Chapter 31
If you're not bopping to the Full Frontal OST then I can't help you man
The hatch of the mobile suit hissed shut as I glided into the cockpit. With a deft motion I pulled myself into the linear seat and quickly strapped myself in. I tried to measure my breathing as my hands hovered over the controls.
Londo Bell had boarded the station, I'd been told. "Suspicion of possessing prohibited materials" they had quoted to station control. They were absolutely correct and from what I knew of their mandate, entirely within their rights to do these types of inspections. Not even the mighty Anaheim Electronics with all their soft power, deep pockets and legions of politicians in their book could prevent Londo Bell from going where they pleased in pursuit of that mandate.
I looked down at the tablet I had brought in with me. It patched me through to the cameras on the Neo Zeon owned cargo hauler currently docked with the station. I could see the white hulls of Londo Bell's task force. Four ships in total, all Clop-class cruisers except for the Ra Cailum itself. A fourth ship had been bringing up the rear of the formation, which I hadn't been able to see from the station's fancy dining room earlier. The pride and joy taskforce of Londo Bell, I had to imagine.
A notification pinged on my tablet. The summons had been sent to my fleet that until now had been running dark a few hundred kilometers away from the testing site. An insurance policy I now needed to cash in.
No ETA on when my ships would get to the combat zone, they couldn't risk a response message being detected by Londo Bell's electronic warfare suites.
I called the cargo hauler through my normal suit's radio.
"Full Frontal here. Are all the men on the ship?"
There was a slight crackle in the response. "Yes sir. We're ready to execute the plan on your signal."
I swallowed to wet my throat before speaking. "Very good. I will begin powering up the Sinanju, scramble from the station in ten minutes and make for our fall back coordinates. Do not wait for any of our fleet to catch up with you if we don't make the rendezvous in time. Your cargo is of vital importance to our struggle, it must make it to the Garden of Thorns."
"Understood Supreme Commander. We won't fail you." Came the quiet response.
"I know you won't. Full Frontal out."
I looked down and saw the faintest tremors going through my hands. How disgusting. Was I not now the man who set wars in motion? Was I not the bloody handed heir of Char Aznable, by deed if not by name? Did I not intend to start, with little remorse as to the almost guaranteed high body count, an interstellar war in the name of haughty ideals and vague notions of self determination for all?
Why did my hands quiver with nerves now?
No, I realized, they did not move with nervousness or quail at the thought of this confrontation. Anticipation was coursing through me, I was eager to sally out and fight Londo Bell. I was eager for a fight that would truly test my skills. I was hungry for the feast of battle that now presented itself to me.
All I had to do was turn the reactor on.
Now my hands flew across the controls of the Sinanju, powering up the reactor, booting the operating system, entering the administrator codes that Martha Vist Carbine had provided me to override the locks and firewalls that should have prevented me from removing the engine limiters, arming the internal weapons and booting the targeting computers for combat. I slide a floppy disk into the side of the console, allowing the Neo Zeon IFF and comm channel encryptions to be integrated into the sensors and communication suite.
Oh, and I deleted the block that prevented the psychoframe from connecting with the rest of the systems. Kinda of important that.
First the panoramic cockpit came to life, showing the darkened interior of the shipping container the Sinanju had been loaded into. I could see the beam rifle clamped to the side of the container to my right and the bulky shield, with the maglock clamps facing outwards, to my left. Then I heard the faint hum of the reactor ramping up. It sent bolts of energy surging through me.
God Almighty but I loved piloting mobile suits.
Vulcan guns in the head were live and weren't loaded with training rounds like they had been earlier. Two beam sabers mounted in my forearms, both fully charged.
"Aggh!"
Then my breath was driven from my lungs as the psychoframe loop reached me!
My vision blacked out, being replaced by a swirling vortex as I was drawn into my mind's eye. My thoughts, my consciousness was being spread, I realized. Spread around, through, into the psychoframe.
Around and around and around I felt a part of me go. It felt like the psychoframe was being marked by my psychic presence, acclimatizing itself to me. Imprinting on me even.
Then the circuit was closed and all of my mind was back to myself. I opened my eyes and looked around the cockpit with fresh eyes.
Without active thought, I adjusted the reactor to have a slightly hotter burn, knowing without thinking about it that this would give me more power to the verniers for dodges. Camera feeds arranged themselves as I liked them in my prior Geara Doga without input on my end. Then I grabbed the armaments for the Sinanju. With shield and laser rifle, and all systems green across the board, I was armed and ready for combat.
I pressed a button and the doors of the container the Sinanju had been placed into blew away, soaring across the gravityless hanger to smack into the far walls.
I breathed in deeply. So this was the power of the psychoframe and the psycommu. It wasn't piloting the mobile suit for me but a degree of separation, one that I didn't even know was there in other mobile suits, had been removed from the piloting process. I knew the systems, knew the Sinanju, like the back of my hand. Inputs and commands were done on reflex. A layer of conscious thought had been eliminated.
Before a mobile suit was a machine I piloted.
But now?
Now it felt like I was wearing a suit that was mobile.
The difference was night and day. It was comparing floating in the void of space with standing under the beating desert sun. It was flying in a passenger liner compared to a stunt plane.
I was a blind man who could now see. I was the cripple who could walk again. I was a new type of warrior, a new type of man even.
"Mayday, mayday! Terrorists are storming the docks! I repeat, a group of terrorists are storming the station docks!"
My connection to the cargo hauler's cameras terminated as my men performed an emergency undocking maneuver, sending the hauler careening away from the clamps and the airlocks with a full burn of its vernier thrusters. I only got to see them fly away from the station before the minovsky particle interference broke the feed up. From my connection to the station's communication network, I could hear that the other ships docked at the station, a mixture of personal shuttles, tugs and other cargo haulers, had followed my men's actions.
Now there would be a mass, panicked flight away from the station. The press of another button released the clamps that had kept the Sinanju secured in the container.
The Sinanju stepped out of the container and I looked around the hanger. No sign of Londo Bell forces. Yet.
I caught a glimpse at the stark white paint that was on the Sinanju. Suddenly I was overcome with the notion that it looked wrong. My mobile suit should be red, not white. All my other mobile suits were painted that color, the Sinanju wouldn't be mine until I had made that change. I shook away that train of thought, whisking it back to the corner of my mind.
Odd notion to come up all of a sudden. Was it caused by the psychoframe?
No matter, I had given the cargo hauler enough time to get clear.
I floated forward and swung around, bringing my weapon to bear. It was very bulky in shape, more of a rectangular block that happened to fire particle beams instead of looking like a purpose built gun. But it worked properly as a beam weapon.
Four shots pierced the steel frame in a tight bunch, weakening the integrity of the wall. Then I raised my suit's shield and put the thrusters on high. I flew through the walls like a bat out of hell…
And right into two patrolling Jegans. The gray-green suits, to their credit, immediately spun to train their weapons on me.
"Unidentified mobile suit cease movements immediately and-acck!"
That didn't save them from being shot down with two precise shots to the torso. I blew past the dying mobile suits, the reactors exploding together at my back.
I dodged down to avoid return fire from a mobile suit above me, then spun and blew off the sniper variant Jegan's left arm and leg. My verniers ignited and halted my forward momentum, more power was sent to the main thrusters and I was charging upwards, following the superstructure of the station.
One kill, two kills, three kills, four kills. They all fell so easily into my crosshairs. The Sinanju was anticipating me, knowing what range I wanted to engage in before I pressed the firing trigger.
I darted over the width of the station, tagging the leg of a transformation type mobile suit in the middle of a barrel roll.
The power of the Intention Automatic System combined with the pschyoframe and the power of a newtype. The Sinanju was alive with my mental will. I found that the only hard controls I needed to use were the control sticks, fire control buttons and thruster pedals. Every other system in this mobile suit was being controlled by my psychic will and thoughts.
I flew clear of the station and right into the arms of another Jegan squad. News of my appearance had spread, as they greeted me with shields raised and a volley of beam fire and bazooka shots. I intercepted two of the bazooka rounds with my vulcan guns and barrel rolled to the right to avoid the rest of the volley. With a thought, my beam rifle switched to automatic firing and I hosed the Londo Bell squad down with the torrent of beams, forcing them to break formation and scatter.
Three pairs of wingmen flew apart. If I tried to fight them at a distance, then I'd be picked apart. The solution? Close in and use the sword.
If a machine could agree with me, the Sinanju did.
I shot upwards, ejecting a beam saber into the left hand of my mobile suit. Shots deflected off the shoulder armor as I charged the two Jegans, but they couldn't strike true.
I crashed into the first Jegan with my shield, and the Federation mobile suit met my shield with his. We tested the strength of our thrusters for a second and mine were stronger. I pushed our locked shields upward then whipped my shield arm down and sideways. Then I raised my beam rifle and blew the second Jegan, who had been closing to come to his wingman's aid, into pieces with a burst of automatic fire.
The bisected Jegan floated backwards and the cockpit fulfilled its role as an escape pod/lifeboat. I paid the escaping Londo Bell pilot no mind, and resumed dancing across space with the rest of the departed's squad.
I was surrounded by a storm of beam fire, the combined output of four mobile suits, and I was dancing in between them like I was playing jump rope.
The beep of target lock heralded another death. One shot, one kill.
And then there were three. One flew above me while two and three tried to pincher me between them. I charged the Jegan that was to the left of me, tanking his beam fire with my shield before lashing out with the fist of my mobile suit's right arm. The blow smashed his suit's head camera and blinded him. Then I backflipped over the other member of the pincer attack as he charged in with his own beam saber and shoulder checked him into his blinded comrade.
A proximity alert and instincts caused me to dart sideways to avoid a beam shot and made me raise the beam saber in my left hand, blocking the follow slash by the Jegan. Arcs of energy crackled away from where the two blades were locked. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the two other Jegans start to untangle themselves.
Ca-chunk! My second beam saber ejected into my free hand. It ignited with a yellow blade of death. I plunged it upwards, scything off the arm holding the Jegan's beam saber. With the sudden shut off the opposing beam saber, I swept the saber in my left arm dead into the cockpit of the enemy mobile suit. I swapped armaments in my right hand and, flying around the dead mobile suit, saw a perfect opportunity.
One shot, two kills. I flew out of the newly created debris field at full thrust, looking to create more distance between me and the quickly closing Londo Bell forces.
"Ahahaha!" I laughed aloud at how graceful my movements were. I didn't feel an ounce of g-force on my body. It was like I was meant to pilot this mobile suit.
Rear facing camera feeds appeared with a thought. I was well above the station itself now and, unfortunately, the fighting had taken me into the training courses. I needed to go the other way if I wanted to group up with my incoming reinforcements. I throttled back and brought the Sinanju to a halt, reorienting myself to face the testing station.
All of the Londo Bell ships aside from the Ra-Cailum had shifted in my direction and were moving towards my position. My sensors marked bundles of approaching mobile suit squads.
I needed to be on the other side of this before I thought about scrapping with more Londo Bell forces. Even with the power of my new mobile suit, I could tell that the Londo Bell pilots were a step above the Federation regulars I had fought previously. I needed to be strategic about my approach until Hill Dawson arrived with the cavalry.
How to get past that formation then? I could go around the station, but that would put me in all of the Ra Cailum's guns. I felt that going under would take too long and make me too blind to my surroundings.
So…
My hands flexed around the control sticks, readjusting my grip on them.
I had no choice but to fly through them!
I slammed on the thrusters, launching the Sinanju into a dead sprint. Light blurred to my eyes as my speedometer maxed out and the fairly far away Clop cruisers began to loom large as I sprinted towards them.
A wall of confused and half aimed beam fire flew around me, but I was going too fast for the feddies to have a snowball's chance in hell of hitting me. Then the cruiser's big guns joined in the fun, and I ducked and weaved through those with similar ease.
I was right in front of the Clop cruisers now and the opportunity was too tempting to pass up. I reduced speed, raised my beam rifle and raked a volley into the side of the middle Clop. Then I was clear of the Londo Bell line. Pushing my throttle back up to the max, I flew over an errant arm of the testing station, right towards the Ra Cailum.
"And then there was only one." I muttered, throwing myself into a barrel roll to avoid an opportunistic beam rifle shot.
I was planning to dart under the Ra Cailum, avoid the biggest of her guns and then bop and weave until I was out of range and home free. With the nearly unbelievable speed of the Sinanju, Londo Bell would need Amuro Ray or his equal to have a chance of catching me.
But Londo Bell had no intention of letting me slip away without a fight.
A massive wall of flak forced me to halt my forward movement and fall back towards the station, shield raised to project my mobile suit's head and torso. I fired back a few times but wasn't able to hit any of the Ra Cailum's flak turrets.
Still the ship continued firing, despite the now increased chance of hitting the testing station. I was impressed. Ballsy bastards were committed if nothing else. My scanners pinged twelve Jegans floating around the Ra Cailum as pickets. The Sinanju's systems started to whine to me about target locks it was sensing from their own systems.
I flew upwards, still holding my shield before me and firing at the flak turrets. Beam rounds started to dance around me as the Jegans joined in on the fun. I cursed them for the added difficulty, but the new angle allowed me to wipe out two of the Ra Cailum's turrets, lessening the flak storm I was dancing through. I prepared to risk a charge through the flak wall when my sixth sense flared up.
Danger! Below-Left!
I instinctively swerved to the left and just avoided a beam that would have at least blown off one of my suit's feet. I then had to dodge two more follow up shots while I swung my head around, looking for the mobile suit that was attacking me.
There! A blue Jegan was charging at me, suppressing fire flying from its beam rifle. I shucked and jived out of the way, responding with shots of my own to force the blue Jegan to change its flight path. I managed to score a shot on his shield, but the anti-beam coating held. The blue Jegan replied in turn, further marking my shield with scorch marks. I grimaced at that, how much more could it take before failure?
Around us, the flak storm continued, yellow tracers illuminating the black space as they passed us by on their way into the great void.
The blue Jegan was level with me now, and we circled each other, trading shots as we both attempted to line up a kill shot. I was faster than this Londo Bell pilot, in the better mobile suit. But he was good, very good. Experience if nothing else kept him just ahead of me.
I don't think I've ever fought someone with this level of skill before.
By unspoken agreement, at an unspoken symbol, we charged at each other, beam sabers igniting in our shield hands. We swiped at each other furiously, thrusters and verniers firing rapidly as we sought to maneuver into the right position that would allow a killing blow to be landed. As we danced with blades, we continued to fire our beam rifles at each other.
I took two stabs to my shield and sheared off the corner of his shield in reply. Then I ducked under an opportunistic shot and slid away from the follow up missile barrage. I hadn't noticed the missile pods on the blue Jegan's hips. A burst from my vulcan guns made the Jegan abort a charge and shield its head. This allowed me to line up my shots better, and I hit his other missile plod, causing a detonation that threw the blue Jegan askew.
"Colonel!" Came the cry of alarm over the comms.
My rear cameras popped back up, showing that another Jegan was charging at my back. I quickly created space with the blue Jegan, turned about and shot the charging Jegan dead. His wingman, having lagged behind his fellow for a few seconds, flew through the explosion only for me to shoot him twice. That Jegan remained intact, my rounds having destroyed the head and a part of the mobile suit's lower waist. I turned back to blue Jegan.
The orange cockpit flew past myself and him.
"You'll pay for that." The pilot of the blue Jegan warned me over the open comms.
"Not the first time I've been told that by a feddie." I said in reply.
The cockpit cleared us. We resumed our dance.
"You're him! Full Frontal!" The pilot cried out in shock as he swiped at my legs with his beam saber.
"Don't wear the name out." I grunted as I flew down below the Jegan and laid out suppressive fire at another squad of Jegans my sensors caught growing closer to our duel.
The blue Jegan spun to look down at me.
"That means if I kill you right here and now, all of the chaos you've caused will stop." The pilot declared.
"Haha!." I laughed. "What arrogance! Kill me and another will rise to take my place in the fight for spacenoid freedom, feddie."
Our beam sabers slammed into each other once, twice, three times before the blue Jegan forced me away with a burst from his vulcan guns. I smiled to myself. He was slowing down, or I was speeding up as my connection with the Sinanju improved. There would obviously be modifications in order to truly bring out the Sinanju's true form and potential. But the Sinanju was good enough in its current state to see me through this battle.
"Pretty words! But all you zekes ever want to accomplish is a bigger body count. I've seen it before! Well Londo Bell won't let you get away with your plans this time. We will stop you right now!"
"You will try and die."
I could feel that the end of the duel was nearing. The veteran pilot was running out of tricks I didn't have an answer to and his machine's outdated hardware was showing itself. But he had put up a good fight and I felt compelled to know his name before I killed him.
"Since you already know my name, why don't you tell me yours Colonel?" I asked, rather sincerely I believed, my opponent as I maneuvered, searching for the opening that would bring the fight to a close.
"Yuu Kajima!" The name didn't ring a bell to me, but if he was the ranking officer of the Ra Cailum then maybe he was the replacement for Amuro Ray in Londo Bell's command structure? Or the temporary replacement considering he was about to die on the job.
"Nice to meet you Colonel." I said. I saw my opening. "This has been entertaining, good bye now."
I charged at Kajima's Jegan, firing beam shots around the mobile suit, forcing him to bring his shield up to defend his torso. His return fire was weaved around. Then I was on top of him and he lashed out with his beam saber, probably predicting that I would meet his blow with a saber of my own like had happened previously. This time, I ducked under the blow and lashed out with the spiked bottom of my shield. The two prongs ripped through the Jegan's torso, gutting it.
Then I blew away the Jegan's right arm with a close range shot from my beam rifle and whipped my shield down to physically batter the suit's left arm until it broke, falling limp as the motors beneath the armor shattered and bent out of place.
"..."
My mobile suit was looming over Kajima's Jegan, now more black than blue from our battle, and I raised my beam saber up to deliver the killing stroke.
Suns blossomed. Great balls of fire appeared in the space around the Ra Cailum before disappearing in the next second. Then the space around Londo Bell's flagship became thick with beams and smaller explosions. The Ra Cailum's flak guns came back to life as the turrets quickly sent out a protective cloud of flak, and the mega particle cannons started firing at the faint outlines of ships in the distance.
Then a volley of mega particle beams raced out from the distance, replying to the volley from the Ra Cailum. My reinforcements had arrived.
Alarms started going off in my cockpit. I looked behind me.
Two Clop cruisers were bearing down on me, assorted Jegan squads in tow. I watched as the mega particle cannons on the Londo Bell ships fired, the large beams shooting over me and towards the new battle around the Ra Cailum. Their reinforcements had arrived.
Then I was jolted around in my seat as a shudder shook the Sinanju.
I turned back to Kajima's crippled mobile suit. Somehow he had managed to twist his Jegan's torso to allow him to jettison his cockpit from the suit, and I got to see the orange sphere racing away from towards the safety of Kajima's advancing lines. I watched as three Jegans from the advance broke off to recover the cockpit.
"Well Colonel, it appears that we'll have to take a rain check." I said to the empty air of my cockpit, tossing away the broken corpse of Kajima's customized blue Jegan. "Next time I think we'll settle this."
I couldn't afford to waste time when the reinforcements were here now. I needed to group up with them, fall back to the fleet and make like a bat out of hell towards home.
That's what I told myself as I raced away from the immobile Jegan. Sure I bugged me a little to leave a fight unfinished, I never had until now. But I had beaten Yuu Kajima once already, there wasn't a mobile suit in existence that would allow him to close the gap to my level. And if I had my way, and I intended to, there never would be any mobile suit that could go toe to toe with the Sinanju.
The battle came to a close after I blitzed my way through the back of the Londo Bell mobile suit line to regroup with my own forces. Though Angelo did team up with me to wipe out another Jegan team that go over eager during the rearguard action.
The fleet had a smattering of holes in it that would need to be repaired at the Garden of Thorns but I was pleased with Dawson's command of the fleet and made sure to praise the professionalism of his captains and crews to him. While he didn't appear to have a positive or negative reaction to the praise, the bridge crew did sit taller in their seats.
The plan hadn't gone according to plan but a day where I could kill more feddies meant fewer down the line to kill. My men were pleased with the combat and even my backers were. Martha Vist Carbine, far from being mad that she had to deal with the Londo Bell poking around one of her facilities and being next door to a space battle, was as pleased as the fox who got into the hen house unnoticed. Orders for the new model Jegan had quadrupled and, though she didn't tell me in her communications, a new model had its production start date moved up.
That might bode ill for me going forward, I had to admit.
But the damn near triumphal welcome I, standing in front of the Sinanju as it was unloaded from the Rewloola, received at the Garden of Thorns made it damn hard to worry about tomorrow.
I had a real party to attend.
A/N: And the Sinanju has made its debut appearance. Critics at noted Federation journals have described it as 'not that good', 'false advertising' and 'we don't actually care that the Zeons stole it from us. Reviews from the Zeon side are overwhelmingly positive. '10 out of 5 stars' a man dressed as the Red Comet told local reporters in the streets of Zum City's theatre block.
Hope everyone enjoyed the last chapter of the year. Next time we're going to be having a time jump as Neo Zeon and the wider Neo AEUG buckle down and get their industrial bases to the grindstone while Bright Noa squeezes more water (ships) from the unwilling stone of Federation High Command.
