09: inertia of the broken-hearted.

Let it take you, the void said. No, that wasn't right. This was his voice, coming through the void on wavelengths of high static, those secret frequencies only the dead know. In the base of his ear and the back of his throat, the dead were humming, hymnals of the blood in his eyes. Let it take you. He was among them now, a member of the choir of corpses that decorated the long corridors of human history, the cast-off collaborators of each twist and turn that constructed those four walls with piles of their own mutating flesh, rotten and seeping together to form the organic structure of the world, plunging forward and backward into space- four walls; no ground, no up or down, only monuments of the deceased. Zechs was a member of the linear hallway of time, forged in the black. Zechs was...

Hurting. Slowly he surfaced, clawing his way through the rank and putrid bodies in his semiconscious dream to find his surroundings; Tallgeese cockpit, re: damaged. Various flickering alarms illuminated every display panel that still functioned, gleaming like a discotheque of prophesied doom.

Oxygen filtration level: 52 and dropping. Heating level: 74 and dropping. All life-support systems malfunctioning. Let it take me? Zechs wondered with the detached curiousity of a coma patient, I don't seem to have much of a choice. He tried to lean forward to grasp the controls and test Tallgeese's manoeuvring function, and was rewarded with a sudden wash of excruciating sensation that paled his skin and and drove goosebumps across his flesh, his expression blanked, drained of all motor function. Fuck me, his thoughts shouted, unable to vocalise even the expletive, unable to unclench his jaw. A trembling glance downward revealed a wide, flat slice of shrapnel, peeled off the control board like wet paper and plunged directly through his lower torso, pinning him to the seat. His blood was a sticky trail of curdling slime that slickened his lower body, poured into his lap and trailing down his shins into an alarmingly-large pool on the small crescent of floor.

"Fuck," he commented, testing the tremour in his voice. A low grunt dropped his head back against the seat where he had found it, and a sigh wrangled another raspy mewling of pain as his ribcage attempted to expand upon a metal skewer. Short, shallow breaths. Come on now, think.

You're going to die.

"I am not going to die."

Oh that was good, very convincing. If only speech altered reality.

"It is not a reality that I'm going to die."

Pinned to the seat of a malfunctioning mobile suit hundreds of thousands of miles away from anyone who might care to rescue you is the perfect time to confront your mortality.

"I might not die right now."

Let's be realistic.

"Fuck you," Zechs snapped, and that was the end of that conversation. From his limited vantage point, he surveyed the various information screens and technical readouts that still functioned, but only reminded himself of what he'd already noticed. His oxygen would run sour before the simple heating system failed, which served at least to postpone the freezing of his corpse perhaps long enough for something recognisable to be carted back to Treize-

Treize.

Oh god, Treize. Fighting back the shivers that threatened to wrack his drained and dangerously cool body, fighting back the bile in his throat and the bitter metal behind his tongue, fighting with every rationalisation of his nerves begging him not to move, Zechs gripped the shrapnel through his midsection and pulled forward, leaning with it as it slid slowly from the seat. The strain almost spun him back to the depths of blessed oblivion, whirlwinds of his heart throbbing in his ears and the nausea spilling into his throat; he spat the bloodvomit that accumulated in his mouth and tried to rest, suspended as he was at this strange angle. Blood began to creep anew from the hole in his gut. He lost consciousness.

Regained it a few moments later, shivering uncontrollably from the cold and the pain and the bloodloss, and he was alarmed to notice how much farther away the explosion debris appeared on Tallgeese's display. He was floating too far, propelled by inertia. Zechs reached for the controls.

Flight jets offline, the screen informed him. No matter; neither he nor Tallgeese could have possibly survived atmospheric re-entry, and he doubted he could even make it to L3. He couldn't go back, he couldn't save himself.

He would just have to make himself saveable.

"Give me boosters," Zechs hissed, partly to quell the chattering of his jaw, "Come on..."

Boosters operational. Left booster running lean. With intuitive fiddling with power levels and some manouevring, Zechs managed not to flit around in useless circles. He limped the dessicated husk of Tallgeese towards the largest object he could find; the skeletal remains of the L3 satellite, splintered by the explosion. Gripping a large support rod with Tallgeese's single remaining arm, he swung himself inside the wreckage and wedged the mobile suit securely against the rod, in case the hydraulics went and Tallgeese lost its grip.

Treize would find him. He couldn't stay in this position; the angle was too rough on his waning circulation. Treize would come for him. He set the monitors to send alarms when piloted vessels entered Tallgeese's vicinity. Treize would know where to find him. With the last of his strength, Zechs pushed himself and his impaler back and sank upright against the seat, utterly spent and shuddering. Treize wouldn't let the void have him.

Zechs closed his eyes, and let it take him.

...

His face shrouded in shadow, garbed in lavish but nonetheless civilian clothing that left his chest conspicuously bare of glittering stars and symbols, Treize waited. They stood silent and stiff in the night of his office, lit only by what light permeated the blinds and through the cracks around the door; three decently-ranked officers and the proud man who commanded their loyalty, with small military machines at their feet. Finally, a fourth officer slipped inside the room, carting with her the missing link for complete assembly of the communications-encoding device Treize had requested. She set it beside the other components and apologised, but Treize excused her with a dismissive wave. "Assemble it."

Three of the soldiers instantly began to work, connecting wires and typing in codes, but the fourth - a now-solemn Anmodere - remained fixated on the general, his brown eyes gleaming like the shells of insects. "Once I've ordered the strike," Treize began, his voice secretive and sombre, "there will be no small amount of chaos within my manor. My soldiers must know their enemies, but your very comrades will become enemies once the loyalties of the OZ armies are divided. We must decide on a definitive mark to indicate those in my faction, and this mark must be changed during the phases of battle to reduce the risk of imitation and infiltration. Do you have any suggestions?"

Anmodere considered. "Our caps, sir? We could remove them."

"Hmm... Alright, that will suffice for the first phase. During the second wave of attack, you will also remove your names and insignia from the breast of your uniforms."

"How many phases do you think there'll be, sir?"

"It's difficult to say. Lady Une's force should quickly overwhelm the regiment here, and with my followers in the control room, Dermail's faction should be completely unaware of my escape-"

"Sir?" one of the other officers tentatively interrupted, and Treize paused in his discussion to glance down at her expectantly. "The device is complete. We've patched codes into all present frequencies so the transmission will not be detected. You need only to enter the code to your private frequency, and you will be able to connect to Colonel Une unhindered, sir."

"Excellent. Those of you present, pay very close attention as I describe the plan of attack to the Colonel; you will need to recall it and describe it to the troops under your command." The officers stood in attention and saluted, and Treize knelt by the machine, and began to work.