A transport truck rolled into the Archangel's hangar.
Inside the cargo bay, whose doors could no longer close because of the damage, lay a new unit jointly developed by the Earth Alliance and Orb's Morgenroete. It was part of the first batch of prototype mobile suits in the GAT-X Series, the so-called G Weapons.
This one was the GAT-X105 Strike Gundam.
Of the other four units, three had been stolen by the enemy, and one had been destroyed.
"Everybody, get down!"
In a commanding tone, Murrue Ramius ordered the group of kids riding in the other transport to disembark.
Out in the middle of the night, not asleep, playing at camping in the wilderness, and of all places near the G weapons factory.
Then ZAFT's attack had frightened them into running all over the place, until she finally picked them up.
They were not being allowed to leave because they had seen Earth Alliance military secrets.
More importantly, one of the units had even been boarded by a child who, trying to save his classmates, somehow managed to operate it. He used it to push aside an overturned transport that had been blasted onto another vehicle and rescue the classmates trapped inside.
In a way, it was lucky. If that child had not activated it, this machine would likely have been stolen by the enemy too.
In the end, the enemy appeared to receive orders for an emergency withdrawal. Otherwise, fighting would already have broken out.
But the more troublesome issue right now was not that.
It was the third party.
"What is that... a corpse?"
"Ugh...!"
"Don't look! Close your eyes! Back up, back up!"
Several of the students who had just gotten down immediately threw up after seeing the body.
It was not as though they had not seen corpses along the way, but this one hit them without warning and made their scalps crawl. The corpse had been carved into several massive chunks of flesh by something sharp.
Seeing that scene again only made Murrue's heart sink further.
Badgiruel had already relayed the footage from here earlier. Through it, Murrue had seen the exchange between Natarle and the newcomer and had witnessed just how terrifying the man piloting that unknown fighter really was.
"Captain Flaga."
"Captain Ramius, don't make things difficult for me. Yes, I have the nickname 'Hawk of Endymion,' but that reputation was earned flying a fighter. If you want me to fight him in the air, I might be able to hold my own. But if you're asking me to fight him hand-to-hand in the flesh, give me a break. That's like asking a baby to beat an adult, all right?"
Mu La Flaga said that with a wave of his hand.
The title Hawk of Endymion was the name he had earned after shooting down five ZAFT GINNs while piloting a mobile armor with inferior performance to ZAFT mobile suits.
He himself had also launched in a fighter to intercept the invading GINNs inside Heliopolis, only for a third force to suddenly appear.
In the end, the other side had forcibly demanded control of the Archangel, and Mu had seen with his own eyes how that man dropped several people with jaw-dropping speed and reflexes.
Those people had clearly been preparing to attack him, yet he had cut them down with brutal, lightning-fast violence.
That kind of performance was simply not human. If anyone expected Mu to fight that monster in person, it would be no different from smashing an egg against a rock.
"What are you talking about? I just hoped you wouldn't do anything rash later."
Murrue sounded a little speechless. Did he really think she would say something that stupid?
"That, of course, I won't."
Mu shrugged. In truth, he knew perfectly well that Ramius was not foolish enough to entertain such an idea.
He had said it deliberately only to make sure she would not ask him for some equally unrealistic favor later.
"Captain Ramius, those things that transform into mobile suits... they look like they can also turn into unmanned fighters."
Mu looked at the three craft hovering around the Archangel. One of them had not transformed and remained in fighter form, what they called an MA form.
The other two had transformed into MS form, mobile suit configuration, and there was clearly no one in the cockpits.
Which meant those two were probably being remotely controlled by the other one.
"They're not even half the size of a normal MS, yet they can still transform. The joints would have to be absurdly flexible. And with optical camouflage built into frames that small... Is Orb really that advanced?"
Mu rested his chin on his hand as he thought it over.
A few seconds later, he gave up. He was no engineer. Thinking about it any further was pointless.
"Captain Flaga, let's go."
Murrue urged the Earth Alliance ace pilot onward. The two princesses and that frightening man were waiting for them aboard the Archangel.
The other side intended to discuss something with the two of them as well.
As for the students they had brought here, the soldiers could keep watch over them.
In the blink of an eye, they were in the Archangel's combat bridge.
"That's impossible!!!"
Natarle Badgiruel's voice shook with agitation. She simply could not accept the unbelievable intelligence being played by the machine called Haro.
The Copernicus lunar terrorist incident and the Bloody Valentine tragedy were both conspiracies.
That in itself was not what shocked her most. After all, there had long been people who suspected that both the Copernicus incident and Bloody Valentine had hidden truths behind them. But once the war broke out and hatred escalated on both sides, nobody cared enough to dig any deeper.
What Badgiruel truly found impossible to believe was the data above that. Many people she had once regarded as worthy of respect were apparently among the masterminds behind all of it.
More than half of the Earth Alliance had fallen under the control of those conspirators. It could be said that most of the upper ranks were a pack of bastards.
So Natarle Badgiruel refused to believe it.
She could not accept that she had been serving a bunch of murderers.
"This was fabricated by you, wasn't it? And this thing about a Cyclops System buried beneath Alaska Base, something that dangerous... how could that be possible? That's Earth Alliance headquarters. And this too..."
She fired off one challenge after another, insisting the intelligence was fake, that Lacus was releasing false information to shake their resolve.
"In any case, if you want us to believe this, you'll need concrete proof."
Murrue Ramius and Mu La Flaga, two of the three senior Earth Alliance officers currently present, still said nothing. In truth, both of them already believed some of the intelligence, because the signs were too obvious.
But if they were to be truly swayed, this was still not enough.
Just as Badgiruel had said, more evidence was needed.
"Proof? I wonder if this will be enough."
Lacus pulled up another explosive set of intelligence.
After learning information from the fan animation, Lacus had informed her father, who then exhausted every means available to investigate and obtain supporting evidence.
And it had all turned out to be real.
When the three of them saw this new intelligence, they were stunned.
Because this was not Earth Alliance intelligence.
It was PLANT intelligence.
The moment the development data for a weapon called GENESIS appeared, the three of them could no longer remain seated.
"Has PLANT gone insane? If that thing fires at Earth, it'll kill every human being on the planet!"
Badgiruel's voice rose higher and higher until she slammed her hand on the table and stood up. She had never imagined ZAFT was developing such a deranged world-ending weapon.
Before she could continue venting her fury, another intelligence report was projected. The sight of it silenced even Murrue, who had been about to speak.
"This is really one hell of a headache. The Earth Alliance is no better."
Mu raked a hand through his hair and let out a bitter laugh.
According to the report, the Earth Forces were also developing a superweapon no less catastrophic than GENESIS: Requiem.
At present, PLANT seemed further along, with construction already halfway complete.
As for the Earth Forces, they had only just begun implementation.
But no matter how you looked at it, both sides were madly developing weapons capable of destroying the world.
That made the princess's proposal, to have them join a third faction and stop both sides from destroying everything, sound far less like a lie.
It really did seem that she sincerely wanted their help.
Then several more intelligence reports appeared, pushing the three of them into even deeper silence.
Each one detailed another insane backup plan, all aimed at annihilating the other side.
For example, on PLANT's side, there was the plan to drive the wreckage of Junius Seven into Earth as a doomsday strike.
And on the Earth Forces' side, there was a plan to use massive numbers of nuclear missiles to wipe out PLANT's colony blocs.
This world had gone mad. Completely mad.
(End of Chapter)
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