25-Jun-2005

Notes: Something new with the old... my apologies for any mistakes that were missed. My beta readers have vanished into the ether, so I'm checking things as best I can on my own...

Fealty by Hope of Dawn

Part Two

Meizer kept his word; I never found him on my doorstep again. Too bad I couldn't say the same about all the memories he'd dragged along with him. I did my best to forget about him, tried to settle back into my comfortable routine--but the things he said kept bothering me. It was like discovering a wound someplace where I couldn't see, a bone-deep stab that twinged every time I thought about it.

"You don't even know what happened to the Colonel, do you?"

Damn Meizer anyway. He'd said it, brought it all out into the open, and now it refused to go away. Against my better judgment, I found myself wondering what had happened. Had Zechs finally managed to get himself killed? It was hard to believe--for one thing, Meizer hadn't acted like Marquise was dead--but it could happen. All it would take would be one asinine stunt too many, and *splat*. No more Lightning Count.

If he wasn't dead, though...then that brought up a whole new set of questions. Meizer had said that an entire squadron of Aries had dropped in on them in Antarctica. That was some serious shit; you don't waste that kind of firepower just for a broken-down Gundam and an insubordinate colonel. Even one as spectacularly insubordinate as Zechs apparently had been. Was this another one of Romefeller's shell games? Or had Zechs really pushed Khushrenada's hand too far?

I couldn't leave it alone. Zechs had dropped me from his squad and from OZ, he'd left me to rot in that damn hospital...and now I found myself wondering if I really knew why. I spent the better part of a week chewing over all the possibilities, and ended up with nothing but a bitter taste in my mouth and a lot of unanswered questions. By the end of the second week, I was pacing around the confines of my little life without even registering what I was doing, my mind running in little hamster-wheel circles.

What if Zechs was dead?

What if...?

"Fuck it," I finally muttered one day, exasperated. That earned me a few weird looks from the other people waiting at the bus stop, but that didn't matter. I'd finally come to a decision. I didn't know what had happened to the rest of my former squad, not to mention Zechs, but I'd be damned if I was going to spend the rest of my life wondering. I didn't like being manipulated--not by the Alliance, not by Romefeller, and certainly not by Marquise. So I was damn well going to find out the truth, even if it killed me.

Of course, that left me with a big problem. Where the hell did I start?

Lacking any better ideas, I decided to try the obvious. Even OZ needed a certain amount of red tape to function. Hell, the Alliance had positively thrived on it. Personnel records, enlisted rosters...even newszine articles might give me pieces of the puzzle. While all documentation pertaining to Zechs' squad was no doubt still classified, some of the Gundam data--the stuff that had been impossible to keep from the public--had recently been declassified. How useful that information would be was debatable; no doubt it had been thoroughly censored by Romefeller's disinformation goons. But I hadn't spent over a year under Marquise's command for nothing. Maybe I could make a few connections that John Q. Public couldn't.

First, though, I had to play catch-up. I'd been playing ostrich for several months at this point, and trying to reconstruct what was actually happening with the war was no easy task. The ever-increasing amount of Alliance, OZ, and Romefeller propaganda had squeezed almost every bit of truth out of existence, covering it with a mountain of bullshit. Still....

I got myself a brand-new library card, then damn near wore the thing out in less than a week as I scavenged every newszine, datadisk, and vid they had on the war since the Sanc operation. I found out about the Arctic operation for the first time, touted by the news hounds as the first 'OZ Victory Over Colony Terrorism'. As usual, the press got everything ass-backwards. I had to resist the urge to bang my head against the nearest wall as I watched the vids. They had four Gundams, right where they wanted them--FOUR. And they still ended up with one suicide and three escapees. That wasn't a victory, that was a complete cluster fuck.

After that, the trail got muddy--really muddy. Various mentions of Khushrenada in this press release and that, but almost nothing beyond sound bites and vague political statements. The public destruction of Gundam 01 that Meizer had mentioned. Various sightings of Gundam activity, usually accompanied by large explosions. No mention of the Antarctic operation, and Marquise's name didn't show up anywhere, which didn't surprise me--but the name of Khushrenada's XO, Colonel Une, did. As the new OZ ambassador to the colonies, she was making headlines on a regular basis, even if they couldn't seem figure out whether to call her Colonel Une or Lady Anne. Reading between the lines, I wasn't sure what to think, but when I combined what I knew with a few reports on Fortress Barge...well, I'd been a part of enough shell games to know what they smelled like.

OZ hadn't totally fucked up, though--Colonel Une had actually managed to capture a couple of pilots and their associated Gundams. It had been big news, with splashy vidcasts and front page headlines, pictures and denouncements by the colonies as they tried to save their necks.  OZ's follow-up was appallingly stupid, though. I couldn't believe it when I first saw the footage--I had to watch the newscast two or three times before it sank in. OZ had finally captured an intact Gundam, and what did they do? They didn't study it, press it into service, or even take it apart to reuse the components. They just blew it to bits, gundanium and all. First Gundam 01, now 02--the most advanced Mobile Suits ever made, Gundams that our men had bled and died to find, and they went and just turned them into so much scrap, just for the PR... It was more than just a waste. It was criminal.

There didn't seem to be much left to find after that. The big headlines on the war started to fade away the closer I got to current news. There had been only a few colony flare-ups recently; apparently not enough to keep the news hounds happy. Everyone was busy watching the OZ fall apart, of course--the Treize faction was making life hell for the Romefeller loyalists--but there was damn-all coming from Fortress Barge and the colonies. I found that sudden lack of interest a bit odd. Unfortunately I couldn't tell if it was because the major conflicts had subsided, or because the information had been suppressed. If there was something this little research project had taught me, it was that I was no intelligence analyst. I didn't have the skills necessary to pick out the right patterns in the meager amount of information I had in front of me.

But...I knew people who did. All I had to do was track them down. Which, depending on what had happened to the rest of Marquise's squad, might be easier said then done.

First things first: I had to establish my credentials, feeble as they were. Which meant I had to go to the one place I'd avoided like the plague ever since I'd been released from the hospital: the local VA administration building.

Armed with my commission and about ten pounds of medical documentation, I braved the domain of the paper-pushers. The near-civil war within OZ may have thrown them off their stride, but never let it be said that the war had stopped the production of red tape. It took me only about three days of being tossed between one petty bureaucrat to the next--not to mention a good deal of toe-stomping--before I managed to get myself the little micro-chipped plastic card that proclaimed to the world that yes, I was an honorably-discharged veteran, and eligible for all the meager benefits thereof. And while I didn't give a shit about the medical coverage or that other crap, I did get the one thing I truly needed: the slightly-higher-than-civilian clearance necessary to view certain military records. Marquise's counter-intelligence activities would still be highly classified, I knew. I stood a snowball's chance in hell of cracking his file open. But the other, less highly-ranked guys on the squad, especially the noncoms--I should be able to at least find out if they were alive, and maybe, just maybe, where they were currently posted. Of course, doing that meant I had to descend to another circle of administrative Hell.

So I put on my best suit, did my little 'yessir I'm just a humble decorated veteran' monkey dance, and started pestering. My requests were met with bored disdain but no suspicion, near as I could tell. As far as they were concerned, I was just another soldier looking for his mates.

A couple weeks later, some of the information I'd asked for began trickling in. It wasn't pretty. Marquise's squad hadn't been very large to begin with, and it had ended up a lot smaller by the time Operation Daybreak was done. Edwards and Igama were both KIA--Igama had apparently died in Sanc--and three others were listed as MIA. Though I had to wonder if MIA at this point meant 'defected to the Treize faction'. Simora had been invalided out, and Sikes had gotten transferred to Fortress Barge, the poor bastard, though they wouldn't tell me what division he'd been transferred into.

The list went on, but in the end it was Harcourt that gave me the break I needed. He'd apparently been smart enough to keep his head down and his nose clean, and now 'Bubba' was First Sergeant Harcourt, attached to the R&D section of the Twenty-Third Aries Division. Harcourt was nobody's fool. More importantly, he came from a well-connected family, with friends sprinkled all through OZ. If I could find Harcourt, I might just find a few of my answers.

England was cold this time of year, not to mention rainy. It had been raining almost constantly ever since I had landed at Heathrow, and Suffolk wasn't much better--I could feel the cold drizzle seeping down under the edges of my jacket to soak the shirt underneath. I resisted the urge to pull my collar up higher, hunching my shoulders instead. It didn't help.

My plan was so simple as to be utterly stupid: having tracked the Twenty-third to Lakenheath RAFB, I went online. A quick search gave me the information number for the local OZ liaison, and after checking out my credentials, the liaison gave me Harcourt's contact details. Which brought me to Lakenheath village, England's godawful weather, and hopefully a face to face meeting with the man I needed to see.

The sound of splashing footsteps brought me out of my funk. Harcourt looked pretty much the same as I remembered--big and dumb and wrapped in a pea coat, a black umbrella cocked over one shoulder. It appeared the same couldn't be said for me, though. Harcourt didn't seem to recognize me at first. He crossed the busy street, slowing down as he approached.

" ...Lieutenant?" he asked, frowning as he looked me up and down.

"Hi, Bubba." I gave him my best attempt at a smile. It felt strange on my face. "It's just plain old 'Otto' now."

A grin spreading across his broad face, Harcourt stepped forward to shake my outstretched hand. "Otto! Even after I got your message, I could hardly believe it. And now..." He looked me over again, shaking his head. "It's good to see you again. How are you doing?"

"Oh, keeping busy," I said. A small smirk escaped before I could stop it, and Harcourt snickered.

"Getting into trouble again, are you?" He shook his head, still grinning. "Why am I not surprised? Glad to see you haven't turned completely into an old fart." He reached over to knuckle my white-streaked hair, and I knocked his hand away.

"Hey, at least I still *have* mine," I shot back, looking pointedly at Harcourt's thinning blond crew cut.

"But still no sense of humor," he said mock-sadly, unfazed by the accusation. Then he grinned again, slapping me on the back. "Don't ask me why, but I'm glad to see you. How long are you going to be around?"

I hesitated, then said bluntly, "Long enough to pick your brain, I hope. I'm not going to bullshit you, Bubba--this isn't exactly a social call." I met his eyes squarely. He and I had gotten along well enough, but we'd never been best friends. Still, we'd served together, worked together on the Tallgeese...hell, it had been my recommendation that had gotten him assigned to Zechs' command. In the Specials, that meant something. I just hope it meant enough for Harcourt to stick his neck out for me in return.

His grin turned wry. He snorted and shook his head. "Of course it isn't. You really haven't changed at all, have you?" He sighed, then waved a hand at the narrow-fronted shops lining the street. "Come on, let's go somewhere dry. I'll even buy the first round while you tell me this story of yours."

The idea was a good one, and I followed along obediently enough as Harcourt headed back the way he came. He obviously knew where he was going, which made me wonder how long he'd been posted here. Hell, these could be his old stomping grounds for all I knew. I'd never bothered to ask before. Right now I'd have followed him anywhere so long as it got me out of this miserable drizzle.

We finally reached a small pub, tucked away inside a larger brick building that had obviously seen better days. Accessible only by an alley door at the bottom of a steep flight of steps, it was one of those places that only the locals seemed to know about. Harcourt headed inside, closing his umbrella and giving the barkeep a friendly wave. The usual round of greetings was exchanged, and by the end of it we were settled in a semi-private booth towards the rear. This early in the day the place was almost completely dead, and Harcourt's promised first round arrived promptly.

"Cheers," Harcourt said, and lifted his mug to mine. He took a hefty swallow, watched me do the same, and then set it down. "All right then, I've done my part. Your turn."

I nodded. "It's about Zechs." That snapped Harcourt to attention, just like I knew it would. Marquise had that effect on people. "I'm trying to track him down, and getting nowhere fast. I was hoping you might know something--or someone--who could help me out."

"Why?" Harcourt asked. His eyes were narrowed and intent on my face. Assessing possible motives, no doubt. "You're out of it now, Otto. I thought you wanted it that way."

"Maybe. But...there are things bothering me about it." It took a conscious effort for me not to shrug uncomfortably. "I was...out of it for a long time after Sanc. Got a medical discharge." I carefully didn't mention that the discharge had been Zechs' idea, not mine. "I ran across a guy named Meizer. He was an Alliance engineer...did you ever meet him?"

Harcourt thought about it for a minute, then shook his head. "I don't think so. I don't remember any Alliance guys coming on board. Of course, I was transferred fairly soon after Operation Daybreak." He shrugged. "Everything was pretty much up in the air after the colonel got transferred to HQ, and I'm not sure what happened to the rest of the squad." Looking at his face, though, I could tell he had an idea. Harcourt was far from stupid. "Things turned into a real mess after that, from what little I heard." He looked like he was about to say more, but clamped his lips shut over the words and took refuge behind his beer.

"What happened?" I asked. Harcourt didn't reply right away, staring down at the fake wood-grain of the table, and I pressed harder. "I read about the Arctic Operation. Was Zechs involved?" That was an educated guess on my part. His name had never cropped up in any of the news articles, but Marquise had a knack for finding trouble.

"...yeah. I´m pretty sure he was there," Harcourt finally admitted. "Word has it that Khushrenada sent him up there himself. But...I heard that there were some problems." He drained his mug in one long gulp, then set it down. "You know how the colonel is about the Gundams. I don't know the details, but apparently Zechs had been fighting against the pilot of 01--the one who self-destructed. It was some kind of political protest or something. I guess he didn't take it too well."

"Wouldn't surprise me," I commented. "We both know how obsessed he's been over that Gundam."

"I seem to recall he wasn't the only one, either," Harcourt said, grinning crookedly. "You were positively drooling over that thing. It was pretty sad."

I flicked a beer nut at him, and had the satisfaction of seeing it stick to his shirt. "Like you weren't?"

"Hey, I'll admit it--I wanted a crack at it too. But nowhere near as badly as you guys did." His grin faded a bit. "And the colonel got his chance, I guess." He gave me an oddly sympathetic look. "Did you know he was in the Tallgeese for that fight?"

A cold prickle ran down my spine, and I had to fight off a reflexive twitch. "No, I didn't. Glad to see all our work didn't go to waste." Somehow I managed to keep my voice neutral. The Tallgeese...even though I couldn't really remember it, that last nightmare ride still seeped into my dreams sometimes. I wasn't sure if I'd ever be able to look at it again without remembering how close that damn Suit came to killing me.

Harcourt had been at Sanc too. Looking at him, I wondered how much he'd seen.

"So...what happened? Meizer, that Alliance engineer--he said he had been assigned to work with Zechs on salvaging 01. He seemed to know what he was talking about, too." I didn't want to talk about the Tallgeese right now. That wasn't why I was here.

Harcourt leaned back in the booth, frowning as he thought. "I hadn't heard about that, but that's probably because it was too classified. I'd always wondered what happened to that thing, though. Your friend might have been telling the truth." Meizer definitely didn't qualify as a friend in my book, but I stifled the urge to argue the point. "I'd heard rumors that one of the Gundams was being used by the Specials, but I always thought that was just wishful thinking. You're saying they were true?"

"Not quite. Apparently Zechs had reconstructed 01--but he did it against orders." I told him pretty much everything I'd overheard from Meizer. Minus the excessively gushy bits.

"That's...are you sure? A whole squadron? After the colonel?" Harcourt sounded as incredulous as I'd felt that first time I'd heard the story. "Do you know who was in command?"

"Nope. Don't know who sent them, either. According to Meizer, he saw Zechs charging in like the Lone Ranger, and that was all she wrote." Looking up, I added hastily, "I don't think he's dead, though. I wouldn't be here otherwise."

"I see." From the look on his face, Harcourt did see--and probably a hell of a lot more than I wanted. But then, that's why I'd come to him in the first place. "But you have your suspicions, don't you? And no proof. That's why you want my help."

"Yeah," I admitted finally. "I don't know if there's anything I can do. Hell, I'm not sure there's anything I *should* do. But I've had half a puzzle thrown into my lap, Bubba, and trying to figure out the rest is driving me nuts. I need to know what really happened."

Harcourt didn't respond right away. Instead he gazed down into the dregs of his beer, tapping a finger against the rim of the glass like he expected it to answer all his questions. After a long few minutes, he raised his head and looked at me. "It isn't that easy, Otto. This isn't a small request, you know."

"I know."

"I could get court-martialed or worse over this."

"I know that too."

"Hell, Otto... Even if we found your answers, how do you know they'll change anything?"

I was uncomfortably aware that I didn't really have a good answer to that one.

"So why the hell should I do it, Otto?" Harcourt's voice was hard. "You're asking me to risk my career for...what? Your curiosity?"

"No." I took a deep breath, and played my trump card. "I'm asking you to risk it for Zechs."

That stopped Harcourt cold. I followed up on my attack, pushing the point home.

"You know Marquise, Bubba. He's not exactly low profile. Which means there's a reason he's dropped out of sight." My fingers ached; looking down, I found I was clenching my fist on the table. "Maybe it's nothing--maybe we'll find out I'm wrong, and he's just been assigned to..." --I searched for a plausible scenario-- "...command a covert unit or something. But...I don't think that's the case. My gut says there's something wrong."

I leaned back, pushing my hands in my pockets, trying to look determined. I had the feeling I just came off as desperate. "I'm not asking you to go AWOL, or join the Treize Faction, or anything stupid like that. All I'm asking is for you to point me in the right direction. I know there might not be anything we can do about it, even if we do find something. But don't you think it's worth the risk to know for sure?" I was pushing it, I knew, and if this had been about any other officer, Harcourt would have laughed in my face. But this was Zechs we were talking about. That automatically changed all the rules.

Harcourt stayed silent for another few minutes, eyes turned toward the muted game playing on the vid over the bar. Finally he squared his shoulders, and lifted a hand for another round. "All right, Otto." He turned a deceptively mild gaze on me. "This is probably one of the stupider things I've ever done--but I'll help you out. I'm not going to promise I'll find anything, though."

I didn't bother trying to fight the slow, pleased smile spreading across my face. "Hell, Bubba--the fact that you'll try is good enough for me." The barkeep plunked down a second set of mugs in front of us, and I lifted one to him. "Here's to mutual stupidity."

"To mutual stupidity... " Harcourt lifted his own, smirking. "And never knowing when to quit. Cheers."

I'd come to the right guy. Harcourt wasn't any more of a spook than I was--but he had friends who were. Friends active in the service, unlike me, and who owed him a few favors. That got both of us access to information so classified we probably should have been handling it with lead-lined gloves, not to mention a lot of conversations that started with "You didn't hear this from me, but..." The puzzle pieces started falling into place pretty fast after that, and the picture they made proved once and for all that truth really is stranger than fiction.

Zechs had been part of the Arctic operation, as I'd suspected. An active part, at that--he'd gone head-to-head with Gundam 01, and by all accounts had been making a pretty good showing in the Tallgeese before things went fubar. The wrench in the works? Colonel Une's attempt to hold the colonies hostage to force the terrorists to surrender. Understandably, OZ had kept that little bit of blackmail buried from all Earth-based media. Even given how alienated the colonies were from their Earth neighbors, nothing says 'bad PR' like threatening the mass murder of millions of innocent civilians.

Everything seemed to go downhill after that. Almost everyone who knew about the incident agreed that Une had overstepped her bounds: Zechs thought so, Khushrenada thought so, and the terrorists had definitely thought so, since they'd decided to blow themselves up to prevent it. There was some wrangling about what to do with the remains of Gundam 01 after that, and Meizer's story about Zechs' little mutiny seemed to be pretty close to the mark.

Given how high-profile Zechs was, though, Khushrenada had apparently decided that a court martial wasn't an option. Instead, he gave Zechs a devil's deal--a 'test', using the Tallgeese against several squadrons of Aries and Cancers. We managed to get our hands on the troop allotment for that little test. The firepower sent in against him was insane. Even Zechs couldn't win against those kinds of odds...and he didn't. He'd taken out most of them, but eventually Tallgeese went down over the Indian Ocean, just like Khushrenada wanted.

Which meant—that Marquise was dead.

That took the wind out of my sails. For all that Marquise liked to push his luck, I still found it hard to believe that it had finally caught up to him. But the proof was right there in front of us, laid out in black and white. Marquise was dead, his reputation whitewashed clean by being 'killed in the line of duty'.

Harcourt didn't say much once we'd found out. Me--I just...stopped, for a day or two. I'd gotten the answer I'd been looking for. Now that I had it, I didn't know what to do. With Zechs gone, I felt old and worn out, not to mention stupid. What had ever made me think I'd get any answers from a ghost?

I was a hair away from tucking my tail between my legs and going home. Then the first sightings of 'Ambassador Peacecraft' aired, and knocked me for a loop all over again.

I damn near killed myself lunging for the remote when that first vidcast aired, tripping over a chair in the process. The sound came up, and the news continued, zooming in on those arrogant aristocratic features.

//...in other news, Sanc representative Ambassador Peacecraft met with L2 representatives today--//

I couldn't believe it. No mask, no uniform--hell, he hadn't even bothered to cut his damn hair. "What the fuck? That sonuvabitch--ambassador, my ass!" Harcourt must have thought I was nuts, the way I was hopping around like an idiot--I'd also stubbed my toes--and swearing at the screen. His reaction was pretty restrained, all things considered.

"What the--? Otto, what the fuck are you babbling about?"

"It's HIM." I stabbed an accusing finger at the vidscreen. The camera angle had swung away while the broadcaster babbled on, showing Zechs in among some random colony bureaucrats. It was a face I'd only ever seen once. One even the Tallgeese couldn't rattle out of my brain.

"Who?"

"Zechs! It's fucking Zechs! He's alive." I grabbed a random handful of classified printouts and waved them in illustration. "These things are full of shit. He isn't any more dead than I am!" The papers got tossed to the floor.

Harcourt stared at the screen, dubious. " ...are you sure? Maybe it's someone who just acts a lot like him."

"Trust me," I snapped sourly, "No way would the universe create two of *him*." There had to be some kind of cosmic rule against it. "I'm sure. It's Zechs."

"Okay...let's say you're right." Harcourt still sounded doubtful, but he was willing to play along. "What the hell is he doing out there in the colonies? And what's with this Ambassador Peacecraft stuff?"

"I don't know." I growled at the screen as the newscast switched over to an ad, full of shiny lights and fake explosions. "I guess we're going to have to find out, aren't we?"

Harcourt heaved a sigh. "Joy."

This time we started digging in a couple different directions. My father's lands were in Wüttenburg, not far from the Sanc border. Even though I hadn't been home in years, I still knew the Peacecraft name--everyone did. The rulers of Sanc had been notorious in their devotion to total pacifism. We'd all heard the stories about the royal family, and what had happened when the Alliance came stomping through. As far as anyone knew, the recently-returned Princess Relena was the only surviving Peacecraft. So what was Zechs' angle?

We had to back-figure his trail from two directions--before OZ, and after OZ. Was Zechs really Milliardo Peacecraft? Everything we turned up seemed to indicate he was. That was something I had to chew on for a while. I'd been mouthing off to a fucking PRINCE. Not only a prince, but heir to the throne of Sanc. There had to be some sort of special kind of punishment meted out by Romefeller for that sort of thing. Try as I might, though, I just couldn't think of him as 'Prince Peacecraft'. I'd seen too much of him. He wasn't even 'the colonel', the way he was for Harcourt and Meizer. He was just...Zechs.

And none of this told us where he'd gone after Khushrenada's little test, or why. Was he really working towards peace in the colonies? Maybe. But I doubted Zechs planned to achieve that just through speech-making and glad-handing politicians. It wasn't his style. It had to be a cover for something else. If he wasn't dead, and the Tallgeese had never been recovered.... All of a sudden those reports of the Gundam skirmishes around the colonies started to make more sense. Zechs was still fighting. Maybe it was for peace. Maybe it was just to poke Khushrenada in the eye. But I'd bet my last cred that he was also chasing after the Gundams.

Now I was covering familiar ground. Maybe I didn't know where Zechs was, but if I could track down the Gundams, I knew I'd pick up his trail soon enough. When it came to Gundams, I had a wealth of information at my disposal. The scientists who'd created the Tallgeese...they were out there somewhere. All I needed was to find myself one.

My swiss-cheesed memory wasn't nearly good enough for something like this, so we had to rely on all the documentation Walker had dug up for the Tallgeese. It wasn't anything Harcourt and I hadn't seen before, but now we were digging through it with new eyes. Instead of schematics and test outcomes, we concentrated on profiles and development team backgrounds. The Alliance's background checks were invaluable, even twenty years out of date...they gave us real names, families, even dental records. Taking that information, we cross-referenced it with all data about Zechs' last known location. The Tallgeese wasn't built for long-term flight. It would never have even made it to shore on its own, much less into orbit. So where had it gone? We were hoping to find a transport plane, or unidentified shuttle--something big enough to transport a MS. Instead we found a ship--the Lachesis--meandering its way right through the test zone, barely hours after Zechs' supposed demise.

The ship was owned by the International Resource Recovery group, based out of Singapore. The captain? He'd covered his tracks well, but there was no mistake. It was Howard McClure--M.I.T alum, former Alliance scientist and MS systems developer.

After months of floundering, I'd finally found a target. His ship was the only thing in the right place and time to be Zechs' mysterious savior. I didn't know how or why it had been there...but I was willing to bet good money that it wasn't a coincidence.

End Part 2

(:./hope/fealty2)