SHIN KIDOU SENKI GUNDAM WING

SAINAN NO KEKKA
Duty: James

I was a cadet at Lake Victoria Academy for what seemed like the longest time.

Not that it was a bad thing. My cadet years were some of the most memorable of my life. I made friends that I would never forget and learned so much in such a short time. I think the best year of them all was my senior year, the week before graduation, when Taurus Flight conducted special ops on the academy grounds for a week.

Yes, my class was named after the new mobile suits, the ones just fresh off the production line. I will never forget seeing Tauruses being unloaded at the supply docks the first day I came to the academy as a brand new first year cadet, with hair that was a little too long and eyes that were a little too wide. I remembered them looking so large, and I was so small. They were the symbol of our new generation, my flight instructor said, as we lined up in formation, stiff at attention, hardly daring to breathe as she looked each of us in the eye and asked, are you ready? Are you ready for the challenge?

It wasn't until much later that I fully understood what she meant.

My flight instructor's name was Lieutenant Lucrezia Noin, and she was amazing. No, more than amazing. She was brilliant. She was everything that any cadet would ever want to be, and more. The girls adored her. The males acted tough around her in public and then in private agonized about how much they would give to be like her. Her piloting skills were second to none. She was hard, but fair, and every word that came out of her mouth was a gem of wisdom. Her own performance at the academy as a cadet was almost the stuff of legend.

Lieutenant Noin was pretty, too, petite with exotic Italian features and expressive eyes. I never even thought about her that way while I was a cadet, however. It would have been…sacrilegious. She was my mentor and my guide, filling in for the family which I had never had, which had opposed my decision to enter the academy, had opposed to me going into the military at all. The only family member even remotely close to me was my little sister Ilene, three years younger, and her love for me was more of a kind of hero worship than anything.

Noin gave me the support I never had, and I was grateful to her for it.

So we might have idolized her a little too much, but she didn't seem to mind. We gave our all, and she gave hers. She never had to remind us of our dedication, or the prestige of having been selected to attend the top military academy in the world. It was understood that any cadet who did not perform up to level would be given no second chances.

There was a boy who lived across the hall from me who was expelled that second semester of our first year for poor performance. It was not that he was not a good cadet. In fact, he was a very good cadet. But he wasn't good enough.

I never understood that until after graduation, when I was working in a tiny office with three people on either side of me, all ensigns, crowded between two computers and three phones. During that time I wondered why I hadn't been selected to pilot, and why all my other friends had. Why I was stuck at a desk job with Federation officers, of all people, at an understaffed Federation base in the middle of nowhere. Why I had gone through the training, in the first place.

Then the call came. Would you like to go back to Lake Victoria? they said.

I told them I would make my decision and call them back. They gave me two days. That night I went home to my small apartment just off base, kicked off my shoes, stared at the ceiling, and counted the bumps of shadowy plaster with thoughts running through my head. The benefits of going back. The benefits of staying here.

There were benefits, believe it or not. I had applied for an instructor pilot's position at the Federation mobile suit training facility on base, and it was almost a given that I would be the top candidate for the job. As a graduate of Lake Victoria, I would not be at the desk job for very long. It was a transfer position, a place to put me until some other prestigious job could be found for me. They had told me this when they sent me off.

I could choose to go to test pilot school, which had been my top choice. I could choose special operations. The teams which took all the glory, the visible positions. Or I could go to the academy and become just another instructor pilot for wide-eyed cadets learning to fly a mobile suit for the first time.

Was that it? Was it that I was not good enough, that they had decided to send me back to the Academy? Was this the end of my career, before it had even begun? I was only fourteen years old.

I thought of Lieutenant Noin then, of her fierce determination to train aces out of greenhorns, professionals out of fumbling cadets, officers out of civilians, adults out of children. I hadn't thought of her since graduation, but her face appeared in my mind again. I saw her yelling out commands as we circled the zero-g track, her voice in my ear telling me that I needed to hang on, no matter what. Standing in front of us in the lecture hall, telling us that we were not doing this for ourselves, but that we were all made for a higher calling.

I called them back the next day, telling them I would accept the position.

Noin met me at the airport, taking my hand with that trademark grin of hers. She was dressed casually. I'd never seen her out of uniform before, and it surprised me.

"Welcome back, Ensign Keets. We meet again."

"Yes, ma'am," I said carefully, and she laughed.

"There's no need for that, James. You can call me Noin."

Noin taught me how to teach. I had never imagined that teaching would be such a tedious and tiring occupation, especially teaching cadets. Cadets were made to follow orders. How hard could it be?

Noin showed me that there was more than one way of getting through to a cadet who had given up on ever making it. She taught me that knowing cadets by name was more important than any instructor award from the Military Board. She stayed awake nights sitting at the corner space at the officer's mess counseling me on how to deal with a problem cadet or just sat with me when I was tired and frustrated and all I wanted to do was quit.

It was then that I would remember that she had never quit. I wondered how many nights she had sat by herself here alone, at the bar of the mess, thinking of how tired she was and how frustrated.

"Don't give up, James," she would say. "The worst thing you could do, worse than anything, is to quit. You'll never forgive yourself for the lost opportunity."

I spent two years at Lake Victoria, two years watching the innocent first years become cautious second years and then grow into independent third year cadets, cadet officers. "How did you feel?" I asked Noin one night, at our daily meetings. "How did you feel when my class graduated?"

She thought for a moment, and when she turned to me her eyes were thoughtful. "I felt…complete."

I knew there were rumors circling around the academy about us. There had to have been. Academy cadets, deprived of anything remotely resembling real world gossip, naturally turned to the academy itself to find the latest scandals. I know my class had. I made sure to repeat loudly and clearly that there was nothing going on between Instructor Noin and myself, if any cadet was bold enough to ask. To my surprise, some actually were.

And there was never anything more than pure friendship between us. Noin was four years older than me and infinitely wiser, more compassionate and more courageous than I could ever be. She was no longer the bright goddess of my cadet days, but even as a living, breathing human woman she was higher than I could ever hope to reach. I told her this one day and she laughed.

"I think you're deluding yourself, James."

Deluding myself or not, I did not need to be a genius to see that Noin already had someone. I never asked…it wouldn't have been in my line to ask. But I was happy for her. I had never had a steady relationship with anyone, and my relations with my family back home were still strained. Ilene and I still corresponded regularly, but how could I talk to her, a child, about these things? True, Noin and I were children ourselves…but we were so much older. We all were, at the academy.

The first signs of trouble had been stirring for longer than I had been in the OZ Specials, but it was my second year at the academy when both Noin and I knew that things would not stay peaceful for long. I worried about the students whom I had taught. How many would die in battle? How many would live to see another day and regret what they had done?

In the middle of the whirl of politics and assignments and confusion, there was always Noin. She was the anchor of the academy, the eye of the storm. She was still the one the cadets loved most, the strongest of us all.

"I'm not strong," she said when I told her this. "I've just learned that duty is more important than anything in this world. And when you do your duty, that's the most you can do. You could never do more."

"Do you think you've done your duty, then?"

She stared at her hands. "You know what, James? I hate seeing soldiers die. I hate seeing anyone die. But it's a fact of life. I…we are in a profession in which the main focus is to find ways to make people die. How hard is that?"

I didn't answer.

"It all comes down to what you believe in, I suppose," she said. "Remember what you believe in. Why you're here. Never let it go. Never regret the reason that you are here."

I told that to my class the next day, when the topic of impending war came up. I reminded them of honor. Of priority, and of commitment, and then I asked them why they were at the academy. These were third year students, committed, passionate, bright. The ones who were not good enough were long gone. I asked them for truthful answers. To write them down on a sheet of paper and to hand them in, as an assignment.

I came because I wanted an adventure. But I got so much more than that.

I was here because my father was here. But I think my decision to stay is personal. I think that the academy is more than a legacy…it's an ideal.

I wasn't sure why I came here, but in the almost three years I've been here, I think I've found my calling.

It's not about the military, in the end. It's about duty.

Duty. Noin had said that.

After reading those responses, I sat in my office in the dark for a long while, and I thought. I thought about my family and their views on the military. About how they believed I was throwing away my life. I thought about Noin and my days as a cadet, and then the academy and Noin now, in the present. I thought about why I was serving as a soldier in the military group called OZ. I thought about what I believed in. About why what I believed in was worth fighting for.

We were fighting for peace. That was the mission, the reason why I had trained here, and the reason why I was now training cadets here. Peace.

Maybe someday Lake Victoria Academy would be torn down, because there was no need to train soldiers here any longer. Maybe it would be converted into a normal school, for normal children, who did not need to grow up as quickly and brutally as I had. That was what I was fighting for. And I did not regret my choice.

I told this to Noin, quietly, the next day, and she nodded.

"I understand," she said. Just that. And I knew she really did.

She mentioned that Lieutenant Zechs Merquise was coming to the academy and she had duties to see to. It was my last conversation with her. We parted with a smile, a handshake, a promise to meet again soon, and that was the end. And when the alarm sounded that night and I woke in the darkness, I knew it was not a drill.

The war was real.

And as the explosion cracked the walls open and I was flung backwards across the room, I closed my eyes and thought again of why I had chosen this, out of all ways to die.

Because it was what I believed in.

Because it was the path I had chosen, and I would not have it any other way.

Because peace was worth fighting for.

And I did not even regret that I never had the time to run to the flightline and pull on my helmet and flightsuit and climb into my mobile suit to defend the base that I loved, because I had done all that I could do.

Because I had done my duty, and that was all that had ever mattered.

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