Recovery times given in this chapter are short. This is intentional. First, Heero Yuy sustained 200 significant injuries before he was sixteen in this universe and doesn't show much outward sign or any of the long-term damage that kind of madness would cause. Second, this is The Future (the AC calender starts in the 1970s so it's actually more than a hundred years in the future by 198). It's safe to say medical tech in the Gundam Wing setting is better than ours.
Crash And Burn
They had counted it up at the end and discovered there had been 38 Gundam clones, but more disturbingly, they had actually come from the colony. There had been a sealed area in lower cargo storage, under the control of a residual group from the Romefeller Foundation, that had apparently been housing them since sometime before the Eve Wars.
Searching it had shaken the team from the L1 Colonial Defense Force that went in with mobile suits first. Noin could see why. Sitting in a gantry at the back of the various MS bays, alone, was a copy of Wing Zero. It had a second pair of wings, which would have made it even more agile than the original Wing Zero what with the extra thrusters built into them, but was otherwise very true to the original version. Complete with twin buster rifle.
There were scorches on its paintwork where the L1CDF Vayate pilot who had seen it first had fired his heavy beam cannon in a panic. Noin didn't blame them, even if it was incredibly poor fire discipline under almost any other circumstance. If the Wing Zero had been activated, it would have killed them all. They would have probably hurt it, but someone with a twin buster rifle and few compunctions about using it was all but unstoppable.
Fortunately their enemies had been equally frightened of the suit and refused to activate it. Duo was standing beside her, staring at the thing in the gantry. "Just once, I would like humanity to open the door, look inside at what resulted from this new thing, and then close it and walk away going 'nope nope nope nope'. Just once."
"How's your wing?" Noin asked.
"Broke two ribs tackling that last one. She's being positively cheerful about it. I haven't heard anything else." Duo replied. "How's yours?"
"I need to check in." Noin replied.
"Want company?" Duo's tone belied the nature of the statement as a question.
"Skipper," Focht said. "Butcher's bill first?" Noin nodded her reply. "Forsythe's still in surgery. Shrapnel in the chest. Her suit's gel sealant layer sealed the holes in the suit and her wound both. Docs insist she'll make it. Buthelezi broke an arm and his collarbone taking a header into that building. Two of my people broke ribs when they got tackled by a Sandrock clone."
"Two?" Noin's expression suggested she didn't want to believe it.
"They apparently slept through all their training and forgot about tactical spacing," Focht replied. "For which I have kicked their ass. Spacing so we don't lose a section in one go's serious business. If you want to yell at them as well..."
"I will. Go on." Noin commanded.
"Schebeiker broke a couple ribs. Pak dislocated a couple of fingers somehow. Yin, Mackensen, and Dyer got a kiss from their seat restraints. The last three are ready to fly now. Pak will take a couple of hours. The rib-broken set will be ready in a little over a week. Buthelezi will be out of action for a month, probably. No word on Forsythe yet." Focht checked the terminal. "Nothing new on that front while I've been talking. Equipment status, Buthelezi and Forsythe's suits there's no realistic estimate of repairs now. Buthelezi's might not even be repairable, Chief Ropke hasn't finished evaluating. One of my dunces lost an arm off their Taurus, which will take three days to fix while they remove what's left, mount a new one, and get it working right. The techs have found some shock damage in some of the other suits which technically doesn't prevent them from flying, but..." There were plenty of good reasons not to fly with damage even if you could. "In the meantime, we have a dozen Taurus and not quite that many pilots. In a day we'll have fifteen Taurus."
Noin shook her head. "Let me know the minute you hear anything about Forsythe." It could have been worse, she told herself. It could have been much, much worse. Noin resisted the urge to try and physically shake off or swat away the memories of Gundam 05.
"Got it, Skipper." Focht replied.
"Thirty-eight. Thirty-nine counting the Wing Zero clone they were too afraid to activate." Noin was speaking via a video link to a Captain in Preventer Space Command.
He ran a hand through his hair. "So you're saying we dodged a bullet here."
"A lot of bullets. If someone had managed to smuggle them planetside, it would have taken us years to root them out. I've had my own Gundam pilot talking to the prisoners we took, but most of them...aren't very coherent." There had been six survivors of the thirty-eight. It might have been ten, but four of them had committed suicide before they could be cut out of their cockpits. Duo had already assessed several of the surviving pilots of the knockoff Gundams with a serious psychotic break brought on by Zero System exposure. "The only one we've talked to so far who seems to still be fully sane was just a merc. He didn't know much."
"Don't worry about it. We've got people for that," the Captain assured her. "Intrepid will be there in a couple of hours. Just look after your people, Commander."
Noin's personal comm beeped and she looked down at it. "Speaking of, one of mine is coming out of surgery-"
"Go."
Dyer was among the small crowd of pilots around, in addition to a squad of the L1 CDF's infantry forces. Someone was taking Forsythe's continued survival very seriously, it seemed. He peeled away from the group to meet Noin. "Skipper. She's going to be sleeping for a good while."
"How is she?"
"Shrapnel made a mess of her shoulder. It's recoverable, but there's a lot of physiotherapy in her future. She's probably not going to fly for at least six months." He was calm, but not composed. There was frustration and sadness and even a hint of something that might be loneliness. And for once, the emotion stayed on his face when he wasn't speaking.
"She just kept throwing herself on missile salvos and making it work, simulators, real missions. She had it under control I thought, wasn't stupid, she knew what she was doing..." Noin realized she was babbling and stopped. "Damn it. I should have stopped her. Discouraged that."
"With respect, it's been a lifelong affliction for her. She lost a Space Leo that way once under my command too. And she was smart and she did have it under control. Lucille made a choice to risk herself in exchange for the rest of us. She probably thought she could get them all, and wasn't lucky. It happens to each of us eventually." Dyer was still calm, but that hint of loneliness had gotten stronger. "Everything we do requires a little bit of luck, that the equipment doesn't fail, that we guess right, and sometimes it's just not there. At high speed and low margin of error, random chance can kill us as surely as enemy fire."
Noin gave him a long look. "You've given that speech before."
"Yes ma'am. I spent about three months working it out back in One Nine Five. Helps me stay sane. Just because we're responsible doesn't mean we're at fault, Skipper." Dyer replied.
"Lessons from the fall of the Alliance?" Noin immediately regretted that remark, it was one that was meant to cause strife considering their previous histories. She was supposed to be better than that as unit commander.
"Yes." He didn't take the bait, but his eyes closed. "If I don't learn something from it it's just dead weight. And that's a lot of dead weight to be carrying around." He opened his eyes and gestured to the medallion around her neck. "What good is suffering if we do not learn from it or help others by it?"
It was weird, in a way, to deal with someone else who shared her level of piety. But not unwelcome. And this is why Focht snagged Dyer as a second. If you need to lean on someone, knowing they're already strong helps. "Lieutenant, keep an eye on her for me?"
"Yes, Commander. I'll be in touch when she's awake." Dyer drew himself up, making it formal.
"Hey, Skipper." Forsythe sounded tired. She and Dyer had been chatting, but he'd vacated when Noin arrived.
"How's the shoulder?" Noin asked.
"Hurts like hell." Forsythe grimaced. "Damn near useless too. They tell me it's a complete mess and I'll fly again in six months if I live a particularly pure life in the eyes of whatever deity handles this stuff. Sorry, Commander."
"You saved a lot of L-One CDF pilots with what you did. They want to give you a medal," Noin replied. She shrugged, amused. "Be more lucky, says your friend."
"A good wing looks after her lead, Skipper. And I know. He already told me. You're going to need a new wing for the Mars trip, I'll only be back to battery by the time you get back." Forsythe glanced to the door. "Why do we have the knuckle-draggers around?"
"Talk nice about the infantry. They came to make sure you were kept safe." Noin gestured to the door. "It took them awhile to round up all the foot element of the attack on the colony."
"I've been out at least a couple days I'm told. Why are they still here?"
"The CDF is mostly ex-OZ. They're an honor guard to one who has sacrificed to save the lives of others." Noin gestured to the two urban-camo pattern infantry nearest Forsythe's door, then down the hall, to the two at the elevator. "Specials tradition."
"That's a nice tradition," Forsythe acknowledged, surprised. "Noin, if I can make a personal suggestion?"
"I think you've earned that, Lucille." Noin smiled, to show she wasn't being as haughty as it sounded on the surface.
"Take Dyer. Squadron leader can't go without a wing and you'll work well together." Forsythe grinned. "Besides, I think he'd rather be second chair to the squadron leader. It used to be his job."
Noin's response was to grimace. "I'm pretty sure he hates me on some level."
A hot shower. A chance to sleep, with gravity and clean sheets and air that didn't smell recycled. Luxury to a pilot in space. Granted it didn't take a long burn to get anywhere in the Earth Sphere usually, but that didn't always mean you wouldn't spend days on your deployment craft. And they weren't designed for that. Even aboard Peacemillion the accommodations weren't as nice as those aboard a colony.
Just maybe the accommodations for the month trip to Mars would be withstandable. Going interplanetary was still a big deal, done by a very different class of spacecraft. The easy way to tell was by layout. Interplanetary meant long burns meant effectively some level of gravity, so interplanetary spacecraft were laid out with "towards the engines" being synonymous with "down".
Noin would have to find out soon. Intrepid was one of the two Preventer ships meant for interplanetary travel and would be their ride to Mars in a few days. It was impressively large hanging out there a hundred clicks away.
Noin shook that thought off. "No chance of getting a replacement pilot?" She was talking to Lady Une, and while the light lag here was measured in seconds, it was still enough time for a quick mind to woolgather.
"The Assembly is quite diligent about ensuring I do not exceed the allowed numbers. Relena's doing, I can have no more pilots than I do suits." Une's expression of frustration matched Noin's sigh. The suits were more durable than the pilots; they didn't need to sleep and they didn't get sick. A few more pilots than suits was a good thing, especially since it got trained MS pilots who might otherwise be out of work in the post-warfare world gainfully employed and away from the temptation to find an old Space Leo and wreak some havoc. But total pacifism's seductiveness was that it offered simple answers to complex problems. Effective answers? That was still up in the air. "And all my incoming pilots are earmarked for new squadrons being stood up." Une was apologetic but firm. "If I had a pilot to spare I would give them to you, Noin. You'll simply have to go to Mars without her and pick her up when you get back."
Noin crossed her arms. "Fine. But I want a decoration for her. Wounded in action, saving the lives of others."
"She'll have one." Une reassured her subordinate. "Your Mars mission isn't just to show the flag, Noin. They aren't on the same wavelength as the Earth Sphere. Martial prowess and your connections to Trieze make you a person to be listened to. It will be very important, especially since I know you have personal connections to many people in the government and military there."
"You are suggesting I will be the Earth Sphere's ambassador-at-large to Mars." Noin observed, calmer sounding than she felt.
"I'm not suggesting. I'm stating." Une glanced over her shoulder. "The diplomats don't get the Martians the way you or I would. They've bought into the Total Pacifism line too heavily. I, and the President, are counting on you to present a face the Martians will respect and listen to. I can promise you a couple of good months before someone in the diplomatic corps realizes you're hijacking their job. There will be some level of interference when they wake up."
"You want me to start a fight with the people holding the world together." Noin was obviously disbelieving.
"To better hold the world together, yes."
"Chief Ropke says the Buthelezi's Taurus is repairable, but she wants to string him up."
"...what does that even mean?" Noin asked.
"Americanism. She wants to hang him. I had to ask too." Focht shrugged. "What about a replacement pilot?"
"It's not happening." Noin said softly, knowing exactly where this conversation went next.
"You can't fly alone, Skipper. You're not expendable." Focht also knew exactly where the conversation went, perhaps better than Noin did. "And your choices are a bit limited. Only so many of the rest of us can keep up with you."
Noin closed her eyes a moment and opened them. "You really think there are people who couldn't here? We have good pilots, Focht."
"We do. But you managed to lose your own wing while trying to lose Epyon, remember?" Focht was as reasonable as he felt he could be. "Maxwell, sure. Schebeiker, because she can keep up with Maxwell, is a maybe...but a lot of it has to do with the fact he's Maxwell rather than her inherent skills." He was ticking them off by raising a finger for each one. "Me. Dyer. That's it."
"I can't take you out of Two Flight's command position. I don't have anyone to replace you with." Noin grimaced. "And if we break up Three Flight's first section they'll be about half as effective with other people as they are together. You're saying I have to take Dyer, but you're not expendable either."
"If it's between me and you, Skipper, you're more valuable to both the squadron and the agency as a whole. You know that." Focht replied. "I can stay with the two idiots. They need closer supervision anyways."
Noin spent a few seconds trying to come up with a way to obliquely refer to how Focht leaned on his wingmate a lot. She finally settled on "That's going to make your job considerably harder in other ways."
"Not really. I've still got to consult with him and with Maxwell both, seeing as they're the next lowest rung on the ladder from me." Focht replied. "Skipper, you're fighting this. He doesn't actually hate you, or if he does he can keep it buried so well it doesn't matter."
"All right. We'll see." Noin sighed after that.
"He's on a check hop. I'm waiting here because he'll get bruised." That was Larishminova, the squadron doc.
"Like I do?" Noin asked, with obvious irony.
"Probably worse. Dyer's idea of a check hop is to link to Intrepid's combat computers and fight a simulated Tallgeese, the first one." Larishminova's expression was mournful. "You're both lunatics, you know that?"
"Good pilots are aggressive." Noin stated the basic rules of how you made a good combat pilot essentially by rote. When you controlled a supersonic weapons platform that could easily turn itself into a lawn dart with a wrong move, you had to have an above-average level of aggressiveness just to pick a fight. "And the machine has higher tolerances than we do, if we want to check it's able to reach them..."
"Maybe. But I think you're just flight junkies. You want to go fast and go hard. Maybe it's the challenge, maybe it's just the power trip."
"Are you trying to get court-martialed?" Noin was incredulous.
"Just being honest, Commander. You, Maxwell, Dyer, you push yourselves harder than others. And some people in this unit push themselves hard by normal standards already." A sigh and a shrug. "My job is at odds with that. I have to keep a bunch of people who could easily hurt themselves fighting fit. It's like being an intelligence officer; I tell you what you can't do and my job is basically adversarial with yours." She looked up. "Here he comes."
The flat gray paint Dyer's Taurus used was, according to maintenance records, Alliance Non-Specular Lunar Grey, which in a single-tone use was Measure 6 Lunar Camouflage. It was a fairly simple paint mix to duplicate in color, although if done properly it was mixed with fine lunar dust as a pigment. Romefeller had liked it, used it to trim a few of their personal mobile suit troops. That had made it one of the few imports to Earth from space during the Alliance and OZ embargoes.
Noin wondered why he'd chosen it, and watched as he racked the Taurus up and dismounted. The Preventers had an unwritten rule about custom paint jobs; if your name would be recognized by the Director before you joined the agency, or the suit you fought in was your personal property, you could have one. Not everyone who fit those criteria opted to do so. She almost turned to ask Forsythe about it, before remembering her normal wing wasn't there. Funny how much she'd come to rely on the other woman in a few weeks.
With a heavy sigh Noin grabbed the ladder and climbed it to meet Dyer on the gantry.
The first thing she realized about her new wing wasn't something she liked. Dyer was a rocket ranger, OZ Space Forces slang for someone who wore a gun in the cockpit. Though an old tradition of pilots to carry a weapon for personal defense, the reasons to do so really did not apply in space.
"It's a good luck charm, mostly." Dyer said. "Worked for one of my parents." He must have tracked where she was looking. Dyer's hair was a mess, sweaty, but he looked...happy, at least for a few moments before he apparently decided that wasn't appropriate to the conversation.
"Mother or father?" Noin almost slapped herself after saying that; it sounded like she was mocking him, and his parent's deaths.
"It's a fair question, considering." She hadn't hidden her reaction to thinking before speaking as well as she'd hoped, apparently, but he again didn't rise to the bait. Even managed a wry smile. "Mother. But understand, Commander, she made ace inside five minutes. Saved ten thousand people. To die achieving that is not a failure." He also managed a single, not-entirely-convincing laugh. "I suppose when I sat with the likelihood my own death for almost a year in One Nine Five, I just started to identify with my mother a lot. But you didn't come here to discuss this."
"No, I didn't. I can't go without a wing, the Director would have my head. Especially after all that's happened. And given your position in the Alliance unit, it seems the initial organization was a mistake." Noin softened her formal tone. "And we've already proved we can fight well together."
"I didn't think you knew, Skipper. Not until you asked about traditions, anyways." Dyer's tone was also softer. "Forsythe tell you?"
"After the Director, and your file, conveniently omitted it. That bothers me. I should have known earlier." Noin shook her head. "I suspect a little gentle manipulation by Lady Une. She would know I would not accept command over the original leader, not when they haven't been busted for something."
"I am ex-Alliance and have relatively little good to say about Une, Skipper, though she has managed her current tasks well. I, personally, am glad to have you here. You carried more than your fair share fighting the Gundams here. And the successes of the rest of us reflect you as a leader, a trainer, and a commander to some extent." Dyer held out a hand. "I'm ready to start over after our last talk if you are."
Noin took his hand in hers. It was a better start than she had thought it would be. That was worth shaking hands for.
Noin strapped into her Taurus' seat quietly. There was something wrong, she felt, and she knew what it was; she looked left and saw the flat grey Taurus rather than the one she expected. She sighed; it hadn't been one of her faults, to not adapt well to change. At least before now. Maybe she was getting old.
You're not 25 yet, Lucrezia, she scolded herself. "Two?" They were last to transfer to Intrepid, delayed by beating back several dozen requests from the press and L1 dignitaries for their time. Dyer's ability to remain impassive had helped a lot; he bored the newsies and frustrated the great, driving them to other pursuits. A few had managed to connect him with his mobile suit, though, which had provided some of the gun camera footage released to the press. They required more serious dissuasion.
"Two is ready." Dyer replied.
"Then let's go." The gantries disengaged and she took slow steps forward, to the elevator out of the hanger area. It wasn't a scramble; no reason for risks. The hanger resounded to the tread of their two mobile suits, metal on metal.
With the Taurus' optics she finally got a good look at the Preventer Space Naval Ship Intrepid. And the big wedge shape looked awfully familiar. "That's one of Libra's quarters."
"The hull, yes." Dyer replied. "They've chopped off the very tip, though."
"Lightning, flight of two, this is Relativity Control. Transmitting instructions for landing. We have a combat patrol up to keep the newsies off you." Noin's Heads-Up Display highlighted a point on the upper hull, and as she closed she made out blinking lights around a small opening; very small in relation to the ship, just big enough for the two Taurus to fit snugly.
"New AAS turrets." Dyer observed. "Quads, but the density is only about two-thirds. More guns overall."
"You ran attack runs against Libra?" Noin asked, incredulous. Only a few World Nation pilots had broken through to fight Libra's defense batteries that she knew. Of those, the number who'd survived the entire battle could be counted on one hand.
"Only in simulation. Alliance Space Forces knew from the moment it started building that we'd have to fight it eventually. By the time we got there in reality the Anti-AeroSpace grid was down." Dyer replied. "I noticed some kind of muzzles recessed into the bow, Skipper."
"I did as well." Noin wondered what they were. There were actually treaties and laws concerning the deployment of heavy beam weapons which did not quite prohibit them, but did mean it was extremely unlikely they were beams.
The two Taurus carefully settled into their assigned bay. It was tight, and a variety of gantries unfolded from the walls as soon as they were down in their assigned spots, securing the suits in place. Noin waited a few moments for the bay to close, and though she heard the hiss of the compartment repressurizing, she checked her helmet seals regardless before opening the hatch.
Dyer was poking at the gantries and nodded approval to himself while she watched, before pushing off for the door. She did so as well. "Worried about the accommodations, Lieutenant?"
"No ma'am. Professional curiosity on the engineering." Dyer replied.
They were met by an anonymous lieutenant, a result of the snafuing that had attended their being last aboard rather than first, and a couple of spacers who lead the way to pilot country. The lieutenant, a young and obviously overawed woman, made sure they were settled in to rooms with their personal gear already stowed before making her escape. Their gear had also made it over before them.
"These ships are weird." Dyer observed. As someone with considerable spacecraft experience for the Earth Sphere, the layout of an interplanetary ship was all wrong to his mind.
"They're the future, such as it is." Noin replied. Something occurred to her. "Have you slept at all in the last three days, Lieutenant?"
"No ma'am." Noin peered at him. Dyer looked far too awake and alert for that to be true, but...she'd never heard him lie before, either.
"Twelve hours," she ordered.
"Yes ma'am." Dyer might have actually grimaced. Noin wasn't sure.
"All hands, activating drive in ten minutes. Drive stations." For the pilots that meant strapped in, either to their suits or the sleeping bags that passed as beds in zero gravity. "Secure all loose objects."
Noin, who was talking to the ship's XO, sighed. The XO gestured to the chairs at his desk. "They've got seatbelts. Grab that pen, though." Noin snatched the pen and pushed off to the seat, which did in fact have a seatbelt. "Every seat on the ship has a seatbelt, actually," the XO, a man with a salt-and-pepper beard and hair said. "Combat maneuvers. Impacts." The XO had been one of the original OZ engineers for Libra. "Firing the main battery."
"Railgun submunitions?" Noin asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Not exactly. We call them sandblasters. They're designed to fragment into a cloud of shrapnel each of which is about the size of a finger. At their velocity they will cripple or destroy a mobile suit and scour defensive systems off the surface of a colony, but large spacecraft and especially colonies are designed to cope with impacts of that size and velocity; they usually can't get out of the way fast enough when dealing with orbital debris." He shrugged. "If we fired it at a planet, the projectiles would burn up in the atmosphere. If we fired it at one of the Lunar colonies, it would do damage, but for protection against solar radiation all the living quarters and most of the working areas are under five meters of lunar dirt and would be unaffected."
"The design was deliberately set up that way, I'm guessing." Noin observed. "People nervous after Libra."
"Got it in one." The XO agreed. "Peacemillion's impact ruined most of the internal systems by shock damage, but the hull was still sound. Libra was intended to be redundant and able to operate each individual hull quarter even if the others were offline. Repurposing the quarters into individual ships was easy enough." The drive kicked in, producing a sensation of slowly rising gravity, almost imperceptible at first, topping at about a quarter of Earth gravity. The XO smiled. "Intrepid's a well-mannered girl when it comes to maneuvering, better than Valiant. Valiant tends to smack you in the rear powering her drives."
"What about the third?" Noin was curious.
"Some hull damage from the Peacemillion impact means she's still being fitted out. And still unnamed. The Assembly moves slowly on occasion. You've met our other two squadrons?" Intrepid was designed to carry up to six mobile suit squadrons, and had other capacity for more though they couldn't be kept in the quick-launch bays. But there were more postings than there were squadrons to fill them out. SMS 48 and MS 5, a Taurus squadron that went by Black Aces and the Serpent squadron that was actually composed of the remains of an Alliance MS battalion. MS 5 didn't have a formal name; they used "Bat Five" on the comm.
"Yes." Noin shook her head. "The Commander Aerospace Group isn't happy with us, of course." Nobody particularly liked having a random unit in their territory they didn't have authority over.
"He'll get over it. It's a long week to Mars, having people to sim against is important. We'll be counter-burning in about an hour to link up with the monthly convoy." It wasn't really a convoy in the guarded sense, so much as a group of ships who traveled in company so others would be around to rescue them if something went wrong. Out there in interplanetary space was a bad place to have an engine breakdown.
Noin nodded. "I'd better be going, anyways. Check on the injured pilots I brought along."
"Sit down, dammit. Bad enough you're trying to move around, bad enough we change gravities." Larishminova was giving the evil eye to Buthelezi. "I could just ground you this whole trip, and that wouldn't impress the girls on Mars at all."
"You know, doc, you don't actually have to be an asshole about it." Buthelezi's observation was made with commendable calm in Noin's eyes, but as a pilot her view of someone getting grounded for any reason other than functional was a little warped.
"Bad enough half of you are on sleep meds-" Larishminova began.
"Doc, I'll let that one go." Dyer's tone was quiet as he joined the conversation from where he was leaning against the wall. His expression was a studied blank, different from his normal neutrality in that it was an obvious attempt to be neutral rather than the actual lack of expression. "But if anyone in this unit doesn't have nightmares I'll eat my vacsuit." He gestured towards Noin. "Hers probably involve the Gundam Shenlong. Mine involve Taurus mobile dolls. Everyone's involves Libra completing its crash-dive, including yours."
Buthelezi tipped his head to Dyer. "The Taurus dolls rather than the Virgos?"
"Virgos weren't always real bright about remembering to dodge, faith in their shields. Taurus...those glitches could fly. Worked hard for every kill, beat them down with your mind and a lot of gees pulled." Dyer shrugged. "If a Taurus MD killed me, it'd be because I wasn't good enough to outthink and outfly it. Lets it play out longer. Time to properly despair."
"Do you always analyze your nightmares?" Noin asked softly.
"Got to cope somehow, and it beats the hell out of drinking." The briefest of smiles before Dyer unfolded from leaning against the wall. "What do you need, Commander?"
Noin checked her watch. Thirteen hours since she'd told him to sleep. Now she needed to sleep. "Makes sure some of the stuff I sent to Foch gets read. I need to try and normalize my sleep cycle."
"Understood."
"How long were you waiting?" Noin asked three hours later. They'd started burning for Mars, at half a gee. It would take them about a week to get there at that speed.
"Ten minutes. I got here early, Skipper. Sleep well?"
Noin glanced at him. He wasn't looking at her, actually, and seemed genuine enough. It was hard to tell, admittedly, considering his lack of expression when he wasn't actually speaking. It was like watching a bad actor; someone who acted only on their own lines. "Shenlong didn't visit."
"Some guesses are easy." Oddly companionable tone. Well, if you had to bond over something, the ways in which you were both broken wasn't technically the worst thing. "We're a wing pair. Our relationship isn't necessarily personal, but we have to mindread each other a fair bit, and that means there's an intimacy greater than some affairs."
"Don't say that in front of Zechs," Noin requested seriously.
"No ma'am." Dyer agreed, his tone mildly hurt at the suggestion he would.
Noin turned towards him. "You wouldn't do it to hurt him." She wasn't asking a question. People inflicting petty harms and inconvenience on Zechs Merquise had been humanity's favorite sport since he'd made his survival known. They couldn't actually get away with hanging him from the nearest lamppost, so they settled for what they could do.
"Anything I do to hurt him will reflect poorly on you. And that would make me a bad wing indeed." Dyer raised a hand and made a balancing gesture, again with oddly amenable tone. "I'll always hate him. But you're not asking me to like him, Skipper, just act like an adult. Mouth shut, hands to myself, all that jazz." It must be an Americanism, she'd never heard that expression before. "I can do that."
Noin raised an eyebrow. "If you're going with a protective brother act next, that's cliche."
Dyer actually laughed, a full laugh, and the hint of a smile on his face did not go away after he spoke. "But it is my job. You lead, I scrape off the people who come after you." He gestured down the corridor. "Shall we, Commander?"
The changes of the last seven days had been dramatic. Buthelezi was up and about, with the doctor's blessing now, but still wore a cast. They'd fought simulator actions against both units on Intrepid by now. The Black Aces had proved, ironically, to be poor matches for Lightning's raw talent. Bat Five had been a different matter; knowing they could not match Lightning's strengths, they fought in tight formations that maximized firepower and their ability to protect each other. Their simulator conflicts were messy, hard-fought affairs that tended to leave only a couple of suits from each side standing, ending more by mutual consent that no real victory was possible than because one side had attained a clear ascendancy.
Now that they were coasting to the point of Mars orbital entry, the mobile suits were all manned, waiting. Intercepting them in interstellar space wasn't a real possibility; any opponent would be seen coming hours away, giving the ships plenty of time to burn harder and outrun them or flip and burn at them, causing them to fly by at such a high relative speed they wouldn't be able to place a shot. Close to Mars, having spent days bleeding off speed and now coasting to their orbital insertion burn, interception was actually possible. Unlikely, but possible.
"Commander, there's a call for you from Phobos Control."
"Put it through." Noin had a good idea who this would be.
"So they made you a commander, Noin? I suppose the Lady has some taste after all." Hint of an accent, too faint to tell what, behind a generalized Southern European one. "Could I trouble you for a favor, something to show off to the civvies?"
"Of course, Ami." Noin grinned under her helmet. Ami Nagano, once an aide-de-camp to Trieze Kushrenada, of the same generation as Noin and like her having bent the rules to become a pilot for the "last campaign". Ami lead the Mars Colonial Milita now and had been a good friend to Noin during her time on Mars.
"We finally got our Tallgeese replicas working. I was hoping you would be willing to help test them. Right now." Ami's grin practically audible to someone who knew her as well as Noin.
Noin glanced at her armament layout. Beam cannon, no missile racks; going slick. Tallgeese-style suits accelerated like no other design, but the difference between the basic Tallgeese and a Preventer-uprated Taurus was not insurmountable. "Two, how do you feel about a friendly tangle with Specials Flight?"
"It would be a pleasure, Commander."
"I would be happy to oblige, Ami." Noin replied. "Relativity Control, request launch permission for Lightning One and Lightning Two."
"Lightning One, clearance granted. Good hunting, Commander."
"It's crowded out here, Skipper." Dyer observed. Local Mars space was less crowded, relatively, than local Earth space. But all traffic to Mars stopped at Phobos first, and local Phobos space was very crowded. In addition to at least three dozen MS-sized contacts squawking MCM identities when queried, there were thirty to forty civilian ships for interplanetary travel, about twice that number of shuttles for surface-to-orbit flight, and at least two MCM warships; the Intrepid-sized rectangular shape that was identifying itself as the MMWS Athena, and the smaller spike-shaped one identifying itself as MMWS Minerva. "What are we looking for?"
"Two-six-two by one-three-seven." Noin replied softly. "I don't believe it, they really did them." Two Martian-red copies of the original Tallgeese.
"Hell of a ride." Dyer observed neutrally.
"Well, Noin. Who's your friend?"
"Behind every great pilot is a wing doing their best to make sure the lunatic doesn't get themselves killed. Mine is Lieutenant Richard Dyer. Who's yours?"
"Lieutenant Chao Lingshen. Go easy on her, she's new to the suit."
"I make no promises." Dyer put in. His tone was the calm Noin recognized from battle.
"So you're making it a challenge?" That must be Lingshen. The accent wasn't familiar to Noin.
"Lieutenants, please." Ami sounded amused. "I think we should encourage skill over raw acceleration, to make for a more fair test. Restrict the fight to a twenty click radius from Phobos' surface, and a twenty klick radius of Stickley Crater. One hundred meter safety radius from civilian traffic. Breaking any of those rules forfeits. Minerva's computers will officiate for us." The space concession was very generous, Noin thought. It did not entirely eliminate the advantage of acceleration the Tallgeese types had, but it did keep them from playing hit and run like it was the only game in town. Stickley was big, of course, but they were all fast enough to cross it in a minute or crowded battlespace also put more to the eyes and hands and less to the performance of the mobile suits.
"Acceptable. I'll message you when we're in position" Noin waited a few moments, then ran through the synchronization process with Minerva's computers, which would track suit positions and shots and see what counted as a hit.
"We have a plan, One?" Dyer asked.
"Stay supportive but keep some extra space between us." In atmosphere, formation spacing was defined by turn radius. In space, it wasn't, and formations often tighter. "Ami would be dangerous with a Block One Space Leo. She's good with her guns like few others. I don't know anything about Lingshen."
"Copy. Kicking it out a hundred meters. There's a gap in that group of shuttles coming up."
"Not a bad idea. Slip in." A few moments later, she switched to the open channel and gave the call that had opened every mock combat between pilots for at least a century: "Fight's on!"
"Get the lead out of your stick hand, Lingshen. If I had missiles you'd already be dead." Dyer said over the open channel a moment later. The two hadn't spotted the Taurus yet, apparently. A moment later they did, and their main verniers lit.
And now we find out if all that simulator time taught us enough about each other to do this. Noin was jinking and sideslipping, but she burned right back at them, the two Taurus in fighter mode. Dyer was also making short, sharp evasive manuevers, but not the same ones...yet they remained roughly in formation. All right. It worked I guess. One less worry.
One of the shuttle pilots complained on the open channel as a Tallgeese shot past, only to be shushed by another. Dyer spoke on their private channel three seconds before the merge. "Lingshen's a rookie."
They flashed past. Noin expected Minerva to call a kill on someone, especially since it looked like both of them were gunning for Dyer, but it didn't happen. He'd executed some surprisingly well-coordinated multiple-plane manuevers in the last few seconds. "There are thousands of veteran pilots in the world. Why would she be a rookie?" Noin answered her own question a moment later. "The suit." Tallgeese had nearly killed Zechs the first time he'd flown it. Getting everything out of Tallgeese wasn't something just anyone could do; it took a naturally very resilient pilot in superb physical condition. "Can you take her?"
"L'Alleanza supera." Dyer replied, using the motto of Alliance Space Forces. The Alliance overcomes. Well, he's a living testament to that I guess. "Are you suggesting I should break after her?"
"Yes." Noin replied. "We'll pull them into Phobos and then try that." The problem with Tallgeese was it was big, and hence heavy. It had a lot of inertia to overcome in a space environment and didn't stop or counterthrust very well. Charging was impressive; it wasn't good practice, though. They really haven't had them working long. Ami's not used to her suit.
"Here they come." Dyer flipped his Taurus onto its back, going to mobile suit mode. Noin blinked, watching the main drives flare in the x-shaped pattern for a moment that she would forever associate with mobile dolls, then she copied the maneuver, with a a less drive-stressing answer. They wanted to open some space and see how their opponents reacted.
The two sides were still ten kilometers apart, the MCM suits having opted to grab the surface for more room to accelerate in, when Minerva came on the open channel. "Tracking kill on Specials Five."
"I didn't fire, Minerva." Dyer may have been objecting, or simply stating facts. It was difficult to tell; he was also jinking.
"You've had her dead to rights for the last thirty seconds, Lieutenant. You shouldn't play with your food."
This time, the verniers on Ami's Tallgeese were silent, and she spun and activated them at the merge, gun up and tracking Dyer's Taurus. She must be finding him a difficult target, though, because it was another thirty seconds before Minerva called the kill.
Which was fifteen seconds too long to be focused that tightly on her gunnery. "Kill on Specials One." Minerva announced. "Senior Colonel, you just cost me a dog watch's sleep."
"That's what you get for betting against the world's leading distributor of Gundam parts." Ami was actually laughing. "Lieutenant Dyer, you are by far the most annoying target I've ever shot at. That includes a number of mobile dolls. If you'd actually been able to see my tracers I suspect I wouldn't have managed it at all. I congratulate you."
"Dying means the fun's over. I try to avoid it." It was in Dyer's calm combat voice, but Noin assumed that comment was sarcastic.
"Well, not this time. Stickley Spaceport is open for business. We can refuel and arrange transport to the surface. I'm aware your suits are capable of Martian reentry, but they'd need repaint afterwards." Ami chuckled softly. "Oh, and it seems the rest of your unit decided to join us."
"Sorry Skipper, watching the fight on retransmitted radar was getting boring," Focht put in.
"It was about what we were planning to do anyways." Noin agreed. "Lead the way, Ami."
Noin racked her Taurus last. Dyer was waiting for her on the gantry, helmet off, hair mussed up, a bit sweaty. Smiling. He actually looked like a mirror-image of her after a good flight. And this had been a good flight. Noin held out a fist and after a moment he apparently recognized the gesture and bumped his fist against hers. "Fine evasive work, there."
"Alliance Space Forces. If you were easy to kill, the Mobile Dolls got you long ago." He shrugged. "Poor Lingshen. I hope she has plenty of time to practice before she has to go to live combat."
"We have a skewed perspective. We are surrounded by pilots who lived through the most intensive combat in living memory. One of them used to drive a Gundam." Noin talked while she made her way to the ladder down. "Lingshen would have been considered very talented before Operation Daybreak, when MS combat was all theory and no practice. But to us? We're not just veterans, we're spoiled veterans."
Dyer was actually laughing softly as they made their way down the ladder. Noin reached the bottom, took two steps backwards away, and stopped dead. Dyer bumped into her, and added a slightly concerned "Skipper?" as he turned.
"Zechs," Noin breathed. "I didn't think I'd see you until we got to the surface."
