JULY 27, CE 74
Ric stared down empty space, waiting for something, anything to make a move. He searched each quadrant of his view methodically. While he much preferred fast, frenetic combat, he was experienced enough to know that a pilot who was not aware of his surroundings was usually a dead pilot by the end of the encounter. So he searched and his trigger finger itched and he wondered what they'd put up against him now. Pirates in GINNs? Redcoats in ZAKUs? Patrols were such iffy things. He checked his radar. Nothing. Maybe nothing was all there was, but they wouldn't have had him sortie if they thought nothing was out there. If there was nothing then they would've sent out a rookie, so the pilot could get experience with the catapults and to mess with his head. The veteran pilots took every opportunity to mess with the newbie pilots' heads, following long and storied (unofficial) military tradition. But they wouldn't send out an elite pilot like him on a ghost run, so that meant there was something out there he had to handle. And it hadn't made a move yet. Ric wished it would get on with it. Dinner was starting soon and getting stuck out on patrol would only increase the odds that he would get reheated scraps rather than the relatively nice food being cooked for the first time right about now.
To his four o'clock and his eight, respectively, sat Trey and Tasha in their suits, facing out, doing roughly the same thing he was in an attempt to prevent anything from sneaking up on their flight of three. They drifted slowly together, maneuvering only minimally, just enough to stay on the same course, and hopefully little enough that they were invisible to any sensors currently aimed in their general direction. The waiting was nerve-wracking; every bit of random dust that caught the light might have been an enemy making its way up on them.
They could have gone more active, spread out, swept the area, but there was too much open space to cover, too many directions for something to hit them from. Their thruster emissions would be picked up by any thermal sensor (and operator) worth its salt. And more worryingly, whatever was out there knew it, was following the same strategy. If there was anything out there. If. But if there was something out there, it was beginning to look like it was pretty savvy, because a less experienced pilot would have stopped gathering data and jumped them already. It had already been ten minutes since they'd been catapulted off the hangar deck, their initial burn covered by the carrier's much larger heat signature, then they had switched to inertial flight, formed up in their triangle, and waited. All they needed was a second's warning, just a little giveaway, and they'd pounce. All three were experienced dogfighters, and in that sort of situation, you had fractions of seconds to make your move or you'd be dead. It was really no wonder that Coordinators excelled at it, though they were all mortal. All of them could be beaten. They just needed that second, maybe a little more or maybe a little less. But that was it.
There was a little piece of debris out there in the middle distance, barely close enough to be seen by the naked eye. It had some sort of reflective surface on it, a mirror or solar panel or something. It was also rotating, probably the incredibly unlikely victim of a micrometeoroid strike despite the vast distances between it and anything else in space. The mirror or whatever-it-was would occasionally catch some light, reflecting off the lunar surface or simply light that had made it past Earth and reflect it directly towards Rico in his suit. It was a pain in the ass, and it was something to look at and so he found his eye drawn to it. He knew it wasn't good policy but it wasn't a strictly conscious decision, either, like checking out an attractive female crew member as she walked by in the mess. And Ric had never been particularly big on policy, anyway. So when the damn thing flashed he found himself glancing at it, every couple of minutes or so. Stupid thing.
"You guys got anything on scopes?" said a woman's voice over comms, hint of a Eurasian accent. Natasha. It was pointless to ask about visuals. They'd pick up any emissions on sensors long before the target got into visual range, which would give them plenty of time to set up. Unless it has a Mirage Colloid system, he thought. Then they'd be screwed. If it was even out there. He still wasn't convinced. MC had been banned by the Junius Treaty. Not that that had stopped anyone from conducting research and development on it. It only meant that the tech was always highly classified and almost never deployed. So the chances of coming up against an MC-cloaked adversary were very remote, for which he was thankful. Invisible intruders made his skin crawl. And gave him ideas.
"Nothing here," chimed in the other member of the flight, a quiet and even male voice that could only have belonged to Trey.
"Goddamn," said Ric. "Where is this guy? Or girl," he added as a concession to Tasha, who was one of the fiercest pilots he'd ever met. Far superior to most men he'd flown with. She'd have been terrifying as a Coordinator. "Honestly, if they really wanted me to shut up on the bridge, they could've just told me. Didn't need to send me on a ghost run. Didn't need to make you guys join me, either."
"Obviously Halley didn't want to deal with your stupidity," said Tasha.
"Ouch. That hurts, ya know? You hurt me, you really do, when you make comments like that. Wounds my self-esteem."
"Ric, your puffed-up ego could lift a hot air balloon."
Double ouch.
"Do you two really have to do this now?" asked Trey wearily.
"Sorry," said Tasha. She never apologized to Ric like that. And that was incredibly unfair, because she was absolutely merciless to him.
The mirror flashed. He was really getting sick of it. He opened his mouth to complain about it, complaining being one of his favorite pastimes, but before he could, it flashed again. That was odd. Normally it took a minute or two before…
"Hold a sec," he said. "I might have something here." He zoomed in on the fragment, having never paid more than shallow attention to it before now. The mirror was definitely rotating faster. He hadn't seen anything act on it, no impacts or gravity or anything. The nature of the silence changed. Whereas before it had the feel of boredom and bother, now they could all suddenly feel the tension in their channel, the 'is it starting?' feeling of near panic and breathless restraint as they tried to figure out what the hell was going on.
Then something blasted past them, too fast for their eyes to track, something that left only ghostly after-images on their sensor readouts, something shaped vaguely like a mobile suit.
"Scatter!" shouted Trey, not a moment too soon, as suddenly multiple green energy beams lanced out at them and into empty space as the three pilots accelerated as fast as they could out of the way, g-force slamming them into their seats as the thrusters kicked up.
"What the hell was that?" shouted Ric. Why didn't it show up before now? Whatever this stranger was up to, it seemed content to avoid their sight and take potshots at them as the three Earth Forces pilots tried frantically not to get hit and simultaneously figure out what was going on. The three of them zig-zagged as randomly as they could, throwing themselves to the mercy of the restraining straps as they searched every view for the source of the shots. No such luck. At this point, their only offensive strategy looked to be 'shoot out randomly and hope you hit something by accident,' which wasn't particularly palatable. That they hadn't taken hits yet was a miracle.
"Oh, what I wouldn't give for backup right now," complained Ric as he pulled another high-g maneuver. His chest was sore from them already.
"Wait! I got him!" called Tasha. "5 o'clock high!"
"Are you nuts?" Ric called back. "That's not where the shots are coming from!"
"Dammit Ric, I just saw him zip past up there! I'm on him!"
"Then who's shooting?"
"You're hallucinating!" Tasha pulled away from the group at full burn. Ric reluctantly covered her, but he wasn't really sure what he could do. A green bolt nearly impacted his main camera, passed just centimeters to the left, and fuzzed out the feed on that side from the heat. Definitely not a hallucination. He tried to follow Tasha on sensors, but she was moving too fast for him to get a good fix on her.
"Trey, what have you got?" called Ric.
"I've got a lot of lasers," said Trey, his voice tight with concentration. He narrowly avoided a hit. "A lot of lasers."
"How is he pulling that off?" asked Ric, another bolt grazing his armor near the batteries, setting off a brief heat warning. "There was only one contact!"
"Beats me," replied Trey, blocking what would have been a fatal hit with his shield. "But we're in a whole lot of trouble if we don't think of something."
"That bastard is fast," called Tasha. "It's almost impossible for me to pursue. Always puts a bolt in my path, trying to catch me over-reaching. Damn!" She pulled dodged around a blast that couldn't possibly have come from her prey, but no additional contacts appeared, which suggested that somehow their enemy could be in multiple places at once.
Ric rolled, then reversed at full burn to avoid consecutive shots. Bastard was anticipating his evasive patterns now? Seriously? Then he caught a flash, not the mirror this time, but the thruster wash of his enemy. "Got him!" he shouted, dropping into pursuit and attempting to line up a shot. He was now facing the same obstacles Tasha was, from different angles, but he expected them and dodged crisply getting close enough to see that the aggressor was mostly white, with a black colored torso. He didn't recognize it, and assumed it was probably a ZAFT design. He knew pretty much everything the Alliance used. Then their opponent pulled straight up, reversed thrust and blasted back down towards them in a stunt that would've caused a Natural pilot to black out, best case, or die from an aneurysm, worst case. Neither Ric nor Tasha could quite believe that anyone would be that reckless and blessed their good fortune as they lined up shots.
Then they were utterly shocked when their opponent dodged the simultaneous attacks with barely a twitch, having so fine a control over his machine that he merely used the momentum of his suit's own limbs to rotate its torso just enough so that he fit in the parallel lane between the paired bolts, a distance of only a few meters and barely enough to contain the suit itself. It was the most incredible display of finesse they'd ever seen. Between Tasha and Ric, Ric recovered from the shock slightly earlier, dropping straight down like a boulder in gravity, letting a slash from a sword they hadn't even seen drawn take only his head-mounted sensor antenna. Tasha was not so lucky and lost her primary weapon arm to the return stroke.
"Shit!" she barked, opening up with her CIWS, attempting to drive away the assailant before he could do any more damage. Ric tried to cover her with missiles, but the bastard always moved just enough to foul up the lock, sending the missile off to god-knows-where without even changing direction.
Trey had finally managed to catch up, suit charred from several near-misses and missing its left leg below the knee. He opened up too, much less impaired than Tasha, the three of them finally driving off the primary foe, but drawing volleys from whatever else was shooting at them, forcing the three to scatter once again.
Incredibly, the enemy maintained the same speed he had first arrived at through the whole fight, when he should have been bleeding from burst blood vessels and unconscious from g-forces, much less fighting with the reaction time and finesse he'd shown. The only reason Ric, Trey, and Tasha were still flying was because there were three of them and only one of him. One-on-one they stood no chance. Ric got the feeling that their opponent had only been testing them out up to this point and had just come to the same conclusion. Green bolts from all directions now passed between them, forcing them to dodge away from each other. Ric got a brief glance of the enemy with a pair of rifles, carefully placing shots to separate the three Earth Forces pilots. It didn't account for all of the beams, which didn't appear to originate from the enemy suit and came from multiple directions, but at least he could understand the strategy. Not that he could do anything about it.
Now Tasha was on her own, forced to evade unevenly because of the missing arm, and Ric and Trey were forced to move further and further away as the uncannily accurate green bolts interrupted their moves and drew them out, but never quite drawing a killshot. They were tiring, though, and it would happen eventually. But Tasha got it first. She pulled out of a looping dodge, had taken too long to set herself, and the opponent was on her, a pair of pink glowing swords dropping on her, cutting through head camera, cockpit, and left arm in an X-pattern, prematurely cutting off her last expletive. Her mobile suit cartwheeled away, venting coolant and atmosphere before exploding in a pink starburst.
Trey and Ric were beyond words now, fighting with their all, sweat beading on their foreheads from extreme concentration, intent on forcing the enemy to pay for destroying their comrade. Adrenaline enhanced Ric's senses; he could see the red and blue detailing on the enemy's suit, its golden joints flashing, the glow of its thrusters like none he had ever seen. He was at his absolute limit, the fight of his life, the most intense moments he had experienced as he dodged and wove and countered the enemy and all his strange abilities as much as he could. Even so, they were still losing, minor damage adding up, delicate systems starting to wear out from strain and use, pilots tiring, reactions slowing, aims drifting until finally they would be defeated.
It caught up to Trey: one of the lancing bolts caught his already damaged leg, destroying it completely and sending him into a spin from which he was too slow in recovering. He managed to escape out of range of a slash, but the enemy revealed linear cannons on its hips and with a slug from each removed an arm before one of the green bolts seemed to come out of nowhere and punched straight through Trey's back, silencing him as well.
Ric was alone now, hemmed in by the green beams, forced increasingly to roll and dodge in the same space until he'd be trapped and cornered. The enemy moved in ever so closer with each miss, just waiting for an opportunity to blast him with the linear cannons or finish him off with a well placed sword strike. But he couldn't take his attention off of the other blasts, which he now realized were remotely controlled weapons, and briefly marveled at the sophistication the pilot displayed with them, always keeping up the net despite their limited battery life, returning them quickly and quietly on an individual basis to avoid compromising the trap. His foe now added new wrinkles with its own rifles, eliminating Ric's ability to counter as the net drew tighter. Ric was forced to use his shield to deflect several linear cannon rounds as he dodged cannon blasts as the enemy suit kept up the volume of firepower on its own even as it recharged its remotes. Soon a cannon round carved off his shoulder armor, then another took his left hand. A remote weapon nicked his leg, severing the hydraulic control, leaving it to drag behind him as he maneuvered, and shortly after it was completely blasted off. He snarled silently, fighting to keep stable as he contorted what was left of his suit around and over beams, constantly slipping just outside the nets and forcing the enemy to recalibrate.
But it wasn't enough and he knew it. Beams began to pare more and more components off his suit. He was finished when his main camera cracked, ruining his visuals, and before backups could kick in he'd lost all of his limbs to the remotes. In frustration, he attempted to ram his foe, a poor attempt at a gesture of defiance. He got close enough to see what was written on the crest of the enemy machine's head, Venti, and then the monster ended the fight with a colossal cannon blast from an integrated chest cannon that it had been so reluctant to unveil. Everything went white.
Then the screens dimmed to black and started displaying his stats. He undid the restraints and yanked off his helmet, ran a gloved hand through his hair and wiped off the sweat that had accumulated on his face. He was exhausted. He looked back at the screen. He'd been in the simulator for fifteen minutes, less than five of which had been the actual fight. Kills: zero. Against one enemy. Accuracy: zero percent. One ungodly monster of an enemy that seemed to casually ignore human limits. Objective Failed, all pilots KIA. Goddamn.
He stormed out of the simulation cockpit. Trey and Tasha were waiting for him. The three of them, reunited once again, marched up to the simulator tech, intent on giving him a piece of their minds.
"What the hell was that!?" Ric almost shouted at the petty officer, who simply raised an eyebrow.
"I thought the simulator was supposed to be realistic," griped Tasha.
"It is," said the tech. "That enemy was based off actual, specific combat data."
"Bullshit," snorted Ric. "That thing wasn't even human! That was an AI or something you made up, because no human has control that fine and no human has reaction time that fast. It's not possible."
"Not possible for you, Lieutenant Duomo," said a new voice. Ric made a face, and then turned around to see that, yes, it was Captain Halley, just arrived. "In fact, there are very few people that it is possible for, but they do exist. Just because you haven't encountered them personally does not make what they can do impossible."
"Not even a Coordinator could pull those moves off, Captain," said Trey.
"For the vast majority of them, you'd be right, Lieutenant Thomas. Only a few exceptional individuals are capable of such extraordinary displays of ability. Tell me, have you heard of the Mobius Zero?"
This stumped the pilots for a moment, till Tasha remembered a rumor she heard about the Battle of Endymion. "A mobile armor, right? A pretty useless one, too. Never made it out of prototype," she said.
"Not useless. Simply highly specialized. Only a few people could use the remote wire-guided gunbarrel pods reliably. But for those who could, it was a sight to behold. In one memorable instance, a single Zero pilot shot down five GINNs. Incredibly effective in the right hands, but the problem was finding the right hands."
"That doesn't explain why the pilot wasn't splattered all over his cockpit by the g-forces he was pulling," groused Ric.
"Look at it as another case of finding the right hands. I can think of three people who could control those kinds of maneuvers, that power. Two of them are in ZAFT and the other is in Orb. Maybe there are others. But don't for a moment assume it was impossible. Everything you faced in the simulator was combat-accurate. And you three actually did well against him, lasting as long as you did. I'm impressed."
"Ha ha, Captain. Very funny. Set an impossible task and laugh when I fail. Great prank. Really," said Ric. He was taking the fight personally because, dammit, he'd already been in combat against people physically superior to him. A whole lot of them. But he hadn't fought freaky computer monsters and considered it highly unfair to make him fight one. It was a mockery of everything he'd done.
Captain Halley narrowed his eyes. "Believe what you want, Duomo. But reality will rudely interrupt eventually." Then he spun perfectly on his heel and marched out, paragon of military discipline as ever.
Duomo seriously considered giving chase and clubbing the man with his sweaty helmet. People did not just dismiss Ricardo Duomo, medal-winning fifteen-kill combat veteran, out of hand! It was humiliating! But Trey grabbed his shoulder, not hard, just a warning, and gave the slightest shake of the head to warn him off. Ric forced himself to relax and settled for making a rude hand gesture at the door the captain left through. He went on to theatrically sulk through dinner, which, to add insult to injury, was exactly the reheated scraps he was afraid it would be.
The next day, they were briefed. That, in itself, was an exciting development. It meant they would actually be going out and doing things rather than just whiling away time in the sims. Slightly less exciting was the fact that Captain Halley hadn't seen fit or found an excuse to throw Duomo off the ship yet. I should be so lucky, thought Natasha. But she'd been stuck with him since the last war, since he had the annoying traits of luck and skill that had kept him both alive and a pain in the ass.
She was on the observation deck now, looking out over the Atlantic Ocean, the port of Marseilles behind her, the iron-gray clouds blanketing the sky reminding her so much of the view from Heaven's Base in Iceland. That had been an unpleasant experience, learning that, only days since her squadron had been transferred to South America, practically the whole ZAFT military leveled the place. Just one of the ways they'd been lucky. The second was being still in transit to the moon, en route to Arzachel to be part of the task force there, when Durandal had seen fit to eliminate President Copeland and the Earth Alliance military base there. Another was being anywhere but Cape Town three days ago.
The enormity of the task they had been set had started to overwhelm her, so she'd come out here, escaping Ric's antics and the constant buzz of rumors about where they might be, who might've done it, and so forth. All the speculation gave her a headache. She'd always liked the sea, the rhythmic sound of the waves, the occasional cry of a gull, the breath of wind and the smell of salt in the air. Maybe, if fate had diverged at some point, she would've been a sailor or a diver or a marine biologist or… who knows, instead of a pilot. Maybe when she got out of the military, whenever that was. Not soon, though. Someone had wrecked Cape Town. And they of the Odysseus would be hunting them down. Obviously the big brass trusted them, would give them all the support they needed, but it would still be one ship chasing people who'd already shown the firepower to wreck a whole damn military base. A big, unwieldy fleet simply wasn't flexible enough to take on the sort of enemy who can vanish like these did and the Odysseus was a hell of a ship, brand new, the EA's first entirely self-developed assault carrier. But Tasha still wasn't really confident in their odds. And who knows how things would turn out if Orb or ZAFT got involved? Somehow, she didn't think they'd just sit around and do nothing. Distantly, she could see that it was possible that another war could start. Certainly no one wanted it or even would be able to fight it, but neither were they strong enough to stop one should the worst occur.
She didn't want to think about it anymore. She wasn't interested in following that particular downward spiral, so she just closed her eyes and listened to the waves wash against the hull. She lapsed into something of a meditative state, just letting the sounds of the world echo and subsuming her anxieties and frustrations in the peace and order of nature. When she was brought out of it by a manmade sound, a door opening behind her, she wasn't quite sure how long she'd been standing there, unable to tell if the sun had moved behind the clouds. She opened her eyes and turned around to see that she had been joined by Trey. He seemed as steady and even as always.
"Been out here long?" he asked, a half-smile on his face hinting that he had a pretty good idea of the answer.
"Yeah." She reached behind her and undid the cord that normally bound her long pale hair in a thick ponytail, now opting to let it loose in the cool sea breeze.
Neither of them quite knew what to say for the moment, but the silence was comfortable. Tasha wasn't particularly inclined to talk at the moment and Trey was never much of a talker himself.
Honestly, Tasha would have gone crazy, either from stress or Duomo long ago if not for Trey. Trey was a rock, calm and collected, easily one of the most rational people she knew. He was normally what kept Ric and her from each others' throats, a natural mediator. He also knew when to take a back seat and let them vent. He seemed to Tasha a combination of shrink, soldier, and statue. He was tall, with neatly trimmed dark hair and dark eyes, a sober and honest counterpart to Duomo's shorter stature, copiously styled hair, and ridiculous moods.
Trey had joined the squadron shortly after Ric had, arriving as relief right as she was about to beat the ever-loving snot out of the shorter pilot. It wasn't much of a first impression, but things had worked out, and here they were, about to deploy on what she felt would be the most dangerous assignment they'd ever been given, even if the war had ended.
He broke the silence, snapped her out of her reverie. "If I was a betting man, I'd bet you were thinking about how messed up this whole situation is."
"You should take your intuition to Vegas or Monte Carlo or one of the Lunar cities. You'd make a killing."
He chuckled. "I'm not that good. It's not that much of a leap, is all."
"I was just torturing myself with what-ifs. I oughta know better by now."
"Maybe. But to err is human."
She waved a hand out toward the ocean. "I don't know what it is, but there's something looming over all this. Makes me uneasy. Call it soldier's intuition, but these next few weeks aren't going to be pretty."
"Well, we've been through enough shit that we're probably pretty good at figuring out if there's more out there on the way. Curse of soldiers everywhere."
"Doesn't make me feel any better."
"Me either."
"I guess it was naïve to think that people would be done fighting."
"Doesn't hurt to hope. Come on. We've got duties to attend to." He stepped back, towards the door and gave her an expectant look.
She sighed. "Yeah, I'm coming," she said, and reluctantly pulled herself away from the vista, sparing a wistful glance behind her as the door hissed shut, cutting off the breeze.
The hangar deck of an active carrier is a vast, complex system and despite being the largest single space in the ship, still managed to be cramped: space is at a premium aboard a ship and a whole lot of it was currently being taken up by the sixty-foot tall mechanical giants that also happened to be Natasha's occupation. It was almost always busy as mechanics tested and repaired the suits, loaded them with ammo, painted them, and even moved between them on the gantries that were designed to fold away so the suits could make it to the catapult. It was even more hectic during combat operations, as all of these things occurred at the same time as mobile suits constantly launched and returned in varying states of damage depending on how the fight was going. Tasha was impressed and very, very glad that the crew chief managed to keep everything straight.
She had followed Trey down here from the observation deck, the hangar deck rather lower on this ship than its counterparts from Orb or ZAFT. She'd neglected to stop by earlier and do her customary maintenance checks on her Windam. Not that she thought the mechanics were incompetent, but there were some things she had to do for herself. Like the old airborne adage went, she packed her own parachute, even if only to clear up any half-formed doubts or persistent problems that might impede her effectiveness. So she took a lift down to the floor and weaved her way through mechanics and lifts and scattered parts and tools, making her way from the aft to the fore of the deck where her Windam was stored, ready and willing to be the first to launch if they ended up under attack. But it wasn't there. Her brow furrowed in confusion. She hadn't passed it on the way up… she recognized the various pilot insignias and other decorative flourishes on the suits and none of them were hers. She hadn't really been paying attention but looking back now she only saw three Windams. Ric's and Trey's were missing too. Was it really taking so long to load them? They'd been on the ship since yesterday and if some paper pusher mucked up the transfer paperwork then she'd hunt the fool down and chuck him out a window. She was really rather fond of that damned suit. It had carried her through several missions and served her admirably. And if some idiot lost it in the bueracracy…
Tasha turned around to shout and see if anyone knew where her suit was or when it'd be arriving, if she could even be heard over the natural din of the hangar deck. She got as far as opening her mouth and inhaling when she noticed the captain approaching her, Ric and Trey having fallen in behind him. She shut her mouth and drew herself up in a proper salute, which Halley returned.
"You look like you have a question, Ensign Vela," he said in greeting.
"Yes, sir. If I may ask, where is my mobile suit? I figured it would be aboard by now and I was intending to perform my maintenance checks, sir."
"Right to the point, eh?" said the Captain. "And I assume you two are following me because you'd like to know as well?" He continued when the other two pilots answered in the affirmative. "I wasn't able to tell you earlier, during the briefing, since we only just got confirmation, but as of today, you three will no longer be piloting Windams."
"What!?" shouted Ric, outraged, unable to restrain himself anymore.
Captain Halley ignored him. "Instead, you'll be piloting those," he said, pointing as the catapult doors began to open. "Let it be known that the Alliance does not keep all its eggs in one basket."
The three pilots turned to look at the new arrivals, being ferried aboard by cargo lifters.
"Meet the GAT-X111 Blood Dagger, the combat prototype for the Windam's successor," said Halley. "These are our first mobile suits to take into account the advances we engineered off of the Chaos, Gaia, and Abyss. They'll outperform a Windam any day of the week." He sounded almost proud. The pilots were transfixed, taking in every detail of their bounty.
The new mobile suits were similar in torso structure to the Gaia (though lacking the bladed 'wings') and incorporated a chest cannon similar to the one found on the Abyss, while maintaining the leg-mounted vernier thrusters of the Windam. Their shoulders were of a different design than their predecessors, less rounded and extending out over the arm, containing thrusters that would give them the mobility of the Chaos. This was rounded out by a unique head shape, which had shorter antennas than the Windam, laid out in a V bracketing the main camera, reminiscent of the old Duel except for the faceplate, which was practically identical to the one on the Windam. Its targeting and sensor "eyes" were behind a crimson visor. They were almost entirely grey in spite of this, indicating that they were equipped with phase shift armor. Cannons were visible on the back that, when activated, would deploy over the shoulders, basically smaller and more efficient integrated versions of the Dopplehorn Striker pack. Mounted on the head were the ubiquitous CIWS guns while handheld beam sabers (stored on the hips) and rifles were brought aboard in separate crates. Each unit carried a shield with integrated beam cannon as well. They were magnificent.
Trey nudged Tasha. "Feel better about our odds now?" he muttered. "Cause I do."