Celestial Being Chronicles - Chapter 71
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the Gundam series, nor any of the various series which are used or referenced in my fic, so please point that damned lawsuit cannon at someone else, also, don't read this if you are not of legal age to read such material. The story contains possibly disturbing content and should not be read by close-minded people (i.e., people who are easily offended.) Everything in the story is fictional. I am also not responsible for any actions taken by people who read this story and society's problems. I do, however, own my original character; Hope Yamato.
In space, life was different now.
The Minerva had made seven journeys into space since the end of the Third Bloody Valentine War, and this was the eighth. In those three years Talia Gladys had become relatively well-acquainted with the new order that ZAFT's defeat and the Alliance's ascendancy had created. The Alliance ruled the colonies with an iron fist, yes...but it ruled everyone with an iron fist. And some people didn't mind being ruled with an iron fist. The affluent citizens of certain colonies administrated by the Atlantic Federation, the Eurasian Federation, and the Republic of East Asia had everything they could have wanted, so who needed political freedom and legal rights?
But life in space was still life on the frontier, and on the frontier anything was possible. Some colonies were overlooked, and none more so than in Lagrange Point 1, where the writhing tendrils of the debris belt choked the trade lanes and occasionally reached out to menace colonies. This was the hideout of many criminal groups, overlooked by the world's powers, and as a result the Resistance had gained strength in this desolate region of space.
Talia sat back uncomfortably on the Minerva's darkened bridge. Her ship's destination was the Arnhelm Colony.
At her station, Meyrin Hawke leaned forward with a heavy sigh. "Arnhelm is run by Marko Jeremiah, isn't it?" She asked.
"The Admiral, Marko Jeremiah." Lunamaria Hawke corrected with as much venom as her voice could muster.
"I know." Talia answered. The Arnhelm Colony was officially a massive orbiting refugee camp for over seven million people. War orphans and displaced civilians had streamed there because it was out of the way and undesired by the warring armies rampaging on and around the planet, but those very qualities had been a decidedly mixed blessing. Lack of interest by either side of the wars made it forgotten to all but the occasional humanitarian group...and to people with all sorts of intentions.
Talia swallowed her anxiety as best she could. Arnhelm also had a port and a group of competent mechanics that could repair her battleship enough to get it to Terminal, near Lagrange Point 3. She would just have to accept it.
"It's not a total loss." Shinn Asuka glanced up at Athrun Zala's voice in the crew lounge, and found the blue-haired coordinator drifting into the chair on the other side of the table.
"What do you mean?" Shinn snorted. "We experienced malfunctions with both the Impulse and Destiny simultaneously, the Justice's subflight lifter got blown up, and the Legend got its ass handed to it on a silver platter."
"But we're not dead and we've still got four mobile suits to work with."
Shinn crossed his arms impatiently and sat back. "That doesn't make me feel better."
Athrun leaned forward. "Shinn, it's not worth hating Kira anymore. I know you have blood with him at least as bad as mine, but there's nothing left of him. He's not even a human anymore. He's just a shell, filled with someone else's intentions."
"He's still the one who killed my family and friends."
"Yes, but hating him is a waste of energy at this point."
Shinn eyed Athrun in surprise for a moment. "I would've thought you'd be more pissed off by all this."
"I know that he has to be destroyed." Athrun answered with a shrug. "I know nothing is going to change his mind, and he has power, and that all makes him dangerous. I don't know what's making him tick, but he has to be stopped before the takes the entire world down with him. He was the one who killed Cagalli and Lacus, and that's why I'll never forgive him. But hating him..." He shrugged again. "I'm tired of it."
After a moment's silence, Shinn heaved a sigh. "I'm not."
The Legend Gundam had been reduced to little more than a torso and most of a leg. That was a little disappointing for Rau Le Creuset, as he silently floated over the ruins of his trusty machine inside the Minerva's hangar. The Legend had served him well and kept him alive on a battlefield where his presence was increasingly necessary to make his plans work. He could not afford to leave Athrun on his own. Not to fight Kira. Kira was a failure, but he was still dangerous, and although someone, either Shinn, Athrun, or himself, would finally exterminate that failure, he could still do incalculable damage.
But it was not all hopeless. All they had to do was get to Terminal, and there awaited a new sword for him to take up against these powerful invaders known as Celestial Being. Captain Gladys had mentioned something about additional units; perhaps if their stay at Terminal could be long enough, they would have the resources and crew necessary to build even more new machines to deal with the angel-winged mobile suit which seemed to lead Celestial Being. And surely the Alliance had its own next-generation machines. Surely this war would escalate. ZAFT was certianly doing its damnedest to make that so.
"That thing is absurd!" Shinn crossed his arms defiantly and stared up in obvious disdain at the intel images of the mighty warship Excalibur on the Minerva's auxiliary screen. In the captain's chair, Talia arched an eyebrow at the pilot of the Destiny Gundam.
"I suppose." She agreed. "They built it to take down entire fleets by focusing primarily on overwhelming firepower, and apparently that has more or less paid off."
"Seventeen miles long." Athrun snorted. "And look at all those guns. They really don't need all that to take down a single Minerva-class ship."
Talia studied the images for a moment. The Excalibur had a second role in the Celestial Being military as well, however, that of sheer crushing intimidation. When the massive warship loomed over the horizon, those who laid eyes on it were supposed to fear. And fear was the natural response to such a massive warship armed with so many weapons. It was the natural choice for the flagship of an army whose professional method of operation was to induce fear among the people, fear so paralyzing that resistance would be impossible.
Talia Gladys swallowed her pride and stuck her hand forward on the docking tube stretching from her battered warship to the Arnhelm Colony's space dock.
In front of her stood the man that called his place home, and the man that this place called master. The wizened and wiry Marko Jeremiah, in his opulent blue naval uniform and leaning heavily on a cane, shook Talia's hand quickly and took a step back. Talia noted in the back of her mind the conspicuous presence of well-armed guards everywhere. It was always good to have a relationship based on mutual trust.
"Welcome to the Arnhelm Colony." Jeremiah said, even as he grimly swept his arm out over the tableau of Arnhelm's port. "Our mechanical staff will help your own with repairs, and you can take on supplies here for as long as your stay will last. Make yourselves at home." He motioned for Talia, Meyrin and Athrun to follow him, and his heavily-armed guards. "Other than the obvious, what brings you Arnhelm?"
Talia glanced at Meyrin and Athrun for a moment. "We got ambushed by that newly created military force which calls itself Celestial Being." She explained, even as she thought back bitterly to those terrorists known as Celestial Being, the ones who had spouted that; by performing armed interventions they would end war forever.
"We will not be here long." Talia said. "Just long enough to make sufficient repairs to the Minerva so that we can get to Terminal safely. The Celestial Being warship Excalibur arrived in space recently, and they will probably be coming after us again within the next week. Arnhelm would be endangered if we stayed for long."
Jeremiah said nothing, and only looked grimly ahead.
With arms of fire stretching out from the colony's hull and ripping pieces of it off into space, the Goddard space colony shuddered under the unstoppable fire of the Katsuragi. On the darkened bridge, Misato watched from the captain's chair as the colony writhed as though in pain. One of the mirrors had been blown off, and that was throwing off the colony's rotation. One more shot would pierce through and sever the axial shaft, and once that was broken, the colony would begin to collapse.
Misato glanced over her shoulder, towards the bridge doors. Hope rarely watched these actions for herself. Misato and the rest of the crew knew why; because her heart was sick at the slaughter.
But that was just like the sub commander of Celestial Being. Hope Yamato was a good woman, a saintly woman, far better than even the Coordinators who exacted their just and proper revenge and brought balance to the scales of justice as they swept the Earth up in terror. She had sympathy for even these vermin Naturals, sympathy which they did not deserve. She had steeled herself to do what the ideals of Celestial Being required, but her heart was too kind to feel nothing at the sight of it.
The colony rumbled as a Tristan salvo blew off another mirror. The Goddard colony's hull was riddled with holes from missile and Isolde shell impacts. Misato narrowed her eyes.
"Tannhäuser, lock onto the target and...fire!"
The Katsuragi sent forth a shimmering column of positron energy that plowed through the colony's openings. The Goddard colony began to crumble as the axial shaft snapped in two, and Misato sat back and watched with grim satisfaction as the rotating colony finally began to break apart.
They were dying. There were six million people in that colony and they were all dying.
Sitting at his desk, deep within the bowels of the Excalibur, Kira clutched his head with his hands and struggled to keep his sanity above the rolling waves of horror. Six million lives were vanishing from the vast plane of human consciousness. Six million lives were being snuffed out by the orders he had given. They were all dying in a cloud of fear, confusion and regret. They were dying and they had done nothing wrong. They were dying and it was his fault.
The Infinite Justice Gundam, lacking its subflight lifter, rumbled as its engines carried it out of the rapidly collapsing colony and into the sudden battle. Athrun quickly glanced around the cockpit; the Justice lost much of its weaponry without the Fatum-01 unit, but it still had its rifle, shield, sabers, and beam blades, and without the heavy Fatum unit, at least it had more agility.
"Shinn, how is it?" Athrun asked.
To his right, inside a Blaze ZAKU Warrior, Shinn shifted uncomfortably in the cockpit. "It'll do, I guess." He said with an airy sigh. "But it's not the same as my Eclipse Gundam."
"Of course not. So don't push your luck." Athrun glanced next at the Murasame on his left, in its sleek flight mode, with Rau Le Creuset in the cockpit. He could just deal with it himself. "Shinn, you hang back and provide fire support. The ZAKU just won't be able to keep-"
He fell silent as a familiar white bolt of energy sliced through the air before him. That feeling, he knew that feeling, but how? That ZAFT ship was nowhere nearby.
"Athrun." Rau said quietly. "Do you feel that?"
"Y-Yeah." Athrun answered. "But how? Is that Kira?"
"Not quite. It feels like Kira, but there's a distortion." Rau pursed his lips. "That thing is a clone of some sort."
"A...clone of Kira?"
"A clone of that guy who kicked our asses earlier?" Shinn groaned. "Are you serious?"
Rau smirked. "The Alliance had a program during the First and Second Valentine Wars where they would capture and brainwash Coordinators to do their fighting for them. They abandoned it after the Coordinators kept coming to their senses, but I suppose not all of them have been eliminated."
Silence reigned between them for a moment, before Shinn spoke up again. "Kind of hypocritical of them."
Athrun ground his teeth. "Incoming, scatter!"
The three mobile suits darted apart and Athrun opened fire with his beam rifle as a squad of Slaughter Windams came roaring in, rifles blazing, with a dark green and black mobile suit at their lead. It sent out a shining column of beam energy from the beam cannon on the left-hand side of its back, forcing the three mobile suits to dodge, and plowing straight through a quartet of mobile suits coming up from behind.
"The Impulse Gundam?" Shinn exclaimed.
"Yes, the Impulse Gundam." Rau grunted, and the Murasame let loose a missile barrage that drove back the Windams behind a sheet of CIWS fire. "One of East Asia's prototype mobile suits, it's essentially a next-generation version of the Strike."
Athrun felt pure rage ripple through his veins. "A clone of Kira piloting a clone of the Strike Gundam. How ironic."
"Isn't it, though?" Rau chuckled, and the three mobile suits dove back into battle.
"Those ones are different," Athrun muttered as the Justice's cockpit zoom focused on three approaching mobile suits, all with the faces of Gundams.
"Shinn!" Luna cried, and with a burst of exhaust the Twilight Gundam dropped in next to the Eclipse. Luna's grinning face appeared on the auxiliary screen. "Don't think you can get yourself into the battle without me!"
Shinn swallowed his fear, there were three mobile suits speeding towards him. "You'd better be able to keep up with-" His eyes went wide. "It's coming!"
The two mobile suits broke ranks and darted apart, and across the battlefield in the cockpit of the Destiny Impulse Gundam, Hope cracked a satisfied smirk. "All forces; begin attack!"
The Destiny Impulse opened fire with its rifle and cannon, quickly filling the sky with beam blasts, forcing the Eclipse and Twilight on the defensive. Luna leveled off her own beam rifle to return fire, but a moment later a shell slammed into the Twilight's face and sent her hurtling back, and with a crash, the Chimera Gundam was there with its beam saber lit to slash the Twilight's rifle in two.
Fire flashed around the Infinite Justice Gundam as its beam rifle was pierced by a pair of brightly glowing green beam blast and Athrun quickly tossed the now useless weapon away before it exploded. An instant later, Athrun's emerald eyes widened as he suddenly found himself staring into the barrel of a large beam cannon, one which appeared to be that of the Aegis Gundam. With the hiss of failing phase shift armor, which was followed only a few seconds later by the shriek of twisting metal, the Infinite Justice Gundam was quickly crushed by its much more advanced counterpart.
"All Celestial Being forces!" The voice of Murrue Ramius suddenly boomed through the communications lines. "Return to the Excalibur, our mission has changed!"