Milliardo checked his monitors. The ship was closing rapidly, turning to bring its flank weaponry to bear on the Mobile Suits. The Gundams, and the pair of white Taurus suits hung in a group, below the White Fang Virgos.
He switched the communication system to the Gundams' frequency. "Gundams."
There was a delay, and then an answer. "This is Quatre," came the reply. "What is that monster?"
"A Battleship," he replied. "It is hostile, and attached to a larger fleet. The rest are scattered out beyond Mars, and are making for us as I speak."
"What do they want?" interjected the pilot of Deathscythe, Duo Maxwell. "And who they hell are they?"
They wish us to surrender and capitulate to their rule," he replied. "Or they will attack. We cannot fight this ship divided. I have no quarrel with you personally."
"No," quipped Duo, "you just want to destroy the Earth, that's all."
"Duo, stop it," cautioned Quatre, from Sandrock. "This is not the time for jokes." He sighed. "You are right, Zechs, or whatever you call yourself now. For now, we'll listen to you."
Milliardo shut off the comm. The ship was fully perpendicular to the rough line of Virgos. His finger hovered over the comm switch, ready to accept its last command to surrender before it attacked.
It didn't come. Instead, the ship opened up with its weaponry. A line of explosions traced a rippling line down its flank as hundreds of weapons discharged, launching projectiles as large as Epyon at incredible speed. The ZERO system was dormant, unable to read the newcomer's capabilities and possible actions, and the Virgos didn't even have time to move before a dozen were smashed to pieces by the fire.
Milliardo didn't waste time mastering the astonishment he felt at the sheer viciousness of the ship, and its lethality. Whipping Epyon into a dazzling series of evasive manoeuvres, he activated the ZERO system manually. Under his command, the Virgos blasted away from each other, spreading out to give the enemy weapons a larger target area, and charged at the Battleship.
The Gundam pilots reacted a split-second behind him, boosting towards the ship in a blinding display of piloting skill. Their Gundams twisted and dodged around the hail of massive projectiles, barely escaping being pulverised despite all their speed and strength.
Epyon's motors protested as he fired retros and boosters on and off in rapid blinks, dodging around the projectiles. The ZERO system could still react to shots, and trace their paths instantly, and that gave him enough of an edge to evade them.
The Virgos were not so skilled. Their automated systems, while possessing reaction times and tolerance levels far above human, could not track all of the ship's weapons, and the grey Dolls were struck down everywhere, exploding into their constituent parts under the impacts, blasted backwards with enough force to completely negate their thrusters' momentum.
Epyon's visual scanners were in range of the ship, and Milliardo could see, in the brief breaks between salvoes, that an immense panel was lifting upwards on the flank of the ship. A hangar! he realised, just as a storm of dark craft lanced from the hangar bay and out towards the Virgos.
With magnification at maximum, he could make out detail on the craft. Huge, well over fifty meters in length, they appeared to be fighters. A long, tapered fuselage was bisected by a pair of stubby, forward-swept, weapon-laden wings, and a flaring thruster was mounted on the back. Long, slender weapons protruded from the nose, giving them the appearance of hawks diving in for the kill.
"Gundams!" he called. "We have to stop those fighters from destroying the Virgos! We can only harm that ship with massed attacks, and our Gundams just don't have the firepower!"
"You got it," came Duo's reply. "I'll show them just who the God of Death really is."
Milliardo said nothing, and instead maximised power to the Vernier Generators that powered Epyon. As he felt the strain at the back of his mind, he slammed the boosters fully open. He was thrown back into his seat by the instant acceleration, the Gundam going from stationary to maximum speed in less than a second. Blood rushed to his head, and then the cockpit's compensation systems activated, returning him to stability.
The Gundams followed, weapons ready, and the two white Taurus' fell in behind them. The five Mobile Suits flashed between the Virgos, rolling and banking away from explosions and near misses. Epyon dropped low, under a pair of Virgos, and came up to the left of them as a huge projectile whipped past below. He rolled away frantically as the Virgos were struck dead-on by a shot and ripped to pieces instantly, reduced to shrapnel and flames, and found himself beside one of the Taurus'.
As the salvoe withered and the ship reloaded, Milliardo activated communications with the Taurus. "Who are you?" he asked.
"Trowa Barton," the pilot replied. "Pilot of the Gundam Heavyarms. And you are Colonel Zechs Marquise, or is it Milliardo Peacecraft again?"
Milliardo grunted. "I am, I have always been, Milliardo Peacecraft. Where is your Gundam?"
Before Trowa could answer, the ship opened up again, and Milliardo was forced into a punishing series of manoeuvres to avoid being shredded along with the Virgo around him. He lost track of the Taurus in the confusion, but then the enemy fighters were amongst them.
The huge craft lashed through the combat on tails of fire, spitting bolts of death from their prows that were barely stopped by the Virgos' shields. Seeing the shielding, the enemy pilots switched weapons, and then missiles streaked out from their wings to engulf Mobile Dolls in clouds of roiling flame and flying debris.
Milliardo gritted his teeth as one of the fighters hurtled overhead at tremendous speed, and Epyon's sabre whipped up, carving deep into the fighter and letting the enemy craft's speed rip it in two around the energy blade. He fired the boosters again, and Epyon flipped downwards, away from the exploding fighter and into another pair.
The Gundam's foot clipped the wing of one, sending it into a mad spin and wrenching Epyon head over heel. As the fighter he had clipped shook itself to pieces, Milliardo fought to stabilise Epyon, and sliced his sabre around in a flaring arc that took off the wing of the second fighter as it came around to attack him.
Righting himself, he immediately boosted backwards as one of the fighters' missiles streaked through the space where he had been, a black blur, and then flipped upwards as a fighter opened up on him with its nose lasers. He caught one of the shots on the blade of his sabre, almost accidentally, and the devastating beam of light simply parted around it and scored off Epyon's thigh armour, leaving a black, seared furrow in its wake.
And then the shots stopped as Noin's Taurus appeared from below him, her beam cannon flashing as its shots tore into the fighter, ripping a trail of ragged holes along the fuselage and into the engines. The fighter exploded violently, and Milliardo took advantage of the blast to launch Epyon to the right, away from the blast and towards Sandrock.
The Gundam was surrounded by circling fighters, like a seal attacked by sharks, and Milliardo could see that its frame was badly damaged from the fighters' laser weapons. And then he was among them, sabre flashing out as he tore into the first he saw, slicing through the engine block. He was past it before it exploded, and into the next.
He sabre stabbed deep into the cockpit of the fighter, and he felt himself tugged round under the momentum, his sabre ripping free in a spray of pink mist and shrapnel. A laser bolt slammed into Epyon's back, and Milliardo was thrown forwards in his harness, but Sandrock's heat blades whipped back and forth, carving deep into the fighter.
He saw, in a break in the fight, that the Virgos had entered firing range. Their beam cannons flashed madly as shot after shot streamed into the ship, but those that did not run afoul of the torrent of fire still pouring from the ship deflected harmlessly against a powerful shield, their powerful beams splashing out and into nothingness.
He saw the same repeated everywhere, the Mobile Dolls' shots doing nothing against the ship, while the Virgos were steadily destroyed by the rain of shots from the ship's batteries.
The ZERO system flared, scanning all the sensors and feeding them into Milliardo's brain, and he blasted Epyon directly upwards as a missile flashed below him, closely followed by the fighter that had launched it. He flipped backwards as he saw Duo slam Deathscythe's massive weapon into the fighter, ripping it clean in half, before spinning round to carve the wing from another.
Milliardo flung Epyon's free arm out, and its segmented, fifteen-meter long thermal lash sprang to life, uncoiling like a serpent rearing to strike. Shoving one hand forwards and one hand back on the control levers, he whirled Epyon around, the thermal lash whipping out to slice through the fuselage of a fighter, catching a pair of missiles under its wing. They detonated in a furious explosion, and Epyon rocked backwards under the blast.
"Gundams!" he shouted into the comm. "Get in close to the ship! The Virgos can't penetrate its shields!"
He didn't wait for a reply, and blasted off towards the ship as fast as Epyon's boosters could carry him. Under his unspoken command, conveyed through the ZERO system, the fifteen remaining Virgos broke off from the ship, and turned to engage the fighters.
Milliardo, the Gundams, and the two white Taurus' blasted between the Virgos, running the deadly storm of weapons fire from the ship once more. He rolled madly, projectiles thundering around him, drawing ever closer to the ship.
"Zechs!" shouted Noin, "cut your speed! That shield must react to velocity and energy!"
Milliardo cut the boosters out instantly, firing retros and bringing Epyon over into a flip to kill its momentum. He felt a resistance as the Gundam passed through the shield, and then he was within its sphere.
A shot punched into Epyon's right kneecap, clipping it with enough force to almost tear the limb free. Sparks and twisted metal flew, and he was thrown into the side of his cockpit as Epyon was thrown around into a wild spin. Another shot passed within inches of Epyon's head, and then he fired the boosters once more. Epyon righted itself under the thrust, and screamed towards the ship in the wake of the Gundams, who had overtaken him after he had been hit.
He saw the two Trowa and Noin open fire with their beam cannons, the close range fire ripping gouts of flame from the sides of the massive ship. Burning atmosphere flared and stormed in the void as the bolts of energy punched through the thick hull of the ship. Although beam weapons were easily stopped by energy shielding, they were unmatched in the sheer physical destruction they could cause to unshielded targets.
Then Deathscythe and Sandrock made contact, their weapons blazing as they cut deep into the ship. As long as they were, the Gundams' weapons could not penetrate the entire hull, and The Gundams were forced to ruturn again and again to the same spot, widening the tears until they finally breached the hull in an explosion of venting air.
Milliardo aimed Epyon towards the top of the ship, keeping close to its hull to avoid the shots still being fired from its countless weapons batteries. He fixed the huge, gothic shape of the bridge in his viewscreen, and let his thermal lash flail out behind him, ready.
And then running lights lit up on a massive protrusion ahead of him, which he had taken for an exhaust vent of some form. Its gaping maw flared and crackled with pent up energies, and it swung heavily around on an immense mount hidden below the superstructure of the ship's hull.
He didn't have time to dodge aside before a monstrous blast of white energy howled from the barrel of the weapon, larger and more powerful even than the Barge's shot. It enveloped Epyon's left arm completely, the transfer of energy smashing the Gundam aside like a rag doll. When it fell away from the beam of energy, Epyon's arm was completely vapourised, the thermal lash destroyed completely.
"Zechs!" screamed Noin, and, through his disorientation, he saw her Taurus heading towards him as fast as it could. She passed beneath the beam, and collided heavily with Epyon, her momentum carrying both Mobile Suits away from the ship. Deathscythe and Sandrock scattered, heading below the ship and around, while Trowa blasted towards the engine modules.
Distractedly, he watched the beam of devastating energy lance through the void and strike the Colony directly. The beam hit the center of the main habitation cylinder, and ripped it open instantly, punching through and out the other side. Open to the cold vacuum of space, the colony bled metal and materials from the gaping wounds. The beam slowly dissipated as it forged onwards, but its work was done.
The Colony was dead. There was no way that anyone could have survived that shot, and the subsequent exposure to hard vacuum. One shot had just killed over a million people. One single shot. Milliardo fought to come to terms with it. Was this power what the Libra was capable of? Did he want to unleash something of that magnitude?
The thought came absently to him that there was no choice now, that these newcomers, this 'Adeptus Mechanicus' had brought it to Earth regardless of him. The Libra might be necessary for the defence of the Colonies, and even the Earth itself, for these newcomers threatened both together.
And then the Gundam pilots reached him and Noin, and the five Mobile Suits blasted away from the ship. Miraculously, none of the ship's shots hit them as they fled towards the stricken Colony. As they neared the edge of the range of Epyon's damaged sensors, Milliardo saw a pair of smaller ships draw close to the behemoth that had killed all his forces, and nearly killed him, if ships over seven kilometres long could truly be called 'small'.
He leaned back in his seat limply. The coming war would be cruel and bloody, and would see soldiers' and commanders' limits tested to the full. And he didn't know if it could even be won.