Disc: Same as the last two chaps.

- - -

Phase 03: Homecoming

'I still have difficulty believing that there are still rational people out there who believe this proverbial 'Solar Barrier' to be the limits of human exploration. Is what lies beyond it, as they claim, a depthless void no craft could ever hope to fathom? No! The same was once said of the far side of the world, and we broke those. The same was said of the Earth's atmosphere, and we broke that, too. Give it time. My followers and I will be the ones to break this barrier.' –Master George Walther, debunking the Solar Barrier

- - -

The trickle of the relief ships was slow at first, but eventually Umil Granq could not look out the window of his secluded quarters without seeing one or more pass by. The more war-inclined ships had come first, responding to the desperate hails, no doubt. Laboring away on conventional drives, they had finally arrived with a grouping of transports tagging along. The new arrivals were moving all throughout the original supply convoy… Or what was left of it.

No one had an accurate damage tally yet, but Umil had seen two of the big barges blown apart by Shyron vessels, each explosion just making him want to dive further into the cushions of the cot he shared with Troy Haliburton. He wanted to shut it all out, including the rumbles from the ship he was on as it took repeated missile hits, each one a possible hit on this very cabin.

Now Umil felt warm tears on the cot, born not of sadness, but out of fear. Some distant part of his mind did resent this, hiding in his quarters while the battle raged, even if that was what he had been ordered to do. He just didn't like being in danger, that was all. He honestly never knew how it was his friends did it, stood up and kept a straight face when their footing could be blasted out from under them at any second.

We're DES workers! He reminded himself vehemently, arms folded over his knees. We shouldn't have to deal with stuff like this! That's why I got into this job in the first place, to stay away from Anno Domino!

Anno Domino's relief ships were out there right now, though. The so-called 'arbitrary military force', and they had placed their own people among the convoy. Any other time, he would consider it a boon to be part of a House that curried such favor with the most powerful land/space army on record. Now, anyone who knew better than to believe its claim of neutrality also knew that they would be hot to exact vengeance for their expensive new MS weapons.

And so it was. After working up the courage to leave the cabin, he first saw Troy and Elya again in the main corridor, surrounded by four soldiers and their commander which caused him to dart back behind a wall; even if they were on their side, the Anno Domino soldiers all looked twitchy and they all had guns. Each of the burly men wore glossy black helmets and armored jumpsuits as their uniform, while the commanding officer, a Lieutenant, had a natty marine blue dinner jacket and pants with a little gold rank sash across his heart. The Anno Domino officer uniform did not demand headwear, letting the officer exposed his thick brown mane of hair for all to see, whereas the soldiers were all shaved bald beneath their helmets.

There was another one with them, too, obviously the reason they were here. A short woman with beautiful blond hair, cursing and thrashing as she was being restrained by two of the soldiers. Even weaponless, she managed to look to Umil as dangerous as the soldiers through sheer frenzy. Wait… we passed her in the hall before. Is she…?

"So Captain 11 was certainly killed with his crew then", the squint-eyed officer was speaking to Troy crisply. "He only failed his objective because of this young lady? She caused all the trouble, then?"

"Yes, sir", Troy told him nervously. "But I don't think she was with the Shyron fleet; our chief designer called her a Peacecraft."

"Peacecraft", the officer spat, giving his captive a mean look. "Yes, I would not be surprised if she was. Still, her actions allowed our greatest enemy to abscond with the special weapons your House promised to us. Interfering with Anno Domino military projects is a capital offense."

"Um, sir? What-what will happen to her?", Elya asked him once the girl in question had been dragged away kicking and screaming. She had made no effort to hide the tone of concern, prompting the officer to fix her with his hardest stare. "She will be tried, of course. If the House of Peacecraft is willing to admit this young woman is one of their people, then they have the right to defend her legally."

That's a BIG if,Umil mused unhappily from his hiding spot. If they do that, they'll be admitting they planted a spy on board. More likely they'll claim she was part of the Shyron task force, keep their own hands clean. It was what he would do.

"You have our gratitude for helping to apprehend this dangerous criminal", the officer told the DES crew, allowing himself a small, informal smile. "We will submit a request to the House of Gemini for a replacement clone. Oh, and while the final decision will be up to my superiors, I am confident we will not press charges to your own House for the loss of the MS units or the gross misuse of the MS 22-GX, so long as we receive replacements in due time."

"Replacements?", Troy blurted out. "But we've been working on them for four years! We can't just build new ones from scratch!"

"That will be all", the officer silenced him, not wanting to hear excuses. He was likely about to spin on his heel and return to his own ship when a distinctive piano tone sounded off. Clasping a hand to his left ear, he listened to the piece everyone knew was in there for a moment before looking back at Troy. "I just got the word. The vessel Crusader just found the MS 25-GX drifting in space, and its pilot is intact. If you kids wish to meet him, I suggest to go down to the main hangar. I will instruct the guards there to let DES crewers through for the time being."

Once he was gone, Umil breathed out. Bryce put more into those machines than any of us. It's no surprise that he pulled a crazy stunt like that to try and get them back. Just another example of his three dumb colleagues having no sense of self-preservation whatever.

All the same though, he was glad to hear none of them had died. Explaining that to Bryce's father would not have been easy.

- - -

For the longest time, he drifted in the endless void. With both the pilot's mind and the machine crippled, the Peregrine was more like a heavy space suit on Bryce's body than ever before. It no longer permitted full movement, and the stinging sensation in his legs would not abate.

Just as well, as he had a great deal to ponder before the shuttles brought him in from the airless cold. Bianca was the first among them, her adamant insistence that the MS units were redundant for Anno Domino.

Those MS units, which were now in the clutches of Anno Domino's only enemy, the exiles in Shyron. This assault had been Shyron's return to the world stage after nearly twenty years of silence since their exile. Troy's told me before, he remembered soberly, he told me how his parents were both DES tech support aboard Anno Domino ships when Admiral Heim Temeritus blasted his way out of Earth, helping his people to escape justice. Because of his tactical genius, they're both dead.

Even if he hadn't been there personally, Bryce had no doubt that the legendary traitor would find a way to put the stolen MS units to evil use. Along with the score of ships Shyron had obviously been building in secret, it was entirely possible he had just witnessed the balance of the coming warfare tilting in Shyron's favor. Anno Domino could no longer ignore their lingering threat; they would be anxious to finish what they had started on Earth, forcing Shyron's millions of people to take refuge on the far side of the cosmos.

Last of all, but by far the most alarming- the pale white MS. He had not built or designed it, had never even laid eyes on such a monstrous machine. Yet it had jumped into the fight eagerly, with a pilot at the controls who made up for his homicidal insanity with skills and power like nothing Bryce had ever imagined. Who the hell was that guy? Why did he choose here of all place to start killing people? And just who built his machine, superior to the ones we put our hearts and souls into making?

No answers awaited him. Instead, he crawled out through the crudely managed hole in the pilot compartment, and opened the right leg's service hatch before he saw the barge's lights again, along with the lights of Umil, Elya, and Troy's eyes.

Total exhaustion struck him the moment his feet touched metal, and he fell down upon Elya's chest for a moment. "Whoa there, Bry", Troy chuckled behind them. "I see the conquering hero's feeling a bit horny."

"Don't you joke", she scolded back him, carefully prying the space helmet off and releasing a great deal of the sweat her supervisor had built up inside of it. "He's just tired. You would be too, Troy, after fighting that monster."

That stirred Bryce up enough to raise his aching head up to match hers. "You saw him? That big white MS?"

"Only on the view screens", she admitted, visibly shaken from all the savage violence she had just witnessed. "He went through us first, then he went for you. He took out the whole bridge with one shot from his launcher. He was like…" her voice trailed off into a shudder at this point, not wanting to suggest such terrifying evil could be of divine origin.

Evidently Bryce did not care much for the other MS pilot either, for he sank further down following her words, then collapsed on the floor. His last conscious thought was the memory of the Counterstriker's explosion, and the murderer's strange laughter

- - -

The new room was completely dark, so it took Bryce a moment to realize that he'd been sleeping for a good long while. He could not feel the tremors that had kept him up at night on the supply convoy, but could also tell he wasn't back home on Earth either. Fumbling for the switch, he instead prompted Umil to open the door after hearing him curse, and let the light from the outer corridor in.

"You're up", he noted dully. "Elya was a bit worried after seeing your wounds. We left your clothes on the opposite bed."

The mousy technician's last sentence drew attention to the fact that he was devoid of any clothing at all, save for minimal undergarments. Crying out, he pulled the sheets back over top and squinted into the light behind Umil. "So how long was I out?"

"'Bout two and a half days. The Anno Domino ships brought us to this DES Lunar Shipyard about six hours ago, told us to contact our folks. We're on Phobos now."

Lying back down, he mulled that over for a moment. The Phobos Shipyards one of a few installations the DES had been allowed by Anno Domino to create. Like the one on Earth's moon, it was know to provide a steady flow of new materiel to Anno Domino, and was guarded accordingly by their benefactor. Guarded by walls of at least thirty large capital ships, he doubted even the ghost-white Mobile Suit could get at them here. "Thanks Umil. I'll contact my father once I've had something to eat."

"Sure, no problem."

Aside from a lingering headache, it didn't take him long to get going after that. Garbed in his packed civilian clothes as he was, he did draw a few cocked stares from the local crewers and soldiers while adjusting to the mammoth structure his team were now given free reign of. Once he had picked up a few things from the surprisingly well-kept civilian guest diner, he felt he understood at least enough about the Yard's internal setup pattern as to not get lost.

Now came the moment he had dreaded since waking up here. Moving up the shortest of three lines for the three enclosed communications hubs, he tried to enter the frequency as calmly as possible. While it could very well be that one of his old 'buddies' in Anno Domino had already tipped him off, the way his luck was going at the moment, he would probably be the one to break the bad news to Jakob Daravon, the selected leader of his House.

It wasn't long before the man's face and upper body appeared on the screen. Bryce's father had had a dark chestnut beard than went all the way up into his hair as long as he had remembered, perhaps making him look a tad older than he truly was, more sage. He usually stuck to more formal clothing than civillian, such as the magenta suit and tie he bore now. While the premier of Daravon was no philosopher, Bryce had come to rely upon his determination and resolve as a stabilizing presence for times like these. He had never seen his father laugh or cry to his memory.

"Good to see you, son. There's no need to apologize.", his deep voice began abruptly. "I've already heard everything from my friend Admiral Gisbourne. And I'm alternately proud and terrified at what you tried to do."

He smiled back grimly over the link. "High praise for something that was, in retrospect, totally useless, father. Now Troy tells me they want us to make some more to counter the ones we lost."

Jakob's jade green eyes tightened with regret. "Yes. I've talked to him too, he was furious about it. Perhaps if we leave the repaired MS 22-GX unit with them as a lump sum, they will give us more time… but you have understand- they already paid us for these weapons. We weren't supposed to lose them the week before delivery."

"Tell that to the Shyron fleet, father."

To his surprise, Jakob leaned a notch closer to the monitor on his side, locking eyes with his son. "Those booths are reinforced, but you should still be careful who hears you say that. Gisbourne also told me he doesn't want the attack to be widely known yet. People will start asking questions about why it had to be now. You know that the ministers for the Houses of Peaceraft and Lurkveil have been breathing down my neck in session lately…"

Hearing his father wax on about politics again, Bryce just shrugged helplessly as he always did. "I don't need to understand all of that to follow it. And before I forget, it is good to see you again, dad, even after this disaster."

If they could have embraced they would have. Instead, Jacob merely smiled back and drew back from his view screen on Earth. "And the same to you. By the time you get back here, we should have a better idea of what they expect of us now. I'll pull some strings, try and get the deadline extended... Stay safe, stay strong, Bryce. You are a Daravon, after all."

"As if you would ever let me forget", he murmured good-naturedly after the screen winked out. That left him with just one other person he had to talk to today. He didn't think this one would be anywhere near as civil.

- - -

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer.

Bianca Tanner sat with her knees outstretched over the outward-jutting bench, keeping as much of herself off the cold cell walls as possible. Regardless, she couldn't help but shiver.

After a foul-up of this magnitude, she really hoped that was because of the frigidly cold cell, not because of fear of what was coming. While the burly guard just outside had not given her any clues except for the occasional hundred-yard stare, she could try to imagine just how messy the news was going to be for the governors of the House of Peacecraft.

Still, she reasoned grimly, that's the best possible scenario for me. If they claim me, I go home safe and never run any mission ever again. Back to agricultural duties, I suppose. They have to claim me. Edmund would never leave me to these bastards.

Of course, there was the other paralyzing fear- that Edmund Batose and Milly Peacecraft were no longer available for comment. Those other ships had certainly not been Peacecraft vessels, but they had been using their ambush point. If they're dead…no. Can't be. Don't fear. No fear.

So it was with a fair amount of built-up tension that she first saw Bryce motioning the black-suited Anno Domino guard aside and pressed against the hydraulic plastic door. "I checked the reports", he said gravely, trying to sound nonchalant but really only making it worse, "no sign of your friends. Either they ran away from Shyron early, or…"

"Don't say it", she snapped at him from behind the gate, trying unsuccessfully to hide any signs of grief.

Instead of unwanted pity, however, Bryce now radiated anger. "Then you tell me something. Why'd you do it? Why'd you try to destroy the machines we'd been working on for four years?"

"Didn't listen the first time, hunh", Bianca retorted, the old defiance from the cargo bay back in force. "Did the idea ever penetrate that thick skull of yours, that just maybe Anno Domino already has more damned weapons than it needs?"

Too late, she saw the designer's own inner struggle- to prevent himself from showing the selfsame scorn for the House of Peacecraft's common ideals he had flaunted before. "Okay, maybe you're not an idiot. But they're the ones who asked us for them in first place. No one had to ask why- they only have one enemy. Shyron."

"One enemy", she repeated, sounding incredulous. "And they call my people naïve. Geez."

"What?"

"Oh come on", she scoffed, now standing up to get right in his face about it. "Latest estimates of Anno Domino from my people place their strength at over a hundred and fifty capital ships. Over a hundred thousand soldiers, and something like two thousand air and ground vehicles. They're the only real army anywhere."

Bryce snuck a glance at the guard after that, fearing he actually might take offense at this ranting. But no; he was still sitting out in the hallway, standing straight up but nearly motionless. "Well, yes. That's the whole point. They're here to protect us, to prevent the Houses from trying to kill each other. It's been that way since the old Masters fell."

Closing her eyes, she shook her head and hair dismissively at him. "Don't you see? They're the 'police', but no one polices them. They didn't want those death machines of yours just for Shyron; they're tightening their control over us. All of the Houses."

"That's ridiculous!"

"Is it?" Knowing she had shaken his faith by the look of him, she now moved as close to his face as the transparent pane would allow. "Anno Domino has a lot of dirty secrets, Bryce Daravon. Maybe you should try asking your dear old dad about them some time."

No longer sure of what to say, Bryce was about to storm from the cell when something else occurred to him. "Temeritus and Shyron have killed a lot more folks than your friends in Peacecraft. I would think you'd appreciate the fact that they're finally going to deal with those bastards."

It was a cheap parting shot, one that made Bianca hide her tears back in the rear area of the cell, but it was too late to take it back now. He had no jokes to offer this time. Harsh words still ringing in his brain, he nearly charged into the soldier on the way out.

- - -

Little by little over the next few days at the Phobos shipyards, Bryce leaked out the details of their conversation to his team whenever they were working on repairing the Peregrine's thruster systems and lower superstructure. Still wanting to keep the MS units- and their capture- a secret to the world at large, the ranking officer there had given them a rather large, private hangar in which to do so, and their voices echoed distantly in the vast space that was probably meant for a warship.

"She seemed so normal before", Elya was commenting thoughtfully. "She'd have to be, to blend in. But I tried talking to her yesterday, and she was so angry with me. I could feel it."

"Few days in prison'll do that to you", Troy piped up callously from behind the limp hanging left arm guard. "Shame she's so into the hating-our-guts thing. She's kinda cute."

Bryce flinched away from an access panel, frowning as he remembered the accusing look in the Peacecraft girl's eyes. Still, he quirked a tight grin at his friend. "The 'hating-our-guts thing'… I don't suppose anyone has figured out her name yet? She sure knows mine."

Shaken heads all around. "Didn't think so." Dropping down casually from the arm, he came to the last bit of damage they had to fix- the hole in the sheet of metal connecting the right leg and torso, the one he'd had to make with the torch. While Umil was already quietly welding an oversized bracing section to the damaged area, that section's integrity would be weakened until they could complete a more thorough repair job at home.

"Our last day here", he acknowledged to the others. "As well as hers. Milly Peacecraft will bail her out, right, guys?"

"She's… not Peacecraft", Umil spoke up suddenly, whisper-quiet so that only Bryce could hear it inside the leg compartment.

"What? What do you mean, Umil?"

He turned to face the chief designer with his usual depressed, pallid expression, actually made a bit sinister by the fickle light of his torch. "I, I overheard Anno Domino officers talking. They think she's from Shyron."

He snorted, not caring if the others heard. "Bull! You weren't there, Umil. She was trying to destroy the MS, not capture them-"

Umil shushed him, for some reason trying to keep it between them alone. "All I know is what I heard, sir. And you'll notice no one from Earth has come to her defense."

Bryce leaned against the cramped walls of the leg, still idly shaking his head in denial. "She's brash and bossy, not manipulative. But like always, speculating won't get us anywhere…"

On that note, he poked his head out from the right service hatch and spotted Elya right off. "I'm taking a short break", he said, springing from the hatch.

Hanging from a service cable with one foot in the sling at the bottom, she blinked quizzically. "Uh, right… Can I ask why?"

Snorting in amusement, he craned his head back at the arm she was working on while keeping up a steady pace out of the large bay. "I can't get that girl's talk out of my head; I'm going to find out exactly where she's from." He signaled, flashing three fingers up peaceably before picking up his pace. "Back in fifteen, Elly."

- - -

While it was a foregone conclusion that the star field that filled all of the Phobos shipyard's windows had no day or night, the installation's overseers had solved the potential crisis of shattered sleep-patterns by cycling the luminosity level of the interior lights according to Earth-time. Thus, everyone knew when the seven-hour 'night' had come on Phobos.

Because of this, the lineup for the communication stations were much shorter than they had been the last time. Bryce did not have to wait long before the menu screen swam into existence before him, requesting a 12-digit address input.

He quickly typed in 15 numbers; 12 for Jakob Daravon's mansion on Earth's eastern continent, and 3 for the extension to his mother, Edwina Daravon.

That woman, who held the iron will of her husband in a more diminutive and older-looking form, knew Milly Peacecraft as something other than an aggravating rival, possibly a friend. But more than that, she could access the civilian datanet from a terminal at home, without all the red tape Anno Domino typically placed on military access terminals.

But to his professional and personal disappointment, Edwina's brown hair and blue eyes did not resolve on screen along with the trappings of their home on Earth. Instead, a balding man with silvery wisps of hair around the back of his cranium was adjusting the screen upward so he could look into it. "Young Master Bryce!"

Out of the respect this man seemed to command as well as he gave, he responded with a fake smile as well as speech. "Hello, Mr. Matthews. I'd love to talk, but I'm kind of in a rush. I need someone there to find some information on the public terminals. If my mom isn't sleeping, could you go get her? I might need her help."

Their butler paused a moment to think. "Sir, I am much older than your father, but even I know how public terminals work. I can locate this information before leaving tonight."

"She's not there?"

"No, sir. Off-planet, as a matter of fact."

The way he said it, full of genuine obsequiousness instead of the kind of friendship he had developed with the family, made Bryce suspicious enough to pry for more. "If you don't mind… where?"

Matthews rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly, and Bryce knew now that there was something he wouldn't like. "She heard about the incident, I'm sure… so where is she, Matthews?"

"She has, well, taken an, ah, personal interest in the matter, sir. Master Daravon was busy, so she, well, she demanded to speak with the Anno Domino officer in charge of the new task force they've put together, one Admiral Landon."

His reply was almost a shriek. "And you LET HER GO WITH THEM?"

"Yes, yes", Matthews mumbled not to Bryce, but to himself. "I was afraid you would take it this way. I cannot understand why the lady insists on going on these little trips without telling anyone."

"Because he wouldn't let her go", Bryce answered for him, frantic deductions whirling through his head as he spoke.

"Yes. Most likely so. Still, I do wish she would not make me her sole confidant in these matters. Ah, but now I'm rambling. The information you wanted, young master?"

"Oh no", he whispered faintly, head swimming. "Oh NO! She's going with Landon to get the MS back! She doesn't know about Temeritus, or about the white one!"

Not surprisingly, Matthews was as confused by this as the other few folks who overheard him from within the booth. "'MS'? 'White one'? What do you mean?"

Without answering, he immediately cut the connection and sped from the booth, nearly tripping over the stairs leading out of the lower level. I have to do something to save her, he thought frantically. Even with Anno Domino's fleet, if Shyron decides to use the MS units they've already captured…or if that madman shows up again…

If either of those things happened, in all likelihood, the Anno Domino task force positioned at the Solar Barrier would be pinned down, too far away from Earth to receive support, and eventually wiped out.

There was only one thing he could think to do. Sprinting back down the bay, he brushed past Troy's muscular form without even checking to see if Umil had exited the leg compartment yet. "Prep this MS for launch", he barked out more rapidly than ever before, "I'm taking it into battle out the main hangar."

"Bonus Question: Are you out of your freaking mind?", he heard Elya shout from somewhere above him. "Now? Why?"

"Elly", he gazed up at her from in front of the suit. "For once in your life, please don't ask me why. If I don't hurry, my mother, and a whole lot of other folks die."

While her own frustrated expression made it clear she wasn't letting the point go, she did do him the courteousy of detaching the gunmetal-colored guywires they had used to climb up and around the Peregrine during its reconstruction. For the first time in many days, Peregrine's chest compartment swung open at the push of a remote.

Troy, unsurprisingly, was the biggest opposition to this sudden takeoff. When Bryce refused to respond through the metal, he hijacked Peregrine's personal comm., his face crowding the pocket-size screen.

"You are loco, Bry-boy", he maintained angrily. "Listen to me. That fight is all the way out at the Solar Barrier, you can't get there in a short-range machine like this!"

"No", the other boy replied with equal conviction. "I thought about that already, I can use a comet."

Only his team would have known what he meant, and Troy's face paled as he swore. "That's even crazier, damn it! You saw the simulations, Bry! The MS will fall to pieces if you do that- constant pressure, its structural weakness!"

"I know the estimation", he shot back dryly. "Loss of structural integrity at a rate of 0.741 percent per minute. If I get a fast one, I can be within comm. range in less than 2 hours, lose maybe 80 percent."

"But you'll be at only 20 percent integrity! That's not enough power to fight a cockroach!"

"I'm not going to fight, I'm going to deliver a message. Now, get off the leg or I will kick you off."

With all his arguments either defeated or deflected, Troy finally looked down at the deck and backed off. "We'll launch you in five", he said ruefully. "I just hope you know what you're doing, Bry."

"Yeah, me, too."

Main system online.

"Prepare for launch, shunt all discretionary power to the engines!"

Security code and voice analysis requested.

"General Unilateral Neuro-Link Dispersive Autonomic Maneuver!"

Voiceprint of chief designer DES18 Bryce Weltroth Daravon confirmed. Redirecting power. Begin ignition sequence.

"Launching!"

And then, before any unit of Anno Domino's could react or sound the alarm, the fastest of the MS units tore out of the bay and into open space.

- - -