Authors Note: I'm sure my paltry summary can't explain everything, so here goes. This is an AU Gundamverse story written by me and reviewed by Jeremy. I don't own anything related to the existing ones, but all the characters you see here are mine. I put this in the Seed Section because its the most populated branch right now, and because this site doesn't have an Original fiction section. As such, my future comments will try to answer/reply to any reviews I get. Enjoy!
Bold- Computer Text
Italics- Thoughts/Emphasis
- - -
Gundam Ignition
Phase 01: Beginning
'As the old adage goes, all things must have a beginning and an end. While I don't believe anyone has ever woken up one morning and thought to himself: 'Hey I think I'll begin a war today', they begin, nonetheless.' –Transcript of Master Yasim Daravon, Founder of the House of Daravon.
- - -
Mae Yu Wa Iji Sin Ji Te no KaniNe Muri O Ma Wari
Iji Kan Ji You Yamete O Ga
DES's youngest chief designer on record had spent the past few days trying to work on the poor-man's cargo barge. After four days, he was no longer particularly anxious to continue doing so, considering the project at hand.
Grease from the open service compartment he had crawled out of now stained his normally auburn hair a darker shade of scarlet red. While he knew many colonists his age had lamented having his other major physical drawback since the dawn of time, he could consider himself lucky- the glass specs he wears across the bridge of his nose are slender almost to the point of invisibility, and they only served to make him look more like his title.
Many people have also lamented his current complaint in the past, albeit only since spaceships with gel pack compensators were invented- the tremor of a less-than-classy spaceliner lacking said compensator mechanisms, the frame of which trembled now and again with the power of its symmetrical bank of four heavy particle engines. Bryce Daravon shook his head in annoyance- he is too used to more advanced ships than this rugged barge vessel and it's tremors. Good thing most of the assembly wasn't done on a ship at all, he acknowledged to the motionless metal head of the machine in front of him, I'd never be able to get any real work done here.
The head gave no indication that it had heard him. Of course, it had not- he knew this machine and it's two brothers standing behind it, however advanced, are self-aware as bricks. He has only ever been deluding himself into thinking these big pieces of tech he had spent four years working on at last count could think, reason, or feel.
He had only just slid back into the service compartment in the machine's right leg when someone slammed its hatch shut, instantly enveloping him in complete darkness. Bryce did not writhe or shout- the nervous apprehension he had bottled up inside now was not directed at the darkness or the machines, but towards the people he knows are just outside that hatch, the asshats who had played this joke on his at least twice before.
"I got the message, guys" he sighed perhaps overdramatically, taking care not to let the metallic shell muffle him. "Can't do a thing with these tremors anyway."
The service hatch still did not open. "That's the idea, professor", a teasing, but girlish voice came back to him. "I think they put us here just to keep you from messing with the insides again."
Still in the dark, he snorted. "A last-minute check never hurt anyone-"
"Ah", a different voice reached him now, this one brash and rough, yet caring like an elder brother's. "There's a difference between last-minute and 'I want to crawl around my play place'. Get outta there, Bry- we got other things to take care of."
Finally, the hatch flew open and Bryce spotted black-haired Umil Granq, the only one of his crew that had not yet burst his bubble, looking like a baby deer in headlights. Farther back were the other engineers on board: Elya Proctor, with her lime green hair dangling into a ponytail down the small of her back, and the modestly beefy form of Troy Haliburton, wearing the thick black work gloves they were supposed to wear standard issue on the job.
He looked at his own bare hands and chuckled faintly. The slack green suits with the DES emblem they all wore now were dark green, slack, and felt like wet rubber once appropriately soaked with perspiration. Troy was the only one who liked the gloves, who wore them when ordered to, or even when not. Despite these quirks, despite the slenderness of his comfort zone in this area, this team was the closest thing he had ever had to friends.
Bryce stood, squinting at the lights of the bay even though he had only been in the dark for a minute or so, before focusing on what the their eldest member had said. "They have VR simulators here?"
Troy cocked an eyebrow while Elya tried to get shy Umil to laugh at that. "I spoke to a guy who said that without them, this slowpoke's crew would go nuts inside a week. It's just like analyzing the real machines really… and a lot less greasy", he noted, indicating Bryce's messy mop of hair.
"Okay", he conceded, following the others from the ship's secondary bay. "But they're there so we can test the MS in a real battlefield environment… not so we can play Star Viper 5 for hours on end, am I right?"
Troy, the one this was mostly directed at, laughed again as they walk out into the decently crowded main corridor. "Maaaaaybe. What's the difference?"
He nodded slightly, understanding what Troy meant. It had always like this, between them: while Bryce was undoubtedly the brains and the workaholic of this particular DES crew, white-blond and athletic Troy was really better suited to be leader. The team knew it, they just hadn't said anything yet. In the field of armament design, or more specifically DES, he was almost as on the ball as Elya, who was behind Bryce, yet he joked, he smiled, he played. In this chief designer's opinion, he talked way too much for his own good.
Thump. Distracted from the calculations of MS design for only a moment, he looked back. Absent-minded as ever, he'd just brushed a girl in the hall he'd never seen before. Long and blond, her relative shortness being the only thing keeping her from looking exactly like she'd walked straight from some Clyne House demonstration. Suspicious, even with the uniform of a new commercial crewer.
He realized Troy and the others had gotten ahead, and put any thoughts of suspicion out of his mind. Girls like that weren't part of his universe anyway.
- - -
Bianca Tanner breathed a quiet sigh of relief that seemed to linger in the air around her. For a moment, she thought she'd been discovered. Just some other guy on this crate who can't hold in his 'impulses'. That makes three today.
Actually chuckling nervously at that, she got back on track, turning into the entryway she had nearly passed, resisting the urge to check if the clod had done her any real damage by thumping into her chest. Of course, her lack of a reply (preferably a rude one) was suspicious like a number of things she had neglected to take care of. Just had to hope the guy didn't pursue it further.
Still so new at this stuff. But it's a measure of Edwin's trust in me that I'm here at all. Don't want to disappoint the boss now, do we?
Still fighting the jitters, she took care to stride through the next area, the passage into the west cargo bays purposefully, as though she belonged there. The other crewer, obviously bored of routine, had decided to let the security scan be enough.
Getting caught here would be a disaster, in more ways than one. She was on a ship that was part of a convoy traveling through deep space- nowhere to run. While Bianca knew beyond a doubt that the myth of peace and non-interaction between the many Houses of Earth was a lie, she had also been warned that the powers-that-be favored some Houses- such as Daravon and Aznable- over others, such as her own. Getting caught here meant an international incident, plus arrest.
So she very carefully hoisted the forged binary ID she had been given, first at the guy, then at the scanner. While the guy didn't even look up from his magazine, the door swung open with the familiar swoosh of well-kept hydraulics, letting into the very row of bays DES Crew 18 had just abandoned.
Then she saw them. Didn't have a choice, really- the three machines dominated the transparent plastics that enclosed the bays themselves. The convoy's Captain, from Gemini House, had wisely opted to keep them in the most well hidden and least visited bay. The vacant, twisting metal passages she had passed through made it a pain for the engineers or anyone else to get to. But now she was here, having eliminated all the other bays by trial and error while in disguise. Her objective was far more hideous in person.
Three huge bipedal forms now faced the far bay doors, motionless. One predominantly gunmetal gray and green, followed by a more athletic-looking one with broad wings covering a sharp silver and blue color scheme. Lastly came a larger, squat machine with black and red coating to hide the tank treads it appeared to be carrying on it's back for some reason she couldn't figure.
No longer under watch, her expression became more disgusted with each new machine, especially the treaded behemoth at the back. That was only the only one where, by squinting, she could make out the silver label on its bulging left arm socket- MS-24G, 'Hyrcanian', Daravon Engineering and Armament Systems Inc…
Hyrcanian, Bianca thought in disgust. One of three awful war machines made only to kill the people its masters don't like. I still can't believe how Daravon keeps pretending its hands are clean after making these…
A faint clank brought her back to reality, and she waited a moment to make sure the way was still clear. No crewer was supposed to be back here, especially not a Junior.
Nothing. Time to do what I came here for. She had been worried that the controls of the older, more run-down freighter would be unfamiliar. Instead, the silvery panel at the back of the scaffolding looked just like her father's weaponless ship. Just like there, the panel was both protected and marked by a steel plate with a naught but a single white circle to designate it. Behind that, the plate's alcove beneath the circle hid the main control dial which, coupled with a screen and number pad, could control all features of the visible bay.
Part of the reason the exposed ventral bays suffered from micro tremors more than any other part of the ship was simple physics- they were positioned on the very outside of the ship, the very first component to take the kinetic force as it built up around a rackety hull devoid of expensive gel compensators. It was why all the viewports on ships generally had external borders protruding outwards to channel tremors away from it.
These bays, Bianca noted, were nowhere near as safe as engineers might believe. Theoretically, all it took was someone with proper ID to hit one button here, twist the dial once… and the hatches would all rise up simultaneously with the dial, exposing everything behind the glass to vacuum. Power tools, trinkets, uneaten candy, debris…
After that, all it would take to move a larger object out of the bay- say, a bipedal tank like the ones just outside- would be another creative 'misuse' of the controls, causing the padlocked gantries anchoring them to the floor to retract into the walls like so. Then the three machines, heavy as they were, would only take a few minutes to drift aimlessly out into space while the ship kept moving on past them.
She checked the digital watch under her sleeve and allowed herself a smile- she'd accomplished her objective well inside the window of opportunity- just as the convoy had been passing the unmistakable solar signature of Earth's sun. In fifty minutes or less, these three particular giant death machines would be so much molten ore.
Now the hard part- timing it out to the recovery point undetected. Even if one of the other ships sees these, it should take them a moment to-
VOOOOOOP. VOOOOOP.
-do that.
All at once, she searched the corridors for a hiding spot, fought to keep the blaringly loud intruder alarms from overwhelming her awareness, and cursed to herself while allowing her sole weapon to drop out of her right jacket sleeve, into her hand. Damn it. How could they know so quickly? I didn't leave any traces, unless-
Behind the glass, Bianca's icy blue eyes became huge. A single glimpse outside the ship had proved that 'unless' dead wrong.
It was a ship. Not a lumbering ore hauler like this one and its brethren, or like anything her father had ever owned. A snub-nosed prow topping off an armored shell that covered up hundreds of meters of exposed superstructure. A size and level of speed like that was impractical for virtually every single purpose save for one- the swift, brutal strikes of an attack squadron.
This ship was under fire. And she would bet her right arm that it wasn't her people out there.
- - -
"Sim. Off. Now!", Bryce yelled in a rare display of anger. "We're under attack!"
All the same, Troy was slow to shut the machine's second visor down, but it was not a product of laziness, but helplessness, which he now illustrated to the others with his exposed face. "So what can we do? We're civilian! This barge has no weapons, the whole point of using it was to keep this hush-hush!"
Pale Umil, who had been at the other visor at the other end, staggered as though Troy had struck him. "An attack? N-no way! Who?"
Even better, Bryce thought grimly, why?
A massive rumble that scared Umil out of the room and into the hall was his only real answer. "This way!", he heard Elya calling to the rest of the people dispersed around the simulator wing, most of the older than she. "What the hell are you waiting for? Get to your quarters! All civilians are to be in their quarters!"
Of course. She had been thinking clearly while they argued over who was attacking them, remembering the common civillian protocol in the case of an attack. The thing was, they had never had reason to refer to it, ever, ever. The entire House of Birthright system had initially been designed to put an end to all strife, never mind a full-scale military raid. Now, with some unknown enemy attacking a convoy that was supposedly only carrying supplies, few people had the slightest clue how to react.
Too accustomed to peace? He banished the dark thought at once, following the panicked crowd down the corridor, but it niggled at him. There's only one reason anyone would take so big a risk as to violate the code of the Houses of Birthright- they know about the MS!
He stopped, holding up several folks that looked like a large family. "Troy! Elya!"
Both swerved as their names were called, confused, then focused on him as he shouted their names a second time over the crowd's frightened murmur. "I need one of you to come with me to the secondary bay!", he shouted over the din. "I think these guys are after the MS!"
But Elya was already too far up the corridor; too enmeshed in the crowd of loudly panicked men and women, too busy trying to help the rare child get to the safest part of the ship. Troy however, nodded as he pushed through the throng. "Only reason anyone would attack a supply convoy like this", he acknowledged under his breath. "And I'm not just going to let someone take away four years of our work. How, though?"
He thought about it for a moment as the crowd began to thin out, still hearing the deafening rumbles of missile and beam impacts both within and without. At last count, they had been one among a dozen ships, but the mysterious ambushers seemed equally interested in all of them. A mixed blessing in this case- if they had known which ship held the MS, they would already be dead or captured.
"Cargo bay", he whispered quickly and quietly to the larger teen. "Anno Domino Captains don't surrender their charges, even if they have no weapons. A shuttle, maybe."
Out of reflex, Troy stared at the orange stripes of the nearest emergency access passage as though expecting an enemy- such an unfamiliar term!- to pop out of it any second. "But… there's no way they could get a shuttle into that bay without someone on this ship to open the doors!"
"Yes", Bryce acknowledged, fighting an urge to run to the bridge and warn their resident Anno Domino Captain. They were supposed to be designers, damnit, not soldiers! This whole scenario felt like another insane simulation. "I'm afraid that is true."
- - -
The two DES designers fought to keep any verbal outbursts to themselves as they crossed over the threshold they knew was no longer secure. The steel door yielded to Bryce's card on the first swipe, all the more cause for concern- normally, the machine was more finicky about opening from the outside. What if it had chosen today to accept an infiltrator?
Within the access corridor, with one wall of glass and one of exposed metal, suspicion only heightened at the sight before them. "Damnit! We're too late", Troy moaned.
"Hold it right there!"
The voice, theatrically loud and tough sounding, muffled the click of the weapon, but Bryce knew it was there even when it was pointed at his back. "You. Over there with the other one. Get in the corner. Now!"
There was something in Troy's face. While he didn't dare say anything, his chief could tell from experience that there were several things about their attacker he wanted to mention as they were slowly walked to the far end.
"Now, um, uh… bind each others feet with the wrap wires in the service bin there", the voice commanded skittishly. "Don't look at me, j-just do it!"
Bryce turned, but not to tie his partner's legs with flexible wires. A sudden clanging noise had drawn his head by reflex alone. It was Elya standing there behind them sans her green DES uniform, standing not ten feet away from a facedown body and a familiar-looking wrench. Seeing a weapon slide out of the unconscious spy's hands, he faced her and smiled. "Nice throw."
She still did not come closer, hiding shaking hands from the two boys. "Thanks. I caught her throwing her voice when I was looking for you two after you disappeared on me."
Her voice? "Do you mean…?"
Even as Troy easily picked the unknown figure up by the hair and checked her over, Bryce also recognized the young woman from before. "Yeah. Our infiltrator's a hot chick. A good job at sounding tough, but she was too nervous to look us in the eyes. I wanted to tell you before."
Momentarily overcome, Bryce blinked in absurdity as he picked up the small weapon. "And she was carrying this dinky little tranquilizer pistol, not even a real gun. You think-"
"Ummph."
Bianca rose, but Troy was quick to restrain her to the wall now that she had no weapon. Seemingly oblivious to the latest missile strike, he actively sniffed the air even as she struggled with him flat against her chest. "No grease, no lubricant. Nothing, Bry."
Seeing Elya actually looking concerned over the rough way the spy was being treated, Bryce tilted his head at her furious expression over his own deduction. "From the House of Peacecraft, right?"
Not surprisingly, her only response was to narrow her eyes angrily and struggle a bit more with Troy. "That's fine", Bryce said, now trying to put on a façade of wistful toughness similar to the one their prisoner had tried, "what we need to know is what you did to our work."
The girl actually looked pleased over this. "Try looking in a very hot place, then", she blurted out defiantly into Troy's chiseled face. "A place as hot as the hell you're going to."
"The sun", he murmured, feeling his heart sink into his knees. "You ejected our MS units into the sun! Why? Why the hell would you do that?!"
"Isn't it obvious?", she shouted back to him, now losing all reluctance to gloat over his fury. "They are supposed to be illegal, right? Under Anno Domino law? Machines like those… they were never meant to exist!"
Bryce pushed his face into his palms, feeling their body heat cover him. "You idiot… Peacecraft idiot! These were purely for defensive purposes! They are our- and your- only chance of surviving the next hour!"
Elya caught this, and turned to him with an eye focusing on the one-sided battle raging outside the exposed bay. "You mean you're…?"
Refusing to remove his palms, he rubbed them even hotter. "I'll space walk. I know its desperate, but the MS units are the only weapons we have left here. We can't take on Shyron military forces with a wrench, Elya."
Expressing the sentiments of all present in doing so, Troy wheeled from his task of restraining their beautiful prisoner in alarm. "Fuck! The House of Shyron? That's the House of Shyron's fleet out there?!"
"Yes", Bryce said drily. "Positive. History of past weapons is something I read a lot about for the past four years, and absolutely no one else uses squadrons of M42 Valkyrie jets like the ones I saw fly by earlier. Fastest armed spacecraft ever recorded… and they invented them."
While Elya was already in the back compartments, fetching what Bryce hoped would be a fully sealed space suit, Troy still seemed a bit taken aback that the Exiled House of Shyron, well known and taught by virtually every living human as a House of evil traitors and murderers, would come here.
"What abo…", he whispered weakly, looking out at the now-visible war cruisers with renewed fear, and not just of them. "Bry. Do you think that he's leading them?"
Beside him, Bryce took a deep breath as Elya handed him a vacuum-sealed helmet. "Only one way to find out, right? Keep her quiet, and don't follow me. Alone, in a space suit, I calculate a 40, maybe 50 percent chance of making it to the MS 25-GX without getting shot."
If he had not been so dumbstruck by the events of the past few minutes, Troy certainly would have argued that point, would have wanted to space walk out with his friend and take control of the Hyrcanian or the Rana. As it was, he merely nodded, and returned to pinning a suddenly restless Bianca Tanner to the wall again while Elya helped their chief designer suit up against what awaited him out in the void.
"I won't wish you good luck", Elya whispered into his helmet once the seal audibly clicked against its metal. "Because one, I know you hate the idea of luck, and two I believe in you. You and Troy are both very strong."
"Only when I forget to use deodorant", Bryce mumbled weakly from behind his helmet, feeling the familiar burn of embarrassment from whenever he was in close contact with people make him woozy. The joke, like the ones before it, were an unconscious defense mechanism against the sensation. Just be glad you didn't insult her.
"Never learn…" the spy breathed furiously from beneath him, ignoring Troy as he nearly cracked up. "You guys never learn. All your machines ever do is kill people. Nothing else."
Those were the last words Bryce heard before his helmet was sealed shut onto the bulky suit, and he stepped out into the airlock just beside the transparent cargo bay door- the prelude to space.
- - -
It was slow going. Only those who had walked out in zero-gravity before knew how utterly frustrating it was to try and get anywhere fast, even with the swimming motions they had each practiced on Earth. Bryce, of course, had a small thruster pack on the back of his suit, but a weak one. Adding to his need for haste was the sight of Valkyrie jets, generic dropships, missiles and the cargo carriers they were meant to defeat flashing by him- the slightest hit from a beam weapon or missile would incinerate his suit, and him as well.
So he did a frenzied front stroke, trying to nurse a bit more speed out of his suit even if was useless. A lucky thing that this ship has portable O2 packs, he reminded himself, counting his blessings. A pilot seeing a big, honking oxygen tube stretching from the ship would be crazy not to vaporize it. As it is, I'm just small enough not to be noticed.
Valkyries. He'd heard about them, seen and analyzed their incredible acceleration systems in the historical records while researching for the very machines he was now trying to reach. Out here, where he could see everything happening at once, they seemed so much damned faster than the aud/vis records showed. In the space of ten breaths behind his visor, two or three flights would flash by close enough to see the details. He counted at least twenty of them swarming the dozen space barges, each with two small beams and twin missile launchers out in front, their main engines actually modeled after old 21st century fighter-jets like the F4 Tomcat.
He would also see a few instances of some considerably slower spacecraft of the same size. Faintly yellow-toned, they were only slightly larger than the nimble Valkyries, and bore no visible weapons in their exposed joints, only a pair of metal prongs. Once he remembered the make and color from the records, his heart leapt. Mini-shuttles. Come to capture the MS units!
Looking past the wave that had brushed him by, he saw them; three bipedal machines, built like massive versions of the space suit he now wore… Or possibly like huge suits of medieval armor, what with the MS24-G Rana's tower type shield on its right arm and the MS25-GX Peregrine's classical-style head compartment. To his horror, one of the small utility craft had already latched onto the third one- the bulky Hyrcanian, and two others were already drawing within a few dozens of meters of the other two.
Not with our project, you don't! Surging forward with all the thrust he could force out of the small rocket-pack, Bryce made a beeline not for the tightly-sealed chest compartment that served as the pilot's seat, but for the open service compartment hatch he had left open before, before slamming it shut once again.
For the second time that day, he was inside of Peregrine's right leg, surrounded by wiring and darkness. While the pencil-shaped electro-welder offered him some light once he flicked it on, holding onto became more difficult the moment he did so- Peregrine was moving, and not under its own power.
Dragging them back to that big flotilla I saw earlier, he thought unhappily from his cramped position inside the leg. No one would expect Shyron's exiles to bring, or even be able to field such a force after the past few years. I won't be able to stop them from capturing the Rana or Hyrcanian… but this one stays put!
With that, carefully pried a nearby plate aside by applying constant pressure to it. Having spent the most time on this MS unit over all the others, he knew Peregrine's insides well enough- the internal plates were actually weaker than the outer hull, and were designed to hold the machine's infrastructure together during a sudden, violent hit, rather than what he was doing now. Constant pressure was its weakness, if it had one. Beyond that was another layer of exposed titanium, which was what the electro-welder was for. One awkward minute later, he was breathing hard in the core compartment's single seat, guidance controls spread out before him.
Startup sequence… got to remember the startup sequence! He had heard no more evidence of the battle for a bit, but that was more a bad omen than good. Sweating bullets, the chief designer finally caught his wits by the tail and hammered the white manual startup switch. After using that, one could finish the sequence for any of the units entirely by voice-activation software.
Main system online, the main screen proclaimed to him.
"Disable weapon safety protocols", he whispered breathily. "Prepare for combat immediately, and switch to manual control!"
Security code and voice analysis requested.
"Right." That wasn't just one code, either; it was six specific code words- DES never took chances with the electronic security measures on its machines. The code sounded to his memory much like an incantation, which was how he recalled it.
"Okay, the code, the code let me think… The code is… General, Unilateral, Neuro-Link, Dispersive, Autonomic, Maneuver!"
Voiceprint of chief designer DES18 Bryce Weltroth Daravon confirmed. Begin ignition sequence.
"Yes! Ignition confirmed! Get us out of here!"
At long last, the autopilot was all too happy to oblige before turning the controls over to its creator. Naturally, the kickback was immense… but he would choose neck pains over certain death any day of the week.
- - -
Commencing ignition, destination Sol, spatial coordinates x394, y918, z581.
The computer that processed this now was not that of the Peregrine. Granted, it had similar design, similar function, but that was where the similarities ended. If a single factor had to be chosen to separate the two neuro-computers as they simultaneously activated, keying in on each other's activation, it was the appearance of their pilots.
The pilot who sat in front of this computer was, to put it simply, a wreck. His faint blue hair had grown long for years, draped down in thick bushy strands off his sagging skull and into the machines beneath his suspended frame. This pilot's arms and legs twitched crazily all the time when they were not gripping the manual controls of his machine, and a similar effect could be noted in the whites of his eyes- where seconds before they had been clouded and disinterested, the knowledge of the Peregrine's activation by a certain someone replaced his lethargy with both a predatory alertness and no small measure of instability.
"So he's finally done it", the long-haired pilot spoke to himself slowly. "The other side of the fate equation is complete. I shall be with you soon."
Then he threw back his head and laughed like a hyena before blasting off for space.
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