Chapter 29

Bright Noa missed the days when he could get a full night's worth of sleep. He also missed the days when his coffee came from a fresh pot and wasn't the reheated remains of the pot he made during the evening. Peering through still bleary eyes, he checked the time on the digital clock on his desk.

Far far too early in the morning for him to be having to deal with an emergency conference with EFSF High Command. But Bright, through the lingering grip of sleep, managed to feel very smug that he was among the most well put together of all the officers on the call. So many admirals and commandants and staff officers that looked like they had just been dragged out of bed for this. All of them blinking rapidly at the harsh office lights that stung at sleep-riddled eyes.

Heh, suckers. Bright sipped at his reheated coffee. He'd made a habit years ago of always having a freshly ironed jacket in his closet. So long as he didn't have to stand up while the cameras were rolling, he'd look calm, cool, and collected.

The assembled assortment of brass Bright was a part of, were anything but at the moment.

"Just where does Dakar Command find the gall to accuse us of being derelict in our duties! They just got trounced by walking junk from twenty years ago, piloted by terrorists who spent those twenty years hiding out in caves!" Vice Admiral Ikande shouted in anger, pounding a fist on his desk to emphasize his displeasure.

Vice Admiral McDougall nodded emphatically in agreement. "This is nothing more than the incompetents in the Ground Forces trying to throw mud to distract from their mistakes. If this comes to an inquest before the Assembly we'd come out looking better. We just need to show them we're not going to bow to this ridiculous accusation!"

More voices from other men and a few women rose up in agreement. Bright noted that they were all of the Admiralty. Not surprising, Neo Zeon had been giving the EFSF black eyes enough this year and all these high ranking officers with their reputations to protect weren't going to allow another blow to be landed on their collective reputations.

He let the rest of the meeting pass him by, doing nothing that would bring him to the attention of the group. Eventually the cooler heads calmed the indignant many and they broke up, not before Bright was consigned to another set of meetings in the morning. Great.

After putting some pants on, Bright rung up his analytic department. I&A always had someone on active duty for this express purpose.

"Captain Noa speaking, have the stills been analyzed yet?" He asked the petty officer on duty. "Good, send them to me immediately then and send a copy to Colonel Kajima."

A minute later, a new email appeared on his computer. Bright opened it and started clicking through the blown up images and stitched together videos that had been pulled from servers half destroyed by Minovsky particle exposure. Very grainy but those greens were too fresh to be remnant suits.

He finished off his coffee and grimaced at both the taste and sight before him.

"Those are certainly Neo Zeon mobile suits." He leaned back in his chair and pinched his nose. "So they were involved in this too."

More questions would undoubtedly come about from this incident. Preliminary reports suggested that there had been a mass looting spree across various Australian bases and depots, not to mention the small clips of a local news station at Darwin Australia that showed EFN mobile suits being escorted onto Remnant ships.

Bright pulled up another image from a different file on his computer. It was a map of the Earth Sphere, with circles and lines that shows Neo Zeon operations and movements, confirmed and unconfirmed, since Axis. His own personal murder board if Bright felt compelled to put a name to the image. A young Bright Noa would have been thrilled.

"Rather not wait for enemy action to happen two more times to be able to make a judgment." Bright mused to himself. "I suppose it's time then."

He dialed a number. One ring, two rings, three rings, four rings…

"Kajima speaking." A bleary voice coughed out. Bright could sympathize with the sudden awakening but it was part of the job.

"Colonel, I need you to report to my quarters at once. There's been a major Remnant operation on Earth and our friends in Neo Zeon were seen front and center." Bright quickly rattled off the relevant information, more details could be obtained by Yuu Kajima, the famed Blue Death and now the commander of the Londo Bell Mobile Suit Corp with Amuro being…missing in action.

To Yuu's credit, he was quick on the update. "I'll be up in four." He also sounded much more awake, the benefit of his long time in the service.

Bright forwarded the file containing the analytic company's initial assessment on the attack and the enhanced pictures and videos to Yuu's email on his end, just to make sure it was at the top of his email list. Then he made a new pot of coffee, filling two mugs and making Yuu's usual mix, two teaspoons of sugar and a splash of half and half. Bright would have preferred sugar and creamer in his cup but he had promised Mirai to look after his sugar intake on account of 'his age'.

He smiled at the memory of that conversation. The look on her face when he had pointed out that she was just as old as him! What a woman he had married.

Yuu Kajime strode into his office three minutes after Bright had called him, an unbuttoned jacket thrown over his white tank top. Bright saw that he didn't have shoes on and was still wearing sweatpants. Yuu pushed off the carpet of Bright's office and floated up to the ceiling and pushed off it to land with a soft thump into the chair in front of Bright's desk.

Bright saw that Yuu had a tablet in one hand, which Yuu put to the side to eagerly quaff down the coffee Bright had made for him. In one pull. Coffee that was fresh from the pot.

Bright emphasized his judgment by taking a slow sip of his own brew. Yuu looked over the lip of his cup as he drained the final dregs.

"Heh, come on Bright. I can't help myself! You have the good stuff, not like that cantina slop the quartermaster gives the rest of us!" Yuu grinned and it gave his face a timeless look of youth. Suddenly Bright was back on the White Base, huddling down to avoid Zeon patrols and eating truly horrible rehydrated rations. He blinked, and the rush of nostalgia faded away like mist. He might really be getting old if this was happening to him!

Luckily, Bright could pass his brief pause off as tiredness. "If you bothered to save any of your paychecks, then you could have the same as me."

Yuu snorted in a boyish manner. "I'm no good with money Captain, you know that."

"And what will you do when you're out of the service? Starve?" Bright chided. Surprisingly to him, Yuu Kajima had become a rather close friend in the few short years that Londo Bell had existed.

"That's what the pension is for!" Yuu chortled and Bright joined in. Then the brevity passed and the two men's faces grew solemn.

"So, bad sign for the situation down on Earth." Yuu commented, waving his tablet, which had a picture of a Geara Doga firing its beam machine gun into a downed GM II. "Looks like this Full Frontal character has really righted the ship for the zekes. Only just a full year on from the Axis Drop too."

And wasn't that a name that had burst onto the scene. If Bright wasn't absolutely sure that anything Char Aznable could have survived, Amuro Ray would have, he'd have declared Full Frontal to be another mask of Char.

But since Amuro wasn't sitting across from him right now, Bright and Londo Bell worked on the assumption that Full Frontal was the stage name that was being used by Neo Zeon's new leader. He had been a busy man over the past year that Londo Bell roughly put his leadership at.

"Then we now have to plan for a united Zeon front to emerge against us." Bright mused. "With their apparent ties to the new Anti-Earth Union Group, we're going to be hard pressed in the future if we can't smother this in the cradle."

"My thoughts exactly." Yuu said.

Of course, Londo Bell had yet to uncover definitive proof that Neo Zeon was a driving force in this new variant of the AEUG that Bright had once been a part of. The wider Federation Intelligence Community had been able to confirm links between a resurgent separatist political party in Riah and a Lunar unification/independence movement to a, at this point, nebulous AEUG High Command. The structure and members of the new type AEUG were unclear to everyone on Bright's side of the equation.

But when said organization's propaganda wing promotes the membership of Neo Zeon within itself along with Neo Zeon's attacks as being AEUG attacks, and when key parts of its political messaging can trace their origin to the writings of Neo Zeon's new leader…

Where there's smoke, there's fire doesn't even begin to cover it.

Bright moved on from that. "Your thoughts on the new Jegan model?"

Yuu shrugged. "On paper it's an overall improvement to what we're flying now. The upgrade package can be applied to existing mobile suits as well, so we don't need to replace our existing suits. Course none of my people have had the chance to test a D-Type but so far so good."

Bright nodded, trusting in Yuu's evaluation on the technical side of things. Mobile Suits had never been his wheelhouse. "Still, doesn't the timing of this seem suspicious to you?"

"Nah. This is Anaheim we're talking about. They probably had this upgrade package worked up years ago and were just waiting for the right time to sell it to Dakar." Yuu shrugged and tilted his head in a manner that said 'What can you do?". Bright would admit if pressed that such a plan was right up Anaheim's alley.

But, but ,but…He couldn't share the sliver of paranoia that the D-Type provoked. Too convenient for Anaheim's bottom line.

"What's your contact over at Anaheim been doing lately?" Bright asked Yuu.

"Vera? She's assistant senior director of marketing for her branch now." Yuu answered without looking up from his tablet. Bright suspected he was filling out the patrol rooster for the week. He checked the time. Five hours before it was due on Bright's desk.

"I do not mean her." Bright responded. "The other contact who works in their Mobile Suit Division."

Yuu put his tablet down and looked at Bright. "Ah, him."

"Yes, him."

Yuu crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair. "You think we need to reach out to him?"

Bright was seized by a sudden burst of energy and unable to contain his desire to move, he got out of his chair and started another pot of coffee, pacing in front of the machine while it brewed.

"Too much is adding up to Anaheim's advantage lately and Neo Zeon is suspiciously well supplied." He told Yuu. "Something is coming our way and we need more than just more ships and upgraded mobile suits to be able to fight it."

"We need hard facts." Yuu nodded at Bright's words. "But there are too many unknowns and old favors will only go so far with him, ya know?"

Bright rubbed his chin before responding. "That's fine, we just need to know what projects Anaheim's mobile suit divisions are working on, preferably the classified ones. Nothing too detailed but enough to let us know the general aim of the project."

Yuu sucked in a breath in thought. "That might step on a lot of toes if we get found out. Every branch has Anaheim working on projects for them. We have more than one if I need to remind you."

"And the ones that we don't already know about or come back as not being Federation commissioned are the ones we need to look into. I suspect we'll find a trail of crumbs that link back to Neo Zeon." Bright theorized aloud.

"Maybe but there's no way Anaheim would allow a real smoking gun to even be listed in their department manifestos." Yuu retorted. "My guy would be found out in an instant if he poked into the real black book projects they have."

"We have to start somewhere." Bright told Yuu, pouring two more cups of coffee for them. He handed one to Yuu and then Bright sat back down on his desk.

"There's always a trace of something for us to find, we just need to cast a wide enough net. Have your contact send you material requisitions and test pilot deployments along with the rest of the information." Bright ordered. He could feel a plan percolating. The kind of plan that had made the name Bright Noa into a household name in the Federation Forces. It was a good feeling.

"Gonna be a lotta sleepless nights if we're going to be reviewing such a large amount of data." Yuu half complained and half stated the obvious.

In response, Bright lifted his mug of coffee and nodded at the time on the clock his office had the wall.

"Good point!" Yuu laughed. "Might as well do something useful. What's the plan when we uncover something that leads back to Neo Zeon or anyone tied to Full Frontal's new AEUG?"

Bright grinned, and if there had been a mirror in front of him, he might have realized that he could still look like the bright eyed ensign who commanded the White Base and tangled with Zeon's best all those years ago.

"Londo Bell was granted all the powers that the Titans had been given. That includes the power to investigate anyone and everyone who we suspect of being involved in the aiding, harboring or supplying of terrorist groups. To put it another way Yuu, we're going to be paying Anaheim a visit in force."

Yuu grinned as well. "And let them try to stop us!"

Thirteen days later, Bright's people found what they were looking for. Buried deep in the mentions of supply shipments being rerouted to avoid traffic and mixed in with a complaint file about substandard cafeteria food in Anaheim's St. Joseph facilities, was the barest of mention about three kilos of 'psycfrm' being shipped to Site J.

Site J was a testing site in lunar orbit that Anaheim operated. It had been in use for sixteen consecutive months for the development of a project. Psycfrm was a clear shortening of psychoframe. The project had scant references to it in what Yuu's contact had been able to send their way, but they had been able to pull the name from the mass of data. The UC Project.

The contact had said that whoever the funder for this project had all the bearings of a government contract. So not the smoking gun Bright had hoped for.

But psychoframe was a controlled substance and Londo Bell was in charge of seizing illegal materials as they related to potential terrorist activities.

So while he was certain that Anaheim would be able to produce a certificate from whatever agency or group had allocated the funding for this UC Project. Londo Bell would have ample time to sniff around during their 'routine inspection'.

Colonel Kajima was certainly fired up, he'd been complaining in the command staff meetings that he hadn't had a chance to try his souped up Jegan in the field yet.

"Argggghhhh!"

The mobile suit accelerated with a furious rumble that he, Alberto Vist, could feel in his very marrow. The mobile suit careened left and right, zipped down then back up again with blistering speed as it raced through the obstacle course Anaheim Electronics had at this testing site. Every maneuver this monster of a mobile suit did caused obscene pressure on Alberto as the G-Forces bit into his body.

He was going to throw up. He was going to pass out.

Frankly put, he was going to die in this stupid puffy normal suit and at this point in the torturous ride Alberto thought that was fine by him. So long as he didn't have to deal with the fucking G-forces!

Then just when the creeping darkness had entirely obscured his sight…! The pressure cut off and the vibrations of the engines stopped.

Alberto held his breath for a moment, and he felt his face contorted in anticipation of another murderous burst of acceleration but it never came.

"This concludes the final evaluation of Project MSN-06 Sinanju. All parameters have been met and exceeded. Anaheim Electronics is pleased to declare that the Sinanju project is a complete success. Anaheim Electronics thanks all members of the development staff and our sponsors for their tireless efforts on this design. We look forward to continuing this work in future iterations of the UC Project. Celebratory drinks and food will be available in the forward cafeteria for all."

The pleased voice of the female announcer made Albert open his eyes and uncurl his body. The outside was no longer blurred by the speed of Sinanju. The black of space looked normal and the various impediments and space debris used in the testing course weren't rapidly approaching his face anymore.

He was alive! Oh blessed god he wasn't a smear of red paste on the cockpit screen!

Alberto was only restrained from shouting in glee by the presence of the test pilot in the cockpit with him.

"Well Mr. Vist, was the trip all that had been advertised?" The female test pilot, Alberto didn't remember her name, twisted back in her seat to look at Alberto with an expectant grin on her face. Alberto was suddenly very glad that in the brief seconds for the ride of death began, he had silenced his comms.

"Erm yes, yes indeed. More than anything I think the reports understated the Sinanju's capabilities." Alberto said after quickly coughing to clear his throat.

"Ha! Right you are Mr. Vist. Humans can't handle the full power of the Sinanju here." She patted the console affectionately. "That's why we have her on autopilot and the thrusters capped to just 60% of her total output. And even that limit is too much for anyone on the test pilot roster"

Alberto felt cold sweat trickle down his neck. "Oh..I see. What thruster output were we on for this…evaluation?"

"Well since we were focusing on the responsiveness of the autopilot when dealing with minor deviations from its pre-programmed flight path, only 45%." She had the audacity to grin. Alberto had the very sudden and very urgent need to get away from this madwoman.

He also swore to himself that he would never, ever get in another mobile suit as long as he lived.

"Ah well…we all must make sacrifices to produce a superior product." Alberto stammered out. "But surely its time to return and get this ...wonderful machine all packed up."

"Ha ha, right you are Mr. Vist!" The test pilot said cheerfully. "Shame the SInanju is destined for the cutting room floor after this but I guess that's the fate of prototypes."

"Anaheim always strives towards perfection." Alberto forced out the corny marketing words and in his mind he danced for joy in anticipation of solid, non accelerated metal beneath his feet.

After the Sinanju was docked and returned to its berth, Alberto tumbled out of the cockpit with a distinct lack of grace. He gave a few choice words about the lack of gravity in the hanger and pulled himself along the gantry.

As his poor luck reared its head again, just as he was about to cross off the gantry and into the hallway that would take him towards a much needed locker room to strip out of this ridiculous normal suit, he slipped.

On what, Alberto didn't know but one moment he was walking normally and the next he was quickly moving towards the ceiling.

"Wo-woah!" Alberto flailed wildly but that seemed to only make his upwards flight more erratic.

Just as he was preparing to make the utterly humiliating choice to yell for help, Alberto's forward momentum was abruptly arrested.

"Oof." He grunted as a new point of contact was established by someone, who then dragged Alberto back down to the gantry. Alberto stumbled a bit before regaining his balance.

"Careful there." A strong baritone voice said. "It can take a few minutes to re-adjust from the acceleration if you aren't used to it."

Alberto looked up and saw the cowboy that seemed to have wandered into a secure Anaheim Electronics facility. The slightly baggy blue denim button up and brown corduroy pants, which did go well with the snake-skin cowboy boots he wore Alberto noted, did nothing to conceal the size of the man. The large sunglasses that concealed his eyes only added to the cowboy eccentric look. The mass of long blond hair the man had didn't really register to Alberto.

"Ahem, yes well. You know how things can be obviously." Alberto said. Then he looked down at himself, saw his normal suit and looked at the stranger, who was not wearing a normal suit. In the mobile suit hanger.

"Erm, I don't believe we've had the pleasure. Alberto Vist, Anaheim Electronics." Alberto held out a hand.

The stranger took it eagerly, a congenial smile on his face. "Elias Kadwell, Imago Trading. It's a real pleasure Mr. Vist. And I'm not just saying that because I've gotten the chance to see this real beauty you created." He nodded at the white and gray Sinanju.

"Yes yes, a real marvel of engineering." Alberto responded before taking the conversation in a different direction. "Imago Trading, I can't say I'm familiar."

Mr. Kadwell didn't look surprised. "We're an up and coming import/export company. Bringing in raw materials from the asteroid belt, that sort of stuff."

The two of them moved out of the hangar and started walking deeper into the station Site J's staff was based in.

"A profitable market these days, what brings you to this particular event?" Alberto asked, fishing for information. If he didn't know about a company working for Anaheim that meant they worked for someone above him. That meant a very juicy chance to get a peak at what the upper corporate ladder was doing.

"Oh my company was contracted to ship certain materials needed by the project. Among other matters we get subcontracted by Anaheim to handle." Kadwell lowered his voice. Alberto matched his tone when responding.

"And the details are need to know. I understand." Alberto and the Mr. Kadwell were walking side by side down the hallway, so he leaned in for his next words. "If I may, who handles your company's contracts with Anaheim? I thought I knew all our regulars."

"We work exclusively with your aunt, Mrs. Carbine." Kadwell all but whispered. "On a variety of matters that I can't go further into."

"Of course, of course." Alberto backed off slightly. If his aunt, the rather terrifying woman that she is, had this man and his company as one of her personal contractors, then Alberto didn't need to pry any further. "Well look at the time, I have to get down to the forward cafeteria and deliver the Board's remarks to the team. A pleasure meeting you, Mr. Kadwell. Hopefully we'll have the time to talk longer next time."

Kadwell nodded in agreement. "Of course Mr. Vist, I don't want to hold you up further. Much to do on my end as well, so until next time."

He waved over his shoulder as he walked away. Then Alberto Vist scurried to the lockeroom to get out of this getup and prepare to give his remarks. God he hated doing these. Why didn't Bertramhave to do this, he was the project lead!

A/N: Back at the grind and I decided to get back into the action for the Sinanju heist instead of having the Londo Bell section and another section with Frontal and his crew planning the Sinanju heist. Much more effective use of time in my eyes.

Technically we're off by about half a month for the Sinanju heist, as the date should be June 14th for the heist going of the Bande Dessei manga. But who really cares about dates when you got a story to tell. 14th, 23rdish what's the difference?