Chapter 27

U.C. 0094.6.10 0330 Australian Western Standard Time

The Australian Outback

The Garencieres was back in the air, and I had never been so happy to be back aboard this vessel.

Air conditioning! My beloved.

Now all I needed was a mobile suit and I would be good.

Unfortunately the Garden of Thorns couldn't ship my Geara Doga down from space but they had been able to tight beam my paperwork down to me along with the schedule for the daily meetings.

An outback vacation, I was not on.

But still, the earthside operation had progressed according to plan. Captain Graw, who was a craggy old bastard regardless of the time of day it seemed, had put his guerilla contacts to work in poking the local garrisons. They even had people in the base staff like custodians and cooks who would pass on discrete copies of reports if the pay was high enough.

Our first target was the nearby Ayers Rock Base, basically due east of the Garencieres landing site. Then we'd hit the Alice Springs Stationing Base which was two dozen kilometers north of the Ayers Rock base. Following that our convoy of raiders would hoof it across the width of the outback to smack the EFF Mount Isa base before wrapping the operation up with the grand finale at the EFN Darwin Base.

An ambitious program of looting and destruction. But we hopefully had just the right group assembled to take it on.

Like a warmongering version of the Avengers.

Major Yonem Kirks had brought two Fat Uncle type transports down from the jungles of New Guinea to assist with the unearthing of the Garencieres along with his personal Zaku I Sniper model. The rest of the Simbu Base Corps would be going perfunctory shipping raids to get the feds spooked up near the Philippines. They would join the column for the final push into Darwin. Otherwise the aquatic mobile suits they fielded would be more of a detriment than an assist during the campaign.

His reward for helping me would be a slate of Zaku Mariners the feddies had stationed at that Darwin Base. I would be getting Kirks exceptional sniper skills for aerial support.

Lieutenant Yular Jamico, true to his words of complete support during our first meeting, had put his entire command into this operation. Three Marasais, one Zaku II Cannon, one Gallus-J type, Jamico's personal machine, one Zaku FZ type, and one Gallus-K type. Along with Jamico's mobile suits came a variety of Dodai's and Dodai Kais to allow the mobile suits subflight capability.

Captain Graw rounded out the Remnants detachment with a Desert Zaku, a Dom Tropen variant and a Dwadge. Graw piloted a rare Desert Gelgoog. Graw's command was the most mobile on the ground thanks to the jet engines installed in the legs of his four mobile suits.

And then there were my forces. One light shipping cruiser that had been converted to military use and its crew. Seventy-eight soldiers under the command of First Lieutenant Yokon Fenwick, himself ironically a native of Sweetwater who had never been to Earth before now. Two Geara Dogas, piloted by members of Zinnerman's crew and one funnel equipped Khsatriya, piloted by Marida Cruz.

I paused my train of thought and went back over what the forces I had counted off.

Yeah, anyone we came up against were pretty fucked, weren't they?

But it would have to be just one group, otherwise we'd shortly be the ones being fucked instead of doing the fucking. I'd inspected the mobile suits as they trickled in, and most of them were ancient by the standards of mobile suits. The Principality era suits were made up of the woefully obsolete steel alloy that had proven to be little more than paper when providing protection against handheld beam weaponry. The rest of the suits were made of various types of Gundarium alloy and were more maneuverable, however their beam resistant coating(if they had it to begin with) had degraded from the years of fighting and exposure.

"Time?" I called out to the bridge.

"Two minutes until we're in sight of the base." Flaste Schole answered from his station on the ship's sensors.

The worst part was still that I had no opportunity to be in the thick of the fighting. At least that way I could draw the enemy fire and limit casualties that way. However I had never fought on earth before, all of my engagements had been in zero g environments. I also still didn't have a mobile suit to use.

"Thirty seconds." Flaste made the final announcement.

Those layabout feds had better have something decent for me to loot. I was not made to be sitting around away from the fighting. Was this incessant itching sensation in my palms something Char had during his life. A continual call to action?

"Being the operation." I said for formality's sake. Zinnerman followed up my words with his own commands.

"Marida, hit them with your funnels. Tomura, bring the reactor up to combat levels and begin broadcasting minovsky particles. Gilboa! Get us over the middle of that base. Mobile suits to the port and starboard doors, fire when able!"

The two Geara Dogas were still in the Garencieres hangar but Marida and her Kshatriya? Those two were standing atop the Garencieres like a knight of old atop his warhorse, armed and ready for the charge.

I could see the structures of the Ayers Rock Base now. Squat office buildings and primitive hangars blocked in by a ring of rectangles that I took to be barracks, along with a double barbed wire fence.

I felt the Garencieres accelerate and then sensed a vague pressure above me. Then the darkness of the night sky was broken by twenty-four beams erupting into cerulean existence, piercing down into structures with deadly energy.

Then the funnels fired again and explosions started to rippled out from buildings like boils being burst. A wailing siren started up but was choked off by another funnel barrage.

"Their patrols are turning to face us." Flaste Schole warned. Zinnerman looked over at me.

"Send in the mobile suits, have Lieutenant Cruz focus on destroying their wider communication ability." I gave the engagement order.

Dark shadows soared past the side windows, illuminated only by the light of their engines. I knew on the ground that Captain Graw's mobile suits would be blasting through the perimeter and racing towards the base's hangars to cut off any mobile suit sorties.

"Minovsky particle saturation?" I called out.

"High enough that we should be severely dampening their long range communications." Flaste Schole answered.

"Then bring us in." Out ahead I could see Dodais making dive bomb attacks into the base, bazookas and beam weaponry barking into vulnerable buildings. We weren't unopposed, return beam fire arced up from the group and tracer rounds were starting to light up the night.

I scanned the now burning base. We needed the armory, fuel depot, machine shop and mobile suit hangers intact. Nothing else was required.

"Lieutenant Cruz." I called on the ship's comms.

"Yes." Came Marida's monotone reply, her telling sign that her mind was immersed in combat. For some reason I was suddenly and uncomfortably reminded about her young age. It was a nonsense thought, she was a seasoned soldier and could be depended on.

"I don't want to see that base HQ anymore. After that, focus on eliminating any rallying groups of resistance."

"Understood."

A spider web of beams then bisected the tall HQ building from every conceivable angle. Then I could see the concrete begin to tremble in the fire light. Then explosions wracked its internals and with a groan that I could hear through the bulkheads, the building came tumbling down.

Marida continued with her overwatch work, blue funnel lights hitting all parts of the base sporadically as she identified locations where companies and MS squads were making stands, and assisting the circling mobile suits in wiping them out. I could see on the ground that Captain Graw was tearing a trench of destruction through the low lying barracks. Following in his wake would be an eclectic collection of hover trucks that carried Lieutenant Fenwick's company.

It wasn't smooth sailing on our part, however. Gilboa Sant was feeding Zinnerman reports that the Garencieres was getting pinged by machine gun fire and that the escorting Geara Dogas had made three missile intercepts.

A miniature sun erupted off to the ship's right. A Dodai and its mobile suit had been hit.

A thick beam returned the favor from on high, Kirks' work I figured.

Still we had the element of surprise and aerial supremacy, after another twenty minutes of fighting, the battered Federation soldiers broadcasted their surrender over the local airwaves.

I was happy to be able to accept a surrender for once.

XXX

Active resistance was over but we were moving quicker now than we had been during the fighting. I had hopped side saddle into a Geara Doga who had transferred from the Garencieres to guard the mass of soot stained humanity who had surrendered to us, me really.

It was almost as hot as the day would be. I realized the fires were starting to merge together, as long as it stayed away from our efforts then we didn't need to waste energy containing it.

The crunch of boots on glass grabbed my attention. It was Fenwick.

"Sir." He said, not saluting in respect to the environment. I didn't think that the prisoners needed the hint to figure out that I was in command, the stares burrowing into the back of my head did that just fine.

"Lieutenant. Butcher's bill?" I asked

"Minor injuries on our end, sir. Armor held up well. Saw that one of our mobile suits bit the dust up in the air, so there is that." He shrugged indifferently. "A Dom type took a rocket to its jets, still looked mobile to me."

"Very well." I accepted the truncated report. "Put a squad on prisoner watch then get over to the armory and start loading up the trucks, after that you do the fuel depot. Captain Graw's men have the machine shop and hangers."

"Understood sir." He turned and began barking at his sergeants.

Jamico had given me a fuller report that Fenwick had been able to. The mobile suit lost was one of his, the FZ type Zaku and he told me that it was the Desert Zaku who had taken the rocket to its left jet engine. It could be fixed quickly if the leg armor had done its job.

I flagged down a newly commandeered jeep, intending to take stock of the haul at the hangers but was halted by a call for my attention.

"Wait!" A female voice shouted. I spun about, hand resting on the butt of my pistol. A woman in nurse fatigues ran up to me. "The wounded need tending."

I looked around the kneeling mass of prisoners and saw doctors and nurses in white scuttling among them.

"It looks like they are already receiving medical treatment."

She winced and glared up at me. "We need more equipment and your fires are cutting us off from the clinic."

"Is that so?"

She was a fiery one, this nurse. "Yes. You need to have your men clear a path so that we can.."

"I will be doing nothing and neither will my men." I quickly cut her off. "Do not mistake your situation, woman. You are being allowed to treat the prisoners as a decency requires. My men are doing their jobs, so go back to doing yours."

She opened her mouth to try again but a pointed finger cut her off.

"This is not a request, doctor, and I am not a patient man."

Finally the woman got the hint and jogged back to the prisoners. I stamped down on the urge to grimace at my actions. It didn't sit well with a part of me.

But the men were watching.

Over to the hangers then.

XXX

The hangers were a set of matching trios tucked on either side of a runway on the base's western side. They were wide and spacious and all six of them were absolutely stuffed with mobile suits and mobile suit accessories.

I looked to the south and saw small groups running around the fuel depot, jamming hoses into tankers and starting the siphoning process. The methods my remnants were using undoubtedly violated every type of workplace safety standards for that type of work, but it was fast and we really needed to be fast. A squawking report on the radio, the channels still thick with the minovsky particle interference discharged by the overhead Garencieres, informed that hover trucks had been seized along with haulers needed to transport our looted mobile suit.

Captain Graw's sand colored quartet of mobile suits stood guard over the hangers area. I couldn't help but notice a distinct lack of prisoners. Graw came off as a bitter and hostile man, I could only hope that the prisoners who had surrendered here had already been taken to the main square where the rest of their kind was being kept.

I singled out a man upon arriving. He wasn't one of my soldiers. "You there, what's the status here?"

The remnant sketched a quick salute. "Found what we're looking for at hangar five. One through four are the current feddie suits and six looks to be storage."

He hawked a glob of spit into the asphalt. I assumed he was showing his general disgust for the federation instead of disrespect towards me.

"Very well. I'll head over there now. Start putting the charges on the feddie suits then head over to help strip storage." I ordered before running towards hangar five. Time was of the essence and I couldn't be bothered with stupid decorum right now.

I ran up to Hangar Five and darted into its open doors. I found Captain Graw, along with other members of his unit, consulting the resting giants that towered above us. Even a glancing assessment of the hanger and its occupants showed that, thankfully, I had been right in my guess that backwater bases like this still had Titans sourced mobile suits on them.

"Ah, Frontal." Captain Graw managed to see me first. "Clean up going well?"

"Yes, we're looting the armory, machine shop and fuel depot as we speak." I looked at my wristwatch. "We're within our operating time too."

Graw grunted. "How long do we have left."

"Two hours, captain." One of his own men replied.

He was right, it had been around thirty minutes from the start of the operation. We needed to be on the move by oh-seven-hundred in order to strike at the next E.F.F base before they got an idea about our attack on their neighbor.

"Captain Zinnerman is on overwatch duty, so we'll know if we have incoming company." I walked up to Graw and clapped him on his shoulder. "Now tell me what you've found."

Graw and myself may not have the best of relationships. Out of the three remnant groups I had called to my side, he was the most clear that he was in it for the loot and the fighting that my plan could offer him. Perfectly fine in my books, if a bit frustrating to work around.

However we managed to be in synch on the subject of mobile suits

"Three Marasais, two of them operational and the third looks to have been used as a training target. The two operational ones need to have their weapons swapped back in and relinked. One Barzam that looks mostly fine." He pointed at the towering blue and black mobile suit with its curious head fin. "I think that's a mount for a vulcan pod, just need to find it."

In the corners of the hanger I could see the blasted remains of Hizacks, which seemed to have suffered the fate of being targets during live fire drills.

"Then we have this beaut."

In the middle of the hanger was a very familiar mobile suit. Its head and shoulders were covered in almost semi circle shaped armor, lending it a similarity to a crustacean. A Dom inspired mount sheltered the suit's green monoeye. The locals had given it a new paint scheme, gray for the upper part of the suit in place of the orange I remembered and sky blue replacing the dark green. Next to the resting mobile suit laid a near rectangular beam rifle and scattered around the plinth the mobile suit was resting vertically on were the dismantled parts of another of its kind, clearly cannibalized for spare parts to keep this mobile suit operation.

I notice still full mugs of coffee around the feet of the mobile suit. "Looks like they were just working on this one."

Graw guffawed at my words. "Yeah the damn feddies ran around like chickens with their heads cut off when we arrived. Scum were so scared they didn't even try to sortie in more mobile suits."

I then made what I like to call a 'I'm the Supreme Commander and I can do what I want' type of decision.

"Do you have the manual for it?" I asked.

Captain Graw looked at me curiously. "Somewhere around here. Why?"

"Because I'm short a mobile suit, captain, and it is my preference to lead from the front." I smiled tightly at him. "Besides, I can't let you have all the fun, now can I?"

Graw guffawed again. "Heh, we do need all the pilots we can muster for this operation. But I can't spare the men to help you fuel it." One of his men tossed him a thick stack of laminated paper bound together with three metal rings. Graw then handed it to.

"I'm a quick study captain. Now get the mobile suits we're taking out of here and onto the flatbeds, then loot that supply hanger of all its worth." As the impromptu huddle dispersed, another report came over the radio: The armory had been looted of all its worth and those squads were moving onto the fuel depot.

We were on pace for the moment.

"Okay then, let's get you back in the fight." I said to the inert mobile suit. NRX-044 Asshimar, I couldn't wait to see what it could do in my hands.

XXX

We departed Ayers Rock at 0724 Australian Western Standard Time. Our departure was heralded by the detonation of the explosive charges we had littered over the various GM types and the fuel we couldn't take from the depot's tanks. The mushroom cloud looked very pretty in the morning sky.

The captured loot diverted from the main force soon afterwards, the captured mobile suits, fuel and weapons racing towards hiding points that Graw's unit had set up in the outback. From there they would be funneled to Graw's outposts in Australia. That was the deal to get the weathered bastard on board. The loot from the next two bases would go to Jamico and the loot at Darwin would belong to Kirks.

We would be at Alice Springs in under thirty minutes. With the advantage of the panoramic cockpit I was seated in, I could see Jamico's mobile suits buzzing around the Garencieres on their Dodais and Base Jabbers. Kirks' two Fat Uncles were higher up in the clouds, providing overwatch.

I looked down at the manual on my lap.

"Okay and then this should finish the calibrations and we'd be good to go." I muttered to myself, reaching forward to tap the start up buttons on the console.

"Hopefully."

But I had plenty of cause to smile as my Asshimar came online with all systems showing green. I quickly went through one final check of systems before going to familiarize myself with the controls. Pedals were the same as my Geara Doga but it took a few minutes for me to become comfortable with the joystick controls of the Asshimar.

It was smooth going, despite my small reservations. As long as I strictly focused my mind on figuring out how to work the Asshimar, I could feel things coming easier to me. I could make connections faster and by the time we were ten minutes out from Alice Springs, this inner feeling was telling me that I could fly this mobile suit into combat with ease.

I linked into the Garencieres through the suit's direct link.

"Any sign of pursuit?" I asked Zinnerman.

"No. But the Federation will be onto us after this next base, there's going to be no night to disguise our attack." Zinnerman replied.

"No matter, the nearest base is three hours away. But let's hold the Garencieres back until we've eliminated resistance this time." I said. It would be bad if my ride back to space got shot down.

"So you're going in with the attack this time?" He asked.

"Yep, I'm taking Marida as well, this one does need to be done quick."

"You're right about that, I'll find a Dodai for her to ride on." Zinnerman tapped into a different channel and I saw the Gallus-J type move to come alongside the ship. In a quick maneuver, the Kshatriya and the Gallus-J switched positions.

"See you on the other side Zinnerman, you have overall command." I cut the line after hearing Zinnerman's confirmation.

Then I did something that would normally be considered very stupid: I hurled my mobile suit off the side of the Garencieres.

But with a press of the pedals, I wasn't plummeting to the ground so much as falling with control and style.

I grinned, well the engines were working. Time for the real test.

I grabbed the small lever to my left side and pulled it back towards me. Then I heard the turn of gears and the shifting of metal around my cockpit and I was pushed back into the linear seat as the mobile suit accelerated forward.

A notification on the panoramic cockpit informed me that the suit had entered mobile armor mode and that the connection with the beam rifle had been made.

That was weapons handled, I quickly flipped back to mobile suit form and into the mobile armor mode to make sure the mechanism was holding up, which it thankfully was.

I flew ahead of the Garencieres and opened up the general comm channel. "Full Frontal speaking, all units assume attack formation on me. We strike the base in seven minutes. Let's make the feddies really feel it this time!"

Shouts and battle cries answered my words and the collection of mobile suits flew into formation. I rolled my shoulders to loosen the tension in them.

It felt great to be back in the pilot's seat, I thought. Now it was time to go to work.

If the first base was any indication, everything was going to go according to plan.

A/N: Of course it will, Full Frontal, of course it will.

Gotta thank Gundam Evolution again for giving me the idea to have FF in an Asshimar for the upcoming chapter. The paint job, in case the text description of it was confusing, is gray in place of the orange and sky blue in place of the green.

Since it's a long weekend here in the States, I'm tentatively hoping to have the next chapter done this weekend.