Commander Randolf smiled behind the lenses of the macro-binoculars. There they were... flying like a row of ducklings exactly along the flight path he'd extrapolated from the reports of the scout unit. His smile quickly changed to a scowl. Like he didn't have enough problems already, restoring the Gibraltar base to ZAFT control. It had been a day and a half since the end of the last bit of Earth Alliance resistance had been snuffed out of the mediterrainean base... and they still hadn't managed to get reliable communications channels opened up. Solar radiation and magnetic solar storms... nothing could be done but wait it out, of course. Randolf would have given all his new mobile suits for a platoon of Ginn trainers if they could have had reliable comms... but sadly that option was denied to him. And then of course there had to come the report of one of the scouting teams, deployed to sweep the desert for any of the most of a division of Earth Forces troops that had fled from the battle. Randolf chuckled grimly... the Earth Alliance troops were getting crappier and crappier... not that he minded... maybe this war would go the way it was supposed to this time.
Though there were several large impediments to that eventuality... a good many of them flying about three kilometers away, heading at a slight oblique over his camouflaged troops. They hadn't shown any sign of detecting the fifty mobile suits that lay under hasty but efficient coverings of camo-tarps, sand and heat masking nets. Randolf may not have been a commander of the fame and reputation of Andrew Waltfeld, the last ZAFT man to command troops in this area... but he'd been stationed in the Gobi desert of China all last war... he knew his way around the sand like a native. His troops were also veterans, for the most part.
Upon recieving the call for aid he'd left his XO in command of the base rebuilding along with most of the green troops and took the men he knew to be good in a fight with him to investigate. He'd thought he was being overcautious at first but upon learning that the enemy was a Gundam of similar capabilities to the Freedom and that there were multiple models as well, he'd begun thinking maybe he hadn't brought enough troops. But sending green soldiers against pilots of the caliber that likely flew in the machines now passing by overhead would be just a waste of men and material... feeding bodies into a wood chipper.
"I wonder where they are going?" Mike Juarez, one of the four elite pilots that made up his team and the closest thing Commander Aireg Randolf had to a best friend, said from underneath his own camo-covering, right next to Randolf on the top of the dune that concealed both their Grendel's. "And why is a private passenger jet flying with them?"
"Might as well also wonder why they stopped to wipe out a scout team to save two half tracks half filled with deserters, without killing a single one of our soldiers but having time to massacre eleven of their own." Randolf grunted back. Mike shifted uncomfortably under his sand blanket. What they had found at the battle sight had been disturbing, to say the least. Not worst were the four BuCue's and single Efreet lying in wrecked heaps all over. No... the worst was the mangled and shot torn bodies of the Earth Alliance soldiers, lying in a relatively neat circle on top of a sand dune, right next to the two broken down half tracks. None of the dead men had even managed to fire a single shot against whoever killed them... their weapons were all full. Though how they allowed themselves to be executed without firing a shot when armed made no sense.
The very worst had been the man with the ripped off leg and the bullet between his eyes... the man hadn't bled much from the head shot because he'd already spilled most of it onto the sand from his leg... whoever had killed him had tortured him by letting him bleed out before finishing the job. He may have been an enemy but Mike still felt a shiver of sympathy... not a nice way to go. And whoever did it could not have been pleasant either. The leg looked like it had been twisted off... not blown off or cut off. The being who had the strength to twist a full grown man's leg off in a single pull Mike did not want to meet.
"So what is the plan then, Commander?"
"We'll wait until they get out of sight and then follow them. They have to be near the end of their journey... that jet could not have taken off anywere nearby and the nearest fuel stores are Gibraltar, which we control and... basically nowhere else in Africa, currently. So they must have come from off continent... no jet that small can carry enough fuel for more than a few more hours flight at most... probably less than two hours. If we can capture those mobile suits it will be a huge boost to morale and we'll net a stupendous media coup as well, with some super special mobile suits of our own to counter those damned Earth Forces things. Or whatever. I still think the troops in Washington may have just come across some heavier than expected resistance and the higher ups used the excuse to fund new mobile suit production."
"Must have been pretty heavy to wipe out a twelth of the force in ten minutes, sir." Mike commented. Randolf grunted noncommitally. Mike shurgged. The boss was the boss... a smart tactical commander, a good leader, and excellent pilot... but gruff and stubborn and stuck in his ways. That's how he was. And so far it hadn't steered him or Mike wrong, so Mike couldn't really complain, could he?
"Suit up... we've given them enough of a lead." Randolf ordered about ten minutes later. Within five more minutes five Grendels, five Efreet, 20 BuCue's and 20 Ginn Ocher's were powered up and moving out in orderly teams. The might of ZAFT in full display, marching forward to the unknown in thunderous mechanical strides. randolf checked his long range comms once again... nothing but static, cut through by an echo or snap of dead silence every few seconds. Comms was still down, damn it. They'd be going in unsupported. "This is Commander Randolf. Uploading our present location and projected course now. We are in pursuit of one civilian jet and five unknown Gundams... one is reported to be similar to the Freedom. Please send reinforcements as quickly as possible. Randolf out."
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Back in Gibraltar the Commander's voice was coming in loud and clear. His data stream was reading just fine... though it took a little wiping to clean the blood and brain fluid off the screen so Frost could read it. He stood alone in the command tower that formerly controlled all the mobile suit and aircraft operations on the base. Well... the tower could still be used for that purpose, once it was cleaned out and mopped down... the bodies charnel stench in the desert heat was beginning to annoy even him. But no one would be cleaning up here, Asmodeus had made that clear to him and the other two BCPU's. There was a reason the Alliance had not made any serious effort to defend Gibraltar.
If they'd had time they would likely have built a Cyclops system under the base... but such things required years of time, which they did not have. Instead they had merely allowed the base to be taken... ensuring heavy damage to the base defenses and sensor gear... heavy enough that when the three BCPU's were dropped from high altitude carriers they were not detected until they were almost within sight of the base itself and that even after they were detected there was such feeble defensive fire that it might as well not have existed at all.
Gibraltar was one big trap. The Alliance had been careful to leave it exactly like they found it at the end of the last war... but they'd taken pains to map out all the fire lanes and building locations and ammo dumps and bunkers in the base. So that when the BCPU's attacked they knew precisely where ZAFT had likely set up its command posts and comm centers and were as such able to take the head off the beast with surgical precision. It had taken maybe ten minutes to kill off the entire chain of command above the individual team leader level. The rest of the battle had been hunt and kill mop up... Frost's favorite sport. The enemy were so helpless too... green troops, fresh out of the academies, still amazed at their own mobile suits power... unable to comprehend the scope of their opponents superiority.
Calling it a massacre would have been like calling a fire in a munitions factory a hazard... it slightly demeaned the word with its understatement. Frost had eventually taken to leaving the Fury parked while he hunted the technicians and other troops personally... but that had offered scarely little more pleasure. The soldiers screamed and died. Even toying with them wasn't so fun. Not when the images of his real enemies... the ones he really wanted to kill, mocked him from inside his head. Pink Lacus. Her buggy boyfriend Yamato. The brown haired aviator chick. Golden boy, the one who couldn't take a knife to the chest. The princess of Orb. Those were the ones he wanted... the ones that got away.
Frost brought his communicator up to his lips. "You guys are gonna love this. Guess who I found? And they're only a few hours away, if we push it."
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Alkire finally, at long last, spotted the great crested dune that marked the location of the assault warship Archangel. To his trained eye, used to looking for concealed buildings or traps it was painfully obvious... a great dome hump of sand where no dune of any similar size existed for several kilometers. Camouflaged well enough from the ground most certainly, but if you knew there was supposed to be a ship there it was pretty obivous where it was. That was what showed the difference between professional special forces soldiers like himself and skilled amateur resistance fighters like Desert Dawn. If he'd been in charge of the camo job you'd be able to rest your hand on the side of the ship without realizing it for what it was, even if you knew it was right there. It also probably would have taken about three months of time and a little under two millions dollars to do... so he supposed Desert Dawn had done a bang up job in three weeks and with a totally volunteer budget.
"There it is." Dearka said a few seconds later, his finely attuned vari-camera sensors having detected the bulk and magnetic signature of the ship now that they were within a kilometer or so. "Looks like the crew is aboard though the ship is not powered up yet... I can make out heat signatures about where the bridge should be."
"Remind me to talk to the Simmons woman about upgrading our own sensor package... able to see heat signatures through sand and heat masking tarp at a range of a half klick..." Vlad muttered, shaking his head in wonder.
"They haven't opened communications yet..." Kira said, obviously a little puzzled.
"Still verifying us, no doubt. They want to make sure everything is still kosher... we are nearly three hours late and with no calls home to momma and dad." Alkire replied.
"Uh oh. Maybe something else is causing the holdup." Dearka suddenly cut into the channel. "I've got blips on the LRR. Lots of blips."
A shiver ran down Alkire's spine. He knew it was going too smoothly. "Blips doesn't quite do it for me, Dearka. Why don't you coordinate with your lovely CIC commander and get us some details?" Alkire ordered. He shut off the mic for a second. "Huh... coordinate... I made a funny." he muttered to Vlad, who managed a weak smile. "Here... I'll put her on." Vlad stood up and returned less than a minute later with a yawning Miriallia, plainly woken from her slumber in the back.
"What is it?" she asked.
"Call for you. We need an expert opinion." Alkire said neutrally as he handed her the mic. Miriallia listened for a few seconds.
"Okay, now pull up the second command sub menu... hit "a". Now "o". Now macro four. There. No, tell it to Alkire... He's in charge right now." Mir said. Alkire raised an eyebrow at Vlad. Alkire was in charge, was he? Wonder what Kira and Athrun and Lacus and Cagalli would say to that... but now wasn't the time.
"Vlad, get on the horn to everyone else and tell them we got company incoming. And company out here means the bad guys." Alkire ordered. He picked up the mic again. "Details." he commanded.
"Mobile suits. ZAFT. Twenty BuCues, twenty Ginn Ochers, five of the ones that can turn invisible and five new types... look like upgraded ZuOots... those are the heavy weapon platforms if you didn't know. They're coming up fast... they'll be here within twenty minutes at their current pace." Dearka reported, starting to bring his weapons online as he spoke. He had the feeling he'd be needing them sooner rather than later.
"I know what a ZuOot is. Upgrades of an unknown type you say? Great. Just what we need. More unknowns."
"I'm running almost dry on power." Cagalli reported after being alerted by Vlad. Alkire sighed. He wasn't used to being responsible for so many people, especially so many mobile suits. The damn things were finicky as hell... no wonder the big ships had so many mechanics for them. Unlike a soldier, who was ready for combat as long as he was alive and awake... mobile suits needed power ups and reloads and maintainence... the sand hadn't helped there... all sorts of things he was used to regulating to downtime.
"Can you recharge?" Alkire asked.
"We can give it a shot... can't garuantee full power restoration but I can get her up partway." Athrun replied. The Rubicon and the Righteous descended together, linking hands like their pilots might do on a date... though the power connecters in each hand would make a similar dating gesture require joy buzzers of extraordinary power.
"So what's the plan?" Raine asked, coming forward after making sure everyone else aboard the jet was awake and at least marginally informed as to what was going on.
"I was thinking of setting down and letting everyone get off... come to think of it I really hadn't had many plans for what to do with my jet once we got here... guess I figured I'd just gas her up and fly her back alongside the Archangel... we can't park it inside, the hanger isn't designed for the wingspan this bird has. But the warship isn't even powered up yet... theres no way to refuel in time and we've got barely thirty minutes flight left in us. And if I land we won't be taking off again... not for very long before we meet the ground again in a very flashy manner." Alkire responded. Raine considered that.
"Yes... that's probably best. Besides... we can't hope to have all mobile suit pilots be as inept as the ones back in Switzerland... the Coordinators stand a much better chance of shooting us down even with our special electronics than the Earth Forces ever did." Raine replied.
"Guess it's time to be a maniac again." Alkire whispered to himself. Before he could get on the intercomm though someone else pushed into the cockpit.
"I need to speak to Kira." Lacus said determinedly. Alkire noted she wasn't quite speaking or looking at him. He winced. So much for forgive and forget. Plainly he'd deeply offended some people's sensibilities.
"Phone's all yours, princess." Alkire said, handing her the mic.
"My name is Lacus." she reminded him coolly. He winced again. Yeah... he'd be in their doghouse for a while. "Hello, Kira. Yes... you know why I'm calling. Please pick me up once we land. Maybe we can head this confrontation off so no violence will be required." Lacus thumbed off the mic and handed it back. "Please land quickly."
"Aye aye." Alkire muttered, sketching a salute she didn't see as she turned and headed back into the passenger cabin. Alkire waited for the door to shut and a few more seconds besides... Coordinator hearing was very sharp... before murmuring "Bitch." under his breath.
"Better keep that to yourself." Vlad noted.
"Thanks... I was going to go call Kira up and tell him too, but now I won't because it's OBVIOUSLY a bad idea." Alkire retorted sarcasticly. Vlad held up his hands placatingly. Alkire started spiralling the jet down for a landing.
"You aren't feeling guilty about killing those soldiers, are you?" Vlad asked a few moments later.
"No... I'm fucking not. Despite their best efforts, I'm fucking not. If we hadn't acted and done what had to be done they'd all be lying in their guts out in the sand, instead of the bad guys. I don't mean to be rude Vlad... but shut the hell up, okay? I'm not in the mood right now."
"You are feeling guilty then." Vlad noted, before swinging back to his own work. Alkire did not reply. Within a minute they were on the ground and taxied to a stop. Within seconds of the passenger door opening Lacus was out and racing across the sand towards the monolithic figure of the Liberty, which had descended earlier. If nothing else, Alkire had to admire her dedication... she was wasting absolutely zero time in order to try and bring the confrontation... for that was what was brewing... to a peaceful solution. Alkire wished her the best of luck. And then went to go make sure his weapons were primed and good to go. For all the good that would do him against fifty mobile suits.