Inside the Kaohsiung Mass Driver terminal, wartime regulations and restrictions on civilian use meant that aside from soldiers in Earth Alliance uniforms, there were very few civilians in plain clothes.
Roz's bright orange suit made him stand out. Just walking to the escalator, he felt a dozen or so eyes on him.
"Daily civilian flights have a limited number of seats, and today's allocation has long been used up."
Standing on the escalator, holding a small cardboard box, Lowe Guele began explaining to Roz.
"But we're taking the cargo route this time, transporting supplies to the lunar colony. After all, Earth Alliance transport ships generally carry only the most urgent necessities. Things like cigarettes or alcohol mostly go through our cargo channel now."
"Of course, the cargo route also has limits, but it's much more lenient than civilian flights."
Looking calm, Roz listened as Lowe held up a thumb with a grin. "You'll understand what to do soon enough."
"You told me before, so of course I understand."
Roz nodded at Lowe. His left hand, tucked into his suit pocket, was fidgeting with a card.
Passing through the corridor and ignoring the Earth Alliance personnel along the way, Lowe led Roz straight into an office marked "Ship Inspection."
"…Lowe Guele, busy as always, shipping cargo again today?"
Inside, an officer's face lit up upon seeing Lowe.
But when he saw Roz behind him, his expression immediately turned serious.
Roz silently admired the officer's ability to switch expressions like a anime character.
"Occasionally, I have to take cargo commissions too, but there's a slight issue with the inspection."
Lowe smiled and handed the officer a box. "Everything promised is here, not a single item missing."
The officer accepted the box and placed it at his feet.
"But the weight you declared this time… it doesn't match the allocated limit, does it?"
The officer frowned while checking the system on his computer, clearly understanding why Lowe had come to him. "Overweight… by two space shuttles?"
"This commission from my wealthy client here is to transport two space shuttles."
Lowe pointed to Roz in the orange suit behind him.
"Rich people… I don't really understand what they want to do."
"Hello, I'm Quattro Bajeena."
Roz stepped forward and extended his hand to the officer.
"I'm Lowe Guele's client."
"Hello, Mr. Bajeena. In your case, you should be taking…"
The officer shook Roz's hand but felt a hard card in his palm and froze for a moment.
Lowe silently gestured and mouthed, "This amount."
"I hope to transport the two shuttles into space as soon as possible. Is that okay?"
After separating his hands, Roz spoke calmly, as if he were truly a wealthy tycoon, completely unconcerned about how much money was on the card.
"Hmm… of course, no problem. Inspection passed. You may use the cargo route."
The officer glanced at the card in his hand, smiling with squinted eyes, and tapped twice on the nearby computer.
Lowe's ship passed the inspection and was placed in the queue. The officer even bumped Lowe slightly up the list.
Back when the Mass Driver allowed civilian use, many people had bribed their way into this position, and their predecessors had profited greatly.
But when he took over ship inspections, the war between Earth Alliance and ZAFT had begun. Civilian flights and cargo were restricted, leaving little opportunity for profit.
Now with someone as proper as Lowe, the officer was overjoyed and quickly completed the process.
"When did you become so…"
Walking out of the terminal toward Lowe's designated dock, Roz's expression was complex.
"Slick? Right."
Hearing Roz, Lowe shrugged. "Can't help it. I'm not like you, always active over in Orb. Earth Alliance is like this—tricky little brats everywhere."
"If they reject your ship in inspection, there'd be checks and delays for ten days or half a month. Can you handle that? Even if our combat capability is top-notch, we can't launch without their operations. The Mass Driver won't activate without them."
Lowe stretched lazily as they walked. "Might as well pay to avoid trouble. After all, it's not me spending this time."
Indeed, the card Roz had used belonged to Lowe, and the money on it was Lowe's, but the expense would be settled into the commission fee.
Thinking about money gave Roz a headache.
The Unicorn's follow-up armaments, the battleship manufacturing, all these projects were money sinks.
And now, with this commission added… he'd have to see if he could get funds from somewhere else.
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At the dock Lowe Guele had reserved, containers were loaded one by one onto Lowe's warship, Re.H.O.M.E..
Even though it was a fully enclosed dock similar to when the Archangel was in Orb, Lowe still used special containers to pack the Unicorn and Strike Gundams, transporting them onto the warship before unpacking and preparing them.
"Such beautiful mobile suits…"
Standing in the closed hangar on the left side of Re.H.O.M.E., Lowe gazed at the mobile suit just unpacked from the special container and couldn't help but sigh in admiration.
The pristine white suit looked completely out of place among the various containers, immediately drawing attention and exuding an aura of "holiness."
"Roz, you have so many mobile suits!"
"Is it a lot? It was bought with money!"
Roz, having just set up the program to charge the magazine via the mobile suit's laser nuclear fusion reactor, stepped out of the cockpit onto the catwalk. "Maybe your bank balance is higher than mine now!"
"I'm just picking up scraps. No way I have that much money!"
Lowe scratched his head. "But speaking of picking up scraps, I recently found a big haul!"
"You mean that red M1 Astray?"
Following Lowe's gesture, Roz saw a red-and-white mobile suit.
"She's called the Red Astray. I found her back at Heliopolis."
Lowe smiled. "Picked her up during the dismantling at Heliopolis."
"…Sure enough, compared to me, your luck is ridiculous."
Roz sighed. "Why can't I ever pick up an MS?"
"But the suits you make yourself are far stronger than the ones I pick up."
Lowe shrugged. "I've heard of your reputation—White Devil."
"A reputation doesn't help. Buying things still doesn't get you a discount."
Roz closed the cockpit, checked the electronic locks on the mobile suit, and only after confirming everything was fine did he leave.
Although unlocking the Unicorn required scanning Roz's capillaries and completing a match, checking things twice never hurt.
"All right, let's head to the standby room. We'll probably be departing soon."
Lowe patted Roz on the shoulder as he stepped down from the catwalk. "If you want a discount next time, just give me a call; I'll help you out…"
The two bickered like this as they left the hangar.
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On the way into the mass accelerator's orbit, nothing unusual happened. The mechanical structure smoothly placed the Re.H.O.M.E. onto the trajectory for launch preparation.
Roz sat in a seat in the lounge, fastened his seatbelt, and flipped through an old newspaper he had bought from a newsstand.
"Didn't expect you to read newspapers, Roz."
At this moment, Mu, sitting to Roz's left, nudged him with an elbow.
"This paper's pretty old, right? I thought you'd pull out some tablet to watch a movie."
The crew of the Archangel were either in Re.H.O.M.E.'s dormitory or in the standby room, where they could see the heaps of cargo in the hangar.
"Sometimes it's nice to read old newspapers when bored. Just like reading a storybook."
After finishing the sections he was interested in, Roz folded the newspaper and held it in his hand.
"Besides, it's not suitable to take things out while we're launching anyway."
"That's true. Remember to grit your teeth, or you might not handle the G-forces."
Mu said nothing further, only smiled.
"Everyone, we will launch in ten seconds. Prepare yourselves!"
Lowe Guele's voice came through the broadcast, and everyone straightened up.
The ten seconds passed quickly, followed by a strong sense of being pushed back, as if riding a high-speed roller coaster. After just a short acceleration, Roz felt the warship being thrown into the sky, Earth's gravity pulling him backward.
Suddenly, Roz felt his right hand being tightly grasped by a soft hand.
Though Roz didn't feel any pain, he could sense the tension of the other person enduring the G-forces.
Roz glanced expressionlessly to his right. Murrue, sitting to Roz's right, was gritting her teeth, resisting the G-forces.
Even the Archangel's crew, including Mu as a pilot, felt uncomfortable without wearing a flight suit.
Roz, sitting among them, idly counted the time.
After all, compared to the G-forces Roz experienced while piloting an MS, this was like a gentle massage.
Before piloting the Narrative Gundam, Roz's pharmacological anti-G suit had never been used. He had endured countless high-speed combat scenarios purely with his body.
The ascent wasn't long. Roz noticed the newspaper on his lap beginning to lift slightly. His free left hand lightly tapped Murrue's hand.
Though his right hand was being tightly held, Roz could feel that Murrue, perhaps afraid of hurting him, kept her hand stiff throughout the ship's ascent.
"We've left Earth."
Roz whispered into Murrue's ear.
"We're safe now."
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