It was late into the night, or more accurately early into the morning when the meeting was finally adjourned and everything settled to everyones satisfaction. The first hour had been spent in convincing everyone that yes it was neccessary to attempt the impossible because the price for inaction in this case might mean being wiped out. That was good, she had anticipated it. The Coordinators of Belterre weren't some milk-soft politicians; they were hardened refugees who had come through the wars with wills of tempered steel and a fine sense of the expedient. They also trusted Midii implicitly because they had experience with her; they knew if she said something they could take it to the bank (not that Belterre had any banks but...). After intitial shock and protest and outcries of it would never work, they settled down and got to the matter of figuring out how to make it work.
The next four hours concentrated soley on the Coordinators; she went over the country roughly by quarters detailing what plans she had come up with on her own and asking for advice from the various sections leaders. It would have been easier, she reflected later if she had only had to deal with one voice from each sector instead of six for each individual Haven, but she hadn't had the time to ask them to elect a Coordinator to represent them and she didn't want to have any bickering thrown into her lap because one of them felt left out. Still, even though discussions about supply lines, man power and equipment lasted long into the night, it wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been. Each of the Haven Coordinators were sensible men and women, if something needed to be done they found a way to do it with the materials they had; they knew their people, they knew their strengths, they knew their capabilities and they worked with them as well as each other. There were alternate suggestions made or arguments that this or that plan couldn't work for whatever reason, but the reasons they gave were solid ones and they worked around thier limitations. If there were two differing opinions on a plan of action, Midii was a little surprised that they appealed to her to settle the matter.
Halfway through the meeting, Midii began to hold out the hope that this might actually work.
After the Havens were as planned and sceduled as they were likely to get, Midii faced her Homeguard and informed them of their part in this migration. There was less discussion and rehashing. Midii gave the orders, they might suggest alternate methods of disposal but for the most part they accepted their orders and the timetable she gave them with a minimum of grumbling.
It was still late into the night and she was feeling utterly wrung out when Midii flopped into her sleeping pallet and faded into darkness.
She was home. The warm wooden siding of the beloved house she had spent the few happy years of her childhood loomed before her. Eagerly she stepped out of the woods and ran up the path to the front door, pushing it in.
"Papa! Papa I'm home!" she called. "Papa? It's me!" The house was silent, not even the stiff wind of the seaside or the crash of the waves on the cliffs many storeis below them filled the silence. Midii looked around her, everything was just as she remembered it; it made an odd sort of sense even though something tried to tug at her. She walked through the greatroom in search of her father. He was probably still in his room and wouldn't he be surprised to see her? She eagrely walked up the stairs and pushed in the door to his room.
On the other side of the door was a windswept plain... a battlefeild. The place where the bombs had fallen on Nanashi's rebel comrades. It was quiet there too, no sound of wind or movement as the smoke driffed like a spectre across the ground. There were mounds that lay too still as she walked by them. Hundreds of sleepers never to wake.
"Papa?" she called. "Papa? Papa where are you?"
A young boy stood by one of the quiet too-still mounds of human-shaped clothing he looked down at the shapeless hill at his feet. Midii drew nearer and recognized that the boy was Nanshi; and she was surprised to see him there.
"Have you seen my father?" she asked him, like she had just invited him over for tea the day before. The young boy stood silent and looked down at the person lying in front of him. Midii bent forward to recognize the body of his former Captain... but he had her fathers face.
The corpse's eyes shot open and his mouth widened into a silent scream. Past his lips came the sound of a siren...
Midii's eyes shot open in surprise and she jolted awake so suddenly she tipped her tiny cot over landing with hard with a grunt on the wooden floor of her tent platform. The warning sirens were going off! Shit! They were under attack.
Of all the bloody... she cursed. She hated that dream; and now this. She shoved her feet into her boots and groped blindly for her hairtie. No time for a brush, good thing she usually slept in her uniform!
A minute later she was off for her suit at a dead run. The storm had finally struck; there was lashing wind and blinding rain and a little lightening thrown in for good measure. Visibility would be zero without instrumentality. Good for mobile suit fighters, bad for ground fighters. Well, that gave them some better than usual odds, a lot of the Homeguard cell leaders who had journeyed there for the meeting had come in their suits; their mobile suits.
Where the hell was Bryson? He should have been there by now! Bugger. She hadn't thought it was that big a deal, well maybe she should have talked things over with him a little more but Midii was the commander and she made the decisions. It was her call to make dammit. If he wanted to sulk let him, he'd just have to miss out on all of the action.
It occured to her that there were a lot of new people there fr that particular evening. Great good gods, this was not an ideal situation. She had roughly twice the normal amount of civilians within this Haven at this time, not many of which knew the standard proceedures for an attack. To her surprise the warning siren was beign taken by all involved with a kind of brisk and unsurprised efficiency. There was no panic; no running about or screaming... the refugees all knew to report to their shelters and their sub-coordinators and the civilians that didn't know where to go or what to do were being taken care of by the ones who did. Well, that shouldn't surprise her; that's just how things were in a Haven, everyone helped everyone if they all wanted to continue to survive. It was no utopia (always perched on the edge of disaster was no ones idea of a perfect way to live) but it was better than it could have been.
She turned to her troops who were climbing in to their suits and turned on her inter-suit com unit.
"Okay, cell leaders from the sectors outside this one I want you to join up with my squads as usual," she said. She probably didn't even need to tell them; with as much as her unit traveled around the countryside getting rid of raiders and running transport patrols she was almost certain that all of the cells had joined up and worked with her group at one point or another.
Her unit had a total of nineteen working suits, and there were seventeen suits brought in by the outside cell leaders, which made thirty six in all. Raiders were accustomed to fighting around seven suits with all of their ground forces; or sometimes her nineteen suits on a patrol run. The most they had ever faced at one time was the combined strength of her nineteen plus the seven suits manned by the Homeguard cell for that sector. She now had ten more suits than even her Homeguard at it's greatest strength had ever had at once to face down just one raiding party. This should be a cake walk.
She had four squads of suits in her units; Alpha, Bravo, Delta and Echo. Each of her squads had five suits except for one; Delta was short by a suit... odd man out and all. It didn't take long for the miscellanious suits to merge into the different squads, four to each team except for Delta which got the extra man to even things out for them. Once the squads had been picked the "new guys" registered in with their feild commander, which was Midii.
"Alpha six, checking in," one of the new team members said after he'd taken his position in the Alpha team. The identification was logged into her computer. The other new team members quickly logged themselves in and it was all accomplished in a mater of moments. Midii gave the order to move out. It was time to do that which they had always done.
When her scout reported back to her about the condition of the enemy however, Midii received a very unpleasant surprise.
Trowa was not amused. He'd been rousted out of bed by the unwelcome and familiar cry of "Enemy attack! Enemy attack!" and then ordered to report to the nearest shelter along with his family. Him, a Gundam Pilot, ordered to report to a safety shelter as if he were some kind of civilian. This wasn't right.
He wanted to be out there fighting and protecting his family, but Catherine looked so scared. He was torn. On one hand she looked so scared and vulnerable with her wide grey eyes flooded with worry as she cowered down on the floor of the shelter, and on the other hand he was an excellent fighter with the will to protect in this case, he could easily turn the tide of this battle even without Heavyarms to aid him. He didn't know if they needed him or not, with all of the extra man-power they had it was unlikely that even he would assure thier victory. He could probably sit this one out. In fact he should probably sit this one out, he knew Catherine hated it when he felt the siren call of battle and answered it by diappearing.
But... there's abattle out there. If those forces fall the enemy will overrun this camp and my family will be in danger, he reasoned, weighing the options. Could he really sit there and do nothing with a clear conscience?
I'll just get a reading of the situation. If it looks like Homeguard has it covered I'll leave it alone and come back, he promised himself and silently to Catherine. But he already half knew that he wouldn't turn his back on the battle anyway.
"Stay here Cathy," he said decisively rising to exit the shelter.
"Trowa?" she questioned, looking up as he headed out. "T-Trowa!" she protested, but he was already gone.
The storm struck him like a physical force the moment he exited the shelter. The wind literally howled across the enclosed fortress and the rain pelted at him with tiny, needle-sized stinging slaps on his skin. Undaunted, he walked calmly toward the entrance gate-tower and climbed up the ladder to the top.
On top of the tower the wind felt even worse, it seemed to lash at him from all directions, and he couldn't seem to keep his eyes open. The two men manning the tower looked surprised to see him appear so suddenly.
"What are the battle conditions like?" Trowa called over the storm since he couldn't see it himself. The man at the top of the tower had infrared and thermal sensor vision veiwers strapped to his head and was taking a reading of the battle grond outside of the Haven.
"Homeguard would normally have the advantage in a situation like this," the watcher replied above the storm. "But the number of Raiders out there isn't normal. There's four or five times the number of raiders than are in even a good-sized Raiding party and they're well armed. She's had to call in for re-enforcements from the nearest Havens in sectors fourteen and nine for some extra ground fighters the even the odds. It's like the Raiders somehow decided to band together suddenly for one all-out attack."
"How well armed are they?" Trowa asked back.
"Suit com with Number One says they have extensive ground combat weapons, mostly ground fighters but they have close to a hundred jeeps with shoulder missile and granade launchers on them. Homeguard is holding them off without difficulty however, enemy weapons are having a difficult time locking onto their targets due to the weather. Number One has come up with a tactic to adapt the situation and terrain to her advantage. I've fought alongside her before, so i know... as a strategist she's top notch even without any formal training."
"How so?" Trowa questioned. It was like one of those Monty Python skits where two people are discussing ordinary matters in a casual way in the middle of an outrageous situation as if nothing was going on around them and they were sitting over a quiet tea.
"Instead of the conditions favoring the Raiders in an attack, the foul weather is actually working against them by making visibility low and interfering with weapons targeting systems. Number One has seen this and has her troops continuously moving, running interference and strike and run manuvers; dart in, hit a vital point, dart back out again."
"They're going to catch on," Trowa felt obliged to point out. He turned his back to the wind and haunched over the tactics display screen the watcher had punched up. There were roughly four hundred visible red dots and a hundred green dots.
"They already have, but Number One has a method to her attacks," the guard reassured him. "The Raiders are being herded away form the Haven and into a ground where the terrain favors the local forces."
"What's the difference in size on the dots?" Trowa asked. The tactics display was far more primative than he was accustomed to using. It didn't give any real differentiation between man and mobile troops.
"The red dots are the enemy," the watcher said. "The clusters of small dots are single fighters grouped together, the larger dots are manned jeeps and the triangles are mobile suit troops. The Raiders have an esimated one hundred jeeps; there will be two men per jeep; one for the driving and the other to man the launcher making two hundred total, then there's another three hundred groundfighters on foot who are already on foot and spreading out. The good news is, they only have ten mobile suits."
"That brings the enemy forces to roughly five hundred give or take if your estimates are correct," Trowa said. "What does Homeguard have?"
"We're in luck. If an attack like this had taken place when this cell was at normal strength, we'd have been overrun easily; but right now we not only have Number One's mobile unit on hand but also the extra suits and pilots who came for that big meeting she had earlier plus the reinforcement ground fighters she called in. So now we have a total of thirty six mobile suits not counting Number One's suit and her XO's suit and a total of seventy-three ground fighters."
"How many of those?"
"The ground fighters in the feild are split into four teams of eighteen by specialty; two teams of eighteen groundfighters eavh, nineteen demolitionists, and eighteen with portable launchers."
Trowa did a very quick calculation of the ratios in the number of fighters and troops involved. About one hundred combination mobile and ground fighters to face down almost four hundred Raiders not counting the hundred extra they had driving their jeeps. They didn't even have half of the fighting strength of the raiders whether or not they had more mobile suits.
Suddenly the guard on the tower cheered and clapped his hands like a sports fan rooting for his favorite team. Trowa looked down at the screen.
"What happened?" he asked.
"Our girl's come though for us again!" he said triumphantly. "She just took one of their Gropo units of seventy-five heads out of commission in one fell swoop!"
Interested in spite of himself, Trowa was forced into asking the obvious next question.
"How?"
"Suit's com says she waited until most of the enemy's walking ground fightershad to move into the ravine near the ledges, and slog through the muck where the river had been before we damed it up then she had half of her demolitionists blow the dam upstream. The force of the water washed them away and took them out of the fight."
"Very neat," Trowa said in grudging approval. Whatever else she was, Midii knew how to use terrain and limited resources to best effect. "And it certainly evens the odds but Homeguard is still outnumbered."
"Yeah," the guard agreed. "And likely outgunned. We need to conserve resources for the migration and that includes missiles and plasma charges. We don't know how many missiles the Raiders have stocked up for a fight like this and if their targeting sensors come on line, we're in trouble."
That decided him (as if his mind wasn't half made up already). Trowa climbed down from the tower and made for the lone suit left standing in the courtyard when all the others had left. He wasn't sure why it was left standing as the first thing he did after a cursory examination upon climbing into the cockpit was to run a diagnostic which stated that everything was in working order; mechanics were green, munitions were green, defensive armor was green, tactic display and communications were green, everything checked out. Shrugging, Trowa tromped out of the Haven to meet the battle.
This was more his kind of fight... he was good in space battles, but he had to admit he was better and more comfortable with fighting on land. Heavyarms had not been a suit that was suited (no pun intended) for battle in space; it was a heavy- grounded graceless affair meant to brace itself for deployment of a lot of firepower as opposed to the suits Sandrock and Deathscythe which had been created for close battles. Wing had done both, but Trowa felt plasma weapons were for wussies.
In a matter of moments despite the suits inability to launch into the air for faster travel, the battlefeild loomed before him. Trowa switched on the com to monitor little Midii's strategies.
"Alpha seven; watch your twelve! Bravo two, Bravo four; close in heading two o clock. Echo three I want you to lay in cover fire but not too much remember to conserve your ammunition, we can't affort to replace it now so make every bullet count. Delta nine, delta five, alpha seven flank in on that section from the left."
Trowa looked down at his tac screen to see what she was up to. The landformation display showed up first, showing a river in the Northwest with a long ledge curving up from the Haven in the south toward the river to follow alongside it on one side which made the eastern edge of the battlefeild. She had one small section of enemy fighters in their jeeps cut off from the remainder of thier ground forces which had stayed mostly near the river intead of pursuing their goal in the south. The jeeps were the ones that posed the most threat to the mobile troops because they had the heavy munitions, the launchers in the backs of their jeeps.
"Demo team one are you in position?"
"Aye!" crackled a voice over the com, the storm raged in the background of that one so obviously demo team were ground fighters and not mobile suit pilots.
"Deploy charges on my mark," she said. She sounded very commanding and confident and intense when in th middle of a battle.
"Aye," she was readilly acknowledged.
"Gropo team one, are you ready?"
"Aye."
"Launcher team are you in position?"
"Aye!"
"Launcher team, deploy your munitions."
Trowa saw a massive collection of green dots suddenly appear in-between the isolated section of enemy troops and their main forces. The main forces, being only mostly on foot had been making their way slowly behind the jeep forces. The jeep forces with the main munitions had obviously been out in front as shock troops, they had the more powerful weapons with which to take out the mobile suits, plus being in jeeps they were a lot faster than the troops on foot. Yellow dots signified the deployment of misiles at close range and a second later a large section of red dots in the middle of the enemy main enemy forces disappeared from the face of the map.
"Launcher team pull out," Midii instructed. "Fall back to point D and await further instructions. Gropos team one, you're up. Give 'em hell, but watch your ammunition."
The gropos team rushed into the hole created in the defenses of the attacking enemy troops who had been on their way to aid the isolated jeep section that had been cut off from its comrades by the mobile troops of Homeguard. The gropos widened the hole by punching in deep through the enemy lines and then spreading out to the sides. Meanwhile Bravo's two and four had anihilated the forces in the cut off section.
Delta nine, assist Gropo team one with cover fire," Midii instructed. Then after a few minutes of pitched battle on the ground in which the Ground Pounders accounted for a lot of enemy damage the enemy began to gather itself back up and counter attack. Midii then gave the order
"Gropo team one pull back!"
"But Number-" someone protested.
"I said pull back!" she snapped in a tone that said clearly 'don't question me.' A few seconds later she was swiftly obeyed.
"Demo team one, deploy your charges," she ordered. A few seconds later a line of enemies on the eastern edge of the battlefeild alongside the ledge swinging off the river and leading south winked out of existance. The battleground suddenly gave a violent jerk to the left. All enemy forces were suddenly in roust to the west.
"Demo team two your charges are set," it was more of a statement than a guestion from Midii. "Pull out and retreat back behind Bravo five. Bravo five lay in cover."
"Aye!" was the loud staticky answer over the suits com.
The red dots farthest to the west away from the panicked soldiers in the east suddenly switched directions and started rushing southward, trying to bust through the enemy line and reach the Haven...
"Deploy charges! Mark!" Midii called.
The enemy dots heading southward abruptly either disappeared or pulled back; the ones trying to escape to the sides were eliminated when Midii gave the order for Alpha seven, Bravo two, Bravo four and Echo three to pull up beside Bravo five and eliminate enemy forces trying to break through the line (since they were already done mopping up thier section of the enemy). Midii had set up charges to blow up the enemy along that sector if they should decide to move southward.
Midii had the majority of her forces in the west covering the open ground up near the river then swinging out and around to the south with the intention of keeping them trapped between a thick line of mobile suits in the west and southwest for superior firepower and the ledge-face where she had set up token defenses to keep the enemy in line.
"Alpha's one two and three, Bravo's six seven eight and nine, Echoes two four five eight and nine," she spoke to her westward forces covering the open ground. "Advance to the east heading three o clock even. Take out all you can. Alpha four, Alpha six, Bravo four, Bravo one make sure they don't penetrate the eastern ledges. Herd them back to the north where they came from if you can."
The number of forces were now about even, but the Raiders still had a slight numeric advantage. Midii brought in the mobile suit forces she had lined up on the far westward side of the feild to intercept the westerly-running enemy forces. She had them in between a rock and a hard place and in answer to that tactic, some commander on the Raider side had the remaining forces to the east backtrack over their fallen comrades and try to charge at the minimal defenses on the ledge. Midii had set up Alphas four, five, and six plus Bravos one and four along the ledge-side in the east (which the demolitionists had blown to create a bit of a landslide to get the enemy fores to move left in the first place) laying in fire to hold them off but there were significanly less mobile suits in the east than she had covering the open feilds in the west.
"Alpha four down!" came the call over the suits com, followed swiftly by "Alpha six down!"
"Alpha five pull back!" Midii snapped without hesitation. "Bravo one, Bravo three retreive the fallen and pull out to join the main forces."
She'd left her eastern flank too weak. Despite the terrain protection and advantagious positioning for firing offered by the cliff side, five suits hadn't been enough to stand against a concentrated attack by the remaining launchers of the enemy. Midii had all of her troops concentrated on the west and south but if the enemy overwhelmed the eastern ledges they could go up and around to reach the Haven. And the enemy's mobile troops, what few there were, had yet to show themselves.
That decided him. He would do the most good on the eastern cliff. He would be able to hold off the enemy from advancing further easily from a position like that. Trowa advanced up from the south, and was surprised to hear Midii's voice appear on his private com-channel.
"Michael! Glad you could make it!" She sounded harried, and relieved to see him. Or more accurately, relieved to see the suit she obviously recognized.
Oh that explains why the suit was left behind, he thought distantly, most of his mind already concentrating on the battle ahead of him. It must belong to her second in command.
"Echoes eight and five cover the south flank in the three oclock direction. Delta one, Bravo four and two, Delta nine, Delta five and Alpha seven form up the southern flank and move east. Bravo one and three fall south and join up with the south flank along the cliff side. we'll cut them off at point F."
That's cutting it too close, he thought. Point F was almost within sight of the Haven far to the south. If that line fell through there was no back-up troop aside of the Havens defenses and he didn't think anyone wanted to try to rely on them.
"Gropo team one, Launcher team head over to the west and back up the mobile troops. Converge on Bravo one's position."
"Bryson, I need you to assist Bravo one. I'm putting you in command of the southern flank. Okay?"
Obviously she was expecting a response from her second. Trowa remained silent, heading north and a little to the east, intent upon taking up the position he'd picked for himself. Bravo one was in a key point but Trowa intended to travel farther northward to pick up the position vacated by Alpha five. It was a good position for a one-man defense, right along the cliffside where the enemy troops would converge the thickest.
"Bryson? Bryson where the hell are you going!" Midii demanded. "I said the point where Bravo one is located. Bryson!"
Midii sounded worried. She should be, he was headed straight for the place where all of the enemy troops were converging. If it had really been her little friend inside that suit he'd have probably been in big trouble, but Trowa was a Gundam Pilot.
"Bryson, you read-haired ape! What in the hell are you doing! I know you're a little miffed but this is no time to sulk, we're in the middle of a battle!" Midii cried over the suits com.
Trowa ignored her and completed his journey to his position. The troops hadn't arrived at the A-five position yet but by the time Trowa reached it they should be just about within range. Perfect.
"Bryson, pull back," she yelled with something like desperate panic lacing her voice. Trowa ignored her.
"You can't defend that position, there's too many of them!" SHe definately sounded desperate now.
Watch me, he thought.
Trowa brought targeting and weapons displays up and frowned. Even for a mobile suit this thing didn't have much. In fact, what it did have was almost entirely jury rigged from other scavenged mobile suit parts. It had one beam gatling held in its left arm, a shoulder gatling on its right shoulder and only four homing missiles. The munitions bank said that his firepower was at a third of the strength he was accustomed to working with. There were no vulcans, no micro missiles, and no interceptors, let alone a machine cannon it didn't even have an army knife for close-range combat. This suit was no Heavyarms. In fact, it was a lot more like the leo he'd piloted as a kid in the rebel army; clunky, old and in need of constant repair. The weapons targeting system was off by point five degrees and his munitions had only about twenty rounds each. He was going to have to make every bullet count then. A bit of a challenge to make every bullet count in the middle of a storm with unreliable targeting systems, but nothing he couldn't handle.
"Delta five, Bravo four outta my way," Midii's voice snapped over the com. "Gold leader is going in."
"But number one!--" one of the suits protested in surprise.
"Can it, Delta five," she snapped. "All forces hold position. If anyone moves without my say-so I will personally rip their lungs out once I'm through with my idiot executive officer!"
She can't be serious, Trowa thought as he watched the lone suit she piloted advance to his position.
But she was serious. She was making her way swiftly over to his position with likely every intention of facing down the shreiking horde in what she probably thought was a suicide venture alongside the man she'd just had an argument with a while ago. Of course, she didn't know it was him. She must really care about her friend to want to face down the overwhealming odds stacked against the two suits just because he was going in too. It was brave and noble, but also inconvenient for him. He didn't know if she was any good as a pilot; she hadn't been a fighter back when he knew her, and he hadn't seen her engage the enemy in this battle either. She could be a terrible and clumsy fighter and he'd have to worry about destroying the enemy troops and keeping her out of danger at the same time. What a pain.
"I don't know what's going on inside that thick skull of yours Bryson," Midii said over the private communications between the two suits. "And frankly I don't care. We'll settle everything between us when we get back to the Haven but I just can't let you go out there and get killed stupidly. You're about the only family I have left and if you want to be stupid, then I guess I'll just have to be stupid too because you're too important for me to lose."
Trowa was brought up a bit short by that. For half a heartbeat he wished that she'd known it was Trowa and not her second in command Michael Bryson that was inside the cockpit when she said those words but the foolish half-formed wish was swiftly squelched by his utter concentration on the battle.
The forces were within range now. Trowa brought his shoulder gatling up and adjusted his suits grip on the beam gatling, then opened fire. The front line went down swiftly with his first volley, but they were replaced by more troops. Trowa concentrated his fire on the thickest part of them and gradually his constnt barage was making an impact. The number of disabled jeeps and launchers grew steadily, just as they always had. There were no problems here. Even with the limited amount of ammo it appeared that his natual abilities as a pilot were still more than enough to beat overwhelming odds. Midii joined his side adding her firepower to his for a few seconds and then... she darted forward towards the troops.
Idiot! he thought furiously. The leo she piloted was not suited for close-in combat. He laid in cover fire while she sprayed the nearby area with bullets and then retreated back to the cliff. The hole she'd created was swiftly filled by more ground troops. Trowa kept them at bay by a steady stream of cover fire, then when it looked like one of the launchers might get abrave and make for Midii's suit Trowa launched into his tripple axle spin off the cliffside and landed in front of Midii's suit.
His second round took out only some of the forces on the feild which were quickly congealing into a massive horde, like a plague of rats preparing to overrun the village. But where were those mobile suit troops that the Raiders were supposed to have? Trowa hadn't seen them yet appear on the battlefield. He concentrated on keeping a safe perimeter between the cliff face his back was to and the sea of troops he faced. Midii split her concentration between aiding him and giving orders to her own fighters. They were making progress.
Over on the western edge of the battlefield the defensive troops continued to attack and eat away at thier forces, but unfortunately thy also sustained some losses in fighters. Echo nine, Bravo seven, Alpha two, and Echo two were reported out of commission.
He sprayed another round of shot from his shoulder gatling at the advancing forces and they paused for a moment because every bullet had disabled a fighter of theirs but they quickly regrouped. The jeeps advanced to the fore and soon there were launchers in the air aimed at the cliff where he stood. He only had four homing missiles.
"Bryson, don't worry about the missiles, I'll get them," Midii said clearly over the com. "Just hold the stupid line you've picked out for the two of us!" Sure enough, the missiles started exploding in mid-air as Midii adjusted her aim skyward.
Calmly, as stoic as ever, Trowa moved toward the side for a better firing position. His shoulder gatling had already used up five of its twenty rounds and he'd just barely made a dent in the enemy forces. He started in on his sixth round, every bullet counted. He had to admit that Midii was a fair shot, he hadn't had a missile come close to hitting him.
"Next wave's up!" Midii warned him. "They've pulled in the rest of their jeeps."
So what? he thought. The slope's too sharp for the jeeps to advance, the worst they can do is fire on our position.
Which they did; heavily and with relish apparently. A few of their missiles breached Midii's defenses but for working with faulty equipment she wasn't doing too badly. She got most of them, and the ones she missed were off-target anyway.
"Oh shit!" she swore.
Oh shit what? he thought in mild annoyance. He was trying to eliminate all of the ground forces here, he didn't need some backwoods fighter overreacting to every little change in the battlefield. Maybe Wufei was right after all... on second thought, the day he started agreeing with that sword-toting Barton-army-joining pilot would be a dark day indeed. Besides, Sally was a good fighter, and Trowa had enjoyed working with Noin; Midii was just too... intense. She was a good tactician but she fought with too much passion to truly be called analytical.
"It looks like the cavalry's here," she said warningly. "Bryson, we'll say you've proved whatever the hell it is you've set out to prove so can we pull back now? I really object to dying stupidly." And then as an afterthought added "You red-haired monkey."
Some pet name, he thought. She sound more like this guy's bossy, bratty younger sister than his lover.
The mobile suit troops had forded the river from the north and were joining the battle.
"Delta nine, Bravo three, advance to our current position," Midii said. "I want you to assist Bryson and me with cover fire. Gold leader is advancing to point C so I'll be counting on you guys to back us up." Then she switched to the private comunications in the suits.
"Hey Bryson, since you're suddenly such a fraggin' hotshot, why don't you help me take on those mobile suits? We'll see who get's the lioness' share; winner does the losers haven tasks for the week!" she called over the com.
How juvenile, he thought even as he advanced to her position to take on the suits. He didn't really care much for laundry duty anyway.
Fighting with an inferior suit was a bit of an adjustment for him, he hated having to watch his ammo. He looked over at Midii who had charged right into the fray. Obviously there were more than a few adjustments made to her leo suit. Despite it's usual graceless appearance it was manuvering with a speed and agility that was very much at odds with what he knew of its capabilities. It had probably been lightened somehow. She was speeding toward the enemy, whipping out an extendable fighting pike. Both ends were heating up a dull angry red... some kind of heat shortel perhaps? Trowa raised an eyebrow at that... certainly not standard-issue Alliance military equipment.
Trowa at last got within range and hauled up his beam gatling and brought targeting systems on line. Weapons systems and engines only were targeted, naturally. The system was having a hard time locking on to the target, mostly due to interference from the weather so Trowa switched to manual. The first enemy suit was within his sights and he aimed for the shoulder to disarm its main weapon. He opened fire in his usual apathetic manner and watched with mild interest as his first suit fell to its knees and then slumped forward, useless. He looked over to see Midii slice her targeted suit in half with an enormous explosion of orangey-red fire and move on to the next suit even as Trowa targeted his second.
She was keeping pace with him... impressive. But probably not good enough.
Trowa's second suit fell and the other suits, catching onto the surprise attack in their midst, had opened fire on the both of them. They were bth making their respective ways to their third suits when the remaining four opened fire. Trowa finished off his own targeted third suit by shooting upward through the power pack.
"Don't run!" Midii called, chasing after her third suit and spearing it through the chest with the tip of her heat lance. The suit slid off her weapon as she threw it to the side, and she dodged the incomong volley of plasma fire from the remaining suits. Two of the jeeps from the ground forces had pulled up and leapt into the fray by firing off thier missiles. Trowa fired at them expertly to intercept. This suit wouldn't be able to take a blast like his Gundam had been able to. Midii moved onto her next suit.
So it's like that is it? he thought. He makes sure she doesn't get hit and she takes the opportunity to get ahead.
"Come on Bryson hurry up!" Midii said with a wry teasing edge to her voice. She fired off two of her homing missiles at the jeeps with the launchers followed quickly by a third. The first two missiles were intercepted and destroyed by the launch teams on the jeeps but they of course had been unable to move quickly enough to stop the last one from destroying them. Problem solved.
Trowa used one of his own homing missiles to take down his fourth suit by shooting it off at the knees. Attack the foundation and the structure collapses then when the suit was lying helpless on the ground Trowa disables its weapons systems. Midii was right at her fourth suit too however, slicing off both of it's arms in a smooth motion and then crashing her shoulder into it to knock it onto its back before sticking her heat lance into its head.
Four each, two left to go. Trowa targeted the farther away of the two with his shoulder gatling and in a last ditch effort of desperation the suit released twenty-four micro-missiles into the air before Trowa took its weapons off line.
Midii broke off her attack on the last suit to change tactics and blast her way back to Trowa's position with all of the ammo in her suit pointed up at the sky trying to protect him from the missiles homing in on his position. The suit she'd been about to attack turned and attacked her! Trowa swiftly finished off his own suit and targeted the oncoming suit, hoping to reach it before it got to Midii (who was busy trying to blow twenty-four swervy-missiles out of the sky). The attacking suit then released it's own volley of micro-missiles doubling the number in the air. There was no way she'd be able to intercept them all even using both her shoulder gatling and her beam gatling so Trowa brought up his shoulder gatling to assist Midii in interception even as his beam gatling targeted the last mobile suit.
"Bryson!" Midii yelled. "Move!"
One last shot, he thought. His system had it targeted. He fired. His own suit shook violently from a heavy impact, there was a moment where he seemed to hang in the air and then another bone-jarring jolt as his suit hit the ground. It wasn't the impact from a blast however, but from another suit; Midii's suit. He brought up visuals of the outside. It was a glow of yellow as bombs went off around him and siloutted against the glow of fire was a single leo with its beam gatling still up and firing even though it was missing part of a leg and its entire right arm and gatling. She'd protected him from the impact of some micro-missiles by using the suit as a physical sheild.
Midii's suit rocked back as another missile hit it, dead on. Trowa brought up his beam gatling and destroyed the few remaining missiles in the air. There was a moment of silence.
"Bryson? Are you okay?"Midii asked, she sounded a little shaky.
In answer, Trowa righted his suit, then turned to the south and laid into the assembled troops there. He still had another ten rounds of ammunition and seven rounds of plasma charges. That was more than enough to put a large dent in thier forces.
"Bryson? What's with you?" Midii demanded. "This isn't like you, acting all gung-ho hoo-rah! Dammit, answer me!"
He ignored her in favor of taking out another three jeeps and their launchers and a small contingent of ground forces. The numbers of the attackng Raiders had significantly lessened; thier forces should be about even with the forces Gathered by Homeguard and with their mobile suit contingent out of the way Trowa sensed that his victory was imminent. His remaining homing missiles should take out the jeeps but he didn't know if he had enough ammo to finish them all off.
With a stoic mental shrug he kept firing. They'd likely surrender before long anyway.
"Wait a minute," Midii muttered (probably not realizing that his suit was still tuned into her suit) her voice hardening with suspicion. "That isn't how Bryson fights. But I recognize that style of combat..." She trailed off.
"No doubt about it now, Trowa's in that suit."
Took you long enough, he thought. What he wasn't expecting however was the sudden deafening roar amped up through his suits com.
"NANASHI! YOU CLOWN-FACED GREASE SPOT ON THE BACKSIDE OF A CAMEL! WHEN I GET A HOLD OF YOU I'M GOING TO RIP OFF YOUR HEAD, TEAR OPEN YOUR SKULL, AND SCOOP OUT YOUR BRAINS FOR CATFOOD!"
Ow. His ears were ringing. She wasn't done.
"I'm going to tie you to a tree with your own entrails and use your testicles for hacky-sacks! Death's too good for you, you poker-faced moron! As soon as I'm out of this suit I'm going to lodge my boot where the stream don't flow!"
"Calm down," he said mildly.
"I am calm!" she screamed at him, ignoring the fact that her enemies were turning tail and running back where they came from and that they'd just won the battle as the sun was comming up.
"I am also going to personally rip your lungs out! Do you have your brain lodged up your ass! What were you thinking, taking on all of those suits!"
He sighed. She might be an excellent tactician, a passable mobile suit pilot, and a somewhat good leader... but she was so far from being his type they were practically in separate galaxies. How feminine was it to tell someone where to stick it in such explicit terms? She sounded more like a paradeground drill sergeant with the vocabulary of a sailor than a petite young woman who looked like a high wind would knock her over. And as for that catfood thing? No, definitely not feminine.
"I have an interest in the outcome of this battle," he explained calmly. "I have family to protect back in that Haven, so I came to ensure that there was a victory."
"You're only one fighter," Midii groweled. "And you're overstepping yourself. You're using my suit and my weapons, fighting my enemy in my homeland disobeying my orders and all without so much as a by your leave Miss Une!"
"This is no time to become embroiled in a territorrial squabble," he stated. Sheesh, she was being very overreactive about it. Maybe she was just disappointed that it was Trowa and not her precious Bryson inside this suit. She could have just said so.
"You endangered the lives of my crew!" She exploded at him.
"If matters had continued without my interference your two ground fighter teams and many of your mobile suit pilots would have been wiped out by the south-eastward push of the land forces and the appearence of their mobile troops. The mobile unit would have come down from the north to take out the suits you had lined up like beads on a string to the east and the missile launch-jeeps would have outnumbered, outgunned, and overwhealmed your south ground-pounder units despite the back-up by the Homeguard mobile suits," he informed her. "The most logical position to take was there at the terrain's weakest point. In a battle where speed and ease of travel is of the essence the only way they would have been able to make a path up and around the bulk of your forces would have been to go along the top of the ledge and-"
"I know that!" she snapped. "Did it also not occur to you that maybe I had a plan for that too? A plan that did not include rushing into the maw of the dragon like some kind of madman and damn near getting me killed trying to save the wrong guy!"
Ouch. So now he was "the wrong guy" eh?
"I didn't ask for your assistance," he replied, beginning to get a little annoyed by her attitude. He aids her and her troops with his fighting abilities and she treats him like some kind of unwanted stray dog that wandered underneath her feet. She had to be the most ungrateful woman he'd ever met! "I would have handled the forces quite well, even with only this suit."
"Well aren't we special? And while we're on the subject, I sure as hell didn't ask for your help either you hypocrite," she shot back. "If you can even call it help. You endangered me and many of my troops with that stunt of yours; you didn't check with the feild commander before engagin gthe enemy, you can't obey orders, you wasted most of Bryson's stockpiled ammo on needless heroics-"
Trowa felt himself actually growing angry as she continued to rant on about all of his supposed faults. That just didn't happen... ever. But she was doing it to him. He felt his face flush and his chest constrict, his hands unconsciously tightened to a crushing grip around the joy-sticks of his suit and every muscle in his body tensed. He, the great unemotional warrior stoic, was actually pissed off. Even if he had known what to say to her ranting list of harsh accusations he couldn't have spoken past the clenching in his jaw.
How dare she! That spoiled, ungrateful, imperious little brat! he thought when he was finnaly able to get a coherent thought past the haze in his mind. Trowa had never been angry before; it was novel experience for him but not a pleasant one. Now he suddenly understood that it did indeed actually cloud the senses. Trowa fought hard for the control and detatchment that had always saw him through every situation no matter how grim. The detatchment was nowhere to be found as his temper had already heated up beyond that point, but the control he could manage.
"It's not called needless heroics Miss Une," he said, actually having to struggle to keep his temper in check. "It's how I fight and it is effective in this situation."
"Next time you want to help, play nicely with the other children and don't act like some god-damned hero," she snapped back at him. "Now take Bryson's suit and head back to the Haven, and since you're the one who damaged it you can see to the repairs yourself!"
Trowa hadn't thought he was capable of getting any angrier than he already was... he was wrong. That last comment had done it. The cheek! Ordering him about as if he was some kind of menial. Dismissing him from the battlefeild like she was the queen of Sheba and on top of that ordering him to fix his mobile suit like he was a naughty boy in need of some punishment to teach him a lesson. He was quite literally struck dumb with anger. There was a loud snapping sound in the cockpit and at first he thought it might have been his temper but he looked down to see the plastic of the console snap in a pattern of fine spiderweb lines beneath his hands.
He stood stock still, trying to bring his breathing under control. Funny, staying in control of his emotions had never been a problem for him. He'd never had to deal with getting angry before and all he could do was simply sit there and try to bring himself under control.What was it about this girl? She could make him go from absolute zero coolness to red-hot in no time flat. Trowa was the stoic who was known for being silent death (as opposed to Duo who was known for being noisy death); he speaks ten words to her and he's ready to strangle her. If Midii had been a man, Trowa would have hauled her out of her suit for a fight and that would have been that; but Midii was a girl, and not only that she was his sister's friend and someone the Preventors was negotiating with at the moment. Hauling her out for a fight was out of the question. So he bent his will to bringing himself under control. At last he reached a point to where he was only nursing a sense of righteous anger and indignation. Oh, he'd go along with her to keep the peace and the negotiations running smoothly, but he wasn't going to give an inch. She might be the queen around here but she held no sway over him, and he'd bet that out of the two of them he was stronger and more stubborn than she was.
He brought up his outside display screens and noted that a general clean-up was taking place. The whole and healthy members of Homeguard were going through the bodies of the enemy forces checking for survivors and laying out the dead in neat rows. The remains of their equipment was gathered up on one side of the feild for inventory later, but the bodies and possessions on the enemies themselves were scupulously left intact. Homeguard might be undereqquipped but apparently they held too much pride to bring themselves to the point of scavenging from the dead. Then again, the Raiders were desperate enough to attack a poor country like this one so they probably didn't have anything worth stealing. The pilots of the fallen suits, the gropo teams, and any survivors among the enemy were given basic medical attention if needed. Apparently Midii had called for that emergency medical back-up she'd arranged earlier for three open backed vehicles carrying twenty-two blue-suited members of Homeguard quickly came up from the south. There was no hesitation as they spread out and went to assist the greivous cases first. Trowa felt something nag at him for a moment but didn't concentrate on it; he was still too pissed.
It looks like they have everything under control here, he thought, turning his suit southward. He should go check on Cathy, she was probably worried sick about him after hearing that the medical troops had been sent out.
Next time on Legacy: In which it's Midii's turn to get pissed off….
Stupid Trowa and his stupid recklessness, she steamed. If she hadn't thought he was Bryson and went to face insanely stiff odds in order to protect him and as a consequence taken on the hits of ten micro missiles her suit would still be working! That jerk. Then again, she might still have faced those odds in order to protect him even if she'd known who he was.
And then she gets dealt a crushing blow…
Midii stood there silently refusing to let the tears fall, but in the end... she just blamed it on the rain.