Looking toward the source of the explosion, Lacus's expression grew more and more solemn as the firelight became increasingly obvious.
Before she came here, her father had already warned her that there was a very real chance they would not care that she was present.
On the contrary, her being here might actually become the perfect public excuse for ZAFT to launch a military operation openly.
Which also meant she herself might be in danger. She might even die here.
Even so, Lacus had still come without hesitation.
And in the end, things had truly unfolded just as her father had said. They had not stopped just because she was here.
Of course, ZAFT would never leave such an obvious trail behind. It would be extremely difficult to find any direct evidence linking this explosion to them.
"What the hell is going on here?"
The angry question, no longer restrained, made Lacus turn toward the speaker.
Orb's princess.
Clearly, Cagalli believed this sudden explosion had something to do with her, perhaps even suspected that she had played a part in it.
"That explosion over there..."
Before the rocket could even reach them, it suddenly exploded in midair.
And at the moment it detonated, several red beams shot back along its trajectory.
"2B, A2. Set the two beside you as protected persons. Then eliminate all targets within a five-hundred-meter radius that pose a threat to human life."
The order came from the man who had just stepped out of the aircraft.
The instant the command was given, the two women designated 2B and A2 vanished from the platform with speed far beyond human limits.
A few seconds later, Cagalli heard gunfire, heard explosions, and heard people screaming.
From the scattered sounds and fragments of speech, it became clear that an unidentified armed force was closing in on them.
And their target appeared to be Lacus Clyne.
They were trying to kill her?
"6O, take the Ho 229 up and keep watch above us."
"Understood, Commander."
The individual designated 6O immediately piloted the aircraft into the air, cloaking it once more with optical camouflage.
"Miss Lacus. Miss Cagalli. We're heading for the Archangel. Hopefully it hasn't been destroyed."
As he said that, Kain moved toward a set of vehicles, and Cagalli stared in shock.
They looked something like motorcycles, but each one had a canopy like a fighter craft's protective cover that would close over the rider once seated.
There were three in total.
Two were single-seaters, and one was a two-seater.
The three people present could fit on the two-seater if the two smaller girls squeezed together.
As for the two single-seaters, they were meant for the 2B and A2 units.
Originally, he had wanted to bring over his ship, but it was over two hundred meters long.
That meant if he wanted to transfer it here, he would need to unlock the next level of space expansion. Instead of a one-hundred-meter cube, he would need a cube with one-thousand-meter sides.
And unlocking that would cost one thousand energy coins, which he did in fact have. Lacus Clyne had brought him an extremely substantial return.
However, a strange problem had come up. His ship had somehow been classified as a lifeform, which meant it could not be brought over.
That was interesting.
Did that mean the ship was alive?
Did it have a sentient AI?
No, probably not.
Whatever that "lifeform" classification was, it also seemed completely unaffected by his inaccessible zone, which had no effect on it at all.
That led him to one possible conclusion.
It might have something to do with that room, the room capable of making contact with the Emperor.
Since he could not bring the ship over, he had no choice but to bring A2's equipment instead.
So he opened a one-hundred-meter cubic space and packed a large amount of supplies into it, almost all of them from A2's side, since there was barely anything useful left aboard his own ship anyway.
Which brought up another issue.
If he ever wanted to bring over a ship more than two hundred meters long, then wouldn't he first need to expand the personal space in his original world into a cube with one-thousand-meter sides?
Fortunately, that was not actually necessary.
He could simply try to store the object first, regardless of size, and the system would tell him whether it met the conditions for storage.
That way, he avoided accidentally losing a thousand energy coins.
In addition, when using Cross-World Invitation, he could also directly unlock a simultaneous space upgrade.
When the invitation was sent, confirming acceptance would not teleport him immediately. He could also wait for the countdown to finish, and if he did not cancel, the transfer would happen automatically.
And during that sixty-second countdown, a prompt would also appear asking whether he wanted to upgrade the space at the same time. It would also inform him that, before the countdown ended, he could already use that upgraded space on his current side and load anything that fit into it before the transfer took place.
When he had gone back earlier to bring the Fury fighter to A2's world, he had not needed to expand his personal space into a one-hundred-meter cube first in his own world. He could simply confirm the opening of that one-hundred-meter cubic space directly in A2's world.
Of course, if he later changed his mind before the countdown ended and decided not to go after all, the energy coins already spent on expanding his personal space would not be refunded.
"Miss Cagalli, get on."
Cagalli looked at the hand extended toward her and fell silent.
After hovering there for two seconds, she finally reached out, and Lacus pulled her up.
Once they were seated properly, the vehicles did not start right away.
They waited.
And only after the area around them had gone quiet, after the sounds of gunfire and screaming had completely disappeared, did they move.
A few seconds later, the two women returned.
Cagalli did not see anything strange about them. They looked completely clean, hardly like people who had just gone out to eliminate a group of hostile armed attackers.
No.
There was blood.
On their weapons.
Not firearms, either, but a long katana and an oversized sword.
Had they really slaughtered a heavily armed group using only those weapons?
Then, after they had been traveling for five minutes—
Boom!
Accompanied by another explosion, one of the vehicles flipped and rolled a considerable distance.
"6O, confirm whether we're carrying any kind of signal."
Kain brought the vehicle to a stop and asked the question because this was already the third wave of attacks.
The enemy seemed to know exactly where they were.
"A suspicious electromagnetic signal is being transmitted from the individual designated Lacus Clyne."
So that was it.
And it was only because this 6O was just a robotic unit running on a dead program, not the real 6O, that it had not dealt with it instantly.
"Ah? On me?"
"It's that robot ball of yours, isn't it? Throw it away."
Cagalli immediately suspected the spherical machine was the one feeding the enemy their position.
"Negative. It is not the machine. The signal source is located on Lacus Clyne's right foot."
6O flatly denied Cagalli's guess.
"My right foot?"
Lacus immediately realized something and kicked off her shoe at once.
So that was it.
Someone had tampered with her shoe and planted a tracker inside it.
Which meant the mastermind behind the attack on her was from PLANT itself.
Though her father had already told her to prepare herself for that possibility, now that it was confirmed, she still felt terrible.
Of course, the people attacking her on the ground were likely not Coordinators. That would have been far too obvious.
The ones hunting her were probably Naturals.
But the people pulling the strings from behind were almost certainly individuals from her own country.
"Commander, six large mechanical units have been identified as threats."
Six large mechanical units?
Cagalli craned her neck and looked ahead at the display projected in front of him as he rode the motorcycle-like vehicle.
The so-called six large mechanical units were ZAFT GINN mobile suits.
They had actually come in.
And some of them had already started firing.
Cagalli's face turned ashen.
If they fought inside the colony, this satellite really could be destroyed.
"Mr. Kain, I'm asking you. Please stop them from causing more damage."
Lacus immediately made the request.
They absolutely could not let a battle break out inside the satellite and recreate the tragedy from the anime, or worse, let it turn into a massacre on the scale of Bloody Valentine.
(End of Chapter)
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