Mobile Suit Gundam SEED ETERNITY

Phase 39 - The Fortress of Sin

"I said I'll do it," grumbled Sting Oakley in the Minerva's crew lounge, glowering up at Athrun Zala. "I didn't say I'd like it."

"I'm just saying, it'll...be a lot of triggers," Athrun answered. "You know what they do at Althea."

"Yeah, I do. Look, I know you're just trying to look out for me, but it's not a problem. Really. I'll deal."

Athrun frowned. "If you say so."

As Athrun took his leave, Sting hung his head with a sigh. Of course he'd deal, but marching into the heart of the Earth Alliance's Extended program would take a toll on him, no doubt. The memories were already trickling back of his time at Lodonia. The cage matches, the physical training, the manipulation, the naked terror that coursed through the place...he shuddered at the thought. He had made friends there in spite of it all— and the Alliance, to toughen him for their service, had made him kill them.

But he was free. He always had to remind himself of that whenever the vortex of Lodonia threatened to drag him under. He was free. Captain Lee had seen to that— and with this lease on life, he could do something with his life now. And here they were, marching into Althea Crater, into the mouth of madness where the Extended were tortured into servants of the Alliance. But he could come here with a new purpose— that of a rescuer.

That, after all, was what he'd promised Captain Lee. That he would do something with his life. And he could think of no better way to honor that man's sacrifice at Daedalus than by freeing the children that he hadn't been able to save.

Shinn Asuka noted with a frown that he had set off something of an emotional storm within Riika Sheder, as they both drifted down the halls of Terminal— and not all the emotions swirling around her were the ones he expected.

"Well," she said quietly, "that certainly sounds like him."

Shinn let out a sigh. "I didn't really want to kill him," he said, "but, well, you know Mare. Hated my guts even to the end."

Riika shrugged. "Don't beat yourself up over it. If he was really the way you say he was, it probably would've..." She trailed off for a moment, choosing her words. "Probably would've done more harm than good trying to talk sense into him anyway."

"I wasn't even going to bother with that," scoffed Shinn. "You remember Mare. You didn't talk sense into him, you waited out his tantrums."

"Well, that's true..."

"Besides, he finally got to pilot the Impulse," Shinn added with a shrug, "and he finally got to fight me."

Riika frowned. "That's not really the point."

"No, but it's all I got."

They rounded a corner. "Well, who else did you run into on Earth? Anyone else we would've known?"

Shinn thought back— bitterly, to the last days spent on Gigafloat, to the feeling of leaving behind Malchio to die as they roared into space, to the all-consuming cloud of evil at Ame-no-Mihashira. He looked back at Riika. She was always too nice for that sort of thing.

"Not a soul."

"Well, here it is," Lowe Gear said as grandiloquently as he could. "Couldn't do as much as I would've wanted, since it was short notice and all, but it'll do ya well enough."

The hangar doors hissed open— and Trojan Noiret nearly jumped for joy at the sight on the other side. A white, black, and green mobile suit with a four-pronged flight pack on its back stood at the other side of the hangar, with the green flaming T insignia stamped onto its left shoulder and the familiar battleaxe beam rifle clamped onto its left-hand hip armor.

"I started with a Civvie Astray chassis and packed on that old flight pack the Red used to use," Lowe went on. "But you said you wanted it tuned for hand-to-hand combat, right? So— "

"It's awesome!" Trojan cried, and immediately jumped forward and lunged towards the silent, waiting Gundam Astray Green Frame Kai. Lowe watched him go with a shrug.

"Eh, whatcha gonna do," he said, and turned towards the person on his other side. "And as long as I'm playin' Santa Claus here, it looks like you've been on the nice list this year too."

At his side, Emily blinked in surprise. "But...I already have a mobile suit— "

"Oh, don't be modest. Come on."

A few minutes later, Lowe was eagerly directing a pair of mechanics in opening up a wide metal crate— and Emily, floating next to the ever-enthusiastic Junk Guild tech, watched in surprise as the lid swung open to reveal two weapons packed inside. One was a long rifle with two canisters slung underneath a metallic blue barrel; the other was a short, stubby shield that housed a long, segmented, sharp-edged whip.

Lowe gestured proudly at the two weapons. "Compliments of Dr. Freeman himself," he said, "the 'Dragon's Fire' beam launcher and the 'Dragon's Tail' heat rod. The Dragon's Tail has twice the range of a normal beam rifle and three times the power in exchange for half the rate of fire, so you'll have to be smart about shots. The Dragon's Tail has a laser-cut reinforced edge and it has superheating and cooling coils inside, plus electrodes, so you can deliver shocks or melt things or whatever, and the edge is sharp enough to cut through anything short of Phase Shift. And," he raised a finger, "it has a beam shield on top."

Emily frowned. More new weapons, more alterations to her style. "I guess I have manuals to read now?"
"You know it."

"Well," she glanced over at Trojan, still giddily examining the Green Frame Kai, "then I guess I'll get started. Thanks, Lowe, I know you don't really like making these kind of things."

Lowe merely shrugged. "Eh, ya do what ya gotta. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go have a chat with your boyfriend over there about his new toy." And with that, Lowe pushed off towards the Green Frame Kai.

Emily looked back down at her own mobile suit's two new weapons and heaved a sigh.

Someone had arranged for the Charlemagne's officers, including its mobile suit pilots, to have a tour of Althea Crater and its Extended facilities. Someone had evidently thought that such a thing would be of great interest to mobile suit pilots. Someone, in other words, was a horrible person.

But Althea Crater was full of those and there was a reason why this place had been dubbed the "fortress of sin" or something like that by the regular forces— the ones who had no idea what went on here and succumbed to all kinds of fanciful tales. The cadets at Volkov had done the same, telling horror stories to keep each other from sleeping and make the next day of training all the more hellish. Erin Gedelberg had never really taken them seriously. Surely the Alliance couldn't do something so inhuman, right?

She hung her head as she heard the door slide open and saw Grey and Merau step into the observation hallway she had chosen for her brooding.

"Hey," Grey started, with an awkward glance at Merau, "there you are. You alright? You seemed pretty upset when, well, you know..."

"I-I'm alright," she started, and slowly got back to her feet, "it's just, in that one room..." She squeezed her eyes shut as the memories came back and the tears threatened to flow. "She...looked like my sister..."

Erin looked back up as Grey put a comforting hand on her shoulder, and then the wall cracked open and she flung herself into his chest with a sob. Grey and Merau exchanged a knowing look and stood back as she wept.

A long row of Calamity Gundam units in the black and red colors of the Phantom Pain stretched down the hangar. Shams Coza cringed at the sight; Gundams were supposed to be unique and even though this had only been a limited production run of a tweaked version of the original X131, it still wasn't cool. Anymore like this and he'd lose the franchise.

He glanced over at Mudie, staring disinterestedly at it all. Of course, this sort of tour was a lot better than the one the base officers had offered. Shams had skillfully finagled his way out of that. He, after all, was a veteran of the Phantom Pain, and he'd spent enough time at the likes of Lodonia. The last thing he needed was the visceral horror that any mentally and emotionally sound human felt at the sight of children in a cage gutting each other like turkeys.

"Well, their problem," he muttered. Mudie glanced at him. "The other pilots. Maynard's little gang. They went on the tour Bancroft was offering."

"Oh," Mudie said, and her flesh seemed to crawl. "That was stupid of them."

"Incredibly." He turned his attention back towards the row of Calamities. "So what are those for?" Mudie shrugged. "I mean, they're totally ripping off my schtick. I was there first."

"Whatever."

Mudie headed off on her own and left behind a frowning Shams. It was getting damn near impossible to engage her in conversation, and he could only wonder what was going on in that pretty little head of hers.

The dock where waited the dark blue and gold hull of the Witch's Hammer rang with the sounds of work as the crews prepared it for a sortie. Mirage Colloid was a useful thing for a force that styled itself as a bunch of ninjas.

Misa Tsunomi watched the final stages of the refit imperiously from her observation deck, arms crossed, mind racing. She had about a day to gather her team and put together a plan to eliminate Robert Meyers. No doubt the new President of the Atlantic Federation would have a ludicrous degree of new security, but if a Mirage Colloid-equipped battleship approached and blasted the White House or something while the President was there, well, there wasn't much they could do about that.

She scowled behind her mask. Of course, she had suggested to Lord Djibril that she should destroy him months ago. She would have done it unhesitatingly. Anything to serve him better. But he had been content to let Meyers play his little games and only destroy him when he became a threat; and then ZAFT showed up and distracted him, and now it was all falling apart.

From the shadows, she would have to support her master again. That was how it had always been. And now, with his grand empire disintegrating...

Down below, the workers loaded her Nero Blitz into the Witch's Hammer's hangar and turned their attention towards the ship's four gleaming new N Windam N units. With the same ninja-like characteristics as the N Dagger N but the successful Windam's frame and improved maneuverability, the N Windams would surely slice through Washington's mobile suit defenses. They could do this, and then track down whatever other officials needed to be killed, until a suitable puppet was reached in the line of succession.

Anything that the master required.

"It's a ZAFT prototype," said Major General Hans von Schadt of the mobile suit before them. Gerhardt and Irene shared a look and both took in the majestic sweep of a mobile suit with a monstrous backpack, folded wings and cannons on its back and hips, and the beam rifle and red shield of the old Strike Gundam. "X08A Liberty. Prototype for the Justice and Freedom." He pointed to the giant backpack. "They derived the Justice's subflight lifter from that, and they tested prototypes of the weapons for the Freedom."

Gerhardt arched an eyebrow. "The Freedom?"

"Oh, indeed," Schadt said with a proud grin. "It's still a formidable machine even six years later. Can hold its own in a fight and everything."

The machine was no mystery to Gerhardt von Oldendorf. Captured shortly after the Junius War, the Liberty Gundam had donated parts and concepts to development of the Alliance's latest and greatest machines, like the mighty Crusader Gundam. And Schadt's boasting wasn't completely off the mark, as the Liberty had held up well in combat trials against small Resistance units. But the Minerva had new, cutting-edge mobile suits. This relic of the Valentine War couldn't possibly help.

Relics. That's all these things were. Relics and atrocities, seething in the blackest pits of Althea Crater. Gerhardt looked around disdainfully as Schadt launched into a discourse about the Liberty's capture. This wasn't the place to find the future.

No, Emily would do that for him.

Unit Zero-Two clutched her shoulders and struggled against the images in her mind as she tried to sleep in her bunk. It was a good thing they had left her to her own devices in here, now that Commander Ehrmacht's task force was so much scrap metal orbiting the Earth, because she had issues to deal with.

And it was all thanks to that damned brat. Emily. How had she managed to do that? What Zero-Two assumed to be every emotion and memory she'd associated with her mother, the kindly, frail woman who couldn't do much as her mother but did what she could, had come crashing down on her in one concentrated bombardment of feeling. And worst of all, she thought as she thrashed around onto her other side, it felt familiar.

It explained, at least, why Emily was so insistent on seeing Zero-Two as her mother. And it was a rather unexpected way for Vice Marshal Yamato's decision to use her to backfire. But she knew who she was. She was Unit Zero-Two, the perfected version of the unstable and wayward Zero-One. A weapon more perfectly honed and skillfully crafted could not be found in the Cosmic Era.

And yet those images stayed with her still. That was Emily's mother; that was her, the same heart, somewhere underneath all that military training and honing and crafting. That was what Emily saw, and it made her sick to think that somehow her entire life might have been built upon a vast bedrock of falsehood.

She clenched her fingers around her shoulders and blew out her breath. The images would have to be driven out. Whatever she was to some misguided soul, she was Unit Zero-Two— and she would not be bent and twisted into something else.

All things considered, Lily Thevalley should have been walking on air. The mobile suit in front of her was the resurrection of Emily's old Twilight Gundam, repaired and refit to replace the rarely used anti-ship sword with a second long-range cannon. Firmly attached to the rear skirt armor was a much larger skirt that held four DRAGOON units. And with the Phase Shift active, it was clear that someone had at long last remembered that she liked her mobile suits red.

The Twilight Gundam Cortana, however, had one rather important hitch.

"They're not saying you're short, Lily," Emily protested, as Lily stewed with arms crossed in front of the crimson machine. "It's a history reference. 'Cortana' is a sword that was used by a big important hero somewhere and got cut down so someone else could use it."

"Yeah," Lily groused, "so they're saying I'm short and they're saying I'm a wimp!"

"No they're not," Emily sighed.

She glanced up towards the new mobile suit and felt a twinge of reminiscence at the sight of her old machine. The poor Twilight Gundam had carried her through so much, it felt a little strange to be handing it down to someone else now. But hopefully this machine and its legacy would extend its protective power to Lily too. Emily hated to think what might happen if it didn't.

"It's really not that big a deal," she said. "If you don't like it, you can change the name. I did." She shrugged. "They called my Gundam 'Gabriel.' I don't. It's not a problem."

"Whatever," Lily grumbled, and turned away disdainfully. Emily rolled her eyes and looked back into the eyes of her old and faithful warhorse.

Well, she mused, you'll just have to be as good to her as you were to me.

"So," said Riika Sheder with a skeptically raised eyebrow, "you're the infamous Stella Loussier."

The infamous Stella Loussier looked up at the sound of her name, a glob of instant ramen noodles waving like tentacles out from her mouth. She blinked at the brown-haired girl in glasses and a red ZAFT uniform, and her confusion didn't get any better as the girl lost her composure and started giggling.

"Wha...?" she started, and then remembered she was eating, and took the time to swallow her food. "What is it...?"

Riika tried to stifle her laughter. "You're what made Shinn go AWOL on us?" Stella looked around and could not find what was so funny, but Riika managed to compose herself as Stella worked up the nerve to ask. "S-Sorry, it's just, the noodles hanging out of your mouth..."

Stella glanced down at her Styrofoam cup of instant ramen. "Stella was eating dinner..."

"I know, I know." Riika took a deep breath. "Okay. Let's try this again." She put a hand out. "Hi, I'm Riika Sheder."

Stella hesitantly shook her hand. "Who...?"

"I was Shinn's friend at Armory 1," Riika supplied, "and I used to pilot the Gaia."

"The Gaia?"

"Yeah, the, uh...the one you stole."

Stella frowned. "The Gaia's gone."

"I know. Don't worry about it, it was getting old." Riika looked around awkwardly. "So, um, I guess you've been Shinn's friend for a while, huh?" Stella nodded slowly. "Cool! So, um..."

Stella offered a smile. "If Riika was Shinn's friend," she said, "then she's Stella's friend too."

That brought a grin to Riika's face. "I can live with that."

"I was in FAITH, yes," admitted Rau Le Creuset, "but I'm sure you understand that Gilbert Dullindal always played his cards close to his vest. I'm sure you were treated the same way. The Chairman only fed you the information you needed to know, always seemed to be playing another angle...?

Meyrin frowned. She'd managed to corner the enigmatic masked ace here in a side hallway in the labyrinthine interior of Terminal. No way was she letting this opportunity slip through her fingers.

"I remember that," she said, "but I'm asking about what you did during the war."

Rau shrugged. "The only thing of note that I did during the Junius War was joining the battle at Cyprus. Covered the Muslim League's retreat during that debacle at Dhekelia." He frowned. "Why do you ask?"

"I've heard some rumors that you were up to less than savory business during the war," Meyrin said. Rau only grinned.

"War itself is unsavory business."

"The rumors say you went further than that."

"And what do the rumors say, captain?"

Meyrin straightened up. "If it's not true, then it's unimportant," she said. "What is important is that I need to know if I can trust you."

"And why would you not?"

A tense silence reigned between them for a moment. "Can I trust you?"

Rau grinned back. "You can always trust me, captain. I think I've demonstrated my unimpeachable credentials ample times over the course of my time on the Minerva. I'm sorry someone distrusts me enough to go spreading these nasty rumors, but," he shrugged, "that's not a problem for me to work out."

Silence descended over them again. "I suppose so," Meyrin said. "I'll see you back at the ship." And with a curt nod, she excused herself and disappeared around a corner.

To be continued...