Disclaimer: I don't own GS/GSD, please R&R.
Chapter 25
It was total chaos, a sort of purgatory in a vacuum. She flipped a few switches and the screen registered the surroundings, quickly counting how many mutilated suits there were. Four, five, eight, twelve, thirteen.
"Watch your back!" a comrade's voice ordered in the transmitter, and she noticed, just in time, a large suit-knife, first-degree, type two flying towards another member of the squadron. She frowned and fired a lazer canon to intersect the rather crude weapon.
But Shiho had no time to hear the breathless thanks of her comrade, she was busy fighting off the fiends who had decided that life was too peaceful to let live and pulled Junius Seven down, but literally. Dearka had described them with a single word, and Shiho couldn't agree more, those bastards were really having it too good for them to be satisfied with the peace those who had died in the First War had fought to give. She wanted to find them and slap them personally, but this was the best she could do, stop Junius Seven from becoming a mamoth bomb onto Earth and watch her back.
She checked the radius, five destroyed suits, no sign of life, team members all fine, no specific instructions except to tackle any opponents that were causing the havoc on the remanants of the destroyed PLANT, and disable or kill those in the way. The coast was clear, there were no assailants so far, just those who had been taken down by the other members of the squadron, a few by Dearka and a few by Yzak. But the radius of the PLANT was behemoth, but then it was excpeted to be. She watched her members spread out and assumed her position, breathing heavily through her nose. There was something more to be expected from all this, it was too simple to be true.
And then she heard Yzak's voice ringing through her system, a cry of anger, "The GINNs are returning!"
The screen registered this, there were at least a dozen headed in her way, and their weapons were out. So they would take care of her before returning to their job of unstabling the PLANT, would they? She gritted her teeth, they were supporters of Patrick Zala, radical, extremists, fools, her mind spat, fools.
Hiding behind the eight portion of the PLANT's radius was sufficient for now; with the enemies thatutilised ZGMF-1017M2 GINN Hight Maneuver Type II units, speed in attacking them would be a waste of time and effort. Yet, their suits were the test-types her research team had contributed to, and now they were taken in ridiculous, unscrupulous exploits. And she seethed with anger, how the rogue ZAFT faction could think so little of the peace they could have if they could only forget about the past grieviances.
A series of switches and key-locks were enough, and the canons were warming up. Shiho prayed she would have enough time before those behind the seventh radius discovered her. A quick locating scan showed they were moving closer, and her teammates were already engaged in their own battles.
"Damn!"
She could disarm them manually, one-to-one combat, but there were better ways to conserve energy and take the enemies down, and they were coming swiftly. She peered down at the screen, ignoring the bead of sweat that soaked her fringe to her forhead beneath the helmet. One had paused, and suddenly, all were moving swiftly in her direction. So they had found her.
Waiting was nervewracking, but she kept her eyes wide open and her fingers poised for aiming. They were moving very quickly towards her spot, and a stray missile sped past her suit, inches away.
"Now!" She cried, and the canon exploded at her finger's command, firing multiple shots simultaneously, as she panted slightly, silently watching the screen with hitched breaths as they hit target after target and the screen registered their imminent disarming. Her balsam-flower attack had been successful, but only by virtue of stealth and tactic.
The report, she reminded herself.
"Unit seven has taken down nine units," she said in the most even voice she could muster, "Does the Commander read me?"
There was a moment or two of disturbing silence, perhaps he was still engaged in battle, and so she waited, still keeping her eyes on the tracking device but her ears open for Yzak's voice. And finally, the communicator crackled abruptly and impudently, and she stiffened a little.
"Read, Unit Seven," she heard him reply firmly, "Job well done. Proceed with plan."
She imagined him, tense and rapt in his mobile weapon, his fists stiffened like all of theirs, around the controls.
"Roger."
The reports were flying in, fast, too many, too disheartening. The squadron was tiring, there were only so many of them, and there seemed to be a hornet's nest of rogues, countless and unstoppable. The members were ebing outperformed, and although not extremely, the odds were not in the squad's favour.
She heard Dearka asking hastily, "Do we leave it to the Minerva and send our troops back to recover?"
There was a long pause as they waited for the Commander's orders. It was a silence filled with tension, and they could imagine the gears of his head whirring. There were no fatalities so far, a few casualties, yes, but not too many, and not too serious.
"No," Yzak finally replied, "We can hold out a little longer, I don't believe the rogue faction has any more to send out, and if we leave, the Minerva will not hold out, not even with Athrun Zala on their side."
There was a collective gasp. The name of another war hero who had fought side by side with their commander was encouragement, to say the least. And Shiho found herself gripping the controls with renewed vigour, perhaps they'd be finished with the enemy if they bore the battle a little longer, and then they'd go back to the ship and rest the strain off.
"They're coming again!" Dearka called swiftly, "We must move."
They did, and the attack was furious, but their defence was upped with the increased morale. Yzak had planned this. He smiled to himself as he watched the squadron move into their positions, they were highly organised and effective. He waited for a stray unit to fly and attack him after getting through the second line of defence, and with a deafening roar, he swung the mobile weapon's sowrd at it, disarming its legs and hence removing its mobility.
He glanced around, and with a cry of anger all too late, he watched as the Girty Lue sped into sight. So they had joined, had they?
No doubt, they would be on the rogue ZAFT faction's side, but they would serve no problem as long as the Minerva could manage them, only-
Yzak cursed. The three stolen mobile suits were being dispatced already. One immediately engaged the Impulse in a ferocious headlock, the other two slashed at another unit which he immediately recognised as one of his own squad's. Taken by surprise and insurmountable odds, it fell and burst into debris. Gone.
A roar of pure hatred ripped itself from his throat. He had disarmed, not killed, and yet they showed no mercy to his subordinates.
"Yzak!" Dearka was hollering very hurriedly, "Watch it!"
He spun the weapon around and sliced, very neatly and precisely, an arm off a mobile suit.
"Thank you," he said morosely to Dearka's worried face, "You watch your back too."
He turned back and stared with apprehension and horror as the screen registered nine of the subordinates' weapons being destroyed. The Girty Lue's stolen suits were stolen for the right reasons then, the Chaos, Abyss and Gaia, those were clearly superior, and they were responsible for tipping the balance in the rogue faction's favour. And his suboordinates, hey were not defined on the tracker for a minute longer.
Yzak had made a mistake.
He felt a red haze covering his eyes and urged his own weapon forward. It charged straight in the midst of the ongoing battles and shoved itself very brashly amongst the remainding opponents. He was hacking and chopping more furiously than he ever had since the first war, but he took care not to aim for the cockpit. One by one, they fell, and yet, he scarcely realised that the ZAKU was now missing the lower section of the fourth limb. He fought on.
The Impulse was doing the same, knocking suit after suit out of the line of action like flies, and he could tell that Athrun was doing exactly what he was best at. But the comfort was scarcely as it should have been, not when the squadron's members were being pulled out of the fight one by one. The latest report in the last hour had been that eight were gravely injured and more than couple killed in action.
He prayed she wasn't one of them, but the radar showed no sign of her weapon in action, or it's registered presence, for that matter.
His fingers tightened around the controls, and he opened the pathway of communication, staring at Dearka's weary face, and he asked stoically, "Report?"
Dearka's voice was tight. "We've lost near to three-eights of our squadron."
His friend didn't say anymore, but the guilt lay in the air.
"Alright," he replied, vexed but fighting to keep in control, "The fighting's getting fiercer, but we're almost through.It's going to end soon."
There was a difficult pause, they knew which side was winning. But at what expense?
"Concentrate on breaking Junius Seven and assisting the Minerva," Yzak commanded to the pilots, "And do this as best as you can, for the fallen's sake."
The voices of the remainding echoed in a resolute affirmative, but the air was tense and filled with hatred. He looked forward and tried to visualise Shiho, but her weapon had been taken from the battle as it lost power and was sent back to recuperate in the mother ship. Dearka and himself, he thought desperately, they were nearly to that extent as well. But-
"Not just yet," he hissed, and he fired the remaining missiles and canons into the mounting wreck with abysmal debris drifting solemnly in it's orbit- Junius Seven, proof of the enmity of the Coordinators and the treachery of the Blue Cosmos.
He watched as the blinding light drew further and further and made an explosion in the circumference. The Minerva and the Vesalius were at the other end, doing the same. And the pilots of the Minerva, along with the Joule squad, were relentlessly attacking it, pushing at it, fending off enemies on one end, brekaing the fallen PLANT on the other. But he knew, they all knew, that it was descending, pushing it's weight down, the draw of earth's gravitisation pulling nearer and nearer.
But the final push broke it into two, and within seconds, the squadron was attacking it, trying to dismantle it into smaller pieces. But it wasn't as simple as taking it apart, it was behemoth even with it's broken front, and as the Minerva and the Vesalius pushed below the debris, he noticed the tracker announcing Shiho's presence. So she had managed to come back into the battle.
The darts of her attack were launched everywhere, to the sixtieth degree and to the hundred and twentieth.
"Launch all! Launch all!" He screamed to his suboordinates, and they did. An ecstasy of fumbling and switching registered the distance of Earth's orbit and the falling debris, was calculated at less than ten kilometres.
"All units to form ten lines, division per kilometer, fend off all pieces!" He hollered, jamming the communicator with his might.
They spread out, and began shooting at the pieces that were moving into their arena, resembling nets of mobile particles that disin. The Minerva and Vesalius were still breaking the smaller pieces down, making it more maneagble to fend it off from Earth's orbit, and yet, Yzak thought angrily, the deadly game of badminton was useless, even with all their effort pulled in. The balsam attack was being utilised over and over again, pieces of debris were being broken down and reshuffled in the front lines, then the quarrters, then the second last, and then his line.
He swiped at six pieces that flew into his division, and realised with a jolt, that he and Dearka made the final line of defence. There were too many pieces, too extensive. He watched helplessly as a beam missed one and the debris hurtled down to earth. There were no more lines of defence.
The Second Bloody Valentine would now commence.
He drifted high above the Earth, watching with dread and pain, as it entered and pushed through the Orbit, the utmost, final line of defence. It passed effortlessly in, it was barely dented by the force surrouding the world.
Vaguely, he could tell that Dearka was swearing and hissing abuse, but it was done. There would be a meteor shower tonight.
And now, the Earth would wake to its own screams.