(Author's Note: The guys are finally (more or less) at Luna II! Hurray.
Sooner or later that mysterious deadly weapon will be revealed, but before then...
Well, enjoy! And review more! I want OPINIONS! Or else the chicken gets it. o.o)
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After meeting up with the experimental Osiris and Anubis battleships, the Speranza continues on its journey to Luna II. Now within sight of the colossal last fortress of the Federation, Keith and company are closer to their goal than ever...
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"He what?"
"I tell you, the guy told me he was married!"
A slightly bizarre discussion was unfolding in the canteen of the Speranza.
Keith hungrily bit into a hurriedly-cooked and slightly burnt burger (he'd had to cook it himself, seeing as there was no assigned chef aboard the ship yet) while James spoke again.
"I tell you, if he's married then I'm a jam doughnut. Kojima's probably hell to live with, I thought you knew that. He hates being on this ship because he has some kind of problem with the air systems, and...well, he's old."
"Hey, don't diss the man!" Keith replied hotly. "He's not that bad of a bloke, once you get to know him. And if you ask me, grudges with air conditioning systems are a pretty pathetic excuse to dislike a guy."
"Yeah, and being past forty doesn't make you a matrimonial hot potato!" Tiff chipped in, looking up from a bowl of steaming spaghetti. James wisely decided to shut up at this point.
Keith sighed and smirked, before getting up and moving to another table, where Michel sat alone. The young man slouched in his seat, forlornly chewing little handfuls of some small potato things from a bowl in front of him. Depressed? Keith hoped not, he thought there was more than enough depression on this ship as it was.
"What's up there, little fella?" he said, a fraction too cheerily.
"Don't call me that, I'm only a year younger than you." came the reply.
Keith mentally slapped himself. He should have known Michel couldn't be that young! "Sorry. Erm..anyhow, what's up? Anything wrong?"
Michel sighed. "Yeah..." "Care to tell me about it?"
"It's sort of personal. Do I have to?" "Of course not, but it's easier to work through problems with someone else to help you. At least, that's my opinion."
"Oh, okay then. No sense in keeping it to myself in times like these... I have a girlfriend.." Michel began, blushing slightly.
"That's it?"
"No! Sh-she lives on one of the colonies, while I was sent down to Earth. Since then, I always kept in touch with letters. But since the Tarantula was first spotted, the Federation post have been too scared to come close enough to pick up our letters, and since Kojima Base was lost... she's always been scared of me dying out there, and she once said me being away's putting a huge strain on our relationship..." Michel's voice took on a slight wailing quality, and tailed off.
Keith sighed, and placed a hand on Michel's shoulder in what he hoped would be a comforting way. "Listen. From what I hear, nine times out of ten, if someone just leaves you because you're away a lot they probably weren't right for you in the first place. As for the other thing, while I'm around I'll make sure nobody can get at you till you make it back with your girl... okay?"
This had the exact effect Keith wanted: Michel smiled up at him, with a quiet "thanks.."
Both smiled, just as the intercom erupted in noise. "You'll be happy to know we're now within sight of Luna II! In a matter of hours, we'll be ready to land and disembark!" the voice of Kojima boomed.
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Keith hurried into the bridge, his half-eaten burger still in his hand and a tail of curious Federation officers behind him. A great sight confronted him the moment he opened the door.
The titanic, crater-pockmarked rock of Luna II was practically in front of the ship.
Some larger craters had been used to house hangars and entryways, others were just too small or in the wrong location and left alone.
"Impressive, ne? I'll call the guys and tell 'em we're here!" Kawada chirped over the comm unit.
"...Yeah..." Keith answered, in a voice barely above a whisper. He'd only had a glimpse of an asteroid base before, when he passed the Zeonic base of Solomon on the way to the Earth, but he'd never really seen one up close.
Kojima grinned from his seat on the bridge. "And to think a few days ago you had no idea of what us Feddies were capable of!" he said with a laugh.
Keith grinned weakly back at him, before grabbing the videophone/comm handset. "Well? Do we have permission to land?" he growled into it.
"Yeah. Head for Bay 6." Kawada returned. "And ask 'em to show you what they've been cooking up recently..."
"What, aside from your overgrown artillery?"
"Of course! What you have to understand is the railgun does use some mobile suit technology. The magnetic rods are Luna Titanium coated in..." Kawada began, before being cut off by a transmission from inside Luna II.
"Speranza, dock and prepare for inspection." came the shaking voice of a tired and desperate-looking Federal officer. My God, is this what the Federation's reduced to? Keith wondered to himself.
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Upon landing, only a little group of Federal officials stood in the colossal titanium-coated steel docking bay to greet the crew.
As people almost literally poured from the airlocks and hatchways, Keith noticed that one of the officers waiting for them was the exact same one who ordered the Speranza to dock.
"Right! Who's the captain of this ship?" he barked, which caused many blank looks from the assembled crew members. Finally, Tiff spoke up.
"Acting Captain Tiffany Patcher here, sir."
"Acting Captain? What, was the original captain injured or killed?"
Keith moved forward. "We don't stand on rank here, Commander... Wakkein," he began, after taking a short amount of time to examine the man's rank and name badge,
"so we have no real captain. Most of what you'd call "commanding officers" are pretty low down on the actual rank scale, but we've managed to pull together. Now, the mobile suits you want are in the launch bay of the ship. James, go open the hatches."
As James hurried to do so, Keith turned back to Wakkein. "One of our escorting captains says that you've got something special hidden on this base. Care to show me what it is?"
"Well, we have two little surprises that you down on Earth were unaware of. But you'd have to ask the people down at Mobile Suit R&D..."
Keith's expression changed from mild puzzlement into undiluted fury. "You have mobile suits here?! And yet you let your people suffer and die back down on Earth, while you sit back here and tinker with your little technological toys?"
"These suits are prototypes! They were never designed for Earth use!"
"That never stopped the Zeons from sending their Zakus down to take over, did it?"
Wakkein immediately was silent, having no counterargument. Keith's eyes narrowed.
"Get those GMs mass-produced, and send them down to Earth as fast as possible.
Every day, every hour counts now, because of all this sloppiness, this... indifference. That's the whole reason the war started, too! People on Earth didn't care for the colonists enough."
Wakkein's face was suddenly a lot more pale. "Alright... but first, I'll go introduce you to the head on R&D in this base. Follow me."
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Whatever Keith had expected from a Federation mobile suit developer, the person Wakkein led him to was definitely didn't look like it.
A long mane of red hair framed a slightly freckled, girlish-looking face. Bright blue eyes shone at him from beneath a pair of clear, squarish goggles. The rest of this....person's attire and looks weren't too out of the ordinary: whoever it was wore standard overalls with the Federal logo on them, and scuffed and grease-blackened trainers.
"You probably get this a lot, but I have one question: are you a boy or a girl?" Keith asked, blushing slightly.
To his surprise, the person stepped angrily forward and slapped him across the face.
"I'm a guy! Good God, everyone that ever meets me nowadays asks the same damned question!" the boy sighed, while Keith rubbed his bruised cheek. "Argh...So not only do you have a girly kid as your R&D head, it's a violent girly kid in need of anger management..." he muttered, for which the boy slapped him on his other cheek.
"He was the only person we could find just after the One Week War; besides, he's a veritable genius. Keith, meet Ken. Ken, meet Keith." Wakkein replied, with a look of exasperation on his unshaven face.
Keith sighed, and reluctantly shook hands with Ken, who smiled back at him and mouthed a "Sorry".
After a few seconds that seemed to pass like eternity, the two's hands separated. "C'mon, I'll show you around." Ken said, smiling.
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After walking for a few minutes through the seemingly endless corridors, the duo (Wakkein left them earlier, saying he needed to get on with supervising the GM analysis and production) came to a huge, long bay.
Although the end of it was closed off for some reason (top-secret? Keith wondered about this sort of thing), the left-hand side area of the bay was crammed with mobile suits. Two or three looked like more angular, deadlier-looking GMs, but further on down the line was something different that he couldn't quite make out.
Keith had heard rumours that the Federation had some secret weapon that was the bane of all Zeon fleet units headed towards Earth. Some had said the Feddies had used intruding ships and carriers as targets for testing of new weapons, although the official line was that they were engaged and sunk by Federal cruisers.
"Were these suits used in any way on Zeon forces?" he asked.
"Yeah, but only to test 'em out. We had to get data for our own set of mobile suits, though they said Jaburo would lead in Federal MS development and they'd send us suits to mass-produce for ourselves."
"I suppose that's happened." Keith smiled. "So this is just a sort of hobby of Luna II's, then? Create experimental suits while the guys on Earth do most of the work?"
Ken frowned. "No, they're meant to serve as defensive units too. We had to have some sort of defense, ever since Char attacked this base a few months ago."
"Oh... well, tell me about these suits."
"Well, the red and whitish-green ones are the GM E-types, which were the ones tested on Zeon forces. They're based on the Gundam more than what you brought in, I think." Ken said, as they walked along the bay. "A bit faster and better-armoured, but underneath the shell they aren't that different from each other. I suppose most of our suits are like that.."
As they moved along, Keith could see the final suit at the end more and more clearly.
It looked a lot like a standard GM but it, like the rest, had differences.
Lighter, more curved, with no beam sabre jutting out of its backpack and with odd little grooves in its skirt and leg armour, it had a slightly more fearsome look and feel to it for some reason...
"This is more based on the Gundam than any other suit we've designed... no, I tell a lie, this is more its own design. It's probably faster and more maneuverable than our ordinary prototypes, though we haven't tested it yet."
"And it is...?"
"The GM Command-model. Like I said, we had it designed to be more efficient than the ordinary GM, though we also have some modular construction capabilities built into it. See the backpack? In a matter of about an hour you can replace that and a few other parts for ones with added vernier engines, all the better for space combat."
"But you don't know if it works." Keith reminded Ken.
"I think it will. After all, I was head of the project that turned out this baby." the boy coolly replied.
Keith had a sudden thought. The Federation had lost so many soldiers and pilots, its ordinary tactics of numerical superiority would result in horrific slaughter and catastrophic losses. Maybe this GM type could help even the odds...
Suddenly, a series of explosions rocked the whole base, followed by the sound of gunfire and yet more blasts.
"Oh, god, no..." Ken moaned. "Please don't let it be them!"
Keith knew different. The Zeons had come to try and stop them at last.
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DUN DUN DUUUUN!! ^^ What next chapter, eh? Well, let's just say fans of MSV might be pleasantly surprised...
Shout-outs:
To Arkbot-dude: I'm sorry for being such an argumentative little annoyance. But hey, thanks for pointing out my mistakes as well. I'm re-writing old chapters and I'll put them up once the fic's done. It shall be called... Federation's End - Author's Cut! (evil laugh) o_o
To Scott-dude: Thanks for supporting me and helping me out with info, man. And I hope you're enjoying the fic so far. I'm looking forward to your views on what should happen next episo-erm, I mean chapter. -^^-;;;
To Everybody In General who likes this fic: Review, please! PLEEASSSEE! Oh, and I might write an 08th MS Team-style side story titled The Glorious 20th, detailing what's going on Earthside. Should I? As usual, opinions are always listened to! ^_^
By the way... why's nobody screaming in terror about the Osiris yet? Well, you might have cause to... it's going to get its "baptism of fire" and show off its power next chapter! Muahahaha!