Gihren Zabi stood at the center of the command chamber of A Baoa Qu, hands clasped behind his back, eyes fixed on the layered tactical displays floating before him.
The fortress was alive.
Green and red icons flooded the screens—mobile suits deploying from every dock, cruisers sliding into assigned vectors, maintenance crews rushing to clear launch corridors that had never been meant to operate at this scale. A Baoa Qu was no longer a fortress.
It was a final altar.
"Report," Gihren said, his voice sharp and absolute.
An officer swallowed. "All combat-capable units are being armed and launched, Supreme Commander. Gelgoogs, Rick Doms, Gyan units, remaining mobile armors—deployment is proceeding at ninety-three percent capacity."
"Zaku reserves?" Gihren asked without turning.
A brief pause. "Including older Zaku II units and refitted training frames. All are being prepared for sortie."
"Good," Gihren replied. "War does not ask for youth or age. Only loyalty."
The words rippled through the room, heavy and cold.
A second officer stepped forward, visibly tense. "Supreme Commander, regarding manpower shortages… the Military Academy has reported—"
"I am aware," Gihren interrupted. "Proceed."
The officer's voice lowered. "All cadets above sixteen years of age are being issued combat assignments. This includes students still in formal training."
A murmur spread across the command staff.
Kycilia Zabi turned sharply. "Gihren."
He did not look at her.
"Cadets are acceptable," Kycilia said tightly. "They have signed provisional service oaths. But military school students are not frontline assets. Many of them have never seen live combat."
Gihren finally turned.
His eyes were calm. Unmoved.
"This is the decisive battle," he said. "Those who wish to inherit the future must be willing to bleed for it."
"They are children," Kycilia snapped.
"They are Zeon," Gihren replied flatly. "And Zeon requires everything."
Kycilia's jaw tightened. For a moment, it seemed she might argue further—but she stopped herself. The command room was watching. The war was listening.
Gihren turned back to the display. "Issue the order. All mobile suits at A Baoa Qu are to deploy. Every frame. Every reactor that can still ignite."
An officer hesitated. "Including units assigned to internal guard and patrol?"
"Leave only what is required to prevent mutiny and sabotage," Gihren said. "Everything else launches."
The screen shifted as new orders propagated across the fortress. Icons peeled away from defensive rings, streaming outward into the black.
Gihren's voice hardened further.
"Zeon does not retreat. Zeon advances—or it dies."
He glanced sideways.
"Kycilia."
She met his gaze, already knowing what he would say.
"Deploy all available Newtype pilots," Gihren commanded. "Every one of them. No exceptions."
Kycilia's fingers curled slowly at her side.
Newtypes were not numbers. They were unstable, emotional, irreplaceable. She had hoarded them, maneuvered them carefully, kept them away from Gihren's grandstanding slaughter whenever possible.
Now there was nowhere left to hide them.
"…Understood," she said at last.
The word tasted bitter.
She turned to issue the order, her voice composed, her expression unreadable. Across Zeon space, sealed hangars opened, and pilots who should never have been sent to war climbed into cockpits that smelled of oil, fear, and inevitability.
Gihren watched it all with quiet satisfaction.
A Baoa Qu was no longer a fortress.
It was a declaration.
And he would burn the future itself to prove Zeon's righteousness.
Side 3.
Degwin Sodo Zabi sat beside the small bed in the quietest room of the Zabi estate, far from command halls and political corridors. The lighting was dim, warm, deliberately gentle—an attempt to preserve something fragile in a world that had already decided to crush itself.
Mineva slept peacefully.
Her breathing was soft, steady, unaware of fleets, doctrines, or the weight carried by her name. Degwin watched her face for a long time, the lines of an old ruler deepening as his hand trembled slightly above the blanket before finally resting there.
"So small," he murmured. "And already burdened with sins that are not yours."
Behind him, the door slid open quietly.
Zenna Zabi stepped inside, composed but pale. She had learned, like all Zabis, to wear calm like armor—but here, in front of Degwin and her daughter, it cracked.
"You sent for me," she said.
Degwin nodded slowly. "And for him."
Moments later, M'Quve entered. He stopped just inside the room, posture straight, expression unreadable. The ornate officer's uniform felt almost obscene in a place like this.
Degwin did not turn to look at him yet.
"Zenna," Degwin said softly, "you and Mineva will leave Side 3 tonight."
Zenna's breath caught. "Father—"
"No," Degwin interrupted, finally turning his head. His voice was not that of Zeon's sovereign now, but of an old man who had already accepted his end. "You will go. Your identities will be erased. No Zabi name. No titles. You will live as civilians, far from Zeon. Far from the Federation. Far from all of this."
Zenna clenched her hands. "And you?"
Degwin smiled faintly.
"I am already dead," he said calmly. "I simply haven't stopped breathing yet."
Silence filled the room.
Degwin turned his gaze to M'Quve.
"I entrust them to you," he said. "You will transport them safely. Under cover. No Zeon channels. No official routes."
M'Quve straightened further and saluted. "I will see them delivered beyond Zeon influence. I swear it."
Degwin raised a hand, stopping him mid-salute.
"After that," Degwin continued, "you will leave as well. Somewhere far away. Do not waste your life lingering in the shadow of my failure."
M'Quve's composure finally faltered. "My lord—"
"This war will not be kind to loyal men," Degwin said quietly. "And loyalty to a dying regime is not virtue. It is suicide."
He looked back at Mineva.
"She deserves a life untouched by our ambition."
Zenna knelt beside the bed, brushing her fingers through her daughter's hair, tears finally escaping despite her efforts. She bowed deeply to Degwin.
"I will protect her," she said. "No matter the cost."
Degwin nodded once. That was enough.
M'Quve turned crisply and moved to carry out the orders. Hours later, under falsified transponder codes and a route masked through civilian shipping lanes, a small, unremarkable vessel slipped away from Side 3.
Inside, Zenna held Mineva close as stars stretched into distant lines.
They did not look back.
And in the halls of power they left behind, Degwin Zabi remained—alone, resolute, and ready to meet the end he believed he deserved.
Lelouch learned of Degwin's move the same way he learned most things now—not from official channels, but from patterns. A ship that should not have departed. A route that avoided both Zeon and Federation oversight. Personnel manifests quietly altered, then erased.
Mineva Zabi.
Zenna Zabi.
He stood alone in a darkened corridor, the faint hum of Granada's infrastructure echoing around him as data scrolled past his visor.
"So he chose mercy at the end," Lelouch muttered.
He felt nothing resembling outrage. If anything, there was a trace of approval.
A newborn should not inherit the sins of empires. History was cruel enough without forcing children to pay debts they never incurred. Whatever happened to Zeon, whatever verdict the future passed on the name "Zabi," Mineva deserved a life untouched by it.
Lelouch dismissed the file without hesitation.
His attention shifted to another report—this one impossible to ignore.
Gihren Zabi's latest orders.
Mandatory deployment of all military cadets.
Inclusion of students from military academies.
Age threshold: sixteen.
Lelouch stared at the numbers for a long moment.
"…He's lost it," he said quietly.
Strategically, he understood the logic. Zeon was cornered. A Baoa Qu would be the final stand. Every pilot, every machine, every warm body capable of holding a control stick became a resource.
But understanding did not equal approval.
"This isn't mobilization," Lelouch scoffed. "It's desperation dressed up as ideology."
Gihren wanted volunteers too—young zealots eager to prove themselves, intoxicated by rhetoric and fear. He would get them. And in the process, he would burn whatever legitimacy Zeon had left.
Lelouch let out a short laugh, sharp and humorless.
"This will ruin him," he said. "Even his own people won't forgive this. Dragging children into the slaughter… history will tear him apart."
The laughter died halfway through his breath.
Something twisted in his chest.
Unbidden, faces surfaced in his mind.
Tanya—eighteen, thrown into a war she never asked for.
Machu and Nyaan.
All young. All brilliant. All bleeding for causes far larger than themselves.
And himself.
He had given orders.
He had sent them into battle.
He had justified it as necessity.
And his past life did kalen 16 or 17 years that make him like Gihren even though kalen is his Ace to fight but this still make him same.
Lelouch's expression tightened.
"…I don't have quality to get to laugh," he admitted quietly.
The difference between him and Gihren suddenly felt uncomfortably thin—not in intent, but in outcome. Ideals did not shield the young from shrapnel. Intelligence did not stop a cockpit from becoming a coffin.
He turned away from the screen.
"I tell myself I'm ending the war," Lelouch said to the empty corridor. "That I'm minimizing suffering."
But war did not care about intentions.
And for the times again, Lelouch felt the weight of every command he had ever issued—not as strategy, but as lives placed on a board.
The silence answered him.
Somewhere far away, a child slept safely beyond Zeon's reach.
Somewhere closer, children prepared to die.
And Lelouch, caught between those truths, found no humor left to cling to at all.