Lacus's Unease

"The materials can be transferred from Diokia immediately, but..."

As Mandell Aves spoke, he could not help glancing up at the flagship, his face clouding with gloom again.

Talia Gladys followed his gaze upward, her expression filled with indescribable exhaustion.

At Port Taggis—a small port along the Marmara Coast—the Minerva lay moored, almost completely battered beyond recognition.

Countless fierce battles had carved scars into her sleek hull.

Noticing Talia's expression, Aves continued, "The damage this time is rather severe. It may take a little longer to repair."

"...Yes."

Talia murmured as she dejectedly looked toward one corner of the dock.

Black body bags unloaded from the Minerva were lined up along the pier. Those inside had once been her subordinates, but now they were cold corpses.

Lives could never be recovered. Never.

With a trace of indignation, Talia sighed. "Anyway, I'll have to ask you to hurry it along... I keep saying the same thing. I'm sorry."

She forced out a faint, bitter smile and heard Aves answer with a smile of his own. "It's what we should do."

Talia was always giving this chief engineer difficult problems.

Yet his understanding demeanor felt, to her at this moment, like a salvation amid hardship and grief.

In the naval battle at the Dardanelles against Orb and the Earth Alliance Military, the Minerva had suffered extremely heavy damage.

Heine and the others joining them had indeed strengthened the Minerva's combat power, but there had simply been too many enemies.

The desperate battle with the Main Angel had inflicted devastating losses on the Minerva.

And then there had been the Prototype Destiny Gundam and the Savior Gundam afterward—

"Ah, honestly..."

Talia forcibly pushed back the two words that had surfaced in her heart.

Yet there was always a shadow in her heart that