Zechs said, "Pause."
The technician paused the display. The image on the screen showed three Aires breaking formation. "What's wrong with this picture?" he asked. "Does someone see it?"
He scanned the room. His eyes touched Noin's for a moment; in that moment, he saw that she knew the problem. She was showing discretion in not pointing it out. Zechs had no need for the illusion of favoritism, regardless of how obviously skilled she was.
Finally, a soldier named Cunha raised his hand. "Sir, the Aires are all splitting up along the same axis. Yes, each one is going a different direction, but they aren't changing their altitudes, so it's still easy to track them."
Some pride filtered into Zechs' chest, displacing the disappointment that he'd felt when his pilots made the mistake originally. "That's correct. You aren't piloting Leos; you're piloting Aires suits. The Aires operates in three dimensions. If you want to get the most out of this mobile suit, you have to change your habits."
Still, the class is going fairly well, Zechs thought. We're making good progress. We'll be ready just in time for the new year. Strange timing.
"Lieutenant Zechs," called a technician from the back of the room. "There's a call for you from His Excellency."
Zechs frowned, though the mask concealed it. He knows my schedules. He's never interrupted me before. What's going on? "Three minute break," Zechs announced, then walked briskly to the sound room in the back.
"Sir," he said.
"Zechs," Treize said, "how are things going?"
It was a conversational thing to say, and Treize's demeanor was flat. Still, Zechs was getting quite good at reading his superior—the man was anxious about something.
Of course, the call itself was proof of that.
"We should be ready by New Year's," Zechs answered.
"You're going to be in action before that," Treize said. "I don't know when or where—yet. But the Alliance is practically begging for something to happen. This is the consequence of having such a fragmented command structure. The traditional "holiday season" is upcoming, and one part of the Alliance is announcing extra days off and lighter duty. In the meantime, another part of the Alliance has declared that the regional governors in Africa will be touring one another's mandates as a good-will tour. It's a dangerous combination."
Zechs noticed with surprise the touch of bitterness in his superior's voice. Just a touch—but a touch was infinitely more than Zechs had heard before. "Has the Alliance forgotten about the last attack?" asked Zechs. "Did they catch them or what?"
"No progress," said Treize, clearly disappointed. "The aggressors lost them in the mountains, and there's an ongoing campaign to scour the Himalayas. As to who was backing the saboteurs, so far no leads have panned out."
"The Himalayas…" Zechs murmured.
Treize blinked. "Do you have something, my friend?"
"Perhaps," Zechs said. "What other information do you have?"
"Precious little." Treize frowned. "I'll send you the route the goodwill tour is taking."
The image appeared on Zechs' screen alongside Treize's face. Zechs scanned it, then inhaled sharply.
Treize's eyes focused on Zechs. "What?"
"It's Somalia," Zechs said.
"Really? How are you so sure?"
"The troops in Somalia aren't merely garrison troops. They're almost exclusively mobile suit units, and all of them have carrier units so they can be moved around quickly. Somalia is like a depot—whenever there's trouble, Somalia is the first place they pull troops from in order to maintain control."
Treize nodded as he picked up Zechs' train of thought. "And the mobile suits of Somalia are currently on deployment in the Himalayas, hunting down renegades."
"I'm not current on the Alliance's force deployments, but that's the sort of thing they'd do," said Zechs. "Without those units, there's nothing heavy in the region. Tanks alone could overpower most of the bases there, never mind enemy mobile suits."
Treize nodded, and subtly relaxed. Zechs almost smiled as his boss changed. When he was uncertain of what might happen, it caused him so much irritation—but now he's back in control. His powers of foresight are limited, after all, and it's a nasty truth for him to swallow. Even so, he can incorporate the unexpected into his future, making almost anything a means to the same end.
"It sounds right," Treize said. "I'll have my sources look into it more closely. In the meantime, keep your forces on alert. We may need you soon to resolve a crisis—most likely some kind of hostage situation. Lake Victoria is reasonably near Somalia, so I want you to react at the first sign of enemy attack."
"Yes, sir."
The expected crisis was not terribly long in coming.
Two weeks later, the governor's goodwill tour was passing through Somalia—against Treize's on-record pleas for them not to—when a sudden attack occurred on a base they were inspecting.
"Pilots," crackled Zechs' voice over the comm. system. "We're currently on our way to an Alliance base near Hargeysa, Somalia. The combined Alliance governors of Africa decided to invite others to capture them, and our enemy has obliged. Now we have to rescue them."
Noin flew through her checklist, marking off the various items needed to start up her Aires. It wasn't a rush, they were still ten minutes from deployment, but she wanted to be ready nonetheless.
"I've sent the blueprints of the area and the probable arrangement of defenses to every pilot's screen. Our data is old, but as far as we can tell, they did a lot of damage to the base when they struck it. That means the enemy's suits and vehicles are our primary concerns.
"A civilian flight was scheduled to be here at this time and speed, and with our two carriers in such tight formation, we fit right into the profile of that flight. Since they're using the base's radar as their own, the enemy's radar should filter us out automatically. I want us to use the maneuver we practiced three days ago—and drop out of the carrier directly into combat."
Noin nodded—she'd expected him to use this tactic. If they dropped directly over the target and immediately went into a dive, they could strike the enemy at such high speed he wouldn't be able to react. The element of surprise was key, especially since the enemy had hostages.
The hostages… if they were attacking the hostage takers, how did Zechs expect to keep the hostages alive?
"The hostages are being held in the command building. In all likelihood, we're only going to get two passes before they open channels with us. That means you have to be fast and accurate. I want everything outside that building destroyed before I have to start negotiations."
Negotiations? Noin thought. What is he planning?
"I have confidence that we can do it, but we have to be very quick and very ruthless. When I give the command to halt, you must halt, no matter what you were doing. If you were in the middle of an automatic burst I'd expect you to cut it off. This is all about timing. Does everyone understand?"
Affirmatives came over the comm., to which Noin did not contribute. She was holding out for an explanation. She knew it would come, but she wondered as to his hesitancy.
Zechs' voice came to her again—but this time over the tight-band frequency, in privacy. "Noin, I have a special role for you. You're going to have to re-program your Aires." He outlined his plan.
Noin glanced down to her waist, where her sidearm was holstered. "I'm not that good with a gun," she warned him.
"I don't see how that could be," Zechs said, "but I trust you nonetheless. Can you do it?"
She hesitated, then said, "Yes. I can."
"Good. I'm counting on you, Noin."
Noin brought her aviator goggles down over her eyes. I know you are, she thought. And, for you, trusting someone like this is the hardest thing to do.
"We're coming into the drop zone," Zechs announced over the common frequency. "Everybody secure for battle."
Zechs felt a momentary weightlessness as his Aires left the carrier. He quickly reoriented towards the ground and accelerated, putting the suit into a dangerously steep dive. The range of his rifle was artificially extended by the fact that he was firing almost straight downwards. He began shooting immediately.
Tracers started filling the sky around him—so far, from air to ground only. Good, surprise was complete. The enemy was still trying to figure out what hit him.
Zechs' altimeter screamed as he plunged back to Earth, picking off target after target as he dropped. Then he pulled back as hard as he could. G-forces from the maneuver all but paralyzed him, but he retained both consciousness and his change in direction.
He came to a halt about three meters above ground, facing the command building directly. He glanced at the blueprints on his screen, ignoring the carnage and chaos all around him. He took aim and fired three shots. It was a squat building, five stories tall. Each shot tore through a part of the building in its top two floors.
Now he saw Noin's Aires swoop past his—and saw Noin egress.
As he'd told her, she'd programmed her Aires to fly out of the area after her initial attack run. Normally, the winch-and-rope pilots called the "tether" was used for pilots to get in or out of their Aires. But there Noin was, dangling at the end of her tether—and releasing it, rolling to a stop on top of the building, and now running. Her Aires was pre-programmed to fly away from the base and come to rest ten miles out.
Zechs turned his attention back to the battle—but there was no more battle. His pilots had been even more efficient than he'd planned for. The only way to see who'd gotten what kills would be checking the flight recorders afterwards. There wasn't enough left of their foes to know how many enemies there had been.
At that point, an angry voice came over the comm. "If even one of your mobile suits moves, the hostages are dead!"
"Halt," Zechs called, though at this point it was a formality.
"I want you to know that you have caused untold pain to your precious Alliance," his opposite number said. "This little escapade of yours is an outrage! A breach of agreement! We now demand, in addition to double the ransom on the hostages, triple restitution for our fallen comrades!"
Need to give Noin a little more time, Zechs thought. "Is that so? Could you please give us an inventory of what was destroyed just now?"
"No, we can't," said the voice. "It's impossible to think with hostile mobile suits hovering about like that. My first demand is that all of you back off. Slowly. And drop your weapons while you're at it."
"You told us not to move," Zechs said.
"Toy with me again, and we'll kill one of the governors outright," said the voice. "That was the previous set of demands. This is the new version. Back off, or the governors die."
Zechs said over the all-hands, "Everyone back up fifty meters." He then followed his own order.
"Fifty meters isn't enough," said the voice.
"Four-two-zero," a new voice said, breaking into the conversation.
Zechs smiled. Enough of this charade.
"I warn you not to try anything funny," said the old voice. "I said I want you to back up further."
"Sorry, but it's not my policy to negotiate with terrorists," Zechs said, taking aim at the building again. "You will come out now, or my bullets will come in after you."
The Alliance governor of Somalia, Edwin Magadu, was not by nature a timid man. It was not as if he wasn't used to guns and such—after all, he had security forces around him most times. Still, he was one of the few Alliance governors who had not been the target of an assassination attempt. He wasn't used to danger.
As Magadu looked around, the three men with their automatic rifles glared at him, trying to cow him again. It worked. Fine, he wasn't timid by nature—but being a hostage was not something he was prepared for! Why, he hadn't been in this much danger since that soccer game in high school!
He was but one of the thirty Alliance officials the rebels had snagged. All thirty were now being held captive in this room, in the geographic center of the building, waiting helplessly for whatever the rebels decided.
He felt the first explosion rather than heard it.
Suddenly, even in the middle of the building, everyone could hear explosions and heavy weapons fire. Magadu panicked. Was this some sort of rescue? Who launched an attack against people who had hostages?
The more intense the battle got, the more panicked the prisoners got. The rebels finally had to fire some shots into the air, which quieted the crowd despite the ongoing battle.
That's when something ripped the roof off.
The whole building shook. Magadu heard ear-splitting impacts, then felt like he was being pulled upwards—and when he looked up, he could see the sky.
The ceiling was torn off, and so was part of the roof—not exactly the same, so he could see part of the roof but couldn't see all the damage done to the roof. But his thinking was too muddled to make sense out of why that could be.
All three of the guards were now waving their guns around, firing shots into the air and trying to keep the desperate captives under control. There was great confusion and clamor, to which Magadu contributed.
The deep noises outside ceased—and Magadu saw something above the ceiling glisten.
Then there was the crack of a small-caliber pistol, and one of the guards fell straight forward, his neck twisting at an unnatural angle.
Another crack, and the second guard collapsed without resistance.
The third guard made the mistake of looking behind him for his assailant. Two more pistol shots thumped into that side of his head. Mercifully, he fell to the ground with that side down, keeping the spooked governors from seeing the gore.
The governors—Magadu included—hovered between petrifying fear and stampeding panic. Then a figure dropped through the open ceiling from the floor above. It was a woman, holding a pistol and wearing flight goggles.
Magadu was closest to her, so he was the only one who heard her murmur to herself, "I told him I wasn't that good with a pistol. Those men didn't need to die, but every shot I fired was in the head." As she said this, she put a new clip of bullets into her pistol, then approached the governors, gun in hand. "Everyone stay calm," she said.
Magadu expected her to say more—the words "I'm here to rescue you" would have been most appreciated—but she clammed up. Instead she reached for one of the dead guards and grabbed his communicator. She fiddled with it a second, then spoke into it "Four two zero."
At this point Magadu and the other governors realized that a conversation had been going on over the comm. "I warn you not to try anything funny," came a voice. Magadu instantly recognized the voice as that of their chief captor. "I said I want you to back up further."
Next was a voice that Magadu didn't know—but its voice was cold, and its words were still more terrifying. "Sorry, but it's not my policy to negotiate with terrorists. You will come out now, or my bullets will come in after you."
The governors began to edge towards the "stampeding panic" side of the equation. Magadu's insides froze. What kind of negotiations were these? This fool was going to get everyone killed! Yet he spoke with such icy certainty… was it simply that he didn't care about the hostages?
The captor's voice came again. "If you don't want to negotiate, then perhaps a little persuasion is in order. Guards, shoot one of the governors."
To Magadu's horror, the woman lifted her pistol, thumbed the transmitter "open" so it could hear everything, and fired two shots.
Pandemonium erupted. Although they didn't try to rush the woman, everyone scrambled about like ants. Even the most dignified screamed in terror. Magadu, however, felt an inexplicable calm. It took his brain a moment to realize what it had already figured out. He looked behind him, following the woman's pistol arm…
And saw the governor she'd shot at quivering but alive, with two neat bullet holes in the wall beside him.
Magadu focused through the screams and shouts, trying to hear the ice-voice again—a voice, he quickly decided, that he liked. "I have a counter-offer," the ice-voice said. "Surrender and come out within sixty seconds, or I'll kill you all myself."
"Bad deal," said the captor, though his voice had lost some of its confidence. "Perhaps a few more dead governors will convince you. Guards? Kill three more."
Once again the woman thumbed the transmitter and opened fire—and once again, as Magadu observed, the rounds impacted only wall, no flesh. This time he contributed to the screaming—but deliberately. He hoped his fakery wasn't obvious, even as he tried to hear the conversation.
"How's that?" asked the captor, smugness back in his voice.
"Forty-five seconds," ice-voice replied.
"Do those people's lives matter to you?" screeched the captor, his voice cracking from the strain. Ice-voice's unexpected cruelty and authority were breaking him down.
"Forty seconds."
"Guards! That's it! Kill all the prisoners, and let this man listen to what he's done!"
The woman dropped the pistol and grabbed one of the machine guns the guards had carried. This time Magadu gasped in genuine fear. She put the communicator on the ground, held it 'on' with her foot, and opened fire with the weapon.
The screaming was intense, but it began to die almost immediately as people realized that no one was getting shot. Magadu went to work immediately, trying to get everyone silent—silent like the dead. The woman finally stopped firing, let the silence go over the air a moment, then stepped off of the transmitter.
Most of the people were still stunned, but Magadu had figured it out. He waited for ice-voice to make the next move.
"Are you done?" asked ice-voice. "You still have twenty seconds to come out and live. I don't care whether you live or die, but we might need that building later."
Magadu resisted the urge to laugh despite the death and destruction all around him.
The former captor, now captive, broke. "Alright! Alright! We're coming out!"
The woman promptly switched channels—she obviously knew ice-voice's command frequency. "Squad one: keep rifles trained on the building; squad two, guns on our new prisoners. I'll go around and get the governors out. Cunha, Ross, you're in charge. Noin, how are the governors?"
"They're all here, Zechs," the woman said. "Aside from frazzled nerves, they look alright."
"That was a splendid performance."
"Thank you, sir. We're on the third floor. I'll get them to a room on the East side near some windows. You can get them out from there."
"Roger that," said ice-voice—though his voice was warmer now.
The woman dropped the machine gun, pulled down her flight goggles, and saluted the governors. "My apologies, gentlemen," she said. "My name is Lieutenant Lucrezia Noin, of the Specials Mobile Suit Corps, Alliance military, and I'm here to rescue you. I'm sorry I couldn't tell you earlier, but we needed your fear to be convincing if we were to get your captors to back down."
Disbelief at her audacity swept through the governors. Most of them were in too much shock to respond, but Magadu could feel it. This woman doesn't deserve that, he thought. He stood and said in his stump-speech voice, "Thank you, Lieutenant Noin. I'm still alive, so you must have done something right. No, I don't give you enough credit. Your and your compatriots have done a wonderful job, and we are all in your debt." He offered her his hand. She shook it—more firmly than he was able to, actually, which surprised him.
"I do my duty," she said. "Now, gentlemen, I'd like you to come this way. It'll be a while before infantry forces arrive to secure this base, so in the meantime we're going to get you out of here. The terrorists may have left a few surprises in the building, and we don't want to take chances with the people we've just saved."
She walked out of the room, leading the group to a conference room with a large window. The governors started when they saw a bright yellow light on the other side of the window.
A screeching noise caused all the governors to draw back, and they backed up still more when they saw the cause. A giant's hand was carving a new exit to the building in place of the window. Yet there the woman stood, unperturbed, only a few feet from the hand. She patiently waited, and was rewarded as the hand dropped to the floor and turned palm-up.
Noin then stepped onto the hand. "My superior, Lieutenant Zechs Marquise, is piloting the Aires mobile suit outside. He will transport us from here to the ground, but only two or three at a time. So, who will be first?"
Her confidence was infectious, but Magadu still hesitated. One man did not. He stepped out from the crowd with firm posture and joined Noin onboard the hand. When the man turned, Magadu recognized him—it was the man whom Noin had first shot at during her performance.
If he has that much faith, certainly I have some, Magadu thought, and walked to stand next to him. When he was ready, Noin signaled the Aires, and the hand slowly but surely moved to the ground.
The process repeated until the entire group of governors was on the ground. "Now come with me," Noin said. "We're headed to the carrier planes, where our forces have a perimeter. Please, don't wander."
She strode off towards the airfields. The governors followed, and Magadu moved to walk next to Noin. "Lieutenant," he said, "that was an incredible operation. How did you know where we were?"
She smiled, glanced around, then said, "We didn't. We guessed."