Chapter 367 - 368: He’s Almost Seen the Light!

Chapter 367: Chapter 368: He’s Almost Seen the Light!

"Um, Captain Le Creuset."

Athrun remembered the e-book Inori had shown him while they were returning from the Debris Belt.

There were some ideas in it that Athrun agreed with.

"Oh? Do you have something in mind?" Le Creuset asked.

"...Could we try to win the Archangel over?"

Yzak’s eyes went wide when he heard Athrun. "Athrun, do you even understand what you’re saying?!"

"Yeah. I understand perfectly," Athrun said. "The only people who could have taken the Archangel by surprise are the Earth Forces themselves. In other words, Blue Cosmos within the Earth Forces. When I infiltrated them last time, I happened to discover that Blue Cosmos seemed to be planning something against the Archangel. If the Archangel lands in Alaska, the information will get out."

"You’ve got to be kidding me. They’d kill people just for a reason that small?!" Yzak believed Naturals were idiots, but even he did not believe Naturals could be stupid to that extent.

"If it’s Blue Cosmos, there’s no way they would allow a ship that once carried a Coordinator to remain in service!" Athrun had learned a fair amount about Blue Cosmos recently.

To Blue Cosmos, Coordinators might as well have been filth.

Once the Archangel had been contaminated by a Coordinator, it could no longer be kept.

Not to mention that the Archangel very likely possessed compromising information.

"But the new ship’s data..." Nicol fell into thought.

"—Was probably taken back to Earth a long time ago. It might even have been removed before we attacked Heliopolis," Athrun said. "The admiral commanding the Eighth Fleet is Halberton, and he isn’t on the same side as Blue Cosmos... Do you remember how we found Heliopolis in the first place?"

"An intelligence leak?" Nicol raised an eyebrow as something occurred to him. "Wait, Athrun, you mean?!"

"Athrun, you think Blue Cosmos leaked it deliberately?" Le Creuset found the idea rather interesting.

"I don’t know. I only think they had every motive to do it."

Athrun did not know the truth.

"I don’t know exactly what happened, but if you analyze the aftermath, Blue Cosmos gained the most from it."

They eliminated internal rivals, struck at the enemy, made their political opponents fight their enemies, and took all the benefits from behind the scenes...

There was no doubt.

That left only Blue Cosmos.

"In fact, if not for the previous attack, Blue Cosmos would effectively have taken the Archangel already," Athrun said. "After all, Lacus-san was aboard the Archangel. Blue Cosmos probably never expected that. And if we hadn’t known about it, we wouldn’t have risked going over there..."

In fact, if the Archangel had joined that battle back then, ZAFT would have had to retreat immediately.

But that was not what happened.

The Archangel, merely passing through, had chosen to bolt.

"Yeah. The Archangel got us good."

Le Creuset looked refined and mild on the surface, but his teeth were practically grinding.

If the Lacus incident had not thrown a wrench into things, the plan should have been perfect.

But precisely because of that "black swan" event, everything afterward had become increasingly unpredictable.

"Even if that pilot is a Coordinator, do you realize almost everyone else on that ship is a Natural?!" Yzak said.

"But Naturals are still people! Figuring out who our enemy actually is should come first!" Athrun said.

"I disagree! I’ll eliminate every Natural!"

"—So you want to become the Coordinator side’s ’Blue Cosmos’?"

"Hah?!"

Yzak, who had been the eternal runner-up to Athrun at the military academy, had always had a bit of an obsession with him.

The two were almost arguing outright by now.

But Le Creuset cut them off. "I’m afraid this isn’t something we get to decide. In fact, I just received orders from headquarters."

Because the Archangel had descended to Earth, Le Creuset’s team also had to revise its strategic deployment.

"The four G-series units will be fitted with armaments for atmospheric combat before entering Earth. For now... all of you should get some rest."

Although the four G-series units had already undergone reinforcement modifications, those had all been intended for the space environment.

Then the Archangel had plunged straight into Earth, which made things rather awkward. Their equipment would have to be adjusted again.

As it happened, Le Creuset was also taking everyone back home. While they waited, they could get a little rest...

[Athrun really is about to see the light.]

[Seriously, trying to persuade the Archangel to defect actually has a pretty high chance of working now.]

[They just got shot by their own allies. We don’t even know what state the Archangel is in right now.]

[I think persuading them to defect would be pretty hard, unless they can find that Halberton guy.]

[I’ve got a feeling this Halberton guy might already be dead.]

[Hard to say. We’ll see.]

[Think Athrun might switch sides?]

[+1. Feels like the Archangel might not switch sides, but Athrun will.]

[Even if he switches, there’s no way he’d go to the Earth Alliance, right?]

[There are neutral nations too.]

[Just found your own country.]

[Grass (a type of exclamation), a high-schooler founding a country, huh?]

The audience’s speculation was shooting off in every direction.

At that point, the scene returned to the Archangel again.

"Whew... done."

After helping treat the wounded, Kuzzey had been pulled over to the hangar again.

Although none of the three MS had suffered damage, they still needed their routine inspections.

The Gold Frame had temporarily left, so only the Strike and Blue Frame were here.

"The Archangel stands out so much. Won’t ZAFT find us?" Kuzzey wondered.

"The hull is cooled through the black-hole exhaust system, so as long as we can fool infrared detection, we should still be able to hide," Murdoch said as he walked over. "Otherwise, in an open place like this, we’d have been exposed ages ago! Radar doesn’t work, and that’s true for both sides..."

"The Neutron Jammers, huh... Why did ZAFT have to come up with something this annoying?!" Kuzzey grumbled.

Neutron Jammers did not merely interfere with neutron activity. They also disrupted radio waves and the like.

In a sense, this was one reason the Archangel had failed to detect the earlier attack in advance. Although they had still been outside Earth’s atmosphere, they were already affected to some extent by the Neutron Jammers.

Of course, since this was an AOE that affected friend and foe alike, the Archangel could not use radar or contact friendly forces now, while the enemy was in the same situation.

"Then how did that earlier attack find us?" Kuzzey was puzzled.

"There are plenty of guidance methods besides radar. Thermal imaging, direct visual guidance, or even simple remote control could all work," Murdoch said. "While the Archangel was descending, it was practically a giant glowing target. Even crude guidance could lock onto it."

"Damn ZAFT." Kuzzey sighed.

Murdoch said nothing.

He did not think the attack fit ZAFT’s style.

Murrue and the others, however, had not released the information yet.

They still had not figured out how to explain it...