Kisaka's eyes slowly fluttered open. Alkire bent over and triple checked some of the bandages and salves that had been applied to the gravely injured man during the last six hours. "Glad to see you're awake, instructor."
"Robert? What are you doing here? Where is here?" Kisaka groaned.
"Here is a rented house about thirty minutes drive from the prison. As for why I'm here, well, I'm here by request. There's a few people who would like a few words with you, starting with…" Alkire said, signaling to Cagalli, who bounded over.
"Kisaka! It's good to see you're alive!" she said, wiping away an errant tear at the sight of her father's chief of security and her long time bodyguard. Kisaka was covered from head to toe in bandages. There was hardly a fingerwidth of flesh on the large man that wasn't covered with some form of medical tape or cloth bandage. The final total of injuries had run to four broken ribs, three cracked ribs, two dislocated shoulders, a broken forearm, a cracked skull, a heavy concussion, a shattered shin, three chipped teeth, innumerable deep bruises on the chest and upper limbs, six deep lacerations, one on the chest, two on the head, one on each arm and one on the lower back, and a sprained spine.
"I almost wish I wasn't. Didn't you give me any painkillers?" Kisaka groused.
"All of the ones in the medical kit I scrounged. Do you want I give you some Tylenol?" Alkire asked.
"Shut up and go away." Kisaka retorted.
"Is that any way to thank the guy who broke into prison to get you free? Just before you were due to be executed too."
"They were going to kill me? Cervantes and his dog Asmodeus interviewed me… two nights ago now. They wanted me to be their scapegoat and to tell them where you were hiding, Robert. I thought they were going to keep me around for a bit longer. I certainly don't know how much I could have resisted if they'd drugged me, especially after that little demon Frost worked me over." Kisaka said, surprised and bitter.
"Frost did this to you?" Cagalli asked.
"One more crime to lay at his feet." Athrun said grimly, coming up to stand behind her.
"Yes, Frost did this to me. It wasn't exactly in a fair fight… though we were both unarmed I'm just a normal guy and he certainly isn't. I managed to hold him off for a half a minute or so, got in a few good blows, or so I thought, but he was just playing with me. I don't remember much beyond general pain after he picked me up and bashed me against the sink. I'm just glad he was under time constraint or he would have almost certainly done permanent harm, orders to the contrary or not."
"So Cervantes and Asmodeus just watched while Frost beat you?" Alkire asked.
"Well, they certainly didn't join in. I got the feeling they were glad to have the bars between Frost and them. He doesn't strike me as the most controllable of tools."
"Yeah… he's certainly not sane. He was the guy they sent to kill you about six hours ago. It was… pretty rough." Raine said, having come up behind Alkire. It was just then that Kisaka noticed how Alkire was pretty taped up himself.
"Damn, Robert, you look nearly as bad as me! What happened?"
"Roughly 3.5 kilos of plastic explosive at a distance of fifty feet, compounded with a thirty foot fall."
"Why the hell were you using so much explosive? A quarter kilo is more than enough for practically any conceivable situation."
"I was in a bit of a panic. Gunfire wasn't slowing Frost down at all and if he got any closer than he was at that time, we were all dog food. He butchered sixty guards and their guard dogs in less than ten minutes, and half of those were armed and hunting for him. And he did it without any firearms." Victor said defensively.
"Oh, so guns weren't stopping him, so you decided to drop half the prison on everybody's head? I taught you better than that."
"Let's see how calm you are when that maniac comes after you with two chainsaws. He's still out there."
"You mean the bomb didn't get him?"
"No. Neither did a good six to eight hundred rounds from a total of about nine people. Or being dragged for fifty yards at sixty miles an hour over rough pavement. Or having James unload both of his machine pistols into his arms and upper body at less than six feet. The little freak is nigh indestructible!" Victor ranted.
"Well, you do have to remember that he's not human any more. From the scale of the mechanical and biological implants that were in that girl that Ysak disabled in Switzerland, I'm not too surprised at his capabilities. Frost is supposed to be more advanced that she was, presumably, and the things the doctors found in her were amazing to say the least. Automated heart and lungs, armored organs, coagulant dispensers tied to the bloodstream, adrenaline synthesizers, metal reinforced bone structure, condensed skin cells and a cocktail of combat drug injectors potent enough to kill an entire rehab center. And that's just the stuff I remember off the top of my head. There was a lot more inside her. Just about her only vulnerable points were her eyes, nose and ears. And we can assume Frost is better made and protected than she was." Kisaka countered. He slowly eased himself to a sitting position with a grimace. Cagalli reached out to him.
"Are you sure you should be moving so soon? You should really be in a hospital, except there's none to take you to."
"There is no time. If Frost survived he has no doubt alerted Cervantes and Asmodeus by now. You are familiar with the Hellhound, I'm sure, Robert. It won't take him long at all to track us down." Kisaka turned to Cagalli. "Why did you come to Orb, princess? It's very dangerous for you to be here, even with that rudimentary disguise. If you are recognized, you'll be thrown in jail and taken before the world court and they won't go easy on you at all."
"It probably wouldn't go to the world court." Alkire cut in. "With Cervantes now ruler of Orb for all practical purposes, with relief aka occupation forces already entrenched in Orb, if Cagalli or especially Athrun were recognized, they'd not outlive a public pogrom hosted courtesy of the neighborhood Blue Cosmos leadership. Cervantes can't risk having figures for his opposition to rally around. That's probably why he decided to have you diced up, Kisaka."
"Even worse then. Why did you place yourself and your friends in such danger to come here, Princess? Please don't say it was just to break me out of jail."
"Well… that was the initial goal, yes. But my motive for getting you out of prison was to find out where you stashed our mobile suits. And to get the location of the Archangel and the other ships from you. War is brewing, Kisaka. Cervantes has manipulated both sides into believing they were treacherously sneak attacked by each other. Junius Six was raided by Frost, while Pearl Harbor has been nuked." Cagalli replied.
"Well, I suppose that is a good enough reason. Still, you should have left it to the professionals. Much as I hate to say it, that would be you and your friends, Robert. Why did you allow Cagalli to come into Orb?"
"What? You're not blaming me for this? For one thing, she has me outnumbered. For another, you're her bodyguard; you know what she's like! If I hadn't offered to fly her here, she would have run away from my house and bought a commercial ticket, probably without disguising herself! Then she would have had a nice cell right next to yours, from which you could berate her to your hearts content while you waited for Frost to kill you both." Alkire retorted.
"I suppose that I'll take your duress into consideration. I do know how Cagalli can be. She's been even more free willed since the end of the war that she was before. But on to business. You want to get your mobile suits. You're in luck. The research facility where they are stored is not far from the prison. I always found it bitterly ironic. Not a fifteen minute walk from where I was confined was enough firepower to level the nation, but I couldn't get to it. If you'll give me a phone, I'll warn Dr. Simmons that we'll be coming so she can disarm the security system. I can probably guide you to the facility from here, but like I said before we should get moving quickly. If Asmodeus gets here with some military forces, we'll never make it there."
"Well then what are we waiting for?" James said cheerfully, coming up behind Raine. He pushed through the crowd of people around the bed and gently lifted Kisaka to his feet before lifting him into a fireman's carry. "Geez, Instructor. You've gained some weight since school." James complained.
"The scars of running an entire nation. I did not have nearly enough time for my usual exercise program and I was falling behind my standards." Kisaka replied.
"Yeah… about that… once we've fixed everything… I want my job back, Kisaka. It was incredibly nice of you to be my regent, but I can't just shirk the job any more." Cagalli spoke up as everyone piled into the large van. Alkire took the wheel.
"You weren't shirking the job. Orb's constitution clearly states that the Representative must be at least twenty years old, no matter their actual depth of life experience in the subject. You're still a few years from the benchmark, though I'm sure you could find some way around it. There's likely to be little resistance if you manage to clear your name and stop the war." Kisaka replied.
"That's another thing. I'm really sorry for getting you dragged into this whole scandal thing…" Athrun began. Kisaka waved it off with a grimace.
"What's done is done. The fault lies with them, not with you. You didn't do anything more than slightly illegal, since you are engaged. When I was your age I was already guilty of worse offenses."
"Really?" Cagalli asked, interested.
"Give me the phone." Kisaka ordered. James handed him his. Kisaka grumbled his way through punching in a long number with his heavily bandaged hand. Forestalling Cagalli's questions with a glare, Kisaka held the phone to his head. "Hello. Yes, I never thought I'd be calling again either. Some old students of mine and Cagalli's friends broke me out. Yes, recently. I'm in pretty rough shape due to an encounter with the enemy, so if you could bring a more comprehensive medical kit… thanks. Just unlock the security systems for me. I'll be there in ten minutes. Right. Thank you. See you soon." Kisaka paused. "Dr. Simmons will meet us there. Just drive past the prison on the road that leads up to it, Robert. You'll come to a dead end about two miles further up the road. Just keep driving straight; you'll hit a hidden trail. Follow the trail until it dead ends in a cave. Inside the cave will be the security systems, which will hopefully have been disarmed."
"Aye aye, sir. My name is currently Alkire though, if you would use it, please."
"Why did you change your name?"
"Robert Jones got gunned down deserting EFSOU after the N-Jammer Canceller fiasco. Alkire Majesty has no connection to him, and so doesn't have any of his enemies. Well, that's the idea anyway."
"That's the best name you could come up with? It sounds like something out of a fantasy novel." Kisaka said cuttingly. Alkire argued with him about it for the entire trip, not making much headway. Almost everybody agreed with Kisaka. Alkire Majesty was just too false sounding.
"If it's so false, why do you guys call me by it?" Alkire asked his teammates as the van lurched into the cave.
"It is the job of friends to humor friends." Vlad replied. "It's the same way with James and his tattoos, which are stupid. He's a friend, so we just play along."
"Yeah!" James said. "Wait… no… you don't like my ram's horns?"
"No matter how you slice it, they're pretty distinctive. People stare at you all the time. It makes going out in public with you pretty uncomfortable." Victor replied. He turned and looked out a side window. "Wow, that's a rather large gun turret. I'm glad it's not armed.
"There's one on this side too." Ysak said. "It looks a lot like the anti-armor gatling guns the Earth Forces use for point defense."
"Except that these are automated. If Dr. Simmons hadn't locked them down for a while, they'd have shredded this van the moment it entered the cave." Kisaka explained. "Keep driving… Alkire. Its a few hundred meters inside."
---------------------------------------
Asmodeus lowered his NV binoculars. "I wonder what's inside that cave?" he whispered.
"A safe house?" Dyre conjectured.
"No. It's too isolated and easily surrounded. They'd just be cornering themselves." Asmodeus replied. "I think it's a depot."
"Ammunition? Weapons?" Dyre asked.
"Mobile suits."
"Mobile suits?"
"The younger people, the male teenagers, they are pilots, some of the best ZAFT ever had. One of them was the original pilot of the Freedom."
"Isn't letting them get to the mobile suits a bad thing then, sir?"
"Perhaps, perhaps not. We have no way of knowing what state the mobile suits inside that bunker are in. They might only be half built. Or they could be just waiting for the pilots. In any case, they don't know we're out here. Kisaka probably suspects, but he doesn't know for sure. When the Strike Dagger platoon gets here, we'll have them caged. They can't all ride in the mobile suits, which means we'll be able to take hostages. We can then use those hostages to force those in the mobile suits to surrender. We'll take out our enemies and advance our mobile suit technologies by several years, all in one swoop."
"What if it doesn't work out that way, sir? What if they just let us kill the hostages? That's what I would do."
"Thankfully, they aren't as well versed at this as you. Even Jones and Kisaka have always been gentle idealists at heart, unwilling to accept collateral casualties. And besides, most of the hostages are the lovers and kin of the pilots."
"And?" Dyre said questioningly.
"We're not all as mercenary as you, Dyre. To some people it means quite a lot when you sleep with someone and blood has always been a strong tie."
"I'm just playing devil's advocate, sir."
"Yes, that's one reason you're around."
"What about the reserve troops? We have five squads of Strike Crusaders in Orb right now, along with your Purifier and the Fury."
"Two of the Crusader Squads have been diverted here as backup, as have the Purifier and the Fury. They'll be the containment force, if the Strike Dagger's can't win by ambush. You are current on the Strike Crusader, of course?"
"Yes sir. I'm pretty good with the beasts."
"You'll lead the Daggers in then. I'm relying on you to curb your trigger happy nature until the enemy has surrendered to spare the hostages you WILL take alive."
Dyre forced himself not to object, knowing that it would do nothing good for him. "Yes, sir."
"I'll lead the containment force of the rest of the Crusaders, once the Purifier gets here. Frost will be our last resort, in case both of us cannot stop them."
"Can we count on him? I was part of the retrieval team and I tell you, sir, he had the shit kicked out of him. He was more dead than alive."
"Frost has remarkable healing capabilities, you know of course. He won't be at his best, but he doesn't need to be at his usual vitality to pilot the Fury. Besides, he'd find some way to fight anyway, if we didn't let him. He is quite incensed about the loss of his scythe. It's one of the few things he treasures."
"It's all he would talk about on the flight to the hospital." Dyre agreed. "What is the ETA on our troops, sir?"
Asmodeus looked at his watch. "Oh… about twenty minutes. Try and contain your excitement until then, corporal."