Gundam Wing: Blaze Of Glory

Part 3: Pressure

By Justin A. Swartz (jswartz82@yahoo.com)

Disclaimer: Gundam Wing and its names, figures, places, and respective merchandise belong to Sunrise/Bandai and Yoshiyuki Tomino. The Ducat Vanguard, Ducat Libreiel, Alexia Rader, Miria, and the original mobile suits described in this story are of my creation and belong to me. Any use of them without my permission is prohibited.

Now dressed in the red-on-black Army uniform, complete with zippered vest and visor cap, Quatre Winner made his way to Lady Une’s office. As he pressed a button by her door to signal his arrival, he realized that never in his career as a Gundam pilot had he seen himself having to wear a uniform. He hoped that, once the war was over, he’d never have to put one on again, that he could return to Winner Enterprises, that he could see—

No, there was no going back to that. It no longer existed. All of it had been shred into tatters by the war. Just as Quatre’s mind was beginning to sink back to his personal reasons for joining the army, the door to Lady Une’s office slid open.

“Come in, Lieutenant Winner,” she said in her business tone. The former assistant of Treize Khush-Renata, and now head of both of the Preventers and the Red Blaze Army, looked at him with stern eyes. It was clear she was out for a kill, and the blonde pilot knew whom she was hunting as her prey.

“I wanted to see if you had any more information about the situation in Sudan,” Quatre said after taking a seat by Lady Une’s desk. Her office was compact and circular, with three different news channels playing behind her on wall-mounted television screens.

“The situation in Sudan can wait,” she said, her eyes never leaving Quatre’s. “I’d like to discuss your performance in the mission today.”

“Ma’am, if you’ll listen to what I have to say,” he started, but she cut him off.

“Leaving those people there was the wrong thing to do. That only provoked Ducat into doing what he did, Quatre, and I’m sure you realize that.”

“Lady Une, please listen—“

“Do not speak until I give you permission to, Lieutenant. You’ll pardon my rudeness, but your Gundam pilot philosophies do not always work best in a war like this.” She scanned over a sheet of paper on her desk. “Your orders were, as clearly stated on this mission request form, to leave no survivors.” Her eyes squared on his again. “Is there a reason why you disobeyed this order?”

“Because I strongly disagree with it,” Quatre responded.

“Explain.”

“Lady Une, if we fight without showing mercy, isn’t it just slaughter and mayhem?”

“Slaughter and mayhem is what we’re fighting against.”

“If that’s correct, then why was I being told to use those tactics?”

“You weren’t. You were told ‘no survivors allowed.’”

“It’s the same principle that Ducat uses!”

“Ducat makes sure innocent civilians are put in harm’s way so as to make us appear the villains. In terms of conduct, he’s fought a very clean war up until this point. When we discovered that he was planning to engage us on a space front as well as an Earth front with these factories, we decided to take a firmer stance against him.

“What I’m trying to tell you, Quatre, is that we are being too soft against the Vanguard. Being soft is what almost cost us the world when the Barton Foundation sought to recreate the original Operation Meteor in 196. I will not allow that to happen again.”

Quatre kept his jaw set, his hands clenched into the armrests of the seat. What had happened to Lady Une? This wasn’t the woman he remembered!

A thought struck him then, and he spoke on it.

“Lady Une, this isn’t about being soft, is it?”

Her brown eyes flared alarm. “I’m sorry?”

His blue eyes were set firmly on hers. “It’s about losing Sally.”

Sally Po, faithful renegade soldier for the Sanct Kingdom and later for the Preventers, had been lost during Ducat’s initial invasion of Sudan. She had been working to uncover his preparations when the first attack came. She had fought bravely against the incoming mobile suit forces, but with their advanced mobility and improved weapons, she and the other members of the initial Preventer force could not hold the line.

Sally’s death had come as quite a shock for all of them, but none so great as Lady Une. It was as if she was starting back at ‘day one’ as a commanding officer, and Sally had been her first official loss. It was more than that, though, Quatre was sure of it.

“You’re dismissed, Lieutenant,” Lady Une said gruffly.

“Lady Une, please.”

“I said you’re dismissed.”

With a forlorn look at his superior, Quatre left.

*<>*

Ducat Libreiel leaned back against the chair in his office and put his fingertips together in front of him. Progress reports from each of the War Factories were spread out before him on the glass desk, illuminated by the light streaming in from the windows and warming the gray and maroon post-modern furnishings of the room. It wasn’t the cheeriest place on Earth, and Ducat liked it that way; he wanted people to feel depressed and morose when they came through his door.

When people came through the thick stained-glass door, they were entering his world, his realm, his playpen. They were no longer in control of their senses, nor their feelings. Those things belonged to him the minute their shoe touched the carpet, or they smelled the air conditioning unit blasting cold molecules through the air.

This attack on M.O.-Eighteen had been troubling to him, for it revealed that the Red Blaze Army knew of the Vanguard’s plans to open up a space front in the war. What resources he did have in space were very limited, due to his being an Earth-bound man for several years. What distressed him the most was the fact that, despite his attempts to demoralize the main core of their staff, they still fought on.

There was no mistake about it: Ducat had opened the war in grand fashion, by destroying the L4 colony, home to one Quatre Winner, Winner Enterprises, and the young entrepreneur’s twenty-nine sisters. It was by fate’s hand that Quatre was not present on L4 when it crumbled; he had in fact been romancing the Vice Foreign-Minister, Relena Darlian—nigh, Relena Peacecraft—at a lovely Earth restaurant the night the explosion had occurred.

It wasn’t that Ducat hated Quatre himself…he hated what the boy represented. That foolish mind that thought mercy belonged in a war. Well, he had certainly showed him what war could do to peoples’ lives, and he had taken the appropriate action by lending his skills as a former Gundam pilot to the newly instated Red Blaze Army.

Ducat pressed a button on his desk. “Miria, could you take a message for me?”

“Certainly,” his adjutant and aide replied. “Go ahead.”

“Send this message to General Lyons in Sudan. Tell him to go ahead and block the Preventers in to the civilian sectors. Report fully on any counter-measures they take and respond with equal or overwhelming force.”

The smile of the devil passed across his lips.

“That is all.”

*<>*

Quatre’s quarters were dark, say for the light coming from a flatscreen monitor in his hands. He sat on the edge of his bed, staring at the face of Heero Yuy intently.

“From what I can gather,” Heero began, “The attack on L4 was deliberately aimed at you, to provoke you.” When he received no response from Quatre on this, Heero continued. “His next step was to take over a strategic piece of land in order to shame the Preventers and the Red Blaze.”

“Sudan,” Quatre said in barely a whisper.

“Affirmative,” Heero said. “Sudan is the bigger supplier of the fuel cells that power the army’s mobile suits. Ducat put his time toward researching compact nuclear power, but I haven’t been able to turn up anything about whether he succeeded or not.”

“If he totally cuts off Sudan, that’ll put us at a serious disadvantage.”

“I’m sure Lady Une understands that.”

“I’m not sure she understands anything, Heero.”

Heero frowned. “Quatre?”

Quatre told Heero about his conversation with Une, and the buried regret she carried.

“Let her be,” Heero advised. “She has enough to worry about. You have enough authority to instigate missions. You can take care of Sudan yourself, with the proper planning and procedures.”

“I’m also concerned about Ducat’s plans for outer space.”

“You can leave that to me.”

A smile formed on Quatre’s lips.

“What do you have in mind?”

Something of a smile was on Heero’s own lips.

“You’ll see.”

“I suppose I will.”

Heero paused before he spoke. “I’ll let you to your duties. I have some more information to dig up before I move out.”

“Roger, Heero. Take care of yourself.”

“Quatre?”

“Yes?”

“Lady Une has a point.”

With that, Heero signed off and plunged the room into total darkness. Quatre tossed the monitor onto the bed and leaned back against the wall.

“Maybe she does,” Quatre said to the darkness, “But it’s not a very good one.”

*<>*