rAnDoM

by Womgi

Because sometimes, there are things that are just meant to be written, if only so what's left in your head is peace of mind...

AN: something that stuck in my head, until I exorcised it into this.

Feel free to tell me exactly how much this sucks. Especially considering how little universal century is worth these days….

XXX

In the year 0086 of the Universal Century, life is both wondrous and terrible. The dark specter of war lies ever looming, threatening to destroy the ever tenuous peace that exists in the solar system.

XXX

The two Gelgoogs lay in wait. They were advanced Jäger models, produced late in the one year war and then improved by the Zeon remnant unit who had found the cache of ten practically brand new Gelgoogs in the otherwise wrecked ship. They were painted a dull steel grey and they had no insignia, only roman numerals on their left shoulder armor, their repainting an effort to keep their allegiance hidden if discovered. Their armor was bulky and not very aerodynamic; suggesting that the suit was space use only, but were there an audience, none would question the menace of metal Cyclops who lay waiting, fire blazing from each of their one red eye.

Both pilots wore Zeon style pilot suits, a relic of the One Year War. The pilots themselves were survivors of A Baoa Qu, fifteen year old boys conscripted into service with Zakus after 40 hours of training. Both had survived by sheer dumb luck when they had crashed into each other at full burn in their panic. In the confusion of battle the sparking and drifting mobile suits were ignored by everyone after the Dolos they had launched out of was destroyed.

Dmitri touched the other suit, unit "VI" with the hands of his, unit "V". The contact link immediately popped up, showing him the other pilot. His mild Russian baritone, an accent he had spent effort to develop, floated through the contact link.

"Jacob, the patrol will be here soon, so we have to be ready. Remember, just like last time. And this time, they will not be sending two full squads, just one or two and so we will be victorious. Courage my friend!"

They moved back. Their current location was the wreck of a One Year War era Papua class wreck. The ship had originally been wrecked onto an asteroid and that had eventually drifted into this Federation controlled route. The two had been waiting for a while for the patrol ship to reach here. Their own vessel was elsewhere, an old Columbus class that had been stolen from the Federation. However, it lacked the hanger or catapult of the modernmilitaryvessels currently in service so had to be careful of anybody showing up while its complement was launching or landing.

The GM crawled into the wreck carefully, vary of hidden surprises. Dmitry smirked. This idiot was an amateur, probably hadn't even seen combat yet, the poor baby. Well, the GM would be dead soon enough and he could meet up with Carla and Jefe soon enough. At that point, the ships themselves would be easy prey.

"Showtime…"

XXX

The world seemed awkwardly tilted. Darkness smothered his sight. The pungent smell of burnt wiring stormed up his nose without mercy, letting him know that he was in trouble and the why was very clear. In space, an intact pilot suit should have supplied him with purified if slightly stale air. However, this was clearly not the case. Yet, he could still feel the helmet around his head, two facts, which when take together meant a leak. The fact that he was still alive was an extremely good sign, even if it was a temporary condition.

As if waiting for that thought, the cockpit flickered to life. Screens slowly booted up from their previous blankness. Almost ironically, the red emergency light also flickered on, as if to annoy him further. He waited the standard number of seconds as the systems began to reboot. Pilot Harry Potter looked around his cockpit with a sense of grim resignation. The mobile suit was in great shape, all things considered. For what was essentially a less than cutting edge suit this five year old GMII was still an excellent unit. This particular one would take a while to get back to service though, if at all it did. The panoramic cockpit showed a great deal of damage, the liquid crystal display having cracked and blackened at places. The linear chair had a few burnt wires, easily fixed up. The dash showed that his left arm was missing, as well as his left leg and his reactor had missed damage with the finest of margins. Thankfully, fine or not it was a miss, and for now he would survive. Still, the damage meant that his remaining thrusters were operating at half power. The only good news was that beacon was now operational, and the low Minovski particle levels meant that he had a good chance of being rescued soon. The Salamis cruiser he was operating out of had three other suits. Not to mention the other Salamis and her four suits. So rescue was still a very good possibility, if one assumed the ships had survived whatever force had hypothetically ambushed them at the same time. Still, he ought to move from within this wretched wreck so that he could be a bit more easily found.

The mission had appeared simple, check out the wreck of what appeared to be a wayward Zeon ship. The ship in question was an old Papua class, used in the early part of the one year war and had crashed bow first into a larger asteroid and possibly contained cargo in it. So he had been sent out to sortie for a look and see.

Needless to say it didn't go according to plan. The ship apparently had passengers, a pair of old but very effective Gelgoogs. The grey suits had ambushed him and nearly destroyed him via beam saber in his surprise. However, the first swing only got his leg, unbalancing his thrust and in a ridiculously comedic stroke of good fortune, made him trip out of the way of the attackers and further into the apparently hollow asteroid. Having gotten a grip, Ensign Potter had activated and swung his own beam saber as soon as the enemy had followed him. In a fit of luck, the other pilot was just as surprised, having walked into the somewhat wild and unthinking swing and lost most of his right arm, his head and the distinctive Gelgoog beam Naginata. A kick and he pushed the handicapped Gelgoog back. The robust construction of the Gelgoog meant that it wouldn't explode, yet.

The second suit flew over the first one and fired his beam rifle. The shot hit his left arm which was carrying his so far unused shield. However, his right hand and its beam saber were ready for the task and he had thrust forward at nearly the same time. Even as his left shoulder disintegrated, the beam saber speared through the Gelgoogs torso and its reactor. He immediately turned and applied full throttle, using maximum acceleration to get away. Unfortunately, with his current damage, he couldn't get away far enough and was thrown into a wall by the explosion. Three seconds after that blast wave, he was buffeted by another blast wave. A second explosion had marked the death of the first Gelgoog. This time he had finally blacked out.

The strange part of the whole battle was that Gelgoogs were present. Strictly speaking, most "freelance" pilots used some Zaku or Dom variation. There were entire battalions that Zeon had manufactured and then "lost". Nobody was really sure whether it was Zeon hoping for a post war shot at the Federation or the chaos of the last weeks of the ONE YEAR WAR, but there was no doubt that there were a multitude of Zakus and Doms out there. Many were still in official Zeon units, but just as many of the cheaper models were in "private" hands. They may have been antiques, but a 120mm machine gun is as effective against civilians as they were years ago. Pirates were everywhere. It was even part included as part of the official reason why the Titans were started. It all sounds excellent to blame the leftover Zeon forces, but a large part of the civilian casualties since the One Year War was space piracy using the plentiful Zeon tech. The Titans may have been formed to respond to the Zeon remnants, but the massive numbers of black market Zeon equipment also played a part in supplying them with their sweeping powers in dealing with the colonies. The unsaid goal that most Zeon remnants were concerned about was Federation forces and their harassment. Like the odd specops team that popped up to decimate the forces at a base for some objective, the multiple attempts, one successful at getting a Gundam. Nobody forgot Operation Stardust. So if there weren't pirates, Hymen wouldn't have been able to gain the support of lawmakers who could care less if their brand new battleships were destroyed via atomic bomb.

Back in the here and now it seemed that his situation really was bad. His faceplate was gone. His face itself was one giant bleeding mess and his mobile suit was less than pristine. Yep, he was almost as screwed as when he was tied to a tombstone with a naked Voldemort rising out of a cauldron. His thoughts ground to a halt.

"Wait, what?"

Ensign Harry Potter, GM pilot assigned to the Cruiser Istanbul blinked. And then he was screaming. Two minutes of hellish screaming later, he blacked out. On his forehead, a lightning bolt glowed dirty green before fading away entirely

XXX

"A white ceiling."

Harry wondered exactly how many times he had woken up to this. It was strange. Centuries into the future and he was still repeating the same things he did since he started Hogwarts. He had woken up far too many times to this sight for it to be healthy. Still there was something to be said to be waking up at all.

Harry took a breath to consider his circumstances. In an age past, he had been the Boy-Who-Lived, a hero and a beacon who had suffered and bled for a peace that never really came. Right now, he was an average soldier in a barely benevolent military organization. Ensign Harry Potter had been until yesterday, an ordinary person who did not care much beyond himself. He was barely aware of the wider world and was barely coherent of anything beyond his own insignificant existence. He was an orphan and had not been adopted. He had been a child of ten when Zeon had attacked the colonies. His parents had been caught up in it when the colony they were constructing was wiped out by the Zeon. He had been with his grandparents in the United States when Zeon invaded. His grandparents were killed when the Zeon base they were being temporarily detained at with other civilians was annihilated by a Deep Rogg strike. However, despite the fact that he was a resident of earth for most of his life, the fact that his parents had chosen to give birth in a colony had seemingly rendered him a spacenoid, something most people found some way of using against him.

Awed by the power and "awesomeness" of the Federation force, and mindful of the advantages listed by military propaganda, he had joined up at sixteen. Two years of intensive training had left him an average mobile suit pilot, not inept, but not exactly ace material either. He sure as hell wasn't going to defeat the Red Comet in one on one combat. Even if he had his GMII and Char had an antique Zaku. So yes, he was pretty much a grunt, now that he thought about it. Still, he was piloting a giant robot. Something that was inconceivable when he was in Hogwarts. But in this far future, after a death that he had subconsciously welcomed, he was alive again.

Of course, the question was if he was in his future or another future. There were many dimensions and universes; it was not inconceivable that he was in the future in some other dimension instead of his own.

Harry resisted the urge to giggle hysterically. Still, the other parts of his mind, the parts not rocking back and forth in the fetal position were quite eager to contemplate the less obvious implications of just where he was alive at. Clean fusion energy. Beam weaponry. Giant Robots. Lightsabers for said Giant Robots. And above everything else, Space the final frontier was being slowly conquered. And even now he was in space. The lack of gravity was easily apparent merely from the fact that even though he was theoretically lying down on a bed, he was actually floating between the mattress and a loosely constraining blanket that had both ends fixed to the sides of the bed. The result was a cocoon that kept him in place in case of shocks and to prevent him from simply floating off. It was a very different experience to the Hogwarts infirmary. Still, there was no doubt that whatever the era, one thing remained the same. The dark cloying smell of antiseptics was always there, a constant identity of hospitals everywhere.

"Ensign Potter!"

Harry tried to sit up and failed. His loose cocoon didn't let him sit up as muscle memory tried to force him into a salute.

"Lieutenant Karasto!" his voice was harsh and strained. From experience, this was usually due to screaming, the excessive screaming that only the Cruciatus could produce. The officer was a dirty blonde haired fellow in EFSF uniform, he was one of the people who piloted a GM against Zeon and had come out an ace. Kimbel Karasto was not the Red Comet either, but he was still an experienced MS pilot.

Yes, Ensign Harry Potter had been a Red Comet fanboy. It was a disturbing revelation.

"At ease soldier. It seems we had a bit of trouble with your extraction. Your suit wasn't in the best condition after all. Your systems were active, but you weren't talking. Eventually, we hauled your suit in when we found that your helmet was compromised. So we had to lock down the hanger first. For now your suit is secured, but it's going to be scrapped when we get to base."

Harry sighed and nodded. There was nothing to be done for now.

"For now we're putting you on reserve. You don't have a suit to pilot; on the other hand, you survived taking out two of those high performance Gelgoogs so the captain's pretty happy with that. The Corsica lost two mobile suits to an ambush on a second asteroid, which was why we took a while to get you. Another two Gelgoogs, makes you wonder where they kept them all… As far as we can tell, it was a Pirate operation that we interrupted, although we're not entirely sure why they were here at all. Anyway, the captain wants you to rest for a while until we can return to base next week. So take it easy and lay off the simulator. Take care!"

And he was gone. Well, the Lieutenant was always like that except when he was actually fighting, so he didn't bother to worry about it. Harry was far more concerned with what had happened and why it had happened. In the 21st century, he had tripped into the veil of death. The Master of Death had perished in a drapery accident. It had been such a sudden explosion that he and his fellow Unspeakable colleagues were thrown about like leaves in a twister. He himself was quite surely launched into the veil with barely a second to comprehend what had happened. He had then woken up as himself (?) in a mobile suit, coincidentally looking much like his old self, except for the scar.

The week went by slowly. The patrol saw no further incidents and there were no issues whatsoever. Still, where there was one suit there were more and it never hurt to be careful. A variety of people had come by to congratulate him on his victory. This was the first combat the ship had seen in a year. And the fact that one of theirs outdid the Corsica meant that all of the 140 odd men and women on the Istanbul were very proud of his actions. Sure two people had died, but that was battle for you. Everyone had lost somebody in the one year war, so as horrible as it might sound most were used to losing people to war. One visitor had even heard the captain hint that he would be recommended for a better posting when they reached Side 4. Harry listened but stayed quiet. He had a lot to think about. Merely a glance at the history he remembered told him a lot about the kind of world he lived in.

Indiscriminate slaughter of civilians? Check.

Discrimination of humans based on certain qualities? Check.

Elite and noble communities/families? Check.

A corrupt government teetering on the brink of collapse? Check and check.

The real question here was what was going to happen now. There were some things he couldn't abide by. And frankly, he had some things of his own to deal with.

Master of Death. The one unites the Cloak, the Wand and the Stone, he shall become death, the immortal destroyer, keeper of balance. It was a sentence on a tablet found in an early period temple in Poland. A legend that later got rewritten by Beedle, who combined it with the tale of the Peverell brothers, which was eventually shortened to just the tale of the Peverell brothers. Harry Potter had been forty three when he died. Underneath his complex glamors, he looked twenty. Apparently Master of Death took a while to set in and eternal youth was at twenty five.

Still, he knew that having the title meant very little. He was doomed to eternity and apparently couldn't die. As proved by his trip through the veil because if you face the facts, he got dematerialized by the ultimate magical trash compactor and magic itself contrived to create a Harry Potter to house the soul of the Master of Death. It was a cosmic comedy. Although, a certain prophesy could have played a part with that.

Magic continued its trend of working a bit different than he was supposed to. Wanded magics worked, but it wasn't exactly the most powerful thing, considering he was well, wandless. He could do a tenth of what he could when he defeated Voldemort, which wasn't exactly much. He couldn't even get a Lumos or Nox working. On the other hand it seemed that passive magic was very much the same as before. Runic magic remained as incredible and versatile as it had been years ago. He could now do a lot more by scratching characters onto paper than he could with a wave of his hand. It was oddly aggravating and amusing at the same time. His shipmates respected his solitude. His hurt was physical; no amount of talking would do anything but bring the memory back to conscious thought. He did suffer a lot of injuries and even if they seemed to be healing fast, his cockpit recorder showed his suffering quite effectively. There is only so much screaming ordinary humans can take.

XXX

Arriving at Side 4, he was quickly sent off by his commander to the local EFSF base for his new posting, colony defense which involved two weeks of light patrols while the brass figured out where to place him. It would have seemed odd that after a year of somewhat mediocre performance, he had suddenly taken out two Gelgoogs when a parallel attack with the same model had destroyed two suits and their pilots. That he had nearly died afterwards was irrelevant. He was now a prime candidate for "shuffling" the act of throwing competent pilots every which way until they fit into a unit. Oh well, not like he didn't expect it, observant as he now was.

The next day though, he found that though he wasn't going to be promoted he was being reassigned. He was being shipped to Earth for mobile suit testing. Apparently, there was an accident where forty experienced Titan pilots were taken out when their escorts failed to stop a team of mobile suits from attacking the Temptation class shuttle they were on. In the midst of the furious battle, one of the defending mobile suits was catapulted by an explosion into the shuttle itself. The suit was then fired on and exploded, killing the passengers of the shuttle. The loss of forty pilots was a hard hit to the EFF, never mind the base they were expected at. Experienced pilots were always in high demand especially in the Earth Federation, where talented and otherwise Earth born were always being headhunted by the Titans. In an ironic twist of fate, he would be posted there because the Titans had dismissed him as a spacenoid and thus beneath their notice. In other words, all other pilots were being sent to "real" postings and he wasn't. It was also an excellent place to start over. He might not have grand plans yet, but they did not include being stuck defending an organization that was about as corrupt as the original ministry of magic.

But there was a huge opportunity in this. Harry Potter knew many kinds of magic. He also knew how to turn electrical devices into self sustaining magical ones. And now thanks to his military training, he also knew basic mobile suit theory. The standard of today's education meant that Minovski physics was being taught at middle school level. So he had enough knowledge on how to convert a mobile suit into a magical version.

Technomancy was a new age subject. It was developed by Hermione Jane Granger, Head of Department of Mysteries. Tired of having to do her arithmancy calculations by hand, she had kidnapped Arthur Weasley for two days to grill him about his flying car. Two months later, she had enchanted a PC to work on magic. That was 2007. From then, the art was carefully disseminated into the Department of Mysteries, which had a firm policy of not caring where they got their good ideas from. As an employee and best friend, Harry had gotten tutored personally. Still, he was not an expert, content to experiment with his own uses, like enchanting muggle projectile weaponry to be slightly more efficient or enchanting a Play Station to be more interactive.

What Harry wanted was two things. He needed at least a ship, and he needed at least a mobile suit. Anything else he would think about later. He needed money and he needed to get out of the military. But there was time for that.

XXX

The Oakland Newtype lab was a small place really. For a newtype lab, it was quite benign. Even though it was a Titans affiliated organization though not under their direct control, there was very little evidence of the fact. The one thing Harry could respect about the scientists was that most of them didn't care about the earthnoid/spacenoid divide. They were all too absorbed by the research and development part of their lives to care about it. Still, he had to stomach the jeers of the Titan officers in the base, all three of them.

"Ensign Potter! You're wanted at D lab. You have ten minutes!"

Harry rubbed a hand over his forehead and sighed. He could honestly not care about this. Still it was his job and he would play along for now. There was always something new to be learnt about mobile suits, and there were so many people to use legilimency on.

D lab was a part of the "Babylon" complex in the ONL. The ONL had been around for a while, but was not part of mainstream MS development. No, their concern was elsewhere. And it was that concern that gave it its name, the Oakland newtype lab. It had a somewhat insidious history during its early days. But for now, it had branched off into newtype usable equipment, like the Flanagan institute research material.

However, his was not the newtype section. He was assigned to test regular MS equipment, same as other facilities in the world. It was the concession to the EFSF, who did not believe in newtypes at all and wanted something more "substantial" to be done at the lab.

For instance, he had done fifteen separate sorties to fine tune the software behind the aiming and firing of a new beam rifle. In particular, this did not appear to be the standard issue Hizack or GM or Galbaldy rifle, but instead a specialized custom type that would probably go to one of the limited production high performance suits. The Hizack he was assigned was not a bad suit, and considering the Zaku model F2 he had done some of his training battles in, he was much happier with this.

The panoramic cockpit instead of the screens helped a lot, as did the better maneuverability. The blue suit was consistently easy to handle and while it was not a Gundam, it was still a technically sound piece of equipment. The overall performance was comparable to a GMII but the different aerodynamics and different thruster positions meant that every maneuver was just the slightest bit different to what he was used to. The presence of atmosphere was also a factor, not to mention the ever familiar feeling of gravity. However, his past memories seemingly meant that he could now instinctually adjust for the presence of gravity while doing his acrobatics. The moves themselves were costly. Doing them meant that he had a quarter of the operational time of the regular pilots. But his combat effectiveness was off the scale. His mock duels with the resident Titan "ace" pilot had proved that the space born pilot was far more effective in gravity than the specially trained Titan. With both Hizacks in their respective color schemes, Harry won every single duel with the blue machine. It was a very amusing fact.

The doors opened with a hiss. On the other side, a balding man grinned widely.

"Ah Harry! Are you ready for your next run?"

Harry nodded. Algernon Dastrum was an excitable man who was extremely enthusiastic about his work, to the point that he was a walking encyclopedia of past MS engineering. He was also one of the people he felt the slightest bit of guilt legilimizing. But the sheer amount of engineering knowledge he was skimming from the man's mind squashed his guilt entirely. He was already in the process of drawing up plans, and this merely helped him.

"Hey doc, what do I get to do today?"

"It's called the Base Jabber!"

Al activated the monitor, showing a picture of a GM lying prone on a platform of sorts in mid air. A second look showed fins and what appeared to be a cockpit on the platform. He looked at the professor, who looked at him blankly before realizing that he had yet to say anything useful.

"It's a mobile suit sub orbital flight system also known as The Flying Sled. It'll let you fly in the air without going through all that awkward thrusting that you do! It's smooth sailing all the way baby!"

Harry shook his head. There were times when the mad doctor reminded him of Luna Lovegood. Still, he was good at his job and this had possibilities.

"So tell me about this Base Jabber."

And the good doctor did speak, most eloquently of the woes of the wretched pilot, compelled by limitations to lean upon their mighty yet much unsuited metal steeds for dominion of the air, such unsightly campaign wagons graced with the elegance of the free falling rock. And forth the good doctor did provide the light, this holiest of creations, put forth to end these darkest days. And thus arose from the minds of men the Base Jabber, savior of men-who drop-like rocks, protector of badly-maneuvering-in-atmosphere-mobile-suits and friend to aerial combatants one and all. As the ally that sweeps across friendly skies, the partner when screaming into the hostile night, the brother that aids all who seek flight, there will always be the mighty Base Jabber.

Harry shook himself. That was simply disturbing. He reasoned that the doctor was simply getting excited over something totally new.

"Your briefing will be given in Hanger D. Try not to wreck it in your first flight."

Harry gave a wave and walked off.

XXX

The test flight was a success so far. The take off and cruise tests were on target, and minimal maneuvering showed a lot of promise. The use of contact link to provide the excellent link between MS and flight system was inspired. Sure, such systems were already in use in beam rifles and the like, but this new form of mobility was a truly exciting prospect. The Base Jabber was currently manned, as a form of independent control should the link be severed so the two pilots were in constant communication, noting down their personal observations of the test flight. The production versions would be unmanned.

There was a boom and a shudder. The Base Jabber had been hit.

"Markus! Can you make it?!"

The Hizack shuddered as the sub orbital unit beneath it lost half its propulsive force. The other pilot, Markus spoke in that harried manner seen in pilots pushed to the brink of their capabilities.

"Don't worry about me! I'll make it home, but you will have to walk. Sorry, but please jump so I can level off! I'll send somebody to get you."

Harry nodded and pushed down on his pedals. Hot gas propelled his mobile suit in a short hop above the almost free falling craft. The lightened craft immediately leveled off, heading back to base. He however would have to try to go as far as possible on land. Thermonuclear power or not, the suit consumed plenty of fuel, so even if he could walk for years on end, his thrusters were burning actual rocket fuel. And if he had to fight, his range dropped off dramatically. So he set his sensors to scan even as he began counting off his altitude while he activated his thrusters in the controlled fashion of an atmospheric assault landing.

It was one of the unspoken problems of having a nuclear powered suit. Technically, the Ultracompact Minovski Fusion Reactor meant that every mobile suit and mobile armor in existence was nuclear powered. On the other hand, that was all they were, nuclear powered. This nuclear reactor turned Helium 3 isotope into heat in a reaction that used the reaction products to continue the fusion reaction, providing a practically infinite power. The only real input becomes the rarely added heavy hydrogen, that is a much more plentiful resource compared to the Helium 3. The heat produce is converted to electrical energy by Magneto Hydrodynamics, MHD that makes a source of heat, a source of electricity. The end result was that we had a nuclear reactor that powered a mobile suit indefinitely, just as long as it was anything electrical.

The funny part was that when Zeon finally managed to get a near infinite electrical supply, they now had a system that could power a large unit to walk indefinitely, but still needed propellant to actually get anywhere. Their big bad Zakus needed rocket fuel to get to the spaceships they were meant to destroy. Whatever the era, rockets were rockets. And in space, everyone needed rockets, even the big battleships everyone had. Of course, the ships used thermonuclear rockets rather than the tried and tested regular rockets. But mobile suits still required fuel, which was a standardized high performance mixture of semi volatile, combustible and oxidizing chemicals.

"3000 feet….. 2000 feet… 1000 feet… 500 feet …. 100 feet …. And touchdown!"

The screen immediately began cycling through the previous few seconds for anything dangerous. Outside, the mono eye swung menacingly from side to side. The area he was in was sparsely vegetated and slightly hilly, the land tilted at a small angle that he nonetheless had to keep in mind. A few trees stood tall, green compared to the not so grassy terrain. His mono eye swung around with a whine, looking for threats. Somebody had shot the Base Jabber after all.

And suddenly, he had a hit. It was GM Sniper II, with its ridiculously long range rifle, accompanied by two GMIIs. There was no doubt about it, this was an ambush. The suits were painted in a purple and black color scheme that reminded him of the Rick Doms in the One Year War. He tensed. Combat with beam weaponry was always tricky. And he just had the beam rifle and the heat hawk. So he had to be careful.

The GMIIs advanced on him, "hopping" while firing their rifles. The high energy beams tore through the space around him, melting rock and cutting through the occasional tree. He dodged easily enough, especially since he had a lot of experience with aerial maneuvering in the Hizack. He kept his motions small and minimal, conserving his fuel. He was already a better pilot, so why not act like it?

The thing to remember about Beam rifles was that they were impossible to fire in a straight line. While collimation ensured a reasonable level of linearity, it was very difficult to get it to hit exactly where the computer said it would. The large quantities of minovski particles in the atmosphere were the reason why they had lost the ability to use radio freely. The particles spontaneously arranged themselves in cubic lattices that produced natural low intensity I fields that disrupted many electromagnetic waves. This same effect meant that any shots from a beam rifle would be nudged in random directions bit by bit as they raced at their targets, because I fields were how the beams were directed in the first place. This resulted in the weapons being slightly less accurate when advertised. Mind you, the beam rifle was an extremely accurate weapon, but still dodge-able.

The experienced pilot thus knows that it was relatively easy to dodge a beam rifle if you knew how to take advantage of this. The trick to using it to hit your enemy was more difficult. It involved using the computer's visual lock as a reference to modify your successive shots based on the way the first shot missed the target, not the easiest thing to do in battle.

The GMs finally ran out of their energy and rushed him, drawing their beam sabers as they came. However, Harry had not fired a single shot yet. The seemingly hopeless situation was instantly reversed when he started to shoot back. The GMs may be similar in performance to his machine, but the pilots lacked both experience and skill. In two shots he had punched through one and skimmed the head of the other. A beam nearly clipped him and Harry swore. The Sniper had yet to be taken care of. Still, the other two suits were somewhat taken care of. One was a pile of flaming wreckage and the other was suffering from the lack of a head. Harry knew just how debilitating it was for the computer as it struggled to reorient its sensors properly. In many cases, the GM should have been disabled, but he hadn't taken enough of the head off, and the Vulcan ammo hadn't exploded, so it was only partly disabled. Still, the transparent visor panel was shattered and the optics frozen, in a parody of the death gaze of dead humans. Just as the suit began to move again, he moved quickly to take care of the problem

He took the time to close in and cut the limbs and backpack off with the heat hawk, and then sealed the cockpit area by the expedient method of putting a big rock on the hatch. It wouldn't do to have him escaping. After rendering the GMII into a torso, He decided to face the Sniper. That suit was actually a bit faster than the Hizack, so he had to be a bit careful going in. On the other hand, the Sniper's long range rifle was not a close combat weapon. It was not even a medium range weapon. It was designed to one shot mobile suits at ridiculously long ranges and consequently had a long charge up/cool down cycle. It was not designed for high mobility close combat. Still, a beam saber was extremely dangerous in the hands of a faster opponent, never mind the two the Sniper carried. His advantage lay in the fact that the beam saber could remain active for a minute on these old suits. His heat hawk could last for five.

"This is going to be tricky…"

The sniper jumped, flaunting its better performance despite being a relic of the ONE YEAR WAR, it still had better performance than his Hizack, a very vexing problem. A difference of as much as .02G in acceleration can turn a battle into a turkey shoot. The sniper had much more.

Harry jumped back, closing towards the ONL base, jumping in short bursts, trying to radio the base. However minovski interference was too great at this range. So he turned and fired a missile. It was aimed at the ground, and provided some cover from the dust cloud. He was very thankful that any testing beyond visible range of the base tower required a full weapon load out. Else he would be defenseless and dead. It just meant he had to do his best to push his plans further up on the time table.

The Sniper pilot was not an amateur, but not exactly ace material either. He used his speed to great effect and seemed to have experience against the Hizack. On the other hand, it may just be experience against Zeonic or Zimmad suits, which tended to have similar weaknesses and strengths, which was the "family" of the Hizack. In any case, his "testing" shots were easily dodged. Still, it only meant that this was going to be a challenge. Harry closed in suddenly, burning fuel furiously as he charged the advancing GM. The pilot was surprised by the move, his actions a bit uncertain as he fired thrusters in a split second attempt to break off his own charge. Still, he drew both beam sabers as Harry was advancing on him. Harry drew his heat hawk and two seconds from being eviscerated by the beam sabers, jumped. The Sniper had a brief moment of tracking him upwards as he reflexively turned around, but the pilot was not prepared for the move and couldn't respond quickly enough even with that impressive acceleration. The heat hawk was thrown downwards as he had jumped and the turning Sniper was caught out when it ploughed through its shoulder and deactivated. With it left hand disabled, the pilot seemed unaware of the fact as he also jumped and seemed be swinging his right hand, unbalancing the whole suit in the motion, temporarily out of balance as the computer tried to compensate for its motion with a limb that wasn't moving. Harry reversed thrust and kicked down, deftly avoiding death by beam saber by sacrificing his own beam rifle. He then pulled out his heat hawk from the semi melted metal and cut the other hand off. The pilot then began firing his vulcans for the first this time in the battle. Harry ducked and swung upwards, an awkward move for a Hizack, but one he had practiced nonetheless on this one. The Sniper fell, his torso cut and head destroyed.

"Ensign Potter. Ensign Potter, do you read me. Come in, Ensign Potter!"

The signal was a bit weak and grainy, but it was a signal none the less. Harry wiped his forehead. It was one of the few luxuries of ground combat, the ability to keep our helmet open without risk of explosive depressurization.

"This is Ensign Potter. Who is this?"

"This is Lt. Hurlow. Can you make it back to base?"

Harry checked his fuel gauges. Running would take too long, so he had to do it in short hops if he wanted to get back in time for lunch.

"I should be OK. Listen Lt., I've just been attacked by three suits, two GMs and a Sniper; I've killed one and disabled the others. Can you secure them?"

There was a pause. Twenty seconds later the com crackled to life.

"Affirmative Ensign. Send the coordinates."

A few seconds and he had transmitted the coordinates. A huge orange and green mobile suit, one he had not seen before landed in front of him.

"Ensign, let's go greet the guy in that suit."

Harry muttered and knelt down, the standard position for egress inside gravity. The Lt. joined him on the ground from his own odd looking suit. They walked up to the disabled suit and took out their pistols.

"All right, let's see if this guy is breathing."

They tried to get the hatch open. However, with the hatch having seen a much too close shave from the heat hawk, it was half melted and its mechanism was totally ruined. Harry went back to the Hizack and tore the hatch open manually, using the custom manipulator controls to carefully rip the suit open, letting them see the inside of the cockpit.

The old style cockpit had one occupant, a brunette haired woman wearing a tracksuit. She seemed to have hit her head on the dash and was unconscious. Harry lowered his hand for the Lt. to place the body on it.

"I'll be headed back in the Asshimar. If you need anything, give a heads up. I'll be checking out the area to see if there are any more around here."

"Roger that. Potter out."

And he began to walk home. It was a long day. He paused just long enough to see the suit transform and rocket off at high speed. He paused, although, this may just be what he wanted. There was something interesting about that suit.

XXX

Harry had barely stepped into the hanger when he was assaulted by his fellow soldiers. Even as base security took away the now struggling woman, he was bombarded with well wishes.

"Congrats man!", "Ace at eighteen!", "Way to go man!" and so on.

Even the good Doctor was there with his wide and creepy grin.

"Impressive! To take out a Sniper in a Hizack, is very impressive indeed. Let's see if we can't put that genius to work eh?"

The Asshimar, the odd looking transformable mobile suit landed and walked up to his Hizack. Hurlow stepped out, a black haired broad jawed fellow, in his Titans suit.

"Good work ensign. Thanks to you, we now have an intelligence resource, two of them. That you were able to disable them speaks of your skill."

"Thank you sir!"

The Titan officer walked away without a word. The complement was given grudgingly and with little genuine feeling. Harry was still a spacenoid, and consequently less than dirt in that mans mind. That was it, he had seen enough. Tonight he would make his move.

XXX

It was midnight. The facility lay idle, resting after a day of work. The grounds were patrolled, the rooms were locked and most people were asleep. It was time to move.

First piece of business, fake his death. He took a spare undershirt and conjured it into a complete human body, using his own blood to provide the proper genetic template. Next, breathe life into it, enough for one day. The decoy began to breathe, a simple animation charm. A slash of a knife as it lay on the bed and "Harry Potter" died. To add to the scene he was building, he took a notepad and wrote a message. "Space aliens will not be allowed to live on earth." A charm adjusted the handwriting, permanently changing the writing from his messy scrawl.

His new disguise was a Titan naval captain's uniform, complete with the trench coat, which was admittedly a bit ostentatious, but the cap and the coat made him almost unrecognizable. A glamour spell changed his hair color, lowered his cheekbones and made up a lightning bolt scar on his cheek as well.

Next step, he apparated to the edge of the base, next to the forest and began to move. First step was to knock out a lone guard, with a hit to the head. He divested the man of everything except his inner clothes. He took the pistol and the extra clips and shrunk everything else. A stunning spell and the guy would be asleep for a while.

Next, he began to head into the main complex. The guard's ID was enough to get past here. There was very little security at this point. He dashed through the corridors, avoiding cameras and the patrols. The first stop was the central armory. A few minutes and he had cleaned the place of anything resembling weapons or ammunition. The room was properly cleaned up. The two hundred guards supposed to be armed in case of emergency would find their needs unmet.

He then headed to the "B" labs, the very restricted area that was always guarded. This was where newtype use equipment was being made. "A" lab was where the actual training and modification of cyber newtypes, something he had very little interest in. The entry to the lab was difficult but not impossible. The frequent traffic of Titan officers visiting this lab meant that there were no biometric scanners. Four specific command codes and his uniform was more than enough to get him entry into the lab. The young guard was an eager and fanatical Titan he had sometimes seen in the cafeteria, so he had no trouble with what he was about to do.

"Sir, will you be visiting any other restricted areas? Security must be notified if you plan to visit them at this hour."

"No. I'm just here to check the progress of-"

He turned and knocked out the soldier that was supposed to be accompanying him in one move. A quick set of spells and the poor fellow was almost naked and asleep till the next morning, if he didn't die by then.

Harry went through two rooms before reaching a Hanger/ lab. There were twenty odd mobile suits hooked up to various machines. The huge underground room had everything from reactor testing to weapon ranges. He swept the area with his eyes before making his move.

The first thing he did was shrink a dark blue color scheme mobile unit that was labeled PMX-000. The thing promptly disappeared into his pocket. Five minutes later, a couple of other mobile suits followed. He was interested in the new limited production "Gaplant" which the Lab had been building and testing before deployment. He left most of the overly elaborate mobile armors, like the one that seemed to have swallowed up a Gaplant on its own. While they did seem to be experimental high performance units, he didn't want to be seen using weapons belonging to the Black Otter team.

The huge thing however did seem to have been opened up for maintenance, so he left it alone. So in the end, he took three of the Gaplant suits that seemed to be a "standard", albeit limited production model, and the Messala, which from the file on it was apparently a transformable mobile suit that was designed and used by some man named Scirocco for use in the Jupiter atmosphere. It was built less than three months ago from transmitted plans and was used as a reference while designing the Gaplant, specifically the working transformation mechanism. The Earth Federation as a whole had little experience with the pesky intricacies of transformations so they managed to weasel it out of the "Man from Jupiter". They weren't exactly supposed to use the plans to build a full scale reproduction, but the eager scientists were too enthusiastic to pass up the opportunity, so had built the thing to the exact specifications and had even had the thing flown to test it out.

The Gaplant itself was seemingly usable only by newtypes due to the large G forces it laid on the pilot. Thankfully, he was, by any accounting of his power, an extremely powerful newtype. His last act before leaving was to set up reactor failures. The destructive meltdown of an Ultracompact Minovski fusion reactor could be specifically set to destroy as large an area as any particular unit could possibly cover. And there were plenty of reactors here, in plenty of mobile suits. The data might already be elsewhere, but B lab would take at least a week to be rebuilt, not to mention the suits themselves. Limited production suits were the hardest to manufacture, as you couldn't just take parts off the shelf.

Mobile suit reactors were not permanently shut down until they were decommissioned or sure to be unused for a while. The reactors used I fields that used energy from the reactor to keep the fusion reaction running. This however meant that if the reactor was suddenly switched off entirely, the small amount of high temperature gases within the reactor, held by the I field would explode out, destroying the suit and everything else in a certain radius of the suit. The rocket fuel that the suit carried would certainly not help. So by default, I fields were kept active throughout the active life of a mobile suit. Temperature dissipation from a suit in standby could take days before the I-field could be switched off without boiling the suits insides. In any case, by putting a large number of suits to destruct in this fashion at the same time in close proximity, the effect was much, much larger.

He quickly made his way around the facility. He had taken too long in the B lab and was now running around in the middle of alarms. However, his uniform and enraged yet purposeful expression kept anyone from questioning him. However, mobile suits were already all around the base, patrolling agitatedly for anything unusual. None were actually in the air; especially considering this appeared to be an infiltration than an attack. He wondered when the lab would go up. A few seconds after that thought, B lab exploded in a spectacular fashion. The area was showered with a rain of flying debris. Several people died in the chaos as they were crushed by the flaming pieces of debris. In particular, one fellow about twenty meters to his left was crushed by a flaming mobile suit leg, though he couldn't say from which model it came from for sure due to the thoroughly flaming haze around it.

He made his way into the C hanger, which was not attached to any of the labs. It was where the facility guard mobile suits were housed. Of the fifty mobile suit niches, there were twenty three blue Hizacks left unattended, as well as two of the transformable Asshimar suits. The real surprise was the single red Marasai, a mass production unit that had just been rolled out, a unit he had not believed to be present on the base. He quietly put a notice me not ward on the Hanger entrance and shrunk almost all of the units. He then shrunk all the extra equipment, beam sabers, heat hawks, machine guns and beam rifles, ammo and so on, which due to the nature of the place as a research facility meant that everything was kept right next to the mobile suits. He then boarded the final suit after cancelling the ward. In the midst of the chaos, few paid attention to the Asshimar which rocketed off into the atmosphere, which was a good thing because he was now teetering on the edge of magical exhaustion. To keep himself awake, he switched on the radio, which despite the chaos seemed to be in a lot of use. It seemed somebody had discovered the fact that C hanger was empty. In his suit, Harry chuckled quietly. Now, he just had to do a little tinkering and see where he could get some cash. He couldn't do much as a pauper of course. And he was sure that there were plenty of corrupt Titans out there ever ready to fill his coffers. As dawn broke, he enjoyed the sight of the rising sun, muted through the filters of his Asshimar.

XXX

It was the 4th of September, year 86 of the Universal century. Following his escape from the Oakland facility, he had journeyed to the nearest cave that he was sure to hide his work. The Asshimar had almost run out of fuel by that point so he was grateful for the break.

Within the small cave, he had begun to do the first of the many modifications upon the former Titan suit. The first thing to do was change the color. The orange and dark green may have been appealing to the Titans, but to him it was just ugly. So he patiently repainted it so that the orange parts were a light gray and the green parts were a light blue. The metal "face" around the mono-eye housing, formerly red was now light green. It was a distinctive appearance.

Next, he stripped the suit, until hours later he had the propellant tanks separate. A bit of complex spell work later, the tanks were now modified with rune to be ever full. He would not have to worry about running out of fuel again.

He then crawled into the cockpit and began to etch more runes. The first set of runes, placed outside and inside the escape pod/cockpit now meant that he was completely safe inside the suit. G forces would be muted to the point of irrelevance, damage would be almost impossible. And most importantly, he could now modify the suit itself.

Magic had a great many ways to make a machine operate more efficiently. Better cooling, better purity of the circulating fluids, reduced friction, things that may be physically impossible otherwise could be easily possible with magic.

By the end of the day, the Asshimar was a new suit. Not only was it faster, more durable and efficient, it had an unlimited supply of fuel and could operate indefinitely. The minovski craft system meant that he was going to use this suit a hell of a lot more. Especially with the more powerful beam rifle, now that he tinkered with it. He would never run out of energy there!

The sensors had also been given an upgrade, assisted by his knowledge of how they worked and how magic could work. With the internal systems having been supercharged by magic, he now had a sensor range of 15000m, about 50% more than he had before. Minovski interference prevented more even with magic.

Next thing he did was attach a small device that he had patiently created with the help of his magic. It was a cloaking device of sorts. Attached to the cockpit, it put out a field that placed a huge chunk of the electromagnetic spectrum outside normal phase while passing through it. A set of runes on the armor, ensured that it would extend two feet outside the silhouette of the mobile suit. He was now invisible as well.

Now that he had completed the suit, he made a small box to place his remaining shrunken stuff and put it on top of his seat. A couple of charms and in went every shrunken item he had. It was time to head out.

XXX

Seattle was a very vibrant city these days. The years following ONE YEAR WAR had left the area slowly filled with more and more people. The new Anaheim manufacturing complex, and the EFF base in the whereabouts didn't hurt the economy much either. In fact, the past few years had given back the respectability of an actual city to Seattle. There were plenty of people in the expanding population who had well paying jobs and plenty of money to spend. An economy had sprung up quickly enough after the factory was built. To Harry though, the place had an important distinction, it was a popular city for certain higher rank Titan officers who were stationed on earth.

The new city had a rather convenient area for unscrupulous elements to operate in the form of the old city, which was still as much of a mess as it was at the end of the ONE YEAR WAR. It still had the wrecks of several mobile suits and even the frame and pieces of the Gaw that Garma Zabi crashed in. The Zeon forces were not overly concerned with the wrecked city in the wake of Garma's death, and the Federation considered it too costly to rebuild over the old city. As such, after a preliminary survey, they left it alone after fencing it off. Thus it remained a criminal haven, a place that had sin written on its doorstep and it was a hellhole nobody bothered with.

The funny thing was you couldn't really operate illegally in plain view of a Federation base. Not only were there an enormous number of GMs and Hizacks, there were frequent airborne patrols literally everywhere.

This was where the Titans came in. For an organization that started with excellent aims, they had been slowly consuming the Earth Federation forces one unit at a time. Most of the earthborn military personnel were now part of the Titans. The problem was that most of the unit commanders, who were part of the original Titans, were excessively ambitious and ruthless men. They craved power and wealth and were not exactly the nicest people. In fact they were right up there with Death Eaters, the Gestapo, the SS, the NKVD and the Zabi family.

The important part was that as soon as the Titans took over, the formerly meager if effective crime organization in the old city became a full sized mafia practically overnight. The important part was that Commander Pyotr Voselkin of the Seattle Base brought a large tract of pristine ranch land within the month of his takeover, spending the equivalent of three times his official savings to do so. The important part was that nobody knew or cared.

Still, there was a lot to be said for the city, including the cheap land prices outside of the main hub. A little petty thievery, bribery and murder in the old city and he was a newly established Earth Federation citizen named Alexander Black, who owned a big ass piece of real estate. And with a little creative magic, and a confundus or two, Harry, now Alexander had drained a quite few bank accounts into his own. The transfers were done with gold as an intermediate step, so he was quite safe from detection. The important part was that Voselkin was now a pauper, and had committed suicide on learning the fact, which was something he hadn't "persuaded" the man to do.

The resultant chaos made his construction activities at his new home unnoticed. His modest villa was on the big piece of land he owned, 50 acres in all. Underneath it was an extensively warded hanger where he worked on his new suits. Thanks to his extensive use of legilimency, occlumency and his own intelligence, he had the equivalent of a fully stocked mobile suit base. Warding prevented anyone from detecting his work. Protections designed to defeat the sensors of the 21st century had no trouble baffling the minovski particle hindered sensors of today.

In the end it took a whole month to modify the almost thirty mobile suits he had stolen properly. Extra precaution meant that he was the only one who could use them. He mostly took the Asshimar out. With continuously refilling propellant levels and exceedingly effective cooling systems Harry could fly for long periods without issue. His runes meant the suit was invisible. The plentiful magic supplied in the universe meant that he was exceedingly satisfied with how the improved suit operated.

A look and see at the Anaheim plant showed that the Marasai he had taken was a new mass production model that had only recently been rolled out because of the Titan pressure on Anaheim for their thinly veiled support of the AEUG. They hadn't begun rolling them out for the space forces, but identical models were being shipped out in low numbers from Seattle. As always, Earth got everything first, ironic, considering that the design was developed at Granada.

Still, he did have other business there. He had recently managed to "acquire" the full constructional blueprints of a certain ship from the ONL, which had a lot of access to classified EFF data, and he had commissioned Anaheim to build it. Extra pay meant that it would be built much faster than ordinarily possible. The Dolos class had been developed and built by a resource starved and nearly defeated Zeon in less than a year. His ship would take half a year to build, big as it was. There were advantages to paying extra.

XXX

Alexander Black walked into the room with a confidence that bordered on arrogance. He had power and knew how to use it.

"Mr. Marlin, how nice to see you. I assume you have begun the construction of the ship?"

The short bald man smarmed at him in a manner reserved for door to door salesmen and overlord minions.

"Of course Mr. Black! We have indeed begun the construction. We do not understand some of the more unique parts of the custom requests but they shall be carried out as you have requested."

"Do not concern yourself with such trivialities. Just keep in mind that the people I represent have ways to express their displeasure with you if their exact requirements are not exactly met."

"So tell me Mr. Black, who exactly do you represent in the grand scheme of things? We at Anaheim Electronics are always interested in expanding our relationships with profitable customers."

Alexander looked at him with an amused smile.

"Mr. Marlin, rest assured that if we have need of your services, you will be informed of it post-haste."

XXX

When things were calm, Harry acknowledged that there was going to be trouble. By mid February, Harry had packed up most of the equipment that he didn't want to leave behind and was waiting for a sign. When nothing had happened in two weeks, Harry began to put anti radiation and heat shielding runes into the suits. By the time he heard word that somebody had stolen a Gundam from the Titan Base at Green Noa aka Grypps, Harry was relaxed, because he was already back in space. Sure, they might have been headed into war, but this meant that he wasn't actually going to be at the front of things yet. Still, as a spacenoid in this life, he wanted to go back to space. The freedom of flight was a lot more amazing up there.

Finding a ticket to space was all too easy. After all, it was getting back to earth that was a problem. However, he was rich, and having spent his time "productively", was more to the point one of the richest in a planet where wealth was power. As a result, he was treated as a favored customer by literally everyone. Everyone knew Alexander Black, the reclusive rich guy who very few actually knew about. With his ponytail and refined, practically ancient manners, he was respected and well regarded after by a small section of people, the very rich and respected. Naturally, he was a mini celebrity and acknowledged powerful person. The others he sometimes associated with had an inkling of how much he had. In this world, in this corrupt world, he had the power of a king.

Getting into Van Braun on the moon was similarly easy. He was after all, an investor in Anaheim. And his being their largest single private customer didn't hurt.

There was a reason he had chosen the moon of course. He was going to be overlooking the creation of his own battleship. And Anaheim was just the sort of ruthless money grabbing organization that was going to do it. Voselkin had been a quasi higher up in the Titan organization, by virtue of his being an aide of Jamitov Hymen, the head of the Titans, and had been rewarded by his boss with a cushy command, not to mention the large amounts of funds. Of the seventy odd Titan officers whose illegal cash had been drained, his was the largest, even after the large land purchases the man had done. His other virtue was that he had knowledge of some of the bigger Titan slush funds that were supposed to pay for whatever they wanted done unofficially. Those funds were now in safer hands, the very nature of those accounts ensuring their complete non traceability to his hands.

From what his legilimency scans showed him, the Anaheim executives he met believed that he was aiming to privately fund one of the factions in the war, or even create a new one altogether. The Dogosse Gier class vessel, which he had named Nimbus, was a 600m long 200m wide battleship with a complement of 32 mobile suits and a total operational crew of 1500. This battleship was a monster of a ship that could change the tide of a battle single handedly. The Titans currently had the one, the Dogosse Gier, while the Nimbus was a privately owned vessel. Not many people actually knew that such a ship existed at all. Thanks to the original being constructed at Grypps, he had free reign to use the plans he had stolen and supplied to Anaheim.

He had given detailed instructions after meeting with the designers they had supplied. He had specifically supplied the plans of the massive battleship. However, his ship was going to have some extras, like the minovski craft system and the ballute, which Anaheim had protested incredulously until he put his foot down. He had ensured that the ship would be etched lightly with numerous runes that he had worked out in advance, something that was simple enough with the automated machinery available today. His request was supposedly ceremonial/religious, but the light blue and grey vessel was going to depend a lot on the runes. Thanks to the advances of science, he had been able to push for accelerated construction, using more shipbuilding equipment and people to bring the vessel into being faster. Anaheim had actually stopped the construction of Salamis class ships for the government while they frantically worked to finish the vessel. Twenty five percent extra is a lot when you consider just how expensive one of these ships is. He had gone through two thirds of his cash just on constructing and outfitting the ship. But he considered it money well spent. The anti beam coating, now augmented by runes on the outside also helped. His time on the moon also helped him replenish his funds via illegal Titan fund. By the time he cut through the ranks again, the Titans were a whole lot poorer and he was richer than he had been before paying for the ship. If nothing else, that had probably helped the AEUG more than anything else he did.

XXX

The Nimbus packed the whole complement of Harry's loot from the Oakland labs. Mostly Hizacks, he was perfectly happy to use them, considering that his versions were better than some of the more expensive suits the factions fielded. With skill, the Hizack could take out the Gaplant, especially now that he had upped the reactors to support more than one beam weapon. The Messala was a whole different matter. That thing was a monster, and Scirocco was a mad genius. The sheer firepower of one of those shots was difficult for ordinary mortals to comprehend. The mega particle cannon could destroy battleships in a single shot. It was a decidedly odd model, and he didn't think Jupiter had rocks requiring battleship class mega particle cannons to deal with them.

After the warding of the vessel, now put on the dark side of the moon by now memory less Anaheim personnel, was completed, he began the time consuming process of creating the crew.

In 1624, wizards in Prague had for a brief period, successfully fought goblins at their own level with twelve foot tall rock golems. The things were clumsy, exceedingly difficult to use and were slow on their feet. But they were durable, and more importantly, they were capable of being semi sentient, and were intelligent enough to use tactics. Eventually the Goblins had learnt to simply immobilize the heavy weapons in magically created quicksand, a quick way of trapping the heavy things. By the time the wizards had figured out that rock was probably not the best material to use, they had been wiped out. The process however was not lost and had been dutifully recorded in the Department of Mysteries. It lay there forgotten because nobody who knew about it saw any need to spend time and money on developing it further. Modifying it to use metal and prebuilt electronics was relatively simple compared to full blown technomancy and may actually be classed under it. He had studied it for fun, but now found the thing to be extremely useful.

Harry made his crew in the form of robotic humans. Originally made of the same Titanium alloy that went into mobile suits like the Hizack and GM, his final model of his new age version of the life size action figures looked very different from the initial form they had, with miniature mobile suit armor. And they could take one hell of a hit. They also looked and felt far more human, once the metal went into their skeleton than their skin. They were androids now, something that Ghost in the Shell would be proud of. They were also beautiful people who had feelings and emotions and sensations and almost alive. They were as much his children as creations. And they were intelligent ruthless and completely loyal to him.

Still, they were not really useful until he put them in Clone trooper armor from star wars and gave them infantry weapons and Chinese goosequill sabers. Once he had built two batches of twenty, the droids themselves began the more resource intensive process of creating the bodies. The use of cheap mass produced Haro "brains" meant that the droids were less golem and more droid, especially since all he needed to give them was the small spark of magic that began their "life". Eventually they would more or less evolve into a bastardization of "life", eternally the same, yet alive and bound to him.

Harry continued to refine his skills in space. Using Hizacks, he was soon pushing the limits of the standard model. His fighting style had to accommodate the increased performance. Otherwise, it was just like going to the corner store in a Ferrari, not exactly the best use of your ride. Having been a rather unmotivated fellow, Ensign Harry Potter had not bothered to train as much. The easy nature of his patrol didn't help much. Alexander Black on the other hand was a trained and extremely fit individual. Since "waking up" he had taken the time and effort to bring back his body to its optimum potential. The magic and exercises had brought him to full form before he left earth. As of now, he was like something out of a Hollywood movie, though he limited himself to very little magic. He wanted to do everything as humanely possible. He wasn't trying to solve all the problems with the wave of a wand, besides his minion army, as he jokingly called them were still a very human like force. Sure his actions outside battle, or his raiding didn't follow that, but he was extremely careful not to leave evidence behind.

It was when he finally had about two thousand minions to operate and crew his vessel that he actually took off from the surface of the moon. Their first target was a Titan facility that had something very useful for his freshly launched "faction", another ship.

The Alexandria class cruiser was quickly becoming a signature vessel in the hands of the Titans. Skirmishes with AEUG forces were regular and the class was proving itself superior to the Salamis Kai that the AEUG normally used. Sure they had that new Irish class and the Argama class ships, but both sides always ended up with the Salamis as their primary ship. Harry on the other hand wanted a ship that was not the Nimbus when he went places.

XXX

On April 3rd 0087, the Titan heavy cruiser Kiev, accompanied by the light cruisers Denver and Shanghai, were set upon by Hizacks displaying previously unseen colors. The light blue and grey suits somehow managed to sneak upon three fully armed and vigilant Titan warships without issue and forced them to surrender. With active beam sabers, pointed at the bridge, not even the ruthless Titans were willing to see if it was a bluff. The ships were quietly directed to sail in a particular path by replacement navigational crew, after all long range communications and sensor systems were quickly disabled by armored infantry who wore old Gelgoog style armor. In zero gravity, they were barely impeded and were extremely quick and ruthless in their suppression of dissent.

The ships were personally inspected by a soldier who personally interrogated every officer separately. In the end, all the crews were quickly bundled up onto one of two Columbus class cargo ship and given coordinates and directions. Far from their last known location, they headed for the moon, where they would be the subjects of ridicule and much speculation. The idea that they were telling the truth was not easy to confirm.

The ships they had returned on were two one year war era veterans that had been hijacked by pirates three years ago just as they were about to be decommissioned. The ships however were in somewhat operable condition, and had at one point had their engines completely refurbished. However, the presence of barely cleaned up bloodstains, nicks from weapons fire and the slashes probably caused by the Chinese Dao the capturing soldiers wore was a great indication of what had happened to any possible pirates before the Titan crews used them. Especially damning had been the two dismantled Rick Dom units and their weapons. The cockpits were open, but the reactors were shut down. Both looked to have seen combat but were well maintained. The large stains of blood and bullet scars on their armor answered whether the ships had been taken by force. The ships had been stocked with enough supplies to last them till they reached the moon, but no more. They were practically refugees by the time they had reached the moon.

In any case, the Titans had lost three entire vessels without the loss of a single life on their parts. It was embarrassing. However, with the matching stories, it was impossible to claim that the men lied, not to mention that the ships had to go somewhere.

Bask Om was not particularly pleased to have three of his "spare" ships and their mobile suits just disappear. With four each on the Salamis and twelve Marasai on the Alexandria, the Titans had lost twenty mobile suits in the space of less than a week. The only real silver lining was that the crew had been returned safely. The two Columbus were rubbish. But the pilots and men themselves were a valuable resource. Not to mention that their humiliation ensured that their next posting would be taken with much motivation. Still, whoever had pulled this off was an incredible commander.

Two days later, a Salamis class vessel docked at Granada. Four hours later, the private accounts of the seventy odd fanatics from the crews of three certain vessels were drained. Anaheim was "encouraged" to redevelop certain Mobile suits that had proven most effective in the last decade. Operation Stardust may have been particularly traumatic to certain organizations but there was no doubt that it had taken combat a step up from what the One Year War had produced. Alexander Black could care less for Gundams. Symbols as they were, their major ability was their amazing ability to compel strong pilots to instantly be drawn into their cockpits. Rare was the Gundam that was piloted by an average person. And considering his own experience as mythical demigod/hero, he wanted very little to do with a Gundam.

Still, some of the mobile were that were fielded were incredibly powerful even compared to today's suits. The Neue Ziel was monstrous mobile armor that was defeated more due to just who was fighting it than the inherent power of the Federation fleet.

Still, the mobile armor wasn't his thing. By some cosmic bleed over, he found himself liking the mobile suit better than the mobile armor, possibly a remnant of his Char fanboy days.

However, he did like the concept of the Heavy Assault Mobile suit, especially if it had a multitude of beam weaponry to go with it. Hizacks were excellent mobile suits, but were basically new age Zakus, grunt technology at their finest. On the other hand, 99% of the mobile suits in active service were easily destroyed by the enhanced Hizacks he was using when piloted by skilled hands. The technology of the era was such that most mobile suits were in performance ranges within a hair of each other. And something that most people tended to forget was that in the battle of Loum, Zeon slaughtered Federation ships like fish in a pond. And the ships of this era were not much different from the same ones back then. Adding a hanger and a catapult does not change the vulnerability of the ships themselves. Zakus sank Salamis and Magellan class ships using heat hawks, 120mm machine guns and 280mm Bazookas. Beam weapons made it worse. And the beam weapons which followed them have not changed much save for power, range and endurance. At close range, many of those tend to make very little difference. Beam sabers block each other, beam rifles punch through armor; these are very basic tenets in mobile suit warfare.

Within these limits, the Kämpfer, the ultimate fast attack suit of the one year war was a king. It had thrusters by the bushel, speeds to reflect that and had very little armor to slow it down. In open space, a Kämpfer outperformed the Marasai. The main drawback of the suit was its weaponry. The limitations of technology meant that the suit had very little mileage and had a short operational radius. Also, its reactor produced less power to the newer versions, ensuring that its only energy weapon was the beam saber. So all the Marasai would need was a lucky shot. Not impossible for a skilled pilot. Not to mention that is the Kämpfer ever stopped; it would be the end of that.

"Captain, we have spotted an AEUG ship. It's the Argama!"

An unfortunate problem with capturing a new ship and pressing it into service was that if he wanted to put all his improvements in, he would have to dismantle the whole thing. So while the Kiev and the Shanghai were being completely overhauled, he had set out on the Denver, newly christened as Raven. The ship had very little modification from what it had before it was captured. The mobile suits were his Oakland sprung Hizacks, and an extra four were shrunken and placed in the Hanger at human size, with a simple voice activated shrink/unshrink password. But the rest was essentially the same. This meant that the Raven had no enhanced engines, no stealth capability, no enhanced sensors, and no enhanced gravity. It was painted sky blue though.

However, the outside of the ship was carved with reinforcement and energy dispersal runes. This meant that it could handle energy weapons to the tune of ten MW and disperse them harmlessly. It also meant that beam sabers were useless against the hull. Once the anti beam coating had been added, this would rise to thirty MW. However, even then, the ship could be swamped.

In any case, he had to do something. The question was if he should make contact with the Argama, or not?

"They are keeping their distance sir, they do not seem to have noticed us, or are ignoring us for now."

"Turn away, let them keep their distance. We will return to the moon for now. We will see if we can join them in their assault that's supposed to be coming up."

"Yes Sir!"

XXX

"Captain, the unknown Salamis has changed course. Based on current heading, most likely destination is the moon."

Captain Bekkener rubbed his jaw and looked at the close up of the retreating ship. They had spotted the ship just five minutes before it was turning away, which was really bad enough. The odd thing was that the ship was painted in a manner he had not seen before. Who painted their ships sky blue? Not that he could talk, in the bone white Argama, but still.

Lt. Quattro Bajeena, who had come up to the bridge at the report of an unknown ship, floated thoughtfully behind the elevated chair.

"What do you think Lt.? Was that a Titan ship?"

Quattro shook his head. He had felt a vague presence, but it did not have the same feel as anyone who he had met till now.

"I do not believe so captain. After we left colony 30, we lost the Titans that were following us. No, I believe this is somebody else entirely. The question is who?"

XXX

Back in the moon base the droids had constructed, which they had called Kamino for nostalgic reasons, they had finished modifying the ships, the Alexandria class Basilisk and the Salamis class Gryffin. These two ships would leave to patrol soon enough, while the Raven would be overhauled. They had very little time before the attack on Jaburo, which would open up several opportunities as earth side battles began in earnest.

He himself wished to go earth side. He wished to see how this assault on Jaburo went. Besides, it is always a good idea to snag more equipment.

"Sir, we have finished the central column of the base. Two out of twenty seven satellite columns are finished. The others will take time as we synthesize fresh sections for assembly."

"Very well, carry on then. I want thirty men. We will head to earth and see if we can't rob the EFF blind for our use. We will of course see to helping the earth side resistance movement Karaba, secretly of course."

"Yes my lord!"

Well, thinking about clone troopers when magically programming his troops led to things like that. In two days, thirty men and women would take a Temptation class shuttle to earth, and begin the process of causing chaos. The ability to turn invisible on demand, call up armor at a thought and have ridiculously good combat skills meant that they could cause plenty of damage. But they were ultimately extensions of his will, and they were not ordered to cause too much damage, yet.

Alexander Black landed in Seattle about three days later. His "friends" joined him within the next day. Three days later, they were all properly registered Federation citizens.

"Alice" was the official second in command, by virtue of the fact that she was the first droid to be produced in the current format. She was also an excellent distraction for the people who sought to ingratiate themselves with Alexander black. And she had the most experience between them. The fact that her unique personality was a reflection upon him was totally ignored.

The first thing they did was steal a Garuda. The Federation had around twenty of them shuttling supplies and mobile suits back and forth from the Seattle base and finding a minimally guarded one was extremely simple. Since this was a military operation, the crew was systematically killed when they fought. The last few actually surrendered, so Harry was lenient and let them off after a few obliviates. They would remember being gassed and falling unconscious, not the "battle" they had fought. A wild goose chase was also in the works for whoever chose to pursue them. Garuda were not purely military ships and there were a few in civilian hands too. Still, it would take nearly a week before the Fury was prepared by their specs. The two Asshimar were now earth side, as were four Hizacks. The rest were the ten Hizacks on the Fury that were already on the ship. During capture, Harry's people, who needed a name, captured the hanger with no warning, leaving everything exactly as it was except the bloodstains.

The ship had come complete with supplies of infantry weapons which were meant for Washington, but could now be put to better use. There was also a set of three Hizack left arms, which was probably a regular resupply mission. He vanished them, removing that from their cargo bay and shrunk the weapons and ammo. This resulted in a much faster ship. A communication sent by regular channels brought another thirty "men and women" from space to crew the vessel. They also quickly made plans to raid an EFF base to steal some mobile suits. The Garuda's capacity of 20 was currently not full, and they meant to keep it full. They just needed a few more and the internal bays could be declared full.

The Federation did not seem to be overly concerned at the loss of their Garuda and he had already swept the ship awhile modifying it, so he didn't care about their reticence in finding him. He merely smiled and flew the latest addition to the reaper forces, which was true in that they served the master of death. The blue would throw them off too. Who related blue with death anyway? Besides, all the other blues were so dark they might as well have been black. He personally preferred his blue and grey colors any day.

Their first task was to find a base to raid. There were patchwork bases all over the north American continent. Some were highly defended fortresses, others were small patrol bases that were there to cover unimportant routes and provide supplies and halfway points for any EFF units in the area.

Obviously Harry's first task was to raid one of these poor, undermanned and unappreciated bases.

In particular, one localized base was chosen and attacked. In thirty minutes, all infrastructures that could be used to let the base function were gone. All of the seven GMs on base were neutralized, three captured without a scratch and four destroyed as they sought to fight him. Also recovered from the base were two used Dwadge mobile suits. The Zeon Dom variant seemed to be surrendered units that just didn't get high enough on the priority lists to get a ride out of here. Indeed, the cockpits had personal effects of the pilots, including a flask with alcohol still in it and a picture of a little girl. The last surprise was the Z'gok-E, with its light blue and Zeon specops markings, an unusual sight for a landlocked area. Harry concluded that it was probably a suit that had been left behind and dragged here. All three mobile suits had wear and yet weren't unused long enough to be a direct leftover of the one year war. Still, it was a clean job overall, and the Fury remained invisible throughout. And the Federation was now told a tale of ruthless and skilled pilots who had annihilated an EFF outpost in half an hour. There were at least three survivors, all of whom had been outside the base perimeter when a Hizack had wrecked their Jeep two miles from the base.

XXX

The results of the raid were not long in coming. Three Garuda were dispatched so that they could serve as platforms for reconnaissance patrols to see what this latest headache for the Federation was. They were operating primarily under the assumption that these were more Zeon remnants, as the Hizacks had been misidentified as Zakus by the traumatized soldiers. The three spread over a large area, keeping track of any suspicious activity that could be indicative of a mobile suit platoon and their upkeep. Unfortunately for the quickly bored pilots, no such sign existed. So they contended themselves with quietly swooping around and trying to find evidence of people who didn't exist. All the while, a Garuda painted sky blue and further rendered invisible slowly circled high above the same area the EFF covered with impunity. And then Harry decided it was time to attack.

"Alice, Spartan and Stiller. Launch in thirty seconds."

The four mobile suits lazily launched of the Garuda in Sleds. All were Hizacks that were part of Harry's enhanced stock. They could out fight a Gundam if need be.

The sleds flew low, making it seem as if that was where they were coming from. Using stealth, they shut down their invisibility at low altitude before climbing at a furious rate. The straight up maneuver would have been impossible without the improved capability that Harry had arranged. As they shot up, they kept in mind Harry's orders.

"They might not have got the warning quickly enough, but they can still fight back. Spartan, you're going for the bridge. Stiller, shut down the engines. Alice, we'll hit the hangers. This is not a capture mission, so shoot everything that moves. And most things that don't."

Alice smiled grimly. As the personality that had spent the longest time alive, and as the personality that was the first "stable" version, she had a great love of violence that sometimes gave Harry flashbacks of Bellatrix. On the other hand, Alice was also a lot more sane and liable to be logical about things. So it was not that great a surprise when three sleds with Hizacks flew out, one Hizack with a pink heart over the left chest armor flew in and five seconds later, the rear of the Garuda practically blew up. With his task being done in such a neat manner, Harry went below the Garuda and began to shoot at the five mobile suits on three sleds that were shooting at the attacking force. Alice flew out, smoke from the explosions in the hanger trailing behind her, as if trying to hold on a bit longer to her suit. The next explosion was a much bigger one that made the whole frame of the transport shudder and "jump". Even as the lasers kept firing, the ship began to list and tumble, slowly but surely hurtling to the ground. Even then, the sky blue mobile suits pursued the falling transport, shooting at the plane with their beam rifles. Harry on the other hand kept the surviving defenders occupied, flying in a manner that the Federation pilots were hard pressed to cope with. It took two minutes but all five suits were taken out.

"Alice! Report!"

"The hanger was full, didn't check the bays below, but it seems that they were about to deploy a patrol. That's why there were any runners at all. At this point we cannot be sure if there is a patrol out there, but let's not take any chances."

"Agreed, up to the cloud bank, cloak and return to the Fury. Let's see if we can't catch the other two soon."

XXX

Taking the two Garuda didn't happen for the simple reason that as soon as the news of the crash was received by Federation HQ, they pulled the other two out of their missions to base to regroup, in other words, eight hours after that first Garuda hit the ground. It seemed that despite his best efforts, Harry's group had been spotted, incidentally by ground based units. The video, taken through a telescope, unusually clear due to low minovski particle density showed the image of a broken green Garuda, falling from the sky, trailing smoke from everywhere. And right at the tail were two Hizacks on sleds, sky blue and firing beam rifles. It was a powerful image. Unfortunately it meant that if he wanted to keep his "improvements" off the Federation database, he would have to keep his head down. So instead, he began the process of improving the Zeon suits he had stolen from the base.

The first part was purely educational. He dismantled and separated all the parts in the suit. The Dwadge was a ground type mobile suit built for the one year war. It was still lethal, much like the type 61 MBT was still lethal, but it was obsolete in the grander scheme of things. So the thing was that he had to update the suit. Unfortunately, you simply cannot "upgrade" obsolete suits. These were extremely refined machines that followed a certain philosophy of design and construction, a philosophy that was no longer valid, and was in some situations suicidal. For example, movable frame meant that it the Dom type suits simply wouldn't be able to handle their opponents in this day and age without a lot of mitigating factors.

The first thing was the armor. Zeon mobile suits were constructed of steel. As a rule, the Zakus and the Doms used on earth were all made of super hard steel alloy, which, while a great deal better than the steel alloys of the 21st century, was still damageable by the 120mm machine guns that Zakus used. The Dwadge was a major change in that it was one of the few suits not to use the cheap, easy to make and easily ignored steel armor. The Titanium alloy used in the Dwadge made the suit a good twenty tons lighter when empty, leaving that much extra space for fuel, which was then further supplemented by external tanks.

What Harry was doing was systematically transfiguring armor to Gundarium alloy, that holy grail of mobile suit armor. The RX 78-2 Gundam may have been destroyed by Zeon at A Baoa Qu, but it literally took the whole war to do so. The Red Comet was on record saying that he "hadn't seen a mobile suit that could survive the beating I'm giving it". Hell, it even managed to survive hits from beam weaponry. Now that was armor! And being the enterprising man he was, Harry had collected the data for this magical armor when he first settled in Seattle, even if he didn't plan on using it then. Federation metallurgists knew how to produce the stuff. It was just too damn expensive to do so for mass production.

It took days to replace the armor. Luna Titanium alloy aka Gundarium was very difficult to get right. As he intended to keep the suit in its Gundarium alloy armor, he couldn't afford to get anything wrong. Otherwise, the later applications of the runes could cause the armor to disintegrate. Since each individual section of armor had to be transfigured, tested and drained of the residual transfiguration magic, it took a while. His last change to the external armor was a completely new piece that curved over the cockpit hatch, protecting the otherwise more vulnerable hatch, something that he found rather odd in such a heavily armored suit.

Next step was the internal components. Due to his proposed changes, properly tested using design software, he had to do a lot of very careful modifications. The reactor was safe to handle because the suit hadn't been activated in a couple of years. The old reactor rated for 1440 kW was exchanged for a new one with a rating of 2910 kW, one hell of an upgrade. The extremely powerful reactor was in fact a modified copy of the ones his yet unused Gaplants were using. However, it required some fine tuning for the power to safely circulate through the systems. In simple words, Harry spent a hell of a long time rewiring the suit. He also took the opportunity to use concepts from movable frame technology on the suit. Using the very latest in mobile suit internals, he would soon be outfighting Gundams even without the magical armor package.

Still, more challenges remained. The thrusters had to be updated and properly set up. The hover and propulsion units had to practically be rebuilt from the worn units he had found within. The vulcans, an unusual weapon in a Zeon suit were replaced and recalibrated. And finally, the cockpit was just ripped out entirely. The thing was a literal piece of junk, not to mention the stale smell inside from burnt wiring.

The cockpit was replaced by a panoramic cockpit with linear seat and an ejection mechanism was placed in. Since the main components were done, the suit was now etched with many, many runes, in pieces as it was. Connecting the many ports and junctions was a chore, especially since the unit was taken from a GMII, which had by now been gutted in the frenzied work. Still, the final result would be amazing, especially once the sensor unit of the original suit had been upgraded.

The next step was the weapons of course. The Dwadge may have been impressive in the one year war, but in this day and age, an original production Dwadge would be easily slaughtered. So the first thing was to introduce a beam rifle. This was done using the GMIIs beam rifle as a base. To this mass produced weapon, the workings were refined until it was a very impressive 2.2 MW beam rifle, a very substantial increase considering the lack of notable increase in length. Next came two beam sabers, these were the same model as the GMII, except with a similar enhancement process that increased the power rating and endurance without having to need magic just to operate the weapon. Next, the scattering beam gun was changed to the beam cannon he wanted to put there. This was a close combat weapon, to be used while mainly in melee range. Even if it had a "medium" range, it would still be best used at close range. It also had the distinction of being powered directly by the reactor, something that was again taken from the Gaplant, using a condenser that used the reactor connected to a condenser to supply the mega particles necessary for the job. Next, the thrusters at the back were changed again, using some of the more impressive units now available for military use. Thanks to the extensive use of transfiguration, he had managed to supply the parts necessary without use of temporary conjuration. The draining of residual magic was a final step that made "reversal" of the transfiguration impossible. It was as if the current state was its original state. Any further changes would require a fresh transfiguration. Being an unspeakable had its perks.

The next bit was to get a few mass produced weapons that he could use freely. The 120mm machine gun was an excellent candidate, so he put a rack on the side skirt armor for an extra four magazines, much more devastating against light targets than the beam rifle he would have to keep loading, for everything else there were beam sabers. Unfortunately, the 120mm rounds were solid kinetic penetrators, not the tank shells that were common in his past life.

By the end of the week he had a collection of parts that theoretically made a super mobile suit when assembled. Unfortunately it wasn't ready yet. However, the next part was something that did not require his direct input. Alice and the other reapers quickly assembled the huge machine by hand, in a matter of hours. The next part was the above mentioned difficult bit, programming.

Mobile suits were complicated equipment. They had enough instruments in them that people in the pasts would have considered one a scientific instrument than a weapon. Simply walking required a very precise set of data, from gravity conditions, to the mass of limbs, position of the limbs, center of mass, centre of gravity, fuel levels etc. Due to the varied conditions that a mobile suit operates in, a multitude of instruments keep track of the position and movement of the suit. Using this data, a computer then decides exactly how to move so that the pilot's intentions are carried out. Since he had a brand new suit, he had to rebuild the software from scratch, something he was all too happy to let the Reapers handle. Walking, flying, hovering, fine motor control, using the various weapons it now had access to, motion on sleds, everything had to be built from the ground up. The old data was less than useless. The calibration was going as fast as it was only because the reapers were using cloud computing to supercharge the process.

Finally, Harry had his suit, the MS-09 GS, Schnitter, Reaper. The unit was painted with a mixed light blue and gray base coat with black clouds emitting bright green lightning. He had placed his personal grim reaper insignia on its shoulder and had its mooneye glowing green as opposed to its previous red. The cross shaped face plate was now colored a bone white. To complete the image, a pair of bright green lightning bolt antenna stuck out from the top of the head unit, painted bright green. The outer limbs also had a series of jagged green lines, representing the lightning that his educational years were shaped by. The paintjob was very visible and could be compared with that of Gundams and Zeon ace mobile suits. Harry loved it.

Harry gave serious thought to getting a beam scythe to complete his image and then put the reapers on it. Making this would take time, unfortunately.

XXX

May 3rd, 0087.

Harry's first opportunity to demonstrate his unit was on yet another remote base, perhaps not as large as Jaburo, but much larger than a mere outpost. The Boseman base at Montana had about a thousand men and was primarily a dumping ground and rest spot for troops and equipment chewed up by continuous fighting. In the one year war, it had been run over by Zeon, recaptured, raided and barely held on to by the end of the war. Still, it had a reasonably sized mobile suit presence and its men were not lacking in morale or commitment. However, its equipment was not exactly the best and its reduced importance in the grand scheme of things meant that while it was a technically large base, it was significantly neglected. That was going to cost them.

He swooped in with just the one suit and began to destroy everything. The GMII and GM equipped base was much larger than the last base he had hit. The proof was in the thirty mobile suits that he faced right off the bat. They had been training a new batch of pilots on ranged weaponry. However, each suit was accompanied by an instructor on an older machine, both of which were armed in the standard layout. The guns were loaded with paintballs, but as always, they carried as an extra, a full load of standard 90mm ammo for their machine guns. No beam weaponry today. Giving novices beam weaponry was like giving a kid matchsticks and letting him loose in a fireworks factory.

Boseman base was essentially a giant tract of land with two huge runways that divided the base as a giant X. This made it highly visible and had multiple buildings and hangers where the men and women of the base operated. Buildings included hangers, offices, simulators, hospitals, housing units, armories, mobile suit bays that simulated ship hangers and a bunch of other facilities that made the otherwise dry place sound awfully impressive. Unfortunately, everything except the training facilities was made before 0075. So a lot of it was plain crap, as some of its inhabitants said. Still, it was a reasonably well to do base and its inhabitants were loyal, high morale troops, some of them with very impressive battle records.

Harry did not posture when he landed. His entrance was clean and sudden. His sled was flying at altitude when he jumped off, letting Spartan take his sled out of sight. He was falling in his controlled descent, this time without fear of depleting his fuel when he saw the mix of old and new mobile suits walking by without noticing his presence. Of course, his optics was far better than what they had, seeing as the mooneye was for all purposes a half sized Asshimar mono eye unit. He did not wait to hit the ground before beginning to fire his shots.

Harry wanted to use a 120mm machine gun for one reason, and one reason alone. It had 100 round magazines. But he also knew that 90mm bullets were way better for mobile suit use. This was due to a combination of factors that included the geometry, propellant and other factors related to the round as a whole. So he had introduced a work around. The massive Hizack style 120 mm machine gun had been modified to fire the Federation type 90mm round. These had higher ranges, muzzle velocities and had better armor piercing capabilities as well. The barrel, chamber and magazine had to be modified extensively, easily accomplished through transfiguration. The bullets themselves were given a higher quality propellant, increasing their lethality a significant degree. The material of the rifle as a whole was changed to Luna Titanium and thus could tolerate the increased pressures. The rifling was modified to accommodate a greater velocity and a host of minor modifications to benefit him and the new suit. Each bullet was given a sharper profile, allowing the stronger tipped bullets greater penetration still. Against GMs old and new, he might as well have been using beam rifles. The first few he hit while he was still descending. This prompted the others to look around and start shifting to combat mode.

"Live rounds! Switch to live rounds! We're under attack!"

"Get everyone active! This guy is no pushover!"

"Barko's hit! Jesus! What is that guy shooting?!"

"We are under attack! This is not a drill! I repeat this is not a drill! All MS teams man your machines!"

"Chekov! Drop those paint rounds! Pay attention if you don't wanna die!"

"Sarge! I think it's a Dwadge! It just shot up the hospital with vulcans!"

"Ensign Jackson! I want to see some covering fire with your buddies! We're evacuating the wounded from that collapsed barracks."

Alarms began to blare almost instantaneously. With the mobile suits being inside the base, it would have taken total Minovski particle saturation to stop any transmission from getting through. The precious few seconds while everyone changed magazines was enough for him to take out another two mobile suits, which did not explode. Then the relative calm of machine gun fire was disturbed by the loud explosion of a GM. That was the point at which it began to sink in for everyone that it really was an attack. Hangars opened up and a previously lethargic force slowly began to trickle into the fight, replacing their comrades as they fell, crowding the ground with the dead and dying. When it seemed as if the defenders had finally begun to develop a strategy against the machine gun using assailant, the Dom variant began to fire the mega particle cannon in its chest. Dom mobile suits just didn't do that. They were supposed to blind, not lance through armor like a needle through paper. The feelings of "hope" that the defenders held onto were replaced by the grim tendrils of "determination", to make that bastard pay for his life. Unfortunately, with what was the equivalent of the most powerful newtype in earth sphere against them, they were cut down like wheat before the scythe.

"Johnson! Stop hesitating and fire!"

"Move! Move! Move! Damn it! We lost Da Costa and Sergei!"

"32, 38 take cover behind the Garrison building. 21 flank him from behind!"

"Aim lower ensign! And keep an eye out for our guys! We don't want fr-"

"Heads up guys, He's headed towards Hanger 1!"

"It's got vulcans! Get everyone under cover! Don't let him spot you!"

"Somebody get me a beam rifle! Where are those reinforcements?"

"Main armory is gone! I repeat main Armory is gone!"

"Try to get away from the buildings if you're about to blow. We don't need MORE causalities!"

"I'm hit! I'm hi-"

It was not difficult to out maneuver the mass produced suits, not to mention the seven year old GMs just weren't meant to take close range punishment of the sort he was dishing out. The GMIIs weren't that great either. He twirled around the stationary and firing mobile suits, using his maneuverability to keep aiming and hitting their torsos and the buildings around them, confident in the extremely precise recoil compensation software that meant that he would hit his targets as accurately as possible. His vulcans took out people, jeeps and trucks. His chest mounted beam cannon blew up anything with a hint of armor on it. He was exceedingly pleased with his work. Most of his mobile suit victims didn't explode; as he tried to hit the cockpits mostly, but quite a few shots had hit the reactors of the lightly armored grunts. People died, and he could feel their passing. He was Master of Death.

"Can we get the sniper over here?!"

"Hanger 2 is gone! I repeat Hanger 2 is gone! He hit the fuel store!"

"That's not a Dom, Jackson. Don't treat it as one."

"Don't let him face you! He's got mega particle cannon in his chest!"

"Flank him from the left. Moriss has a bazooka we can use."

"Command is down! I repeat Command is down! One of ours crashed and blew. Who's next in command?!"

"Get that Garuda outta here. We'll try and buy it time!"

"This is the Samudra. Thank you for everything. We're taking the wounded we have on board away. We'll use our Hizacks to help buy time.

Twenty minutes after the raid began he took stock of the situation. One runway was ruined and most of the buildings were wrecked. Feeling a new enemy, he turned and let a loose a burst from his machine gun before the computer could analyze optimum firing angle and position. He would have to fix that.

A GMII that was crouching on the roof of a hanger and aiming a beam rifle at him blew up spectacularly, collapsing part of the concrete roof blowing away a tarp, exposing a Garuda within, a Garuda that was beginning to power up.

"Man, how many of these things do the Federation use anyway?"

Harry hovered and skated forward at full speed as the Garuda slowly began to move, even with the extra rubble on it. However, his journey was interrupted by beam shots that melted the ground right in front of him. He jumped and somersaulted, using the motion to track the hostiles that had fired on him. He was surprised to see EFF Hizacks though. So far he had encountered nothing that could have really hurt him. The GMs and GMIIs were so far below his notice that he had slaughtered them. He was lucky enough to hit most of the armories and hangers quick enough that he wasn't faced with many beam rifles. He did have people trying to charge him with beam sabers, a useless gesture considering his overwhelming advantage. He had not even used his beam sabers yet. Still, this meant that there were reinforcements somewhere in the area.

"This is Samudra. Just a few seconds longer and we'll be airborne!"

"Godspeed captain! Let's We'll distract him for you! We're not going down that easy!"

The suits were on sleds and were firing their beam rifles in a surprisingly controlled manner. Harry was surprised, but not shocked. So he hovered straight at the Hizacks, taking the time while dodging attacks to calculate the perfect time for him to jump. Even as the sleds, flying at an altitude of two hundred meters kept firing, he moved without a single hit. He shifted left, right and then jumped, letting the rocket backpack, a recent model that was much more efficient and powerful, roar through the air, eating up the precious distance between him and his foes in a surprisingly small amount of time. The two Hizacks on the sled seemed frozen in disbelief, unable to cope with his actions as he dodged all their shots even in mid air. Their short lived attack ended as a few dozen tons worth of mobile suit tackled the two suits of their ride. Even as they fell dozens of meters from the sled, Harry lined up his machine gun and fired. His last spare magazine ran dry as the two Hizacks, severely damaged crashed into the tarmac with no grace whatsoever. They did not explode, but they wouldn't get up either. Perforated Hizack was a particularly beautiful sight, sprawled as it was in that ungainly manner.

Inside one of these unfortunate Hizacks, Ensign Yorik waited a short period of time before laughing in a deranged manner. He had survived! His suit was trashed and his cockpit hatch would probably require power tools to open, but he had survived! He laid in the darkness, laughing and crying hysterically, his mind numb to his own action.

Harry's original target was meanwhile getting away, and the other Hizacks were now free to shoot at him now that their comrades were not in the way. Harry quickly flew back to begin a proper attack run. Getting up to full speed on a sled required a certain distance for the sled to accelerate through. He turned around and let the sled accelerate, shooting behind him as he flew away. The Hizacks didn't pursue, believing that he was going to take the chance to escape. However, Harry wasn't in the mood to let the fools stand there and believe they had gotten the better of him. He turned and charged in and even though they saw him coming, they could not hit him as the sleds sped past each other with very little margin for error. The two Hizacks who were on the second sled were unfortunate victims of a mega particle cannon blast and were killed immediately. Harry flew off towards his own sled, a quick look confirming that nobody "alive" was on the outside for his performance. Still, that did not mean everyone had died, and a few mobile suits were probably still "alive" yet barely functional, not to mention anyone still buried in the buildings. He transmitted a short message and flew away. His suit was a success. He would need a few modifications for space use though. Not to mention that these mass produced suits were not perhaps the best test for the high performance suit.

XXX

Underneath the rubble of one of the many buildings that had been once part of a proud Federation base, Ensign Yuki Narhael let go of a breath she didn't know she had. It had been a fine morning and breakfast was just finishing at the cafeteria when there were alarms. By the time she had gotten into the hangers, there was chaos everywhere. Buildings were burning; mobile suits were exploding or simply collapsing under fire and not getting up. The attacker seemed to be a Dom of some sort, though she wasn't familiar enough with the Zeon mobile suits to identify them by sight and weaponry. Besides, she didn't even know that Doms used machine guns. The building next to the hanger was the officers' quarters. It had been destroyed when one of the old GMs had crashed into the building before exploding. At this rate, she wouldn't have been surprised if most of the damage was from the detonation of their suits and weapons than that incredibly menacing Dom type.

She had just gotten into her GMII when the hanger had shuddered from another explosion that felt way too close. The only difference was that this one managed to actually cause part of the roof to collapse. She watched horrified when one of the GMs who had just been boarded got buried under the rubble of the collapsed section. She had barely stepped off the maintenance bed when yet another explosion lit up her screens. One of the suits who had tried to get outside the partially collapsed hanger by jumping through the newly created opening in the roof had been neatly speared through by a red beam. The suit had quietly fallen down and exploded, collapsing the hanger. She herself had found herself without any options as a piece of rubble ignited a fuel tank, detonating a not a few tons of rocket fuel.

She was thrown out through one of the walls, destroying the backpack and limbs, rendering her helpless as she sat in her cockpit and watched the remaining destruction through teary eyes. She had cheered briefly when the Garuda had escaped, but had been crying again by the time the last Hizack was cut down. It was too much for her. She wasn't the violent type and seeing everyone she knew and everyone she didn't cut down mercilessly was enough to send her catatonic. Because she was in shock, she didn't hear the last radio transmission the area would hear for a while. But her cockpit recorder still recorded the ominous message, spoken in a deep voice.

"To any survivors who are alive and listening…. As long as the Federation permits the existence of cancers like the Titans, they will know no rest…. For the Black Death of Reaper squadron will come for you"

XXX

"Well Admiral, what do you think?"

Admiral Gambit was weary and resigned. They had been moving from Jaburo for a while now and now they had to deal with this. The Titans had just about taken over the EFF, so he was confused as to exactly why he was still in this quickly emptying base. He was also confused as to why the Titans, who were so eager to gain command of his men weren't taking his responsibilities along with them.

"Commander Warring, I am not sure what you want me to say. Nine hundred thirty two men and women have died, a hundred and six are injured and the most thought you can drudge up is for that bloody mobile suit!"

"Admiral Gambit, please understand that it is not that I do not feel for the dead and the wounded. Unfortunately, my duties prevent me from grieving as I wish. All I can do for them is to destroy that pilot and his mobile suit in their name. if I must kill myself in doing so, I have no regrets. "

The commander, five foot seven inches tall and sandy brown crew cut hair clenched his fingers furiously.

"You are the most experienced soldier in this base that can tell me what I am up against. As an intelligence officer, you have the knowledge to tell me what this is. You are the person who can ensure that I get this bastard. So please tell me Admiral, whatever you can about this scumbag who has dared to strike down our brothers!"

"Tch. All you young fellows are all alike aren't you?"

Gambit paused to gather his thoughts.

"The first thing you have to understand is that there was no unit or group till now that bears the name Reaper Squadron. Second, there is no pilot with the alias Black Death. Then there's the mobile suit itself. This mobile suit is one I've not seen before. Obviously, this is a Dom variant. If you see this section of the tape, we can see that it is using vulcans from the head. Traditionally, this is a Gundam and GM style armament, but there is one unit in the Dom line of mobile suits that uses 60mm vulcans. So simply from this, I can conclude this is a Dwadge variant. That is confirmed when I look at the rear skirt armor. You can see that ribbed pattern; it is unique to the Dwadge. The chest armor is a design very similar to the Dom, so we can rule out the Desert Dom and Dom Tropen variants. That armor over the hatch is new though. The observations opposing this possibility are the backpack, which is a more recent design than anything Zeon produced in the one year war, and simply be an upgrade. Then there are the lightning bolt type fins, which may or may not be a communication aid, much like the Gundam or the Zeon commander units. The thing is that I've never seen anything that resembles a fin on a Dom variant."

Warring nodded slowly absorbing the words.

"This is a very unique suit don't forget that. The primary weapon he used is a 120mm machine gun, the same one we equip our Hizacks with sometimes. He seems to have four extra magazines, which gives him a total of five hundred rounds shooting. In this day of beam weapons, what one tends to forget is that the 120mm machine gun is still used for a reason. That thing killed those GMs at medium range with five to ten round bursts. It also demolished buildings and vehicles liberally with that thing. It may have gone through a few magazines while doing it, but that pilot took out at least seven mobile suits with that gun while doing it. And this is that clip alone. It doesn't matter if the dead are obsolete GMs or the newer GMIIs and Hizacks; they still had massed fire and numbers on their side. By using its superior performance, that thing made a mockery of all defending forces in the area. The only odd part is just how damaging that gun was. It had far too much penetrative power to be a standard issue Hizack 120."

Warring looked queasy. Gambit continued.

"The next important thing is the beam cannon. Can you tell me if you ever recall a Dom doing that?"

"No sir. I cannot say I can."

Gambit smiled grimly.

"And you'd be right. Zeon didn't put actual beam cannons in there for any Dom variant actively fielded during the war. That port is for a scattering beam gun, equivalent to a flash bang only. In any case, the important thing to remember is this, that thing has a completely functional mega particle cannon. We now have a suit which has inbuilt beam weapons, which tells me that thing has a better reactor, which means at least 2000kW, which means that thing is extremely powerful. And let's not forget the two handles on the backpack, GM style and the lack of a heat rod. This tells me it has beam sabers. This thing is very close to my idea of a nightmare, because whatever this thing can do, it has nothing on the pilot. We have no evidence that during the raid to suggest our people managed a single hit. He was untouchable today. Don't forget, even the best aces of the one year war got hit, and that was with backup and other people for their enemies to shoot at. Whoever named that guy of all things… Black Death."

Warring nodded and stood up and saluted.

"Sir!"

As soon as he left, Gambit took a cigarette and lit it. "Whatever your suit might say, you are not from Zeon are you?"

The very next day, security at all bases was increased, delaying the Jaburo evacuation as forces were rerouted. To make up for it, three more Garuda were assigned for evacuation purposes. So they were actually ahead of schedule in two days. There was a lot of speculation and not a little fear of this new character that had waltzed in, waltzed around the Bozeman base and reduced it to rubble. This was something that just didn't happen. When you attack a base, you always attacked with multiple units. This was the only way to get even a fraction of your troops back home after. Even the 0080 attack on the polar base used multiple units, and they still lost units in the attack despite their advantages.

This was a rude awakening to the type of terrors that existed in the world, a one man army, using ordinary weapons to decimate a base. Multiple ace in a single battle without a scratch. There was something to be said when you kick out Amuro Ray from the top of everybody's list of " I'd die than face them in combat" people.

Still life went on, the military fought and died and Jaburo was awash in traffic. It was on this note that May 11th dawned.

XXX

"Sir, the AEUG have attacked Jaburo. There was a brief fight before the base was destroyed in a nuclear blast."

Harry chuckled. After all this time, he had the experience and the perspective necessary to see the humor, grim as it was through the horror of war.

"Indeed? How curious. What do we have on their projected routes?"

"Nothing yet, sir. All we have so far from the EFF radio chatter is that they have two Garuda."

"I see."

XXX

The Audhumela flew lazily over the North American continent, headed for Kennedy space center. The AEUG soldiers on board were relaxed and playful. They had assaulted a Federation base, come out and avoided a nuke, so there was plenty to celebrate. The Sudori was also with them, the two Garuda eager to get back to space after the fiasco of almost getting wiped out. The Federation prisoners could also be transported out without issue and they would get back to space. It was all planned out cleanly.

What was disquieting was the sheer fear of the Federation officers and the new rumors in the EFF rumor mill. A new pilot had wiped out Bozeman. It was not a major base, but it still held a lot of people in it, a lot of people who were now dead. Even though they were glad to hear of the new opposition, they were unsure of exactly how much they would welcome the aid of somebody who had basically spit on the EFF's face and walked away without a scratch. And the name, Black Death did not inspire any confidence. A still from a disabled suit showed the extremely intimidating unit in full profile, a light blue suit, the dark clouds and green lightning giving it a sinister appearance, especially because when shadowed, the lightning showed up a hell of a lot more than the light blue.

Still they were not concerned as the new pilot seemed to be more interested the Titans than anything else. They flew unaware that even now, the Titans were closer to them than they realized.

XXX

"Tell me Alice, how long until blue team gets that beam scythe done?"

"Three more days sir. In the mean time, as instructed, we have added two more beam sabers, and also rendered all four beams green, same with the mega particle cannon and the beam rifles. The suit is also being calibrated for duel wielding sir."

"Excellent."

XXX

May 20, 0087.

Hayato Kobayashi walked through the museum at Kennedy space center with a confident and purposeful stride. It had been a long journey from the corridors of white base, and now here he was fighting against the Federation than fighting for it. Still, it didn't change the fact that he was now a military commander and required to operate on a planet crawling with EFF and Titan forces. Kennedy was already on the brink of being taken over. Still, there was no better place to send the AEUG personnel back to space. They had two shuttles that could be sent up and they were ready to defend their allies as they went back to continue their fight. Intelligence confirmed the presence of two Garuda, both heading here. There was no doubt in his mind as to exactly what his course of action was. He had to give it his all.

XXX

The Audhumela and Sudori approached Kennedy space center cautiously. They did not need to escape a nuclear death to be cut down by Federation mobile suits. So they were extremely relieved to find an aircraft that guided them in.

"Is Kennedy Spaceport safe, Mr. Hayato Kobayashi?"

Quattro Bajeena's dulcet tones carried through the radio with a hint of disbelief.

"It's currently under Karaba's control."

Lt. Bajeena scoffed amusedly under his breath.

"Karaba…..I don't like that name."

Ensign Reccoa Londe, an Argama crew member who had been captured spying on Jaburo, looked up at the blonde haired MS pilot.

"Oh?"

"It sounds like a secret society!"

Everyone on the bridge chuckled.

The Garuda landed smoothly, something most people would not believe easily of the enormous monster, one that dwarfed the Gaw carriers of Zeon by a sizeable margin. The work was fast and hurried. They had a lot to do, and not a lot of time to do it in. Many of the mobile suits went to Karaba, so they were just loaded directly into the Garuda and packed in. The Audhumela would be prepped and ready to take off in case of the expected attack. The other was stripped but kept in reserve for when it was needed.

The operators were juggling separate pieces of information when the Hayato learned that the Oakland Newtype Labs were now controlled by Titans. He would have been surprised to learn that they had been running the place for quite a while, its secretive nature and high security preventing the news from percolating out easily.

In another building, Lt. Bajeena quickly convinced the operators that with Bright Noa commanding the Argama they were sure to be picked up. The clock was ticking. They now had just forty minutes to get the two shuttles they had fueled, prepped and ready for launch. From then on things happened quickly.

It seemed that in no time at all, they had reached the final few minutes to liftoff. The EFF chose that very moment to attack. Three sleds with two Hizacks each and an Asshimar roared in at low altitude. The shuttle carrying the mobile suits was unfortunately closer to the ocean and was hit multiple times by beam fire. It didn't stand a chance and was quickly burning away merrily.

By now the attacking mobile suits were over the base proper. The red Garuda Audhumela was already taking off when a couple of GMs, Lt. Bajeena's Hyaku Shiki and Kamille Bidan's Gundam MkII, and Lt. Roberto's Rick Dias began to counter attack. The fighting was fast and furious. Seven suits were not a large force in this day and age, but it was more than enough to attack a civilian held spaceport. Still, both sides were quickly racking up losses. The orange mobile armor, the transformable mobile suit Asshimar was in pitched combat with varying mobile suits. The high power beam rifle, now seemingly the main weapon of the mobile armor was tearing up tarmac in its erratic but undoubtedly effective fighting style. Roberto soon lost his life as his Rick Dias caught a beam right through the reactor. Time passed quickly as the Audhumela took off, the AEUG mobile suits boarded it and Kennedy was captured by Titans.

XXX

"Captain! The Titans have Kennedy. What are your orders?"

"Find me a Federation base to attack….Or we can hit Federation naval assets. Alice, do you want to go and hit that naval base at Hawaii? We'll hit them for some new suits. We could get some GMs to modify? It sounds like something to do anyway. At this point, there's very little I or anybody can do to alter the wars course. For progress in this war, there needs to be a battle, at this point it's just a stalemate. We'll head back to space then. Modify that Z'Gok-E for space use? It'll be a surprise for them? Why am I feeling so bloody bored?"

"You should relax a bit captain. Enjoy me while I'm around. Aren't I the product of your perversions made real?"

"Hah! Maybe I should. Giving you all those feelings and emotions seem to have made you a little demanding hasn't it?"

"Why not captain? We can play pirate captain and virgin wench all we want. Just you, me, and a big bed. And maybe chocolate syrup…"

"Later my dear. For now, let's see if we can't find another base to raid." I have some ideas to try on a GM or two. Or we can go see if our Karaba friends need help."

"Yes captain!"

XXX

"Captain Yoshi! We have hostile mobile suits headed this way!"

The casually seated officer on the bridge of the Garuda immediately jumped up.

"Where are they?! What model? And how many are there?"

"They are Hizacks sir! And another suit sir! It's a Dom!"

The news of the presence of the older model served only to make him shudder in fear.

"Put it on screen!"

The pale Japanese fellow turned a ghost white as the remaining blood drained off his face. The picture was not the most detailed of things. It had been taken at maximum range by a camera that was primarily used for coordinating the medium range laser turrets. It showed an odd looking suit that had an unusual paint scheme.

"That's the Black Death! What the fuck is that guy coming here for! Tell everyone to stand down. Reduce speed and open the rear bay doors. Tell him….tell him we surrender!"

The bridge crew looked at him in askance.

"NOW! I didn't join the military to let my men get slaughtered due to idiot politicians and their messes."

"Sir!"

There was much scrambling.

When Harry arrived at the Dollmer,he was treated to the sight of a white flag flying from the rear bay doors, and from inside the laser turrets.

"I didn't think they'd surrender. Makes you wonder if the trip was worth it."

"Captain, what are your orders?"

"I'll land. Any sign of foul play and you destroy the bridge. Those beam bazookas can do a lot of damage against the engine and bridge."

"You got it boss!"

XXX

Harry stepped out of his suit to see a very nervous crew of people. The officer of the bunch stepped forward and bowed shakily. He cut an intimidating figure in his black pilot suit with white dots sprinkled everywhere and a white scythe on a shoulder patch

"The crew of the Dollmer surrender peacefully to you sir. Please treat us in accordance with international law."

"I didn't think you would surrender this easily."

"You are the Black Death sir. There are very few who do not know who you are. This ship is purely a transport. We don't even have pilots for the Mobile suits on board."

"I don't believe that, but I will be seizing any cargo of value in this boat. Any funny business and you all die."

The officer nodded jerkily. He was sweating a lot and shaking in fear. The simple, matter of fact promise maybe a bit of a cliché, but unless you have experienced it, it is difficult to understand just how terrifying it really is.

"Relax soldier. I'm a man of my word, and I am definitely not prone to mindless destruction. Just don't try to get into that suit. It has defenses even my people don't dare to test. Tell me what do you carry on this ship?"

"Yes sir. Our primary cargo is the mobile suits. We are carrying eight Asshimar and ten Marasai for the base at Bismarck. They are just the suits. We don't carry any sleds. Our secondary cargo is a hundred E-Caps for the Marasai rifles. We also have a set of forty disassembled rifles, but we don't carry the equipment to charge the E-Caps, so they are mostly useless for us. We also have a few crates of something, but those were not with a specific destination. We were told that at one of the stops we would be specifically asked for them."

Harry nodded and then smiled. "Excellent. We will be taking that cargo of your hands. In return, nothing else will be taken, and nobody will be harmed. You will be free to continue. Try not to modify that in our absence. I'll be sending some men over while transferring the cargo. You are not allowed to see what we're using to take it all in. maintain your course and altitude for now."

"Alice! Get some men here. We're doing a direct transfer."

The crew shuffled nervously for the ten minutes or so it took for the twenty men to board on a transport. A half hour later, all the original crew was gathered in the lower bay in one spot, covered by machine guns and rocket launchers. The message was clear.

The transfer took almost two hours. The mobile suits, despite being the largest were the easiest to move, insofar as they could move on their own. The others had to be carried out on sleds and the mid air transfer pod, a very similar set up to that used for transfer between ships in space. The Marasai were not fueled, but their reactors were "warm" so they were easily moved. They also helped move the crates. The Asshimar had to be fueled up before taking off, so they had to be manhandled onto sleds one by one, something the Schnitter had to participate in, although the sight of Hizacks and a Dom lifting the forty ton behemoths so easily was a sight that would have had the Dollmer's crew gaping if they were able to see , they were let go peacefully and Harry was satisfied with the whole affair. Unlike Zeon remnants who were incapable of pulling off this kind of heist, his reapers were more than up to the task. The damage to the enemy's TO&E was not exactly quantifiable, but was significant. The attack on a transport on a route so secure that they didn't bother to arm it was a hit on morale. That the crew would escape with tales of the polite and merciful base killer was a bigger hit, if on efforts to demonize him. The ghost like nature of their attack was a very impressive feat by normal standards. The idea that the enemy was actually stealing weaponry from an already starved Federation military was going to give nightmares to some penny hoarding bureaucrats. But it was time to return to space. There was nothing here he could do.

XXX

Getting back into space with all their loot was not as easy as some might think. But it was infinitely easier than if they had used regular methods. After some brainstorming, they had simply pushed the Garuda into space via a minovski craft prototype that had been stolen, enhanced and burned out through its use of putting a big ass Garuda to space. Once in space, the Fury had its wings detached and folded to the sides. The setup was not exactly art, but it served the purpose of getting it looking more space worthy than if it was a standard Garuda In space.

Next went on two transport ship rocket engines, which were huge and efficient, if not military grade. The last part was solved with some liberal us of magic. The ugly looking contraption was then given a sheet metal shell that was thin yet served to provide "shape" to their vessel. Finally, he spent a day covering the thing with runes to make it ignorable. In other words, they stuck an "invincible" Garuda in an "invisible" shell, which had rockets for propulsion. They would meet with the Basilisk in two days.

XXX

Space was as welcoming as ever, the vast emptiness generating a feeling of freedom in those who looked for it. Yet it was the emptiness that created newtypes that evolved type of humanity that could reach out through the stars and call one another.

The reaper vessels were in the best condition possible. With the efficiency and work ethic impossible in ordinary humans, the reaper squadron had turned the Titan patrol into a machine of war. Perhaps their system of returning the crew had given the enemy a glimpse of what had happened, but it was not a concrete understanding. Nobody knew just what was happening where. But they knew enough. By removing himself from ideology and human motivations, he had effectively rendered himself beyond the capabilities of any side to predict. Of course, exactly what he wanted to do was an entirely different matter. Because he had no idea himself!

XXX

An experiment that did not leave my head for days. But I think I'll leave it here. Because frankly, it sucks. I'm posting this because otherwise all it's doing is rotting on my laptop. It'll start my random ficlet list. Assuming I ever get around to doing more!