Part 2: Char in Granada
Volume 1: Kamille Bidan
"Is this true?" The young officer questioned him while typing on the keyboard, not even bothering to turn around.
"There's no mistake. After all, this is information from Lieutenant Hank of the 36th supply corps..." The sergeant, out of breath as he had come running, spoke while indicating the memo in his hand to the officer.
“The Titans are in a hurry? New pilots are entering Green Oasis every day…?”
“Is there a flight?”
“Stop calling me a colonel. I’m a captain.”
“But the Commodore is asking that you come to Sweetwater as quickly as you possibly can… If you are not there, Colonel Char, the Mobile Suits will not move out.”
The blonde officer took the printed paper in hand. This very man had formerly been Char Aznable, nicknamed Char the Red Comet within the Principaity of Zeon.
“Yes, Captain Quattro Bageena.”
“Let’s go. Contact Abu Dabia for me. Tell him I’m going to Sweetwater…”
“Telling them that I’m supervising repairs on the Mezoba should be enough. You can convince them with that, can’t you?” Without bothering to reply to Kignan’s question, Char left the room.
Char had finally decided to carry out the plan that he had considered for so long.
Char Aznable’s mood had lightened. Without thinking, he kicked the floor, and flew. Char’s body glided, tracing a slight arch for a distance of more than six meters. On the moon, where the pull of gravity was only a sixth of that on Earth, this would happen. So if you mistook the direction when jumping, you ran the chance of bumping your head on the ceiling.
As Sergeant Kignan Ramza had just said, Char’s current name was Captain Quattro Bageena. But this name was only a false one, used so that Char could infiltrate the Earth Federation Army. Char Aznable was still entirely Char Aznable.
And standing at the head of those making this claim was Char’s Father, Zeon Deikun. He claimed that in order to keep from polluting the Earth, all humans should migrate to the space colonies. At the same time he demanded independence for the people living in the colonies. This claim aroused sympathy from the spacenoids (the residents of the space colonies,) but the person who took advantage of this sympathy to establish a dictatorship was Degin Sodo Zabi.
Char had entered the Principality of Zeon before this happened, becoming an officer in the Zeon army, and was looking for a chance to approach Degin to carry out his father’s revenge. However, Char sympathized with the theory of independence for the spacenoids, who made up the main base the Principality of Zeon’s support. These principles caused Char to continue serving as an officer in the Zeon army until the end of the war.
A mutual understanding as newtypes had created sympathy between Lalah and Amuro that surpassed any idea of enemy or friend, which Char hated. Char understood that this hatred of his had ended up killing Lalah. But this also left deep scars in Char. Even so, Char would have likely been able to forgive this if the enemy pilot, Amuro Rei had even been a real newtype. But he only exercised his newtype abilities within that small territory defined by his own friends, refusing to become anything more than an enemy to Char.
It was his hatred that had probably caused Char to avoid bringing matters with Amuro Rei to a close, but there were other reasons as well. Deep inside, Char hated that the country prefixed with his father’s name would fall into ruin. Mineva Zabi, who had the blood of the Principality of Zeon’s Zabi Family, and her attendants, along with Char’s friend Margarethe Ring Blair and others, had escaped Zeon’s final space fortress, A Baoa Qu, right after its fall, and were now hiding in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
Getting the Earth Federation Army position had been easy. As the One Year War had caused massive losses to both the colonies and to Earth, enlistment registries had disappeared from all over. Because of this fact, applications to return to enlistment were easily accepted on behalf of the residents of fully destroyed colonies and soldiers from platoons that were rumored to have been completely wiped out and such.
In the case of these sorts of investigations, data would be tacitly fabricated, and then balanced with other existing data. It was not done through consultation or conspiracy. It was just common wisdom in the lives of the masses. Nothing more than something learned from the European precepts for living from the age when nations bordered closely on one another. Because of this, the business of data fabrication by proxy was flourishing.
The indifference of high-ranking Earth Federation officers to the spacenoids became a reason behind the ease with which they reregistered so easily. This was because the high-ranking officers of the Earth Federation were desperately working to return Earth to the way it had been prior to the Universal Century. Because of this, discrimination towards those formerly in Zeon rarely appeared. The only sense of discrimination was based on whether one was a spacenoid or an Earth resident, and it was this very sense that was gradually creating the next problem.
It was exactly because Char had insight into this that he had decided to live as an Earth Federation soldier. Then, when he knew that the difference in consciousness between spacenoids and Earth residents was becoming increasingly certain, he decided that he could not sit idly by and watch; that he need to prepare.
It was two years ago that the Earth Federation, in trying to defer this movement, made use of a particularly brutal method. They used the same poisonous gas attack that Zeon had once formerly used against a colony. It was used against Side 1’s 30th colony, which had been the stage for large-scale AEUG meetings, killing fifteen million spacenoids in one single attack.
With this action, AEUG’s presence became further defined, and at various places in the colonies and on the moon, small fights continued to break out. However, this was the Earth Federation’s plan. They had wanted to flush out the corruption all at once, and annihilate the anti-Earth Federation movement. In order to do that, the Earth Federation army took advantage of part of the movement, organizing a special corps known as the Titans, and constructing a base in the former Side 7, which was now known as Green Oasis.
At the city of Granada on the surface of the moon, there was a mass driver facility used for the purpose of sending out materials. Speaking simply, it was a facility where the linear motor drive-style containers for distributing mineral resources and the rails were matched together. The facility was used to distribute mineral resources necessary in building colonies, but they were also usable to send out modules heading for the colonies.
This module, the “Tobu,” took off, gently at first, using the thrust of the normal rockets, then along with the thrust of the mass driver, it shook off the gravity of the moon. By riding on a balanced path between the Earth and moon orbit, the Tobu headed along an efficient course towards Sweetwater, the colony at Lagrange Point Two (a gravitationally balanced point.)
“Tobu, huh? What a strange name…” Char called up the disc containing information about the ship on the monitor in front of his passenger seat.
As the flight this time was completely allocated to the army, there were no girls working onboard. He had no choice but to pour the brandy himself at the service counter, but this was better than wasting time talking to a girl that he didn’t care for.
From the ship’s window, he could see the full figure of the earth, but it passed out of sight behind the ship rather quickly.
Char watched the army employees around him taking out their personal computers to do their desk work, and wondered why they made a point of showing themselves as being busy. This was particularly the case of the three women among the passengers, who must have been truly diligent secretaries. Without paying any mind to the surroundings, they started typing away at their own keyboards.
“I’m amazed they can do that without even paying attention to the things moving around them…” The depth to which Char felt this could likely be blamed on the fact that he was still rather young.
The Tobu now entered into inertial navigation, taking off for Sweetwater, the destination that still remained out of sight. Darkness swallowed up the body of the ship right away, showing the passengers an all-too-silent view. This silence made one expect proximity to the gods, but the earthlight was too strong, making the space before them shine brightly.