The moment we've all been waiting for. It is here.
EDIT: The "ZOINKS" error is because this fic is hosted on another site (MAHQ) which uses ZOINKS to censor swear words, and the fic is reposted here. Usually I catch those but today I did not. The errors have been fixed, and I apologize for any inconvenience to the early readers.
Chapter Fifty-Nine: The Inferno
The Eurasians didn't stand much of a chance against us.
They were already outmatched against the combined power of ZAFT's navy, and with all five of us joining in, they didn't stand a chance at all. It felt more like a massacre than a battle, and it was by no fault of the Eurasians. They just couldn't fight so much power at once, and who could?
In hindsight, it should have occurred to me that there was a reason they were so outgunned.
But caught up in the heat of battle, you don't think of such things. You're directly involved, all you're worried about is the slaying of the next enemy. And there were plenty of targets for us to go after.
"This is what they call a 'turkey shoot'," I said, invoking an archaic term that had remained in the military lexicon since the Anno Domini era.
"May be a turkey shoot but I'm not complaining," Dearka replied. "I've had enough hard fights in this war. I could go for more battles like this where it's more of a shooting gallery."
"Cut the chatter and keep your focus,," Athrun said. "These are professional sailors and letting your guard down they will shoot you down."
"Considering how wildly they're firing I doubt they could hit the side of a-OW!"
It was pretty clear that Dearka had just inadvertently confirmed Athrun's point, especially after Dearka's rapid-fire cursing and the Buster's squirrely movements on my radar.
"Damn it," Dearka growled after his cursing session. "Why do you have to keep being proven right, Athrun?"
"Because it's my job. Now keep your focus. The GUNDAMs can only take so many shots.."
Not like Athrun to be so sarcastic. Then again, I didn't blame him. I would have been just as sarcastic in his position, if not more so.
I sunk another cruiser then. At this point, doing the deed was second nature, and I wasn't quite thinking of the casualties I was causing. "Do we have orders to move out? We've got things pretty well in hand on here, we can let the fleet finish them off, can't we?"
"I don't have orders to move yet," Athrun replied. "Trust me, we have orders to move I will let everyone know."
"This is pathetic. We're picking on panicking scraps instead of trying to get into the interior of JOSH-A," Asta replied then. "I just did a radio scan. They're already through the outer gates! It won't be long until the entire interior is taken!"
"Well then, it wraps up before we join in the attack on the interior," Athrun replied. "Sometimes that's just how it works in war. You don't always participate in the main assault, sometimes your duty is to make sure the main assault goes off as planned."
More ZAFT DINNs flew by us then, heading for the front line. I knew that wasn't going to make Asta happy at all.
"We're nearly ten kilometers away from the damn base, Athrun. We're so far away from the main assault we might as well not be participating in the same operation."
Athrun sighed. I knew he was getting pretty frustrated, and the temptation to want to move in had to be growing. It did look like things were pretty well taken care of here in the sea. There wasn't enough of the Eurasians left to give the ZAFT fleet that much trouble. We could leave and the fleet could probably mop things up just fine.
"All right, you win," Athrun said. "Nicol, Dearka, you two disengage when you're finished with your current assaults. We will change batteries and then right back out. If we do this quickly enough we will make in time to participate in the final assault."
"You sure about this, Athrun?" Nicol asked, clearly surprised.
"Yeah. I'm sure."
For the first time in a while, Athrun didn't seem completely sure about one of his orders. It was probably because he was disobeying his orders to stay here at sea, helping to destroy the Eurasian fleet and watch for the Panama reinforcements to turn around and come right back at us. But at the same time . . .
There was no sign of the Panama reinforcements we were fearing. The Atlantic Federation should have already peeled off at least a few rapid-response detachments to try to attack us from behind. That's how typical military strategy worked. Was the Earth Alliance simply that taken off guard by us, that they hadn't managed to turn anyone around in time yet?
That was the only answer I could come up with. That somehow our surprise attack had gone off better than we imagined.
"Cagalli, since you're the only one who has unlimited power, you find a few targets of opportunity and make the fleet's lives easier while you wait for us. This won't take long," Athrun said.
"Right, I understand," I replied. I wasn't feeling really good about flying around and blasting away more sailors who were outclassed by my machine. But at the same time, this would help end the war quicker, wouldn't it?
Then I got a bleeping noise, and I checked my sensors. "Hang on. I've got some strange readings from JOSH-A."
Athrun. "Yeah, I've got it too. Something's wrong."
I turned the Justice over to look over at the distant assault on JOSH-A . . . and saw what seemed to be an enlarging dome of electricity surge out rapidly, encompassing everything in its path.
"What the hell is that?" Dearka asked.
That's when the bleeping noise turned into an outright alarm. I immediately plugged in the calculations, and saw the most horrifying result I had ever seen in my life.
"I'm . . . I'm detecting a huge maount of radiation!" I shouted.
"It's some kind of bomb!" Athrun shouted. "Everyone, emergency fall back, right now! Move it!"
I wasn't about to argue. In that moment of time, the expanding dome had gotten twice as close to us. In about fifteen seconds it would be right upon us.
I turned the Justice around and turned on the accelerator to blast the GUUL across the sea.
It didn't take me long to find out that the GUNDAMs had all turned around and began flying off as well.
"What is that thing?" Dearka yelled.
"It's death! Just step on it, Dearka!" Nicol shouted.
"What do you think I'm doing, dammit?"
As we blasted away, I began hearing cries of alarm and panic before screams and static began overwhelming them.
They were dying. All of those people who flew by us, heading into the front line, all of those people who dropped with us and continued with the assaults on the gates, they were dying.
Being microwaved alive.
"It's gaining on us!" Asta shouted.
By that point, the dome had fried the ships we had been attacking, and the dome was right on our tail.
A nearby GINN suddenly exploded into flame near me, and I pivoted and grabbed the GINN before continuing on. "Hang on! I gotcha!"
But then the dome slowed down. Then stopped completely.
"It stopped!" Nicol shouted.
I spun the Justice around just in time to see a massive explosion erupt from where JOSH-A us, and the dome faded from existence shortly there after, leaving nothing but the smoke of JOSH-A in the distance.
And no signs of life from anything that had been caught in the radius.
I felt numb, looking at that explosion. I knew what had happened, there was no ambiguity whatsoever, but I didn't want to believe it. That what happened was even possible, much less had just occurred.
It was horrifying.
"Oh my God," Dearka said, speaking for us all.
"Athrun, what do we do? Do we head back in there??" Asta asked.
"No!" Athrun shouted. "N-No . . . we can't . . . we don't have enough power. Let's just . . . let's just find a place to land . . . there's a few nearby islands . . . there's nothing left anyway."
Those words, 'nothing left', finally made it clear to me what had happened at JOSH-A.
They were dead. Everyone. Everyone was dead. On both sides.
"There's nothing left." Athrun said, his voice trembling. "Nothing at all . . . the battle's over."
He took a shaky breath audible over the radio. "The battle's over."
We landed at a rocky island that was deserted of civilization or most life in general, it was small but our GUNDAMs would be easy to spot, at least according to Athrun. We pulled out the pilot from the wounded GINN but there wasn't enough time to give him medical treatment before he died on us too. All he managed to ask was why we wasted our time saving him, that we should've known that the explosions had to have injured him, and that we could've been killed too.
I didn't have a chance to reply to him. He died before I could say anything at all.
We stood outside our GUNDAMs. Nicol was the only one actually in a GUNDAM, he was trying to raise someone. The rest of us had grouped together, trying to figure out what had happened.
"That had to have been some sort of bomb. A nuclear one," Dearka said.
"No shit," Asta said. "But a nuclear bomb should be impossible! And that didn't go off like any nuclear bomb I've ever seen!"
Asta was right. That was not an ordinary nuclear bomb. I've seen enough pictures and videos of nukes going off to know what those looked like. The sort of dome I had seen was not a result of a nuclear bomb. It was something else entirely.
Athrun was staring into space, looking out at the wreckage, completely stunned, almost like he was in his own little world.
"Athrun," I said, hoping to jar him out of his stupor. "Athrun, we need to figure out what to do."
"At least . . . at least ninety percent of the entire assault force was in that blast radius," Athrun said suddenly.
"Huh?" I asked. I thought I had heard him wrong. "How many again?"
"I . . . I had access to the operations communications. I've been . . . been listening through the log. At least ninety percent of our forces were directly involved in the JOSH-A assault, including the majority of the fleet," Athrun said. "We've taken so many losses . . . we could have just lost the war."
"Lost the war?" Asta stormed past me and spun Athrun around, grabbing him by the collar. "What do you mean we've lost the war?"
"You don't understand. We've lost so many people, people we can't replace," Athrun said. His voice was soft, distant, disconnected. He was barely functioning at all, he was so lost in shock.
"Shut up! I don't want to hear this from you! Get your head together, asshole!" Asta shouted.
Asta looked like she was going to punch Athrun, and the thought of her doing that really pissed me off.
"Let him go!" I grabbed Asta and pulled her away from Athrun. "Stay in control of – "
"You shut up!" Asta shook me off. "You're lucky I don't kill you right now! You fought with those bastards who just blew all of us up!"
Asta wanted to have it out with me? Fine, this seemed like a perfect opportunity for us to fight. Not like anyone was going to do anything about it anymore at this point!
"What the hell are you talking about? Whose uniform am I wearing, Asta? Does this look like an Earth Alliance uniform to you?"
"You've always had sympathies for the Naturals! Look at what they did!" Asta pointed at the smoke on the horizon. "Look at what they did! They're monsters, all of them! They slaughtered us in the worst way possible!"
"They slaughtered themselves too!" I shouted. "Or didn't you notice the Eurasian forces getting fried along with anyone else!"
"I'm sorry, I was too busy fleeing for my life to notice!" Asta screamed back. "Not like I goddamn care what happened to those Eurasians anyways! They're animals! All of those Naturals! Animals!"
I think Asta and I would have come to blows if Athrun hadn't finally snapped out of it. "Enough! Both of you!"
"Oh, you're finally coming to your senses, huh?" Asta snarled. She looked ready to punch Athrun in the face, and I instinctively felt my left arm tense up to grab her again. But I didn't need to bother, I saw Athrun's eyes and he wasn't going to let Asta grab him again.
"Will you stop yelling at everyone! Belligerence isn't going to help anyone in this situation! A lot of us just died out there and we need to keep from falling apart until we know who's left!" Athrun shouted.
"Isn't it damn obvious it's down to just us?" Asta yelled back.
"There's no way!" Athrun replied, getting right in Asta's face. "ZAFT always holds back a force in case of emergencies or if reinforcements have to be utilized. That force should have been outside the blast radius of that bomb! We are not alone out here, Asta!"
"How do you know that?" Asta shouted. "That was an all-out assault on JOSH-A!"
"Nicol," Athrun said, taking his attention off of Asta, "Please tell me you found someone on the coms."
"I did," Nicol said from the cockpit he was sitting in. "I got in touch with operational HQ. They were outside the blast radius, and Commander Le Creuset is among those who survived. Somehow our entire unit made it out of this."
Athrun breathed a loud sigh of relief. "That's good."
He turned to Asta, and made a motion in his arms that clearly meant 'See?' Asta, for her part, just looked like she was going to collapse. She didn't look much different than Athrun had just a moment ago.
"How long until they pick us up?" Athrun asked.
"Not much longer," Nicol said. "We should be extracted in less than twenty minutes. They have us on radar and just need to gather the equipment necessary to get us out of here."
"Won't be soon enough," Athrun sighed, and I agreed with him.
I took one last look out at the distant smoke rising into the air, like an unending inferno that had sucked all that had gotten close into hell.
What a cruel weapon. What a horrible way to die. And what a immoral strategy, sacrificing their own forces like this just to kill their enemies. I was no military strategist, but I had doubts that the Eurasians would just willingly throw their lives away. They were the least fanatical out of the Earth Alliance factions and they had the most to lose out of a sacrifice like this.
No, judging by how hard they had been fighting, in spite of being completely outmatched, they had no clue they were bait. Usually bait will fold quicker, or make it more obvious that they were mere bait.
No, something told me that the Atlantic Federation had just stabbed the Eurasians in the back here.
And that told me that the war was about to get worse.
"Commander Le Creuset, sir!" Athrun said, standing to attention as we once again met the mysterious ZAFT commander. We had been taken onboard a ZAFT submarine after being extracted, and we, along with the remnants of the ZAFT force, were in full retreat back to Carpentaria. Sadly, that was where my whole journey with ZAFT had begun. It was like I was going full circle already.
"At ease," Le Creuset said, and we all followed Athrun in relaxing our postures.
"It is good that you are still able to follow military protocol," Le Creuset said. "It is important to keep discipline right now."
He clearly had no idea how close Asta had come to blows with me and then Athrun. I decided it was best that Le Creuset had no idea. Not unless the situation became so unbearable that Le Creuset's assistance was absolutely necessary. The man was eerie and mysterious behind that mask of his and that continued to make me nervous.
"What happened at JOSH-A, sir?" Athrun asked. "I've never seen such a wave of energy before!"
"We're still analyzing it," Le Creuset said. He was somehow staying calmer than every other person in the submarine. I wasn't sure how he was pulling it off but that made him even creepier than before. "But we believe it was a form of concentrated radiation. It microwaved everything within a ten-kilometer radius."
"How many of our forces were caught in it?" Athrun asked.
"An estimated ninety percent of our attack force was caught inside the radius," Le Creuset said. "The lethality rate is likely ninety-nine percent, if anyone survived it at all. The Earth Alliance had a trap for us, and we walked right into it."
How could he just say that? He sounded even calmer than before! Was there any emotion in this man at all?
Surprisingly, Asta echoed my very thoughts and then some. She marched right up to Le Creuset. "How can you be so calm? How can you just talk like it's just a mechanical problem or something? That's a lot of Coordinators that just died out there!"
"If I panic, the situation will worsen," Le Creuset replied. "Right now, I need to compartmentalize everything and try to gather up what we have left. Our casualties are such that I doubt we will hold onto our gains on Earth for very long. I am drawing up contingency plans as we speak."
Asta made a growling noise, but finally she looked away. "Fine!"
I was amazed that Le Creuset was not punishing her for insubordination. Maybe Le Creuset just felt there would be no point.
"Does . . . does Chairman Zala know?" Athrun asked.
"He is being notified as we speak," Le Creuset said. "He will not be pleased. A ninety-percent casualty rate was not anticipated."
"Neither was the Naturals blowing us to Kingdom Come," Asta snarled. "They're going to pay for what they did with their lives. All of them."
"Asta, now's not the time for this," Athrun growled.
"We can't sit here and do nothing!" Asta replied.
"It's unlikely that Chairman Zala will allow us to sit still for long," Le Creuset said. "Right now, the five of you should get some rest until we know what the orders are. What's happened at Alaska was unforeseen. The only consolation is that with the sacrifice of the Eurasian forces the victory is Pyrrhic in nature and it will likely not make the Eurasians enthused about assisting the Atlantic Federation or the Republic of East Asia any further."
"The Eurasians were the weaklings in the alliance, that barely helps us," Asta growled.
"Nevertheless, it prevents this from being a total defeat," Le Creuset replied.
Honestly, I think losing ninety percent of our forces and not achieving the target objective constitutes 'total defeat'. I could not see where Le Creuset was coming from at all.
Perhaps realizing we all felt the same thing, Athrun said "All the same . . . a lot of people have just died, sir."
"And you should feel free to mourn. Right now, I can't afford to. I need to have multiple contingencies ready to submit upon Chairman Zala's desired orders," Le Creuset replied.
It seemed like a reasonable answer. Le Creuset was possibly the last strategist ZAFT had left on Earth. Unless he was removed from duty or the theater because of his failure to foresee the Earth Alliance trap, if he was all that was left, he had to do all of the work on his own. But the calm, controlled nature of his words and the deliberate way he spoke just did not seem right. He was being unsettling rather than commanding, and it made me feel uncomfortable, like there was something else going on that I was not aware of.
"Again, you are dismissed. Get some rest, that is an order. Mourn while you can, because I doubt the Chairman will let everyone mourn for long. He will want vengeance, and you, Asta Joule, will undoubtedly have the opportunity to kill as many of the Naturals as you desire," Le Creuset said then.
"Good," Asta said softly.
"All right, thank you sir," Athrun said, though he was eyeing Asta with an uncomfortable look in his eye. And I didn't blame him; I was looking at Asta the same way.
I could not blame her for being angry. I was angry too. We had barely escaped death by massacre. But Asta looked like she was ready to give the Earth Alliance the same treatment we had been given, or worse. And that wouldn't solve anything. That would just make things even worse.
But, judging by the looks of other ZAFT personnel surrounding Rau Le Creuset, she was not the only one who felt this way.
This war was definitely going to get worse. And I had a sinking feeling in my heart that I was going to come to regret serving my time in ZAFT.
And, perhaps, ever being a part of this war to begin with.
One thing I should probably make clear, note the "ninety percent casualties" being said. In canon, the casualties were "eighty percent". No Archangel + no Kira Yamato = significantly more dead ZAFT soldiers. The Cyclops worked even better than Sutherland and company had expected.
Dark...
