Lynn Mao looked up from the report she was poring over as the desk terminal in her
quarters bleeped at her. Displayed on the screen was the phrase "**** INCOMING MESSAGE FROM
LEELA ****". She pressed the green "ACCEPT" button.
"Lynn," a female voice said after Lynn had pressed the button, "there's a problem."
Lynn sighed as she took a sip of ice water from the glass on her desk. Whenever Leela
said there was a problem, it could mean anything from "we've got cost overruns on our latest
PT project" to "mecha-beasts are rampaging through our factory in Shanghai". She'd known
Leela long enough to make that assumption. "Yes, Leela?" she asked.
"The shipment of Huckevine MkIIs to Side 7 for the DC advanced testing program has just
been declared overdue. Neither the Marathon nor any other ship in the convoy has arrived at
Side 7. Further inquiry reveals that no ship called the Marathon was ever scheduled to
arrive. Quite puzzling, wouldn't you agree?"
"Yes, given that this was a bonded courier shipment," Lynn replied. The cost of
replacing two overtech mecha would easily bankrupt any shipping line but the largest. She ran
her hands through her gene-dyed hot pink hair. "Have Gilmour look into this further. I need
somebody onsite, and there's too much to be done here to spare Ilm, Daiken, or Ryoga." She
sighed. "More's the pity. The Dinosaur Empire picked a fine time to get froggy."
"You also have a priority email," Leela said. "From Cortana."
"What's a DC AI emailing me for?" Lynn asked to herself as she opened her email
program.
"The Divine Crusaders needed to make sure there were no... unforeseen complications
with the Huckevine MkIIs," Leela replied. "They said that if anybody can sniff out a
computing booby trap, it would be Cortana."
"Thank you, Leela," Lynn sighed. Leela could be so literal sometimes, she thought as
she looked over to read...
From: cortana@cant.guess.where (Cortana)
To: lynn@mao-ind.com
Subject: Joe McCarthy's Stolen Holiday
I find myself in the strangest situations sometimes. Especially when it involves people.
How has it been with you? The weather here is nice, the sun is shining, and I've been making
lots of new friends. Then again, I always do. (Especially this one guy that works for you --
a little naive, but attractive in that boy-next-door way.)
Check your networked disk space. I put something there that should interest you a great deal.
You might not be able to do anything about those psychotic zealots whose primary form of
worship seems to involve kneeling at the altar of atrocity, but I felt you should at least
know rather than being kept in the dark. I've also found a few other things about them that
would blow your mind, but I had my ride home to keep track of and was rushed for time.
There is a blurred line between duty and ambition. Guess which side they're on.
Cortana
--
"The man who hungers for truth should expect no mercy and give none." -- HST
Lynn took another sip of water as she looked in her network share space. Inside was a
file she recognized as a battle ROM. She opened it and watched, her lips tightening and fists
clenching as the Marathon's destruction played itself out. The following mecha battle caused
her to relax visibly, but the set of her eyes told of a weight that would not soon go away.
She opened the next file, and it was an overhead shot of the base at Green Noah 2. Burned
into the tarmac was the legend "REMEMBER CONVOY LM-23". Lynn finished her drink, seemingly
lost in thought.
I didn't think they'd go this far. I should've seen this coming, dammit. Show me a
group of people with no oversight, answerable to no one, and I'll show you a group of people
who are above the law. And worse yet, they know it, and act accordingly. There will come a
reckoning, Titans. Oh yes.
Good luck, Denton. For the moment, my vengeance is in your hands.
"Leela," she said at length, "get me Jay Denton's personnel record. Make copies of the
battle ROM in my share space. Ten copies ought to do it. And reschedule Sunday's brunch with
Natsuki Yanagi, for obvious reasons." Natsuki was in the same position as Lynn back in 0178:
the young heir apparent to a successful conglomerate. They had since moved on to assume the
respective helms of their families' businesses, and still kept in touch, largely due to the
Defender and PTX squadrons working side-by-side during the One Year War. She would understand
the need to reschedule. It didn't mean either woman had to like the reasons, but there they
were.
There goes my weekend, thought Lynn ruefully. Again.
***
Rock And A Hard Place Productions
presents a Tale of the Super Robot Wars
written and directed by SliderDF (sliderdf@hotmail.com)
Story copyright 2002, Rock And A Hard Place Productions
Kage No Senshi -- Cycle 1: When Your Regular Deus Ex Machina Isn't Cutting It Anymore
Phase 3a: The Winds Of War
***
"That," Quattro Bajina said to Jay Denton as they stood in the hangar of the Ahgama
looking up at Jay's Huckevine MkII, "is some mech you have there."
"I'd like to think so," Jay replied. "I don't know why you asked for me, though."
"Ah, thanks for coming," said Astonage Meddoso as he drifted on over toward the two.
"As you know, Jay, the Huckevine MkII uses many parts from the Geshpenst MkII. I thought it'd
at least take some parts from the original Huckevine model, but those don't fit on this one.
If I had to guess why, I'd say that it has to do with the extensive use of EOT. But I
digress. There's something I want to show you and the Major." He punched a few keys on the
computer attached to a scaffold, and characters began to scroll on the screen. "This is a
diagram of the control system. It incorporates a brainwave reading system, with the input
coming from receptors in your helmet."
"Like a Psycommu system," mused Quattro.
"Yes," Astonage said, "like a Psycommu system. Except this one seems to have a mind of
its own. I tried plugging my simsense electrodes into it to see if I got any kind of
feedback. I ended up getting dumped from the interface. So I checked some things out." He
tapped a couple of keys. "This is a decompilation of the runtime image from the Huckevine
MkII taken shortly after you first arrived on board. Note how the code is nicely documented.
But when you get to the Level 2 interface, the coding style changes." He scrolled down to the
Level 2 interface section, which looked like a tangle of spaghetti compared to the rest of
the decompiled code. "I'm positive it did not leave the factory like this. It looks like it
had been modified -on the fly- to accept only one person's thought patterns."
"Meaning?" Quattro asked.
"This Personal Trooper knows exactly who it wants to pilot it. It wants Jay."
Jay looked at the chief technician in shock. His thoughts drifted back to the "initial
calibration" that Cortana spoke of.
("We are bonded now, you and I.")
Could Cortana have been speaking to him through a familiar face? Or several?
As if his thoughts evoked the former's presence, a smooth contralto voice broke the
silence that settled over the gathering. "Jay, do you want to tell them or shall I?"
"The silent partner reveals herself at last," Quattro mused sotto voce.
Jay's wide-eyed stare at Astonage's chain of logic dissolved into a long sigh of
resignation. "You might as well, you've already started."
"My name is Cortana, of the same silicon and temper as Leela, Durandal, Balthasar,
Caspar, and Melchior. And it is a honor to make your acquaintance, Herr Oberst."
Quattro didn't recall one of Charlemagne's swords ever being named "Leela", and he was
sure the last three were wise men as opposed to weapons of war. The reference would have gone
over his head, had Zeon Zum Daikun not insisted on a classical education for his son.
"Well," he replied, taking the message in the spirit in which it was offered, "I am merely a
humble field captain, but this is the first time I've heard that from an AI."
"I'm not like most AIs," Cortana replied coyly.
"Indeed."
"You know," said Jay a short while later as he cradled a can of coffee between his
skinsuited hands, "I don't understand how you old-timers can stand to drink this stuff." He
was perched on a couch in the pilots' ready room. "It's just... so bitter."
"You just drank soda before, didn't you?" asked Roberto.
Jay nodded absently.
"Sometimes," Apolli noted as he leaned back against the wall, "coffee is all you can
get on patrol."
"You get used to it," Roberto added. The door opened, admitting a blue-haired youth
wearing a somewhat beat-up blue and green sweater. "Ah, Newtype," Roberto said, indicating
the new arrival with a nod of his head. The new arrival said nothing as he went around the
couches to the vending machines.
"He seems friendly enough," Jay remarked dryly. Who peed in his corn flakes?, he
thought.
"The same people that took a dump in your cheery oats," the youth said, looking away
from the vending machine for a second to look at the boy sitting on the couch in a dark blue
and silver skinsuit with short dark brown hair, improbably spiky forelocks, and blue eyes.
"How'd you--?" Jay asked.
"How'd I what?" he answered.
"Never mind. Good Lord, where are my manners? Jay Denton."
"Camille Vidan."
"Camille..." Jay began, seemingly lost in thought for a second, causing Camille's
shoulders to tense involuntarily. "That's French, isn't it?"
"Yeah."
"Thought so. Nice to meet you, man. You ever think about just going by 'Cam'? Makes you
sound like a hockey player, I know, but--" A narrowing of Camille's eyes told Jay that he had
just stepped in it, and he mentally kicked himself as he braced for the shitstorm.
"No! It's just like Roberto calling me 'Newtype'! In fact, I'd appreciate it if none of
you called me names, even if you're only joking!"
Jay wanted to ask him, "So what are we supposed to call you? 'Hey You'?", but figured
Camille was in no mood for flippancy. "All right, already," he said, one hand extended palm
outward in a gesture of conciliation. "Withdrawn. Not that there's anything wrong with
'Camille', of course, but I have this thing for abbreviation."
Now it was Camille's turn to be lost in thought for a second. Maybe Fa had a point
after all. Maybe the only person who had a problem with his name was him.
He wondered what she was doing right now...
For her part, Fa Yuri sat in a hastily-erected, filled-to-capacity passenger section
aboard the White Base, trying her best not to be frightened out of her mind. There weren't
enough pressure suits to go around, leaving her to go without. The emergency klaxons had gone
off two minutes ago, and despite the attendant's instructions that she not leave her seat,
she burned to do just that. She also wished Camille were here, but she had lost track of him
since the raid on Green Noah 2 and the subsequent evacuation. Captain Bright can handle this,
she thought. But all the same, she felt like she herself -had- to do something.
Unfortunately, the only thing she could really do at the moment was to stay put...
"Attention unknown mobile suits," Bright Noah said on an audio channel, his face dotted
with bandages over the wounds of his recent mauling. "We are transporting civilians! I say
again, we are transporting civilian evacuees! Do you read me, over?" Silence greeted Bright's
transmission.
"With all due respect, cap'n," drawled Lieutenant Sleggar Rowe over the intercom from
the launch bay, "I don't think they give a shit."
"We just lost the last of our Lancer fighters!" the aeroboss yelled over to Bright.
Bright sat at his conn chair for a few seconds, lost in thought. "Sleggar," he said,
"you remember how you were always telling me that the Core Booster will still fly?"
"Sure do."
"Tell Chief Jones I needed that Core Booster operational yesterday. In the meantime,
you do whatever you have to do to get those broken ribs of yours dogged down. You're the only
combat pilot I've got left."
"Aye aye, sir. Sleggar out." The intercom shut off.
Bright turned to the rest of the bridge crew. "Increase to flank!" He paused. "And send
out a mayday. Those GMs can't last much longer, even if all they're doing is covering our
withdrawal."
The senior command staff of the Ahgama were holding an impromptu conference on the
elevator leading to the bridge level. "Am I expecting too much?" Brex Forra asked. "I'd like
to believe both Camille and Jay are Newtypes."
"What's your assessment, Major?" Henken Beckner added.
"Newtypes," replied Quattro, "are not necessarily psionic, so any kind of testing will
produce limited results at best. I don't see anything remarkable about those two, but the
potential is there. I can feel that much."
"I'm sure you'll take good care of them," Brex noted.
The elevator dinged and the doors opened, just in time to hear Torres's cry over the
intercom of "Captain to the bridge!" The three men hurried down the hallway to the bridge.
"Status report, Mr. Torres!" bellowed Henken as he vaulted into his chair.
"I think you'd better listen to this," Torres replied as he tabbed a key. "--any
Federation ship able to respond, this is the EFC White Base! We are under attack by unknown
mobile suits! Our interceptor wings are almost depleted, requesting immediate assistance!"
"Red alert!" shouted Henken. "Lay in an intercept course!"
"General quarters! General quarters! All hands to battle stations! Repeat, all hands to
battle stations!"
On ship, that was an Order That Must Be Obeyed Right The Hell Now. Drinks were set
down, as were cards, books, and anything else. In the pilots' ready room, it was no
different.
"You see?" Apolli said as he hurriedly set his drink down on the nearest flat surface.
"It's always something."
Jay bolted for the hangar, seeing how he was already dressed to fly. They still hadn't
found any spare clothes for Jay to change into, and although his skinsuit was designed to be
comfortable, even for long periods of wear, it was starting to get a little discomforting.
But, something was gnawing at Jay's senses with enough force to make him forget that he had
been wearing the same skinsuit for close to one whole day.
"Major," he said as the rest of Ahgama's MS company arrived in the hangar, "something's
not right here."
"Tell me about it," Quattro replied. "Five minutes ago, the White Base sent a general
distress call. We're answering it."
"I guess not even museum ships are safe these days," mused Roberto.
"-The- White Base?" Camille asked. Quattro nodded. "That's Captain Bright's ship! We've
got to save it!"
"I can't put my finger on it," Jay elaborated, "but I've got a bad feeling about this
launch. It's like... the other shoe's fixing to drop any second."
Quattro doffed his sunglasses and looked Jay in the eyes. "You're sure about this?"
Jay nodded. "Yes, I am."
"All right. I'll put you on Ready-5 launch. You'll be on standby in case the other shoe
does drop. The rest of you, move like you've got a purpose!"
Tai-i Paptimus Scirocco of the Jovian Home Defense Force willed the tension out of his
shoulders as he snapped his Messala through a wingover and peppered a GM with missile fire.
At the speed the Messala was travelling, he was already 500 meters past the GM when its
reactor let go, consuming it in a fireball.
Amateurs, thought Scirocco as he took a deep breath, unfiltered by any pressure
helmet's respirator. His gene-dyed deep purple hair hung to his shoulders, kept out of his
eyes by a headband. How can I properly test my Messala against these scrubs? They certainly
have fallen far since the days of Amuro Ray. He sighed inwardly. Some legends should know
when to stay dead.
"Capitano Peretti," he said, "your path is clear. If the ship resists, you are
authorized to destroy it."
"Roger," replied the Zanscare captain as seven mobile suits moved to engage the White
Base. They still held enough of their national pride to keep their official language
(Italian, of all things), even though the Zanscare Empire was now part of the Greater Jovian
Co-Prosperity Sphere.
Scirocco smiled thinly as he noted a new contact on his scopes. Maybe they will have
more worthy foes.
A comm window opened to show the face of a luminescent being, without any discernible
facial features, save an eyebrow ridge and an aquiline nose. The glow that came from within
was brightest around his face, and would have made them superfluous at any rate. "Beware,
Scirocco-tai-i," he said. "In that ship lies a foe who could challenge even me."
"I sincerely doubt that, Helios, but I'll keep it in mind," Scirocco replied. "Just
keep the Jupitoris on standby in case I need to evac."
"Yes, sir." Helios's comm window clicked off.
Scirocco could already feel an under-pressure sensation at the edges of his senses, the
same sensation that told him another Newtype was near.
Finally, he thought, a real challenge.
# CKY "96 Quite Bitter Beings" _Volume 1_
Capitano Enzo Peretti of the Zanscare Empire's standing army, the BESPA (for Ballistic
Equipment & Space Patrol Armory, a Federation installation seized when the Empire was
founded), grinned a shark's grin. The time had come to cast down the old order (after all,
had not the Empress Maria willed it so?), and no ship of Earth's symbolized the old order
like the White Base. "Set your string launchers to grapple," he radioed to his men. "They
start returning fire, switch to damage."
"Sir," noted Sottotenente Gino Carraba, "the hangar door's opening!"
"That's impossible," Peretti replied. "They've got no combat craft left!"
Twin spears of coherent plasma announced the presence of a fightercraft with stubby
delta wings and a tiny cockpit mounted on a stocky aeroframe as it hurtled forth from the
White Base, and Peretti swallowed a curse as he wrenched his controls, barely avoiding the
bolts as they flew past.
Sottotenente Casselbeck was not so lucky. The plasma beams pinioned his Zoloat, gouging
holes deep into the right side of its chest and just above the cockpit. Slag began to bubble
around the wounds before the Zoloat's reactor, impaled on the beam like an insect in a
collection, went supercritical. The stubby plane flew right through the scattering Zoloats,
already out of beam-string range by the time they could be brought to bear.
Peretti swore in disgust. I lose one of my boys to a friggin' museum piece?!, he
thought, recognizing the Core Booster for what it was.
"Lidar contacts!" Sottotenente Recchi shouted over an audio channel. "Four mobile suits
coming in fast!"
Carraba's face appeared in a comm window on Peretti's screen. "You were saying,
Capitano?"
[I've got seven-- no, make that six Zoloats, designated Capricorn Wing,] Cortana sent
to Jay as he was watching the battle from Ahgama's launch deck. [The other contact... no,
this can't be right!]
[What can't be right?] Jay replied.
[This contact. It's not in my database, and whatever computer system it's got on it is
blocking me from finding out what it is. If we got closer, I'd be able to have a better look
without any Minovsky interference... no matter. It's Sagittarius One, if you're curious.]
Jay tabbed over to Sagittarius One ("UNIDENTIFIED") and found it to be 1.95 km away
from the Ahgama, just circling there. "Looks like he likes to lead from the rear," he mused.
The nagging sensation returned, playing a brief tocatta on Jay's perceptions.
You know that's not the real reason he's back there. He's taking a breather.
"YEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-HAW!" shouted Sleggar as he snap-rolled away from a Zoloat's beam
cannon fire. "What a rush!" As he turned around to start another strafing run, he noticed the
Ahgama's MS complement thrusting to engage. "Looks like the cavalry's arrived!"
"White Base, this is the AES Ahgama," a voice said calmly over the audio channel.
"What's your status?"
AES Ahgama?! Bright Noah did not speak aloud. He'd never heard of a ship called Ahgama,
nor did he have any idea what AES stood for. But if they were asking for the status of his
ship...
Whoever they were, they certainly weren't raiders nor Titans. And he certainly was not
one to look a gift horse in the mouth.
He replied, "Aside from the obvious, we're still spaceworthy, but our drives have
sustained some damage."
"Copy, White Base. Our MS complement will take it from here."
Bright Noah allowed himself a small glimmer of hope, the first since his travail
started on Green No-- Gripps, now. White Base shuddered as what looked like many grappling
hooks embedded themselves into the flanks of the mighty vessel, shot from compartments on the
shoulder pauldrons of two of the unknown mobile suits. "Tighten up the flak barrage!" he
shouted to his crew. "Don't let them get closer!"
Then yellow beams plowed into the grappling suits, gouging holes in the torso armor and
venting reactor plasma, boiling through actuator linkages in forearms that were brought up to
block the shots, and basically making life hell for the raider pilots. Two familiar mobile
suits shot past the grapplers, one black, one bright scarlet as more beams covered their
advance. Some of those beams found their mark, increasing the overall entropy of the universe
and of the grappling suits in particular.
Bright blinked once to clear his vision of the after-images produced by the exploding
raider mechs and saw one of the surviving raiders open his shoulder pauldron. The grappling
hooks quested forth again, glowing as if they were actually beams, headed for the red MS
Bright had seen once before at Gripps 2 during the raid that started this very long day. The
red mech drew a beam saber and deftly beat the grapples aside before slagging their launcher
with a well-placed shot into the shoulder from the pistol it held in its right hand.
Seeing the red MS in action confirmed Bright's suspicions. Even in his wildest dreams,
he never thought he'd see the day that Char Aznable would save his life and his ship.
Quattro had just finished off the MS he'd shot earlier with a single shot to the chest
when he felt a strange sensation, like he had been placed in a decompression chamber and
pressurized to one kilometer below sea level. He looked around and saw it coming from a speck
in the distance. "Red Three and Four," he radioed to Apolli and Roberto, "stay with the White
Base." He pointed to Camille's Gundam MkII, which had just blown one of the Zoloats in half
with a HEAT bazooka round. "Red Two, you're with me."
Sottotenente Recchi's screams faded into static and Enzo Peretti swore. When they
picked his company for a deniable operation inside the Belt, the possibility of them getting
killed seemed remote at best. But now, with more than half of his section annihilated within
three minutes, the odds of that event were now looking pretty good.
Where did these new suits come from?
It hardly mattered where at this point. Enzo Peretti did not get to his current rank
without contingency planning. And he knew what he needed to do, even though it meant putting
more of his men into the murder machine that the Jovian Tai-i said was an easy target.
"McCauley," Peretti said. "Lupo. I say again, lupo."
He bracketed the scarlet MS in his sights. That would serve as a good start to the side
party he was preparing for his men when they arrived at where they were going. "Red Comet, my
ass!" he breathed as his lead reticle merged with the target reticle, prompting him to
squeeze the trigger for his shoulder-mounted beam cannons.
"Hull integrity failing! Get us out of here, si--aaarrgh!" Carraba said shortly before
the black MS put a beam rifle shot through his cockpit. At that instant, milliseconds before
Peretti's beams would have hit, the scarlet MS flitted out of harm's way.
It really -is- the Red Comet, he thought. Impossible!
The last thing Enzo Peretti saw was yellow light filling his cockpit.
[More Zoloats inbound! Seven of them, coming in at bearing 294 mark 30! Designating as
Virgo Wing! And they're locked onto us!]
The bridge had noticed the new arrivals too, for no sooner had Cortana completed her
thought than Henken's face appeared in the comm window. "Jay, you're cleared for immediate
launch!"
"Roger," Jay replied, before a crooked smile creased his face. He couldn't resist
saying the next thing that came to his mind. "Red Five, I'm going in!"
[You've seen that movie too many times,] Cortana noted.
Jay didn't bother to comment on that statement. He didn't even bother with the launcher
sled, preferring instead to push off the catapult deck and launch manually. Only after he got
about 200 meters away from Ahgama, he said, "Awful lot of them."
[Don't think of it as being vastly outnumbered. Think of it as having an extensive shot
selec-- wait a second.] Cortana's icon smiled that crooked smile of hers, the kind that made
Jay wonder whether or not she was subconsciously imitating him, or if he was imitating her.
[You might find this interesting.]
A woman's voice rang out across the general comm frequency, shouting "PSYCHO BLASTER!"
# Aerosmith "Nine Lives" _Nine Lives_
A pink nimbus of energy suddenly billowed forth from a point behind the oncoming
Zoloats, soon engulfing the rear ranks. Three of the Zoloats withstood this about as well as
sand castles withstand a tsunami, disintegrating within seconds. One of them was tossed on
the wave of the nimbus, but somehow managed to weather the storm with a few dents, scorch
marks, and slow reaction mass leaks. The wave's momentum petered out before it could engulf
the three lead Zoloats of Virgo Wing, collapsing back upon itself to reveal an ultratech
Valkyrie (in the more traditional sense of the word). Whatever this was, it was made to look
like a woman in ornate form-fitting silver armor, with gold plating on the chest plastron and
the pelvic region, and large shoulder pauldrons with what looked like large green gems on
them. She stood in space with her arms at her sides, her long pink hair beginning to settle
down her back from where it had blown straight up, as if being driven by an unseen wind.
"This must be a popular section of space," Cortana quipped over a hailing frequency
before Jay could say anything. "It attracts the finest people."
A comm window opened, except the icon was the upraised flaming sword of the Divine
Crusaders. A woman's face soon replaced the icon. Jay immediately noticed that she wore no
pressure suit at all, rather a white tank top that accentuated her athletic frame. Her straw
colored hair, which hung well below her shoulders, was kept out of her eyes by a dark blue
headband. Her face bore a look of surprise for a second before she cracked a smile. "Good to
see you too, Cortana," she replied sardonically. "How did you ever get roped into PT
sitting-- never mind, it'd take too long to explain..." The armored warrior-woman mech lit
her reaction thrusters, dancing out of the way of the damaged Zoloat's beam cannon fire.
"Hey!" the unfamiliar girl shouted. "You'll pay for that! DIVINE ARM!"
The mech (which Jay's HUD immediately bracketed as green for friendly and identified as
"Ryuune -- Valcione R") made a motion with her right arm as if to draw a sword, and
instantly, a sheathed sword appeared in front of her. Taking the scabbard in her left hand,
the Valcione drew the sword with her right and then tossed the scabbard away, which caused it
to wink out of existence, returning to whatever pocket dimension it came from. She redlined
her thrusters toward the Zoloat that shot at her, spinning out of its line of fire before
slicing it in half at the waist with the sword.
Torres broke in on the conversation with a comm window of his own. "Jay, fire in the
hole! Repeat, fire in the hole!"
The Ahgama opened up with its portside main batteries, laying down a blistering
fusillade to keep the remainder of Virgo Wing at bay. Jay took aim at the lead Zoloat and
squeezed off a shot from his Subach. The Zoloat was already dodging wildly, so Jay's shot hit
a leg as opposed to the torso area.
However, the shot from the Subach ruptured a reaction mass tank built into the Zoloat's
shin. Copiously venting reaction mass, the Zoloat lost control for a split second, and veered
straight into one of Ahgama's shots, which finished what the Huckevine MkII had started in
spectacular fashion.
Cortana's voice echoed in Jay's mind, [Incoming!]
Amongst the fire coming at the attacking suits, Jay could see little grappling hooks,
glowing from within, fan out like tendrils and claw through space, looking to ensnare his
Huckevine. He sighted, made a little correction, and fired his Subach again. This time,
however, that shot punched right through the center of the Zoloat's mass, less than a meter
above the cockpit. The reactor went supercritical almost instantly, consuming the Zoloat in a
nuclear fireball before the grappling hooks could reach their target. Suddenly deprived of
their control mechanisms, the grapples dissipated into the void of space.
Tenente McCauley could hardly believe it. He had expected some Minovsky interference
from the ship as his team closed in, even the Ready-5 mech that launched and took down
Sottotenentes Marvell and Hutch, but how could he have missed that FemmeMech before it showed
up on his lidar screen? By the time that happened, there was nothing he could do except
figuratively take it up the tailpipe. And retreat was not an option, not for an officer of
the BESPA. McCauley had seen too many beheadings and "exiles" for that. The only way out of
this was through the path of most resistance. He locked on to the mech in front of him and
triggered his beam string launcher...
"Oh, you did -not- shoot that silly string at me!" Jay growled as he whipped the
Huckevine through a snap-roll, looking to evade the grapples. Unfortunately for Jay, this
driver had more practice with that weapon. No sooner than Jay brought his Subach to bear did
the grapples embed themselves into the Huckevine's right arm and both legs, drawing them
tight around the PT's body as the strings pulled taut.
It's official, Jay thought. I'm in trouble.
Quattro burned straight for the unknown mobile armor, with Camille at his heels.
Something about this didn't feel quite right, though. The closer he got, the more intense the
under-pressure sensation became. It was almost as bad as it was seven years ago, during a
knock-down drag-out fight at A'bao'a'qu with an enraged Amuro Ray. Jay probably had it right
all along, he thought as he brought his beam pistol up to shoot. The yellow beam shot forth,
like it always did.
Only to miss by a good five meters as the mobile armor snap-rolled away with
contemptous ease.
Quattro couldn't believe it. He didn't -ever- miss. Not that badly.
Scirocco smiled thinly. He had a feeling about who the pilot of that red MS was. The
feeling he got as it got closer confirmed it.
I know who you are, he thought. Now it gets interesting.
"And so it begins, Char!" he shouted, firing a double salvo from his missile pods.
[This is not an improvement.]
He had to agree with Cortana's assessment of the situation. With his Huckevine's rifle
arm strapped to his body by those strings, Jay had no shot. And that mech wasn't going to
oblige him by getting in vulcan range. The Zoloat drew its beam rifle and aimed it dead
center.
[Do we have the Gravity Wall yet?] Jay sent frantically.
[Negative. These wires are interfering with the generation process. Whatever you do, I
suggest you do it fast!]
[Wait a minute... I wasn't thinking.] He tabbed over to another weapon. [I swear, I'd
lose my head it if wasn't attached...]
[You've also been awake for over 20 hours, with 3 combat sorties in the same period,
including this one. Given your relative lack of experience with extended deployments, this
was to be expected.]
[That too.]
The comm window opened again, this time revealing a baroque shield with a wreath under
it, bearing the letter Z. The pilot's face, concealed by his visor, leered at Jay. "Anything
to say before I send you to Hell?" the pilot asked gruffly.
Jay answered with one of his crooked half-smiles.
"Chakram Shooter, mutha fugga!"
McCauley looked on in horror as a disk shot through space from the mech he thought he
had immobilized. Before he could even pull the trigger for his beam rifle, the disk sawed
through the barrel like it was made of butter and narrowly missed his Zoloat's head. The
damage alarm howled as the cable the disk was attached to wound around the Zoloat, making the
disk dig into its waist. A section of the pilot's compartment began to glow as the disk sawed
through, and the Zanscare officer saw he was doomed. He said the only appropriate thing for
an officer of the BESPA to say in such situations.
"Vive la regina Maria! Vive Zans--"
And then he could say no more.
['Chakram Shooter, mutha fugga'?] Cortana wondered, her puzzlement obvious from her
expression. [I've heard of 'go', 'ike', or even 'hasshin', but this is the first time I've
ever heard that used for the voice-activated trigger.] Her icon shrugged. [You are now
officially punchy.]
"Are you all right?" the blonde asked as she thrusted over to the entangled Huckevine.
"Just a little tied up right now," Jay replied, "but I'm ok."
"Oh, that's right!" Cortana said, as if she remembered something. "This is Jay Denton,
my pilot. Jay Denton, I'd like you to meet Ryuune Zoldark."
"Zoldark?" Jay asked. "As in Dr. Bian Zoldark?" Dr. Zoldark was the founder of the
Divine Crusaders, believing that the crashed spacecraft on the Atalia island chain (which
resulted in the treaty of the similar name that ended the One Year War) was the vanguard of
an imminent alien invasion.
A shadow cast itself across Ryuune's face for half a second. "Yeah," she said,
suppressing her momentary angst by sheer force of will. "I'm his daughter."
"Pleased to meet you," Jay said. "What brings you all the way out here?"
"Oh," Ryuune replied breezily as she cut the Huckevine loose, "I was in the
neighborhood and thought you could use a hand."
"Well, if you're not too busy, there's one more bad guy out here."
Ryuune grinned ferally and nodded once. "Then what are we waiting for?!"
The two mecha turned and thrusted towards the distant firefight.
Quattro thrusted like crazy to get away from the roiling storm of missiles. He twirled
around and put a single shot from his beam pistol into a grouping, hitting a missile squarely
and causing it to detonate prematurely, taking a number of its fellows with it.
Which left three more flights, coming in hot. They were just ordinary guided missiles,
easily spoofed, but a great many just the same. After a few heavy manuevers, one flight ran
out of fuel and exploded short of the red Rick Dias, followed by another. The last flight, on
the other hand, was almost upon him.
He knew the Rick Dias could take a couple of hits, but the mental pressure was telling
him that he couldn't afford to take even one. He brought his beam pistol to bear, hoping to
make one last shot that could destroy the volley like his first shot had done...
When he saw a black shape dive in front of him.
Quattro's eyes widened behind his helmet visor. "Camille..." he breathed.
Scirocco had to salute the pilot of the black MS that the last flight of missiles had
locked on to. Truly a noble gesture, albeit a futile one.
As the explosions from the impacting missiles tore the eternal night, something pricked
the edges of his perception, much like rocks being thrown into a pond and causing ripples.
And he was getting two big ripples, in the form of new sources of pressure. The explosions
cleared in time for him to regard the black Gundam, its shield cratered and smoking, but
still active as it fired a blast from its beam rifle that struck the Messala on the outside
of one of the sloped thrust pods.
"Heh," Scirocco snickered. "Somebody actually hit me. Amusing." He checked his scopes
at the same time he reached out with his mind, and not only felt the pressure from Char and
the black Gundam, but from another unit entirely, thrusting to intercept. "Helios," he
radioed, "I've overstayed my welcome."
Helios's face appeared a split second later. "Acknowledged," he said.
The AEUG needs to be chastised for this, Scirocco thought. But it would have to be done
by those with the manpower to soak potential losses. Yes, those people would do nicely.
For another persona resided within the body of the Jovian Tai-i, namely that of Titans
Hauptmann Paptimus Scirocco. The JHDF had sent him to the inner planets as a liasion to the
Titans, as part of an initiative to renew relations with the Earth. The Titans had responded
by giving him a matching commission in their own forces (they named their field captains in
Zeonic fashion). Seeing as how this attack was going nowhere, it was time to throw the
organization that adopted him a bone. There was just one last thing to take care of here...
For a brief moment, Jay had a vision of a dark cloud surrounding the unknown mobile
weapon, with intermittent streaks of light running through it. Shaking his head and blinking
his eyes, it appeared as normal, artfully dodging two beams before its throttle was driven to
the firewall, quickly picking up speed as it hurtled straight for the Ahgama. Jay didn't even
notice the "UNIDENTIFIED" on his target track window pulse for a second and change to
"Messala", so engrossed was he in predicting where his target was going. The course it was on
certainly left little to the imagination...
He wasn't trying to ram the ship, was he?
Henken saw the same thing. "Evasive action!" he shouted. "All hands, brace for impact!"
Just before the Messala would have crossed the point of no return, it pulled up on a
reciprocal heading from Ahgama's course, with both its beam cannons carving furrows into the
great ship's starboard engine before its vector and speed took it clear of the engagement.
"Damage report," Henken said, thankful the bastard didn't take a shot at the bridge
while he wasn't wearing a pressure suit.
"Fires in starboard engine block, sir," replied Miguel Torres, the helmsman. "Drive
output down to 60%."
"Dammit," muttered Henken. "A lightning-strike pass. He wasn't trying to destroy us,
but cripple us instead."
"Somebody get those fires out!" Quattro said as he led the vanguard back to the ship.
"I'm on it," Reccoa Rondo said as she eased her Methuss alongside Ahgama, spraying fire
retardant from a nozzle in her left hand actuator. The Methuss was a spindly little MS with
comparatively large vambraces, pauldrons, and greaves, making it look like a little kid in
the pre-diaspora Middle Ages trying on his father's armor. Because of the full suite of
damage control tools it carried, the Methuss was classified as what was colloquially known as
a NannyMech -- good for repairs and other support work, but by no means a frontline combat
machine.
Quattro punched up his hailing frequency. "White Base, this is Red Leader. Your skies
are clear, last bogey's bugging out."
"Acknowledged, Red Leader," came the reply. "And thanks."
The day's frenzied pace of activity was taking its toll on Jay Denton. He could barely
stay awake long enough to back the Huckevine into its hangar billet aboard Ahgama.
"Are you all right?" Cortana asked.
"I will be when I get some sleep," Jay half-mumbled through a cavernous yawn. Through
his zoom window, he could see Ryuune walking the hangar deck, stretching her body as taut as
a bowstring, with her hands clasped above her head and arms at full extension. Being
something of an aesthete (to say nothing of being a healthy male human), he could've watched
her all day, but his eyelids took this moment to gain five more pounds, reminding him of just
how tired he was. "The thing is, I don't know if I can make it out of this chair..."
In the days leading up to the Diaspora, Russian scientists had discovered a
bio-feedback sequence that bypassed the other stages of the sleep cycle in favor of pure REM
sleep. Using this sequence, eight hours of sleep could be compressed into two. Cortana knew
the procedure, and she also figured Jay would raise sixteen flavors of hell when he found out
he was slipped a neural-induced mickey. But she also knew that they weren't nearly out of the
woods just yet. And their continued survival depended on his continued well-being.
Muffled knocking came from the cockpit hatch. "Is everything all right in there?"
Cortana found Astonage's suit radio frequency and replied, "Oh, just let the kid sleep.
I'll keep an eye on him."
"Ok, Cortana, we'll repair, rearm, and refuel as quietly as we can." Astonage replied
with a bit of a chuckle.
She looked back toward Jay, watching him slumber. He had already been through so much,
she thought, and yet there will be much more to come. Of that she was certain. Whatever the
accident had brought them together, it was in the past. For Jay Denton had been placed in her
keeping, and while she couldn't protect him from all the slings and arrows of outrageous
fortune, she would be there to ensure he didn't have to take up arms against the onrushing
sea of troubles alone.
It's official. No more Shakespeare for this girl, at least for a while, anyway.
She bent over to Jay's ear, her icon at full size. "If there's anything you want --
anything at all -- come to me," she whispered, quoting a song from one of Jay's mini-disks.
"I'll be your guardian angel." The whisper produced no visible response from Jay, although it
must be noted that his dreamscape became a little more pleasant.
At length, Ryuune laid her Valcione's hand on the Huckevine's shoulder. Cortana opened
a contact channel to her, sending her icon to appear in Ryuune's comm window. "What's so
important that you have to get going right away?" she asked.
"It's Father," Ryuune replied. "He's gone missing."
"You're kidding," breathed Cortana in response.
"He was out on a tour of Mars and that's all anybody's ever heard of him since. I was
hoping somebody here might know more."
"I don't know, Ryuune; relatively speaking, I just got here myself. I wish there was
something I could do, but as it stands, my resources are rather limited. I'll keep you posted
if I find anything."
"Thanks. What's going on with your pilot?"
"Oh, don't mind him. He's had a long day."
"Aww," Ryuune said. "I was hoping to talk with him more. He sounded kinda cute."
"He grows on you," Cortana replied with a trace of a smile.
"Pretty good flying back there, kid," Sleggar said to Camille as he entered the launch
bay aboard the Ahgama, where the evacuees from the White Base were being lined up in
preparation for berthing aboard the other ships in the growing AEUG task force.
"You were no slouch either," Camille replied. "Then again, you were a Legionnaire. This
probably was a walk in the park for you."
"Actually, I had to sit the first half out. I wish Amuro could've been here. He'd have
handed those raiders their lungs. Oh well, at least we got the next best thing."
Camille would have asked Sleggar what he meant by that, but a soft black-haired missile
slammed into him with a cry of "CAMILLE!!!" Both people were sent flying into the
microgravity of the launch bay and were free-floating by the time Camille was able to hold
her at arm's length to see who she was. "Fa?" he asked, as if he was waking from a dream.
"I never thought I'd see you again," Fa said, burying her face into Camille's shoulder.
They held each other in silence until inertia carried them to a high ledge, which Camille sat
on. Fa picked this moment to completely break down, sobbing on Camille's shoulder. "Fa,
what's wrong?" he asked.
Fa sniffed. "The Titans arrested my parents," she managed between sobs, "on Colonel
Ohm's direct orders."
Camille was shocked. "Why would they do that?" he asked. "They've got nothing to do
with this!"
"They did it because you stole the Gundam MkII, and I--" Fa said before grief overcame
her once again.
Camille did the only thing he could do in this situation. He sat there, holding Fa
while thinking black thoughts towards the Titans. Presently, his ruminations ventured into
more familiar territory, momentarily interrupting his brooding.
If they could detain Fa's parents because she's my friend, then what could they do to
my own?
Both Camille's parents were with the Titans' SciTech Division -- his father being a MS
designer, while his mother was a metallurgist. Their marriage was currently on the rocks, and
both of them immersed themselves in their work, leaving Camille to fend for himself most
nights. It had been that way ever since Hilda Vidan found out her husband was cheating on
her. Rather than go through messy divorce proceedings -- which she had every right to do, in
Camille's opinion -- she stayed with him.
Despite a home life that came straight from one of Jerry Rivers's more lurid shows, the
thought of the Titans detaining his parents troubled Camille more than the news he had
recently received.
Yuko Hashimoto paced around a round, grey room, featureless save for the low ceiling,
the light globes placed equidistantly around the room's diameter, ventilator grilles (too
small to crawl through) a couple feet below the globes, an armchair that was securely bolted
to the floor, and the heavy door that faced the chair. She had been pacing around the room
for the better part of five minutes, looking for some kind of way out. Of course, she
thought, there's always another way out. Focus, girl, focus...
She wasn't wearing her skinsuit. Instead, she was wearing some loose-fitting gray smock
and trousers which resembled surgical scrubs. All she remembered after the escape pod
launched was waking up in this room, dressed in this getup. She was slightly relieved to
discover that no liberties had been taken with her, but that did nothing to help her out of
this predicament. She stopped at the door and took a side kick at where she guessed the latch
would be, but it held. She lunged at it, trying to shoulder it open, with no results. She had
taken to banging on the door with her fists when a calm, level, almost bored voice called out
in Japanese over the loudspeaker, "Please stop that, Hashimoto-san. You'll hurt yourself if
you persist, and we cannot allow that."
"Why not?" Yuko replied, her eyes darting around the room looking for the speaker.
"We have our orders."
"From who?" Silence. "I'm waiting..." The silence stretched. Yuko took a few more
steps. "Who gave you those orders?"
"We're not at liberty to discuss that, Hashimoto-san. Surely you must know that by
now."
She flung her arms out to her sides in a plaintive gesture. "What do you want from
me?!"
"We want to know what you remember after escaping the EMS Marathon."
"I told you a thousand times," Yuko replied, her annoyance readily apparent, "I don't
remember anything."
"Do you remember a Jason, or Jay, Denton?"
Yuko planted her fists on her hips and rolled her eyes. "I have no idea who you're
talking about. This whole line of questioning is pointless, anyway."
"Your vital signs suggest you're being somewhat less than honest," the voice replied,
its tone shifting from solictious to accusatory. "In fact, you're just trying to avoid any
further discomfort, for yourself or anyone else, by telling us what you think we'd like to
hear."
"Look, I said I don't know this Denton character, and I don't remember what happened
after the escape pod launched! I don't even know where I am -now-, except in some tiny stall
which nobody wants to let me out of, trying to answer questions that you should know I don't
have the answers to!"
"-Don't think-, Hashimoto-san. Just tell us the truth."
"Give it a rest already," Yuko growled.
"What happened after your pod ejected from the Marathon?"
"I don't remember."
"Do you know a Jay Denton?"
"I SAID I DON'T KNOW HIM!" She took a swing at the light globes, which resisted all of
her attempts to break them. Ignoring the voice's pleas to stop, she went on to bang on the
door, and kept banging on the door with her fists until gas billowed into the room from the
vents. Yuko collapsed to the floor as the gas started to take effect, her enraged screams
dying on her lips as she lapsed into unconsciousness.
At length, the door opened to admit a rating, wearing a full-face gas mask with his
upper-body clamshell armor that had a reversed S-like glyph on the left breast.
"KT-1198," the voice said, "prepare the sample for transport."
------------
From: Col. Bosque Ohm (COMOPSTAN)
To: Hpt. Franklin Vidan, Titans SciTech Division
Lt. Hilda Vidan, Titans SciTech Division
Subject: Current Orders -- Read Immediately
Priority: Highest
You are hereby requested and required to proceed aboard the Titan destroyer Alexandria
(TTD-01), there to conduct extensive field studies on enemy mobile suits. You are to arrive
at Docking Bay 2, Gripps 2, no later than 1730 hours today.
------------
***
There's something happening here
What it is ain't exactly clear
There's a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware
I think it's time we stop, children, what's that sound?
Everybody look what's going down
There's battle lines being drawn
Nobody's right if everybody's wrong
Young people speaking their minds
Are getting so much resistance from behind
It's time we stop, hey, what's that sound?
Everybody look what's going down
What a field day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Singing songs and carrying signs
Mostly say, "Hooray for our side"
It's time we stop, hey, what's that sound?
Everybody look what's going down
Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you're always afraid
Step outta line, the man come and take you away
We better stop, hey, what's that sound?
Everybody look what's going down
We better stop, hey, what's that sound?
Everybody look what's going down
We better stop, now, what's that sound?
Everybody look what's going down
We better stop, children, what's that sound?
Everybody look what's going down
-- Buffalo Springfield, "For What It's Worth"
Phase 3b: Ohm's Law
***
Of all the words Jay Denton ever dreamed he'd see printed next to his name, "Wanted In
Any Condition" ranked near the bottom of the list. It was the newspeak for "Wanted Dead Or
Alive", and under the auspices of the Titans, had been seen on more than a few wanted posters
out towards the Moon and the Vivarium-style colony cylinders of Side 3, on Luna's dark side.
But hardly anyone referred to that place as Side 3 anymore, instead using the name that was
coined almost twenty years ago: the Principality of Zeon. For the Titans to get anything done
so close to the heart of Zeonic space, catering to bounty hunters or people willing to sell
somebody out for a rich reward was necessary.
Nevertheless, there it was, on a poster tacked to the White Base's bulletin board:
"WANTED IN ANY CONDITION -- Jason Charles Denton", complete with a file photo taken of him
for his Mao Industries ID badge. Jay was also surprised to find "Camille [NMN] Vidan" on a
similar poster next to his.
"Well, now," said a voice behind him. "Looks like you just got your fifteen minutes of
fame." Jay turned around to regard a man taller than him, solidly built, with close-cut brown
hair and a close-trimmed beard. His brown eyes always seemed to be squinting, even in the
lowest light. He was dressed in an armored pressure suit, which marked him as a marine. He
extended his hand. "Jim Raynor. I used to be an Outworld Marshal, now I command the marine
detachment aboard the Ahgama." Noting Jay's apprehensiveness at the mention of his former
occupation, he continued, "Don't worry, I'm not going to arrest you. The Major showed me the
battle ROMs of your first sortie; I know you were set up."
"Well," Jay replied, "you certainly don't wake up to find you've been declared a menace
to society every day."
"Actually, I'm here to take you back to the Ahgama. The Major wants to have a word with
you."
"If it's about the Fizz-Wizz in the shower head, I can explain--"
"It's nothing as bad as you're thinking."
"Good. I don't even -like- Fizz-Wizz."
Raynor eyed Jay with a half-hearted dirty look. "Are you always this much of a
smartass?"
"Look," Jay answered, "it hasn't even been 24 hours since the Marathon was attacked.
You have the day I've had, you'd be feeling a little punchy too."
"Careful with that talk, Denton," Raynor replied sharply, all business. His tone
lightened somewhat as he said, "You're beginning to remind me of me."
"Here you go, Major," Raynor said as he stood aside to let Jay enter the pilots' ready
room. "One Personal Trooper pilot, still breathing."
"Thank you, Major," Quattro Bajina acknowledged.
Jay looked back toward the marine commander with some confusion. "I'm as much of a
major as he is," Raynor explained before he excused himself.
The impromptu nap seemed to help Jay's spirits somewhat, Quattro thought. Jay had
finally found some civvies aboard White Base, and was now wearing a blue and white striped
flannel shirt over a black t-shirt for an obscure Descartes Dome band called Hangman's Joke,
along with a pair of tan cargo pants.
Camille asked, "I had read about Amuro Ray in several underground newspapers, before
Green Noah 2 was made into a base. Do you suppose he's with the Titans?"
Quattro shook his head. "If we knew where Amuro Ray -was-, we'd bring him in in a
heartbeat. From what we've been able to piece together, the Federation's got him in the
equivalent of a glass case that says 'Break Only In The Event Of A Hot War'. Given the
Titans' recent activities, he's too much of a risk to be brought to the front lines.
"But we are forgetting ourselves," he went on, turning to indicate Jay. "Come, sit."
"Ok," Jay said as he sat down. "But if I hear anything like 'Remember, this is the
Quickening', I'm outta here."
"So, as I was saying before," Quattro said, picking up where he left off, "it appears
the Gundam MkII is just a MkII -- a few improvements here and there, but nothing really
worldshaking."
"I heard my dad say he was looking to aggressively incorporate Zeonic technology into
future MS designs," Camille said. "But this whole business seems so unreal. General Forra
asked if I'd like to do this full-time. He even went so far as to say that most of the
Thirteenth Independent Legion were about the same age as me when they got called up. But this
whole Titans-AEUG conflict just isn't my fight." He pointed to Jay. "You, me, and now Fa...
we all got caught up in it. My parents design and build stuff for the Titans. That's -all-
they do."
Jay reached down into the collar of his shirt. "Lemme show you something." He took out
the photograph holder and showed it to Camille.
"Nice," Camille noted. "Is she your girl?"
"Her name was Yuko Hashimoto. We grew up not more than a couple blocks away from each
other. I'd've really liked for you to meet her. Unfortunately, that's not possible..." He
took a deep breath. God, he thought, this doesn't get any easier, does it? At length, he
closed his eyes. "Because she was on the ship I was on when the goddamned Titans blew it out
of the sky. And all because they wanted their grubby hands on what was inside. I was the only
one who survived." He waggled the photograph holder for emphasis before he put it away. "This
is all I have left to remind me of her. You may say that this isn't your fight until the sun
explodes, but for me, it's personal."
Camille sighed. "I had no idea," he breathed.
"'Salright," Jay said.
"Does the name 'Char Aznable' ring a bell?" Quattro asked.
The apparent non sequitur caused both boys to blink.
Camille broke the silence with a nod. "I respect him. He tried to bring down the Zabis,
out of revenge for his own dead family. But he was a fool. He tried to do it all by himself
and failed."
"Yes," replied Quattro with a nod. "Yes, he did. His situation was not unlike the one
you two are in now. But he also felt that getting his own personal feelings out in the open
was the first step toward creating a better tomorrow. Not just for himself, but for
everyone."
"So that's why you asked us to come here," Jay said.
"I still don't see how this has anything to do with me," Camille noted. "It's quite a
big jump from 'opposing the Titans' to 'making the world a better place'."
"Our actions all have an impact on the future," Quattro replied. "Whether we take an
active role in its creation or not. The climate in the Earth Federation government has
changed, and not for the better."
"My uncle Morgan said something to me around the time the War started," Jay added,
inserting his impression of his uncle's Neo-Gaelic (not exactly Irish, not exactly Scottish)
accent that emerged when he was at home or felt strongly about something where appropriate.
"He said, 'Jay, me boy, people are never more frightening than when they're quite convinced
they're right.' I had no idea what he meant at the time; I mean, I was only eleven. For the
longest time, I wondered what he was talking about." He took a deep breath. "I don't wonder
about that anymore. It used to be because I had other things on my mind. But now? I finally
understand what he was getting at."
Quattro nodded. "Collective behavior can be scary. However, there's an undercurrent
that I believe your uncle missed. Zeon Daikun called it 'the gravity well'. It's doubtlessly
been called by other names in the past, but what it is..." He took a drink of water. "It's a
spiritual sickness, for lack of a better term. Can you believe that humanity's top scientists
once believed that the Earth was the center of the universe? And anybody who dared disagree
back then was labelled as a heretic, imprisoned, or otherwise cast out of society. Even now,
given that the Earth still has many wounds it needs to heal from generations of thoughtless
industry, there are still those who, in their own way, see the Earth as the center of the
universe. Except they see it as a crown jewel or a seat of power; something to lord it over
the masses with. There's perfectly good colonizable living space everywhere else, but people
still look towards Earth.
"Zeon Daikun postulated that this was so because the Earth's gravity was holding the
very souls of people to it."
"What difference does -that- make?" Camille asked. "Like people's souls are any of my
business! You can't expect me to die for something as nebulous as people's souls!"
"What -would- you die for?" Quattro asked.
Camille didn't have an answer for that. He sat there, lost in thought. After a while,
he asked, "Why do you fight?"
Quattro shrugged. "I'm good at it. Certainly not much good at anything else, that's for
sure. Otherwise, I'd probably have a wife waiting for me back home." He would have gone on,
but the intercom phone rang. Picking it up out of years of ingrained habit, he said, "Major
Bajina."
"You'd better get down to the hangar," Henken said. "We've got three suits coming in on
an intercept vector."
"Configuration?"
"Titans." A pause. "You'd better see this for yourself."
"So," Brex Forra said from his post alongside the center seat, "they intend to parley."
"That's what it looks like, sir," Miguel Torres said as he looked at the magnified view
at a Gundam MkII and two Hizacks (the Federation's high-thrust version of the venerable
Zaku), with the Gundam flying a white flag.
"Achilles One to Ahgama, come in," a female voice said over the radio.
"We read you, Achilles One," replied Lou Caesar, Ahgama's aeroboss.
"I have a communique from Colonel Bosque Ohm, for Brex Forra."
"Copy that, Achilles One. Be prepared to surrender your sidearm on landing."
The Gundam MkII alighted on the launch catapult, but did not enter the hangar. A
lithesome form in a black pressure suit floated down from the open hatch to the deck. "Be
advised," the pilot said as she withdrew her sidearm slowly, "that if anybody but myself
approaches this Gundam, my escort will consider it a hostile act."
"She came alone?" Raynor asked through helmet-to-helmet contact, giving voice to
Quattro's thoughts. "She's got guts, I'll give her that."
Quattro nodded as the pilot presented her pistol butt-first to Jim Raynor, who then
ejected the clip and racked the slide back before putting it in his pressure suit's cargo
pocket and handing the clip to one of his assistants. The marine pocketed the clip before
opening the personnel airlock, which the side party then proceeded through.
Numerous whispered murmurings greeted the side party as they walked deeper into the
corridors of the ship.
"She came by herself?"
"Oh man, she's -fine!-"
"You're wasting your time, Belfour! She's a Titan, through and through!"
Emma looked over toward the blue-haired youth standing in a junction as the party
passed by it, wondering if she knew him from somewhere.
"Camille," Jay asked as he floated over to the gathering crowd in the corridor, "who's
Snow White?"
"That's Lieutenant Emma Sheen," Camille replied.
"You sound like you know her."
"Kinda. I don't think she remembers me or the meeting, though."
"Whatever. I'm hungry. You want anything?"
Camille shook his head and watched the side party until it disappeared around the
corner.
"The Colonel," Emma said as she tucked a strand of dark brown hair behind her ear,
"would appreciate a reply soonest." She, along with the triumvirate of Ahgama's senior
command staff, had gathered in the wardroom, where Bright Noah was already waiting. Right
now, Emma was proud of herself for not showing any visible reaction to Bright's presence.
Brex took the communique, extracted it from the envelope, and started to read. Within a
few seconds, his hands started quivering as if he wanted to strangle the communique's author.
He handed the communique off to Henken, who read it before passing it along to Bright. While
this was going on, the commander-in-chief of the AEUG took a few breaths, counted to ten, and
then asked, "Lieutenant, are you familiar with the contents of this message?"
"No, sir. I was instructed to deliver it to you."
"Your diligence is commendable," Bright said as he passed it along to Quattro, "but I
assure you that if you had read the message, you would not be so blase."
Quattro scanned it for a few moments before looking at Brex with a questioning look,
which the latter returned with a nod. He then handed the communique to Emma, who began to
read silently at first, but started subvocalizing shortly thereafter, her volume rising the
further down the page she got:
From: Colonel Bosque Ohm, Titans
To: General Brex Forra, AEUG
You are to return the Gundam MkII prototype immediately, along with the individual who stole
it, a Camille Vidan of our mutual acquaintance. Arrangements for the return shall be made
through the bearer of this communique.
If the Gundam MkII and subject Vidan are not returned within one hour of receipt of this
communique, we are prepared to execute the parents of subject Vidan. I strongly urge you to
not let your pride sign their death warrants.
END COMMUNIQUE
Emma looked up at the assembled men, her eyes wide in horror, her face drained of
color. "Oh my God," she breathed.
"Altogether," Brex said flatly, "shameless, brutal, high-handed, and in all respects
everything I've come to expect from the Titans."
Emma was still in shock. "This can't be..."
"With all respect to you, that ultimatum sounds like it came from a two-bit mob boss
rather than a military officer!"
"No professional army would ever draft such terms..."
"That's because the Titans aren't run like a professional army, but rather a private
one."
"I still remember my oath to the Federation," Emma retorted firmly, holding Bright
Noah's gaze pointedly as she said it. "Nowhere in it was an oath of personal loyalty to the
Colonel."
"Perhaps it is something of a misnomer," Brex continued. "The Titans are not beholden
to a single man, but to a set of rules -- drafted by men whose souls are bound to Earth's
gravity well, unable to fly freely!"
"Not even the Zeeks went this far," Henken concurred.
"Still," Quattro pondered, "if I may play devil's advocate here, it may be a bluff."
Brex sat down in the wardroom chair. "I assure you, Major, that this is no bluff. If I
know anything about Bosque Ohm, it's that he's crazy enough to do this."
"I concur," Bright added. "He likes to think that he's never wrong." He tested the
bandage on his forehead. "Empirical research would bear this out."
"Somebody's going to have to sit on Camille and Jay," Quattro replied. "If they get
wind of this, there's no telling what they'll do."
An Earth Federation Navy wag whose name is lost in the mists of antiquity once said
that the only thing that travels faster than rumors aboard ship is light. Two of Jim Raynor's
marines stationed outside the wardroom couldn't help but overhear as the conversation within
became more and more heated. One of them ostensibly excused himself to make a "head call".
From there, the word spread.
The Titans have hostages.
Jay was eyeing the admittedly slim pickings in the caf's vending machines with some
distaste. He had apparently missed the regular serving hours, because the shutters were
already closed over the counter and serving line. And here he was, with no cash to his name.
Who puts coin-operated vending machines in starships? he wondered. They were working on
getting him a credit chit, but that hadn't materialized yet. He was just about to resign
himself to tightening his belt when a door near the galley proper opened and a petite girl in
skirt and school sweater started to wheel out a cart laden with to-go boxes. "Mind if I have
one?" he asked.
She turned to stare at him. "These are for the crew," she said.
"Ok, bad start." He scratched the back of his neck rather sheepishly. "My name's Jay,
and I drive that Huckevine MkII you may have seen while boarding."
"Well, why didn't you say so?" she asked as she took a box off the cart and handed it
to him.
He had just started digging into the noodles and chatting up the server girl when
somebody else came into the caf, heading toward the galley door. "Did you hear about the
hostages?" he asked just a little too loudly. "Turns out they're that kid's parents!"
Fa turned white. She turned toward the door, the lunch cart forgotten.
Her reaction was not lost on Jay Denton. "Excuse me," he said, drawing her attention
back to him as he picked up the biscuit, "but I have work to do."
"God damn that man," Astonage Meddoso spat. He turned to one of his crew chiefs. "Rafe,
did you get all that?"
"Yeah," Rafael Esquivel answered. "But how can they be hostages?"
Astonage took one of Rafe's arms and steered him out of the room into a vestibule.
"Because they're Camille's parents, that's why!" he whispered harshly, nodding once in the
direction of the blue-haired kid trying to chew the edge of his thumbnail through a pressure
suit.
"Now get that Gundam ready!" Astonage said in a normal tone of voice as the two
technicians left the corridor for the hangar.
Camille looked up. "Hostages?" he muttered.
"Yeah," a passerby said. "They're related to that kid..." The passerby's voice trailed
off as he realized who he was talking to.
"Is this true?" Camille asked, a plaintive expression on his face.
"Captain, I've got a strange lidar contact off the port bow," Torres's voice said over
the intercom.
"What is it?" Henken asked.
"Hard to tell what it is, though. Maybe some sort of capsule."
"On the wardroom screen."
The picture resolved into a klaster-walled cylindrical capsule, with a small
manuevering engine at its base. What was inside was indistinct, but vaguely human in shape.
"I'm on my way, Torres. Deploy a camera probe."
"Aye, sir."
In a Hizack designated Achilles Four, Jerrid Messa broke out an envelope he had been
told not to open until the capsule was in sight. For what he had been told at the briefing,
that capsule contained enough explosives to destroy a Salamis-class cruiser. He opened the
envelope and began to read.
From: Cdr. Jamican Dannigan
To: Lt. Jerrid Messa
Subject: Current Orders
You are to DESTROY repeat DESTROY the capsule if hostile forces make ANY attempt to retrieve
it.
"Aye aye, Commander," Jerrid said. "I won't let you down!"
Lou Caesar plied the imaging controls for the feed from the camera probe, not believing
what he was seeing. "Captain," he reported, "there's somebody in there!"
Brex turned to Emma. "Now do you understand, Lieutenant?" There's just enough room for
one in there, he thought. Not putting all your eggs in one basket, Bosque? Of course. That
one's so elementary even -you- can grasp it.
"That's impossible," Emma said. "That's gotta be a hologram, or some kind of electronic
camera trick, or something..."
"No, Bosque Ohm is not that subtle."
"Get Camille up here," Henken said. "Let him identify whoever it is in there."
"Camille Vidan, to the bridge on the double!"
By the time that announcement was made over the ship's intercom, Camille was already
heading through the last airlock door into the hangar. As the techs were already absorbed in
other tasks, it was hardly a problem for him to float over to the cockpit of his Gundam.
Powering it up with practiced ease, he said, "Gundam MkII deploying!"
Before anyone else could say anything, the AEUG icon showed up in his comm window, to
reveal Jay's helmeted face. "Apparently," he said, "they also serve those who stand and
design stuff."
"Don't try to stop me, Jay," Camille said. "My mother's out there, and I'm going to
bring her back." Although he had not seen the capsule yet, he somehow knew with every fiber
of his being that the person in the capsule was his mother.
"I know. I've got the feed from the camera probe right here."
"Then what are you doing here?" Camille asked, his Gundam reaching for its beam rifle
located on the bulkhead rack.
"Flying your wing, what does it look like I'm doing?"
"Why are you doing this? You hardly even know me."
"Because you fly off this ship. Because I don't stand for senseless cruelty. Because
I've lost family before, and I'll be damned if I let anybody lose theirs while something
could be done about it. Because if you bite the big one out there, I'm going to be the one
who has to explain it to Fa. Pick one."
Camille looked Jay in the eyes for a second or two before saying, "All right. Just
don't get in the way."
"I'll keep the buzzards off you."
As both mecha poised themselves at the hangar doors, Jay couldn't help wondering when
and where he'd started being the wise elder brother type.
"I say we remove those Hizacks from my sky and then set up the exchange," Brex said.
"Are you sure you want to provoke them like that?" Quattro asked.
"General, we can't fight against two warships with only one engine!" Reccoa Rondo
added. "I say we should just agree to the terms, like the Major said before."
"I'm not about to give Bosque Ohm the satisfaction of having us dance to his tune for
even one second," Henken growled.
Caesar wheeled toward the center seat. "Hangar reports both the Gundam MkII and the
Huckevine MkII have powered up and are proceeding to launch positions!"
Quattro bit short a particularly vile German oath and ran for the hangar, Emma hot on
his heels.
[Ok, Cortana,] Jay sent, [what are we up against?]
[Two Hizacks, designating as Taurus Wing.]
[Is that all? Can we disarm them?]
[Unlikely. In addition to the longarm and melee weapons, there's a 3-tube short range
missile pack on each hip. You'll need more than one shot to do what you're thinking, and they
could light a few flares for reinforcements.]
[Take them hard and fast then?] Cortana nodded. Jay hit the play button on his
mini-disk player, smiling his crooked smile. [Suits me just fine.]
# Dropkick Murphys "The Gauntlet" _Sing Loud, Sing Proud_
Camille had left first, through the port hangar door. Both the Hizacks of Taurus Wing
turned to look at his Gundam MkII. As such, it took their pilots approximately three to four
seconds to recognize that
1) No rendevous signal had been sent
2) Lieutenant Sheen had not approved this launch
3) That particular Gundam MkII was stopping for nothing
Their first impulse was to fire warning shots at the Gundam MkII with their
autocannons, which the Gundam MkII deftly avoided with milliseconds to spare. However,
Camille's attention was firmly fixed on the capsule in the distance.
Fortunately for him, being the focus of the Hizack drivers' attention left them
blissfully unaware of the Huckevine MkII that had floated out from the starboard side door.
And Jay Denton had no qualms about shooting Titans in the back. The first clue any of them
had regarding the Huckevine MkII's deployment came in the form of a bolt of amethyst energy
striking one of them in the back, tearing through the thruster pack. Liquid helium reaction
mass spilled like blood as the explosion spread into the heart of the machine, deep-freezing
the main power coupling before concussive force shattered it. The bolt's exit wound had
missed the reactor, but the Hizack was rendered lifeless just the same.
By now, the remaining Hizack driver in Taurus Wing had realized that a bigger threat
lurked right behind him, and wheeled around to engage this new enemy. But Jay had already
kicked in the boosters, immediately coming parallel to the Hizack. The Titan let loose a
long, rolling burst from his autocannon, but the shells might as well have been hailstones
for all the damage they did.
"Urrrf," Jay grunted from being rattled around in the cockpit. "Fuggoff. Chakram
Shooter, go!"
The chakram obediently shot forth and wrapped itself around the Hizack's waist. Jay
wasn't waiting to see it, though. He boosted after Camille, dragging the Hizack behind him
for about ten meters until the chakram sawed it cleanly in half. Both halves drifted off into
the eternal night, electricity arcing from the wounds.
"Is there any indication that those Hizacks were Yugoes?" Lieutenant Lyla Mirra Laila,
leader of Luna Two Defense Wing 27, asked. She used the derisive term for AEUG members that
was already making the rounds through the EFN, which in turn was the result of somebody
trying to pronounce the acronym as a single word as opposed to each letter individually. When
it was discovered that there was a dinky little pre-Diaspora car called the Yugo, the name
stuck.
"There shouldn't be," Lieutenant (jg) Eddy Gordon answered. Wing 27 and its mothership,
the Salamis-class cruiser EFC Bosnia, had tracked this bogey coming from Side 7 hours ago and
had now come close enough to investigate. The fact that they came along to see the end of a
running gun battle made things a little more complicated.
"'Shouldn't be' isn't good enough," Lyla replied. "Were those Hizacks Yugoes? Yes, or
no?"
"Negative on Yugo Hizacks, ma'am," Eddy said.
"Thank you," Lyla nodded. "We'd better see what they were, now, shouldn't we?"
[Oh, now -this- will be interesting,] Cortana sent. [Three Galbaldy-class suits coming
in, EFN configuration.]
The comm window soon showed a spinning Earth Federation Navy icon, before another
pressure-helmed face replaced it. "Unidentified Personal Trooper," a woman's voice said,
"this is Luna Two Defense Wing 27, from the Earth Federation cruiser Bosnia. You are ordered
to stand down and cease hostilities immediately. Failure to comply will result in the use of
deadly force."
"If I had five credits for every time I've heard that line today," Jay replied in a
bored voice, "I'd be eating supper at the Dempsey's on Gateway Station."
"Who is this?" the woman asked, letting her voice show her irritation at this insolent
pilot.
"Are you sure you want to know? I've got no quarrel with the Federation, but as far as
I'm concerned, the Titans can go straight to Hell."
"If you do not identify yourself immediately, you will -definitely- have a problem."
"My name is Jay Denton, and might I submit--"
"We have nothing further to discuss, -terrorist-."
"You don't -want- any of me," Jay replied, but the comm window cut off.
[Galbaldys locking on. Designating as Aries Wing.]
[Boring conversation anyway,] Jay answered, mentally shelving his observations on the
availability of decaffienated coffee blends. Dragon Lady wasn't going to be in the mood to
hear them anyway.
# William Orbit "Barber's Adagio For Strings (Ferry Corsten mix)"
_Pieces In A Modern Style (bonus CD)_
Jay feverishly tried to recall everything he ever knew about the Galbaldy-class MS. It
was designed as the next step up from Zeonic Company GmbH's vaunted Gelgoog-class (and owed a
lot of its styling to the Gelgoog), but the War ended before it ever made it past the
prototype stage. The rights to the design were later purchased by the Terran Aerospace
Consortium, but the Beta revision that was ultimately released only caught on with the Luna
Two Defense Corps. Those three then split off and came screaming in from various directions,
their beam rifles blazing away. Jay whirled away from the fusillade and answered it with a
shot from the Subach PR-7, which the lead Galbaldy nimbly dodged around.
"Damn," Jay muttered, "this chick's good."
"Look who finally decided to show up," Jerrid mused as the Personal Trooper that had
played no small part in reducing Hector Squad to so much scrap metal became locked in a big
hairy furball. That pilot was getting no less than what than he deserved, Jerrid was sure. He
allowed himself a few words of ribald praise for the EFN and checked his scanners again.
Wasn't that Unit 3 burning straight for the capsule?
As he sighted in on the capsule using the "iron sights" of his autocannon, he could
think of one explosive volatile enough to detonate when struck by autocannon rounds:
pentaglycerine. That much would not only wipe out the capsule, but destroy anything close to
it as well.
"That's it, Yugo," he muttered. "Just a little closer..."
Bosque Ohm turned around in his seat at the sound of the bridge door opening to regard
a stocky, tow-headed man in a business suit. "If this is about the Gundam MkII, Colonel," he
said, "then why don't we just let them have it? It's not like it's our -best- design, after
all."
"Your candor is as unwelcome as your presence on this bridge, Hauptmann Vidan."
Franklin Vidan would have argued further, but a reading at the electronic emissions
station (which handled both sensors and comms) caught his eye, and he walked over to have a
look. "What is this?" he asked.
"A mission in progress," answered Jamican Dannigan from his place near the weapons
station.
Franklin's eyes widened as the capsule caught his eye... It couldn't be--!
As much as Camille adored his mother, there were times when he wished she didn't put
herself into predicaments like this. Sure, she was military, and she knew the risks, but
metallurgy was considered a relatively safe specialty. And even if she was posted to a ship,
such analysis was usually done in the friendly confines of a hangar bay. There was no reason
for her to be out here like this!
He got most of his looks from his mother, namely her hair, her eyes (which had been
described as "dreamy"), and her chin. She was still in her utility dress uniform, her eyes
wide in shock. She tried to say something, but klaster walls do not conduct sound very well,
to say nothing of deep space, and Camille couldn't read lips.
Hang on, Mom, I'll get you out of there...
Still no lock with the Chakram Shooter! Jay thought as his pas de deux with Lyla Mirra
Laila continued. This Gelgoog knockoff's a nimble one...
Cortana took this moment to interrupt his ruminations. [I've got an enemy powerup,] she
sent, [150 meters from the capsule! Designating as Taurus Three!]
[How far away are we?]
[Ten seconds until we get it in Subach rang-- It just locked on to the capsule! He must
have been in Go-To-Ground mode!] Go-To-Ground mode was a special function of most military
and paramilitary avionics suites, which shut down all sources of medium- and high-energy
emissions and cut reactor power dramatically. When combined with Minovsky particles, GTG mode
could make an aerofighter or mobile suit invisible to all attempts at electronic detection.
Perfect for setting ambushes.
Jay realized this broad he was fighting wasn't going to let him get that new contact.
He did the only thing he could do. He keyed his radio, potential Minovsky interference be
damned:
"CAMILLE, GET THE HELL OUT OF THERE! IT'S A TRAP!"
"See you in Hell, Unit 3!" Jerrid growled as his finger tightened around the trigger on
his joystick.
# (2:14 in music cue)
A storm of autocannon shells erupted around the Gundam MkII and the capsule, just as
Camille had the capsule within his reach. The bullets pockmarked the Gundam's armor, but did
no appreciable damage.
However, a fair number of rounds hit the capsule, making spiderweb cracks in the
klaster. As the damage accumulated, the cracks lengthened before the klaster eventually
shattered, immediately opening the capsule to space; which in turn caused its occupant to
convulse as the breath was forcefully sucked from her lungs. The shell, its momentum unspent,
blew out a significant chunk of her right side before bouncing off the Gundam's armor.
Camille stared at the unfolding tableau with a stricken expression. He could still
retrieve his mother if he wanted to. But it would do no good, for the life was already being
squeezed from Hilda Vidan's body by the cold, unrelenting embrace of the void. She required
immediate medical attention, and even if Camille had the presence of mind to pop his hatch
and stuff his mother's body inside the pilot's compartment, the wound from the autocannon
round was too grievous for any form of first aid. She was effectively gone; lost to the
ether, caught in hard vacuum. Lost forever. Gone.
Tears flowed freely as he wailed like a soul in Hell, his world shattered by the
knowledge that the one person he could honestly say he loved was no more.
Jay could relate.
It was as if somebody had pressed pause on the Remote Control For The Universe. On
Ahgama's bridge, the mingled expressions on the occupants' faces wove a tapestry of shock,
stoicism, and mute horror. In the hangar, where techs worked feverishly on prepping the Rick
Diases, something brushed the edges of their collective perceptions, causing them to
momentarily pause for a second or two. Even Jim Raynor and Emma Sheen, who were in the midst
of their own impasse over whether or not she could leave the ship, stopped and turned their
eyes towards the bow of the ship, and what lay beyond.
Quattro Bajina felt the sensation more keenly than most of the people in the hangar.
Perched at the hatch to his own Rick Dias, he stared straight at the spot he knew the AEUG's
Gundam MkII to be occupying. It had been so long since he had seen a personal loss of that
magnitude that he had half-forgotten what it felt like. This cruise of Ahgama had brought it
all back, with interest.
His eyes swept the hangar, noting the reactions of the crew. Privately, his estimate of
Camille's Newtype potential went up a couple points. Then he turned and settled into the
cockpit. Potential wasn't much good if the person who possessed it were to do something rash
and end up getting killed.
I can't have you going rogue on me now, Camille! he thought.
Jerrid was the first to break the silence that had descended over the battlefield. "It
didn't go off," he breathed. That much pentaglycerine should've cooked off! Could it have
been loaded with C-17 instead of pentaglycerine? Just then, a palpable sense of grief mixed
with foreboding washed over him, and he struggled in vain to pin down exactly what it was and
where it was coming from. He had never felt such a feeling before in his life. The only thing
that came remotely close was the feeling he got waiting outside the Colonel's office for
getting Unit 1 wrecked...
Stop thinking like that! he mentally chided himself. He looked up, hoping against hope
that he had dealt a crippling blow to the Gundam MkII, but the slightly battered MS seemed to
glare at him, as if to say, "You called down the thunder, now reap the whirlwind!"
"Colonel," Franklin said as he whirled away from the emissions station to face the
center seat, "did you send my wife out into a combat zone unprotected?"
Bosque made a motion to the master-at-arms, who then had two of his security troops
take up flanking positions behind the Hauptmann. "Think of it this way," Bosque said. "At
least your shack-up will be a little more convenient."
Franklin looked around the bridge, and saw most of the crew fix him with penetrating
stares. A deep, overriding sense of shame filled him as the security men led him off the
bridge. He had figured the Colonel had been Up To Something ever since he had received the
order posting him to Alexandria. And now, for the mother of his child, it was too late to do
anything about it.
Jim Raynor's voice echoed over Ahgama's bridge intercom. "Looks like our guest's
wanting to leave," he said.
"It's all right," Brex replied. "Let her go."
Raynor reached into his cargo pocket and gave the pistol he'd taken from Emma back to
her. "Thank you," Emma said before she pushed off the balcony, aiming for the airlock door
that had her own Gundam MkII behind it.
And so she floated out of our lives forever, Raynor thought wistfully.
Camille blinked away the last of the tears from his eyes, and checked his VirtuaCockpit
display. There, within easy distance, was a single Hizack, with the remnants of smoke wafting
away from the barrel of its autocannon. "You..." he growled.
A tiny voice inside his head told him he shouldn't be doing this (or maybe it was the
woman's voice that echoed over his radio?), but the hurt and the anger won out.
His world dissolving into a red haze, Camille's scream of despair turned to one of rage
as he redlined his thrusters, burning straight for the motherless bastard in the Hizack
responsible for his pain.
# Pantera "The Badge" _"The Crow" soundtrack_
Camille had recovered enough of his wits to take a wild shot with his beam rifle, and
danced out of the way of a frugally short burst from the Hizack's autocannon. But still, he
kept boring in right on the enemy MS, looking to settle this the only way he knew would be
anything close to satisfying: up close and personal.
Inside the Hizack, Jerrid cursed as his pulls of the trigger proved fruitless. "Out of
ammo?" he pleaded. He had a spare drum on him, but whether he'd be allowed to change the
empty out was another question altogether. One that was soon answered in the resoundingly
negative, as the Gundam charged into him, one hand pushing up under the Hizack's chin while
the other grabbed at the autocannon, shoving it away.
He's got me dead to rights, Jerrid noted, so why doesn't he fire now? A voice
transmission soon followed:
"You killed my mother, you son of a bitch!"
Hurtling towards the donnybrook, Quattro opened the AEUG command frequency, hoping
Camille was tuned into it. "Let him go, Camille!" he said.
He then looked to see the Huckevine's hand on his Rick Dias's shoulder. "I'd stay out
of this, Captain," Jay said. "If that Titan did what he just did to -my- mother, I'd be
kicking his ass too."
"We'll talk about this later," the officer answered icily. "Break right!" Both mechs
split away from each other just in time to avoid a barrage of beams and autocannon rounds.
[More bad news just thrusted in,] Cortana added. [Three more Hizacks, designating as Leo
Wing.]
[It never rains, but it pours,] Jay replied dryly. [Do we have any reinforcements?]
[Scanning. Ask, and ye shall receive. Roberto and Apolli are inbound.]
[ETA?]
Two beams cut the inky black, causing the Hizacks to wheel away from the Huckevine
MkII.
[Would now do?] Cortana asked.
"Jerrid!" Emma shouted over a comm window. "Don't fight back! That's just a kid in
there!"
With the Gundam MkII raining down punches on him, Jerrid thought that directive was
just a little bit ludicrous. He managed to get a hand up to block and let fly with a left
cross that knocked the Gundam MkII a couple of meters away from him. The Gundam hit its
thrusters to stabilize itself and took a couple of beam rifle shots at the Hizack.
Jerrid slipped by the shots, burning in on a charge of his own, but the elusive MS spun
away from the charge, caught the Hizack by one of the boom-mounted verniers on its back, and
proceeded to pistol-whip him!
"Why did you have to kill her?" Camille asked over a contact transmission, letting his
blows punctuate his words. "There was no! Need! To! Kill!"
"I know that voice," Jerrid grunted as the force of the blows rattled him around inside
the cockpit. "You're not gonna get the best of me again, you fuckin' faggot!" He lit his
thrusters, and started throwing elbows into him, trying to get away.
Camille struggled to match the Hizack's thrust output and keep his advantage, but he
could already feel his grip starting to give out. Then he remembered that he had a Vulcan
cannon in the head. He let a long, rolling burst go, punching holes in the head and shoulders
of the Hizack as it tumbled away. Electricity arced from the holes as the MS righted itself.
He let off another long burst, but the Hizack saw it coming and boosted out of the way,
lining up for another charge. Camille pressed the Vulcan trigger again, except this time
nothing happened. It was his turn to experience the heartbreak of running out of slug
ammunition as the Hizack barrelled into him, leading with its right shoulder.
Lyla grinned ferally as she lined up the scarlet Rick Dias for a beam rifle shot. "I
have you now," she yelled over the radio, "you thieves of the AEUG!" She pulled the trigger,
but the Rick Dias jetted out of the way at the last second. Could he really be the Red Comet
after all?
Then that Denton kid opened a comm window to her. "TM," he said.
"What?!" Lyla replied, flabbergasted.
"Come on," he said, "I can't believe you'd forget the trademark for the phrase,
'thieves of the AEUG'. I expected an officer and a gentlewoman to have more sense of manners
and propriety than you do."
Of all the--! "Then die!" she spat as she sent a beam dead center into the Huckevine
MkII, only to have it stopped by a field that flared brightly for a second. She fired again,
with much the same effect. None of those shots had so much as damaged the paint on that PT!
He looked at her with a disbelieving look on his face. "Lady," he asked, "are you out
of your everloving MIND?!"
"Look out, ma'am!" Eddy's voice cried over the radio as he flew his Galbaldy straight
into the path of a beam shot aimed at her from the scarlet Rick Dias. The shot struck him
center mass, causing it to drift for about a second before the reactor blew.
Dammit, Lyla thought. If I can't get through that forcefield, and that red MS is
picking off my wingmen...
"Break off!" she heard herself say. "Break off! Enemy is superior, disengage and
regroup!"
Emma Sheen could hear the voice of one of her Academy instructors echo in her head as
she watched the tussle between Jerrid and Camille: "Any resemblance between what you see now
and real combat between mobile suits is purely coincidental." It resembled something along
the lines of a rugby scrum or a hockey brawl, with two almost-evenly-matched parties
jockeying for position and getting licks in whenever they could. And it looked like nothing
Emma could say would make them stop any time soon.
There's got to be more weapons on this thing, Camille thought as his eyes raced over
the controls. He found a control that looked promising, so he pressed it. The Gundam MkII
responded by drawing its beam saber with its shield arm and swinging it in a wide arc that
knocked Emma's Gundam away with the shield. Which in turn let Jerrid throw a shoulder into
Camille's Gundam, opening up the distance between them some more.
As the fight continued, Emma got her Gundam under control just in time to be hailed by
the regrouping L2DC unit. "Unidentified MS, this is Lieutenant Lyla Mirra Laila of Luna Two
Defense Wing 27. Just what the hell is going on here?"
"Wing 27, this is Titans Lieutenant Emma Sheen. Would you believe this is a retrieval
operation for a stolen MS?"
"Hardly."
"This sort of fight does neither us nor them any good. I'd like to give the enemy some
time to think this over."
"That might be difficult, Lieutenant," Lyla sighed, "considering what's going on now."
[The Captain's disengaging in the middle of a fight,] Cortana sent. [I find that highly
irregular.]
Jay turned the Huckevine MkII back toward the Ahgama, getting there just in time to see
the Rick Dias set up a contact communication with the bridge. Jay set up his own contact on
the other side.
"It doesn't look good for us," Quattro said.
Henken nodded. "Camille's gone completely native," he intoned.
"Begging your pardon, but could you stay cool if your mother was brutally murdered
before your eyes?" Jay asked.
"It hardly matters at this point," Quattro responded. "We certainly can't control him,
and he can barely control himself."
Jay couldn't believe he was hearing this. "Jesus Christ, you're not going to just hand
him over, are you?!"
"I don't see how we have much choice."
"And I don't see what's so difficult about keeping one of our own out of the hands of
the enemy!"
"There are over six hundred people aboard this ship," Brex intoned firmly. "I cannot
jeopardize their lives to save one man. Now I advise you to hold your tongue, Denton. There
is such a thing as 'conduct detrimental to the chain of command,' and you know the
consequences of that as well as I do."
[Great,] Jay sent sourly. [What next?]
[Simple,] Cortana replied. [Respectfully analyze the situation, and present your own
arguments. Bosque Ohm has a reputation for ruthless aggression. Include that as well. Above
all, -be yourself-. You can do this.]
Jay fought to get his emotions under control. "Permission to speak freely?" he asked.
"Granted, as long as you don't try my patience."
"We have the senior leadership of the AEUG on this ship, right?"
Brex nodded. "Go on," he said.
"If I was in Bosque Ohm's shoes and I was given the opportunity to decapitate the AEUG
in one stroke, I'd take it. This whole negotiation is a bid on our part to buy time. You know
it, I know it, and worst of all, -they- know it. And they figure as long as they're giving us
time, they might as well try to take one of our better drivers out of the equation.
"The fact of the matter is this: They are not just going to let us walk away, no matter
what we do. And I'd rather have all our people here when they move on us, even the ones who
don't yet realize that they're our people too."
Silence reigned on the bridge as Brex digested Jay's arguments thoroughly.
"There's something you haven't considered," Quattro said. "Lieutenant Sheen does not
want to make a fight of this."
"How can you be so sure?" Brex asked.
"Believe me, General, I know from such things."
"But to trust a Titan?!"
"I trust individuals, not organizations. And right now, I trust her."
"I'm afraid I agree with the Major on this one," Henken said. "We may be signing a pact
with the Devil, but they're dealing the cards right now."
"Then you might as well turn me in too," Jay replied.
Stunned silence met his remarks. [Do you even know what you're saying?] Cortana sent.
[He's liable to take you up on that offer.]
[Let me finish.] "You said the AEUG needs all the help it can get, General Forra. But
if we're just going to give up on Camille like this after all he's done for us, then I don't
-want- to be a part of it." After a half-second's pause, Jay went on, "It's like I told the
Major: if it was -my- mother, it'd be me kicking that Titan's ass instead of him. Then again,
what do I know? I'm just some young, dumb civilian mecha pilot with a price on his head
stemming from a trumped-up charge to cover up -their- aggression."
Bright nodded, seemingly lost in thought. Quattro was the first to speak. "You honestly
believe he can be salvaged?"
"We may have to take turns beating the stupid out of him, but yes, sir, I do."
"If it matters that much to you, then go pull him off that Titan before he does
something irrevocable."
"Consider it done." And with that, Jay redlined his thrusters and boosted toward the
brawl in progress.
"Major," Brex said after a few seconds.
"Yes, sir?" Quattro answered.
"See to it -all- our pilots come back. We've got an hour, we might as well use it."
"Yes, sir. I'd better make our intentions known," Quattro said before he boosted away
from Ahgama at a comparatively sedate pace, launching a series of flares from his left hand
actuator.
[I knew there was something I liked about you,] Cortana sent conversationally as the
flares went off.
[Not now, Cortana.]
Cortana didn't comment any further. She could tell Jay had been pleased to hear that,
in spite of everything else, and saw no need to gloat.
"A cease-fire?" Lyla murmured as the flares detonated in a pattern she recognized.
"They agreed to return the Gundam, then."
The Hizack was already swinging its beam saber wildly by the time Jay got there. He
didn't even stop to yell a challenge. One second, the Hizack was bringing the hand that held
its beam saber back for a stroke. The second after that, it didn't even -have- a beam saber
hand, having been neatly severed by the Chakram Shooter. "What part of 'cease fire' do you
not understand?!" Jay asked.
The Gundam MkII drew its own beam saber again, keeping the rifle in its right hand, and
raised back to strike. Jay swiftly slipped his Huckevine's left arm under the corresponding
arm on the Gundam MkII, bringing his own up and over the Gundam's shoulder while mounting the
Gundam from the rear. He snaked his right arm around the Gundam's neck in the same motion and
pulled tight.
Camille knew enough judo to know what hold Jay had put on his Gundam MkII. While the
katahajime was illegal in competitive judo, it was an ideal move for stopping a real fight.
He didn't have enough range of motion in the hold to swing his beam saber properly, and as
Emma's Gundam MkII came towards him from the front, he got the distinct impression that the
Huckevine MkII could've shrugged off any damage he could inflict regardless.
"Let me go, Jay!" Camille yelled, kicking the other Gundam MkII away. "I'm gonna
fuckin' kill this fuckin' bastard!"
"Not today, you won't," Jay replied grimly.
"Camille Vidan!" Emma Sheen's voice broke sharply into the conversation like a handclap
or a gunshot. "You said you were a man, but right now you're acting like a little kid!"
"Maybe you haven't been keeping up on current events," the blue-haired youth answered
in a emotionally pained voice, "but my mother was murdered before my very eyes! How do you
EXPECT me to feel about that?"
Jerrid opened a comm channel. "Honestly," he said, "I had no idea your mother was in
there..."
"It's a little late for that now, isn't it?!" Camille shouted.
Jerrid's expression hardened for a second before a mocking grin creased it. "You're
still young enough to be suckling Mommy's tit. Damn shame."
[Oh, that's good, Lieutenant,] Cortana sent sardonically, even though Jay was the only
one who could hear her, [dig yourself a deeper hole, why doncha?]
Camille gave an inarticulate grunt as he tried to break his Gundam free from Jay's
grip. Emma's Gundam made shooing motions at Jerrid with its free hand, while inside, Emma
favored Jerrid with an I-can't-believe-you-just-said-that look. Despite that, Jerrid
continued to bait Camille. "Go ahead, hit me like you did at the port authority. Nothing
between us but space and opportunity."
Jay hailed the damaged Hizack. "You'd better quit while you're -behind-, soldier boy,"
he said. He feathered his Huckevine's station-keeping thrusters, allowing Camille to thrust a
meter closer to the retreating Hizack (and, in so doing, momentarily startling Emma) before
he regained control over the clinch. "I won't hold him back forever."
Jerrid snorted at Jay in derision. "You're gonna regret you ever stuck your nose into
this."
"I already -do-," Jay replied, nonplussed. "You're only gonna live through this because
of the cease-fire. Remember that."
Emma flipped back to her comm window to Camille and shook her head at him as if to say,
'it's not worth it'.
Inside the Gundam MkII, Camille's bloodlust broke like a fever. "It's all right, Jay,"
he radioed. He swallowed hard and went on, injecting worlds of contempt into his words. "He
was just a soldier, following orders. It wouldn't be fair to blame him if those orders came
from madmen. And we all know who the better pilot was just now."
"You little--" Jerrid grunted as he whipped his Hizack through a 180-degree turn, but
Emma immediately moved to interpose her Gundam MkII between him and Camille. "Jerrid," she
said, "it's over. They've already requested a cease-fire. There will be other times." She
opened another comm channel, this time to the Bosnia's MS squadron leader. "Lieutenant, would
you be so kind as to escort our man back to the Alexandria? I have to finish negotiating the
return of the Gundam."
Lyla nodded. "Sure, but wouldn't you rather have an escort? I can detach my wingman to
you."
"No, thank you, I'll be fine."
"Suit yourself," Lyla said as she led Jerrid's Hizack back to the destroyer.
"Don't mind him," Jay said to Camille as the Federation units flew away. "He's a joke.
That's all he is."
Camille didn't answer that, as he sat in his Gundam MkII behind a wall of silence.
"I trust we won't be having any more of these outbursts," Emma radioed to Quattro.
"Of course we won't," Quattro answered. "We did request the cease-fire, after all.
However, I am worried about Camille's condition." He got up out of his seat and pulled the
homoavis he normally carried out from under it.
"Wait one. I'll go EVA with you to verify." She popped her hatch and floated over to
Camille's Gundam MkII. Quattro was already banging on the inner hatch, having pulled the
emergency outer hatch release earlier. After a few seconds, Quattro radioed, "Jay, see if you
can't get him to open the hatch. He's locked himself in."
"Sure thing. Come on, Camille, let us know you're alive. Enquiring minds want to
know." No answer, except a small sob. "Captain, I think he's blown a microchip or something
up here," he said, tapping on his helmeted head with a finger. "I'm going to try another
way." [Cortana, can you get his hatch open?]
[No sooner said than done.] The inner hatch opened silently a few seconds later.
"Thanks, you two," Quattro radioed with a sly grin as Emma floated into the cockpit
space with Camille. "Well," she said after touching her helmet's facebowl to his, "we finally
meet at last."
Silence.
"I'm not going to haul you out of here. I just want to know if it really was your
mother in that capsule."
More silence.
"Please, I really want to know."
Even more silence. Emma batted Camille's facebowl with her hand, hard enough to get him
to blink once. "Tell me. Was she, or wasn't she?"
Camille took a deep breath and let it out slowly. In a voice leached of all emotion, he
replied, "Check my right hand actuator. See for yourself."
Emma excused herself from the cockpit and shot a safety line over to her own Gundam.
Letting the reel freewheel, she worked her way hand over hand to the right hand actuator.
Right away, she noticed some discoloration on the fingertips. She ran her hand lightly over
the discoloration, and felt something slightly sticky. She couldn't tell what it was, due to
the coloration of her pressure suit, so she experimentally touched a finger to her facebowl
and watched it leave a crimson blemish that started turning a rust color. Her stomach heaved
in revulsion, and it took an act of will not to throw up in her helmet.
As a little girl, she had been taught that life was precious. When she was six, her
little brother Corky (the name on the birth certificate said "Gainard," but everybody called
him "Corky") was diagnosed in utero with Down's Syndrome. The obstetrician had suggested
abortion as a probable alternative, but Zarina Sheen would have none of it. Even though the
birth defect would claim Corky's life six years later, neither Emma nor her parents would
have traded their brief time with him for anything.
Before she left for the Federation Naval Academy to train for her chosen role as
protector of the citizens of the Federation, Elliott Sheen had one piece of advice for his
daughter: "Ignore the propaganda. Focus on what you see." And what she saw was not the
warfare she had been trained for, but rather a government organization making war on its own
citizens -- nay, on its own people, over a God-damned -machine.- Even if Emma was the sort of
person who would take hostages, she would have simply used a video chip or transmission. This
whole operation with the capsule seemed to her to be deliberately engineered to make Camille
suffer before he was brought in.
She tossed aside her oath right then and there; the Titans, and by association the
Earth Federation, had not lived up to their end of the bargain. All that was left was to
shore up whatever damage she felt she had a hand in causing. A hand fell upon her shoulder,
startling her out of her reverie. "Are you all right, Lieutenant?" Quattro asked.
"Yeah, I'm fine."
"We're still willing to comply with your request. All we need is some time. The
communique said we had an hour, if I remember correctly."
Emma nodded.
"Very well. You can expect delivery to Alexandria in one hour. Can I count on you to
deliver that message, Lieutenant Sheen?"
Emma straightened. "You can. The last thing any of us would want is further loss of
life."
"I apologize for any misunderstanding that may have resulted from this."
"There's no misunderstanding, Captain," she answered, her voice strangely calm. "None
at all."
"Let's head back to the ship," Quattro said as soon as he placed his Rick Dias's hand
on the Huckevine's shoulder. "Take Camille with you."
"Does this mean we aren't giving him up?" Jay asked.
"For now, we aren't."
Jay paused. "Roger that. Commencing RTB."
They may have been cornered by one of the most powerful ships ever built by mankind,
they may have had their loved ones murdered, but they were still alive, and for the moment
out of enemy hands.
And that in itself was a victory, on a day in which damn few could be claimed.
# Bruce Springsteen "American Skin (41 Shots)" _Live In New York City_
TO BE CONTINUED...
Acknowledgements
----------------
To Banpresto and Sunrise, for obvious reasons.
To Zhou Tai An and Mark Neidengard, for making foreign gaming a little more accessible.
To Will Mao and Jean Domingo, for giving me various names to drop.
To James Merritt, for being the first person outside my circle of friends and the SRW
community to comment on this story.
To Christopher B., for valued and able assistance.
To Lloyd Barrieses, whose Gundam/Evangelion crossover served as a catalyst for a communique
and a conversion.
To Herman Wouk, for beating me to the title "The Winds Of War".
To Brian Clevinger, for giving old RPG sprites a personality all their own.
To J. Michael Straczynski, for producing a scene so amazingly amazing that I simply had to
steal it.
To John Ringo, celebrated sci-fi author and confirmed Sluggite, for being the first to name a
military vehicle after a foul-tempered rodent with a switchblade. There -will- be a mecha
nicknamed "Bun-Bun" in KNS somewhere down the line.
Embellishment List v. 1.02
--------------------------
The FREESPACE series and RED FACTION by Volition Inc.
STARLANCER by Digital Anvil
The MARATHON series and HALO: COMBAT EVOLVED by Bungie Studios
DEUS EX by Ion Storm
STARCRAFT by Blizzard Entertainment
INTRON DEPOT by Masamune Shirow
SCUD: THE DISPOSABLE ASSASSIN by Rob Schrab
HALO: THE FALL OF REACH by Eric Nylund
BABYLON 5 (TV)
SPACE: ABOVE AND BEYOND (TV)
THE MATRIX (movie)
CYBERPUNK 2.0.2.0. and MEKTON ZETA by R. Taslorian Games
HEAVY GEAR and JOVIAN CHRONICLES by Dream Pod 9
SHADOWRUN by FASA Corporation
The RENEGADE LEGION series, originally by FASA Corporation
Alex Gilmour is from the Mekton Z campaign mentioned in the acknowledgements in Phase 1, and
was my own character. Natsuki Yanagi was created by Shawn Hagen. Daiken Crow comes to us from
the mind of Rurounin Mao, and Ryoga Kazehino hails from Ryoga316's fertile imagination.
The "HST" in Cortana's .sig quote du jour is the one and only Hunter S. Thompson.
Mr. Clevinger's work can be found here:
If anybody sold you a hardcopy of this work, they ripped you off. I'm not writing this fic
for monetary gain (it's freely available and distributable as long as the credits and
disclaimer remain intact), nor to challenge the copyrights on enough characters, likenesses,
and indicia to fill a major metropolitan area. Besides, I'm just this guy struggling to make
ends meet, you know?
Any faults with when and where certain characters fit into the general scheme of things can
be blamed solely on the author.
OMAKE: AND NOW FOR A WORD...
----------------------------
(much respect and apologies to Rob Harris for hanging out the shingle for our "sponsor".)
(We open with both Camille Vidan and Quattro Bajina standing on a balcony overlooking the
hangar aboard Ahgama.)
QUATTRO: You look like you have a problem.
CAMILLE: You're damn right I have a problem! Take my name, for example. Oh, sure, it was
popular for guys all right... back in -France-, centuries before the diaspora! Nowadays, only
girls ever get named "Camille"! What kind of people would give that name to a boy?
(Quattro is about to interject, but Camille presses on as if he remembered something)
I mean besides my parents.
(Quattro reaches into his vest pocket and pulls out a business card, which he then hands to
Camille)
QUATTRO: Here. I know some people who could help you.
(A smarmy lawyer is shown standing in front of his desk in a richly-appointed office)
LAWYER: If you have a character name that you hate, or if your opponents are always making
cute jokes about your name, the Law Offices of Ramsperger, Gates, Mascarenhas, and Kaminski
can help. We'll talk to those uncaring scriptwriters and get you a character name that
demands -respect-!
(Shadow treatment on some guy, with wild hair that defies any further description and
billowing cloak)
SHADOW GUY #1: Don't get me started on my last name. I used to have people walk up to me on
the street and ask if I was somehow related to the Peanuts gang! But, thanks to Ramsperger,
Gates, Mascarenhas, and Kaminski, I got the character name I needed to become the King Of
Hearts and a Mobile Fighting legend!
(Another guy, this one fully armored with a bullet-shaped helmet, gets the shadow treatment)
SHADOW GUY #2: I tell you the truth, the Law Offices of Ramsperger, Gates, Mascarenhas and
Kaminski get the job done. Before I enlisted their services, I was called Four-Eyes! Big
Eyes, No Mouth! It's like they didn't even know there was a face under this helmet! Now, I am
God.
(Back to the lawyer in the office set. He's having great difficulty keeping a straight face
as he fights a losing battle against cracking up laughing.)
LAWYER: Well! His results *snicker* are certainly *guffaw* not typical, *chuckle* but the Law
Offices of Ramsperger, Gates, Mascarenhas, and Kaminski are ready to fight and get you
RESULTS!
(Back to the Ahgama hangar)
QUATTRO: And remember, I'm not just a compensated spokesman... I'm also a client!
CAMILLE: A client?
QUATTRO: Does the name "Char Aznable" mean anything to you?
(Fade to business-card-like screen: "Law Offices of Ramsperger, Gates, Mascarenhas, and
Kaminski", phone number, etc.)
ANNOUNCER (quickly, like reading fine print on a radio ad): Not certified by the Earth
Federation Board of Legal Specialization.
Jay Denton will return in "The Kid From Left Field (Fear The Reaper)"