"Captain! It's the Freedom Gundam!"
At that suffocatingly tense moment, Miliaria, who handled communications and enemy detection, delivered the news everyone had been waiting for in an ecstatic voice. Her voice even cracked with excitement, but nothing could have sounded sweeter.
One corner of the main screen quickly switched to footage captured by the optical sensors. Several rapidly growing points of light appeared from the direction of Mendel Colony's port. They were mobile suits departing from Mendel.
They were symbols of hope.
The Freedom Gundam, the Strike Gundam equipped with the Aile Striker Pack, and the Unicorn Gundam behind them appeared on the screen, along with the ferocious-looking Blaze Gundam and the Strike Gundam piloted by Nicol.
Seeing those familiar figures, Murrue instantly relaxed her rigid shoulders and let out a long breath. Yet that brief relief did not last even a second. The urgent tone of Jiliang's incoming transmission made her tense up again, her heart clenching.
"...Archangel, can you hear me? Mu's hurt! Please have the medical team ready immediately!"
The background of the transmission was noisy, but Jiliang's voice cut through clearly, tinged with unmistakable panic.
"What...!?"
In that instant, Murrue forgot the composure expected of a commander. She even forgot that she was in the middle of a battlefield. Her eyes widened, her pupils trembling as worry and terror for her lover showed plainly on her face. That man who always wore a flippant smile and claimed he could make the impossible possible had been injured?
"Jiliang, I'll take him. You go too, Xia Ya. I'll catch up right away!"
Michel's voice came over the communications channel. The Freedom Gundam quickly approached the Blaze Gundam and gently handed the badly damaged Aile Strike Gundam in its arms to Michel's machine.
The instant the handoff was complete,