Author's Note:
This fanfic is to write upon some of the events in Gundam SEED and SEED Destiny that are not touched upon or mentioned in-series, but their dates are listed on GundamWikia and are thus treated as part of canon. They are therefore based upon actual happenings in the Cosmic Era universe, but the events within them are open to interpretation. This fanfic is also an attempt at showcasing a "what-if" of all sides involved in the wars, and how some of the events within the show might have come to be.
Gundam SEED: Tales of the Cosmic Era
Chapter 11: Split-Second Judgment
CE 71 March 6th, KaohsiungBase HQ Building, Kaohsiung Spaceport Complex, Taiwan, Republic of East Asia
Afternoon 14 41
ZAFT commander Marwin Autor looked out of the glass windows of his office. Ever since its occupation by ZAFT forces following a surprise assault earlier in the year, the Driver's schedule had been reduced; only ZAFT traffic and a few exceptions for civilian flights was allowed in the Spaceport.
He had lobbied long and hard for this posting, even going as far as to ask his father, a member with a seat in the PLANT Council's secondary seats, to petition for this posting. He had quite enough of working as a commander of frontline forces, not after having to work with Andrew Watfeld; to someone like Marwin, he felt that having to work with a commander who couldn't carry himself with an air of superiority was like demeaning himself.
The ego-driven white-shirted commander sighed. He had thought that Kaohsiung, being a ZAFT stronghold, would be a peaceful place. After all, while he thought of the Atlantic and Eurasian-borne Naturals as unrepentant savages, he had a bit of hope for the Asian-borne, who were from the third-strongest nation on Earth, and thus, hopefully more knowing of their place in life.
Keyword "had".
A soft knock interrupted his thoughts. "Enter," Marwin said lazily.
A ZAFT black-garbed commander walked in. "Sir," he saluted.
"Get on with it," Marwin irritably replied.
"Sorry to bother you on matters that you've made clear on the previous time, but sir…" the junior commander began. He stopped his sentence the instant Marwin turned his chair around in rising rage and slamming his fists on the table, having quickly learnt how to not be the target of his commander's anger since the first week.
"Dammit! Damn those filthy Naturals!" He shouted. "Chaos and resistance, day in, day out!" He fixed a burning stare at the junior commander. Marwin was not near corpulence by any definition of the word, but a life of sheltered living and a career in ZAFT with the aid of some string-pulling had allowed the man to put on fat in many places; the trembling on his cheeks was evident even to the junior commander, who stood a good metre away. "Well?" Marwin asked. "Get on with it!"
"Car bomb," the junior officer replied, fearing the worst was yet to come from his commander's open display of ire. "Hit one of our transports. Two dead, three injured. The CAV escorting them was damaged in the blast. No civilians; the car had rushed our transports before they started on the highway road to Kaohsiung Base-"
"I've had enough. Really," Marin stood up to look over the facilities that surrounded the Mass Driver, and the cities that extended from the foot of the mountains that surrounded the Kaohsiung Driver to the portion of Taiwan's shoreline that faced China. "Something has to be done."
Something in Marwin's voice made the hairs on the back of the junior commander's neck stand on end. "Sir?"
Marwin turned to face the junior commander. "Time to teach the savages something," he said, a sneer curling the corner of his lips. "Now, what shall I deploy…?"
CE 71 March 14th, Meinong District, Kaohsiung City, Taiwan, Republic of East Asia
Afternoon 14 41
ZAFT Infantry Corps Senior Sergeant Robert Kalagan walked down the silent streets of Meinong District, eight Corporals following behind him as they swept their sight from left, to right, and above them; their guns were hanging down in front of them, their fingers tense, ready to react to the slightest action.
ZAFT had stepped up patrols in some of the nearer areas of the cities surrounding the Kaohsiung Spaceport, following the constant spate of insurgent attacks against ZAFT forces by the locals, and harassment by OMNI/East Asian Republic commandos. Now, ZAFT armed patrols stalked the street corners, looking for an excuse to bring to heel the Naturals that inhabited the city.
With the recent Siege of Kaohsiung and the subsequent 3-day grace period that ZAFT allowed to the people, those that had fled had fled, and Kaohsiung in general now resembled a ghost town, with large portions of it uninhabited and abandoned. ZAFT patrols through the city wasn't so much for keeping the civilians in line rather than making sure the Republic wasn't sneaking troops through the deserted city, but if the recent spate of attacks were anything to judge by, the people of Kaohsiung had many ways to fight back.
Wisely the remaining civilians kept their windows and doors closed as the ZAFT patrol passed, but Robert didn't need to be a psychic to know that behind every tinted pane and pulled curtain were likely to be angry eyes wishing for his violent eviction from the island of Taiwan, along with every ZAFT soldier on the landmass. So far, he hadn't the chance to engage in combat yet, and each time he had thanked whomever was listening from far up that it was so.
ZAFT's capture of the Kaohsiung Mass Driver at the start of the year had crippled Taiwan's financial centres, and struck a blow to the Republic of East Asia's economy in general. Without their own spaceport to do commerce with, the Republic was experiencing its most violent financial and social crisis yet; China had old rocket launch facilities and a few non-Driver-equipped spaceports, but they were not enough in number and size to support the activities that the Kaohsiung Mass Driver handled on a weekly basis, and disposable launch rockets and shuttles, along with the massive amount of fuel needed for them, made one-time launches and orbital drop shipments too much of an effort to organize.
And so, the Republic of East Asia had continued to choke as it sought to bring relief to its people in space and on Earth. Robert had seen the reports of the Republic having to use a fair number of its own troops on its own people to keep the riots from getting out of hand, and as a soldier he was glad of it; ZAFT, despite its looks, did not have the strength to push into mainland China to contend with the Republic's still-strong army and air force, or into neighbouring Japan and Korea, where it was said that some of the Republic's most outlandish concept research and development took place.
It was sheer luck that the ferocity of the Kaohsiung attack and ZAFT's recent lightning victory at the Victoria Supercomplex had put the Republic on the edge, and led to it adopting a cautious stance; were they to attack now, Robert was sure that the Republic, while sustaining massive casualties, would be able to take the Kaohsiung Mass Driver from ZAFT. And while the Republic might have balked at the idea of running their military to the breaking point just for one key target, Robert, as a member of the opposing force, knew very well that if they lost the Kaohsiung Driver, ZAFT would not be able to gather up the resources for a second invasion of the Republic.
It was a status quo maintained by a chance, one that Robert hoped would hold for as long as the war lasted. Already he had heard rumours about an OMNI task force defeating esteemed ZAFT leaders; first whispers than Andrew "Desert Tiger" Watfeld had fallen in combat in the deserts of North Africa, then a roving ZAFT naval patrol offshore the Indian Ocean, led by Marco Morassim, a man who had been famous for his exploits in naval warfare during the early days of the invasion of Earth.
Robert hoped that those were rumours and nothing more.
A small clattering sound from an alley beside the nine-man squad brought Roberts and his troopers to high alert as they raised their rifles and dashed for cover behind walls. One of the corporals peeked over the corner of the alley wall, placing his gun sight over the corner just in time to see a cat dash down the alley, chasing a rat, and an empty beer can rolling on the ground, away from the cat's direction.
"Seems like nothing," the corporal replied, signalling Robert over. "A cat, a rat, and a beer can."
Robert let out the breath he had been holding. "Form up," he said. "We'll finish our patrol circuit."
As the nine-man team re-formed, Robert's thoughts wandered back to the current situation ZAFT was in. With the loss of Victoria, the only remaining Mass Driver usable by OMNI was the Porta Panama Driver, under the direct control of the Atlantic Federation. Allies notwithstanding, the Atlantic Federation was sure to exact a heavy fee for using the mass driver, in addition to having to manage their own space-lane traffics with those of the other nations of OMNI; this would serve to slow down the entirety of OMNI's logistic and deployment capabilities while ZAFT paused to catch their breath and re-organize their vaunted mobile suit forces.
The only way to end the war was the capture of all Earth-based Mass Drivers, rendering the OMNI war machines in space and on Earth unsupplied, unsupported and separated. Only then could ZAFT hope to have an advantage at the negotiation tables; so long as OMNI remained convinced that it had a winning chance, it would continue to fight, and while OMNI could afford to lose scores of men, even in a losing battle, ZAFT could ill afford to lose even a single Coordinator.
And so Robert was here, prowling the streets of Meinong as a show of force, daring any would-be insurgents to attack. On one hand it was a simple strut, ZAFT's display of their willingness to engage any kind of belligerents; to remind the people of Taiwan that the only reason they hadn't blown up the entire island and the mass driver along with it was to ensure that a trickle of aid from non-aligned organizations, enough for the Taiwanese to survive, could enter the blockaded island.
On the other hand, Robert had heard that the master plan of the ZAFT commander currently in charge of the Kaohsiung occupation to ferret out the insurgents really involved nothing more than dangling live bait in front of the tense Taiwanese population and hoping that the right kind of fish took the hook. Robert remembered his commanding officer saying something under his breath about incompetence during the mission briefing.
Robert's team, as bait, was to try and entice the Taiwanese insurgents into attacking. If it were a street fight, Robert had the option of pulling back to another allied location; if the insurgents were in a building and outnumbered him, he could call in an airstrike by one of the four DINNs currently overhead Meinong, staying hidden in the clouds. A ZAFT command-type CAV and its escorts were stationed on the edge of the district, directing the other two-dozen or so infantry teams that were on similar missions.
The fireteam's walk had taken them to a street in-between two six-story shop-houses, and Roberts glanced up in response to the sound of ceramics knocking on each other. That saved him, as a flowerpot came crashing down inches from where he had stood as he leapt to the side.
Training took over within a second as the ZAFT fireteam scattered, each member seeking ideal cover as gunmen from both buildings leaned out over the windows and opened fire. Robert looked upwards and saw a gunman shouting at the other building, presumably at someone else for knocking over the flowerpot, making it hit the windowsill below it, and giving advance warning.
Setting his rifle butt into the hollow of his shoulder, Robert opened fire, and his comrades did the same. Several gunmen ducked behind windows as 6mm ZAFT-standard rifle rounds blew holes into the old buildings; one of the gunmen who had stood defiantly exposed fell over the window screaming, ending his life with a sickening crunch on the concrete pavement.
Robert was briefed on his job, and while he frowned upon the practice, he had no choice but to follow it through. "This is Echo Team to operation command," he yelled into his helmet comm unit over the staccato din of gunfire. "We've encountered an insurgent harbouring area that matches criteria for airstrike package requirements."
The reply was swift and crisp. "Acknowledged, Echo Leader," the female voice answered. "Wyzard Three and Four will be with you shortly."
Robert had closed his helmet mike when the Corporal that had taken cover beside him pointed at the building entrance. "Sergeant!" he shouted. "Civilians! Running from the left building!"
Robert's gaze snapped from the building's top levels to its base, where the first civilians were beginning to stream out. Men and women ran helter-skelter as the gunfight continued, and one insurgent exposed himself to fire a rocket at the ZAFT troopers even as he was shot. The round went wide and hit the entrance of the left building, killing several Taiwanese and partially collapsing the exit. As the dust cleared, Robert saw a boy of about thirteen, bloodied from a head wound, pull frantically at his leg amidst cries of pain, which had been pinned to the ground by a slab of concrete.
"Shit! Cover me!" Robert said to the corporal, running out of cover towards the boy even as two ZAFT DINNs descended from the sky in short order. A bullet grazed the ZAFT soldier at the side of his helmet, and Robert temporarily blacked out even as the impact snapped his head backwards. "Halt the airstrike!" Robert yelled into his helmet mike as he barely avoided sprawling on the ground.
"Sergeant!" the corporal yelled. He took a step out, but a burst of fire forced him back into cover. "No!"
Ignoring the corporal, Robert dived to the ground as a burst of fire slashed through the air where his head had been moments ago; had those rounds hit, Robert would be on the ground, his brains leaking out from holes on the other side of his head. He scrambled for the boy, who by now was cowering as the insurgents from both buildings continued to fire directly at Robert. Two ZAFT corporals took the chance to snipe a few insurgents from their window perches, temporarily causing the rest to duck back in.
The comm channel crackled to life. "Wyzard Three to Echo Leader. My radar is picking up targeting warnings on Wyzard Four, I cannot stay here any longer!"
Landing on the shop-houses, one DINN pulled a Cattus M68 recoiless rifle out of a carrying case and levelled it the roof of the building. On the other building, a second DINN landed, trying to steady its own Cattus; the lightweight mobile suit was unsuited to carry such a heavy weapon, and was straining its operation parameters to do so.
Robert slung his weapon on his back and gripped the brick slab that had landed on the boy's leg, ignoring the look of surprise he gave to Robert. "Hold on!" he said desperately as he strained his genetically-optimized muscles to the maximum, trying to lift the slab enough for the boy to scramble out.
Despite common rumour-mongering, Coordinators were not supermen; their genes were optimized for maximum growth and development of a human's natural abilities, but not to the point where their bodies could defy the laws of conventional physics. Dust shook from the slab as veins on Robert's neck throbbed against his skin, and his arms glistened with sweat as they strained against a load that would have taken two Coordinators to lift. "Come on!"
"Sergeant!" A corporal screamed form across the street. "The insurgents from the building on your side are evacuating! They aren't firing back!"
Robert cursed and pulled even harder; the boy felt a loosening of pressure around his leg, and while he was injured, he was aware enough that he scrambled away from the slab, gritting his teeth and dragging his broken leg along with him. Robert let go of the slab as it slammed down onto the earth, just as several insurgents on the opposite building popped up from hiding, and unleashed a salvo of rockets straight at Wyzard Four.
"Firing!" The comm crackled as Wyzard Three's terse warning message ended. The DINN fired its Cattus gun, and the shell made it through three levels of concrete before exploding in a massive overpressure wave of fragments and heat, throwing fire everywhere; Robert had a second to glimpse the silhouettes of six men standing by their windows, wreathed in fire before they disappeared into the inferno.
The rocket wave fired by the insurgents missed their mark as Wyzard Four's DINN took off first, before firing a round into the building that the mobile suit had landed on, the very same building that Robert was right beside. "Echo Leader!" The impact threw the DINN off-course as it attempted to gain altitude in the event of an unexpected anti-air attack. "Brace for impact!"
Robert leapt at the boy, the two of them going to ground as the deafening boom of the explosion encompassed everything. He hugged the boy closer to him and gritted his teeth as the world went dark and silent; only Robert's sense of touch remained, the shockwaves vibrating through the ground and tearing at his rifle, armoured vest, helmet, everything.
Then the sound stopped, and everything went silent. After what seemed like a minute had passed, Robert slowly opened his eyes. To his immense relief, firstly, his eyeballs still remained intact, and secondly, the boy stirred; it seemed that he had passed out during the explosion of the Cattus' round, but other than his previous injuries, the massive shockwave hadn't done anything else. Being near the entrance had saved both of them; the interior had collapsed entirely.
The building and the insurgents housed inside, however, were a different story. Outwardly the building still retained its shape, although every wall was cracked and every window shattered. Inside, no semblance of levels remained, everything having collapsed with the shockwave. The bodies, or what passed as the mangled remains of nearly fifty insurgents, were strewn about in different shapes and sizes amongst the rubble.
Robert shook his head to clear the disorientation. He tapped the right side of his head in mild annoyance as his hearing on that side remained silent; it was likely that he would have to spend a few days away from his men so that ZAFT doctors in Kaohsiung could repair his inner ear.
"Sergeant!" A corporal hurried over, his voice partially muffled by the roar of the DINNs' jet engines as the mobile suits returned to the skies. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine, treat the boy," Robert replied, shakily getting to his feet. Already, four more fireteams of ZAFT infantry were on scene to secure the area, and they were taking up positions in the nearby buildings to secure high points of observation. Judging from the frantic screams but lack of gunfire, Robert guessed, with some measure of relief, that the buildings around the combat site housed honest-to-goodness civilians. "Can't say I approve of this plan, though."
"Sergeant?" the corporal asked.
"Look at them," Robert said, tilting his head towards the group of civilians that had escaped, some of which were edging back towards the building. The presence of ZAFT soldiers were keeping them back so far, but Robert knew that emotions was a powerful thing, and that there had to be relatives of the dead buried amongst the rubble from the stray RPG. "If they hadn't run out, what would have happened? We were lucky the boy happened to be the last of the civilians."
"I understand, Sergeant," the corporal said, sealing the bandage on the boy's head and getting to work on his leg. The boy winced as the corporal applied a local painkiller with an injector and set about with a splint for his leg.
"I'll have to speak with someone about this method of insurgent hunting. It has to change; this is beyond simple heavy-handed violence," Robert said, hobbling two steps away before the boy called out to him.
"Erm… Thank you… sir." The boy said in halting English.
Robert stood silent for a while, before returning a crooked smile and dredging up old memories of foreign –language classes during his days as a student. "No problem," he replied in Mandarin as best as he could, trying to hide the fact that his knowledge of the language was, at best, mediocre.
"Erm.. why?" The boy asked, this time in fluent Mandarin. "It was a very dangerous thing to do."
Robert was silent for a while as he wondered why himself. Certainly, he had a son, about four years younger than the boy, but that wasn't the main reason. When the answer hit him, he smiled; a memory of his son asking him on the eve of his departure in CE70 November, asking him if he was going to be a hero. He had remembered telling his son yes.
"Because we're both human," Robert replied in choppy Mandarin, even as the first civilians began returning, amongst them a woman with a worried face who made straight for the boy. "And humans help each other."
Afterword:
A light chapter dealing with a small period of life in a region occupied by ZAFT; nothing much to put here except reference various points of the Bloody Valentine War. Fictional infantry ranks for the ZAFT soldiers are used here for easy identification; otherwise, ZAFT doesn't seem to put much importance on the role of infantry. Not that they can afford to deploy that many realistically, considering it'll be a massive waste of talent and efforts...