Part 10
"Dammit!" shouted Duo through the radio, as the raging ball of energy where the Peacemillion had been subsided. There was no trace of the ship.
Howard… Sally… gone? Heero felt hollow. All gone… if we hadn't deployed when we did…
"How could they do that?" cried Quatre. "The Peacemillion isn't even armed!"
Mastering his emotions, Heero detached himself, focussing on the combat. That was how he had been trained. That was what he knew. Now was not the time for grief.
"Get moving," he said firmly, scanning his sensor board. He fired Wing Zero's thrusters, and the angelic Gundam blasted towards the enemy ship. The others followed, forming a rough formation around him.
The battle would give them something to take their minds from the Peacemillion's death. They needed it. They didn't have the ZERO system to lose themselves in. Not that it would work now. The system was inert. It knew nothing about the capabilities of the opponent, its armament, or its speed. The ZERO system's instant analysis was useless.
Looks like this battle will be fought on skill alone. Heero relished the thought, even as he knew that it would make it harder for them to claim victory. It had been too long since he fought on his own merits alone.
"Zechs said they had shields. What's our plan?" asked Wufei. His Altron was to Heero's right, its twin claws gleaming in the backwash from its thrusters.
"We smash through them," said Heero.
When the range-finder scrolled down to four hundred kilometres, he killed the thrusters and activated Zero's retros, bringing it to a dead stop. The abrupt deceleration threw him forwards in his seat, the straps biting into his shoulders through his vacuum suit. He wrenched the controls, bringing Zero's right arm, along with its double beam cannon, up straight, pointing directly at the enemy ship.
Spinning coils of energy whipped from the barrels of the gun as it built up to firing potential, the inside glowing with white-hot light. Heero pulled the trigger.
A beam of energy exploded from the twin barrels, thicker than Zero was tall, spearing directly for the enemy ship. Sparking whips trailed in its wake, and it bathed the five Gundams in white light. It crossed the distance between Zero and its target instantly, hurtling forwards with enough energy to completely obliterate any Mobile Suit, aimed for the center of the armoured, plow-like prow of the ship.
It hit the behemoth's void shields and flared harmlessly off, a slight darkening of their surface the only indication of the weapon's impact.
Heero did not waste time wondering at the strength of the enemy's shields. "Go," he said into the radio. The others blasted ahead, streaking towards the enemy ship on wings of blue flame.
Heero watched them go, waiting for the beam cannon to recharge. They had got within two hundred kilometres before the blinking red lights on his display turned green at last. He sighted on the spot he had hit last time, and pulled the trigger once more.
The beam lanced between the four other Gundams, and hit the ship's shields again. It made the same impression as before. As the energy splashed off the shields, the huge ship retaliated.
Across its spine, pinpricks of light flashed to life. Though the appeared tiny from Heero's position, he knew that, up close, they were huge maelstroms of energy, and had to be tens of meters across. They grew, and merged, pairs becoming trios, becoming quartets, until finally, they fired.
"Move!" shouted Heero.
Eight separate beams of energy, each one more than twice as thick as Zero's beam cannon shot, blasted from the ship towards the Gundams. Heero slammed the thrusters fully open, the acceleration pushing him back in his seat as he fought to reach the others, but there was no time.
The beams, travelling at the speed of light, hit as soon as they were fired. Three of the Gundams managed to dodge their fury, moving before the ship fired and dodging the beams by scant meters. Two were not fast enough.
Trowa's Heavyarms was almost clear, when a beam lanced below him, hitting Heavyarms' left leg and completely vapourising the limb. The Gundam tumbled away from the beam as the power cells in its upper thigh detonated, pushing the Gundam into a spin.
Sandrock, Quatre's black Gundam, was hit dead-on by one of the beams. The column of thundering energy engulfed the Gundam completely, powering onwards a hundred meters to Heero's left. When it passed, there was no trace of Sandrock.
Heero finally reached the others, just as Trowa mastered Heavyarms' spin, and flew straight past them. "Get moving. Quatre may be dead, but you can mourn him after we kill this ship," he said, struggling to follow his own orders.
Quatre had been the last person any of the Gundam Pilots had expected to die. They had all assumed that it would be someone like Heero, or Wufei, to die first. Not Quatre. He was the kindest of the five, the most devoted to peace.
And now he was gone. Annihilated.
Heero gritted his teeth. He would make that ship pay. If he had to cut his way through decks themselves, he would make it pay. In killing Quatre, the captain had just signed his death warrant.
Wing Zero reached the ship in less than ten seconds, and Heero fired the retros on full, killing its speed enough to let it pass through the shields. The other Gundams followed suit, forming up around Zero in the shelter of the ship's prow. Duo, in Deathscythe, did not stop, but flew upwards, towards the massive golden eagle that topped the prow, a howl of anger coming through the radio.
His scythe sliced through its neck, and the hundred meter chunk of gold tumbled away from the rest of the prow, cut cleanly by the blade of the beam scythe. Deathscythe hung there, arm still extended from his attack. Heero could hear heavy breathing through the radio.
"Duo," said Wufei, "Quatre is gone. We have to put that out of our minds if we are going to succeed here."
"If you're going to do anything, then kill this ship and avenge him," said Trowa.
Duo was silent for a moment, and then his anguished voice came over the radio. "You're… you're right. The only thing that matters right now is killing this damned ship."
"Damage report!" snapped Vaelor.
Wochal consulted his screens. "Cosmetic only, Captain."
"Cosmetic?"
"Yes sir. They decapitated the Aquila on the prow."
Vaelor's teeth ground together, and he felt his anger rise at this new evidence of their heresy. "Get every weapon we have targeted on them. I want them wiped from existence."
Wochal glanced down. "There's a problem, sir."
"What?" barked Vaelor, glaring balefully at the lieutenant.
"Our weapons can't fire at them, sir. They're too close in to us, our prow obscures them."
"Lieutenant?" Vaelor said, his voice deadly-cold.
"Y-yes, sir?"
"How fast is this ship capable of travelling?"
"Five-eighty thousand k's per Imperial minute, sir, at max thrust."
"And how fast do you suppose craft that small are capable of travelling?"
"I really don't-" Wochal broke off as he realised what the Captain meant. "Right, sir. Banking engine power now. Thrust at twenty seconds."
"Better, Lieutenant, but not good enough. After this engagement, report to the excruciators for penitentiary scourging." He waited for Wochal's reluctant nod and salute, and then raised his voice to shout over the crew pit. "Helm, turn to port ten seconds after manoeuvre begins. All port side weapon batteries, target on the enemies as soon as they come into view."
"Energy spike!" shouted Wufei. "From their engines!"
"Move!" ordered Heero, and blasted Wing Zero backwards, to the left side of the ship. Trowa and Wufei went right, while Duo went over the top of the ship. Almost as soon as the Gundams were clear, the ship's engines lit up like supernovas, and it jumped forwards at an incredible speed. It passed Heero within a second, and the snap-shot he let off from the beam cannon was far too late – hitting the ship's rear shields without doing damage.
One of the ship's tall spires caught Deathscythe a glancing blow, and sent the black Gundam tumbling limply away, its right arm completely shorn away by the impact, and a ragged gash ripped in its waist. Its beam scythe fell away from the Gundam, but Duo managed to snatch it with Deathscythe's remaining arm. Under the pilot's careful command, Deathscythe's thrusters and manoeuvring jets brought it under control.
The others began to move towards Duo, to offer what help they could. "Scatter and evade!" snapped Heero, knowing full-well what the ship's next move would be as soon as he saw it begin to bank, bringing its broadsides to bear against the Gundams.
As the ship began to gradually reduce its speed, it opened fire. Projectiles fired in blasts of flame, lasers flashed from powerful emplacements, and plasma batteries shot the destructive power of a star towards the four Gundams.
His order had only just been in time. The other three barely avoided the initial barrage of shots, jets flaring as they executed short, sharp direction changes to throw off the enemy's targeting. Wing Zero's inertial compensators struggled to cope with the g-forces generated by Heero's unpredictable movements, and he was thrown around his chair with every manoeuvre.
"Heero!" called Trowa. "Zero's beam cannon is the only thing powerful enough to even stand a chance of hurting that monster! We'll distract it, you get inside its shields!"
Heero didn't reply, instead maximising power to the thrusters and heading to the right of the ship. The other three Gundams began firing, doing no harm, but commanding the warship's attention. Heero just hoped that he could stop it before it killed them.
The ship's outline revolved beneath him as he moved, coming up above it and out of its line of fire, he hoped. He kept his movements erratic, throwing off the few batteries that targeted him, and soon he was above their sights and in the clear.
The others were not, though. The ship was subjecting them to a punishing barrage of fire, shots pounding out relentlessly, one after another after another. The Gundams pushed themselves to the limits of their abilities just to avoid behind obliterated in the fusilade, dodging in every direction, then remaining still when the ship tried to compensate for their movement, before breaking off in a new direction, weapons still blazing uselessly.
Heero checked over his systems one last time. Everything was optimal. Weapons charged, thrusters warmed up, heat sinks engaged – he was ready. His hand closed around the thruster lever, and his eyes shut slowly. Let this work, he thought to himself, and slammed the thrusters fully open.
Wing Zero rocketed forwards instantly, the sheer acceleration threatening to crush him within his chair. He could feel the ZERO system sink its claws into his mind as he pushed the Gundam to its furthest limits, squeezing every bit of speed from it that he could.
If the ship noticed him before he was close enough… He refused to allow the possibility any merit in his mind. He would get there in time. Too many lives depended on it for him to fail. His eyes snapped open again, and the rapidly growing ship filled his vision, ten kilometers of blood-red horror, bristling with weaponry and protected by meters of solid armour.
He managed to get within ten kilometers before it detected him as a sufficient threat. The ship began to bring its bow upwards, bringing its prow and dorsal weapons to bear on him, while keeping its broadsides hurling death at the others.
Reaching up, Heero shut down all the unnecessary systems, one by one. Automatic targeting. Energy management. Stabilisation. Movement actuators for the lower half of the Gundam. And finally, the ZERO system itself. As he felt it slip from his mind, he shunted all the excess power into thrusters and weapons, charging the beam cannon fully, and smashing Zero forwards on a massive blast of blue-white flame.
He covered the ten kilometers before the ship managed to target him, and dropped down close to its hull as weapon emplacements began to pump their deadly payload out at him, killing his speed momentarily to bypass the shields, and then slamming the thrusters back open again. Working manually, he jumped Zero around as best he could, flicking individual jets on and off, trying to make his course as difficult to track as he could. Columns of blinding light lanced on every side of him, thundering projectiles passing within meters, but somehow, miraculously, his erratic flying carried him onwards unharmed.
Until a spear of crackling plasma punched upwards from below and atomised Zero's head. The Gundam flipped backwards on the impact, the unexpected movement the only thing that saved it from being destroyed by three intersecting laser beams. As the lasers flared in front of him, Heero struggled to gain control over his errant Gundam.
All his visual sensors were dead, wiped out by that shot. All his detail calibrators and targeting routines has been based in the head. He was effectively blind. No! thinking frantically, he flicked a handful of switches. Zero's heat and energy sensors were located in its core. If he could reroute them to feed directly into his monitors, instead of through the head, then-
The screens flickered to life, bathing him in a harsh red light as they painted a digital portrait of the enemy ship from its energy signatures. Its weapon discharges lit up the screens with dazzling, flickering flares of white light, and he brought Zero down into a roll, thankful that he still had all his thrusters left undamaged. The stricken Gundam roared down in close to the ship, scant meters away from its surface, close enough to avoid most of the weapon fire, apart from point-blank shots from directly beneath him.
He brought up a detailed scan of the ship, looking for anywhere that might be a power generator, or any other vital system. There were two hot-spots, one deep within the ship, back near the engines, and one on the top surface, in the tall, skyscraper-sized tower that he presumed was the bridge. His lips twisted into a tight smile. One two.
"Status of that enemy craft?" demanded Vaelor.
"Damaged, but not destroyed, Captain," said Wochal. "It is currently in too close to our hull for our guns to be brought to bear."
"And the others?"
"Still dancing out to port, sir. They're just too nimble for us to target them – our shots are mostly guesswork and estimations. One or two glances, but nothing significant. It's like they can react as soon as we fire, sir."
Vaelor slammed his fist down into the railing surrounding the command pulpit. Wochal jumped nervously, and a menial scurried from the bridge, screeching. "Dammit, I don't care if they react before we shoot, just kill them! Bring everything we've got to bear on them, divert power from the engines if you have to!"
"Captain Romana!" shouted one of his officers, indistinguishable in the chaotic mass of the crew pit. "Hull damage, port-side, directly above the plasma generators!"
Vaelor swore. Loudly. "What from?" he snapped.
"The other craft, Captain. It's firing on us from within our void shields – there! Another impact, same spot. Two more passes and he'll be into the plasma generators themselves."
How powerful a weapon did that craft possess? To melt through meters upon meters of solid bulkheads and armour would require phenomenal amounts of energy, and nothing he had seen from these craft gave any indication of being that powerful… No, wait. There was that weapon that they had fired before. It had done nothing to the void shields, but maybe, just maybe, it was merely drastically weakened by shields. That would explain its devastating performance against unshielded hull armour.
"He's into the generators, Captain! We're switching to emergency power."
Vaelor nodded. "Shut down starboard weapon systems and divert their energy into the engines. Navigation, pull up projected schematics of the planet. Where's the nearest population center?"
The reply was a moment in coming. "Almost directly below us, sir. The northern half of a large continent. One minute… Data from captured prisoners from the colony stations name it as America. Specifically Northern America."
"Good." Vaelor smiled a grim, predatory smile. "If our plasma generators are destroyed then we have no power to fight on. So we shall deal the greatest blow of this war, before this enemy takes the ability away from us. Set course for that location, maximum burn. When we reach upper atmosphere, charge the Warp Drives and activate. If we are to be defeated, then by the God-Emperor we'll take as many of them as possible with us!"
"Sir!" came one voice, as the others turned to obey his command. He acknowledged it with a nod, just as a massive shuddering blast rocked the ship. Vaelor clung to the railing to stay upright, and he could see the ship slew to port from the viewscreens.
"Plasma generators destroyed sir! Weapons deactivated. All emergency power diverted to engine thrust and Warp Drive charge. The enemy craft is coming up on us."
Vaelor stared at the schematics displayed on the top viewscreen. Sure enough, the tiny blip representing that enemy craft was moving steadily up the Leviathan, away from the gaping crater that had once housed their plasma generators.
"Ignore it," he said. "Correct course for that blast."
And then a shape made of blue flame sped towards the viewscreens, magnified large by the ship's Machine Spirit. A vaguely humanoid shape rode at the front of that flame, a smoking ruin where its head should have been and a large, grey weapon raised resolutely towards the ship.
The enemy craft! The thought flashed through Vaelor's mind, and then the it fired.
The blazing shaft of energy pounded into the bridge of the ship, passing through armour as if it wasn't there and coring the heart of the command tower. The blinding light utterly destroyed all it touched, chewing deep into the tower until the bridge was completely gone, a smoking ruin in its place.
Heero looked at the red-white flare on his energy sensors that showed the damage, and smiled. With no one to guide or control it, that ship would carry on with its course forever. Engines flaring and dying, it headed out over the horizon if the Earth, into deep space. Heero neither knew not cared if its crew was recovered.
They had killed Quatre.
He checked his available systems, booting up those he had shut down, and checking what remained. All but the sensors were still functional, and he isolated the head systems to prevent power loss through the damaged circuitry. Comms were down, too.
Maybe his vacuum suit comm could reach? He tried it. Static filled the cockpit, and he almost gave up and turned it off, when a voice, faint and hazy, emerged.
"Heero? Heero, are you there?"
"I'm here, Duo. Let's go. We can't stay here."
This time it was Trowa's voice. "But where are we going to go? They destroyed the Peacemillion."
"To Earth."
Part 11