Chapter Eleven
I
The base was unusually quiet when he arrived; the woods surrounding it were silent as death at an hour in which there should have been heard a barely audible hum from the activities transpiring beneath the ground. It had been like this every time he had been summoned to it since the Austrian incident. Somehow he found the silence unnerving.
He found Odin Lowe waiting for him by the concealed doorway of the entrance he usually used. The sight of the man, a handsome demon in the guise of a man standing in the silent shadows, almost startled him for a moment, and Odin seemed to be aware of this.
"Good evening, Marquise," he said, his deep voice echoing quietly in the empty corridor. It was not entirely silent inside the building, Zechs realized, for from somewhere deeper within it carried the familiar metallic humming he had not been able to hear outside.
Zechs merely nodded.
"How is the situation in Sanq?"
"Improving, to say the least. The people have Relena to look to, and that seems to be keeping it under control for now."
Odin stepped away from the wall. "And the Queen?"
He hesitated. "Unsettled still," he said finally. "But that is to be expected."
Odin nodded thoughtfully. "And Miss Noin?"
"She's doing well."
"The child, I presume, is in good health still."
Zechs nodded. He had never known how Odin had found out about Lucrezia's pregnancy, but neither had he been curious about it.
Odin considered all of this for a while, then turned and motioned for Zechs to follow. "Come on, Marquise," he said. "We've wasted too much time already."
With a questioning expression and a silent tongue, he obeyed.
"Have you received word from Treize yet?" Odin asked as they walked, their path illuminated only by a dull overhead lamp.
"Yes."
"Does he still maintain the conviction that the counteroffensive is responsible for what happened in Austria?"
"No. He hasn't even mentioned it."
Another thoughtful pause. Zechs wondered if Odin was beginning to consider what he himself had.
"Our suspicions have been confirmed," Odin continued. "All of our members who were sent to Germany were apprehended. Treize's soldiers stationed here returned to Thessaloníki yesterday. Rhyn wasn't among them."
"Was he the last to confirm it?"
"Yes." After a short pause he added, "I've yet to inform Marguerite."
Zechs didn't question who this Marguerite really was to Rhyn. He no longer needed to.
Odin stopped suddenly and opened a door that Zechs had never before noticed. He assumed that it had once been concealed.
Odin disappeared into the darkness that lay, like the mouth of a cave in the deepest pit of Hell, beyond the doorway. Zechs hesitated on the threshold.
"Come on, Prince," Odin said from the darkness, either not bothering to or unable to disguise the impatience in his voice. "There is something I need to show you."
Zechs nodded and followed after him.
Neither of them spoke as they proceeded through the almost perfect blackness, down weak, narrow staircases that threatened to collapse beneath them into God-only-knew what below and through tight serpentine corridors in which could be heard the scratching-squealing-rustling of the strange, deformed creatures living within the walls.
This should have been Treize's prison, he thought as his eyes moved to examine the almost gothic passageway in the meager light provided, which, he realized when they came to it, came from a remarkable set of ivory candles set in a chilling golden candelabrum. Not some well-furnished bunker in Luxembourg. This.
Odin seemed a satanic priest as he moved through the passage, blending as though naturally with the strange, dancing shadows.
At some point farther down the corridor, a large brown spider dropped from its enormous web built among the eaves of the ceiling in front of Zechs's face. It hung there for a moment, a bulbous vampire suspended on a thread of the thinnest gossamer, then dropped onto his feet. Its dark elongated fangs gleamed against the shined leather of his boots. He nudged the spider aside and went on.
At last they came to a doorway. From first glimpse it was apparent that the door could not be opened from the outside. Odin placed the palm of his hand over a glass screen to the side of the doorway. The screen flared red as a series of beams traced the lines of his hand, then each of the locks was disengaged with a hard, hollow click.
Odin pushed the door open and motioned Zechs through it.
The candlelight faded. The dusty clawing behind the walls ceased once beyond the threshold. The gothic architecture gave way to a great bunker, one of the kind of formal efficiency he had not seen since he had left OZ years ago. The walls were alight with the glow of the dozens of computer screens that lined them, flickering in the absence of the candles. The overhead light panels were blue rather than white, bathing the entire facility in a surreal shade of cobalt seen only in the deepest and most symbolic of dreams.
His eyes were pulled immediately to the center of the room, where it stood waiting for him, unrestrained, unchanged. He whispered something in Greek — he would never remember what exactly — and thought of the passageway through which they had just come, the candles and the shadows that seemed themselves living entities. A sanctuary for Treize's handmade god.
"When–"
"We received it yesterday," Odin said, too casually, too calmly to be standing before this reconstructed beast. "I gave the order for its transfer the night following the explosion in Austria."
He nodded, took a single step toward it. Another step, then another. Even after its reconstruction, he had yet to pilot the Gundam or to test the new system. Staring up at it now, standing at its feet in an awed stupor, he realized that was exactly what Odin was going to ask him to do.
"Tonight?" he asked, glancing back at Odin.
"No. In fact, tonight is your last night in Vólos."
Zechs shot him a quizzical look.
"In light of what occurred in Austria, the entire world is looking to the Sanq Kingdom, since in years past it has often emerged as a strong, truly unified nation in times of confusion and conflict. It would hardly be appropriate for it to be discovered that the Crown Prince of the kingdom is involved with one of the forces that will fight in this war that everyone knows is about to arise yet is too afraid of the fact to admit it to themselves."
Again he nodded, his brow furrowing slightly in consideration. He had wondered since Austria when his movements within the organization would be limited. "Then where will it be tested?"
He thought he heard Odin sigh. "When you consider it, Marquise, given the counteroffensive's position in the events and your own, there is only one location where we can test it."
"The kingdom."
"Yes."
He looked up at the Gundam, at the lifeless emerald eyes. The Epyon, a symbol of war and nothing but war, brought within the limits of the Sanq Kingdom.
It would not be the first time such a paradox had occurred.
He nodded in agreement and turned to leave the bunker. Odin did nothing to stop him.
My dear Relena, he thought as the door fell shut and locked behind him, trapping in the cold candlelit passageway with the squealing, scratching rodents and the hissing spiders. It seems definite now that I will have to fight again in the manner of the Lightning Count to preserve your kingdom. I do hope that you understand.
Somehow, her comprehension of his actions had ceased to matter to him.
Author's Notes: I was wrong: this is the shortest chapter of Ballad. At last the Epyon makes its official reentrance. There is a sharp contrast to the manner in which Zechs thinks of the Epyon and Heero of the Wing Zero, although I do not think it is very obvious in this chapter. Where Heero rather considers his gundam to be a stronger form of drug, Zechs almost deifies his: Heero might possess a slight fear of his own machine because of the threat of losing the stern control he has always had over himself, while Zechs might feel somewhat intimidated by his, for the Epyon often does seem to have a mind of its own.