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October 13th, UC 0079 The unmarked steel door slid open quietly, light spilling into the darkened room from the corridor outside. First Lieutenant Marie Francois, ever-present attache case of sensitive documents in one hand, crossed the threshold and squinted her eyes against the glare of the fluorescent lighting. Her hair was somewhat disheveled, she considered with a bit of disdain. The sailors and junior EF Army personnel embarked at Green Noah would likely be making asinine chuckles as she returned to her office. They would keep it to themselves, however, if they knew what was right for them: as Admiral Jamitov Heimann's personal adjutant, she had not insignificant power in determining who might end up assigned to a delightful post in any number of places colloquially known as "Buttfuck, Nowhere". The link between such a reassignment and a juvenile catcall or innuendo would, of course, be unsubstantiated. Inside his office, Jamitov helped himself to a glass of champagne. It, like Marie, he thought, was a good Earthnoid product. Both the bottle and his aide-de-camp had been brought up from France. Proud people, the French, Jamitov mused, sipping the bubbly beverage. Being of a stout German/Russian ancestry himself, Jamitov had much to be proud of in his own right. He considered some of the names his forebears had contributed to the ever-expanding greatness of mankind: Tchaikovsky, Von Braun, Tannhauser, Gagarin, Kalashnikov, Barbarossa... "Yes, everything good comes from Earth, doesn't it..." he said aloud, reclining behind his desk. Jamitov couldn't stand Spacenoids. When he was a young man and mankind had truly begun aggressively reaching out towards the stars, things had been different. Then came Zeon Deikun, the philosophy of Contolism, and the idea that Spacenoids - as they came to be called - were now their own ethnic group. A superior race to those whose "souls were weighed down by gravity." The very idea enraged him. What truly aroused his ire was how the Earth Federal Forces did not take what he considered "appropriate steps" to squash the Spacenoid movements before they militarized. That was unforgiveable. "But... that's immaterial now, isn't it," he again said to nobody in particular, tapping his fingers against the manila folder on his desk. The words "PROJECT PHANTOM" were plastered on the upper edge, along with a red classified stamp. A new state-of-the-art mobile suit, featuring the latest advances in technology and equipment; heavily armed, well protected, high mobility. Jamitov grinned smugly at the prospect of the Spacenoids' own weapon being their ultimate downfall. More importantly, it also meant he would no longer need to concern himself with such absolute nonsense as "Newtypes", which inevitably involved more interaction with despicable Spacenoids. He thought back almost nostalgically to the development of the Earth Federation's own primitive Psychic Communicator and the amount of abject misery he'd forced on test pilot Rachel Arronax. The girl was a Spacenoid; the degree of suffering Jamitov inflicted on her in the name of increasing the psycommu's responsiveness by a few more fractions of a percentage was irrelevant. The admiral had even somewhat furtively hoped the arduous training process would kill the test pilot... one less Spacenoid Jamitov would have to deal with, and it's not as if finding new so-called "Newtypes" would have been difficult. But, that was all in the past. Jamitov's pet project, the Phantom, would eliminate the element he felt was most unreliable about cutting edge mobile weapons: the human, and far too often, the Spacenoid, operator. The Phantom was totally operated by a computer. A perfectly functional, reliable computer - developed on Earth. "A toast," Jamitov said, raising his glass to the CAD 3-view of the mobile suit proudly displayed on the flat panel display that offered the only light in the darkened, lushly-furnished office. He set the depleted glass aside and activated the intercom set into his desk. "Jamaican, is it ready yet?" "Final testing begins tomorrow, Your Excellency," Lt. Commander Jamaican Daningham replied from the Phantom's control bunker. Jamaican was one of Jamitov's closest allies; a trusted toadie through and through. "Do you still expect the Supreme Command to support going ahead with it, sir?" "Indeed," Jamitov grinned. "Once this weapon is produced, they'll be neatly handing over control of the entire mobile suit forces to us." |