Chapter Six
I
The world above him shuddered violently, as though whatever God there was had decided man was no longer worthy of ruining the Earth and was ripping it apart. The walls of the building shook and trembled, and in one corner of the room a piece of loose clay fell from the ceiling, aided in its flight to rest on the floor by dry powdered wisps of mortar. A shrill whining —not unlike the most piercing scream of the tortured of Hell— echoed throughout every hallway of the base, and if one were on the subterranean floor he would undoubtedly be able to hear beneath that whine an underlying metallic ringing as the mobile suit prototype clattered against its restraints.
The whining-grinding-screaming ended as gradually as it had begun, and the second it faded the Earth shook again. Footsteps in the corridors. Not only one set or even two or three, but an entire army of them, all running, all stamping against the reverberating floor furiously as though Hell were behind them and Heaven ahead, but it would remain there only if they arrived at its gates within the next five seconds.
Inhuman shrieking above. Yelling, stampeding outside, in a restricted area. There were a few things this could mean, but considering the suddenness of it, the only good possibility could be eliminated.
Heero rose from the chair in the darkness. He had spent the night in this room and had intended on leaving soon, but it seemed there would be a change in his plans.
He opened the door and peered out into the corridor. It was empty despite the thundering footsteps and shouting; the echoes were coming down from some other nearby hall.
He had a feeling he knew which one.
He walked quietly toward the end of the corridor. A strange but familiar blue light emanated from the open doorway of the room in which the Roman phalanx seemed to have stopped. He did not know which was louder — the sound of them all running and shouting only moments ago or the screaming that now came from the room.
He stepped into the massive mobile suit storage facility. It was often empty, and he did not usually venture into it when it wasn't, but now it swarmed with people, some in lab coats, some dressed in clothes similar to Heero's civilian garb, even one woman in a flowing dark blue dress, all shouting at one another.
As he watched this spectacle, feeling the closest thing to shock he could muster, a frenzied redheaded woman collided with him.
"Don't just stand there!" she yelled when he opened his mouth to give a half-hearted apology. "We have to get them underground now!"
She ran in the direction of the others.
He spotted Yuan-Chen at the top of the short staircase. The small, passive man was bellowing at the top of his lungs, pointing the others in five separate directions, yelling above them all in what seemed like every language known to man. He had been shouting in his native Chinese when Heero had first been able to make out his voice in the crowd, but had in the minute since switched to Greek, then to English. From English he made the transition to French and then Spanish, then German, then Italian, then Japanese, and, if Heero were not mistaken, he actually began shouting in Yiddish.
"Takeru!" he called out when he spotted Heero looking up at him. He motioned for Heero to come to him.
Heero reluctantly did so. "What's going on?" he asked, calmly as always but loudly enough to be heard above the roar below. The moment the last word left his mouth there was an enormous crash above them. He looked up and saw that the portal to the facility was being opened.
"This message is for you," Yuan-Chen said as quietly as possible amid the noise. He thrust a piece of parchment paper into his hand.
Heero unrolled the sheet. It was written, as though coded, entirely in Japanese with the exception of two words, the signature at the bottom of the page.
Triton Bloom.
Trowa.
He stood back from the edge of the stairs, following the columns of the message with one finger as he read it, oblivious to what was going on around him.
Heero,
I was told by a reliable source in black that you can read this. I apologize if this message causes any inconveniences, but in these days information is more suspected of being on disks than paper.
Word of MS production on this colony has leaked to the Prevention Organization. I could be held partially responsible for the leak, but I am rectifying that mistake by sending this late Christmas present to you. The President of the Prevention Organization informed me that she would be sending three members to investigate the situation on the colony. I have removed every trace of evidence from the production facility and am now placing them in your care. Perhaps having the actual suits will help you in the development of the system.
Please inform Odin of this premature change of plans. I was not given a chance to do so.
Triton Bloom
He skimmed over the message again, then rolled it up and stuck it in an interior pocket of his jacket.
"Odin isn't going to like this," someone nearby said. Heero looked up and saw another of one of the more informed members of the counteroffensive standing beside Yuan-Chen.
"Nonsense," the Chinese man replied, his voice serene but his face smiling as he watched the MS containers being lowered beneath the landing platform. "He will find it utterly hilarious."
The subordinate gave him a strange look but no further contradiction. He knew quite a bit more than many of the others did about Odin, but not enough for him to see how Odin would perceive this development. Yuan-Chen was right: Odin would find it hilarious, ridiculously so.
The first container was lowered into the subterranean room and the second appeared overhead, blotting the sun from the sky completely. Somewhere in the back of his mind he wondered what this looked like from above.
The second container reached the concrete floor. The third, then a fourth, and fifth.
"That's all!" someone aboveground shouted down through the great chasm in the platform. There seemed to be an audible breath of relief from all those below but there was no pause in their action. There was still too much to be done. The portal to the underground room was sealed and the task of moving the containers out of the middle of the floor began.
"We're lucky it's a weekend," another nearby voice said. A woman walked up the short flight of stairs and joined Yuan-Chen, as comfortably as though they were friends. Heero instantly recognized her as the redhead who had all but tackled him earlier.
"Yes, we are," Yuan-Chen agreed. "Has there been any commotion among the workers who are here?"
The woman shook her head. Her curly red hair flew about her face before settling back into a smooth mantle of fiery ringlets. "With all the noise in the workrooms, I doubt they were even aware of the landing."
"True," Yuan-Chen agreed, "but it would probably be wise to concoct a less controversial explanation in case."
The redhead nodded and pushed her glasses up on her nose. "How many suits are there? Do you know?"
"Exactly one hundred. Twenty suits per container, five containers."
"Is it possible that others could have been sent to Vólos?"
Yuan-Chen laughed quietly. "I do not think so, but if some were sent to Vólos, Odin certainly has a situation on his hands right now."
And he's probably enjoying every minute of it, Heero thought, but said nothing.
The redhead left. Yuan-Chen turned to him, placed one slender, aged hand upon his shoulder. "You spent the night here, Takeru," he said. "And I have heard you working in that room on other nights when you were supposed to be gone. Whether you care to admit it or not, Takeru, you are tired, and your presence here at the moment is unnecessary. Go home and rest. You will be needed here tonight, when more of the engineers are here."
He nodded. To argue with such a man as Yuan-Chen was utterly futile.
He left he room. He left the base, through a much more clandestine exit than he had used previously. He left the Spanish coastline, his hands shoved into his jacket pockets. He passed on foot through a bustling city, then again found himself away from civilization, and he did not seem to notice the difference between the two.
He had the distinct feeling that he was being followed.
II
Relena said nothing about his inexplicable disappearance the night after he had arrived in Sanq, nor did she say anything about the phone call she had unintentionally overheard between himself and Treize. Zechs did not think she had heard anything of importance, but nonetheless he wanted to keep her as uninvolved as possible, and already it seemed she was going to make that difficult.
He slipped out of the palace unnoticed, running across the side of the vast lawn and through the gardens like a spirit fleeing from the eyes of man or the light of the sun. His hair cast strange, changing shadows behind him, and if someone inside the palace were to glance out a window on the east side they would undoubtedly be frightened, for a moment at least, by what appeared to be a hunched-over winged figure running across the Queen's grounds.
He had to climb over the stone wall at the edge of the palace grounds. He had not done such a thing in years — not since he and Lucrezia used to climb over the walls at Lake Victoria to meet at the edge of the base's property — and it sent a childish feeling of exhilaration through him. He turned to his side once, half-expecting to see Lucrezia there with him, and when he remembered he was alone, any spark of enthusiasm burning within him abruptly died.
He took the car Relena had given him for personal use. She had protested him leaving it outside the palace gates, perhaps knowing what he would do — how easily he could slip away — with the car out of earshot, but he had earlier this evening disregarded her wishes.
The drive to Vólos was long, and he was unable to keep his mind clear. His thoughts were first with Relena, but this did not last for long. The past week with her had convinced him that his fears for her had been well-founded: something had happened to her, perhaps something outside or perhaps only something within her own mind, and it had done enough damage to ensure she would not open up to him. Perhaps she would never open up to anyone again.
Did any of this surprise him, though? No, not in the least. He had known from the moment he had taken her into his arms in the main control room of Libra and asked her to remain kind that she would not always be the sweet, innocent princess she had been raised to be. He had known it just as surely as he had known that he would never be able to walk away from a war. War had a nice way of changing a person, and everything was a war. It had just taken longer to change her, that was all.
He wondered if he was right in believing that the short-lived war with Mariemaia had done more to change her than had the Eve Wars. After all, in the Eve Wars she had been only a symbol of peace, a hindrance to the actual attaining of it, but with Mariemaia it had been she who renounced her pacifism and rallied the people to fight. Some, he knew, wondered how that had felt for her. He didn't have to wonder. He already knew how it felt.
He did not dwell on his sister tonight. He would shed the last proverbial tear for her later, when he had to look at her too-knowing, too-matured face.
From there his mind wandered to Treize, whose belief that everything was a war continued to strike a nerve with him, and then to Odin Lowe, the grinning black-eyed devil. From there it progressed to Lucrezia.
There had been no response to his message, and he had not tried to contact her again. This would have been a cause for concern but he had heard from Odin that Lucrezia, along with two other preventers and President Une herself, had safely reached the L3 colony, and because of their barely-expected investigation, the completed mobile suits (minus the cockpit system that would be added before the great battle) were sent to Earth, to the secondary base in southern Spain. Odin had found the ordeal greatly amusing despite how close they had come to having the whereabouts of the base disclosed.
Knowing that she was on the colony did not quell his unease, however. There was a reason she had failed to respond, and if nothing had happened to her, that reason was most likely anger at him for what he had done to her. If that were the case, he couldn't say he blamed her.
He became lost in his thoughts, as Lucrezia had often endearingly accused him of doing in the past. So lost, in fact, that he almost did not realize it when he at last entered the city of Vólos. The base was located at the edge of the city, along the coastline, and he parked and left the car in one of the busiest places, the outer merchant district that so resembled that of the Sanq Kingdom. The streets were illuminated by neon- and lamp- and firelight, seemingly ancient and modern at the same time. The district was bustling with people in spite of the late hour, and above the roar of their intermingling conversations could be heard the calls of street vendors trying to lure people to their stands and of shopkeepers standing outside, inviting buyers into their stores.
He was pleasantly reminded of the time he and Lucrezia had gone to Italy and had spent their night touring streets such as these, yet untouched by battle.
As he passed an alleyway, a woman threw herself at him. He caught her — not intentionally but rather out of instinct — and held her out from him, too shocked to speak, too shocked to do anything but stare at her with wide, startled eyes. She swayed drunkenly in his arms, her low-cut, tight, dusty, and torn white dress rustling around her. With a laugh she brushed her brown hair out of her eyes, and when she saw his face she stopped swaying.
"Oh," she said wondrously, and that was all she could say for a moment, then she smiled and, stepping closer to him, she crooned, "You're beautiful." Before he could do anything in protest, she pushed herself up against him, moving her hips provocatively against his. "Do you want it?" she purred into his ear, in heavily accented English, her breath redolent of some sweet liquor. "It won't cost much, I promise. I always give the pretty ones a discount."
She laughed again and touched the side of his face, then her eyes rolled back into her head and she fainted.
He stared at her a moment longer, stunned, then finally shook his head and laid her down on the street corner, propping her head against the wall of a shop.
Four miles were set between the edge of the district and the secluded entrance to the base, and he walked them easily. As he had done earlier in the car, he was constantly and discreetly watching for anyone who might be following him, and, as always, there was no one.
The entrance was surrounded by a dense forest. The paved road that led to it was well-concealed and could be found only by complete accident or if one knew precisely where to look.
He followed this road until he reached the high, solid gates. A squat guardhouse stood to the left of the gates, its walls partially surrounded by cameras placed under the eaves of the roof. It was directly into one of these cameras that Zechs looked as he neared the building, partially to provide the guards within a clear view of his face and partially because he knew that a retinal scan was being performed on him as he looked, though no light shone into his eyes.
The door slid open when he stepped up to it, then immediately slid shut behind him once he entered the compact guardhouse. The lights inside were low, the air warm and scented faintly of coffee. The quiet voices of men in the midst of a conversation that had been ongoing for some time, it seemed, drifted to his ears from the small room beyond this cramped alcove.
"Welcome back, Mr. Marquise," one of the two guards on duty said, motioning him into the room. "We were just talking about you."
Zechs raised an eyebrow. "Were you?"
The guard took another drink from his coffee mug. "The history of Sanq," he said in a mock-professional tone, and he gestured toward the other guard. "The Gerschwitz-Demetras abridged version."
"We've come to your birth," the other one said. "Do you have anything to contribute?"
"Nothing you yourselves wouldn't already know," Zechs replied.
"Would you care to join us?" the first guard, Mendele Gerschwitz, offered, gesturing toward an empty chair across from them. "Your thoughts on the subject would be much appreciated."
"I'm afraid I have time only to do what I came here for. I would like to be back at the palace before dawn, otherwise I shall have to spend the morning not answering the Queen's questions."
The other guard stifled a small laugh. The thing the guards found most amusing about his words, he had always thought, was the sincerity of them.
"I'll notify Mr. Lowe," Demetras said, and he rose from his chair. For a brief moment the jacket he wore stretched across him in such a way that Zechs could see the outline of his gun in its shoulder holster.
He came back into the room only a minute later and nodded. Zechs thanked him and left the building. The doors of the gates — which surrounded the entire base with only this one entrance — swung open and he walked through them. After another half mile on the tree-lined road, he came to the base. He was given access first by the computerized locking system — no retinal scan here but rather a scan of the lines of his fingertips and palm — and then by a trio of guards who were posted at the base's main entrance. He descended to the subterranean floors alone, slowing momentarily when he passed the room in which he had awakened into this war, three months after his death.
He had not been told where Odin Lowe was but he did not need to have been. Odin was expecting this visit, and he would remain in his own dark chambers until he received it.
Zechs walked through the maze of corridors that led to Odin's offices and personal rooms — for he indeed lived on the base — without any consideration as to where he was; he had the route to the underground wing of the base memorized now, and where others would have become lost, he made the correct turns without thinking.
He had once gone down the wrong corridor and had discovered, to his amusement, that it ended in a doorless concrete wall. The lowest levels of the base truly had been constructed in the form of a maze, though what purpose this had served when the base had belonged to the military he did not know.
He heard the deep, melodic hum of Odin's voice long before he reached the room. Sounds carried well in these halls, and echoes were slow to die out. The acoustics of it were rather disorienting until one became used to them.
Another voice floated out into the corridor, this one younger, not quite as deep, and strangely familiar:
"…in another month, then."
"Most likely, if all continues to go well."
"And there are no repetitions of last week's incident."
This was followed by Odin's low laugh.
Zechs paused, his pale brow furrowing in thought. He knew he had heard the voice before, sometime recently, it seemed, but he could not remember where or when.
The door to the room from which the two disembodied voices emanated was slightly ajar. Without bothering to knock Zechs pushed it open. It squealed on its heavy reinforced hinges, alerting the two men inside to his presence.
"Mr. Marquise," Odin said, looking up from the computer with his characteristic dark grin.
Zechs opened his mouth to speak. The other man in the room, the one with the familiar voice, looked up at him. He recognized him immediately.
The soldier on Treize's shuttle. The one who had brought him the computer, the one he had seen watching him as he got into the limousine.
The soldier made as if to draw a gun. Zechs lunged at him, reaching single-handedly for his own revolver within his coat. His arm connected with the soldier's chest and he collapsed, and Zechs fell with him, pinning him to the floor.
"Treacherous bastard," he growled, pressing the gun into the side of the soldier's head. He squirmed underneath him and Zechs cocked the gun.
Behind them, Odin laughed, watching them amusedly. "Get off him, Marquise," he said, grinning still. "Let him go."
Feeling a confused expression come upon his face, Zechs did. He realized the soldier was laughing too, and he kept his gun fixed on him as he backed away.
The soldier reached into his own coat and pulled something out. Zechs's finger tightened on the trigger. The soldier withdrew a tissue and waved it in front of his face like a white flag, then enthusiastically blew his nose into it.
Not a gun. A tissue. A damned tissue.
"I'm sorry if my cold offends you, Marquise-love," he said, his heavy Liverpudlian accent made even thicker by his congested throat. He tossed the tissue into a nearby wastebasket and rose to his feet. "I believe one of the others on the shuttle gave me this nice little virus. If you have this much of a problem with it, you should take it up with him."
Zechs narrowed his eyes. "What?"
Odin returned to his seat in front of the computer. "Marquise, is there a reason that you tackled one of our top computer analysts?"
"I saw him," Zechs replied, leveling the gun again at the soldier. "He's working for Treize."
"No, Marquise, he's working for me."
Zechs looked at Odin incredulously.
Odin continued. "Marquise, I would like you to meet Rhyn Tolkien, one of the chief designers of the Sagittarius. It was Rhyn who gave it that ridiculous name. Rhyn, this is the infamous Zechs Marquise, also known as the great Prince Milliardo of the Sanq Kingdom."
"We've met," Rhyn said, unfazed by the gun. He pulled out another tissue and blew into it. "I believe Mr. Marquise threatened to…what was it? To put a bullet in my head for my stupidity if I dared address him as 'Lord Alsirae'"— there was an unmistakable note of disdain and mockery of the name in his voice —"ordered us to."
Zechs slowly lowered the gun and looked from Rhyn to Odin. "What the hell is this?"
"Rhyn is one of your fellow traitors to Kushrenada's organization," Odin said. "He was not employed by me as you and a good deal of the others were. Rather, he offered his very life for our cause when our own organization was still in its infancy. About a year ago he asked for the assignment of infiltrating Treize's base, and, as you learned last week, was successfully able to do so."
Zechs studied the soldier in question, who was looking at Odin as a son would a father he greatly revered. "Is he your next ward, your next Heero perhaps?"
Rhyn's knowing eyes darted from Zechs to Odin.
Odin's handsome face became somber, but he was not offended. "No. I never rescued Rhyn from anything, nor did I ever try to become his mentor. He is merely a good soldier, too good to be wasted in a tyrannical military force such as that through which Treize intends to gain power."
Zechs knew this was not the entire truth, that just as it was with the former Gundam pilot Heero Yuy, this young man had some past connection with Odin, and just as it was with Heero, Odin kept the knowledge of those connections strictly limited. He said nothing about it, though. It had never been his custom to ask Odin Lowe his business, and in turn Odin did not ask his.
"Do I still strike you as being terribly stupid, sir?" Rhyn asked, a wide, childish smile illuminating his face. His face was itself still childish, his features those of a younger boy, but his eyes held the solemnity of an assassin. "You seemed to think of me that way on the shuttle."
Zechs could only look at him.
"Acting utterly aloof, naïve even, is one of the factors that so impressed Treize about me. Most of his soldiers he chose for their intelligence, their previous experience, or even their maliciousness, which all seemed to earn his trust in them. He trusted me simply because he thought I was too stupid to betray him."
Zechs was still unable to answer him. He put away the revolver, and after silently berating himself for his rash mistake, he said, "I offer my humblest apologies, then."
Rhyn gave him another smile and turned his cheek toward him. "How about a kiss, then?"
Zechs was unable to control his expression.
Rhyn seemed not to notice. "Your assault on me means I'm doing a good job with Treize. Do you have to act for him, Marquise-love?" he said, rather sincerely this time. "I would imagine that you do some of the time. But even if you do not, Kushrenada trusts you not to betray him. He thinks you owe him too much to go back on him now. That's a direct quote, sir. Yet at the same time, I think he's expecting you to rebel against him before the battle. He doesn't seem to believe that you will align yourself with the enemy, though. He expects you to rebel as a loner." Rhyn shrugged. "The term he used was actually 'rogue,' but it's basically the same thing."
"How do you know all this?"
"My greatly wondrous skills of eavesdropping."
"You've heard him say this? When? To whom?"
"That's the thing I haven't quite learned yet. It seems that he has a strong ally in a man he himself refers to only as 'the General.' I'm sure he does occasionally say the great General's name, but I've yet to hear it."
Odin, obviously having heard this before, resumed what he had been doing on the computer before Zechs's interruption.
"We do know, however," Rhyn continued, "that the general is a very prominent man, very wealthy, and very influential, perhaps to a governmental extent." He paused to blow his nose again.
"This could be the benefactor," Odin said, without taking his eyes from the computer. Rhyn crossed the room and took a seat beside him, and Zechs followed.
"This is Rhyn's most recent contribution to our cause," he told Zechs, gesturing at the monitor, which displayed the contents of a disk. "It appears to be Treize's financial activities over the span of his organization's two-year existence."
"This is why paper records are simpler and easier to conceal," Rhyn said. "Other things will always get mixed up in them, and sorting it all out often makes a person who shouldn't be seeing it in the first place frustrated to the point of carelessness. Paper records are disorganized. And if a situation arises, paper is very easily destroyed. With a computer file, there is always a way to restore what was deleted."
Zechs looked over the file, wondering still what this talk of a benefactor was about.
"Don't just skim over it," Odin advised. "Read it."
He did, as Odin and Rhyn waited in contemplative silence. When at last he leaned back in the chair, there was no longer any question in his mind what they had been talking about.
"Do you see it?' Odin asked calmly, his brow raised.
Zechs nodded. "There is too much going in."
Rhyn, in the midst of another blowing of the nose, smiled.
"Exactly," Odin said. "Too much money is being put into it. This is too much for even a government-ordained military, much less a clandestine organization."
"Are you sure it's all coming from the one person?" Zechs asked.
"I wasn't at first. Even after his supposed death, Treize Krushrenada's estate remained a wealthy one, and all that money disappeared around the time he was a month in his grave."
"It was funneled into a series of religious charities," Zechs said.
"Yes, by Treize himself, or someone acting on his behalf." Odin brought up another file on the computer. "This was the so-called 'series' of religious charities."
Zechs recognized the church in the photograph immediately. "Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrows."
Odin nodded. "Abandoned in AC 181, in light of church raids by rebels against the Alliance all over the world. The money of Kushrenada's inherited estate was donated in five separate 'gifts' to the church." He moved the file another page down and again brought up the financial record. "The first ones required no research to find where the money was donated in specific. The Chapel of Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrows. The Orphanage of Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrows." His voice took on a mocking tone, ridiculing both the people who had not realized what was happening and Treize's perversion of charity. "The Convent of Our Lady, the Monastery of Our Lady. And then this is the strange one: 'To the Great Hall of Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrows.' I thought this might be another order of the clergy, some branch of the monasticism even, but this is what I found." He brought up the file on the church and scrolled down until the screen displayed a photograph of a long, high-ceilinged corridor with wide marble floors and frescoes of the saints and angels lining the walls, ending in a painting of the Assumption.
"This?" Zechs asked, for once unable to disguise the incredulity in his voice.
Odin nodded. "It was the smallest donation. He gave $500,000 to the damned hallway." He gave this time to sink in, then continued. "So all the estate disappeared. Perhaps he would have left a small sum behind if he had known about his daughter then. The money was given to an abandoned church — against public knowledge, of course — and the powers that be who preside over such matters — bankers and lawyers, I believe they are called — all failed to realize that the church had been abandoned for fifteen years. There is something rather interesting about the ownership of the church, however." Odin pointed out the paragraph regarding the church's construction. Zechs's eyes fell directly to the name of the man who, in the year AC 62, had commissioned the church to be built.
Alsirae Trecais.
"He didn't choose the name for its aesthetic value," Odin said. "The fact that Alsirae died in AC 91 didn't seem to matter to those aforementioned powers. With that name, he was able — illegally, of course, but able nonetheless — to filter the money out of the church's funding and into a private investment, and from there it disappears completely."
Zechs nodded. It was the only thing he could do. In all this time, he had never heard, never suspected, had never even thought anything remotely like this, and what struck him the most was not what he had just heard but rather the horrible knowledge of what all this was leading up to.
Somehow, he knew Odin had had just as shocked a reaction to this discovery as he was having, and what finally brought him back around was imagining how colorful Odin's reaction must have been.
"Treize's family was undeniably rich, wealthier even than some monarchies," Odin continued, "but this kind of operation requires one of two things: money, or strong, willing alliances. The counteroffensive was begun on the latter for that eventually does lead to the former, but Treize was one man who wanted, for whatever ungodly reason, to organize a military agency, and to do it with such discretion that the countries in which it was formed were unaware of its existence. He had the money to begin such an endeavor, but nowhere near the amount that would inevitably be required. This is where the benefactor steps in." He removed the disk and inserted a different one. "This is a message that the head of the computer analysts at the base in Spain intercepted from Treize's computer to the man we've recently come to believe is the chief benefactor."
"Would I be correct in assuming the head computer analyst is Heero?" Zechs broke in.
"You would be. The message contains nothing of importance, but the location to which it was sent is rather interesting. Wouldn't you agree, Mr. Marquise?"
Zechs leaned closer to the screen. He needed only to read the end of the location line to know what it meant.
He cursed under his breath and turned away from the computer.
"We knew the money had to be coming from an outside source," Odin went on, accustomed now to the knowledge he was presenting Zechs with and therefore able to maintain his signature calm tone. "Some of those who work for him are from wealthy families as well, but in the case of most of those that wealth was depleted during the wars, ruling out that possibility. The next possibility was yet another inheritance. As you know, Zechs, the head of the former Romefeller Foundation, Duke Dermail, did not have many surviving family members at the time shortly before his death. He left a considerable sum to his nephew, and most likely Treize somehow filtered this money to himself."
"He probably donated it to a staircase," Rhyn mumbled humorlessly.
Odin gave a faint smile. "Most of Dermail's estate, however, was left to his granddaughter. It would have required only slightly more effort for Treize to gain his cousin's inheritance, once again by illegally transferring the money from one account to another, but because of Miss Catalonia's current circumstances" — he paused, looking at Zechs, and Zechs nodded — "we can rule out that theory as well. Which means that he has someone outside the organization supporting him."
"And you think this is him?" Zechs asked, motioning toward the computer. "Why?"
"There is another message from Treize thanking him for his most recent contribution," Rhyn said. "I saw it on Treize's computer. I would have made a copy of it but he returned before I was given a chance to. And 'Lord Alsirae' having a connection with a member of the Supreme Earthsphere Council is rather suspicious in itself, wouldn't you say?"
Zechs nodded. "But does he know what Treize is doing? And what was this most recent contribution for?"
"He knows exactly what Treize is doing." Rhyn's youthful voice took an unmistakable note of bitterness. "And the 'contribution' was for another shipment of a reinforced titanium alloy. Treize has ordered another unit of mobile suits to be produced."
"And the rest of the Council, do they know?"
"Most likely not," Odin replied. "Despite the events of the past, most of the Council members genuinely are serving their purpose with the right intentions, and I do believe that they would not allow this." He turned to Zechs. "Miss Noin was invited to attend the conferences the Council held as a member of the Prevention Organization, was she not?"
"She was."
"Whatever her reasons for turning down the offer, it was a wise decision. I'm sure you realize that the number preceding the Council's code in Treize's message means this nameless benefactor is one of the Council's highest members. He would have known exactly where Miss Noin would be at all times, and if ordered to, he would have had the power to have her arrested. God only knows what would have happened to her then."
"She would have been donated to a firing squad," Rhyn muttered, cynically and without any of his former mirth.
Odin nodded in consideration. "That is a possibility."
Zechs suddenly felt nauseated.
"Are you all right, Mr. Marquise?" Rhyn asked, and the concerned yet confused tone of his voice confirmed Zechs's suspicion that he didn't know who Lucrezia was. "You look rather pale."
"I'm fine," he mumbled through clenched teeth. Odin flashed him a solemn, knowing look.
Nothing more was said for some time. Eventually the nausea died down and he was able to breathe again.
"You're expected back in Thessaloníki at dawn, aren't you?" Odin asked Rhyn finally.
"Yes, I'm being put second-in-command for the transportation of the titanium to Germany. It might interest you to know that the fields where the MS are tested belong to Our Lady. It seems Treize is quite taken with the church."
Of course he is, Zechs thought but did not say and he nodded. Odin glanced at him, one eyebrow raised, asking in silence if there was a reason for this, then turned back to Rhyn.
"You'd best be leaving then, hadn't you?" he said.
Rhyn glanced at his watch and sprang to his feet. He said his hurried farewells, obviously a bit chagrined to have lost track of time so badly, and left, stopping to use another tissue halfway through the doorway.
Odin rose from the chair. "Do you wish to be back in Sanq by dawn, Marquise?"
Before he could answer, the door was opened again and Rhyn's head appeared. Looking expectantly at Odin he said, "You will inform Marguerite of this, won't you? I've not had a chance to tell her that I'm leaving."
Odin nodded and waved him out of the doorway. "Of course. I'll tell her."
Rhyn fell against the door, pressing the back of his hand to his forehead in a great melodramatic gesture. "Tell her I love her and that I'll be coming home to her soon," he cried out in the same fashion. "Tell her those Commies can't keep me away from her! Tell her I'm sorry that I couldn't get her a ring but we're in love so it doesn't matter! Tell I miss her and even more than that I miss sleeping with her! Tell her–"
Odin, shaking his head in amusement, rose from the chair and approached the boy. "Out," he said, laughing softly, and closed the door on Rhyn's over-dramatic face.
Zechs flashed Odin a questioning glance.
"Marguerite is a close friend of his, currently stationed in Spain. He won't have the opportunity to inform her of his mission in Germany. As for his final comments, he has quite a flare for melodrama. Should you be returning before dawn as well?"
"Preferably. Relena will be worried if I am not there."
Odin removed the disk from the computer and dropped it into a locked drawer below the desk. His hand grazed a stack of papers as he did this, and underneath the stack was revealed a black-and-white photograph from a newspaper clipping. Zechs carefully picked up the picture, examined it will all the curiosity of a child.
The clipping was old, brittle and slightly yellowed with age. The photograph displayed only a close-up of woman's face as she turned to look at something behind her. She was beautiful, this woman, at first glance undeniably of Asian descent, with smooth, high cheeks and glossy, dark, almond-shaped eyes. A smile played at the corners of her mouth, and somehow Zechs thoughts that this slight smile was always there, that she could die with that same smile gracing her lips.
The name below the photograph read, in the Roman alphabet rather than an Oriental language, Hanasaki Sakura. It seemed vaguely familiar to him.
"Who is she?" he asked Odin, holding the photograph up.
Odin turned and for one brief moment his eyes widened at seeing Zechs with the picture. Then the angry expression on his face faded and, in the manner of a father plucking an object out of an infant's fist, he took the clipping from Zechs's hand.
"Who she is," he said, placing the photograph in the same locked drawer, "or rather, who she was, is of little consequence to you, Marquise."
"Her name seems familiar."
Odin regarded him with interest. "Does it? It wouldn't to many people, not now, at least. Of course in other parts of the world there are still some who even now pray for her soul, but she is already being forgotten."
"Not by you, obviously."
Odin smiled faintly. "No. Not by me. But would you find it hard to believe, Marquise, that there are people, on Earth and in space, who have to think about it before they remember who King Peacecraft was?"
Zechs considered this for a moment. "No," he said finally. "I would not."
"They say we choose our joys and sorrows," Odin mused, resuming his seat in the chair across from Zechs. "If that is true, then likewise we choose our glories and our defeats. The woman in the picture, Sakura, accomplished more by way of revolution than any of the old organizations did, yet let me assure you, Marquise, her name will never be written into a history book. Your father was one of the greatest advocates of peace our times have ever seen, but the name Dekim Barton will be remembered long after his has been forgotten. Do you understand what I'm saying, Marquise?"
Zechs could only nod.
"Good. You looked like you knew something when Rhyn mentioned Treize's fascination with the church. Would you care to elaborate?"
"When the church was supposedly abandoned–"
"The Alliance raid."
"Yes. His parents were there when it happened, and they were two of the first casualties."
"I suspected as much," Odin said, nodding. "But satisfy my curiosity, Prince, since you knew him and his family personally, how did he deal with their murder?"
He found himself wanting, as though he did still have some loyalty to Treize, to claim he had been at Lake Victoria at the time, but he could not. "He received the news well," he said, "then he took one of the horses out and didn't return until the next morning. He was drunk and looked as if he had spent the entire night crying."
"Ah, then he did once have a soul." He paused. "If you want to be at the palace before dawn, you should leave now."
Zechs nodded and stood.
"Be careful in Thessaloníki," Odin advised as Zechs started for the door. "Treize's suspicions have been raised over something. Rhyn is smart enough and he should be all right, but he doesn't have your experience. He may have to leave the country soon. You would do well to keep that in mind, Prince."
He cast Odin a solemn glance and left.
His footsteps echoed in the corridor behind him, hollow, strangely inducive of thoughts of approaching death.
He thought of what Odin had said about Treize's suspicions, of what Rhyn said about a donation to a firing squad in Germany. He thought of Lucrezia and the mission offer she had turned down. He thought of the woman in the picture, and of Odin's face when he had realized that Zechs had seen it.
We choose our glories and our defeats.
How true.
He feared his defeat had already been chosen for him.
III
"Mr. Marquise?"
He turned in the direction of the voice. He could not see the man's face from where he stood in the darkness of the hangar, but he immediately identified the back-lit silhouette leaning in the doorway as Odin Lowe.
"Yes?"
Odin stepped across the threshold. "I had a feeling I would find you here. You had a special attachment to this one, didn't you?" He gestured at the crimson monolith before them, which lay almost completely in the shadows. Its emerald eyes seemed to glow as if with an inner fire in the dim light shed upon it from the open doorway.
Zechs nodded.
"Do you still believe that Treize intended you to pilot it from the beginning?"
"Yes. Heero Yuy was merely a toy to him, an experiment with its capabilities."
"What makes you so sure that you were not one as well?"
He smiled. "You're forgetting he was once my friend."
"No, I haven't," Odin replied calmly. "Which is why I agree with you. Tell me, did Treize ever torture insects when he was a child?"
"Not to my knowledge."
Odin joined him at the foot of the Gundam. "They say the reconstruction should take no longer than another two weeks. Arrangements have already been made for its transportation and storage."
Again, he nodded.
"What do you think of it, Prince? Do you find it satisfying?"
His eyes went over the Gundam again. "More than satisfying," he said. "They truly have done excellent work." He paused for a while, considering. "I would like to make one request, however."
"And that would be?"
"I would like to redesign the system myself."
Odin grinned his signature devil's smile. "Very well, if that's what you want." The expression in his eyes silently conveyed that he understood why Zechs wanted to rebuild the system unassisted; those eyes were warning him to be careful when he did it.
At last, they left the hangar. The Epyon watched after them with its cold, soulless green eyes.
He lay atop the elegant bed, still fully clothed, one hand covering his closed blue eyes. The covers were rumpled beneath him from his earlier attempt to sleep. He had arrived back at the palace an hour before the sun rose, awakening no one, and had tried to fall asleep, only to find that his mind was too occupied to allow such a thing.
The half-empty wine bottle sat on the dresser beside the bed. He opened his eyes and stared at it, then finally plucked it from the dresser and gulped another couple inches of it down. He had the strange thought that Treize would laugh at him if he were to see him in this state, that Odin would be amused and at the same time disappointed. And Lucrezia, if she were to see him like this, how would she react? He did not even need to wonder; she had seen him like this, and if she were here she would do as she always did: she would watch him silently, her silent violet eyes bleeding silent tears, as if she were mourning his death.
This thought sobered him. He rose from the bed, went to the window. The world beyond the palace was cold and gray, as though the sun no longer found the world worthy of its light and was concealing itself behind the thick cover of clouds.
I would like to redesign the system myself.
He stepped back from the window. In all honesty he had not thought about that brief conversation — had not even thought about the thing it regarded — in months, and, still drunken but thinking clearly enough now, he supposed it was the combination of alcohol and sleeplessness that had brought it to memory.
Along with Zechs's battered, comatose body, Odin Lowe had ordered the remains of the Epyon to be recovered, and shortly after Zechs had agreed to join the counteroffensive, Odin led him to the hangar that held the gundanium corpse. He reminded Zechs of what was happening outside of the kingdom and what it could escalate into, then asked him one simple question.
Zechs's answer had been 'yes.'
Thus the reconstruction of the Gundam had begun. It had been finished almost a year ago, and in the months before he had resurfaced as a preventer, Zechs had made his own contribution to the reconstruction effort. Enough of the components of the cockpit system had survived to give him a basis for the new version, and he had only to employ his knowledge of the Zero system to restore it to what it originally was. But that was not entirely true, was it? He had restored the system and then enhanced it, increasing every possible level to the highest extreme that a human being could endure. Even the slightest additional increase would result in nothing less than death.
It was only now that he was able to admit to himself that he had toyed with the idea of making that additional increase, of giving the system the strength to override his mind when the time came again for him to fight even if it killed him in the process. The prospect of death had never disturbed him, and in those days it had even appealed to him. After all, was he not supposed to be dead? And who would care if he died again? Would there be any to mourn at his grave? No, of course there would not be. To all those who had genuinely cared for him he was already dead, and of the matter of graves, there was already one with his name engraved above it just outside the Sanq Kingdom, side-by-side with the empty grave of Treize Kushrenada. He had had no true comrades as a soldier, only allies, and for all he had known then the only one he had really ever cared about was dead too, so what did it matter if he gave life in battle? Perhaps that was the seduction of death, that no one would care, that he could slip easily and silently out of existence into whatever awaited him beyond and leave nothing behind.
He had considered it, had even come close to doing it, but in the end he did not. He did not regret his decision, but neither did he regret enhancing the system as much as he had. The only thing he did regret was never testing the new system.
The Epyon was no longer in his possession. Soon after its completion the Gundam was sent to a private hangar in Antarctica that Odin had somehow gained use of. He had been told that a man by the name of Xing Yuan-Chen had been placed in charge of the Gundam's transportation, and once, months ago now, he had considered finding a way to contact this man to arrange for it to be returned to him.
Zechs returned to the bed. He took another long, thoughtful glance at the wine, but made no move toward it. He was beginning to feel sick.
He was finally able to sleep but only for a few minutes, for the moment he began to fall into a deeper sleep there came a fierce knocking on the suite's door, carrying through the silence of the parlor into the bedroom.
He groaned softly and without even thinking decided to ignore it.
Sleep again. The beginning of a dream, two violet eyes staring into his. The glimmer of silver in the candlelight. Click click of the beads. Soft, insistent fingertips pressing the crucifix into his hand. My prince, please. A whispered prayer.
A hand on his shoulder. "Milliardo?"
A slurred, muffled response.
"Milliardo, wake up." His sister's voice uttering a curse. "You're drunk, aren't you?"
He blinked; the dream faded. His eyes opened easily enough, assaulted only by the light that managed to penetrate the clouds, and he saw her beside him, not Luca but his sister, looking worriedly from him to the bottle of wine and back to him again.
He looked up at her and mustered a slight smile and a quiet laugh. "I'm not drunk, Relena. I've only consumed half of that bottle. If it were that easy to lapse from sobriety I would be a much happier man." He watched as the expression on her face darkened. "However, I was well on my way to becoming drunk before I fell asleep. Were you hoping to join me, my dear sister?"
"You left again last night, didn't you?" she asked. She seemed as if she were trying to sound angry but her fear for him gave her voice a wild tremor.
He sat up on the bed beside her. He knew her question required no answer, therefore he made no attempt to give one. "Where do you go?" she pressed, her voice much softer now, so resembling the voice of the innocent Relena Darlian that he momentarily wished for deafness. "When you leave here in the middle of the night, where do you go, Milliardo?"
"To Hell," he mumbled. This was not entirely true; he had not been to Hell — which the devil had relocated to the Grecian peninsula of Thessaloníki — in a few days, and now he supposed that Vólos was only Purgatory.
"You don't have to be so sarcastic." She turned away from him, the expression on her face even more hurt than the sound of her voice. If earlier she had sounded like the sweet, untainted princess she had been only a year ago, she now sounded like the child he had once known her as, nothing more now than a child, not a Queen or even a princess but a lost, dejected little girl.
Any lingering effect that remained from the wine faded at her words.
He touched her shoulder. "Where I go, Princess, is not something I would like to talk about or that you would like to hear," he said gently.
She looked at him. There were tears in her eyes, he saw immediately, and her chin trembled violently. Two large tears spilled over onto her cheeks. "You're wrong," she said. Her shoulders shook as she stifled a sob. "If I didn't want to hear it, I wouldn't have asked."
Her words cut through him like a blade through the thin flesh of a woman's throat. His hand faltered from her shoulder as two more tears fell onto it.
"You don't have to tell me," she continued. "I already know."
He blinked. "What?"
He had not noticed the folded letter in her hand until now. Still looking directly into his eyes she held it up, then angrily she thrust it into his hands. "This message was delivered to the palace this morning. I was told to give it to you."
He unfolded the letter.
Relena rose from the bed and before he could read even one word of the message she said, "You're to go the Thessaloníki at 1400 this afternoon. A plane will be waiting for you in Katerini. Despite the scheduled time, you are to leave for the peninsula as soon as possible, and you are to be sure you aren't followed out of Sanq." She studied the questioning expression on his face. "I read it, Milliardo. Do you really think I'm that naïve? The messenger delivered it directly to me and I read the damned thing. Does that surprise you so much, Milliardo?"
The bitterness in her voice pierced him, and he found he could no longer meet her eyes.
She returned to the bed, stood before him in dominance like the queen that she was. "What are you doing in Thessaloníki, Milliardo? Is this what you returned to Earth for?" Now she did sob, absently wiping the tears away with the back of one gloved hand.
"Yes," he told her honestly. He took her hand and kissed the back of it. "That's all I can tell you, Princess."
"What's happening there?" she continued. Such painful desperation. "I am not an imbecile, Milliardo, and I am not a child any longer. I know something is happening there. Every ruler of every province surrounding the city knows it. The night you came here, the very moment I saw you, I suspected you somehow knew about it too. Not preventer business, is it? Not preventer but personal business. What's happening there?"
He did not answer her. She stared at him angrily for several minutes, then collapsed before him, sobbing loudly.
"There is something else," she said finally, her anger seeming to dissipate. "This morning I…"
He took one of her slender hands. "What is it, Relena?"
Her eyes, red and shot with tears, met his. "A few minutes ago I received a call dispatched from a hospital on Mars. Something's happened…Miss Noin was admitted yesterday–"
He felt his stoic jaw become unhinged as a shudder contorted his body.
"I've already arranged for a shuttle to take you there…the doctor I spoke with didn't tell me–"
He pushed away from her and leapt from the bed. Turning back, the sickness he had felt earlier now magnified, he tried to say something to her, tried to speak and found himself utterly unable to.
Lucrezia…please God—
He turned and fled the room.
Author's Notes: This chapter marks an increase in Yuan-Chen's appearances. Despite how serious he can be at times, he is really a rather amusing character, as exemplified by his inclusion of several languages in his instructions despite their relevance to the actual situation. The red-haired woman who is so curt with Heero appears again later, so don't forget her just yet.
Rhyn makes his first appearance as himself in this chapter. For those of you who are wondering, as I've received a few comments regarding this, I took his first name from the bird after hearing about someone else who was named after it and just played with the spelling. Surnames always take me forever to create, so in the interest of time when I was writing Ballad I literally took the surname of author of the first book I saw above my bed in my room. I hadn't originally meant to keep that one, but it kind of stuck after a while. Rhyn has been terribly fun to write, so much so that I could not resist making him a bigger character in Remnants. I listened to the Beatles' music quite often when I was writing Ballad, so one might blame that for Rhyn's odd personality.
As a brief note regarding the reappearance of the Epyon . . . what can I say? It was my favorite Gundam. I couldn't resist.