Minerva looked out the window from her quarters, she sighed wistfully as the derelict colony orbited into view and as she remembered the things she learned in her history class back in Berlina University so many years ago…
It has been nearly 200 years since Humanity has began exploring space, there are three countries that have emerged from the tyranny of the Planetary Federation. Her country and the country of her fleet, Empire Mars Europa based on Mars proper (Basically a unified Europe), the Federation of Zimmerit (a new iteration of Japan, really), and finally, The Earth Republic, everyone else.
We have fought each other and with each other, in the Solar Wars, and against the Altir Combine, an alien theocracy that broke due to civil war after 10 long years of combat, the Altirs have since broken back into their constituent races as individual nations.
What was even more unusual, was the discovery of multiple Earths, as only 4 years ago, they had observed an Earth on the brink of breaking the Lightspeed barrier. Multiple Earths adds the dynamic of meeting your genetic twin, almost literally. The revelation that there was an ancient world building civilization of some sort and the new strain of humanity, known as the Innovators, humans that were biologically immortal and had some telepathic powers, almost as if they were meant to explore space…
And that was what Minerva was, she was one of them, they made up a steady 20% of the nearly 2 trillion humans in the known universe. Innovators often stopped maturing past their mid teens to early 20's, so they all appeared very young, a balancing factor though, was the difficulty in reproduction that innovators had.
"hmm…" She said to herself, things were getting interesting, as they were ending a long three month patrol of the edge of human territory. time to head home, nearly 1000 light-years away and a 2 week journey. She turned back to her computer screen, to type her report…
"Maybe Derwent was right", she whispers to herself, "maybe there is some sort of conspiracy behind all of the recent revelations in space exploration". She stops typing for a moment and crosses her arms, pondering the words of her dead lover and last executive officer before Maxim, he was supposed to have been promoted to Commodore, like her and given a task force to command, given his family's standing with the navy and his elder sibling's connections. That all ended when he was lost 6 years ago during the chaos of the Battle of Cygnus, where his mobile suit was pushed too close to the nearby supergiant, and he fell to his death. Bitterly, she returns to her work with the thoughts of how ironic it would be for him to be alive today to see this, how his words somehow came true, that there would eventually be a supersoldier-esque look-alike to certain people that had great combat abilities or great telepathic abilities. Also, he once said that there was probably some higher civilization, a theoretical extragalactic entity that would unite the broken civilizations of the Orion Arm and perhaps, the rest of the galaxy. Minerva had dismissed those sayings as rants of an overtaxed gamer, but for some reason, she felt that there were some things falling into place with the finding of this derelict colony in the middle of nowhere and the discovery of Mutsu along with her other ships.
"What time is it?", asked Mutsu weakly, her eyes full of confusion and worry.
"September 22, 2256, 0835, I just ended my watch", Jean responded with a tired tone, "winding down to sleep, but I guess it's time to take you over to the infirmary and show you around the ship, can you walk, your muscles felt kinda stiff when we put you in the bed."
"Ummm, they are kinda stiff, but I think that walking around would help out" Mutsu responded weakly.
So he held her hand and helped her up, and out they went, from the dark room into the bright corridor with a soft hiss, and off they went.
The corridor was a warm grey, had handrails and other amenities that normally would not be present in a warship, but as this was a patrol cruise, the commodore allowed things like rugs, posters, and other notes to other crewmembers. Doors down the hall denoted the slightly cramped junior officer's bunks, which were stacked a comfortable 2 to a bunk. They were all young, college age kids that came to the Officer's academy straight out of high school and were assigned to the ship right out of graduation, and because of that, the corridor looked more like a college dorm than military sleeping quarters. Jean sighed a sigh of relief when none of the officers came out of the doors to ask questions about the rather skimpily clad girl next to the Captain. The rounded a corner and approached a set of transparent doors. There was the infirmary.
"So here we are, back in the infirmary where we have all of you strange ones stored" Jean announced as the sliding doors to the infirmary hissed open to reveal a surgically clean room, which had beds along one side and had tubes along the back, like the one Mutsu came in, stacked neatly in columns and flashing dim LEDs at their control panels. Mutsu nervously stepped in, her rudder heels clicking lightly against the white linoleum.
Mutsu nervously asked, "But why did you bring me back here, weren't you supposed to show me around the ship, like people are supposed to when new people are taken aboard a ship?"
"Ahhh…. about that…well, Marie told me to bring you back here as soon as you woke so she could do a more thorough check-up on you, also , to see just how biological you are, because you look very life-like and did not show up on the bio-scanners, which don't detect Innovators anyways", he paused for a moment, "and make yourself at home, this isn't my office, but I find it funny to see Marie exasperated at the people that she would expect to like."
As if on cue, Marie walked in through the doors, which did not shut automatically because Jean had locked the OPEN button on the wall as he walked in.
She glaringly says, "I hope you haven't done anything to her, if you do, I have the right to kick you off this ship, even if you are the captain."
"Yea, yea", Jean says absentmindedly, "just get to it, you said that you needed to check her out before I could take her around."
"Yes Sir", Marie says curtly, "I want to make a check-up while she is conscious and not comatose, like some doctors would do".
She sat Mutsu down at one of the beds and then took out a thin syringe, she inserts it into the crook of her elbow to extract some blood first, after, taking a small tube's worth of blood from her arm and placing it in a blood analysis machine. She then takes a small headdress out form underneath the bed, hooks it up to the minimalist looking computer at the head of the bed and asks, "do you know if you are more biological or more machine, because i want to know from you before I do anything more".
Mutsu responds, "I am a Kanmusu, an artificial intelligence program that was implanted into a genetically modified embryo, not carbon based, but made of a substance known as "Bio-aluminum" which is an effective cell membrane material against the invaders of my country, the Abyssals, who at the time of my commissioning, had nearly conquered the entire planet and with that, We were sent into space to protect what was left of mankind, along with select personnel to reproduce and to continue Humanity's mark in the Universe", almost robotically, as if this response was a recording and less of an actual statement made by Mutsu. To complement this, while she was answering the question, Jean noticed that most of the life had left her eyes and her body stiffened up, much like a robot. At this, Marie deftly removes the cabling and stows it along with the helmet back underneath the bed.
"Ok, get up, both of you out" Marie barks, "I have stuff to do and things to analyze, Mutsu, I will get back to you after I'm done, I'll call you over the Intercom. Meanwhile you" she turns quickly around to face Jean, "show her around the ship to kill some time, go grab a breakfast or something, Shevonne made some of her famous croissants this morning 'cuz she's off duty today. Shoo, Shoo". Marie pushes them out the door together before slamming the CLOSE and LOCK buttons on the inside of the room.
"Well, so much for a medical check-up," Jean breaths out with a light chuckle, "why don't we head to the galley for some food, her sister does make great pastries".
"By any chance, was there another tube labeled with the name 'Murakumo'? That doctor, Marie, she looks similar to her"
"I don't know, I wasn't on the team that was in charge of extracting the cryotubes that you girls were in, but I think that Marie will let you examine who has what, because the nearest person that knows Japanese is several kilometers away in the light carrier" Jean responds with a smile, and as he turns to see Mutsu's smile, his head runs into a bulkhead, knocking not only his officer's cap, but also his whole self over. Seeing this, Mutsu, smiles a little and chuckles lightly before bending down to help him up.
"Being 6' 4" is not easy you know, especially in a smaller ship like this, that's why I hate being on the destroyers, they are way too cramped" Jean says slightly sourly as he gets up while rubbing his forehead. He grabs his officer's cap and jams it back on his head, but before he does, Mutsu notices that he has two small sprigs of hair that also face forward, much like the way her hairband antennae face.
Walking through the Mobile Suit Hanger as a shortcut to the galley, Jean suddenly stops Mutsu in the middle of one of the mid-level catwalks and swiftly points down at the center of the floor. There, a hemisphere has been made, like some sort of drop shield from Halo, as Jean would have put it. Inside there were two people, on their left, was the Commodore Herself, with her signature red uniform, while on the right, was another girl, with straw-grey hair, half of which was tied into long pigtails, by contrast, she was wearing a black uniform that denoted her as a junior officer. She had ochre eyes and a leering smile that made her look as if she was armed with fangs. next to her feet, was a little robotic ball that flapped it's diminutive wings and rolled in circles around her legs.
"Yo take a look," a sparring match is about to begin, Jean says rather enthusiastically, "People find it nice to have sparring contests once in a while, it helps to keep your senses sharp when out of combat and passes the time on long patrols with little to do".
As if on cue, a bright light engulfs each of the girls and when the bright lights die down, there they were, seemingly transformed from normal humans to super soldiers. Zabi had a beam assault rifle in her right arm, a rather large shield on her left that was armed to the teeth and had her family coat of arms emblazoned on it, and on her rear waist, there was mounted a sort of gearbox that had small wings with thrusters on the rear and two mysterious grey cylinders that hung off from the wings. Her small legs were now housed in large Red boots with gold and black knee plates. Also, they were literally covered with thrusters all along the rear. On the other side, the mysterious girl had donned a triple spiked shoulder mounted shield, arms encased in field green gauntlets, a small truster backpack that had a tomahawk mounted on it. Her suit included boots that looked simplistic, without the ornate designs and folds that were on Zabi's suit. Her robot had jumped up as it was engulfed by the light, it now was waist mounted, along an armored side skirt on her right side, on the opposite side of which held several cylindrical grenades, and finally, a very large sniper rifle cradled in her arms.
Mutsu gasped very loudly in surprise, which Jean had to turn around to look at to make sure that there was nothing wrong with her, aside from her hand flying at almost superhuman speed from the guardrail to over her mouth.
"I didn't know that you have Kanmusu as well," she gasps between surprised breaths, "I thought that they were a thing unique to Imperial Japan, we were supposed to be one of a kind!"
"I have no idea what you are talking about," Jean replies with a puzzled look, "they are wielding a weapon known as the Infantry Suit, or IS, like having the power of large mobile suits being compressed into one small package, although you do lose out on quite a bit of firepower due to scaling."
Mutsu calms down a little at the explanation. "Anyways," Jean continues, "most people, like Antionelle over there, have standard issue IS, while high officers, like Commodore Zabi, have them forged, each custom one is made based on an individual commander's personality and the synchronization possibility that a person has with it."
As they talk, they two ladies lunge at each other and draw their respective close combat weapons, Zabi, with a wrist stored beam saber and Antionelle, with the tomahawk from her jetpack. In a single stroke, with Zabi, on top, she uses her beam saber set to EMP mode, to stab it into her jetpack, which is the designated weak point for sparring matches, all before Antionelle could even begun to swipe at Zabi with the tomahawk. Their beam weapons stop emitting their green glow and in the same flash of light, they return to their normal selves. Minerva pulls Antionelle up by the arm and shakes her hand before the field dissipates and they walk away together in conversation.
Jean looked on with a "not bad" face, Mutsu meanwhile, still had a large puzzled look on her face as Jean leads them down a set of stairs to a large mess area. The area appears large, despite only being able to fit no more than 40 people at a time, with the higher ceiling and large windows in the back, offering a sweeping view of the gas clouds that make up the Orion Arm, and the bottom of the hull of the ship, if one were to look up through the windows. On the wall to the left of the windows, there are a set of pictures hanging, portraits of important crew members, Mutsu assumed, and one picture in particular caught her eye.
The person in the photo, had long sweeping lavender colored hair, his eyes seemed to be in a slight smirk, as if he were sneering at the low skill level of the other portraits around him, he had a rather deep skin color, almost a gold rather than the pale color that Jean had, and he was wearing, quite literally, the exact same uniform that Jean had on.
"Who's that?" Mutsu inquired, "Is he some well know person on the ship?" At that, Jean's eye suddenly drop and his tone goes from rather cheery to somber, as if he was mourning someone. "That's Derwent Zeon," he said slowly, "he was the executive officer of this fleet and the captain of this ship before I got this to command. He was also very close with commodore Zabi, from what I heard from the older crew members."
"Where is he now?" She asks, her interest piqued as they approach the photo and examine it.
"Well, long story short, he died, how?, we believed that he would fell into black hole Cygnus after his umbilical to the ship was severed." Jean said quietly, but as he said it, he noticed a small shimmer outside the window. Using the nearest comm panel, he calls the bridge with a small swish of his hands
"This is Captain to the Bridge, you guys have anything on the sensors?"
"No sir, not quite….Hold on there, I think that we do, radioman, confirm contacts!"
Jean could hear in the background "wait a minute... hey, what the, THEY'RE CHARGING WEAPONS".
Cursing himself for not being more suspicious of the glimmer and immediate hitting the emergency button, he opens the line to Intercom and yells:
ALL HANDS TO GENERAL QUARTERS, REPEAT, ALL HANDS TO GENERAL QUARTERS, WE ARE CONDITION RED, WE ARE CONDITION RED, THIS IS NO DRILL
He grabs Mutsu's hand and says, "well, looks like our little tour was cut short, let's head to the bridge". As they tear back across the mess hall and back to the hangar to see the whole place beginning to erupt into chaos as pilots began to board Mobile Suits, engineers ran around with last minute check-ups and small robots doing the finishing maintenance work. Klaxons rang all around them as the two of them ran down the corridor that they came down in to get to the elevator, which Jean forces open with his Captain's keycard and pulls Mutsu in, He then presses the button for the bridge as the doors hissed closed.
Inside the small elevator, Jean notices as Mutsu's eye began to glow slightly, around the irises and her surprised face slowly goes from puzzled to cool and collected, she opens up and says "Captain, there are Abyssals in Close proximity, please be advised" before snapping back to attention. Meanwhile, Jean's irises began to develop streaks of dull yellow, much like a firework went out in the middle of his eye and the sparks were radiating out from his pupils, as he began to establish a telepathic link with Minerva. Through that link, they are able to share limited amounts of thoughts and images of what the other is seeing to help with coordination.
As Jean and Mutsu exit the elevator and enter the bridge, The radioman says "Sir, the bogeys are hailing us through an open channel, all other ships on channel ready to receive transmission."
"OK, put'em through, Corporal"
A cold face emerged on the viewscreen, it coldly and methodically stated, "You are in violation of the Territory of the Abyssal Fleet, you are to disarm your weapons and power down your defenses. Prepare to be integrated within the fleet or be annihilated."
The person behind the screen appeared to have prosthetic legs, a scepter, and a weird looking headdress that looked curiously like a parasite, with small cannons pointing out from the side and the head of the headdress billowing some sort of blue glowing smoke. It had a large toothed mouth on the front and it seemed to be lifeless, except that it wasn't.
What sent chills down the crews' spines wasn't the cold and nearly robotic voice, it wasn't the strange way the person or thing dressed, and it wasn't even the fact that the person appeared to be standing in the vacuum of space without any sort of life support or space suit.
…
…
.
.
.
.
.
.
It was because the face, was the face of Derwent Zeon.