Asmodeus waited in his tent, rubbing the early morning crud from his eyes as he paged one last time through the maps and plans he and his tactical officers had hammered out the night before. It was 0330, and the final ZAFT counterattack, the one designed to crush all resistance remaining in Washington DC, was estimated to be beginning at 0400 sharp. In his field encampment thirty miles west of the city, Asmodeus was already out of the direct line of the attack, as safe as anyone really could be in a war. Of course, in about twenty five minutes that would change considerably. Asmodeus listened to the shrill of high altitude missiles arcing down from ships in geo-synch orbit to pound the already battered entrenchments around the city. Every so often a flash of light from the east lit the sky as the flare of a capital ship beam weapon roared down to strike a pinpoint target.
Asmodeus didn't know why ZAFT was even bothering with an orbital bombardment. They had over quadruple the forces the Earth Alliance had, and their mobiles suits were, by and large, newer and better. Besides, the leadership of the Earth Alliance had long since evacuated the city, headed for the more secure military base bunkers. There was absolutely no strategic value to taking Washington DC, except for the blow it would deal to the EA morale, which was at an all time low, especially for the forces defending DC. They knew they were doomed, but there was nothing they could do about it. Asmodeus could not help but wince at a particularly loud crack, the sound of a positron beam weapon fired from a battleship in orbit impacting in the city. Asmodeus had seen what the weapons carried by the Strike Crusaders could do, and their weapons were just roman candles compared to the weaponry mounted on a space battleship. There was little doubt that there was one less city block in the city now.
Markov Ashino sat in the cockpit of the Bane, clad in his jumpsuit with the cockpit hatch propped open to let the air and night in. He had a small glow lamp hanging from the cockpit ceiling and by its light he was taking down notes in a little red leather bound notebook. He had dozens of the things, blue ones, red ones, green ones, black ones, even white ones, each about six inches by eight, with around three hundred pages of lined paper. He used them to write down his thoughts, his impressions, his opinions and observations. He went through about one every two weeks or so. He didn't know why he did it; he just found the act of writing down what he was feeling to be relaxing. He hardly ever read them over, his memory was photographic, but it did feel safer to have a written record somewhere. Maybe someday someone else would read them. Ashino was pretty sure he'd like that.
Cray Thresher was buttoned up tight in the Merciless, clad in a heavy sweater and jacket and heavy fatigue pants. He was cold, and he knew it was ridiculous. He was a BCPU 5, mechanically, bionically and chemically altered to be far more than human. He could survive in arctic temperatures uncovered for weeks at a time. There was no way he could be cold in a mere early October morning. It was barely even freezing out. Still, he started shivering uncontrollably whenever he cracked open the cockpit and so now he just sat, closed up tight, only the dim status lights serving to etch his form into pools of deep and shallow shadows. He couldn't wait to get on with it, to pilot the Merciless in another battle, to feel the shuddering recoil of the guns, hear the roar of the missiles, see the lancing beams turn armor into molten slag and bodies into red vapor. He looked at his cockpit chronometer. Only twenty minutes to go.
Frost didn't care about the weather. He stood outside, on the shoulder of the Fury near the head. The night wind slapped wetly against his face, but it meant nothing to him. Only the prospect of combat mattered. He couldn't get enough of killing. It made his practically meaningless existence bearable, the killing did. He knew that he would have no other purpose, if he did not have that. Regrettably, today's round would be of the impersonal sort, with him in the Fury, killing giant robot dolls, unable to hear the screams or see the snapping bones or smell the fresh blood. But it was still combat. That was good enough, for the moment. He'd be able to have his wish later, he'd been assured. He didn't put much stock in that promise being kept… his masters seemed to believe that because he was completely insane that he was also something of an idiot. Well, the Doc didn't think that way, but Cervantes and Asmodeus certainly did. They looked at him and saw a killing machine, nothing more. They hardly suspected that he was a killing machine with goals of his own. But such thoughts would have to wait for a later time. With a final series of eye searing flashes, the orbital bombardment ceased. It seemed the intelligence reports were off… the attack was starting earlier than expected.
Frost watched as Asomdeus sprinted from his tent and reeled himself up and in to the Purifier. He laconically clambered down into the Fury and started buckling himself calmly in. However, his blood was starting to rush like a raging torrent and he could feel the adrenaline glands and stimulant injectors start pumping beneath his skin. His breathing quickened, his heart pounded, everything seemed to grow slower and sharper and clearer and more intense. He could feel each individual grain of plastic on his control sticks, smell the ink in Ashino's pen more than twenty meters away and hear Asmodeus cursing as he buckled himself in and made adjustments to his precious plans in simultaneity.
Frost snorted contempt. What need had they of plans when they had his raw power and talent on their side? Despite what everyone said, Frost was pretty confident he himself, alone, could handle the oncoming ZAFT advance. He could send them packing, or better yet, he could send them all to their graves, if Asmodeus would only let him loose. But that was never going to happen. Certainly not today. No, today was an advertising campaign. Cervantes wanted to make a point to the EA high command that he had some good shit to sell, and that if they wanted any they'd better damn well sit up and jump when he said jump. He waited, fuming with impatience, for Asmodeus and the other BCPU's to power up their machines and line up all their weapons, so Asmodeus could feel safe enough to send the code that would allow Frost to do the same. Asmodeus sure was a cold bastard, acting like this even after Frost pulled his ass out of the fire in Orb. Of course, Frost expected no different, doing things like this were one of the few smart things they did. Only by totally denying him freedom did they have any chance of controlling him, even slightly and temporarily.
Asmodeus finished bringing the Purifier on line, nearly a minute behind Ashino and Thresher. He sent the go code to Frost's machine and the Fury leapt from cold state to full start in less than fifteen seconds. Frost was raring to go, it seemed. Good, that meant the carnage would be commensurately greater, which would help make Cervantes's point faster, which would allow Asmodeus to get back to a real job sooner. "Form up on me. You all know the plan. Follow the courses input into your machines, take any targets of opportunity, once you reach the extraction point you leave, no exceptions. Clear?"
"Yes, sir." Ashino replied.
"Aye." Thresher responded.
"…" Frost just punched his comm button hard enough to send a grunt of static across the voice link. He chuckled grimly, voice link still open.
"Excellent. Move out." Asmodeus ordered. Frost took point, the Fury being the most agile of the machines present. Thresher and Ashino moved side by side, flanking Frost, while Asmodeus himself flew behind them and several thousand meters higher up, to get a better view of the battleground. From his vantage position he could see the orbital landers coming down like a meteor shower, fat metal pods bursting open like overripe fruit to release Ginns and Dinns by the dozen. Anti-aircraft fire and ground to air rockets churned skyward, but even the massed firepower did little to slow the attack. Sure, a Ginn here or a Dinn there might suddenly suffer a missile or shell strike, arm or leg or head exploding in a flash of smoke and metal shards, but the mobile suits were too maneuverable and well armored for conventional weapons to hurt much.
Beam fire raced upward now as well, as the enemy came within range of the two battalions of Strike Daggers in the city. More than four hundred Earth Forces mobile suits opened up, filling the sky with green energy. Asmodeus closed his eyes to shield them as the expected response rained down from the heavens. More pinpoint capital ship fire hunted through the defenses, seeking out the greatest concentrations of Earth Forces mobile suits and wiping them out.
"Contact." Frost said with sudden relish. He had come across a pair of BuCue scouts, no doubt dropped the day before to search for weaknesses in the Earth Forces line. Both machines were already destroyed before he even initiated the radio link. Neither had so much as been able to turn around, much less fire at him.
"Frost, engage high… Ashino, Thresher, engage low." Asmodeus ordered. In response Frost took off, heading to intercept troop landers still arcing down, while Ashino and Thresher tore off towards the middle of the already landed troops. Asmodeus circled above, a waiting hawk with wary eyes alert for danger or opportunity. It was a complete waste of time for him. He was not needed in the slightest.
Ashino and Thresher waded through a maelstrom of muzzles flashes and missile contrails, pumping out death in wholesale lots. The Bane was capable of engaging three or four mobile suits at a time, and the Merciless consistently wiped out entire teams with rapid fire salvoes. Of course, the collateral damage was obscene. Every time the Merciless fired, a good square acre of land went up in flames, and the Bane was only a little less messy. No enemy approached closer than fifty meters to them at any time during their assault, and the heavy armor of both machines easily deflected the few shots that the ZAFT pilots managed to snap off their way before being blown to tatters.
Frost's fight was another matter. The only gunfire there was directed at him, as the combat air patrol mobile suits escorting the descending landers swept in to keep him away. It was nothing short of a massacre, a turkey shoot. ZAFT pilots would dive in, afterburners glowing, and then they would die. It was that simple. Sword in either hand, beam grapples constantly seeking new targets, gyrating and twirling like a maddened dancer, Frost wove the Fury in between and around the enemy fire, until he closed with a group of four or five and cut them to shrapnel in a storm of green fire. He didn't even use the Celerity system. By Asmodeus's very rough estimate, Frost must have killed forty or fifty ZAFT suits in by the time they had reached the extraction point. Ashino had accounted for twenty three and Thresher had killed thirty. By themselves the three mobile suits and BCPU's had wiped out about a twelfth of the incoming force, and on only one pass. If they had decided to stick around, they probably could have won the battle.
But that wasn't the point of this exercise. Cervantes didn't give a rat's ass about whether Washington DC survived. Asmodeus cared even less. He smirked. Hell, if DC was lost it would only serve to even better point out to his former superiors how helpless they were without Blue Cosmos. And the loss of the capital would inflame those who had previously been reluctant to support the war. A win no matter how he looked at it. Asmodeus took care to snipe a few Dinns for himself as he lead the retreat, so it wouldn't look like he'd just been loitering around up in the sky. With his camera footage of the battle, taken during his overwatch, this would be all over the news and internet within hours. The EA high command would be dragged out into the street and burned if they turned down Blue Cosmos now, after Blue Cosmos had made an effort to pull their fat out of the fire, so to speak. Appearances were everything on the national level. What was did not matter nearly so much as what it looked like.
By the time Asmodeus and his three charges had returned to their field camp, disembarked and helped strike camp, the battle was over. ZAFT was victorious, to no ones surprise. Listening in to a PLANT newschannel, Asmodeus grinned when he heard "…casualties were heavier than expected, due to what one source calls Earth Alliance monster mobile suits. Existence of these mobile suits has not been reliably confirmed or denied by ZAFT."
"They're hurting." Ashino commented. "Cannot confirm or deny, my ass. They just don't want the civilians to panic like ZAFT command is. They don't know what the hell just hit them, even though they did win in the end. From now on, they'll be wondering if any given attack will have us show up in the middle of it and wreak havoc again."
"Look at the master strategist!" Thresher mocked. "If you fought like you thought, then I might actually have someone to be scared of!"
"Might…?" Frost breath from behind him. Thresher couldn't completely suppress his shiver. He'd never even heard a whisper as Frost had crept up on him, and he prided himself on his situational awareness. Frost smiled, noting the shiver. "I thought so… as it should be."
"Stop messing around." Asmodeus ordered. "Your constant posturing grates on my nerves. I forbid any of you from talking until you return to the lab." He sighed and rubbed his eyes, headache already pounding. He was too old for this crap.