Chapter 12
U.C. 0094.1.25 1300 EOST
Interior of Axis, Axis, Earth Sphere.
"Okay, cycling the airlock now. Prepare for atmospheric degradation and keep an eye on your normal suit's air levels. Some of these things aren't exactly new." The technician that had been roped into joining my expedition party informed us. The other members of my party, some 20 people, and myself decided to take him up on that advice, running some last minute checks.
This was one of the rare occasions that I was wearing the Char-like mask that had been in my possession since my...awakening. It turns out the thing has night vision built into the lenses. About time this thing had a redeeming feature in my opinion. Truthfully I'd rather have one of the torches that some members of my expedition were carrying but it'd be selfish for me to take one when I had my own way of seeing in the dark.
The technician who had spoken previously turned to me and gave me a thumbs up. The mission was a go.
"Synchronize watches on my mark." I addressed the group over the helmet radio. "Mark."
A small green bar built into the sturdy analog watch that I wore on my wrist flickered, and a countdown started. Four hours to go into Axis City and find that mobile suit hanger then head back here with what operational mobile suits were down there or to get more people. Of course we weren't going to run out of air in four hours or five hours or even eight hours. But if something were to happen and we ended up getting stuck, there was plenty of air to keep the group alive until rescue came. Just a basic precaution.
The group bounced off the metal floor as we went down the maintenance tunnel, away from the airlock. Something had resulted in the most direct way to Axis City, the monorail tunnel, being sealed off so we were using the adjacent maintenance tunnel to cut past the blockade.
In no time at all, we found the door that opened up into the monorail tunnel. 'ACML-4T-MT9' or Axis City Metro Line, maintenance tunnel nine was the code stamped into the center of the door according to one of the woman techs. I think she had been assigned to monorail maintenance during the days when Axis had been inhabited.
Another benefit to this being space was that there was no rust to deal with when opening hatches or doors, so it was no trouble to manually open it. More good news, it looked like we had a clean shot to Axis City. As for the collapse.. I couldn't see it clearly, even with the night vision but that barrier of twisted metal didn't look like a collapse. It was made entirely of metal for one thing, and the metal looked shredded.
"Did the metro line have any defensive measures?" I asked over the group's radio frequency.
"The main approaches were mined to create barricades to impede mobile suits. Something about some of the metal supports not actually being supports. I remember that they used plastic explosives." The woman who had worked on the monorail spoke up.
"Then why isn't this entire tunnel filled with such barricades." I pointed to the one in front of us, a few of the torches darting past me to illuminate it for the rest of the group to see.
"...Toto's rebellion maybe." The woman said, clearly unsure herself.
"Then let's assume those charges are still active and avoid the walls." I ordered, maneuvering to face everyone. "Right, those with torches to the front. Everyone else tether up in groups of five."
Since we only had five torches to allow everyone to see, my mask not counting, we were going to move forward in columns, with the torchbearers pulling the four people tethered to them with short bursts of their jetpacks allowing them to sail forward on momentum. I went higher than the others and used my better vision to make sure no hazards were missed.
As we sailed onwards, I inwardly cursed the talents of whoever had designed that defense system. Even if only one had been activated, it had done its job of blocking mobile suits from heading straight for the city. Removing the long spikes of metal were going to cut into what time that could be better spent searching Axis but it was more important that we had the fastest possible routes open to transport material to our reactivated port.
The method of just flying forward on momentum alone was a vastly more efficient way of moving in zero gravity than the leapfrogging method. We ate up the kilometers like it was nothing, and nobody ran face first into a piece of sharp metal. Always a positive in my book. Although I could do without the small headache that had developed. Strange thing was that I could have sworn I had plenty of water today.
After twenty minutes, according to my watch, the ceiling started to grow larger and eventually gave way to a truly gigantic space. The craggy edifice of tall apartment buildings broke up the horizon before me. The tallest of the buildings only filled one third of the space. I couldn't even see the ceiling from where I was.
Axis City. What a sight.
I looked down and saw that I had drifted away from the group, guess I got distracted by the sights. Firing my jetpack, I moved back down to the ground. Joining back up with the group, we flew off the path the monorail had been giving us and headed down to the outskirts of the city proper. We landed in the middle of a street, just in front of the monorail station's parking lot(or maybe a bus stop), in order to untether everyone.
Taking advantage of the break, I pulled out the map of the city that I, and two other members of the group, had stored in our belts. On the map, three red circles were drawn to the north of our current position, if I was reading it correctly. The circles represented the three probable places that had the back ways into the mobile suit facilities through, unfortunately, the city's sewer system. Why you would build your tertiary(or was it quaternary?) entrances in the sewer system instead of just installing some nice and clean elevators, I don't know. Maybe there were easier ways to get below the city, but if there were any, we didn't know about it.
After a brief discussion with some of the people who, like the monorail woman, had lived and worked in Axis, we split into three groups to check out the three areas. It wasn't a numerically equal division instead being divided based on light sources. So my group ended up with only one torch due to me having my mask.
"Radio over the main channel when you find the entrance or in the event of an emergency." I told the two squad leaders. "Other than that, switch to a different channel for intersquad communication."
"What if these locations don't have any entrances sir?" One of them asked. I grimaced a tiny bit. Thanks to the nigh impossible goals I was striving for; I didn't like to consider things not working out when I sat down to plan. Yet rational thought demanded backup plans.
I jabbed a location on the map with my index finger. "If nothing emerges, we'll regroup at this square and decide on our next move." The location was a square that was close to the city's center so we would all be fairly close to it.
"Alright, tether up." I told everyone. "Switch over to channels one, two and three based on who you're with. I'm channel one, Richard is channel two and Elsa is channel three. Good hunting everyone."
"Any of you from Axis?" I asked my squad six tensely. My headache had gotten worse since entering the city it seemed.
"I'm from Axis captain." A timid voice piped up from the rear of the huddle. It was one of the supply corps members who had been picked for this mission solely based on him being from Axis. Looking at him now I honestly would have preferred if he had been left at Palau but the First Neo Zeon War had wiped out most of the people of Axis; so I really didn't have the cream of the crop to choose from.
"Do you know how to get to-" I glanced at the map. "-301st Dozel Street from our location?"
"Uh, yes sir. I can." He managed to say after thinking, or panicking, for a few seconds.
"Very good." I replied, ignoring the renewed headache(that felt like it had increased as the supply corp member took longer to reply) and forcing a more upbeat tone than what I usually used. "You can guide Charles here."
Charles being the guy with the torch.
We didn't need to tether to each other now that we were in the city and as such made a return to our imitations of frogger, with substantially more walking this time as we headed northeast.
We moved in silence thanks to some unspoken agreement between the seven of us. Perhaps on their part it was the dead city cask in complete darkness except for the piercing light they carried with only the sound of their breaths for company. For myself, it was something different. I could see the city, more or less in perfect detail. The buildings with their rough concrete facade and windows, still perfectly intact and a film of dirt dust on them. Unlight storefront and neon signs that dotted the street front, looking to all the world like they were ready to be reopened by their owners. An involuntary shudder racked me. Axis City was a dead city, plain and simple.
Yet another part of my silence was this sense of unease I felt with a vague and unnamed sense I had come to associate with my Newtype abilities. Yet it remained elusive as to what exactly I was feeling, the headache, which I realized was growing stronger with some dread, was louder and more concerning.
I swear if this was the result of something the cooks had made, they are in for a world of pain when I get back to the Garen.
I was interrupted trying to remember my past meals by the supply corp member, Roth maybe, activating his radio. The squak made the people around me visibly flinch.
"Captain sir? I have a question." He asked.
"Ask away, then we have a bit to travel." I allowed him to proceed.
"Is this the right thing to do?" Roth said. "I mean, to take things from Axis. Feels like the ghosts of this city are judging us for disturbing their peace. If you know what I mean sir." His voice wavered at the end.
A part of me wanted to tell him to forget it. Part of me emphasized with him. Yet another part nudged the feeling of unease I felt. I suppose others could be feeling uneasy about the reason for Neo Zeon's return to Axis. Guess it was time for me to put those feelings to rest, and my own while I'm at it.
"If such a thing as ghosts or spirits were to exist and they happened to inhabit Axis as you say, I see no reason why they would be upset with us." I was addressing Roth and those around me as I spoke, trying to project my confidence onto them. "The people who made this asteroid, which once resided in the farest parts of the asteroid belt, came here so that the dream of Zeon's independence, of spacenoid independence, would not be snuffed out. They came here to continue the fight. And for nearly a decade they lived here. They rebuilt their lives, formed families, and they believed, unlike so many in the Earth Sphere, that our fight could continue."
I shook my head. "No, not just continue in the vein of those who fought still on Earth. They believed that the fight could be won. They believed that the children who were born here, that the families they created here, had a future beyond the confines of this city. They had hope, the hope of a better future. It is this same hope that we carry, that we uphold in our fight against the tyranny of the Federation."
"So soldier, if the spirits of the people of Axis did happen to be looking down upon us at this very moment, I see no reason why their reactions would be negative or angry towards us. They would most likely be cheering at the sight that all the sacrifices they made haven't been futile. The tools they created will serve the cause they were created for and not fall into the hands of the Federation, to be perverted by their hands and used to oppress more spacenoids. That is what I believe."
"Does that answer your question?"
"Yes. I mean yes sir!"
I grinned at Roth's response, and realized that Charles had ended up shining his torch on me, resulting in me being bathed in artificial light. And I imagine casting quite the shadow behind me.
"Now I believe we have a sewer entrance to locate. Let's move."
As it turns out, finding a sewer entrance was easy. They were designed that way.
Finding a concealed hatch/tunnel on the other hand? Wasn't as easy as I had hoped. The continued existence of the headache I was suffering from wasn't doing my patience any good.
Of course the entrance could be at an entirely different place.
Deciding that the alcove I had been examining was a bust, I hauled myself around the corner and glided down the tunnel to the beam of light that was moving along the concrete walls, serving over and under metals pipes that emerged from the ceiling. As it turned out, they didn't use things as primitive as water based sewage systems in the universal century. Also it was, I imagined, a terrific waste of valuable H2O.
"Nothing in there." I said as I grabbed onto a pipe to halt myself next to Charles and his torch. "Anything here?"
"No sir." Charles pointed with the torches beam to highlight an area on the wall they had been looking over. "And that diverted area was looking promising too."
"Well that rules out the last of the southern section." I said;. "What's left?"
The torch's beam was narrowed and directed onto the extended map. "Just the area below this apartment complex sir. The one on the border of the area we're searching."
"Then let's get over there and start searching." I said, using a pipe to push off. Better to save my jetpack's fuel for if I really need it.
Two hours and fifty minutes. More than enough time to regroup with the others and decide on a new course of action should all our searches turn up nothing. I sure hope it didn't come to that. Not only because I knew there were mobile suits below us, mobile suits we desperately needed, and I could really use some painkillers to deal with this headache. At this point it was more like a migraine than a headache. A real pain in the head headache that decided it didn't like my morale boosting speech earlier and had kicked it into full gear.
"Well this looks like the right place." I muttered to myself as the color coding of the pipes changed to yellow.
I looked over my shoulder to see the rest of my group come to a halt behind me.
"I'll take the right side, you take the left side."
A short and quick 'roger' over the radio and six figures glided past me. Time to get back to the grind.
Running a hand along the wall as I moved, I carefully examined the nooks and crannies, each and every dip as I moved. Searching for a hidden switch, sensor or eye scanner, and slithering over and under various pipes. Sometimes using them to clamber to check out the ceiling or as an anchor to keep me from drifting away from whatever I was examining. It was good zero g maneuver training all things considered.
I crept along all the same, eagerly checking out each and every irregularity that caught my eye. Yet there were no false walls or the feeling of metal when there should be concrete. Just pipes, long dead lights and started to grow more prevalent in my thoughts as I started trying to figure out where else in this city an entrance could be. Worst comes to worst, we head back up to our base and I can wrack Worklach's brain over other possible locations. Maybe another way of approach could be attempted, going from the bottom up rather and the top down like we were attempting now.
Or maybe…
Thunk.
"Ah shit!" I cursed as I glided head first into a wall, my head knocking around inside my helmet. I could have sworn I'd been going straight. Guess I'd gotten too caught up in my thoughts there.
Yet it looked like I hadn't, because I could have sworn none of the previous walls had been made of metal, or curved.
I looked over the new feature to the sewer tunnels with interest, running my hands over the wall to make sure that my night vision wasn't glitching out or that this wasn't some new kind of concrete that was naturally smooth.
Yep, this was definitely metal. I looked to my left, eyes tracing the length of metal structure I'd run headfirst into.
It looked like it ran the width of the tunnel, the curve suggesting that it was part of a larger structure. I can't see Axis Zeon wasting metal for something as trivial as a series of tunnels. At least if the tunnels didn't lead to something important.
"Have you run into a curving metal wall yet?" I asked over the radio, containing my eagerness somewhat.
"Uh yes we have. Does it run all the way to your end?"
"It does." I confirmed. Looking around, I noticed another strange, and promising, thing: there were absolutely zero pipes that ran into the metal wall. In fact, it looked like the pipes were purposefully avoiding the wall I was examining, straight pipes suddenly changing direction with a series of ninety degree bends.
"Ladies and gentleman, I think it's time to put those plasma cutters to good use."
We quickly regrouped and the two people with said plasma cutters got to work. Sparks flew, my mask revealed another nice feature as it automatically dimmed itself, and the metal wall shook against my hand as it was fundamentally changed for the first time in over a decade.
The minutes stretched on as the true thickness of the wall showed itself. A second wind flew through us all as the odds grew more and more in favor of this being our target. Shame we hadn't found the official entrance but I guess it's more fun in the end when you make your own.
With a final effort on the part of the plasma cutter's operators, the new door popped loose.
"And we are in." I said to myself in the confines of my helmet. It was about time. Gesturing to Charles, I pointed to the door, which hadn't been knocked away from the wall, and then to my legs. Charles gave me a thumbs up and the two of us jumped up and used out jetpacks to slide the door out and into the space behind it.
Making sure not to make contact with the still hot edges, I flew through the hole and immediately had to adjust my course to avoid smacking face first, again, into a tall spike of metal.
Firing my jetpack, I circled around the object, sending a warning over the radio to my group to be careful.
Then I looked down. The object wasn't loose debris, it was attached to something. I flew closer, grabbing onto the object and maneuvering my way down its length. My feet landed on metal, curved metal. I quickly looked behind me. Two smaller metal objects flanked their taller kin.
"Give me a light down here." I called.
Charles obliged and it turned out I was standing on a head, red in color. That head was connected to a torso, which itself had two arms sprouting from its sides. The arms were garbed in a curved shoulder piece with spikes and a flat one that jutted out at an angle. I was standing on a mobile suit, there was no doubt about it.
The beam of the torch briefly left my position to illuminate my surroundings. Walkways ran everywhere a few meters beneath me, forming 'U' shapes. Berths I realized. If this was a mobile suit I was standing on and it was resting in a berth, then there was only one conclusion to come to.
I accessed the wider comm channel. "This is group one, we have located and entered the mobile suit hanger below Axis City. Groups two and three are ordered to head to our location immediately."
I felt like laughing but that would be unprofessional. Instead I settled for patting the commander's antenna of the mobile suit I was standing on. I guess red is my lucky color afterall. What are the odds too? I was sure it'd be a Gaza series suit that got discovered first, they were the most prolific model Axis had produced after all.
Wait, I knew this suit.
Moving to confirm my suspicion, or maybe it was a hope, I shimmined down the suit's head, grabbing the lip of the monoeye rack and examined the deactive monoeye, trying to determine its color.
It was red I realized.
A red mobile suit, with a red eye and a commander's horn in the bowels of Axis. Only one mobile suit matched all those parameters.
"Zaku III, Custom." I spoke its name to myself.
The intended mobile suit of Char Aznable, commissioned by Haman Karn herself for when the Red Comet returned to her service and her side. A suit that was tied up in promises and oaths, awaiting the day when it would be flown by the man it was created for. An ace mobile suit built for an ace. Needless to say, that day had never come. So here it had sat, in the darkness, for all that time. Only for a clone of Char to come along and stumble across it.
Well I had been expecting to find it, but I hadn't expected the suit to resonate with me so much.
And for the mere sight of it to make my headache hammer into me with a vengeance.
The shuttle rattled around them as it left the emptiness of space and emerged into an environment with some kind of gravity.
Not that the passengers, who had been wreathed in complete darkness for more than a day by this point, were able to tell where exactly they had been taken too. All they knew was that they had been yanked out of their cells for no seeming reason and shoved into here.
They were all wondering just where their collective captors had taken them too.
Many had questions, yet none dared ask one out loud. For all that they knew, their jailors were listening to them right now. Or they might not be.
The shuttle landed and the passengers waited. And waited, and waited some more.
They waited for so long that a few of their number were exchanging furtive glances with each other. Perhaps they were about to start speaking to each other.
But that would have to wait until a later date because juuust before they dared to risk it, the door to the cargo hold slid open, and harsh light flooded in. Many raised an arm to shield their eyes, some squinted to try and see what was out there, the unlucky few who had been caught unawares when the door opened blinked rapidly to get the dancing spots out of their vision.
"Get a move on you damn Zekes." A harsh voice, ironically underscored by a soft Irish brogue, bellowed at them. Men in tan fatigues and tan body armor stepped into the cargo hold and started grabbing those closest to the exit by the arm, pushing and pulling them out.
After a few seconds, those who hadn't been grabbed got with the program and quickly shuffled out, the loud Irish voice haranguing them all the while.
The second the last passenger had left the cargo hold, the ship's metal doors slid shut and the craft flew away.
The passengers looked over a wide and shallow crater with guarded eyes, all of them taking in the walls, the towers that ringed the crater. None failed to notice the armed guards that looked down at them with undisguised disgust.
A scared man with shockingly bright red hair stepped out in front of the passengers.
"As the Assistant Warden of this prison," The man said, his strong Irish brogue marking him out as the man who had been yelling at them previously. "It is my pleasure to welcome you to your new home. The place that all of you will call home until the day you draw your last breath."
The man swept his arms out dramatically, like a stage magician revealing his grand finale to his captive audience.
"Welcome to Diyu!"
A/N: So that's all the chapters that I had already written. If you've made it this far, thank you. While I have you hear, I'd like to make the formal statement that I do not own Gundam or any of its associated stuff(wish I did though), Mobile Suit Gundam is the property of Bandai Sunrise and Hajime Yatate Yoshiyuki Tomino.
Any and all reviews only fuel my desire to write. See you next time.
