I woke up in a rather odd place, seconds ago I had been trying to shake up my night's blanket to break away from the searing summer heat. But suddenly the cool air was replaced by a warm sensation covering my body, not close to the heat of the summer night but rather it was like a perfectly kept room. Warm enough not to be cold, but cool not to be called hot.

Then there was a loud ringing noise blasted into me ears. Enough that I was forced to rapidly blink my eyes open with the sort of half awareness that meant my surroundings weren't taken in as much as my clothes were. It was an alarmingly odd suit I was wearing too.

A beige jumpsuit, it felt sealed as if it was a wetsuit but lacked the… wetness that one would have. Then there was a helmet around my head, this wasn't something I could see the color of but I hoped it matched. Like the rest of the suit, this thing appeared air-tight, but given that I could feel new air being recycled at the same time this wasn't much of a worry for me.

The next thing that I noticed was that there were two flight sticks gripped between my hands. An hatswitch on each too, an almost analog feeling version of the device that I had only ever used a digital eight-way version of.

The final set of things that I noticed, as my eyes cleared from the bright light, was how I was stuck in a cockpit. Buttons, levels, pedals, and a panoramic monitor were all in my face. It looked vaguely like the Gundam Arcade Game in Japan, but larger, more detailed, and with such high-resolution screens that I was almost tricked into thinking that I was looking out a window. I came to a stunning conclusion, I was in the cockpit of a mobile suit.

"This is a dream," Was the only thing that came out of my lips.

"Ensign Colasour," A voice jumped into my ear, a low commanding tone that I'd only heard from a few people in my life. "Ensign, are you ok?"

"Yeah, yeah,'' I commented, taking the controls in hand and as if I had ingrained the practice into my muscle memory, I brought the mobile suit to a stand. Only realizing at the end that it had been laying on its back, on the bottom of a spaceship… which was in space, so while I didn't feel odd, I think I was technically upside down. Deciding not to feign any sort of knowledge, I went on; "Where am I?"

There was a beat of silence from whoever was on the other end of the comms channel before a new voice spoke up.

"Are you joking around with us, Ensign?" There was enough anger there that I felt like if I answered wrong it could mean trouble. "Because if your fucking with me, kid. I'll destroy your career. You'll be lucky to be licking shit off toilets, never mind sitting in a GM."

"No… sir!" I suddenly got the feeling that things would go better if I showed the man some basic respect. He sounded like he was some superior of mine in the military, I didn't need memories of how I got here if someone was yelling at me about being an ensign and destroying my career. "I've no idea how I got here or what I'm doing here, sir?"

"..." The line was silent for a few seconds before what I could only describe as the most exasperated sigh I have ever heard was made.

"You only bumped your head, Ensign," The man I could only assume was either the captain or a commander said this as if I'd been making some sort of different trouble the entire time I'd been working in his command. "First you got yourself trapped by getting your sleeve caught by your locker door. Then you managed to trip out of your GM during training, and now you've got Amnesia."

With those list of screw ups, I must have been a rather wimpy guy.

"Sorry, sir?"

"It's fine," he replied, in a manner that implied to me that I better not argue. "We don't have time to get you checked up by the ship's medic. Do you recall how to pilot the GM or did you lose technical as well as personal memories?"

I shifted the controls slightly, bringing the beam sprang gun up to line into the nothingness of space below the ship, but really above my unit.

"I seem to recall how to use the controls, sir," I replied honestly. "Just to make sure on general details though, I'm on a Salamis Class ship, given that I'm underneath it due to it lacking a proper mobile suit hanger. And for the final piece that I know we're probably going to fight Zeon Forces, which will probably consist of a lot of Zaku IIs?"

"You know, if this turns out to be part of a prank, you will be punished."

"Of course, sir!" Was the only thing that I could bring myself to say. I adjusted the straps on my body, ensuring that I wasn't going to start bouncing around the cockpit in the middle of combat. "Waiting Orders, sir!"

"Launch with the rest, form up behind them. Take out any mobile suit you see with a mono-eye. This is a tough battlefield, one of the Zeon's Strongholds, but luckily we've reinforcements for the fleet that broke through to Solomon."

Solomon…

This wasn't the worst place to find myself in, at least not in the wider Gundam multiverse. I could've been in a GM about to fight Devil Gundam, or been in a Zaku I about trying to fight Wing Zero. Being in a GM for the battle of Solomon and as reinforcements rather than the main fleet, this was a place I could reasonably survive.

And it was also close enough to the end of the war that I could reasonably survive the whole thing. Then retire from service after this, then find some quiet place for myself to spend the rest of my days trying to stay out of the rest of this universe's conflicts.

Maybe stay away from Ireland though, I did not look forward to that Colony Drop plan during one of the Zeta Gundam Animes.

I took in my surroundings, taking in the other four Salamis Class ships beside mine, with a trio of GMs on the underside of their ships. I could even spot a ship with a pair of GMs standing on the deck of one with a Hyper bazooka between them.

I took special note that I was piloting a regular GM, an RM-79 GM to be exact. A mobile suit designed as a cheaper version of the legendary RX-78 Gundam. Nowhere near as tough, not as fast, normally not carrying the same powerful generator, nor the amazing Learning Computer that helps to improve the pilot's response time with every engagement.

It didn't even carry the powerful Beam Rifle, instead, it was typically outfitted with a weaker Beam Spray Gun. At most a Hyper Bazooka copy that was of the same quality that the Gundam could carry.

It wasn't the worst machine in the One Year War, in fact, if it had deployed in the opening months the Zeon Forces would've lost with both superior numbers and units. But this was the ending months of the war, not the start of it. The GMs were at worst, less to the units Zeon were starting to field by a decent enough margin, at best they're relatively superior with rookie pilots.

Making the GM a dangerous mobile suit to find oneself in. If one was also a rookie.

"Pilots!" Our Comms Operator growled into my ear, he was an older gentleman, his eyesight seemed so bad that he needed glasses to see, his hair so grey that it was almost sheet white, unlike before when I was merely hearing the comms, this time I was getting a video feed too. "All Pilots launch now! Incoming Mobile suit! He's already taken out three ships and their suits!"

I couldn't even believe my ears. They had sent a single mobile suit to hold back our reinforcements? Even a Gelgoog, the best performance Unit that Zeon fielded in this time period in any substantial numbers, at least to my memory, against 20 GMs and five Salamis Class ships would be a slaughter.

So when I blasted off to fight with my fellow GM pilots to met this single Zeon Mobile Suit, I was surprised when out of the gate, it steamrolled through five GMs with tricky maneuvering that allowed him to take out two with a single beam from a specialized Beam Bazooka while also taking out nearby ones with the resulting explosion.

I recognized the model of Mobile Suit right away. It was a Rick Dom, model number MS-09R. A Space version of a ground-type mobile suit that Zeon developed to replace their older Zaku II Ground Type, the MS-09B Dom. It outperformed the Zaku II that was still the current mainstay of theirs, especially in space, but not so much that it should've been able to take out five GMs in ten seconds though it was probably helped with that with a big ass Beam Bazooka it carried.

This told me they were an Ace pilot, as they were both flying a limited-produced unit and had special equipment.

"Spread out!" I ordered over the comms, it didn't matter to me at the time that it was an open comm. "He can't pull shit like that if we keep our distance from each other."

There wasn't any push back to my shouting out orders. If they were all professionals, it made sense to me that they wouldn't talk shit when given good advice. That or they were so busy shitting themselves after seeing what the Rick Dom had done seconds earlier that they couldn't bring themselves to be pissed with me. We spread out with enough distance between us to fit whole warships.

And then we attempted to shoot down the Rick Dom with enough shots from our Beam Spray Guns to make up for lacking a Bazooka. But even with so many shots coming from so many directions, the Rick Dom effortlessly danced around it, firing off a beam that didn't just kill a GM. It blasted through it even though it held up its shield.

This also allowed me to notice a weakness in the bazooka as it didn't fire for twenty seconds after that round. This, of course, killed another man. But it told me that there was a rather large delay in the firing rate of the weapon.

"We've got twenty seconds!" I yelled over the comms, not really caring the shouting wasn't needed when my voice was being carried by electronic devices. "Charge!"

Knowing that my shield was useless against the Bazooka, and the first to have charged at the Zeon Mobile Suit, I threw the item at them. Instantly I fired the Beam Spray Gun right afterward. It was almost successful, but the Rick Dom was fast enough that it managed to dodge backward from the beam after having kicked the shield away.

It was only that I had been counting the time since the last shot that allowed me to clear the distance between myself and where the beam bazooka fired, while at the same time I blasted back, not having the same weakness as the Rick Dom. The two of us danced around, mostly it was me missing, while there were times even when the enemy missed that he managed to take out a GM flying behind me whenever they tried to intercede.

Eventually, they seemed to stick away from me and the Rick Dom. Perhaps they'd been given orders over a channel that I hadn't

But I knew that the energy powering my gun wouldn't last forever, and not knowing how long his bazooka would last, I made sure to draw closer and closer with each traded volley of blasts, using each twenty seconds to decrease the distance between us. Before finally, I drew on my GM's single beam saber with its free hand and then charged in for a stab.

As if annoyed by my challenge, the Rick Dom placed the Beam Bazooka behind its back and drew its Heat Saber. A physical weapon rather than the energy-based Beam Saber that the GM carried, it cut through heat rather than… the heat that a Beam Saber used... They were different weapons. One was a metal heated rod and the other a beam.

And so the Rick Dom narrowed the distance between the two of us so fast that I barely managed to get my Beam Saber to block it. Fortunately, I still had my Beam Spray Gun in the GM's other hand, pointed right at his cockpit.

Unfortunately, the Rick Dom pilot proved to be better prepared once more, somehow trusting themselves to the side and cutting the gun in half with his Heat Saber. There was a small explosion, not big enough to kill me but more than enough to destroy the hand holding the gun.

"Shit!" I couldn't help but yell, boosting the GM downward in time for the Heat Saber to miss cutting me in half. Acting fast, I sprayed him with fire from my Vulcan guns. Something that while useless against trying to kill the other pilot, did manage to hit both the chest sensors and head sensors of his mobile suit.

"Impressive, it seems that your not so lacking in skill as the other Earth Dogs I've dealt with," A new voice sprung up over the open comms channel. It had a strange timber to it, one that I swore that I could recall from somewhere else. "But your hesitation marks you as an inferior Earthnoid!"

With those words, he suddenly boasted at me, but this time I was ready and slashed. Our sabers met, the force of his thrusters send the two of us hurdling towards the Salamis Class ship I had come from earlier.

It was at this moment that I remembered exactly what Zeon Ace held the line at Solomon in a Rick Dom.

"For the Glory of ZEON!" Anavel Gato, The Nightmare of Solomon, yelled out over the comms as we continued backward. The meek thrusters of the GM weren't enough to overpower the Rick Dom, but I had something he didn't.

Vulcans.

So close were we that my rounds shattered the Mono-eye of the Rick Dom even while Gato was forced to stop his attempt to squeeze my GM's head with his unit's free hand. If it wasn't for the fact that cameras existed elsewhere on his unit, I would've blinded.

"For the Glory?" I questioned him, kicking the Zeon Ace away just so I could drive right back at him with another stab pointed at his cockpit. Gato was far too experienced for me to continue this for a long time. My only hope was to get him mad, hope it leads to Gato making a mistake rather than just killing me. "What's Zeon Glory? Civilian attacks, terror campaigns, dropping colonies. Long speeches about hatred? Sorry, I don't find much glory in that!"

It was now him on the back foot, his Rick Dom forced to parry the Beam Saber while we were sent back from the ships behind me. I knew his plan was to destroy the ships with the Beam Bazooka still on his unit's back.

"You're nothing but a Federation dog!" Gato turned, playing into my expectations of the man. From what I recalled from the OVA Stardust, he wasn't capable of not running his mouth about how glorious and noble Zeon and its goals were. "You lick the boots of men that oppress all Spacenoids! Zeon's Glory is Spacenoid Independence!"

"Oh, don't talk to me about Spacenoids," Oh, how I wished to recall specific ways to counter his points. But instead, I deflected them with my own; "When Zeon crimes include the gassing of the Side 2. There was never even a punishment for that shit! Maybe you shouldn't be telling me this war is for all Spacenoids when you kill more than the Federation ever have!"

The Rick Dom attempted to counterattack, swinging the Heat Saber in a vertical slash. But rather than meet him, this time I let him pass me, boosting past him before turning around in order to fire my Vulcans at the Beam Bazooka on his unit's back.

But once more Gato showcased his superior experience, predicting my tactic. He didn't even turn to face me, instead simply pushing his mobile suit to the left of my rounds, and blasting off towards the rest of my battle group.

"You've underestimated me, Federation Dog!" With those words, Gato blasted off from me far faster than my GM could follow. "All bark and no bite."

But that was when my eye caught sight of a floating Beam Spray Gun passing me. It looked chipped, damaged. I wondered if it was capable of even firing a single shot, but there was no time for even checking that out. My Beam Saber went back into the holder, my GM grabbed the gun and I was off after Gato.

System readings told me what it thought the Beam Spray Gun could currently do. But I was more interested in catching up with Gato to give much focus to reading the data. Thankfully for the Forces here, the dreaded Nightmare of Solomon had received enough damage from me to his systems that he wasn't taking out GMs and Salamis Class left and right.

Merely disabling the ships and killing the GMs in a few moves that made me sweat in the face of. I never imagined a Rick Dom could move like that, it was less a mech space and more like a man underwater with some kind of booster.

It was then that I could tell, it wasn't that his unit was faster than ours. It was merely that he was capable of pushing himself, of predicating us, there wasn't a part of him that was dedicated to this fight, but many of the GM Pilots weren't willing to die. It was hesitation, we were green and he wasn't.

This wasn't a difference in machines, this was a difference in men.

With a possibly gammy Beam Spray Gun, I didn't fire off a single beam from it but rather I threw it between Gato and his latest target, the bridge of a Salamis Class ship. Rather than the explosion the man expected from his Beam Bazooka, the beam detonated prematurely as it contracted Beam Spray Gun.

The Rick Dom was knocked away from the Salamis Class Ship, saving the bridge from death by beam. Quickly, My Beam Saber was out again, descending for Gato's cockpit.

It was over in a flash, I didn't even register what had happened till Gato opened up the comms channel with me once more.

"You've got talent, and so I'll let you live for now," His smug tone made me want to scream, but I barely held it in. I wouldn't give this shit the pleasure. Even if I was stuck without any arms, without any real weapons, with a Heat saber ready to stab into my cockpit. "But let this loss tell you, and fill you all with despair. it doesn't matter how many Federation Cannon Fodder is thrown our way, Zeon will prevail."

But this wasn't the complete loss that you'd think it was. I hadn't noticed at the time, but he must've lost an arm and the Beam Bazooka when I did my trick. His suit was melted in patches on his torso. The broken mono-eye was just an added piece to showcase just how much damage I'd done.

This was mostly cosmetic damage, only his lack of two arms gave away a sign that I had been close to beating him.

"Next time, it'll be the last time you'll see me," I warned him, for some reason. Perhaps it was the memory of how he helps drop a colony on Earth in the future. Maybe its how he manages to kill a third of a full fleet.

This was someone I should kill at any point.

"Careful, careful," Gato replied, unconcerned about the gathering of Federation Mobile suits that were behind him. Given that they weren't doing anything, I imagine that they were scared into inaction somehow. "Wouldn't want me to change my mind. It would send a different message."

With that, I was left with a broken GM. Next to a battered Salamis Class, and what was left of my battle group.

But history changed that day.

Rather than the wholesale slaughter he would've inflicted, the Nightmare of Solomon, a respectful fight with the one Federation Rookie that stood up to him. A fight that would go on and be romanticized later on in my life.

Much to my chagrin.

Author's Note: Hello readers new and old! I have come out with work new to many of you pure readers. I've got a decent backlog for this story. It was really started as a work to put my hands on so I could work through my writer's block.

It really hasn't worked out for that. But I've gotten something done at least lol.