Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam SEED or any of its characters. Squadron Commander Javier Sabato, Commander Alexander Stanton and his team, Astray pilots Sara Nakamura, Kenji Tiran and Maria Velasquez, medical officer Serena Ridley, Ensign Roger Doolittle, Dr. Elizabeth Sanford and the CS-M25 Eviscerators are my creations.

Chapter 4: Into the Fray

September 12, CE 72

It has been said that war consists of interminable stretches of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror.

The crew of the Archangel wouldn't have minded some terror at this point.

Athrun was currently sitting in the mess hall, sharing a table with Cagalli and Flay, whose shift on the bridge had just come to an end. While no one said it, he could tell that Kira was on all their minds. Cagalli was fidgeting slightly in her seat, tapping her foot on the floor, and Athrun could sense her frustration at being unable to do anything useful. She was a soldier, an excellent one at that, and her skill in combat was what she could use to help her brother. However, since there was no enemy to fight at the moment, the Lioness was consigned to pacing the halls, practicing in the simulator or attempting to relax in her quarters or here. Athrun normally found her intense spirit and fiery personality exciting or even comical, but he was in the same situation, and he was beginning to get frustrated as well. While they weren't related by blood, Kira and he were practically brothers, and while Athrun knew that agonizing over Kira's situation wouldn't get him anywhere, it was hard not to.

For her part, Flay was lost in thought, playing with an item of jewelry. While Athrun hadn't paid much attention to it before, he realized that she had been wearing the silver necklace back at Orb, and he just hadn't noticed it.

The three were shaken from their reverie by the sound of someone clearing his throat behind them. Athrun turned around to find Ensign Doolittle watching them, a tray of food in his hands. He had changed out of his flight suit and was now dressed in a standard white and grey Earth Forces uniform.

"Can I join you?" he asked. Athrun shrugged. Talking with their guest would at least help relieve some of the boredom.

He'd better just hope he doesn't set Cagalli off.

Doolittle found an open spot and sat down. He looked over at Cagalli.

"I want to apologize for what I said earlier," he said. Cagalli remained silent. "It took me until about ten minutes ago to realize why the name 'Athha' was familiar." He paused for a moment. "Your father gave his life for his country and his ideals; you can't be much more loyal than that." Cagalli nodded slightly.

"Thanks," she said. Doolittle waited for a moment before saying anything else.

"I don't know if this helps," he said, "but I wasn't actually involved in that battle." Cagalli didn't say anything, but Athrun could tell that a little of the tension constricting his girlfriend had been released. The Coordinator was grateful for it too. No one wanted the awkwardness of working with someone they might have fought personally.

Things might turn out alright here after all.

"So, Princess Athha," Ensign Doolittle began, and Athrun sighed.

So much for that dream, he thought as he watched Cagalli roll her eyes at the formal title.

"Ensign," Athrun moved to correct the Earth Forces officer, but Cagalli held up a hand, indicating to Athrun that she wanted to speak for herself here.

"I don't like being treated differently from everyone else just because of my family, Ensign Doolittle," she said. "You can call me 'Commodore' but please don't call me 'Princess.'" Doolittle shrugged.

"Okay, but you all don't have to keep calling me 'Ensign Doolittle,'" he said with an amused smile. "Yeah, okay, Command would probably like me to stay formal, but almost everyone back on the Churchill just calls me Roger." A moment passed in silence, and then Cagalli spoke up again.

"So, Roger, how come you can't fly the Sword Calamity?" Athrun had to admit that the same question had crossed his mind. Roger's brow furrowed.

"I thought I already explained that the OS isn't for use by Naturals."

"You did explain that," Athrun said. "However, I've never seen a Natural with yellow eyes." The observation seemed to make Roger a bit uncomfortable.

"The eye color is a medical side effect," he said, prompting the inevitable question.

"What is the side effect from?" Surprisingly, the question came from neither Athrun nor Cagalli, but from Flay. At the redhead's inquiry, Roger looked away for a moment, eyes fixed on nothing in particular as he rummaged about in his head for the right words. Finally, he seemed to settle on something, and his gaze returned to his small audience.

"You know how I mentioned special Alliance pilots when I was talking about the 133?" The Earth Forces soldier was speaking in a relatively low voice, and had leaned forward a bit, apparently wanting to keep the conversation between the four at the table. "Well, the technical term for a pilot like that is an 'Extended.' The Extended Program is a project with the goal of giving Naturals the ability to compete with Coordinators on equal footing, at least in terms of combat capability." Roger seemed ready to continue, but Athrun could see where he was going, and was puzzled by an aspect of it.

"This seems like something the Alliance brass would keep quiet," he said, "so how did you get in? No offense, but you don't have a really high rank." Roger took a sip of his drink before responding.

"It is," he said. "In fact, I'd prefer it if it never left this table. The program's been partially declassified, but I can't be naming names or giving out exact locations or anything." All present nodded in understanding. "Well, I found out about it while a couple of my shipmates and I were on shore leave," he said. "We'd had a few drinks." He paused, and then performed another of those bizarre facial shrugs. "Okay, so we were totally hammered, but that's beside the point.

"As far as Atlantic Federation law is concerned, aren't you underage?" Cagalli asked.

"That's also beside the point," Roger replied, jabbing a finger at her for emphasis. "The point is that while I couldn't tell you how we came to this topic of conversation in the first place, at some point during the evening one of our superior officers let something slip about the program. I thought leveling the playing field in the war seemed like a good idea, so I approached my superiors, sober by that point, and asked to join." Roger gave a half smile at the memory.

"Judging by their expressions, not many people ask to enter the program. I later found out it's mostly for younger kids; children who show exceptional physical abilities at an early age are offered a spot in the course, sort of a 'gifted program' for the military. Anyway, I'm no child prodigy, but I passed the physical and psychological tests and was given the all clear. The training I received consisted of extensive time in a simulator, as well as a wildly unpleasant amount of physical exercise and hand to hand combat training." The idea of children being inducted into the military was unsettling for Athrun. It was certainly true that ZAFT pilots were very young, as he himself had joined at only fifteen, but Coordinators' innate abilities allowed them to handle the rigors of military training better than Naturals of the same age.

"Finally," he said, "there were the chemical treatments." The soldier seemed to be quite uncomfortable with whatever he was about to say. After a while, however, he continued. "You've got to understand that all this training still didn't up our reflexes to the level of a Coordinator, so we were given neurological stimulants."

Neurological Stimulants…

"The three pilots we fought," Cagalli said, apparently making the connection at the same time Athrun did. While he hadn't heard all of the details, some information had been released during the Copernicus Trials, information about the existence of Alliance pilots who were given performance-enhancing drugs in order to pilot G-weapons on a level exceeding even normal Coordinators. It seemed that three of those pilots had led the Alliance's invasion of Orb, pursuing Athrun and Cagalli to Mendel and even appearing at Jachin Due.

"I still don't understand," Athrun said, shaking his head. "I just can't believe you can willingly work with people like that if you don't think like they do."

"Not everyone in the program is like that," Roger clarified, a little irritation coloring his voice. "Hell, I used to practice hand to hand techniques with this girl named Lous- well, this girl: sweetest person you'll ever meet, provided you're not facing her on the battlefield that is. Besides, the fact of the matter was that if we didn't push ZAFT back into space, GINNs, DINNs and God knows what else were going to come crashing down on my home sooner or later. My parents still live in the Atlantic Federation, and I had to put up with punks like some of the other Extended candidates if I wanted to be able to do anything to help my family." He paused for a moment before resuming the conversation. "Anyway, to get back to the original topic of this whole discussion, the neurostims did enhance our reflexes, but in high enough doses, they had some side effects, one being permanently altering the pigments in the iris, which resulted in my rather distinguished look." He smiled at the last bit. Flay raised her eyebrows.

"You went through all that to explain your eye color?" she asked. Doolittle drew back, looking irritated.

"Well I didn't want to just leave it at 'I was on drugs,'" he said. Cagalli shrugged in response.

"I'd have bought it," she deadpanned. Athrun chuckled, and Roger opened his mouth to reply, but apparently decided to just leave it at that and start eating.

"Captain, we have a ship on the radar," Jackie Tonomura called up from the CIC.

"Profile matches a Nazca-class," Chandra added. Murrue frowned. She turned to face one of the trainees, currently occupying Flay's position at the communications panel.

"Hail them," she said. "Our enemies have been using some ZAFT technology, but a destroyer isn't something they could obtain easily. We don't want to fire on the wrong people." There was the usual delay while one ship attempted to contact the other, but as that delay became longer and longer, and as the destroyer continued to approach, Murrue became correspondingly less and less comfortable. Her suspicions were finally confirmed when Commander Herikawa spoke up from the CIC.

"Captain, we're seeing radar interference here," he said. "It looks like they're activating their N-Jammers." While it didn't seem possible, the enemy had somehow gotten their hands on a ZAFT warship, and they were moving toward the shuttle the Archangel had been pursuing. The time to act had arrived.

"Commander Herikawa," the captain ordered, rising from her chair. "Prepare the ship for combat. All hands, Level One battle stations!"

"All hands, Level One battle stations!" The captain's voice coming over the intercom put an end to Ensign Sara Nakamura's rest. She hadn't been sleeping, but lying on her bed had been a nice reprieve from Kenji's advances. Her fellow pilot was well aware of the fact that Sara had a boyfriend back home, and she knew Kenji just did it to get a response out of her. Still, it could get a little annoying. Now, however, it looked as though she had something else to do.

Less than seven minutes later, Sara was in the hangar, suited up and activating her M1. She opened a channel to the other pilots.

"Do we know how many mobile suits there are?" she asked. Commodore Athha's face came up on Sara's CIS.

"Not yet, but according to the bridge, the other ship is just deploying its linear catapult now, so we'll know soon enough." Sara nodded respectfully.

"Thank you, Cagalli-sama." The princess smiled and blushed at having the respectful term applied to her.

"That's really not necessary," she said, and Sara smiled back.

"I can't help it; it's tradition." Like many of Orb's inhabitants, Sara could trace her family line to the Republic of East Asia, and adding the appropriate suffixes to people's names was a habit she had been raised with. She was also amused by the way her superior officer became embarrassed whenever someone treated her with the respect due to a member of a noble family.

"How come I never get cool Japanese words applied to me?" Kenji's face popped up on the CIS.

"I apply the word 'baka' to you all the time," Sara replied, and Kenji shook his head.

"Aw, come on, Nakamura! That was unprovoked!" he protested. Sara was about to reply, but word suddenly came down from the bridge.

"Six mobile suits have launched from the enemy ship. Thermal profiles match the ZGMF-600 GuAIZ."

"Are we sure this isn't ZAFT?" Another face appeared on the CIS, and Sara recognized it as that of the Alliance pilot who had recently joined them. "I can understand how they could get the shuttle, but the destroyer and mobile suits…"

"Now is not the time, Ensign Doolittle," Cagalli replied. The pilot nodded, and the small crowd of faces disappeared from Sara's CIS.

"MBF-02 connected to catapult," the voice over the intercom reported. "APU disconnected; Aile Striker, stand by. Systems, all green. Course clear; you are cleared for launch."

"Cagalli Yula Athha, Strike Rouge, launching!" While the airlock had been opened and the vacuum allowed no sound, Sara's Astray conducted the vibrations as the electromagnetic catapult hurled Commodore Athha's mobile suit into space.

"MBF-M1 connected to catapult. APU disconnected; systems, all green. Course clear; you are cleared for launch."

"Athrun Zala, Astray, launching!"

"GAT-01D1 connected to catapult. APU disconnected; systems, all green. Course clear; you are cleared for launch."

"Roger Doolittle, Duel Dagger, taking off!" As the mechanized conveyer system maneuvered Sara's machine onto the catapult, she tightened her grip on the controls. For Kenji, Maria and her, this would be their first real battle together, and she whispered a quick prayer that they would all come back.

Commander Stanton counted six mobile suits deployed from the Archangel. Four of them were Orb's standard orange and white machines: "Astray" if he recalled correctly. Another was some sort of armor-plated suit that looked like a crude version of the Duel seized by the Le Creuset team a year and a half ago. It held the same beam rifle and shield as the Heliopolis machine, but the shoulder cannon seemed different, and the mobile suit's somewhat primitive look was characteristic of the Alliance's Dagger series.

The last machine, however, was the most imposing. Aside from its pink coloration, the MS was an exact replica of the legendary GAT-X105 Strike. Alex had seen both the original and the replica at Jachin, and he didn't like the idea of facing either one.

"Alright," he said, addressing the five pilots temporarily under his command. "Divide and conquer: try to split them up and take them one on one; the Robespierre will provide cover fire. I want two units on the G-weapon. If our intelligence is correct, that's Athha's personal machine, so let's not take any chances. Remember, you engage only until the shuttle has been retrieved. The second that happens, you get back to the ship. Is that understood?" A quick series of affirmatives greeted him. Stanton would have preferred to have his own team for this mission, but Lia was on the shuttle, Cooper had been killed on Earth and the Amigos were back at the station, so he was forced to work with a set of pilots whose names he didn't even know, bad conditions for any commanding officer.

Brushing his thoughts aside, the commander swung his mobile suit to the left as a railgun shot from the Robespierre streaked past him, crashing against the shield of one of the M1s. The impact shattered the defensive item and pushed the machine backward. Firing all thrusters, Stanton accelerated toward the Astray group. Two of the other GuAIZs rushed the Orb suits, and the defenders formed a solid line, effective against the suits attacking from the front.

Alexander Stanton had not earned the rank of Commander by catering to his enemies' whims, however, and he broke away from the other two attackers, flying below the M1s in order to flank them. One of them noticed him and shifted its focus, raising its shield and sending several beam shots his way. Stanton was prepared; he took the electron fire on his shield and snapped his beam rifle up, targeting his enemy's head instead of the protected cockpit. An emerald beam streaked out from his rifle and caught the Orb pilot off guard, hitting the M1 in the face and shattering its head. The Astray twisted about like a wounded animal, and Stanton took the opening, firing at the now-exposed left elbow and blowing the arm off. The anti-beam shield spun away with the severed limb, leaving the mobile suit's cockpit exposed. Alex bore a surprised smile.

I thought these Orb pilots were supposed to be better than everyone else.

He trained his rifle for the kill shot, but one of his cockpit alarms warned him of an approaching enemy. Turning about, Alex swerved to the side just fast enough to avoid a downward slash from the beam saber of another of the M1s. Judging by the fact that it was missing its shield, it was probably the same machine that had taken the railgun slug earlier.

Throwing his suit into full reverse, Alex fired repeatedly at the Astray, but the pilot must have either seen what happened to the other Orb suit or anticipated the tactic, because he swerved back and forth, making it infuriatingly difficult to lock onto him.

Several hundred meters away, Roger's Duel Dagger traded beam shots with an attacking GuAIZ. Unable to get past his shield, the ZAFT-built mobile suit opened fire with its head-mounted CIWS guns, knowing that the Alliance machine couldn't block both the electron beams and the projectiles at the same time. Roger gave a half-smile.

"Yeah, like no one's ever tried that one on me before." He kept his shield in position to block the beam shots, ignoring the machine gun fire entirely. The 76mm bullets were deadly against most targets, but the Dagger was well-protected. The rounds slammed into the Dagger's Fortrestra armor, penetrating a short distance into the material and rattling the mobile suit, but doing no meaningful damage. "Here's something you can't do," Roger said, locking on and firing a shot from his shoulder cannon. The explosive round obliterated the GuAIZ's left wing-mounted thruster, causing the machine to spin out of control for a second. Roger took the opportunity to fire a beam shot through the enemy mobile suit's battery, blowing it apart. Turning away from the dissipating explosion, he drew a bead on one of the two suits attacking Commodore Athha. Just before he fired, however, his cockpit alarms went off.

What the—. By the time Roger located the enemy suit behind him, its rifle barrel was already emitting the unmistakable green glow of a beam shot.

The electron beam erupted from the rifle. At the last moment, however, an Astray threw itself in between the blast and its target, and the shot scattered off the M1's shield. The Orb mobile suit fired repeatedly, and the GuAIZ backed off for the moment. Roger blew out the breath he'd been holding, and opened a communication channel to his rescuer.

"Thanks for the save there, um…"

"Nakamura," the Astray pilot responded. "Sara Nakamura, and think nothing of it." Roger smiled and shook his head.

"No can do, Nakamura. I owe you one," he said, before breaking off the conversation to return to the fight.

Cagalli backed up momentarily, twisting the Strike Rouge around in order to avoid some of the beam fire coming her way. Normally, she might have been able to outmaneuver one of the attackers and open fire, but the fact that they'd decided to flank her made life a lot more difficult. As it was, Cagalli could defend herself, but finding an opportunity to go on the offensive was another matter entirely.

Sparing a moment to survey the rest of the battle, she saw the two warships trading fire, the enemy's railguns and the Archangel's linear cannons exchanging hypervelocity projectiles while the vessels' beam cannons sent deadly particle streams back and forth. Thus far, neither vessel had managed to score a decisive blow.

Elsewhere, the Duel Dagger and one of the Astrays were keeping the enemy busy, making little headway but keeping the two GuAIZs engaging them on the defensive. A few hundred meters from there, another Astray was locked in a vicious duel with a GuAIZ with some sort of red-white decal on its left shoulder. Cagalli recognized the IFF tag on the M1 as Athrun's.

A bright flash brought her out of her thoughts, and Cagalli realized that her opponents had been pushing her further and further upwards, moving her into the crossfire between the warships. A Gottfried blast had just missed her by about a meter: far too close for comfort. It did, however, give the princess an idea. She activated her com link.

"Archangel, can you track the Rouge with the Igelstellungs?"

"Yes," the voice giving the response sounded like Commander Herikawa.

"Good," Cagalli said. "When I give the signal, put a barrage into the area around me; I want the bullets as close as you can get them." The order sounded a bit confusing, no doubt, and there was a brief silence on the other side, but she finally received the affirmative she was looking for.

Without warning, she took her mobile suit down toward the GuAIZ duo. They opened fire, and Cagalli drew back, retreating along the Starboard side of the Archangel. Not understanding what was going on, the enemy suits followed. They were probably aware that they were straying into the firing range of the warship's CIWS, but the guns weren't tracking them specifically, and the Rouge was in the danger zone too, so the odds of a ship firing a barrage were rather low.

At least normally, Cagalli thought as her opponents closed in. When they began to raise their beam rifles, she knew the time had come.

"Now!" The 75 millimeter Vulcan guns opened up, engulfing the three mobile suits in a storm of streaking tracer fire. Nearly a hundred rounds hit the Rouge, but what the enemy hadn't been counting on was the fact that the move only looked suicidal. The Strike Rouge was equipped with Phase Shift armor, and the projectiles bounced off harmlessly. The GuAIZs, on the other hand, were not so lucky. One of them was torn to shreds, while the other pulled out of the line of fire, losing its beam rifle and right leg in the process. The pilot drew to a stop, probably thanking his lucky stars, at least until the Rouge came straight at him. He raised his shield to block the incoming beam fire, which was exactly what Cagalli had been counting on. Letting go of the beam rifle, she drew the Rouge's saber and swept it through a downward arc, catching the GuAIZ on the top of the head and splitting it down the middle. As the halves of the enemy mobile suit floated apart, Cagalli stowed the beam saber, retrieved her rifle and acquired a new target.

Commander Stanton was getting frustrated. No matter what he tried, he couldn't seem to gain the upper hand over this Astray. When he tried to circle around behind it, the M1 moved to stay facing him. When he opened fire, the mobile suit seemed to magically disappear from what had previously been a clean shot. What's more, the Astray kept getting closer, and by now it was nearly within saber range.

"Alright then," Stanton growled. "Let's see how you deal with this!" Momentarily swinging the GuAIZ's arms out of the way, Alex launched the EEQ7R extensional arrestors. Mechanical claws on the end of long cables, they were designed to grapple with enemy mobile suits. In a flash, the arrestors clamped onto the Astray's left arm, allowing Alex to twist his mobile suit and yank the Orb machine off balance. Retracting the arrestors, Alex brought his rifle up and fired.

The particle beam tore through the empty space where the Astray had been a split-second earlier.

Before he could fully grasp what was going on, Alex was aware of multiple alarms going off, and he pulled back in time to save his life. Instead of cleaving through his mobile suit, the M1's beam saber cut through his rifle instead.

"Who the hell are you?" he called out, surprising himself by actually pressing the button to send an open transmission.

"Lieutenant Commander Athrun Zala, Orb Navy," the Astray pilot replied, and Alex's eyes widened.

"So," he said, his voice heating with anger. "The turncoat appears."

"I don't know what you mean," Zala stated, prompting Alex to snort derisively.

"You know damn well what I mean. You were arguably the best pilot on the Le Creuset team and you turned against ZAFT and your own father!" He might not have his beam rifle anymore, but Alex wasn't out of tricks yet. The MA-MV03 composite shield on his GuAIZ was equipped with two beam claws mounted in the front of the shield itself. Extending the plasma blades, he swung at his opponent, his weapons crashing against the Astray's beam saber.

"My father died at Junius Seven!" Zala spat from his cockpit. "As for ZAFT, I may not work for them anymore, but I would never betray them!" Alex laughed at that statement.

"That simpering excuse for a chairwoman doesn't stand for ZAFT!" he shouted, slashing at the Astray again. He'd heard about how the younger Zala lacked his father's willingness to do what was necessary, but the way he claimed he still supported ZAFT was simply unbelievable.

Unfortunately, this matter would have to wait, as an alert popped up on Alex's CIS stating that the Robespierre had retrieved Lia's shuttle. As much he wanted to finish the fight with Zala, he knew their forces were sorely outmatched, and he was aware of the fact that half of their pilots had already been killed. It was time to cut their losses and retreat. Alex opened fire with the GuAIZ's head-mounted Picus guns, the automatic rounds tearing into the Astray and forcing it to raise its arms to protect the cockpit. Alex used the break in swordplay to turn about and fall back.

"This isn't over, Zala," he stated as he sped back to the Robespierre. "The punishment for treason is death, and I'll make sure that sentence is carried out."

Space station Azathoth, Debris Belt

Kira had been waiting for an opportunity like this.

While he hadn't seen Dr. Sanford since their first meeting, white-garbed medical personnel had been in and out of his room several times, once every hour or two as far as he could tell. For the most part, they were coldly detached, taking down data from the equipment hooked up to Kira and then leaving. One of them, however, seemed different. She was a young girl, no more than eighteen years old, with a brown hair arranged in a short, boyish cut, and eyes the same color as her hair. The young brunette had introduced herself as Serena, and had blushed whenever Kira spoke to her. She also seemed to feel very bad about the restraints, apologizing profusely for Kira's discomfort. On her last visit, he had asked Serena to remove the bindings, and she had reluctantly agreed.

"Just don't…well…don't hurt yourself, okay?" Apparently, she had been concerned that Kira might attempt suicide; he had almost laughed at that. Despite the circumstances, he wasn't in that bad of a mental state. Besides, he had people out there to live for. He wanted to see Athrun again, he wanted to argue with Cagalli about how he should season his food, and he wanted to be there to blush when Flay teased him.

He felt some guilt over taking advantage of Serena's kindness, but he had to get out of here.

So, after she left the room, Kira waited for perhaps five minutes before getting out of bed and moving to the door. As luck would have it, the door had been left unlocked, and he was able to quietly exit the room and head off down the hallway.

The floor sloped up in both directions, as though Kira stood on the inside of a sphere or, more likely, a cylinder. Heliopolis had been designed that way, generating gravity through centrifugal force, and it seemed likely that he was on some sort of space station.

How far did they take me?

He wasn't sure how long he wandered the halls. On several occasions, he was forced to duck around corners to avoid armed patrols, but they passed by without incident. Finally, he came across a set of mechanical doors that turned out to open into an elevator.

Slipping inside, Kira noticed the standard array of buttons for different floors. Beside the array, a sheet of paper had been taped to the wall. The top of the printout read "Station Levels," and Kira quickly read through the list, finally stopping when his eyes ran across one particular listing.

Level 10: CS Holding Pens; Access to Shuttle Docking Bay.

Kira didn't know what the holding pens were for, but the shuttle bay probably represented his best chance of escape. Crossing his fingers, he pressed the button for the floor in question.

"Doctor Sanford," one of the technicians called from his position at the video monitors. "You want to take a look at this." The scientist had been listening to Squadron Commander Sabato's description of the fight the Robespierre had gotten into with the Archangel, but something in the technician's voice told her that she did indeed want to see what he had to show her. Moving around the control room until she reached his station, she grabbed hold of the young man's chair and settled to the floor.

"What's the problem?" The technician's only response was to point to a screen displaying a security feed of one of the hallways on Level 10. For a moment, the area was empty, but suddenly a figure moved into the camera's view. Looking closer, Elizabeth recognized Kira Yamato, moving hesitantly down the corridor, and she sighed with frustration. "What is our subject doing down there?" The technician hesitated.

"I don't know," he said reluctantly. It had been a stupid question anyway. Yamato had obviously escaped from his room after the most recent checkup.

"Which medical officer was with him most recently?" The technician tapped at a computer console nearby, bringing the desired information up on the screen.

"Serena Ridley was the most recent, Doctor." Sanford felt a pang of irritation at this.

I ought to slip a hormonal suppressant into that girl's next meal. Ridley had mentioned that she felt bad about physically restraining Yamato, which meant that she probably took the bindings off, facilitating his escape. Elizabeth made a mental note to talk to the young woman about clinical detachment later. For now, her primary concern was securing her subject.

"Why didn't we catch him on camera before?" she asked, at which the technician shook his head.

"We don't have complete coverage with the security cameras yet, but he probably went past more than one on his way down. In all probability, he was likely overlooked due to the excitement over the battle." Dr. Sanford rubbed her forehead, wondering if the incompetence of one's coworkers was capable of physically inducing migraines. Her rumination was interrupted when the technician spoke again. "Doctor, we have a patrol coming that way; we can just intercept him." Elizabeth was about to answer in the affirmative when she noticed just where Yamato was.

What are the odds of that?

"How has he been avoiding the patrols thus far?"

"He's probably just ducked into side halls or unoccupied rooms." That was exactly what she had wanted to hear.

"Deactivate the key code on the CS-M25 holding pen." The technician gave her a shocked look, and she simply shrugged in response. "It'll be a learning experience for him. I'm heading down there now."

The sounds of footsteps alerted Kira to an approaching patrol. He backed up, scanning the hallway for a branch-off or open door, but avenues of escape seemed nonexistent on this floor. There were several heavy metal doors lining the walls, but each of them had an electronic keypad sitting to its right, and Kira knew that he couldn't possibly hack his way in; as skilled a programmer as he was, he'd never hacked anything in his life.

There must be an open door somewhere.

Above each of the keypads was a light, apparently indicating whether the door in question was locked or unlocked. While almost all of the lights were red, there was indeed one that shined a blessed emerald hue. As the footsteps came closer, Kira ran over to the door. "CS-M25" was inscribed on the door itself, but the letters and numbers weren't ringing any bells for Kira, and as he caught sight of several pairs of feet coming "down" the hall to his right, he knew there was no time to consider them. Kira pressed the "Enter" key on the pad next to the door, ducking inside as soon as the portal slid open. Perhaps a second later, the door slid shut automatically, leaving him in darkness.

After a moment, the sounds of the guards came and went, and Kira felt around in the dark for a light switch. Finding nothing near the door itself, he went further into the room, running his hand along the wall. He still couldn't find a light switch, and to his growing alarm, there didn't seem to be any way to open the door from inside either.

"Okay," he told himself. "There must be a way out of the room, so let's just think for a second. Let's just—."

Tick.

Kira thought for a moment that he might have imagined the noise, but then it repeated itself.

Tick-tick, tick-tick.

The noise was akin to what you might get by tapping the point of a knife or some other sharp object against the metal floor. Turning away from the wall, Kira strained to pierce the darkness of the room.

Tick-tick, tick-tick, tick-tick.

The sounds were getting closer, and Kira realized they were coming from more than one direction. One set of sounds came from almost straight ahead of him, another from somewhere off to his left, and a third from his right. The noises were getting closer, and Kira now realized that he could hear the soft sounds of breathing in the darkness around him. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up as he suddenly realized that the noises he was hearing were footsteps, and that the clicking was the result of long nails or claws striking against the floor.

Kira began moving back toward the door. There had to be a panel that would let him out. He couldn't stay here any longer; armed guards were infinitely preferable to whatever was in the room with him now, getting closer with every passing second.

He turned around and bolted for the door, but froze in his tracks after moving only a few feet.

One of them had gotten between him and the door. Kira couldn't see or hear it so much as he could feel it: a looming shape, bigger than he was and radiating menace from every pore. It released a deep, venomous hiss, like what might come out of a big snake or a crocodile, and Kira jumped back at the sudden noise. He backed up, but another hiss came out of the darkness behind him, and then another from his left, and then a piercing alien shriek that made his blood run cold. He realized that he had less than a meter of space on all sides, and that they were still getting closer. While he couldn't be sure if he was imagining it or not, Kira thought he saw a faint glimmer of light reflecting off a set of needle-like teeth just in front of him.

Abruptly, another hiss filled the room, but this one was different. This was the sound of hydraulics working, and the sudden light from the hallway forced Kira to squint.

"Go back." Kira recognized the voice of Dr. Sanford, and he heard the clicking of claws against metal again, only this time the sounds were moving away from him. Finally forcing his eyes open, Kira saw the red-eyed scientist silhouetted in the open doorway.

"The Eviscerators are scheduled to be fed in a little under an hour," she said. "Now, either you can come quietly back to your room, or I can shut this door again and feed them early." The matter-of-fact tone Dr. Sanford used for the statement only served to drive her point home more effectively. She offered her hand, and Kira took it, stepping back out into the hallway and not turning around until the door had shut behind him.

Archangel, Bridge

"It seems pretty clear that we're dealing with ZAFT deserters," Athrun said. He was addressing Cagalli, Roger and the three Astray pilots, but Captain Ramius was listening intently as well.

"That would explain where they got all that ZAFT tech," Roger said. "They just took it with them when they left."

"So what does this mean for us?" The question had come from Ensign Nakamura. She was dressed in a standard Orb uniform, and her silken hair ran down behind her shoulders like a black waterfall.

"It doesn't mean anything at the moment," Captain Ramius replied. "Our mission remains the same. A Nazca is faster than we are, but we still have them on our sensors, and they'll have to slow down once they enter the debris belt." Given the speed the ships were traveling at, that would happen soon. "The enemy ship's reactor gives it a very long operating time, which means it doesn't have to lead us back to its home base."

"So we have to capture and interrogate?" Cagalli asked.

"We'll try to get them to surrender," Murrue replied. "We're the better-armed ship, but boarding and capturing an enemy vessel is never an easy thing to do. Unfortunately, Kenji, repairs on your Astray aren't complete yet, so you won't be able to sortie on the next mission." Kenji Tiran groaned, running a hand through his orange-brown hair.

"Well, if that's the price to make sure the beautiful Sara Nakamura remains safe…" he started, but his comrade, a Hispanic woman with curly, shoulder-length brown hair, reached out and slapped him on the back of the head.

"No, it's the price of letting your guard down, pendejo!" She laughed, and Athrun did as well. Maria's family had moved to Orb from the USSA fifteen years ago, when she was seven years of age, but she was as patriotic about her adopted homeland as any Orb native. She got on quite well with her teammates, even if she did hassle Kenji constantly, and she was a fine pilot as well. Roger interrupted the banter between the pilots.

"Ensign Nakamura," he said, prompting the older woman to turn to face him. "I just wanted to thank you again for watching out for me back there."

"I have a boyfriend, you know." The response seemed to puzzle Roger.

"Uh…that wasn't what I meant," he said uncertainly, and Kenji raised his hand.

"That's technically my fault," he said. Maria slapped him again, and he shot her an irritated look. Athrun just shook his head and looked over at Cagalli. She laughed.

"And to think, they're older than we are."

Robespierre, Pilots' Ready Room/Open Space

"Are we at the target area?" Commander Stanton asked.

"Yes," the reply came over the intercom. Stanton nodded.

"Good. Deploy the linear catapult and activate the Strikers on my command." The Archangel had hailed them about ten minutes ago, asking that they cease movement and come peacefully. The upside of that would be that the Legged Ship wouldn't blow the Robespierre to pieces, but the downside was that they would undoubtedly be questioned about who they were working for, and Stanton was not ready to hand over the location of Azathoth yet, not while there were still other options.

He turned to Lia, now fully dressed in her flight suit. "Watch yourself out there. I know I don't have to remind you, but this is the Archangel we're talking about here." Lia nodded solemnly. She had decided that she wanted to fly on this latest skirmish. It would be short if everything went according to plan, but they would need all the skill they could muster, and she was indisputably better than the relatively inexperienced pilots Alex had flown with during the last fight.

"Commander Stanton," the intercom announced. "The Archangel has closed to striking distance; mobile suits are launching from its catapults."

"Then I guess it's time we followed their example." He turned back to Lia. "I know you want a piece of Zala too, but this is about losing our pursuers, so let's just try to make this work. That bastard will get his due eventually." Lia nodded.

"I understand, Commander."

"Alright," Athrun said. "They're launching. We can probably use the debris for cover, but so can they, so keep your eyes peeled."

"Understood," Cagalli replied.

"Copy that, Ath," Roger said. There was a momentary pause.

"Did you just call me 'Ath'?" Further discussion of Ensign Doolittle's nicknaming habits would have to wait, because the three remaining GuAIZs were closing in. "Here we go."

"Let's dance!" Roger shouted from the cockpit of his Duel Dagger, opening the shoulder-mounted missile launcher and sending two explosives streaking towards the nearest enemy mobile suit. The GuAIZ opened fire with its CIWS, detonating the missiles before they could contact it. The enemy suit extended its beam claws and rushed the Dagger. Athrun considered helping out, but the GuAIZ with the decal, a red image of a snake eating its own tail set on a white background, was already closing in, raising its beam rifle.

"How'd you recognize me?" Athrun asked, broadcasting an open transmission.

"Truth be told, Zala, it was a lucky guess." The GuAIZ opened fire, beams pounding on the Astray's shield. "However, I'm not really in the mood to talk right now."

"That's good," Athrun said. "Neither are we." As if to punctuate his statement, the Archangel's Gottfrieds opened fire, and four powerful electron streams tore into the Nazca-class ship's side engines, causing massive explosions.

"You are really starting to piss me off!" Roger shouted, trying to draw a bead on the GuAIZ. The Earth Forces pilot considered himself a fairly skilled warrior; no Mu La Flaga of course, but not exactly cannon fodder either. Nevertheless, this enemy mobile suit was frustrating him to no end. Sara and Roger had gone after the suit as soon as combat had begun, but instead of attacking at range like the enemies from the last fight, this particular pilot closed for melee immediately, crossing blades with Sara and keeping her between Roger and any chance of a clean shot. Every time he tried to circle around and fire, the GuAIZ turned in an opposing direction, forcing Sara to turn as well, lest she leave herself open to the enemy's beam claws.

The three mobile suits were now heading into a denser region of debris. Ahead of them were two massive solar panels, probably photovoltaic power sources for some old satellite or early space station. The two semi-reflective sheets were each the better part of a thousand feet on a side, and floated almost parallel to each other. Breaking away from Sara's Astray, the GuAIZ moved into the space between the panels, images of the enemy suit reflected in the smooth material above and below it. Roger smiled, moving in after it.

You're mine now, he thought as he locked on with beam rifle, shoulder cannon and missiles. There would be no way for the enemy to block all of it.

"Come into my parlor," a female voice said over the communications channel. Roger only had a moment to contemplate what the literary allusion meant before the GuAIZ fired its beam rifle. It didn't shoot at Roger or Sara, who had moved in beside him, but at the solar panels themselves. Four particle beams blew through the upper and lower panels, and the resulting explosions sprayed the area with glassy shards.

"Whoa!" Roger yelled as he made full use of the Dagger's extra Fortrestra thrusters to maneuver among the high-speed fragments. Some of them still tore gashes in the armor, and a few bit into the legs of Sara's mobile suit, although her shield kept the main body safe. "You alright, Nakamura?"

"I'm reading a hydraulic failure on my suit's left leg, but nothing too bad." Roger moved to follow the rapidly retreating GuAIZ and realized that the shots, having struck the solar panels behind Sara and him, had knocked the massive sheets into motion. The GuAIZ pulled out from between the panels just as the edges slammed together, showering Roger and Sara with more shattered material and cutting them off from their opponent.

"Do you want to go around and come out one on either side?" Roger asked. Sara paused for only a moment before replying, a hint of amusement in her voice.

"I say we go straight through," she said, and Roger laughed.

"Copy that," he said, firing off four missiles, a cannon round and a shot from his beam rifle. Sara added several beam shots of her own, and the barrier in front of them disintegrated in the ensuing fireball. Using the explosion as cover, they were able to avoid taking fire as they emerged on the other side. The enemy suit had been waiting above the solar panels, and promptly opened fire as the Astray and the Duel Dagger approached it. "I've got to hand it to you," Roger said through the com link. "That was a pretty nice trick."

"I'm hardly the best the Advent Faction has to offer," the enemy pilot said. "Of course, I guess anything looks clever to Earth Forces scum like you." Roger would have to run that "Advent Faction" line by Athrun later, but the second statement was what really stuck.

"Aw, come on!" Roger protested. "I'm the only Alliance officer here and you've still got to pick on me?" Everyone else here was from Orb, but they had to single him out, didn't they? Athrun's voice suddenly came over the com link.

"These people are hard-liners, Roger," he said. "Reasoning with them is going to be difficult at best."

"Fine words coming from someone who couldn't see the Naturals for the threat they are!" Roger couldn't even guess who this was.

"How many people are on this frequency?" he yelled out. Frustrated, he returned to firing on the enemy MS.

Athrun brought the M1's beam saber down on the command GuAIZ; his opponent barely managed to block the attack with the shield. The machines broke apart for a moment, and the enemy mobile suit launched its extensional arrestors again, but it didn't work this time. An emerald beam streaked out, destroying both mechanical claws before they could reach their target. Athrun caught sight of the Strike Rouge lowering its beam rifle about one hundred meters away.

"You're outnumbered and outmatched," Athrun said. "You know you can't win this." The enemy's response was surprisingly calm.

"I'm aware of that," he said. "Luckily, we don't have to win. We just have to get you far enough away from your ship. Activate the Strikers now."

Maria Velasquez was closing in on the GuAIZ she'd been chasing when she saw the debris around her begin to move. Catching it in her peripheral vision, she initially dismissed it as her imagination. When the mobile suit broke off combat and another piece of debris came to life, she realized it was no trick of the mind.

The objects in question were barrel-shaped; dull orange and white in color. They had been floating motionless, but now they took off, tiny puffs of compressed gas spouting from various locations on their surfaces. Ignoring Maria's Astray entirely, the two objects sped off in another direction. For a moment, their course didn't really register, and she started to move off toward the retreating mobile suit. Then it hit her.

The objects were headed straight for the Archangel.

Archangel, Bridge

"Captain, we have at least three confirmed hull breaches," David Herikawa called out. "Decompression alarms are going off in four more locations." Murrue swore. The objects had come out of the debris around them perhaps two minutes ago. While they were rougher-edged than what she remembered, the attacking machines looked almost exactly like the wired gunbarrels from a Moebius Zero. The Gottfrieds and Valiants weren't anywhere near fast enough to target them, and even the Igelstellungs were having difficulty.

A gunbarrel moved into position in front of the ship. The front swung open to reveal a snub-nosed weapon, and the yellow streak of a hypervelocity projectile flashed out.

The bridge shuddered.

CIWS rounds ripped through the vacuum, but the machine had already moved out of the line of fire. Nearly as quickly as it had gone, another appeared, its cannon aimed directly into the bridge.

Before it could fire, however, a beam shot tore through the gunbarrel, blowing it to pieces. The fading explosion revealed an Astray, and Maria Velasquez's voice came across the bridge speakers.

"Sorry it took me so long," she said, turning around to block another projectile with her shield.

"Do you know where the others are?" Murrue asked.

"They were right behind me…" Velasquez said, and then another gunbarrel exploded behind her. The Strike Rouge and another M1 swooped into view.

"Doolittle and Nakamura are on their way," Cagalli said. "They should be here soon."

Open Space

Cagalli drew back as two more gunbarrels came around the Archangel and moved to circle Athrun and her. As the nearest machine opened and extended its cannon, Cagalli fired the Rouge's vernier thrusters, pulling around the gunbarrel to keep it from firing. What she hadn't expected, however, was for the machine to launch two missiles from beneath the cannon. She fired her CIWS guns, destroying the explosives, but the gunbarrel fired through the explosion, and the projectile struck the Rouge directly over the cockpit. The Phase Shift saved Cagalli's life, but the cockpit still shook fiercely. She raised the beam rifle, but the gunbarrel had already moved to another position, to her left and slightly above her, and was ready to fire again.

A shot from Athrun's beam rifle destroyed the machine, and Cagalli smiled slightly, but then she noticed the second gunbarrel darting into position behind the Astray.

Cagalli's blood ran cold. Athrun's M1 didn't have PS armor; the projectile would rip straight through him, and there was no way she could lock onto the threatening machine in time.

"Athrun!" A split-second before it could fire, the gunbarrel was destroyed, and the blast cleared to reveal an Astray with damaged lower legs.

"Sara," Athrun said. While no one else would have caught it, Cagalli could hear the slight tremor in his voice after his close call. "Where's Roger?"

"OOOOOH MY GOD!" Roger's Dagger streaked into view, moving in reverse as it was attacked by two gunbarrels simultaneously. The Alliance mobile suit's shield was a crumpled mess, having been hammered with multiple projectile impacts, and the Fortrestra armor was pockmarked with holes blown open by the slugs. Cagalli decided to lend a hand, and when the gunbarrels moved to flank Roger, she locked onto the nearest one and fired, destroying it. Capable of focusing on just one opponent now, Roger fired the massive grenade launcher underneath his beam rifle, and the explosive blew the remaining gunbarrel apart.

"Ensign Doolittle," Captain Ramius contacted them from the bridge. "That's Alliance technology. Do you recognize it?" There was a momentary pause, probably while Roger caught his breath.

"Yeah," he finally said. "They're Gunbarrel Strikers, based on the wired gunbarrels for the Moebius Zero; standard armament is a railgun, and I think they've got missiles too. They're supposed to dock with 105 Daggers, but I guess our friends have installed some sort of advanced computer control system."

"We're still taking fire from two of these things," the captain responded. "Circle around to the rear of the ship and take them out." After a quick series of affirmatives, the mobile suits swept around the warship, coming upon two more gunbarrels busy stabbing the vessel with railgun slugs.

With five mobile suits against two automated weapons, the fight was over fairly quickly.

As the final explosion dissipated, Cagalli surveyed the damage to the Archangel. There were holes at various points on the hull, but the engines remained intact, and the weapons systems also seemed undamaged.

"I don't understand," she said. "These things weren't that hard to put down, so what made them think the gunbarrels would destroy the Archangel when their mobile suits couldn't?" Captain Ramius's voice came across Cagalli's cockpit speakers.

"I don't think they were trying to kill us," she said. "The Nazca-class has disappeared from our sensors."

"What?" Athrun sounded stunned. "It looked like you inflicted some serious damage at the start of the fight."

"Maybe they weren't that badly damaged, or maybe they went dark, turning off all their electronics and using the debris to mask their radar signature, but the result is the same." Disgust was clearly audible in her voice. "For now, we've lost them."

Author's Note: Well, sorry it took me so long to get this to you guys. Part of the delay is due to the fact that my computer caught a virus, so that had to be dealt with. Another part has to do with the fact that I am a member of an Anime Club on my campus (don't ask). Our unofficial club leader introduced this new (well, new to us) show called Tsukihime. My first thought was "Oh, please, not another vampire show." Of course, that was before I got totally hooked on it, and Shiki and Arcueid made it onto my Favorite Pairings list.

Anyway, as to the chapter itself, I hope the length doesn't bother you (at seventeen pages, its a little over double the length of my longest previous chapter). Writing this actually made me laugh a couple times. I kind of gave an evil cackle when I wrote Dr. Sandford's line about a "learning experience" for Kira, and the good guys definitely got quite a few good lines in as well. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it!

Before anyone says anything, I should also mention that I have in no way altered the rather...well...evil nature of the Extended Program. Roger was given a somewhat censored explanation of how the program works. While he's been at training facilities, he's never actually seen the labs where the children are, for lack of a better term, put through their paces.

Next Chapter: Lacus and Andrew have arrived in Orb, and they may have another way of tracking the Advent Faction back to their base.