Phase 5 – Supreme Conquest

Amaru sat in the conference room and listened in on the conversations. "With our forces quickly depleting," began Steven of the Earth Forces, "can the Plants be prepared to host a great number of refugees?"

The room was dimly lit and a screen had been set up, although at the moment all it showed was the Earth Alliance logo. Behind Amaru, a table that had been dropped down from the wall had been set with food and beverages. He figured he would be here for a while. Again his mind wandered to Andarian, Yumi, and Alex. He checked his watch and rejoined the conversation.

Athrun looked at Cagalli then answered Steven's question. "I have ordered the construction of several new sectors and additions to older ones. However, they will not be ready for several months, and even then there will be a lot to do afterwards."

Amaru looked over at the Chairman then spoke up. "I'm sure CETA could find some space for some of them." The Chairman looked over at Amaru with slight surprise. "Even the Central District has some room, and that's the most heavily populated."

The Chairman took over from there. "It is true that we have some spare room for some refugees," he looked around the table, "but we do not yet have a strong enough economy to support a larger population."

Cagalli stood and went to get a glass of water. As she did so, she stated, "Orb, and I'm sure the other Earth countries, have all suffered from the Hulgar attack." She went on about the resource drop, the lack of lumber, grain, oil, and other raw materials.

"This brings us to the war…" Stephen said in a depressed tone. "We have word that CETA has completed the new Mobile weapons and a new warship. Is this correct?"

"Yes," answered Tamaru. "In fact this is Amaru Connors. He is the pilot of one of those new machines."

Amaru stood and gave a brief summary on the three complete Gundams. He started with the Warp, describing it's speed. Next was the Eclipse and it's new weapons. Third was the Lunar and it's power and transformation. After he was finished with those three, the Chairman handed Amaru a booklet like the ones the others got. Amaru read it aloud. It was the data for the Nightmare. "The CPSG.-260, or Nightmare is mainly a support Gundam to the other three Gundams. The Nightmare has no weaponry at all, save for a single beam sabre." Amaru flipped through the pages and read them at a fast speed that amazed the others. "Like the other Shadow Gundams, the Nightmare is equipped with two power cells, the Ultra Compact and the Nuclear Core, which is activated only with the approval of a superior officer." Amaru continued flipping through.

"The Nightmare has three transformations. When attaching to the Eclipse, both the backpack of the Nightmare and the DRAGOON System of the Eclipse come off. The backpack from the Nightmare goes where the DRAGOON was and the DRAGOON [backpack then attaches onto that. The backpack is both a rotation motor and a lift. The backpack comes up so the DRAGOONS are above the head and the DRAGOONS Guns bend forward. The motor begins to spin and the guns unleash a continuous beam, creating a tornado-like beam. The Eclipse then stands on top the Nightmare, which transforms into an aircraft MA." He waited as the screen displayed this.

"For the Lunar, the arms of the Nightmare come off and attach onto the shields when the Lunar is in MA mode. The arms become Plasma cannons similar to the ones on the Centaur. The rest of the Nightmare attaches onto a part of the top of the transformation that is left uncovered by the shields." Again, he waited for this to be displayed.

"For the Warp, the legs come off and the feet fold up, giving room for the two legs to attach together. This forms a large two handed cannon. The equipment weight slows the Warp, but the boost in power cancels that out. Like the Eclipse, the Warp stands on the transformed Nightmare." After the video was finished, the lights came up again slightly and everyone took a break for lunch.

"Load missile tubes with Sledgehammers. Target, enemy warships. Fire!" Kinoru shouted his orders.

"Incoming message from Kronos, text only," said Jessie. "They have sustained heavy damage and are preparing to sound the evacuation."

"Increase speed by twenty percent and take us to Orange Delta," commanded Kinoru.

"Incoming missiles, Red Alpha mark 20!" alerted Katrina.

"Evade!" shouted Hamatari. The ship turned to avoid the wave of missiles while the guns fired, destroying them.

"This is insane!" exclaimed Hamatari. "Where's the ZAFT forces?"

"They are fighting the MA force," said Ray, "and losing badly, I might add."

Andarian dodged a beam from the foe Eclipse and pulled around. There was a message on the screen. His main power was below fifty percent, and the core was draining quickly too. The Prominence attacked with it's rifle, blasting the left leg of the enemy. However, the leg regenerated quickly and it seemed to not have noticed. "This is bad," he said to the others.

Alex was having the same problem. The shields on the enemy Lunar were not able to reflect beams, but they still regenerated quickly. Even in MA mode and blasting consecutively with the machine gun, it still healed faster than the shots could damage it. "Legitimate!" Alex called. "What are we to do? We can't beat them if we can't do any damage to them!"

Jessie answered after receiving the orders from Kinoru. "Fall back to the ship and defend."

The Solar attempted to retreat, but was blocked by the foe, as were the Fusion and Prominence. "We can't get back!" Yumi shouted, taking a hit to her right arm. She looked to her left to see the enemy MA units destroying the ZAFT forces easily and taking out the base's defences. "We're getting killed out here!" She activated the Mirage Colloid and distanced herself from the main battle. She charged the sniper to full then shot at the enemy Warp. The beam passed right through and kept going, hitting the leg of the enemy Eclipse. However, they just healed again like nothing happened.

"Yumi," sighed Alex. "There's no point on fighting these things. We can't win."

The Prominence used it's chain to grab onto the enemy Eclipse. It was aimed at where the power cell would be normally, but nothing happened. The Eclipse just pulled it out and threw it back. "Well, I'm out of ideas," Andarian stated.

Jena sat there, taking in all that was going on. She watched as Andarian, Alex, and Yumi got pummelled. She stood and began to leave. "Where are you going?" asked Captain Hamatari.

Jena opened the lift doors and turned. "I'm going out there to help."

Hamatari approached Jena. "You are in no condition to pilot the Centaur."

Jena looked at the screen past the Captain. "I only need one arm to fly that thing," she said, close to tears. "As long as I can distract them long enough for them to break their attack, then they could retreat."

Hamatari nodded and let her go. Jessie turned and informed the pilots of the situation. "Shadow Team, the Centaur is coming out to assist with your retreat." Andarian and Alex began to worry. Was she ready to re-enter battle?

Amaru helped himself to a bagel and buttered it, then poured a glass of orange juice and returned to the table with them. The Chairman looked at Amaru and whispered in his ear, "That was impressive, the way you delivered that information." He sat in his chair and Amaru sat beside him.

They ate and exchanged more pleasant talk for a time. Cagalli and Athrun talked about their years in office and their experiences, the Chairman talked about the upcoming elections, and to Amaru's surprise, the group wanted to know about the academy he was attending. "It's a wonderful place," he began. "The place is very secure meaning that if you're not a member or special visitor, you can't get past the office. Both the interior and exterior are very nice." He continued on about his classes in mechanics and piloting, and about his room there until Athrun wished to continue with the meeting.

Andarian came around and blasted at the Eclipse needlessly. "Shadow Team go to formation Omega. We'll cover our bases until Jena gets out." The Prominence moved away from the Eclipse and called the Solar and the Fusion over to him. Once they were together, the Fusion got behind the Solar, in MS mode, all cannons faced forward, and Prominence, unleashing the DRAGOONS.

From this formation, Andarian and Alex blasted away and Yumi provided support from behind, blasting between them. This drained their power fast, but it would not be long until Jena was out.

Jessie's voice was sent through the hangar. "Jena Renomar, prepare for launch." Jena quickly got into her space uniform, being careful of her arm. She rushed out to see the Centaur ready for her. She got in and the hatch closed and the lift brought her to the catapult system. "Lowering launch gate. Catapult output levels normal. Linear launch system engaged. Course clear. Centaur, you are cleared to launch."

The gate lowered and opened revealing the emptiness of space, and the battle that took place there. "Jena Renomar, Centaur launching!" She thrust forward and launched into space, going towards Andarian and the rest of them.

Alex looked at his screen as a warning light came up. "I'm almost out of power!" he exclaimed.

"So am I," stated Andarian, also checking his screen.

"I'm low," Yumi started, "but I still have a fair amount-" She stopped her sentence and let out a loud scream. Her head began pounding with her heart beat. She gripped her head.

"Yumi!" cried Alex, but his attention was soon returned to his Gundam, as the Nuclear Core ran out, and the colour turned grey, losing it's VPS Armour. "Damn it!" He looked over at Andarian's machine as it too became grey. In the Fusion, Yumi went unconscious.

"Don't worry I'm here." Jena whipped past them, forcing the Hulgar to stop. She unleashed the Plasma guns and fired them. They hit the Eclipse, and to their surprise, it did not regenerate as quickly. Using this, she fired rapidly, giving the pilots a chance to escape. Andarian used his chain to take hold of the Fusion and bring it back.

Andarian fired a small EMP beam at the Fusion so it's Nuclear Core would deactivate. He towed her in and went to the holder in the hangar. The Warp was backed in and the Lunar and Centaur came in behind shortly after. Medical teams took Yumi to the hospital and helped Jena out of her MA. Andarian and Alex returned to space to finish off the rest of the MA's. The enemy MS's were nowhere to be seen. With the MS's weakness exposed, the Hulgar had begun to retreat. Andarian and Alex returned to the Legitimate. They had survived, but the battle was lost.

"So what is our next plan of action?" Steven asked. "We need to take the offensive and attack. We can't keep defending."

"I'm well aware of that," Athrun retorted, "but none of the forces are strong enough."

Cagalli slammed her fists onto the table. "Are we really this hopeless?" she asked, only to have heads tilted away or down. "Is this really the best we can do?" She met the gaze of Amaru who stood up.

"I agree," he said. "We can't keep running. We have almost nothing left. We must defend what we have."

Steven looked at Amaru and smiled. "I like your style kid." He waited for Cagalli to reseat herself before continuing. "We believe," he began, "that the Hulgar came from Neptune. It is the only planet that any nation has yet to explore."

Amaru piped in quickly. "What about Pluto?"

"It pulled away from the Earth's gravitation about three years ago," Athrun answered, "but we only discovered that recently. Besides, Pluto had no resources other than water and rock."

"Anyway," Steven continued, "with this information we could gather our full strength and attack. Even if we just do enough damage to slow their next attack, we could use that time to rebuild ourselves."

Amaru looked around at the other members, very confused. "How do we get to Neptune? That would take at least a year with the best of technology."

The Chairman laughed and looked at Amaru. "We have what are called Jump Gates set up throughout the system. We could go to any planet with one, instantly."

Cagalli filled in the details. "When the current space age began, around CE 75, Orb created the Jump Gates. They create a field of energy that can move us from one point to another safely, although it's not as 'instant' as it sounds. It does take a fair amount of time, but it's a lot faster than going without it."

"The trip," Steven continued, "would take about three weeks to a month for we don't have a gate at Neptune, but we can get to Uranus and continue from there."

Just as Steven finished, an Earth Alliance soldier came in asking all members of the meeting to go to the communications room quickly. They did so at a run and soon arrived. The room was fairly small, for it was not the main base, but still larger than the boardroom they were just in. "What's the problem?" asked Steven.

"It's ZAFT," replied the soldier that brought them there. Athrun's eyes widened and the soldier continued. "There were battles at Kronos and Mallith. Both have fallen."

Athrun ran to the soldier and lifted him by his collar. "What happened?"

Amaru got in between them and shoved Athrun back. "Let the man finish!" he shouted.

Athrun looked down. "I'm sorry, continue please."

The soldier adjusted his shirt and continued. "The Hulgar have sent a large fleet that appears to be coming from Neptune. A small group detached and attacked the stations."

The Chairman looked at Amaru grimly. "Mr. Chairman? What's wrong?"

He bent low and whispered to Amaru, "The Legitimate was last heading to Kronos before we came here." Amaru felt like falling to the floor, but kept his stance.

Everyone's expression dropped as the grim news was announced. There were at least a thousand people on Kronos alone. They began talking amongst themselves. "So ZAFT's EWS has failed…" Athrun muttered. "What is the strength of the fleet?" he asked, his voice swaying with anger and sorrow.

"Fifty at least, maybe more…" answered the soldier. Amaru dropped to his knees at the number. "They have come to invade Earth."

The great fleet approaches and again anger mounts. Friendships are tested and memories brought back of the past. Memories that no one wants to remember. The nations begin to doubt themselves as the fleet draws near, but hope remains as long as there is the will to fight. Next time on Gundam Seed Abyss, Preparation for Doom. Legitimate, you have the Shadows, release their might.