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PHASE 01
FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX
‘Not even a system schemed out in total depravity to produce all the wrong times could have organised such compounding error and misfortune.’
– Elton E. Morison
Maius 2, C.E. 73 7.08There had been resistance to the escalation in Alex’s involvement with the mission, not from the other crewmembers, but from the Supreme Council, which had been willing to employ him on a contractual basis but balked at his inclusion in the crew. It had taken Commander J.C. Yao’s direct intercession to bring him in and the commander was pretty damned pleased with himself for pushing it through.
For one thing, Alex had turned out to be a natural pilot; nerveless and precise, with a logical approach to complex systems, he picked up the skills with the cool competence that once profited the engineering department of the Galatea and now delighted the commander. “Learning curve like a jump jet’s flight path – all but straight up,” J.C. declared to the Supreme Council, and continued cheerfully, “I could drop dead any time now and he’d get the mission up and going, no problem. It’s a load off my mind, I guarantee.”
But there was more to it than that. J.C. made no claim to saintliness, only to a certain talent for bringing people into their own – for finding themselves. A master of disguise himself, he knew when he was looking at a façade. If nothing else was accomplished on this crazy-ass mission, he told himself first and the Supreme Council last, he intended to take a shot at helping this one soul patch itself up and make itself whole. That was the gift he offered Alex: the opportunity to do something so difficult that he would be stretched to his limits, feel his own possibilities, find something in himself to rejoice in.
“There is the one instruction,” The squadron commander said to the young man in front of him. “That you are to take the Phoenix in this mission. That will happen, if you show yourself capable of piloting it in the next few hours.”
Alex ran his fingers through his short hair, a nervous habit he had never been able to break. “M – me ? But sir, I’m afraid – ”
“Listen up,” J.C. cut in as he stood up. “Be ready to give a summary of everything you’ve learned tonight at nine. I got decisions to make.” He patted Alex comfortingly on the shoulder and moved towards the bridge.
Alex was startled by the size of the Phoenix – approximately twenty metres in height, a vast metallic mobile suit set into an alcove. Above the Gundam, hundreds of tonnes of steerable antennae hung from cables connected to support towers anchored in the surrounding walls.
J.C. turned to him as he stepped into the cockpit. “Have you ever done anything like this system before?”
“No,” he admitted, shivering. It could be chilly in the PLANTs. And one had a sense of being overwhelmed at the beginning of a project. He was always starting from scratch and there was always the chance that, this time, he wouldn’t be able to understand, that something would simply be beyond him. “I’ll manage,” he said aloud.
J.C. looked at him sideways for a moment. “I’m sure you will.” And then he reached forward to close the door to the cockpit.
By nine tonight, the old commander, a long-time friend of the Zala family, would be able to confirm the nagging suspicion gnawing at him for the past weeks: he would not be wrong.
He did as he was told. After several minutes, he began skipping around, switching tactics randomly, pursuing instruction at different levels. It was all there, the experience of years, ZAFT’s best effort, ordered and systematised, seen through the prism of their collective intellect. Hours later, he staggered out of the cockpit.
In the centre of the bridge was a kind of deckhouse that made it look almost like a Noah’s Ark. It was not a closed structure; its sides seemed to have been cut away, leaving the corner beams and roof like a canopy. And inside, beneath the canopy, a familiar figure lay.
Alex scrambled over the door of the cockpit and approached the deckhouse. The uniformed figure of the commander lay very still and Alex drew back a little, afraid of what he would find. He wanted very badly indeed to hit something or to throw up and tried to control the impulses. The overhead light had been left on, making the headache worse. He was afraid to attempt the walk to the switch.
The nausea passed and when he opened his eyes, he noticed an old tablet with a windowed memo overlaying the text lying in the man’s hands. He reached reverently across to retrieve the tablet. But first he had to touch the hand of the dead man, and it was colder than any stone. “Alex,” the memo said, “there has been a reconsideration of Operation M in the weeks of your absence. It will go on as planned whether or not we have the Phoenix. Perhaps you will be interested in the new thinking. – H.”
The vomiting went on long past the point when there was anything left to bring up. When the sickness abated, he stood, sweating and trembling. Then he willed his hands to grasp and smash the tablet against the floor, wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and turned back towards the Phoenix.
I am Alex, he thought. Nothing is beyond me.
Jachin Chare, C.E. 73 7.08
They moved in a single file, along the silent path. The Freedom Gundam glittered in the reflected sunshine; bright spots dancing on the otherwise dull grey surface.
“What are we going to say, Kira?”
“I don’t know,” Kira replied.
“We’ll have to meet the PLANT representatives on Aprilius 1,” Cagalli said. “And say – and say – ”
“Better if we don’t,” Kira said suddenly. “They don’t trust us anyway: they know about the situation in Orb, remember?”
“That won’t solve anything for long.”
“Maybe we won’t need long.”
They went on in silence. At the turn where the path curved down towards an airlock, Kira paused and gazed ahead over the shoulder of the Freedom, over to the next cluster of PLANTs where millions of coordinators live. “It’s too quiet. They didn’t even try to stop us.” He said doubtfully.
Then he shrugged; seemingly detached, indifferent, as though his mind were still half-paralysed. “Probably received our distress signal.” He opened the first gate of the airlock that would lead them away from the hangar, and she followed cautiously.
The second gate was opening with a soft hiss when suddenly ahead of her Kira seemed to leap into the air, cannoning sideways into Cagalli. He yelled incoherently, and then they were both flinging themselves at the gate they just came through, in a hopeless instinctive clutch at defence. And behind them in a horrible hasty flash Cagalli saw, aiming at them, the black glinting barrels of dozens of guns.
“Slowly, now!” The voice was warm, relaxed, amused: as Cagalli pressed desperately against the metallic wall she glimpsed the figure of a man ahead, holding out an arm as if to catch her. The fatherly face seemed somehow familiar… Cagalli thought no further, but collapsed in exhausted relief against the comforting outstretched arm. Behind her, Kira glanced apprehensively over her shoulders – and saw that every single gun had been lowered.
“Calm down,” The voice came again. “There’s no need to panic, we were just making sure. What is the trouble, what’s wrong?” Then he looked more closely at Kira. “Why, I know you – you were here on a visit with Athrun not too long ago.”
Kira removed his helmet. “Mr. Amarfi?”
“Yes indeed.” Yuri Amarfi’s voice sharpened. “Representative Attha and Kira Yamato, if I may hazard a guess? What is wrong, has something happened at Orb?”
They stared at him, unable for a moment to gather enough wit for an answer.
“No no,” Cagalli said then, stumbling. “No… I’m just… Cagalli now. The cabinet staged a coup, saying it was for the good of Orb.”
“For the good of Orb.” Mr. Amarfi’s lean face darkened. He looked at them in concern. “When was the last full meal you had?”
“About two days ago,” Cagalli said, too exhausted to pretend; Kira remained wheedlingly silent. “We had no time to prepare, and no other place to go to. There was nothing – ” she gulped.
“Oh dear me,” Mr. Amarfi said comfortingly, as if cosseting a small child. “Never mind, you’re safe now…” He put his arm around Cagalli’s shoulders and led her down the corridor. Kira hesitated a moment, and then followed. Behind him, the guards remained unnervingly close. Driving… driving, he thought suddenly; driving us, as if we were sheep and they were sheepdogs.
An hour or a lifetime later, he stood motionless in the dark corridor of Jachin Chare, all feeling spent, a great ache behind his eyes, and somewhere now there were footsteps, and a voice calling in anxiety. It seemed to him that these things mattered little, for he was too weary now to care. He wanted to lie down in the darkness, and to sleep with his face between his hands, where he could hide and be forgotten. Somewhere, in the Debris Belt, there was a ship called Excelsior, and the man he trusted sat in the captain’s seat now, taking his ship to safety. He had promised to bring him the Phoenix at daybreak, and to wait for him on Junius 7. There would be no operation, no Magdalene. He had kept his promise, didn’t he?
He wanted to sleep now, and remember no more the guttering flames in the streets of Maius 2 littered with pulverised automobiles, and the stone-cold touch of dead flesh. He wanted to sleep, and it seemed to him suddenly that he stood no longer, that he was falling too, and the blackness came about him and covered him, and there was a rushing of wind in his ears…
Surely it was long afterwards that people came and bent over him, and hands lifted him and carried him. And someone bathed his face and his neck, and laid pillows under his head. There were many voices in the distance, and the coming and going of heavy footsteps.
And dimly, in the back of his mind, something whispered, “He will be waiting for me on the Debris Belt, yet I am lying here, unable to move, and Magdalene will proceed as planned,” and he tried to raise himself from his bed, but he had no strength.
So it was that, through the mathematics of eternity, the sole survivor of the terrible massacre of Maius 2 was Alex Dino who, not too long ago, had very much wanted to die.
In the space of forty-eight hours, they had moved from an area heavily scarred by the previous war to the placid peace of an enclosed room, where she could watch the broadcast melodrama, silently taking in the ripples of laughter and witty, empty conversation. Even if she had not spent the past three years in the volatile political field, she would have felt a stranger among such characters – the young men in brilliantly coloured, intricately pleated coats that broadened shoulders and narrowed hips, the young women wasp-waisted and delicious in pale and shimmering fabrics the colours of peony blossoms and sherbet. The beautiful grooming and attention to detail fascinated her: the arrangement of hair, the delicacy of shoes, the perfection of features. And the thought of children screaming and running – stunned, desperate, starving and terrified – came to mind. She mastered the unreasonable anger, knowing it was partly exhaustion.
Through this oasis of artificial delights and into her inclement mood, Senator Amarfi strode purposefully, dressed in a severe black suit. The contrast was unavoidable.
“It is often hard to tell from the way people behave whether or not they are telling the truth,” he remarked conversationally. “I have managed to contact diplomats in Orb.”
“Did you think we were lying?”
He shrugged and turned away to pull two plates out of a previously unseen dumb-waiter and carry them to the table. He set the plates down and watched as Kira and Cagalli began to eat.
“And yet,” the senator said, “you behave like a good and moral person.”
He expected an explosion and he got it. Cagalli threw her fork down with a clatter on the plate and sat back. “You know what? I really resent the idea that the only reason someone might be good or moral is because they’re cowed. I do what I do,” Cagalli said, biting off each word, “without hope of reward or fear of punishment. I do not require rules or regulations to bribe or scare me into acting decently, thank you very much.”
He let her simmer down enough to pick up her fork and resume eating. “A woman of honour,” he observed, inclining his head with respect.
“Damned straight,” she muttered around a mouthful of food, glaring at her plate and spiking a bland morsel with her fork.
“We have more in common than you might suppose,” Amarfi said mildly but did not elaborate when Kira’s head came up. As she struggled to swallow, he leaned forward and became more businesslike. “There has been a great deal of work done in the past few weeks. To the best of our knowledge, Senator Clyne is as yet unharmed but under armed guard. The original plan was to prove that she wasn’t involved in the gassing so she would be allowed to leave Orb.” She grunted: sounds reasonable. Watching her reactions carefully, he continued, “However, I am also told that Orb has signed the treaty with the Organisation.”
He expected surprise and anger but saw only resignation. He felt himself rocked again by doubt. What if the whole thing was a mistake and it cost the false peace they had known for the past two years? And as quickly as that passed his mind, he caught another glimpse of the serenity that sometimes came to him lately. When he spoke again, the twins heard only calm and reason.
“The Council would never permit a suicide mission. If the voyage could not be undertaken now with a reasonable chance of success, we would simply wait until it seems sensible to make the attempt,” he told them. “Who knows? It may be impossible for us to carry out the rescue operation. In such a case, we would gather as much information as possible and return home.”
“Who are we? Is it definite now?”
“There has been no decision about the crew yet. But the Council is, in fact, a very rational body,” Amarfi said ironically, “that seems to believe that old diplomats like me will be able to contribute less than, say, a veteran Gundam pilot.”
Kira looked into the senator’s eyes, so friendly and close, and paused. A great sense of strangeness swept over him; there seemed to be no light in Yuri Amarfi’s eyes, as if they were not rounded but flat. “Your point being?” He asked suspiciously, refusing to be charmed.
“I have – ” Amarfi was saying as a guard entered the room. “If you would excuse me a moment, I would be right back.” He said briskly, turning to the guard who glanced warily at the other inhabitants. They moved without further hesitation to the door.
It could have been five minutes or an hour: the wait during which they remained utterly silent, wary of bugging devices that might be privy to the discussion of sensitive issues. But when Senator Amarfi finally returned alone, he was undoubtedly distracted, his face the colour of rain. He looked into the room, eyes unseeing, nodded once and then again, as though confirming something, and left abruptly, his footsteps receding down the hall.
It did not take them long to decide who would go after the senator.
After Cagalli left, Kira moved out into the hallway and listened for a time before stepping into the adjacent room. A glass panel replaced one wall and his eyes had little trouble adjusting to the dim light. The man in the bed turned away as he entered and pulled a pillow up so he could rest his back against the headboard. Kira went to the wooden chair in the corner of the room to wait for whatever would come next.
“So,” the quiet voice was cool and musical, “you have come as a tourist perhaps? To see how the civilians on the PLANTs fare. As you can see: we fare badly.”
Kira stirred: the voice tugged painfully at his mind. I have heard it somewhere before. He was about to say something in reply when suddenly the man sat up, gasping. He struggled to get out of the bed, the loose and nerveless fingers tangling in the sheets, and seemed unaware that anyone else was in the room with him. Kira went immediately to the bedside, helped him clear the linens, and held him over the bedpan until the sickness passed.
The violence of the vomiting could not be exaggerated. Kira had seen a few of the Archangel’s crew experience a great deal of sea-sickness while traversing the Pacific, but never anything like this gut-wrenching reaction. When it was over, the man accepted the proffered tumbler of water, pressing it between his shaky hands and bringing it to his lips.
“Feeling better?” Kira inquired.
For a while, the other man simply stared at him through lank black hair dampened by exertion, mute and trembling, hunched over the edge of the bed. “I’m sorry you had to see that.” The man said at last. “I’m Alex Dino. Glad to meet you.” He held out his right hand and in the absolute quiet of the room, there was the familiar whir of servomotors and micro gears, the metallic susurration of mechanical joints, but strangely muffled by the overlayment of extraordinarily lifelike artificial skin.
Kira took the cool mechanical hand in his own. “Well – ” he began, and then he stopped. He had looked into the man’s face and found there a pair of green eyes to shake him off balance. It was a sudden shock of feeling that he had seen and known them for as long as he could remember: they were unmistakable.
“Athrun,” he said instantly. “Athrun Zala! Where have you been? We were all looking for you!”
“My name is Alex,” the man repeated, unsmiling, looking unwinking down at Kira. “Alex Dino. I used to live on Maius 2.”
Kira was taken aback for a moment, in spite of his new confidence. “Used to?”
Alex looked at the glass wall, continuing in exactly the same conversational tone, “Senator Amarfi wouldn’t think of revealing too much at this point. So I suppose I can only tell you the barest details. It was basically a repeat of the Bloody Valentine; only this time they gassed the colony. I was there when it happened.”
… … End of Phase 01 … …
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