Warning klaxons blared in an abandoned hangar in the L1 colony cluster. A handful of technicians made their way toward the pressure door exits, securing tools and anything else that could possibly become hazardous upon the depressurization of the hangar. The harsh, white artificial lights died out, casting the hangar into darkness as the depressurization procedures continued. The heavy tang of vernier fuel hung in the air, accompanied by the warm-up hum of engines.
In the cockpit slung beneath the body of the high-speed shuttlecraft, the pilot went over the final preflight systems checks, feeding power into the engines, weapon systems, and atmospheric heat shield. On the ground below the cockpit, a white-haired man with mechanical eyes, a three-fingered right hand, and a cane in his left hand stared up at the pilot.
"Once you reach Earth, I'll contact you from time to time concerning targets for you to destroy."
"I understand," the pilot's feminine voice replied, her right hand testing the resistance of the main cannon's targeting stick. It was all information she already knew anyway, so she had no real reason to pay her controller any mind.
"Your main objective is the destruction of OZ targets and the avoidance of civilian casualties," the man continued, "but your absolute highest priority is to protect yourself and your mission, at all costs."
"Roger," she answered tonelessly. Letting go of the control levers, she brought up both hands to pull her long, light brown hair into a bun, then secure it in place with a rubber band. She picked up her helmet from her lap and lowered it over her head, sealing it to the neck of her flight suit.
"Operation Meteor will commence in one minute," a voice said over both the cockpit intercom and the speakers in the hangar. "Doctor J, please clear the area so we can finalize launch preparations."
"Hmph, I'm coming already," the labcoat-clad man, Doctor J, replied. As he started to walk away, he looked up one last time at the pilot strapped into her cockpit chair above him. "Good luck, Narusegawa."
The pilot's only reply was to tap the button to close and seal her cockpit from the outside world. As the doctor disappeared from view, the inner cockpit hatch sealed in place, followed moments later by the outer, heavily-armored hatch. Darkness filled the cockpit, broken only by the glow of her instrument panel.
Her internal viewscreens came online, one mounted directly in front of her, and two to either side. They currently displayed a one-hundred-eighty degree view of the darkened hangar.
"Hangar depressurization commencing."
There was no sound of air rushing out of the chamber as it depressurized, the soundproof cockpit easily blocked it out. The only thing she heard was the slight creaking of the shuttle's hull as it adjusted to the change in pressure. She reached forward, queuing up the power to the engines, and waited.
"Launch tunnel deploying."
A slight tremor ran through the shuttle as hydraulic lifts lowered the section of hangar that the shuttle rested on, down through the floor, and into open space. As the vista of stars burst into view on her viewscreens, she couldn't help but marvel at the beauty of it.
From where she sat, magnetically-attached to a secret launch platform extended from the side of the L1 colony, she felt like she could see the entire universe. All around her, hundreds of thousands of stars shined at her, unblinking due to the lack of atmosphere. Larger, moving points of light marked the locations of shuttles or Alliance Mobile Suits on deployment and the even bigger, static spots were other colonies.
And there, directly ahead of her, its mass darkening a large portion of the sky, was her target, Earth. She couldn't make out any distinguishing features due to the fact that she was on the planet's night side, but she could see the glimmering nighttime lights of the cities on her side of the planet, sparkling like jewels on a black velvet stand.
She had been to Earth, once, when she was two years old, but the memory of where she had gone and what she had done were not something she could pull from the recesses of her mind. As far as she was concerned, this would be her first trip to the mother planet. She couldn't wait.
And then reality intruded on her pleasant utopia, in the form of the voice from before, "Releasing magnetic locks. Commence, Operation Meteor!"
Her hands acted instinctively, a result of years of training. As the heavy thumps of the magnetic locks disengaging reached her, she engaged the vernier engines at full power, rocketing toward Earth on an autopilot course. The heavy acceleration pushed her back into her seat, but she slowly settled out as she became acclimated to the speed.
No Alliance Mobile Suit could hope to catch up to her, and none of their defense emplacements could track her. From now until the time she began her orbital descent, she was well and truly safe, cast adrift in her own world.
Releasing her grips on the control levers, she leaned back into her seat, laid her hands in her lap, and closed her eyes, relishing in the feeling of finally, truly flying after those years in simulators. Before long, a blissful sleep rose up to enfold her in its comfortable embrace.
---
In low Earth orbit, a civilian diplomatic shuttle on a return flight from the L1 colony cluster maneuvered into position to descend into the atmosphere. Firing breaking thrusters, the shuttle brought up its nose as it oriented itself in the proper glide path to avoid incineration.
Inside the passenger cabin, a young woman with long, dark brown hair pulled back into a braid gazed out the window at the planet rising up below. She cupped her chin in her left hand, resting her elbow on her chair's armrest as she stared out at the blue-and-green ball turning lazily below the shuttle.
A uniformed Alliance soldier drifted up to her row, floating easily in the low gravity within the cabin, and stopped himself by grabbing the headrest of an unoccupied seat nearby. "We're making the descent into the atmosphere now, Vice Foreign Minister Otohime," the soldier said.
Seated next to the girl, an older man in a business suit, with graying brown hair and a matching beard, nodded to the soldier. "Thank you," he said.
With a nod, the soldier pulled himself toward the cockpit.
The well-dressed man turned toward the younger lady sitting beside him. "Enjoying the view, Mutsumi?" he asked with a smile.
The brunette woman, Mutsumi Otohime, turned toward the man and nodded, smiling. "It's very lovely, Father," she replied. "I've missed home terribly. Do you think Tama-chan has been okay without me?"
The elder Otohime smiled and patted his daughter's arm. "I'm certain Tama-chan is just fine, and waiting for you to get home," he replied. "You're not upset that I had to spend so much time out here working?"
Mutsumi shook her head. "No, I understand that your job is very important. You are one of the only voices of reason left between Earth and the colonies, after all." She turned to look back out her window, and a flash of light outside caught her attention. "Oh, my! Is that a shooting star?"
Her father leaned his head down to get a look at the object out the window, and his brow furrowed. That's an atmospheric entry capsule, he thought to himself. Then it must be…Operation Meteor?
---
Higher in the Earth's orbit, in one of the Alliance's satellite tracking stations, a sensor crew watched the orbits of the near-Earth objects that had recently appeared with great interest. Five of them had emerged, apparently from behind the five different colony clusters, and were on a direct course for Earth.
"Moving object confirmed at LaGrange Point AX," one of the technicians stated, staring down into his sensors.
"So it's not just one?" the officer of the day asked, leaning over the man's shoulder.
"No sir, there appear to be five metal objects."
"Metal, huh?" There was silence for a few moments as the officer pondered that information, then shrugged. "Probably just debris or parts from an old mining satellite. Uranami is in the atmosphere, so let him know what we found."
"Yes, sir."
---
A blue-painted, delta-winged Specials Mobile Suit carrier orbited between the tracking station and the Otohimes' shuttle, waiting for the shuttle to descend so it could begin its own descent into planetary atmosphere.
Within the cockpit cabin, two black-uniformed Specials pilots sat boredly at their stations, cursing the timing of the Otohime shuttle's return to Earth. The pilot sat with his arms crossed, tapping his fingers idly against his upper arms, while the copilot/communications officer ran diagnostics checks. In the central seat behind them, a man in a red uniform top, white pants, and knee-high black boots quietly sat reading from a pamphlet. His most noticeable outfit piece was the white helmet he wore that covered the upper half of his head, complete with white-tinted lenses that made it difficult for someone to see his eyes without being right in his face.
The pamphlet in his hand, at first glance, appeared to be a set of routine orders. But upon closer inspection, it would be revealed that it was actually a calculus study guide. His right thumb concealed the property logo of Tokyo University.
A beep from the communications panel drew the copilot's attention, who accepted and screened the message. "Lieutenant Uranami, Surveillance is reporting five meteorites."
The helmeted man, Uranami, lowered the study guide and looked up. "Idiots," he said slowly. "Surveillance couldn't do their job with help from a spotter satellite. Do they really think a meteorite would ride the wave course to enter Earth's atmosphere?"
The copilot looked back at his superior. "So it's just what Headquarters said?"
Uranami nodded. "It's Operation Meteor, for certain." He took a moment to close the study guide and return it to one of the pockets in his uniform. "How many can we catch up with?"
Reaching toward the center console, the copilot called up a display to track the projected path of the five objects, all of them seeming to head for different sectors of the Earth. Sensible, considering that their points of origin were doubtless the geosynchronous-orbiting colonies. A few control manipulations plotted their own course compared to those of the objects', determining that one would pass right by them.
"Just one," the copilot answered. "The one heading for the Kanagawa Prefecture in Japan."
"That will be just fine," Uranami said. "One is all we need. A front-line soldier mustn't rush needlessly to battle."
"That's quite the bold statement, sir," the copilot said.
"As I said, I am a true soldier."
---
As the orbital insertion pod neared the terminator line between night and day, the sun peeked out from behind the curve of the Earth, brilliantly illuminating the pod as its autopilot carried it toward Japan. The automatic systems begin to disengage, sounding a gentle tone to get the pilot's attention.
But it's the viewscreens reproducing the forward camera views of the rising sun that awaken Narusegawa, her eyes opening slowly as she raises her head and focuses on her surroundings. Through the viewscreens, she can see the planet Earth dominating her forward view.
Wow, here already?
Lifting up her hands, she settled her right around the weapon control and her left onto the throttle. A quick check of her status revealed everything in the green, with just a minute or so until she has to take over control from the automatic pilot.
"All systems functioning," she said, for the sake of the battle recorder. "I'll commence operations in seven minutes."
A proximity alert sounded from the right side of the cockpit, flashing red warning lights up from the panel. The systems changed the image displayed on the right viewscreen to that of the Otohimes' shuttle, descending below her in the atmosphere.
"A civilian shuttle?"
She had no choice. The shuttle was an obstacle in her path, and any move to go around it meant risking damage to her craft, which was not something she wanted to do this early in the operation. Releasing the weapon control, she lowered her right hand to tap a switch grafted onto the console, opening up a hatch in the nose of her own atmospheric entry shuttle to reveal the barrel of a beam cannon.
"Relative speed to target, Zero-One-Five-Four-Five," she said. It was a civilian ship, she knew, and she did not want to cause civilian casualties, but some things had to happen in war. Still, she would have much preferred her first confirmed kill to be Alliance or OZ, not civilian.
Shaking her head, she tightened her grip on the weapon control. "Auto-lock engaged. Preparing to destroy the obstacle."
Another proximity alarm sounded, this one louder and accompanied by a larger array of lights. She glanced down, and bit back a curse. The louder alert was the result of hostile sensor painting.
"Alliance assault carrier?"
---
"We've caught up," the pilot of Lieutenant Uranami's carrier announced. "Bringing the target up onscreen."
Uranami looked down to the center console that now displayed a hazy, shaking image of Narusegawa's entry shuttle. The poor quality was a result of the holocamera viewing it at maximum range. The Specials commander smiled humorlessly. "So, that's their little flower, all ready to blossom into new battles," he said.
"He'll have to reduce speed," the copilot said. "There's a civilian shuttle ahead."
"What're the odds he'll shoot the shuttle down and keep going?" the pilot asked.
"He won't do that, now that we're watching him," Uranami calmly answered. "Remember, he's on a secret mission, and destroying a civilian craft won't exactly help him in that regard."
---
Narusegawa hammered her fist against the grafted switch, closing the cannon access hatch, and swore. "The Alliance is already onto me!"
The ambient temperature in the cockpit skyrocketed as the pod entered the Earth's atmosphere, a veil of flame surrounding the craft as the white hull of the shuttle glowed an angry red.
"Finally," Narusegawa breathed, turning down the environmental controls of her suit. "I've made it back to Earth…"
Now with the option of shooting down the shuttle thankfully removed, she knew she would have to risk some damage to her unit to slip past the civilian craft. With her left hand, she released the throttle control and tapped a few buttons.
Outside, maneuvering thrusters on the nose of the craft fired, changing the craft's angle of entry, and then the sextet of vernier engines mounted to the rear of the craft roared to white-hot life, propelling her ship down into the atmosphere at a steep angle.
Tightening her grip on the control units, Narusegawa stared ahead at her destination, the shimmering blue ocean just east of Japan, and sweated out her reentry.
---
"He must think the only way to keep this a secret is to destroy his craft," Uranami's copilot said. "But his speed is increasing; it looks like he's trying to break away."
"That's impossible," the pilot retorted. "There's no way he could survive that heat."
"Don't be so quick to assume, gentlemen," Uranami said, leaning back in his seat, lacing his fingers together over his right knee, and watching the streak of flame burning through the sky before them. "Our enemies are clearly very technologically-advanced."
---
By now, the heat of reentry was beginning to melt the leading edges of the atmospheric entry pod. Inside the cockpit, Narusegawa looked over the warning indicators, smirking morbidly. "Looks like it's time to get rid of this turtle shell," she said, tapping a series of buttons also grafted onto the cockpit.
A series of muffled bangs rocked the craft as the carefully-placed demolitions charges detonated, blowing away the outer shell of the entry capsule, leaving behind a sleek fighter-like craft of varied coloration. Its main feature was the long-barreled beam cannon that served as the fighter's "nose", and the thin, yellow-and-white wings it deployed to its sides.
Grinning, Narusegawa pushed the throttle all the way forward, sending the fighter rocketing forward the rest of the way into the atmosphere. "Let's see those Alliance losers catch me now," she said.
---
Uranami leaned forward in his seat, closely studying the multispectral scan of the fighter being displayed on the main monitor, broken down into a simple blueprint-design of the craft. Its primary features included radar-absorbant construction material, a powerful engine system, and variable-geometry wings.
"So, the enemy's new weapon is a fighter," Uranami said.
"It moves just like a bird…" the copilot commented.
"We've reached cruising altitude," the pilot announced, flipping the switch to lower the heat shields covering the cockpit viewports. "We can proceed with the attack."
Far ahead of them, the fighter was a mere speck of light.
"Let's give him a wake-up call with the machine guns," the copilot said, reaching for his weapon controls.
"No," Uranami interrupted. "No machine gun. Shoot him down!"
"Lieutenant?"
"We were told that the objective was to bring in the weapon," Uranami said. "But it's not the weapon, it's the pilot inside that matters."
---
Narusegawa's control panel screeched a warning of a hostile weapons lock just as the first volley of heavy cannon fire streaked over the topside of her fighter. She instinctively threw her craft into a barrel roll, losing hundreds of meters of altitude as incoming fire shot harmlessly past her.
Pulling out of the roll, she glanced contemptuously back in the direction of the enemy craft. "I'll escape without a doubt," she said, smirking. A beeping sound drew her attention to the mission monitor, which was scrolling new information. "Alter mission?" She paused, reading the data. "That ship's carrying Mobile Suits. By speed estimates, it's probably got three Suits on board. Not a bad score for my first mission."
With a controlled thruster burst and a twist of her control stick, she had reversed direction in the course of less than a hundred meters and was now roaring back toward the Alliance carrier. "No problem, I'll take out that carrier before heading down to my insertion point."
---
Uranami was on his feet and heading toward the cockpit exit as soon as he noticed the change in the craft's course. Behind him, the pilot and copilot were both staring at their instruments. "Enemy fighter has turned around and is heading straight for us," the pilot reported.
"Is Leo ready for use?" Uranami asked simply.
"You're going out in a Mobile Suit?" the copilot asked.
"Of course."
"Wouldn't the Aries light, speed models be more effective than the ground-based Leo?"
Uranami smiled coldly. "My Leo is plenty fast enough." As he passed into the Mobile Suit bay, he called back over his shoulder, "Besides, if it's a fight he wants, I should at least give him my best."
Barely a minute later, the rear loading hatch of the carrier opened, deploying the ubiquitous green Leo on magnetic tracks. This unit, Uranami's personal Leo with a heavy-artillery dober gun, fired its thrusters to orient itself in midair.
"Lieutenant Uranami, I'll send backup as soon as the Aries are ready."
"Roger," Uranami answered, his voice drowned by a proximity alert tone from over his head. The helmeted warrior looked up to see a glint of light rushing down at him. "From above?"
His Leo spun in place, belying the natural awkwardness of the lower-mobility Mobile Suit, and oriented the dober gun, firing a condensed shell of high-explosive energy up toward the enemy fighter. The shot passed the fighter, but its proximity sensors caused it to detonate in the wake of the craft.
Ignoring the near miss, the multicolored fighter came directly at Uranami's Leo as if intending to ram him, but a deft application of thrust pulled the ace pilot clear of the collision. He spun, carefully lining up the dober gun, and fired again.
This time, the shell detonated against the rear drive system of the fighter, blackening the red drive ports and causing the three right engines to flare out. Trailing smoke, the fighter spiraled down into the atmosphere.
"Nice shot, Lieutenant Uranami!"
The ace pilot scowled. "So much for that guy," he said. "That was far too easy."
"Lieutenant, shall we go after him with the Aries once you return with the Leo?" another pilot asked.
Uranami looked to the viewscreens on either side of him to see a pair of streamlined, black high-mobility Aries units hovering beside him. One wielded a missile pod, while the other carried a simple assault rifle and parachute pack.
"We'll follow in the carrier and capture him on the ground," Uranami replied. "It's our chance to find out more about Operation Meteor."
"Any chance he'll blow himself up?" the pilot of the carrier asked.
"Unlikely," Uranami answered, focusing his attention on the distant form of the falling fighter. "After all, he's made it this far to Earth. If I were in his position, I wouldn't commit suicide without setting foot on it."
---
Suicide was the farthest thing from Narusegawa's mind. She had hastily determined that the right drive system of her fighter was shot, and that she'd have to take drastic measures to avoid a fatal crash.
"I really didn't want to reveal myself this early in the game, but…"
Reaching up her right hand, she grabbed a lever mounted in the ceiling and pushed it forward, while simultaneously depressing the left rudder pedal. And then the phrase 'variable geometry' took on an entirely new meaning.
The forward section of the fighter pitched down as the wings folded upward to come to rest ninety-degrees closer to each other than their previous configuration. The engine section twisted one hundred and eighty degrees, the engines themselves straightening out and shifting their formation.
What had minutes ago been an oversized fighter craft was now a massive, white-red-and-blue Mobile Suit, complete with a red tower shield attached to its left arm, and the beam cannon held standalone in its right hand.
---
"It transformed into a Mobile Suit!" Uranami cried, shocked beyond comprehension. With a few input commands, the sensors focused in on the retreating form of the newly-revealed Mobile Suit, studying it intricately.
"What kind of machine is that?" one of the Aries pilots asked.
"I have no idea," Uranami answered, truthfully. He grimaced. I thought only the Alliance and OZ had the technology to create Mobile Suits…
"Lieutenant, leave him to us," the other Aries pilot said, attaching the parachute pack to the back of Uranami's Leo.
"Do it," the ace pilot answered simply.
With that, the two Aries engaged their thrusters and roared down in pursuit of the free-falling Mobile Suit, firing furiously down at it. Bullets from the rifle Aries' gun pinged off the armor of the blue-and-white Suit, but a quartet of missiles from the other Aries had a decidedly more satisfactory effect.
The four missiles slammed into the back of the craft, directly between its wings, blowing off chunks of armor and causing smoke to issue from the Suit. But its only response to the assault was to roll out of control through two rotations before the pilot regained control and once more turned its back on the incoming enemies.
"He's intense," Uranami muttered to himself.
Its missile pod empty, the second Leo switched to the rifle hanging from a wing hardpoint and joined its comrade in raining a hailstorm of fire down on the enemy Mobile Suit. After several moments, the enemy finally reacted, turning its humanoid head to 'stare' back at the Specials craft.
"It moved," one of the pilots noted.
"Forget it, just shoot!"
The enemy Mobile Suit turned to face the two Aries, leveling its massive beam cannon at them. The weapon's emitter glowed with golden energy for a moment before a tremendous beam of golden energy roared out of the weapon, spreading wider as it shot out to engulf the two Mobile Suits. The lightly-armored Aries units' armor immediately began to warp and melt away under the assault, until finally the two Suits detonated, filling the sky with a tremendous pair of explosion clouds.
---
A cruel grin spread itself across Narusegawa's otherwise-beautiful features as her shoulders began to tremble. She began to chuckle, low and quiet at first, until a few moments passed and she had thrown her head back, laughing loudly and harshly at the fate of the two pilots.
Suddenly, she regained control of herself, narrowing her eyes to menacing slits as she glared at the only remaining Mobile Suit on the radar. "One more to go…"
---
"He blew away two Aries with one shot?" Uranami uttered, aghast. Then, despite himself, a grin crept across his face and an appreciative note wormed its way into his voice. "Not too shabby."
Simultaneously detaching the parachute pack and the dober gun, Uranami sent his Mobile Suit into a freefall toward the immensely-powerful enemy craft, his unit's right hand reaching behind the round shield attached to its left arm.
---
Twisting the weapon control stick in her right hand, Narusegawa centered the targeting reticle of her beam cannon on the falling Leo, waiting for the green crosshairs to flash red and signify a targeting lock. Just as she tightened her finger on the trigger, the Mobile Suit shot to the side, easily avoiding the energy burst fired from her cannon.
As the Leo reoriented on her, its right hand shot away from the left arm, drawing and igniting a red beam saber. At this close range, she knew her beam cannon would be ineffective. The Alliance Mobile Suit reared back as it reached her, then swung the beam sword down for her Suit's head.
Reacting instinctively, she sent her own Suit's left hand striking out, catching the Leo's wrist and preventing its beam sword from coming down any further. She didn't realize her mistake until the enemy unit jammed its left arm up under her right, preventing her from moving that arm and denying her the use of the beam cannon.
Swearing, she jerked her control sticks to try and shake off the Leo, but it was no use; the thing was grappled tightly to her. She watched helplessly as the Leo's cockpit opened up, revealing a red-and-white clad Specials soldier stepping out onto the hatch, wearing a parachute. The enemy pilot tossed a salute in her direction, before leaping clear of the tangled Mobile Suits and deploying his parachute.
And then it felt like she had slammed back-first into a solid brick wall. She slung forward in her seat, her restraints fighting to hold her back, and her head smashed into the control console.
The last thing she saw before falling unconscious was the ocean water rising up in the images projected onto her viewscreens.
---
Uranami watched passionlessly as his Leo and the unidentified enemy Mobile Suit sank into the ocean, out of sight. It was a shame; he would've loved to have gotten his hands on that fine machine to study.
"Lieutenant Uranami, are you alright?"
Reaching down, he retrieved his emergency comlink and held down the transmit button. "Yeah. Sorry to worry you. I did everything I could."
His subordinate wisely chose not to answer that remark. "We've completed a full analysis."
"And?"
"Judging by the strength and resilience of the enemy Mobile Suit, it could only be made of Gundanium alloy."
Beneath his helmet, Uranami's eyes widened. "So then… it was a Gundam," he said. He looked down at the ocean below; it showed no signs of the precious cargo it had absorbed. "The Mobile Suit might be undamaged, but that reckless pilot won't have survived."
A flash of blue from the corner of his eye drew his attention to his carrier, which was swooping in to pick him up. "The Marina carrier group has offered to recover the unregistered Mobile Suit."
"Let them do as they wish. Tell them it sank east of the Kanagawa Prefecture in Japan." As he returned the comlink to a uniform pocket, Uranami laughed aloud. "They offered to bring it up? There's no bright future for soldiers scurrying for their reward."
---
In the arrival terminal of the Hinata Regional Spaceport, Mutsumi closed her eyes and calmly focused on blocking out the voices of the throng of reporters surrounding herself and her father. It was always like this, wherever they went, and it sometimes took everything she had to refrain from lashing out at them. As the escalator carrying them down to the lower level hummed beneath their feet, she only hoped that there wasn't a larger crowd waiting below.
"Mister Otohime, what was discussed at the Colony Summit?"
"What are the colonies' demands to the Alliance?"
"Any comments, Vice Foreign Minister Otohime?"
Camera flashes went off around them like shots from a firing squad, but Mutsumi's father simply stared directly ahead of him, not responding to any of the questions.
"Here on Earth, people are concerned about when the colonies will attack."
Mutsumi scoffed internally. The colonies would never attack the Earth, she thought. They only want peace and to be left alone by the Alliance. If these people would only understand that, then this situation wouldn't be happening.
"It's a hostile situation with the colonies, isn't it?"
"Minister Otohime, people are very concerned. What kind of outcome can you predict? Do you think there's going to be a war?"
"Please, Vice Foreign Minister, the press would like a statement."
The entourage reached the bottom of the escalator, and Mutsumi and her father stepped off into the lower concourse. At first, she assumed that the press would continue to hound them like dogs after a steak, but when she noticed that they were hanging back, she looked up to see why.
In front of them, a middle-aged man in an Alliance officer's uniform stood flanked by two security soldiers, all of them visibly armed. The officer gestured to his left. "Vice Foreign Minister Otohime, we have arranged military transport for you. Please proceed this way."
"Now?" the elder Otohime asked. "I can't do that. I have some things to take care of for my daughter's birthday."
The officer nodded agreeably. "I've arranged a separate vehicle for your daughter."
"Don't worry about me," Mutsumi said to her father, smiling warmly. "I can find my own way."
"Are you sure?" he asked.
The brunette nodded. "Yes, I'll be fine. I know my way around Hinata just fine."
A bit reluctantly, her father nodded and turned to the officer. "Very well, then," he said. "Let's go."
The officer nodded in return, then led her father outside. The two soldiers prevented the press from following. Outside, Mutsumi's father and the officer stepped into the vehicle, which quickly departed.
Turning away, Mutsumi walked in the other direction, clasping her hands back together as she wandered through the streets of the hot springs resort town of Hinata. As she often did when walking alone, she allowed her mind to drift aimlessly, thinking of anything and nothing at the same time.
"Oh my, that's right," she said suddenly. "My birthday is coming up." Her right hand came up and touched her forehead in that way she did when she'd forgotten something or was apologizing for a temporary lapse in judgment. "Silly me for forgetting…"
A shadow fell over her, causing her to look up and blink. "Tama-chan?" But what she saw was a massive military Mobile Suit airlift plane, heading toward the west, into the setting sun. "Oh, just a military plane. I guess I should probably go home. It's getting late."
As she started to walk forward, something caught her attention out of the corner of her eye and she looked down toward the shore. What she saw caused her to gasp. There, washed up on the beach, still occasionally being lapped by the incoming waves, was a figure clad in a full flight suit and helmet.
"Oh, my!" she exclaimed, then rushed down the hill to the beach. Upon reaching the downed figure, she rolled the person onto their back and spent three minutes figuring out how to release the neck seals on the helmet.
Having accomplished that, she pulled the helmet off, revealing the face of a lovely young woman with light brown hair pulled up into a loose bun, and two runaway strands of hair poking up from her head like antennae.
Mutsumi smiled and poked at one of them impulsively. "Oh, my, she has bad hair like me," the darker-haired woman said, reaching up to flick her own disobedient hair strands. "But I wonder why this cute lady is in a military flying suit?"
As she reached out to poke at her hair strands again, the woman's eyes shot open and looked around wildly, like a caged animal expecting a whip to connect with its backside at any moment. The woman's eyes settled on Mutsumi, and in an instant she leapt to her feet, using her left hand to cover her face.
"Oh my, you should be careful," Mutsumi said, smiling warmly.
"Did you see?" the woman hissed.
"See what?" Mutsumi asked, tilting her head to the side.
Snarling, the woman reached over with her right hand, flipping open an access panel to a box mounted on her flightsuit's torso. Mutsumi caught sight of a red button surrounded by a yellow and black warning label, just before the woman jammed her thumb against the button. Lowering her left hand from her face, she slammed her fist into a panel on her right forearm.
The panel on her chest exploded, pitching the woman back several feet to land on her back in the sand. Mutsumi wasn't aware of it, but the other woman had attempted to activate a suicide device.
Unfortunately for her, the device had sent its explosive energy outward, not in, and did no actual harm to her. She sat up, looking down at the charred patch of her suit where the device had been, and snarled angrily.
Standing up, she rushed past Mutsumi, knocking the other woman down in the process, and ran up the hill to the road running by the beach. She stopped in the path of a passing ambulance, which slammed on brakes to avoid hitting the woman. She ran to the right side of the vehicle and reared back her fist, slamming it with all her might into the window. The driver, having assumed that a young lady lacked the power to punch through a Plexiglas window, was unpleasantly surprised when the window shattered on impact, spraying him and his partner with glass shards.
The woman wrenched open the door, then grabbed the driver by the collar and pulled him out. Jumping inside, she had only to glare at the other emergency medical technician for him to leap out as well, then she slammed the door shut and threw the vehicle into gear, tearing off down the street.
Down on the beach below, Mutsumi sat up dazedly, holding a hand up to her head. "Oh my, where am I…?"
---
In a distant part of the world, a tall man in a blue uniform top, white pants, and knee-high black boots lowered the small binoculars he had been using to watch the opera before him from his seat high above the stage. "You say you lost three Mobile Suits in combat against a single enemy?" he asked. "That's not like you to be so careless, part-timer."
From the videoscreen on the table beside the man, Lieutenant Uranami stood in the cockpit cabin of his assault carrier, leaning on the pilot's chair as he made his report. "We were up against a Mobile Suit made out of Gundanium alloy," the helmeted man said calmly.
The other man focused his attention directly on him. "You're joking."
Uranami shook his head. "Imagine the fallout that would happen if it turns out to have been made by the colonies."
"Something like this wouldn't have happened if we'd been in OZ fifteen years ago, part-timer," the man said, stroking his chin thoughtfully.
Uranami chuckled. "Fifteen years ago, I was still making kid promises in sandboxes. I don't think it would have made a difference."
The other man laughed. "Oh yeah, I forgot that you're not as old as you look when you put that mask on. Say, don't you have some studying to do? The next mock exam is coming up in a few weeks."
"My kid dreams and promises take a backseat when I'm needed to fight, Colonel Noriyasu. You know that."
"Of course, of course, part-timer," Noriyasu replied. Then he sobered, and his face lost its amused expression. "So, it seems that the Alliance's surveillance was far from anything sufficient."
"Gundams are on Earth," Uranami said with a nod. "The Alliance's Marina is on the way to recover the sunken Gundam."
Noriyasu nodded and leaned back in his seat. "Okay, just leave it to my men. I'll send in some undersea recovery specialists and you can take over from there."
"Understood."
"I suppose this means I'll have to let Sarah stay at the Hinata apartments a little longer than anticipated," Noriyasu said. "There's nothing much we can do about it, so let's just try and get this thing taken care of as quickly as possible so we can get things back to normal."
"I'm waiting for that day to come," Uranami said, then ended the transmission.
---
In western North America, work continued as usual in an Alliance Mobile Suit production factory. This factory was dedicated primarily to the construction of Leo-class Mobile Suits, and as such only used the older-model machines for patrol and defense.
Suddenly, an explosion broiled up in the middle of the factory floor, destroying dozens of incomplete Suits and killing hundreds of workers. Red emergency lights came on as a thick wave of black smoke filled the building.
Two security Leos marched into the power generator area, scanning the surrounding shadows for any hint of danger. "Are we under attack?" the lead unit ignorantly called out.
His answer came in the form of something slashing completely through his Mobile Suit, severing both arms and bisecting it in the cockpit region. Its power core compromised, the Mobile Suit detonated, consuming the pilot in a plasma firestorm. The other Leo turned, looking for the source of the attack, when it too found itself cleaved asunder from right shoulder to waist. Its severed edges sparking electricity, it likewise exploded.
The highlight of the explosion revealed a third Mobile Suit standing amidst the ruins of the first two. It was black in color, more humanoid in appearance than the Leo units, and sported an energy scythe as the weapon that had downed the two Leos.
The Mobile Suit drew the scythe back in its right arm, then swung it forward, cleaving through the turbines generating power for the factory. Sparks flew from the machine, but it still continued to stubbornly work. The attacking Mobile Suit drew its weapon across its body, then slashed horizontally outwards, this time destroying the power core.
In the cockpit of the Mobile Suit, a woman with short, light blonde hair and fox-like eyes viewed the devastation before her with a small smile on her face. "Kitsune here!" she said with a heavy accent. "I've trashed this factory, so now all I've gotta do is cut my way out!"
---
On the other side of the world, in northern Europe, ball-shaped explosion clouds and heavy machine gun fire lanced out of an Alliance-controlled military spaceport. A number of Leo and Tragos heavy artillery units had formed up outside the hangars, firing into the distance at an approaching assailant.
"This is the Dover Base reporting," a technician in the control tower called over a wide-spectrum frequency. "We're under sudden enemy attack."
"Sudden enemy attack? Who's attacking?"
"I don't know!"
A Tragos heavy artillery unit fired its shoulder-mounted artillery cannons at the attacker, but they exploded behind the attacking Mobile Suit, a black-and-white unit sporting twin sickles as its main weapon. As the backwash of the artillery fire died out behind the Mobile Suit, a feminine voice called out to the defenders.
"Throw down your weapons and surrender, and I'll spare your lives!"
"Fire, fire!" one of the Leo units called as they redoubled their efforts.
The attacking Mobile Suit seemed to shake its head before it roared forward on its vernier boosters, rushing the defenders' line with its sickles drawn across its chest. As it reached the defense line, its right arm shot out, the razor-edged blade of the titanium sickle cutting the Tragos artillery unit into two halves. The left arm also lashed out, slashing off the upper right section of the nearest Leo.
As heavy machine gun fire from the remaining Leos pelted off the machine's armor, leaving minor dings and scratches, it turned toward the fuel depot that the Leos were viciously defending. A pair of short-range missiles shot out of launchers attached to the collar area of the Mobile Suit, slamming into the fuel depot and destroying it completely. The resulting explosion wiped out the defense line, and left the attacking Mobile Suit standing in a sea of flames.
Inside the cockpit, a young-looking girl with short blue hair looked over the devastation she had wrought, and shook her head sadly. "Shinobu Maehara reporting," she said to her battle recorder. "Spaceport successfully destroyed." Then she lowered her voice and said to the fallen enemies, voice quivering, "I told you, you should have surrendered."
---
In the Sahara desert of Northern Africa, a troop of Leo units stood amongst the sand dunes, searching for the atmospheric entry capsule that had gone down in the area. Unknown to them, a number of Mobile Suits, looking as if their design had been based on a turtle, were hidden behind nearby dunes and in sand traps, waiting for the opportunity to attack.
"You're sure the enemy capsule went down in this area?" the commander of the Leo troop asked one of his lieutenants. "There's nothing here!"
The visual sensor of the lead unidentified Mobile Suit flashed red, indicating that it had received the attack order. It shot to a standing position, sand streaming off of its lowered rifle, and let out a battle cry that sounded like "Myuh!" but was, in all actuality, the order to attack.
It opened fire on the Leos, as did the rest of its comrades, now rising up from the sand traps and from behind the sand dunes, sending a wall of incoming fire straight at the Alliance Mobile Suits.
A Leo near the commander exploded, rocking the man's Mobile Suit. "What is it? What's happening?"
"Enemy attack! Enemy atta–" The soldier's panicked outcry was cut off by his Leo exploding.
Explosions rose up from all sides as the commander and his lieutenant rushed out of the ambush, sliding their Mobile Suits down a tall, adjacent sand dune. "We're surrounded," the commander snarled. "Who are they?"
The commander had landed facing back in the direction of the enemy attackers, while the lieutenant had faced the direction they were going, and seen what was waiting for them. "C-Captain!"
The commander now turned to see a red-and-white Mobile Suit standing before them, a massive Gatling gun mounted to its left arm, and missile launchers attached to both shoulders and legs. "What on Earth?"
"Ahh, so you survived my Mecha-Tama assault force!" an accented female voice called out to them. "That's very impressive! But unfortunately for you, now that you've seen me, I can't allow you to leave here alive."
The Mobile Suit raised its left arm, the barrels of the Gatling gun already spinning, and it opened fire on the two Leo units, raining a hailstorm of deadly beam bursts down on them. Both units collapsed to their knees under the strain of the attack and detonated.
In the cockpit of the heavily-armed Mobile Suit, a tan-skinned girl with blonde hair pulled up into two ponytails grinned madly as she sent her unit marching up the dune to join her comrades in mopping up the survivors.
"This is battle Zero-Zero-One," she said aloud. "Pilot's name, Kaolla Su!"
---
In the Sea of Japan, a pair of Alliance military cruisers burned brightly in the dark night, victim to a sudden and devastating attack. But yet even now, that attack was not complete.
An explosion broiled up from the deck of the lead ship as a white and blue Mobile Suit drew back a draconic claw mounted to extendable arm sections. Aside from the dragon head on its right arm, the most remarkable feature of the machine was the huge, solid titanium katana strapped to its left hip.
As the second cruiser capsized and began to slip beneath the waves, the Mobile Suit retracted the dragon head, turned toward the remaining portion of the command tower on the bridge it was standing on, and sent the fanged weapon careening into the tower.
Overhead, a pair of reconnaissance jets passed over the scene, transmitting aerial photographs of the Mobile Suit back to their home base. And it was good that they were transmitting in flight, as the machine spotted them and withdrew its dragon head. The head folded back over the right arm, revealing a humanoid hand and arm beneath it that clasped the sheathed katana.
A feminine voice from the machine shouted, "ZANMAKEN!" as the sword was drawn out of the sheath and slashed in the direction of the two craft at an inhuman speed.
At first, the pilots of the reconnaissance fighters found it funny that the Mobile Suit pilot would attempt to strike them with a sword from five hundred feet up. Then they noticed the twin waves of energy rising through the air toward them.
With no time to react, the ki energy waves of the 'Boulder-Splitting Sword' attack reached the jets and passed seemingly-harmlessly between them, causing the pilots to blink, let out a held breath, and thank the gods that the enemy Mobile Suit's pilot was not only dumb, but couldn't aim either.
Then the two pilots heard a series of sounds of shrieking metal, and looked back to find the wings and tail sections of their jets disappearing, torn away by the attack. Screaming in terror, the jets, now resembling passenger-carrying missiles, plummeted toward the ocean below.
On the deck of the cruiser, now slowly beginning to sink, the Mobile Suit drew its sword across the sheath, then sheathed the blade and stared at the point of the ocean where the jets had gone down. Inside the cockpit, a young woman in a white gi and red hakama, with long, night-black hair, stared impassively at the devastation around her.
"I am Aoyama Motoko," she said calmly. "I do not hide from my enemies. This battle was over before it began."
---
Night had fallen on Hinata as Uranami's assault carrier skimmed the surface of the coastal waters as it approached the very all-purpose port that Mutsumi had discovered Narusegawa at.
With the craft on autopilot approach, boredom had again set in within the craft. "Haven't the search troops arrived yet?" the copilot asked.
Uranami, who had been studying the printed reconnaissance photos from the two destroyed jets, gave the conversation between the two pilots only half of his attention. He was more focused on absorbing every detail of the Mobile Suit in the pictures, comparing it to the one he had fought.
The similarities between the two were easy to spot, but so were the many differences. The unit he was now looking at had no visible ranged offensive weaponry, excepting that nasty variable-length dragon crusher. It also lacked the red tower shield of the previous unit, replacing it with a smaller circular shield on its left arm. Furthermore, it carried a full-scale sword on its left hip, something that his previous adversary decidedly lacked.
"They say they won't get to this area for another two hours," the pilot said.
The copilot scoffed. "The hell's taking them so long?"
Uranami didn't raise his head, and the raising of his eyes from the photographs was imperceptible behind his mask. "Don't get so worked up about it," he chided calmly. "The Gundam won't go anywhere. And besides, the water is deep in this area, so a search would take more time."
The ace pilot stood up, switching the photos to his left hand, and took the two steps separating him from the pilots' seats, leaning on the copilot's seat with his right hand as he held out the photographs. "In the meantime, have a look at something interesting."
Taking the photos, the copilot looked at the first one, which showed an explosion cloud blossoming from the bridge of the cruiser the Mobile Suit had been standing on. In that picture, though, the Suit itself was a tiny speck of white overridden by the black and orange explosion.
"What's this?"
"An OZ reconnaissance flight took these before we lost contact with them. Look at the next one."
Obediently flipping the picture, the copilot's eyes widened at the zoomed-in photo of the Mobile Suit itself, its arm disappearing inside the dust cloud from the explosion.
"Looks an awful lot like the one we encountered, doesn't it?"
"You mean there are two of these things?" the copilot asked in disbelieve.
Uranami shook his head and smiled coldly. "No, there appear to be more," he said. "There are reports coming in that an OZ Mobile Suit factory, a spaceport, and troops searching for a capsule, much like ourselves, all came under attack and have been annihilated."
The copilot counted on his fingers. "So there are four?"
"Five," Uranami corrected, "in total, if you count the one that sank." He stepped back, turning to look in the direction they had encountered the Gundam in, as if expecting it to appear behind them. "Consider us fortunate. We made it out alive after an encounter with a Gundam."
---
The next day, all seemed as if the fiasco with the Gundam attacks had been nothing more than a dream. While the military forces of the Alliance continued to buzz about the attacks, the sleepy hot springs town of Hinata was unconcerned with what had occurred practically right on their doorstep.
A female figure in a simple yellow shirt and light red skirt crested the final step leading up to the Hinata apartments. She traveled light, nothing more than a simple travel backpack filled with essentials.
She leaned her head back to stare up at the building before her. So, this is where I'll be staying… she thought to herself.
"You must be the new tenant?"
She turned around at the voice to find a slightly-older looking woman standing before her, wearing a white apron over a dark brown sweater with the sleeves rolled up, and simple jeans. A half-smoked cigarette protruded between her lips.
"Yes, I am," she said, nodding politely. "I'm Naru. Naru Narusegawa."
"Welcome to the Hinata apartments, Naru," the other woman replied. "I'm Haruka Urashima, the acting landlady until my nephew returns."
Naru blinked, wondering if her hearing was already going bad. "Excuse me, did you say 'nephew'? Isn't this an all-girls dormitory?"
Haruka winced slightly. "Well, yes it is, but the owner of the Hinata, my mother and his grandmother, left the place to him when she went off on a world hot springs tour. So he's the landlord until she gets back. He's a nice guy, very responsible, so I doubt you'll have any problems with him."
Naru nodded slowly. It wasn't like she could go anywhere else. She needed a base of operations, at least until she could recover her Gundam. "Well, as long as he's responsible, it should be fine," she said.
Nodding, Haruka held a set of keys out to the younger woman. "You'll be staying in room 304," she said. "Your stuff arrived earlier and I already moved it in for you."
Naru smiled. "Thank you."
With that, she turned and entered the Hinata. The first thing she noticed was how desolately-quiet it was. She supposed it could have been the result of there being no other tenants, or the other tenants all being away. In all truth, she preferred the silence of the building. It made it easier for her to concentrate, and decide on a plan of action for recovering or, if necessary, destroying her Gundam.
She made her way up the stairs and to the third floor, then down the hall to her room. Sliding open the door, she set her backpack on the ground, and stepped into her room. It was a fairly-large room, with a full-sized walk-in closet and plenty of open space.
As she inspected her room, she noticed a plywood board laying loosely on the ground. Curious, she walked over to the board and leaned down to pick it up. Beneath it was a hole in her floor, that went all the way down into the room below hers.
"That's pretty dangerous, having a hole in the middle of the floor," she said. "But I guess the landlord has his reasons for keeping it."
Replacing the wooden board, she looked around the room until she found her boxes of stuff, neatly packed into the closet. Kneeling down next to the boxes, she opened them one by one until she found what she was looking for.
She reached into the box and withdrew a yellow stuffed doll that appeared to be well-loved, but also well cared-for. Wrapping her arms around the doll, she gave it a tight squeeze and rested her chin on its head.
"Well, I finally made it back to the Earth," she said aloud. "My first mission sucked, though. I only got two out of three enemy machines, I didn't get the carrier base, and I lost my Gundam because I was overconfident. And to top that off, some girl saw my face, and my suicide kit didn't work properly."
She groaned, then turned her face down and buried it into the doll's soft felt. "I must be the worst pilot alive," she muttered, her voice muffled by the doll.
To be continued...
---
The Alliance's Marina has sent out troops to find the sunken Gundam, but OZ's Uranami was the first to find the Gundam, using the Cancer Mobile Suit.Naru must destroy the Gundam before anyone gets their hands on it. But, in the dark ocean depths, another Gundam shadow appears.
Next, on Shooting Stars Episode 2: The Gundam Deathscythe.