Kira x Murrue fanfic continuation - Chapter 7
Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam SEED, Gundam SEED Destiny, or Gundam 00, so please point that damned lawsuit cannon at someone else!
Deep inside the main turret housing of the Executer, a compressed, forcibly condensed sphere of solid Lithium was being bombarded with enough energy to turn it instantly plasmatic, but it was prevented from doing so by magnetic fields almost as strong as the gravity well of the Earth, but much more localized.
More and more power was pumped into the sphere, until its atomic structure could bear no more and it flared, crackled and roiled like a birthing star, matter converting to antimatter in a rush as fast as the speed of light. Unstable, unable to remain compressed and coherent long, the sphere was instantly grabbed by more magnetic fields and hurled down the length of the barrel like a man throwing a live grenade away from his face.
As it left the barrel it wrapped and warpped itself into a hollow ring, a torus, which almost instantly expanded as it streaked across empty space in its rapidly decaying magnetic wrapper. When it finally struck solid matter, a luckless Nelson-class destroyer in the middle of the Earth Alliance formations. The magnetic wrapper dissipated, and over a kilogram of pure, compressed antimatter encountered regular matter.
An explosion powerful enough to annihilate in a neutron star, flared outward for two full seconds, an expanding sphere shaped shockwave, which disintegrated everything it touched, regardless of whether it was armor plate, human flesh or space dust.
Even the background radiation drifting through empty space was consumed and annihilated by the antimatter reaction, leaving space, at least for a brief instant, truly, and completely empty of anything.
For once, when it was said that nothing was left after the explosion that was actually the literal truth.
The Earth Alliance Second and Third attack fleets simply ceased to exist, almost eighty Drake-class escort frigates, Nelson-class destroyers and Agamemnon-class warships disappeared in a glowing ball which was so bright that anyone looking directly at it had their eyeballs charred in their sockets, even if they had been looking through a camera lens.
The antimatter torus, much less the explosion itself, gave off light so powerful that it was visible through closed eyelids and through solid metal bulkheads, though not enough to cause more than spots and uncomfortable blinking in those cases. Because the explosion happened in space, there was no physical shockwave to further cause disruption to the ships that were nearby but not disintegrated, other than the fact that all of their sensors and other electronic systems had been fused into scrap by the release of energy.
"WHAT THE FUCKING HELL WAS THAT!?" Meyrin demanded, not caring for once that she was swearing and causing a scene. She blinked her tearing eyes rapidly, glad for the auto polarizing bridge windows, which were still so black that they might as well be painted that color. Around her, her crew was rubbing the spots out of their own eyes and blinking in stunned incomprehension at the dead exterior display screens, which displayed only static. All of the external cameras were dead.
Kira reacted almost instantly, surrounding himself with a GN Field, thanks to the newly installed GN Drive. He split his dual plasma rifle into two separate rifles, while Shinn and Athrun split their own twin buster rifles. While Shinn and Athrun fired quick, powerful blasts, in order to provide cover fire, Kira fired his own rifles continuously, holding the triggers down, while holding the weapons at arm's length as he began to spin in circles, the blasts destroying everything in their path.
The three stopped their attacks when they were suddenly cut off by a string of detonations that danced their way through the middle of the battlefield, they then noticed Nelson-class destroyers and Nazca-class frigates, which were spinning towards the Executer in wreckage, gouting plasma fire and oxygen into the void, before slamming into the positron reflector which protected the massive ship.
Suddenly the Executer opened fire with a hail of missiles, each missile that had been fired from the Executer, was slightly bigger than the Wombat Ship to Ship missile fired by the Archangel. These missiles however were fitted with a much more sophisticated computer navigation system, multiple warheads and several stages of rocket boosters into a relatively compact six meter long by one meter wide and tall rectangular box like form, aerodynamics weren't really important, since the missiles were designed for space use only. Inside, each missile was packed with what an uninformed observer might easily think were paintballs, thumb sized blue waxy balls filled with a sparkling blue chalk like powder suspended in thick flammable gel to make a sticky paint like substance.
Each missile carried several tens of thousands of the balls, each of which also had a ceramic; pencil eraser sized incendiary charge in the middle. As each missile reached its optimal target location, it began to revolve, slots opening in its sides, allowing a few paintballs at a time to be thrown out by centrifugal force as the missile slowly flew along a course that would take it as close to as many warships as possible, until the space the enemy armada was occupying was seeded with millions of the tiny blue warheads.
As the ships moved or even while they stayed at rest, the blue balls began splattering against their outer hulls, the delicate ceramic incendiary charges shattering and becoming inoperative at any impact strong enough to break the waxy ball exterior, which then resulted in the sticky blue paint-gel smearing itself on whatever surface it had struck. Each incendiary charge had an ID signal that was routed back to the Executer, so that the number of projectiles that found targets could be discerned.
Most of the balls struck so lightly no one noticed, though a few splattered harder, and the ones that struck windows were hard to ignore, generating surprised looks from anyone nearby, as globs of blue paint weren't exactly commonly found floating in empty space. However, with communications systems still down, the fact that it was a fleet wide phenomenon went unremarked and most just shrugged and went back to what they were doing.
Even those that were initially suspicious found themselves just staring at a splotch of blue paint for a few minutes, with nothing happening. Probably just debris from the battle, melted plastic paint from a destroyed warship, and indeed, until the activation signal was sent, that's all it pretty much was.
About twenty minutes after the missiles started dispersing the weapon, they ran dry, and ten minutes after that, over eighty percent of the ships in the armada, including the Ptolemiaos II, the Minerva, and the Eternal, had been struck by anywhere from ten to three hundred or more warheads. Many thousands of other warheads had not found targets, but that was what the flammable gel and incendiary charges were for. A single command from the Executer's computer and all of the balls that had missed began immolating themselves, flaring like tiny sparks before burning to inert, greasy sludge.
It didn't happen all at once, but in waves, and the flares were so small in the background of space that you would practically have to be right next to one to see it. Thus, the hazard of free-floating nanomachines was at least somewhat mitigated, because until activated, the substance was destructible by any of a wide variety of means, including burning. Of course, after activation of the nanites, that was no longer the case, and after about one hour, the nanomachines activated.
In the Ptolemiaos II's infirmary, the glove of Athrun Zala's flight suit came off without a problem, the issue was, that so did most of the remaining skin and muscle of his right hand.. His hand was raw and bloody, with bones plainly visible through deep cavities in the flesh from fingertips to wrist, on both sides.
The remains of his hand were almost entirely blue, even the bones were stained dark blue, while thick purplish blood splattered all over the doctor, the desk, the floor and then continued to shoot into the air, gradually turning from purple to dark red as it continued to pump out from the perforated and just plain missing portions of the veins and arteries.
Many parts of the hand had had nerves eaten away or damaged already, which explained why Athrun hadn't been in howling agony already, but the sight of the damage caused him to go into almost instant shock. "WHAT THE FUCK!? AGHHHA! OH FUCKING MOTHER OF CHRIST!"
Athrun's howls of distress were soon joined by others, as if his agony was calling upon similar pain, and not all of the shouts were coming from the infirmary area, some were echoing from other parts of the ship. One of the Orb pilots, who had been waiting antsily out in the hall for his turn to see the doctor staggered by the doorway, clawing at his face, tearing away rubbery chunks of dark purple, stringy, pulpy flesh from his face, which was covered in inky blue stains from crown to chin.
Even his eyes were starting to fill with blue, as dark purple gore gushed onto the deck and he collapsed, his screams becoming gurgles as his tongue was eaten away and his throat began to fall apart.
Other victims were tearing at arms, legs, or chests, trying to get the vile substance that was eating away their flesh and bone off them, tearing away the "diseased" looking purple jelly that was partially decomposed flesh, and scattering puffs of sparkling blue powder from the deepest and most progressed wounds.
A female crewmember fell out of one of the other infirmary beds, her pained writhing having pushed her over the edge. When she hit the floor her insides flooded out of a dark blue patch on her belly like she'd been eviscerated, and many of her internal organs were already starting to turn blue as well. She reached up a hand towards Murrue and Athrun, and then explosively vomited bright red blood and collapsed face down.
For her part Murrue was staring, bug eyed, rooted to the spot as if turned to stone, unsure whether she was suddenly dreaming or perhaps hallucinating or not. Athrun too seemed almost paralyzed, unable to believe the situation unfolding before their very eyes, which continued to spiral out of control, as the doctor and then the responding medical assistants struggled to make sense of what was happening and help out their shipmates.
They got Athrun down onto a bed, sitting at least, sucking in deep, wracking breaths, careful not to touch the skin of his neck or throat, where it was dark blue and beginning to glisten with welling purple gore. He tried to talk, but it came out as a wheeze as the blue stuff began eating into the inside of his throat, and lines of red-purple blood began dripping from the corners of his mouth. Athrun had tears in his eyes, and they made tracks down his face, tracks which slowly began turning blue as well.
In an instant, the doctor had opened a videocomm channel to the bridge. "Bridge, the situation here is grave beyond words. DO NOT send help! We have an uncontained chemical or biological weapon on the loose down here! Seems to spread by touch, and it doesn't discriminate between biological and nonbiological matter!"
On the bridge, Sumeragi jumped when the videocomm channel opened connecting her to the infirmary, but it was what she saw on the screen that frightened her, doctor had what appeared to be blue paint splattered all over his face, but he was also bleeding heavily. "Bridge, the situation here is grave beyond words. DO NOT send help! We have an uncontained chemical or biological weapon on the loose down here! Seems to spread by touch, and it doesn't discriminate between biological and nonbiological matter!" This scene was also occurring onboard the Eternal and the Minerva, but with the communications systems out, they weren't able to tell that to each other.
Only twenty minutes later, the Strike Freedom Gundam, Freedom's Destiny Gundam rocketed out of the Ptolemiaos II's hanger bay. They were quickly followed by the five Gundams of Celestial Being; the 00 Gundam, Exia Gundam, Arios Gundam, Seravee Gundam, and the Cheridum Gundam. Finally, after the other Gundams had launched and the 00 Raiser had completed its combination sequence, the Infinite Justice Gundam rocketed out of the hanger bay, piloted, by the Captain of the Ptolemiaos II, Sumeragi Lee Noriega.
As she joined up with the other Gundams, she glanced back at her ship. She knew that without it, getting back to her own universe could take some time, but her thoughts were interrupted when she heard Kira scream in pure rage as the Freedom's Destiny Gundam boosted forward, igniting its Wings of Light, while also activating its Trans-Am system. "I'M NOT GOING TO SHOW YOU PEOPLE ANYMORE MERCY!!! EVERYONE IN THE ZAFT MILITARY IS FUCKING DEAD FOR EVEN DEVELOPING, MUCH LESS FOR USING A WEAPON LIKE THAT!!!"
Everyone stared at the Freedom's Destiny Gundam as its Wings of Light ignited, then it began to glow with a red light, then an instant later, it vanished, moving so fast that it didn't even leave a trail of afterimages in its wake.
Everyone onboard the Eternal was panicking, and no one really cared when the Freedom's Destiny Gundam suddenly appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, and forcibly pried open the docking clamps which held the METEORs against the hull of the ship, Kira struggled to control his rage as he quickly backed his Gundam into the weapons system, and only three seconds later, he was gone again.
Well, here's Chapter 7 in the continuation of my first fanfic.
AS ALWAYS, PLEASE REVIEW!