ZAFT had no available troops left!
This thought instantly sprang to Creuset's mind the moment Chairman Patrick announced the large-scale conscription campaign in the homeland.
Indeed, ever since the East Asian Alliance's sudden rise to power—particularly due to that bastard Wang Hu using him to pad his combat record—Creuset had privately calculated that it was nothing short of miraculous ZAFT hadn't collapsed yet despite fighting on multiple fronts simultaneously.
In this era, mobilizing troops wasn't as simple as planting a flag and watching crowds swarm in, then handing everyone a rifle and calling them trained after firing two practice rounds before deployment.
Silently watching Patrick's incessant chatter on the communication channel, Creuset even considered using the attack on the Eighth Fleet as an excuse to deliberately sacrifice the elite forces he'd drawn from the homeland defense units.
What? You ask why Creuset would do this?
Wasn't he afraid of being sidelined afterward?
The answer was simple. Had Wang Hu not existed, Creuset would naturally want to accumulate as many military merits as possible—just as he'd done in the original timeline, rising through ZAFT's ranks through repeated achievements before ultimately leading both sides to ruin at the critical moment.
But with Wang Hu in the picture, Creuset knew that although he remained Patrick's trusted subordinate on the surface, the path of accumulating merits had become extremely difficult. After all, too many defeats had severely damaged his evaluation.
So what about a different approach?
For instance, exaggerating the strength of the Allied Forces and the East Asian Alliance?
When pushed to desperation, people would commit unthinkable acts—like gamblers selling their wives and children or resorting to street robbery.
With PLANT's population barely reaching tens of millions, how many troops could they possibly conscript even at maximum capacity?
Facing the Allied Forces with their billions-strong population, PLANT's numbers were utterly insignificant—a drop in the bucket.
This was precisely why the Coordinators secretly developed the Neutron Jammer and indiscriminately deployed it across the entire Earth Sphere.
To reduce the Natural population. To cripple Natural industrial output.
Only by pulling the Naturals down to the Coordinators' level—or even lower—through any means possible could the Coordinators hope to win!
But what if, after exhausting all schemes and calculations, nothing worked?
Having settled his thoughts, Creuset stared at the still-chattering Patrick on the screen.
Only one option would remain: wait for Genesis to be completed, then fire it directly at Earth and the United Forces Lunar Base.
Eliminate the Naturals in one swift strike, leaving them no chance to react!
"Chairman Patrick, please give me another chance." With his plan set, Creuset adopted an unprecedented solemnity as he pledged his determination. "For PLANT's prosperity! For ZAFT Forces' unification of the realms! I will annihilate the entire Eighth Fleet to demonstrate my loyalty and capability to you!"
"Hmm?" Patrick had practically spewed two bowls' worth of saliva while venting his recent pressures from all sides to Creuset.
Suddenly hearing that Creuset, despite repeated defeats, still wanted to attack the Eighth Fleet, even the great Chairman of the ZAFT Forces was momentarily stunned.
Staring at Creuset's masked face on the screen, Patrick appeared unusually hesitant.
He wavered because Creuset's recent track record had been abysmal, yet the pressures weighing on him lately were indeed overwhelming.
He desperately needed a grand victory to silence the doubts from various factions back in the Homeland.
Otherwise, how could he win the next election?
"Mmm." After a long deliberation, Patrick—now with something of a gambler's mentality—finally decided to give Creuset one more chance.
"I'll be watching closely. Don't disappoint me again, Creuset." With those words, he hastily ended the communication.
Patrick feared that prolonging the conversation might make him change his mind. After all, the Coordinators' hand was already running thin!
"Of course, of course, my dear Chairman Patrick."
Observing the now-darkened communication device, Creuset rubbed his palms together and smiled.
Time passed swiftly. Not long after General Halberton departed from the Archangel,
the ship—which had never been well-supplied—finally began enjoying meals with meat at every serving.
As a result, the evacuees on board started looking much healthier.
"Aren't we sending them away?" Li Chengzhi asked Wang Hu as they walked together through the living quarters.
"Send them? Send them where? Straight into the crosshairs of those white-haired bastards?"
Wang Hu replied with a smile, his mood lifted by the improved conditions for the evacuees.
Li Chengzhi, who still harbored doubts about talk of the Homeworld and the future, was about to argue that even though Coordinators were at war with Naturals,
they wouldn't dare commit such an atrocity as openly firing on evacuation ships.
Suddenly, the Archangel's alarm blared loudly across the ship.
"They're here." Wang Hu glanced up at the blaring speaker and winked at his friend.
"Does this count as evidence for my predictions about the future?"
"No." Li Chengzhi's expression darkened as he shifted into combat mode, shaking his head.
"It just means your tactical prediction was accurate."
"Tch." Wang Hu made a face as if to say he couldn't win with him, then called out to Kira, who had rushed out of his room, intending to lead him to the hangar for launch preparations.
But something happened as Kira ran toward them, causing both Wang Hu and Li Chengzhi to wear subtle, complicated expressions.
"Sorry, sorry, little one! I almost bumped into you."
The alarm had caught everyone off guard, and Kira nearly collided with a little girl in overalls as he sprinted toward Wang Hu.
Fortunately, his Coordinator reflexes kicked in—he twisted sideways and slammed into the wall instead of the child.
Rubbing his sore head from the impact, Kira immediately crouched down to apologize to the girl.
"Mmm, it's okay! You're going to protect this ship, right?"
With wide, innocent eyes, the little girl held out a paper flower she had folded.
"Mommy said we should thank the big brothers protecting this ship. Can I give this to you?"
"Of course! And my favorite, Brother Wang Hu—will you accept my flower too?"
When Kira somewhat dazedly accepted the flower handed to him by the little girl, she then ran up to Wang Hu.
Standing on her tiptoes, she tried to hand another paper-folded flower to the tall Wang Hu.
"Ah, thank you." Quickly squatting down, Wang Hu took the flower from the girl and affectionately patted her head.
Watching the girl happily trot back to her mother's side and seeing her still waving at him, Wang Hu turned.
"Kira, let's go."
In full view of the mother and daughter pair, Wang Hu sniffed the paper flower that should have no fragrance whatsoever.
Yet he treated it as if it were the most fragrant flower in the world, then solemnly pinned it to his chest.
"Yes, Brother Wang Hu!" Following his example and pinning the flower to his own chest, Kira's expression became extremely solemn.
"The world's corrective force?"
Glancing at the girl still waving in the direction Wang Hu and the others had left, Li Chengzhi headed toward the Archangel's bridge.
Along the way, he pondered the incident of the girl giving flowers, repeatedly considering whether Wang Hu had privately achieved this effect through indirect influence.
Setting aside what Li Chengzhi was thinking about, Wang Hu and Kira joined Mu and had already taken their seats in their respective mobile suit cockpits.
"Kira, Mu - our strategy for this battle is to defend while attacking."
"Be careful not to stray too far from the Eighth Fleet. Return to the Archangel immediately upon receiving my signal."
Before departure, Wang Hu earnestly warned both of them.
"Defense? Understood, Brother Wang Hu."
Stroking the paper flower on his chest, Kira naturally wouldn't raise any objections.
Unlike the Eighth Fleet with whom he had little connection or affection, Kira was more concerned with protecting the Archangel.
Although he understood the principle that "when the lips are gone, the teeth will be cold," since Brother Wang Hu had managed to bring them this far with just one ship...
If they abandoned the Eighth Fleet but the Archangel remained and everyone was still here, Kira felt Brother Wang Hu would always find a way to lead the ship to escape elsewhere.
"Return to the Archangel?"
Hearing this, Mu's face twitched, reminded of what happened at the Artemis Fortress.
Worried that Wang Hu might try to repeat his old trick of using the Eighth Fleet as a shield, Mu quickly sent a message to Murrue on the bridge.
"Wang Hu, the Eighth Fleet cannot be lost."
In a very strong tone, Mu expressed his firm stance.
"And this time Murrue and the others definitely won't listen to you. Don't even think about abandoning Admiral Halberton and running away!"
"Don't think of me like that." Wang Hu maneuvered the Zeta Gundam onto the catapult.
"You'll understand once we're out there. And if it weren't for Admiral Halberton's insistence, we wouldn't even have to fight this battle in the first place."
"What do you mean?" Perplexed by Wang Hu's cryptic words, Mu followed him out with heavy concerns.
What did Wang Hu mean by that?
With such thoughts weighing on his mind, Mu piloted the Zero Ginn away from the Archangel, prepared to sacrifice himself for his country today.
The moment he emerged into space, his entire mind began buzzing.
"What's going on? Why is it like this!"
"What is Admiral Halberton trying to do? What is Wang Hu trying to do?"
Mu and his father's clone, Creuset, almost simultaneously cried out.
The reason both of them wore expressions of stunned disbelief and incomprehension was...
The root of everything lay in the current deployment posture of the Eighth Fleet.
Was the Eighth Fleet important?
Extremely important!
Even for the resource-rich Allied Forces, there were only about a dozen fleets of this scale after consolidation.
So one might ask, how formidable should the military strength of such a main force be?
Then why were the Moebius units appearing on the battlefield so sparse and scattered now?
In past engagements against Coordinators, regardless of the outcome, the Moebius had always made a grand entrance—dark, dense, and imposing!
Their numbers had always been more than sufficient.
"Scattered here and there, what is Admiral Halberton trying to do? Does he expect such numbers to hold off Creuset?"
Mu looked left and right, noticing that the Eighth Fleet showed no intention of deploying additional Moebius units.
A rather uncharitable thought crossed his mind.
Just how many empty payrolls had the admiral taken, how much soldier's pay had he embezzled, to the point where he couldn't even muster enough Moebius pilots?
"Mu, I have a question for you. You don't have to answer if you don't want to."
The Zeta Gundam flew alongside the Zero Ginn, and Wang Hu posed the question to Mu.
"What question?" Mu had long abandoned any thought of fighting to the death, mainly because it seemed utterly pointless.
Given the posture the admiral had adopted, it looked as though he was preparing to lead everyone to their graves.
If that were the case, fighting to the death would only make him look foolish.
"Is the Eighth Fleet more about the ships or the people of the Eighth Fleet?"
Calmly observing the distant, visible specks of light representing ZAFT's Mobile Suits, Wang Hu asked leisurely.
"The people or the ships?"
A flash of insight struck Mu's mind. He looked at the Moebius units, which, though few in number, were charging forward at remarkable speed.
Suddenly, Mu guessed what Wang Hu meant and tuned into the internal communication frequency of the Mobius Machine Group.
"For a blue and pure world!"
The roaring slogan flooded his ears.
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