Don't Put Out the Fire

Ye Qingluan made her judgment within half a second.

They were not security personnel.

"Who are you?" Huili's voice was taut as she positioned herself in front of the console. The progress bar for the storage device was still flashing.

Ye Qingluan did not answer.

She walked to the power control cabinet on the left and tipped her chin at the members of Team Two behind her.

"Restore power to Node Four. Manually bridge the circuits and bypass the security system's sectional shutdown order."

"Understood."

Huili's eyes shifted back and forth between the two figures in gray work uniforms as she took half a step back.

"You're not from Dawn Society."

Ye Qingluan crouched before the power control cabinet, opened the panel, and swiftly identified the labels on the circuit board.

"You don't look like you're carrying out a normal backup procedure either."

Huili bit her lip.

A dull explosion sounded outside the server room. A piece of insulation fell from the ceiling and shattered across the floor.

"I'm backing up Director Erica Simmons's personal research logs," Huili said in a lowered voice. "Maintenance details for the G Weapons, calibration parameters, pilot system compatibility logs... None of that is in the central database. It's all stored in the local partition of her personal terminal. If the server gets blown up, that data will be gone forever."

Ye Qingluan's fingers paused on the circuit board for an instant.

Erica Simmons's personal research logs.

G Weapons maintenance details.

Their value might have exceeded even the standardized parameters in the central database.

Anyone could follow blueprints for standardized parameters, but maintenance logs recorded the issues engineers discovered during actual operations, along with corrective solutions and compatibility experience. Those were things that could not be written into design schematics.

She pressed her communicator.

"Director, we encountered a Dawn Society engineer in the server room. She's backing up Erica Simmons's private research logs, including G Weapons maintenance details and pilot compatibility parameters."

Lin Yuan's reply came quickly.

"How far along is her backup?"

Ye Qingluan glanced at the screen on Huili's console.

"About one-third remaining."

"Let her finish."

"Director, she's already becoming suspicious of our identities."

"It doesn't matter. The entire colony satellite is burning right now. No one will investigate an engineer who saved her supervisor's data amid the chaos."

Lin Yuan paused.

"But bring her with you."

Ye Qingluan did not argue.

"Take both her and the data. Tell her the colony satellite's structural integrity is deteriorating. The outer hull from Sections Seven through Nine has already begun deforming. If she doesn't evacuate within twenty minutes, the entire factory district will depressurize."

"Is that true, or are you trying to scare her?"

"It's true. I just saw the satellite structural monitoring data."

The communication ended.

Ye Qingluan turned to Huili.

Team Two had already completed the bridging operation. Power to Node Four was restored, and the terminal in her waist pouch gave a faint vibration as the data stream accelerated again.

Seventy-six percent.

"Your name is Huili?"

Huili stared at her without speaking.

"The colony satellite's outer hull is deforming, from Sections Seven to Nine. You know what that means."

Huili's expression changed.

She was an engineer. She understood the consequences of structural instability in a colony satellite better than anyone.

The factory district was in Section Eight.

"You're lying to me."

"Check for yourself. There's a structural monitoring terminal over there."

Huili hesitated for two seconds, then ran to another console and pulled up the data.

On the screen, the outer hull stress levels for Section Seven flashed with red alerts.

Her hand slid off the keyboard.

"How much longer on your backup?" Ye Qingluan asked as she walked over.

"Four minutes."

"Finish it, then come with me."

"Where?"

"Somewhere you can get out alive."

Huili looked back at her. Fear and suspicion filled her eyes, but there was something else there too—an instinct too urgent to identify.

She turned back to the console, her fingers returning to the keyboard.

Eighty-three percent.

The explosions outside the server room grew increasingly frequent.

Ye Qingluan crouched beside the power control cabinet again. While keeping the circuit bridge stable, she listened to Team One's report through her earpiece.

"Team Leader, the fighting near the hangar is basically over. ZAFT's red-uniform squad has taken four G Weapons: Duel, Buster, Blitz, and Aegis. Strike was launched by that civilian pilot and is currently engaging ZAFT outside the factory complex."

"What about the Archangel?"

"It's starting its main engines in the harbor district. Looks like it's preparing to withdraw."

"Are there any civilians nearby?"

"Several dozen people are trapped in the western corridor of the factory complex, including trainee students and maintenance workers. The security evacuation passage was destroyed by an explosion."

Ye Qingluan closed her eyes briefly.

She pressed her communicator.

"Director, civilians are trapped in the western corridor of the factory complex. Several dozen people. The evacuation route is destroyed, and our extraction route passes through that area."

The channel went quiet for a second.

"Can you take them with you without affecting the mission schedule?"

"If we're just passing by and opening a door, yes."

Another second of silence.

"You can open the door. You cannot stop to organize an evacuation."

"Understood."

Ninety-one percent.

The progress bar on Huili's side also reached one hundred percent.

She pulled out the storage device and clenched it in her palm.

"You're done." Ye Qingluan stood. "Come with me."

"I don't know who you are."

"You don't need to know. What you need to know is that this colony satellite will begin depressurizing in less than fifteen minutes, and I know an escape pod passage that hasn't been destroyed yet."

The hand gripping Huili's storage device was trembling, but her feet followed.

Ninety-four percent.

Ye Qingluan led Huili and the members of Team Two through the pipeline maintenance passage toward the designated escape pod route.

As they passed the western corridor of the factory complex, she saw the people inside through the fire door's observation window.

More than thirty people were crammed into the corridor: maintenance workers in coveralls, students in school uniforms, and two women holding children.

The evacuation door's electronic lock had deadlocked due to the power outage.

Ye Qingluan went to the door and swiped a maintenance work order across the card reader.

Nothing happened.

She crouched down, took out a multifunction tool from her waist pouch, pried open the electronic lock panel, and shorted two nodes on the circuit.

The lock sprang open.

The people inside froze for an instant, then surged out.

Ye Qingluan pressed herself against the wall to let them pass, shouting to the maintenance worker at the front.

"Turn right and go three hundred meters. Escape Pod Harbor Twelve. Run."

The worker nodded and led the crowd away at a run.

Ninety-eight percent.

Ye Qingluan turned and continued forward.

Behind her, Huili was breathing hard, her steps slightly unsteady.

"You saved them," Huili's voice came from behind.

Ye Qingluan did not turn around.

"I opened a door."

One hundred percent.

The terminal stopped vibrating.

Ye Qingluan stopped at a corner in the pipeline passage and pulled out her terminal to confirm the data integrity.

Every checksum was green.

The GAT-X series frame data, Phase Shift Armor technical details, weapon system parameters, control software architecture, and Dawn Society engineering logs were all secured.

She pressed her communicator and said six words.

"Director, the Spark has been secured."

Earth, capital of the East Asian Republic, underground command center of the Special Equipment Bureau.

Lin Yuan sat before the tactical display, his right hand resting on the armrest, his fingers unmoving.

Sheng Lan stood behind him, watching the structural monitoring display for Heliopolis.

The colony satellite was breaking apart.

The deformed outer hull area continued to expand, while the internal sections depressurized one after another.

The Archangel, carrying Strike Gundam and a group of civilians, burst out of the harbor and vanished into the deep space of the L3 Sector.

ZAFT's Nazca-class destroyers began recovering their assault teams.

A colony satellite that had once housed two hundred and fifty thousand people became a slowly disintegrating red icon on the tactical display.

Lin Yuan watched for a long time.

Then he reached out and switched off the Heliopolis display, replacing it with the data receipt confirmation page for the Spark Project.

Green check marks lined up in a row.

Complete.

"Sheng Lan."

"Yes."

"Notify the 811 Institute. Put the technical analysis team on standby. Ye Qingluan's extraction craft is expected to reach East Asian territory in seventy-two hours. Begin the assessment immediately once the data arrives."

"Yes." Sheng Lan paused. "Director, Ye Qingluan brought two Dawn Society technical personnel out with her."

"I know. Receive them under the pretext of a technical cooperation invitation. Do not restrict their personal freedom. But they are not to contact any core projects of the 811 Institute before signing confidentiality agreements."

"Understood."

Sheng Lan turned to leave.

"Sheng Lan."

She stopped.

Lin Yuan did not turn around. His voice was quiet.

"Record today's casualty figures for me."

Sheng Lan stood where she was, looking at his back.

The silence lasted three seconds.

"Director, those numbers should not be remembered by me alone."