This one is with proper acknowledgements to Synthesis. Go read Walker's Account!

Zechs Interlude: To Betray

"Noin," Zechs said over an open channel, "may we speak?"

She made no verbal response, but he heard her reply anyways as his radar warning system started the fast beeping of target locks. A lot of them. A moment later the pitch changed: it was detecting missile guidance commands. His HUD marked them out, several dozen missiles, and noted which ones were receiving commands and which ones were transmitting radar signals of their own.

In a way, he felt...insulted. Yes, tactically, it was an excellent launch; three different waves from different vectors, mixed types of missiles. It would be extremely difficult to evade. But he was the Lightning Count; he could do it.

The evasive maneuvers were punishing, but not too much. Some of the missiles, however, were better at tracking than he'd expected; an order of magnitude more capable than the others. One actually hit, but the warhead failed to penetrate; a poor angle for the HEAT round. "Noin, if you won't listen now...I'm sorry, but I can make you listen." Even when you lose, win. Something he'd learned from Trieze.

But the ghost of Trieze Kushrenada was silent.

Two suits broke free from the groups facing him. A Serpent-no, that was no Serpent. Sharp, knife-edged design. No OZ engineer had participated in that. The other looked like a Taurus, but closer examination showed it was not the right shape and a little too large. Some kind of improved version of Taurus? "You won't win. You don't have to die." Zechs said over the open channel again.

"I denied you the battle with Trieze Kushrenada you should have fought. That was a grave mistake on my part," the voice of Wufei Chang replied. "I should have joined with him to defeat you, and settled my differences with Trieze some other time. Today I correct that mistake."

Trieze is dead, Chang. You could not join him in anything. And still silence.

"What about your companion? I recognize that color scheme." The other prototype was a flat gray, a somewhat different shade than he expected, but still. Perhaps he'd just seen it badly; perhaps the omnipresent Martian dust had altered the color. "Do you have a score to settle with me, Lieutenant?"

Dyer made no reply, simply forming on Chang's wing. Had he not heard? Or did he simply have nothing to say? Chang was an easy book to read, which was why Treize had been able to beat him, and why Zechs had no fear of him. He knew little about Dyer, and while he did not doubt he was better than any Alliance lieutenant, the man had flown on Noin's wing. Dyer was probably not an incompetent. Noin could, after all, beat Zechs if they faced each other on equal terms. She had never actually done so, but Zechs knew she'd held back from it.

Maybe I should have given her Epyon. Maybe she could have beaten Yuy. Zechs winced, realizing he was now trying to provoke the voice in his head. Then the time for stray thoughts was past.

Chang opened with a missile launch and came roaring in right behind them, lighting beamsabers built into his suit's arms. This close in the missiles were harder to evade, and the man had been a Gundam pilot for a reason; he had launched the missiles without a radar lock, suddenly rotating his suit to unmask an active launcher and obtaining an infrared lock in moments. Zechs evaded them, just barely managing it by starting his evasion once Chang started moving.

It was very much not what he'd expected. Cunning, and almost underhanded. Chang was all about the anger, open and direct, covering his lack of tactical range or finesse with sheer brilliance in hand-to-hand combat. He lit his own beamsaber and charged the heat rod to maximum power so he could use it against beamsaber-armed suits. The beam rifle he'd borrowed to replace the lost Mega Cannon was tucked under his shield.

Chang struck with one blade, parrying a blow from the heat rod with the other. Zechs blocked, reflecting in annoyance and not for the first time in his life that deft parries were simply beyond most mobile suits unless they had a Zero System. Mobile suit hand-to-hand was by nature rarely a graceful enterprise.

The Taurus prototype whipped past and shot him in the back while he was trading unsuccessful blows with Chang.

Zechs spit a curse and broke the hand-to-hand; while it involved a lot of movement, it was inside a relatively confined space and the Taurus prototype didn't appear worried about firing into a melee. Perhaps Chang would; he turned and with a blast of verniers attacked the prototype instead.

The prototype blocked using a beamsaber it got out just in time; not well, but it did. A normal Taurus did not have the strength to properly fend off Tallgeese, and Zechs pushed, trying to overpower it. The prototype pushed back just as strongly and tried to swing around him, and for a moment the two mobile suits spun around each other, blades locked, rocketing through space.

For one endless, horrific instant Zechs was back in Epyon, hearing the Epyon System in his mind, tearing down a corridor in Libra and staring into the dead green lenses of Wing Zero, battling for his life against Heero Yuy. No fight against Yuy was a combat for some objective based upon strategy or tactics; it was a battle for personal survival, primal and desperate. But then the moment was gone as the prototype raised its beam cannon and tried to fire into him point-blank; he broke the bind and moved to get away from it, and it darted away as well...but not without leaving him a point-blank missile launch as a present, of course. Zechs threw up the shield that served to house the heat rod and managed to absorb the two missiles on that, snarling in frustration.

"Is this a private party?" Maxwell's voice, and then another Taurus, a regular Taurus, was on him, flailing with twin beamsabers. He blocked the first two swings with some fancy work, beating the two blades with his one, and lashed out with the heat rod. Maxwell was on the alert and dodged aside and up, clearing the way for a salvo of missiles from a Serpent in the white and blue that Barton used for his personal colors now. Zechs fired the verniers and watched them go under Tallgeese III, noting with some relief they were not whatever had been fired at him earlier and proved so capable.

Two prototypes and three Gundam pilots. It was flattering, the sort of open, honest assessment of his skill level only possible from people trying to kill him. Their judgement as such seemed more sound than the willingness of Gundam pilots to take insane risks and launch missiles into a hand-to-hand battle would imply. Once upon a time, he had dominated Maxwell and Winner utterly even with their respective second-generation Gundams.

But he'd had Epyon then. His situational awareness had been limited by Epyon's ability to process data, not his own. Four enemies, four skilled enemies; even that Alliance lieutenant might be clumsy with a blade, but there was nothing wrong with his gunnery. Tallgeese III outperformed them, but they were cannily arranged to make it impossible to get by them now...

It was a stab in the stomach, a sharp and searing pain, to realize that what he needed now was Epyon if he wanted this fight to go quickly. No! If this is the hard way, so be it; better to struggle and have a soul than defeat all who would oppose you easily and be soulless. He was the Lightning Count. He was the only man who had ever proved more than a brief distraction to Heero Yuy. And Heero Yuy didn't pilot mobile suits anymore. Sometimes, at the highest and most rarified levels of skill, the difference between victory and defeat existed solely in the belief you were the best there was. That you couldn't be beat, that you couldn't be stopped.

He attacked again, first going after Chang; after a few blows exchanged, he fired at the prototype and broke away to attack Barton. Barton tagged him, hard, with a beam cannon shot; it penetrated the armor on the upper left leg, but not much more, and then Barton tried to evade. It didn't work. The heat rod still managed to catch a shoulder missile rack and cut deep.

The secondary explosion of the launcher's remaining missiles vented out the front; Zechs wasn't sure whether Barton had managed to pop open the cover as his own trick or if it was the safety systems of the launcher itself. Barton fired his beam cannon again, the heavy Serpent-use beam doing significant armor damage to Tallgeese III's right leg but failing to penetrate.

Zechs' return shots devastated the Serpent's left arm and left leg. Barton turned and boosted away, and Maxwell and Chang charged in to attack and cover his retreat. One down.

But it could only get harder. Barton was probably one of the better pilots he faced, but his Serpent was the least-performing suit on the battlefield, and its heavy armor was no defense against a marksman of Zechs' caliber.

"Three way split," Zechs observed, idle tone calculated to project an air of non-concern. Chang wasn't angry enough yet. Perhaps he could provoke Maxwell as well.

"Suits me." Maxwell responded, and didn't sound angry in the least.

"The easiest target? Weak, Zechs." Chang added, as their beam blades clashed again.

"The weak fall first, as well you know." Zechs replied. He knew better, of course; combat was a brutally Darwinian process, but it could be equally random at times. But it would incense Chang. "First those who will not fight, then those who can not fight, and finally those who fight badly." Ah. That got Chang's attention from the brutal slash it provoked.

He turned, and with what even he thought was surprising casualness, cut the legs off Maxwell's suit. He really hadn't expected that to work, honestly... The Taurus' improved armor slowed the heat rod, though, and Maxwell responded in an innovative fashion: he threw both his beamsabers at Zechs. It wasn't hard to dodge, but-

Chang cut the heat rod from the shield with a temporarily overloaded built-in beamsaber that fizzled a moment later, but he caught one of the ones that Maxwell had just thrown away as it died, and a moment later it reignited with a new power source to keep it active.

"Two way split."

"You have grown soft, Merquise." Chang replied, focused and controlled again. Zechs shook his head in frustration; the Gundam pilot was not behaving as he should. His attacks were relentless, well-coordinated, and Zechs had to draw a second beamsaber to defend himself.

And then the lock-threat alarm, and the missile alarm, in fast succession. The damn Taurus prototype had gotten behind him again. He kicked the verniers and moved left, dealt with the missile pair via vulcans, and tried to think of something that would work. He had no idea where Maxwell had gone, but at the moment he had no time to care about that either.

It was a frustrating three minutes that followed; he could not play his opponents off each other, nor dictate their actions though he tried. Two in harmony were not surpassing one in perfection, not quite; Chang took damage, but drove him off with a massive missile launch. He had probably expended all of his by now...but the Taurus prototype still had them. It had been frugal, launching in pairs. As long as the threat of a missile crawling up his tailpipes remained, he could not afford to ignore it.

But eventually, Chang grew angry again. Predictable. And another couple of minutes...the wild swing, and the lost arm, and he too boosted away from the battle. Zechs let him go; Chang's death would accomplish nothing he really cared for at the moment and he still had an enemy to consider. It was down to the most agile and the fastest of his enemies; the Taurus prototype. But even so Zechs could still outrun it, and turned and broke for the main screen.

Missile alarm. He turned to fight the launch-

And nearly took a beamsaber through the cockpit, watching it miss his suit as he dodged by only centimeters. It had not only kept up with him; it had gained on him. It burned retros and darted back, just out range, and left him another point-blank missile launch. No lock warnings; radar warning only after this missiles were in the air. He got the shield up, but he was off; one of them got through and damaged his left vernier. He had warning lights go on; but the more serious caution board stayed dark. The vernier still worked. You held back something. You held back several things; an effective infrared or optical search and track, the maximum acceleration of your suit, that you could somehow get radar missiles to lock without using your own radar. "Clever. You realize this means I have to kill you."

No response. Tallgeese III and the prototype darted through space, jerking and spinning, exchanging beam fire. The prototype remained ever just out of reach of his melee weapons, but never far enough away to make a ranged attack a good method of dealing with it either. Zechs knew he was being strung along, but he knew equally well there was nothing he could do about it; if the other suit out-accelerated Tallgeese III then the decision to allow him to close was not entirely in his hands. He would have to await a mistake.

Then a salvo of dobergun rounds shot past, save one, which impacted. And the heavy shell, a 406mm round with a HEAT warhead, was not defeated by Tallgeese III's armor as it should have been; it punched into the left vernier and put it out of action. Now he'd never catch that damn prototype. And five Martian-dirt-red Tallgeese clones moved in.

The state of the working art never sits as still as you'd like it to. "You don't have to die Ami. Surrender."

"Do you offer this based on our past friendship, Zechs? Is that enough to ease your conscience?" Ami replied. "No, our differences must be settled in battle."

Two pilots, both students of the Kushrenada school of oration...honestly it was disconcerting. Barton and Dyer's silence had annoyed Zechs, but Ami could throw his best back into his teeth. "That will be your death."

"Then I will die a Martian!" Ami came straight at him with her Tallgeese I clone, beamsaber out, dobergun firing. He evaded, returning fire with the borrowed beam rifle, but while it wasn't Gundanium the armor on the original Tallgeese was still superior to that of most mobile suits. The two shots that connected failed to penetrate. He turned and fired at another member of Specials flight; it evaded as well.

The damnable Taurus prototype zipped in and sprayed beam fire at him, catching one of the vulcans with a lucky hit. Zechs heard the chambered round, and maybe others, explode, but the blast vented out the side of Tallgeese III's head rather than doing further internal damage.

As it shot past, its drives abruptly sputtered. A moment later a rush of silver-colored rather than the usual blue plasma shot out of the left-side thrusters, and then the whole drive system died. Some kind of malfunction? "It seems your suit has betrayed you, Lieutenant. A shame."

"Ah, Zechs. You couldn't beat him fairly? I'm amused and heartened to see that even you are mortal." Amy addressed the lieutenant next. "Dyer. I'm counting on you to make sure Noin lives to keep her promises."

"You have my word. For His Excellency and the Soldiers of Tomorrow, Colonel Nagano." The unofficial rallying cry of the Trieze Faction. Odd to hear an Alliance soldier use it.

Zechs knew Ami Nagano well enough to hear her smile in her tone. "Dio salvi l'Alleanza, Lieutenant Dyer." Odder still to hear a confidant of Trieze say "God save the Alliance" though. One of the five broke off, and boosted itself and the crippled prototype back towards the convoy of Martian and Preventer ships. What followed took him another few long minutes; and by the time it was over, he could see the ships of the escaping convoy lighting their main drives. He was too late.

The wreck of Ami's Tallgeese floated past, and he felt a pang of loss. "Farewell, Tallgeese." Zechs whispered. Farewell, Ami. I am sorry that I had to betray you, for what little that would be worth to you.

The sort of victory on which legends are born, my friend. Treize's voice. Of course, that works both ways. I doubt this battle will be spoken of in the hushed tones that your confrontation with Wing Zero was, but ah; your enemies have earned themselves some respect today. And you have earned some as well. All it cost you was any you had for yourself.

Zechs sighed. "I thought perhaps I was rid of you, Trieze."

I thought Chang could use the extra guidance if he had to challenge you. He was quite adept, wasn't he? At least as long as he would listen. Trieze's voice was almost silky. Ah, and that lieutenant. I spoke to him, but I am not sure he heard me; his approach to battle is so very different from those you and I favored. And "Everyone can be killed," like a mantra. He's right, too. We all are so pitifully mortal in the end. We fail and fall and guess wrong, and then we die. No one in this whole pitifully mortal race safe, no one immune.

Zechs' eyes widened.