Who we are today is less important than who we were yesterday. Don't get me wrong, yesterday is still important, but how do you expect to move into the future if all of your thoughts are stuck in the past?
- Rashad Jefferson

Chapter 24: Past Lives

- June 7, UC 0084 -
- 0830 hours (CST) -
The range to the Titans fleet was so great the computer could not even spot them at this distance. Duncan estimated them to be at least five hundred kilometers distance, but Vanessa was sure they were much farther than that. With the intensity of the mobile suit battle moving away from the fleet perimeter, the auras of the Titans officers on the ships was by now much easier to pick out. Concealed as they were within the bay block of a half-demolished colony, she had a clear shot to every ship in their formation from here. If only she could pick her first target. "I can sense the target but I can't tell which one is the Agamemnon."

Duncan checked the output on the beam cannon and started powering it up for its first firing. "I don't think it maters as long as you hit one of them."

"So pick one at random, is it?" She shouldered the high-output beam rifle in her hands and aimed it in the direction of the Titans fleet. She didn't bother with the GM's sniper scope, but closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths to concentrate on her attack. She selected one in particular and focused all her attention onto it, felt the collective energies of its crew, and focusing more and more attention on it until she could almost make out the shape of the vessel in her mind's eye. She adjusted the controls with the slightest touch until the beam rifle lined up with the enemy ship, and slowly she moved her hands to the fire control panel and charged up the capacitor on the rifle. "I think I'm locked in."

"Energy level rising... 81%" Duncan checked the power cable from the rifle to the portable fusion reactor they had brought with them, making sure the lines were in no danger of overheating any time soon. There was no need for a coolant line when using this weapon in space, but he had seen strange things happen when Minovsky particles were involved. "Full power. Locked in."

"Charging..." The force chamber in the beam rifle built up power for its attack and the little green light flashed on her monitor. Vanessa pulled the trigger without any announcement.

The beam crossed an ocean of space between the colony and the Titans fleet, passing directly over the Agamemnon's bow at a steep angle before striking the main hull of one of the Salamis cruisers beneath it. The beam sliced clean through the ship just starboard of the bridge, superheating the metal and air within the hull and sending jets of flame erupting through the fittings of the hull plates even as the beam wound its way along the hull and sliced the ship open like a fish. The stricken warship spun as the inferno consumed its innards until moments later a second beam hit just aft of the mobile suit hangar, cutting across the hull vertically and slicing the bow clean off. A fireball of hot gas and molten metal drove the two halves away from each other and sent the now-dead cruiser tumbling off into oblivion in pieces.

Admiral Carter came half out of his chair and shouted at the top of his lungs as the alarms rang throughout the ship, "Evasive action! Get us some cover from that sniper fire! Simone, trace the firing path of that beam cannon!"

The Lieutenant ran the sensor data and charted the origin to too wide a margin to be of help. "I can't pinpoint, but it's coming from somewhere in Side 2! The direction is 51 degrees elevation, 20 degrees to port!"

"Have the Thoroughbred launch everything they've got left to try and pin it down! Passaroff, move us towards the construction site for Bunch 39."

The hulking block of a man that was Carter's first officer followed orders immediately and the Agamemnon's engines fired, moving the ship off of its planned course and straight on towards the half-completed cylinder that in a few years time would become the 39th colony of Side 2. The rest of the fleet began moving to follow them, one of the cruisers even started launching its remaining mobile suits to join the Thoroughbred's pursuit unit... until another blast from the same beam rifle reached out from the darkness and struck down one of the Hizacks only moments after leaving the catapult track. The cruiser's gunners reacted on impulse and fired a few salvos into the distance; one lucky shot impacted against the wall of the very colony in which Duncan and Vanessa were hiding.

The concussion from the cannon fire shook her cockpit, and with the sudden frantic energy of the Titans she struggled to keep her concentration and pick out her next target. They're moving into that construction site for cover, Deuce." She said anxiously.

"That's okay, we can use that. Look for the ship the others seem to be moving to protect. That'll be the Agamemnon."

Vanessa focused her attention again and found the ship she was looking for, the one the other ships seemed to be trying to screen from her attacks. It was difficult to sense with the others in her way... but the moment she focused all of her attention on it, she felt a pressure from the enemy ship unlike any she had experienced before. It was more than just battle stress she was used to, this was something more, almost repulsion at some power too alien for her to contenplate. "I can barely focus on it... that man, he's..."

"I know, Sis, I feel it to." Duncan checked the energy level and the cable again. The rifle was almost ready for another firing. Everything was working fine, but the portable fusion reactor powering the beam rifle was beginning to fluctuate in readings and thermal outputs. "Give it your best shot. The generator's won't last much longer."

******

The Sedona was in no danger of being destroyed, but the mobile suit battle was no less intense than it hand been when it started. The wreckage of the Lexington had become fulcrum of their fight now; Bate's team brawled with Lucy's Gundam in a four-way dance on the one side, while Gardner and Sullivan lead a team of six GMs and Hizacks against Mike and Rico with three GMs. Despite the difference in numbers, both sides were at a standstill, but it was not a deadlock that the Tarawa's pilots were pleased to maintain.

Rico kept as much distance between himself and the GMs as he could, firing over his shoulder with the beam rifle to keep them at bay before reversing back to cover Mike as he pulled out as well. The three GMs darted back and forth exchanging fire with the Titans suits, occasionally scoring hits with machineguns or beam guns as they were equipped but neither side gaining any decisive advantage. "Mike, why the hell are they picking on us?!" Rico complained.

A pulse from Sullivan's beam gun cut through Mike's left shoulder and the arm fell away in a shower of sparks. "Aw man... I dunno Rico, but I'm pretty sure it's YOUR fault!"

"Yeah, whatever! How are we gonna get out of this?!"

He gave it half a second's thought, then reversed his thrusters and charged in towards the GM unit. "Stay on my right flank, no matter what! Don't break till I tell you!"

"You have a plan?"

"Just stay on my right!"

Rico followed along, moving behind and to the right of Mike's Galbaldy as it charged in to attack. The speed advantage over the GM was beginning to manifest here, even as Sullivan started to move to counter what he predicted to be a standard flanking maneuver. Mike broke to the right as he came into range of the GM, starting to circle around it on that side as he dodged fire from the GM. Sully circled in the opposite direction to keep him from getting to his back, answering Mike's fire with his beam gun shot for shot. After half a rotation, Mike fired a series of quick shots, across Sullivan's face and shouted out to Rico, "Change directions!"

Rico did as he was told, and in a just a moment he had a perfect shot of the GM's vernier pack. A single blast from the beam rifle and it was all over: Sullivan's GM spun lazily in space for a few long moments, then the fuel tanks ruptured and the suit ripped itself apart.

Mike turned in space and searched for the other GM, but before he could locate it Lucy's Gundam shot passed him, firing over her shoulder from her arm gatling with the three Hizack Customs in hot pursuit. "This isn't our show, fellas! Let's get the hell out of here!"

"Right behind you!" Mike turned away from the fight and started to retreat, but even at a glance, from the intensity of the three Hizacks dancing with Lucy, the Titans didn't seem willing to allow any kind of retreat today. On the other hand, their attention was entirely focused on the Gundam now... he wondered if they would even notice a battleship sneaking up on them with a solid weapons lock. "Lucy, fly straight in towards the lead suit with your beam saber and lock up with him for just a moment..."

"Screw that, Mike! Are you nuts?!"

"I got your back, but we need to get one of them to stop moving!"

Lucy took a deep breath and drew her beam saber, locked onto Bate's mobile suit and charged in at full thrust. The Hizack discarded its beam rifle and drew its own saber, meeting the Gundam in the same spirit and locking up with it for just a moment in space. Monsha reacted in a split second and moved in behind her to take a shot...

The moment he stopped moving, Mike pulled the trigger. The beam exploded in the sensor eye, destroying the mobile suit's head and sending it tumbling backwards in space. Monsha had just enough time to spring the hatch and leap to safety before Rico put the death blow into the suit and blasted it to pieces. The distraction was just enough for Lucy to finish her work: she pushed off from the Hizack with her foot, then slashed down on it with the beam saber against the torso, cutting through the right arm and leaving a deep gash across the torso just above the cockpit hatch. In the time it took for Bate to regroup his thoughts, the Gundam was already kilometer away, racing into the distance with its comrades at top speed and slowly vanishing into the darkness behind a radar wall of minovksy particles.

******

The mobile suit itself was not especially impressive, but the range of armaments it equipped was troublesome in itself. The G-5's gatling cannon seemed to have a bottomless magazine, and with such a high firing rate there was simply no way to attack it for any period of time. The hyper beam rifle was a nice surprise as well, a powerful weapon with a fast firing rate used almost the same way as the gatling gun. After 20 minutes of a running fight, the Titans fleet was nowhere to be seen, but the Gundam the two of them danced with now was drawing all their attention.

From the opposite perspective, Commander Rongfellow found himself blinking intensely as the sweat started to sting his eyes. His arms were growing tired, his heart racing in his chest; just the sheer effort of keeping up with the two speed-demon mobile suits tested his piloting abilities in ways he never thought possible. "Christ, why don't you two just retreat already?! You've gotta be running low on fuel moving like that!"

By sheer coincidence, Naomi's eyes were even now drifting between the forward screens and the fuel gauge on her instrument panel. "We're runnin on fumes here, Ryo, we're gonna have to pull back!"

Ryo glanced at his own fuel gauge and groaned in annoyance. He had just enough in his tanks to make it back to the Tarawa and land, assuming the ship hadn't changed course since they'd launched earlier that day. "We'll need cover fire..." He backed away from the Gundam just as the gatling cannon fired off another spray in his direction, answered back with a burst from his arm cannons and fired off a flare into open space over his head. The flare burst a brilliant white signal that could be seen for hundreds of kilometers, and Ryo adjusted his course to fly past it on his way back to the Tarawa's rendezvous point. The Gundam seemed to be pressing the attack, as did the pack of a half-dozen Hizacks suits pursuing the GM team.

Ryo watched as the Brisbane's mobile suits moved into formation just ahead of his and snuck a peak at his watch, "Six... five... four... three... two..." A new star appeared in the distance, glowing brilliantly for an instant before it blossomed into a hair-raising barrage of mega particle beams raining down on the Titans suits from hundreds of kilometers away.

Lieutenant Rongfellow reversed course and pulled out of the line of fire, but one of the Hizack pilots hesitated too long and pulled out of the chaos missing both of his legs. "They must have a ship nearby..." Rongfellow checked his ammo supply and raised a brow at his display: his beam rifle was almost depleted, and the magazine of his gatling cannon had exactly three rounds left. "When they come back next time, we better be ready for them."

******

The Agamemnon's main guns joined the two Salamis cruisers in a salvo, targeting the colony Simone had traced the sniper fire to. One of Vanessa's attacks had cut open a second cruiser amidships, but the ship had somehow survived the attack and was now pouring its firepower into the wrecked colony along with the rest of the fleet formation.

Vanessa could barely even sense the enemy now with the concussions from beam cannons pelting the colony wall, little by little smashing it to bits around her. One lucky shot even hit the bay block a few hundred meters from the old space gate they were using for a shelter. "Concentrate, Sis!" Duncan said, all the patience and gentleness fading in his voice, "The target's right there in front of you! Visualize the enemy in the eye of a hurricane!"

"That's what you say, but..." Another barrage from the beam cannons hit the colony, this one close enough that Vanessa's GM almost lost its footing on the metal surface.

"Vanessa, one of the bastards that killed our father is aboard the Agamemnon! He's gloating over it right now! He took pleasure in doing it!"

Her concentration evaporated at the same moment her vision of the enemy surged. Her next series of actions were pure instinct, homing in on the source of the greatest unpleasantness and locking the weapon onto it. The energy level was already maxed out, and Vanessa knew that with the density of enemy bombardment, it was likely the last shot they would get today. "I can't let the Titans get away with this..." She snarled through clenched teeth.

"You sure as hell can't!"

"I can't let the Titans go unpunished..."

"You sure as hell won't!"

Vanessa could see the Agamemnon in her mind as clear as if she were standing right next to it. Her beam rifle centered on the very middle of the ship and her senses told her the next shot would be the last. "Agamemnon, burn in hell!!"

In the same moment she pulled the trigger, a tremendous salvo of mega particles hit the bay block only a few meters from where the two of them were standing. An explosion swept up around them both as the block collapsed from the attack, jets of flame rocking both of them at once. Vanessa steadied herself as much as possible as the beam fired from the rifle.

Vanessa's answer to their bombardment hit the Agamemnon's flight deck a dozen meters forward of the mobile suit hangar, burning straight through the hull and sending jets of flame gushing out in both directions along with a spray of dislodged hull plating and molten material from deep inside. The beam sliced along the length of the flight deg in a jagged diagonal to starboard until it finally cut off, leaving the heavy cruiser's flight deck and one of the launch catapults smoldering in the hull as the metal slowly began to cool.

Duncan snatched Vanessa by the hand and dragged her out of the bay block just as the damaged fusion reactor started to overload, snapping the cable from the long-range beam rifle as they went. The reactor explosion shattered much of what remained of the bay block, but the power of the blast itself seemed to satisfy the gunners in the Titans fleet. The barrage began to let up and finally ceased altogether, leaving Duncan and Vanessa to take a roundabout course past the Titans fleet to where the Tarawa was waiting to recover the mobile suit teams. "Nice shootin, Sis." Duncan said with a note of admiration.

"I could have done better with that larger beam cannon back on the ship."

Duncan nodded in empathy. "I know how you feel, but you know we're saving that for the Flash Gundam. We can't risk weapons like that for these kinds of missions."

"That's true." Vanessa opened her faceplate and rubbed her eyes tiredly. She felt exhausted already, she knew from the stress of having to attack targets by newtype sense alone. At this point the only thing she could sense now was the call of her pillow on the bed in her quarters. "This mission is over, Deuce. Let's hurry back before their patrols spot us."

******

Lieutenant Osborne moved through the debris of Monsha's mobile suit and found the disgruntled pilot flailing around in space, trying and failing to get his vernier back to function properly. "You okay Lieutenant?" He said innocently, "You look a little frustrated."

"Don't gimme that you bastard! Just pick me up already!"

Osborne reached out his hand and pulled Monsha in, just as Bate moved alongside them along with a damaged GM from the Federation squadron. "The Sedona's out of danger, and those pirate suits are bugging out. Think we should pursue?"

Lieutenant Bate took a moment to glance around the battlefield and immediately decided against it. "Negative. We're already at our limit as it is. Get back to the Sedona and escort her to the Titans fleet. You'll operate with our squadron from now on."

"Yes sir." Lieutenant Gardner saluted and closed the channel, then moved on a course that would bring him back to the Sedona, back to the ship that had been his home, the ship his comrades had protected for him with their lives. He clenched his fist in bitterness and ground his teeth in rage. Some time in the next two weeks, Lieutenant Sullivan's two daughters would open a letter from EFSF command, a bland and apathetic notice that their father would not be returning from his last tour of duty.

As they soon would, Lieutenant Gardner stopped to ask himself the purpose of his friend's death. The emptiness of space filled his heart.

- 1412 hours (CST) -
"Why are you in such a hurry? I thought you work for a research company?"

Nine didn't give his intrusion so much as a backward glance; she tossed Alfred's sweater on the floor at his feet and picked up her newly washed t-shirt and jacket, "Just because. I'm working very close with the project. There's not much they can do without me."

"Well you don't have to peel out in such a hurry. It's not like they're working to some kind of deadline."

Nine knelt down next to the bed and found her shoes, "Actually, there is a deadline. I didn't know about it until today." She found her shoes and quickly kicked her feet into them, stuffing the laces under her heel. "I'm sorry I couldn't stay longer..."

"But I've started doing all this research on the Merrimac incident. You could at least stay around one more day... maybe I could find out something that could help...?"

"I'm sorry, Alfred. Thanks for everything, but I have to go now." She followed his voice to the door and pushed past him, feeling her way to the top of the stairs and staring down them as quickly as she could.

By the time she got to the front door, she sensed her path blocked by a second person, someone she had heard come in with Alfred but hadn't given much thought to. Until now. "You're going out to fight again," She said, a girl barely older than Nine herself, "We can't let you do that."

She traced the voice to a shadow of a memory somewhere, but the name was unfamiliar. "I have to. I don't have a choice."

"You always have a choice." Alfred said from the top of the stairs, walking down slowly behind her, "Different options are always there, even when you don't see them. There's always a way to get what you want, but fighting for the Titans is not going to help anyone."

Nine turned to face him with burning in her eyes, "You don't understand, Alfred! I don't know anything about myself, I don't even know what I look like! Do you have any idea what kind of world I wake up to every morning?!"

"But you..."

"The Titans are the only people who can give that back to me, but first I have to finish my part of the deal!"

Alfred read between the lines. "They have you fighting the Tarawa don't they? A man named Brian Anderson?"

At first it just seemed like a lucky guess based on news reports, but immediately Nine sensed something in his voice that told her he knew something... something she was certainly not going to like. "How did you know that? How do you know any of this? Who are you?!"

Alfred knew better than to get into that line of conversation. "Alice, the Tarawa only came because YOU'RE here. You don't have to fight anymore."

"What are you talking about?! Don't you even know what you're saying?! Those terrorists out there would destroy this colony without hesitating! That's all they do is destroy things! That's all the Tarawa has ever...!"

"The Tarawa's not your enemy, Alice!"

"The hell it isn't!" Nine spun around from him and shoved towards the door, throwing it open as the other girl calmly stepped out of her path.

She stormed out of the house and started on her way towards the linear car to the bay block, but barely ten feet from the front door, Alfred called to her from behind, "Alice, the Tarawa's not your enemy! You can't go out there and fight them!" Nine glanced over her shoulder for a moment, but kept on walking without a word. In desperation, he played his last card in the deck, "BRIAN ANDERSON IS YOUR BROTHER!"

This time she stopped in her tracks and shuddered in realization. She started to turn around to face Alfred again, but for some reason she couldn't build up the willpower to turn back. More than anything she wanted to turn back and ask Alfred what else he might have known, but little by little she began to recognize that her inability to face him was nothing short of an impulse from above... eight hundred feet to be specific, and descending slowly from the colonial sky. Lucifer was in its mobile armor configuration, the psycommu system already active and calling out to her as it came near.

So what if he is? Her eyes flooded with tears as the giant mobile armor descended in front of her, coming to a landing in a vacant lot only half a block from Alfred's house. She followed the impulses from the psycommu motor almost unconsciously; in a matter of moments she found herself climbing into the cockpit of the machine. She began to loose herself as the power of psy-waves buffeted her consciousness—in a matter of moments the battle system would take full control of her mind. It means I'm about to annihilate the only people who've ever cared about me.

The mobile armor powered up and rose into the sky of Bunch 13, leaving behind Alfred and his house, his stupefied neighbors staring out their windows in wonder. In a matter of moments the giant mobile armor had ascended high above and disappeared into the clouds on a beeline towards the space gate to the west.

"Do the right thing, Alice," Alfred muttered as he watched her go, "Don't throw your life away for nothing."

******

It is generally accepted that the average person posses a finite amount of tolerance. The limits of a person's patience depends on many factors, mainly the duration of stress and the nature of the source of it. Her patience had endured for no less than fifty eight months without vindication, the authorities oblivious to her frustration despite her most vocal protests, her too cynical to intervene, her parents too self absorbed to notice.

In the fifty eighth month, her opposition tested the limits of her patience. A heated argument in the school cafeteria evolved into a fight between the beloved Mizuki Shima and the reclusive yet volatile Michiko Shinohara; Matsumoto High's star softball player was never known to fight any of her battles on her own, and this would be no exception. The fight between the smaller girl and seven softball players ended much the way most would have expected it.

Shinohara was accused of provoking the fight and suspended three weeks. Mizuki Shima and each of her friends received three days of detention. Michiko spent the first two days of her suspension in a hospital room.

She returned to school on Monday of the following week, arriving early before classes began and well before any of the faculty had had their morning coffee. She lay in wait for them in the girl's locker room waited for the gym period in which her targets would be isolated and defenseless. And when the hour came, early that morning, Michiko Shinohara burst from a locker, ambushed the three of them and slit their throats with the katana stolen from her father's mantel. She stuffed the bodies into their lockers and moved on, a memorized hit list fresh in her mind. Amagasake Gotoh was next, stabbed in the heart with a kitchen knife, followed by Akemi Hatori and her older sister, whom she impaled on her sword in the same strike. With each killing she moved the bodies to a place where they were unlikely to be found until she wished them to be found, so no one would stop her until she had finished her work. Fifteen students met her steel, each with a long list of offenses from the petty to the grotesque; Hikaru Itoh, her ex-boyfriend... Miyako Hatori, the girl he had been seeing behind her back for almost a year... Markus Washington, the American boy who had gotten her drunk and photographed her in the nude, along with his friend Bobby who published them on the internet a week later.

She caught Mizuki Shima in the girl's washroom during her history class, strangling her to death with an extension chord, then baiting three of her comrades who had participated in the previous week's beating into chasing her into the same washroom between classes, one at a time.

Tiring from a full day of combat, Michiko Shinohara took her place in infamy; she walked the halls of her school, tapping the walls and doors of the classroom with the hilt of her sword until she arrived at the office of the Dean of Discipline. With a surreal grin she entered his office in plain view of a confused and frightened student body, and with the same grin she left the office holding the dean's head by the scalp.

Even as a dream, she remembered the horrified stares of the students around her, the same expression that would be shared by the jury who convicted her and the judge that sentenced her to execution. She remembered standing there in the midst of them with a strange, almost psychotic feeling of power at having completely wroughted her enemies and triumphed at last over injustice... but at that moment, it had been the words of one of her instructors that had shocked her to sanity: "You killed him because he's your enemy. Like Muzki does." She listened as the words fell on her ear and the terrifying reality of her deed; she had marched out of the school like a zombie, tears rolling down her face, still carrying the dean's head until she heard from somewhere in the distance a voice calling her, shouting to her as it came closer...

"Empty Nest to 805, please respond immediately."

Lucy shook the sleep out of her head and gathered her surroundings again, checking her position and fuel status. The core fighter was just passing the area of the resource satellite for the Eastern quadrant of Side 2. "805 standing by."

Brian sounded annoyed over the radio. "Lieutenant, you're almost ten minutes overdue for your next report. Is there a reason for this?"

Lucy hung her head sadly. "I think I nodded off sir. Easy to do with such long waypoints."

"I understand. You're passing into the area near the resource satellite, move in a take a closer look of the mining facility."

"Yokai," She banked the core fighter gently in a slow loop, turning towards the asteroid at an angle that would bring her around it in a slow pass as opposed to diving in for a head-on collision. The mining station itself had been abandoned in the war, and since then none of the local corporations had seen fit to renovate the facility and resume operations there.

Closer to the surface she passed a series of small buildings on one surface of the asteroid, the high-speed digital cameras slung under her wing taking video of the entire surface as she passed over. Nothing caught her eye immediately, and she started to yawn again as she banked the core fighter around the bend... and as she came around, her eyes locked onto a block of shadow against the rock, "Hello, what have we here?" She focused the camera over it as she passed by, then circled around again for another pass and looked at it with her own eyes. A section of the asteroid just big enough for a pair of mobile suits had been carved out and reinforced with steel girders. There were two construction pods locked down in docking clamps, but the other two stations were empty. "Bingo! 805 to empty nest, I think I've we've hit paydirt. I'm returning to base."

"Roger, 805. Be sure to check your six for a tail."

"Will do..." Off to one side, in the direction of Bunch 13, Lucy's radar picked up an energy spike and her motion sensors followed. On a more detailed scan she picked up a curtain of minovksy particles forming between her and the colony, but on infra-red she could just detect the outlines of a pair of Zeon warships at the edge of her scanner range, moving towards the colony at full thrust. I wonder... "805 to Empty Nest, there's a pair of Musai moving towards Bunch 13 on an attack heading. I think they're going after the Dogos Gaia, I want to stick around for a bit and monitor the battle."

Brian thought for a moment, then answered back, "Negative, 805, we can't run the risk of you getting spotted. Return to ship immediately."

"Roger." So much for THAT idea... oh well, I doubt they'll show us anything we haven't already seen.


- 1419 hours (CST) -
Dr. Adams looked up from his control panel and nodded to the Admiral in his chair. "Lucifer's made contact, sir. She'll be joining us in about six minutes."

Admiral Carter nodded and turned to his radar officer, "And those bogeys we spotted?"

The radar officer checked his screens and squinted at the data on his consol. "Maintaining course and speed. Judging by their position I'd say they're waiting for us."

Carter grinned. They probably don't even realize they've been detected. "Move us out of the bay block in standard maneuvers. Maintain battle stations, but keep all gunports and missile bays closed until we're in range to attack."

Adams turned in his chair and spoke over his shoulder, "The kids are standing by, sir, unless you want to do this the old fashion way."

"By all means. Let the little scamps indulge themselves."

"Yes, Admiral."

"Sir," The communications officer on the other side of the bridge turned slowly in his chair, "Signal from the Agamemnon. I think he's reporting battle damage..."

Carter scowled for half a second, then put the Admiral on the monitor on the armrest of his chair, "Talk to me, Dyson."

The Admiral's face was a mask of anxiety, the bridge behind him a hotbed of activity of all sorts. "I have nothing but bad news. Tarawa's mobile suits got the drop on us. We've lost almost half of our mobile suits, the Cambodia was destroyed, and the Kashmir has suffered heavy damage. And as for me, we took a direct hit to the forward hull, both MS catapults are out, but we think we can repair one of them by midnight."

Admiral Carter took it all in and dismissed it offhand... and after a moment he even began to chuckle, "Admiral Dyson, you have finally made yourself useful."

"Sir?"

"You've demonstrated very clearly the need for more powerful weapons and more capable pilots to deal with more troublesome dissidents like the Tarawa and the likes. I'm afraid that the Flash Gundam is the only weapon that has ever come close to bringing them down."

Even now the Dogos Gaia was just beginning to leave the spaceport of Bunch 13, and almost the moment they did the ship's own sensor systems picked up the group of renegade warships the recon unit had been tracking for the past hour or more. "Targets in sight, Admiral," The radar officer reported, "Looks like two Musai class light cruisers."

Carter acknowledged the man, then turned back to Admiral Dyson on his monitor, "It's not too much of a problem if your catapults are damaged. I'm primarily hoping to draw the Tarawa into a battleship fight, use your mobile suits defensively while the Flash Gundams take the fight directly to their ships. Their pilots won't be able to attack us while they're busy driving off the newtypes, but even if they do manage to hold out, we have a clear ship-to-ship advantage."

"Sounds like a plan... My radar shows a renegade force advancing on your position. Shall we launch mobile suits to assist you?"

Carter thought about it for a moment, but even as he did, the veiwports on the right side of the bridge flared for a moment in brilliant light as Lucifer zipped past the ship and moved into formation forward to port. There it began its transformation; the mobile suit literally unfolded itself, arms and legs and torso section from a compact flying machine into a freakishly huge mobile weapon, thirty meters from head to tow, bristling with beam cannons and any number of defensive systems and knick-knacks the engineers could squeeze into the frame. Like the Flash Gundam it looked rather bulky and even a bit absurd, but Carter had seen this mobile suit in action once before. In the hands of a pilot like Nine Murasame, it was a weapon with no equal in the universe. "Adams, give the kids clearance to launch. Set their targets to the enemy warships closing on our position." He waited for Adams to program the mobile suits, then turned back to Dyson's monitor with a wolf's grin, "Now's your chance to see Lucifer in action, Admiral. Watch and learn."