Gundam Fire Still

No sooner had his brain finished digesting the fact that the other man was the very billet he had fashioned from his father's genetic information than the man had collapsed and fallen in front of him, the mouth where he had shot him still smoking.

The United's ace pilot rose shakily to his feet and held onto the wall.

The other man's mask had fallen aside at the moment of his fall, and Mu could recognize the glazed, familiar blue eyes and the heavy wrinkles of old age around them.

The fire burning in those familiar eyes was slowly dying out.

"There's no one left to stop it! The vortex of hatred is about to turn the entire universe upside down!"

The fallen man struggled and waved his hands and shouted his final statement hoarsely in a voice that wasn't that of an old man or a young man.

"Hurry, Fleet, Earth, use the communications system here," the muscles in Borgman's face shook violently as he winded his way into the control room where the other man had been guarding, then found the radio system and the communications system, "This guy, this guy has said something remarkable. "

"This is Borgman, call the fleet, don't, don't let that thing, fall into the hands of the Perestroika."

On the JSA standard communications channel, radio waves from inside the satellite spread throughout the cosmos with the aid of the Institute's antenna.

================

Oh no, that's what I thought at the time, oh no, now everyone knows, there's no military grade encryption in that damned institute.

--- General Remiret wrote so in his memoirs.

23.Void Pressure.

Orb Task Force First Fleet Flagship, Kusanagi, Bridge, Inside L4 Satellite Group

A kind of tension was settling over the bridge, it seemed like everyone could sense that something was going to happen, but without knowing what it was, Kagari was calling Kira's hull over and over again, but the response kept coming back with the automatic beep that the pilot had left the plane and the hull was locked, she didn't like it, not because the ship had lost a protector, she realized that she was worried about the teenager, he might have run into trouble.

And at the same time, Chisaka in the command chair noticed something else that made him frown; the Combine ship that had been fairly peaceful throughout the entire engagement, the one he had been aboard had opened its main gun cowl a few seconds ago, the twin beam cannons had begun their rotation and pitch system calibration, and the ciws turrets on its flank had extended their barrels and begun rotating to scan the surrounding The target, the launch tube on its stern, was loaded with live ammunition from scratch. All of this indicated that the ship was in combat mode.

He was drumming a little, his own ship was the closest target, it couldn't avoid any possible attack at this distance, but he knew very well that the other side had no reason to do that; if the other side was on alert for the three zaft ships, they were still blocking the perimeter of the satellite, it wasn't within fighting distance here yet, and if the other side was on alert for a threat they didn't know about yet... He didn't like the feeling, and as a veteran Special Forces soldier, he was well aware that the hidden enemy was the most dangerous one.

"Raise level one alert and get all duty officers in position." He asked Kagari tentatively.

"Just do it." The young woman replied without hesitation, "Also, prepare my plane."

"What? But..."

"The Union MS is moving!" An impertinent radar man interrupted the conversation taking place in the command chair, "They're approaching the airframe that's sending out the unknown signal."

"Mayura's report, the Union pilots warned them to watch the perimeter!" It was the ship's ms control that answered the call.

It seems that the Combine has sensed something and is making preparations for something, but what is it? Chisaka frowned, lack of intelligence was the most important situation to be avoided, and worse, there was very little he could do about it.

"Comms, how is the electronic environment in U Domain?"

"Report, there are standard search radar scans of us, United, and that red PLANT ship, unidentified signals from that unidentified ZAFT hull, etc., new bursts of communications from inside the satellite, on the United channel."

"Can you decrypt it?"

"No encryption, the contents are..." The communications officer with the headset hesitated, as if he couldn't believe what he was hearing.

"What is it? Put it out!"

"'This is Borgman, call the fleet, don't, don't let that thing, fall into the hands of the Perestroika.'" A desperate male voice boomed across the bridge.

"What? Cosmos? What does that thing refer to?"

===== It's the dividing line between location and time ==============

Five minutes ago, Earth, North America, Atlantic Commonwealth, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Underground

The discussion continued, Fred . Every time Young looked up a little, he noticed that the ashtray on the table was getting a little fuller, and that several officers with the vice of smoking were consuming the tiny white cylinder one by one, and he could understand why, for the anxiety was torturous, unusually torturous.

After all, they were discussing nuclear energy, the most efficient energy source at this stage, and the most powerful weapon; and the matter under discussion was the possibility of regaining it from their own adversaries, and the possibility of it falling into the hands of a group of desperate terrorists who would do something unpredictable.

"Why are they there? There was no reason for Ezral to run over there on his own, that child's game-like contact wouldn't have been his purpose, at least not the first one."

"According to the quantum computer's analysis, someone invited them over, their friend."

"But who was their friend? The waste merchants and orb organized the contact, they wouldn't have welcomed the unwelcome guest on their own, we, Eurasia or East Asia are not Ezral's friends, the only ones left in l4 are the zaft and plant's group of snitches, the mutant Kleinites, this computer downstairs refers to, who are Ezral's friends?" A staff officer banged on the table in irritation, "There's a possibility that someone from that ORB ship, someone who doesn't like old Asha's plans, but what is his purpose in summoning Perestroika over there?"

"No, wait, since there's still zaft, and the moderate group of adjusters who now call themselves 'terminals'... Amongst them..."

"The one outstanding question we've always had is how Ezral's friend in the Alaskan base dropped our arming plan - and it was to zaft," Young said slowly but firmly.

"We've been assuming that there was a go-between between them, a cunning intelligence dealer who bridged the deal between them, a pair of mutually hostile adversaries, and found the one who was willing to sacrifice some of his 'own' for the deal, on our side it was Ezral, but we've been unable to Knowing who makes that decision on their side of the fence."

"Because the problem is obvious, he's high enough in the zaft to get a real plan of attack, even knowing that the target is Alaska and not Panama, and at the same time he's happy to out this to their enemies - which means happy to see the plan fail and their people go to hell. It's hard for us to imagine that such a man could exist."

"But if, indeed, this middleman and this madman at the top of the zaft does exist, and is in L4 right now." Young drew a circle on the projected star map of the L4 satellite cluster - a cluster that was in fact now marked with numerous circles of different colored lines.

"They're probably working on another deal, one as bold and cunning as the Alaskan conspiracy, between zaft and Perestroika."

"It's possible," someone nodded in admiration, "that he could be hiding in any of L4's unidentified forces."

An updated, real-time intelligence from L4 popped up on the electronic projection on the desktop, the message from the Montgomery's ship's ai over the quantum communication system included the first firefight with zaft, the commando team chasing into the interior of the satellite, the intelligence on the new type of zaft aircraft shared by the plant's detractor's ship, and the zaft-affiliated, but oddly acting ms that was now flying out of the satellite while constantly sending out unidentified signals.

"That's it!" Someone opened their eyes.

"What?"

"That's what they're trading,..." A terrible conclusion came to his mind, this hypothetical, almost impossible death merchant actually existed, and Yang opened his mouth, but couldn't get out the second half of the sentence.

"That up there, aboard, is nuclear energy." A general added for him what he hadn't finished, and his voice was shaky.

A silence enveloped the otherwise noisy conference room, as if a pressure from space was pressing down on the heads of everyone here, and even though they were all well aware that they were staying in a place that was part of a nuclear warfare bunker that had been operated for over 50 years, and that ordinary nukes wouldn't do much damage here, the depressing feeling remained.

"We need to link up to L4," Admiral Bliss broke the silence with a heavy face, "Tell the nasa or darpa's not to skimp on any bandwidth, we need to know what's going on in real time."

========

In the meantime, l4, cosmic space

Aslan. Sara knew that he had few options left, and after several minutes of, attempting to regain control of the machine, he found that there was little left of what he could operate - not even the ability to leave the machine.

He could be sure that it was Kruse who had done all of this, that the man had set the airframe to autopilot mode and then locked it down, and that neither fingerprints, voiceprints nor passwords would allow him to free the airframe from that mode. But he knew there was one other thing that was bound to remain under his control, the crudest mechanical last resort that could be used even if the entire fuselage's electronics were damaged.

He touched the handle at the bottom of the main screen, and after wrenching it down hard, he heard the click of some sort of mechanical device unlocking, then he fumbled for what he was looking for from the side of his own main console and yanked it out.

It was a simple digital input panel, and he knew it wasn't connected to any of the control system authentication elsewhere in the body, so that code was still valid, that last one.

The teenager didn't want to enter it at all.

The organism was still advancing uncontrollably, looking like nothing in the direction it was moving, no union, no orb, but he was well aware that what awaited him would be nothing good.

On the already out of control, but still working screen, he could see the four approaching points of light, two of them joint ms, the other two belonging to orb, they were not moving fast, obviously confused and remaining cautious, but the distance readings were actually decreasing.