Chapter 230: Aspirations Unfulfilled
From Hathaway's perspective, the plot was completely different.
He had been determined not to join the army since he was a child, and he didn't pay much attention to his father's work in the A-Laws. The good news is that his father was a very open-minded man who treated him and his sister equally and let them practice their chosen way of life according to their own will.
When he was in high school, he was introduced to Judau Ashta and joined his Jupiter extraction team by Dr. Lingus, his father's most solid ally and his most respected elder. Judau not only taught him the skills of piloting the MS, but also taught him a lot about being a good man.
Under the influence of both the Doctor and Judau, Hathaway grew into a moral, idealistic, educated, and disciplined boy. In general, except for not successfully chasing the girl he liked, Hathaway was quite satisfied with his life now.
Then Mineva's words completely disrupted his worldview.
Is a human being still a human being after losing one's self? Is that kind of human being truly alive? Is there any point in simply lingering on in the brainwashing of others? He had been convinced of free will since he was a child, and in his eyes, the so-called "Destiny Plan" was not fundamentally different from the destruction of human civilization.
The respected elder suddenly turned into a demon king who wants to destroy the world, and his old father also suddenly transformed into the four kings under the demon king - the other three, according to his estimation, should be Diana, Haman, and Nunnally - and as the hope of mankind, the Wheel of Angels, turned out to be an evil super weapon that will destroy the free will of all mankind.
Mineva is unable to lie to him, so the above is by no means some kind of epileptic dreaming for him, but a reality that has to be faced. So the question arises, what to do now?
Is it to expose his father's crimes to the world like Mineva? Or to unite with other people to blow up the Wheel of Angels? Or go to the moon and talk to Dr. Lingus face to face to change his mind? You know, it's always hard to accept that your most respected person suddenly became a devil.
Just when he was worried about the future, Mineva and Ple left him behind and quietly ran away. After learning this fact, he chased after them in his newly painted F97 at the first opportunity. Perhaps leaving him behind was Mineva's gentleness to keep him from getting too involved, but Hathaway now needs the young girl's advice and counsel.
The good thing is that F97 is an MS specially developed by Dr. Lingus. Although it doesn't have strong firepower,& its basic performance is exceptionally good. In order to adapt to Jupiter's far greater size and gravity than Earth, F97's movement ability and sensor range were far better than any MS or warship today.
Hathaway therefore could smoothly catch up with Mineva's shuttle, and after Mineva was captured, he could track after the ship without being detected.
When the Minovsky particle concentration suddenly rose, he realized that someone was planning something bad. In the face of a small team of MS, saving a shuttle from their hands is too unrealistic, so he sensibly chose to bide his time.
Some time later, the team of MS left the sea area and entered Dakar. Any further and F97 would be detected by anti-aircraft radar, Hathaway stopped the MS to think quickly.
"Mineva's current identity is, to put it bluntly, a terrorist, and there are still many of the Doctor's political enemies lurking in the council, and they are likely to use Mineva's identity to make a play against the Doctor. In other words, both Mineva and the Doctor will be in danger." Hathaway took a deep breath, "I believe that I can talk to the Doctor and persuade him to give up his plan, so now it is necessary to save Mineva first."
Hathaway stared intently at the radar display directly in front of him, trying to find the time to strike. Fortunately, luck seemed to be on his side, and at the last moment when the shuttle Mineva was on was disappearing from F97's sensor range, the MS team, accompanied by the local garrison, changed course and flew to the barracks outside the city, while the shuttle headed alone to land at the airport on the edge of the city.
"It's now!"
F97's thrusters were on full blast, turning into a long rainbow straight into Jove International Airport. Mineva and Ple had already disembarked from the shuttle as he expected and were diving into a small car. As long as he could catch Mineva back before the local garrison responded, he could …
"…?!"
The sense of crisis in his mind made Hathaway subconsciously control F97 to make an emergency evasion, a high-energy particle beam immediately swept past before his eyes. The reflective beam cloak had been consumed in the battle with Kshatriya, if this shot hit F97, it would crash on the spot.
"Showing off yourself above downtown is not a recommended behavior, the unknown pilot," A cheerful male voice followed on the public channel, "Isn't this Gundam F97? Did you steal it from my father-in-law… ahem, from Dr. Lingus?"
A thirty-meter-tall "giant" MS was standing in front of him, while the car carrying Mineva was gradually lost in the traffic towards the city center. Hathaway, who saw that, hammered the armrest of his seat in frustration, then immediately took a closer look at the MS in front of him and began to think about how to get out.
He was Bright Noa's son, and if he was caught here, it would bring his father too much trouble.
He quickly recognized the Gundam in front of him. It was a special NT MS (Penelope) that Anaheim had been commissioned to develop several years ago. There was also a Gundam codenamed Ξ (Keshi) that was commissioned together, but it was forcibly cancelled by Dr. Lingus for some inexplicable reason.
Penelope Gundam, as an NT special MS, the biggest feature is its Sekhmet system. The floating missiles are hidden underneath the shoulder armor and skirt armor, and could be controlled by the NT pilot's mental sensing.
This MS was originally assigned to Captain Mu, who had just awakened to be a NewType in the past few years, but someone's obsession with the new Gundam was unbelievable. And Bright, after numerous pleas, finally gave in and assigned this NT-specific MS to a non-NT pilot for the first time - Graham Aker.
"No wonder this Gundam comes so quick, it really is the worst encounter that can be thought of." Hathaway's palms uncontrollably seeped out a layer of fine sweat, "Major Aker, too bad that it's him…"
"What's wrong? Don't like to talk? It's not a good habit to be silent as a Gundam's pilot." Penelope drew out two beam sabers, "It's not a good idea to shoot indiscriminately over the city, so let's settle it happily with a close battle!"
"That was fast!"
Penelope's 30 meters tall body seems to have no effect on its speed, almost in the blink of an eye, its beam saber has arrived in front of Hathaway's eyes. In the nick of time, F97 flipped backward and kicked Penelope's forearm unexpectedly with the short blade mounted on the bottom of F97's foot.
"I've known about this for a long time!"
Aker lightly dodge the kick, and the beam saber smoothly chopped down. F97's entire front leg was cut off. Penelope, who completed a series of complex movements in a flash, even had the strength to grab F97's front leg, so as not to cause casualties by smashing such a large piece of metal into the city.
"Oops, you run really fast." Aker looked at F97, who took the opportunity to escape away, and regretfully sighed, "It's not easy to meet another good pilot, it's a pity that he was about to lose so suffocating. Father-in-law, father-in-law, why do you have to make such a thing?"
Hathaway didn't know why Major Aker didn't chase after him, but it was a good time to escape anyway, and F97 made a mad dash towards the coast. As long as Graham Aker didn't chase after him, Hathaway believed that he could safely escape from others.
Yet things were going in the worst possible direction for Hathaway, in the next unsuspecting moment.
"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!"
The hissing didn't clear his consciousness one iota, and the nerves of his whole body shuddered with misery. The eyes could not see anything under the pressure of pure white electric light, and the mind could not feel anything but severe pain.
There was a buzz, a rupture of the eardrum, and something exploded in the center of consciousness. Until then Hathaway remembered that Dakar seems to have a security device called "light defense wall"?
"That's enough! Stop!" Graham yelled angrily to the command center, "He's clearly incapacitated, must we electrocute him until he's dead?"
The high voltage grid finally stopped functioning at Aker's request, and the stiffened Gundam F97 stopped functioning and crashed to the shoreline. After Penelope quickly arrived at the scene, Aker used a sling to descend to the hatch and opened the cockpit of F97, and the slight smell of burning mixed with the smell of urine came to his nose.
He took out his pistol and looked into the cockpit, only to see the F97's pilot sitting with his head hanging down, seemingly unconscious. Aker carefully took off his helmet, and underneath it appeared the face of a teenager with visibly burned skin and messy hair.
"Fortunately, the light defense wall stopped in time. But this teenager, I feel his face looks very familiar…" Aker pondered for a moment, and his pupils suddenly dilated, "… Hathaway?!"
A few hours later, Aker, who had completed all the handovers, walked into a high-end bar in downtown Dakar in his civilian clothes. As a direct report of Commander Bright Noa, he had been stripped of his command of the MS forces at the first opportunity by the Prime Minister using some emergency clause he had never heard of, and he was even forbidden to report to Commander Bright, Dr. Lingus or anyone else due to the sensitivity of the matter.
Only when he handed over his military power did he realize that he seemed to have been counted. The good thing is that Prime Minister Marcenas& is still calm and didn't foolishly imprison him, but only sent a few people to monitor his movements.
He's not much of an alcoholic, but he can't help but want a drink when it comes to things like today.
"Give me a drink suitable for Virgo." He sat at the bar and ordered the bartender, glancing with his eyes at the "little followers" not far behind him and sighed deeply, "The Doctor's daughter, the Commander's son, ah, the wheels of fate are beginning to turn … "
The bartender with a serviceable smile on his face placed a glass of gin and tonic in front of him as if he hadn't heard any complaints.
Half an hour later, the words "The Doctor's daughter, the Commander's son, the wheels of fate are beginning to turn", along with countless other sentences, either full of meaning or worthless, were sent from all corners of Dakar, relayed through layers of encrypted networks, and gathered in a server in China, and then summarized by several top intelligence experts. The analysis was turned into a reliable conclusion and submitted to someone.
At the end of the day, Ade, who was on the moon, received a text message from Wang Liu Mei, "Your daughter has been caught in Dakar."
"I found Mineva, she's in Dakar." Ade put down his phone and looked around the living room, "Does anyone want to go with me?"
"I'm still in jail." Lacus said without looking up while typing, "I really want to accompany you, but unfortunately, there is really no way. Maybe about after twenty-three years later, there will be a chance?"
"You know that I can't leave the moon because of Villkiss, and you deliberately seduce me with such questions." Ange puffed up her cheeks unhappily, "It's too much, it's just too much."
"Ade, I have learned one thing in my long life." C.C. looked meaningfully into the distance, "It turns out but whenever I get involved in your business, I'm bound to get things to mess up until I fall into a bottomless abyss and end up relying on you or Lacus or Ange to save the day. So I've decided that I don't care about anything for the rest of my life. Besides, I've raised you for so many years, it's your turn to raise me, right?"
Momoka was the only one who blinked her eyes with eagerness, but Ade shook his head at her cruelly. Without her, C.C. and Ange would& get everything in the house into a mess, and Lacus, who couldn't stop herself from writing every day, couldn't help a little on this matter.
"Me! Me!" Alice raised her hand excitedly, "I'm going with Ade!"
"Then Alice and I will go together." Ade stood up and headed for the second floor, "I'll leave as soon as I've packed."
While walking, Ade picked up the phone, but just as he was going to type something like "Consider it as I owe your another favor", Wang Liu Mei sent another message.
"I don't receive money and don't ask me to consider it as a favor, I only need your time. Dr. Lingus must be faithful to his word." These words were shown on the phone screen, "If you don't want those photos and videos to be seen by your woman (lol)."
