Renascent SEED

[Kenji]

Wow... that was the longest, um, months in my life. To make a long story short, it culminated in three short stories, an essay, and an exam all jockeying for my attention during the last week.

However, I haven't stopped working... and this fourth chapter is the proof of it. Everyone enjoy and many apologies for the wait.

Oh, I also changed around a few spellings and terms... I'll edit the prior chapters on this forum, when I get back on a high-speed connection.

--

Chapter Four

For a moment, the world around Aslan Zala was suspended. That face was one he hadn’t seen since that day in Asea, five years ago. Time had filled out the face of that child, set him on the path to becoming a man, yet those eyes and that parted-lip naivety were the unmistakable features of Kira Yamato. That trembling voice that seemed always on the verge of tearful despair was also Kira Yamato. Even so, seeing him there, hearing his voice, looking at those eyes, all of it was impossible. Aslan knew it was impossible.

A heavy metallic snap brought him back to reality. The Ganymedean was aiming a gun at him, her face growing pale as she realized the chamber was empty. Feeling his own cheeks grow hot, Aslan stepped forward and slashed at her abdomen. She jumped back, barely avoiding the blade, tensing her body for the follow-up, but there was none. Instead, the young ZAFT soldier turned on his heel and ran down the length of the prototype mobile suit, down its alabaster leg to the bright red foot. He leapt from the toe across the chasm to the other heavy-freight trailer. His body collided with the other mobile suit’s crimson armor, his fingers curled into the chinks of its armor as he hung over the trailer bed.

As he climbed up the smooth armor plating, he looked back to see the Ganymedean woman fishing into her pockets, probably for more bullets. Rather than wait, he made his way to the cockpit hatch of the GAT-X303, opening the access panel and inputting the entry code. The locks disengaged and the hatch opened, the unpainted internal plating sliding back. Aslan slid into the seat, closing and locking the cockpit, altering the password to seal himself in safety.

He couldn’t help but smile at the faint sounds of bullets ricocheting off the mobile suit’s thick armor. It was the sound of her frustration, the realization of her ultimate inability to protect the prototypes. The price was too heavy, not to mention that she was still in possession of the GAT-X105 Strike: Mackenzie’s Strike.

The operating system finished its self-diagnostic, presenting the main menu on the forward monitor. Aslan typed a couple of quick commands into the left keyboard, assigning torso movement to the left stick, which he pressed forward. He felt the Heliopolitan “gravity” shift as the mobile suit sat up in the trailer.

Assigning the rear-main camera to the right monitor, he watched as that woman opened the Strike’s cockpit hatch. He was sure that she wasn’t one of the test pilots who were scheduled to arrive today, but now it was evident that she wasn’t a mere technician, either. She turned back to the brown-haired boy, the one who looked so uncannily like Kira Yamato, and there was an exchange. He raised his hands and shook his head, gesticulating toward something on the concrete floor far below, looking rather frenetic. She wouldn’t hear any of it, pulling him roughly to his feet, dragging him to the cockpit hatch, and booting him in. She gave one last look in Aslan’s direction before jumping into the Strike, herself.

Delaying no more, Aslan returned his attention to his duties, activating the debug mode and deleting the necessary lines of code, returning the GAT-X303 Aegis’s control scheme to a manual configuration, something more similar to the GINN he had piloted over the last four years. The gifts he had inherited from his Coordinator genes combined with the strict training he received under ZAFT to make him into a superb pilot, capable of dividing his attention between the screens and gauges, the dual control sticks and pedals, and the constant manipulation of suit variables via the three keyboards, two armrest keypads, and other switches located throughout the cockpit. At any given moment, his hands and fingers were always moving, his eyes constantly darting between data readouts. Even if his suit was performing a simple action, there was no lack of activity from the pilot. It had taken intense training to raise his endurance to an acceptable level.

As he finished his work and rebooted the system, Aslan looked back at the right monitor. The cockpit to the GAT-X105 had been sealed long ago, now the white mobile suit was struggling to stand. Inside, the woman, a Natural, was attempting to use the hobbled operating system. Talk about anticlimactic. Even so, he could breathe a sigh of relief. At least he didn’t have to figure out what to do with her passenger.

Without the control programs, the Aegis responded beautifully to his will, climbing out of the heavy-freight trailer with ease, its great crimson limbs moving effortlessly at his command. Its responsiveness exceeded the expectations he had built up after hearing report after report on the G Project suits’ performance. According to the intel, the Strike and Aegis were the most recent models, the culminations of the entire project. While the Strike was envisioned as a general purpose combat MS, the most likely template for mass-production, the Aegis had grander aspirations as an anti-ship weapon. Among its impressive armaments was a high-yield beam cannon installed directly into the frame, a compact and far less accurate version of similar beam rifles used by the Buster and refined for the Strike. It was Aslan’s guess that his tendency to attack enemy ships directly was the reason why Commander le Creuset had assigned him to this suit. Now that he could feel its power and grace directly, it no longer seemed like such an arbitrary assignment.

The main monitor’s filter activated as soon as the Aegis left Restricted Area Zeta, dimming the light from the ultraviolet panels installed at various points around the colony cylinder and allowing Aslan’s eyes to properly adjust. Heliopolis, like all colonies of its type, was completely closed off from the space outside, lacking any sort of window in favor of superior radiation shielding. Even if there was a clear view to the void, as there was in the PLANTs, the sunlight received wouldn’t be adequate to grow the various flora needed for aesthetic beauty and psychological health. Therefore, all colonies and cities used ultraviolet emitters to simulate sunlight as best as technology would allow. Though the intensity of the emitters was very low, creating a faint glow of white light more akin to cloudy days on Earth, real estate near the panels was understandably cheap.

Ahead of him, over forty kilometers from his current position, was the end of Heliopolis, where the cylinder met the asteroid into which it was lodged. Once he made it there, out into space, and back to the Vesalius, his mission would be complete. However, he’d have to make his way through the city, where the Heliopolitan Defense Forces were currently occupied with the three GINN mobile suits that had brought him and his comrades into the colony. Though he would likely draw fire, it was something that had to be done. Warming the thrusters in the Aegis’s legs and hip binders, Aslan prepared for the long jumps that would speed him to his goal.

Before entering the commands to switch drive modes, he glanced once more at the right monitor, where the Strike had just managed to climb out of its trailer and was starting to approach him slowly. He thought of the boy who looked and sounded like Kira Yamato, of their last meeting in Asea. He hoped, now as he did then, that Kira would have nothing to do with the war, that he could remain in the peace that Orb had secured for itself. To that effect, he hoped he would never see that boy’s face again. With that thought, the Aegis’s thrusters fired.

--

“Shit!”

Maria Ramius could only watch helplessly as a classified military secret lifted off into the air. How the hell did those Coordinators know how to control the prototypes so well? The moment that the ZAFT soldiers began their attack, it was clear to her that information had been sold. The extent of it, however, was becoming clearer with each passing moment. Watching that dark-haired youth so expertly wield the Aegis only made the picture more damning. The G Project was no secret, at all.

She cursed through clenched teeth, damning her luck again and again. Instead of finishing the tests and passing the torch to Lieutenant Bashir, who was scheduled to arrive today, and returning to Ganymede for some well-deserved leave, she was attempting to chase down a top-secret military prototype in one she had commandeered for herself. This certainly wasn’t the path toward a peaceful retirement and a nice government pension.

She was well aware of the disparity of power between the two suits. The Aegis was fully loaded with its weaponry, including a refined beam rifle, four beam sabers, and a high-yield Scylla anti-ship cannon. The Strike, meanwhile, was meagerly armed because its weapons hadn’t been delivered from the Archangel yet. The two head-mounted CIWS machineguns certainly wouldn’t be able to pierce through her opponent’s Phase Shift system. If the Aegis’s hijacker were proficient with any of the weapons, which it would be safe to assume he was, then Maria would be in trouble.

She was also aware of her advantages, though. Since the Strike was scheduled to be tested first, its battery had been fully charged. The Aegis, meanwhile, had only been charged to about one-eighth capacity, since its tests weren’t due until the next day, assuming everything had gone as planned. If she could avoid its attacks and force it to use the Phase Shift system, then it would drain its battery quickly and she could recapture it. However, if the pilot managed to outrun her, all the power in the Strike would be meaningless. Increasing the throttle, she brought the suit to running speed, the city ahead approaching quickly.

Her eyes flitted back to her passenger, the boy who was currently wedged between the left armrest and the alloy cockpit wall. She had intended to take him along with her, to let him use the mobile suit’s armor in exchange for saving her life. However, he had been less than cooperative, babbling and gesticulating wildly to the point where she wondered if he even understood the Ganymedean dialect. Rather than ignore and leave him to his own devices, as she should’ve done, she decided to take him along by force. It was quite a bit of trouble to get him to calm down, but once he did, he started making some sense.

“Listen, kid,” Maria offered, “We can look for your friend once I’ve finished dealing with this, okay?”

The boy didn’t respond, averting his eyes and seeming to shrink into the REMOVED he had been shoved into. Maria was indignant. What the hell did this kid want, for her to turn around and put this girl, whoever she was, over far more important matters? She hated it when civilians acted like that, putting up their self-important and unrealistic demands, but it seemed that civilians from neutral nations were even worse.

“What’s your name, anyway? I’m sure you don’t like being called ‘kid’ all the time, right?”

“That patch on your shoulder,” he said, not looking at her, “You’re a Ganymedean officer, aren’t you? What are you doing here?”

Maria frowned. Of course, her presence here would be strange to him. Orb was a neutral nation, distant from the war against the PLANTs. The Ganymedean military had no business being in this colony; there were no excuses. Everyone on the G Project knew that.

“Look,” she hesitated, “I can’t justify us being here. The higher-ups found an opportunity that they couldn’t pass up. I was assigned here to make sure it happened. That’s all I know… that’s all I can say.”

It was an unsatisfactory explanation and she knew it. Still, what did he expect? Treaties and declarations were as thin as the paper they were printed on. Just because Chancellor Atha favored neutrality didn’t mean the rest of his government really felt the same way. The Ganymedean partnership with Morgenroete was proof of that. Could a truth like that ever be satisfactory?

The boy remained silent for a short time, as though he were considering her words. Finally, he said, “My name’s Kira.”

Maria snorted, pleased with the absurdity. “Pleased to meet you.”

--

The Heliopolitan Defense Force’s missiles struck the face of an apartment complex, shattering the outer wall and raining concrete on the streets below. Taking shelter behind that building was one of the gray metallic giants that had brought the ZAFT soldiers into Heliopolis via the resource asteroid. Its single red eye shifted around its horizontal track, giving its pilot a 120-degree pan of the battle zone. Its 76mm machine cannon was held tightly, clutched against its armored breast.

The pilot of this ZGMF-1017 GINN was waiting for his chance to counterattack. This was hardly the first time he had seen battle, nor was it the first time that he was pitted against forces that seemed far more insignificant than they really were. Even though the armored trucks were weak in comparison to the GINN’s thick armor and heavy weaponry, that didn’t mean they could be taken lightly. Those missiles, while they couldn’t break the armor, could cause it to spall, tearing apart the interior with flying shrapnel. Many young pilots forgot this and paid their due for it.

Miguel Aiman, however, wasn't a fool. He had feinted twice from the corner to his right, building up an expectation from the enemy. Once the missiles had lulled again, the operators hoping to lure him out, he took a couple of steps toward the other corner. He knew full well that the Heliopolitans could hear his suit’s footsteps and were adjusting their aim in preparation for his sure emergence, confident that they could see through his tactic. Then, at the last minute, he activated the leg thrusters and kicked forward, causing the GINN to make a thrust-assisted leap backward. As he sailed over the asphalt in midair, he aimed with his machine cannon and fired, each large-caliber round hammering through the thin chasses of the armored vehicles, setting off their munitions in little gouts of flame.

As a child, Miguel always admired ZAFT’s mobile suit corps, holding his dreams of joining them close to his heart. Even as he grew and began to guess at the realities of the war against the Galilean Alliance, his dream never wavered, evolving into an earnest desire to protect the PLANTs from the Naturals. The reality of combat filtering into him over his tour of duty did little to stifle his love for mobile suits, and now he was the leader of his own combat squadron, based on the Laurasia-class carrier Gamow. The reputation of him and his men had built over successive operations until they were assigned to participate in this critical mission with the famous Crucible Team.

The opportunity of this assignment couldn’t be ignored. If these prototypes were anything like the intel made them out to be, ZAFT would soon use them to create new models of their own. It was doubtlessly Miguel’s intention to be the recipient of one of these new models, once the kinks had been worked out. For that reason, his performance today had to be the best of his career. At this point, he was confident in his success. The drop operation was performed without incident and the diversion he and his compatriots were providing was working splendidly.

“Dusk One, come in. This is Caesarion. Dusk One, do you read me?”

The voice on the radio belonged to Zala, the Commandant’s son and one of the aces of the Crucible Team. He’d heard tell of the boy’s prowess, how he sank three Galilean cruisers in quick succession, destroying the enemy’s morale and making the mop-up that much quicker. Of course, he’d never seen those skills himself, and he couldn’t help but wonder if the stories were simply exaggerations due to his pedigree, considering the way that the Political Office was harping on his engagement with Chairman Klein’s daughter. A modern-day warrior-prince and his pure-as-snow princess bride; Miguel didn’t know whether to laugh or gag.

“This is Dusk One,” Miguel responded, the mic in his helmet taking in the words with clarity, “I read you, Caesarion. My boys and I were starting to wonder how much longer we’d have to play with these jokers.”

Though he feigned indifference, Miguel was impressed by the crimson and black mobile suit approaching. The armor, like any contemporary suit, was a patchwork over the frame. However, unlike the GINNs, there was a sort of method to the madness, almost as though the disparate plating could fit together in another way. There was an unshakable sense of symmetry in the design.

Beyond that, he felt uneasy when looking at the head. The way those emerald eyes glared at him, or how the silver war mask stared coldly in his direction, as though it were sizing up the GINN and wasn’t impressed, it was disconcerting. Perhaps, he wondered, this was a conscious design choice. It didn’t make any sense, since combat in space took place over such speeds and distances that it’d be unlikely that an enemy pilot would gaze upon this suit’s visage, yet he somehow felt as though the stare of this mask would pursue him, even in the vastness of the void.

As the GAT-X303 approached, slowing to a walk, Miguel continued, “Where’s the other prototype?”

There was a short hesitation on the other side, “Things didn’t go as planned. Rusty’s dead… so are the marines.”

Miguel’s throat turned to cotton. Russell Mackenzie was one of his classmates in the Martius Primus military academy, as well as the better student, graduating with honors and being granted the elite status of a Redcoat. Back then, Miguel couldn’t take the perceived humiliation and abandoned their friendship. It was only after he had experienced the reality of warfare that he began to reflect and see the error of his ways. When he learned that the Gamow would be accompanying the Vesalius on this mission, he began looking forward to meeting the redheaded “Rusty” and making amends.

The mission timetables were so demanding that he couldn’t meet him beforehand, so he was hoping to celebrate their victory afterwards. Now, it was impossible. Miguel gathered himself, returning his focus to the mission at hand, “What about Mackenzie’s target? What’s its status?”

“Capture wasn’t a success. Last I saw, a Ganymedean officer was getting into it.”

At this point, Zala was starting to irritate him. He was a Redcoat and he couldn’t just blast the other prototype into ashes? Judging from the long black rifle strapped to its skirt armor, that crimson mobile suit should’ve been more than capable of that. Ultimately, he had to concede that he didn’t know how strict Commander le Creuset was to his subordinates. After all, ZAFT was a militia; each commander had complete authority over the rules he would enforce. Miguel created his own code of conduct, and Raul le Creuset did the same. It wasn’t the place of either man to question the other. Besides, the masked commander of Crucible Team could be quite unsettling.

“Return to the Vesalius, Caesarion. I’ll capture the One-Oh-Five in Mackenzie’s place.”

The other pilot didn’t answer, nor did his crimson machine move. It was clear that there was something that Zala wasn’t agreeing with, but Miguel wasn’t in the mood to care. His making amends with an old classmate, his glorious performance in this operation, all of it was slowly being tarnished. If, however, he could capture the GAT-X105, then he would kill all birds with a single stone. It would be worth the trouble.

“Understood,” Zala finally replied, “I’ll leave it in your hands, Dusk One.”

As the Aegis passed the GINN, the Redcoat pilot added, “One more thing… if you can, please capture the enemy pilot alive.”

“Shouldn’t be too difficult if it’s a Natural.”

Miguel could imagine the younger man’s face twisting into a frown, a thought that amused him. The crimson mobile suit then proceeded to run into the city streets, receding in the GINN’s rear camera. For it to be running instead of jumping must’ve meant that it was running low on battery power or propellant.

It really didn’t matter to him; it wasn’t his job to babysit le Creuset’s men.

--

It was quickly developing into the longest day in Cyrus Argyle’s life.

After the siren sounded, he led his friends to the elevator, only to find that it had been locked, as per emergency protocol. Though he knew that there was a staff elevator somewhere on that floor, he didn’t have the clearance necessary to use it. So, he was forced to lead his friends down staircases, through corridors he had never seen before, all to find the tube-like entrance elevators to the shelters underneath the basement.

Every city built in space, be it in free orbit or within a moon’s crater, had a system of shelters buried deep within. Each was completely sealed off from the outside environment, stocked with food and water, designed to last through the breaking of the biosphere. They were designed to survive even the complete breakup of a colony, be it through natural disaster or warfare. Survivors from other colonies, destroyed over the course of the long war, were a testament to the engineering.

However, once they reached the basement, they found that all of the shelters were filled to capacity. They had no choice but to return to their cars and search for any other shelters they could find. To their dismay, each one they found turned out to be full. With each ashamed voice they heard over the intercom, informing them of their misfortune, they began to feel the pressure. True, a raid on Heliopolis didn’t necessarily mean the colony was going to be destroyed, but the possibility was undeniable and the lack of available shelters made it seem imminent.

Freya, though she was no longer on the verge of catatonia, was still generally unresponsive. Throughout the whole journey to the basement and back up to Cy’s car, she kept mumbling fearfully about the Coordinators, how they were coming to slaughter them all. Cy, for one, knew better than to automatically assume it was ZAFT, but his fiancée was from the Ganymedean Federation. For all he knew, she may have been right, but he liked to believe he was more open to possibilities.

It was at some point between their hurried flight down the stairs and the headcount in the parking lot that they realized that Kira and Calgary weren’t present. Toru and Miriallia were adamant about going back into the R&D building to find them, but Cy and Kazui reasoned against it. The building was huge, and it had been quite some time since they had disappeared, whenever that was. Besides, Kira would know what to do. If anything, the two of them were probably in a shelter, chatting away to pass the time. Neither Toru nor Miriallia looked all that satisfied by the explanation, but they did see the point behind it, that it would be pointless to search the building for them.

Instead, the five of them piled into the car, with its owner behind the wheel and Toru riding shotgun, Miriallia keeping an eye on Freya at Cy’s whispered behest. They drove to the edge of the city, trying to dash away their past apathy and remember where the shelters were. Their feeble attempts at remembering facts they had never bothered to learn were interrupted as soon as they passed city limits. The air was alive with sound, the concussions of distant artillery fire periodically puncturing an otherwise complete silence. The streets were completely empty, the shops abandoned, all life had left the city within the cylinder. The car cruised ever more slowly through the abandoned streets, the attention of the passengers turned to gazing in awe at the spectacle around them.

“Hey, Cy, stop this thing!”

The response to Miriallia’s frantic cry was immediate as Cy’s foot slammed on the brake pedal. The passenger-side door opened, Toru hopped out, the seat flipped forward, and Miriallia bailed. Cy’s eyes, along with everyone else’s, followed her as she approached a young girl sitting on the curb, curled up into a little ball, trembling with tears. Toru’s eyes met Cy’s, signaling some sort of condolence as his girlfriend knelt before the girl, exchanging soft words with her.

At length, Miriallia returned to the car with the sniffling young girl in tow.

“These are my friends,” she said to the little girl, introducing each with the point of a finger and a name. Everyone greeted their new guest, if only to be polite. Freya was the only one to remain silent, staring at her lap in the backseat. Cy was fairly sure that, at the moment, none of the others were particularly interested in meeting new people in this situation, but there was nothing else to be done.

“This is Elle,” she said to them, indicating the girl, “She’s been here ever since the sirens sounded. Poor thing was so scared she didn’t know what to do.”

Cy knew what Miriallia was asking, what ought to be said, “She can come with us, if she wants.”

Miriallia’s eyes returned to Elle, “Hear that? The five of us are already looking for a shelter. Do you wanna come along? We can help you find your family after things settle down, okay?”

The little girl hesitated at first, looking at Miriallia and the car with a sort of open-mouthed suspicion. She finally nodded in assent, climbing into the backseat with Miriallia. As Cy watched her, he noted Elle’s face, which was covered in dirt and smudged by tears. He began to feel that his friend was assuming too much as he assembled the reality of the girl’s situation in his mind: there was probably no family to look for. Still, he said nothing as the two got in the back, the passenger seat was snapped back into its original position, and Toru returned to riding shotgun.

As the doors were shut, the car’s occupants began to notice a change in the air. The concussions that punctuated the otherwise silent city were beginning to get louder. Not all of them were, but two sets of noise were increasing in volume, like thunderous footsteps, their frequency closing. Just as the noise was starting to approach unbearable, the sound of giants running stopped.

That’s when Cy saw them, giant legs clad in white armor, skidding to a halt, rending the asphalt asunder as crimson feet dug into the streets. Everyone else in the car grasped at their ears, crying out against the mixed sounds of crunching and tearing, yet he was unmoved. The spark set itself off in his mind, igniting a chain reaction of subsequent thoughts. Ignoring the protests of everyone else in the car, doubtlessly pleading for him to drive away, he opened the driver’s side door and stepped out onto the pavement.

There it stood, the majority of its patchwork armor painted in white, the chest section in bright blue and the torso in red. Demonstration colors, Cy concluded, since no one would paint a weapon of war so garishly. If it was painted like this, then it must be a test model. That raised a million questions by itself. True, even though Orb had no part in the conflict between the Alliance and PLANTs, that didn’t eliminate the need for a military. As Chancellor Atha had said, force was required to maintain Orb’s ideals. But, combat mobile suits? Something designed to be the attacking arm of a fleet was hardly a defensive weapon.

Of course, mere interest in weapon prototypes or speculation on Orb’s military secrets wouldn’t be enough for him to stand with one foot in the car, his heart pounding and the voices of his friends echoing in his ears as if they were so far away.

“Gundam Alphonse…?”

No, it wasn’t. The design was far too different to be the Alphonse, but there was no denying the similarities. The color scheme was significantly different, but still featured a similar pattern of white, red, and blue, complete with a set of horns on the war helm. The armor, however, had only partial coverage, leaving the frame exposed throughout, unlike the aesthetically pleasing Alphonse. The only area that seemed adequately armored was the torso, where Cy could presume the cockpit was. It was the head, more than anything else, identified the machine for him. ZAFT’s GINNs had crested, snouted helmets, while the Alliance’s Daggers had opaque visors that rendered the machine passive and expressionless. This suit, to whomever it belonged, had the cross-slitted mask and blazing amber eyes of a Gundam, giving it an air of ferocity.

Standing across from the Gundam was a GINN, painted for war. Its gray armor was also laid patchwork over the black frame, though its dull colors somehow made it seem more dangerous. Its crest rose tall, like a plume of steel feathers, illustrating the pride and prowess of the ZAFT militia. Held in its hands was the standard issue machine cannon that most GINNs tended to carry, a magazine of large-diameter shells jutting out from the stock. Its single, crimson eye glared at the Gundam, studying its every move, reading its stance and judging the next course of action. The Gundam only stared back, its powerful hydraulic pistons slid halfway into their cylinders, the knees bent, the thruster vents in its shins warmed and ready to fire.

Then, at the same time, both mobile suits turned at looked at him. No, above and behind him. Cy turned around and saw what they must’ve been looking at. A squadron of five attack helicopters, the Heliopolitan Air Defense Force.

“Helicopters? Are they…?”

Toru trailed off, his eyes fixed upon the approaching squadron. Miriallia was busy shoving at him, trying to get out of the car far enough to see what he was looking at.

The canisters held under the stubby wings of the helicopters erupted with fire, releasing their vicious payload.

As the tiny fires came closer and closer, arcing towards them, Cy cried out. Toru shoved his girlfriend back into the car, wedging himself against the passenger-side seat, which Miriallia had flipped forward. Cy dove into the driver’s seat, shutting the door behind him, as if that could save him from air-to-air missiles.

Through the windshield, he saw the GINN go defensive, digging its right foot deep into the asphalt and raising its shield to bear. From its back launched four bright flares, soaring high into the sky. The Gundam, meanwhile, stood as if stupefied.

The missiles struck and the air erupted with a thunderous roar. Everyone in the car clutched at their ears as the roar passed over, around, and through them. The windshield and windows shattered under the force of it, as if screaming along with them. The roar lasted for an eternity, followed by an eternity of white noise in their heads.

By the time Cy came to his senses enough to look through the jagged hole where his windshield was, the GINN was lowering its shield. The meters-thick gray and white alloy was charred and pulverized, but still intact. More importantly, the gray cyclops seemed completely unharmed. It raised its machine cannon and fired a couple of quick bursts over the car, toward the attacking squadron, before ducking behind one of the windowless office buildings.

The Gundam, meanwhile, was lying prone on its side.

--

Kira grasped at his temples, his feet pressing against whatever metal surface they happened to be against, as he tried to swim out of his phasing consciousness. He was starting to wonder how many blows to the head he could take before things started getting serious.

He was lying on the wall of the cockpit, which meant that the mobile suit had to be turned on its side. The last thing he remembered was the approach of the missile cluster from the helicopters. A small window had opened in the main screen, noting that the GINN they were facing had launched four heat sources into the air above it. Kira knew enough to tell that those were missile defenses, designed to draw away the assault by confusing infrared sensors. Lieutenant Commander Ramius was busy cursing herself and the world, trying to find some way to avoid the attack, finally inputting a single command before the world tore itself apart and he went unconscious.

Now Ramius was limp in the pilot seat, a large bruise spreading across the right side of her forehead. She must’ve hit her head on the side of the headrest during impact. Kira shook her gently, but there was no response. She was unconscious, or worse…

The left monitor listed a damage report. The Gundam, or the Strike as the OS called it, had been hit by six air-to-air missiles. However, the damage listed was minimal to negligible, indicating undue stress to the frame and some metal fatigue, nothing more serious than that. What was going on?

Kira reached down to the right keyboard, which was under him, calling up the command list, then asking the OS about the nature of the last command that Ramius had entered.

“Phase Shift?” he parroted, reading the definition provided by the system. It was an experimental type of energy-based armor that redistributed force delivered to the mobile suit’s armor, lessening the effect of physical impacts. In other words, this armor system was what allowed the Gundam to survive those missile impacts. Kira could hardly contain his amazement.

The GINN was visible on the main monitor. Its attention was diverted, presumably by the helicopter squadron, as it momentarily popped out from behind a half-ruined building to fire at something off-screen. Reaching to the forward keyboard, Kira entered camera commands from the simulator that Cy had modified, finding that the controls were identical. He cycled through the available cameras, getting a better picture of the battlefield.

That’s when he saw Cy’s car. The windows had been shattered, but it was unmistakably his. Kira zoomed in to see his friends cowering within, Toru turned back and talking to Miriallia, Kazui in heated argument, Freya with her palms pressed against her ears, Cy gazing passively at the Gundam.

Kira’s thoughts returned to the battle between the GINN and the Heliopolitan Air Defense Force, made up of missiles and large-diameter cannon shells. He thought of his friends, trapped in the crossfire, of Freya crying out in fear and anguish as the world was blown to pieces around her. Then, Kira thought of the Gundam, of the Phase Shift armor system, of his performance in Morgenroete’s simulator. The choice seemed easy, far too easy.

It was too much trouble to remove the unconscious Ramius from the pilot seat. After all, the GINN wouldn’t remain occupied by the helicopters forever, and there was no doubt that the Gundam was its real target. Kira clambered into her lap, supporting himself in the awkward, sideways position with the armrest. The first thought to intrude his mind was how warm her lap was, but there were far more important things to focus on. Pulling the forward keyboard towards him, Kira accessed the system debug mode and began to scan the lines of code, one by one.

He continued to read, his speed increasing with each successive line, until the code was flying up the screen. His fingers danced along the keys, rewriting errant code as he saw it, altering the settings and eliminating the automatic movement protocols.
As was his right in high school, back in Orb’s main city around Europa, the method of control he used in the mandatory piloting class remained confidential. It was part of the nondiscrimination clause, to prevent the same Natural-Coordinator violence that was tearing the Jovian system apart, though there were more than a few students who felt secure enough with their identities to release the information.

Kira’s method of control, unlike the rest of his current roommates, was manual.

--

Aslan stood on the lip of the Aegis’s cockpit hatch. To be more accurate, he was pressing against the upper edge and lower edge with his hands and feet to keep from floating away. He was in the Heliopolitan axis zone, the center of the colony’s rotation and therefore free from gravity, just under the enormous axial shaft that provided the structural integrity to keep the cylinder from tearing itself apart. Behind him was the tunnel leading deep into the resource asteroid: his exit.

He gazed down the length of the axial shaft, which extended from the center of the resource asteroid all the way down to the spaceport on the opposite end of the cylinder: over thirty kilometers. A myriad of branches stretched from it to the walls of the cylinder, the spine that held it together, yet Aslan could still sense its inherent fragility. To think that people could place their faith in something so tenuous.

As he was about to push himself back into the cockpit, having drank his fill of the scenery, he heard a shrill bird’s call. It shouldn’t have stopped him, since birds were surely imported to Heliopolis, as they were to the PLANTs, to give its citizens further comfort in their artificial home. However, this call struck a chord within him, and he scanned the cylindrical skies for the source.

A small, green bird approached from beneath the axial shaft, beating its wings fiercely. Aslan couldn’t conceal his amazement. It was virtually unheard of for a bird to reach the axis zone, where there was no gravity and the air currents became strange, yet here it was, and such a small bird, too. It appeared to be headed straight for the Aegis.

Reaching out with his right arm, he let it approach and land on his sleeve. That’s when he saw the tiny joints, the polymer skin with a feather pattern painted on, the tiny cameras that served as eyes. A green mechanical bird.

“So, it is you, Torii,” he said, stroking the bird with his other hand. Torii cocked its head and gazed at him, its lenses somehow seeming to recognize and question him. Aslan took one last look down at the city, where a tiny plume of smoke rose from between the buildings, and thought of Kira Yamato. Then, bird in hand, he retreated to the cockpit of the Aegis, closing the armored hatch behind him.

[Kenji]

A great many apologies to those who have read this story thus far and have been waiting for more.

For starters, these last two months have been extremely busy, leaving me little time to open a word processor for anything other than schoolwork. Gallavanting around the country on errands took up most of my winter break, too.

But, I'm not here to make excuses. Instead, I'm here to explain what this story has been up to.

I reread what I had written so far and, while a lot of it is fairly satisfactory to me and my learning process, I noted that the next three or four chapters I had planned were almost all mecha combat, and I found myself betraying my original purpose: to skew this sci-fi practice novel as far toward character interaction as possible. Simply put, in the four chapters I had written so far, I hadn't given the large cast I've introduced proper time to differentiate themselves. In particular, I see Toru, Kazui, and the three "other" ZAFT Redcoats as victims of this... and Freya got the shaft as soon as ZAFT attacked, for mewing in a corner only has meaning for the one sentence it's described, after which she becomes something of a prop to be dragged around until Kira meets up with his friends.

So, I've been working on expanding my current four chapters to include a greater sense of the characters. This, of course, pushes the Heliopolis battle even further back, but I think it's necessary to make this story the way I want it to be. Also, it'll allow me to set the stage a little better without relying on prior knowledge of SEED or flying by the seat of my pants, as I'm prone to doing. For one thing, I needed to introduce what Coordinators were much, much earlier than I did (and I didn't introduce so much as hinted at what they were).

Also, spontaneously during my break from school, probably because someone on this forum found a ton of great For the Barrel pictures, the design elements of the Renascent world started to pop into my head, basically requiring me to rewrite all mecha passages to deal with this. Since I've pinned down what the purpose of a mobile suit is in this world, the official SEED designs are simply no longer consistent to that. I've got some pretty specific designs that I'd absolutely love to draw... but, of course, I was never much of a mechanical designer, even in high school, when my abilities were at their peak...

Anyway, that's what I'll be working on. I suppose I'll have to repost the reformed early chapters before moving on, but as I said before, I'm pretty serious about using this for my own improvement, so I'm hoping for an even better result.

[Antares]

Keep'em coming when you have time. We'll wait.

[Kenji]

Believe it or not, I've been working hard on this project! Mechanical designs, political factions, character relationships and thematical concerns, I've been scribbling them all into my notebook whenever I've had spare time. I feel like my Renascent world is several times stronger now than it was before, and I hope it follows through with the descriptions. The Prologue chapter, which I intend to set the conditions of the war, will be completed and posted before too awfully long.

Once again, I apologize to everyone who's been waiting. Hopefully, it'll be worth it.

[Kenji]

Rather than just post the standard excuse titled "I haven't stopped! Srsly!" I've decided to do a small update by posting some MS information. Notes, really. It's nothing particularly earth-shattering, but it gives a few glimpses into the world of Renascent Seed.

By all rights, I should start with ZAFT's mobile fighters, but I just so happened to have Ganymede's armored troopers on the mind (the difference in the classifications is really cosmetic... they're essentially the same technology), so that's what we get. Specifically, it traces the initial three ATs that were adopted into Ganymedean service.

As for the story itself, I've been doing some revamping that ultimately have skewed it further from the anime. Most notably, one obviously expected event is simply going to be passed over. This is partly to ease some of the logical dissonance I was suffering due to the very premise of the event. Trope or not, it's hard to reconcile when you're trying to make people act realistically.

Am I being purposefully obtuse? Yes, yes I am, but I hope that you'll see what I mean soon enough. Hopefully, the long delays will prove worth it. And now, without further ado, some information on the Dagger series:

--

GAT-01
Ganymedean Armored Trooper, First Combat Service Model
“Dagger”

Nearly four decades into the Fifty Years’ War, the Ganymedean Federation had spent itself bankrupt. Indeed, bankruptcy had technically loomed over the war effort within six years of the war’s beginning, but the practice of borrowing from future generations had kept the illusion of prosperity afloat for a little over a decade. Printing money for immediate use wasn’t without its consequences, and the standard of living in Ganymede and its territories fell with the value of the currency. This was further compounded by specific ZAFT attacks on Galilean refineries, eventually forcing the government to bite the bullet and seek out ways to cut costs.

One of the cost-saving measures investigated was the ZAFT mobile fighter, a piece of wartime technology used by the PLANTs since the beginning of the war. Investigations found that the technology allowed a fighter to take on a dual role in construction and maintenance within Jupiter’s magnetosphere, reducing the overall cost while simultaneously increasing a pilot’s combat potential.

The main potential of the armored trooper (the Ganymedean form of the mobile fighter) lies in movable thrust systems. Generally, thrusters are installed in the fuselage sections analogous to the back, upper torso, shoulders, and calves. The ball and hinge joints in the legs and drums of the shoulders allow the verniers and thrusters to be pointed in a variety of directions, reducing the number of thrusters necessary to achieve maneuverability comparable to a spacefighter.

Beyond this, the combination of manipulator and fuselage hardpoints (a dataplug in each hand, hardpoints on the calves, forearms, and shoulders) allowed the unit to be equipped with a variety of weapons and optional equipment to be more suitable to specific functions and operations. These included anything from reinforced ceramic-coated plates (shields), missile launchers, chaffing or extra detection equipment, etc.

A series of sensors are embedded within the fuselage, with a main sensor installed on a track in the cranial unit. The information from these sensors was fed into a panoramic holographic monitor set within a circular ring cockpit. This ring cockpit, unlike the panel monitors used in the first- and second-generation GINN mobile fighters, was designed to display tactical information to facilitate coordination within squadrons and among the fleet. Contrary to appearances, the panoramic image was not generated in realtime, but was instead compiled from previously collected data as well as feeds from other sources, such as other armored troopers or ships. This way, the relative positions of allied units or ships of the fleet, last-known positions and probable trajectories of enemy units, and other variables in the field can be tracked and taken into account when the pilot executes his or her next action. Objects that the actual sensors alight upon can be viewed more closely in windows that open over the relative position of the object, or centered in front of the pilot if deemed necessary, to facilitate interaction with the target.

Control is achieved through an interactive system using the pilot suit and holographic emitters along the ring. Sensors within the fingertips and joints of the gloves form a hand control unit that can be toggled through modes via wrist-flicking and holographic keyboard commands, allowing for such things as fine motor control of the manipulators, control over thrust either in the general sense, allowing the computer to allocate thrust for maximum effectiveness, or over each specific thruster, or weapons systems management.

The concept was designed to allow the fleet to act collectively using easily accessible and observable information collected throughout. However, despite the advances, the Dagger’s Natural pilots still were unable to compete directly with their Coordinator opponents, by and large. When the third-generation GINN adopted many of the Dagger’s advances, the advantage was mostly cancelled out, leaving the stalemate roughly the same as before.

--

GAT-01J
Ganymedean Armored Trooper, First Combat Service Model, Jump-Capable Ground Combat Specification
“Dagger-J” or “Dagger J-Type”

The introduction of the third-generation GINN, which utilized many of the Dagger’s technological advances, cancelled out the advantages Ganymede had gained. The government was unwilling to give up its original investment as lost, especially since the GAT-01 had just been officially adopted into service as the replacement for the GSF-22 Tomahawk spacefighter, with factories throughout the Federation having been refitted for mass production. To save face while accepting the Dagger’s lack of real combat performance, efforts were made to improve the base model with modifications. The first of these, put into service five years after the original rollout, were the ground and space combat variants, the J-Type and F-Type, developed simultaneously.

The J-Type was tuned for ground combat, which applied to combat on lunar surfaces and inside free-orbiting cities, within any gravitational condition from one-tenth through one gee. As the emphasis is ground combat, the thruster systems had been removed from the shoulders and reallocated to the legs and backpack for the purpose of jumping as opposed to flight. To facilitate jumping, the frame and shock absorbers in the legs had been significantly strengthened and higher quality auto-balancers were installed. The armor was strengthened with external layers of reactive plating, to make up for the significantly lessened mobility. Overall, the J-Type ended up resembling a bipedal tank more than its lineage as a new-generation spacefighter would suggest, and it was particularly disliked in comparison to true tanks, which could perform similar functions with equal effectiveness with less complex controls and a far more manageable center of gravity.

Due to the flaws inherent in the concept, the J-Type was usually relegated to the role of fire support. Its mass, which made its mobility suffer in any environment that wasn’t a moon or asteroid, made firing heavy artillery while moving possible. Its mobility, while not enough to replace a battle tank, was more than any contemporary artillery vehicle could manage, and so it began to replace them. This eased the production burden, as the same factories that manufactured F-Types could also produce J-Types, and filled a genuine need in the Ganymedean ground forces.

--

GAT-01F
Ganymedean Armored Trooper, First Combat Service Model, Flight-Capable Space Combat Specification
“Dagger-F” or “Dagger F-Type”

The other, generally more successful half of the Dagger Rearmament Plan was the F-Type, tuned specifically for space combat. The objective was to take advantage of the Dagger’s potential and increase its mobility and versatility beyond that of ZAFT’s third-generation GINN.

To achieve this, thruster output was increased and the overall mass was decreased, with the frame and armor in the arms and legs being significantly reduced in mass and, consequently, strength. This makes the F-Type more maneuverable in space at the cost of making it completely unsuitable for any variety of ground combat with more gravitational force involved than the hull of a ship. This would inevitably lead any ship that would conceivably be involved with both styles of combat to stock both models of Dagger in its hangar, and a great number of pilots training in and customizing two machines.

Aside from the performance enhancements and structural weakening, there was very little that differentiated the Dagger-F from the original model. This reflected in its combat performance that, while better than the original, was still unable to break through the ZAFT line or overcome the advantages inherent in Coordinator pilots. Still, the F-Type was a significant improvement over the original and completely replaced it within the space of three years, remaining the frontline armored trooper for the Ganymedean Navy until the introduction of the GAT-02.

[Kenji]

Finally.

And, I do mean finally.

A great many apologies for having taken so long. Yeah, summer school, moving around, looking for a job, applying to another school as "Plan B," all of it takes time, but this is my practice novel! It shouldn't be dragging like this!

Nevertheless, I've put a great amount of work into each sentence, and I hope it shows. With this rewrite of the first chapter, I focused on what I considered to be important to the story, first and foremost, and devoted the majority of the material to it, as well as setting up the overarching conflict of the Fifty Years' War.

History, conflict, half of the main cast, and point-of-view (especially Kira's), that's what this first chapter is about, and any and all feedback, especially about effect would be greatly appreciated.

In any case, I appreciate the wait that my readers (known mostly through the View counter) have endured, and I hope that a similar wait won't be coming for some time now.

--

The First Phase - The Heliopolitan Incident
Chapter One

“No history exists in a vacuum, not even in space.”

There were a couple of muted chuckles at the grad student’s attempted joke.

“Case in point, many historians trace a direct causal line from the Libra Incident, which further destabilized the Saturnian System, to the push to colonize and exploit Jupiter. Up until this point, the Jovian magnetosphere had been deemed too hazardous for either activity, but the advance of technology and Saturn’s political crises led corporate and governmental bodies of the Earth and Phaeton to consider the possibility more seriously.”

The grad student-slash-instructor squeezed a button on his tiny remote, and the image of a man in a spacesuit, blonde hair caught in mid-wave and smile emblazoned in binary for all eternity, appeared on the wallpanel at the front of the classroom. His left arm cradled a golden-visored helmet against his baggy spacesuit. His stance, his smile, there was something casual about it all, as if he were looking forward to his mission, knowing that his face would one day be gazing across classrooms across the Jovian System.

“Supported by the Imperial government, the Tycho Foundation recommissioned an old tanker, the Tsiolkovsky, refitting it as a research vessel. This was done because fuel tankers from the Earth-Saturn line were among the most robust and self-sufficient craft of any fleet. Details regarding the Tsiolkovsky’s construction and differences between it and the rest of the Satirnis-class tankers can be found by touching the provided link on your pads. If any of you are engineering students, you might find this a worthwhile read.”

Kira Yamato, sitting in the third row from the back, with an open window to his left, grazed his finger against the word “Tsiolkovsky,” his fingertip passing through the holographic screen, setting off the optical sensors lining the edge of the pad’s shallow concave. A new window opened in front of the original, raised slightly over by a quarter of a millimeter, displaying in-depth data on the Tsiolkovsky tanker-turned-research ship.

For further reference, Kira touched the term “Satirnis-class” to open another window with the university database’s entry on the tanker line. The design was straightforward to its purpose: exporting large quantities of crystalline fuel pellets to the various nations throughout the solar system. These pellets were held in honeycomb lattices within large armored spheres, dozens fixed to the central spine of the tanker in rows, that protected them from inertia and space debris, in turn protecting the ship carrying them. Large thruster nozzles, similar in relative size and shape to the chemical rockets that had taken the ancients into orbit, jutted from the back, fed by an amply-supplied fusion reactor. On the opposite end of the two-kilometer central spine was a tiny cabin for the crew. Its size and the thickness of its armor plating, relative to the cargo spheres, emphasized what was truly important to the men and women who commissioned and built these tankers.

The Tsiolkovsky differed only so much as its function required. Most of the cargo spheres had been removed, aside from the four that held the fuel for the five-year research mission orbiting Jupiter. The crewmen’s cabin had been expanded to include the sizeable research staff and their assortment of instruments and equipment, while the outer hull had been replated with the latest radiation shielding, necessary to protect the crew from the monstrous Jovian magnetosphere, quadrupling the cabin dimensions.

“The commander of this mission, as I’m sure I don’t need to tell you, was Captain George Glenn, known to many as the ‘Renascence Man.’ He was the Imperial Senate’s offering to the Tsiolkovsky expedition, and his presence and celebrity were welcomed by Tycho with open arms. In preparation for the voyage, Glenn memorized the original and revised schematics for the Tsiolkovsky and gained a license for piloting Satirnis-class tankers. This, added to his doctorate in physics and expertise in engineering, made him capable of taking on nearly any research task, essentially becoming the most valuable member of the team.

“On the third of April, 998, the Tsiolkovsky lauched from Antichthon, when the overall distance to Jupiter was at a minimum. Eleven months later, just before entering the Phaeton Belt, Glenn declared to the rest of humanity that he was a product of genetic engineering, that his accomplishments, while his, were likely a result of this. The public reaction was sweeping, varied, and tumultuous. Members of the Order of the Aqueous Star Awards Committee, which had previously recognized Glenn for achievement in five separate scientific fields, demanded that he be stripped of his honors. Likewise, the Imperial Senate held an immediate and much-publicized debate on whether Glenn had legal protection or was recognized under the Articles of Concession for Human Rights. Declarations of Glenn as a savior, abomination, and all gradients in between echoed throughout the international community. Likewise, rumors of the implications, what the Imperial government was attempting, who else might’ve been genetically engineered, circulated throughout public forums.

“The outcry and debate would’ve been bad enough had Glenn merely announced his origins. However, he also provided, encrypted within the transmission, his genetic information and the process behind his modifications. Supposedly, he had deduced it, himself, as the finer details were kept hidden from him. The encryption sequence, as some of you in the Computer Science Department have learned, was merely for storage. The code itself was easily broken and, before long, biotech companies announced their own models of enhanced humans. Soon, elite families throughout the solar system were giving birth to designer children, each endowed with whatever aspects their parents personally considered part of a ‘perfect specimen.’”

The holographic image on the wall changed again. This time, it displayed a decoded human genome, laid out in neat rows and columns, overlaid on lines of complex mathematical formulae. This, Kira knew from his Intro to Bio Engineering class, was the key to Glenn’s genetic code and the reproduction of the process that created him. He never cared much for the subject, and learning to decipher the charts and formulae was the business of Bio Engineering grad students. Still, he thought, it had to mean something that he could recognize it on sight.

“Glenn was hardly the first genetically engineered human. However, unlike past attempts, he was both mentally and physically stable, as well as able to produce viable offspring, as the scandal of his teenage daughter’s pregnancy, news of which broke five months before he embarked on the Tsiolkovsky expedition, had proven. It was Glenn’s stated belief that, through the process that created him, mankind would be able to shed the racial and national barriers that had prevented the achievement of harmony. To that end, in his address, he referred to himself as ‘a coordinator of humanity,’ seeking to harmonize them through extreme individuality and a common pursuit towards perfection.”

Harmony. It was the year 1326, more than three centuries since George Glenn and his hopes, and there was nothing that Kira could describe as “harmony.” Instead, Jupiter had been engulfed in war for almost fifty years, with each side claiming to be fighting for the sake of harmony.

The ground outside of the window, far in the distance, curved upward and over Kira’s head. Perhaps it was too much to ask for harmony across the human race, he wondered. After all, there was a harmony of sorts here, in the Heliopolitan Branch University of Orb, where conflicts were mostly limited to inter-club and fraternity arguments and the occassional fistfight. Throughout the rest of Heliopolis, a city in a canister orbiting Jupiter, something that could be called harmony was present, as there were few riots. Heliopolis, it could be said, achieved harmony and community under the protection of Orb, a coalition of states neutral to the war, allied for their own protection, headed by the municipality of Onogoro, which orbited Europa. Orb, by maintaining its neutrality and providing a conduit of wealth exchange with many nations far from Jupiter, could be said to have created a sort of harmony in Jovian space and throughout the solar system.

Perhaps, Kira thought, the definition of harmony was too open to interpretation.

“This class,” the graduate-instructor said as he turned to face the class, “as I’m sure you read in the description and thoughtfully considered instead of choosing it merely because it fulfilled the Social Sciences credit and looked easy, is a study of the ramifications of George Glenn’s statement on March 11, 999. This is about the effect that stable and viable genetically engineered humans have had on society and politics, from the rise of the Beautiful Aristocracy to the Ganymedean Revolution and, now, the secession of the Coordinators and their resulting war against the Galilean Alliance. This is a big topic, perhaps the biggest topic that any of you have ever discussed, and it’s a topic that will affect you no matter what field you choose to devote your lives to.”

--

“Status, Frederick?”

The captain of the Vesalius, Frederick Ades, looked behind his right shoulder to see the commander of the operation pulling himself into the bridge, the circular door contracting shut behind him. This man, with whom Ades has spent much of his career, wore the white overcoat of a squadron commander, but the red lapels in front of the silver garlands stitched into the collar identified him as a pilot elite, a commander of Redcoats. More noticeable than the honors, more than the Messianic Order pinned to the breast of his overcoat, was the white mask that covered the right side of his face. Had it been a complete mask, covering his entire face instead of just the right side of his forehead, his nose, upper lip, and right cheek, it would’ve been shaped like a well-fed young boy, probably with short curled hair, the same sort of chubby face seen in ancient sculptures and paintings from Earth. A cherub’s face. From above and behind that mask, which Commander le Creuset had worn for as long as Ades could remember, blonde locks that had somehow evaded ZAFT barbers flowed in zero-g, clasped an inch from their curled ends by a silver, diamond-studded moth. From within the eye of the mask, as well as the uncovered and unmarred left side of the face, shone brilliant blue rivaled only by the Earth herself.

“The seventeenth shipment has passed through security unscathed. With only eight more to go, I doubt they’ll notice what’s going on.”

“And the Marines?”

“Their infiltration as tourists is complete. Quite successfully, I might add. I would’ve expected some background checks, but it seems that they weren’t even given a second glance. Their equipment made it through on the fourth and sixth shipments. All they have to do now is suit up.”

The left corner of le Creuset’s lip curled upward, the right corner obscured by the mask. He grabbed the back of Ades’s chair, halting his own motion through the bridge. Heliopolis, represented on the three-dimensional tactical display at the captain’s feet as a nigh-featureless cylinder embedded in a rock with a slightly larger diameter, rotated slowly on its axis. The cylinder itself was actually quite far away, a mere speck to the naked eye if either of them could’ve braved the magnetosphere to try and catch a glimpse.

“The team leaders?”

“Ready to give their lives for the PLANTs, if necessary.”

The upward curl of le Creuset’s lip disappeared as he said, “The Heliopolitan defense forces will close in quickly… they may have to.”

Ades didn’t respond, neither did the bridge crew, who were well within range to hear what le Creuset said, what the tactical computer had predicted. The survival probability of the mobile fighter and Marine teams were estimated at no higher than twelve percent. Each of the team leaders had been notified of this, but given the nature of the mission, they unanimously agreed to continue.

After the silence, Ades’s words cut to the heart of the matter, “Raul, is it all true? The Galilean prototypes supposedly being tested here, are they as capable as you’ve told us?”

“Unfortunately. The data was verified on two separate occassions.”

“To think they would make such technological leaps, all for the sake of killing us. The Naturals are frightening, indeed.”

“Ganymede has always been the most vocal about our status as ‘abominations before God.’ If I’m surprised about anything, it’s that they haven’t gone further.”

Ades blinked.

“Further?”

This time, it was le Creuset’s turn to not respond.

--

Kira leaned back in the workstation chair as the library search engine pulled up twelve thousand articles on Siegel Klein’s racial policies. Everything from the maintenance of the Coordinator Purity Declaration to the easing of anti-Natural restrictions in regards to international trade was here, along with academic and professional responses to these policy decisions. Twelve thousand articles, hardly something he’d want to go through in his spare time.

“Write a paper encapsulating your personal views on the relationship between George Glenn’s declaration and current relations between genetically engineered humans and their unaltered counterparts.” This was the first assignment of the class, issued on the very first day. As soon as his classes were finished, Kira went to the lab and began searching through the library database, looking for what he had considered the shortest distance to the answer: Klein, the current Chairman of the PLANT Supreme Committee. The simplicity of his solution became far less clear when he read the number of hits his query called up.

Rather than create a new strategy, Kira instead opted to scan the titles, looking for a set that he considered impressive-looking on a bibliography, copying the contents of the articles to separate windows. When he had gathered six of these, he began to skim them, one by one, looking for good lines to quote and concepts to cite. This was how Kira wrote many of his papers, a process that could only be called “research” by a stretch.

At his fingertips were four holographic keyboards, separated from each other by half a millimeter. As per Kira’s personal login settings, the optic sensors would only register a keystroke based on a strict diameter limit for the finger passing through the hologram, meaning that only the utmost tip would register as a hit; anything more, which would happen when he was striking at one of the keys below, would be ignored. In this manner, his hands, without stopping, would alternate between scrolling down the articles, typing a passage of the paper, and cross-referencing any information he didn’t know with online encyclopedias. His eyes, meanwhile, flit between the word processor, the open article windows, and numerous other windows that would be open for exactly as long as they remained useful, a total that would sometimes climb to eleven.

Kira’s attention was devoted to this method, so much so that he didn’t notice the girl with dyed red hair approaching his workstation until she was no more than a step away from him. The moment his eyes caught her in their corners, he closed all of the cross-reference windows and two of the keyboards.

“The first day of the semester and already so hard at work?” she said, her voice light with hints of pleasure, “What, have you forgotten the break so soon?”

“Of course not,” Kira said, his lips in an unintentional pout.

“Have a good time back in Onogoro?”

“Yeah.”

Kira continued to type, his eyes crossing lines already written and scanning the empty spaces where they hadn’t been typed, in all cases locked to the holographic screen. The truth was that he hadn’t return to Onogoro, but instead stayed in his apartment over the break between semesters, debugging many of the programs that his roommate had left on the network. He knew that this girl, Freya Ulster, returned to her family estate in Francesca, on Ganymede, and that her boyfriend Cyrus, who was also his roommate, joined her for the holiday. With a comparison like that, he preferred that she didn’t know that he spent the break alone in his apartment.

“How was your break? Francesca, was it?”

Freya folded her arms over the privacy board that rose from the back of the workstation, resting her chin on her forearms, her smiling widening as she looked directly into Kira’s eyes. He could see himself reflected in hers, those large blue eyes that he always remembered looking straight into him, the same way that they focused on and pierced whatever had her attention. He also noticed how the light split into rainbows by the diamond ring on her finger, a ring that he had never seen before. His eyes returned to his paper.

“Beautiful, as always,” Freya sighed, “You really ought to see it, someday. The artificial sunset will just take your breath away. Cy really enjoyed himself, too, and Mom just adored him! Unfortunately, Father wasn’t able to return, this year.”

Her father was a commodore in the Ganymedean Navy. Her brothers, also, were members of the Navy and Marine Corps, the latest generation of a long line of military officers. How a girl with this background was able to enroll in the Heliopolitan Branch University of Orb, Kira could never figure out. Perhaps different rules applied to the wealthy and prestigious.

She raised her head and unfolded her arms. Caressing the privacy board with her right hand, she swung around the workstation until she was perched over Kira’s shoulder. He saw her fingers gripping the faux-wood board, felt her “presence” piercing through his back and mingling with his own. Her hair brushed weightless and insubstantial against his cheek and her leather-bound breast lightly grazed his shoulder as she leaned over him to look at his paper.

“The Ganymedean Revolution was focused on the ideology of freeing unmodified humans, termed ‘Natural Man’ by the movement, from the heavily modified Beautiful Aristocracy. In keeping with their stated goals, the newly independent Ganymedean Federation rounded up all of the genetically engineered humans in their territory and placed them in servitude. After a mere century, these genetically engineered slaves would hold their own uprising, declaring themselves the ‘Coordinator Nations of the PLANT Refineries,’ named after Captain Glenn’s self-identification as ‘a coordinator of humanity.’ Ganymede, armed with the same anti-modification rhetoric that spurred them against the Beautiful Aristocracy, declared war on all Coordinators for control of the energy trade.”

After reading the excerpt aloud, she drew herself to full height, crossing her sleeved arms and shrugging her bare shoulders.

“Can’t really say you’re wrong about that. The way you wrote it makes it seem… childish.”

Kira watched her pursed lips and the distance in her eyes, tracing the tension behind her skin and under the creased leather fit snugly against her collar and chest, and said, “I didn’t mean anything personal.”

Freya smiled.

“I know. It’s just a paper, after all.”

She blinked and the smile vanished.

“But… what are these spelling errors?”

Kira’s nose involuntarily twitched as her hair, like feathers, brushed across his face. He focused on the stud in her earlobe, a gold-bodied cat in eternal pounce, tiny Ionian diamonds dancing in its eyes, down the spine, and up the tail. Ionian diamonds, like the ones in her studs and now her ring, were manufactured within and extracted from the crust of Io at the great risk of many lives, so they were deemed precious throughout the solar system. It was only natural that a girl like Freya would be used to gifts such as these.

“What’s this about, Kira? Twelve spelling mistakes in three lines? I knew there had to be a downside to you and Cy typing so fast!”

“It’s not because I type fast,” he murmured, his face and neck burning.

She raised her eyebrow at him, then scratched the back of her head.

“That’s no excuse. Do something about it.”

Kira pouted again.

“You come here to criticize my spelling?”

“No, actually,” she said with an exaggerated grin, “I was just wondering if you were done. If you were, I would’ve asked you if you wanted to get something to drink.”

He glanced at his assignment, stalled and apparently riddled with spelling errors, from the corner of his eye.

“Actually,” he said as he saved and closed the document, “I was just about done for now. Where do you want to go?”

--

Lying on his back upon an alloy plate, his upper torso dangling from that underneath a network of curved beams that formed the general shape of a dome, Commander Miguel Aiman plugged the second feed cable into a boxy sensor unit. That sensor, the α-1 unit, was mounted on a curved linear track that covered about 120 degrees of the dome, while the lens itself, which channeled information into a variety of instruments, had a perpendicular angular range of about 90 degrees. This sensor bundle was among the most delicate pieces of equipment, and so was among the last to be attached before the armor overlay.

“Alright, Oler, give it some juice!”

From within the sealed cockpit, Oler Koudenburg linked the battery pack to the driveline. The holographic ring monitor, showing a 360-degree image of his surroundings, flickered to life around him. An interconnection status screen also activated as the internal computer began to run a feedback diagnostic. While waiting for the results, Oler looked straight ahead to the uncovered underside of the warehouse’s roof, to the scaffolds at his right and left, and the concrete floor behind. Entering a quick command on the keyboard, a window opened in front of him, showing a stretched, distorted image of his commander’s messy blonde hair.

“Quit fucking around,” was the response through the earbud.

“Apologies, sir.”

Miguel, who had just extracted himself from underneath α-1, grasped the frame and lowered himself over the lens. He stared into it as the filters within contracted in response.

“So, what’s the sensory status?”

Oler opened over thirty windows, spacing them equidistant around the ring monitor.

“α-1 checks out fine, and from the looks of it, so do α-2 through -8. The entire cranial unit looks to be in fine condition. Visual data, infrared, ultraviolet, everything seems to check out. β-1 through -15 also check out, so do all of the γ sensors.”

“All green, huh? How about the movable ones?”

“δ and ε units are all green.”

“Visual info’s okay?”

“Lotsa floor, sir.”

“And how’s the floor look?”

“Fucking filthy, sir.”

Miguel smiled and rose to his feet, dusting off the seat of his coveralls with his hat. Turning from the cranial dome, he looked down at the crème-colored elliptical cockpit set in the torso, suspended from the frame by a network of “floating” shock absorbers. Soon, it would be sealed beneath layers of radiation-proofed, impact-resistant alloy, the thickest armor to be found on the entire machine.

“Alright,” Miguel spoke into his headset, “Begin movement checks while the diagnostic’s running. Gotta make sure these jerk-offs didn’t forget anything.”

A timid response came from the warehouse floor, “A little credit’d be nice, sir!”

“Understood,” replied Oler’s voice between muffled chuckles, “Beginning movement check algorithms.”

Yet another voice, this one loud like brass, sounded from below, “Boys with their toys! Y’think you toy soldiers’ll be finished in time?”

Miguel peered past the ceramic, skeletal hand flexing each and every joint in various combinations. Standing at the doorway of the warehouse was a dark-skinned young woman whose muscular frame threatened to burst out of her red leather jacket and matching pants. This woman, Commander Helene Martinet, likewise stared back at him through the gaps in the giant hand’s ceramic frame.

“Speak for yourself. Your goons wanna make mayhem that badly?”

“The mayhem’s already here, Aiman, ever since we set foot in this city!”

“Can’t deny that,” he said as he hopped from the mobile fighter’s frame to the scaffold set over the flexing hand, “So what brings our beautiful and delicate Marine commander all the way down to this piece-of-shit warehouse?”

Helene grinned, “Loneliness, that’s what! So fucking lonely that I decided to watch the kids build their toy robots, but maybe I should’ve gotten myself shit-faced, instead.”

“Why don’t you do that and come back around? My boys and I are always up for some entertainment.”

“When the boys stop playin’ with their toys and become real men? Maybe I will!”

Miguel pursed his lips, then spoke into his headset, “How’s the diagnostic going?”

“Everything’s green so far,” Oler answered, “I can take it from here, easily.”

“Right, you do that.”

Miguel switched off the headset and pulled it down around his neck. He climbed down the crisscrossing frame of the scaffold, the tiny ridges in his gloves and soles keeping him from slipping on the smooth ceramic. When he reached the bottom, he turned to find Helene approaching. Her heels echoed on the concrete and her leather scrunched in the stale air that smelled of metal and ceramic powder. Were her expression as loud, it wouldn’t be unheard of for him to continue his banter, flaunting her womanhood and the tension of the sexes for his own amusement, perhaps making commentary on her shape which was rarely seen in Marine combat armor or the ZAFT dress uniform, or on how her breasts were straining the buttons of the jacket that separated them from public indecency, that and maybe so much more. However, her grin was gone and, with it, so was his.

He stepped close, his lips close to her ear, and murmured, “Don’t screw with me, Martinet. What’s this really about?”

Her eyes twitched to her left. Miguel nodded and the two began walking toward the offices adjacent to the warehouse. The way they walked, hurried and sober without a hint of swagger, was met by no catcalls. The maintenance crew working on the giant ceramic skeleton merely resumed their work without a word. The joints of the skeleton, one by one, continued to twitch along a meticulous pattern as Oler, sitting in the egg-shaped cockpit, continued his diagnostic.

The moment the two commanders had stepped through and Miguel shut the door behind them, Helene spoke, “Don’t you find it strange?”

“What?”

“Not a word from the Commandant’s Office. We left Seven-Three five weeks ago, yet the pencil pushers haven’t said a single thing. Not one update, not one revision, not even a goddamned status request. Not from the upper secretaries and not even from the Committee. Haven’t you noticed?”

Miguel exhaled slowly, then said, “That’s the operation, Martinet. No communication until it’s over, that’s how it works.”

Her eyebrows arched and stepped closer, shoving her face in front of his, her body mere millimeters from his. With a low pitch, she said, “The fuck you just say? Don’t talk to me like I’m green or some shit like that. My team has performed thirty-seven flawless operations since we joined black ops, so I know ‘how it works.’ The Commandant’s Office has never, and I mean never, missed an opportunity to fuck with us or our mission. If they ordered us to take a shit, they’d find a way to complicate it. That’s the way it works, and there hasn’t been a word. Not a single goddamned word. Now do you get it?”

Miguel replied without a waver in his voice, “When you came here to piss and moan like I’m your psych evaluator, taking up my precious time, did you take a look around you? You take the time to notice where we are? This isn’t Alliance territory. This is Orb. Fucking neutral Orb. You have any idea what happens if you, or I, or any of us are found here?”

Helene took a step back and turned away, her expression refusing to budge from its steadfastness, nodding slowly.

“If we’re found here,” Miguel continued, “ZAFT officially breaches Orb’s neutrality accords, Chancellor Ashe embargoes us to keep the Alliance from attacking, and our economy is fucking dead. You know those elitists in Earth and Phaeton won’t buy goods from ‘abominations’ like us, and that Orb’s free markets are the only thing that feeds us, feeds our families, and keeps us free. Now, you want the Commandant’s Office to jeopardize everything for your peace of mind?”

“Don’t you lecture me,” she said as she folded her arms, “I know all that, alright? But political sensitivity never stopped them before, so why the fuck’s it stopping them now?”

This time, it was Miguel’s turn to approach. He spoke into her ear, “Even if it’s as suspicious as you say, do we have a choice? If the intelligence is real, and we have every reason to believe it is, then the enemy’s developing advanced weapons in this municipality. If even half of the info is true, you think we can just sit by and watch?”

Helene didn’t respond.

“If they go into mass-production without a proper answer from us, they’ll break the defensive line and slaughter us. Our success is not only expected, but required.”

Her eyes met his once again as she replied, “I know. You don’t need to tell me how critical it is.”

“No, I don’t. But ’til then, we need to sit back and curb our enthusiasm. Commanders set examples for their men, after all.”

She remained quiet for a short while, as if considering his words against the doubts she had expressed. Then, her entire body turned to face him as she smiled and said, “Not bad for a toy soldier. Guess you won’t fuck up watching our backs, after all.”

“Stick around and you’ll find Dusk Team is very capable from behind.”

“Oh, fuck off, little man!”

Helene laughed. Miguel laughed. The matter, at least as far as appearances were concerned, was settled. He opened the door and she, rapping her right fist against her breast in salute, clicked her heels and made her exit. As she passed by, his open palm arced and smacked her on the tightly leather-bound ass, and she, with a graceful turn, backhanded him across the face.

In an instant, she was gone, leaving him crouched on the office floor, clutching at his cheek with both hands as muffled sobs strangled in his throat.

“Fucking strength-enhanced Marine bitch!”

--

“You sure about that? I’ll probably forget to pay you back.”

“That’s fine,” Kira said as the price for both drinks were debited from his account. To be honest, it wasn’t “fine” in the strictest sense of the word: his dinner plans for that night had just been downgraded.

Drinks in hand, they strolled down the sidewalk of the quad. The automated drink stand behind them offered the usual “thank you, come again” mantra that came upon payment. Freya walked slightly ahead, taking periodic sips of cherry-flavored vodka, the nanomachines in her bloodstream managing her alcohol intake to her preference. He watched the movement of her shoulder blades and torso as she walked, tracing the curve of her spine with his eyes, from the leather collar, down the open back, and to the small of her back where the skirt began.

“Are you listening?”

“Of course,” came the reply, regardless of its truth.

“It’s just that, sometimes, I have no idea what’s on his mind. I mean, we’ve been going out for, what, a year and a half? I think I should have more figured out, by now. Am I missing something obvious?”

Kira took a sip from his own drink, his eyes scanning the manicured lawn and crisscrossing sidewalks of the quad. In the grass, students were sitting in small groups, some studying, some chatting, others playing music or dancing for their gathering’s benefit. His eyes returned to Freya, who was now walking backward, watching him, her lips around the straw of her drink, sucking slowly.

“Uh, well… I might live with him, yeah, but it’s not like I really get him or anything…”

“But you two are so alike! You even work together well, so you must have some kind of understanding, right? Probably more than his Business School girlfriend, right?”

Girlfriend. Her slender fingers, white and pink, were wrapped around her cherry vodka. The diamond ring glittered at him, taking the light from the axial shaft, the structure that held the municipal cylinder together, and splitting it into a dazzling array, each light beam a representation of that word. Though, with such a ring reflecting such light, was a word like “girlfriend” enough?

“Not as much as you’d think. It’s not like we’re the same person.”

Her cheeks tinged pink as she smiled.

“Yeah, I know.”

Before he could respond, she pirouetted on her toe, turning her back to him as her hair whipped around in a singular red arc. The leather of her boots, which reached up to her skirt, scrunched up her calf as she turned on her ankle, never breaking stride as she resumed her stroll ahead of him. Once again, there was her bare back, her shoulder blades and spine, and the swishing of her hair with the motion of her shoulders against her hips.

“By the way, I like your outfit. Looks good on you.”

As though for the first time, Kira looked down at the canvas tunic hanging beige from his shoulders, the large flaps of the front tied into place and the waist wrapped with a red sash. The short, stiff sleeves opened wide, dwarfing his arms in comparison and, though he couldn’t see them, he was aware of the red ribbons tied around his throat and upper arms. His dull green pants hung from his hips and tucked into the boots he had always worn. He could feel his face growing hot both at the compliment and at the vast difference between this and what he wore before the break.

“Well, I… I only listened to what you said. And Miriallia helped pick it out. So… glad you like it.”

Freya giggled, and when she did, Kira imagined the glass wind chimes that hung from his parents’ porch in Onogoro, a cascade of diamonds raining from the trucks of Ionian deliverymen into steel containers, the echoes of crystalline collisions causing a smile to well up and burst upon the jeweler’s face.

Diamonds.

The major difference between himself and Cy was that he could put a diamond on her finger, while Kira would be forced to eat poorer that evening because he bought her a drink. Small wonder, it was.

[Kenji]

Still more behind-the-scenes progress, but I can't deny this is a glorified bump. Once again, I've been retooling the story, this time to fix the point-of-view issues I've been having. This being a Gundam story, a far-reaching space opera that depicts events bigger than any one character, maintaining a consistent yet personal point of view has been very difficult. I've devised a model that might work, so I'll give it a go and show it when I've made decent progress.

In the meantime, I've done some designwork, such as trying to design mobile suits and characters, altering them to fit the mood I've seen fit to make in Renascent Seed, so they may border on unrecognizable compared to Hirai or Okawara's work.

Here, for instance, is Kira Yamato.