Chapter Text
“Think very carefully, Captain,” says Lieutenant Sauper, who is currently holding a gun, “Giving us the saboteur would be perfectly legitimate. You will save yourself and fail no one.”
The Nahel Argama’s bridge is deathly quiet, save for the ventilator fans.
“Lieutenant,” replies Mitas, “What’s your leverage here? How can you possibly hope to persuade me?”
Sauper glares, but says nothing. Wheels and gears whir behind his eyes.
“The Rewloola will know,” the Lieutenant eventually says. “Colonel Frontal will not tolerate this treachery.”
“Your mobile suits aboard my ship are inoperative,” says Mitas, “And your occupying crew is spread thin.”
“The Rewloola-”
“Will not fire upon her own crew, will she?” Mitas interrupts. “Or does Full Frontal care so little for his men and materiel that he would risk destroying them for the sake of mere vengeance?”
“I’m surprised, Captain,” says Sauper, almost conversationally, “I would think you would have more concern for your well-being than this.” He chambers a round and levels the gun at Mitas. “Tell your men to hand the saboteur over to us, or I’ll give Commander Borrinea here her first command,” and here he jerks his head towards the unhappy XO.
“Choose now, Captain,” Sauper continues. “You’re running out of time.”
Mitas has a duty to his crew. It comes before his duty to the Admiralty, to the Federation, even to himself. Before anything else, you have moral responsibility. It’s the foundation of who and what you are.
Nobody can force you to choose. All they can do is scare you into believing they’re capable of that.
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Borrinea move slowly, drifting towards Sauper.
Colonel Mackle also shifts slightly. Mitas glances towards the ECOAS commander. He’s not holding his gun, but his gun arm is hanging loose in the way a man does when he’s ready to move in an instant.
And then Mackle winks.
Mitas speaks on instinct.
“No.”
What happens next seems to play out painfully slowly.
Sauper, already glowering, frowns even deeper, face wrinkling into a mask of hate. His finger tightens on the trigger.
Borrinea moves.
Mackle draws his gun.
Sauper fires.
Mitas’ world explodes.
He does not see Borrinea restrain the Sleeves Lieutenant. He does not see Mackle slam the butt of his pistol into Sauper’s temple. He does not hear the shouting, the panicked intercom calls, or even the tiny clink of Sauper’s shell casing finally bouncing off a wall.
Everything is numb. He can’t breathe, his ears are ringing, and he wants to cough, but can’t muster the breath. He desperately wants a cup of tea.
Borrinea is above him, saying something. She’s fussing with his chest, and she wishes he wouldn’t. It’s terribly unprofessional. Crimson droplets spin through the air, and Mitas realizes in a detached, analytical sense that his uniform is soaked with something warm.
He tastes salt and iron.
“Get them off the ship,” he tries to say, but cannot speak, “And find my damn hat.”
And then he loses consciousness.
#
Takuya fucked up. It’s over.
He missed a suit—one of the several Geara Zulus on board just came to life, Cyclops eye flickering into activity. The brown-haired Lieutenant, still mad as hell, glances up to note the way that the Zulu steps out from its storage rack and shoulders its rifle.
In Takuya’s defense, the Geara Zulus are all identical, and he kind of lost count after the third one. And he was scared shitless and rushing. Still is scared shitless.
“We’re not asking,” booms the voice of the Zulu’s pilot, crackling out like the word of God, “If you’re Federation, get out of the hangar. Now.”
The assembled mob of Feddies quails. You can’t blame them, not really. Looking up the barrel of a beam rifle is sort of a transcendentally shitty experience.
The Sleeves are going to take Takuya back. They’re going to kill him, and repair their mobile suits, and all this will have been in vain.
“Grab him,” says the brown-haired Sleeves Lieutenant, pointing at Takuya. Micott shoves herself in front of him, brandishing that wrench, gleaming like justice.
“Try it!” she spits.
She’s outgunned, severely. The Sleeves guys draw and aim, and the Geara Zulu levels its beam rifle at her, not that its aim matters much when it comes to hitting a particular person.
The Lieutenant takes aim at Micott’s center of mass. The nine-millimeter slug will punch its way through her abdominal muscles, puncture her stomach, and shred her thoracic aorta. She will die in minutes.
Something moves behind Takuya, but he’s frozen with terror. Don’t move. Don’t fucking move. Never surprise a guy with a gun.
There’s the sensation of mechanical motion, and a flash of light—Takuya squints instinctively, but it leaves afterimages of the hanger in his vision.
“Sleeves personnel, stand down!” barks another amplified voice. Takuya turns, blinking away the last flickering remnants of that blinding light, to see the harlequin Unicorn standing in the way of a maimed Geara Zulu. The Unicorn has used one of its beam sabers to sever the Zulu’s forearm—the beam rifle, hand still attached, is slowly drifting away, trailing stringy ropes of rapidly-cooling armor.
“Marida!” shouts another voice, unamplified. It’s Suberoa Zinnerman, Zeon badass par excellence. “Come out of the Unicorn.”
The Unicorn’s cockpit hatch opens, but its horrid demon head is still aimed at the Sleeves men. One touch of the CIWS guns and they’re history.
Inside the Unicorn’s cockpit, Takuya can see a head of red hair. The Princess. She’s saying something to the Unicorn’s pilot, talking fast.
#
“Marida, come out of the Unicorn.”
Marida stiffens at the sound of Zinnerman’s voice.
“Don’t do it,” says Mineva, “please,” but she’s too late—as if on reflex, Marida has already keyed the hatch release.
“Don’t do this,” Mineva says again, “The Unicorn is yours to command. The Box is yours, as it was meant to be. You want to open it for the sake of Cyber Newtypes, don’t you?”
“Master,” mutters Marida. One hand absently unbuckles her seat belts, while the other tries to stop it.
Mineva glances down towards the stalemate, and sees Technician Irei, surrounded by Federation and Sleeves personnel. Only the Sleeves have guns. If the deterrent represented by the Unicorn is rendered non-credible, Irei will be taken, and Mineva will have failed her promise to him.
“Marida!” she hisses, “Don’t let him do this!”
“I-” says Marida, sounding confused. She is now standing, gazing out towards Zinnerman. She blinks, then looks back towards Mineva.
“The Unicorn is yours,” says Mineva. “The last ninety-six years of history have determined it.”
“Is this really what you want?” asks Marida, looking towards Zinnerman and raising her voice to be heard, because he’s standing on a walkway some distance away.
“I just don’t want you to get hurt, Marida,” he says. It’s a loaded statement, Mineva knows. What are his criteria for hurt? Does he have a moral obligation to take all possible measures to protect Marida from that hurt? “Come on out, please. Let’s all just get to the Box in one piece.”
Marida’s expression darkens. “This is just about the Box, Master? Is that all?”
“We need it!” insists Zinnerman, “And we need you on our side! Come out of the Unicorn, Marida! Now!”
“Can’t you let me live how I wish?” asks Marida. “Just once?”
He’s taken aback by this. “What do you mean?”
“What do you want for me?”
“I want you to be happy,” he says, “And I want you to be safe. We can’t have that if the Federation still exists.”
“Then let me be happy,” she replies. “Let me fight on my own terms.”
“So that’s all you want, then,” he says gruffly. His expression closes off a little. “After all this, you just want my permission to do what you will.”
“Is that wrong?”
“We need Full Frontal,” says Zinnerman. “We need to follow his plan. Running off and doing your own thing—it’ll destroy you. Don’t throw yourself into hell for the sake of liberty, Marida.”
“I want Spacenoid liberation just as much as you do,” insists Marida, “But I don’t want what Full Frontal does. I don’t care about bargaining with the Federation. I don’t care about consolidating economic power. I want to break the divide between core and margin.”
“You can’t do that,” says Zinnerman hollowly, “It’s not possible.”
“The Unicorn will make it possible!” Marida says. “That’s the point of this awful machine!”
“And you’d damn yourself!” replies Zinnerman, raising his voice in response. “You’d be responsible for untold evil! For uncountable deaths!”
“And Frontal wouldn’t? It’s somehow preferable when he does these things you revile?”
“Because I don’t love him!” roars Zinnerman, and seems to collapse or deflate, the fury exploding from his body. “I don’t want you to dirty your hands any more than you have to. I don’t want you to become something you hate.”
“Oh, hate,” says Marida, sounding the word out, “Hate. You want to know what I hate?”
Zinnerman shakes his head. He doesn’t want to know. He loves Marida, but not enough to know these things about her.
“I hate that it’s always Newtypes, or Cyber Newtypes, who have to bear these things,” says Marida. “I hate that Cyber Newtypes were created to be responsible for evil. I hate that the evolution of humanity is only ever allowed to be a dire threat or a great tragedy. It’s never a triumph. All my actions will always be cast in the worst possible light, because of some coincidence of my biology. That’s what I hate.”
“I didn’t want this for you,” he says.
“Then why are you still giving me orders?”
He recoils at the accusation. “I...Marida…”
“Let me bear these sins on my own terms,” she says. “Please. If I’m going to do evil, let me do it for my own sake, for my own reasons.”
“I knew you’d ask me for this one day,” he says, looking crestfallen. “I guess it came sooner than I expected.”
“Every father has to face it,” says Marida.
Zinnerman’s eyes widen. “What?”
“I said, every father has to grant his child independence. Is that not what you are to me, Father?”
“But I don’t want this for you,” he says, but there’s no fight in his tone.
“Does that give you the right to prevent it?” asks Marida. “Especially now, with the Box on the line?”
Zinnerman’s head is bent, his eyes in shadow. The wrinkles around his mouth deepen in a frown. For just a moment, his teeth glint in a rueful, sad smile. Father , he mouths. Father .
“You have the power to coerce me,” says Marida. “You’re still my Master. But let me ask you, does possessing that power oblige you to use it?”
“I see,” he says, and chuckles sadly. “I guess…” he trails off. Frowns. Clenches a fist. “Fine. You have a right to this. I can’t deny it, not without making a monster of myself.”
“Will you support me?” asks Marida. It’s one thing for a father to promise something to his child. It’s another entirely to make good on that promise.
“As much as I can,” he says, but it comes grudgingly, “And I won’t raise arms against other Zeon soldiers. I could never do that.”
“Thank you,” says Marida. “Father.”
“It’s the least I can do,” says Zinnerman, voice rough.
“Unicorn, Bridge,” says the voice of the XO over the radio, “What’s going on? Are you with us or not?”
“We are,” says Marida as she sits down, straps in, and closes the cockpit door. She twitches a thumb-stick and targeting markers appear on the faces of the Sleeves personnel who stare up in fright and indignation.
“Now hear this,” says the XO over the shipnet, “Our agreement with the Sleeves is now over. ECOAS and Marines, sweep the ship. All other hands, rig for anti-ship combat.”
#
“Bridge, Unicorn,” says the voice of Ensign Zabi, the traitor Princess. “What is the status of the Rewloola?”
“She’s burning,” says Liam, watching the big data-fusion display on the bridge. Rewloola is screaming out across the electromagnetic spectrum as her engines fire, a sun-hot tower of fire reaching towards far-off Industrial Seven. “If you were hoping Frontal would come back for his men, Princess, you’re sorely mistaken.”
“So it’s a race,” says Zabi. “Frontal knows where the final coordinates are. If we are to keep the Box out of his hands, we must move quickly.”
“And where are the coordinates?”
“The colony builder Magallanica,” says Lieutenant Cruz, the Unicorn’s pilot. “At Industrial Seven.”
“Navigation!” barks Liam, “give me a trajectory for Industrial Seven, fastest possible.”
“Sir!” says the navigation officer, already entering the commands on her console.
“I’ll get you there, Unicorn,” Liam says to her handset. “After that, it’s all you.”
In Nahel Argama ’s belly, the engines throttle up. Hydrogen propellant, compressed so hard it can’t decide whether or not it’s a liquid, is crammed into the engines by the ton, to be bathed in the sunny glare of gaseous, boiling uranium.
Radiators unfold, glittering in the sunlight, dumping the thermal load of the engines at full power. Nahel Argama spreads her wings, a sparkling white moth, glowing first in the near-infrared, then dull red, then orange.
And then she flies.