April 3rd, 70 CE. 2145 Colonial Standard. ZSFS Ares. Wilhelm Lutjens POV
"Sir, Rear Admiral Hayashi has just sent a message. Operation Chromite has begun, L4 shall belong to Zeon within the next 24 hours." The communications officer who would soon be promoted to Lieutenant Commander informed Lutjens.
Taking his eyes off of a datapad concerning the confiscation of East Asia's nuclear weapons, Lutjens turned to the officer with a smile. "Very good, keep me informed of any developments sent to our way by the Admiral."
"Sir!"
Lutjens leaned back in his command chair, the atmosphere of the bridge turned into one of excitement and jubilance. After the bloody battle that they had just recently suffered yesterday, Zeon would have its revenge and liberate the oppressed Spacenoids of East Asia from gravity's tyranny, further establishing Zeon's power in this new timeline.
Operation Chromite referred to the invasion of the L4 cluster by a collection of 73 ships, mostly Musais along with a compliment of Papuas that would transport Pezun's contingent of Marines to secure the colonies. With the colonies isolated and no hope of reinforcements, the Marines would deploy their Zaku squads to lay waste to any defenses in the colonial interior while the infantry went in and captured the local leaders to force a surrender.
The name of the Operation referred to the original Chromite which was the Operation undertaken by UN forces to liberate Inchon from North Korea in the First Korean War, with the operation leading to the salvation of the South from its Communist counterpart. Lutjens decided on the name as he thought it was the most poetic for this situation, for Zeon to be saving Korean (and Japanese) colonies from the successor state to the People's Republic of China.
The plan was highly simplistic and incredibly rushed with no contingencies and a large amount of luck and expectations playing into the operation. If it was undertaken in any other circumstance Lutjens would've refused to gone through. The main reason was due to a lack of a full resupply from the homeland with the first convoy arriving ten hours ago. His forces were down to 3/4th's of their prime strength and that was not including the operational ships with varying degrees of damage. To top it all off they had to keep watch over the East Asian prisoners until they could gradually be escorted to the homeland for interment.
In the end Lutjens supported the operation as there were no non-Zeon forces present within L4 at the current moment, giving them complete control of regional space, and from what limited information they gathered it seemed he had wiped about a quarter of East Asia's ships, so it was unlikely they would launch a counteroffensive soon.
While Gihren's orders were rushed, Lutjens could understand the initiative. It was as Gihren had told him, soon East Asia would sue for peace upon realizing their mistake and once they did so Zeon would be given a white peace with reparations and minor military restrictions at best. Such a lightweight victory was nothing but disgrace to the Principality and the warriors who had died under his command. If they captured L4 though, then Zeon could potentially gain complete control of L4 or muscle East Asia into heavy economic concessions that would grant their resources and markets to Zeon control.
With the war being escalated at this moment, Lutjens' thoughts drifted to his earlier encounter with Chen and his revelation of how this clusterfuck had happened.
7 Hours Earlier
When it came to Lutjens' physical impression of Chen, it wasn't much. His East Asian counterpart hardly carried any air of intimidation due to his average build and short height in comparison to Lutjens and other Spacenoids who on average stood near 1.8 meters. Combined with his plain looks he would be merely a face in the crowd versus the colorful array of flag officers that served Zeon.
What did impress Lutjens was how when he walked in, while Chen appeared to be clearly remorseful over the current state, he refused to be cowered down and carried his personal dignity strongly. Lutjens could respect that and Chen's wise decision of surrendering as soon as his fleet came to the battlefield prevented the German spacenoid from hating him on a personal level.
From what he had learned before and over the course of their conversation, Lutjens had come to greatly despise East Asia as a nation. Not only did they exhibit the worst traits of the Federation with their Capitalist elitism and lack of care towards Spacenoids, they were also so braindead that they thought that hundreds of colonies that appeared out of thin air were somehow the work of ZAFT.
If the East Asian Admiralty were handed over to Zeon through a peace treaty then Lutjens hoped he could execute them all with a single shot from the Ares' megaparticle canons.
"Admiral, please be truthful to me, are these Coordinators really so awful and so all-powerful that a collection of your nation's military leaders would all believe us to be ZAFT instead of believing in our word?" Lutjens asked with great disgust. Both he and Chen were seated across from each other in one of the Ares' conference rooms. With no weaponry on his person and being handcuffed with two Marines flanking Chen's person, there was little the East Asian could do to harm Lutjens in this environment. And if he somehow managed to do so, Lutjens gave orders to Molenshav to eliminate a portion of the imprisoned ships with impunity.
Chen let out a tired sigh, seemingly sharing Lutjens' thoughts on the matter. "Some people like to proclaim that Coordinators and Naturals are no different, that we are both the same people, only with different genes. This belief is ludicrous and the worst kind of naivety. The lowest performing Coordinators will perform equally with star athletes and smart students. The genius Coordinators are so superhuman that it would take hundreds of Natural prodigies to equal them.
When you combine the entire population of Naturals then you would surely gather a group of people who would outperform Coordinators, but this is only due to overwhelming demographics and in equal numbers Coordinators would win everytime. In the early years laws were passed to try and achieve a sense of balance in the workforce, yet as much as we tried Coordinators always came out on top and would dominate in leadership positions with vast amounts of success. They're every science fiction authors worst fears on transhumanism come true."
Lutjens frowned at the explanation, finding it lacking. "Even if Coordinators are true superhumans in every sense of the word, they still can't defy reality. From what I've read their fleet numbers around 2000 at best and even with the technology of the PLANTs you can only produce so much with a population of 30 million, half of which are children. When three asteroids with fleets of thousands and over 300 colonies pop into existence, you somehow believe that this is a Coordinator threat?"
"Like I said before Admiral, at first we truly believed that it simply was impossible for the Coordinators to do such a feat. Sure there might have been some skeptics, but space command was resolute on your existence and we were heading towards establishing proper relations. Had your nation popped into our timeline a week ago then none of this pointless bloodshed would have occurred. Unfortunately, reason was lost when the N-Jammers, at least that's what they call them, were dropped on the Earth and wiped out the near totality of our power.
While the Universal Century was able to achieve nuclear fusion, it was an impossible dream for us and as such we fully relied on fission. If Earth's power is wiped out and the power plants themselves are still intact, then that means that ZAFT found a way to prevent the atom from splitting, nevermind the disruption of radio waves that came up with such a device. When we learned about what happened, every wild claim made about the ability of Coordinators suddenly became plausible. If they could rewrite nuclear physics, then would it be so hard to believe that Zeon was a Coordinator creation.
I know that what we did by launching an unprovoked attack was inherently wrong and it will go down as one of our nations darkest moments in history, I won't justify or deny it. If you were in our shoes Admiral, could you react rationally?"
Present
While Lutjens never vocally admitted it, Chen did have a good point and if Zeon had experienced the same history then maybe its leaders and Lutjens himself would've acted similarly. From what he had read on the first Coordinator George Glenn, the man seemed to be nothing short of perfect with the feats from the first half of his life being so extraordinary that it would take lifetimes to accumulate a similar amount of success. If it wasn't for his mortality with how the first Coordinator had fallen from a simple pistol, one would think that Glenn was a God among men.
While some amount of sympathy was present, Lutjens could not and would never condone what the East Asians did. Without any confirmation or investigation, they went in on him and his men, spraying nukes like there was no tomorrow and killing tens of thousands of loyal patriots of Zeon. Such a crime had to be payed in full with iron and blood.
Outside of the need for retaliation with the Battle of Pezun, East Asia's abysmal treatment of their Spacenoids alone made them a target of Zeon's righteous fury. Never before did Lutjens ever think that the Federation may not have been that bad in their oppression, but Orb's information on East Asia showed that one could always have it worse.
To Chen's credit, he seemed to genuinely disagree with the horrid conditions of the Japanese and Korean Spacenoids, wanting for some level of self-sufficiency and economic development to take place to give them a semblance of a decent life, but according to him the policies towards the L4 cluster were deeply entrenched with the establishment in Beijing and it would take nothing short of a revolution to change the laws.
Whatever the reason for the war's beginning, it didn't matter now. All that mattered was for Zeon to achieve justice for the fallen and to uphold its missions to liberate all Spacenoids from the tyranny of gravity, no matter which timeline it existed in.
ZSFS Iwo Jima. Daichi Hayashi POV
"Sir, all mobile armors surrounding L41 have been eliminated." Said a Lieutenant Commander in charge of the CIC."
Rear Admiral Daichi Hayashi climbed out of his normal suit and smiled widely at the development. Once he was finished he rolled his shoulders and pulled his arms to experience the relative freedom outside of a normal suit. When the mobile armors had come Daichi had ordered the entire crew of the Iwo Jima to put on their normal suits for fear of the ship being struck by one of East Asia's nukes. While Orb's intelligence pointed L4's nuclear stockpile to be with the fleet that they had captured at Pezun, one could never be careful after the nuclear hell that they experienced at Pezun.
Fortunately it seemed like the mobile armors were normal models, allowing them to be destroyed at ease without damage to the fleet so they could continue with Chromite.
When approaching the colonial cluster, Hayashi had opted for his fleet to be divided into seven groups and to form together in a line while transmitting Minovsky particles once they were 100 kilometers from the cluster. Thanks to the Minovsky dispersion the garrisons would assume that they were facing 7 ships with one for each colony. They then launched all or at least a majority of their resident mobile armors to combat the threat. When the Azures got close, they unfortunately realized that they were facing 12 ships with dozens of Zakus instead of isolated Musais.
The goal of this strategy by Hayashi was to draw out as much of their space forces as possible and eliminate them, leaving the L4 cluster defenseless against the Zeon invasion with their fleet captured at Pezun and no East Asian, or even Alliance forces present anywhere within L4.
While the plan had gone swimmingly, it was not perfect as his CIC officer reported to Hayashi that three Zakus had been destroyed in the dogfight that had lasted roughly eleven minutes. To Hayashi, it was a harsh reminder that while a mobile suit was superior to mobile armor, it was not invincible and any Zaku pilot could die due to a superior foe or their inferior skills. He hoped that in the future that all Zeon pilots wouldn't develop a high hubris and remember their mortality.
"Signal the fleet that we are to enter into blockade formation." Hayashi ordered with a positive resposne.
Each group within the fleet moved in front of their targeted colony, entering into a semicircle formation approximately thirty kilometers from the colony's bays.
In theory a blockade in space is supposed to be impossible as the 3D environment of space and the vast expanse of the solar system would make such an attempt impossible. However, Zeon strategists found science fiction to be closer to reality as while one could not feasibly blockade an entire planet like Earth, a blockade of a colonial Side was more than feasible so long as one had a large enough fleet to cover each colony's bay. While such a practice would be impossible in the Universal Century, here with only seven open-type O'Neil cylinders as the enemy, it was more than feasible.
Once the fleet had gotten into formation, Hayashi waited five minutes for a response from the local garrison. When none came he ordered the communications officer to broadcast a transmission from the Iwo Jima to the colonies in every form of communication possible and to bypass any blockage from the East Asians to allow the common people of the colonies to listen in.
Hayashi stood at attention for the visual transmission, "To the East Asian forces currently stationed at the L4 cluster, I am Rear Admiral Daichi Hayashi of the Zeon Space Force. To the oppressed Spacenoids of these ghettos who are unaware of what this means, two days ago our nation, the Principality of Zeon, came to this timeline from another dimension. Zeon is a nation ruled by Spacenoids, colonists who live in Lagrange 2 who were exiled there by our ruling government, the Earth Federation, to transform Earth into a plaything for the ruling oligarchical elite, much like how you were exiled from your homelands in Korea and Japan so that the Chinese could assimilate your lands.
Part of our territory that was transported to this timeline was an asteroid called Pezun in L4 along with its stationed fleet. Shortly after our insertion, we made peaceful first contact with the Republic of East Asia. However, the Republic of East Asia attacked us without provocation for fear we were ZAFT, killing tens of thousands of brave patriots of the Principality in cold murder.
To seek retribution for this grave injustice, and to end the tyrannical rule of East Asia over its Spacenoid minority, we come here to liberate the Spacenoids of L4 from their masters. East Asian forces, your fleet has been wiped out in its near entirety, the rest of your space force is hunkered in the moon and shall soon face ZAFT, East Asia is currently suffering from a loss of near total power, you are isolated and there shall be no hope of reinforcement. Surrender now and your people shall be treated according to the Geneva Convention of the old 20th century. Resist and most of your men's lives shall be forfeit as of consequence.
My fellow Spacenoids of L4, we of Zeon have shared your suffering and we have come to liberate you from gravity's tyranny. My own family was exiled from Japan to space because we refused to bow down before the one world government of the Federation and were proud of our nation's heritage. Many a Japanese and Korean were stripped from their homelands and sent to Zeon for a crime of not being a member of the Earthnoid Elite. Despite their hardships, they eventually prospered and helped lead Zeon to its glorious revolution against the Federation.
Spacenoids of Lagrnage 4, it is time for you as well to break your chains and overthrow your masters. By tomorrow you shall be no longer bound to Earth's gravity and shall instead enjoy self-rule and sovereignty just as Zeon is experiencing right now. The time for justice has come, Sieg Zeon!" Hayshi shouted thunderously, with the transmission then ending.
Climbing back into his command chair, Hayashi was satisfied with his speech, hoping that it would accomplish everything he planned for. Figuring from Orb's information on the oppression that East Asia had placed on these people, one that even eclipsed the Earth Federation's tyranny, Hayashi had gone into Operation Chromite figuring that the chances for an automatic surrender were extremely low, and that was if they believed he was Zeon and not ZAFT.
Deducting that he would have to invade the colonies, Hayashi worded his message in order to inspire a revolution from the oppressed Spacenoids of L4 against the local garrisons. This would force the garrison to spread out its forces across the colony, allowing his compliment of Marines and Zakus to move in and eliminate them with ease.
Hayashi knew that what he had planned was not the most moral way to achieve victory. If East Asia did not surrender soon then many Spacenoids would be mowed down and casualties would most likely climb into the thousands or tens of thousands versus if he launched the invasion immediately. However, the rushed timetable of Chromite and the stressed need of Lord Gihren to capture the colonies as soon as possible forced him to act risky.
His fleet would only have one shot at liberating L4 and they had to make it work on the first try or else it was likely that L4 would not be included in the deal. With this limited window of opportunity, Hayashi decided to inspire a revolution to create an opening for his men.
Hayashi's deepest sympathies went to the Spacenoids who would soon die in their brief revolution. As someone who was deeply proud of his Japanese roots, Hayashi was infuriated with the treatment of his ethnic kin alongside the Koreans in L4, just for the crime of being members of a conquered population. At the end of the day though, Hayashi was an officer of Zeon, and his duty came first and foremost to the Principality, even over other Spacenoids. This was the best path to victory with minimal casualties, and Hayashi would take it.
Hayashi honestly hoped that a surrender would soon come. If the garrison did not decide to do so, then he would give them hell. At the end of the day, no matter the blood spilled by L4, at least they would become a free and independent nation.
L4 Cluster. Third Person POV
The previous two days had everyone within the L4 cluster incredibly on edge. At first there was the Event where a couple million people within L4 had suddenly collapsed in pain. The cluster's poorly run and underfunded hospital system had been crowded with victims of the unknown event. Marshal law was immediately declared with curfews imposed and garrison troops mobilized onto the streets. To many of the Korean and Japanese Spacenoids, they believed that this was some sort of virus that had been distributed by East Asia, prompting various groups to attempt to fight against the garrison. It was only thanks to the observation that some East Asian troops were infected and the affected people quickly regaining consciousness with no visible ailments that prevented the breakout of a full revolution.
Despite the return to calm by the end of the day, martial law had not been lifted with a complete communications blackout with the rest of the Earth sphere imposed while all ships were temporarily impounded within the colony bays. The unrest of the colonial population remained, with the only information they had were rumors among the garrison troops of a crushing defeat of the Alliance in Earth orbit, an attack on Earth by ZAFT, and the presence of an enemy fleet in L4.
While the people of L4 wanted to take action, at the moment they had stayed in their homes and begrudgingly did what they were told, not willing to risk their lives on rumors when so many false hopes in the past had claimed tens of thousands and only seen the noose on their liberties tightened.
On the second day the crisis intensified when the garrison troops were observed in a frenzy panic, setting up barricades throughout the colony, taking up posts in a defensive position, and several battalions being sent to the hangar bays with all colonial workers in the bays being ordered home and a total lockdown prepared. Attempts were made to get information, only with the curious either being arrested or shot. Tens of millions of people were holed up in their homes, fearful with the East Asians acting like it was the end times.
Prominent leaders in each colony among the Korean and Japanese Spacenoids soon began to meet and plan together in separate meetings. While no one knew exactly what was going on, most believed that ZAFT had somehow delivered a death blow to the Alliance and the war was coming to a close with the Coordinators coming to liberate L4.
The thought of liberation from ZAFT deeply conflicted the local leaders. While any nation would be preferable to the totalitarian rule of East Asia, there were many in L4 who distrusted Coordinators and saw them as superhumans who would only dominate them and treat them just as bad, if not worse than the East Asians. For now they adopted a wait and see approach with an agreement that revolution was coming soon and when the right moment appeared that they would act.
When Admiral Hayashi announced himself to L4, with many of the Spacenoids listening due to black market radios and the usage of hackers listening in to East Asian channels which were then played back to the colonies through government broadcasting, the Korean and Japanese populations didn't know what to think. Here was a man who proclaimed a ludicrous tale of a nation that came from another world. Numerous foreign words such as Spacenoid,Earthnoid, and Zeon were thrown around casually. Many thought that it was some sort of East Asian trick to test their loyalties; however the panicked rush to the hangars along with the sight of distant green warships not of Alliance or ZAFT origin presented otherwise.
A few rebel cells, antsy and tired of the wait for freedom, would then launch their attack. Using weaponry smuggled in courtesy of the Yakuza, Korean mafia, and the CIA and SVR, alongside plenty of improvised explosives, attacks were launched at East Asian garrisons with any soldiers or convoys unlucky enough to be patrolling in the streets swiftly and brutally mowed down, with isolated infantry often torn apart and lynched by viscous Japanese and Koreans bent on revenge.
With these attacks the time for revolution was now and within the hour the L4 cluster was burning with tens of thousands of dead piling on the streets. While theoretically the East Asian Army should have been able to crush the rebellion, the collapse of morale due to the events of the past two days, the panic and freak outs of officers dealing with a situation they never prepared for, the confusing mess of orders as the overextended garrison tried to deal with both a "ZAFT" invasion and internal rebellion, and simply being outnumbered caused many units to fall and the fires of revolution to spread.
With most of the colonies falling to the Korean and Japanese revolutionaries and no reinforcements from the Space Force looking to appear anytime soon, some East Asian officers decided that this was their final hours and that if they were to die, then they would take down as many rebel scum with them. Scorched Earth tactics were soon broadcasted to many of the garrisons and artillery, APC's, tanks, and helicopters began to fire indiscriminately towards the residential districts and anything that didn't belong to the Army.
To the credit of the East Asians, this was not a unified policy with the commander of the L4 forces, General Ming rebuking such orders and telling his forces to stand down. This only complicated the East Asian position with most units simply following the commands of their immediate superiors, while for a brave few who tried to do the right thing and enforce Ming's order, they would be meet with gunfire by the crazed butchers who sought to wipe out the colonies.
This was the final straw for the people of L4 with anyone who wasn't a young child or the elderly and infirm rising up in arms against East Asia.
With the Rebellion reaching a critical climax, the Zeon Marines would make their move.
MS-06C Zaku II. Cima Garahau
Ever since The Event, Lieutenant Cima Garahau kept on swearing to herself that the universe would not get any weirder. Each and every time she did so the universe seemed to one up her with how batshit insane the past few days have gone. At this point literally nothing should surprise her, something like an alien invasion would be practically mundane.
For the most part everything could be considered calm in the first day. She wasn't one of those people who experienced weird visions and since her family and home came along for the ride, Cima came out okay mentally, although she could swear that some of her fellow Marines and the sailors on her ship gave her dirty looks.
What little she read of the new timeline that they were in, the Cosmic Era, was interesting to say the least. It seemed like both an inversion and a mirror of the Universal Century with the world still divided into nation states, genetic superhumans, and most of humanity sticking on Earth, yet some things appeared to stay the same like the oppression of Spacenoids. The world may not have been united, but as seen in the treatment of the PLANTs, and what she would experience in L4, it's not like the attitudes of the Federation never came into existence.
The second day she went into battle against the East Asians, her role in the battle being the protection of Pezun from assault from enemy forces. While Cima was supposed to perform in colonial assault, she did pretty well where she shot down 23 mobile armors and had two ship kills to claim.
After the titanic battle that saw a good number of her crewmates and fellow Marines lost, Cima had expected that for the moment some sort of rest or period of normality would resume. Her expectations were wrong as she was immediately sent into battle to conquer East Asia's L4 cluster.
At the very least she got a Zaku-II out of this whole affair to replace her Zaku-I which was badly damaged during the Battle of Pezun. If she lived then promotions and rewards were bound to flood in.
'Shame I didn't have the time to paint it custom. Green is just so dull and boring.' Cima lamented. In the end though, she was a patriotic daughter of Zeon and would do whatever was asked of her.
After Hayashi's one hour ultimatum had gone through without a single communication from the East Asian lines, Cima and her fellow Marines were given the green light to play their role in Operation Chromite.
It wasn't really anything she'd call brilliant, but with the enemies lack of mobile suits, their forces being stretched throughout the colonies, Minovsky particles, and no chance of reinforcements, Cima was hopeful that it would turn out all right in the end.
Her job was to lead five other Zakus, with another squad of six accompanying them, to invade the central colony of this cluster with their entry point being a bridge which connected two of the strips. Her squad would deploy with the other on Strip One based on the data that Intelligence had somehow procured on the colonies. Her squad would head colonial south towards the port with the simple mission of eliminating all East Asian resistance, along with a secondary objective of hopefully linking up with the local resistance.
Their role was being repeated on every strip of the colonies with a total of 252 Zakus being deployed. The main goal was to spread out East Asian forces and act as a distraction so that the infantry battalions of the Marines could secure the spaceports. If the ports were secure then the battle was won.
Cima gently guided her fellow Zakus across open space with their formation being a couple dozen kilometers from the colony proper. They were all careful to use slow bursts on their thrusters so that they wouldn't be detected thanks to the Minovsky density. Sure their entry would definitely give away their positions, but it never hurt to even have the smallest amount of surprise.
After seven minutes of travel from their ships, the Zakus made it at their destingated points. The squadron split into their designated groups with Cima and their pilots under her going upward to the section of Strip One that connected to strip three.
"Blow a hole, Patel!" Cima ordered.
Raising his Zaku's bazooka to target the colony exterior, Patel did as ordered and fired his sturm faust, which was specialized with a greater than normal explosive yield to punch a Zaku sized hole through the colony.
An explosion rocked the colony's window portion. In less than a second a large hole was created on the window section with the colony's air blowing rapidly at the Zakus. The six mobile suits quickly rushed into the colony with Cima being the last one in.
When Cima got into the colony she used her Zaku's sealant launcher to quickly fill up the whole with birdlime before the colony lost all of its atmosphere. Two other Zakus joined her, allowing the hole to be filled rapidly with a pink crystallized mass covering it, protecting the Spacenoids of the colony from death by asphyxiation.
Cima quickly barked out orders to her squad. The Zakus split into two with three moving for the entry point of the bridge connecting strip one to strip three while Cima and two other Zakus went for the center of the bridge.
Driving her vernier thrusters to full power, Cima had her Zaku jump high to land on the bridge. When Cima landed she saw about a couple dozen military vehicles spread out along with infantry machine gun formations to block anyone from crossing.
Acting quickly while the East Asians were still in shock, Cima threw a cracker barrel towards a mg position, it fell inside of the position which caused it to be leveld and killed about seven infantrymen. Cima then used her verniers to slide back to avoid any targeting and aimed her 120mm machine gun at the nearest vehicle, an odd looking tank with a long and sleek barrel, and fired, destroying it with seventeen rounds.
Her subordinates followed her actions with their first targets being the elimination of the tanks. While testing had shown a Zaku to be superior to the T61, a T61 could still kill if it was in close range and in numbers. Cima and her men didn't want to take any chances with these Cosmic Era tanks which were said to operate on rail weaponry, a far deadlier form of ammunition than your standard T61 lineup.
Fortunately they were able to quickly transform each linear tank into a burning heap. All that was left were the APC's which tried to fire on the Zakus, and while they did hit there rounds caused scratches and minor dents. While hypothetically a Cosmic Era APC could destroy a Zaku, it needed continuous fire on the same spot, which Cima and her meant would not provide.
Four minutes later the bridge was cleared, with Cima and her two charges, all of whom sustained various levels of minor damage, went to help their comrades at the base of the bridge for strip one which was a military checkpoint that acted as a camp for the garrison.
When they arrived they found their comrades to have done most of the work. What they saw was a smoldering ruin of a former base with all of its guns, armor, and heavy machinery blown to smitherens while corpses were strewn across the area with patches of blood painting the landscape.
Fortunately it seemed there was little left besides stragglers desperately trying to escape the Zakus. Cima frowned when she saw one of her men trying to mow down the surviving infantry despite their lack of means to fight back.
Moving her Zaku towards the offender, Cima created a contact link, "Stand down Marine. Those soldiers can't fight back and all you're doing is creating a pointlessly bigger body count. There's nowhere left to go so they'll surrender eventually. We're supposed to be here as liberators, not butchers." Cima stated.
The pilot on the other line snarled in response, "Why do you care Lieutenant, they're just Earthnoid scum. They're no better than, if not worse than the Federation! Besides, it's not like we signed any treaties with them, I'm not violating any rules of war."
Before Cima could make a response, the comm flared to live, "Lieutenant, Johnson, verniers hard right NOW!"
Acting on instincts and not bothering to question, Cima and Johnson did as told with them both pumping their thrusters to evade several meters to the right.
A couple seconds later, a couple high velocity rail rounds soared to where they previously were and destroyed a couple piles of debris. The other four Zakus fired their machine guns and bazookas for a few seconds, then going silent.
Moving her machine to where they had fired, Cima found a couple of well hidden and now destroyed linear tanks that had apparently arrived on the scene.
Breathing a sigh of relief as her Zaku's sensors hadn't picked them up thanks to the Minovsky interference, Cima her thanks on the comm.
"Thanks for the save Kim. I'll buy you a round when we get back to Side 3." Cima said to the only female member of the squad.
"Lieutenant, Kim was a couple hundred meters away scouting the residential block. She didn't fire a single shot at the tanks." Patel told her.
Cima looked around and indeed she couldn't see Kim's trademark purple Zaku-I with the pilot's machine just now coming into view. Her distance should have made it impossible to detect the tanks if Cima didn't detect them, therefore she shouldn't have known that Cima and Johnson would come under fire.
'Then again, this isn't the first time Kim's seen the future.' Cima thought to herself. She had fought besides the Korean woman in Pezun and she could count four instances where Kim was able to predict an enemy coming and had saved her comrades from certain destruction. There must have been countless other times she had saved herself with such knowledge, and Cima had begun to hear rumors in the battle of similar pilots acting the same.
Did The Event make Kim some sort of psychic? Or maybe a Newtype...
"Well thanks for the save. Let's continue our march towards the port. Every second we waste here is a second one of our Marines at the gates could die."
"Yes ma'am!" Her fellow Zakus said. For now it didn't matter what sort of mumbo jumbo Kim had, she was a fellow pilot and if she used her powers to save her fellow Marines then she was alright in Cima's books.
After traveling a kilometre without making any contact, Cima's squad ran into a couple hundred men and women who were taking up residence in a makeshift base in the surrounding block. Going in Cima knew that the East Asians treated their Spacenoids so poor enough that the other nations of this timeline called the colonies Ghettoes, but she wasn't prepared for the sight of residential districts that were so badly constructed and taken care of that they made the dirtiest slums in Side 3 look like gated communities.
The people in front of her were sent into a panic, but Cima didn't fire on them as from their lack of uniforms she assumed that she made contact with the local resistance.
Wanting to calm them before things got out of hand, Cima activated the external mike on her Zaku, "Attention Spacenoids of L41, I am Lieutenant Cima Garahau of the Zeon Marine. I do not belong to ZAFT, but the Principality of Zeon, a nation which has come from a different timeline that has suffered the same oppression from Earth as you have. We come as your friends and we are here to liberate you from East Asia. I repeat, I am a Marine of Zeon, I come as a friend."
From the external audio that was playing back inside of her cockpit, Cima frowned as she heard the spluttering of an oriental language from the hundreds of bewildered and afraid resistance most second and third generation Spacenoids, Cima had grown up only knowing of the English language with the official teaching of all other languages highly discouraged by the Federation to prevent Nationalism. Cima grimaced as her mother was Japanese and had tried to teach her the language but Cima had always refused, a skill that could have come quite handy now.
"Kim, why don't you make contact with them. You speak Korean." Johnson said.
"The majority of this colony's Japanese. So there's a chance that my words would sound just as gibberish as the Lieutenant's." Kim responded.
"Why not? They're both East Asian so it's practically the same." Johnson said.
"The Fuck did you say you little shit!" Thus began a linguistics argument that went on for half a minute until a man came forward from the resistance, with Cima ordering her subordinates to quiet down.
From the Zaku's audio she was able to pick up his words, "My name is Tadashi, I'm the leader of this cell of the resistance. I would like to speak to your leader on behalf of our movement." The fighter politely requested.
"Patel, keep hold of the squad, I'm going to go down and talk with the guy, try to get their radio frequency so that way we can coordinate with the locals. Watch out for any incoming enemies."
"Be quick about it Lieutenant."
"I will." Cima replied. She quickly opened her Zaku cockpit and using the cable, gently landed down on the ground. She shifted to this Tadashi, who at a close glance wore a simple t-shirt and genes, though augmented with an unevenly distributed set of fatigues, most likely stolen from the East Asians. The man before had a decent amount of muscle, though he was still pretty lanky and just about reached Cima's height, some signs of poor nutrition being present with the bags under his eyes. Despite being a dirty mess, he posses sort of a rugged charm that made him somewhat attractive in Cima's books.
Cima sprinted over to him, with Tadashi meeting her halfway. "So it's true, you really aren't ZAFT, but from another world?" Tadashi asked with some disbelief in heavily accented English.
Cima nodded her head, "Yes, I'm from a nation called Zeon in L3 that suddenly got teleported to your timeline."
"An Isekai?" Tadashi asked with a bizarre look on his face.
Cima had no idea what the hell that word meant, so she just nodded along, "Basically. We came to this timeline two days ago. Yesterday I was involved with a battle at our nearby asteroid base where we wiped out or captured 3,000 East Asian ships, including the local fleet for this cluster. There are no reinforcements coming, you will be free soon."
A wide smile broke out on Tadashi's face with him hugging Cima in excitement, she was bewildered and was about to push him away, but fortunately he broke off and yelled some words in Japanese to the fighters, with them breaking out into heavy cheering and jubilation, including large amount of shouting of "Banzai!"
"I am sorry Lieutenant, but you've just made today the happiest day of all of our lives. The Chinese bastards have been wiped out and soon we shall rule these hellish prisons they put us in. We are forever in your debt." He said, bowing to her in gratitude.
Cima waved it off, "We Spacenoids of Zeon have been oppressed by Earth in our own timeline, we are just landing a hand that we were never fortuante enough to receive in our timeline. That's besides the point, I need to exchange communcation channels with you so that your resistance can coordinate with our fleet outside. We've got a couple of regiments of Marines storming the port and they need our help. However, we need to make sure we don't fire on your people. We have the basic layout of the colony, but I'd like updated information on the enemy. Give us info and we'll save your people."
"Of course! I am one of the only English speakers in our group, so I'll try to act as a middle man between your people and mine." Tadashi hurryingly gave the information for the resistance channels while Cima gave info on Zeon's lines, with the sound of distant but approaching artillery and machine guns drawing ever closer and causing them to quicken their pace. Two minutes later Cima climbed back into her Zaku and they continued on their mission to reach the port with Tadashi alerting his fellow resistance fighters of Zeon's existence while alerting Cima's squad of updates in East Asian positions.
Thanks to Tadashi's information, Cima and her squad were able to eliminate the opposition with ease, drawing thousands of East Asians away from the port and saving dozens, if not hundreds of Zeon lives. The only casualty in their group was Johnson whose Zaku had its legs immobilized thanks to a combination of mines and an unlucky artillery shot, but thankfully he was able to bale and thanks to Tadashi's guidance grouped up with some resistance fighters who protected him until the end of the fighting.
By 0530 Colonial Standard on April 4th, the Battle of L41 was declared to be officially over with General Ming surrendering the local garrison, causing hundreds of East Asian troops to cease fighting, with all of them rapidly making their way towards the port to surrender to Zeon instead of being caught in the hands of the locals who they had oppressed for the past half century.
Fighting still continued to play out for the rest of the day with stranded East Asian units making desperate last stands against the resistance. The rebels were also quick to inflict victor's justice upon collaborators of the regime with tens of thousands across the colonies being killed in rage. A few attempted to fight back, though most were caught up in some manor of kangaroo court where they were swiftly judged guilty and either executed or tortured and humiliated for working with the enemy. This vigilante justice would continue until Zeon Marine and Army regiments came to occupy the colonies and installed law and order under temporary martial law. The remaining collaborators would flock to Zeon lines where they decided that the justice of Zeon courts would be a better mercy than death by mob.
Thus ended Operation Chromite, or as it was known in Zeon, the Liberation of L4.
In the Universal Century, Zeon's mark on L4 would originally been one of mass genocide with Cima Garahau unfortunately being tricked into gassing millions of her fellow Spacenoids without her knowledge and against her will. This insidious action would haunt Cima for the rest of her days, creating a downfall that led to her becoming a pariah in her own nation, living the life of a pirate after the end of the war, and receiving a death by Gundam when she had fought so hard to stop Operation Stardust.
In the Cosmic Era, many within Zeon would undertake new paths that would see them rise above the villainous descent that they were meant to take. Instead of becoming a butcher, a victim of Gihren's megalomania, Cima Garahau would be revered throughout space as a hero, the Chain Breaker.
A/N: Hello again my loyal readers, Kaiser Chris here with another chapter of Cosmic Crusade. In this chapter we cover Zeon's conquest of L4 which brings about an end to the Zeon-East Asian aspect of the First Contact War. Since the East Asian fleet was eliminated at Pezun, the battle was won by Zeon the moment they surrounded the cluster, but unfortunately a battle had to be drawn out as the garrisons refused to surrender and suffered a mass collapse in command and panic. I promise that East Asia is far more competent than this, but in a scenario where the East Asian Army had thought that their homeland had been wiped out by ZAFT, thousands of ships were elimiminated effortlessly at orbit and Pezun, it truly looked like the end of days had arrived, thus leading to the shit show that was the battle. There will be some good signs of East Asia shown and competence displayed in battle in the future, I promise.
In this chapter I also wanted to highlight Zeon's Nationalism and their tendency of separating things into an 'Us vs Them' mindset, especially with their fellow Spacenoids. This is especially seen in Rear Admiral Hayashi who was willing to let thousands of the L4 Spacenoids die if it meant that fewer of his men would die in the process. Zeon may be considered to be the protagonists of the story, but they are not heroes and the villainous tendencies of the OYW still remain, they are just being redirected for better purposes against the Alliance and ZAFT. While Zeon does care for its fellow Spacenoids of this new timeline, to many Zeon characters Side 3 shall always come first. This shall especially be seen in later chapters with the Zabis. We can also see how the L4 Spacenoids aren't so heroic, as shown in their brutal retaliations against collaborators.
Of course we have the highlight of the chapter which is Cima's contribution to the battle. In canon she gassed Shiro's colony, though she did so under the belief that it was sleeping gas and not G3. She was horrified by the actions but found no support as her fellow soldiers hypocritically named her a murderer, with Cima being further driven over the edge when Gihren converted her colony into the Colony Laser for A Bao Qu. Here with Cima being a hero and not a mass killer and a high chance that her colony won't become a giant gun, she's far more devoted to Zeon and has a high likelihood of becoming an entirely different woman by the end of the story. Something important to note though, Cima is a Oldtype so she has no idea what happened to her in canon.
Next chapter which will come out after Chapter 50 of Gihren's Glory will cover Garma's participation in the Battle of Granada. After that everyone in the Cosmic Era will learn of Zeon's existence. Thanks for reading and stay tuned for more!