Archangel's Amazing Adventures

by CSS Stravag

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

31. The Hammer Falls

(Archangel's Amazing Adventures, Set 4, Chapter 2: The Hammer Falls)

The Strike Freedom was the last of the Gundams to land after ordered, as Kira's machine had the most ammunition remaining and the least damage from the battle. As it had been reported, the enemy was smart enough to bug out when they realized they weren't winning, but they were dumb enough to try blitzing the ship with their surface fleet after having their mobile forces shot down or scared off. The dichotomy of such actions worried Kira.

"Murdoch, how's the ship?" Kira asks while taxiing into his hangar cubicle.

"Surface damage, starboard-side Valiant is down, a couple of point defense weapons here and there are out. We kicked ass, but if they're smart, two or three more attacks like that and we're toast."

"Well, put another one on the Archangel's tally for cheating death," Yzak comments on the radio.

"Anybody got a clue how long before our luck runs out?" Tolle asks a few moments later.

"No, why?" Yzak asks.

"I got a few stunts I'd like to try, but not if we're running thin on karma."

"If it's illegal, you're not allowed," Miriallia informs him directly.

"But—"

"I will enforce it if necessary," she overrides the Buster pilot's protest.

"I never said it was illegal! I said stunts, not crimes! Jeez Laweez, where did you get that from, Mir?" Tolle asks in clear and rather loud frustration.

"Eep, did I really push that kinda hot button?" Miriallia asks quietly after a moment.

"No, he's just frustrated," Kira counters.

"We all are," Yzak grumps as the Strike Freedom comes to a stop and is locked down for transport. "We all are."

"All right, everyone, get some rest, and consider it an order if necessary," Mu overrode the comm channel to tell them. "Hit the hot-springs, watch a holo-vid, take a nap, run a small concert, I don't care what. Just get out of the battle mindset for a few hours, before you blow up and do something I'll have to file paperwork on, clear?"

"Yes, sir," Kira, Tolle, and Yzak all reply in sync.

Kira was the last to exit his cockpit. "Hey, Kira, anything I need to fix on your machine?" Murdoch asks while looking the Strike Freedom up and down.

"Nope, just feed it some trash and the internal repair systems will do the rest," Kira replies. "All I took damage on was the left arm power conduits, nothing major."

"Gotcha," Murdoch says, nodding. "One less machine to worry about." With that said, he looked over the side of the second-level balcony. "Gomer, no go for the Strike Freedom, get your team back on that GuAIZ! I want it live for Nicol to use by the next battle!"

"Yes, sir!" Gomer shouts back at Murdoch. Kira could hear him issuing orders to his subordinates to continue the process of turning the GuAIZ into a live, functional, and deadly machine, but he could not hear the individual orders themselves.

Next battle, Kira's mind echoes the haunting phrasing of the chief mechanic. It must be the nature of our lives that we now come to expect battles to come several at a time, he grumps mentally.

"Which way you headed?" Tolle asks.

"My bunk," Kira replies honestly. "Shower and sleep, I've been up almost a full day straight."

" 'Kay, man," Tolle replies. "I'm hittin' the hot springs, you sure you don't want to take some heat before you..." Tolle recoils at the strange look from Kira, then realized what was at hand in an instant of clarity. "Man, chill, that was not deliberate on my part," he corrected himself in an attempt to cover his ass.

"Yeah, sorry, I'm too exhausted to see through things like that. I'm outta here."

"Later," Tolle replies as they part ways at a junction. Tolle headed toward the rear of the ship, Kira towards his quarters on the starboard side of the ship.

"Hey, Kira, you all right, man?" Athrun asks as he passes the Aegis pilot's quarters.

"Just exhausted, Athrun, thanks," Kira replies wearily.

"All right, I won't delay you," Athrun says as he stands aside so Kira could pass unhindered. "If you wake up sometime before tomorrow, I'll be in the theater, watching either Immortal Warrior or some other mindless movie."

"Thanks," Kira waves Athrun off before punching the unlock code for his room and entering.

Kira was not the first nor the last to forgo all other considerations for a ration of sleep, though Tolle and Athrun were not alone in remaining awake to take their minds off the battle.

For all, it would be a long afternoon.

-x-x-x-

"This is the best picture we have of the ship, isolated from the battle recorder of a salvaged Aries MS."

"Graceful thing," Duke Dermail comments. "And big. What do we know of its firepower?"

"So far, this is what our analysts have been able to piece together." A folder was handed to the Duke.

"Two warship-grade dual beam cannons. Two warship-grade rail guns. Four MS-grade rail guns. Five unknown-type energy weapons, blue beam. Sixteen, possibly as many as twenty multiple-launch missile silos for small missiles. Sixteen-silo mid-size missile block. Estimated thirty-two capital-scale missile silos in the twin tail assembly. Four heavy machine cannons; eighteen confirmed, twenty-four estimated rotary medium machine cannons. Minimum eight, estimated twenty MS-grade laser weapons. Possible other weapon systems in the rear and front weapons arcs," the Duke reads off the list contained within. "Good God, this thing isn't so much a Warship as it is a flying fortress."

"We think it is a bit of both, sir," the chief analyst for the project reports. "Of what we can tell of its design ethic and confirmed mobile forces, this is a high-maneuver high-speed high-survivable assault warship, crewed by a veteran and very competent crew, commanded by a very savvy command officer, with an independent mobile force comprised of Gundams, three units we cannot classify, and a high-power strike fighter."

"Purpose?"

"Naval domination, mobile first-strike assaults, securing beachheads, destruction of high-value targets, and special operations assaults. Additionally, it can perform the tasks of missile cruisers and destroyers, AAA destroyers, battleships, and carriers given its large deck and arsenal."

"Wonderful," Dermail sounded far less than pleased. "This is the exact kind of chaotic element I do not need in the Baltic Sea when we are trying to pacify the Sanc Kingdom. What do we know about how much damage the ship itself can take?"

"Well, sir, the flight recorders we could salvage showed that the ship took repeated strikes from all forces involved in the battle and did not slow down signifcantly. Additionally, we believe that an accidental ramming attack struck the starboard side of the ship and may have disabled or destroyed one of the naval rail guns, but we cannot confirm this from battle footage. We can confirm the mobile forces are capable of taking severe abuse from Aries and Cancer units while continuing the battle, and at least one of the carried units can fight underwater."

"Very well," Duke Dermail replies calmly. "We will assume they cannot make repairs underway at this time, and, with being unidentified, may not be able to put into a port for repairs. Intel, do we have a current location on the ship?"

"Yes, sir, the ship is presently north of old Germany, headed towards the North Sea at a brisk pace. It will be passing nearby two of our naval bases in thirty-six hours."

"This is how we will attack them. They should be smart enough to tell they are approaching or passing those bases, but we will play dumb and complacent instead of attacking on sight. When they are optimally positioned, we will attack them from three directions and from the bases, using Taurus mobile suits and Mobile Dolls against the enemy mobile compliment, and use Leo units with jump packs to close up on the ship and attack it from point-blank range."

"Should we use the Virgo Mobile Dolls?"

"Few, only those stationed at the Copenhagen base. Those Mobile Dolls will be needed more for the operations in the Sanc Kingdom than they will be to sink one ship."

"Understood, sir, I'll get right on it." The Chief Analyst and the two Oz Majors left the room immediately, headed for the secondary command facilities to begin preparations for the attack.

"Colonel, I want you to modify the plans for the Sanc Kingdom assault, given that we keep having trouble operating in that area without interference from Gundams. Increase the force correlations and request additional Mobile Dolls to be sent to our bases in Germany and Poland. We still have to deal with Treize in Luxembourg, but we do need to ensure that when we take down the Sanc Kingdom, it is done right and the rest of the world gets the message."

"Will do, sir," the Colonel in question also left.

Duke Dermail looked at the map of the Baltic disapprovingly. "They just will not realize that the era has changed, it is now the time for the Romafeller foundation to lead the way."

-x-x-x-

Commander's Log

Commander Mu La Flaga, formerly 8 Fleet, Earth Alliance Navy, now Archangel Team

7 November AC195 (local date), 1000 hours

It has been long since I even kept my own log entry, mainly because Commander Badgiruel was doing it until just recently, and thereafter Captain Ramius until she passed the mantle to me.

I will not bother rehashing the past events already covered in the log, those entries speak for themselves, and, as it happens, are better written than I could hope to do. We have been through rough ones, we have been through massively bloody ones, we have skated easily past some issues. To an extent, I consider it something of luck that we have made it as far as we have without matters being much worse than already are, though we are by no means in a secured position right now. Of course, 'luck' presupposes that things could have been far worse for us in several of the places we have been, yet it must also be said that we have not been unscathed. Simply walking past the memorial boxes outside the ship's hot springs is ample evidence that we have lost personnel, almost to the point of crippling the ship in several cases.

More to the point, the ship is once again astray, stuck in a land that apparently wants us dead and there is little we can do about it except resist. The forces outside the ship's hull have a mastery of Mobile Suit warfare and mass production, though the technology they operate under is significantly different from Cosmic Era or Inner Sphere technology, and wildly different from Crusader and Rune God weapon systems. For now, we are making underway repairs, Murdoch and his merry band of madmen are fast at work undoing all the surface damage to the ship's hull the enemy inflicted on us, with estimates ranging from 1400 hours to 1900 hours completion time. Additionally, with the crew personnel infusions we received from ZAFT and Vector, we have more than enough personnel to repair the Gundams and other units that are actually repaired (instead of repairing or healing themselves), so all machines will be combat ready by 1600 hours tonight. Never before has the ship been in such good status with crew and readiness, despite the losses we have taken.

The scare we got from the CE lands – what we thought was our homes – well, it still hasn't subsided. I can see it in Kira's eyes every time I pass him in the halls, he saw a lot of dead people in that colony. He saw a lot of dead people in the PLANT, a lot of dead people in the transfer colony that was headed to Mars, the parts of the colonies falling to Earth, and it is tearing him apart inside. Everyone is still feeling torn apart, despite it not being our homeland (Kira and Nicol died on Earth; the Archangel was destroyed at Alaska, which means what happened to us caused a diverted history parallel), we still feel responsible, in part, for what happened there. Despite the renewed hope we got from the salvage of a very powerful Gundam and its phase-transfer jump pack, few in the crew really feel like they have any more purpose to return home to ZAFT or the Earth Alliance. Even Captain Ramius has all but handed in her commission after seeing the smashed colonies and the craters on the surface of Terra caused by the falling colonies. Such suicidal tendencies as turning stationary objects into falling instruments of doom are an instant turnoff to the crew, and none of us want to see such actions repeated again.

There is open talk of ways to prevent such atrocities from happening, involving most or all of the crew in such plans. Few would hesitate to drop the hammer on the madmen that did this the first time, if it would prevent it happening again. Athrun, normally more restrained than all but Nicol, has been the loudest in speaking out against both the depredations of the Earth Alliance and the massacre caused by the ZAFT nuclear laser. His plans for destroying the laser, of which we have schematics courtesy of the Strike Freedom MP Gundam, are direct and efficient, making use of the whole force structure to prevent the GENESIS laser from being used once the location is known and the force closes. If we have to go in and prevent a repeat of that disaster, I think we can do it.

As it stands, we are all hoping this does not turn out anywhere near as bloody as what we found in the alternate copy of our homeland. It is all we can hope.

"A new log entry?" Murrue asks the Commander. Mu's eyes snap up from the viewscreen to the Captain, who he had not noticed enter the room.

"Yeah, someone's gotta keep the log going, even if it doesn't amount to much." Mu saved the new entry and closed down the terminal. "Coffee?"

"Definitely." Without further ado, Murrue received her mug full of the all-important beverage.

"The fuel of Armies, Businesses, and Civilians everywhere," Mu notes as he refilled his mug. "Thank God one of Doma's chief exports is coffee. How many tons of it did we stock up on?"

"Oh, six and a half." Murrue had made sure they were not at risk of running out of coffee for some time.

-x-x-x-

(7 November AC195, 1415 hours)

"All right, Ai, what other units are used by this OZ organization?" Kira asks the main battle computer of the Strike Freedom.

"On your right-side monitor, Kira," the system replies. The listing was a nested chart broken down by classification and threat level, with each entry color-coded. "The color bands for each entry represent the estimated likelihood that OZ will have these weapon systems, though you may not encounter any of these forces in battle. Given detected radio traffic and present location, the three entries highlighted in the mobile forces bracket are extremely likely to be encountered, as well as the entries in the air forces and naval forces bracket have already been encountered, therefore their likelihood of repeat encounter is near 100 percent."

"Aries, Taurus, Virgo," Kira reads off the mobile forces names. "Which of these is the most threatening?"

"Against the mobile forces, the greatest threat would be posed by Virgo, which is a completely automated mobile suit with firepower in excess of all mobile forces on this ship excepting the Warhawk, the Dagger with the Launcher Strike pack, and this Gundam. Additionally, the completely automated nature of the Mobile Doll units prevents any form of morale victory by routing their forces and breaking their will to fight. If they are launched against this ship with orders to sink the ship, they will continue executing those orders until the ship is destroyed or no Mobile Dolls remain."

"Ouch," Kira grumps. Fighting people usually meant that after killing off a nebulous percentage of the enemy, the rest surrendered or fled. A completely automated machine with no soul and no fear would not be so easily defeated. The technical requirements of such a system were not grossly dissimilar from what he was working on at Morgenroete, but the possible penultimate purpose of such a machine (wholesale slaughter) disgusted him. "And threat against the ship?"

"In an attack against the ship itself, completely ignoring the mobile forces, the greatest threat is likely to be the Taurus manned mobile suits, when armed with a Space Laser Cannon. The Taurus machine itself, with standard beam rifle, is actually less of a threat than the Dagger without a Strike Pack. With the Space Laser, the Taurus is capable of crippling the ship in as little as ten seconds so long as the pilot is competent and fires on certain critical locations on the ship." A diagram of the Archangel appeared on the main screen, highlighting the locations of the levitator, bridge, power plant and engine feeds, and the main missile magazines for the anti-ship launchers. As Kira saw it, such strikes were possible but wildly unlikely in a fluid, mobile engagement, especially when there is a huge amount of ship to shoot at, with such critical locations being extremely small by comparison. Just as one example, the bridge windows themselves were only a meter tall and ten meters wide, whereas the ship was over 175 meters tall and 299 meters wide (including wings). "In expected practice, five Taurus machines with the Space Laser, if unopposed, can cause severe hull and weapon systems damage but will not be likely to sink the ship."

"All right," Kira sighs. "Prepare simulations for final protective fire scenarios, incorporating the rest of the team as bots at 85 percent expected skill," Kira requests. The fact that he was toning down the skills of his allies in the scenario would force him to fight harder for an equivalent victory, which was by far the best training he could take on short of actual battle. "I'll run the training scenarios while I am on standby later today."

"Understood, first scenario will be ready in 47 minutes, with successive scenarios ready every fifteen minutes afterward."

"All right, I think that is enough for now. Can you begin preparation of spare parts for the Dagger, Buster, Duel, and Aegis? We're running critical low on field replaceables for all all four."

"It shall be done, Kira." Said pilot was not going to ask how, but the CBC (1) of the Strike Freedom knew pretty much exactly what the ship had in inventory, through the inventory database used by the crew chiefs, and Kira did not want to know what method it used to gain access to that data. On the other hand, the SF also knew that the ship was its own irregular formation, and parts resupply was a dicey proposition at best. So, keeping the other machines active and fully capable fit into its mission parameters in a way Kira had not received an explanation for as of yet.

Kira exited the cockpit of his machine, but before heading in the planned direction of the hot springs, he stopped and took quick stock of what was happening in the hangar bay. To starboard, of four cubicles, the Dagger was installed in the first cubicle and presently undergoing an engine transplant, a power plant that had been salvaged out of the remains of one of the Aries units used to attack the ship. The other three cubicles held three GuAIZ units recovered from the dead space around their not-so-homeworld, two machines being rebuilt and a third being disassembled for parts to fix the first two. Six more such machines had been recovered by the Archangel. All six were in storage at this time awaiting determination for fix or disassembly, though Kira would bet that only two of those machines were fit for repair.

On the back wall, the Aegis was the hot spot of the hour, having been cracked open at every external access hatch for a quick 'A-Check' maintenance routine. Tolle was using the power-washer to clean the grime, hydraulic fluid, and blast residue off the Buster, while Sai and a crew of the Vector expatriates worked on reloading the missiles and vulcan guns of said machine. Kira's machine, the Strike Freedom, comparatively did not require much in the way of maintenance, the internal autorepair systems kept it going at or near peak efficiency so long as he fed it 'high quality scrap materials' (An Aries MS counted as 38 tons of high-quality scrap, so there was little concern of running out of material for his Gundam). The only thing the Strike Freedom would not normally do if ready replacements were at hand was the fluids, as it justified that six hours repair time is better spent doing repairs while the maintenance crew filled a fifty-gallon hydraulic reservoir in six minutes. Kira had been careful when choosing his words to tell Murdoch that, who simply shrugged it off as a common (and relatively easy) task for the maintenance staff. Only the Duel stood undisturbed, the maintenance on the 105-ton machine having been performed already to satisfaction. At this time, the Duel stood with a new disposable missile pack over its left shoulder, salvaged from the missile pods carried by the Aries MS (eight barrels, with each barrel having four reloads), and in the right hand it held the EM Rifle from the Lightning Striker, giving it veritable sniper capability as well.

In times past, the port-side cubicles would have held four Omnimechs, though now the ship was down to two: the Timber Wolf and the Warhawk. Neither machine was being seen to at this time, as neither machine had seen any actual action requiring repairs since the last of the Imperial Remnant's attack on Vector. Of the Rune Gods, they were as they always were, ready to do battle at the call of the Magic Knights, though as always they needed no maintenance space inside the ship. Kira always wondered what the Rune Gods did when they were not around the ship, though after a fashion he had to admit that being ancient Gods they probably had a lot of stories to tell about past exploits. Kira had little trouble envisioning a cadre of Gods hanging out in some lonely corner of Existence, swapping tales about days long past. A strange fraternity that would necessarily have to be.

It was the central area that drew his attention most adroitly before he could migrate toward the hot springs. Though unseen or unheard in a long time, the sound of clashing blades immediately caused Kira to look over the edge at the participants of the battle, being a pair of mechanics and Yzak, the latter with his massive magic sword out and at the ready. "That sounds like a plan," Kira mumbles, realizing he had not practiced his bladecraft in so long that he needed the training more than he needed time in a hot spring. Getting down onto the hangar deck was a simple task, he simply took a parts elevator down to the ground floor as it was descending to pick up more missiles and 75mm ammunition for the Buster, and once on the ground he joined more crew headed toward the impromptu melee training session.

"Strike, fancy seeing you here," Yzak says as Kira takes up position opposite the Duel pilot across the ring. Someone had put a duck tape circle down to represent the combat area for the two contestants, which was a step in a more organized direction than the practice sessions of days long past.

"Been a while since we met in this circle," Kira notes pensively. "Same routine as last?"

"Yeah, winner goes until he or she's busted."

Kira looked around the crowd, and noticed something he was never really expecting to see. Of the people watching, almost all had swords and the bulk were ready to join the practice session. Of the usual suspects, only himself and Yzak were at the standby, the rest were the mechanics and logistics personnel assigned to the hangar.

Kira drew his dual-blade sword and braced it, ready to enter the fray when he was challenged. It would be a while before anyone called him, but the practice would be worth it.

-x-x-x-

(8 November AC195, 1630 hours)

The Captain had not objected in the slightest to Nicol's major acquisition for the Archangel, nor the location he had it installed and secured. Though not as rich as a full Grand or Baby Grand, the upright piano was well suited to the inside of the ship, as it was small enough to not take up a large amount of otherwise valuable space and two people could move it around easily as needed. Securely mounting it in the pilot's ready room was a simple task, once the vending machines for the all-important coffee had been shifted around to accommodate the newcomer. And, much as Nicol had been pining for years, the piano was welcomed by both himself and anyone with the stomach to listen to longer concert pieces (which had turned out to be Umi, Fuu, Murrue on occasion, Natarle (once, prior to her resignation), Athrun, Yzak (though Nicol figured coercion on someone's part in his case), Mu (the snoring wasn't all that loud), Sai, Tolle (who claimed to have always respected piano and keyboard players), and Miriallia). Most of all, it helped pass the tedium of the standby rotations as well as kept him alert.

He had been on standby for the 1000 to 1600 rotation as was typical of the ship's new operating schedule, since he now had one of the marvelous GuAIZ units to use, he was back in the saddle. Murdoch's Madmen had pulled a massive coup de main in logistics by modifying the engine from Kristen Redmond's long-dead Mad Dog Omnimech to fit the new machine. Shakedown trials gave it a good rating, at the least equal to the 105 Dagger piloted by Morgan, but like most machines, it lacked modular weapons. Nicol was beginning to wonder if machines like the Omnimechs were the screaming exception to the trends of warfare, though he had to remind himself that modular weapon systems made for increased cost and logistical nightmares, and both factors increased geometrically the more variable units put into service. On the other hand, the flexibility of the unit was also a high priority, since the most flexible of units could respond rapidly and lethally to a wider array of threats than would be expected of a 'static' unit.

The other person on duty rotation at this time, Fuu, was leaning against the side of the piano. Nicol could see at least part of her face from where he was sitting, and he could tell she was listening with intent, not just as a way to pass the time. The Magic Knights operated on a different rotation schedule than the main pilots (Nicol, Kira, Athrun, Yzak), who, in turn, operated on wildly different schedules from the ground forces pilots (Tolle, Mu, Pytor). Fuu's duty rotation ran from 1100 to 1900, a longer shift but something that lent itself to her other duty on the ship, being that she also served as one of the hot springs operators (along with Fuu and Terra). On the Archangel, it was not uncommon for any one member of the crew or officers to have double or triple qualifications and at least a shift and a half operating schedule, since casualties in years past had almost crippled the ship by loss of experienced personnel.

Despite the misinformed comments on the subject, Nicol always welcomed the company of the Magic Knight. After two, almost three years of having served on the ship, Nicol found he related well to most of the crew, though still got along best with the pilots and Magic Knights. Fuu had told him more than once she found him to be the person she easiest got along with. Of course, the months of treasure hunting and 'dungeon delving' they had done around their prior world of residence had cemented that bond, and it was usually Nicol that Fuu went to when she had some talking to do or a request to float. The fact that he was professional military, ZAFT, and a Coordinator did not occur to him much anymore; the years and campaigns that had lapsed between that one fateful day and the here-and-now affected any relations he had with anyone on the ship more than his days in ZAFT.

The music of the day was Tchaikovsky, a selection from his piano concerto works, with Schumann thrown in to break up the single-artist routine. Nicol had written his own works, though they were left on the carrier sub before the fateful assault on the Archangel and so far he had not managed to put together something new of his own. On the other hand, Doma and Figaro had their own piano maestros and Nicol had little challenge acquiring copies of their music for experimentation and play-through.

"I wish I could play like that," Fuu comments at the end of the song.

"I thought you said you had a piano at home," Nicol notes.

"I did," Fuu says almost wistfully. "My elder sister could play, but I spent too much time on console RPGs to properly learn the piano," she admits almost sheepishly. "I'll never look at a video game the same way again." This slant was saddened, almost painful.

Nicol chuckles. "Interdimensional perversity at its finest," Nicol says, which immediately caused Fuu to look straight at him instead of at the aft bulkhead. "Think about it, Fuu. How could the video game designers know that somewhere, somehow, what they imagine is someone else's cold, hard reality?" She blinks, clearly understanding what Nicol said but not quite registering the thought. "Before I joined ZAFT, I read a long list of science fiction authors, Heinlen, Asimov, Clarke, Piper, Ringo, Flint, Clancy, Brown, the list goes on. I would never have assumed that the barest fraction of what my hyperactive imagination conjured up from those stories could be possible. Yet here we are, bouncing between dimensions in an attempt to get home, with who-knows-what still to be seen before we actually get there." Unlike Yzak, Nicol still took the tack that they would get home, eventually. Yzak firmly stated he was along for the ride on the complete off-chance they ever got home.

"You are right, but—" The ship's battle alarm cut her reply off midway. "Shall we?"

"After you," Nicol says a moment thereafter, having picked up his thin leather gloves. Since he was fighting on earth, there was no advantage to wearing a normal suit, but the ship had picked up flight suits from the FedCom quartermasters years ago, in a wide variety of sizes to allow for the changing pilots. Due to the drilling of late, he had become used to putting the last few vestiges of gear on before a mission, and, as expected, he was walking out as the other pilots were coming in to suit up themselves.

"What do we have, Chief?" Nicol asks of Murdoch as he approaches the cockpit of his new machine.

"Mobile Suits and aircraft confirmed, possibly naval again, maybe ground as well," Murdoch replies. "Helmet," Nicol hands it over so he could climb into the machine before receiving it again. Unlike the ZAFT helmets, the ones they purchased from the Federated Commonwealth were a bit bulkier but provided almost double impact protection for the pilot's head. "You'll need to get an updated tac picture from Miriallia when you go live."

"Roger that," Nicol replies. "Pin count?" he asks before starting his machine up. On the GuAIZ, much as on older fighter aircraft and helicopters, certain systems were locked out from operating until the safety releases were pulled. These were usually a series of linchpins that were also used by the mechanics to lock out systems until they were properly maintained (2).

Murdoch signaled Gomer, who held up a finger count. "Pin count is eight, you are good to go," he says. "Good luck, kid," he concludes before tripping the cockpit actuator and standing clear so it could be closed.

Hot-starting his machine from the ship's accumulator took only ten seconds, most of which was spent on the various cockpit systems and weaponry. The engine was relatively fast to start from being externally powered at startup. "GuAIZ is online, what is our status?" Nicol asks after his radio boots clean.

"Nicol, it's not looking good," Miriallia immediately replies. "For all intents and purposes, we just blundered into the territorial waters of an enemy base, and they ain't happy about it. You can guess what their reaction was." The sound of missile impacts against the side of the ship was answer enough. "The Magic Knights will be deploying first, to give the other pilots a chance to suit up before you have to launch. We still have not tested the GuAIZ in battle, so we don't know how effective it will be alone and unsupported."

"Understood," Nicol replies. "GuAIZ is awaiting launch orders at this time," he concludes officially.

"Strike Freedom is active, how bad is it Mir?" Kira asks in the silence thereafter.

"Wait one, Kira," Mir orders. "Windam, Rayearth, please move to catapults at this time for priority launch."

"Rayearth taxiing to right cat, stand by," Hikaru replies.

"Windam going left," Fuu adds immediately thereafter.

"Kira, we have several dozen in the air at this time, and more appear to be preflighting on the ramp to join in. It's not going to be pretty," Mir tells all the active units.

"I hear ya," Yzak replies. "Duel reporting ready for action."

"Buster, armed and ready!" Tolle says.

"Aegis, hot-charging now, ready in fifteen seconds," Athrun sounded the most groggy of all, as Nicol figured he was likely asleep at the time the alarms went off.

"Selesce, Aegis, you two are next," Miriallia orders after the ship shudders to the impact of the two catapults discharging the first two Rune Gods.

"Ready," Umi says calmly.

"Aegis going right," Athriun comments before the mechanic-moonlighting-as-marshaller (3) begins walking him out of the bay.

"105 Dagger reporting, what pack you want me to deploy with?" Morgan asks in the radio silence of the Rune God and Aegis moving to the catapults.

"105, Command, please deploy with Launcher Strike for heavy interdiction and long-range strike. We have a lot of contacts, and we need to start taking them down by the numbers," Miriallia orders.

"Roger that," Morgan replies stoically. He knew the Launcher Strike would cut down on his maneuverability, but when connected to the ship's power grid, he could charge the cannon up on a Sunday and shoot the thing all week without a problem.

"Strike Freedom, GuAIZ, prepare to launch."

-x-

Outside the ship, things were indeed looking rough for the Archangel and her mobile forces.

The battle had started with a very rude shock to the Archangel, as a bunch of underwater lights the Captain thought were the lights for a clearing through the narrows turned out to be the search lights of underwater Mobile Suits. They had not fired initially, just relayed the position of the Archangel to the base above the waves, though after the first enemy aerial MS were off the ground the order to loose torpedoes had been carried out.

"Newman, take us up above the waves," Murrue ordered as her opening position. "Sai, where is the enemy the thinnest?"

"Directly behind us, but not for long. Looks like they're bringing in more air-only MS from another base south-west of our location. Count ten carrier planes, probably loaded the same as they were two days ago."

"Other options?" Murrue asks immediately thereafter. "Chandratta, go live on all weapon systems, including the Lohengrins," she orders in the silence of Sai trying to find a way out for the ship.

"Aye, Captain," Chandratta had already activated the point-defense grid, but with the order to go live, the weapons began training outward in anticipation of further fire orders. The only thing he did not deploy was the Lohengrins, but the weapons began their pre-charge cycle in anticipation of use.

"Captain, this is going to sound practically suicidal, but our best option right now is directly over the base to our east. Any other direction is nothing but a wall of enemy mobile suits," Sai concludes after almost a minute of analyzing various inputs and displays. The enemy was holding position outside the expected weapons range of the ship, waiting for their own orders to commence attack, or perchance waiting for someone brave enough to lead off and sacrifice himself to begin the melee.

"Captain, there's a helluva lot of anti-air weapons in that direction," Chandratta replied immediately thereafter. "But he's right, the other directions are less welcoming."

Murrue hesitated a moment, thinking things over. "Miriallia, have Mu mount up in his Timber Wolf. Re-task the GuAIZ, Duel and Buster to go in on the ground and clean out those anti-air weapons and cause as much general destruction as possible. Maybe we can shellshock them into inactivity," she hopes without much in the way of conviction. "Newman, plot us a course through the lightest concentrations of AA weapons, then plan on swinging southbound and back into the Baltic."

"Aye, Captain." Newman was already deriving the necessary course for the ship to get out of harm's way as quickly as possible.

"Mir, it's starting, here they come!" Kira half-shouts over the radio band.

"Conn, sensors, incoming from every direction!" Sai says immediately thereafter to confirm Kira's forewarning.

"Newman, up hard!" Murrue ordered immediately, remembering that the missiles used by their primary aerial MS were mostly rockets and could be dodged under the right circumstances. "Sai, jam them up, Chandratta, open fire!"

"And the Archangel dances with the Devil once more," Yzak sighed mightily after his comment.

"Point being?" Athrun asks in retort.

"None," Yzak replied immediately. "I knew this was coming."

"Time to get ready for it," Kira says to nobody in particular.

-x-

"He was right, this may be the easy way out, as counter-intuitive as it seems," Yzak noted with a professional eye toward static defenses. As of yet, he was still out of range of any of the heavy AA emplacements, but the advance march was intended to get him there in good order.

There were some things Sun Tzu had said "don't do it, dipshit", and thousands of years of proceeding history had only reinforced. One of the big ones was: never lay siege to a city or fortress that can be bypassed, and equally important was never assault a defensive fortification unless it could not be bypassed. In this case, the Archangel had to assault a base because the other ways out were swarming with weak but incredibly hostile enemies. It was also becoming clear the 'plugs' on the trap, being the north and south waterway inlets, were now guarded by mixed naval forces, and to head due west meant trying to out-fly several hundred aerial MS and oh, by the way, you had to get over the craggy mountains in that direction while under severe fire.

The base it had to be, Yzak thought crassly. Silently he pulled out the long-range scope panel for his fire control system and locked it in place, as he would benefit most from it with the Electromagnetic Rifle he had 'borrowed' from the Lightning Strike. Per shot, it was not the best weapon he could carry (That distinction went to the Agni cannon for the Launcher Strike), but the extreme range it brought to the battle was his best friend, especially when challenging anti-aircraft batteries and low-flying MS.

Those pukes may see what we are doing, Yzak thought of the various somewhat-nearby Mobile Suits. "Nicol, keep an eye up and about while Tolle, Mu and I bust a hole for the Archangel."

"Got it," Nicol replied immediately.

"I'll handle the ground-mobile forces, Yzak, you and Tolle do their air defense batteries," Commander La Flaga ordered.

"Yeah," Yzak replied immediately.

"I have lock, time to start playing rough," Tolle declared as he linked the two weapons of the Buster into the long-range sniper rifle.

Yzak dropped the Duel to a kneeling position to stabilize his aim, and with the sights just slightly over the nearest of the radar direction centers, opened fire. After the first slug left the barrel, gravity did the rest for him, dragging the composite slug downward at a constant and increasing rate until the 125-kilogram nickel-ferrous-coated depleted uranium slug slammed nose-first into the building. What happened next was a different part of physics from the flight to the structure, this one a case of Newton's laws in action. The nose of the projectile, a full meter forward of the tail and fins of the slug, began decelerating and shifting direction faster than the tail did, resulting in what is commonly called 'tumbling' in ballistic sciences. The rapid shift in direction caused the slug to turn a quarter of a spin while inside the structure, and the slug slammed broadside into a structural column on the far side of the building; the shockwave and spall kicked up by the entry of the slug into the cinder-block building had already killed or wounded all the persons in the room.

On the far side, the structural column that was supporting the roof twisted in two directions, wrenching the upper-level support beams for the massive air-search radar on top of the building out of alignment. The ten tons of antenna, motors, and radio transmitters sealed the structure's fate without reserve, collapsing down through the suddenly-unsupported roof of the building. With one blow, Yzak had completed the destruction of the radar tracking and communications for the first line of anti-aircraft weapons arrayed against the Archangel.

"Radar is down," Yzak commented almost mechanically before he shifted aimpoint to a missile battery just in range. Left of his position a hundred meters, Tolle fired a precision shot into what appeared to be an ammo dump for the forward radar-controlled guns, and, much as he expected, the explosion of that ammo resulted in four guns and thirty-some-odd people obliterated in a miniature mushroom cloud. The Timber Wolf and GuAIZ surged forward before Yzak popped off his second shot, this one not quite as destructive as the first – it only resulted in the six-cell missile launcher being sheared off the base it was attached to.

"If we're going to be on stage today, a little fireworks are in order," Colonel Chevalier commented dryly after seeing the mushroom cloud kicked up by Tolle's shot.

"C'mon guys, move it up, we gotta get out of here!" Commander La Flaga ordered hurriedly, his omnimech moving forward of the rest of the team now, the torso twisting back and forth as he sighted up emplacements one after the next and fired on them individually. Mu had rebuilt his weapons pods in a non-standard configuration, giving himself foremost the jump jets necessary to vault into the Archangel's launch bays from the ground, and second giving him the firepower to handle a wide threat array without overheating his 'mech constantly. With an ER Large Laser in the left arm, two LRM-10 launchers in the left missile rack, a single SRM-6 launcher in the right rack, and three ER Medium lasers in the right arm, his machine was truly the equal of the Gundams in net firepower and at least a match for them in survivability. More to the point, the wide array of weapons was perfect for the task, given that it did not take much in the way of damage to destroy or render inoperable most of the anti-aircraft arsenal in the area.

"Commander, Mobile Suits on the left! Unknown type, appear ground only!" Tolle cautioned his direct commanding officer before switching around his weapons

"Well, these are new, but not all that impressive," Mu declared as the unit in question began firing on him rather sloppily. Of all the shots headed in his direction, few were landing or passing by within twenty meters. "Tolle, Yzak, stay on those air-def sites, I have these pukes."

"Already on it," Yzak replied tersely. He had foregone the sniper detail for his beam rifle and disposable missile rack, since without the radar station the guns and missiles weren't able to track even his machine with reliability.

Mu tracked left, toward the oncoming land-model MS, while the other three continued forward. Much as he surmised, there were a few of the enemy aerial MS trying to prevent destruction of the base AA grid, but not enough to amount to anything. Right now, the main threat hailed from the company of ground-model MS, what looked to be even more basic (and less capable) machines than ZAFT's GINN units. The foremost of the enemy machines carried a simple machine gun with drum magazine, an appropriate combination in Mu's estimate, but the shoulder shield was well out of place to provide any decent defense. A single shot of ER Large Laser proved that adroitly, the center-mass shot crippled the enemy machine in one stroke, much to Mu's surprise.

The result was almost comical, had Mu been watching a holo-record of the fight and was not actually conducting the battle. The first of the enemy platoons stopped dead, followed by the second platoon, then the fourth platoon. The problem with the instant brakes, however, was that the third platoon of the unit did not stop fast enough, and careened face-first into the back of fourth platoon. The whole exercise in stupidity could not have been scripted better by a comedian, Mu thought sardonically as half the remaining enemy force ended up in a twisted pile of entangled Mobile Suits.

"Dude, did I just see that right?" Newman asked.

"You did," Mu replied before firing his laser into one of the remaining standing enemy machines, then unleashing his LRM racks at two separate MS with what appeared to be anti-armor bazookas.

-x-

"If they weren't trying to kill us, I'd call this Keystone Kops material," Tolle declared with a small hint of reverence. A single shot from his cannons in sniper rifle configuration was ample to disable four of the piled MS and destroy outright a fifth. Murrue could naught but gape in how pathetic the enemy appeared to be, having disabled half a company of MS by an idiot collision.

"Kira, Athrun, aerial Mobile Suits appear to be massing at the ship's seven o'clock position, 5-K up. Break 'em down," Miriallia ordered curtly.

"Roger that," Kira replied immediately.

"Aegis moving in now," Athrun's voice was beginning to sound the toll of the battle. So far, none of the enemy had managed to apply any serious hits to the machines, but that would change fast enough.

"Magic Knights, spread out from the starboard rear of the ship in five hundred meter intervals and try to thin out the crowds," Miriallia followed up her orders by shifting the Magic Knights down from the forward areas to the rear, where the enemy was naturally bunching up.

"Got it," Fuu replied immediately for the three Knights. The Rune Gods began moving west, toward the rear of the engagement zone as requested, and as they went, Mobile Suits dropped off the sensor plot.

"Chandratta, spin up tubes one through eight and twenty-five through thirty-two with Sledgehammers, rear tubes with six Anti-Air cluster warheads and ten Wombats."

"Fire pattern?" Chandratta requested even while inputting the load commands.

"Sledgehammers downrange to the heavier AA batteries, prioritize guided missile systems. Wombats on the rear-starboard, AA shrapnel on the rear-port. Make 'em count, our guys ain't going to last forever out there!"

"The rat-bastards are playing smart," Chandratta grumped. "Staying out of range of the bulk of our point defense grid is saving a lot of lives...and making ours miserable."

"We can't accuse them of being totally inept, despite their showing on the ground," Murrue commented. It had taken Mu and Tolle no more than twenty seconds to finish mopping up that company of ground MS, then return to the necessary evil of eliminating the AA belts. Nicol had a significant collection of shoot-downs on the ground in front of the ship, enemy MS lucky enough to get close without getting mulched by the point defense grid but dumb enough to fly too low and thus subject themselves to his tender ministrations. Yzak had not turned away from the task at hand, and was now closing on the radar control center for the second belt of AA weapons, all the while eliminating various nearby weapons platforms and the occasional main battle tank that ventured close.

"Strike Freedom reporting intercept complete, beginning close-quarters battle."

It pained Murrue to hear such a mechanical phrasing from Kira, who in the past had made himself famous for not wanting to fight, much less learn about normal flight operations procedures. We do what we have to, Murrue thought after a moment.

"It never is pretty," Morgan Chevalier commented in the radio traffic silence thereafter. "I just don't see another way through this." His comment was accented by the launch of the forward missile tubes, each missile headed to separate targets in the base interior.

-x-

"You won't find one," Kira replied coldly, dodging under the flight path of a Valiant linear gun slug as it tore through the skies in an attempt to smash the Aries MS around him to bits. "They want us dead. We object, naturally. Conflict ensues." He flew through a burst of 50mm chaingun deliberately, preventing it from getting to the Archangel beyond him, since the Phase Shift system on his Gundam made his machine more or less immune to kinetic weapons. The offending party received two pairs of beams from his beam rifles, two to the upper engine intakes, one to the upper chest, and one to the head With that, another Aries began the plummet to the ground. His wingmate suffered a similar fate, but only from the Callidus beam cannon in the chest of the Strike Freedom.

"Kira, cover right, I have these on the left to dead astern of the ship," Athrun requested.

"On it," Kira replied tersely, now focused almost completely on the blossoming battle. As much as his personal results and extended training was beginning to pay off, the Archangel was still taking a frightful beating, and most of it in the most vulnerable part of the ship - the rear. As the Strike Freedom began to shift more toward the 8 o'clock position on the Archangel, a blossoming fireball from the direction of the ship drew his attention in that direction; something had exploded on the ship. "Archangel, Kira, you all right?"

"We're alive," Miriallia replied wearily. "That was the feed system for the port-side missile tubes, we can't load or launch from tubes one to sixteen. Unless you can suck 'em in close, you and Athrun are on your own."

Can't shift the Knights over here, they're busy on the right flank, and Morgan's machine doesn't have extended flight ability, Kira thought drolly. "Athrun, fall back three hundred meters and reengage," Kira said quickly, suiting his own actions to his request.

"I'm in," Athrun replied immediately, shifting his Gundam from MS form to MA cruising form, then cleared back toward the ship.

"Priority target identified, priority target identified," the Strike Freedom's battle computer reported. "Targets identified, Taurus Mobile Suits with Support Laser cannons. Four contacts on the Archangel's ten o'clock." The four contacts were immediately highlighted on Kira's sensor panel, as well as shaded to show relative altitude against his machine's location and altitude.

"Are they tracking?" Kira asked before twisting around and hammering his thrusters to close on them.

"Kira, where are you going?" Athrun asked in severe shock.

"Major threat on the left, Athrun, I'll be right back," Kira declared.

"Make it fast, damn it, I'm dancing with a freaking battalion of 'em up here!"

"I'll cover Athrun, do what you have to, Kira," Hikaru replied immediately. On his sensor uplink, the whole rearguard had shifted around to cover his immediate departure, with Umi on the far right and Aegis on the far left to keep stragglers from getting around the ad-hoc guard.

"Kira, what the hell are those things?" Miriallia asked immediately.

"Bad news walking," Kira replied half-sardonically. "High-power MS with support lasers, they'll punch holes in the ship if left unchecked."

"Warning, lead Taurus is tracking the Archangel," the BC reported. "Valid lock, thermal bloom from that support laser, he's firing!" And Kira knew he was still out of range by several hundred meters and couldn't do a damned thing to stop it.

The support laser put out a blue-white beam, and a very high-power one at that (4). Thankfully, the pilot was not thinking strategically and had deliberately tracked in on the port-side Gottfried cannon, instead of a more critical system such as the levitator. Even despite this, the sight of the Gottfried turret with a half-meter scorch in both sides of the turret and the venting smoke turned Kira's stomach.

"Kira," Miriallia began, but faltered.

"Let me guess, Gottfried two is down," Kira grumped.

"Make sure they don't get a second shot," Miriallia intoned clearly.

"Roger that," Kira did not speed up, instead he slowed down and deployed the Xiphas III Rail Guns attached to the hips of his Gundam. Four shots lent two wounded machines and one killed to their ranks, the two wounded he finished with beam rifle shots as the first shooter dropped aside its Support Laser. "Why did he drop that support weapon?" Kira asked nobody in particular as he closed on said enemy, his left beam shield up and active to block the beam gun shots coming in his direction. In close, the battle was a forelorn hope for the Taurus, as the Strike Freedom collided with the smaller machine and drove it into the ground roughly. On standing up, Kira fired a single shot into the center of the chest, which severed the cooling circuits for his engine and depowered the enemy machine in less than five seconds.

"These Support Lasers are usable only for one shot in atmosphere. Their cooling systems are designed to work in vacuum, not down here," the Battle Computer reported.

"Well, three still live," Kira noted while he racked the standard beam rifles, followed shortly by picking up the nearest of the surviving Space Laser Cannons. "Ai, Traffic analysis, are these forces being controlled from a ground station or something in the air?"

"Indeterminate," the Battle Computer replied immediately. "There are a lot of different sources yelling their heads off on the enemy comms channels, but nobody appears to be listening. There are three possible command elements, two aircraft in high orbit behind the Archangel and one ground station. I'll mark them on your tactical display. You have three Support Lasers nearby."

"Oh no! There's more of these black machines on this side!" Umi reported in a half-frantic tone.

"Archangel is hit!" Miriallia announced in a worried tone. "Starboard Valiant is down again! Fuu, close in and take those machines out!"

"Fuu, close fast and hammer them flat, but get clear if they aim at you! Don't take a chance with those Support Lasers!" Kira informed her while he began locking onto the ground station his systems suspected of being a command post.

"SHIT!" Tolle shouted just after Kira dropped the hammer. His system immediately locked onto Tolle's location and magnified for a clear view; Kira did not like what he saw by a long shot.

"Tolle!" Miriallia shouted in response. "What happened?"

"One of those damned black-suits got his Gundam's legs," Yzak replied. "Nice shot, Kira, you brought that radar dish down into the rest of the building."

"Archangel, Kira, I'll recover Tolle and his legs, have Murdoch waiting with crowbars to get into the cockpit. The heat flash from these damn support lasers may have sealed him in."

"Archangel copies your last, Murdoch will be waiting," Murrue assured him. "Mobile forces, Archangel with flash traffic, if you see any more of those damned black machines, they are priority targets. We can survive AA belts, we can't survive too many more shots like those things."

"Aegis copies your last," Athrun replied.

"Speak of the devil," Morgan replied. "Got two more on the ground behind us, I'm'a try sniping them from the back deck."

-x-

"Buster is recovered," Murdoch declared over the ship intercom.

"I'm going back out for the legs, we need the parts," Kira declared before his Gundam jetted out of the catapult bay.

"Captain, we're over the inner AA belt, minimal fire incoming from ground sources. Now might be a good time to get the hell outta here," Newman informed the bridge.

"Control, Conn, begin recovering our units. Mechanicals first," meaning the Rune Gods would be the last in since they were not limited on fuel.

"The more I work here, the more strange shit I see," Sai bemoaned, watching the forward cameras as the Strike Freedom came up to the catapult deck carrying the two legs of the Buster, one under each arm.

"It's not a job, it's an adventure," Chandratta replied with a clear tone of mirthless humor.

"I knew he was going to say that," Miriallia replied. "Aegis, Control, return to ship, port-side deck. 105 Dagger, Control, return to ship by way of central lift. Duel, Control, you're next, starboard side catapult."

"Helm, Conn, after recovery of Mobile Units, put the hammer down. These guys can't pursue too much, they're probably running down on fumes."

"Archangel, Kira, recover my unit last, I'm still good to go, I'll cover everyone else getting in."

"Kira, Archangel copies. Don't get shot down," Miriallia replied immediately.

"Conn, Hangar deck, Tolle is in route to medbay, moderate injuries. Alert Fuu and Nicol, they may have to help the doc out," Murdoch informed the Captain.

"Conn, aye," Murrue replied in shorthand to acknowledge she understood. "Mir, warn Fuu and Nicol that we have multiple injuries in the Medbay to be seen to."

"Windam, GuAIZ, Archangel with priority traffic, we have injured persons from crew and Mobile Forces that will need help when you get in."

"GuAIZ, good copy, requesting landing authorization."

"Timber Wolf, GuAIZ, you are to ingress immediate, Timber Wolf to the port-side catapult bay, GuAIZ on starboard. Selesce, Archangel, please return to ship and enter by central lift."

"Roger that, comin' in hot!" Mu half-shouts as he jumped up to enter the launch bay. "I'm in!"

"GuAIZ is in, moving to lock down," Nicol added after a moment's silence. "Any word on how bad Tolle is?"

"No word," Miriallia replied. "Murdoch didn't sound like it was serious."

"Murdoch could bleed a pint a minute and not think it serious," Yzak said, though with a clear tone of respect for the mechanic.

"He's got me beat, then," Mu declared. "I tend to get stupid when I lose blood."

"Fuu, Hikaru, pull back, they appear to be backing off," Kira replied. "Archangel, Kira, remaining forces appear to be breaking contact."

"Out of their operations range, or out of fuel?" Murrue asked at the same time as sheared looked over the ship's damage panel. "God, we cut that one close."

"Yeah, they almost had us," Chandratta natively faced the damage panel, which tended to help him in making sure he was not issuing orders to destroyed weapons.

-x-x-x-

(8 November AC195, 1900 hours)

"Two days?" Murdoch asked, incredulous.

"That's all it will take to rebuild one of the GuAIZ hip assemblies to match what that laser just sheared off the Buster," Kira replied. "Here's the plate, just attach it and press the button. Once it's rebuilt, we can work on reassembling the Buster."

"Outstanding," the Chief Warrant Officer replied. "Anything on your machine need work?"

"Fuel, railgun ammo, and vulcan ammo. Rest of the machine is in acceptable shape," Kira replied.

"Will do. Get some rest, kid, you look like dogshit."

Kira groaned. "I feel like it, Chief, but you guys need help down here..."

"Out, before I have Gomer remove you and lock you in your quarters," Murdoch ordered, despite the fact that Kira technically outranked him.

Not willing to challenge the mechanics on their own turf, Kira quickly retreated into the lower decks of the Archangel. After about ten meters traverse, Kira even managed to convince himself crew rest was as important as repairs to the decidedly beat-up machines in the hangar behind him. None of the other pilots had remained behind to volunteer their services. Kira had had the last word, though, in that he requested the Strike Freedom's Battle Computer analyze all the sensor data from the units to determine who won and how many each had shot down. The results would take a day to collate and process, but the information would be invaluable to both the pilots and the command staff. It would also tell where, if anywhere, someone or something had gone wrong.

Despite his physical exhaustion, Kira continued to wander the ship, passing from location to location completely unheard and as often as not unseen by others. Most stopped and saluted, to which Kira simply nodded to the persons in question. His path even crossed Pytor, who had to sit out the past two battles due to the lack of a truly mobile 'mech for him to pilot. The Warhawk was good, but slow compared to the other 'mechs the Archangel has or had. Pytor simply nodded as they crossed paths, since he was not in a position to salute while carrying an armful of parts from stores toward the hangar area.

In due time, Kira found himself in the halls adjacent to the Hot Springs, where the various memorial boxes for the deceased and departed had been set up. New to the addition was a box for Natarle Badgiruel, though not deceased she counted as having departed from the ship. Kira found it interesting, she had left her rank insignia for the box, or Murrue had ginned up a new one for the display, but Kira thought it more likely that Natarle had left hers in place. At least she got out alive and in a way she risked enjoying it, Kira thought almost enviously. Home was home, and being nice would have been home, and real-estate in heaven has to be overpriced, he thought blearily before he realized that he was so far gone his own thought process was making no sense.

The hell of it was, only mentally was he screwed up, his body felt all right. So, after a whiff of the steam, he decided that a bit of heat would be the choice to clear his mind. All he had to do was walk around the corner to the Springs...but he couldn't immediately look away from the box that held the memories of Dearka. And then there was the remembrance of the night he had been struck down, on Colonel Hartman's farm in the hills of Romulus. Years had passed, pilots had changed, but still the memory was always the same. The two hits, then the particle cannon streak circumnavigating the waist of his armor, having already blown most of the cockpit apart. Even today, the glove that he wore as a linked Knight to Hikaru continued to sparkle, and sometimes glowed, never fading or dulling from the bright ruby color it always was. Just the memory of just another guy trying to work his way home and hoping he survived it.

For him, the war is over. Rest easy, pilot. Kira didn't even quite realize someone had told him so telepathically, nor did he realize it was not one of the crew, but simply nodded at the logic of the statement. With the memory concluded for a day, Kira finally pushed away from the wall and took the turn to the Hot Springs.

"Heading in?" Terra asked when he arrived at the entrances.

"Yeah," Kira replied.

"Cube seven for your stuff. I just filled the towels, so you should be good." Kira moved toward the doors after a polite nod. "Erm, Kira, you may outrank me, but I'm not supposed to let you go into the ladies' side."

"What?" Kira asked, then looked at the signage on the outside of the robing room. "Oh, yeah, wrong side."

"Are you sure you're going to be all right in there? I've never seen you try using the wrong room before." Come to think of it, I've never seen him put a foot wrong period, Terra thought but did not say.

"I'll live...I hope. Thanks again." This time, Kira ducked into the proper room. He did manage to get undressed and prepared for the springs without any undue complications, and even entered the springs room without issue. Kira sort-of recognized that Commander La Flaga was in the room, but it didn't completely register. Trying to drop down into the water, though, resulted in a bit of a conflict with gravity and a loud splash, but no injury.

"Is everything all right in there?" Terra asked from the corridor outside the robing room.

"It is, no injuries," Commander La Flaga answered for Kira. "You sounded like hell there towards the end, but now I see it's worse than you were letting on," Mu apprised after Kira managed to stabilize himself and settled down.

"Those years in Vector didn't do me any favors," Kira grumped. "The calm was fun, but..."

"Yeah, you're not used to the high-stress high-stakes battles as you were while fighting the Clans," Mu replied. "Just more proof that you're still human at the end of the day."

"I'm beginning to wonder if we'll ever find somewhere there is nobody trying to kill us," Kira bemoaned.

"Maybe, maybe not," Mu admitted quietly. "I don't know, but I'm stickin' with the Captain, regardless of what happens."

"Little late to get off, though," Kira replied.

"Yeah, might be a rough walk home," Mu conceded. Kira could not stifle the inevitable chuckle to come with Mu's offhand joke.

Several minutes of silence ensued. "What are we doing with our lives?" Kira asked.

"I don't know what you are doing with yours, but I am going on with mine."

"Maybe I should, if I have anything of a life left," Kira replied after a minute's foggy contemplation.

"We'll be running deep for a few days, so nothing should happen. Might be a good idea to sort it out, figure out what you want to do. A head start can't hurt your long-term goals."

-x-x-x-

(10 November AC195, 1600 hours)

"And this is where it gets messy fast," Yzak replied. "God, why did these pukes have to use hydraulics in their missile launchers?"

"I have fifty C-bills that says some contractor somewhere said that if they made it a hydraulic system instead of a manual gear-drive or belt-drive, they would earn more on maintenance contracts," Kira replied honestly.

"Of course, in battle, one good impact and your missile launcher jams on reload, so..." Yzak replied, meaning that too much rough treatment could vent the hydraulics and seize the loading mechanism solid. "Think we can tear all this shit out and replace it with a gear-drive or belt-drive?"

"Not likely, not without some serious work," Kira replied. "Hrm, how about a chain-drive system? These hydraulics are only used to shuttle reloads up and forward from the magazine. I think we could get by with replacing the hydraulic drives with a couple good chains."

"Across three points of contact? The chain would spend more time slipping than turning," Yzak thought aloud.

"Nah, we put an idler sprocket up here, a meter above the drivetrain for the chain, that way it has four points of contact and it shouldn't slip. We'll have to do the same thing on the other side for tubes three and four, and then do it again for five through eight, unless you want to run the four inboard silos off one chain?"

"No way in hell, Kira. One chain for two silos, I'm not taking a chance on one broke link wiping out half my ready reloads."

"Makes sense," Kira admitted to himself.

They had captured some of the original-model missile pods, before Oz had moved to this complex magazine-and-barrel loading system. The original versions fired electronically with all the rockets in the tubes ready to launch, but because the rocket exhaust had to blow by the ready reloads in the same tube as the fired missile, there was a severe chance the fired rocket could ignite the engine on another rocket and cause the whole assembly to detonate from overpressure inside the launcher. Naturally, Yzak had twigged to such a failure and built his new disposable missile launcher using only the magazine-fed model, which lost two seconds per shot due to load time but the reliability and improved accuracy were worth the wait in his opinion. Not all battles can be won by throwing gratuitous amounts of firepower in the enemy's direction, Yzak thought sardonically, realizing that he had probably figured out why he always managed to fail at trying to bring down the Archangel in days past. Such was enough of a revelation that it shocked him to stillness.

"You all right?" Kira asked in the moments after Yzak had froze.

"Yeah, it's nothin'. Chain Fed Missile Pack, I think I like the ring to that. Now, where are we going to acquire a chain like that?"

"Erm, that could be a problem," Kira replied after a few moments of considering it. "I don't think we have any chain like that."

"Great, Strike, just great, come up with a solution to the outstanding problem that we can't implement. How long were you studying to be an Engineer?" Yzak asked tersely.

"About two years, before you guys interrupted that," Kira replied just as tersely.

"Oh, okay, they never got around to introducing you to Murphy's Laws, then," Yzak replied. "Well, we can shelve the chain-link plan for now, and figure out some way to reinforce the hydraulics on this thing so it won't bust the first time someone farts in my general direction."

"Okay, first thing's first, hose clamps on the spike fittings," Kira replied immediately. "That's the obvious failure point, one of those hoses comes loose and you lose two silos right off the bat." Kira looked over the side of the assembly to where a couple mechanics were hanging out, playing a game of cards on top of a barrel of lubricant. The nearest of the mechanics was one easily recognized. "Hey, Gomer, can we get some one-inch hose clamps up here?"

"On it, Kid!" Gomer, being the ranking man at the table (he was Murdoch's fourth-in-command of the hangar bay), quickly sent two of the newer techs out to get the parts and deliver them to Kira, which also doubled over as an exercise in learning the locations of certain miscellaneous spare parts.

"What else can we do?" Yzak asked Kira while waiting for the hose clamps.

"The hydraulic reservoirs. What about putting some insulation around it, something to help slow down fragments or something?" The reservoir was not all that robust, and the fragmentation from a hand grenade could easily cause it to vent.

"Kevlar blankets?" Yzak got a nod from Kira. "Easy enough, I know where they are."

"Hold a moment." Kira stopped to consider something of significance. "Get enough to cover the inside of the entire loading area with a couple layers, as well as heavier wrap for the magazine itself and the hydro reservoir." (5)

"Protect the whole loading mechanism from fragmentation? Nice thought," Yzak replied.

As the Duel pilot returned to the maintenance platform for the weapons with a cargo exoskeleton carrying about three tons of Kevlar blanket, Gomer's two runners had come with an armful of the requested one-inch hose clamps. Much to Yzak's surprise, Hikaru had joined Kira on top of the missile launcher pack, given that right now was her assigned sleep time.

"Hey, aren't you supposed to be in bed?" Yzak asked after he shut down the exoskeleton.

"I just woke up, Yzak," Hikaru replied offhand. "Anyways, anything I can help with?"

"Yeah, here," and Kira handed her a screwdriver and over a dozen hose clamps. "These hydraulic lines need to be clamped down." He demonstrated how and where with the external port-side hose. "You can take this one on, while Yzak and I work on protecting the mechanism and hydro systems from shrapnel."

"This is going to be interesting," Yzak noted. "Any idea how we're going to do the inside pair?"

"Very carefully," Kira dodged. "We'll worry about that once we have the outside dealt with."

It would not take them long to revisit Yzak's question, as the process for seeing to the exterior shell and the critical hydraulic components was dead simple. All it took was some mounting bolts, grommets, and a length of the kevlar blanket and suddenly the major components were protected from all but the nastiest direct penetration trauma. After applying to the starboard side (they had started on the port side of the launcher to avoid interfering with Hikaru), they were left looking down in between the two loading mechanisms, with the less-than-a-meter gap pretty much preventing either Kira or Yzak from getting in there.

"You know, this could be a little bit of a problem," Kira noted.

"Yeah, and trying to take the assembly apart to make this fix would take about, oh, three hours? Four?" Yzak replied in kind.

"And in two hours, I'll be reassembling the Buster's legs." Which tasking put Kira off the project at that time.

Yzak was silent for a moment, considering what needed to be done. "You know, there is one person working on this weapon markedly smaller than the two of us."

"Uh-huh, you think she could deal with it?" Kira asked in clear response.

"Well, what did it take us? A little drill work, bolts and grommets? No big deal, really."

"You know, if Hikaru gets injured, Miriallia is going to blame us," Kira continues his line of dodging.

"You got a better idea, then?" Yzak concluded the argument phase of the discussion.

It was thirty seconds before Kira answered. "Nope. Not a clue."

"Hikaru, are you done with the clamps?" Yzak asked.

"Not the center four lines, I was trying to figure out how to get to them," Hikaru replied, looking just over the top edge of the port-side launcher at them. "Need something?"

"Yeah, we want to put some Kevlar blankets around the critical components between the two launchers, but we can't get in there."

Hikaru disappeared below the edge of the launcher for a moment, presumably to check the clearance in between the launcher assemblies, then popped back up. "I can do it, all I need to know is how."

"Check over here." Kira led her to the rig they had set up on the outside of the launcher. "See how this is drilled through, then the grommets are suspended from these eye-bolts?"

"Yeah." Hikaru checked the assembly thoroughly. "Yeah, I can do it."

"Alright, figure out how to get in there then we'll start with the hose clamps. I'll lower them to you one at a time so you don't get caught in there."

The arrangements made, Hikaru ended up having to climb up on top of the launcher assembly, then slowly lower herself down between the two launcher loading mechanisms. When down there, Kira began by handing her hose clamps one at a time, until all eight of the fittings in the center of the assembly had been secured. Then came the difficult part.

"Here." Kira lowered a pneumatic impact drill down to her. "Use these;" he stripped his own safety glasses off to give to her. "We'll drill all four holes on one side in one go, then the four on the other side, then we'll do the bolts and lastly the blankets."

"Okay, just tell me where." Kira showed the first location on the frame beam with a laser pointer.

"If you're a little off, we can compensate, so precision is not a huge deal," Yzak declared. "This whole thing is a jury-rig anyways, if it lives for an extra minute, so much the better, but my life isn't depending on you getting it right to three decimal places."

"At least we got the things working with telemetry from your TTS," Kira noted with a soured tone. Doing so had taken four hours of trial-and-massive-error programming operations.

"Don't remind me," Yzak replied, just as soured from the experience. Whoever did the software handling for those launchers needed to be brutalized, shot, napalmed, and then carpet bombed just for good measure in Yzak's opinion. 'Gross misuse of software code' was his operational description of the problem, for his records.

"All right, where next?" To which Kira pointed out the second drill location with his laser pointer. Hikaru moved onto it without reserve, though she had to contort herself somewhat sideways and horizontal to get the drill in proper place to bore the hole and maintain control. Since the drilling was going through 0.5cm steel beam and the drill bit in question was a Mithiril bit, they got lucky in that they didn't have to use lubricant to do the drilling, as Mithiril resisted seizing or thermal expansion in drilling applications.

Though the drilling operation only took about forty seconds, it took Kira less than half that time to come to a conclusion. Kira would then spend the next half-hour trying to get the view out of his mind, as well as a couple other contortions she had to work into in pursuit of the task at hand.

-x-x-x-

(11 November AC195, 1600 hours)

With the ship above the waves, a rotating guard had been stationed on the foredeck and the reardeck to prevent the ship from being ambushed without an immediate response for a third time. In addition to the Mobile Suit guards on the fore and aft decks, several work crews had been organized for the purpose of patching up the ship's numerous dents and scrapes. Work had begun 20 hours ago, and was scheduled for another 20 hours to come. A bet pool was running around the ship whether or not work would be able to continue without interruption; Kira had bet twenty C-bills for, Yzak had bet fifty against.

"You know, after a few hours to think about it, I don't know why we're betting C-bills on this issue," Yzak said without much in the way of conviction. "I mean, when you get down to it, we've got pretty much no chance to ever see the Inner Sphere again, so...why bother, y'know? Betting souvenirs would be just as easy, and probably more worthwhile."

Kira could not help but acknowledge the logic to Yzak's comment. "You do have a point, but we had to bet something, and betting Figaro Golds would have been just as effective, when you get down to it. I am not giving up those few trinkets I've picked up, though."

"At least the gold has some measure of value wherever we go," Yzak said deadpan.

"As does all the rest of the haul Nicol and Fuu picked up from those ancient caves."

"Yeah, that was a serious mother of a load they picked up. Just hanging around in a chest with a few worn-out traps to guard it. I gotta give 'em points for that one."

"Hate to interrupt the reverie, guys, but something is tracking us," Sai reported.

"Track 'em back, see if the lousy bastards will go away," It was becoming a bit of an old-hat story for the Archangel, military search aircraft would come looking but when the Archangel returned the favor, they left fast.

"That's the problem, there isn't anything in the area we're being tracked from," Sai replied. "I show a clear sensor board, but tracking radar emissions from 4000 meters. Port side."

Kira immediately looked his Gundam in that direction. "Oh yeah, there's something coming in right now. Show possible hostile of unknown type coming in from overland," Kira declared. "Appears to be a fighter type, fairly large one."

"What – there! Ten o'clock high!" The target flared for a moment, the halo of a particle beam of some kind; Yzak knew what was coming. "Oh hell no!" The Duel's shield was more than enough to block the narrow beam from the nose of the craft. "Definite hostile! Fifty bucks, Kira," Yzak settled the debate about the bet before he brought his own beam rifle up and fired three shots at the target.

"Hostile?!" Kira replied after taking a heavier beam hit from the same target in the beam shield, this one enough to knock his Gundam down from pure energy transfer. "Downright unfriendly!"

"I'll give 'em hell!" Said fighter screamed over the ship about a thousand meters above the Archangel's flight level. Though, as it did so, it provided the perfect ventral (6) shot to Yzak, who took it. Two beams lanced out at the foolhardy pilot, one struck the aft part of the fighter and apparently burned out an engine on it.

"That thing looks freaking weird, like it's some mash of fighter and Mobile Su – SHIT!" Yzak's Gundam was caught looking the wrong direction, leaving him little recourse in stopping the incoming heavy missile or bazooka round that knocked him down. "More of 'em? What the hell?"

"I got the fighter, you take the ground-pounders!" Kira ordered. "Archangel, status of backup?"

"Tolle is pre-flighting, Nicol is moving to catapult right now. No ETA on the Magic Knights." Miriallia sounded groggy, likely because this was her assigned sleep rotation.

"Mobile Units, Archangel, fire support from the ship is going to be limited, we're still trying to fix most of the point-defense grid," Commander La Flaga said, apparently not pleased he had to say such a thing. "Do what you can, hold them until we can get clear and break away."

"Once more unto the breech," Yzak grumped, wrestling to get his Gundam back on its feet. Thankfully, the enemy forces on the ground had not followed up with a beam weapon, though he could identify at least one of the MS that carried the Support Lasers – except, it was painted white instead of black, and did not appear to have the Support Laser weapons. Yzak activated his Sniper TTS, which caused the eyes of his machine to flicker, before he brought up the beam rifle and fired two shots.

"I'm on the fighter!" Kira shouted before he hammered his jets and cleared off the forward deck of the ship.

"Nicol Amalfi, GuAIZ, launching!" Once cleared of the ship, he immediately began jetting hard to land on the semi-forested hills to the left of the Archangel.

"What?" Kira asked his monitors as the fighter he was chasing began contorting and transformed into a Mobile Suit – specifically, what looked like a Gundam, with one very large beam weapon for its primary. "Oh, crap, Gundam! It's a transformable Gundam!"

"Take it down, Kira, take it down hard!" Yzak shouted in response. Having struck zero for five in sniping, he set aside the long-range sight and cleared off the reardeck of the ship, headed toward the enemy position in the edge of a semi-dense forest just up the shore from where the Archangel was cruising. When he landed, the frontline of the enemy formation became rather obvious as his Gundam was immediately subject to attack from machinegun fire from three different Mobile Suits.

"There's about ten in the treeline – three of 'em like the ones with the heavy lasers, the rest split between air and ground types!" Nicol warned the others before he began moving around to flank the treeline foes and displace their ambush into Yzak's waiting crosshairs. The missiles from the Duel's disposable missile pack began flying even as Nicol first entered the treeline and began working his way toward the enemy ranks.

Kira did not give the enemy a chance to take an advantageous position against himself or the ship, he simply closed on the transforming unit with both Beam sabers out and ready for a close quarters scrap. The enemy must have misread intentions, however, and failed to hit Kira in close with a high-power blast from the beam cannon it carried – thankfully, it also managed to miss the Archangel, but only by a matter of meters. In close, Kira started with the most dangerous weapon exposed – the beam rifle – and chopped it in half with a rising swing, before he tried stabbing into the chest of the enemy Gundam with the other Beam Saber. Wizened up from the initial shock of misreading his foe, the enemy knew what was going on now and countered appropriately. He slammed into the Strike with all force of his thrusters and shoved the larger Gundam away temporarily. Kira had no choice but to take the hit and absorb the recoil, which gave his foe precious seconds to eject a beam saber from the shield and prepare blade for the close quarter battle.

"Tolle Koenig, Buster, launching!" The Archangel had come to a halt and turned bow-forward to the battle on the ground, where its limited forward armaments that survived the battle could be used to support the ground units. This also put Tolle right next to the Duel, which was as good a place for the Buster to drop as any in Tolle's opinion. "Comin' for ya!" He shouted before dropping the hammer on his weapons combined in shotgun form. The trees ate into the effectiveness of his attack, but the sight of an air-type MS arm doing lazy circles in the sky was evidence that it did not fail completely. The fire coming from the treeline did not take long to drive in on his machine now, though it (like the attacks headed for the Duel) was mostly ballistic and haphazardly aimed, resulting in few hits and no damage. A second shot into a clearing in the thickets resulted in a crippled land-type MS, which further took heat off the ground teams, followed by a barrage of particle cannons and Gauss Rifles from the Archangel that brought a tree down on the air-type that Tolle had damaged.

Kira had snap-decided on the one-two-three principle of fighting, hitting the target in different ways in rapid succession. So, he began with the Xiphas III railguns and fired four shots while he hammered his jets to close in again. Of four shots, two hit, one on the shield and one in the right arm, though the enemy did not appear to have taken much in the way of damage. As Kira began closing again, the enemy lit off his paired head vulcans and shoulder-mount machine cannons, and Kira rightly figured the Phase Shift armor on his machine would protect him, except for one freak happenstance. The machine cannon fire walked across the center chest of the Strike Freedom, and in one of those classic cosmic accidents, a single penetrator struck an unprotected edifice on the chest – the barrel of the Callidus multi-phase energy cannon. The Phase Shift managed to shear the fins off the penetrator, but the rest of the long-rod slug bored inside and buried itself fully a foot into the beam generator and accelerator. Before Kira could begin the second phase of his plan, his Callidus went red and showed INOP on the weapons panel, a rather startling but hardly impossible result. Kira slammed his thrusters hard to the right, hoping to circle around for a reengage and use the enemy's shield against himself, but the pilot acted faster than Kira would have given him credit. The thrust was expert, but the follow-up diagonal slash was artwork of combat itself, and before Kira could realize what had happened, his Gundam's left hand was on the way to the ground while he continued to try and clear away. Again, the performance of the enemy machine was the final deciding factor of the engagement, as Kira took a third hit, this one removing most of the left arm below the shoulder.

"Windam, Control, Kira's in trouble, move to support immediately!" Miriallia ordered while said Rune God mounted to the catapult. On the ground, Nicol had engaged the enemy left flank with aplomb, and before the nearby land-type had even seen the GuAIZ, he fired up the beam claws and chopped through its hip plates from rear to fore, bringing it down in a massive heap literally at his feet. The shot to the upper chest was pro forma but battlefield necessity, enough to disable the machine and secure his rear, such as it was. Once he jumped clear of the disabled foe, he tried coming down on one of the white MS with the beam claws, but the pilot wised and cleared away from him before the strike would have been fatal. That did not stop Nicol's other intention, and before he even landed, a beam was loosed into the side air intake of a flight-type MS, which was enough to drop it by severing the engine coolant systems. Nicol took the hit from the one that got away, the beam sheared a significant chunk of his MS off, including the right-side rocket anchor, but that strike threw his jump maneuver off-balance and rather than jump through a clearing, he flew the GuAIZ practically headfirst into a significantly large oak tree. The follow-up shot from the white machine struck dead-center on the upper chest of his Gundam, and found the strike-hardened battlemech fusion reactor inside. Rather than risk further damage that might result in an engine explosion, he decided to play it smart; Nicol SCRAM'd the reactor to play dead. "Nicol is down, engine hit, I'm playing dead right now," he reported.

"Fuu Hououji, Windam, launching!" Fuu shouted, urging Windam forward and thereby tripped the catapult, but immediately as she did so she realized it was not going to be her best launch yet. Barely thirty meters out of the launch alley, Windam flew chest-first through a cluster of missiles, though the Rune God had shrugged more and more powerful weapons off in the past. Once through that obscurant, Fuu vectored up and right, toward where the battle between the unknown Gundam and Kira had moved through. The rapidly-approaching Rune God did not go unnoticed by the enemy machine, and where it was guarding against an attempted renewed offensive from Kira, it also managed to block and jam aside Windam's massive sword. The swipe at Kira was less than effective, but the shield check and burst of machine Cannon did cause Windam to back off, if not far. Her re-engagement did not work out well, as the enemy machine cleared back and away from the massive sword of Windam, and again with the machine cannons, though this time Windam was readied for it and took the hits on the hardest armor of his frame. Fuu's third shot at the enemy came off a little better this time around, as the enemy took the hit on the shield with intent to counter and follow through, but the fact that Windam's sword became embedded halfway through his shield made a counterattack a no-go.

"Thanks, Fuu," Kira declared, relieved that someone had taken the heat off his abused Gundam.

Yzak put the thoughts of the air battle out of his mind. His Gundam was not flight-certified, and he had real enemies ahead of him to take care of. "Tolle, close up on 'em and take 'em in close! We're at a disadvantage out here in the clear!"

Tolle did not reply by words, just actions as he jumped forward 200 meters, closing the gap almost instantly while firing on them from above. His two hefted weapons garnered no kills, but the four missiles he used to 'sanitize' his landing zone did the job with a confirmed kill on the third of the white machines. He landed in a fire alley, however, and the second of the white machines got him good with a shot to the right femur on his Gundam. "Damn, not again!" Tolle shouted as his Gundam collapsed right on the bum leg, though he did get some consolation in taking down the last of the air units with a burst from the gun launcher – the forty-millimeter 'shotgun pellets' of the blast was enough to sunder the entire right half of the enemy MS to flying scrap, to which Yzak silenced with a volley of Shiva rail gun slugs. For him, however, the battle ended as a loss, with the second of the white machines having finished up the job begun on his leg, and a tap to the chest knocked out the cooling circuit for his engine.

"Tolle's down, engine casualty," Yzak reported. "Archangel, I need some serious backup out here!"

"Rayearth, launching!" Kira put the ground battle out of his mind, knowing that the foe in front of him was far too dangerous to suffer a distraction. It was all he could do not to gape, then, when the enemy did regain momentum and struck Windam in the one place it really counted – the exposed left wing. The Beam Saber chopped through effortlessly, and in recoil reaction Fuu loosed the sword and dropped altitude. Kira saw his one chance to capitalize, and made sure it counted. His strike of the beam saber landed on the enemy beam saber, and with the enemy melee weapon sheared off he had no recourse but to grab for Fuu's sword. Kira could only smile in reply, as his Gundam did not loose the shield to which the sword was embedded, but with the sword suddenly taking on an effective weight of 3 kilotons, his Gundam was quickly dragged to the ground at a breakneck pace. Kira simply stowed his remaining beam saber, drew one of the beam rifles, and waited. After the enemy Gundam landed, a single precision shot to the torso silenced the threat.

"Fuu, you all right?"

"That is the weirdest pain I have ever felt," Fuu replied, slightly dazed. "I natively don't have wings, but they still hurt!"

"Wait, this isn't right!" someone unknown half-shouted on an open radio channel.

"What? Who said that?" Miriallia replied immediately. "Identify on this channel!"

"Sanc Kingdom forces, cease fire!" the same guy ordered on the open channel, presumably at the same time as he did on their command frequency.

"What? Who called time out?" Yzak asked after the fire stopped very abruptly.

"Wait a minute!" The second of the white MS threw aside its beam rifle. "We're not enemies!"

"Like hell we ain't enemies, kid!" Yzak replied. "You just shot our unit up for no damned reason whatsoever! Why shouldn't I blow your ass to the moon for that?" Despite the gesture of peace from the enemy ranks, Yzak had not removed his aimpoint from the said machine.

"You're not Oz, are you?" the kid asked more reasonably as Hikaru closed up on Yzak's right side, potentially shielding the Duel from an attack from the other white MS.

"Hell no we are not Oz, I don't have a clue who Oz is."

"Oh crap," an older lady said on the same channel. "We just attacked a neutral party," she admitted.

"Well that was incredibly intelligent. Let me guess, bad intel?" Silence was the only answer to Yzak's scathing question. "Figured as much. Now what would make you think that this rather unique warship belongs to whoever these Oz pukes are?" He asked deadpan.

"We were informed that Oz may be attempting to land specialist troops on the southern shores of the Kingdom," the kid replied in turn.

"And this Oz group, they own a base northwest of here, near the narrows out to the open ocean?" Yzak asked calmly.

"Yeah, that's the Northern Baltic base—" The lady drew silent after Yzak began chuckling mirthlessly. "What's so funny?"

"You just got played pretty hard, pilot," Kira answered for Yzak. "We just tore through that base three days ago, but they knew we were headed in this general direction. If you got that intel from inside Oz, there's a pretty good chance your source is compromised, and they tried playing two enemies off against each other."

"That's not—" The lady gasped. "Oh, God, it IS possible."

"It is likely that Oz did try using us to destroy this ship," a different guy declared. "Oz has a track record of such deceptions, such as New Edwards and Operation Daybreak," he concluded.

"Oh God, now what?" the lady asked.

"I think you need to talk this one over with our commanding officer. If this scenario is right, and we both got played by these Oz pissants, well, the Captain will want to do something about that," Yzak said.

"Now, where did my arm land?" Kira asked nobody in particular, looking down off the side of the Archangel for the severed limb of his Gundam.

---

Author's Chapter Afterword:

I LIVE! Or, at least I think I am still alive. Hard to say, sometimes. What is death, but the absence of living? And trust me on this if nothing else, seven months of job-hunting is not living. Sucks to be searching when about 20% of the rest of the country is out job-hunting as well (and that is including all the people that the Government and media won't claim are unemployed because it makes 'the boss' look bad).

The first of the battles for the Archangel was a bit of an odd one. I kept coming up with either median results (between 41 and 60) or mildly good results (some of the AA takedowns) until right there at the end, when things shifted wildly from side to side. You could see where it went bad (first appearance of the Taurus machines that took out the Gottfried), then good (Kira scratched that element) then bad (A second flanking element got Tolle at the legs). All things considered, though, after a six-month hiatus on battle writing, I don't think this one turned out as dynamic or as satisfying as I wanted.

The fight of Strike Freedom against Wing was hellish and brutal, and very random to boot. Far more to my liking this go around. The intro paragraph (first clash) was just that, setting the battle circumstances with rolls of 87 (W missed its buster rifle shot) – 94 (Kira destroyed the Buster Rifle) – 39 (W dodged the second beam saber) – 29 (W body-checked the SF and drew its own beam saber). The second paragraph is where the scoreboard really changed, starting with a 74 (two hits of four for the Xiphas), then 39 (W machine cannons damaged the Callidus beam cannon on the SF), then 7 (W removed the left hand of the Strike Freedom), and a 16 (Kira lost the remainder of his left arm). You can see how the results build on themselves, depending on how the rolls come, where successive negative or positive results build up to worse and worse circumstances for the inflicted party.

The score again changed wildly in the ground battle second paragraph, going from 88 (initial strike) to 55 (attempted on Noin, hit on the Aries) to 16 (Noin hit Nicol) to 4 (Nicol flew into tree, then took a beam to the engine), though fortunes held in the air battle third. Fuu had a rough start, being catapulted through a flight of missiles (21), and even a rougher start against Heero (33), which didn't improve the first time she reengaged (21), but did end on a neutral note there at the end (55); thankfully, the Rune Gods are some tough hombres. And once more, it vacillated in the ground battle with a 51, then a 30, then 55, then 7 – not looking good for the poor sods in either direction, but they are running out of machines on the ground by this time.

The air battle ended on a high note for the Archangel – 5, 87, 50, 63 and Heero is done. The battle status roll before switching back (enemy ace downed) came up 36, which is not low enough to force enemy favor, but not high enough to cause a surrender, so this is how it ended. Now you see why I take solace in the results of the dice, because battles can become something frenetic, almost unpredictable, and it makes it significantly entertaining to write.

Now, the great question is, what next? I leave that up to your imagination, but of course I am required to give this little tidbit. NEXT UP: Captain Ramius and Captain Noin discuss the intelligence failure that led to the battle, and what to do about it. Romafeller begins their overt moves in another part of the globe, seemingly unrelated but far from it.

ADDENDUM: HOLY SHIT! As of this posting, I have the following stats on this doc:

33,450 hits on this story, which is in excess of 1100 hits average PER CHAPTER. That is incredibly rare for Gundam SEED fics any more. Highest hits per chapter is actually neck-and-neck between Chapter 9 and Chapter 13. Just for ref, at least 5000 of those hits came after I posted chapter 30. I forget the exact number.

260 Reviews, which is an average of 8.6 reviews per chapter. For the record, the only other story I have doing anywhere near this well is my other epic tale, Legend Of The Jokers Wild (Revised), and it has not yet passed 100 reviews.

Story is in 8 C2 Archives, 68 members have it listed as favorites, and 51 members have specific alerts for this story alone. These numbers beat out all the stats for all my other stories combined.

These are the kinds of stats that keep an author going, knowing that so many people read one's work and like it. Much thank you all for the continued patronage, and I expect you all to keep those comments and ideas coming, the more the merrier :)

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Review Replies:

Erm, HOLY SHIT! 22 reviews for my last chapter! That is so insane as to be noteworthy beyond even the norm!

As usual, here are the public replies, in order of review submitted.

Knives91: I hope this is answer enough as to the trouble to come.

Strata-Assassin: The water entry is actually primacy of chance: earth is 70 percent water, therefore the likelihood of showing up somewhere else is low, though henceforth not all jumps will be on-planet.

There will be a bit of a drinking binge, eventually. Not sure when, or where, or under what circumstances, but it will happen eventually.

Hope this covers your missing the Knight's weapons.

Well, Gundam SEED operates on much fridge logic at times, so there really is only a plot force excuse for how well they started working together. It took quite a bit of effort to get going right on this one, for obvious reasons. I detonated the Fridge Logic reservoir with a rigged can of American-grade Whoopass before I started writing this story.

Natarle will get her just dues in the side-story I am still planning for the remnants of the FF6 world. Kira on the bridge, however, doesn't quite add up as was shown.

You have asked for that more than once, though of course I have to wait for the dice to give a positive result.

You can be mad about Heine, but the dice have spoken. Sorry about that.

One Village Idiot: As you can see from this chapter, the burner is being turned up at every battle. As to who would make more effective commandos, it is a toss-up between the pilots and the Cook's team, though favoring the latter because they are trained special operations personnel, not jack-of-all-trade officers like the pilots.

Nim Maj: The status of who has what when the lead is through flying will be a bit interesting, since the appearance of the Archangel is going to change a lot of things up. Even in its present beat-down state, that is.

FraserMage: This chapter should give you an answer to that question. The Sanc Kingdom still exists and Heero is still driving his Wing Gundam, or at least was driving it until he grabbed Fuu's sword. Oops.

Deathzealot: I hope this answers your questions a bit more thoroughly. Things just happened a bit too fast for any kind of situation management in that last battle, until someone realized things were not going right...

CHM01: I hope this chapter disabused you of the idea that the Gundams are the only thing capable of challenging the Archangel. There already has been some salvaging, but there will necessarily have to be more—and better—salvage to properly conduct operations here.

Jaded (ANON review): thank you, I hope this chapter continues the tradition of it going well.

Knightwolf 1875: You would be surprised the possible decision tree that is coming for the crew...

Barricade: The land of Oz...really, when you mentioned that, I was reminded not of L. Frank Baum and his classic work, but of ICP's Wizard Of The Hood song...

I am truly unsure who will get what in the end, but there will be some serious bouts to come, both in and out of the cockpit. This universe screams for more dynamic application of whoopass, and the Archangel crew natively thinks outside the box, so...

Actually, I was thinking someone else for the battle against Trowa, but that may not come to pass given the timeframe.

The evolution of the ship is as much random as it is expectable, so the dice have said no major mods these past two go-abouts, but that may change here at the next transition...or sooner. As to an AI, well, if there is one that will integrate into the ship, I already have that one in mind...

EvilManicX: Well, we've already encountered two of the Pilots (Quatre and Heero), and as to Mobile Dolls, the stakes keep getting higher and higher, so eventually you will see them in battle... Of course, those beam cannons they carry could prove useful to Murdoch's madmen...

EtienneOfTheWestWind: Well, the crew doesn't quite know how long they're going to be at it, but after this jump most of them have come to the realization that it will be a very long time before they get home. As to Wufei, well, he's still in space right now, and given Miriallia's tendencies, he should probably stay up there for his own health...

NHO: NHO, there are so many ways to do 'Bad SEED' at any point in the series, it is insane. You may get to see a few of them, even. Depends on the dice and all that.

Akasui: Well, amigo, nothing is quite as clear-cut as it first seems. Oz, for whatever reason they have, wants them dead. They'll even (possibly) sucker a neutral and pacifist nation into attacking them. The road home will not be easy for anyone.

As to the Strike Freedom, well, it is good but far from the marvel seen in GSD. Even with different design implementations, it may not be the only tool to save the ship, and there will be far more pain to come before things even begin to settle down.

This chapter should give you a better idea where they are in the series, which is well after Heero destroyed the Wing Gundam. Yzak can still take the beating, though :)

Gundam 00 and Xenosaga have been frequent requests, but hold onto those thoughts, there are many places still to go before the blatant end.

Mega1987: Sorry for the delay before the new chapter, I lost my will to write for a few months there. All should be better now :)

Gundam Chief: Impressive, you're the fourth that has said the locals are hamburger in front of the Archangel except for the Gundams. Have you people no faith in Oz? I hope this chapter shakes the thought of suckiness in Oz ranks out of your mind...

JC: The reality to come will be stranger still...

Lord Sia: My follow-through has been lax in months of late, but I have not given up hope yet. I want this one done! I want to see where the dice lead it as much as you people want to read it, rest assured of that.

I have been ripped long and hard for the actions of the dice, especially in my Jokers Wild series. However, there comes a point at which you can write a story and have it turn out blandish, or you can introduce random decision trees and change the narrative accordingly, which can result in a wildly different story from expectations. Like in this chapter, Kira got his arse handed to him and Fuu was well on the way to joining him in defeat, but one little error on Heero's part and the battle folded out from under him.

The evolving ship principle I borrowed and upgraded from MKR, but it is far from done. With much in the way of lands still to traverse, there will be much in the way of upgrading to come, both from the crew making mods and from the ship evolving itself, though in the end the path of mods is still random. I don't have a set plan for it, since I don't know where everyone is going yet. The machines, however, are not tied to the evolution link and as such run the risk of being outclassed rather easily in certain circumstances.

Thank you for the recommendations for locations to go, Stargate is a common request. May do that eventually, may not. Still classified at this time :)

Hellhound-D.O.W: Most of my grammar work is courtesy of Strata-Assassin, it pays dividends to have a very good beta. As usual, I have to say where we go next is classified, but that is half the thrill, is it not?

Confue (Anon Review): Aube is the manga spelling of Orb, I have since stopped using it to maintain parity with the official spelling and material.

Alex Yamato: Gundam 00 is becoming a more frequent request. The more the merrier, I say. As to the rest, I hope this chapter puts a bit of a point on what you are seeing between the lines...

Mordalfus Grea: Your knowledge of Murphy's Laws is excellent, and you can expect they are in full force in this story.

Barricade (Again): Sorry for the delay, comrade, here it is :)

2ndsly: You are correct about the Valiants, I call them rail guns when in canon they are coil guns (gauss rifles, etc). And trust me on this if nothing else, the Archangel will need every pound of whoopass it can muster throughout the rest of the story, because things are only going to get progressively uglier.

Eduardo (ANON Review): Your appraisal is correct, and they just went head-to-head with the infamous Wing Gundam. Things will only get grittier from here on out...

THANK YOU ALL FOR THE REVIEWS! I am sorry this took me so long to get out, but since November I have been under varying degrees of writer's block and outside distractions. Now that I am back into it, I should have more chapters done faster in coming weeks.

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The Gripe Sheet: Again, well over a hundred corrections to be made courtesy of the grammar ninja, Strata-Assassin. No outstanding probs for the last chapter.

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Footnotes:

(1): Central Battle Computer, similar to but far more powerful than the Learning Computer System of the RX-78 system. Also houses the unit's AI system, integral to this line of the Strike Freedom.

(2): This is a safety measure similar to the industrial safety system Lock-out Tag-out. Basically, in this case it prevents the GuAIZ from being used if it is still under maintenance or not safe to use.

(3): When you see a guy with the lighted batons or a guy using strange hand gestures to guide a plane or MS as it begins moving, you are seeing a Marshaller. In the case of planes, these guys are usually accompanied by two wing-walkers, who keep the pilot from clipping wings with objects or other planes. Despite how easy this looks, it is one of the most vital tasks for modern flight operations, and one of the most difficult.

(4): In Gundam Wing, all weapon systems (with one exception) look like particle or plasma-based beam weapons, including the Space Laser. So, I'm mixing it up to show deliberate differences.

(5): This system, the use of kevlar blankets to stop fragmentation on the inside of armor plating (often called spalling) is presently used in the M1 series of Main Battle Tanks as a protective measure for the crew. Supposedly the only thing more effective is a double-hull design, which is not effective on tanks and would definitely weigh too much in this application.

(6): Ventral is the lower surface of a ship, craft, or fish. Dorsal surfaces are the top of the ship, craft, or fish.