"What information can Flaga and the others bring back... Damn it! Whose unit is that? Why did it have to appear at a time like this?"
Natarle murmured anxiously.
Their concern was no longer limited to the hostile forces they could see outside.
The real variable lay somewhere "unseen." Jiliang and Mu had entered the colony and never returned. They were their strongest fighters, and then there was Xia Ya—who, despite everyone's desperate objections, had seemed possessed as he piloted the Unicorn Gundam after Jiliang and Mu. The disappearance of that normally steady man was especially worrying.
It was the Creuset Team.
A certain voice shattered the speculation. It was Murrue who answered.
At those words, the people aboard the other ships all looked doubtful. Three Nazca-class vessels did match the Creuset Team's usual formation, but their insignias had not been confirmed. Yet the members of the Archangel, along with Natarle, who had once fought beside them aboard the same ship and now commanded the Dominion, wore expressions of inexplicable understanding, even a sense of destiny.
"Though I don't really know why myself... Mu knows. That feeling... about Rau Le Creuset's presence..."
Murrue's voice lowered, carrying a helplessness science could not explain. This was not merely a tactical deduction, but something rooted more deeply in those strange experiences from the past.
Everyone aboard the Archangel, from bridge personnel to ordinary maintenance crew, had often witnessed Mu La Flaga's uncanny sense. It was neither radar nor thermal detection, but an intuition that was almost a sixth sense.
That direction... She remembered that the Freedom Gundam and Mr. Mu's Aile Strike Gundam had also headed that way earlier in pursuit of Creuset. In other words, Xia Ya was rushing at full speed toward where Jiliang and Mu were.
Back when they had