Soldier of OZ: Walker's Account
Chapter 7 – A Revolutionary Scenario, III
May 15th, AC 195, New Edwards Air Force Base
In the primary terminal building at New Edwards AFB, the young daughter of the First Deputy Foreign Minister of the UESA, Relena Darlian, watched in stunned silence through the wall of windows as New Edwards burned.
Why do people keep fighting? Still a child, her viewpoint was necessarily simplistic and black and white. Indeed, she wasn't even aware of the simultaneous mutiny that was tearing apart the Alliance military.
Behind her, First Deputy Foreign Minister Darlian watched the Gundams destroy everything that stood in their way at New Edwards. For them to appear at a time like this…and with her here!
A few hundred meters away, a high-speed trans-orbital shuttle, painted in Alliance Speciali livery, emerged from its armored hangar and carefully taxied towards the runway. Almost immediately, the Maganac Corps mobile suits opened fire in its direction, though they were unable to penetrate the reinforced armored fuselage.
"Gundam pilots, your attention please, this is the taxing shuttle! We have no intention of fighting!"
One of the Gundams, armed with close-range weapons standing in the midst of ruined mobile suits, tried to contact his comrades. "Everyone, please wait! I know that voice!"
In the passenger cabin of the shuttle, surrounded by the rest of the Alliance war council, Supreme Allied Commander Noventa clasped a handset in his gloved hand, waiting for a response. When he didn't get one, he continued. "This is not OZ! This is Field Marshal Noventa, of the United Earth Sphere Alliance! Please, we only desire peace around Earth!"
The Maganac Corps ceased firing, and the Gundam responded. "I'm one of the Gundam pilots, and I speak for us all when I say we wish for the same."
Another Gundam, equipped entirely with ranged weapons and artillery, spoke on the same channel. "I'm also a Gundam pilot. If you desire peace, why did you assassinate Heero Yuy? Why did you crush the Sanc Kingdom?"
Across the aisle from Noventa, an American lieutenant general scoffed. "This is absurd! How was our war in the Sanc Kingdom any different from your obliteration of Southern California!"
Noventa ignored his colleague. "That was not our doing!"
Another Gundam pilot spoke over the channel, his aggressive tone offset by his obvious youth. "The name's Chang Wufei, I want answers! Why did you bastards use biological weapons on the colonies?"
Noventa sputtered a response. "That's the first I've heard of it! But we're here to discuss our own disarmament, to end the meaningless bloodshed…"
"You're full of it! You insist on peace but you're not entitled to it!" Chang Wufei responded.
"Can you hear me Gundam pilots?" another voice asked. "This is Colonel Treize Khushrenada, supreme commander of OZ! While you waste your time with the old men of the Alliance, I'm the one you should be fighting against. Some come get me!" he said, taunting.
Inside the short-ranged Gundam, the young blonde pilot looked at his computer displays—the latest signal had been triangulated to another location, some distance from the shuttle, which had nearly reached the its runway.
"Master Quatre, at this rate, the enemy counterattack will…"
"Marshal Noventa, please take off right away! It's pointless to talk under these circumstances." He voice became hopeful. "We'll meet again, though. I for one welcome your position as the first step towards peace."
The response didn't come until the shuttle was at the end of the runway. "I'm…I'm sorry."
In the different Gundams, a warning tone detected an incoming threat—it would have been nearly invisible on their sensors, had it not been moving at such high speed.
"It's another Gundam!" one said. "The Barton Foundation sent this guy!"
To the shock of Noventa and the military council, the ranged Gundam turned its heavy arm-carried Gatling in its direction and opened fire on an inbound aircraft. After a brief barrel-roll, the variable geometry aircraft began folding and flexing, transforming into a Gundam itself.
In the main terminal, Relena stared as the new Gundam absorbed the Gatling fire. She could have sworn she'd seen the Gundam before.
The door slammed open at the back of the room. "Deputy Minister Darlian! This is your doing, isn't it?" General of Space Forces Septim demanded, pointing an accusing finger.
"General Septim, don't be ridiculous!" Darlian shouted back. Behind him, the new Gundam opened fire with a beam canon of incredible power, turning the ground near the other Gundam into a crater. He dragged the beam towards the shuttle, as it sped down the runway, only barely missing when the cannon had discharged.
Quatre's Gundam moved into position on the runway, trying to put himself between the airborne Gundam and the shuttle. "H-Hold on a minute! The shuttle's carrying…"
He came a second too late. The airborne Gundam rocketed over him and, drawing a beam saber from its shell, pounced on the shuttle.
Inside, Noventa watched from his small window. So, this is it. I suppose Khushrenada was right… "Now, young man, don't do anything foolish…" he muttered into the handset.
A fraction of a second later and the Gundam's beam saber cut clean through the small shuttle's armored fuselage, setting its fuel tanks aflame. The Gundam fired its vernier thrusters, just as the shuttle vanished in a fireball, obliterated, debris shooting in every direction.
Relena gasped, not at the shuttle, but at the chunks of armor plating thrown from the explosion, crashing against the tarmac closer and closer to the main terminal, before debris struck the building itself with the force of light artillery. The Plexiglas cracked and chipped, but seemed to hold, until the ceiling came tumbling down on Septim.
"Relena!" Darlian screamed, shield her from the ceiling as it came down.
II
He was magnificent to watch in action. Like many other soldiers of OZ, Zechs Merquise had cut his teeth on the OZ-07AMS 'Aries' years ago. And while the Lightning Baron may have publicly favored the OZ-06MS 'Leo', the mainstay of ground warfare for two decades, he was still deadly with the Aries.
"Damocles Actual, check your six!"
Zechs unloaded his chain rifle down the chasm between rows of burning hangars of Jomo Kenyatta International at Nairobi, his fire finally hitting home at a Leo armed with a beam rifle taking cover behind a collapsed crane. The main camera and floodlight burst as the Leo fell backwards, continuing to fire up into the air.
"Damocles Actual!" Flight Lieutenant Walker shouted, above him. In his wave of destruction, Zechs had neglected a Leo armed with a beam rifle, two hundred meters behind him. Walker made an improvised foothold on a hangar roof, his Aries' feet sinking a meter into the building, and fired his chain rifle at the Leo in multiple, uncontrolled bursts, forcing the Leo to begin to withdraw. Zechs turned around and fired in the same direction, blowing off the Leo's legs and bringing it crashing down. A second later, the cockpit hatch blew off and the pilot ejected out, flying high into the air.
Zechs sighed in his cockpit. "Thanks, Walker. I think I got carried away."
Walker lifted off the roof, hovering just over Zechs before landing beside him. Not much fuel here. We expected this, going in with our tanks half full. "No problem, Lieutenant Colonel."
"Where's your Japanese comrade?"
Ogasawara? Where is she? "Damocles 1-3, this is Damocles 1-2, come in."
A half kilometer away, Flight Lieutenant Ogasawara Emi was fighting her way to an Aries she'd seen shot down just a few minutes earlier without ejecting. With a few quick bursts, she landed just outside south barracks and switched to her machine's legs.
"Damocles 1-3, where are you?"
"Damocles 1-2, this is Damocles 1-3. I just saw Muhuru Actual go down at the barracks, no parachute. On site now," she said, her Aries running along the barracks.
"Acknowledged. Damocles 1-2 joining you."
"Negative, Damocles 1-2, I've got this under control!" she yelled, leaning around a corner and catching a Leo unawares, filling its back with 90 mm APFSDS at very close range. The systems wrapped around the ultracompact fusion reactor were penetrated and burst, spraying her Aries with harmless but distracting liquid nitrogen and deuterium fuel as it fell back. Ice condensed on the Aries' superstructure before shattering in shards.
"Acknowledged, Damocles 1-3. Watch out for the next reinforcement wave, ETA three minutes from the east."
"Fuck," she mumbled, as she ran past the Leo and to the Aries wreck, a smoldering wreck in the side of one of the barracks. Its starboard shoulder turbofan housing was shot apart, the jet engine still on fire, and it was missing a leg.
"Muhuru Actual, this is Damocles 1-3. Respond!"
The response came back, weak and buzzing. "Damocles 1-3, this is Muhuru Actual. Thanks for coming…uh, my right leg's broken and I crashed cockpit down, can't blow the emergency releases."
"On it, Muhuru Actual."
Damocles 1-3 leaned down and carefully pushed the Aries with its left hand, rolling it over. As she performed the maneuver, Ogasawara heard a cry of pain over her headset, causing her to shiver. "Muhuru Actual!"
"Sorry, it's okay…I'm bleeding pretty bad, though."
"Acknowledged, hang in there." She changed the channel. "This is Damocles 1-3, requesting medievac for one pilot, coordinates one, nineteen, forty-eight by thirty-six, forty-eight, thirty one. Look for red smoke!"
With her left thumb, she fired a flare from a purpose-built launcher behind the Aries' head compartment. "Muhuru Actual, trying firing the releases now!"
There was a grunting sound, and on her forward display, she saw a cloud of smoke as explosive pins blew off the clamshell hatch over the Aries' cockpit, with enough force to overturn a bus near the wreck. A few seconds later, the pilot unfastened his restraints and crawled out, managing to slide down to the leg joint.
Ogasawara smiled for a few seconds before the alarm tone in her cockpit went off, and she turned to her port display, just in time to see an a Leo with a shield and a beam carbine. Shifting her mobile suit, she managed to fire a burst which struck the carbine, puncturing the cooling unit and spilling liquid nitrogen, before her magazine was expended. The Leo discarded the carbine, reached into its shield and drew a beam saber, which it promptly activated and charged at her with.
Damn it! I use my thrusters and I'll kill Muhuru Actual. She had no choice but to brace her mobile suit on the ground and fire her missile pods, which missed the Leo at such a close distance. The Leo brought down its beam saber in a killing stroke, only to have its right arm caught in the Aries' left.
Fuck, can't reload! She looked at the pilot, who was limping away, and was about to take the chance of activating her thrusters when the Leo shuddered violently and its camera floodlight died. Gritting her teeth, she pushed the Leo off her. Thirty meters to the northeast, a Leo carrying a 105 mm automatic cannon flashed its floodlight at her, simultaneously pinging her the IFF. An OZ sympathizer.
"Thanks," she mumbled, lying back in her cockpit.
Though he couldn't have heard her, the Leo physically raised its left hand at her, before adjusting its heading and marching off. "Muhuru Actual, where are you?"
"In a trench. I'm fine, for now."
"Acknowledge. Damocles 1-3, returning."
At that time, the remainder of Damocles flight—four mobile suits, including Zechs Merquise and Oswald Walker—was holding down a strongpoint at the old bottling plant, just on the edge of Nairobi AFB. Their fuel exhausted was exhausted, the Aries were confined to ground combat. It wasn't their specialty, and it required a very careful, deliberate fighting style for long periods of time.
Using one of the collapsed bus depot buildings as cover, Walker did his best to back up Zechs as they fired from their barricades. Without flight, their primary advantage—mobility—was gone. Without mobility, we're left with firepower, which we're running out of.
A tone sounded in his alarm, indicating an empty box magazine. He discarding it, letting it fall onto a nearby jeep, crushing the windshield and hood. That leaves three magazines, about three-hundred sixty rounds. And we went into this operation overloaded, to boot.
"Damocles Flight, this Air Sentry Eagle Eye. Reporting inbound Alliance military assets—counting remains of two mobile suit divisions, repeat, two mobile suit divisions. ETA six minutes!"
Two divisions—that'd be the 73rd and 91st, almost a hundred mobile suits. We went into this with seventy-two airborne suits, and we've already taken heavy losses against the 105th and their ground and air support. This is bad.
"Lieutenant Colonel Zechs, we can't stay here!" he yelled into his headset.
"Agreed. We need to regroup with Noin, Krist and everyone else." Zechs checked his own ammunition displays.
"Sirs! We're running out of firepower here!"
"I know, Damocles 2-3," Zechs retorted.
"Damocles Actual! This is Warrant Officer Petrova at Lake Navaisha! Code is Zero-Nine-Zero-Five-Five Pretoria."
"Walker!"
In his own cockpit, Walker fished a small book of passcodes out of his pocket and flipped through them "Confirming code, Damocles Actual. It's good!"
"OZ has seized the Alliance missile assets at the park, and we have five ballistic missiles on hand, awaiting targeting data. One was destroyed by Alliance forces. Repeat, missiles are standing by, we just need target data."
"I'd forgotten about the missiles," Zechs admitted. "Walker, how much fuel do you have left?"
"About five minutes of flight, sir."
"Rendezvous with Damocles 1-3, then find the targeting laser. The rest of us will move to a new defensive point by the barracks."
"Acknowledged! Damocles 1-2 heading out!"
III
"I found it!" Flight Lieutenant Ogasawara yelled out. A few hours of rigorous combat, and the parts of her black crop top that weren't stretched taunt stuck to her skin, damp with sweat. Hell of a time for the A/C to break down, she thought.
"Location, Damocles 1-3?"
"JKIA Police Station! Two hostiles on site!"
She watched as Walker's Aries appeared to her left.
"You take the lead, I'm running on fumes here!" he warned her.
"Acknowledged, you take the autocannon, I'll take the beam rifle!" Both Aries mobile suits opened fire on the two Aries by the burning police station, their shots crossing and striking the two Leos. The two Leos attempted to track them as they crossed over, firing back into the air.
"Too slow, ground hugger!" Ogasawara shouted, bringing her Aries around and firing another burst, this one sending the Leo to its knees. As she closed, she fired another burst, this one blowing off its head.
Walker's Aries was losing altitude, before deploying its legs and landing near the toll gate. The Leo scored multiple hits on his turbine and legs, blowing off ERA plates, as he steadied his aim.
"What are you waiting for?" Ogasawara demanded, just before he finally fired a burst downrange, followed by another. The Leo was hit in the chest and head, shattering the floodlight and monoeye, before its posture faltered and it began firing at the ground. A second later an explosion blew out the reactor compartment, also blowing out the cockpit door, while the Leo remained upright,
"Damocles 1-3, are you all right?"
Walker responded immediately, as his Aries walked over to her carefully. "Number three turbofan's hit and running rough. I'm out of fuel anyway."
"Acknowledged. The targeting laser's here, on the east side of the building, can you…"
"Say no more, I'm on it." On the other side of the building, the Aries kneeled down on its knees, its left hand holding it up for support. She watched the clamshell hatch open, and Walker threw his tether over the edge and slid down on it, machine pistol in hand.
Breathing in the smoky, early morning air, Walker yanked off his uniform cap and fully extended the machine pistol's stock, flipping off the safety. The police station burned violently ahead of him but he didn't feel like taking chances.
"Damocles 1-2 on foot. What do you see, Damocles 1-3?"
Ogasawara's own Aries touched down, on the other side of the building. Inside its housing in the Aries' head, her main camera pivoted left and right. "Damocles 1-2, you're all clear."
Walker sprinted to a military car, clutching his machine pistol. He stepped towards the corner of the vehicle, before peering around the corner briefly. "Damocles 1-3, can you put some fire on the second floor of the police station?"
Her Aries raised its chain rifle. "On it, Damocles 1-2." Walker pulled down his headset, covered his ears and closed his eyes underneath his goggles, as Damocles 1-3 sprayed the second floor with chain fire, blowing through the cement walls and knocking burning cinders and shrapnel out the other side. A single, burning figure flung itself through one of the windows and onto the ground a few meters upwind from Walker.
Walker ran past the burning corpse, briefly keeping his weapon pointed at it, and to the other side of the building. It was a relief, actually—for at least four years, he'd grown accustomed to firing at other mobile suits or armored vehicles. He'd even grown used to shooting at people from a mobile suits, in large part because they disappeared into bloody spots very quickly. But shooting at people with small arms on foot—that was something he hadn't gotten used to. He'd gone through basic training, but that didn't change the fact that infantry combat terrified him. The vulnerability of running around, only protected by whatever body armor you might be wearing, when a single bullet might end your life, they were all things that scared him. Shooting someone in person was also horrific and he was glad Ogasawara had done it for him.
On the other side of the building, sitting on its side on a flatbed of a cargo truck, was modified beam rifle that mounted the special targeting laser, intended for beam-riding guidance. He scanned the building and surroundings for any threats, then approached it.
He pulled off the protective tarp, climbed on top of the beam rifle and pulled open the access plate, above and forward of the trigger housing and underneath the carrying handle, on the left side of the weapon, switching on the local computer. This sort of terrestrial beam rifle can be used by an Aries, though it's most commonly used on a Leo. So I just need to manually reconfigure the BIOS to operate on an Aries.
"I'll need ninety seconds after the BIOS boots up to reconfigure the weapon."
"Acknowledged."
Standing crouched over, once the BIOS finished booting, he used the small number pad to navigate through the menu until he could begin rewriting commands. Reaching into his pocket, he took out a compact solid-state computer drive and plugged it into an open data port and began rewriting part of the weapon's firmware.
Sighing, he leaned against the flatbed and slid down, taking a moment to rest. "Do you hear that?"
"Hear what, Damocles 1-2?"
Right, my headset's still on. He didn't answer and instead, carefully approached the police station, brandishing the machine pistol. Just under the sound of distant gunfire and rocket artillery, he heard something different, a human voice speaking steadily. Stepping inside the first floor of the building, the sound grew louder and clearer, until he found the origin: an overturned television set in the lobby that was left on and switched to an international news channel.
Very carefully, he flipped the TV right-side-up and watched. The anchor was discussing the ongoing attack at New Edwards.
"Today at New Edwards Air Force Base, Field Marshal Noventa of the United Earth Sphere Alliance was advocating for a global disarmament in pursuit of peaceful coexistence with the space colonies. However, extremists from the colonies sought to protest the summit and commenced an attack with new mobile suit technology. Marshal Noventa and other members of the peace summit are believed to have been killed in the attack."
Walker had no idea he was watching the same broadcast as the Gundam pilots a continent away. This particular news network was known for its anti-Alliance attitudes, but was still reporting what was soon to be the biggest news event worldwide.
"We're still waiting on conformation, but this could be interpreted as an outright declaration of war on the Alliance by the colonies."
The colonies sent five Gundams to Earth to kill and destroy, and that wasn't an act of war? What a wonderfully tolerant, enlightened age we live in, he thought cynically. That war council had the most respected military leaders on Earth. They've made themselves enemies of all of Earth.
"Walker, what's taking so long?"
"Sorry about that," he said, running out of the building and back to the targeting laser. On the small screen, ninety percent of the necessary files had been overridden. "And…it's done. Damocles 1-3, try picking it up."
He backed away, as the Aries stowed its chain rifle on a hardpoint on its back between the turbofan thrusters. It then knelt down and picked up the system, interfacing with the weapon's firmware and arming it.
Ogasawara checked her weapons display and nodded. "That did it, Walker. Damocles Actual, this is Damocles 1-3, the targeting laser is operational and I have more than ten minutes of flight time. Your orders?"
"Damocles 1-3, this is Damocles 2-1, Zechs wants to storm the headquarters. Rendezvous with Muhuru group and target Alliance fire support on Ngong Hill to the southwest, ASAP. Bring Walker, you may need him for adjustments on the targeting laser."
"Acknowledged, Noin." She switched to the short-range radio. "Walker, we need to rendezvous with Muhuru Flight. How's your mobile suit?"
He responded quickly. "My machine's ground-confined. I can support you from below."
She closed her eyes and crossed her arms. "Negative, Walker, that'll take too long. For now, you're abandoning your machine."
"Wait, what? Are you sure, I could follow…"
She tapped her weapons display screen. "Negative, if something goes wrong with the laser, you're the only engineer. Hang on, I'm opening up."
"Wait, how is that going…" Walker began, before he was cut off as the Aries kneeled down. Ogasawara opened her hatch and tossed down the tether, which Walker reluctant held onto and let it lift him up. When he climbed into the cockpit, Emi had opened up the floor compartment immediately left of the foot pedals.
"No offense, Flight Lieutenant, but I don't think I can just sit in your lap."
"Good, because you're not," she said, tossing him a pressurized flight mask attached to a small gas cylinder. He held it as she tossed him a safety harness.
Walker glanced over his shoulder, at the long beam rifle. "Please tell me you're joking."
"That's what the harness is for. You've never ridden outside before?"
"You fire that beam rifle, and I'll be flash-cooked alive," he told her.
"No one's telling you to strap yourself to the barrel. Stay under the handle."
"That'll hardly matter."
"Fine then, I won't use the beam rifle."
"What if you drop it?" he asked.
"Now who's joking?"
"This isn't a joke, you could be hit by ground fire, lose an arm or have your right manipulator fail. I can think of a dozen things right now that would kill me almost instantly."
"Of course, you're an engineer," she countered. "Now move!"
Despite his objections, within a few minutes, he had donned the harness and used it to strap himself to weapon's body, under the handle, so he was within reach of the access panel.
He opened the valve on the oxygen cylinder and tried to steady his breathing through the mask, now tightly secured to his face. He closed his eyes under the goggles. "I'm ready!" he yelled into the mask's internal radio.
"Hold on tight."
He did just that as the Aries' turbofan kicked in and he felt the machine lift up, carrying the targeting laser along with it. "Gaaauuuhhhhhh..."
Inside the cockpit, Ogasawara was forced to keep the Aries going mercifully snow. She plotted the shortest route to put her within firing range of Ngong Hill.
"Walker, I'm getting some fire here, firing countermeasures."
"What? Fire? What about fire?"
The Aries deployed chaff and flare, as the few Leos on the ground fired in her direction, missing her.
"I'm getting shot out here!" Walker shouted, panicking. Sure, walking it would have taken four times as long, but this is ridiculous!
"Well, Walker, I can either go faster, or you can just accept that you're going to get shot at a little," Ogasawara said, sounding nonplussed.
"I am getting shot out here!" he repeated, more insistent.
"ETA four minutes!"
"Oh God! Oh goddammit!" she heard him scream as the Aries shifted a little bit from a lucky 105 mm penetrator striking a leg.
The Aries continued on slowly, finally coming to Misfit's position overlooking the hill of Ngong and the nearby township.
A pair of Leos turned to her position and flashed their floodlights red, then pinged her with their IFF transponders, identifying them as Alliance defectors.
"Damocles 1-3, this is Misfit Actual. What's that on your beam rifle?" a voice asked.
"You wouldn't believe it," she responded, deploying her legs and touching down between them. Under three kilometers to the west, a battery of OZ-07MS 'Tragos' mobile suits—the standard terrestrial fire support mobile suit—were dug into the hilltop and firing back down at Nairobi AFB. Each carried twin long-barreled 320 mm artillery, comparable in power to the dober gun. Unlike the Leo, the Tragos was purpose-built to mount those two cannons, and wasn't useful for much else.
"Damocles Flight, that fire support is tearing us apart, I thought you had that handled."
Ogasawara armed the targeting laser and shouted in response, "I'm on it, shut up!"
She changed the channel. "Petrova at Lake Navaisha, come in! This is Damocles 1-3!"
"You're coming in clear, Damocles 1-3."
"Beam-riding activated, fire one missile, coordinates: one, twenty-Four, zero by thirty-six, thirty-eight, zero!"
"Confirming coordinates, one, twenty-Four, zero by thirty-six, thirty-eight, zero! Missile away! ETA thirty seconds!"
Walked yelped as the Aries raised the targeting laser to camera-level and fired its laser beam in the direction of Ngong Hill. Ogasawara kept the targeting laser trained on one of the Tragos to the best of her ability, and in a few seconds, saw a 9K120 ballistic missile streak in the night sky, before it literally vanished into the fire support position. A second later, the entirety of Ngong Hill literally shook, silencing the artillery.
"Hit! Hit! Hit!" She zoomed in on the target area, and as the dust settled, she saw that one of the Tragos mobile suits had literally been cut in half by the missile on its way into the hill, and was now a burning wreck. The remaining mobile suits had been severely shaken, but were attempting to redeploy.
"Only one Tragos was knocked out! Lining up for another shot!" she yelled over the channel. "Walker, the laser needs calibration."
"I'm on it!" Walker shouted back at her. He leaned over the edge of the beam rifle and reached for the access panel, pulling it open. "Just a little…hold on!"
"Walker, they're repositioning!"
"I know, I'm working on!" he screamed back, exasperated. "This isn't like changing the resolution on a computer screen, all right?"
He fumbled with the keypad, bringing up the configuration menu again. "For starters, I have to do it upside down!"
Punching the enter key, Walker pulled himself back up. "Okay, that's it, recalibrated!"
"Petrova, fire another missile, same coordinates!"
"Affirmative, missile away!"
Walker shuddered again as the Aries lined up another shot, causing the protective panel to pop off. "Ogasawara, forget the mobile suits, look for an ammo dump in the ground! There must be one!"
"I don't see one!"
"Look harder! There'll need to be a door with a lift or a crane vehicle of some sort!"
Ogasawara scanned the fire support position until she came across what looked like a small concrete pillbox, behind which was a pair of utility cranes. Near the cranes was a disguised spot on the ground, covered with a camouflage net. "I think I see it, reaiming!"
Just a few seconds later, another ballistic missile vanished into the ground with a cloud of smoke. At first, nothing happened, until the entire hill shook violently and an explosion literally picked up the heavy artillery vehicles off the ground and scattered them like toys. The Eurasian ballistic missile had exploded somewhere amidst the concrete Alliance underground magazine, detonating the shells and literally blowing the cap off the hill like a volcanic explosion.
The explosion was visible from Noin's position, where she was confronting a platoon of Leos. One of the Alliance pilots saw the explosion and radioed his sergeant.
"Sir, it's no use! We have to surrender!"
"Don't be absurd! Or are you one of those goddamn traitors?" the twitchy sergeant responded. A defecting Leo downrange from him flashed his floodlight at the approaching Aries Flights. Almost immediately, his Leo command-type fired its two shoulder-mounted beam cannons into his comrade at near point-blank range, blowing out the head and much of the cockpit.
"Sergeant!" the other Leo's pilot screamed in horror. Noin's Aries and a Damocles 2-2 strafed their position before descending on it.
"Nairobi is now under our control! Surrender and exit your machines now!" she demanded over the open channel.
"Like hell I'm surrendering to rebels! I'll never surrender!" The command-type Leo fired its beam cannons into Noin's Aries, blowing off ERA plates on either side of the cockpit, just underneath the turbofan. Her Aries smoking, Noin aimed her chain rifle and pumped the Leo full of APFSDS at close range.
The mobile suit shuddered and exploded, as the remaining Alliance pilot dropped his 105 mm autocannon and opened his hatch, his hands over his head.
Walker watched as the cloud of rock and soil eventually returned to the ground, raining down as far their position. He shielded his head with his arm.
"Ya mayor!" Petrova shouted triumphantly over the channel in Russian.
"Alliance artillery destroyed! Repeat, Alliance artillery destroyed!" Walker heard Ogasawara yell as people cheered over the channel.
"Affirmative, Damocles 1-3. Damocles Flight, Raven Flight, Kitsune Flight, all flights converge on the main terminal! Misfit Platoon, bring up the rear!"
Their back broken and their fire support gone, the remaining Alliance forces were forced into a route as OZ and their supporters converged on their position. Ogasawara watched the unit movements on her radar display, as Walker released his harness and managed to climb back into the open cockpit.
"The third and fourth wave are running," she told him, pointing to a spot on her radar screen.
"This was strongest Alliance holding in sub-Saharan Africa," Walker said, craning his neck to get a look. "Without Nairobi, communications, supplies, reinforcements…forget them all."
Ogasawara nodded. "Hey, Zechs-Chūsa is broadcasting."
Walker leaned back and up his hand to his headset, listening. Zechs was giving his prepared victory speech, apparently.
"Resistance is futile, comrades! We need as many of you to live as possible! The era of the Alliance has clearly ended. It is up to OZ to fulfill the promises of the Alliance, and it is our responsibility to create a new world system, isn't it?"
Ogasawara and Walker glanced at each other and smirked.
"So it's not just my imagination, then?" she asked him, shaking her head and laughing.
"No, that was corny, even for Lieutenant Colonel Zechs," he told her, before plugging his headset into her radio. "This is Damocles 1-3, requesting fuel truck at police station."
"I just hope New Edwards worked as smoothly as this," she told him, stretching her arms inside the cockpit. Apparently, she was tired.
"I'm sure Operation 'Pleiades' worked fine," he told her, still shaking. "The Gundams are many things. If given any thought, they are also surprisingly predictable."
IV
"Bastards…bastards! Like hell I'll let it end like this!"
Bleeding profusely from his forehead and his stomach, General Gwinter Septim, Commander-in-Chief of Alliance Space Forces, stumbled through the crumbling remains of the hardened command and control bunker at New Edwards Combined Forces Headquarters. He'd escaped ceiling collapse at the terminal only barely, and was clutched the wound on his stomach with his left hand. Good riddance, Darlian. I'll see you in hell soon, won't I?!
Summoning his remaining strength, he pushed aside the corpse of an operator who had dutifully stayed at her position until part of the ceiling had collapsed much of her skull in. Her body, and the chair with it, toppled onto the floor, but he wouldn't be distracted. He was no architect, but it was plainly evident the rest of the ceiling would follow in short order, the handiwork of the Gundams that had wreaked havoc above him.
"I'll show them. Show them the power of the Alliance Space Forces!" he mumbled, punching in the missile codes he knew by memory into the computer and transmitting them to the Space Forces' Missile Branch. They in turn bounced the signal to the vast array of missile satellites the Alliance had put in geosynchronous orbit of Earth. One satellite over North America was armed, as were the MIRV—multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles—nuclear warheads it carried.
"General, sir! You need to evacuate, it's dangerous in here!" a subordinate staff officer shouted at him from the doorway, bleeding from his neck and forced to hold himself up by the frame.
"Shut up, I know that!" Septim snapped back. "Goddamn it, it's all lost! New Edwards, the general staff, the whole cabinet, they're all dead!"
He turned his head as much as he could manage. On the grid-marked display panel in front of him, glitch-plagued reconnaissance video captured a squadron of Leo troops valiantly holding their defensive line, until a Gundam carved them up like a cake. "They're all dead! It's over, don't you see it? And if it's all over, I'll blow away this whole air base if it destroys a single Gundam!"
He turned the arming handle, arming the high-efficiency, 'clean' thermonuclear warheads, the most destructive weapons in the Alliance arsenal, and setting the target—the Gundams outside who had destroyed almost the entirety of the Alliance military leadership.
It took a few seconds for the staff officer to realize this was no trauma-induced delusion. The general of space forces had command access the orbital missile arsenal. "Sir...sir! You're going to kill us all!"
"Oh? Just watch me!" he cackled with a laugh, staring with his one functioning eye as the missiles prepare to release.