Chapter 56: The Mantis Stalks the Cicada, Unaware of the Oriole Behind 

Setting aside the ulterior motives currently held by the Atlantic Federation, Orb, and PLANT, the ordinary residents of Heliopolis remained completely unaware of the impending disaster.

In the lounge of Heliopolis Industrial College, Angie was sprawled casually across a clearly brand-new, high-end sofa, utterly exhausted. She had just delivered a two-hour-long speech and was now physically and mentally drained. With a sigh, she complained,

"Reid, how exactly did you coordinate with the East Asian Republic? Why did they insist on me giving a speech? I'm not exactly good at this sort of thing."

Reid could only shrug helplessly at her question. The East Asian Republic had already gone to great lengths to devise a plan allowing Angie and him to bring Mobile Suits into Heliopolis under the guise of campus recruitment.

After all, Orb had been on high alert regarding their entry. While they couldn't openly refuse without valid justification, the Earth Alliance was well aware of the Atlantic Federation's covert collaboration with them—something that simply couldn't be acknowledged publicly. If the East Asian Republic played dumb, Orb had no choice but to compromise.

Thus, Orb imposed numerous restrictions on Reid and Angie. First, they could bring Mobile Suits, but not via large transport ships. The units had to be stored in cargo containers and transported via medium-sized shuttles.

This meant Reid's two Mobile Suits could carry only minimal armaments, with no possibility of resupply afterward.

Similarly, medium-sized shuttles had limited passenger capacity. Aside from the shuttle pilots, Reid and Angie could bring only about twenty personnel.

Honestly, these conditions weren't entirely unreasonable, given that they were bringing Mobile Suits—weapons of mass destruction—into another nation's "territory."

So Reid agreed. However, of those twenty personnel, he didn't bring a single security officer. Instead, he filled the slots with indigenous workers from Star Palace's external factories, all skilled in basic Mobile Suit maintenance and capable of operating engineering machinery.

Moreover, since Orb insisted on using cargo containers for the Mobile Suits, Reid decided he might as well pilot them directly into the Colony Satellite. After all, it wouldn't make sense to rush back to the port to deploy them if ZAFT attacked.

Of course, Reid provided an official justification: he didn't trust Orb's spaceport warehouses to safeguard their new Mobile Suits.

Initially, Orb refused this condition. But after mediation by the East Asian Republic, they reluctantly conceded. After all, Reid was bringing the Mobile Suits into the Colony Satellite to protect Princess Angelise—what good would they be sitting in a warehouse?

And who could guarantee Orb wouldn't covet the New Misurugi Republic's new Mobile Suits?

Thus, under the pretense of student demonstrations, Reid openly drove the NT-X Gundam and Angie's customized Union Flag into Heliopolis Industrial College.

Yes, the unit Reid was piloting was no longer the NT-1 Gundam but its successor, the NT-X Gundam.

Of course, this NT-X Gundam was a stripped-down version.

For starters, it definitely lacked the Psycommu System.

Next, for the large wired control bits on the back, Reid utilized the wired pod system from the Moebius Zero (the Dragoon System in the later CE universe was an improved version of this system) as the backpack, then replaced the pods with a combination of heavy particle beam cannons and large bazookas.

This achieved the same armament effect as wire-controlled bits, at the cost of being extremely power-hungry.

As a result, Reid had to abandon his original plan of equipping four control bits and instead stayed faithful to the original design with just two. This allowed him to increase the size of each individual control bit, fitting two ultra-compact energy batteries inside—one to power the rocket propulsion and the other for the heavy particle beam cannon.

Additionally, in gravity environments, the heavy particle beam cannon could also be raised to function as a shoulder cannon. The NT-X could achieve short bursts of high-speed flight in gravity conditions by combining its own thrusters with the propulsion from the large bazookas on the control bits, essentially brute-forcing its way through the air.

Of course, to accommodate this backpack, Reid had to relocate the beam saber to the skirt armor. Moreover, the NT-X could only carry either the beam rifle or the bazooka per sortie.

However, Reid still equipped the NT-X with decoy balloons, as they took up almost no space.

After all these modifications, the NT-X Gundam was barely operational, though compared to its UC counterpart, Reid's budget version was significantly inferior in performance. After all, the main body was still the NT-1 Gundam, and Reid hadn't made extensive changes.

Another issue was that this machine had a whopping five batteries. To be safe, Reid also designed an energy intercommunication function. If the power was completely drained, the recharge time would be five times longer than a standard mobile suit. Its full-fire operational time was even shorter than the Union Flag's, and if it had to fly in gravity, the active time would drop even more drastically.

At least, without worrying about logistical strain, the NT-X Gundam could now hold its own against five GINNs in a direct confrontation, avoiding total performance suppression.

Still, Reid had to placate Angie's complaints for now. He walked over to her and began massaging her shoulders, whispering:

"Don't worry, this'll probably be the only speech you'll have to give. I've got intel that ZAFT's infiltrated. Once they cause chaos, we can slip away in the confusion.

When the explosions start outside, we'll board our mobile suits and leave immediately. But we won't engage ZAFT—we'll head to whichever industrial zone gets hit hardest under the pretense of firefighting. There's treasure buried beneath it, and we're going to dig it out."

Angie adjusted the pressure of Reid's massage and glanced out the window before replying in an equally hushed tone:

"But Orb's spies are watching us everywhere. Are you sure they'll let us near the factories?"

Reid chuckled at the question.

"Of course, because they'll soon have bigger problems. You have no idea how ambitious the Atlantic Federation and Orb are. They've bet all their advanced tech on those few mobile suits—each one more advanced than ours.

ZAFT won't make the same mistake they did with the East Asian Republic. Mark my words, this Gundam heist will be massive. So we'll just play the waiting game and swoop in when the time's right."

Officially, we still can't take things from the Atlantic Federation—we can only find ways to retrieve the data. But when it comes to Orb's stuff, we have no such reservations. After all, they've been developing things even behind the Atlantic Federation's back. Even if we flaunt their tech right in their faces, Orb can't openly claim that what we have was developed by them."

Seeing Reid's confidence, Angie didn't press further. Before this mission, Reid had given detailed instructions to Noin and Une, who were stationed at Star Palace, clearly indicating this would be a long-term operation. So all she needed to do was follow Reid's orders and adapt as situations arose.

However, Angie had hoped to rest a little longer, but suddenly, the roar of Mobile Suits and the sound of explosions erupted outside.

At the first sound of the blast, Reid and Angie leaped out through the window, sprinting straight for their respective units. It was time to get to work.

--Support me in Patreon for more chapters 35+ chapters in there 

patreon.com/LegendaryTL

Thanks!