It's that time of year again for regular Bloodlines updates. Let's see how long I can keep this up. I'll NaNoWriMo Bloodlines Part Four if I have to in order for this fic to be finished in an appropriate amount of time.

Thank you for your patience. Hopefully the updates will continue until the fic is done or nearly so.


Chapter Fifty-Eight: Coming Down

It was a couple of days later when I saw the burgeoning fleet outside the hallway windows.

"Quite a sight, isn't it?" Athrun asked.

I looked over at Athrun, who was floating towards me, though his eyes were peeled outside as well, looking at the same fleet I was.

"This is the fleet for 'Operation Spitbreak', isn't it?" I asked.

"It is," Athrun said. "A lot of Mobile Suits will be descending from orbit in order in order to surprise the Earth forces. The objective would be for us to disrupt the defenses and reinforcements for the beachhead defenders at Panama, at least, that's my understanding."

It was odd how calm Athrun's voice was considering that the battle had to be rapidly approaching, maybe even in hours. It wasn't comforting to me, surprisingly. I wanted to shake, I wanted to float away somewhere and wrap my head around the idea of participating in such a massive operation. But Athrun was a veteran. He had seen a lot of war, a lot more than I did. Maybe he was grimly accepting his duty, and maybe that was why he was the leader of our unit, more than him being Patrick Zala's son.

"This looks like an all-out assault," I finally said.

"It is. Panama is heavily fortified, but it's a necessary move," Athrun replied. "If we cut off the Earth Alliance forces in space from being supplied on the ground, the war is pretty much over. We're going right into the teeth because it's the quickest way to end the war in our favor."

He looked at me then, which suddenly made my chest tighten, just a little. This was getting embarrassing, the little things that were happening whenever Athrun looked at me in private. I shouldn't have been feeling like a lovesick schoolgirl, but that seemed to be what was happening to me whenever I gazed into his eyes, without the distraction of something important going on.

I was afraid of the implications, but I wasn't going to hide from them either. Now was not the time to worry about it, though. Not until after Spitbreak.

"A-Athrun," I managed as I consciously forced my feelings down, "What's the plan when we land?"

"We'll be landing right in the middle of their defenses, I would think," Athrun replied. "Basically, our GUNDAM machines will be able to take a lot of damage that the ordinary GINNs and DINNs cannot. So I think our team will be able to weather at least the initial punishment. Afterwards, we may need to recharge before we press on with the offensive."

"Sounds that simple," I replied. I couldn't help but think that a lot of people onboard all of these vessels were about to lose their lives, however. But that was war. It is not the private fight for survival I had on theArchangel. It's something far greater than that.

I saw Nicol Amalfi approach the both of us then. "Athrun! Cagalli! Captain Ades is telling us to head for the bridge! It's about Spitbreak!"

The shocked tone in his voice and his wide eyes made it clear something was wrong. But Athrun spoke first. "What's wrong, Nicol?"

"It . . . it's hard to explain but . . . let's just go to the bridge!" Nicol replied.

I immediately felt a pit form in my stomach. This was not going to be good.


"The objective is no longer Panama, sir?" Athrun asked, clearly as taken aback as everyone else in the room. Even Asta Joule had dropped her customary sour, cynical expression in exchange for a look of honest bewilderment.

"Correct," Captain Ades replied. "I just got word not a half-hour ago. The target is now Alaska, specifically the JOSH-A base that is Atlantic Federation military headquarters. Moreover, the attack is going to begin as soon as possible."

"You're kidding, sir!" Asta exclaimed. Even she was fazed by this, her normally sullen exterior had vanished. "How're we going to pull this off?"

"The theory is that the Earth Alliance has moved so many forces to Panama from JOSH-A that it's ripe for the taking," Ades replied. "Apparently, JOSH-A has been the intended target of 'Operation Spitbreak' from the very start, but they kept that info away from the vast majority of ZAFT forces in order for Earth Alliance agents to not discover the truth."

"If JOSH-A were to fall," Athrun said, "Atlantic Federation forces will be put into disarray and their leadership will be gone."

"That is correct. This would greatly weaken the Earth Alliance in a way that goes beyond seizing the Panama Mass Driver," Ades replied. "In any case, the five of you will be put back under the command of Commander Le Creuset upon entering the Alaska theater, so your team will not be lacking for orders or direction, Athrun."

Being put back under Le Creuset's command made me feel uneasy. Something was clearly not right with the man, though I wasn't going to discount my rampant paranoia after joining ZAFT. But he made me nervous, and that included the mask he wore.

"Apparently Le Creuset's one of the masterminds behind "Spitbreak", so you should be in good hands, I think," Ades added.

"I understand," Athrun said. He approached Ades and stuck out his hand. "It was a pleasure to serve under you again, Captain."

"My pleasure too," Ades said, shaking Athrun's hand briefly before letting him go. He eyed the rest of us then. "Good luck to all of you. Hopefully the rest of the orders will be wired to you by the time you have to deploy."

"Yes, sir!" At this point, I was good at mimicking the ZAFT salute on command. It was frightening to me, really. I really was becoming one of them, even though I kept telling myself I didn't believe in ZAFT's ideals or with the views of its current leader.

This had happened to nearly all of the Orb citizens onboard the Archangel. We eventually became part of that ship. We had gotten used to working on that ship for so long it had become home to us. It was a part of our existence, and the Earth Alliance personnel had become our comrades. Even the Artemis personnel, with the language barrier and everything, had eventually assimilated into being part of the ship.

That was 'Stockholm Syndrome', right? Was I beginning to develop that for ZAFT?

I wouldn't. I refused to. I could not let myself become one of 'them'.

At the same time though, if it meant being at Athrun's side . . .

In the back of my head, I was wondering if that would be such a bad thing.


We were loaded into the GUNDAMs first, and then the GUNDAMs launched and were inserted into special capsules made for re-entry, just like all of the other Mobile Suits in ZAFT's arsenal. The capsules worked on auto-pilot, so I was left with a sense of feeling enclosed and helpless the entire time. My fate rested in the hands of a computer until the capsule would break open after atmospheric entry.

"I have received our specific orders," Athrun says.

"Oh yeah?" Dearka asked.

"Our mission is simple. We're going to help establish a beachhead for the main forces to move in on JOSH-A. Following that, we are to head out into sea on the GUULs to assault the seafaring forces from behind so the marine landing force can break through and land. JOSH-A is well defended and Mobile Suits and the navy alone won't be enough."

"So we're not plowing straight ahead into JOSH-A?" Asta asked. "Honestly, it seems their only strategy for us is 'go straight ahead and smash things'."

Honestly, I kind of agreed with Asta on that one. That seemed to be the only strategy ZAFT had for the GUNDAMs, especially since I was on the receiving end of such assaults.

"We are going to be used for the final assault on JOSH-A once the seafaring forces are eliminated," Athrun replied. "It is believed most of the naval forces are Eurasian. They won't be as motivated to protect JOSH-A as Atlantic Federation forces would. We need to finish them off quickly and move in-land and capture JOSH-A as intact as possible."

That made me realize something. "We're thinking JOSH-A has Earth Alliance secrets, don't they?"

"Yes, and that's why they don't want us to completely annihilate the place. The secrets of JOSH-A could allow us to systematically destroy the Earth Alliance forces. We'll know their codes, their encryptions, their battle plans, anything you can think of," Athrun replied.

All of that would put the Earth Alliance on their heels. If the Earth Alliance was never given a chance to recover, it would end the war.

And then . . . I could head home. My service in ZAFT would be brief, mercifully brief. But at what cost? The obliteration of JOSH-A and the total defeat of the Earth Alliance would leave the Naturals at the mercies of Patrick Zala, and he did not seem like a particularly forgiving man when I had spoken with him.

Patrick Zala would likely not give the Earth Alliance generous peace terms at all. His peace terms would likely be so cruel that they would spark another war decades down the line, with the Naturals feeling oppressed, manipulated, and perhaps even enslaved. How would a victory today help either cause, down the line? And what did it mean for Orb? Would ZAFT respect Orb's neutrality and independence, or would they militarily force Orb to fall into line with the rest of Earth?

This battle would not be the end of the conflict even if ZAFT achieved all of their goals. It just would be the setup for centuries of war and death to follow. Even before we launched, I was becoming convinced of that. Perhaps ZAFT wasn't assimilating me as much as I had thought.

Maybe the only reason I felt anything for ZAFT at all was Athrun.

The desire to protect him had grown, just a little, since the last battle. I wasn't so worried about me getting blown up by flak after re-entry, but the same happening to Athrun. It was weird, and I knew why I was beginning to feel that way. I wanted to ignore those feelings, but at the same time, they were there and were getting stronger.

It was stronger than friendship but it wasn't romantic love. It was something else, based on desiring Athrun to live through this war and then find happiness afterward. Was it love, in some way, shape, or form, that I was feeling? Or was it something else, something that is unclassifiable? I didn't know then and I don't know now what those feelings were, but they were causing my heart to slam against my chest and a warm feeling was behind my eyes and in my lungs.

I guess when you get down to it, what I was feeling was pretty much love.

I took deep breaths, tried to ignore my feeling of claustrophobia, caused by being locked in a dark pod with only video screens giving me glimpses of the outside. That's when I felt a sensation of being jarred loose, and I realized my pod had been launched into space, and I was in-bound for Earth.

"All right," Athrun said, as if he had done this plenty of times, "The autopilot will take us through the Earth's atmosphere. After a certain point the pods will open and when that happens the autopilot will be disengaged. The GUNDAM you pilot will be under your personal control."

Thanks, Athrun. Nothing like knowing I could wind up flying myself into my own death.

"This better not be like when I fell into the atmosphere," Dearka said. "That was hell."

It took me a moment to remember that when I had fallen through the atmosphere all those months ago, Dearka had joined us in that. But while I needed Athrun to save me, Dearka had been left on his own. In retrospect, I wonder why Dearka never seemed bitter that Athrun had chosen to help me rather than help Dearka.

"It won't be like that at all. And before you forget, both Cagalli and I took the same trip into that atmosphere. I don't think any of us want to experience that again."

"Point taken," Dearka sighed.

The capsule was beginning to rattle. I figured we were beginning to fall through the atmosphere.

"All right, when the capsules open up, use your thrusters to slow your descent. Not even the GUNDAMs can tolerate a freefall. Control your descent until you hit the ground, understand? And choose your targets wisely, there's ZAFT Mobile Suits ahead of us and we want minimal friendly fire casualties."

The rattling became fiercer, and I gripped my controls, just praying I wouldn't get hit while still in the capsule. That would be horrific, and I'm sure, a definitive possibility. It was the thing everyone thought about but never said a word over, so there would be zero perceived cowardice. The kind of chances you took was something that came with the profession. This was war for you.

The radios were buzzing, I was losing coms. This was typical. How can radio waves be expected to hold together while in re-entry? But this made re-entry even worse, because while auto-pilot was supposed to take care of everything, who says that somebody's auto-pilot won't screw up and ram into me? Or vice versa? Were ZAFT operating systems that reliable, that superlative, that they could guarantee the survival of every single person dropped onto Earth in one of these pods?

The rattling quickly ended, and coms returned. I heard Athrun. "We'll be opening up in five, four, three, two, one . . ."

That's when the pods opened up and began falling to earth, and suddenly I was in freefall.

I immediately poured on the Justice's thrusters, and I tried to position the GUNDAM so I could aim towards the ground. There was fire coming at us from all over the ground. Some surprise attack this was, from the level of flak we were getting it felt more like they were expecting us!

"They're all over the damn place!" I shouted as five GINNs in front of me vanished in fireballs. I fell past them, blinded temporarily by smoke, before getting a mostly clear viewpoint of the ground below.

"Use auto-target!" Athrun shouted. "I don't want to take the risk of friendly fire! Just let the computer do the work and fire!"

I turned on the auto-target system, and suddenly I was given more targets than I could possibly shoot at. JOSH-A had the aerial defenses of nothing I had ever seen before. Definitely worthy of guarding a headquarters!

I pulled the trigger again and again, firing missile salvos at the enemies below. Some of them were intercepted mid-air or were lured off-course by decoys, but roughly half of my shots wound up hitting their targets, causing distant explosions, looking like fiery dustballs from my perspective, to perforate the mountainous landscape.

"This is supposed to be light resistance?" I shouted.

"Well, this is still the Atlantic Federation headquarters! We couldn't expect them to leave it completelyunguarded, I don't think!" Nicol replied. Even he, normally calm and unflappable, sounded stressed and strained.

Asta had fallen ahead of us, and she was lighting up the defenses below left and right. It seemed she wanted to make sure she landed first. "I'm going to land first and secure a zone for the GUULs to be delivered! You guys just keep shooting these bastards!"

Then I saw that Asta's targets suddenly switched from the defenses to the Skygrasper Mobile Armors that were being deployed. We were starting to fall into their sphere of influence and they began shooting at us furiously. I immediately changed my primary targets as well and began shooting at the waves of Skygraspers approach us, and more than one of their missiles hit me, but they failed to do much damage to the Phase Shift.

"Cagalli," Athrun said. "You're the one who won't run out of power. We're counting on you to keep the pressure on these people while we wait for the GUULs and to be recharged. Keep them off of us!"

"Y-Yes, Athrun!" I blew another two Skygraspers out of the sky, and then I was hit from flak below.

"God damn it!" I tried to do two things at once then, firing at the Skygraspers with one weapon and shooting at the ground defenses with the other. It was a near impossible task, especially with the thrusters needing to be periodically fired to keep from going into complete freefall.

Alarm sensors went off. I realized what that meant immediately. I was about to hit the ground.

The Justice slammed into the ground then, shaking the cockpit and throwing me off balance. I managed to regain my senses in time to aim my rifle high into the air and lock onto a pair of Skygraspers coming in for a dive-bombing. Desperately I opened fire and my shot hit one Skygrasper dead-on, and grazed the other. The 2nd Skygrasper spiraled out of control, flying through the fireball of its wingmate and shooting past me before plowing into the ground by several of the remaining anti-air vehicles being deployed against us.

I found cover behind a rocky hill and shot at several of the anti-air guns as they were trying to pull back. More and more GINNS were landing on the ground too, which were making the Earth Alliance ground forces' position untenable. Now they were dealing with both airborne and ground-level operations.

It was becoming clear how unprepared the Earth Alliance was, and how close they already were to being overwhelmed.

My sensors indicated the rest of Athrun's team landing nearby, with Asta Joule being the farthest-flung. She was a berserker on the battlefield, caught in the open while the rest of us were behind cover. She was blasting everyone in her way, considering how many red dots were vanishing from existence when her green dot got close to them.

Finally, she made it over to our position. "Where's the damn GUULs, Athrun?"

"They're trying to get them here! Part of the problem is that the Eurasian navy is putting up enough resistance to delay them!" Athrun replied.

"Tell them to just fly on through without bothering to fight them then! We're gonna head back there to blow up the Naturals' damn navy to begin with!" Asta shouted.

A couple of DINNs flew over our heads. Asta's mood did not improve. "See? If those cheap-ass DINNs can get through, why can't the GUULs?"

Dearka, for his part, leaned out and fired a shot before taking cover again. "Can we complain at a time when we're not gonna get killed? We're bunched up here! All it'd take is some superbomb or something dropped on our heads and we're all dead!"

"Not like Dearka to make sense, but he is in this case," Nicol said. "I'm going to go on ahead with the Mirage Colloid activated. Let's see if I can't make the defenses lighter so we can have a breather."

"That's not a good idea, Nicol," Athrun says. "There's too much fire everywhere. You can't use Phase Shift with Mirage Colloid on, it's not worth it."

"Then what do we do to get out of this mess?" Asta asked.

Another fight of GINNs flew over our heads then, and I turned around to see five GUULs showing up behind us, gliding along the water then making it to the shoreline to where we were pinned down.

"We found it," Dearka said.

I heard a new voice on our coms then, and it seemed to be the commander of the DINN unit. "Zala Team, they need you back on the naval front! The Eurasians are fighting hard. We'll go and plow the road to JOSH-A wit the BuCUES!"

"Got it," Athrun said. "I guess this means the first part of this mission is being cut short for us, then."

That's what it sounded like to me. Clearly things had to be going badly back at sea for them to already call us back to do something about it.

But no one said anything. It was likely we had all grimly accepted our duties. Even I didn't feel like I could say anything at all. What could I possibly say to add to the situation?

"All right, time for the phase two of the operation. We're heading out to attack the Eurasian Navy from behind. Dearka, give us covering fire from the anti-air. Everyone else, get to a GUUL and let's get to work!" Athrun ordered.

We obeyed his orders quickly. The four of us immediately charged towards our GUULs, leaving Dearka and the Buster behind.

The Buster leaned out and fired a trio of shots before taking cover as more fire came its way. I joined in then, firing a salvo before making a break for my own GUUL, which proved more difficult than I expected. After a klutzy maneuver that made the Justice look like it was flailing in the air from a bad tap-dancing attempt, I managed to lock the Justice into place on the top of the GUUL and I shot off into the air, heading back out towards sea.

Dearka soon joined us, and we shot out across the water.

"Okay, that could have gone better but I think I'm still in one piece," Dearka said.

As we charged across the sea, I could already see the Eurasian fleet, surrounded by flak and explosions. It brought to mind a sense of siege.

In fact, it looked like the Eurasians were being overwhelmed. It didn't look like much of a fight at all. Did the navy really need our help that badly, when it looked like they were manhandling the Eurasians on their own?

"Man, insert French military defeat joke here," Dearka said.

"Something's wrong. The navy doesn't look like they need our help for this at all, they're winning easily," Asta said.

The thought occurred to me that we should separate. We were winning dramatically enough that I felt confident about the suggestion. "Maybe I and someone else should split off and head towards JOSH-A to help with that assault while the others stay and follow the plan to help the Navy."

Athrun's voice came back swiftly. "No. We're following orders. Anyway, once we finish off the Eurasians, if it really is this easy, then we'll be able to bring in the full force of the ZAFT forces in theater towards the JOSH-A rather than a partial amount."

There was a certain logic in Athrun's orders, supporting the idea of overwhelming force. With the Eurasian navy obliterated, the forces currently on the ground attacking JOSH-A would be able to get all of the reinforcements and supplies they'd need to smash through the base rapidly. So what if we were not absolutely needed to defeat the navy? Our presence would be enough to make a noticeable difference and probably move up the timetable a good deal.

He was a good leader, a smart captain, and he accomplished this while obeying his orders.

"All right, makes sense to me," I said. I aimed towards a random Earth Alliance ship and fired. It blew apart almost in half and began to sink.

At that point, it barely mattered to me how many Naturals I had killed in this battle. I had an almost fatalistic attitude. I had killed so many, what were a few more at this point? I was fighting for ZAFT and I was fighting for Athrun, and I had to do my part, especially if this battle meant the war would soon end. Regardless of what came afterward, if the war ended, I could go home.

If Athrun's orders would take me to the end of the war, while staying as moral as such orders could be in battle, I could accept that. I wanted to trust Athrun.

"All right, spread out and go after the naval forces systematically. Let's make as quick work of them as possible and then we're going to get resupplied before we go back to JOSH-A," Athrun said. "Everyone, begin your attack runs!"

We accelerated as one, and then charged right into the battle at sea.


Anyone who has watched Gundam SEED will know what's coming the next chapter. Following that . . . a lot of things are going to change. And it will significantly affect the fates of Team Zala in ways you might not expect.

Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed, especially after such a long break.