AC Universe, somewhere in Alaska, an underground base. One of Lady Une's large safe houses was located here.
Reid was quite satisfied with Lady Une's secret base.
According to Lady Une, this place used to be an illegal bacterial weapon laboratory that was eradicated by OZ. Due to its past research on dangerous bacteria, it was abandoned.
However, the only achievement of this bacterial lab was neutralizing the hazardous bacteria. The intended bacterial weapon was never successfully developed. Instead, OZ scientists later used the lab's data to complete the bacterial weapon YO-448.
Because of the notorious reputation of bacterial weapons, OZ exercised extreme caution during their assault, leaving the base largely undamaged. After learning about the situation, Lady Une repeatedly verified that no dangerous bacteria remained before secretly restoring the base as a fallback option.
After all, Lady Une had always been fully aware of Treize Khushrenada's dreams and goals, so she had long begun making preparations using her authority—including contingency plans for failure.
In the end, this base was never used in Lady Une's parallel universe. Now, it was being enjoyed by Reid and the others. One could only wonder how the Lady Une of this world would feel if she knew her future self had commandeered this base without permission.
Of course, Reid couldn't care less about what this world's Lady Une thought—to him, she was just an outsider.
Lady Une had gained access to this base by sheer recognition—the gatekeeper only acknowledged her. Unfortunately, he didn't realize that this "Lady Une" wasn't the one he knew.
After arriving at the base, everyone rested for a few hours to recover from their journey. By evening, after dinner, the five of them gathered to discuss their next steps.
In reality, only Reid and Lady Une actively participated in the discussion. Ange knew almost nothing about this world and wouldn't interject unless she found something utterly unreliable.
As for the Xia sisters, Yufang and Yulan, they simply followed Reid's lead without voicing their own opinions.
Though Reid knew the plot, he couldn't appear omniscient to leave room for potential changes. So, he deliberately steered the conversation:
"Lady Une, my quota for recovering mobile suits is now full (the system's direct capture limit). From here on, we should focus on acquiring the technologies most needed by the New Misurugi Republic. Do you have any suggestions?"
Lady Une had long suspected that Reid obtained intelligence from some mysterious source. In truth, Ange and Noin were aware of it too—Reid was the type to shop with laser focus, grabbing what he needed before heading straight home.
Moreover, during several operations in the main universe, Reid's objectives and instructions were far too precise, as if he knew exactly what would happen at any given moment. Unless Reid had truly become a prophet capable of foreseeing the future, he must have been receiving intel from an unknown entity.
Still, there was no need to spell it out. Perhaps Reid had his own restrictions or reasons for secrecy. Thus, Lady Une simply went along with his words.
"The most needed technology? Then we must acquire the Mobile Doll system. The New Misurugi Republic's greatest weakness right now is insufficient military strength. While we have plenty of high-end mobile suits and elite pilots, they can only influence parts of the battlefield—not win an entire war.
After all, the contingency you prepared, Reid, can only catch the enemy off guard once. The second time, its effectiveness will be greatly diminished.
Whether it's the three major nations of the Earth Alliance or any country in PLANT, if they're willing to invest heavily in a prolonged war against the New Misurugi Republic, the Republic will inevitably be destroyed in the end.
However, building an army isn't something that can be done overnight, and we don't have enough fully trusted personnel to rely on. We've already tried with the locals—they can handle logistics and communications at best, but on the battlefield, they're practically just standing targets.
That's why Mobile Dolls equipped with the Mobile Doll system are our best option. From what I recall, version 2.0 of the Mobile Doll system has already been developed by this point. All that's left is inputting pilot data—we can go and retrieve that program.
Once we have it, we can mass-produce standard MS units using the Factory Module and rapidly expand our forces. With just a small number of soldiers—or even just the locals—we can raise a massive MS army. After all, Mobile Doll-equipped units only need orders from a squad leader. Even if the leader is shot down, the units can still follow commands from the mothership.
The only issue is that, due to the Neutron Jammer, these units can't stray too far from the mothership. Otherwise, if the leader is destroyed, they'll default to attacking enemy units in a very rigid manner."
Reid nodded. Une's suggestion aligned with his own thoughts. Honestly, the original animation never specified where the Wing Zero Gundam's data was located—it just showed Quatre already having completed the machine.
Even if they did obtain the Wing Zero's data, a single Wing Zero still wouldn't change the balance of power in the Cosmic Era. Unless Reid wanted to become a terrorist—blowing up Colony Satellites in retaliation, systematically destroying PLANT's colonies one by one, or launching surprise attacks on Earth nations' capitals—it wouldn't make a difference.
So, Reid had never seriously considered pursuing the Wing Zero in the first place.
The Tallgeese was in a similar situation. The biggest difference between it and the mobile suits Reid had captured was its Super Vernier Thruster, which drastically increased mobility. However, this was essentially a murderous system—the G-forces it generated were absurdly high. If the pilot couldn't withstand them, fighting in this machine was practically suicide.
But the system's operational logic wasn't too different from the Bit Rocket Propulsion System Reid had installed on the NT-X. If he had ignored battery consumption and added two more Bit Rockets, he could have achieved similar results to the Super Vernier Thruster. So, to Reid, the Tallgeese was redundant. If they happened to acquire it, fine—but going out of their way to seize it wasn't worth the effort. Unless, of course, they had no other targets left.
Moreover, the Mobile Doll system was indeed well-suited for the current New Misurugi Republic. After all, Reid still possessed the artificial intelligence from Full Metal Panic, which already had an AS-compatible version. If he could integrate it with the Mobile Doll system, he could essentially build an entire drone army.
At that point, forget just the four major powers of the CE Earth Sphere—unless they ran into something like the ELS, they could steamroll through entire worlds. Just imagine a machine uprising, for starters.
Of course, the actual implementation wouldn't be that simple. Merging code from two entirely different worlds was no easy feat. And one shouldn't underestimate the technological prowess and top-tier talent in the Gundam universe. For all he knew, before his army could even dominate the CE universe, the Earth Alliance and PLANT might collaborate to develop countermeasures.
But that didn't stop Reid from indulging in a little future fantasy. Nodding in approval, he said:
"A reasonable assessment. So, where exactly is the data for the Mobile Doll System 2.0 located? How do we get there, and what's the defensive setup like?"
Une regarded him with unusual seriousness before answering slowly:
"The Mobile Doll System 2.0 is currently housed in the space fortress [Barge] (also translated as 'Burg') built by OZ. Officially, it's classified as a mobile spacecraft—8,000 meters long. It can function as a warship, but it's absurdly massive.
Getting there won't be too difficult. This base has a transport ship capable of reaching space, barely large enough to carry our five Mobile Suits. If we depart tomorrow, we'll arrive the day after.
However, [Barge] is armed with more defensive turrets than anyone can count (in the original, it was breached single-handedly by the Gundam Epyon, which stormed the command center—then, in typical fashion, the command center was right above the ammo depot, and the whole thing blew up). It also has a planet-cracking superweapon, the [Barge] Cannon.
On top of that, it's already heavily equipped with OZ's new MS, the Duras (OZ-12SMS), numbering over a hundred. The escort fleet surrounding it also includes a large number of semi-obsolete Leos, also in the hundreds.
But the actual pilot count isn't that high—many of the Durases are unassigned units, since OZ had been concealing its military strength.
As a result, the Mobile Doll 1.0 deployment rate is less than half.
Overall, the defensive forces there far outnumber those at New Edwards Base, and their combat capability is on a completely different level."
After Une finished describing the fortress fleet's defenses, everyone fell silent. Sending just five Gundams to assault such a fortress was practically suicide.
And their objective wasn't even to destroy the fortress—they had to infiltrate it and steal data, which made the difficulty exponentially higher.
Unable to hold back, Ange interjected:
"Une, with defenses this tight… could you use your identity in this world to slip inside?"
Une could only shake her head in response.
"I might be able to bluff my way past the outermost security with my face and some excuses. But before entering the fortress, I'd definitely be asked for proper access credentials and a mission briefing. Neither of those can be forged in just a day or two."
Moreover, if I interfere with the OZ system to forge documents, the version of me in this world will definitely notice, because the credentials would be directly sent to her.
If we're exposed before reaching the fortress, we'll have to prepare for enemies on both fronts."
After Une finished speaking, everyone fell silent again.
Reid also felt a headache coming on. In the original work, the [Barge] sank so easily partly because they didn't have so many garrison troops at that time. The Duras units that should have been deployed had already been distributed. The mass-produced units had even been upgraded to OZ-02MD Virgos.
Due to production issues with the Virgos, the number of Mobile Suits in the [Barge] fortress fleet was in an awkward phase. Both the escort fleet and its MS were wiped out by the colonial resistance group [White Fang]'s fleet. This led to the subsequent situation where the fortress was sunk by a single Gundam Epyon charging straight at it.
Secondly, the [Barge]'s commanding officer was similar to Gerard Garcia - completely unwilling to accept his own failures and stupidity. His blind faith in the [Barge] cannon's power (which couldn't even turn), comparable to Requiem's, led to the fortress-like ship being sunk.
However, Reid's five mobile suits charging into the fortress to steal data didn't seem impossible either. If they were worried about identity checks, they just needed to avoid being checked.
So Reid asked thoughtfully:
"Une, how familiar are you with the [Barge] fortress's layout? What are the passageways like inside? How many types are there?"
Une didn't know why Reid was asking this, but answered truthfully:
"I worked there for some time and still remember the routes. The passage from the port to the hangar, and the sortie routes for combat MS are about twenty meters high to accommodate mobile suits. Cargo passages are generally around ten meters. Human passages are only three meters."
After hearing this, Reid continued thinking and asked:
"What's the shortest distance from the port directly to the command room? If we try to stay mostly in cargo passages, what's the minimum length of human passage we'd have to traverse?"
Une also thought for a while, clearly recalling the [Barge] fortress's internal routes, before giving approximate figures:
"Directly to the command room would be about 2000-3000 meters, mostly through the smallest human passages with several turns.
If we choose a route from cargo passages that minimizes human passages, the cargo route alone would be about 4000 meters with detours, plus another 500+ meters to the command room at the end. But that final stretch would be a straight line, as it's the route for delivering mechanical equipment to the command room."
As she spoke, Une took out paper and pen to sketch the approximate routes from memory.
Ange looked at the rough map and said helplessly:
"Une, what is this you've drawn? A maze? I can't make sense of it."
Une looked at Ange helplessly - to someone unfamiliar with it, wasn't the [Barge] fortress interior essentially a maze? And she was drawing from memory - it's not like she could draw it in 3D.
At this point, Xia Yufang raised her hand while looking at the map.
Seeing Yufang wanting to speak, Reid naturally said:
"Yufang, say whatever you want to say. When it comes to infiltration, you're more professional than any of us here, no need to hold back. Same goes for Yulan - these meetings are meant to gather everyone's ideas."
Reid's words were met with nods of understanding from Xia Yufang and Xia Yulan, though they had no intention of changing their habits.
However, since Xia Yufang had now received Reid's permission to speak, she began,
"I can read this map. It's not too crude—as long as the routes are accurate, and you give me the specific door numbers or surrounding landmarks, I should be able to locate the target."
Reid trusted Xia Yufang's abilities. After all, she had been trained by Kowloon specifically for infiltration and assassination.
So Reid asked further,
"Une, how many guards are stationed inside the [Barge] fortress? And what kind of weapons do they carry?"
Une answered the question with ease,
"The [Barge] fortress has very few internal guards because the facility is highly automated. A command room of just over a dozen people can operate it perfectly. Even accounting for shift rotations, there are no more than fifty combat-ready soldiers inside. There are, however, quite a few ground crew members—though they barely count as combatants, being the type who've hardly ever fired a gun.
"The real defense of the [Barge] fortress lies in the fleet stationed outside. If those ships were to return, they could easily trap everyone inside like dumplings in a wrap."
Hearing this, Reid immediately saw an opportunity. He studied the route map Une had drawn, nodding repeatedly before saying,
"If that's the case, we still have a chance to seize the data directly. Listen up, everyone—here's what we'll do… first… then… and finally…"
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