(Section 3, Chapter 3: When Good Plans Go Bad)
"Nicol is safe," Athrun notes as the Rune God Windam ducks into the launch catapult of the Archangel. After a few moments the bay shut, sensibly to prevent the deck crew from getting uninvited company.
There was little doubt in Athrun's mind that these things, despite being very easy to kill, were a significant threat nonetheless. The air forces had torn several good strips out of the starboard side of the Archangel, knocked several weapons out, and there were still a good gross (twelve dozen) of them hanging around, maybe a few less. Now, it was down to the real 'icepick versus fly' detail work, whereby he was only really getting one shot one kill instead of the several kills per shot he had started out with. At the least, the Buster was still getting several per shot, though the drawback here was that Tolle's spreads were few and far between, whereas Athrun was pulling a consistent result with the one-shots.
The enemy air forces were down to what he defined as the 'basic' units: the units with strap-on missiles that were not a major threat to a Phase-shift Gundam and the lasers that were inaccurate if he kept his machine moving. As to the enemies with the strange, multi-colored beams that caused a helluva lot of damage to just about anything they hit, be it terrain, ship, or Gundam, Athrun had made sure that they went in the soup first, since he had seen one of those red beams literally cook off the Streak SRM launchers on the starboard side of the ship. Despite the loss of their heavy hitters, they were still a threat: in volume, those lasers were scoring hits, and Athrun had already taken a number of hits to the right side of his machine though nothing that had caused serious internal damage...yet. He definitely was not tanking on walking away from the battle with armor-only damage.
Tolle actually had an advantage in this case, he had parked it on the foredeck of the Archangel and was using both the Trikeros and the combined Buster weapons to keep the fire pressure on the enemy and keep it steady. What was left of the Archangel's arsenal was helping keep the helicopter wannabes at distances where their lasers were losing accuracy, but Athrun knew that if they got enough nerve up to rush in close, they could disable almost all of the direct-fire weapons grid and that was that, stick a fork in the ship with that much of its weapons shot to hell.
Kira came in over the shoulder of the Buster, what few of his weapons with ammo remaining blazing hard in concert with Agni and the beam cannon on the Skygrasper. On one pass he managed to cook off four and hammer one into a catastrophic detonation with the last of his 20mm gun ammo; he had nothing but the energy weapons left, and that dicey since his power capacitor was not being charged by the engine APU as fast as he was using it.
"Skygrasper, Control, I show all your munitions expended, Natarle wants you to bring it in at this time for reload and refuel," Miriallia orders.
"Control, Skygrasper, roger that," Kira replies as he reefs the Skygrasper into a turn to come in for a landing. "Huh? Oh, crap, Control, I have eyes on some form of mechanical ground units that looks sorta like their air units, running down the ocean shore at about ten kilometers out from the ship, over,"
"Don't expose your ass to hostile action, Kira, get your craft home now," Miriallia orders tersely. She would not stand for having Kira shot down today, especially after listening to Fuu's panicked screech when Nicol's craft exploded. Recovering the flight recorder would be one of their priorities, to see what went wrong, but not in the middle of a battle.
"Control, Skygrasper, I roger that. Please have the deck crew waiting with ammo reloads as soon as I touch down, over," Kira requests.
"Murdoch is already assembling the reloads as we speak," Miriallia had made sure that was being prepared, as the Skygrasper was too powerful a weapon to leave parked, and most of all because they were already badly outnumbered.
"Roger that, control, I'm coming in for landing now," Kira says as he begins to close on the ship. The port side landing bay was his designated strip, since the said side was farther away from the enemy fire and the Skygraspers were even more susceptible to the damage than the Gundams or Rune Gods.
"All right, Kira, you have ILS (1) clearance and the deck crew is waiting. Turn around time should be ten minutes given your present fuel status."
"Roger that, beginning landing now," Kira says as he brings his speed down to 100 knots, deploys flaps and landing gear.
After Kira had landed the Skygrasper and taxied off to where the refuel and rearm crews were waiting for him, he popped the canopy to jump clear of the plane while the crew did their thing, and immediately moved to the remnant of the ejection seat that Nicol was in. There was a modicum of blood on the ground near the seat, and also some on the back of the seat itself.
"He's still alive, if that's what you are thinking, Kira," Murdoch says as the said senior mechanic approaches the seat himself. "Fuu's with him right now, down in the medbay. You have eight minutes before I position your craft on the catapult, kid."
"Right," Kira thinks about it, knowing he wanted to verify they were still alive, but the distance—I owe it to Nicol to check, Kira rebuffs himself after a moment. Without more than an extra half-moment's hesitation, he was sprinting toward the personnel hatch into the interior of the ship and headed toward the medical bay as fast as he could muster. The total run time was little over a minute for the Coordinator, figuring that he had just covered half the length of the ship in one good run, and that including several doors to pass through.
Kira slowed to reclaim his breath as he approached the medical ward, and as he stopped at the doorway to finish catching his breath, he did not move from there. The first bunk was no farther than he needed look, followed by the second bunk being where the local civilian had been placed for care. The bondsmen and mechanics injured by the chicken-lizard creatures were arrayed around the bay as well, though they were being a bit quiet at the time. After a few moments, the doc signaled him to be silent; Kira needed no prompting on that part, given the status of the first bunk.
Nicol was asleep, that much Kira could sense of the other Gundam pilot. Fuu had apparently fallen asleep leaning on his bed, probably from the stress and the long day she had already suffered. Both looked peaceful, almost angelic in sleep, which was enough that Kira was not going to disturb them at all. After a minute of just watching, he turned around and began the walk toward the hangar, since he still had minutes to kill.
"Pilot Yamato from Control, come in," the radio in his helmet chirps. He crammed the helmet on his head after a moment and pulled up the visor.
"Go for Kira," he replies immediately, now far enough away from the medbay that there was no chance of waking either Fuu or Nicol.
"Report from Control: enemy air forces have begun a rather fast retreat after chewing off about a third of our starboard armor and major weapons," Mir reports.
"Thanks, Miriallia, what are my orders when I launch?" Kira asks as he continues walking apace toward the hangar.
"When you launch, your revised mission is to scout out enemy forces approaching the Archangel from the ground, and to direct our ground forces into proper intercept positions. Can you comply?" Natarle asks on the same frequency.
"Can do, Commander," Kira replies. Better do it now, right, than have to live with watching a town get mulched, Kira thought inside the confines of his own mind. It went without saying that the town would suffer it now, since these were not really professional military forces and would vent rage at having their air forces shot down by taking it out on the civilians. Such logic was gross to the Coordinator and otherwise nice guy known as Kira Yamato, but he also knew what to think to put himself in the shoes of the enemy.
After another thirty seconds of walking, he was at the door to the hangar. His hand hesitated, refusing for a moment to open the door to the airlock that led to the hangar, but after a moment his raw willpower overcame the desire of the rest of him to not fight, to not kill people. In this case, he had a choice: stand by and watch the right people die, or shoot enough of the wrong people that the rest would go away, in theory.
He finally jammed his thumb into the door release button and stepped through to the hangar area. The last of his 40mm cannon ammo was being reloaded by a pair of the bondsmen while a separate contingent was using makeshift melee weapons to chase down and beat down more of the chicken-lizard creatures that had somehow managed to work their way into the ship proper. Kira did not complain of this, of course, since he had seen the nature of the wounds they caused. He could already tell the Combo Weapons Pod of the Launcher Strike pack had been replaced, since the missile tubes had new covers on the and the whole craft was leaning less into the Agni than it was after he got out of it.
-x-x-x-
"Kira Yamato, Skygrasper, Launching!" He gave a minor grunt as the catapult shoved him backwards into the ejection seat that was harder than the seat for the Strike. Something about the ejection seats was a bit more rigid than he was used to...
"How is he?" Athrun asks.
"Beat up but asleep. Same with Fuu right now."
"No wonder I can't find her, she's in the med bay still," Natarle notes.
"Best to leave her as is, Commander, she's completely out of it," Kira replies immediately, more sensing than else that Natarle meant that she was looking for her to get back out in the battle.
"We need everyone possible out there, Ensign," Natarle replies curtly, which also showed her frustration very clearly. Almost never did she call Kira by his Earth Alliance rank any more.
"She's already been up twenty hours and been on duty half or more of that. Even if she was out here, she wouldn't be much use to anyone, maybe even a hazard," Mu says in Kira's defense.
"Oh, right," Natarle half-squeaks. Only when presented the thought in series did it occur to her that Fuu would not be in the best condition to fight.
"Relax, Control, we can handle this," Mu says smoothly.
"Right. Skygrasper, do you have position on the enemy ground forces?" Natarle asks after a moment.
"Right, I have a small contingent of the enemy forces to the ship's starboard at five kilometers out, the ground forces should have visual right now," Kira says. "The main enemy body looks like its about twenty kilos out, heading straight at the Archangel."
"Understood. Timber Wolf, Duel, Rayearth, Selesce, you're on. Duel and Selesce will handle the contingent to starboard, Timber Wolf and Rayearth will handle the middle contingent as they close with us. Buster, Aegis, you will reinforce as needed. Skygrasper has scouting and strafing authorization at this time, don't take chances out there, Kira."
"Timber Wolf acknowledges," Mu replies.
"Duel copies."
"Rayearth, can do," Hikaru says with a bit of cheer that did not really match what she was feeling inside.
"Selesce, ready," Umi notes with more the hint of disgust at the whole scenario.
"Buster on standby," Tolle notes.
"Aegis requesting RTB for ammo and possible repairs," Athrun notes.
"Aegis, you are authorized," Miriallia replies automatically. Keeping the units in service was one of her top priorities, and often times that required bringing them back to base for ammo, fuel, and minor repairs (replacement armor, typically).
"Make it fast, Aegis, the enemy doesn't intend on giving us all day," Natarle notes curtly.
"Fast? I like it fast," Athrun replies to nobody in particular.
"I'd hate to know what 'it' means in that sentence," Yzak notes.
"Strangely enough, I agree," Mu says in amplification. Umi could do naught but sigh in frustration; Hikaru simply shrugged, a gesture amplified by the Rune God around her.
"I would give up, but I am not allowed," Natarle notes in frustration.
"Tea and cake or death!" Tolle half-shouts. (2)
"What the hell does that mean?" Yzak asks in response. "Never mind, I don't think I want to know," he corrects before things got really out of hand on the radio.
"We're all getting stressed out," Miriallia says. "And when Tolle gets stressed, he says strange things that I think are quotes from someone somewhere long dead, I guess," Miriallia notes more or less as an answer to Yzak's question.
"Stress kills, cover it up," Tolle replies.
"Easier said than done, Tolle," Miriallia replies in a tone that brooked no rebuke from the Buster pilot.
"Whoa, I think you're pissing her off, Tolle, better watch it," Yzak notes with a hint of awe. "She shoots people in bathrooms, no telling what she'll do to you in your bedroom tonight," he adds after a mere moment.
"All right, clear the channel unless you have tactical traffic," Natarle orders in a frustrated tone. Her comment forced the other pilots to stifle their laughs which came out as a collection of sniggers.
"All right, Duel reporting I have eyes on about two dozen mechanicals about the same height as Elementals with exposed pilots and a bit wider overall, each with two infantry hanging off the back of the unit."
"Roger that, Duel, begin interception. We don't need an enemy attack from two directions," Natarle orders. "Selesce, cover Duel as he moves in on the enemy," she adds after a moment.
"Actually, I think I'm going to do all the dirty work from here, Commander," Yzak says as the Duel hefts the twin-15 LRM launcher that had worked well for him prior.
As the Duel stepped out, Yzak got a solid lock on the enemy formation with the targeting array that encompassed the enemy midget collection. The whole enemy formation stopped the march forward, suddenly confronted with this massive machine that was over three times larger than a normal house and absolutely looked of murderous purpose. The Duel hunched down slightly as Yzak brought the missile pack in line for the shot, and pulled the trigger. Thirty LRM missiles zoomed to and struck in their formation, a bare 400 meters away from the Gundam; the result was rather spectacular, in Yzak's opinion. Two of the armors on the left flank blew outward, their energy sources hit; it went without saying that the infantry ride-along were goners at the least from fragmentation. Three more of the armors took five missiles apiece, in two cases the missiles striking the pilot and ending his life in a rather spectacular and very messy fashion, though the armors themselves remained upright and apparently functional. Two more pilots went down from fragmentation from the missiles and blown-up comrades, though the bulk of the formation remained more or less unharmed due to being spread fairly wide for a small number of units.
The shock only lasted a few moments in the enemy ranks, then the group collectively decided to return the favor. Yzak was slightly prepared for that; he shifted his right foot back a step and rotated enough that his shield was now covering the bulk of the Assault Shroud as the lasers began tracking in on his machine, though the main problem he had was that the shield protected his body well, but not the legs of the Duel. The enemy realized that the lasers were not going through the shield it was carrying (which likely weighed more than their armors), so naturally they began shooting his exposed legs.
"Agh, shit! I'm getting kneecapped!" Yzak growls while he aims around his shield at the enemy with his beam rifle. Tap, tap, two armors destroyed, one catastrophically as the 57mm energy beam chopped completely through it without hesitation. Yzak lowers the shield to better cover his legs as he depresses the fire buttons for his head-mounted 75mm vulcans and moves the head aimpoint left to right across their file. In this case, the vulcans were actually effective, whereas against a battlemech or omnimech they did little more than to piss off the 'mechwarrior inside. As his burst swept left to right, the slugs tore into the armors and the personnel without reserve, creating a massive mess of motor oil, grease, blood, and body chunks that went a helluva long way to disgusting Yzak, though in the end he mastered his stomach and reminded himself that they were shooting at him, and intended on pillaging a village somewhere to his rear.
"Water-!" Umi shouts as she steps just barely into his Gundam's peripheral vision and prepares the motions for her attack. Before she could begin in earnest and launch the attack, a pair of missiles came out of one of the more distant of the enemy, this one without the ride-on infantry but with a pair of four-silo missile tubes hanging over the turbine-looking extension on the back. Yzak figured the enemy not stupid enough to hang live missiles over a live and exposed engine like that, so they were running some other form of power, which he also suspected was probably under the pilot's seat. The missiles were enough of an impact that they disrupted Umi's attack and actually had Selesce's attention completely.
"I got 'em," Yzak says as he sights up the said armor with Shiva. As much improved as the blue beam was that lanced out from said unit and struck Yzak's shield (as improved over their basic laser weapon, which wasn't much a threat except in numbers), it was not good enough to prevent Yzak from putting a 125-kilogram rail gun slug through the armor the hard way. The slug shredded through the armor's power supply, the pilot, and the secondary weapon systems on the armor, all of which vented catastrophically as the armor itself cooked off and the pilot inside was killed. Yzak had to admit, the pilot was a rather good-looking lady, but challenging a machine far larger than hers was asking for it, and Yzak was not in the mood to be nice with civilians in the balance. "Try it now," Yzak says.
"Water Dragon!" Umi chants, and this time Selesce was able to actually put the spell downrange and into their formation. Being this close to the shore, the enemy forces were more or less blasted backwards and into the sea itself; those that survived did not do so for long, given that their heavy armor caused them to sink faster than normal.
"Control, Duel, flanking group has been sunk. Literally. They gone."
"Duel, Control, roger that. You're needed at the front, it's about to get real deep for the rest of the team."
-x-x-x-
Given that the medbay was halfway down the length of the ship from the hangar and catapults, it was not the sound of the catapult that had awoken Nicol. It was the vibration of the whole ship as the catapult's recoil shuddered through it when shoving a Gundam or Battlemech that stirred him to consciousness.
This then inevitably brought on a wave of disorientation, as the last thing he could remember was the sight of the canopy on the Skygrasper shearing clean off. After a few moments of looking around, he could readily tell where he was; he had helped some of the wounded from the hangar deck into the medbay and seen to some of their injuries himself, though his casting power had faded before he had run out of persons to see to, as had Fuu's casting power.
It took him no more than ten seconds to find Fuu, even without being able to readily move the rest of his body. Foremost, her right elbow was digging into his right hip, which for her was a very bony elbow and it was an attention getter. Second, her light snoring from laying in an unusual position was just barely audible over the sound of the monitors and instrumentation in the medical bay. Nicol knew intrinsically that she was a silent sleeper normally, it was Umi that did the snoring, what little there would be between the three Magic Knights, if any.
"You all right, pilot?" One of the wounded mechanics asks as he hobbles over toward his bed.
"Yeah, just...sore..." Nicol notes in close to a whisper so as to not wake Fuu. "What...happened?"
"Your fighter blew up. We don't know why, the bondsmen think it was an ammo explosion."
"I have seen similar blasts when Hunchback IIC 'mechs blow from ammo cooking off," Pytor notes as he hobbles over to the same area. He was being respectfully quiet. "I fear it is the same as with your unit, Nicol," the Clansmen-turned-Archangel Bondsman notes.
This far, nobody had managed to wake Fuu, and Nicol wanted to keep it that way. He knew she had been pushing it before the battle had begun; participating in the battle without having any decent rest as she had was very bad in Nicol's opinion, yet he could not order her not to fight. She would not stomach just standing by as Nicol went into battle with more hazard than she would have.
"Ammo explosion? Possibly the 40 millimeter, then. Still, how am I—an ejection seat?"
"Yes, apparently the Earth Alliance ejection seats are not the best," Pytor notes offhand. "You were unconscious when Magic Knight Fuu and Chief Murdoch brought you in."
"Oh," Nicol notes; that would explain why he could remember nothing after the cockpit blew clear: he was out cold in his seat. Helluva way to end one's participation in an important battle, not knowing what happened after you got your craft blown out from under you, Nicol thought; and then saved by your girlfriend. Which inevitably brought on the thought: Am I her boyfriend? Or does she not think of it that way yet?
"Beats the alternative, Nicol. At least you did get rescued," Murrue says from the doorway, though still quiet enough not to awaken the sleeping Knight.
"Captain," Pytor says by way of greeting. Murrue nods to the injured Bondsmen as she walks in and stands next to Nicol's bunk.
"Still, I didn't do much to help...while I was—"
"You did more than enough, Nicol. I can't expect my crew to win every battle with a pocket knife and a rubber band, much less outmoded and inadequate fighters. Don't blame yourself, if anything I should have come in behind you and Kira with the ship to help hammer them back. I just don't think we're going to win this battle, any way you cut it, and regardless of how many Skygraspers we have."
"Then what?" Nicol asks.
"I don't know. I just don't know," Murrue replies evenly. The crux of acting instead of planning, Nicol thinks aloud. "True, that," Murrue replies immediately.
"Captain, you're replying to someone's thoughts again," Nicol cautions. She avoided that mostly, but not all the time.
"I know, I know, it's just getting hard for me to distinguish between thought and spoken. I was awake an hour after Fuu."
"Oh," Nicol replies. He had not considered that the Captain was getting exhausted, which was a bad thing the whole way around.
It was the doc that broke the momentary silence afterwards: "Pytor, back to your bunk. Captain, out; I will not have you pestering the patients."
"All right, all right, I'm outta here," Captain Ramius replies. "Don't worry about it, we'll find some way to win. Just rest," Murrue orders as she heads for the door.
Nicol intended nothing but rest for now, given that Fuu had been asleep so far for two hours, and he figured she would need about eight more before she would feel proper again. Not to mention, he was just too sore to do anything meaningful right now. As were about a dozen others in the medbay.
-x-x-x-
"Well now, these midget armored bastards took their sweet time getting here," Yzak notes coldly as the first of the enemy appeared over the crest of the minor hill between them and the main enemy body. Despite the area north of the Archangel being mostly flatlands, there were still minor hills that obscured movement and vision, and in this case the minor hill in front of them at about three kilometers was enough to block their view of most of the enemy formation.
"Yeah, you have to wonder if those air-jocks that retreated stopped to forewarn them on the way out," Athrun replies. "Still, they should be easy prey any way you look at it. All we have to do is keep them in the distance," he notes in a chilled fashion while bringing his beam rifle up.
"I don't see that happening here, but might as well give it a try," Commander La Flaga notes as he sights up the enemy and activates his magnified optics.
The enemy had the unit beat on one thought: long range suppression fire. The Mobile Forces of the Archangel were a kilometer forward of the ship, and the enemy were three kilometers farther forward than that, thus to get to the ship the enemy had to approach march four kilometers to get to where Captain Ramius had parked it in defiance of the enemy. On the other hand, the missile weapons of the enemy armors were better than appeared, given that the aircraft that had been firing them were firing them at no more than a kilometer.
"Oh, shit," Yzak says as he immediately switches targeting modes on his OS from standard to AA, which was specifically written to shoot down airborne objects, such as missiles, helicopters, airplanes, and a certain warship in the air (though even he would admit that the latter was an objective on hiatus for now). "Uh, Archangel, you may want to turn your anti-air grid on, I think those things are aiming for you."
"Roger that, Yzak, we're more or less ready for them," Miriallia replies. "Sort of."
A wall of missiles had taken flight from the rear of the enemy ranks, aimed more or less at the Warship and not strictly at the forward guard. Even still, the Gundams and Omnimech had trained weapons and fired, intercepting at least ten percent of the missile volley over a kilometer away from the ship. The Igelstellungs that had survived the battle already intercepted another forty percent, though the half they did not kill continued in on the ship. The missiles began falling and striking the ship and the ground around it, tearing rents in the heavy ship plate that went down as much as two of the eight layers of armor that the ship now had, that above and beyond the mauling the whole starboard side had taken already in combat.
"Damage report!" Murrue orders. "Chandratta, Gottfrieds, I want a grazing shot on their formation and hit them with all the missiles you can put in their formation."
"Captain, Gottfried two, system malfunction. It took several hits while deployed, we can't use it. The missiles and all point defense weapons on the froward grid are active. Armor damage forward is at ten percent, Captain," Sai reads off his damage control panel.
"Volley fire Sledgehammer missiles, now," Chandratta says as he hammers out the fire command. The whole ship shuddered as thirty two of those missiles were unloaded and half of them curved around the ship in a wide arc to reorient on the forward targets. The one active Gottfried and the port-side Valiant also fired, though Murrue was not expecting much in the way of actual damage from those systems, given they were designed to immolate warships and not small point targets.
"Sai, were those missiles guided?" Murrue asks.
"No, ma'am, nothing on sensors or EW gear except for their engines," Sai says.
Murrue's mind was already furiously working on a plan. "Newman, bring the ship up to hover at fifty meters. If they fire missiles again, backpedal to get us clear of the landing zone," Murrue orders. If they zoomed forward to clear the missiles, it would subject them to a lot of ground fire.
Tolle had connected the combined Buster weapons into the Archangel power grid and set his aimpoint. As soon as an enemy crossed it, he fired, watching as two machines were trashed by his single shot, one in such a fashion that it blew. Within moments his weapon reported it was ready to fire again, and he did so on a different aimpoint so as to kill two other machines. His weapon lit up red thereafter. "Damnit, Control, Buster is RTB for ammo, I'm out of options here," Tolle says.
"Watch your mouth, Tolle, and get inside," Miriallia orders. The Buster jumped down to the ground, then vaulted up into the landing bay; few heard Miriallia's sigh of relief.
The Sledgehammers started landing inside the enemy ranks, though the enemy was spread out enough that collateral damage was minimized. Of thirty-two missiles, they managed to scratch about fifty armors and two hundred personnel, hardly enough to give the enemy second thoughts. The lancing from the Gottfriend, far more visually impressive but far less damaging, was enough to shake some of them up, especially those close enough to feel the heat of the beam.
"Are we all policing the pilot's language now?" Natarle asks.
"It's a dirty job, but someone has to do it," Miriallia replies.
"Commander, find us a point 500 meters offshore where we can get a grazing fire position on the whole narrow," Murrue requests.
"The choke-point is 20 kilometers at its most narrow. It won't work, Captain, unless you want to enforce it with the Lohengrins," Natarle says quickly.
"Bah!" Murrue half-shouts as she brings her clenched right fist down on her console. "We need to find some way to maximize our firepower and cut down our exposure, or they're going to have us for lunch and the town for dinner!"
"Captain, suggest we fall back 3000 meters and the forward line fall back 3500 meters, force the enemy into the narrow and then barrage until destroyed," Natarle replies.
Murrue does the mental calculations after hearing the suggestion. The narrow was about four kilometers long and twenty across, and the Archangel was parked smack dab in the middle of it. By falling back, they would have the ability to range to the whole narrows, therefore no chance of a flanking attack, and by hauling the front line an extra five hundred meters back the Archangel could better support the troops.
"Helm, all back full for three thousand meters, then stop cold. Controller, recall all our forces, fighting withdrawal. Units are to reload and refit as quickly as possible."
"Roger that, Captain," Miriallia replies.
Please, help us...
"Huh? Who said that?" Miriallia asks. To her the mental voice sounded human, mostly, but part of her wondered if it was.
"Who said what?" Yzak asks in retort.
"Someone asked 'Please help us' and I didn't recognize the voice."
"Wasn't on this radio channel, Miriallia, check and see if you are on two channels," Mu offers.
Miriallia checks her radio output and input controls. "Nope, only this frequency, Commander."
"Are you sure you heard it audibly, or only in your mind?" Miriallia gasps. "Someone is trying to contact you telepathically, I guess. Wonder who it is?" Tolle asks.
"And thus, we go ever slightly more crazy," Yzak notes sardonically.
"So long as we don't lose our heads in a crisis situation, we'll be all right," Athrun says wearily. "I hope."
-x-x-x-
"Tolle!" Miriallia shouts as she ran up on his rear.
"Mir—hey!" he protests weakly as she charged him down and grappled him in a fierce embrace. "Mir—hey, what are you doing off the bridge? I thought the battle wasn't over!"
"It isn't, but this next one is it," Miriallia says. "The Captain let us all up and out for a few minutes, since the enemy isn't following right now, they're just waiting, trying to figure out what we're doing, I guess. And what we are."
" 'Lost in the darkness, so far away from home,' " Tolle replies.
"Where did that come from?" Miriallia asks; Tolle did not usually speak like that.
"It's a line from one of the mythical Power Metal songs I've been chasing. Part of a verse that I've seen quoted in old Internet pages that still exist, or existed, but I want to hear the song. The whole verse is 'burning fires, burning lives, on the long distant road / through the lost mountains endless so far away from home / warrior soldiers forever, we fought long ago / we're all lost in the darkness so far away from home.' That is, if I remember it correctly. God, that was so long ago," Tolle notes as he leans back against the armored wall between the cubicle for the Buster and the rest of the ship.
"Sounds interesting," Miriallia says of the verse that Tolle had recited. "Makes me wonder what the song was really like," she notes wistfully, leaning over the catwalk railing to look down to the deck of the hangar. Of course, she did so right in front of Tolle, which gave him a rather impressive view from his angle. "Doesn't sound like the normal old stuff you listen to, where'd you find it?"
"A message board post, someone was asking if anyone knew where that verse came from. Said it was some kind of Power Metal or Opera Metal song he heard once."
"Strange, you never found it?"
"Nope," Tolle replies, sighing. "Maybe somewhere on our travels we'll find it or we'll find someone who knows it."
"Why, why is it everywhere we go, someone has to shoot at us?" Miriallia asks with a hint of sadness to tone.
"I don't know," Tolle replies honestly.
"I mean, its not like we're trying to—well, you know..."
"Actually, we are," Athrun notes as he approached the two from their left. "Well, mostly. On Cephiro, they took all the potshots before we did. On Dustball, we started it out by stomping their punitive assault. Here, we just fired first based on what someone heard from their minds. I'm not going to lose any sleep over it, but still..." Athrun had a dislike of rapists that was slightly worse than the norm for PLANT society, though most of his enhanced disdain was from military ethos.
Miriallia groans, only now realizing she had just consigned part of a military force to death because of what she heard inside their minds.
"Still, it's gotta be better for us to do it this than sit back and live with ourselves, knowing we did nothing," Tolle says with a modicum of hope.
"He's right, I wouldn't stand by and watch them rape a town," Athrun says. "Still, we keep picking these kinds of fights, eventually we are not going to walk away from one of them," Athrun notes coldly. "Someone needs to warn the Captain and S-O's that we need to be a little more judicious about who we stomp on," and his tone had the finality of a death sentence.
"I heard," Natarle says; she had apparently approached behind even Athrun without being heard, who was looking at Miriallia and Tolle looking down at the hangar deck. "And I agree. Only two problems, one, the crew is not going to stand for doing nothing, two, the Captain isn't going to stand for doing nothing."
"Well, I was just saying, Commander, not like I advocate doing nothing, but if we keep getting caught in these kinds of crusades, we aren't going to make it home." Unless something incredibly freaky happens...no bets there, Athrun thinks crassly. He so wanted to be home, in the arms of his fiancée, rather than being here getting shot at. Wherever 'here' was.
"I know, I don't say it as a club against you, but keep in mind that we're all reliant on each other, and after all that's happened so far command authority only goes so far now. Like, Murrue couldn't order the crew back to Earth Alliance service after all we've been through, the crew would have her for lunch. Probably the same with the ZAFT contingent, you couldn't order Yzak and Nicol back to ZAFT service, right?"
"First, Yzak might go on his own, though I'm not going to bet on that if this trip gets any stranger. I think he just wants to go home, any way you cut it. Second, I couldn't prybar Nicol and Fuu apart right now, much less order him back to that bloody war," Athrun admits. "And, when I really think about it, if my father told me to get back to the war, I'd tell him where to get off."
Natarle was silent for almost a whole minute, as she in turn looked down over the catwalk rails to the mechanics that were still loading ammo into the Gundams and the Omnimech. "What changed?"
"A lot did," Athrun replies after a few moments. "Everyone changes. Especially when forced to see what you're doing wrong," Athrun notes ruefully. "Like these two," he jerks his thumb at Miriallia and Tolle. "On any other day, I'd have no reason to shoot them, but because they are crew of the Archangel, I ended up shooting at them. For a good chunk of near space and half the distance around Earth. Otherwise, I had nothing against them. So yeah, when you look at it right, there is no real reason for a war except the flag you're following."
"There's always what you believe," Natarle replies in minor addendum to what he says. "Which is slightly redundant, since the average person doesn't fight for a flag unless he or she believes in it."
"Conscription?" Athrun asks.
"Yeah, that does happen, sometimes, but usually some form of belief is drummed into the conscripts. Not so, here," and she indicates Tolle and Miriallia by gesture.
"Enemy forces are on the move again, repeat, enemy forces are on the move again! All hands, battle stations!" Mu shouts across the intercom. "Natarle to the bridge, immediately!" he adds after a moment.
"Right, we'll finish this up after the battle, Athrun. Come back alive," she says as she moves off toward the personnel hatch and stairwell to the conning tower.
"Go, Mir. We'll be all right," Tolle says as he gets ready to dash over to his loaded and readied Buster.
"You'd damn well better come back alive, Tolle, or you'll have problems," Mir orders, then heads for the door leading inside the ship.
-x-x-x-
Natarle had stopped off at the Captain's quarters, due to a radio broadcast looking for her. After a few moments she opened the door by pressing the button, and looked in. She saw enough in about three seconds of observing. With that, she stepped back to allow the door to close and continued to the bridge without her.
"Where's the Captain?"
"Out like a lightbulb," Natarle replies to Mu's request.
"That bad?" Mu asks.
"She had the bridge shift before the aborted Steel Beach Day began, so she's been up as long as Fuu, maybe longer." And right now it was no secret that Fuu was asleep in the Medbay, having borrowed a small parcel of Nicol's bed.
"Which means she's been up for almost a full day straight," Mu notes. "Can you handle the bridge for a battle?"
"I should be able to," Natarle notes. As Mu moved toward the door, Natarle stopped him. "Commander, keep the ground forces in close and don't do anything hazardous. I don't want to explain to Murrue what went wrong," Natarle orders.
"Roger that," Mu says as he heads out the door.
"Station report," Natarle requests as she takes the Captain's chair and adjusts the panels closer for her smaller stature (as compared to Murrue or Mu).
"Weps, we have both Gottfrieds ready at this time, as well as anything that wasn't downed prior."
"Sensors, enemy is now closing at the far end of the gap, estimate range to enemy front is 5500 meters," Sai replies.
"Comms, nothing," Kuzzey says.
"Helm, all systems go," Mina replies.
"Control, all units are ready except the Timber Wolf."
Natarle begins her plan: "Weps, you are go for full arsenal, shoot them off as fast as they load up. Sensors, if they start moving in strange directions, I want to know about it. Control, launch them and have the ground forces take position at 500 meters off us. Helm, put us up fifty meters and keep it mobile; if you see a cloud of missiles coming in, dodge them."
"Conn, Sensors, enemy is headed straight for us at this time," Sai says. "Best range 5000 meters at this time," he notes after sneaking a laser range in on their lead elements.
"Weps, begin with a missile barrage aimed at their rear echelon, see if we can take out some or more of their fire support carriers," Natarle orders. "I wonder what their logistical tail looks like, maybe we can get them to go away if we cut their supply line," she notes.
"Valid solutions, firing now," Chandratta notes as the Timber Wolf thunders down the starboard-side catapult and jumps out of the launch tube.
The missile tubes were the first to fire, headed in on the enemy's rear to attempt to scratch their fire support forces, or at least who were acting as missile batteries. Natarle had to admit that her understanding of the enemy and their tactics was a bit thin, but so far it did not appear that they were doing anything finesse, just using a sledgehammer-style wave assault. Sai watched the missiles on radar as they went out and started landing in a ladder-south strike pattern that prevented one warhead from killing another with its own blast. The whole cascade of thirty-two missiles hit the enemy rear and caused significant havoc both in destruction terms and morale, since the enemy now knew that their target knew how to handle incoming fire.
Despite this, the enemy was smart and disciplined to know how to return the favor. Though not as large a cloud of return fire, the amount of missiles that came in was very significant and not all that haphazardly aimed, either. Newman, as ordered, drove the ship aside to avoid the incoming fire as Mu took the mobile forces forward five hundred meters to dodge the barrage.
"Perfect; come on up a little closer," Chandratta mutters at his screen. "Gotcha," he says as he thumbs the fire command, which fired off both the Gottfrieds and the Valiant. He had an angle whereby the enemy was marching up a small hill that he could stare down the reverse side of the hill at an angle that was perfectly flat, essentially creating an enfilade scenario with grazing fire along a whole line of enemy troops. The 225cm emerald beams each chopped through armors by the dozen; the projectile from the Valiant actually slammed into the ground partway down the hill, though instead of burying it skipped and started tumbling, with an erratic pattern that ended up doing as much as one of the straight-through beams of the Gottfrieds.
"Good tactic, Chandratta. Sai, enemy count in fire range?"
"In range to our weapons, about 440 not including indirect missile ranges, Commander, add another 200 for the Mobile Forces range brackets."
"Where the hell are the rest of them?" She asks, kind of worried that well over 2000 of them had simply disappeared.
"Flanking us," Mu says. "Kira reports that we have two larger formations five kilometers to either side of the center, moving south. He estimates they'll turn in on the Archangel so we have enemies forward, forward left, and dead to right," Mu reports.
"Great. Anvil and two hammers," Natarle mutters, immediately recognizing the tactic. "All right, Mu, we're going to destroy the enemy formation ahead of us, completely wipe it out, and fall back to prevent being trapped between the two larger units. I'm especially concerned about that formation to the right, we've already been chewed on that side," she orders.
"Roger that, Commander," Mu replies immediately. "Mobile unit, we take out the forward enemies and defend the right," Mu orders as another wave of missiles from the Archangel streaks overhead, this one aimed at a dense-pack created when the enemies decided they wanted to get out of an obvious enfilade. Part of the missiles ran afoul of a group of enemy missiles headed toward the ship, though most landed in the desired area and caused massive casualties both to the ride-along infantry and the actual armored troopers.
- - - - -
"What's the plan?" Athrun asks as he jacks the bolt on the combination rifle for the Aegis. With that action, the autocannon was ready and armed for the upcoming action.
"We close in on them while firing. With luck, we'll knock out more than half of them before they start really firing on us," Mu notes. "The ship can't take a whole helluva lot more before we're stuck here, so..."
"...So we force the issue in our favor," Yzak continues where Commander La Flaga hangs. "I can live with that," he notes. "Standoff fire first?"
"Two salvos, then fire while closing," Mu orders. "They should be in range here in a few moments," he notes.
"I have lock now," Yzak says as he reorients the Twin-15 launcher to the enemy in front.
"Begin standoff fire," Mu orders as he depresses the trigger on his missile launchers. The battle computer in his machine did the rest, telling the missiles how to fly in an arcing pattern to traverse the distance between his location and the enemy formation. Yzak did the same, and in five seconds literally 100 LRMs were dispensed with, just short of a ton of ordinance, headed in the enemy's general direction.
"You know, I can't wait for the enemy to get close enough for the Archangel's LRM batteries to open up," Yzak notes. "Not that I am complaining about doing this myself, but this is like trying to kill ants with an icepick."
"Do you ever stop complaining?" Miriallia asks bluntly.
"No, normally not," Athrun answers for him.
"Agh," Yzak groans. "I give up," he declares after a moment. "There just is no winning around here."
"Of course not," Natarle replies to Yzak's admission. "We're the Archangel. We never lose, but we never win. We are just fated to be."
Silence on the comms as the ground forces actually overshoot their planned two salvos before closing up with the enemy. It was four salvos before anything else was said. "It must be a really bad day, if the Commander is talking that sourly."
"For the record, yes, it is a very bad day, Athrun," Natarle notes coldly. "Finish up the center formation, get ready to move, we're running out of space between here and the town," Natarle notes as the whole ship echoes to the sound of missiles launching.
"Understood, Commander," Mu replies before he pushes his throttle forward to get moving toward the enemy. They were close enough now that he could hit them with direct fire from his ER Large Lasers, which he was doing in an alternating pattern, saving the Mediums for after he ran out of missiles.
The missile wave from the Archangel passed overhead of the advancing ground forces, again striking in a ladder south pattern so the explosion and debris from one missile did not kill another inbound missile. After that wave impacted and shredded more than a few of their ranks, the enemy began having second thoughts about attacking in this fashion, and that before the ground forces really opened up on them. The explosions were close enough that Yzak could feel the ground jolt with each blast of a missile.
The terrain actually worked to the enemy favor in this case. A small hill prevented most of the formation from taking potshots at the enemy as they closed ranks, though this cut both ways. The only fire coming in from the enemy was missile fire headed toward the ship, and most of that sparse since the enemy had apparently lost their missile carriers or expended their ammo, or both. As Mu advanced over the hill, with Athrun and Hikaru in close support, he walked up basically three hundred meters forward of what was left of the enemy front lines, which was a lot closer than he wanted to be at that time. On the other hand, that also made all of his weapons easily usable in the close quarters, since none of his arsenal had a minimum range and his machine guns were the real short-range anti-infantry knives of his arsenal.
"Nuts! We're this close!" Athrun bemoans as he levels first his rifle, then his shield at the enemy since they were already firing.
Tolle was actually the first to act, as he locked the weapons of the Buster into the shotgun configuration, leveled it at 350 meters, and pulled the trigger. What he accomplished was a mech-sized grazing shot, where the ordinance basically ended up hitting the ground and skipping around, those that did not impact about twenty armors and take them out of action. After that, he popped the caps on his missile silos opened and fired four of the anti-armor missiles into four small clusters of armor, taking out an additional seven. After that, he along with Athrun had to set his Trikeros shield forward, though with it at an angle he had the ability to fire on the enemy right flank.
"Flame Arrow!" Hikaru shouts as Rayearth prepares its right hand to deploy the spell. The fire surge created by the spell slammed into the ground and skipped, spreading out in an arc that roasted off the personnel in several dozen of the armors and their accompanying infantry. Mu joined in the effort by twisting his torso while ripple-firing his missile launchers (3). The wave of missiles danced across their ranks, some hitting, some missing, causing a wave of havoc in their tight-pack formation.
"This is insane," Athrun half-shouts as he levels his combo rifle and fires a round of autocannon into a cluster of their rank. The single 100mm slug tore through two of the armors and the personnel that were riding them; this was followed by the ruby red beam of the attached Large Pulse Laser, then the vulcans on the Aegis itself. The last of the ten he targeted fell prey to his beam rifle, which was grossly overpowered for this tasking but very accurate for point targets.
A red beam lanced out from the left, where Yzak and Umi were supposed to be. The beam dragged across the torso of the Timber Wolf, immediately causing some damage to the side armor and a heat spike. Mu swiveled the torso of his machine to look at the offending armor, of which a few of the enemies in the area were trying to elevate their armors so they could shoot at the seven-story hulk that was about to hose them. Mu gave them not the time to draw a bead on him, instead turning his machine guns on the enemy and unloading a few dozen rounds from each. He could not help but retch from the sight of all the blood and body parts, but the mission came first, his feelings second.
"Sapphire Whirlwind!" Mu hears over the radio as the whole enemy left flank takes a helluva thrashing from Selesce's water-wind composite attack (4). What few of the enemy armors that did not take a beating from the spell Yzak dealt with by beam rifle precision shots; most of the infantry was sent sailing for a good two, three kilometers back toward where they came from.
The torso of the Timber Wolf twists back right and Mu opens up with the machine guns again. The small 12.5mm ammo was not enough to punch through the armor, even with AP shells, but it ripped up the pilots and infantry, both of which were severely exposed and easily injured. Between his guns and the Aegis, what was left of their already heavily abused formation was no more, the few survivors headed away from the city at a breakneck pace.
"Ground command reporting all foes eliminated or retreating. And I'm about to puke," Mu declares weakly. He even sounded sick to the rest of the team.
"Don't screw up your controls, Commander," Natarle replies. "Bring the team in, we're headed for final defense position outside of the town."
-x-x-x-
Natarle was not happy with the arrangement, but it had to be done. Chandratta had the conn, since the Captain was still out and Natarle had to see to the ground action herself; anyone who could use a rifle, bondsmen, crew, whatever, that was not involved in fighting the ship was set to it. Anyone else, those injured in the day's incidents that could stand or brace, were placed at strategiuc locations to give movement orders to the civilians coming in.
"Are you sure about this?" the scout that Fuu had brought in asks. "Taking everyone in town to a safe location? You would do this?"
I couldn't live with myself if I did not do this, Natarle wanted to reply. "Yes. We tried stopping them, and they are mad as hornets now. If we don't get the civilians clear, it will be a massacre."
"Understood," the civilian scout says. "Our Elder may have an idea where we can go."
"Commander, we are at the destination," Chandratta notes on the radio frequency for the infantry.
"Take us down, soft, deploy one load ramp for the Timber Wolf and the Skygrasper. Gundams, Rune Gods are to put up a suppression fire barrage if any enemies come close. Infantry to the rear deck to conduct plunging fire, break out the heavy weapons. Missiles as fast as you can fire them, Chandratta," Natarle orders.
"Aye, Commander," Chandratta replies.
"Commander, shall the remaining Bondsmen draw arms and join the battle?" Kristen Redmond asks as she approaches the infantry group.
"Yes, do so immediately," Natarle says, then: "Belay that order. How many Elemental-trained personnel do you have available?"
"Two, three at best," Kristen replies, having already considered it. "Most of our Elementals were injured by those wild animals."
"Damn," Natarle replies. Despite their almost comical ineffectiveness against the Gundams, she knew that Elementals were hellishly powerful and very effective to boot. "Deploy with the heavy weapons teams. Murdoch has command of your unit."
"Understood, Commander," Kristen replies as she sets out to wrangle up her remaining available.
"Ready?" Commander Badgiruel asks of the scout.
"Best we get this over with," he says. The Crazy Cook nods in silent respect for the Scout, given that what he was about to lay on the townsfolk was the next best thing to a firestorm.
"Control, Ground. Open central loading bay doors," Natarle orders.
"Hangar, Conn, open central bay doors," Miriallia repeats for Natarle, given that Natarle's radio did not have a setting for the hangar. I'll have Kira look into that after this mess is over with, Natarle thinks. After the bay ramp hits the ground, the scout leads off.
A crowd had assembled, at the forefront of it being about two dozen fit guys with pikes. Behind that was someone that was talking to another guy with a pike, though after they were partway down the loading ramp a murmur went up from the crowd and the pikes seemed to stand at ease. By the time they had hit the ground, the pikes were completely at rest and the older guy from the rear and the guy in the back with the pike had pushed forward. Accompanying them was a guy wearing a blue vest and pants with a red headband.
"Rex, you're still alive?" the older guy asks rhetorically. "When we heard the battle to the north, we thought the worst," he continues.
"The worst almost happened. One of their Rune Gods saved me from a detachment of Imperials," and he indicated the Commander.
"And you are?" the guy with the spear asks. Natarle could only figure him for some variant of a guard commander or lieutenant.
"A long, strange story," Natarle notes in response. "We're not with the Empire, if that is what you are worried about," she tacks on for clarification.
"No, definitely not, but you do as good a butcher job as the Empire," the guy in blue notes. "So, if you're not from around here, why are you fighting the Empire?" he asks after a moment.
"It is that obvious?" Natarle asks, though it was not a major shock to Natarle. "We may be wanderers of a different sort, but you can rest assured we don't sit by and watch a town get assaulted and raped. Which is what the Empire intends here."
"Oh," the apparent elder of the town notes, then deflates. "We need to evacuate, then, but how? they'll track us down for sure, and if they are as mad as you say they'll be, Locke, it'll be bloody," he notes with a worried tone.
"How many in your town?" the Crazy Cook asks. Before an answer could be delivered:
"Ground, Control, enemy activity sighted on ground-area sensors, best range twelve kilometers. Enemy advance rate puts them on top of us in thirty-seven minutes, standoff fire range in twenty-two minutes," Miriallia reports.
"Control, ground, aye," Natarle replies into her radio. "Control, Conn is released to begin rear-tube missile barrage, standoff range. Have Aegis get close to scout and tag."
"That quick? Leo must really want to catch you off guard," Locke says, thinking it over. "Normally, he is slower than this," he adds after a moment, remembering Tzen's invasion clearly. Leo was effective mostly for being methodical and thorough, as well as honorable and just. A far cry from the indecisive General Celes or the insane General Kefka, he knew.
"Leo? Enemy force commander?" Natarle asks. "Never mind, we can discuss that later. Elder, we can get your people out on our ship, it'll be close, but if your people only bring themselves and some bare necessities, clothing and food, we can get the whole town cleared and out of here before they get to us," Natarle notes.
There was a silence for a few moments, as they thought it over. "We cannot run from where we have lived all of our lives."
Natarle was almost expecting that, given the demeanor of Rex and his tendencies. You could learn a lot of someone by observing for a few minutes, which is one thing she did while waiting for the landing.
"I expected as much," Natarle replies. "You do realize that when they hit the town, it will be very violent."
"This I know. We're prepared to send some of our women and children with you, we had them ready to evacuate when the fighting started. Locke can guide your ship to a suitable place well away from here," the Elder notes. "The rest of us, we will wait."
It hurt Natarle's heart to know that the guy in front of her knew that he would likely not survive the day, but he was unwilling to give up his homeland. In his position, however, she would likely have done the same thing, not walked away from what she believed was her place. Except, any more she did not believe she had a place, really, except in command of the CIC.
"Very well, load them up, the mechanics will get them to safe locations on the ship."
"Rex, they're down at the stables. Get them up here, fast," the Elder notes. "Locke, take this to Banon," he hands over a rod of some kind and a letter. "He'll know what this is for."
Locke frowns, though he nods after a moment. "Understood." Natarle could only guess he did not like the implication that was given: the Elder was not expecting to survive.
Twenty birds of a far larger size than the one that was still running amok somewhere on the ship arrived at the loading doors for the ship, each with a lady under thirty (in Natarle's estimate) and at least one child per. It was a paltry sample of a town that had thousands in it, but Natarle could only guess that most did not want to leave, despite the incoming Imperial forces. The riders dismounted, gathered their saddlebags and small amount of possessions, and were brought onto the ship by the special forces and Bondsmen.
Any one of them could tell the refugees were afraid. Severely afraid. Many of the children were sobbing, knowing that they were leaving everything they knew, everything they liked. A few of the guys visible in the area were restraining themselves, whether to join the ship or to simply go along with the ladies that were coming on board Natarle could not tell.
Everyone jolted when the first group of missiles fired off, headed northward toward the enemy formations that Sai suspected had merged in again and were moving as one instrument of crushing victory. Wisely, to avoid the appearance of attacking the town, Chandratta was not using the forward-facing missile tubes, since the flight pattern of those missiles would cause them to be turning over the town. The Helldarts were too range-limited inside the atmosphere to be of use just yet, though. In less than a minute, though, the roar of the missiles gave way to silence, and from there the sounds of explosions in the distance.
"I am sorry we could not stop them outright," Natarle tells the Elder and the guard Lieutenant.
"You tried. That is better than most people are ever willing to do," Locke replies.
"It was an honor to meet someone who tried saving us, even without ever knowing us. You and your crew may be more human than most. Now go, before you are caught in the crossfire, Commander."
"Thank you," Natarle says as she gives them a salute. The Elder simply raised his staff in salute, while the Guard raised their pikes in salute as well. With that, Natarle and the Crazy Cook headed back up the ramp, with Locke in tow.
"God," the Cook says as the loading ramp begins closing. "Sucks we can't stop them," he declares with a frustrated tone.
"What is the Clan term for fighting understrength?" Natarle asks.
"Fighting below Cutdown, or Powless, depending on in what way you're fighting understrength," the cook replies. "Either way, yeah, one Archangel-class just can't do it."
"Next time, however, I want to be able to do it," Natarle orders coldly. "The Stone Rhino. How much overhaul is it going to need?" Natarle asks Murdoch as she closes up on his knot of techs.
"We can get it functional underway in forty-eight, ma'am," Murdoch replies hesitantly. Compared to the omnimechs, the Stone Rhino was a hulk, short on maneuverability and flexibility but very apt at taking abuse and dishing it out.
"See to it," Natarle orders. "I want the Warhawk and Stone Rhino ready to go before next we see battle, so that any Imperial entanglements go to our favor, not theirs. And make plans to break out that Mad Dog and the Stormcrow after those two are functional." She sighs before she turns to look at Locke, who was looking around the inside of the hangar bay with something between fear and dread. Before she said anything to him:
"You...those aren't Magitek, right?"
"Magitek? What does that mean?" the Cook asks before Natarle could even begin to think such a question out.
"You don't know? Those Imperials you were shooting, their armor is Magitek." Locke replies, rather stunned.
"It's a pain in the ass is what it is," Murdoch comments as he walks past, headed for a crate that was in open hangar storage area.
"No, we don't know what those armors are, though they do have one serious bite for something that small," Natarle notes as she grabs for her radio. "Conn, Natarle. Recall all of our units. Once the Gundams and Rune Gods are secured, Helm set course due west at ten percent burn until we are off the continent."
"Conn, aye," Chandratta replies immediately.
"God protect those left behind; we've done what we can," the Cook adds after her radio was silent for a moment.
-x-x-x-
Later that day, Leo took his best, most disciplined platoons into the town, leaving the remainder of his army back and outside of the town so as to avoid the massacre that Natarle feared. There was no shooting, precious little bloodshed as the Magitek armors thundered through the streets of the town, asserting their command authority over the otherwise defenseless town. There were no reprisals against civilians, there was no rape as had been feared by the crew of the Archangel. There were only questions as to the nature of the ship that had attacked them, a ship that did not match the silhouette and capabilities of the only two known airships in the world.
When Murrue woke up, it was to a dark room that had only the light of a monitor glowing, and the sound of a voice-note recording warning. She had been left a voice-note by someone; after playing the message, she immediately dressed and headed down to the stateroom. Her code was easily enough to get in, to a room that was empty except for one person.
"How do you deal with it when you've done everything you can short of a one-way suicidal blitz, and still did not win?" Natarle asks. She was sitting at the desk, likely typing up a battle log or some other form of report.
Murrue sat down in the chair that Natarle usually used when in the stateroom. "I take it we weren't able to stop them all, or evac the town," Murrue requests for clarification.
"We gave them a bloody nose, both in the air and on the ground, but in the end there was just too many of them to stop them all. We did evac about fifty civilians, but the rest of the town opted to remain there, they would not evacuate."
Silence, for over a minute. To point, the closest thing Murrue had suffered to a failure was the loss of Dearka Elsman, a pilot that died in an otherwise very intelligent ambush delivered by the other side. In cold, hard military analysis that was a partial failure in that battle, she lost a pilot and had the Buster downed for a week, but she also sent more than a good ration of those enemies to hell in response. And the assault at the starport the next day was more than ample to recompense the Inner Sphere for the loss of one of its mercenaries. "I guess...you don't really deal with those so much as you just regret you didn't do what you set out to."
"Damage to the ship is minor to moderate on the surface, the starboard Valiant is still down, but the rest of our arsenal was easily repaired. No engine or Levitator damage at this time," Natarle notes, still typing, forcing her mind away from the thought that she wasn't able to do what she wanted to. She did not offhand realize that six months ago, she would not have even given that town the time of day in deference to the ship, much less tried defending it.
"How long...was I asleep?" Murrue asks.
"Approaching twelve hours," Natarle notes as she finishes up her AAR (5) and closes it out after appending her digital signature.
"I did...want to be there, Natarle," the Captain notes without much in the way of anything except a hint of sadness.
"I figured you would say that, but by the time I realized you were missing I found you asleep and snoring slightly. I decided to leave you in bed, you were already looking and sounding like hell before we got that reprieve. You look and sound a lot better now than before."
"You don't exactly sound all that good right now, either," Murrue notes.
"I don't doubt it. I just hope this report is legible tomorrow morning," Natarle notes as she taps the computer screen that was now sitting at an idle desktop.
"All right, before I relieve you, anything I should know?"
"First off, our new local contact is Locke. He's one of the resistance against the Empire, team's name is the Returners. He's slick, but on the level. We are presently out over the open sea, north of the Empire's continent, course 0-2-0 speed five percent, headed for Figaro Castle. The King of Figaro is a member of the resistance but apparently shows a facade of supporting the Empire."
"Think we'll be able to at least stop and breathe there?" Murrue asks. Such periods were beginning to be more rare by far.
"Better: Locke says we'll be able to drop off the refugees there without any issues, the King will know how to disperse them, and while he can't hide the ship he's not going to question its presence. After that, I don't really know what to do, after blowing thirty to forty percent of an enemy formation to hell I doubt we'll get anything but hostility from the Empire and their supporters."
"Could be worse, though. At least they really don't know our full capabilities yet. The Warhawk?" Murrue asks.
"Warhawk is ready, the Stone Rhino will be ready here in about three days, Murdoch's estimate. Timber Wolf is up, Aegis, Buster, and Duel are active, and the Skygrasper is down for routine maintenance, minimum six hours. Also of note, the Stormcrow and Mad Dog in storage, I'm having them assembled in anticipation of an extended engagement to come."
"Who will pilot them?"
"Actually, that is something I've been meaning to discuss with you lately..."
Author's Chapter Afterword:
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I am still alive. If you count having no free time and less of a life as being alive, that is.
Okay, okay, I have a little confession to make: I am not much into the latest and greatest of games. Final Fantasy VI hit the American shores in mid-96, which makes it over 12 years old now. I think the newest of games I have is FF 12, and I actually have very little motivation to work on that right now. I prefer the older games, it seems to me that the newer ones lack certain elements of depth of storyline to me. I don't really know what it is all about, but saving the world in games as old as FF 6, Earthbound, Tales of Phantasia, and Dark Cloud seems to strike me as more entertaining than some of the newer ones. Call it what you will, nostalgia, being old (I hardly count 24 as being old, IMHO), what have you, but even I have limits. Somewhere.
And then there is the little problem of having a full-time job and being a homeowner that seems to be sucking up my schedule in massive chunks. I actually put estimates out on a Gantt Chart of how long it is going to take me to do all my stories, and working on five distinct fains of writing at once is going to take a while. Quite a while, even working on the stories parallel. Those are:
-Jokers Wild series (I have big battles planned out for that still, hehe)
-Archangel's Amazing Adventures
-a side story of the Jokers Wild not pertaining to anything published yet (will be released during the phase of the Jokers Wild that it is based to)
-the original Multimage Chronicles that the Jokers Wild are derived from, which makes the Jokers Wild seem rather wimpy in places, trust me
-and the UN Squadron story, which I really do want to do that old and kickarse game some credit.
So, yeah, I have a lot of plans and devoting the time needed to execute them all is going to be a bit thin over the summer break. But, as I have sworn before, I start a story, I will not stop it. Actually, once I finish the JW side story and UN Squadron, that is it for those two, which reduces the playing field significantly. Just a matter of getting them done to focus on the rest.
And now, for some comments on the story:
A rather unusual twist to the battle: numbers can kill you. Each armor may be individually insignificant when stacked against a Gundam or Rune God, but enough of them in one small area is a severe threat to even the warship, all the more so when competently led. Natarle realized this, and decided to walk away before the ship really got banged up. Actually, the small center force that the team busted up was intended to have lasted longer than they did, at least in Leo's mind, as a distraction that would give his flanking forces time to come in on the sides and really hammer the Archangel. He missed that call, on not knowing the capabilities of the Archangel and the Mobile Forces he underestimated their striking capability as well as their maneuverability, which gave Natarle enough time to retreat and try to fast-evac the town.
One has to wonder what forms of ripples the Archangel will cause in the natural timeline in this dimension: First, who shall survive, with the hazard of being overwhelmed by many foes that are only going to get worse as the story progresses, and how will the Archangel and her forces alter the course of the resistance and the inevitable clashes with the Empire? How will Gestahl's policies change as he comes to grips with the warship that his Magitek forces cannot easily sink? How will the Archangel come to grips with hordes of small and deadly foes? These I leave up to your imagination, for now.
Review Replies
First and foremost, I do believe I owe an apology to The Green Knight. The day that I replied to the review for last chapter, I was in a very foul mood due to events IRL at that time and I think I went a ration sharper than intended. Still and all, you can rest assured that if Spongebob shows up in one of my stories, he/she/it/whatever will not survive that chapter. Period. I have very little tolerance for cartoons that generally dumb, and my writing will reflect that, should I be forced into a position where I need to frag Spongebob. (6)
On the more broad overview of the reply, yes, this does seem like a strange route to take, but keep in mind that threat is not something simply defined in terms of mobile army or even in science fiction. Over the years, I have built a cohesive theory of combat that allows for a wide variety and derivation of talents and crossovers. With enough analysis, you can make reasonable calculations or assumptions as to what any given weapon system or attack form will do to any other object. Is what this story is running on, analysis of what is worth what and how effective it is when wagered against the Archangel, the Gundams, and the Rune Gods. This is simply my analysis; if you have a differing opinion, I want to hear it, and that goes for anyone out there.
And now for the replies:
Knives91: If I had to get 'physically insistent' with someone and did not have my trusty .357 Magnum large-frame revolver at hand, I would have to go with the ten-pound sledge. Light enough it isn't going to wear you out, heavy enough that even a glancing hit is going to get the maggot's attention. Not that whatever at hand can't be used for the purpose, it is all a matter of frame of mind on accomplishing such.
FraserMage: Thanks for the wake-up call, comrade. I guess I was forgetting my sworn oath to complete my works in a timely fashion there. Anyways, yes, the Executors are part of the JW backstory and MMC main characters, but keep in mind that Executors are trans-dimensional operators and you have to wonder whether or not their random bouncing for now has caused them to cross paths with the purview of the Star Empires or other trans-dimensional beings or organizations. Yes, Locke just showed up now, the rest of the MCs from FFVI will not be far behind. Starting next chapter, actually.
CHM01: the enemy name is ChickenLip, the ones you encounter only in the area of Maranda and Tzen, have the nasty Quake spell that kills them just as readily as your team but almost never use. Yes, it is hard to picture speed demons as the Gundam pilots in something as drag-arse as a Warhawk, much less the slower Stone Rhino, but keep in mind when your original unit is SOL you use what you have that can do the job. Military necessity and all that.
Akalon: Thx for the accolade, comrade. Yes, I will be updating the Jokers Wild series soon, hopefully soon after this is posted with the next Chapter of Dilemma of Flay Allster, and the next chap of Inferno in Chicago is still being planned out, but it will revolve around some not-so-typical soldiers on the Mendel side :P Stay tuned, the fun is not over yet.
Gonging Apples: I find that I may have overestimated the popularity of FF VI, but I did not want to do 7 or 8 since everyone and their grandma has done stories about the latter two. And going where everyone else has gone just is not my style. You'll see evidence of that in coming sections, rest assured.
Etienne of the West Wind: Oops, errata, I missed that in the final review of the last chapter. No, she will not be out until probably the middle of this section, maybe a little longer. Yes, the Archangel will be here that long. This is only chapter three, and I intend more than a dozen for this section. Those ChickenLip always gave me hell when I was going through the game, though they are not the worst enemies on the southern continent, not by far. As to the wiretap incident, rest assured such perversion is far from completed. And be wary of what questions you ask, they may come true.
The Green Knight 63: You can rest assured that while the Archangel will go places no sane Gundam FanFic author would otherwise dream of taking it, it will not become a 'mary sue super-warship'. In fact, as the story progresses, you will find that the hazard of the ship being shot down will increase almost to the point of a confirmed kill scenario. Just, cut me some slack here and you may find that all is not as easy as it seems.
Alkard: Excellent to see that I am not (completely) crazy after all and someone else in here has played this excellent game. Yes, the crew got hella lucky that those ChickenLip did not fire off a Quake spell, or the ship could have been broken in half, literally :P Also, just hang on about the vignettes, as there will be more of them as the story progresses. And there will be one-shot chapters that really will get some of the brain cells frying come soon enough. In fact, the first and probably most influential of them will be immediately following this arc of the story.
Tremerid: I think you may be off on some of the allocations there. If you are using The Drawing Board, you can find skids of TRO 'mechs here and there all over the internet for it, the place I always advise checking is Pryde Rock Industries. That site has hundreds of downloads. Just enter the name as I spelled it here, no spaces, add www in front of a . and . Com afterwards. You can use that to track the changes of the Omnis as I start playing around with custom configs. You know Murdoch is going to be playing with mods, hehe. And yes, you are right, it has a heat problem, even in the config that Murdoch has set up.
Burnout 360: Sorry, Burnout, the usual mantra: I cannot give away what Gundams will show up where, that is just too much to give away, sorry. Rest assured that Gundams will show up, though, at various times in the story, whether enemy or ally or neutral only time will tell. Thanks for the review, regardless, and the suggestions are already in the possibles list.
Barricade: LOL killer ideas, and thanks for the first review, comrade. The nature of summons in the works I write are presently being filled out in another work I am writing as a side story to another I have already posted here. Summons are very powerful beings, however you look at it, though I think the FF10 summon system would be closest to how I write them...and still a bit short on the dynamic elements. Tonberry, well, hang around for some killer surprises on that front (wink). Expect some serious arse whooping in coming chapters.
Abbey Saunders: Thank you for the first review, Abbey, always an honor and especially from a lady (few, as far as I can tell, actually read my works). Okay, looks like this is a recurring argument, but I can only say that there is more to mechanized warfare than giant robots, and in some works that I have read giant robots are far from the worst enemies one can face. A Hymn Before Battle (author John Ringo, Publisher Baen) is a classic example why taller and beefier is not always better, not by a long shot. Assured, though, there will be more giant robots in the story, but part of the reason why I am writing this is to introduce flexibility: not all battles should revolve around giant robots, sometimes simpler and smaller is far better for a given purpose. Stay tuned, I'll prove this point here in the next few chapters, comrade.
Thank you, one and all, for the continuing inspiration, cadging, and even fumigating. Keep the color commentary coming, people, your dreams are but a bucket of fuel for the ongoing nightmares of the Archangel. Despite the sharp review to Bien (the Green Knight) I do respect all opinions, though when you have major appliance blow up on you, everything else in life gets a sharp reply for several days.
The Gripe Sheet
One error from the last chapter: Flay is not due to get out of the brig soon. It'll be several months still, sorry I missed that in the final read.
Footnotes:
(1): ILS: Instrument Landing System, a navigational landing aid for pilots.
(2): From the Dressed to Kill stand up comedy skit by Eddie Izzard. He rules!
(3): This actually dates back to the Mechwarrior 2 PC games, where missile launchers fired each missile in rapid succession instead of the whole pack at once. In this fashion, it was possible for me to use a LRM-20 to hamburger about a half-dozen enemies in a pair of salvos by spreading the missiles around. Aerodynamically this is more appropriate for a missile weapon, given that firing them all at once causes missile collisions, which puts less missiles on target.
(4): Derivation from the name as well as the old MKR imagery of the attack. It looks like something resembling a tornado with water in it, so...
(5): After Action Report, a general synopsis of the battle or campaign just executed.
(6): Note that this paragraph is the only time I intend on having such a complete dumbarse character or cartoon in any of my works. Period.