Ye Qingluan made her judgment in half a second.
Not security personnel.
"Who are you?" Huili's voice was taut as she stood 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 jerked her chin at the members of Team Two behind her.
"Restore power to Node Four. Manually jumper the lines and bypass the security system's sectional shutdown order."
"Understood."
Huili's eyes darted between the two figures in gray coveralls, and she took half a step back.
"You're not from Dawn Society."
Ye Qingluan crouched before the power control cabinet, opened the panel, and rapidly 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 muffled explosion sounded outside the server room. A section of insulation paneling fell from the ceiling and shattered across the floor.
"I'm backing up Director Erica Simmons's personal research logs." Huili lowered her voice. "The maintenance details for the G Weapons, calibration parameters, and pilot-system compatibility logs. Those aren't in the Core Database. They're all stored in the local partition of her personal terminal. If the server gets blown up, that data will be lost forever."
Ye Qingluan's fingers paused over the circuit board.
Erica Simmons's personal research logs.
G Weapon maintenance details.
Their value might have exceeded even the standardized parameters in the Core Database.
Anyone could follow blueprints using standard parameters, but maintenance logs recorded the issues engineers discovered during actual work, along with their corrections and adaptation experience. Those were things that could never be written into design drawings.
She pressed her communicator.
"Director, we've encountered a Dawn Society engineer in the server room. She's backing up Erica Simmons's private research logs, including G Weapon 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 already suspects who we are."
"It doesn't matter. The entire colony satellite is burning. No one will investigate an engineer who saved her superior's data amid the chaos."
Lin Yuan paused.
"But bring her with you."
Ye Qingluan did not argue.
"Take both the person and the data. Tell her the colony satellite's structural integrity is declining. The outer hulls of Sections Seven through Nine have already begun deforming. If she doesn't evacuate within twenty minutes, the entire factory zone will depressurize."
"Is that true, or are you scaring her?"
"It's true. I just saw the satellite structural monitoring data."
The communication ended.
Ye Qingluan turned to Huili.
Team Two had completed the jumper operation. Power to Node Four had been restored, and the terminal in her waist pouch gave off a faint vibration as the data stream accelerated once more.
Seventy-six percent.
"Your name is Huili?"
Huili stared at her without speaking.
"The colony satellite's outer hull is deforming. Sections Seven through Nine. You know what that means."
Huili's face changed.
She was an engineer. She understood better than anyone the consequences of a colony satellite becoming structurally unstable.
The factory zone was in Section Eight.
"You're lying to me."
"Check it 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 reading for Section Seven flashed with a red warning.
Her hand slipped from the keyboard.
"How much longer on your backup?" Ye Qingluan walked over to her.
"Four minutes."
"Finish it, then come with me."
"Where?"
"Somewhere you can get out alive."
Huili looked back at her. Her eyes held fear and suspicion, but more than that, there was an instinct she had no time to identify.
She turned back to the console, and her fingers fell onto the keyboard again.
Eighty-three percent.
The explosions outside the server room grew increasingly frequent.
Ye Qingluan crouched beside the power control cabinet again, maintaining the stability of the jumper lines while listening to Team One's report through her earpiece.
"Team leader, the fighting near the hangar is mostly over. ZAFT's Red 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 port zone. Looks like it's preparing to withdraw."
"Are there any civilians nearby?"
"There are dozens of trapped people in the west corridor of the factory complex, including trainee students and maintenance workers. The security evacuation passage was destroyed in the explosion."
Ye Qingluan closed her eyes briefly.
She pressed her communicator.
"Director, there are trapped civilians in the west corridor of the factory complex. Several dozen people. The evacuation passage has been destroyed. Our escape 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 through 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.
Huili's progress bar also jumped to one hundred percent.
She pulled out the storage device and clenched it in her palm.
"Finished." Ye Qingluan rose to her feet. "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 route that hasn't been destroyed."
Huili's hand trembled around the storage device, but her feet followed.
Ninety-four percent.
Ye Qingluan led Huili and Team Two through the pipeline maintenance passage toward the designated escape pod.
As they passed the west corridor of the factory complex, she saw the people inside through the observation window in the fire door.
More than thirty people were crammed into the corridor: maintenance workers in coveralls, students in school uniforms, and two women holding children.
The electronic lock on the evacuation door had deadlocked due to the power outage.
Ye Qingluan walked to the door and swiped a maintenance work order across the card reader.
Nothing happened.
She crouched down, pulled 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 at the maintenance worker in front.
"Turn right and go three hundred meters. Escape Pod Port Twelve. Run."
The maintenance worker nodded and led the crowd away.
Ninety-eight percent.
Ye Qingluan turned and continued onward.
Behind her, Huili was breathing hard, her steps unsteady.
"You saved them," Huili said from behind her.
Ye Qingluan did not turn around.
"I opened a door."
One hundred percent.
The terminal's vibration stopped.
Ye Qingluan halted at a bend in the pipeline passage and pulled out her terminal to confirm the data's integrity.
Every checksum was green.
The GAT-X series framework data, Phase Shift Armor technical details, weapons system parameters, control software architecture, and Dawn Society engineering logs had all been 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 motionless.
Sheng Lan stood behind him, watching the structural monitoring display for Heliopolis.
The colony satellite was breaking apart.
The deformed area of the outer hull continued to expand, while internal sections depressurized one after another.
The Archangel had burst out of the port with the Strike Gundam and a group of civilians, vanishing into the deep space of the L3 Sector.
ZAFT's Nazca-class destroyer began recovering its assault forces.
A colony satellite that had once housed 250,000 people had become a slowly disintegrating red icon on the tactical display.
Lin Yuan watched for a long time.
Then he reached out, switched off the image of Heliopolis, and replaced it with the data receipt confirmation page for the Spark Project.
Green checkmarks lined up in a row.
Complete.
"Sheng Lan."
"Yes."
"Notify the 811 Institute. Have the technical analysis team stand by. Ye Qingluan's evacuation craft is expected to reach East Asian territory in seventy-two hours. Begin the assessment the moment the data arrives."
"Yes." Sheng Lan paused. "Director, Ye Qingluan evacuated with two Dawn Society technical personnel."
"I know. Receive them under the pretext of a technical cooperation invitation. Do not restrict their personal freedom. But until they sign confidentiality agreements, they are not to have contact with the 811 Institute's core projects."
"Understood."
Sheng Lan turned to leave.
"Sheng Lan."
She stopped.
Lin Yuan did not turn around. His voice was very soft.
"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 shouldn't be remembered by me alone."
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