[Gundam SEED] The SEED of Tomorrow

[Lord Raa]

Back to the regular content for this chapter.


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The SEED of Tomorrow


By Lord Raa


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Disclaim-me-do: Sandwiches are not "w00t!" foods.


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Chapter 7


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Lenore Zala slowly chewed her pizza as she waited for her husband to explain exactly what it was that he'd planned for Athrun.

"Where to begin?" Patrick asked rhetorically. He took a deep breath before beginning the explanation of his actions to his wife. "Birthrates for Coordinators reduce with each generation. There's only a small difference between first and second generation, but the third generation appear to have a few sterility problems."

"That does correspond to the numbers I've seen from the Bureau of Official Statistics."

"If this trend was to continue, in a few years, PLANT will have a demographic crisis."

"Certainly if the war is not ended soon," Lenore said, nodding in agreement.

"This is where Athrun comes in," Patrick smiled. "Ulen Hibiki was hoping to make the Ultimate Coordinator. Thanks to some assistance and gentle persuasion, he agreed to make Athrun the peak of human genetics."

Lenore nodded as she reach for her wineglass. "I'm with you so far. This was why we delayed having Athrun, after all."

The Chairman took a sip of his wine before continuing. "Athrun isn't going to be the patriarch of a new generation. His sperm counts are too low. However, what he lacks in quantity, he more than makes up for in quality. Not just in DNA, the tests showed they all had good motility and no deformations."

"Does that mean he'll be using in vitro fertilisation methods?" the Zala matriarch frowned. "It seems like a waste to me."

"Ha ha, no, I wouldn't do that to our son. I'm not Al Da Flaga," Patrick said with a grin. "But thanks to Hibiki's work, Athrun will help with the fertility rates of PLANT. He won't father a generation, but his secretions will help others with their attempts to conceive."

Lenore pondered this. "So, the would-be mothers of PLANT will be queueing up for sex with our son in the hope that it will aid their pregnancy with their partners?"

"Not only that, but Athrun will be the bridge between Naturals and Coordinators. A child would be a naturally occurring Coordinator."

"What about their children?"

"That would depend on who the child mated with."

Lenore shook her head. "You've taken the potential you gave our son and your squandering it on a breeding programme!"

"It's more than that, Lenore!" Patrick snapped. "It's... well, look, our son is genetic perfection. We need to make sure that gets passed on to future generations. Not only that, our son or his son could lead humanity to its next stage. Consider the advances we could make as a species! No longer would we be stuck at the Lagrange points, but extrasolar travel.

"Those that carried Athrun's DNA would be able to adapt to any environment within a generation or three. How long would it take for Naturals to adapt to Mars' lower gravity?"

"I suppose you're right, Patrick, but still..."

"I understand your reticence, Lenore, but this isn't just about me having a legacy, it's about ensuring the future of Coordinators."

Lenore sighed. "Promise me that you're not going to force Athrun into this. If he wants to just live a quiet life with Lacus, promise me that you'll let him."

"I promise you, Lenore. Athrun will be free to make his own choices," Patrick smiled genuinely. "Speaking of Lacus..."

"Ah... Well, the thing is I had make sure that she was good enough for Athrun. She barely knows how the Naturals make babies."

"I hope you didn't teach her too much. She must remain pure but thirsty."

"Why?"

"Because Athrun sees her as pure and innocent. He felt shame from wanting to do things like hold her hand and sit with her under a tree. To know that she's skilled at sucking dick will crush him," Patrick explained. "Other women will attempt to seduce him, but that's what happens when you're better than the best result the genetic dice could ever bring up.

"Besides, Siegel Clyne's head will explode when he finds out what his precious daughter is doing in the fight to hold her own against grown women for the love of Athrun."

"You devious bastard!"

"It's why you love me, isn't it?" the Chairman said before laughing like a supervillain.


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Cagalli Yula Athha had just finished escorting the Morgenroete engineers to the Earth Alliance when she received the call from her superiors at the Orb intelligence agency, ODESSA.

"Speak to me," the blonde said into her phone.

"¬Agent Athha, we've got a new assignment for you.¬"

Cagalli moved to a more secluded part of the building. "No down time for me, huh?"

"¬It's unfortunate, but your previous mission was only escort duty and this mission is time sensitive,¬" the handler on the other end said apologetically.

"I suppose you're right," the young woman conceded. "Right, so what do you need me to do?"

"¬We need you to break someone out of a secure facility and get them to the mass driver in Panama.¬"

Cagalli shrugged. It wasn't the first time she'd taken part in a jailbreak, but the escort duty part sounded boring to her. Most people she needed to babysit were weaklings who had to be protected from anything scarier than a soft cushion. "Send me the details and I'll get them to Panama."

The call was terminated and an encrypted data file was transmitted to the secured phone. The blonde took the opportunity for a comfort break and used the privacy to review the dossier she'd been sent.

'Athrun Zala, as in...?' The more Cagalli read through the briefing, the more she started to understand about what was so time sensitive about this mission. 'I suppose that keeping an eye on him won't hurt too much,' she thought with an amused smirk.

Finishing up in the restroom, Cagalli signalled that she was en route to the secured facility holding Athrun Zala prisoner.


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The Earth Alliance high command were in deep discussion about the ultimatum Patrick Zala had sent them.

"We can't allow the peace talks to be jeopardised, we have to give his son back!" an Admiral insisted.

"And give up our best leverage?" Captain Sutherland asked. "It's how we can ensure we get what we want."

"Rau Le Creuset is on his way. Sure, it's just one ship, something we can handle if we send the Archangel to head a battle fleet," Rear Admiral Haliburton added. "But if we open fire, we'll be the ones breaking the ceasefire."

"How is the work on the remaining Gundam coming?"

"The good news is that the Gundam will function. The bad news is that it currently requires a Coordinator to get it to work properly," Captain Yuuki answered. "What Athrun did to the OS to get it to function is nothing short of phenomenal. However, they're reviewing the OS line by line. It'll take weeks to get to the testing phase, even with the new help from Morgenroete."

There were a few sounds of commotion as the officers protested the slow nature of the work on the mobile suit.

The highest ranking officer there, Fleet Admiral Giovanni Locatelli, called for calm. "Gentlemen, we can't stall any longer, we need to make a decision. Either we agree to the demands and send Athrun Zala back to his father or we don't. If we send him back, we can keep the peace talks going and possibly see an end to this war before too long. That is assuming that they are true to their word.

"If we don't send him, we risk opening up hostilities again. You've read the same reports I have, you know that without the Gundam or a method of countering the neutron jammers, we're not going to be able to fight back for a while. That's not to say we can't win this war, it just means we're in danger of a Pyrrhic victory."

Solemn silence descended on the room as they processed their options.

"If anyone has any other options, now is the time to speak up," the Fleet Admiral said.

"We could stall with a wild goose chase," Captain Sutherland suggested. "It won't buy us much time, but if we were to claim that we've had a systems failure, we could send up a number of ships or capsules and Le Creuset would have to investigate them all."

"He would be under orders to ensure Athrun's safe return. But we risk losing all of these ships and we have some severe shortages. We did need Morgenroete to build the Gundams for us," Haliburton added.

"We have no guarantee that they won't betray us when they have him back!" Sutherland protested.

And so, the debate raged on into the night.


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Fortunately for the Cagalli Yula Athha, there was only a short distance between the facility where she'd dropped the Morgenroete engineers off and the airport for her connecting flight to southern California. The security measures meant that she was unable to carry through her normal armament, but the blonde told herself that it was a civilian flight so there would be few weapons onboard.

Not that a graduate of the ODESSA training programme was ever truly unarmed. After looking around, the blonde decided that her krav maga skills would be enough on this flight. Even if someone managed to conceal a blade through security, improvised weapons training would mean that Cagalli could incapacitate a man with the in-flight magazine or one of the stewardess' trays.

But still, there was something unsettling about being away from a proper weapon while on mission.

'I must look into Captain Simeone's work on ceramic blades...' she thought as she felt the aircraft accelerate into the sky.

It was an honorary rank for the engineer, but Captain Simeone was one of the best engineers in the ODESSA backroom staff. His work on composite materials had proved quite useful for body armour used by the Orb military. It had even found its way into the mobile suits Morgenroete had produced for the Earth Alliance.

There were rumours that his blades, while fragile, were sharper than any steel blade. As Cagalli closed her eyes to help make the flight pass quicker, she reasoned that having a piece of the blade break off inside your opponent might prove more useful than sword sturdy enough for a medieval battlefield.

After all, the state of the art with military technology was the mobile suit with Phase Shift armour.

She opened her eyes when she heard the man in the seat next to her speak to a stewardess about what drink he wanted. He'd ordered a coffee.

"What would you like to drink, Madam?" a pretty redhead asked with a practised smile.

"Gin," the blonde answered without hesitation.

The stewardess was surprised at the earliness of the traveller's drinking, but said nothing and produced a small bottle of gin and a plastic tumbler containing ice and an anaemic slice of lemon. "What would you like as a mixer?"

"Regular tonic water will be fine," Cagalli replied. Her expression softened. "I've got one of those days ahead of me and I could do with a spot of Dutch courage."

"Ah," the redhead nodded as she handed over the can of tonic water.

The man was about to speak to Cagalli when he noticed the look in her eye. It warned him not to speak to her, lest he find himself in pain. He swallowed nervously before turning his attention back to his coffee.


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Cagalli's flight landed on time and she was met by another Orb operative. Samantha Choy was an attractive woman of Chinese descent; she was in her early thirties and had spent most of the last decade working in the Atlantic Federation for ODESSA.

As the pair walked to their SUV, Agent Choy asked if Cagalli knew anything about the mission they'd been assigned.

"Not much other than the initial briefing," the blonde answered. "Even then, that was a data packet. As I understand things, we're being asked to break Chairman Zala's son out of the military prison."

"That's phase one," Choy replied. "The second part is to get him on board a shuttle into orbit to meet Rau Le Creuset."

"I heard that the only reason why we've got a ceasefire is because Patrick Zala wants his son back," Cagalli said as she fastened her seatbelt. "If that's the case, why are we helping ZAFT out?"

"I asked the same thing, but they didn't tell me," Choy said as she directed the car to the safehouse. "My guess is that Blue Cosmos might do something stupid as a power play and if that happens, ZAFT might react badly."

"Not as badly as Chairman Zala." Cagalli activated the air conditioning. She could have opened the window, but one did not get to be as successful as she was by being careless. She turned to her travelling companion. "I hear rumours that Heliopolis may have to be evacuated."

"Yeah, though there's not much intel on that at the moment. I suspect that ZAFT might have something to do with that. What's brought this up?"

"I was nearly assigned to escort the Morgenroete engineers and the Gundams to the Archangel," the blonde said. "I was about to head out with them, when I get a call for some close protection duty."

"I'm not sure you could have done anything differently."

"No, but you always wonder about these things."

"Best not to dwell on them. Anyway, about our mission," Samantha said, deftly changing the subject.

"How will we get him out of the prison?" Cagalli asked. "We don't have the time to dig a tunnel, and breaching the walls is probably a bad idea."

"Infiltration. I've got you a uniform and visitor's pass, but unfortunately, you'll have to pretend to be a man."

"Crossdressing?" The blonde asked. "Better than having to seduce dirty old men, I guess."


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Patrick Zala strode into his office with a purpose. "Arrange for the communications department to come to my office immediately."

"S-sir?" his assistant asked, slightly fearful of the expression on the Chairman's face.

"I need to send a message to my son."

"Right away, Sir," the assistant said, picking up the phone.

A few minutes later, the PLANT Council's communication department arrived at the Chairman's office.

"You wanted us to send a message to the Earth Alliance, Chairman?"

"Indeed," Patrick said, rising from his desk to greet the two men. "I need to send a message to Athrun and the Earth Alliance military."

"Two messages?" the first technician asked as he started to set up the camera.

"One message should suffice. Something to reassure Athrun that I'm doing what I can to bring him home, but with the hint that I will take action if he's harmed."

It was a good plan, it had an efficiency that most Coordinators employed. It also maintained an air of secrecy with regards to what ZAFT's course of action would be.

Within a few minutes, the equipment was set up and the message recorded for broadcast to the Earth Alliance.


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At the safehouse, Cagalli looked at her reflection as she tried her disguise on. It was that of an Earth Alliance officer and without any additional work, it would be clear that it was a woman inside it.

Samantha Choy looked at her fellow operative and considered where the modifications could be made.

"We're going to have to strap your chest down, and you'll need to wear your hair up."

Cagalli looked down at her chest and felt a pang of sadness. She was proud of her body and worked hard to keep her figure trim and so to deny her femininity, even for a short while, felt a little wrong. Still, it was a minor concession to make for an important mission, she had made much bigger sacrifices during her career with ODESSA.

"Anything else? Facial hair? Glasses? What's the identity I'm using?"

"A Captain Gibson, here's his picture," Samantha said as she handed over the ID card of the man in question.

The blonde studied the picture and tried to mimic the expression in it in the mirror. "Shouldn't take too much make up. The moustache will be annoying, but I think I can handle that."

"Do you want to select the shade of hair from the kit?"

"No, I'll use some of my hair for that. I'll trim it before I dye it."

"Ah, a quick hair change to help evade capture, good call. What colour would you like?"

"I fancy being a redhead."


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Athrun Zala was struggling to deal with his situation. He felt guilty, like he should have been the one to die instead of Rusty.

Rusty was a good kid, someone who'd only recently gotten engaged, and as team leader, Athrun felt obligated to bring him back home in one piece.

Perhaps it was foolish of him to feel like that, but it was part of his upbringing and the social expectation that he accomplish great things as the son of a high ranking PLANT Council member.

Had it only been Rusty that he'd seen killed on this mission, he might have been able to realise that it was survivor's guilt that he was experiencing. But Athrun had also seen one of his oldest and best friends killed before his eyes.

Kira Yamato was not a soldier. He was a civilian, a pacifist who loved computers.

He was also a red stain on the ground of the Heliopolis colony.

Fresh tears leaked from the prisoner's eyes as he thought about the way Kira had died. "At least I avenged you, Kira…"

There was a knock on the door and Athrun rose up from his bunk and wiped his eyes. "Come in."

An armed guard walked in with a uniformed officer.

"Athrun Zala, you have a brief message from your father."

"M-my father?"

"Yes," the Lieutenant said as he held a small computer up for the Coordinator to see. An image of Patrick Zala was shown as the officer started playback of the message.

"¬Athrun, I know that you are suffering right now, but I need you to be strong for just a bit longer. I want you to know that your well-being is of the utmost importance to me and your return to the colonies is being arranged at this very moment. Rau Le Creuset is heading to Earth to rendezvous with you in orbit. You WILL make it home and I will see you again.¬"

The confidence in the Chairman's voice stirred something in the young mobile suit pilot.

"¬We're counting on you, Athrun. Remember that I love you, Son.¬"

That last comment caused a wave of emotion to wash over Athrun. "I have to be strong for Father and the rest of the colonies…"

Fresh tears welled up into his eyes, but this time they were not the tears of grief or self-pity. They different. Athrun couldn't quite place what emotion was causing them; it wasn't pride and it wasn't joy, but whatever it was, it was better than what he had been experiencing just an hour ago.

Taking several deep breaths, Athrun Zala turned to the men visiting him. "Thank you for that. It was just what I needed," he smiled.

"We'll be leaving you then," the Lieutenant said before walking to the door. "Oh, excuse me, Captain Gibson, I wasn't aware that Intelligence was going to be interrogating the prisoner today."

"What kind of intelligence department would we be if we allowed people to know our plans?" the blonde man asked.

"A fair point, Sir. I'll leave you to your work. Sergeant Peterson, you stay here to guard the Captain."

"That won't be necessary, Lieutenant."

"But…" the junior officer's words cut off by a lightning strike to his windpipe.

Before Sergeant Peterson could react, a tranquilliser had been administered to him and he started to slump against the concrete wall.

Athrun was taken aback by this course of action. "I… Wait, who are you?"

Captain Gibson give the injured Lieutenant a dose of tranquilliser before turning to the prisoner.

"Captain Gibson and you're coming with me, Athrun Zala. If you do exactly what I tell you, we'll both get out of here alive. Do you understand."

"Yes."

"Good, now let me unlock the cell so we can leave here for the spaceport," the blonde man said.


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To be continued…