"DINN's approaching from aft," Neumann reported. "They'll be on us in fifteen minutes."
"We don't have time to look for them," Natarle insisted. "If we lose this ship then everything they sacrificed will be wasted!"
Mirialla sobbed and lunged for the door, but it hissed open before she reached it, leaving her to cannon into the chest of Thomas. "Captain," he said simply. "Permission to disembark? I know we can't wait around here, butI can take an emergency liferaft over to where we last heard from the lost boys."
Maria looked torn. "Just you and an inflatable boat?"
"I could take a volunteer, I guess," Thomas answered.
"Captain!" Natarle insisted. "We have to go!"
Mirialla turned a pleading face towards Maria and the captain folded. "Alright," she agreed, with a sinking feeling that it might be the last time she saw either one of them. "But hurry - we're taking off the minute you're off the ship."
-/-
Only two minutes later and the Archangel lifted slowly away from the island crashed and made it's faltering way into the air. Below, Mirialla and Thomas ducked as debris was thrown around by the blast of the engines going to full power. Between them was an emergency kit from the Archangel and a small case that Thomas kept on hand for emergency medical purposes.
"Well," the man told his young companion. "We'd better get started." He opened the survival kit and passed her a small bundle. "Put this on - your miniskirt's very cute but it's not much use in a small boat."
Miri blushed furiously as she shook out the waterproof coverall. Glancing around for something to change behind, she realised that between crashing and taking off, not to mention taking several near-misses from missiles and beam weapons, the Archangel had pretty much denuded the area of suitable cover. She shot an embarassed look at Thomas, only to see that his back was turned as he unpacked the inflatable boat. "Get a move on," he grunted and she hastily obeyed.
By the time she was changed, he'd managed to get the boat inflated and was strapping the assorted equipment to it, cursing at the fasteners as he did so, "How far do you think we are from the other island?" he asked abruptly.
"About ten miles," she said, eyeing the boat nervously. It didn't look as large as she had hoped for, "Can we get that far?"
"I expect so," Thomas replied. "We better had, anyway. Mar- Captain Ramius will be sending the details to Orb so they can send out a rescue crew, but there's no chance of them getting here before morning. If we come a cropper out there -" he waved one hand at the ocean "- there's nothing to fall back upon. You can swim, I hope?"
"Yes, of course... but not ten miles."
"Ah? Well, as long as you can stay afloat," he muttered.
"Doctor Finn?"
"What?"
"Do you think... do you think that they're dead?"
"Hard to say," Thomas said thoughtfully. "It's possible that they've both survived - but equally, this isn't a safe business."
-/-
When the ORB rescue team landed, Cagalli was the first to leave the huge flying boat that had carried them, jumping into the shallow water and wading up onto the beach to where Mirialla was tending to a small but rather smoky fire. The crude signal had pinpointed their location for the plane, but it almost equally obvious that tending to the fire was makework that had been foisted on the exhausted girl to persuade her to stay in one place and rest her body, even if her mind was too troubled to sleep.
"What happened?" Cagalli shouted as she crossed the strand, looking at the scattered remains of the Aegis.
"There was another battle," the girl replied slowly. "Kira and Tolle were shot down. The Archangel had to keep going. Doctor Finn and I used a lifeboat to get here, but we can't find them..."
Cagalli blinked. "A lifeboat?"
Mirialla pointed to what the 'Princess' had thought was a tent. Now that she looked coser, she realised that it was a small inflatable raft, of the type that had a collapsible roof. The roof had been raised but through the open flap, she could see a figure sleeping inside.
"Who's in there?"
Mirialla's mouth twisted unhappily. "A ZAFT pilot. Probably from the Aegis. We found him on the shoreline, injured. He's not woken up yet, but he might have a better idea what happened."
The blonde wondered at the resentful tone in the other girl's voice, but then recalled that Tolle and Miri were a couple. Having her boyfriend missing in action - probably dead - and the Doctor treating an enemy officer must be upsetting for her. She looked inside absently and blinked at the familiar face.
"Well, he's the pilot of the Aegis alright," she observed. "He sure gets shot down a lot."
Mirialla blinked. "You know him?"
"Remember when I went MIA myself?" Cagalli asked rhetoricallly. "He was on the transport I shot down and we crashed on the same island. When Kira arrived, he let me go to get picked up and I left him for his own people to pick up. He's... not a bad guy, not really."
"He and Kira are friends," Mirialla said with a sniff that sounded like the herald of tears.
"What!?"
"We picked up a lifepod when we went past Junius Seven," the girl explained. "There was a Co-ordinator inside, the daughter of ZAFT's chairman. She and Kira talked a lot and Kuzzey heard them talking about the pilot of the Aegis."
"What happened to her?" Cagalli asked.
"Kira went out with her in the Strike and signalled for the Aegis to come out and collect her," Mirialla explained. "One of their mobile suits almost attacked us, but she called them off."
"Wow," Cagalli exclaimed. "How is it that everywhere we go, we keep meeting the same people?"
The rest of the ORB expedition were assembling on the beach now. Technical staff fanned out the check the Strike and the components of the Aegis, while the medical team joined the two girls.
"There's a wounded Coordinator in the boat," Cagalli ordered. "He's been treated, but check on him anyway. The rest of you spread out... there are still two people not missing."
"Just one," came a sombre voice from behind her and they all jumped to see a dripping Thomas Finn standing there. No one had seen him approach and finding him looming over them was something of a shock. Ignoring the new arrivals, he set an Earth Alliance bodybag down beside the tent and knelt down by Mirialla. "I'm very sorry," he said gently. "I found Tolle's body."
The girl paled even further, something Cagalli would not have beleived to be possible. "NO!" she protested loudly. "You're wrong! He couldn't be..." She reached for the bodybag's zipper but Thomas caught hold of her wrists and restrained her easily.
"You really don't want to do that," he said bleakly. "His cockpit must have taken a direct hit - I had to piece together the remains."
With a sick feeling in her stomach, Cagalli realised that the bag was lying too flat to contain an intact corpse. It was alsot too short to have contained Tolle unless...
Bending over, she briefly regreted the breakfast she'd managed to choke down on the aircraft. It hadn't been very appetising when she ate it, and it felt much worse as her stomach expelled it all over the sand.
-/-
Athrun's eyes flickered open as he felt the bed beneath him vibrate slightly.
Wait... bed? He'd been in the Aegis, fighting Kira...
Everything came flooding back to him. Nicol dead, the cold focus that had fallen over him as he fought against his friend to avenge his friend. The way that Kira had fought back, reluctantly at first, then with the same fury after the Earth Forces jet had been shot out of the sky. Locking the claws of the Aegis around the Strike and triggering the self-destruct... the shockwave of the explosion batting him out of the sky as he tried to escape with his jet pack.
The door to the compartment slid open and Thomas entered, glancing at the bed and nodding without surprise at the jade green eyes that speared him as he entered. He pulled a chair out from under the room's small desk - the same sort of institutional plastic chair that had been used for centuries - and dropped himself into it.
Mirialla stood in the door, glaring at Athrun rather than entering and Thomas sighed. "Cagalli, is there somewhere Mirialla can lie down? She's been up all night."
"So have you," the blonde snorted. "Take your own medicine."
"Cagalli!?" Athrun exclaimed. "What... am I on the legged ship?"
The three gave each other blank looks and then Cagalli grinned. "The Archangel," she concluded. "The ship from Heliopolis. 'Legged ship' indeed."
"No," Thomas told the concerned Coordinator. "We're on an ORB Union aircraft - they'll arrange for you to rejoin ZAFT. You're in no particular danger of the Alliance getting their mucky paws on you."
"Oh," Athrun responded, the rush of adrenaline that had flooded through him at the prospect of imprisonment fading away. There was more talking, but he couldn't focus on it. Wen he looked up again, the girls were gone and Thomas was leaning heavily on the desk, head in his hands, his entire posture reeeking of exhaustion. Athrun used his left arm to push himself up a little, but at the first sound, Thomas jerked around with feral speed, his eyes alert.
"Don't do that," he growled. "You need your rest."
"I'm fine," Athrun replied automatically.
"You've a broken arm, two bruised ribs and a mild concussion," Thomas replied confidently. "And I've had Kira in the medical bay a time or two - I know that those will affect a Coordinator just as much as it would the rest of us."
"Kira..." Athrun whispered. "Did you... did you find him?"
Thomas shook his head. "No. We found you on the beach, and we found the wreckage of the Strike, the Aegis and the Skygrasper... I don't care about any military secrets, but I'd rather like to know what happened there."
"I killed Kira," Athrun said softly. Even the thought that Nicol was avenged didn't stop a wave of horror at the thought that Kira - naive, gentle and innocent Kira - was dead by his hands. "I detonated the Aegis, I can't imagine that he would escape from that."
The older man grunted, a pained noise in the quiet room. "I gather you took down a fighter as well," he said, a question implicit in the statement.
Athrun nodded slowly.
"Ah," Thomas nodded back. "I thought that it looked like one of the Aegis' weapons. Poor Tolle. He wanted to protect Kira - they were friends, you see."
"Friends," Athrun grimaced. "Kira killed one of my friends."
"The boy in the Blitz?" Thomas asked.
"Nicol... he was a pianist... he never planned to be a soldier, he only joined ZAFT to protect his family against you Naturals... he died to protect me," Athrun cried out in broken sentences. "And Kira cut him apart in an instant!"
"Your friend dies to help you," Thomas sighed, leaning back in his chair. "And Kira's friend dies to help him. There's a twisted symmetry to that. Tastes foul. Like most of this bloody war."
Athrun shook his head. "Why did he do it? Why did he let you use him? Why did he... why did he..."
"Why did you have to kill him?"
"Yes, dammit! He was a Coordinator! He should have been with us!"
"He was a human being," Thomas observed coldly. "He belonged with all of you."
"But..."
"Those idiots in Blue Cosmos think that Coordinators are different... why are you agreeing with them?"
"They're saying we're monsters!"
"Ha!"
Athrun stared at Thomas. That snort of bitter laughter was not the reaction he had expected. "Being more competent doesn't make you inhuman. It just means you do the same stupid things with greater skill. Thus the war - killing each other is a very human trait."
D for Drakensis
You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.
"We don't have time to look for them," Natarle insisted. "If we lose this ship then everything they sacrificed will be wasted!"
Mirialla sobbed and lunged for the door, but it hissed open before she reached it, leaving her to cannon into the chest of Thomas. "Captain," he said simply. "Permission to disembark? I know we can't wait around here, butI can take an emergency liferaft over to where we last heard from the lost boys."
Maria looked torn. "Just you and an inflatable boat?"
"I could take a volunteer, I guess," Thomas answered.
"Captain!" Natarle insisted. "We have to go!"
Mirialla turned a pleading face towards Maria and the captain folded. "Alright," she agreed, with a sinking feeling that it might be the last time she saw either one of them. "But hurry - we're taking off the minute you're off the ship."
-/-
Only two minutes later and the Archangel lifted slowly away from the island crashed and made it's faltering way into the air. Below, Mirialla and Thomas ducked as debris was thrown around by the blast of the engines going to full power. Between them was an emergency kit from the Archangel and a small case that Thomas kept on hand for emergency medical purposes.
"Well," the man told his young companion. "We'd better get started." He opened the survival kit and passed her a small bundle. "Put this on - your miniskirt's very cute but it's not much use in a small boat."
Miri blushed furiously as she shook out the waterproof coverall. Glancing around for something to change behind, she realised that between crashing and taking off, not to mention taking several near-misses from missiles and beam weapons, the Archangel had pretty much denuded the area of suitable cover. She shot an embarassed look at Thomas, only to see that his back was turned as he unpacked the inflatable boat. "Get a move on," he grunted and she hastily obeyed.
By the time she was changed, he'd managed to get the boat inflated and was strapping the assorted equipment to it, cursing at the fasteners as he did so, "How far do you think we are from the other island?" he asked abruptly.
"About ten miles," she said, eyeing the boat nervously. It didn't look as large as she had hoped for, "Can we get that far?"
"I expect so," Thomas replied. "We better had, anyway. Mar- Captain Ramius will be sending the details to Orb so they can send out a rescue crew, but there's no chance of them getting here before morning. If we come a cropper out there -" he waved one hand at the ocean "- there's nothing to fall back upon. You can swim, I hope?"
"Yes, of course... but not ten miles."
"Ah? Well, as long as you can stay afloat," he muttered.
"Doctor Finn?"
"What?"
"Do you think... do you think that they're dead?"
"Hard to say," Thomas said thoughtfully. "It's possible that they've both survived - but equally, this isn't a safe business."
-/-
When the ORB rescue team landed, Cagalli was the first to leave the huge flying boat that had carried them, jumping into the shallow water and wading up onto the beach to where Mirialla was tending to a small but rather smoky fire. The crude signal had pinpointed their location for the plane, but it almost equally obvious that tending to the fire was makework that had been foisted on the exhausted girl to persuade her to stay in one place and rest her body, even if her mind was too troubled to sleep.
"What happened?" Cagalli shouted as she crossed the strand, looking at the scattered remains of the Aegis.
"There was another battle," the girl replied slowly. "Kira and Tolle were shot down. The Archangel had to keep going. Doctor Finn and I used a lifeboat to get here, but we can't find them..."
Cagalli blinked. "A lifeboat?"
Mirialla pointed to what the 'Princess' had thought was a tent. Now that she looked coser, she realised that it was a small inflatable raft, of the type that had a collapsible roof. The roof had been raised but through the open flap, she could see a figure sleeping inside.
"Who's in there?"
Mirialla's mouth twisted unhappily. "A ZAFT pilot. Probably from the Aegis. We found him on the shoreline, injured. He's not woken up yet, but he might have a better idea what happened."
The blonde wondered at the resentful tone in the other girl's voice, but then recalled that Tolle and Miri were a couple. Having her boyfriend missing in action - probably dead - and the Doctor treating an enemy officer must be upsetting for her. She looked inside absently and blinked at the familiar face.
"Well, he's the pilot of the Aegis alright," she observed. "He sure gets shot down a lot."
Mirialla blinked. "You know him?"
"Remember when I went MIA myself?" Cagalli asked rhetoricallly. "He was on the transport I shot down and we crashed on the same island. When Kira arrived, he let me go to get picked up and I left him for his own people to pick up. He's... not a bad guy, not really."
"He and Kira are friends," Mirialla said with a sniff that sounded like the herald of tears.
"What!?"
"We picked up a lifepod when we went past Junius Seven," the girl explained. "There was a Co-ordinator inside, the daughter of ZAFT's chairman. She and Kira talked a lot and Kuzzey heard them talking about the pilot of the Aegis."
"What happened to her?" Cagalli asked.
"Kira went out with her in the Strike and signalled for the Aegis to come out and collect her," Mirialla explained. "One of their mobile suits almost attacked us, but she called them off."
"Wow," Cagalli exclaimed. "How is it that everywhere we go, we keep meeting the same people?"
The rest of the ORB expedition were assembling on the beach now. Technical staff fanned out the check the Strike and the components of the Aegis, while the medical team joined the two girls.
"There's a wounded Coordinator in the boat," Cagalli ordered. "He's been treated, but check on him anyway. The rest of you spread out... there are still two people not missing."
"Just one," came a sombre voice from behind her and they all jumped to see a dripping Thomas Finn standing there. No one had seen him approach and finding him looming over them was something of a shock. Ignoring the new arrivals, he set an Earth Alliance bodybag down beside the tent and knelt down by Mirialla. "I'm very sorry," he said gently. "I found Tolle's body."
The girl paled even further, something Cagalli would not have beleived to be possible. "NO!" she protested loudly. "You're wrong! He couldn't be..." She reached for the bodybag's zipper but Thomas caught hold of her wrists and restrained her easily.
"You really don't want to do that," he said bleakly. "His cockpit must have taken a direct hit - I had to piece together the remains."
With a sick feeling in her stomach, Cagalli realised that the bag was lying too flat to contain an intact corpse. It was alsot too short to have contained Tolle unless...
Bending over, she briefly regreted the breakfast she'd managed to choke down on the aircraft. It hadn't been very appetising when she ate it, and it felt much worse as her stomach expelled it all over the sand.
-/-
Athrun's eyes flickered open as he felt the bed beneath him vibrate slightly.
Wait... bed? He'd been in the Aegis, fighting Kira...
Everything came flooding back to him. Nicol dead, the cold focus that had fallen over him as he fought against his friend to avenge his friend. The way that Kira had fought back, reluctantly at first, then with the same fury after the Earth Forces jet had been shot out of the sky. Locking the claws of the Aegis around the Strike and triggering the self-destruct... the shockwave of the explosion batting him out of the sky as he tried to escape with his jet pack.
The door to the compartment slid open and Thomas entered, glancing at the bed and nodding without surprise at the jade green eyes that speared him as he entered. He pulled a chair out from under the room's small desk - the same sort of institutional plastic chair that had been used for centuries - and dropped himself into it.
Mirialla stood in the door, glaring at Athrun rather than entering and Thomas sighed. "Cagalli, is there somewhere Mirialla can lie down? She's been up all night."
"So have you," the blonde snorted. "Take your own medicine."
"Cagalli!?" Athrun exclaimed. "What... am I on the legged ship?"
The three gave each other blank looks and then Cagalli grinned. "The Archangel," she concluded. "The ship from Heliopolis. 'Legged ship' indeed."
"No," Thomas told the concerned Coordinator. "We're on an ORB Union aircraft - they'll arrange for you to rejoin ZAFT. You're in no particular danger of the Alliance getting their mucky paws on you."
"Oh," Athrun responded, the rush of adrenaline that had flooded through him at the prospect of imprisonment fading away. There was more talking, but he couldn't focus on it. Wen he looked up again, the girls were gone and Thomas was leaning heavily on the desk, head in his hands, his entire posture reeeking of exhaustion. Athrun used his left arm to push himself up a little, but at the first sound, Thomas jerked around with feral speed, his eyes alert.
"Don't do that," he growled. "You need your rest."
"I'm fine," Athrun replied automatically.
"You've a broken arm, two bruised ribs and a mild concussion," Thomas replied confidently. "And I've had Kira in the medical bay a time or two - I know that those will affect a Coordinator just as much as it would the rest of us."
"Kira..." Athrun whispered. "Did you... did you find him?"
Thomas shook his head. "No. We found you on the beach, and we found the wreckage of the Strike, the Aegis and the Skygrasper... I don't care about any military secrets, but I'd rather like to know what happened there."
"I killed Kira," Athrun said softly. Even the thought that Nicol was avenged didn't stop a wave of horror at the thought that Kira - naive, gentle and innocent Kira - was dead by his hands. "I detonated the Aegis, I can't imagine that he would escape from that."
The older man grunted, a pained noise in the quiet room. "I gather you took down a fighter as well," he said, a question implicit in the statement.
Athrun nodded slowly.
"Ah," Thomas nodded back. "I thought that it looked like one of the Aegis' weapons. Poor Tolle. He wanted to protect Kira - they were friends, you see."
"Friends," Athrun grimaced. "Kira killed one of my friends."
"The boy in the Blitz?" Thomas asked.
"Nicol... he was a pianist... he never planned to be a soldier, he only joined ZAFT to protect his family against you Naturals... he died to protect me," Athrun cried out in broken sentences. "And Kira cut him apart in an instant!"
"Your friend dies to help you," Thomas sighed, leaning back in his chair. "And Kira's friend dies to help him. There's a twisted symmetry to that. Tastes foul. Like most of this bloody war."
Athrun shook his head. "Why did he do it? Why did he let you use him? Why did he... why did he..."
"Why did you have to kill him?"
"Yes, dammit! He was a Coordinator! He should have been with us!"
"He was a human being," Thomas observed coldly. "He belonged with all of you."
"But..."
"Those idiots in Blue Cosmos think that Coordinators are different... why are you agreeing with them?"
"They're saying we're monsters!"
"Ha!"
Athrun stared at Thomas. That snort of bitter laughter was not the reaction he had expected. "Being more competent doesn't make you inhuman. It just means you do the same stupid things with greater skill. Thus the war - killing each other is a very human trait."
D for Drakensis
You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.