Scene IV: Ballade por Adeline, Part III
"This bloody road remains a mystery
This sudden darkness fills the air...
We can't afford to be innocent."
-- Pat Benatar, Invincible
The first attack at Kashmir Command Base had caught them all unawares.
They should have been prepared, and as far as the rest of the world knew, they were. Security had been massively stepped up since the news of Sally's betrayal, and though the Liberation Forces, as Sally's faction was now being called, had gone on several more raids against various bases, they had taken little that would be useful to them. The Cancers at Forteleza Sea Station were particular targets of interest to the Liberation Forces, so Une had buckled down security and sent a few squadrons of mobile suits there to sit it out.
Trowa had arrived at Kashmir in the evening after the attack. The Liberation Forces attack on the Kashmir base itself had fortunately left the missile silos intact, though by Etille's grim expression as he met Trowa's shuttle on the landing platform and the rubble and damage that surrounded the ground that the silos were buried beneath, the missiles clearly had been Sally's prime target. The ground was still smoking in some places and attack sirens still glowed red, though warning whistles were no longer going off.
"How bad was it?" Trowa wanted to know. The general shook his head.
"Not as bad as we thought," he admitted, "though definitely worse than we'd hoped it would be. I'm actually very glad you're here. The missile defense center was hit, and half of the missile control personnel were killed, and I've evacuated the remaining personnel. We can't man the missiles from up here, so I'm sending you to the emergency control room belowground. It's just you and the big red button now."
Trowa raised an eyebrow. "I think I can manage."
"I don't doubt it," Etille said. "Still, I am praying for at least a few days respite, though knowing Sally, she'll have forces ready and waiting. I wouldn't be surprised if she attacked again tonight." He gestured to the rubble. "She hit those missile silos pretty hard, but if she'd wanted to get rid of the missiles, she wouldn't have had any problem doing it. She wants to capture those things, not destroy them."
Trowa nodded. "I thought so. This first attack was a decoy, wasn't it?"
"Partly. Sally was after both the missiles and the mobile suits at Sparta Command Base. I think she would have been happy to get either, though obviously the missiles are top priority. Unluckily for her, she ran into Milliard Peacecraft here and Chang Wufei down at Sparta, so she didn't manage to get either one, and if I were her, I would be stewing in my own shoes right now, just waiting for the chance to get at us again."
That was right. Wufei had been on the way to retrieve Shenlong..."Was Wufei hurt? Did she get Shenlong?"
"No and no. Your friend and his Gundam are both safe back at Geneva. So is Peacecraft, actually. The poor man shouldn't have been flying that thing, not in his condition...the Zero system ate him alive."
Epyon. Trowa had mulled over this after Etille had left him at the entrance of the missile defense system passageway with a clearance code and instructions on how to get to the main control room. He had known that Epyon would surface sooner or later, but he had never imagined that it would be in the defense of a Preventers base, no matter how loyal Zechs Merquise - Peacecraft - professed himself to be to the Preventers now. Didn't Heero and Zechs still have a long-standing grudge to fight over?
The missile defense system passageway had been long and dark and very cold. The entire complex was underground, completely secure defense in case of attack. It hadn't taken him very long to find the main control room, which seemed to be composed entirely of giant wall-to-wall vidscreens. He guessed they connected directly to the base war room, to give the missilier sitting down here some inkling of how things were going on the surface.
He'd given himself a quick crash-course on the system and how it worked. It wasn't very complex. There were a string of codes one had to key into the system to unlock it, and then once that was done, all that was left to do was to input the coordinates and push the button to send the missiles out of the silos. Like any high-budget defense system, it seemed almost too easy.
But that was the price, he knew. Once that button was pressed, there was no going back.
The encounter with Banks at the Geneva base lingered in his mind still, and he wondered how many other people in the world had the same image of the pilots as gods, trying to control the world. He had never wanted to control the world. All he had ever wanted to do was control his own path in life.
I've learned that sometimes there is no absolute right and wrong. It's up to us to try to sort it out, and each of us comes to our own conclusions.
So what happens if no one decides?
That was the question, right there. Why did there always have to be a decision made? Why did the world work that way?
The image of Ilene, her wide, glassy eyes, her bloodstained dress, had lessened somewhat, but she was still there in the back of his mind. He was glad that Duo had forgiven him, but it hadn't helped. He had thought that the guilt was because he had betrayed Duo's trust, but thinking back on it, Duo or no Duo, he would still feel the same.
He wanted to believe that he would still have killed Ilene, because when it came down to it, she was a terrorist. She had ceased to become a civilian and subjected herself to the Geneva Conventions when she'd joined the terrorist cell and willingly carried a weapon into the fight. As the rules stood, Trowa's actions had been correct.
But Duo had believed that she could be saved.
He'd wanted to believe that Catherine could find the answer to that for him. Catherine had been there by his side all through the war, to stop him from self-destruction, to encourage him on when he had been about to give up, to love him when he had thought there was no one else. Even when she had tried to stop him from fighting, to keep him by her side, he knew that she was doing so not out of a belief that war was black and white. She had done so out of a belief that war should not be fought on a level of machines and missiles and mobile suits destroyed, but on a more personal level, because war only meant something when you could see your enemy's face.
Does duty even exist? Or is it something that we make up simply to justify our actions because there is no justification for war?
He had seen Ilene's face. And Catherine, in the end, hadn't been able to justify that for him. That twisted his gut. Catherine had always been there, always been able to work out the answers for him when he couldn't. She was so much stronger than he.
The boy in Milan, the boy who had captured him, the boy who most likely had been killed along with Ilene in the attack on Geneva, had let him go. Even though he was the enemy - a Gundam pilot, a direct target. He'd been set free. Treize had done the same thing to Wufei during that attack on his fleet, early in the war. He'd let Wufei go.
Why?
Trowa Barton had been raised as an assassin, trained as a soldier, and sent to Earth as a pilot, and that one simple act - of letting one's enemy go - went against every creed he'd ever believed in.
There's no one I trust more. The pilots have never lied; they've always stayed true. I'm offering you a soldier's battlefield, where your decision matters.
Une believed that he was strong enough to handle a mission like this. He had tried to tell her that she was wrong, but he had given up in the end. It hurt to see her like this, begging him to take it because there had been too many people around her who had betrayed her in the end. He hoped that she would never need to know that he had had his beliefs about war and duty and the enemy twisted around until they were almost unrecognizable, hoped that he would never be in a situation where he had to push down on that button and release those missiles. Because he wasn't sure if he could anymore.
Not when Sally Po was the enemy.
Would you do it if you had to?
He'd gone to sleep that night with the question on his mind, Banks' accusations ringing through his head, and he'd dreamed of Ilene again, dreamed of killing her over and over again, with Duo's anguished voice in the background.
She wasn't a fanatic. She was my friend.
The gun would drop from his hands and then he would fall to his knees and cry, but Catherine wasn't there to comfort him. There was only the dead girl and Duo's voice. And then he would look up and Duo would be pointing Ilene's gun at him, straight between his eyes, and he would relax, knowing that Duo was right. That he deserved to die for what he did.
And then Duo would shoot him, but he didn't die, would only hear the shot echo, and then Ilene would turn into Sally, the honey-blond braids soaked in blood, those staring eyes looking at his own, saying You killed me, Trowa Barton.
And then the dream would begin all over again.
He awoke in a cold sweat, and the pale light of morning streaming in through the window of his quarters didn't calm him either. Etille had left him a message, warning him to stay on guard, which meant that he would have to basically live inside the missile control room till the alert was lifted from the base. They were expecting Sally to come back, and when she came back, it would be the real thing.
Sally wanted that missile system. And he knew that if she managed to capture it, she would not hesitate to use it.
That meant that he couldn't let her have it. And that meant that he might have to kill her.
Catherine had spent the morning at home, which meant that she had locked herself away in Dorothy's study for the entire morning until lunchtime, just her and the computer system and Dorothy's library. To her right was a half-eaten omelette, to her left was a thick stack of biographies of certain high-ups on the World Nation council that Dorothy needed some more information on, and at the moment she was busy cursing the computer system which had frozen for the umpteenth time and wouldn't respond to the manual bootup.
She kicked it vehemently with her foot, then yelped as she stubbed her toe, decided it wasn't worth the effort, and crawled under the desk and turned the thing off. The screen flickered and died. She resisted the urge to stick her tongue out at it.
"Man versus machine..." she proclaimed to the study. "Man wins!"
The books didn't talk back. She didn't really expect them to this morning, though she couldn't say the same for her state of mind on some of the long nights she'd been in here alone. Sighing, she leaned back in her chair and stretched, staring at the omelette. Dorothy's chefs were some of the best in the city, and Catherine felt bad that she had wasted their time. Maybe she would heat it up again for dinner.
She rose from the computer chair and walked slowly to the window. The neighborhood was quiet, as usual, and the sun was out, but she felt a tingle down her back that usually signaled a storm nearing. Probably in about three hours or so the sky would cloud over and there would be rain by the evening. She'd always had sort of a sixth weather sense, which had proven quite handy sometimes in telling her when she needed to bring an umbrella, even though it would be perfectly sunny, and the ringmaster had learned to trust what she said in regards to the weather.
She straightened her skirts and let the draperies fall over the window, shutting out the sunlight. Closing the study door softly behind her, she padded softly down the hall to her own room. It was a smaller room just again down the hall from Relena's suite, but Catherine had told Dorothy she didn't want a grand set of rooms. Relena had opened her mouth to insist, and Catherine had stopped her. She wouldn't know what to do with a three-room suite like the Queen of Cinq had. She was a circus performer, and she preferred to live simply.
Flopping down on the bed, she thought of her brother.
He had said goodbye this time, but it was a hurried goodbye, and he hadn't told her where he was going. Classified, he said. She had kissed him and let him go, because what else could she do? She was doing her part in this as best as she could, and he was too.
Except her part didn't really involve putting herself face to face with the enemy.
There was a slight knock at the door. "Miss Catherine?"
The maid, Clarisse. It was time for the mid-afternoon linen exchange, but Catherine didn't feel like letting someone rummage around in her room for ten minutes today. "I'm fine today, thank you Clarriese," she called, and there was a murmured assent from the door and then the sound of departing footsteps. She stared up at the ceiling again.
Perhaps if she had been born into this, like Dorothy or Relena, she would have an easier time of this. Relena's brother was Zechs, and she didn't seem to have a problem with him going to war. And Dorothy's family had a long military lineage. Her father had been one of the heroes of the pre-war era, after all.
Turning her head, she regarded the tiny music box on the side of her dresser. The tune was Ballade pour Adeline, an old song, Trowa had said, but he'd never said anything more about the melody or the box - who had given it to him, and why he had given it to her. When she had left the circus, it had come with her, buried in the bottom of her luggage. For some reason she hadn't wanted to take it out, as if seeing it glittering there, winding it and hearing the music tinkle out of its depths was too painful. She hadn't taken it out of her luggage till she got to Geneva, when she had learned that Trowa was safe.
Catherine reached over and cupped the box in her hands. It was so cool and small, and her slim fingers looked large and bulky on its ornate surface. Gently, she let her fingers come to rest on the small golden shaft protruding outside the box, twisted and heard the satisfying click. Released.
The music box played a slow F and G and then stopped.
She lowered the box between her breasts, feeling it rise and lower with every heartbeat, and sighed. It was still sunny. There was something wrong about that. The clouds should be rolling in by now.
Does duty even exist? Or is it something that we make up simply to justify our actions because there is no justification for war?
Trowa knew what he was doing. He had to. He was her steadfast little brother, and he was fighting for something he believed in, and he would do his duty.
That was what she tried to tell herself, tried to tell him, but she was just a girl from the circus, with really no concept of what duty entailed.
I'm not a soldier, Trowa. If I could answer all this for you, I would.
And that was all it came down to. He was a soldier, and she wasn't.
The remote control for the vidscreen was on the nightstand and she reached over for it, flicking on the screen. The channel hadn't changed from the World Nation news since she'd been here, and as far as she could tell, every other vidscreen in the house was set on the news as well. Dorothy's house was probably as close as you could get to a working war room without actually being in the military. Catherine found that funny.
But I am a soldier. Maybe not in Trowa's battle, but I have my own battle. Like Relena, like Dorothy, like Sylvia...we'll fight as best as we can.
The news anchor was droning on about the details of Quatre's trial, but Catherine had gotten the details from Dorothy early that morning, and her attention wandered back to the music box. Picking it up again, she turned it around in her hands, but did not wind it.
When she looked out the window again, she could see the clouds moving in, just as she knew they would.
The only warning Trowa got was a muffled explosion somewhere overhead, but he had been sitting, alert and waiting for the sound. He had made no false reassurances to himself that Sally might not come or she might have decided to wait a while longer. No, Sally wanted those missiles and this base, and she wanted them now.
He checked the chronometer built into the wall. 1824 hours. The ground shook a little bit, but the silo was so far buried beneath the earth that for all he knew, the base could be falling to ruins and he would have no way of knowing.
"Barton? You there?"
He reached over and pushed the blinking comm light calmly. "Right here. It's her, isn't it?"
"Damn right it is," Etille said grimly. "She's pulling out all the stops today. Apparently she's gotten quite bold since her first strike here...Yuy tells me that she even had some troops at Lake Victoria. Took over our own base without us knowing."
"Is Heero coming back then?"
"He'll be here," Etille said, "but the way things look, he and Maxwell will barely make it in time to catch the tail end of this and help us." He paused. "If we're still alive."
"It's that bad."
"Oh, it's pretty bad. I'm sending you the battle data that we've got on our screens here at the command post. You've got your computers all on and running?"
Trowa nodded, even though the general couldn't see him. "All up and green."
"You shouldn't be in any danger yourself," Etille said. "The silo's buried deep enough that even if the entire base blew up, there wouldn't be a scratch on you."
Trowa grimaced. "I'm sure Sally's thought of that. She'll have to capture the silo to get control of those missiles."
"We'll see." There was a ping and suddenly, the computer screens around him lit up. He was impressed despite himself. Etille hadn't been lying - these were real time, complete statistics from the war room. He saw formations of what he assumed were mobile suits - the green dots as friendlies and red as Sally's forces. There were an awful lot of red dots.
Trowa had always had the philosophy that when outnumbered, the victory would just be that much sweeter, but looking at the way Sally's forces had managed to converge and surround the base, he could see the outcome was going to be uncertain.
"Looks like you were right," he said to the comm, knowing that his voice was emotionless as always, and being glad of it. His palms were sweating just a tiny bit. "I had no idea she would be this coordinated at this stage of the fight."
"She's been planning this for a while," Etille responded. "Trust me, this is no last-minute plan. I'd be willing to bet she's been building up her forces ever since she heard Une was going to form the Preventers and build this missile system."
"I won't let you down, sir."
Etille laughed grimly. "Let's hope so, shall we? There are no promises in war, Barton. Call if you need anything."
The comm light went dark and he sat back in his chair, watching the computer screens, which seemed much too busy for how quiet it was down here. The silence hovered around him, chattering at his ears. He could die down here and no one would ever know. Unless they blasted their way down here with the intention of retrieving his body, it would be very easy to forget that the control room ever existed, and if Sally got control of the missiles, he doubted that she would care enough to come find him.
The ground shook slightly, and he gripped the control desk with sweaty fingers. Ridiculous. His hands had never sweated during battle. He was a soldier.
Does duty even exist?
Etille thought it did. Une thought it did. Did Heero? Did Duo? Did Wufei, still haunted by Treize's death? Did Quatre, now on trial for what he had done during the war, what he had thought was the right thing to do?
But that wasn't even the question. The question now was much more brutal, colder, black and white.
Could he kill Sally Po?
Could he, Trowa Barton, press the button and launch ballistic missiles at the woman who had helped him find his place during the war?
He didn't even have to launch all of them. Even one would be enough to wipe out Sally and her force. It would most likely destroy the base. It would most likely also destroy any civilian towns in the vicinity of the base. But if it came to that, that would mean that most of the people on base were already dead and that Sally would be coming after those same missiles, seeking to use them on him and the rest of the world and the colonies.
But that still didn't make it right.
A formation of red dots disappeared, but for every red one that blinked out on the screen, it seemed to take with it three more green ones, and the screen on his right showing battle statistics confirmed the grim reality. It was the bitter truth that the Preventers were woefully unprepared for combat, and Etille and Brown and Une knew that. With the World Nation's drawbacks and cuts to the Preventer's combat capabilities, they had not had nearly enough personnel or mobile suits to perform their wartime mission. Of course, Sally had known that as well.
Sally's troops were trained, ready for combat, and fought to kill.
The ground shook again, and this time there was an audible explosion. He heard alarms wailing from somewhere from inside the silo, but he ignored them. He had his orders to stay.
He could just take out her troops and leave her alive. He didn't know them. They were following their own misguided cause...
But no, there was no way he could be that accurate with these missiles. Not against a formation of aircraft. If it was a colony, maybe. Or a ship. If the missiles were regular aircraft missiles. But not these.
Another explosion. More alarms. This time the rumbling sound lasted several more seconds before dying down, and one of the computer screens began blinking red.
MOBILE SUIT HANGAR HIT. MISSION CRITICAL. MOC INOPERATIVEB
Trowa took a deep breath, wiping his hands on the sides of his shirt, and keyed the comm button for the war room.
"What is it, Barton? Are you hurt? I saw the silo was hit but it doesn't look too bad."
"No, I'm fine. If it's not too much of a problem, I'd like to be put on open comm so I can hear what's going on on the base channel."
Etille was silent for a moment and he could hear muffled explosions through the speakers, heard someone shouting something. "All right," the general said finally. "Whatever happens, Barton...don't leave. You got that?"
"You have my word," he said tightly, and the chatter of the battle communications surrounded him as he flicked the comm off.
"We've lost the MOC!"
"I'm hit, starboard engine, gonna try and turn her around."
"Alpha two-five, what is your status?"
"I've got a code three. Request permission to land and relaunch in spare."
"Negative. MOC is down, flightline is down, we have no spares."
"Bravo six, two on your tail."
He watched more green dots wink out. The silo shook briefly with another explosion, and he heard screaming from the comm.
"We've lost Bravo seven!"
"Tighten up that formation! They're still coming!"
The comm system pinged and he answered it. "Yes?"
"Barton, it doesn't look pretty for us. We're going to have to evacuate the survivors soon, because the base isn't going to stand much longer."
"What about Heero and Duo?"
"They've been notified. I've rerouted them back to Geneva. I don't want them mixed up in this - they've got prices on their heads as it is."
"I'm not leaving," Trowa said.
"I'm not asking you to," Etille returned. "I'm not leaving either. You and I are going to be the only ones."
"You should leave," Trowa said. "There's nothing for you here. Une needs you."
There was a strange note in Etille's voice when he answered, something that Trowa couldn't identify. "If the leader is not willing to sacrifice himself, the people die in vain." He sounded like he was quoting something out of a book.
"Sir?" he wondered.
"I've a mission for you, Barton. It might be your last. But at least we don't have died in vain. I want you, when you see Sally Po on that screen, to aim the entire missile embankment at her and fire."
Trowa blinked. "All of them...?"
"All of them," Etille said harshly. "You heard me. It'll take out half of Asia Minor, but that's nothing in comparison to what she'll do if she gets them. You need to destroy those things. They should never have been built in the first place."
"I-" Trowa began, but Etille cut him off.
"I need you to kill Sally Po. One soldier to another. Don't let me down."
Before Trowa could respond, he was gone.
There was a screen at the lower bottom right corner of the large display that showed what seemed to be a view from a camera a short distance from the missile silo. He leaned towards it, adjusting the buttons to see if he could zoom in. It didn't zoom, but he discovered that he could change views to different parts of the base. Apparently this was an entire camera network.
The views were not pretty. Most of the north end of the base, where the flightline was, had been entirely flattened. The hangars were a fiery inferno, and bits and pieces of mobile suits lay scattered amid twisted steel beams and other wreckage. The command building was still intact, but the logistics center a block from it was completely gone. He could see bodies and parts of bodies in some of the larger craters. Several of what he assumed were Sally's mobile suits streaked overhead with two Preventers suits in pursuit, and they had barely come into view before one of the Preventers' suits began billowing smoke and broke formation, making a wobbling semi-recovery before plunging to the earth, exploding in a shower of flame that lit up the night sky like a brilliant bonfire.
The fire billowed outward, catching the east end of the command post, and it began to burn.
Trowa swallowed, turning away from the screen. He had seen plenty of battles and he had seen many people die, but it had never been this inevitable before, nor so sad.
Kashmir Command Base would fall.
Sally would win and the World Nation would be lost.
Unless he, Trowa Barton, could stop her.
The ground trembled.
What was it Duo had said when he'd killed Ilene? In the heat of the moment, in the tangle of emotions in his mind, he could barely remember, though it had haunted him every day and night since her death.
She wasn't a fanatic. She was my friend.
"This is the war room," the comm said. Etille. He sounded as calm as usual, but for some reason that did not reassure Trowa. He wondered what it took to get to that point, where even knowing for certain that you would die and that you would be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of others did not matter.
Was that what duty was? Cleansing oneself of all emotions, not fear, not hatred, not joy, not even sadness? He had just begun to know what it was like to feel, to accept what it meant to be human. Was he to erase that once again? Was he to live the rest of his life as a robot?
If that was it, he didn't want it.
This was Sally Po. He knew Sally Po. He wanted to believe he still did.
She isn't a fanatic. She is my friend.
"This is the war room," Etille said again. "Enemy forces have entered the base. All personnel evacuate. Repeat, all personnel, evacuate!"
She must have fallen asleep, because the next thing Catherine knew was that she was waking up and it had grown dark and there was the sound of rain coming from the open window. She sat up, rubbing her eyes. The clock read 5:40 PM, and the music box had fallen from her hands while she had slept, tumbling a bit and ending upside down beside her pillow. She picked it up and put it back on the dresser. The vidscreen was still on, the volume down.
Getting up, Catherine went over to the window and looked out. It would have been dusk if the clouds hadn't been blocking the sun, and she couldn't decide if that was a shame or if she was glad. She liked the sun, but she liked the rain too, and it hadn't rained in a while in Geneva.
Her door was open, and she had remembered she closed it when she first came into the room, so someone must have come in. A note caught her eye at the end of the dresser by the open door, and she crossed the room, picking it up.
Cat,
Kashmir is under attack. Watch the news. I didn't want to wake you up because you needed the sleep. I will be with Relena on base if you need me.
Dorothy.
Kashmir.
An icy claw squeezed her heart, erasing the last traces of sleep. He hadn't told her, but she knew. Trowa was at Kashmir.
No!
Trembling, she fumbled on her bed for the remote, turned the volume up, noticing for the first time that the news studio wall showed KASHMIR ATTACK in large letters. The anchor looked up from his papers at the screen.
"We still have no new updates on the attack on Kashmir Command Base, which began a few hours earlier today. Apparently, Po's Liberation Forces took the base somewhat by surprise. She had attacked the base before and seems to have returned, hoping to take them while they were still weakened. Our news correspondent in India, Sawyer Nolte, has more."
She could hardly see Sawyer Nolte on the screen against the dark background and inadequate lighting, but his voice came strong and clear. "Thank you, Hakim. We unfortunately do not have an active news correspondent on site at Kashmir, but from the reports we've been receiving, the news does not look good. Command Base ceased responding to our inquiries for information an hour ago, and we must assume that either they are too busy to respond or that they have been destroyed."
No. Trowa couldn't be dead.
She would have felt it if he was.
Tears stung her eyes, and she reached out blindly to the side, fingers grasping for the music box there on the dresser. She brushed it, but the heavy box slid off the edge and tumbled off the dresser to the floor. She watched it fall, seeming to see it turn over and over in slow motion, glittering in the dusky rainy evening, in the false glow of the vidscreen.
It hit the floor and began to play.
Funny, she hadn't remembered winding it, but it was all right. She sat numbly on the bed, hearing the sweet notes of the melody, her thoughts a blank.
Trowa.
She knew it was selfish of her. Trowa wasn't hers. She had realized that some time between the time he had left the circus and when he had left for Kashmir. Trowa and the others didn't belong to anyone - they saw the world in a bigger picture than that. But that didn't mean she couldn't grieve.
Trowa, don't...don't leave me. Don't die. Please don't die.
"Catherine?" he said, sitting up suddenly, wondering if he had just heard her voice out of the air.
But no, it was just his imagination. The sirens were now going off at a steady pace all over the base, and he wondered if the evacuation order had come too late. There were very few green dots left, and four of the cameras on his system had been destroyed, leaving just the one above the silo, the one over the now-burning command post, and two over the ruined flightline. The darkness of the night provided a perfect backdrop for the glow of the fires that were threatening to consume the base, but unlike the first attack, there was no one left to put them out.
"This is the command post." It was a female voice, not Etille, tension running beneath the hard tone. "All personnel, evacuate now! All person-"
A crash, a fuzz of static, then nothing.
It was now or never.
He stared at the red button, seeing it as if through a dim fog in his vision. Bringing up one hand slowly, he laid two fingers on it, feeling the smooth polished metal beneath them, and reached up his other hand to power up the missile system. Maybe the system had been damaged in the attack. Maybe he still wouldn't have to fire them.
The system came off standby flawlessly, and the whir of electronics and the row of lights that lit up the control panel told him that there was no such luck. Of course there wasn't. The system had been designed with last-ditch efforts in mind, and there was no stepping out of it now.
Looking up at the screen, at the fires burning, he thought he saw Ilene's eyes.
The control panel blinked again, and the screen showed all missile systems online, ready for activation.
"Catherine," he whispered.
Bring up one finger, he prepared the missiles to fire.
The vidscreen shifted back to the news anchor, who shuffled his papers, looking grim. "We have just received some news from the front," he said quietly. "Kashmir base has been evacuated, with remaining personnel bound for locations unknown. We have reason to believe that Sally Po is after the Preventers' high-tech ballistic missile system which is located at Kashmir, and with the base abandoned, there is no telling what she would be able to do with it."
I'm sorry I'm not the perfect brother, Trowa had said. I'm sorry I couldn't be the person you wanted me to be.
She wondered if he had evacuated. Or if he was still at the base, clinging on to his duty, sitting it out till the very end. She wondered which part of him would win.
There's a conflict in you that hasn't been resolved yet. I thought I could fix it, thought that I could heal you. But I've discovered that I can't do that. You're the only one who can do that, Trowa - you're the only one.
He wasn't expecting to hear anything, but the walls began vibrating, and the screen showed a schematic of the missiles rising from their underground tomb, locking into place.
MUNITIONS LOCKED. ENTER COORDINATES.
There were several concentrations of red dots around the base, and he wasn't sure which one would be Sally. He could just aim at a random formation, but something inside of him shied away from that. The system was not built for hit-or-miss. If he was going to do this job, he had to do it right, and they were counting on him to make sure Sally was dead.
He flipped the camera switch, hunting through the remaining live camera feeds for a mobile suit that might hint that Sally was inside. He hadn't seen any that remotely resembled command craft, and he had guessed that Sally had stayed out of the battle, commanding from the sidelines.
There was nothing on the flightline. Several Aries. He switched again. Three squadrons of Tauruses. Switch. The command post, burning. As he watched, the roof collapsed. Switch. Another four squadrons of Tauruses and one Aries squadron. Another....
Wait.
He hit the zoom function, beating the control button, willing the thing to move in closer. The mobile suit in the background, just a little too tall and a little too wide, bulkier than the rest. That was no Taurus or Aries. The acid in his stomach churned. There was something from one of its arms that didn't look like a hand, almost like a...
A cannon.
Sally was piloting Heavyarms.
"We've managed to get close to the base," came the voice of yet another news correspondent on the air. The fuzzy picture on the screen showed a few bright dots, some of which Catherine recognized as fire. The Kashmir base was burning.
She remembered how the Preventers Headquarters had looked after the attack. She remembered the acrid smell of smoke and spent ammunition. Hugging her knees, she stared at the screen.
"There seems to be very little combat going on. We saw a few transports leaving the base earlier, but they did not seem to be pursued. For some reason, Po doesn't care if there are survivors."
"She wants those missiles," the anchor responded, and the news correspondent made a noise of agreement.
"She'll be-" A muffled gasp. "Hold on. Hold on!"
The news anchor leaned forward in his seat, and the fuzzy picture attempted to zoom, got fuzzier, and wavered in and out. At the corner there was something moving...something rising out of the ground.
"The missile system! That's the missile system!"
"There's someone still there then..." the anchor said thoughtfully, and then broke off as realization hit him. "They're going to fire them!"
Trowa.
The correspondant's voice shook. "They're going to fire the missiles. Turn around...turn around, we've got to get out of here!"
MUNITIONS LOCKED. ENTER COORDINATES.
He stared at Heavyarms, his breath coming in short gasps. She hadn't...she couldn't. It couldn't be.
But it was Heavyarms. There was no mistaking it...it was his Gundam.
Sally hadn't sat out the battle. The knowledge came in a rush - she had been piloting Heavyarms. The Gundam was ideal for her, with its heavy cannon and double rounds of ammunition. One didn't have to necessarily be a good pilot to pilot Heavyarms. One just needed to have good aim, and Sally was a crack shot. That had obviously been a huge force against the Preventers, who had already been outnumbered as it was.
Trowa had never thought about it like that when he had been Heavyarms' pilot. He had always been the one in the Gundam's seat, the one with the powerful cannon and the ammunition. It was quite different to be on the losing side.
It frightened him just how much he had taken that for granted.
The screen blinked at him. ENTER COORDINATES.
He struggled to focus on the radar screen, searching for the concentration of red dots on the east side of the base, pressing the keys as slowly as he could, delaying the inevitable. 2A-56-510T
Sally Po.
"We'll never make it in time," the correspondent said raggedly over the radio, his voice cracking. "Those missiles have the capability to destroy about half of Asia Minor. We'll be blown to bits."
"If those missiles fire..."
"It's likely that most of the area around here will be completely obliterated. The towns surrounding the base, most of old India and Pakistan...it'll be horrific."
"Isn't there anything we can do?"
The correspondent laughed, his breath coming in gasps. "You try facing off with the military. I'm not going to try it. Not in a crisis of this magnitude."
If the missiles fired, Trowa would die. If they didn't...he would probably be captured.
Do your duty, Trowa, she prayed silently, reaching one hand to her cheek and feeling the tears there trickle slowly down.
Beside her, Ballade pour Adeline played mournfully on the music box.
COORDINATES ENTERED. BEGIN FINAL COUNTDOWN.
The comm light was blinking.
Etille was gone. The base had been evacuated. Hesitantly, he reached out, touched the button. There was only one person it could be.
"Attention, Kashmir Command Base. This is Sally Po. We have taken over your command post and all of your communications. I have troops at the door of the missile silo now. Cease your missile fire countdown and we will let you live."
The troops would have a very hard time getting through the reinforced steel door. It wasn't Gundanium, but it was close, and it would take them a while. Surely she knew her threat was useless.
"I don't know who you are sitting in that silo firing those missiles," Sally continued, "but let me tell you this: what you are doing is about to cause much more death and destruction to innocent civilians than if you would surrender. Are you going to wipe out an entire corner of the world just to make sure I won't win this battle?"
Trowa squeezed his hands together. Empty threats. That was all they were.
Sally paused. "It's not worth it, is it? What about the people outside right now, going about their daily business, depending on you to protect them? Will you betray their trust?"
He stared blankly at the screen, shivering even though sweat had begun trickling down his face because the temperature control system had finally failed.
What is duty? he had asked Catherine. What is duty?
I need you to kill Sally Po.
The pilots have never lied; they've always stayed true. I'm offering you a soldier's battlefield, where your decision matters.
His heart pounded and he hovered, his hand over the button that would initiate firing sequence, a sequence from which there was no return. He would be destroying thousands of lives, destroying himself, destroying the woman who he still could not think of as the enemy.
Because she wasn't.
It didn't justify anything.
I need you to kill Sally Po.
The screen blinked incessantly, taunting him.
COORDINATES ENTERED. BEGIN FINAL COUNTDOWN.
They screamed at him from inside his memory and he clamped his hands to his ears.
I want you, when you see Sally Po on that screen, to aim the entire missile embankment at her and fire.
They should never have been built in the first place.
Should never have been built in the first place.
"Is it your duty?" Sally barked from the comm, and the sound of her voice broke something in him and he fell forward onto the control panel, his head hitting the metal with a crack, the pain just a dull throbbing through the accusing voices. "Is this your duty to kill innocents?"
"No," Trowa breathed, seeing black spots before his eyes, dizzy and wanting to throw up. He groped for the edge of the table to stop himself from sliding off onto the floor. "No. I can't...I can't. I can't!"
I need you to kill Sally Po.
She wasn't a fanatic. She was my friend.
Kill Sally Po.
"NO!" he screamed, and reached out, fingers flying, keying off the system, feeling the mechanical grinding as it prepared to lower the missiles back underground.
POWER OFF
"Wait!"
Catherine stared at the vidscreen, as the news correspondent drew a shaking breath.
"Look! The missile system....are they not going to fire after all?"
"What's happening?" the anchor demanded.
"The structure's drawing back...going underground." He sounded bewildered. "Something must have happened...I wonder what?"
There was no one. No voices. Nothing.
He felt the cool metal under his cheek, opened his eyes, saw the view of the command post, still burning, on the screen. He was still alive. So was Sally.
In the end, he couldn't kill her.
He didn't have what it took. He had lied to Une, lied to Etille, and lied to Catherine. They had thought he was a soldier, and he had proved that all he was was a coward.
She wasn't a fanatic, Duo's faint voice said gently. She was my friend.
"And does that make it right, Duo?" Trowa whispered, staring at the fire on the screen, fists clenched. "What justifies killing one person and not someone else? How can I...?"
"You made a good choice," Sally said from the comm. "You did the right thing."
He pushed himself up on one elbow, slapping the comm button. "I don't need to hear that from you, Sally."
Silence.
A gasp. "Trowa Barton?!"
He laughed sarcastically. "You've won. Does that make you happy now? You haven't changed, you know. You're still as persuasive as ever, even if you are the enemy."
"Trowa-"
"Don't lecture me on good and evil," Trowa said. "I don't need to hear it. Not from you."
He could almost hear the thoughts running through her head. Nothing she could say would affect him now. She'd already done what damage she could.
"I'm sorry, Trowa," she said at last. "I'm sorry. I wish I didn't have to do this."
"Do what?" he demanded, a horrible sense of dread coming over him. "Do what, Sally? What are you going to do!?"
"We're getting a transmission!"
The screen shifted back to the news anchor with a flash, and he stared into the camera, speaking excitedly. Catherine leaned forward. Was it Trowa? He was still alive...wasn't he?
"We are receiving a transmission from Kashmir Command Base. The missile system has apparently been deactivated, and the standoff has come to an end. The transmission is directed at all public communication networks through the world and the colonies, and we're trying to patch it through right now."
"-am Sally Po, commander of the World Liberation Forces," said the voice through a shower of static. "I have captured Kashmir Command Base and am now in possession of the Preventers' Missile Defense System."
She paused, but Catherine turned away from the screen, not bothering to stop the stream of tears. Sally had captured the base. Even if Trowa wasn't dead...she might never see him again.
The music box tinkled its last few notes next to her and fell silent.
"Trowa," she whispered. "Mon frere...I love you."
"I have made certain demands to the World Nation," Sally said. "If these demands are not met, I will have no choice but to change circumstances so that the World Nation will meet them. With these missiles in my possession, I give you, the leaders of the World Nation, seventy-two hours to acquiesce to the conditions I have put forth."
The chill running down Catherine's spine and into the pit of her stomach dashed away the tears, replacing them with an icy spike of fear.
No, Sally...no!
"I have aimed the missile embankment at the colony L1. Within seventy-two hours, if the World Nation has not complied, I will activate the system and destroy the colony."
Act X Part IV | Act XI Part II | Back to Sainan no Kekka