After landing on the island, it was hard to imagine that one man had taken down a base like this.
Looking at the traces of battle, the shattered tanks, the expressions of terror frozen on soldiers' faces before death, it was as if they had encountered an enemy beyond imagination. What he had brought them was not merely physical intimidation, but psychological terror.
It looked as if they had run into a monster.
However, the attention of the people who had landed on the island was quickly drawn elsewhere.
The Biological CPU Program.
It was a plan so horrifying that anyone who saw it would feel their rage burn past reason.
Murrue almost could not stop herself from drawing her gun and firing several rounds into the base commander.
Bang!
It was not a gunshot. It was the sound of flesh being struck by a heavy blow. Cagalli, so furious she had lost control, kicked the surviving commander hard in the stomach.
He did not scream, not because his mouth had been gagged, but because the pain left him unable to make a sound.
The contents of his stomach were forced out by that single kick.
"You sick, deranged pieces of trash. You actually dared to drag children this young here and do something this cruel to them?"
Burning with rage, Cagalli was about to kick him again, but someone grabbed her and held her back.
"Calm down, Cagalli!"
"I can't calm down! I want to kill this bastard!"
"If you kill him, who will testify against the real culprits?"
Murrue's words left Cagalli with no choice but to grit her teeth and glare furiously at that bastard of a commander.
Cagalli was enraged, but she had not truly lost her mind to the point of killing him. Even so, if she did not beat him senseless at least once, there was no way she could calm the fire in her chest.
Although this commander was not the originator of the Biological CPU Program, he was a collaborator in it. In this base, he had used methods this cruel to train these children.
He had even made them kill each other. It was utterly insane.
Thinking of something, she also glared at her own soldiers. In a certain sense, all of this had happened right under Orb's nose, and they had not discovered these children at all.
She wanted to angrily question them, but then she thought of something and could only clench her fists.
She had no right to point at them. They had already been doing everything they could to protect Orb.
Especially now that ZAFT and the Earth Alliance were fighting on Earth itself, they spent every day watching the situation in fear, terrified that the flames of war might suddenly spread to Orb's homeland.
And Orb's strength only went so far. Where would they find enough spare military force to carefully monitor everything?
"Bastard!"
She cursed the commander again, then turned a look of intense disgust toward the other surviving officers and soldiers.
When they had first landed, she had seen how broken and terrified these people looked. She had also seen the soldiers he had torn apart, the bloody scene of brutal slaughter, and at that time, a hint of pity had even risen in her. She had thought he had gone too far.
Now, she did not think it had gone too far at all.
Even if most of the soldiers did not know the details of the Biological CPU Program, they at least knew there was something special about these children being brought here. Since they had shown no reaction to it, they were accomplices.
Cold-blooded animals.
Using children for experiments like this, treating them like computer CPU components, was an act of pure evil.
"When we return to Orb, I'll reveal all of this to the entire world. I'll show everyone exactly what kind of devils these bastards are."
As Cagalli said this, she still stared murderously at the commander as he was finally dragged away.
"Cagalli, no. You cannot make this public right now."
Once only three of them remained, Lacus shook her head and stopped Cagalli's plan.
"No? I know. I won't reveal it immediately. At the very least, we have to rescue the children in that research facility too, then expose the evil there."
The Biological CPU research facility was hidden somewhere near the Black Sea, at Lodonia.
If they made everything public right now, then to destroy the evidence, the enemy would likely erase every child there. Of course Cagalli had considered that. She was not stupid enough to announce it recklessly.
"That is not what I mean by no, Cagalli. The evidence of the Biological CPU Program alone is not enough. It is not enough to completely bring down the people operating behind the scenes."
The evidence they had obtained from this base regarding the Biological CPU Program could certainly deal a severe blow to the hidden forces behind it: LOGOS, the organization formed by those merchants of death, as well as Blue Cosmos, which had been pushed onto the public stage.
But it would only be a heavy blow. It would not be enough to destroy them outright.
One had to understand that the influence of the merchants making up LOGOS was not limited to military arms. They were involved in every industry.
It could be said that most of Earth's economic lifelines were currently in their hands. If they struck them directly like this, it could cause an extremely severe economic collapse.
That might be even more terrifying than the damage caused by war.
Right now, they had not yet completed the work of secretly taking over and stabilizing those industries. If LOGOS's crimes were exposed directly, it would immediately trigger massive turmoil.
So Lacus explained that point clearly to Cagalli.
"Is it really that serious?"
"It is, Cagalli. The situation is far beyond what you imagine. According to the information Father gave me, Blue Cosmos and LOGOS behind it have deeply embedded their power throughout human society. It could be said that they are now almost in a symbiotic relationship with all of humanity, bound together with it. If they are forcibly torn away, the entire human world will undergo a brutal upheaval. So we need to wait. We need enough power, and we need a sharp enough scalpel. Then, all at once, we can cut this tumor out."
That was what Lacus hoped for.
Once they had enough power, and once they had nearly finished investigating all the important members of Blue Cosmos and LOGOS, they would launch a lightning strike.
They would surgically remove those tumors as quickly as possible.
In the blink of an eye, they returned to the Archangel and left the island directly aboard the ship.
Some of the people had not been killed. Mr. Kain had deliberately left them alive as hostages. Otherwise, ZAFT's underwater submarines would have long since bombarded the base with a rain of missiles.
"Your name is Stella Loussier?"
Lacus was speaking with the children. When she asked one of the blond girls and learned her name, she could not help freezing for a moment.
So this was the truth behind Mr. Kain telling her that there was a "familiar face" among these children.
This child was one of the girls who appeared in the "fan anime." She was one of the Earth Alliance's Gundam pilots.
Just as in the first part, ZAFT sent Athrun to steal Gundams from the Earth Alliance. In the second part, the story reversed itself: enhanced humans sent by the Earth Alliance infiltrated PLANT and stole Gundams manufactured there.
And this child was one of the three children who carried out that mission.
"Y-Yes."
The child's reply was very restrained and uneasy.
Her gaze kept wandering around her surroundings. It was not curiosity about the environment. She seemed to be looking for someone.
Lacus knew who she was looking for. She had already noticed that this child was especially concerned about him.
"If you're looking for Mr. Kain, once we enter Orb and he no longer needs to stay outside on guard, you'll be able to see him."
When Lacus pointed that out, the child fell silent. She seemed at a loss, fidgeting awkwardly.
Oh no. Had she already fallen for him?
Lacus sighed.
(End of Chapter)
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