A/N: Well so far I have no votes for any pairings but there are still quite a few chapters before they really come into play unless its going to be a Kira/Lacus as that vote would have to have a major lead in a few chapters.
Angelus288: I didn't know that, if you could tell me, what do newly promoted ZAFT commanders wear? I'm hoping to make this as canon as possible.
Chapter 3: Dog's of War
Murrue Ramius, surviving officer of the Archangel unfastened the safety harness in the Strike Gundam before triggering the hatch and descending on the zip line arriving on the ground in front of the Archangel as the orange and white suit landed beside her and she watched as the pilot clad in a pitch black flight suit descended his own zip line holding a unconscious young blond teenage girl bridal style his tinted helmet visor hiding his features from view.
The pilot, obviously a man from his stature, stepped off the zip line onto the ground gently setting down the blond girl in his arms before turning his attention to the Earth Forces officer and the approaching crewmembers from the Archangel as well. Murrue drew her standard issue side arm pointing it at the mysterious pilot.
"I suggest you put the gun away unless you were planning on firing upon an Orb Special Forces operative?" The pilot's deep voice caught her off guard as well as his answer. It was true that they were on an Orb colony and developing weapons with Morganroetes' help, but for them to send one of the highly trained "Orb Sentinels" out this far indicated there was more going on here than met the eye, like the blond girl he had been carrying, it could have just been a civilian that he rescued but it was unlikely that he took the time to save one inconspicuous civilian out of the thousands that lived on the colony; no Murrues' instincts were screaming at her that this person held some sort of significance; one she intended to find out.
"My apologies, may I enquire as to why a Orb operative is in Heliopolis, I know the G-Project is important to both the Earth Forces and Orb but I didn't think it would require the attention of someone so…" She trailed off only to have her sentence finished by the black clad man in front of her.
"So important and rare? Its common knowledge that there are only ten Orb special forces agents in existence; you can refer to me by my code name Centurion. I was sent on a mission to track down well…. I guess I should tell you if I'm going to take passage on this ship back to Orb. I was ordered to track down a very….elusive target, the Chief Representatives daughter who had heard rumors about this project and had to see for herself the 'betrayal', as she puts it, her father made to Orb's policy." Murrue took a few moments to collect her wits after having such a bomb shell dropped on her until one of the agents' statements brought her back to reality.
"Wait a minute, passage? You expect to hitch a ride on a warship back to Orb?" She asked incredulously.
"I would be willing of course to help defend the ship should we run into any ZAFT forces, although I suggest allowing the Hawk of Endymion hiding behind that bush over there pilot this machine, he could get much better use out of it." Murrue looked over to where the agent had gestured to see a sheepish Commander La Flaga in a flight suit minus the helmet and holding a handgun sheepishly rubbing the back of his head in embarrassment.
"Ah, sorry about that, unknown situation and all." Mu said guiltily.
"Understandable, especially for one such as myself." Mu nodded in understanding before turning serious.
"So, basically the situation right now is that we have two of the G-weapons while ZAFT has the other five, a runaway princess and the Thunder Guard on our front doorstep." Murrues' sharp intake of breath indicated that she recognized the name while the Orb agent stood there perplexed.
"Thunder Guard?" He enquired clearly enunciating the name.
"You ever heard of the Desert Tiger?" He received a stiff nod from the still helmeted man.
"The Thunder Guard and their leader a man that goes by the moniker of the Rakurai, they are to space and perhaps more what the Desert Tiger is on the ground." The Orb agents' head was bowed in thought before it shot up in surprise.
"The Thunderbolt eh?" Noticing their surprised looks he proceeded to explain.
"It's from an old Orb dialect that hasn't been used in decades as nearly everyone speaks English now. I wonder how, other than be a former Orb citizen, that someone could learn such an archaic language. No matter we have more important matters to discuss such as this machine here-" He stopped abruptly, instincts kicking in as he swiveled in place, procuring a side arm from somewhere and training it on the group of civilians that had been try to unobtrusively walk up.
"You are?" Centurion enquired his voice colder than space.
"I'm Sai, this is Tolle, Kuzzey and Miriallia, we're interns at Morganroete."
"What are you doing out here? Shouldn't you be in a shelter?" Mu asked with a raised eyebrow.
"We were on our way to one when we got caught up in a fight between those machines, by the time they were gone the shelters were already either full or locked down." Replied Sai nervously eyeing the side arms all those present were brandishing.
"Great, just what we needed, civilians to get in the way of our operations while trying to make it out of this debacle alive." Murrue muttered.
"Hey!-"
"We're not useless!"
"You take that back, we've had experience with electronics before!" This coming from the fiery Miriallia caught Mu's attention.
"What kind of experience?" he questioned looking curious.
"Mainly we've been testing the new OS for a small troop sized exo-skeleton trying to wire out the bugs as well as dealing with software that looks like its intended for large warships. I could never figure out whether it was being designed for naval ships or space based craft, Morganroete only told us what we needed to know."
"Hmm, interesting, what say you Lieutenant? We could probably use their help."
"You can't be serious commander, allow them on a classified military secret? They've already seen to much as it is." A voice spoke up behind slightly sarcastic.
"All the more reason to let them on board, aside from the commanders astute observation, I'm Ensign Natarle Badgiruel sir." All those present turned to meet the cherry colored eyes of the black haired ensign.
"Ensign? What do you mean we have a full crew unless…" Murrue enquired, dread forming a small ball in her stomach.
"The control booth was bombed, we lost the pilots and most of the command crew, aside from me and a couple other ensigns its just regular crewmembers that have no clue on how to run a warship, they can at least run the CiC for us since we're so undermanned. As it stands you and the commander are ranking officers and he should take command."
"Me command a warship? You're out your mind! I don't have the faintest clue how to run a ship much less one I'm not familiar with."
"Then I guess you're in command, Captain Ramius." Natarle said with a slight smile bringing her hand up in a salute.
"But- wha-how-"
"Lost for words captain? Don't worry I'm here to back you up, though I don't know how much use I'll be with my Moebius unit totaled." Mu sighed looking depressed until the Orb agent spoke up again.
"I believe I can offer a solution, since I am so far up in the command chain I was privy to classified files, one of which was the details on a program to create our own version of the Moebius corps. We were trying to find a way to allow any individual to utilize the wired gun barrel system; so far they have had no progress. But there is a prototype here in Morganroete that has the system installed, but with no one able to pilot it…." He left the statement unfinished as Mu perked up and got the look of a kid in a candy store with his parents' wallet; after all who doesn't like trying out new military hardware?
"Well I guess that solves that problem, do you know where it's stored?" Mu asked.
"Wing 3, block E." The agent replied in a monotone.
The mobile armor wasn't that hard to find with such precise directions. Mu accompanied by the agent and Sai to aid in moving it back to the archangel stood in front of the imposing doors that had 'Restricted Area' in large block letters across them. The agent, still with his helmet on approached a keypad typing in a code causing the doors to rumble ominously before slowly opening to reveal a tarp covered item basking in the rays from the narrow skylights overhead giving it a ghostly glow. The agent pressed another control on the wall inside the doors causing machinery long unused to come to life and pull the massive tarp off the object.
Mu's and Sai's breath caught in their throats at the sight of the machine. The sleek aerodynamic craft was a royal purple and was much like an improved Moebius Zero might appear to have been. Its basic shape was a sleek elongated cone without any protrusions as the crafts hull encompassed the dual linear cannons mounted below and to the sides but not on the bottom of the craft with only the very end of the barrels showing. The rear of the fighter, instead of widening like a sphere would tapered off to a well crafted engine with the gun barrels appearing as part of the actual craft, they were wedge shaped objects only identifiable as not being an actual part of the craft by the small lines that surrounded them indicating that it was detachable. The tear shaped canopy the craft had was slightly behind the linear canons and looked like something from the twentieth century, by the old calendar. The black clad agent broke the silence.
"It's an amazing machine, a shame they never got it to work the right way. All it needs is a few tweaks to the OS before it's ready to fly, that's what Sai her is for, he specializes in this sort of thing, or so he's said, I'll leave you two to get this thing up and running while I have a talk with the captain…
"Well?" Captain Ramius enquired.
"We found it easily enough, it'll take some time to get it flight worthy but once it is, it'll hold its own, we have other matters to deal with at the moment though, like those two mobile suits." The agent known as Centurion commented.
"Well they don't really have a working OS, and even if they did it's not as if we have enough pilots for them." Ramius replied defeated.
"don't be so sure, I have something here that believe it or not is a mobile suit OS that's much more advanced than anything either Orb or the Earth Forces have, and maybe ZAFT as well." Murrues' jaw dropped in shock before she regained enough wits to ask.
"Where did you get it?"
"Would you believe me if I said that my twelve year old son, a first generation coordinator, made it while trying to make one of his video games more realistic for his friends and him before I took it away as it went against our neutrality." Captain Ramius nearly choked on her own spittle as she raised an eyebrow.
"A twelve year old you say? Well it can't be worse than anything we have now. But that still doesn't answer the question about the other pilot, I know you can fly one but that still leaves us one short."
"I was referring to the princess as the other pilot. She has had training and is quite adept at it, she's just never had a chance to actually pilot anything."
"I suppose, as it isn't my job that's on the line if something happens to her." Murrue replied with a slight grin. A wry chuckle came from behind the helmet.
"Too true, though I think we should talk with her first before we decide anything."
"Of course."
Planning room of the Vigilance
"Our failure to capture all the prototype Gundams cannot continue, prepare the captured units for combat after you have finished extracting the data on them. If we take too long the council may decide to replace us with the Le Creuset team, that is not acceptable, Le Creuset is known for his brutality and would most likely have razed the entire colony just to get to them. We will each launch as soon as we are done with the data extraction, I am already done so I will be going in first, this is too keep them off guard, if we all enter at random times they don't know how many enemies they are dealing with as well as constantly having to watch all the entrances." Kira Yamato, also known as the Rakurai stood at the head of the planning table dictating his orders. Nicol looked up with trepidation at the last sentence.
"You sound as if you plan on making some entrances."
"Yes, it's unavoidable, if we wish to surprise them we must come from different directions, if we all came from the main shaft all they would have to do is wait for us to come through and could just sit there and wait."
"Hmph, it's not like we should care about some natural colony." Yzac stated.
"Yzac there are coordinators in Orb you know." Athrun pointed out.
"So? What's your point, there's hardly any of them there and besides it's not like we should care about whether some traitor coordinators lived on some natural colony." Athrun looked over to see the pained look on his face that quickly disappeared behind his mask of indifference.
"Enough! Operation will commence at thirteen-hundred hours that is all." All of the pilots filed out of the room except for Athrun who turned from watching the pilots leave to look at Kira. As soon as the door slid shut Kira sighed and collapsed into a chair nearby causing Athrun to frown in concern for his friend.
"What's wrong Kira? Did something happen in the colony?" Kira nodded his head to Athruns' question.
"Yea, I saw some old friends of mine, nobody you would know but they were still friends of mine, I haven't heard from them since the end of the academy. I saved them from getting crushed by a building, I'm scared that they didn't make it to the shelters and may have boarded that ship." Kira looked decimated at the thought of having to fight his friends. Athrun placed a hand on his shoulder reassuring his friend that he was there.
"Kira, it's not your fault, you couldn't have known they would still be living here much less that they wouldn't get to a shelter, I'm sure that the Earth forces captain will get them back to Orb at the first possible time, and besides we can just disable the ship, there's no need to destroy it."
"But what will the rest of the ship think? It would be seen as a weakness and I would be taken off the mission and Le Creuset, the one originally picked for the mission by the council and would have gone on it if Councilman Clyne hadn't gotten the majority of the council to overturn their decision. Le Creuset would have no qualms about destroying the entire colony to get what he wanted. If I don't make a concerted effort to destroy them it truly would be the end of them, so either way I'm going to lose.
"Don't worry about it Kira, we'll find some way to make sure that they stay safe, any friend of yours is a friend of mine, natural or not." Kira smiled in thanks nodding to his friend.
"I think I've changed Athrun." Kira told Athrun gazing at the wall in the planning room that had a copy of the painting in his quarters.
"Oh? How so?" Athrun enquired.
"At first, I joined ZAFT only to be near you, now…I think I truly understand what you are fighting for. Survival, you don't want to fight but you will to protect your home and family, and even if my family doesn't live in the PLANTs or are coordinators, to me you are family." Kira said smile widening while offering his hand to his friend who grasped the forearm in a warriors handshake.
"Thanks, Kira." Athrun responded his eyes showing the joy at his friend finally understanding why he fought so hard. He had always tried to talk to Kira about the subject but could never find the words to describe it, Kira had never understood before today why Athrun had fought so hard and pleaded with hi to join him in the PLANTs. If this is how Kira is when he's not even trying and he's already almost the best ZAFT has, then what will he be like once he fully concentrates on the task? Athrun wondered.
"No thanks needed Athrun, now I best be getting suited up and ready to launch, I only have ten minutes before I'm supposed to be out there, try and keep Yzac and Dearka in line while I'm gone will you?" Kira asked a humorous smirk on his face that Athrun returned.
"Sure Kira, I've got a few….things, over Dearka's head that will keep him out of mischief and Yzac just needs to blow something up to calm that temper of his." Kira nodded and relaxed before opening the door and floating towards the hanger. He sometimes forgot what it was like to be just a teenager instead of a illustrious ZAFT commander, the youngest in history at that, dealing with people like Dearka and Yzac reminded him of the fact that he was more than a uniform.
