Mr. Yamato looked up with dread as the drop pods came pelting down through the atmosphere like giant glowing red hailstones. Barely a few days had gone by since the end of the voyage had dropped him, his wife, his squad and all the soldiers of their conscript regiment off at Gibralter. The doomed base. Everyone knew it. The Earth Forces barely had a division emplaced at Gibralter... and half of that was conscripted or green troops. Only fifty Strike Daggers defended the base. Even with his unpracticed eye Mr. Yamato figured the number of ZAFT mobile suits to be at least 200... plus what ever infantry they chose to land. ZAFT infantry would be even more of a nightmare than their mobile suits.
Mobile suits went after big targets... infantry was a tertiary target at best. But ZAFT infantry... who were more like special forces soldiers, in terms of ability and training, would decimate their Earth Alliance counterparts. When the enemy was better armed, better armored, faster, stronger and tougher than you... not to mention smarter... well, that made things pretty bleak. ZAFt hadn't employed many infantry attacks during the last war, but they wanted to reclaim this base... formerly one of their main strategic Earth bases, as quickly and efficiently as possible. Mobile Suits were excellent at taking and holding ground. But they couldn't make an invasion soley by themselves... they'd run out of power or ammo eventually and be forced to retreat.
Mr. Yamato cursed the Earth Alliance once again for putting him into this death trap. He cursed them more fouly for putting his wife and friends into this death trap with him. Mr. Haw and Mrs. Haw had been assigned... through a little underhanded nudging of sergeants... as his squads transportation. Mr. and Mrs. Argyle had been assigned as their communications people and the Buskirks had managed to get lost and wander over as well. Mr. Yamato almost suspected some higher power setting them all up for a big fall... putting all of his former friends in one group with him... the father of someone the Earth Alliance really didn't care for much. Come to think of it... none of the groups children were especially popular with the Earth Alliance high command... having all been parties on board the "Archangel fiasco" during the last war. But there was little more time for such ruminations. He could worry about them if he survived the next fifteen minutes.
He peered out of his dug out bunker at the arid plains where the ZAFT mobile suits were forming up. Lifting his binoculars he started trying to count makes and models. Lots of Ginns. Many BuCues. Some Ginns. And twelve heavy limbed monsters of a type unfamiliar to him... bristling with weapons and almost projecting menace around them. A detail caught his eye... something was out of place. Three drop pods were off by themselves... but they were empty... no mobile suits came out of them. Twelve mobile suits unaccounted for. Odd. But he couldn't think more about it as he had to take cover from long range fire started coming in... both from mobile suits and low orbit warships.
Weapon percussions and explosions picked him up and bounced him hard against the ground. Even from more than a quarter mile away he could feel the heat of beam strikes and was concussed by shell and missile explosions. Being infantry was not fun. You got to do a lot of hunkering down and hoping some big missile or beam didn't fall on you and snuff you out like a rat... and there was nothing you could do about it. Mr. Yamato screamed involuntarily as more explosions walked closer and closer to his position, sounding like thunderclaps from angry gods fighting. No one noticed... most were screaming themselves. Jimmy wet himself and suddenly rose in a panic and darted out of the bunker. One of the Eurasians... Mr. Yamato could not tell which... tried to stop him and ran out after him. Not a second later the entire bunker jumped slightly as a missle landed almost directly on top of it.
Dust cascaded from the ceiling... but the bunker held. The explosions receeded... ZAFT had softened up this section and moved on to other targets. It took Mr. Yamato nearly a minute to get back to his feet, and his head wouldn't stop ringing. He could barely hear his own wife yelling at him from two feet away. He poked his head out of the bunker and winced. There wasn't much left of Jimmy and the Eurasian man... and what was left wasn't pretty. Smears of guts and blood painted the outer wall of the bunker. There wasn't a piece of flesh within sight larger than a thimble. Jagged shards of missile fuselage lay scattered everywhere... some with red flecked edges. At least they had probably never known what hit them... a fractional mercy.
"HERE THEY COME!" one of the ex-cons shouted, gesturing wildly out an observation port. Mr. Yamato rushed over, as did most everyone else. Here indeed did they come. BuCue's raced across the plains in tread mode, missile batteries and railguns spitting fire and smoke. Dinn's zoomed by overhead, penetrating several defense lines to strike at the scrambling jets and organizing tank squadrons. And the twelve hulking mobile suits were charging as a line... loping forward like maddened gorilla's on their knuckles, blue-red energy flaring from great cannons on their backs to plough trenches of glass through the outer defenses.
However, besides all of that, another detail caught Mr. Yamato's attention. A very high whining sound, growing deeper, as if doppler shifting closer with every second. It sounded a lot like the jump thrusters of a mobile suit... but no mobile suits approached. Mr. Yamato looked at a group of dust devils rapidly approaching his bunker. Quite large ones, spewing dust in all directions violently. Oddly, they were in a "V" formation too. Mr. Yamato frowned. Dust devils didn't move in formation... something was wrong. One of the other Eurasians noticed the same thing and was just opening his mouth to say something when two beams flashed out of midair to rake across the bunker, melting deep scars into the roof and causing everyone to stumble back in shock.
"Invisible?" one of the cons cried. "Fucking invisible monsters? What the hell?"
"Mirage colloid!" Kuzzey shouted back. "It's like the Blitz had!" More beams lanced into the bunker. Several roof supports fell and Mr. Yamato could smell burning dirt. Plainly their cover was not going to last much longer.
"Everybody into the half track! We'll make a break for it!" he ordered. The two Eurasians and the older japanese man ignored him and sprinted for their lives. they were still framed in the doorway, quite visible to everyone when flame washed down like a waterfall, covering the area outside the bunker in a maelstrom of fire. Inside the bunker the heat was enough to bring blisters to the skin. Outside the bunker... Mr. Yamato gagged as his three squadmates turned to instant torches, skin and fat melting off bones, blood flashing to steam and bones charring to ash in less than two seconds. They couldn't even scream through seared lungs. The outlines of three mobile suits could be seen through the heat distortion of the flames, which were rapidly turning the area outside the bunker into a glass crater. Everyone else practically dived into the half track.
After waiting a minute for the mobile suits to move on, Mr. Haw gunned the engine and tore out of the bunker like a bat out of hell. Or more accurately a bat into hell. Because outside was a lot more hellish than inside. Fire raged everywhere. Smoke plumed milesinto the sky. There wasn't a bunker within view that wasn't covered in slag or just plain burst open. There were no bodies... no blood. Everything was burned through to the topsoil or below. Large sections of ground were melted as if exposed to a blast furnace. Nothing moved. Weapons fire still resounded from other parts of the base, but even that was starting to dwindle. Mr. Yamato made what is sometimes referred to as a command decision.
"Let's bug the fuck out of here." he swore. "Get us out of here, Mr. Haw. Anywhere but here. Out into the desert. We might be able to get out of this hopeless war if we can reach a neutral position."
"Like where?" Mr. Haw muttered, but that didn't stop him from pulling around in a sharp turn and heading out at max speed into the desert. Everyone looked behind them to see if they were being followed. They didn't see anything...