After a personnel transport craft and three mobile suits flew out of Heliopolis's port, they followed the order they had received and fired their thrusters in one direction, accelerated to a certain speed, and then immediately cut their engines.
After that, they simply coasted through space on inertia.
"What exactly is going on?"
"If you'd given me one more minute, I could've taken that one too."
"And instead we had to blow it up. What a waste."
The three mobile suits with them were the new units they had successfully captured from the Earth Alliance.
It had to be said, they really were terrifying machines, far beyond anything ZAFT's own mobile suits could compare to.
If Commander Le Creuset's order to retreat immediately had not come through, they probably could have taken all five.
As it was, they had successfully stolen three. Because the retreat order had been so urgent, they had been forced to destroy one of the remaining units on the spot.
"It's probably connected to the destruction of our GINNs," Nicol Amalfi guessed.
During the retreat, they had seen what was left of the GINNs: just the cockpit sections, five in total.
Judging by the scene, they had been destroyed like that in an incredibly short amount of time.
"To wipe out five GINNs that fast... is it some new weapon too? Just what the hell have those Earth bastards been developing?" Dearka Elsman said irritably.
But what really annoyed him was not the new weapon that had destroyed the five GINNs.
It was the fact that he had been just one step away from capturing that fourth unit himself.
Just one step too slow, and the machine that should have been taken ended up being destroyed instead.
"By the way, what about our princess?"
The moment Yzak Joule brought that up, the group fell silent.
After a brief pause -
"From now on, no communications until we've returned to the designated position!" Athrun ordered immediately.
If they kept communicating, the enemy might be able to detect the signal and locate them.
As for Lacus, he was deeply worried too.
But right now, he was a soldier. He could not let personal feelings take over.
...
Inside the cockpit of the transformed Ho 229, Kain looked at the asteroid that had been pierced through in front of him, then at the twisted metal debris drifting nearby.
He was certain that the reduced-output satellite orbital laser cannon he had borrowed from A2, the kind used against super-large flying carrier-type machine lifeforms, had hit a warship.
He just could not be sure whether it had been Rau Le Creuset's ship.
If that bastard had been killed outright, it would have removed a major threat.
You could say that in the world of SEED, Rau Le Creuset was one of the biggest reasons the war spiraled completely out of control.
Though he belonged to the ZAFT military and looked like he served ZAFT, in truth he served no one.
What he wanted was for the war to run wild and for everyone to be wiped out.
The reason he had become like that was simple: he had fallen completely into darkness.
He was neither a Natural nor a Coordinator, but a failed clone of Mu's father, Al Da Flaga.
And not just a clone, but a defective one with very little life left in him.
Because of that, his rage twisted him. From that moment on, he had planned how to drive humanity toward extinction and bring the world to ruin.
Kain shifted his gaze toward another patch of space.
The exhaust flare of one warship vanished in an instant.
That ship had deliberately pretended its engines had been weakened as though it had also been caught in the blast. Once he noticed it, he had moved in to finish it off.
And then it had suddenly accelerated and escaped, shaking him off just like that.
He could not catch it, which was normal enough.
Most of A2's combat took place on the ground, and space warfare was rare, so there had been very little development of high-speed spacecraft built for space combat, especially large warships.
So it was perfectly normal for the Ho 229 to get left behind that quickly. Even a GINN at full speed probably would not have been able to catch up either.
Kain immediately turned back toward Heliopolis without the slightest hesitation.
He had been played.
The enemy had lured him away so the people inside Heliopolis could escape.
Once he returned to the colony, the scene that greeted him made his brow twitch slightly.
It looked like the changes to the plot were not that major after all. Several Gundams had still been taken.
As for the cockpit he had not destroyed outright, the one he had intentionally left alive as a rescue bait and a drag on the enemy, it had not been retrieved by them. It had been captured by the Earth Alliance instead.
In that case, it was time to go find those two princesses.
In the blink of an eye -
Thunk!
A chunk of metal was forcibly pulled free and dropped onto the solid floor with a heavy sound.
Cagalli, caught off guard, got splattered in the face by the blood that sprayed out, and hurriedly reached for something to stop the wound.
But the man in front of her simply pulled his shirt back on, with no intention of treating it at all.
Not only that, he took out a bottle and drank the white liquid inside in one gulp.
So that was the miraculous medicine that made his wounds heal so quickly.
Because the man who had returned still had one deeply lodged metal fragment in his back that had not been dealt with earlier, Cagalli had helped treat it and ended up seeing the abnormal state of his back. Some wounds that should have still been there were already gone.
And this man really was terrifying.
She had not dared to dig into the wound herself, so he had simply opened the gruesome wound wider with his own hands and exposed the fragment for her to pull out.
If it had not been lodged in such an awkward spot, he would have pulled it out himself.
Originally he had asked Lacus to help, but that pampered princess was too timid and had no strength. All she had managed to do was make him suffer more. So Cagalli had taken over and yanked it free in one hard pull.
Then, all of a sudden, he pulled out several more bottles and shoved them into her and Lacus's hands.
"...You're giving these to me?"
Cagalli stared at what was in her hand in stunned disbelief.
Something that could heal wounds this quickly was an incredible medicine.
Even if it came with side effects, even if it rapidly burned away a person's lifespan, for an injury so severe that without immediate treatment you would die, that price would still be worth paying.
"Yeah. You can't die. You're an important character, after all."
After saying that, Kain boarded the Ho 229 again. He extended a mechanical arm toward the two of them and took them straight toward the Archangel.
Things had already reached this point.
There was no need to hide anymore.
"Important character? Me?"
"Yeah. We still need you to take control of the Archangel."
Cagalli fell silent after hearing that.
Lacus had already told her some of the situation just now, revealing some of the hidden truths behind the war and briefly explaining why a third faction needed to be formed.
She had also told her that once he returned, she was supposed to go take over the Archangel.
Take it by force under her identity as Orb's princess.
She had grounds to do it too, because this was Orb territory.
You could even say the Archangel belonged to Orb.
But she had to think this through carefully.
She represented Orb.
If she did this, it would be the same as openly turning against the Earth Alliance.
And Lacus, to prove her resolve, had declared that as the chairman's daughter, she would also announce her separation from PLANT.
In truth, the moment Lacus Clyne had Kain destroy the GINNs and apparently wipe out one of ZAFT's warships outside, that was already an act of betrayal against PLANT.
She was serious.
So...
Was Cagalli going to join them too?
(End of Chapter)
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