Glancing at the internal damage readouts, Amuro paused what he was doing to adjust the Guncannon's hold on the boulder it was currently leaning against to make sure the rock didn't give out under the mobile suit's hands. He already had to mute the damage alarm on the right leg just to be able to concentrate through the pounding headache, half-considering abusing the contents of the first aid kit inside the back of his seat for relief. At least the nosebleed stopped a couple minutes ago, so there was that, but he didn't need to be a doctor to know it wasn't normal.
Ever since... whatever happened that left him at this point in time, his senses remained dulled. He was getting somewhat used to it by now, but whenever he went into combat and reflexively reached out to read the opposition by force of habit, it felt as if he was slowly driving his skull up a barbed, white-hot iron spike. Sure, being a Newtype came with pretty bad migraines occasionally when he ran into others of his kind who didn't agree with him, but nothing like this. It was like using his Newtype senses was actively hurting him.
...was this how Cyber-Newtypes felt?
He never got the opportunity to talk to one (who wasn't trying to kill him, that is), but it would certainly explain their incessant complaints about headaches whenever they exerted their unnaturally-gained abilities. Ironically enough, he now found himself in the same situation of having no one to talk to: as far as he knew, only the Flanagan Institute had even the slightest idea about anything Newtype-related at the moment. And even if he were to somehow contact them without arousing suspicion from talking to who are ostensibly enemy personnel, chances were that he knew more about Newtypes than they ever did before their research data was plundered by Axis, then confiscated by the Federation.
Focus. He didn't have time for this right now.
He didn't need to get out and peek underneath the armor to know that the Guncannon's thigh joint was busted from being overstressed. Kemp was no doubt going to give him an earful for having overridden the actuator safeties that were supposed to prevent this very scenario, but it wasn't as if Amuro had much of a choice. Armor or not, a Guncannon wasn't exactly the ideal mobile suit for taking on Char Aznable – and Zaku or not, the man was still a latent Newtype among the highly exclusive club of those who repeatedly managed to put Amuro on the ropes and walk away with their lives afterwards. Without Amuro having subtly tweaked the actuator settings while he was familiarizing himself with the handling of a mobile suit he had only ever piloted in live combat once, Char would've ran rings around him.
Luckily for him, the damage wasn't severe enough to immobilize the suit altogether. Normal suits weren't exactly designed for hiking who knows how many kilometers in snow, after all. And on that note, Amuro could clearly recall the very distinct lack of snow the last time he experienced a highly off-course reentry alongside the White Base. That and the terrain didn't look mountainous enough to indicate that said snow and the pine forest he was in was at high altitude, which meant wherever they descended was even more off-course from Jaburo than before. At least, Amuro was reasonably sure he wasn't somewhere in the Andes this time.
With the Guncannon stabilized for the moment, Amuro turned his attention back towards the radio. There was nothing, but that was to be expected. They were so deep in enemy territory that broadcasting at high enough power to break through Minovsky jamming would reveal the ship's location to any Zeon patrol that happened to have radio detection gear tuned to known Federation frequencies, encryption or no encryption.
And that's if there even were survivors other than him. The last he saw of the White Base was that of the ship falling all but sideways and trailing a thick column of smoke as it careened towards the forest below.
Drawing a deep breath, Amuro keyed the radio to record mode and spoke into the mic. – "Whiskey 3 to Whiskey-Bravo-Alpha. CQ, CQ, CQ."
He then set the recording to loop on broadcast before the Guncannon let go of the boulder and started slowly hobbling towards the column of smoke wafting above the treeline.
Kilometers away, the cockpit screens of the Zaku finally flickered to life as the backup power kicked in. Frankly, it was a miracle that the cooling system lasted long enough for Char to make a rather violent semi-powered landing after the Guncannon wasted no time kicking him off as soon as they decelerated to a safe velocity, the Zaku's sole remaining arm immediately parting with the shoulder and disintegrating into carbonized scrap from the slightest force. He could only guess what the other pilot was thinking as the two mobile suits silently glared at each other, drifting apart, the burned and semi-molten Zaku with a single leg and no arms looking like some kind of misshapen, demonic abomination as it fell from the sky.
After that, Char's attention was more concerned with his engines suddenly cutting out under him mid-fall when his reactor auto-scrammed from lack of cooling and left him with no propellant heating.
This mobile suit was never going to fight again, Char knew. Even the cockpit hatch was partially jammed to the point where he was forced to fire the explosive bolts to get out. One look outside told him that his mission wasn't a failure after all, even if it wasn't a complete success either. No jungle meant that the White Base wasn't anywhere near Jaburo and Char himself saw that they didn't escape unscathed.
He chuckled to himself at how much of a stroke of luck it was that the White Base didn't get enough escorts to put up Minovsky jamming sufficient to drown out a targeting laser, as was Dren being quick on the draw. Just a dozen meters or so and that shot would've nailed the White Base straight in the bridge, putting the Gundam out of business once and for all with no mothership to fall back to and not enough range to make it anywhere else before the oxygen ran out.
If only he had also managed to swallow the pride borne of his previous encounter with that ship and its mobile suits long enough to have actually called ahead to Garma, like last time. Chances are, the Gaw would've already been circling overhead if he had, looking for the stricken White Base like a vulture that smelled prey.
Alas, Char Aznable wasn't that lucky.
If anything, today's dose of luck was spent entirely on the fact that he was somehow still breathing after diving headfirst into Earth's atmosphere from above in a Zaku II without a Komusai.
Glancing up at the ceiling of the cockpit, the corner of Char's mouth drew into a smirk.
'In your face, Crown.'
Where did that thought come from, he couldn't tell even if someone would've been around to ask him. Yet as if a dam had burst, the chuckling erupted into borderline hysterical laughter heavy with disbelief and relief in equal measure.
How was he still alive?
If the Grim Reaper existed, he must've been very pissed by now at how many times Char danced with death and walked away laughing, sometimes literally. Hell, the very reason he was here in the first place was him tempting fate one times too many for the sake of settling the score with his old nemesis... only to have inexplicably walked away from that one too with time travel, of all things.
Trolling death itself with no rhyme nor reason. Now that's another achievement worthy of a man who breathed reckless and crapped notoriety.
As soon as he got himself mostly under control, a still chuckling Char reached for the radio.
He missed the button.
Frowning, he tried again, only to fail once more.
Only then did he realize his hand was trembling like a leaf in the wind, his earlier mirth draining away without a trace as his mind fully rebooted.
...how in the name of all that's holy was he still alive?!
How ironic was it that after all his talk about humanity's evolution into Newtypes needing to be forced in order to bear fruit before they drove themselves to extinction, Char himself needed a proverbial kick in the head for the equally proverbial pieces to finally fall into place. All those times he obstinately tried to find explanations to the enigmatic foe who has been continually foiling him every time they came face to face, only to dismiss the most obvious one.
That said foe has been his old rival all along.
How it happened, he had no idea. At age 15, Amuro Ray was an impulsive and inexperienced, yet crafty and obstinate mobile suit pilot whose repeated victories over Zeon aces with vastly more combat experience than him was equal measure luck and his victims repeatedly underestimating both him and the proverbial bigger stick that was the Gundam.
Char knew that better than anyone, for he himself had fallen into that very trap far too many times than he liked to admit.
Out of everyone alive at the moment, Amuro Ray was the only one Char knew beyond a doubt had the potential to grow into a threat he might not be able to handle. Even Haman had the advantage of coming at him that one time with the Qubeley in an era where psycommu-controlled weapons on a mobile suit as opposed to a mobile armor were an outside context problem even to other Newtypes – and that was before the damn thing went into mass-production, with even Char himself having briefly considered getting one of those in red before the Neo-Zeon engineers came up with the Sazabi.
Amuro, however, was the only one who was capable of matching him blow for blow under (mostly) equal conditions, as Char found out the hard way twice over. Even on Axis there were pilots who insisted the dreaded White Devil only won time and time again because he was a Newtype, with Char in no mood at the time to bother pointing out that Amuro bagged the entire Black Tri-Stars well before he had even awakened. And yet that performance with a mere Guncannon, a suit Char actually read the manual and technical specs of before handing all of it over to that guy from the 603rd and thus knew for a fact was physically impossible to achieve by an Oldtype against Zaku pilots who knew even half of what they were doing...
...could Amuro have actually come back with him?
The thought alone was enough to make him break into cold sweat even as his shaking hands finally managed to cooperate long enough to get the radio up.
Why, oh why didn't he call Garma when he had the chance?!
"Yes, I know!" – Bright closed his eyes for a moment as if in momentary prayer for patience from whatever deity was listening. – "For the last time, I want ALL damage control personnel down in engineering ASAP! Leave that bloody door be and move on!" – He slammed the wired handset down back to its socket in the captain's chair. – "Sensors!"
"White 1 reports no contacts!" – came Marker's reply a moment later.
Which admittedly didn't say much. As far as Bright knew, there could be an entire Zeon regiment beelining towards their crash site at the moment and nobody would know until they were already in sight range. The ship's sensor array was down from heat exposure to their rather unstable reentry and frankly they had bigger issues to deal with at the moment.
Or rather, Bright had bigger issues to deal with. For once, he wasn't the one taken out of commission as a result of enemy attack. On the other hand, Cassius having been one of those who got tossed head-first into the nearest wall upon touchdown meant that Bright was the one stuck dealing with a dozen fires, both metaphorical and literal. At least they got the latter ones under control by now, and without starting a forest fire that would give their position away to everyone within a hundred kilometers, even.
Not that the kilometer-long stretch of pulverized trees behind them wouldn't do just that to the first recon flight to get eyes on the area from above.
"Sitrep."
And speaking of which... – "Sir, I've got this. Go back to the infirmary."
Cassius tried to shake his bandaged head, only to wince hard and have to grab onto the doorframe before Bright reached him and offered a shoulder. – "What's our status?" – he repeated with audible strain.
"Grounded." – Bright replied as he helped his superior into the captain's chair, internally conflicted over whether to praise or curse the man for his stubbornness – especially at this age. – "Minovsky Craft System failed during the descent, we're trying to get it back online and move before a patrol finds us."
"Readiness?"
"White 1 is on the hull as lookout." – Bright pointed a thumb at the white form of the Gundam standing on top of the starboard hangar beyond the bridge window. – "White 2 is a little cooked but still upright."
"What about White 3?"
This time Bright couldn't suppress a sigh. – "MIA. He got separated from us during reentry."
Which was only marginally better than outright knowing he burned to a crisp. While he hadn't known the kid for long, Bright dearly hoped Amuro hadn't bought the farm. Having to send someone even younger than him into a battle because they were that short on pilots was bad enough, but it was Amuro who warned them about the incoming fire from the Musai. Every single one of the White Base's crew was still breathing because of him.
"I'd have already sent out José in a Core Fighter to look for him, but the port hangar looks like someone worked it over with a blowtorch and the door hydraulics are cut, so he's stuck in there." – he continued.
"Unless he takes a page out of the Red Comet's book and blasts his way out." – Cassius pointed out.
"He's ahead of you with that one, but I told him to wait at least until we have incoming. Ventilation's busted and the internal door's melted shut, so they can't get in to check whether the fuel lines are ruptured and we're all sitting on a ticking bomb."
"In which case he'll blow us all to kingdom come the moment he pulls that trigger."
"My thoughts exactly."
Cassius tapped a few buttons on his armrest, switching one of the monitors above the window to one of the still-working external cameras with a view of the gaping hole on the top of the port hangar, edges visibly molten and re-solidified, the armor material having had ample time to cool back down. Both men winced at the sight. It wasn't quite as bad as what Char did back at Luna II, but that one was mostly surface damage along the engine nacelle. This, however, went straight through and Bright knew if he were to stand on the edge and look down, he'd see dirt.
On the other hand, the ship sporting such a sizable hole did have one rather morbid advantage to it. – "I'd say that takes care of venting any fumes, sir." – Bright noted in a flat tone.
"Not going to buff out, unfortunately." – Cassius agreed. – "On the other hand..." – He trailed off for a few moments before snapping his fingers. – "How fast do you think a beam saber can widen that hole enough for White 2 to fit out through?"
"White 2 doesn't have a beam saber." – Bright replied, recalling what he managed to memorize from the Project V materials in the brief time he had outside his duties. Command crew or not, Cassius was adamant that both of them should have an at least cursory level of familiarity with the capabilities and specialties of the mobile suits the ship now carried and Bright could see no fault in his superior's logic.
"White 1 does. And we'll get to keep our hangar door."
"I'll let the lieutenant know, but none of it will do us any good if we get caught on the ground."
Both fell silent and Bright was about to excuse himself and go back to his duties when Cassius looked up at him and asked the million dollar question.
"Where are we?"
Bright sighed, sending a glance at Mirai who was currently sitting at one of the terminals at the rear of the bridge. – "I don't know. Yashima is trying to backtrack our descent trajectory right now, but we're very far off-course."
Cassius opened his mouth to reply but was beaten to it by an irritated voice. – "Captain!"
Sayla all but stormed across the bridge straight to the two of them, looking none-too-pleased. Bright idly noted Frau standing back at the door, visibly hesitant to barge onto the bridge uninvited.
"I didn't give you permission to leave the infirmary!"
Cassius tried to shake his head again, only to lean back with a groan that made the irate blonde narrow her eyes. – "They don't get to rest, I don't get to rest."
"With all due respect, sir, you have a severe concussion!"
"And so do a lot of other people."
"She's right, though." – Bright interjected. – "We're not under fire just yet and DC doesn't warrant you pushing yourself like this. I can handle the situation."
Any other superior officer and Bright would've thought twice before making such a suggestion. Logic or not, questioning the judgment of a ship's captain in front of his entire bridge crew was not something especially tolerated by any navy. One simply did not undermine an officer's authority when loss of respect and trust in said officer knowing what he was doing might make his subordinates hesitate to follow his orders in a life-or-death situation and potentially get someone killed as a result.
If push came to shove, Bright would follow an order even if he knew it was a bad idea. He knew his place in the pecking order as a junior officer, after all. That being said, he also knew that blind obedience was not the way to prevent mistakes – and besides, being a junior officer usually involved unfucking someone else's mistakes, sometimes from both directions at once.
That and losing the man to overwork while injured would leave him and everyone else in even deeper shit than they already were.
"Don't be so quick kicking me off my own bridge, XO." – Cassius quipped with a smirk that let Bright know he didn't overstep just yet. – "I might just return the favor down the line."
"Wouldn't dream of it, sir." – the younger officer replied neutrally.
Technically Cassius did it first, but Bright wasn't going to say that out loud. Granted, he was actually unconscious at the time thanks to oxygen deprivation, and even once he was awake enough to get the oxygen mask off, he needed quite some time until his vacuum-exposed skin and eyes stopped feeling raw from literally any physical contact with anything else. Being in space was actually helpful in that regard: the normal suit took the worst of it even without the helmet, to the point where by now he could actually sit properly on a chair under gravity without painkillers.
"Just don't go running off after the Red Comet if he sticks his nose out without telling me first." – Cassius briefly glanced in Sayla's direction. – "And you can consider that an order, doctor's orders be damned."
Bright opened his mouth to reply but was interrupted for the second time in a row, this time by Mirai approaching the officers with a tablet. – "Sir... I think I have our position."
That news alone was enough reason for Bright to not mind the interruption, he decided. – "Good work."
She handed the tablet in her hands over to Bright. – "It's only an approximate, but... we're somewhere in the vicinity of 64°N, 117°W."
"...I'm not a navigator but that doesn't quite sound like South America." – Cassius spoke up with a frown. – "Where does that put us, Bright?"
The younger man quickly consulted with the tablet before looking up with a stricken look. – "...northern Canada, sir."
Which meant that they were way the hell off the beaten path.
The exact opposite direction to Jaburo relative to the objective of two entire Zeon orbital drop operations half a year before, in fact.
With the entire North American occupation force and the Central American front between them and their destination, flanked by two oceans full of Zeon subs.
All of which Cassius summed up with a single near-silent word that almost escaped Bright's hearing.
"...fuck."
Mirai cast her eyes down. – "I'm sorry."
"Don't be." – Cassius replied instantly, beating Bright to the same. – "If it weren't for you, none of us would still be alive and you can be damn sure I'll be citing you for a commendation for it." – He winced. – "Just as soon as my headache stops..."
"Which it won't while you're here." – Sayla said in a tone considerably more gentler than earlier, as she too could read the room even if she wouldn't have been within earshot of the news. – "Let's go, sir."
Cassius finally nodded in resignation, but barely began to rise from his seat when the entire bridge suddenly lurched, sending almost everyone stumbling to the ground. To her credit, Mirai was the first one on her feet, running right to the helm station without even waiting for orders as the deck under their feet continued to tremble.
"White 1, sitrep!" – Cassius barked into his chair's radio, all thoughts of an infirmary rest driven out by the adrenaline.
"No contact, repeat, no contact! That one came from the ship!"
"White 2 here, I felt it too!" – came Ryu's voice. – "What did you do?!"
"Helm, report!"
"Starboard MCS just went active!" – Mirai yelled back over her shoulder. – "It's trying to lift us off!"
The sound of groaning hull almost drowned her out as the entire ship shook, the floor slowly but steadily tilting to the left. The outside view beyond the window tipped in the opposite direction before the groan intensified into the sound of metal being tortured as another violent tremor threatened to shake everyone off their feet and dust rose up before the window.
"White Base, you are groundstriking!" – Kemp warned, the Gundam visibly hunching over trying to maintain balance on its suddenly unstable footing. – "Repeat, you are skidding along the ground! Increase port side lift!"
"There is no port side lift!" – Mirai replied in a panicked tone as she frantically tried to operate the flight controls, not that Kemp could hear her. – "The entire fore port quadrant on my board is red!"
Everyone had to grip something as the floor continued to tilt to the point where Frau's grip on the doorframe slipped and the girl faceplanted straight into the opposite wall of the corridor with a yelp.
"It's going to tip us over!" – Cassius warned. – "Shut it down!"
"I-I don't know how!"
Bright was next to Mirai in an instant, looking at the readouts. – "Throttle controls are stuck!" – He quickly grabbed the headset on the helm station and held it to his head with one hand while holding on with the other. – "Engineering, cut power to all MCS relays immediately! All of them!"
Suddenly everything on the bridge became weightless for a second before the ship violently slammed back into the ground. This time nobody succeeded remaining on their feet. Even the Gundam visibly stumbled before its gyros saved it from falling off the hangar.
"If that would've flipped us over..." – a rather pale Cassius muttered as Bright and Sayla pulled themselves up from the ground, the latter immediately moving to help up a slightly dazed-looking Frau.
"Uh, sir?" – Oscar called down from his station above and behind him. – "Sirs? I'm getting something."
"Have they found us?"
"Scope is clear, but I'm getting a faint signal on Federation frequencies. Trying to clear it up..." – He fiddled with his controls for a few moments before he called out – "It's White 3, sir!"
This time Bright couldn't keep his thoughts in. – "...I'll be damned."
"Patch us in." – Cassius ordered immediately.
"We're under blackout protocol, sir." – Marker replied. – "First officer's orders."
Cassius sent a glance in Bright's direction. – "Good call. Suspend protocol and proceed."
A nod and three seconds later, Oscar spoke into his headset's mic. - "Whiskey 3, this is Whiskey-Bravo. Please respond."
"Whiskey 3, inbound for RTB." – came Amuro's voice through the bridge PA, causing Frau to perk up in surprise. – "Be advised, Red Comet is still in theater."
Now that was news Bright definitely didn't like to hear – and from his swearing, nor did Cassius. - "How the hell...?!"
"Unable to confirm bandit's position. No enemy contact at this time."
"Whiskey 3, do you require a beacon?"
"Negative. Have visual on heading. ETA... 30 minutes, unable to expedite."
"Understood. Be advised, radio silence protocols in effect. Short-range comms only."
"Copy, going silent."
Bright looked at Cassius with worry. – "Sir, if Char called our position in..."
"It'll be raining Zakus soon." – Cassius finished in a terse tone. – "Tell engineering to deprioritize all damage control except the MCS. Light a fire under their asses if you have to, but we need to get out of here right goddamn now."
Post-it author's notes – 2023.08.01.
As far as I'm aware, Char has never piloted a Qubeley in canon. Gundam vs Zeta Gundam, however, has a special route unlocked after all three factions' best endings where Lalah and Sayla both die in the crossfire between Amuro and Char at A Baoa Qu. As a result, the two's rivalry becomes even more bitter to the point where Char takes command of Axis alongside Haman and initiates the events of Char's Counterattack six years early. Since the game does not include any mobile suits from CCA, Char instead uses Puru Two's red Qubeley Mark II as his mobile suit of choice while Amuro pilots the Zeta Gundam in Kamille's place. History ends up repeating itself with Kamille and Haman both dying at Luna 2, forcing Amuro and Judau to confront Char by themselves.
In other routes where Char either stays with Axis because AEUG is never founded or joins the Titans to complete his revenge against the Zabis (sometimes both), he frequently uses a red Hyaku Shiki (which is sadly unusable in any of his AEUG routes).
UC technical manuals are not very verbose regarding how mobile suit engines work. Considering that all UC mobile suits without exception are nuclear-powered, I'm guessing that the most likely candidate is a nuclear thermal engine fundamentally similar to the NERVA concept from the seventies which NASA studied and successfully proved as feasible. In such an engine, the propellant does not undergo chemical combustion like in a conventional engine but is instead funneled through the core of an active nuclear reactor, superheating it to temperatures (and thus exhaust pressures) in excess of what's possible with a chemical engine, resulting in far superior fuel efficiency. Needless to say, you don't want to stand in front of the exhaust nozzle when it's active.
While the original NERVA concept was designed around a fission reactor, nothing says fusion cannot do the job (and in fact, the sci-fi concept of the Bussard Ramjet is basically just that), but it does require a less-efficient closed-cycle configuration that prevents the propellant from mixing with the fusion fuel in order to avoid contaminating the latter. Thrust and fuel efficiency are inversely proportional with each other and depend on the propellant's atomic mass; hydrogen is the most efficient fuel on paper, but the Dom's Saturn engines in particular are noted to use a propellant rich in heavy metals, which makes sense considering that they're supposed to be holding up the weight of a 60+ ton mobile suit under gravity.
The vernier engines used for zero-G maneuvering are a bit clearer matter as most mobile suits use liquid-fueled thrusters. One notable exception is the Ball, which uses solid-fuel cartridges that, combined with lower weight compared to that of a full-sized mobile suit, give it a substantially higher thrust-to-weight ratio for evasion maneuvers in a way that's also cheap, mechanically simple and fairly quick to replace once spent. The catch is that since solid-fuel thrusters cannot be extinguished until the fuel runs out, they cannot be rationed the way liquid-fuel thrusters can, thus Balls can only dodge a finite number of times in each direction before running out of cartridges and needing to disengage for resupply. Real-life verniers utilize monopropellant "cold gas" thrusters that are basically just a high-pressure gas tank with a valve on one end that vents the tank's contents into space when thrust is needed. For efficiency's sake, it's not out of the question that the "liquid-fuel" verniers on mobile suits are actually monoprop thrusters running on the same fuel as the main engine, just without going through the reactor, since this would greatly simplify both engineering (no need for multiple fuel tanks with separate piping for each) and logistics (fewer types of fuel to resupply and inventory).