Italics are for thoughts (sometimes if I remember) and flashbacks

CE76

Commander Shiho Hahnenfuss walked through the corridors of the unit headquarters, returning the salutes of red and green uniformed personnel as she passed by.

Barely a few years back, she had been a redshirt as Yzak Joule's second in command, she had risen through the ranks and a few months of the war's end, she was promoted to a whiteshirt with her own command and further cemented her reputation as the Housenka as well as the squadron's own reputation for emerging victorious despite the odds against the Blue Cosmos remnants. The Housenka or Balsam squadron was well known alongside the Joule squadron as being ferocious and tactically astute. The flower painted on their machines instilled fear in the hearts of inexperienced insurgents and had resulted in the unconditional surrender of many an insurgent force more than once. Weaker willed Blue Cosmos recruits rarely had a stomach to take on elite squadrons like her's or Yzak's.

Turning her thoughts to the white haired commander, a smile came up as she thought about her former commander, now fellow commander in their division, and boyfriend of 2 years. She always had a crush on him but Yzak was just too pig-headed and she was his subordinate. But when the wars came to an end, Yzak finally came to his senses and asked her out the very day he pinned her commander's badge on her uniform. He could be a pain I'm the ass at times, but Yzak was never neglectful and always made time for her.

Speaking of which, her boyfriend was throwing one of his famous tantrums again,the recipient of his tirade being a red shirt who apparently had suggested a maneuver which Yzak thought was idiotic.

She sighed and went up to him as he finally finished and sent the poor red shirt packing.

"Don't you have anything better to do than to make people miserable?", asked Shiho. Her boyfriend whirled around to face her and that handsome face that never failed to amaze her increased her heartbeat. Yes, Yzak could be very impatient and just never seemed to relax, but Shiho knew better. Behind those blue eyes, there was fire for sure, but also a longing for peace. She hoped she would be the one to grant him that.

Yzak just growled at her, " l can't help it if he chooses to be an idiot can I?"

Shiho just laughed and gave him a kiss, which he returned.

"Don't forget our dinner date tonight", Shiho teased and Yzak fumed.

"I didn't forget you know. I had too much work the last time."

Shiho laughed and gave him a quick peck before the two left the building towards the division headquarters.

CE76

4th Defence division headquarters

Aprilius One

Shiho and Yzak were led into a conference room by a staff officer, who ushered them to their seats. Already seated were a significant number of white shirts, only a few of whom Shiho and Yzak knew.

Moments later, the division commander entered with his adjutant and took his seat. The quiet murmuring suddenly died down as the division commander prepared to address them.

"Commanders of 4th division", began the commander before pausing to ensure he had everyone's attention.

"You have been called here today concerning an assignment your respective squadrons have been given", said the commander.

The assembled men started murmuring once again in anticipation of this latest development before the commander silenced them with a raised hand.

"Three hours ago, I received a call from ZAFT Operations Command with orders from Chairwoman Clyne herself for your respective squadrons to leave for earth. During the recent summit between the PLANTs and earth, it was agreed that operations would be stepped up and coordinated. You will be stationed on bases along the axes of our borders with the Earth Alliance. As you all know, the Blue Cosmos still has armed forces capable of insurgent operations all over the world and are well-armed. At this point of time, we are still unable to pin down the location of their mobile suit manufacturing facilities and OMNI forces are a shadow of what they were before the war. OMNI is barely able to police its entire territory at this time and Blue Cosmos has been taking advantage of this."

The men tensed at his words, impatient to hear about their role in this deployment. The commander scanned the men seated around the table with his deeply-set eyes before resuming.

"Your task is to launch counterinsurgency operations within our borders to neutralize insurgent threats to actively prevent further attacks within and beyond our borders. OMNI forces will be launching their own operations in tandem with ours. We hope that raids by either side will permanently flush insurgent-held areas or drive remnants into the waiting jaws of the other. Many of these operations will be coordinated with OMNI in two pronged assaults between borders. Further details and orders are being sent to your units as we speak. I expect your utmost best, gentlemen. Don't fail."

The last two words were certainly not a request and his tone suggested it was also a warning. All assembled shot straight out of their chairs and saluted before their dismissal.

"Well I guess we'll need to have dinner together another day", muttered Shiho as they left.

Yzak:" who said anything about cancelling dinner? We're going."

Shiho:" But..."

Y:"Just because we can't eat out doesn't mean we can't eat together."

Shiho smiled, secretly happy that he was adamant about keeping his promise. Yzak was a stubborn rebel, but that wasn't always bad, especially when he usually had lots of work and you were his girlfriend.

CE76

Shiho and Yzak brought the sealed folders to his office after dinner, intending to look through their deployments together before briefing the men. As they looked through the documents, Yzak found that they were both to head for Central Europe, via Carpentaria. Looks like theirs would be a combined task force.

Shiho felt tears begin to form in her eyes as her mind was overwhelmed with memories of her deceased younger brother. Shiho was the first child and only daughter in her family, 7 years older than her brother Maddox.

During the war, Shiho's parents had brought Maddox to learn more about ZAFT on one of their political trips to Carpentaria and hopefully follow his sister's footsteps. Tragically, Maddox was caught up in the battle for the base during the first Bloody Valentine War and killed.

She remembered the day the news came to her as if it were yesterday. Distraught at the death of her brother, she got into an argument with her parents, blaming them as they sent him there in the first place to his death. She had never forgiven them for that and their relationship was still dicey. Tears now ran freely from her eyes as the pain of the losing her younger brother proved too much to bear.

CE71

Aprilius One

"Its your fault! Maddox is one because of the two of you!", screamed Shiho.

She couldn't control herself. Her younger brother, barely old enough to make a decision for himself, was dead. All because her parents had decided to take him on their bureaucratic trip to earth.

"Shiho. Please stop. You're not helping. I know its hard but remember that we're his family too! We loved him and now he's gone.", said her father, voice barely loud enough to hear.

Shiho: "Why did you have to bring him out there! Why are the two of you so stupid! We're at war and you bring him to the frontlines?! Have you lost your mind?!"

Shiho's father: "It wasn't exactly the frontline Shi..."

Shiho: "It was close enough!"

Shiho turned away from Maddox's parents, her parents, who had unwittingly killed their son."

"Shiho wait!", cried her mother, who had been quietly sobbing throughout the exchange.

Shiho stopped and stood there for a few long moments. Then she turned around with the most murderous glare she had ever mustered.

Shiho: "I don't know who you are. My parents would never endanger their own child as recklessly as you did. I don't ever want to see you again!"

With that, Shiho stormed out of the room, leaving behind her sobbing parents, who had now lost both their children

Yzak continued to leaf through the deployment details, fully absorbed in the documents' contents. That was until a series of sniffing caught his attention. Yzak knew about Maddox. Placing the papers on the table, Yzak crossed over to her and wrapped his arms around her. Shiho instinctively buried her face in his chest as she cried.

Yzak just sat there and continued to hold her, muttering comforting words that could not alleviate her pain, simply to let her know that she still had him.

The two sat there for two more hours as she continued to cry. They would brief the men on what needed doing, but for now, the two stayed there, uncaring of the world going by.

CE76

Eastern Europe

Poland

The heavy footfalls of the three mobile suits would have alerted anyone and brought an entire unit down on them. Thankfully no one lived in these parts of the nation. Forests filled with tall coniferous trees that stretched far and wide along the Polish Jura Chain.

A week ago, Blue Cosmos agents masquerading as a geological survey team had found a giant cave entrance into one of the mountains while searching for possible hideouts from which to launch insurgent attacks. What surprised them more was the detection of a heat source on their instruments, possibly emitted by a geothermal power source.

The Warsaw cell had decided to further divide its forces to spread its influence further and so Lieutenant Justin Wzasky had been assigned to sneak three mobile suits from an underground garage to check out the place.

It had been a long ride aboard the flatbed trucks transporting their tarpaulin covered mobile suits. Lt Justin hoped the place checked out. If the agents were right, they'd have a new base with its own power source. He imagined proper facilities such as mobile suit production facilities and the like, giving them further power to strike back at the coordinators, the enemies of mankind.

The coordinators categorized humankind into coordinators and naturals as if they were human! It was an insult. Those abominations were an affront to all humanity and had no right to live. The earth was meant for humans and only humans, naturally born humans. Period.

Lt Justin raged at the world's acceptance of coordinators as he moved his Windam inside the cave, his two Dagger L wingmen following suit. Now Naturals were accepting coordinators all over the world, including the Atlantic Federation! Didn't they understand? It was every Natural's duty to wage holy war against those abominations. Nothing short of their extinction would suffice and so Naturals had to conduct a war of genocide. It was the call of the righteous. Lt Justin advanced past 14km down the cave, the feet of the three mobile suits slammed down on the ground, driven by motors that placed their machines weight by the tonnes sent tremors through the ground. The shock waves travelled through the ground in all directions for kilometers around, the reverberations reaching a tiny black box under the ground. The seismic activity triggered an electrical response from the device, current flowing through its circuits as it activated hidden cameras and sent out a signal.

CE76

Unknown location

Deep down in a faraway subterranean location, the signal from the seismic detector reached a control terminal in a facility. The facility was part of a large city-size base that had lain dormant like a city of the dead, soulless, lifeless. Suddenly, generators started up and the base came to life. Lights and computers came online, factories started automated subroutines to prepare for weapons production. Within the control room, a single human was present, suspended in amniotic fluid since he was interred into the stasis tank. The boy jolted from slumber, suddenly aware of himself and his surroundings as stimulants jabbed into his body took effect. Something had triggered the system to wake him. He closed his eyes as his brain connected with the supercomputer and the base's network, interfacing and integrating him into the system through the cables attached to his brain. Rows of binary data flowed down the screen two meters ahead of the tank. The boy looked to the screen, a blinking alert notification catching his attention. Blinking his eyes once, the alert was selected by the action, neural interface sending the signal from his brain to the system and bringing up a map of Eastern Europe before zooming in to an isolated location of Poland. Selecting a small chart at the top left-hand corner with the blink of his eyes, it enlarged to fill the screen, presenting its seismic activity data. A series of high and irregular spikes caught his attention. Something was moving down there. Blinking his eyes again, he selected square icon which appeared to be video footage of the intruders He brought the camera footage of the three mobile suits to the fore of the screen in front and played it. The boy's eyes narrowed, he didn't recognize them and the database had no record of such models. Yet they bore similarities to strike daggers. That meant they were most probably OMNI mobile suits and thus by default Blue Cosmos.

Warily, the boy activated the Polish base's defensive units to identify the three unknowns.

CE76

34km below ground

Polish Jura Chain

Lt Justin was still raging half and hour later when he was distracted from his reverie.

"Lieutenant. I'm picking up faint heat signatures further down, about two clicks out", a deep set voice reported.

Justin wasn't surprised, although it was a miracle that Danny had managed to pick them up at all through the mist and humidity of the cave.

Lt Justin:" Its probably just the geysers Danny. Keep going."

Danny:" I thought there was only one?"

Lt J:" Spooks probably didn't understand the difference between plural and single."

The team pressed on deeper into the cave towards the heat sources. As they approached what seemed to be an intersection, Lt Justin raised his suit's shield arm and the team stopped. Justin scanned the intersection. Three circular tunnels, one left, one right and one ahead made up the intersection.

D:"Which way boss?"

"Or should we split up?", suggested Carlyle.

Lt J:" Wait"

Something about the intersection disturbed him. It was normal for such formations to exist in mountains but his veteran combat senses nagged at him. Being a veteran of both wars, Justin knew better than to ignore his combat senses.

Then, it hit him. The tunnels were perfectly rounded without a single trace of deformity and the ground was completely flat. No stalagmites hung from the ceilings, neither was there any stones or bumps marring the surface of the ground. These tunnels weren't natural, they were man-made.

Lt J:" Its man-made!"

D:"What?!"

Lt J:" Its man-made. The tunnels are perfectly round and the ground is flat."

C:" Erm lieutenant?"

Lt J:" What?"

C:" The heat signatures... they're...th... they're...m...moving.

Justin and Danny's heads snapped to their radars, cursing themselves for being distracted. Sure enough, the heat signatures, now stronger radar returns, were moving. Towards them.

Justin eyes widened in panic before combat instincts took over.

Lt J:"Squad, ready weapons."

The three pilots levelled their beam rifles and shields. Justin's eyes alternated between the radar and the suit's visuals. The contacts crept on closer, undaunted. The mist wasn't helping visual sight much and the pilots steeled themselves.

Then, more contacts appeared on radar, from the left tunnel. Before Justin could react, the right tunnel was also filled with radar contacts.

D:" Boss?"

Lt J:" I know... I .."

More contacts appeared behind those coming ahead of them. Justin's jaw dropped. They were outnumbered... almost twelve to one.

J:" Fall back! We"ll take up defensive positions outside the cave and await reinforcements!"

As the three turned to run, contacts appeared... behind them. The team froze, they were trapped. Turning his suit around, Justin saw the first of the contacts enter visual range. The first one he saw had a rather humanoid appearance to it. The head resembled a man with a gas mask but had no eyes. Instead, a yellow vertical rectangular lens filled the area of where the eyes and nose of a normal mobile suit would be. Its arms held a rifle of some sort pointed at them.

Other mobile suits resolved through the mist. Some like the zaku warrior and dom, Justin recognized. Others were completely foreign or were variations of known mobile suits like the zaku and dom.

To the left, beefed-up versions of the zaku marched towards them. On the right, strike daggers, mono-eyed mobile suits with scoped beam rifles and large oval shields, along with what appeared to be mobile suit designs influenced by the strike dagger, armed with an assortment of pistol-sized guns to rifles complemented with shields.

J:" Halt! Or we'll fire!"

If the pilots heard the warning, they showed no sign.

The team fired in all three directions, but the hostiles dodged the shots, which sped on towards mobile suits at the rear resembling beefed-up versions of the first model Justin saw.

The said mobile suits each released three discs that formed a beam shield in front and absorbed the shots.

The mobile suits in the front opened fire, bullets and beam shots fired in overwhelming force. The three suits took the brunt of the fire on their shields. Suddenly, Carlyle cried out as his suit's knee was blasted by a beam shot from one of the beefed up zakus. As he raised his rifle, the first mobile suit type fired its machine gun. Bullets riddled Carlyle's suit's torso. Carlyle's scream was cut off as his dagger l exploded.

Justin cursed and squeezed off a shot at his killer, which blew up as his shot hit centre-mass. Danny was next to go. As he finished off a strike dagger and turned his attention front, a dom variant with two long panes jutting at a 50 degree angle from its backpack fired its machine gun straight into Danny's cockpit. Danny's dagger fell with a smoking hole in it's chest.

Justin roared as he fired. Two more shots and his windam's hip was hit from a squat looking zaku with a long machine gun and a zaku warrior which was oddly using a machine gun which looked exactly like the zaku's original beam rifle.

Justin's windam crashed to the ground, and he struggled to get up. A heavy foot slammed his suit back down with jaw jarring impact and Justin opened his eyes to see the zaku warrior staring at him.

Despite having fought against ZAFT's zaku suits before, Justin had never feared their physical appearance when he had faced them down in battle. He did now as he stared at the red mono-eye staring him down. It looked like a hungry ogre about to devour its human prey. Justin moved the windam's arm to shoot it.

The zaku caught the movement and calmly raised its machine gun at Justin's cockpit. The last thing lieutenant Justin Wzasky saw was the bright flash of the zaku's machine gun.

CE76

Unknown location

The boy's eyes slid left and the reports the Polish base personnel had sent concerning the mobile suit intruders shifted out of sight from the screen. Two of them had been salvaged for analysis, albeit with little gleaned from the wrecked cockpits. But what they had gathered was enough to paint a picture. Access into data fragments from the operating systems had revealed the two models as the Earth Alliance dagger l and the Windam, both confirming his suspicions about their country of origin. Audio logs had also confirmed the pilots to be from Blue Cosmos.

The boy closed his eyes as he established connection with a satellite, browsing through the internet, news channels and archives for information regarding the world's position. Articles and footage of the end of not one but two wars came up, all of which corroborated to form a picture of a world moving towards peace, the banishment of Blue Cosmos from the Earth Alliance, its military power base and the defeat of Blue Cosmos and LOGOS.

The boy narrowed his eyes and growled, the action sending air bubbles from the sides of his rebreather mask to the top of the tank. His merger with the facility's supercomputer and its network had familiarized him with all the different scenarios and possibilities. He scoffed. These news articles and footage were obviously part of Blue Cosmos's misinformation programme meant to lure him out of hiding into the waiting jaws of Blue Cosmos.

The time had come. The boy went through the different scenario command protocols and activated the one he was looking for. The Blue Cosmos had discovered the Polish base and that meant they were aware or would soon be aware that ZAFT had a fail safe to secure final victory despite its fall. On the screen in front of the tank, the command was confirmed and lights on geographical locations around the world, in space and on Mars lit up as their bases started up like this one and began automated and manual preparations for war. Supercomputers fired up and initiated command protocols on each base, activating defense and weapons production routines. Ships began shakedown cycles to prepare for war as robot drones loaded supplies and ammunition aboard.

Base personnel contained within life-preserving stasis pods awoke as cryostasis fields were deactivated. No one asked questions about why they had been woken as they washed up in cubicles and made for pre assigned stations. There was only one answer. Wargame scenario Red storm Alpha-552 was in play.