Trowa's eyebrows raised, impressed.
"Why the Excalibur?" he questioned. It was a pretty laden name for a suit.
"Arthurian legend says that the Excalibur will reappear when it is most needed," Midii said softly. "King Arthur raised the sword to defend the weak and to fight against tyranny and oppression. I thought it was suitable, no pun intended."
"I've never seen a mobile suit like this before," he said mildly. It was tall, taller than most ordinary mobile suits.
"Nor will you," Midii said as she continued to pap away at her control pad. "The Excalibur is the only one of its kind. It was a prototype model and since Father burned all of his notes and destroyed the hard drives that have all of the information about the systems he'd developed for it, I don't think that's likely to change."
"How did it do that disappearing act?" Trowa asked interestedly.
"I'm not exactly sure. I think father invented a sort of shielding system that bends light instead of allowing it to reflect off from an object, but that's really only a guess. I know the system only works when the suit is still, if it's moving the suit has some weird-looking blurry warp effect in the air around it... for a good pilot with a good targeting system it would be enough to lock on if they can keep up. Callie's pretty fast."
Despite the note of pride in Midii's voice there was a worried expression on her face. She walked up to stand directly before it at its feet and looked up into its metallic gaze.
"Alright suit," she said, addressing it directly as if she fully expected it to understand her. "You don't like me and I don't like you, but I need to borrow your strength one last time."
"You're the pilot?" Trowa questioned. That much would have been obvious now that he thought about it and he felt a little foolish for asking that out loud. By every evidence Midii was the sole person who knew the location of the Excalibur's hiding place if not its existence.
"As much as anyone can be," Midii said in a subdued voice. "It's more like I'm borrowing its strength. The Excalibur isn't an ordinary suit, and it requires a unique quality in the one who would pilot it. If you don't know who you are, what you want, why you're here and where you're going; if you don't have a clear sense of the battle you're fighting and the reason you fight, then trying to pilot this suit will prove fatal."
"Fatal?" Trowa questioned.
"Back when they were testing the suit the test pilots all died, every last one of them. I'm not sure what happened, but the cockpit system burned them out."
"Cockpit system?" Trowa demanded, suddenly very interested. He grabbed her arm, her uninjured one, and turned her to face him. "The zero system?" he demanded.
"Zero system? Never heard--"
"Of it, I get it. I don't suppose you would have," Trowa said. "The Zero System was a very special cockpit system designed by the five scientists who developed the Gundams. Its goal was to feed battlefield data and tactics programming directly into the pilots brain making his reaction times faster than any other fighter on the field and stretching the pilot's fighting abilities to the fullest extent. It also had the unfortunate side effect of killing off lesser pilots or making pilots who were mentally or emotionally unstable step over the edge. It was a good system... for anyone who could master it. The only ones who ever did were my comrades and Zechs Mequise who piloted Epyon."
"How many Gundams were there?" she grumbled.
"There were five original suits that were sent to Earth from the Colonies. Then there were the Custom models built by our five scientists. Then there was Wing Zero built by Quatre but piloted mostly by Heero though all of us seem to have tried it out at one point. Then there was Epyon, the suit Treize built that Heero piloted and then Zechs used to fight against us. Then there were Tallgeeses one, two and three but I don't think they count; they were made from gundanium and built of the prototype designed by the five scientists but they were never piloted by any of the five of us. I guess you might call them the OZ gundams."
"So, counting the OZ Gundams, that makes fifteen," she said. "That's a lot of alloy."
"I should probably also mention Mercurius and Veyeite; they had Gundanium armor and they were designed by the five scientists who had been coerced into working for OZ at the time... but they were only mobile dolls loaded with tactical data taken from myself and Heero Yuy."
"Seventeen. Any more?" she asked curiously.
"There wasn't seventeen at one time," he cautioned. "The Custom models were built after the originals were destroyed in various ways. So at a given time there were usually only six on the battlefeild; the five piloted by myself and my comrades and whatever Zechs happened to be using at the time."
Midii didn't say anything more about Gundams after that and the maintenance machines got to work on readying and refueling the Excalibur. Midii looked like she was readying herself, she had her eyes closed and was taking deep even breaths, obviously seeking calm and relaxation. When she opened her eyes Trowa questioned her about it.
"I said this wasn't an ordinary suit," she said in reply. "You can't just jump in and pilot it. Piloting the Excalibur under extreme stress or emotional upheaval is dangerous. I have to be calm and centered if I am to remain in control. For you, piloting a special suit is a matter of course; for me, piloting the Excalibur is only a court of last resort. This is the suit I use when I'm all out of options and I need a victory. It is powerful but also very dangerous."
"The thing you haven't explained to me is just why it is so dangerous," Trowa said. "You said it requires a special pilot, you've said that piloting it has been known to kill people. You've said that it's dangerous enough to be only used under greatest duress. Is that because it is a danger to the pilot or because it is a danger to everyone else around the suit?"
"Both of them at once," Midii said gravely. She looked up at the suit and sighed once more. She didn't like using it because it was based off from a principle that seemed like something impossible and yet it existed.
"If piloting this suit makes you nervous, I'll do it for you," Trowa said looking up at it.
"Thank-you, but it's my burden alone to carry. Besides, I think the suit would reject you as a candidate and I don't want that to happen to you."
Trowa stiffened a little.
"No offense," she added quickly. "It's just that this thing is... different."
"So is the zero system," Trowa said, she could tell by the rather stiff ring to his lack of tone that she'd offended him anyway.
"If it were just a matter of using only the primary weapons and defenses I would clear you for cockpit entry and say have at it. I've seen you fight and even at ten years old you're exceptional... but the in the battle ahead considering the size and sheer numbers of suits we'll have to combat it's likely that I'll have to use the Rowan Drive System. That's the thing that sets this suit apart from all other suits, it's the thing that kills the pilots trying to operate it and it's the reason I won't let anyone else touch Excalibur. It's not that I'm particularly attached to this suit because frankly it scares the hell out of me sometimes, it's that drive system. It's not normal."
"How so?" he asked quietly.
"It does things," she said, her voice sounding a little haunted. "Things I've never seen before, things that should be impossible. It reacts to the pilot, it makes will into reality. If it were ever to get out of control I don't think anything would be able to stop it."
Midii turned on her heel and walked over to a curtained alcove off to one side. Trowa heard the sound of a zipper and the rustle of cloth and realized she was undressing herself. She emerges a few minutes after that in a suit of light armor with an odd headpiece under her arm, it wasn't a helmet because it didn't cover face for breathing and the top was open.
"There's a secondary compartment below the cockpit," she said. "You can rejoin your comrades when I go to meet the good padre on the open field. He is most assuredly moving to attack my civilians as we speak."
The Excalibur kneeled down to a crouch and Midii scrambled up the arm, over the shoulder, and into an open hatch placed right between the shoulder-blades. It felt familiar and yet frightening at the same time, the ease with which she slipped down the narrow hatch and into the cockpit. The tac screens of the Excalibur lit up upon her entry and the automated system of her suit demanded her identity and password.
"Pilot Midii Une, password Nanashi," she replied, obscurely glad that the suits com was off and he wouldn't know that she'd used his name as her password.
"Identity confirmed. Welcome Pilot Midii Une," the mechanized voice of her cockpit AI replied.
Mobile suits didn't come with a system like this in a cockpit, she imagined that having to talk to a suit instead of pilot silently would make a lot of pilots nervous but the security system on this suit was like everything else on this suit; one of a kind. If another pilot had tried to access her suit the cockpit would have locked up and the self-destruct sequence would have commenced unless he or she knew the correct override command and confirmation password. There was no point in going to all of the trouble of surrounding the suit with a security net if just anyone could get into the cockpit and make off with it once they got past the net.
"Begin preparations," she said. "Synchronize at level one and lock in piloting preferences."
"Confirmed," Excalibur replied. Midii felt the restraining harness lock over her chest and the special arm braces that went over her hands and upper arms slide into position so that she could access them. Placing the helmet on her head she felt the padding around the sides expand to mould to her skull.
"Synchronizing... Ten percent... Thirty percent... seventy percent... Synchronization complete."
The tac screens of her cockpit in front of her lit up with a diagnostic of all systems. Despite it's long period of disuse Excalibur was at one hundred percent capacity. Midii fitted her hands into the piloting gauntlets and they glowed momentarily.
"Synchronize at level two," Midii replied. "And open intra-suit com to reserve chamber."
"Confirmed," the suit replied.
"Trowa?" Midii inquired. "Are you there?"
"Affirmative," he replied. "This looks like a cockpit."
"It's a reserve chamber. Mainly it's used as an emergency single transport unit or even emergency medical, for instance if a comrade was injured in battle you could haul him out of there in the reserve unit. It can be used as a secondary cockpit and command functions can be rerouted there but it takes the primary pilot, that's me, giving the command and it takes their password."
"I've never seen one of these on a suit."
"My father thought it was a good idea to make it that way just in case the pilot got injured and there would be someone who could take over command if necessary. It's never happened before. The internal security is pretty tight I should warn you. If anyone tries to access the suit's controls without proper authorization by the pilot or the correct override password the suit will lock down the cockpit and begin its self destruct sequence."
"It would sooner be destroyed than placed in the hands of the enemy eh?"
"A sensible precaution with something like this I think," Midii replied.
"Why are you so certain that Sacred Omega will attack the capitol in force? Wouldn't that be tipping their hand too soon?" he inquired.
"Synchronization complete," Excalibur informed her. Midii tapped in commands for the suit to go activate light shield and launch to an altitude of seven hundred feet, then to proceed on a set course.
"He wants what he wants," Midii said. "And he won't stop until he has it. He knows I'd do anything to protect my people, and he feels deep down that I know where this suit is. He's right of course, and he wants me to fight him."
"So basically you're saying that you're going to play right into his hands," Trowa remarked dryly.
"If he wants a fight then I'll give it to him. I don't start my battles, but I always finish them."
With that Midii launched her suit. It would only take two hours to reach the city at sector twenty-nine with the Excalibur traveling at maximum burn. She knew that Sacred Omega would be waiting there for her, she only hoped that the Haven and Homeguard would be ready in time to receive them and give them a proper welcome. If not, then it was all up to her.
Quatre Raberba Winner looked at the main tactic display screen on his mobile suit. Lady Une had by default been put in charge of the mobile suit troops of both Homeguard and the small contingent of suits brought in by the Preventors. His own Maguanacs were there as well, all forty of them. They needed every available suit for the battle that had sprung up on their front lawn earlier this morning without warning. When Trowa had disappeared and Number One of Homeguard had disappeared with them she'd called them in to go hunt for their comrade while Une set up a command outpost outside the city gates. When this massive army had sprung up overnight with every evidence of hostile intentions she'd asked them to remain behind and pilot their Preventors Issued mobile suits into battle. They were all modeled after the Tallgeese One, the suit that zechs had piloted that had been made as a prototype model bt the five scientists who had built their own Gundams, so they were familiar with its basic design and could use it to best advantage.
The position of Homeguard and the Preventors looked unusually bleak; Quatre hadn't know that it was possible to still be able to assemble a force like this in these peaceful times... and the disarmament had been going so well too. In total the Allied forces of Homeguard and the Preventors had three hundred and ten operational mobile suits. The enemy had approximately three times that number. Each Homeguard squad consisted of seven each, there was one squad for each of the thirty three sectors. Then there were the additional nineteen suits of Number One's mobile team making two hundred fifty mobile suits all together. Quatre had them arranged in squads for long range and short range battles to make maximum use of each and every squad member but they were all woefully outnumbered.
Homeguard faced squads of ten enemy suits arranged in phalanxes five squads deep. There were fifty suits in each of their units laid out in neat rows and columns that seemed to stretch on forever. They weren't even worried about setting up for best strategic advantage, the sheer number of them was an advantage all of its own. There were nineteen units with five rows of ten suits (or fifty suits)... so, nine hundred and fifty suits to face a little over three hundred.
"Man," Duo said, whistling through his teeth. "There's just no end to 'em. Looks like the God of Death is needed once again."
"Don't start," Wufei said repressively. "There is no justice in their actions. Attacking a civilian settlement that has not provoked them in any way is the epitome of injustice."
"Yeah, what you said," Duo agreed. "Hey Heero, ten credits says I get more than you do."
Naturally the stoic pilot ignored him and said
"This suit's all set. Ready for the order."
"Hey," Quatre said. "Has anyone seen Trowa? I haven't seen him at all, though his sister Catherine showed up late last night. I wonder where he could be."
"Don't worry about Tro, man," Duo advised. "This is a big battle and he's not the type to sit back from the action especially when his sister might be involved. He'll be along any time now."
"I guess you're right Duo," Quatre said.
"I am? I mean, of course I am. Let's get this party started."
"Don't be so anxious. Protocol demands that we let them attack first, otherwise we can't say it was a justifiable defense."
"Aww Heero, they've been sitting there for hours!" Duo replied to the first pilot. "What the heck are they waitin' for?"
Before Quatre could chide Duo for being a jinx the enemy suit in the lead fired its first shot at one of the four suits front and center of the Homeguard troops.
"Injustice!" Wufei screamed, lowering his shield.
"I guess that's our cue!" Duo said firing off the ground and charging into the fray with his beam weapon out. "If you guys are lucky, I'll leave some left over for you!"
Quatre and Heero quickly followed suit. The battle had begun.
In the distance Midii could see the streaks of fire signaling plasma weapons being fired and the sporadic bursts of flaming spheres signaling that a target ahd been destroyed. She magnified to get a better look at the battle.
"Sugoi," she breathed in amazement. There were four suits that were tearing into the fore-units of Sacred Omega's massive armada. Endlessly charging with long lines of explosions and destroyed enemies stringing out behind them, they fired on the lines before them and their enemies fell but for every enemy suit they vanquished five more strode forward to take its place. The suits of Sacred Omega may have out numbered the four suits fighting the close battle but it was clear that they were woefully outclassed. The four suits easily dodged every shot that the Sacred Omega suits fired at them with aerobatics, barrel rolls and twists that were so smooth they looked effortless.
Midii felt a pang of self-doubt, her suit might be hot stuff when it was fully awakened to battle but she didn't think she had that level of skill that she saw beating Sacred Omega to a pulp. There was a lot of Sacred Omega to beat however, the suits and forces of her people and the Preventors were mainly positioned in defense around the unprotected city, and though the four suits and the detachment of fifty or seventy who were accompanying them were creating much havoc, they were still barely making a dent in the overwhelming military force that Sacred Omega had gathered.
She set down a few leagues away from the backlines of Sacred Omega's forces switched on her stealth shield to full power, and contemplated her next move.
"What are you waiting for?" Trowa questioned. "Those are your people down there, shouldn't you go and protect them?"
"I intend to," she replied. "Excalibur needs a moment to warm to full battle mode."
She punched in the command for her suit to engage battle mode. She raised her hands and launched herself into the air, pausing at a set altitude and then stooping down into the midst of them like a hawk. Her heat shortel-pike glowed and angry red as she made her first pass, decimating the line of enemies she had targeted before she pulled up and looped around for another pass at them. They wouldn't see her as anything more than a blur and a line of destroyed suits because of the stealth shielding and Midii had never fought in a pitched and open battle before with the Excalibur; always before she had attacked manned bases at night under the cover of her light-shield. Those who had laid eyes on Excalibur had never lived to tell about it. Now it was all changed.
In for a penny, in for a pound I suppose, she thought. What she hadn't been expecting was the sheer magnitude of their forces. There was only one way to even odds that were this bad and it wasn't by attacking the suits singly. She supposed she had no real option but to activate the Rowan Drive; that was the single thing which made this suit so dangerous and Midii did not like using it. She hauled out her Plasma Rifle and showered the troops before her with plasma rounds, taking out their suits. That was really more Trowa's style of fighting.
Typical male, she thought, continuing to ire. Think that if you throw enough bullets at it the problem will eventually solve itself.
Midii reluctantly addressed her suit.
"AI, start the Rowan Driver," she ordered.
"Confirmed," the cockpit said. Midii swallowed against her nervousness, she'd never tried to use the system as extensively as she planned on using it today and she didn't know for certain what would happen. With forces this great the best she could do was do her best and hope she lived through it. A status bar blinked into existence before her eyes and showed that her system was powering up. She was smack in the middle of the Sacred Omega army, right in the midst of where their troops were concentrated to the greatest degree when her light bending shield came down. The Rowan Driver required all auxiliary power to be rerouted to its main system. Her planet defenders were down as well. Her heat shortel still worked but she was relying solely on the reflective armor plating for defense against enemy fire. Sacred Omeaga seemed taken aback for a moment by her appearance in their midst out of thin air but wasted no time in concentrating their fire on her.
"Rowan Dive power-up complete," the cockpit informed her. She felt the strange tingling along her skin that warned her that the battle mode had been activated. The cockpit faded from around her and instead she saw the battlefeild as clearly as though she was standing outside, overlaid in the air were three-dimensional sectors a tactics and targeting display. It was a mental projection instead of an actual field as the Rowan system activated informing her of her enemies movements.
Midii nodded and closed her eyes briefly, sending up a small prayer to whatever deity might be listening that this would work without killing her or draining her so much that she could no longer pilot the Excalibur.
She saw a shield, held it in her minds eye, became it, became the idea of a shield, brought out all of her protective shielding instincts and roused them to full frenzy and pushed slightly. She felt power crackle along her skin and skitter through her senses but she held onto her sense of self and her world remained steady. Enemy fire stopped rocking the sides of her suit, cut off suddenly as if by a knife. They targeted her with their missiles and their most powerful beam cannons but the shield held without effort.
"If it's a fight they want," she muttered at them.
She gathered her thoughts again, it was time. There was the smell of Ozone around her and the tingly feeling of lightning crackling along her skin. She felt the forces gather around her like a palpable sensation, she focused, becoming one with the battle, a creature of the suit. A sphere of blue-white light appeared in front of her mobile suit. She shot it outwards at the enemies in front of her and it hung in the air, floating a moment like a soap bubble and then burst in a tsunami of pure white light that blinded anyone who looked at it. Rings of energy waves blasted out from the ground zero causing the suits within the immediate vicinity to explode instantly. The ones farther away were merely rocked with the shockwave. She looked at the smoking crater that was all that was left of twenty-five suits, another fifteen just outside the blast site were obviously deactivated. It was good for a first attack using the system; but Midii felt drained. The Rowan system had a tendency to do that.
She was about to ready another attack when she heard Trowa's voice echo through the cock pit system.
"Incoming," he replied. "One hundred from above and another two hundred ringing in from all sides. I would say you managed to attract their attention."
"Good, because I've only just gotten started," she said. If she could draw all of the enemies away from attacking her people she would have achieved her purpose. She sent out another blast in an expanding ring from the sides to take out the lateral offense then raised her hands to force her suit into the air to take on the aerial troops. She blurred past them ready with another attack from the Rowan Driver and there was a line of exploding suits behind her.
"There's too many of them," Midii muttered as the suits she destroyed were replaced by three times the previous number. There was only one way to even the odds that she could think of, the problem was that she didn't know what would happen if she made such an attempt; it was theoretically possible but the stress of making the Rowan Driver do something like that might just end up killing her.
One only lived once; at least this way her death would have meaning. What more could she ask for?
She allowed her suit to free-fall back down to the ground and pushed off with her retro boosters to slow her descent. Upon landing safely Midii changed the energy signature on her shield from defensive to shorter-wave. She closed her eyes and focused all of her will, all of her energy, all of her strength on this one attack.
Her shield burst out from her suit traveling in all directions; an enormous dome attack-wall of pure blue-white light that destroyed everything it touched. She existed only as a force of annihilation, for that one moment she was no longer Midii Une but the energy spreading out all around her. She was a being of energy, a lance of pain, a wall of thought, the idea of utter destruction. Therein lay the danger of the Rowan suit, one could become lost to the pull of the energy to the dance of air and lightning and it could consume you. The only hope for the pilot to retain their sense of self in te workings of a larger universe was to know themselves, to have a purpose for being where they were and doing what they were doing. The only hope for a pilot to not be taken over by the mysterious force that the Rowan Driver tapped into was to be utter and completely grounded in themselves at all times.
The wind screamed and the sky became white with the unleashing of such powerful energies and Midii pushed out from around her, forcing the ephemeral bubble of lightning and force out in all directions as far as it could go, as far as she could hold it together. She felt the Rowan system draining her of all of her strength, of all of her energy... She hung in the moment and all she heard was the sound of her own heart beating... low, muffled... slow. Slow. Slow...stop. She lost her grip and everything faded.