I said only parts of Frozen Teardrop had been included due to conflicting with the original draft; Noin's family is one of the things that conflicted too heavily with the original draft. In the rather monarchist world of Gundam Wing, I'm going to assume the Italian monarchy never collapsed. With the Alliance and the subsequent steps towards unification how much power it actually carries is deeply debatable, but it's still there. The astute among you can probably guess the line Noin is descended from. If you're astute-but-not-about-Italian-nobility, her father is the Duke of Aosta. This means, depending on siblings and the current succession laws, she probably also has a title. As Dyer suggests she might even be a Duchess (of Apulia).

This chapter was actually unplanned, and results from splitting off the first half of the next chapter due to incorporating an extra dogfight scene. Zombie Epyon was too good to pass up.

Unstick

Sixteen Aries were lined up, weaponless and cockpits open, on the tanker. Most of them were damaged. Duo's black-and-blue Taurus was perched in front of the bridge, with Hilde's more standard grey-and-white facing towards the Aries. Three other Aries were clawing their way towards the ship and hoping they retained enough altitude not to crash into the side while trying to land, while a few other Taurus lurked about in the immediate area, running racetracks. The rest were higher and more distant, their grey and white paint schemes hard to spot against the sky.

"Forsythe." Noin said softly on a private channel. "What were you doing putting yourself in front of that missile volley?"

"A good wing looks after her lead. Especially when her lead is a squadron commander and notable hero." Forsythe's reply was delivered calmly. "I can handle a couple of missiles, Skipper. I wouldn't be here if I couldn't."

Noin took a deep breath. "All right. But keep in mind if we both die then life is harder on those left."

"Boss." Duo's voice on the squadron channel. "I've been looking at the bridge close with my suit's magnification. They've got some nice toys aboard. Camera sleds, winches, deepwater submersibles. If they really were looking for Epyon, they've got the tools to find it and recover it."

"Any sign they did, Twelve?" Noin asked.

"They've still got a camera sled down, but they were headed towards something they've got a pinger on, probably bringing something up with lift bags..." It was all babble to Noin. "They're bringing something up nearby. I'd have to dismount to tell you where exactly, but it's probably got radar reflectors on it."

"Seven?" Noin asked.

"Seven here." Focht replied.

"Take your flight up to five klicks and look for small radar signatures on the water."

"Lightning, Triton. Thunderclap. We're two minutes out. Anything left for us to do?" The voice was younger than she expected, and had the same accent that Dyer did. The sister he'd mentioned was actually MMS Two's commander?

"Might be. They had a heavy escort and we haven't been able to deny a subsurface component. We're also looking for some salvage subs. They probably can't run but they might try to hide." Noin paused and glanced at a secondary display. "We also have some hostiles down in the water in need of SAR."

"Cleanup duty." There was some humor in that comment. "Okay Lightning, transmit coordinates."

"Uploading." Noin replied. "Sorry, Triton."

"Lead, Seven. Got a radar target to the north about two clicks from the tanker. I've got a cloud in the way, but it ought to be in your view."

Noin glanced in that direction. "Minisub, and some big plastic bags...lift bags?"

"Yeah Boss." Duo said. "They pulled something up."

"Three, Four." Buthelezi and Yin. "Get over there and make sure whoever's in that sub stays in it rather than trying to deep six whatever they had."

"Copy. Compliance." Buthelezi replied.

"There's a few Cancer suits around here," Buthelezi reported. "One of them just ducked under away from the minisub. Keep an eye out for SAM launches." The Cancer had the annoying ability to launch missiles in addition to torpedoes, if properly fitted. "Lead...it's Epyon. They found it."

Noin reefed the Taurus around hard and accelerated in that direction. She wasn't the only one; Focht's wing pair broke from its orbit and so did at least one other. "Willem, stay on station."

"Copy Lead." Willem lead the third section of One Flight.

"Three, what's it read like?" Noin asked.

"Cold. Colder than the water around it even." Buthelezi replied.

"It's been in the abyssal zone for years." Duo put in. "It could have been running its reactor the whole time and it'd still be nearly frozen. I can see it from here, Boss." There was a pause. Noin could see the distinctive dark purple head and upper torso, complete with the large "jewel" sensor eye now. "Did it just-" Duo said.

"Lead, evade." Dyer, with a tone of command and urgency worthy of Zechs Merquise or even Treize Kushrenada. Noin's Taurus stood on its left wingtip and turned hard before she was even consciously aware of what she'd heard. The beam sword shot up out of the water at the size she'd only ever seen it when Zechs was practically cutting Barge in half, right in her previous line of flight. Then Epyon was after her in a cloud of steam as its engines lit. It was missing a leg from the knee down, but it was still flying under thruster power. How it was still operational after years underwater was a mystery Noin had absolutely no time or interest for.

There was a babble of overlapping voices. "Oh god-" "-Mary, full of-" "We're so fu-" "Shut up and fight the threat or we're dead!" Focht yelled, clearing the squadron's comms. "Two Flight, missile runs, do not approach closer than two klicks!"

The good news was that Epyon didn't have any ranged weapons, or it was very likely she'd be dead already. Its damage appeared to have ruined some of its aerodynamics, and prevented it from converting from mobile suit mode. "Triton, Lighting, do not approach!" There was a great deal of urgency in her voice. Noin made a turn that pressed her against the left arm of the command chair, ten or twelve gees, darkness creeping into the corners of her vision as the vacsuit constricted around her limbs and tightened across her chest, acting as a g-suit as well. The old skills; tighten your body, resist the gees, fight it. Can't black out. You'll die if you black out. It felt like the armrest was trying to cut her body in half.

She rolled slightly and eased off the turn down to about six gees, her head turned back and left to try and keep Epyon in sight in the cockpit's panoramic screens. Noin had managed to lose her own wing with that turn. She hadn't lost Epyon. Impossible. Desperation move to get in it. Can't have a flight suit or pilot's vacsuit. They'd black out. And with the Zero System... "Forsythe, don't link up."

"Foxtrot tango, Skipper!" She'd heard other Alliance soldiers use that phrase, given orders they could not, or would not, obey. Foxtrot tango was phonetic alphabet, literally fuck that. Noin didn't have time to consider that Forsythe had used the same nickname Dyer did.

"The Zero System takes the easier targets first." Noin was still struggling to breathe, grunting with exertion. Six gees was nothing to sniff at. "It should have gone after you, not me. Don't link up."

"Can't lock him," Hilde said. "I'm positive for guns but he's screwing with my missile seekers."

"No guns. Trackbreaker will run out of tricks." Noin replied. God above, she hoped it was true. Epyon closed again as she rolled level, prompting her to break into a reversed turn. This time the darkness closed in further, and she strained harder, panting as she eased off twenty seconds later. "Somebody give me an estimate on the gees it's pulling." She couldn't pull this many gees too often. Tightening every muscle in your body and then trying to move your head and arms when they effectively weighed as much as your torso normally took it out of you.

"Eleven to twelve gees, Skipper." Dyer. "Have lock. Lance with ten." Grey trails came down from altitude as the missile volley arrowed in, only to suddenly wobble and detonate short. "Lost lock. He broke track when they were in the air. Bastard bluffed me into wasting my missiles."

Am I fighting a working Zero System? The obvious answer was no; she'd be dead if she was. But that trick had been too savvy for an amateur and too high-risk for a veteran that didn't have the perfect timing a Zero System would give. "Two, you have guns?"

"Affirm."

"Make it notice." She reached over and pulled the lever that blew the explosive bolts holding her own missile racks on the Taurus. She'd never get more than a snapshot at this point. They were two tons of dead weight, costing her speed and maneuverability she was going to need. The Taurus gained some altitude as the weight fell away. Then Epyon was there again and it was time for another turn, ten gees this time. It didn't seem quite as punishing, but that was probably illusory.

"Aye-aye!" The white-and-grey Taurus of her wingman rolled in behind Epyon and hammered at it with a long burst of beam fire. Epyon was a second-generation Gundam; most of it did little more than warm the armor. Most. The Preventer beam rifle for the Taurus had an operational specification that it be able to penetrate a certain percentage of the armor on a second-generation Gundam.

In this case, two shots penetrated one of the wing joints, and Epyon flicked out of its turn as the wing froze in place and the suit lost half its ability to vector thrust. At the same moment: "Have lock." Duo and Hilde's voices overlapped. "Lance with six."

Even damaged this was one of the most maneuverable and capable mobile suits ever designed. It avoided most of the missiles, weaving between the armor-piercing warheads, taking a hit on its thickest armor on the chest. But the maneuvers involved had to mean pulling a lot of gees for thirty or forty seconds, not all in the same direction, but...

Noin's Taurus was there next, in a shallow dive, spraying beam fire in an arc above Epyon. It killed its engines into freefall and then shot forward, but she kept lowering her aim, forcing it down under power now. It couldn't fall fast enough. And Epyon didn't have that much altitude to play with either. Epyon rolled inverted and started to pull back in a downwards loop it might, just barely, complete; at the cost of pulling eleven or twelve gees down, negative gees.

Halfway to the water, it went limp and started to tumble. Noin pulled up and rolled inverted to keep watching it, but she was starting to breathe normally again. "Splash."

"We didn't touch him." Foch said. "Not enough to matter, anyways."

"You can't pull as many negative gees before you lose consciousness as you can positive ones." Epyon hit the water at somewhere around six hundred kilometers an hour. "And now they're probably dead," Noin added regretfully. Epyon would survive that, it had survived reentry and splashdown after all, but the pilot would have bashed their head against something hard enough to kill them. "Remember that you are fighting the machine and the pilot both, but you only have to beat one of them."

Noin checked her fuel state. She'd burned a lot of reaction mass running from Epyon. "Triton, you're clear in, and I hope you brought some gas." She turned for the tanker, because she had about forty-five minutes fuel remaining. Not enough to go home on.

"Oh, you know the good old OZ suborbital. Gas and ammo for all." Triton One's voice replied. The old supersonic suborbital OZ transports, like the one Zechs had used, had been one of the few things the Preventers had worked hard to keep from the start. Their ability to land on water as well as landing strips made them able to reach more places, and their ability to refuel and rearm a mobile suit helped too.

The old deep blue transports, with the white Preventer "P" on the wings now, skimmed in low over the water, Pisces landing with a splash. "Got some traffic down here." Triton One said. "Hauler, stay high, some Cancers and minisubs about. We'll clean them up."

"Lightning One, Hauler Three. You need to link up airborne?" Mobile suits weren't equipped for air-to-air refueling in the traditional sense. For an Aries, or later a Taurus, air-to-air refueling meant actually coming aboard a properly-equipped mother aircraft in flight. It was a maneuver every pilot got extremely proficient at during training and none of them ever wanted to actually execute. In her entire OZ career, Noin had done it once that wasn't part of a training exercise, during Operation Daybreak.

"Not quite yet. May need to in ten minutes." That would leave her with a decent reserve in case the linkup proved troublesome. The surface of the water beneath her seemed to jump, followed by the plume of spray, and she banked to avoid it. Huh. Just like the depth charges in the old movies. She was probably going to end up watching a lot of old, and recent, movies about naval stuff. Service culture and fitting in meant understanding tradition.

It had been bad enough not knowing what Skipper meant that first time. God help her if she didn't understand the meaning of bulkhead. Triton One's voice intruded on her thoughts: "Scratch two. We have a couple of Cancers and a Pisces surfacing, keep an eye on them. Tritons Five through Eight: SAR for the Aries pilots."

"Oh, and Lightning. We got you a souvenir."


"What the hell are we supposed to do with a second-gen Gundam?" Focht demanded. "This is the biggest security risk in the Earth Sphere!" The damaged Epyon was currently lying in the middle of an unused hangar. Two active Taurus suits stood guard, in addition to enough Preventer infantry in full battle dress to have fought off a small army; they were setting up sandbagged positions for machine guns and automatic grenade launchers at each of the entrances to the hanger, and Noin thought she had spotted an anti-MS missile team lurking on the roof while she was on the way over. The base commander had already issued orders that anyone who didn't have authorization and approached within a hundred feet of Epyon would be shot. He'd also charged Noin with figuring out a way to neutralize Epyon until it was off New Edwards.

"There are a few options." Duo said. He was the resident Gundam expert. "Give me some tools and let me go crazy for a few hours and I can promise you it'll need a full overhaul before it'll turn on again. Alternately, we can wreck the cockpit pretty quickly. Just open it up, insert beam cannon, pull trigger. That'll take weeks to fix."

"I've been asked not to wreck it completely." Noin replied. She grimaced; she would have been happy to vaporize Epyon. That would have eliminated at least one of her nightmares. "Duo, draft whoever you want or need for your sabotage. Be thorough. It's going to be on static display in a museum, with almost all its parts stripped, so aside from preserving its basic structural integrity and not breaking anything in the cockpit, there are no rules."

"Not a single wire properly connected, Boss." Duo promised. He gestured to Hilde, then to Willem and Dyer, making his way over to some of the squadron's technical staff. Noin mentally reviewed those pilots; Willem had been an OZ MS engineer on Luna, Hilde shared Duo's mechanical inclinations and had run a salvage company. She knew Dyer had an engineering background, enough of one that he apparently held some patents on his work, and that was probably enough for simple sabotage.

Noin turned and walked back towards SMS 22's hangar, Forsythe in tow. "You wanted to vape it, didn't you?" Forsythe said.

"Zero Systems mess people up. That particular suit and that particular Zero System deranged someone so badly the world almost ended..." Noin trailed off. "If I could destroy Epyon more thoroughly than tossing it into the sun, I would. I'll have to settle for letting Duo disconnect every single wire. "

"Nothing personal about it." An inimitable deadpan voice. Noin turned sharply on one heel.

Heero Yuy's smirk was almost human, but flashed across his face fast enough to leave Noin questioning if she'd really seen it. "You seem surprised to see so many of the unquiet dead, Noin." Yuy wasn't wearing a Preventer uniform, and looked surprisingly normal in slacks and a business jacket. His visitor ID badge identified him as also a Preventer but a part of Special Branch, the plainclothes intelligence and counterinsurgency side of the agency.

"There's plenty personal about it." Noin replied. "But I would still want Epyon reduced to free atoms even if it wasn't personal."

"It would be hard for it not to be personal." Yuy replied. "Your parents." Noin did not reply. Her expression, to her credit, did not change. But that cut close for her. It was possibly the greatest shame of her life that with Zechs, back to her, trying to kill her family, she hadn't even thought to raise a weapon. Maybe she would have stuck a gun in her mouth and pulled the trigger, if she'd shot Epyon in the back and killed Zechs. But she should have at least thought about doing it.

And sometimes when Noin woke from her nightmares late at night, she would admit that even if it would have destroyed her she ought to have shot Epyon in the back. She was a soldier. She had admitted her life did not necessarily count by becoming one. Certainly not in comparison to the billions Zechs was trying to kill.

Yuy glanced towards the hanger housing Epyon. "You have Duo back there?"

"Yes." Noin replied. "I gave him the job of making sure it stays dead."

"I was supposed to give instructions on how to fully disable the Zero System. Duo will know how. Dealing with Epyon again for me is unnecessary." Yuy gestured towards the hanger Noin had been moving towards. "I am also here for the inevitable press conference, as the more acceptable of the experts on the Zero System."

"He," it had been a he, and the impact with the water had indeed killed them, "was so target fixated that I can't believe he was using a Zero System. My wing managed to nearly kill him by blindsiding him." Noin gestured to Forsythe.

"It is quite possible." Yuy replied. "The Zero System does not fix bad habits." His speaking paused a moment while they silently walking on. "Epyon could have recognized you and encouraged him as well. It has tried to kill you before and the system is just smart enough to remember such things."

"You're suggesting it's an AI. A proper one." Forsythe put in. Not intimidated by the former pilot of Wing Zero, apparently.

"The Zero System is an expert system, not an artificial intelligence. It creates solutions and then puts pressure on the pilot to execute them. If the pilot does not, the pressure increases. Spare an enemy it believes you should have killed, and it will be more difficult next time." Yuy replied.

Forsythe shook her head. "That's stupid. It ignores so many possible concerns at the ground and strategic levels. Even just trying to force the pilot is the act of a cretin, considering the feedback problems."

"Agreed." Yuy's voice had some humor in it. His eyes slid towards Noin. "Your solution was innovative. Forcing the suit into a maneuver the pilot could not take." There was also some admiration there.

Heero Yuy's approval made Noin feel vaguely...unclean.


The inevitable press conference was, in fact, happening. Most of it had already happened, in fact. Noin had to give a speech. She'd kept it short, and she'd had it written by someone else, who she half-expected to be in attendance though she hadn't seen them yet. She wasn't much of a speechwriter, and though she had a gift for extemporizing she doubted that Director Une would be very happy if she did.

It was disconcerting to be the one on podium, accepting the medal, getting the applause. Being the hero. She did enjoy it, she would have been less than human not to enjoy it at least a little bit. But some part of Noin insisted this is was what Zechs did. She wasn't Zechs. Noin was glad to escape, but the press did follow her, and she'd been instructed to answer at least two questions.

"Does the fact Epyon was piloted by your fiancee Zechs Merquise have anything to do with this situation?" That was a very dumb question in Noin's opinion, but she'd fielded a lot of dumb questions with grace in her life, having been a flight instructor.

"No." Noin replied. "Though I'm glad to see the Gundam Eypon finally laid to rest for good. The Zero System produced far too many shattered lives and broken dreams to allow someone to run around loose with one."

"Do you agree with the plan for Epyon?"

"It is the only remaining Gundam that's even marginally intact. Some sort of monument to both the horrors and the wonders they accomplished is needed, and while I might have preferred Wing Zero I really don't have that option. This will do. No more questions." Noin replied. A half-dozen Preventer infantry in regular dress rather than the combat outfit were at the side of the regular entrance to the hanger/living complex, keeping a few determined press types out. It was kind of odd to be using the normal door, or for that matter to see the squadron hanger door fully shut where normally it was cracked a meter or so for ventilation purposes. Noin made her way towards the squadron mess, she hadn't been able to grab a bite to eat all day between debriefings, getting ready for the big press conference, and then actually having the conference.

Her father was here, having somehow gotten in via the hanger, and was intercepted by Richard Dyer further up the hall. Her father also wore the visitor ID badge, with a "escort for sensitive areas only" tag that was rarely given to civilians and usually reserved for outside military like the colonial militias and defense forces.

"Your High-" Dyer began.

"Your Grace will do. The family hasn't used the Prince of Savoy title since AC Seventy-Five." Noin's father replied.

Dyer showed the barest hint of a smile. "You still retain it. And though she would be quite cross if I used it, it prevents confusion with your daughter, Your Highness." The Duke raised an eyebrow at him. Noin knew he wouldn't have expected an American to know the subsidiary titles of the family. "Your daughter," he added, gesturing to Noin, and then fading back into the hanger. Forsythe glanced to Noin and then also headed off into the hanger.

"The spirit of Emanuele Filiberto smiles on you." Noin's father smiled and gestured expansively; he was speaking Italian so that they would have a modicum of privacy. "It is good to see the family lauded for its feats once more, even if not in the way you would desire, Lucrezia." There were very few people who could use Lucrezia Noin's first name to her face without rebuke. Her father was one of them.

"It's not quite the Victorious Third, father," Noin said, with a genuinely pleased smile. She also switched to her native language, leading him to the mess area and a seat at one of the tables. "I was unaware anyone in my unit knew I had a title beyond my old OZ one."

"They are not fools, my dear. You actually seem to enjoy having them around." Noin was not known as a child or as an instructor for having suffered fools gladly. "The intelligent and the curious, or merely astute, will discover things they are not told."

Noin blushed faintly. "Are you trying to embarrass me in front of my unit?" she asked, somewhat accusatory.

Her father raised his hands in a gesture of peace. "Never. I was once a soldier too."

"A sailor, now." Noin smiled. "They are...often amazing, compared to the cadets I once trained."

Her father shook his head. "I knew men with eyes like your Lieutenant, when the Alliance was young. Commanded them. But they were older men. It surprises me to see them on one so young."

"He served the Alliance as well, as did his family...but now few of them are left," Noin's tone was softer as she explained. "We have made our peace."

Her father tilted his head and glanced back towards the door and the hanger. "A better man than those I knew, then. Your companion wore Alliance decorations as well, and I believe I noted some White Fang iconography. Quite diverse."

"You haven't met Duo yet." Noin observed with a grimace. "I have about a dozen ethnicities and five different original services represented." Duo actually entered the room, chatting surprisingly amicably with Heero. He glanced at Noin, and she gave him a nod, indicating he was okay to come in, but still the two of them sat farther away.

"Maxwell? I have some knowledge of him. I suspect most of the human race does." Her father was amused. "I am thankful you received him rather than Yuy."

"I gather Yuy will die before he pilots a mobile suit again." Noin gestured to him. "There is another, but somehow no one seems to know-"

"Barton. He leads a squadron himself. Serpents, I believe." Her father said. "Ironic. It has been claimed he is not the real Trowa Barton, but he is real enough to contest succession and wills. Given the family's misdeeds, I think many of our peers would rather he become the real Trowa Barton. Inject some character into the family." Noin had not always been good at juggling the various people she was supposed to be, which was both a strength at times and a curse, so it took her a few moments to realize that "our peers" was other nobility rather than peers to any of the people she was supposed to be day to day: Lucrezia Noin, woman; Lucrezia Noin, combat pilot; Lucrezia Noin, squadron leader. Lucrezia Noin, Italian nobility, wasn't someone she had to be very often and tended to be forgotten at times.

"I would not think he would have wanted to do that." Noin remembered the quiet, serious young man who had gone by Trowa Barton. He had seemed older, more mature, than the others, and also somehow less...driven? Wrong word. It was not a lack of drive, but a lack of desire or expectation for reward.

"Perhaps not for himself. But to keep that family from trying to take over the Earth Sphere again? The greater good is a powerful incentive for those who seek no accolades," her father said, with a smile. Noin wondered if he had been one of the people who had prevailed on Trowa to help there. In the post-Eve Wars world, the European power structure had been gutted; the battles between the Alliance and OZ over what was their homeland had been fierce and done much damage, and to have been a supporter of Romefeller was to be an outcast. People like her father had more power today than they had in generations. "You'll be going to space soon, you know."

"I don't have a full unit yet, much less a properly trained one." Noin objected.

"Needs must. Your other pilots are already on the way, I expect. From a friend of a friend of the Director, you'll be spaceside before the end of the month, and bound back to Mars soon after. Feuds among the Rock Movers make everyone nervous." The Asteroid Belt Retrieval Corporation, or Rock Movers, was the second-largest company in the Solar System. It was a distant second compared to the Winner Corporation, but while the Winners would get noticed if they tried to move a 25,000 ton chunk of rock, that was quite literally the ABRC's job. They were the only power in the Solar System that could still devastate a planet or destroy a colony without much effort. And since Zechs destroyed Barge, and nobody wants to rebuild it, the main system that the Alliance and OZ counted on to neutralize a large asteroid is gone, so if you boost it long enough then no realistic intercept is possible. And the only colony outside the Earth Sphere that could defend itself against even a slow rock is Mars. When corporate infighting broke out, or the workers got angry with ABRC, then the government paid attention.

Noin sighed. She was too used to how militaries worked to grimace. The requirements of the service. "I had hoped for an assignment closer to Earth."

"But your name carries too much weight, especially now, not to be dispatched to deal with possible crises." Her father gestured to her hand. "You still wear his ring, child." Her parents had never really approved of Zechs, but nor had they hated him. "What will you do?"

"I don't know." Suddenly the food she'd originally been looking for seemed a lot less interesting.