Gundam Fire Still

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"I guess you're right, Captain." Thomas shook his head silently as he looked down the tarmac at the row of loaded soldiers, plus two jeeps that were carrying anti-armor missiles and had their firing ports pointed at him. He could also see that two Ginn were pointing their guns at the two huge, transport planes that took up most of the tarmac, and that the other two ms of his own squadron were being slowly dragged out of the belly of the transport, still strapped to their mounts and unable to move.

"I order you to come down, immediately, now, no weapons, no extra movement!" An officer was standing a little further away, holding a megaphone and shouting.

"I told you to be ready for this."

"But what I didn't expect was to be ready to face this, Captain." The pilot being hauled off the transport was visibly grimacing on the screen, "What's next?"

"Unfortunately, since they're pointing guns at us, we're going to have to cooperate with them for a bit, get off the plane and be checked by them, but don't forget to lock down your airframes."

4 Confidential matters, and the exposure of them

"This is your barracks, have a nice stay, but don't wander around the base, is that clear?" The soldier slung over his assault rifle and deliberately showing the clip at his waist as he finished and brought the door shut, it was clear that he wasn't expecting an answer, but was simply completing his routine. And it was clear from his habitual general movements that he had done so many times. The soldier's uniform and armband showed he belonged to this base.

"What the hell, Captain, we're trapped." The Ensign looked around, the barracks large enough to sleep a squad was now occupied by the four pilots from the Atlantic Federation, the Ensign picked out an empty bed and lay down.

"I'm kind of glad Katarina didn't come because the airframe broke a leg in Alaska, she wouldn't have liked seeing this."

"Is that what we like to see?"

"Of course not, hell, I kind of know why the captain made us bring live ammunition, these damned Eurasian lunatics."

"But it still doesn't work. Captain, then what are we bringing live ammunition for?"

"Just because it didn't work before, doesn't mean it won't work later, don't get too impatient, boys." Carl walked over to the window and observed the base facilities within view, "Actually they have us under control for a reason for the time being, after all that body is supposed to be classified, and a classified body escaping the base, hell, I'd probably panic if it were me."

"So, boys," Carl turned around and leaned back against the window, "they're going to be looking for us to ask questions later, just tell us what you know, don't purposely cover up or reveal too much hostility, at least for now, they should be more concerned about the lost body, and the machine Why would it escape."

"You know, the organism won't escape, only the person inside will."

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"I'd like to apologize for that unpleasantness, Major Black," the Lieutenant Colonel with the ms unit armband on his uniform passed out his hand with a little embarrassed smile, "I'm Vasiu . Lieutenant Colonel Torris, the commander of the ms unit here, the test unit to be exact."

"Pleasure to meet you, I think I can understand you, some sort of overreaction to some unforeseen event." Karl stepped forward and shook hands.

The location was the Lieutenant Colonel's office, and the row of pictures of pilots on the wall with fighter jets as a backdrop and the somewhat dated flight helmets on display below were an indication that the Lieutenant Colonel was clearly one of his own kind, and not the kind of backstabbing enemy he needed to deal with.

"I know what you're going to ask, Major, but I can only answer, classified, confidential matters, I'm well aware it's stupid, but, there's no way around it, there's a lot of things that aren't up to us in the MS unit, and as a pilot I'm sorry, and my superiors won't allow me to let your men go free."

"At least I want to confirm one thing, the people on the transport plane...."

"They won't be able to leave for a while, but the base will provide them with food and water, in short, anything they might need."

"Well, that doesn't sound too bad." Carl was well aware that this conversation was under someone's watchful eye, so they both should be careful what they said, "About when can we start the exercise? Wait until your business is over?"

"I guess it'll have to be that way, both your men and mine can't move right now because of the damn secrecy of the situation," the bearded colonel sat down in his chair and mopped his forehead with a helpless hand, "and right now it's his (bleep-) move. "

"You established communications with them while you were chasing them, didn't you?" The Colonel suddenly looked up and asked.

"Yes, I inquired as to where they belonged, but the response was that I didn't know."

"A pity, a pity, you could have called them back if you knew." Lt. Colonel Torris's voice grew lower.

"What did you say? Call them back?"

"No, I'm sorry, just forget you heard anything, or to hell with confidential matters, those who do research have a bunch of confidential matters."

"Don't beat around the bush!" There was no knock at the door, and the angry speaker pushed right in.

The eavesdropper was, in Carl's opinion, too impatient, but the latter evidently had good, showing reasons for his impatience.

"I know you Atlantic Federation fellows are here for them, now that you have seen and accomplished your purpose, have you not? So let's not talk about this crap."

The man who was obviously in charge of intelligence, secrecy, and working with Perestroika here looked angry. The latter quickly guessed that this early arrival team must have been instructed to target one of the secrecy programs here. But neither he nor the observer from the consortium, the one who had been yelling in the tower communications, had been able to stop the ms from landing, so under pressure from the consortium behind it, he had to come and ask for clarification. There were things about this base that had to be kept secret, as the observers from the consortium had stressed many times.

However, as a soldier, the head of security at this base had to act under pressure from the consortium, and being manipulated by capital and outside forces was not something he enjoyed, yet he had no other choice, so this anger was vented on the subject of his questioning.

"Yes, sir, I did see the two new classified aircraft, but your suspicions about our snooping secrets are unfounded, and if those two airframes were still in your underground hangar, there is no reason why I would have set foot in your classified confines. It was they who ran to us first, sir, not the other way around." Carl folded his arms in innocence.

He knew he wasn't very good at telling lies, but telling partial truths was barely doable.

"But you saw it anyway, dammit..."

"I have a suggestion, sir," Carl spoke up cautiously, "Instead of wasting time here, let's get them back quickly, since it's a classified body, more people will see them if we run outside."

"..............."

"Nonsense, I don't need you to remind me of such stupid questions." The other party's mouth quivered and looked as if he was about to start cursing, but was eventually restrained, "Hmm, in that case, I demand that you provide me with the unlock key of your organism, I know that you communicated with the escaped organism, we need the records of your calls as well as their escape routes deduced from your organism's records. "

"I'm sorry, but it's more complicated, the driving system is voice-activated, or you can get the original mechanics, but they won't be here for a while, and even if they are, they can't hear confidential information, right?"

Carl said with a smile, knowing that the other side was by no means in a foolproof situation, and that the trouble of the loss of the organism was ultimately on them. While he didn't have the initiative, neither did the other.

"You probably wouldn't believe me if I put it this way, but if you can get me back to the plane, we should be able to share the call logs from the system."

"But please note that you are still under surveillance and there is no proof yet that you had nothing to do with the accident."

"Yes, that's true, but listen, sir, I've seen the plane. Whether you believe it was an accident or not, the image of that organism is already in my shortsword's data logs, and it's there. There's no point in you locking me and my men in that damned barracks."

"..........."

"I suggest that I can involve my squad in your search operation, if you don't have enough ms. Our transport is still here, so we can't stay away, and there's no point in you locking us up when we've already seen the mech anyway."

"A very suspicious suggestion, Major, very suspicious, it's as if you're in it for them. Blending into our operation and thus stealing more information."

"But, security chief, the fact is that there really aren't enough ms we can send out to search for them to move if we don't let 'them' out." The base's ms captain spoke cautiously in the silence, "If we can get their ms involved, we can at least make up half the search sector."

"Don't mention them again, hell, bastards, those damned... , especially not in the presence of suspicious people, and no, indeed those planes can't go out." The head of security paced anxiously around the office.

"I can ask for your advice," the intelligence officer spoke up after a while, knowing full well that if that organism and the people on it were lost for an extended period of time and it happened to be discovered by someone, the Consortium wouldn't simply be pressured to do more than put pressure on itself, and that nothing could go wrong with these experiments or the experimental organism, or else he would need to It's not just your position that you're worried about, it could even include your life.

"But don't forget that you are still suspects. If your suggestion can be taken on board, only you and another, the ms that came into contact with the exodus machine may be allowed to participate in the search, and the rest of you must never leave the base, if you know what I mean."

"I just want this to end early, really."

========

"So what's this about?"

The location was the base's underground test site, and Carl was sitting in the cockpit of his short sword, gripping the joystick. It seemed that the operators behind this base were efficient, and he was quickly notified to come in for a mock battle, along with his airframe.

"Simply put, to show you the consequences of tampering in this matter, there are consequences to snooping on secrets, and it is necessary for me to inform you of the severity of that consequence."

The communication was an angry and grimy male voice, "Don't think you're anything more than not many people who can drive MS, you'll soon be obsolete, just like them."

It was clear that the speaker was not part of the military, or at least lacked respect for some of its basic principles, and it seemed that this was the Consortium, Karl judged in his mind, but if it was a research facility, it wouldn't have said such a thing.