Archangel's Amazing Adventures

by CSS Stravag

Mass Crossover fic. Chapter 51 UP! Powerful magic draws the Archangel and the ZAFT Creuset Team into a world of magic and intrigue like nothing imagined by the straight-laced CE residents. Their battles on Cephiro are only the beginning of their nightmarish journey as they give Odysseus a run for his money in the 'bizarre trip home' category...

18. Empirical Air Warfare

(Section 3, Chapter 2: Empirical Air Warfare)

Three days had passed without incident from the nearby town; Murrue had no doubt that their luck was holding, but that would change soon enough, she knew. Stealth only lasted so long, and the Archangel was by no means a small ship and rather incapable of hiding in plain sight; it had actually grown a little in length and beam, to the point that the ship itself was now 450 meters long, up from the original draft plans of 440 meters. On the other hand, there appeared to be very little to hide from in the area. Not one person had been spotted by lookouts, though the Rune Gods had all reported through their respective Magic Knights that there was serious Magic powers about the land and someone had to be controlling those powers.

In three days, the armor damage to the ship had been fixed. That was something on the left side of a miracle in Murrue's estimate, as she figured on the task of getting all the armor patched being no less than a week, likely more than ten days. Yet, on walkaround inspection she could not identify any damage to the ship that had not been sufficiently repaired to bring it back up to functional or proper status (more of the latter than the former).

This being done, Murrue considered herself more than justified in what she had said she would do. After all, an exemplary crew deserved a break from the grind and tear of continual operations. Within five minutes of her announcement on the 1MC for all personnel to assemble in the hangar, the unit was lined up and standing at attention.

"At ease, people," Murrue begins as she surveys their ranks. There was over 110 persons on the ship, including one official recruit and her daughter, three Magic Knights, three ZAFT elites, twenty Bondsmen, and the ship's original compliment of Earth Alliance personnel, less those that had been killed in combat or in the abortive coup d'etat against the officers on Cephiro. And the ship was now set to be staffed by 185 plus twenty steerage passengers; finding that much crew would be rough on a good day in the Earth Alliance, since posting to the Archangel was almost assuredly a suicide op. ZAFT knew well of said ship and would go out of its way to kill it off. Now, it would be a nightmare of epic proportions, since the ship was nowhere near friendly lines.

"You know, I just realized that we have a few weeks before we have to let Flay loose," Mu notes to Natarle as Murrue was surveying the assembled. That disparate fact created an instant lead knot in her stomach, since Flay would either play it calm or take another stab at Kira; betting was heavily on the latter and Murrue agreed with them.

Murrue mastered the lead knot in her stomach and decided to press onward. "Attention to orders: due to exemplary service to the ship and surviving through odds that no professional bookie would quote us on, and due mostly to a lack of enemies in the area, I am hereby instituting a Steel Beach Day at this time (1). As of right now, minimal watches will be posted, and all personnel not on duty at any given time are authorized to partake of what entertainment the ship has and of the beaches in the area at this time. My one restriction is that no personnel are to move beyond 1 kilometer from the ship in any direction, as a defensive measure in case anybody unfriendly shows up."

Murrue continues on after most the hubbub died down. "As soon as the ship is repositioned to the edge of the inland bay, we will go to stand-down status and the Steel Beach Day begins. Enjoy it, people. Today we rest; tomorrow we go exploring." And that meant at least a half watch, everyone knew. "Mess crew please remain; personnel will be informed when the Steel Beach Day begins officially. Dismissed."

The Crazy Cook and his bunch had moved forward as all the remainder of the personnel filtered back toward their stations, though the rumor had gotten around everyone was fearing that there would be no Steel Beach. On the other hand, this was not going to be like it was out in the Pacific, the ship was not planning on going anywhere and there was no known threat in the area, so the ship would be really basically a steel beach for those who did not want to partake of the real beaches in the area.

"What gives, Captain?" The Crazy Cook asks.

"Do we have the appropriate supplies to do a beach-side cookout for lunch? Say, burgers, hot dogs, bratwurst, typical cookout foods basically," Murrue asks, herself still forming the plan in her mind. Most of what she was planning was spur-of-the-moment, but she had a few ideas...

"Easily, Captain," the Crazy Cook replies. "I'll need to draw upon a few other volunteers to do that properly, though, I'm going to need a few men guarding the grills, such as they are, and I will need personnel to gather wood for the fires."

"Might I suggest a pair of pilots see to that?" Mu says offhand from Murrue's left and slightly behind her.

"And that would be?" Murrue asks in counter.

"Hikaru and Kira. Rayearth can very easily carry trees that Kira cuts down." Rayearth had already proven that

"Granted, provided they want to give up some of their day to do so. If you would ask?" Murrue prompts.

"Sure," Mu replies as he heads off toward the ship's interior.

"Natarle, please have the ship moved due east to some available beach area. Once we land, I want a skeleton crew of infantry-trained personnel to stand guard on and in the ship, and two in the bridge, one officer, one enlisted. Make sure they keep an eye on the ESM gear, Sai has been tracking some weird readings that Athrun thinks is some kind of engine or electrical system that is more powerful than a medium laser on a 'mech. Anything else is discretionary, Commander."

"Understood. We will be underway momentarily." Natarle was fast to move onward toward the bridge.

"Well, assemble your crew and stand by at the port-side personnel entrance. When we have landed, the flood gates open," Murrue notes sardonically.

"Understood, Captain, we'll be ready in three," the Cook, a Warrant Officer by rank, salutes her. "All right, grill geeks, let's get the mobile kitchen equipment out of stores and get ready to party!"

"HELL YES SIR!" They all reply. When they moved, they moved with a purpose; in less than two minutes, the first of them had come out of the Delta corridor carrying a portable grill surface.

Murrue could only wonder:are they all Spec Forces and nobody told me?

-x-x-x-

If not for the very large warship parked just off the beach area, one would have thought the throng of beach-goers, volleyball players, sunbathers, and various grilling and cooking personnel were just another group out on a beach for a party. As it stood, anybody that saw it would have known it for a military group due to the big warship and the way in which they even moved logically at times, not just as would a fairly disorganized party-goer would be moving.

"Line!" Commander La Flaga shouts. "Point to Team Red!" Team Red right now included Hikaru, Kira, and Athrun, the former two after they had garnered four large trees for the fires.

The challenge had been doing so in a way that they were not seen; it had turned out that the town was on the near side of the peninsula land mass and hill; Rayearth had to circle around the hill to a smaller forest with a profusion of the yellow birds (and a stable for them as well, though they avoided the stable) to pull four trees and take them, roots and all, back toward the ship. Rayearth said they had been unnoticed in transit or operation, but Kira was not as sure as the Rune God on that issue. With that accomplished, magic weapons and a chainsaw was all that was needed to prep the logs for the fire.

Team Green consisted of Miriallia, Nicol and Fuu, though Commander La Flaga was being counted on their side unfairly (he was linked to Fuu and Windam, but was being an honest referee of the matches, unlike standing opinion). After a moment, Miriallia deflated with a huge sigh. "This is bull. Can't you give us the benefit of the doubt, Commander?" Miriallia asks, knowing before she finished the sentence it was a forlorn hope.

"What? And have those three do screwy things to the plumbing or electrical in my room? Not a chance in hell, Miriallia, sorry," Mu replies without a hint of shame to voice. "Serve it," Mu orders as he makes a scoring notation on his 'tournament table'. The ball went up and down, as Fuu bumped it back up; Nicol set the shot up for Miriallia, who spiked it right down onto a waiting Athrun, who cleared it up to Kira, who set it up to Hikaru, who rather than spiking it to a waiting Nicol faked it to Miriallia's left; Mir was just barely fast enough to get her hand under it, though not fast enough to get it back up in the air. "Point, Red Team. Game point, serve it!"

The observers gave the obligatory cheer as the match-deciding serve came their way. Nicol had to dive for it to keep it from becoming a no-return shot, though his angle was bad and the ball sailed under the net and into Hikaru's shin. The cheering continued as Murrue read off the Green Team's obituary for this tournament: "8-3, Red Team wins!"

"Kickass game, Nicol," Athrun says as the Red Team ducks under the net to exchange the obligatory handshakes and condolences.

"You three are murder, how do you guys do it?" Nicol asks. "Is one of you a telepath and haven't told anyone yet?"

"Uh, no..." Kira says after stopping to think about it.

"Very good game, Fuu," Hikaru says.

"An excellent match, Hikaru. You had me beat severely," Fuu said, having been winded by the match.

"Next up: Murdoch's Madmen and Hot Springs NGs! (1) Teams report to the field now!"

"Hey, c'mon, let's get something to eat!" Hikaru says as she starts dragging Kira toward the grills.

I don't envy him trying to keep up with her, Athrun thinks sardonically. Athrun had taken to using his memories of Lacus as something of a cross to ward off any possible thinking about Hikaru, and it was working...mostly. Hikaru was the kind of person that could capture any guy's attention just by her personality, energy, and actions, never mind her physical charm, in Athrun's estimate. While Flay counted as voluptuous when stacked against Hikaru, she also had the kind of personality that could bend Phase Shift armor plate, and apparently also had some form of fratricidal tendencies to go along with her very manipulative ways. From the word 'go' Athrun did not trust her; she had only proved herself more untrustworthy as the ops in Cephiro and on Dustball continued, and culminated on Romulus.

"Uh, sure," Kira replies, clearly unsure of what tack he should take. He did let himself get dragged along to the grills, though, and Athrun could not help but notice the closeness between Nicol and Fuu as they went in the same direction.

"Makes you wonder, doesn't it?" Athrun was not completely spooked by the voice of the Captain nearby him. On check, he noticed that she was watching the same thing as he was. "What was all the hatred for?"

"Shits and giggles, looks like," Athrun replies, causing Murrue to gag on her drink to the point of coughing and sputtering. "You all right, Cap'n?"

"Yeah, I'll be all right." She coughs again. "Just don't let Umi catch you talking like that, or—"

"I'll get my jaw involuntarily loosened. I hear she's also 'reeducated' Yzak three more times since the incident at the Chicken Cages."

"Is it working?" Murrue asks after a moment of considering it, and came up with a blank answer.

"Hell no," Athrun replies immediately. "It's going to take more than a few face slaps to realign his foul mouth, much less his attitude."

"Like?"

"Well, Umi kicking his ass, hard, for starters. That is, if she is willing to. She may just completely give up on him after a while."

The two watched as Kira and Hikaru headed down to the beaches with loaded plates. Nicol and Fuu went in the opposite direction, toward the ship. With them cleared, it did not take either Athrun or Murrue more than ten seconds to notice that Yzak and Umi were both hanging around the grills but facing exactly away from each other at five meters. At range, Athrun could detect a hint of redness on Yzak's left cheek where Umi must have hammered him again recently for some form of infraction. Umi was talking to Mina about something, and Mina was nodding with rapt attention; Yzak was chatting with the Crazy Cook, though it was Yzak doing the listening and throwing in a tidbit here and there.

"Ten c-bills on Umi," Murrue notes.

"I don't know, Yzak's been improving steadily and rapidly. It's only a matter of time,"if he lives long enough, Athrun thinks to himself...

...loud enough that Murrue picked up on it. "Well, for what it's worth, I don't intend on letting anyone on the ship die, regardless of prior affiliation," Murrue notes. "If we don't all get home, none of us ever completely go home."

"I know," Athrun mumbles, thinking of Dearka, buried on Romulus. At the hands of a group that was just as vile as the hate groups of his own world.

"It helps that we're both good and lucky," Commander La Flaga notes. "And that our ship doesn't want to die, either."

"True, true," Murrue replies. "I somehow get the feeling that a pair of crowbars would be needed to separate them," Murrue says, nodding toward Hikaru and Kira.

"Well, I kept getting the feeling that Hikaru's wanted to ask Kira out on a date since Flay rather abruptly destroyed her chance with Kira. I guess this qualifies...sort of," Athrun tacks on after a moment. This was about as private as a pool hall, but in her judgment it would probably be a starting place, Athrun figured.

"And you?"

"I am still engaged and I am staying that way," Athrun replies, though both the Captain and Commander could sense the falter in his voice. "You?" He realizes his mistake after a moment; "oops, I don't think I'm allowed to ask that of a superior, I rescind that question with an apology."

"Technically, no, you're not supposed to, but we're all off duty right now and I don't really care for that regulation. And as far as I am concerned, the day is still young..." Murrue deliberately let the sentence trail, to leave both Athrun and Mu wondering what her intentions were...

-x-x-x-

Not all the crew that could be partying, was partying. Murdoch actually had most of his personnel working on a project in the hangar, though he did have DJ Tall's (Tolle Koenig) feed coming into the hangar, much to the annoyance to the Bondsmen that were also working on this project.

The project was simple: the Warhawk that had been captured in battle needed to be reassembled and readied for possible upcoming battles. No simple task, that; the Warhawk weighed in at 85 tons of combat-engineered metal and was as unyielding as Clan hardware got. Though there were larger chassis on both the Inner Sphere and Clan sides, the Warhawk staked up to just about anything on the ground and hammered it flat on pure damage potential and lethal accuracy. Without a doubt, in the hands of Kira or Nicol this machine would only prove to be even more damaging than the Clanners could dream of; said pilots were by the numbers the best shots of the unit.

The only thing that would cause both of them angst would be the slow ground speed and lack of jump jets, both of which were things that they could overcome, but were grossly used to the opposite, being mobility lovers; in this monster, they would literally have to take the hits, since dodging was more or less out of the question. On the other hand, 13 tons and change of the unit was armor, and that of a type that resisted ballistic and energy damage, not just ballistic.

"Sir, what weps are we loading into this thing?" one of the Mechanics asks.

"We'll use Weps Config Charlie," Murdoch notes. "That'll give them good long-range, good mid-range, a flamer for starting fires, and no dependency on ammo whatsoever," Murdoch notes. In point of fact, they were limited on ammo in the long run for the ballistic and missile weapons on the ship now, and Murdoch was thinking that far ahead as a matter of course since there was no telling if or when they would receive new supplies—or obtain ways to manufacture their own.

"Gotcha," he says as he looks through the omni pod chapter of the Warhawk IMM. "Ah, Charlie, two ER PPCs, two Large Pulse Lasers, one Flamer, five targeting computer modules. Three extra heat sinks."

"No shit, Gomer, get the parts out of storage so we can put them in the arms and torso," Murdoch replies a bit testily. The chastised mechanic was quick to take the heavy cargo exoframe into the cargo storage area and begin pulling the ER PPC for the right arm out.

"Shall we begin pulling the Large Pulse Lasers out for the machine as well?" Kristen Redmond asks Murdoch in English, since her Japanese was still almost nonexistent, though she was learning.

"Yeah, get a team on it, Kristen. The Lasers should be in storage 3-Charlie," Murdoch replies in the same language.

"Understood, sir," she replies. "Pytor, Natalya, form up two points to pull the Large Pulse Lasers out of storage. They are in 3-Charlie." Kristen followed Natalya to aid in pulling one of them out as well.

"Aff," Pytor replies immediately as he begins pulling bondsmen personnel off less essential taskings to draw the weapons out. Most of the actual assembly work was being handled by the mechanics, the bondsmen were either seeing to maintenance tasks around the ship or testing the parts of the Warhawk.

A clucking sound similar to that of the old chicken coop comes to Murdoch's mind, though when he looked to where thye had the chicken coop, all he saw was a clinically clean suit cubicle, no chickens.

"Ready and waiting, sir!" 'Gomer' half-shouts as he flips open the PPC storage crate. It had been the same crate that they found the PPC in the belly of one of the Clan Dropships on Romulus that the Archangel more or less nuked with the Positron cannons, and really it could be a crate found on just about any military base.

"Excellent work, Gomer, we may make a mechanic out of you yet," Everyone in hearing range could tell that Murdoch was getting frustrated. Tony, Nick! Let's get those other two cargo frames over here and put this monster in!"

"Right, boss," Nick replies as he mounts up and buckles into the cargo frame in question.

Murdoch took a few moments to inspect the bay and the goings-on at this time. He had techs out the wah-zoo working on connecting the torso to the legs and verifying the power and data feeds to the legs in question. He had two teams on each arm, including the Bondsmen that were now hauling the Large Pulse Lasers down the cargo elevator from the 3-Charlie storage bay, which was actually set behind the legs of the Duel right now. All in all, everything was going very well and would be done with enough time for his men to have some party to themselves.

Again, Murdoch heard the clucking sound of chickens, though this time he totally dismissed it; the chickens had been killed by depressurization, not one of them had survived.

"Lasers are here," 'Gomer' notes dourly. He had taken about four minutes to pull one ERPPC out with a heavy cargo frame, whereby six of them had taken the same time to pull one Large Pulse Laser out with a light frame and a pair of pallet jacks. They still had him beat, but he knew how machines worked, they just blew things up.

"Excellent, now we can get these things in and get the arms in place," Murdoch notes as the lasers arrive. The two devices, the ERPPC and the Large Pulse Laser, both physically weighed the same and took up roughly the same amount of space (the laser was smaller by twenty kilos and a few cubic centimeters) but they both caused a lot of havoc when used right. The ERPPC technically had more power and range, but the Large Pulse Laser was favored for its accuracy, faster fire rate, and less heat generated per shot.

"What? Murdoch, on your six!" Kristen shouts as she grabs his left wrist and roughly hauls him forward and aside, away from something.

"What are these stravag things?" Pytor asks as he looks forward toward the cargo and vehicle access door. A veritable sea of the clucking, scrabbling creatures were in the hangar bay, well over sixty of them. "Someone close the forward doors!"

"Jesus, is that thing a cross between a chicken and a monitor lizard?" 'Gomer' asks as one of them surges forward and toward Murdoch. "Oh hell no, short shit, you ain't takin' a chunk outta my boss!" Gomer was still inside the heavy cargo exoframe and used it to stop the onrushing tango. He grabbed it by the neck, picked it up off the ground as it made a loud squawking sound, and proceeded to close the gripper manipulator. Tighter and tighter it went, until the pressure on the right manipulator went just barely into the red, before 200 kilos of pressure broke its neck with a very audible snap. Gomer dropped it onto the ground and accentuated the injury by stepping forward onto where he had been gripping it. Under the 2000 kilos of weight of the cargo frame, its demise was sealed as a 50-centimeter strip of its neck was compressed to the thinckness of a 3/8" bolt (not counting the threads).

"We need security in here!" someone shouts.

"Fuck security, we can take these shits out ourselves," a Mechanic says as he picks up a 9cm wrench that weighed a good three kilos.

"Howie, trip the goddamned doors! We don't need their reinforcements!" Murdoch says as he picks up a tire iron for use on one of the small wheeled jeeps.

"They're closed!" Howie shouts as he dashes madly for the door controls near one of the personnel hatches. The button had to be held positively to close the doors, which he began the minute-long process of.

"Stravag filth!" Pytor shouts as he roughly kicks the nearest of the tangos. The creature was light, and his high kick sent it soaring into the air; on the way down, he slammed it on the back to hammer it into the deck harder. After it landed it was temporarily dazed; Pytor took that moment to stomp on it hard enough to break its skull and scramble the brains.

"Ow! Fucker!" One of the mechanics shouts as he shoves a large toolbox off a table and onto one of the monsters. The heavy toolbox was enough to crush and trap the squealing monster.

Crack Crack. Someone had a pistol of their own, shoved it down the open beak of one of the tangos, and pulled the trigger twice. After the first shot, the monster collapsed and started twitching, nothing threatening from it. His victory was short-lived, however, as two had stepped up to take its place, and shots to the exterior proved ineffective against it. In moments he was on the ground, struggling to keep two beaks away from his face, before an elemental stepped in and pulled both the monsters off him and promptly rammed their heads together. Several times. When he was through with that, he dropped them on the ground and crushed their skulls with his boots. "Thanks, man," the Tech replies as he stands up and starts examining the scratches he had acquired from the monster. "Damn those hurt," he says.

Kristen had picked up a sledgehammer for use in 'adjusting' troublesome components, and stepped toward them with intent. As one darted forward, she swung overhead and down onto it, a glancing blow that frightened it and caused it to retreat. Another darted forward, and this time Kristen did not glance it. The monster made the most terrible racket as it dragged itself along with only its front paws, until Kristen hammered it between the forward 'shoulders' in such a fashion that all it could do was writhe in place. Judicious application of her boot to the head silenced it for good. Another had closed on her rear as she was finishing her first kill off, and bites her in the left calf. The shout she let out was immense in both volume and pitch, though before she could begin to react it involuntarily released its bite as Murdoch hammered on its body with the tire iron.

Natalya had waded in unarmed, and had an idea based on what she had seen of their anatomy. As she crouched low, one of the monsters had charged her down, and she struck as fast as a cobra would have. With a feral shout she had a grip on its neck, at the cost of having her free right arm scratched up by its fore claws. She holds its neck down to the deck, and with another feral roar she drove her right hand down as she yanked up with her left hand, breaking its neck savagely by hand. With this accomplished, she stood up straight and gripped it by the broken neck with both hands, and proceeds to use the tango as a club to beat down the other tangos in the vicinity, shouting and hollering all the time.

"Jesus," Murdoch swears as he watches Natalya go to work on the whole group. After ten seconds, he noticed that they were trying to herd away from her and from the other elementals and mechanics. "Natalya! Herd them toward the port-side Launch Bay!" he shouts before he starts swinging his tire iron at them, with the same intent. "Everybody, herd them to port and down the launch bay!"

"Herd them toward the Port-side Launch Bay!" the call came up from several Technicians and Bondsmen, even as Natalya continued smacking the enemies with her dead chicken-lizard.

"Herding, sir!" Gomer shouts as he starts driving a dozen of them toward the said edifice with the cargo Exoframe. He had killed a half-dozen of them himself just by stomping on them and crushing them with the manipulators.

Murdoch hauls his radio out. "Commander Badgiruel from Murdoch, I need four Marines down here in the port side of the bay with assault rifles and grenades, pronto!"

"What?" Natarle asks increduously.

"I need them NOW!" Murdoch shouts as he clicks off his radio and cracks a tango in the head with the tire iron. As it open its beak to snap at him, Murdoch fed it the handheld radio to jam its mouth open. "Hold this, asshole," he say as the tango wonders what the strange object in its mouth was. With a wind back and a tremendous swing, Murdoch shattered its head and the radio all at once in one blow. "Fuck it, didn't like that thing anyways," he mutters as he kicks another in the general direction of the herding effort.

Natalya had picked up a second dead tango and was now using two to flail any that would dare approach her, the serpentine bodies made great whipping instruments that had enough mass behind them to cause actual injury as well. It was this scene that Natarle entered the hangar to see, armed with four grenades and a Rorynex SMG and leading five Marines carrying the new 30-caliber assault rifles and four hand grenades apiece. One even had a 'willy pete', a White Phosphorous grenade in case they had to signal to the rest of the crew.

Natarle had done a double take when she saw what was happening, and she also saw the handful of crewmen and bondsmen that had been lamed by the tangos biting their legs and rendering them unable to walk due to torn muscles. "Get down there and help them herd into the port-side, then 'nade them to death," Natarle orders as she takes stock of the amount of casualties. As she vaulted down the personnel stairs to the lower floor, she happened across one of the tangos that had escaped the herding process. After it snapped at her twice and advanced a meter, Natarle centered the SMG on the tango and unloaded five rounds on it. The explosive-tipped ammo shredded through the hide and literally blew it in half from the inside out; after ten seconds, even the halves stopped major squirming, and were just twitching.

She looked up and around, to see the Marines herding the tangos with short bursts and shouts, and combined with Natalya's antics and the rest of the mechanics swinging their tools, the whole gaggle of creatures were forced down the launch bay and farther down, with only a stray here or there that Murdoch and Pytor were seeing to with sledgehammers. After basically an off-and-on volley fire from the Marines, combined with more savage shouting and swinging of the dead critters from Natalya, the tangos were forced down the catapult path far enough that using a grenade on them was feasible, those that had survived the automatic rifle fire (about two dozen of them).

"Pets of yours, Murdoch?" Natarle asks as the Marines form a firing line and start advancing on the remnant.

"Fuck no, they just walked in the front door and started trying to bite our asses!" Murdoch shouts.

"All right, have your men see to the wounded right now. Call Nicol and Fuu in if necessary."

"Aye, Commander," he replies.

"Bondsman Natalya, I take it you know how to use one of these?" Natarle asks as she holds up a standard baseball-type grenade.

"Aff, Commander Badgiruel," Natalya replies.

"Drop the dead lizards and flip 'em a pair," Natarle orders as she pulls a second grenade off her sling harness.

"Aff, ma'am," she says as she drops aside the dead tango flails and receives the grenades.

"Don't throw just yet," Natarle says as she walks up to the Marines. "Marines check fire," she says on the tactical radio circuit; within three seconds, all fire had stopped; the remaining twenty or so chicken-lizard tangos were standing at the far end of the launch bay, easily over twenty meters away from them and quite afraid to move. "Marines, deploy one 'nade apiece and haul ass back up the pipe and clear left. Natalya, two nades. On my mark," and throughout the port-side launch bay the sound of safety clips being removed and pins being pulled echoed up and down the hall. "Ready, throw NOW!" Natarle shouts as she throws hers as well. Eight grenades sailed down the way and landed among or in front of their ranks; before the first grenade even hit they were running up the pipe, a bare ten meters to safety around a corner.

All eight of the grenades detonated within two seconds, amid the final shrieks of the tangos as hot steel fragments and explosive propellant sundered their bodies into chunks that came sailing up the pipe for several meters. By the time the random fragments stopped zinging around the bay (and caused an additional two minor wounds), the blood and dust had settled and none of the chicken-lizards lived to tell the tale to their comrades.

Natarle bent over and picked up one of the tangos that Natalya had used as an impromptu beating device. "Uh, Commander, I think that is the one she broke its neck by hand so she could use it to flail the others," Murdoch says as he looks at it more closely. Without a doubt it was dead, therefore it was no threat and could be so examined.

"Oh, wow. Remind me not to piss her off."

Murrue was next to enter the bay from one of the personnel entrances on the lower deck, followed by Yzak, Nicol, Fuu, and Miriallia, and all had their magic weapons out and readied. "Commander, are you all right?"

"We have injured, Nicol, Fuu, can you help them?" Natarle says before anything else, pointing to the personnel that had been injured in battle with the creatures. "I don't know what the hell these things are, but they invaded the bay and starting taking bites at the crew. So the crew bit back. We got them all, but..." Natarle's gesture encompassed the injured personnel, and there was no shortage of injuries.

"Understood," Murrue says, not really understanding the situation in its totality but rather what needed to be done.

-x-x-x-

"See, this is where I think we're going wrong here," and the Electrician counted off the numbers of the data harnesses. "Why are the harnesses here numbered 25, 26? We only have 24 missile tubes."

"I dunno, why are we trying to run the cables for the spy cam in the girl's hot spring through the missile tube relay harnesses?"

"Because, if we ran them along the standard electrical conduits for the holos, they would know almost immediately. I checked; they have security indicators along those conduits for new cable runs. The guys who set those up are not pussies, man, they were both electrical and system engineers before they were Mobile Suit pilots, and they both coordinators. They know their shit, here or on the battlefield, backwards and forwards."

"So, by running them along the data harness for the VMS tubes, we can power and feed the camera without alerting them?"

"Hopefully," the senior electrician notes.

The spy cam was actually not—they intended on connecting the holo record feature from one of the unused projectors (each room needed only two active, though they installed four) to do this. In theory it would be a simple task, just connect the wire, run it to a loopback splitter, and pipe the feed along any one of a hundred unused data circuits to whatever terminal they wanted it on. The catch was, they could not physically enter the room, they had to accomplish this by way of making the wire connection using a remote camera and gimmick, the same way they did so on some of the less user-friendly electrical connection points in the Gundams.

"Trivial question: if we get caught, how badly are we going to get busted for this?" the junior Electrician notes.

"Oh, pretty bad," a separate voice from the pair of electricians notes.

"Oh, shit," the Senior Electrician notes as he clearly recognized the voice of the Duel pilot.

"F'kin perverts. Get lost," Yzak orders calmly.

"Hey, man, you're still single—" The Senior Electrician notes as a possible dodge.

"I said get lost. Don't make me enforce it."

"I'm outta here," the lower-seniority Electrician said as he picked up his toolbox and starts walking.

"Wuss," the Senior Electrician notes. "Well then, since this op is blown, might as well figure out why these harnesses are numbered incorrectly," the said electrician begins checking the test points on the wires for info with a scanalyzer computer that he bought on Twycross and reprogrammed for use on the ship.

"Fine, play innocent, but keep in mind I'll have the equipment audited and if I find bogus data streams coming out of them, your ass will get mulched as well as any other guilty parties," Yzak notes testily before he fairly stomps away.

The electrician actually took the lesson to heart: he did not interfere with the cameras...today. He figured he would wait for about ten days to two weeks before he would try again.

As far as Yzak was concerned, the blood-curdling threat should have been enough to dissuade them, though he figured on checking the equipment personally every few days to make sure they didn't go behind his back and attach a connection to it anyways.

-x-x-x-

"Ah, Commander, got a strange one here," Sai notes.

"What is it?" Natarle asks from where she was standing at the bridge window. She alternately did and did not want to be down there with the rest of the unit. She did because she did like the party scene, much as her stiff exterior would hint otherwise. She did not because she thought that the way the Captain was going about this was a big mistake: mobility was more of a defense than armor, and by parking it on a beach any ships that transit this area would have a clear view to the ship. Not to mention they had open field more or less in every direction that was not sea, which made approaching the ship very easy, though what they did when they got to the ship was another story entirely. For all that Natarle knew of the ship, she did not relish the thought of trying to storm it, even with a skeleton crew as they had on hand right now.

"I just got a large number of those power-ups in one small area, at least eighty. No movement yet, ma'am." Sai says as he was modding his controls the whole time.

"Bearing and range?"

"0-2-5, range 100 kilometers minimum."

"Great, that's pretty close." Natarle goes over the numbers mentally.

"Commander, second group of contacts, this one is at 0-7-0 and 300 kilos. These contacts are moving, fast, heading will put them close to us but not directly over top of us."

"How close?" Natarle asks.

"Definitely close enough to see us," Sai says.

"Well, we just got compromised."

"Corncobbed?"

"No, Sai, 'corncobbed' is a different matter. Please don't make me explain it," Natarle replies in a wearied tone. "Captain from CIC, come back," Natarle puts out on the radio frequency as she puts the radar plot on the main viewscreen. None of the contacts were on it until Sai superimposed the ESM reading bearing lines onto the radar screen.

"Go ahead, Natarle," Murrue replies.

"Captain, the party is about to be crashed, we have multiple contacts at 100 kilometers that appear to have a slow move rate and multiple contacts at 300 meters that appear to be airborne, both headed in our general direction."

"Roger that, party's over, unfortunately," Murrue notes in a dejected voice. "Fire up the klaxon, might as well make it official."

The alarm buzzer went off as soon as she tripped it. "All hands, level one battlestations, unknown contacts incoming our location! Available bondsmen personnel are to fill in for crewmen injured in the hangar incident!"

Though Natarle did not relish cutting some much-needed crew rest short, better inside the hull of probably the baddest warship she had ever known than outside on the beach when those things came screaming by. Whatever they were. Within three minutes, the party area had been cleared of all essential items and all personnel had been accounted for; nobody had really strayed far from the ship due to their uncertain locale. That made the deploy all that much faster; within five solid minutes, the ship was manned and ready to go.

"Status?"

"Air contacts bearing 0-6-5 range 270 kilometers, close rate six kilometers a minute. Ground contacts bearing 0-1-0, range 95 kilometers, appear to be running more westward than south at this time."

"Double-punch assault, ground and air, looks like," Natarle notes. "Question is, are they targeting us or the town nearby? Miriallia?" Natarle asks as the controller sits down at her station and enables her console for flight control.

"One moment," Miriallia says. "Oh, okay, if I'm reading their intention right, they intend on taking the nearby town, Maranda is its name, by land and air assault to overwhelm the town guards." She hesitates a second, her eyes closed shut tight to help her concentrate on the distance. "Eeeggg, that is disgusting," she says after a few moments.

"What?"

"The soldier I was listening in on, he wanted to find a lady in town and rape her," Miriallia says, holding her head.

"Rape and plunder. Definitely not a modern military force, unless you count them in with Blue Cosmos," Natarle notes, citing the fact that Blue Cosmos was off-and-on known for raping their victims when they had the opportunity; they considered Coordinators less than human, which had validated that MO in their own little twisted minds and instantly turned Natarle off to the Blue Cosmos ethos. She knew the other person on the far side of her sights was human in the end and treated them as such, even if she was going to kill them in the end; the attitude and influence of Blue Cosmos had less than endeared her to the command structure, but she was a military officer and only recently had seen the light of day.

"This requires the question, do we get involved or not?" Murrue asks in a level fashion. "Or worse yet, do we not get involved and listen to our consciences for it?"

Natarle looks to the Captain for about ten seconds, then blinks; apparently she had to consider the same mental quandary as the Captain. "Miriallia, how many of them are considering rape or plunder, or both?" Natarle asks.

Good to see I don't have to argue with her over a humanity concept like defending civilians from vile aggressors like these, Murrue thinks, recalling a time in which Natarle would have sought the safety of the ship over such a concern. In fact, not too long a time ago, really.

"Uh, give me a minute here," Miriallia concentrates on the ground force again. "Okay, about a third of them are not thinking about that, a third are worried about getting to the riches first, and a third of them a combination of riches and other forms of amusement." By which the latter meant rape or gang rape.

"How many of them are there?" Natarle asks next.

"A lot. I can't really see the whole force, a lot of dust in the air from their armored units, but I'd say 3000 or more, easy. Mix of some kind of armored troopers and ground troopers."

"Captain, pay or play time," Natarle notes. "If we wait here too long, we won't have a choice."

"Conn, ESM, ground force is now showing no bearing change, they are headed almost straight at us at this time, Captain," Sai notes after verifying the readings twice.

"Roger that. Helm, take us south-west at this time, let's find a good place to hole up and prepare to stop an advancing wall of enemies." Murrue picks up her growler phone and dials in the hangar. "Deck Crew, is the Warhawk ready to go?"

"Negative, Captain, she's still missing an arm and a decent system test. I can't certify it for combat at this time," Murdoch notes. "Damn those chicken-lizard-shits! I'd've had it done if they hadn't mulched half the mechanics, and good as the Bondsmen are, they're better at blowing stuff up than fixing it, sorry to say."

"Roger that, Kira will have to deploy in a Skygrasper, then, as well as Nicol." Murrue did not like the thought of those two having to fight in dinky Skygraspers, even if they did have an insane amount of firepower with the Launcher Strike Pack, but anything was better than nothing in this case.

"What's the situation, Captain?" Mu asks on the pilot's channel.

"We're standing between a town and an army that wants to conquer, pillage, and rape it. Answer enough?" Murrue replies with a bit of vehemence.

"Answer enough," Mu replies as he crams on his neurohelmet and connects it to the Timber Wolf's central computer array. "I think I can play the knight in shining armor, even if we are hopelessly outnumbered at present. Uh, we are outnumbered, right?"

"A thousand of 'em, ten thousand of 'em, they ain't getting past me," Yzak growls on the same radio channel. "I'll bend 'em all over and—" Natarle gasps sharply, thinking what he was going to say was incredibly vulgar. "ah—boot their asses up between their shoulders," he says, though his correction was rather evident to anyone listening.

"All right, Yzak, give me the line back," Athrun notes drolly.

"Hey, it's a classic, not like you can really accomplish it as well as Duel can," Yzak says as the Duel hefts the Twin-15 LRM pack over its left shoulder.

"Right, we'll see which one of us smokes more enemies in a shorter time span," Athrun says as Aegis picks up the autocannon-laser combo weapon he had engineered with Kira and Hikaru.

"The amount of testosterone on this frequency just tripled without any real good reason," Mu notes drolly.

"No kidding," Natarle replies just as drolly.

"Did rutting season open and nobody warn us?" Nicol asks. His rather innocent question engendered laughs from just about everyone who heard it, since it was not often that Nicol got digs on anyone.

"Okay, I walked right into that one," Athrun notes drolly.

"I surrender," Yzak adds to Athrun's admission of defeat.

"Good, finish surrendering and prepare to deploy. We're about to get the air part of their forces on top of us in about thirty-five minutes," Natarle orders from her seat in the CIC.

"Conn, Helm, I have a possible here," Newman notes as he was looking forward using the terrain radars while Mina took the ship southwest. "Looks like a classic flat-plain choke point about twenty kilometers across, eleven o'clock. It'll be tough, Captain, but I think we can park the ship in that choke and just let them come to us," he says as he finishes isolating on it.

"Thank you, mister Newman, Helm park us there facing north-northeast and stand by for move orders. CIC, have the pilots deploy their machines, have Aegis, have Buster range along the shore to the east for aerial intercept. Skygraspers are also to prioritize enemy air for now. Magic Knights, Duel, Timber Wolf forward of the ship for ground intercept."

-x-x-x-

"Well, there they are," Nicol says as the first of the enemy shows up on their radar over a hundred kilometers away. "Control, Grasper One, I have contacts, a lot of them, on radar in the expected position, heading, and speed. Targets are at angels nine at this time." (2)

"Roger that, Graspers are cleared to engage at this time, over. Attempt to draw them into a crossfire with the ship and the ground forces, over; and keep in mind that if they are too hot, you are ordered to pull back, over," Natarle commands.

"Grasper team rogers your last, over and out." Nicol says. "Follow me in, Kira," Nicol says.

"Two," Kira replies in the fashion of fighter pilots, since he was the second Grasper pilot his radio callsign was Grasper Two, or simply Two in shorthand.

Nicol pirouetted the fighter down to 200 meters and fired his engines up to high power but not up to the afterburner mark yet. He checked his weapons capacitors and all showed green, full charge and ready to do battle. His ammo and guns were all ready, a pair of machine cannons, four machine guns, and the two missile bays under the wings with one reload each were all showing green. The weapons on the Launcher Striker pack were all green and charged as well. All in all, he was ready to do his job, armaments and mentally. "Two, arsenal check," Nicol orders.

"Two showing green across the board," Kira replies. They were both armed with Launcher Striker packs, the last two Launcher packs of the fabled Strike Gundam that itself got smoked by a warship-grade laser. The laser in question may not have been as powerful as Agni, but it did not need that much power to slag down a Gundam. "How are we gonna do this?" Kira asks.

"Hit and run, use our maneuverability to keep them harried. Plan B, in case that doesn't work, is get out of Dodge real fast," Nicol muses.

"Two rogers that," Kira replies. "Goin' down to the deck at this time," he says after a few more moments of flying at 200 meters. At twenty meters, his plane threw up a rooster trail of seawater that would be awe-shaking to an enemy coming their way in slower and less-capable craft. Kira could only hope that the enemy wasn't all that good, or had low-tech units to use, because they were badly outnumbered by as much as 100 to 1, possibly more.

"We'll blow under them unless they dive down to engage us. If we get under, we loop back and hammer on their backs," Nicol notes.

"Roger that. One minute to contact," Kira estimates.

"I have visual on enemies...what the hell are those things?"

"They look like something attempting to be a helicopter with dual side-by-side blade assemblies," Kira says, running some numbers through his head fast. "Those things shouldn't be able to fly, except by dint of really fast and hazardous propellers."

"Hazardous is right, the pilot is exposed barely a mater in front of his propellers," Nicol notes. "I don't see any external weapons assemblies, maybe they have a few internal weapons?"

"I see one that might be a laser emitter, but it is small, very small," Kira notes.

"They made us," Nicol notes as some of them begin diving down. "Fire two beams, take it up to 200 and break right, we'll reengage from their left flank," Nicol orders. He was running on some form of demonic autopilot, calling upon everything he learned about aerial warfare from his academy days (which was not a lot). He felt grossly out of place in a fighter, even one as insanely fast and powerful as a Skygrasper, for in the end his home was a Gundam that no longer existed except as a collection of leftover metallic shards in a box next to Dearka's ZAFT flag box in the hallway outside of the Hot Springs. On a warship that he had tried to sink numerous times and was now serving on. Reality is a strange place, he muses, then quickly shoves the thought out of his mind.

Kira and Nicol fire two shots as they bring their fighters up to the 200 meter mark and break sharply right. Nicol saw at least one of the enemy craft had gone down in flames from the transit of his beam, likely more, before he turned to starboard and applied a little more power. "How many did that look like to you?" Kira asks after he puts on power to hold pace with Nicol.

"Over 200, closer to 300 of them, and those lasers of theirs are too short-range to catch us," Nicol notes as he watched their return fire miss him by as much as a full kilometer in several cases "Control, Grasper One, they headed straight for Athrun at this time, those that aren't chasing us," Nicol notes with a dose of irony.

"Roger that, Grasper," Natarle replies.

"One, check left," Nicol notes as he starts swing his fighter around to reengage.

"Two," Kira replies as he begins the turn himself.

"Engage with Agni at this time," Nicol orders as they center on the bulk of the fighters that were still headed toward the land mass that was now coming into sight. "Fire two and break off, we need to keep the in-out-in action going to keep them off us," Nicol orders.

"You don't have a clue how perverted that sounded from over here," Yzak notes on their frequency.

"Clear this channel, airhead," Nicol orders testily as he fires his first of two...maybe three Agni shots. The last thing he wanted to deal with was Yzak's acid tongue. Kira's first shot lanced out at the mass of enemy craft spread across a kilometer vertically and two wide and deep, and his shot claimed three and a partial, the latter turning to return to base ASAP since the pilot took some frag from a craft that blew up nearby in a blue-green fireball. Nicol's second shot also claimed three, though the enemy was beginning to maneuver and jink by the time Nicol fired a third shot, and his blast only caught one. "Break off, Kira, it's getting' too hot for us to do this alone."

"Control, Grasper Two, we appear to have their attention at this time," Kira notes with a hint of worry.

"Grasper Team, Control, roger that. Be advised the ship and ground forces are waiting for you to lure them toward, over," Natarle notes.

"Works for me. Kira, let's hit and run twice more, headed right each time for the breakoff, and then draw them straight to the Archangel and our ground teams."

"Got it," Kira says as they begin another pirouette in to attack again. This time, the little pang of worry in his stomach blossomed into a lead knot as he circled in and saw that the whole enemy force was basically gunning for the two fighters. "All weps?"

"Roger that!" Nicol says as enemy laser blasts from the forward rank start impacting the ocean around him. As they closed on the enemy, each fighter brought more of its arsenal to bear on the target, as the longest ranged weapon they had was Agni and the closest was the quad of 20mm machineguns on the nose of each craft, each machinegun having less than 10 percent of the maximum firing range of the Agni. It would turn out to be the 40mm wing root cannons that caused the most havoc in the enemy ranks, as a single of the slugs of 40mm was capable of causing tremendous trauma to the enemy rotor craft and even had the potential of killing two craft with one slug.

"What the...are they using manual targeting systems or something?" Kira asks. "We got up in their faces and not one of them hit us—" A laser punches through the starboard wing surface and leaves a four centimeter scorch that someone could see straight through. "I stand corrected." He had, though, observed as more than two dozen of the lasers hit the water's surface around him, scattered as far away as 200 meters over a full kilometer's distance.

"It's not bad, Kira, just don't get shot in anything important," Nicol says as he does a damage check on his comrade's craft.

"Roger that," Kira notes. "Ready for the last dance before we run home to mama?"

Silence from Nicol for almost ten seconds. "I can't believe you just said...aw, what ever, Kira. Well, erm, I can think of worse places to run to right now. Follow me in," and Nicol begins the last pirouette on his attack run as he fires up his engines to afterburner.

Again, the two fighters fired their whole arsenals except for their missile launchers and broke off to the right again, now literally headed toward theArchangel at high speed. The beams and 40mm wing root cannons turned out to be the real crowd-pleaser weapons on their craft, as with those three they each racked up seven kills, combined with three from Agni and another two with the four lighter machine guns. Nicol took two hits to the wing surface on the way out, much as Kira did, with little chance of his craft taking major damage from that, and one hit to the fuselage that knocked out his port-side cannon ammo feed but did not cook off the ammo in the feed. Several of the beams that had missed were far larger than the blue lasers and colored yellow, though Nicol had little doubt that whatever produced those were in the formation.

On the way out they hauled back on their close speed with the Archangel to effectively lead them into the ground ambush. On check, the enemy was indeed following them straight to the Archangel with the proverbial blood in the eye and little along the way of restraint.

That part of the plan was indeed working.

-x-x-x-

"Conn, Sensors, I show the Skygraspers burning in at a slow pace right for us, followed by what the computer thinks is about three hundred forty enemy contacts. Margin of error two percent," Sai notes with a hint of amusement. He had never been in a battle whereby the computer had a margin of error on counting the amount of enemies before.

"Sensors, Conn, Aye. CIC, status of the ship?"

"All hands at level one battlestations, Captain. All weapons, major systems, armor sections show green across the board. All engines at idle power at this time. Sensors, TTS, FCS all green and awaiting fire commands. ECM and ECCM systems green and awaiting activation. We are good to go," Natarle reports of the 'thousand-meter view' of the ship.

"Wait a second...something ain't right here, Captain," Chandratta says. "I know the Igelstellung control grid has changed, I expect that, but not the MP missile tubes," he muses out loud.

"What? Are the missile tubes malfunctioning?"

"No, the computer thinks we now have thirty-two missile tubes, Commander Badgiruel," Chandratta notes.

"Uh, what?" Natarle and Murrue both ask at the same time.

"No joke, Captain, check it out," Chandratta slaves the main view screen to his control panel, which showed the missile grid control panel. The panel indeed showed he had thirty two silos to choose from, plus sixteen Helldarts, twenty LRM Launchers, and eight Streak SRM 6 Launchers.

"Okay, then we do a dummy check. Pop open silos twenty-five to thirty-two," and Murrue clears the main screen and switches it to an external observation camera in the area.

"Opening silos now," Chandratta replies as he enters the appropriate commands. After a few moments, four access hatches open up on the outer side of the starboard tail binder, and the Camera was staring down four pairs of missile tubes, empty but ready.

"God, I'm really beginning to love this ship," Murrue notes out loud. "All right, we'll assume all the silos are live and act as such. Begin pre-plotting your fire runs, Mister Chandratta. Start with an absolute hammer attack, see if we can minimize the amount of them we have to kill by giving them plenty of reason to go away," Murrue orders, her humanity overriding her first desire to kill 'em all and let whatever crazy God was in the area sort the remnants out.

"Roger that, loading one through sixteen with anti-air shrapnel. Seventeen through thirty-two loaded with Korinthos. Helldarts slaved in pairs, LRM launchers on the starboard side set to single salvo at best range. Deploying Valiant, Ultra Autocannons, Large and Medium Pulse Lasers, Gottfrieds and Igelstellungs. We are ready to go."

"Control, Grasper One, requesting fly-by," Nicol asks.

"Grasper Team, Control, you are authorized. Finish sucking them in and we'll do the rest, over," Natarle orders.

The two Skygraspers pass forward of the ship, the roar of their passage something of a lift to Murrue's spirits, that the two pilots had survived the initial engagement with very little in the way of damage to their craft.

"Conn, Sensors, targets are now within Captail weapons bracket three," Sai notes.

"Sensors, Conn, aye," Murrue replies. "As soon as they are within 2000 meters, fire all weapons."

"Aye aye," Chandratta replies.

"Call it out, Sai," Natarle orders.

"Thirty-four hundred...thirty-one hundred...twenty-eight hundred...twenty-five hundred...twenty-four hundred...twenty-two...twenty-one...two thousand!"

"Valid solutions! Firing!" Chandratta says as he stabs the fire command out on his control panel.

Where the ship was almost eerily quiet moments prior, the sound of all the weapons firing almost at the same time was a loud roar like few others that Murrue had heard before. Chandratta had planned a specific tactic into his fire commands: using the direct-fire weapons, he intended on forcing the enemy to debauch in two directions, specifically forward and behind the Archangel since their direction of approach was starboard broadside-on. With that accomplished, the Korinthos and AAS missiles would target eight of each to the forward and eight of each to the rear groups; the Gottfrieds would fire at the forward group, while the Helldarts fire toward the rear. If they broke away and made for their base like good little whirlies, so much the better, in his opinion. He did have a complete fire-plan B set and ready, and that would not be to their liking whatsoever.

As the ship's direct fire weapons came in on their ranks the whole mass did something that Chandratta had not even considered: they as a unit brought their entire formation to a screeching halt, hovering a mere 800 meters off the ground at 1600 meters distance to the ship, basically staring at the wall of fire they just walked into. Never mind the two dozen or more of their ranks just turned into yellow-green fireballs or headed downward courtesy of gravity and smoking engines. The targeting mainframe on the Archangel, which doubled as the ship's movie server when not in combat, compensated for this unexpected twist of the battle plan by redirecting the missile flight paths into the enemy formation, where they would cause the most damage possible in a single stroke. Thus, the enemy was simply hovering in place when the sixteen Korinthos and sixteen AAS warheads entered their formation and detonated.

"Stupid, if they had kept moving more of them would have survived," Murrue notes rather resignedly.

"Conn, sensors, enemy force is reengaging with one eighty, they headed right at us!" Sai shouts over the surprised murmurs on the bridge.

"Chandratta?"

"Already on it," he says as he trips plan B and hits the immediate-execute command.

"Conn, Control, Forward guard reports they have sighting of unknown units and some guy riding one of the yellow birds! He's being chased!"

"Deal with it, Controller," Murrue orders tersely. The name of the game had just changed drastically and she still did not know the full extent of the enemy forces' abilities. And what she did not know made her very testy.

"Windam, close and engage, close and engage," Miriallia orders quickly. "Aegis, Buster, return to ship, we're about to get hammered by their air forces."

"Aegis is airborne, will be there in thirty seconds," Athrun replies.

"Skygraspers are reengaging at this time," Kira notes.

"Here they come," Sai notes as the lead wave of the enemy begins firing at the ship.

Unlike the Skygraspers, the Archangel itself was a very large and stationary target. Even as the Igelstellungs, the Autocannons, the Large Pulse Lasers picked fighters off one or two at a time, and the Valiants and Gottfrieds cleared whole swaths of the enemy at once, they kept coming, firing more and more as their whole rank made fit to close to four hundred meters, the optimum kill range for their weapons.

"Damn, it's like killing flies with an icepick," Chandratta notes. "Oh, great, they're spreading out and around us," he notes as he watches their actions through the boresight cameras of the Igelstellungs.

"Conn, Sensors, we're down to 140 of them," Sai notes.

"Control, where's our support?" Murrue asks as the ship takes several hits from beam weapons that were red, blue, or yellow, and even one from some kind of missile launcher in the enemy ranks.

"Captain, we're losing weapons," Chandratta notes as first the Large Pulse Lasers blink red, then one of the Igelstellungs on the upper broadside array, then another Igelstellung.

WRAAM.

"What the hell was that?" Natarle asks.

"Some crazy mother just flew his craft into our Valiant! System malfunction!"

"Aegis is on site," Athrun reports on the open channel as he begins firing all his weapons into the enemies that were targeting the Archangel. In mere seconds, he had massacred over a dozen of their ranks with the autocannon, the beam rifle, and his Igelstellungs, and his efforts had drawn some of the heat off the ship.

WRAAM.

"Captain! Starboard Streak SRMs are down! They cooked the ammo off with one of those red beams!" Chandratta was starting to sound rather worried

"Deploy anti-beam depth charges along the Starboard side, immediately," Murrue orders; within moments the whole starboard side lit up with blue-gray bursts of the beam-absorbing and deflecting particulate. The effects were immediate and rather drastic, as the amount of beams that actually got to the ship amounted to basically nothing, though this had the downside of annulling the beam weapons on the Archangel, for which it was prepared for using missile and ballistic weapons.

-x-x-x-

"Aegis, Control, get up close and personal with these things if you have to, We need them taken down ASAP," Natarle orders. "Skygraspers, where are you?" Fuu hears from the radio chatter in the area.

"Firing now," Kira notes. He was firing all but his beam weapons sensibly, and raking his fire laterally across the enemy ranks to take down as many as possible. From where Fuu was approaching the ship, she could count off the enemies that Sir Kira was knocking dopwn, either with catastrophic kills or by injuring their craft enough to force them to crash or land.

The enemy was getting smarter, though, they were now maneuvering in random patterns in hope of spoofing the well-armed fortress they had come across into shooting where they were, not where they are. Fuu figured she could gauge their movements herself, but she had a mercy mission first to deal with, this despite the bloodied blade covered in both grease and blood of the six persons and two mecha units she killed in a single stroke of Windam's sword. "Control, Windam, I have an injured civilian rider needs medical ASAP, requesting permission to—NICOL!" she shouts in a half-mad panic.

"NICOL!" Athrun shouts immediately thereafter.

"Oh my god," Miriallia gasps.

Nicol's fighter had literally blown up from the inside out. In one of those little-heralded engineering screwups of the prototype Skygraspers, later corrected in the Earth Alliance mass production Skygrasper models, the ammo feed on the 40mm Wing Root cannons could literally cook off a shell in the feeder if it was jammed down the line from the feeding mechanism. The feed motor on the prototype was never constructed with a decoupler for when it should jam down the line, and the motor itself was a very powerful device to fast-feed the ammo-hungry cannons. When the cannon jammed from the laser scorching the feed belt, the feeder continued to attempt to push a shell down the way, and the feeder's mechanical finger twisted into and cut through a shell, releasing its propellant and bending the feed pipe. The mechanical finger then glanced off the feed pipe and caused a spark, setting the propellant off in a very confined space. The pressure blast caused a chain reaction of exploding ammo that cascaded into the 160 remaining 40mm shells, an ever-expanding explosion that literally tore the left wing off Nicol's craft and soon thereafter converted the fuselage of his craft into a hail of steel shards headed mostly away from him.

The pilot yet lives, Windam reports to Fuu. As Fuu began frantically searching the skies, she did indeed catch sight of a parachute.

"He's still alive!" Fuu shouts as she could distinctly see his head twisting back and forth.

Nicol had been saved by one of the things the engineers did right, an automatic eject system that kicked the pilot out of the plane as soon as it detected an imminent ammo explosion. When the sensor for that event was tripped, the computer in the plane immediately ceased all functions except one set of instructions, designed to prepare the plane for the imminent ejection of the pilot, and finally kick him out. First, his harness immediately drew back and brought his whole body inline with the seat, should he be slightly forward against his belts. Second, a draw-string connected to his helmet pulled his neck back so that his entire being was inline and in the safest position for ejection. Third, a series of explosive bolts and linear shape charges removed the canopy of the craft and exposed him to open air as the wind dragged the plexiglass canopy backwards and away from the pilot. A series of powerful explosive bolts detonated under his seat, giving it an initial escape velocity from the craft, followed a quarter-second later by a rocket motor that propelled his command couch over 100 meters clear of the now-shredding Skygrasper. The last action of the computer itself was to detonate a series of shape charges built into the main computer control components to protect confidential systems and data by destroying it; this confidentiality feature would later be removed in the production models of the Skygrasper, as most pilots are leery of piloting a craft that has rather destructive security measures on something that might as well not be classified.

"Holy shit, he's alive!" Tolle shouts. "Thank you, PMP!"

Natarle breathes an audible sigh of relief. "Fuu, recover Nicol immediately and bring both wounded to the ship. I will have medical personnel waiting on deck. Aegis, Buster, Skygrasper Two, cover her recov and retreat, now!"

"Aye, Commander!" Athrun shouts. "Kira, Tolle, concentrated barrage to the ship's two o'clock, do not use explosive weapons! Go!"

The three said machines put up a solid wall of fire in the area that Athrun assigned, to prevent them from drawing a decent bead on Nicol before Fuu could catch and cradle him back to the ship. Fuu immediately diverted and headed straight for the pilot of the Skygrasper as he drifted to the ground riding a parachute with the Earth Alliance globe on it. She was not really shot at until she got close to Nicol, at which point she had to circle around him to interpose Windam's back between Nicol and the Rune God. With little effort, Windam was able to catch the drifting pilot and sever his parachute cords; with a simple reflex action, she had Nicol shifted to the hand where she was carrying the local rider as well, which freed her sword up if absolutely necessary.

"Windam to Control, I'm coming in now, request immediate landing," Fuu says tersely; she had a mission now and knew it.

"Fuu! On your six! MOVE IT!" Yzak shouts.

"Fuu! Break hard right and get low! We'll smoke the bandits on your tail!"

Fuu did just as ordered quite quickly; the beams transited the airspace behind her from three different directions, not to mention autocannon and Igelstellung ammo, though they did not get them all—three remained, and Fuu need only look over her left shoulder to see them.

What happened next would forever be a blur to the Magic Knight of Windam, even despite the fact that she could watch it as it was recorded in Tri-Vid by theArchangel's battle computers. She took Windam down to ground level and slowed, which temporarily gave the enemy a better targeting profile, but not for long as Fuu literally landed at the same time she brought her sword up above her head. Those foolish enough to tailgate her had to pull up to avoid colliding with Windam, and one of them cut himself in half vertically as his craft tried flying through Windam's sword. The two halves of the craft fell to the ground a hundred meters forward and catastrophically blew apart as the energy source within cooked off from the impact.

From this position, Windam spun around sharply as it brought the sword down into a horizontal slash at the foes hovering behind it and shooting Windam's back. Two took hits, both high enough to decapitate the pilots and sever the propellers from the craft; one of the propellers even flew up two hundred meters to impale another craft and render it combat ineffective. With a massive leap and a single downstroke of wings, the Rune God was airborne again, and this time the sword took four swings at four separate tailing craft; each craft was struck in some fashion lethal to the craft, be it a slice or a flat-blade impact that drove it into the ground.

From her leap, Fuu twisted onto course and resumed her flight to the Archangel, covered by the Buster and Aegis for what it was worth; few of the enemy ranks were dumb enough to challenge Windam any further, after finding their weapons ineffective and her weapon instantly fatal to those she swung at.

"Nicol, hang in there, we're almost to the ship now," Fuu says audibly. The starboard-side catapult had opened as Fuu approached, giving Windam a clear flight into the hangar.

-x-x-x-

(Vignette: Cosmic Accidents Happen)

(Location: Deep Space between galaxies)

(Date: 30 June 3305)

The Executor was once again examining an anomaly that seemed to have either occurred or been subject to the Archangel that was drifting between Dimensions with no real bearing except a fervent desire to get home. Despite being one of those interesting occurrences that invariably drew attention wherever it went, the Archangel in question was on a mission: get home. Such missions the Executor could relate to: more than once he had been forced from his rightful home, and had to retake it by force.

"A big sucker if ever I have felt one," a second Executor notes to the one of the white armor. This one wore the same physical style of armor as the one in white, though his armor was forest green and enchanted not for protection and stealth, but protection and manipulation of time itself.

"Aff, old comrade, I think this is by far the largest spatial distortion I have encountered in one place," the Executor of the White Armor notes.

"I have seen one bigger, though it came of nothing in the end. This one, however, has a history. Care to hear?"

"Aff, go for it," the Command Executor replies to the Executor in green.

"This spatial distortion was once in the primary galaxy, and even passed through what we know as the old Inner Sphere. You know that Archangel-class you have been studying? The one I told you not to interfere with in any drastic fashion?" The Executor of Time requests.

"Aff, I know the ship well," the Executor of White replies.

"It was fighting in the presence of this anomaly, which is literally larger than several hundred star systems and the space between. The ship itself is becoming a flying spatial distortion as well as a flying relic, and when the two interacted, combined with the mental overdrive of the crew in battle, and then add one major particle event from the attempted firing of an antimatter weapon, oops, they punched their own hole through space and time, to land on yet another world. With another set of hazards and possibles."

"So, basically, they got sucked through a self-initiated random spatial anomaly into another dimension...again."

"Aff, comrade."

"Gods, Odysseus rides again, reincarnated as Murrue Ramius and the present crew of theArchangel. And you say all we Executors are allowed to do is watch," the Executor of White notes sourly.

"Neg, we will aid them in their quest, though for several major events to be altered on our side, their quest must go unhindered or unsolved by our hands until the last," the Executor of Time replies.

"You never miss a chance to plot and operate at several levels, quiaff?"

"Aff, boss-man, aff. And before you ask, neg, I do not enjoy watching the Archangel get the crap kicked out of themselves time and time again, yet this must come to pass. By all of Fate itself, I would love to introduce myself to the Captain and crew, and offer them a free Gate home, but such cannot be. You said it yourself: it is the voices, hopes of many that shall sway the outcome of the final battle Ragnarök, not the elitism of a few. Thus, what we examine must be allowed to continue apace lest all of Existence befall the Fimbulwinter and all life worth mentioning be extinguished."

"This is just one variable among your immense calculation of Ragnarök, I daresay," the Executor of White notes.

"One among too many, when you get down to it." For a moment, the Executor of Time's voice betrayed his age and his weariness. "For five hundred thousand years, I have done everything in my power to prevent the utter destruction of Existence. The battle is grossly close to the front gates; we in the know can see the Barbarians preparing their rams and catapults, the engines of the final destruction. I find as the battles approach I must fall more and more upon contingencies and even blind luck to solve the variables, as the amount of issues to be seen to expands at a far larger pace than the Executors. And even my own vaunted control of time cannot solve all the tasks I need to accomplish."

"You run the ragged edge, as does your wife and the others that are in the know," the Executor of White notes. "Is it worth it? Shall we win against the forces arrayed against our gates?" he was speaking in metaphor, of course, since no one gate would be the battle ground to decide the outcome of Existence itself...or would it? He mused to himself. Even having known the Executor of Time for countless eons of their mutual existence, he could never claim to have known the complete breadth of his comrade's incessant scheming. The old saw about 'never taking a piss without a plan and a contingency' applied thoroughly to the Executor of Time, as his many broken and slain foes could attest.

"Not even I hold that answer. The best I can do is give us every advantage possible; the battles of the future shall be the true matchmakers of our fates."

"And this Warship, strayed from its natural history, holds an answer to our fates?" The Executor of White requests for clarification.

"It holds answers that shall prove to be fate-altering to many parties, here, elsewhere, our sphere of influence, never before known to us. Their shared beliefs will shake the heavens and the lands of many worlds to come and many more that they have visited. And when all is said and done, they will get their chance."

"A chance of what?" The Executor of White asks.

"You have taken a personal interest in their tale, comrade. For now, observe; in time, I will have subtle ways for you to aid their quest to return home. In due time, the significance of their fate and their actions shall become manifest as few other tales in Existence have ever been." For a bare moment, the Executor of White could have sworn that his ancient comrade (and technically a subordinate) was enjoying stringing his 'boss' along.

The Executor of White decided he would bite this time around, instead of pulling rank and forcing the issue. The last time he had done so, he had definitelynot liked the answer he had been provided, nor the cruel necessity of such an answer. "Aff. I will heed your advice on this matter. I will record what will transpire as I have recorded that which transpired prior."

"Theirs shall be a tale that will make its way into the Remebrance of Existence, the one record we pass unto the generation that will survive Ragnarök. Make sure you record all that you can, boss-man, that those who come long after we are dead and gone know what has transpired here. Many lessons are to be understood here."

---

Author's Chapter Afterword:

Final Fantasy VI.

Prior to my picking up the Suikoden series of RPGs, Final Fantasy VI was by far my longest RPG, routinely clocking in at 65 hours to whoop Kefka up at the last, including recovering all the characters and killing off all the optional bosses (the dragons, mostly). Since then, the longest I have now is Suikoden III, which I can do in as little as 65, but usually take up to 110 hours at a round because I like using different combinations of characters for effect. Suikoden IV was good, but a bit faster than any of the above.

Even given this being a FF game crossover now, do NOT expect this to get cutesie, kitchy, campy, or easy for the Archangel. Especially given as the Magitek armor systems are built better and better on the enemy side, they will give more and more hell to the Archangel before all is said and done. There is even a few chances for casualties coming up, despite the measures the Archangel is planning to increase their flexibility and firepower...

And while I am on the subject of the Final Fantasy games, I saw not one reference to Final Fantasy IV, V, VI, or Tactics in all the guesses that people dropped in reviews. Have you no respect for the classics? Any of you? ARRRGGG!!! Of course I am not ruling out the use of any other series at this time, on another section...

The air battle as shown here is an extrapolation and a little modification on my part. The fact that only your characters had the ability to use the three elemental beams made no sense to me back when I first picked this game up over a decade ago, and it makes less sense now. I highly doubt that the Empire would engineer their armor not to take advantage of those powerful weapons, thus you see them in use here. I am using a tiered deploy system on them, however, which will come of more evidence in the next chapter. So, in short, expect to see the ground forces take a chunk out of the Gundams, Rune Gods, and Battlemechs in short order, not to mention the strips they already tore out of the ship.

And you can expect to see the advanced special attack armor that Terra used as well, which can tear even more sizable chunks out of the ship in more ways than one.

And now, for the review or PM replies, whichever applies at this time:

Alkard: Check. Unfortunately, in the average war you don't walk away with straight victories and no losses.

FraserMage: Indeed, they had radio in both, but this is not FF7 or FF8.

Knives91: Murdoch will be screaming more than just that in time to come.

Gonging Apples: See comment above about people not guessing the classics of the FF series.

Tremerid: This one was not all that easy to write, since the party scenes are a little on the strange side for me, but once I got going there was no stopping. And the battle, oi, that was fun to write. Thank you for the first review, comrade.

The Baka Brigade: So close, yet so far, comrade. And once again, the use of Gundams is classified TS/SAR. You will know the answer soon enough.

DeathZealot: At least one of those series listed is on the list of possibles, maybe more. And my plans are always flexible for new ideas, since the prose has not been written yet, I can do quite a bit of maneuvering as necessary.

Etienne of the West Wind: Continuing from your last, it would appear that the creators and staff of GS did a lot on the arbitrary side without fully back-checking their work. Oops. Like the resistance by GENESIS to the Lohengrin, which is an impossible feat as far as I can muse. Still, the information on their ages is useful, as I can work with that. And the expert analysis above is a precursor to far darker things that the ship shall befall and be subject to, in due time :P (on this, I pull no punches. Lives will be altered in the strangest of ways in the course of their transit.)

As always, thank you all for the reviews, and keep the thoughts coming, your dreams are but a drop of fuel for the Archangel's evolving nightmares.

Next up: The battle for Maranda heats up and leads to a very unexpected twist in the evolving campaign of the Empire.

---

Footnotes:

(1): NG is a web abbreviation of Engies, which is short for Engineers.

(2): Fighter pilot lexicon: 'Angels' means altitude, in thousands of feet; Angels Five means five thousand feet, Angels Twelve means twelve thousand feet, and so on. In this case, they are slightly under 3000 meters ASL.