Gundam Fire Still

It was easy for the listener to hear that what he had intended to say was probably the word worse, or worse, but it was also easy to understand that Earth United still lacked unity so far.

"In the face of this war, we must unite, Mr. Commodore, and in any case, the base is now yours."

"Do you have any further comments, Commander Torris?" The Commodore recruited a few of his fellow officers, assigned them tasks, and then turned to his own side, the Eurasian Union, who had remained silent, to ask questions.

"No, the planes under my command are fine, and the boys are fine, maybe a little confused, but that's no big deal. However, I'd like to fill in on their training mission if I can."

"What?"

"What you are here for ah, the exchange and training of MS troops, a lot has happened but it's always time to have a few mock battles between the Atlantic Federation and my people, that order is real after all!"

Epilogue . change

Late May CE51

The last **** scale battle from the beginning of the month had been heading towards a lull, the feints and counterattacks on all fronts on Earth in response to the campaign in Alaska had likewise tended to come to an end as the battle in Alaska dissipated, and aside from the Eurasian coalition expanding its territory slightly in the Middle East, the countless ms and tank wrecks scattered across the Alaskan ice sheet hadn't done much to change the staggered fronts.

But also starting with something that happened in Alaska, for some the war had crept into a new phase. Not too many people knew about that series of senior officers being reassigned or missing, and for most, the change began when they saw Marine helicopters begin landing at a series of heavy industrial bases.

There is anecdotal evidence that the reason they are the worst equipped is that this military force is not controlled by other power-sharers, so the latter naturally do not want the force to become too powerful; and at the same time, the act of leaving most sensitive and dangerous missions to them to perform sacrifices while at the same time does ensure that the Marines are tenacious in combat.

The landed Marines, under orders from Washington, quickly took over the control centers and power generation systems of the industrial facilities, but they had little effect on the workers and functioning equipment therein.

There was no doubt that the people who really had everything under control behind the scenes were always well-informed and not so easily controlled.

On the same night that the Marines were operating, the countless radar stations that kept an eye on the sky at all times belonging to NORAD were able to detect something more or less. The radar net that had been sufficient to cover the entire sky had become an unfortunately flawed and broken web of neutron interference, but experienced analysts could still identify the trajectories of aircraft in that one circular radar coverage area and then connect the tracks in the circles belonging to each radar station. Those trajectories belonging to Gulfstream or Venus business jets ended up disappearing into the sea in the same direction. Not to the surprise of those waiting on the communications screen, those planes all flew beyond the speed of the flight manual, they flew north over the Canadian sector and then disappeared in the direction of the North Atlantic.

Someone had a list in his possession, and by analyzing these flight paths and takeoff points that connected between different breakpoints, he was able to match up everyone on the list, their planes, and their flight paths. In the windswept North Atlantic, which was the estimated end of their route, there was their long-running base, Paradise Island.

As one of the Atlantic Federation's nodes for advanced technology development, the Paradise Island base was heavily invested in by the consortium, and a large number of personnel were brought in through them, so while using the excellent technicians they brought in to provide the consortium with quite a bit of new technology, the entire base was also mixed with enough sand from various new consortium forces.

The cooperation between these consortiums began around the time the Adjusters began building the PLAnt satellite constellation, and their contact became closer as the conflict deepened until the war began, and Paradise Island became one of the points through which they were able to control the Atlantic Federation, and thus the Earth Alliance. The businessmen were no longer content to be behind the scenes when the Copernicus explosion left Earth in shambles, the LoGos title and this powerful tandem began to surface, and the guys in suits on Capitol Hill were no longer required to whisper the names of their patrons from the Consortium, or even greet the guy behind it to someone who was a fellow representative of the Consortium, and then A request for a quid pro quo was issued. From Capitol Hill to the White House offices they have enough pawns in place to take control of the situation over the young president who would be put into office on short notice.

If this were an ordinary president, they could easily have done that, with every step of the election essentially a war for money and a lack of roots for those in office at war. But this time, they missed the point that the resume of the former vice president who was later sworn in as president included a seemingly ordinary stint in a foreign embassy.

In their view, the new president's silence and negative decision-making were not much different from what they expected.

They were routinely handing over the next step in their plans to the Blue Universe as an active subordinate organization, and the latter, led by Ezral Jr. had been acting aggressive enough and even crazy enough that whatever incredible things they did could easily be interpreted as fanaticism and hatred. Even if the Blue Universe's actions are perceived, or even slammed, it's nothing more than extremist impulses. The obvious, close ties behind the Blue Universe and the old Ezral's company also made it so that no one would dare to confront them. But to their surprise, it appeared from the battle reports on both sides that their plan had failed, and the failure was due to the seemingly coincidental reactions of a series of mid- to low-ranking officers in Alaska; they didn't understand the logic of the battlefield and the guidelines by which soldiers made judgments on the battlefield, and in their view it was all just an unfortunate coincidence that allowed one or two nervy officers to see a loophole.

Both the military and their men had temporarily lost contact with Alaska under Zaft's electromagnetic strike, but when contact was established again, they began to expect something was wrong. The members of the so-called United Earth Command had been replaced, and the officers they had in their possession had either been transferred to remote corners or had mysteriously disappeared. And equally bad news from little Ezral, where several regional heads of the Blue Universe are being investigated for tax and financial problems that have begun. By the time the councillors and officers they had bribed secretly told them of the movements of several marines, these sniffy businessmen and capitalists had already smelled danger. Neutron jamming made it impossible for them to communicate without delay by satellite phone any longer, and fiber optic and cable communications were in danger of being eavesdropped on, but they would make a choice that was already about to be made.

And the President of the Atlantic Federation was waiting with an ease that was more than his age deserved, he was quite young for the position compared to most presidents who had ever held it, but he wasn't in a hurry. He has not forgotten the young embassy staff, the echoing shouts of "Alahukpa" and the Kalashnikov rifle shots of the native West Asians, and the helicopters waiting for the marines to evacuate them. He also occasionally dreamed of the bomb exploding in front of the embassy, the steel gates arcing leisurely through the air, then stirring up dirt that splattered his face and landed in front of him; then the soldier beside him collapsing in a rain of bullets, him grabbing the automatic rifle and firing it in the direction of the now defunct gates, and then the clatter of the helicopter rotors coming closer and closer.... So nothing to worry about, those old people in limousines or airplanes, drinking red wine, did have power, but it didn't scare him.

Even his wife didn't know about the affair, and there weren't many people on the entire planet who knew about those secrets, in the Atlantic Federation, just a handful. He knew there were a few others who knew, and he had just met with those few not too long ago, and they had gone their separate ways, and were in each other's minds about that past.

The President knew that his friend Riker would be landing with the Marine helicopter and then taking over the old Ezral's business, and that many of the LoGos would be receiving similar visits at the same time. The CIA and the Intelligence Convergence had infiltrated one of the few bases they had infiltrated the most, and a certain friend far away in Moscow was ready to cooperate, except for that one node, Paradise Island.

And now, as plane after plane of high-grade commercial aircraft began to land on the airfield at the Paradise Island base, and were towed into the closed hangar originally intended for long-range bombers, the base's commanders would never let their boss's property be parked out there to endure the winds and rains of the North Atlantic. It was a safe haven for the LoGos' manipulators. With a self-contained, state-of-the-art federal defense system and new weapons developed to exceed the level of active federal equipment, they could wait in the VIP lounge, sipping wine or coffee, for the young, arrogant president to send in a provocative army and then sit down at the negotiating table with them once again after the army had been met head-on. There was still Zaft in the sky, and this president would know that he and his Marines alone could do nothing without their power.

"Did they all go?" Someone in NORAD asked to a list.

"Two planes are missing."

"That's right, there's two more in Washington, they can't escape. Send a message to Alaska." The officer nodded.

On the runway of the Atlantic Confederate base outside Anchorage, Alaska's state capital, a patch of ground suddenly opened up and a black shaft lit from below with a series of cold LeD lights marking the elevator track, from which a triangular aircraft, all black, was slowly rising.

Ten thousand meters above.

Mu. La. Major Frada touched the zipper and latch of his pressurized suit that had been pulled up to his neck, the side screen built into his helmet already showing the status of the entire suit, but he still felt more comfortable touching it himself.

The data stream was spilling over the green glowing unibody screen in front of him before settling into a composite view of an airport runway, and unlike the conventional cockpit design with multiple screens spread up and down, an entire hemisphere of screens half-wrapped around the forward side of the driver's seat showed a picture of the fuselage surroundings, while the fuselage data would be displayed as a translucent projection in the corner of the screen where the pilot's gaze was directed.

Obviously, this was a design more suited to MS's ease of observing his surroundings, although the triangular shape of the fuselage in which he was sitting, shown in the corner of the screen, did not belong to MS.

He had been tempted to turn down the assignment when Air Force Intelligence had approached him, along with the Intelligence Convergence. He had intuited that all missions that had anything to do with intelligence agencies, especially internal investigative agencies, harbored political intrigue with a straw man. He could already smell a certain conspiracy in the Alaskan battle that had just ended, and after the war, Marius. What Lamias had told him after the war had confirmed his judgment, but as someone who sat more in the cockpit than in his office, he knew that kind of thing could cause trouble if he bothered to care too much about it.

It had been a few weeks ago, before Flight Captain Mu, fresh from combat duty, had been able to fulfill his transfer orders to the rear as an air combat instructor, and had received a strange order that the Air Force's intelligence people needed to meet with him.

One of the first secrets brought to him by those intelligence men was, presumably, good news, or at least that's what he would call it, and that was that William . Colonel Sarzalante had been secretly arrested.

He remembered the man, and he didn't think he'd forget the face that would easily cause him to attack** for the rest of his life; he was the one who had appeared on the communications screen as the Archangel made its dusty crossing of the Pacific Ocean and finally docked at the Alaskan naval port, and then he'd driven off everyone on board, isolated and then waited for scrutiny of the already restless sailors, including the officers, stationed armed guards in the corridors that isolated them, and then arrogantly declared them all suspected of collaborating with the enemy, revealing military secrets, or running away from the ship.

"In fact, however, we found evidence that he himself collaborated with the enemy,"

So said the black-clad man of the Intelligence Convergence.

"And it wasn't found in time," the Military Intelligence man affirmed with a grin, "but we're also all too aware that acts of collusion are often not the work of one man alone."

"So you're expecting me to spy on someone in the squadron?" Mu still visibly frowned, an unabashed display that might have caused his interlocutor's displeasure, but he himself made his stance clear on that.

"No, we're only targeting those internal hazards, and your mission is still flying...."

Then the Air Force Intelligence officer stopped the former before he could say too much, "These contents are currently beyond your classified classification and we cannot cover more than that, but what I can inform you is that this operation has been approved by the command."

"Then why were you the ones who came to me instead of just sending a direct order?"

"For the sake of secrecy, this mission requires not only a good pilot, but also someone who is not their friend."

It took Mu some time to realize who the "they" they were referring to was.

After a few similar conversations, and then getting some information, he took the job.

Then in the underground facility at Anchorage Air Force Base, he saw this black triangle.

"If you guys had shown me this earlier, I might have joined this mission sooner." Mu joked so, and then had trouble controlling himself-like approaching the black airframe.

In the years that the proponents of MS development were going mainstream, not many people would continue to develop this typical, shapeless aircraft with no arms or legs. But it was special, and while it was unclear as to the background or reason for its development, there was no doubt about it for a pilot who had also flown a sufficient number of planes before the universe opened the mA. The flat, razor-sharp nose, the streamlined fuselage that stretches backward, the narrow, thin wings that blend into the fuselage, and the large engine hidden beneath the curved back all indicate that it was designed for high altitude and high speed.

"Yo, finally, you're here." The young man who greeted him was none other than an acquaintance of Mu's, Fred . Young handed over his recording terminal with a tired look on his face, "The project here is finally about to be turned over, and it looks like I'll be back in Washington soon."

The fellow Intelligence Integration officer pressed his fingerprints on the terminal, "This is the intended pilot of the airframe, is there anything in particular I should be aware of?"

"All in all a rather troublesome airframe, should be fine if it's a Major," Young slumped half of his body against the wall and clicked on the panel, "BR-107, Black Raven, hypersonic reconnaissance/bomber, and manned. Project after the last war, goal is to scout the world in an hour and then if necessary, make precision strikes. Congress gave a lot of money to build two prototypes, one unmanned and one manned, and then this was the third one, never used because of the world situation after that. Features and problems were high altitude, high speed and high G-force, probably only for adjusters, and naturalists would have to pulse to accelerate, even if they wore special high G-force pilot suits. The cockpit is a semi-panoramic design, which is quite an advanced idea now that I think about it. The cockpit is also a simulator, so I imported the program to simulate the flight. Then well, the airframe is in good condition for ground test drives, but unfortunately it can't be flown for secrecy reasons." He folded his arms, indicating that there was nothing he could do.

"Can't we test fly?" One of the officers in charge on the Air Force side frowned, "That would be very risky."

"But there's a chance it might be noticed if you test fly it, it's so fast that its flight path might be noticed." Jan replied with a shrug.

"So it can be established that the base itself is classified? If that's the case, I can just trust the maintenance staff here." As a pilot, Mu didn't appear to have too many worries.

"The secrecy here isn't a concern though, the airport in Anchorage has always been a low priority. If it were 30 years ago, we'd be worried about infiltration from Eurasia and East Asia, but now, both Eurasia and East Asia and PLAnt will only keep an eye on Washington, on universities and high tech R&D facilities, and places with ms. Even if they heard about this they wouldn't care, airplanes are out of date, even with this hypersonic multiplier body propulsion."

"Well, what about those people? What are we going to use it against?"

"The capitalists you mean? And the cosmos they sponsored? They'll care even less about that, they'll care about the trips of senior officers and politicians, about money and power, and they'll keep an eye on every place we might develop ms with the PLAnt people, then every officer who goes on vacation to Hawaii or Florida, but it won't be the ice and snow here. Even if there are classified projects here it's not worth their prying eyes, because to them projects that they haven't meddled in are useless and lacking in value, either dead or dying. And only things that have been invested in by them will live on. As for this one, as advanced as it is, it's just an old plane that doesn't fit the times."

"But you won't believe this right, Major."