Respect between Enemies – The BetanWerecat
Gundam Seed: "Descending Sword" and after. OCs with appearances by canon characters. The actions of Kira, Athrun, and the others have far reaching effects. Ah, interpersonal relationships! What joys they are. Rated T for language and off screen activity. (Reviews are welcomed but not required. This is written only for my own enjoyment. Flaming me will get you ignored.)
Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Seed.
They'd launched the mobile armors with the nukes! Adrian pointed them out to Captain Thoms and he tried to bring the Team in behind the defending mobile suits to reach them. But those three killers were far too alert.
Adrian and Yuri had flown together long enough to be able to make battle plans with hand signs and few words. It was the only thing that kept them alive in the first five minutes of the battle. They very quickly became chop and change artists. Nothing they tried worked a second time. Damn few things worked once.
With Adrian covering, Yuri did get off a couple shots at the mobile armors. He didn't hit them, he was forced to move too quickly to get a good line, but he did give them a bad fright. Around them, the Thoms Team was dying.
The three strange suits were ungodly fast. Worse, they were equipped with a new variant of phase shift armor that only activated when it was hit. So while he could and did pour fire in on any one of them, he wasn't doing any real damage. Moreover, the counterattacks were vicious and terrifyingly quick.
"Just lost Marksen and Oni." Yuri reported dispassionately. "We're down to less than half strength."
"We have to find a way past these bastards to those nukes!" Adrian cried as he evaded the spiked hammer head from the dark machine again; then had to roll wildly to avoid being torn apart on the line that tethered it.
"The Joule Team will be here to help any second!"
That might just actually be a help. Joule had one of the stolen EA prototypes, the Duel. It stood a lot better chances in this fight than any other suit out here so far. Unfortunately, the rest of his team wasn't any better equipped than the Thoms Team and was just as likely to be a free lunch for these bastards.
Then there were more ZAFT mobile suits around him again. Joule's people had arrived. And they ripped right past him, headed for the mobile armors and their deadly payloads.
"NO! Pay attention to the defenders!" Adrian shouted.
He was too late for several. The Joule Team learned the hard way what the Thoms Team had learned the same way. You couldn't turn your back on those killers. And you couldn't strike at the nukes unless you got the rabid dogs off you. Joule himself managed to pound the killers a bit but he was essentially alone. It wasn't a job anyone could do alone.
"They're launching!" Someone shrieked in despair.
No! Adrian forgot survival for himself. He snapped away from the swing of the scythe blade and cut in all thrusters. There was only the necessity of stopping the missiles now. He opened fire with everything he had that could reach them.
"'Rin! Behind you!"
He heard Yuri and ignored him. The closest of the mobile armors was just in range! He fired again only to pick up something coming at him with terrible speed. The flinch was instinct. He couldn't control it. But it meant when the scythe struck, it only removed the GuAIZ's legs. That took an entire set of thrusters away though and sent him spinning out of control. The nuke carriers were suddenly out of reach.
"Spread out! Spread out on the grid like we agreed, damn it! They're coming! Move!" Kayla yelled.
"They've launched!" She didn't know where that warning came from but it told her she was out of time.
"Screw it! Everyone just face out where ever you are and get set! They'll be on us in moments!"
She spun her GINN and checked her readouts. Dear God they were close! And there were so few defenders left still trying to stop them!
"Steady!" She shouted. "Take the time to aim! We can't afford to miss!"
Something was coming in from her relative left. It was moving even faster than the speeding missiles. It was bigger than any mobile suit but smaller than any combat ship. Then she caught it on her screen as it spread its wings to fire.
THUNDERBIRD! THAT WAS THE THUNDERBIRD!
A glory of white and blue erupted lightenings and missiles straight into the path of the oncoming nukes. Kayla threw her arm across her eyes. The universe lit with the fireworks of hell.
The lights died in seconds and she dropped her arm to stare. A mobile suit encased in some kind of booster screamed past her. Wait! That was Freedom!
Another dot moving just as swiftly caught her attention. This time she realized what it was immediately. It was a second mobile suit in another of those impossibly fast boosters! Then it also spread its 'wings'. She saw the white and red machine erupt with the same lightenings and missile barrage as the Freedom had put up.
She covered her eyes again on instinct. For a second time, hells fireworks lit everything in the area with a brutal and pitiless light. When the light went down, so did her arm. The red machine shot past her just like the white and blue one had before. This, this had to be Justice!
"That was not Thunderbird. They are only his mortal Children."
Snowy Owl's words suddenly rang in her head. Freedom and Justice, their pilots were the children of the THUNDERBIRD? What sort of mortal people could carry that kind of spirit power?
A searing bolt from a massive energy gun ripped across space in front of her, striking a late arriving nuke and detonating it. Kayla brought her own gun up. Where there was one, there could be more. And there were.
"Hey! Heads up everyone! Those guys didn't get them all!"
The fire from the cadet grid was ragged and the aim was 'interesting' but if the nuke got in range, they did knock it down. There were others picking off strays outside their zone of control. She paid enough attention to recognize the Buster and the Strike as well as the Duel out there hammering any nuke they could find. Within a few minutes, it was over. There were no more inbound nukes. There were damn few outbound mobile armors left too.
"Did we do it?"
"Yeah, I think we did."
"Oh, wow!"
"We won!"
Yeah, they'd won all right. For the moment at least. But the battle as a whole was far from over. Kayla studied her screens. The fight had degenerated into a massive mess of ships and mobile suits scattered all over the stretch between the wreckage of Boaz and Jachin Due. It was the biggest furball of a battle she'd ever seen, even including that messy, sky-hogging fight at Luna One!
Fortunately for the cadets, the action was all well away from them. They were close enough to the Plants themselves to have the place all to themselves. The nearest EA units were currently being driven even further from their position by the fury of the surviving defensive line troops formerly stationed directly ahead of them.
"Hey Kayla! Now what should we do?"
"We hold our positions." She told them. "The nukes seem to be gone but that can't be said for the rest of the Alliance. We're still the last line of defense if any suicidal ship or mobile suit breaks past the line to try to ram a Plant."
Someone snorted derisively. "What are the odds of that happening? Look at how they're getting their butts beat!"
"The odds don't matter." Kayla said grimly. "All it takes is one suit or ship to get free of that giant furball over there and there's a Plant gone! Forget any question of odds. We aren't about odds! We're about final insurance and final insurance alone!"
She got protests, lots of them. All she could do was repeat her orders and hope they'd be obeyed. It wasn't like she had any authority here after all. It took a while but eventually, she won over the senior cadets who the others did recognize as having command positions and the arguing stopped.
With the help of the four squad seniors, she got the cadets spread out into a genuinely effective grid. Now if someone did break free and try for a Plant, this group was probably going to be able to stop them. Even as they did their set-up though, the battle continued to be pushed further from the Plants. Kayla was privately relieved. The kids were all raring to go but she'd watched them shooting at the nukes and knew they weren't ready to take on a truly desperate and suicidal enemy. They wouldn't get through but they would take a lot of these kids down with them and she honestly didn't want that to happen.
Lu, senior of the Gold Squad drifted up beside her and popped a private communications line onto her GINN.
"You need something Lu?" She asked, wondering what had to be private.
"Just an honest answer to one question."
"I'm listening."
"Are you actually a ZAFT cadet?"
Kayla stared at the other's GINN. "What brings that up?"
"Oh, just that I've never heard any ZAFT pilot call a battle a furball before. But my brother has told me the EA pilots do."
The kid's weapon was still in his GINN's hip rack. So this wasn't going to lead to any instant attack. She hissed in irritation and admiration. This was the problem with dealing with a really, really smart kid. They saw things.
"Kayla Grayhawk, First Lieutenant, 421st Air Wing, 3d Moebius Squadron. Someone dropped this machine in a place where I was able to, uhm, lets say borrow it."
There was silence on the line. She monitored the battle while Lu digested what she'd told him. It was still a confused mess but ZAFT appeared to be getting a solid upper hand.
"Why would an Earther officer help defend the Plants?"
"Because genocide is wrong." She snapped. "We already have a big enough permanent stain on our honor on account of Junius Seven. This, this would have been unforgivable! It's legitimate to think it wrong to have ever created Coordinators, that's an opinion and everyone's entitled to their own. But it's not legitimate to try to enforce that opinion by destroying innocent lives just because they happen to be Coordinators. That's murder and murder is always wrong. It's just as wrong as your nutcase Chairman's idea of getting rid of all my people."
"So do you think we're a mistake?"
"Good question. I really don't know." Kayla told him frankly. "Having you around has created a lot of problems but most of the problems are coming from inside people's heads, not from things you folks have done. I don't blame you for anyone else being jealous of you. That's their fault, not yours. And I can't argue with you declaring war after Junius Seven either. Someone blew away 200,000 plus of my people with no warning and for no good reason and I'd be painting for war too. I'm just not sure if making you guys just because they could was smart on anyone's part. Brilliant, mind you, it was amazingly brilliant, but maybe not very smart. I kinda wish George Glenn had kept his mouth shut about what he was, you know?"
"What would that have changed?"
"It would have let the technology develop a few more generations until it was more reliable for one thing. And it would have let people get used to it in stages instead of demanding they swallow it all in one big, indigestible lump. I doubt it would have prevented something like Blue Cosmos from ever coming into being but it sure would never have become as strong as it has that way."
"I'll have to think about that. I'm not sure you're right about that." Lu replied quietly. "By the way though, that unit, isn't it the Tomahawk's squadron?"
"It was." She agreed shortly. "Captain Thoms tells me my people got cut down at Panama. 3d Moebius is gone. I may be the only one left."
"You weren't with them?"
"No, I got shot down at JOSH-A. My Zero wasn't ready in time when the rest of the Squadron went south. When I picked myself up out of the wreckage, one of your people decided he liked what he saw and grabbed me just before the damned Cyclops blew."
"Oh." Lu chewed on that for a bit, then suddenly demanded; "Hey! If you're the First Lieutenant for 3d Squadron, doesn't that mean you're Tomahawk?"
"My name is Grayhawk! I despise that stupid nickname all right?"
"But it is you?"
"Yes. It's me. Satisfied? Now don't call me that!"
"No, Ma'am!"
"Kayla, use Kayla. I'm not one of your officers after all."
"But you are an officer! I can't call an officer by her first name! It isn't right."
"You got my permission. Just do it."
"But, . . . . . "
Kayla had been monitoring the battle all through the conversation. Part of that had included flipping through the ZAFT combat channels just to get a feel for how things were going. One of those flips had turned up a familiar voice, an angry familiar voice shouting a couple of familiar names.
"Lu! Shut up! I need to listen here!" She interrupted the kid.
". . . . Holman! What the hell do you think you're doing?" Adrian! That was Adrian!
"You and your friends will just get killed in combat. No more problems for me. And I'll get the Team as senior survivor."
"You've lost your mind!" She didn't know that one either.
"Naw, Lubbek, my mind is working just fine. Now get outta the way or die with the bastard!"
"There is no Team to get Holman." That was Thoms! "The four of us are all that's left. And don't delude yourself with any dreams of command. Not after dropping that girl and her GINN in the Project's garden! The very best you'll get is junior on a newly assembled Team. People don't like or trust you."
"I'll get a Team! I deserve one! I'm better than this Natural-screwing son-of-a-bitch!"
"The hell you are." Adrian Ito's voice whispered. "You got your ass shot down over JOSH-A by that Natural. And she could do it again!"
"Lu! Take charge here!" Kayla snapped.
"Where are you going?"
"To return a favor."
"I can't let an Alliance officer just run off like this."
She turned to see GINN's hand slipping toward its beam gun. "Lu, I owe Ito my life.
"I can't!"
"Were you listening!" She shouted.
"Yes, but I can't!"
"Well, I'm the Natural he's been screwing and he's the father of my twins! Now get out of my way!"
The GINN's hand stopped. Then the private comm line dropped. Suddenly, Lu's machine was pulling back, clearing her way.
"I'll take care of the Squads, Kayla. You take care of your friend!" Lu shouted over the open channel.
"I owe you one, Lu!"
She hit her thrusters for all they were worth. Adrian was a good way away. She could only pray he lived long enough for her to get there. Locked onto the signal, she shot across the battlefield.
