With proper acknowledgements to both William Whiting and Robert Heinlein.
This chapter was split in the middle so I could insert another Zechs Interlude; it would be criminal to pit all my available Gundam Pilots against Zechs and not document it.
Jink High 1
"What happened?" Noin asked.
"Chang wasn't looking to start a fight." Dyer said. "He just came by from the port flight deck where his unit is. Searcy objected to having to share the same space as someone who had killed cadets in their sleep and who tried to kill his commanding officer in the past." Dyer grimaced. "By the time I noticed what was going on...I could have ordered Lightning to stand down, but I had no way to make Chang back off. Chang is technically senior to me, he has seven months date of rank. Gundam pilots don't go in for a fight without being in for a funeral."
Noin grimaced. Duo was like that; he could be incredibly aggressive, because with a Gundam the difference between success and failure was usually just being willing to try. "And rather than give an order nobody would listen to and damage your authority as XO, you were waiting for someone to step so badly out of line the others would turn on them. You should have caught it earlier, ideally, but I see where you're coming from."
Dyer nodded. "You are correct. I should, and I have no excuse ma'am. You've heard the news from the Earth Sphere?"
Noin shook her head. "Yes." L3 was in the grip of a large-scale rebellion, with only a small portion of the L3 Militia having remained loyal to the ESUN; but they were fighting out of proportion to their numbers so far. L1's government had declared for rebellion as well, only to unwisely seek insurance against their so far neutral Lunar neighbors by positioning a resource satellite in an orbit that would make it easy to divert onto a Lunar city; this had provoked a preemptive strike by the L2 and Lunar Guard. Preventer units in L4 were fighting with the militia which was also fighting with itself. There was large-scale civil unrest in central Africa, eastern South America and parts of northern Asia.
It had all broken out within hours of the KKV strike. Someone had concocted and executed an incredibly ambitious plan to destabilize almost all of humanity, and it was working. "The bit about princess, though..."
Dyer shook his head. "Just a rumor. No confirmation."
She didn't want to ask, but... "Where did it come down, exactly?"
"Almost directly on the A Ninety-One bridge, apparently. I haven't seen a yield equivalent, though." Dyer looked up sharply as someone approached. "Petty Officer Munz."
"Sir, ma'am." Saluting was impractical in zero-gee, and anyways the hanger was designated a "working area" where only the arrival of the unit CO merited dropping what you were doing for protocol. "If you have a moment, I need to show you something."
Munz raised his tablet and played a gun camera clip. Noin guessed it was from a suit in Three Flight, and it showed Tallgeese. Munz zoomed the clip and paused it, then brought up a still from a different camera. Noin's own, when she fired on Zechs last before breaking off their first fight. "Commander, BDA says that Focht mission-killed Tallgeese for at least six weeks if not a permanent catastrophic kill. However, comparing its damage here with the damage it sustained previously..." Munz's grimace spoke volumes. "I can't find any evidence of the original damage. Even if they had a proper repair setup and the parts, they still shouldn't have had time to repaint it all so I can't tell the difference between replaced parts on the verniers and original ones."
Dyer was giving Munz an I-don't-want-to-believe-you-look. Noin imagined her own face was similar. "Conclusions?"
"Either Tallgeese got modular when no one was looking, or it's a different suit. Chief Ropke says it's singularly unsuited to modular design principles, so..."
Noin sighed. "This changes things. I'll have to talk to Bright again."
"So they probably have access to Tallgeese still. It will lack its heavy beam cannon, so its warship-killing potential is limited." Noin explained to the assembled group of ship captains. Also present were the MCM battalion commanders, Ami Nagano, and two Preventer squadron leaders besides herself.
"But it's still Tallgeese, and it's still the Lightning Count," Intrepid's Captain was an ex-Alliance officer, ironically, just as its XO was ex-OZ. His claim to fame aside from that was having commanded one of the last of colonial construction ships before the Alliance had nationalized his original command and used it to help build Barge; from there he had been part of various Alliance warship projects, none of which had ever gone beyond simulation and some interior mockups. Ironically this made him one of the best-educated people in the Solar System on space warship combat. "And neither suit nor man are to be treated lightly."
Ami Nagano grimaced. "He's a congenital traitor, but you're right. I'll shift a unit to engage him if Merquise shows up; anyone who's leaving might not be able to break contact and return to their ship when fighting a suit that fast."
"Or," the CO of Intrepid said softly. "We could get everyone out. Only twenty enemy ships are approaching, none of them mass more twenty thousand tons. Intrepid has forty-eight Ess Sixty Eights aboard. There was a strategic weapons attack on Earth. Preventer doctrine in the event of that is clear: strategic weapons release authority is granted to ship commanders. We can fry them with ship-to-ship or mobile suit-delivered nuclear ordnance."
Noin gave him the evil eye. "Yes, but that release was granted in the expectation the weapons will be used counterforce against an ongoing strategic weapons threat to Earth. This is not the situation envisioned in those orders and the fact we have access to those weapons right now is an oversight."
Intrepid's XO nodded. "Sir, I have to agree with the Commander. Preventer doctrine has never envisioned the use of nuclear weapons in a battlefield environment, not unless the opponent was similarly armed and we had positive intelligence they were intending to use them or they had already done so. We can't first-use. It's against everything the agency stands for."
"The MCM will not be a party to a nuclear first strike," Ami Nagano added firmly. "Besides, we still have to abandon the planet because we don't have enough warheads for the second wave, and it would only invite retaliation against the citizens of Mars." She shifted the subject away from the nuclear option with a rush. "In any case, Merquise. I'll have to use Specials Flight; it's the only unit I have with the hardware to do more than distract Merquise for a few seconds."
Noin glanced at Ami aside; she wasn't the only one. She had great respect for the MCM's Senior Colonel, but...attacking Zechs when he had any model of Tallgeese was usually classed under "suicide attempt" more than it was "sound tactical decision". "I will be having one of my people in a Strike Taurus prototype," Dyer had volunteered to let Searcy use his suit when it was clear they couldn't repair either of the damaged Taurus in the hanger in time, "and Lieutenant Chang intends to use the prototype Striker Serpent. We won't be entirely defenseless."
"Searcy. You'll be piloting Lieutenant Dyer's Taurus for this mission. He'll be using one of the Strike Taurus prototypes." Noin said. The briefing was informal, this time, everyone gathered on the various handhods on the gantry next to Noin's Taurus. "Our job is to screen the Mars-side edge of the fleet, along with The Dragon. I know some of you have issues with some of them," she gave Searcy a hard look, "but you will stow those aboard this ship before we launch."
She sighed. "I hoped, when I took command, that my career would be a peacetime one. I think we all did. We all had enough war to make us dread another: Daybreak, the Civil War, the Eve Wars. We all hoped never to lose a comrade again. We were not so lucky, but at least, as the saying goes, we have experience. You have made me proud, these last three months. And our losses are and will be missed. Lieutenant Dyer, Lieutenant Maxwell, you asked to speak to that?"
"Eternal Father," Dyer spoke, though Noin knew enough to know it was a hymn he was quoting, "strong to save, whose hand hath bound the restless wave, who bids the mighty oceans deep their own appointed limits keep. Oh hear us when we cry to Thee for those in peril on the sea. Almighty ruler of the all, whose power extends to great and small. Who guides the stars with steadfast law, whose least creation fills with awe. Oh grant Thy mercy and Thy grace, to those who venture into space."
He drew a deep breath. "The words aren't very familiar to most of us. OZ and the Alliance both really didn't want their space arms acknowledging the debt they owed organizationally to their respective naval arms. Interservice infighting. Yet the words to The Navy Hymn were adapted to us before the Alliance was founded. Some of you," he nodded to Duo, "don't believe. Learn the words anyways. I won't give you that stupid line about atheists and foxholes, because I've known plenty. But you'll have to say the words for others who can't anymore. Focht was Catholic, Willem Protestant. They couldn't say the words for themselves. So learn them."
Duo grimaced. "Our anthem, Lieutenant?"
Dyer nodded back to him. "Care to lead off?"
Duo closed his eyes a moment, took a breath. "We meet 'neath the sounding rafters, and the walls around us are bare." He also had a surprisingly good singing voice, though his youth showed; he was a little too-high pitched, and Noin could not shake a bit of discomfort at the illustration that whatever else he was, one of her lieutenants was still just seventeen. But here, in the hanger, the words seemed appropriate.
Dyer picked it up along with him. "As they shout back our peals of laughter, it seems that the dead are there."
Then a minute later Noin herself, for the first time, picked it up to finish the song. And as if appointed to, the others dropped away. "We loop in the purple twilight; we spin in the silvery dawn; with a trail of smoke behind us to show where our comrades have gone. So stand to your glasses steady! This world is world full of lies! One cup to the dead already, and hurrah for the next one to die."
There was a long, silent pause; Noin was nervous at first, but a look at her pilots said she need not have worried. They were silent because the brief, impromptu memorial and the song had left them each with something to think about or some part of the past to revisit. The Revel tended to do that, especially because she knew Dyer mixed and matched from various alternate verses to touch on certain themes. Or someone had done so before him; he'd implied once the tradition went back to before Operation Daybreak.
She gave them a few moments. Then, she cleared her throat to get their attention. "I'll see you all back here when the fight is done. All of you. My executive officer is right to ask you to learn the words, but I don't want to hear them again any time soon. Much less have to say them for any of you."
They waited. The MCM's stay-behind force was engaging, tentatively, the Outer Colonies force as it entered orbit. Minerva appeared to scare them, perhaps on the theory that if it was anything like Intrepid they were in deep trouble. And there, coming up out of the atmosphere...
"How the hell did they repair Tallgeese?" Duo's demand suggested that the universe was blatantly unfair and that someone should probably be torn in half for it.
"Not important." Dyer replied. "Focus on the task at hand, Thirteen."
"Lightning, come to two-one-seven, arm missiles." Noin's voice was not emotional, just another standard command. "Lock Tallgeese."
"Noin," Zechs said over an open channel, "may we speak?"
"Launch by my order. Two, hold back when I give the command. One Flight, launch." Three replies came back; "Spear with twelve." "Lance with six, spear with six." "Javelin with twelve." Her own "Javelin with six, spear with three, lance with three." was calm and normal.
"Two Flight, launch." Noin commanded, then ten seconds later, "Three Flight, launch."
"Noin, if you won't listen now...I'm sorry, but I can make you listen." Zechs' tone suggested he was actually sorry. At this range it would take thirty seconds for the missiles to arrive, and another thirty more for Zechs to reach them.
Noin had a moment to wonder what he meant before, with horror, she realized it. Damn it, Zechs, you should know better than to go in that direction. You're supposed to be a better man than that, on upbringing alone if nothing else.
"One, Two. Request permission."
Noin bit her lip a moment. I'm sending you to your death, Richard Dyer. The fact you asked makes it no less painful. "Granted, Two."
"Lightning, Dragon Five. Whom do I have the pleasure of working with?" Wufei's sarcasm wasn't his most attractive feature.
"Lightning Two here. I'll be your wing, Dragon Five." Dyer replied calmly. Noin watched Tallgeese use a combination of evasion and vulcan fire to get through the first two waves of missiles; Zechs had more trouble evading the Martian-made Starbolts, though. Apparently they really were all they were cracked up to be...but the one hit on the shoulder plate didn't penetrate Tallgeese's armor.
Noin shook her head in frustration as the two prototypes moved together, knowing there was nothing to be gained by taking the rest of the squadron in to support them. In atmosphere, they could probably slash and dance with Tallgeese III because their aerodynamics let them do certain things better than it, but in space, where it was designed to fight, Zechs would go through her squadron like a scythe through wheat.
"Lightning Leader, this is Firestorm One. May I make a suggestion Commander?"
"Go, Firestorm."
"You can do more good at the main screen now. Give me Duo and we'll back up Wufei and your wing." Trowa said. "You take the rest of my unit." Zechs was currently dodging the last of the Starbolts from the third wave. They'd been impressive; made him push Tallgeese to the edge of its performance envelope, but he was too good to be stopped that way. Long-range missile shots gave him too much time to react.
"You won't win. You don't have to die." Zechs said over the open channel again.
"I denied you the battle with Trieze Kushrenada you should have fought. That was a grave mistake on my part," Wufei shot back. "I should have joined with him to defeat you, and settled my differences with Trieze some other time. Today I correct that mistake."
"What about your companion? I recognize that color scheme." The Strike Taurus prototype was a flat primer gray; had Zechs had taken it for the gray of Dyer's usual ride? Noin had little time to think about that. "Do you have a score to settle with me, Lieutenant?" Dyer did not reply to Zechs.
"You want me tucked in or to give you space, Dragon Five?" Noin wondered if he'd even heard Zechs. If he had, he didn't seem to care. His voice was the same calm it always was.
"Some space. Not too much, but enough to make him have trouble targeting us both at once. Switch to Tac Five." Wufei replied.
Their conversation moved where she couldn't listen, and Noin was too disciplined to want to change her own comms to listen and miss something said to her; she had other responsibilities, after all. "Hilde. You're with me."
"Moving to take your wing, One," Hilde replied.
Minerva and her mobile suit screen were consuming most of the enemy's attention, but not all. Athena screened the rear, her heavy weapons being better suited for an engagement to her rear than Intrepid's spinal railgun cluster. Athena's main guns were in sixteen large turrets, and weren't, technically speaking, guns. The EMRLs, short for Electro-Magnetic Rail Launchers, combined aspects of a railgun and a missile system; the extra speed meant that its missile volleys were too fast for mobile suits to avoid inside a large radius. Against enemy warships they could increase the power to the rails, load solid rounds, and barrage an enemy ship with dozens of kinetic penetrators.
The Outer Colonies force was, mostly, trying to skirt Athena's range. A couple of frigates and several mobile suits squadrons; the frigates were small and looked to Noin like refitted Leo carriers given armor and beam cannon turrets. It probably wasn't a bad idea; the MS carriers had plenty of internal space to devote to new reactors and other systems. Crew accommodations...well, that was probably less of a good idea. "Fireteams Zeta and Epsilon, this is Lightning. Mind if we and Firestorm tag along?"
"Be obliged for the help, Commander." The voice was Amada, from the big briefing before the first battle for Mars. "The frigates are more dangerous then they look. One of them chewed up Gamma team. They stole your Mark Forties." The Mark 40 was the design of turret used in the Virtue-class ships like Intrepid; a fully automated quad 40mm beam cannon turret with high-speed traverse and elevation, integrated ladar and thermal imaging system, connected to the same logic systems that guided the fire of the mobile dolls. The massive, ineffective barrages of AC 195 weren't what modern spacecraft did. Instead a pilot had to cope with accurate, rapid fire from multiple turrets.
"Eight Vayates," Amada said sharply. "Vectoring to intercept."
Noin grimaced under her helmet. I have sixteen Martian Super Leos, fourteen Serpents, and twelve Taurus. And you're hitting me with eight suits. Morons! You're throwing those pilots away! "Lightning, in fast. Catch them on the flyby." Hers not to reason why; hers merely to ensure that the other side did the dying. Acceleration pushed her back in her seat as she advanced her throttle to the stops.
The Vayate pilots had wanted to hang off, rather than let their more numerous opponents mob them. They were unpleasantly surprised to discover that the enemy wasn't going to try and dispose of them with a missile barrage at range. Noin swept past one Vayate in mobile suit mode, holing its reactor with a couple of shots of a burst. It froze and continued on a ballistic course. Another, trying to avoid Hilde's attack, swept in at her from the side and noticed, opening fire. She jinked under the shot and fixed her left beamsaber to her rifle just in time to take its right leg off with a swipe from her bayonet. The Vayate didn't turn to reengage. Hilde fired at it a couple of times, but it got away.
"Saunders, make that frigate flinch." Amada said. One of the frigates was charging the battle site with its close escort composed of another eight Vayates. One of Amada's Super Leos that was packing a pair of long-barreled weapons...doberguns? No. When it fired she realized they were railguns. That must be close to the maximum rated power the suit can support safely.
"Commander, two squadrons moving in. Super Leos. I think we pissed them off," one of Firestorm's pilots warned.
"Epsilon Lead, let's pull it back towards to Athena. See how brave they are." Noin wasn't giving orders, not technically; merely advice.
"Agreed. Zeta and Epsilon teams, retrograde towards Athena."
