"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary."
--H.L. Mencken

Chapter 6: Castle Keep

- February 6, UC 0083 -
- 0851 (CST) -
The searing heat from reentry finally started to level off, then after a few seconds started to decline, slowly at first and then more and more quickly. Ryo breathed a short sigh of relief, then breathed another one as his readings indicated his speed was dropping off dramatically. Any minute now they'd be back down to a fairly normal velocity where they could discard the ballute shields and drop in on the enemy from above. For now, though, he was stuck here, lying on his back on an inflated bowl of carbon fiber and ablative Kevlar, falling out of the sky with nothing beneath him but miles and miles of air and clouds. It was high noon in this part of the world, so at least they would have the sun directly over their heads when they dropped in right in top of the enemy. "I don't like this at all..." Ryo grumbled again, feeling his stomach twisting in a knot. "What's our position? Does anyone know if we're on target?"

"We're on target, Ryo." Naomi said from somewhere below him. "Give it another few minutes, we're almost at stall speed."

Brian raised the blast shield on his helmet, blocking out the shadow world of the psycommu interface to read his instrument panels. "GPS guidance says we're passing over... uhhh... the Pakistan border, coming up on the Hindu-Kush mountains."

"Right where we should be. At present angle of descent, we'll come down right over their heads." Naomi checked their entry vector one more time, but even as she did the intense heat suddenly vanished and her velocity took a nose dive. She felt a surge of gravity pushing down on her chest, peaking sharply to three and a half gees as the mobile suit decelerated. "Passing through hypersonic barrier. Velocity now... Mach eleven... 10.5, 10, Mach 9.5, Mach 8.5..."

Ryo's hands were shaking around his controls. "Is it supposed to slow like this? I mean... well should it?"

"The shield's been heated by re-entry. When the gas cools, the ballute gets softer and increases drag. We'll level off around terminal velocity in a few minutes."

The radiation from the friction burn dropped out finally and Naomi's radio buzzed with a contact signal from the ground: "Hail Zaku, just and merciful."

"Hail Feddy, sick and maniacal." Naomi answered on the same frequency.

The pilot recognized her voice, but was slow to answer right away. "Good to see you again, Naomi. Recon indicates your carrier had some trouble with the launch."

"It's nothing Matsui can't handle. Pay attention to your job."

The pilot on the other end chuckled, apparently nostalgic for times gone by. "We've started bombardment of the enemy surface structures, but as expected, they've got the high-ground advantage and our strike team is pinned down just below the first ridge. Their mobile suits haven't launched yet so it's mainly Megellas and Dopps with a few gun and rocket emplacements on the top of the ridge."

Ryo whistled in amazement. "That's ALOT of firepower... I'm startin to think maybe Alice was right about this."

Brian shrugged absently. "I never said she wasn't. My question is, how is it that satellite surveillance never noticed an arsenal this big sitting out in plain sight?"

All this talk wasn't getting them anywhere. The battle was at hand, complaints aside it was time to go to work. "We're at altitude. Deploy primary chutes and discard ballute shields now." Naomi went first, fired the parachute on the thruster pack and let the shield catch the wind and float away from her. The parachute caught the Gundam and slowed it for just a few moments before the cables snapped, and Naomi deployed the second parachute immediately after, also snapping the cables after barely a few seconds. Every mobile suit in the strike team did exactly the same, and in moments all six GMs and four Gundams were in freefall, reduced to the booster packs attached to their chest plates and the sides of their legs.

Naomi stowed her beam rifle onto her waist armor and shouldered the hyper bazooka, scanning the ground below already for a target. They were easily a hundred-thousand feet in the air now, but at their rate of descent the ground was rushing up extremely fast. She could just see the dark yellow dust of the mountain far below them, and squinting she could see the tiny pinpricks of light from explosions as the fighting raged all around the base. The mountain top where the facility was located was in a brilliant position; the only way to get to it was to cross a deep ravine, pass over the ridge on one side, then descend into another ravine before climbing up a steep incline to the top of the mountain where the base was situated. It was a natural fortress, complete with an outer wall and a moat, and probably alligators and a draw bridge too. "This is Wilson to all units, slight change of plan. GM teams, drop in on the enemy forces on the ridge just below the base. Gundam team, we'll set down on the slope just below them and try to bait their mobile suits."

Lieutenant Swanson groaned in anxiety, "See? There you go again, always doing things the hard way! Let's just drop in on top of them and rip the base a new asshole!"

"We don't know the layout of their base, idiot! You wanna touch down right in front of a damn firing squad?"

"Well... ummm..."

"You should think twice before you open your mouth! C'mon people, we've got a job to do, no more complaining!"

Ryo looked around on the panoramic monitor, taking in his first glimpses of the planet below him. He'd never seen a landscape like this, it went on forever into the distance, didn't curve up like the cylinders of a colony walls. Something about that made him feel terribly uncomfortable. "No wonder Alice hates this place!"


- 0856 (CST) -
Lucy took just a moment to wipe the sweat out of her eyes, then went back to working the hand crank to move the missile onto the hardpoint. The loading arm slid into position finally on the side of the fighter until she heard the satisfying click as the missile's safety lock engaged the hard point. Ensign Fokker floated over to the missile, checked that the lock was secure and then gave her the thumbs up. "Locked and loaded, Lieutenant! Now if we only had a pilot for this thing..."

"We'll figure it out." It was good that the core booster's cockpit had finally been replaced since the battle with the Delaz Fleet. Even Lucy would have refused to fly in a cockpit that had been the final resting place of a comrades lower intestines. A whole new cockpit solved the problem perfectly well. "What do you think, Chase? Will this thing really work inside an atmosphere?"

Chase bounded off the side of the fighter and planted his feet next to her. "Theoretically it should. The design's based on the old G-Fighter from White Base, but you never know with these mass-production jobs. Anyway, if it doesn't we've always got the two other units to work with."

"True..." Lucy really wasn't looking forward to it. All of the mechanics were busy repairing the mobile suits in the forward bays, that left no one available to load the Corsairs for combat even if they wanted to. "If nothing else it'll support a mobile suit in space. I just wish we could find a pilot..."

"We might have Astonage do it, or that new guy, Kelly."

Lucy shrugged and pushed off towards the door. "Push comes to shove, we'll just ask for volunteers."

Chase followed her out of the ship's aft deck and pushed his glasses back up on his nose. He was just on the verge of asking another question when their company increased by two; Lieutenant Ricardo Dyson and April Parsons came around the corner and took hold of a hand grip immediately behind them. "Lieutenant Matsui," Parsons called her attention and didn't wait for Lucy to turn around, "I just wanted to thank you again for repairing our mobile suits. We owe you big time for this."

"Don't mention it." The responsibility for the loss of the Merrimac rested squarely on their two shoulders and Lucy fully expected at least one of them to make it up to the Zeons. But she held her tongue, not wanting to offend their temporary guests with too harsh a criticism after only an hour on board her ship. "Our starboard engine is still running rough. We can't join the ground team until it's repaired, and if Chief Watson's estimates are correct we'll need at least a full day to make repairs. The zeeks know this, and we're positive they'll be back for more."

Lieutenant Dyson chuckled smugly. "I don't think so. We nailed three of their mobile suits, including that sniper they've been building their offensive around. I don't know who's commanding them, but they'll think twice before coming back for more..."

Lucy spun around in the corridor and grabbed him by the collar. "Why don't you pull your head out of your ass and take a wiff of reality! They destroyed one ship, severely damaged two others, damaged nearly all of our mobile suits and destroyed one of your GMs in the process! Don't make the mistake of thinking we just had a victory!" Dyson swallowed anxiously and Lucy calmed herself and continued on, "Those mobile suits that attacked us probably launched from a heavy cruiser, Tive class, maybe bigger. Three of them managed to get away, and that means at least three mobile suits on the Tive, plus whatever else they have in their support unit. They have more than enough firepower left to finish the job."

Dyson stayed quiet for a moment until she released his collar, then swallowed hard and decided to proceed more tactfully. "How can you tell that?"

"I recognized those mobile suits. MS-09P, Rickdom Sniper Customs. I went up against two of them back during the war, both were flying for Kicilia Zabi's Newtype Corp. And I know those people, they would NEVER put their entire attack force in just one wave unless they knew exactly what they were up against."

"Okay. Then...?"

Lucy turned back and grabbed the handgrip on the corridor, leaving Dyson and Parsons behind. "I don't intend to wait for them to attack us again. As soon as the repairs are finished, we're going after them with everything we've got. So you two better take some time to rest, you're gonna need it."


- 0900 (CST) -
Samir pointed the Magella-top cannon forty-five degrees into the air and fired off three rounds, one after another, over the tree line covering his MS-05 to rain down on the heads of the Magella formation firing down from the top of the ridge. One of the three shots landed a direct hit, and Samir could see a fireball rising off the top of the ridge as the ammunition and fuel detonated. He would have been proud of his work, but the other ten Magellas above them homed in on the source of his shots and began bombarding his position mercilessly. Explosions on top of explosions landed around his feet, forcing him to boost backwards to the cover of the foxhole he had just crawled out of only minutes before. "This is bullshit, we can't even move forward like this!"

The other seven Zakus of his attack force were in the same position, though most of them were firing out of foxholes with bazookas and not even bothering to move forward. "We're just the diversion, remember? Those Feddies are supposed to do most of the work today."

"Yeah? How come it's not working out like that?" Samir growled and switched back over to the radio line to the Gundam team. "We're gettin alittle toasted here, Baby Doll."

Naomi checked altitude one last time. The timing for his complaints could not have been any better. "Sit tight, we're engaging now. By the way, don't call me that." The base defenses had noticed them long before now, and now that they were close enough the sky suddenly filled with flak. Little puffs of black smoke went off all around them, framed by lines of tracer bullets from machine guns below and streaks of missiles plying in the sky for a target. Anything they got close enough took a hit from the head vulcans on the mobile suits, the rest was lost to the storm of anti-aircraft fire that filled the air around them.

Ryo felt the sweat started to sting his eyes. He couldn't even see the ground anymore, only a wall of smoke and fire from all the shells bursting in his path and the firehose lines of heavy machine guns streaming and crisscrossing all around him. He darted back and forth to try to avoid the worst of it, but he could still feel some shrapnel from the flak shells bouncing off the front of his shield. Three flak shells exploded in the air right in front of him and he felt all three impacts shake his suit one after another. "Lieutenant, this is nuts! We can't get in like this!"

"Calm down Izumi, we're right on target! Break formation and head for your L.Z.!" She was down to a thousand feet from the mountain when the computer fired the thruster packs. It slowed her descent to just below a complete stopat two hundred feet, then cut off and let the Gundam fall again.

The GMs fired their thrusters half a mile away from her, dropping in over the heads of the tanks and artillery batteries firing at the old Zakus below them. The first suit down immediately aimed his 90mm GM rifle and fired a short sweeping burst across a line of battle tanks to destroying two of them at once. The other five opened fire as they descended, raining machinegun fire and head vulcans onto the tanks and gun emplacements before they could really react to them. Four of the tanks reversed engines and sped away from the GMs, firing as they fell back. One shell glanced off the lead suit's shield, and the six Federation suits finished them with one burst each.

Samir was the first to notice the change of scenery, and with a whoop of excitement called his troops forward. "We're in business! C'mon men, we're storming the castle!"

The base defenses responded quickly. The Gundams landed on a spot on the slope where their guns couldn't easily reach, but a team of Dom Tropens was already scouring over the dust to search them out. All three moved in a staggered formation scanning ahead of them, and all three failed to notice a single Gundam move up behind them, likewise hovering over the ground with its beam rifle aimed and ready. Brian fired a single blast from his beam rifle, clipping the reactor of the rear Dom, blasting it into pieces where it stood. The other two spun around startled and took aim, but stopping in place only made them easy pray to they other three Gundams crouched in concealment further down the slope. The first Dom took two direct hits from the two beam rifles while the third was hit in the back by Naomi's bazooka shell. All three collapsed flaming against the rocks while the Gundams continued their climb up the side of the mountain. "Look sharp! Remember, most of this base is underground!" Naomi fired her thrusters to bound up the side of the slope, Ryo and Eric followed suit. Brian stopped in place and knelt down below them, waiting to see what would happen once they landed before he would move on himself.

Eric's suit came down on a side of the mountain just a moment before it started moving. The rocks receded into the ground and then parted, revealing the three Gundams to a trio of unsuspecting Gouf Customs lined up shoulder to shoulder in the opening. Both Zeon and Federation suits fired at roughly the same time and then ducked around the corner for cover. The exchange left one Gouf on fire and Eric's Gundam with a section of his chest armor chopped to bits. "That was sloppy, Lieutenant." Naomi grumbled.

"I'm doing the best I can! Gimme a break, will you?!" Eric peaked around the corner into the hidden opening again, but another burst of fire shot the beam rifle from his hands before he could even fire. "Aw man...!

"Eric, you are such an idiot...!" Three energy beams struck down into the open hatchway, and half a second later two powerful explosions erupted from the opening in a geyser of flame. Naomi glanced back to see three GMs and Zakus boosting over the ravine to the side of the incline, with three more of each appearing on the top of the ridge behind them. "Excellent... Eric, go with the first GM team and move in right here! Ryo, Brian, we're king of the mountain!" The three GMs of the first team did just that, followed by three of the Mujahadeen Zakus, all darting into the underground tunnel riding fire from their verniers, leaving the others to scale the side of the mountain on their own.

Three of the Zakus and one of the GMs started moving up right away while two officer's units in desert camouflage landed on the slope just in front of Naomi. She recognized Samir's suit; the gigantic white rabbit painted on his shoulder armor was hard to miss even at night. "Let's get moving!" He said, glancing back for a moment. "There's alot of activity at the top of the peak! It looks like they're sending out more firepower..." As he spoke, four Dopp fighters banked out of the clouds and dove in on them with machineguns blazing. All four Gundams and two GMs fired back with beam weapons, the rest of the suits ducked down for cover from the attack. At that same moment, two Gouf customs and a Zaku Cannon peaked over the side of the slope and opened fire at once, catching one of the Zakus completely off guard and tearing it down where it stood. Samir and two Zakus both answered back with 180's, forcing the three defending suits to duck out of sight again.

"This is kind of upsetting..." Ryo fired his thrusters and rose high over the slope, up over the tops of the mobile suits, up over the top of the mountain itself, drawing all the attention in the world right to himself as he took his first real look at their objective. There were four large gun emplacements in turret mountings guarded by a half dozen large missile launchers and heavy machine gun emplacements, all lined up defensively around three foxholes, each with armor plating over the front of them, all occupied by mobile suits. With the exception of the three suits dug in at the edge of the slope, nearly all of their defenses were setup quite a ways back from the edge, all poised in front of a pair of gigantic blast doors large enough for a battleship to fit through. Satisfied, he cut his thrusters and descended back to the slope just as the whole of the enemy guns lit the skies around him with heavy fire of every kind. By some miracle he managed to land again undamaged and took a long moment to slow his heartbeat again. "We have to take this slow! They're dug in pretty deep over at the top!"

"How many suits?" Naomi said, moving up next to him.

"Six to eight mobile suits, couldn't tell what type. That's including the three right up there in the trench." On cue, all three of the Zeon suits peaked over the side again and fired another mixed barrage. The GMs and Zakus answered them shot for shot, forcing the defenders to duck behind cover again. "This is getting annoying. We can't really get close to em without getting lit up!"

Naomi discarded the ammo clip on the bazooka and changed to the one on her right hip armor. "The best thing you can do for yourself is plan ahead..." She aimed the bazooka just over the top of the slope and fired two shells. Both soared about halfway up the slope before the heads of the shells burst open, spitting a massive cloud of tiny pellets over the top of the slope. All of them rained down over the heads of the three Zakus, and all of them exploded as soon as they were close enough. More than a hundred tiny explosions all went off at once, shredding through the armor of all three mobile suits and leaving the Zaku Cannon completely immobile.

"Nice!" Brian and Ryo both boosted straight up from the slope and rose up and over the top of the peak. Both of them drew beam sabers as they descended; Brian came down perfectly on one of the Goufs, cutting off one arm on the way down before stabbing it through the cockpit with his beam saber. Ryo wasn't so lucky, as the other Gouf Custom managed to draw its heat saber just in time and the two locked up as the Gundam came down on it. Ryo tried to push past it, but the Gouf's saber wouldn't budge. Somehow it managed to match him in strength no matter how hard he pushed it... until a blast from Naomi's beam rifle sliced through the suit just below the shoulders.

The reactor explosion in the trench carved out a fairly large crater and sent Ryo's Gundam flying backwards, tumbling through the air before crashing against Brian's suit dozens of meters behind him. Naomi used the fireball as cover from the enemy guns and landed right in the middle of the smoldering crater. "I'll give you half of that one, Izumi."

Ryo heaved back up to his feet, careful not to expose too much of his head above the trench for enemy gunners to shoot it off. "God dammit, what have I told you about that?! You tryin to get me killed?!"

"I said it before and I'll say it again, you have to take out your targets, Lieutenant."

Ryo aimed his beam rifle straight for her cockpit, but Brian jumped between them before he could do anything dangerous. "Forget it, Ryo! We don't have time now!"

"Don't have time?! There's a bigger chance of getting hit by NAOMI than by enemy fire!"

"Ryo..."

"Who's side are you on anyway?! You tryin to kill me?!"

Samir's Zaku landed in the trench between them, his laughter rippling over the com line mockingly. "New pilot, huh Naomi?"

"He's still getting used to combat." She said cynically.

"Combat nothing! It's YOU he's getting used to!" Samir squatted in the trench and fired two shots into the air, letting them fall where they may among the enemy defenses. He heard the explosions in the distance, then smiled as a barrage of artillery exploded in all around the trench they now squatted in. One shell blasted up chunks of rock the size of cars and sent them raining down on top of his head. "What fun this is... Izumi was it? You better watch out, kid! This crazy bitch is infamous around the galaxy for her track record of friendly fire! Isn't that right, Baby Doll?"

"I'm actually known for my short temper." Naomi peaked over the side of the trench and counted enemy strengths. The enemy was in almost perfect position, even attacking from the air wouldn't be able to dig them out now. Four mobile suits and at least as many bigass turrets and flak batteries... Shouldn't be TOO hard. "Stay focused, everyone! We've still got our work cut out for us!" She checked the ammo in the bazooka again; for more cluster bombs, a full pack of high explosives, plus two packs for the beam rifle on the back of her shield. "Oh, and Samir..."

"Yeah?"

"Don't call me that."


- 0911 (CST) -
Something about this made Chase feel incredibly guilty. Alice hadn't moved an inch since Brian left the ship, not to get up for something to eat or even so little as to scratch her nose. She just sat there, squeezing her palms together between her knees with her sightless gaze fixed on the table. Lucy had wondered if she was keeping her brother's chair warm, or maybe just saving a seat for him if and when he finally came back from the mission. But Chase's concerns were more than just wonderings; The Tarawa would be almost a day and a half late picking up the Gundam team and the surviving GMs from the operation. He couldn't even imagine how hard it must be for a little kid to be left alone on a ship full of strangers, especially in her unique circumstances.

At first she intended to leave Alice alone and give her some distance and breathing room, but before too long her conscience started to weigh her down. She looked so lonely there, hadn't even flinched in all this time... Chase made up his mind finally. At lunch call he loaded up a large tray from the chow line with a portion of just about everything on the menu, sat down across from Alice and set a few small dishes in front of her right where she was sure the kid could smell them. "You oughta eat something. It'll make you feel better." Alice didn't say anything, but she made a small move to sniff the food before resuming her original position. Chase was more worried for her than ever. "What's the matter? You sick?"

"No."

"Well what's the matter?"

"Nothing."

She seemed curt and standoffish in all her responses, which did nothing to make Chase feel better about this. "Well, I got you something if you're hungry. There's French Fries, some chips, fish sticks and some grilled carrots..."

"Is THAT what that is? I thought I smelled carrots." Alice sniffed the food again, but her hands still remained glued together, squashed between her knees under the table. She looked even smaller than ever.

Chase was trying not to be pushy, but he felt more pressure on himself than anyone else. "What's on your mind? Really?"

"Oh, nothing."

"No really, I wanna know. With Naomi and Eric gone, Mike and Lucy at alert stations, I've got no one else to talk to."

Alice looked up for a moment, failing eye contact but somehow engaging him more directly than she ever had before. "I was wondering, how do they get the cream filling into the middle of Twinkies?"

It took a few seconds for his brain to switch gears and actually contemplate the implications of the question, another few seconds to understand that there didn't seem to be any. "A machine does it, I guess."

"Like a... robot or something?"

"Could be. You've been sitting here thinking about that all morning?"

Alice shook her head, and for the first time released her hands to start picking at the food in front of her. "I was reading this book last night and the author said something like, the imagination is the cream filling of the mind, but knowledge is on the outside, it's what we see when we think of intelligence. A Twinkie without the cream filling isn't much of a Twinkie."

It was a long loop to try and follow, but with some effort Chase managed to stay with the thought without getting lost. "So, without imagination, intelligence is...?"

"A Twinkie without cream filling."

"Heh... that's alittle deep." Oddly enough, Chase suddenly felt a strong craving for Twinkies. "What's the point of that, though?"

"Well imagination is how the spirit powers the mind. So if you don't have an imagination, you don't really have a soul."

"Okay, that's alittle TOO deep." For the briefest instant, Chase had a flash back to the study groups she had so loathed on her college campus, people with nothing better to do than ponder the meaning of life or other profound questions while letting realistic concerns go straight out the window. Somehow it seemed different this time around; the study group consisted of a blind girl six years younger than him. "What book was this again?"

Alice hesitated to answer. "Who's near us right now?"

"What?"

"Is there anyone around who could be listening?"

The pilot's table was in the one quiet corner of the room and Chase glanced around just to be sure. "All clear. What's the big secret?"

Alice leaned forward all the same and whispered. "My dad owned a publishing company and some friends of his wrote a book with him."

"So your dad was a publisher?"

"Yeah. Him and his philosopher friends gathered research and stuff for the book, and my dad was the editor and publisher."

Chase was impressed, but the fact that they were whispering it made him curious. "What philosophers? Maybe I've read it somewhere?"

Alice listened again and whispered, "Jimba Ral ,Degwin Zabi, Zeon Zum Daikun..."

No way! Her Dad wrote the...! Chase looked around suddenly to make doubly sure no one else was listening. Why Alice was telling him this was beyond him right now. Either she meant it as some kind of confession or as a gesture of trust and good faith, or it was even possible that she was making it up to get attention somehow. Either way, it put Chase in a very delicate position. "So you're telling me your dad wrote books for the Zabi family?"

"Zabis...? No way! My dad owned the company, he really published it for himself."

"Yeah, but Degwin Zabi..."

"Degwin Zabi handled most of the historical references, but he wasn't really a central part of writing the book. Daikun and Ral organized the thesis, Dad did the editing, Genkai Sakhalin provided alot of the funding and organized public support for..."

"I know all the people who worked on it, Alice. I'm just trying to figure out..." Chase paused for a moment as two younger officers passed the table and waited until they were out of earshot. "You know, you shouldn't be reading books like that, especially at your age. There's alot of really dangerous ideas about the world, you could get yourself into trouble if you're not careful."

Alice grinned slightly. "That's almost the exact words of the book."

"Hm?"

"It's in the third chapter. 'The world is full of dangerous ideas. Young people could get into alot of trouble if they don't stop to think about what those ideas mean.'"

Chase couldn't help but feel like Alice was dancing around him, making this more difficult than it needed to be. "Just because you can find something useful in Mien Kamph doesn't mean..."

"... 'doesn't validate the larger idea. There's a little good in every bad idea and alittle bad in every good idea.'"

Now he was down another point, and suddenly he felt himself loosing an argument of surprisingly great importance. "It's just the principle. You should distance yourself from evil ideas that lead to evil things."

Alice raised a brow. "Did you ever actually read The Spacenoid Evolution?"

"Well no, but..."

"Then you've read the cliff notes?"

Lucy's face started burning. "No,"

"You've read a chapter-by-chapter summary of the book along with statistics and the main ideas and commentary by experts to summarize the chapters?"

How exactly am I loosing an argument on contemporary ethics to a thirteen-year-old war orphan? "No, but all the experts I know of describe it as a handbook for universal genocide."

Alice sighed, searched the table for the dish of carrots. "That's what they used to say about the Bible, the Koran, Darwin's theories, the Communist Manifesto, even the constitution of the Earth Federation. Just because you think you know alot doesn't make you smart. Your experts are Twinkies without cream filling, they have no taste."

Again with the Twinkies... Chase laughed at this, even despite the uncertain feeling in the pit of his stomach. "Okay, they're tasteless, I'll give you that. So what IS the book about then?"

Alice stuffed a fistful of carrots into her mouth and swallowed them. Somehow, Chase got the impression the kid was deliberately stalling him. "You ever just suck the filling out of a Twinkie without actually eating it?"

"Can't say that I have."

"Oldtypes have to eat the whole thing, but newtypes can get to the important part if they want to. And all real newtypes live in space. And everybody should be a newtype. That's all the book really says."

The argument was dying, and Chase's appetite --as well as his curiosity-- was dying with it. "I got you, and if you kill all the oldtypes and there'd be nothing but newtypes, right?"

Alice rolled her eyes. "That's like saying, let's kill everyone who eat a lemon without turning a face. That's stupid, what kind of nut would publish a book like that? Then again, it DOES make a good slogan for any politician with a bullhorn."

He was just about to ask another question when Mike appeared next to the table with a cold look on his face. He seemed perplexed by the intensity of their conversation. "Chase, we've picked up a Minovsky concentration in the forward quadrant, seems to be shadowing our course and speed."

Chase's focus shifted in an heartbeat. "Is it them?"

"Probably. We can't pinpoint their exact location, but at least now we know where to look."

"Gotcha..." Chase stood up and left the tray on the table, well within reach of Alice's hands and pushed out from her chair. "Duty calls, Alice. I'll talk to you later."

"I know." Chase was just starting to leave when she added, "Chase, thanks for coming and talking to me like this. It was really nice of you."

"No problem. I'll bring you a Twinkie when I get back, okay?"

Seeing her chance, Alice blurted out, "Oh hey, could you get me some snew too?"

"Snew?"

"Yeah, snew."

Chase paused and looked around. "What's snew?"

"Nothing. What's snew with you?" She smiled like a wolf over the carcass of it's latest kill. Chase growled and skulked off, leaving Alice alone again at the table, timidly picking at a dish of carrots and fish sticks while she returned to the solitude of her own head and her thoughts. I wonder if he's cute? He SOUNDS kinda cute...


- 0922 (CST) -
The Gundam and the three GMs behind him were all flattened against the side of the corridor, not daring to go much farther in lest they by cut down by the MMP-80s of the two Zaku Customs just around the corner. The Zeon suits had them pinned down with an almost constant barrage, shells eating away at the corner stone of the corridor between them every time they fired. Eric, poked his head around one more time to get a look and pulled back just as a burst of fire raked the rock wall next to his head. "Lieutenant Wilson, what's your position right now? Making any progress?"

Naomi ducked under her shield again, deflecting another flurry of rockets and machine guns from the three Dopp fighters strafing them from above. Ryo fired a long burst from his 90mm cannon as they pulled up away from him, catching two in his line of fire and sending them fighters crashing to the ground trailing smoke. Feeling the danger temporarily passed, Samir popped out of the trench and fired two more shells from his cannon, answered back by a dozen more from the artillery batteries up ahead of them. One lucky shot from a Zaku machine gun clipped off the fin on the top of his head. "Oh man...!"

"We're alittle pinned down here, Eric! What's happening on your end? Think you can get in behind them?"

"I think... maybe..." Eric peaked around the corner and fired a quick burst from his arm gatling, striking the chest of one of the Zakus before the other fired back. The damaged one collapsed to the ground spitting flames from within its chest armor as the other retreated farther into the passageway and reloaded its machine gun. Two GMs dashed around the corner and opened fire with beam guns, and one was immediately struck down by a shell from a Megella attack tank already poised to fire in the corridor behind the Zaku. The Megella got off another shot, but the GM pilot bellied out on the ground of the passage as Eric peaked around the corner and fired again with the arm gatling. Once again the Zaku collapsed under the spray of hot led, but this time one unlucky shell pierced the mobile suit's reactor core...

Brian felt the concussion in the ground beneath them, and poking his head over the top of the trench he saw a section of the ground ahead of them suddenly crumble and shrink inwards as if some invisible weight were crushing it in. "That moron... now's our chance! Get ready!" The ground collapsed a bit more, and then a burst of sand and rock exploded up from the center as the escaping gasses breached the surface. All three Gundams and both GMs rose up out of the trench and soared high up over the enemy defenders and immediately began raining beams and shells down on the gun turrets and the four mobile suits dug in next to them. Two of the gun turrets were blown to bits with a direct hit, the others smoldered but fell silent with a good strafing from the GM beam guns. Brian passed directly over the head of one of the Zaku Cannons and fired both of his shoulder cannons straight down on it. Both shells missed, but the explosion knocked the suit out of the trench and directly into the waiting sights of Samir and his Zaku team who immediately blasted it with machine guns. One GM landed in a trench next to a Zaku cannon; both suits drew their weapons but the GM was just a bit faster, managing to stab the Zeon through the head before it could bring its heat hawk down.

Ryo landed on top of one of the suits, and jammed the barrel of his beam rifle against the cockpit, pushing it down into the dirt. "Abandon your mobile suit and surrender! Don't throw your life away!"

The mobile suit reached for the machine gun at its side. Ryo fired a burst from his head vulcans, shredding the Zaku's head and sensors before he repeated, "Last warning, abandon the suit and surrender!"

The Zaku went limp under his rifle and then the pilot radioed back, "You wanna... like... move your rifle so I can open the cockpit?"

Ryo pulled the beam rifle back and the cockpit hatch sprang open. The pilot emerged slowly with his hands over his head, grinning at him cynically as he stood there. Immediately, Ryo was faced with one fairly perplexing problem: the pilot wore a Federation uniform. "Uh, Lieutenant...?"

Naomi had noticed the same of her own capture; the pilot standing in the hatch of his wrecked Zaku Cannon was wearing a Federal Forces Uniform with a Lieutenant J.G. rank insignia. She was confused beyond all hope, but now she decided it was best not to think about it. "Alrighty... Eric, what's your status? Everyone okay down there?"

The response was clouded by static but immediate. "We've had a cave in, one of the GMs is disabled... Hey Lieutenant, what the hell's going on? Half of these guys have Fed uniforms, the other half are Zeon or Colonial Guard!"

"That so? Um... we'll sort it all out later." And even now there was still work to be done. Standing here at the base of the gigantic metal doors, Naomi reminded herself that they hadn't even penetrated the enemy base yet. She turned to the one GM left in their group and pointed to the two captured prisoners, "Ensign, keep an eye on these two." She looked at the gigantic metal door cut into the side of the mountain again, suddenly feeling more anxious than ever. "The rest of you, let's see if we can't figure out what the hell's going on here."


- 0940 (CST) -
The feeling of pressure squeezing her body still lingered in her sleep, but as she returned to consciousness it began to fade slowly. The heat was gone too, in fact she was cold now. Something's wrong, she thought as her mind went back to operation. Her brain rose in activity, her heartbeat sped up, and yet with each passing second she felt more and more cold, What's happening? Where am I? She opened her eyes at last and the world came into focus. She was staring up at a metal ceiling with a while light centered directly over her, beaming down at her from five specific points. It confused her for the longest time, lost to her disorientation until with a start she realized where she was.

She surged up in a panic, but a set of strong arms forced her back down on the table and patted her on the forehead. "Calm down, your leg's broken. Doctor Cass just set the bones."

At the mention of it, Vanessa immediately became aware of nearly unbearable agony in her left leg just below the knee and again at the angle. "Jesus, Deuce, I didn't wanna know!"

Duncan smiled but tried not to laugh. Even injured, he knew she would still probably punch him in the stomach for making fun. "A 90mm from that Gundam passed right between your legs. Four inches to the left and you wouldn't even HAVE a leg."

Vanessa sat up more slowly this time and Duncan helped her swing the leg, cast and all, over the side of the table. At this point she noticed her leg had some companions; her right arm was bandaged, as was her head and what felt like a few broke ribs in her lower chest. "What the hell happened? Did the new ejector pod work?"

"Barely. The explosion crushed it like an egg and smashed it in around you! We dislocated both of your hips tryin to get you out of the damn thing!"

So that's why my ass feels so funny... "Worked well enough, though."

Duncan nodded. "I guess, I mean you ARE still alive after all. The data recorder made it through intact, so Anaheim will know how to work the bugs out of it." He paused there for a long time, staring at her with something anyone could recognize plainly as relief. Vanessa understood it perfectly well; since before Duncan was old enough to walk she had been both his mentor and his senior team member in every type of activity, from learning how to walk to street races on a big-wheel to sneaking out at night for parties at friends houses. This experience reminded her once again just how important he was to her and she to him. "We could call the mission a partial success. The Tarawa can't descend, and we dropped one of their cruisers in the fight. Captain Sansky's loading the mobile suits for another attack..."

Vanessa's head pulsed, slowly at first, then more rapidly as the pressure started to mount. It was decidedly hostile, and closing in fast, not just one but many of them... a warship... "You better get to your suit, Deuce."

"Huh?"

"Enemies coming. You better get ready to fly."

"Who's coming? What are you talking ab..." He started to sense something to, but by now the radar officers had taken the hint and the Captain didn't wait to identify them before going to battle stations. The scramble horn wailed its message even in the infirmary and Duncan burst up for the door the moment it hit. "I'll nail that Gundam that wrecked your suit for you!"

"Don't bother, I want that one myself!" Vanessa shouted as the doors closed. She leaned back on the operating table and tried to relax, though in the end failing in her effort. "Careful out there, Duncan. Don't get careless like I was."