27-Oct-2004
Title: Tetractys: Da'ath, IV
Author: Sol 1056
Rating: R for violence and language, some adult situations
Pairings (currently): 1+R, 1+2+3, 2x3x2, 4x5xM
Disclaimer: no, don't own 'em... duh.
Archived: sweetlysour and gwaddiction
Critiques: always welcome, natch!
Notes: Many thanks to everyone reading/reviewing who has NOT been scared away by the pairings. These past chapters have been more genfic, but the emotional may come back into play in the next section, with additional developments. Anyway. Onward and... downward?
Week Twenty
The shuttle's storage doors slid open, revealing a massive bay, lit only by warning lights during its down hours. A few figures moved around a shuttle at the end of the row, unloading and refueling.
Meiran blinked a few times to force her eyes to adjust to the light, and gritted her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering. The rustle behind her was slight, but enough to let her know Quatre was ready.
"Clear," she said, but the word came out more as a croak. She swallowed, unable to get saliva down her frozen throat, and pointed with a finger.
Quatre appeared in the shaft of light, Wufei across his shoulder. Blood soaked both their flight suits. Quatre didn't have the strength to carry Wufei any other way, though the position of Wufei's gut against his shoulder could hardly be helping the wound in Wufei's side.
Meiran hopped down from the shuttle storage, swaying a little as she stood up. The blood was rushing in her ears; the room spun around her and she instinctively put a hand to her forehead. Her fingers came away sticky. She helped Quatre down as best she could, noting that his left leg was unable to take much weight. It probably stiffened from the cramped hiding quarters, too, she cursed.
"Okay," Meiran said, shifting to get Quatre's arm around her, and taking some of his weight.
He groaned when she bumped his injured thigh, and she shushed him with a soft pat on his chest. Meiran jerked her head towards the exit, a hundred feet away.
They clung to the shadows behind the shuttles, moving so slowly even the shuffle of their footsteps were lost in the hangar's endless echoes. The distant workers made enough noise to cover them.
Meiran left Quatre and Wufei in a corner, and snuck to the door, checking it out. No guards were stationed, and she half-feared it was a trap. A smaller part of her dared to hope they could reach some kind of hiding place. The colonial resistance was broken and scattered; the fight was over. Now, her mind was focused only on her partners. Wufei and Quatre needed a doctor, and they all needed water, food, rest... . She had no idea what they would do, then. Meiran straightened up, and turned to signal to Quatre.
She found a gun pressed against her forehead.
"Please," Meiran managed to choke out. "Don't shoot."
"Who are... " The woman's voice trailed off, and the gun was lowered.
Meiran raised her eyes to see a dark-skinned woman with jet-black hair, pulled in a low ponytail. The woman stared at Meiran's face, taking in the blood caked down the cheek and neck, the torn flight suit. The woman sniffed, and Meiran knew she had to reek of blood, sweat, dirt, and fuel.
"What are you?" The woman's gaze darted around the shuttle bay and back to Meiran, pining her in place.
"A friend of Lena's." Meiran repeated the code words she'd been given. She imagined crossing her fingers for hope like Zhiyi had taught her.
"Are you alone?"
"No. There're three of us," and Meiran had to fight to keep the tremor from her voice. This was it. She'd either found an ally, or condemned them all. A desperate battle; a dangerous escape; and barely hanging on for thirty-two hours in the hold of a shuttle...
The woman raised a communications device to her face, and hit a button. "Seventeen, come in," she said.
The device crackled. "Seventeen, copy you."
"I think we've found the pilots," the woman replied.
Week Twenty-One
Duo pulled the blanket tighter, and tried to press up closer to Heero. Trowa was asleep, curled in a ball against Heero's chest; Heero had woken from a bad dream only a few minutes before. Duo's glove was heavy, but it seemed the gesture mattered more than whether the fireproof glove was rough and scratchy. Despite the fact that Heero had slipped back into sleep, Duo continued to run his fingers through Heero's hair, soothing him.
In the distance, the fires blazed up on the hillside, and Duo sighed. It had been a beautiful city, shining architecture from a thousand years, ancient to modern, blending together in its own inimitable way. The sea reached into the city, splitting neighborhoods and small villages into pockets, curving its embrace around a hundred archipelagos.
And now, after five nights of fighting, the city was crumbling before the Foundation invasion. But the citizens held on, fighting tooth and nail among the ruins of their once-proud avenues and homes.
The three Gundams had taken on seventeen Long, two dozen Ma, ten Go, and over thirty Yang. At Deathscythe Hell's feet, the citizens had fought and died and screamed their freedom with their last breaths.
He felt ill, thinking of it.
The soldiers - no, the citizens' - faces were gaunt, tortured. They were eating rats in the sewers and not a dog could be found in the countryside. What they'd not been able to hide from the Foundation, they'd had to burn, for fear of the enemy using any supplies against them.
The Gundams had fought alongside the soldiers, in the streets, pushing forward and falling back, a deadly two-step. Only when the last mobile suit was destroyed did General Randt order the Gundams away from the city to await further orders. There was too much risk of friendly fire from the massive machines when soldiers were fighting hand-to-hand in alleyways and burnt-out storefronts.
When I was a child, Duo mused, remembering snippets from Sister Helen's teaching. I thought as a child and played as a child, but then I became a man, and put away childish things...
I never wanted to commit mass murder. I never wanted to wipe humanity from the face of the earth, but death has always followed me.
He looked down at Heero's sleeping face, the frown-lines faded into brief innocence. Trowa murmured something inaudible, tucking up closer to Heero; his expression was peaceful. Trowa had once said that his fondest dreams were of the savannah, but the only time they'd ever been there was to eradicate a den of rebels for Treize. Trowa had never spoken of those dreams again.
Duo leaned his cheek on his knees, and shivered. He thought of Hil, and the sadness in her eyes when she'd finally realized he was not her Duo, and would never be. He wondered what might have been, and knew that there were some futures he couldn't bear to see. He didn't want to have hope and lose it, one more time.
Heero shifted, moving away from his hand, and Duo froze. Gently he lifted his hand away, and stared down at his teammates. Those two had always had a rapport that shut him out; a way to communicate that required no jokes, no gestures, no superfluous words. He sighed, and stared up at the city above them, in the distance.
Another hour, and his watch would be done. He would flip a mental coin and wake one of the two, and take his turn sleeping. He would dream of peach pie and cream in his coffee, he knew, and Duo shook his head at himself. Better to stay awake and watch the distant fires, than fall asleep and be tormented with one more thing he couldn't keep.
It was six hours later that he came out of his trance state to see a deer in the clearing. The sky was a tempered sapphire, the odd twilight of late morning so near the Artic Circle. Duo held his breath, and the deer - a young doe, he thought - stepped carefully across the broken twigs littering the forest floor. One branch snapped, and the doe froze, seeing Duo.
For a long moment they stared at each other, and Duo thought of venison steak, venison stew, venison sausage... and then he thought of the country's people, killing their pet dogs only to go without so their children could eat. In that one moment, Duo stared at the deer's liquid brown eyes, seeing the twitch of an ear, and the bare stubs of brown horns. The tail flicked, and Duo sighed. He stamped one foot.
The deer turned, leapt, and was gone with a flash of white tail.
"Sorry," Duo said, to his sleeping companions. "Normally I'd cook you breakfast... but I just suddenly had this thought, even the deer's fighting, in its own way, and I guess... "
He didn't really have an explanation.
Week Twenty-Two
Zhiyi woke up when her bedroom door opened and closed. The footsteps were hesitant, and no light came on. Suspicious, she sat up.
"Who's there?"
"Just me," came Mariemaia's whisper. "Please don't yell for the guards."
Zhiyi considered that. Other than drugging her - which had stopped after that day in the office, although Zhiyi continued to play the happy fool when not alone with Mariemaia - the woman hadn't done anything to hurt her. She couldn't think of any harm in returning that small kindness with one of her own.
"Shall I turn on a light?" Zhiyi reached out for the little lamp on the bedside table.
"Please don't," came the reply. "I just wanted to sit here, if you don't mind. You can... you can go back to sleep, if you want."
"You should be sleeping, too," Zhiyi whispered, feeling sorry for the woman.
"I couldn't." There was a rustle of fabric in the dark room, and the creak of a chair, followed by a soft chuckle that sounded bitter. "I must be pitiful to you, if a prisoner is the first company I seek when I don't want to be alone."
"You could go see that guy," Zhiyi offered, testing. She didn´t like Alexander; she'd decided Aunt Doro's favorite insult of being 'a real piece of work' fit him perfectly. "The one who's your fiancé or something."
"More like my keeper," Mariemaia sighed. "He'd just tell me I'm being silly... do you think I'm being silly?"
"I think it's good to want peace," Zhiyi said, picking her way carefully through her words.
"Hard to believe, I was two years younger than you when I took over the world." Mariemaia snorted. "How old do you think I look?"
"Old," Zhiyi promptly said, and just as quickly regretted it. "I meant—"
"No. I guess it fits. I'm sixteen and I'm old," Mariemaia said, in a pensive tone. "I feel ancient... and sad, too."
"I'm sorry."
"No, don't be." Fabric rustled again; perhaps from a shrug. "Just... I was raised with this idea that I was the one who'd unite the world, and run the show. And then I—well, my grandfather did, but I was the one at the head of the armies. But everyone cheered and threw flowers... doesn't that mean they loved me?" Her voice was wistful.
"My mommy didn't throw flowers," Zhiyi reminded her.
"True." Mariemaia didn't sound insulted. "I guess I figured five women not liking me didn't make much difference if the rest of the world loved me... "
"Throwing flowers doesn't mean people love you," Zhiyi retorted, then grimaced. She didn't want to upset Mariemaia, and really she only felt sadness, hearing the lonely words. "Maybe... people were scared of what you'd do to them."
"Are you?"
Zhiyi didn't have an answer for that. She shrugged, and after a long pause, Mariemaia continued.
"I've never really had someone who will talk back to me. I never realized until I met that woman... Lady Une?"
Zhiyi flinched.
"She looked me in the eye and told me that my father would be ashamed of me. Horrified, she said." Mariemaia fell silent, and for a long moment there was no sound in the room but two sets of steady breathing. "She was in love with my father, I think. I wish I'd met him."
"My mother talks about your father, sometimes," Zhiyi said. "But not that often. Just when she's... when she's really sad, and not sure... I mean," Zhiyi broke off, uncertain whether it would be okay to admit that sometimes she'd overheard her mother expressing doubts about the Gundams' war. "She says he was a tall man, handsome, charit... charsi... charismatic. She says he was an excellent swordsman, and an honorable man."
Mariemaia didn't say anything, but Zhiyi imagined she could feel Mariemaia was leaning forward, listening intently.
"Once when I was really little she was crying to Auntie Lena about a sword fight, and that it was luck not skill... " Zhiyi tried to remember the words she'd heard, echoing down the ship's bowels while she snuck into the galley trying to steal a cookie. "Mommy thought... she thought Treize was... she said she often thought he should've killed her, not the other way around."
"Oh." Mariemaia sounded confused.
"Yeah." Zhiyi shrugged, not really clear about it, either. "My mommy really admired Treize, that's what Aunt Doro told me. Aunt Doro said he was a true warrior, willing to die for what he believed in."
"What did he believe in?"
"I don't know," Zhiyi whispered. "Aunt Doro knew Treize, growing up. She said he was very ambitious, but his goals were always his own."
Mariemaia's snort sounded more like a sob. "No wonder Lady Une said my father wouldn't acknowledge me as his daughter. She said all I've done is be a pawn." She sighed. "I'm sorry... Lady Une was a friend of yours, wasn't she... "
"One of my aunts," Zhiyi replied. She tried to stir up hate against Mariemaia, but couldn't. She wasn't sure why, and she hoped her Aunt Une would forgive her.
"I got so mad at her, and when Alexander said she had to be an example, I agreed... but it didn't seem real," Mariemaia whispered. "Like... I kept thinking when it was done, she'd still be there and I could ask her more about my father. What he was like, did he watch any movies, did he ever dance, what was his favorite color, did he laugh, did he... and then, then, it was over and I realized... " She sniffled, and the chair springs creaked again. "I'm sorry. I didn't intend to show up here and sound like a weakling."
"Real warriors aren't afraid to be weak," Zhiyi said, softly. "My uncle Quatre told me that. We can cry because we know what it's like to really feel."
"I don't think I'm much of a warrior," Mariemaia said. "But thank you for the words." She paused, and the silence felt heavy on Zhiyi's shoulders. "No, I am a pawn, and I am surrounded by people who fear me. I always thought they loved me, but they must not, if they're willing to die to be free of me... "
"Yeah," Zhiyi said, because it was true.
"I suppose I should let you sleep," Mariemaia said. Fabric shifted, brushing against carpet, and then light footsteps headed towards the door. The knob clicked, but the door didn't open. "Zhiyi, could I ask you a question?"
"I guess."
"Why do people choose freedom over peace, if they know it will only lead to war and death?"
"I don't know," Zhiyi admitted. "I'm just a kid. But my mommy told me once that what's important isn't what you get, but that you got to choose."
"I see." Mariemaia sighed. "Good night, Zhiyi."
Week Twenty-Three
Lena came to her feet when Prime Minister Cole entered her bedroom at dawn, without knocking, and with four guards. Mildly annoyed, she tugged her sleeping shirt down, and suppressed the urge to check her reflection in the mirror behind the men.
"Is something happening?" She glanced over at her flight suit, and calculated the time it'd take her to get dressed and get to Talon.
"Your majesty," Cole said, in a formal tone he rarely used. He bowed low, and waved his hand towards Carrie, who was pouring Lena's morning tea. "Arrest her, gentlemen."
"What?" Lena spun to see the guards approaching Carrie. The girl didn't move except for her eyes, which darted back and forth between Lena and Cole. Lena turned back to Cole. "What? On what grounds?"
"Giving information to the enemy," Cole said, and lowered his chin. "We received word two days ago through the network, from Deathscythe Hell, with a time and place to watch. I don't know how he got the information up in Norway, but... I figured it couldn't hurt to send two of my men, just in case. And... " He gestured towards Carrie. "That traitor was speaking with a man down in the village, at the time and place Deathscythe Hell indicated. My men listened, while she told the man of our plans and the status of the castle's defense. One of my men followed her back, and the other followed the man she spoke to."
Carrie was shaking, and the tea spilled in her hands. She looked away from Lena's stunned expression. One guard took the pot and the cup, and the other gently pulled Carrie's hands behind her. The handcuffs clinked loudly in the large room.
"That man met with one other person in the town, and then hiked into the woods, where he had a broadcast station set up. My man watched long enough to determine the man planned to broadcast something. Before that could happen, my man shot the spy."
Carrie's legs gave out. She sank to the floor with a low moan.
"The spy is now dead," Cole announced. "But we can't be certain that the information was not broadcast in some way. My guards have arrested and are interrogating the person visited by the spy." He bowed again. "I'm terribly sorry, your majesty. My man woke me the minute he got back, and we paused only long enough to obtain a formal letter of arrest on grounds of treason." Cole dug out a paper from his back pocket, and handed it to Lena.
She stared down at the paper; barely able to comprehend the scribbled lines she was seeing. The writing was lopsided and hasty, but worded properly, and signed by three members of the House of Commons stating they had heard the accusations by the witness.
"Carrie," Lena whispered, turning to the girl still slumped on the floor. "Why... how... say something, damn it!"
"I'm sorry," Carrie murmured, her forehead against the stone. One of the guards pulled her upright, and then to her feet, but she still didn't look at Lena. "My brother... he's an officer with the Foundation. I got a note from him last week, saying he wanted to make sure I was okay, and when I met him, he said... he said... " Tears caught in her eyelashes. "I made him promise you wouldn't be hurt, and I didn't tell him where the Gundams are, I swear."
"Because you don't know," Lena retorted. Only the pilots knew that information. Anger, relief, regret, betrayal, fear; the emotions were running through her as fast as she could put a name to them. "I trusted you, Carrie. We all did."
"I know, but... he's family, Lena," Carrie replied.
"You lost the right to call me that," Lena snapped. She grabbed a pen from the bedside table and signed her full name, suddenly hating the regal swoop as she finished with 'peacecraft'. She shoved the paper towards Cole and tried to speak steadily. "What do you intend to do with her?"
"Execution," Cole said, simply. He hesitated, noting the way Lena's hand shook, and he took the paper, folding it up before tucking it away. "Unless you wish to pardon or suggest an alternative."
I don't want any more deaths on my head, Lena thought. At the same time, if the secret capital city's location had been jeopardized, too many people were at risk. The fortress would be attacked, and the village below would be decimated. She could not afford to ignore that Carrie had put so many lives at risk for the sake of appeasing an enemy-brother.
"I have no alternatives," Lena said. "And I do not wish to pardon a traitor."
Carrie sobbed, but Lena shut her ears and mind from hearing any of the girl's mumbled apologies. The guards led Carrie from the room, Cole following in their wake.
Lena remained rooted to the spot for a long time, still trying to comprehend the enormity of what had just happened.
"I can't forgive," she told the empty room, "or be forgiven."
Week Twenty-Four
The young guard accepted the shovel and gasmask, and followed his squadron into the back of the truck. He was nineteen, and had just signed up for officer candidate school six months before. His recruiter had promised him that being an officer in the Foundation was a sterling accomplishment that would help him chart a career in the military or after it.
He didn't feel very sterling, knowing what he was facing.
When the truck stopped, he was one of the first out. Despite the tight mask on his face, his eyes watered at the sight before him.
"Fred, buck up," his officer said, clapping him on the shoulder. Larry's voice sounded odd, coming through the in-mask comm. system. He waved at the rest of the group. "Groups of four, and let's get this done fast, men. Much longer and we're looking at... " Larry looked around them, and grimaced. "Well, a lot worse than right now."
A soldier nearby slammed his shovel into the nearest pile. It clunked hollowly against the frozen stack. "It's all solid, Sarge."
"Pickax," Larry ordered. Two men with axes stepped forward and began hacking at the bodies.
Fred stared down at his shovel, and followed three of his buddies over to a stretch down near a stand of trees. The bodies weren't as high here, and - he noted, with almost clinical detachment - they were younger.
"Come on, Fred, stop gawking," Mike chided. "Just... don't think of them, okay? They're gone. Nothing you do now can hurt them."
"Yeah," Fred whispered. He repeated the words to himself: nothing can hurt them, nothing can hurt them, nothing can hurt them.
It stopped working when he got to two bodies, a little away from the rest. They were facing the base, only a few feet past the broken hole in the fence. Fred started to pry one up with the shovel, and stopped. It was a boy, maybe his age. Unbidden, he sank down to brush at the boy's hair with a gloved hand. The boy looked like his little brother, but Fred would kill anyone who ever put such a rictus of pain on Joel's face.
"The gas," Mike said, behind him. "They didn't suffer long. Come on, man. Let's get this over with."
They did suffer, Fred thought, his gaze traveling across the boy's body down the frozen arm, encased in a frost-laden sweatshirt. The boy's hand was clasped tightly in another hand: that of a teenage girl, curled up, her body frozen in her last spasms of pain. The gas ate them from the inside out; Fred recalled his Sarge's words when handing out gas masks.
The gas will linger in the area for up to six weeks. Possibly longer. When we're done, don't go back. It's a no man's land, now.
Fred stared at the two bodies, locked in death.
He leaned back, turning his head to look across the field. All around the perimeter of the base, the fence ran, dividing the military from the broad open plains. Two hundred miles to the east lay the great Mississippi; a thousand miles or so west were the mountains. The winter sky above him was a cerulean bowl, stretching broad and cloudless over the deaths of eighty thousand people.
There had been no fighting. Not a single Foundation soldier had been injured. The command had come, and Fred had watched with his brethren while the unarmed protestors tore down the fence and rushed in from all sides. And then, in a burst of glorious yellows and oranges, they had fallen, screaming, tearing at their guts, clawing at the air.
Two kids, their hands clasped.
"... Fred," Mike's voice said, from a long way away.
Two kids.
"Fred," Mike said, again.
Two, among eighty thousand.
"Fred!"
Fred blinked, gagging. He reached for his gasmask. He was going to be ill, violently ill. He fought against the hands restraining him.
"Calm down! You can't remove that, man," Mike was shouting.
"Kids," Fred moaned, and the bile rose in his throat.
"Get him out of here," Mike ordered.
Fred twisted in the arms that carried him away, trying to see the bodies stretched out in an endless line. A new fence, of skulls and flesh and clothes and lives and souls, surrounding the ten-square mile he'd called his home for the last year. So many lives, so many.
He wished he'd at least had a chance to find out the kids' names. Perhaps then he'd know for whom he was truly crying.
Week Twenty-Five
Cat let Heavyarms drop down below the flight deck, barely noting the pattern of her contrails. It was late dusk, and the waters were turning steel gray along her port side. The land angled, coming around to approach the islands of Venice.
There was nothing there.
In the distance, Cat reminded herself, there were four hundred thousand troops marching across the northern part of the Italian State. They'd passed Milan, angling down towards Florence. The occupation was touch-and-go; the supply trains had been disrupted by resistance behind the lines. But now the Foundation was bringing in their mobile suits; Hil and Doro had radioed for help.
I wish my Trowa were here, Cat thought.
She twisted the throttle-bars, finally comfortable with the Long design modifications after days in the cockpit. Ten years in the cockpit, she thought, and grinned bitterly. She would be buried in the cockpit, probably. A small box, not much larger than her; barely enough room to stand up in.
I think I'd rather be cremated, she decided. Spread my ashes, and for once I would be free to take up as much room as I like.
The coastline was once a string of pearls at dusk, she recalled. Villages and houses, leading to peaks of city skyscrapers, reflections dancing on the dark waters: pinpricks of light to show the way. But now she followed a coastline of smoking ruins, massed rubble, and the only movement below were that of trucks carrying bodies to be dumped in mass graves.
Cat wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
This isn't the future I wanted, she told herself, and the future I wanted will never be possible again. She remembered Hil, repeating Duo's words, and wondered what she'd bet, if she had the future sitting in the palm of her hand. With a flick of her wrist, she could roll the die...
She twisted the throttle, giving Heavyarms more power, and turned west to head for the front lines.
There is no victory, she told herself. There is only death, and it comes now or later, peaceful or violent, quick or slow. There is only destruction. There is no end. We will fight, and kill, and eventually we, too, will die, and there's no reason or purpose for such slaughter.
At what point, she wondered, do we stop and say the price is too high?
She thought of the Trowa she'd known, the young man she'd adopted as her brother. She'd tried to protect him, cherish him, let him know he had a home, despite his insistence that he had a duty. There was nothing she could do to sway him from his mission, and she'd been a million miles away when he'd sacrificed himself to protect another pilot. His entire life, she'd realized, was a sacrifice; to die any other way would have been a contradiction to everything he was.
But did he believe in it? She didn't know.
The land began to rise, and she adjusted her path, squinting against the setting sun. The sunset was streaked from smoke on the battlefields, turning the sky lurid orange and crimson.
A bloody world.
She radioed Doro and Hil with her coded location and estimated time, but almost immediately found herself turning north-west. The front was a hundred miles towards the south, but the thick of the Foundation's forces were back away from the leading squadrons. There would be where she'd find the mobile suits. There would be where she could do the most damage.
Hil's radioed response went unanswered. Cat deleted the message and ignored the blinking readout on the lower screen. In the distance, just a pinprick on the horizon, she could see towering columns of mobile suits, moving across the land. Flames belched from the mecha, scorching everything in their path.
That would be her destination, her funeral pyre.
"Cat!"
The scream came as suddenly as the slam against Heavyarms. Cat was thrown forward. Her head hit the front screen and she cried out. A second later she opened her eyes to see Deathscythe's chest, cockpit against her view-point. Deathscythe was carrying Heavyarms bodily, backwards, away from the enemy's territory. Cat realized Hil was still screaming.
"You bloody fucking fool! If brains were gasoline, you wouldn't have enough to run a piss ant's go-kart around the inside of a donut!" Hil's face was on Cat's side screen. She was on her feet in the cockpit, glaring at the screen while she screamed at the top of her lungs. "You humped-back, club-footed, bowlegged, waste of a pilot, what the fuck are you smoking?"
Cat blinked, a bit astonished at the variety in Hil's swearing.
"Where the fuck is Cat, and who the fuck is this cerebrally-deluded pilot with a head full of misfiring suicidal synapses!"
"Uh... "
"I don't want to hear it!" Hil slammed her fists on the console; the camera jumped, making her image wiggle slightly. Hil shoved her face right against the camera, until her blue eyes were all that Cat could see. "You were going to land in the middle of them and take them out and you with them! Don't lie! I see your fucking systems - it's a goddamned Christmas tree in there!"
"A what?" Cat stared down at the console, stunned to notice the single blinking red light amongst green, blue, and yellow. That one red light: the self-destruct processes. Cat gaped, and looked at Hil, as her thoughts came rushing back. "Hil, let me go."
"Like hell I will, you scrawny-assed, clueless, über-incompetent fuckwit! You're coming back with me - Doro's counting on us, and that means US as in YOU and ME and if I could I would punch you right now and don't you ever try that again, goddamnit—" Hil broke down in tears, sobbing helplessly, and pounded her fist on the console again. "Don't, please. Cat, I got the signal from Heavyarms and I kept thinking no, but you were heading away and I thought... " Hil's words disintegrated into indistinct sobs.
"Hil," Cat said, stunned. She shook herself, and wiped her eyes again. "There's no way to end this—"
"Maybe not!" Hil shot up again, her anger no less fierce for the tears pouring down her face. "But if you die, there won't be a way, ever! We can't win without you!"
"There's no way to win," Cat repeated, helplessly, but let Deathscythe carry her along. Another minute, and Hil broke away, letting Heavyarms fall away and pull level with the ground, aiming for the thick of battle.
"Bloody hell, it's about—" Doro grunted, and beam sabers clashed on the ground. "—fucking time, you two." An flame-thrower's explosion rocked the three Gundams as they settled down back-to-back. "You go shoe shopping or something?"
"Just a friendly chat," Hil said, and her viewscreen went black.
Cat raised the double gatling guns, and set her sights on sixteen Yang, approaching from the east. Pulling up, she gritted her teeth while Heavyarms shook with the force of the rounds. The Yang exploded, falling sideways and back. More appeared over the crest, marching on the burning shells of their comrades.
There is no victory, Cat thought, and the miles of Yang coming at her was simply more proof. Her brother had been right. Sacrifice was the only end of the road she'd chosen.
Week Twenty-Six
Zhiyi listened at the door, her gaze watchful on the empty hallway. Mariemaia had come down with some kind of flu, and had been listless and pale for several days. She'd taken to wandering the hallways at all times of the day and night, and Zhiyi found herself worried about the older girl.
She's just a girl, too, Zhiyi thought, and it was a comfort, but it made her fearful. Mariemaia had seemed so elegant, so powerful, and now she was nothing more than a shadow that whispered as she paced the hallways, hugging herself tightly.
"... Without someone at the head," a man's voice shouted. "Figure something out. I don't know, electro-shock therapy or something, but it's the only way we'll end this, and she's not cooperating!"
Zhiyi scowled. She didn't like Alexander, still, but she'd noticed his soliticious respect for Mariemaia over the past week or two, and she appreciated it on Mariemaia's behalf, even if the girl rarely seemed to notice.
The door gave way under Zhiyi's weight, and swung open a crack. She held her breath, and peered through the opening. She could see Alexander standing behind Doctor Darrow. One of the generals was sitting at the table next to Darrow; there were a bunch of stars on the shoulder of his jacket. She wondered who else might be in there, of the people she'd seen come and go over the past month... she wondered if it had been a month. Maybe longer?
"If we can find the three Gundams," another voice began. It sounded like General Jota. "Then we can use those as an example. We need a turning point, a clear victory—"
"You can't even find the damn pilots," Alexander barked. "We had word two weeks ago they're hiding on L4, but I don't see any pilots standing in front of me now, do I?"
"We've infiltrated all levels," Jota replied. He sounded defensive. "There's no sign of them. The rumor had to have been incorrect."
"Especially since there was another rumor shortly afterwards that they had been sighted on L1," added the general in Zhiyi's line of sight. She chewed her lower lip before assigning him a name based on his bald, sweating forehead: Shiny. "The rebels' network is easily confused," Shiny continued.
"All the more reason to find those Gundams," Alexander told the men. He paced away, but his voice floated back to Zhiyi's ears. "The rumors will die once we show the world that the Gundams can be beaten. People will stop seeing ghosts."
"True, your Excellency," General Shiny said. "I'll double the guards on every inspection station, and increase the mines in the colony travel rings."
"And go through the L2 debris again," Alexander replied, only slightly mollified. "With a fine-tooth comb, if you have to."
"Yes, sir," General Shiny said; he was barely able to cover a sigh. He patted at his forehead with a handkerchief.
"Doctor Darrow, have you had any luck on reproducing the gateway?" Alexander reappeared, his back to Zhiyi.
Gateway. Zhiyi studied Darrow, and filed the word away. Maybe Mariemaia would know what Alexander meant, and would actually answer on the next nocturnal visit.
"None, unfortunately," Darrow replied, sadly. "I've gone through all the notes I took, but there must have been something I wasn't told. If I had longer—"
"We don't have longer," Alexander said, shaking his head. "We've got to put a stop to this. The empire is holding together by threads, gentlemen, threads, and we stand to lose everything if we can't pull it back together!"
"Perhaps if we have the Empress—"
"She's too ill," Alexander replied, waving a hand at the unseen speaker. "Ask that quack sitting next to you. Maybe you can get him to suggest something that will work, because he keeps telling me no." Alexander glared at the person, then straightened up, turning slowly until his gaze was set on Zhiyi. "Looks like we have a mouse, gentlemen."
Zhiyi shrank backwards, but Alexander was too fast. He crossed the room in two steps and caught her by the hand.
"Come on in, Zhiyi Long," Alexander said. He tugged on her hand, almost gently, and sat her down in the empty seat next to Doctor Darrow. Alexander moved around to sit at the top of the table. "Zhiyi, right?"
"Yes." Zhiyi sat up straight, and didn't smile.
"People have been fighting and dying for you, Zhiyi, just like they have for Mariemaia," Alexander explained, with a strange smile on his face. It made Zhiyi want to slump down in her chair until she could slip away, perhaps hide under the table. "These gentlemen are the Empress's council. We're trying to figure out a way to stop the fighting."
"So you can go back to running everything," Zhiyi shot back.
Alexander looked surprised, then nodded. "We did a good job."
"My mommy wouldn't say so." Zhiyi narrowed her eyes. "And I'd bet there's a lot of people fighting right now who wouldn't say so."
"Perhaps you're right," Alexander said, sighing heavily.
The smile faded, to become a thoughtful frown. The other men around the table glanced at each other, confused, and Zhiyi waited, trying to keep from chewing on her lower lip. Marco had always told her it would make her lips chapped, and she leaned back enough to make the silver ring on the chain thump against her breastbone. Immediately she felt a little stronger.
"Mariemaia wants peace," Alexander said, and clasped his hands on the table in front of him. They were strong hands, with broad square nails, and Zhiyi watched as he raised his hands to lean his chin on them. "The Gundams have been waging war for a long time, now. Your whole life, actually. Do you think they'd stop fighting if we offered a truce?"
Zhiyi registered the subtle inference that all the fighting was due to her aunts, and pondered Alexander's question. She narrowed her eyes at him, trying to appear intimidating. "What kind of truce?"
"I can't say without discussing it with the council, but for the sake of argument, let's say... we agree that Sanq can be free."
Zhiyi shook her head. "Not good enough. The colonies don't get to talk to each other, and they should. So they're not free."
Alexander's eyebrows went up, then he regained his composure and nodded thoughtfully. "In a time of peace, you're right, they should be able to do that. And that would be enough?"
"No." Zhiyi raised her chin, and tried to think of all the times she'd listened to Aunt Doro discuss world politics with Aunt Lena while her mother watched Aunt Cat and Aunt Hil play chess. "If people want to be free, you should let them."
"I see." Alexander shook his head. "The problem, Zhiyi, is that it's not this simple. You and Mariemaia could appear on television and the net, and people would listen, but they wouldn't stop fighting. They're too caught up in it, and even if your mother and her friends agreed to a truce with Mariemaia, that wouldn't stop anything. There are thousands upon millions of people fighting it out," Alexander said, waving his hand expansively towards a map on the wall.
Zhiyi noticed it for the first time, seeing areas colored in red, and others colored in green or blue. There were more red areas... far more red areas. It looked like the world was soaked in blood, she thought, and shivered.
"Those five Gundam pilots... well, ten, however that works," he muttered in puzzled aside, "and Mariemaia, well, that's eleven people asking for a cease-fire, against eighty million who want to keep killing. There's only one way to make them stop, to make them pay attention and be willing to listen to our offers of peace."
"How?" Zhiyi watched him carefully. He seemed too pleased with something, though there was nothing in his face to show that. She couldn't put a finger on it, but the hairs on the nape of her neck were definitely standing up. She'd listen, she decided, but that was all.
"War after war," Alexander said, leaning back casually, "it's taken that one single act to bring people to their senses. To make it clear that the fighting has to stop, by showing that you're willing to end it all in one blow."
Zhiyi frowned, and inclined her head like she'd seen Aunt Lena do. It didn't mean Aunt Lena agreed; it just indicated she was listening. It always looked regal on Aunt Lena, Zhiyi thought, and was relieved when Alexander returned the nod.
"Mariemaia is too ill to speak for us, if we commit to this path." His tone was amiable, almost genteel. "You have influence with the people, as a symbol of hope, of the next generation. If you appear with Mariemaia, telling the people that we're ready to discuss terms, they'll believe you."
"Oh." Zhiyi ran through everything in her head, and stifled a sigh.
She wished for a second that Aunt Doro were with her; Aunt Doro would see the good and bad and know which path to choose. That was why no one played chess with Aunt Doro, but now it was Zhiyi staring across the board, and she didn't have her aunts there to help. She licked her lips and took a deep breath before asking her questions.
"When you say it's one single act... to end everything," Zhiyi began, "does that really work?"
"Every time," Alexander said. "Do you want me to list the history?"
"No," Zhiyi replied, trying to appear casual. "I've studied history, too."
A few of the men around the table chuckled, and Zhiyi felt like she'd won a point. Alexander grinned, good-naturedly, and for a moment she could see why Mariemaia thought the man was charming. The wide grin gave him an almost boyish look, a devil-may-care smile almost like Duo's. Zhiyi smiled back, tentatively, and considered her next question.
"What's this one single act?"
"We drop an asteroid into the pacific ocean," Alexander said.
Zhiyi frowned, trying to visualize a big rock splashing into the sea. "What will that do?"
"It will cause large waves across the world, which will hit the beaches. It's like a bomb, but it won't set anything on fire," Alexander assured her. "Natural disasters force people to act together, to protect themselves. In this case, it won't be that bad, but it will get everyone's attention."
"Oh."
Zhiyi thought about that. Asteroids could be big, or small, and really small ones were shooting stars. She knew that much; they burned up in the atmosphere. So it'd have to be a big enough asteroid that something would be left when it passed through the outer atmosphere, but not so big it would destroy a lot. And if it fell into the ocean, then that would be far better than having it fall on land and hurt people. But it'd still be impressive. She studied Alexander's face, then the generals around her, and the doctor sitting across from her. Finally she turned to Darrow, whose kind eyes were watching her closely.
"Doctor Darrow," Zhiyi said. "You do space stuff."
"Physics," he replied, smiling.
"Can you make sure the asteroid's big enough to make waves but not so big it will hurt people?"
Darrow glanced at Alexander, and back to Zhiyi. "Within some amount of accuracy, yes, I can. It's a matter of speed, and weight."
That made sense, given what Zhiyi knew of such things. "Can you make sure where it falls, too?"
"Timing is very important," Darrow said, pursing his lips. "But as long as we know the size, speed, and angle of the asteroid's approach, we should be able to time its drop-down point within a fifty-mile radius. Scientists have known that math for several hundred years, now."
"I see."
Zhiyi squared her shoulders, and thought of Mariemaia, and peace, and an end to the fighting. She thought of what she'd heard before Alexander discovered her listening. Then she thought of asteroids, and bombs, and waves slamming into the beaches across the world. Setting her jaw, she raised her chin and looked Alexander straight in the face.
"I'm not helping you," she announced.
End Part 32
(:./sol/tetra32)
