Chapter 24

U.C. 0094.5.23

New Miranda, Loum/Side 4, L4

It was rather hot in the city, I noted, tugging a bit at my button up shirt's collar. Weather Control was either compensating for another event or the colonial administration had decided that there was going to be a heat wave going into summer.

As strange as I found it, with my prior lifetime of earthnoid weather, there was a weather schedule that was followed extremely strictly in the colonies. Every atom of water was a precious resource and so the distribution of that water into the weather patterns necessary to support the plant and animal life of a colony had been worked down to an exact art. When you read the weekly weather forecast or saw it on the news in a colony, that wasn't a prediction. It was a promise of what weather you would be having that week.

So the heat, just over the line of comfortability, was deliberate. I just didn't know the reason. That didn't make me like the heat though.

The clothes I was wearing didn't help my temperature regulation either. A plaid button up under a green tweed jacket with jeans and loafers gave me the doctorate student chic needed to make me a part of the crowd of higher education types that had come sailing into New Miranda for the opening of this grand historical exhibit.

"Okay, you're good." The voice of Suberoa Zinnerman spoke into my left ear from the earpiece I covered with my hair. "No movements to be concerned about and we can't find anything that looks out of place in the security."

"Good to hear, Captain." I muttered into my jacket collar, where a tiny microphone had been attached. "Is everything set on your end?"

"The calvary will be ready if you need it. Marida has the Kshatriya on stand by too." Zinnerman replied with his usual gruff tone.

"Do pass along my appreciation to Lieutenant Cruz for her diligence." I replied. "I'm heading in now."

The other side of the line clicked twice in acknowledgement. I walked out from the bistro awning I had been standing under. I frowned, again, at the heat and sipped the iced macchiato I had bought from the bistro in order to take shelter in its shade.

Stingy place.

Folding myself into the crowd that was flowing its way down the boulevard, I made my way to the museum's main entrance. I whistled at the sight of it. They really had gone all out for this exhibit. Lapis lazuli colored walls, gold cuneiform script and inlays of Babylon's ancient deities. Holographic projections provided translations of the major inscriptions on the brick.

I never thought that I would see a full replica of the entire Ishtar Gate of Babylon, but the effect was very striking.

Passing under the lesser gate, I saw that the ticketing booth to the museum had been set up under the arch of the greater gate. I queued up, politely smiling at the other museum goers. Five minutes later, it was my turn.

"Ticket please." The security guard said, holding out a gloved hand.

"Of course." I handed over the provided ticket. The guard's eyebrows moved up at the sight of the ticket. He quickly punched the ticket and handed it back to me, bowing to me as he did so.

"Pardon for any delay sir. We didn't know that one of the backer's would be using the main entrance today." He gestured off to the side, to a door that didn't have any metal detectors. "Please enjoy your visit to the New Miranda Institute of History. Thank you for your sponsorship of the historical arts."

I bit down a 'you too' and walked into the museum, giving the guard a thank you as I passed him. The back of my neck prickled from the hostile stares I was getting. Once inside of the building, I rubbed my neck.

"Jeez, what a passionate group of people." I muttered, checking over the museum floor map.

Zinnerman had done his research when he had been approached by this entity, of course. The exhibit that I was walking into had been possible through the heavy financial support of several very wealthy spacenoid notables in order to secure the artifacts from their home institutions on Earth.

As a show of gratitude for those notables' financial support, the museum gave them first class tickets to the choicest items on display, allowing one with the ticket to bypass the normal guide groups needed to go see these items and just…waltz on it to take a look like I was doing.

It was certainly an indiscrete way to flex your wealth and power if I ever saw on. Though the only other one I had been party to was the Martha Vist Carbine approach, and that had involved machine gun turrets being pointed at me. Hopefully not the baseline.

Having located the chamber where my meeting was to take place on the map, I made my way to the west wing of the museum. Along the way I fed my position to Zinnerman, who in turn orchestrated the movement of the hundred strong band of heavily armed members of the Neo Zeon Attack Force that skulked the area around the museum.

That was my backup in case this meeting took a turn for the worst. We also had three mobile suits, the Kshatriya included, in the colony dock. Personally I had my trusty ZM-03 pistol on a shoulder holster.

Benefits of having a ticket that let me past the security without needing to be checked, huh?

Finally, I was at the meeting location.

This rotunda currently held the exhibit called 'The Development of Law and Order'', which the gold lettering on the blue banner above the double doors so proudly proclaimed.

I pushed through. A variety of mini exhibits were clustered together in the niches of the rotunda, showing this legal development, or this regional pottery trend and how the dimensions of the amphora showcase the grain laws of Ur or this king's commissioned poetry reflecting his interest in regulating the power of the priesthood of Marduk.

Very dry stuff, I gotta be honest.

But the centerpiece was something different. It was directly in the center of the rotunda, with a beam of light from the roof shining directly down on it. A nearly eight foot tall rounded pillar of basalt with lines upon lines of small cuneiform text all along it had been set up. At the top of the pillar had been carved two figures, a seated man with a long beard and gown presenting something to a standing man with a similarly long beard, though not as long as the first figure.

A tall glass case encased the stone edifice, protecting it from the elements, and I imagine wandering hands. Around the case were various pieces of information about this exhibit.

A man stood in front of the pillar, his back turned to me. I looked around, seeing nobody else in the rotunda. Checking my watch, I saw that I was right on time.

Walking up to the stand to the right side of the suited man, I looked down at the text he had been reading. I focused down on it briefly. A particular line caught my attention.

"The Jacques de Morgan Stele has inscribed on it the Code of Hammurabi in Old Babylonian. It is the most complete copy unearthed to date of the Near East's earliest legal code. On generous loan to the New Miranda Institute of History from the Musée du Louvre."

"Impressive, isn't it?" The man I was standing next to asked. I turned my head to look at him. He was average looking with a widow's peak. Brown hair, brown eyes. Slightly hawkish nose. And a pair of very thick eyebrows. He bore a rather severe look.

"To some, I imagine." I replied. "Depends on what you're looking for."

The man clicked his tongue. "That it does. Full Frontal, I take it?"

"In the flesh. And I have an idea about who you are, though proper introductions are in order." I joked, deflecting away from a somber conversational tone. Nanai had told me that was a flaw I needed to correct. Char had apparently been a major buzzkill in his last years.

"Of course, it would be unseemly for me to have you at such an advantage for longer than necessary." The man replied, his words taking a formal pattern to them. "My name is Meitzer Ronah. As your man Zinnerman might have informed you. It is an unusual pleasure to be able to stand here and speak with the man who has thrown the Earth Sphere into as much chaos as you have. And in such a short amount of time too!"

"You flatter me, Mr. Ronah." So the next great actor of the Universal Century has finally revealed itself. "Though I'm sure my infamy comes nowhere near to what Char Aznable amassed during the last war."

"Oh you'd be surprised then if you had the chance to listen to the conversations I've been privy to." Meitzer Ronah retorted. "While the person who ignites the fire will leave a lasting impression, the one who tends to the flame and keeps its power burning will always be remembered."

"Those entrenched in power are talking about you, Full Frontal, though their myriad thoughts about you and yours are always presented to the public as a unified narrative of resistance." He continued on. "But among friends and allies, they mull and scheme over what they need to do in order to sway you into their existing order of corruption and nepotism."

"Conversations which you have never been a part of?" I asked, surreptitiously looking around the rotunda. I couldn't see anything out of place yet, and my sixth sense was tingling in alarm.

Meitzer Ronah smiled a bit. "Oh I was certainly there, though I was part of the observing many, not the participating few. Tell me, what do you know about the Buch Concern?"

I shrugged, pulling from intelligence briefings Nanai had started running me through in order to enhance my understanding of the political world of the Earth Sphere. "A newer megacorporation that deals in mining and machine part production, with a dozen subdivision companies under its umbrella. Middle of the pack in the Fortune 500 index. Not bad for a purely spacenoid company, I've been told."

From the slight furrow of Ronah's eyebrows, I could tell that last statement cut at him. "From a purely financial outlook that is correct, however you and I are not concerned with just money, I can tell. Money is one of many tools that men like us use to bring about our new worlds."

I agreed with him. If I actually had real accountants in Neo Zeon, they would have all died of heart attacks long ago with the way I was spending capital and accruing very concerning amounts of debt.

"I've been clear on my beliefs before, Meitzer Ronah." I began. "My concern is the liberation of the spacenoids from the political tyranny of the Earth Sphere. The restoration of human self determination for those who live outside of that blue sphere. A continuation of the political revolution that Zeon first sparked among the Sides in its purest forms, divorced from the Zabi monarchism that derailed its initial spread."

"As can be evidenced by your reformation of the old AEUG moniker." Ronah observed.

"Indeed." I mentally pondered the situation for a heart beat. "While I can't comment on your own beliefs in detail, I can make a few guesses based on our locale alone."

That was a lie, but it was unsporting to give the game away.

"However I detest misunderstandings amongst potential friends." I continued. "So if you want, we can take this meeting to a more private venue, instead of a public museum."

Ronah Metzer chuckled and looked up at the carved image of Hammurabi. "Very well, but first let me return the philosophical insight you provided with one of my own cause."

"What do you see when you look at that image, of Hammurabi being blessed by the patron god of Babylon, Shamash, with the law that today bears his name?"

I shrugged. "Standard mesopotamian religious iconography?"

"Haha, close. I see his father, the soul of the former king looking over his son's shoulders, observing his actions with pride. While we learn about Hammurabi and his revolutionary code of law, itself the core of justice in ancient civilizations up to Persia, we don't learn about Hammurabi's father. And why should we? Hammurabi was the one who placed himself into immortality through his rule of Babylon and the empire he forged."

He walked around the stele, one arm outstretched so that he was nearly touching the ancient artifact. He seemed honestly starstruck by the thing, looking up at it with reverential awe.

He talked as he moved. "But if you care to look deeper into the story, you learn that what Hammurabi accomplished in his lifetime was only possible through the foundation that his father built for him. Oh, his successes are certainly his own, but the opportunity to become great was a gift given to father by son."

He completed his circuit of the stele and turned back to look at me. "I know I won't be a Hammurabi or Alexander the Great or William the Conqueror. No great empire will I create. What I strive to be is the one who builds the strong foundation for my own Hammurabi, who will create a new Babylonia for this age where mankind travels the cosmos. The template for governance for the next two thousand years."

Our eyes met, I imagined he saw the same conviction of belief in my eyes that I saw in his.

"You and I, Full Frontal, will not be remembered by history but our successors will be giants to future generations. That is why I reached out to you. Kindred spirits should aid each other. Honest believers are a dying breed in these times."

He sighed suddenly after looking down at his watch. "Looks like we are going to have to switch locations now, my private viewing window is nearly up."

"Hopefully it's less public than this." I said.

"Oh, much more private, yes." He nodded along with his words. "Ah, if you don't mind doing something first?"

"What?"

"Have your men stand down." He simply said. I raised my eyebrows. "No need for alarm. It's just that I called off my guards about fifteen minutes ago and your people are starting to make them nervous."

I wish I could say that I thought about it for a minute before responding.

"All clear." I spoke into the mike hidden in my jack collar following up with two clicks of the mike. The prearranged signal that things really were all clear.

Ronah smiled. "Thank you, Full Frontal, for the show of trust. I promise you I have no ill intentions towards you."

He gestured at a side door and began walking to it. I followed after him.

Why the show of trust? It wasn't because of Newtype intuition or based on a read I had gotten of his character, rather it came down to a gamble. You had to roll the dice of chance often in this type of profession, usually with no back up should things turn sour.

If I had to write a self help book called "Insurgency 101", then rule number one would read like "Always be prepared to take risks that may result in death".

And if this dice roll did come up snake eyes, I still had the Kshatriya on stand by. Rule number two of Insurgency 101 being "Always have a backup for the original backup".

The next week both passed in a whirlwind of activity and dragged on forever. Meetings in the morning, meetings over lunch, meetings in the afternoon, meetings in the evening and meetings late at night. A few hours of sleep and then the process began again.

The vast majority of those meetings didn't involve an alliance between the Buch Concern and the AEUG. Instead, I was treated to a first rate education on the values of Cosmo Babylonia, the dream of Meitzer Ronah. A heady combination of noblesse oblige, a rigorous meritocracy to create and maintain the noble class, and executive absolutism with a dash of free market command economy to round everything off.

It was a very well thought out ideology that Meitzer Ronah and his compatriots had created and when I was being guided through the finer points by such honest believers, I could see the appeal. Men and women put in charge for their ability and competence, given rank and title to give the necessary incentive for them to remain competent. The granted title could be taken away just as easily as it was given.

As I said, very heady stuff. It was almost enough to make me overlook the utter lack of political representation for anyone who wasn't of the new noble class.

So there were negatives of Meitzer Ronah's innovative system of governance and the ideology of that system. Not a surprise.

The rest of my time with Ronah and Company had been spent arranging their entrance into the AEUG. It had been a very frustrating process.

The main problem was that Meitzer Ronah wasn't the man in charge of the Buch Concern, he was just the chief executive officer. His father, Scharnorst Ronah (formerly Buch), had stepped back from active leadership in the company's affairs in the mid 0080s but retained majority control over major decisions. Major decisions like redirecting company assets to build warships and mobile suits.

The second roadblock was Meitzer's older brother, Engeist Ronah. Currently on his third term as a member of the Earth Federation Assembly, representing the Eastern North American province of the Federation. He wasn't active in the company, but his politics were on the record as being earth-centric.

What my Ronah wanted was for his faction of the Concern, the ones dedicated to his vision of a Cosmo Babylonia, to become the silent backers of the movement. They couldn't cough up the reactors or frames that Anaheim was giving us, unfortunately, but they could give us electronics and raw materials. The components that we could manufacture into weapons.

And the support of deniable assets that reported to Meitzer alone. The Birnham PMC looked to be an early incarnation of Crossbone Vanguard, though they lacked the dedication to the cause that I remembered those future pilots having. If I needed a convoy raided and didn't want it to be traced back to me and mine, then Meitzer could have Birnham attack the target in AEUG's place.

That was all the support that Meitzer could guarantee to the AEUG at this point. He did promise far more extravagant support in the future (timeframe not provided) when he took direct control from his father and could seed the high echelons of the Buch Concern with Babylonians.

And the cost?

Why nothing more than a few promises of my own in return, three to be specific. I would provide military advisors to the Cosmo Babylonian, to drill them in mobile suit and naval tactics, when the time came.

Easy to make and keep.

The involvement of the Ronah family in support of the AEUG would be kept off the record. A matter of the highest security in the organization, known only to the members of the AEUG Council. Meitzer Ronah had more than a passing familiarity with the involvement of Anaheim with Neo Zeon, and didn't want to draw Anaheim's ire on him.

Another easy promise to make and keep.

The last one was the real bitter pill.

The AEUG would support Cosmo Babylonia when it emerged and would not interfere with its internal affairs.

So when the "revolution" was launched, we'd be swinging down from on high to install the authoritarians and leave them alone to create their Babylonia in peace.

Yeah, that was a fucking pill to swallow. The irony of the agreement wasn't lost on me. The self appointed champion of spacenoid self determination, selling out an entire Side, because of course they wanted an entire side to themselves, because a war can't be won with cold reactors and empty magazines.

In the end, that third promise was made and I set off back to the Garden of Thorns.

This whole alliance process between the AEUG and Meitzer's faction of the Buck Concern wasn't going to be finalized just like that. We were in for the long woo with this one. No one and done like with Pepe or Mayor Mann.

Hopefully we'd have this wrapped up by the start of July, or the start of August at the latest. The recruitment drives for Neo Zeon would have finished by then and there would be a surplus of new members waiting to be assigned to postings that would be created through the war material Ronah could provide.

Now the real concern was putting down any grumblings from within my own forces at having to ally with another megacorp. There were a bizarre amount of purists in those who came from Axis. Purists in the sense that they only wanted to associate with those who had supported the Principality in the first war.

I believed they wouldn't raise too much of a ruckus, and Zinnerman agreed with my analysis. If I was wrong, Dawson would be able to step in on my side.

I looked over at the holographic clock in my quarters on the Garencieres. 1500 hours on the dot. We'd be home in two hours as Zinnerman had elected to take us along a less populated flight lane, one that skirted the edge of the shoal zone. At the right position, we'd slip off the charted path and onto the ones that our scouts had bushwhacked into the shoal zone and fly into the docking bay in time for dinner.

All according to schedule.

Then the Earth Federation found us.

A/N - dun dun dunnnn. So the other side showed some of that proactiveness they occasionally stumble into. How unlucky for SI Frontal and gang, wonder where this will take them?

Cosmo Babylonia is in its infancy right now. So I wanted to reflect that in the power that they could bring to the table for the Neo AEUG. No crazy planet killer weapons in the future right now unfortunately.

See you all next time for the "surprise attack" on the Garencieres.