Celestial Being Chronicles - Chapter 59
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the Gundam series, nor any of the various series which are used or referenced in my fic, so please point that damned lawsuit cannon at someone else, also, don't read this if you are not of legal age to read such material. The story contains possibly disturbing content and should not be read by close-minded people (i.e., people who are easily offended.) Everything in the story is fictional. I am also not responsible for any actions taken by people who read this story and society's problems. I do, however, own my original character; Hope Yamato.
"This just in...a Destroy Gundam is attacking the Atlantic Federation base at Pearl Harbor." An announcer cried a few hours later, as the main screen on the Excalibur's bridge suddenly switched to an emergency news broadcast. Everyone spun to face the screen. The view showed the middle of Pearl Harbor, with dozens of frigates, destroyers and several carriers moored at various docks and piers. Explosions dotted the harbor area and dark plumes of smoke soared high into the air from where the mobile suit waded through the wreckage towards the center of the base. Strike Daggers, Windams, tanks and jets scrambled to intercept the Destroy, or even to slow down its advance, but all were blown away as soon as they got within a few hundred meters by the arsenal of weapons both mobile suits mounted.
"Damn, I had forgotten how big those things were." Dearka commented, staring at the mobile suit. It was a heavily modified Destroy Gundam, and it carried nearly twice the amount of weapons as normal. Large bore cannons were held in each hand, while deadly looking gatling cannons projected from the shoulders and bulky missile packs sprouted from the legs. Six beam cannons were mounted in two rows of three on the chest and two massive missiles rode in vertical launch assemblies on its back.
"That thing is so slow a ZAFT pilot would be embarrassed to pilot it." Yzak said with a sniff of disdain. "It makes a ZuOOT look graceful."
"Problem is, it also makes a ZuOOT look puny." Dearka muttered. As everyone watched the giant mobile suit cut loose with a barrage of missiles and cannon fire, leveling several acres of base structures and vehicles in less than a second. The second mobile suit was more normal sized, and was less heavily armed, but was still managing to wreak a lot of havoc, because it was still far better armed than any strike dagger could hope to be. It concentrated on warding the giant's back and sides, making sure no one could get close.
"What the hell are they trying to pull? Two mobile suits may be able to cause a lot of damage, but there's no way they can be victorious. Eventually the Earth Forces are going to get organized, and then they'll surround them and use numbers to take them down. It'll be costly, but the Earth Forces will be the winners." Hope said with a frown.
"What kind of missiles are those?" Murrue asked Meyrin quietly.
"Which ones?"
"The two big ones on the back of the Destroy Gundam."
"They look sort of familiar, but I can't place them. They remind me of the bunker busters the GINN's sometimes carried, but these are bigger." Meyrin said, peering closer. Her mouth dropped open and her hands started trembling. "Yzak... come here and tell me that's not what I'm afraid it is." Meyrin said in a whisper. Yzak darted over and stared at where Meyrin was pointing.
"THAT'S A FUCKING NUKE!" Yzak shouted.
"WHAT?" Kira, Athrun, Dearka and Lacus chorused. Before anyone could move further, both missiles launched from the back of the Destroy and roared into the sky. The Destroy started to retreat, sowing death as they walked backwards.
"Pearl Harbor is about thirty miles from our current position...will the nukes in those missiles have the punch to hurt us here?" Hope asked Meyrin. Meyrin shrugged.
"If they put a couple megatons in them, sure, easy. Anywhere at about ten megatons and up, you'd probably feel the shockwave around the world. Of course, Pearl Harbor and most of the surrounding five miles would be nothing but a blast crater then, and that giant mobile suit would be part of the cloud of radioactive smoke, so I doubt it's that powerful. It's more likely that they're tactical nukes. Point five to five kilotons, maybe multiple warheads. Figure a blast radius of around a kilometer, shockwave and fire damage out to triple that. Out here we'll get to see a nice light show, experience an ungodly amount of wind, and get to watch the plumes of smoke turn into a spectacular mushroom cloud. That's it though. Oh, and maybe a tsunami, if enough of the explosion happens in the harbor proper." Meyrin reported after a few moments thought.
"What about the people at the fleet base and the city of Pearl Harbor?" Kira asked. Meyrin shrugged again, this time dispiritedly.
"I'm figuring close to fifty to sixty percent blast casualties, considering its lunch hour. Maybe another twenty percent collateral casualties and who knows what sort of damage from radiation. A good three quarters of everybody within the shockwave radius is going to be dead in a few minutes." Meyrin told everyone.
"You seem pretty calm." Dearka noted. "It doesn't bother you to talk about all those helpless people like they're nothing but percentages and figures?"
"Hey, I'm not happy about this. But you're not one to talk. All you mobile suit pilots ever see is the enemy machine. You never have to actually see the people you're killing, don't have to look them in the eye when you pull the trigger or press the switch. After you've done that a few times, maybe then I'll let you criticize me." Meyrin snarled. Dearka held up his hands placatingly.
"Is there nothing we can do to help?" Kira asked, his fists clenched.
"No." Hope said decisively. "We can get revenge, that's about it."
"So we can do nothing but pray?" Lacus said. Hope nodded, her eyes blazing.
"Who would do this? ZAFT?" Cagalli asked into the silence.
"Hardly. The civilians would murder us all in our beds if we initiated an unprovoked nuclear attack on Earth." Yzak declared. It was at this time that two streaks of light barely identifiable to the Coordinators present as the two missiles shot down from the heavens back into the view of the camera.
"Oh…" The cameraman and reporter on scene were heard to mutter before the entire screen flashed blinding white before turning to static and then black as Murrue turned it off. Nothing happened for a minute or two, leaving everyone to look around in puzzlement and hope. However, the faint ray of hope was soon extinguished when the ground trembled slightly all around them.
"There's the concussion wave." Meyrin noted dryly. No one said anything as the tremors continued for several more minutes before dying away. "It should be safe now, if we want to go topside. Nukes that small, the radiation will be confined mostly to the blast area." Without a word, everyone hurried for the stairs up and out of the bunker complex. Yzak was first up the stairs.
"Oh...man…" He gasped, staring at the double mushroom cloud that glowed brilliant pink and orange and grey on the horizon. That entire section of sky was tinted orange and red from all the vaporized dust swirling through the air. As people came out behind Yzak they each responded in their own way. Shinn and Lumanaria murmured curses under their breath at the awful sight, while Lacus and Miriallia were quick to shed tears for all those lost, while Kira stood as still as a statue. Dearka tried to comfort Mir, but was struggling not to weep himself. He remembered Junius Seven as well as any Coordinator. Any Coordinator that didn't cry or feel horrible at seeing a nuclear attack had something wrong with them, in his opinion. Hell, anyone that didn't feel a twinge of fear when seeing a mushroom cloud was a little crazy, in his opinion, Natural or Coordinator.
"That'll light a fire under their asses." Adolf Hitler commented smugly as he watched the screen. He stood in a private observation dome in Berlin, Germany.
Celestial Being was quick to mount a rescue effort; dozens of Gundams, along with hundreds of fighter and transport aircraft screaming out of the Excalibur's hangers. Out near the fringes of the city, where the Akatsuki, Buster, Chimera, Destiny, Divinity, Duel, Force Impulse, Strike Freedom, and Wing Gundam had landed, the damage wasn't so bad, but even so, the group had decided to merge with their machines, shrink them to human size and utilize the holoshrouds to project their human vestiges over the armor.
As the group began to search, they noticed that a few small buildings had collapsed and there was a lot of broken glass and debris lying around, but for the most part the buildings were standing and the streets were clear. Fires burned in some spots, sending plumes of grayish smoke into the air and several cars were overturned at one intersection, not from the blast but from the driver's panicking due to the explosion.
Of course, the area was still devastated and scores of people in various stages of shock or injury lay, sat or walked about. Kira immediately helped an eldery woman sit down; the woman was bleeding from a ragged gash on one arm and above her left eye, but was just wandering aimlessly about. Dearka and Miriallia went into a nearby building, the remains of a small business it looked like and started helping people with glass cuts and a few broken bones make their way out of the lobby and nearby office spaces. Kira left the eldery woman with Lacus and searched out the more seriously wounded people he could see.
Kira had to shut his eyes at times, to avoid looking at the bodies and parts of bodies that were scattered here and there in the ruined buildings and near the wrecked cars. Some body parts were charred, almost skeletal and must have been thrown here from much closer to the blast area. Most injuries consisted of cuts or gashes from flying glass or debris, or broken bones from being knocked around by the concussion wave. The more serious cases consisted of two compound thigh fractures, which required most of Lacus's attention, several amputated fingers, an amputated ear, and the worst case, a man who had caught a face full of molten glass, which blinded him and covered more than half his face in third degree burns.
"These poor people." Lacus sobbed. Kira put an arm on her shoulder to comfort her and tried to stifle his own emotions.
'How can people fight wars when this is the result? Why do weapons like nuclear missiles even exist?' Kira thought, his anger slowly yet steadily rising.
"How could they do this?" Lacus asked through her tears.
"Can't they see how pointless wars are?" Cagalli complained.
"They can't. That's the problem. Their hate and fear blinds them so much that they can't see even something as obvious as that." Kira snarled, as Dearka, whom was merged with his Buster Gundam, and Miriallia, whom was merged with the Wing Gundam, came over to them.
"Why don't you and Lacus go out and do some searching and leave the tending to Mir and I for the moment." Dearka suggested. "Going through those ruined buildings takes a lot out of you."
"Physically and emotionally." Mir added tiredly. "Those poor people...a lot of them never knew what hit them. We...we searched through a collapsed day care center...it...was..."
"Shh. It's okay." Dearka said, interrupting her as he pulled her into a tight embrace. He looked at Kira. "You should be careful. We stumbled into a few very bad sights. And some of these buildings are only standing by a little bit. I saw several stairways collapse just as I walked by."
For a block or so there were no buildings that looked even remotely safe to enter, so Kira and Lacus stuck to the street. They had just reached another intersection when the noise of a car engine caused Kira to halt. "Someone's coming." He told Lacus. Some sixth sense told Kira to get off the street, so he did, pulling Lacus into a partly collapsed convenience store.
"What?" Lacus breathed into his ear.
"A bad feeling." Kira replied. He watched the intersection carefully. The car noise drew steadily closer. As it did so, several nearby civilians noticed and ran towards the intersection.
"Hey...a car, a car!" One shouted.
"Stop! Stop, please!" Another cried.
"I'm hurt! Please take me to a hospital!" A third yelled, holding up a heavily bandaged arm that had red stains all over it. Kira's bad feeling got about ten times worse, as the car noise dropped off very suddenly, likely because the car had slowed to a walk. Kira looked expectantly at the intersection, as did Lacus. They were so intent on the people outside Kira didn't notice the back door to the store opening until the man in urban camouflage was completely past the threshold. Kira spun as the man brought up his wicked looking assault rifle. Lacus screamed as the man opened up with a short burst of automatic fire that shredded the shelving around them. Kira dived on top of her and crushed them both flat to the floor.
"Two civilian kids. They're in the store on your right." Kira heard the man whisper very quietly. "They're still alive. I just warned them. How should I proceed?" The soldier continued, obviously talking to someone through a communication device. "It's just the kids, the rest of the place is clear." The soldier paused a moment. "Yes, sir." He said respectfully. "Okay, kids, sorry for the scare there." The soldier said in a normal voice. "There's an important person being evactuated past here and we're all a little jumpy. You two just stay right where you are until the jeep passes and we'll have no problems."
"Why the fucking hell did you shoot at us?" Kira asked, his anger slowly taking hold.
"Like I said, we're all a little jumpy. This place just got nuked ya know. The damn PLANTs sent some of their new mobile suit models down to tear up the fleet base. They did a damn good job of it too, damn them. There's not much left of the pacific fleet. And then they nuked the city, just like those monsters have always wanted to do." The man replied evenly.
"Why would they want to nuke a city? They know what that's like. Why would they want to do that to us?" Lacus asked, trying to circumspectly point out the error in the soldier's thinking. The man laughed, from his position by the rear door.
"Why do the damn Coordinators do anything? They're genocidal war maniacs, that's why. Space monsters." He replied with more than a hint of bitterness.
"That's not true!" Lacus couldn't help but blurt out. The soldier's laugh took on a grim tone.
"Isn't it? You two probably don't know much about it, but the PLANTs used a weapon called GENESIS to wipe out the Ptolemais Lunar Base. They were going to fire it at Earth, to kill everyone, but it was blown up before they could." The soldier replied. Kira heard him moving toward the front of the store and he clamped a hand over Lacus's mouth to keep her from replying and possibly getting the soldier angry. The man was plainly an adherent of the Blue Cosmos philosophy. "Smokes...don't mind if I do." The soldier said lightly. Kira could just barely make out the man reach over the counter and rummage around in the tobacco cabinent. "Not like the storekeeper's ever gonna smoke again, with that wound."
"What storekeeper?" Kira asked.
"The dead guy with half his head missing behind the counter here. Looks like he was facing away from the blast wave that threw the cash register into his skull. Messy. You shouldn't look at it." The soldier replied calmly, like seeing a horribly dead man lying on the ground was nothing strange. There came a clicking noise and the smell of smoke. "Ah, that tastes good." The soldier commented to nobody in particular. He stared out at the intersection. "Damn civilians are gonna get killed if they don't get out of the way."
"The people outside?" Kira asked. "But they're just trying to get help."
"They should get it elsewhere. The jeep doesn't have time for them." The soldier said flatly.
"Hey! Stop! My brother needs help! Stop!" One of the civilians outside yelled.
"Fool." The soldier said contemptuously as a single gunshot sounded from outside. The civilian stopped yelling.
"YOU HEARTLESS BASTARDS!" Cagalli shrieked, freeing the beam rifle from her machine's rear waist armor and shooting the soldier in the face, the searing green energy blast instantly vaporizing his head before then continuing and punching through the entrance of the building. Reacting to the beam blast which had suddenly emerged from the entrance of the store, soldiers stormed in, assault rifles already firing, the rounds pinging loudly and uselessly off the armor of the camouflaged Gundams.
"Morons." Kira muttered, as half a dozen DRAGOON units dropped from his wings, the remote weapons flying forward and stabbing each soldier through the heart and head. "If you hadn't executed those civilians, you might still be alive."
"This reminds me of Orb during the Earth Alliance invasion." Cagalli said as she, Lacus and Murrue forged ever deeper into the city. They were moving building to building, reasoning that the people most seriously injured were likely to be trapped in the buildings, not walking around on the street outside, and so far they hadn't found many wounded people. The people they had found were so obviously dead that neither Cagalli, Lacus or Murrue even stopped for a moment. People missing both arms or with a wooden spar through their chest didn't need first aid, they needed funerals.
The group of nine had now split into three groups of three, in order to cover more ground in less time. Cagalli, Lacus and Murrue in the first group; Kira, Hope and Mayu in the second group; and Dearka, Yzak and Miriallia in the third group.
"Except that in Orb, there were few civilian casualties." Lacus said grimly, wiping at some dried blood that had seeped out from under a collapsed wall. Yet another person that wouldn't need saving. "Watch the stairs; I don't think they're very safe."
Cagalli picked up a chair and pushed it down the stairs. True to Lacus's prediction, the stairway collapsed after the first few steps down. "I love how perceptive you are." The blonde commented with a small smile. Lacus and Murrue then finished searching the room with both eyes and ears.