Mobile Suit Gundam SEED ETERNITY

Phase 13 - The Father's Shadow

"Sting and Auel are sedated," Abbey explained quietly on the bridge. "The doctor said their wounds are survivable, but they will unquestionably be out of action for a while. Viveka's wounds were less severe. Emily reported some light injuries of her own. Everyone else seems to be intact." She glanced towards Terminal, through the debris field that had become so much denser in the past few hours. "On our end, at least."

On the auxiliary screen, Oshida shrugged. "We will take as long as necessary to recover our wounded," he said, "but no longer. Terminal must relocate before the enemy can reestablish the scent. I gave you the contact information for who you need to meet at Copernicus. That's all I can do."

Meyrin frowned and tried not too feel too bad about the utter ruining of her plans to stay in dock and manufacture new Gundams using Terminal's facilities. Terminal just did not have the proper parts and resources to build seven more entirely new mobile suits. Those would have to be acquired elsewhere. "Do you have the DSSD survivors, including Ms. McGriff?"

Presently, the flash of green hair indicated Selene's presence in the Terminal control room. "Thank you, Captain Hawke. I hope the Gabriel performed to your satisfaction."

"I'm not the one you'd have to satisfy," Meyrin replied with a smile.

"You should be able to reach the Moon without incident," Oshida continued, "and in the meantime, we have the Vedlow Fleet to protect us. We will be fine." He offered a crisp salute. "Terminal, out."

The screen went dark and Meyrin took the chance to heave a sigh and bury her face in her hands. "That shoots my plans all to hell."

Abbey scratched the side of her head dejectedly. "There's a Resistance presence on the Moon, but meeting with that guy..." She glanced up towards Roxy's station— and blinked in surprise at the sight of a far more melancholy Roxy Bannon than had been expected. "Miss Bannon, do you have any contacts on Copernicus?"

Roxy ran a hand through her hair and sat up. "Probably not. Copernicus is too upper-class for the people I rolled with."

"Then we'll just have to hope our contact is in a good mood," Meyrin interrupted, trying not to worry about Roxy. Once they got going, she could be released from her duties for a little while.

"And if he's not," Malik spoke up with a smirk, "we can sic Stella on him."

Everyone's stomachs turned at that idea. "Very funny, Malik," Meyrin said with a sigh. "Set course for Copernicus. We have an appointment to keep."

Athrun Zala was no stranger to dressing wounds, his own or someone else's— but he was certainly a stranger to dressing wounds on the body of an attractive woman. Viveka had managed to get a few nicks from flying shards of cockpit monitor between her shoulder blades, which meant she had pulled down the top half of her flight suit and Athrun was sincerely hoping he wouldn't have to take off her bra to bandage the cuts on her back— and all of that meant his face felt like it was the same color as her hair.

"Enjoying yourself back there?" she asked with what Athrun knew was a smug grin.

"You're gonna have a few more of these," he said, and tapped the long, two-pronged scar on her left side for emphasis. Ordinarily, eyepatch and mechanical arm aside, her athletic body, honed by years of combat and harsh training, would have caught many a man's eye— but then there were the injuries, and all those scars, and also the fact that she could crush a man's larynx in less than a second with her left hand. Seeing her like this, with beauty marred by ugly wounds and scars, he began to understand why she had fixated on him— on somebody who might return her affections despite the damage done to her body.

And, as he idly touched her left shoulder, where human flesh turned into a jumbled mass of scar tissue and then into a shaft of titanium, he felt guilty for having never done so.

Viveka flinched. "What, have you never been with a girl before?"

"N-No— well, I mean— sort of— "

"What does 'sort of' mean?"

Athrun took a step back and struggled for words. "I was supposed to be married— "

"Holy shit, really?"

"To Lacus Clyne."

"Lacus Clyne? Then why the hell aren't you?"

"It's...um, a long story."

Viveka glanced over her shoulder and smirked. "Well, let me get dressed and you'll have to tell me."

The Moon.

It was drifting off in the distance, far beyond the densely-packed Debris Belt and the neglected colonies of Lagrange Point 1, where the wreckage of Arnhelm Colony was joining that great ring of space junk around the Earth. And for Rau Le Creuset, drifting on the Minerva's interior observation deck and staring at the Earth's silvery, faithful satellite, it was the next stepping stone in his plans.

The Gabriel— no, the Eclipse, he reminded himself, such a fitting name— had performed wonderfully. With its Voiture Lumiere and Emily's skill and power, it had effortlessly torn apart two mobile armors and even made short work of the Moonlight Mad Dog himself. Selene had not been kidding; the Eclipse was a force of nature.

Rau frowned at the thought of Selene McGriff. She had thrown a brief bit of sand into the gears of his plan with her insistence to Emily that she use this power to end the war— to enter into Emily's mind the idea of a cause other than the one he would supply. But he was not worried or even annoyed, because there was another chance down the road. There always was, and it lay now with the inconstant moon.

Emily, after all, needed some reminding of who she really was. If that Trojan fellow and Lily, the Extended, were any indication, she was beginning to forget.

"You must be tired," the technician said in that soothing voice that made ND HE know he wasn't being taken seriously. "Get some rest first and we'll talk about it later."

ND HE lay his head down on the plushy maintenance bed surface and slowly removed his mask. He watched the nonreflective plastic close around him. His sanctuary sealed shut with a click.

It made no sense. He could not remember any time in his life where he'd met a blue-haired boy who gave him a green robot bird, and yet the feeling of familiarity with that man, the man that intelligence identified as Athrun Zala— it twisted and grew within him. He hated it. He hated this Athrun Zala person, for forcing these feelings and memories through him. Who was this man to alter his mind? Who was this man at all?

He flinched as another memory emerged. He saw it now, the stench of burning flesh and metal and gunpowder, the smoke swirling around him, the heat of flames clinging to his skin. He was standing on something— and there was that man again, in a red space suit, with a knife in his hand and combat web gear on his body—

ND HE turned over and groaned in pain. That man, Athrun Zala, charged at him with a knife— but stopped short when he recognized who he was attacking. A woman beneath him opened fire with a handgun, and ND HE looked down and recognized the cockpit hatch of the Atlantic Federation's old Strike Gundam. And that woman—

Who were these people? Why did he remember this? He knew what he was seeing. It was ZAFT's raid on Heliopolis, at the beginning of CE 71 during the Valentine War— but he had never been there. He had awoken four years later!

ND HE clutched at his head.

"What have you done to me, Athrun Zala?!" He clenched his fists. "What have you done to me?!"

There were many reasons Morgan Chevalier had assiduously avoided the Phantom Pain throughout his career. Colonel Joaquin, as it turned out, was one of them.

Morgan drifted through the Lucifer's spacious hangar and watched as across the way, the ship's mechanics diligently assembled a mobile suit. It was said to capitalize on his "unique powers of spatial awareness" that allowed him to use the Gunbarrel Striker and the Exus to such effect. It was why there were two more purple Exus units waiting off to the port side, getting their receptor units installed. It was why the Phantom Pain was so interested in him.

And, he reflected ruefully, it was why he rebuffed their advances— until now. He was a soldier of the Alliance and would do his duty— but the Phantom Pain required far more than that, and Morgan was under no illusions as to what they would ask him to do. The military's official accounts of those attacks on Murmansk and Volgograd pinned them on the Resistance, but Morgan knew better. And now he was surrounded by Lord Djibril's black-shirted thugs.

They were supposed to be his allies, but he felt no camaraderie with these people. Not with the way they acted, the methods they used, the things they did.

And there was Colonel Joaquin. Morgan felt a scowl work its way onto his face. Colonel Joaquin, with that smug grin and that condescending attitude...and Morgan suspected that it was at Colonel Joaquin's direction that the Lucifer had fired the fatal shot that had destroyed the Arnhelm Colony, in an attack Alliance officials were happy to blame on ZAFT and the Resistance.

He steeled himself as he watched his new mobile suit come together. The Space Force had fended off pressure to transfer him to the Phantom Pain, but now he was on their turf, and he would have to be careful.

The hangar noise had faded to a dull hum in the background as Grey Saiba idly worked in the Regen Duel's cockpit. At first he had been a miserable ball of tension, thinking that the Charlemagne had been so effortlessly kept out of the battle at Terminal— but now the reports were coming in of that new Gundam, the one that the pilot had evidently called the "Eclipse." And once those had come in, tension had given way to a feeling of intense discouragement. Grey vividly recalled getting his ass handed to him by Morgan Chevalier on the training grounds at Volkov Crater— and Morgan Chevalier had barely survived the incredible power of the Eclipse.

Grey looked up wearily at the cockpit hatch. Erin had been there for the past fifteen minutes at least, but she had said little— and judging by the troubled look on her face, she wasn't going to speak up anytime soon.

His conscience got the better of him. "What is it?" he asked, and Erin glanced at him in surprise.

"Nothing," she said quickly, and then stopped short, as though thinking better of it. "Just...well, you saw that footage of the enemy's new mobile suit, didn't you?"

"'course I did."

Erin blinked at him. "You're...not worried?"

"What's the point of worrying over something I can't control?" Grey asked back with a shrug. "We'll go out and fight and give it our best, and if we lose, we lose. Not much you can do about that."

At that, Erin blanched. "That's not what the instructors said at Volkov Crater— "

"That's because the instructors at Volkov Crater have no idea what combat is like." Grey waved a hand scornfully. "You can refine your techniques and whatever all you want, but in the end it just comes down to luck, and you can't control that. We've just been lucky— so far." He gestured across the hangar, to a spot occupied by a silent Dark Windam. "See that machine there?"

"Yes."

"Ensign Fuller used to park his mobile suit there. Ensign Fuller got blown away at Carpentaria by some Resistance mook. Merau and I survived. We were all Volkov graduates with high marks, so what's the difference? We were lucky, and Ensign Fuller wasn't."

"I didn't come here to just beat the odds— "

"Then what did you come here for?"

Erin frowned and looked away awkwardly. "You wouldn't believe me."

"I wouldn't have believed a lot of shit I've wound up believing since I was assigned here."

"Then I'll just say I'm filthy rich." Grey arched an inquisitive eyebrow. "My father is the president of Cosmic Developments. They make space colony components. We're incredibly wealthy, and I stand to inherit it when my father dies."

"Then what are you doing here?"

She shrugged. "Getting away from all that." Grey blinked in surprise as she went on. "It's not as great as you think being a rich kid with powerful parents. Not when you've got your father expecting you to carry on the family name, and all this education to get done, and all kinds of limits on your social life, and being isolated."

Grey arched an eyebrow. "You joined the military to have a social life?"

"No," she said quietly, "I joined the military to have a life."

"The last time we did any lunar combat was at Volkov," Merau explained. Standing across from her on the gantry in front of the Nix Providence, Kelly Maynard nodded. "The simulators might help, but there's really no substitute for fighting in actual lunar gravity."

Kelly glanced up at the Nix Providence's white armor. "Captain Danilov expects that we'll be engaging ZAFT forces instead of the Minerva anyway. There's been a ZAFT fleet hovering around the Moon for the better part of a week."

"That can't be good."

"No." Kelly crossed her arms. "We'll fight the Minerva if we run across them, but if encounter those ZAFT units we'll have to put them over the Minerva."

Merau shifted uncomfortably. "The enemy of our enemy is our friend?"

"Something like that."

At that, Merau apprehensively turned her thoughts towards the Minerva, towards their glimmering Angel of Death, towards the quiet torment she had wreaked on Grey. The Minerva had cost them so many friends and allies; how could they go into battle together, even with the mutual enemy of ZAFT before them?

"I'm sorry, lieutenant," she said suddenly. "The enemy of our enemy isn't exactly my friend."

Kelly shook her head. "Not in this war."

Without any thought toward politeness, Lily Thevalley shoved her face right up next to the glass of Stella's aquarium and peered determinedly through the plastic rocks. From underneath an overhang, a colorful fish stared back up indifferently.

"I didn't know you could keep fishes in zero-G," Lily cooed. "Don't they need gravity or something?"

Over Lily's shoulder, Stella shrugged. "No. But he gets confused sometimes," and she giggled at the thought.

"Weird!" Lily frowned as the fish made a cunning escape behind another rock. "How come you have a fish tank in here?"

"'cuz it's like the sea."

"Huh. I've never seen the sea."

Stella's small smile promptly vanished. "Stella will show you the sea...when the ship is back on Earth," she said with finality.

Lily glanced over her shoulder. "What's so special about it?"

"It's pretty," Stella said, "and..." She trailed off and Lily frowned, and opened her mouth to speak before Stella interrupted her. "And everything about it is the same." She held her hands wide apart. "It's really big but it's all the same. And there's animals in it, but none of them are special or something and they get to do what they want."

"I guess," Lily said, "but aren't there, like, sharks and stuff in the sea?"

"Yeah. They're scary, but," Stella remained undeterred, "they get to be what they wanna be."

Idiots just about got themselves killed.

Of course, as she sat in the infirmary watching Sting Oakley and Auel Neider sleep off surgery, Roxy knew somewhere in the back of her mind that feeling so shaken up about this was ridiculous. They were mobile suit pilots. Every time they launched there was a chance— mitigated by their skill and equipment but no less worth taking seriously— that something like this might happen, or worse. Hell, she was a bridge crew member, and something like this or worse could just as easily happen to her. This was all ridiculous, and somewhere in her rational mind, she knew that.

Which was why she'd brought the Wild Turkey with her. Damned rational mind never knew when to shut up.

She had not yet imbibed enough to really drown out the voice of reason, however, and miserably remembered why. Meyrin and Abbey wanted her sober enough to run the MS deck and communications system in case they came under attack on the way to the Moon. Even the enemy conspired against her. And so instead she sat in her chair in the infirmary, stared at the two pale and bandaged Extended, and wondered just how sober she needed to be to make sure Emily fired the catapult the right way.

But these were her friends and they needed her— just as Sting and Auel were her friends and no amount of alcohol could wash away her anxiety for them. After fourteen years of poverty and an abusive father and another three of life on the run, she had come to the Minerva three years ago and found friends, a home, stability, order, acceptance...

Especially with those two, whose lives were at least as bad as hers. And they had taken the powers they had never wanted and made them into something to stand against their old oppressors, and forced down their worst memories to carry on the fight. That had been inspiring, to be honest; through all their battles and even in their darkest hours, she had spent the last three years surrounded by friends.

Now their mortality stared her in the face, and she stared back and hated it.

The last time the Minerva had visited the Moon was sometime in early CE 75, where they stopped at tiny Goddard City in a small crater on the near side, close to the lunar south pole. Meyrin remembered that visit well, because she had almost been killed by a Resistance contact driven mad by hallucinogenic drugs he took to escape the madness already driven into him by the war. Not everyone had what it took.

Copernicus, however, was a different experience.

Meyrin glanced around the bridge as the ship handily navigated the Debris Belt. Malik was no stranger to this part of space. Assuming the enemy left them alone— never a safe assumption, Meyrin had learned long ago— they would arrive at Copernicus in a matter of hours.

With that somewhat comforting thought, Meyrin sat back and glanced up at Abbey, seated at Roxy's console and scanning through information in the ship's central computer on Copernicus.

"You know we won't be able to stay for long," she said suddenly. Abbey blinked down at Meyrin. "Copernicus is only letting us stay long enough to take on the supplies Oshida lined up for us."

Abbey scratched her head nervously. "Something will go wrong," she replied. "It always does."

"Even so," Meyrin went on, "we can't stay at Copernicus long enough to get the new mobile suits built. We'll have to do that elsewhere." She sighed. "You have any ideas?"

"Barnacle, Gigafloat, Terminal, the Heliopolis shoal zone, Poljarny, Aqrah, Goddard City, Ame-no-Mihashira..." Abbey shrugged. "The question is just getting there."

Meyrin frowned at the last suggestion. "I don't think we need to go indebting ourselves to Rondo Mina Sahaku."

"Just a suggestion."

None of the options, really, were to Meyrin's liking. Everything on Earth, like Gigafloat and Aqrah, meant another atmospheric reentry that was always dodgy, especially with something like the Charlemagne after her ship. Anything in space could eventually be found, by the Alliance or by ZAFT, and Meyrin did not want to be stuck in dock when that happened. Barnacle was an important shadow port that she occasionally had to visit, but she hated the thought of spending time there— for many reasons.

"We'll have to take the first option that presents itself to us," Meyrin answered. "Back to Terminal, most likely."

"We're not staying on the Moon?"

Meyrin glanced up at the tactical map on the auxiliary screen. That small ZAFT fleet, a dozen warships hovering ominously over the Moon, had not moved.

"I'm not making plans that far ahead."

"Why not?"

"Because," Meyrin pointed at the map, "we still don't know what they're going to do."

"I thought you were supposed to be resting."

Emily glanced over her shoulder at the sound of Trojan's voice in the interior observation deck, with the sweeping panorama of the Debris Belt before her. He drifted into the room and shut the door behind him.

"I guess I'm an insomniac these days."

"I guess so." Trojan landed quietly next to her, and Emily immediately felt her stomach curl at the feelings radiating off him. "Um...about yesterday..." He looked over at Emily and immediately looked back out the windows, his face red. "Why did you...y'know..."

Emily leaned forward and tried not to blush. "It seemed like the right thing to do."

"Did you think I was gonna die?"

"Just in case you did." She shifted awkwardly. "It's, uh, happened before."

Trojan frowned. "I don't think you've told me this story."

Silence prevailed between them for a moment as Emily searched for words. "Uh, well, there was a boy at Carpentaria who, um, pretty much fell in love with me." She pursed her lips and wondered why that was making her blush too. "And...the Minerva went on a mission, and it was supposed to have help from some ZAFT veterans. They turned on us and during the fighting," she bowed her head, "he got killed."

"I'm sorry," Trojan said quietly.

Emily shook her head. "I didn't really like him in that way."

"Then what about me?"

She looked over at him again and wracked her brain for an answer she could give him. Would he understand that she had gone insane and tortured her enemies to death after Isaac was killed? Would he understand that she didn't know herself— that she was lonely and tired and hovering on the brink of madness? That she had her father's voice tormenting her in the back of her mind?

Why did she care if he did?

"You're different."

Trojan looked back at her again and met her eyes. "What does that mean?" He paused, and Emily frowned at the feeling of doubt creeping up through him. "I mean...well, I might as well say it. I hope you weren't just doing that as a favor or something." He glanced back towards space and Emily could feel the pain. "I...hope it was more than that. I mean..."

"You idealized me, and now you know the real me a little better," Emily finished, and she reached out to touch his hand. He jumped in surprise and turned towards her. "Trojan, I didn't kiss you back there just as a favor. I really was worried you were going to die. But..." She shook her head. "I don't know how I feel about you. Or about anything. It's complicated and I don't know if I can tell you, but I just didn't..."

"Didn't want any regrets?" Trojan asked.

Emily smiled. "Yeah. That."

Trojan awkwardly took her hand and pulled her close. "Alright. I'll wait. But Emily, really, you can tell me what's going on. Don't think you can't."

She could feel his sincerity, but as she looked into his eyes, Emily knew in her heart that she couldn't.

As the sounds of the hangar went quiet behind the hangar doors, Juarez Recardo glanced over awkwardly at Gary Talon. The maintenance was done and the Fortuna was preparing to set out for the Moon, in support of Operation Hell's Wind. They would probably face stiff Alliance resistance— and most likely, the Minerva.

"You know they've got a new Gundam," Juarez spoke up.

Gary glanced over. "The Resistance?"

"Yeah. They debuted it at Terminal. Looks like it's got that Voiture Lumiere system."

"So what. We've got one too."

"Yeah, in pieces in a hangar in Messiah. Nothing we could deploy into combat."

Gary crossed his arms. "What's so special about it? I know it's fast, but so what? The Vice Marshal could bring it down. Speed's not everything."

"No," Juarez agreed, "but we'll have to be there too. And..." He shook his head. "You know what's going to be going on."

"Don't tell me you're going all soft on me, Juarez," Gary said suddenly.

"I'm not. But that doesn't mean I have to like it."

"Well I don't either," Gary shot back, and Juarez blinked in surprise at the sudden defensiveness. "But we've got Kara going all fanatical on us and we've got our orders from Marshal Sunogachi herself, so what are we supposed to do?" He touched the shiny FAITH pin on his lapel. "We don't wear these things just as decorations, y'know."

Juarez leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes. "No, we don't," he said, "but do we surrender our moral agency just because we're soldiers?" He shook his head. "I'm reminded of something Lacus Clyne said at Jachin Due six years ago. 'Attacking won't soothe the hurt.'"

Gary stepped past Juarez with a disgusted snort. "Don't lecture me on Lacus Clyne, man," he snarled as he headed off. "Lacus Clyne gave the orders. She never had to take them."

As Gary disappeared around a corner, Juarez glanced after him and sighed sadly. Lacus Clyne had built an army for people who wouldn't stand taking immoral orders...but Lacus Clyne was gone and now there was none of that left.

He looked back over his shoulder, towards the hangar doors and the mobile suits that lay beyond it, and wondered how many more times he could swallow his conscience.

"This is the worst shortcut ever!" Lily wailed, and to underscore her point, her angry voice echoed off the walls of the disused warehousing district of Copernicus.

At her side, Viveka rolled her eyes, Trojan frowned in what looked like agreement he did not want to vocalize, and Emily glanced over with annoyance at Viveka. "All 'cuz you didn't want to wait in traffic."

"You saw how bad it was backed up! It would be 2000 by the time we got back!" Viveka exclaimed. "And besides, that's all 'cuz this little runt," she brought down her hand on Lily's head just hard enough to elicit a startled squeak, "insisted on missing our bus so she could eat an ice cream sundae the size of her head." She smirked triumphantly at Emily. "Which you bought for her."

"I can't believe you actually ate it all," Trojan said quietly.

Emily shrugged. "I promised her I would do something cool for her."

"And that was the coolest ice cream sundae ever!" Lily added with a grin.

"But then we missed our bus," Viveka went on, "and so, here we are."

"Using the shortcut that you said was going to work," Trojan pointed out, and then shut his mouth when Viveka glared back at him.

"Shut up. We can get back into the docking bay through here." She pointed up ahead, towards a gate where a long row of docking bays in the crater wall could be seen through the thick transparent ceiling high above. "See? Now quit bitching."

Together they rounded a corner and Emily listened with half an ear as Lily triumphantly defended her ice cream consumption prowess. She glanced over at Trojan and caught his gaze, and returned it with a small smile that instantly made him blush. There was one upside to this relationship, whatever it was; she could make him blush on a whim, and that was cute and funny.

The others, at least, had had a good time, and that made Emily feel better. The positive energy helped push away her own problems, if only for a moment, and—

She froze in her tracks, catching her companions' attention. "What is it, Emily?" Trojan started, his hand falling to his belt, where a handgun was hidden inside one of the pouches.

Emily blinked in disbelief, at the feeling of human beings— how had she missed that? How had they gotten this close to her without noticing? Who— ?

"I see your senses are as sharp as we predicted, Emily," spoke a voice she knew all too well.

She turned around and her blood turned to ice in her veins. Lily hid behind her; Trojan backed away protectively in front of her; Viveka gasped in disbelief. The man before them— the hawkish nose— the goatee— the burning, baneful eyes—

Emily took a terrified step back. "F-Father...?"

Standing before them, hands behind his back, accompanied by a dozen well-armed men, Gerhardt von Oldendorf bared his teeth in a smile.

"It's been a long time, my little angel of death."

To be continued...