Ashino stood on the bridge of the AFNS Victorious and watched with narrowed eyes as the stately shape of the Archangel slowly materialized in the middle of the Orb Defense Fleet, surfacing from some hidden hangar in the bedrock of the Orb island chain. The submersible capability of the Archangel had long been a known asset of the Clyne faction, but is was one thing to read about it and quite another to see a thirteen hundred foot long ship just rise out of the water with little to no warning at all. If he'd been human, Ashino probably would have been sweating with apprehension, like the rest of the bridge crew was. After all, the Archangel represented more than just a heavily armed battleship... if anything the warship itself was less threatening with all its renowned firepower and resilience than the cargo it was known to carry. Because facing the Archangel meant facing Kira Yamato, Athrun Zala, Yzak Joule, and Dearka Elsman. It meant the Liberty, the Righteous, the Duelist and the Grand Buster. It meant four top of the line Gundams, piloted by four of the most skilled Coordinator pilots the world had ever seen, all working as a team against you, supported not only by the Archangel itself, but by the by no means weak Orb Defense Fleet and its M-4 Guardian transformable mobile suits, plus Cagalli Zala-Attha herself in her own Gundam, plus who knew what other surprises Orb had in store. It was a daunting proposition and the fact that he had a task force at his back stronger than the one he'd used to Isolate Carpentaria didn't change that.
"We all knew this was coming." Ashino said quietly, though his voice carried easily to every corner of the dead silent bridge. "Ever since we set a course for Orb after our victory at Carpentaria, every man and woman among us knew, deep down, that this confrontation was ahead of us. That we would be facing off against not only a highly advanced and motivated defense force augmented by thousands of our former comrades from after Purgatory Day, but that our foes would include the previously undefeated Archangel and its crew, plus the mobile suits it is so famous for carrying. Well, now it is no longer ahead of us, but before us. You all know me, and you know I have little talent for grand speeches. But let me say this... they are not invincible. I have fought them more than just about anyone alive... and I can assure you, they are far from invincible. After all, I'm still here, aren't I? Just think about that. Remember your training. Remember your teamwork. Remember that if we allow ourselves to be turned back here, if we cannot enforce Isolation in just one part of the world, the entire plan falls apart and the war will continue until nothing is left but charred corpses and burning cities." Ashino let those thoughts sink in for a few seconds. "All hands, to Battle Stations."
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"Jeez, would you look at all that." Dearka said with amazement. "Looks like they brought half the ships in the world against us. I'll admit I thought the fleet strengths I saw mustering for the Battle of Josh-A were something, but they had nothing on this." Dearka stood with his nose pressed flat against the observation deck's plate glass windows, staring out at the Isolationist task force arrayed about ten miles away. Of course he'd seen the sensor and sonar displays back on the bridge, but the little blips didn't quite convey the true scale of the enemy forces. Ships carpeted the ocean in a mass almost six miles wide by two deep... there were seven super-sized Fleet Carriers like the one they'd attacked during the invasion of Carpentaria, ten regular aircraft carriers, more than thirty cruisers, eighty destroyers and smaller escorts, supply ships and troop ships beyond easy counting and more than forty attack submarines. Casual estimates placed enemy mobile strength at more than 320 mobile suits and around as many again mobile armors, plus at least thirty thousand infantry soldiers. And likely one Gundam, piloted by Markov Ashino. Against which they had about twenty cruiser class ships, The Archangel and almost ninety mobile suits, plus the 5 Gundams and a few Skygraspers.
The Isolationist task force had first appeared off Orb Territorial waters some eight hours earlier, broadcasting a demand for surrender and compliance, just like Sai said they would. Of course, Cagalli responded just as Athrun had predicted she would, with a vehement denial of any right by the Isolationist forces to invade and deport thirty percent of Orb's population, for any reason at all. The Archangel had landed five days prior and had been undergoing refit and repair for the entire time, as Orb scrambled to muster its defenses against the inevitable attack. There wasn't much to muster, since Orb was still a wreck from after Purgatory Day. But at least the population was almost fully behind them... straw polls indicating a greater than ninety percent approval rating for standing against the Isolationist forces in a military manner.
"Hmmph, just more targets on a range. Haven't they learned by now that the only real solution to enemy Gundams is having Gundam's yourself? They may outnumber us by more than six to one, but long odds don't impress me anymore." Yzak said confidently.
"Try and keep the arrogance down to a non-suffocating level, Ysak." Athrun said sharply. "A force less than half this size took Carpentaria base in a little more than six hours, and that was a target even we'd considered untouchable. If you go out there and expect them to fight like they did at Josh-A or the following Battle of Panama, you're going to get shot down. Sure, they might be mostly upgraded Crusaders and Daggers, but theres at least ten Freedom's out there. Ten. They may be piloted by Naturals, but still... thats no joke. On top of that, there is Ashino, who does have a Gundam that is at least a match for any one of us. If we go out there with anything but the highest respect for the capability of the enemy..."
"I get it, damn it! Sheez, Zala, do I tell you how to destress before combat? No, I fucking don't. So kindly just shut the fuck up and let me deal with things my way, and I'll endeavor to do the same." Ysak retorted. Athrun looked for a moment like he was going to pursue the confrontation, but Kira laid a hand on his shoulder and calmly shook his head. Let Ysak work out his stress for himself, with bluster and bravado. Athrun's tendency towards confrontation was his own symptom of stress, as was Dearka's forced light heartededness and Kira's introspection. Cagalli was pacing down in the ready room, likely conducting command meetings even as she finished prepping herself for launch, and Miriallia was busy praying. She wasn't particularly religious, but she couldn't help but think it sure wouldn't hurt to try and call in a few favors. Raine and Victor were checking their weapons again and again, while Alkire was working with Chief Murdoch to ensure the Skygrasper was ready for takeoff. Waltfeld was briefing the Orb pilots that had been assigned to the Archangel's task force section and Murrue was commanding on the bridge.
Kira had tried to convince Lacus to remain on shore, in the Orb command bunker with Kisaka, but she had been having none of that. She was the de facto leader of the Clyne Faction, and thus the person in overall control of their forces. She would share the danger of everyone under her command, or else she was not fit to be the leader at all, to use her own words. Though of course unable to fight, she took a place on the bridge of the Archangel anyway, securely strapped in and connected wirelessly to every communication device in their fleet. They had a few plans, last ditch type strategies, revolving around her and her Newtype powers, though everyone of course hoped it wouldn't come to that. Katie sat in Miriallia's old chair, running the CIC like she'd been born to it. In short, everyone in the Clyne Faction and its allied forces were entirely ready and waiting for any surprises the Isolationist forces were preparing to send their way.
"Sonar to the bridge... we've got what looks like a pod of whales breaching in a free floating kelp forest in our path. They are about a half mile directly ahead." Murrue blinked as she took that comm. Natural wildlife was of course expected in Earth' ocean, but she would have thought all large fauna would have been frightened off hours ago by all the ship movements. She gave a slight mental shrug... the Archangel was going to be airborne for most of the fight anyway, because of the increased maneuverability options that allowed.
"Wildlife to the front, distance one half mile, Sonar, Bridge, Aye." Murrue replied. "Helm, take us out of the water, up angle ten, make altitude forty."
"Up angle ten, altitude forty meters, aye ma'am." Ensign Neumann replied, and slowly the Archangel began lifting off from the waves, as it began advancing on the massed Isolationist forces along with the Orb fleet. There were several small chains of archipelago between them and the main enemy strengths, they were planning on using the relatively confining nature of the shallow waterways to their advantage, to help keep the much more numerous Isolationists from bringing to bear the full weight of their fleet's firepower. "The Archangel is clear of the surface. Ascending to forty meters now."
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"You are a sneaky bastard sometimes." Frost's voice was suddenly much more respectful than it had been during the previous few days. The period of enforced idleness had not been easy for the BCPU, and thus double uneasy for the other members of Tiamat. No one could guess when the little psycho would finally snap and just kill them all, but fortunately Asmodeus's intelligence and planning had struck gold one more time, and the Archnagel had appeared almost exactly when and where he had predicted it would. "I admit I never would have thought to hide a submarine in a mass of decaying vegetation. The whale carcasses are an especially nice touch. From a distance no one would even think twice about this, unless they were a marine biologist."
"Once again proving why I'm the one giving orders." Asmodeus muttered, carefully ensuring the comm system was off first. "It isn't perfect, but as far as camouflage goes it isn't the worst I've ever been forced to make do with. Unfortunately, calling in the favors required to not only acquire this stealth submarine and the other specialty equipment we needed has almost entirely used up our credit with the EFSOU founders and our own operating budget."
"Budget, budget, budget... thats all you whine about these days." Frost retorted. "Where's your sense of adventure, Asmodeus? Who cares what it costs, or what we have to do to get it... thats WHEN thinking. Its here now and we're ready to use it. All your damn planning paid off, and the waiting is over. Its just about time to bring the HOW to our enemies, at long last."
"Yes, of course, that is true." Asmodeus found it was easier just to agree with his so called partner. It tended to result in less internal organizational bloodshed. So he mouthed agreement and then institued his own plans anyway, and thus Tiamat generally prospered. The failure to kill Sai in New New York City nearly a week prior still stung his pride, but it was partly salved by the news reports detailing how much of the central city had been rendered uninhabitable by the poison gas. Casualties were already estimated into the high thousands, many of them government workers. A successful operation, even if the primary target escaped by being up on the Moon, conducting secret peace talks that fortunately failed to pan out. Asmodeus shook his head clear of the memories and regrets and focused on the here and now. "They'll be overhead in less than five minutes. Remember Frost... take no action until they are directly overhead. When is of course not important, but if you break concealment too early, your How will be a Gottfried blast to the face and thats quite embarassing for someone of your history, I'd think."
"I know what to do... its been three days of sitting in this cockpit listening to you go over the plan again and again, I think I could recite it in my sleep. You just remember our deal. If she's on the Archangel, she doesn't die until I kill her. If she's even wounded, I'll eviscerate you all slowly with a rusty hacksaw."
"You've made your conditions quite clear. You can rest assured that we will bear them solidly in mind. I'm cutting comms now to ensure stealth capability." Asmodeus signed off the land line comm that temporarily connected the small stealth submarine to the Fury, lying half buried almost one hundred meters below on the sea floor. Getting the Gundam in place had been no easy feat to accomplish undetected, but by coming in several days early and just leaving the super-humanly enduring Frost in place had worked quite well. Three days trapped in a pitch black mobile suit cockpit three hundred feet underwater with only a few bottles of water, a few combat ration packs and a oxygen generating system running on one fourth capacity would leave any Natural or Coordinator pilot entirely unfit to walk, much less fly and fight. Fortunately for Tiamat, such conditions were merely annoying for Frost, rather than debilitating. Conditions aboard the stealth submarine hadn't been particularly enjoyable either, with fifteen men and associated gear crammed into a mostly uninsulated tube twenty feet in diameter and seventy five feet long, where two thirds of all interior space was already taken up with equipment necessary for operating the submarine. There was only a single bathroom and no shower, and they had been forced to remain inside and mostly motionless, chilled by the cold water around them, for almost the entire time.
Asmodeus turned his head and regarded his chosen soldiers as best he was able. Die hard zealots to a man, not necessarily the best trained or most experienced of the members of Tiamat, but the ones who's loyalty he was entirely certain of. These men would follow him to the bowels of hell itself if he ordered it. They were the sort who would ordinarily strap suicide bombs to their torsoes before a mission, in case they became too wounded to continue on. Asmodeus had forbidden that practice, but only because he didn't want any accidents killing them all before they even began the mission. "Kill everyone. I don't care what Frost threatens, he has a short attention span. He might kill one or two of us, but really, who expects to live through this mission anyway?" No man raised a hand.
"We've covered this again and again, but I'll overview one more time, to fill the minutes. When the Archangel flies by overhead, I will trigger the explosive charges that will shred our topside camouflage and peel the top of this submarine off like a tin can being opened. At the same time, the topside multipurpose launchers will fire three EARP missiles into the bottom of the Archangel, while the fourth launcher fires an anchor cable into the hole thus made. Using the ZAFT emergency ejection harnesses we are all wearing, as well as a cable-climbing handgrip, we will ascend in good order and at high speed into the interior of the Archangel. I estimate that at most we will have eight seconds to cover anywhere from twenty to sixty meters, before the Archangel's forward progress snaps the anchor cable and leaves the deployment zone behind. Anyone who misses the hole, assuming one is made in the first place, will either smash headfirst into the under armor of the Archangel, thus likely breaking your neck or skull, or will be left swimming in the water while two fleets engage in a free for all fight around you. Either case means death." Asmodeus paused and stared his men in the eye one more time. No one showed any signs of wavering, not that he'd expected them too. It was far too late for regrets anyway.
"Once inside we will split up into teams. One team will head to engineering spaces and do their best to destroy or disable the ship's propulsion and generating systems. Another will head to the bridge to neutralize the ship's command crew. If we have enough for a third team, they will head to the hangar spaces and attempt to interdict the pilots before they can board their machines. Precisely twelve seconds after the first missiles are fired, our ally below will attack the Archangel and attempt to destroy it. If we are successful, so likely will he be. There is no evacuation plan. Take as many down as you can, and if you somehow manage to survive and escape, then know that God himself is looking out for you. For the preservation of our Blue and Pure World..." Asmodeus intoned the ritual phrase, staring at a tiny screen that showed a blip for the submarine and a larger blip that represented the Archangel.
"For the preservation of our Blue and Pure World..." the soldiers echoed, as the two blips moved to occupy the same space on the screen and a chime sounded insistently. Asmodeus pressed a single white button on a console by his head. With a deafening roar the kelp and decaying meat that were affixed to the outside of the submarine and to the nets that floated on the water for several dozen yards in all directions blasted away in a near instantaneous series of explosions. A quarter second later the back two thirds of the submarine's top deck peeled back with a shriek of shearing and tearing metallic polymer and flipped several meters into the air like a discarded bottlecap flicked from the top of a carbonated drink. Four missiles left the forward topside launchers in columns of smoke and fire. Caught unprepared, the Archangel's Iegelstellung 75mm CIWS defenses were still under manual control for pre-battle testing, and the mere forty meters of distance between the ship and the sub did not allow enough time for even most computer systems to react anyway. The three EARP missiles struck in a cluster, right on the exterior ramp/hatch for the Archangel's loading/cargo bay. Though armored well, the concentrated attack by munitions designed to defeat heavy armor was more than enough to blow a five meter hole at the impact point, through which the anchor cable shot and firmly anchored on an interior bulkhead.
Designed to replace antique parachute type ejection seats, the ZAFT emergency ejection harnesses allowed for short lived manually controlled flight, no more than three minutes at most on Earth, considerably more in space. In either case an initial surge of power allowed for an ascent of almost one hundred meters in ten seconds, with the remaining time representing hover mode for a slow descent to land or water. A little creative tinkering on the part of Tiamat had extended the power boost to almost twenty seconds, covering an estimated six hundred meters and eliminated the hover capacity. Now more short lived jetpacks than safety equipment, the harnesses proved more than effective for Asmodeus's intentions. Using the anchor line as a guid, twelve of the Tiamat soldiers, including Asmodeus himself, made the crossing between the submarine and the Archangel in a little less than five seconds. Two of that twelve broke their necks when they proved unable to stop quickly enough and rammed themselves into the cargo bay ceiling moving at roughly terminal velocity. Of the three that missed the hole, two suffered similar fates when they impacted the lower armor of the Archangel, smearing themselves like bugs on a windshield, while the last and least fortunate suffered a harness malfunction that fired him sideways rather than up, breaking both legs and an arm on the side of the submarine in the process and dumping him into the ocean, wherein he was devoured by sharks attracted to the whale meat camouflage several hours later.
With a vibrant "twang" the anchor cable snapped as the Tiamat soldiers quickly gathered up their gear and distributed the equipment of the fallen, while they listened to the damage control alarms blaring. There were no announcements regarding boarders, so Asmodeus decided that their unorthodox method of entry had yet to be detected, which was of course in their favor. Not that they would remain undetected long, as short blurts of autofire announced the arrival and subsequent massacre of the damage control crews. But by then the Archangel had a bigger problem to be concerned with, as the Fury burst from the water beneath them like a sea monster of legend, thrusters already roaring at maximum velocity.
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"Explo..." the sensor officer started to shout, but he was interrupted by the sound of rending armor and the echoing blasts from the EARP missile impacts resounding throughout the ship.
"Missile impacts detected, lower cargo bay hatch! Armor breached, repeat armor breached! Damage Control crews report to the cargo bay! Heat source detected beneath us! Heat source is rapidly growing!" the auxilarly sensor operator started shouting, the reports flowing in one continuous stream as events happened faster than he could report them.
"..sions detected beneath us!" the sensor officer finished, slapping the collision and battle damage alarm buttons, bringing sirens and horns to life throughout the ship.
"Report damage! Operations, where did those missiles come from!?" Murrue shouted. "FLANK SPEED! Take evasive action, hard to starboard NOW!"
"Heat source profiled and analayzed... ma'am its the..." the aux sensor operator was cut off by the Fury blasting out of the water, one shoulder cleanly bisecting the abandoned submarine, sending both halves rapidly sinking to the bottom. For this mission Frost had allowed Asmodeus to talk him into borrowing a pair of 200mm hyper impulse cannons from two of Tiamat's Strike Crusaders. Though he disdained the ungainly cannons, Frost quietly acknoweldged the fact that his beam swords and rifles were of less use against the Archangel than they were against mobile suits. As soon as he cleared the surface Frost aimed and fired, his Celerity system active and his implants already working at maximum flow. A instant of hesitation on his part and the Fury would fly smack into the Archangel, likely resulting in a spectacular explosion that while effective would hardly be a fitting How for Frost. As soon as the red-blue beams fired, Frost kicked the Fury around and threw all power into averting a collision. He was successful by a margin of less than two meters, but only because of the damage done by the two heavy weapon shots.
The two hyper-impulse beams sheared through the ablative armor of the Archangel like it was made from soft wax, striking just aft of the port mandible, in the power accumulators for the port Lohengrin. The beams themselves continued on, inflicting severe damage as they bored through multiple decks of storage and secondary mechanical spaces before blowing out the top of the mandible, shredding the port Gottfried turret from beneath. But the real problem came from the Lohengrin array, which rapidly destabilized and detonated. Though fortunately not charged to capacity, like the Judgement's had been when it was destroyed, the stored energy in the Lohengrin array was still equal to the force of several hundred tons of TNT being set off at once. The blast wave sent the Fury tumbling away like a rag doll in an autumn gale, to splash awkwardly down in the water several hundred meters away. The same shockwave tilted the Archangel almost forty degrees downward to starboard in an instant as well as kicking the entire ship almost thirty meters starboard, tossing everything and everyone not securely strapped down through the air like confetti.
Deckplates in the port mandible hanger bay warped and ruptured as billows of fire and smoke raced up like a pyroclastic flow from a volcano, sadly spelling near instant doom for all the mechanic crews working in that hangar, preparing the Righteous and the Liberty for launch. As was customary for the Archangel, the Liberty was already in place on the linear catapult, just waiting for its pilot to show up and strap in before launching, while the Pulsar was secured in the Liberty's maintenance cradle, directly across from the Righteous. As a result, the Liberty was thrown around like a rock in a tin can, its feet tearing out of the magnetic couples securing it to the catapult system, ruining it even before the system collapsed along with most of the hangar floor due to the fact that almost all the structural supports beneath them were suddenly melted away in the explosion. Secure in their cradles, both the Righteous and the Pulsar escaped with only minor scratches and heat damage. The Liberty on the other hand suffered severe damage to both legs, especially from the shin down, as well as shattered servo's in the right arm and had one HiMat wing completely shear off when it got slammed into the ceiling and took the full weight of the machine for an instant. The Liberty lay on what remained of the hangar floor, cockpit down, covered in ash, debris and wreckage.
Ship's power cut in and out for a few seconds before stabilizing with the lights dim and red emergency lights blinking in most corridors. The power surge caused by the overloading weapon system, as well as the other internal damage from the hyper impulse shots caused widespread shorts and electrical faults throughout the ship, resulting in several fires and several sections of the ship losing electrical power for more than thirty minutes. Engineering was one such place, and the sudden jar from the explosions hadn't done the relatively delicate equipment much good either. The port generator was offline, though the emergency backup had started and was covering the load for the moment. However, the backup could supply ships loads and weapons, but not altitude thrust and the Archangel began listing sharply to port, sending people and loose gear sliding back across the decks in the opposite direction from which they had been initially thrown.
"UNABLE TO MAINTAIN ALTITUDE! STEERING THRUSTERS INOPERABLE ON PORT SIDE!" the helmsman shouted, wrestling with his control yoke. "We're drifting to port and losing altitude at the rate of a half meter per second ma'am!"
"DAMAGE CONTROL, I NEED A REPORT!" Murrue shouted back, wincing as her neck protested the whiplash it had recently suffered. Fortunately the bridge crew had already strapped themselves into their seats in preparation for her calling Battle Stations, so no one had been thrown around, though there was a lot of loose objects... cups, pens and hats amongst other things... that were currently scattered around the bridge. "Bring us down slowly, Ensign!" She snatched at the shipwide announcing intercomm. "ALL HANDS BRACE FOR EMERGENCY LANDING!" She slammed the intercomm down. "OPERATIONS, WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT!?"
"Hyper-impulse weapon discharge detected, Ma'am! It's the Fury! He attacked us from the water below!" the aux sensor operator called, feeling a trickle of blood drip down his scalp from where he'd slammed his head into the top of his console just a moment before.
"Port Lohengrin destroyed! Port Gottfried destroyed! Severe damage to port mandible and hangar bay! Casulaties suffered, all medical teams lay forward!"
"This is Engineering! Port generator offline, backup operating within parameters. Lighting is down, injuries suffered, request medical assistance!"
"This is the starboard hangar! We've got a lot of wounded here... we need help!"
"Fire Fire Fire! Class alpha (paper/cloth) and charlie (electrical) fires in the galley and secondary spaces! Class bravo (oil/fuel) and delta (combusting metals) fires in forward and midships mechanical storage holds! Fire Fire Fire!"
"Ma'am! I'm losing the starboard altitude thrusters! They can't handle the strain! We're going down! Descent rate now two meters per second and climbing!"
"ENEMY MOBILE SUIT DETECTED, PORT SIDE!"
"Ma'am we've got..." the last report cut out in a series of sounds that Katie instantly recognized. She slammed her hand down on a button she'd never imagined any modern day ship would ever need to use, initiating another automatic siren and warning announcement. "ALL HANDS, REPEL BOARDERS. REPEL BOARDERS!"
"What!?" Murrue shouted, whipping her head around to stare at Katie.
"Gunshots! Autofire. Damage control cargo bay, report status! Damage control cargo bay, report status!" Katie yelled back. No one answered. "Last reporter, say again! Say again!" No replied to that either. "Anyone, has anyone seen the damage control crew for the cargo bay..." Katie was cut off by the sound of gunfire, completely unmistakeable this time.
"This is Victor, holding door Romeo-3-2-2. Confirming boarders, confirming hostile boarders! Unknown number or affiliation but I coulda sworn..." the report cut out in a wash of static and overstressed feedback noise. "... fucking grenades... who the fuck... grenades... fucking inside... goddamn warship... ASMODEUS!" the radio cut in and out and then went entirely dead. Murrue thought rapidly, even as she struggled to accept the fact that her ship really had been boarded somehow. Door R322 was one of the doors leading into the crew's quarters two decks above the cargo bay that had been initially breached. The invaders were moving fast. The deck shifted under her chair again as the Archangel finally lost its ability to even slightly control its altitude as the starboard thrusters sputtered and blew out, overloaded and overheated from the strain of trying to keep the entire ship in the air. The floor seemed to drop away like they were on a rollercoaster as the Archangel half rolled onto its port side and went into a shallow dive, still strongly propelled by its rear thrusters. "BRACE..." she started to shout, but then it was too late.
The Archangel slammed down on the ocean's surface with all the grace of a cannonball, almost crushing the Fury underneath it's bulk. The first impact was bad, but it was actually the softest the Archangel would experience. Coming in at roughly a ten degree down angle and moving close to one hundred miles per hour, the Archangel struck the water and skipped like a stone. The second impact came with the shallow bottom of the ocean as the Archangel rapidly approached one of the islands that they had been planning to shelter the Orb ships behind. The second impact cut power to the entire ship, leaving everything bathed in the bloody glow of the emergency battery lights. Still moving at roughly ninety miles per hour, the Archangel skipped again, heeling sharpely over to starboard since it was the port side that had struck first. The third impact was the worst, because the right mandible.hangar bay struck solid dry ground and dug in, catching for almost two seconds, swerving the Archangel around like a stone on the end of a rope. The ship struck the ground at about forty five degrees to full side on and slid, carving out a massive trench as it did so. Almost three hundred meters later the Archangel finally came to a stop, roughly upright, its underside scoured of armor and weapons.
Steam and smoke rose all around the ship from numerous brush and forest fires the landing had casued, as well as from within the ship itself. Lighting slowly came back on in some sections of the ship, though many others would remain in darkness. The ship's interior video communication network was offline, as were almost sixty percent of all combat systems. The port hangar bay had almost completely collapsed, though the Righteous and the Pulsar remained miraculously accessible through the maintence bay that connected the port and starboard hangers. The Liberty had been lost on the second bounce, ejected through the disintegrating floor of the hangar bay when it rebounded from the shallow sea-bed, though that wasn't immediately obvious unless you actually entered the hangar itself and somehow managed to look through the burgeoning inferno that was consuming the area, fed from several ruptured hydraulic lines. Slowly the stunned occupants started to regain their bearings and take appropriate actions.
Asmodeus and his boarders had lost a further three men to the crash, their broken bodies having been thrown into several walls and then rolled down nearly three flights of stairs. That left them with only seven effectives, but even in a ship the size and quality of the Archangel, seven well trained men can do a lot of damage... especially if they didn't care about leaving. Modern ship based tactics did not commonly allow for boarding maneuvers, but the few protocols that existed called for use of weapons like tear gas and shotguns... weapons that were effective in tight quarters and had low penetration power, because the last thing you wanted to do was shoot out a window and either let the water in or worse, let the air out if you were in space. Explosives like grenades and such were thus not even considered as viable by shipboard security forces, as were defenses against them. Tiamat's fanatics didn't give a rats ass about anything but crippling the ship and killing people, so they tossed bombs and grenades with wild abandon, and were quick to use their fast firing assault rifles with high penetrating power bullets. Also, they were already armored with body armor, something that was not true of the crewmembers they encountered. Tiamat split into two teams, with three men led by Asmodeus heading for Engineering, while the other three headed for the bridge.
"All mobile suit pilots launch now! Repeat launch now!" Murrue commanded, gingerly unstrapping herself, knowing that she'd be sporting some extremely fine strap marks in a few hours, assuming she lived that long. With boarders there was a simple strategy... hit the bridge and hit engineering. Disable one and the ship would be impaired, disable both and it was as good as dead. "CIC continue to feed me reports. Helm, Operations and any Aux operators, arm yourselves. We're going to hold the bridge against the boarders. Someone give me a STATUS REPORT!"
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"Uhhh..." someone groaned in the darkness that was the oberservation deck. "Wha'... the he... ll..."
"We got hit..." Athrun slowly pulled himself up the wall, feeling like he'd just thrown himself down a flight of stairs headfirst. His head was ringing and his balance was way off, at least until he realized it was because the ship was resting at an angle. "Hard..." It was pitch black for some reason, not even the emergency lighting was working. He fumbled along the wall, his feet shuffling as he tried not to step on anyone that might be lying injured on the deck. His searching hands quickly found the vid-comm controls, but the screen was either damaged or the system was down, because it didn't respond to his attempts to call the bridge.
"What the fuck... is all that noise..." Ysak grumbled from a few feet away, holding his head in his hands and tenderly feeling what felt like two egg sized lumps on his skull. "And can someone turn on the goddamn lights!"
The lights didn't turn on, but the room grew brighter when the hatch leading back into the rest of the ship screeched open, throwing a dim red glow inside, almost immediately followed by several harsh white beams of light from damage control flashlights. "Everyone alive in here!? Athrun!? Kira!?" Cagalli called worriedly, peering into the room, fearing the worst. She'd been lucky enough to manage to brace herself pretty good in a corner of the ready room, so she hadn't been tossed about much by the impacts, though the initial explosion had knocked the breath out of her when she went flying the width of the room into a couch. She didn't even want to think about what it must have been like to be standing unsuspecting on the observation deck... images of pebbles being shook in a can came to mind. She'd rushed up there as soon as she was able to round up a few mechanics... being Chief Representative came in handy because it allowed her to order the Orb crewmen to leave off the damage control to help her. Maybe not the most unselfish of acts, but screw that... this was Athrun and Kira.
"We're all right. Well, we're alive anyway." Kira said, slowly crawling upright against the glass wall of the room, almost twenty feet away from Athrun. Athrun winced, since Kira had been right next to him before the world had suddenly gone violent... that was a hell of a slide/flight. "Doesn't feel like anything's broken... though I don't wanna see what my face looks like... feels like I just wiped the floor with it. What happened?"
"Theres no time! Captain Ramius has ordered all pilots to launch immediately. I get the feeling we're still under attack. And they called out repel boarders a short while before we crashed."
"Repel boarders! WTF!?" Dearka moaned, helping a wincing Miriallia to her feet. "How the FUCK did they BOARD a ship in FLIGHT?"
"Who knows... whats important is that we launch. If the ship is under attack we're not doing any good sitting around in here!" Ysak pushed past Cagalli and sprinted towards the hangar. Despite his obvious confusion, Dearka was close on his heels, half pulling a still dazed Miriallia behind him. Athrun took a moment to clasp Cagalli in his arms, to reassure her that he was indeed fine, just bruised and shocked. A look of concern passed over Kira's face in an instant, being replaced by one of calm iron determination.
"Lacus and the bridge crew are fine, just a little shaken up. It was Frost that shot us down. And apparently Victor saw Asmodeus, though Lacus can't detect him, which I suppose is standard for dealing with him." Kira reported. "I wonder how they knew what we would do..."
"If Asmodeus is here, then I'm sure he had something to do with it. He may be crazy now, but lets not forget he's every bit as smart or smarter than Alkire and the others. What matters is that he figured out what we were going to do, and he set a trap for us. Now its up to us to make sure the trap backfires on him." Athrun said firmly. He gave Cagalli a quick kiss. "I'll see you out there... lets give that bastard Frost what he deserves."
"I'll be waiting, don't be late." Cagalli handed them a flashlight and then headed off after Dearka and Ysak. It took less than a minute for Kira and Athrun to reach the port hangar, passing several damage control and medical crews working furiously to contain the damage and deal with the casualties from the devastating surprise attack. Kira hadn't seen the Archangel this badly damaged... ever... come to think of it. After Jachin Due came close, but in space there was precious little to crash into, unlike on Earth. Nothing could have prepared either for the chaos that confronted them when they opened the personnel access door to the hangar bay. The heat and smoke almost instantly forced them back, arms across their faces, choking and coughing. It was a firestorm inside, unapproachable for anything human.
"Go... cough, cough... around. Use the... cough... maintenance bay entrance..." Kira pulled Athrun along by the sleeve. They felt the slight rumble pass through the deckplates that signaled the launch of a mobile suit from the opposite hangar. "There goes Ysak. I hope he can take it long enough for the rest of us to get out there."
"It's Ysak... he just doesn't know how to lose." Athrun quipped with a only slightly forced smile. Thirty seconds later, and one more launch, meaning Dearka and Miriallia were now in combat as well, and they managed to circle around to the port hangar again. The heat was still intense, but at a level they could deal with it for a short time anyway. Kira shaded his eyes with one hand and peered into the fire for a few seconds.
"Where's the Liberty?" Kira asked, dumbfounded for a moment. How did a 20 meter mobile suit just disappear, raging inferno or not? Athrun didn't reply, having headed for the Righteous without delay. "Athrun! Wait! I don't have a mobile suit!" Either Athrun didn't hear him over the fire or he didn't care, because he didn't turn back or even acknowledge him before boarding the Righteous and began getting it ready to move out under its own power, since the hangar systems were quite obviously down. "Damn it!" Kira swore with feeling, skipping backward to avoid the Righteous as it stepped out of its maintenance cradle and began slowly pushing its way through the fire and debris towards the hangar exit. The Righteous hunched over and sifted through the fire with its hands for a few moments and then Athrun proved he had heard Kira after all.
"It's not buried in the wreckage! It looks like the entire deck is gone, theres a massive hole in the ship! Maybe the Liberty got thrown out during one of those impacts?" Athrun announced over his external speakers.
"What the hell am I supposed to do then!?" Kira shouted back. "I'm no good without a mobile... suit..." his voice trailed off as his gaze tracked across the Pulsar.
Apparently Athrun's camera's had shown him where Kira was looking. "No! Absolutely not! We're not sure how safe that mobile suit is! Remember what happened to Borander? You want that to happen to you!? Come out burned like crispy bacon!?"
"We don't know if that was caused by the machine or something else! And we're not exactly spoiled for choice! And don't you have someplace to be, my sister's out there waiting for you!"
"DAMN IT, KIRA! THIS IS A REALLY STUPID IDEA!" Athrun swore, turning the Righteous and heading for the hangar doors, which he was forced to blast open with several shots from his dual 57mm beam rifle. "Cagalli will never forgive me if you get hurt... but I can't let them fight Frost by themselves! LACUS... STOP HIM!" The Righteous took off and headed towards the other three machines, who were visibly engaged in a life or death struggle against Frost and the Fury.
Kira took three steps towards the Pulsar before Lacus broke through the shield he'd erected in his mind for privacy's sake. Kira wasn't that surprised, though a small part of him had wished that something like this wasn't going to happen. Kira...
"Yes, Lacus, I know it's not the best choice. But we really don't have ANY choice."
You can't see that machine the way Katie and I can. It is not safe to use. I hate to say it like this, but that machine is evil.
"It's just a mobile suit!"
It has a presence. It's not strong, but its there. I can see it just like I can see your own mind, it just takes a little more looking. And I don't like what I see. It thirsts for combat. It desires it. That machine scares me, Kira. We should have gotten rid of it a while ago.
"Listen to me... without a mobile suit I'm completely useless. I can't use a gun, I can't fight soldiers. I hate it, but piloting a mobile suit is what I do for the Clyne Faction. Its what I do to bring peace! If I can't do that I'm no more than a useless kid! They're up against FROST! THEY NEED MY HELP!"
No Kira... I understand how you feel. Better than anyone I do. But I can't let you pilot that machine. I forbid it!
"You forbid it!? Are you telling me you forbid me to help my sister and my best friends!? Lacus!? Damn it, I didn't want to do this!" Kira continued heading for the Pulsar.
Kira... Kira... KIRA... KIRA!! Don't do this, Kira...
"No, Lacus, I'm sorry but I can't listen to you this time. I have to help them. Even if this machine isn't safe, I still have to go. It's all I can do!"
...I can stop you Kira...
That brought him up short. The single phrase, quietly spoken even for a mental communication. It was almost a threat. Kira swallowed hard. "Yes... I'm pretty sure you could, Lacus. All you'd have to do would be try, and I'm reasonably sure you could knock me out where I stand, even control me like a puppet. But... I really hate to say it like this... but I don't think you could do that and ever look me in the eye again. I know I wouldn't be able to... to... trust... someone who would forcibly take my free will away." Tears welled in his eyes and his voice choked up. "So if... if you're going to stop me, you'd better do it now... and you'd better be ready for what comes afterwards... I'm sorry, but thats how I feel about this."
Kira... I love you, but...
"I love you too, Lacus, but that doesn't have any bearing on this. This is my choice, wrong or right I can't say yet. Now its up to you to make a choice. Like you said, you can stop me. Theres nothing I can do about that." Kira swallowed again. "Please don't stop me, Lacus. Please."
...Fine. But this is a long way from over, Kira. You didn't like it when I brought up my ability to stop you by force... I liked it a lot less that you forced me to go that far. I've warned you about that machine and you refused to listen to me, when I'm the more expert of us on the subject. But you called my bluff... and part of me wonders which of us it is that is really forcing the free will of the other? You held my feelings for you hostage, Kira and used them as a shield so that I would let you use that machine. I love you more than anything... but I've lost some respect for you... I thought you were better than that...
Getting shot in the groin with a taser couldn't have hurt more than those last few words, and indeed Kira felt her disappointment almost like a phsyical blow, but he couldn't let it stop him. "I'm sorry Lacus."
Yes you are. And yes you will be, when you come back. I don't take kindly to people playing with other's emotions to get what they want, especially mine. Now go... go and fight in that machine. And don't get mad at me if you get fried doing it... Damn it, Kira!
"I know. I'm sorry. I love you too, Lacus." Kira started climbing the ladder to the Pulsar's cockpit.
BEEP!! The force of the beepcall almost made him lose his footing. You are a dead man walking, Yamato. She's crying, you bastard. Really crying hard. Of all the people I ever figured would make Lacus cry, you were on the bottom of the damn list, you son of a bitch. You hear me? When you come back, you are FUCKED, understand? And not in any good way. I'm going to take you out like yesterday's trash. And I don't even know what Athrun and Cagalli will do to you, but I bet it won't be pretty.
"I think you're probably right about that, Katie." Kira resumed his climb. "However, that's in the future, and right now I just need to go help fight Frost. So if you would kindly stop badgering me, I'd appreciate it."
Fine. I said what I meant to say. Good luck out there... Frost looks to be in top form, the bastard.
Kira climbed into the cockpit of the Pulsar, noting again just how tiny it was... barely big enough to stand up in, and nowhere near wide enough to stretch out his arms. He shivered a little when he saw how all the interior compartment covers, which Dearka and Ysak had removed weeks ago while inspecting the interior of the cockpit and never replaced had managed to return to their places. Just like the armor had repaired itself, so too was the interior recreating itself towards some set standard. It was more than just a little creepy. Kira figured it was some sort of micro self-repair system or even nanotech, but he knew of nothing in either field within decades of this sort of reconstruction work. He punched the hatch control button and sealed himself into the machine. He was slightly unsure of where to go from there, but the Pulsar was ready, its action memory well prepared for this eventuality.
"Initiating aerated suspension gel flow." the computer said in a neutral electronic voice. Shutters whined open on vents around the circumference of the floor and a thick pinkish gel began seeping out, quickly covering the floor and then rapidly rising up his legs. It was like standing in a ever deepening pool of half melted strawberry jello. When the gel reached his waist, the computer continued with the next phase of the synchronization. "Comm sensors deploying. Open wide." Kira was bemused for a moment even as two wires with circular sensor pads descended from the cockpit ceiling, guided by segmented armatures into his mouth. It was almost like being worked on by one of the newer models of automated dentist chairs, but a good deal more surreal. The wires were secured between his molars and the sensor pads adhered to the top of his layrnx. It was tough fighting the gag reflex, but thankfully the operation was over in a matter of seconds. It felt decidedly odd having the wires trailing out of his mouth, but Kira guessed it was soon to be the least of his discomforts as the gel level came to his chin and kept rising steadily.
It was one thing to know that the gel was perfectly breathable. It was another entirely to actually breathe it in. Kira couldn't help himself, he tried to hold his breath. It didn't work... after about 45 seconds the Pulsar sent a slight electric shock through the gel... just enough to untense his muscles and open his mouth. The gel came pouring in and he was hacking and coughing and gagging and almost aphxiating before his body realized it could breathe just fine, if with more effort than before. What was worst of all was that he'd felt Lacus brush his mind slightly, just enough to be sure he wasn't actually drowning, but other than that she didn't seem too distressed at his distress. He got a strong feeling of "serves him right".
"Connecting to ship's power for startup. Ship's power insufficient for garuanteed startup. Attempting low power startup... startup failed. Connecting to ship's power for startup. Power insufficient for startup. Releasing saftey locks, routing power... power available..." Kira's eyes widened. "Wait, I didn't say to do any of that!" his words came out garbled by the thick gel, and there was no one else connected to his comm system to hear him at the moment anyway. It was too late by that time, as the Pulsar drained enough power from the Archangel to blow out the emergency port and starboard generators and send the starboard main generator into emergency shutdown. The ship switched over to battery power, but the forced re-routing of the ship's power supply had caused even more damage than the Fury and the crash had already caused. Almost 90 percent of the Archangel's systems were now in emergency shutdown, leaving only a few vital things like sensors and life support/damage control with any sort of operational capacity. "Murrue is going to kill me too..."
"Main power online, secondary power systems aligned and charged. Cooling systems blue, blue. Fusion Pulse Reactor operating at 3 percent capacity. Continuing with synchronization process. Initiating Neural Interface Control System linkage. Please remain stationary." The computer droned on. "Initiating what!?" Kira was answered a moment later as scores of silvery wires began extruding through the gel towards fim from all sides. He couldn't help it, he flinched. Still, there was nowhere to go, the wires were coming from all sides, even from above. The wires were briefly cold against his skin as they trailed across him and he flinched again, hard, as they suddenly burrowed into his skin. But not because it hurt... the burrow points neither bled nor hurt, not even the ones on his head. Kira blinked involuntarily several times before his eyes finally drifted closed of their own accord and a tickling sensation passed through his entire body.
"NIC connection confirmed. System test complete. All nerve connections satisfactory. Brain control centers contacted and confirmed. All system functions nominal. New pilot detected. Synchornizing... synchro... synchronizing complete. Welcome, Kira Yamato." Kira's eyes snapped open, and the Pulsar's own red ocular lenses flashed brilliantly in the flame light of the hangar. It was like activating the SEED... an entire universe seemed to explode into being inside his head. He was seeing without seeing, feeling without feeling... he could sense the FPR beating just like his heart, calm and quiet at the moment but ready for instant activation. The entire control system became almost instantly intuitive and obvious to him, even the flight controls. "Gravity Reduction System online, Positron Reflector Shield system test green. All weapon checks sat. FPR now operating at five percent power. Pulsar, ready for launch."
"This is incredible..." Kira examined his... the Pulsar's... right arm, holding it up and twisting it from side to side. Dimly he remained aware of his own body, hanging limp in the gel filled cockpit, but it was hardly even a tiny distraction. He took two steps forward, marveling at how easy and natural it was... just like walking down a street. He knew he was commonly considered to be one of the best if not the best mobile suit pilot alive when using machines with standard controls... and he knew he could never have walked like he just had anyway. It just wasn't possible with foot pedals and a joystick. The sound of an explosion from outside brought him back to the here and now. He opened a line to the Archangel's bridge. "This is Kira, in the Pulsar..."
"Kira!? What the HELL did that machine do to my ship!?" Murrue demanded. Video comms were still down, so she couldn't see him, but she tried to give him an evil eye just the same. Given recent actions, Kira's stock amongst the feminine portion of the Archangel looked to be heading for rock bottom.
"I'm taking off now. Hopefully I'll be back shortly and I might even be able to explain a few things." Kira closed the line. Hanging up on a ship's captain was never a good idea, but he wasn't spoiled for the time to listen to them all bombard him with questions right now. "All right then... lets see what this thing can do... maximum power, taking... OFF!"
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"What the fuck was that, a bomb?" Ysak shouted, picking the Duelist up from the ground where the shockwave had tossed him. One moment they'd all been engaged with Frost in the Fury a few hundred meters away from the Archangel, the next everyone was scattered like leaves in a strong gale, and now clouds of dust and other debris sifted around the area, just like some unimaginably powerful explosive had gone off. But there was no mushroom cloud, no huge fireball slowly expanding out of the ground... just the Archangel and its trench and the Clyne Faction mobile suits and Frost.
"More like a sonic boom!" Dearka replied jerkily. "My audio sensors are down, is it some sorta new weapon? I didn't think sonics had been developed for battlefield use yet!?"
"This is the Archangel... Kira launched just a moment ago in the Pulsar, but he's no longer on any of our sensors... does anyone else see him?" Katie cut in frantically. "He's out of range of both me and Lacus too for that matter."
"I don't see anything on the LRR... he might be using some sort of stealth system, but according to my instruments the Pulsar isn't within ten kilometers. Switching to extreme range... holy fuck!" Miriallia swore. "34km? WHEN DID HE LAUNCH AGAIN?"
"Not more than about six seconds ago..."
"That's impossible... the acceleration would have killed him." Athrun said, keeping a wary eye on Frost, who was likewise looking around for whatever it was that had disrupted their engagement. "Besides, anything going anywhere close to 6km/sec in atmosphere should have burned up like a meteorite... thats more than six times the speed of sound at sea level!"
"I don't have answers, just data!" Miriallia replied.
"NO TIME!" Ysak cried, blasting three quick shots at the Fury, all of which were dodged with almost mocking ease. Apparently Frost, not detecting any new enemies, had decided to just shelve the issue of whatever the disruption was until later, and he had started advancing on the Archangel again while they'd been discussing whatever it was that Kira had managed to do. "Bad enough when he had near impenetrable armor, at least I hit him then..." Ysak complained. The Fury spun like a top and deployed the six wire guided Gesichmedig-Panzer deflector shield pods that normally nestled on its front and rear torso. Pod's circling like tiny moons, Frost put away his beam rifles and snapped out a beam sword in each hand. With no further warning he charged, heading straight for the Grand Buster, bounding over the landscape like a deranged cheetah. Ysak fired several more shots and then cursed vilely as the circling pods caught and deflected the beams, not just once but two or three times, so that Ysak's shots ended up bouncing at Athrun, forcing the Righteous to scramble backwards in an ungainly stumble to avoid flying head on into the beams as he attempted to close to within melee range.
"Damn it!" Dearka blasted with a snap shot from the 400mm anti armor shotgun, which Frost leapt aside from so quickly it was almost like he turned into a mirage. Miriallia tried to hound the BCPU with the shoulder beam cannons, but she was frustratingly slow, her shots tearing up the ground a good two or three strides behind the Tiamat machine. It was like trying to draw a bead on a jackrabbit moving at 4x fast forward. Dearka twisted the Grand Buster into a violent gyration and tried to at least slow Frost down by saturating the area with his missile volleys and a second shot from the shotgun, but the Fury weathered the few missile hits with ease and changed course so abruptly that Ysak actually overshot by a good ten meters when he tried to rush in with his sword. Dearka and Miriallia's eyes both grew wide as the Fury suddenly seemed to appear in front of them, with their weapons canted in the wrong directions and their machine unbalanced. The Fury's arms seemed to move in slow motion as the swords started swinging down, but then Frost was forced to veer off at the last minute when Cagalli used her own missile systems to literally blast the Fury away from the Grand Buster. The Grand Buster took a few hits in the process, but Dearka would gladly take a bit of a battering to getting split like a melon.
"Beams are no good!" Cagalli yelled, proving the point with a shot from her Ion cannon, which Frost adroitly redirected with his pods so that it neatly sliced the right shoulder beam cannon turret from the Grand Buster. Cagalli dropped the bulky rifle and yanked out her beam Glaive. "We're just causing problems for ourselves as long as he's got those pods working... ACK!" the Strike Rubicon fell backwards in a desperate attempt to avoid the two beam tipped grapples Frost had fired at her from his left arm. One missed wide by a scant few feet, the other pierced the Rubicon through the right shoulder, destroying the missile tubes there and anchoring firmly. Frost started reeling himself in towards the Rubicon like it was a fish he'd harpooned. Even as he did so, he fired off his other six beam grapples, guiding the projectiles through chaotically looping trajectories that were almost impossible for the Coordinators to predict. Dearka avoided any damage to the Grand Buster itself, but he lost his anti armor shotgun in the process. Athrun avoided the two that came for him altogether, and detached his wingsabers in the process, sending them circling out wide in preparation for a joint attack. Ysak fared the best of them all.
His CIWS intercepted the first grapple to come for him and blew it away to land limply on the grass, far short of its target. The other he glanced away with his own sword and then brought the whirring chainsaw edge of his shield around in a lightning fast maneuver to shred the cable the grapple trailed, amputating the beam tipped head cleanly. Ysak then fired his own beam grapples at the Fury, though Ysak did not guide the projectiles by hand, instead following up with a volley of missiles and a brace of railgun blasts. Frost ducked under the railgun blasts and crabbed the Fury forward in a jolting dodge, then swatted two of the missiles from the air with his beam sabers. He proved that he was not invincible when four more missiles in quick succession caught the Fury in its chest and sent it staggering backward a step or two, but no one was able to react fast enough to take advantage of the momentary loss of balance. The GP pods swarmed together in an interlocking shield that deflected all three of Ysak's beam grapples, sending them sprawling uselessly in the dirt like limp noodles, even as Frost continued winding himself in towards the Rubicon, despite Cagalli's best efforts to break away, though the cable was at such an awkward angle her beam glaive couldn't align to hit it properly.
Athrun's wingsabers came jetting in from the north and south, while Athrun came screaming down from above in a thruster assisted dive, double bladed beam saber in hand and shoulder railguns spitting yellow tracers in steady volleys. As the wingsabers approached to within 150 meters they opened fire with their twinned 75mm cannons and missile 20 racks, and then started corkscrewing as they activated their wingtip beam sabers. Frost blocked Athrun's slamming sword and shield with his own blades, while his GP pods whirled apart and then reformed into two seperate tri-shields, each of which drifted square into the path of a wingsaber unit and deflected it aside, though the impact did send the pods flying uncontrollably for several seconds, which was more than long enough for Athrun to slice backward with one blade and snip the cable connecting the Fury to the Rubicon in the same motion as he shield charged Frost once more, twisting the twin bladed beam saber in his other hand to cut twice at the Fury even as he closed in.
Frost blocked Athruns beam saber attacks and rolled with the shield slam so that he was already turning even as it hit, a beam saber swinging around backhand to slice through both barrels of Athrun's shoulder mounted railguns, almost taking the Righteous's head in the same movement if not for a frantic duck on Athrun's part. Frost took the backward momentum the shield slam gave him and used it to dive backward, a beam saber spearing out to cut a deep gouge through the top of Ysak's barely interposed shield as Frost threw himself at the Duelist, which had been charging in from the flank. The Fury crashed into the Duelist and sent them both sprawling, with the BCPU on top. Unable to attack with his beam sabers, Frost nonetheless landed several heavy blows with his elbows and knees that rocked Ysak in his cockpit almost like they'd been delievered to him in person. Rolling off the stunned Duelist, the Fury barely managed to avoid yet another furious beam saber attack from the Righteous, the attack missed its intended target but still pared out both beam grapples from the right leg of the Fury.
Showing his typical disregard for injuries or close calls, Frost immediately went on the attack again, beam sabers hacking and slashing at the Righteous in a flurry of attacks that forced Athrun completely on the defensive, shield and sword both darting to and fro desperatly trying to intercept the seemingly endless barrage of attacks. Though seemingly engrossed in the butchering of the Righteous, Frost showed he was more than adept at multitasking when Ysak slowly brought the Duelist back to its feet, only to go crashing down again when Frost fired three of his GP pods directly into the face and upper torso of the Duelist, the unexpected physical impacts crushed Ysak's primary sensor array and disabled both his head mounted CIWS while also knocking him down again with screens sparking and flashing violently. The unorthodox attack did have a cost for Frost though, as one shield pod drifted limply to the ground afterward, its lift systems shattered in the impact, though its shield remained active.
"Clear out! I can't get a goddamn shot with you right next to him!" Dearka demanded, eye glued to his targeting scope as he aimed his 250mm hyper impulse cannon at the melee.
"He's just gonna deflect it anyway!" Athrun shouted back, sweat pouring from his face, eyes washed out in SEED mode already. It was all he could do to slowly back the Righteous away from the raging Fury as it hamered at him again and again with its beam sabers. Even talking was a bad idea, the slight distraction causing three seperate attacks to almost slip through his defenses to score slight burn marks on his thighs and chest.
"I've got a plan!" Dearka retorted. "Mir, you thinking what I'm thinking?"
"Rarely..." Mir replied.
"The shield pod!" Dearka called.
"Now wait a minute..."
"NOW!" Athrun yelled, dropping his shield and kicking it into the Fury's face while simultaneously throwing the Righteous into a headlong backwards dive. Not quite sure yet what Dearka was talking about, Mir nonetheless opened up with her remaining beam cannon and all four missile racks, aiming for the Fury once more. Predictably, the five circling pods interposed themselves, taking missile hits and sending the beam blast careening away to cut a long diagonal heat scorch across Cagalli's shield. However, that was all that Dearka had needed her to do, by drawing Frost's attention for a brief moment to the ineffectual attack. He switched his aim at once, as soon as he felt the missiles leave their tubes, and targeting the GP pod trailing in the dust a few dozen meters behind the Fury, its shield still active. The hyper impulse shot lanced down towards the ground, a clear miss... but then bounced up with no warning at all, like a golf ball hitting a hummock, slipping underneath the swooping pods Frost tried to divert at the last second. The Fury flinched and took the blast on its left arm instead of in the groin, the limb wavering and then dissolving in the hellish energies of the blast like it was made of wax.
"I GOT HIM!" Dearka cheered, even though it was just a limb, in this fight it stacked the deck pretty heavily in their favor. His elation was short lived however, as the Grand Buster's threat display suddenly went crazy with all sorts of new icons appearing on it. "What the f..."
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Roughly three minutes earlier, the Pulsar had exited the Archangel's hanger moving at flank speed, which in atmosphere topped out at roughly 6km per second... any faster and the specially developed friction reducing armor plates would cease to be effective, thus resulting in the machine turning into a fireball as friction heat melted it apart. Still, 6km/sec is not by any means slow (21600 km/hr or close to 13000mph), and it was far faster than Kira had expected. By the time he realized just how fast he was going and tried to stop, he'd already passed beyond the island where the Archangel had crashed, out into the Pacific ocean proper, past the gathered Isolation fleets by several miles. He'd actually flow through two ships, a cruiser and a fuel tanker, the Pulsar protecting itself from harm through action memory activating the Positiron Reflector shields before the impacts... though the Pulsar was moving fast, the anti-matter annihilation of the shield moved at light speed itself, which was massively faster. The hyper-sonic boom from his passing had capsized two further destroyers and had raised a roostertail of water almost six hundred feet tall in a line almost fifteen miles long. The Pulsar stopped dead with almost no deccelleration and Kira had almost a full second to gasp in incomprehension before his own sonic boom caught up to him and knocked the Pulsar sprawling through the air like a cartoon comic actor.
"Okay... what the fuck was that!?" Eric Kellson grumbled angrily, picking himself up off the flight deck of the AFNS Victorious, on which he'd been standing, enjoying a last few minutes of tropical sunlight before going down to the ready room to get the briefing for the Isolation of Orb. But then something like the mother of all windstorms had come up from nowhere along with a thundercrack like the world splitting in half and he'd suddenly found himself on his back a good thirty feet away from where he'd been standing, with the massive super-carrier swaying underneath him like a rowboat in a winter storm. Rain pattered down all over him, soaking him in a matter of seconds and causing him to spit from the horribly briny taste of the water. All sorts of alarms, ranging from collision to general emergency to man overboard were blaring from the ship's announcing systems. Other ships were having similar troubles he guessed, from the way the alarms echoed and seemed to come from all around him. He finally spotted the gargantuan roostertail of water and his mouth dropped wide open. "What in the name of..."
"A new enemy weapon!?" an Admiral, the commander of the Victorious, cried in shock. "We didn't have any sort of warning, nothing on the radar or other sensors... but the Abraham Stokes and the Grumbler are both destroyed, while the Vincent J. Jones and the Fidelity are capsized and sinking! Most of the rest of the task force ships are reporting various amounts of casualties and scores of people are overboard... even the submarines are reporting casualties from the shockwave!"
"We have no way of knowing." Ashino replied, holding himself calm, though he was as surprised as anyone. It was entirely against the Orb national character and code of ethics to open fire without issuing warnings first, and besides that they'd seen no evidence of any sort of new installation or weapon being moved into place. And for all its shocking suddenness, it didn't feel like an attack... why leave the core fleet strengths untouched while taking out a mere four auxilarly ships if you had a weapon with the power he'd just seen? "Is there any change in the engagement we were tracking earlier?"
"The Archangel is still down, sir. We're not quite sure what happened, but it looks to be severely damaged. Analysis of long range sensor records gives us reason to believe they were ambushed from below, but details are impossible to give at this range. We're tracking several mobile suits engaged in combat near the crash location though. Thermal signatures confirm the Righteous, the Duelist, the Grand Buster, the Strike Rubicon and the Fury."
"The Fury?" Ashino narrowed his eyes. Things were starting to fall into place. Everyone had been immensely cheered when the Archangel suddely veered off and then crash landed during its advance on the Isolation fleet. No one could figure out what was wrong, though theories had ranged from catastrophic engineering failure to sudden mutiny by the crew. Now, with the Fury obviously on the scene, Ashino felt far more sure that the Archangel had indeed been attacked, ambushed by Tiamat. Quite how Asmodeus and Frost had known where to be lying in wait was not something Ashino understood, though he supposed there were a limited number of places the Orb fleet could hope to engage the Isolationist forces with even a slim chance of success, and Asmodeus might just have picked the most likely of them and gotten lucky. He was not going to look a gift horse in the mouth though, as the saying went. If Tiamat wanted to take out the Archangel, he wasn't going to complain, though their aid wouldn't stop him from snuffing them out like vermin afterwards anyway. "What about the rest of the Orb forces?"
"Still holding station. They appear to be more confused than we are, sir. We're getting a lot of communication traffic directed at the Archangel, but we haven't intercepted any sort of reply yet. They look to be preparing to launch some mobile suits to assist the Clyne Faction machines, but at this range, with the islands in the way, its still hard to keep accurate track of them."
"Do we retaliate, sir?" the Admiral pressed. "We're not going to get a much better opportunity than this."
"Retaliate? I'm not convinced we've been attacked yet." Ashino shook his head. "They still have a few hours before the deadline ends. I will not order offensive action against Orb until then, unless I am undeniably convinced they have attacked us first."
"But sir..." The Admiral protested.
"Sai was very specific, Admiral. No offensive actions are to be taken until the deadline is up, unless we are irrefutably attacked first. Think about it... does this feel like an attack? Where's the follow up? Why did they not target the carriers? Why didn't we have any warning, not even a thermal or magnetic buildup... something's not right here, and I will not break the President's policy until I'm convinced it's necessary, and what has happened so far HAS NOT convinced me."
"Commander Ashino, sir! We've got a new contact on our long range radar. Matching thermal profile... searching..." The sensor technicians voice trailed off. "Sir... its the Reaper, sir! Nothing else in our records puts out anywhere close to that much heat!"
"Its the what!?" The Admiral shouted, dumbfounded.
"ZAFT's Gundam!?" Ashino gasped, now totally confused. The Archangel was fighting Tiamat, his own forces had been disrupted by some unknown force, and now ZAFT's missing Gundam had shown up out of nowhere? As Eric would sometimes say... something was Fucked Up. "Where is it!?"
"It's behind us, sir! Its approaching rapidly... never seen any mobile suit move that fast! He's twenty kilometers out... nineteen five... nineteen... eighteen five... holy fuck... he's going at least Mach 2!!"
"Scramble! All pilots to their machines! All ships prepare for anti-mobile suit combat! Scramble, Scramble!" the Admiral, a veteran of the previous war, barked at once. "I assume you don't have a problem with us attacking a ZAFT machine, do you sir?" The Admiral asked, as the battle stations alert blared again and again, even though all hands were already at battle stations.
"None whatsoever!" Ashino called back, already leaving the bridge. "You're in command until I get back, Admiral. But you'd better not initiate an attack on Orb unless you clear it with me first, or the deadline ends, do you understand? I'll be in the Independence if you need to contact me."
"All right, what the fuck is all the commotion!?" Eric asked as Ashino barged into the ready room just off the main forward hanger bay of the Victorious, already shrugging into his flight suit even as he walked. "Sir." Eric added belatedly, eyeing the barely visible scars on his commander's back before the flight suit covered them up. "Nail marks... I didn't need to see that." Eric muttered to himself.
"Not from Jean." Ashino replied at once. Eric cursed himself for forgetting that the commander could likely hear a pin drop across a room through a closed door. "As for the commotion, well guess what just appeared on our long range scopes?"
"Fuckin Valkyries, sir, you know I ain't got the cognitive skills you do."
"You sell yourself a little short, Captain. But no, its the ZAFT Gundam." Ashino flicked his eyes over to Eric, making sure he was okay, because of the strangled choking that suddenly came from him. "I have no idea what it's doing here, but we're not going to let it get away. We're launching as soon as we can... given it's speed its still going to pass over us before we deploy, but I've a hunch it's also headed for the Archangel."
"A hunch?"
"A hunch."
"Fuckin A..."
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I can't believe this. I feel like I'm loafing along, but I'm still going three times faster than the Liberty at maximum thrust. What's the idea behind creating a machine like this? It's so powerful its almost impossible to control. I can't process fast enough to make use of it's abilities at anywhere near its maximum levels. There's no way I'm ever going to get the thrusters to flank speed again... who knows what I'd do then... I don't want to fly into a mountain or something going that fast... it'd be like a meteor strike. But the maneuverability... I went from flank to stop in less than a second... I should be dead. WHAT IS THIS THING!? Kira's thoughts crossed and jumbled together so much it almost hurt. It took him a few seconds to realize that it was more than just his thoughts, that the Pulsar was trying to tell him something. Not a OS for the introspective, I guess... OWW! Alright, alright... "It's the Isolationist Fleet. So what? They aren't going to be a problem for a few more hours. Say what else you can about him, Sai is a man of his word, and so are his people. They will attack when the deadline is over, not a moment sooner. Carpentaria proved that." It felt stupid talking to a machine, but no more stupid than when he talked to Lacus when she was in his head.
Even as he looked down from an altitude of several thousand feet, he watched the icons representing the Isolationist Fleet on the status display that was somehow inside his head suddenly blur and multiply. "What the... oh... yeah I suppose that is what I'd do in their place, if I saw a ZAFT machine fly overhead." Kira watched as dozens and then scores of mobile suits began deploying from the carriers and other motherships, along with regular jets and heavier mobile armors. "But so what... even the fighter jets can't go close to fast enough to catch us... me... whatever..." Kira turned his attention back towards the Archangel. This proved to be a mistake, not that Kira could have possibly known. It brought his intentions into conflict with the Pulsar's action memory regarding the proper actions to undertake when threatened by Isolationist mobile suits. Kira was totally unprepared for the sudden wash of blazing agony that caused his preceptions to white out. It felt like his entire being was being hollowed up by liquid fire. Am I dy... Kira snapped back to awareness, panting ever so slightly, before he could finish that frightened thought. Then he saw his surroundings and his world seemed to drop away from him.
He was standing on the deck of an aircraft carrier, the gigantic two handed beam sword held confidently in one hand, a segmented 25 meter chain of superheated metal links descended from his other wrist. Flak explosions dotted the sky overhead and missile contrails criss-crossed the air nearby. The destroyed remains of four Isolationist Cavaliers lay on the flight deck of the carrier at his feet, while the bridge of the carrier itelf was nothing more than a flaming ruin. The burnt and crushed remains of more than two score crewmembers lay sprawled across the flight deck inbetween raging fuel fires and jagged edged holes. Two destroyers were keeled over nearby, leaking flaming oil into the ocean in rivers, their twisted superstructures looking half melted as they slowly slipped beneath the waves. There were no signs of lifeboats. Strike Dagger JA's and Cavalier's circled at a safe distance while ships steamed away from the carrier at flank speed in all directions, some nearly colliding with each other in their haste to get away. A glance at the chronometer showed only ten seconds had elapsed. "What... what happend...?" Kira murmured, his eyes catching on the Cavaliers nearby.
The cockpits had been stabbed through in three cases, and smashed/melted in the fourth case. Even Kira couldn't decieve himself into believing the pilots had survived those attacks. "No... no! DAMN IT NO!!" Kira screamed. "I killed them! I swore I'd never kill anyone who didn't absolutely deserve it ever again... but I killed these people! I murdered them! I'm not even breathing hard and they're all dead! What the hell did you make me do!? How the hell did this happen!?" Kira demanded. The Pulsar didn't reply. It didn't really have a voice, it just had its action memory. If it could be said to be anything, satisfied would probably be the best term for it. "Damn it, how did this happen!?"
"It is not safe to use. I hate to say it like this, but that machine is evil." Lacus's words echoed in his thoughts. "It has a presence. It's not strong, but its there. I can see it just like I can see your own mind, it just takes a little more looking. And I don't like what I see. It thirsts for combat. It desires it. That machine scares me, Kira. We should have gotten rid of it a while ago." "Damn it, she was right! This was stupid! How could I have let myself do this? Damned evil machine... you forced me to break my oath never to kill! I... I can't believe I'm swearing at a mobile suit..." The world went white again at that moment. Fuc... The whiteness faded. Kira was almost afraid to look this time, but he forced himself to. "No..." he shook the Pulsar's head from side to side in denial, trying to refute the fact that there was currently a Cavalier impaled on his sword, right through the cockpit, as the Pulsar stood amid the ruins of a cruiser that was slowly sinking under the weight, its hull shattered and leaking in dozens of spots. "I won't LET THIS HAPPEN!" Kira shouted. The world went white again with pain, and it stayed like it as he poured all his considerable will into a battle for control with the Pulsar's action memory.
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"Dude... I mean, sir... we can't keep sending people at that guy, its like sticking your hand into a running wood chipper." Eric commented, wiping sweat off his brow as he circled his Templar around, about one hundred meters outside what the ZAFT pilot evidently considered his own personal no fly zone. In less than a minute the ZAFT Gundam had sunk three cruisers, two destroyers and a carrier and destroyed almost twenty mobile suits in the process. In return, they hadn't even managed to scatch him, due to whatever sort of invisible shield mechanism the ZAFT Gundam evidently projected from its palms. Whatever it was, it was more powerful than a Lightwave barrier, nothing they threw at it even made it flicker. They were trying to get FRALA units in position, but it was going to take at least ten or fifteen minutes.
"I refuse to accept defeat from a single opponent, no matter how powerful his Gundam is." Ashino gritted his teeth, fighting his own frustration. He remembered the briefing Cyprus had given him and Sai about this machine, and realized he'd still managed to badly underestimate it. If not for a surprising degree of hesitation on the part of the ZAFT pilot, extremely strange for someone piloting such an obviously overwhelming machine, Ashino wouldn't have been surprised if his task force had been forced to retreat. "You have a point though. Head on assault is getting us nothing but casualties. Though it's strange... with such power, why hasn't the pilot done more... he could have killed three times as many of us if he didn't spend so much time just standing around."
"I can't say as to that, sir, but even I'm starting to think that maybe he's not fully in control of that thing, whoever he is. My grasp of tactics is far from brilliant, but he's just hitting whatever comes close to him, like hes acting only on instinct or memory or something." Eric replied. "It's like he can't figure out what he wants to do now that he's here."
"Well, lets ask him then." Ashino decided. "Normally I'm not much of one for talking with my enemies... I leave that sort of nonsense to Yamato and his ilk... but this is hardly a normal situation." Ashino tuned his comm system to broadcast and recieve on most commonly used channels, including the emergency and international bands. It would let anyome with even half an ear within twenty miles listen in to his conversation, but Ashino didn't much mind right at the moment. "This is Commander Markov Ashino of the Isolationist 1st CAD, calling the unidentified ZAFT Gundam currently engaged with my task force. Identify yourself, ZAFT pilot, and state your purpose for interfering with our mission." Ashino listened to the hiss of static for several seconds. The ZAFT Gundam didn't even turn to look at him, though the Independence could hardly be missed as a command model mobile suit, given its size and unique look. "This Commander Ashino, in the Independence, calling the pilot of the ZAFT Gundam attacking my fleet. State your name and purpose and surrender quietly. We have you surrounded and massively outnumbered. Even your machine cannot hope to handle us all alone..." Privately Ashino wasn't one hundred percent sure of that, but there was no point in showing his lack of confidence.
"I think he's calling our bluff, sir... FRALA teams report they won't be in posit..." Eric started to say, but before he could even finish his sentence, the ZAFT Gundam was gone. Eric blinked. "Where the..." The sonic boom struck his Templar and sent it flailing backwards through the air to splash into the water below. Eric wasn't harmed, nor was his mobile suit, but the already damaged cruiser the ZAFT machine had been standing on was broken into pieces that were rapidly slipping beneath the surface even as his Templar regained the air. The Independence had weathered the turbulence more equitably than the Templar's and other mobile suits around due both to its far greater size and mass, and to the consummate skills of its pilot. "Doesn't even have to fuckin hit us, the bastard just gotta hit the afterburners and we all go flying!" Eric complained.
"It's... very unwieldy..." Ashino said quietly, even as he started the Independence in pursuit of the ZAFT Gundam, which was even now inscribing a long arc is it coasted down from low orbit towards the island where the Archangel was crashed. "Speed is all well and good... but there is a point past which speed is more a hindrance than a help. No one can possibly react when moving so fast... not even me or Frost." Ashino shook himsel from his thoughts. "All forces, this is Commander Ashino. Pursue that mobile suit and destroy it. Use extreme caution, but do not let the enemy escape if at all possible."