Legacy 2/10

[Nightheart]

Midii Une, leader of the rag-tag band of men and women calling themselves the Homeguard patched into her suit communication to get a status report from the different teams of Homeguard cells she had assigned to specific tasks. The drivers had the now de-weaponed Raiders well out of the area, the rest of the teams involved in the counter ambush had finished stripping the weapons to their component parts for later disposal and were read to pack it in and head back to the barn. She was looking forward to a nice long time in the sweat lodges that the camp had rigged up in order to warm the people who had been stuck out in the chill flood waters. It was easier and more manageable than trying to create some kind of a large hot tub or set of baths (they didn't have the resources for something like that anyways especially on short notice) but a couple of sweat lodges had been doable, even necessary given that he weather had taken a turn for the worst.



She herself couldn't wait to get back to her base for the evening and warm up for the first time all day. She had been dripping wet and shivering since she'd arrived on location at dawn that morning. She'd been beginning to wonder if she'd ever feel warm again or if she would ever get her muscles to loosen up and stop shaking with cold. The cup of hot cider and the change of uniform had helped... but only a little. She was still frigid and her hands and feet were probably clumsy with cold, it was a good thing that piloting her suit for the basics didn't involve a lot of fine motor skills.



"Number One!" a panicked voice screamed over the link to her communications speaker.



"Yes..." she checked the origin of the signal; Thomas Biggs, one of the men she'd left on flood-water patrol down near the primary sand-bag dams.



"What is it Biggs?" she questioned.



"They took out the bags!" he shouted over the roar in the background of his com. Apparently he was in the middle of the flood. "There's nothing holding the water back and now its surging toward you knocking down everything in its path! The water wall is at least four feet high!"



Midii let out a string of curses and turned abruptly to her crew and the civilians, assessing the situation in a split second. The water would only take bare minutes to reach them and they wouldn't be able to get all of the civilians out in time and still move their gear and the Homeguard suits as well. The best they could do would be to use their suits and the neo-titanium shields to take the brunt of the force of the wall of moving water and try to secure all of the civilians in vehicles.



"Homeguard, we have a situation on our hands!" she barked out in her parade-ground voice, the voice that could be heard over hundreds of milling refugees and a few squads of Homeguard personnel running drills. Her orders were further amplified by the com-system on her mobile suit. Her Homeguard members came immediately to attention and looked to her for their instructions.



"Alpha team! Form a rank in across the road in front of me; Alpha's four, five, and seven, dig your shields into the ground and brace for impact. Beta team! Secure all civilian transports; hold 'em steady and make sure they don't get blown away. Civilians, get in the vans, now! Move it people, hustle hustle! Let's go!"



Among her own people her orders were obeyed instantly and without question. The civilians whose lives she was trying to save looked at each other questioningly, wondering what this was all about.



"I *said*," Number One commanded, injecting her tone with more authority and a little more urgency. "Get in the nearest transport, now!"



With more worried looks they headed towards their trailers and their transportation rigs that were being braced from behind them down stream by a mobile suit from the Homeguard. Middi grabbed a shield and joined the members of Alpha team on the front line. The impact was going to hit them hard, but hopefully the mobile suits would be strong enough to withstand all of that water pressure.



The mobile suits were all lined up shoulder to shoulder across the road, down on one knee. They were kneeling in order to get the lowest center of gravity possible, the best thing to do in a situation like this. Their neo titanium shields overlapped one another and had been wedged into the dirt and tilted back, this should have the effect of redirecting much of the force instead of trying to take in blunt-on.



Then she saw it. A huge surging sloshing hungry maw that rushed at them like a dark and implacable wind. It was like a demon that had been let free of its bindings and now was free to destroy everything in its path and pursued its self imposed mission with a gleeful unholy vengeance. This was a force of nature, a force against which they could do nothing more than brace themselves for the brunt of it and hope it was enough. She closed her eyes and sent up a prayer for the safety of her people as the roaring water attacked.



The wall slammed into them. It was a physical sensation that jarred her in the cockpit of her mobile suit. She'd slammed into other suits in her time or slammed into the side of transports but that was nothing compared to that first incredible collision with that raging flood. It didn't stop at the initial impact but the weight of the water bore down on the top of her shields and flowed around her suit quickly enough, the eddies pulling at her from the side. Her suit began to scrape backwards from the force of the water pushing at her and her companions. She willed with all of her strength her suit to hold its ground. She couldn't lose this fight; she had innocent civilian lives depending on her and the lives of her comrades as well. The water continued to push at the shield in front of her and there was water seeping once again into her cockpit. She had spent most of the day previously with her cockpit half-filled with water as a result of running flood-water rescue patrols. She was beginning to seriously wonder if she was ever going to feel warm and dry again.



<Much more of this and I may consider growing myself some gills,> she thought sourly as the shivers returned to her in full force.



She called up a rear-view in her tactics screens she was relieved to see that her civilians were doing just fine. The wall of suits and the shield she and her compatriots were bracing was taking most of the brunt of the force of water and the overspill raining down on top of her and flowing past them was less forceful. Granted, it was still powerful but the B-squad suits were bracing the transport vehicles from downstream. It looked like things were going to be just fine for them.



After an eternity of minutes the force of the initial flood subsided a bit and they were left with only the raging current of water trying to sweep the legs of their mobile suits out from under them. The vehicles were mostly submerged by water however and there were civilians climbing out of their submerged trailers and rigs to climb on top of them and escape drowning inside of them.



One problem solved and another one popped up to take its place. A commander?s work was never done.



Midii paused to think for a few precious seconds. She had to get these people out of the water and someplace safe as quickly as possible. The local terrain was treacherous. She had two teams of ten mobile suits each. There were forty seven vehicles in the civilian train. Saving lives was the priority. The appropriate strategy was quickly decided upon.



"Alpha four, Alpha five, Alpha seven; drop your shields and fall back to assist Beta team move civilian transports containing civilians only," she snapped off. She didn't waste time or breath, not when the situation was so precarious. If the water kept rising, the civilians who had climbed on to the tops of their vehicles would get swept away by the rising water.



"If there's just supplies or junk in the vehicle leave it behind. Beta team, I want two suits to a vehicle; the terrain is too treacherous to expect these big trailers and rigs to try to four-by over so load as many civilians as will fit safely into a few of the vehicles and carry them upstream against the current to rendezvous with Delta team up at the dam site. Ground forces, you are to provide the escort service and assist any civilian or civilian vehicle that might be having difficulties. You have your orders, let's move them out!"



Number One was proud and pleased to note her concise orders were followed instantly and with a bare minimum of question to figure out a way to carry them out. Alpha and Beta teams had been running rescue runs all morning, so they already had a bit of a system worked out; however their rescue runs hadn't involved such... unusual civilians. How in the name of anything holy were they supposed to move the elephant car? It would take four suits to even try and lift it. They were really raising a fuss now too. She couldn't really blame them. The last thing she needed however was a stampede of panicked elephants.



"And could we get some handlers out to see to those elephants?" she called as an afterthought.



A short time later seven trailers, a group pf circus elephants, and a lot of animals in cages were carried by sets of two mobile suits marching in lock-step against the current. The rest of the trailers were transport vehicles with no civilians aboard and could wait for a later time to be picked up provided they and all the stuff contained within them didn't get washed away in the flood. The crawl towards the Rendezvous point would be slow going for the civilians and their vehicles and Midii had several things that she needed to do at that moment so she left Alpha Leader, Beta Leader and Gamma Leader (Gamma was the ground-force leader) in charge of moving the civilians to the rendezvous point and went on ahead to assess the damage and begin organizing reparations.



The site they'd chosen to make the sandbag dam against the flood water had been the best they'd been able to choose at the time. It was in a place called the Ledges in a county that had once been known as Grandledge. On one side of the river were enormous rock formations that had once been deposited by a glacial icecap eons ago. It was a geological fact that the enormous almost canyon-like stones had once been completely submerged by river water, in fact the ledges had been carved by the river water, but Midii had never heard of the rocks even being touched by the river in her lifetime, in her father?s lifetime or even in her great-great-grandfathers lifetime. When she'd been a child and her father had taken her and her brothers to play and climb around on the rocks in the paths of the great forests the river had been a good distance away from the ledges. It could bee seen from the pats and from the outcroppings that broke above the trees but it had never been close enough to actually contemplate touching the ledges. The river touched the sides of the ledges now for the first time in a hundred years. Her crew had chosen to sandbag their dam in a spot there the ledge jutted out into the river (in normal times the jut was nothing more than a small obstacle to take the scenic path around). On the other side of the river was a slowly sloping hill that led back into more forest land. The hill wasn't as high as the ledges on the opposite bank but it sloped just high enough to suit their needs.



Delta team and what people could be spared from the hurried organized chaos of the construction of the high-ground base-camp were already desperately trying to salvage what they could of their structure. It had been secure before, but a raider missile had taken it out as a last parting shot before they got taken down. Vindictive bastards! The blast had taken out a third of the dam in the middle and the subsequent rush of penned-back water had widened the hole. the people working at a frantic pace to repair the damage before the storm hit had formed a picket line and were tossing sandbags to the workers scurrying around on the dam like industrious worker ants piling sandbag after sandbag like so many oversized bricks. There were other men and women on top of the three-foot-thick sandbag dam who were pounding in enormous long steel spikes on the outside of the dam wall downstream to reinforce its ability to hold. Midii heaved a purely internal resigned sigh as she submerged herself in water again (subsequently flooding her cockpit and soaking her in chilly cold silty grey water again) and waded over to lend the strength of her mobile suit to the teams of men already working there and simultaneously ordered a report from Biggs, the Delta Team Leader.



"We're trying our damnedest, no pun intended, to get these walls back up before the big storm hits Number One but its a race against time," he shouted into the mouthpiece of his transistor radio over the din of the working teams. "What with the recent attack, the relocation and the need to secure base camp, our manpower is stretched thin."



"I know. Normally I would order the reserve teams out to aid you Biggs, but I just have this horrible feeling that we'll be needing them later," Midii said back. "If ever there were a time for a raider team to strike at one of our refugee havens it would be at a time when our defenses are depletes, our defenders are exhausted and our resources stretched thin with trying to protect and provide for an entire horde of guests and a really big bad storm on its way. The situation couldn't be more perfect for them! Just do what you can."



"Will do," he acknowledged and turned back to his picket line of sandbaggers. Midii turned her suit to the stake pounders who were singing old railroad songs to keep in rhythm.



"Stand back please," she said. They clamored out of the way. She balled her suits glove into a fist and pounded on the stake. Once it was sufficiently in the ground she moved her suit on to the next. Midii and her Homeguard had learned long ago that mobile suits were even more useful as construction tools than as tools of destruction. She had just finished pounding in the last stake when the circus, the civilians and their escort team limped its way over the horizon at a crawling pace.



Here she would order the civilians unloaded and escorted back to high-ground base-camp. Alpha, Beta and Gamma teams had brought along their previously discarded neo-titanium shields. With more work by the sand-baggers the gap that had been blasted in the sand-wall would soon be small enough to be covered by welded together shields. If all went well, she could order her hard-worked Homeguard members to head back and rest up for the evening. They had all certainly earned it!



The civilians were unloaded one by one from the trailers, rigs, and whatever else had been used to carry them to this point on to the three foot wide top of the sandbag dam. It was still slippery and treacherous, everybody was wet but none the less the teams worked together to pass get every civilian over the hop from rig-door to dam-top along the rain-slick top of the wall and safely at last to dry land (well, not *dry* land...).



They were on the fourth vehicle when Murphy's Law intervened. The arms on one of the mobile suits had been damaged in battle and gave way under the pressure of holding up the rig with all of its passengers inside; the main box of the back of the vehicle stayed in one piece due to a lucky catch by one of the suits running rescue runs but unfortunately one of the civilian passengers riding in the front cab tumbled from her seat and into the driver-side door of the vehicle. The window shattered in impact, unable to support the full weight of the passenger. Said passenger fell out through the hole when the window broke beneath her and dropped twenty feet into the swiftly moving flood waters. A dark-haired passenger nearly succeeded in catching her before she fell out and when she dropped he leaped into a dive after her, but neglected to bring any sort of rope, float, or life-vest; essentially putting himself into the same position as the woman he'd leapt after.



<Who's the more foolish; the fool or the fool who follows him?> Midii wondered. She was the only other suit on rescue run duty since the other one was occupied with trying to hold up the rig so they could get the passengers off. So it fell to her. Great, it looked like she was going back in the water.



Her desperately scanning eyes caught sight of the head of the unfortunate woman as she broke surface supported by the dark-haired man who was trying to swim upstream or locate anything that might give him purchase against the torrential current. Midii quickly kneeled her suit down and popped open the cockpit of her mobile suit, all-day practice with running maneuvers like this made her movements almost deft despite clumsy chill-numbed fingers. She grabbed her suits mounting-cable and vaulted into a swan-dive from the platform. She'd been in the cold water all morning, running operations exactly like this one so the water didn't come as a shock... it was still less than pleasant. With strokes that seemed to take forever she caught up to the pair and slipped her arms and legs around the two of them around the two of them in likely the only kind of grip that would hold in a current this strong. It was not an easy hold to maintain for the current constantly pulled at the three of them trying to rip make her loose her grip and she was getting half drowned being constantly ducked under. She waited impatiently waited for the slack on her mobile-suits dismount cable to take. With a jerk like a fisherman deciding that his catch had had enough line to swallow the bait, it did.



<Uh-oh, not good,> Midii thought after a moment. The line should have been automatically cranking back in at that point and it wasn't. That could only mean one thing... the combined the force of the floodwater drag and their three own bodyweights was too great a pull for the weight bearing of the line and the capacity for the crank. If their position continued too long like this the cable would snap and they'd all be screwed.



Her comrades in arms were already moving to pull them in by hand but it wouldn't matter; it was the line that was too weak. There was really only one option then. No sense in the both of them going down, besides, she had an obligation. The choice was clear.



"Don't worry Miss, Sir," Midii said reassuringly as she while trying to keep from getting ducked under. "You're going to get out of this just fine. My Homeguard won't let anything happen to you."



Midii looped the cable around the young man's chest just beneath the armpits in a rescue hold and snapped the end of it to secure the woman in a rescue line hold.



"It'll be just fine," Midii said encouragingly. The serious faced young man knew precisely what she intended to do and gave a short, almost-salute-like, nod of his head to her. She returned the gesture and took a deep breath.



Midii let go. The river swiftly ripped her away but she had no intention of letting it keep her. The current carried her swiftly away in a world of ripples and grey on those occasions where Midii could keep her head above water she searched constantly for the familiar landmarks she was looking for so that she could set herself up in the correct position because she was only going to get one shot at it.



There was an old abandoned rail-road bridge (that she and her brothers had once dared each other to climb across despite the fact that it was a rotted crumbling ruin that would like give gangrene if they'd cut themselves on the rusted metal of the beams) a ways downstream from the dam site. The cement pilings and poles were still there. Midii fought to turn her body into the proper position, her feet downstream and her arms to the side so that she'd see it coming and be able to brace herself. At last she saw the pilings of the bridge up ahead and coming at her swiftly. This was not going to feel good. She braced her feet and maneuvered herself into position to hit one of the pilings dead on.



The impact jarred her but she grasped the rusty encrusted cement with hands that were numb and clumsy with cold. She clung to it like the proverbial barnacle for a minute, taxing her strength by just fighting the current.



<I don't know how much more of this I can take,> she thought. It had already been a long day. Paddling about in the water trying to rescue everybody and their dog all morning with nothing more substantial than a cup of coffee in her, then a battle this afternoon against raiders... plus all of the various other minutiae that seemed to get crammed into her day. She was tired. Her muscles had spent the day in a permanent state of tension shivering in the cold of her waterlogged cockpit. She felt drained, as only a day spent in the damp and chill could make you feel drained. She didn't know if her muscles had the strength in them to haul her heavy soggy ass out of the water.



"Number One!" she heard a voice call from downstream as she clung debating whether or not she had the physical strength left in her to pull herself up. She had just about decided to do it when she looked over and saw her second in command standing on top of the partially submerged Pisces suit she'd had him take command of for the battle. The suit was jetting upstream and her second was grinning like some kind of mad red-haired monkey. He tossed a line to her as he passed she caught it wearily and let him tugboat her half drowned self upstream. Ah Bryson, always there when she needed him... even if he was a smart ass. He no doubt had a whole battery of remarks thought up and was likely right now choosing the very best one. She knew why he was tugging her upstream too. It wasn't so that she could rejoin her troops; oh no, it was so he'd have an audience to laugh at his jokes made at her expense. Jerk.



They reached the dam and the suit stood for land-mode. Midii was pulled up out of the water looking precisely like a bedraggled, sodden and half-drowned kitten. Her men were cheering wildly. It was nice to be loved.



"Well boys," Bryson called, his voice pitched to carry as Midii hung at the end of the line for a moment before dropping to the top of the dam.



"She looks a little scrawny to me... think we should throw her back eh?" Her Homeguard, well accustomed to their sibling-like banter, roared with laughter.



Midii, expecting it, gave her usual reply. She flipped him the finger and said



"Shut-up Bryson."



*



The overcast grey sky began to fade into the smokestack grey of dusk Trowa waited alongside his sister, an unnaturally unperturbed Heero and a soaked and army-blanket covered Relena Darlian. The circus, its animals, the merchant civilians, and them had all been defended and rescued by a group of old mobile suits that despite their obvious care and maintenance were past their expiration dates and well on their way to the scrap heap. He watched as the people in the suits used their big machines to transport heavy loads of sand bags directly to the worksite so that the picket line teams could work directly on the dam itself. Once their loads had been dropped off, if they didn't have another task that would be better served by the use of the mechanical giants, they hopped out of their suits and started working alongside the others hauling sandbags into place.



No idle hands here.



"Cathy," he said, breaking the silence for a change. "Is this the Homeguard you were talking about earlier?"



"Yes," she replied. "I recognize the colors they paint on their suits."





"And their leader Number One is among them?"



"It's hard to say," Cathy replied. "From what she said, Number One travels all around this country visiting each refugee haven and showing up to lead local forces in an emergency. I'd say that this flood is a local emergency; she could be here."



"You haven't seen her though," he said.



"There are a lot of suits Trowa, and a lot of workers. It's hard to spot one person in this entire melee. If she's here we'll see her when the dust settles and the task is done."



Trowa made a non-committal noise in his throat and crossed his arms, waiting for the last of the work to finish.



Three of the midnight blue mobile suits lifted up the enormous wall of welded-together neo-titanium shields they had created and held it above their heads as they waded into the torrential flood waters churning through the gap in the dam. They positioned themselves twenty feet upstream of the sand-bag dam in front of the gap and lowered the immense metal wall into the water... vertically sideways, facing upstream. The mobile suit closest to the wall began to edge slightly to one side, forcing the water to flow around him. Trowa picked up on what they were doing; they were going to use the welded wall as a plug for the gap. Water pressure would hold the plug in place at least for a few days, long enough to finish construction and shoring up on the flood dam. It was quickly done.



The people working on the wall started clapping and cheering as the mobile suit closest downstream told everyone to call it a day, pack it up and head back to the barn. Trowa and the rest of the people that had been traveling with him were joined by sopping wet working-men and -women all wearily herding towards a collection of jeeps, trucks and other motor vehicles. Mobile suits grabbed the animal cages and lifted them up (much to the dismay and protest of the cages occupants) for easier transportation. Elephants and their handlers along with a few daring dam-workers rounded out their little parade toward wherever the barn was. Trowa found himself loaded onto a truck and wedged between his sister Catherine and a bearded guy in loose grey clothing that was soaking wet... obviously one of the men who had been working on the dam.



"...I sure hope we get a few extra req chits for this," the man said to his neighbor on the other side of him, obviously another worker like himself. "I sure am sore!"



Trowa, out of the long habits of a spy and information gatherer, kept his ears open and his mouth shut.



"You said it," his friend next to him said. "I don't think I'll ever get the kinks out of my neck, shoulders, and back come morning. I may just have to cash in a lux-chit or two and get a back-rub from Services!"



Trowa's brow furrowed in puzzlement, they weren't speaking his language; what was a Lux-chit and what was the significance of Services? Still, he continued to listen. A third person spoke up, a burly older woman.



"Hey, d'jyou guys hear yet?" she questioned.



"Hear what?" questioned the guy sitting next to him.



<Ah gossip,> thought Trowa. <It's truly what makes the world go round.> It was a relief that the people around him were so talkative, even after a day of what had obviously been hard labor; if they got to talking and he got to listening, he'd be able to easily glean a lot of information about the social and political climate of the area's population. He needed to know if these people were dangerous or not, especially with not only his family but a very important political figure mixed in among the rest of his company. And it wouldn't hurt to do a little free work for his part-time occupation among the Preventors since the opportunity had presented itself.



"Number One's in a temper. Got some bad news from those worthless gits in the capitol," the woman replied.



"You mean those Romafeller puppies?" the man sitting next to Trowa growled. "What they got ta say bout our girl?"



Oh, now this was interesting. He'd just received confirmation on two things... one, Number One was indeed in the area; and two, the Belterre Provisional government was neither respected nor liked by the average Belterre.



"I don't know for certain," the woman with the juicy news continued. "But Cora said that her brother Sergey-"



"Is that the one with the long braid?" the guy next to Trowa interjected.



"No that's the other one," the woman corrected. "Sergey is the tall skinny one with his head shaved bald."



"Bad haircut on him," the other guy commented.



"Anyway," the woman said impatiently. "Cora said Sergey was on an errand nearby when Number One stopped by our haven to meet up with her second. 'Said somethin pissed her off terrible, face like a thunderhead."



"So what was it?" the first guy asked.



"Sergey said he thought he overheard Bryson say that it was something to do with those Provies; made some announcement or other..."



"Aww they's always makin' announcements," the second guy scoffed.



"I wish they'd announce they were going to do something about these damned Raiders," the woman grumbled. "How are any of us ever going to start rebuilding if we have to worry about thugs with large guns terrorizing an honest person? That's the reason none can leave the collective safety of the camps and start building houses of our own. Not like in the old days when it was safe to even cross the countryside unguarded."



"I heard they have a city rebuilt in sector twenty-nine, where the old capitol used to be," the second guy volunteered.



"Where'd you hear that?" the first asked.



"One of the Homeguard guys traveling with Number One said so."



"So those Provies are actually doing something?" the woman said, a small note of hopefulness creeping into her voice.



"Neh," the second grunted in negation. "Just made a bunch of museums and memorials. From what I heard, it looks nice but that's about all it does. No one lives there, 'cept the Provies."



"Probably dining on caviar and living in nice houses no doubt," the guy sitting next to Trowa grumbled.



"Most likely," the second guy said, his voice tired with resignation.



"Losers," the woman said. "I for one just can't put my faith in that so-called "official" Provisional government of Belterre. Not since our supposed leaders abandoned this country back even before the going got tough. If they're our government how come they don't help us? I say, if they want my support they'll have to earn it."



"Hear hear," the second guy applauded. The first guy nodded emphatically.



It sounded to Trowa like there was a lot of dissatisfaction with the Belterre Provisional Government. Maybe it was just the three of them, or maybe it was even a local problem... with a flood and a bunch of people crammed into a camp there was bound to be a lot of grumbling (especially after a long hard day like these people had just been through) but somehow Trowa doubted that was really all there was to it.



A fourth man entered into the gossip session.



"I heard that the Provies are going to start printing their own money." He sounded and looked pretty amused. The three gossip mongers laughed as if he'd told a joke.



"Printing money eh? Won't trade in a haven that's fer sure," the woman said a trifle scornfully. "Not when havens only take ration chits, requisition chits, honor chits and luxury chits for the stuff people need."



"Refresh my memory," the second guy, younger than all of the other workers involved in the conversation (who were all in their mid-thirties) said. "Why is our government's original form of currency no longer valid? I was still pretty young back in those days."



"Well lad, our government as we knew it then collapsed in 187. The original political leaders of Belterre packed up their valuables and split when the Alliance started rapid expansion on their military programs. Without a sound government backing to keep all of the banks in line the value of the paper bill became worthless and thus..."



"Economic collapse," the woman said, a little grimly. "I can still remember it well. You could walk up to a vendor with an entire wheelbarrow full of money and you couldn't even get groceries."



"It wasn't the fact that nobody had any money," the fourth man explained. "It was the fact that because there was no faith in our government, the money they had was worthless. People?s entire life savings just went out the window. The Alliance came in supposedly riding to the rescue and just started printing up more and more money like that was going to fix anything; soon you couldn't buy a loaf of bread with a lake of notes."



"Why don't the Provies just start accepting chits like the rest of us do?" the young man asked.



"Lad, those Provies may call themselves our government but they haven't the first clue about what that means," the fourth man, Trowa was now betting that he was educated in some way, either a teacher or a professor or had some form of higher education at one point.



"Yeah," the woman agreed. "They didn?t know what life is like for us here in the havens. They probably don't even know about the raiders."



"Oh they know," the fourth man said. "They just don't really care. You see, the Provies see matters of government on a different level than we in the havens or our Homeguard do. For us who are so accustomed to Homeguard, the Coordinators and the sub-coordinators, we see government as being purely involved with us; our people, our needs, our governance. They look more at the broader spectrum; they see Belterre on an international level and they involve themselves with foreign affairs."



"But Belterre hasn't been on an international level for almost an entire generation," the young man protested. "Why don't they worry about involving themselves in local affairs first? Let's see them start providing a little something to help the havens start rebuilding for real instead of building up their stupid little castles and prancing around in front of a bunch of foreigners!"



Several head bobs of agreement and a few "ayes!" and "damn straights!" met the young man's heated proclamation.



"The least they could do is drop by and take a look at how we're doing. I've never heard of those Provies ever stepping foot outside of their fancy new city to mingle with us common folk. Maybe if they did they'd see beyond the ends of their noses!"



Trowa noticed with a growing sense of unease that several other citizens of Belterre had also been listening in on the same conversation he'd taken an interest in and were nodding and making noises in agreement. These people weren't just dissatisfied with the way the Provisional government was handling things, they looked downright upset with it. This definitely spelled trouble for him... a definite possibility for civil unrest and these citizens had access to an armed force, a well-trained armed force. If they were made unhappy enough there was the possibility they might make their displeasure known to the rest of the world.



"They can't even muster up the time or resources to help out in an emergency," the woman said with some heat. ?The only help we can count on in any sort of emergency has been and will probably continue to be Homeguard. Let's face it, we're all we have."



By the facial expressions on the other workers in the truck it looked like things might degenerate into some kind of civil protest rally. This country was a powder keg that looked like it would bear some looking in to. He'd be certain to keep his ears sharp and his eyes peeled. After all, it was the job of the Preventors to put out fires, especially when they were still small.



Trowa looked up ahead to see the "haven" just coming into view as they topped a rise. His expression didn't change, but he grimaced inwardly.



"Well," Relena remarked softly from the other side of Catherine. "It has a nice homey "welcome to the apocalypse" feel to it, doesn't it?"



It was fortress, pure and simple. Sand-bag walls plated with metal siding surrounded the entire flattened summit and rose to a safe (and intimidating) height of ten feet. There were watchtowers built at appropriate intervals ringed all around the outer wall, next to the watchtowers were bright football stadium lights reaching towards the sky to illuminate even the darkest night, and the gate leading onto the base was one of those two-tower-and-a-crosspiece affairs that were so good for defense.



"It's good to be home!" the man seated next to Trowa said, smiling a little.



"They did a really good job for only having this place up and running for a few days," the young man said as their truck pulled up to the thick iron gate. "It a shame about the original haven though."



Trowa surmised that it had likely been lost or relocated due to the flood.



Once the trucks cleared the entrance most of the working-men and -women piled, hopped, and stampeded out of the transports and joined their own families, leaving Trowa and the members of the caravan that had been traveling along with him behind. Trowa scanned around him taking in the interior of the camp.



<That's strange,> he thought for a moment. <Something about this place feels oddly familiar.> He shrugged it off as being the feeling of the sort of familiar sameness that accompanied always traveling in camps like these; you've seen one you've them all.





Then people started to emerge from tents and the few make-shift cabins inside the camp. Trowa's trained eyes could make out the definite traces of a system of order to the structures within the walls as Catherine had described to him earlier. Several rings in a circle around the center of the camp. Each ring had one central fire-pit circled in an orderly manner by several large cabin-like structures which were in turn ringed by clusters of smaller tents... well in this case, they were raised wooden platforms on sturdy stilts with canvas roofs lashed securely to the frames; likely a precaution against the wet. From the central fire-pits, from the clusters of tent-platforms, from the main buildings around the fire pits emerged people of all ages; tiny children, young men and women, elderly folks all gathering around the trucks that held Trowa and his companions with curiosity, suspicion and a little fear written plain on their faces.



From the gathered crowd emerged an elderly careworn ascetic-looking gentleman with graying hair, a widow's peak and a definite air of calm authority. He wore a blank gold-colored metal disk around his neck, and his clothes, while no better or less worn than the peoples that surrounded him, were cut to fit. Trowa noted that there were several other people with silver metal disks around their necks that ranged to the sides of the elderly man, and with the emergence of the man with the gold disk and the group of people with the silver disks, the some of the worried looks eased from the faces of many of the people in the crowd. That confirmed if for Trowa... these people were definitely the leaders around these here parts.



The elderly man, spying the flanks of midnight blue mobile suits blocking the exit behind the trucks, relaxed a little and looked like he knew precisely what was going on. Indeed, he spread his arms and hands out in a gesture of welcome and said



"Homeguard of Belterre, Highground Haven welcomes you with open arms and offers its hospitality, however small, to you and yours."



The cock-pit of the mobile suit n the front and center of all of the other Homeguard suits popped open and the person inside of it stepped out onto the platform. The wind from the incoming storm gusted suddenly in from the side and caught the hair of the person standing on the mobile suit and lifted it like a golden banner to the breeze. Trowa froze suddenly, stock still in shock. He recognized the pilot!



His entire world seemed to freeze in place; he had the disorienting feeling of being outside of time for the one endless moment of instant recognition. It felt like all of the air had been knocked from his lungs and if his face had been as expressive as the average persons his mouth would probably have been hanging open. He knew her. The leader of Homeguard, the leader of the militia group that held armaments in this country was none other than Midii Une, ex-spy of the United Earth Sphere Alliance Military. There could be no mistake; he knew her.



Then the world snapped back into place and he was shocked into the present when she moved. Midii leapt with the ease of long practice down from the cock-pit platform of her suit (Trowa recalled that she had leapt the exact same way from the shoulder of his mobile suit back when they had been younger) and walked over to the man who had welcomed them and clasped the wrists of his extended arms in greeting.



"As the leader of Homeguard I accept your welcome and your hospitality gladly Coordinator Meitchel. It's good to see you again."



They were smiling with the familiarity of long acquaintances, so obviously the greeting was mostly a formality. At a signal from Midii, the other pilots of the suits emerged from their cockpits and leapt to the ground the join in with the people behind their fearless leader.



"May I know the number of our unexpected and honored guests so that my people can begin to see to the situation and provisioning for them?"



"We've got seventy with the circus, twelve merchants, and two regular civilians," a young man with an unruly mane of red hair who stood slightly behind and off to one side of Midii volunteered. "That's eighty-four all told. Think your people can handle it old man?"



"Bryson! Show some respect to the Coordinator here," the young blonde snapped. She turned back to the elderly man



"I'm sorry for my XO, he's an idiot."



"Not at all," Coordinator Meitchel replied good-naturedly. "It shouldn't be too much of a problem. We'll have to double up in the plats, but we've enough food in the granaries to feed them all. It was a good harvest in this part of the country."



"That's a relief!" Midii said, looking truly relieved. "I'm sorry; I didn't want to put to much of a strain on your resources Coordinator, but..."



"These things happen, I understand," the Coordinator said as the men and women wearing silver disks stepped forward and started counting off and dividing the rescued civilians in the trucks. To Trowa's surprise and dismay his sister Catherine hoisted herself up onto the cross-piece of the truck they had ridden in along with the other passengers and called out



"Number One! Hey! Midii! Over here!"



The blonde woman turned and looked over her shoulder to where his sister waved frantically. Trowa ducked to one side to hurriedly blend in with the rest of the performers and merchants piled into the truck with him. He didn't want that girl seeing him, he didn't want her recognizing him, and he certainly didn't want her talking to him!



Midii's face lit up in surprise and delight as she obviously recognized Catherine. She quickly bowed to the Coordinator, gesturing that her second was to take her place, and hurried over to see his sister. Trowa scowled as Catherine leapt down from the back of the truck and the two young women embraced each other like they were old friends.



"Oh my god girl, how are you!" Cathy asked as the two of them exchanged kisses on the cheek familiarly. "I haven't seen you in forever!"



"It's great to see you Cathy!" the little blonde traitor replied with every evidence of real delight in her body language. "It's been ages, how have you been?"



The two of them made to walk off with every sign of being two best girlfriends ready to dish and catch up on old times while Trowa, Heero and Relena were kindly yet efficiently escorted away from the vehicles and deeper into the camp by one of the people with a silver disk around their necks.



Trowa didn't like it. He didn't like it one bit.



Leaving Heero and Relena to take care of the details with silver-disk Trowa immediately tailed the two of them. He didn't want his only family falling into the hands of his enemy. She was the leader of a force of arms with unknown strength and capability. The situation would bear careful watching, and if he hung around close enough, he would likely hear information that would be far more useful than a lot of peasant gossip.

* * *

She listened with one Ear while her guest and friend chattered on about her recent life at the circus, her younger brother and the two new lions that had been born recently. Midii liked Catherine, she genuinely did. The older woman had an open friendliness and an innocence about her that Midii wished she still had; but she really couldn't afford to be innocent. Still, Catherine was someone she'd like to protect and see safe; people like were rare in this world, people who would take you in without a second thought, without wanting to know your past or where you've come from or what you'd done... people who would accept you as you were and do their best to make you feel better when you were down. Catherine was a rare soul indeed, Midii envied her (ever-absent) little brother a little; he got to spend all of his time being taken care of by a wonderful big sister. What could ever possess the idiot to want to leave? If Midii were part of Cathy's family she'd face hell itself to protect it... then again, facing hell itself for the sake of protecting her family wasn't strange to her.





"Midii! You're soaked to the skin; you're going to catch a chill!" Catherine scolded. "Get out of those wet things and somewhere warm and dry before you catch your death. Honestly, who takes care of you?"



Midii grinned wryly at her; her smile more than a little self-deprecating.



"No one really. It's my responsibility to provide for my people. I am the nominal commander of Homeguard, my people will eat before I eat, rest before I rest and-"



"Yes yes miss martyr-in-training. You know young woman, you have a real self-sacrifice complex!" Cathy said tartly. The taller older woman snatched up a dark green wool army blanket hanging over a line and whipped it around the young woman she was scoldings thin shoulders.



"And put this on before you shiver yourself to pieces."



"Yes Cathy," she said with mock-humility. "I bow to your superior wisdom."





"And when's the last time you had a descent meal? I told you last time that you need to start eating better, I'll bet you don't weigh ninety pounds soaking wet with your clothes on. You need to start eating better and taking better care of yourself, just look at those circles under your eyes."



"Yes, oh good advice guru!"



"I'm serious, you're going to wear yourself to a wraith if you keep at it the way you are. Running patrols in your suit all day with barely anything to eat, and don't try to look innocent with me, then coming home and working until late at night. You grab unhealthy food at odd hours and when you do eat, you're not getting enough of the right things!"



"My life is but to serve!" Midii said bowing with her hands pressed together before her in mocking servility.



Catherine shot the young woman a mock glare and put her hands on her hips.



"That's the problem!" she said. Cathy was just getting started on her big-sisterly scold-rant. Midii knew from past experience that once her nurturing instincts had been aroused there was little besides total and complete compliance that would satisfy her. Midii knew it when she saw it because she had been the same way once upon a time and she quickly headed Cathy off with



"So," Midii said disarmingly. "How's that troublesome brother of yours? Still popping off at the drop of a hat?"



"He's gotten better," Cathy said defensively.



"Uh-huh," Midii said, obviously not buying it. "If he were my little brother, I'd have him caged alongside his beloved lions. I certainly wouldn't allow him to go marching off to fight in every single little dust-up and debacle that blew through out there. That's the trick to having younger siblings; you have to be firm with them. Why when I was living at home, my younger brothers minded me because they knew if they didn't I'd have their hind ends!"



"Midii, it's been what? Eight, nine years since you lived at home with your family? Of course they minded you, they were too young not to. Trowa's different. He's definitely got a mind of his own, and I don't think he'd take kindly to me treating him like some willful adolescent."



"Betcha my last honor-chit that he is a willful adolescent," Midii riposted. "He should be at home protecting you instead of gallivanting off with his friends causing death destruction and massive amounts of property damage."



Then she smiled mischievously and suggested



"You could chain him up in your trailer."



"If I could catch him," Cathy retorted.



Midii adopted a fake mafia accent as she said



"You just say the word... me an' the boys we'll take care of it for ya."



Cathy laughed.



"I'm serious," Midii said, the smile on her face belying her words. "I know some people who know some people."



"Know them? Midii, last I checked, you lead them!"



"Guilty as charged," she said with false ruefulness. "And a scraggly lot they are too!"



"I resent that," a young man, maybe a year or two older than Midii (and just about Cathy's age) said as he joined the two women outside of a patched and worn canvas tent. He had scarlet hair in an untamed tumble down to his shoulders.



"I don't see why, Bryson," Midii said with nonchalance. "You're the scraggliest of the lot of them."



"Now is that any way to talk to your dearest second in command?" he said lightly. Midii gave him a flat look; he grinned and leaned over to stage whisper to Cathy



"She's just grumpy because she hasn't had her nap today."



Midii rolled her eyes and turned to Cathy.



"I'd love to stay here and chit-chat with you Cath but you know I've got fifty billion things I have to do," she said with the swift, barely comprehensible babble of a commander giving someone a quick run-down before they had to hurry off to attend to something else.



"I have to meet with the Coordinator to discuss defense of the Haven and its granaries, followed by another meeting with the scouts from this cell of Homeguard for a final report on this sector, then Bryson and I need to make arrangements for the defense against the Raiders now that they've stepped up their activities, and that's not mentioning the reports from all the different sectors that are likely waiting for me on my desk and all of the other stuff that's likely going to come up to bite me in the ass. See sub-Coordinator Hadrian about your plat assignment don't forget to collect your reqie-chits, I recommend warming up in the saunas before you head to the caf for some dinner. I gotta go, no rest for the wicked you know."



"Slow down there girl," Bryson said with a disarming bat of his hand. "You've been going non-stop since harvest and I know for a fact that you've caught maybe a grand total of ten hours of sleep in the last two days; you've been up since dawn this morning running rescues and haven't had a thing in your stomach besides that mug of hot spiced cider since shortly after the early shift breakfast."



"Tattle-tale," Midii muttered as she caught the full brunt of Cathy's reproachful look.



"I'll handle the meeting with Meitchel and the report from the scouts. *YOU* go shower and warm up in the sauna, you've been shivering all day and you don't even look like death warmed over... because you're not warmed over."



Midii looked like she was going to protest even as Cathy put one arm around the smaller woman's shoulder before she could even think to escape.



"But-" Midii began.



Bryson turned her just as firmly and they both started walking her away from the command tent.



"Then, once we're nice and toasty," Cathy continued without missing a beat, winking to her co-conspirator. "We're going down to that wonderful caf of yours and you're going to eat until *I* say you're full."



"But-"





"After that, then you can head directly to bed to get some well-deserved rest," Bryson said cheerfully, obviously enjoying himself bossing his nominal commander around.



"But-"



"Don't worry about it, there's always plenty of time for trouble," Bryson cajoled. "You owe it to your dependents to be well rested and in top fighting condition."



"But-"



"A full glass holds no water," Cathy added.



"But- but-"



"Butter on those scones? Why certainly," Bryson said. "I'll see to it."



And with that the red-haired one kipped off to attend to matters leaving Midii to Catherine?s bossy tender mercies. The girl was obviously so exhausted she gave in with only a token struggle to assuage her conscience and allowed herself to be led away to one of the large structures ringed around one of the large central fire pits near the western edge of the camp too tired to be aware of their very discreet tailer.



* * *

Trowa looked around from his unseen spot just outside the tiny tent-like structure he'd followed his sister and the little resistance leader to. A tray with big bowls of hearty stew and several loves of bread were brought over by one of the people wearing a little silver disk, probably as a mark of deference to the rank and importance of the visitor inside the little tent-like structure.



Everyone else in the camp was too busy with their activities to pay any attention to him. It was meal time for one shift, with bowls of hearty stews and trenchers of warm bread served alongside ale, moonshine, or water being passed out by people who had probably drawn that as their lot for the evening. There were groups of people both men and women hurrying to bring in the laundry before the big storm on the horizon struck, there was the bang and clatter of another shifts dishes being done, and the frantic rushing of preparations to get all of their guests (and their animals) settled in before the storm hit, people rushed to and fro securing any loose articles and double-tying lines and adding extra ties to canvas roofs; children were laughing, chasing each other around in impromptu games of tag under the watchful eye of some of the older folks of the camp... it looked like a healthy life here in the havens, well relatively anyway. There was enough food to feed everyone, the water was sanitized, there was structured organization for tasks to be accomplished, likely a penal system in place, and everyone seemed healthy enough there wasn't any disease that he could see. How did all of this fit together and what did Midii have to do with it?



He set himself up to listen in as Cathy and Midii discussed whatever it was they were going to discuss, but instead of talking about the numbers in Homeguard, how man weapons they were carrying, their strengths and weaknesses, or something else equally important or interesting they insisted on talking about inconsequential little details like who was dating who and who had broken up with who and other girly stuff. For the first twenty or so minutes Cathy talked about nearly every single detail going on in her life while Midii kept saying happily that it was warm inside the little sauna. He?d been a little surprised that Cathy and Midii had hit it off so well and so suddenly but there seemed to be something about the woman that inspired people to trust her. It was like the girl had a little magic Trust-me Aura hanging around her. It had pulled him in and ended a chapter of his life tragically he would be damned if he'd let the same thing happen to someone he cared about, to the one he protected. He resignedly settled himself in for a long wait.



"...ember this one time that Bryson had this fling with these two girls in the same haven at almost the same time and when they both found out about it, 'cause in a community that small everybody knows everybody's business, well anyway when they both found out about it, it took two of my men, all of the camps prefects, two sub-coordinators an omni bunds and me three hours to sort the mess out," Midii said with the air of someone imparting a juicy piece of gossip. They'd been at it for what felt like hours! Trowa rolled his eyes and hoped against hope that they'd start with the more intimate-secret type gossip, stuff that girls only tell other girls they're close to that had to do with what they were afraid of and how many troops they had under their command.



"He sounds like a lot of trouble, why do you keep him around?" Cathy asked. "Is there a little unspoken attraction going on?"



"Eeew! Are you crazy? With him?! Not happening. I keep him around because we've been through a lot together; he's like my own family now. I don't think I could handle all of this without him."



"Well that's pretty honest of you... though certainly a lot less interesting that the unspoken attraction thing. Are you sure you're not at least a little attracted to him?"



"Nope. It'd be like incest. He's like my own brother. That's why I boss him around so much you see."



"Ah. So tell me about how things have changed, I mean... how's everything going?"



Midii sighed and said





"Not so well really. Even with the harvest in, I've got to worry about how best to allocate supplies among all of the havens so that everybody can eat and not just the ones who brought in a good haul. And with those Raiders attacking from all sides of the borders, my Homeguard forces are stretched thin. I can't seem to find enough trained personnel to fill all of the positions I need. It's true that we got a harvest in this year, but we've had just one trial after another over and over. First there was a series of strikes by the Raiders along the havens in sectors forteen, nine, seven and ten shortly after harvest which weakened the strength of the Homeguard in that because it took out some of the fighters stationed there and the suits had to be repaired with parts we didn't have; so me and my mobile troops had to hurry over there to fill in for the ground troops that got taken out of commission. I had to leave a small detachment behind as well as staff part of that fort's medical wing, so my traveling troops are only at half strength right now. Its a problem because patrolling rescue runs in an emergency situation is best done with a fully staffed team. And even only at half strength I still have to worry about running transport security so that the few traders I can get to pass through my country and trade with Belterre don't have to worry about their supply caravans. They are the only real source of income we have and even that is scarcely enough to cover expenses."



"I thought that your Homeguard was only a military organization Midii."



"No. No we're a lot more than that. I have my people from a lot of different backgrounds and they're all trained in a wide variety of skills out of necessity. We're part patrol force, part circuit judge, part national defense, part disaster relief, part rescue runners, part construction workers, part triage staff, part farmer, and part...whatever else the moment requires. You see national defense is only part of what Homeguard does, basically it our mission to take care of the civilians, to protect them."



"So you're not interested in say, taking over the world or causing problems outside your borders..." Cathy pursued.



<Thank-you Cathy!> he thought with relief. Finally, now they were getting somewhere. He'd have to remember to do her an extra favor later to thank her for what she was doing now... these were precisely the questions he needed answers to.



"Are you crazy?" Midii's voice replied. "I have enough problems to take care of inside our borders. But that reminds me, there was something I wanted to ask you about."



"Go ahead," said Cathy openly.



"A couple of months back a cell of my Homeguard in sector twenty seven along the western border picked up a small armed force invading the edges of our borders. My men said they were obviously not Raiders nor were the traders or merchants and that they looked like they were spying about. They were poking around, looking for people to talk to; they even tried to approach one of the Havens but my people pulled back within their walls and wouldn't come in but the unusual thing about them was that their military insignia's didn't match any of the ones we know of. We thought they must be some kind of para-military organization, an armed force that has no real official backing that is, but now I'm not so certain. They've made a few attempts to contact us, unfortunately I can't afford to let them near us or any of the havens we protect and we can't receive their electronic attempts to open communications as our equipment is one short step away from the garbage heap. I don't know who they are or what they want. My people have just been sneaking up on them, disarming them and escorting them to the border because frankly we don't know enough about them to judge whether they're friend or foe."



"Why don't you know anything about them? If they're a well established group your people should be able to identify them right?" she asked.



"The information I have of the world beyond the borders of this poor country is sketchy at best. Our electronics and communication systems are pretty primitive; it's capable of local broadcast only. We use the comm system to maintain communications between the Homeguard cell-fort and the Havens in a particular sector but the range is extremely limited, mostly we can't even reach sector to sector and we have to rely on message runners for most communications between sectors. All of the news we get concerning the world outside of the borders of Belterre comes from the trade caravans or from travelers through our country like yourself, but word of mouth is often unreliable. I'd send a team out to do some reconnaissance beyond the border but my forces are already stretched too thin. Any information you can give me concerning this threat would be helpful."



"What did the insignia look like?" Cathy asked. "Maybe I can tell you who it is."



"A stylized P," answered Midii. "They came wearing weapons but they haven't been overtly hostile. I do not like making decisions based on little to no information but with the way things are going I will have to make some decisions very shortly and I don't have the resources to spend on ferreting out information on two possible enemies. If at all possible, I'd like to concentrate all of my energy on only one."



"What do you mean?" Cathy questioned, sounding alarmed. Trowa could have kissed his sister right then, thank goodness for the female propensity for sharing their troubles with one another.



"Well I don't want what I'm about to tell you getting out so I'm going to swear you to secrecy," Midii lowered her voice so Trowa had to lean a little closer to hear what she said. He was triply glad of his acrobatic balance ability; anyone else would have lost their balance, tipped over, and fell through the cloth roof.



"Only I and a few select others know about it," Midii continued.



"I'm the soul of discretion."



"It concerns a group of people within our borders. They say that they're farmers but there's nothing to farm. They've built up a small fortified city every bit as heavily defensible as a Haven but here's the odd part... they only just moved in at the end of the wars. Which leads me to the question of why? Why build fortified cement walls and watchtowers, why build holders for munitions and explosives, why train a small army inside their defenses... why do all of this when they only real threat to worry about is the Raiders? The fort itself is enormous; I could probably fit four Havens in there with room to spare but there's only about twenty people inside that we know of. This is where it starts getting tricky, you see all I have to go on are instincts; I have no proof. They've cooperated with every single inspection that I've sent in the look around their little campground and every single time we turn up nothing. We can't find any munitions only empty holders for them, we can't find any empty tunnels or underground bunkers only "storage cellars" and the people inside their little fiefdom look healthy and well fed but not like fighters. No one wears uniforms or carries any sort of weapon and my people have been over every inch of that place but haven't found any trace of weaponry. It's frustrating

[Eienvine]

Umm, was it supposed to end right there? Well, anyway, here is my review for what part of it is up. This story is so much fun! I'm normally not much of one for really heavily politics/military type stories, but the way you write keeps my interest anyway. You're doing a great job of keeping it readable.

And I totally never guessed that Midii was Number One- never even saw it coming. I probably should have, but, well, there you go. I suppose this is going to be Trowa/Midii? I'm normally not into that pairing, but maybe you'll be able to convince me. Keep writing!