(Dilemma of Flay Allster, Chapter 11: Chasing Shadows and Mimes)

(15 April CE 73, 0245 Hours Zulu)
(Warship Dominion, On approach march to Terra)

"De-orbit polar, coming down through the Northwest Territories of Canada, through Saskatchewan, then down into Minot. Figure fifteen to de-orbit, two hours overfly approach march, two hours to trash what is left of Minot, then we cut left toward the invasion corridor. Sound solid?"

"Three hours in Minot, take some time to dredge for intel," Gerald changed the plan. "Good concept, though, Sting. Auel, your turn," Gerald ordered.

"Same concept, polar de-orbit, but rather than Northwest, I'd drop in over the Nunavut Islands and run south on the western edge of the Hudson, baiting the Earth Alliance Navy to come get some. Trade some damage to the Dominion now against sinking Earth Alliance tonnage — and by dropping their Hudson Bay rowboat team, our fighters can de-orbit polar instead of coming down steep over a possible hot battlefield. South through Manitoba, down into North Dakota and then Minot. I was planning on 4 hours on site, intel and bait to draw the enemy in the wrong direction, then cut right toward Mountain Home and the Extended facility there. What say you, boss?"

"Good concept, bad order. We will need to go south from Minot to Hannibal, Missouri, and all the while take some heat off the invasion corridor. We do a protectee pickup in Hannibal, then we cut across country to Mountain Home. Stand to for judgments," Gerald said.

"Ready for it, sir," Stella said with gravity to voice.

"Sting, your plan was the most conservative of the three. Not a bad thing, but keep in mind that our purpose is to give the Earth Alliance a boner pointing in the wrong direction. Little hard to do that when you don't make any noise."

"Sir, understood, sir," Sting answered.

"Stella, your plan was better in the noise and aggression, but still not where we need it. You made a good call on hitting Manitoba AFB, but by our own estimates that base is mostly unused right now."

"Roger, sir, I'll do better next time."

"Auel, your plan did the best, good combination of noise and movement. We will go with yours, but keep in mind your ass is going to be on the line for your plan just the same. Get on the side console and upload your nav points to the helm. Then get to your Gundam and start prepping for glory."

"Aye, sir!" Auel jumped up from the CIC pit to the bridge guest seats, then folded down the console for use.

"Conn, comms, incoming from the Golden Phoenix."

"Main screen, commo," Captain Jamestown ordered. It only took four seconds for the screen to come up. "Master Executor Tomoe! How may I be of service, milady?"

"The inverse is at hand, Captain Jamestown. I intend to be of service to the Dominion. Permission to teleport to your bridge?"

"Granted, readily," Jamestown answered.

Hotaru raised two fingers to her face, then began the expected word. "Tele—" Hotaru appeared on the bridge, demonstrating the lag that the technologists said didn't exist in modern systems, "—Port," The screen finished up behind her, despite the Master Executor standing in front of the bridge windows.

"No lag my ass," Commander Grey pointed out the fallacy in question.

"Welcome aboard, Master Executor, though I wonder what gives?" Captain Jamestown asked.

"Division Commander Agrippa is taking command of the Ophanim, but in my case I am along for special operations support for ground operations. There are several actions which must be taken during your campaign to ensure a positive outcome; I am here to ensure those actions occur in good order and with the proper results."

"The Sovereign of Silence calling some targets? Reminds me of old times, milady," Gerald said as he climbed out of the CIC pit.

"You tag 'em, we frag 'em," Auel said with a mischievous smile, even though he was still entering waypoint information into the console.

"What's the word, ma'am? Where do we start?" Commander Grey asked.

"Minot, for starters. They have two functional missiles; we must ensure they are not functional before the landings. After that, we continue as planned between Pilot Neider and LC Lightbringer. Anything that needs to happen will fall between those operational points."

"We will make it happen, Executor. We have several hours before planetfall, do you require quarters?" Captain Jamestown asked.

"It would be welcomed. I sense I will be on the ship for several days," Hotaru said calmly.

"Flay, secure your terminal and see the Master Executor down to my quarters. I'll bunk in with Gerald for the duration."

"Aye, sir!" Flay locked her terminal up and took her turn crawling out of the CIC pit. She was met up top on the elevator platform by Hotaru.

"After you, Operator," Hotaru gestured to the turbolift.

Flay stepped in and waited for Hotaru to enter before she selected the bridge crew level. I wonder… no, I could not ask such a question. Unworthy of an Executor, and people aren't supposed to talk about the future, Flay thought but forced herself not to say.

"You have a question, I can sense," Hotaru said offhand, staring off to the side, not towards Flay but not deliberately away.

"I could not, Executor. Isn't it against the rules to ask or speak of the future?" Flay tried dodging.

"Only in the confines of some wussy fiction author's mind is that against the rules," Hotaru put that fear to rest. "We fight the war Ragnarok. If you're not breaking the rules down with demo charges and burning the referees with napalm, you are not fighting to win. Now, what was your question?

"Is the future going to be that bad?" Flay asked.

Hotaru hesitated when the door opened, though it was brief. "After you, Operator."

"This way, milady," Flay stepped out of the turbolift and took a right toward the senior officers staterooms.

"I expect I will be dead within six months of returning home," Hotaru answered. "The battle that drove the Mjolnr here was the opening battle of the final stage of Ragnarok. From the point of that battle, things will get exponentially worse, by an order of magnitude per engagement. Within weeks, the old Star Empires will be fully invested, within two months the Star League and the Executors will be suffering grievous losses. The best I can hope for is six months, but the closer I come to the engagement, three months appears to be the end of my chronicle."

Hotaru keyed her way into the Captain's stateroom, though she waved Flay in first. "I can't imagine what it would be like to know when I would die," Flay admitted candidly. "I don't know how you can live with it, ma'am."

"Grab a seat on the end of the bed." Hotaru took a chair next to the bed. "For me, for my husband, it is a release from a terrible long duty. Final Executor Hess has lived over 630,000 years; I am at 540,000 years, myself. I alone have buried billions of antagonists that wanted to interfere with the operations to win Ragnarok. I dread the end, but I know the end is also a release from this horrible duty we signed up for."

Flay was taken aback by the magnitude of the numbers, but it didn't halt her sense of self...or her renewed sense of purpose. "What can we do to help?"

"Your life and living is what must be done, Flay. Your family business is an asset critical to the future, but more to the point, your bloodline will make even more a difference to come. I will not say where or when, in so doing the expected history becomes broken, but keep in mind that life goes on, and for Ragnarok to be survivable, life must go on."

"Oh," Flay half-squeaked.

"And in that, I am not referring to your relatives. You have one niece that will remain after the Abjuration, though her side of the Allster bloodheritage will be mostly muddled into other families and will effectively drown out. Your side, though, I won't say much, but eventually your line will earn its place in the Mendel artificial gestation program, among other accomplishments."

"Okay, that's nuts. I mean, I'm just dating Oruga so far, but…" Flay petered her sentence off.

"Wars tend to complicate dating schedules, this I understand. It took my husband and myself three wars and nearly 1200 years to get it decided, though outside interference was responsible for about 1030 of those years," Hotaru said. "Take your time, and make sure you've buried your demons. You're young; an extra year can ensure it is done right, or not done at all if you go that route."

Relationship advice from a Master Executor? This is too weird, Flay thought but did not say.

"You will be needed on the bridge shortly, Flay. Best you get moving. Think later on what I have told you, but always remember it only comes down to what you want to do, and what you actually do. Nothing is absolutely written until after the fact."

-x-x-x-

(15 April CE 73, 0700 Hours Lima (UTC-6))
(Warship Dominion, 32 kilometers north of Minot AFB)

"Command, Sniper 2, reporting roughly 30 mixed Mobile Suits on base visible from this position," Major Ziggs reported.

"Sniper 1 confirms chalk, I'm not seeing anything different from here. 30 machines, sundry ground defenses and lighter armor," Major Kates reported from the right-side wing binder.

"Roger tally," Operator Flay Allster answered. "Team 2, Command, prepare to go live. Snipers, you are cleared to fire as soon as we confirm they've made us."

"Team 1, Command, gear up and get ready. We don't know what they'll try to do," Tiara said.

"Command, Raider, northernmost surviving missile silo is destroyed," Clotho reported as the ship continued toward the actual AFB.

"Roger last, Raider," Tiara acknowledged. "Chaos, report status."

"Almost through," Sting reported. "And… there! HOLY SHIT!" In the distance, a jet of flame burning upward from the site of Sting's operation could be seen. "Command, I ignited the third stage!"

"Chill, Sting, chill," Gerald consoled the far younger pilot. "It's not going anywhere, you lit the top of the rocket motor off. If anything, you drove the bottom of the missile into the bottom of the silo, which means it won't be going anywhere unless they set the nukes off first to kick the missile out."

"I guess that means we're clear to do the base?" Captain Jamestown asked, given that the rocket burn plume would be easily visible to the base.

"Clear to engage, aye," Gerald said.

"Team 2, Command, snipers start your music, Providence, Commando Arms and Calamity are clear to deploy DRAGOONs," Flay passed on the plan to her subordinate machines.

Gerald had rebuilt the operator positions from four down to two: Tiara commanded 6 machines, Flay commanded 7. The units were assigned by way of range preference: Tiara commanded the units that excelled at close-quarters combat, Flay commanded the long-range fire support units. In this case, Flay had everyone on the foredeck from her unit, except for the snipers who were out on the sub-wings of the ship.

"Sniper 1, target air traffic control tower, sending shot," Davy Kates reported before he dropped the hammer. Sitting on the front edge of the sub-wing, he was able to coax a decent firing angle and drop the hammer on the probably-just-alerted enemy control station. After five seconds, the slug struck the tower roughly halfway up, the sheer force of the impact was ample to cause a small kinetic explosion of energy transfer and effectively ripped the tower in half. The slug continued on and bounced over the runway, headed southbound into the distance.

"Sniper 2, target enemy Slaughter Dagger IWSP, sending shot," Gwenivere Ziggs dropped the hammer a moment afterward, convinced she had a solid lock. The flight time was the same, 5 seconds, and the impact caused something of a small kinetic explosive flare. The Mobile Suit in question simply shredded apart from the impact, its limbs flung in several directions as the body was reduced to chaff and debris by the weapon strike. This second shot slammed into the ground behind the MS and tumbled, then skipped into the side of a building behind the machine, which suffered serious trauma from the slug's passage.

"Reloading now," Sniper 1 reported. The rifle had both a magazine (5 shots) and a power pack, necessary for the extreme amount of electric charge that drove each 250-kilo slug. The power pack came off the rifle's stock, he locked it onto a charger plate on the hip armor of his Gundam, and pulled a second power pack from a different charger plate to attach to the rifle. Once the pack was in place, the Gundam's right hand went forward to the bolt on the rifle, where the Gundam brought it up, back, forward, and down to chamber the next slug. The rifle would still not be ready for another ten seconds, as the power pack was drained into the rifle's capacitors for the next shot.

"Here's to hoping these modified DRAGOONs work as I intend," Cole James said before all 11 of his remote weapons detached from his Gundam. He began directing them in three dimensions toward the base, relying on his own Newtype skills and the new Anti-grav systems in each DRAGOON to move in atmosphere. It was an energy-wastrel method of using remote weapons, as the Anti-grav tended to chew through power at a brisk clip, but it gave options that were not otherwise available to the Providence.

"Direct your remote weapons to the armor and air defenses., then to troop vehicles and barracks facilities."

"What about aircraft?" Sensor Operator Nikko asked. With Tiara and Flay having taken control of the Gundams, Nikko and Melody had been reassigned to target discrimination and sensor operations only — critical necessities on the bridge, given the enemy had a large arsenal of nuclear arms and apparently retained the will to use them.

"Snipers, make your next shots cratering rounds on the runway. Close it for business, quiaff?" Gerald ordered.

"Ziggs, put your shot about 500 meters inward from the southeast end, dig under the runway and let the kinetics crater it out. I'll do 1500 on the inside from the northwest edge, that way they can't just taxi down and use the strip for STOL (1)."

"Sights are hot, taking the shot," Ziggs reported after a few seconds of zeroing in on the target location.

"Sending shot now," Kates reported a second later.

Five seconds into the distance, the slugs struck the soft earth just short of the runway tarmac. Because most reconditioned runways were built on top of a small hillock to level everything out (Minot had been reconditioned by the Atlantic Federation in CE 27), the slug did not skip but buried itself under the runway and imparted its tremendous kinetic energy to the ground around it. Each slug was roughly the same kinetic energy as was contained in an M121 / Tallboy heavy bomb used by the British in WW2 for dam-busting.

A bare fraction of a second after the slugs burrowed into the side of the hillock below the runway surface, the runway above the slug veritably ruptured from the translated force of the slug passing under it. Both ends of the runway had a gnarly reverse-crater laid into it, which rendered long-tarmac takeoffs or landings impossible. "Runway is out of service, reloading now," Kates reported.

An explosion amongst the enemy Mobile Suits cored out two of the hangars for the old strategic bombers that used to land at this airbase. "Sorry about that," Commando Gundam Pilot Ami Hidaka said sheepishly. "Getting a little slap-happy with the funnels there."

"Conn, Comms, enemy is requesting terms of surrender," the radio operator said.

"Snipers, cease fire. Comms, Gerald, patch me through to their frequency." Four seconds of static presaged the coming of a voice.

"Attention Mendel Warship, this is Minot base command. We have lost all combat capability with the destruction of our runway. We wish to surrender immediately. Is anyone reading me?"

"Attention Minot base command, this is Gerald Lightbringer. Your request for terms of surrender is heard. First, all Mobile Suits or Linear Tanks are to shut down and crew are to evacuate their machines. You have two minutes to comply before I order Lohengrin cannons fired on the base."

"Understood." The radio was silent for 60 seconds, but at that time Nikko reported that all enemy machines had stopped movement. "What is your next order?" the Base Commander asked.

"Second, all personnel are to evacuate Minot AFB in the next fifteen minutes. Vehicle traffic is to route to the south, along Highway 83. All evacuation traffic is to continue south to Minot, at which point you are released to your own devices. Any attempt to return to the base will be met with lethal force. If you leave any traps, mines, or bombs on base, I will have your evacuation convoy shelled from suborbit. Your clock is ticking; get your men moving, you do not want to be on base when I unleash the Marines, clear?" Gerald bluffed the base commander. The Dominion did not carry Marines.

"Understood. Base Command is out."

Gerald deliberately reset his radio to the C3i circuit, which would not retransmit even if someone had their primary radio on the GUARD frequency just used. "They'll have the base cleared out in ten. We're going to render unusable the Mobile Suits, sweep for intel or salvage, and head out to Missouri. All personnel, prepare to move in for snatch-and-extract in twenty minutes!"

-x-x-x-

(15 April CE 73, 0930 Hours Lima (UTC-5))
(Known residence of Lord Djibril, Virginia, Old United States territory, Atlantic Federation)
(Coords: 38°39'3.99"N, 77°34'53.39"W)

"This is fucking rich. The Dominion hit Minot AFB about 90 minutes ago, forced the base to evacuate, and raided it for supplies and fuel. They trashed the Mobile Suits, trashed flight-essential facilities, and were off the ground before the base commander could properly identify himself to NORAD."

"That is impressive… and sad," Anatoliy, his driver and SPO, said. "If they're here to play for keeps, why not take the base? More importantly, why trash the base like that? It's an absolutely prime strategic bomber base from the bad old days."

"I don't know, it just doesn't make sense," Djibril said. "Riseman has ordered forces to move to and retake the base, but I'm not seeing any reason to worry about them. The Dominion is long gone, the greater worry is the enemy ships coming in for suborbital bombardment."

"I would disagree, sir. If the Dominion remains in our backfield unchecked, they can cause a helluva lot of disruption to our supply lines and reserve formations. Plus, given where they are, it's only a hop, skip and jump to the Colorado AO to pick up that bastard Ghost and the singer."

"That fucking pair," Djibril said through clenched teeth. "We'll let them stew, but when the Dominion heads for Colorado, we know they're headed in for the rescue."

"Aye, sir. Coming up on the house." Anatoliy picked up a radio handset that was only usable in close to the house (within 2 kilometers) due to N-Jammer interference. "Security, this is package. Status of Hotel?"

"Security reporting, we're green here. The galley staff has a roast boar on the spit for dinner toni—" The watch officer was cut off by a massive blue streak from the sky that slammed into the house. The blast from it was audible at range, not to mention the sight of the house shredding apart to be thrown around the countryside for sheer hundreds of meters.

"Yob Tvoyu Maht!" Anatoliy shouted as he slammed the brakes on. His shout was Russian, his native language, and roughly translated to 'fuck your mother' in the parlance of the English-speakers.

"Oh man," Djibril grumped, seeing his house in pieces and flying through the air in the distance. The most surreal of such evidence, however, was the fact that his master bathroom toilet landed on the road some twenty meters in front of the car and splattered all over the road surface, identifiable only by the brushed silver toilet seat that bounced off the pavement, tumbled twice, and landed on the hood of his limousine.

"Okay, then, I think—" Anatoliy started to say, but was cut off in a most unexpected fashion.

I know you saw that, Djibril, a voice said to their minds directly, completely and creepily bypassing their ears. I know you can see the lid of your 'throne' resting on the hood of your 'chariot'. I want you to remember this view, remember this moment, because when we do drill down on you, you will not even see it coming.

"Holy shit, drive! Drive, Anatoliy! Drive it like you got a purpose!" Djibril shouted in panic. "God damnit! Calamira Weste knows where we are! Start making random turns, Anatoliy!"

Yes, Djibril, you already know what you are facing. You know you have invoked the wrath of beings far greater than you can imagine. Welcome to your own personal Hell, Djibril, but your driver can let off the accelerator for now. The Mjolnr has greater targets to fire at than one bad makeup job in a limousine. Just remember, wherever you are, wherever you hide, you are only two seconds away from death, the maximum amount of time from particle cannon barrel to your sorry ass. We will come for you, Djibril.

"This is not good," Anatoliy grumped. "That mind-reading bitch can find us anywhere, sir. Where do we go?"

"Anywhere, fucking anywhere," Djibril answered in fright. He had a partial look at the remnants of his house, and it was a total loss as expected. More to the point, his secretary / confidant / mistress was in that building, and probably was one of the first to die because she would have been up on the third floor.

"I'm headed to the bunker in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. That should get us out of the line of fire, briefly."

"Do it, just do — Jesus, if we'd not have stopped at that stoplight back there, we'd've been in the driveway when those particle cannons hit!" Djibril half-wailed.

"Sir! Don't lose your shit! We're alive, and we're oscar mike (2)! We can do this, but not if you're half-insane with fright from having your balls dusted by suborbital fire!" Anatoliy shouted at his principal from the driver's seat. "Calm down, have a couple shots of Vodka, and start working through a list of assets you can call in to help extract us when we get to the bunker in Anne Arundel."

"Okay, okay, I hear you," Djibril said. He grabbed a bottle of top-shelf vodka he kept in the back of the limo, bypassed the typical shotglass, and simply slugged the bottle. "Okay, that's a bit better."

"Now, who do we have in the area we can call on?" Anatoliy asked. "We can run, but if we expect to survive, we need manpower. The big guns in the sky are not the only thing we need to worry about."

"We have Monck and his ATGM team in Maryland, can they do an escort?" Djibril presented as his first thought.

"It's a start," his SPO answered.

-x-x-x-

(15 April CE 73, 1100 Hours Lima (UTC-6))
(Rendezvous Location, intersection of Kansas 168 and County Road 337, Northwest of Ghost Base Hannibal)
(Coords: 39°48'32.16"N, 91°29'28.44"W)

"This is where we meet?" Kira asked Ghost Officer Terra. "A farmhouse in the middle of nowhere?"

"Exactly," Xion answered. "We may be invisible, but your pickup is not. Staying out of the way is the best bet, for them and for you."

"I see," Kira said.

"This house is abandoned. We'll hold here for now, they troops will be along shortly. MRE?"

"Definitely," Kira answered. MREs gave him a small headache (one of the preservatives in use), but the Magi MRE meals were better than fast-food restaurants in Orb. And that was saying plenty, given that even fast food in Orb was a cut above most sit-down restaurants in Earth Alliance territory. "Have any of that vegetarian chili left?"

"I believe I do," Terra passed him one of the requested MREs.

-x-

(Same Time)
(Bridge and CIC, Warship Dominion, Fabius Island LZ, northeast of rendezvous point)

"Time to go rescue a dreamer," Gerald said with some small hint of sarcasm to voice. His personal history with Kira Yamato was well documented, and all things considered there was no love lost in that association from either side, but Gerald figured the world would properly be a better place with Kira alive as opposed to hors de combat or a political chew-toy for Blue Cosmos. Even if Gerald had problems getting along with the Ultimate Coordinator punk, he would still take the past of most mutual benefit to the entire planet; such was the ethos of the Magi, when all was said and done.

(Star Colonel Wilhelm, the lead geneticist of the GARM R&D group in Mendel, had not taken more than two months to find Ulen Hibiki's work on the Ultimate Coordinator project. Though technically sensitive personal medical information, Wilhelm had reported the findings of the project to Gerald and Wayne Centara as demonstration of where genetics were in the Cosmic Era. The artificial gestation program spearheaded by Hibiki was still centuries or millennia behind anything that the Magi could turn out, but it was a start.)

"Permission to lead the mission, Legion Commander?" a voice asked from behind Gerald.

"Serious?" Gerald asked over his shoulder.

"Quite so, Lightbringer. I have my reasons, and I will have need of you on hot-pad alert along with the Raider," Master Executor Tomoe explained.

"Well bargained and done," Gerald said with a smile. "Form up your team as you need it. You have the rendezvous information?"

"Hai," she answered. "I will need Stella, Sting, Auel, Shani, and Flay for the ground team."

"Wait, what?" Flay asked after she heard her name.

"You know your business, Flay, having extensive paramilitary training from prior careers," Hotaru reported. "More to the point, this is something you need to execute for yourself. Remember what we spoke of yesterday?"

"Aye, Executor," Flay acknowledged, realizing that this was a personal issue in the making. If she could rescue Kira, at least she could consider it paid back for him saving the Archangel time and time again.

Gerald pulled a handheld radio and dialed it into the ship's 1MC. "Stella Loussier, Sting Oakley, Auel Neider, Shani Andras, report to the armory for small arms draw and briefing. Repeat, Stella Loussier, Sting Oakley, Auel Neider, Shani Andras, report to the armory for small arms draw and briefing. That is all."

"I know what the job is, but what can we expect?" Flay asked on the way down the turbolift.

"We can expect some serious trouble. It is on the road right now, headed out to try to 'intercept' the Dominion, but they'll end up making the protectee and they'll start a gunfight at the rendezvous location."

"Can't we just hit them with missiles or something?" Flay asked plaintively after the lift stopped and they exited.

"We could, but remember, actions have consequences, both in the here-and-now and down the road," the Master Executor reported.

That answer was enough answer for Flay to derive what was going on. "This isn't about Kira."

"It is, properly stated, about both of you, and about these four hardasses," and Hotaru waved a finger at the pilots who had congregated at the armory door.

"Uhm, us, ma'am?" Sting asked.

"I'll explain later. Arms and armor, people, let's move it."

The Chief of the Watch keyed open the armory. "Scan your tracked equipment on the terminals, we'll sort everything else out later."

"How do I load out for this one? General combat?" Flay asked as she entered the much familiar armory.

"Aye, and make sure each of you have grenade launchers on your assault rifle of choice. I will be covering your infantry actions from a sniper position. You will also need a shotgun for door breaching, four or more light antitank weapons, and inferno grenades for evidence disposal."

"I'll carry in the infernos," Stella volunteered.

"I have the breaching shotgun," Auel noted.

"I'll do three LAWS," Shani threw three of them over his back.

"I'll carry in three more," Sting threw a three-pack over his shoulder and settled them.

"And me?" Flay asked.

"Here," Hotaru handed her a Rorynex sub-machinegun and a pouch of magazines with shoulder strap. "You carry this in and give it to the principal. He'll be necessary in the plan for getting out alive."

Flay threw the weapon and magazines over her right shoulder, so they would be on her left side and out of the way. With that done, she hefted her personal choice of assault rifle (Remington ACR) and slapped a ready magazine into it. "Good to go, ma'am," the MS Operator-turned-rump commando said.

Hotaru picked up the oldest rifle in the armory, a G3-SG1, and slapped a magazine into it. She was not wearing a body armor plate carrier like the rest of the team, but she had a pistol belt, drop leg platforms, and web harness with magazines and grenades.

"Time to rescue a misplaced pilot," Shani said with a chuckle.

-x-

(20 minutes later)

"You hear that?" Kira asked, staring out an eastern window toward the farms in the distance.

"Hear wha — oh shit," Terra groused when she realized what the sound in question was. Throughout Existence, the sound of military transport trucks tended to not vary too much, and the sound of APCs or IFVs on the road was rather distinctive.

"Now what?" Xion asked nobody in particular. "Kira, get in the kitchen and stay behind the refrigerator. It's the safest place in the house."

"Sure," Kira said meekly.

"Okay, looks like we have a column approaching, four trucks and an APC. Not good."

"They may just blow by," Terra groused.

"I hope they do, or this is going to get messy fast," Xion answered.

The not-so-distant sound of trucks came to a halt nearby the house, close enough that Kira could easily hear the rumble of their engines as they idled.

"Fuck, twenty c-bills says that wench in the lead truck is lost," Terra groused.

"And here's the guy that's going to give the reach-around," Xion half-moaned when a Blue Cosmos trooper jumped out of the back of the lead truck and began walking up the driveway toward the house. "Terra, send the compromised code-group and prepare for glory."

"Way ahead of you," Terra answered. Between the two Ghosts, she had the only meaningful anti-armor weapon in the group, given that they had no expectation of facing armored foes on such a pithy hand-off mission.

-x-

"We're almost there," Shani reported from the lead vehicle.

The radio in the Sprinter utility vehicle crackled. "Attention pickup, this is Base Station. We are compromised, code Bravo Delta. Repeat, we are compromised, code Bravo Delta." The next sound audible over the radio was a quick machine gun burst, followed by a missile launch. "Need assistance immediately! Engaging two platoons BC regulars!"

"Base Station, this is Saturn. We will be approaching from the north, check fire north. Shani, take the next right into this driveway and head south through the yard and bean field for the back of the house."

"Got it," Shani answered as he yanked his vehicle right, then left to avoid a tree and head out into the yard. Along the way, he ended up running over a kids' dollhouse that was out in the yard, though mercifully without any kids in the area. "Sorry, sweetie, daddy just flattened your Barbie collection," he said semi-sarcastically.

"Use those machine gun turrets," Stella said over the radio as it became obvious what was going on in the vicinity of the buildings.

Each of the Sprinter Utility Scout Cars had a small CRAWS turret on top (Cupola-mounted Remote Automatic Weapon System), depending on the vehicle age and version could be mounted with 2 machine guns, 2 micro pulse lasers, 2 small lasers, 2 ER Small Lasers, 1 Medium laser, 1 ER Medium laser, or a couple other weapons. The machine gun version was the common unit, given the vehicle was not expected to be used as a direct combatant against anything more than partisan forces and it was far cheaper than any of the laser-armed versions. A Spirnter Utility / Scout Car was a 5-ton armored-body truck with a 25-rated Fusion Engine in it and a small turret on top, they weren't designed for shooting matches against anything more serious than unarmored infantry squads.

Both vehicles had an angle to the front or the rear of the enemy force briefly, so both vehicles unloaded a couple hundred rounds of ammo at the dismounted fired forward of the column and accounted for at least a squad on her own with the two machine guns, Shani fired toward the rear and scrated a fire team with one gun but missed with the other.

"Stop short of the house and dismount. We'll fight them from inside, with the assistance of the Ghosts," Saturn ordered.

"On it!" Auel half-shouted as his vehicle slid into a stop. He was the first out the door for his team, aiming toward the east to prevent an easy flanking maneuver. Flay was the first out on the west side from the first vehicle, her ACR immediately up and looking for threats.

"Move in! Move in!" Shani shouted as he hit the ground running, carrying the team's only light machine gun for this engagement. Each of the Armored Ghosts would have a heavy machine gun (pretty standard faire for Recon Ghosts), but ammo would be limited for their venerable Ma Deuce machine guns. Less so for a MG4 Light Machine Gun.

"Shani, cover right!" Saturn ordered as the group piled into the back door of the farmhouse. Auel and Sting went left, Shani and Saturn went right, Stella hesitated briefly before she went right, and Flay went left.

A right turn into a hall, four meters sprint, left turn into a dining room, immediate right and she was in the kitchen. Two strides, movement, she stopped dead and brought her rifle up onto target, but she hesitated immediately before she dropped the hammer.

"Flay?" the guy on the far side of her sights asked.

"Kira?" she brought her rifle down from aimpoint once the voice confirmed it. "Good, was looking for you."

"What?" Kira asked.

"We're here to get you out, but you're on the burner as well," she half-shouted over the sound of Shani's light machine gun. Everyone had suppressors on their weapons, but even when 'silenced' (3) the racket of bolt and blast was still very much audible and disruptive.

"What?" Kira shouted again, this time on approaching Flay.

"Here," Allster pulled the sling for the Rorynex SMG and the bandolier of magazines off her shoulder and thrust them at him. "Use 'em or lose 'em, Kira," she said before the rump infantryman turned quickly and headed back out into the hall.

-x-

Kira stood motionless, staring at where Flay had been in the doorway briefly before she bolted left, toward the front of the house. He did retain grip on the sub-machinegun and the magazines, but only by rote did he do so. The sight of Flay Allster, in body armor and fatigues, blackened face with camouflage, carrying an assault rifle like she had been using it for years, was altogether stunning and somewhat frightening to Kira.

After another thirty seconds of considering it, Kira came to an inexorable conclusion. Two years ago, she had been harmless but manipulative, and Kira had slept with her over the sands of North Africa. If what he had seen was the measure of it, she was today neither harmless nor manipulative, and Kira figured himself afraid to try sleeping with her.

"C'mon Romeo!" Someone shouted from the doorway. Kira had no clue who it was, but the light blue hair was rather distinctive. "Move your ass and get that gun in the fight! We're here to save your ass, not coddle it!"

"Right," Kira half-choked on saying that much, but he intellectually knew he had to contribute or someone wasn't going to go home alive — and he knew he would never forgive himself if that someone was Flay. He slung the magazine pouch to his left hip, the sub-machinegun to his right hip, and started down the hall toward the front of the building while he loaded the unfamiliar weapon. As an Orb military reservist, he had basic training on all the nominal infantry arms, but Mendel's weapon selection was quite different from what the Emirate issued its troops.

At the front end of the hallway, he realized that the windows downstairs were properly covered and Flay was not down here, so he backtracked a meter and headed up to the top floor. At the landing, he found himself in a short hallway north-south with four separate rooms to choose from. He decided forward and left was the likely option, but hesitated at the door when he realized the sole occupant wasn't Flay, but an entirely smaller (and older) lady with a semi-auto sniper rifle. He considered turning back to check the other front room, but stopped when she waved twice toward the center-of-house window. "Get that sub in action, Yamato. Cover the center, Flay has the right."

Kira didn't comment on the fact that she had gave him his marching orders entirely without removing her eyes from the field of fire, and actually took a shot while speaking to him. He did approach and use the short extension of the integral suppressor on his weapon to break out the glass pane for a clear shot down into the fray.

It did not take the Gundam pilot long to ascertain what was the status of the battle. The Blue Cosmos troops had tried to force an entry early in the battle, but had been hammered back to their transports quickly by the Ghosts. The arrival of the extraction team had forestalled a second assault, and now with punishing fire from the Magi forces on their positions, the Blue Cosmos operators had no choice but to stand there and die, vainly firing at a handful of troops in covered positions and with superior arms.

Once the enemy disposition was understood, Kira began singling out the more effective troops for his ministration. His first burst was a bit of a shock, the weapon had such a massive fire rate but the recoil compensator in the stock and built into the suppressor extension helped take much of the muzzle climb out of the weapon. fourteen rounds loosed, nine hits on his target splayed her out on the ground with surprising alacrity, even against a target wearing full body armor.

Clack, clack, the muzzle of the sniper's suppressor was far enough out the window that Kira could not distinguish it from the other gunfire in the area, but the bolt on her rifle was surprisingly loud inside the room. "Focus right, they may be trying to move in that direction," the sniper reported. Her rifle stayed forward, clack, clack, and Kira could see two troops trying to run from one transport truck to another fall mid-sprint and rolled into contorted positions.

The Gundam pilot shifted his aimpoint right and dropped a longer burst across a fire team trying to move right in open yard. The attempt was not properly successful, two took hits and the other two fell prone, but a squad picked up their movement and added suppressing fire to the engagement which drove Kira back into the room.

A second full squad of troops made the break on the right. It was at this point that Kira realized he wasn't hearing anything from the right-side room, though the explosion of a grenade was evident in that general direction. "Go to the right room, help Flay suppress those troops," the sniper said.

"Got it," Kira said. He moved for the door, then to the right-side room, and stopped dead at the door. "Flay!"

-x-

Allster had no idea when she took the hit, but she was highly thankful that the body armor and the trauma plate did as advertised — she had been knocked down by the hit, winded and stunned from a good punch to the chest, but she was still alive and ready to fight. That was what counted.

She heard some kind of shout from behind / above her, though the rump infantryman had no idea what or who was shouting. Everything was still a bit hazy, a bit blurry from a combination of dizziness and adrenaline, but when a form shouted something and approached her right side, she reacted. Her right hand went to her sidearm and kicked open the safety retention lock, then she brought it up and in toward his chest above her head. She thought she recognized him from somewhere, but she wasn't going to take chances on her disoriented mind misidentifying an enemy as a neutral.

One shot, two shots, both missed after he trapped her pistol hand between body and arm, the muzzle of the Mark 23 pistol aimed to the roof behind him. "Flay! It's me! Kira!"

"What?" Flay asked after a hazy moment. The disorientation was starting to wear off…

"Come on, you're hit! We've got to get you to a medic!" Kira said as he tried hauling her up by the front of her vest.

"Hell with a medic, I'm still alive and ready," Flay groused after she was vertical and shook out what remained of her disorientation. "Come on, shooting match is not done yet," Allster said before she dropped the empty magazine out of her ACR and slapped a fresh one in — entirely faster than Kira could do with a weapon he was used to, or faster than he expected she could do. The other thing she did was pop open the grenade launcher, yank the expended shell, and feed in a fresh 40mm explosive round, which was a bit worrisome to Kira. Colonel Kisaka wouldn't even let him think loud about using a grenade launcher, but Flay...

Kira moved to the forward corner window that faced west, Flay to the window immediately to the right three meters. The Operator started with the grenade launcher, then after the blast dropped five of the BC troops in the open, she started on the assault rifle work. Flay let Kira do the groups, she focused her bursts on the stragglers while he hammered flat the groups of two or more enemies. Several of the enemy realized what was going on, and some even tried to put suppressing fire down on the windows, but Flay was fast enough to prevent any one enemy from drawing a bead on their position.

"FIRE IN THE HOLE!" Shani shouted from down below a second before a loud explosion sound ripped through the household. Flay looked left, out the south windows after some kind of blast echoed back, and the rocket trail told the tale of what had transpired.

"Enemy banzai charge front!" Auel shouted.

"Flay, I've got the side!" Kira shouted.

"Got it!" Allster kicked the empty round out of her grenade launcher again as she turned south, and had the M320 reloaded and ready for action by the time she arrived at the window. What was left of the enemy (barely a full squad) was doing a rifle charge almost exactly out of the North Korean infantry handbook of the 1950s, though Flay put a stop to it quickly with her last 40mm grenade. The two surviving troops were cut down by Auel using the breaching shotgun they had not needed for breaching after all.

"We got them all," Master Executor Tomoe reported. "We're done here. Stella, set off your incendiaries in the enemy vehicles and in this house, rest of team return to vehicles for extraction. Terra, Xion, you are released to RTB."

"Pleasure working with you, Master Executor Tomoe," Ghost Officer Xion said. "Good fortunes and good afternoon, milady."

-x-

Kira piled into the vehicle he was pointed to, in the back passenger seat, and simply splayed out. The stress of unarmored combat was much higher than his days in the cockpit of a Gundam, he realized after the fact. A whopping five minutes of gunfight had worn him out worse than a full day doing construction work, or worse than some of the battles he had run in the Strike.

Saturn piled into the front passenger seat, the young one with the blue hair took the driver seat, and the last person in was Flay in the driver side rear.

"That was rough," Flay grumped after she pulled her earplugs. "You all right, Kira? No bullet holes or anything?"

"I'm unharmed," he answered. He was still staring at Flay, who had stopped to remove the magazine from her ACR and eject the live round in the chamber. "Where did you learn this?"

"What? Infantry small unit? Several training groups, the most recent being under Legion Commander Lightbringer," Flay answered in an almost-matter-of-fact tone. The partial mag went back in her magazine pouches on the front of her body armor. "Oh, yeah, this," she said after she fingered the entry hole caused by the round that struck her in the chest. She pulled the body armor carrier forward, pulled the trauma plate out, and flipped it around.

"Pass that up here," Saturn said after both Kira and Flay had some time to examine it.

"Here," Flay passed it forward to the Master Executor.

"Standard Lamellor Ferro-Carbide trauma plate with ceramic composite, energy-ablative foam and anti-spall coating. The bane of many a small-bore sniper over the centuries."

"I think I'll mount that on the wall on the Dominion, I have a replacement right here," Flay pulled another trauma plate from a console between the passenger seats in the rear and stuffed it down her body armor.

"Definitely worth putting up in the mess hall," Saturn judged. "Not often do warship crewmembers get to claim they took small arms fire and survived it."

"Dominion in five," the kid with the blue hair judged. "Shani, Auel, we clear up ahead?"

"So far so good, I am not seeing anything," the other pilot reported over the radio.

"Excitement's over, back to work," Flay grumped. Auel partially suppressed a snigger at the operator's comment, the Master Executor did not suppress it.

"You're totally different from…" Kira said, but stopped his sentence short after he choked up at the thought.

"No, not really," Flay responded after a moment. "I found rock bottom a few months after our fling in the North African desert, scraped along in ZAFT custody for a while, did some time in the OpFor, and had the shit shocked out of me by my present boyfriend and his commander. It's not different, I'm just on my way out of the gutter with a vengeance."

-x-x-x-

(15 April CE 73, 1345 Hours Lima (UTC-5))
(House / Bunker, Anne Arundel County, Maryland, Old United States Territory, Atlantic Federation)
(Coords: 38°51'33.23"N 76°39'33.41"W)

What was normally a reasonably peaceful 90 minute drive from Virginia to the Anne Arundel property / house / bunker had turned into a near-5-hour debacle for Lord Djibril.

The sheer enormity of the traffic clusterfuck around Washington DC was endemic of the problem that Djibril always fancied existed in the Atlantic Federation. With the new and novel threat of national death and disruption, more than a third of the Atlantic Federation citizens had been driven into a panicked frenzy by the Magi. This panic was made only worse by the wall-to-wall coverage of the Magi suborbital bombardment, because with six dedicated warships in play in the skies over Terra, someone was always being shelled somewhere by the big guns from outer space.

This state of panic now meant that millions of persons were on the road around Washington, trying to get to stores for food and survival supplies to weather the storm coming their way. Reports were already coming in from several prominent grocery store chains and hardware store groups that critical supplies of plywood, basic foods, water, batteries, blankets, and similar material was rapidly running off the shelves. Several places in New York, LA, and Detroit were reporting looting. Fire and EMS services were now strained, sometimes unable to get to emergency incidents due to the traffic snarl around the major cities.

Whether or not the Magi intended it, Djibril figured the panic they had caused with their auspicious start to the campaign on Terra would very likely economically break the Earth Alliance. Not for want of deliberate economic damage, but the sheer reflexive panic purchases from millions upon millions of suddenly-terrified civilians would create an instant inflation scenario, which was inherently bad for an economy that was already close to the breaking point. If nothing else, the Mjolnr could sit back for a week, continue shelling the planet below, and eventually Chairman Riseman would be forced out of power by the citizens.

With several hours of traffic grind to get around Washington, the escape to the country roads in eastern Maryland was a welcome change. Rolling hills, trees, farmland, split-log fences and horses everywhere, a welcome change of pace from the frenetic DC metro area… and a welcome diversion away from the raw fear of the past few hours, wondering if the Mjolnr would pass overhead again to fire down upon him or something else in the area.

"Approaching the facility now, sir," Anatoliy warned his principal.

"Excellent. Looking forward to getting out for a stretch." Djibril continued his work on his laptop, working to understand where the Magi had struck so far and where they were likely to strike next.

The armored limo moved past another bank of trees, of which they were now outside the property. "Oh what the fuck?"

"Huh? Djibril looked up and out the window. "Oh, this is bullshit! Now they're just fucking with me!"

This property only had a two-story above-ground house on it, but it had two levels of basement and a further 50 feet below the lower basement was a bunker built in the classic 1950s style of nuclear survivability bunkers. Technically, the whole land and structure package was worth less than 7 million earth-dollars, a paltry sum for someone who rated high in the billions for his LOGOS work, almost unworthy of his station. The security afforded him by the bunker and his competent guard Anatoliy was what made this property a keeper for the LOGOS magnate.

Or, at least, it was what made it valuable before the Magi happened to it.

"Those fucking wise-asses," Djibril said through clenched teeth, referring to the second and disparaging connotation of the term Magi. "Two properties so far today. Why are they fucking with me like this?"

"We could ask them what happened?" Anatoliy waved a finger at the secondary road on the property, which was occupied by a pair of APCs, four of the older ATGM Missile Trucks, and a Gatling Truck.

"Head up there." Anatoliy moved the limo forward to where the last of the APCs was and stopped the vehicle. Djibril did not wait for his driver to open the door, he simply jumped out of his own accord. "Who's in charge here?" he half-shouted after the dismounted infantry came to attention and saluted.

"I am, sir. Captain Monck, 883rd ATGM Platoon Reserve. I take it you're here for the bunker, sir?"

"Was." He sighed, looking over the stoved-in house that once sat atop his 'panic room' as he tended to think of it. "What happened, Captain?"

"Single slug from the sky, probably from a Naval Gauss Rifle. Hit the top of the house and bored down to below the bunker, so far as we can tell. The stairs down were impassable after thirty feet descent, so I pulled my men out. Couple minutes later, the house collapsed in on itself. No casualties so far as we know."

"Did that bitch Calamira have anything to say about it afterwards?" Anatoliy asked as he approached the group.

"Calamira?" Monck asked for clarification.

"Strategic Officer Calamira Weste," Djibril explained.

"No, sir, if you're referring to the bitch telepathically telling us something." Amongst Blue Cosmos, Calamira had quickly gained a hard reputation for being able to taunt a foe at planetary distances, in addition to sensing an attack before the troops were marshalled for orders.

I will thank you to use a more respectful tone when calling me a bitch, Captain Monck, Calamira chimed in from afar. And as for you, Lord Djibril, you can already write off your possessions west of the Mississippi. The Golden Phoenix flattened your horse farm in Colorado ten minutes ago.

"Why? Why are you doing this to me?" Djibril asked.

You have not yet understood your penance? For shame, Djibril, for shame. See, your great sin is being a lowly industrial baron with delusions of military superiority over a Star Empire. And, being a businessman, you have framed your personal war in terms of personal profit and corporate expenditures. As such, I am making it a point to give you a few demonstrations of the folly of a businessman playing the game against soldiers. I am going to put your personal profit margins six feet under before I have you directly dealt with. You follow, Djibril?

"You raging whore bitch slut — ARRGGGHHH!" Djibril collapsed to his knees, slamming his fist on the driveway asphalt below him. The frustration caused by Calamira's justification was enough to drive Djibril into nonsensical gibbering rage briefly. "DAMN YOU CALAMIRA WESTE! THIS IS NOT A GAME!"

Exactly, Djibril. This is NOT a game. This is war. Welcome to it. Now, here in about twenty minutes, the Redland will be taking a pass at your rather palatial residence in upstate New York, the same residence you use as your filing address for political contributions and voting registration. By what I can see of that property from up here, it is a larger residence than has been owned by most of the Division Commanders of the Empire throughout our past. Such a pity to destroy such a magnificent house, but I don't think you're hearing the lesson quite yet, so the show of force must go on.

"This is so totally against the rules of war! Enemy officers should not be accorded this level of hostility!"

And that is the problem in one sentence, Djibril. You are what you think to be a military officer, but you're not. You have no official standing in the Earth Alliance. Your only allegiance is to LOGOS, which has tenuous administrative control over Blue Cosmos. If you wanted to conduct a war against a military, you failed to bring a proper military to the party. Today you get to pay for your hubris. Now, I suggest you pack up and hit the road, big boy, the Redland is too far north to target Maryland, but the next ship behind it is the Vladivostok, which will be passing over DC and shall have clear targeting to anywhere in Maryland, New Jersey, or most of southern Pennsylvania. Good luck!

"Fuck! Time to go, sir!" Anatoliy half-shouted. "Monck, can you form up an armored convoy on this limo?"

"Hell yes sir!" The Captain turned around to look at his dismounted personnel. "MOUNT UP! TIME TO HAUL ASS NORTH!"

"This is so totally bullshit," Djibril groused as Anatoliy fairly dragged him to the limo and stuffed him in the back.

"Worry about it later, sir, we need to move!"

-x-x-x-

(16 April CE 73, 1900 Hours UTC)
(Warship Thrones, approaching Zabul Extended Training Facility, Zabul Province, Afghanistan Territory, Eurasian Federation)
(Coords: 32°12'26.88"N, 67°12'34.47"E )

"Ready to commence right jump, sir," the helmsman for the Thrones indicated he was approaching the necessary waypoint for the turn.

"Helm, make it happen. Unit One, make your moves. Unit Two, begin your interdiction fire as you bear onto the target," Star Commodore Freeman ordered.

"As ordered, sir," Commander Maxim said. "Iris, get the guys moving in. Close fast, hammer their defenses flat. Adam, your machines are released to snipe. If it moves, kill it, if it doesn't move, make sure it's dead."

"Unit One, Armrest," Iris pinged her subordinate suits using the ship's code-name for radio work. "Close and engage with extreme prejudice."

"Unit Two, Armrest, weapons free, say again, weapons free."

As the Thrones rolled right and banked to climb over a mountain line, the facility at Zabul gradually came into view. After a few seconds of analysis, one thing was now obvious to the Thrones crew about their enemies.

"Holy shit, are these guys really that stupid? We flew in full sight of five, six villages and these Blue Cosmos pricks still haven't mustered their troops out? What the fuck kind of amateur hour are we playing against?" Commander Bill Maxim asked his screen.

"Four machines on the ground, sir, minimal activity visible in their hangar," Operations Specialist Iris reported. "Guntank team, rapid engagement enemy hangar area."

-x-

"Will do, Iris," Star Commander Kasandra Ruotsalainen answered after she received the change in plans. "Risto, cut wide right, bore in on the front door. I'll take it from the side," she said.

Star Commanders Kasandra Ruotsalainen and Risto Foster were two of a short fraternity of pilots that were brave (or foolhardy) enough to drive an Earth Federal Forces claptrap unit, a desperation weapon built and thrown onto the lines of Odessa as an attempt to eke out some manner of advantage in that large-scale clusterfuck. The RTX-440 Ground Assault Type Guntank had done a niche job in the Earth Federal Forces inventory, but was not pursued beyond the One Year War. A Multimage observer had decided that it was a possible worthy platform for further development, and forwarded his analysis to his commanders. With some material and arsenal improvements, the RTX-440 Guntank Ground Assault HMP (High Mobility Platform) had been inducted into the Magi arsenal just in time for the Star Empire Wars. They were rare units; a Legion formation of 8000 armor points might have 5 such Guntanks spread amongst its forces, but field commanders would routinely call upon them for hit-and-run raiding.

"Watch for friendly fire, I think I'mma try something for the record books," Risto said before he peeled off to the right and drove his throttle forward.

"Wait, what are you — oh you crazy bastard! Go for it!" Kasandra lit up with an impressive smile once she realized what her cohort was planning.

"130 down a rough-ass wadi in the middle of fucking Afghanistan in a 65-ton mobile weapon on treads! Eat your heart out, Formula One!" Risto shouted as he continued the high-speed drive toward the enemy encampment and the hangar facilities. The wadi (dry riverbed) snaked south, east, northeast, then turned toward the southeast due south of the Extended complex, but the turn toward the southeast was Risto's jumpoff point — literally. Rather than turn, he hammered the throttle down to the mechanical stop, hit the edge of the wadi, jumped clear over the near-edge barracks buildings, and landed in the muster ground in front of the hangars.

Doing 115 kilometers per hour after hitting the ground, Risto had nowhere to go except into the hangar. This was his initial intention, but he was not planning to barrel front-first through a Strike Dagger Trainer that was trying to get out of the hangar. Still, between the low-slung 65-ton Guntank and the standing 45-ton Strike Dagger, the Guntank won handily. Risto's insane driving resulted in ripping the left leg clean off the Strike Dagger Trainer, and the impact caused the Guntank to flat-spin out the back of the hangar while the Strike Dagger was thrown wildly to the side and knocked down two other machines that were trying to start up.

"HOLY SHIT!" Risto shouted as his machine continued to flat-spin down the hillock behind the hangars until he hit the bottom of the valley and crushed a civilian truck in the process. He would not know until later that day that the vehicle he squashed was the base commander rushing back to base with orders to terminate the Extended trainees and sterilize evidence at the facility.

"Bloody showoff," Kasandra griped as her comrade spun himself down into a rut — literally — and took himself out of the fight temporarily. Rather than rush into the base on some wild banzai charge demolition derby mission, she took position on a mountain ridge northwest of the base and let the 275mm Sniper Artillery Cannon do the talking for her. One shot, two shots, and what was left of the hangar collapsed in on itself.

"I'm alive, I'm okay," Risto said over the radio.

"Forget you, what about your Guntank?" Star Captain Karin Varga asked as her machine came up to the Guntank.

"Dunno yet," Risto groused.

"Leave the testosterone-addled bum where he is," Star Captain Elena Waterly said. Her Physalis crested the ridge due north of the Extended compound and cut loose with a hyper bazooka against the fixed defense emplacements on the north side of the compound. "Flat-spun his tank through a hangar at Formula One speeds. Hope you didn't throw a track, school boy."

"Such wanton cruelty," Risto complained at the same time that Star Captain Nikolai used his beam rifle to hammer down the first of four sentry Mobile Suits on the outer perimeter of the base.

"Shit!" Karin jetted her Mudrock Gundam in between the base defenders and the stuck (downed?) Guntank, with her shield forward to protect both herself and the Guntank. One bazooka round went high, the other slammed into Karin's shield at knee level and caused her unit to stumble backwards and into the side of the Guntank. "Somebody plug that thing!"

"Got it," Ensign Theodotus LePage said calmly. The enemy machine had a bare two seconds to look up and try to maneuver his bazooka up, but it wasn't fast enough to catch the machine dropping down on him. Before the bazooka passed above the horizon, an experimental Gundam landed on him with two beam sabers lit off, cleaving his machine into three uneven strips. "Got his buddy," LePage warned as the subflight lifter on the back of his machine popped up and the two beam cannons allowed him to put four rounds downrange. Three hits ended the threat from a Dagger L with Aile Strike backpack.

"I have the last," Anaheim Sniper Anantha Wook declared. The bazooka rounds from a Calamity Gundam did not hit the Justice, but the sniper rifle round the ASOG Serpent MS fired struck the Calamity almost dead-on in the chest. True to form, the purely kinetic sniper rifle round did not penetrate the armor of the enemy Gundam, but the sheer kinetic impact of it — roughly equivalent to 4500 lbs of TNT, or the equivalent blasting power of 5 laser-guided 2000-lb bombs (4) applied to an area roughly the size of someone's fist — did still cause damage. The battery inside the Calamity was ruptured by the impact, all the capacitors that stabilized the system power needs were destroyed by the impact, the cameras were shattered, every cockpit monitor was spidered or blown out, and the gun feeds for the CIWS guns in the head were knocked out of alignment. By the time the Calamity was knocked off the top of the compound wall and hit the ground, it was shut down and unusable. "Tango down."

"Damn good shot, girl," Theodotus LePage acknowledged. "Wish we had your rifle work back in the first Bloody Valentine War, you'd've skull-fucked these Earth Alliance punks one after the next."

"Hunh," Star Captain Waterly groused. "That reminds me, LePage, why did you naturalize into Mendel from ZAFT?"

"Because I knew this was the place to be for beating Earth Alliance asses," the former ZAFT pilot said. "And unlike those fucks on Junius Seven, I know the value of being surgical about it."

"Point," Isis said. "Can you move, Risto?"

"Neg, busted a drive wheel on impact with this boulder. I'll need recovery," Risto admitted.

"Derp-a-boom!" Kassandra mocked her now-combat-disabled cohort.

"Yeah, yeah, I earned that one, but holy shit was it fun," Risto said.

"Whoa, what the hell do we have here?" Theodotus pointed the hand of his Justice F-model at the main building of the facility. "Command, got kids coming out of the building, single file march with hands up."

"Surrendering?" Commodore Freeman asked.

"No, defecting," Pilot Diana Kotaras answered from the top deck of the Thrones. She had not had anything to do in this battle, as the actual shooting action was done before she was in range to assist, but she didn't particularly consider that a bad thing. "I can sense their will to defect. The Extended trainees, to a man they want to exact vengeance on the Earth Alliance."

"Why?" LePage asked. "Excuse me, that was an invidious question on my part. Unworthy of anyone on the radio, and obvious on the face of it," he apologized for the bad question.

"Neg, I think we will find it worse inside the facility than even we can imagine," Diana said. Her Newtype skills did not give her the ability to control remote weapons, but her reaction speed, telepathy and clairvoyance were extensive.

"Roger that. Stand by to set down. We will see what needs to be seen here, and collect what intel we can. Indeterminate time on the ground, do what you can as quickly as you can," Commodore Freeman ordered.

-x-x-x-

(16 April CE 73, 2015 Hours UTC)
(Armory, Warship Dominion, In route to Mountain Home, Idaho by way of Saskatchewan, Canada)

"Ensign Allster," the Chief of the Watch acknowledged her approach to the Armory.

"Chief, here to prepare my arsenal early for tonight's mission, and make some mods to my rifle," Flay reported. "Authorization code from Lightbringer is 1-alpha-victor-7, if you need it."

The Chief Petty Officer checked his handheld data device, and verified the code against Lightbringer's list for armory access. The code matched the next one in the list. "Code is valid. You have full access, Ensign. Shout if you need anything."

"Should be good, I have a general idea what I'm looking for to do this run," Flay said. In fact, she was holding a piece of paper given to her by the Master Executor, with three things on the list that Flay really didn't have a clue why she would be taking them in, but Hotaru's performance yesterday was ample reason not to question her. Not only was Hotaru a lethal marksman with a rifle that should be a museum piece, she had all the calls for equipment and deployment down pretty close to the second and the last bit of gear. It was creepy beyond all compare to Flay, but it was also something she wasn't in a hurry to question. Maybe, just maybe, this voodoo shit was for real, she figured.

The inside of the Armory was a little better stocked today than it was yesterday. Stella, Shani, and Auel had taken the time and effort to 'appropriate' some Earth Alliance weapons, munitions, and gear harnesses; each of them retained one set for themselves, the other two sets each had recovered went into the general ship's arsenal pool. Flay had no intention of using that gear, she was well-versed on Earth Alliance equipment but far more practiced on Magi gear, and that was what she intended to use.

For the crew of the Dominion, the weapons were assembled, ready and racked on the way into the armory, just in case they had to fight boarders. The body armor sets were arranged general toward the front, personal kits (like for Marines or Commandos) toward the rear, to which Flay didn't have too much time finding hers.

The far back of the armory had four benches for use as armoring benches and equipment preparation. As a matter of convenience for the unarmored infiltrators or unarmored Marines, the Earth Alliance had also set up hooks to put body armor on so it could be worked on vertically rather than on a flat surface. Flay latched her body armor hangar on the provided hook and started by removing the grenade launcher shell pouch. This was an environment for hand grenades and flashbangs, the space was too constrictive for proper use of a 40mm grenade launcher.

Once she had four frag grenade pouches in place of the 40mm grenades, Flay rotated the armor around to present the back face. First, she moved the hydration pouch over to the left side of the plate carrier and cinched it back down. To the right of the hydration system, she attached a shotgun scabbard. Why, exactly, Executor Tomoe wanted her to carry a breaching shotgun, Flay had no clue. She figured she would know soon enough.

On the right side of her armor panel, Flay attached a weapons catch, a simple device used to keep odd-shaped weapons or entry tools readily available. Once it was in place, Flay added a pair of entry bolt cutters, small, and locked them into the weapons catch. Again, the request was very specific and very nonsensical to Flay, but if Gerald was willing to take orders from her, Flay figured it in her best interest to listen.

"Chore's over, time for some fun," Flay said after she pulled down her body armor and moved it back to the armor rack. Her next stop was the 'Assault Rifles, 5.56, STANAG 4173 Compliant' rifle rack, and her personal choice of ACR that she had tagged on the rack as her deploy weapon. The ACR came off the rack and up to her shoulder, where she pulled the bolt back to verify empty chamber. Once the bolt was locked back, she stuck a chamber flag into it to keep it clear, and the rifle went with her over to the armorer's benches again.

The first thing she did was attach a suppressor to the rifle. Much as in the last mission, it would help keep noise down in the environment, but in this case there was some expectation of the need for silence to achieve mission requirements. Second, she removed the M320 and replaced it with a forward grip for better stabilization during sustained fire. Third, she added a red dot sight to the receiver and flipped down the iron sights, so she could see through unobstructed. In total, ten minutes of modification and her rifle was ready to go.

Now that she had a new sight in place, she had to set it up and zero it. The Chief Petty Officer had taught her a trick for fast-zeroing optics, using a laser boresight cartridge and four rounds of live munition. She took the rifle over to the firing range, clipped a target on the shuttle, and ran it down to the 25 yard mark (the maximum for the armory range). Before she went to the live ammo, she started with the boresighter, which achieved a 90% accuracy for what she intended. With the boresighter on and in the chamber, she put the laser dot on the 'T' mark exactly 3.05 centimeters below the X mark, and used a pocket knife to adjust the red dot to exactly on the X. The X on a sight-in target is always point of aim, the T in this case was point of impact, assuming she wanted a 50-meter / 225-meter zero.

Once the laser had dialed everything in '90%', Flay put a magazine in and verified her placement. Two shots, a minor adjustment left, two more shots, another adjustment left, two shots, exactly where she needed it. Ballistically, the 50-yard zero was optimal for any range up to 300 yards, where a center chest hold point would strike a vital zone on a man-sized target; beyond that, Flay figured she could do elevation by dead reckoning out to 600 yards, which she had learned from Blue Cosmos. Anything beyond that and she really needed a 30-caliber rifle, not an ACR, or alternately she had a radio and a Captain who was all too willing to do fire support from the Dominion.

"While I'm here," Flay said mostly to herself as she surveyed the stack of magazines someone had left in the shooting booth earlier in the day.

-x-

"Kira Yamato reporting to armory to draw weapons for tonight's mission," Kira said to the Chief Petty Officer standing guard at the armory.

"Authorization code?"

"Delta-9-Juliet-4," Kira read off his hand. He had written it on his left palm, since he knew he would not remember it an hour after Gerald had told him.

The Chief Petty Officer checked the code against his list for the day. "You are cleared. Do you have gear assignments?"

"No, should I?" Kira asked.

"LC Lightbringer forwarded an equipment list for you. Here," and the CPO swiped something across his screen to the left and toward a thermal printer mounted to the wall. "Ensign Allster is in the range right now, if you have any questions about what you need or how to use it, you can ask her."

Kira opened his mouth to say something about Flay being in there, but he held his tongue and entered the armory. Two paces inside, Kira could hear the distinct muffled crack of a suppressed 5.56 rifle on the range. He had to forcibly stop himself from going toward the range, given that he was here in the armory for the purpose of drawing weapons, not trying to talk to Flay. Or, alternately, he was not in the armory to try to understand why Flay had done a near-180 on her life since those days in North Africa and Orb.

"Standard body armor plate carrier, including 2 medium trauma plates, 9-magazine SMG pouch, 4 frag grenades, 4 flashbang grenades, pistol holster, double pistol magazine pouch, utility knife pouch, radio pouch, IFAK pouch, and hydration pouch." Kira read off the thermal tape that he ripped off the printer outside the armory.

The armor was easy, the pouches not so much. Kira had worked with a lot of things over his career, but MOLLE assembly systems were not one of them. Thankfully, the SMG magazine pouch came with instructions folded into one of the mag wells, so once he understood how to do it with one pouch, he had an idea for the rest. While MOLLE looked simple enough, if a person hadn't done it before, it might as well have been Greek to the Gundam Pilot.

"Radio, standard RB-65 with extensible headset." Finding the radios was not difficult, nor in this case was putting the radio in the aptly-named radio pouch. He did have a little bit of an issue working in the wiring to the vest loop points, but all that was arranged to spec easily enough.

"Pistol, Mark 23, including suppressor and three magazines," Kira read off the next line of his printout.

"Left side rack, just inside the door," a somewhat haunting voice said from the doorway to the range. Kira looked at the speaker, Flay, who was this time not wearing her armor but had the same ACR slung across her chest with a three-point sling. "Magazines are below the pistol rack, suppressors are next to the pistols."

"Flay…" Kira started, but trailed off in a hurry once she started moving in his direction.

"Gear first, Kira," the Ensign said. "Make sure you pull two extra mags for each of your weapons. You'll want to make sure the sights are set right."

Kira nodded as he went around the center rifle rack in the room, deliberately to stay out of her way as she headed for the armorer's tables. The pistol, silencer, and magazines were exactly where she said they would be, so he retrieved the printed equipment plus two extra magazines for testing purposes. Once he returned to his bench, Kira was mildly surprised that Flay had taken over the bench directly next to his.

"So, what's the question of the hour?" Flay asked as she started field-stripping the ACR she had been using on the range.

"What?" Kira asked while he loaded up his plate carrier.

"You started to ask something before I shooed you on toward the pistols," Flay prompted him as she began disassembling the bolt of her weapon for a thorough cleaning.

"Why all this, Flay? This isn't how I remember you, and I'm not imagining how you could get from Morgenroete to the Archangel to here," Yamato pointed out.

Flay snorted, then smiled about his question. "This isn't exactly the world I remember from those days in North Africa, Kira. Everything has changed, and at first I decided I didn't like those changes and wanted to fight against them."

"Blue Cosmos," Kira drew the link immediately. The change was obvious: the arrival of the Mjolnr and the formation of the Protectorate of Mendel had definitely rewritten the history books. The first and loudest party to fight Mendel was Blue Cosmos, and given Flay's prior hate-Coordinators-love-Kira twisted mindset, that would be where she went first in the process of fighting to preserve the old world.

"Like I said, I did my time in the OpFor. It was an awakening, a sickening awakening," Flay said as she ran a cleaning rod down the bore of her rifle. "I had the shit shocked out of me by Lightbringer when BC botched an assault on GARM. I was supposed to be the team's controller, but they went rogue and screwed the pooch pretty badly. Technically at that point I was blown, but they let me sit in place while I worked out my personal feelings. After a few late-night stress-barfing sessions, Blue Cosmos handed me a golden platter to present to Mendel as a bona fide to walk out the door permanently. In exchange for blowing all the Blue Cosmos cells in Mendel, I went deep cover here on the Dominion, effectively defecting and now I serve 'the enemy'. New life, new love, new outlook on the future. What's next on your list?"

"Huh?" Kira asked in clear shock. His mind wasn't processing what Flay had to say so much as it was doing circles around the fact that Flay had gone full-throttle into a whole new life that Kira just couldn't see her taking for herself.

"Your printout, Kira," Flay tapped the top of it with her cleaning rod, which left a gunpowder smudge on some of the white space.

"Oh, yeah, says 'four fragmentation grenades, four flashbangs' and the next line is 'sub-machinegun, Rorynex, with 10 magazines."

"Grenades are over your right shoulder, on the outside wall, and the subs are on this wall, halfway down. Remember, grab two extra mags." Flay pointed to where the Rorynex sub-machineguns were, making that part much easier on Kira. Kira was back to his bench, grenades under one arm, sub-machinegun and ammo block under the other arm. Just after he set the equipment down, Flay had her rifle reassembled and did a mechanical function test using a couple dummy rounds in a blue-painted magazine.

"Still, that doesn't answer why you're now… here, I guess?" Kira asked as he watched in minor trepidation while Flay disassembled the suppressor she had used on her rifle. Something about the way she handled military hardware was still unnerving to the Gundam pilot.

"You mean here on the Dominion, or here gearing up for another ground operation?" Flay asked while Kira put grenades in his pouches.

"Both?" Kira decided that both questions were valid on the face of it.

"I'm here on the Dominion because someone has to stop the Earth Alliance. Orb's pacifism isn't going to faze them, and last time the island chain went face-to-face against the big dogs, it didn't end well for Orb. I believe I did answer that question last time we spoke, no?"

"That wasn't an answer, Flay, that was a cop-out."

Flay snorted loudly. "After all this time, after watching another attempted nuclear war, you seriously think I was trying to cop out when I said that we'll take it from here?" Flay had stopped her cleaning of the inside of the suppressor baffles to look at Kira. "Seriously?"

"I said it at that time, I'll say it again. Annihilating them won't solve the problem," Kira said with a bit of a high moral tone that he didn't realize he used.

Flay rested her elbows on the bench in front of her and rested her temples on her hands. "Good God, I wish I was still that naive. Hell, every now and again I wish the whole damn thing hadn't happened, starting at Morgenroete and working its way down the line. Unfortunately, every time I think that, I get slapped in the face by reality. Sometimes twice."

"Naive? What?"

Flay bolted up to proper standing, and threw down her cleaning rag onto the silencer parts on the bench. "Just, stop, Kira. Just stop. I told you I'd give you a future, it's high time you sack up and get ready to accept it. Otherwise, you're going to get flattened by the changing times, and the rest of the world will be too busy to notice the smear stains on the railroad tracks."

"You think I don't know what has happened? You think I want this? I just don't want to see Mendel make a bigger mistake than Blue Cosmos," Kira protested.

"At any time you have a better solution, pretty boy, let's hear it," a different voice said from nearby the armory door. Kira and Flay both looked to the speaker at the doorway, only to find a small crowd of personnel waiting just inside the bulkhead.

Shani let loose one of his more creepy chuckles after Kira had nothing to say for several seconds. "I think the Orb flyboy doesn't have a plan, he just wants to object to the big boys sorting the problem out."

"Wouldn't be the first time that has shown up in the history books," Sting said.

"C'mon, guys, we need to gear up and correct the world's largest problem. We'll worry about the noisemakers another day," Auel said, though he was clearly referencing Kira when he said 'noisemakers'.

"Flay, boss says to gear up for real. We'll be hitting the objective soon," Oruga said. "You done at that bench, Kira, or do you need to be 'counseled' some more by my girlfriend?"

-x-x-x-

(16 April CE 73, 1630 Hours Lima (UTC-5))
(Blue Cosmos fallback bunker, Rural Pennsylvania, Atlantic Federation)
(Coords: 40°57'18.97"N, 79°14'16.88"W )

"With any luck, our psycho telepath stalker bitch is asleep right now. She is human, at the end of the day, and she probably has to rest sometime," Anatoliy commented.

"Maybe," Monck groused. "Maybe not."

"Probably not. That wench could probably harass us while asleep," Djibril guessed (not incorrectly — Strategic Psionics were known to screw with people while they were asleep).

"Maybe we can get some peace and quiet tonight?" Anatoliy asked.

"Maybe," Djibril hoped aloud.

You boys are off the hook for tonight, a significantly different but still female telepathic voice told them. Calamira is asleep right now, and we two comrades of hers are busy tracking down and destroying the remainder of your nuclear weapons. You can rest easy that nobody will be mind-fucking you tonight, we have bigger fish to fry.

"Aww, this is bullshit, now there are more of them?" Djibril asked with depression to voice.

"I had heard rumors of rumors that Calamira had apprentices under her, I guess now we get to listen to them?" Monck commented.

You are correct and incorrect in one sentence, the mystery telepathic voice declared. Calamira does have apprentices under her, though they are tasked to guarding Mendel against some manner of sneak attack. They have no part in this campaign. I am not an apprentice of Calamira, I am her partner, Adel Longmarsh. Pleased to make your acquaintance, 'Lord' Djibril.

And I am Anita Von Havet, a totally different and rather alluring mental voice told the troops in the bunker. Calamira, Adel and myself form a trio of psionic guards. Though, as Adel pointed out, we are a bit busy breaking your toys, Djibril, so you won't be hearing from us until sometime around daybreak tomorrow. Division Commander's orders, all things considered. He wants your nuclear arsenal destroyed, end to end, even though we can track down your flashbulbs while still toying with everyone's favorite rat scurrying around the countryside.

"This is psychological torture!" Djibril raged at the ceiling of the bunker. If the mental voice of the Strategic Psionics were not audible to everyone in the building, the ready assumption would have been that Djibril was suffering a mental breakdown or was simply flat-out insane.

Torture? Really? Adel asked mentally. Was it not you who started this war by way of breaking all the rules of civilized warfare? And now you ask us to adhere to a set of standards that are unwieldy at best, and depraved at worst? I respectfully request you reflect on your foreplay with the cantankerous wench known as Karma before you tried butt-fucking her on live television. Reflect long and hard, Djibril, for Karma is going to give you the appropriate reach-around soon enough. Now, I bid you good evening, milord. Sleep well, my precious little rat, she telepathically said in a sickeningly sweet tone of mental voice.

"Oh wow," Monck said. "I know we're going to lose, and I know we're probably all consigned to Hell for this, but hot damn are these Mendel pukes insane. I mean, holy batshit Batman, these pukes are worse than the run of serial and spree killers America produced in the late 20th and 21st centuries. How the hell do we convince the world that they are now being lorded over by three psycho bitches that could scare the curl out of Ted Kaczynski's nut hair?"

"Did not need to hear that," Anatoliy simply shook his head, staring down at the ground of the bunker.

"We don't," Djibril admitted after a few moments. He stood up and paced over to the bunker's kitchenette, where he had some water boiling for use on some freeze-dried foodstuffs. "We don't convince the world, because simply put, outside of Earth Alliance territory we are the bad guys. This past day has convinced me of one thing, we've gone out of our way to be raging assholes to the rest of the world, and now the rest of the world is either ignoring us in our hour of need, or they're participating in disassembling the Earth Alliance."

"That doesn't change the fact that we are in the right," Monck said. "Blue Cosmos has the right of it, sir, regardless of what the rest of the world wants to say about it."

"I know, we are right, but by next week it won't matter if we are right. In a week or so, the Atlantic, Eurasian, and East Asian governments will be too dead to do anything about being in the right." Djibril chuckled as he stirred some freeze-dried chicken into the boiling water. "Mendel even has a pretty accurate phrase for this problem. 'Having the moral high-ground only matters so long as being on the moral high-ground does not include your own tombstone and coffin.' if I remember correctly." He set a timer on the rehydrating chicken and covered the pot up, then returned to his seat.

"Artsy-fartsy bullshit, sir. What do we do? Roll over for them?" Monck asked.

"Like I said, it doesn't matter at this point. We'll fight them for every inch of ground, but we're not going to win. We're already past that point," Djibril sighed heartily. "I just had my mistress, my cat, my house, and my domestic staff blown up by a passing warship from freaking space. Even if we are completely righteous, how do you compete with that kind of nightmare opposition?"

Monck opened his mouth to reply, paused for several seconds, then snapped his jaw shut. After a few seconds, even he lowered his eyes and shook his head. Phrased in the most succinct terms, even the BC operator could not think of a way to bypass those kinds of categoric advantages.

"I have an idea, sir," Anatoliy said. "In Russia, we still teach the old history, especially of the Great Patriotic War (5). This is a different time, different foe, different mechanic, but the same general flow of events. Vastly superior force cold-cocks weaker force, drives them back, cripples them."

"Doesn't sound too uplifting so far," Monck commented dryly.

"The rest of the story goes, weaker force bleeds superior force, bides time, reverses the course of the campaign, then drives the enemy into oblivion. In the Great Patriotic War, this entire line of events unfolded in roughly four years. For us, the events will take longer, but it is still doable."

"I am listening," Djibril prompted his SPO.

"Mendel has already said they will Abjure us — that means, no more BC or EA on planet, we're all getting the boot or the grave. Let them boot us. We bide our time wherever they send us, then when the time is right, we come back and finish the job. It may take ten years, hundred years, thousand years, ten thousand years, doesn't matter. Bide the time, reverse the course of the campaign, drive them into oblivion. And, in years to come, we will site our artillery on the moral high-ground, and shove 100-kilo artillery shells up their asses from the hill they swear they hold."

"I like his thinking. Where did you find this diamond-in-the-rough, Lord Djibril?" Monck asked after a few moments of silence in the bunker.

Djibril only smiled in response.

-x-x-x-

(16 April CE 73, 1730 Hours Lima (UTC-6))
(US Highway 34, Yuma, Colorado, Old United States Territory, Atlantic Federation)
(Coords: 40° 7'7.14"N, 102°42'51.63"W)

"Even if the war rages on in Chicago, you would expect nothing of it in towns like this," Benjamin pointed out. "I mean, look at this. We're only 1200 kilometers from the epicenter of the invasion of Terra, yet on looking around, it is business as usual. That alone tells me that this war is not as much as the Earth Alliance would lead its citizens to believe."

"The war must mean less to the people than it does to their government," Lacus guessed.

"Close. These people don't believe the Earth Alliance is their government," Benjamin pointed to a pair of pickup trucks at a feed store on the northern side of the 34 highway, both trucks of which had bumper stickers that read 'Blue Cosmos is like Blue Balls: no matter how it happens, it is never a good thing' on their tailgates. "The people are disconnected from their nation. Their government isn't listening to what the people wants. Such is the method by which revolutions are formented."

"Like when the EA used to rule over the PLANTs."

"Aye," Benjamin said.

"Benjamin, Blue Cosmos infantry at that gas station," Lacus said, pointing toward a gas station behind them.

"Doesn't matter, we're 350 meters past them," the Ghost Instructor said calmly. "Probably in town to get some go-go juice and grub, generally stay out of line of sight of their commanding officers, under the pretense of searching for us. Were I in their position and motivated to escape the brass for a day, that would be how I went about it."

The Ghost and the Singer continued marching, briefly in silence, until Benjamin's computerized music jukebox switched over to a new song. The song didn't take long to get to the point, hard house music and a female voice not far removed from Lacus' native singing range. The chorus group was particularly poignant to Lacus: 'Without love, where would you belong? What would I become? Tell me without love, without love, what would you believe? Who would come for me? To save the heart that's free? Without love?' the song put to question.

It also easily identified itself to a careful listener. "Without Love. I always wondered what it would be like to branch out into more synthpop and techno-pop music. Hearing something like this song, I can get a feeling what it would sound like."

A catch in her voice on the phrase 'this song' told a bit of tale to Benjamin. "I know your boyfriend was on the shuttle as well. As soon as we bed in for the night, I will set up my laser antenna and try to communicate with someone in the skies, see if we can determine what happened."

"It is that obvious? My worries?"

"I would expect no less of it, especially given our present relative safety," Benjamin pointed out.

"What about you?" Lacus asked.

"Married twice, divorced twice. Two children, away from this history," Benjamin recounted. "I married early, though loving wives, they were of the wrong mindset to cope with the stress of having a husband away for months at a time on missions that sometimes I could not tell anyone below a Division Commander about, such was my secrecy. In both cases, after four or five deployments, they gave up and walked away. After the second try, I gave up."

"That is… sad," Lacus said.

"Being a Multimage Commando is a hard life," Benjamin said. "Hard for the trooper, harder for the spouse. Being a Ghost is an order of magnitude worse, because Ghosts by their nature cannot talk of their duties and we are often executed for our troubles when captured, despite the treaties of war that declare us legitimate combatants."

The barking of a dog in the distance caused Lacus to look back toward the gas station. "Mister Jones, we have a problem."

The Ghost stopped, turned partway to his left to interpose the shield in that direction, and had a good look. "They've made us. I should have seen this coming. Dogs would make a perfect rump tracking measure, we are invisible but neither silent nor shielded from giving off scents."

"What do we do?" Lacus asked.

"Only one thing to do," Benjamin said with sadness to voice. "Sorry for the poochie, but better Fido than you."

The Lacus of three days ago would have protested vehemently at what she expected to happen. The Lacus of now knew that Blue Cosmos was sacrificing assets to try to localize the Ghost, and that included four-legged assets such as a working dog. Thus, she cringed in sadness when Benjamin cut loose with an Earth Alliance light machine gun and heard the last yelp of the dog caught by surprise.

The shooting was not over with just the dog, however. A short pause as the Ghost Officer repositioned his weapon, then cut loose with a longer burst at a higher angle — presumably into the troops. Lacus knew better than to look, since she had to duck down to keep her head below the edge of the shield where it was protected, but she was surprised when Benjamin put the machine gun away after only that second salvo. "Is it over?" Lacus asked after five seconds of silence.

"Only two troopers involved, and a search dog. Time for us to change course again," Benjamin said with some sadness to voice.

"It is a hard life," Lacus agreed.

-x-x-x-

(16 April CE 73, 2330 Hours Lima (UTC-7))
(Mountain Home Extended Training Facility, Mountain Home, Idaho, Old United States Territory, Atlantic Federation)
(Coords: 43° 8'32.61"N, 115°39'4.87"W)

"Are you asking me to pilot for Mendel?" Kira Yamato asked Gerald with a tone of voice that was only barely shy of insulting.

"Neg, that would be pointless," Legion Commander Lightbringer answered calmly. "I know you, Kira. You only pilot for your sense of justice. I'm offering you a mission that might satisfy that calling, if you are interested in saving lives."

Phrased that way, Kira found himself entrapped by his own stance. If he said yes, he would effectively be piloting for Mendel, regardless of what Gerald said. If he said no, he would have to justify to himself not acting to save lives, especially if it turned out an extra machine on the field would have made the difference. The frustration of the conundrum was amplified only by the consideration that Kira had a personal enmity with the Mendel officer in front of him.

In the end, his personal-ascribed duty won. "I will do it, but not under your colors."

"Expected," Gerald said. "You are free to claim your own operations status, but if you take up the machine, you answer to the operator. Clear?"

"Understood." Kira looked aside, where one of the three Sprinter Scout Cars had pulled up to nearby the foot of the Strike Gundam.

"Hey boss, where's the rest?" Shani asked after he stepped out of the drivers seat.

"Still arming up. Hold here." Gerald looked back to the Orb officer. "After we're done here, we have a rat to go catch in Pennsylvania, then we rescue the Singer and the Ghost."

"Why not rescue them first? We're a lot closer to Colorado than Pennsylvania," Kira asked, which was the same question Captain Jamestown had asked Gerald in hours past.

"The purpose of the Dominion is to confuse and distract the enemy forces west of the Mississippi, to make things easier on everyone else," Gerald explained. "The longer we make nonsensical jaunts across the countryside, trashing enemy formations as we go, the longer the invasion beachhead has to consolidate and the longer your girlfriend has to live. We are, by technicality, already in the process of trying to rescue her, because we're making the noise that Ghost Instructor Jones is using to conceal his escape."

"Oh," Kira grumped once he understood the logic in their otherwise nonsensical plan.

"Get your gear ready for ops, Kira. We deploy in fifteen." Kira only barely heard what the Legion Commander had to say, since he was staring at Flay as she approached the second Sprinter vehicle in full battle gear.

-x-

"Left turn in thirty seconds!" Shani reported.

"Missiles splash, now, now, now," Operator Tiara Graley reported. On her second rendition of 'now', the first of four missiles struck the enemy Mobile Suit hangar on base; by the time the fourth missile struck, the structure was unrecognizable as a hangar.

"Two enemy MS on the ground active, I have the southern tango," Alicia Yamato reported. The enemy machine was caught looking in the wrong direction for the attack from the south, and one good bazooka rocket from Alicia's Gundam Double X (modified) put the Strike Dagger on the ground by blowing both legs off. As she ran up on it, the machine was still moving, trying to turn itself over to continue the engagement from the ground, but the Commando transplant pilot simply hosed it down with the beam vulcans in her machine's head to end the threat. No sense wasting ammo on an already combat-ineffective enemy machine.

"I have the northern exposure," Argus Deville said. The three Sprinter Scout Cars had the surreal experience of driving under his lanes of fire, as Argus had cut loose with all four of his hand-carried 60mm Gatlings on the hapless Long Dagger MS. Within two seconds of concentrated fire, the torso of the Long Dagger had been shredded down to assorted scraps of steel and titanium, utterly unusable for anything but the barest of salvage.

"Northern guard bunkers are next." Kira slammed down on one with his Aile Strike Gundam, his landing hard enough to cave the bunker in below his feet. A bazooka shot against the second bunker put an end to it before the enemy could try to bring the AT gun around to fire on him or fire on the approaching vehicles. Two micromissiles from Argus passed over his head and streaked down onto the top of a guard tower, which splintered the wooden tower into little more than toothpicks.

"Ground teams, Command, clear field. Enter and secure."

"Command, Ground op, we're moving in now."

"This used to be a National Guard outpost," Master Executor Tomoe said. "The actual research facility is below the old armory building, with some auxiliaries under those quonset huts to the south."

"Coming up on it, let's make this happen!" Gerald said with a smile.

-x-

Flay strapped down her right shooter's glove a bit tighter, then yanked back on the charging handle of her Remington ACR. With that accomplished, she was ready for the jumpoff.

"Go go go!" Shani shouted as he brought the vehicle to a skidding stop in front of the armory building.

Flay was second out the door, bested by Clotho from the passenger door. Only one guard was on duty in the guard post at the front door, though her pistol was a sorry threat to a pair of ACR rifles. "Lobby clear, move it up!"

"Move it like we've got a mission!" Gerald ordered. Unlike the other troopers, he was carrying a light machine gun with an extended belt feed.

Clotho and Shani were the first two into the armory lobby, which was as much historical with ancient equipment as it was a practical armory for Earth Alliance National Guard troops. Flay and Stella moved in next, the two ladies sweeping to the right to clear the south wing of the armory ground-floor weapons. "Clear left!" Stella reported after she checked the left side of the wing.

"Clear right!" Flay reported after she verified nothing in the weapons racks on the right side of the room.

"Top floor clear," Oruga declared. There wasn't much more than two offices on the second floor.

"Found the ingress for the buried research lab," Gerald declared. "Clotho, you have a laser sub-machinegun, get over here and burn us a way in."

"I can do it faster," Master Executor Tomoe said as she approached the semi-concealed trapdoor down to the lower floors. Flay arrived in time to see Hotaru pull her polearm from the storage loop on the back of her plate carrier, reverse the pole head to the ground, and then jab it through the metal plate of the floor. It took some effort, but Hotaru was able to cut the trapdoor out of its mounting frame in roughly thirty seconds, after which it collapsed onto the stairs below and skidded down to the bottom. "Done. Be wary, troopers; what we shall see down here shall not be pleasant."

"Coming up behind you," Kira Yamato reported as he approached the group, still wearing his pilot suit and carrying the same sub-machinegun that Flay had given him in days past.

"Stack behind Auel," Gerald waved him toward the Abyss pilot. "Oruga, Clotho, hold up here with Master Executor Tomoe to receive hostages."

Stella stacked on Flay, who was the fourth pair to go down the stairs. The lighting was mostly disabled down here in the research center, though what light was active was the red light 'emergency' lighting. "Go right, partner," Stella advised Flay as they came to the first intersection.

"Got it," Flay said in a whisper. She used a small mirror plate to look around the corner, and once convinced nothing was in the corridor, she moved up and into the lane.

"On your six, Flay," Gerald said by radio. Flay simply acknowledged it by clicking the radio toggle twice, which generated a short and audible burst of sound.

She came to a left-hand branch that ended in double-doors into some kind of room or corridor. "Branch, sir. Left or forward?"

"I sense emotions, hatred, rage, triumph, pride, in the room to our left. We will inspect left. I have point." Gerald and Sting moved forward while Flay and Stella held the forward corridor, which was prescient on her part. "Incoming to your front, Flay. Five seconds," Gerald warned her.

"Ready," Flay took a knee and brought her rifle up to braced ready. Stella flattened against the wall and prepared her sub-machinegun for action.

"They're loose! Run! RUN!" someone shouted in the perpendicular hallway ahead of Flay. As the person came around the corner, she ran a pace into the hallway before she stopped cold and tried to bring her assault rifle up to bear. Both Flay and Stella engaged her with a burst each, six rounds sundered her chest and neck immediately. A second tango made it to the intersection but died from two suppressed pistol shots to the back that originated from down the perpendicular hallway.

A third researcher also made it to the intersection, but her fate was even more bizarre than pistol shots. A young teen slammed into the researcher's back, which drove the researcher into the far wall. Flay could barely recognize the flash of a knife before it entered the tango's back, then as the researcher collapsed to her knees, the teen drove the knife into the base of her skull and pushed the now-clinically-dead researcher to the ground, the knife still in the skull.

"That's an extended! Check fire!" Stella warned Flay.

The warning drew the attention of the teen. Her pistol came up immediately, but no shot was loosed. "Who the hell are you?"

"Mendel forces! We're from the Dominion!" Stella answered immediately. "We're here to get the Extended out!"

"Mendel? We're saved! Thank God!" The Extended trooper safed the pistol and slipped it into her pants. "Where do I go?"

"Are there others down that hall?" Stella asked.

"Yeah, four in canisters, and four chained to beds," the Extended teen said as she approached, her hands up to make sure she wasn't killed by friendly fire.

"Take us there," Flay said by automatic reaction, though she wasn't really sure why. "Gerald, Flay, going frag. Possible hostages down this way," Flay reported by radio.

"Do it, I'll take this room," Gerald said.

Flay followed close to the Extended, her rifle aimed over the shoulder of the slightly shorter young teen forward, Around the corner, it was only a two-meter wall to the Extended room, though the contents of the room were a hundred kilometers away from what she expected. "What the hell?"

"Welcome to my prior life, Flay," Stella said coldly. "I'll free the kids chained to the beds. You work on clearing the kids in the canisters."

"Right," Flay said. She walked over to the first of the canisters, and was rightly disgusted by what she was looking at. "This… this is some sick shit." Flay was standing in front of a clear canister, filled with some kind of fluid, and a teen was dunked into the liquid with a respirator mask on, several tubes into connection points on the subject's arms and back, and underwear. Flay kicked the bottom of the canister twice, which caused no damage to it whatsoever.

"They're hardened glass," the Extended escapee said from behind Flay.

"Hardened glass — that's it!" Flay let her assault rifle hang and brushed it aside to clear it out of the way. Allster had questioned why Hotaru had handed her a breaching shotgun, but looking at this scenario, the Executor had simply given the rump operator the right tool for the right job. Flay pulled the shotgun up out from the scabbard on the back of her plate carrier, flipped it around, and racked the slide. "Kid, duck down as far as possible," Flay said, gesturing for the encapsulated teen to scrunch down. Once clear, Flay put the shotgun muzzle against the glass, half a yard above the captive, and pulled the trigger. The steel-plated 00-Buckshot pellets hammered through the tempered glass and caused the entire encapsulation to spider, then seconds later the contents of the container pressured their way through the safety glass and caused the whole contents to spill out and the captive to bounce off Flay on the way to the floor.

The surprised teen pulled his face mask first. "Holy shit! I'm free! Thanks, lady!" he said as he began disconnecting hoses from the fittings in his arms.

Flay moved to the next container. The teen lady in it had already balled herself at the bottom of the enclosure, so Flay put the muzzle against the top of the enclosure and fired. The glass spidered again, top to bottom, but this time Flay had to punch the glass to rupture it properly. In this case, the teen inside avoided dropping out onto Allster, but the operator-turned-rescuer could not avoid the bath of chemical solvent and water. "Thanks, trooper," the teen lady said as she began disconnecting herself.

The third container held another male Extended subject, who had already disconnected all but two of the hoses before Flay got to him. He ducked down, waited for the shot, and barreled through the spidered glass after Flay blew the container open. Once he had his mask removed, he stood up and smiled to Flay. "Mendel, is it? I'll serve as your bondsman for getting me out of there."

"Hold that thought," Flay said on reaction, since she didn't want to consider the possibility of having Bondsmen this early in her military career. She moved to the last container, braced the shotgun against the top of the enclosure, and fired the last releasing round. The lady inside was not ready for the sudden release of the glass, and stumbled out onto Flay's legs, which knocked both of them to the ground roughly. "Ohshit!" Allster half-shouted in a rush on the way to the floor.

"Hand up?" Stella offered to Flay, who readily took it. The girl in question was already off Flay, though limited in mobility due to the cables she could not remove by herself.

"These cables in the back require a mechanical release," the escapee Extended said. "And the machines are disabled."

Flay looked over the connector robot arms in the top of the canister. "No way I could make that work right." She looked to one of the Extended from the beds. "If I cut these tubes, will it cause problems?"

"No, with the machines off, nothing should be moving through them anyways," one of the older ladies said.

"Okay." Flay safed and holstered the breaching shotgun over her right shoulder, then pulled another questionable tool issued to her by Master Executor Tomoe — a pair of small bolt cutters. The feed tubes into their backs were armored fiber tubes, easily resistant to hand or knife, though they looked to be not enough to stop a bolt cutter. "Dominion, Ground-8, be advised we will have need of medtech support for the incoming hostages. Details when in route, over."

"Ground-8, Dominion, acknowledged. Secure persons and get them out of the facility."

"Bend down a second," Flay waved to the fourth rescuee. Once she bowed, Flay opened, placed, and chomped the inlet tube with her bolt cutters. Four seconds later, she had the other tube cut an inch above the connection point. "You're clear."

"Thank you, Operator," the lady said with another bow. Flay blanched at the show of respect, but said nothing.

Allster simply moved backwards across the row to clear the cables for the other three released subjects. A full minute later, the four were cleared from their final tethers and released to move freely. "Ideas?" Stella asked Flay.

"Yeah, we'll clear them up to the vehicles, get them secured and ready for transport, then we re-enter the base and continue clearing. You have enough ammo… huh?" Flay half-squeaked after her peripheral vision caught something she was not expecting whatsoever.

All eight of the subjects from the room and the escapee had lined up and taken a knee in the clear area of their quarters. "You two have freed us. If you're fighting the Earth Alliance, we will serve as your bondsmen to help win the war," the escapee declared solemnly.

Stella clapped Flay on the shoulder. "There you go, Flay. You're on the way to building your own command."

"Stand, all of you," Flay said adroitly. This much she did know from the old history, and knew now was a good time to correct a problem. "Never bow or kneel to a Mendel officer. It is not our way." After a few moments hesitation, the nine Extended Operators took to their feet. "On the plan of Bondsmen, if it shall be permitted, so shall it be. You will learn the ways of Mendel, and you will assist in terminating the threat of Blue Cosmos. Good to go?"

"We follow you, milady Allster," the first one Flay freed said.


Author's Chapter Afterword:

Two chapters this close, mainly because I had a lot of material for DFA 10 that I decided was better to subdivide and expand on. Consider it an early Christmas present!

A lot of major material came to be in this chapter. First, Kira is now out of the danger zone, and in the hands of the Dominion. Turns out, he also makes a good pinch operator and the Strike Gundam was a pretty prescient available machine. Or, alternately, I won't bullshit you in that Lightbringer anticipated Kira's willingness to save lives. The payback for the assistance comes in the next chapter, when Kira and the Dominion go after the Pink Princess.

The other major thing of the chapter is the complete screw job with Djibril. This complete fark job is two things in one. One, I wanted to convey that the Strategic Officers Group is not a completely humorless group. They do have a sense of humor, and a quirky sense of justice to use. Second, I just enjoy screwing with assholes. Djibril is the classic asshole-in-charge, and he is also a major racist / classist of the classic science-fiction model. For me, screwing with someone due to genetics is a big fail, so whenever an opportunity presents itself, I like to return the favor. It just so happens that the Mendel forces have both the wherewithal to screw with Djibril, and the arsenal to make it reality, and clear motivation to make it reality, so Djibril gets the mad end.

On the affair of the Extendeds, pay attention to this matter in depth. There will be a massive and ongoing thread with the Extended troopers, and it starts with Flay Allster. She has personal Bondsmen now, those that she rescued and more from the Mountain Home facility, but even that will be only a partial of what is to come. Keep in mind, under Magi law it is not illegal for corporations to hold real military power of their own right, nor is it against Magi law for corporations to maintain their own genetics or paramilitary training regimens, so long as those training and gestation groups follow all otherwise applicable laws on the matter. Theoretically, Flay Allster could build her own private army by way of the Extendeds she has taken as Bondsmen…

And then there is the big kahuna of the chapter, Flay's second round with Kira. This one is a long time coming, Flay having decided to walk away from her past and Kira trying to goad her into admitting she was on the wrong path. You could tell that there toward the end, Flay was getting a bit frustrated by Kira's almost-deliberate obtuseness on the subject, thankfully she got the message across and Auel was able to bring the conversation to a hard stop before it got out of hand. I think I will start the next chapter with Kira's reaction to the Mountain Home lab — maybe he will have his own 'shock the monkey' moment in the tunnels below ground, with the Extended troopers showing him what manner of monster Kira is trying to indirectly protect.

That's it for this chapter. NEXT UP: The Dominion gets to really change the scorecard in the next chapter, and will Kira make it to the field in time to save his love from the Blue Cosmos hunter-killer parties?


Review Replies: 6 Reviews for DFA 10! I find that absolutely kickass! THANK YOU ALL!

Frasermage: Good point on the diesels. Those are definitely options, and Scandinavia may have to field a few.

Cody 88: Good guess on Kira, but the Flay apology thing happened in an earlier chapter, in a sense. She indirectly apologized and offered her penance of unscrewing the coming future. Herein, Kira seems to think she is helping Mendel make it worse. I think I will have to demonstrate Kira learning exactly what he is trying to rail against in short order.

Drakensis: Harold Coyle, never heard of 'em. Think I may have to look into that. As to the Frasier Park 'n' Stomp trick, you can blame FrasierMage for that one — he gave me the idea, I just put it to good use and now I have started engineering ships with arse-end arsenal capable of taking proper advantage of the technique.

DeathZealot: You are right, in hindsight the last chapter seems disjointed but that is the nature of that beast. This one is a bit more focused and action loaded. As to Natarle and Sutherland, they will be shown more adroitly in the next chapter of JW, which I can say will not be until next year.

On the posting stories issues, yes. I have taken all the variables possible completely out of the equation. So far as I can tell, it is an account issue with FFN. If you want, can you send some word to the support staff by the directions up top at the beginning of this chapter?

Holy Dragoon: The EA naming conventions blow. I cannot make sense of them. All I can do is work with them. 'Nuff said.

Fire Miner: Hope this chapter is more of what you expect!

Quad 'Mechs do exist amongst the Magi arsenal, but are exceedingly rare. Their limitations are usually considered to outweigh any advantages they may have. The other Star EMpires make further use of Quads than the Magi.

Executors are chosen in a very strict manner. The First Six Executors are the Old Emperor and his Five Disciples of the Divine Wars. The Planetary Princesses (Master Executor Tomoe is of that group and also holds the title Princess Saturn) are the initial eight Retainers to the Queen of the Star League.

Beyond those small bands, the rest of the Executors are hand-chosen by the existing Executors from people who are very powerful wizards, Newtypes or Psionics with the proper mindset to defend all of Existence and to avoid going crazy with powerlust. If 1 in 100 persons amongst the Star Empires is of mindset to become a proper wizard, then 1 in 100,000,000 is of proper skill and delta (rate of skill advance) to become a Transcendant wizard (essentially a demigod). 1 out of 50,000,000 Transcendants is of sufficient mental fortitude and aptitudes to do the job of an Executor, and only they are selected for the job. The training for an Executor is as much to weed out the incapable as it is to harden up the new recruits, sort of like the SEAL training in the United States, only conducted on wizardry talents and trained across 300 or 400 years. Thousands will apply for the duty of an Executor in an average year, but it takes an average of several training application group rotations to cough up one Executor.

Even with such stringent requirements, though, the reaction multiplies on itself. The more Executors are in place, the more they train, the more raw recruits are cleared and the proper ones are trained up. As of the start of the Jokers Wild series, there are over 4 million Executors in active duty.

THANK YOU ALL FOR THE REVIEWS! I intend to keep this going, even if I can't post new stories at this time!


The Gripe Sheet:

There were some reports of disjointed material from the last chapter, but that is the nature of that beast. I hope there is no such problem in this chapter. Stay tuned for further!

As always, thanks go out to Necroblade, Sieben Nightwing, and Takeshi Yamato for the assistance!


Footnotes:

(1): Short Takeoff and Landing.

(2): Oscar Mike is common NATO phonetic for 'On the Move'

(3): Contrary to Hollywood productions having perpetuated this myth for decades, sound suppressors DO NOT silence a weapon down to the sound of a whisper, cough, rustling leaves, or anything similar. Most suppressors will drop noise levels by 30 to 40 dB, which is enough to render the sound mostly harmless to a shooter or nearby persons. By no means does a suppressor make a gun sound different from a gun, it makes it sound less loud like a gun. If you want a very good example of an IRL suppressor, look up Hikok45 on Youtube, he did a production on shotgun suppressors recently.

(4): When considering the weight of an aircraft-dropped bomb, keep in mind that such devices are usually loaded with less than half their mass as explosive filler. The remainder of that mass is the case, guidance system (if any), and tail assembly. A common United States Mk. 84 bomb (2000 lbs or close enough to it) has only 920lbs or so as explosive filler, or roughly 46% of its mass as explosive.

(5): This is the Soviet / Russian name for World War II.