George Borander leaned back in his chair and kneaded his eyebrows, trying to massage away the headache. Outside of his office huge machines lumbered and hammered and groaned and shook, but he couldn't hear or even feel the factory through the baffles built into the office. He'd never been able to tolerate even minor distractions when working, but he liked to be able to watch his creations take form in front of his eyes as well. Thus the office was built, hanging from the ceiling of the mobile suit manufactory of BoranderCorp's main industrial center and research labs, located on PLANT Maius Four. BoranderCorp was a new company, having sprung up after the last war when the majority of the ZAFT military technicians and researchers were discharged back into the civilian world. George Borander was a fourth generation Coordinator and he was one of the team who had intially created mobile suits in the first place.
Even by Coordinator standards he was a brilliant man, owning doctorates in Physics, Mechanical Engineering, Applied Metallurgy, Robotics, Aerospace Engineering, Computer Systems and Theoretical Mathmatics, and he was still only 35 years old. he'd acquired a few sponsors from his days in the military and within six months hee had built BoranderCorp up from a small subsidary to one of the largest defense contractors in all of the PLANTS. BornaderCorp also had a civilian side, specializing in applied medicine and genetics, that side was run by his wife, Zelda Borander, also a fourth generation Coordinator.
The Borander family was actually quite extensive and formed something of a "good ole boy" network across the PLANTS. If any family could be said to be the Coordinator equivalent of the Rockefellers of age old history, it would be the Borander family. Most estimates put their number at around ten or twelve within the direct line of descent, but George knew that number was off by at least fifty percent, on the low side. The family had long excelled at medical sciences, and they were actually secrelty ahead of the rest of the PLANTS in that category. They practiced inbreeding by family tradition... not only was Zelda his wife but also his cousin... but through genetic manipulation their children did not have any defects. In fact, their child Noah, the only fifth generation Coordinator alive, was genetically perfect, by any current standard of measure. Of course the cost of the refined manipulations was incredible, and that was the reason the Boranders had so many companies and interests. Trace any profitable company or scheme long enough in the PLANTS and you'd invariably run across a Borander or two somewhere along the way.
George found himself staring at a family picture. It did not have the whole family in it of course, since the entire family only got together once every few years at the most often. No, he'd had a photo taken with the people he saw most often and worked with and liked the most. Himself, of course. His wife Zelda. His younger brother, Jeremiah, a commander and ace in ZAFT and a member of his current project team. Noah, his son. And his older brother, Franklin, whom he hadn't seen since just after GENESIS was destroyed. George's lips twisted slightly, as they always did when he thought of Franklin. His older brother was the black sheep of the family. Equally as brilliant as George, with advanced degrees in Biology, Medicine, Medical Robotics, Molecular Engineering, Chemistry and Genetics, Franklin used to be the man who performed the genetic enhancements to the Borander family children, and also served as the family doctor. He'd come back to the PLANTS from his self imposed exile to Earth to doctor to Noah, and perform a favor for George, even though they were estranged to say the least.
Franklin lived on Earth... doing what nobody really knew. He was impossible to find unless he contacted George first, and he never did that anymore, since the fight after GENESIS. George thought Franklin was crazy, yammering on about the threat Coordinators presented to the future of humanity... even though Franklin was a fourth generation Coordinator himself. George sighed, bringing himself out of the past and back to work. It had been a week since ZAFT invaded Washington DC the second time, wiping away the Natural defenders and laying waste to that eyesore of a city. The victory was phyrric at best though, since the Alliance high command had long since evacuated the city and losses during the attack were far higher than expected. Due mainly to the intervention of three more Alliance "Gundams".
"Gundams" was now the technical term for any sort of advanced prototype mobile suit. George despised "Gundams". He built practical models, not individually tweaked sport car like super machines, tailored for individual pilots. Skilled they may be, but they could do just as good in a command model, like the Guaize, and it would be exponentially less costly than using experimental technologies and whatnot. But the ZAFT high command didn't want to hear it. They loved the Grendels and Efreet... the two new classes of mass produced mobile suits BoranderCorp had designed last year and were currently producing at maximum capacity. But the civilians and Supreme council were demanding something more. Something special, to show that the Earth Alliance wasn't the only power who could build super mobile suits.
Well... George may not have liked it, but given what BoranderCorp was being paid to do so, he could stomach making a "Gundam". Once. And he'd make it as best he could. And plainly put... that was better than anyone else could. Especially since he had the resources and know how of the entire family behind him. He was actually working closely with Jeremiah and Zelda on some of the more esoteric aspects of the new, prototype model. George snorted. No reason to call it a prototype. It would never be mass produced... the technologies it incorporated would not be mass producible for the foreseeable future. The machine taking shape down on the factory floor below his office was unique. Its like would never be made again. George stood up and walked over to one of the windows looking down at the factory lines producing the Grendels and Efreet.
Efreet were designed as land skirmishers, fast, maneueverable and with a host of special features stolen from the X series captured during the last war. They would take the place of the BuCue and Ginn models currently in use by ZAFT. Humanoid in shape, they still were as fast and agile as a BuCue due to the low altitude downthrust jets mounted on the legs, which in effect allowed the machines to hover a few meters above the ground rather than walk. Taller and thinner than a Ginn, Efreet mounted less armor but more weapons. A dual beam cannon turret much like that found on the LaGowe graced the back of the Efreet as well, and there was a six missle rack built into the chest below the cockpit for further ranged punch. However, it was at close range the Efreet shone. Each carried twin beam sabers and mounted a plasma fire projector in the palm of each hand. A plasma fire projector was pretty much just a flamethrower for mobile suits, projecting either a cone or line of superheated and electrically charged gas up to 50 meters in a line or in a 20 meter cone. The fire could melt through vehicle armor with ease and could even penetrate a mobile suit with repeated exposure. Against ground troops it was perhaps the most terrifyingly effective weapon around.
For defensive measures the Efreet had light armor, but it was difficult to hit in the first place... it carried both extensive stealth systems and a Mirage Colloid system which ran off special extra batteries. Since the machines did not have phase shift armor, they could remain invisible for more than two hours at a time, plus an additional two hours off the main battery. Efreet also had solar recharging panels built into their back, which means you could just leave them in the sun for a day and they'd be back to full charge... which cut maintainence costs considerably. To sum them up... they were fast, agile, brutally effective at close range and totally invisible to the naked eye and even most sensor systems. The perfect shock and recon model.
Once the Efreet had confused the enemy line, the Grendel would come up to smash it completely. Grendels were built to replace the hastily designed ZuOot models, which had been rushed into production early on in the last war to provide indirect fire support to the still unfinish Ginn models present at that time. George had never liked the ZuOot... he preferred machines with grace and mobility to go with power. Clanking along on treads made the ZuOot more like tanks than mobile suits... anyone could drive a tank, until recently it took someone special... a Coordinator... to pilot a mobile suit. So thus, the Grendel. Twenty meters tall and hunched like an ape, an erect Grendel did indeed look a lot like a gorilla, crouched forward on its knuckles. Indeed, that was one of its locomotion methods, bounding along on legs and knuckles, which were specially reinforced for that purpose.
Mounting thick armor and extensive ammuntion supplies and extra batteries, each Grendel was a walking armory. Missile 15 racks sprouted from each shoulder. Each massive forarm mounted two beam cannons, two heavy assault machine guns, a beam claw and a beam deflecting shield. The broad torso provided mounting for four additional machine cannons, while the vast back carried two hyper impulse cannons. Maybe not the fastest or most agile machines on the battlefield... but a Grendel could wipe out an entire squad of mobile suits with a single volley... not many suits could comprehensively lay claim to that capability. Grendels could either walk forward like normal mobile suits, using forearm and shoulder weapons as well as the torso weapons. Or they could change locomotion methods, bounding forward at a significantly higher speed using hands and arms like a gorilla. In this second form the hyper impulse cannons were brought into play, at the expense of the other armament.
BornaderCorp factories were currently producing the Efreet and Grendel models at the rate of five per day, each. Still... it would be a while before they became widely used, since ZAFt was still performing its own, unnessecary tests... test required by law they said but George knew to be his competitors searching for flaws. They would find none. Each Efreet cost roughly fifty million dollars... Grendels cost 75 million. Not a bad price tag, all things considered. Certainly much less than the price of the monster slowly taking shape on the main factory line. Each component of the special model had a price tag well into the hundreds of millions... George was glad he wasn't footing the bill, because each day of work he spent more money than all of BoranderCorp made in a week. And there were a lot more days ahead... the special model was only about thirty percent complete. George irritably brushed back his short brown hair and winced, closing his deep blue eyes. His head hurt with all the strain he was under. The Supreme Council wanted their special mobile suit yesterday, and so they jumped down ZAFT's throat. ZAFT in turn jumped down his throat, because most of the generals had no real idea how long it took to develop a mobile suit... especially one like the... George could barely manage to think its name... the Pulsar.
Someone knocked firmly on his office door. "Enter." George called, knowing who it was already. his employees always called before coming to see him, and Jeremiah, his younger brother, was the only one who knocked so firmly. With any luck, his brother would have good news to tell him. George took his seat just as Jeremiah opened the door. George shook his head slightly and smiled, as he always did when seeing his younger brother. George was by no means a bad looking man, he had the refined features of very selective breeding. But genetics had combined very favorably in Jeremiah, who was, by all feminine accounts, drop dead gorgeous as well as brilliant. Mid length blond hair, ocean dark blue eyes, muscular build, naturally tanned skin, Jeremiah was like a hero from some macho action film, except even more dangerous.
A Commander in the ZAFT space forces, he wore his white uniform with pride and decorum, bright medals always flashing, tunic always neatly pressed and spotless. jeremiah was also a mobile suit ace, with over forty mobile armor kills and ten mobile suit kills to his credit, as well as three warships. There were few better pilots in all of ZAFT, especialy now that Rau Le Crueset was dead. And there were no better pilots that also possessed doctorates in Computer Programming, Particle Physics, Chaos Mathematics and Electrical Engineering. Jeremiah could not only fly mobile suits, he could reprogram them to be better than they already were. He had been chosen by near unanimous acclaimation to pilot the Pulasr... a name he himself had coined. The reasons for his selection were myriad and not all had to do with his piloting skills.
"It's finished." Jeremiah said, barely able to contain his enthusiasm. A storage disk was held tightly clenched in one hand, gripped as tightly as if the future of the world was contained within it. In some ways, it might have been. "Zelda finished the neural maps and nerve tracery analysis a few hours ago and i just ran through a successful simulation at full capacity."
"You're sure?" George asked cautiously. Jeremiah's only flaw, if he could be said to have one, was that he did tend to be a little hot headed and had a tendency to get slightly ahead of himself, ignoring fractional details that sometimes tripped him up later. "There is no chance something could go wrong?"
"Something can always go wrong. The universe could implode at midnight." Jeremiah countered sarcastically. "But it's perfectly safe as far as any tests I or your own technicians can discern."
George smiled, reassured. If his own techs had agreed then it was surely safe. They were paid to be overcautious. "So the Neural Interface Control system is functional. Thats the best news I've had all week. You realize what a huge step forward that little disk represents for us all?"
"The end of the joystick." Jeremiah laughed. He rapidly turned serious. "But in know what you mean, George. This work Zelda and I have been doing... ground breaking. Earth shattering if you will. We've been able to manipulate genetics for more than half a century now. But until a few hours ago, we still hadn't cracked the human mind and its intricasies. We could map the nervous system, heal it, grow it... but not control it to the degree that its signals could be used as an output. An output to control external mechanisms. A pathway for interface with nonbiological matter."
"You don't have to sell it to me, Jeremiah." George replied lightly. "I've already bought the damned thing. Or rather, your bosses have, for quite the price too, if memory serves."
"Hey... I may have increased national debt by 5 with my project... but at least its done. And with the NIC system, the development of the Pulsar can continue as planned."
"That it can. Here... I'll send the data down right now. Why don't you run me through what it does one last time before the techs get their hands on it... they'll have questions for me for a certainty and you won't always be around to straighten them out."
"Of course, brother. Most of the stuff is outside your technical fields, so i'll try to keep it basic. At the simplest level the NIC system forges a connection between the nervous system of the pilot and the user interface controls of the mobile suit... the Pulsar in this case. Through a lot of very technical applications and equations that you don't really need to know, properrly designed software and hardware allows the pilot to feel the Pulsar as an extension of his own body. When he tells his arm to move the signal is intercepted and redirected by the NIC system to the appropriate controls in the Pulsar, moving its arm just as much as the pilot wanted to move his own. Same for legs and head and other body motions. This eliminates the need for bulky and awkward controls... controls which in truth limit just how manueverable a mobile suit can be. It doesn't matter how many micro thrusters or vector jets you have, a joystick will only let you do so much. It certainly won't let you approach the ranges of motion available to the human form. With the NIC, I can make the Pulsar do handsprings and backflips. Or crawl on my hands and knees. Or do a headstand. Or even play a piano, if a big enough piano was made and I learned how to play." Jeremiah said, pausing for effect.
"But that is not all. For not only does the NIC allow for the user to interface with the machine and make his capabilities its own, but the machine allows its user to utilizes its capabilites as naturally and easily as his own. Humans cannot fly. Mobile suits can. Humans don't have thrusters and have no biologic equivalent. So one would think that a machine with NIC would have to be entirely land based. But that is not so. Again, the reasons why are highly technical and encompass a great deal of the price tag. But when hooked up to the NIC system, I instinctively know how to use the Pulsar's flight thrusters just like a bird instinctively knows how to fly. I can do barrel rolls, loops and aerial equivalents of gymnastics. Maneuvers totally beyond the reach of normal mobile suits are second nature to me. Once coupled with the gravity compensation system thats being developed the Pulsar will be the most agile weapon ever created. I'll be able to quite literally stop in the middle of a dive and change direction without losing momentum. I'll be able to fly rings around fighter jets at cruising speed. And I'll be able to run on my hands faster than most people can drive a car."
"Thats amazing." a young voice said from behind Jeremiah. George started. Once again, his son had managed to sneak up on him. Noah always seemed to find a time when George was paying attention to something else to show up, so that even with his keen Coordinator senses George hadn't detected him. It was something of a tired joke in the family that when Noah grew up he had a bright future in burglarly, since he was so stealthy. However that was still a long ways away... Noah was only ten. This caused many people... well, many of the few who knew him... to be puzzled. Noah was a fifth generation Coordinator. That meant every one of his parents, grand-parents, great grand-parents and great great grand-parents had been Coordinators. Most first and second generation Coordinators were not yet to the age of being grand-parents themselves yet... with the third and rare few fourth generation coordinators were still young... in their early twenties. Except for the Borander family.
George didn't know all the family secrets... but there had been other Coordinators during the time of George Glen. Whoever had created Glen hadn't just stopped there... there had been others. Less public of course, but George strongly suspected that the Borander family had its roots in a pre Glen Coordinator couple. Also, their advanced genetic manipulation technologies allwed them to take sperm and ova from their members as soon as they hit puberty... and artificial wombs were not only the domain of the famous doctor's Hibiki. Noah had been artificially conceived when George and Zelda had been only fifteen. He'd been born ten years later. Well... actually the Noah that had been artifically conceived was not born. That embryo had died, about six months into growth. However, because of what the child represented... a 5th generation, a genetically pure human... seven clones were made.
Of course, at the point in time of the cloning, the problem with short telemeres was not yet apparent. And besides that, the artifical wombs were notoriously unstable. Only one clone... number seven, survived to birth. And that child had proved dangerously unhealthy for the first two years of life... before genetics could assert itself properly. But survive Noah had. And his capabilities put those of his parents to shame. Though only ten years old, he possessed most of the same doctorates both his father and mother posessed, along with a few extra from Jeremiah's fields of expertise and nanotechnology to boot. His I.Q. was off scale... estimated in the lower 700's. Problems that had stymied scientists for decades were plain as day to Noah. Of course, he didn't just go around solving so called conundrums... if he did everyone would know just how special he was.
It would be the Coordinator phenomenom all over again... but this time with Coordinators demanding to be like Noah. He'd be assassinated within weeks, by Blue Cosmos if no one else. Of course, all this assumed that he did not die of old age first. Clones had short telemeres. George did not know exactly what a telemere was, much less how long or short it was, but Zelda assured him that they had a direct role in the lifespan of a human. Something about how well cells regenerated themselves. George himself, as well as all the fourth generation Coordinators in the Borander family could comfortably expect a lifespan of 200 years or more because of how excellent their genes were. Noah should have been able to live far longer. But as a clone his lifespan was estimated to be at most twenty or twenty five years... maybe as long as forty five with medication. Zelda and much of BoranderCorp was working to find a cure for the condition... but so far no one was even close.
Noah was slim and short, with a pale shock of pure white hair. His eyes were violet or gold, depending on which angle you looked at him from... he was a beautiful child. Just starting to flesh out for puberty too. He was dressed plainly; Noah did not favor ostentation, which was looked upon well by the family, since the Boranders rarely showed off their wealth. In one hand he wore what looked like a glove made out of metal... wires snaked across his fingers and a faint crackle of current could be heard. Floating above the palm of the gloved hand was a sphere of inky blackness, about the size of a golf ball. "What's that you got there?" Jeremiah asked, curious. He'd actually enlisted Noah's help on some of the trickier calculations for the NIC, and he was better aware than most that despite his young age Noah was quite mature and often saw things his parents did not.
"It's a Nanomachine." Noah replied, looking slightly sheepish. "I borrowed one of your unused labs and made it a while ago, Dad."
"I told you not to use my labs without asking first, Noah." George said severely. "How much did this little project cost us?"
"Not as much as an Efreet..." Noah trailed off shyly. George groaned inwardly. That was still probably around forty million or so.
"You mean its a nano-cluster, right? Bit big for a molecule sized machine." Jeremiah joked.
"No... its a nano-machine. Singular." Noah countered.
"But... it's the size of a golf ball. Molecules are invisible to the naked eye." George snapped. "You know that."
"Yes, I do." Noah snapped back. "I'm not an idiot." He looked stumped though. "I was building it to work on matter-energy conversion stuff... transmutation of one element into another in a time and cost effective manner. Also the conversion of energy into matter in a practical fashion. But I don't know where I messed up. I made one of these things and fed it some energy... not more than a megawatt or so. It just kept sucking it down. Total energy loss... which of course you know is impossible. Nothing totally absorbs 100 percent of all energy put into it. Some is always radiated as heat or reflected as radiation. But this does. And not only does it absorb energy, it converts that energy into mass. Its own mass. The more power you put into it, the bigger it gets. Even ambient radiation causes it to grow at an incredible rate... more than a micrometer a minute. Thats more than a half meter per year. If not isolated by a magentic containment field it'd be getting bigger right now."
"What's it made of?" Jeremiah asked, brow wrinkled, trying to figure out just what his nephew had made.
"I don't know."
"You made it!" George cried.
"It originally started out as a very compounded silicon nanomachine... much like any other, though of course more complex. But I can't tell now. Because not only does it convert energy to mass, it converts mass to mass. On as close to a one atom per one atom ratio as I've ever seen. That's how it got so big so fast. I tried to probe it with a micro-needle. It ate the needle and got a lot bigger. I tried next with a macro-needle... same result. That's also why its in the containment field... it absorbs the air molecules and makes itself bigger with them." Noah said, puzzled. "It's kind of freaky, actually. The only things it doesn't absorb are magnetic lines of force... which is why it is contained."
"I don't have time for this." George growled. "I have too many headaches getting the Pulsar online by the deadlines. Figure out how to destroy this nanobot and put your wandering mind to a better use. Perhaps you can go over some of the Pulsar systems and see if you can get any insight as to improvements, hmm?"
"I don't think it can be destroyed..." Noah began.
"I don't want to hear it." George was starting to get angry.
"So that's where you went to." a calm, genial voice came from behind Noah. Another man stepped into the room. Tall, well built, he would have been handsome at one point in time, if it wasn't for the burn scars that cris-crossed his face, covering it in a web of small pink and white marks. George knew that those scars covered most of the man's body as well. "I told you not to bother your father while he's working." the man continued.
"He wasn't interested anyway." Noah said dejectedly. George ignored him. His son would learn to toughen up soon enough.
"Michael, it is good to see you." George said warmly. As always though he felt a little cold inside. He could help thinking it. Damn Natural.
"Mr. Genesis." Jeremiah nodded slightly. Michael Genesis was the head of security for BoranderCorp. He had been a soldier in the last war, though he had lost much of his memory due to an accident suffered during the later stages of the war. He'd actually been found by George when he was helping clean up after the battle of GENESIS. Unable to remember his own name, the vacuum exposed and burned man had been named Michael Genesis in honor of the lost battle of which he was certainly a casualty. After recovering in a BoranderCorp facility for a few months, and after some extensive rehabilitation by Franklin, Michael had come to work for BoranderCorp. He was a skilled pilot... in his way as good as Jeremiah himself, though they'd never fought each other during the war. Well... Michael hadn't. The man he had been might have. It was hard to say exactly. Michael also did double duty as caretaker to Noah and it was in this capacity that he slowly shepherded the young boy away, listening patiently but uncomprehendingly to a lecture on nanomachines and mass/energy conversions.
"He gives me the creeps." Jeremiah said after the door shut. "I know Franklin said he was fixed... but still..."
"He's watched. And Franklin is a genius at psychology... I may not like our brother but he does know what he's doing when it comes to the emotions and memory." George replied. "But lets go over some more of the Pulsar design. Are you sure you like it's present configuration...?"