After arriving in the world of SEED, a world with Gundams in it, of course Kain had wanted to experience what it felt like to pilot one.
After only a brief try, he gave up.
It felt like asking a newborn baby to learn how to walk.
This was not something he could pick up in a short time. Its complexity far surpassed the Ho 229.
On the hardware side alone, there were far too many control buttons. On the software side, there were countless settings to adjust, interpret, and fine-tune.
The Ho 229, by comparison, did not have nearly so many tedious controls, and its software barely needed manual adjustment because the system itself was much more intelligent.
A lot of complicated operations could be inferred from his movements.
It was a bit like gesture controls on a phone. The camera recognized a certain motion and interpreted it as a command, then carried out the corresponding action.
In that sense, it resembled the mecha controls in Pacific Rim, except the pilots there had to wear gear so the machine could read their motions.
The Ho 229 did not need anything that cumbersome. Its onboard systems directly observed the pilot's movements and interpreted them.
That said, some actions still required actual physical contact and pressure feedback to register commands.
For example, after transforming the Ho 229 into humanoid form, if he wanted it to turn around, his body, held in place by the cockpit restraints, would twist in the same direction. The seat would register that force, and the Ho 229 would immediately recognize that he intended to turn.
The greater the force of the twist, the faster it would rotate.
So compared with the Strike Gundam, the Ho 229 was much easier to operate.
As for which one was stronger in combat, that was harder to say. Without using thermite bombs or high-energy beam weaponry, ordinary lasers and conventional ammunition would have a hard time penetrating the Strike's Phase Shift armor.
He was making that defensive comparison based on the Strike Gundam's stated armor performance relative to a standard GINN, since he had already fought GINNs before.
As for mobility and agility, no one had truly brought out this machine's full potential yet, so there was no way to judge.
His gaze shifted toward a podium.
"...I condemn the illegal acts committed by both PLANT and the Earth Alliance in invading Orb and attempting to seize Orb's state secrets..."
No longer dressed like a tomboy, but instead fully carrying the bearing of a true princess of a sovereign nation, the girl was delivering what amounted to a diplomatic press conference, sternly denouncing the crimes of both sides.
When she finished speaking and stepped away from the camera, the strength seemed to drain out of her. Clearly, she was not used to giving speeches like that.
But the conference was not over yet. Next, representatives from both the Earth Alliance and PLANT would go on camera and acknowledge that what Orb's princess had said was true.
"...As for Orb's development of new mobile suits and warships, some people may call that hypocrisy from a nation claiming neutrality. But look at it from another angle. If two heavily armed men keep pressuring an unarmed person to join one side and go to war, and refusing probably means the only outcome is that they eliminate you first, then what should you do? The answer is simple. You arm yourself enough that neither side can threaten you. So yes, I can understand Orb's position..."
After Lacus Clyne refined and framed the message further, the general public would be far more inclined to believe that Orb had not acted out of a desire for conquest or world domination.
It had simply armed itself because it was weak, because it needed the means to protect itself.
Kain could more or less understand now why so many people admired Lacus so deeply.
Of course, that did not mean he was calling her one of those characters who seemed sweet on the outside but were black-hearted underneath.
He felt Lacus Clyne really was a pure-hearted girl.
Pure-hearted, not naive. There was a difference.
Naivety carried a kind of foolish innocence, the sort that bordered on stupidity. Purity meant having no dark intent, but not lacking intelligence.
She was the sort of person whose reason outweighed her sentiment.
And being pure-hearted did not mean she would never do anything harmful.
For example, when she had asked him earlier to stop the invading GINNs, she had not added requests like trying to merely disable them or preserve the pilots' lives.
She had only asked him to stop them.
How he chose to do that was his business. She did not press further, interfere, or micromanage. As long as the objective was achieved, that was enough for her.
"Well, with this, we're traitors to the Earth Alliance now."
Mu La Flaga, who had also gone on stage and delivered a statement, said that with a headache as he stepped down.
The gist of his speech had been the same. The new battleship Archangel and the new mobile suits belonged to Orb.
So the Earth Alliance's objective there had been, in essence, to forcibly seize them.
"Traitors, huh?"
Arnold Neumann, also a member of the Earth Alliance military and a petty officer, could only smile bitterly at his superior's reaction.
Captain Flaga did not look like a man genuinely worried about being branded a traitor. It was not that he doubted the Earth Alliance would label him one. He simply did not seem to care all that much.
Arnold could not tell what exactly Captain Flaga and Captain Ramius had been told that had caused such a dramatic shift in their stance.
Still, a little of the intelligence had been leaked around: the Earth Alliance had deceived them all. The basic meaning was that they had been sold out and did not even know it.
And if they returned to the Earth Alliance, they would probably be secretly executed.
That possibility had frightened most of them, because after investigating the men killed by Kain, they had discovered those men had indeed received orders, including orders to kill crew members.
Worse, they were supposed to pin the "credit" for the assassination of Lacus Clyne on the ship's own crew.
There was no way they could bear that kind of "credit."
They might be recast as terrorists. It was a complete inversion of black and white.
Which meant that, under the circumstances, their best option was to accept Orb's offer of surrender terms. More than that, joining Orb and accepting its protection was probably the safest course.
As for Ensign Badgiruel, she had clashed with the two captains and insisted that they were the traitors, refusing to believe the higher-ups were rotten to the core. So she had been placed under arrest.
As for Arnold Neumann's own choice, like most of the others, he had decided to follow Captain Ramius.
Because she was the one who had led them this far, and because they trusted the kind of person she was.
"Princess Cagalli, it's the press conference from Orb proper!"
Still dazed by the bold declaration she herself had just made, Cagalli was suddenly alerted by the satellite's mayor, who hurriedly switched on a television channel for her.
"Father..."
Biting her lip, Cagalli tensed, anxious over what her father was about to announce.
Yet after her father's own news conference regarding what had happened on the satellite ended, she still had not quite recovered her senses.
It looked as though he had coordinated with her and had openly supported her decision.
No, more than that. It was almost as if he had anticipated she would do this, because that press conference had been fully prepared in advance, complete with further evidence cementing the claim that the Archangel and the new mobile suits belonged to Orb.
And that the actions of the Earth Alliance and ZAFT amounted to grave crimes: an illegal invasion and the theft of Orb's secrets.
Suddenly, Cagalli thought of something and turned to look at the girl approaching her, one about her own age: Lacus Clyne.
Earlier, Lacus had told her not to worry about giving the speech. She had said Cagalli's father loved her and would never blame her for it or pressure her over it afterward.
But this was not mere favoritism.
This had all been planned.
Which left only one possibility.
"You already contacted my father, didn't you?"
"No."
Lacus knew exactly what Cagalli meant and shook her head.
"I think my father has probably been in contact with your father behind the scenes as well."
That was Lacus's conclusion.
No, not a conclusion. It was exactly the sort of thing her father would do.
After investigating the events revealed in that fan animation, and in order to preserve a future that had not yet changed too much while also dragging those self-important puppet masters into the light, he had tracked them as far as he could.
Once he had found their traces, all he could do was watch what they did. He could not disrupt their movements or interfere with their plans before the right time, before they noticed.
But noninterference did not mean inaction.
As long as he did not affect their plans prematurely, her father had been preparing strength wherever he could.
And that strength surely included Orb.
As for the Clyne faction's strength within PLANT, it was actually growing weaker and weaker under the suppression of the current radicals, who enjoyed frenzied public support.
There was no suspense left in the next chairman election. Her father being forced out was all but certain.
He might even lose his status as a council member and be thrown out entirely.
"Then now that I've accepted your invitation, you can tell me who he is, right?"
By "he," she meant the young man Lacus called Mister Kain.
He was not from PLANT, nor from the Earth Alliance, and certainly not from Orb.
Could he really belong to some third category of people? After all, his displayed abilities had gone beyond the realm of normal human action.
But Cagalli quickly discarded that thought.
It was too absurd.
That left only one other possibility.
He came from a Martian colonial power.
(End of Chapter)
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