Amidst the young man's sharp and dissatisfied voice, the squad leader spoke up.
"Enough! Instead of saying so much, better prepare quickly!"
The squad leader's voice was deep, instantly silencing the newcomer.
"Captain, are you really sure there's no problem?"
Seeing the channel fall quiet, another still quite calm team member asked in a private channel between just the two of them.
"I don't know."
"But Captain Wolf isn't someone who can't see reason."
As for how much confidence this squad leader had in Fred?
Certainly none. But since the order had come down, there was no choice but to carry it out.
"We will definitely rescue Captain Haken."
Thinking of all these messy matters, the squad leader suppressed his unease and sighed.
"Mm!"
Haken's prestige among them was absolutely immense. Of course they wanted to rescue him.
It was just that none of them could gauge Fred's exact capabilities, leaving them all feeling rather unsettled.
Although the team members were discussing privately, their preparations for sortie procedures were not the slightest bit slow.
For a moment, the entire hangar fell into an unusually quiet state.
Before long, they completed their final sortie preparations.
"Director Freed, we are ready to sortie at any time."
The squad leader, acting as representative, spoke up after checking the condition of all the Powered Armors.
As he spoke, he glanced toward the direction of the Powered Armor remotely controlled by Fred. Though he had obeyed the order, his curiosity remained.
In his view, what his youngest team member said wasn't wrong.
Fred's remote control here seemed a bit too troublesome.
If that was the case, it might be better to just keep their communications open for direct command.
An uncontrolled Powered Armor could not only endanger their lives but also potentially hold them back.
As for Fred piloting this Powered Armor to lead them in a great slaughter, to the squad leader, that was basically impossible.
Although they had this remote control function, due to the Powered Armor's special characteristics, even an Ace couldn't achieve smooth and fluid remote operation, let alone Fred, a researcher.
"Understood."
On Fred's side, of course he couldn't see the squad leader's and everyone else's probing gazes. At this moment, under everyone's watchful eyes, he simply controlled a standard Space Colony-use Powered Armor to pick up a multi-functional toolbox, attach it to the back mounting point, and then quickly stride out with metallic steps.
At first glance, the Powered Armors they piloted looked no different from ordinary maintenance-use Powered Armors.
But upon closer inspection, one could see that various parts of the body were slightly bulkier.
Hidden inside this Mobile Suit were weapons: machine guns on the arms, small rocket launchers on the legs.
The eye sensors were also more advanced than those of ordinary maintenance-use sensors.
Though not as powerful as an MS, they were sufficient for conducting anti-personnel combat within a Space Colony.
After Fred's Powered Armor began to move, six other Powered Armors also started moving, following behind him.
One of them was piloted by Alec, while the remaining five naturally belonged to the group from earlier.
Among them, the young man still harbored resentment but followed orders, trailing behind Fred.
Without delay, they soon exited the hangar through the opened hatch one after another.
The entire port was now devoid of people, with not even a single vessel in sight.
Not only had most people evacuated by ship during the recent attack, but the threat of terrorists—and even the possibility of Mendel exploding—had left no one willing to stay.
Moreover, this small, unmanned port had been deliberately arranged for their use, the kind where even surveillance footage could be deleted.
Fred's plan cleverly divided the team into two parts. The first consisted of their officially licensed transport ships.
The second part involved three armed transport ships lying in ambush among the asteroids outside.
The modifications to those three transport ships were so extreme that approaching under the banner of PLANT would inevitably leave traces. They absolutely could not appear openly or be associated with PLANT in any way.
But now, with the two parts operating independently, both sides could withdraw safely.
Even the Atlantic Federation would find it nearly impossible to locate those three transport ships in the vastness of space.
Not to mention, they could easily split the three ships apart.
In short, Fred's plan was proceeding smoothly so far. All that remained was to locate the missing Haken and his group, and the mission would be complete.
With that thought, Fred pulled up a scaled-down map of Mendel's interior on the screen before him.
The port they had docked at was the closest to the research institute. From here, the path led along the central axis of the cylindrical space colony.
If he led the team directly down the central axis in powered armor, descending at full power, it would take roughly three minutes.
And that was exactly what Fred intended to do.
At the moment, the route they would take was the dark maintenance tunnel below the port, illuminated only by flashing emergency signs.
The space was just wide enough for small powered armor to pass through.
Even if MS were present, they would be helpless against such narrow passages.
"Alec, can you handle the controls?"
Since this differed from ordinary powered armor operation, Fred turned to Alec to ask.
"No major issues," Alec replied in a low voice.
"But if we have to fly, it's hard to say."
This was precisely why the squad leader and his subordinates had questioned Fred earlier.
In most cases, controlling powered armor relied entirely on instinct—a kind of intuition gained through firsthand experience.
Under remote control, fine-tuning for inertia became significantly more challenging.
Walking was manageable, but once airborne, adapting to the simulated gravity within the colony would be uncertain.
If forced to pilot under such conditions, combat effectiveness in aerial engagements would likely drop to less than ten percent.
Meanwhile, the young man watched the two ahead with visible impatience.
He had already said it—this Fred was nothing but dead weight.
Driven by urgency to rescue Haken, he cursed Fred repeatedly in his mind.
As for the squad leader and the others, though they said nothing outright, their probing gazes lingered on Fred as usual.
Remotely piloting a Mobile Suit through such a narrow passage seemed quite dangerous no matter how you looked at it.
If possible, he would have preferred to have Fred take the rear position.
But the other man was the boss now.
Faced with Alec's doubts and the skepticism of the others, Fred simply gave a light laugh and said,
"I've already adjusted the Mobile Suit's inertial motion data based on the Space colony's Pseudo-Gravity readings. The data has been synchronized to both of our armors."