First, a moment of author realtalk: I'm going to make an acknowledgement. Go google "Attention On Deck Robotech"; I owe that story and its author a great deal for the fact this story survived its ten years in the wilderness before I got around to rebuild and posting. Plus it's worth the read anyways.
Zechs Interlude: The End of All You've Known
In the silence of his dead mobile suit, Zechs Merquise contemplated the future.
Bleak, mostly, and shaped as though to reject the past and its works. He wasn't sure why he was alive, what purpose could possibly be served by such an act of what had to be divine intervention. He could hear the last of his cockpit air hissing away. Traditionally he hadn't bothered with a helmet, but he'd had to put one on just to mount up here. Otherwise he'd be dead. That...it disappointed him. He was aware he should not be thinking that, and Trieze's voice gently chided him. Suicide is a sin, is that not what your God tells you?
"Zechs?" A voice, female, in his ears. It was familiar, and he wondered briefly if Dorothy Catalonia had come to haunt him as well before remembering where he was.
"Victoria. My suit is done for." His helmet comms worked. Victoria sounded uncannily like Dorothy, but she was older than that, and probably unrelated. Victoria Mannstein, OZ Space Forces originally. Io Militia today. "How many are left?"
"Five trapped in the mine, plus four of us outside. Only three properly working mobile suits outside. One more that kind of works." Victoria was not telling the whole truth. Zechs had been, at least once upon a time, a noted leader for a reason. Knowing what others were not saying was as important as knowing what they were saying.
"Lightning?" Victoria's voice had none of the stress of combat, particularly high-speed aerial combat. Which could mean several things.
"Withdrew. They were more concerned we have to dig out the others than with killing us all." Victoria replied. That, Zechs mused, was quite a change from how Noin had treated him before. She had wanted him dead in the worst possible way. And the shock of Noin turning on him so violently had nearly been enough to kill Zechs on its own. Not...directly, but for three seconds he had been frozen, unable to cope, and it took far less than three seconds of inattention for a suit like Tallgeese to kill its pilot. Once again he had been saved against long odds, to no purpose. Her...fascination with you was never entirely rational nor comfortable for others to see, or even for you to see as well you know. Come now, don't shake your head at me, you've thought before that her infatuation was unhealthy. Does the possibility of the woman you love having grown to a healthier understanding of relationships hurt you so much? Zechs made a rude gesture at the air, and the ghost of Trieze Kushrenada. Temper, Zechs. You can't unravel openly now, can you?
One of the things that had been so deeply insufferable about Trieze, in retrospect, was his penchant for being right. And if that penchant had survived his death, if the ghost of Treize Kushrenada wasn't just a metaphor and a sign of his own troubled mind but something literal... Well then, he was truly doomed. He checked his mic was off before muttering, not for the first time in his life, "Trieze, stop following me around."
"Can you pop your cockpit?" Victoria again.
"No power." Zechs replied, turning his mic on again. "The manual firing system for the explosive bolts..." he trailed off, staring at it. It was glowing a dull red, and rather soft-edged, as if it was about to melt away. How close had he come to having raw reactor plasma jet through his cockpit and vaporize him? It was the most common terror of mobile suit pilots; to be flash-fried inside their own cockpit by their own reactor. You could get away from enemy fire. You could convince yourself you were too good to have a fatal accident. There was no escaping your own reactor. It hadn't ever actually happened that he knew, but there were rumors traded in dark corners after midnight by drunk pilots. Sober pilots wouldn't have been able to talk about it. The nuclear genie in its magnetic bottle was an immensely powerful thing and despite all the safety systems it was not to be lightly disrespected. "It's kind of melted."
"Mein Gott. The reactor damage? Are you injured?" Victoria understood; any mobile suit pilot would.
"Nothing...actually breached the cockpit. But the handle and the area around it are glowing. Dully." He'd probably gotten some radiation. Maybe a lot of radiation. But there was arad medication for that. He wasn't throwing up, so it couldn't be that bad. Just a few years off his life, after that antiradiation meds were done. Strange how distant, how difficult, death seemed now. It had been close and easy only a minute ago, seductive. "The external rescue handle is probably intact, it was on the right thigh."
Who had it been, who sacrificed themselves in an effort to kill him? They were not the first to do so of course, but they had done rather better than anyone else. It was not Maxwell, nor was it that ex-Alliance lieutenant who'd been Noin's wing and near-bodyguard. Just another anonymous Preventer Taurus to him, no way to know who the pilot had been. Just another reason for Noin to hate him. That had been her pilot who'd died while he had lived, her responsibility, her letter written to next of kin. How many before forgiveness was no longer possible? How many before the only thing Noin would offer him was a swift death?
Perhaps he'd crossed that threshold already. It would be in keeping with his luck so far. His personal war for respect was at a deep low point, as the last few days had probably done more to demolish the myth of the Lightning Count than a year at peace ever could have.
You can't really win by fighting, Zechs.
He turned his mic off and checked to make sure it was before replying. "Now you grasp at the straws of others, Treize. There are things that can be won on the battlefield, as you know well."
But are you fighting for one?
