Quatre R. Winner
Prologue - A Wind In The Door
L5 Colony, Outer SpaceI'm going to throw up. Wouldn't that be something?
He chuckled weakly to himself in the dark. The candle flame flickered and danced in the passage of his breath; anything brighter might've shone from around his doorway, and alerted passersby that he was still awake at this late (early) hour.
Go ahead and laugh at yourself, if that makes you feel any better. You know you shouldn't be doing this. It's wrong.
But I've got no other options left. Desperate times...
Sure. As though that's what this is really about.
"You're just trying to make an old man feel that his life wasn't wasted."
Quatre brushed one hand against the cold, white surface before him and looked over his shoulder at the man behind him. "That's not true. It is beautiful. Sandrock." He rolled the word across his tongue.
The short, plump man behind him sighed and stroked at his chin. The oiled tips of his long moustache glistened faintly in the light. He rubbed a sweaty hand across a mostly head and said nothing, looking up at the Gundam he had built, kneeling on the floor of the hangar bay with one fist pressed to the ground, as if in an aspect of prayer. A moment of silence descended on the hangar bay.
Instructor H coughed into his hand after a moment. "Is there something I can do for you, young master?"
"Just Quatre is fine." Quatre dropped his hand from the smooth Gundanium surface and turned around to face the Instructor. "I certainly hope I'm not intruding, but I was bored and I didn't think you'd object to some company."
"Not in the least. So tell me, young Winner...does Sandrock impress you?"
"Impress me?" Quatre's shoes clicked loudly on the floor as he began a quick circuit of the kneeling mobile suit. The bright, uncaring lights of the hangar bay made the Gundanium alloy shine. It sparkled on the four pronged headdress that topped Sandrock, the raised shoulder plates designed almost to look like wings. It sparkled on the long, silvery virgin Without thinking, Quatre found a handhold in the Gundanium of the leg and hauled himself up with agility that surprised him, until he stood on the kneeling Sandrock's shoulder, looking down, his hand resting on its head.
"I suppose it impresses me," he replied. "As I say, I think it's beautiful."
"Beautiful, yes. But it is also a weapon." H rubbed his hands together.
"Tell me, Quatre...does it impress you with its ability to destroy?"
Raising the document he'd stolen from his father's desk to the light, Quatre regarded the signature across the bottom. His father's handwriting was unextravagant; tight, compact letters close together, spider-like. He laid the document back down on the desk, and turned to the carefully typed series of documents laid before him.
He remembered Rashid Kuruma only vaguely; as far as he could remember he had met the man only once, though his father had always spoken highly of Rashid and his Maguanac Corp. He'd never met their leader, Sadaal; hopefully whatever in he could get with Rashid would be enough.
Good men and true.
Quatre looked down once more at his father's signature, lying across the page like an accusation.
You're being naive. One screaming fit and a desperate night won't turn you into a graphologist.
He touched his pen to the paper before him and slowly began to copy.
"You're making that up, Quatre."
Quatre shook his head and sipped at his tea. "I swear I'm not, Iria. He offered it. Offered it to me."
"Well, what do you plan to tell him?"
Quatre turned from his sister and looked out of the window, at the colony spread out below him. "I don't know."
"You're considering it?"
"It's hard not to."
"Quatre."
He shrugged. "Well, it is."
"You've never piloted a mobile suit."
"There's a first time for everything. Instructor H says I have good reflexes; he says I could be taught."
Iria shrugged. "I suppose that's true. But, Quatre...you'd have to kill people."
"Maybe that's so. Or maybe..." He set his tea down on the table and leaned on it, resting his head in his hands, still not meeting Iria's eyes. "Maybe it would be enough just to be there."
"Oh, please."
"All right," he replied. "It's naive, sure. But people are going to die anyway. They're dying now. I have the means, and the knowledge...some of it, anyway. Don't I have a responsibility?"
Iria frowned. "Just because people will be dying anyway doesn't make it all right to kill them, Quatre. I'm worried about you, thinking this way, talking like this...You know father won't have so pragmatic an attitude."
"I guess so." The twist in his gut made him suddenly desperate to change the subject, but now it was too late. If he couldn't trust Iria, who could he trust?
"So what are you going to tell him?"
Quatre stood up. "Nothing, yet. Nothing until I know for sure." He pushed his cup and saucer, still half full, towards the center of the table. "Would you excuse me, Iria? I'm not very thirsty all of a sudden."
"Of course." She waited until he reached the doorway to speak again. "Quatre?"
"Yes?"
"Don't do anything rash."
He flashed her a winning smile. "It's not in my nature. Don't worry, Iria."
Sighing in frustration, Quatre crumpled the sheet of paper he'd been working on and tossed it onto the pile of failures before selecting the next in the pile.
Try again. Try again.
You have to do this.
If birds didn't have wings, they'd move like this. The thought was so bizarre and so incongruous that it almost made Quatre laugh. Instead, he shifted the goggles across his nose and tried to focus. He watched Sandrock's arm pass before the viewscreen, a gentle, circular motion that was the first function he had been taught. Later, he and Instructor H had covered more advanced movements, including walking and the handling of the Gundam's weapons; now, four months after Sandrock's completion, Quatre actually had begun to feel as though he might be a competent pilot, maybe even a good pilot.
And, lying in bed late at night, he wondered if he might even be a very good pilot. He wondered what that would look like.
The training had commenced as and continued to be a strictly illicit affair. The only one who knew that Quatre was being trained in the operation of Sandrock was, of course, Iria. Somehow, somehow he'd managed to keep his activities more or less under wraps. They practiced at night, when his father was off of the colony on business elsewhere, any time that they could do so without fear of being found out.
The purpose of Gundam Sandrock is to fight off the armies of the Earth Sphere Alliance, more specifically, to wreck absolute havoc on the elite military known as OZ and all of it's members.
His mantra. "Learn every word," Instructor H had told him. "Never forget your purpose, your raison d'etre. Do not lose sight of the goal. You serve a greater good, now. That is lesson one."
The Gundam is not like other mobile suits. It is not designed for regular usage, which is why many soldiers and all civilians are incapable of handling such a powerful mobile suit. Only those with superb skills can successfully pilot a Gundam to its maximum ability. It is recommended that the pilot of a Gundam be quite young, so as to be able to keep up with rapid hand-eye coordination that comes with this super mobile suit, and to keep up with the stress that can be dealt with when dealing which such an extraordinary machine.
"So that's why..." Quatre had said.
"One reason. There are many."
The specific model Sandrock has been designed for close-range combat and maximum mobility in hostile (terrestrial) terrain of all varieties. The twin khopesh, in addition to their value as bladed weapons alone, are balanced to be thrown short distances and are equipped with a thermal system that can heat the blades to temperatures sufficient to melt through the hulls of most mobile suits. The close range combat aspects of Gundam Sandrock are supplemented with a pair of mini-missile launchers mounted into the shoulders. The shield can be combined with the khopesh's thermal systems to create a dangerous pincer-style weapon.
The simple exercises over for the moment, Sandrock reached behind its head and drew forth one of the gigantic khopesh.
Time to grow up.
Quatre held the paper he'd completed up to the light and compared the signature to the one his father had actually signed.
Perfect. Now I can get going.
Standing up, he blew out the candle and plunged the room into darkness.
It had often seemed strange to Quatre that Instructor H, apparently a friend of his family, would lie to his father about something as important as the fact that Quatre was now trained in the operation of a deadly mobile suit. Like so many questions, Instructor H dodged the issue when asked.
"There are some things," he would say, a far-away look in his eyes, "that are more important."
Quatre was adrift.
Adrift, and it occurred to him, briefly, that the only thing separating him from the vacuum of space was several feet of tempered Gundanium alloy, and yet for some reason he was not afraid. Though it seemed foolish, he knew Sandrock would keep him safe.
The simulations that he and Instructor H had worked through had not adequately prepared him for operation in a vaccuum. The drift was more extensive than he'd imagined, and he often overcompensated in his movements, spinning the Gundam out of control.
Instructor H's face appeared on the viewscreen. "You must be calmer in your movements. Sandrock is not configured entirely for operation in a vacuum, but there may come a time when it is necessary to take the battle into space; you must be prepared. Remember, you are operating without an atmosphere, without gravity to bind you. Control the Gundam."
"Sorry." Quatre fired his navigational thrusters and steadied Sandrock's motion, not bothering to correct the Gundam's slant as such things were entirely relative anyhow, in space. It seemed a little strange to see the colony before him, hanging upside down in space, but he could recover. In a sense, it was part of the strange sense of euphoria washing over him.
Of course, he'd been in space before, but never in space. Always at somebody else's behest, in a commuter shuttle, en route to someplace else. But now...with Sandrock feeling like little more than an extension of his own body rather than a collection of servos and alloy...
...it was like he'd never known space before the moment he escaped the gravity of the colony.
"So tell me, young Winner," Instructor H asked as Quatre steadied himself, "have you decided?"
"Decided what?" Biting his bottom lip, Quatre focused more on controlling his suit than on what H was saying.
"Decided whether you will take Sandrock to earth or not."
Quatre blinked.
The lights came on automatically as Quatre entered the hangar bay. He left no note for anyone in the colony, not even Iria. They'd know he'd gone to Earth, even if they didn't know precisely where on Earth he was headed. No need to leave them anything; they knew how he felt. Instructor H knew where he was going, and when, as well...that had been necessary. Sandrock would, if the Instructor had done as he had said he'd do, already be loaded into a transport shuttle capable of sustaining atmospheric re-entry.
Zero hour...
Master Winner stood with his back to his son, Iria, and Instructor H. Bright artificial light flooded in through the window and slashed across the red carpeting.
"Absolutely out of the question."
"Father..."
"How long have you been training in the operation of this...machine?"
"Six months. Nearly seven."
"Without my knowledge? Without my consent?"
"You never forbade me, father..."
Quatre could see immediately, with the tensing of his father's clasped hands behind his back, that he had misspoken. "You will not cling to semantics with me, Quatre. You will never insult my intelligence in that manner. You knew I would disapprove."
"Yes, father. I did."
"And you did so regardless?"
"Father, we can't just wait for the Alliance to come to us! If we just sit here, then..."
"Did you feed him that insanity, Instructor?"
Instructor H raised one eyebrow and took a bold step forward. "I do believe that your son can think for himself. I gave him a tool; he must decide how to best use it."
"I took you into my home."
H bobbed his head. "Yes, you did. And when you did, you knew where my priorities lay."
"And what, said the king..." his father began.
"Is that wind in the door?" Instructor H finished the quote. "You flatter me. My motivations are not nearly so grandiose as that."
"Quatre. You intend to take this machine, go to earth, and use it to do battle?"
"If I have to."
"To kill?"
"You know me better than that, father."
For the first time, Master Winner turned, putting his profile into the sunlight. He regarded his son. "I thought that I did."
"Father!" Iria spoke for the first time.
"Answer the question, Quatre. To kill?"
Quatre closed his eyes and hung his head. "If I must. If I must to protect the things that I care about...yes. Yes."
Master Winner turned away. "Then go. Continue your training. Finish it. Go to Earth. Kill if it makes you happy. But if you do, know that you will no longer be my son."
"Father..."
"Go."
"That's...that's it?" His voice fell into the air like rocks, so quiet to his ears he could barely hear it. "I can walk out that door and suddenly I'm not your son anymore?"
"There is room for only one kind of son in this house. Apparently, you are not that kind."
Quatre felt his fists clench, in spite of his desire to remain calm. His fingernails bit into his palms. Screw your courage, Quatre. You can do this. More frightening at that moment than all of OZ, all of the Alliance, more frightening even than his father...the fear of what might happen if he pushed on. And yet... "People will die anyhow, father."
"That is not a license to kill."
"Maybe not...but maybe it should be an impetus to take action." He swallowed hard. His palms were sweating. His voice dropped another octave. "You're certainly not..."
"Quatre!"
"I'm going to Earth, father. I'm taking the Gundam." He lowered his head. "I have to do what is right. I have to."
"Then I have one less child. Leave me."
"So you're leaving?"
Quatre looked up from the controls of the shuttle. "I knew I should've locked the hangar bay doors."
Iria took another step towards him. "If you go down there and bloody your hands, he might not forgive you."
Quatre sighed, glancing back down at the controls. "I know that. But the way he's doing things...I don't know. It doesn't seem like they're likely to get done. It's hard to admit, but somebody's eventually going to be exterminated...and it's us or the Alliance. Shouldn't somebody take action?"
"It doesn't have to be you."
"It might as well be me as anyone. I've got the skills, now. Are you going to try and stop me?"
"Not if you want to leave that badly." She paused. "Promise me something, Quatre?"
"Yes, Iria?"
"Promise me you'll always ask them to surrender."
Quatre nodded. "I will. I haven't changed that much."
"I think maybe you've changed more than you know." She sighed and brushed a hand through her short brown hair. "Goodbye, Quatre."
"Goodbye, Iria.
"Goodbye."