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.