping the headset from the back of her ear, she unclipped the microphone from her jacket and held the equipment in her right hand, tilting her head to look at Une. "Colonel ... it's His Excellency, Treize. On the comm set. For you."
At the mention of Treize's name, a completely different set of emotions flashed across the colonel's face. His Excellency inspired loyalty in his staff - some said he inspired it to the point of fanaticism - but it was loyalty, and Lady Une was unquestionably dog loyal to the general.
However, this expression was one that Noin could not identify, and it left the veteran officer feeling cold and unsettled. She anticipated emotions such as hopeful expectation mingled with worshipful adoration, considering it was Lady Une thinking about His Excellency - and if that was all that was involved, Noin would have turn her attention to other matters.
What bothered Noin was the strange, possessive gleam in Une's eyes, coupled with a dark, shivery something that settled in her gaze when Noin told her the General was on the other end of the connection. Plus, it was that certain twist to the Lady's lips that heightened Une's already intense look to something truly frightening.
"Give it to me!"
Une lunged at Noin, grabbing at her adjunct's right hand, trying to wrench the comm equipment from her subordinate's fingers in her haste to hear His Excellency's words. Didn't that woman understand? She needed to hear him now, NOW—
Anticipating Une's move, Noin lightly sidestepped, slapping Une's hand harmlessly to the side. As the colonel, enraged, drew herself erect to demand the headset, Noin held her hand slightly off to the side with the earpiece visible between her forefinger and thumb, stared directly into Une's eyes, and enunciated each word slowly so there would be absolutely no mistake in the delivery of His Excellency's message to Lady Une.
"Colonel - he said, 'do everything more elegantly.' Be more elegant, Lady."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Clearly, OZ fought explosive battles against the colonies' Gundam mobile suits; but OZ also sought out Earthbound rebels as eagerly as it squashed rebellions off-planet…
In a mountainous area of Central Asia, within the borders of what used to be called China, a peace-orientated leader of a small country was assassinated. He had advocated the demilitarization of the region and stood up to challenge the existing military rule. Unfortunately, a coup d'etat was orchestrated against him by the Federation Armed Forces; and now, as OZ started dismembering the Federation, many independent countries faced bloody civil wars. ... however ...
... neither the Federation nor OZ could have predicted the unintended, far-reaching effects their actions had. Not only were the common people of the region solidly against the Federation and Colonel Bund, the man who led the murderous coup - but the actions of the OZ organization over a relatively short period of time, culminating with the wholesale slaughter of the leading pacificts at New Edwards Base, earned them the eternal enmity of every living, thinking human being throughout that country.
Every person, that is, that had any contact whatsoever with ex-Major Sally Po, late of the south JAP Point Federation Medical Center – late, in fact, of the entire Federation Armed Forces. An unrepentant AWOL Federation medical officer turned rebellion leader, Sally vowed to spread the word and fight for the freedom of her people against the Federation and against OZ, and never to return to either unless forced to do so under armed military escort.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
That, in fact, was how rebels at a makeshift Chinese revolutionary base deep in the mountainous section of Central Asia came to surround a small vidscreen in the middle of the day, their eyes glittering and their faces intense, completely absorbed in the spontaneous broadcast from the colonies. When Dr. J started to speak, they immediately gave him their full, rapt attention –
"Attacking innocent colonies?" the scientist had asked, his tone openly hostile, his image scowling. "What an inhumane strategy that is. You guys will indeed do anything to achieve your goal... I have no choice. I hereby declare that we surrender."
"Good." Lady Une's voice drifted over the connection, cold and harsh, a grating counterpoint to the doctor's tone. "I accept your surrender. Have the Gundams disarm and surrender to us immediately."
The old man's face was unreadable. "We surrender. But we will not hand over the Gundams. I repeat. We surrender. But we will not hand over the Gundams."
- and when Heero Yuy's gundam exploded, not one of them flinched. They understood this part of the war much too well; to a man, they understood. One might give in and surrender to the enemy, but one never gave up.
Sally sat quietly in the back of the room, a woman in green army fatigues, her braided hair draped across her shoulders, watching the vidscreen and listening to a communications unit with several other people, frowning in concentration. She, too, could understand and appreciate why Heero sacrificed himself without question.
"What's wrong, Sally?" one of her men asked, glancing at her.
"Nothing," she replied, looking at the vidscreen with a strange, closed expression. "Why do you ask?"
"Sorry – you return to your homeland after being gone for so many years, only to get involved in such a mess …"
"Don't be," she said, the ghost of a smile on her lips. "I was the one who decided to come home." And it wasn't a moment too soon – I was this close to losing what little humanity I had left, she thought, somber again.
Several other people monitoring the transmissions from the comm system looked at each other quickly, then over to her. "Sally," the chief technician murmured in a low voice, "you should really hear this. You can't hear this on the vidtape - this is coming directly from OZ headquarters. Our mole thought it was important to place pickups all over the building, so that we could hear them."
She nodded, sighed, and lifted the handset to her ear, listening to the conversation.
"Colonel … it's His Excellency, Treize."
Someone was speaking to Colonel Une, second in command of all OZ forces under Khushrenada. Not surprising, she thought.
It was the next words that left her staring. "... I don't believe this." Incredulous, she motioned to the others surrounding the equipment to snap their headsets on, turning the volume up on hers.
"Colonel - he said, 'do everything more elegantly.' Be more elegant, Lady."
Sally stared at the communications equipment as if it had morphed into a snake right in front of her. "Be more elegant? What kind of message is that? What does he think this is, a garden party?" Angrily shaking her head, Sally scowled at her companions, thinking about Heero's loss in the desert. "People died there, and they certainly didn't do it for that prick's amusement." Her eyes were cold and furious as she thought about the price other rebels from their cell had paid on the battlefield, only to be casually tossed away by one stray comment.
"Major Sally." A squat, dark haired man was standing at her elbow, quietly waiting for her attention.
"I'm not 'Major' Sally anymore, Weng. Just Sally."
The rebel paused, looking at her. "Well. Sally. We have information that Bund and a number of his lieutenants will be in our region within the next several days. We think we should make plans to give him a proper welcome." Several of the other rebels looked at Weng and nodded, narrowed eyes abruptly slitted and cold in their weathered faces, mouths drawn in tight, compressed lines. There was absolutely no love lost between the rebels and the new regime.
"Do you know have the particulars of his visit - where he will be staying, how long, with whom, and the like?"
"I wouldn't be of much use to you if I didn't, Maj- ah, pardon ... Sally." A small data disk was sitting in the middle of his outstretched hand.
"Thank you, Weng." Her eyes flashing, Sally took the disk, stood, and walked to the front of the room, motioning for Weng to join her. Most of the rebel section leaders were there, huddled around the vidscreen and shaking their heads, watching the gundams walk away from the battlefield.
"Excuse me, gentlemen," Sally said, moving into their midst to push the disc into a waiting data port. "I'm afraid we must get back to work. Colonel Bund's going to be here sometime during the next several days ..." Tapping several keys on the machine, Sally continued, "... and this disk is going to tell us where he will be."
A murmur of assent rumbled around the group. "Good. Let's see it," one of the section leaders growled. "He's going to pay for what he did. My entire village was razed on Bund's orders."
"He ordered the deaths of hundreds, Chang Weng. Not just the people in your village," Sally replied as she pressed a final button and moved away from the machine. "We've all suffered horribly; we must remember that our strength lies in working together. It is only by working together that we will drive out the invaders and take back our lives and our freedom." Sally never raised her voice, but quiet strength with a backbone of steel shone through her words.
The men nodded, Chan emphatically. "Together, then," he said, his jaw set like granite. "We will reclaim what was stolen from us."
Sally nodded back, her expression tight and closed. Using the remote, she disconnected the system from the world net and started the decryption program to process and make sense of the huge columns of zeros and ones on the data disk.
As she watched the output roll across the monitor as the program continued to work, Sally thought of the men surrounding her and those out in the field. She was proud of them; they fought without reservation, without thought for personal safety; considering, instead, the people they were trying to protect.
Just as suddenly, an intense, hungry expression shone in her eyes as she thought about the enemies they tried to eliminate. Soon ... very soon. We have started the revolution, and will not stop until our voices have been heard from one end of the country to the other. You will not hold power for long ...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Several days later ...
"Rebel ship. You have five minutes to come to a complete halt, disembark your crew and disengage your weapons. Failure to comply with these orders will result in your immediate termination."
The woman's disembodied voice reverberated across the decks of the shuttle, rattling empty compartments and causing most of the rebel crew to stare at the loudspeakers embedded in the ship's walls. Those assigned to the bridge looked at each other and then at Sally Po, waiting for her reaction.
She scowled in response, completely annoyed. Her hands flew across her own command board; her soft voice carried across the clamor on the bridge. "Communications - do not allow video or audio feed with that vessel. Rather, encode and send this message back to Une: 'Request received – regretfully, we are unable to comply.' And then cut her frequency off completely."
"Yes, ma'am!" Concentrating on his task, the man quickly pounded out the instructions on his board, carrying out Sally's orders. From long experience, he realized that the message would infuriate Lady Une - and hopefully, that would push her to make some careless mistakes during the upcoming battle. Their small force needed every advantage they could muster; otherwise, OZ's soldiers would completely crush them.
The rest of the crew went back to their tasks with much the same attitude, heartened by Sally's obvious calm and poise in the face of such tremendous odds. Sally was the epitome of calm and coolness under pressure; there was nothing that Sally asked her soldiers to do that she would not do herself.
"Preferred escape route, Sally?"
"Heading 6, 3, 1, using the base as the zero vector," she replied, glancing at her navigator then sliding her gaze back to her screen. "We'll take five minutes to offload casualties, then five minutes to draw Une's fire away from them."
Nodding, the navigator relayed the orders to the rest of the crew, announcing a shipwide evacuation for all personnel with the exception of the assigned bridge personnel.
The shuttle landed in a small clearing, close to the bunker but not next to it. The area was extremely difficult to see - in fact, because of the mountainous terrain in that part of China, most pilots missed the strip completely. Sally skillfully put them down, leaving no room on any side the shuttle for the OZ ships hovering above them to land. All hatches were immediately flung open and the rebel fighters poured out, carrying their dead and wounded into the forest, melting into the landscape.
"We could use a diversion about now - that gundam pilot friend of your could give us some relief," suggested one of the rebel fighters, scanning his position on the bridge as he looked sideways at Sally.
Sally shrugged her shoulders, smiling faintly as she thought of Wufei. "I'm not even sure where he is - and at any rate, it needs to be his decision to join us, not mine to demand that he fight with us. But we still have a couple of tricks we can use." Watching her monitor, she nodded once, decisively. "It's time. All entrances have been sealed. Secure all hands for liftoff."
"Yes, ma'am!" The navigator made the announcement, only seconds before a large explosion rocked the ship.
Gasping, Sally clutched the controls and pulled, yanking the nose of the shuttle up as she opened the throttle and drove the engines with a roar. Braced at their positions, the skeleton crew grimly hung on as the shuttle rocketed into the air, the internal gravitational forces slamming the crew into their seats.
"Weng - you're on weapons - are the lasers on line and powered up?" Sally shouted as she piloted their way past several OZ mobil suits, twisting over and around the larger machines.
"Aye, Sally, they are," Weng yelled, thumbing several switches on his board. "The weapons systems are operational and ready for firing – but we're down to half power overall. That last blast cut out our left rotor."
"All right – brace yourselves, everyone – it's going to get rough." Sally whipped the shuttle into a tight spiral run, spinning across the evening sky. An enormous groaning sound resonated throughout the bridge, protesting maneuvers suitable for smaller planes and vessels, not a cargo shuttle running a gauntlet of enemy mobile suits.
The OZ mobile suits spread out in response to her move, ringing her trajectory like large diamonds on an invisible string, and started firing point blank.
"All right, Weng - open the auxiliary bay doors now and release the cargo."
The dark haired man pushed a small level on his console forward and watched his readouts with a satisfied smirk. "The cargo has been delivered, Sally, in standard fan formation … we should see and hear the results right about—"
Sudden, earsplitting explosions rent the air behind them, buffeting the ship with large sonic waves and mechanical debris.
"—now," he finished with a grin.
Her eyes narrowed in pleasure. "Never thought I'd find a use for magnetic proximity mines. They're just so - attractive - to OZ." She grinned evilly as she punned the last sentence. "How many mobile suits are left?"
"Too many." Weng shook his head, peering at the screen, calculating the odds of escape and coming up short. "But we'll take lots of 'em with us."
"That we will," she agreed, losing her smile. "There's another set of mines on the other side – are you ready to deploy?"
"Aye, ma'am," he promptly responded, reaching for the control.
At that very instant something really huge slammed into the shuttle, shaking the structure of the vessel until the fuselage moaned. Smoke billowed from every doorway – emergency lights flashed, klaxons rang, and the scrubbers tried to contain the acrid stench flooding the area. The bridge personnel, flung to the far corners of the room, hauled themselves back to their positions, bleeding, blinking and gasping in surprise.
"All stations, RESPOND! Emergency procedures in place—" Sally managed to yell before another volley hit the ship, tossing her to the deck as easily as a child threw pebbles in a stream.
"We can't take much more of this!" Weng snapped, a large gash open and bleeding on the side of his head. He ignored the blood dripping down the side of his face as he pulled himself back to his console, beating out a small electrical fire on the side of the board.
Sparks and wires rained on their heads as Sally crawled back to her station, only to be greeted by a large holograph of Une from the waist up, pink ribbons and all, staring balefully at her.
"If you do not surrender, you will all die. It's simple. Surrender and live, Sally Po. Unless you WANT all those lives on your head…" Her glare bored right into Sally's head.
The rebel leader stared back at the transparent woman. "Go to hell, Une. Consider that my last request to you." Squinting, Sally muttered under her breath, "Quick - target that signal and send a blast back along it…"
"Very well, Po. That was your last chance," Une snapped. Her signal fizzled and died, the holograph winking out of existence.
The navigator reported woodenly, "No blast was fired at Colonel Une's ship, Sally, because we couldn't get a fix on her location. The transmission was too short."
Cursing her luck and Une, Sally looked around the bridge, panting. Smoke was still wafting across the floor, coming in thin waves from the doorway. The Trunda twins – engineering geniuses both – were obviously dead, crushed under a cabinet next to the bridge exit. All other personnel were battered, bruised, and wounded in one way or another – some were burned, some had large gashes like Weng. No one had been left unscathed.
"Sally …," an engineering technician said, his face deathly pale, "…Sally … there's a report ... there are mobile dolls coming this way…"
Before she had a chance to react, a third and final assault against the shuttle caused the ship to tremble and shake in midair, as if with palsy – then suddenly, every electrical panel flared simultaneously. The control consoles had sparks leaping and cascading from them, looking very much like large Roman candles. An acrid haze drifted in the air as the electrical fires consumed everything in their path and burned themselves out, leaving the command center in smoky semi-darkness.
Hoping against hope that the emergency channel was still operational, Sally limped to her command station and swiped at a small flange hidden under the main panel, then leaned close and spoke into a hidden transmitter. "All hands - abandon ship after landfall. Take all necessary gear from your station and leave." She closed her eyes for an instant - gods, nothing is every easy, is it - then turned to see her second at his station, vainly fighting for control. "Do your best - find us a suitable location for landing."
He snarled at his smoking controls, pounding at them with burned fingers. "I'm trying to take us over to the clearing by that small stand of trees—"
—when there was a sudden, jarring, gut-wrenching *crunch* as the nose of the shuttle slammed into the forest, along with one more large, smashing force that crushed and buckled the left side of the ship.
As she lay on the floor, her legs curiously immobile and her awareness slipping away, Sally was positive she heard Lady Une walk onto the bridge of her ship and murmur, "Treize-sama … will be pleased."
Then darkness surrounded her, and she slipped into unconsciousness.
Tapestry - Chapter 1
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The actions of the five Gundams were a direct reflection of the will of all the colonies. The Gundams were Mobile Suits created to deal with the threat posed to the colonies by OZ, a secret organization hidden inside the Federation Armed Forces. After Colony Year 195, OZ finally emerged as the leading force in history. OZ's leader, Treize Khushrenada, carried out massive operations to devastate and take over the Federation Armed Forces. Having been tricked into the confrontation, bloody battles between OZ and the colonies' five Mobile Suits began....
...however...
...as the gundam pilots and their supporters defiantly screamed and sprayed bullets at OZ, more than just general interest in their activities was kindled in the minds and souls of their opponents. It was precisely due to the fierceness of their battles, the challenge of their untamed spirits and their untapped potential as pure warriors that they they appeared so special... and desirable... to an elite few.
And to those few beings who were aware, it became rather obvious rather quickly that a major elemental force – something far deeper and more insidious in scope than nearly any other power on Earth – had separated himself from the predictable patterns of human warfare and was now watching the newcomers, unfeigned predatory interest gleaming in his bronze eyes.
As his considerable attention turned toward the pilots and those beings surrounding them, he narrowed his focus, honed his concentration ... and found an unexpected, priceless treasure...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Huge, smoking hulks that were blasted mobile suits littered the battlefield. The ruins of machines belonging to warriors less skilled than the Gundam pilots lay half buried in sand dunes for miles in every direction, vital electronic parts blown apart, exposed to the abrasive effects of sand and wind.
Hardened OZ and rebel soldiers alike gaped in astonished shock when Dr. J's likeness flashed across the viewscreens of their mobile suits. And although those pilots did not know it, they were not alone; their plight was broadcast live to virtually every location on Earth, to anyone with a viable plasma screen. Dr. J's supporters - angry, cold-eyed colony rebels - literally pirated the airwaves, jammed all the signals across the globe they could and replaced them with their own.
Immediately after the scientist's astounding declaration - that he was the only person attacking OZ, not the rest of the colonies - the perspective of the satellite feed changed. Dr. J's picture dissolved and gave way to a view of Gundam 01; its hatch opened and a slight male figure stepped out, his thin shoulders squared and set, his expression unreadable. A riot of dark brown hair covered his head and fell across eyes that were as steady and cool as if cast from stainless steel. Wedged firmly in his right hand with his thumb held directly over the button was a small detonator, its casing flipped open.
"A boy..." Zechs Marqueis stared unblinking at the viewscreen, his hands stilled on Tallgeese's control board, his mouth completely dry. "That - little boy - that child - is Gundam 01's pilot?!"
Very deliberately, Heero Yuy walked to the end of the catwalk and extended his right arm in front of his chest. With his chin raised and his face a mask of calm certainty, the pilot took a deep breath, locked his gaze on some remote area in front of his machine that only he could see and clearly intoned, "Mission. Acknowledged." There was no change of expression on his face - no flicker of fear, of relief, of anger, or even regret - as his thumb deliberately struck the detonator switch.
Yuy's gundam exploded with a deafening roar. His body, hurled from the catwalk of the vessel by forces strong enough to rupture the ship's hull, tumbled violently in midair with millions of scalding pieces of gundanium alloy before plummeting to the ground. Chunks of debris and molten metal rained down on the desert, heated silver streaks ravaging the coarse sand of the dunes immediately below. The concussive force of the blast flattened nearly every structure in the immediate area that wasn't made of an amalgam created in outer space, designed to take that kind of punishment.
The bystanders – those eyewitnesses in mobile suits and gundams and those watching via the satellite link — were struck dumb by the spectacle as the enormity of Yuy's casual sacrifice slowly bled into their consciousness.
"The 01…" started Lieutenant Noin, her face turning a shade paler in the unearthly glow of the computer equipment .
"….blew itself up…" finished Lady Une, staring. "Destroying the gundam in exchange for the colonies…?"
Noin closed her eyes briefly, acknowledging the pain that pushed against her throat. "Killing himself so easily ... without hesitation ..." He looked so vulnerable, yet fought so fiercely ... as if this time was his last ... The officer was caught between her admiration for the pilot's single-mindedness and exasperation at his futile efforts to stop gundam technology from falling into their hands.
Fool, Noin thought grimly. We would have had the information anyway; if not from you, then from someone else. You people are too idealistic for your own good.
Another officer was working hard to bring the rest of OZ's hardware and software back on line. The force of the explosion had completely overwhelmed many of their internal systems, and had literally blown everything offline except for visuals of the battle site.
"The remaining gundams are leaving the battleground, ma'am." The soldier squinted at the plasma screen, counting the number of large mobile suits still on the battlefield, determined to account for each and every one. He glanced across at his superior officer, wanting to insure that Une heard his report.
Hatred and loathing, thick and heavy, stared back at the soldier from Une's eyes. The poor man swallowed and blinked, not wanting to believe what he saw; he had to be wrong, there was no possible way that the colonel would permit herself to be anything less than professional with anyone under her command ... Her gaze drifted across his body, barely registering his physical presence before reacting to the news that the battleground was clearing out.
My failure ... is YOUR fault, she thought, hating and blaming the retreating forms of Zechs Marqueis and the other OZ operators for her inability to yet again capture the rebellious gundams and their pilots. ALL your fault.
I've been cheated ... and I've let His Excellency down ... again .... Remorse edged with shame tinged her thoughts as she watched the small screen in front of her. Unable to express her true feelings, Une allowed her disappointment to turn to anger and resentment in a moment.
"Don't think that I'll let you get away like this, gundams!" she raged, her eyes unpleasantly small and narrowed. "And you, too, Lieutenant Noin!"
Noin glanced over at her commanding officer, one hand holding her small comm headset to the right side of her head. Quietly, she spoke into the transmitter, listened for a response, then nodded. Slipping the headset from the back of her ear, she unclipped the microphone from her jacket and held the equipment in her right hand, tilting her head to look at Une. "Colonel ... it's His Excellency, Treize. On the comm set. For you."
At the mention of Treize's name, a completely different set of emotions flashed across the colonel's face. His Excellency inspired loyalty in his staff - some said he inspired it to the point of fanaticism - but it was loyalty, and Lady Une was unquestionably dog loyal to the general.
However, this expression was one that Noin could not identify, and it left the veteran officer feeling cold and unsettled. She anticipated emotions such as hopeful expectation mingled with worshipful adoration, considering it was Lady Une thinking about His Excellency - and if that was all that was involved, Noin would have turn her attention to other matters.
What bothered Noin was the strange, possessive gleam in Une's eyes, coupled with a dark, shivery something that settled in her gaze when Noin told her the General was on the other end of the connection. Plus, it was that certain twist to the Lady's lips that heightened Une's already intense look to something truly frightening.
"Give it to me!"
Une lunged at Noin, grabbing at her adjunct's right hand, trying to wrench the comm equipment from her subordinate's fingers in her haste to hear His Excellency's words. Didn't that woman understand? She needed to hear him now, NOW—
Anticipating Une's move, Noin lightly sidestepped, slapping Une's hand harmlessly to the side. As the colonel, enraged, drew herself erect to demand the headset, Noin held her hand slightly off to the side with the earpiece visible between her forefinger and thumb, stared directly into Une's eyes, and enunciated each word slowly so there would be absolutely no mistake in the delivery of His Excellency's message to Lady Une.
"Colonel - he said, 'do everything more elegantly.' Be more elegant, Lady."
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Clearly, OZ fought explosive battles against the colonies' Gundam mobile suits; but OZ also sought out Earthbound rebels as eagerly as it squashed rebellions off-planet…
In a mountainous area of Central Asia, within the borders of what used to be called China, a peace-orientated leader of a small country was assassinated. He had advocated the demilitarization of the region and stood up to challenge the existing military rule. Unfortunately, a coup d'etat was orchestrated against him by the Federation Armed Forces; and now, as OZ started dismembering the Federation, many independent countries faced bloody civil wars. ... however ...
... neither the Federation nor OZ could have predicted the unintended, far-reaching effects their actions had. Not only were the common people of the region solidly against the Federation and Colonel Bund, the man who led the murderous coup - but the actions of the OZ organization over a relatively short period of time, culminating with the wholesale slaughter of the leading pacificts at New Edwards Base, earned them the eternal enmity of every living, thinking human being throughout that country.
Every person, that is, that had any contact whatsoever with ex-Major Sally Po, late of the south JAP Point Federation Medical Center – late, in fact, of the entire Federation Armed Forces. An unrepentant AWOL Federation medical officer turned rebellion leader, Sally vowed to spread the word and fight for the freedom of her people against the Federation and against OZ, and never to return to either unless forced to do so under armed military escort.
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That, in fact, was how rebels at a makeshift Chinese revolutionary base deep in the mountainous section of Central Asia came to surround a small vidscreen in the middle of the day, their eyes glittering and their faces intense, completely absorbed in the spontaneous broadcast from the colonies. When Dr. J started to speak, they immediately gave him their full, rapt attention –
"Attacking innocent colonies?" the scientist had asked, his tone openly hostile, his image scowling. "What an inhumane strategy that is. You guys will indeed do anything to achieve your goal... I have no choice. I hereby declare that we surrender."
"Good." Lady Une's voice drifted over the connection, cold and harsh, a grating counterpoint to the doctor's tone. "I accept your surrender. Have the Gundams disarm and surrender to us immediately."
The old man's face was unreadable. "We surrender. But we will not hand over the Gundams. I repeat. We surrender. But we will not hand over the Gundams."
- and when Heero Yuy's gundam exploded, not one of them flinched. They understood this part of the war much too well; to a man, they understood. One might give in and surrender to the enemy, but one never gave up.
Sally sat quietly in the back of the room, a woman in green army fatigues, her braided hair draped across her shoulders, watching the vidscreen and listening to a communications unit with several other people, frowning in concentration. She, too, could understand and appreciate why Heero sacrificed himself without question.
"What's wrong, Sally?" one of her men asked, glancing at her.
"Nothing," she replied, looking at the vidscreen with a strange, closed expression. "Why do you ask?"
"Sorry – you return to your homeland after being gone for so many years, only to get involved in such a mess …"
"Don't be," she said, the ghost of a smile on her lips. "I was the one who decided to come home." And it wasn't a moment too soon – I was this close to losing what little humanity I had left, she thought, somber again.
Several other people monitoring the transmissions from the comm system looked at each other quickly, then over to her. "Sally," the chief technician murmured in a low voice, "you should really hear this. You can't hear this on the vidtape - this is coming directly from OZ headquarters. Our mole thought it was important to place pickups all over the building, so that we could hear them."
She nodded, sighed, and lifted the handset to her ear, listening to the conversation.
"Colonel … it's His Excellency, Treize."
Someone was speaking to Colonel Une, second in command of all OZ forces under Khushrenada. Not surprising, she thought.
It was the next words that left her staring. "... I don't believe this." Incredulous, she motioned to the others surrounding the equipment to snap their headsets on, turning the volume up on hers.
"Colonel - he said, 'do everything more elegantly.' Be more elegant, Lady."
Sally stared at the communications equipment as if it had morphed into a snake right in front of her. "Be more elegant? What kind of message is that? What does he think this is, a garden party?" Angrily shaking her head, Sally scowled at her companions, thinking about Heero's loss in the desert. "People died there, and they certainly didn't do it for that prick's amusement." Her eyes were cold and furious as she thought about the price other rebels from their cell had paid on the battlefield, only to be casually tossed away by one stray comment.
"Major Sally." A squat, dark haired man was standing at her elbow, quietly waiting for her attention.
"I'm not 'Major' Sally anymore, Weng. Just Sally."
The rebel paused, looking at her. "Well. Sally. We have information that Bund and a number of his lieutenants will be in our region within the next several days. We think we should make plans to give him a proper welcome." Several of the other rebels looked at Weng and nodded, narrowed eyes abruptly slitted and cold in their weathered faces, mouths drawn in tight, compressed lines. There was absolutely no love lost between the rebels and the new regime.
"Do you know have the particulars of his visit - where he will be staying, how long, with whom, and the like?"
"I wouldn't be of much use to you if I didn't, Maj- ah, pardon ... Sally." A small data disk was sitting in the middle of his outstretched hand.
"Thank you, Weng." Her eyes flashing, Sally took the disk, stood, and walked to the front of the room, motioning for Weng to join her. Most of the rebel section leaders were there, huddled around the vidscreen and shaking their heads, watching the gundams walk away from the battlefield.
"Excuse me, gentlemen," Sally said, moving into their midst to push the disc into a waiting data port. "I'm afraid we must get back to work. Colonel Bund's going to be here sometime during the next several days ..." Tapping several keys on the machine, Sally continued, "... and this disk is going to tell us where he will be."
A murmur of assent rumbled around the group. "Good. Let's see it," one of the section leaders growled. "He's going to pay for what he did. My entire village was razed on Bund's orders."
"He ordered the deaths of hundreds, Chang Weng. Not just the people in your village," Sally replied as she pressed a final button and moved away from the machine. "We've all suffered horribly; we must remember that our strength lies in working together. It is only by working together that we will drive out the invaders and take back our lives and our freedom." Sally never raised her voice, but quiet strength with a backbone of steel shone through her words.
The men nodded, Chan emphatically. "Together, then," he said, his jaw set like granite. "We will reclaim what was stolen from us."
Sally nodded back, her expression tight and closed. Using the remote, she disconnected the system from the world net and started the decryption program to process and make sense of the huge columns of zeros and ones on the data disk.
As she watched the output roll across the monitor as the program continued to work, Sally thought of the men surrounding her and those out in the field. She was proud of them; they fought without reservation, without thought for personal safety; considering, instead, the people they were trying to protect.
Just as suddenly, an intense, hungry expression shone in her eyes as she thought about the enemies they tried to eliminate. Soon ... very soon. We have started the revolution, and will not stop until our voices have been heard from one end of the country to the other. You will not hold power for long ...
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Several days later ...
"Rebel ship. You have five minutes to come to a complete halt, disembark your crew and disengage your weapons. Failure to comply with these orders will result in your immediate termination."
The woman's disembodied voice reverberated across the decks of the shuttle, rattling empty compartments and causing most of the rebel crew to stare at the loudspeakers embedded in the ship's walls. Those assigned to the bridge looked at each other and then at Sally Po, waiting for her reaction.
She scowled in response, completely annoyed. Her hands flew across her own command board; her soft voice carried across the clamor on the bridge. "Communications - do not allow video or audio feed with that vessel. Rather, encode and send this message back to Une: 'Request received – regretfully, we are unable to comply.' And then cut her frequency off completely."
"Yes, ma'am!" Concentrating on his task, the man quickly pounded out the instructions on his board, carrying out Sally's orders. From long experience, he realized that the message would infuriate Lady Une - and hopefully, that would push her to make some careless mistakes during the upcoming battle. Their small force needed every advantage they could muster; otherwise, OZ's soldiers would completely crush them.
The rest of the crew went back to their tasks with much the same attitude, heartened by Sally's obvious calm and poise in the face of such tremendous odds. Sally was the epitome of calm and coolness under pressure; there was nothing that Sally asked her soldiers to do that she would not do herself.
"Preferred escape route, Sally?"
"Heading 6, 3, 1, using the base as the zero vector," she replied, glancing at her navigator then sliding her gaze back to her screen. "We'll take five minutes to offload casualties, then five minutes to draw Une's fire away from them."
Nodding, the navigator relayed the orders to the rest of the crew, announcing a shipwide evacuation for all personnel with the exception of the assigned bridge personnel.
The shuttle landed in a small clearing, close to the bunker but not next to it. The area was extremely difficult to see - in fact, because of the mountainous terrain in that part of China, most pilots missed the strip completely. Sally skillfully put them down, leaving no room on any side the shuttle for the OZ ships hovering above them to land. All hatches were immediately flung open and the rebel fighters poured out, carrying their dead and wounded into the forest, melting into the landscape.
"We could use a diversion about now - that gundam pilot friend of your could give us some relief," suggested one of the rebel fighters, scanning his position on the bridge as he looked sideways at Sally.
Sally shrugged her shoulders, smiling faintly as she thought of Wufei. "I'm not even sure where he is - and at any rate, it needs to be his decision to join us, not mine to demand that he fight with us. But we still have a couple of tricks we can use." Watching her monitor, she nodded once, decisively. "It's time. All entrances have been sealed. Secure all hands for liftoff."
"Yes, ma'am!" The navigator made the announcement, only seconds before a large explosion rocked the ship.
Gasping, Sally clutched the controls and pulled, yanking the nose of the shuttle up as she opened the throttle and drove the engines with a roar. Braced at their positions, the skeleton crew grimly hung on as the shuttle rocketed into the air, the internal gravitational forces slamming the crew into their seats.
"Weng - you're on weapons - are the lasers on line and powered up?" Sally shouted as she piloted their way past several OZ mobil suits, twisting over and around the larger machines.
"Aye, Sally, they are," Weng yelled, thumbing several switches on his board. "The weapons systems are operational and ready for firing – but we're down to half power overall. That last blast cut out our left rotor."
"All right – brace yourselves, everyone – it's going to get rough." Sally whipped the shuttle into a tight spiral run, spinning across the evening sky. An enormous groaning sound resonated throughout the bridge, protesting maneuvers suitable for smaller planes and vessels, not a cargo shuttle running a gauntlet of enemy mobile suits.
The OZ mobile suits spread out in response to her move, ringing her trajectory like large diamonds on an invisible string, and started firing point blank.
"All right, Weng - open the auxiliary bay doors now and release the cargo."
The dark haired man pushed a small level on his console forward and watched his readouts with a satisfied smirk. "The cargo has been delivered, Sally, in standard fan formation … we should see and hear the results right about—"
Sudden, earsplitting explosions rent the air behind them, buffeting the ship with large sonic waves and mechanical debris.
"—now," he finished with a grin.
Her eyes narrowed in pleasure. "Never thought I'd find a use for magnetic proximity mines. They're just so - attractive - to OZ." She grinned evilly as she punned the last sentence. "How many mobile suits are left?"
"Too many." Weng shook his head, peering at the screen, calculating the odds of escape and coming up short. "But we'll take lots of 'em with us."
"That we will," she agreed, losing her smile. "There's another set of mines on the other side – are you ready to deploy?"
"Aye, ma'am," he promptly responded, reaching for the control.
At that very instant something really huge slammed into the shuttle, shaking the structure of the vessel until the fuselage moaned. Smoke billowed from every doorway – emergency lights flashed, klaxons rang, and the scrubbers tried to contain the acrid stench flooding the area. The bridge personnel, flung to the far corners of the room, hauled themselves back to their positions, bleeding, blinking and gasping in surprise.
"All stations, RESPOND! Emergency procedures in place—" Sally managed to yell before another volley hit the ship, tossing her to the deck as easily as a child threw pebbles in a stream.
"We can't take much more of this!" Weng snapped, a large gash open and bleeding on the side of his head. He ignored the blood dripping down the side of his face as he pulled himself back to his console, beating out a small electrical fire on the side of the board.
Sparks and wires rained on their heads as Sally crawled back to her station, only to be greeted by a large holograph of Une from the waist up, pink ribbons and all, staring balefully at her.
"If you do not surrender, you will all die. It's simple. Surrender and live, Sally Po. Unless you WANT all those lives on your head…" Her glare bored right into Sally's head.
The rebel leader stared back at the transparent woman. "Go to hell, Une. Consider that my last request to you." Squinting, Sally muttered under her breath, "Quick - target that signal and send a blast back along it…"
"Very well, Po. That was your last chance," Une snapped. Her signal fizzled and died, the holograph winking out of existence.
The navigator reported woodenly, "No blast was fired at Colonel Une's ship, Sally, because we couldn't get a fix on her location. The transmission was too short."
Cursing her luck and Une, Sally looked around the bridge, panting. Smoke was still wafting across the floor, coming in thin waves from the doorway. The Trunda twins – engineering geniuses both – were obviously dead, crushed under a cabinet next to the bridge exit. All other personnel were battered, bruised, and wounded in one way or another – some were burned, some had large gashes like Weng. No one had been left unscathed.
"Sally …," an engineering technician said, his face deathly pale, "…Sally … there's a report ... there are mobile dolls coming this way…"
Before she had a chance to react, a third and final assault against the shuttle caused the ship to tremble and shake in midair, as if with palsy – then suddenly, every electrical panel flared simultaneously. The control consoles had sparks leaping and cascading from them, looking very much like large Roman candles. An acrid haze drifted in the air as the electrical fires consumed everything in their path and burned themselves out, leaving the command center in smoky semi-darkness.
Hoping against hope that the emergency channel was still operational, Sally limped to her command station and swiped at a small flange hidden under the main panel, then leaned close and spoke into a hidden transmitter. "All hands - abandon ship after landfall. Take all necessary gear from your station and leave." She closed her eyes for an instant - gods, nothing is every easy, is it - then turned to see her second at his station, vainly fighting for control. "Do your best - find us a suitable location for landing."
He snarled at his smoking controls, pounding at them with burned fingers. "I'm trying to take us over to the clearing by that small stand of trees—"
—when there was a sudden, jarring, gut-wrenching *crunch* as the nose of the shuttle slammed into the forest, along with one more large, smashing force that crushed and buckled the left side of the ship.
As she lay on the floor, her legs curiously immobile and her awareness slipping away, Sally was positive she heard Lady Une walk onto the bridge of her ship and murmur, "Treize-sama … will be pleased."
Then darkness surrounded her, and she slipped into unconsciousness.