(Archangel's Amazing Adventures, Set 4 (!!!), Chapter 1: Welcome to a Different Earth)
"Conn, Sensors, ship is ready for jump. Present stats show jump destination array at 100 percent, charging system 100 percent, ship synchronization at 84 percent, environment synchronization at 96 percent. Equation verified as valid target for jump. We are ready."
"Mu, sound jump," Murrue orders.
"All hands, all hands, prepare for interdimensional jump, repeat, all hands prepare for interdimensional jump. And cross your fingers."
"Oh God, please let this work out," Kuzzey grumbles to nobody in particular.
"Sensors, initiate jump on my mark. Jump, now, now, now." On the third iteration, Sai tripped the Gate Engine.
The world flashed green to everyone on the bridge, as a 600-meter sphere centered around the bridge of the Archangel was replaced by an exact-sized sphere of the area where the Archangel arrived. In this sphere existed a large amount of seawater, a school of fish, and three and a half sharks. The half of the shark outside the sphere collapsed in on the bridge of the ship as the vacuum that came along with the ship sucked in the ocean around it. For a brief moment, Murrue was scared stiff as a wall of green-white foam collapsed in on the ship so fast there was no chance of evading it. The whole ship shook to the impact of sea crashing in on them, and more to the point, the whole primary hull of the ship groaned from the abuse of going from no external pressure to undersea pressures immediately.
"Are we gonna make it?" Sai asks.
"We'll make it," Mu replies immediately.
"It'll be close," Murrue admits as the sound of the automatic pressure venting devices move to quickly compensate for the changing pressures in the ship's atmosphere. The change was minimal, due to the double-hull design of the ship, but any change could be noticed if one paid enough attention. "We'll make it, but that shark is a goner," and she indicates the tail of a shark that had been flattened against the front windshield.
"Along with anything else in the area, if that is any evidence of what happened," Mu replies nonchalantly. "Ship's board shows it is in one piece, Captain."
"Whew," she replies cautiously. "All right, Helm, take us up to Conning Tower breach depth, no higher."
"Conning tower depth, roger that," Newman replies.
"Conn, Sensors, no sonar contacts within 30,000 meters of the ship," Sai says.
"Sensors, aye," Murrue replies. "Anything on ESM?"
"Negative, nothing yet," Sai was still dialing in the controls for the ESM. "Okay, I'm showing a couple naval search radars, nothing major, below detection values at this time. One radar bearing 2-2-5, another bearing 2-5-2."
"Conn, helm, show 100 meters to surface breach."
100 meters was not a long distance to the surface, nor did it take long to get there. Murrue marveled at the changing colors of the seawater on the front windows in the moments before the Conning Tower breached the surface and came into a clear, sunny day. Some things just make this nightmare worth it, Murrue thinks aloud.
"Yeah, it's worth it," Mu replies. "After all, this is world number six for us, and we're still alive and trying to get home. Better than the odds I was thinking we had when we found out what was happening in Cephiro."
"That...was out loud?" Murrue asks. Kuzzey replies silently by nodding. "I gotta get used to this..."
"It could be worse," Sai grumps. It was fairly obvious to anyone on the bridge what he meant.
"Thanks, Sai, see if I send you a Christmas card this year," Miriallia replies sharply.
"Don't dig your rut any deeper, man," Kuzzey tells Sai. "Hey Cap'n, I'm showing signals on short-wave naval radio, in the clear. Give me a moment and I'll see what's going on around us."
"Conn, Sensors, I have clear cuts to naval positioning beacons," Sai says cheerfully immediately thereafter.
"Amazing," Murrue says. "Can you triangulate our location and program it into the inertial nav system?"
"Given what stations I am seeing, our present location is somewhere in the Baltic Sea between Latvia and Sweden. Computer is chewing on it now, Captain." The bridge was silent until he came back with his results. "Bingo, good cut! Ventspils, Latvia, course 1-1-0 at 67 kilometers. INS has a good position fix, we are ready to go."
"Thank you, Petty Officer Argyle. We shall watch and listen for now," Murrue fronts as their present tasking and motivation. "Sai, any...no, we'd know if we were home, neutron jammers."
"Yeah," Mu grumps. "Wonder if we can figure out a way to wipe 'em out, get the nuclear power stations going again," he asks idly of nobody in particular.
"Easier to circumvent it; use another form of power, I'd think," Murrue replies. "Commander, please announce stand-down."
The speakers throughout the ship crackle for a moment. "All hands, go to condition 3, repeat, condition 3. We are now at standard crew rotation. All hands be advised we have not arrived in CE 71 Earth, we are in an unknown alternate dimension at this time. Further information to follow when we have more understanding of our present location." Mu was silent for a moment after turning the 1MC intercom off. "I wonder what went wrong."
"Page Kira, Yzak, Athrun, and Nicol, I think we need to talk," Murrue requests.
"Kira Yamato, Athrun Zala, Yzak Joule, Nicol Amalfi, please report to the bridge."
-x-
"All right, I'm going to preface this by saying I am not being accusatory. I just want to know what went wrong, and, if possible, why we are not home yet," Murrue asks.
Nicol sighs. "Tell her, Yzak."
Yzak nods, a grim expression to his mien. "The logs say we jumped clean. For all intents and purposes, it did exactly what it was designed to do."
"Then what was the malfunction?" Murrue asks.
"I can only think of two possible problems," Kira says. "First, the ship synchronization was not 100 percent, second, the environment synchronization was also not 100 percent. Everything else worked as advertised and was within operating expectations." His report came off almost matter-of-fact, as if he was reporting on the weather outside the hull of the ship, or the conditions inside the ship.
"I went back over my equations after the jump, since Kira could tell we weren't back home but somewhere else, and everything adds up 100 percent. We should be home, unless those synch numbers really do add up to a failed jump," Yzak explains.
"Close, not quite," Athrun says. "Given our numbers were that close, we should be somewhere similar to home, but not it."
"Recommendations?" Murrue figured she would conceal her mounting frustrations on the matter.
"Next time, we may want to jump with synch ratios above 95 percent, though we may want to go as high as possible," Kira opines. "I don't think those numbers are tallied for fun and games, they are there for a purpose."
"All right, we'll do that. Also, if I remember correctly, 'Miko' said she thought there was some kind of presence about the ship that may be interfering. If we are not getting shot at, can you look into what she might have meant?"
"Can do, Cap'n," Athrun replies immediately. "Nicol, Fuu, and I shall begin immediately, unless something else needs to be done?"
"No, not right now," Murrue says. "Please see to it. Thank you, all of you, for the try."
Murrue was looking down at the noteputer she had purchased in the mall on Twycross, not at the persons leaving. Thus, she didn't realize all but one had left on the semi-clear dismissal from her.
"Captain, if I may say something?"
Murrue looks up to see Yzak still standing, though nearer to the door to the conference room than he was prior. "Something the matter, Yzak?"
"Yeah. I think you're taking this a bit rough, judging by the vibe I know I felt, and I think Athrun and Kira could sense it as well. No guess at Nicol, though, but one confirmed and possibly three out of four."
Murrue sighs, since she knew there was no hiding it. Something drastic had changed about the ship, and it was wildly manifest in the increasing psionic talents of the ship's crew and the ability to use more and more powerful spellcraft in the hands of some. It went without saying that a hint of psionic sensitivity was not out of the realm of possibility, so... "You are right, Yzak. I am taking this hard. I have been away from home for approaching four years now, and in several different shooting and spellcraft wars during that time. Honestly, I believe we have broken records all across Existence, at least for the 'ship least likely to have survived anything and is still journeying home' category. And the fact that we're not home after our first and second real chances to get there, it is starting to hurt in more places than one." A brief pause. "How's the rest of the crew taking this setback?"
"Mostly shrugs, a guy or two here and there seemed frustrated enough to kick lockers hard, but that's it. The contingent of our crew from Vector, the ZAFT survivors, they're still too new to this to hold a solid opinion, or they don't care so long as they're anywhere but dead. It's too soon to see how Kira, Nicol, or Athrun feel about it, but they'll probably just shrug it off and keep going."
"And you?" Murrue asks in the silence thereafter.
"I am resigned to it," Yzak replies after a moment's reflection. "I, personally, am convinced we are doomed to forever wander, just because Fate itself is taking his bloody vengeance out on us for killing his colleague Emeraude. If I could find him and wring his neck, I would, the sorry bastard."
"Is it...is it wrong to try and push everyone forward on the completely unlikely chance of ever seeing home again?" Murrue asks, the grating question that had been haunting her since prior to the jump from Vector to the burnt-out remains of their home. It was a doubt, not so much in her cause as in how her crew wanted it, and she thought the crew didn't want it, but she could never tell for sure who wanted to continue or who wanted to stay.
"You are not the only one who wants to go home, Captain. Athrun still pines for his fiancée, I'm not sure what Commander La Flaga wants, Nicol has only once said he wants to stay anywhere but home, half the surviving mechanics definitely want to go home, if for no other reason than to beat the Earth Alliance to death, the list goes on. If people don't want to go, they'll jump ship. Most of us are along for the ride and pick your reason. So no, you are not doing anything unusually cruel or reprehensible, since we're all in it and some of us are even enjoying it."
"Thanks, Yzak. I owe you a drink for that."
"I'll collect after I figure out what went wrong for sure." With a ZAFT-style salute, he was out the door.
-x-x-x-
(Same day, 1145 hours)
Silent, silent.
Kira and Athrun stood on balcony three in the hangar, watching the ministrations of the journeyman mechanics (recruits from Vector, Figaro, and Doma) and the senior mechanics (the leftovers of the EA forces, ZAFT specialists that joined the ship).
"Remember back when we were starting to run out of mechanics?" Athrun asks.
"Yeah, for a while there I was wondering if we would ever get our machines fixed after some of those battles," Kira replies. "Now, we have mechanics, and almost no machines to fix."
The once-empty cubicles told enough of the tale. Kristen Redmond's Mad Dog Omnimech had lost more than could be rightfully replaced, so it had been scrapped down for parts usable on other machines, the rest used as salvage in Vector. The Stormcrow fared worse. One of the rail gun slugs had chopped through the engine and gyro the long way, so it also was scrapped down and recycled, what the Archangel could not use was being used in Vector now. Some relief had come in the way of the Timber Wolf and Warhawk being repairable, and those two machines were being fawned over by the techs, but the glowing achievements of the Archangel's scavenger mentality were in the cubes once occupied by Clan Omnimechs.
"That's the pinnacle of the Earth Alliance mass-pro units?" Athrun asks idly, looking over the Dagger with the Gunbarrel pack.
"Supposedly," Kira replies. "Not too much different from the Strike, really. Uses all the same striker packs and can handle the same weapons without issue, including ZAFT's latest arsenal."
"I do like the design aesthetic and capabilities of the GuAIZ, but your new one takes the cake by a wide margin." More than a few GuAIZ had been picked up from the various debris fields and were now being rebuilt with the intention of giving something to Nicol for a semi-replacement MS until further notice.
"Strike Freedom. I wonder how they get that name," Kira wonders aloud. His noteputer beeps twice, a signal that his machine had something to add to the conversation. "Ah, my system says the name was derived from the original Freedom Gundam, but was given the title Strike Freedom because it was envisioned as a rapid assault, siege, and interceptor Gundam for dealing with masses of equivalent machines."
"Masses of equivalent machines?" Athrun asks in clear shock. "What insane society would have more than a handful of machines like ours?"
"I don't think any of us want to know, or ever meet them," Kira replies deadpan.
Silence again for a few moments. "I hate it when you say that, or something like it, things usually end very badly for us."
"Huh?" Kira asks, not sure what Athrun meant.
"That phrase should be banned from use on the ship, at least, maybe even in all Archangel crew dialog. As well as variants of 'what could possibly go wrong' and similar. Pissing off the Fates seems to be the number one cause of major problems for the ship..."
"Okay, now you're not making sense. You all right, Athrun?"
"No, Kira, I am not all right," Athrun says. "Vector was supposed to be the ticket home, yet we landed in some god-awful grim reality alternate of our home. Try again, we end up wherever-the-fuck we are. I want to go home, but this is getting OLD really FAST."
"Oh boy," Kira bemoans. "This...this—"
"—This is not what any of us asked for," Umi completes Kira's hanging thought. "Not one of us wants to be the modern-day equivalent of Odysseus, not one of us. Yet here we are, going from place to place to place, trying to get home, possibly cursed never to get there. That's how Odysseus was screwed, Poseidon cursed him to never be able to get home."
"I know this!" Athrun was not the first and certainly not the last to have read through Homer's Odyssey. "What would you have me do? Every time we change locations, it only gets worse."
"Nothing, I guess," Umi replies before pushing away from the rail. She was gone moments later, inside the labyrinthine corridors of the still-growing Archangel.
"Did...yeah, I did see that right," Athrun says, referring to what he saw of Umi as she pushed away from the rails. "What...what am I? I don't know what I am any more."
"What you are, what you want to be, what you need to be, three totally different things," Kira answers calmly.
"Then what am I? Some kind of horrid bloodied monster?" Athrun asks at his most cynical.
Kira did not react to the open-ended taunt, instead aiming for the 'sage wisdom' answer he thought was needed. "What you want to be: home, in Lacus's arms, never to leave her again. What you need to be: the ruthless soldier who can drive through all the resistance in multiple worlds, basically what it takes to get home, get home alive, and get there in one piece. What you are: just another guy exceptionally trained in mobile warfare, caught far away from home and probably under the realization who you won't be the same person that left Lacus as you will be the person that arrives to her. Never the same, but never different. Make sense?"
Again, Athrun was silent for a good minute. Never the same, never different, what I am versus what I want to be, and...I can't figure it out, except... After a fashion, Kira's logic made more sense than it initially came across as, and he had an idea where he had gone wrong. "I needed that. Thanks, Kira. I've become so focused on what I want that I have forgotten what I have and what I must do. Just, how do you cope with this?"
"I be what I am, and let what I want to be follow suit. And this," Kira brought forth a camera purchased on Twycross. Before Athrun could even say anything, a picture had been taken. "It'll make a helluva story if I ever have children. All the better that I have photos to back it up."
"And I thought I didn't get it," Athrun replies drolly. "You act almost as if this is a game."
"It's not," Kira replies immediately. "It's real, and that's where your problem is. You focus too much on the reality, not letting yourself just be in the moment. Try it, man, you'll feel more human by the time this is said and done."
"Right," Athrun grumps after Kira had left him to his own devices. It did not take Athrun long to realize what the quandary really was that Kira had presented to him.
-x-x-x-
(Same day as arrival, 1715 hours)
"Where were we?" Murrue asks.
"I believe you were explaining the shootout at the bar with the gang-bangers and an APC," Colonel Chevalier replies as he was shuffling the cards for another hand. Without any clear apropos of a threat to the ship, the Conn had been left to Chandratta while the three officers played a match of poker in the ship's stateroom
"Oh yeah, that was a hairy one for the ground team. It started at the Bar and Grill when Miriallia and Fuu were almost molested by a pervert who had entered the bathroom behind them. Miriallia shot him dead center in the chest, and almost ended up shooting her boyfriend in the process through a heavy door and a stone wall."
"Huh? I don't know many personal weapons with that kind of power," 'Mad Dog' Morgan questions.
"Miriallia's bow can do that, and pretty much all of the Knight's weapons can punch through stone and metal with ease. Anyways, taking out the molester was only the beginning of that fiasco," Murrue pauses to pick up her cards and arrange them logically. A pair of sixes to begin, nothing noteworthy in the rest of her hand. "Anyway, the pervert was DOA, and the police thought that might be a good time to get themselves a high-profile kill. So, once we heard about the incident, we went to rescue our operator from the pain-in-the-neck prosecutor."
"Natarle did that job," Mu says. "We stood outside with the rest of the team involved, and got to listen to her chew the poor prosecutor up one side and down the other. He called off any investigation of our team immediately and released the teams. Bet this," and Mu drops in a Vector gold piece. "And then it gets crazier."
"I think we're already off the deep end, and you think it gets worse?" Morgan asks in clear dismay.
"Oh, no, this is still logical. Wait until we get up to the part with the Espers."
"Oh my," he replies in shock.
"I'm in," and Murrue drops an equivalent Figaro gold piece. "Anyways, after we got out of the police department, we went looking for some eats. Our guide and liaison, Major Adam Steiner, AFFC, led us to a hole-in-the-wall bar-and-grill place. Just so happens it was the same bar-and-grill that our team had almost been molested at."
"That went over well, I can guess," Colonel Chevalier drops in his own denomination of money.
"With the staff? Yes. With the gang the molester came from? Hell no. A half-dozen of them came by to exact their monthly protection money and a little vengeance on the bar. We decided otherwise."
"Highlight of that forty-second fracas was watching Natarle start off by whopping some guy off halfway up his legs. Then as his body collapsed down and forward, she chopped his head and neck off," Mu notes.
"Actually, I would say the highlight was something else," Murrue replies before she set two cards face down on the table. "A pair, please." The two cards come her way. "Mu got shot three times by a small-caliber pistol during the engagement—a .25 automatic or something similar, not a heavy combat round. Knee, waist, shoulder, bloody as hell but not all that damaging. Part of the same incident, I took out the guy that shot him and his girlfriend. The girl was getting ready to shoot me with a forty-caliber, so by shooting the guy and the rounds traveling through him and into her, I stopped them both. That was messy."
"Oh man, the police probably loved that," Morgan says. "I'm gonna stay," he says of his hand.
"The inspector for that incident had some choice words for us, and Major Steiner thought we should be commended, but that wasn't the worst of it by far," Murrue decides that the hand she was holding would be enough for this match, and signaled she would stay as well.
"It gets worse? How? They're gang-bangers, nothing major, right?"
"Gang-bangers financed and backed by the nastiest mob boss on Twycross. Less than pleasant. Anyways, we had two trucks and an APC attack the Archangel in the spaceport. That assault lasted long enough for us to 'calibrate' the point defense grid on their vehicles."
"Messy," both Mu and Morgan note.
"And then there was the infamous assault on the bar itself, another APC this time around with twin machine guns and nobody who could aim them." She sets her hand down. "Two pair, kings and tens."
"Damn," Mu mutters.
"Two pair, queens and sevens." Morgan drops his cards down, resigned to the defeat.
Murrue raked in her small pile of winnings silently. "Anyways, an APC and about a dozen and change assault the bar and grill where all this crap is going down. The bar had hired us out as security detail, though, so they met with some unexpected resistance when they attacked. Several people with nasty sub-machine guns are an unpleasant wall of fire to walk into, and those gangers found it out the hard way. The downside was the APC gunner was able to put a lot of hurting down on the bar and the people in it."
"What was he using? Twin fifties?" By which he meant twin 12.7x99 machine guns, a fearsome sniper and heavy machine gun round that was over four centuries old by the times of CE 71 and still going strong.
"Nope, fifteen millimeters. Still, the only thing he managed to do was kick up a lot of spall and practically annihilate the restaurant before he ran out of ammo. The dismounted gang-bangers did better, a couple of wounds on the entry team and absorbed a helluva lot of ammo." A brief pause as the cards for the next hand came her way. "Just when everyone was down to their last magazine or empty, the remaining gang-bangers charged the place, stopped dead in the middle of the road, due to being caught in the open under gunfire, and then got strafed by the Blitz and its 75mm CIWS."
"Yzak and Athrun both reported watching body parts doing lazy circles in the sky before coming back down with a messy result," Mu adds for an extra bit of shock factor.
"Messy? I'd call that a massacre," Morgan comments with a grimace to the effect. "The APC?"
"Oh, it tried driving off, but it didn't get too far," Murrue says. "Nicol snared it with the rocket anchor on the Blitz, hauled back, and flung it sling-style about twelve blocks down the road. When it hit, there wasn't much left of it."
"The power of a Gundam, absolutely amazing," Colonel Chevalier says. "I'm in." He dropped two of the Doma gold pieces into the pot area.
"Oh, but that's not all," Mu says as he drops an equivalent in. "Fast forward a couple weeks, after we had beaten the piss out of the Jade Falcons. We were looking forward to getting off-planet and to the next theater of battle, when we decided the mob boss needed to be flattened and run through the courts. So, the TPD and the Archangel Team got together, worked out a plan, and executed it. We thought we had everything under control until the mob boss showed up to the battle with a company of 'mechs and two companies of tanks."
"No shit? An armored battalion?"
"Oh yeah," Murrue replies. "And they did quite a bit of damage to us. Only problem is, they underestimated us, believing that everyone else was overestimating how good we were for kicking the Clanners from one side of creation to the next. Oops." Murrue dropped three cards on the table. "Need some replacements, please," to which she was given her due cards.
"How bad?"
"Duel got the mad-end. Blitz lost a leg and took a couple peripheral hits. Rayearth had his knee broken. The ship took some minor damage from triple-A threats, and the Buster spent a week in overhaul. On the other hand, twelve enemy 'mechs destroyed, over fifteen tanks destroyed, and seven vehicles captured kinda skewed the odds in our favor. We own Tony P's mansion and lease the adjacent hangars to the Twycross militia and any other military units needing repairs or parking. All in all, we won and came off like bandits."
"Here," and Mu drops two gold pieces in the pile. "Before we left, we took the time to raid the stores again, haul in some more salvage for the ship and units, and party one hard night before we left."
"And forever will the Archangel Team be synonymous with, oh, how did that one guy say it?" Murrue asks Mu.
"I believe he said 'epic ass beatings and name-takings'."
"Which fits very well on the field of battle, but not so well at the table of cards;" the hand Morgan dropped was a full house of three queens and two nines.
"I'd say my luck is a bit uneven today," Mu replied artfully. "At least she's doing a bit better." The jerk of his thumb at Murrue was pro forma in this case, but done regardless.
"Not by much. How does an Eurasian tank commander turned MS ace get so good at cards?"
"Trade secret," Morgan Chevalier replies with a bit of a Cheshire grin to effect. They knew they weren't going to get any more info out of the guy on that note, so they resigned themselves to hearing a tale from him as to what happened in the EA after they disappeared. "Well, there I was in Victoria..." his tale began, and would last eight more hands, proving him as much of a storyteller as a cardsharp.
-x-x-x-
(Next day, 0535 hours Lima (local) time)
"Conn, sensors, I show no contacts bearing 2-0-5," Kira said. He had relieved Sai to go to sleep about four hours prior, as he was the pilot least in need of sleep himself and qualified to operate the ship's sensors and EWO (1) panel. He was also doubling as the maintenance controller and MS operator, allowing Miriallia to sleep as well.
"Sesnors, Conn, aye," Mu replies. Murrue was still asleep and he intended on letting her remain asleep for now. "Helm, bring her about to 2-1-0 real easy, recalculate to avoid shipping. If necessary, plan for going underwater to the conning tower or complete submerge."
"2-1-0, aye Commander," Newman replies. "Shipping sparse in new traverse area, we may have to go under once and that is it."
"Conn, aye," Mu replies.
The bridge was silent for several minutes before anything else happened. "Conn, sensors, I'm getting something to port," Kira says. "Transport planes, minimum gross mass estimate 2-5-0 tons, turbofan or turboprop type. Intercept course our ship, ETA line of sight visual in 1-0 minutes."
"Helm, prepare to submerge the ship. Chief of the watch, signal dive," Mu orders calmly. This was not the first time they had gone under to avoid planes in the past two hours, and it was grossly simple to do for the Archangel.
"All hands, prepare for dive at this time," Chandratta orders over the 1MC so everyone on the ship knew what was happening.
"Conn, Helm, descent rate one meter per five seconds, two minutes to splash-down."
"Conn, sensors, I've lost track on the transports; they dropped altitude below the radar horizon," Kira sounded a bit worried about it.
"I don't like this. Newman, take us down fast, level out and ease into the waves. I think we're about to get hammered."
"Roger that, fifteen seconds to water entry," Newman says as he noses the ship down toward the waves faster while hauling back on the levitator. He leveled out at the necessary time then gave the ship a bit of a pitch up to land properly. The whole ship shuddered as it glanced across the waves before it settled down into the water and began slowly sinking, the mass of the ship greater than its volume in terms of buoyancy. "Conn, Helm, depth to keel (2) is 2-0 meters and increasing."
"Huh?" Kira switches modes on the sensors for a moment after an alert came up on the sonar cross-warning system. "Shit! Conn, sensors, sonar contact close aboard! Large submarine, twin-screw (3) contact estimate three thousand meters to starboard! Not classified!"
"What?" Mu half-shouts. "Oh man, we've been trapped from two directions! Damn it!"
"Warning!" Kira shouts immediately thereafter. "Launch transients, high speed screws! Four torpedoes in the water to starboard!"
"Battle stations," Mu simply orders.
The sound of the battle klaxon reverberates throughout the ship, waking more than half the crew from some much-needed rest. "General quarters, general quarters, all hands to your battle stations on the double! Ship is under fire!"
"Chandratta, unlock and ready all weapons systems but do not deploy. Kira, launch noisemaker countermeasures for anti-sub warfare," Mu instructs rapidly. With the shift from evasion to combat tactics, the procedure from here became infinitely clear to the Commander: send them all to whatever hell they believed in. Since they would shoot first before asking questions he would return the favor, and he had every intention of adequately protecting the crew and Captain in that respect.
"Status report!" Murrue shouts as she enters the bridge.
"Captain!" Mu replies, clearly relieved she had arrived. "Unidentified transport craft closing from port, ETA seven minutes, one submarine to starboard has fired torpedoes at us when we tried going under. Countermeasures are in the water, weapons are arming now."
"I have the Conn," Murrue says. "Thanks, Mu. Get to the Skygrasper and get ready to sortie. Kira, you as well."
"Yes, ma'am," Kira replies as he jumps out of the sensor seat to turn it over to Sai, who had come with Miriallia and Kuzzey.
"Conn, sensors, I have ships, helicopters dead ahead, definite military tracking radar sets course 2-0-0 to 2-2-0. I have active sonar course 2-9-0, and aircraft radar sets course 0-8-5 and course 2-7-0 to 3-0-0 closing rapidly. We're boxed in on three sides, Captain!" Sai rattles off, showing the gap in training and skill between himself and Kira rather adroitly: Kira could blow all the crap in the world up, but Sai could use a small whiff of sensor data to type an enemy and divine force correlations and positions far faster than said pilot.
Murrue settled into her seat and fastened her seat belt. "Status of the weapons grid?"
"All weapons spun up, awaiting orders on munitions, Captain," Chandra replies.
"Load missile tubes 25 to 32 with anti-shipping torpedoes, tubes 1 to 8 with Corinthos missiles, and tubes 9 to 24 with Sledgehammers. CIWS to special auto. Deploy Gottfrieds, Valiants, all point defense weapons. We wait until we are fired upon, then we let them have it. Sensors, torpedo range?"
"Torpedoes have reached countermeasures!" Sai says. "Torpedoes have lost contact with our stern...torpedoes reacquired! Estimate thirty seconds until they fly up our tail-pipes, Captain!"
"Understood," Murrue replies. "Rear laser assemblies, can you track and eliminate those torpedoes?"
"Will do, Captain." Chandratta immediately began tapping the commands in. "Solid track, firing now." The only sound that traveled far enough forward to be heard by the bridge was the sound of the paired Clan ER Particle Cannons firing, though the weapons status board showed the four Medium Pulse Lasers and singular Large Pulse Laser had fired as well. The medium and large lasers were recharging with six and eight seconds respectively to fire readiness, the PPCs with nine seconds. The shockwave of two of the torpedoes cooking off did not shake the ship, but the sound of the destruction echoed throughout the hull without a person in the crew mistaking what they heard.
"Scratch two! Going for two more!"
"Ten seconds to impact!"
The laser turrets dump again, though this time around only one of the thunderous explosions buffeted the ship. "Got another! Last one!" The sound of the particle cannons unleashing was not followed by the sound of the fourth torpedo detonating.
"Imminent hit!" Sai shouts with a second to spare. The ship jarred significantly from the hit, but not to the extent the Clan Warships had beat on the ship with their naval autocannons years ago.
"Damage report!"
"Surface damage only, Captain!" Miriallia replies immediately. "No systems damage at this time!"
"Ready status on Mobile suits, please," Murrue requests a bit calmer this time around.
"All Rune Gods, all MS ready. Skygrasper is preflighting with Launcher pack at this time. Dagger is armed with Gunbarrel pack. Ready to go at this time."
"Weps, target enemy submarine with starboard lateral sonar dome. Prepare firing solution for torpedoes. Sensors—"
"Captain, we've got transports port and starboard, dropping out forty-ton objects that show to be aerial Mobile Suits, not classified, and I have contacts approaching fast from the rear, also possibly transports. Enemy submarine has deployed underwater MS, count two smaller contacts broke off from the main target," Sai says.
Murrue sighs. "Boxed in on all sides, leaving us to sink down and scoot or go ballistic and clear the atmosphere," Murrue opines. "Or we can fight our way out of this. Count on enemy MS?"
"Two companies to port, one company to starboard, and at least two companies taking off from the shipping dead ahead, Captain. Numerous smaller assets detected intermittently. Unknown if the enemies to our rear are large combat units or transports, or both."
"Control, Aegis, Strike Freedom to catapults, Buster and Gunbarrel Dagger on the foredeck and aft-deck respectively, stage Windam and Rayearth for launch forward, Celeste to rear deck for unassisted launch if necessary." Miriallia began moving units on the simulated 'Ouija board' that gave orders to each pilot where to go and prevented collisions inside the hangar deck or on the way out to the reardeck. "ECM on standby at full power; prepare to blast them when the shooting begins, Sai. Stand by Chaff, flares, smoke. Weapons, stand by to fire on my mark only, except for CIWS on special auto."
"Ready and waiting, Captain."
"Conn, sensors, cruise missiles launched from enemy shipping, estimate time until impact, thirty seconds!"
"Helm, put us down below the waves, spoof those missiles. As soon as they pass overhead, bring the ship back up to fifty meters depth to keel." As the ship begins sinking again, Murrue muttered, "And now it gets bloody."
"Not by our choice, Captain," Newman replies immediately. "They shot first."
"So did Han Solo," Kuzzey retorts crassly.
"What the hell does that mean?" Newman asks as the bridge of the ship ducks below the waves.
"Later, both of you," Murrue replies.
"Submarine still closing, more torpedoes in the water! The enemy MS are firing torpedoes!"
"Take the hits, those missiles are going to hurt a lot worse," Murrue orders. "Deploy Selesce to counter the enemy underwater MS."
"Selesce, Control, launch from the rear hangar platform and engage the enemy underwater MS."
"Roger that, Miri," Umi replies immediately. "Why are they shooting at us? We have done nothing to them!"
"Beats me, girl," Miriallia replies offhand.
-x-
One of the few modifications the ship had received when parked in Vector was an elevator in the back of the hangar deck that allowed a MS or Battlemech to enter and exit the hangar from the rear deck of the ship, behind the conning tower and between the tail fins of the ship. It was a strange feeling to Umi to see the water rush into the locks as the outside doors opened, though it only lasted a few moments before the Rune God of Water was immersed in the seas of a new and very hostile world.
"Selesce, deploying now!" the Rune God jumped off the rear deck of the ship, gliding through the waters effortlessly toward the oncoming pair of enemy machines. "Do you know why they shot first?" Umi asks her Rune God.
They believe the ship is some sort of rebel vessel, and believe it to be fair game for their forces to sink into the abyss below us, Selesce replies calmly.
"Can we win?"
I do not have the measure of thine foes, Magic Knight. Best we take it now.
The enemy machines knew there was a new threat in the water, though they were more concerned about the volley of eight torpedoes launched from the Archangel that were otherwise not targeting the small enemy units but their much-larger submarine mothership. Umi consciously tuned out the big target, instead focusing on the small ones that were harassing the Archangel from the starboard quarter. After a moment's contemplation, she singled out the farther of the two for her ministrations, figuring that killing it off first would leave her a shorter distance to return to the ship or close on the enemy submarine, which was now starting to drift more aft than starboard of the ship.
"C'mon, you freaking pirates! I won't let you shoot at my ship!" The sword deployed, she charged down the farther of the two, dodging under a pair of poorly-aimed torpedoes from his partner as she continued her set-blade charge on the enemy. He was wise to her attempt and tried dodging, but the clumsy Mobile Suit could not match the grace or maneuver of Selesce in his element. The screech of metal ripped through the seas when her sword punched into the body of the enemy unit and straight through the other side. A horrendous groan of armor composite ensued as she drew her sword out of the deceased sideways, enlarging the wound extremely and venting the innards of the machine to the seas it was meant to protect from.
"Why would they paint their machines red when they are under the waves? They are easier to spot and target visually in this environ," Umi asks nobody in particular, though the question fell back on Selesce.
Paint would help against the corrosion of the seas, though even that tenuous. Why the coloring, I do not know, unless line-of-sight battle is common under the waves in these lands. Be wary, the other enemy machine approaches from dead to port.
The Umi of years past would not have known what Selesce was referring to; the Umi of today was versed excellently in both what the Rune God meant and how to deal with it. One enemy torpedo went wide, the other actually targeted the Rune God properly, though it did not hit as Umi speared it with her sword and rendered it unable to move or contact to detonate. The Rune God looked to the enemy machine, followed almost immediately by the sound of detonating torpedoes against the hull of the enemy submarine, and there was hesitation in the movements of the enemy.
Umi could tell the enemy knew he wasn't going to walk away from this one. It wasn't comforting, per se, but it was an improvement over her feeling that way.
-x-
"Launch Strike Freedom, launch Aegis," Murrue orders just after the water level cleared the launch catapults. "Point defense grid, open fire on anything that approaches us too closely."
"Roger that," Chandratta switches over from manual weapons control to target designation control, where the ship's powerful onboard computers would determine what weapon to use on the targets Chandratta sentenced to death. Yzak and Athrun had written the revised targeting system after the assault on Vector, then had Kira debug it, so the Archangel would be less likely to be overwhelmed by sheer numbers while Chandratta issued fire orders to the weapons.
"Kira Yamato, Strike Freedom, launching!"
"Athrun Zala, Aegis, launching!"
"Windam, Rayearth moving up to the catapults now. Buster is up on the foredeck, Duel and Gunbarrel Dagger are on the rear," Miriallia informs the Captain.
"Conn, Sensors, enemy tracking radar from the rear! Those fast craft are combatant ships!"
"Chandratta, open fire," Murrue orders simply. She was not going to give them the pleasure of taking the first shot when she was surrounded on all four sides, and, technically, they had already fired on her multiple times.
"Roger that," the weapons officer says grimly.
The enemy aerial MS were still slightly out of range to engage, meaning the only fire from the Archangel was capital-grade weapons aimed at the transports and shipping dead ahead. The Gottfrieds were the first to fire at the enemy ships, one pair missing, the other pair striking an escort destroyer and slicing through the hull almost without resistance. The ship cooked off from a combination of vaporized petrol bunker and a 5" gun magazine blowing out. The other fire from the ship was the pair of Valiants targeted at enemy transport planes, both of which hit the craft unable to maneuver with any kind of aplomb. One lost a pair of engines and started descending rapidly while the other took the hit dead on and broke up in mid-air, headed to the ground in pieces.
"We're on the scoreboard now," Sai says, "and they are pissed off about it, Captain. Every sensor system in the field just lit off and is dwelling on us!"
"Jam 'em solid, Sensors. Weps, fire all missiles and reload with anti-air warheads."
The ship shuddered almost violently as the catapults ejected Rayearth and Windam into the winds, the two Magic Knights and their Rune Gods ready and willing to defend the ship against the oncoming unidentified and clearly hostile enemies. With two more in the air, and three on the decks, things were already heating up and the enemy knew it clearly, given their maneuvering in an attempt to get good positions against the Rune Gods just launched.
"Roger that, Captain," Chandratta answers to Captain Ramius's orders, and with a few clicks of the light pen against the screen the missiles had their targets and were on the way, reloading with straight anti-air munitions to sweep the skies clear of enemy threats.
"Captain, enemy fire from the rear! Dagger reports those transports are dropping out more aerial MS while firing on us with beam cannons!"
"Point grid is opening up now, Captain," Chandratta cautions before the ship is rocked by several impacts of beam cannon. "Were those MS-scaled weapons, or ship scale?"
"Apparently, not ship weapons; they didn't cause any notable damage to our stern," Miriallia replies.
"Enough midget weapons will take the ship down with enough time," Murrue replies.
"Enemy missiles from the aerial units! Holy shit, over 200 missiles in the air!" Sai says.
"Too late to go under," Murrue replies. "Take her up fast, Newman!"
Newman fired the dorsal thrusters and maxed out the levitator output, while firing the main engines hard to try and spoof the missiles if they were unguided. The CIWS went to work valiantly, yet the storm of ordinance was more than a mere 24 CIWS guns could handle and more than half the missiles blitzed through the hail of gunfire onward toward the ship. The combination of dodging and super-smart CIWS grid was enough to prevent most of the missiles hitting, with a mere 47 striking the hull across both sides of the ship and the tail binders.
More than one of the enemy was given pause, seeing the graceful form of the Archangel now completely above the waves and spitting furious weapons fire in every direction.
-x-
"What the hell are these things? Bricks with bigass engines? A GINN can outmaneuver these things!" Athrun half-shouts as the Skygrasper clears under his flight level, having been freshly launched from the Archangel. With the Launcher Strike pack equipped, there was little doubt that Mu was intent on going ship-hunting.
"Doesn't matter, Athrun, they puttin' a hurtin' on the ship, we gotta scratch 'em!"
Kira had some minor time to try out the Strike Freedom MP in combat nearby the survivor's transport colony, but now was the first time he had to fight in atmosphere and the first real numerically superior foe he had to face off against. He considered it trial by fire for both himself and the machine, though the semi-AI in the suit listed the threat to both his suit and the whole unit as only 'moderate, leaning light'.
Thankfully, his Gundam was designed expressly for that purpose. He let two pass by unharassed, as he believed them fated to a death by the Archangel's numerous close-quarters weapons, and focused on two that looked to strike and fade before the ship could get them. The nearer of the two he gave a ten-meter lead and dropped a pair of rail gun slugs into, one shearing the legs off the bottom of the machine, the other penetrating the port-side upper engine assembly and blowing through to the other engine. Both engines began flaming almost immediately and the craft started sinking down toward the waves. Without main engine power to sustain flight, it was dead. The other craft was on the receiving end of four beam rifle shots—two to the body of the craft, one to the port-side engine, and one to the hips—causing it to begin spiraling toward the ground of a small island below the battle ground.
"Damn good shooting, Kira! Lot more to go, though, keep the pressure on!"
"Skygrasper, redirect and prioritize enemy shipping assets at this time. Aegis, Strike Freedom, you have the left flank guard and attack positions, Rayearth and Windam on the right flank," Miriallia orders.
"Roger that, command," Athrun says as the Aegis transforms into the Mobile Armor cruising mode that allowed it to outpace the Skygrasper in level flight.
"Wait, my suit has a type match on the enemy!" Kira half-shouts. "OZ-07AMS Aries, six-engine ground and air mobile suit. Very light armor, high speed, moderate mobility, light armaments consisting of 50mm machine cannons and medium-range guided or unguided missiles. Principle manufacturer and user is the Organization of Zodiac."
"How the hell?" Athrun asks. "Never mind, later." Aegis transforms from cruising to attack MA, lines up on one of the said units, and fires a single shot of Scylla into it at close range. The beam must have transited the enemy machine's reactor, for Athrun found himself cruising through the rapidly-cooked-off machine and out the other side. "Holy crap, lightly armored is right!" he shouts before reorienting on another enemy machine and transforming Aegis out of Mobile Armor mode and to the much-dreaded Gundam that destroyed the Earth Alliance naval forces categorically in years past.
"No way!" Kira shouts angrily, firing both beam rifles and the chest-mounted Callidus beam cannon at one of the midnight-blue painted high speed transports as it passed under the battle area. One beam rifle missed, the Callidus and other beam rifle struck off-center and behind the two beam weapon turrets. The craft listed to starboard, lost altitude, and struck the surface of the Baltic Sea, skipping once, twice, then digging in and pinwheeling across the waves until it broke up into seven odd-sized chunks.
"Got your six!" Tolle says as a yellow beam lances out and 'touches' an Aries that was trying to flank the Strike Freedom.
"Thanks, Tolle," Kira used his left arm beam shield to stop a burst of machine gun slugs headed at him, then slammed the enemy machine twice in the rear as it blew by with his right hand beam rifle. Having lost an engine and probably some critical systems, the pilot wisely decided to duck down below the engagement envelope and try to nurse his Aries to dry land.
Athrun took advantage of a small formation of enemy machines and his superior maneuvering capabilities, bisecting their turning radius even as they fired on him with 50mm machine cannon before closing in on them from the inside of their turn with beam sabers deployed. The nearer of the trio lost both engines and the head of the unit as he cleared by, the middle machine was speared in the side and possibly through the cockpit as the Aegis crashed into its side, and for the third Athrun used the 75mm CIWS to tear off its right-side canard and put several large and smoking holes in the two main engine units on that side of the machine. All inside of three seconds.
Kira noticed something he thought he would never have to see in his lifetime: an attempted repeat of the World Trade Center ramming incident that he had researched when he was a tech college student, only this plane was aimed at the Aegis, not a building. "Go to hell, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred bucks!" Kira shouts in clear fury at seeing a plane try to ram something in his purview. With his beam rifles combined, Kira took one heavy shot through the plane at an angle from low on the starboard side through to high on the port side, and apparently he did it just right. Immediately, the plane's port-side engines began flaming wildly and the craft began losing altitude, followed by the left wing starting to fold in over top of the rest of the craft. Within moments the wing sheared from the rest of the body and the plane began spiraling in toward the seas below.
"Holy shit, Strike, who pissed in your Wheaties today?" Yzak asks in clear shock at hearing Kira say anything remotely like that.
"I hate it when people attack us for no damned reason whatsoever!" Kira shouts in response, both being accurate and covering for his real reasons.
-x-
"Bow down before the one you serve; you're going to get what you deserve!" Tolle sings in a horridly off-key fashion along with the music of Nine Inch Nails playing at full blast in his cockpit.
"Tolle, Yzak, Morgan, we've got a lance of 'em coming in on the starboard, snaked low past Hikaru. Intercept priority!"
"YOU SHALL NOT PASS!" Tolle shouts as he sights up the lead enemy machine and fires a single shot of long-range beam rifle at the target. It struck off-center, blowing the port-side canard off the machine and causing it to spiral into the waves and begin flipping grotesquely as it hit the surface and skidded.
"Command, no shot, repeat, no shot," Morgan shouts. "It's point def only right now!"
"Roger that, no weapons available at this time," Chandratta replies. "Skygrasper, Archangel Weps, clear altitude, I'm going to fire Gottfrieds again," he appends.
"Come and get it, you wussies!" Tolle shouts, and just like his last taunt it went out on every frequency known, including civilian radios on the nearby shores and islands. With his weapon broke down into component arms, he fired two rounds of beam cannon into the rearward enemy and one tap of gun launcher into the other; the gun launcher severely damaged four of the engines on the enemy craft as well as stripped off a lot of armor, but the beam cannon struck dead center and killed the pilot, evidencing the loss of control of the aircraft. "Oh, shit!"
The Aries MS slammed into the starboard side of the ship just below the Valiant, the inertia of the impact carrying it up through the Valiant assembly and roughly up and forward to slam into the side of the conning tower below the bridge. The wild impact sprawled Duel and Dagger out on the ground, but more notably managed to dislodge the Buster to skid down the beveled side of the foredeck. "Tolle!"
"Oh man, I'm goin' down! Gravity sucks!" He ripped out a rather guttural screech as the Buster plummeted to the waves without him being able to do a nything about it.
"Command, Strike Freedom, Buster is down, he skidded off the side of the foredeck and is below water!"
"Duel reporting, no eyes on the Buster, repeat, no visual on the Buster!"
"I've got 'em!" Moments later, Selesce erupted from the dark blue seas shoulder-supporting the Buster, with both wing and jump jets carrying both up to the ship. "Man, these Gundams aren't light!"
"Thanks, Umi, I would've sunk like a rock without the assist," Tolle says meekly.
"Save the theatrics for after we kick their butts," Umi tells him as the two land on the foredeck. "Command, I got the last of their underwater units, there was another wave of them behind that submarine. Where do you want me?"
"Forward, join Commander La Flaga in attacking those ships," Miriallia orders.
A burst of machine cannon fire walks across the foredeck between the Buster and Selesce, though before Umi could even draw her sword the offending party had been swatted out of the sky by three salvos of LRM 20 from the starboard-fore missile batteries.
"Ensign Koenig, Captain Ramius, are you all right?" Murrue asks after Selesce clears the foredeck.
"I'll be all right, Captain, I busted my head on the way down but nothing major. Resuming guard without the cheesy movie one-liners."
-x-
"Command, Skygrasper, enemy air forces remaining are bugging out, though the ships are making steam toward the ship at full power. Please advise," Commander La Flaga requests.
"All forces, enemy air compliment is retreating. Focus on remaining enemy combatants in the water," Captain Ramius orders.
"Roger that," Kira replies.
For the ships, the few anti-air missile launchers and AAA guns were not enough to slow the Rune Gods and Mobile Suits coming in at them, much less stop them in any meaningful way. Kira was the first in on the enemy shipping with both beam rifles and rail guns blazing, focused on the leading edge of the escort ships. One he rendered disabled by blowing the bridge in, another began flaming as a beam transited a fuel bunker on its way through the ship, and the middle of the escorts he landed on was also rendered disabled as he put the fist of the Strike Freedom through the bridge without reserve.
Athrun moved left of the center, toward more of the escorts, and with more purpose to his shots than Kira. The Scylla beam cannon tore through a destroyer at an angle and immediately caused it to catch on fire as well as begin taking on water. The cruiser he landed on became an excellent platform to fire on the main carrier of the fleet after he kicked the 5" gun turret off the front of the ship and slammed the end of his shield through the bridge to disorient the rest of the ship.
Rayearth collapsed in on the right flank of the enemy force, the massive sword of the Rune God extremely frightening to the crews of the ships it came after. For good purpose were those crewmen who saw it scared, as Rayearth landed on the first of three Frigates it stomped flat the single-barrel 6" naval gun turret, then brought around the sword through the ship's conning tower and completely severed it from the rest of the ship. To add insult to injury, Rayearth kicked the severed conning tower segment toward the stern of the ship, where it came to rest on the helicopter deck. A quick jump to the nearest of the destroyers, Rayearth used his inertia to drive the sword down through the deck of the ship and clear through the keel, then sliced violently outward to render the stroke fatal to the ship.
Windam also struck in on the right flank, but with only one ship to clear (a large missile cruiser), Fuu's ministrations were direct and to the point. She overflew the ship with her sword just barely over the waves, set forward and low, so that the sword impaled the ship just above the water line, and her inertia versus the ship's material resistance did the dirty work for her. As the sword penetrated, it did so at a slower rate than Windam was moving, and the variance in inertia caused the sword to rotate to vertical and sink lower into the bowels of the cruiser. It did eventually clear out the other side of the ship, but in so doing it had rotated clear around and caused massive trauma to the heaviest non-battleship in the Oz fleet.
Bereft of escorts to shoot him down, Mu made the final stroke of the battle against the carrier. The Agni hyper-impulse cannon spat fury at the carrier that had entrapped them without so much as an order to surrender, and in one lucky shot, ended the battle. The beam blew through a land-based MS standing on the deck, through the deck itself, and down into the innards of the ship where it penetrated the ship's main engines. The fusion reactor's main containment spire was completely annihilated by the beam's transit in less than a hundredth of a second, venting the plasma contained within the reactor into the rest of the ship and outward from there. The naval reactor gave off a hellish fireball that consumed most of the midsection of the ship and eliminated the crew compliment to a man. The forward and rear of the ship began taking on water immediately, and within seconds were below the waves with only a froth of bubbles to mark the grave of the foolhardy fleet Admiral and his subordinates.
"Skygrasper reports no surviving enemy forces in the area; this one appears done."
"All forces return to ship for refit and repair, this battle is over," Murrue confirms.
Author's Chapter Afterword:
Silent, silent, no longer. I now have a clear idea on what I want to do with this fic, and shall resume the frequent assbeatings applied to all sides, and even throw in a trademark 'helluva big shocker event' or two in the chapters of this section. I think it is due for not getting on this much sooner.
I would say most of my inspiration for this chapter and the next came in a burst of inspiration generated by some pure, 100 percent grade 'A' angst. Now, let me preface this by saying that I am no wuss, but losing the job you have been working at for over 3 years, you enjoy working at immensely, you planned on working for at least 30 years (maybe longer), and losing it to a foreign contract's complete incompetence (that effectively dismantled the company you work for) is not a pleasant feeling at all. That being said, I have plenty of these strange things called 'feelings' to vent. You can probably guess where this is going to go for the Archangel, given that set of details. All things considered, though, I have a lot of good opportunities to pick up work within 2 hours drive from where I live, so it is not all that bad.
All angst aside, I hope most of you are versed in pretty much where we are at this time, because the crap has well and truly hit the fan for the Archangel, and next chapter is only going to get far worse for the team, up to and including the introduction of some very badass soldiers that may be more than the venerable Archangel Team can handle. This was just an opening blow by the Oz teams, they thought it was a poorly-defended ship making its way to certain parties and would be a fairly easy kill for an otherwise overkill force structure. They will not make the same mistake twice. Expect to see heavier forces and more coordinated assault next time, and then a glimmer of hope...crushed.
As of this update, chapter 30, I now have 25,100 hits on the story, 234 reviews (7.2 reviews per chapter on average), with this story featured in 8 C2 archives, 52 persons calling it a favorite and 33 people with specific alerts to this work. And this is less than a third through the story, people :) That is absolutely amazing, I never thought an epic like this would take off in such a hearty fashion. Much thank you all to the reads and reviews, the favs and the archives, this is plenty motivation to keep the twisted tale going !!!
And that is all I have to say of this chapter. NEXT UP: The Baltic is normally a very cold or frozen sea scape. Not this week, people, it will get very hot and bothered in very short order, as the ship is attacked again in rapid succession by more of these unidentified and less-than-talkative forces.
Review Replies: FIFTEEN REVIEWS! HOLY CRAP! My best chapter yet on fan feedback, much thanks to you all!
Nim Maj: I have been toying with the idea of a ship-based AI, and the thought of a female-influenced Inouva would be practically hilarious and very practical. Of course, though, the dice must speak favorably on this one before it becomes reality, so...
Deathzealot: I hope this answers where they are now, and your opine on the 'team' part of the Archangel Team is heard and may be implemented, should the dice say so.
Strata-Assassin: The Crusaders will get plenty of exercise in some of my other stories, if you care to read of them.
Morgan Chevalier is an Astray character, some people don't consider Astray to be canon, but I do.
Here, the crew is hardened, having seen the worst of three alternate dimensions and taking part in those wars. As this chapter demonstrates, that here is the grim reality, not the wide-eyed idealism that marks SEED. The Archangel Team know that reality is a stone-cold bitch and kills without remorse he who ignores that fact or tries to sugar-coat it. And this is only the beginning, I have a whole slough of 'tough shit' for them to wade through.
Yzak has his moments, but yeah, I think he has mellowed out quite a bit with age. Strange how a few years can do that to someone, no?
Well, the Strike Freedom technicality is a long way from being explained, but again it loops back in on the history of the Crusaders. It may also be worth more trouble than salvation, given the propensity of the dice to roll wicked.
I think Heine sits this one out for a story, but he will get his just props in the Jokers Wild timeline.
God, Gods and Existence are very hard ones. God is almost always capitalized, except when referring to the concept of a god and not one actual God. Same thing with Gods, though in this case you are referring not to one God but to a group of beings, as in 'All the Gods of Asgard'. Under the proper group name clause, Gods would be capitalized in that case, and that is how most Magi speak of Gods (usually with a negative or insulting connotation). Existence falls under the location clause: existence can be Existence as referring to a specific place (all of Existence) in lieu of considering existence an abstract concept. Example: "I exist (at least I hope I exist), but I live as one small grain of dust in Existence itself." I hope that clears it up somewhat.
Knives91: Your expo on the nature of humanity is short, to the point and quite brutal. I like it. Thanks :0
one-village-idiot: Of course, pineapples will get a literary (and imaginative) workout in the next chapter of Jokers Wild, since you mentioned them and it gave me a pretty good idea for a vitriolic turn of phrase...
As to the Gundams, you will get to see them thoroughly, but under the guise of a different story. Trust me on this if none else, there is clear reason they exist and exist in the hands of the Crusaders. As to your guessing of the Crusaders and Darkness, close on both counts but not quite on either.
That experience would be mind-blowing, though cruel to both Kira and the rest of the crew for obvious reasons. As for rest, it may be a while, but definitely not that long. That would be brutally inhumane.
I think Nim Maj threw an excellent thought for the AI and avatar, I could see a fem Inouva and Cortana having it out in cyberspace after the first real argument...
Answer to question: If neither the Spartan nor the Marine were armored, the Spartan would win far more often than lose. In armor, the Spartan armor and trooper is good but is no match for either the defensive or offensive capabilities of the Armored Marines. Fighting an Armored Marine is about par with fighting a tank that has more than a few main guns and disposable stores (missiles, grenades, etc), with the added benefit of close-quarters skills well in excess of Covenant elites.
Barricade: Transcendant Gundam is over twice the height of any contemporary UC or CE mobile suit, and is actually larger than the Destroy by a margin. In the Gundam metaverse, there aren't all that many bigger machines than that...
The Executor, I must admit, is a bit of author tract here. You saw him (at least being invisible) when he presided over the fate of Dearka, having told the Valkyrie that said pilot is off limits forevermore. The Multimage Chronicles is where said Executor got his start, and if you want to learn what kind of hard-asses write the rules that Existence lives and dies by, that is where to start reading. It will be long, bloody, and winding, I can guarantee that, but these stories are not one-bangs. They have purpose, and they tie much of Existence together in following that purpose.
There has been some salvage, but it is not ready for deploy yet. Murdoch is still working on duct-taping a GuAIZ together for Nicol to use.
Come on, you should have guessed this location based on the God reference, this universe is replete with references to God throughout the 50-episode series.
That Strike Rouge was a Crusader Strike Rouge. I regret to inform you that Cagalli was ganged up on by Earth Alliance Strike Daggers and did not survive the battle. Sorry, man.
A fleet is an interesting proposition, but such things must be measured carefully. Be on the lookout at this time.
Drakensis: On that note, I have some brutal reality to dispense with, but I will save that for another day. It is long in the future.
Arthur Hansen: Indeed, not a Final Fantasy now, more like a 'grim reality' if you will excuse me playing with the English language :P
Knightwolf1875: Where did you get Warhammer 40K out of that? The Battletech / CBT Mechwarrior 3rd overtones should have been fairly obvious...
al103: I don't remember him actually shooting the Mobile Armors themselves, but I do remember him intercepting a whole helluva lot of missiles. Still and all, I am not calling Kira Jesus Yamato that based on one shred of fact. I call him that because of his combination of plot armor plus his insane skills plus his unwillingness to directly kill plus the unreality of such a whole scenario. If you take into account that my writing style is far closer to 'real war' than it is Gundam, the logic of disparaging such a munchie / marty stu combination of traits is manifest.
Evil Manic X:
1: I hope I have answered his gunbarrel question now.
2: The SF MP LR (alphabet soup, har har har) can make its own packs, but right now neither the materials nor machining time is available for that.
3: Classified
4: Classified. Also, keep in mind that, as in my reply to al103, I write closer to real war than I do to Gundam logic (which, in certain things lacks logic). IRL, the F-15 Eagle was on the drawing board in the 1970s. It is only now being supplanted by the F-22, and may be a match for the JSF with some revisions and upgrades. Just because a machine is 'old' (and 4 years is far from old in terms of weapons of war) does not mean that machine lacks the ability to kick insane amounts of ass.
CHM01: There was no divine purpose to it (or even an Executor's purpose). Many people don't believe in chance, but the dice say otherwise.
Etienne: Thanks for busting my chops in a couple reviews back in JW, I think I earned that for obvious reasons.
I actually screwed up the dates in the headings, it all took place in September as per the nominal timeline. And then the Archangel shows up. Hilarity does not ensue at all.
Psionic abilities are on the rise, the ship magically grows and transforms for some reason, they are subject to some weird crap. What can I say? The dice don't play favorites.
There was some additional crew from ZAFT, people who wanted to walk away from it all. Morgan was the only big-name to survive and come along, Heine went along with the refugees. You are right about his motivations, as per the dice roll in this case.
Tankk: As in EvilManicX's review above, this is what a mass-pro project would look like in real life application. The prototypes are just that, prototypes used by the engineering staff to figure out where they screwed up on the design and what could be changed or improved. Gundam blows that logic by a wide margin, cost savings notwithstanding.
Specifically, they made the DRAGOON wings modular so it could accept Striker, Wizard, and Silhouette packs (with appropriate adapters) or a host of other equipment (such as the Jump Pack the Archangel seems to have absorbed). On the LRR model (the machine Kira picked up), it has an extended cockpit for increased pilot comfort on long patrol routes (up to several months or years), has storage for a literal ton of material in various locations around the frame and in the cockpit, and is standard equipped with a high-output fusion reactor for extended duration battles and patrols.
Akasui: I think I answered this one in prose, he will be using a GuAIZ UFN.
Morgan will give and get his dues, rest assured of that.
Duel with Strike Packs? Holy crap, man, don't give Murdoch ideas like that :)
The jumping is not in-system, it is cross-planetary, cross-galaxy, or cross-dimensional (or a combination of the above). Doing small jumps is pretty much out of the question.
THANK YOU ALL FOR THE REVIEWS! It is such a pleasure to receive this kind of feedback. Keep the fuel for this nightmare coming, and I shall keep their worst phantasms coming real :)
The Gripe Sheet:
To just give you an idea on how much help I get from Strata-Assassin, in this chapter of 12000 words, she found 163 correction points for me to make. That is more than 11 corrections per 1000 words. I can easily understand that I stank that bad, and Strata has my eternal thanks for keeping it cleaned up.
Footnotes:
(1): Electronic Warfare Officer, the member of a ship or aircraft's crew responsible for controlling electronic countermeasures and electronic counter-countermeasures. Unlike normal EWO officers, this position on the Archangel also covers other combat countermeasures such as chaff, flares, or smoke screens for decoying missiles and dumbfounding foes.
(2): Keel refers to the bottom of the ship, typically the spine of the ship's hull in the case of surface vessels.
(3): Screw or Screws refers to propellers, which can be the drive props of a surface ship, a submarine, or torpedoes.