Eastern Raid
A Mobile Suit Gundam Side-Story
Produced by Ninja-Pirate Studios
Written by GM Ace
Chapter 2: Time to Start the Real Game
Quincy, Massachusetts, North America
December 24th, UC 0079
2300 hours local time
A lone Zeek in a disheveled uniform stumbled over the sidewalk, apparently drunk from celebrating Christmas Eve, heading towards the main gate to the Fore River Base. One of the guards in the small building there nodded to his partners and went outside. They'd been dealing with these guys all night, although the last one had come in a little over an hour ago, just barely making the curfew. This particular idiot, the guard thought, was going to be totally screwed over by the base commander. The guard held up a hand and asked for the shaky drunk to stop.
"Alright, soldier, where's you're ID, huh?" he asked, his voice tinged with humor at the soldier's condition
"Ish rate here, shurrrrr . . ." the disgraceful soldier slurred out, his voice barely understandable. He reached into his overcoat slowly, apparently reaching for his ID. But then his arm whipped out towards the guard. Strangely enough, the soldier didn't seem shaky or drunk anymore. In fact, his eyes and hand were rock steady as he pulled the trigger of his silenced pistol and put a single round straight between the guard's eyes.
Brian, who had crossed over the Fore River Bridge hours ago in order to do this, stepped over the body toward and walked into the guardhouse, where a second guard was still writhing on the ground, a combat knife stuck in his back. Apparently he had seen what happened, and had been going for the alarm when the third guard knifed him. The third guard just happened to be Sergeant Michael Siberry, a member of the Federation's 4th Special Forces Infiltration Team, the same team as Brian. He'd been in place months longer than Brian had.
"So Brian, old buddy of mine, how you been? Has business been good? How're the folks? Have you been eating well? Look at you, you scrawny little bastard, have you even eaten in the past month? I swear, soon as we're done with this I'm taking you out to a buffet, there's this nice little place just a few-"
"Easy there Mikey," murmured Brian. Michael was a good friend and a great soldier, but a bit too talkative for someone in the business of sneaking around. Not that he ever gave anything away; he just didn't stop blathering on about nothing. One had to take a firm stance with him, or one would be stuck talking for hours. "Look, it's been awhile, I know, but we need to get to business already."
"Aw, alright, fine."
"Alright, now, is everything on your end ready? And what about support?"
"Of course everything is ready. Callie and Darryl took care of all the cameras and managed to get slotted in as the hangar guards, although there's still one more we'll have to kill. Plus, the suit is fully prepped. And as for support, have you heard of the 2nd Combined Arms Force?"
"Aren't those guys the Special Forces group that'll supplement the assault on Logan?"
"Yup, the same. Though their mobile suits haven't all made it here yet, most of their other forces are here, and some of them will be dropping in to play a few minutes after we get the game started. Plus, the fleet's gonna provide a force to intercept any planes that Logan send our way to check things out."
"Wow, air support? That's rare. Well, let's get going, huh?"
"Yeah, let's."
Michael slung his Zeon-issue submachine gun over his shoulder and Brian pocketed his pistol, and the two left the guardhouse and the bodies behind as they headed into the base. There were no worries; the next watch wasn't due till two oh-my-god-it-is-too-damn-early-hundred hours. The base was ridiculously quiet as the two Feddies-in-disguise made their way to through the base heading for one of the mobile suit hangars. There was nobody up and about in the cold night, and there was very little to light their way except for the moon. Brian kept his hand on his pistol; after all the waiting, the fact that he was finally getting to work and the quiet were making him nervous. It didn't help that he couldn't stop remembering that his last experiences in combat had been months ago, and that only he and Mike had survived the near annihilation of the 4th Infiltration Team.
Finally, blessedly, the two reached the hangar they wanted, and met Cassie and Darryl, the other two members of the team. Darryl was the mechanics expert, and had gotten the suit data out to the rest of the Federation for Brian's use in training, while Cassie was a computers girl, responsible for creating the team's Zeon identities and taking out the security systems. Brian didn't know Cassie and Darryl all that well, as he had barely met them before they departed for the mission, but they seemed competent enough, although they looked awful young to the thirty year old veteran. The third guard, the only real Zeek present, meandered over.
"Hey you," he said to Brian, "you a friend of Craig here?" gesturing to Michael. "Or maybe you're one of Justin's gambling victims come to pay a debt, or maybe you're a, shall we say, acquaintance, of the lovely Esther? 'Cause other than that I don't a reason for you to be here," he finished, gripping his gun.
"Aw, don't be such a prick Kenneth!" berated Carrie. "He's a friend of mine, okay, and he's thinking of training for suits. And he's just a friend, alright? Christ, is your mind always in the gutter?"
"Alright, alright, Esther, take it down a notch," the guard replied with a smile.
"So," the guard said, turning back to Brian, "What's your-"
That was as far as the guard got before Brian pulled out his pistol again and put the next two rounds in the gun straight through the man's heart. The look on the bastard's face was frightful as he fell backwards to the ground; a combination of shock, pain, and the horrible realization that he was quite mortal and that the consequences of that had come upon him. But what actually caused Brian to be scared was that the guard's hands clamped shut out of reflex. . . pulling the trigger of the gun he was still holding. It was only a short, three-round burst that went straight into the ground, but the noise it caused seemed cacophonous. The team froze as Kenneth twitched for a few seconds.
"Oh . . . shit," Brian murmured. "Let's go! Move!"
As one the rest of the team shouldered their weapons and followed Brian as he ran towards the three suits in the hangar, two MSM-03 Goggs and a single MSM-04 Acguy. The plan was for Brian to steal the Acguy, tear the shit out of the base, and then escape. Since half the force for Operation 2004 would be from the sea, it had been decided to take an MSM, since it could later be used to defend the fleet. The Logan naval units, like their airborne brethren, had so far refrained from attacking the fleet several miles off the coast, but that wouldn't last forever, and what better way to counter the Zeon MSMs but with another one of their MSMs? Brian had been training in simulators, made from data retrieved by Darryl and others around the world, to prepare for this. Which made what happened as the four ran towards the Acguy even worse.
A Zeon officer ran up to the hangar entrance, saw the dead Kenneth and the running soldiers, and quickly deduced what was going on. So he didn't even yell for the team to surrender before drawing his pistol and opening fire. With a scream, Darryl went down with a bullet in his lower back. Everything slowed down for Brian just then. Carrie screamed Darryl's name, dropping next to him, her hands fluttering over the wound in a panic. Michael whirled about with his face twisted into a snarl, and opened up on the officer with his gun on full automatic. The officer tumbled backwards, his blood spraying across the snow to join Kenneth's. The base's alarms howled as someone else heard the gunfire. And Michael turned to him and screamed at him to go. Finally, the world sped back up, and he ran to the elevator as Michael dropped next to Darryl and started trying to patch him up as the team's best medic, yelling for Carrie to cover him. She did; the two guards who came into view next didn't even get to raise their guns before they too joined the growing number of bodies at the hangar entrance.
Meanwhile, Brian had a hopped into the cockpit, sealed it up, and started up the suit. He went through a crash check of all systems. Fully fueled, machine guns in the head fully loaded, three rounds in all six tubes in the left arm missile launcher, fifteen shots in the right arm mega-particle cannon, right arm claws fully functional, reactors both at 100. That done, Brian took a deep breath and gripped the controls. This was going to be his first time piloting a mobile suit for real, and the last time he had been in combat with mobile suits involved he had been fighting against them. Plenty to worry about, but no time to do the worrying in. Alright, turn on the screens. It looked like Carrie and Michael had dragged Darryl over to where the rest of the bodies were, and were confronting a group of soldiers. Brian saw Michael gesturing wildly towards the Acguy and smiled. It appeared that his friend was passing the three Feddies off as Zeek guards who had responded to the fire but had been too late to stop the dastardly Feddie from getting in the suit. So, when Brian put some pressure on a foot pedal and eased the MSM out of its berth, the soldiers ran for their lives, with Carrie and Michael picking up the stabilized Darryl and stumbling away.
The original plan had been for the three of them to be gone by the time Brian started his rampage. Now that the plan was basically out the window, Brian no longer wanted to follow it. The plan had been that he would direct his damage towards the other MS hangar before the Zeek pilots could reach it, and that was the direction his three comrades had to go in order to escape. So, it was time for a change in plan. But, Brian thought, that didn't mean he couldn't at least complete the first part of the plan as scheduled. He turned his new suit around to face the two Goggs, still parked and totally defenseless. . .
Private Mark F. Rounds, Zeon Earth Attack Force, 3rd Terrestrial Mobile Division, 2434th Mobile Suit Team, practically fell out of bed as the base alarms began to howl. Like the other soldiers in the barracks, including his two fellow 2434th pilots, he was throwing on a uniform, overcoat, and a gun belt before he even thought about it. Surprise had gripped his brain, but such a paltry thing as mere surprise couldn't override military training that easily. Mark ran out the door of his barracks, his commander and fellow pilot with him, and started running towards their MS hangar. The regular soldiers ran towards defense posts and armories, while the three pilots of the 35th "Leviathans" Amphibious Mobile Suit Team headed for their own hangar. Mark had no idea what was going on, but he could hear gunfire echoing from somewhere in the base.
Mark was a rookie in every sense of the word. He had barely completed his training a month and a half ago before he had been stationed here, only a few days before the base's supply lines started to get cut off. He had never fought in anything other than war-games and simulations. His scores in training had been good, no doubt, but he still had no experience. And his suit didn't help bolster his confidence much. The MS-05B Zaku I had been the forerunner of the Zeon Military Forces as they now existed, but they were horribly out of date. And for a new unit like the 2434th, they were the only thing available. Mark and Sergeant Fewkes would kill to have anything else, even a regular MS-06J, but Lt. Glicklich actually seemed to like the thing, seeing as how he had used it back during the first battles of the ground war. But still, while he had more experience than either the Sarge or Mark, it only had been against Type 61 tanks. Which, as it turned out, were not what they were facing here tonight.
An explosion suddenly ripped through the side of the MSM hangar, and a single Gogg was hurled straight through the hangar wall moments later. Out of the gaping hole stomped the team's Acguy, its mono-eye flashing as it stepped over its prey and fired its mega-particle cannon straight into the fallen suit at point blank range. But even that explosion was dwarfed when the Acguy turned around and fired six rockets right back into the hangar. Apparently they hit the Gogg torpedo and Acguy rocket storage areas, because the entire hangar went up in an explosion that knocked Mark and many others flat.
"What the hell is going on?" screamed the private at Lt. Glicklich as they picked themselves up off the ground and the Acguy stomped away from the burning hangar, turning its cannon on the Harvard, one of the cruisers. The Lieutenant didn't get a chance to answer before the base commander came over the facility-wide intercom:
"All base personnel, all base personnel! This is the commander! A Federal Forces agent has stolen the Acguy! Rally yourselves and destroy it, I repeat, destroy it! Help is on the way from Logan!" Mark's commander grimaced.
"You heard the man, Mark! Let's move!"
Mike ran after him and the sergeant as they dashed towards their own mobile suits, as the ammo aboard the Harvard cooked off, destroying the cruiser with all hands and nearly knocking Mike flat again.
"This is one hell of a way to wake up," the young Zeon private thought to himself.
"Now THIS is one hell of a way to fight!" thought Brian as the first ex-Federal cruiser blew up in front of him. "How the hell do you guys like it?" he screamed as he raked several barracks with the machine guns mounted in the Acguy's head. The wooden buildings were torn apart, and the men inside of them suffered the same fate. A handful of infantry that had weapons futilely fired at his suit, but with only submachine guns they didn't stand a chance. Brian turned to face the Yukon-class sub at the next berth over from the now destroyed cruiser. Two beam blasts tore into it, and the fragile sub snapped in two and began to sink. That left him with twelve rockets and eight more shots with the cannon; three had been for the cruiser and one each for the Goggs. "Alright, I should have given enough time for the others to get out of my way. Time to deal with the mobile suits." He turned the suit around back the way he had come, firing the machine guns at any juicy targets he saw along the way. But just as he brought the Acguy around, his sensors screamed and he ducked as a 280mm Zaku bazooka round came at him. It missed the Acguy's head by no more than a few feet, flew over the base, and finally impacted on the Fore River Bridge.
The Zaku I that had fired at him stood just outside the entrance to its hangar, bringing his bazooka down to fire another shot. But apparently he had frozen in horror or something for just a second; the Zeeks were under strict orders not to cause damage to civilian property so as to avoid problems, and there was no way anybody could use that bridge anymore. Whatever had slowed him down it gave Brian enough time to bring his cannon to bear. One shot missed as the Zaku sidestepped. Cursing, Brian clamped down on the trigger. Two more shots were fired, and this time the Zaku didn't make it. The first blast tore its left arm right off, and the second hit the bazooka's magazine. The three 280mm rounds still within cooked off, and the resulting explosion tore into the mobile suit, killing the pilot and sending the machine tumbling to the ground in flames.
"Alright!" Brian yelled, "My first mobile suit kill! Everybody better watch out, 'cause I'm on a roll, and – holy shit!"
Brian's uncharacteristic cheering was abruptly interrupted by a stream of 120mm bullets tearing out of the hangar's entrance. A second Old Zaku stomped out, its machine gun at the ready, and charged him with guns blazing. This wasn't going to be so easy after all.
Mark cursed his poor luck. His Zaku's reactor had developed an anomaly, which kept his suit flat lined while the engineers tried to fix it. That meant he was stuck here in his suit while everything went to hell. The Sarge was already dead and the El-T had gone charging out of the hangar screaming bloody murder over the radio. The Harvard and Zabi Pride were already gone, the base had already been badly torn up, and the explosions from outside didn't sound too good. Finally, the head engineer stuck his head into the cockpit.
"Alright Mark, you're good to go."
"Thanks but get everybody out of the hangar and to safety. I'm gonna try something real crazy."
"Alright, sure, stay safe buddy."
The engineer left, and Mark directed his Zaku to shoulder its 120mm machine gun as the mobile suit crews ran for it. "This had better work," thought Mike. "I just hope the El-T can hold out until I can pull it off."
As it turned out, the El-T couldn't, although he did fight the brave fight. He had expended his machine gun and drawn his heat hawk to close to melee range, in the process making Brian expend another three shots from his mega-particle cannon. But finally, as the running battle brought the two suits to the berth of the final cruiser, Brian finished the fight. When the Zaku brandished its heat hawk and charged Brian didn't stand his ground or fall back. Instead, he moved into the enemy's attack, deploying his claws. The Zaku had raised its weapon over it head, and couldn't bring it down properly, while the Acguy brought its claws up in an uppercut. The claws connected solidly with the cockpit entrance, sending the Zaku up and flying backwards, to land on top of the cruiser while its weapon flew off into the water. Retracting his claws, Brian brandished both arms, and fired both his last two mega-particle blasts and another six rockets. The destruction was immense, the immolated cruiser acting as a funeral pyre for the hapless Zaku.
Brian, panting heavily from the strain of jerking the heavy MSM back and forth, turned around to face the mobile suit hangar. He fired his machine guns again, taking out a group of soldiers that had been setting up an anti-tank missile launcher, and literally stepped on an armored truck that swerved into his path. He kept his left arm rocket launchers trained on the entrance of the hangar as he stomped towards it. "Why didn't the last suit come out? I know it's in there, and if it doesn't come out I'll just blow the whole hangar down. And where the hell is the support that –aahhhh!"
The wall of the hangar suddenly shattered as a Zaku I just charged right through it. It took aim with its machine gun, and Brian's rocket launchers weren't aimed anywhere close to the right place. The damn Zeek had duped him. As the first bullets were fired, Brian heaved his suit to the right, but finally made a mistake. He had tried to move too fast, and the Acguy was a suit built with water in mind, with only limited action on land. As such, it was clumsier than the average suit, and was made even clumsier in the hands of a rookie like Brian. The MSM literally tripped over its own two feet and came crashing down on its own face, but at least the bullets missed above and to the left. But the Zaku was shifting its aim quickly, so Brian lifted up his suit slightly with his left arm and aimed his rockets. The six rockets flew out of their launchers towards the enemy MS, but that wasn't good enough. The Zaku used its thrusters to do a short hop to the left, and the rockets missed it completely, instead finishing off the hangar. Steadying itself, the Zaku took aim yet again, and this time there was nothing Brian could do to stop it.