Chapter 10
U.C. 0094.1.17 0945 EOST
Refurbished Neo Zeon Hospital in Calyx, Palau, L4
Angelo Sauper woke up with a start. His thin arms jerked upward, attempting to block out the harsh light that was seeping into his eyes. They were halted about a foot into the air. Restraints he dimly realized. Brief movements of his legs showed that they were bounds as well.
He could faintly hear the sound of people moving towards him and the horrifying realization that his dreams of safety must have been just that, a hopeful dream. Of course he wouldn't be able to escape. But how had he failed? Everything was still fussy in his memories. He must have gotten hit on the head again.
Then a voice startled him.
"...sir? Can you hear me sir?" A male voice sounded off to the left of him. Angelo rotated his head to get a better look at the person, fully expecting to see one of the back alley surgeons his owners used to treat him and others when their 'clients' had gone too far. His eyes half lidded and facial muscles relaxed to give nothing away. He had found that looking this way made the back alley doctors less likely to take out their frustrations on him.
"Well it looks like you woke up right on schedule young man. Almost like clockwork." A chuckle from the male.
He...didn't look like any back alley doctor Angelo had been in the care of before. Angelo flickered his eyes to the scenery around the doctor. It looked surprisingly clean. And very white too. Shit maybe he had been messed up badly this time.
The doctor(?) continued to talk to him, mentioning things that Angelo didn't really understand. Then he turned to another person in a white coat, who handed him a clipboard.
"Now things man be a little disorienting sir, we had to put you into a medical coma in order to properly treat your short term and long-term injuries, as well as to flush a startling amount of drugs from your system." The doctor must have seen something in Angelo's eyes, which he had opened fully at this point, because he frowned as if deep in thought.
"Maybe it's best if he explained things to you…" The doctor muttered before resuming a more normal tone of voice. Not that Angelo hadn't heard what the doctor had said, having an acute sense of hearing had gotten him out of many beatings in the past.
"Now I'm going to perform a series of tests on your sir, just to ascertain your health and make sure everything is functioning properly. If at any time you feel uncomfortable with the tests, then we can stop and do them another time." He said sincerely.
Angelo figured he might as well go along with this and started to say yes but only a croak came out of his mouth.
The doctor looked sheepish and handed him a water pouch with a straw in it. "Slow and small sips please."
He looked back to the other white coat, Angelo tracking his movement suspiciously. "Rachel if you could call Line 1 and tell them that the patient has woken up."
"Okay then sir, if you could please follow my finger with your eyes without moving your head please."
An undisclosed, at least to Angelo, amount of time later the doctor stepped away and scribbled one last line on his clipboard before looking down at him and smiling. "Well sir, it looks like that concussion you got didn't knock anything loose. You'll have to stay here for a few more days, then I believe we can move onto physical therapy and…"
The door that Angelo had been eyeing occasionally since he had woken up opened with barely any noise, and another man entered the room. Angelo's eyes darted over to examine the man and he gasped as everything suddenly clicked into place. Him making another escape, almost succeeding, being beaten and his rescue by the man with blonde hair and blue encasing him.
"It's you…" He managed a faint whisper. He frantically ran through his memories. He..he was free.
The man, who wasn't resonating blue light at this moment and dressed in a red coat with gold trim, smiled kindly at Angelo.
"Ah you're awake." He plucked the doctor's clipboard from his hands as he approached Angelo's bed. "And in remarkably good health for someone who needed to be put in a two week medical coma according to Doctor Roberts here."
Doctor Roberts, his name now revealed to Angelo, spoke up. "Sir, I must protest this intrusion. My patient has only just woken up and needs time to adjust."
Angelo's rescuer hummed in response, taking a second to finish flipping through the papers on the doctor's clipboard before responding. "He is a doctor, however he should also be informed of where he is as soon as possible instead of leaving him in the dark even more."
Roberts kept protesting but the man in red's startlingly blue eyes slid to lock onto the doctor's brown eyes.
"I'll be at my desk." Roberts said before walking off.
Angelo watched the exchange with grey eyes narrowed. He was reasonably sure that the man in red was on his side. So best to keep an eye on the doctor in case he made any hostile moves. And did his best to ignore that hopeful part of him that had woken up when the man in red had entered the room.
"Here let's get these off you." The man in red released the clasp on his arm and leg restraints. They had been given slack when Roberts was looking over him, but feeling the weight on them on his wrists and ankles hadn't exactly eased Angelo's mind.
The man in red continued. "I apologize for those, but they were necessary. You were thrashing around when you were being detoxed and we were worried you would injure yourself."
Well that sounded...believable Angelo decided.
"That's fine." He croaked out, his voice still sore despite the two water pouches he had drunk. "I'm sorry for causing you trouble."
The man in red looked surprised. "It was no trouble at all and certainly nothing to apologize for. I'm Full Frontal, pleasure to meet you." A hand was extended to Angelo, who had been rubbing his wrists to banish the last feelings of the restraints on his wrists.
Angelo shook the offered hand and eventually responded "..Angelo Sauper."
Full Frontal's eyes gleamed and he smiled. "Nice to put a name to the face Angelo. Suppose you have questions for me? Oh but before that. Here." A thermos was handed to Angelo, who looked at it with confusion. "It's herbal green tea with honey. I prefer coffee myself but one of my subordinates swears by it as the cure for colds and sore throats"
Angelo took an exploratory sip and he felt better! He eagerly took another sip. It had been so long since he had anything that tasted like this. When his thirst was slaked he looked at Full Frontal and asked his first question.
"Where am I? Von Braun I assume?"
"Actually no." Full Frontal responded. "You're not in Von Braun or even the Moon anymore. You're currently at Palau, an asteroid settlement located at L4."
Angelo... didn't know where that was.
"More specifically you're at our medical facilities where you have been receiving treatment for the past two weeks." Full Frontal finished explaining, no visible impatience on his face which was unusual for Angelo to see. He got a good smack across the face whenever he asked the simplest of questions at Von Braun but he realized he wasn't exactly at Von Braun anymore.
Angelo moved on. "Why did you save me?"
"Because it was the right thing to do." Full Frontal leaned forward a bit as he said this and his brilliant blue eyes shone with determination.
"That's it?" Angelo blurted out when he realized nothing else was being said.
"Yes, that's it."
"Bullshit, nobody just does things like that." His own anger surprised him to a degree.
"That is the only answer I can give you I'm afraid Angelo." Full Frontal spread his hands. "I'd do the same thing for anybody else I came across in your situation."
Angelo continued on with the line of questioning, feeling a yawning pit forming in his stomach. "How did you know where to find me?"
Full Frontal considered him for a moment before responding. "Do you know what a Newtype is?
"Yeah." Angelo said forcefully. "Super-soldiers that pilot mobile suits, everybody knows that."
Full Frontal grimaced at that answer. "While that is the common misconception, it is not the truth.."
"What do you mean?"
"While Newtypes can, and often are, ace mobile suit pilots that is merely a side effect of their mere existence. Newtypes are people born without limitations, able to surpass what was once thought of as the limit of human capabilities. Namely, the mental telepathic abilities that allow Newtypes to communicate with each other beyond the established norms of speech and thought. However, most often they find a niche for themselves in times of conflict such as the One Year War and the Gryps Conflict, which as led to Newtypes being a byword for super soldiers for those who aren't aware of their abilities and are unlearned on the subject of Newtypes."
That made a surprising amount of sense of Angelo but… "That doesn't explain how you knew where to find me."
"Simple really, you sent out a mental call for help. I was nearby and heard, along with another of my subordinates. I found you at the entrance of an alleyway and dealt with your attackers before taking you to a local hospital to get preliminary treatment. You didn't have any form of identification on you so there was no chance of the hospital taking you on for the long term. So I took you back to Palau for treatment."
"Really?" Angelo asked.
"Yeah." Full Frontal chuckled. "Simple."
"Sounds like a nice story but it loses its effectiveness when you start with mental communication, which is impossible." Angelo challenged.
"Really?" Full Frontal sounded smug. "Then how have we been having this conversation, yet neither of us have spoken a word after we introduced ourselves?"
He...he was right Angelo realized. Angelo hadn't opened his mouth to speak since he told Full Frontal his name. He'd just been drinking tea.
"I see you figured it out" Full Frontal spoke, using his mouth this time. "Well that ends this particular demonstration. Mental talk isn't my strong suit, so I can only keep it up for a short time."
It took Angelo a couple of tries of opening his mouth and nothing coming out to click back into speaking.
"So everything really happened then? This isn't a dream?" He said faintly
"I know a thing or two about dreams, so I can say with confidence that this is not a dream. There would be more beaches, bikinis and drinks if this was a dream." Full Frontal said jokingly.
"That means I'm free?" Angelo asked. "You saved me?"
A shadow passed over Full Frontal face for a brief second. "You are free to chart your own course in life Angelo and I'm sorry that this choice was ever taken from you in the first place. The world shouldn't work like that. And if you want to put it that way then yes, I suppose I did save you." A transparent blue started to hover around Full Frontal, although Angelo realized in a flash of realization that the man probably wasn't able to see it.
"So what now?" Angelo asked and yawned at the end of his question, and his tiredness struck him like a hammer blow.
Full Frontal seemed to catch onto this and grinned. "Well I'm going to hand you back over to Roberts over there before he kills me for interfering with his patients for too long. As for you, you have some recovery to do but Roberts is confident that you'll not only be back on your feet by the end of the month, but in better shape that you've been your whole life. Trust me, you are in good hands with Roberts treating you, even if his bedside manners could be improved."
Angelo was able to pick up Robert start grumbling at that remark.
"Yeah, I guess so." Angelo said. "Will we get to talk again?"
"Of course, once you have some more energy." Full Frontal assured him. "Probably in a day or two. Rest up in the meanwhile Angelo and welcome to Palau."
"Sure." Angelo got out and then Full Frontal was out of the room and Roberts was back with another clipboard.
As the examinations continued and the medical talk grew, Angelo focused on Full Frontal's words of the way the world worked and came to another realization. If such a world could exist like that, where people helped other people in need, then he'd do anything to bring that world into existence.
Calyx Military Port, Palau, L4
The same day
"Okay Oshikawa, what's the damage?" I asked the wiry old man with trepidation as the two of us gazed up at a damaged mobile suit that had been moved to the repair bays buried in the back of the military port.
Oshikawa took a drag of his cigarette before responding. "She's missing her right arm up to the torso and she's lost four of her funnels. The cockpits connection cable has been scrambled a bit and the main thruster backpack got itself melted back at Axis from the carbon scoring we've found on it."
"What about the reactor?" I asked, not breaking my stare at the mobile suit.
"It's fine, just needs a good recharge and she'll purr like she's just come off the assembly line." Oshikawa said cheerfully, a welcome surprise as the man had been pretty upset ever since we recovered the sole remaining Jagd Doga from the Rewloola's hanger. The Rewloola herself was currently getting the repairs and refits she deserved.
"And the psycommu system and the psychoframe Oshikawa? The suit is useless without it."
"I'm pleased to report that the psychofrom and psycommu system are functional sir."
I sighed and folded my arms across my chest. "Okay then, here's what is going to happen. Fix up the internals, replace its backpack with one of the spare ones from the Geara Dogas, and get the torso repaired."
"And the rest of her?" He asked.
"The funnels just need to be recharged correct?" He said yes. "Then charge them separately and make sure there are no malfunctions present in their systems. As for the arm and rifle, this presents a perfect opportunity to do a quality check on our new operation foundry."
I turned to leave and Oshikawa saluted me, but I remembered something else I needed him to do. I looked over my shoulder at the red mobile suit with silver highlights.
"After the cockpit is repaired, pull all the data concerning the Gundam in the Jagd Doga's operating system and then wipe the previous pilot's flight data. After which, perform a wipe of the suit's psycommu." I had initially been surprised that Neo Zeon had the knowledge of how to reset a psycommu system to what amounted to factory default, but upon reflection it made sense. They had developed/co-developed the current iteration.
"What priority do you want the repairs given sir?" Oshikawa asked.
"Top priority." I responded with. "We need every mobile suit in our possession operational. And give that thing a new paint job, I'm the only one here who flies in red."
I left the repair bay at a brisk tap, my thoughts wrapped up in the decisions of my genetic progenitor. What had possessed Char to give not one but two important assets to a child? I wracked my headspace for the answer and even probbed the Will to see it if I remembered the reasoning for that decision(It didn't.) but was forced, in the end, to conclude that Char just hadn't been thinking when he made those choices.
But I decided to look on the bright side: I had an operation Newtype-use mobile suit and I had Newtype to pilot it, although Marida was probably only going to be using it for a short time before she got moved to the Kshatriya. Horst's most recent report said that Anaheim was interested in the design philosophy behind the suit, so hopefully it wouldn't take much convincing or negotiating on my part to lock down its production.
I hopped on a series of lifts as I raced back up Calyx, getting a very nice view of the fleet in their moorings along the way. The final lift came to a stop at the upper most location in the entire asteroid: an old control block for inbound and outbound traffic from the military port. It dated back to the first days of the currently defunct Republic of Riah and now served as my quasi quarters and the Sleeves command zone, where daily briefings and important meetings happened.
As I entered the briefing room, twenty-two people came to their feet and saluted me. The noise produced a strange echo that warbled off the metal walls of the room.
"At ease." I took a seat at the front of the table that had been dragged up to this room. "Now let's get down to business." I activated the holographic projector, which came to life to show six arrow head shaped ships.
"This is the Arango-class Freighter. 120 meters long and 134 meters tall with a crew complement of ten. They were discovered during our last sweep of Calyx's bowels and after such our engineering teams have been hard at work getting them serviceable again and installing MS catapults for the ships. I know that some of you have had reservations about freighters getting priority over your own warships. Rest assured these reprioritizations were deemed critical to the interests of Neo Zeon and were given a good deal of thought before they were implemented."
The officers looked at each other before turning their attention back to me.
Captain Bassein of the Endra-class Kalt spoke up after that. "Perhaps we might be informed of the wider purpose that these unarmed freighters would serve in the fleet sir."
I nodded and stood up from my seat.
"As all of you know, we are in a precarious situation. Not even a full year ago, we suffered defeat at Axis and as a result of that defeat have lost much of our local Earth Sphere resources, both in men and material. Now we must begin the job of rebuilding our forces in the wake of those losses. In order to do that, we need a way to move around the Earth Sphere in a relatively inconspicuous way."
I saw that the officers had caught onto my plan.
"So ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to the Rivacona Cargo Shipping Fleet, which will serve as our intelligence gathering and covert operation branches. Captain Zinnerman will lead these six ships as his command from the Garencieres, the first Arango-class we recovered here at Calyx." I went to Zinnerman, who was seated three seats down from me on my left. "Congratulations, Captain Zinnerman."
Zinnerman didn't look surprised, obviously. He had been briefed and offered this task two days prior. After some hemming and hawing on his part(although it was much more like grumbling) he had accepted the job on the condition that Marida would stay under his command. She was already going to be under his command, not like I'd break up such an effective team as the two of them, but if it made him feel like he got some benefits for rejoining Neo Zeon, then who was I to disagree?
I changed the projector to a map of the Earth Sphere. "Moving on our main topic for this meeting: Operation Aesop. Captain Dawson, please brief the room." I retook my seat and Dawson, who was directly on my right, stood up.
"Thank you sir." His dull eyes swept the room. "The main goal of this operation is the location of the Axis asteroid halves and the securing of any and all Neo Zeon resources that still remain onboard the facilities there."
A red x and re line appeared on the projected map.
"Following the Battle of Axis and the subsequent diverting of the front half of Axis away from the Earth , the two halves of Axis hung in high Earth orbit for roughly two months before escaping earth orbit and heading out into space. Based on our calculations, the frontal half of Axis, the part we are interested, is somewhere between the L4 and L3 points." A red circle appeared on the map. "Captain Zinnerman will lead his ships to this zone and commence a search for Axis Prime with four of the Arango-class freighters. Upon their finding of Axis Prime, they will transmit its location back to us here at Palau and the Columbus-class cargo hauler Garen along with two escort ships will depart to begin recovery operations. While the recovery team is enroute, Captain Zinnerman's ships and his mobile suit contingent under Lieutenant Commander Banham will post a guard around Axis Prime and secure a docking zone for the Garen." Dawson swept the room one more time before sitting back down.
"Any questions or concerns?" I asked the assembled officers
"Only four of the freighters are going to Axis, why is this? Surely it would be more effective for all six of them to be assigned to this task?" Captain Ignovich asked, his Russian accent shining through a bit.
"Those two freighters have been assigned other tasks to be carried out outside of the umbrella of Operation Aesop." I responded.
"When will the operation commence?" Captain Dante of the Guskor asked.
"Two days from now on the nineteenth." Dawson gave the answer this time.
"Anything else?"
No response.
"I don't think I need to inform you all just how important Aesop is to Neo Zeon's future." I said sternly. "Therefore I expect everyone to do whatever necessary to make sure Captain Zinnerman's force departs here on time, well equipped and well supplied for his mission."
"Yes Supreme Leader!" The mood in the room was rather...content. The officers weren't excited for the operation but nor were they angry about it.
"And after Axis Prime's location has been transmitted." I continued on. "I will lead the recovery teams personally." In contrast to how I imagined my officers would react, everyone seemed happy and pleased by the decision. Guess the standards of leading from the front really did produce a different kind of officer culture than the one I was used to hearing about.
"Excellent." I smiled. "Now onto slightly less exciting topics. Major Silk, please present your report on how the training of our new recruits from Palau is proceeding."
"Yes sir. As of this meeting we have 200 recruits from Palau who have been sworn into our armed forces and a further 900 who have entered our employ to help with bringing Calyx back online…"
After all the other topics had been reported and discussed, the meeting had ended and I returned to my quarters. Taking off my jacket and tossing it over a chair, I took a seat at my desk and started pouring over handwritten notes. These notes contained just about every single tidbit of things that I thought could prove of use to me. The location of defunct bases, possible allies, the positions of Zeon Remnants based on Earth and so on. But I simply couldn't act on any other leads until we had found Axis.
It all came back to Axis in the end. We didn't have the resources to create more mobile suits in a large number. Axis had those in spades, locked away in modular storage containers deep in its depths. Stockpiles that had never been used during the First Neo Zeon War due to manpower constraints. We needed factories to produce small arms, equipment and other basic necessities to feed a military. Yet again Axis had these. Palau didn't have any foundries capable of letting us produce warship grade metal or the fusion reactors to power warships. Axis had whole modular shipyards and foundries that could be hauled back to Palau.
We were dirt poor and barely had two Federation pennies to rub together. The old timers who had been ranking officers at Axis told me of vaults filled to capacity with every precious metal known to man.
All roads lead to Axis.
And that was without getting into the dozens of experimental or repairable mobile suits and armors that were locked down at Axis either.
With each scrap of knowledge as to what Axis contained, a fire that burned in me raged ever hotter. Failure was not an option. We had to obtain Axis or Neo Zeon, hell my entire AEUG project, would flounder at conception and we'd just end up being the tools of Anaheim and eventually be destroyed by yet another teenager in a white suit. I'd be killed by a teenager in a white mobile suit.
With a harsh sigh I pushed the thoughts away. Better to focus on what can be done right now. I opened my computer and got to work plotting the course the other two decoy freighters would be taking through the Earth Sphere. One had the ultimate destination of the shoal zone at Loum and the other was making a 'shipping run' over to Side 1.
Maybe these probes would pay off and the Federation truly was this miraculously incompetent. Just maybe.