Crossover Fan Fiction / Gundam SEED Fan Fiction / Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Crossing Barriers ❯ Appraising the Situation ( Chapter 19 )

Crossing Barriers

 

Gundam Wing and Gundam Seed are the sole property of their creators and distributing studios. I have no financial interest in either series. Nor am I receiving any financial gain from this fan fiction work. I do however own all plot elements not part of the original and all self-created characters. Thank you. Enjoy.

 

Special note: Yaoi (homosexual pairings) is a plot element of this story. There will be NO explicit material but there will be sections where it is reasonably clear that sex is happening or has happened.

 

Beta Reader: T'Amara

 

 

Appraising the Situation

 

Albert Hannam watched the broadcast from Mendel for the sixth time, trying to see what had gone so completely wrong. Yes, he'd intended to have the pirate's ranks thinned in this fight, they were getting too demanding and were too strong to outright refuse. But this? No, this was far more than he'd intended. He needed some of them alive a while longer to do the majority of the fighting for Blue Cosmos while it rebuilt in the shadows.

 

“Are the damned monster and his fucking mobile suit both coated with luck?” Crystal snarled as she glared at the large screen where they were going over the battle almost frame by frame. “Good God! Did you see that? How close can you come and still miss the bastard? That shot was fired from less than two hundred meters! And it didn't even scratch the paint!”

 

“I saw it,” Hannam replied tonelessly.

 

“You could be a little concerned here you know. We stand to lose everything to this monstrosity!”

 

“There were reasons for the destruction of Mendel Colony,” he reminded the angry woman when she rounded on him. “He was the primary target there as well if you will recall. And they missed that time too. Kira Yamato is the final product of Hibiki's unholy Ultimate Coordinator project. It is our intense misfortune that the project was an outstanding success. He isn't your standard lab freak, Crystal. Quit trying to blame the pirates as if he was. We sent so many mobile suits in the first place because we knew he was going to be very, very difficult to kill.”

 

He ran a hand through his hair in frustration. “I must admit though, I hadn't anticipated this much destruction or that much stupidity once they were on site. I was sure they'd notice how all their guns were lining up and that most would move fast and far enough to manage to survive. But no, they got so caught up in their individual battles they paid no attention to the overall fight. I know we need the men and ships but I have to wonder if they didn't do us a favor by killing themselves. That kind of stupidity factor is not something we can afford in this war.”

 

She growled wordlessly and stamped off to the bar to fix herself a drink and answer the phone that rang just as she got there. He ignored the temper, she had a right to be angry considering just what this fiasco had cost in terms of their own supply levels and tight fuel stocks. Then, to add insult to mortal injury, that erratic mess of a mainframe on Mendel had picked that moment to hiccup and dump the entire show onto the emergency network, where everyone and his blind dog got to see what really happened!

 

Now that ZAFT battleship - what was it called, the Irwin? - at any rate now it and its lost crew were being hailed as heroes all across the planet! Even the most rabid of Alliance networks recognized that the ZAFT ship and her people had stood their ground and had covered as much as they possibly could of the mistakes in judgment so evident in the Jan Smits and her flotilla. And Commanders Yamato and Joule were now the subjects of a massive search and rescue operation.

 

Worse, the PLANTs had acknowledged they had a pair of mobile suits with Mirage Colloid capability and, because the one had been part of the gallant but impossible defense of the Smits, it was politically impossible to go after them about it. Both suits apparently had actually been built during the First Bloody Valentine War but not completed by the end of it. So even though they kept them, the PLANTs did not violate the Junius Treaty by having them since they weren't operational at any point when the Treaty could honestly be considered to be in effect. Nor did they count as new construction now since they had only been completed, not built from scratch, since the end of the Second Valentine War.

 

Chairwoman Clyne had gone public with the existence of the suits this morning. Moreover, she admitted they and Joule's new one were nuclear powered. She also made it quite clear that ZAFT was not going to discard its nuclear mobile suits this time around. They would discuss a limited number for everyone but the removal of those suits from their armory was not open for discussion. She had assured everyone that there would be no completely new suits built with Mirage Colloid though. This begged the question of just how many of these incomplete units there were stored in dusty corners of various ZAFT bases, a topic she'd avoided altogether.

 

“Albert,” his sister was back, holding out a tall glass with what looked like a triple shot of whisky in it. “Have you located Terasawa yet? I despise the bitch but she's the only fleet commander left.”

 

“Dieter didn't make it to that farce either.” He waved an angry hand at the screen where a seventh replay was just beginning. “And he's a lot more manageable. We'll use Ruhde.”

 

“No we won't. That was Bjork who just called in. Captain Ruhde died of Jupiter Fever about two hours ago. The Ice Dragon is going into full quarantine somewhere in the Belt. He said they won't be checking back in until they know the ship is clean. It'll be three weeks at the earliest before we can hope to hear from them again.”

 

“Shit!”

 

“I agree, now what about Terasawa?”

 

He shook his head grimly. “Not available. She's already checked in, remember? I told you what she had to say.”

 

“Call her back,” Crystal ordered. “Grovel if you have to. We need a fleet commander, damnit! She's the only one with a name left right now. We have to have her. Especially since there's been no sound from either the Duelist or the Cleaver. We have to assume Yamato got them both.”

 

“Oh, I have,” he assured her. “I assumed that the moment I realized not only did the little patchjob survive, he did so with an undamaged mobile suit. With Joule to protect, he will have turned on them as soon as he could be sure he had the damaged unit under cover. Since he had a wingman with Mirage Colloid to hand, I have no doubts both ships and any surviving suits are gone.”

 

He leaned back. “Unfortunately this does not help us with Terasawa. The bitch flatly told me not to bother calling again, she will not respond. The problem with her is she's just sane enough to understand the odds. And she doesn't fancy ours. No, we could grovel for a year but we'd never hear a word back from her.”

 

“Shit! What does that leave us with?”

 

“Bjork,” he replied bluntly. “He's the only one left now with any command experience. And the Swede is a vindictive bastard. He'll not take the loss well at all. So all we can do when ships call in is have them get in touch with the Ice Dragon.”

 

Albert glared at the screen, not seeing the battle any longer. “We will make Lars Bjork a god-damned pirate admiral if we have to! And once we do, we will stage another attack. Yamato's luck won't last forever. No one's does. We will get him.”

 

He tossed half the drink down in one fiery swallow. It burned all the way down. Hell of a waste of fine whisky but he needed to calm down and this would mellow him out faster than just about anything else. The second half went down moments later. When Crystal offered to refill it though he refused. He needed to unwind a bit here, not to get drunk.

 

As the hundred and twenty proof booze began to thread its way through his body, he accepted the relaxation it brought. His head wasn't perfectly clear yet but it was working better on whisky than it had on rage. They were done in space for a few weeks. It was time to turn his attention back to Earth, most specifically to the Chinese. There was a very ambitious group that had just managed to weasel its way into a dangerous level of power in the Eurasian political structure, a place they were pretty much already holding on the military side. Those ambitions would not be beneficial to Blue Cosmos. He needed to go home for a while. Albert stared across the room through half-lidded eyes and smiled. He would leave Crystal in charge here in space. The pirates wouldn't know what hit them.

 

* * * * * * *

 

Sally watched the uncensored news reports Une had sent them for the third time. Something was different and she wasn't putting her finger on it. Only Johnny Morgan and Chen Ly had bothered to stay for one more repetition of what was, frankly, damn depressing information. This wasn't her first war, or Johnny's either for that matter, so at least two of them knew six weeks really wasn't much when it came to issues of ultimate win or lose in one. But six weeks of unrelenting depressing news was hard on moral no matter how it came out eventually. And moral was a serious issue when people were penned up in absolute quarantine like they were here.

 

So if something was changing, she needed to recognize it. Either it would boost moral or it would be one more factor that she'd have to deal with to keep it from sagging any further. No matter which it was, she had to understand what it was in these reports that was niggling at the back of her mind.

 

“How many times are you planning to sit through this sodden dreck?” Johnny asked calmly, his eyes focused on the visuals of the latest, fortunately failed, attack on the base at Bastogne.

 

“Dreck?” Lieutenant Ly asked, curiously.

 

“That's American for `mind-numbingly awful',” Sally told him absently. “Or at least that's how Maxwell always translates it. Personally, I think it means something ruder than that. Must be very bad if Duo wouldn't say it out loud though. And the answer is, until I figure out what's different in this report from all the ones we've been seeing for the last six weeks.”

 

“Oh, who's this Maxwell?” Chen enquired as he winced, a very large missile having just blasted a respectable crater just outside the perimeter of the base defenses.

 

Sally considered the question for a long second, then decided it was time to begin to inject some very specific hope in the team and the staff. “Gundam 02, nice kid, very loud and vulgar mouth though. He's a colonial American with a really vicious L2 vocabulary when he wants to use it.”

 

Chen Ly whipped around to stare at her. “You know one of the Gundam Pilots?”

 

Sally smiled. “I know all five of them. I was Resistance during the last part of the Eve Wars, I met them then. Honest, they're nice kids. Very determined to do their duty though. And 01 could be outright scary sometimes, he'd get so focused. That's not a kid to try to stop with words and if you're using weapons you'd better bring something meaner than he's got to the table to get him to pay any serious attention. He'd notice Zechs Merquise or fifty mobile dolls; not much of anything less was enough of a real threat to hold his consideration for longer than it took to blow it away.”

 

“Where are, . . . . . . . . Sorry, I don't suppose I'm supposed to know that am I?”

 

“Nobody knows where they are,” she assured him soberly. “The only safety they have is silence and ignorance. One of the big reasons I'm here is because I can identify them all. I can't afford to be picked up by Crimson Dawn for that information by itself, let alone all the rest of what I know about our resistance. But General Une has a connection to their contact so we do know they got away safely and that they're working on getting the equipment they'll need to be able to be effective when they return.”

 

“The GUNDAMS will be back?” Chen whispered, naked hope in his wide eyes.

 

“I didn't say that,” Sally cautioned. “I said they're working on getting equipment. I haven't been told if that'll be new Gundams or not. Please don't say anything about Gundams, we don't know. It'll crush people if they're expecting Gundams and they don't have them when they reappear. If you want, you can tell our people that the pilots are alive and planning to return, just make sure you stamp on anyone who is trying to assure everyone they'll return with the Gundams themselves. The old ones were blown into small pieces. Five crazy old men were the only ones who knew how to build new ones and, as everyone knows, the Gundam scientists are dead. I honestly don't know if the pilots can build new ones without them or not.”

 

Only one outright lie in the lot. Not bad for having to limit the information and control the levels of expectation hearing it would climb to. Because that was one thing coming in clearly from these tightly compressed data squirts they were getting every few days. Everyone opposed to Crimson Dawn was hoping the Gundams would miraculously reappear. After six weeks of fighting, only the most determinedly blind hadn't admitted the new Sagittarius suits were seriously outclassing all existing opposition. Anyone with brains and working eyes was all too aware that it would take the Gundams to bring them down.

 

Those were the self-same Gundams everyone had been so happy to see blown to bits three years ago by their own pilots as a pledge of eternal peace. My, my, how enlightening a solid dose of reality could be. From cries to rid the world of such dangerous weapons to whispers praying they'd return. Mariemaia had honestly had a point when she'd told Relena the three beats of war, revolution, and peace were eternal. Now if only people learned from this experience and started yelling for responsible control of weapons instead of blind elimination, maybe the world would come out ahead after all. Maybe they'd properly fund the Preventers too, just to see that nothing like this happened again.

 

Yeah, Sally acknowledged in the back of her own mind, and maybe pigs would grow wings and start flying with the eagles too. Still, she mustered up a warm smile when Chen Ly bounced out of his chair to go spread the good word to the entire base. That she actually thought might help. If nothing else, it would give them all a fresh incentive to keep focused on their training.

 

“I give it a month, maybe a bit longer,” Morgan said quietly after the door closed behind the Lieutenant.

 

“You give what a month?” She asked.

 

“The boost in moral and heart that little story will set off. If there aren't any Gundams in a month, it'll wear off.”

 

“Only if we harp on it. If we're smart and only trot the reminder out when we really need it, I think we can stretch the effects out over six to eight weeks.”

 

Morgan sighed. “We'll hope so. Because if we see a Gundam in less than six months I'll be surprised. The Dawn is being a bit smarter than I'd hoped. If they keep themselves restricted to government and Preventer targets, no matter how vicious they are, a lot of people will hold their noses and accept it as the price of ridding themselves of corruption. Really, the bastards who worked behind the President's and Dorlian's backs have a lot to answer for.”

 

“Oh, most of them are,” Sally assured him grimly. “The Dawn isn't taking prisoners and it isn't accepting conversions. You saw the other day what's happening to those old Romefeller families who were connected to that internal plot to grab control from the current Sun. The only survivors there will be the ones who have the guts and brains to just sign over their wealth and property to the Dawn and take whatever scut jobs they're offered. And given the arrogance of most of those fools, there aren't going to be many of them that smart.”

 

“Damn few of `em are gonna be all that missed either,” Morgan noted dryly. “Too many of `em couldn't keep their big mouths shut during the Eve Wars and kept bragging about how superior they were. Lots of people haven't forgiven `em for that. Then so many of `em moved back into politics in a big way these last two years. Now the evidence we've had all along for just how much of the corruption in Europe and Asia can be traced directly to their bank accounts is coming out. No, the Dawn can shoot `em with almost complete public impunity. The Sun is being sharp enough to make sure each family he destroys is firmly tarred with the corruption scandals one way or another before they're shot. We aren't going to have any sympathy to use against the Dawn there.”

 

“I know.” She turned her attention back to the newscast. Thinking about how many of the breaks were going the Dawn's way was just too depressing. And Une hadn't offered any timing for the boys return either. Their people here weren't the only ones with morale issues. Sally didn't try to tell herself she didn't have them, she knew she did. It was not easy trying to keep spirits up on this whole base when her own were having a down day.

 

She watched a very brief piece on an anti-violence protest by the `peace hounds' in Rio de Janeiro. At least someone was standing up for what they believed in. It worried her though. Peace hounds were so completely dedicated to Total Pacifism that they would not defend themselves if attacked. This very orderly march of several hundred through the streets of Brazil's most famous city was not going to make them popular with the Dawn. They were making enemies they couldn't afford, or survive.

 

That piece was followed by three more of similar length noting other protests or anti-violence speeches by other `peace hound' groups. She just shook her head unhappily. They were becoming more and more vocal. And they didn't mince words or fail to name names. If they didn't learn how to do this diplomatically real soon, someone with a lot of guns and no hesitation about using them was likely to try to teach them new manners.

 

“You have to admire the courage of their convictions,” Johnny said quietly. “But they're gonna get themselves shot if they don't shut up.”

 

“I would hope not,” Sally sighed, knowing he was right.

 

“Hope is good for the soul but it won't stop a bullet,” Morgan told her flatly. “The Dawn won't tolerate even completely non-violent opposition much longer. It especially won't tolerate it when it's criticizing them for killing the non-combatants. That's the Dawn's terror edge and they aren't about to give it up yet. If they can see the `peace hound' protests are starting to affect public opinion, well, the `hounds' are going to be in trouble.”

 

She gave him a troubled look. “I don't know, I mean I agree with you and yet I don't. The `peace hound' movement is almost universally seen as idealism at it's highest. They tend to be respected for their convictions by almost everyone. Well, organized crime and the Dawn aside that is. They have a huge moral clout with the public. It would be very dangerous to attack them.”

 

“And you expect that to stop the `Rational Revolution' fanatics of the Dawn why?” The other Preventer shook his head slowly. “Honey, take it from someone who grew up black in North America and learned his family's history well. When those in power plan to stay there come hell or high water, they don't seriously think about possible consequences when it comes to opposition. They tend to shoot it and let the chips fall where they will. We have a fully integrated and racially peaceful society now but getting there was a long, bloody, and brutal process that got a lot of innocents killed. One of my several-times great-grandmother's lost a sister when some racist bastard blew up the church the family attended. Others were shot or hung for being out at the wrong place after dark. And a few died in the protests that finally began to force the society toward the much happier racial times we all have now. No, the Dawn shares a lot of characteristics with the old Klan. Believe me, if they aren't careful, the `peace hounds' will find themselves targets.”

 

“That would be absolutely stupid of them!” Sally protested. “Can you imagine world reaction to a slaughter of those people?”

 

Morgan gave her a weary stare. “Like they say, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The Dawn is going for absolute power here, Sally. They aren't going to let a bunch of mule-headed idealists who aren't even armed stand in their way. Think about it, eh?”

 

She did. And she saw both horror and hope in it. Because she knew she wasn't wrong about how the `peace hound' community was seen. If Crimson Dawn ever struck them, it would not be an act the world would forgive. If it could be proven beyond any effort of the Dawn's to discredit the report that it was their work, well; she just shook her head, unwilling to risk cursing any of those peaceful people with her need for an incident that would wake the world up to what was really happening.

 

She flipped the news off when it reached the end of the third repeat. She still wasn't sure what had nagged at her attention but she did know the tone of much of it was darker than it had been only last week. Things beyond the doors of their mountain base were getting grimmer. At least some of the world seemed to be seeing that now. Perhaps it would lead somewhere positive.

 

* * * * * * *

 

Even in the dangerous chaos of the Debris Belt, there were loci of relative stability. The one-time artisan's colony known now as `the Graveyard' was in one. Ash Gray had found another for his Genesis-Alpha base.

 

Ilene Terasawa had no idea who had cobbled together the enormous shell that she now used as the base for the Vulture Fleet. It had been empty when she'd first stumbled on it almost eight years ago: the builders had stripped all their effects from the rooms and data from the computers. She no longer had much interest in them. They were gone and she was here. It was good enough.

 

The three ships of the fleet were snugged into their berths now. Preparations to temporarily mothball them were already getting underway. And she was sitting at the comm/data station on the bridge of the small cruiser, the Hungry Hatchling, watching Mickey and the others who would make up the crew for this trip begin to call the sleeping ship back to life.

 

Lucy So had already left, taking the first wave of their people with her. They were the ones who would integrate back into general society the easiest. Each of the people with So had an established identity that could readily account for this most recent, prolonged absence from their old haunts. Most claimed jobs like free-lance journalist or construction worker or gypsy mobile suit operator, all jobs with very high mobility and low accountability.

 

Once they were reestablished, they would act as conduits, allowing the rest of the crews to filter back as they vouched for them at new jobs. But it would take three weeks to fully mothball the three ships of the fleet so the urgency wasn't instantaneous to be getting new identities going for most. Pressing, yes, but not immediate.

 

Terasawa turned her attention to the boards in front of her. Getting the rest of their people out and settled was Yuki's job. Hers was finding those Blue Cosmos bases. She began to activate the boards, readying them to take new data from all three ships before those computers went off-line.

 

Hours later, how many she honestly wasn't sure, Yuki Hartono quietly cleared her throat to get her leader's attention. Ilene looked up, very slightly confused as her focus had been nearly total. But the carefully neutral expression on Hartono's face told her there was either a real problem or something that could be come one that needed her attention. She raised one eyebrow in question.

 

“The rescue ships have reached the survivors at Endymion.” Yuki said quietly. “The news is all over it.”

 

“I see. How bad is it?”

 

“Well, we're the nasty evil bad pirate monsters again. That aside, not too actually. Both Zala and La Flaga have refused to be misquoted and have said very plainly that we could have killed a lot more than we did. They are both pretty sure you were after a specific target and everyone else was just collateral damages. Waltfeld is backing that idea. One of the newsies got a very, very good picture of you checking the interior of that life shell before you popped it. Truthfully, you'd have to be blind or Blue Cosmos not to have seen that you were hunting someone and didn't strike until you knew where they were. It's raising a lot of speculation on just who the target was.”

 

She just shook her head, damn it! She should have made sure she got all the newsies! Now her last half-brother was going to be warned. Not that he shouldn't have known after all this time and blood, but this seriously upped the odds that he'd vanish down some well-guarded hole. She'd have a devil of a time digging him out if he did that now.

 

“Anything else that matters?” She finally asked when chasing disappointing scenarios eventually got old.

 

“You made a good call, bringing the Fleet in and starting us into mothballs.” Yuki kept her voce very soft and stared grimly out the forward viewport, eyes clearly seeing something other than the actual view. “The bounty on us all has tripled. It's large enough now to worry me.”

 

“You mean it's large enough to tempt some of our newer people into thinking they can sell personal enemies within the Fleet.” Ilene closed her eyes in frustrated disgust.

 

“All right,” she spoke as quietly at Hartono just had. “As soon as we get the Hatchling out of here and you're down to your most trusted hands, execute Operation Diaspora. Don't leave anything behind that could lead a tracker to you. If you have to, blow this place on your way out.”

 

The other woman stared in shock. “What?”

 

“If the money is that good, someone will take the bait. We're pirates, Yuki, not saints. The Fleet exists only as long as we have ships to fly. Protect the ships and the Fleet lives, lose them and it dies. You know how to get to each of those points blindfolded. So make damn sure the navi-computers are shut down before you move out of here. Get word to Lucy as soon as you finish. Then make sure everyone gets to Earth safely. From there, life will be a waiting game until they have something else to distract them from hunting us.” She grinned viciously. “Like knowing where to find Blue Cosmos maybe. Nothing like an even worse enemy to distract you from a simply bad one.”

 

“You've got a point there. All right. Consider Operation Diaspora underway.”

 

“And Yuki,” she said quietly as the other Captain paused, “I want to know immediately if they find Yamato alive. I don't care if I'm asleep and it's the first good rest I've had in a week, you wake me as soon as that word comes. Yell at me if I'm in the shower, it doesn't matter, I want to know and watch how this plays out. I think a good deal of how we approach the ZAFT when we finally have Blue Cosmos to sell to them will depend on what the rescue ships find at Mendel.”

 

Her fellow Captain and good friend nodded slowly. Eyes met and they both saw agreement. Oh, yes, how they approached ZAFT was going to be very dependent on what kind of shape Yamato, and to a lesser extent, Joule was found in. The better the condition, the easier this would be. But if he turned up dead, well, she just might have to rethink this whole deal. Because she knew who the PLANTs would blame for that death. She found herself, irony of ironies, hoping the damn brat wasn't hurt at all.

 

* * * * * * *

 

Morning was something of a subjective concept on a space colony at the best of times. On one as trashed as Mendel, it was completely arbitrary. Kira had been awake for a good half hour before he decided he wasn't going to be going back to sleep and opted for getting up. A single look had told him both Yzak and Dearka were still oblivious. So he showered, snagged a ration bar, dressed in the uniform he, like most pilots, had kept in his machine now that `peace' was here, left the other two a note, and went out to see what his hosts were up to.

 

What he found was just how early it was for everyone. No one was in the lounge or the kitchen. He checked on the mobile suits in the hanger but they had no other company either. He was about to stick his head in the dining room when he heard a voice. Turning toward it, Kira realized there was a concealed room at the end of the hallway. He recognized the type of hidden door from explorations of the building overhead. Curious, he went to look.

 

The door wasn't fully closed but it was tight enough to prevent him from really understanding what was being said. There were three voices though and one of them was the husky, unmistakable one of Colonel Merquise. The second sounded like Yuy's flat tone and he thought Maxwell might be the last one. There was an urgency in them that sent his hand to the door to cautiously ease it further open.

 

“ . . . . it Zechs! I don't even know if this wreck has attitude correction thrusters! And I ain't findin' `em in this mess either! `Ro, you havin' any luck?” Yes, that was Maxwell all right and it sounded like the problem was serious.

 

“Not yet. The damage to the systems is making the search more time consuming that it should be.”

 

“You found anything useful yet Zechs?” Duo had an iron edge to his voice now that spoke of serious danger and complete focus. “The decay is getting noticeable.”

 

“No.” Merquise answer was hard and concise.

 

“Shit! We are so fucked!”

 

Decay noticeable? Kira blinked, then it registered. Oh hell! All those ships exploding, all that material sent slamming into this rickety colony! Of course orbital stability would be affected! He shoved the door open wide and whipped into the room.

 

It was a very well setup communications and control center. Kira let his eyes sweep the boards before he centered on the one Heero Yuy was at. Yeah, that was the command center and the one he needed.

 

“Captain Yuy, I need that seat,” Kira snapped, his eyes reading the computations for mass, vector, and acceleration on the screen directly in front of it. “You've missed a couple things. They have to be figured now or we'll be past the point where the thrusters the colony has left can compensate in ten minutes or less.”

 

Yuy didn't hesitate; he was out of the chair instantly. Kira grabbed it and threw himself into it almost before the smaller pilot could get clear. He immediately brought up four new sub-screens that Yuy apparently hadn't known about and began to check the actual situation.

 

“Hull integrity marginal but under repair,” Kira muttered as his hands flew across the keyboard. “Seven sites, not too bad for all that hit this place. Impact mass total, shit a lot of stuff hit! Impact mass accrued, oh did we get lucky, most didn't stick. Thruster function, yeah we still have all seventeen!”

 

“How the fucking hell can he type that fast?” Duo's voice held shock.

 

An unoccupied part of Kira's mind took note of that remark. It told him none of these people really knew what a Coordinator was. And it assured him none of them were a real equivalent to a Coordinator. They'd have seen speed like this before if they were. The rest of his mind continued to process data as fast as the staggering mainframe could cough it out.

 

“Allow for accrued mass. Verify registered pre-battle colony mass. Add. Allow for unknown elements possible as part of recovery team equipment.” He paused, scanned the final number three times, hunting for errors, and found none. “Program thruster firing sequence and duration for initial burn. Verify fuel for each unit is adequate. Verified. Programmed. Calculate most advantageous firing time, . . . shit, almost past it! Fire now!”

 

His hands made one last flashing move, then went still. For long seconds it didn't seem as though anything had happened. Then a vibration began that shook the entire colony. And Kira was abruptly aware of settling ever so slightly deeper into the chair as the thrusters began to arrest the colony's deadly swing. There was a shout somewhere in the corridor behind him too as someone else up and awake now realized what was happening. His eyes though never left the rapidly scrolling data in front of him as it reported on many things at once.

 

“Hope to hell he got it right,” Maxwell said, the depth of his concern clear in his voice.

 

“He did.” Yuy was suddenly standing beside him, eyes also locked on the swiftly rolling data. “We're already reaching the arrest point. And nothing is breaking yet.”

 

“Doesn't look like it's going to either.” Colonel Merquise was up on his other side, eyes as focused as Yuy's.

 

The vibration abruptly ceased as the thrusters cut out. Kira watched the numbers begin to slow as the additional vectoring energy shut down. He already knew they were going to have to do a second firing. He'd applied a touch too much power on this first one. The colony was going to end up swinging the other way in a few hours. But he'd calculate that one later. It was important to let the existing change stabilize first.

 

“Beautiful work, Commander,” Merquise said quietly as he continued to watch the recovery numbers indicate a reasonably slow but steady improvement. “We should stop just short of the point of no return before the correction begins. I think you may have to do a second burn though.”

 

“I will,” Kira agreed. “Things were just too far along. I had to use too much power in order to stop the movement before it was too late.”

 

“Yeah, well ya stopped it,” Duo was hovering over his right shoulder now. “And I'm damn glad you did.”

 

“We all are.” The new voice was Winner's.

 

Kira turned to find everyone in the room now, including Dearka and Yzak. The blond gave him a small thumbs up. Yzak did him the honor of not scowling at him. The guests were just looking relieved. So much so that it made the Coordinator wonder if they'd all known the danger they'd been in.

 

“Are we stable?” Mariemaia asked seriously.

 

“Not yet,” Dearka told her as he read the numbers for himself. “But the swing out of orbit has been arrested. It won't take that much to get the colony back into a stable orbit now. Might need to make three or four progressively smaller burns before complete stability is achieved but that's all that's needed.”

 

“Oh, good! I don't want to have even the smallest responsibility for causing an Operation Meteor here.”

 

“A what?” Yzak pounced on that remark instantly.

 

“Operation Meteor,” Heero Yuy replied. “The original I assume, right?”

 

The girl nodded grimly and Yuy turned back to Joule. “Colonel Merquise gave you a brief rundown of our recent history yesterday. What he didn't bother with was the fact that the operation that our Gundams were actually built for never happened. Dekim Barton intended to drop a colony on the planet. We were supposed to go in behind that drop and slaughter what opposition remained. He intended the planet to be next to uninhabitable for decades while he secured rulership over everyone left on planet and in the colonies. The plan was known as Operation Meteor.”

 

Yuy paused, then added quietly, “None of us would agree to it. So the scientists saw to it that the plan was modified without telling old Barton. We did go to Earth and we did fight. But they arranged for us to functionally steal the Gundams and to slide with them out of the man's control. So the colony was never dropped. He tried again a year after the war ended but that effort failed as well. Barton was killed in that one, Earth is now safe from him. The concern is the rise of others who think the same way he did. I have no proof, but I believe Crimson Dawn is prepared to do the same thing if they find they can't win by force of arms.”

 

“That's a nasty thought,” Dearka said softly. “Reminds me too much of what would have happened if we hadn't managed to break up Junius Seven when those bastards tried to drop it on Earth.”

 

“Too much of it got past us.” Yzak stared grimly at something invisible that Kira rather though might be a particularly ugly memory if the look on his face was anything to go by.

 

“I believe it would be good to discuss this.” Relena stepped forward. “Perhaps we can provide breakfast and a place to sit and talk?”

 

“I'll be very happy to talk,” Yzak told her politely. “But we've decided not to take any chances with foods. Ration bars are uninspired but we know their safety. I'm sorry but unless you've been upstairs to the labs above and done a truly complete analysis, we must decline your generous offer.”

 

“There's a lab up in there?” Quatre and Dorothy both looked very interested.

 

“Several of them,” Kira replied wearily. “But we've only found one that's still fully functional. It was Dr. Hibiki's private facility. Blue Cosmos never found it when they were tearing G.A.R.M. apart and killing everyone they found there. Dr. Ito and I stumbled on it on my last visit here a few months ago. We shut the door and left it intact. There are too many questions that may have answers hidden in there and we were out of time to do the kind of investigation it needs.”

 

Kira stared at the floor and added, “We already know the answers in that lab may be deadly. Old Roland isn't sure he wants to find them any more. I never was.”

 

“And Dr. Hibiki was?” Quatre probed gently.

 

“Director of G.A.R.M.” Yzak replied shortly.

 

That brought the conversation to an abrupt end. Not even Maxwell missed the cues on just how sensitive that subject was. He kept his mouth shut although the struggle to do so was plain for everyone else to see. Relena gently herded them all out and into the larger conversation area in the lounge where they found the promised breakfast waiting.

 

The meal was a time of polite conversation with topics picked with care in a serious effort to avoid both business and a chance of upsetting anyone. Kira watched Relena and Quatre mastermind the conversations with a smooth handoff from one to the other and back again. They'd obviously done this before. They also obviously came from backgrounds of power, money, and privilege. The flawless civility was clue enough but the fact that they really didn't seem to notice Maxwell's much more blunt attitude all the while they were trying to smooth the edges of it was a dead giveaway.

 

He sat back and listened, speaking only when he couldn't get out of it. They hadn't had a chance to discuss anything but Yzak was nothing if not adept at getting his orders across. There was an entire language of hand and body posture signs the ZAFT had developed to allow soldiers to exchange information without the Naturals catching on. It had never proven particularly useful as the Alliance wasn't prone to taking prisoners and it was primarily for that situation that it had evolved. But it was also useful for situations like this, where a commander wanted someone to gather all the information he could just by observation. It wouldn't hurt to have the most in-depth impressions he could collect to give Lacus either.

 

So Kira watched, smiled politely, and watched some more as the meal ended and the real negotiations began. All of these visitors were people worth watching, which made keeping a truly solid eye on things difficult. It really wasn't a help that the discussion was so general either. But through it all, Kira was beginning to think these people wanted to talk, seriously talk, about the possibility of exchanging technology. They weren't exactly desperate but it wasn't hard to see how badly outnumbered they saw themselves and how dangerous they rated this Crimson Dawn group as being.

 

Yzak was trying to get something worked out to get them access to the visitor's language. He kept putting off Relena, Quatre, and Zechs' attempts to move the subject to any kind of tech at all. You had to know him to really see it but once you did, his distrust of the whole situation was very clear. He was taking it all at face value for the moment because he almost had to but he was sincerely wary of it all too. Yzak Joule wasn't prepared to trust anyone he couldn't understand and understanding vanished whenever one of them fell back into their own language. Quite reasonably, they didn't seem to want to share that at this point.

 

It occurred to Kira that there might be a way to get it. But he was going to have to get to Strike-Freedom to be sure about that. And he had no reason to leave the room for the kind of time he'd need either.

 

Then Yzak suddenly changed his orders. Yuy had excused himself a while ago, implying he was going to the latrine and would be back. But that was over twenty minutes now and there was no sign of Yuy. Yzak wanted him to find the Wing Zero pilot and make sure nothing was happening to their mobile suits. So he slid over to Barton, made his excuses there, and quietly faded out the door, very aware of Maxwell's eyes following him. And he did stop by their rooms, there were things someone could well have tried to get into there also. But he could find no indications that anything had been disturbed.

 

The sitting room included a computer terminal. The unit was supposed to be quite limited in its access but the people who'd programmed the system hadn't planned on having someone of Kira's caliber around to hack it either. Then too, he had already given himself administrative rights on the mainframe months ago. Breaking into the system wasn't all that hard for him.

 

Ten minutes later, Kira was opening the secret door that led between Yzak and Dearka's room and the very secret corridor behind that wall. He closed it carefully behind him, quite sure at least Duo Maxwell was sharp enough to find it if he wasn't cautious. He turned right, having already located Yuy using the security network. The other pilot was in the outer hanger, working to make it even less likely to be detected as a functional point of entry than it already was. It was time to get to his mobile suit and do some more, far less traceable hacking.

 

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