(Jokers Wild, Set 2, Chapter 3: Planning Stages)

(22 August CE 72, 1400 Hours UTC)
(Mendel Colony, Mendel Administration Building, Floor 7 Conference Room)

"Look, as of right now the law does not care how this material got here, who put it here, who claims it is here, or who claims that they own it. Material abandoned in place due to the processing of a war, regardless of the war or the parties involved, falls under salvage regulations clauses of Admiralty Law as recognized by all six of the star empires of the Star League. Under such law, any material claimed as salvage is automatically recognized as salvage as of the time that it was claimed if no clear possession was possible by the original owning party. In this case, when we claimed salvage rights of the colonies in Lima–four, the corporations that had initially constructed these colonies had all gone bankrupt due to losses incurred by the destruction of most of those colonies and the subsequent abandonment of others due to the ongoing war. Additionally, at the time of that abandonment, no effort had been made for other corporations to purchase or otherwise transfer those assets, as no record of transaction in this fashion existed in anybody's system until a week ago, which is unsurprisingly postdated to show slightly after the last of the colony corporations went bankrupt. That, good sir, falls under the heading of wire fraud among the Star Empires. If you men wish to continue this claim, I'll go ahead and post your information as you have written out and begin proceedings for a claim of holding. I will then proceed to have each and every one of you arrested for wire fraud. Is that how you wish to end this?"

Of course, every man at the table railed against his accusations, though not out of inaccuracy in his statements. They knew they had been caught in the process of attempting to defraud Mendel and they knew he was not bluffing when he said they would be jailed for the attempt. "Can we skip the whole jailed in Mendel thing?"

"Certainly." Captain Ward slid the documents back to the representative. "This claim never existed, which thus means the underlying wire fraud on which is based is unenforceable. Additionally, you gentlemen also get to dodge the very merry charge of aiding and abetting terrorist organizations, which makes the whole wire fraud thing look like a fart in a tornado."

"Where the hell do you get that charge?" The senior negotiator asked indignantly.

"Oh, that one it is an easy one. Propulsion And Machinery Progress is a member of the National Defense Industry Association of the Earth Alliance. The NDIA is a known classification-three terrorist organization under Magi law. Therefore, any businesses that do business on a first-order basis in a knowing fashion fall under the regulations for aiding and abetting. And before you say anything about the purity of business transactions, keep in mind that having your bid package underwritten by PMP does not exactly say double-blind transaction to any courts you might have to go in front of to justify. So, before I'm really required to haul out the regulations book, let's just say this dog won't hunt and call it even. Fair enough?"

"Message received, Captain," The junior negotiator replied.

The method of his reply immediately grabbed the attention of Captain Ward. "Military?"

"Radar officer, Arkansas-class, '54 to '62. I pulled the plug when it looked to me like the promotions board decided I'd hit the top end." He specifically didn't have to mention the unstated caveat that he hit his furthest point of advancement because he wasn't kissing enough Blue Cosmos asses to ensure further promotion.

"Not an unfamiliar story among this task force. Hell, took the assignment board six months to find a ride crappy enough to assign the Star Admiral to. Still, all we can do is just keep on trucking, and hope the REMF squads don't yank the truck out from under us. So, what's the next subject?"

"Further access to material, especially to base and rare earth metals."

"Okay, this is where things get a little bit interesting," Captain Glennaste Ward replied evenly. "The first and loudest problem is simple: by law, Mendel cannot trade with the Earth Alliance. I don't think I need to remind any of you this fact."

"An old philosopher once said "an unjust law is no law" if I remember correctly." From the senior representative, it sounded like as artful a dodge as any, and in willing company would even be used as justification to bypass a law.

Of course, Captain Ward fit no measure of the word 'willing' on this subject. "That depends solely on how limp your definition of justice truly is," he threw out there as bait for the representatives. Nobody in the rival camp rose to the bait, a not unexpected result. "That being said, there is a way for you to access resources produced from the salvage we collect. The international commodities and metals markets make a very lively trade in our proceeds; it would not be unreasonable for you to take possession of certain refined raw materials were you to find a willing buyer in those markets. I highly suggest, however, that you purchase from retailers that are purchasing from us for the intention of general distribution; we will see through any attempt to set up a front company and will refuse to sell to those front companies. Above and beyond that, there's little I can help you with. On this colony, the law is unequivocal and the absolute last thing I want to do to be remembered by history as selling to terrorists."

The senior diplomat simply bristled at the repeated accusation. "Will you please stop calling a sovereign nation terrorists?"

"Will you please shitcan Blue Cosmos?" The Mendel representative requested in a sickeningly-sweet voice.

"You know I do not have the authority to do that," the elder representative replied almost in a growl.

"I expect as much," Captain Ward sighed his resignation on this subject. "And herein lies the problem. I will just say that I'm not going to repeat the analysis of the actual operating structure of the Earth Alliance, and I'll spare you the necessity of repeating the official party line that denies the official operating analysis. Call it a preemptive attack against a needless argument. That being said, until such a time as the Earth Alliance strips out the influence of said parties and can be shown to be operating free of that influence, there is nothing I can do in terms of direct trade with the Earth Alliance."

"Is this what the people of the colony want?" coming from the junior negotiator, Captain Ward was a little bit surprised.

"Officially, the embargo against the Earth Alliance is supported by 78 percent of the populace. Unofficially, you really do not want to know what they ask us to do, and what we old and wizened soldiers must adroitly refuse to do."

"May I speak candidly?" The elder negotiator requested.

"Certainly," the Mendel representative offered him the field.

"Are Magi entities, be they companies or other government functions, always this much of a pain in the ass to negotiate with?" The question was asked with such gravity and conciseness that it was apparent to everyone it was a very serious question, not a joke or an insult.

Captain Ward took the question neither as joke or insult, but as a backhanded compliment. "Only to people actively trying to kill us, to everybody else we are reasonably friendly if a mild bit standoffish. Now, is there anything else I can help you gentlemen with?"

"No thank you, we will be taking our leave." Without further word, the two negotiators left the room.

"You may speak now," Captain Ward said towards the ceiling of the room.

"That went far better than I expected," the artificial intelligence entity for the colony answered the Captain's implicit order to speak. "Those two knew the party line before they walked into the room. I don't believe I need to explain to you that they were fishing in attempt to find someone who would be more flexible than the law allowed."

"Testing the armor, trying to find a soft spot in our defenses. Nothing particularly special, especially since their paymasters are not giving them any slack to negotiate with. I'm guessing the upper-level maggots are running on the assumption that we will start doing business sometime after we realize that they're big enough to flatten us."

"They should know by now that Magi forces had never been impressed by force of numbers, given that we have never fought a war in such a fashion that we actually had the superiority of numbers. It is basic doctrine and training principle that we will eventually be outnumbered, they should already know this." If anything, Glennaste Ward was surprised by the sour tone of voice coming from the wall speakers and by extension the artificial intelligence entity that was speaking to him.

A simplistic but not altogether untrue euphemism came to mind. "Great big men have their great big flaws, and so far it's looking systemic that the Earth Alliance has one great big flaw in underestimating their opposition. Yes, I know about Sutherland, but so far he and his disciple appear to be the roaring exception in a sea of stupidity. Unless you have a better explanation?"

Silence was the only answer. Of course, Captain Glennaste Ward didn't realize that his generalization of the enemy command structure also put himself squarely in the center of the exact same generalization.

-x-x-x-

(30 August CE 72, 1030 hours PLANTs time)
(Office of the Chairman of ZAFT)

"This strategic meeting is now in order," Chairman Durandal began the preamble to the meeting. It was not much of a meeting, a handful of administrative advisory specialists, two warship captains, and a handful of pilots and pilot commanders. "For the sake of brevity, and on the fact there is no cause to challenge any person in this room on loyalty, we will skip the traditional opening." A few of the pilots shared a quick glance but nothing was said directly about skipping the soldier's pledge for ZAFT. "Captain Gladys, what is the progress on your ship?" Captain Talia Gladys stood, came to attention, and saluted as was traditional. "At ease, Talia. This may be a classified strategic meeting, but I do not expect formalities or measured responses. I called this meeting to discuss planning and informal exchange of ideas and concepts, the full measure of formality is not necessary here."

Talia winced at the implicit order to not show expected deference to the standing Chairman of the PLANTs. Still, an order was in order, and she did have a request to answer. "Sir, the ship is presently at 47 percent hull completion, engine systems are at 23 percent completion, life-support systems are at 10 percent completion and armaments are at 14 percent completion. The Armory One shipwright is estimating no less than six months until we can begin space flight testing for the unit."

"Captain Halsey, your ship's status?"

Captain Frankford (Frank) Halsey stood when requested. Much as his name suggested, Captain Halsey was descended of another very famous Halsey, the latter being an admiral in the long-deceased United States Navy. As Chairman Durandal was a firm believer in the power of genetics and genetic aptitude, he figured a relative of a very famous Admiral had some potential in his own right. His naval record showed promise, especially in battles against the Earth Alliance, lending credence to the Chairman's theory. "Gondwanna overall is at 65 percent construction completion. It should take roughly the same amount of time to complete as the Minerva," he noted with gravity. "Facilities for the carried units will take an additional two months to complete."

"Six months, eight months," Durandal repeated. "Honest opinion time, and this question is an open one to every person present. Are these projects worth the expenditure of resources and manpower?"

His response for the first minute was a din of conversation between some of the senior personnel, but the first definitive answer came from Commander Yzak Joule. "The most complete answer to your question, Chairman, is both yes and no." Half the analysts – and more than a few of the line personnel – expressed their disdain for his answer, believing the proper answer to be 'yes' in most cases.

"It is the opinion of the analysts that the answer is an unequivocal yes, and several of the ship captains agree."

"Not all of us," Captain Halsey responded. "If Commander Joule is thinking what I am thinking, I side with him."

"I am in with the Commander, I think I know why he is saying yes and no." Yzak simply nodded to the support services commander.

"My opinion is in concurrence with Commander Yzak Joule, Chairman. I have seen first-hand exactly what he is about to use as evidence." Captain Gladys nodded to the younger commander, making sure the distinction was clear that she was not siding with the desk weenies in this case.

"Very well, Senior Analyst Nimzicki, please deliver the majority opinion."

"Sir, in deference to those who have faced off against the Mendel forces, they are not invincible and they are not supermen. I will readily give them credit for being extremely tough and even more dangerous, but they have a glass jaw. All it should take is one good hit and it's over for them. The Minerva ships give us a good opportunity to hit them hard and fast at any location of our choosing, and the Gondwanna gives us both numeric superiority and strategic mobility. Against a rival whose primary mindset is defensive, their options are limited and their transition from defense to offense gives us time to counterattack or preemptively strike them. I do not believe I have to speak of the utility of our ships against either Orb or the Earth Alliance."

"The dissenting opinion, please."

Yzak stood and took a quick breath to prepare. "I say the two projects would be extremely useful against both the Earth Alliance and the Emirate of Orb. I do not, however, say that these projects would be of complete utility against the Mendel forces. The reason why they would be of only limited effectiveness against Mendel is simple: the more defensive pressure you put on a Magi force, the harder they fight and the more damage they will cause to an attacking force."

"No evidence of that," one of the analysts muttered, just barely audible to those in his vicinity.

"Another thing to keep in mind is that Magi forces always expect to be fighting against a numerically superior foe; fighting against three-to-one odds is not only their mindset, it is a training requirement and the basis for their Trial of Position. Oh, yes, that reminds me: of the four military forces in discussion here, the Magi are the only force that requires an incoming recruit to win a battle against numerically superior forces before they can accept a position in the line units."

"You can take the man out of the cave, but you can't take the cave out of the man," another of the analysts declared, this time slightly more audible and clearly heard by Captain Gladys.

Yzak suspected he understood what he heard, but pressed on: "Therefore, any units that we would fight in battle start at veteran ratings well in excess of our training standards, because those units that couldn't hack it have already been kicked out. Now, if these analysts want to stand here and tell me that the Magi forces are going to give a flying rat's ass about a very minor numeric advantage over the mobile forces complement of the Mjolnr, I can supply them the Mobile Suits to go test that theory. I need to clear some room in my unit anyway for incoming new model suits, might as well put the older units to use."

"Why don't you?" one of the female analysts requested.

"I already do," Yzak replied testily, referring to his training battles against Mendel and the odd Trial of Possession. "If I break even against them, I'm doing good. I don't need to tell you what happened at Second of Jachin Due, and prior to that battle I'd already engaged them once and had my ass handed to me by their Marines," he said with some fervor.

"Yzak," Chairman Durandal cautioned.

"I know, sir, that one is classified, but it is time to pull these Analysts' heads out of their arses. Permission to brief them?" Yzak requested.

Silence for five seconds, as Durandal weighed the options. "You may proceed."

"We received reports of Earth Alliance activity at Mendel, and three ships went to inspect. Heusinger, Helderton, Vesalius."

"Heusinger and Vesalius? Mendel killed them? How?"

"I'll go in order," Yzak answered. "We arrived at the rear dock of the colony and entered. Inside the colony, we came across and engaged an unknown Gundam, what we thought was an Earth Alliance machine. Turned out it was a Mendel Dendrobium Stamen Gundam, nothing special in terms of Mobile Suits – the Duel is just as flexible as what I shot down, though the Stamen's armor is better. While inspecting the downed unit, Commander Creuset and I were engaged by a literally unrecognizable enemy force – Armored Marines with their shields don't look human when they're using their jump jets to bounce up and attack your machine at point-blank range. In 10 seconds of engagement time, these Marines were able to almost completely cripple Commander Creuset's new model GuAIZ mobile suit and caused extensive damage to my upgraded Duel mobile suit. Now keep that thought in mind going forward: 10 Marines, one mobile suit, 10 seconds, one crippled mobile suit. Mendel has more than a Galaxy of Marines; unless you intend on using a nuclear weapon on their colony, you will have to deal with those Marines and I want no part of that."

"We would never stoop so low as to use nuclear weapons on civilians," a senior adviser said with extreme indignation.

"I rest my case on the Marines," Yzak said. "Creuset was out first, and during his attempt to retreat he ran afoul of a certain white painted Neue Ziel mobile armor – come to find out way later after the Second of Jachin Due, that mobile armor belongs to Mendel's second-in-command. I was delayed in exiting the colony, and that was good thing – if I had departed the colony with Creuset, I probably would not have survived. Century Commander Gerald Lightbringer is not exactly famous for leaving survivors in his wake, at least among the tales told within Magi circles; I have a feeling he is operating under orders, but he seems to have about a 50 percent kill ratio with everybody he faces, ZAFT or Earth Alliance. That being said, what got Heusinger and Vesalius was not one man piloting one mobile armor, but one very pissed off well armed escort battleship, the one that happens to be named after a hallucinogenic alcoholic beverage." Yzak technically overstated the power and prestige of said warship, given that the Absinthe was classified as an Escort Destroyer Monitor, not a battleship.

"How can a heavy gun destroyer take out two of our ships? How badly was it damaged?"

"Oh, if you think that's bad, I got some seriously messed up news for you. The Absinthe delivered the killing strikes literally within 10 seconds of each other, in what I believe is called a naval alpha strike. All told, we recovered maybe four escape pods between the two ships. That is only a partial idea of how high you're going to have to jump to impress Mendel. As much as I don't like saying it, I cannot in good conscience say that the two projects are going to be war-winners if by some quirk of fate we end up going gun-to-gun against Mendel."

"Leaving Mendel out of the equation, you are in agreement that the ships are of use against Earth Alliance or Orb forces?" Chairman Durandal asked for clarification.

"Yes, sir. I'm not the best in here in naval terms, but by the numbers the Gondwanna and an escort fleet should be capable of wrecking the naval forces of all four of the ground-bound states that have naval forces up here," by which he was referring to be Earth Alliance, the Emirate of Orb, the United States of South America, and the Kingdom of Scandinavia, the latter two of which had purchased some salvaged warships from Mendel and were preparing to purchase more ships from the Earth Alliance.

"The analysts concur on that, sir, but we disagree on their utility against Mendel."

"Very well, we will continue the project on the assumption that it will not be Mendel that we are facing in the next war. Something else will need to be determined and implemented if for some reason we are ever required to go head-to-head against Mendel." Some of the personnel took the short pause as appropriate time to take notes, others conferred with nearby colleagues about how well their debate position was doing when argued out. "Our next matter of consideration is the establishment of an artillery doctrine and revising mobile weapons to accommodate this doctrine. The opening opinions please?"

Thus began the second phase of contention between the operators and the analysts. Chairman Durandal found the heated argument much to his liking; he was a native schemer and strategist, the exacting details and methods of military operations were his one weakness in any long-term plans that he thought he might have, and he believed he chose well when he assembled this group to assist with those plans.

His one miscalculation was forgetting that Mendel had the ability to listen in on these meetings just as readily as he did.

-x-x-x-

(7 September CE 72, 2015 hours UTC)
(Orb Satellite Station Ame No Mihashira)

"Piloting, report distance to docking at station."

"Distance to docking position is three-five meters and closing."

Collectively, the bridge crew of the newly redesignated KS-SN-001 Viking held their breath as the docking maneuvers continued. It was not that any one man or woman on the bridge was technically incompetent in their task; on the contrary, the crew of the ship were the best of the best of the Kingdom of Scandinavia naval forces. The problem being in the designation of what manner of naval forces: the crew trained mostly on Scandinavian submarines, which in the end was the closest designation of warship to an actual space and Naval warship in terms of inside-atmosphere analog. The differences between wet-naval and space-Naval ship handling were extensive, and quite frankly the Scandinavians did not have any manner of training facility to learn the skills short of taking their new ship out and gingerly learning it by trial and error.

All things considered, the crew had been significantly lucky in their choice for first ship. Mendel had captured more than a few intact Nelson-class warships in the botched nuclear raid on their home colony. Having no need for such otherwise outdated warships, Mendel gave options for those warships to Orb, Scandinavia, and South America; the Equatorial Union did not respond to requests for a bid on the other ships, meaning that they either were not interested or could not finance such ships. Orb purchased two ships, South America purchased two, and Scandinavia purchased four, the single largest military expenditure ever in the nation's history. On the other hand, it gave them a way into the naval dominance games being played in the near space around the planet, and it also gave them a starting position from which they could expand their growing Navy by way of salvage purchases from the Earth Alliance, who were beginning to quietly sell off some of their older Drake-class ships.

The luck of their draw truly came into realization when the crew found that the navigation systems on their Nelson-class warship were the absolute state-of-the-art in terms of control and ease of use. Most of the maneuvering functions were themselves automated. The fact that losses incurred during the war required that incoming crew for new warships to be able to do their job with rote commands, and as little training is possible to better field new forces was clearly evident to the Scandinavian personnel. Other functions of the ship, such as sensors and weapons panels, were themselves highly automated but not to the same degree as navigation systems. By design, as much load as possible was being taken off the crews of these newer Nelson-class ships, a decision which was part task load reduction and part training requirement reduction, though in the end how well the automation would substitute for proper crew training or veterancy was definitely open for debate. By the numbers, any of the Monitors in the possession of Mendel were considered to be the most difficult ships to crew or fight, but by the same token the ships were also expected to win against any other ship in present employ hands down.

Still and all, the exigencies of interstellar expansion demanded a naval presence to guard the process, the ships and the colonies that were to come. The command section of the Kingdom of Scandinavia was definitely thinking ahead with their option to begin developing a space naval fleet now as opposed to when it would be needed most.

"Arriving in position in seven seconds, five seconds, three seconds, now. Neutralizing inertia and matching rotational velocity to the station."

"Conn, sensors, station is deploying magnetic grapples and gang plank."

"Sensors, Conn, acknowledged." After the magnetic grapples took hold on the ship, the Captain picked up his growler phone and hit the quick-connect button for engineering. "Engineering, Conn, finished with engines. Shut 'em down."

"Acknowledged, Cap'n." The sound of the engines diminished slowly for thirty seconds, then the lights flickered as the ship switched over to shore (colony) power for internal functions.

"It's a start," the Chief of the Watch grumbled.

"A start and nothing more," the Captain replied. "We have long to go before we can even begin worrying about gunnery or naval strategy."

"Aye, sir," the Chief replied.

The Captain picked up the same handset as before, though this time he punched in a different code. The automated intercom system let loose a three-tone whistle as an attention-getter for the whole ship. "Attention all hands, this is the Captain speaking. I would like to congratulate you on an excellent first run in the Viking, the first commissioned of our homeland's new star navy. All personnel are to finish buttoning up the ship and report to briefing station in Ame No Mihashira when cleared by your section officers. That is all."

"We definitely need to give thanks to Orb for letting us dock here at station Ame No Mihashira," the weapons controller officer said to her junior ensign on the weapons panel.

"We owe thanks to many groups for this wonderful bounty we now sail. Orb, Mendel, even the Earth Alliance contributed directly or indirectly to our fledgling Navy. The least we can do in thanks is to not squander this opportunity. The next thing we can do is begin some honest to God expansion; in time, we can begin taking other planets and start setting ourselves up a proper interstellar Navy." Despite the hints of pride in his voice, everyone knew that the captain knew that this was the vulnerable point in time for the Kingdom of Scandinavia. In all reality, it would only take one mistake to effectively annihilate the on-going plans; it did not matter if it was their fault, someone else's fault, or nobody's fault, it would only take one mistake to end this charade immediately.

"The one horse wonder is always the easiest guy to cripple or kill in a battle," the wise-ass helmsman said to nobody in particular. Even though it was not a directed comment, the intent of this saying was clear to everyone.

"Now, everyone here knows our nation's limitations. More to the point, everyone here knows our nation's strengths. We can never match the Earth Alliance in numbers, unless we expand extremely aggressively. We can never match ZAFT technical artistry in the art of mobile warfare. I don't think any being in existence will ever be able to match Mendel's complete grasp of warfare and their ruthlessness in executing the war. On the other hand, per capita Scandinavia has the most seafaring population of all, men and women literally born into the roles of sailors and shipwrights. Let others have their larger ground forces, formidable mobile army units, it means nothing if they can't get close enough to use them." The Captain sighed mightily. "Should've saved that spiel for the debrief."

"I think we can go for an encore, Captain," the ship's executive officer replied. A couple of the radar officers giggled at the Captain's admission, but nothing more was said.

"I think I shall," the captain mused. "Bridge staff is dismissed to assembly room for debriefing."

-x-x-x-

(12 September CE 72, 1010 hours PLANT Standard Time (UTC-4))
(ZAFT Station Armory One, Northern Continent, ZAFT National Training Center and Industrial Park)

"Shinn! Coming around on your left!" Meiryn shouted across the radio link.

"I can't see her! Take cover!" Shinn passed a recommendation to the others. He suited actions to words just as readily as he said it, with a timely move of his ZGMF-X999A ZAKU Trial Type he was out of the line of fire from the enemy. The poor sods in the building he was next to, however, were rather visibly worried that a Mobile Suit was now using their establishment for cover, though all the buildings in the area were designed to take abuse from MS training battles.

"How can one pilot keep us all pinned down?" Dale asked as his GuAIZ R took cover behind a medium-rise building.

"This isn't anything like training!" Lunamaria half-moaned, half-shouted at her forward viewscreen. Her machine was identical to Shinn's, except she had it painted red with white highlights to match her hair color.

"She's definitely not playing nice, and nothing like Earth Alliance models," Rey Za Burrel griped. He was not referring to Earth Alliance machines, of which their intel on older machines would not likely apply due to upgrades, but he was referring to their combat models and doctrine. Already his shield had several beam scorch marks from training-strength beam weapon fire and a few paintball splats for good measure.

"Now is not a good time to be debating what our foe is fighting like. Can we try to flank left, see if we can force her into a vulnerable position?"

Shaun took the request from Dale as an implicit plan and recommendation for beginning some kind of coordinated strike. He made the subconscious decision to move first, a fatal flaw without the rest of team being clearly on board the evolving plan. It was not more than three steps from cover behind a large liquid storage tank that he came under fire from the enemy. Even despite having a shield oriented left to block incoming fire, the right side of his machine took two hits in the arm and two hits in the right upper chest, neither of which would be fatal hits in real battle but they both would diminish performance and effectively disarm him. To simulate the casualties, his GuAIZ R slacked off its ability to control the right arm, which resulted in it going limp but retaining possession of the machine gun used for this simulation.

"Damn it all, you are moving too fast!" Shinn jumped clear of his cover location, burning through an entire magazine to suppress the last known firing location of their enemy. As far as he could tell, it achieved the desired effect in that his opponent did not show herself again even as the other machines in the unit broke cover and joined them in a defense palisade formation.

"Sorry Shinn, I thought I had a good plan," Shaun replied as the team moved towards cover again.

"She gave us that one for free, one good burst or a call of artillery could have took all five of us out in that clearing."

"Leave it to Ray Za Burrel to point out our mistakes in the middle of a shooting match." If Lunamaria could sound any more soured about the thought of being schooled by one of her teammates, nobody in the formation could remember such a time.

Several rounds of paint and a pair of beams struck the ground in the vicinity of where they took cover. "He is right, if we stand around in open areas with our thumbs up our butts, I would be surprised if she didn't shoot us for being that stupid," Dale noted with a slight hint of humor.

"Days like today remind me it was a lot simpler back in basic," Shaun said to nobody in particular. "Now, how do we get out of this mess?"

Another half dozen paint rounds splatter on a nearby medium-rise building in the training area. On the far side of the windows, several of the office workers were scared shitless, and even one managed to knock over a water cooler in her haste to take cover. It was a hazard of taking office space in Armory One, and everyone that signed on to the companies knew this would happen on a routine basis. "Very carefully," Meiryn said from the simulated control room. "Shaun had the right idea, nobody else jumped with him. You all have to move as one so she can't attack all of you at once. Don't let her divide you, and don't let her see only one of you at a time; she can't kill you all at once unless you make it real easy for her."

"Where do you want us?" Rey asked after a short pause.

"Follow these routes," and on her screen she traced each pilot out a quick navigation route to be followed in sync with each other pilot. "When you get to the end of your route, take cover and hold position. Do not attempt to engage if you're the only person in the area."

"Ready for it," Shinn declared once he saw the plan on the tactical map of the area.

"Jumpoff, now!" Meiryn ordered. She had envied the Mendel flight controllers for their variably-hands-on command authority with Mendel mobile units, but now she realized their command and control had a reason for its existence – and she would need to use it to win in a double-blind battle like this.

Five machines moved as one, each wheeling around their point of cover and advancing toward their next rally point in a coordinated sweep operation designed to prevent the enemy from challenging any one machine without having to fight all of them. In that sense, it worked: Meyrin's ad-hoc strategy allowed three of the machines to put down direct fire on the enemy at the cost of Lunamaria being downed by beam fire. As to how effective it was, the veterancy of the enemy pilot prevented anything crippling, with the shield blocking most of the attack against her.

"Dammit, lost her again. I hate urban warfare." Shinn paused to switch out magazines on his machine gun, giving him a fresh load of munitions should he come face to face with their phantom foe. "What is our next move?"

"One moment, drawing new routes," Meiryn said hurriedly. "Got it, we're going to try and force her towards the chemical plant dead ahead of you. We lost one, but don't let her separate you."

"Easier said than done, Meiryn, especially since she is not fighting like any foe I recognize." As usual, Ray Za Burrel made at a point to sound as calm as possible even when he was under as much stress as anybody else on the radio channel.

"Awaiting orders," Dale announced as he an analyzed his new movement route.

"Prepare for move, now!"

This time, the move action went completely unhindered and unopposed by the enemy. No visual contact was made with the blue unit even as the four remaining pilots came to a stop at the end of their navigation points. All four simply assumed that the enemy pilot had moved farther forward toward the planned ambush site of the chemical plant.

Oddly, it was Shinn who put voice to the fears inside all four of them. "I don't like this at all, something feels very wrong here."

"No harassing fire means she is planning something, or moving somewhere," Ray put voice to his inner dread.

"She couldn't have flanked us, our system's sensors would have caught it." Luna sounded the most like she was trying to convince herself of her own logic, and to everyone else it sounded like a very hollow argument.

Ray barely sensed the execution of his dread, a mere quarter second before the proximity warnings in his ZAKU test type registered a threat. "From behind!"

Even with the minor hint of forewarning, his attempt to clear out of the path of fire was futile. His machine took six paint rounds in the back, what would have easily been fatal hits were they beam rifle rounds, at the same time that Shinn took four rounds in the back and two in the head. Dale turned and ripped a quick burst in her general direction, but without a clear reference on her location all ten of his shots missed. The enemy response was a pair of bursts from two machine guns as her machine vaulted over a medium-rise industrial building and landed behind the last surviving unit.

Shaun tried maneuvering but the enemy pilot he faced was faster on the trigger than any of the trainees could guess. She walked a burst of fire across both of his legs, which the computer determined were hits that would disable the thrusters in the back of his machine's legs. With the loss of those thrusters, his machine crash-landed and skidded to a stop, effectively crippled and without any decent form of offense. Knowing better than to continue this simulation, he simply popped the crew hatch open and stepped out on the chest of his downed machine, both hands raised in the classic surrender position.

With the surrender of the last pilot, the CGUE DEEP Arms lowered its original machine gun and the weapon recovered from Lunamaria's downed machine. "Welcome to the National Training Center, pilots. This has been your wake-up call."

"What? Is this some kind of sick joke? You kick our asses and call it a wake-up call?" If Shinn could sound any more indignant, nobody on the radio channel had a clue how.

"No joke, Shinn Asuka. This was an object lesson: you are by default not the baddest things on two legs in this star system, and I just proved it. Now I have to start teaching you how to be more effective, because if you go outside these walls with an attitude and fighting skills like that, I'm not expecting you to survive."

"This isn't a joke, it's a nightmare," Lunamaria griped over the open channel.

"Welcome to Purgatory, if thinking of it in that fashion makes you feel any better. I am your instructor, Shiho Hannenfuss, and is time for you to earn the redcoats that you wear. Chairman Durandal wants you to be the best of our best, and I say you have a long way to go to get there. Time for you to start proving me right when I think there may be hope for you yet." Shiho took the pause on the radio channel to sigh with her finger off the radio switch. She hoped she was not laying it on too thick, but the necessity of breaking their arrogance was the first and the greatest requirement of her training regimen. Arrogance was the foremost crippling trait of armies throughout Existence, Shiho had learned from the Magi. Commander Hannenfuss knew that ZAFT would have to learn that lesson through her training regimen, or they would learn it the Darwinian way on a real battlefield in the years to come, the latter with real casualties to go along with the real lessons.

"Oh my God, this is starting to sound worse than Basic," Shaun said deadpan.

"Oh, this is nothing. Wait until you have to cross-train with the Mendel forces. Not only will they chew you up and spit you out faster than I did, they'll break your arrogance, your morale and your souls in the process. I stole the idea of a National Training Center from Mendel, who stole the idea from the United States and improved on it. This is where you feel what defeat feels like and learn what victory looks like, so you can use those lessons in the next war. Training battle dismissed, hangar your units and report to briefing three for debrief and analysis. That includes you as well, Meiryn."

Nobody dared to say a word about what she apparently intended, but everybody silently expected they would learn many lessons in coming days and weeks of training. Everybody silently expected that they would be very hard, very harsh lessons, but necessary ones. After all, the only way to be the best was to train like the best and train harder than the best.

-x-x-x-

(20 September CE 72, 0130 hours Lima (UTC-6) time)
(Colombia, USSA Territory, circa 35 kilometers east of Bogota)

"Command, Thunder element, standing by at line of departure."

"Command, Wind element, preparing to cross line of departure now, requesting final go-Mission."

It was always at this point in an operation, the final decision to begin or not began, that always gave Edward Harrelson a case of nerves. In this case, however, the attack of the jitters was both minor and short-lived; for his nation to retain its sovereignty, these parties had to be removed.

"Execute operation," he said after only two seconds of hesitation. "Now we see if these new designs work as advertised."

"We've got the best free minds this side of ZAFT working on these new systems. We are doing the best we can, which is better than our foes." Coming from the lead engineer on the new attack chopper, Harrelson only found the comment mildly assuring.

"I hope you're right, or this going to end very quickly and very badly."

-x-

"Wind element, Wind six, we are cleared to execute. Stay in formation, weapons live at point of departure."

"Weapons coming alive now, Major Lido. Autocannons, linear machine guns locked and ready, rockets, antitank missiles, anti-radiation missiles armed and ready. All weapons systems confirmed armed, we are ready to dance."

"Roger," Major Lido answered immediately. One of the few flight-rated helicopter pilots to survive the Earth Alliance takeover of her home country, Major Sylvia Lido was quick to jump at the opportunity to return to active service when the revolution came calling. She had spent the months of combat against the Atlantic Federation troops and their Blue Cosmos puppet masters flying medical dust off for wounded personnel, a sorely needed skill in those days of bloody guerrilla warfare. In the weeks after the revolution, she inadvertently became the primary adviser to Major Harrelson in all affairs pertaining to helicopter operations, and she made her pitch carefully in those days to kickstart a combat helicopter program.

It became fairly obvious fairly quickly that the United States of South America had almost all of the necessary infrastructure to create a combat-viable combat helicopter design. Just the same, ZAFT had all the necessary infrastructure and even had their own design: the Agile combat helicopter units proved to be more than ample of a threat to conventional ground forces, but their effectiveness against Mobile Suits was incredibly lacking. Clearly understanding this deficiency, Sylvia set out to engineer a new unit, taking the best design elements of older and very reliable heavy combat helicopter units and marrying them to a newer structure and weapons package. With the addition of armor provided by Mendel and weapons systems manufactured locally by way of Mendel designs, the Major created what she hoped would be a game-winning anti-armor and anti-personnel forward aviation unit. In honor of her contributions to the design and doctrine, she was allowed to choose the name for the new airframe: Jaguar Warriors.

It would be this evening (technically, morning) that provided the first new-world combat data based on old-world combat principles long believed to be obsolete with the coming of the almighty Mobile Suit. Mendel swore up and down that Mobile Suits were glass cannons, the Earth Alliance and ZAFT both swore up and down they were the titans of the modern battlefield, and Major Lido believed she could get an answer one way or the other before she had to retire. If anything, her career was riding on that answer, even if Colonel Harrelson did not say so.

"Wind five, Wind command, move forward to spot for laser-guided missiles. I want towers, strong points, armor, and Air Defense Artillery taken out before our ground team is in position."

"Copy traffic," Wind Five replied as his helicopter began inching forward. If there was any design aesthetic that these machines came close to, it was the older AH-64D Apache Longbow, though the new machines lacked the curves and the grace of the older unit, instead relying on angular armor and surfaces to absorb a hell of a lot more gunfire than the Apaches ever could. By a miracle of engineering, the front and side armor on the Jaguar Warriors was specified to stop a single hit from an Earth Alliance beam rifle, a feat previously believed impossible for any airborne unit prior to the arrival of the Mendel forces.

"Wind command, Wind three, right flank is clear of hostiles. Looks like we have clear approach to the base."

Ahead of the main force of helicopter units, Wind five stopped behind a particularly thick clump of trees and began inching his unit upward to allow him to place the mast-mounted sensor systems in line of sight to the base. After a few seconds, the onboard communication systems inside the forward machine began relaying updated sensor and visual pictures of the base. "Wind command, Wind five, targeting is available."

"Five, start the music. Command, Wind element, please relay to Thunder element we are beginning long-range bombardment."

-x-

High above the location of the enemy training camp, a pair of drone planes orbited in a lazy racetrack pattern over the soon-to-be-a-battlefield. Copied from the Global Hawk drone program of the United States, the new Southern Hawk drones brought improved electronics and capabilities necessary for the new battlefield. Gone were the VHF and UHF communication systems that were rendered mostly useless by N-Jammers, instead replaced by laser communication relays that could not be stopped by the N-Jammers. The visual systems were retained from the old Global Hawk, including laser tracking and designation systems, and the unit's flight time was upgraded to the realm of days on station courtesy of some creative engineering in the USSA aerospace industry. High-capacity battery systems and an electromechanical propeller motor went a long way to ensuring a long duration of flight.

Each of the new Southern Hawk units provided a critical capability to the USSA military structure: the ability to communicate with ground units from afar by way of integrated relay systems. Each Southern Hawk acted as a flying mobile communication hub to coordinate with any ground units that could carry or be retrofitted with a laser communication system. The reintroduced capability of integrated communications and coordination ability changed the game significantly; in the past, the ability to communicate and coordinate was considered a given, a necessity of modern warfare, but was now a luxury prior believed only in the hands of Mendel.

"Thunder element, command, advise Wind element is beginning long-range bombardment. Recommend you begin your approach march in one-five seconds."

"Thunder copies traffic, placing next communication relay."

Four seconds elapsed, then another relay node came alive on the communication status board pertaining to Thunder element. For aerial and ground vehicle units, the laser relay system had been incredibly easy to set up and implement. Infantry forces, the true backbone of any military throughout history, did not have the luxury of having integrated Communications Systems that could be easily swapped out for a laser relay system. Lacking a method to integrate the infantry into communicating with the rest of the battle space, the USSA command structure almost gave up on creating a properly integrated command structure until a communications engineer had a burst of inspiration by reading an old science-fiction novel. In the novel, special forces teams were able to communicate with base without using open-air radio transmissions that could be localized by the invading aliens; their method of communication was by way of laser communications using small man-portable relay boxes. It took the USSA brass less than 30 minutes to approve in the initial concept and allocate funds for initial planning and development, such was the perceived operational need for communications relay and integration of the infantry into any upcoming mobile battles.

The South American engineers took the original concept and doubled down on it. The relay devices in the novel only ever appeared to communicate in a straight line, effectively meaning each device would only attach to a maximum of two other devices. With only a minor change in design ethic, the new relay systems gained a modular component system that would allow each receiver to communicate with up to eight other devices, effectively creating a grid of communication systems that could be tapped from any point in the network, a major improvement over the communication model in the novel. Upgrades were planned to the first-flight receiver systems that would allow them to act as remote sensor systems and a remote laser target designators, effectively creating passive sentry units that would allow the sensor operators to passively defend the communication network with the assistance of artillery or air support.

"Thunder element, command, communication relay is active. Advance with caution. Enemy outer perimeter is less than 100 meters ahead of you. Good hunting." Edward Harrelson leaned back in his chair to better watch the main monitor screens with the relayed video images from the attack helicopters.

-x-

Major Pedro Samuel Rigos, USSA Argentine Special Forces and presently callsign Thunder Six, worked hard to conceal his inner dread at what he knew he was about to walk into.

The problem was not the fighting, certainly not his foes, nor even the necessity of taking down Blue Cosmos. The standing issue with the coming engagement was the absolute hellish mess he knew the helicopters would make of the base. Helo pilots were traditionally not trained to be nice to their targets, and a training facility with a few strongpoint defenses would pose no operational challenge to the revived frontal aviation forces. It would be a difficult task for his ten-man element to comb through the rubble and extract intelligence or survivors from the mess that was just now beginning to be made.

"Time to move," Major Rigos said quietly on the team's short-range radio channel. For communicating with base, his communications officer had a special radio backpack that would be used to talk through the laser repeaters.

"Time to boot these assholes," his heavy weapons Sergeant groused just before the first of the long-range missiles struck in the base proper.

The ten-man assault team formed up into their usual pairs and began the march forward, rifles and light machine guns at the ready for any personnel that would be fleeing the base and / or counterattacking their incursion. The march was slow and methodical; night vision had improved to nearly-daylight quality in the centuries since it was invented, but it still wasn't perfect and all it would take is one man with a flare or flashbang to render the entire team helpless.

It was testament to how lax their security was that the special forces team was able to approach within 50 meters of the base perimeter without being sighted. Now, even with a second wave of missiles coming in from the helicopter gunships, their focus was only on the air threat they could not see for the forest overgrowth in the area that concealed the rotary-wing death machines. Despite the lack of line of sight, a few intrepid Blue Cosmos trainees hefted and fired MANPADS (1) missiles in the general direction of the incoming fire, achieving nothing more than to shred a pair of large conifer trees and redistribute limbs across the area.

"Snipers, action front," Pedro ordered crisply, given that Wind Element would not continue to waste long-range missiles on such paltry threats and the air-defense forces (such as they were) needed to be downed before the rotor-heads closed in for the coup de main attack.

"Target?" The elder sniper specialist requested.

"Air defense personnel," Pedro said without much conviction. In the distance, another pair of missiles went up, but this time only one appeared to detonate inside the stand of trees. The second may or may not have hit something on the far side of the trees, and if it did he hoped the new armored helicopter designs could withstand the MANPADS missiles.

A pair of missiles came in over the treetops, deliberately aimed high by the helicopter forces, where they would pick up the laser designator from the forward scout helo and nose down into the base. These two missiles went in for the base motor pool; both struck and tore apart the flimsy hangar-style structure. Within three seconds of the detonation, the side walls collapsed outward and the roof came down on what was left of the trucks or staff cars in the building. A pair trucks and a car had fled northward already, but Pedro figured the military would find them fast enough.

"Sights are hot," Specialist Celine O'Grady commented in her usual mellow voice. A former Atlantic Federation infantryman (infantrywoman), she deserted due to moral objections and went into hiding after her unit invaded the USSA in years past. The rebellion picked her up and put her back in the field to good use – her rifle skills and sharp tactical acumen put some serious hurt on the Earth Alliance infantry forces she used to serve. After the rebellion, she enlisted with the USSA Special Operations teams because she knew the Atlantic and Eurasian federations were not through with her new adopted homeland.

"Send it," Major Rigos ordered. In stark contrast to an order to fire, an order to 'send it' or 'send your shots' meant to fire when the shooter was assured a hit.

Given the distance was a mere 200 yards, the time between the order and the shot was less than a second. She was a good sniper, better than the Earth Alliance gave her credit for, and with one shot she proved it. A hit on a surface-to-air missile box with a 50-caliber API (2) round caused one of the missiles to cook off, scattering the rest of the boxes (not detonating them) and killing the personnel in the vicinity with fragmentation. One shot, five downed foes – and with it ended the SAM threat from the base.

"Major, they're retreating north, should we lay down fire on them?" his heavy weapons specialist requested.

"No, let them run. They have nowhere to hide, and the helicopters will chase them down and deal with them." It went without saying everyone in the team knew how that would end: very messy. The rotor-heads, if not ordered to outright kill them, would bird-dog the enemy infantry for ground forces to capture or eliminate.

"Here they come," the communications Sergeant said with reverence. True to his word, the six experimental frontal aviation attack helicopters crested the treeline in line abreast formation, each machine spitting rockets and 30mm autocannon into the base proper in response to the Blue Cosmos inductees firing rifles or machine guns at them. It was hopelessly one-sided in the USSA forces' favor, but Major Rigos silently reminded himself that war was never supposed to be fair.

-x-

"Holy shit, sir, what was that?" The vehicle driver asked as the Blue Cosmos training camp receded into the distance south of them.

"That was bad news incarnate," Colonel Morgan Chevalier answered in a measured tone. "Helicopters, several of them."

"Helicopters? How? I mean, ZAFT Has the Agile units, but—"

"ZAFT has pussy attack helos, small and nimble and gave me fits in Southeast Asia, but these are heavy hunter-killer helos. Lots of missiles, lots of guns, probably long-range and probably armored so you can't look at 'em to cause them to fall out of the sky. Would have been nice to get picture or video," the Colonel groused. He considered it blind luck he was out behind the motor pool having a smoke away from the trainees when the shooting started. A kid – 14 at best – had been cleaning the staff cars in the motor pool when the balloon went up; he needed no cadging to drop the sponge and grab the keys.

"Sir, coming over the forest now, back at the base," the lady in the back seat said.

"Stop the car," Morgan ordered. It took roughly ten seconds for them to come to a full stop and pile out to look at the incoming machines in the firelight from the base.

"This is insane! I've never seen anything like those!"

"I have," Morgan sighed. "Looks like it is similar to the old AH-64D Apache, badass tank killers from centuries ago. If they are anywhere as effective as their predecessors, and those pilots look competent enough to fly straight, those things will give us hell even when we have Mobile Suits."

"Does Mendel have helicopters?" the lady asked in fright.

"Doesn't matter," Colonel Chevalier replied stoically. "When this war opens up again, we probably won't live long enough to find out, especially if the USSA starts mass-manufacturing those things."

-x-x-x-

(27 September CE 72, 0700 hours PLANT Standard Time (UTC-4))
(ZAFT Station Armory One, Southern Continent, Integrated Design Bureau A1 Factory)

"It certainly looks the part," Yzak mused with a smile.

"I think it'll scare 'em into running home to momma," the junior technician said with a clear hint of pride. "I was polling for more spikes on it, but it was pooh-poohed above me."

"Never been in a mobile warfare battle, have you?" Yzak asked bluntly.

"No, sir, why?" the tech answered with a quizzical expression.

"Mobile Army pilots don't scare by training. You'd really have to do something colossal to cause another MS pilot to run in fear – like use a nuclear weapon. No matter how many spikes it has on it, the best you can hope to scare is veteran infantry."

"Oh," the younger technician groaned. "No wonder they minimized the spikiness, then. No need to add them, simplify production."

"Bingo," Yzak eased up on the tech. "I can see how they derived the Zaku form to create this update. Took the form and structure, married it to ZAFT mobile war concepts, and begin normalization. Performance?"

"The ZAKU Warrior is a 150 percent increase in all specifications over the model we bought from Mendel except armor, which is only plus 25. The ZAKU Phantom is plus 275 in all areas except armor, which is still just plus 25. Production cost is a bit higher for the frame, but we don't have the engine expense so the unit price tag is less than a Zeon Zaku machine."

"Nice," Yzak replied. "Armaments?"

"Big-time improvement over the old Zaku. Primary weapon is a beam rifle roughly equivalent to the beam rifles carried by Mendel machines. Each machine will have a shoulder shield, and the shield will mount two energy packs for the rifle to keep the trooper in the fight longer. Secondary weapon is a beam tomahawk, and each machine can carry up to four grenades on its hip armor." In point of fact, a technician and welder were attaching the locking lugs to the hip armor plate for the grenade rack. "It can also use the old Cattus recoilless rifle from the GINN in case it needs to carry heavy blasting firepower."

"What about an extended grenade rack?" Yzak asked.

"Not on the factory models, but the engineers are working on drawing up specifications for extended ammo for special operations troops."

"If we have to go to ground, we will need it," Commander Joule thought aloud. "I believe I heard something about these models being able to mount variable mission packs?"

"I think you heard correct, sir," and the tech waved him over to a database panel. With a few taps on the screen, he brought up the view of the back of the machine, with several fixtures highlighted. "These are the hardpoints for the Wizard Pack system. We have three models being derived from the Mendel machines, all three machines will be able to use the Wizard packs. The yes-men up top wanted to make it so only the ZAKU would use a wizard pack, but someone way higher said enable the ZAKU, GOUF, and DOM to use all the packs. We've got some hot plans for strap-on firepower...wait, that didn't sound right, even to me."

"Strap-ons and Mobile Suits should never be used in the same sentence," Yzak commented dryly. "Still, this pack specification is pretty good. Extended jump capability, extended space maneuver and guided missiles for good measure," he said as he read through the specifications for the Blaze Wizard pack.

"We learned a lot about efficient jet usage from the Leo we received from Mendel. The Leos aren't liked by the front-liners, not enough armor to take a beating, but they have just about everything else going for 'em including flight time. I figure the armor thing is all overblown anyways, one good beam rifle hit and its over."

"Yep, just don't try that on Mendel units. Their armor really is beam resistant," Yzak said as he moved the database record viewer to the next record, that of the Gunner Wizard Pack. "Oh, man, that is some firepower, it might be able to one-shot a Mendel unit."

"Everyone thinks it can, except you say it might?" the tech asked. "Are they really that serious?"

"I fought them at the Second of Jachin Due. One Mobile Armor tore through my entire team, including a CGUE DEEP Arms and the upgraded Duel Gundam. I even had an earlier encounter with their Marines against my Gundam, and I didn't win that one either – I had to retreat before they tore my machine apart. You can say a lot of things about Mendel, but 'pussies' or 'easy to kill' are not on that list."

"Oh, wow," the tech moaned as Yzak paged forward to the next Wizard Pack entry. The pack listing was Knight Wizard, and it was mostly just a storage bin of ammunition for the new DOM Trooper Mobile Suit that was still undergoing structural trials. The amount of ammunition it was slated to carry for its intended weapons was immense – easily over 100 bazooka rounds per bazooka carried (maximum two), or 10 drill lance heads per lance if the pilot carried them (max 2), or a combination if the pilot wanted to carry a combination of weapons.

The next entry on the list brought the tech mentally back to the here-and-now. "That's the Mobility Wizard pack. It is going to be standard issue on the GOUF Ignited, though the GOUF can switch out for the other pack systems as needed and the other machines can use it. Flight capable in atmosphere, and helluva maneuverable in space."

"That will help, somewhat, against the Earth Alliance." The unstated caveat was that it would not help against Mendel, though the tech figured it of some use against Orb.

"How hard can it be to outfly Mendel craft? They focus on armor, not speed, which makes them slow and easy targets."

"Doesn't matter if we outfly Mendel," Commander Joule pointed out fairly. "It matters how well we shoot, how well they shoot, and how well they can resist being shot by us or anyone else for that matter. Speed isn't armor; try buzzing by a Mendel Gundam or Aerofighter and they will prove it for you."

"Don't the Magi have some long saying about that? 'Speed isn't armor, speed won't save you,' something like that?" the Tech asked.

"Clean version or non?" Yzak asked as he flipped the database panel to the Slash Wizard pack information.

"Dirty, of course," the tech replied with a hint of indignation, as if the answer should have been obvious.

"Let's see if I remember it right. 'Speed is not offense, speed is not defense, speed is not armor, speed will not save your ass from a terminal case of lead poisoning. Skill is offense, skill is defense, armor is armor, and a big stick will keep your enemies at bay,' " Yzak recited a mash of the dirty and clean versions of the old Magi saw about the inherent dangers of speed.

"Whoa, that's deep," the Tech said with clear amazement.

"This next war, contrary to what the pundits say, isn't going to be won by the guys with the most of anything. It is going to be won by the guys with the best training and coordination. Good machines will get us somewhere, but it will take a lot more to really go the distance."

It would be Yzak's haunting answer to the tech's incredulity that would sway the fate of his nation, in more ways than one.

-x-x-x-

(27 September CE 72, 1200 hours UTC)
(Guild II-class Dropship Fast Falcon, in orbit above the Debris Belt)

"Chief of the Watch, secure the bridge door. Nobody in or out unless I say otherwise."

"Aff, milady," the Chief replied. In all reality, he was not a Chief Boatswain, but was acting the part dutifully; his proper rank was Star Captain (Commando), which put his real paygrade well above the role he was playing for the day.

The door out of the bridge was a heavy blast door, and had several interleaved mechanical bolt locks that could resist attack from lighter Battle Armor for a short amount of time. The true intention of the blast door was to prevent pirates from gaining access to the bridge, and it served that duty well in peacetime. The sound of the bolts ratcheting into place with a distinctive triple-clang chilled the bridge staff to the bone, but not a word was said.

As soon as the Chief of the Watch returned to his station, the Captain nodded to him. "Bridge personnel, listen up!" the Captain prompted them, which caused heads to turn toward her station immediately. "Chief Mick has an announcement you all need to hear."

"Is the locked door part of it?" The weapons controller asked.

"Oh yes," the Captain replied evenly. "Bridge is yours."

The Chief stood up and looked around. "Name's Mick Dalton, I'm a Star Captain under Gerald Lightbringer." If anything else had ever caused the two gossiping navigation specialists to shut up nearly instantly, the Captain could not think of it. "I'm going to start this brief by saying that anything from here on out is classified top secret or better. What is about to be discussed and done cannot be spoken of again without proper clearance, not even in your wildest wet dreams. Any of you who cannot keep your shit silent need to stand up to be released from duty right now."

"What's so big and bad that we have to be sworn to secrecy?" the senior Navigation specialist asked bluntly.

"I'm not about to tell you unless I have your assurance that you won't be blabbing about it." The clearly-understood indirect threat from his pre-briefing pep talk was that anyone who misspoke on these subjects would be quietly 'disappeared' for their intransigence. The Magi always took a very dim view of spies and informants, and everyone present knew that fact from childhood. If he said it was classified, it was expected that it would stay classified, one way or the hard way.

Of course, not everyone in the Empire agreed with the concept of secrecy and propriety at an Empirical level, and it showed. "I'm out," the junior Nav specialist said. "Damn military-industrial complex types and their secrecy rules. It's people like you who prevent the many worlds from getting along in peace and harmony." Though her phrasing was referring to planetary-level, she was properly referring to relations between the various Star Empires of many sizes, the bulk of which had some form of enmity with at least one other Empire somewhere else in Existence.

Mick chalked her spite up to the wildly errant belief that the default status of Existence was peace and order, a happy illusion that had nearly zero evidence to support it as far as a Commando was concerned. "Keep telling yourself that, honey," Star Captain Dalton groused as she took the stairs down to the door out. "Anyone else?" he asked. Not even the senior Navigation Specialist stood to leave. "All right, when I reseal the door, the classified actions begin."

"What's the big deal?" the commo specialist requested. "Oh, her?" he asked as the Star Captain escorted one of the passengers up to the bridge deck.

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is Veruna Daniels, a Coordinator refugee from the Earth Alliance Atlantic Federation territories. Her parents are still in the Earth Alliance, and our intention is to extract them by way of hacking them a clear path from their residence to Orb and then onto a freight Dropship headed for Mendel. The necessity of classification is because this will probably not be the last time we do it, given there are still a significant number of Coordinators in the Earth Alliance territory that cannot attempt to exfiltrate without some form of support."

"Like the old Underground Railroad from old United States history, only with more and more diverse methods?" the Helmswoman asked.

"You got it, kid," the elder Commando replied to the teenage junior ship pilot. "Commo, establish laser-link to Mendel, use this code for the connection;" he handed the communications officer a single piece of paper. "Sensors, confirm no craft or objects in the vicinity for possible laser-line intercept."

"Conn, Sensors, no contacts in LLOC," the sensors officer answered immediately.

"Link polling now, now, active," the commo officer declared when the systems began their link.

"I am online," a voice declared from the communication link.

"Ai, this is Mick, pass-code is Jagger," the Star Captain declared, using an old in-joke about his name. "Authenticate Whiskey-Golf-Charlie."

"Authentication is valid. Veruna, are you ready?" The Artificial Entity asked.

"Now or never," Veruna replied. "Where do you want me?"

"Any open station will do, any can access the networks." Veruna took the seat of the junior navigation tech and cleared the nav system off so she could access the network browser system. "You know what the contact and exfiltration requirements are, so please lay out your plan."

"I will message a family friend who is in on the plan to exfiltrate us. The message will be picked up on Saturday when my dad visits to deliver some firewood. Sunday, they need to be on a plane to Onogoro, where they can be picked up by a Dropship."

"Perfect," the Artificial Intelligence Entity declared. "I will register them on a Equatorial flight from Birmingham International Airport to Onogoro International with one stop in Honolulu. One moment while I verify the transit times." The moment stretched into a ninety-second wait. "Verified. Their flight will be a red-eye express, departure time is 0330 local time Sunday morning. They will be flying second-class, meal service will be provided on the flight. Hope they like crab, doesn't look like the galley is going to be well-stocked."

"We love seafood," Veruna replied. "What about the Onogoro transfer?"

"They will be met by Mendel embassy personnel at Onogoro International, who will take them to the embassy and arrange transit on the Guild II-class Dropship Sailboat Reborn, which departs roughly six hours after their flight lands in Onogoro."

"Excellent, and I get to reunite with my parents in about a week, after we are done picking up space junk," Veruna completed the run-down operational plan even as she typed in her message to her parents.

"Neg. Mick, brief her in."

"You and I are not hanging around, Veruna," the Star Captain replied. "My boss has a detail waiting for me back home, so we're going to jump ship after the Sailboat Reborn departs Onogoro, and rendevous with it nearby the Asgard station."

"Message is sent. I hope all the stars align on this one," Veruna wished aloud.

"You and I both, kid," the senior navigation specialist said. "Captain, think we can do this a lot more frequently? I mean, these Coordinators down in EA territory are one slip-up away from being royally fucked, and most of us are Mil, so we all know the value of de-assing hostile territory with all due quickness."

"Underground Railroad some Coordinators?" the Captain asked. "Who wants to make it a routine?"

"Hell yeah, Captain," the Weapons Specialist grunted.

"I'm in!" the Helmswoman shouted.

"Fuck yeah, Fast Falcon Express! Depriving the Earth Alliance of torture subjects and enjoying it!" From the Chief Engineer, the Captain figured it a major condemnation.

"What do you say, Star Captain? Think we can make a habit out of this?" the Captain asked.

"I think we may need to establish some contacts with the Atlantic Freedom Operation," the Star Captain mused. "Ai, think we can do it?"

"I am beginning preparations now. Strategic Officer Weste has already signed off on it. Veruna, care to make this a routine operation?"

"I dodged once," Veruna admitted. "I don't think I could live with myself if I dodged again. I'm in."

-x-

(29 September CE 72, 1900 hours UTC)
(Earth Alliance Atlantic Federation territory, rural Alabama, 5 kilometers from Daniels household).

"Come, come, I have hot cocoa for you for your troubles," the Russian-born AFO operative said as he waved the part-time lumberjack Estel Daniels into his modest house. "Come!" he said with a big smile. "Thank you for the wood, Estel Daniels, I have your payment ready...and a little something more." With the Earth-Dollars for the wood, Estel Daniels received a computer printout. "Your daughter is very skilled. Our counter-hacker could not reverse-trace the message, he lost track of it after twice around the world and five passes through anonymizer servers, two of which are known to be hostile to Blue Cosmos traffic and inquiries. It is very well laundered."

"She has a gift with communications technologies," Estel said without doting about it. "Oh, wow," he grunted after he read through the message.

"You do not have much time, but this works to everyone's advantage. I have a message you need to give to someone high up in the Mendel command structure when you get there," and he passed off to Estel a small data chip. "We can get more out; we can get thousands out, if we can get some form of support. The Atlantic Freedom Operation is all over, watching and silently guarding the Coordinators who were unlucky enough to remain behind. We need support to do more."

"I will plead your case to the Star Admiral if I must," Estel promised.

"They sound like they're honorable men and women, let us see if they really show it." The AFO operative took a few moments to pour some hot cocoa for the lumberjack-turned-escapee. "it is unlikely you and I shall ever meet again in this lifetime. Go with the grace of the Holy Spirit, and never look back in regret."

"You are not... planning suicide, correct?"

"No, certainly not, but I expect Blue Cosmos will want to have a chat with me. I have an assault rifle and a couple grenades for such an occasion, but I am no fool. I don't expect to survive."

"Good God, man, that's a hell of a way to think about it." Estel sounded genuinely shocked, especially with the sheer vehemence of his old friend's declaration.

"I was born and raised in a Gulag in old Russian territory. I know what captivity is, and I learned what the grace of God is. Go with God, old friend, and get off this miserable mudball. The men who walked the stars as easily as we walk the roads can show you what true freedom looks like."

-x-

(31 September CE 72, 1200 hours UTC)
(Emirate of Orb, Onogoro Spaceport main entrance)

The man sent to pick up the two refugees from the Atlantic Federation was a special security officer, and like every security or law enforcement officer throughout existence he was very good at recognizing people. Even when incredibly disheveled by being on a 30-hour flight. "Estel and Regina Daniels?"

"We are. Who are you?"

"Name's Tyler. I'm a Marine Point Commander stationed at the embassy here in Orb. I'm here to pick you up."

Estel knew to expect this, but he also knew that it could be a false flag. He also knew a very quick way to verify that the man in front of them was legitimate. "Do you have your Codex necklace?"

"Yes, sir, you can check it on one of the airport terminals." The supposed Marine readily handed it off to Estel. All three stepped up to one of the data terminals to plug it in and verify; Onogoro International Airport had taken the thus-far unique initiative to install and synchronize the necessary software to allow Codex verification on the various data terminals around the airport. As such, when plugged in and the terminal was requested to do a search to verify the Codex of the Marine, they were shown his complete identification package and non-classified military records, both of which were so far removed from anything that would be legitimately imaginable by an Earth-bound Blue Cosmos member that it seemed legitimate. Of critical note were the entries for his assignment to the warship Mjolnr and subsequent assignment to the embassy in the Emirate of Orb.

"Sorry, I had to be sure. This is just too unreal, and too easy to run a counter-espionage operation against it."

"Way ahead of you on that note, we have a couple officers around the terminal keeping an eye on the people just in case Blue Cosmos wants to show up and shoot some people up. They want our asses for hamburger, we want their asses for Codex lines. Just another day at the office, if you ask me."

"Things are getting pretty hot," Regina commented bluntly.

"I expect the war will resume sometime around next spring, at the absolute latest by northern-hemisphere summer. The flipside of that thought is a good one: combat action in the summer is a lot easier than trying to fight a winter battle against them. Come on, I have a car waiting outside."

Outside the main terminal, it became rapidly evident in the space of 20 yards walking distance that something was wrong, gauging mostly by the incredible string of profanity let loose by the Marine. After nearly a minute of foreign language foul language, he finally broke down and said something that could be understood by the Daniels refugees. "Where the fuck is my truck?"

"Point Commander, a trio of teenage girls in black and leather saw it sitting there, hopped in and drove off with it before I could stop them." Regina was rather surprised that the person who admitted to being unable to stop a trio of teenage hell raisers was herself a teenager in street clothing but with her Codex necklace worn visible next to a small silver cross.

"Well this is a grade-alpha clusterfuck if I've ever seen one. Call the police and put out an APB on it, they are on a bloody island and they can't get too far with it, even if it is fusion powered. I will radio for another ride, and hopefully round two doesn't get freaking stolen in transit."

-x-

(1 October CE 72, 1000 hours UTC)
(Lagrange Point 1, nearby Asgard Station)

"Old arcade games, Dad? Serious?" Veruna asked after she successfully snuck up on her father in the crew lounge on the Sailboat Reborn.

"Veruna! I thought – when did you get on the ship?" Despite the question, father, mother and eldest daughter all closed on each other roughly in the middle of the lounge area in the dropship Sailboat Reborn and embraced.

"I had to transfer over to this ship with an aerofighter pilot, something pertaining to security."

"It doesn't matter now, doesn't matter now, we're back together." Veruna did notice but did not comment on her mother being misty-eyed over a reunion that she otherwise thought was a piece of cake to arrange. To her, it was nearly no effort to crack passwords, break encryption, hack networks especially in the pursuit of such a lofty goal as evacuating coordinators from the clutches of Blue Cosmos.

"We missed you, all three of you," her father said.

"We have some catching up to do, but we can do that when we get to the colony. There is a lot to see in the colony, we will have to give you a tour when we get in."

"How are you three getting along? Are the Magi taking care of you?"

"They were, at first, but it didn't last. All three of us are over the age of majority by Magi law – they don't play games up here, they expect you to start making decisions and judgments early."

"Serious? What are you three doing now if you're not in school?"

"I'm the only one of us that isn't in school of some form or another, Mom, but we all have part-time or full-time jobs to go with. Rita is in trade school for medical apprenticeship and works part-time fitting dresses with a professional seamstress. Leiley lives over in the second colony, doing early college courses in preparation for naval jump engine design and works full-time as a colony infrastructure technician contractor."

"And you?" her father asked.

"I live at the GARM facility in Mendel, or I should say I work there and live in an apartment a couple blocks away, but to be honest I don't go home very much. I've been known to spend as much as a week in the server rooms at the research facility without seeing daylight once. I know it's not good for me, but it's right on the cutting edge and it's where I want to be." She wasn't about to admit that she had been known to sleep on top of one of the Quantum Mainframes because it was the warmest of the machines in the server farm – she only need a flat sheet to keep the moving air off her and a pillow to rest well, even in the continuous noise of a server farm.

"Server technician?" Her mother asked.

"When needed, mostly I do quantum computing analysis and data storage management."

"That's...wow. Already?"

"Like I said, they don't play the '18 / not 18' game up here. The Magi-born kids around Rita's age do better than some adults I've dealt with."

"Oh," Regina Daniels grumbled. She slacked her embrace on her daughter; as she did, her hand passed across something in the waistband of Veruna's pants. "Huh? What's that?"

"What's what?" Veruna asked, unsure what her mother was referring to.

"Are you...carrying a gun?" she asked suspiciously.

"Huh? Oh, yeah, so?" Veruna asked in counter.

"You know how I feel about guns, dear," she said in a calm voice.

Veruna took it as something of a warning and decided her stock answer wouldn't fly in this case – most people asked why she carried a smaller piece, in this case her mom wanted to know why she carried at all. Or at least wanted to chide her into not carrying / retaining possession of it.

"Well, Mom, I work at an installation that has been attacked by terrorists in the past, and is still under threat of attack. I work with systems and data structures that the Earth Alliance would literally kill people to gain access to. I have to think about these things, and I think you should as well."

It was clear from her expression that she did realize what Veruna was speaking of.

-x-x-x-

(3 October CE 72, 1400 hours EST (UTC-5))
(Earth Alliance Atlantic Federation territory, Old England Territory, Davenport Naval Fabrication Plant (HMNB Davenport), Drydock 3)

Much as the old naval facilities of the United States had been continued for the purpose of naval supremacy by the Atlantic Federation, the British naval facilities were still in use but with a different purpose. Where the old United States fleet harbors (Charleston, San Fransisco, Pearl Harbor, Key West, Seattle) served mostly surface assets and the occasional hunter-killer submarine, The major English stations (Devonport, Portsmouth, Clyde (Faslane)) served a much more secretive and destructive purpose.

The main traffic in and out of the English stations was the submarines, including refitted British Vanguard-class, Russian Typhoon-class and United States Ohio-class 'boomer' (nuclear missile) submarines. Relics of a long-gone era, the Earth Alliance had recovered and resurrected the ancient missile submarines simply because, at the time, nobody else had a nuclear counter-force option and being the only state with working SSBNs made them the terror of the world in the CE 60s...that never was.

The mere existence of the small cadre of SSBNs was one of the Earth Alliance's greatest and best-kept secrets. Two Vanguards, two Ohios, and five Typhoons, all refitted with the last production model Trident D8-A1 Naval ICBMs, used the Davenport facility as their ultimate home when not away from shore. Of late, the tenders began seeing new activity, new ships with a wildly different purpose from the old Boomers.

Warships with ancestors from space.

"Five here at Davenport, six at Portsmouth, five more at Faslane, six at Charleston, three in San Francisco, two in Key West, two in Seattle, seven in Pearl Harbor, and three more on the moon, 39 ships total?"

"Forty, including your ship, the Ophanim." Despite the immense progress in the clear threat of numeric superiority the massive amount of new Archangel-class ships would provide to the Earth Alliance, Admiral Sutherland was still stone-jawed even while delivering such impressive news. "The lessons of your last battle with Mendel have been taken to heart; the old men well above us have been 'motivated' to not make the same mistake again as we did in the last war. Today we fight new enemies, and as you have pointed out they are not impressed by our old ways. So we play the game by their rules, only to we play it with our deck, our cut and our shuffle."

Natarle Badgiruel, Rear Admiral (officially as of last week – her promotion had been held in abeyance while her conduct was reviewed along with that of Admiral Sutherland), whistled in surprise, though not at the ships or their sheer numbers. "Studying their psychology and motifs now, sir?"

"I find that thinking like a disorganized bastard is difficult, but not impossible. Sadly, it is needed: they are not going away unless we force them to go away."

"Task Force Jokers Wild," Natarle recited the name of their erstwhile foes after she stopped at the retaining wall for the number nine ship tender to look down into the frame of a new warship being built. "In the end, it will probably all be psychology."

"In their own concept, something of a losing psychology already." Natarle shook her head in defiance of her commander's conclusion. "No? Then what is your take on it?"

"When the admiral spoke of his concept for the fleet, he called them 'the wild-card discarded in the tournament game, only to be picked up in a street game.' don't make the mistake that the brass brass are making in assuming that that means they think themselves of lower quality; on the contrary, anybody in the fleet will readily tell you that the 'tournament players' in this game sucked major portions of ass and need to be removed from the tournament the hard way. Their phrasing is referring both to their homeland and to us at the same time: a tournament game played correctly will never be won or lost in a single hand. To them, this is not a tournament game, we are nowhere near big enough to be tournament players in their game, and they're making the unjustifiable assumption that we never will be."

Sutherland would not admit to any one being in existence, not even God if He asked, that he agreed with their position. Unlike Azraiel, Sutherland did not even begin to entertain the notion that the Earth Alliance could be used for anything other than beating the shit out of Coordinators and Mendel. As a form of government, the Alliance was completely clusterfucked from top to bottom and would rapidly collapse of its own weight and numerous failings overnight if the world suddenly woke up and there was nothing left to do battle with. He had suspicions that Natarle believe the same, but both were far too professional and far too ingrained in the Earth Alliance military culture to even begin voicing such an opinion.

"And because we are not tournament-grade, we are a street game by default?" A third voice requested from immediately behind the two flag officers.

The two flag officers returned the salute of the newcomer as was proper. "Captain Roanoke, welcome back to the service."

"This is a candid discussion, Captain, I expect you to speak freely and directly. I don't have time for yes-man bullshit, and quite frankly neither does the Earth Alliance as a whole." Again, Admiral Sutherland looked grim as he said it.

"Well, given that we have all had our asses kicked by Mendel in one fashion or another, I think I transferred to the right department to start working on a way to return the favor." Despite the highly impolitic phrasing, neither Admiral took it as an indirect insult. All three were silent as he stepped up to the retainer wall that the admirals were leaning against. "As I guess, so God shows. Archangel-class ships are a good start, but don't bet the farm on them doing the job. It would be nothing for Mendel to trade a few Mobile Armors for each one of these new ships and still consider that a win in their book. That, mind you, is if we get lucky enough to actually take down one of their mobile armors in the process, a feat that I won't bet on."

"We figured that, we have new Mobile Armor-scale weapon systems and new mobile units in development to begin countering the overwhelming advantage Mendel already has in that department," Sutherland said.

"Street game, street rules. The only time we came close to winning was one time of two that they fought fair. When they let loose the chain and truly release the dog of war, it's going to go right for our necks."

"I only wish we could get that lucky, Captain," Rear Admiral Badgiruel commented dryly. "When they finally do cut loose, this dog is going to start by going for our balls, then the handler will come in behind the pooch and cut our necks while we can't stop them. Street game, street rules, and the Magi have a long history of playing very nasty when provoked. Throw in a chaotic variable, like a certain off-the-reservation Star Admiral, and you have an instant recipe for nightmare."

"Our balls...the naval stations on the moon?"

"That is one way to look at it," Admiral Sutherland commented dryly, wondering what gave Natarle the idea to consider the moon to be the nards area of the Earth Alliance military.

"It is the direct way to look at it. As of right now, the only power projection we have is from the moon and from Artemis. Given that Artemis is still mostly useless after ZAFT shot it up, that leaves only the moon, and as soon as we provoke them that's going to be their first strike. If they can pin us on the ground, they can saturate bombard us until we have no choice but to sing soprano as ordered when ordered." Natarle sighed mightily. "I know I am missing something here."

It would be years before the final piece of the puzzle was revealed to Natarle, but the answer to come contained within that piece would be so horrifying as to outstrip even the sight of the nuclear missiles being launched from the ancient submarines housed at Naval Station Davenport.

-x-x-x-

(6 October CE 72, 2000 hours PLANT Standard Time (UTC-4))
(PLANT Aprilius 1, Office of the chairman of ZAFT)

"Take a seat, Commander Joule. I have a special assignment for you," Chairman Durandal said by way of greeting.

"Chairman?" Yzak prompted, completely unsure why he was before his NCA so late at night to receive an assignment.

"I am conveying to you this assignment this late at night, not out of any delay in schedule, but a necessity of secrecy. The other members of the Supreme Council have informants throughout the entire military command structure. While in normal practice this would not be a concern, I have need of a special adviser with three qualities and I don't want them to know about it. First, I need a special adviser who has done battle against every major military force throughout the Earth Sphere. The amount of people that have that qualification inside ZAFT can be counted on one hand, and at least two of them are known informants for opposition factions in the council. Second, I need an adviser who is completely realistic and just as importantly very blunt about that realism. While ZAFT is not strictly overrun with yes-men, the amount of such persons is strangely high. Third, I need an adviser that is innately aggressive and is willing to take risks above and beyond the normal call to duty. Again, much like the yes-men, it is not fair to say that ZAFT is overrun with cowards or career-pushers but I have noticed over the past months a trend to move away from direct action and towards placating certain irrational parties on the planet below. Are you with me so far?"

"I follow, sir. You call me because I fit all three of the parameters you listed."

"That, and one other parameter I will not yet discuss. My question then becomes are you willing to build strategies and deliver advice outside the normal ZAFT command structure with the intention of furthering ZAFT goals outside of normal channels or methods of action?"

The chairman's phrasing slightly confused Yzak. "Are you referring to special operations actions?"

"Not directly, though now that you mention it you are one of the few pilots that I would induct into my special operations personnel group. More to the point, I'm referring to command and coordination, not necessarily military action."

"Civilian or military solutions?" Yzak was referring to the necessity of creating strategies and coordinating actions, not necessarily pertaining to military operations.

"Mostly civilian and industrial, though some interface and planning for military actions will be necessary. Any military action to be involved will be mostly noncombat beyond a certain point in time."

"You need a man on the inside, someone who moves about the command structure freely but owes no allegiance to any patrons on the board, and someone who is mostly with the program in terms of expanding away from Earth. Is my read back correct?" Yzak asked after a few moments to digest what Durandal had to say and what his mission requirements were.

Chairman Durandal took a moment to move the bishop on the black side of his chessboard a few squares. Yzak always figured his love of chess to be something that he used as much as entertainment as it was a method of helping him collect thoughts and organize concepts inside his mind. "In short, you are correct. I am not entirely sure how much you are aware of the internal workings of the Supreme Council, so I will need to draw for you a scenario as demonstration."

"Not as much as I probably should be," Yzak admitted candidly, an not surprising answer to Durandal.

"As of right now, in the council there are three major factions. My faction, which thoroughly believes in off-world expansion, is technically the numerically largest of all at six members including myself. A second faction has grown up inside the confines of the council almost illogically; one would think that the necessity of remembering the depredations of the Earth Alliance would be automatic for some people, however in the case of the second faction they seem to forget that we have suffered both war and nuclear holocaust at their hands. This second faction does not see peace as a decent holding point when dealing with the Earth Alliance, their intention is to placate the Earth Alliance to a wholly unreasonable degree. To what end they are attempting to do this, we do not have any idea. A third faction exists of four members, though in terms of expansion they are more or less neutral. What is your opinion of this dynamic?"

Yzak took several moments to answer. "My first guess is that the opposition faction seems to have either a serious mental deficiency or something else is happening there. I would not expect to see any manner of bribery going on, though I have noticed among the PLANTs a lot of people still talk about ties to the Earth Alliance as if the natural state of affairs was the last war never occurred. I take it you get a lot more traction when dealing with the neutral fraction than you do with the pro-Earth Alliance group?"

"I get some results, though so far the combination of neutral and against have not thus far managed to block any of my major initiatives. At the minimum, I would say most of their willingness to operate is political expediency; they know they can be kicked out of their respective command structures very easily for taking irrational actions, especially in this environment. I have not begun pushing hot buttons, but when I do I expect I will get some pushback from both sides."

"And I take it that is where I step in. You need a man to minimize conflict with the neutral faction, need an adviser that can help formulate concepts and plans that would be more desirable to both factions, and needs somebody who is willing to be realistic about everything you intend and still able to follow through with those expectations when they become operating policy. Have I missed anything so far?"

"No, you have the right idea. In short, you would be my senior administrative aide and, to borrow a phrase from Mendel, you would be the power tool I use to clean up messy spots."

"You know this is going get real messy real fast," Yzak said candidly. "The two council members that I think comprise an opposition faction may be dirty; I haven't heard anything official or unofficial, and so far I have not seen anything, but I do believe that they were or are not making judgments in the best interests of ZAFT when they're pushing against expansion plans or attempting to placate the Earth Alliance. The more serious of the two involved is actually more heinous: if I remember correctly, she is a history teacher by trade and she should know that placating tyrants does not work at all."

"I believe I've found the right man for the job," Chairman Durandal commented as he moved a pawn two spaces forward from his starting assault line. "For now, we will ignore the disruptions from the council, and focus on building a secure and aggressive expansion plan. What are your thoughts on, say, setting up an early colony on a planet one jump or two jumps away from Earth as soon as we have a jump ship available?"

Yzak nodded with a smile, though in so doing a glint from one of the queens on the 'Mechwarrior's Chess' board caught his eye. Much as the normal board on Durandal's desk, this one also appeared to have a rumination game going but with all six factions in play and with a lot of otherwise chaotic placements on the field. If anything, it seemed to be a metaphor for the current state of affairs, and a metaphor that Yzak did not disagree with in the end. He figured if he was going to be doing this on a routine basis, he would need to learn the Magi version of chess, because his foes were altogether vicious and chaotic when viewed from the outside.

-x-x-x-

(3 June SL2-12, 1100 hours Terran Standard Time)
(Office of the Empress of the Multimage Star Empire)

"Okay, we have the 'What' and 'Who' sorted out, now how do we get to the Mjolnr?" Division Commander Gerard Lightbringer asked. "Wizard support?"

"No, no," Executor-Princess Hotaru Tomoe replied. "We can get there by jumping in the same fashion that Kerensky left the Inner Sphere for new lands, though ours will necessarily be different." She was referring to the 'planet-hopping' method of travel that Aleksandr Kerensky used, by which he traveled a distance nearly the length of the Inner Sphere toward the core of the galaxy to settle his remnants, well away from the 'hostile environment' the Inner Sphere had become.

"Well, yeah, we're jumping through parallels and time, and the latter a long way back," Stan replied honestly. "How many jumps?"

"On the ships that will be going, call it forty jumps. Just shy of a year in transit to get there."

"We'll need tanker Dropships to supply the engines, then," Gerald replied. "I take it we will be landing in dead space a lot?"

"We will," Hotaru replied. "We will also need to heavily modify the jump controllers on each ship involved. The Phalanx-class ship will need to be a 'throwaway', another abused ride of the Admiralty that can disappear without them giving too much of a crap."

"The 2291 ship, the Golden Phoenix, would make a good candidate," Division Commander Caecilius opined. He knew which ships were disdained by his 'micromanager squad' and how they were being squeezed out. The Admiralty Review, however, was not making the mistake of the old Magi Council in trying to wedge themselves between his authority and the ships, per se, just micromanage the naval forces outside his purview. When the Star Admirals began trying to countermand his orders, Gerald would act with the utmost directness. "It's out of maintenance routines, passed over for Nanotech upgrade, half-staffed and most of them are pissed, I don't think they would object too hard to taking a long walk if the Empress asked them. Admiralty wants me to scrap the ship and 'retire' the crew and officers, but I say fuck 'em. If we can put the ship to good use, so much the better."

"I'll Gate out to the ship later today, talk to the Star Admiral and his crew. This is strictly volunteer, of course," Rini said.

"I would not willingly ask this of people unwilling to stay," Executor Tomoe replied. "To answer the question unstated, this is the last campaign for the ship sent; once the shooting is over, the ship will be scrapped out for materials, its guns placed in orbit nearby the colony cluster to be used on new, smaller ships as time goes by." In space, there would be no degradation of components left floating in place, since being a vacuum there would be no atmospheric wear or similar contamination. "The jump core specifically would provide material for nearly a dozen jumpships, and probably would be the first thing to go."

"No problem, in a proper shooting war it would have to be refitted before we could even put it into action," Gerard commented. "At least this way, we can give it a nanomachine refit over the next 40 weeks of transit, and when we arrive it is ready to do battle."

"There won't be much naval battle involved," Hotaru admitted. "Establishing near-space superiority is a priority, but a pathetically easy priority for one Phalanx-class ship, much less two. The main problem is going to be..." her sentence trailed off when Gerard smiled.

"Let me guess, suborbital fire support?"

"No contest, that," Division Commander Agrippa commented crassly. The Empress simply snorted, herself trained in the art and understanding of suborbital fire support direction. "Monitors?"

"Not needed," Hotaru replied immediately. "The one thing the locals can do is Monitors, and our guys have a contract with two of the other players to produce some fabulous ones. Infantry, armor and air is the crux of the forces needed."

"Forty weeks, is it?" Empress Rini Atrebas asked.

"It is," Hotaru replied.

"Best I pack heavy, then. Recommendations?"

"Sunscreen, body armor, and urban camo. And some way to amuse yourself on the forty weeks of trip," Hotaru allowed. Magi warships were not the best in terms of creature comforts, nor were they the worst.

"You?" Gerard asked with a lecherous twitch of his left eyebrow.

"Not hardly," Hotaru replied, knowing exactly what he was referring to. "My husband is busy right now, and will be for the next month minimum. Besides, I'll have a huge amount of work to do in transit, certain special devices necessary for this operation to go smoothly and to prevent a nuclear holocaust in the future of the destination." Gerard and Stan both nodded without a word, knowing that she frequently used her husband as a defense against any implication of extramarital activity, even when referring to her special relationship with Empress Rini. It was a very effective defense due mostly to indirect fear, in that there weren't many people who could claim to defeat the Old Emperor in direct combat and her husband was on that short list.

"Start packing your bags, gentlemen," Rini ordered. "We leave in one week, after the force is assembled. Gerald, issue orders for the Golden Phoenix to move to the flotilla rendezvous point. Also check the status and transport availability of the four civilian groups that are coming along."

"Aff, Empress Atrebas," Gerard replied stoically and left the room.

"Stan, I want Commando Resources Management to dredge up full contingents from the list of approved non-magic personnel. Remember, this is a one-way ticket for everyone going, and everyone going needs to be warned. You, me, Hotaru, and Gerald Lightbringer are the only ones coming back. Personnel need to be moved to the Golden Phoenix by Gate Mages, Strategic Mages, temporally if needed. Also, if there is spouses or children of personnel from the Mjolnr still in this time period, we need to give them an offer to go that way, with the clear warning that they may not be coming back."

"Aff, Empress, I'm on it." Stan was out the door moments thereafter.

"And you and I need to go over some operational details on this matter," Rini said to the only remaining person in the room, being Executor Tomoe.

"First off, there is a symbolic issue standing with the Admiralty Review," Hotaru began as she took a seat. "Their negligence nearly had the Mjolnr and fleet killed off entirely, and thus would have ensured no victory solution to Ragnarok. I think such misconduct needs to be re-compensated appropriately, don't you?" Hotaru asked plaintively.

"Oh yes, we need to finagle some orders for the Mjolnr and descendants to see to that little problem. This is not the first fleet they have screwed over, so..." Rini said in retort.


Author's Chapter Afterword:

This is one of the longer chapters in terms of noncombat (or semi-combat) action in the second half. It took a while for me to write it cohesively, and for that I must apologize.

Note clearly: this is the breaking point. This chapter is where the foundation of coming conflict is laid out for everyone to see and manipulate. Do not think for a minute that Blue Cosmos is not going to use the positions in this chapter to begin formenting their next war. Do not think for a minute Mendel will allow unhindered the production of 40 Archangel-class ships. Do not think for a moment ZAFT will allow anything to come between them and the new dream of interplanetary (and later interdimensional) conquest. The lack of yield in these positions can result in nothing less than sheer conflict.

There is an interesting dynamic I stumbled across when writing this chapter, one that inadvertently echoed real life to a far greater degree than even I thought possible. When viewed at a distance, this story shows three dynamic schools of thought. The first school is the old world, those who have the existing power structures and will do anything to retain that power and control (Earth Alliance, to an extent not yet shown Equatorial). The second school is those parties who wish to escape the old world, who do not want to be governed by old control structures (ZAFT, some Orb and USSA positions). The third position is mostly those people who just want to be left the hell alone (Mendel, Orb, USSA, Scandinavia). Much as the clash of these three parties is making for a shit-ton bloodbath in real life, it will do so in coming chapters of this story.

The noisemaker of the chapter is definitely going to be the Fast Falcon Express, specifically Veruna's use of multiple techniques to get her family out of harm's way. When the Earth Alliance starts losing possession of its victims, you will see the rage increase exponentially. Blue Cosmos will likely become involved at one or more levels, possibly even the military. And on the note of Blue Cosmos, they have a really heinous action in the works here in a few chapters. It will involve one of the old SEED cast, and it won't be pretty. Really not pretty.

The last thing on your minds should be the oncoming cavalry from the lands of the Magi: a whole Phalanx-class ship and a lot of forces. Everyone here who knows their military procedures will tell you that the Magi are about to completely upset the numbers game in their favor, though the reason for it is known only to the Executor-Princess who is calling the shots. There is clear reason for this level of overkill, and you will understand it no later than chapter 12 or so.

Below, I have part 2 of 3 of my explanation on the Star League. This is the juicy parts, the conclusion of the Star Empire Wars and the bizarre shadow war fought between soldiers and shadows in the eons after the war. There is a third part to come in the next chapter, the tale of the Executors, which will bring a little more clarity to the affair and specifically an understanding why an outside party can practically give the Empress of the Magi a set of marching orders.

That's it for me. Stay tuned for more chapters in all my stories.

NEXT UP: the forces of each side train hard for the coming battles, even as some parties begin their clandestine operations.


Review Replies: 8 reviews between release and now, so I have a lot of territory to cover! Thank you all for the input!

Knightowl 4183: On battle armor, well, your question will best be answered in the next chapter. As to Eurasian ships, not likely with the mods you suggested. You will see why in the next chapter or two; internal problems are crippling the Eurasians, especially their naval presence.

Takeshi Yamato: Your OC will definitely get a workout before the story is over, rest assured. If you are grilling any other ideas for OC, I would like to hear about them.

Deathzealot: More Sutherland action in this chapter. You can probably guess he is going to be the EA's command linchpin when the shooting begins, and you may not be far off the mark with such a guess :)

How goes your writing on the JG side story?

The chant used in the second chapter was the chorus to one of the all-time badass power metal songs, 10th Man Down by Nightwish. The Magi commonly use it as a catchall to extoll the fact that they didn't start the present conflict, but they will see it through to the end.

The USSA is going to end up one of the power players in coming sets, and each of the nations will have its decided advantages and disadvantages comparative. This is not for balance purposes, but a result of expected development and expertise.

(PS, have you tried the MekTek version of Mechwarrior 4 yet?)

Sieben Nightwing: Rest assured, I have not forgotten about your writing, but real life has kept me real busy and not able to devote proper reading or writing time to FFN.

Sieben Nightwing (Part 2): On the 'Flying Holy Shit Kung Fu' (also called 'just plane stupid' by flight-adverse Magi personnel), it may be featured depending on circumstances in the side story Inferno in Chicago.

Biggie1447: Good to see I can still get someone's brain going L)

My apologies for the 5-month delay on this one. Real life is kinda unfriendly to my writing pursuits right now, so...

FraserMage: Oh yes, you hit the peg there. Slowly, though, the political factors are being squeezed out for operations, so...

Damrhein: On that, you can sleep well. The Triangle will be reformed, as will some showing of the results of the new Triangle be shown. I have not forgotten about the Psionics in Mendel's employ, though you can also expect that advantage will not be strictly to Mendel forever...


The Gripe Sheet: ADVISORY: I had some issues with translation in my voice recognition software. Please be on the lookout for grammar or logical FUBAR and report as needed. Thank you.

As usual, all due thanks to Necroblade, my beta-reader. If there is any one person keeping me out of the gutter when writing this, it is he.


Footnotes:

(1): MAN-Portable Air Defense System

(2): Armor Piercing and Incendiary


HISTORICAL BRIEF: The Star League, Second Star League, and the Executors (Part 2 of 3)

"The final vestige of the influence of the Gods is done. The Negaverse no longer serves the purpose of vengeance. The many worlds [Star Empires] do not stand at a footing of war. 3500 years to attain the silence. Was it worth it?"
—Executor-Lord Baigan Nostra, year 2001 of the Star League

The existence of the Star League is itself part paradox and part creative solution to an ongoing nightmare scenario between the six Star Empires that controlled the bulk of known space. The formation of a governmental coalition between the major and minor Star Empires provided the basis under which the ongoing and never completely understood conflict between Empires could be reduced or eliminated. However, the first Star League would only provide a temporary respite in the war, it would be the Second Star League that provided for true peace between the Star Empires.

SECOND STAR LEAGUE: Silence Of The Darkness, Phoenix Light

SILENCE OF THE DARKNESS: "Is this where we begin anew?"

The destruction of the first Star League heralded a new and much bloodier phase of the Star Empire Wars. Much as the wars themselves began, it started between just the Magi and the Negaverse, but within five years the conflict spread to all six of the major Star Empires – a case of two-on-four odds that turned out to be exceedingly destructive to the numerically superior side, even despite the advantage of size. More to the point, the Magi had given up any pretense of restraint, assaulting their foes in a randomized pattern with maximum force and minimum hesitation, a combination of tactics that unleashed the true potential of the military state and a seriously infuriated population.

For 252 years, the renewed Star Empire Wars continued at a breakneck pace, with such rampant destruction and capture that two of the four Empires aligned against the Magi – specifically the Illyaris and Dynasty – were forced to bow out of the general conflict with cease-fire agreements to preserve their sovereignty. Ever the ones to claim moral supremacy, the Negaverse continued their intransigence and counter-campaigning even in the face of increasing political dissent from behind and increasing Magi lethality from their front. The sheer fury of the Magi would continue to fuel the conflict to the end of the phase, even well past the point that the most conservative military analysts would have said the Negaverse was through as a serious military power.

The end of the Quarter War came with a decisive campaign, but more or less petered out of its own volition. With the destruction of over 80 percent of the Negaverse combat power, and what remained of that power being mostly greenhorn forces incapable of threatening veteran Magi units, the opinion shifted slowly in the Empire away from their annihilation and toward considering the end results to be an execution of the Emperor's orders. They had broke the resolve of the Negaverse to do battle, they had broken worlds, crushed a people, and in the end they left the 'high and mighty' Negaverse to pick up the remnants of their own arrogance. Though most of the military damage was recovered within 60 years, and notable expansion was again taking place in the Negaverse military within 100 years, the psychological damage from coming so close to outright national annihilation would never be fully recovered – persons were taken Bondsmen in a campaign 750 years later that still stated the Quarter War as justification for their fear of the Magi.

The end of the Quarter War also change the existing dynamic of the ongoing Star Empire Wars. This change was most notable in the alignment of major powers there would continue to be involved in the conflict will through the end. With the Dynasty and Illyaris empires having bowed out of the game in cease-fire treaties, this left the wars be fought as a straight two-on-two battle between opposing factions, leaving no parties in the middle to operate as swing states and no parties to curry favor with or use as an expedient shield against their opposition. This change in the status quo was considered a major victory by the Emperor of the Magi, in that a quarter of the population of known existence was now considered out of the line of fire and could begin rebuilding and expanding, a change of pace that directly matched his assigned goal.

In the centuries after the end of the Quarter War, the relative silence and reduced campaigning would later come to be known as The Calm Era, a time not specifically of prosperity but hallmarked by the relative silence of the lack of battle. Even as they rebuilt, the Negaverse was not willing to openly engage in force in large campaigns against their erstwhile foes; quite the opposite, the Queen of the Negaverse deliberately ordered her forces to avoid engaging in any pitched battles against Magi or New Moon forces, thereby preventing a rekindling of the near-annihilation that occurred in the years after the collapse of the Star League. The Negaverse use this time of calm as a direct opportunity to expand, to train, and to prepare for what they hoped would be a coup-de-main strike to be executed later.

A single strike was planned with the intention of providing the Negaverse ample bait to draw the Magi into a campaign from which they could not readily recover. The source of the bait was simple: the moon that the Star League resided on had been razed to the ground, but the planet said moon orbited had not been completely annihilated by the campaigns and still considered hallowed ground by the Magi. A planned strike against an uninvolved planet that the Magi declared off-limits could create an abattoir that simply generated casualties for the Magi if executed correctly. Forces were mobilized, chains of command were activated, warships were pulled out of mothballs, and exactly 997 years after the destruction of the Star League palace the Negaverse began a new campaign of terror with the intention of demonstrating to the Magi that vengeance runs deep. Operation Crystal Fracture, the assault on Terra Zero, by which point had advanced to mid-90s technology and society above and beyond their prior governments, was executed flawlessly in the space of two weeks and resulted in a planet captured with no more than a regiment total casualties among the Negaverse forces.

Despite their overwhelming victory, and even despite the major coup in finding and capturing the reborn Princess Serenity (who was believed to have been a casualty of the Negaverse campaign on the moon), the Negaverse forces made a critical error in judgment in attacking Terra Zero. The one soldier they failed to kill in their campaign on the moon, an old combat Wizard by the name of Erich Hess, had surmised that one day and Negaverse would attack this hallowed ground for one of multiple possible reasons. The Emperor of the Magi understood this possibility and left the old Mage as a sort of "trip wire" on the planet in a deep cover mission that did not even acknowledge his continued existence among the records of the Magi. When the campaign for Terra Zero began, Retainer (Star Commander) Hess reported back directly to the Emperor of the happenings on planet. With clear forewarning, and more importantly clear knowledge of enemy weak points and timetables, the Emperor was able to immediately assemble a counterattack plan to wrest control of Terra Zero from the Negaverse and keep it out of their hands.

Much as in the campaigns of the Quarter War, the Magi campaign to retake Terra was extremely swift, extremely brutal, and showed precisely no restraint against Negaverse forces. Operation Moonlight Shadow gained its place in history mainly for being another resounding defeat of some of the highest-ranked of the Negaverse command structure, but also for being the first campaign to be waged completely in the open by the Magi Commando Caste, effectively taking them from a semi-hushed formation to being the fourth acknowledged branch of the Magi military and by demonstration the most lethal of the four branches. Even with their best formations in play on Terra, under a full assault from Magi Commando forces deploying directly onto the planet's surface by way of Gate Mages, combined with a full naval assault from Pirate and Zenith jump-points, the Negaverse forces could not hold the planet they had taken a mere week before. To ensure their erstwhile foes did not simply come back with a larger force for another attempt, Operation Moonlight Shadow was also conducted at the same time as multiple other smaller operations were conducted across Negaverse territories for the express purpose of distracting some of their larger and better organized formations from beginning a counter campaign and to tie up possible reserves. These minor operations would later be recorded as part of the main operation and the total campaign was listed as having run for six months, despite the fact that the main effort of the campaign was executed in less than 10 days.

It would once again be the moon, forever designated Luna Zero, that would be the linchpin of this chapter of history. The thousand years on the ground, undisturbed and not participating in the Star Empire Wars, would allow the Retainer to train heavily in his old arts of wizardry and specifically increase his ability to distort space and time to such a degree that he could begin to warp entire dimensions with his skills. It would be this skill, combined with the man-power of the best of the Magi and Commando personnel, that he would use to rebuild the Star League in one instant. With a powerful distortion of both space and time, Erich Hess reached across the infinite parallel dimensions and drew forth a rendition of the moon from another time that had not thus far been destroyed by the Negaverse; with a single stroke, this living rendition of the Star League traded places with the destroyed hulk of the moon. In the span of less than two seconds, the entire annihilation of the Star League had been undone.

The rebirth of the Star League would be the second to last nail in the coffin of the old Negaverse. Such a visceral reparation of one of the greatest tragedies throughout known Existence immediately changed the entire dynamic of the Star Empire Wars overnight. Though incorrectly classified by outside observers, it was widely believed that Erich Hess had reversed time on Luna Zero a thousand years, a skill of such power it was widely assumed (not incorrectly) that the same Magi officer could challenge and destroy any other wizard, military formation, planet or planetoid as was ordered by the Emperor. With such a frightening milestone readily visible to all involved parties, the Dark Moon Star Empire immediately requested terms of cease-fire with the Magi and petitioned for reentry into the Star League, with the unstated addendum that all treaties and/or alliances of convenience with the Negaverse were now null and void. In the space of 72 hours, the Negaverse was left standing alone and still at a state of direct war with two of the other Star Empires, only this time this state of war came with the caveat that the Magi could petition the entire Star League for redress against the Negaverse. The ruling power of the Negaverse had very little doubt that such a petition would be struck down, especially with the thousand years of intervening history to show as proof.

All things considered, the newly-reformed Star League had all the option available to conduct a unified campaign against the Negaverse, but by request of the Emperor of the Magi, did not. Due to intelligence information coming in from multiple Negaverse sources, the Magi had reason to believe that the Negaverse were standing on the precipice of civil war and any action before such a split would simply galvanize the populous of their enemies into a single unified force. It did not take more than a week from the reunification of the Star League for the first blows of the Negaverse Civil War to begin – a split between the rightful Queen of the Negaverse and the 'power behind the throne', what would later turn out to be the Goddess Hera. The split itself was wildly uneven, favoring the proper Queen nearly 5 to 1 in terms of planets and population, but some of the highest-ranking military personnel sided with the opposition and created a significant threat to unification.

The events of the NCW created the perfect opportunity for the Magi to end the war on their terms. Under direction of now Division Commander Erich Hess, the combined might of the Magi descended upon the rebellion forces in the Negaverse, hunting the condemned Goddess under direct orders of the Emperor. Operation Moonlight Thunderbolt, the assault on the Negaverse Remnant, began in earnest with a naval assault on every enemy-controlled planet and only grew in scope from there. By political wrangling, the Emperor also made a case that the Negaverse had been as much a victim in the war as the other Empires, in that they were being used as an engine for revenge grand mal in their prosecution of the Star Empire Wars. This changed the dynamic of the war and technically annulled the standing Trial of Absorption against the Negaverse – the ruling against the Greek Gods (a Trial of Abjuration) took precedence, though rendered any persons involved in supporting the Goddess Hera an instant war criminal.

Due to the now-fragmented nature of the Negaverse command and control, resistance to the Magi assault was uncoordinated at best and nonexistant at worst, despite the remaining hatred of the Negaverse Resistance Front. With no fallback and no reinforcements from the remainder of the Empire, the few forces and planets that had chosen loyalty to the Goddess found themselves overwhelmed by the Magi in short order. In a massive error of judgment, Hera returned to the Negaverse Palace to attempt to restart the Negaverse campaign against the Magi and re-destroy the Star League. She was greeted with an entrapment spell and imprisoned in a tomb of black onyx to await disposition by the Magi.

The Emperor himself saw to the annihilation of the last at-large Greek God. A final duel was conducted between the Queen of the Negaverse and the Emperor of the Magi, a closing battle symbolic of the past 3500 years of war. With the final defeat of the Queen, the Negaverse abdicated and surrendered to the Magi. The Star Empire Wars were done.

PHOENIX LIGHT: "Today is a true time of peace, and tomorrow shall also be peaceful. We shall enjoy it."

With the war completed, building the peace became the primary focus of all six Star Empires. First on the matters of business was the induction of the Negaverse into the Star League – the former now known as the Negaverse Mercantile Empire to distance itself from the past nightmares it inflicted. It took days of negotiations between the Executors, the Magi, and the other member states to cement a deal that did not require reparations. Chief among these arrangements was the Magi position, who pointed out fairly that nearly 35 percent of all territory once held by the Negaverse was now annexed Magi territory – that alone was a considerable enough penalty according to the Emperor, and the obvious reward of dealing with the last renegade divinity.

The second order of business was bringing the Magi down from their near-perpetual state of war they had existed at for over 3 millennia. Easily the most difficult of the post-war challenges facing the Star Empires and Star League, the first problem was the necessity of the command structure involved – the Emperor of the Magi had been the standing symbol and ruthless commander of the war effort since the founding of the Empire, and everyone (including the Emperor himself) knew he was the wrong man for the job. With the retirement of Division Commander Hess from active duty, the Emperor's daughter was selected by Trial as the next Division Commander of the Magi, and with the necessity of changing to a peacetime footing she was voted in by the people to command the time of calm. It would take fully 500 years and another change of command structure, but the Magi did finally achieve a level of normalization that retained national integrity without being on a war footing.

The greatest challenge to the Star League was ensuring that the Star Empires Wars would never be repeated. The first example of such a necessity came less than a decade after the close of the major war, a brush-fire conflict between minor states that took wholly five years to resolve because no method of resolution stronger than arbitration was available. A method of solution came obvious when one of the First Six Executors (Specifically, Executor-Lord Sephiroth) became frustrated with the negotiations and accidentally threatened to simply kick both sides' asses just to get them to shut up and quit whining. Within a day, both sides had armistice paperwork on the table and a willingness to sweep the whole conflict under the rug. This result was not overlooked; within a week, plans had been drawn up to form a cadre of Executors, ultra-powerful soldiers and wizards, for the purpose of conflict resolution and promoting the advancement of the member states of the Star League.

The first Executor to sign on was the Old Emperor of the Magi, now officially resigned of his former command and free to act as a neutral broker between the Empires. With his announcement of the first training cadre and recruiting drive, millions of highly-qualified wizards from all over known Existence registered to join. Few were selected, those who had the ability to operate with impartial and cold reason in all actions, who were not afraid to cadge by word, deed or blade any party needed, and those who saw no need for artificial limits on the Star Empires. Even fewer of the selectees stood fast under the grueling training and conditioning program necessary for an Executor, mainly due to the necessity of time involved. The first Executor inducted into the general operations pool from an external source (not an existing Executor, retired Multimage officer or a Planetary Princess) did so 182 years after the end of the Star Empire Wars, succeeding where hundreds had already failed to meet the standards of the Old Emperor, now commonly known as a High Executor. (More will be covered below.)

With a stable defense and expansion, the Star League would grow at an exponential rate as more Star Empires were discovered and inducted of their own free will into the alliance. Despite the times of peace, the true purpose of the Star Empires was never forgotten: to find a victory solution to the coming war Ragnarok, the supposed annihilation of all meaningful life sitting just over the horizon of time. This became the focus of a special cadre of Executors, who act almost completely autonomously to control the progression of the future in such a way that the necessary solution is built in time to fight the war.

In the shadows of Existence, the dark recesses of planets and systems far away from the peaceful home of the Star League, it became evident to the Executors that they were not alone in mastery of the infinite parallel dimensions. Rumors of movements here and there, sightings of unusual warships and flotillas, persons that could not be accounted for, the rumors of shadowy beings and mysterious encounters began to pile up at an alarming rate as the Star League expanded. It would again be Lord Sephiroth that gained the upper hand in the game of shadows, but this answer would come at a terrible price. Lord Sephiroth caught a unit of the mystery skulkers in a position from which they could not readily retreat, and demanded identification. The response of his erstwhile foes was the first defeat an Executor had suffered at anyone's hands since the destruction of the Lunar Palace thousands of years prior; in a protracted sword and spellcraft battle, ten of the unidentified soldiers were able to bring down Sephiroth with the loss of four of their rank, a battle that sent chills through the largely-uncontested Executors.

This result would repeat multiple times over the coming centuries, as the Executors groped for information and understanding of a foe that refused contact at all opportunities despite their marked ability to defeat even the best of Executors through attrition or outright skill. Even the Old Emperor fell to their blades, a lengthy grudge match between the ancient soldier and an ancient representative of their swordcraft. The only conclusive understanding garnered from the encounters between Executor and shadow was a name: Crusaders. (Author Note: the Crusaders showed up in one chapter of Archangel's Amazing Adventures, and for good reason. Their existence will be further explained in stories to come.)

Despite the lack of (unclassified) understanding between Crusader and Star League, no actual campaign would be fought between the two parties, and more to the point only one proper war was conducted between the Star Empires, itself short and inconclusive, mostly mitigated by outside circumstance and prevented from becoming a major interdimensional conflict. The Star League had achieved its objective with flair.

Part three will feature the Executors: their structure, purpose, job perks and duties. What you have read above is oversimplified; for thousands of beings who hold the literal life and death of planets in their hands, whose word and deed changes the fate of entire dimensions, a proper explanation cannot be shown in a few paragraphs.