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"Thank you for coming," Gilbert Dullindal said, as his visitors entered the large office. The Chairman of the ZAFT Supreme Council was a tall man and handsome with dark hair spilling down over his shoulders and a thin face that usually revealed only detached confidence in his policies. He was feeling unusually tense now, however, for the complexity of his duties had risen markedly over the last month.
None of the visitors knew this however, though he had a passing acquaintence with most of them. Indeed, two of them likely knew this office almost as well as he did, for they were the only children of his predecessors. Athrun Zala looked much recovered from the strain he had been under two years ago, at the end of the Bloody Valentine War, standing behind the blonde 'Princess of Orb'. He wondered if the young man knew how much his occasional glances at Cagalli Yuna Athha revealed.
The other young couple, were thinner. Lacus Clyne was as sweet as ever... and perhaps even more beautiful. Her young man, the almost legendary Kira Yamato, looked thin and pale however. The strain of the climatic battle at Jachin Due had almost broken his will to live, and he was evidently not yet fully recovered. That was not good.
Last into the room were a man Dullindal knew well and a woman he did not. These two were not a couple, however, instead the survivors of two romances that had been broken by the war. Andrew Waltfield had been ZAFT's best ground forces commander until he was defeated and his lover killed by the then inexperienced Kira Yamato. Murrue Ramius, for her part, had risen from obscurity to inherit the command of the Earth Alliance's famous Archangel... and lost her own lover when conscience drove them to battle against the Archangel's sistership the Dominion that had fallen under the command of a genocidal madman.
"Why have you invited us here?" Cagalli broke the silence once they were all seated on the white couches that dominated one wing of the dimly lit office. "You must know that you made nothing clear except that you wanted a face to face meeting. Several of us endangered our lives by coming here."
Dullindal smiled. "To the point as ever, Princess," he noted, and smiled secretly to himself as her face reddened at the title she despised. "My apologies for the mysterious nature of the invitation, but what I am to tell you is the most guarded of secrets - one that I have shared only with only a few of the Supreme Council and the leaders of a few Earth nations."
"What could be that vital a secret?" Waltfield snorted. "Have you discovered a living space-whale or something?"
"Or something," Dullindal said quietly. "Something... to be more precise someone, that has given me cause to be perhaps a little paranoid about my electronic security." He lifted an old-fashioned plastic file from a side-table and retrieved a printed picture, passing it to Athrun. "What do you make of this, Mr. Zala?"
Athrun examined it and then shrugged. "Some sort of shuttle? I've not seen it before, but there are any number of designs..."
"It's a electronic warfare platform," Dullindal told him. "No, not something we've come up with, Ms. Athha. Nor is this an Earth design. A Junk Guild ship happened upon it adrift on the far side of the Moon. They were able to retrieve the crew before their life support gave out, and when the Guild heard their story they brought them to the PLANTs."
"So, if they aren't ZAFT... and aren't from Earth, then were do they come from?" Kira asked, showing the first sign of interest since he'd entered the room.
"They're from another star system," said Dullindal and waited for the room to explode with protests. He was pleased to discover that for the first time, an audience did not react with instant disbelief, although Ramius and Cagalli both looked as if they were waiting for the punchline to a particularly tasteless joke.
Lacus shook her head. "I don't understand," she said candidly. "You mean to say that this," she tapped the picture that Athrun had placed on the coffee table between the couches. "Is a starship? It's so small! And her crew are from another star system?"
"Somehow I don't think you're talking about bug-eyed monsters," Waltfield said drily. He picked up the picture to look at for himself. "The fittings look like they're designed for humans."
"They are indeed humans," Dullindal agreed, "Which has placed the biologists into quite a panic, I must say. However, they are adamant that they originate from - well, they call their home the Twelve Colonies and their particular planet is called Caprica. Our linguists have spent almost as much time deciphering their language over the last month as our engineers have in repairing their ship."
"Colonies?"
"Yes, which raises several interesting questions, doesn't it?" the Chairman said with a hint of irony to that particular bit of understatement. "All of which are beside the point for the moment however. You see, these particular individuals are scouts for a convoy of refugees. Their homeworlds have been attacked - the word destroyed has been used, although I'm not sure how to interpret that at this point, by a force they call 'Cylons'. A large number of civilians, almost fifty thousand in fact, are headed this way and the Cylons are close on their heels."
There was a stunned silence. "I can see why you want to keep this a secret... for now," Murrue said at last. "But why tell us? With the exception of Cagalli, none of us are in a position to do anything about this."
"I'd like to change that," Dullindal said, avoiding a direct answer. "But there are a few things I would like to tell you before I come to that. Everything in its place, so to speak." Receiving nods to continue, he did so.
"A week ago, we finally managed to finish repairs to their ship and two of the three crew departed for their mothership. The third remained behind to continue helping us work on understanding their language. We've come a long way on that front and I'd have to say that there have been some interesting technical developments as well. I'd brought the leader of the Oceania Union in on the story by then - with all due respect to Orb, Oceania has been our closest ally on Earth for sometime now - and we have been able to bring the Kingdom of Scandinavia, the African Community and the Equatorial Union in on the secret in the last few days. Three days ago, two vessels of the same kind arrived, carrying a diplomatic party, albeit a rather small one. Their ambassador has requested sanctuary on behalf of their remaining government and population in the convoy and warned us that in all probability the Cylons will target us regardless of our stance."
"Do you believe that?" Cagalli snorted. "Of course they're going to demonise their enemies!"
"I believe that they believe that, Ms. Athha. They could, of course, be quite mistaken. That is why this is being dealt with as a matter of the greatest delicacy. For obvious reasons, our allies have agreed that someone needs to visit this convoy to verify their story as far as we are able. We will also need time to prepare in the event that the Cylons are everything that they are painted as."
"You're talking about rearming," Cagalli snorted.
"It is hardly a secret that all signatories of the Junis Treaty have been upgrading their forces to replace their older equipment," Dullindal said. "The older equipment is usually scrapped, of course. This has allowed ZAFT to be substantially reduced in size without compromising our security. But if we are faced by an attack that can, literally or figuratively, destroy planets then we must consider this a threat on the order of GENESIS."
Athrun flinched. The GENESIS superweapon had been used to destroy entire fleets attacking the PLANTs... and on the orders of Athrun's own father, had with one shot depopulated almost a third of the Moon. Only it's destruction and his own death had prevented Patrick Zala from turning it on the Earth and wiping out inconceivable numbers of the human race.
"But..." Cagalli protested.
"Obviously the next step has to bring in the old Earth Alliance nations," Dullindal said, "And I intend to do so. But someone has to judge the nature of our prospective guests... and it has to be someone neutral that we all know will not play favorites. I believe that the veterans of the Three-Ships-Alliance would be the best choices."
There was another silence and then Murrue shrugged. "What do you have in mind?" she asked.
The Plant's scientists had naturally been interested in the hyperdrive of the colonial vessel and had constructed several duplicates, including a scaled up model that the Colonials had indicated should be powerful enough to move a full-size vessel. With this fitted to a ZAFT vessel, the Earth party would be able to travel to the refugee convoy without being left dependent upon the Colonials for their return.
Dullindal's plan had been to fit the drive to ZAFT's newest battleship, the Minerva, but it was Lacus to nixed that plan.
"If we go aboard a ZAFT vessel, then we shall be considered to be a ZAFT group," she explained. "Instead, let us mount the drive aboard one of our own ships."
"What ship do you have in mind?" the Chairman asked, more curious than offended.
She simply smiled and answered sweetly, "I think that the Eternal would appear the least threatening, Mr Dullindal."
Practically everyone in the room choked. The Eternal wasn't all that threatening in appearance, but it had been designed to support the two most powerful mobile suits in the Bloody Valentine War.
"I believe that with two mobile suits aboard, we can be reasonably secure," Lacus continued, blithely. "Without appearing to be unnecessarily cautious."
The question of what those suits would be hung in the air of the office. Given the identity of the two pilots in the room, it was not a question, the Chairman realised, that he really wanted to voice. No small number of battles in the war had been skewed by the intervention of one or both of them. If the Colonials were to try anything hostile then they would be playing with fire.
"Well, I suppose that if I'm asking you to be our emissaries then I can hardly second-guess you before you've so much as left my office," he said finally. "One of the Colonial military officers will be going back with you as a liason."
What with one thing and another it was another week before the Eternal was ready to depart. The ship had been anchored within Artemis, an abandoned Eurasian military outpost that had been abandoned during the Bloody Valentine War. It brought back memories to Murrue and Kira, who had both been aboard the station when ZAFT attacked, having to fight their way out with the Archangel and the old Strike. With prompting from Lacus, Kira told Athrun about and how Athrun's friend Nicol had singlehandedly opened Artemis' supposed invulnerable defenses to the ZAFT forces. In return, Athrun shared his memories of Nicol, whose death over the Pacific had almost caused a permanent risk between he and Kira.
The station itself, dug into an asteroid like most major orbital military bases, didn't make much of an impression on the Colonial officer who would be acting as their liason. The only thing that seemed to surprise him about the arrangement was the colour of the Eternity, although no one was quite sure why. His name was Lee Adama but his exact position in the Colonial Military wasn't something that anyone had worked out yet. Of course, since he was being kept away from most of the military equipment, such as the two mobile suits, he'd had to keep pretty much to himself - everyone else was busy getting that military equipment ready to go.
It was early on the seventh day since he'd come aboard that Andrew Waltfield knocked on the door of the quarters he'd been assigned. Unlike the confined quarters of a warship, Artemis was large enough for large and comfortable rooms and until it was time for Eternal to depart there was no point being uncomfortable. "Good morning," the scarfaced man said in greeting. "Ready to go home?"
Lee looked at him for a moment and then held up his dufflebag to indicate that he was all packed. "Home's been gone for almost three years now," he said somewhat grimly as he followed Andrew out of the room.
Andrew shook his head. "Home is where the heart is," he said sagely. "You always have one somewhere - sometimes it just takes a while to find it."
"Have you ever had your home destroyed?" the Colonial snorted. "There isn't much left to find."
Andrew looked at him and then shook his head. "Are you familiar with what we mean by 'nuclear weapons'?" he asked.
Lee thought about that. "No," he said. "No one's used that one yet."
"Well I don't plan to explain it in a corridor," Andrew said. "But the last time I was aboard the Eternal we were defending my home from being destroyed. We succeeded, but I could not go home. So I made a new home on Earth. Now everything changes, so who knows where I will call home tomorrow?"
"You say destroyed," Lee asked carefully. "How do you mean... destroyed?"
Andrew used the hand that wasn't holding his cane to gesture explosively. "Boom!" he said loudly. "Like that."
"Perhaps I do know what 'nuclear weapons' means," he said at last. "If so, then I... I apologise for my rudeness."
"That's alright, boy," Andrew said as he opened the hatch to the Eternal's airlock. "Just watch it around some of the crew. We didn't save everybody's home."
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.
The mind boggles....if you're talking about the current incarnation of Battlestar Galactica, it would be interesting.
Actually, it would solve the Natural/Coordinator conflict..when you got "real" space monsters coming in to kill all of humanity, I don't think a united front is out of the question.
The upshot is that humanity will have to spread out to other star systems now.
I got to chew on this for a while.
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Into terror!,  Into valour!
Charge ahead! No! Never turn
Yes, it's into the fire we fly
And the devil will burn!
- Scarlett Pimpernell

WengFook

The Fabled 13th colony of Kobol.... Earth... and it just happens that everything the earthlings have completely outclasses whatever the Cylons can currently bring to the table :O
I foresee either the Cylons are going to tech up to mobile suit sized battlearmor or... they've been hiding their good stuff [Image: smile.gif] _______________________________
We are the swords in the darkness, the watchers on the walls. The fire that burns against the cold, the light that brings the dawn. The horn that wakes the sleepers. The shield that guards the realms of men. -The Brothers Black
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Take Your Candle, Go Light Your World.