82 years after the end of the second Bloody Valentine war ZAFT, the Alliance and the rest of the world's nations no longer exist. Instead, they have been replaced with the collective nation of the Earth Sphere Peace Alliance. Using force to provoke peace across the Earth Sphere, the ESPA military forces are constantly being enlarged.

After 19 years of the forceful oppression felt by many, the United Earth Rebellion is created. Within 3 months they take control of 5 small mining colonies built around the asteroid belt. It was only a matter of 4 months more before ESPA declared war upon the Rebellion. By that point, however, the UER has placed defensive armaments on the colonies, as well as repaired almost 40 battleships that had been sleeping in the asteroid belt.

The war became drawn out as large missiles and ordinance weapons were made useless against the colonies due to the asteroid belt. This lead to the formation of ESPA's elite force, SHIELD. Using highly customized and sometimes unique Mobile Suits, they began to overwhelm the UER forces. In response, the UER conducted Project X; the creation of 3 new mobile suit types.

C.E. 174, one hundred years after the second Bloody Valentine war, the UER's Project X reaches the testing phase, using a real life mission as the testing ground.

* * * * *

"All systems green. Re-entry mode active. 300 seconds until break limit point."
A young masked man sitting within a cockpit of a mobile suit was staring directly forward. His gruff voice was shaking just as much as the cockpit itself due to the resistance on his Mobile Suit due to moving through the atmosphere.

"How about you two?"
"All systems green, sir," replied a female voice. Just a short distance from the masked man's Suit were two other Mobile Suits, also going through the re-entry process; his blue and white one, the woman's red and black one and another black and white one. Although at that moment they all appeared mostly red due to the heat exerted on them.
"Everything is go here, Captain Aritide."

A deep voice came over the communication system from the third suit. The pilot, a young man with a very focus expression on his face, gripped the controls of his suit tightly as it began to shake even harder.

"Captain," said the young woman, "may I ask a question?"
"Go ahead Serenity," he replied.
"When we land, what are Marcus and I to do?"
"You are to head to point 3A whilst I move to point 4B. From there we will perform a pincer attack on the target building."

The target building the Captain was referring to was a small SHIELD command outpost located within the Nevada desert. Reconnaissance planes had shown that the outpost was weakly guarded, leading to the belief that it was of little important. However, it was still a change from the UER to show their seriousness of resisting the ESTA and SHIELD rule, as well as the perfect setting to test their newest mobile weapons.

* * * * *

Within the Nevada base, warning sirens rudely awaken the sleeping soldiers. The surveillance officers run to the control room, quickly examining the scanners, unable to make visual confirmation due to the darkness of the night.

"What's the situation!?"
The demanding voice that filled the room came from an elderly looking man dressed in a white Captain's uniform. His face was covered by an incredibly serious expression as he marched into the room, almost in a furious manner.

"Sir, we've picked up 3 unknown units closing in from 10 o'clock. They appear to be coming from above."
"Any carriers around the area?"
"Negative, sir," replied the man at the scanner. "They seem to have performed atmospheric re-entry."

The Captain's expression swiftly changed to a look of confusion. It was well known throughout the ESPA forces that the UER didn't have any mobile suits with that sort of capability. However, if the units were friendly, they would have given their IFF code by now.
"Very well, shoot them down."

* * * * *

"Captain Aritide," shouted Marcus over the comm. System. "They're targeting us with AA guns."
"I can see that. Initiate attack formations."

The three Mobile Suits moved apart, with Marcus and Serenity moving east and Captain Aritide moving west. Within seconds all three were under fire from the beam cannons situated around the base. With each of them darting left and right, they were able to make use of their Suits' manoeuvrability to dodge the relatively slow beam shots.

"Testing the cannon," announced the Captain. His Suit raised a large cannon from its right side, holding the trigger with its right hand and stabilizing it with the left. A small spark of energy appeared at the tip of the cannon, before a sudden and massive blast of green energy burst forth, heading straight from the AA guns on the west side of the base. They were annihilated, resulting in a massive explosion that shook the base itself. Then it was time to touch down.

"Marcus Rite, Fallen Gundam, initiating testing mission."
"Serenity Leone, Sapphire Gundam, Hardedge pack, starting the test."
"Kyle Aritide, Silent Gundam, here we go!"

The three suits moved forward through the night. Marcus took hold of the Fallen's scythe and activated his thrusters. Speeding toward the now emerging Murasame mobile suits, he swiftly sliced them all in two. The explosions rocked his Suit as he continued his assault. Serenity grasped the massive sword on her Suit's Hardedge equipment pack and moved to join the fray. Although the size of the sword made her attacks slower than Marcus', its size meant she was taking out 2 to 4 Suits with each swipe.

On the other side of the base, Kyle opened fire again with his suit's Porta-Lohengrin, swinging the shot from left to right, removing a huge amount of the defence force in seconds.

"Alright you two, enough playing around. Let's get this over with."
"Understood," replied Marcus.
"Yes, sir," said Serenity.

With that, all three changed their targets to the base itself. Marcus went straight for the control tower, slicing it vertically with his scythe. Serenity moved to the Mobile Suit hangars and started to slice them into pieces bit by bit.

Kyle, on the other hand, took aim at the main power supply; a large number of electrical reactors. With one blast from his cannon, the first set of the reactors exploded, causing a chain reaction that moved across the facility as the power surges and heat from the explosions caused the ammunition storage area to detonate, sending shrapnel and ammo in every direction, hitting every section of the base.

"Alright team, move over. This mission is complete. We are to head to the rendezvous point immediately."
"Understood, Fallen Gundam heading out."
"Yes sir, Sapphire Gundam moving to the rendezvous location."

As she flew off into the desert night, Serenity looked at the monitor display of the base, now in ruins. Smiling, she felt she had accomplished something necessary and worthwhile.
"Mum, dad... It's finally starting. ESPA will regret what they did to us. They will regret it."


AUTHOR NOTES
Hi there. :) I've been working on a new story instead of adding more to Counter Action, as I feel I cannot add much more to that at the moment. However, please note that I work a lot of hours now, so it may take a while for this to be updated. :) Next chapter will involve more character building. :)