Respect between Enemies – The BetanWerecat
Gundam Seed: "Descending Sword" and after. OCs with appearances by canon characters. The actions of Kira, Athrun, and the others have far reaching effects. Not all things that begin as acts of war must stay such. Rated T for language and openly acknowledged but off screen activity. (Reviews are welcomed but not required. This is written only for my own enjoyment. Flaming me will get you ignored.)
Three hundred plus hits – one review; interesting ratio. Now I really am curious to know if the story is actually that uninspiring. However, I will not hold up posting for reviews as that form of blackmail does not appeal to me.
I do thank my lone reviewer and the kind soul who listed this in their favorites.
Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Seed.
Grayhawk's scream brought every activity in the area to a halt. God, the girl had a set of lungs! Adrian's eyes flicked everywhere, trying to watch everyone at once. The main reaction was shock. A lot of people simply hadn't noticed her or realized she was an Earth Forces prisoner. They knew it now. They had a whole new perspective on Josh-A shoved in their faces too. It wasn't being welcomed, but it couldn't be ignored either. Not with Grayhawk standing there, magnificent in a towering rage that wasn't going to back down if Hell came calling in person.
The glare she was directing at the wounded Elite youngster should have melted the chair he was in. He couldn't meet it; he looked everywhere but at the enraged EA pilot. This battle was not a ZAFT victory. Ironic when the enemy was already a prisoner of war.
"That, . . . . . . . , that wasn't what we were talking about." The kid finally managed to blurt out.
"Oh yes it was." Grayhawk snarled. "You were just going half way round the galaxy to get there."
"Well, what the hell would a girl know about it anyway?"
"Lieutenant Kayla Grayhawk, 421st Air Wing, commanding 3d Moebius Squadron. Received my commission the day before the nuclear assault on Plant. I've been part of this since it began. Can you say the same Mr. ZAFT Elite? Have you been in every major battle since the first strike at Luna? Because I have! So if you can't, I don't want to hear you bleating about how you know so much more just because you got that guys bitsy third leg, hear me?"
421st Air Wing, 3d Moebius Squadron? Adrian stared at his prisoner. Suddenly he knew just who she was. Oh lord, and here everyone thought the Tomahawk was a guy! No, she didn't have the same kind of record as the Hawk of Endymion, but the Tomahawk was still very well known in ZAFT for his, or rather her, skill in keeping her people alive in a sky where ZAFT was the better equipped and better trained. With the Tomahawk holding it together, the 3d Moebius Squadron was one of the only Moebius units in the EA that was consistently dangerous. The Zero was far inferior to the GINN as a fighting craft. But in the hands of a few highly unusual Naturals, it could almost hold it's own. And this girl was one of those few. He'd picked even better than he knew the other day.
"Who do you think you are?" The kid was indignant now.
"She's the Tomahawk." Adrian said clearly. "Weren't you listening to the unit and squadron identification?"
Silence followed that naming. Men glanced at each other to see if the other guy believed it. Then they looked back at Grayhawk, standing like an angry statue in front of them. She met the eyes of anyone who dared meet hers. He could see it as more and more of the crowd began to believe. It was the eyes, he knew it. Those incredible emerald eyes held so much truth, pain, and experience.
"So that's why everything looked so familiar."
Adrian whipped around to find Captain Thoms leaning against a pallet of neatly secured supplies. He looked tired and more than a bit grubby. Like he'd come straight out of battle or an unusually long atmospheric flight in his GINN.
"Sir?"
"The record from your GINN over Josh-A. Now I understand why that fight looked so familiar. Change it from atmosphere to space and it could have been any one of half a dozen engagements the old Luden Team had with the 3d Zero Squad. Except you actually managed to bring Tomahawk down." The Captain nodded congratulations to him. "Very well done. There are a lot of guys who are going to owe me some serious money since it was one of my Team who finally took Tomahawk out of our hair."
"Sir!" A master chief in the crowd spoke up. "Sir, do you have any word from Panama? We heard it was successful but no more than that."
"Successful? Yeah, if you count total slaughter a success, it was." Thoms stared up into the sky, but he didn't look like he was seeing anything that was actually there. "Too many people went in too mad over Josh-A. Discipline broke down and it went from war to murder. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Just killed a lot of line troops while the people responsible for that Cyclops got away again. Worse, the bulk of their forces weren't even there. We smashed up the mass driver all right, but mostly because it was so lightly defended."
"Where are they?" Adrian asked, seriously worried.
The Captain stood up and smiled crookedly. "Why, they went to get themselves another mass driver of course. The Atlantic Federation attacked Aube sometime before noon today. We have reports of several new mobile suits on both sides of the conflict. Most interestingly, it seems the legged ship Commander Le Creuset has been pursuing also went to Aube and is now defending that nation against their former comrades."
Thoms gave Lt. Grayhawk a long study before he continued calmly. "It seems they resented being used as live bait as well. That impressive new mobile suit, the Freedom, is still with them and is also defending Aube. Preliminary word is that while Aube will make it hellishly expensive, they will not be able to stop the Federation."
Kayla Grayhawk shook her head grimly in firm disagreement. "I've visited Aube. Went with a diplomatic delegation that wanted to impress someone by having a real, live combat vet along. Doubt I impressed the sand on the beaches, let alone their leadership. They strike a lot of folks as soft but they're not. The Federation may take the islands but they aren't going to get the mass driver. Having toured the place, I'd guess they're after the research and development facilities at Morgenroete as well and they won't get those either. Uzumi Athha will see it all blown to bits before he lets them have the charred scraps. They call that man 'The Lion of Aube' for a reason."
"I agree." Captain Thoms replied immediately. "And once that happens, all hell will break out down here. The EA will be desperate for a mass driver and they will strike out viciously to get one."
"And we'll stop them!" The chief exclaimed proudly.
He was roundly cheered by the crowd. Adrian eyed his Captain and saw no agreement there. He had his own doubts as well. The Naturals were far from finished no matter what anyone said about it up in the Plants.
'We made you', that was what Kayla said. A lot of Coordinators tried to forget that, to forget that they got their courage, determination, and willingness to hold on in the face of impossible odds from the Naturals who bred them out of themselves. They wanted those to be Coordinator traits, and they were! But they weren't exclusively Coordinator traits and never could be.
Ship Captains and upper level medical personnel began arriving to break up the crowd. They got the flow of wounded to the hospitals and evacuation points going again. Someone rounded up the young Elite as well before he could continue to cause trouble. Within minutes, Adrian found himself once more in a quiet backwater with only his prisoner and his Captain for company.
"Fortune favors you, Tomahawk. You came out of this one alive. You really do need to learn to keep a tighter rein on that temper of yours." Captain Thoms remarked quietly.
"My name is Grayhawk." She grumbled. "That stupid nickname is something for a dumb kid. I didn't even pick it! One of your less bright bulbs hung that one on me."
"I'm given to understand Commander Le Creuset somehow discovered your ethnic background and selected it as appropriate."
Adrian's eyebrows rose. Commander Le Creuset had picked it himself? That was something of an honor. Although, given the look in her eyes, she didn't see it that way.
"He has wretched taste." She finally said after several false starts where she was obviously censoring herself.
"Uhmm, that's a matter of opinion. The good Commander is quite well connected in the new administration by the way. I would be a bit discrete in my criticisms of him were I you." Thoms suddenly stood up straight. "Ah, the transport is here! In, the both of you. Before the Lieutenant here starts an incident she doesn't survive."
An undistinguished security transport had pulled up just beyond the pallet Captain Thoms had been using as a shoulder rest. It was one of the smaller units, a box on wheels really, that could be loaded directly onto a space shuttle without the passengers having to change vehicles. So they would be going all the way to the Ito Project's site now without any more side stops.
The interior was neatly if neutrally appointed. There were four seats, all deep and well padded. They faced each other in pairs, separated by a reading stand and light, with a low table secured to the floor between them. One of the chairs was equipped with a pair of short chains and lock-rings. He settled Grayhawk there and secured the waist chain to the two side chains. She would not be going anywhere now until he released her. She gave him a cold look but said nothing.
Adrian took the chair beside Grayhawk and his Captain elected to sit across from him. When he opened his mouth to start a conversation to relieve the tense silence though, Thoms waved one finger at him sharply. He raised one eyebrow in question but only got another quick gesture for silence. He wondered what was going on.
They rode to the spaceport, loaded onto the shuttle and launched all in the same uncomfortable stillness. Only when they felt the jar that indicated the orbital booster had dropped away did Thoms move. He reached under the seat and pulled out a small case. When the Captain opened it, Adrian could see a complex set of screens and very small controls. The Captain flipped them all on and watched for what felt like an hour but timed out as five minutes.
"It seems the transport is clean as promised."
"Sir?"
Thoms looked up. "The failure of "Operation Spit Break" has had massive consequences at home, Ito. Thanks to my mother's connections, I've been warned that there are friends I must not see and questions I must not ask. Orders coming from the Chairman's Office are no longer to be questioned, period. Former Chairman Clyne and his daughter have been accused of treason and espionage for the Naturals."
"What! That's crazy!" Adrian protested.
"An opinion you will never express again, am I understood?" Lance Thoms said flatly. "Think anything you please as long as your big mouth stays shut!"
He stared at his commander in shock. This couldn't be happening. This wasn't how things were done in the Plants!
"So, the radical nutjobs are completely in charge on both sides now." Grayhawk said quietly. "We're all gonna die. Neither of them will permit the other to exist."
"We may." Thoms agreed. "Or we may not. It will depend on many factors and on what each of us chooses to do when the chips come down."
"And until then?" Adrian asked very softly.
"We go on." The Captain shrugged. "The Team will be reassembling at Aprilius Base. I've no idea where we will be stationed other than in local Plant space. We are being completely resupplied; our old machines have been left on Earth for the use of our forces there. It was judged they would take too much time to make fully space worthy again after all the damages they've sustained in the recent battles. You, of course, will be available to the Project as required."
"Ah, yeah, anyone got the guts yet to tell me just what this 'Ito Project' is?"
Adrian nodded before Thoms could say anything. "Yes, it's time to explain it."
He turned to face her, careful to tuck his legs back. She was secured to that seat but he had chosen not to hobble her legs. He didn't know what her kick range was but he was willing to guess it was longer than it looked like it should be. He really didn't want to either hurt her trying to control her or get hurt himself when she lost her temper.
"You remarked earlier that Coordinators need a full medlab to reproduce. Do you know why that's so?"
"Not really." Kayla answered readily enough although her eyes were narrowing already. "I do know I don't believe a word of the crap Blue Cosmos spreads."
"Actually, this time they aren't so far off. Their details are completely false but the underlying premise, that the work done to make us was defective is not entirely wrong." He settled back, this was a very familiar story, one he'd grown up hearing argued over the dinner table every time Grandfather came for a holiday meal.
"You see, there are two sets of changes that make Coordinators. The first, and the one that really makes us what we are, is metabolic. It is about removing all the damaged material in a gamete's genome, then enhancing the factors that improve the functions of the body and the brain. This is why we are stronger, faster, healthier, and have a greater intellectual capacity than Naturals do. Because of the metabolic enhancements."
"Those enhancements have an effect on our reproductive capacity too of course. They put it into overdrive and would result in a very early end of fertility if we didn't do some other adjustments. So between those enhancements and adjustments, we could actually manage without a medlab. The children born however would have a very wide range of abilities and some could fall as far as back into the category of Naturals."
"Makes sense." She muttered. "And I can see why that wasn't acceptable to people too."
"Very unacceptable." He agreed wryly. "However, that could have been dealt with by relatively simple tweaking. The real problem comes in when you add on the 'gifts' people wanted their enhanced children to have. Suddenly you were doing a lot more than just boosting what was there naturally. Now you are into serious gene splicing and rearranging. This is the second level of what makes Coordinators. And it is why it takes a medlab to make more. Because those spliced and rearranged genes don't always divide well at mitosis or go together very well at fertilization to make a new Coordinator. We are now in the third generation and our birth rate is dropping noticeably. Marriages are arranged by how your genes fit together, not how your personalities match. The few fourth generation children there are already are so complex in their genetic needs that they will be very difficult to successfully match with other fourth generations. We need another solution."
She had it figured out already; he could see it in the twin slits of green fire her eyes had narrowed to. Mad didn't even begin to describe those eyes. Even rage was too pale a word. He wasn't sure what word would be good enough, or even if there was one.
"Finish this story." She hissed.
"You already know the rest, but ok. My Grandfather is Dr. Roland Ito. He's a first generation Coordinator and an expert in genetics. He's watched this develop, predicted it actually. Some time before I was born, he finally cracked the problem and knew what was needed to solve it. He also knew the political will to do so was totally absent. He was working with a research team pushing the extreme in our development in another direction and realized they were going for the wrong answer. He left the team shortly before they had some kind of major lab accident that closed that project down for good. Killed a lot of them, he said. Anyway, the solution he found, and genetically it is absolutely sound, was to go back to the way the first generation Coordinators were made and redesign the process."
He sat up, leaning slightly forward as he got to the heart of the matter. "Grandfather developed the tweaks that should have been worked out a generation ago. Using his techniques, the metabolic changes come together smoothly; the child produced will pass on his or her heritage with an even higher degree of confidence that the next generation will inherit their sound genetics than any Natural can. You can even tack on up to five 'gifts' without disrupting this assurance or, most importantly, causing real problems crossing such children with existing Coordinator lines. When you do cross them into an existing line, they are the dominate parent and they clean up most of the problems that line currently has."
"And just where are you getting these wonder kids?"
He sighed. "From girls like you. Naturals with exceptional genetic qualities found among the POW population are being co-opted into the program. I said it was sound genetically, I didn't say a word about the ethics."
"Let me be absolutely sure I'm hearing this right; you plan to use me as a brood ewe to make you a bunch of little Coordinators?"
His own temper, under a lot of strain from his conscience, snapped. "They're called children!"
"IT'S CALLED RAPE!" She shrieked back.
"Only with a pipette." He replied sharply. "This isn't sex here, its lab work."
She stared at him, then suddenly began to laugh hysterically. "Is that supposed to make it all right?"
"NO!" Adrian jumped to his feet and screamed back at her. "NO, IT DOES NOT MAKE ANYTHING ALL RIGHT! OK? IT'S NOT ALL RIGHT! I ADMIT IT! NOW WOULD YOU RATHER HAVE DIED AT JOSH-A? 'CAUSE THAT WAS THE ONLY OTHER CHOICE! YOU HEAR ME? IT WAS THE ONLY, . . . . . , OTHER, . . . . . . CHOICE!"
