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...

50. Rebels With A New Cause (Revised Chpt)

(Archangel's Amazing Adventures, Set 6: Rampaging Blue Light)

(Story Chapter 50 / Section Chapter 7 REVISED: Rebels With A New Cause)

(Day 39, 1600 Hours Shipboard Time)
(Archangel Stateroom)

The briefing materials provided for the command level were short (only 6 pages of findings) and brutally succinct. The longest to read through it was Morgan Chevalier, and even that was only ten minutes. Miriallia was the fastest, with a horrified low-whistle after she finished and the material started sinking in.

Murrue had the question of the hour: "This isn't some kind of sick joke, is it?"

"I used to like science fiction horror crossover stories, but this is infinitely worse than what I thought was edgy and entertaining in the past," Morgan admitted.

"It is a lot to stomach," Mu sympathized.

"This is no joke, and no false flag," Yzak shot that line of thinking down quickly. "What we saw inside the Harvester Ship, it's all too real."

"And, as Kira pointed out a couple days ago, you don't bait an enemy by instilling in them a deep-seated desire to kill you before you kill them, you bait an enemy into his weaknesses so you can exploit them," Mu said. "Something like this is a big red flag proclaiming bad intentions to every colonized world around the galaxy, and for one solar system to do that is not the way to achieve their objective."

"Okay, not a joke, not a false flag, real-life horror story on an interplanetary scale," Murrue summed it up. "All for this 'Continuing Life' program. Now we have a name for the horror show, and we have their timetables, their battle plans, their designs, the whole nine meters."

"It'll take us weeks to sort through it all, Captain," Yzak admitted. "We have the big, critical operations points, though: timetables and schematics."

"Where and when they will be, and how to kill them," Morgan drew the obvious conclusion from Yzak's comment. "What are you proposing?"

"Destroy them as we go," Yzak said. "Spare them not one damn bit," he tacked on for good measure.

"Anyone involved in data analysis have a different opinion?" Murrue asked.

"Even Fuu and Parfait are on board," Yzak said coldly. Murrue figured that a solid barometer of the current situation: if the hands-down least vengeful of the Magic Knights was on board with killing them by the numbers, the situation was beyond the pale and in dire need of correction.

"All right," Murrue said as something of a mental bridge for herself, not as any kind of declaration. "We continue underway as normal for the time being. Morgan, Mu, Miriallia, I want you three to work out a plan of attack for the remaining Harvest ships on our way there, rope in any of the pilots or mechanics needed."

"Will do," Morgan answered stiffly.

"After we have the schedule up to arrival at Tarak and Meijere, we need plans for defending those planets, assuming both possible scenarios: full support from those governments or no support. Mu, I'll let you determine how we do that one."

"On it," Mu said immediately.

"Third, we need plans to take the fight to the Harvest Capital, and what to do when we finish sinking their navy. Morgan, you're responsible for that plan."

"Yes ma'am," Morgan said with a low growl to his voice. Those in the room knew it was directed at the Harvest, not any person within the Stateroom.

"I want options on the table in three days. Any questions?" Nobody spoke up in ten seconds, so: "Yzak, please remain."

The Stateroom emptied out in less than twenty seconds. "Something going on, Captain?" Yzak asked after the door closed.

"A lot, and that is the problem," Murrue waved him to one of the chairs on the other side of the desk. The Duel pilot was quick to take the seat in the here and now, though he quietly reflected that in years past he had been actively trying to shoot this ship down and would never have imagined being this close to the Captain on friendly terms. "As much as I have my own concerns recently, I have been keeping track on the pilots during this mad crusade. I've noticed a trend, though, and not a good one."

Yzak held up a hand to forestall the next section. "I know, Kira, Athrun, and myself have been burning it pretty hard lately."

" 'Pretty hard'?" Murrue snorted derisively at his understatement. "Eighteen to twenty hours of simulations and data analysis, two hours sleep and barely enough meal time or exercise time to register on a stopwatch? That's not 'burning it pretty hard', Yzak, that is more along the lines of burning it out with a blowtorch."

"The analysis and research work isn't going to go away, ma'am, it has to be done," Yzak pointed out fairly.

"I know," Murrue bowed to the reality of the matter, but was not about to give up on her intention: "But that does not change the fact that all of us in general, and you three in particular, are headed for a stroke in a hurry. Stress kills, in some industries it was called the silent killer for a reason."

"Gunfire kills, too, and I'd prefer to go into the next few battles with all the advantages possible to avoid that," Yzak countered.

Murrue sighed. "All right, since I'm not going to be able to convince you to step back on your own, let's combine intentions. The three of you can continue work until the major analysis is done, then I want all three of you off-line for 36 hours to catch up on sleep and crew rest. Acceptable?"

"I'll have to convince Kira and Athrun of it, both of which are going to go only after kicking and screaming about it," Yzak admitted.

"I'll leave the method up to you," Murrue said, glad that she was able to convince at least one of them to back off before burnout. "Until then, daily reports on progress unless you come across a major game-changer buried in the data."

"Understood, Captain," Yzak acknowledged the orders.

"Dismissed."

-x-x-x-

(Day 39, 1700 Hours Shipboard Time)
(Nirvana shuttle, approaching the Archangel for landing)

"Entry course confirmed, starboard side launch bay to open hangar parking Sierra-2," Barnette repeated the instructions from the Archangel Operator.

"Acknowledged, proceed," Dorothy answered and cleared Barnette to land on the ship. A moment thereafter, the video link cut out.

She double-checked that her radio link was off before she sighed. "Here we are, pirates, and we're still doing it like proper flight crew," Barnette half-complained.

"Safety matters," Parfait said.

"Safety always matters," Magno said from behind Parfait. "I've seen too many good ones go through burials underway. Safety first."

Barnette didn't respond audibly, she just nodded. She was focused on not running into the sides of the launch catapult as she took the ship down the launch bay and into the hangar area of the Archangel — safely, if nothing else. Even still, she did not miss where her co-pilot was looking, out the port-side window and toward the Gundams hangared on that side of the ship.

"Passing the catapult breech," Barnette said. "Ten seconds to the turn at Sierra-2."

"When we land, Barnette and Jura with me, Parfait and Gascogne, I believe you have a meeting with Murdoch?" Magno pointed out.

"Looking at options for overhauling our water purifiers," Parfait admitted somewhat sheepishly. The engineering and support equipment on the Nirvana was her dominion, but in this case she had to admit defeat: she knew what the problem was, she couldn't figure out a way to correct it with materials on hand.

"Do what you have to, we need the water," Magno said as the shuttle began settling down to its designated parking spot.

"Already have a couple ideas in mind," Parfait admitted.

"Brace for landing," Barnette said calmly a bare moment before the shuttle's runners touched down. After they touched, the mechanic that was marshaling the shuttle to landing pressed a remote control button, and immediately all five occupants felt gravity take over and draw them down into their seats.

"That was the weirdest feeling," Jura said, though even still Barnette could tell that her mind was elsewhere and the comment was distant and distracted, almost automatic, from her love.

"On this ship, I'm not surprised," Gascogne commented. She was first to open the shuttle door, though once she deployed the stairs the chief mechanic for the Nirvana stepped aside for the Captain to exit first.

Magno exited the shuttle at her usual pace and was met at the landing by one of the Magic Knights — Fuu, if she remembered the name properly. "Welcome aboard, Captain Vivon," she prompted the Pirate Captain.

"Thank you, Magic Knight," Magno said serenely. "I take it you are here to escort us up to the stateroom?"

"Yes ma'am," Fuu said curtly. "Captain Ramius and Commander Chevalier are waiting."

Magno nodded. "Please lead the way. Jura, Barnette, with me please."

"Aye, Captain," Barnette responded immediately. Fuu set a respectable pace to cross the hangar and back into the interior of the ship, slow enough that Magno had no trouble keeping pace but fast enough that they were not dawdling in a work zone.

The Dread Squadron Lead looked around the myriad machines in the hangar of this foreign warship and thanked the turns of fate that these troops were helping the Nirvana, not against it. After all, if half of what BC said was true, the coming battles would be plenty difficult enough even with the assistance of this diehard crew.

-x-

(Same time as the shuttle landing)
(Paxis Enclosure, Engine Room, Archangel)

Paxis Archangel, like all the other Paxis beings throughout the universe, knew exactly where they were in relative space to the other Paxis units. This was no manner of secret or special conduct amongst themselves, even if the humans they now supported were leaning toward conflict with the Paxis beings caught in the middle.

Unlike the other Paxis units, Paxis Archangel had not been born in the vacuum of a high-energy parallel dimension, it was born of the seed of another Paxis, and was formed of the heart and soul of a warship like no other. It was not a being divorced of its actions, seeking only to survive. Paxis Archangel was now as much the engine of the ship as it was the will of the ship and the largest echo of her crew. Crazy as they were, Paxis Archangel would not betray their intentions or confidences, even if it meant putting itself in jeopardy. It thoroughly expected the crew would do the same for it, even if they were not completely divested from considering the ship and the Paxis one entity (technically they were separate).

It helped that Inova, the soon-to-be-avatar of the Paxis unit and their go-between for the crew and the engine, was also quite willing to help the crew it now knew more of than in those days that Inova had been ordered to fight the Archangel in defense of the Pillar of Cephiro and her lover.

So, for today, Inova would have to introduce himself, but with bad news on the movements of other Paxis units.

-x-

(5 minutes later)
(Stateroom, Warship Archangel)

"So, this is what we are up against," Magno said as she received the document pack from the Captain of the Archangel.

"We've only gone through a portion of the data so far, but what we've seen is frightening," Murrue said bluntly. "There is no two ways about this: we've got three minimum, maybe four battles lined up for the next 300 days, then a battle with two of the Harvester Ships at Tarak and Meijere roughly a week after we arrive."

"That will not be pleasant," Magno said. "Two ships, though, may be doable if we can receive some help from Tarak and Meijere."

"Unfortunately, Captains, the calculations have changed," a disembodied voice said from somewhere behind and to the left of Murrue's desk.

"What — where?" Morgan asked in that direction. "Who said that?"

"I know that voice," Murrue said somewhat grimly. "Inova?"

"Aye, Captain." Behind her and to her right, a meter-tall projection of Inova in his humanoid form appeared; it was clearly holographic given the translucence of the projection, but Murrue did not recall a holoprojector in the Stateroom before… "It has been a while since Commander Badgiruel destroyed my gemstone, but thanks to the efforts of the Paxis Archangel, I am now back to at least a projectable form."

"Okay, I was not expecting this at all," Murrue said with clear shock to voice. "Still intend to destroy the ship?"

Inova chuckled grimly. "Rightfully I never should have opposed this ship, Captain. You did what you were summoned for — what had to be done to protect Cephiro from the ravages of the Pillar. In the here and now, I have chosen to work with the Paxis Archangel to assist the ship, not stymie it."

"You fought him before?" Barnette asked.

"In the hangar, though in a different form," Murrue confirmed.

Inova nodded in confirmation. "I was the right hand to Zagato, the love of the Pillar of Cephiro, and at the time I did not know why the ship had been summoned, only that Zagato rightfully considered it a threat to his love. And I was early amongst many to fall before this warship and her crew. Zagato, and later the Pillar herself, also fell before this ship as was its summoned duty. On that, my only regret is not understanding in those days past that Zagato was leading an entire world to desolation for only his heart."

"That is the kind of love story that I read in my years past, long before I came to Meijere," Magno said.

"Still, tales of deeds and demise are not my reason for being here. Miladies Captain," Inova nodded to the screen in the room, which showed a relative map of the ship's course and the aforementioned contacts with Harvest assets. "The four battles to come, and the two Harvesters prior assigned to Tarak and Meijere, are now the least of the ships' concerns. Paxis Archangel has intercepted communications between some of the other Paxis units, specifically from a Paxis Overlord to a Paxis Kodiak and a Paxis Stargazer, to move to a rendezvous point and meet up with a fleet of ships to take operations against Tarak and Meijere."

"How many?" Commander Chevalier asked.

"Kodiak and Stargazer are Overlord-class command ships, and the orders disseminated include three more of the Harvest Motherships, so five total of their ranks," Inova said.

"Seven capital ships at Tarak and Meijere," Morgan half-groaned.

"That is going to be a very busy day," Murrue said.

"The intercept also included some other information that I do not understand, perchance you may?" Inova asked.

"I am listening," Murrue said.

"Paxis Overlord declared that it intends to put into Saturn Station for refit and upgrade, in case our ships intend to bring the battle to it."

"Better still," Morgan grumped. "I always thought God has a sense of humor, but this is a bit much."

"The only boon in this matter is that the reinforcements for the attack on Meijere and Tarak will set their timetable back an extra week," Inova pointed out.

"It is not much, but anything will help," Magno said.

"Aye, anything the Paxis can come up with to help reduce or eliminate the threat, please inform us," Murrue said.

"The Paxis is considering options, but I am unsure what direction it intends to go as of yet," Inova admitted. "Same as with the Paxis Nirvana, Captain Vivon, it is also working on options but has not settled into a plan as of yet."

"The way you keep talking about the Paxis is like a living being?" Jura asked.

Inova bristled at the question, briefly, but quickly composed himself. "Though not flesh and bone, yes, they are — I am — a living being. I was born of the raw energy of Existence and formed by magic, they born of the raw energy of Existence and formed in the environment from which they hail. Though the largest part of the Paxis family are neutral in these matters, Paxis Nirvana and Paxis Archangel most certainly are not — and I suspect Paxis Overlord is also not neutral, but in the service of opposition parties."

"So, now, we have to plan for what must come at Tarak and Meijere," Magno nodded twice. "Captain, I will have to discuss this with my senior staff, but to survive this we will need to increase the training tempo — and the difficulty."

"Agreed, this campaign just became a lot harder," Murrue pointed out. "Meeting for schedules tomorrow?"

"I would like to extend an invitation to you to come over to my ship for it," Magno said with some cheer.

"We'll be there when you are ready."

-x-x-x-

(Day 40, 0845 hours Shipboard Time)
(Nirvana, Crew Locker Rooms)

Paiway thumbed open the door release into the locker room so she could take her morning shower before going on duty. As was normal, she expected to walk into an ongoing conversation, but unlike normal she walked into a conversation that hit her hard.

" — The Captain of the Archangel will be over in an hour to discuss next moves with Captain Vivon," one of the mechanics said. "I heard some skinny that this war's getting more complex."

"That means more training," a Dread pilot said with some disgust to voice.

"More workups for the hangar crew, as well," the Mechanic answered offhand.

"Either of you heard how many motherships we have to go through before we get home to Meijere?" Paiway recognized the voice of Celtic as she came out of the shower area.

"No, do you know?" the Dread Pilot asked.

"Four, heard it over the radio from one of the Archangel Pilots overnight," she said. "Two of the ships we will have to fight within a week of each other."

"And we still have to deal with two at the same time when we get home," the Dread Pilot said.

"No, it's seven now," Celtic said. "Five Harvest Motherships, two Command Ships." She sat down on one of the benches in the shower room and buried her face in her hands. "Seven! I thought maybe we could win this, but that's too much!"

Paiway sat down at the bench in front of her locker and sighed. "Is — are we really going to have to do this?" She took a breath. "This can't be real, can it?"

"It is real," BC said from the doorway. "The Captain confirmed the details that Celtic heard over the radio. Captain Ramius is coming over to discuss training schedules and preparedness." BC stepped up to her locker and opened it, then began unzipping her uniform back.

"What does it mean? Seven ships at once? Eleven total?" Celtic asked.

"They intend to annihilate us," BC said. "Tarak and Meijere are too dangerous, the Harvest has to put the men and women down to keep their operations going. It's the only thing that makes sense now, with this much force in play."

Paiway's mind froze in dread at the thought, the nurse staring blankly at the locker in front of her. Everything. They want to destroy everything. Us, the Archangel, Tarak, Meijere, all of it. All of my family, my friends, all of it. All of it. But, why? "But, why?" Paiway asked unconsciously, and didn't realize that she had asked it aloud.

"It doesn't matter, does it?" the Mechanic asked. "What matters is who survives. If you're right, Commander, if they want to kill us all, I say we bury them first."

"That's exactly what the Archangel Team proposed yesterday after we stumbled onto this information. 'The only way to put an end to this is to go to Terra and bury everyone involved in the project,' as said by their chief mechanic," BC said as she pulled down her dress and dropped it in the laundry. Her panties went in a moment later, and the Commander took her customary shower stall.

It doesn't matter, Paiway's mind echoed the words of the mechanic on the other side of the room. I've been so focused on what the Men will do to Meijere's culture, and we're about to be wiped out by the Harvest because we're too dangerous! The nurse experienced a spike of horror run down her spine when she realized that she wanted to divide the men and the women — the crew of her ship — in the face of such abject terror. I — I almost became the problem because I'm afraid of what three men would do to us!

Somewhat driven by her fear of death, partly driven by the horror of her realization and partly driven by her pride, Paiway bolted off the bench and out the locker room without a word said or a glance at anyone else. At a dead sprint, she took only 50 seconds to run from the locker room to her quarters, and closed it up behind herself before she cut loose with tears and sobs. The sudden wave of fear, of horror, of realization, overwhelmed her; the best she could do was throw herself onto her bed and sob into her pillow to muffle the sound somewhat.

And that horrible realization would continue for her for hours, until she realized that in this regard she was her own agent of self-destruction, contributing to the problems that would only hamper the ship. But she did not have to be. With 300 days or more to go in the journey, she came to the realization that she could change her course if she tried.

In years to come, she would learn an old male saying that fit her change of mindset perfectly: "When a man learns his hanging is a week away, it tends to focus his mind sharply."

-x-x-x-

(Day 41, 1015 Hours)
(Nirvana, Engineering Bay)

Parfait did her major engineering systems checks as she routinely did, on her console starting from left to right: main power bus voltage, engine output, shield system readiness, atmosphere oxygen saturation (too little could kill the crew, too much created a fire or explosion hazard), sensors, radio, and Paxis indicators. As with her check five minutes prior, everything was in nominal shape, or at least as close to nominal as the Nirvana ever truly was. Given the way this ship came to be, there was nothing truly normal about it, and less so in terms of the crew.

One such abnormality started making noise on the wall behind Parfait out of the blue: the printer unit in the engineering spaces was shared between the medical lab, the engineering control center, and the brig office. There were only a couple dozen hard-copy printers throughout the ship, which meant that several adjacent spaces would share them, and in this case the primary user of this printer happened to be the one male that commonly resided in the area.

"What's he printing today?" Engine Technician Curacao asked, though with less hostility than she had asked the same question in weeks prior.

"No clue, but I thought we were out of paper?" Senior Electrician Elisa asked in counter.

"We were," Parfait confirmed their suspicions. "Wonder where he got his hands on some," she said idly as her eyes went across her gauges and readouts again.

"Huh," Curacao said from the printer station. "He's printing out a textbook on reproductive health and science? Why would he need that?" She asked after the printer quit.

"Not for myself, I already have a copy," Duello said from the door. "This copy is for Jura."

"Jura?" Curacao asked in clear shock. "What — why?"

"She is researching several things about the differences between men and women, and wanted to see what medical information I had on it," Duello took the couple-hundred pages off the printer and secured them in a binder clip, then in a folder.

"Better question, where did you get the paper? I thought we were out," Elisa needled the doctor. She still didn't trust him completely, but was warming up to the fact that he was more of a professional medical operator than Paiway.

"I asked Gascogne if she had any in stores last week, and the answer was no. Two days later, I started my shift to find four reams of paper sitting in my chair, with a note from her saying she converted some of her winnings off the Archangel Mechanics to material credits. I have no idea how I would pay that back."

"You're part of the crew, and Miss Gosko handles the Registry and stocks so that's her thing," Curacao pointed out.

"She usually rakes in the cash by selling missiles to ships we are nearby, usually other pirates," Elisa continued the thought from the Engine Tech.

"And now she's trading with the Archangel, so that works to our advantage," Curacao took the thought to its conclusion. "Wonder what other interesting things she picked up while she was at it."

"Didn't you go over yesterday?" Elisa asked Parfait. She thought she heard something rattling in one of the pipes above her, but brushed it off — the ship was still making weird noises even several weeks after its transformation.

"I did, but I was talking with some of their engineering personnel and Yzak. Gascogne was working with the Mechanics on something separate, I didn't hear what she was discussing," Parfait semi-dodged the question.

"What were you working on? The filter system?" Elisa asked, since that had been a bit of a worry for everyone in engineering of late.

"Yes, actually," Parfait confirmed, and instinctively looked past the Paxis unit to the filtration system on the far side of the engineering bay — two seconds before the main filtration tank ruptured in what sounded not unlike an explosion.

-x-

The explosion of the main filtration unit was a problem that originated with the Ikazuchi itself, but properly and coincidentally started a few seconds after Duello began printing the documentation for Jura. In one of the main return lines for waste water coming from the port side of the old ship, an ancient butterfly valve finished its journey into corrosion-induced failure and the butterfly clapper that would normally have allowed someone to shut off the return water line broke free from the valve. Herein, the engineering choices of the original construction created the coming problem: titanium valves were used only in certain high-heat applications, not in a waste water line, and since chromium and molybdenum were exhausted on Earth (meaning no stainless steel), the valve was of a cheaper, anodized aluminum type. A titanium or stainless steel valve clapper would have broke off and simply dropped to the bottom of the waste water pipe, otherwise harmless but annoying if someone tried to close that valve. An anodized aluminum clapper weighed much less than other valve clappers, and given the pressure in the waste line, it simply floated along with the current, banging around as it went down the pipe.

When the valve clapper entered the main water filtration unit, it passed halfway into the filter before it came to a reduction fitting in the first stage of the filter, an outlet fitting that was some four centimeters smaller than the valve clapper itself. For a couple seconds, it wedged in place parallel to the current and did not obstruct anything, but pressure variances caused it to rotate to flat-face against the fitting. This immediately backed up the first stage of the filter and should have triggered an emergency shutoff of the water injection pump for the filter, but the relay that would have stopped the pump had been severed by the transformation of the old ship. The pump continued putting twenty kilos of pressure into a filter that could not take it, and within five seconds all six stages of the filter had ruptured. Another ten seconds later and the side wall of the filter housing blew out. That catastrophic loss of pressure did cause the pump to shut off, but the damage was already done.

-x-

"Oh no! The main filter!" Curacao half-wailed.

"Well, that happened," Parfait said, then sighed. "I was planning on overhauling the filters next week."

"Timetable just moved up," Elisa said after she tripped an automatic closure of the valves along the waste water line to prevent flooding the lower decks.

Parfait picked up the handset for the growler phone and punched in the code for the bridge. It only rang twice.

"Bridge, BC speaking," the Commander answered.

"Bridge, Engineering, we just had a blowout of our main water filtration system," Parfait said in a rush.

The line was silent for a few seconds. "Understood. What do you need to get it working again?" BC asked calmly.

"I don't know yet, but I do know we don't have the materials on hand to do it ourselves," Parfait had to admit. "I was planning on leaning on the Archangel Team with some material trades, but that was supposed to be next week."

BC nodded twice, her expression unchanged over the video link. "Understood, Parfait. Take stock of what is needed to effect repairs, move the water handling over to the secondary filter unit, and if you can, try to figure out what caused the filter to fail. Call me back when you have better information, the Archangel Captain will be over here in 50 minutes and I can pitch a request for a trade."

"Will do Commander!" Parfait said with some cheer.

"Report back in thirty or when you have the list of what we need to ask for. Bridge is out," BC hung up the growler phone, which killed the call.

"Do you need anything from me?" the Doctor asked.

"Don't think so," Parfait said, a bit surprised that the Doctor was offering to assist outside his specialty. Even if it wasn't much, it shifted her opinion of the Doctor in a positive direction a bit, though she would not realize it for some time. "Elisa, reroute to the secondary filter systems. Curacao, with me, we need to inspect the filter."

"Right!" Curacao picked up her toolbelt and followed Parfait into the engineering bay, then around the Paxis unit and over to where the water filtration and pumping stations were.

"Oh, wow, it is worse up close," Parfait said in a half-moan.

"This isn't repairable," Curacao braced herself on the pump housing, hauled herself up to the rent in the side of the filter, and shone a worklight on the inside. "Mama Mia! It looks like a damn bomb went off in here! Shrapnel, casing parts, filter medium, all jumbled up!"

"Anything salvageable?" Parfait asked.

"Take a look yourself, Chief, but I don't think so," Curacao waved the worklight at Parfait, who hesitated only a moment before she took up the light and climbed up on the pump housing to inspect it herself.

"Wow, this is a rough reminder of the power of water under pressure," Parfait grumped after she had a good look on the inside of the filter housing. "We can take down the filter body and try to recover the media, maybe reprocess it for use in a new filter unit, but other than that, I don't think so."

"Water rationing ho!" Curacao said in a very sarcastic-cheery voice.

The Paxis enclosure PA speaker clicked. "Should I set up a bet pool on how long before the crew rebels against shower restrictions?" Elisa asked from the control booth.

Curacao picked up the intercom phone for the engineering area. "Yeah, go ahead and set it up, I've got five meal tickets on three days." The engine technician covered the receiver microphone. "Parfait, your bet?"

"Five tickets, five days," Parfait said as she was still looking around the inside of the filter.

"Parfait is in for five on five days," Curacao said, then hung up. "Any hope?"

"Nothing comes to mind," Parfait sighed. "Better inform BC that we're looking at a total loss."

-x-

(40 minutes later)
(Nirvana Hangar)

The approach of the shuttle from the Archangel was not unexpected, but the Strike Freedom coming behind it was a new advent for the day. Both landed with appropriate grace in the Vanguard hangar, though Gascogne figured the Gundam was not expected to remain for long.

Surprisingly, the shuttle was all mechanics first through the door. "Ho! Heard you could use some help with a water filtration system?" Mechanic Rose Hayward asked on her way out of the shuttle. Voltage, the Hangar 3-I-C for the Archangel, was next out the door, which told Gascogne that someone had thought fast about this process and picked some of the better ones from the Archangel's crew for this detail.

"Glad to hear it," Gascogne gave Rose a quick hug after the shuttle emptied out. "Filter hasn't been down for more than an hour and the rumblings are already beginning."

"Well, we started putting together a plan when Parfait pinged us about assistance, didn't think it was this close to FUBAR," Rose said. "Murdoch wanted to come over and assist, but the Duel's hydraulics blew up an hour ago and he's neck deep in trying to figure out why, so he sent Voltage in his stead."

"And that's the centerpiece of our repair effort," Voltage pointed to a long square tube that was set down in the middle of the hangar area by the Strike Freedom.

"Glad to have it," BC said as she approached, though the size of the item beckoned a question: "What is it, though? It's far larger than the filter system in the Male part of the ship."

"That is a mobile component remanufacturing system developed by the Strike Freedom's onboard AI system for rebuilding equipment on the fly. Put the busted filter in, the CRS does the dirty work of rebuilding it." Voltage nodded to the tube in question. "It's a new system, first one came online yesterday, with three more scheduled for stand-up over the next three weeks."

"And then we get to reinstall it," Rose completed the thought, meaning the filter. "You're here for the Captain, Commander?" Rose continued.

"Yes, though she wasn't in the shuttle?" BC looked around but could not see Murrue.

"Riding with Kira," Rose pointed to the Strike Freedom, where the Gundam in question brought its hand to the cockpit and Captain Ramius stepped out onto it. The pilot was next out, and he lowered the two of them to the ground using a pilot's winch line to take them from cockpit level to the ground. None of the personnel in the hangar missed the close proximity between the two — Murrue was holding on to Kira's waist tightly — and the trust therein was obvious to them.

"Commander Calessa," Murrue came to attention and saluted BC.

"Captain Ramius, welcome to the Nirvana," BC returned the salute sharply, in the same fashion no less. "Captain Vivon is waiting for us in quarters."

"Thank you." Captain Ramius turned to Kira. "Assist as needed with the repair work, Kira. Petty Officer West has command of the repair section," Murrue said, referring to the proper name of Voltage.

"Can do, Captain," Kira said quickly, then nodded to PO Alicia West ('Voltage' to the other hangar personnel). Without further ado, the Captain and Commander made for the elevator up to the command deck of the ship.

"Well, we've got the crew here, let's get to it," Gascogne said. "Anything you need right now, Voltage?"

"First thing we need to do is pull the filter unit and figure out what killed it," Voltage said. "No sense in replacing it if this happens again."

"Good point, maybe Parfait has an update on what caused it," Gascogne waved the repair crew toward the innards of the ship and led the way into the corridors.

-x-

(5 minutes later)
(Captain's stateroom, Nirvana)

"Captain Ramius, welcome," Captain Vivon waved her guest over to the couch opposite her. "I had the crew prepare some raspberry preserve jello for us for this meeting."

"Ah, thank you, Captain," Murrue said with some gusto after she sat down. In the grips of one of her cyclic cravings for sweets, she wasted no time in sampling it.

"How are you feeling?" Magno asked. She had no children of her own, but knew the routine well enough from her various crews over the decades.

"Some mornings are harder than others," Murrue admitted. "Other than that, decent enough, thank you. How's things been going around your crew since we discovered the truth of the harvest?"

"Some shock, some disbelief, but that's to be expected with something this monstrous," BC answered that question readily enough. "In a day or two, it should sink in completely."

"So, have you discovered anything new in the data archives since we spoke yesterday?" Magno asked.

"Honestly, just operational details, further timetables and such. Nothing that will give us a stellar advantage," Murrue said. "My technical personnel are working on a quantum virus to try to disable their low-level fighters, but defeating their programming is challenging. They are not expecting to have an advantage to deploy in this next fight, maybe not at all." Athrun had made that much clear in his last report on the matter, their programming was a lot more resilient than he had initially given them credit for. Breaking it in a repeatable fashion, using the virus broadcaster on the Aquarius, was not a guaranteed expectation at this time.

"Hrm, that would have been a massive help," BC pointed out. "So we plan on doing this the hard way."

"Yeah, the hard way," Magno nodded her acceptance of the matter. "The direct way. Still four ships enroute and seven at Tarak and Meijere?"

"That information has not changed," Murrue admitted solemnly.

"So we prepare to run this fight with the difficulty increased to the maximum," BC said. "I have already discussed this with the Dread Team Leaders, all three agree that we will have to step it up."

"What is your plan?" Magno asked after a moment's pause.

"Daily simulations for all crew, with review afterwards, increasing difficulty on the simulation until we have matched the numbers at 140% difficulty. If we can do it there, we can do it for real," Murrue laid out the Archangel Team's plan of training. "We will have several months of no expected mothership contact after the fourth battle enroute, which will give us plenty of time to do a full-up exercise for the coming Battle of Meijere."

Magno noticed that during their short discussion, Murrue had already finished her jello. "Seems you've dealt with your jello. I made sure to have another handy if you want it," Captain Vivon prompted her.

"One is plenty, thank you," Murrue said, mastering the impulse to say 'yes' in this case. Despite it being excellent, she was already fairly close to full due to her having had breakfast less than 2 hours ago.

"A full-up exercise would be everything we expect to face at Tarak and Meijere?" BC asked to bring the conversation back on track.

"Yes, seven capital ships and all their escort ships. We figure, after we master the increased difficulty standard, we slowly crank up the quantity of enemy forces to face until we match the numbers at the increased difficulty. If we can do that reliably, we can do the real battle with a much better than even hope of victory."

"This is going to be a nightmare," Magno said. "And we will only have two weeks at Tarak and Meijere to brief and prepare the other pirate Captains. Much less convincing Tarak and Meijere of what is about to come their way."

"Do you think it can be done?" Murrue asked.

Magno nodded grimly. "They will have to face up to some very hard truths."

-x-

(Paxis Enclosure)

"Well now," Voltage said in some shock after she entered the enclosure and got her first good look at the water filter — what was left of it. Even at a distance of 30 yards and somewhat looking through the Paxis halo, the damage was quite visible.

"Yeah, that's the size of it," Gascogne confirmed.

"On the plus side, it isn't as big as I thought it would be," Rose said. "Bigger than I would like, though."

"Think it can be done?" Parfait asked.

Voltage chuckled. "Water rationing will be rescinded before the end of the day," she said as she approached the filter unit and climbed up to look inside. "Holy shit! I thought hydraulics made a mess when they detonated, but this thing's been completely scrambled!"

"Second thoughts?" Curacao asked after the Archangel Team Hangar 3-I-C lowered herself back to the ground.

"No," Voltage said plainly, then smiled. "Just because it looks like a pipe bomb went off inside it doesn't mean the Component Repair Tube won't fix it."

"Tough talk, I like it," Gascogne said with an approving nod. "How about a wager?"

"No take, I'm in hock to Gomer right now, at least until our next payday. I'm off the field for cards and wagers," Voltage ducked out.

"I'll take the bet," Kira said. "Two Figaro golds, water's back on the main circuit in eight hours."

"Twelve hours," Gascogne presented her hand for a shake, which Kira accepted.

"Split the difference if it lands between," Kira completed the wager. "Now, to make this reality. Where do we begin, Chief?" Kira asked Voltage.

"I have the tools, so you and I will start disassembling it. Parfait, can you find at least two wheel carts we can use to move it around? And some ratchet straps to fix it to the carts, the last thing we need is this thing to roll off a cart onto someone's foot."

"I know where two are right now," Parfait said, given she had used one of the carts the day prior to move some large capacitors. "Ratchet straps are going to be in the hangar, though. Miss Gosko?"

"I'll get them and be back in a few minutes." Gascogne was out of the Paxis bay seconds later, headed toward the hangar area.

"And now, for something completely different," Kira said in a baritone falsetto.

"Bah, same shit as working on hydraulics, only a quarter of the pressure. Get to it, flyboy." Voltage slapped a crescent wrench against Kira's left bicep.

"Aye aye," Kira took possession of the offered wrench and bent to the base of the filtration unit. The chief electrician used a step ladder to start on the locking collar holding the top of the filtration unit in place. There was no fear that the filter would collapse on them during the process, as the filter housing was anchored to the wall in four places and had legs supporting the bottom of the pressure housing.

Parfait was first back between the two Nirvana crewmembers out looking for transportation hardware, though Gascogne was back to the filter with a half-dozen ratchet straps well before either Kira or Voltage were done with their disassembly task. Still, the filter came loose from the inlet (waste water) and outlet (clean water) pipes within the first fifteen minutes of their start time, and with the pressure collars loosed, the filter was ready for release from the wall and floor anchors.

"How do we do this safely?" Parfait asked. "This filter has to weigh over two tons."

Kira looked around the bay area where the filter was, and immediately noticed an exposed structural beam above and behind the filter unit. "Miss Gosko, what's the longest strap you have?" the Gundam pilot asked.

"25 meters, but I don't have it with me," Miss Gosko said. "I only brought some ten-meter straps with." In point of fact, she had six.

"Three of those will do," Kira picked up three of them, removed the strap from one of the ratchets, and tied the straps together to create a single long line with a ratchet at each end. After that was prepared, he pointed to a large bay door at the far end of the paxis enclosure. "Those bay doors lead to a cargo hold if I remember correctly. Do you have a forklift in there?"

"Yes…" Curacao said, though her sentence trailed off after a moment. Her eyes darted around the area, until: "I see what you're planning! Back in a minute!" The junior mechanic fairly ran to the bay doors in question and opened them with a hearty slap on the button, then ducked in to get the forklift.

"What's the plan?" Rose asked, the first thing she had asked in a while.

"Cradle it on the way down, using a forklift as the counterweight and the structure beam above and behind it as the leverage points."

Voltage looked the area over and nodded. "Nice. Near-zero manual labor on our part. I can sign off on a plan like that." Voltage moved the large ladder Parfait had used earlier to behind the water filter and climbed up. "Ready when you are."

"Here," Kira moved to the right side of the filter and hooked the hook end of the ratchet strap to a welded-on anchor plate for a coolant pipe. Once secured, he tossed the slack end of the straps to Voltage, who looped it over the structure beam and then tossed it back to Kira. The Gundam Pilot ran the strap around to the left side of the filter and handed it off to Voltage, who flipped it over the structural beam again and back to Kira, creating a two-point sling that was now only waiting for the counterweight to arrive.

"I'm here!" Curacao said when she arrived with the forklift. True to Kira's expectation, it had a hook or winch connection point on the back of the engine and battery housing, meaning it was perfect for the plan. Kira played the line out to maximum length, then guided Curacao back to his position to where he could hook the line on, then ratchet it to tension it.

"All right, we're stable. We can release the anchors now," Kira said. Loosening the anchors was simple, they were held together with only a bolt each, so Gascogne and Parfait loosed the eight anchors on the leg braces while Voltage and Kira took care of the four wall anchors. When the fourth of the wall anchors was released, the filter tank immediately settled against the strap and held position.

"Now that is awesome," Gascogne said with a nod.

"Now the fun part. As we're letting it down, we have to position the carts under it so that when it gets to ground level, all the weight is on the wheels. Definitely don't want to drag this thing through the hallway the hard way," Voltage said. "Curacao! Start her up!" The junior mechanic gave Voltage a thumbs-up and activated the forklift controls. "Bring it back to me slowly! Only a few centimeters at a time, please!" As Curacao backed up toward where the filter was, the filter slowly levered down toward the ground and Gascogne positioned the cart for the top of the filter while Rose positioned the cart for the bottom of the filter housing.

Voltage signaled Curacao to bring the forklift back some more, and after a few more meters of travel Rose used the handlebar on her cart to wedge the base of the filter out away from the outlet pipe and down onto the cart. The impact was hellishly loud when it slammed into the bottom of the cart, but it positioned the filter just properly for seating on the cart. "Got it!"

"Hell yeah!" Kira half-shouted. "That will make steering and turning a lot easier!"

"We'll need it, this is one heavy mother," Voltage said. "Curacao! Slowly back toward me until I signal stop!" Voltage said the same thing with hand signals as Curacao crept closer to the filter, and with it the filter slowly pivoted down toward the second cart. Voltage called a halt with about half a meter before touchdown. "Rose, get your ratchet strap on the cart and mostly tension it down. Gascogne, get your strap on as well, tension it until you start lifting the wheels of the cart off the ground."

"Sure," Miss Gosko had her ratchet strap on and tensioned in a bare minute. Rose was not far behind in having hers locked down as well.

"Curacao, when I say 'go', start bringing her down slowly. Rose and Gascogne, as soon as the filter starts coming down, ratchet those straps down to match so it is locked down by the time it touches down. Everyone good to go?"

"Ready!" All three said in unison.

"Curacao, go," Voltage signaled the start. True to the plan, the filter came down and was secured at the same time, with no appreciable shifting before the sling strap went slack under it.

"Got it! Yeah!" Parfait, Kira, Rose, and Gascogne high-fived each other.

"Good driving, Curacao," Voltage said.

"That was the easy part," Curacao pointed out. "Now we have to roll this heavy monster down to the hangar. Or do we?" She asked, then looked back at the forklift.

"Push it along with the forklift?" Rose asked.

"We guide it, Curacao pushes it along?" Voltage asked. "Lazier still, I like it even more."

-x-

(5 minutes later)
(Captain's Quarters)

"There's another part of this story which I have not spoken of in a long time," Magno said. "And, in light of what the Harvest intends, this story that was puzzling in years past begins to look rather disturbing."

"What are we talking about?" Murrue asked.

"This goes back to the colonization of Tarak and Meijere," Magno said, then removed a picture from her pocket and set it on the table, though face down. Murrue picked it up and looked at it.

"A young girl holding a baby? Background of the picture looks like the inside of a ship," Murrue said, then passed the picture to BC.

BC looked at the picture for a moment, then looked over the top edge of the photo at Magno. A glance back at the photo brought to mind a question: "Is this a photo of you?"

"Many years ago, yes," Magno admitted.

BC passed the photo back to Murrue. "I'd guess this was about when you were nine? Ten?"

"Eight," Magno admitted. "I left Earth when I was seven."

"You've been on Meijere for more than a century?" BC asked. The scale of time had not occurred to her, until…

"And a pirate for better than 80 years," Magno said. "I saw the beginning of the two societies, because the two societies came from the same ship, the Takemikazuchi."

"The male half of the ship was the colony ship that colonized Tarak and Meijere?" BC asked. That much of a revelation positively shocked the intelligence officer in BC, but she/he knew this was a good opportunity to push for even more intelligence. "What happened to cause the split, if we were supposed to be together?"

"I don't know the details," Magno admitted. "I was too young to know to pay attention to the politics of the matter, but I do know we set out from Earth with the intention of colonizing one world — Meijere — and about halfway through the travel the plan was changed."

Murrue leaned forward a bit. "I'm listening, Captain," the much-younger Captain said.

"The Captain and XO of the ship, who would become the Lord Grandpa and Lady Grandma of the two new societies, changed the plan midway. The two genders would be split between the two planets, and the Males would take the marginally-habitable world of Tarak. The part that truly confused me in the beginning was what happened to the 5000 colonists destined for the world. They were offloaded from the Takemikazuchi still in cryo stasis and a new Cryo Lab was set up on each planet for maintaining them in permanent suspension. I don't know where Tarak sited theirs, but Meijere's lab is adjacent to the Northern Administration Building. And it was built underground, with heavily guarded and restricted access."

BC was silent while listening, trying to remember anything she (he) had heard from prior intelligence training about a Cryo Lab on Tarak. There were some classified / special access programs for medical sciences, but she/he was never involved in them and didn't know much of the details.

"And the societies above the surface, built on top of a world-scale genetic engineering and artificial reproduction program," BC said after a moment of silence in the room, trying to push in a different direction from where the conversation had stalled. "Why?"

Magno sighed. "I don't know. The only persons awake and alive that do know are Lord Grandpa and Lady Grandma, the other ship's personnel are either dead or went back in Cryo after the transfer."

Murrue nodded; Magno and BC were pirates, she was military, and a split such as this would follow military logic to a degree, she figured. "Two possibilities come to mind that make sense given what we now know, and a third that makes sense only in a very macabre way. First, the Takemikazuchi left Earth as a colony ship without knowing what their fate was, found out somehow during the trip, and the Captain / XO assembled the plan on the fly to try to fool the Harvest into not slaying the colonists or their descendants. The original colonists being underground is the plan all along: the Harvest grabs the genetically engineered persons, even clean-wipes the society, but the cryo chambers open up on a timer a couple months after the Harvest moves on and the colonists rebuild the world."

"I could buy that," BC said. Magno nodded in agreement, as that was inline with her thoughts.

Murrue took a moment to have a sip of water. "Second possible, the Captain and XO left Earth knowing what was to come, and hashed out the split as a way to harden the societies to resist the Harvest when it does come looking for body parts. Would not have been the way I went about it if I was in their position, but here we are. The colonists being underground is the backup plan, in this case: if the Harvest wins and moves on, the colonists wake up, see what happened, and build up again to do unto the Harvest in a second round."

"Grisly but also possible," Magno admitted.

"The third possible that I can think of is absolutely nasty, but I can't discount it. In this case, knowing beforehand or not knowing doesn't matter. The Captain and XO split the two groups as something of a head-to-head competition between the genders, using artificially created populations to slug out the old Battle of the Sexes, and the Harvest doesn't factor into their engineering, but now factors into our planning."

Both BC and Magno were quiet for a good thirty seconds, until: "She's right, Captain. It is a very nasty possibility, but from what I know of Tarak and Meijere societies, I can't say with one hundred percent certainty that it is impossible."

"Neither of the senior officers struck me as the type to be that savage, but I didn't know them all that well," Magno admitted. "Still, of the three choices, I think the first option is the more likely one."

"That's my appraisal, knowing what I do," Murrue said, though she silently admitted she didn't know enough to pass a proper judgment on the matter.

-x-

(90 minutes later)

"So, what's the deal?" Rose asked the Gundam Pilot.

"It's coming this way, foreign material found in the filter," Kira said after reading what his display was showing him.

"So, something plugged the filter and it blew," Gascogne said. "How close are we to being completely repaired?"

"Final assembly is happening right now," Kira read off that part of the report. "Okay, Rose, according to my control panel, the offending object should be at the upper hatch."

"So, what's the guilty party?" Rose popped the hatch, waited for the nanomachines to recede, and extracted the metal disc to inspect. "Wait, is this a butterfly valve flapper?"

"A what?" Gascogne asked.

"No way! And it's in horrible shape!" Parfait snatched it up and gave it a very thorough inspection. "Yeah, look at this. It's corroded so bad I can put my thumb through it." True to her word, Parfait pushed her thumb through a weak spot and out the back side, visible to the others.

"Failed here," and Rose pointed to the top edge of the flapper, where it was obvious that part of the material had sheared off. "These flaps ride on two bearings, one at the top and one at the bottom, and rotates by either a hand actuator or a motor on one of the bearings. When it sheared, it took a ride down the pressurized water pipe because its full of cavities to catch water currents and the whole assembly is light."

"How many more of the valves are going to look like this?" BC asked as she approached with Captain Ramius in tow.

"No telling, Commander, but inspecting them will require shutting the entire water system down in segments," Parfait said.

"And we'll have to get replacements from somewhere," Gascogne pointed out.

"What about the component repair system, Kira?" Murrue asked.

"We'll have to feed it some scrap, titanium would be a good option to prevent corrosion again," Kira pointed out.

"And both ships have a lot of titanium from scrapping the Harvest Drones," Murrue finished the thought. "How soon can you set it up?"

"Once I program the controller on the repair tube, it won't care, we can leave it here and the Nirvana crew can do the inspection and remanufacture at their own pace."

"Make it happen," Murrue said.

"Will do, Captain," Kira picked his tablet up and began the process of queueing the repair order. Before he finished, the repairs on the water filtration system were completed. "Water filter is draining of nanomachines right now, we're almost ready to pull it."

"And this thing is still on the carts? We don't have to try to lift it?" Parfait asked.

"That's the plan," Voltage said with a wary look to Kira.

"That's what it said it did, we're about to find out," Kira hedged his position.

The wait for the refurbished filter to be 'ejected' from the component repair system was a bit of theatrics to the Archangel personnel, but a bit amusing to watch BC, Parfait and Gascogne marvel at the filter rolling out of the component repair unit of its own accord.

"All buffed and shiny," Rose knocked on the outer casing twice with her knuckles. "Now we get to put this monster back in place."

"Fun's not over yet," Voltage said. "Curacao, you're on!"

"With pleasure!" Said mechanic was quick to jump up on the forklift and start it up, then took position at the end of the filter to begin pushing the carts along toward the Paxis Enclosure.

-x-x-x-

(Day 44, 1830 Hours)
(Archangel, Hangar Supervisor's Office)

"Normally I wouldn't be asking this, Murdoch, Commander, but we have two mechanics down to food poisoning and I need to pull engines on four of the Dreads for overhaul. And, better still, I need to pull two of the arms off the support ship for rebuild, battle damage from the last fight," Gascogne explained.

"Murdoch?" Commander La Flaga asked.

"Well, we've definitely got the personnel availability," Murdoch hedged. "Just finished up switching the Duel over to myomer actuators after the hydraulic blowout a couple days ago. So, I see three problems here: One, the engine overhauls, how many spare personnel do you need there?"

"Two minimum, four maximum," BC requested for Gascogne.

"Two, the support ship, what do you need for it?" Murdoch continued.

"One or two senior operators would be fine, it's complex but doesn't tie up a large amount of personnel," Gascogne admitted. "What's the third issue?"

"Your galley. Two instances of food poisoning in a short window like that tells me that you either have a bad batch of material, or you have some faulty galley gear," Mu explained.

From the blank look on Gascogne's face and the hard blink from BC, it was apparent that such a thought did not occur to either Nirvana officer.

Ten seconds later: "Oh," BC said. "So, yeah, we've actually had an increasing trend of food poisoning since the two ships merged, started about two weeks afterwards," the Nirvana commander admitted. "What do you recommend?"

"I'll send my electrical chief over to give your galley a full inspection," Murdoch said. "Do you have an electrical specialist to tag along with her?"

"Not a dedicated electrical specialist, we really don't have one in the maintenance staff, but I have someone in mind," BC said.

"All right," Murdoch looked past the monitor he was using and into the hangar bay of the Archangel. "I think I know who to tap already for this. Probably myself and five, I'd say. How soon?"

"90 minutes doable?" Gascogne asked.

"We'll be there." Murdoch killed the link. "So, Commander?"

"They have the personnel flexibility that they could do all of the above in-house. They're asking us as an ulterior motive, they want something else."

"My guess, they're using us as an ongoing example of an integrated ship, and bringing us over is their way to work on showing the crew how to get along with the other side of the gender gap," Murdoch dropped his idea.

"I could see that," Mu admitted. "From what Murrue gathered from Magno, she predates the societal split, so she would know."

"Probably started her rebellion because of the split," Murdoch guessed (not incorrectly).

"Anyway, round up your personnel, assemble gear, and head on over. We're not due for combat for a few weeks, so you have room to play with," Mu released him. "Of course, make sure you keep it on the level."

"Always, sir," Murdoch said with a grin. The kind of grin that presaged screwy things to come.

-x-

(90 minutes later)
(Supply Ship Hangar, Nirvana)

Nicol and Fuu were both available for the trip over to the Nirvana, so Nicol became the de facto expedition pilot (And, Murdoch had to admit, one of the better examples of a stealth couple in the Archangel for use as an example to the Nirvana). Of the Hangar mechanics, Rose, Terra and Voltage were the choices; Rose and Terra to assist with engines, Voltage to do the galley inspection. And, Murdoch decided to do the 'senior' work on the supply ship himself, since he figured he already had a decent rapport with Gascogne and he could sense that she wanted the time with him.

There was a small crowd waiting for the shuttle's arrival when Nicol shut it down and popped the door for the passengers to exit.

"Maintenance party!" Rose said as she came down the ladder. "Who's got the engine detail?"

"That's us!" one of the hangar mechanics waved at her.

"You've got four of us," Murdoch said after he hit the ground. "Rose, Terra, Nicol and Fuu."

"On it, sir!" Nicol said as he followed the other three to join the engine detail.

"And for the galley inspection?" Gascogne asked.

"Voltage has that one," Murdoch nodded to said electrician, who was delayed in leaving the shuttle due to her different gearset on a roller cart.

"Guilty," Voltage said a moment before she stepped up to Gascogne. "Who's doing escort and understudy?"

"Guilty," was echoed by a familiar voice to Voltage.

"Curacao! Didn't know you did a lot with electric?" Voltage followed behind the junior engineering operator as they headed in toward the galley.

In twenty seconds, the hangar was empty of everyone except Murdoch and Gascogne.

"And that leaves us," Gascogne pointed out.

"And the supply ship, but it doesn't have much to say in the matter," Murdoch pointed out the large hunk of machine in the room.

"Well, let's get to it," Gascogne said. "We've got a list of fixes to do."

"Better and better." Murdoch hefted his tool box and followed close behind his counterpart from the Nirvana.

-x-

(5 minutes later)
(Galley, Nirvana)

The fact that the stove threw an arc of electricity a bare second after Voltage stepped in only served to highlight the problem. "Oh, thank the heavens!" the lead chef half-shouted after she saw who entered. "Here to look at our overworked equipment?"

"That's the plan," Voltage said. "Anything you can't stop right now?" she asked, since there were several personnel still working in the galley.

"We're preparing parfait cups right now, once that is done we can clear out. Five minutes?" the lead chef asked.

"I'm not in a rush," Voltage said. "The quickest way to get barbecued when working with electricity is to get in a rush."

"Barbecue? You've heard that term before?" The Lead Chef asked. "I thought I was the only lady in near-space that had heard it, but I don't know what it is."

"Yeah, we Archangel Team troops know what a good barbecue is," Voltage admitted.

"Please, teach me," she said, then gasped. "Oh, how rude! I haven't introduced myself. Caramel Sanse," she gave Voltage a short bow.

"Alicia West, though most everyone calls me Voltage because of my specialty," Unlike the cook, Voltage offered her hand for a shake, which they did exchange shakes. Voltage also took a few moments to give the cook a good look-over, and figured her at or around 25, neighborhood of 170 centimeters, and a little more on the heavy side for the crew — probably a side effect of being the lead chef.

"Welcome to probably the most dysfunctional kitchen I have ever been in," Caramel said.

"Anyway, barbecue. Two definitions to the word, and the first one applies to how I used it earlier. To barbecue something is to cook it over a barbecue grill, which uses open flame and a metal or ceramic grill for cooking. Great for meats and vegetables," Voltage started the explanation.

"Okay, that I always knew as just grilling," Caramel admitted.

"Different terms, same use," Voltage pointed out. "As a slang term, it means to die by burning, and electricity arcs can do that to a person."

"Very true, we just lost one of the chefs to an electric arc. She'll live, but her arm is pretty badly burned."

"That's no good," Voltage said. "Anyway, second use of the term barbecue, it refers to a special sauce used for meats and certain vegetables. Barbecue is its own food group, practically, and there are hundreds of variants of it. Offhand I can't tell you what's in it, but I might be able to get the main recipe used by our head chef, if he's willing to part with it."

"Would bribery work?" Caramel asked.

"Not likely, not with Ryback," Voltage admitted. "I'll ask, though, he's flexible. Have any recipes you could trade, if it comes to that?"

"I have a few good ones," she admitted.

"Done!" the last of the parfait cups was filled and set on the conveyor belt for pickup by the crew.

"Clear the compartment, let's give the electrical team space to work!" Caramel waved the four junior cooks out.

-x-

(Same time)
(Dread Hangar J)

"Four engines, we're going to do this in two pairs," the chief mechanic for the hangar declared.

"Where do we begin?" Rose asked.

"Dread J-7 and Dread J-9," the Chief pointed out the two Dreads in question. "How do you break down?"

"Oh, Terra and I will assist on J7, Nicol and Fuu will do J-9," Rose said immediately. She knew what Murdoch had been silently planning when he called up this crew, and figured now a good time to play it to the hilt.

"All right, let's get to it." The Hangar Chief picked up a radio. "Cranes, Lapis, position over J-7 and J-9 please."

"Right!" The overhead cranes moved to position quickly and were stationed over the two fighters on the maintenance pads in less than a minute. Nicol and Fuu both took positions at the back end of their requested fighter.

"What's the process?" Nicol asked.

"Engine packs are pulled out of the rear, after we remove the propulsion unit," the Chief said, then extended a hand to Fuu for a shake. "Lapis Garber, Hangar 3 Chief."

Fuu readily took the shake. "Fuu Hououji, Magic Knight, and Nicol is one of my Squires," she nodded to Nicol.

"Is that what's up with the glove?" Lapis pointed to Nicol's left-hand glove.

"Yes, these are our link to Rune God Windam," Fuu explained. Nicol flexed his left hand unconsciously, but was otherwise preoccupied by the armor plating around the propulsion unit of the Dread they were tasked to strip the engine out of.

"Okay, here's the process. We unlock the propulsion unit and slide it out slowly until we can get the crane cables locked in on it. We pull the unit and set it aside, then we eject the engine on hydraulic rams, cable it up and set it in the engine cradle so we can wheel it over to the maintenance booth. Any questions?"

"How heavy is the propulsion unit?" Nicol asked.

"400 kilograms, give or take," Lapis guesstimated the weight.

"How much is it going to shift when we unlock it?" He followed up.

"Should not move unless the frame below it is bent, that is one thing we need to check while we've got it out."

Nicol nodded. "Ready when you are, boss," he said.

Lapis nodded. "All right, there are two access hatches just outboard from the propulsor. Open them up, twist the locking lugs to vertical and pull them out until they click."

Nicol looked at the ground behind it. "Feet clear," he said before he twisted the lug and pulled it out. The 'click' was more of a metallic clanging sound as the propulsor immediately shifted. "Watch it!" he half-shouted after a second metallic clanging sound from Fuu's locking lug caused it to shift some more.

"Okay, that was close," Fuu said after the propulsor snagged on the edge of an armor plate and stopped shifting. "Nicol, give me a hand holding it up?"

"Which way does it need to go so you can get the hooks on it?" Nicol nonetheless put his weight into pushing it up into place.

"If it comes out two hands, we have all four lift points," Lapis said.

"We hold it up, you pull it out?" Fuu suggested.

"And my two assistants can cable it up," Lapis warned the two assistant hangar mechanics that were staying conspicuously away from Nicol. "And no, as far as we can tell, he won't bite," she reinforced the point.

"Are you sure?" one of the assistant techs asked with a perfectly straight face.

The plaintive way the assistant mechanic asked for confirmation set Fuu to giggling, then to outright laughing, which then set Nicol to laughing, and shortly thereafter Lapis joined in on the fun. It would be that question, repeated more than a few times between everyone involved, that would help break the ice and bring them closer as an ad-hoc maintenance group for the day.

And, Lapis would admit many years into the future, it was that sense of humor seen in the assistants from the Archangel Team that convinced her that not all men were dangerous or predatory to women, despite what Meijere society had to say on the matter.

-x-

"Okay, test it," Murdoch said after he had the arm controls reconnected.

The arm made some grinding noise after Gascogne tried moving it by manual control. "Same thing, Murdoch. Looks like we're going to have to drop it and replace the servos."

"Unh, was afraid you were going to say that. Give me a couple minutes to begin disassembling the locking lugs," Murdoch reached for his toolbox and the necessary box wrenches within.

"I'll keep a hand on the arm for when you do have it freed up." Gascogne stepped out of the cockpit of the support craft and over to the number three arm on the port side, where the malfunction was.

The trouble started during the last fight, the assault on the Harvest Mothership, where the arm in question took a stray machine cannon round halfway between the shoulder and elbow joints. What started as a simple severed control wire harness was repaired quickly enough, but now the repaired wiring was demonstrating problems in the control servos, where the impact trauma had jammed the motors and damaged the reduction gears on each. Simple enough to replace, except for the fact that the whole arm assembly had to be disassembled and laid out to make the necessary repairs.

"This is normally a four-person job, but since most of my mechanics are assigned elsewhere for the day, it's just you and I," Gascogne said.

"No problem," Murdoch answered. "Need some extra exercise anyway."

The two were silent during the disassembly of the arm's mounting lugs, mainly because it was a laborious process and neither knew where to start on the hundreds of questions they had for each other. The mounting lugs were not vacuum-sealed, the arms were attached at hold points in unpressurized areas of the support craft, so removing them was a simple case of pulling nuts, bolts, and locking washers loose.

"Bolts are loose, all that remains is the slip-joint," Murdoch said after a quick glance at the crude maintenance manual Gascogne kept for her craft.

"Come on out and give me a hand, this will take both of us." Murdoch joined his Nirvana counterpart at the arm assembly and took hold of it between her grasp.

"Your call," Murdoch prompted her for timing.

"Now," Gascogne said, then lifted up and out on the arm assembly. The attachment block came out of the fitting location in one whole piece and immediately weighed the whole thing down in that direction.

"Gah! You weren't joking about this needing four people," Murdoch griped about the mass. Both did little more than grit their teeth and breathe on the crab-walk over to a repair bench, and both groaned from the effort of heaving the arm assembly up onto the bench.

"Three servos to replace. I'll be back with spares, can you start disassembly?" Gascogne asked.

"On it," Murdoch said immediately. He began on the 'wrist' joint protective shell, four screws to remove the outer protective covering, then the same on the 'elbow' joint and six screws on the 'shoulder'. Once removed, he began on the disassembly of the first servo at the wrist.

"Here are the replacements," Gascogne set down three sets of high-torque motors and three sets of reduction gears, a total of 18 components total between the two types.

"This is going to take a few minutes," Murdoch said offhand as he began the removal of the first of the reduction gear sets. The translated shock of even a glancing blow against the arm had shredded the gear casing into four uneven chunks of twisted metal and sundered gears.

"Good. Got a few questions for you," Gascogne asked.

"Hit me," Murdoch said after he flicked the first of several chunks of gear box out of the wrist joint housing.

"Does Jura have it right? Completely? Mostly? Not at all?" Gascogne asked.

"Mostly," Murdoch said. "She's on the right track, men and women are supposed to work together to advance humanity. However, she's going about it in a way that's going to drive away a lot of guys if she doesn't slow it down. At least a lot of guys with brains, that is." Murdoch dislodged the next couple fragments of gear box onto the table, then began removing the servo that was previously driving said gear box.

"How so?" Gascogne asked as she began at the other end of the arm, the shoulder, to disassemble the motors there.

"Well, the unwritten rules vary from society to society, but at least from Archangel's side, you don't start with jumping full-in. You take some time, get to know the other half of the relationship first, then you decide if you want to go further. Really, it's a step-by-step thing, there are few storybook love-at-first-sight relationships out there," In the span of explaining, Murdoch had removed the second gear housing and servo.

"So what we know of Tarak's way of doing it is wrong? Or just applicable to them?" Gascogne requested for clarification.

"From what I've heard, just applies to them. Artificial breeding program and all that, devalues the personal relationship angle. Same thing with the Clanners on our ship, they don't put much emphasis on the personal aspect, but they're a funny bunch to begin with, so..." Murdoch shrugged famously before he flicked out the last piece of the third gearbox and began in on the servo motor.

"So, Meijere's route is closer to normal, except no men," Gascogne said. "This servo looks like it's undamaged, probably can reuse it."

"Yeah, probably takes a lot of resources to run an artificial splicing and insemination program, but probably a helluva lot less resources than the full artificial breeding program on Tarak. After all, you are your own incubator, Tarak has to do all that the hard way," Murdoch had the first gear housing and servo removed from the middle ('elbow') joint while explaining it.

"Yeah, and the complications of finding women who actually want children," Gascogne said. "Or is that a Meijere problem?"

"That's across the board, men and women, all societies," Murdoch explained. "And that comes in varying flavors of the attitude, from misandric or misogynistic hatred of the other gender, just doesn't want kids, wants to sleep with the other gender but doesn't want kids, wants to put off children until they're older, and a bunch of variations in between."

"If I didn't know better, I would say you've been watching soap operas from Meijere," Gascogne said with a chuckle.

"Pfft," Murdoch snorted. "Soap operas are what you get when you take the average urban ration of drama and put it under a magnifying glass. Dramatic reality at 500 percent magnification, with moody lighting and cheesy plot thrown in for good measure. Couple times I was laid up in the hospital, that was one of the few things I had available to watch. Part of my soul died from overexposure to cheese and drama, lo those many days ago."

"My condolences," Gascogne said solemnly. Both Crew Chieftains had a good laugh at the sappy turn of the conversation.

"So, halfway there," Gascogne started positioning the motors and gear housings for the replacement work. "This is the easier half, we don't have to remove impact-torqued screws, just put them in."

"Pneumatic drivers exist for just such an occasion," Murdoch said. He picked the driver up and gave it a trigger squeeze to verify it had pressure.

"So, what about you?" Gascogne asked as she began hunting through drawers for an appropriate driver and air hose.

"Well, we had a little bit of soap opera going on in our ship's crew a while back, except this one didn't get strung out for multiple episodes. Flay Allster, she was dishonorably discharged four jumps ago, was trying to cling to Kira Yamato. It ended pretty badly, they split, she ended up in the brig for trying to skewer him. So far that's the only major dating disaster on the ship, but given time there will be more." Murdoch sighed. "We're a motley crew of long-service veterans, though, so we know each other very well. Most of the time, we don't even try unless we figure it's a good shot anyhow, such as with Tolle and Miriallia, or the Captain and Commander."

"Don't think I have met Miriallia," Gascogne said.

"She doesn't leave the ship much, at least not lately. She has command of the combat information center, so she's busy quite a lot," Murdoch explained before he torqued down the first gear housing. A box wrench on the motion input provided sufficient testing to verify it worked when the whole arm twitched a mite. "Also, her and the Captain are working on dueling pregnancies, both fairly early in, so here shortly their duty rotation and travel will thin out."

"Oh," Gascogne nodded contemplatively, which confirmed (indirectly) that men and women did have the capability of making a baby.

"Yeah, 'oh', and add an 'oh my' to that when you consider that now we have to set up a nursery on a warship. When we ever get our ship back to our world, the engineers that originally designed the ship's class will brown their pants when they see what mods we've made to 'er," Murdoch said with savage humor. He wasn't a fan of more than a few of the pencil-pushers that had designed the ship, but he had no major complaints with how survivable she turned out to be.

"True, not something I'd expect to see on most warships," Gascogne admitted. "Still, it is a nice touch. And the hot springs, and the holoprojectors, at least you've put some effort into crew amenities. We're still working on kitting out our ship."

"Give it some time, when we're not getting shot at, there is room for improvement." Another of the motor and gerarset assemblies was installed and torqued down.

"So, where would you start on trying to convince the societies that it is doable?" Gascogne asked her counterpart from the Archangel.

"There's the trick, you're already working on it," Murdoch pointed out. "See, here's my theory…" he began an explanation that would take a good ten minutes. By the end of that explanation, Gascogne would be convinced that Murdoch was not entirely stable, but had a good plan for psychologically faking out the two societies into cooperating by way of using the Nirvana as the forge and anvil.

-x-x-x-

(Day 46, 1030 Hours)
(Nirvana, Jura's Quarters)

Jura leaned back into the couch. "I still don't know how to do it, but what I'm understanding is that it is possible," Jura said.

"I think you're right, there is no genetics lab or fertility clinic on the Archangel, and two of them are pregnant," Barnette pointed out the obvious issue.

Unlike Jura, the senior Dread Squad Leader's interest in the subject was limited on the matter, more intellectual curiosity than anything else. Barnette's personal leanings were against having any children for the time being, mainly because she was still technically in rebellion against the Meijere government and that would make for a rough early life for her daughters.

Of course, considering what she had just told Jura, and with Ezra's present status, she had to remind herself that life goes on. The difference being, she wasn't trying, but Jura was out to blow the lid off cross-sex relationships for… why?

"Maybe it has something to do with that antenna that I've heard people say men have down there," Jura said. "Maybe I can ask Dita to check in on that."

"Taking the indirect route?" Barnette asked.

"Trying to avoid raising suspicions," Jura said. "I think, over the long term, the less suspicion I draw on the matter, the better. That way, when the two societies start intermingling, I'll be the go-to Meijere lady for the new process."

"I knew there was an ulterior motive in there," Barnette said.

"Of course! The Captain may have been a pirate for the better part of a century, but that job will be going away once the societies come to accept the reality of the matter," Jura pointed out. "And, once piracy becomes a dead career, we'll need a new job."

"Inter-gender reproductive therapists?" Barnette asked.

"Why not? Would quickly become a very valuable career on both worlds," Jura pointed out. "Still need to figure out all the basics, though."

"I'm thinking about the future in terms of 'do we survive the harvest', you're thinking about future career paths. I love your optimism, Jura, but we've got a much closer-in problem to deal with."

Jura grumbled about the point raised by her love, but conceded quickly that she could not find fault in it. "True, victory is not a guarantee here," Jura acknowledged the point.

"Survival is not a guarantee here," Barnette countered. "We have to do better on the battlefield, these training simulations are becoming more and more difficult, more than we can keep up with."

Jura stood up and stretched. "Ugh! This still infuriates me, what we've learned about the Harvest! What gives them the right to slaughter people for body parts?"

"I asked about that myself, actually," Barnette said. "The best answer I got was from BC. There is no answer, megalomaniacs just want to accumulate power and use it."

"That's depressing," Jura sat back down. "We're fighting these Harvesters just because some faceless enemy wants to use his power on us?"

"Or her power, it could go either way," Barnette said, and in so doing made the final mental step away from assuming that women were more right than men in all particulars. She would still admit to thinking they were mostly right, but not always, and certainly not in this context.

"Is it control? Or just wanting to kill us all?" Jura asked. Either thought was horrible on the face of it, but Jura had to admit that of the two, the control aspect was more so. She became a pirate to escape the norms and controls of Meijere society and eventually came around to fighting those controls, finding herself now at the whims of a madman trying to control the entire galaxy was less than appealing.

"I don't know. I wish I knew," Barnette said. "Knowing would make it easier to hammer on them."

"Wow, you've been taking lessons from the Archangel Team," Jura pointed out and needled her in one sentence.

"Oh yes," Barnette said. "These guys have a long record of winning against foes and odds well above their size. There are lessons to be learned here."

"Can't argue that," Jura stretched again, this time without standing up. Just before Jura finished her flex, Barnette hugged her from the side while her arms were both still up. "Wha—huh?"

"More I think about this, more I think some of us may not survive it," Barnette said, then hugged her love tighter.

"I know," Jura sighed, then returned the embrace just as tightly. "I wish this wasn't happening, but it is and we're deep in it. We just have to do better, and enjoy every minute we can with each other."

"Tomorrow isn't guaranteed," Barnette said. "Picked that up from Athrun a few days back."

"Very true, especially to a couple of pirates like us," Jura detached her love from her embrace, stood up, and hauled Barnette up. "I'm off-duty for another six hours. You?"

-x-x-x-

(Day 48, 2215 Hours)
(Archangel, Kira's Quarters)

Despite the good results of battles past, Kira knew that the effectiveness of the Hydra Missile Pods was slipping, and that was a problem. Especially with the coming massive battle at Tarak, he knew that a loss of effectiveness of as much as 10 percent would throw the battle in the favor of the enemy. Despite present results and trends, Kira knew that he didn't have time to wait and sit complacent on the matter, corrections and improvements would need to be made now for them to be field-tested and ready for later.

The problem was numbers, always a hazard for a lone ship such as the Archangel. The coming force to deal with at the Battle of Tarak and Meijere was five Harvest Motherships plus two Command Ships. Each Harvest Mothership carries 450 Pod Ships, each Pod Ship carries 2 Cubes of the Cube Fighters, each cube comprised of 24 Fighters, or a total of 48 per pod ship and 21,600 per Harvest Mothership total inventory. The numbers did not improve with the Command Ships, as the Pod Count on the Command Ships was 1250 — five larger bands of the Pods adorned the much larger Command Ship — meaning that the Cube Fighter count would be 60,000 per Command Ship. Doing the back-of-napkin math, the entire expected enemy force, not counting stray ships coming along for kicks (definitely possible), 228,000 cube fighters, 4750 pods, 5 Harvest Ships, and 2 Command Ships.

"Jesus, on paper this is starting to look unwinnable," Kira grumped.

"That bad?" Hikaru asked from over his shoulder. "Yeah, that's the first time I've seen all the numbers spelled out. That's why you're so worried about the Hydra systems."

"Yeah. Here." Kira flipped to a new page of notepad paper. "Assuming the theoretical P-K of 1.0 for the Hydras, which is real-world impossible for any weapon system, means that we'd need," and he did the division by hand in a couple seconds, "912 Hydra missiles to take out all of the Cube Fighters. Again, assuming everything goes exactly right and we get 1 kill per fired micromissile."

"And we're already below that," Hikaru pointed out.

"Oh yes," Kira admitted. "If you assume our last-battle P-K of 0.92, 985 missiles are required. And that's not a realistic number, because the Cube Fighters are only going to get harder and harder to target."

"We only carry 480 missiles between all 40 launchers," Hikaru pointed out the huge disparity between needed missiles and available missiles.

"Exactly, we'd need to reload all of our magazine space at least once, and probably a partial load, while getting shot at," Kira explained. "So we need something more."

"What are you thinking?" Hikaru asked before she sat down on the stool he kept next to his desk.

"Two things. The existing missiles we're using are not the maximum missile size we can use. We've used the normal 5-ton missile setup, which is the Earth Alliance standard. Paxis Archangel upgraded our launchers, we can use missiles up to 10 tons mass, same diameter, longer bodies."

Hikaru frowned. "How long has that been in place?" she asked.

"It was part of the last upgrade set, just not told to us off the bat." Kira stretched out for a moment. "Second, the Helldarts. We have the array of 20 missiles on the back of the conning tower, and two blocks of 8 launchers just forward of the Valiants, so total of 36 launchers. Helldarts are two tons per missile, and if I can create a new missile design that uses the same principle as the Hydra, we can leverage the 20 reloads per silo of Helldart to our advantage." Kira did a new brace of math on a new notepad sheet. "If I can get 20 micromissiles per Helldart, then we have twenty times twenty times thirty-six… that comes out to 14,400 on one load of Helldarts."

"Helps, but underwhelming," Hikaru said with a nod. "When was the last time you slept?" she asked.

"Yesterday, why?" Kira answered.

"I mean, really relaxed and slept properly, not just your usual four-hours-stifled-nap and back to work," The Magic Knight pointed out the disparity between what Kira normally did and what was proper.

Kira yawned, then dropped his pen on his note-tablet. "Things like this keep me up at night, Hikaru," Kira admitted. "There is no good way this works out."

"That's why we train, harder, day after day. The nights still belong to us," Hikaru held her hands out to Kira. "Hand up?"

"Other way around," Kira took her hands, and pulled her close for a kiss. She was initially surprised, but mastered the reaction quickly and gave into it. Enjoyed it, she quickly came to realize. "Sorry," he said after they split.

"I'm not," Hikaru said before she sat down on his leg and closed up for a longer, more passionate kiss.

They would take their kissing to Kira's bed and would fall asleep in each other's arms shortly thereafter, still fully clothed. Both would be late for their next duty rotations, but no comment was made of it by Miriallia and it was never entered into their records.

Kira would finish his revised micromissile pod designs in the coming days, and prototype a design after having it cleared by the Captain, for testing in the next battle.

-x-x-x-

(Day 56, 1130 Hours)
(Archangel, Hangar Deck)

" 'I can hear the voices say, Carry On my Wayward Son,' " Murdoch sang reasonably close to in tune with the song playing on the hangar radio.

"Carry on the wiring harness over here to my segment?" Gomer asked between verses of Murdoch's singing.

"Here," Murdoch pushed it through the compartment wall to where Gomer could get to it on his side. "See it?"

"Yeah, I got it," Gomer pulled the harness through to where he needed it. "Okay, this will take a soldering iron and some solder, got one handy boss?" the Hangar 2-I-C asked.

"I do," Voltage said as she was passing by with her tool harness on. She pulled a soldering iron from her pack and flipped it to him. "Return it later."

"Yes'm, noted," Gomer waved the business end of the soldering iron toward her, then ducked back into the access hatch he was working in and began attaching wires.

"Air pumps again?" Yzak asked Murdoch as he approached the back of the Duel.

"Yeah, last test we ran on the system fried the wiring harness to this block. We think Paxis has upgraded these pumps and didn't upgrade the power feeds, so that explains why we've burned out four harnesses to these pumps."

"Makes sense. What kind of overhead did you plan for this one?" Joule followed up.

"Plus fifty percent," Murdoch said. "If that doesn't work, next step is use the same wiring we use to feed the power motors in the CIWS guns on the Mobile Suits," the Hangar Chief reported.

"Those are hungry — " Yzak was cut off by the battle klaxon going off. "Well, time to find out," he started running for the pilot lounge.

"Finished, Gomer?" Murdoch asked.

"One more — yes!" Gomer switched off the soldering iron, stashed it in the access panel so he would know where it was, and heaved himself out onto the floor of the hangar area so Murdoch could slam shut and latch the access hatch. After it was closed, Murdoch heaved him up to standing and toward the crew bay so they could get their encounter suits on — depressurizing the hangar was serious business, and crew had to be either inside the pressurized areas or in space suits before the process began. There was one exception: the Rune Gods had to deploy into the hangar before depressurization, the Magic Knights could not use encounter suits to pilot their Rune Gods, but the three ancient beings could deploy in normal atmosphere and simply wait for the depressurization.

"Attention all hands, attention all hands, detecting battle beacon for Malanas fleet elements! They are engaging the Harvest Mothership ahead!" Operator Dorothy Catalonia reported as Murdoch started climbing into his encounter suit and sealed the body section up.

"Looks like we've got some friends," Gomer said after he got his helmet on and locked down.

"Always good to have them shooting at someone else," Murdoch acknowledged the point. He had his helmet on and secured moments later. "Let's do it!"

The Crew Bay had two doors going into the hangar, one standard door for normal access when the bay was pressurized, and an airlock large enough for four persons to pass through at a time. The depressurization pump for the airlock was sufficient to clear it in thirty seconds, so Gomer, Murdoch, and two more crowded into the room and closed up the inner door. "Suck job started," Gomer said in a complete lack of tact after Murdoch thumbed the depressurize button.

"Listen for whistling or hissing sounds, boys," Murdoch ordered.

After twenty seconds, nobody chimed in. The order to listen for whistling or hissing sounds was a safety precaution, the old Earth Alliance normal suits sometimes had a habit of ripping under the internal pressure if a leak started, which could increase the rate of depressurization and once or twice had resulted in explosive decompression for EA naval crewmembers. Such was not a pretty way to go to the grave, it usually resulted in a closed-casket funeral for the poor sod thus vented.

"Nothing, only my bum-hole practicing 'When Johnny Comes Marching Home' for the Christmas Choir," Gomer joked.

Murdoch groaned. "Why do I keep you around?" the Hangar Chief asked nobody in particular.

"Replacing me would be a platinum-plated bitch, boss, you have to be a special kind of crazy to stay on this ship," Gomer pointed out.

"The horror of that comment is exceeded only by the validity of it," Operator Catalonia pointed out. "When you get your personnel out, Murdoch, first launches are Strike Freedom and Buster."

"Will do, ma'am!" Murdoch answered after he unlatched the door to the hangar.

-x-

"How's it looking so far for Malanas?" Kira asked while doing the combat pre-flight for his machine.

"Better than last time, they brought a bigger fleet and more fighters so they are not wildly outnumbered like last time," Miriallia covered that answer.

"How are you feeling?" Kira asked after a moment of silence.

"I'd much rather be in bed right now, but Murphy's wisdom rings true here: the enemy attacks when they are ready, and when we are not," Miriallia admitted.

"Too true," Tolle admitted. "Have they noticed we're here yet?"

"No, no indicator that they're looking away from the Malanas fleet elements," Sai covered that question. "First launches of Dreads from the Nirvana, and the command units are active as well," he continued, meaning the three 'custom' Dreads, the Vanguard, and the Support Ship.

"Final checks completed, Strike Freedom and Buster are cleared for launch," Murdoch said. "Give 'em an assbeating worth remembering, kid," Murdoch gave Kira his send-off.

"With pleasure," Kira said with some savagery to voice before he closed up his cockpit. "Strike Freedom, taxiing Starboard Main to Starboard Catapult hold-short, requesting clearance for cat-shot," he reported.

"Kira, you are cleared for immediate launch. Godspeed, pilot," Dorothy said.

"Buster reporting, taxiing Port Main to Port Cat hold-short, ready for my cannon shot," Tolle said with some cheer.

"Cleared for immediate flinging," Dorothy said with a straight face but a hint of humor to voice. Immediately thereafter, Kira was ejected into space by the starboard catapult.

"Rayearth reporting readied," Hikaru said.

"Selesce, ready to go," Umi acknowledged a couple seconds later.

"You two are next, Rayearth on the starboard catapult, Selesce on the port-side. Move it up!"

-x-

Sai changed a couple settings on his control panel. "Conn, Sensors, we've got an issue here," he reported after he isolated the anomalies that his sensors were detecting.

"Talk to me, Sai," Murrue requested.

"Six Pod Ships approaching from a different direction, not part of the Harvest Mothership fleet ahead. High-energy readings suggest something new and strange onboard, ma'am," Sai reported.

"Suicide run?" Miriallia asked.

"Not on their resource budget," Yzak pointed out. "You don't throw resources away when they're already cutting corners to this degree. This is probably something inventive that they're going to try to tie us down with while their Mothership closes in for a killshot."

"Copy," Murrue acknowledged the point. "Kira, Tolle, Hikaru, Umi, intercept and engage incoming pod ships. Newman, maneuver us to port and plan on looping around behind the Malanas fleet, then reengage from the left flank low of the Malanas lines."

"Moving to intercept," Kira said stoically. The four deployed units were joined by the Heavyarms and Mercurius forthwith, both of which moved quickly to join the intercept.

"Pod ships launching cube fighters," Athrun said. The deployed cubes did not immediately separate, but instead received a high-energy capsule from the Pod Ships in the moments thereafter. All six of the ships launched their second cubes, followed quickly by the second energy capsules that quickly engulfed the cubes. "The Hell are they doing?"

"What is that shit?" Tolle asked.

"The cubes are breaking up into three objects each!" Hikaru noted after the crimson flash of the energy anomaly started fading. "What the — they're trying to replicate our units?" Hikaru noted after the condensed objects started taking familiar forms if not familiar color schemas.

"Bust their asses for this!" Athrun said.

"Don't engage your own clone! Fight asymmetrically!" Kira closed on a clone of the Duel Assault Shroud and sabered its left arm off with a beam saber. "Fight enemies that your arms and style are best against!" The Assault Shroud clone tried to fire on the Strike Freedom with the Shiva Railgun and the missile pack on the shoulder, but neither weapon was effective against a Gundam equipped with advanced phase shift armor. In contrast, Kira's deft beam saber work put a quick end to the Duel Assault Shroud clone, and he moved to engage a second clone of the Duel Assault Shroud.

"Yeah, we can work with this!" Umi ducked under a beam cannon shot from the Vayeate clone and came up under it before the simulacrum of the heavy gun Gundam could move away. Her rapier punched through the chest of the machine cleanly and cleaved the crimson energy source on the way through. Yzak covered her ass quickly when the copy of the Mercurius tried to close in on her exposed rear, four beams to the back of the machine disabled it and a pair of Shiva rounds detonated the reactor. "Thanks for the assist, Yzak!"

"Keep on it, there's another Vayeate clone in the group!" Yzak turned his attention next to the GuAIZ clone that was ostensibly a copy of Morgan Chevalier's machine, but which was woefully under-piloted to be anywhere near a proper simulacrum.

Trowa's guns lit up first a Windam clone, then turned his missile launchers on a Rayearth clone, neither of which was defended to any degree of the defense held by the proper Rune Gods. "These units look and somewhat move like ours, but lack any amount of defense equivalent to ours," he commented after his guns crossed over a second Selesce clone and shredded it to pieces.

"The fact that they are trying is abhorrent, but worrisome," Pytor commented before he capped off another GuAIZ with a single shot. "If they improve these simulacrums, this might be a challenge."

"We've got enough as-is," Hikaru complained before she cleaved the first copy of the Strike Freedom in half from head to crotch in one swing, and along the way detonated the power source within. Her second swing of this battle was at a Buster clone, which caught it at the knees and removed both legs from the knees down. Fuu finished it up with an impaling strike from a different angle, and in the process of ripping the blade from the deceased machine detonated its energy source. "Thanks, Fuu!"

"This is underhanded!" Fuu complained. "We will master this trick just as much as we will master the Harvest itself!" She moved onto the second clone of the Strike Freedom and engaged it quickly.

"Kira reporting, I'm engaging these pod ships!" Kira stowed his beam sabers and switched over to his paired Beam Rifles, which he combined into cannon form and started doing the Pods one at a time.

"I will join you!" Pytor broke through the rump line presented by the clone machines and started with the Pod Ship at the far end of the line from where Kira began.

Pytor and Kira each accounted for two, the Archangel itself accounted for the two in the center — two sets of Gottfried Triad cannons against each of the pods put a quick end to them. With the loss of their command elements, the remaining cloned units were easy prey for the Archangel Team to mop up and render inop.

-x-

Admiral Rayn sighed when this latest trick of the Harvest Fleet failed utterly to change the outcome of their battle against the Archangel Team.

"That worked not at all for them," Captain Reija said with some humor in her tone.

"They tried, they failed, but that does not mean they are defeated, my love," Rayn pointed out. "Comms, open laser channels to the ships."

"You're up," the radio officer reported.

"Archangel Team, Nirvana Team, Admiral Rayn of Malanas. Are you willing to assist in bringing down another of these Harvest Motherships in a salvageable form?" the Admiral asked.

"You wish to salvage another?" Captain Vivon of the Nirvana asked.

"Yes, we intend a surprise for the Harvest," Reija said.

"I like where this is going," Captain Ramius answered with a savage smile from the bridge of her ship. "We'll discuss particulars after the battle is completed. Helm, move to broadside-on attack position, continue below the flight plane of the Malanas fleet. Weapons, prepare targeting priority same as last engagement."

"Targeting priority Harvest Mothership disable, can do Cap'n," the weapons officer over Murrue's right shoulder said.

"Coco, have our Dreads move forward and begin clearing the enemy fighters in support of the Malanas fleet," Captain Vivon said. "Make sure they don't try to target the Archangel while she is disabling the enemy ship."

As the first of four fire sets went out from the Archangel, combined with a salvo of Micromissile Pods, Admiral Rayn sighed again, this time in thanks of the assistance from the Archangel and Nirvana. Already, these two unique rebel ships were very famous in the Malanas Armed Forces, and this battle would make them even more so.

Both ships would find out in months to come that they had a serious fanbase in a star nation that neither ship had visited, and a growing list of persons who were willing to join their crews even without having set foot on their ships yet.

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Author's Chapter Afterword:

Four years, the original Chapter 50 has haunted me. Four years in the planning and execution to correct it.

I won't say that the original Chapter 50 came off half-cocked or incorrect. Quite the contrary, I had planned it out for some months before writing, beta reading, and execution. When done, it actually looked close enough to what I had planned for the chapter, which is kinda surprising for the way I normally write. Normally the Dice decide how bad things go down the toilet, and I will admit more than once I have had whole plans, whole chapters torpedoed by the shifting rolls. It is what it is, and it is an interesting way to write that requires mental flexibility to a significant degree to make it work.

The problem with the original Chapter 50 is that, in essence, it sounded better in my head than it looked on paper. And, I'll admit that readily and freely: what hit the paper, after the fact, just did not stack up to my planning. If it is not good enough, it needs to be redone.

Here we are, four years after the fact and the continuation of the consideration that I'm not dead yet, and I have not yet given up the writing. New cut, new rolls, new action. I hope this chapter 50 follows more in the lines that are expected of my writing.

—The new cut: rerolled the entire sequence for Paiway's attempted mutiny.
—The new result: Not only did Paiway fail to instigate this time around, the coming Harvest Shitstorm may have scared her straight and cleaned up her protectionist attitude.
—The new dynamic: since Paiway's attempted Mutiny fizzled out on detonation, but the plumbing malfunction still rolled as happening, I had to come up with something else to bust. So I took a page out of Tom Clancy's The Hunt for Red October (a favorite book of mine) and loosed a rogue corroded butterfly valve on the ship. It passed through a couple possible checks for causing catastrophic failure and ended up clogging the water filter.

So, with the plumbing failure not eating half the chapter, I moved up a couple other things, changed around a couple event orders, and deployed the next Harvest Mothership battle for this chapter instead of making it the opening for Chapter 51 as I initially intended (before I locked myself in a mental loop trying to figure out how to dig myself out of the hole I buried myself in the original Chapter 50).

I won't say much else about the chapter, but I will say this about my writing: I'm back! Exorcizing this wraith of my writing has helped a helluva lot in getting my writing motivation back inline, and switching from some generally light forms of music back to Metal has helped inordinately in refocusing my efforts. So, in the next couple weeks I am going to pre-prep the Chapter 51 for Christmas, and give a proper Christmas gift as is necessary for my writing tempo.

Also on the writing front, I seem to be down to just one Beta Reader now, Takeshi Yamato is still hanging around and needling me into writing more often than I just vegetate and game. I need that pestering, to be honest, in that I still have a love for engineering games and would just waste my evenings on them when I really need to be forcing myself to think sharp and write hard. Doubly so now that my work circumstances have changed of late.

On the personal front, I have been promoted / lateral transferred at work to a position much more inline with my training and personal goals, and once I got over the mental shock of that change, my writing has gone ballistic. In the past month, I have pre-prepared seven chapters of a coming story that I will begin posting after I finish up the loose ends of Set 2 Jokers Wild. I have committed myself to continuing the Sigma storyline even if my records programs are doing weird things; thinking I may just take a vacation and force myself to write out the revised programs in a week. I am also big-time committed to doing Archangel's Amazing Adventures, as I have changed up some of my story planning on this note to go a few places that I never considered before the hiatus, and which will cause some head-scratching but make sense in context. (As usual, no spoilers!) And, the black sheep of my storylines, the MMC is still on the books and I've got a lot of writing to go there still.

So, no, this is not my swan song. The party's still going, and you know it's all fun and games until the neighbor complains about the noise, then it's even better :)

NEXT UP: More harvesting means more battle for everyone, and Hibiki pushes himself past limits that he thought he would never surpass. And, through it all, the two ships grow closer even when circumstances look like things are getting worse…

FOR REFERENCE: NEW ROLLS:

Paiway tries to instigate: 72 — makes attempt
Crew Check for mutiny: 32 — crew does not cooperate
Paiway attitude adjustment: 100 — Complete unscrewing
Paiway trajectory change: 71 — Not complete change, but in the right direction
Magno tells part of the tale: 82 — First part of the story (Ikazuchi story)
Plumbing Malfunction: 30 — Some failures, not as catastrophic as first round
Jura Check: 88 — Jura digs deeper into men / women relationships
Murdoch / Gascogne: 93 — tag-team maintenance on the support ship
Harvest Encounter: 29 — Harvest Mothership iced by the team, encounters new enemy units trying to mimic the Archangel Team

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Review Replies: These replies are of the reviews for the original Chapter 50, what I would normally reply to in Chapter 51. The replies I posted for Chapter 49's Reviews are listed below.

Mega1987: RNGesus is my co-pilot. Har har har.

The onion thing is still a possibility, but the exact method it happens by is now up in the air.

DragonBlade00: I need to do another full TO&E and TRO for the Archangel sometime shortly, if for no other reason to keep my own numbers straight. Thanks for the review!

Deathzealot:

(1): Yes, the hot springs already exists. (2): Supposed to be Lady Grandma, when I get in a hurry I can slip up like that. (3): Not sure yet, may be an option for a supply ship, but given the flexibility of the Archangel itself, that might also be considered redundant. (4): If the topic comes up again, the split of the pirates will probably be deeper the farther down the timeline it goes. (5): Oversight on my part. (6): Not going to spoil that one, but Magno might. (7): If things start getting desperate, the Vanguards may come out of mothballs. Time will tell.

Infinite Freedom: Yeah, Paiway really didn't plan her mutiny bow to stern. That worked out to everyone's advantage, though, and this time the dice shocked her out of that FUBAR.

BIGGZ1344: I love your characterization of the mutiny response from the Archangel as a blaise 'here we go again' kinda thing. Now I have to work that kind of reaction in somewhere else. Thanks!

Sabaku-no-yokho: Now it is 15 years since inception, and I have sworn not to give up!

Digineko1a: I believe your reply to Chapter 50 was your first reply to my story, so thank you!

HolyDragoon: You can expect the cause of the mutiny is only going to be much tougher than shown on the Nirvana when they get to Tarak and Meijere.

KPheonix: I froze up mentally for four years, wanting to continue but could not dig myself out of the mental hole I put myself in, now we continue.

2ndsly: I'm in the same boat as you, after I posted I bounced off the mutiny and could not mentally force myself past it. Here's to hoping this one does better.

Knightwolf1875: Now there's a name I have not heard in more than a few years, Voltron…

Finnzo: Your idea about jamming the Quantum Comms between the command ships is now something of a moot point, but things could shake out in a similar direction or tangent. I'll have to consider this.

FlawlessCowboy2552 (Chapter 4 review): The GUULs were assumed to have been destroyed in the transition to Cephiro, though this was not explicitly stated.

Dragoon725: Several good points in your reviews. I've copied it for future reference. Thanks!

synbad2: Interesting take on jump mechanics, and not entirely out of line with some of the unseen mechanics of parallel universes in the MMC / JW / Sigma timelines, but a bit more stringent than the Jump Gate Engines used by the Crusaders. There will be a more thorough explanation on that note some time into the future.

Bleach5700: Good point on the AI interactions, but this chapter shows that the Archangel now has a good AI on their side (two, counting the AI in the Strike Freedom).

Redliner: I cannot say where they shall go next, for I give no spoilers. I am sorry on that note, we go where we go.

Ryuma085: I've heard a lot about Gundam IBO's failures over the intervening years, and right now I don't think it is on the menu, so rest safe there. Thanks for the review!

Guest (Guest review?): you are right about the ongoing maintenance state of the Gundams, but keep in mind that in national arsenals around this world, there are combat aircraft that have been in service for decades and are still flying under stresses not dissimilar from what the Archangel's Gundams have been through. Never discount the value of good engineering, though I may have to start throwing in curveballs on that note.

The Crimson Trucker: I will admit at least two of your requests are on the list of possibles. I'll leave the guess on which to your imagination for now.

TheKiller7: Those upgrades (BT fusion engines) definitely did happen during the BT section, and the crew has kept new machines upgraded with those engines just the same. That said, as the pace heats up, they will probably need to beef up those engines, so the Strike Freedom's AI and equipment database will have a workout in coming chapters.

553Mega-Zecterprime: My apologies for the delay, but I am now back in the swing!

Hellhound-d.o.w: Since Paiway straightened herself out in this version of the chapter, no punishment necessary. I was thinking about having the Captain give her a once-over, but not an issue now.

SabakunoYokho: Yes, I had a horrible case of WPS, I buried myself in a hole and could not dig out until I rebuilt the chapter.

Barricade: Standby for further!

RandomBugger: Aye, most of what you point out is not properly spelled out in the anime. Thanks for the heads up!

Dragonmaycry12: Motivation failure. I think I'm back in gear now.

Redliner: 51st Chapter is planned for this Christmas. Standby for further!

UDLLORD: The Coof has not slain me! What nuked my writing was WPS and stress. Stress sucks. Stress is bad, m'kay?

Dark Phoenix Jake: Confession time: the first anime series I bought piecemeal was Trigun. And it was so piecemeal that I acquired it, the first three DVDs I have are Pioneer and the remaining 5 are Geneon. Ha! (That said, standard disclaimer: I will not confirm or deny that Trigun is a destination, only that it is on the list of possibles).

Sabakunoyokho: The hiatus is over.

Noctis Luxys: Cryptic reviews are cryptic. Or are you being deliberately laconic? Hard to say, but thoughts they are.

Sabakunoyokho: Next destination is a fantasy destination, will not yet say where. Standby for further!

I apologize for the protracted silence to all my readers. I break my silence now because I have found my road to writing again, from a very unusual source no less. All will continue apace, and I have plenty of writing to come in the next year or two.

THANK YOU ALL FOR THE REVIEWS AND FOR YOUR THOUGHTS! KEEP 'EM COMING!

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The Gripe Sheet: There was some gripes on the last chapter, and most critically of all the original Chapter 50 came off as something of a shit-show to me, which is what stonewalled me for four years. So, much thanks to Takeshi Yamato for keeping me writing in the interim, and now I hope I have broken the curse and can continue on the path I have set for myself.

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Footnotes: No footnotes for this chapter. Much thanks to my lone Beta Reader of these days, Takeshi Yamato, who has steadfastly made sure that I keep writing even when my motivation was gone.

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Review Replies (Original Chapter 50):

Mega 1987: Lacus may be out of the running for Kira, but that doesn't mean she's completely sunk. My dice have done stranger things over the years.

BIGGZ 1344: The upgrade program will be commencing here shortly, and the Strike Freedom has a LOT of options for it, so…

Dragon May Cry 12: There are some unorthodox options in your list, and a few that have not yet been considered. Thanks!

Broken Life Cycle: I was not referring to doing WH40K in AAA, not at least until I have a much better understanding of what the series entails. And you are probably right, playing against technology-as-religion is asking for trouble.

Victor M Sarks: Both Macross and Space Battleship Yamato have been recommended, but I don't specifically choose series based on what tech I can 'lift' for future use. Choices run a bit deeper than just that, but always welcome to see where the options are.

As to the Jokers Wild series, well, it has been revised heavily from the first version, and I am thinking about rewriting some of the chapters involved, but I'm still considering options there. I may just drive forward in it, that's more of a personal project thing and as you pointed out, AAA is the main draw. By about a factor of four. Still, I always try to do better in all my works, and I thank you for the feedback.

Mordalfus Grea: That's definitely a different opinion as to why I should do Gundam IBO. Thanks!

Rydan Fall: MSN Would be a fun one, that is one of my all-time favorite mecha animes, mainly because it deconstructs a lot of what is wrong with mecha anime. Your other options are in the list, so stay tuned for further!

Holy Dragoon: In my opinion, Vandread is a Sci-Fi anime with a shit-ton of potential that was hastily converted into a romantic comedy, and never quite made the transition fully. In this writing, I am taking the sci-fi elements up to 11, maybe 11.5 and running with them in what a technical analyst would consider a logical fashion. If you can stomach some cheese, VanDread might be a good grab for a few bucks.

Hellhound D.O.W.: I agree, that scene didn't come out right. I wanted an impact death, not a console explosion or anything tried and overabused like that. What I was aiming for was operator facing rearward (you are right, the console forms a semi-circle around her), the engine explosion drives the ship forward faster than it drives her forward and her head strikes the console in front of her. Hope that makes more sense!

I have long maintained that anyone in a technician's pursuit is at least a little bit twisted, which is why I have so much fun with Murdoch's Madmen! There might be a few join-ups, but not many of the named crew from the series. After all, the pirates are trying to reform Meijere and Tarak, not abandon it.

Drakensis: That's the challenge, dealing with masses of low-quality enemies in the fashion that Stalin said 'quantity has a quality all its own'. Kira got lucky on the design for the Hydra missile system, but that luck won't last forever.

Dark Phoenix Jake: OMG! As soon as I read that, my mind instantly shipped Trowa-Jura and the results were well past wrong and into permanent-eyebrow-flex territory. Now to see if the dice have anything to say about it…

The data includes all historical reports of the Harvest, information on designs, known habitable and inhabited planets, historical information, operating specs and readings from the Harvesters, the works. Being a computer tech analyst myself, I know how much data inflation you can get in a closed system if left unchecked, and the Harvest's network engineers coudl easily be accused of 'dereliction of duty' in this regard. So much the better for the Archangel, such as it is :)

Knives 91: Oh, assuming all goes well at Meijere and the Archangel takes up the gauntlet of cleaning up Terra, I've got some good ones planned for it :)

Knightwolf 1875: Have not seen more than a few chunks of Voltron. Thanks for the recommend!

2ndsly: As I pointed out in my review reply to Holy Dragoon, I think it was a straight-up sci-fi anime that they tried making into a romantic comedy and didn't quite scrub all the really terrible aspects of it properly. The background of VanDread has all the propensity to be truly horrible, but they don't quite get to it in the anime. For AAA's segment, I decided to harden it up a bit, so…

Well, on the romantic side, I predict things will start moving a bit better in a few cases, but as I have a LOT of story still to go, there will be a few that are dragged out a bit. Stay tuned on that note!

Redacted 20168: Always a pleasure :)

Sabaku No Yokho: That MS strikes me as a salvage build you'd see in one of my other stories, not a production unit. Still…

Infinite Freedom: I hope this chapter meets your expectations!

EXpertUS: Not sure about Gundam 00, it is a possibility.

RedemptionWarrior: Well, that double-down boiled over in this chapter, and it took a hard check to start making progress away from the problem, so…

As to the VanDread Meia, I think in the next chapter or two you will see some movement on that story. And some work with the other VanDread units.

Thanks for the review!

Dark Phoenix Jake: Without remorse, you just pegged 100 percent to a story element that I'm about to exploit for points in the coming chapters. The technical term is Nanomachine Factory, but Hive is just as common given the way nanomachines move and work in my works.

PsyRaptor: Kantai is not strictly in the list, mainly because I don't have a lot of experience with it, but I have been thinking about doing a study on it. Hrm, hrm.

Fallout 3, Fallout NV, and Fallout 4 are definitely options.

Gulping: Much thank you for the review and suggestions. And you are right, we're in a gray zone where the Archangel is still too small for the big leagues but not small enough to be appropriately challenged by the lower-tier games. Hrm, hrm, this will take some serious work deciding what to do next.

You are right on the arsenal, quite a bit of it is getting dated. I'll have to think about that here in the next couple chapters.

Thank you!

The Crimson Trucker: RWBY, now that's not a common suggestion. I'll have to consider it…

Dragoon 725 (Round 1): Indirectly, you just pointed out one of the problems of armor throughout the ages: specialization and depth of defense. That is a good breakdown of Gundam IBO armor and its effectiveness against different forms of energy weapons. Still not sure if I'll go there, or if the dice will have a say on it, but there is a distinct possibility.

Dragon Blade 00: Thanks for coming back and giving it another chance!

Dragoon 725 (Round 2): That's a helluva lot of info. Not to mention, I've not decided on Halo or Starcraft yet, both are quite possible but the random location matrix has not been consulted yet. Still, your points are quite valid for the limitations of both groups. I'll have to keep them in mind if I go in that direction.

Dragoon 725 (Round 3): And the fun keeps going! I love these kinds of technical fiskings, always a good thing to see hard-and-fast analysis of disparate technologies. Thank you very much for the opinion piece!

Dragoon 725 (Round 4): Good read on FF7 and FF8, I considered a lot of those same points and intend to make some noise with that intention in Sigma at the minimum, likely in AAA if the dice determine I go that way.

Good point on the EMP rounds, which are a legit missile mod for Battletech and therefore available to the Strike Freedom.

Thank you for the extended reviews!