Side 7 Airspace.
Tuesday, September 18, UC 0079
0600 Hours
Six Zeon Zaku II mobile suits steadily zeroed in on the far side of the single bunch at Side 7, machine guns in hand. Less than an hour had elapsed since they were given their orders and much longer still since a white flash consumed everything. It had no apparent effect on anyone, but it got the Falmel jumping a bit earlier. As much as the six pilots wanted to discuss the phenomenon, they were under strict orders to keep radio silence.
Only short, powerful bursts of oxygen were propelling the Zakus toward their destination.
Soon, the team was at the skeletal frame at the antipode. Had construction not stopped, it would have been finished long ago. It was all left to rot.
The mobile suits touched down on the hull and soon found a large hatch.
Denim's Zaku soon found a lock and fired a single shell from his machine gun, breaking it. It kneeled down toward an adjacent dial and opened it. Two doors clanked as they rolled open.
The suits began to descend through the hatch. A distant wail could be heard from within the cylinder.
This was where radio silence was broken. "Master Sergeant," said Slender "There's a siren going off!"
"Calm down," said Denim "It's on the other side of the barrier. A ship just docked at the bay."
"You think it's the 'Trojan Horse', sir?" Pacheco asked.
"It's likely." Denim's Zaku grazed a crane inside the shaft and knocked it loose. It became debris, drifting out into space along with the little escaping air.
Christened two months ago, the new EFS White Base, guided by a laser-light runway eased toward the Space Gate of Green Noa. The second of the Federation's Pegasus-class battleships, she looked for all the world like her line's namesake.
In the vessel's living quarters, a young officer walked forward. A tall, young man with small winking eyes and dark hair that seemed to have a greenish-blue sheen to it. He reached his destination, a small cabin on his left and opened it. On the other side of the door was an older man in a collar shirt looking at a bunch of papers strewn across a small table. "Dr. Ray," he said "we've made port at Side 7, sir. The captain would like to see you. Would you please come to the bridge?"
"Yes, of course. Lieutenant Junior Grade Bright, was it?" He said as he donned a blazer jacket. "Have you been on supply duty long?"
"No, sir. I used to be on the front."
"Well, this ship has a crucial mission," said Tem as he fixed his tie in front of a mirror. "Not unlike being at the front."
Bright took notice of a picture sitting on the table. It was of a boy with ruddy hair that seemed to be attempting to form an afro, but not quite. "Is that your son, sir?"
"Yes," Tem confirmed. "Just fifteen. Next to a smart young man like yourself, he's just a child." Tem looked as dapper as he could and was ready to leave for the bridge. "Though I hear kids that young are being drafted nowadays. Terrible!"
Bright had heard such stories.
Yet Tem was still confident. "But once we start mass-producing the Gundam, this war will be over," he said. "We can put an end to it without wasting young lives."
Tem and Bright made their way to the elevator at the end of the hall. The elevator would take them to the highest point aboard, the bridge.
It opened with a hiss. Right ahead as the docking bay of the bunch.
From the captain's chair the aging Paolo Cassius took notice of the two men entering. "I hope you got some rest, Dr. Ray."
"Thank you, sir," Tem saluted. "It's been a nice, relaxing flight."
"That's good to hear."
"And what about that Zeon ship that tailed us here?"
"So, you did notice." Paolo motioned to the large monitor above them. A green Musai had been moored next to a docking satellite. "It's at berth, doctor. By treaty, military ships aren't allowed to dock at Side 7, so the problem is the return flight."
"Do you think they'll try anything?"
The captain thought about Tem's question for a moment. "This is a civilian supply ship," he said. "If they're shameless enough to attack us, neither of us will come out smelling like roses."
Amuro only got three hours of sleep. When he came to, he was back at work.
This time, he had one specific thing in mind: cracking the riddle of the Gundam.
Just before the war broke out, he discovered that his father's office was loaded from wall to wall with data on something called "Operation V": a plan to develop mobile suits for the Federation. Apparently, it was all going down in the construction block. Back in January, Kai Shiden, his neighbor Hayato, and a few other boys tried to break into that area to find out just what they were doing behind locked doors. They almost got killed for entering a restricted area. The soldiers let him off easy since he was Dr. Ray's son and sent him home; the others, though, got their asses beaten flush against the ground. After that, a lot of the other kids at school no longer trusted Amuro, especially Kai's gang.
They all accused the Rays of trying to get Side 7 wrapped up in the war.
His attempts to learn more about the project only got him a lecture from a Federal officer, who urged the boy to forget about the Gundam for his own good. This resulted in the removal of all Operation V data from the study. He was convinced that the construction block was where the Gundam was. Where else would it be?
Between January and September, Tem would return a couple of times. Fortunately, the house wasn't as devastated by neglect (thanks to Fraw, for the most part), so he didn't get chewed out as bad as he could have. There were instances where Amuro lucked out and did happen to find specs on Operation V amid the mess in his bedroom. Stuff he'd taken from the office and had only recently rediscovered. He was grateful that the agents weren't totally thorough.
Even though he had a surviving disc, cracking through the security on it was about as easy rolling a steel cube up a steel slope during a monsoon. By first light, the most he was able to find on it were some Gundam schematics, a bunch of weird numbers, and (for some reason) specs on a Zaku II.
Fraw Bow was at the door and she could be seen on the door-cam. "Amuro, the supply ship's come in!"
He looked up from his computer at the girl on the screen. "The door's open." He went back to his rummaging. There was data on colony design and a fusion reactor in the prototype mobile suits' torsos.
He could hear the office door swing open. Nothing happened right away, but Haro emerged from a pile of books, CDs, and game cases in the corner and said "Good morning, Fraw! Morning! Morning!"
As soon as Fraw laid eyes on Amuro—groggy, nothing on but boxers and a muscle shirt—she screamed. She tossed a yellow shirt and blue jeans at him and yelled "Put some clothes on, now!" She stooped down to gather bits and pieces of junk he'd left all over the floor. "How did it get like this in here?" she asked with annoyance "I just picked up for you the other day! Are you even allowed in your father's office when he's away? Won't you get in trouble?"
"Don't worry, Fraw," he said as he dressed "He's Earthside on a business trip."
"Isn't he coming home today on that supply ship that just docked?"
Amuro paused for a moment. Now he remembered: Fraw wanted to go to the ship that was docking that morning.
Fraw groaned and stormed out. "I'm done with you!"
Fraw stepped out onto Amuro's doorstep to let off a little steam. She liked Amuro well enough but he was always spaced out. Maintaining patience was a monstrous task. It was just then that she noticed Hayato Kobayashi, Amuro's stocky neighbor of the same age hopping on his motorcycle. "Honestly, Hayato," she said, still reeling from Amuro's… Amuroness "You two are neighbors! You should act like it!"
The boy's face, a second ago happy to see Fraw, made a one-eighty. "Is this about Amuro?" he asked coldly "His Dad's working for the military."
Fraw blinked. "What? He's just in charge of construction for the bunch."
"How do you know what they're doing on this side of the barrier?" he looked toward Amuro's open garage. He'd just started up his jeep. "I wish they'd never come here."
On that note, Hayato rode off and Amuro rolled out of the garage.
Amuro was at the wheel, eating a piece of toast: all he could manage. Haro was in the back seat.
Fraw shook her head. "You have no manners."
They took to the road just as Amuro finished the toast. "So where are we going again?" he asked.
"The docking bay!"
"Oh, right! Sorry!"
Fraw felt like she could slap him right now. "Amuro, get it together!" she complained. "My Mom told me to get lots of sugar, flour, and detergent. Supplies are low, so it's rough on everyone. Especially since construction's at a standstill."
One last set of doors had been busted open. The team of Zakus now overlooked the far end of the construction zone. Or rather what they could, it was dark and the occasional spotlight from an observation tower illuminated some of the area.
"The area's pressurized," said Denim. "Oxygen concentration is optimal."
"How far to the barrier?" asked Pacheco.
"About five kilometers," Denim replied. "There's sensors all over the place. Don't trip them. Slender, you stay behind. If things for us start to go south, radio a mayday to Commander Char."
"Aye-aye, sir."
"Gene, you're with me. Ash Squad, you'll scout on the left."
"Yes, sir!"
"Master Sarge," asked Gene "if we come across that thing should we destroy it?"
"Negative," Denim responded "this is a recon mission. Commander Char wants intel, not action."
Denim and Gene's Zakus were the first to drop from the hatch. Ash, Fleetway, and Pacheco followed less than a minute after the first two were clear.
Fleetway looked around: ricochet-proof walls, observation towers, a minefield, anti-armor jacks. This was no construction site, it was a testing ground!
Soon, his searchlight came across something on the ground: it looked like an old Anaheim-developed Guncannon, but not quite. It was battered and had a large slash on its left side. One similar to what a Zaku's heat hawk would do.
Ash noticed it too. "Get some photos of the impact plane." Not too far away, he laid eyes on the pocked remains of an old RTX Guntank. Apparently, the Feddies were using the decommissioned hulk for target practice. Then another, and another: all twisted and maimed. Some even had their cannons cut off. Likely by whatever weapon damaged that Guncannon.
Amid their snooping, Ash's team was caught when a spotlight revealed their position.
Another siren, this one closer, began blaring.
Fire from Vulcan guns in the dark erupted on the Zakus, which replied with their machine guns!
Soon the exchange ceased and a large humanoid figure emerged from the shadows.
"It's the Feddies' new mobile suit!" Pacheco yelled in dread.
Slender kept his guard at the hatch, unable to help in the firefight below. Unable to participate, he could only watch the fight unfold.
The three Zakus of Ash's team let their machine guns rip open on that Federation suit, a titan with a faded-gold hull, but the storm of bullets did nothing to slow it down.
The enemy had a cannon mounted on its left shoulder, which fired at Ash. It missed, but as Ash began to charge his enemy, the gold suit brandished a gun of some sort—a type Slender had never seen before. Then came a flash of pink light between it and the Zaku. The latter combusted.
Only mega particle weapons, like the guns on a battleship, could one-shot a mobile suit. Had the Federation come that far technologically?
Fleetway and Pacheco attempted to double team the enemy suit. It used that gun on Fleetway's Zaku, point-blank. The shot triggered a chain reaction that destroyed the Zaku's reactor, generating an immense blossom of fire that consumed Pacheco and the enemy prototype and ruptured the bulkhead.
The recon mission was compromised.
The landing zone of the docking bay elevator was swarming with people. Half the colony had gathered there for the supplies shipped from Earth. With four Sides reduced to clouds of twisted debris and Side 6 neutral since January, the war had hampered trade sharply. Civilians now had to make due with rations in order to get by.
Amid the hustle and bustle of people from shopkeepers to simple parents, a distant explosion was heard. It came from the construction block.
Talk of a flash in that area and a distant siren was common.
The news made Amuro fear the worst. Did Zeon know about Operation V, too? "Fraw, get in the car!" he yelled.
Fraw Bow hurried over, carrying a bag of supplies from the ship. "But Amuro, I still need to get—!"
"Forget about it," he said. "There was an explosion in the construction block. I don't think the colony's going to survive something as big as that." No sooner did he start driving off did he see an immense hole in the bunch's wall, far in the distance. It was as obvious as a scarlet dress in a swamp.
Ash's squad was gone. Even though he wasn't near his comrade's position, he could still hear the siren, the guns, and the explosion. As far as Gene was concerned, he could make a move against the Federation's installation.
"Fall back, Gene!" Denim ordered. "This goes beyond 'recon-in-force'," he said. "We can't lose any more men!"
Gene ignored the order, letting his machine gun loose on the Federation's research complex in the distance. "Commander Char got where he is by finding glory in battle!" he yelled. He charged toward the lightly-defended building and smashed the control tower's window with the butt of his weapon.
A grim air was about the White Base's bridge. It was obvious what had happened, but they didn't expect the attack to come from inside the bunch.
A sense of dread chilled the old bones of the seasoned Captain Paolo: would this be another minor skirmish or was the war going completely hot again? "Frost, they're understaffed on the ground," he told a nearby lieutenant "Get everyone who isn't needed in the engine room out there!"
"Captain, what about the civilians down there?" Bright asked.
"We will not just sit here and watch them die," said Paolo, grimacing. "Guide them safely aboard this ship. But only as much as circumstances allow."
Suction from the rupture could be felt in the bunch's residential block. Fortunately, it wasn't strong enough to drag a person out into space.
At the same time, the research center was attempting to transport the secretly-developed mobile suit prototype to the docked battleship as quickly as they could by monorail trolley. However, with the sudden Zeon attack on their operation they sent the loaded trolley away improperly. It was moving too fast down the rail and damaged a portion of it.
Concrete siding covered the road below and the supports crumbled.
It nearly crushed the car Amuro and Fraw were in, but they stopped in time without getting a dent. "The road," Amuro groaned, surveying the mess "somebody on the other side of the barrier got stupid and made that thing derail."
"This is close enough," said Fraw. "I can run home from here. Thanks, Amuro!" She left with her supplies.
No time had passed before a large flatbed truck came along to get the off-track trolley's still-covered cargo. So too, came a river of civilians. A man in a white normal suit (a man from the garrison, obviously) was standing on the roof of the vehicle, desperately directing the flood of non-combatants to a detour.
Amuro grabbed Haro and darted forward. "I'm trying to reach tech chief Tem Ray," he told the man. "Please let me through!"
The man couldn't quite make out what Amuro was saying for want of the commotion, but the boy's attention was soon grabbed by a nearby argument.
He heard his father's voice nearby. "The Gundam takes priority over refugees," he barked. "Tow the carrier!"
Amuro ran toward the front of the vehicle. His father was there in a normal suit like the traffic director. At least he can't send me home.
Tem noticed his son, but said nothing.
"Are you saying that a mobile suit is more important than human lives?"
Tem ignored this question. "Secure the lift, too! Load it aboard White Base, top priority!"
"DAD!"
The elder Ray finally addressed his son. "Amuro, evacuate to the White Base!"
"White Base?"
"It's the Federation ship in port, now move it!" Tem turned back to the truck driver. "What's the hold up?"
"The engine won't turn over!" the man at the wheel yelled.
No sooner had Tem gotten his response was a hole blasted in the barrier between the construction and residential blocks. A green Zaku with a machine gun emerged though it.
The garrison had already positioned Armadillo anti-mobile suit tanks and Scorpion and Ballista missile buggies in the area, but they did little to stop the invading suit.
Amuro took cover as the crossfire was unleashed.
When he got a look once the salvoes had settled, civilian corpses, some more intact than others, were scattered all around. The Federation vehicles were scrapped and the Zaku was still up and about, now firing its massive weapon at an unseen enemy the distance. 140mm shells rained down from the giant.
"AMURO! ARE YOU OKAY!?" It was Fraw Bow, running from a ridge crowded with refugees, struggling to flee the battle. The overrun hill erupted in fire as soon as Amuro could see her. Fortunately, she wasn't killed, but the shock of the blast sent her rolling in the dirt.
Amuro hurried up to the girl, now balled up in a fetal position to take cover. She was trembling in fear, but she was alright.
The people on the hill weren't so lucky. Whether it was intentionally done by the Zaku or a misfire by the garrison, neither of them could say. Fraw, however, was devastated by the fact that her mother and uncle were claimed by the blast. She buried her face in her mother's body, sobbing like a baby.
The boy felt bad for his friend, but the Zaku was still on his mind. "Fraw," he told her "if you don't start running, they'll get you, too." She didn't seem to hear him. He leaned closer and raised his voice "You have to get out of here!"
Fraw, her mind still rocked by what had just happened, wailed hysterically. She didn't want to leave her relatives.
Amuro had no choice but to slap her, it was the only way he could think of to snap her out of it. "Stop it!" he said, firmly. For all the times Fraw had tried to play his parent in the past, now it was his turn. "Pull yourself together! You're stronger than this! You gotta run to the port! I'll see you when I get there."
Fraw scraped all the nerves she could together to keep going. She left slowly at first, but then picked up the pace and started running.
"That's it, run!" Amuro yelled, as tears of his own started to form. Fraw, I'm so sorry. You can't die here. He took a look to the side. That trolley's cargo was still on it, but the tarp covering it had been pulled all about, revealing a white-plated mobile suit underneath. He'd seen it before during his snooping, but here it was before him. If there were any doubt about its identity, the plate on the trolley reading "RX-78 Gundam" dispelled it.
Amuro could only take awe in the prototype for so long. The Zaku, that Zaku, was right there. This was the only thing he could think of that could fight it; those buggies weren't cutting it. He was only at the feet of the suit and was looking around. He'd remembered all that time he'd taken studying the specs when he'd had them. There was an access panel on the tip of the right foot that would unlock the cockpit.
Behind the hatch were ten numeric keys for the passcode. Amuro looked over his shoulder: that Zaku was still busy. "Zero… Seven… Two… Three… Two… Zero… Zero… One…"
With those eight digits, something in the suit's torso rose. It was the hatch.
Gingerly, Amuro scaled the suit, trying to get to that cockpit.
Char was gazing out at the unfinished bunch in the distance. Slender was sending a transmission from there. The Zaku team had muffed the recon.
"Master Sergeant Denim charged in?" said Dren.
"That's right, sir," Slender confirmed. "When Sergeant Ash's group encountered a hostile, Denim and Gene moved in to back them up. The colony's running out of air from an explosion! Because of the situation, I followed the Master Sergeant's order and withdrew from the construction block."
"Good job, Corporal Slender," said Char. "So, the Federation forces do have a new mobile suit?! That'll do for now, return to the ship. You'll be debriefed later."
"Yes, sir."
The transmission ended.
"Color me surprised," Dren said, thoroughly unimpressed. "I'd thought Denim could handle the rookies."
Char, too, wasn't happy that this operation didn't go smoothly either. "Dren," he ordered "detach the ship and close the distance with the colony."
"To arms, sir?"
"The Feddies have violated the Treaty, we're going to make sure they pay for it."
It felt like forever, but Amuro finally got to the hatch in the Gundam's torso. He got inside like he wanted, but the process was far from ideal: he'd slipped.
No sooner had he literally fallen into the cockpit, it closed.
A second later, the image of a Zaku with a machine gun could be seen on a monitor before him.
His heart sunk, but his better judgment got a hold of him. Don't panic. Think. You've seen the schematics. You need to find the activation switch.
Gene attempted to open fire on the Federation mobile suit still at rest on its trolley, but only let out a handful of bullets before yellow eyes flickered on in its sphinxlike head.
"Gene," Denim called over the radio "Don't destroy them if they're just parts. We can capture them."
"Master Sarge," the loose cannon said, now in a bit of a shock. "Those aren't just parts! Something's in there! It-It's moving!"
"Damn! It's operational? Gene, fall back before it can get a fix on us!"
The suit was now sitting up. From two tubes on the side of the suit's head, fire-linked rounds from built-in Vulcans fired at his Zaku, but most missed.
Soon, the suit was moving again. It rose to its feet, breaking its support cables and shedding the tarp. All white, save for the torso and parts of the head, it towered over the neighborhood like a god.
A little trivia:
1. In the Origin manga, upon which this work is derived, six Zakus invade Side 7 rather than the three (Denim, Slender, and Gene) in the original anime and movies. Two of the extra pilots were called Ash and Pacheco. I never found anything on the sixth. Thus, I named him Fleetway, after the publishers of a Europe-exclusive Sonic comic series. Sonic the Hedgehog, as you know, is the second party of this crossover. However, it crosses over with the pre-lawsuit Archie continuity instead.
2. The code Amuro uses to open the cockpit is the numeric value of July 23, 2001, the premiere of the original 1979 series' abortive run on Toonami.