Zechs: "(Disguised voice) Hello, this is the Saint Gabriel School Board. Is Mariemea Kushreinada here?"
Mariemea: "(Nervous) Yes?"
Zechs: "Well, Mariemea, I regret to inform you... how can I say this?"
Mariemea: "What?"
Zechs: "You see, Mariemea, Our school is grading at an unusually high curve- "
Mariemea: "And?"
Zechs: "You've fallen to the low end of the curve."
Mariemea: (Shocked) What?"
Zechs: "I'm sorry, but under state law, we must segregate you to a more 'peer oriented' environment."
Mariemea: "(Expletive) No! You can't!"
Zechs: "Now calm down, it's just a holiday prank from the Lightning Count!"
Mariemea: "Uncle Zechs, is that you?"
Havana
"That's right, it's me, Marie. I'm not sure a class could be fielded to put you at the bottom, or so the records I lifted off the server say." Zechs stood toweling off in the big bedroom of his pricey beachfront residence, making a long distance social call.
"You didn't use Preventer resources improperly, did you, Uncle?" No one in the Earth Sphere measured up to "Uncle Trowa and Aunt Katie," but Zechs sensed that the girl genuinely labeled him as a cool guy. Yeah, he's comfortable with that.
"You
know what they teach us undercover types can really turn against the
system," he deadpanned, "for instance, whenever we're accused
of bending the rules, we know how to say things like," he thought
it over, "I have no recollection of any chain of events leading to
this alleged breach of procedure."
Adolescent
laugher filled his ear.
"You had me going about that school trouble, you know! So, I here you're touring the vacation spots- in the companionship of any ardent colleagues?" 'So observant these precocious feminine youths are. My, am I so transparent, that even the obscuring haze of an ocean can't mask me?' At least his composed telephoned voice could keep cool.
"I think you understand the situation, kiddo, but if you know we're both vacationing at the same time, the dots are simple to connect."
'Yeah, really cool, but now I sound like a real player. (Yeah, Mack, I'm here, she's here, you can do the math.) Now I sound like a real sleaze.' His skin undulated, sickened by the thought.
"Oh my Gosh!" Oh, Zechs couldn't take it back, but could he salvage his reputation some way.
"I had a proposition for her, and we set the date for sometime in May. You think she'll pick you as a bridesmaid? Any chance?" 'Yeah, without an ounce of self-deprecating sarcasm, I can say that was a really smooth repair.'
"I can only hope," she gushed, fully interned by the exciting prospect, "could you please ask her about it?" Zechs chuckled.
"I'll introduce the thought, but listen; you must do me an important favor, these are joyous times for young women, and one of the greatest joys is personally breaking the news to everyone, so whenever you feel the urge to share this privileged knowledge to others, absorb yourself in reading a bridal magazine instead."
"Uh-huh,
Uncle, I give you my word I'll keep my lips shut! Gosh, this is SO
cool! Thanks for everything, and good luck to you,
Uncle!"
Treize
always thought of the romantic imagination of a young girl as a
special gift from God, and managed to bring his conviction into
conversation many times. Zechs finally understands his enthusiasm on
the subject.
'Girls aren't so different after all. I can see now that relationships are the sports of women. Gee, I can equate her feelings with those of a football crowd cheering for their team.'
"Don't
mention it, and thanks for you support. By the way, things sound
awfully crazy in the world; are things worse than they seem from your
vantage?"
Zechs
heard a razor breath.
"Man, you had me forget all about it, and that's all anyone could think about all day! You know what? Lady didn't come pick me up as she always does at the end of the day, and I had to stay at a friend's dormitory here. It's really cool, though. I called her after arriving, and she actually went along with it!" Une has been severely protective since taking custody, so this was a bit surprising.
"Oh yeah?" Zechs internationally asked an open-ended question.
"Yeah, she even pressed me to end the call shortly. This is crazy tough, you know, what a Director has to put up with. I couldn't even stomach some of the things they said on the news." But she had to ask.
"Is it true?" Zechs felt his limbic system spike.
"Is what true?" She stuttered a broken word, chattering something.
"Siberia, AC 195, I mean." Oh! It hit the fan! He felt evasive.
"What about Siberia, Marie?" Evade like mad!
"The
scat on the television said she tried to kill a lot of people, like a
massacre? She tried massacring a lot of civilians?"
That
about Siberia.
"Marie,
things were more complicated than that," he heard Noin slip into
the room, and tried to steel himself for trouble, "it didn't
happen, Marie, they're misrepresenting the facts, the way bad
journalists always do. In Siberia, sigh , we were all
really tense in a fight with the Gundams, and, a question arose about
the rules of engagement."
Mariemea
interrupted.
"They said Ms. Noin stood up to her."
"They
got that right, Marie. Um, understand that Oz formally labeled the
Gundams as terrorist combatants, and many of us believed that they
had popular support in the colonies. I'll try to gather my
thoughts. Lady Une cornered some Gundam supporters in a populated
area, and she believed that it was prudent to hold them hostage with
some really powerful weaponry. You asked about Ms. Noin's role in
stopping her? Yeah, she confronted Une about it, and so did I, so
Noin kicked the question over Une's head up to Treize, and he sided
with Noin and me. Listen, that's all there is too this; the media's
just trumping it up, so don't worry about it."
He
felt some familiar arms cuddle around him. 'Good, Noin will
corroborate this.'
"Hey,
Mariemea! I've got some welcome company. Would you like to ask her
about this?"
Zechs
traded the phone for a kiss.
"Mariemea?
This is Noin. Zechs sums it up pretty well. There was no power
struggle in play here, just a messy disagreement that Colonial Une
and I peacefully resolved, by delegating to His Excellency. We were
both pretty stewed over it at the time, but neither of us even
thought it worth going to a tribunal over."
Zechs
hovered close, and heard a sniffle.
"Thanks, Ms. Noin, I'm okay now. Bye." The connection broke, and Noin set the phone down.
"Why would someone bring that up?" Noin addressed Zechs, bewildered.
"Some Senators are now openly going after the Director, and Mariemea say's Une's burning a lot of midnight oil hunting down all the rats- not in those words, mind you." 'It figures,' her body language indicated. She rested her head on the Count's moist shoulder, and searched her feelings.
"More
than a year ago, I couldn't say this, but I sympathize with Lady
Une now. As the Director, you're the head of the serpent... but
let's just worry about ourselves for a while. This is OUR vacation
time, at least that's what the theoreticians decree."
She
felt her man's chest twinge in humor.
"I
was thinking, Noin, Mariemea could use a lift from some cheerful
news, and nothing uplifts the wretched young girl's soul like the
offer to be a bridesmaid at a good friend's wedding," he leaned
back, reeling her in with his expressive face, "will you consider
it?"
She took a
sudden interest in the flowing curtains in the distance, brushed her
vision back to him.
"I can't imagine how exited she'd be by that, and she is too old for being the flower girl, is that not a fact?" She reasoned very judiciously, and gave an enthused shrug.
"Oh
I'll let her do it," she parted a feral smile, "but be warned,
I plan to dress her up like the young Kirsten Dunst in that vampire
film."
In other
words, a immaculate nineteenth-century ballroom doll gown, with an
ankle-length flowing skirt, and ribbons, an absurd number of ribbons
serving no purpose whatsoever.
"The trick is not overdressing her gown, because the other bridesmaids must wear matching attire," she digressed, "where do you keep those kite's?"
Sultan Mehmed Bridge
Sections
of Constantinople's world famous forty-foot seawall remains intact
and fully restored in the fall of the year A.C 196. It's
significantly gnawed down like old eyeteeth, stunting the current
height a few feet in places, but the thick stonework still displays
some relevance one day after the Thanksgiving
holiday.
Turkish
patrol cruisers scurry cross-country to an operation point left of
the bridge, accelerating well beyond regulation speed down to the
shore wall, outracing the correcting aim of small-arms and bigger
enemy weaponry stationed in the Asian Fortress on the other side of
the water.
The
cars deemed the wall less a hazard than the wave of steel and
tungsten coming in, so by mutual ascent, all units impacted their
defense fast enough to eject the airbags.
The
blunt force crash caused injury; the kind people are hospitalized for
every day on every continent, but the blue-suited defenders declared
that servicemen all over do things like jump out of perfectly good
airplanes, and sometimes break legs, because it beats the odds of
being shot if you walk into a hot area. Everyone on this shift knew
beforehand that the world would soon idolize them the way they do
paratroopers, and give them the no-brainer title of "crash
dummies," and probably make a feature film of their job on this
day, plus a book, and a few of them would tour the talk show circuit.
They'd probably endorse a car and some body armor, a gun, and they
would all serve as recruitment tools. They expected these things,
because these things have happened to their mentors, and more
importantly, they believed they were as entitled to it as all those
others who've had the royal treatment.
They
crashed into a wall, and for that, they'd be national
heroes.
Driver and passenger doors jarred open. The doors told stories of enemy strength. Paint chipped off, stress-cracks crowned holes, and various other Braille dents told them that the soothsayer, Highwayman One, knew what he'd said about the gun types.
The senior officer amid all the other responders was a captain with a Serbian name, Franklin Brankovic, a tanned and tall man with the typical pattern of hair loss for a man of his age. His uniform fit on him like those scene in the recruiting posters, but his sun-damaged face and bald spot diminished him markedly. He compensated by keeping a close buzz cut, and the effect worked well enough to make him reasonably photogenic. The close hair held all the dark color it had in his youth, and his safe body weight slimmed his face more than other officers his age.
"The right flank, watch after it!" A small band of enemy took aim from a high stone watchtower, holing cruiser roofs with a well-placed RPK, another Russian gun.
"Gunship
One, keep low and strafe this watchtower for us," he radioed,
"first tower to our right, top floor."
Both
sides heard a whirling buzz of a four-rotor helicopter gunship, a
slim and black model reminiscent of black fiberglass aliens of the
Ridley Scott movies.
The
up-gunned Apache rocketed a killer blast every other second from its
prone position a bare fifteen feet above Turkey's grass. The tower
severs the indicted enemy location as a concession to the Apache's
demands; and next came the really tricky part.
"Great work, Gunship One, but now I want you to show me if that up- gunned Longbow has the mettle to do what it's famous for."
"Roger that," the pilot coolly replied, transferring the whirlybird to a distant firing position, and then inching the top-mounted sensor scope over the ridge.
"Alright, the 'UFO' isn't taking any fire!" The bird is five miles out, and it's peeking over a fence with a gizmo- laden periscope, but even from this unlikely position, the gunner simply aims the missile pylon at a high angle- not so steep the rotor blades will be in trouble- and the tank-busters arc thousands of feet over the bridge and decline on the mortar trucks without hitting the bridge cables.
"I
have them boxed in, but the trucks see the end coming. Jeez, I'm
not going to get them. Sorry, Frank."
Humanoid
bodies of heat scram clear of the smoke-trails, but the Apache gunner
doesn't let them off that easily, and he airbursts the missiles
feet above impact, thus widening the blast radius.
"As
a consolation, we have fewer bad guys out there now," he
deadpanned, "I'm out of guided stuff now, but I could gun them
real good with my dummies," he offered.
"You'll get a chance. Do you think the trucks are broken?" The chopper pilot scratched his nose.
"Yeah,
buddy, both now have broken front axles, and busted tires, too. The
driver seems to be in charge, looks like he really lost his
composure, and is stubbing his finger at me. Yup, I'm ducking away.
Incoming coiled smoke."
Frank
heard two shallow rumbles far to the right.
"I got out, Frank, the SAMS (Surface-to-Air-Missiles) didn't have terrain following capabilities. Listen, I'm serious, Captain. This bird can do a quick strafing run before they even know it, and I even have a big napalm bomb on my tail boom, so I can do anything an attack plane can," he pleaded, "it could cover an insertion to their trench line a few feet in front of them."
'Dangerous,' Captain Brankovic mentally waved it off.
"No doing, flyboy, I want those mortars down, so I'm thinking we should move ahead to support YOU." The captain motioned his buddies in an informal huddle, and kneeled.
"Guys,
we're cops, and we train together all the time. I don't know
about those guys, but I like where we are right now- though a virgin
island in the South Pacific would be nicer- I'm confident we can
take these guys from our defense line here, but we got to press them
hard, understand?"
Yep.
"We
have to keep contact with them, and punish them for not keeping their
heads in the sand. So let's whip out our long rifles, and exchange
fire with them."
He
peered over at the wall corner, and felt pleasure to see some junior
officers methodically discharging .22 Armalite ammunition at the
entrenched enemy.
"They have the idea," he smiled, "we need someone in a close watchtower on our side of the gate," he pointed, "the Preventer liaison from Moscow," some officers looked around, and Brankovic shifted to English, a language common of Preventers.
"Hey,
Stalingrad, you've been teaching us how to shoot? Drag yourself up
that watchtower and show someone else with a scope how it's
done!"
The
Russian, not really named Stalingrad, padded off with his prodigious
disciple among the force.
Frank
turned back toward the junior shooters at the gate, or rather, wall
opening.
"Taking
some sharp shooting is fine, but one of you needs to rock 'n'
roll at all times, or they might just charge us where there ain't a
field of fire!"
The
Serbian-born Turk stepped to his patrol cruiser's trunk and hoisted
out his favorite public relations tool, his riot gun.
"You, you, and you," he pointed, indicating three idle green cops, "I bet you guys can disperse a crowd just fine. Get your riot guns, and I'll be right back." He just got an idea for his towered snipers, and sprinted at all possible speed up their watchtower.
"Captain Brankovich coming up," he announced, "I want one of you guys radioing to my riot shooters," he instructed, pointing out the wide window, "they're going to give indirect fire over the wall, and they'll need some eyes up here." The Russian Preventer liked it.
"Their
disturbance will have another benefit to our favor," he
enigmatically contributed, gapping at the bridge, "we'll just
need a radio and an exclusive channel with your riot
gunners."
The
captain offered his Motorola, settling the arrangement.
The near-catastrophic attack helicopter raid shortened the firing angle for the massive concrete mortars, so that the siege shells fell short into the less tightly packed residences, rather than the tightly populated middle area. Sure, the astronomical property values of the seaside condos made enticing targets, too. But the vision of Job Khalid does not demand a mere high cost in damages, the vision sees blood! The yacht attack generated all the property damage his grand vision called for; now it's time for the other major class, the common man, to turn against Une!
"Elevate
those mortars! How? You see that crank on the trailer? Crank it, you
stupid apes!"
To
all those around, he remained visibly livid as he tread toward the
plowed Thracian soil, where the team's trencher had cut through
earlier, before the very eyes of that fantastic antiterrorist
gizmo.
His guys
kicked their automatic Kalashnikovs aflutter with a few would-be
suicidal cops. If only his guys could fight like men.
He
trod to his western trench, fully oblivious to the Turkish field of
fire. He envisioned it as a cone, and saw himself in the clear.
"Men,
we dug the trench up to that wall for a reason! Now, if you'd just
process the clear and present intention of the cut you're standing
in, you'll see a freedom fighter such as yourselves can safely
crawl to your right, until you get your tails to that wall
there!"
He knew
they heard him- no one could miss his fiery oration, even in a
viscous gunfight. They crawled at once, on hands and knees, erasing
the police datum of targets.
"I'm
right here, smurfs! Now show me if you think you have the testicular
fortitude to take on Job Khalid!"
The
vicinity of junior officers all poked out their own vitriol replies.
His fresh cigarette dangled atop his smiling lower lip, and the
recoil from his launcher slapped it out. His rocket's buckshot
round detonated apon closing five meters of the pack of bodies, and
propelled hundreds of deep- wounding darts and flechettes into all
corners of the human anatomy.
He
discarded the cardboard tube, and sprang ahead to the trench line and
shifted his slung AKMS.
After
clapping off the safety, he deluged wounded and rescuers with his
voluminous drum magazine, and taunted the dying.
"I'm
going to be the end of you, and your mal-informed sense of integrity!
I'm at the gates, and I'm coming through!"
The
drum ran down, but Khalid freed his belt-holstered piece, an Uzi
pistol, like those used by his foe, except with the extended
clip.
"Got
some 'nines' coming in, suckers!" His megaphone voice exclaimed
his macabre chants; interposed mildly by the bucket of "nines" he
poured out.
Job
drew a third piece from the right thigh, a louder arm, a big nasty
magnum revolver, one with a snub nose for a lightning draw. The
hammer fell, and his index finger passed through thin air where a
guard should have been. The gun barked, broadening his psychological
dominance.
He plumed a corpse, vulgarly baptizing the suffering rescuers. He stood primed for a sequel, when Captain Brankovic's riot gunners enacted their first barrage with crowd-dispersing charges.
Surprised,
but ever-calculating, Khalid un-pouched a banana clip for his AK, and
reasoned the shots only endangered the siege cannons.
He
remained mute, using his mouth in the more useful role of air intake,
and rounded the barrier, ducked in, let honed instincts carry through
his aim, hosed a small pocket of space, and ducked back out, as seen
in training videos.
"I
have operation memento sic here, not you," he shrieked in
poor
English.
"Finish the job, my soldiers!"
Madagascar
The
Earth Sphere naval forces like isolating bases on small
islands,
but these
arrangements make for horrifically long journeys. The
world's
"unsinkable carrier" rests in Cyprus, the major North
Atlantic
base is in Iceland,
Garcia covers the middle Indian Ocean, the Canary
Islands
and Corsica share some burden further west, in the
western
Atlantic, Porto Rico
and the Panama Canal Zone handle naval affairs.
Pearl
Harbor in the Hawaiian Islands complete the chain.
The
islands are useful, but in no way sufficient. Panama,
of
course, is
inland, and so is the canal base at Port Said. Rostov
is
another inland
canal base, and others exist. The world now learns
that
narrow
straits are also vulnerable at choke points like Istanbul.
One
base tasked
with tying the world together is sometimes referred to
as
"the other
Diego," Diego Suarez, a deep harbor at the tip
of
Madagascar.
In
A.C. 196, Suarez acts as a hub between Victoria, "Diego
1,"
and Cape
Town, South Africa, for stressed freight carriers and
non-
nuclear boats
operating in the Cape Town-Diego-Victoria triangle,
and
sometimes
receives troubled voyagers from as far as Barckley,
in
Antarctica,
though Cape Town is usually the better detour from the
frigid
land. Suarez looks after a large portion of the world
sonar
network,
keeps up a UHF station, a satellite downlink station,
the
local militia,
a small flotilla of anti-sub and anti-mine ships and
helos,
customs vessels, a squadron of observation balloons, and
takes
part in
regional missile defense.
They
have a pair of ships taking part in the "lost
fleet"
search,
but are safely keeping their patrol and customs fleet
docked.
The base
keeps no submarines, but have their lone Pisces
squadron,
supplemented
by an odd Cancer, in a scrimmage with "the other
Diego's"
more
complete taskforce.
The
local economy centers around supplying the Earth
Sphere's
paper
demand with a vigorous unregulated logging industry. These
guys
aren't
dumb, they put a high investment in recharging the
industry
with
potted trees, and they pitch in a little time and
effort
providing
water and trifle with organic fertilizer, with
occasional
supplements
of "miracle" western fertilizer blends.
One
company south of Suarez even chose not to lay concrete
on
their logging
road, so it could faster recover to a natural state
one
day.
This
company, 'The Greater African Logger Cooperation,' won
a
contract to
clear out a firebreak for the Earth Sphere
Government's
auxiliary
Diego base.
Things
worked well; the World Government paid the usual
inflated
prices
well above the natural local economy price just to clear
brush,
and the
co-op robbed them again by selling "bargain" wooden
furniture
and
trinkets. They further sold them charcoal at special events,
like
yesterday's
Thanksgiving holiday, and the coming Christmas-Chanukah
and
New Year's Day.
Yeah,
the Sphere government people pay well, but nothing like
these
strange mercenaries hanging around the logging zone. And
for
what? They pay
a fortune just to blend in with the co-op loggers- they
even
do free logging work!
A
small one-seat car roles itself downhill. An owner chases
it,
and begs Navy
sentries for help stopping it. They head it off, digging
in
their regulation heels for traction, and WHAM! The
one-seater
blooms
orange, bleeds oily smoke, and exhales intense heat.
The
car-owner pops grenades through the gate, and more
guards
rush to
meet more grenades.
Bomb
chunking completed, Katushka rocket mortars land on
important
kiosks with laser precision.
On
the left flank, a militant fires an RPG-18 round into a
tree
stump, and
supervising soldiers fly through the air with
cinematic
flair.
The militant logger jogs and scales the base wall, hits
his
lapel radio.
"Fire
in the hole."
Rumbles
continue, and a paper wafts through the scene.
"Enemy
attack!"
Soldiers
on duty crawl from wreckage previously demolished by
the
smart mortar
rounds, but the general response is more orderly from
the
hardened
shelters.
Improperly
stored kerosene-based jet fuel sets aflame the
airfield,
lifting nauseating fumes into nostrils.
Small
arms clashes break out at the attacked gate, and at
the
scaled wall.
The frontal assaulter persuades the gate to swing open,
and
a renegade loaded log truck backs through the void. Even
the
larger caliber
tools cannot harm the cab and driver through the bundle
of
tree trunks, and it backs completely in with no fear.
Now
for the surprise. By an unknown mechanism, the straps
release
their hold on the bundle, and they scatter off the end
and
catch fire for
no visible reason.
The
trucker shifts out of reverse, and the stacks puff
putridly.
He veers
violently left, toward a hardened bunker, even as the
toppled
soldiers
regain their footing. He passes the target, jackknifes
left,
losing the
trailer, and guns his cab ahead through some thick
rubble.
The
trailer, even after losing the logs, still held a hefty tank
of
some of that
western ammonium nitrate fertilizer, mixed with petrol as
a
slurry bomb.
