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"Alternative Directions: Options "Written By: Karina Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing or the lovely
boys and their girls in the series. Wish I did. Please don't sue me.
I haven't even got a brass razoo to give you. Rating: Deffinately PG in Australia, at the moment,
but probably safer to say R for later chapters. Not sure about international
ratings Warnings: It will be 6x2, even though it does
not start out that way. After all, Zechs and Duo never met in Gundam
Wing and only spoke briefly over a com line in Endless Waltz. I've
tried to keep them in character as I saw them in the series. A bit
of language creeping in under stressful conditions. Pairings: eventual 6x2, past 2xH, 2+H,6x9, 1+R
Summary: Directions is set post Endless Waltz
and roughly 2 years have passed. Zechs and Noin are on Mars and Duo,
after spending some time with Hilde in a relationship leaves L2 to
join Preventers. Hilde was not happy about his decision. I guess enough
said. Here t'is, and I hope you like it. This is also AU for the standard
setting, as well as the series and Endless Waltz. Spoilers: Gundam Wing Series and Endless Waltz Many thanks to Dulin for volunteering to beta this. //... // thoughts
"Alternative Directions: Options"
Chapter 83 Peacemission H65193P Sanc Registry In transit Time: 22:40 [ Sanc time coincides with Ship time] Howard // They just could not leave the boy alone. I thought that he might finally find some measure of peace, but they could not allow it. I thought him safe from Romefeller machinations, secure in a new future and content with his life and now he is to go against them publicly. Damn. He will do it willingly for the good of those who have turned to him, but I remember when he first came to me. I remember the boy.// The last few hours had involved a flurry of activity on board his ship as his crew had scrambled to gather the information he needed. The ship was prepared, the final checks now being made, her crew alert and ready for the action to come. He had had the time to do some serious thinking and as yet it was not too late for him to stand down the crew and wait to see how events progressed. He could still step aside, that option did remain, but could he really choose to step back and do nothing and then look at his face in the mirror, knowing that he had stepped aside? He could simply sit here in his study and mull over the facts as they had been presented to him by the boy who was no boy now, but a man fully grown. He could sit on the sidelines and become a spectator and allow it all to progress as it would, without any input from himself or his crew. He could allow it all to flow around him and by that very act he could betray all who had died for the peace. He could ignore it all, if it was in his nature to be a coward and if he did not care not only about his fellow Sweepers, but the lives of everyone who had fought in the wars for peace. Those who died for it and those who lived through it and those who lived because of it. //He reminds me too much of another boy who was forced into the trappings of power by those who believed they knew so much more and had the knowledge to guide the people to a grand and glorious future. The truth is that even if I do act it may end just as brutally now as it did then. No matter if I take a hand in this or not, it may end no better than in a repeat of the tragedy in which the One Year War ended. They were all too young. All of them, even Kushrenada.// His eyes, hidden behind the safe anonymity offered by his sunglasses, flicked to the framed blueprints dominating the far wall of his office. An unusual choice of wall paper, he mused, but if he looked at those blueprints they reminded him of his youth and his folly that in part shaped the past and still affected the future. The plans that he had so meticulously drawn and slaved over were yellowing from age and they represented one of the greatest achievements of his life. Perhaps one of the greatest mistakes of his life. He could not say that they represented one of the greatest achievements of his youth, though he had first had the idea for the mobile suit in his salad days. It had simply taken too much of his life and he had not completed the project. He had dreamed of the Tallgeese, his prototype mobile suit in his youth, and he had begun the construction of her much later in his life, when he certainly was not a youth, but a man full grown who had not had the vision then to understand what would result from his dream. Tallgeese. His baby. It had been so long ago. “They are all dead. They have to be. I found no sign of them after the explosion and I would have expected that at least G would be in touch with me had he survived that explosion. I have heard nothing from any of them and my crews found no trace of them. So, at long last, the five are dead and that makes me the last. It leaves me to be the one who is accountable for our crimes of the past and the only one who can make amends for that past and our part in it. We shaped the war. We cast principle players in the scheme of things, and we must bear the blame for it just as much as any other. Just as much as Romefeller. There were too many players in the wars and gradually we are passing, but some amends have to be made. Someone has to do it. I can not hide from the truth anymore.” He must assume their deaths as confirmed and accept his culpability in past event. Almost all of those original technicians and scientists who had helped him to develop the technology for the wondrous white suit so many years ago, were passing into the obscurity of death. The suit that no one had managed to fly. They were almost all gone now to the sifting sands of time. Most of them had passed in violence, very few had gone to their final rest of natural causes and it was likely that he too would die in a violent conflict. Better he than this new generation to whom he owed a blood debt. They all had had such dreams and worked feverishly to create the material proof of their visions and at what he had thought was the end of the matter, it had hurt to dismantle the suit. They had, he and his five compatriots, realized in time the uses to which the technology that they had developed could be put to by less than savory individuals. They had realized who it was who had so closely monitored the developments of mobile suit technology and they had learned something of the organization before it was too late. Or so they had thought. They had been wrong. It had been too late by the time they had confirmed the first rumors. The Alliance had had their own plans for the suits and that was bad enough, but it was the really big player who was interested in their work that was the most dangerous and they had been the worst kept, best secret of the Earth. Romefeller. To this day no one spoke of Romefeller in open halls. Modern history said that Romefeller were disbanded when the Princess of Sanc became the Queen of the Earth. Fools. Those fools who walked the halls of power had never been the true Romefeller. Kushrenada and Dermail had been different and he suspected that Wayridge too knew the true Romefeller. Certainly the then Vice Foreign Minister Darlian had been involved in Romefeller's coils of power and deceit. He would have liked to know what part Darlian had played in the fall of Sanc, but that likely would never come out. The man was dead and he had taken his secrets with him to the grave. Romefeller was not gone, as so many assumed. He knew it. Those in his confidence knew it too and worked as diligently as he to keep a close watch on those known to be within the ranks of that ancient secret society. It was not those who were known to be a part of that organization who were the dangerous ones, who needed surveillance, though they did keep them under attentive watch. It was those you did not know, who seemed to be too innocent to be suspected that were the dangerous ones. If you gathered one hundred people at random off of the streets of any city in the world, then you could be assured that at least one on them would be involved in the ranks of Romefeller. It was identifying that one in a hundred that was the problem. No one admitted freely to being involved in Romefeller schemes, not even he. In the distant past and in secret the organization had been birthed and it had grown and he doubted that now it could ever be destroyed. There were too many heads to Romefeller to strike off to destroy that particular Hydra. The heart of the beast was lost somewhere deep within its body and he doubted that they could ever find a weapon with reach enough to strike the very heart of the monster. Secrecy was the heart and soul of the organization and he knew of no one who knew who was the controlling influence in these post war days. Faction fighting had always been and still was an ongoing concern in the organization. That tendency to split into factions had curiously enough allowed the heart of the beast to sink into obscurity, though it beat strong and powerfully, monitoring all the little splinter groups and the faction fighting. Those at the heart of the monster knew who was in which faction and manipulated them all to further its ambitions. Faction fighting added to the mess that was suggested to be forming in a time when they, the people of the Earth and the Colonies, needed peace and stability. Romefeller factions worked constantly in opposition to each other, revolving around each other in a complicated waltz lest one faction gain too much power to be ousted at a later time and day. It was the faction fighting that exerted the most control over the government now in power and if the Romefeller factions ever joined together then the Earth would be in serious trouble. //If the hidden heart ever allowed such a thing to happen. They need the chaos element controlled and they use every one and everything to balance that chaos. They would not want too much peace just now. Enough to rest the human race, yes, but not to weaken it. Somehow it always comes back to Romefeller. I wonder what our history would have been like these last forty years or so had I not dreamed and then devised the technology to make the Tallgeese a reality? Tallgeese was my creation, though I needed the help of the five to complete her and we worked for Romefeller. At least we were mature enough to realized what use would be made of her if we continued. After the first few test flights and the death of every man who flew her, I never expected that anyone would be able to fly her. No matter the modifications I devised it was not enough to see the pilot survive. I did not expect that anyone would be able to fly my beast and I never expected that anyone would be able to complete her after we made the decision to dismantled her and I stole the blueprints.// He had been young when he first had dreamed of the idea of the great suit. He had been a genius, but he had been just one of many children amid those known as Sweepers. Just a gypsy brat amongst gypsy brats, but one who had had a will of his own fired by dreams and the drive to become an individual amid his peers. He had wanted to be different. He had wanted to create something to be remembered for, to place his stamp on the future and he had dared to look beyond the Sweepers for his dream. It had not been an easy road for one of his background to tread, but sometimes it was the difficult roads that are the roads best traveled. By the time he had reached his middle years he had become one of six whose genius was exploited by those in hidden halls, whose faces were never seen and whose will was heard through the voices of others. He had become one of six who could together create the technology to make mobile suits a reality, and he had been one of six who had realized in a moment of triumph turned sour that all was not as they had thought. They had heard enough whispers to make them uneasy and to force them to begin investigations into the plans of those who controlled the purse strings for the project. They had gained more information than they had wanted from whispers alone and at the first confirmation of some of those whispers they had known. They had been duped, lied to and used and they had known that they must disappear and be prepared to deal with the chaos that must come. The chaos that they had inadvertently birthed. //It was all so long ago. Sometimes I think that I have lived past my use by date. I feel so old some days and while it may well be true, it is not good. I can not afford to be old. There is still so much that I need to do to make up for the mistakes of the past. I owe a debt that I need to repay before I die. A debt that I can not pay to the ones I need to pay back. They are dead, gone but not forgotten. I must do the best that I can now that my debt is due and I will pay that debt by ensuring that this peace lasts.// It had been to the Sweepers that he had returned when he had fled from Romefeller and he had taken his place amid them as a leader, though one who preferred his own anonymity and who was known to be eccentric. Eccentric he might be, but they had known and recognized his genius and he had developed technology that allowed the Sweepers to rise far above their gypsy past. It was true that the majority of them still roamed the space ways, and likely always would. The space lanes without Sweepers did not bear thinking about. He had developed technology to further his people and made them a force to be reckoned with in space. He had risen to be counted amid the ranks of the Sweeper Council in recognition of his work, and he had acquired a loyal following amid his own kind and he had made a home for himself, safely away from Romefeller machinations. Or so he had thought. One day he had received a visitor and he had smiled and welcomed an old friend. It had been then that he had known he could not escape his past. That he must acknowledge the debt he owed to those who had already died because of his youthful dream. To make a difference and to protect the colonies, G had said. // To protect the colonies. What was wrong with me? I still looked at the world through blinkers. We must create the Gundams to protect the colonies, he said. Repair the damage we had done, when we left enough technology and trained personal behind us to continue the development of the mobile suits. Create the Gundams so that they in turn could defend the colonies. What I saw was not a defense of the colonies, but something else entirely. There is something in the heart of Romefeller that demands the balance be kept. They use factions pulled by hidden strings, but at least they did keep a balance. So who was left to protect the Earth? We disrupted the balance, giving the colonies five Gundams. There was no force in place on Earth that could contest that amount of concentrated power, thereby giving the Colonies the balance of power. Five Gundams against conventional armies was no contest. I still do not know how the information leaked out, most likely a result of Romefeller spies. That information did not fall on deaf ears when it made its way to perhaps the one man who had the genius to see it for what it meant and the determination to do something about it. To use it in a grand design. Kushrenada. He saw that it all came down to a matter of balance.// He had not thought it through, not then. Guilty yet again of tunnel vision. He had allowed the stealth technology he had developed to be incorporated into the machine that G was designing to protect the Colonies. He had given over vital technology to G and then he had stood back from a distance and watched the machine develop, using the Sweepers technology and he had not for an instant considered that the balance between the colonies and Earth would be disrupted. It had been a wobbly type of balance to be sure, but it had been balance. A balance that had wobbled further and further from the course of peaceful negotiation and into the dangerous world of potential open warfare. The death by assassination of Heero Yuy had been one wobble that would not heal for the colonies and then had come the orchestrated deaths of the Peacecraft Family and with that blow had come the death knell for the peace process. He did not need to look far for the identity of those who had planned the entire mess. Modern history blamed Treize Kushrenada for the assassination of Heero Yuy. Could no one count? Oz had not even existed when Yuy had been murdered. It had been years later that Kushrenada, barely more than a child had made his presence felt and begun the founding of the Order of the Zodiac. The Peacecrafts had been the innocent victims of the Alliance factions controlled by the true masters of the entire sordid mess. Under its many guises and from its secret lair the tendrils of corruption and manipulation had made their presence felt. The facts were there for anyone with a true knowledge of the forces involved to trace the origin of the plot. It bore an unmistakable stench. A stench uniquely Romefeller. //Just look at what that game playing resulted in. Who would have thought that the boy, trained and reared from birth to be a pacifist, would have turned warrior? This is all the result of games being played with peoples lives by people who believe that peace has its place but conflict forces the evolution of man. Peace does not suit certain people, it does not assist their ideals of evolutions driving need. I wonder did he surprise them? Did his very survival surprise them or did they plan for him to survive and to become the vengeful avenger? Kushrenada too was a tool in their game. They have to push and they keep pushing beyond the limits of human endurance in their search, and what is it they search for? We need peace.// he looked about the cabin, at the blueprints on the wall and the mementoes of a life of variety and invention. // It was for the preservation of the Peace that I made the choice to change the original designs and crafted the ships.// So many things could go wrong with his plans and had gone wrong and still would go wrong before it was done, but he could not stop now. He had come too far and he had been hurt too many times and still he had driven himself and his crews relentlessly in the crafting of the Peacemission. The basic designs for the ship had already been on his drafting boards before the forerunner to this ship, the Peacemillion, had been completed. He had intended both the Peacemillion and the Peacemission for purposes entirely different than to fight when he had begun to design them fifteen years in the past. The One Year War and watching as his mistakes contributed to its development had taught him that he needed to look closer to home to make a difference. //Tallgeese. It all started with my dream of creating you. Were we fools to have created you? No one knows what you really were, accept maybe the one man who actually flew you and survived you. My greatest triumph and my greatest folly. To succeed in flying you he had to merge with your prototype operating system. I suspect that another, Kushrenada, may have suspected what it was that I designed. Maybe. I have seen some of the blue prints for the Epyon system and it bares too many similarities with the Tallgeese operating system. Far more advanced that the Tallgeese, of course, but the basic design similarities can not be mistaken. He had to get the blueprints for the Tallgeese system from somewhere, and he would have had the best chance of breaking into the Romefeller records. The Zero design too was changed from the original prototype, far more advanced than my original design, but I had hoped that I had destroyed all of the plans before I fled the Alliance laboratories. I must have left enough behind for Kushrenada to find and have developed a comparative system. One of the five must have made copies for the Zero system to be created. My fault again, for not cleaning up my mess. Zero and Epyon. Tallgeese, Zero and Epyon. I wonder how alike they really were? Not so similar, I think, but it is the boy who would be the only one who could tell me. He is the only pilot to have used all three of them.// “I can't blame any of them for the war. I can't blame any of the young ones for the mess they had to deal with. They only worked with what we had created and left in our wake. They only used what we had left behind in our arrogance, forming grand designs to clean up our mistakes. They were no worse than we were in our youth and they were so young. Too young to carry the weight of the world on their shoulders, but what is done can not be undone, only managed. In retrospect, at least they won this peace, but at such a cost. I owe it to those who died to make certain that the this peace is maintained. I owe it to those who lived to make certain that there is no return to the darker days for their children to relive the horrors they survived. We have killed too many and the killing has to stop somewhere.” He owed it to the young people who had survived the
blood and the destruction to ensure that they never again had to face
the darkness of war. He had kept track of them all. Those who still
lived, of course. He smiled, reflecting on the past and the changes
that had been made in their lives as time had passed. Change could
be quick and dynamic or slow and stealthy, but it was inevitable. Dark and fiery Chang Wu Fei, the boy who had lost his colony and who in his grief and anger had sealed the fate of another who had lost it all and who had sought alliance with him in their mutual fight. He had been an angry boy and in his anger and confusion he had later joined forces with Dekim Barton and compounded the errors of the past with a new war to end all wars. Idiocy that seemed to find its roots in generation after generation of angry young men. A Preventer now and advocate for peace, he had a promising career ahead of him and the chance to find new roots that would hold him through life. Then there was the silent, stoic boy whose name had been the name of a man he had watched die. Trowa Barton, a boy who had lived the hard and bitter life of a mercenary. From his earliest memories there had been fighting and death and destruction. Never a child, that one. It was only since the war that he had found hope, both in finding a surrogate family in the one he called Sister and in the love affair that warmed his heart with another who had piloted the Gundams and whose past could not be further from his own. The gentle but strong blonde who ran a business empire with the same strength and quiet touch that he had used in piloting a Gundam. Quatre Raberba Winner. The same gentle empath who in anger and grief at the fickleness of humanity had destroyed a colony. Quatre had admitted that he had lost himself in his grief and anger over his father's death and that he had not and still did not understand what his father had thought he was doing. His suicide had served no purpose other than to drive his son insane with grief and brought about the creation of the Wing Zero and the further death of millions. Quatre had found himself again and begun his healing when he had found the one pilot who had warmed his heart with love. Then there was Heero Yuy, the boy named after the assassinated peace-orientated leader of the Colonies. A pretty piece of doggerel that. A foundling forced into the care of J under the command of Dekim Barton and molded into the role of the perfect soldier when in truth there was no such thing. What life would that boy have had? Dekim Barton had been insane enough, but he had forced a child, an innocent through the horrors Yuy had endured, first under the care of Barton's pet assassin, Odin Lowe and then into the doom that was the original Project Meteor. He hoped that J rotted in hell right alongside Barton for what he had done to that boy. Of course, that left Maxwell, the L2 child who had been taken in by the Sweepers after stowing away on one of their shuttles. He had felt something deep within him melt at sight of that waif of a child when first he had seen him so many years ago. A gutsy boy, so young but filled with fire who was determined not to die in the squalor of the streets, but to live and enjoy the living. Duo had come a long way from the squalor of the streets and the burned out remnants of a church mission. He had taken his name from a dead child and a dead Priest, determined to honor their memories and the parts they had played in his life. Who knew what that boy's name actually was or to what death he would have succumbed had he stayed on the streets of L2? In many ways Duo reminded him of himself, determined not to fit into the mold that was expected of him and fired with a need to become so much more. He had survived so much when others had died that he had taken to calling himself the God of Death and he had dealt death with every swing of the scythe when he had piloted his Gundam, but that was not how Duo now lived. He had chosen to live life to the fullest, certain that everyone died and when it was his time to meet his death face to face he could do so knowing what life was. He was a Preventer now, one who worked to prevent a return to the days of chaos and Howard could be no more pleased with him if Duo had been his own son. Years ago he had accepted the presence of a child amid his Sweepers who had been inventive enough to have stowed away on a Sweeper shuttle, no small feat when the shuttle had been one of his own. He had watched that child from a distance, never becoming an open part of the boy's life, but always aware of him. He had had the boy placed on a Family ship and educated and been gratified to see the thirst in the child for knowledge. Yes, Duo had reminded him of himself in far gone years, so why had he allowed G to enlist Duo in the Gundam project? Why? That boy should have been far from things associated with death, not in the middle of creating a monster capable of causing wholesale destruction. He had allowed it, and he had aided and abetted it and the child had grown to call himself Shinigami and had played the part so well. //I should not be sitting here, recapping the old horrors of days gone past. Reliving my mistakes with my own life and the lives of others. There are things that need doing and sitting here only reminds me of how old these bones are.// There had been another one. Another child who had known death and the senseless slaughter of innocents. Another child who had been helpless to stop the massacre and who had had his very soul scarred for his short and bitter life. There were so many comparisons that he could make between the lives of Duo Maxwell and the scarred Zechs Marquise. They both were survivors of the massacre of innocents, and through that tragedy were forced into roles that did not sit well with their individual natures. His Duo, of whom he was so proud, had coped better than the lost Prince of Sanc, that was blatantly obvious. One had determined to rise from the ashes and extract revenge, yes, but also to live life to its fullest and to celebrate his very existence with that living. A little bit of a contradiction, was his Duo, but he was a rare and unusual boy. The other child, his world in ashes, had known nothing but ingrained lessons of honor and duty to a people he had watched butchered around him. Had no one taught the child to live? Had no one taught him to celebrate that he was alive? “Of course not. I am as much to blame as anyone you met in your life. I saw it in you, the absence of anything other than duty and I failed to point you in the direction of living again. All you could think about was wanting to bring peace, to stop the fighting. You were a Peacecraft through and through, and it was your duty to end the war. It was your duty to stop the killing, however you could for the good of all. I'm sorry boy. I failed you as much as your father failed you when he did not keep you safe and he did not teach you that there was more to life than being in service to others. I failed you when I never understood the depth of the pain that lived in you for all that had been lost, and I missed the signs that were there that would have told me what you were planning until it was too late. In my defense, there was much that I could not have known. I never realized that there was the potential for the Zero System to push any of you to those extremes. It was far worse than the Tallgeese prototype. I never knew that Kushrenada had devised the Epyon system and I still do not know exactly what that beast was meant to accomplish. I have acquired partial plans for the system and the suit, but it is far more than I can understand with so little hard copy on it. I know now to my shame that you intended to die and that there was no one to teach you to live.” //This is killing time, but that is about all it is doing. I have made my decision, and it is time that I acted on it.// He left the privacy of his cabin, stalking the halls of the great ship. There were few crew in the halls and rooms he passed through, most active with the preparations he had ordered be made. Those he met nodded briefly to him and returned to their labors, aware that they were tight for time if they were to make a difference in the drama to be played out in the vast reaches of space. He hitched a ride on the glide rail, smoothly gliding through the length of the vessel and finally stepped into the bridge. His crew largely ignored him beyond a quick look and then their attention focused on their duties of keeping the ship running. He had a good crew. The best of the Sweepers served on the Peacemission, many of them survivors of the Peacemillion and all dedicated to preserving peace. The Sweepers had made some decisions in the years since the wars and he was pleased that the Sweeper Council had passed the resolutions he and selected others had devised for the greater good of Sweeper, Colonist and Terran alike. True, there had been objections, many in fact. There were those who wished no actions to be taken, that the Sweepers would remain the gypsies of the space lanes. Enough of them shared a vision of the future, where there was peace and many opportunities for trade, not just war salvage. The Peacemillion and the Peacemission had originally been intended for space exploration, to take the Sweepers beyond the asteroid belt, out into the depths of the solar system. The Council had decided that she would serve another purpose entirely. “Contact the Dark Side and the Miss Conception. Arrange a conference call and relay when ready to my ready room.” He was only too aware of the eyes that rose to follow him as he strode across the bridge and he ignored the attention. He had too much to think on and he had made his decision. The call from that scheming bastard of a pirate could not be ignored, and if everything that Raydon said was true then Howard understood that he had no real choice. //I failed you once before, boy, by not understanding what you intended to do, and though I do not agree with the way you went about it then, I have to admit that it did produced the desired result. There is peace now and if I do not act then it is a fact that that peace may be in danger. If they continue to use you to pull that girls string's then the entire thing will come crashing down into ruin.// ******************* “We have a problem, my friend. A problem that I had hoped to be able to deal with without involving your Sweepers, but there are two of your ships heading directly into the danger area. I have warned them and they have not turned their course. Forgive me but I dare not be more explicit about the cause.” He had grown to be a devastatingly attractive man, Howard thought. He could still see the young man who had found him on that long ago day in that more mature face that looked out at him from the view screen. It had been some years since he had met with Raydon face to face and the man seemed not to have aged much in that time. He still looked to be barely in his thirties though he had known the man for twenty years and he had been no teenager when first they had met. “What is happening and where?” “Within a few hours the ESUN will declare war on the Raiders, using as an excuse to justify their actions the massacre of the Martian Terra Forming team. I can assure you that it is not my people who will execute this atrocity. I ask that you use your influence to have the captains of the ships heading into the vicinity of the Martian Sphere turn their course away from Mars, or at the least to delay their arrival there by some three days. The danger of reprisal from the attacking forces should be over by then.” ********************* That entire speech had, of course, been designed to ensure that his curiosity had been well aroused and he had sent a prompt and curtly worded response to Station One, using the secured direct channel that Raydon had used for his message. With the current position of the Peacemission the radio delay from send station to receive station was only ten minutes or so on a standard beam and he had ordered the communications be sent via direct high frequency beam. The response to his message had come in promptly, after barely thirty minutes using the same high speed frequency. No doubt the boy had been waiting for him to respond and had not delayed in sending back the very carefully worded and staged response. //Hooked me like a fish, of course. He was always good at that, knowing what bait would best hook his catch. He knew how to play his catch too. Gave me just enough line to ensure I was firmly on the hook and then reeled me in.// ********************** “My friend, believe me when I say that you do not want to get involved in this struggle I will be having with the ESUN. There are certain members of the Earth Sphere Council who have their hands deeply mired in some very bloody muck and the Raiders have been seen as their perfect scapegoats. As of this time as Raiders we no longer exist. I have no option but to initiate the matter of our independence from the Earth Sphere Nation as I have every intention of opposing this faction with every resource that I can muster. My old family features in this idiocy about to make itself known to the entire Earth Sphere and you know their penchant for overkill. It is time to let them know that they can take their factions and their infighting and crawl into the sewer pit that best serves their nature. When they see me they will know just what they will be facing. I had to stop hiding eventually.” Raydon had been seated before a wall that was a mass of viewing screens. Each screen running footage in an always changing sequence that disturbed the eye. His hands were resting before him on the desk in an old gesture that Howard knew so well from past years when he had taken Raydon under his wing and given him a new life among the Sweepers. The fingers of his right hand had rested over the back of his left hand, two fingers curled out of sight. Howard noted that in the background, directly over Raydon's right shoulder one of those screens was displaying in sequence the schematics of the Leo mobile suits. His eyes had fastened on the folded hands of the man and the number of fingers on display then flicked up to the screens and sought the one screen Raydon wanted him to watch. There were six screens that were displaying footage of various battles from the One Year War and the Barton Incursion. Each was marked with a date and time in the lower left corner and the screen that Raydon had indicated with the placement of his hands and fingers drew Howard's attention and a flash of anger. Dekim Barton had come very close to succeeding with his ambitions for the Earth Sphere and Howard could not think of a worse candidate to rule than the bitter old man who had so much blood on his hands. He recognized a replay of file footage of the final battle of the Barton Incursion to take place on Earth. His attention had been drawn from the man speaking to the screen and to watching as the mobile suit battle played out. He watched the massive blue and white suit, so clearly based on his original Tallgeese design though more slender and streamlined than his behemoth of a suit had been. He noted the white suit that had battled alongside it and he recognized it as the suit piloted by Lucrezia Noin. He watched the Tallgeese III blast straight up into the air and practically dance to avoid the mass of fire power directed against it, and he was struck once again by the similarities of the suit to its forerunner and to the fighting style that he had only ever seen from one man. “What is happening on Mars is an atrocity and I will do my utmost to ensure that it does not go as they plan. I have ships en route to Mars to offer aid, though they will be pushed to make the scene in time and I am doing my best to delay the Wellington's arrival. The people on Mars have a right to the protection that I can offer to them as some of them are citizens of Station One and with this action the ESUN has clearly made it plain how little their peoples lives are worth. Understand that I will not have the matter escalate into war if I can possibly avoid it. I have no interest in war and I owe it to a mutual acquaintance that we share to ensure that the peace is kept. The package that you sought after the One Year War was picked up by one of my ships, and I would like to return it to Station One if at all possible. It was a little damaged in the handling and while its value to most people is negligible, to me it is priceless and could do with a secure home. It was unfortunate that I had the misfortune to lose it soon after it was repaired, due to circumstances at the time. The Peace needs for this atrocity on Mars to be kept as quiet as possible, but I do not believe that the lives of more than two thousand people are accounted as being worth nothing. If I should succeed with the rescue of the colony and they prove to be amenable to the suggestion, I will offer sanctuary to those who survive. I have no idea where you are currently located, my friend, and I have made the best plans that I could to see the matter end as peaceably as possible, but I need you to manage your ships.” The battling mobile suits danced on the screen, engaging and disengaging, dancing and not once dealing a death blow and his eyes widened as for a split second the screen flickered and he was watching a face he had thought long dead. That style that he had thought so familiar and had discounted as most likely explained as being a student trained by the original user, had indeed been familiar. That face, there for only a second and then gone in renewed scenes of combat removed all doubt. He watched as Lucrezia Noin's face appeared, some comments appeared to be exchanged over sealed channels and the battle was then displayed from the vantage of cameras set somewhere above the building near the combat zone. The first of the Gundams arrived, heraldin g the death knell of Barton's bid for power. “You should be aware, as I understand you know her personally, that the Vice Foreign Minister may suffer repercussions over the assault on Mars. It was largely her pet project and she has kept tabs on the progress of the colony. My family likes to intimidate and control people and using what happens on Mars against those involved in the project will certainly not be beyond them. I am sure that you will understand the implications and why I am not going to take this quietly. Talk to your people, Howard.” ******************** He was alive. Against all possibility after the extent of the explosion on the Libra, he had survived. If he was to believe Raydon and that renegade had never needed to lie, then Milliardo Peacecraft, Zechs Marquise, was alive and the cause for an incident on Mars that would produce thousands of deaths. The boy was cursed. He could so clearly remember every word and nuance in the conversation. The package that was a survivor against all odds, the warning that Relena was under the thumb of players using her brother as a pawn against her. The family that was Romefeller dabbling in power games once again. //You must have hurt, boy. You could not have walked away from that without knowing what pain was, but knowing you, you gave no thought to your own survival. You were intending to die when you made the choice to go through with your plan. A necessary casualty to bring about the Peace. Two sides of the same coin, you and Kushrenada. Two sides of the same coin.// He settled into his chair, secure in the solitude of his ready room, awaiting confirmation of his instructions. The message would be relayed to the ships nearing Mars and there would be little in the way of radio delay considering his proximity to both vessels. With the boosters on the Peacemission he could speak to his fellow Sweepers and know that they heard his words in seconds. He would need to wait a few more seconds for their responses to what he had to say, but they all were accustomed to this form of delayed communications and they would take any delays as precious time in which to consider their next words carefully. Twenty years ago he had met a dark haired young man who had known who he was and where he was and that he would not kill him on sight for that very knowledge. He had been on the run from Romefeller after destroying what he had thought were all of the plans for the Tallgeese and the experimental operating interface a pilot would use to control the suit. He had been very unpopular with Romefeller and the Alliance, but a young man had tracked him down seemingly with little trouble. Raydon. The man had known too much about him and he had uttered in those first few seconds the few words that were guaranteed to get help from him with few questions asked. As it stood, he had learned much of Raydon's past in the intervening years, but he did not know it all. There had been much that the man had not told him that very well could be learned in the near future if Raydon challenged Romefeller. * “You are Howard.” it had not been a question, but a statement. “My name is Raydon and I am running from Romefeller.” * A short, sharp beep and he flicked a finger over the com toggle. “The Captains of the Miss Conception and the Dark Side are on line, Sir.” “Plot an intercept course with the ESUN Wellington and initiate that course at full speed and under stealth mode.”
Just a quick note to remind the reader that this is
AU and not totally canon. I only have access to the DVD's, not to
any manga or official books etc.
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