I'm really pissed right now. I had like 23 pages for this chapter written when my #$ # #& computer crashed and destroyed it along with almost a dozen fornicating megabytes of original material I was compiling for publication. None of it is recoverable. As I said, pissed. Anywho, that's why there have been no updates for about a bit. Since all the stuff I had in process on my other stories was destroyed as well, consider them suspended indefinitely. This will be the only fic I'm working on for a bit. Once this is done, I may pick up the others again.
Anyway, on with the fic. Pairings are tentative but for right now they are Murrue/Mu, Kira/Miriallia, OC/Lacus, Athrun/Cagalli.
Flames are welcome. I could use something else to yell about right now.
I do not own Gundam Seed. Do not sue me as I have nothing worth taking. I'll put the pretty toys back when I'm done playing with them. I own only my own ideas, and, so far as I know no one has done a Kira/Mir before so don't accuse me of stealing the pairing from you/a friend/your dog.
Chapter I
An Island in the Sky
Take up the White Man's burden-
Send forth the best you breed-
Go, bind your sons to exile
To serve your captive's need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild-
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.
Rudyard Kipling
The White Man's Burden
Orb Natural Resource Satellite Heliopolis: January 25th Cosmic Era 71
David was bored. Really, really bored. His morning classes at the university had been canceled and he had absolutely nothing to do. As a result, the cobalt-eyed, straw-haired nineteen year old was walking through the park reciting the names of all the plants there from memory in Latin, German, French, Spanish, and Japanese. Not really entertaining, but it kept the brain from atrophying. However, that's about all that it did; his brain still has plenty of room left for musing. Ya' know self, he begins the cycle yet again, at least the thirtieth such cycle in the last two hours, most people would be glad for a day off. Why can't you relax? Surely enough time's passed that you don't have to be so . . . attentive all the time. Amused by the Schizophrenia of the thought, David smiles to himself before stumbling over the Latin name for the Weeping Willow. It's not easy being one of only a handful of Coordinators on the colony, he continues his musing once the mistake is righted. Especially when the only other one that I know of is actually smarter than me. He continued to reflect on his own personal version of what passed for luck. In the PLANTs he had been only a little smarter, a little faster, and a little stronger than his classmates. Here, he had to force himself to slow down at everything he did and conceal his true abilities, even from his friends. He'd only ever told Kira what he was, and then only because he was sure that Kira was a Coordinator too, and more importantly, knew that he was. David looks up and blinks, And in the true spirit of 'speak of the devil' there he sits! Noticing that Kira hasn't seen him yet, David carefully sneaks up behind his best friend and strikes. "Kira!" he says, nearly as loudly as humanly possible, while smacking the aforementioned on the shoulder. "How ya doin'?"
Kira jumps almost a foot into the air while trying to twist sideways. The end result is one Kira twisted into a pretzel amongst the various posts and boards of the table and chairs, and one David holding his sides in laughter. "God Kira (a laugh) if I'd realized you'd end up like (a giggle) that (smothered laugh) I wouldn't have done that (giggle again)," David apologizes while trying to get a hold of himself. Kira, on the other hand, went from looking ready to do some serious violence to amused at his situation by the end of his friend's sentence.
"You have no idea how much I needed that, Dave," Kira says once his friend catches his breath. David gives him a look that says "What could possibly be bad enough that imitating a particularly twisted pretzel seems good by comparison?" so Kira continues, "Dr. Kato gave me this huge program to write, and it's driving me up the walls. I've run through it I-don't-know how many times, and it will not work."
"Really? Let me look at it," David half states half asks. David turns Kira's laptop around and begins to look over the code. "Well, I can see your first problem right now. Judging by the state of this, and how tired you look, I'd say you were up to at least three or four in the morning working on it. How many times do I have to tell you that the part of your brain that knows how to connect the dots on a program this large turns off at midnight without a constant supply of caffeine?" He then delves deeper, and several thoughts register in rapid succession. First is, Good God what a rat's nest! Second is, Hey, this looks really familiar, Next, Oh wow, this is remarkably similar to what they tried on the GINN prototypes, the last is, So, are they for the Earth Forces, or for Orb's defense? All of this flashes through his mind within a matter of seconds, and he controls his expression as best he can, hoping that anything that leaks through will be interpreted as disbelief or concentration on the program before him. Though he knows that the operating system before him could be for anything from a cargo loader to a mineral extraction shuttle, his instincts are telling him otherwise, and he knows to trust his instincts on something like this. I suppose the only question is whether or not I help them. In the end, the choice really isn't very difficult.
"Alright, Kira! I've found your problem," David says while Kira looks on expectantly. "There isn't one," David waits for the obvious challenge to his pronouncement.
"But if there isn't a problem, why do all the simulations I run fail?" Kira asks, not challengingly, but with genuine curiosity.
"Alright," David says, slipping into teacher mode, "if you have elements X, Y, and Z, and X,Y, and Z connect, which, by the way is really impressive for a midnight plus project, then why isn't it working?"
Kira gets it almost immediately, "I'm going about it the wrong way!"
"Correct. See, look here. Any command input has to go through this block here, dozens of lines of spaghetti logic, before it comes out the far side, but then it's got to go through this one," he says, tapping the screen, "and this one too. All of that is eating time and processing power by the gigabyte. So we need to get rid of these logjams; however, all three of them are all integral parts of the program. So lets try simplifying them into smaller chunks without all of the feedback loops."
They'd been working for almost an hour when two of their other friends from the college came up to them. "Good Lord, guys!" brown-haired Tolle says as he and his girlfriend Miriallia walk up. "It took us forever to find you! Professor Kato wants to see you."
Kira gets a deer-in-the-headlights look on his face. "But I haven't finished it yet! Even with Dave helping me, we're only halfway done!" he cries mournfully.
"Still, we'd better go," says Tolle. As they begin gathering up their stuff, a news bulletin comes over the vid screens in the park, and they all stop to take in the story.
"Kaohsiung? Isn't that pretty close to Orb?" Mir asks.
"Yeah, but they'll be fine; we are neutral after all," Tolle says confidently.
Yeah, but ZAFT would blow the hell out of this colony without a second thought if they're building what I think they're building. Even if they were only for Orb's own defense, they can't afford to risk it. This thought and others like it carry David with his friends to the modern equivalent of a bus stop. David realizes that there are others present, but doesn't really register who it is until he hears the name "Flay." He scowls in disgust, but his mental recitation of "101 Reasons Why I Hate Flay" is interrupted by a voice from behind him.
"Excuse me, but if you're not getting in, do you mind if I do?" a dark-haired woman asks in a subtly condescending tone.
"No problem," David says as he steps aside and allows her and her two companions to pass. After they depart, David focuses back in on the current subject, something about some letter that someone supposedly sent to someone. Since he'd missed the first half of the conversation, he decides to just jump into the front of one of the cars. "Well guys, are we leaving sometime today, or are we gonna stand around yapping till we grow roots?"
XXXXX
As they pull up to the checkpoint at the gate of the Morgenroete facility, David is seriously considering throwing Tolle out the back of the car.
"Well, if you're not going to ask about it, I will!" Tolle says, trying to browbeat Kira into acceptance.
"Then go ahead!" Kira says as he scans his ID card through the terminal, "I don't see anybody stopping you."
After several more minutes and more pleading by Tolle, they finally arrive at "their" workroom. "Ah! There you are Kira," Another of their classmates, Sai, says as they walk in the door. Then he does a double take at David. "Dave! I didn't know you worked at Morgenroete."
"Technically, I don't," Dave says, "but I've got family with connections fairly high up in the facility back on Earth, so I've pretty much got a get-in-free card whenever I want to wander around. Besides," he continues, "I've been helping Kira with his project,"
Sai nods and David and Kira get to work on the OS yet again before Dave feels someone's eyes on him. He looks up and sees a girl standing up against the wall on the far side of the room. Dave calls Sai over and asks him who it is.
Sai responds, "I don't know, she's some guest of Dr. Kato's," David just shrugs, putting her familiar features out of his mind for the moment.
They've actually gotten another half-hour of work in on the OS before every alarm in the colony sounds simultaneously; the result is a cacophony of noise that ought to be easily capable of waking the dead.
"Everybody out!" David yells directing everyone towards the doors and to a stairway down to ground level.
When they get to the stairway, Sai asks one of the workers, "What's going on?"
"It's a ZAFT attack!" one of the workers yells back over his shoulder as he runs.
The girl from the workroom suddenly takes off running in the other direction. Kira sees her and follows while David yells, "Kira get back here!" and follows, Miriallia right behind him. The girl manages to round one corner before Kira's enhanced muscles allow him to catch her.
"Get off of me!" she yells as Kira prepares to drag her away to a shelter, by force if necessary when an explosion blows them all off of their feet.
David rolls to his feet and looks backwards before loosing a torrent of invective in at least three separate languages. "Well, we won't be going back that way!" he yells to the others. Kira nods and looks at his erstwhile prisoner and does a truly classic double take.
"You're a girl?" He asks dumbly.
"Yeah! What'd ya' think I was?" She retorts hotly. Kira, wisely, declines to answer.
"Come on, this way!" David yells and takes off down a side corridor.
When Miriallia sees where they're going, she yells, "This is a dead end! It's a restricted area!"
David just smiles, "I told ya'! I've got a free pass!" he yells back to her. He stops and hits several numbers on the keypad and snarls when he doesn't get the response he wants. "Fine, be that way! Voice key override: four, two, niner, five, alpha, golf, charlie. Pass code is 'The Will to Power!' Now open the hell up!" The door obliges.
They step through into a minor war zone. All of them take a moment to look over the side, and what they see on the factory floor surprises all of them but David, and apparently the girl, "I knew it! The Earth Forces new mobile suits. Father, you traitor!" she yells as her knees bounce off the walkway.
So they were for OMNI, David thinks, but before anything else can go wrong David sees a female officer pointing her assault rifle at them. "Down!" He yells as he drags Mir out of the way after giving Kira and the girl a solid push in the other direction. "Get yourselves to one of those shelters! I'll take Mir to one! Go!"
Kira leads the girl quickly to the shelters on the far side of the giant room, but when they arrive, they discover that the only remaining shelter has only one opening left. He quickly pushes the girl in before she can argue and takes off back the way they came. About the time he gets back to the door where they'd first arrived, Kira looks over the side and sees a ZAFT commando in green sneaking up behind the Earth Forces officer that had shot at them earlier.
"Behind you!" He shouts in warning. The officer spins around, and empties the last few bullets in her clip at the soldier. Several of them hit, and drop the ZAFT green back over the side.
The officer, knowing that there's no way out of the facility anymore makes a snap decision. One that will be varyingly praised and cursed for the rest of her life. "Come down here!" She calls out to him.
"Thanks, but I'll go to the shelters on the left." He says as he starts off.
"There's nothing there but the fronts!" she yells back. Kira stops and then jumps down onto the mobile suit on which she stands.
He has just landed when a ZAFT elite shoots her in the right shoulder, causing her to drop her weapon and lose her footing. The only thing that keeps him from killing her is a jammed gun. Instead, the soldier draws a combat knife and activates his jetpack. He lands on top of the mobile suit and darts forward. Then he makes eye contact with Kira.
"Athrun?" Kira asks, and the ZAFT soldier checks up in surprise.
"Kira?" he asks, but before anything can develop, the Earth Forces Lieutenant manages to raise her sidearm, and empty most of a clip in the commando's direction, forcing him to back off. Not even a coordinator wants to take on two enemies with just a knife. Instead, he flies over to the other mobile suit and jumps into the cockpit.
With the threat gone for the moment, the OMNI soldier pushes Kira into the cockpit, and then jumps in herself.
XXXXX
The two mobile suits burst out of the dying facility with near simultaneity. That, however, is where any similarities end. While the captured machine lands easily beside a ZAFT GINN, the suit piloted by the Earth Forces officer seems to have trouble staying upright.
Tolle, Sai, and a third member of the group, Kuzzey are running toward yet another shelter when they see them.
"Look at that!" Tolle says. "More mobile suits, and these ones are different!"
"Just keep running!" Kuzzey says from up front.
Tolle keeps looking long enough to see the new suit switch from gunmetal gray to white with red and blue on the body and deflect the GINN's sword before he takes off after his comrades.
Meanwhile in the cockpit of the first model, the lieutenant whose nametag says 'Ramius,' Kira notes absently, is having lots of trouble, and only the activation of something called phase-shift armor keeps them from being chopped in half by the GINN in front of them. Somehow, the armor dissipates the effects of physical blows, and this renders the GINNs weapons useless, or would, Kira suddenly realizes, if the pilots were strapped down and weren't likely to brain themselves on their controls.
That and falling on innocent bystanders, he notes with sudden horror that three of his best friends are in the middle of the intersection just behind the suit. A suit that is about to be knocked over backwards by yet another blow from the GINN. This is a sub-optimal solution set. Kira decides to change the equation. He quickly reaches up to the control panel and taps a button that he thinks will cause the suit to strafe left. Instead, the mobile suit begins to kneel, effectively ducking the GINN's blow. Or we could duck, Kira thinks absently while he grabs one of the various throttles and shoves it all the way forwards. The impromptu shoulder tackle knocks the GINN backwards into a building. Kira takes the momentary pause and uses it to his advantage. "If you're going to fly something like this, then you should make better use of it," Kira immediately looks over the operating system and grimaces, "I take it back. With this crap in its memory banks, I'm surprised it can even stand."
"It's still in its trial stage; there wasn't time to upgrade it!" the lieutenant says defensively.
"Please move over," he says to the still stunned Officer who automatically complies, her face openly displaying her shock. Kira takes a deep breath and starts to redesign the OS on the fly, using some of what he and Dave had been working on that morning and combining it with his own programming instincts. "Recalibrate the ion pump . . . balance movement controls . . . there!" he shouts just as the GINN finally regains its feet and opens fire.
Kira flinches as the ZAFT machine opens fire, but the phase-shift holds, and Kira steps on a foot pedal that propels the mobile suit, which Kira discovered in his quick rewrite was named Strike, into a thruster assisted jump out of the GINN's line of fire. This, however, exposes him to several of the GINN's friends. Kira sees two of them out of his peripheral vision as he begins to search for something with which to shoot back. What he finds disappoints him, "Armor Schneiders? That's it?" but beggars can't be too choosy, so he hits the activation command and darts forward, knowing time is not on his side. Kira dashes forward, the Strike easily evading the GINN's fire, before juking to the side one last time and shoving one knife into its right shoulder and the other into the side of its neck, severing power cords and doing other assorted damage.
The first sign Kira had that there was something wrong was the enemy pilot jumping out of his suit. Half a dozen seconds later, before Kira can do much more than begin moving backwards the enemy suit self-detonates, knocking the Strike over immediately, and battering the two occupants. The Lieutenant is knocked out instantly, but Kira retains consciousness long enough to see three GINNS round the corner a block down the road. There's something I should be doing to stop them, Kira thinks absently before surrendering to the blackness that swirls in the corners of his vision.
XXXXX
David was lost. Totally and completely lost. After the first set of shelters turned out to be destroyed, he had led Mir deeper into the complex, knowing that there was another set on the far side. However, collapsed corridors had quickly made that option an impossibility. Now, he was just trying to get them out. Suddenly, there was another explosion, and the corridor's roof collapsed less that a dozen meters in front of them.
So what's behind door number one? He thinks sardonically as he runs up to the aperture just before the blockage. He kicks the door down and quickly steps through, dragging Mir behind him, but stops short at what he sees before him. Okay . . . new plan. "Hey, Mir, do you think that you could get one of those moving if I tell you what to do?" he says with false calm as he takes in the two mobile suits in front of them.
"Right now I'd walk into the men's locker room at school in my birthday suit if it meant getting out of here alive," she replies in relief at the thought of escape.
David, momentarily distracted by a very vivid mental image shakes his head. "Alright, grab hold of that and climb up!" He says, indicating the line running from the open cockpit to the floor. When he arrives in the cockpit, he looks around for a moment to accustom himself to the interface before yelling to Mir's mobile suit. "Alright Mir, small green button on the main control board beside the big orange one, push it!" he takes his own advice and watches as the activation screen pops up:
General
Unilateral
Neuro-link
Dispersive
Autonomic
Maneuver
"Gundam?" he wonders aloud. "Is that what you're called?" After taking stock of his systems, he quickly reaches over and activates the radio on a tight band to Mir's unit and closes the cockpit hatch. "Alright, there should be a control stick at arm level on the right side of the pilot's seat. That's your basic movement controls. No flight or anything, flying's way more complex, but that should get you out of here if you follow me, alright" he waits for a response for a moment and then triggers the radio again, "Ah, radio's the third small black button on the left control panel at seat level, oh, and you'd better close your hatch in case we get flying debris, that's number five by the way."
"Alright," he hears after a moment, and her cockpit seals and pressurizes. A few bits of detritus fall from the ceiling. "I'm so ready to get out of here!" she states.
David nods and begins looking for something with which to break his way out. Head-mounted CIWS, beam saber, forearm mounted combat knife . . . okay that'll work. David smiles and activates the chest-mounted beam Gatling cannons. He squeezes the trigger and almost immediately releases it. In the time that he had the cannons active, each of them fired three rounds. Each round tears a hole the size of a small car out of the wall in front of the mobile suits. The beams are almost immediately followed by David's unit, left shoulder first. He emerges into another huge room, like the previous one with one exception. This one has an outside access. David again triggers the Gatlings and tears half a dozen large holes in it as well and follows the beams out of the door before he realizes that he is no longer being followed. "Uh, Mir?"
XXXXX
Miriallia was receiving an object lesson in why Naturals do not belong in mobile suits. Turning was pretty easy, and walking hadn't been too bad, but she had nearly fallen all three times she had tried to scale the wall of debris David had left in his wake.
"Uh, Mir?"
"David! Not right now, I really don't want to hear it! This stupid thing is-" suddenly, the radio cut off, and for a moment nothing at all happened in the cockpit. Oh no, please come back on, she thinks in sudden horror, please turn back on! The mobile suit seems to comply. "Unenhanced user detected. Initiating cockpit simplification cycle," a light soprano announces and the cockpit dissolves into apparent anarchy. Control boards shift position and orientation, they combine and break down too fast to follow, and after several seconds, they lock back into place in what appears to be a much simpler configuration. After a half-dozen more seconds the radio reactivates on a very worried David.
"What happened?" David demands, "God! I thought something was wrong!" he says in relief.
"Well," Mir says, "my computer took over and 'simplified' the cockpit interface, its word, not mine," she says.
"Well let's hope it works." David says over the com.
Mir nods and experimentally pushes the control stick forward. The mobile suit responds instantly, going into a thruster assisted jump over the debris.
David's surprised face blinks, "Yeah, I think that works." He shakes his head, "Let's go!"
XXXXX
When he steps outside again, Mir is right behind him. And they are just in time to see one of the two mobile suits from the first room, he looks and sees that the computer has it tagged as GAT-X105 Strike, go flying through the air trailed by tracers from a GINN's assault rifle. "Uh Mir, weren't those mobile suits gray like ours? Cuz I gotta say that one doesn't look gray now," He shakes his head and moves out down the road. Keeping one eye on the road ahead he looks with greater depth over the weapons his suit mounts. Chest-mounted Gatlings, alright got those down, I think. Head mounted CIWS, useful for shooting down missiles, but the caliber's too small to hurt something as heavily armored as a mobile suit. Beam saber . . . very nice that'll go through a GINN's armor like a hot knife through butter. Forearm blade. Now what's up with this? David looks more closely at the systems and his brow furrows. Well, that's interesting. He hits one of the buttons and then another in quick succession, and the forearm blade springs out of its sheath and locks into place over the middle knuckle on the left hand. Meanwhile, the shield on the outside of the upper arm slides down and around and settles into place on the center of the forearm and, twisting ninety degrees, doubles in size to about that of the MS Miriallia is piloting. David nods in satisfaction before triggering the radio. "Hey Mir, we might be going in hot, so you'd better look through your weapons,"
"Don't worry," Mir responds, "I set the mobile suit to follow you at a twenty meter delay; I've been looking over the weapons since we left," seeing the surprised look on David's face, Mir continues acerbically "What, you didn't think that I couldn't handle it?"
"Nonono!" He says quickly "I'm just surprised that an AI can do all of that," he says quickly.
XXXXX
"-can do all of that," David says over the com.
Mir nods and continues looking at her displays. Now all I have to do is prove that I can do it, she reflects. She looks at the weapons again, and selects the beam rifle. Immediately, the mobile suit draws it from the holster on the suit's right hip and a targeting visor slides down over her right eye. Just in time, as it turns out. As David's unit takes the corner, it flies into the air with a thruster assisted jump. Mir's unit begins to follow, but then stops and begins to drop as the still unexpected soprano comes over her speakers, "GINN thermal energy patterns detected. Phase-shift armor activation is recommended. Autopilot disengaged" Mir struggles to remember where she's seen the phase shift button before, then quickly reaches for the defensive maneuvers panel. She's just in time. Two of the three enemy mobile suits continue to target David's unit, but one sees what he thinks is a less than alert straggler and fires. The bullets strike a suddenly dark blue torso with black and gray highlights. Mir almost instinctively squeezes off a shot.
Normally it would have missed, as the standard tactic in mobile suit warfare is the venerable shoot-and-scoot approach. In most cases, he would have vacated the spot from which he fired before the bullets arrived on target. This time, however, he stuck around to watch the pretty explosion as the high explosive rounds tore through the unprepared suit. It was a testament to the doctors who rearranged his genetic code that he was able to move nearly two meters to the side before the shot hit. It wasn't enough to generate a miss, but instead of bisecting the cockpit, the beam of emerald fury only took a core sample of the GINN's battery. It took almost half a second for the chain of secondary explosions to reach the cockpit.
The explosion was, in point of fact, quite pretty.
XXXXX
David rounded the corner at precisely the same time that a unit of three GINNs did the same not a quarter mile away. If he hadn't had his shield in its melee position the HE rounds would probably have destroyed his unit. If he hadn't been a Coordinator, he couldn't have reacted quickly enough to put his shield between himself and the ZAFT machines. Fortunately, he had put his shield in the melee position and he was a coordinator. As a result, he blocked their first volley, and got into the air fast enough to avoid their second. It was only after he had begun to strafe left that he remembered his impromptu wingman. He turns his head back, almost expecting to see an expanding cloud of gasses carrying a few recognizable parts. He does not.
Very few veterans of First Jachin could have responded with more ability and poise than technology student Miriallia Haww. Before the bullets had even left her opponent's gun, her Gundam went from the base metallic gray to a blue so dark it was nearly purple with black and lighter gray highlights. She had apparently figured out the color-changing trick that the Strike had pulled off earlier. The rounds, designed to penetrate the armor of a battleship, had precisely no effect on the new armor, whatever it was. Mir responded by firing one shot from her beam rifle before ducking back behind her shield. She apparently hit something important though, because the GINN that had fired at her disappeared in the fury of a battery hit.
David was wishing she'd tell him how she pulled it off when a radio link opened. "Activate your phase-shift armor! It'll protect you from their weapons."
David remembers the button marked phase-shift and immediately hits it. His machine promptly turns a ruby-red with white accents. One of the GINNs, seeing his comrade downed, switches his target, and begins to shoot at Mir, as she has the more obvious weapons. That was a mistake, David smiles as he strokes the trigger for his chest-mounted Gatlings.
Before he can release the trigger, each gun fires four beams. Of those eight beams, three miss entirely. One strikes the GINN's head, while another removes the right arm at the elbow. The other three penetrate the torso and reduce the GINN to a series of molecules suspended in air by the superheated gases the detonation produces.
Seeing his comrades dispatched with ease, the pilot of the third GINN tries to retreat. He manages to get all of fifty meters before David's Gundam destroys him with yet another burst from the beam Gatlings.
Suddenly, several things that he had been seeing all along register: first he notices that this has been a battlefield before. The pieces of GINN seem to indicate a self-detonation, second is that the Strike is laying with its top half inside a building hear where the GINNs came out of the crossing street, finally, he sees three of his friends from the university standing up against the buildings on the left side of the street. Alright, third thing first. He quickly deactivates the phase-shift armor, seeing how quickly it's depleting his energy reserves, and activates the external speakers, "Hey guys, you all right?"
The three students, Sai, Tolle, and Kuzzey look around in confusion for a moment before their eyes return to the mobile suit in front of them. "David?" Sai yells, "You're the pilot?"
Mir apparently realizes what's happening, because she too disables the PSA on her unit, and apparently finds the speakers as well, "Guys, are you all okay? I didn't even see you there!"
This time, it's Tolle that speaks. "Mir!" he manages in a half strangled voice before falling over in a dead faint.
David shakes his head, One out of three, not bad considering. Forcing himself to start thinking again he begins issuing orders. "Alright, we need to get the Strike, that's the other mobile suit, out of here and into a more open area. You two wake Tolle up and meet us in the park in ten, okay?" The others nod. "Alright, let's be about it."
XXXXX
Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Murrue Ramius of OMNI Enforcer struggled awake, and confirmed, yet again, that she was not having a good day. Everything hurt. After several moments, she verifies that all of her extremities are responding when she remembers what happened before she was knocked unconscious. She opens her eyes, expecting to see the cockpit of the Strike above her; however, the sight that greets her is somewhat different. Instead of an instrument panel, she sees the sky of Heliopolis. Blinking, she begins to sit up.
"Hey, guys! She's awake!" a voice says beside her. She looks and sees a boy she doesn't recognize looking at her curiously. Before she can pull enough thought together to ask his name, a second person arrives, and this one she does recognize.
"Please, don't try to move too much just yet. We haven't been able to tell just how badly you're hurt," he says.
Murrue, however, knows that they may not have much time. She manages, with only a little help from the bays, to pull herself to her feet. "What happened?" she asks, looking around. The terrain is somewhat different from what it was where they had fought the GINN. She concludes her cursory inspection of the area and focuses on the Strike, which, she suddenly notices, has a civilian climbing all over it.
Before any of the others can react, she has her sidearm out and has fired a warning shot over the G-weapon's left shoulder. "Get down from there!" she yells, "All of you, over here!"
As having a gun pointed at one tends to clarify ones thought patterns wonderfully, the four students comply. After they've all assembled, Lieutenant Ramius begins to speak, "You have all been exposed to classified technology of the Earth Forces, thus I have no choice but to detain you." After allowing them a few moments to process this information, she speaks again. "Your names, all of you."
"Kuzzey Buskirk,"
"Sai Argyle,"
"Tolle Koenig,"
"Kira Yamato," he says, but not with hostility. Hostility would be expected of someone finding himself suddenly a prisoner. Humor is generally not. Lieutenant Ramius quickly discerns the reason for his humor, however, after all, the sound a mobile suit in flight makes is rather unique. Even if that hadn't given it away, the vibration from something weighing around seventy or eighty tons suddenly landed would have. Murrue turns around, not sure what to expect. What she sees nearly floors her. A sixth G-weapon? she wonders. But there were only five, and I helped with all of them!
A voice comes over the new machine's external speakers, "I don't like it when people point guns at my friends," the female voice says as Murrue looks up the bore of a beam rifle. "Since we seem to be collecting names, what's yours?"
"It seems that you have me at a disadvantage," Lieutenant Ramius says to the G in front of her as she holsters her pistol. "What are your intentions?"
"I don't really know what the plan is. David went off to find something called a Heavy Arms pack. All I know is that he doesn't like ZAFT much, so I see no reason for us to be enemies. Honestly, we'll need the support of the earth forces to survive. The batteries on these things won't last forever, certainly not long enough to get to the moon. So do what you feel you need to." Mir continues, "If you don't shoot at my friends, I won't use you as a footstool,"
"Very well," Murrue says, ignoring the joke/threat, "You, Sai right? Could you get the number five trailer? Kira please get back into the Strike and try to contact any members of the Earth Forces,"
Murrue wandered around nursing a severe case of nerves for several minutes before asking the mobile suit, "I remember there being several more GINNs in the area, where did they go?"
"I took one down; David took care of the other two," Mir says in response. Murrue's eyes are as big as saucers, but Miriallia doesn't seem to notice as she continues, "I've been looking at the radio equipment, and I don't have any Earth Forces frequencies, in fact, the only frequency I've got is the one for David's suit. Do you know why that would be?"
"I don't think that those suits were designed by the Alliance, Orb might have built them themselves though," Murrue responds. A few moments later, Sai pulls up in a trailer.
"The number five trailer, as requested," he says as Kira jumps out of the Strike.
"Thank you Sai, any luck Kira?" Murrue replies.
"No, there's nothing on any of the bands but static," Kira says in response.
"What do we do now?" Sai asks her.
"Mount the Launcher pack on the Strike," Murrue orders, "Maybe that'll give it enough power to penetrate the jamming," she continues, not really believing it, but wanting to do something all the same.
"Okay," Kira says as he jumps back into the G.
XXXXX
Mir was getting nervous, they had had no contact with either side for almost three hours, and the atmosphere in her cockpit was getting thick with tension. She could just feel it; something had to break soon. So when her radio crackled to life, she about jumped out of her skin.
"Hey M- . . . . . way back . . . –nd it! Should be . . . minutes to your . . . –tion," David's voice rings through the cockpit.
"David, this is Miriallia, please repeat that, I couldn't make much of it out," Mir says into the throat mic. However, before he can answer, her thermal sensors register a powerful spike, one that the computer designates as an explosion. Mir looks at the upper viewscreens and sees part of the colony's support shaft wreathed in flame before a Moebius Zero minus its wired gunbarrels comes shooting out trailed by a CGUE and two GINNs. Mir immediately scrolls to the beam rifle and presses inward before pressing the activation button for the PSA and trying for a lock on one of the three ZAFT suits. However, the proximity of the Zero to the suits makes any intervention on Mir's part impossible. I hope David has a shot. Mir quickly hits her external speakers, "Kira quickly! Get the phase-shift up!"
XXXXX
"What? More of them?" So they managed to keep another one from us.
XXXXX
"There were more of those things?" Why didn't the General mention more than five G-weapons?
XXXXX
"I . . . . . much of . . . out," David hears over his radio. However, Mir's garbled signal is very quickly the least of his worries as he sees a part of the support shaft explode. The battle overhead is quite short, though the Zero gives an ample performance, dodging left, and shifting right, the CGUE finally manages to take off the barrel of its linear cannon with a sword strike. However, the ZAFT suits seem to have bigger fish to fry. The two GINNs have already broken off and are diving toward the park, and the pair of mobile suits there, both of whom most likely contain two of his best friends. As there is no returning fire, David surmises that they must be using the support shaft as a shield so Mir won't fire. This was unacceptable. Hoping that the arm-mounted Gatling of the Heavy Arms pack is more accurate than the other two since he is over a mile away from the action, he takes aim at the leading GINN and fires. The five-barreled arm Gatling is much more accurate. Out of a dozen shots, three hit their mark, and of those three, at least one hits something vital, because the leading GINN simply blows up. This causes the second GINN to check up, both to avoid the shots, and the pieces of his partner's suit.
Unfortunately for him, this gives Mir an open shot. The first beam passes through the GINN's left shoulder. The second removes the cockpit entirely. And suddenly, the numbers are in their favor. However, in doing this, they have both ignored the CGUE.
XXXXX
Mir smiles slightly as she takes out the second GINN; however, her amusement turns to horror as the enemy commander's suit takes the chance to dive bomb the Strike. "Kira, look out!" she tries to target the CGUE with her beam rifle, but cannot get anything even resembling a lock. However, just as the ZAFT suit raises its rifle, the Strike connects to the Launcher pack. The Strike's PSA comes up just before the bullets can hit. Suddenly, however, a huge explosion shakes the colony, and out of a cloud of smoke and debris, a huge ship appears.
XXXXX
David's mouth drops in surprise as he swiftly swivels, trying to target the intruder before his systems tag its IFF as friendly. David grins in relief glad that those really, really, big guns won't be shooting at him in the near future.
XXXXX
Mir notices all of this in only a peripheral fashion. She scrolls through her weapons and selects a second one, aims, and pulls the trigger. Her mobile suit's left hand reaches up to the left shoulder and pulls off what had looked to be a decorative piece. The suit shifts the weapons position and throws it . . . nowhere near its target. The pilot of the enemy suit apparently decides it is no threat, because he continues to fly toward the new ship. Suddenly the object activates a set of beam emitters and its flight path shifts dramatically; it is now headed straight towards the CGUE.
Most pilots wouldn't have been able to recognize the threat in time to react; on the other hand, a ZAFT commander is, by definition, not most pilots. Instead of bisecting the cockpit, the beam boomerang only takes off the CGUE's right leg at the knee. This seems to convince the ZAFT soldier that flight is the best option. He switches direction and begins to head back to the hole in the support shaft.
XXXXX
Kira is determined not to let the CGUE get away, and this time, he has a long range weapon. Kira lifts the gun on the Strike's right arm and targets the ZAFT suit. He hears the Earth Forces officer say something, but it doesn't really register until after he pulls the trigger.
She had been yelling not to fire, something about the weapon being too powerful.
Oops.
XXXXX
Miriallia watched as the intense red beam from the Strike's cannon tore the whole right arm of the CGUE off before continuing and punching a mobile suit sized hole in the wall of the colony. The ZAFT MS, apparently not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, shoots out through the hole and into space trailed by several shots from her beam rifle. And once again, in the colony of Heliopolis, silence reigned.
With ZAFT's forces in retreat, the Earth Forces and the students had a little time to regroup. The Earth Forces battleship/assault carrier which her systems tag as the Archangel lands nearby as David, his suit now equipped with the Heavy Arms pack, comes into view. After the three pilots greet each other they gather up the other students and Lieutenant Ramius and fly them up to the Archangel.
The three students and Lt. Ramius are quickly and carefully deposited on the hanger floor before all three G-weapons deactivate their PSA and power down. While the three pilots prepare to get down out of their mobile suits Murrue turns to the approaching side party (A/N a side party is a group of people sent to greet new arrivals. Sorry for the technical jargon).
"Lieutenant Ramius!" the black-haired woman in the lead calls with a smile, "After what happened to the Archangel, we feared the worst!"
"Ensign Badgiruel," Murrue says with a smile in return, "It's good to see you, and thank you for watching out for the Archangel during the battle."
"So these are three of the G-weapons?" Natarle asks suddenly concerned, "What happened to the other two?"
"Actually, these are three of seven. There were two of them that even I didn't know about. Unfortunately, the other four were captured by ZAFT." Murrue says while the Ensign's jaw drops in dismay. The opening of the three cockpits goes largely unnoticed until the three pilots begin to descend on the built in access lines.
One of the maintenance men, a chief petty officer with the name Murdoch on his uniform asks, "What's going on? They're just kids, what are they doing as pilots?"
"Lieutenant? What's going on?" Ensign Badgiruel inquires somewhat more sharply than she probably should have.
"Well, this is a surprise," The pilot of the mobile armor says as he joins the other two officers. "Lieutenant Mwu La Flaga (A/N I like the fansub spelling better and it's my fic) of the Seventh Orbital Fleet, at your service," he concludes with a smile.
All those nearby salute as they recognize the name of the Hawk of Endymion. "I'm Lieutenant Murrue Ramius, Sector Two, Fifth Special Division. I'm a crew member of this ship."
"Ensign Natarle Badgiruel, same division."
La Flaga returns the salutes, "It's an honor. Permission to come aboard? Also, who's in command of the ship?"
Ensign Badgiruel hesitates before responding, "The Captain and all of the senior officers were greeting the new pilots when the attack occurred. There were no survivors." She states to the stunned observers.
"What? The Captain- I can't be-" Murrue stutters, apparently unable to complete a sentence in her shock.
"What a rat fu- er disaster," La Flaga says, shaking his head after nearly losing his cool. Anyway, Captain, please allow me to board. The ship I was assigned to engaged the enemy and was destroyed."
"Of course Lieutenant; permission granted," Ramius says with a quick nod.
"So none of the pilots I was assigned to protect survived?" he asks, looking at Natarle.
"No Sir," she says sadly.
Mwu nods, "I see," he says before turning to look at Kira, Mir, David, and the others. "So who do we have over here?" he asks.
"They're all teenage civilian that were in the factory district when the attack began. I brought that one," she indicates Kira, "aboard that G there when I escaped, it's called the Strike by the way. He used it to down a GINN, and I assume you saw what happened with the CGUE." Mwu nods in affirmation. "The other two pilots are that girl there, I don't know her name, and that boy, but from what she said earlier, his name is David." She concludes.
"That kid took down a GINN?" Ensign Badgiruel asks, obviously impressed.
"I see," Mwu says, an expression of curiosity on his face as he walks toward the group.
David sees him coming and inquires, "Is something wrong?"
"So tell me, you're all Coordinators?" Mwu says/asks conversationally.
Though the question is directed at the three pilots, Tolle is the one who speaks first, "Are you kidding, Mir's not a Coordinator neith-"
David raises a hand, effectively cutting the other student off. "Miriallia isn't a Coordinator, but Kira and I are."
Almost instantly, the guards point their rifles at the two Coordinators in their midst. The tension is ratcheting higher by the moment, but then Tolle jumps between the soldiers and his friends. "What are you, crazy?" he cries, "They just saved all of us!"
"Tolle," Kira says trying to quiet his friend before he does something stupid and gets himself shot.
Tolle merely steamrolls over the statement. "You all saw what happened! They may be Coordinators, but they're not with ZAFT! You must all be out of your minds!"
The tension in the air backs off, but only a little. It is finally dispelled when Lieutenant Ramius waves her hand. "At ease! Lower your weapons," she orders.
The soldiers comply, looking at each other with nervousness readily apparent in their expressions. "Lieutenant, I respectfully request an explanation," Ensign Badgiruel says with less respect and more incredulity than she thinks she displays as she vocalizes the question that all the others are thinking, her rank as an officer giving her the authority to ask.
"When you think about it, it's really not terribly hard to understand," she answers Badgiruel, "Heliopolis is neutral territory; it only makes sense that those Coordinators who don't want to be involved in the war would take refuge here," she turns and looks at Dave and Kira, "Am I right?"
"Yeah," Kira says, "especially since we're both first-generation coordinators."
"Which means, of course, that your parents are Naturals. I can see how that would cause problems," Mwu says apologetically. "I didn't mean to cause an incident. I was just curious, that's all." Mwu suddenly smiles, "It's your grace that gave you away. I saw the pilots practicing on the way here, and they were having trouble just getting those things to stand up! But you three make it look easy, like the steps of some elegant waltz." He shakes his head and looks at Mir. "Miriallia was it? Sometime I'd like to know how a Natural can manage that," he concludes with a smile.
"So what do we do now?" Natarle asks as Mwu turns away from the teens.
"Well," Mwu temporizes, "I've been shot down, and the Le Creuset team is still waiting outside with at least one more team for backup. I don't think that they'll be content to wait for long," Mwu says with a headshake.
The three officers head off to the bridge, while a crewman leads the six students off towards a bunk room that they can use for a while.
XXXXX
While the crew of the Archangel planned their next move, the six students relaxed in the quarters that they had been temporarily assigned.
"How can they sleep at a time like this?" Kuzzey asks quietly, indicating Kira and Mir, each of them racked out on bunks, dead to the world.
David smiles, "Combat fatigue. Being in a cockpit when there's fighting going on like there was earlier is like running uphill. When you come down off the adrenalin high, you crash like that," he says pointing towards his sleeping friends.
"So then why aren't you sleeping too," Tolle says with a smile. "Taking it easy out there?" he teases.
David smiles despite himself. "No, I'm just not down off the adrenalin high yet," when the others look at him questioningly he continues, "Earth Alliance ship." He says ticking the points off on his fingers, "Me, as a Coordinator. Blue Cosmos. I'm still expecting some nutjob to yell, 'For a Blue and Pure World,' and try and stick a knife in me,"
"Ya know, speaking of Coordinators," Kuzzey says, "I've wondered for a while now if Kira was one, though it never crossed my mind that you were too Dave. Could you explain something to me?" David nods. "You guys can do all of these mind-blowing things, and for you it's just a little bit difficult. I mean, you can pilot mobile suits, you're faster, you're smarter, and you're stronger. I mean Kira even rewrote an entire operating system in the middle of a fight! Do the Earth Forces stand a chance when every person from the Plants is like that?"
David considers for a moment just how to respond. "Okay Kuzzey, it's like this. The Plants and ZAFT have individual soldiers capable of lots of destruction. Hell, a GINN can take out an Earth Forces Battleship with only a little luck. But to be quite cold about it, the Earth Alliance has people to spend. There are literally billions of people on the planet, but there are only a few million in the Plants. Statistically, it takes four and a half Moebius units to take out a GINN. So a GINN can kill four enemy units, but, statistically, the fifth one will get him almost every time. The Coordinators have a qualitative edge a mile wide, but their advantage is matched by the sheer quantity that the Earth can bring to bear. Most of the time, the side with the better tech and individual superiority wins. However, just look at the conflict in Vietnam in the twentieth century. Occasionally sheer numbers can overwhelm even the most powerful." David concludes. "Anyway, I was out there too! I is goin' to bed." David says as he maneuvers himself into one of the remaining lower bunks for a nap.
XXXXX
Meanwhile on the bridge, Ramius returns the borrowed headset to the communications console before turning back to the two other officers present. "The interior of the colony is almost completely evacuated, but I've been informed that the Strike's display of firepower has upped the hazard level in the colony to nine."
"Which," Mwu points out, "means that the shelters will all be locked down. So what are we going to do with those kids?"
"We can't exactly let them go free, even if there was someplace to put them. They've been exposed to classified military secrets." Natarle says.
"Are you proposing that we have them join us in our escape? One we exit the colony, we'll be involved in some pretty heavy fighting! There are two Nazca class ship and two Laurasia class ships plus who-knows-how-many GINNs, and, if they're feeling reckless, four of our own G-weapons!" Mwu exclaims.
"First of all, I didn't really detain them, when I tried that, the girl, Miriallia, threatened to step on me. We came to a mutual understanding that getting out of the colony intact would be the best result and I was best equipped to accomplish that. The fact that all three of them left their units at once tells me that they trust us at least a little." Murrue says thoughtfully. "Those three kids accounted for six GINNs inside the colony, so that leaves a maximum of eighteen minus however many you took out Lieutenant."
"Well that's a good thing," Mwu says, "I took down two, but with my Zero out of the fight, those three units are probably our only hope of getting out of this cluste- er mess alive."
"Why don't you pilot one of them, Lieutenant?" Badgiruel asks.
"I don't think that it's possible. The only one with the ability to be flown by a natural in unresponsive. That girl's unit won't even acknowledge our existence." Mwu says. "It's giving the maintenance people fits,"
"Still," Badgiruel says, "it seems . . . inappropriate to give that much power to people we don't even know!"
"I don't see what choice we have. A Natural couldn't fly two out of the three, and the one a Natural can fly won't respond to anyone but the girl." Murrue says, "I'll go down and speak with them, and if their terms aren't unreasonable, then I will accept them. Please take care of things while I'm gone."
XXXXX
David jerks awake as the door opens, his heart racing and his left hand going for the hilt of one of his throwing knives before he realizes that it's just the Captain, and not a Blue Cosmos cell at the entrance.
"If I might have a moment of your time? There's something that I'd like to ask you three," she says, indicating himself, Kira, and Mir.
David's face goes suddenly blank as he anticipates the worst. Mir seems merely inquisitive, but Kira's face is blanketed by suspicion. "What do you want?" Kira asks.
Murrue hesitates, not wanting to broach the subject in front of the others before finally deciding to just say it. "We need your help." Murrue says flatly, "ZAFT won't wait long, and there are four ships and anywhere from eleven to sixteen GINNs as well. I really hate to ask this of all of you, but will you help us defend this ship when ZAFT attacks again?"
This is exactly what Kira has been expecting. "No! This isn't our war! We don't want any further part of it!" Kira explodes. "We're neutral! This isn't our figh-"
"Shut up, Kira," David says, abruptly cutting off the teens tirade. "If you don't want to fight, then say so and then be quiet; there's no need to be rude. Lieutenant Ramius is just looking after her ship. She could have threatened us to get us to cooperate, but she didn't." He turns to Murrue. "I assume that the colony is now at at least hazard level eight, and probably level nine?" He asks and Murrue nods. "Which means, of course, that all of the shelters are in lockdown mode. As for this not being our fight? Kira this became our fight the second that rat-bastard Le Creuset attacked this colony. For all that he knew, the mobile suits being produced here were for the defense of Orb. He might have suspected or feared that they were intended for OMNI, but he had zero proof! His attack was illegal and immoral, and I, for one, will go out there and protect this ship from bastards like him any day." David says coldly before turning back to Murrue, who is standing with her jaw hanging loose. "Ma'am, if the offer is still open, I will defend this ship under your orders."
However, before the Lieutenant can pull herself together enough to respond, the room's intercom activates. "Bridge to Captain Ramius! Captain Ramius, please respond!"
Murrue activates the panel. "Yes? What is it?"
"ZAFT's attacking!" Lieutenant La Flaga says severely. "We have many mobile suits incoming! Get up here and take command! You're the Captain!"
The new Captain's eyes widen, "What? I am?"
"I have seniority, but I don't know anything about this ship!"
"I understand. What about your Mobile Armor, Lieutenant?"
"The repairs aren't completed yet," La Flaga says.
"Then please take control of the Combat Information Center. I'll be right there," She frowns and turns back to the six students. "You heard him, this ship will be entering battle again. We're badly undermanned, but hopefully we'll be able to get through the battle intact."
Kira clenches his fists, "This isn't fair!" he yells at the Captain.
However, it isn't the captain who responds. "Life isn't fair, Kira," David says gently. "If life were fair, then you'd still be back on the moon at Copernicus and we wouldn't be at war. I understand if you don't want to go out there; I just want you to know that I won't hold it against you. Either of you," David says before he and the captain head out the door.
Kira looks at Mir for a few moments, then both of them nod and take off down the corridors toward the hanger bay.
XXXXX
Captain Ramius enters the bridge just as things are getting interesting, "Report!" she says as she takes the commander's chair.
"All systems are online, we're as ready as we're going to get!" Lieutenant La Flaga says from his chair in CIC.
Crewman Tonomura pales as he looks at his screens, "My God, Captain! I'm detecting fourteen GINNs and . . . the X303 Aegis!"
Ramius pales as well when she hears those numbers. Good Lord! They must really want to see us dead! "They're already sending it against us?"
"It's theirs now!" La Flaga says from CIC. "Are you just gonna let them sink us?"
"Of course not!" the Captain says, looking down at the Lieutenant in CIC. "What's the status of our mobile suits?"
"They can all go out, assuming we have pilots for them. The Strike has the Sword Striker pack on it to limit collateral damage." The Lieutenant says.
Murrue takes a deep breath. "Activate Gottfrieds! Load missile tubes with Corinthos and prepare to launch! Deploy Valiants! Prepare to fire upon targets of opportunity!" She continues, preparing her ship as well as she can for the battle ahead.
XXXXX
David runs into the hanger just moments after Murrue gets to the bridge. When he gets to his unit, he stops and shouts angrily, "Alright! What the hell happened!" Murdoch pokes his head around the corner.
"Sorry, kid. We thought we'd have more time before they attacked, besides, we had to find out how it worked sometime."
David smacks his forehead and swears for several moments in Japanese and Spanish. "Alright, I can deal with this. Next time though, don't take the Heavy Arms pack off without my permission, okay!"
Murdoch nods, "Good luck, Kid!"
David immediately grabs the access line and begins his ascent. He gets into the cockpit and activates his systems just in time to see Kira and Miriallia enter the hanger and head to their units. David triggers his radio, "This is David, I'm preceding to the catapult," he says as his suit's feet attach to the launch tracks. "What's the situation?"
Badgiruel's voice comes over the com, "We've got fourteen GINNs and the Aegis inbound. Try to keep them off of us without hitting the support shaft, alright?"
"Confirmed," David says as the light turns green. "David Almafi, going out!"
XXXXX
Murrue looks out the viewport and orders, "Target the Gottfrieds on the Aegis and fire. Try to keep it off balance! Target missile tubes seven through eighteen on the GINNs and fire, reserve the others for targets of opportunity! Lieutenant La Flaga, take any shots you see with the linear cannons or the missiles! Don't wait for my confirmation."
The Gottfrieds fire, and disperse the concentration of mobile suits while a dozen missiles fire at the three most isolated GINNs. They are all shot down short of their targets, but evading and shooting down missiles keeps them from targeting the Archangel, instead of a massed group of enemies, the Archangel's Igelstellung meets only a handful of penny packet groups, and the new ship's CIWS is equal to the task of dealing with them. Murrue smiles and tries to come up with a good way to counterattack.
XXXXX
The Gottfrieds and missiles fire just as David's unit is leaving the port side hanger bay doors. David smiles as the enemy suits scatter. He reaches over and hits his PSA and then shifts the left arm into melee mode while he draws his suit's beam saber. The shield shifts downward and doubles in size while the wrist blade extends and locks into position. David locks onto the nearest GINN, who doesn't seem to notice him, occupied as he is shooting down missiles aimed at one of his friends. David doesn't give him a chance to dodge, he simply opens fire with his beam Gatling guns. The GINN's pilot doesn't even have time to scream before his battery detonates and turns the mighty war machine into a cloud of microscopic particles. David smiles. One down, fourteen to go! He thinks, as behind him, the Strike and Mir's unit launch from the starboard and port catapults, respectively. Suddenly David goes pale as he really looks at the GINNs in front of him. Aw shit. "Archangel, be aware that approximately half of the enemy mobile suits are equipped with anti-fortification weaponry!"
XXXXX
Murrue grins as David destroys one of the distracted GINNs before a message comes over the radio, "Archangel, be aware that approximately half of the enemy mobile suits are equipped with anti-fortification weaponry!"
Murrue congratulates herself on keeping something in reserve. "Task Helldarts to anti-missile fire!" she calls out just as the first GINN fires at the Archangel. Luckily, her order comes in time, and the incoming missiles vanish as the Helldart's interdiction system works as advertised. Then, the odds change even more in the Archangel's favor as the Strike and Mir's unit take the fight to the enemy. We may just get out of this mess yet!
XXXXX
Athrun swears as the Archangel's Gottfrieds fire yet again, forcing him to dodge, but this time, they fire staggered, and the second set nearly gets him. Only the Aegis's anti-beam shield allows him to escape destruction. Suddenly one of the escort GINNs blows up, and Athrun gets his first glimpse of David's unit. That must be the seventh machine, the one that Commander Le Creuset didn't get a visual on! He thinks before being forced to dodge the Gottfrieds yet again, this time they try to bracket him in. He avoids them successfully, but he is forced to cut momentum once more and move away from his intended target. Then, all of a sudden, the Strike and the other new unit are there, slashing into the flanks of the attacking force. Damn, this is going from bad to worse!
XXXXX
Mir smiles when she sees the Strike with its oversized anti-shipping sword. Unexpectedly feeling the desire to expand her horizons, Mir thumbs the selector. Her mobile suit's right hand reaches up to her right shoulder and draws the cut down version of the same sword as the Strike holds and activates it as she charges into the melee. The first GINN is so surprised to see her that it almost cannot evade in time. He manages to move just far enough that he loses his suit's head to Mir's slash instead of his own. However, a person can only dodge what he can see. Mir's second slash with the undersized ship-killer takes both legs off, and sets off a chain reaction that destroys the GINN. Got one! she thinks with a smile before quickly retargeting on yet another GINN and flying off to engage it.
XXXXX
On the bridge of the Archangel, Mwu is beginning to get annoyed. Despite his efforts, the Archangel has yet to shoot down even one GINN. However, Mir's sudden charge into the rapidly evading pack of ZAFT suits presents him with an opportunity. As three GINNs scatter from her assault upon one of their fellows in an attempt to gain enough range for their bazookas to be accurate, Mwu's fingers fly across his targeting panels. In their distraction, the three suits have forgotten the Archangel. Just as Mir finishes with her first kill and prepares to move on to a second, the Assault Carrier fires both of its Valiant linear cannons and all twelve missiles from tubes one through six and eighteen through twenty-four. The two GINNs targeted by the gigantic railguns on either side of the ship simply vanish. Moments later, two missiles detonate less than a dozen yards from the third GINN, and it is destroyed as well.
Mwu lets out a war cry that has most of the bridge crew wanting to cover their ears. "Got three of them!" He yells in triumph from the secondary console in CIC.
The Captain smiles after ordering a slight heading change, "Good work Lieutenant! Now, do it again."
XXXXX
Kira takes off from the starboard catapult, and immediately finds himself surrounded by enemies. He takes note of the fact that he is isolated from his companions, accepts it, and starts swinging. The GINN he is fighting puts up its sword to block the strike of the massive Schwert Gewehr anti-shipping sword; however, the gigantic two-handed weapon shears through the GINN's blade like it doesn't exist before continuing through the top of the GINN's head and out the base of its left leg. The GINN explodes moments later, but Kira has already moved on to another enemy. This one, though, has rather more skill than the last. Kira finds himself dodging well-aimed attacks from the obviously veteran fighter. Good he may be, but Kira uses his enemy's unfamiliarity with the G-weapon's design to his advantage. After avoiding three shots, he takes the fourth on the base of the Panzer Eisen which doubles as a shield.
Kira's enemy does exactly what Kira expects. He stops and asks over a general frequency, "Did I get him?"
His answer comes in the form of a fifteen and three quarters meter sword. The ZAFT pilot is barely quick enough to dodge. Kira then reaches up with his suit's left hand and draws the Sword Striker's beam boomerang. He throws it right at the GINN, whose pilot easily avoids the outbound weapon. He is somewhat less fortunate when it returns.
The beam weapon slices through his suits left leg like a hot knife goes through butter. While the pilot is trying to fly without half of his thrusters, Kira closes the distance and neatly cuts the GINN in two.
XXXXX
"Miguel!" Athrun yells in horror as one of his longtime friends is cut in half by the Strike's colossal sword. However, Athrun doesn't have time to mourn as the new assault ship fires its main guns at him yet again, forcing him into yet another evasive maneuver. And taking him out of range of the killer of the Magic Bullet of Dusk.
XXXXX
David, seeing Mir's tactics, smiles. Very good strategy! If your enemy wants to fight at range, then force him to engage up close, he thinks as he follows her into the furball. The first GINN to get in his way is an escort with a sword and rifle. The sword blocks the first beam saber strike, but David makes good use of the blade on his suit's left wrist. After all, a GINN with a three-meter deep hole in its side doesn't work very well. It works even worse after it blows up. David sees Mir cut another of the escorts in half as he blocks a bazooka blast from one of the heavy units. He starts to go off after it, but something catches his eye from his peripheral vision. He turns and looks at it.
It's one of the remaining escorts, and it's heading for the Archangel's bridge. David kicks his thrusters to full power, not daring to fire his Gatling guns for fear that the inaccurate weapons will hit what he is trying to protect. It's a race to see who can get to the lightly defended viewport first.
The home team wins this time. David prepares to take off the GINN's head from behind with his beam saber right as the built in, rechargeable battery fails and the powerful energy weapon goes dead in his hand. Damn! he thinks as he shoves it back into the recharge rack. The GINN is raising its rifle when his Gundam's right fist connects with its left shoulder, ripping the entire arm off. Its burst of fire, intended to take out the Archangel's vulnerable bridge, hits nothing.
David is about to destroy the suit when he checks his movement. Instead of thrusting his wrist blade all the way through his opponent's suit, he stabs just deeply enough to kill the pilot before dropping the suit onto the deck of the Archangel and continuing on his way.
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Mir was having a more difficult time than she had had in the beginning. This particular enemy was rather skilled. He had managed to parry all of her strikes for nearly a minute, and Mir was getting impatient. When yet another two-handed strike is deflected Mir remembers a feature she had noticed earlier. She flicks a switch on the control stick and hits a button on the side of the left stick.
Outside, something rather more drastic was happening. Mir's suit let go of the hand-and-a-half sword with its left hand and gripped the beam saber on the left hip, draws it, and activates the beam. The GINN is suddenly confronted with two threat sources, and Mir pulls another trick out of her hat. She immediately feints with the saber, and her opponent shifts to block.
At that point in time, if he had been facing a human pilot, even a Coordinator, he could have recovered and blocked the real attack from the anti-shipping sword. However, he faced a semi-sentient computer with a rather devious pilot who was, for the first time, accessing her battle computer's pre-programmed combat routines. Even if he had blocked the first strike there were half a dozen rapid-fire attacks behind it. But he didn't. The thrust from the anti-shipping sword was too sudden, and too unexpected after all the slashes she had been using against him.
The tip of the blade enters just below where the navel would be on a human. It exits just under the left elbow and also takes off most of the left arm. The GINN detonates almost immediately. Mir grins and goes back to work.
XXXXX
Murrue smiles in relief as the enemy forces finally break. Only three GINNs and the Aegis remain, but Murrue isn't content to just let them go. "Alright, signal the return, our suits have to be running low on power by now." She waits until the command is sent. "Now, target all of our weapons on the Aegis and fire," she says calmly, "I will not allow them to use that suit against us again," she says to the suddenly silent bridge. Mwu types for a few moments.
"Firing . . . now," he says as both Gottfrieds, both Valiants, all two dozen missile tubes, and all sixteen Helldart cells open up on one target. The Aegis has only a split second to react, but Athrun uses it well. He switches to mobile armor mode and jets sideways, knowing that he can take anything short of the Gottfrieds. He winces as one of the rounds from the Valiants shears off the bottom half of a GINN. Athrun grimaces and yells in almost blind rage, "No more!"
He triggers the Scylla cannon.
The crimson bolt of energy flies straight and true. One Helldart and two Wombat missiles survive the shot. The two surviving GINNs take care of the three remaining missiles with ease.
However, the missiles on the crippled GINN chose that moment to misfire. The first flew wild, missing everything. The second, however, hit the support shaft dead on.
Both David and Miriallia had managed to make it back to the Archangel before the missile hit. Kira, however, was farther out due to his battle with the particularly skilled GINN pilot. He didn't make it back. In the confusion as the colony was coming apart, the Strike and the Aegis came into fairly close proximity.
Athrun, still angry triggers his radio, "Kira Yamato? It is you isn't it Kira?"
Kira freezes at the sound of his best friend's voice. "Athrun? Athrun Zala?"
"What is this? Why are you here?" Kira demands.
"You should talk! What are you doing in that thing?" Athrun yells back.
Before Kira can answer, David comes over his radio. "Kira, get the hell out of there! The colony's coming apart around us!" However, his warning is much too late. The vacuum of space pulls him out through a large hole in the side. Athrun, keeping pace with the two survivors of the battle returns to his ship at their best speed, towing the third, badly damaged survivor.
XXXXX
Onboard the Vesalius, the lead Nazca class ship Raul Le Creuset frowns as Heliopolis comes apart. These two new units could ruin everything, Le Creuset thinks, I will have to be very careful about how I handle this. At least this will make one part of my job easier. A cold smile breaks briefly across his face at the thought.
XXXXX
Wow. This is officially the longest it has ever taken me to write a chapter. Of course this is also the longest chapter I've ever written, so they kinda balance each other. Tell me what you think! And that's it! I'm goin' back to bed!