Chapter One: A Very Warm Welcome Indeed
Everything was dead. Quess has just pressed on the trigger when the universe flashed around her like a strobe, before it all went black. She screamed her frustrations out at the machine, trying to get it to work again, but nothing would budge. She'd only been shown how to pilot and fight with the Azieru, not how to fix it or perhaps restart it. In the end, she huddled up in the seat shivering. She could tell that others were still out there, but not what they were doing. The young girl suddenly found herself all alone in the dark, her new toy now a possible deathtrap, with only emergency battery backup lighting working in the cockpit. While the Azieru was up and running, almost nothing currently built could touch her and she could fly it without a care. Now the thirteen year old found herself locked out and totally helpless. Another Mobile Suit could come along and stick the barrel literally straight in her face and pull the trigger and she'd never know. The thing could even punch its way through and she couldn't know about it until it was too late.
It had been well over an hour since everything had gone silent, and with only the mental 'hunches' that something was coming closer, she tried to bury herself in the seat. So when the soft thumps registered against the hull, she could only shiver a little, wondering what had happened. She wanted to see Char so bad she would have done anything he asked of her. However with what the muffled voice said that echoed throughout the armor, she could only whimper.
"This is the Earth Federation warship Rai Cailum. We have you under tow and bracketed by our guns. We're opening the hatch in ten seconds, come out with your hands over your head. If you offer any resistance you will be shot."
It got hard to hear was being said near the end, although 'will be shot' came out clear enough, as she could feel the MA being pulled close to what could only be the warship. They hadn't even asked for her surrender, only told her to get out or die, not that her mind was in any shape to realize that. Even with the ten second warning she barely had time to grab the helmet she refused to normally wear. It was tucked behind the seat and Quess barely had its seal on before the Londo Bell marines blew the hatch. She'd taken off the restraints almost a half hour earlier and now paid for her mistake, as the all the air rushed explosively outward to pluck her up and slam her hard enough to bounce against the inside of the hatch. Blinking past tears from the pain, the last thing she remembered seeing before she passed out was to see at least five marines hovering around her with rifles aimed at her forehead.
One of them took a closer look while the rest covered him. Squinting he backed up in his suit not quite believing his eyes. "What the hell? It's just a damn kid!"
Elsewhere the Marines weren't quite getting the same reception as a cute girl. Instead, they were backed up by not less then two Clop class ships training full broadsides at the suit they were about to crack, and there was nearly a company of marines jetting across from the ships to cover the suit as well. Leading them was a pilot fresh from his own mobile suit. Interestingly enough he didn't bother pulling out his sidearm. And considering the rivalry between the two pilots, that worried all the marines slightly.
One of them, a tech, slapped a resonance mike onto the armored skin, and after a nod from the squad leader activated her pickups. "We're popping the hatch, you know the drill Captain."
After a few seconds, nothing was heard inside except what could only be calm and unhurried breathing by the pilot. The technician turned and shrugged at the Lieutenant next to her. He returned it with an even look and simply glanced at the Master Chief next to him.
"Okay, blow it."
There was a slight whuff of air as the hatch snapped open along its joints, as everyone looked inside expectantly. Standing there before them without a seeming care was a man in a red flight suit with his arms crossed, staring eye to eye with the pilot hovering in front of him.
"Amuro."
"Char."
The stalemate edging into almost a minute before one of the marines tried to speak up but was silenced by a glance from both men before they returned to glaring at each other. Something was being said silently between the two and no one was to interrupt until it was over with. Finally with tension thick in the space around them, Char let his lip turn up briefly into a smile, as Amuro finally blinked and turned to the guards.
"Char, you are hereby under arrest. If you would be so kind as to follow us back to the Ra Keim. Chief, get a towline and secure this mobile suit."
Saluting, the man turned to his duties as the two pilots jetted across the distance to the ship with an impressive escort clustered around them. He was blissfully unaware that both pilots were worried about something beyond the fact that both wanted to kill each other. Unseen by the rest, both shared a look. They'd sensed something the instant everything flashed, that something was coming larger then them, larger then anything either had ever felt before. To both of the newtype pilots it felt like an avalanche was about to pour over into their small slice of the universe and devour them into its maw whole.
Upon passing through at the main airlock, both were surprised to see the ship's captain waiting for them who seemed to be on the verge of panic. Char had to smile a little at that, as his reputation preceded him, but it died when the captain's face hardened on looking at him. Whatever was worrying him didn't have a thing to do with the 'Red Comet' and both men caught the undercurrent immediately. Something was very wrong indeed, and Axis either wasn't part of it, or was only a small part of it.
"Lt. Ray, Captain Anzable. Before either of you say a word, come with me to CIC. Captain Anzable, as long as you refrain from anything...foolish, I have been ordered for you to see this. If you do try anything, we have two options: a nice warm bunk in the brig, or back out that airlock without a helmet. Your fleet has stood down along with ours captain. We've got problems bigger then either of you and Axis now." A chill swept through the hallway that had nothing to do with the temperature. No one said a word, and the group marched in silence to the core of the ship, wondering what could have put everyone so on edge.
Most people believe that the bridge is the heart of a ship. They're only half right. Wherever the captain sits is the heart and soul of it, but it's usually several decks down that one will truly find its brain. CIC is where everything comes together, and only after getting sorted out does the data get pumped up for the captain to deal with, otherwise in a three-dimensional combat zone one can easily get overloaded, and that's what the men and women in this room were for. As it was the room was perpetually, unless a beam round went through it, kept around ten degrees cooler then the rest of the ship, even the life-support connections to the spacesuits when they went into combat were kept slightly 'chilled'. But if the cold breeze that had met them at the airlock was bad, it was like walking into a freezer now. Everyone took a look at the famous Red Comet, and then went back to their screens. Or like the two women standing around the globe in the center of the room, they went back to staring at it.
"Ensigns Yamaguchi and Santiago, Lieutenant Ray, and Captain Anzable." Everyone nodded politely at each other in silence not sure what to say before the CO stepped back in. "Now that introduction are over with, lets get to business. Every single minovsky reactor everywhere in the system went down when that, that 'Flash' for lack of a word hit us. Your mobile suits and that monster armor are all dead in space. The only reason we're up and running is that we can get to the reactors and restart them, which is an option you pilots don't have."
Char hadn't quite been expecting this, but Amuro took that in stride. From where they'd opened the hatch on his Nu, with his eyes alone he could easily see the suits floating dead, frozen in whatever positions they had been in when it happened. Even Axis was completely dark, and could only been barely seen by lights reflecting off the Earth's surface. Coming out of his thoughts, Amuro listened as the captain continued.
"And frankly that's the good news. A few of the suits we hauled back we've already managed to restart without any problems. What the bad news is the Jupiter. We don't know how or why but something nearly two kilometers tall showed up near Io just after the Flash occurred. This happened while you were still stuck in those tin cans so you wouldn't know. And the news only now is reaching us due to time lag. Whatever it is sat around for a good ten minutes before sending a radio transmission to the colonies. When it finally got a response, we got a single one word reply: 'Humans.'"
That got their instant attention as both pilots gazes snapped up from gazing into the 3D system globe and into the man's eyes. The man held them for a moment before his shoulders slumped and he continued on. "Whatever happened next we can barely understand, but whatever that thing is opened fire. And..."
Char could see something was dreadfully wrong with this whole situation. Things that large didn't exactly come out of nowhere, and anything that did certainly wouldn't response by saying 'Humans' like that unless they were dealing... no it couldn't be possible. "Stop stalling Captain and spit it out or you're wasting my time."
Turning to the pilot it was easy to see the captain wanted to shoot the man on the spot for that, but in the end he surrendered to the pressure.
"The one observation sat we had up managed to catch the end. The Jupiter refueling fleet. The Ganymede and Callisto colonies, everything. They no longer exist. Whatever that thing is wiped out everything in Jupiter orbit in under three minutes. It's all gone."
With both the Neo-Zeon fleet and the Londo Bell taskforce facing off, the cease-fire that had gone into effect was a tense one indeed. And probably the only reason why it was being allowed in the first place was that while all the mobile suits were out, Captain Noah had ordered demolitions engineers to Axis and they had stabilized its orbit. Had it still been falling towards Earth, by the time the Axis fleet could get their own MSs Running again, things could have reverted right back to a shooting war. The strangest sight of all was seeing the NZS Rewloola, the flagship of the Neo Zeon, holding station alongside the EFS Ra Cailum. With all the blood flowing in the last four years alone with the multiple massacres by the Earth Federation's Titan taskforce, most people would have thought the world would have ended before these two fleets would come to the table peacefully. In fact the moods aboard were anything but friendly, but once word got out about what had happened to Jupiter, no one wanted to pick up where they'd stalled out.
While there was a bit of grumbling, the conference to figure out how to work through their new problem, and possibly settle some differences, was being held in the Ra Cailum herself. No one in either fleet had a record as impressive and respected as Bright Noah's. There were a few nasty words traded briefly but when Char Anzable vouched for him it settled the issue instantly. And at the moment he was glaring at one of his officers who really couldn't take the hint, while Bright was briefing them on what was occurring.
"As you can see from the video coming in from Mars, that vessel is currently heading in-system. We're tentatively calling it the 'Sunfish' at the moment considering what it looks like, but Devilfish would probably be more appropriate. We can't figure out any reason why it'd be doing this, but its been hunting down and wiping out every single one of the refueling ships that were already heading out before it showed up." No one wanted to discuss Jupiter directly anymore, the mass killings of the One Year War and the Titans made everyone distinctly uncomfortable, and this was like rubbing salt into the wound. "The other part that we need to worry about is that this thing is accelerating to each destination at least at 50gees. Nothing we have even comes close to that, and our Intel people are completely stumped as to how or why someone could built a 'drone' of this size, or how they were able to outfit it with weapons like the ones seen. It just doesn't make any sense." Most people clustering around the conference table had reflective looks at that or were simply nodding their agreement. One however wasn't going to let it sit with this, as something just didn't fit.
The slender junior officer from the Rewloola bounced on her heels slightly and let her momentum carry right to the table's edge. Almost everyone there was at a captain's rank or higher, and for a mere lieutenant to intrude with a suggestion was almost unheard of. However in her case she had an ace up her sleeve. Or more accurately, the one sitting two chairs away. "Alright Captain, we know that it appeared out of nowhere on the anti-spinward side of Jupiter from the colonies at the time. There were probes up that still ran on the old fission reactors, and they never went down, but all they could see was this 'blue flash' that we all originally thought was them lighting up their drives for their run. But," and she held up her hand her to tick off fingers for each issue, "we haven't detected any kind of drive emissions. Every time it does move all the gravimetric sensors in the system throw fits. Its weapons are far in excess of our own. Somehow it's accelerating at a rate that would crush us to death and doing it constantly. Only after several minutes without any kind of transmissions did it introduce itself by saying 'Humans', and who in their right mind would program a ship to say that, or if there was anyone aboard, why would they have chosen to say that of all things? Finally if it's a drone then how is it getting its information through the minovsky fields virtually every ship it's encountered has put up."
Bright along with Char knew where she was going, but the whole room was silent as a tomb waiting for the other shoe to drop. "And just what are you getting at lieutenant Mingueru?" he finally asked.
Nanai quietly took in a breath before leveling her gaze equally and firmly across everyone at the conference. "I do not believe this is from our solar system." There, she'd said it, and while the slight smile coming from Char helped, the glares from the rest more then smothered it.
One of the Zeon officers couldn't hold it in, "Are you crazy lieutenant? Are you saying little green men, or some tentacled monster is aboard that ship? You're mad." From the look on his face he was wondering why she hadn't been removed from duty.
"Really captain? Or is she saner then everyone here by saying what several of us have been thinking? This thing is beyond anything I know of with our tech levels. Even with multiple minovksy drives and a fusion torch engine it couldn't be doing what we've all seen, not even a drone can do that. Do you have a better suggestion as to what exactly that is? Or should we just sit here and wait until it arrives in orbit and ask it then, and ignore the fact the broken trail of ships it's leaving in its wake." What surprised most was that it wasn't Char that had come to her defense against the Zeon captain, but Bright himself. He'd bored his gaze into the man and hadn't raised his voice beyond that of a normal tone. However it had the steel of authority behind it, and the two sat staring at each other for nearly a minute before Anzable's hand lightly grasped the captain's shoulder and took the cue from Noah and gave off his own version that silenced the man with a look.
Once certain that the idiot wouldn't open his mouth again for the rest of the conference unless asked, Char turned to look back at Noah. "Well then, what do we plan to do about it?"
"Communications, have we been able to get a single out to the rest of the fleet yet?"
"Not yet Alyt, we're still having problems with all long range communications for some reason."
"Very well, keep me informed, and keep a datalog on all this. Who knows perhaps we can use this to our advantage later on, by drawing more of the human fleet here. If we're having problems, they might not even be able to talk to each other."
The Alyt was getting irritated that even after half a cycle they hadn't been able to get word out of their findings. Here was an entire colony system of humans right at the very borders of Minbari space! And yet according to his charts there shouldn't even be a star system here. He was doing the best he could but these pitifully small ships the humans had built were everywhere. It didn't make sense really. Just one of the ships in the fleet they'd sent that had murdered Dukhat massed more then everything he'd yet seen except those orbital colonies. Even as a minbari those had impressed him. How could anyone build a colony almost sixty-five kilometers long, and not bankrupt themselves? And then they did it again two more times!
The one thing that had bothered him was that their weapons were far different that the ones seen so far. They were puny in comparison to the huge mounts aboard the Agir'Nil, yet the ones that had managed to hit before he completed their destruction had chewed through the ship's hull like it didn't exist. One had hit the deck below, and he'd gone down to check the damage after it had been sealed and repressurized. While it was perhaps a fourth of his height, he could lean down and look through almost forty bulkheads, nearly the length of the hull, before the beam had dissipated. A mere pinprick against his ship, but one that shouldn't have ever occurred.
Damn you filth. But at least I might actually get the pleasure of an enjoyable battle when we reach your main colony. These ships, small as they were finally stood and fought back instead of continuously fleeing. I will still see them all dead, but perhaps these ones are at least worthy of battle, instead of those other weak cattle. Pausing for a moment in his thoughts, he gazed at the hologram suspended against the wall at the two planets left that he could detect artificial emissions from. One was a reddish world with barely a trickle coming from it, while the space around it in orbit seemed to have signals similar to the colony group around that gas-giant. And the next was the third world in, which had to be their primary colony. Energy emissions from it however were sporadic at best, and yet when they did come in the clear, they peaked out in levels incredibly high. They had to be hiding something there, but why they hadn't sent out their fleet was beginning to trouble him.
For now he would be content to show those around the red planet what a minbari war-cruiser could actually do. None in the fleet had yet had the chance to perform a full orbital bombardment, so perhaps now would be a good time for a demonstration. After all, shortly there would be so few good choices left to demonstrate on.
"Helm, plot a short-range jump into orbit around the fourth planet in the system. It looks like they're using its moons as some kind of station. I want the vortex to exit out right on top of the larger one. Then we'll sweep anything in the area."
The crew nodded and turned to their grim purpose with a surprising feeling almost like joy. Each wanted badly to wipe the stain of losing Dukhat, and the faster they wiped out this cancer of humans, the better. It only took a minute for the numbers to run, before his one female bridge crewmember turned to him with a nod.
"Alyt, we can jump at anytime."
"Very well. Jump!"