Andrew Waltfeld.
After war broke out between ZAFT and the Earth Alliance, he had won ZAFT a decisive success through his strategy in the North African campaign, suppressing a critical point in North Africa and making his name in a single battle.
That was why he had been given the title Desert Tiger.
At the moment, he was participating in a meeting and watching footage obtained by the soldiers.
It was absurd footage, so ridiculous it was hard to accept as real. Fully armed soldiers and four mobile suits had actually been defeated by a single man.
"What's this guy acting so arrogant for? He's just relying on advanced equipment."
Yzak Joule, one of the red-uniform elite squad members, curled his lip and spoke with faint disdain.
In particular, the sight of that man in an incredibly powerful powered combat suit looking down on everyone with such apparent arrogance irritated him even more.
"Just relying on advanced equipment?"
Andrew could not help smiling at this elite member who had also come down to Earth. Was that innocence? Or stupidity?
To make these still-proud boys pay more attention, Andrew clipped a section of the video.
"You're Yzak, right? Take this sequence of movements this man performed. If you wore that suit and tried to do the same thing, you would die."
"I would die?"
"Yes. Even if you understood how to operate that powered combat suit, and even if the suit had protective measures for you, if you tried to move to this degree, you would die."
"What are you talking about? Why would I die?"
"Why wouldn't you? Look here. Twisting your head at this reaction speed. Do you think your neck could withstand it?"
Andrew froze the image at that frame and brought up the reaction data.
"Well? As an elite, could you turn your neck like that without a problem?"
His question was met with silence from the proud young man.
After a brief pause, Yzak answered with visible frustration.
"No."
If he twisted like that, his neck would not withstand the rotation speed. His cervical vertebrae would probably snap.
With that much force, even the nerves might be torn apart.
The fact that the person wearing that powered combat suit could endure it meant that his physical body itself was unimaginably strong.
"If you want to deal with him without using mobile suits or heavy equipment, relying only on infantry, then according to my current judgment based on his combat performance in this video, this is the number of troops that would need to be committed to kill him."
Andrew displayed his combat power comparison, along with the expected casualties.
"Th-That many?"
Yzak found it hard to believe.
"Yes, that many. And that is under conditions relatively favorable to us."
Andrew's voice was low.
The casualty ratio shown above was a horrifying comparison.
"However, if the operation method is changed to this, the casualties can be reduced to one-tenth."
Even one-tenth was still a number that left everyone silent.
And more importantly...
"A suicide attack?"
Athrun spoke bitterly.
The new method of attack required charging in with the resolve to die, sacrificing oneself to take the opponent down as well.
It was like a terrorist attack using human bombs.
"Now do you understand how dangerous this man is? So I hope you young masters don't get clever and act on your own!"
Without this footage, these boys really might have tried to infiltrate Orb on their own.
That would be suicide.
Andrew did not want anything happening to these young masters too. That would be troublesome.
...
Orb.
Lacus received information from Terminal that Athrun and the others had also arrived on Earth and were currently being placed under Andrew's supervision. That made her relax considerably.
With Andrew watching them, they would not be able to act too recklessly.
After this, she would have to let them see the truth of the world as well, so they could choose their positions again.
As for Nicol Amalfi, who was in the same red-uniform squad as Athrun, it seemed he now trusted her words more. He would likely become a member of Terminal.
Terminal was not a machine. It was the name of an organization, one whose purpose was to stop the great war that would lead to humanity's extinction, break the inhumane state of the world, and clearly support the construction of a free and peaceful world as a non-governmental organization.
Over the past year, through the secret cooperation between her father and Cagalli's father, they had also been investigating the hidden forces behind everything. They had paid no small price for it.
These like-minded comrades who sought peace would go into hiding within the many fields of human society infiltrated by LOGOS, waiting for the moment of surgery.
Once the surgery began, the role of those comrades would be to stop the bleeding when the tumor, which had already spread through nearly every blood vessel in the body, was cut out and pulled free, dragging its roots through the veins.
They would prevent the global economy from suffering a massive shock and producing destruction even more terrifying than war.
"I can't anymore."
A somewhat weak, exhausted voice rang out. The cockpit of Mr. Kain's unit, whose Lambda Driver had been reinstalled, opened to reveal a visibly drained Cagalli.
Right now, they were having her attempt to activate the Lambda Driver and learn how to use it.
Later, if there were spare Lambda Driver units, they could be used to protect her when Mr. Kain was not around.
Cagalli's attempt to activate the Lambda Driver had succeeded, but she could not produce anything even remotely as exaggerated as Mr. Kain did.
The defensive shield she successfully deployed could currently only defend against rifle bullets.
And by rifle, that did not mean the Ho 229's rifle or a mobile suit's rifle, but an ordinary rifle used by humans. It could only reach that level, and her reaction speed was also somewhat slow.
"If this master-slave motion trace system were transplanted into a Gundam, the difficulty of piloting it would basically drop from college level to elementary school level."
Cagalli muttered this as she climbed down.
The master-slave motion trace system was a form of synchronized motion recognition system. It could read the operator's minute movements and magnify them onto the machine at a proportional angle through what was called bilateral angle control.
In theory, any movement a human could perform could also be replicated by the machine through this system. Its flexibility was beyond imagination.
After her feet touched the ground, Cagalli walked over to Lacus. The songstress was preparing the music video for her new song, which would be performed in Orb.
And the CG being produced was most likely not false imagery, but real footage.
"This guy is him, right?"
Cagalli suddenly pointed at the small figure among a group of huge metal-covered figures in the CG, strongly suspecting that it was that man.
"Yes."
Lacus nodded.
It had now been almost one hundred hours since Mr. Kain came to this side, and he was not currently in her world.
He had returned to his own world for a while, saying that he needed to retrieve some things from an armory to make matters safer.
He had said they were also mechs, equipment suited for land use.
It would take roughly half a day for him to travel to another star system and retrieve them.
Several hours had already passed. He should be close to reaching the armory hidden inside that gas giant by now.
(End of Chapter)
[Get +30 Extra Chapters On — P@tr3on "Zaelum"]
[Every 300 Power Stones = 1 Bonus Chapter Drop]
[Thanks for Reading!]