An atonal noise from one of his secondary monitors brought Michael Genesis out of his semi-doze daydream. He blinked, his mind firing aimlessly for a second or two as he remembered where he was and what he was supposed to be doing. He slowly got to his feet, uncrossing his legs and stretching his arms, the Vengeance glinting in the sunlight for a few moments before the Liquid Crystal armor adjusted its color patterning to a duller hue. No sense in giving away his position with a tell tale sparkle, like that of a sniper scope or pair of binoculars that always warned people in movies when they were being watched or about to be ambushed. Not that the enemy were particularly nearby, at the moment, but he liked to think it was one of his hallmarks that he wasn't as careless and hard headed as the other Apostles. Not that he put much stock in the bosses semi-religious rigamarole anyway... some kids made imaginary friends, or went on imaginary vacations... Noah wasn't content with such pedestrian pursuits. Instead he created a whole bogus religion, just so he could enjoy it, as far as Michael could see.
It certainly wasn't to justify whatever it was that Noah was planning on doing to change the world. As far as Michael had ever seen, Noah had never needed to justify himself to anyone but himself. He didn't need anyone's approval for his actions, and he didn't really care about their disapproval either. In fact he even seemed to expect disapproval from others. It might have had something to do with how he'd grown up, with his parents both always too busy to have much time for him, and them getting annoyed and shooing him away whenever he tried to show off to them, interrupting their own work. George and Zelda Borander had worked themselves into early graves... sudden heart attacks, the both of em. Within a week of each other. Who'd have guessed such otherwise healthy Coordinators would just up and drop dead? Strange world sometimes. One of the best arguements he'd ever seen for not taking life so seriously, and making sure to get plenty of rest and relaxation time in... who knew when you were going down, best to enjoy life to the fullest! He tried to impart that philosophy to Noah when he could, but the kid was way too serious... driven almost... by his quest to change the world in his unknown but apparently fundamental way.
Michael had been pleasantly surprised to see Noah actually take a short vacation recently, going down to Earth to visit his friend Rey at the Solar Knight training base. It had been completely out of the blue, but Michael wasn't sorry to see it. He'd told the kid many times that he was going to work himself into an early grave, just like his parents... had he really listened for once? It seemed mind boggling, since Noah didn't make a habit of listening to anyone except himself. Well, don't look a gift horse in the mouth, Michael always said. Just went to show, some people really could make the apparently impossible, possible. He froze for a moment, struck by something he could not name. Like his day dream, it flickered at the edge of his consciousness, just past his ability to recollect. The noise from his secondary monitor reminded him of where he was again, and he frowned, displeased with himself for getting so wishy-washy during an important mission. The most important mission yet, actually, which was why he was here personally.
"What's happening? How did you lose your Zealot?" He demanded of the hapless pilot who's IFF beacon had winked out.
"They came from... behind. From the sea! Bats... bats made of fire!" The tremulous voice of the Brotherhood pilot replied. He sounded like he was in the middle of a bad Waft trip. Worse luck him if he was... a battlefield was no place for being on hallucinogenic drugs, and if he was wiped during a mission, Noah would demand more than a few fingers as repentence! Michael accessed the last data transmission from the sensors of the destroyed Zealot and grunted. The shapes really did look kinda like bats made of fire. Or maybe dragons, with that tail like thing behind them. Of course, what they actually were was Mobile Suits, of a new type he wasn't familiar with. They zoomed and flitted through agile and distracting patterns in the air for a moment, easily avoiding the desultory fire from the Zealot in question, before blue-red beams of compressed plasma spat from their head regions and the Zealot transmission faded to static.
"Dumbass! Those are Mobile Suits! They came from the sea, eh... okay, gentlemen and ladies... our dance partners have arrived at last! You all know the plan... fight hard, make em sweat, beat em up good if you can... and lead em out here. Make em think they got you on the run, and then the rest of us will turn the tables on them. We're actors on a stage here people... let's make this look good!" Michael smiled in a predatory fashion, the Vengeance's fingers clenching and unclenching in anticipation. "And remember... don't harm the city any more than necessary. We aren't here to raze this place or massacre the citizens. Collateral damage is unacceptable!"
"But... Apostle... didn't the Prophet say that collateral casualties were not a considera..." Another Zealot pilot asked, her voice subdued.
"I'm the commander on the ground here! You leave the Prophet to me, and do as I tell you! I say don't harm the city or its citizens, and if you don't wanna play along with that, by all means, speak up now and I'll pull your plug, both on your toys and in real life when I get back!" Michael retorted harshly. Yeesh. Buncha lousy terrorists. Can't believe these are my "comrades"! Ah well, sometimes to win you have to play with the dirt for a while. Maybe some of them will get it, eventually... you can do as much with smoke and noise and mirrors as you can with explosions and massacres... more even, since it's damned hard to win the hearts and minds of dead people! With a lot of luck, we won't have to kill too many of the Orb forces... we aren't even here to kill them, if the poor sods only knew it. Sometimes there are things worse than death... "Keep your eyes peeled for a Gundam too... most of them are supposed to be tied up and unavailable by other forces, but one may have slipped through our nets!"
"What do we do if we see it? Destroy it?" Another Zealot pilot asked eagerly.
"Not even slightly. Avoid it. Leave it to me." Michael replied. "You guys are the smoke... I am the fire today." He eyed a timer counting down on one of his displays. He knew the displays weren't actually there, that it was all a sort of holographic hallucination being projected on his eyes by equipment inside the Vengeance's confined cockpit space, but he found it comforting to see at least some parts of a traditional cockpit. "Remember, we don't have all that much time. Make this look good, but make it quick, people. You are all expendable, in the end, as long as you lure them out of the city and into the ambush zone. If ten of the remaining eleven of you have to be reduced to scrap, and the last one halfway there, then it'll make things harder, but you will still have succeeded."
"ALL HAIL THE BROTHERHOOD! ALL HAIL THE PROPHET!"
"Right, right... pay fucking attention, would you!? I'd still prefer not to have you all destroyed, if possible." Michael sighed. He longed for the days of... his mind blanked again. He could have sworn he'd served with real soldiers before... strange. He'd had to learn all his skills somewhere, and he didn't think he'd learned in the PLANTS. Whatever, not the time for idle rumination. He crouched down again, dropping the Vengeance back into full cover of the trees and hillside, in the middle of the national park area above the infamous San Andreas fault zone. Covered in shadow once more, his outer skin... outer armor, he forced himself to remember that he and the Vengeance WERE not one entity, despite how it felt sometimes... his outer armor returned to the translucent purple hue he favored. He looked around, even though his other sensors were more than adequate for finding the details he was looking for... human habits were hard to kick.
Concealed under rough camouflage netting, courtesy of the Vengeance, currently almost entirely powered down as an additional precaution against being found out before time, the eight extra Zealots and four Martyrs of the ambush force waited for his activation signal, that would return control to the pilots on board the Great Endeavor back in the PLANTS. Michael found the idea of remote controlled Mobile Suits personally distasteful, though he couldn't deny their effectiveness for what the Brotherhood was trying to do. With Noah's ground breaking Red EDEN nanological vats, which could convert any material to any other material when provided with enough energy and time, constructing new Mobile Suits was a simple matter of time... about twelve hours for a Zealot or Martyr, with the Great Endeavor running at full capacity. It brought new meaning to the term "mass production". Getting new pilots, even only marginally qualified ones like many Martyr and Zealot pilots were, would still take a great deal more time than twelve hours.
He winced as another of the city strike force Zealots IFF icon disappeared from his awareness sensors. Right in the middle of the slowly retreating formation... hmm, those Orb machines were good. Better than he'd expected. Not only new models, but elite pilots too? Orb was serious about this. Michael smiled. Excellent. Just as Noah wanted. Let them send their best, to be crushed under the Brotherhood's iron fists! Let the entire world see just how helpless the vaunted Orb really was, compared to the enemy standing before them! This was no hit and run operation, at least not this part of it... Orb would come on, expecting to encounter some stiff resistance, but they would not be surprised by their ability to push the Brotherhood forces back, inflicting losses while taking relatively minor damage themselves. After all, that was what had happened every other time so far. And without a Brotherhood Gundam in the area to tip the scales... as far as they knew anyway... they would pursue, conscious that the entire world was watching their heroics.
There was only one problem... the entire world WAS watching. Watching with bated breath... would Orb beat the numbers again? Would that miniscule island nation once more show the whole world up? It would certainly look that way... until it all went horribly, totally wrong. Which was his job. Noah had told him that whether or not LAS survived the humbling of Orb was unimportant, but Michael had taken that to mean that if LAS survived then Noah wouldn't be unhappy. He'd said unimportant, not expendable. Surely the re-created world to come would still need cities to live in... why destroy something only to have to rebuild it later? Besides, it would be wrong to kill so many innocents just to get at someone else. Michael understood that, in the long term, their deaths today would be seen as a great and admirable sacrifice for the cause of human evolution... but he wanted to see as many of them enjoy the new world as possible, if he could. Maybe he was just soft inside. Well, so be it... he was pretty sure he could live with being soft inside.
Realizing that it would be some minutes yet before his forces lured the Orb units into ambush range, Michael opted to do a final readiness check on the Vengeance. He obviously couldn't try out some of the higher powered systems, like the Positron Reflectors in palms and the wing tips, because the heat dissipation flare from his cooling wings would be easily visible for miles once the FPR started cycling up. He held his hands up, and popped out the two meter long fingertip Quantum Crystal blades, first one at a time, then all five on one hand at once, then the other hand, then both hands at once. The QC blades slid in and out with barely a twitch of his fingertips, sliding out of the Liquid Crystal Regenerative armor smoothly and easily, like ice forming from water. His forearm armor rippled and rose up into spiky ridges as he deployed the twenty five meter long heat whips, though he didn't shunt excess reactor heat to them for stealth reasons. Satisifed in the smoothness of their deployment, he retracted them and reached up to the sword slung crosswise across his back.
He eased the QC zweihander off his back, twenty five meters long from hilt to tip, and almost three meters wide at the base of the blade, a crystalline solid from hilt to tip down all the way to the subatomic level. It glittered, even in the shadows, the fractional edge sharper than an electron microscope could see, able to cut protons and neutrons, the basic building blocks of atoms, in half. Depending how he gripped the sword and how he tilted his head, the blade was opaque and translucent in different spots, like an enormous unbreakable icicle. The blade could part any protective armor known to man like it was soft cloth, and was entirely proof against melting or heat based attacks, as well as any conceivable physical damage, short of a meteor falling from heaven or something else absurd. A Citadel Shield lightwave barrier would stop it... usually... and a Positron Reflector would devour it just like it did any normal matter, but that was it. It was just too bad it took so long to make... the sword and fingerblades had taken almost a year and a half to grow with the Red EDEN vats, one crystalline molecule at a time.
Michael understood, from talking with Noah, that the Vengeance incorporated a sort of Red EDEN microsheath around itself... that, given time and power, the Gundam could repair itself and its armaments should they ever be damaged, even if nothing was left but the torso and reactor, with no outside assistance whatsoever. Indeed, from what Noah had said, in the case of most minor damage, pretty much anything less catastrophic than total loss of a limb, it was by far cheaper and faster to let the built in systems repair the Gundam, rather than return to a maintenance bay. Ten hours, was what he'd said... ten hours to regrow a hand if lost. It seemed impossible, but really, Michael had the feeling the kid was bored by it... that such an amazing technology was somehow old news to him, a sort of interesting antique that he'd already moved well past. Well, as far as nano-reconstruction went, maybe that was true... take the LCR armor, which was essentially a big nano-soup, like molten glass that was controlled by electrical signals, the current paths and outputs determining the shape, translucency and color of the armor.
His inventory of the built in and standard weapon systems complete, Michael turned his attention to the extras he'd decided to bring along for the current mission. Noah had wrinkled his nose with surprise and mild disbelief when he'd seen what Michael had ordered brought out of storage. "You're going to use those RELICS?" Had been his question, delivered in exactly that tone of voice that said he considered Michael to be marginally insane, or else just really stupid. "Those have been sitting in the vaults for almost three years now... my weapons research is generations beyond those prototypes!"
"Well, then you won't miss these at all, will you? Good, I was worried you might get upset if I broke them." Michael had replied cheerfully. He shook his head now... Noah sometimes didn't seem to realize just how far ahead of everyone else he sometimes was. Yeah, maybe this tech WAS three year old prototypes... but that didn't mean the rest of the world wasn't about ten years away from even getting close to thinking about making them! He had to admit, after studying the instruction manuals for them, that they certainly were obviously prototypes, with quirky flaws that had no doubt driven Noah batty those years ago. Kid could never be satisifed unless things worked perfectly like he designed them too... even if they did what he wanted, but had little side effects or problems, he sometimes scrapped a whole project and started anew. Michael wondered how much incredible technology had been discarded like that, because it didn't match up to Noah's perceived designs. A disgusting amount, he was sure... tear inducing, from an engineering standpoint.
But back to the weapons. The Vengeance lacked any sort of ranged punch, disregarding its astounding ability to use its speed and maneuverability to close to melee distance in a matter of seconds, almost regardless of the initial distance between him and his foes. Sometimes getting up close and personal wasn't the best answer. Michael was decent in the up close arena, and the Vengeance helped him become truly exceptional... but he didn't prefer it. He liked to take down foes efficiently... and there were few weapons as efficient as a good gun, in his opinion. The 300mm QC spear driver was a slim, rifle like weapon almost as long as the Vengeance was tall... almost twenty meters from stock to muzzle. It was a weapon designed for a machine with a NIC equipped pilot, since it was single shot and had to be manually reloaded, in a fashion similar to that of a black powder rifle, i.e. it was a muzzle loading weapon, versus a clip or breech loading weapon like most modern guns. The internal firing mechanisms were too bulky and delicate for any more modern reloading option. The weapon functioned like a railgun, hurling a three meter long QC tipped spear up to three thousand meters in a straight line, at very high speed. The penetrating power was ungodly, though the damage actually not that incredible, depending on where it hit.
The other weapon he'd taken for today's little farce was smaller, more of a large pistol or carbine than a rifle, easily able to be fired with one hand. It was also designed for NIC operated machines, being single shot and breech reloading, kind of like a grenade launcher or old style double barreled shotgun. Additionally, the focusing mirror on the front end had to be swapped out every couple of shots, which was at least better, from what he understood, than the original model it was a miniaturized copy of, which had needed mirror replacement after every shot. The cartridges it fired were about the size of a medium sized suitcase... each containing a twenty kiloton category nuclear bomb. The bombs weren't actually fired though, and nor did they really explode. Instead the energy of the explosion was converted to pure X-ray radiation and channeled into multiple beams, which were fired at the focusing mirror and recombined into a wider angle radiation beam of extremely high power, that destroyed targets by bombarding their molecular structure with heat, exciting it until they destabilized... melted, exploded, caught on fire, evaporated, it all depended on the volatility of the item in question.
It was a nasty weapon, all things considered... it reduced vehicles and Mobile Suits to melted, radioactive slag, assuming the cooking off of their power and ammunition didn't blow them apart. People popped like balloons filled with blood tossed into a raging furnace, and the very air within the beam sometimes ignited and burned. The effect was identical to that of the GENESIS space laser that ZAFT had used to almost wipe out the Earth during the end of the First Valentine War, or the Cyclops systems of the Earth Alliance... just on a much smaller scale. Noah called it a 660mm hand held Radiation Cannon. It had a long range, somewhat attenuated by being in atmosphere, and though the caliber of the barrel was only two thirds of a meter, the actual beam was closer to ten meters in diameter, more than wide enough to cause devastation to multiple targets at once with the same shot. However, firing multiple times without hours long cooldown periods could cause it to become unstable and possibly fizzle or even explode, which would not be happy making for its user. He hoped he wouldn't have to use it at all... it was a "just in case" tool.
"Beeeep.... beeeeep...." Two more IFF icons winked out within seconds of each other, amidst shocked cries from their pilots, their simulator controls shutting down as the control interaction signals cut out. Michael grunted with annoyance... only a couple of minutes had gone by, and a third of the initial strike force had been taken out? That was much faster than he'd been expecting. Were the Orb pilots really that good? He only saw eight of them on his screen... already the odds were even? "What the hell are you guys doing out there? Standing around, sniffing Waft? You had a thirty percent advantage in numbers, now they've completely evened the odds! Honestly, I'm ashamed to be on the same side as you guys!"
"Beams aren't having any effect on them! They're flying all over the place... never seen Mobile Suits fly so fast, Apostle! They're like fighter jets!"
"Well then switch to guns! You've got linear cannons and machine cannons, and missiles too... don't tell me it didn't occur to you to use em! Green beams are pretty, but if they don't work, DON'T USE THEM!" Michael was surprised though, despite his exasperation. He'd watched the footage of Randolf's encounter with the Phoenix King, and the way the Orb Gundam had weathered plasma beam attacks like they were spring showers... but who'd have thought they'd put that kind of defensive hardware on a mass production model! Beams were becoming the weapons of choice these days, because of the relative prevalence of Phase Shift technology... maybe the days of plasma beams dominance of the weapon systems were numbered, with this new Orb armor. Or his own LCR armor for that matter, which was also impervious to beam based weapon damage, though not because it absorbed the heat, but rather because it reflected heat energy using tens of thousands of mirrorlike facets at the point of impact, dissipating the beam before it did any damage. He somehow doubted though, that the Orb armor could rebuild itself when damaged, unlike his own Gundam's armor.
"They've also got those damn Citadel Shields... and these guys are good! They're fighting in pairs, they never leave themselves open! And they're constantly in our faces... most of their attacks don't penetrate the Phase Shift, but I my screen is shaking so hard its like I'm a pebble in a tin can! I'm starting to get a headache just looking at it."
"Poor baby... can you imagine what it would be like if you weren't playing it like a game!?" Michael retorted without pity. "Be thankful all you see is vibration... each of those 120mm shells is hitting you hard enough to blow a house to flinders. They could kill you through sheer kinetic shock, assuming you weren't safely up in the PLANTS!"
"Beeep... beeep.... beeeep..." Michael stared at his screen, incredulous. Three IFF icons, just like THAT? "I'm warning you dopeheads right now... the Prophet ain't gonna be happy when he watches this sensor recording. You guys are getting raped out there... what's the deal? Have we not given you every conceivable advantage!?"
"My Phase Shift suddenly stopped working." One of the recently destroyed Zealots said in a sulky voice. "Stupid machine broke, that's why I died."
"System lag got me. Stupid latency. Popped up real high all of a sudden... something was weird with my armor too." Another added.
"SHUT THE HELL UP WITH YOUR LAME EXCUSES! YOU SOUND LIKE YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT SOME INTERNET MMORPG!" Michael snapped at them, before reigning in his temper. They weren't soldiers... hell, in some cases they were still just kids, tied up in their religion and their deathless combat ability. Weaklings. The kids in HIS day were... damn it, his train of thought totally slipped away from him just then. Stupid memories.
"But... but... my Phase Shift stopped working too... I got blown up by a bunch of missiles! Missiles!" The third recently deceased Zealot pilot complained, in a disbelieving tone. "What a piece of crap... we got a bunch of defective machines!"
"I'll tell the Prophet you think his machines are defective. I'm sure he'll be very agreeable. Our comms ARE recorded, dumbfuck!"
"My l-life f-for the Prophe..."
"Oh, shut up. If you don't have anything productive to say, butt out of this comm channel. I don't need the distractio..."
"OMIGOD! It's HUGE! RUN! RUN! RU... damn..." Another Zealot's IFF icon disappeared. "I almost made the corner too..."
"WHAT THE FUCK!?" Michael yelled, drawing a prolonged silence on the comm line. "Four units lost in under a minute!? You've gotta be shitting me! Ain't nobody going home early tonight, kiddos... we're going to be doing some remedial training until your eyes bleed! That's if the Prophet doesn't decided to ask for all your fingers, and maybe mine too! Shit!" Michael chewed his lip. "What was huge, anyway?"
"There... there was another Mobile Suit. Way back behind the other ones. It was massive! Gargantuan! At least half again as big as my Zealot! It was still about a kilometer away, down a street. Didn't you get a picture?"
"Your video transmissions are total junk... you get your cameras blown away or something?"
"Until I died, I hadn't even taken a hit... though right at the end there, my Phase Shift also started going funky... turning off and on for no good reason. My targeting systems went to hell too... never seen such jamming!"
"Jamming huh..." Michael considered the evidence. Four machines, downed in under a minute, all complaining of things going wrong with their armor and control systems just before they were destroyed. Yeah, he didn't need a neon sign, thanks. Looks like Orb had managed to slip a Gundam into the area after all... it sure wasn't the flaming bat squad, or else they would have had this problem from the get go. What kind of jamming gear could affect a passive system like the NIC controls or Phase Shift though? What was the range? Was it consistent, or a pulse thing? Damn, too many unknowns! "All remaining units, maximum retreat, NOW! Pull out of the city... I don't care if it looks like you're turning tail and running... because you ARE! We NEED to get them further outside the city."
"Why though...? The Prophet said..."
"FUCK THE PROPHET! Because I said so, and I'm the commander right now! He left it up to me to execute the details... do as I say, unless you want to find out how pissed off he can REALLY get! What he did to Mary... that was a JOKE!"
"You... saying such a thing about the Prophet..." The pilots seemed fundamentally shaken.
"Yeah, well, maybe I'll go to hell for it. It's not the issue at hand! We've got eight Orb Mobile Suits... damn it, couldn't you have even DISABLED one... plus a Gundam in the area. We still outnumber them, but the rest of us can't engage until you losers lure them into our range! We don't have time to FUCK AROUND any more! Pull back, full speed, and wait at the indicated coordinates." Michael pinged an area on his tactical map and transmitted the data to them. "Do this right and we can still pull our asses out of the sling. Work with me here, people... keep your heads IN the game!" Michael turned off his comm system. "Damn! Damn! Shit! This is going to be closer than I expected..."
-------------------------------------------
"The Pandemonium ECM System is working out even better than I'd expected it to." Miriallia commented, with a slightly smug grin on her face, as she watched the smoke rise from the shattered shell of the Brotherhood Zealot lying in the street, about a kilometer away. It had backed into view, firing at some of the Dawndrakes that had been progressively herding it and its comrades out of the city proper and into the outlying suburb belts, and had half turned towards them before recoiling in a completely human expression of shock, stumbling backwards almost amusingly. It had turned to run, not the best of tactical decisions certainly, but by that point in time Dearka had already locked onto it and fired a salvo of shells from their four torso mounted 375mm artillery howitzers. The fin stabilized shells could correct their flight path to a certain degree after leaving the barrel, certainly more than enough to account for the two and a half strides the Zealot managed before they plowed into its back.
Had it's Phase Shift been operating normally, the impacts probably wouldn't have done more than throw the Zealot forward to the ground like a man hit in the back by a small car... painful certainly, but definitely not as profound an effect as being basically explosively dismembered, the arms and legs cartwheeling away like fireworks as the torso disintegrated under the punishing impacts. There was some small collateral damage... smashed windows, a crushed car or two, a small fire in a cleared lot... but otherwise the destruction was confined to the street and the wreckage of the Zealot. "Nice shooting, by the way."
"He couldn't have made it much easier for me." Dearka paused to wipe a sheen of sweat off his brow. He almost hadn't been able to force himself to take the shot, but he didn't want to admit that to Mir, who was too worried about him as things were. "Running away in a straight line, not even trying to dodge or interpose his shield... a three year old could have made that shot."
"Well, for a three year old, you're doing pretty good." Mir let her smile grow as Dearka chuckled. She couldn't hear him laugh often enough these days. "Little over eight minutes until the Solar Knights reach their drop point, maybe two or three after that until they reach the engagement zone. Hell, at this rate we won't even need any backup."
Their comm system crackled for a moment, before Miriallia adjusted the gain... despite everything, the Pandemonium was still a prototype, and not without its flaws. It was beginning to jam their own comm lines too, and would probably eventually go after their targeting and passive electronic systems as well. They'd need to turn it off before that happened obviously, run some more tests on it, figure out where it was over-reacting. "Sir, Ma'am, this is Salamander Lead... remaining Brotherhood forces are pulling back at maximum speed... running away even. We have so far accounted for eight Brotherhood kills between my Squadron and you. At this rate we should be able to mop them up before the Solar Knights even drop. Quite a feather in her Majesty's cap, I should say. Permission to pursue further?"
"Go ahead, Salamander. Flush em out for us, and send us some targeting data. If you can group them up in a relatively clear location, we might be able to end this infestation with a single shot. They appear to be withdrawing towards Fault Line Park, just as we wanted." Miriallia replied. "How are you guys holding up? You look like you're running a bit low on expendables."
"True enough, Ma'am, but isn't that their purpose? Shells not used against the enemy might as well not have been carried into battle at all. We've so far managed to avoid taking anything worse than minor damage... lost a few external weapon mounts, Salamander Five lost his gun arm... stupid bastard is buying us all drinks when we get home, remember that Farlye!"
"Dawndrakes performing all right? From what I hear, they're still pretty much fresh from the ranges." Dearka enquired, his professional curiosity piqued.
"A few bugs, here and there sir... nothing we didn't really expect. Some shakiness and stickiness in the joints during Mode transformations, a few power consumption problems... nothing frightening. I'd say these bad asses are going to be ready for the big time stage with only a few more tweaks and tunes. As for how they handle... well, sir, I'd always wanted to pilot a Freedom..."
"That good eh? Damn, might have to try one out myself sometime." Dearka mused.
"Sir, if I could legally marry this machine, I think I would. As things are, we might end up having some illegitimate children together, if she keeps being this fucking sweet, pardon my language, Ma'am."
"Don't mind me. Not only am I a journalist, I'm a part time sailor and a CIC operator. I don't blush easily. Anymore."
"I was about to say..." Dearka smirked at her.
"Besides, Sir, Ma'am... that monstrosity you're piloting is enough to give me jealous shivers too. I mean, yeah, maybe it doesn't fly like a hummingbird, but whatever you guys are doing to their Phase Shift armor... keep it up, please! And I can't stress enough what a psychological advantage it is to us to have a Gundam covering our butts with the big guns. Everyone is always a bigger bad ass when they're tougher, older siblings are around to back em up. Though I have to say, I have not yet been impressed with the quality of our enemies. Their machines are amazing... but the pilots... they suck."
"That seems to be the general consensus." Miriallia agreed, turning her attention back to her CIC screens. "They're grouping up, just past that line of cliffs, out in the national park area. If they think they can get away, then they've got another thing coming! Still, it makes me wonder... we were pushing them back before, but why the sudden retreat? They obviously don't care about their lives, if they're even in those machines, and not controlling them remotely!"
"We've killed eight, with four more remaining. How many more of them can they have? They must be trying to cut their losses. Mobile Suits aren't made in a day, you know, especially advanced ones!" Salamander Lead replied confidently. "We're moving to surround them from the air as we speak. Locking on with laser designators as we see them. Feeding you targeting data."
"Receiving it. Mir, handle the data feeds while I prep the Magnus. Stupid motherfuckers will never know what hit em. Salamander Lead, I'm going to put my foot down on these terrorists hardcore... if you could clean up the mess, maybe take one partially intact, I'm sure Dr. Simmons'd be real appreciative. Mind you stay a healthy distance away until the Earthshaker hits though..." Dearka winced at the thought.
"Roger that, sir. Though from what I remember of the tech specs, I don't expect to find much. That's one hell of a big gun you got, sir."
"If you only knew... oh, fuck that was on an open comm, damn it!" Miriallia found herself flushing. Damn her inability to tell when the comm was on or not... this wasn't the first time something like this had happened! She needed a big red sign saying "Open Comm" on her screen, badly! The chuckles from the mostly male Salamander squadron, and from Dearka, didn't make things any easier. She focused herself on inputting the targeting data being fed to them from the Dawndrakes, and tried not to feel the heat on her ears and neck.
Dearka jumped the Warmaster forward another kilometer and a half, clearing the city proper and landing in a large, park like space. Perhaps a sports complex or maybe just a environmentally conservated area. Whichever it was, he didn't really care. It was open, relatively stable ground, with good lines of sight throughout their forward arc. Still smiling at Miriallia's inadvertantly public compliment and appraisal, he scanned their surroundings, looking for any sign of threats. Besides the odd plume of smoke from back in the more built up areas of the city, where the remains of the other eight Zealots were smouldering, there was nothing. Far in the distance to his front, about a kilometer and half to two kilometers way, he saw the fiery colored shapes flitting through the air in a circling pattern that were the eight Dawndrakes. Occasional tracer fire from the shoulder gatling cannons or a blue-red lightning flash from their rifles would streak down to the distant ground, but they didn't press their attacks closely, waiting for the big hammer to drop.
Unlike with the old Grand Buster, the Warmaster didn't need to deploy any additional support struts from its legs and body before firing the upgraded Earthshaker Magnus. This was both because the Warmaster was larger and stronger and better braced internally than the Grand Buster, and also because of the improved recoil dissipation systems on the Magnus itself. Dearka checked to make sure the clip of shells was firmly seated, and that there were no problems with the feeding and loading mechanisms of the cannon itself. A misfire or backfire would be more than merely annoying... it could be catastrophically fatal, especially if the other reamining shells were to blow up as well. It would be like a small nuclear explosion. He forced himself not to think about it... the gun would not jam. He wouldn't let it. He cocked the weapon and removed the first safety, loading a shell into the firing breech.
He then took the data Mir was feeding him, relayed from the Dawndrakes slaved targeting computers as they kept their laser rangefinders on the grouped Zealots. The Magnus tilted up and to the side, taking into account atmospheric conditions, including humidity, wind speed, wind direction and dozens of other tiny variables that could possibly affect the placement of the shot, no matter how slight. The computer bleeped at him, showing all green in terms of computations. He double checked them with a few seconds of thought, and couldn't see any errors, glaring or minor. Dearka removed the second safety and put his thumb on the trigger. He looked at Mir, and they shared a smile of trust and mutual enjoyment. It took both of them to bring out the Warmaster's true potential, and there was few better feelings in their world than a mutual accomplishment. "Fire in the hole!" Dearka exclaimed, mashing down the trigger. The Warmaster's frame shivered, vibrations from the arm humming through the bottom of their seats for a few seconds, with a sound like a ceramic plate being tossed from a roof onto a sidewalk resounding in their ears.
The muzzle flame jumped almost ten meters from the Magnus's barrel, propellant fumes jetting from the barrel louvres in a steaming cloud of fire and smoke. By the time the first shell had gone a hundred meters, the second was already being levered into the breech, ready to fire. The spent shell casing, glowing white and dull cherry red with absorbed heat, flipped lazily through the air before crashing to earth with a "BONG!" sound like a falling churchbell, indenting itself into the soil. A small cloud of dust and loose debris recoilled away from the Warmaster in a circle, carried by the sonic shockwave of the weapon's firing, the same disturbance shattering windows for three blocks in every direction and stunning any living being within a quarter kilometer for a few seconds. The muzzle flash was so bright that it was visible from low orbit, a brief spark of light against the earth tone background of the world.
Salamander Lead watched with stunned awe as the Earthshaker shell flashed past his squadron, falling almost straight down from the heavens onto the bunched up Zealots hiding behind the crest of the hill below, shields raised protectively over their heads to guard against the strafing runs by the Dawndrakes. The shell didn't land right on top of them, though it did land within a few meters of them... and with the Earthshaker, close was certainly good enough. The flash of light was enough to put pinwheels of blue and purple spots in his vision, a geyser of shattered rock and burning earth rising almost a hundred and fifty feet into the air in a thirty meter radius around the point of impact. Trees were smashed to splinters and overturned like a child kicking sticks set upright in the ground, leaves and pine needles exploding off their branches in a green wave that pulsed outward like a ripple in water. The Dawndrakes quivered in midair from the shockwave, and scorched soil splattered against some of their undersides, splashed upwards from the ground several hundred meters below. Smoke and dust clouds rose thickly, like a volcanic plume, from the impact site.
"Oh, hell yeah!" Salamander Three whispered into the dead silent comm. "Cannot confirm, but targets look to have been... comprehensively annihilated!"
"You went long by about three meters... might want to adjust your scope, Sir, Ma'am!" Salamander Seven joked. "Lord knows, you've gotta be damned precise with that whopper!"
"Hit an unexpected updraft at around the seventy five hundred meter mark, tilted the angle of descent a little. We'll correct better next time." Miriallia replied, rolling her eyes. "Pretty soon we'll be shooting into teacups, just you watch."
"I don't doubt it, Ma'am... I don't doubt it." Salamander Lead shook his head admiringly. Poor bastards probably never knew what hit em. "All right, Salamanders... lets go down and pick up the pieces. Keep the gugnir's charged and ready... I don't expect to find too much more than shrapnel down there, but we might get lucky. If we do, lets try and take it whole." He started his descent, transforming, with a few herks and jerks, into Mobile Suit form on the way, wings sweeping around to his back, arms unfolding from over his head, legs reattaching themselves to the hips... all in all, it took about three seconds. Longer than it should... they were hoping for less than two. Still, he had damn few complaints about the Dawndrake's combat abilities so far. "I'd be grateful if you'd keep an eye out for us, Sir, Ma'am... this should be the last of em, but I'd sure feel better with our big brother keeping his watchful eye on us."
"Don't worry, Salamander Lead... tempting as it might be to fire my other big gun and work the kinks out of THAT targeting system, I suppose we'll hang around for a little while." Dearka replied, shooting a lopsided smile at Mir, who batted at him, face flushed.
"Roger that, Sir." Salamander Lead grinned. "We'll try and make this fast. Large weapons require a lot of maintenance after all."
"I hate you." Miriallia told Dearka, trying to be cross. "Must you make a public spectacle of my slip ups?"
"Hmm... yes?" Dearka replied, leaning back in his chair and stretching a little. "You don't drop gems like that every day, you know. The sentiment is appreciated, by the way."
"Don't let it go to your head." Miriallia admonished, though she was secretly glad to see him having fun. If she had to be embarassed because of it... well, so be it. Not that she was planning on making a habit of making a fool of herself for his benefit... but every once in a while... well, she had pride to spare for him. She looked back at the city behind them. "I guess there wasn't a Brotherhood Gundam after all... or else they ran away once they saw us steamrolling their goons."
"I am consistently unimpressed with these Brotherhood pilots." Dearka mused. "It seems stupid of them to keep giving people like that control of expensive war machines, regardless of whether or not they can control them remotely. It doesn't add up with the rest of their capabilities... the planning, the secrecy, the ability to make these Gundams and Mobile Suits in the first place... surely they could come up with some trained pilots, besides their Gundam pilots?"
"And even they aren't exactly Redcoats." Miriallia added, thinking similar thoughts. "The only one so far that even put up a real fight is the Tormented. The Traitor didn't even ruffle Ysak's hair, and the Haunted only gave Athrun a few problems because of the fog... once he'd licked that, he dominated the Haunted. It seems such a waste... or like maybe the Brotherhood leaders, whomever they are, were choosing people not based on their talents for Mobile Suits, but on other qualities? Like maybe loyalty, or the ability to follow questionable orders without moral complaint?"
"That's a strange thought... but you're right." Dearka leaned forward. "Though I suppose for the type of attacks they've been pulling, these odd, not as destructive as they could be deals, maybe the barely competent people they have are good enough. It doesn't take much skill to terrify people with a Mobile Suit when they're civilians after all. I wonder what they were up to today... there's no USN presence here, no military base, they didn't make any public demands, or political threats. They just showed up in force, started blowing shit up randomly, and waited for us to show up and kick their asses back into the stone age? Something is VERY strange here..."
"Pardon me, Sir, Ma'am... but we're done checking out the impact crater. I should stress the term crater." Salamander Lead whistled, standing on the lip and looking down into the eight meter deep depression in the rocky ground. "Haven't found much even identifiable as a Mobile Suit part... nothing bigger than a car hood certainly... and a compact car at that! Phase Shift armor and all, these bugs are pretty well squished. Maybe we can salvage something from one of the ones we took down in the city. We're wrapping up here and..." Salamander Lead turned his head, hearing a strangled cry over the squadron comm. Salamander Eight, standing across the crater from him, suddenly swayed and toppled forward, landing with a crash and sliding in a cloud of grit into the crater bottom. "What the hell!? What happened? Jim!? Jim, what the hell happened!? Did anybody see if something hit him?"
"I thought I saw a brief flash of light... like on a mirror or something, from off to the northeast, over by those hills." Salamander Five replied, doubt tinging his every word.
"I don't read any major damage, sir... but Jim's... Jim's DEAD, sir!" Salamander Six cried, disbelief and sorrow strong in his voice. "His vitals just dropped right off, before he even finished sliding! I don't see any impact marks or armo... hold on a second.... what the HELL?"
"Report! Stay sharp! Shields up, backs together, don't let your guard's down!" Salamander Lead ordered. "Big Brother, we've got possible enemy contact back here. One of my men is down, dead."
"Dead?" Miriallia was shocked. "All your IFF icons are still fine."
"Salamander Eight is dead, vitals gone. We're still trying to determine how... his Dawndrake appears... dammit, give me a report, Six!"
"Sir... there's a fucking hole in his back, right behind the cockpit area! It's only about a foot in diameter... can't hardly see it unless you zoom in real close. Looks like something you'd see using a hole punch on a piece of cardboard... never seen a hole that neat in Mobile Suit armor! There's no fragmentation of the surrounding plate... its almost like it was cut with a blade!"
"FRALA... no, the HAC woulda stopped that. Plus, that'd be a DAMNED big FRALA... we'd have seen the beam, no problem." Salamander Lead considered, as Six turned Eight over. He looked over when Six swore heartily. "What now!?"
Six swallowed heavily. "B-b-blood, sir! The hole goes all the way through the Dawkdrake... and theres blood just spilling out of the hole in the front! Oh god... Jim!"
"Hey! There's that flash agaAARRGHG!" Salamander Five flinched and then its arms drooped, before its thrusters fired and hurled it forward, out of formation until it hit the hillside and toppled over, lying as still as a corpse. Through the settling dust, Salamander squadron could see another neat, precise hole punched through the torso armor, right over the cockpit. Salamnder Five's vitals, which had been going crazy ever since he'd screamed, flatlined and stayed that way with a mournful howling beep.
"EVERYONE, EVASIVE MANEUVERS!" Salamander Lead ordered, his face swelling with fury. "We've got ourselves a sniper! Keep your shields over your cockpits, the bastard is targeting US, not the machines!" As the squadron scattered he got back into contact with the Warmaster. "We've got two men down over here! Some sort of super-penetrating sniper weapon... goes right through our armor like it isn't even there! Two pilots down already, enemy not in sight! Request you get over here as quickly as you can, please!"
"On our way... OH!" Miriallia's long range scanners began registering new icons. "OH FUCK! Salamander Lead, you have inbound bogeys, enemy Mobile Suits... more Zealots and a few Martyrs... eight of the first, four of the second."
"Roger that, I see them... came right out of the woods, guns blazing. We'll try and do what we can, but we can't get bogged down in a battle with that sniper out there! I've never seen the like... like a hole punched right through them!"
"A trap? But why didn't they spring it earlier?" Dearka wondered, even as he started jumping the Warmaster towards the fracas behind the hills ahead of them. He could see missile contrails and explosions jetting up smoke... the Dawkdrakes were getting hammered by the surprise attack, which had caught them seperating to confuse the sniper, which wasn't the best positioning for weathering large numbers of ammunition based weapons, which were the primary armaments of the Zealots and Martyrs. He swore... in a matter of moments they had gone from being the victorious elite, to being hard pressed. "When are the Solar Knights gonna be here!?"
"Not for another five minutes! I've appraised them of the situation!" Miriallia called back. "Oh SHIT!" Salamander Four's IFF icon winked out, replaced with a "signal lost" tag. Counting the dead pilots in Salamander's Five and Eight, the Dawndrakes were down to five effectives already, and all of those damaged or partially expended from the previous battle! "They're getting swarmed!"
"I'm hurrying, thank you! Fat ass here doesn't exactly sprint like a forest hind!" Dearka retorted, as the Warmaster landed on the hillcrest, knocking down trees and shaking the ground with its arrival. Several of the Dawndrakes were already desperately defending themselves from melee and point blank attacks from Zealots, while others zoomed and zipper overhead, chased through the sky by relentless barrages from the Martyrs. "Get away from them!" Dearka shouted, pointing the Warmaster's left arm at the Dawndrakes in melee. The red-blue crackling hyper impulse beam fired from under his shield was joined by a veritable double river of green beam blasts from the twin 57mm gatling beam cannons also under the shield, each pumping out four beam blasts per second. The firestorm washed over the melee combatants, being harmlessly absorbed by the Dawndrake's HAC armor. The three Zealots, with Phase Shift, already suffering disruption from the Pandemonium ECM, were rather less fortunate, being blown apart and cut into pieces by the hail of energy bolts.
At the same time Dearka sent flights of missiles from the shoulder launchers into other Zealots, knocking them about with the concussion waves and spoiling their aim, keeping them on the back foot for a few more preciois seconds for the Dawndrakes to recover. He oriented on the four Martyrs and opened up with his torso howitzers, the Warmaster stutter stepping with recoil for a moment as he stomped down the hillside, throwing out artillery shells every other second from each barrel. He hosed the gatling beam fire back and forth, creating a wall of plasmatic death that kept the Zealots scrambling backwards, ducking behind their shields. Missiles and railgun tracers from the Martyrs detonated on the hillside all around them, or struck the Warmaster directly, as effective as spitwads against the double thick layer of Phase Shift armor. More concerning were the twin hyper-impulse blasts fired at their chest, but Salamander Lead swooped down from the heavens, shifting into Mobile Suit form from Jet form, spreading his wings and taking both blasts harmlessly on his body, acting as a shield for the Gundam.
"Thanks for the save!" Miriallia called, her voice somewhat shaky from the close call. The Warmaster wasn't designed for up close and chaotic battlefields like this one. Oh, they were doing all right, the shock of their sudden appearance and the tremendous unleashing of firepower kicking the Brotherhood ambush forces back onto their heels, but they still had the advantage of numbers, and at close range the Warmaster was vulnerable, especially to beam attacks and melee weapons.
"Keep up the pressure! Only a few more minutes!" Salamander Lead replied, skewering a Zealot through the stomach on a red-blue plasma blast from his rifle, shearing the torso from the legs. He swerved around a flight of missiles from a Martyr, and hung poised in the air before it, Gugnir cannon sparking with pre-discharge energy. "Nighty nigh..." Sunlight flashed along a line that passed through the Dawndrake from side to side, completely through the chest before disappearing off into the distance. Salamander Lead hung there for a few more seconds, his vital signs screaming as his life's blood sprayed from the stump of his neck, coating the ceiling and sides of his cockpit, his hands still tense and ready on his controls, before the Martyr corrected itself and blew the helpless Dawndrake to pieces with sixty missiles fired point blank into its chest.
"There! I see you, motherfucker!" Dearka crowed, orienting on the position the flash of light had originated from. "Hide and seek is over!" He launched missiles and a salvo from his howitzers, blanketing that hillside in explosive death, blasting away the foliage and hopefully either destroying the sniper or at least forcing them out in the open. "Not so much fun no... oh fuck." Dearka's voice got very quiet, as the smoke cleared and he got a clear look at the sniper. Miriallia gasped as well, a fissure of fear running through her core. The sniper stood in plain view, almost casual in its stance, despite the devastation of the burning hillside around it, firelight glinting off its translucent purple armor facets, turning parts of it blood red with reflected light. It's eyes flashed pinkly at them, and it slowly lowered its knife edged, nigh triangular wings, which had been canted forward over its shoulders, tips to the front, energy field projectors in the very tips irising closed, dropping the Positron Shield that had guarded the Gundam against the Warmaster's firepower.
In it's hands, the purplish crystal Gundam held an enormous, slim barreled rifle, into the muzzle of which it was methodically loading a long, spear like missile, the firelight winking brightly from its tip. The enemy Gundam did not look particularly perturbed to have its blind destroyed. If anything, it seemed almost glad that it didn't have to hide anymore. Reloading complete, the Gundam brought the rifle up to its shoulder and tilted its head, sighting in with very humanish motions.
"Oh no you don't!" Dearka spat, bringing up his left arm and blasting away with the 325mm hyper-impulse cannon and 57mm beam gatlings. To his shock, the Brotherhood Gundam didn't even try to dodge, didn't even raise a palm or wingtip to use its anti-matter shields. It just stood there, calm as could be, sighting in its next shot, as the energy bolts struct its refractive skin and splattered like paintballs against a steel wall, stray energy spraying away uselessly in all directions as whatever armor system the Gundam had weathered the onslaught like it wasn't even happening. Deflected shots and splashed energy added to the conflagration growing around the Gundam's feet, but that was the most noticable effect of Dearka's attack, unfortunately. He and Miriallia stared into the enemy Gundam's eyes as it pointed its rifle right at them and pulled the trigger.
----------------------------------------
Michael grunted unhappily. He'd had them dead to rights, they'd left themselves totally open to attack him! Why had he missed his shot!? What had made him jerk the QC spear driver down and to the side at the last moment like that, at the very instant he'd pulled the trigger? He could have taken the Orb Gundam down good and hard, the easy way, with a foot wide hole right through the pilot's chest! That would have totally broken the other Orb machine's morale, and put them on the definite right track for accomplishing their mission. But no... he'd shied away at the last moment, and instead sent the spear through their right knee, ruining the joint and basically crippling the machine... but why? WHY? Why this reluctance to kill them? Why would he avoid killing Dearka Elsman or Miriallia Haww, the pilots of that Gundam? Michael gritted his teeth and began loading the next spear. He would NOT shy away this time! No matter how much it made his gut twist!
-----------------------------------------
"We're... alive?" Dearka whispered, lowering his hands from in front of his face, thrown up in a reflexive gesture. Miriallia was doing similarly, down in front of him. "Uh... he had us."
"Yeah..." Miriallia agreed, her entire body shivering almost uncontrollably. Her life had passed before her eyes there for a moment. "Right knee joint is totally destroyed. The leg is holding up its share of the weight for the moment, but moving is out of the question. I suppose that answers my question about whether his weapon can penetrate Phase Shift armor, as well as HAC armor. I don't like the answer." She held a hand to her throat and took deep breaths, trying to calm herself before she started retching, a very nasty response to utmost terror she sometimes experienced.
"That thing's just like the Pulsar... no, better than the Pulsar! We're way out of our league here!" Dearka took hold of the controls again, the only way he could keep his hands from shaking. He hit the triggers for the howitzers again, but had to walk the fire back towards the enemy Gundam, his aim was off that much. He tried to be calm, but it was hard... he should have been dead! The enemy Gundam had HAD them, cold! He shivered and stared as the enemy Gundam's wings canted forward again, projecting twin fields of reddish energy that absorbed his howitzer shells in brief flashes of light that were not at all as impressive as the explosions should have been. Behind his nigh impenetrable screen, the Gundam continued reloading his sniper weapon with precise, efficient movements. It wouldn't be long before it was ready to fire again.
Seeing this, and knowing the Warmaster would have no such good luck a second time, Salamander Two broke away from the two Zealots he had been duelling and rocketed at the enemy Gundam, ignoring everything else. With the Warmaster around, they could at least have a chance of holding on... if it were defeated or destroyed, then the Dawndrakes would crumble soon after, from despair if nothing else... though the power of the enemy Gundam would probably considerably shorten their resistance. He fired his weapons as he came on, but they all just disappeared into the reddish fields without a trace, like shooting down a hole with no bottom. Discarding his rifle, he snatched out his beam saber as he skirted around the edge of the fields, to come at the enemy from the side. The fields shimmered and dropped away, the Gundam's wings re-orienting around on its back in a seamless transition that made the Dawndrake's own movements seem clunky, as the Gundam sidestepped his chopping slash.
Salamander Two's Dawndrake staggered backwards, armor splinters spitting from its head, as the Vengeance spun its rifle around in its hands and slammed the armored butt into the Dawndrake's face. Salamander Two was savvy though, and he turned the backwards momentum of his stagger into a whirling lash with the electro-chain attached to his shield, swinging for the enemy rifle. If he could blow that away, then the enemy would be badly weakened! Instead though, the Gundam took on hand off the rifle and snatched out, grabbing hold of the lashing chain and halting it well short of the rifle. Salamander Two triggered the electric shock, sending megavolts of electricity coursing into the enemy Gundam. He smirked... the Gundam pilot might as well have licked a finger and stuck it into a wall socket, it was the same damn thing as grabbing the chain! Blue lightning arced and crackled as it flowed along the whip and into the Vengeance's arm.
The LCR armor on the Vengeance's right forearm shimmered and rippled, spiking up in ridges and geometric figures as the conflicting currents ran through the gel like structure of the armor. The disruption traveled up the arm to the elbow and stayed there, before gradually smoothing out, the overwhelming power of the FPR more than easily overcoming the brief outside current from the chain. The Vengeance popped its fingerblades and sliced the chain into shreds, before sweeping a leg around and kicking the Dawndrake's shield from its grasp. Spinning around, the Vengeance brought its rifle up to its hips and fired as it bore, piercing the Dawndrake's chest and impaling Salamander Two through the heart, most of his chest just disappearing as the QC spear continued through him without slowing, punching out through the back of his Mobile Suit and disappearing into the distance. The Dawndrake tottered and slowly fell over backwards, inert and still, blood leaking from each side of the hole.
The Vengeance discarded the QC spear driver for the moment, having used all the spears he'd thought to bring. Instead, the Vengeance's right hand dipped to its side, drawing out the carbine sized, broad muzzled hand cannon that was magnetically clipped there. The Vengeance spun the pistol around its fingers once and then popped the breech, left hand palming a shell from the container on the back of its waist and slotting it home into the breech with a single slick motion. The breech chamber snapped closed and the ready light on the back turned from red to green, the barrel beginning to spin as it built up the fields that would channel the energy of the nuclear cartridge. The Vengeance pointed it at the Warmaster for a few moments, before jerking its arm away and into the melee, where the remaining three Dawndrakes were being beset on all sides by Zealots and Martyrs. The Vengeance's finger twitched and pulled the triger.
Dearka and Miriallia threw up their hands again, flinching back from their screens as an enormous beam of multicolored light spat from the pistol muzzle, easily ten to fifteen times the size of the muzzle itself, carving without mercy or pause into the small valley betweeen the hills, melting a furrow as it went, destroying everything in its path, be it friend, foe or environment, with equal ease. Mobile Suits bloated like week old corpses, before exploding like firecrackers in a microwave, while the ground turned to glass and trees turned straight to ash, without even a glimpse of flame. Rocks turned to magma, and the very air twisted and warped with excess heat energy. Steam, smoke and heat distortion waves rose in a cloud from the trench, which was almost a kilometer long before it slowly tapered away, surrounded by a much larger burn zone of blackened cinders and spreading flames.
The three Dawndrakes had weathered the storm of heat energy intact... at least to first glance. Though glowing red hot in many places, their HAC armor had proven proof against the storm of thermal radiation. Too bad the same could not be said of their internal mechanisms or pilots, which had melted and popped and charred very quickly under the radiation bombardment. The Dawndrakes were left as nothing more than shells, like cast off beetle carapaces, their insides running molten and liquid out through their joints. Green and red sparks fritzed through the air around the Radiation Cannon in the Vengeances hand, while white smoke leaked heavily from inside the barrel, and in a great cloud when he popped the breech, discarding the slagified remnants of the first cartridge before sheathing the weapon once more, twirling it a few more times around its figner as it brought it down. Only a couple Zealots and a Martyr were left of the Brotherhood forces, most having been destroyed by the radiation blast... but there was only the Warmaster left of the Orb forces, and it had a crippled leg.
"WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT? I've never seen a..." Dearka trailed off. Well, he HAD seen a weapon kind of like that, but that thing had been HUGE... the size of a space station! Who could put that kind of thing into a fucking pistol!? It defied belief, but the evidence was right there in front of him! That was a fucking hand held GENESIS space laser! Dearka swallowed hard, as the enemy Gundam spun the pistol like a cowboy from a movie and holstered it, slowly turning to regard them, almost speculatively.
"Heh heh... thinks he's a cowboy... heh..." Miriallia didn't know why she was laughing... her eyes were wide enough to feel like they would fall out of her head, and her mouth was dry with terror, but for some reason the stylistic flourishes the enemy Gundam pilot had added seemed like the funniest thing in the world to her right then. Talk about overacting! "Talk about callous... blew away half his own guys, just like that!"
"Yeah, but he blew away ALL of our guys in the process!" Dearka gritted. He sent missiles and more howitzer shells at the enemy Gundam, while using his gatling beam cannons and hyper impulse cannon to keep the other Brotherhood machines at bay. No sense in wasting energy attacks on that bastard, they'd just bounce right the fuck off, unfair as that was! Of course, when the Gundam used its palm Positron Shields to just absorb the firepower directed at it, it hardly mattered WHAT he fired, did it? "Please tell me the Solar Knights are right on top of us!"
"They'll be dropping any second now... but that still leaves fall time!"
"Down to the wire then, huh!? Well, no sense holding back now!" Dearka swung the Earthshaker Magnus around to point more or less at the enemy Gundam. "Tremble before our wrath!" He shouted wildly, squeezing and holding down the trigger.