(Gundam SEED Altered Fates: Red Shift)
This is a bit of an experiment on my part. How would the war be fought if things turned out different because a certain variable changed? Would the war end with a decisive outcome instead of the orgasm of battle at Jachin Due and the effective surrender of both sides? Who would survive the interim battles? Who would not survive that otherwise lived through the cruel conflict de rigeur?
These questions can best be answered in prose, with the help of 'The Gods' as old-hand RPG players call them. Those of you who are familiar with my other stories know that I favor using dice and random result generation to determine the outcomes of some battles and how the Fates change the way the story flows. After all, nothing is so cruel as to trump reality, and reality is at best insanely random when looked at from a large perspective. There are so many possible changes to the story overall that changing various 'linchpin' events can have drastic and far-reaching effects for everyone involved.
I shall not speak to what element be altered, but in this chapter you will see where the paths of fate diverge markedly from the original story of Gundam SEED. There will be a lot of alterations to come, following in the principle that a stone dropped into the lake creates a small impact trauma but massive waves radially away from the point of impact, waves that traverse a long distance. And possibly at another time I shall do a mirror image rebuild, changing the fate in the other direction and showing what happens then.
And now, onto the obligatory declarations (and these apply to all sections)
Stravag does not own any part of the Gundam franchise. If I did, you could rest assured GSD would have been a lot bloodier than it was. Not quite as bad as Zeta, but close (har har har). And Stella probably would have survived (not Shin, though), and…
Writing note: numbers in parentheses, like this: (0) mean check the footnote for something else I think goes along with the thought. Could be informative, could be humorous, or both.
BAAAAAD LANGUAGE WARNING: Much as in real life, there will be foul language in some sections. Even the best of us let fly a four-letter word when really pissed off, startled, or else. Not to mention that Yzak has a very foul temper and a rather excellent grasp of invective. You can expect Yzak to be the lead scorekeeper in shady language, with Dearka and Athrun a distant second and third respectively.
VIOLENCE WARNING: Oh yes, Virginia, there will be no shortage of it. Gundam is about the political scheming and the war, NOT about the (arguably thin) romance aspects. Expect this story will reflect that one cold, hard fact.
ANTI-POLITICAL-CORRECTNESS WARNING: To strive to be politically correct serves no purpose, for real life makes no such distinction. I will not do so. Death before dishonor. End of story. Please don't ask me to explain this one. (note that this also applies to normal fandom principle: if I have to choose between reality and preferred perception, I will choose reality).
And NEG, THERE IS NO CHARACTER BASHING IN THIS STORY! PERIOD! Every character is entitled to some props even if their only purpose in the story is the classic image of deus ex machina. AND THERE WILL BE NO SLASH IN THIS STORY BECAUSE IT IS DEFINITELY NOT CANON TO GUNDAM SEED!
Thank you. And now onto the story.
(Chapter 01: Special and Hazardous Operations)
"That's it. It's exactly like Commander Le Creuset said," Yzak declares after he brings his binoculars down from his faceplate.
"What? With the right amount of prodding, they're sure to come out of their hole?" Dearka notes in his usual nonchalant fashion.
"After all, the Naturals are stupid and pathetic," Yzak replies, confirming Dearka's comment. With a quick radio code, the location of the five prototype units was transmitted to Miguel's unit, which was coordinating the armored spearhead inside the colony.
Less than a minute later, the two GINN units arrived in the area and began doing what they did best: turning Earth Alliance units and personnel into scrap and greasy spots respectively. "Let's go," Athrun says coldly. What do you think of this little war, Kira? He mentally asks the friend he had not seen since prep school back on the moon.
Once clear of the precipice, the ZAFT infiltration team was running mostly weightless and had to use their maneuvering packs to close up with the MS transports. "Destroy any parts we can't carry and the factories. Intel indicates five of them," Yzak says almost needlessly. The whole team had gone over this several times in briefing. "Are the other two still inside?"
"Rusty and I will continue," Athrun says. "Yzak, you guys take these three."
"Okay, go for it!" Yzak had not yet begun firing on the infantry around the units, but the other ZAFT soldiers with them were already firing and getting kills. "If you're piloting one, disable the self-destruct first!"
No shit, Athrun thinks but does not say. When excited, Yzak tended state the obvious...
The infiltration team landed at the vanguard of the transport column, where most of the personnel were already dead from the ministrations of the GINN units or the suppressing fire laid down by the team in approach. Athrun did not begin firing until after landing, at which point he knelt, brought his weapon up and began firing the short bursts he was trained for. His training had emphasized that it really only took one well-placed round of 6.2mm to kill someone, anything more than that was overkill and overkill was only good on the front lines, not in a stealth attack behind enemy lines without the ammo to spare.
Immediately Rusty dropped down to his right and three meters forward of Athrun, using the same short burst tactic, and between the two they knocked down the three visible enemy combatants in their area, driving two more into the body of the MS transport. Athrun rushed forward to the rear corner of the transport as Rusty stopped to hurl a grenade into the transport's personnel door; the explosion caused him to flinch but nothing more than the whip-crack sound of 76mm machine gun rounds from the GINNs. Idly Athrun wondered how much gunfire it took to increase the air pressure in a colony... (1)
"Move it up!" One of the ZAFT Marines shouts, waving Rusty and Athrun forward from the lead MS carrier to the middle. On the way Athrun let fly a couple of bursts toward some more of the Earth Alliance personnel, not expecting much in the way of results and getting it. With that gap run, Athrun threw a non-fragmenting grenade (2) forward in between some crates that had been scattered by the sudden arrival of ZAFT MS; the detonation of the grenade took out three and severely injured a fourth, the latter Rusty dispatched with a deft stroke of his combat knife. Dearka moved up past where Rusty had sliced the last survivor up and took the ladder on the MS carrier up to the machine inside.
"This is pathetic!" Rusty half-shouts on the radio band as he ducks from one place of cover to the next, drawing very little fire in the process. "Athrun, lend me a hand?"
"Got it," Athrun replies immediately as he pops around the side of a heavy container and sights up one of the Earth Alliance soldiers. One burst missed, though the soldier did not pull back behind his cover and the second burst caused the back of his head to disappear in a puff of pink mist behind him. When his teammate tried boring in on Athrun, Rusty cleared his cover and gave him a triple in the chest; said soldier collapsed straight down and moved not a whit again, except to convulse twice and whizz himself. Both Athrun and Rusty darted out from their cover as one, sweeping left and right of their movement axis for anyone that might try to shoot them; when assured it was clear, the two pilots moved up to the waiting Marines at the front edge of the third carrier.
The third carrier was nothing special in and of itself, though one of the Marines did take several hits. The normal suit he was wearing did nothing to properly protect him from the 6.2mm rounds, leaving him without life by the time his body hit the ground. Yzak had the answer de rigeur for the Earth Alliance soldier, he shot under the edge of the staff car the soldier was hiding behind, causing him to collapse forward of the engine block from hits to his leg; Athrun finished him off with a pair to the head and dropped his empty magazine out for a fresh one. With that done, Yzak took the ladder up to the load bed to mount the third of the exposed Gundams while the Marines, Athrun and Rusty surged forward to the factory blocks.
Stiff resistance at the load doors gave the Marines more pause and an extra three casualties; Rusty got one, Athrun got part of two more and the Marine escorting them delivered the coup de grace with an offensive grenade that wiped out the remainder of the guards in the area. Even with the ground-level cleared out they still took and delivered casualties, as the two MS transports were veritably crawling with more Earth Alliance troops and they had something of a plunging field of fire to where the Marines were maneuvering (3). Despite the increasing casualties, Athrun, Rusty, and four Marines managed to get up to covered positions near the personnel doors to the factory block, which is what they wanted: controlled, defensible access to the last two Mobile Suits.
"For pathetic Naturals, they sure are having a good run of luck taking us out," Rusty declares as he counts the amount of bodies behind them that wore the green of ZAFT regulars. The total was not all that favorable to ZAFT, but the mission was paramount.
"It could be worse," Athrun grumps. "C'mon, we can enter through here and flank right," Athrun semi-orders as he trips the door open and checks around the corner with a small mirror plate. The presence of heavy equipment containers gave him a good field of cover immediately inside the door, but beyond that things were looking sparse.
"Wes, Kubo, work your way up and onto the gantries, see if you can get plunging fire positions on them. Don't do anything stupid, just get good positions and spray 'em down," the Marine commander orders.
"Yes sir!" the two Marines in question move for the ladders up to the gantries, which were thankfully protected from gunfire.
"I'll go first," Rusty says before moving into the factory block. The enemy was still firing, though at what was beyond Athrun since the six remaining ZAFT personnel not inside a MS already were accounted for...
Rusty moved right as was the plan, passing low behind a waist-high cargo crate to a larger material crate, then stood back up and loosed a few bursts of fire at some Earth Alliance soldiers. Once he drew fire to himself, the two Marines moved to the lower cargo crate and hunkered down behind it while Rusty threw a grenade high over his cover toward a concentration of enemy troops. "This must be where finesse goes out the window," Athrun mutters as he moves forward and begins suppressing fire on the right MS carrier. Four enemy soldiers were visible, two of them woefully exposed, and he did not hesitate to take advantage of their incompetence. In five seconds of fire those two went down, hard, one having lost a significant chunk of his head in the process.
The Marines made their presence known, one firing over the edge of the cargo container as Rusty continued moving right and around, ducking behind a staff car while the Marine Commander took up position where Rusty had been hiding. The Marine behind the low crate got one but himself was silenced as Athrun watched by no less than two shooters up on the MS carriers. "Rusty, we've got several still on the gantry to the left, and at least one on the right side," he declares.
"Got it, give me a moment and I'll clear off the right side," he pops up over the trunk of the car and looses one burst of 6.2mm rounds, but doesn't get his second trademark four-round burst off before the gun jams. "Damnit!" he half-shouts as he ducks back down, but not before something that immediately horrified Athrun happened: his helmet was struck by a round from the Earth Alliance soldier on the right MS carrier, gouging a serious chunk out of the top of it. "Whoa, man, that was freaking close!"
"Rusty, you all right?" Athrun asks, trying to control his heart from going completely out of control at the thought of losing a friend.
"Yeah, I'm still alive. My rifle is jammed solid, it'll take me a few to clear this one. Can you cover?"
"Better idea, here," Athrun kicks the rifle from the deceased Marine at the low crate over to Rusty. "I'll take down the soldier on the right-side gantry and draw their fire. When they start spraying me down, take advantage of it, repeat until we get 'em all," Athrun orders.
"Gotcha," Rusty replies. Athrun moved first, getting a clear shot at the soldier that was harassing Rusty, and took it. One shot, one kill; the contents of his head disintegrated into a pink mist that was spread liberally all over the side of the MS they were trying to capture. From there he turned on the two remaining on top of the left-side MS, unloading a suppressing burst of ten rounds on their position that definitely got their attention. As he ducked back behind the crate Rusty came around the side of the car's rear fender this time, drilling a pair of four-round bursts at their position and taking down the right-side of them with a pair of chest shots. He ducked back behind the car as the enemy in the orange jumpsuit focused in on him again, allowing Athrun to clear out and drop a series of three-round bursts at the soldier. Nothing contacted from his efforts, though it did succeed in drawing the attention of the enemy again, and this time Athrun paid for his gamble with a round striking the receiver area of his gun and rendering it inoperable. Rusty ducked out again, and this time the enemy was wise to their plan; Athrun watched in slow-motion as the soldier in the orange jumpsuit took aim at Rusty with a pistol as he took aim at the soldier with the heavy sub-machinegun. Ten rounds traded sides, though in the end Rusty won uncontested as the soldier's head was turned into a ghastly red mulch spread behind where standing in a cone for several meters, including on the face of someone that was standing on the MS but was unarmed. "Got the last! Area appears clear!"
"Go for the Mobile suit, Rusty, but watch your ass! There may be more of 'em!"
"Roger that!" Rusty shouts as he bolts from cover, sweeping right with his machine gun as Athrun moved to the dead Marine Commander and picked up his SMG to finish clearing the vicinity of the final MS.
We got 'em all! Athrun shouts inside his head. The plan called for them capturing three and destroying the other two, but scoring all five of the machines was a fortuitous victory on their part. With the SMG claimed, Athrun moved to the gantry carefully and leaped up on the MS Carrier. What he saw up there when he got there was the last thing he expected to see, especially see looking through an ACOG sight (4). "Kira?" he asks after a moment.
"A—Athrun?" the teenager kneeling next to the deceased Earth Alliance Officer asks. "But—"
"Get out of here, Kira," Athrun orders coldly. "You don't want a part of this. Get out, get to an evacuation shelter."
"Uh, Athrun?" Kira asks as he stands up.
"Go, Kira, before I drag you there," he orders more forcefully.
"Right," Kira replies before jumping off the side of the gantry to the ground. Athrun watched as he ran out of the factory block and toward more civilian areas. Unless someone else started shooting inside the colony, he would easily make it to the evacuation centers without undue harm. As Athrun looked away from where Kira had been running, he realized that the soldier's body was partially obstructing the cockpit access, so he grabbed the back of the obscenely orange jumpsuit and yanked...her...off the cockpit hatch. With some latent respect for even a dead Natural, he pulled her ID off and slid the body down the side of the MS before popping the hatch to the cockpit and jumping in.
"Damn, Athrun, she didn't look all that bad...for an Earth Alliance puke," Rusty declares on the radio frequency just after the hatch closes him into the cockpit.
"Rusty, for the last time, I am engaged already," Athrun notes drolly as he flips down the keyboard and begins modifying the Mobile Suit's OS to his specifications.
"I keep my options open," Rusty declares with a clear attitude of calmness on the subject.
"You are incorrigible, and slightly disgusting in terms of taste. She had at least ten years on you."
"Who was that kid, or do you know? Didn't look like military."
"Long story, Rusty. I'll explain when we get back to the Vesalius."
"You say so," Rusty mutters. "I'll wait here for you to get up and moving," he says.
"I'm up," Athrun says as the OS reboots, displaying General Unilateral Neuro-link Dispersive Autonomic Maneuver system. "Gundam?" Athrun mutters, reading the first letter of each word. "Gundam...sounds simple enough," Athrun declares with a little more gusto. As he stood the machine up he picked up the beam rifle for the unit, though unlike the other machine standing next to it there was no shield in his kit.
"Gundam, is it? Acronym for the OS full name? I like it, sounds powerful, spooky," Rusty declares. "What's your unit's designation?"
"X-105 Strike," Athrun says. "You?"
"X-303 Aegis," Rusty replies immediately. "Oh, wait, hold on," his machine changes color from slate gray-on-gunmetal gray to white-on-maroon. A moment thereafter a pair of missiles strike the chest of his MS and cause no damage whatsoever, not even a paint scratch. The beam rifle came up and took two shots, the first striking, the second also striking but grossly unnecessary. "Man, this thing is almost double faster than a standard GINN in terms of reaction speed and lock-on time."
"The Earth Alliance really pushed the envelope with these new models," Athrun says. "Mine even has a modular frame for add-on weapons and equipment packs."
"Well, where are the packs?" Rusty asks.
"I don't have a clue, probably on that Warship they built to carry these things," Athrun declares. "We'll worry about that later, let's get these two back to the ship." Athrun had stopped to spray down an enemy missile truck with his 75mm CIWS, efficiently shredding it into several large chunks and igniting its petrol-based fuel into a raging inferno on the concrete street.
"Roger that, I have the lead," Rusty declares as he jumps off. "Miguel, Rusty, we have all five machines. Mission accomplished, return to base."
"Any survivors among the Marines?" Miguel asks.
"Negative, none from our section. If any did survive it would have been with Yzak, Dearka or Nicol."
"Their section bought it as well," Miguel replies immediately. "A flanking attack by some pissed-off Earth Alliance troops got 'em all, but the Earth Alliance paid for it when Yzak got the Duel up and running." Miguel did not have to say how effective the CIWS guns in the head of the Duel would have been against unarmored Infantry. In point of fact, as Athrun was leaving the factory district he could see the said infantry's remnants, and it was not pretty whatsoever. "Continue destroying their transports?"
"Negative, return to base," Athrun orders. "We are done here, the Commander wants these machines back immediately."
"Roger that," Miguel replies. "Can't wait to see what those things are really worth," Miguel declares as his machine catches up to the speeding Gundams, barely.
" 'The Magic Bullet of Dusk' is about to get some stiff competition from the undergraduates," Rusty declares with a hint of a chuckle.
"If those things fight half as badass as they look, my poor customized GINN is toast," Miguel declares sourly. That was good for a laugh from Rusty, since Miguel's GINN was so heavily tweaked that even with a full combat load of Cattus antishipping recoilless rifle and Pardus intercept missiles it was still capable of outpacing a standard CGUE commander's mobile suit. The only problem with his modified GINN was that the damned thing spent more time in maintenance than in service.
They were approaching the airlock to exit the colony, and no sign of continued resistance from anything in the area. They knew they had not killed off everything Earth Alliance in the colony, there was still the new-model Warship at the other end of the colony to be dealt with, and without a doubt there was still Earth Alliance personnel here and there berthing or caught in non-essential areas, but ZAFT had effectively crippled the Earth Alliance G-weapons project in one stroke. "This will change the war for certain," Athrun declares.
"No doubt," Miguel says as the airlock doors close behind them. "All we have to do is take out that Warship, or even capture it would be just as good, and we have this tiger by the balls," he says staunchly. "No offense to Andrew Waltfeld, of course," he appends; Andrew Waltfeld was known as the 'Desert Tiger' for more than one reason, and even had his pilot's suit modified to a tiger-stripe pattern.
The external airlock doors opened up to space, allowing the three to take off for the Vesalius and Gammow which were holding station nearby the colony for the pickup of the machines. "Vesalius, this is Rusty Mackenzie in X-303 Aegis, requesting permission to land."
"X-303 Aegis, this is Vesalius, welcome back and congratulations. You are cleared for priority landing at this time," the Controller replies immediately.
"Vesalius, Athrun Zala in X-105 Strike reporting, requesting landing instructions," Athrun asks after Rusty gets halfway down the landing path.
"X-105 Strike, congratulations are in order. You are cleared to land, you are at gate 3 for parking. Commander Creuset, Vesalius Control, we confirm all five machines are here and accounted for. Mission accomplished."
"Commander Creuset to Vesalius, I am being engaged by one Moebius Zero unit at this time, I am unable to return. Be advised I will return when I have swatted this fly. Stand by for updates," and his radio link cuts out.
Athrun brought the Strike in for a landing deftly, very much surprised by how nimble it was for a completely prototype model made by someone who probably didn't have the first clue how to build a Mobile Suit. With a few steps backward guided by a marshaler on the ground, he was able to back into the needed cubicle and stop his MS in the proper place to park it. With that done, the crews immediately began opening the Strike up for connecting their analysis equipment. Athrun shut down the operating system and popped open the cockpit, kicking out of the enclosure and into the waiting arms of his technician team.
"Hell yes, man! We won!" Rusty declares, waiting for him outside the cockpit. "We completely hosed the Earth Alliance! Unhh!" Athrun and Rusty high-five, which had the strange effect of causing both to recoil away from each other in space. "This is so going to change the face of the war!"
"We won," Athrun replies; "but it's far from over. Now we have to stick it to the Earth Alliance."
Author's Chapter Afterword:
And this is where it begins.
One variable changes; how does the rest of the story change? You've seen part of that change already. No mobile forces to protect the Archangel; how will the Legged Ship fare in its battles to come? And how will ZAFT having all five Gundams change the face of the war?
If you are expecting me to play 'nice' in this, the fact that one of the Earth Alliance MCs is already dead should have disabused you of that idea fairly quickly. Though a lot of what is to come is going to be subject to the dice and therefore itself is variable, you can literally expect this one to be a very grim, bloody fic. There will be death. Lots of it. And it won't even be limited to the Earth Alliance.
I consider this one a bit of a cross-bred Fic compared to my other works. No, there will be no crossover elements, not even hints of it. I can write straight Fics, and this is going to be one of them. The crossbreeding in this one is the fantastic Sci-Fi of Gundam SEED (All the glitz, glamour, major explosions, etcetera) combined with cold, hard reality. Nothing says 'bloody' when you take a sci-fi that is already very bloody and add hints of real war to it. The other major change of this one is that I intend on keeping the chapter lengths short, preferably less than 10K words per chapter (as opposed to 15K for AAA and 20K plus for JW).
This is just the beginning. Expect a lot more to come.
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The Gripe Sheet:
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Footnotes:
(0): Oh yes, if I put a footnote in, even one in the story foreword, there will be something interesting about it. Or maybe not, unless you want to hear about the polar bear that walked into a bar with a penguin under one arm and a three foot sausage under the other...
(1): As gunfire consists of flying lead caused by violently expanding gases, when enough is used in a confined space the air pressure will increase unless there are safety devices to prevent such a happenstance in the ventilation systems. The bigger the gun, the more violently expanding gases released, so the use of a 76mm machine gun is going to cause some serious pressure spike in due course. The only question is how much expansion does it take?
(2): Offensive grenades have a thin wall designed not to fragment, that way a trooper would not frag himself or his teammates when in close contact. Defensive grenades have thicker walls that will fragment on detonation and are designed to be used from cover so the fragmentation does not kill the thrower when it blows.
(3): Plunging Fire is where fire comes down on a target from above or an angle, as opposed to enfilade fire which comes from the front of a column or grazing fire which sweeps down a whole side.
(4): ACOG sights are small, 4x-power scopes usually attached to assault rifles. Designed to be lightweight and powerful. Definitely not cheap. I looked at getting one for one of my rifles, and recoiled in horror at the price tag.