Gundam: The Wind That Blows Through Space

Chapter 709 Lacus and Siegfried

Ever since the first adjuster, George Gray, revealed his identity, the CE world was destined to end up in racial confrontation. The widespread use of gene adjustment technology has only shortened this process. The establishment of PLANT is just the beginning, and it is far from the end of the confrontation.

Due to the bond between their fathers, after coming to power, Cagalli humbly asked Mina about the merits and demerits of Siegel, the first Speaker of the House. At that time, Mina's evaluation of Silger was "an idealistic politician."

Looking at all the decisions Siegel made during his administration, it can be seen that he did not want to engage in large-scale armed conflict with the Old Union. Even though he experienced many assassination attempts, negotiation was always the main theme of the speaker's diplomacy.

But with the outbreak of Bloody Valentine's Day, the pro-war forces within PLANT began to rise. Siegel, who was the Speaker at the time, was completely unable to notice the emotional changes of his long-time friend, and he also misjudged the domestic situation. In his conception, the neutron jammer could have become a powerful bond to forcibly sew together the Earth and PLANT. After all, PLANT's energy, medical, and industrial products are all rigid needs of the Earth.

However, the April Fools' Day crisis caused the deaths of hundreds of millions of people. At the same time, this death was not a sudden death like the one caused by Zeon smashing the satellite, but a gradual death from starvation, freezing to death, and disease due to energy shortages and hunger and cold. This completely tore apart the economic cycle system planned by Siegel. The expected unity of opposites turned directly into complete opposition, until finally both sides were caught in the vortex of war and unable to extricate themselves, and Siegel himself died at the hands of the PLANT Internal Affairs Department.

Now Mina is also facing a similar test. The army is an extension of politics. Any failure in military operations will quickly spread to political activities, and eventually trigger a political storm that no one wants to see and no one can be immune to.

Reality is not a game. The inertia of the development of things means that many things cannot be stopped just because Mina wants to. After the destruction of Requiem, the People's Revolutionary League was forced to tighten its military control over PLANT, which also brought the relationship between the two countries, which had just begun to rise, to a crossroads again.

In order to stabilize the situation, all the surviving lunar troops remained in space, and the information about the Strike Freedom was not spread on a large scale.

Of course, Mina also has another simpler route, which is to copy the operating mode of Blue Universe. Even now, she holds a power far more powerful than that of Blue Universe back then.

Relying on the high-pressure rule of A-Laws, igniting the revenge of natural people against adjusters, and finally raining nuclear bombs on the PLANT satellite cluster, this operation may be able to bring about decades of peace.

But Mina is very clear about her mission. Her only historical mission during her term is to hand over a complete and unified Earth sphere to Cagalli, and then future generations will step on the shoulders of the orbital elevator to extend the frontier of human interstellar development to the edge of the solar system. In order to complete this plan, the almost perverted scientific research ability of the adjuster is indispensable.

One thing that cannot be denied is that adjusters are indeed like accelerators in the CE world. Hilde once conducted a half-year follow-up test on Erica Simmons, the current president of Aurora Society. The results showed that technical adjusters like her have a learning ability about twice that of natural persons. That is to say, 20-year-old Erica's scientific research ability is equivalent to that of a 40-year-old natural scientist. Kira, who is the upper limit of the adjuster, will only be higher, not lower.

So, it was not that Mina wanted to show leniency to Kira for Lacus's sake. Two years ago, Siegfried and his plane harassed PLANT's entire supply line, which directly caused ZAFT's morale to be terribly low in the early stage of the Lunar Orbit Campaign, and this situation did not improve until Athrun arrived at the front line.

Because of this example, most people know that once a UACE is determined to become a terrorist, the passive defensive party will inevitably have to pay a price thousands of times higher, and this price may not necessarily be answered. Back then, Durandal tried every means to hunt down and intercept Siegfried, but was still found by the Archangel at the gate of Spring City and killed the second-in-command of the local garrison fleet, Eric Reid, in front of Nicol.

As a political creature, Lux naturally understood Mina's motives. Having been trained as a successor by her father since childhood, she actually knew very well that politics and emotions are inherently opposites.

Not to mention the distant past, her father was killed by the Ministry of Internal Affairs because he was too naive to believe that Patrick would not kill his old friend. Now that things have developed to this point, not to mention that Mina is unlikely to go to protect Kira, even Cagalli has vaguely hinted that she hopes Lacus can help the People's Revolutionary League control the Strike Freedom.

It didn't take Lux long to figure it all out. It was precisely because she understood these causal relationships early on that she almost turned into a "shrew" in front of Hilde.

Since she was old enough to understand, Lux never remembered having such an inappropriate experience, but lies don't hurt people, the truth is a sharp knife, Hilde's straightforward confession pierced through the armor called "reason" on her body.

In the basement of the Yunogoro Island, after passing through a long corridor and multiple identity verifications, Lacus arrived at the most central secret hospital in Orb, where the unconscious Siegfried and Ingrid were having their vital signs observed.

The only sound in the clean white room was the bubbles coming out of the oxygen cylinders. Considering the possibility of too many people talking, the AI ​​medical system introduced from PLANT and independently developed and modified by Hilde was used here. The robots coming and going were like ghosts passing by the hem of Lux's skirt. All she could see was a piece of pure white. It was this monotonous and boring environment that suddenly made Lux feel irritated for some reason. After visiting Ingrid in the smaller room on the left, Lux pushed open Siegfried's door. The red-haired boy was lying there quietly. Lux waited for a while. It seemed that as long as she stood there, the figure in her memory would greet her with a bad smile.

"Hey, isn't this Lux?"

In a trance, Lacus sat down beside the bed. Due to the long-term coma, the boy's face was somewhat pale. She reached out and gently stroked Siegfried's eyebrows. For the first time, Lacus discovered that her nominal brother also had such a quiet side.

"Siegfried, long time no see."

In fact, after coming to Orb, Lacus would come to visit Siegfried almost every day, but as time passed, Lacus found that the memory of Siegfried in her mind had become blurred. After telling Hilde about this phenomenon, she received a house arrest order from the other party, and she has never set foot in this room since then.

"Kira attacked Requiem, and I was worried about him, but there was nothing I could do."

"You were the first person to show kindness to me on the Archangel. Why did you push me away so decisively? Was it because you had already seen this ending at that time, seeing that Lacus Clyne neither became the goddess of peace that everyone expected, nor protected the person she loved."

"But I actually just wanted to be an ordinary person at first. I wanted to have my own friends, my own lover, and my own family. Do you know that? Back then, on the beach in Scandinavia, you told me that Lacus Klein was just an ordinary little girl. At that time, I vaguely felt that Siegfried seemed to know me better than I did myself."

Tears fell drop by drop from Lacus's face. Just as she said herself, no one knew that Lacus' biggest dream was not to maintain world peace. After experiencing the death of her father, she just wanted to be an ordinary little girl. Seeing Kira come home on time for dinner every day was far more important than sitting on the Eternity and watching the Strike Freedom killing everyone.

The appearance of Siegfried once made Lux see the dawn of hope. He was domineering, arrogant and unreasonable, but at the same time, Siegfried was willing to shoulder the responsibilities of a hero. The terminal was like a shackle that firmly locked Lacus' heart, and now this shackle has been smashed into countless pieces by Siegfried.

It was precisely because of Siegfried's existence that Lacus did not work hard to operate the terminal during the crisis-ridden 73 years, so that the appearance of the Eternity during the Battle of the Moon was somewhat hasty, but Lacus did not regret her choice, and she even hoped that such days could continue forever.

"When I was in Berlin, I first heard that you might be my brother. Only I knew what this news meant to me. Brother is such a distant title."

"But Sister Hilde told me that you no longer have any blood relationship with me or the Klein family, and she also reminded me not to try to kidnap you with the non-existent sibling relationship. I tried my best to control my inner impulse, but many times I couldn't help but think of a hypothesis. If Mom hadn't made that choice, would you and I be getting along differently now?"

"Food is over there, tell the chef what you want to eat, water is over here, just use a disposable cup. This is the opening line when we first met."

"They all say that you are an omnipotent hero. I also know that I am not qualified to ask too much from you, but this time, Siegfried, this time, can you help me? I really don't know what to do to save Kira. Please help me."

Green particles fell like running water, as if the gods had responded to Lacus's prayers. The boy lay there motionless, and gradually, the entire medical base was covered by GN particles. Lacus looked at the strange scene in surprise, and then without any emotional fluctuations, she directly activated SEED.

'There is light looking for you, he wants to warm you.'

(End of this chapter)