{ === + === }
The Archangel (along with two support ships) was sent into space to find a ship that sent them a coded message. When it reached the debris belt, it saw an interesting sight.
Namely, a pair of Mobius Zero crafts with twice the Gunbarrel loadout that they're supposed to have.
"You think they're friends of ours?" Mu asks Kira, when the two of them saw the uniformly red coloring of both aircrafts."
"Not likely." Kira mutters. "Those things give me the creeps."
"Yep." Mu agrees. "Captain, we should probably avoid them; they don't look like they're doing anything dangerous."
"Though I agree…" Murrue sighs. "I don't want to run the risk of having them be our enemies."
"Or we'll have something dangerous on our backs." Mu agrees. "Alright, you all heard the lady. Let's get out there." Mu had switched to an M1 Astray, customized by the Belkan Engineers to work with the Gunbarrels system from the Mobius Zero. "Mark Zero, launching!"
It looks suspiciously similar to the Dreadnaught Gundam with the DRAGOON system attached.
"I feel like you're taking her side too easily." Kira sighs. "Aile Strike, going."
"The captain's right, Kira." Tolle reminds him. "Imagine if those guys are enemies… Astray, deploying."
He has a vanilla M1 Astray.
The three units (with Mu's Astray leading the arrowhead) accelerate towards the two Mobius Zeroes hanging around the edge of the debris, seemingly not paying attention to them.
Tolle managed to take a picture of the Zeros' cockpit sections. "Whoa, take a look at this." He sent the image onto the Archangel's network.
The cockpit had a series of neatly arrayed glowing dots on it.
"Weird." Kira murmurs. "Should we shoot them down now? Or just investigate?"
The Archangel's threat response system then beeped a response, getting the attention of its operator.
"Captain, there's a ZAFT warship signal within detection range." Sai reports. "It seems to be moving in our direction."
The Archangel's infrared detectors worked best in outer space, and thus picked up that ship from far beyond their engagement range. Murrue thought this over a bit. "Make contact with the unknowns. If they're friendly we'll leave them be. If not, we'll knock them down and go into the belt at full speed."
"Roger that." Mu replies, opening up all frequencies. "This is the…" He pauses for a second. Allegiance changes are a bit weird on protocols. "Orb Allied Forces. Unknown spacecraft, please state your affiliations."
No response.
"Seriously? Not even with the Belka-given frequencies?" Mu mutters, and tries again.
Kira idly flips through some channels on his radio. "Nothing, Mu. Either they don't speak our language or there's nobody in those crafts."
"Automated Zeroes?" Mu overacts his groan. "What about my reputation?"
"You had a reputation?" Kira and Tolle poke him simultaneously.
"Thanks, you two. Appreciate it." Mu grumbles and sighs. "If it's automated, then we shouldn't be too worried about it."
The Zeroes, however, were more than willing to prove them wrong.
"Whoa, weapon power up." Tolle reported as the engines of the two unknown crafts suddenly came to life. "Hang on. I'm getting an IFF response…"
"Same here." Kira frowned as he saw the name displayed on the screen. "ZOE? That's a weird name."
"It's from the Belkan datafiles, most likely." Mu replies. "Look sharp! They're coming in!"
The two Zeroes had climbed up high and dove onto the allied units with all of their guns blazing, forcing the three allied units to separate.
"Just me?" Kira groans as the Zeroes home in on his Strike. "Fine then, be that way." Kira counter-accelerates at the Zeroes and open fire with his head mounted Vulcans against the barrage of fire from the Zeroes.
Due to the Strike's Phase Shift Armor, its path through the hail of bullets was much safer than the Zeroes' were…though he didn't clock too much damage upon the smaller, more agile spacecraft either.
"Gotcha." Kira said as he turned his Strike without arresting its speed, and fired two shots from his beam rifle at the Zero cockpits, striking them dead center and killing both crafts even as the two crafts started to deploy their Gunbarrels.
"Ok, let's recover them for analysis and get going." Mu said after he recovered from his surprise. "Your aim is getting really up there, Kira."
"If I can hit it, I can kill it…or spare it." Kira replies confidently. "If I want to stop people from dying in a fight, then I need to be good enough to make them stop."
"Hear hear." Mu laughs. "At this rate you'll be better than those Aces in no time."
…
The two Zero corpses were recovered, and the Archangel proceeded to enter the debris belt at a slow speed (to avoid turning itself into a massive heat spot on someone else's infrared systems).
"So, what's so interesting about this guy?" Mu asks Murdoch as the head engineer removes himself from the belly of the mechanical beast.
"You got me. I don't recognize these designs at all." Murdoch sighs. "I'd thought they'd be at least similar to the Belkan engineers, but whoever made this one is on a fundamentally different level."
"Really?" Mu frowns, a little bit worried.
"Yeah…kid can probably tell you more about it." Murdoch wipes his face with a rag and go back under.
"Kid?" Mu looks up. Kira was tooling around in the cockpit section he blew up. "Oy, Kira! What discoveries are you discovering up there?" Without really bothering to wait for a response, Mu floated up to the cockpit to see…then came to a realization. This Zero is a bit bigger than the ones we use. He wasn't sure if the realization meant anything though.
"Check this out." Kira said as Mu came to a stop next to him. "I've rigged some of the electronics to this" he gestures to a small screen. "So we can read some of the data that's inside it."
"Find anything good?" Mu pokes the small screen a bit, seeing nothing but random numbers and letters.
"Not especially." Kira sighs. "It was apparently never designed to be maintained by humans, as there is no simple way of accessing its programming…not even the most basic of console codes." He scratches his head. "As far as I can tell this thing is definitely made to be thrown away."
"Seriously? Who's got the money to do that?" Mu pokes the screen some more. "There's no pattern to these letters, are there?"
"There might be." Kira hits a series of buttons on his smaller screen and a flurry of garbage shows up. "Occasionally I'll see the ZOE letters show up, but…" He gestures in defeat to the garbage on the screen. "That."
So we've established that this thing is a ZOE? What does that even mean? Mu wondered.
"Hey boys, come check this out." Murdoch says from underneath the aircraft, and the two pilots oblige.
Murdoch was looking at what seemed to be production data or the like engraved onto the underbelly of the craft. It was a series of numbers and what appeared to be the name of the spacecraft.
"'Zone of Endless'." Kira read out the name. "I feel like whoever named this thing needs an English lesson."
"No kidding. So these are both ZOE crafts?" Mu went to check on the other one. "Hey, this one says Zone of Endlesser."
"And gullible's written on its top." Kira replies.
"Seriously?" Mu went to check. "Oh wow, it really is."
"What?" Kira went to check as well, and there were no words written.
Mu simply had a self-satisfied grin…which turned into caution. The top of the aircraft had a set of tiny lights arranged in a hexagonal pattern, and they were still blinking irregularly.
"Murdoch," Mu said with the voice of someone giving command. "Jam all communications within this hangar space."
…
…
The two Zeroes were scrapped a short while later, and Murdoch (along with Mu and Kira) went to report their findings.
"It was still transferring data even after it was shot down…" Murrue repeated. "Was anything compromised?"
"Hard to tell; ZOE's built like a coffin." Murdoch grumpily replies. "Hell, I don't even know if it has any cameras inside that thing."
Miriallia played with her instruments a little. "There's been no sign of tampering on our intranet." She reports.
"At least it didn't get onto the ship." Murrue sighs. "Save anything interesting you found and jettison the rest." She commands.
"Gladly." Murdoch grins.
All of them miss the small spikes of activity on the intranet system…and who could blame them? That activity could've been anything.
…
Several hours later, while the Archangel and its two escort ships were still searching through the debris belt, one of the escorting Kusanagi cruisers suddenly picked up a distress signal and repeated it to the Archangel.
"Any allied units, we request immediate assistance." The female voice said. "Our ship has been attacked and is stranded at the following coordinates." It then repeated a set of three numbers. "If you can hear this message, please assist us."
Murrue muted it before it played again. "What do you think?" She asks her bridge.
"Probably a trick." Sai said immediately. "Nobody's that calm when rattling off a long set of numbers."
"Those numbers are functionally meaningless, too." Tolle agreed. "She didn't give us a point of reference."
Navigating in space required points of references otherwise the numbers involved becomes astronomically huge…and useless.
"Well, by default a ship's navigation assumes the point of reference is closest major locale." Natarle replies. "For us, that would be…"
"Junius Seven." Murrue answers uncomfortably. "Plug in the numbers, and see what we get."
So they do, and a large map of the area is displayed on the main screen of the bridge. On the map was a circle denoting the area they needed to search (as the person did not include a compass direction).
"We're over here." The navigation officer said, gesturing to a spot just outside of the search radius on the map. "We can probably go through the entire search area within five hours."
"That's an oddly long amount of time." Sai notes.
"Blazing through a belt of dangerous debris isn't exactly a thing we want to do carelessly…unless you feel like doing two passes." Neuman (helmsman) replies. "Besides, if whatever attacked the ship is still around, we don't want to run into it without preparations."
…
In the end, it was agreed that the three ships would alternate between active and passive status to preserve its pilot stamina as they went to do the searching, as the large amount of debris made searches and scans from the ship problematic.
"So how did they get the message onto our ships?" Tolle had asked.
"It was a prerecorded message from a small transponder." Was the explanation. "Apparently the ship that sent it sent a lot of those little things out. We just happened to find one."
In short, the crew was on a rescue mission of a ship that was simply in danger, as opposed to looking for the ship that sent them the signal, and everyone just crossed their fingers and prayed really hard that the two are one and the same.
…
After two hours of scouring the designated areas for signs of the ship, they found it.
Or, more accurately, they found a pink behemoth of a ship hiding in an overly dense section of the debris field.
"That's an incredibly eye-catching color for a warship." Mu said diplomatically, as he and the entirety of the mobile suit squadrons from all three ships converged upon the ship.
"That's an incredibly polite way of putting it." Kira mutters. "It is what we're looking for, right?"
A hail (on an open frequency) from the ship interrupted him. "Is that you, Kira?"
Kira's heard that voice before. "Athrun? Are you on that ship?"
"As circumstances would have it." Athrun replies. "This is the Eternal…but what are all of you doing here?"
"We're here to search for a ship that's been emitting a rescue signal." Murrue said. "Judging by your reaction, that wasn't you guys."
The Eternal was silent for a moment.
"This is Captain Andrew Waltfield: We sent a coded message to Orb." Waltfield replied. "But we never tried hailing for a rescue; this ship is still in operational status."
"So who sent those messages?" Kira wondered, looking around with his Strike and drawing his rifle.
"More importantly, were the messages friendly to begin with?" Mu mutters.
Murrue mulls it over for a minute. "All ships assume battle stations. Give full power to our detector systems; if they're around here, we'll find them. Eternal, what are your plans?"
"Given that our hiding spot is compromised, we'll escape into open space." Waltfield replied. "We can think about what to do next later."
"Acknowledged, we'll escort you out." Murrue responded.
"Isn't there an Orb port in space somewhere?" Kira asks over a private network.
"Heliopolis was the only overtly friendly one, the rest of the stages are a bit of a toss-up right now." Mu answers. "Not sure if Usea has any that we should know about either…"
The four ships form up into a triangle formation (with the Eternal in the center) and sail out into the open space.
Upon reaching the edge of the debris belt, however, they received what they were expecting.
"Contacts!" Sai reports as the threat radar warbles. "What the hell…?" He breathes in surprise.
"What is it?" Murrue demands.
Sai grits his teeth. "Contacts are four Strike Gundams!"
The four Strikes were painted in a uniform blood red and were accelerating towards the allied ships.
"Yeah, I see them." Kira replies, feeling a little put off by the fact that the face plates of the red Strikes—normally a face—is replaced with a blank slate with seven glowing dots arranged in a hexagonal pattern. "Bet you anything they're more of those ZOE units."
"How many are there and who's producing them?" Mu wonders. "The Federation?"
"Or someone using the Federation." Murrue replies. "All units engage, take them down."
"We should get away from here." Waltfield advises instead. "We've tussled with those things before. They're miles ahead of anything we've faced so far."
"Roger that." Mu replies. "We'll be careful." He then fires three shots at the leading Strike.
It responds by jetting itself downwards, causing Mu's attacks to sail harmlessly over its head. It then responded further by returning the same three shots at Mu.
Mu dodged them with comparatively less grace than the ZOE Strike. "Alright, it's no pushover; all units break off and engage the enemy units, gang up on them and don't let them support each other." He orders.
"Understood." Kira charges forward and engages one of the ZOE Strikes in saber to saber combat.
Surprisingly, the other ZOE Strikes immediately disengage and fan out further.
"Are they luring us?" Mu mutters. "Don't chase them out too far, it could be a trap."
"Not like we can try with how slow Astrays are." Tolle grumbles, firing at a ZOE Strike with no real effect.
…
[Unknown Location]
…
"ZOE Captain Unit 2 has made contact with the Super Coordinator." A robotic female voice reports tonelessly. "It is proceeding with the data collection. Captain Units 1, 3 and 4 are awaiting alternative directives."
"Commence data collection." A robotic male voice commands in an equally flat voice. "This is a prime opportunity."
"The ZOE Captains are currently engaged in battle." The female voice reminds him.
"Our objective is the collection of data." The male voice replies. "Taking damage is negligible."
"Acknowledged; deploying additional ZOE units."
…
[Archangel]
…
"What the hell?" Mu scowls as the three ZOE Strikes suddenly turn as one towards Kira and accelerate towards him with their beam sabers active. "Kira! Watch your back!"
"What? Shit." Kira breaks off his duel with his target with a kick and fires two shots from his beam rifle into its torso.
The hexagonal pattern on all four ZOE Strikes glow momentarily.
"They're all going for him?!" Tolle snarls. "All units open fire! Give Kira cover!"
The three ZOE Strikes have already reached Kira, and thus supporting fire was more problematic than helpful.
What's with these guys? Kira thinks as he dodges a lunge from one of the ZOEs. It's like they're trying to get killed.
Kira's reply to the lunge was a shot to the back of the attacking unit.
To his surprise, however, the ZOE turned and intercepted the shot with its shield.
He didn't have much time to think on it however, as his alarms were going off about another unit at his back.
Kira spun rapidly with his beam saber and swats another ZOE that was lunging at his back. This time, he didn't arrest his rotation to stop, but instead accelerated into the spin and cut into the ZOE's armor with three very fast but very light hits.
The two other ZOE units open fire with his beam rifles at Kira's Strike as Kira regains control and accelerates out of the way, giving the breathing room needed for the rest of the Astrays on approach to blanket the ZOE units with fire.
The ZOE units, in response, begin systematically dispatching the Astrays with extremely precise firing even as they erratically dodged incoming fire.
"All of you back off and leave them to me!" Kira says quickly and desperately when half of the Astrays were wiped out.
"Doesn't look like we have much of a choice. Damn." Tolle withdrew, his Astray having suffered a hit that destroyed its beam rifle and arm. "Watch yourself, buddy."
Kira's response was to slam into a ZOE Strike with his shield and then impale its head with his beam saber.
He then felt his Strike shudder as it sustained a hit on the Aile's booster engines. He jettisons the Aile pack, as it was now no longer useful.
"It feels like they're improving." Mu breathes.
"They're sharing and receiving a large amount of data." Miriallia notes. "So it's entirely possible that they're learning from each other."
Kira heard it, and was not exactly pleased by that revelation. So they're here to gather data on me?
Kira focused upon the thought of victory and went into SEED mode. Then gather as much as you want, you bastards.
Two more ZOE Strikes remain, and they backed off from the Strike while firing at it with their beam rifles.
Kira grabbed the remains of the Aile Strike pack and tossed it like a boomerang at one of the ZOE Strikes. The ZOE unit, in response, peppered it with its head mounted Vulcans and destroyed it.
Then there was a minor cry of anguish from the Archangel's hangars, but nobody heard it, so…
Kira charged through the scraps that used to be the Strike pack with his two beam sabers active, and tear into the ZOE, chopping it up into its component pieces.
The second ZOE activates its two beam sabers in mimicry of Kira's tactics and charges forward. Kira's response was to sheath one of his sabers and patiently wait.
The ZOE unit charged at full speed, allowing Kira to dodge it by dropping downwards at the last moment. As the ZOE missed and moved to turn, Kira shot it unceremoniously in the torso, and the now uncontrolled ZOE Strike sailed straight into the debris belt.
"To be honest, I expected more out of them." Kira said confidently. "They don't seem to be nearly as dangerous as you say they were."
"Maybe this batch was defective?" Athrun replies after letting out the breath he didn't realize he was holding. "The one we met was zooming all over the place."
"Yeah. Compared to him these guys were just sitting there and taking it." Yzak agrees. "Are there more of them on radar?"
"No…yes!" The Eternal's radar operator says with surprise. "More contacts coming on radar, approaching us at high speed!"
"How many are there?" Murrue asks as Kira made his way back to the Archangel.
"Uh…twenty." Miriallia says a little faintly. "But based on these signatures, only one of them is a mobile suit, the rest are all mobile armors…"
"Still, twenty enemy units?" Mu laughs darkly. "Who's out for us this time?"
Murrue thinks it over for a second. "All units prepare to engage." She orders and then turns to Sai. "What's the IFF of the newcomers?"
"Uh…" Sai takes a moment to parse the name on the screen. "The mobile suit is broadcasting as ZOE RAY, and the littler things are broadcasting as ZOE GHOST. I don't know what any of that means. It's definitely hostile, though."
Sure enough, when they finally had the enemy unit on radar, it was a lone Mobile Suit with twenty red things arranged in a massive circle behind it.
"O…kay." Mu mutters as he zooms in on the mobile armor units. "I've never seen those things before. Anybody else?" He took special notice of its triangular design, green nose camera, and single cannon. "It might really be a ghost. I'm just going to call them ghosts."
Murrue slightly shook her head in shame.
"Enemy units are not showing up in our database." Sai replies worriedly. "Nor from the Usean database."
"Whatever they are, they're sending a massive amount of data over a secured connection." Miriallia reports. "Commencing data interception procedures now."
"That Gundam is also different from ours." Kira murmurs. "What's up with that thing? It's giving me the creeps." He took special notice of its blueish purple paintjob and six wing-like appendages on the back. "I'm guessing that thing is the boss."
"Kira, we're here to help as well." Athrun deploys in his Aegis. "I've never seen that unit before either…it's giving off an impressive pressure."
Yzak and Dearka both deployed as well.
"Yeah." Kira gulps, inwardly wishing he didn't trash the Aile pack (he had to switch to the Launcher instead).
The two sides stared at each other for a minute, before the Purple Gundam's eyes glowed alight.
Simultaneously, the nose cameras of the twenty ghosts flashed.
"Oh hell, they're coming!" Dearka raises the alarm and his rifle and fire at the ghosts.
The ghosts, in response, scattered over the wide space all around the combat area with frightening agility, before diving towards the Allied units with their guns blazing.
"Stay calm and aim carefully!" Kira yells before panic could properly set in. To drive his point home, he levelled his AGNI towards a ghost diving at the Archangel and erased it from existence.
"You have the biggest gun!" Dearka points out, firing and utterly failing to hit anything. "Gah!" He was hit in response. "Their caliber isn't too high, thank god for that."
"Us Astrays aren't doing too good." Mu grunts; his targeting computer had flat-out given up trying to track the ghosts as they zoomed around the combat area. "I wish I had a faster gun!"
"Twenty percent of anti-air guns lost." Sai reports. "We're getting hit hard here too!"
"Astrays, pull back to the ships! Provide them with support!" Mu commanded. "Sorry, kids, we're leaving the boss to you."
"All ships close in, saturate the airspace with fire!" Waltfield commands, moving the Eternal closer to the Archangel and giving it assistance with its own anti-aircraft fire.
But the Ghosts were like buzzing flies, circling around the ships at their whim and attacking from near-impossible angles. Despite the best attempts of the mobile suit pilots, it was plainly obvious that the ghosts were only interested in killing the ships.
Though the Astrays gave everything they had to assist the ships, it was far and away not nearly enough. Every time an Astray plink a ghost with its head Vulcans, all the ghosts within firing range would immediately turn on the offender and shred it with fire.
"Kusanagi One sustained a critical blow!" Miriallia reports over the alarms blaring in the Archangel Bridge. "It's going down!"
"Anti-aircraft systems entirely down. Main engines are offline." Sai grits his teeth. "The ship is effectively dead."
An explosion shook the ship.
"Gottfried two has been destroyed." Murrue said without waiting for Sai's response. "What just happened here?"
Within five minutes, all friendly ships were effectively dead.
…
The mobile suit squadron weren't doing well either.
"Gah! Shit." Yzak growls as his GuAIZ took a hit. "Main camera's dead. What's with that ungodly output?"
The purple Gundam had shot him clean in the head.
"Athrun! Circle around, flank him!" Kira orders, taking another AGNI shot at the purple Gundam.
The Gundam dodges easily out of the way and approaches Athrun's Aegis.
"Dammit!" Athrun activates the beam sabers in his Gundam's hands. He jabs at the purple Gundam and misses.
In response, the purple Gundam roundhouse kicks Athrun's unit in the kidney (if it had one) and sends it flying.
"Athrun!" Kira unleashes a barrage of missiles at the enemy, forcing it to evade and counter with the Vulcans instead of finishing off the Aegis with its beam rifle.
"Stay still, you bastard." Dearka growls. His Buster had lost an arm and a leg, but he could still aim. He depresses his trigger twice.
The Gundam pulls out its beam saber and deflects the two shots aimed above him before dancing away from the AGNI coming from below him.
"That kind of response time is not normal!" Kira complains as his AGNI was struck by the purple Gundam's beam rifle. He tosses the entire cannon at the enemy Gundam, but the cannon exploded before it even reached halfway.
"This is the worst situation." Athrun grits his teeth and fires at the Purple Unknown. "Kira, our ships are getting hammered." He shakes his head slightly to clear it.
"I know, but we can't break from this guy." Kira retorts. "Whoa!" The Unknown had charged right at him and tackled the Strike in the chest before spinning and decapitating the Strike with its beam saber. The Strike responds with Launcher pack's shoulder-mounted chaingun, but to avail.
The Purple Gundam's eyes flashes again, and the red ghosts were recalled to its side, reforming into their circular formation behind the Gundam like some demented ring of death.
"Oh…hell no." Athrun mutters. "Something big's coming!"
The Purple Unknown's eyes flashed red, and the ghosts zipped towards the Allied units even as the allied Gundams gathered together.
The friendly units opened fire with everything they had towards the incoming ghosts, but the ghosts zipped through the hail of fire with their spastic evasive maneuvers while blanketing the friendlies with gunfire.
With the amount of fire involved, the Phase Shift armor couldn't withstand the damage output and within moments the Strike, Aegis, and Buster Gundams were all inoperational.
The ghosts, following their attack, reformed into their ring formation and struck again.
…
[Unknown Location]
…
"ZOE Ray has finished its engagement." The female robot voice announces. "Augmenting other ZOE units with collected data."
"Recall the deployed units." The male robot voice commands. "Continue production of the Ray subroutines as planned."
…
[Archangel]
…
The Purple Unknown's eyes flashed green again, and then it promptly turned around and zoomed off into the depths of space with its ghosts, leaving the wasted husks of the allied fleet and Gundams behind.
.
.
.
{ === + === }
Author Notes:
I have an endgame planned now! *pom poms*
Also, I have made a mistake in the last chapter. The blue, tuning fork-like warship of Orb is the Izumo-class, not the Kusanagi-class. The ship's name is the Kusanagi.
I will continue to make this mistake because "Kusanagi" is cooler.