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NaNoWriCo
NaNoWriCo
#1
Much as I probably shouldn't visit the plot bunny breeding pens this month (you guys keep giving me ideas! for different fics!), I thought I'd give you a look at what I've managed thus far for the nameless little tale I'm trying to hammer out.


"How far do we have to go?" called the commander from her chair.
"Two thousand kilometers," replied the navigator, half-way across the smoke-filled compartment. "Two-fifty seconds at the current deceleration. We'll be below maximum jump velocity in two-thirty, jump engines ready in two-sixty!"
"All suits!" ordered the Flight Ops officer. "Make sure you're docked in two hundred seconds."
There was a crackle of responses over the ship-to-suit bands as the handful of defenders diverted just enough attention to respond from their primary mission of keeping the cruiser intact for those critical minutes.
Another wave of missiles hammered at the rakish ship and the bridge compartment shook as one of the explosions took off a radar array mounted nearby. A second later, the suit responsible exploded as a green beam of energy from one of the Tzimisce's own mobile suits blasted straight through it.
There were only three friendly suits out there - out of the five GINN that had been aboard at the beginning of the engagement, three had been destroyed and only one survivor from the Tzimisce's sister ship Lasombra's suits. The Lasombra had taken engine damage in the initial attack and, limping, had turned on their pursuers to give the other Musai-class ship a chance at escape. More than an hour had passed since they saw the flash of the plasma reactors losing containment and tearing the Lasombra apart.
Two more of the enemy mobile suits dashed in, discharging their missile loads before closing in with their cannon. The Lasombra's only survivor dived in, literally sweeping the missiles of one suit aside with it's shield as his beam rifle picked off the other volley. Then his green-trimmed suit writhed under the explosive shells of the suits. One of the Tzimisce's violet-trimmed suits was there suddenly however, and it's larger beam cannon tore one of the suits apart in catastrophic overkill as the anti-shipping weapon wasted it's energies on light-weight mobile suit.
The other suit's pilot saw that discretion was the better part of valor and his suit went through the familiar folding that converted it into a sleek aerospace fighter before zooming away to regroup for another attack.
"What's the threat assessment?" the Tzimisce's commander asked, and then grimaced when it became clear that radar officer was in no condition to reply. Ignoring a dozen safety regulations, the commander unstrapped and crossed the compartment in a single bound to check the readouts for herself.
"Unless they've gotten a lot faster, there's only one more squadron of that can reach us before we jump," she concluded. The odds looked bad - the enemy squadron was made up of an even dozen suits - but more than a few such squadrons had already been driven back by the handful of hardened veterans.
"Just once more wave," the Flight Ops officer promised the weary pilots. "We're almost home."
"Get them docked," the commander ordered. "They can fight from there and we can jump the minute we reach the point. For that matter, Nav! Bring us around one-eighty. Let's remind them that we still have fangs."
There was a mutter of approval from the rest of the bridge crew and the commander dragged the Gunnery officer's corpse aside to let her take over the controls of the two remaining beam cannon mounted along the front of the Tzimisce's spine. The cruiser's steering thrusters fired and she spun easily on her axis as the three suits closed in and then used magnetic clamps to secure themselves against the hull.
The enemy squadron reached maximum range and then both turrets fired, only a fraction behind one of the anchored suits and three of the attacking mobile suits vanished into fireballs. A moment later and the green bolts of beam rifle fire were reaching out to target the wave of incoming missiles as point defense began to track and fire.
A wave of fire flowed towards the Tzimisce as missile after missile exploded. For a moment it looked as if none would make it, but against all odds, a single warhead came close enough to trigger it's proximity trigger and send hurricane of shrapnel into the rear of the bridge. The commander's empty chair was shattered by the impacts and a shard of the hull decapitated the Flight Ops officer. Two of the medics trying to tend to the dying radar officer died with her as they failed to close their helmets before the air rushed out of the compartment, leaving only a handful of stations manned.
"We're in the zone!" shouted the navigator. "Jump engines still charging!"
More missiles rushed in, including three from the assault carrier closing in behind what was left of the tattered enemy mobile suit squadron, closer and closer, some dying under the point defense fire and others from weapons less suited to that precision work, as they fought for those precious ten seconds that they needed.
The Navigator was wiser than to simply report readiness and the instant her indicator went from amber to green, he mashed the button to trigger the jump engines. For a split second, the Tzimisce was haloed in white and then it was gone, leaving the five surviving missiles to detonate meaninglessly, light years away from it.
.oOo.
Red lights ignited across a dozen command boards as a point of light appeared within the holographic representation of that roughly spherical zone that humanity called a jump point. That colour was enough to send Admiral Rau le Creuset leaping from the couch he was napping on to the desk that held his communications panel. Fortunately, it was not enough to have several automatic systems start firing off the beam weapons of the hundreds of expendable buoys that ringed the jump point.
"What the devil's happening!" Rau demanded.
The face under the uniform cap in his display paled. "Sir, one of our pickets just jumped in, heavily damaged. She's transmitting an invasion warning."
Rau grimaced. Ships on picket duty operated in pairs. If only one had returned then the other quite simply couldn't and ships of any kind were in short supply. The only thing harder to lay hands on these days was replacement crew in fact and he would be down one of those as well.
"Understood. I'm on my way to the bridge. Get the picket's commander on the line in two minutes and activate defense plan alpha-delta seven."
Without any further comment, he cut off the communication with a vicious slap of the panel and shoved his feet into the dress boots of his uniform, snagging the long jacket from the back of the door. It had only been a month since he'd been assigned out here and it was sooner than he had hoped that his command would be put to the test.
The Greater Etiyoke cluster had always been a difficult region for the Confederacy, for it had been the industrial heartlands of the old Alliance Worlds and one of the most heavily militarized regions. When the Alliance fell, the successor states that would later form the Confederacy had dismembered the cluster to prevent anyone from obtaining it's impressive economic might and channel it towards further wars of aggression.
But generation after generation of Etiyokeans had remembered that their combined strength had been sufficient to bring many of the Forty-Two Systems to their knees and the local militias and governments had consumed a disproportionate amount of the Confederacy's limited attention over the first century and a half of it's existence. On that record, perhaps more attention should have been paid when those rumblings died away, for that had signified only the quiet before the storm.
As the standard year 2751 drew to a close, the Confederacy had been consumed with the excitement of the Christian religious festivals, the two hundredth anniversary celebrations of the signing of the Articles of Federation and the celebration of the New Year. In ten star systems, a wave of assassinations and small unit combat swept almost unnoticed through the upper echelons of government. Even as the Confederacy's second century closed, almost a quarter of it seceded and as the new year dawned, a United Government was declared for the Greater Etiyoke Cluster.
The Confederacy Defense Militias had been called upon to put down the rebellion, only to discover that the jump points were guarded by fleets significantly larger than intelligence had suggested and equipped with weapons that had definitely not been drawn from the armories of the militias from Etiyoke. The result had typically been disaster as vessels emerged blindly into killing zones. Rau le Creuset himself had made the first step towards his current rank when he inherited command of the damaged Chivvay-class Heavy Cruiser Gettysburk he was navigating and managed to plot a hasty jump back in time to warn off the remains of the overconfident Iayuvian militias. Out of the thirty ships that had jumped into Etiyokean space, only the Gettysburk and a lone Musai had escaped and on the other routes, casualties had been even worse.
With the local militias devastated, the Etiyokeans had pushed forward an offensive before reinforcements from more distant systems could arrive. The Lesser Etiyoke Cluster had been fortunate enough to have reinforcements arrive in time and the lone jump point leading between the two clusters had seen the Etiyokean forces take losses almost as severe as they had inflicted weeks before. Ezoe had done less well and by seizing the key border systems, Etiyoke forced the defenses to be spread thin to guard several more and drained the reserves even more heavily to contain them there.
Finally, in the Iayuvi cluster, the battle had raged back and forth as the militias had been pushed back from the jump point but not allowed the Etiyoke squadrons to push through the vital connection to the two jump points leading into the rest of the cluster - most importantly, to Terra. Finally, a large force of Militia ships had transited from the Zjevlovecoe system and the defenders had welcomed their allies... until those very ships suddenly switched their IDs and opened fire on them.
The ships had come from Etiyoke's militias, now absorbed into what had become the Unity Government Enforcers, and their betrayal had broken the back of the defenses. Ironically, the lack of a strong central command had been all that saved the militia fleet, as individual ships and squadrons scattered and fled, the confusion made it impossible for the Enforcers to be sure if there was a counterattack underway until the handful of ships Rau had been able to hold together were already firing.
There had been little time, for if Zjevlovecoe had fallen then Terra itself was threatened, but Rau's crew had abandoned the Gettysburk moments before the automatic controls sent it ramming into one of the Enforcer's two Gwazine-class battleships and under the cover of his mobile suits they boarded the second and overwhelmed the crew of the other, retaking it for the Confederacy and racing back to the Terra jump point and thence to Alpha Iayuvi when the Terran government abruptly declared their neutrality.
That particular idiocy had at least served to keep the mother world from being bombarded, or even occupied, but the fighting over the other worlds had lasted for months. Rau and the Confederate had been one of the few bright spots of the Confederacy's record in the war, so far, and he was flung into combat over Mars and then for the Jupiter colonies, exacting a heavy toll before being driven back and out of the Solar system, buying time for the rest of the Confederacy to organize its resources.
And now, as a newly-minted Admiral, without even time to break the habit of answering his telephone as 'Commodore le Creuset', he had been placed in command of the defenses for Alpha Iayuvi.
It was an important role. The three systems that gave the cluster it's name were among the oldest of the Forty-Two Worlds, having been colonized in the first decades after the discovery of jump points. If they were to fall then nothing but a rump of the cluster would remain in the hands of the Confederacy, which would carry a potentially disastrous impact upon both morale and on economic might. However, resources were slim. He could be spared only his own Confederate, the Dolos-class heavy carrier Enterprise and a mix of Chivvay and Musai-class cruisers. Together, the ships could field roughly two hundred mobile suits and there were also emplaced defenses - a network of sensor and weapon buoys around the jump point, backed by two asteroid bases hastily converted to house an additional fifty mobile suits.
It would have to suffice.
The bridge was a large, open room that located the commander's seat rather regally at the back, with the work stations around the edge of a sizeable (for a space ship) open square of deck that allowed for a number of staff to stand around at the commander's presence. One of the changes that Rau had made was to have a large holodisplay set up in the centre, so that he had a large tactical display to work with.
No sooner had he entered the room than the display created a smaller window facing his command chair and displayed the worried face of Commander Talia Gladys behind the visor of a spacesuit helmet. Rau viewed her with mixed feelings. On the one hand, she was a capable officer but she also owed at least part of her rank to political connections. It was an odd prejudice to have in the Militias - given that the Militias owed their direct allegiances firstly to the various Families and only then to the Confederacy - but Rau had his doubts about Talia' Dullindal patrons. That family occupied a moderate stance and Gilbert Dullindal, while objectively a capable executive of his own world was one of the leaders amongst the small faction that had indicated that they would be favorably inclined towards a peace agreement even if it left Greater Etiyoke to go it's own way.
On the other hand, Talia Gladys was the commander of the Tzimisce, which suggested that the Lasombra had come to grief out in the Zjevlovecoe system. It was a pity, but if there was any ship in his small fleet that Rau would be dry-eyed about losing, the Lasombra might be it. Not for any crime of the ship, but because of one of the crew.
"Commander," he greeted her, settling into his seat. "What's going on across there?"
Talia sighed. "They're on their way here, sir. We got jumped by a carrier's worth of those transforming mobile suits and saw the carrier at long range. It was one of their assault jobs - best guess is that they wanted to punch out the picket so that they could jump without you receiving a warning. Since we made it back..."
"They'll either abandon the operation or push ahead before we can call in support," he said. "Agreed and a very good job on your part, Commander. How are your people?"
"Too many lost, sir. The sickbay took a hit early on and at least a third of the ship is depressurized. We can move and fight, but we're a long way from business as usual. Probably need a dockyard at some point. And the Lasombra's a complete loss - we saw her reactor go. They got their suits off first but only one of them lasted to get back with us."
Rau hid a grimace at the news. It wouldn't do to show regret at anyone's survival, but if only one pilot had survived then he could guess quite easily who it would have been. "Let me guess, Flight Lieutenant la Flaga made it back?" At her nod, he raised one eyebrow. "The man's definitely a survivor."
"Alright Commander. I can't offer you a dockyard at the moment, but move yourself over to Jachin Due. They'll be glad of all the close support that you can offer if the Enforcers do come through and Having a few veterans with them should stiffen up the suit squadrons there."
The Commander looked like she was going to point out the old truism that you can't stiffen spit with ball bearings, but refrained. He understood her feelings - the squadrons at Boaz and Jachin Due were made up almost entirely of novices right out of flight training and operating older suits. Not any older than the GINN's that had operated with the pickets, but significantly inferior to the CGUE suits on the Enterprise or the newer GuAIZs that hadn't even reached the frontlines yet. Still, some of the pilots would probably turn out well, if they survived long enough.
.oOo.
The hangers of a Musai-class cruiser such as the Tzimisce are located not far below the bridge, so it took Talia only a short while to reach the large compartment. It was open to space as the doors at the back had been opened to admit the incoming mobile suits, but that was no surprise for the large hanger was only very rarely pressurized.
The Tzimisce's own mobile suits had already landed and being moved into their docked locations at the front of the hanger, leaving only a relatively narrow space for the last suit to land. Talia held her breath as the damaged GINN entered the hanged carefully and a slight shock went through the deck as it settled onto the catapult. The surviving Techs rushed forwards to secure it and the large doors began to fold open.
All the suits had taken damage she realised - Miguel Aiman's was missing an arm, which must have limited it's ability to handle the heavy beam cannon it carried, and Heine Westenfluss's suit was so scorched and blackened that it was hard to make out the original colour scheme. The last GINN was the worst off, with one leg reduced to an immobile stump and the rear thrusters torn halfway. She was surprised that it had managed to make it back to the hanger.
When the suit's hatch opened, a broad shouldered figure in a violet-trimmed flight suit emerged. This would be the mysterious Flight Lieutenant that the Admiral thought had a knack for survival. There had been a hint of dislike in that comment and she wondered what lay behind it. Gliding along the gantry, she gestured for the three pilots to go down the ship into the general crew quarters rather than up into the pilot's ready rooms which had been opened to space by the same impact that had done such damage to the bridge.
The two Flight Officers were still in their teens, she remembered as she followed them down to one of the still pressurized sections of the ship, but La Flaga had sounded like an older man over the radio. This was confirmed once they were safe to remove their helmets - he was five or six years older than the other pilots, with a handsome face not covered by the half-mask that was fashionable in some parts of the Confederacy and slightly tousled blond hair.
"Welcome to the Tzimisce, Lieutenant," she told him. "Sorry about the Lasombra."
"She was a good ship," he said with grim resignment and she guessed that he had been in the Militias since before the war. That was the reaction of a seasoned soldier, few and far between these days.
"And welcome back to the two of you," she added to Miguel and Heine. "Although you won't be here long, I'm afraid. Probably not long enough to even get out of those flight suits."
"We're being reassigned?" Miguel exclaimed. "What for."
"You may not have noticed, Flight Officer," Talia observed testily, "But my ship is just a little broken at the moment. We'll be deployed in close support of the Jachin Due forward base until there's time for repairs and the three of you are going to be joining their mobile suit detachment. Most of their pilots are right out of the flight school so they'll need the benefits of your experience." Her face softened. "The pilots quarters took some damage in the fight but you've got an hour or so to salvage what you can before you leave."
The youngsters saluted promptly before departing upwards again. Heine halted in the door. "Commander?"
"Mr. Westenfluss?"
"I'd just like to say that it's been an honor to serve aboard the Tzimisce, ma'am. I hope to have the chance again."
Talia nodded. "You've done very well, Mr Westenfluss. And if you're available for my flight group in the future, I'll be glad to have you aboard."
Flight Lieutenant Mu La Flaga smiled thinly at the exchange. After almost six years in service, he knew how the Confederacy Defense Militia really worked and recongised the offer and it's acceptance. It was more the rule than the exception for officers to form cotories of junior officers, promoting their careers in return for their junior's support and loyalty. It also allowed officers to pool their connections within the Confederacy to obtain the best possible supplies and assignments.
In this case, Commander Gladys had obtained the support of the Westenfluss should it be necessary in future, and would probably get a good flight officer for her next command if they could arrange the assignment. For his part, Heine would have a mentor, and likely a shot at Flight Lieutenancy earlier than would normally have been the case, as well as the protection of a patron favored by the Dullindal family. It was hard for him to criticise - he knew his own career would not have done so well had he not had the La Flaga name to fall back upon and a mentor in the late Admiral Halliburton, but objectively, he had to worry about how it divided the Militias against themselves.
"I imagine you don't have much in the way of kit, Lieutenant," Talia asked him, breaking him out of his reverie.
"Nothing I'm not carrying," he said, spreading his hands illustratively. Since all he was wearing was the standard flightsuit, unencumbered by even a survival pack, that meant he probably didn't have anything more than whatever he wore beneath it - not even a uniform.
"Well, I think some of our supply rooms survived," Talia advised the man. "We should at least be able to provide some of the basics. Go requisition yourself a couple of uniforms before you leave - they'll not do anyone any good here and you can't wander around in a flight suit forever."
.oOo.
It was slightly more than an hour later that the three mobile suits, somewhat patched up but still a long way from being fully operational, stepped out of the hanger one at a time (the catapults were out of action and would be for at least another couple of days) and flew slowly across the kilometre or so of empty space that seperated the Tzimisce from the looming mass of Jachin Due.
The asteroid had been tunnelled out during a mining operation centuries ago, and then the tunnels had been dug into storage and facilities for freelance asteroid miners ever since. It had taken almost a month for tugs to bring it out to the jump point, but the thick rock would provide a good layer of defense against most weapons, protecting the hanger bays buried deep inside. A sliding door covered one of the old mining shafts and once the three suits entered, it closed behind them. Three more doors shielded the interior of the asteroid where a dock once used by small one-man prospecting skiffs now held almost thirty GINNs.
Techs with lighted batons steered the new arrivals towards berths near the back were repair gear was being prepared. Obviously, getting their suits up and running would be an immediate priority for the base. From the look of the paintsprayer, they'd also be getting repainted at the same time.
A slight woman with close-cropped black hair was standing just inside the airlock once they had disembarked from their suits and entered the base itself. All three men saluted as they saw that her red uniform jacket had the single silver star of a Commander on both epalettes. "Welcome to Jachin Due," she told them, returning the salute. "I'm Commander Noin, the flight group's commanding officer. Or chief babysitter, as it sometimes comes down to."
"Flight Lieutenant La Flaga," Mu replied. "Pleased to be aboard. Should I ask about the babies?"
Noin grimaced. "They're not as bad as pilots go," she explained. "But the average age of pilot in our flight group is seventeen, and that's with the handful of experienced pilots pulling the average up."
Mu winced. Twenty-odd teenagers convinced of their own immortality and with all the confidence of a pilot who'd never seen combat... it sounded quite nerve-wraking.
"They're really scraping the barrel," muttered Miguel from his lofty status as an eighteen year old and ace.
"I'll expect you to be an example to them, Flight Officer Aiman," Noin replied. "I'd offer to keep you together, but frankly, I need to spread your experience as widely as possible. With the three of you, we have thirty mobile suits. I'm going to shuffle that into six teams of five and put one of you into each group." She pulled out a clipboard. "Mr. Aiman will be in Team Gold under Lieutenant Matthews. He's got seniority but no actual combat experience, and he's smart enough to listen to advice. Mr Westenfluss, you get to play nursemaid to Team Orange under Lieutenant Olor. She's not senior at all I'm afraid, but she is connected so try to be nice while you're in the base. If she gets out of line outside, take over. That's a direct order from me and I'll back you to the hilt."
Heine gulped. That was a legal order - barely - but it was not one that any officer in the Militias wanted to hear. The Families had long memories for slights and if he wound up ousting Lieutenant Olor then there was every chance of a feud breaking out between the two families.
Noin, for her part, smiled thinly as she saw the hint drop in. "The pilot quarters are seperated by team," she said. "You shouldn't have any difficulty finding them. Here," she passed each of them a sheet of paper from the clipboard. "Room numbers for each Team and the briefing room. Go meet your people and get some sleep. The best guess is that we have at least a few more hours before the Etiyokeans can concentrate their assault force."
"So what burden do I receive, Commander?" Mu asked once the boys were out of sight around a corner. "I notice that you didn't want to name names around the others."
"They'll hear soon enough," Noin replied drily. "Team Violet is made up of pilots with the highest connections."
"Council?" Mu asked.
"Committee," she confessed.
The blond was severely tempted to start beating his head against the wall. Flying with pilots connected to the Confederacy Council would be awkward enough. When they were connected to members of the Militias Command Committee, things would be about a hundred times worse. "Who?" he asked faintly.
"Joule, Amalfi, Elsmann and Zala."
Mu buried his face in one gloved hand. Patrick Zala was currently the deputy chairman of the Committee, and Ezra Joule would probably replace him if Zala managed to unseat the incumbent chairman during the next elections. That made keeping his squad alive and out of enemy hands into an almost national priority. "I'm trying to imagine how things could get worse, and right now I'm running short on options," he admitted.
"Well, at least we have a little warning," Noin pointed out. "Every minute they don't attack is a little readier that we are."
"That's assuming they don't blindside us again," Mu pointed out. "We still don't know how they managed to get into Zjevlovecoe without going through Okireul. We had the jump point from Nyiiureul locked solid and that's the only route between the clusters. If they manage to blindside us again, well, we could lose the whole front."
"That mustn't happen," Noin said flatly. "The political situation's looking pretty shaky as it is. If we take another major defeat it might not be Zala or Clyne in the Chairman's seat come the election. If we get some whacko pacifist, then this war's over and it'll be the Alliance all over again."
Mu sighed. "Well hell, I guess we'll have to win then."
"And if we need a miracle," Noin suggested, a slight grin crossing her face. "We have you and Rau le Creuset here, that's doubly lucky."
She spent much of the next few hours wondering at the shadow that crossed his face at her wisecrack.
.oOo.
With the surprise lost, all that the Enforcers could do was either abandon their attack or proceed anyway. In the grand tradition of gamblers anyway, they put all their chips on the table and less than eight hours after the Tzimisce's arrival, six of their Daedalus-class Assault Carriers jumped in rapid succession.
The problem with attacking through a jump point is that you're attacking blindly, without sure knowledge of what the defenses will be, while the defenders know that any attack will have to come through a relatively limited space. The best hope is that the defenders cannot know exactly when that attack will come through and it is not and never had been possible to keep defenses at full readiness at all times.
Without surprise, the Enforcers knew that they would face defenses readied for them. But they also knew that wars are not won without risk. Six assault carriers was a formidable force to lead them through: each was sixty-percent larger than the Enterprise and carried sixty-percent more suits, albeit the smaller and more fragile models that the factories of Greater Etiyoke were turning out in such numbers. They lacked the formidable energy armament of the smaller ship, but then again, there were six of them and all of the almost one thousand suits they carried were the variable fighters that had proven so useful against the larger Confederacy mobile suits so far.
All they needed was to win some space for the fleet carriers to emerge and sheer numbers could carry the day.
But in victory or defeat, this battle could not but cost them. Primed for the arrival, it took less than a second for the weapon buoys to open fire. Four seconds later they were gone, the cheap beam weapons destroying themselves as they each fired only one shot. Defense plan Alpha-Delta Seven dealt with just such a rapid transit and in accordance with its directives a quarter of the buoys had targetted each of the first four ships to transit. Assault Carriers were tough ships... but not that tough.
As the First Battle of Alpha Iayuvi reached it's sixth second, thousands of Enforcer personnel died in the silvery balls of plasma fire that had been their ships. But the ships had jumped with their catapults primed for rapid launch and more than a third of their suits had already been away before death arrived. So too, the survivors of the first wave were launching rapidly, and a sprinkling of red lights fanned out from the jump point in Rau's holodisplay. Rather too many for his liking were headed for the nearer of the two fortresses, Boaz.
For a moment, the young Admiral hesitated, pondering amendments to his plans. But there was little time and he dared not add confusion to the concern amongst his crews. The odds had been cut and less than six hundred variable fighters threatened his two hundred and fifty mobile suits and the ships that supported them. The Assault Carriers, he ignored. There would be no more transits into the system until the Enforcers knew that nothing was in place to threaten their precious fleet carriers. Assault Carriers, for all their expense, were designed to be expended breaking through warp points. Fleet Carriers were not.
No, until one of those Assault Carriers returned to call in a second wave, the battle was down only to them.
The deck beneath him shuddered as the Confederate's engines fired and it led the ranked squadrons of cruisers deeper towards the jump point and away from Boaz. The two bases were on their own - only by pushing close enough to underline the threat he posed, could he force the Enforcers to break off. And the only way to do that was to survive the hundreds of variable fighters threatening to engluf his command in entirety.
The lights of beam cannon began to stab across the blackness of space.
.oOo.
On Jachin Due, there had been little time for the new arrivals to grow acquainted with their comrades. Exhausted by the running battle in the Zjevlovecoe system, they desperately needed to sleep before the invaders arrived and all three were asleep when sirens and red lamps banished any hope of further rest.
"They're attacking?" Nicol Amalfi exclaimed in surprise from the desk at the side of the small barracks that housed the five pilots of Team Violet. He was a slender, green-haired youth, almost fragile in appearance. "But they don't have surprise."
"Perhaps they were counting on us thinking they wouldn't without that," the slightly older boy brooding by the window muttered, lifting the helmet that lay beside him. Athrun Zala had his father's coloring, but it remained to be seen if he would grow into the same powerful build.
The only one of them not already in a flightsuit was Mu, who skinned into his with ruthless speed, barely flinching even at the sanitary fittings. "Perhaps you should be getting to your suits?" he suggested gently and the four pilots jumped to obey, Yzak Joule smirking at the perceived rebuke to Athrun.
Mu shook his head as he followed them out of the room, sealing up his flightsuit as he walked. Was I ever that bad? he asked himself. The sad thing was that he probably had been, back when he was a teenager. It had taken several hard knocks for him to get over the after-effects of adolesence and he suspected that these youngsters were about to have just such a collision with reality in the form of a murthering great battle.
In the docks, the mobile suits of Team Blue were already vanishing into the catapults. On the far side of the cavern from the entrance passage, the catapults were set to launch five suits at once, allowing the docks to empty in rapid succession. Commander Noin's Team Red were moving to launch the moment the catapults were clear and Mu could see Miguel Aiman's suit leaving the gantry to join the rest of Team Gold.
The techs had worked wonders in the little time that they had had, Mu noted as he moved quickly along the gantrys to his own GINN. There was still sign of damage, but all the necessary systems were operational and if the paint was lacking in a few places, at least the violet trim had been reapplied.
"Right then, boys," he ordered. "Get your crates moving and in line for the catapults. And make sure you're at one hundred percent ready status before you get on the catapult. Once you're on it there's no time for you to back off and get a spare ammo pack or the like. Check in."
"Yzak Joule, ready," snapped the teenager.
"Elsmann ready," his buddy added, his suit carrying the Team's heavy beam cannon.
"Athrun Zala, ready."
"Nicol Amalfi, ready."
"Mu La Flaga," the blond finished. "Flight Control, Violet Leader. My Team is ready to launch."
There was a crackle on the radio and then an unfamiliar voice replied: "Okay, Violet Leader. You are clear to launch after Team Green."
That left Team Orange last in line, Mu noted as only one of the suits from that team was out of the maintenance racks. From the look of the blackened armor, it was Heine Westenfluss who was waiting for the rest of his squad and he didn't envy the boy having to deal with a lieutenant who had let her squad get that slack.
Team Green vanished as the catapult hurled them out into space and Team Gold stepped into their places. Mu let the boys take up their positions behind the yellow-trimmed GINNs (calling them Team Yellow would have been... indiplomatic, so standard nomeclature was Gold instead and a few Militias even paid for gold paint) and then filled the open slot himself, noting that it left him right behind Miguel. The new arm was noticiably better polished that the original that still held the heavy beam weapon that Miguel favored.
Then Team Gold diminished rapidly into the distance and it was time from Team Violet to step up.
As a child, Mu had never liked roller-coasters. As a pilot, he did not enjoy catapult launches. The flood of adrenaline as he was suddenly accelerated to high velocities took away all control of his suit for the seconds before leaving the catapult and he rationalised that it was the inability to maneuver that rubbed him the wrong way, although it was probably more the way that it made him feel like he was going to throw up. This time was no better than it ever was, but it was over quickly and the five mobile suits soared away from Jachin Due into space that was brightly lit by fiery explosions and the brilliant beams of energy that were causing some of the former.
"Holy shit," Dearka Elsmann muttered under his breath.
"Keep it together, kid," Mu ordered automatically. "Form up on me, some of those fighters are headed our way." The four young pilots moved their suits around into a textbook formation and started to actually put their training to use figuring out what was going on rather than just looking at the pretty lights.
"Violet Leader, Red Leader," Noin ordered over the radio. We have sixty, six-zero, incoming VFs. We're going out to meet them. You'll be backing my team, Orange backs Gold and the others get to play reserve."
"Will comply," Mu replied and vectored towards Noin's flight path, the rest of his team following like dutiful ducklings behind their mother. He switched his radio back to the Team channel. "Okay, I don't know what the academy tells you about Variable Fighters, so here's the straight dope. They're smaller, and more agile, than our suits and fighter-mode they're a lot faster. As suits they're slower and they haven't upgraded to proper beam weapons yet, just small point defense lasers on the heads. Their cannon can hurt our suits if they get a good hit in, but they aren't up to a one-shot-kill. Their missiles can kill you right out, but they're mostly for anti-ship and base work. It takes a damn good pilot to get the best out of them but they don't have any more of those than we do right now. Don't try to tail them, just take what shots you can and try not to let them get behind you - explosive shells can fuck your thrusters up and then you're a sitting duck."
He frowned in thought. "And Dearka, watch where your shooting - your beam cannon will shoot right through one of them so try not to frag a friendly suit behind one of them: it may sound far-fetched but I've seen it happen before."
"Right..." Dearka drawled, disbelievingly, but there was no time for further advice as the incoming variable fighters began to fire off volleys of missiles from below their wings, targeting the approaching mobile suits rather than the still distant fortress. Noin's squadron didn't break formation, instead shouldering their beam rifles and opening fire on the incoming targets. A moment later, the missiles were close enough for Mu to pick one off and his Team followed his example, green beams reaching out to explode the missiles before they reached Team Red.
Dearka cursed as he found that his heavy beam cannon was relatively little use for this precision work. "Save it," Mu snapped. "You've got almost enough range to hit the fighters, so deal with them!"
The younger blond's eyes widened and then he brought the cannon up and the green beam reached out and blew straight through one of the fighters. He really was a decent shot, Mu noted and then frowned as the Enforcers evened the score, a missile detonating close enough to one of Noin's pilots to cave in the side of her suit, sending shrapnel through the cockpit.
There was no time to grieve as the rest of Team Red plunged into the variable fighters and a vicious dogfight halted the advance. Team Gold entered the mix a moment later and suits on both sides began to die. The variable fighters had taken suit mode to deal with their opponents at close quarters and it became increasingly difficult for the still approaching Orange and Violet teams to pick out targets as they reached beam rifle range. Dearka was surprised to find that he actually had to break off one shot as a GINN flew across the path that his beam would have taken. He could see suddenly just how easy it would be for his beam cannon to accidentally hit one of his own side, and became far more cautious with placing his shots.
For their parts, Nicol and Athrun stayed close together, low voiced comments concentrating their shots upon the same targets. It was a good technique and they were hitting almost as often as Mu, which was more than could be said for Yzak, whose wild shooting was well nigh as much of a threat as Dearka's potent beam cannon to the Militia's mobile suits. It was with some relief that they came into close quarters and Yzak was able to stow his rifle, taking out his sword to beat back the variable fighters as they tried to swarm over Dearka. The lure of destroying one of the weapons that could seriously threaten a carrier was enough to bring them closer to the defending GINN than they would have allowed normally and Yzak snarled triumphantly as he stabbed the short blade into the lower chest of one fighter, crippling it. Then his other hand closed around the head of the much smaller suit and crushed it easily before discarding the suit for Dearka to finish with a quick shot from his cannon.
.oOo.
Several thousand miles away, Rau le Creuset was also facing a wave of Enforcers. Together with the sixty or so variable suits attacking Jachin Due, the Enforcers had detached about eighty suits to attack Boaz - a interesting number since the standard organisation for Enforcer mobile suit forces was to group five squadrons of twelve fighters into a single wing, such as that attacking Jachin Due. The reinforced wing attacking Boaz might simply be an intelligence miscue: although Boaz was larger than the other asteroid, it had a smaller force of mobile suits. If they expected a larger force, then reinforcing their attack group would be wise. But it could also indicate that specialist squadrons were attached to the wing for some nefarious purpose.
Nefariousness was a trait that Rau was more than willing to ascribe to the Unity Government. After all, they saw themselves as the successors of the Alliance, and in it's day, there had been few depths that that long deceased polity had been unwilling to sink to in order to maintain their personal power.
However, there was little he could do for either fortress at the moment. The detachment of a hundred and forty variable fighters still left him with well over three hundred fighters descending upon his fleet and there was no choice but to break through them if he was to retake the jump point. Fortunately, the numbers favored him more than anywhere else in the battle - between the one hundred and eight mobile suits aboard the Enterprise, the twenty aboard the Confederate, and the complements of the twelve remaining Musai-class ships, he was outnumbered less than two to one, and while the variable fighters might have the potential to be a match for the GINN, neither their tactics nor their technology had reached that point yet. That and twenty-odd warships should be enough to carry the day.
The volleys of missiles from the incoming variable fighters had been launched from closer than usual, and there had been more of them - a mid-range missile that hadn't been encountered before, but the GINN's had at least some practise in dealing with such a threat and most of the missiles had been destroyed before they could reach engagement ranges. Perhaps inevitably, however, some were missed. Not one had hit the Confederate, but there had been minor hits against the Ventrue, Gangrel and Setite, and a lucky hit to the starboard missile bay of the heavy cruiser Maldon Bridge, had not only taken out the missile by but triggered a sympathetic explosion in the magazines, temporarily disabling the ship's forward beam turret.
Now the fighters switched to suit mode and penetrated the formations, with mobile suits in hot pursuit. Point defense was a chancy affair, as likely to hit a friendly suit as a it was one of the enemy, but GINN's could take such a hit better than the variable fighters could and the attackers were firing back with autocannon little diffierent from the Militias point defense, while the GINN's beam rifles would destroy or cripple an enemy suit with almost every hit.
A number of the Enforcer pilots had been carrying loads of short range missiles and held them back for use at point-blank range and fire spread through the fleet. Not all of them had made it this far and the GINNs had paid especial attention to the handful of fighters still carrying missiles, but more than half ripple-fired heavy loads of the small missiles at ranges too short for any meaningful evasion. Virtually all of them died instants later, as vengeful GINN's lashed out, but the damage was done.
The Azincour and the Malkavian simply exploded and the luckless Maldon Bridge[/i] drifted out of formation, engines in ruins. The Assamite pulled back to take the heavy cruiser in tow, for without its turreted beam cannon it would be of little value in a stand-up fight. The Confederate had taken the brunt of no less than three such attacks and staggered out of the crossfire trailing fire and with four turrets out of action, but the others were still spitting fire and they only needed to go a little further before the two surviving assault carriers would be in range.
From one side of Rau's bridge there was a cry of dismay and he jerked around to see the Communications Officer on his feet, looking over at the Radar Officer. "Enterprise just dropped off the net," he reported.
"She's still there," Radar responded. "Brining up a visual."
The shot from an aft-pointed camera sprang up on a side-screen and the computers magnified and cleaned up the feed until they could see the Enterprise clearly. The large ship was indeed intact, and its guns were still firing, but there was only fire where the conning tower should have been.
It was the Flight Control Officer who explained the mystery. "Kamikaze!" he reported. "One of our GINNs saw a variable fighter fly right into the Enterprise's bridge. It must have killed everyone up there instantly, and taken out the radios as well."
"Dammit," Rau growled, watching as the officers all reflexively checked the windows of their own bridge. "See if you can make contact with their Combat Information Centre," he ordered the Communications Officer. Even if the main radio is out, they should have a back-up online soon."
"We're in range of the Carriers!" the Gunnery Officer reported.
Rau nodded. "Switch fire to them immediately," he ordered.
Outside, the large turrets turned slightly, bringing the powerful sixteen-inch beam cannon to bear on the targets in front of them. Behind them, the greater range of the eighteen-inch beam cannon on the Enterprise had come into range at almost the same moment and one Assault Carrier staggered under the barrage, tough armour deforming under the beams.
There was a sudden actinic flash from one side and Rau grimaced. From that direction, the source could only be Boaz, and it didn't take a genius to realise that the light was too bright to have been caused by mere plasma warheads. "Warning to all ships," he said in the silence. "Also to Jachin Due for relay to planetary bases. UG Enforcers have employed battlefield anitmatter weapons."
.oOo.
The flash of light was also visible from Jachin Due and similar conclusions were being drawn, although except in the asteroid's command centre, there was little time to spare.
"Are they likely to use those here?" the Commander serving as executive officer asked warily.
Commodore Noventa shook his head. "If they haven't yet, then it's not likely," he said solidly from his chair in the centre of the compartment, not taking his eyes off the holo-display that was trying to keep up with the dogfight that was moving steadily towards the base. Commander Noin had had to call in her two reserve teams of mobile suits already and the Confederacy suits were down to little more than half-strength even so. The Enforcers had lost more than twenty fighters, however, and given time the GINNs might have been able to wear them down.
By that time, however, the fight would be taking place inside Jachin Due and that was just a little closer than Noventa was willing to allow them.
"Signal Commander Noins," he ordered. "We're going to join in the fun. Ready all missile launchers for maximum fire in thirty seconds."
Outside, in response to his signals, the scattered Confederacy mobile suits regrouped and it was not at all coincidental that the locations that they formed up upon left an open route for the variable fighters to use to close on Jachin Due. The Enforcers were quick to exploit the gap and the remains of two squadrons shifted to fighter mode and punched through, trying to engage the asteroid at pointblank range.
Across Jachin Due, hatches sprang open and to the dismay of the Enforcers, magnetic catapults began to fling missiles at them, rockets flaring to life once the missiles cleared their launch tubes. Noventa's gunners called for a staggered drive activation, so the first volley was barely a head of the next two as they slashed into the variable fighters, engulfing them in plasma fireballs.
In fighter mode, the variable fighters were not agile enough to evade the targeting systems of the missiles, but the handful that switched to mobile suit mode discovered that they were too slow to get out of the killzone before the blasts tore through them. It was Catch-22 with a vengeance, and by the time Jachin Due ceased firing, it's small magazines reduced to only half their previous state, not one of the variable fighters that had pushed through survived.
The remaining fighters, now only equal in number to their opponents, found themselves fighting not to destroy the enemy but to stay alive. Then Noventa played his trump card and the Tzimisce swept majestically out from behind the asteroid-fortress it had been hidden by, its two beam cannon raking at the Enforcers.
Within moments, the variable fighters were fleeing, their fighter modes faster than anything that the GINNs could manage.
"Good job, Commander Noins," Noventa broadcast. "Get your suits back inside. Commander Gladys and the Tzimisce will pick up anyone who can't move under their own power. We've got just enough time to rearm you, if they decide to send in a second wave."
Shaking his head, Mu took stock of the survivors. His own team was doing well enough - Nicol's suit was going to need pick up, judging by the damage to his thrusters, and Dearka's machine was, quite literally, headless. The teen had also wrecked his beam cannon, driving the muzzle into the back of one variable fighter and rapid firing it through the briefly surprised Enforcer and into a second fighter behind it, but he was mobile and the other two were both more or less intact.
Other Teams had not done so well. Not by far. Heine Westenfluss had made it through, but he was commanding only four suits, an amalgamation of Team Orange and Team Gold that did not include poor Miguel, who'd been shot to pieces somewhere. Team Green was just gone, and Team Red, having been reduced to two suits during the dogfight, was flying beside Team Blue, which had oddly enough managed to survive with all five suits still in apparently mint condition - quite a surprise for a bunch of rookies, but he had to give them credit. For all their lack of experience, most of the novice pilots had done as well as more experienced soldiers could have been expected to.
"Nicol, signal the Tzimisce for pick up," he ordered. "Same for you Dearka."
"I can still fly," protested Dearka.
"I know that, kid, but without the sensors in your head, your fine manuevering is going to be iffy and we don't need you demolishing the docks when you land. Just take it easy. You've all done well."
"Well!?" Yzak protested. "We got beat on like drums. Look at Team Blue - not even a scratch on their damn paintwork."
"At least we're all alive," Nicol pointed out softly and all eyes went to the trail of broken suits that trailed out behind them."
"Nicol's right," Athrun said firmly. "And next time we'll do better. But for now we should get aboard. We'll need to get ready for a second wave. Without Boaz, we'll be more of a target for them."
.oOo.
There was no second wave however, and no sooner had the few score variable fighters to survive and lifeboats from the more damaged of the two Assault Carriers been taken aboard the less damaged of the pair, than the Daedalus-class vanished with the distinctive haloing effect of a jump. It's sistership blew up almost immediately in a ball of antimatter that made it perfectly clear that that there had been a reserve of antimatter weapons aboard.
That was ample reason for their decision not to scuttle the ship by the conventional means before leaving of course. A plasma reactor (or several reactors, no one in the Confederacy had gotten a good look at the insides of the UG's new carriers yet) would quite neatly remove a ship from existence if certain safeties were overridden. But antimatter was another matter entirely - the warheads would inevitably be triggered by such an explosion (probably the trigger mechanism in this case) - the blast had scoured the jumpoint clean of not only the carrier, but of all four of its broken sister ships as well, and would have destroyed the only surviving ship as well if it hadn't jumped first.
It also meant that Rau would be wary about sending any ships into or through the jump point until it had had a day or two to settle. Antimatter detonations did funny things to jump points sometimes, and using a jump engine in a jump point unsettled in that way was... well perhaps not fatal. The ships that had tried might have ended somewhere intact. But none had ever been heard from again. The use of antimatter weapons against a jump point was, of course, something that Confederacy absolutely prohibited. For that matter, although a reserve of antimatter warheads was maintained, the Militias hadn't fired one in anger since the last Alliance stronghold was defeated in the Lesser Etiyoke Cluster, over a hundred and ninety years before.
The Unity Government evidently felt differently.
Not that Rau would have attempted a pursuit anyway. It was a given that a second wave of Assault Carriers could be about to emerge, since the jump point in Zjevlovecoe wouldn't have been affected, and that there would definitely be a sizeable force of ships that would have followed up the attack had it been successful in critically damaging the defenses.
And those defenses were looking just a little on the threadbare side at the moment. Over a hundred and fifty mobile suits had been destroyed, as had seven cruisers. Several more, as well as the Enterprise, were limping towards Jachin Due for emergency repairs to get them back to the orbital dockyards over Alpha VIII. The military bases on the moons of the gas giant had been built by the Alliance's Terran Union predecessors and had been home away from home for the Militias of Alpha Iayuvi's three inhabited worlds and seven shoals of orbital habitats since the Confederacy liberated the system from the Alliance. They were also on the far side of the system at this point in their orbits and at least a week's travel for an undamaged warship.
The idea of launching a counterattack with one battleship and several cruisers, all of them still damaged to one extent or another did not fill Rau with glee, but he supposed that for all that his opposite number in the Zjevlovecoe system couldn't be sure that there wasn't a heavy battlegroup on the way out from the system's planets, quite capable of doing so. A useful illusion, he decided.
It was only a pity, he mused, that La Flaga's damnable luck had held out. The Unity Government Enforcers had been stopped cold and it would have been nice to cement that particular victory by getting rid of that particular irritant. A little public display of grief might have been in order, and then drinking ostenisbly to his elder half-brother's memory and actually in celebration that the only legitimate offspring of Aldo La Flaga had departed the universe.
As it was, that individual had not only survived, he had led the sons of several prominent politicans into battle and somehow managed not to get any of them killed. Failing in that would at the least of been a black eye for the La Flagas, politically. Instead, it would bolster their position and while the younger La Flaga seemed genuinely unconcerned by the influences that shaped the Confederacy, his father would not be so naive.
But it was not and never had been an ideal universe, Rau reminded himself. He had cemented his own reputation with this battle and it would be... obsessive, dangerously so, to let his dislike of his blood father overwhelm the practicalities of the moment. With that settled for the moment, he turned his attention to taking account of the casualties and of rescue operations for lifeboats and ejected pilots who might be endangered by the usual detritius of battle. On another level, he started mentally composing the many reports that he would be required to make on the battle.
BuShips really needed to do something about those damned conning towers, for one thing. And there ought to be some way to deal with the explosive shells of variable fighter cannon. Admittedly, a mobile suit couldn't be armoured everywhere if they were expected to move, but there should be something. He made a note to check reference texts on body armour design - the same problem had probably existed back on Terra back when the deadliest projectile was the arrow so there might be some useful ideas there.
.oOo..oOo. .oOo.

Major Roy Fokker watched as the halos of energy that surrounded the transport faded to reveal a subtly different star field. The halo had been even more intense than usual, which he guessed was probably because of the additional energy that was necessary to make a jump through a Class-III jump point.
The initial theory of jump points had been laid out by physicists in the late twenty-first century, although the basic concept had been looked at hopefully for at least a century before then. It had not been until the twenty-third century that the first human jump transit had been made by the International Science Vessel Discovery. Fifty years later, when the body of knowledge involving jump points had grown exponentially, the possibility of Class-II jump points had been raised: even harder to detect or use, but perhaps leading out of the closed network of the Iayuvi Cluster's star systems.
The collapse of the New United Nations delayed the solution of these problems for decades as the colonies were forced back upon their own resources until Terra managed to put it's affairs in order and re-establish interstellar trade. In that span, the old first-generation jumpships, little more than jumpdrives to which between two and nine sublight transports could connect for the journey through a jump point, were replaced by second-generation jumpships that could economically haul cargos from orbit of one world out to a jump point, make transit and then reach another world.
But the new government was not entirely welcome on the colonies, having had two generations to get used to home rule, so when Adrienne Bashir managed to locate and transit through a Class-II jump point from Delta Iayuvi into the Emyoje Cluster, she triggered a rapid surge of migration away from the control of the Terran Union and it's genetically augmented ruling caste, the Coordinators. When the Union followed, the Independent Governments resisted, at first with no great success. Only in the mid-twenty-sixth century would the Etiyoke cluster governments create the Alliance that would break the back of the Terran Union and exterminate the pureblooded Coordinators, banning the biological research that had led to them.
But only a iconclastic few in the physics community had theorised what Roy had just experienced: Class-III jump points leading out of the Forty-Two Worlds. In the closing days of the Alliance, when the upstart Confederacy had shattered the hardwon peace enforced after the defeat of the Terran Union, the Hawking Flotilla had left the Uvbeyou system with the seeds of a new colony, a military cadre and the entire faculty of the Alliance Insitute of Applied Sciences, jumping blindly through the only Class-III jump point they had been able to locate with their preliminary research - research of which they carried every trace with them.
And for two hundred years they had hidden here, in New Etiyoke, preparing for the day of the return when they would reestablish the Alliance once more. It was truly ironic that the colony had included so many with partial descent from the Coordinators (whose diluted advantages had still allowed future generations to rise to great heights) that today almost everyone in the orbital colonies that clustered around Osiris could claim at least some of that blood.
It was on Osiris, where painfully slow terraforming was still proceeding, that the Unity Government's Enforcers had their ultimate headquarters, despite the establishment of the Senate in Alpha Etiyoke. And it was there that Colonel Bruno Gloval and Major Roy Fokker had been summoned, as the senior survivors of the debacle at Alpha Iayuvi.
Gloval, a tall man with a thick black mustache, was looking out of the same window - no great surprise as it was the only one in the observation lounge. It must have been a body blow for the man to be taken away from his command when it needed to be refitted and prepared for new use, the Icarus had been an almost new ship and a prestigious assignment. Now, because of orders he had protested fruitlessly, he was likely to see his career go down in flames.
A similar fate might await Roy of course, but he was more junior, merely the commander of a wing of variable fighters. Of course, that wing was little more than two squadrons now, so there was likely to be some official disfavor for that, but there was little chance that he would be sidelined. Experienced pilots were in short supply for variable fighters. Those who lived long enough to make full use of the Phoenix were able to work miracles when employed correctly - which they had not been at Alpha Iayuvi.
"Have you ever been to Osiris before, sir?" he asked.
Gloval shook his head solemnly. "No, Major," he replied. "I was assigned to the Ezoe front until I was recalled to take command of the Icarus. But you were one of the first from the old Militias to transfer to a variable fighter - you must trained here?"
"Yes sir. The newer flight schools were still being set up so I came here to learn. It's an interesting planet but I don't believe that you'll have a chance to see it up close. The military command centre occupies one of the colony cylinders and movement is restricted. I doubt there's much of a nightlife up there either."
"Well, I suppose that we may have more important things on our minds than the night life, very soon," Gloval said and, apparently bored with the conversation, turned away from the window, taking out his pipe. Then he spotted a no smoking sign and put the pipe back inside his jacket. Honestly, you'd think that the New Etiyokeans were afraid of catching some disease off of a little tobacco, he thought in disgust.
.oOo.
The chamber being used for the tribunal was silent for a long moment after the last testimony had been taken. Located under one of the 'secure administration' buildings in the Horus VII orbital habitat (meaning that it was an outwardly normal office building that a mobile suit would have been hard pressed to damage, set in a parkland setting that a carrier task group would have a hard time threatening), the room was, as custom dictated, darkened. A single spotlight pinpointed the ordinary looking office chair welded to the floor only a metre and a half away from the door, but the officers sat behind the U-shaped table on the podium that the chair faced, were lit only by the muted glow of their workstation displays.
"Troubling," said one officer from one of the bends in the U.
When it became clear that he did not propose to clarify the word, a woman halfway down the other arm cleared her throat. "In what sense do you mean, tribune?" By tradition, all officers on a tribunal were refered to as such, rather than by rank, as they all carried equal authoruty and responsibility for the tribunal's findings. In practise, everyone knew who out-ranked who and the seating order reflected this, with the senior officer at the base of the U and the most junior at the far ends.
"It means that that idiot Hayes has cost us thousands of Enforcers, hundreds of variable fighters and five of our newest carriers," grunted a man sat right beside the central chair.
"And we appointed him," said the first man cuttingly. Eyes widened around the table.
"He has previously showed considerable ability," offered the woman. "And it is important that the upper commands not be held exclusively by our people. The cluster is happy to unite with our leadership, but not if they perceive themselves as being under our rule. Opening command slots to officers drawn from the Militias is necessary."
"Hayes is ambitious," offered another officer. "If he loses his rank over this, he'll muddy the waters. Say it's predjudice against an outsider, or that we're not being aggressive enough. Anything to keep his name clean."
"Someone needs to pay for this cock-up?" the first man asked. "Tribunals are not witch hunts. Just because we could have someone courtmartialed, does not mean that we have to. We were defeated. It happens. We cannot expect otherwise. What is important is that we learn the lessons of the defeat and do not repeat the mistakes that were made."
There was another silence, before the woman in the central seat spoke, her voice sure and authoritive. "Marshal Hayes cannot be entrusted with another field command. Offer him assignment to a anministrative post. The Fortress Command in the Pedeoo system will require an officer of his grade. Responsibility for one of the few routes into the Cluster, but one behind the frontlines. Other outsiders will be promoted as we continue to expand the Enforcers, reducing the disparity."
There were nods around the room.
"As for the lessons learned, we should bring Colonel Gloval and Major Fokker... Brigadier Gloval and Lieutenant Colonel Fokker, I should say, after their heroics at Alpha Iayuvi..."
More nods. Publically promoting outsider officers involved would make it clear to the officer corps that there would be no scapegoats and mitigate the effects of sidelining Hayes.
"And discuss with them what changes must be made to prevent further such debacles."
Within moments, the two officers had returned. Since there was only one chair, neither sat in it.
"Gentlemen," the woman in the central seat began, "It has become clear during this tribunal that we need to review our fleet's tactical balance. As the most recent officers to operate against the Confederacy militias, your opinions are hereby solicited. Mr. Fokker, pre-war exercises indicated that variable fighters would have a critical advantage against mobile suits whereas since the initial surprise wore off, they have actually required a significant edge in numbers to defeat them. Your thoughts?"
Roy straightened. "Ma'am, the variable fighters now employed are not those simulated in the pre-war exercises. The proposed variable fighter was to operate with an onboard plasma fusion reactor and carry a weapon load equivalent to that of a current model GINN. However, the variable fighters placed in production are operating on high-density power cells which limits their operational range and cannot power a full-scale beam rifle for more than a few shots. As a result, the fighters are using automatic cannon that are significantly less likely to destroy a target and do not have the endurance to keep fighting long enough to keep hitting the targets."
"The compromise was necessary in order to maintain our operational pace," another of the tribunes observed. "However, if the Pheonix cannot perform then perhaps it should be withdrawn until a fully operational variable fighter is available."
"They still give us a mobility advantage," the man next to him objected.
"With respect," Roy said. "We've also been slow to evolve doctrine for variable fighter operations. That's improving, but so are the Militias tactics to deal with us, and they've been making up ground rapidly. The longer they have to work out how to deal with us effectively, the less effective a new Variable Fighter will be."
"And they will have new suits of their own," added the tribune who had proposed withdrawing the Phoenix fighters. "Intelligence makes it clear that research is underway to build a new generation of their mobile suits, better equipped for anti-variable fighter operations. They may also have variable fighters of their own before long."
"Then we'll need to do something about that," Gloval said boldly. "Our carriers are excellent for carrying variable fighters and the lightweight mobile suits developed here, but they do not have the anti-shipping capability of the Militias warships. Unless we can improve our ability to take them on ship to ship, or regain our edge in mobile weapons, then we will not be able to maintain the offensive."
There was an outraged silence. Those before a tribunal were not expected to speak unless addressed.
The woman at the centre of the table nodded her head. "That is a concern," she agreed firmly. "And it must not be allowed to come to that. How do you propose that the matter be settled, Brigadier Gloval?"
Gloval blinked. "Brigadier?" he asked.
"That is one conclusion that the Tribunal has drawn," she replied.
"Ah," Gloval grunted. "Well, our assault through the jumppoint failed for two reasons. Firstly, we were too tentative. As soon as the assault carriers had launched their fighters, they should have left and a new wave come through. Cruisers and battleships to take the Militias ships with heavy weapons. We still have many captured from the Militas and we can't afford to waste them on patrols or second-line duties - we have to use them to bolster attacks. And we need to build more of them. The antimatter missiles worked, so they'll be warier of our fighters now - if we have a better fighter, we can use if against their mobile suits but we need dedicated anti-shipping fighters as well, ones that can carry the firepower to take down a warship not just peck at it the way that we have been doing."
"Do you concur with this, Lieutenant-Colonel?"
It took a moment for Roy to realise that the statement was being directed at him. "Yes ma'am. I've seen the specifications for the original variable fighters and they'll make a huge difference. The Phoenix is a good concept but the Valkyries would eat them for breakfast. Combine that with capital ships that can meet them head on and their current fleet can't stop us. We'd still have to consider what they might pull out of their hats, but we could handle everything they've shown us so far."
"Very well. If there are no further questions...?"
The other tribunes shook their heads one at a time.
"Thank you for your comments, Brigadier, Colonel. I believe that quarters have been arranged for you on the station and you can expect to receive instructions in the next forty-eight hours about your next postings."
.oOo.
"Brigadier Gloval?"
At the chessboard in the recreation room of the Bachelor Officers Quarters block he'd been assigned a small apartment in, Gloval looked up from the move he'd been about to make. By relative casualties he was losing, but he knew that the trap he'd been patiently laying was only a few moves away from snapping closed around his opponent's king. "Yes?" he asked, a slight bite in his voice.
The young woman standing at the door was only in her early twenties, but the cuffs of her white uniform jacket bore three gold rings, marking her as a Lieutenant-Colonel. She looked a little taken aback by the response, but not too much - white jackets marked officers acting as staff, be it the general staff here at the high command, or directly assisting a flag officer in the field, so she could hardly be unaccustomed to dealing with short-tempered senior officers.
"Brigadier, I'm Colonel Hayes," she told him. "I have your new orders."
The document that she held out was parchment, folded twice and sealed with red wax. It was an old tradition, one inherited from the Confederacy's Militias rather than the old Alliance Fleet, to relay certain orders on parchment. Green wax to confer a medal, black wax for a warrant of courtmartial... and red to assign the command of a ship. He could not help but to feel a surge of exceitement at the sight, although there was also a degree of surprise. Command of a ship was usually the responsibility of a Colonel or Lieutenant-Colonel, occasionally a Major if the ship was not a combatant, but almost never a Brigadier.
Taking the orders, he cracked the wax, sealed with the age old badge of Etiyoke: a dragon, a phoenix and a tiger, and unfolded the parchment. "Thank you, Colonel," he said absently, examining the orders and then paused, reading them more carefully. "Hmmm. I see that I shall be taking command from Colonel Lisa Hayes. Is this you?"
"Yes sir," she replied. "I've been overseeing the construction."
"Hmmm," he said again. "Have you indeed? In that case, Colonel, perhaps you could show me my new ship. I rather gather," he added, folding the parchment and tucking it inside his jacket. Unlike Lisa's his was the blue of a ship's crew. "That she will be a new experience for me."
Lisa smiled, more naturally. "Yes sir," she said. "I rather anticipated that you would want that."
"Good," Gloval said approvingly. "My apologies, Mr. Havel," he added to the Major who had been facing him across the chessboard. "I will have to finish beating you at chess another time."
The younger man raised one eyebrow at the comment, given the number of pieces taken, but didn't directly address the assertion. "Not a problem, Brigadier Gloval. And congratulations on your new command."
.oOo.
True to Lisa's words, there was a car waiting outside the building, to whisk them to the port, and a shuttle had been reserved for him. He had to wonder if this sort of treatment was standard at Horus, or whether it was something that he could expect now that he was a flag officer.
"There will be a short delay before we depart, sir," Lisa said apologeticallty. "The commander of our fighter group has also been named today, and he'll be joining us on the shuttle."
Somehow, Gloval wasn't surprised when Roy Fokker stepped out of the car that arrived a moment later. His guide was a blonde major with a coffee-coloured complexion - one of those odd combinations that made it very clear that she had Coordinator ancestry. Like Roy, she had the green jacket that marked a member of the mobile suit/variable fighter corps, but without the pilot's wings.
"Good Afternoon, Roy," Gloval said in greeting. "It would seem that we are both being assigned to the same ship once more."
"I suppose that they don't want to break up a winning combination, sir," Roy agreed. "Although I have to wonder what this ship's going to be - I didn't even know that there was a carrier called Alliance."
Gloval's eyes twinkled and both women hid grins. "Well, perhaps we should see for ourselves," the Brigadier suggested drily, and gestured for the women to lead the way to the shuttle.
.oOo.
The military docks that they set out for were orbitting almost half-a-million miles away from the high command's station and the inital clusters were crowded with factories for sub-assemblies. But as the shuttle threaded through the network they came across more and more docks where partly-built ships were surrounded by construction frameworks.
Most were Daedalus-class assault carriers and Prometheus-class fleet carriers, but there were others as well: small, blocky ships that Colonel Hayes identified as Birmingham-class escort carriers and round, clumsy looking ships that had been intended as missile cruisers but were now being modified before they had even been launched.
Right at the far end of the lines of ships lay a much larger framework. Rather than cutting between the structural members, Lisa guided the shuttle along the length towards the open mouth where the construction gantries had been removed so that the ship would be able to leave. When she rounded the final barriers to view, Roy gaped shamelessly and even Gloval was speechless.
The ship was huge - twelve hundred meteres long and almost four hundred wide, with a long flat deck leading back to massive engine blocks at the rear. A command structure reared up from the hull and long barrelled weapons jutted forward from turrets either side. "The first Alliance-class monitor," Lisa said reverently. "More than twice as large and ten times as powerful as any battleship in the history of the Forty-Two Worlds. She carries more than five hundred mobile suits and variable fighters, with primary armament of four railguns, eight eleven-inch beam cannon and a spinal antimatter beam cannon."
"Antimatter beam?" Gloval asked, incredulously. "A directed antimatter weapon!? Impossible!"
"Not at all," Lisa said confidently. "It's not something to use lightly, of course, but it's capable of devestating tight formations of vessels -"
"And if the ships move apart then they can't support each other against our fighters," exclaimed Roy. "Even the threat we could use it would weaken their defenses!"
Claudia chuckled. "Such enthusiasm, fly boy. And you haven't even seen one of your precious fighters aboard."
Roy gave her a suspicious look and then grinned. "Is that your way of telling me what I think you're saying...?"
"Let's just say that we won't be carrying Phoenix's into harm's way," she said smugly. "Orders were amended just yesterday and we'll be getting the first production runs of Valkyries - six full wings and almost half as many mobile suits to back them up."D for Drakensis
Contagious, rampant insanity isnt against the rules.

D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.
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Re: NaNoWriCo
#2
Ummm....
I have one overriding question: since this plot is so very far from Macross, why use the Macross names? I mean, I'm reminded of the comment by somebody on another of these threads that he (she?) would've probably liked BGC 2040 a lot if it'd been done with all new names to match the changed personalities.
Not that I dislike this; I'm just puzzled.
-----
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Re: NaNoWriCo
#3
He's using Macross names because that is all Macross material through and through. Granted, the background is most assuredly different, but everything else...
The only difference that I was able to notice was that it wasn't called the SDF-1.
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Re: NaNoWriCo
#4
I'm trying to keep the people the same, as much as possible, while the situations will be somewhat different. Well, very different, in several cases.
So Roy Fokker is still a veteran hotshot pilot but for the Unity Government Enforcers, not the United Nation Spacy; and Rau la Creuset and Mu La Flaga still have good reason to dislike each other even though they are on the same side.
The Alliance's hull number is SDF-1, but that's not the actual name of the ship, just as the Enterprise isn't called NCC-1701.D for Drakensis
Contagious, rampant insanity isnt against the rules.
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Re: NaNoWriCo
#5
Quote:
The Alliance's hull number is SDF-1, but that's not the actual name of the ship, just as the Enterprise isn't called NCC-1701.
... Oh you gotta be pulling my leg.
I thought you were just using the name and not the venerable ship herself!
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#6
Did you read the description of the ship? That's Macross all the way.
--Sam
"Is this the song that sank five million ships?"
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Re: NaNoWriCo
#7
Oh. No, sorry. The Enterprise in this fic is a Dolos-class Heavy Carrier, CVH-05. Bad example to use.
The Alliance is SDF-1 with the file numbers changed. The Enterprise is just the heir to a proud tradition. The closest thing to a star trek ship in this fic would be the Tzimisce - if you turned it upside down and painted it white instead of klingon-green there's a slight resemblence. Not much of one, admittedly.
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Re: NaNoWriCo
#8
If Roy's grin had been any larger then it might well have fallen off his face. "Oh, but those Confederacy pukes are going to hate this lady when she turns up," he said. "How far is she from completion?"
"We're currently a little behind shedule," Lisa admitted. "According to that the launch would be in forty-two days, but we're currently looking at forty-eight days to finish outfitting and then a thirty day shakedown before the Alliance is cleared for operations."
"What is the cause of the delay?" Gloval asked.
"Primarily it's the antimatter cannon," Lisa admitted. "It's drawing power directly from the jump drive and the linkages are being more problematic than was expected at first. Doctor Lang from the Institute came aboard yesterday - he did the primary design work and he's come up with modifications but they'll take a while to implement. There are also some issues with the maintenance requirements for the Valkyries. The original requirements were based off the Phoenix but there are some significant differences and Major Grant is still rearranging the flight spaces after her predecessor..."
She hesitated and Claudia rolled her eyes. "He decided to show the flight engineers that it wasn't any harder to reroute the power conduits on a Valkyrie than it was on a Phoenix. What he wound up showing them was not to mess with the port compensator if it isn't completely discharged. It took a full crew a week to rebuild the compensator and he'll get out of rehab some time next year. First thing I did was have the engineers write the maintenance shedules and get out of their way."
Gloval grunted. "It seems that the two of you have been running the ship then."
"Essentially, sir. Of course, there won't be much of a role for the commander of the flight group until the pilots turn up next week and most of the command duties are relatively minor in dock..."
Relatively didn't mean that much, Gloval noted, fully aware of just how impossibly complicated it was to run Carriers half the size of this behemoth. Out of dock, he'd need a full-time chief of staff just to keep the paperwork under control. Speaking of which: "And when can I expect to be deprived of your services, Colonel. If a project this size is less than a week behind shedule you must be quite indispensable."
"I haven't received any indications, sir. A post was offered on the staff of the new Chief of Fortress Command in Pedeoo, but I'm hoping for a field assignment."
Oh, she wasn't fishing very hard, was she. It didn't take more than a second for Gloval to recall that Marshal Hayes's next assignment after Alpha Iayuvi was to Pedeoo, and the name was unlikely to be a coincidence. Hayes had a daughter in the service, as he recalled, but if this was she then she was even younger for her rank than Gloval had guessed. "Well, I shall have an opening for a Chief of Staff, it would seem," he observed. "And given your experience aboard the Alliance, I imagine that you would do very well, Assuming, of course, that you are not sick of the sight of her already."
Lisa flushed. "Not at all, sir, I'd be honoured to serve as your chief of staff."
"Well, now that that's settled," Gloval said, "perhaps you can settle one item that makes me curious. Why is the hull number for a monitor SDF-1 when none of those letters appear in the word 'monitor'? Granted, carrier hulls are numbered CV when there's no V in 'carrier', but even so."
"I believe that the original intention was to designated the Alliance-class as 'super-dimensional fortresses', Brigadier," Lisa said. "But someone at high command thought that that was too long and didn't sound aggressive enough."
Gloval shrugged. "There's something to that," he agreed. "Well now, let's see this new ship of mine." A smug looking Claudia and Roy fell in behind Gloval and Lisa as the shuttle entered a landing bay.
In the end, it took only another forty-five days for the Alliance to be made ready to depart the docks. There was a media frenzy going on at the far end of the docks as the first Birmingham-class carriers were launched, but in stark contrast, the Alliance almost snuck away, departing in the opposite direction, cheered only by a few lonely crews of workers waiting to start work building another Alliance-class monitor in the same dock, and the rather more numerous workers on the dock next door where the second ship of the class, the Union, was already taking shape.
Once the great ship was completely clear of the docks, Gloval gave orders for a heading away from the ecliptic plane of the system where they could put the ship and her crew through their paces without being observed. With that done, he left the bridge and walked down the short passage to his quarters, near the back of the conning tower. In accordance with naval tradition, two armed guards flanked the door.
Inside, it only took him a few minutes to open the safe and remove the small, heavy envelope that had been delivered by an armed courier four days previously. There was an ornate letter opener on his desk, not his but part of the furnishings, and now for the first time he took it from the desk and sliced open the envelope, spilling the contents onto his desk.
There were only three items - a printed operations order and two ROM chips that he knew from experience could be read only by a computer with the correct codes. Presumably the codes would have been input onto the bridge computers at some point under tight security. It was a constant wonder that intelligence operations could be mounted across interstellar distances when almost the first step in any hostilities was to blockade all jump points to the enemy against unauthorised travel. Nonetheless, the intelligence community continued to thrive, resourceful as ever, and precautions such as this were necessary.
Gloval unfolded the letter, paused and then took out his pipe, methodically filling it and lighting the tobacco before reading the contents. When he was sure of what he had read, he exhaled slowly, adding noticably to the fumes that were already struggling against the air recycling. "Audacious," he muttered. "Very risky, but the reward..."
He weighed the letter for a moment, feeling that its contents were even heavier than the ROM chips. In stark paragraphs, the high command had laid out their plan for victory to him and he knew that the obligation lay upon him now to ensure that this information never fell into the hands of the Confederacy. Taking out his lighter, he applied it to the paper in his hand and held it over the desk's ashtray, watching it blacken and crumble away until he dropped the last fragments into the tray and ground up the ashes with the other end of the letter opener. Then he took the ashtray into the bathroom and flushed the ashes down the toilet.
"Colonel Hayes," Gloval announced, walking back onto the bridge a moment later. "Please advise me the minute that we are clear of the dockyard telemetry and of their sensor range."
"We're clear of telemetry now, sir," Lisa replied, her tone surprised. "We should be beyond sensor range in another seventy minutes."
"Very good. Please arrange a meeting of all department heads in two hours to review the training plans we have drawn up for the crew."
The meeting room fell silent as Gloval entered. Arrayed along the table were officers from every corner of the ship, from Doctor Lang (whose reserve commission as a Major had been reactivated to put him in a special engineering slot) to Roy Fokker and his wing leaders. The colourful array of their uniform jackets spanned the spectrum and there was a small pile of white uniform caps on the sideboard.
"Ladies and gentlemen," Gloval said, standing at the head of the tables. "I imagine that you all have extensive plans for the shakedown cruise we shall be taking around the New Etiyoke system?" He paused. "You can ignore them. I have opened my sealed instructions and we will in fact be doing something quite different."
Jaws dropped, but it was Roy who responded first, his experience as a combat pilot leaving him somewhat accustomed to rapid changes of plan. "So where shall we be going, Brigadier?"
"I'm glad you asked," Gloval said. He brought up a star chart on the holodisplay above the table. "While it is of course a somewhat open secret that New Etiyoke is connected to the Forty-Two Worlds only by Class-III jump points, what is not so well known is that there are more than the two used by most traffic. To be precise, there is a jump point into the North-West system that is quite unknown and that can therefore be used without any chance that anyone else will be using the jump point and spot us moving."
"From the North-West system, we'll follow the usual route out of the cluster and into the Esoe cluster, that is, by going through the Esezre system. By joining the traffic in North-West, we should be able to mislead any observers into believing that the Alliance was built there rather than here. In the Esoe cluster we will pick up an escort from the fleet presence there and move along the frontline to enter a newly discovered Class-III jump point that will take us, via an unknown system, into the rear area of the Confederacy, opening a new front of the war!"
Smiles crept across faces as the men and women in the room envisaged the absolute chaos that the Confederacy would face with the Alliance and a task group based around her, loose in their territory, with no idea of how they could have arrived. "Can you tell us where we'll be striking at?" asked the Gunnery Officer enthusiastically.
"Not just yet," Gloval said firmly. "While neither I nor the high command have any reason to distrust any of you, we shall be proceeding under the strictest of operational security. However, I can assure you that there are some very important targets waiting for us."
"So, it should be obvious that we will have plenty of opportunity to test our engines on this voyage. It will take us two weeks to reach the first jump point on our journey, so we can make a start on drilling our pilots as we go. Colonel Fokker, are your pilots ready? I want them pushed as hard as we can. Opportunities to train with them discreetly will be few and far between once we reach North-Western, so we will need to make the most of this time."
"They'll handle it, sir," Fokker said confidently. "I've got some real hotshots in this bunch, with a good seasoning of veterans to show them how it's done. We'll be ready."
"Excellent," Gloval said, and there was a note in his voice that belonged to a megalomaniac stroking a cat as he sent minions to their deaths in furtherance of his plans for global domination. Then the amusement left his voice. "In that case, let's start with an emergency scramble with no warning whatsoever, shall we?"
Roy, as prepared for 'absolutely anything' as he could be, was on his feet before the most astute of his wing commanders had finished wondering when the drill would take place. By the time Gloval had reached over to the communications panel in front of his seat and pressed the red button (the one labelled: 'Emergency Red Alert: do not press'), he was kicking the other pilots out of their seats with a stenorian bellow of: "Scramble! Scramble! Get your pilots to their fighters and into the big black!"
The part of the room occupied by the pilots emptied to the accompaniment of red lights and klaxons as everyone on the ship but outside the briefing room wondered what the hell was going on.
Fortunately for Roy, he was as convinced as his commander was that training should mimic reality as closely as possible and had ordered that a wing of fighters be at ready status at all times: one squadron in their cockpits and ready to go, the others in the ready rooms while their fighters lined the approaches to the catapults and really upset the flight engineers who had to work around the fully loaded and fuelled machines.
Unfortunately for the pilots, they wasted a valuable minute or so trying to figure out if the alarm was real or if someone had gotten drunk and leaned on the button somewhere. As a result only four fighters left the deck before Roy and his officers scrambled off the turbolifts in their undershirts and shorts, charging into the readyrooms to get into their flightsuits; and it was a seven minutes before the last of the so-called ready wing was off the catapults. The delay was unspeakable but it didn't stop Roy from speaking, at length, to the Major whose wing had failed to take off within the required five minutes. And it didn't stop the Major from speaking very sternly to his second-in-command, and all of his other squadron commanders.
The only bright spots, relatively speaking, were that four fighters of the immediate readiness squadron had in fact responded to the red alert by closing up their cockpits and triggering the catapults that they were sitting on; and that one enterprising Captain had had his own squadron (from an off-duty wing) running close quarter drills with a mobile suit squad, the combined force exiting the ship through the landing bays (annoying the flight enginneers even more, since mobile suits running through a narrow passage inevitably bounce off the walls here and there) and had made ready to defend the ship against all comers.
Since only Captain A. J. 'Ace' Rimmer's and Lieutenant Rick Hunter's commands had actually managed to do what they were supposed to be doing - rather more in the case of Ace - they got to have the rest of the day off.
The other five hundred odd pilots entertained the flight engineers by providing grunt labour for them for the rest of the day, followed by an hour of calisthetics. After all, Roy noted caustically as he led them through a hundred jumping jacks, they'd obviously gotten plenty of sleep earlier when they were supposed to be taking off.
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.
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Re: NaNoWriCo
#9
Quote:
The closest thing to a star trek ship in this fic would be the Tzimisce - if you turned it upside down and painted it white instead of klingon-green there's a slight resemblence. Not much of one, admittedly.
Good old Musai-class. I miss 'em. [Image: smile.gif]
--Sam
"Roof pig! Most unexpected."
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Re: NaNoWriCo
#10
Yeah, I'm considering getting a 1/400 scale model of a Musai. It looks incredible but it costs a lot and I've no idea where I could put it... it's almost 60cm long!
D for Drakensis

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Re: NaNoWriCo
#11
correction: the Musai is 1/550 scale, the 4 zaku it comes with are 1/400 scale, just small enough to fit into the hanger.
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.
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Re: NaNoWriCo
#12
Drakensis, the bit about burning the orders... And then sneaking behind enemy lines rather than shaking down...
This sounds awfully familiar. Gloval wouldn't happen to be thinking of pulling a Ramius, now, would he?
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#13
Given the number of characters from Gundam Seed that have appeared, my first thought was: Ramius? What did Murrue... oh. The other Ramius.
I won't say that I haven't had Hunt for the Red October in mind at times, or that Gloval may not be a little less than subservient to the High Command at times, but it would be very difficult to do that. For one thing, jump points are quite well guarded and he'd really be doing awfully well to find out about two seperate top secret Class-III jump points much less forge orders to let him use them.
The High Command have just the same vision that Gloval officers have of what the Confederacy will go through when they find a huge enemy ship, armed with a new generation of military technology rampaging through an area that is about as far from the war zones as you can get - roughly the way that the USA would react to an Iraqi carrier group on the Great Lakes and an armored brigade landing in Chicago.
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Re: NaNoWriCo
#14
Ouch. Nice strategic target - Great Lakes Naval Station, home of the US Navy's boot camp.
Anyhow, part of me figured not since Gloval seemed so impressed with the orders -and- that he didn't pull out a forged set of orders, either.
Although, you gotta admit... it would be something, eh? Probably would be a lot more workable if this ship had an experimental jump drive that allowed it to make relatively short jumps without the aid of a jump gate. That'd be just as bad as the Red October herself. Bypass all jumpgates (granted, it would take time to do so, but it would be worth it) and then sucker-punch your enemy in the proverbial nuts.
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Re: NaNoWriCo
#15
Interesting mix of sources.
Lets see, there's Robotech/Macross, Gundam Seed, Gundam Wing, and the Jump-points, defences and various types of carriers reminds me of Weber's 'Stars at War' novels.__________________
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Re: NaNoWriCo
#16
The Stars at War books are based off the setting for the Starfire wargame, which is where I drew the jump points from, although the strategic map is much smaller here.
Other sources may appear as the story continues.
edit: in addition to the existing Red Dwarf material, of course.D for Drakensis
Contagious, rampant insanity isnt against the rules.
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.
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Re: NaNoWriCo
#17
The transition through the jump point from Qewev was textbook perfection. The Alliance popped into existence, followed at one-second intervals by a pair of Chivvay-class heavy cruisers and four Musai-class light cruisers. Each ship was almost instantly surrounded by patterns of fighters launched from catapults or simply flying out of hatches under their own power. The Alliance's fighters were noticiably faster to launch - their pilots having absorbed Roy's insistence upon lightning-fast launch procedures.
The small fraction who had been confident that they knew better than he did were now flying Phoenixs off the cruisers, and cursing their every antecedent right back to the evolution of the species for being stupid enough to think he was bluffing. The pilots swapped out from the cruisers to the Alliance had absorbed this lesson and were almost pathetically grateful for the chance to move into flying Valkyries.
The launch was, of course, quite unnecessary. The system they were entering was empty - it hadn't been colonised and there was nothing more hostile than an unmanned Enforcer sensor buoy with a single jump drone. That was all that there should be of course - unless the Confederacy had managed to develop a third-generation jump drive (possible but not likely), they couldn't have entered the system at all and if they had, the other sensor buoy would have sqawked a warning to this one, which would have sent the jump drone to warn the Qewev system that the system had been violated.
None of which made the precaution pointless of course. Things can go wrong with even the most secure of plans and if nothing else, it was good practise for the next jump, when the dangers would be very very real.
"All squadrons report no contacts," Claudia reported from her console on the bridge. "The system appears to be clear." Not that it was possible to be certain of course. Even the best shipboard sensors couldn't hope to reach any significant distance with any detail and star systems were much larger than most people realised. There were any number of places that a ship or fleet could have been hidden... the system boasted no less than five seperate asteroid belts and twelve dwarf planets in additon to the seven actual planets. Prime colonisation territory but a nightmare to fight in.
"Very good," Gloval said. "Update the buoy and recover everything but the standard patrols. We'll wait an hour to see if there are any reactions before we move to the other jump point."
"Does that mean you're going to tell us where we're going, sir?" Claudia asked sweetly.
"Claudia!" Lisa hissed at her friend.
Gloval nodded solemnly. "We're going to the other jump point in the system, Major Grant," he divulged in a conspiratorial tone. "Please don't let anyone outside the navigation officers know... it's supposed to be a secret." With some effort, he refrained from smiling.
Claudia rolled her eyes. "Sorry sir, I'll be sure not to intrude on your classified material any more," she promised.
"Very good," Gloval congratulated her, rising to his feet. "Actually, there isn no particular reason that I can't tell you now that we have entered this system, but I'll brief everyone at once. Set up a meeting tomorrow morning, Lisa. Have the department heads notified that it may take much of the day and to arrange their schedules accordingly."
The briefing room was crowded again the next morning when Gloval entered the room and took his chair at the head of the table. In addition to the senior officers aboard the Alliance, the six Lieutenant-Colonels commanding the cruisers of the escort had been invited aboard to attend the meeting.
"Ladies, gentlemen," he began. "Normally I would begin the meeting by reviewing our progress but I believe that we are all familiar with how we came here, so let us discuss the future of our little task force. To be precise, we will be enacting a plan that the High Command have eloquently titled Operation Bengal. Very shortly, a significant fleet of vessels will be following us into the system to set up jump point defenses and a forward base here. This base is to support Operation Bengal and any subsequent operations in a new theatre of the war against the Confederacy."
He activated the holo display and the map of the Forty-Two Worlds appeared. There were in fact forty-five systems displayed, three of them marked in the gold that signified a world accessible only by Class-III jump points. One of these flashed steadily as Gloval adjusted the display. "As you can see, we have entered this system from Qewev. Valuable as having a hidden system is, the key advantage that we have here is the second jump point, which leads -" A line appeared on the chart, linking the golden system to another. "- here. To the Ovluvizoe system in the Ukievoe cluster, three jumps behind the Confederate front lines and the only system in the cluster with any known jump routes to the rest of the Forty-Two Worlds. Seizing Ovluvizoe will sever the entire cluster from the Confederacy and do so at a time when the bulk of their Militias are deployed in the Ezoe cluster."
Around the room, everyone fixed their eyes upon the star chart, seeing that this was so. While the Ukievoe cluster was small, with only four systems, it was also one of the most secure in the Confederacy and by severing that connection all four could be taken away.
"Sir," asked one of the cruiser commanders. "I don't - aren't we a little short on numbers for this sort of operation? Taking a whole system needs a fleet, not just a task force, however well prepared."
"You're quite correct," Gloval said. "As it happens, just such a fleet is on it's way here, but as you can imagine, assembling such a force is not a swift endeavour. There was, I imagine, some concern over sending us in so hastily before a proper invasion could be mustered. The deciding factor lies here, in the Zoet system." Another system started to flash on the display, this one in the Ezoe cluster. "As you can see, Zoet is the only system that connects to Ovluvizoe and taking it would force the Confederation to defend much of the rest of the cluster, spreading their forces thinner. What is not yet displayed here is that it is also home to Morgenroete, one of the more innovative military manufacturers in the Confederation."
He brought up display of the Zoet system. "While taking out Morgenroete's Heliopolis factories would not damage the Confederacy's military manufactuing potential as much as attacking the factories of Zeonic Militiary Industrial for example, the High Command's intelligence places the cutting edge of the Confederacy's new mobile suit technology there. The suits prototyped there are not just a new class, they are a new generation entirely and must be considered a step at least as great as that between, shall we say, the Phoenix and the Valkyrie variable fighters."
Gloval paused to let that sink in. "Therefore, rather than directly attacking Ovluvizoe, our mission is to break through whatever picketing forces there may be between ourselves and Zoet and launch an attack on Heliopolis to capture the prototypes and as much design material as possible from the factories there. Once we have that technology, we can counterbalance whatever advantage the Confederacy will gain from them."
"Now," he declared. "This is our objective and it is our duty to devise a means by which we shall accomplish it!"
It was another beautiful day on the Heliopolis habitat and Kira Yamato, for one, was taking it for granted. The slim teenager was sprawled in the corner of a gazebo - one of several scattered across the lawns of the campus - a laptop workstation his lap, displaying news items about the ongoing war that Kira was ignoring in favour of working on his class assignment.
"So here you are!" came a call and he looked around to see Tolle Koenig and Mirialla Hawe standing at the entrance to the gazebo. "Professor Kato was looking for you."
"He said to drag you over once we found you," Mirialla added with an grin. The young couple were on the same engineering course as Kira and just as familair with his habit of using the students as assistants for his own research. "What is it that he needs your help with now?"
"Damn," Kira muttered and turned to place the laptop on the gazebo's table, the motion sending the small robotic bird that had been watching him fluttering into the air. "I haven't even finished the job he gave me yesterday!" He slumped down, letting the bird land on his shoulder.
"What's that on the news?" Tolle asked, looking at the screen over Kira's shoulder.
"It's about the battle last month at Alpha Iayuvi," Kira said. "A friend of mine sent it to me, said he was in it. I haven't watched all that much of it though."
"Really? Well, that's a long way away," Tolle pointed out. "And there's more danger from Professor Kato than there is in the war reaching us here. Let's go."
The Professor was working in his laboratory attached to the big Morgenroete factory complex, several miles along the colony cylinder, so the three of them headed for the taxi-rank nearby. As students, they could use the robotic taxis as public transport between approved destinations and unless the college let up on it's draconian rules against students owning private vehicles, it was the best way to travel.
There was already a cluster of students waiting and one of them turned to wave at them. "Mirialla!" called a redheaded girl in a pink frock. "Hi!"
Tolle watched Kira's face as the redhead pled with Mirialla for support against the other girls, all hungry for gossip about the letter she'd received from her boyfriend. It had been obvious to Tolle since the beginning of the semester that his friend had a thing for Mirialla's roommate Flay, and it was clear that the fact that she had a boyfriend didn't seem to have changed that, even though he still lacked the confidence to approach her. It was a bit weird - Kira wasn't exactly a nerd, although he was near the top of the class academically, but when it came to girls, he had no confidence at all.
They stepped aside to let the next group waiting for a taxi go past before Flay got tired of the ragging and haughtily took the next taxi, her friends scrambling to get in before it left. They could hear Flay directing the taxi towards the nearest shopping centre, and Tolle noted that from the look on Mirialla's face he'd better find some pretext to go that way with her soon, let her get some of those female shopping impulses worked out.
The taxi whisked them quickly to the checkpoints at the edge of the Morgenroete complex (Kira had been surprised at the security until Professor Kato told him that there were usually thirty or forty attempts a year to break in and make off with proprietory material before it was patented) and almost as quickly across the landscaped park that Morgenroete maintained between the perimeter and their actual factories, in order to maintain their share of the air maintenance requirements.
Only a few miles from these scenes of peace, something quite close to panic was beginning to take hold in Heliopolis Port Control.
"The unknown ships are still approaching!" called one officer.
"Repeat the challenge!" ordered his supervisor. "And see if you can contact the jump point traffic control station. They'd be taking a funny route but they might be coming in from Ovluvizoe."
"They're military!" another officer reported. "Long range sensors say it's Militia cruisers - two heavies and four lights. I'm not picking up an IFF signal though."
"Dammit!" growled the supervisor. "Those clowns probably aren't even listening to their radios. Get the local Militia post on the line as well. Maybe they know what's going on."
"I have a response from the jump point, sir," called the first officer. "There's an signal coming through but it's pretty garbled - looks like electro-magnetic interference."
"What? Are they being jammed?"
"I don't think so - there was an Electronic Counter-Counter Measures class a couple of years ago and this doesn't look like anything that they showed us."
The supervisor shook his head. "What are they playing at?" he muttered. "Adjust the sensor sweeps for mobile suits - if they're arsing about out there with ships there are probably suits there as well. It would be just our luck to have some idiot in a GINN blunder into - oh crap."
The screen in front of him lit up and it wasn't just showing the cruisers any more. Against sensors calibrated only for picking up ships, almost any suit could remain invisible at distances of more than a few hundred miles, and variable fighters were smaller and stealthier than most. Closing in rapidly on Heliopolis were dozens of them - a full wing if the supervisor was remembering the briefings he'd been given since the war broke out correctly.
"They're Enforcers," he said with calm that he did not feel. "Sound an alarm. Notify the civil authorities that we're under attack and punch a call through to the Kpove and Ovloe jump points. Someone has to get the word out and there's Militias fleet in Kpove."
The compartment was rocked by an explosion that sounded far too close and he closed his eyes. "Please tell me that that wasn't the main transmitter," he asked. It was the last thing anyone said in the compartment before two short-range missiles from the lead Valkyrie bathed the Port Control structure with plasma fires and killed everyone within.
The explosions trailed across the port as local forces responded. This far from the frontlines, all that that amounted to was a single squad of GINNs, piloted by those left behind when the pick of the Militias had deployed for the warzones. Outnumbered ten to one, they wouldn't have stood a chance against Phoenixs, much less against Valkyries armed with beam rifles as effective as their own.
The real action was inside the colony however. A squadron of Phoenixes had accompanied the Valkyries, all of them D-variant two seaters, and now they punched through the port and raced along the length of the cylinder towards Morgenroete, clinging to the sides to avoid anti-air fire from the concealed defense emplacements hidden around the factory. Even so, missiles lanced out and two Phoenixs died - one torn apart in mid-air and the other pinwheeling to the ground without a wing, carving a path of destruction through the apartment building that it struck.
The remaining ten raced over the perimeter, engines snapping down as they adopted gerwalk configuration and their cannon picked off guard posts and security stations. Three more were brought down by the defenders, one by a plucky guard and a portable anti-mobile suit rocket launcher, but their crews managed to bale out and the other crews set their demolition charges and joined them on the ground. All twenty were in black commando gear and sporting heavy submachine guns. Half of them were marines from the Alliance's onboard complement, and the others were the pilots - handpicked by Roy Fokker for the mission he was leading them on.
The goal was brutally clear. There were five prototypes in the factory, all of them operational. No matter what, five pilots had to reach the prototypes and fly them out to the waiting cruisers. Everyone else was expendable.
"There's convoy forming at Gate Seven," Rick Hunter reported as he reached the rest of them, his marine in company. "I saw three mobile suit carriers, all occupied."
"They must be withdrawing the prototypes to a more secure location," Fokker concluded. "Excellent." The last comment drew some peculiar looks and he grinned. "Well it's easier than having to look for them. Still, it could be a decoy. We'll split into two teams. Ace - I'll take half the group to check out the convoy, you take the other half into the factories to see what's still there."
Ace nodded. "Not a problem old chum. Smoke us some kippers, we'll be back for breakfast." He tapped four of the other pilots before leading them and five marines through the nearest door.
Roy watched him go and then shook his head in admiration. "What a guy!" he exclaimed, half in admiration and half in disbelief. "Right then," he told the other pilots. "Let's go see what's on this convoy then." The four pilots - Rick Hunter and his flight - followed him as he began to move through the parkland of the perimeter towards Gate Seven.
"What was that!" Kira gaped as he heard the sonic boom of the fighters. Before anyone in the lab could respond, klaxons began to sound.
"That's an evacuation signal!" Sai exclaimed unnecessarily - no one could live on an orbital colony without being drilled repeatedly on the meaning of the atonal wailing.
From the corner of the room, where the Professors two guests had been waiting for him since Kira arrived, there was a gasp and and a muffled curse. The shorter of the two, a sturdy looking youth in a heavy coat and flatcap covering short corn-blonde hair moved over to the window and then looked back at the slimmer girl who had gasped. Thats an Enforcer variable fighter, the visitor said with confidence. It looks like we arent the only ones to hear rumours.
Enforcers? Here!? Tolle exclaimed. Thats impossible! Theyre out in Etiyoke and clusters near them!
It wouldnt be the first time they managed to get around that, the youth snapped. And the factory here must be their target its the only thing on Heliopolis they could possibly want.
Her companion rose to her feet. We have to go. Im sorry we havent found what youre looking for Cagalli, but we cant stay in the middle of a battle.
There are shelters just across the block, Sai Argyle said, closing down his workstation. Dont take anything you cant live without because theyre going to be cramped. He matched action to words, taking only his jacket as he opened the door.
The others followed but the minute that she was out of the door, Cagalli darted away down the corridor, vanishing around a corner. "Cagalli!" exclaimed the girl.
Kira didn't hesitate before chasing after the youth. "I'll catch up," he called back over his shoulder, before turning the same corner. He didn't know what was going on, but he thought that Cagalli might. On the other hand, a stranger to the complex might well have difficulty getting to safety once their business was done. Assuming that the youth had the sense to realise that getting to safety was called for.
It took him a surprising amount of time to catch up with Cagalli. Kira suspected that there was a lot of Co-ordinator in his heritage a few hundred years back. Odd, since his parents didn't show any of the usual signs, but he was pretty sure that as an eye colour, violet was a sign of some genetic tampering back in his ancestry. He'd always been fast on his feet, but Cagalli was moving quickly and apparently certainly towards one of the factory blocks.
"Wait!" he called as he finally caught hold of the youth by the shoulder. Cagalli's hat went flying as the youth spun around and Kira was surprised to find himself holding onto a girl, rather than a boy as he had expected.
"What?" Cagalli snapped.
"What are you doing!" he hissed. "We have to get out of here."
"Why did you follow me then?" she demanded. "Hurry up and leave!" The building rocked under and impact and Kira could smell an oily fire somewhere upwind of them. Cagalli took the opportunity to pull away from him. "There's something that I have to find here."
Kira shook his head. "You need to get to one of the shelters." He caught hold of her again and started pulling her along a different passage.
"Let go of me, you idiot!" she protested. "This is important!"
"You can look for whatever it is when we're safe!" Kira insisted. "There should still be shelters in the next factory block."
The passage was poorly lit, but the light at the end suggested a larger, better lit chamber. The pair burst out of the passage, the light blinding them for a moment. As their vision cleared, they could see that they were on a gantry overlooking a huge open room that currently house only two huge trucks and an assortment of crates, over which a couple of dozen people in black battledress or coveralls were fighting.
Oh, and the contents of the trucks. Can't forget about those.
Mobile suits. Two of them.
"Is this..." Kira wondered. Morgenroete built all sorts of things here - Heliopolis was a major manufacturing centre in the system, but he'd never heard that they built military hardware.
Cagalli fell to her knees, resting her forehead against the railings. "Just as I thought," she half-wailed. "The Confederacy Militia's new mobile suits... Father, you traitor!"
The last was almost a shout and one of the black-clad soldiers turned and pointed his weapon at them for a moment. Before he could fire though, the man beside him glanced up, shook his head and pushed the weapon down.
Kira dragged Cagalli upright and set up off at a run hauling her behind him by one wrist. "It's no use crying!" he shouted. "Just run!"
Lieutenant Murrue Ramius flinched as another burst of machinegun fire hammered at the truck she was sheltering behind. She pulled a grenade out of her coverall's deep pockets, snagged the pin over a convenient hook and yanked it loose before snapping her arm around the corner, lobbing the explosive towards the source of the gunfire.
The gun fell silent, which might mean nothing, she knew. Some, at least, of the blackclad soldiers attacking the factory were almost certainly smart enough to play dead until she stepped out into their field of vision. She turned and started to climb up the side of the truck. Fortunately, the truck was a mobile suit transport and had been designed with the expectation that someone might need to get up on top, so the framework was pierced regularly to provide a ladder.
At least the attackers weren't going to get all the new suits, she thought. Three of the suits had already been loaded on their trucks when the sirens went off and she'd sent them off immediately to be hidden inside the sprawling city around the factory, while she stayed behind to load the other two. Murrue had no idea how Enforcers had managed to raid this deeply into the Confederation, but it could only be a raid - there was no way that any appreciable military force could have come this far without warning. And that meant that the chances were very good that they would have to leave before they could find the suits.
It was a comfort, small as it was, but she would have to take what she could because she didn't see much chance that her small command could stop them from taking the two suits remaining. As best she could guess there weren't more than a dozen of the commandos - probably less - but they were wearing body armour and armed with automatic weapons while the more numerous technicans had only coveralls and if it wasn't for the small store of grenades and carbines in the security post would have been armed with no more sidearms. As she swung herself up onto the top of the truck she could see people that she'd worked with for months now lying on the floor, dead or dying.
There was a flicker of movement from the other truck and she thought she saw the cockpit hatch close. It might be one of her people - the only chance she saw remaining was to get into the suits and try to escape with them under their own power - but it could also be one of the commandos. Then a black-clad form rose above the side of the her own truck and she threw herself to one side, trying to retrieve her sidearm from the holster although all her instincts told her that she couldn't hope to get it out before the man used the submachinegun that she saw in one fist.
Something came flying across her field of vision and cannoned into the commando's helmet. Startled, he lost his grip on the truck and began to fall backwards with an alarmed cry - the fall probably wouldn't be fatal but it would hurt a lot. He hadn't fallen far enough before Murrue's pistol came around to bear and red blossomed on his chest twice before he fell below the level of the truck's roof.
Looking for the source of the mysterious projectile, Murrue saw a teenager stood on the gantry at the side of the room, arm still outstretched as he recovered his balance from the throw. A kid? What the hell was he doing here, she thought in horror. He was going to get killed.
The thought was cut off as pain flared in her shoulder and she fell forwards onto the top of the mobile suit. Up ahead was the hatch into the cockpit... inside she'd be able to take sanctuary. Pulling out her last grenade, she yanked the pin out with her teeth and dropped it off the side where she'd climbed up. There was a satisfactory scream and the muted thump of a grenade going off far too close to a human body.
"Ace!" someone shouted from below her and she broke into a waddle across the top of the truck, hoping to stay low enough not to draw any more fire. The hatch slid open at her command and she looked up at the kid, who was crawling along the gantry towards an exit. Murrue grimaced. The block that the door led into was on fire already - he'd never get out that way.
"Kid!" she called, waving one arm at him. "Get over here!"
Kira stared down at the woman in disbelief. Did she think he was crazy? Why would he join her in the middle of a gun fight rather than getting to the shelters in the next block?
A bullet whistled above him and smacked into the concrete of the wall as attention was drawn to him. Another burst of shots rang off the door ahead of him and it swing open, releasing a wave of heat. Oh that was just great! This had to be the worst day ever. He glanced at the truck, and at the dark-haired woman who had descended halfway into the hatch into the mobile suit laid out on top of it. If he could just get along the gantry a bit.
Well, it wasn't as if he had a choice. He rose from the metal decking like a runner of blocks and sprinted desperately. Sheer surprise caught the gunmen off guard and their shots hit the metal and concrete well behind him. Coming parallel to the truck, he vaulted over the gantry's rail and hung in the air for a long moment, convinced that at any minute someone would manage to hit him.
Instead, his hand caught hold of a chain hanging from the ceiling - part of a crane, he thought - and he swung a short distance before releasing it. The brief moment on the chain had given Kira enough horizontal momentum to carry him across the gap to land lightly on the upper chest of the mobile suit. A mobile suit, he realised, that didn't look like any mobile suit he'd ever seen before.
The hatch was under the chin of the suit and he scrambled to join the woman inside. She was wearing orange coveralls stained red at her upper right arm by blood. From the way that she held her arm, it was entirely obvious that the blood was her own. "Stay behind me," she ordered. "And try not to touch anything."
She touched a control and the hatch slid closed, sealing them inside the tiny compartment. LEDs lit up, as did several screens, revealing a view of the factory floor that was right out of hades. The fire was spreading into this block and dead bodies were scattered across the floor - sometimes in pieces. On the main screen, a start-up cycle was obviously under way and Kira read the display curiously. "G-U-N-D-A-M... Gundam?" he asked, sounding out the new word.
"It's a new operating system," the woman said absently. "The programming for existing mobile suits just can't keep up with this one. Unfortunately, we haven't got all the bugs out of it yet."
Then the suit lurched and under her less than deft guidance, began to tear itself loose of the truck's restraints, drawing itself upright. The perspective of the screens shifted jerkily up until it displayed a view from some twenty metres or so above ground level, two-thirds of the way towards the ceiling of the cavernous bay.
In the space of time that it had taken for the mobile suit to power up, the other suit in the chamber had also risen and they watched as the red machine left the building by the simple means of battering down the doors and marching out. The pilot certainly seemed to be more capable than Kira's companion, for the machine moved fluidly while his own ride staggered under the turbulence as the red suit's thrusters blazed, driving it up and into the air.
"Dammit!" she muttered, walking clumsily towards the door. When she arrived, they did not see the red mobile suit, but two smaller suits were descending towards them. As they reached the doors, panels opened across the two suits and Kira gasped as hundreds of missiles slashed across the short space dividing them from their target. The suit was blasted back into the factory, falling to the floor under the hammer blows, but to Kira's eyes miraculously, did not appear to have been seriously damaged.
"This is a tough suit," the woman said in relief, "If I could just get it to move!"
Then her face tightened as the two smaller suits walked through the hole in the wall that had once been door and frame. "I don't know if we're that tough though."
The two enemy suits closed in as she struggled to stand, looming over her. Kira leant over her, grabbing hold of the left hand control yoke, driving it forwards and the back thrusters fired, hurling the Gundam up and forwards, its knee hammering into one of the smaller machines.
"What!" exclaimed the woman. "How did you do that?"
Kira ignored her question. "Move over please," he asked and she scrambled out of his way, huddling into the right side of the cockpit while he settled into the pilots chair and pulled down a keyboard. The two suits had pulled back momentarily, but he only had a few brief moments to complete the most urgent hack of an operating system he'd ever tried - and without even knowing the nature of the system architecture.
Murrue watched him in awe. She'd never seen anyone work so easily with an operating system - and unless there had been some massive breech of security, this had to be the first time he'd seen a G.U.N.D.A.M. operating system.
The two enemy suits split up, closing in on the enigmatic suit from opposite sides. First it staggers like a drunk, then it knocks one of them down effortlessly and now it was just standing there. The one thing that they could be sure of was that the black and white coloured suit must be one of the targets. And if they couldn't capture it then it would have to be destroyed.D for Drakensis
Contagious, rampant insanity isnt against the rules.
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.
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Re: NaNoWriCo
#18
Kira checked the weapon systems available. It looked as if he would be spoiled for choice. He selected the autocannon and dropped the crosshairs that appeared on the screen over one of the suits, noting that the head had turned to follow the suit as he did so. When he hit the trigger, tracer rounds marked the pattern of cannon rounds that tracked across the surprised suit, sending it tumbling back.
It was a surprise to Murrue that the enemy suit had survived the attack - it might have been bowled over and much of the outer armour had been battered in by the explosive shells, but it was picking itself up determinedly. Hits like that would have eviscerated the variable fighters that she had examined the battlefield salvage of, but these two were apparently made of sterner stuff.
The second suit opened fire and it's own cannon traced fire along the rear of the Gundam. Kira turned reflexively, switching to another weapon and pulled the trigger. Much to the surprise of everyone involved, the 'wings' that contained the Gundam's thrusters snapped together and out of each a blocky-barrelled weapon snapped forwards over the mobile suits shoulders. Twin beams of energy punched into the Valkyrie and despite the additional external armour, it fared no better than its predecessor Phoenix had done against against the beam cannon of GINNs. The beams ripped through the suit, violating the shielding of one of the twin plasma reactors and then blazing though the resultant explosion to tear into the wall of the factory.
"Oh no," Kira whispered, shocked by the holocaust that he had unleashed. "The shelters."
"There aren't any in that part of the factory," Murrue said after a moment's thought. It was true in a way - the shelters were deeper, closer to the outside skin of the colony cylinder so it was unlikely that they had taken any damage from the beams. But it was quite likely that the entrances would be blocked and anyone who hadn't entered the shelters would probably be dead. "But don't use those again. Try the railguns - they're designed not to overpenetrate like that."
Kira nodded jerkily and adjusted the controls, folding the beam cannon away and dropping a rail gun out of compartments under each hip. But the other Valkyrie was already backing up, rather than seeking to continue the fight. Outside the building, it ejected the outer armour, stripping down to the standard mobile suit configuration, and allowing it to shift into gerwalk mode, skimming rapidly along the outside of the factory until it had the speed to transition into fighter mode.
All over Heliopolis, other variable fighters were doing likewise.
Heliopolis itself might only have a few GINNs present, but the Zoet system was an important bottleneck so even with most of the Militias deployed elsewhere, a small reserve had been retained and as chance would have had it, a pair of heavy cruisers had been close enough to notice when Heliopolis dropped out of communication and approach to investigate. The minute that they realised that Enforcers were loose, and in greater numbers, they had made the cold-blooded but wise decision to avoid action. Both ships were accelerating towards different jump points and doing their best to punch through the powerful jamming of the Enforcer ships. Chasing them down would require a quick response and so the Enforcer ships were themselves recalling their fighters and splitting up.
Whats the status? Roy demanded, the moment that he reached the bridge of the bridge of the Pelennor Fields. The Chivvay-class cruiser was acting as flag-ship for the Alliances escort while they were on this operation, since the Alliance itself couldnt possibly have worked its way close enough without some brighter than average station puke noticing that it was larger than every heavy carrier that the Confederacy Militias had in commission combined.
In theory the Lieutenant-Colonel commanding the Pelennor Fields sister-ship Helms Deep was in command of the little force, as the most senior out of himself, Roy and the Pelennor Fields captain, Adam Bolitho. That was fine with Roy Juzo Okita had been one of the more experienced and almost certainly the most respected ship commander in any of the Etiyoke Militas before the creation of the Unity Government but while Okita had commanded the ships and Major Susumu Kodai had commanded the wing of Valkyries, it was Roy who was mission commander and responsible to the Brigadier for its success or failure.
Adam turned his seat towards Roy. The enemy ships are Chivvays so theres no chance we or Helms Deep can catch up, he replied. Juzos ordered the light cruisers to chase them down a pair of Musais ought to beat a Chivvay, particularly with Valkyries aboard. Major Kodais squadron picked up the rest of your team, but there were heavy losses among Captain Rimmers team. Only Captain Fallyna and three of the marines made it back with one of the suits they were looking for.
Ace didnt make it? Roy asked, his face betraying his shock.
I regret that he was severely injured trying to capture the second suit, said a cool voice from behind Roy and he turned to see Milia Fallyna walk onto the bridge. Milias green hair indicated her Coordinator heritage and unlike most of the pilots on the operation, she was from New Etiyoke. She also took the usual arrogance of an ace pilot to extremes, in Roys opinion, and her tone made it clear that the regrets that she was expressing were entirely pro forma. I understand that you faced losses yourself?
Roy nodded grimly. He, Rick Hunter and Max Sterling had managed to secure the three mobile suits that they were after, but the other half of Ricks flight had not done so well. Young Ben Dixon had been tough enough to survive being carried back to the Pelennor Fields in an inflatable emergency rescue bag carried by Ricks Gundam, but it hadnt done anything to help the injuries hed suffered when one of the suits defenders had fired a shotgun into his upper chest. It was entirely probable that hed reached sickbay too late to accomplish anything, and while Duggie Baders life was in less danger there was little chance hed walk again, never mind pilot a variable fighter.
Out of the twelve pilots and twelve marines Roy had led into Heliopolis, only four pilots and six marines had survived unscathed.
Well be heading for our rendevous with the Alliance immediately the Helms Deep recovers the last Valkyries, Adam continued. I gather that one of them had a run in with the one mobile suit that we didnt recover to be more precise two of them found it and only one of them managed to escape. The pilot seemed quite impressed I hope the ones that we picked up compare to that one or we might be in a mess of trouble.
Theyre very impressive indeed, Milia smirked. I look forward to showing whoever got hold of that one, exactly how capable its sister is in the hands of a real pilot.
The two men refrained, barely, from rolling their eyes at her bloodthirsty enthusiasm. Youll likely have to wait for the opportunity, Roy said firmly. Were going to be leaving it behind. Itll be stuck at Heliopolis for a while anyway, assuming that Susumu did his usual thorough job in the port.
Oh yes, Adam nodded. Theres nothing left there that can carry the suit away, so itll be stuck at Heliopolis until another ship arrives.
What happens now? asked Mirialla quietly.
She was kneeling next to a park bench in one of the less damaged parts of the parklands around the Morgenroete factories. On the bench, Murrue was examining the bandage that the girl had applied to her upper arm. Not far away, Sai and Tolle were examining the Gundam with the excitement of boys and enginneers enthralled by a new mechanical toy but not yet emotionallyt aware that its function was neither more nor less than wanton destruction.
I suppose that thats up to the Militias, Kira replied. He sat with his back against the side of the bench, knees up against his chest and arms wrapped around them.
There isnt much of a Militia presence here, Murrue told them. There was a squad of GINNs and a small base located near the port. The last reports that reached us were that they were being overwhelmed by variable fighters.
So are you the only member of the Militia left? the girl asked.
I dont know, Murrue said. Possibly the way that the Enforcers went through the port and the factories, I dont know what else is there that could have survived. Welll, exc- She broke off. Sorry. I shouldnt have said that. Come to it, how is it that the four of you were in the factory anyway? Arent you all a little young to be working here?
Were students of Professor Kato, Mirialla explained. He spends so much time consulting here that Morgenroete let him set up a lab here to work on his research and we were working on projects for him.
Professor Kato? Murrue repeated, impressed. Kato had been one of the consultants for Project GUNDAM and while he had struck her as a fussy little man, he was also one of the key contributors to the breakthroughs that the Project had made in mobile suit design. Ive met him, but I didnt know he brought students into the complex. She shrugged. Anyway, if I am the senior officer then I suppose Id better start getting the Project packed up. God only knows how the Enforcers got here but it cant stay here if the wars reached us.
But how will you get anything off the station? Mirialla asked. The transmission from the port said that the Enforcers had destroyed every ship in dock before they left and that thing, she waved one hand at the Gundam, is too large to fit into a lifeboat.
The womans lips twitched. Its not a thing, Miss Haw. Shes the Freedom Gundam one of the most advanced mobile suits ever constructed. As for getting her off Heliopolis oh, to blazes with it. Ill need Kiras help just to move the Freedom, so the secrecy is out anyway. The Enforcers didnt destroy everything in the factory. Theres a shipyard underneath that houses a new battleship. It was built to carry the Gundams but the crew hadnt arrived. I should be able to recruit enough people to operate it, at least as far as one of the jump points. She turned and looked down at Kira. Mr. Yamato, Im afraid that I will need your help again. Just to move the Freedom to a safe place.
Kira looked up and then froze as there was a distrubing cracking sound from the central spine of the colony and one of the structural cables connecting it to the surface of Heliopolis parted. It drifted down almost lazily towards the ground but when it struck, entire houses were obliterated.
Oh my, Murrue whispered. I think were in more trouble than I thought.
What do I need to do? Kira asked urgently.
Get back in the Freedom, Murrue ordered, standing and pulling a pocket radio out of her coveralls. We need to go back into the factory. Im going to have everyone who hasnt entered a shelter join us if the colony collapses then we could be looking at an utter disaster.
She set off running for the entrance to the factory and Kira gave the colony spine another horrified look before darting for the Freedom, shouting for his friends to follow the Milita Lieutenant.
Another cable parted before they had even reached the factory.
Project GUNDAM was the brainchild of Chairman Siegel Clyne of the Militias Command Committee. Variable fighters had died by the score in every major confrontation with the GINNs that had been the Confederacys primary mobile suit for decades, but it was clear that the fighters were nothing more than the first, crude models of a concept that had far more potential than they had first displayed. And if two were shot down for every GINN, the best estimate was that they cost less than a third as much to build.
When that bombshell hit the Committee, there had been an immediate consensus that new mobile suits would be needed to replace the GINN and to prevent catastrophe once newer and more effective variable fighters were fielded. What had not emerged was on any consensus as to what was needed. In the end, there were two principal options: firstly, the option favored by Patrick Zalas faction with their close ties to Zeonic Military Industries, was an evolutionary approach. ZMI had been trying to sell an improvement of the GINN designated as CGUE to the Militias for several years. Zala had proposed purchasing the CGUE, ordering field upgrade packages for GINNs to improve their performance as far as was practical and the commissioning of a new design of mobile suit as far advanced over the CGUE as that was over the GINN. The CGUE and the proposed High Maneuver GINN would essentially be stopgaps until the newer suit could be put into full production. It was a good plan, well thought out and would address the short term problems of the existing variable fighters while preparing for newer ones in the future.
The alternative, proposed by the moderate faction was to focus on an even greater advance in quality. Rather than spend the vast sums necessary for the CGUE and its successor, they wanted to create a small number of revolutionary mobile suits right on the bleeding edge of the available technology suits that could spearhead attacks by existing forces without letting the war expand even further in scale. It was a gamble, but the plans, once more, seemed well thought out and the numbers displayed by Morgenroete suggested that the new suits would outclass anything else ever thought of.
If there was one thing that Siegel Clyne had learnt in decades of politics, it was that it was always wise to have an alternative at hand. He also doubted, after the first battles, that Etiyoke could be brought to heel a swiftly as the moderates believed. Publically, he had endorsed the Zala Plan, a decision that would very probably give Zala the stature to successfully take the Chairmans seat in the next election. Privately, he authorised Project GUNDAM. If the CGUE or its successor were not enough to keep up, then the Gundams would be the testbeds for technology needed in follow-up generations of mobile suits.
Three full teams of Gundams had been designed, each team built in a different factory under tight security, and each team had had a battleship commissioned to act as its base. Siegels last action before handing the Committee over to his old friend had been to authorise the transfer of pilots for the Gundams and crews for their parent ships.
Now Murrue needed to crew one of those ships, and one of the Gundams, with whoever she could find. The power was out on the lift shafts and so she led her little band down an open stair along the side of the mobile suit access passage while Kira watched nervously from above. Once the stairs were clear, hed be bringing the mobile suit down the same shaft, but it was probably not safe for those on the stairs for the Freedom to descend at the same time as them.
They were a motley crew. Added to Mirialla, Tolle and Sai, Murrue had a handful of Militia techs to have escaped the vicious battles, the Recruiting Officer from Heliopolis Milita Post, three merchant spacemen, a small squad of Morgenroetes onsite paramedics and a single Enforcer officer who was under the care of the latter. How the man was alive was a matter of speculation, the fact that he was concious would have been a nine-day wonder under lesser circumstances - he seemed to have been far too close to a grenade, but his ballistic vest had slowed the shrapnel to a survivable degree.
Hed also been pretty close-lipped except to give his parole when Murrue made it clear that she couldnt possibly spare the time to offer treatment to someone who could turn on them at any moment. Well, close-lipped about any topic of substance. Apart from that, hed been personable and even charming. Even though being carried down the steps must have been agonising for him but he kept on laughing and joking, raising their spirits.
Finally, the stairs terminated at a door leading into the docks observation deck while the shaft continued down to the area of the docks used to load mobile suits and other supplies. Murrues keycard was sufficent to open the door and she ushered the others through before waving her torch in the pre-arranged signal that it was clear for Kira to descend and she saw the shadowy mass of the Freedom, backlit but its thrusters, descending towards her until the door slid shut behind her.
From the observation room it was possible to see the long, low mass of the ship. Not quite four hundred metres long, the Girty Lue was much blockier than most Confederacy ships, almost as much as the new designs used by the Enforcers. The business end at the front held four linear catapults in over-under combinations to either side of the ship, with turreted beam cannon above, below and outboard of each pair. Behind this area, the hull narrowed to fit between the bulk of the engine pods and the flying bridge reared up at a rakish angle towards the rear. Less obvious than the turrets, missile ports marked the sides of the engines, revealing that not only propulsive systems were inside. The whole thing was blue and trimmed with white and grey, a brave sight that had been intended to let the ship bolster morale in addition to the effect that it would doubtless have on the battlefields of the war.
Murrue stifled a curse as she saw the Enforcer's eyes twinkle at the sight of the Girty Lue. Well, she'd just have to make certain that he never got to report anything whatsoever that he had observed to his commanders.
"There's no time to stand around, people," she ordered. "The ship's waiting, as you can see, so you'll need to get aboard quickly. It's entirely possible that Heliopolis will collapse any moment now and if that happens while we're in the docks..." She did not need to elaborate upon the likely consequences. If the colony cylinder broke apart there would be mass depressurisation and the remains of the station would be an enormous hazard to anything trying to move through them. Even if the dock wasn't torn apart, it would only be a matter of time until something pierced it, venting the contents into vaccum.
While the rest of her 'crew' spread out through the ship Murrue made her way to flight control and took over one of the stations there, donning a headset attached to the console.
"Freedom, this is the Girty Lue," she called. "Mr. Yamato, can you hear me?"
There was a pause and then Kira's hesitant voice replied: "Uh, yes ma'am. I can hear you."
"Good. I'm opening one of the hatches at the front of the ship. You can land on the deck inside and walk along the ship into the hanger. Are you okay with doing that?"
"Yes ma'am. What should I do then?"
Murrue shook her head. "I'll meet you there once I've closed the hatch, Kira." She manipulated the controls and on her display the upper-righ hand linear catapult opened up to accept the new arrival. "Okay Kira, the door's open."
She watched through the window as the mobile suit jetted over to the hatch, hovered and then settled gently inside the lip of the catapult ramp. She couldn't even feel the vibration through the ship as the additional tonnes landed, which was either a mark of the competence of the construction of the Girty Lue or of Kira's remarkable ability to get the Freedom to do as he wished. Once the cameras inside the catapult tube made it clear that Kira was well inside, she started the hatch closing and left it to it's own devices, heading back to the hangers.
The plural term was correct, in fact. In order to service all four catapults, the hanger was split vertically, with space for five mobile suits on each level. All the spaces were empty of course - four of the Gundams intended to have their homes here had been stolen and the other bays were for the supporting squadron of GINNs or CGUEs that probably wouldn't have even been assigned until the ship actually arrived at one of the combat fronts.
Kiras handling was sure as he backed the Freedom into one of the bays and powered it down. No, not just sure. Superb. Shed only rarely seen a mobile suit piloted so deftly and never by someone who was only piloting not merely that particular model of suit but any mobile suit ever for the second time.
Who are you, Kira Yamato, she whispered. And what can you really do with the Freedom. An icy premonition trailed its hand down her spine that she would someday find out how far his talent went.
Shaking it off, she closed the dock around the suit, ensuring that it would not be shaken around when the Girty Lue maneuvered. No one in their right minds wanted a machine weighing more that seventy metric tons crashing around loose within a spaceship under power.
Kira scrambled out of the cockpit and onto the gantry that had moved to lie immediately in front of it. Piloting the Freedom again seemed to have snapped him out of his funk, although he looked about as tired as Murrue felt.
Good job! she called up to him. Come down here and Ill show you to the crew quarters. I told your friends to set up camp there and if youre feeling half as tired as I am, you could do with a few hours sleep.
If you feel twice as tired as me, Im amazed you can still walk, Kira replied, crossing to a ladder and descending it with the easy grace of youth.
Murrue was surprised that she could muster agrin at the quip. No rest for the wicked, she replied. I want to get the ship clear of Heliopolis until were sure if its safe or not. Once thats done, Ill have time to rest a while.
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.
Reply
Re: NaNoWriCo
#19
Well, after a mid-week bout of the dreaded block, I had some inspiration and wrote a few thousand words to come later. Now I just need to get the story that far...
And the total now clocks in at just over 35,000 words. More than 2/3rds of the way!

"So it seems that news will have reached our friends the Militias," Gloval observed once the report from the Sidhe finished. "Bad luck with that freighter, but that happens sometimes. Alright, let's pull back to our jump point. We can hold that until Admiral Waltfeld's fleet arrives and keep the Ukievoe cluster cut off."
"It's a shame to lose Zoet, sir," observed Lisa. "Those jump points would let us threaten half of the Ezoe cluster."
"Very true, Colonel," Gloval conceded. "But we have only five ships and if we split our forces to hold both jumpoints, we would be defeated in detail. But so long as we hold the jump point from Ovluvizoe, we can take the rest of the system at our leisure."
Lisa flushed. "Sorry sir."
"It's worth the consideration," Gloval assured her. "But it's one thing to be bold when you have the advantage of surprise. Without that, boldness can become recklessness. We're hit the Confederacy on several levels - apart from anything else, they'll need to reinforce their nodal defences to protect themselves from similar attacks in the future - but if we can't hold them out of Ovluvizoe all our gains are for nothing."
One of the communications officers behind him blinked and tapped her headphones for a moment. "Brigadier!" she said sharply. "I'm picking up multiple distress signals from Heliopolis."
"What!?" Gloval exclaimed, spinning his chair to face her. "What sort of distress signals?"
The officer flinched. "Lifeboat signals... Sir, those signals won't get though our jamming. Unless we drop it no one in the system will receive it."
Gloval groaned. "What a wonderful choice," he muttered. "It could be a trick to make us drop the jamming... but we can't risk it with tens of thousands of lives at stake. Can you make out anything else?"
"Just general... Sir, they're saying that there is major structural damage to Heliopolis. They've evacuated completely."
"Cancel the jamming," Gloval said grimly and settled back into his seat. "What a mess."
Indeed it was, and those aboard the Girty Lue with access to windows watched in horror as the entire surface of the colony cylinder broke apart into the seperate panels that it had been constructed out of. "Dear God," Murrue whispered. "How many people..."
The other Militias officer shook her head. "There was almost an hour's warning, Lieutenant," she said. "And there are literally thousands of escape pods. I'm not saying that nobody would have been caught in this - there is always someone left behind no matter how well drilled the population are - but the vast majority were confirmed as being aboard lifeboats or in spacesuits if they couldn't be spared. The real problem is in getting someone to come and pick them up."
"What? But the emergency beacons..." Murrue said and then groaned. "The jamming. It'll be blocking the emergency bands as well."
"Exactly," Natarle Badgiruel nodded. "We can only pick them up because we're right on top of them. When we leave..."
"Ping them all," Murrue interrupted.
"What?"
"Check them all for status, Ms. Badgiruel," Murrue ordered, sitting down in the central chair. "We can't stay here until rescue arrives, but with all the debris there's a very good chance that some of the lifeboats took damage when the station collapsed. If any of them report damage, or don't reply, we can provide aid."
"Ma'am," Natarle protested. "Every minute will count if we're going to trace the enemy to their jump point."
"Then you'd better get cracking," Murrue said. "I suggest you get those college kids I brought aboard involved. They should be able to work a radio and it'll keep them busy and out of trouble. Mr Yamato can assist search and rescue in the Freedom if need be." She glared at Natarle when the other woman continued to hesitate. "The Militia tradition does not include abandoning civilians in need just because it's expedient, officer."
There was really only one answer that Natarle could give. "Aye aye, ma'am."
Murrue nodded absently. The younger officer wasn't a fool by any means - she was a shipboard officer by training and probably better qualified to command the Girty Lue than Murrue was - but she lacked the field experience to know when the Book had to be ignored. As a recruiter, that didn't matter much, but it had probably irritated her to be filling that sort of role when her fellow officers were fighting a war and now that she had her chance to show what she could do she was over-compensating. In a junior officer that wasn't a major problem, but as fortune would have it, Natarle was the de facto executive officer of a battleship - a much more responsible post with correspondingly less room for error.
The Lieutenant was still looking for a solution to that when she fell asleep, alone on the bridge.
In the end only three lifeboats were damaged and with the sudden lack of jamming, two of them would be alright until the ships from the nearest planet, Aube, arrived. Kira went out in the Freedom and carried the lone exception into the hanger and before the hatch was fully closed behind them, the engines began to propell the Girty Lue after the Enforcers. The first battle of this campaign might have been a defeat for the Confederacy, but it was a long way from being over yet.
After napping for six hours, Kira was feeling at least fifty percent better and when he dismounted from the Freedom he stopped to watch the lifeboat's passengers disembark.He almost choked when he saw a familiar head of red hair emerge. "F-Flay?"
She looked up and he saw that it was indeed his crush. "Ah, it's you - Sai's friend," she called, kicking off from the lifeboat to coast up through the microgravity to meet him halfway to the gantry.
"Uh, yes. Um. Sai will be glad to know that you're alright. He and Mirialla are aboard already."
"Sai's here? That's wonderful! But what happened? I heard the alarms and went into the shelters, but I got seperated from the others and no one knew anything. What happened to Heliopolis?"
Kira gulped. "Flay, Heliopolis collapsed. It was damaged by the Enforcer attack -"
"Enforcers!" Flay exclaimed. "But that's ridiculous! We're three systems away from any of the Enforcers and besides, Heliopolis is a civilian colony - why would they attack here?"
"They were after the Morgenroete factories, I guess," Kira said. "They made off with military research and wrecked the port. This ship is another prototype apparently, one that they didn't find before they withdrew. I don't know how they got here but we're going to follow them - hopefully they'll be heading to whatever jump point they used."
"'We' are going to follow them?" Flay repeated quizically. "Since were you in the Militia? And where will we get off if you're going chasing after Enforcers."
Kira flushed. "I don't know," he admitted wretchedly. "If your lifeboat hadn't been damaged then the Captain wouldn't have had it brought you aboard. There might not be any chance to leave."
"What!"
Had Patrick Zala been a lesser man, he would have been slumped in his chair after hearing the latest news. This was not the way that he had wanted to begin his tenure as Chairman. A freighter had jumped into the Zoet system only to see a heavy cruiser blown apart almost on top of the jump point by two light cruisers with Enforcer markings. Fortunately, the captain had had the wit to jump back immediately and transmit a warning to the local Militias. Unfortunately, the local picket had nothing like the force necessary to reclaim the jump points.
"How could the Enforcers possible have reached Zoet!" Ezalia Joule exclaimed. "Has Kpove fallen and no one told us?"
"Calm down, Ezalia," Tad Elsmann said. "They've outflanked us before, at Zjevlovecoe. Kpove's still holding steady."
"True," Zala agreed. "However, losing Zoet would threaten our forces there as well. We need to act swiftly to contain this. Losing Zoet means losing the Ukievoe cluster to all practical purposes."
"What can we do?" Siegel Clyne said calmly. The outgoing chairman had retained his seat on the Committee and now he commandeered the hologrpahic display above the circular table that they sat around. "We need to work out what resources are available and mobilise them immediately. Patrick, you're the strategist."
Zala nodded. "I've ordered the reserves being amassed for a strike at Retkpebxe mobilised to respond to this," he said. "In addition, we have several recommissioned ships ready to leave docks in the Meaxo Eleve system, only two jumps away. I've ordered both fleets to set out for Zoet immediately with the objective of securing the jump points into the system. That probably won't be enough to drive the Enforcers out but as long as we control the jump points we can prevent further expansion of their beachhead and feed more troops in when we can muster them."
"It may not be enough to hold the jump points," Clyne said soberly. "One of the Project Gundam sites was in Zoet. If they manage to get hold of the equipment there, then they'll have a roadmap of our best technology. We have to get that equipment out of there."
There was a ripple of concern and Zala frowned. "Alright. We'll mobilise the other two Project Gundam teams then. Order them to into Ovloe to spearhead a counter-offensive. We'll pull le Creuset out of Alpha Iayuvi to command - he's the best we have. With his Confederate and the battleships from Project Gundam, plus the modified Nelson-class ships from Meaxo Eleve that will give him a dozen ships and almost a hundred mobile suits. We had a dozen cruisers earmarked for the Retkpebxe operation so once they arrive, and they can pick up mobile suits from the systems en route."
"That's not a very large force," Eileen Canaver observed.
"We'll have to bank upon quality," Zala said flatly. "Let's hope that the Gundams are everything that Morgenroete promised, Siegel - because the Enforcers aren't stupid enough not to have sent a battlefleet."
"Ma'am?" asked Arnold Neumann from his seat at the helm. With the small number of personnel available, sensor readouts were being channelled through his secondary displays.
"What is it, Arnold?" Murrue asked. There had been enough time since they left Heliopolis for her to sleep a while, wash up and then finally replace her battered coveralls with a uniform, even if it was not quite that which she was used to. Like most Iayuvi Militias, her own unit had worn quite short double-breasted jackets, but the only uniforms aboard were of the Ezoe pattern, with a wrap-around tunic although at least, by Confederacy regulation, the colours were right - basic black with the tunic emerald green to denote a member of one of the technical arms.
Arnold had donned a similar uniform, with the grey tunic that marked him as naval personnel, although he was not technically a Militiaman, instead being one of the merchant spacemen that Murrue had drafted. "Ma'am, the cruisers appear to have made rendevous with another vessel - it's much larger."
"A flagship?" Murrue asked, calling up the sensor readouts for herself. "Wait, it's how big?"
"I don't recognise it, Ma'am," he confirmed. "But it's large. Bigger than even a bulk carrier. Of course, it could be some sort of mobile supply base for them..."
Murrue snorted. "Possibly. But the Enforcers adapted to variable fighters mostly because it meant they could cram more mobile suits aboard their ships. I guarentee that the minute anyone proposed a ship that large the first thing their High Command thought was 'I wonder how many fighters it can carry?'."
Arnold chuckled. "It makes sense that they might have some sort of collier aboard, to carry supplies if this is a long range operation," he pointed out. "But if it's this close to the front then it's almost certainly well armed and carrying plenty of fighters, for replacements if nothing else. Are you sure that they can't see us?"
"See us?" Murrue asked. "No. The new Mirage Colloid system's reliable about that. Detect us by some other means?" She shrugged. "We don't know of any passive sensors that can pick us up, or any active sensor that can detect us in a vaccum. But there's an awful lot that we don't know, so they might have a way. Let's not give them a reason to come looking, eh?"
"They're heading to the Ovluvizoe jump point then," Murrue said two days later. "Interesting choice."
"Perhaps they're continuing operations," Natarle suggested. "There are enough units still in the cluster to pout up a fight, but they'll all be scattered around in penny packets. A task force this heavy could pick off a ship here and a mobile suit squadron there while a fleet comes through their hidden jump point to secure Zoet."
"It's a possibility," Murrue agreed. "On the other hand, they could have come through this jump point, if their little ace in the hole is inside the cluster. The Ovluvizoe system probably. If that big ship of theirs is configured for jump point defense, they could withdraw through it and have us break their teeth on their flagship while the cruisers clean out our forces."
"I don't think that there's anything that we can do to decide which it is," Natarle said. "Except guess. Maybe we should return to Aube to protect them against whatever comes through."
"That would be the safe thing to do," Murrue agreed. "But it gives them the initiative. And maybe we can find out what their plans are. Mr. Newman, how close do you think we can get to their formation?"
"With the Mirage Colloid, we could be deck to deck with them," Arnold replied. "In theory, anyway. In practise, their combat patrols seem to be about a hundred kilometers out, so we could get almost that close without any likelihood of someone flying into us."
"That would be a little embarassing," Murrue agreed. "Get as as close as you feel is safe, Mr Arnold. If we can get close enough to them, there are some tricks that we can try. If nothing else, it would give us a good idea of what the ship looks like."
They were only a few hundred miles away from the Enforcer ships when Kira reached the bridge. "You sent for me, uh, captain?"
Murrue nodded, not taking her eyes off the blue and white hulled ship that dominated the screen. "Yes. As you can see, we're closing in on the Enforcer units. Obviously, there's a risk that we could be detected, and while we seem to be faster than they are - the large ship in any event, our best guess is that we're well inside their weapons range. If they're detected we'll have to fight our way free."
Kira frowned. "I don't see... oh. The Freedom."
"That's right. I realise that you're not part of the Militias, but you're the only person aboard, except the captured Enforcer, who has any experience with flying a mobile suit. And unfortunately, to come this far, we've - I've - put you and the other civilians in danger if we are detected. I want to maximise our chances to escape if we need to and the best defense against their mobile fighters would be the Freedom."
"I'm not a soldier," Kira protested.
"I know. But you're the only one who can do this. We won't be here long, and we may not need you. But will you help us if we need you?"
Kira looked trapped. "I don't want to kill anyone," he said.
"That may not be a luxury that we have," Natarle interjected from the CIC deck behind them both. "Because the Enforcers will certainly want to kill us."
The Girty Lue had only been in position for an hour when they hit paydirt. A small courier vessel jumped in and quickly began exchanging tight-beam communications with the larger ship, the SDF-1 according to its hull markings. There wasn't enough of a sideband to the communications for the Girty-Lue to decipher, but there were other means. One of the whisker lasers normally used for it's own tight beams had been reconfigured slightly and with both vessels at rest, it had been possible to train it precisely upon the bridge windows of the SDF-1.
It was a very old intelligence method, dating back to the days when humanity had been confined to Terra, and if either ship had been moving relative to the other, it's usefulness would have been almost nothing, but Arnold had been able to match velocities almost perfectly and the laser, measuring the exact distance between it's emitter and the glass, was able to measure even the miniscule vibrations caused by sound within the bridge. And unless something interupted the beam, it was almost impossible to detect.
"...so now we have a timetable," said the voice that they had identified as the ship's commander, and the leader of the little fleet. "It is unfortunate that Admiral Waltfeld has been delayed himself, of course, but once his advance force reaches us, the additional carriers should make it possible for us to detach a force to begin securing the rest of the cluster."
Murrue's eyes widened. That little snippet of information was enough to justify the risk of coming this close all on it's own. If the courier had a message from a follow-up force then then that force - and thus the Enforcer's secret jump point, had to be in the other star system since that was where the courier had come from.
"That's still a little later than I would like, sir," said a female voice - one of the senior officers, she guessed. "It's unlikely, of course, but once news of us reaches Kpove they could send ships straight for us. They'd be starting later, but they'd also be closer to us than the Admiral will be if he's on shedule. That's a race that we can't afford to lose."
"True," the commander replied, "But there's very little that we can do about that. And they won't find us easy to dislodge. But make sure that a full download on our new prizes is included in the dispatches we send. We need to get that out of the Ovluvizoe system and behind our lines as soon as possible."
"Should I order the courier to make all speed, sir? That could have us a lot of time, but..."
"No, no. Not at the expense of security, Lisa. You're quite right, we absolutely cannot afford to let Confederacy find out about Class-III jump points, much less actually locate one of them. Make sure he knows how important the information is, but he shouldn't risk the security of the jump point for it."
Murrue jumped to her feet. "Cut the beam," she said, her voice little more than a whisper, although there was of course no way for the Enforcers to hear her - unless they were spying on her, the way that she was spying upon them! "Nothing we're likely to hear is more important than what we already have."
Arnold obeyed promptly. "Should I take us out, ma'am."
"Yes! But slowly, carefully. If they had any idea what we discovered, they'll stop at nothing to prevent us from reporting it."
Slowly, the Girty Lue backed away from the little squadron. Murrue watched as the courier boat was covered by the halo of an active jump drive before vanishing abruptly across the gulf of stars. "Cut the engines," she ordered once they had built up a respectable speed. "We'll coast away from them until we're well out of their sensor range."
It was an hour later and they had almost relaxed when Arnold looked up from his controls. "There's a cruiser heading in our direction, Ma'am."
"What?" Murrue said, rising from her chair where she'd been waiting tensely for the time to come when the ship could get back under power and start it's run for the next jump point. "Are they on to us?"
"I don't think so, ma'am. From their course, I'd say that they are making for Aube."
"Aube," Murrue mused and returned to her seat, pulling up records of the planet. It looked pretty run of the mill - the fourth planet out from the sun, rather warmer than Mars, it had been terraformed during the interregeum before the rise of the Terran Union, by the planetary government of the system's more habitable third world, Sanq. It remained cold, with large ice caps and island chains in the temperate and tropical zones near to the equator, but the seasons were mild and the planet enjoyed a healthy income from tourism as well as from the numerous high tech industries that it had attracted. Probably it's most significant value was that since the fall of the Peacecraft family on Sanq, the Athha family on Aube had taken up the leadership of the Confederacy's pacifist movement."
"I wonder what they want there?" Murrue muttered. "It would be impolitic to attack Aube outright - the pacifists aren't much of a threat so why stir them up?"
"Perhaps they're looking for some more of the Project Gundam technology?" Natarle suggested. "There is a Morgenroete research station located down there - no factories on the same scale as Heliopolis, but there could still be some information there - they'd want to know what the Freedom can, and the same for the suits built at other locations."
"That's possible," Murrue agreed. "And the Athha would probably hand it all over and be glad it was gone, damn their sanctimonious hides."
"What do we do?" Arnold asked. "We're still in sensor range of the Enforcers at the jump point."
"Keep the Mirage Colloid up," Murrue said. "But power up the engines. We'll get out of their way and trail them to Aube. If they're up to what we think they're up to, then we'll stop them. Besides, once we're at Aube we can get a courier boat or two to carry our intelligence to the rest of the Militias, and disembark our passengers."
"That will be a relief," Natarle observed. "No offense to yourself, Mr Neumann, but I'd really rather minimise the number of civilians belowdecks."
By tradition, that refered to the parts of the spaceship that were below the conning tower and Murrue chuckled, the tension unwinding inside her. "Well that's easily managed," she said. "We could invite them up onto the bridge to take a look around."
Natarle gave her an irritated look. "That's not very funny, captain," she said and then her frown deepened as a thoughtful look crossed Murrue's face. "Captain, that's really not a good idea. The ship is supposed to be a secret, you know."
"Not once it's launched," Murrue replied. "Although that's not what I was thinking, actually. It was more about that Enforcer officer. He's stable, from what I understand, but we're not really equipped to confine anyone in the long term."
"What are you suggesting? That we hand him over to Aube? He'll be back aboard a ship and spilling his guts within minutes."
Natarle, if we have to engage the Enforcer cruiser over Aube then everyone in the system will know about it within hours. Beyond that, what is he going to tell them? That we have a sickbay? That we were undermanned for a while? Because Im not planning to just go running out without pulling some of Aubes Militia detachments aboard for a crew, Murrue explained. And I really think that hes dangerous enough to cause us some trouble if hes still aboard once hes made more of a recovery. He didnt get sent after the Gundams because he was expendable he was probably one of the team leaders and handpicked out of hundreds of pilots for the job. I do not want someone with those skills running around unless Im one hundred percent certain that they wont be measuring my back for a knife.
Cagalli Athha was not having a good week. Her efforts to discover whether the rumours of military research for the Confederacy going on at Morgenroete having borne fruit, she was somewhat at a loss as to what to do about it. The fact that her discovery had been coupled with the capture of that research by the Unity Government's armed thugs (as opposed to the Confederacy armed thugs that it had been paid for by) and the destruction of an entire orbital colony did not put her in the best of bargaining positions with her father.
Coupled with this was the departure of Ambassador Darlian and his family. Of the two ambassadors sent by the Confederacy Council to try to patch up relations between the factions currently controlling the central government and her father's pacifist faction, she much prefered Darlian to Ambassador Allster, and not merely because she got on surprisingly well with Relena Darlian - well enough to have persuaded her to join her in the disasterous expedition to Heliopolis.
The aftermath of that had been to persuade Darlian to depart with his family aboard the next ship back to the current meeting place of the Council, since the presence of the Enforcers changed his role significantly. She could only hope that Relena would stay in touch - perhaps near the Council she could find out more about what had brought Uzumi Athha to allow Morgenroete to break with his lifelong policy of barring more than the barest minimum of military activities in Aube's territorial holdings.
Ambassador Allster had relocated to Sanq, but refused to leave the system until his own daughter, who had been on Heliopolis, was located. He was therefore bothering their Militia on the assumption that Flay had been on the lifeboat picked up by some Militia warship that had turned up at Heliopolis just long enough to ping the flotilla of lifeboats for their condition and then hared off in search of a fight. Given that Sanq had only had two cruisers, both of which had fallen afoul of the Enforcers, there really wasn't anything that the local Militia could do for him, but at least he wasn't on Aube any more.
The news that an Enforcer cruiser was in orbit and making demands was just the icing on the cake.
Not only had Morgenroete been testing new mobile suits at Heliopolis, but several other prototypes that had not been selected for final construction had been cached in storage facilities and two of them were on Aube. The Enforcers were demanding that the Athha family demonstrate it's commitment to the pacifist ideals by handing over the equipment and disbanding their Militia. The last was a particular insult - the Athha Militias were configured to support the emergency services rather than a war and by the particular ters that bound them to the Confederacy, they could retain them for that purpose, which was why none had been committed to the war.
But the Enforcers apparently thought that a tradition of two centuries was no guarentee and were demanding the abolition. The rest of the Confederacy, no doubt, would be laughing their heads off once they heard this.
In front of her, Uzumi Athha looked as majestic as ever as he took his place at the head of the table where the Five Families that dominated Aube's government were represented to respond to the demands. He looked at the camera operator and nodded slightly, to confirm that he was ready.
"Uzumi Athha, addressing Captain Azonia of the UGE cruiser Sluagh," he began. "We have considered your demands. Allowing the military hardware illegally developed on Heliopolis to remain on Aube would violate our principles. However, to provide it to you - the self-declared enemies of the Confederacy, would be a violation of the treaty that binds us to the Confederacy. Accordingly, I have ordered that the equipment be seized and destroyed. As regards your threats against Aube, I suggest that you remember that while our principles do not support aggressive military action, the Attha have never renounced the principle of self-defense - and we will protect the homes of our people."
He made a discreet gesture and the camera switched off. Within moments, the recorded message would be transmitted to the ship above them.
"Was that wise?" asked one of Cagalli's cousins. "Our Militias might be able to repel a direct assault by the Enforcers, but they cannot be everywhere."
Uzumi clasped his hands in front of him on the table. "The two mobile suits Morgenroete developed have been obtained and completed," he explained. "If the Enforcers are reasonable, they can be disassembled as easily. If they persist... then they may was well be destroyed by Enforcer guns as by our hands. They have the speed to react should the Enforcers attempt a landing."
"We're caught between a rock and a hard place, for sure," muttered another of the Athha.
Cagalli grimaced. "Shouldn't have let them be built at all," she spat out. Uzumi's eyes hardened and he rose to leave the room.
"Stupid girl," her cousin snorted. "He didn't know - it was the Sahaku who let Morgenroete build at Heliopolis. But he can't admit that one of the other families did this sort of thing with out his knowing - they could use it to maneuver him out of office."
The girl paused. She'd not even considered that anything could happen without her father knowing about it.
"And he's still responsible, and holds himself responsible," one of the Yuuna added. "You're such a little girl, Cagalli. Still throwing tantrums to break his heart."
"They'll destroy the suits?" Milia snorted. "Yes, of course they will. In full view of the flying pigs, no doubt."
Only a short distance across the command deck of the Sluagh, Azonia chuckled from her command chair. "Oh calm down, Milia. There was never all that much chance that the Athha would agree to break with the Confederacy - which is what giving us the suits would have been - and neither I nor the Brigadier really thought that they would. But it was worth the attempt. After all, however unlikely it would have been convenient if they had, and it's not as if they can stop us from enforcing our demands."
Now it was Milia's turn to laugh. "Oh, indeed not. With my Justice, I think that it's safe to say that the miserable handful of GINN's down there won't be a problem. We won't even need Sterling's Calamity."
"That would be nice," Azonia agreed. "But it's nice to have him along anyway. It's possible that a military operation might have failed for using too many troops at some point, but I can't conjure up any examples off the top of my head."
"It can't even fly," Milia protested. "So it won't be any use down there, no matter what."
Azonia chuckled. "Humour me, Milia. I know I'm only your commanding officer but it would be nice to think I can have my own way every now and again." She pulled up a holographic display of Aube and tapped one island chain. "We'll use the Komusai to land Sterling and our jump infantry, with you flying escort in the Justice. The Morgenroete complex is on the west coast of the island, so the Komusai can land safely behind this ridge -" She expanded the view to show the island in detail, pointing out the contours of the geography. With you and Sterling there, there's not much chance of any serious resistance."
Milia shrugged. "If you say so, Azonia." She grinned. "I really hope that they resist. Those damn GINN's think they're invincible and it's time we taught them better."
"Well, I guess that this makes it official," Murrue noted as she watched the Komusai dropship detach from where it had formed the prow of the Sluagh and enter the atmosphere. "That flight path will drop them right on top of Morgenroete's Aube facilities."
"Is there any chance that they'll be held back?" Natarle asked. "I know Aube's Militia's isn't that formidable but a Musai couldn't be carrying more than a squadron of mobile suits at the worst."
Murrue gave her an amused look and pointed at the little speck that was descending alongside the Komusai. "That's one of the Gundams. Looks like the Justice. Could you enhance that, Mr. Neumann?" The image sharpened, revealing the purple suit in more detail. "Yes, that's the Justice. I seriously doubt if the entire Aube Militia could stop one Gundam, never mind a Gundam plus whatever they have loaded aboard the Komusai."
Natarle gulped. "The Gundams can't be that powerful, can they? They're just mobile suits!"
"Just mobile suits?" Murrue said with a raised eyebrow. "Even a lone GINN can pose a threat to a warship, and the Gundams are rather significantly more dangerous that a GINN. If we had the full squad that was built at Heliopolis and pilots for them, I wouldn't heistate in launching an attack on the Enforcers at the jump point. Individually, they're about as dangerous as battleships - not as heavily armed of course, but far more difficult targets."
The look on Natarle's face was skeptical. "Even if a mobile suit could be so powerful," she protested, "it could hardly be feasible build them in any number."
"They aren't - there are only fifteen of them," Murrue said. "There only needed to be fifteen - although that may change now that some are in Enforcer hands." She looked out of the bridge's window and shook her head. "But that doesn't matter now. Pull us back to extreme sensor range, Mr Neumann and prepare to deactivate our Mirage Colloid. There's no point revealing its existence if we don't have to, and I don't want to attack until the Justice is deeper inside the atmosphere."
"Captain! A Confederacy warship!"
Azonia cursed as she saw the tactical display update. "Where the hades did that spring from!" she shouted. The ship was in their rear quarter and very nearly inside beam range. "Bring us around to fire on it! Get me an ID on it!"
"No ID!" the sensor operator replied grimly. "It must be a new design - power and mass readings are consistent with a battleship!" His face was pale. A cruiser would have a good chance of outpacing a battleship in a straight race, but the ship had neatly entrapped them against Aube and there was no way that they could break away before the enamy was in range to fire."
"Get Milia on the radio," Azonia ordered. There was a flash of light as a beam cannon shot past the bridge window - a narrow miss and just luck that it hadn't decapitated the Sluagh's conning tower. "Tell her that there is prey here worthy of her talents."
"It'll take her at least five minutes to get back here," Azonia's second advised her. "And the Calamity can't make it back without the shuttle."
"Then we'll have to last five minutes?" Azonia snorted. "Take an evasive flight pattern, helm. Let's see if that big clumsy bastard can hit us when we don't let him!"
Five minutes is a long time in a battle between warships, she knew. And with the firepower this badly mismatched, Milia might not return in time to do more than avenge us.
It was surprisingly easy for Cagalli to obtain access to the mobile suit hangers.
Aube had never had very many mobile suits, but the hangers had been built against the possibility that large numbers might have to be brought in at some point, so there was enough space to leave many of the bays empty. It also made it quite easy to hide a couple of extra suits - or for a teenage girl to penetrate the security. It would have been more difficult, of course, if she had not already had a good idea of the layout. Uzumi Athha was committed to the pacifist movement, but he was also pragmatic and had ensured that Cagalli was trained in piloting, just as she was trained, to a degree, in escape and evasion skills.
The Morgenroete facilities were on the same island, so the hangers were the logical place to locate the suits in order to keep them under the control of Aube's government rather than of the corporate executives that had gotten the planet into the mess in the first place.
With only two bays in this part of the structure occupied, Cagalli only had to follow the movement of techs to locate the two suits that she sought. They didn't look exactly like the suits she had seen before, she realised. Only one of them had the helm-and-face arrangment of the others, and it had much less defined features, while the latter simply masked it's sensors behind a window-like arrangement. The first was blue and white, with a shield and a recoilless rifle, the other green and grey with a pair of massive gatlings held in one hand, and what looked like several internal missile launchers in the shoulders. They would be effective against variable fighters, but she had her doubts about their usefulness against a Gundam - the armor systems suggested that those were almost immune to direct damage from kinetic attacks.
She moved closer to the bays. The technicans were wearing emerald green coveralls, much like the one she'd obtained from Milita stores, and she pulled a cap low over her face as she crossed into the active area as the personnel prepared their charges for battle.
A trailer rattled past, towed by a tractor and she recognised the load as a pair of beam rifles. A second trailer was following, this one loaded with the flat disks of beam rifle energy cells. "There's a report from orbit," came a quiet voice from behind her and Cagalli whirled to find the tall frame of Commodore Treize Khrushrenada stood behind her.
Treize was something of a legend in the Confederacy Defense Militias, a gifted pilot and swordsman who'd worked his way up to flag-rank through the mobile suit corps, even though a tour as ship commander was usually a prerequisite. Until recently he had been chief of staff to the Chairman of the Committee, but in the aftermath of Patrick Zala's election, he'd been assigned a role in the Ezoe Cluster.
&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp "Apparently a previously unknown Confederacy battleship has arrived in orbit," he continued, "and is engaging the enemy cruiser. They have confirmed that the Enforcers have a Gundam escorting their dropship, so we'll be carrying beam rifles rather than the cannon. Princess."
&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp "Don't call me that," Cagalli growled. She hated being called that almost as much as she hated the gowns she'd occasionally been forced into for formal balls... like the ones where she'd ended up meeting Treize.
&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp Treize chuckled. "As you wish, Officer Athha. Should I take your being here as volunteering as my wingman for this little bout?"
&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp She blinked. "You're flying?"
&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp "Rank has its privileges," he said with a slight smile. "And I must admit, I've been itching to get hold of one of these ever I heard of them. Go get in a flight suit - you'll have the Serpent, over there," he pointed at the grey-and-green suit, "and I'll have the Tallgeese."
&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp Cagalli nodded her understanding and headed for the nearby pilot rooms. Somehow, Treize suspected that anyone trying to get between her and a flightsuit would be nursing a black eye or two when they woke up. Youthful enthusiasm was a wonderful thing when harnessed, he mused.
&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp "Kira," Murrue said, as she watched another salvo from the big forward batteries reach out for the Enforcer cruiser. Most of the shots missed - the gunnery team was a scratch job by any standards, but two scored on the forward hull, digging deep gouges into the green ovoid shape. "We're picking up a mobile suit coming up from the surface. It looks like the Justice. Are you ready to launch."
&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp The boy's voice was nervous. "Yes ma'am. What should I do?"
&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp "Just keep it away from us," she replied. "As long as it doesn't get involved in this fight, we should win. And without a mothership, it won't be able to do anything much. So, just keep it busy. And be careful - whoever's flying it will probably be one of their better pilots so don't give them any openings that you can avoid."
&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp "I understand," he confirmed. A moment later she could see one of the linear catapults open up and the readouts on the flight control officer's workstation flicked from amber through to green. "Kira Yamato, Freedom, launching!" Kira shouted and the last word trailed into a startled yelp as for the first time he felt the effects of having a linear catapult pick him up and hurl him out at a speed that he would have taken almost a minute to reach under the thrust of even the Freedom's powerful engines.
&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp Natarle blinked and then saw a twinkle appear in Murrue's eye. "He hadn't made a catapult launch before, had he?" she asked.
&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp "No," Murrue admitted, and then she and Neumann cracked up in a totally inappropriate fit of giggles.
&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp Kira saw beams criss-crossing space between the two ships. The Girty-Lue's shooting was noticeably less accurate than that of the smaller ship, but it had twice as many beam turrets and the heavier beams did more damage, which more than swung the balance. A volley of missiles erupted from the Musai, but most were picked off by countermissiles fired out of the Girty-Lue's missile tubes and the few survivors ran into a wall of fire from the point defenses. It was obvious even to Kira that since Murrue was keeping her missiles for defense work, that it was the beam weapons that would settle this battle.
&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp Then he grimaced as two pairs of variable fighters launched from the rear of the cruiser and came around to approach the Girty Lue. "I can't let you do that," he whispered apologetically to them, although they could not hear of course. "My friends are aboard that ship." The Freedom's targeting computer found it easy to mark out the fighters and he fired the hip-mounted railguns once, then a second time. The first pair of fighters simply exploded. One of the second went pinwheeling away as one side of the fighter was smashed, the other simply drifted, the shot having gone completely through the cockpit and the pilot before exiting the other side of the variable fighter.
&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp Kira could not and did not ever perceive the shock that went through the commanders of both vessels as they saw an entire flight of Valkries blotted out of the sky in a single moment.
&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp "What was that!" Azonia demanded of her sensor operator.
&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp "That is the power of a Gundam," Murrue whispered to Natarle.
Soon the upper atmosphere of Aube was party to several fast moving examples of huamn ingenuity. The fastest moving was of course the Komusai, since gravity was on its side. The dropship, loaded with a short platoon of jump infantry, Ensign Max Sterling and the Gundam that had been designated as Calamity was still descending towards their island target.
Moving in the opposite direction and cursing the improvident fates, Captain Milia Fallyna was redlining the powerful thrusters of the Justice Gundam to try to break free of the gravity well. The mobile suit was actually marginally capable of this however powerful a suit was, the gravity of a planet was not something easily countered but to anyone familiar with the speed and agilty of mobile suit combat, her efforts looked slow and clumsy.
&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp Above these two and descending cautiously were their enemies. The nearest was Kira and the Freedom Gundam, but closing in from behind them was one of Aubes few mobile suits. It was a non-standard model bearing a more than coincidental resemblance to the Gundams, it was painted gold and white and inside it was one of the political figures behind Project Gundam. His name was Ghina Sahaku and whatever might have been said about him, the man was no coward.

D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.
Reply
Re: NaNoWriCo
#20
Well, in the end I didn't manage to reach the target this year.
Still, here's what I did manage to get written:

The Astray-series mobile suits were his personal projects and he'd selected the Gold Frame for this particular run, not least because it had been the first to be refitted with the equipment he'd had duplicated once it was designed for the Gundams. Lighter than it's cousin the Freedom, it's thrusters had correspondingly more effect and it caught up to Kira's suit just as they entered extreme range of the Justice.

"We're picking up two mobile suits over the base," the lieutenant piloting the Komusai reported. "They don't look like DINN's, so I guess those must be our targets."
Max Sterling nodded thoughtfully from the seat he occupied at the back of the compartment. "Let me guess, they aren't powered down and waiting to be loaded?"
The lieutenant nodded. "You're on the money there, hotshot. From the power readings I'd guess that they're going to make a fight of this. Are you up for this?"
"I'd sort of better be," Max pointed out. "There isn't really anyone else." That much was true. The Justice couldn't make it bat to orbit from the surface, although it could manage if it got high enough under someone else's power, and they'd needed to leave space for the other two mobile suits that he was now going to have to - at best - disable, or more probably destroy; so as a result the cavernous hanger that took up most of the Komusai contained no more than his own Calamity and the three squads of jump infantrymen that were assigned to the Sluagh. "All credit to the jump infantry, but their anti-suit tactics aren't going to work as well against a Gundam as they would against a DINN or a ZuOOT."
The pilot grinned. "If I agree, do you promise not to tell them I did?"
Max blinked. "So long as you repay the favour in kind," he said. "They are a little gung ho."
"But seriously. One Gundam against two?"
"Not the best of situations, admittedly," Max agreed. "But neither was a completed Gundam, and they must have had to work fast just to get them operational. There is a reasonable chance that they won't be more dangerous than, say, a squad each."
"And you're comfortable with that?"
Max grinned. "Lieutenant, you would not believe how good a Gundam is."
It would be safe to say, Milia noted, that she was fighting on less than optimal terms - the other mobile suits had a height advantage and there were two of them, even if they weren't displaying any actual teamwork at the moment. The gold suit was overly aggressive, while the black and white suit was far more hesitant.
If she had to choose, she'd probably prefer it that way though, because it was obvious from her sensors that the other suit - Freedom, according to the warbooks - had a much more powerful plasma reactor and was probably better armed to boot. The latter was suddenly proven when it opened fire at long range, two plasma beams forcing her to dodge sharply. Coming out of the dodge Miria came around and returned fire with her backpack's beam cannon. Both shots missed, but the Freedom turned away, apparently content to engage at long range.
The same was not true of the gold suit, which close in, producing a beam saber to attack with. A classic mistake - fighting this close would prevent the Freedom from firing and the Justice was anything but lacking in close quarter capability. Firing her beam rifle, Miria used the Justice's shield to block return fire - the green beams of a mere beam rifle unable to penetrate the thick laminates used to construct the defense. She grinned. "Just a little closer, little bird," she crooned.
The gold suit came a little closer.
In one swift movement, Miria threw her beam rifle up above her. Seizing the two beam boomerangs, she sent them spinning at the gold suit. The other pilot was obviously aware of the Justice's capabilities, for he immediately evaded the attack. However, splitting his attention between the twin boomerangs and the Justice left him stretched a little thin and he gave her just the tiniest opening. Miria caught her beam rifle as gravity dragged it down upon her once more and snapped off a quick shot that caught the other suit on the hip. It spun wildly and she opened up with her beam cannons, taking off the head and one leg. Then the boomerangs returned and slashed through the gold suit's arms, leaving it to tumble helplessly towards Aube, unable to maneuver.
Just like that and the odds were evened.
"I am the greatest," Miria reminded the universe as she stowed her rifle, caught the beam boomerangs and returned them to their stowage. Then she threw more power into her backpack's thrusters and powered up towards the Freedom, igniting a beam saber. Time to deal with the real threat.
"Here it comes," Treize warned in a calm voice as the Komusai came into visual range. "Target the shuttle first."
Cagalli nodded, the gesture visible to Treize on the communications screen. "Let's do this," she said and the Serpent rose from behind the ridge, standing on a GUUL, one of the lifters used to deploy GINNs under atmospheric conditions as (unlike their DINN cousins) their thrusters were not powerful enough to maintain flight in a gravity field. Since the Serpent found itself in a similar position, it had been planned from the beginning to equip it with such a unit - but it would be a critical vulnerability if the attackers had a suit capable of real atmospheric maneuvers. A moment later, the Tallgeese followed under it's own power.
No such mobile suit was in evidence as the Komusai closed in, and Cagalli watched on the targeting scope as it grew. The box around it pulsed as the distance fell and a small red dot went green as the range dropped below maximum range for her weapons. She checked her weapon selection and fired, missiles exploding from the shoulders of her mobile suit, the contrails marking their paths towards the dropship.
Lone missiles would have been little threat, but a volley at ranges as low as this was enough to damage even capital ships and the Komusai was smaller than any real warship. It broke off from the landing pattern, trying to evade the missiles, but in so doing it exposed its belly to Cagalli and Treize and they took ruthless advantage, raking the tough metal with their beam rifles.
There was a metallic roar and a large mass flew out of the rear of the dropship - probably jettisoned from one of the aft hatches. The Komusai was trailing smoke now and Cagalli guessed that it was probably going to be making a forced landing this side of the ridge. She fired again, this time catching one of the engines. There was an explosion of fire and the dropship staggered in mid-air. Figures began to fall from the open rear hatch, some of them on fire. A few managed to deploy parapchutes... but most did not. The Komusai canted slowly to one side and ploughed into the ground. A moment later the reactors exploded.
The force of the explosion sent a shockwave through the air and Cagalli's GUUL was rocked violently. Rather than trying to stay aboard, she followed her training and jumped the Serpent free, landing on both feet. Under remote control, the GUUL stablised and then swung around towards her. It was close enough that she was in mid-leap to reboard it, when two lances of silvery fire lashed out and punched through the metal skin of the flying platform.
"What the - ?" she shouted, kicking off from the wrecked GUUL as it fell and coming down again.
"Watch your back!" Treize snapped and she sent the Serpent running down the slope of the ridge, seeing the fire and smoke of a mobile suit battlefield down below.
The Tallgeese was engaging a blue mobile suit, she saw. The machine seemed no more able to take to the skies than she was, but it was much better armed - two massive beam weapons over the shoulders, a shield with some sort of guns built in and some sort of heavy weapon carried like a bazooka. The latter was reduced to a smoking ruin by Tallgeese as Treize closed in and made a sweeping strike with his beam saber. The other suit - the warbook called it Calamity - blocked with the bazooka, discarding it when the weapon was wrecked and firing some sort of beam weapon from it's chest that Treize barely blocked with his shield, the shield actually deforming under the power of the beam.
Cagalli took a shot with her beam rifle at long range, only to have the Calamity sweep its own shield around, intercepting the shot and then returning fire with the guns built into the shield, forcing her to break aside to avoid being struck.
Damn, she thought. This guy's good!

This was getting a bit difficult, Max decided. Neither of the other two suits was very good compared to the Calamity, but there were two of them and neither pilot was exactly a pushover. He danced the big mobile suit back out of the way of the Serpent's beam rifle fire and burned the ground to cinders beneath the Tallgeese a fraction of a second after it had lifted off the ground. The larger of the two suits was very nearly as agile as the Calamity and he had a nasty feeling that at least a couple of the other Gundams must have been built along those lines.
Fighting them would be fun, but it would also be hellishly destructive.
Not that fighting these two had spared the landscape.
The trail of destruction left by the Komusai crashing - and then exploding, which had almost certainly killed every one of the forty or so people aboard - had just been the beginning. What had been a rather pleasent wooded slope was currently ablaze and cratered as three leviathans hammered at each other with what an uninformed observer might have thought was a disturbing lack of skill.
After all, unlike the landscape, none of them had taken any serious damage yet. Or even much - when the lightest weapons being used are 115mm automatic cannon any damage has the potential to be serious. That was probably the only reason that he was still holding out, he knew. The other two suits couldn't really afford to let him cut loose with the Calamity's full firepower upon them so they were understandably a little tentative in their approach - catching a 125mm beam shot in any of a dozen locations would put them decisively out of the fight, most likely dead. What would happen if he managed to hit one of them with the anti-shipping energy cannon in the chest didn't bear thinking about - several acres of the slope had been reduced to molten glass as a result of missed shots with the 580mm aperture weapon.
"I think my dance card is already full," he said regretfully and glanced along the slope. There really wasn't any chance of punching past the two of them without giving them the opportunity to run in behind him and there wouldn't be any actual point in doing so since they were piloting the technology that the mission's goal was to obtain. Destroying them would meet the secondary objective, but that was looking increasingly unlikely.
With that decided, he turned the Calamity and made a break down the slope. Caught off guard, Cagalli was left behind, unable to do more than pepper his path with beam rifle shots as she tried to keep up. She broke off in disgust as her targeting system pinged to report that the energy clip was discharged. Discarding the disc-shaped power supply, she detached a spare from where it was clipped to her leg and replaced it.
The Tallgeese, unlike the Serpent, was fast enough to keep up with the Calamity and Treize came down from the sky with a roar of thrusters to intercept the fleeing mobile suit. "Now now, Enforcer," he said mildly, the words echoing across the blasted landscape from his external speakers. "Leaving so soon? Don't you enjoy our hospitality?"
"It's a trifle warm," Max replied, using the same method. He fired off the 'Scylla' in his chest and the Tallgeese sideslipped to avoid the blast, letting Calamity gain some ground towards the water.
"But giving up so soon?" Treize asked as Tallgeese lunged with it's beam saber, forcing the other suit back a few steps. "You don't seem as determined as I'd expected."

Ghina patted the head of his pet. He knew that many, perhaps even his sister, thought him strange to keep such a creature as a pet, but he'd always liked reptiles. When he was a child, one of his aunts who shared his enthusiasm had given him a Terran crocodile, naming it Midorigami after the similar creature that she had raised as a child and had laid the egg that Ghina's pet came out of. He still thought that the creature had been magnificent but it had died unexpectedly while he was off-planet and as his aunt was dead and interplanetary trade in animals was strictly limited, he had been unable to replace it.
In the end, he had paid a sizeable sum to obtain the eggs of an Aube River Dragon and a much larger sum to have the embryo modifed. His current pet was the third generation of the little family of the creatures that he kept in a swampy part of a private island. Like most River Dragons, this one was slightly more than three metres long and weighed in at almost half a ton, which made him awkward to transport at times. Not that Ghina cared. If he wanted Snappy to accompany him then then there would be people he could pay for the purpose of ensuring that he could, even if that was the only reason for their being in his employ. Unlike most River Dragons, however, Snappy and the other descendants of the pet he'd called Dogzard were quite safe for him to pet.
They were rather less safe for other people to be around, since they didn't match the scents that had so carefully been impressed upon the River Dragons as their Master. His sister probably smelt close enough, but she didn't like his pets and he rather thought that they could tell. They certainly returned the sentiment.
"So," he said thoughtfully. "The other pilot?"
"In five minutes she'll be facing a firing squad," his aide reported.
"Good," Ghina noted. The little bitch had shot him down, wrecking one of his precious Astrays. Admittedly, he still had the Red and Blue Frame versions, but it was a blow to his ego. Shooting was too good for her, but he would have to bow to international convention on this. Let no one say he couldn't be flexible about minor details. "And the other one?"
The aide smiled. "He's locked away in one of the empty cargo holds."
Ghina nodded. "Excellent." Out of the corner of his eye he saw the aide pale suddenly and claw for his pistol. Turning, the scion of the Sahaku family twitched as he saw a broadshouldered man step into the shuttle's command deck, a cigar that he recognised as coming from his personal stock clamped between his lips. The man produced a lighter, lit the cigar and puffed out a small cloud of aromatic tobacco smoke.
"Ahhh," Ghina said, shooting a withering look at his aide. "'Ace Rimmer - might one enquire how you escaped your bonds?"
"Just had to dislocate both shoulders, pop 'em behind my ears and slip between the ropes. Of course, it's going to take major orthopaedic surgery to put them back, but rest assured: that won't stop me from freeing Captain Fallyna."
"You're insane, Rimmer!" the Sahaku exclaimed. "You're out-manned and outgunned."
Ace raised an incredulous eyebrow. "You expect me to concede?"
"No, Captain Rimmer, I expect you to die." Snappy punctuated the declaration with a throaty roar, causing even Ace's composure to slip slightly and Ghina stroked the reptile's head soothingly. It wouldn't do for Snappy to take action precipitously - he might kill the aide and Ghina wouldn't want to decide just how to discipline the incomptent quite so hastily, although Snappy was quite welcome to whatever was left. "Take him into the cargo hold and then vent it," he ordered the man. "And don't take ten minutes explaining all my plans to him."
The aide nodded his head sharply and probably would have snapped his heels together if it wouldn't have looked so ridiculous. "Out!" he snapped, gesturing at Ace with the pistol.
The gesture was the last mistake that the aide would have a chance to make. In the brief instant that the gun was not trained upon him, Ace smashed a right hook into his jaw and caught the gun before it hit the ground. The pilot, who had remained out of the affair until that moment, turned in his seat, reaching for his own sidearm and Ace promptly fired two shots into the man's chest. He collapsed over the controls and the shuttle shook violently as it veered wildly off course.
Ace had no time to exploit his possession of the gun, however, for Ghina reacted with quicksilver reflex, grasping his pet's head between his hands and turning it to face the lone Enforcer. "Kill," he hissed in the ancient Aube dialect and, unleashed by the being it catagorised in it's primitive mind as it's God, Snappy lunged at Ace, driving him backwards out of the compartment.
The gun went skittering away and Ace barely managed to keep the claws and jaws of the monstrous reptile as he struggled with it. A few moments later, Ghina emerged from the control room himself, a parachute strapped to his back and a smug look on his face as he edged past the wrestling pair.
"Ah, Captain Rimmer," he said, opening the airlock. "Sorry I can't stick around for a chat, but I've got to blow..." He gave Snappy a regretful look but a quick moment's sabotage had ensured that he had the only aprachute, and it's not as if one of them would have fitted onto his pet anyway. "Do me a favour, will you?" he sneered at Ace. "Feed Snappy."
Then the door closed and a moment later, Ace heard the airlock cycle. "What I wouldn't give for a gun," he grumbled. Snappy let rip another roar, this time directly into the daring pilot's face and he wrinkled his nose. "Or a bottle of listerine!"
Some quirk of the airlock's control structure opened the inner door again and Ace took the opportunity. Ripping a length of wiring out from where the flailing claws of the River Dragon had sprung a floor panel loose, he bound its muzzle, grabbed the gun he's lost earlier and ran into the airlock. He'd underestimated Snappy's reflexes and the beast managed to leap inside with him before the door closed. It had made the same mistake however and he managed to sidestep, letting it slam headfirst into the door. River Dragon's are noe easily stunned, but the impact bought Ace the moment he needed to open the door and the motion of the shuttle sent then both hurtling out into the air, high over Aube.
Hundreds of metres below, Ghina laughed bitterly as he heard the explosion of the shuttle. He had taken the precaution of rigging the reactor before leaving the control room. It was an expensive triumph - he'd lost Snappy! - but worth it to ensure the death of someone so much of a threat to him. And with no other survivors, it would be easy to cast himself in a good light and Ace Rimmer as the villain of the piece.
"Goodbye, Ace Rimmer!" he called to wheresoever the spirit of the recently departed pilot might be. "You were a most worthy adversary!" Then he turned and glanced behind him. It wouldn't do to open his parachute only to have it damaged by debris from the shuttle. No, there didn't seem to be anything... His head snapped back around and his face lost much of it's pallor.
Behind and above him, Snappy was falling towards him, collared somehow by the man who stood on his back and was riding him down like a surfboard. Ace Rimmer had survived another brush with the Reaper, without even disturbing his blow-dried hair.
With a shout of fear and anger, Ghina pulled his own sidearm and fired at the Rimmer. The angle was bad however, and much of the pilot was hidden by the mass of Ghinas own pet. The shots did little more than anger the beast to the point that it did not recognise the smell of its master, distorted as they were by the rushing air. It opened its jaws to roar.., and a jerk of its collar brought it around at the perfect moment for Ghinas head to plug its throat.
The Aube nobleman screamed as his pet reflexively close its jaws around him. He felt hands against him as Ace climbed down the precarious structure of falling bodies and unstrapped the parachute, leaping away from the duo with it before refastening it around himself. See you later, alligator! he shouted and turned, spreadeagling and angling his direction of falling back towards the distant military base. He had a lot of distance to cover, and only minutes to do it in.
Milia Fallyna was having a very bad day. Yesterday, being shot down despite flying what was inarguably one of the most powerful mobile suits in the universe had been bad, right up until she discovered that the one doing the shooting down was a teenager who was only even in the cockpit for the third time, at which time it had gone down in history as her worst day ever. She was an elite pilot for Buddha's sake!
Today, although not featuring anything quite so traumatic, had started poorly, in a military prison cell and meandered gently down towards her current circumstances, chained to a wooden post that had been hastily erected in one of the yards of the Aube Militia's local base and facing a file of infantry carrying rifles. She wasn't exactly one of the jump infantry but she was pretty sure that they weren't here to measure her for a prison uniform.
"Ready!" shouted the officer commanding the little squad. "Aim! Fi-" His last word was cut off by a gunshot and Milia stiffened briefly before realising that she wasn't the victim. Instead, it was the officer who keeled over and another shot heralded the death of one of the firing squad. The infantrymen wheeled, raising their rifles to the sky and Milia, looking up, saw a man on a parachute descending from the sky, firing a pistol one handed.
Two more men died before their rifles could bear and then the gunshots from above were masked by the sound of the automatic rifles blazing away. What they did not disguise was the way that the man jerked - presumably the victim of a bullet. For a moment she thought that he was dead, and then an indignant shout echoed across the yard.
"This is my best top, dammit!" shouted Ace Rimmer, picking off three more soldiers with three quick shots. But more soldiers were spilling out of the barracks and raising their weapons. The dashingly handsome man hit the release on his parachute harness and dropped free moments before the 'chute was torn to shreds by the massed firepower. He hit the roof of a wooden storage shed and crashed through it, vanishing from sight.
Another officer had emerged from one of the buildings and he quickly gathered several soldiers. On his command they fired off their rifle's magazines into the side of the shed, splintering the wood and presumably perforating the man inside. The officer had a smug look as the gunfire died away, but Milia saw a confused expression cross his face a moment later. Then she heard what he did, the sound of an engine revving, and the splintered wall disintergrated under the impact of a powerful motorcycle that exploded out of the shed under the guidance of Ace.
The soldiers scattered out of his path as Ace charged through them, firing left and right with his pistol. Then Milia's stomach clenched as she saw him aiming the gun at her. Nerves frayed, she looked away as the gun fired once, then again. To her amazement, once again she was unharmed, but the same could not be said of her chains, which fell away. Seconds later, Ace skidded to a halt beside her.
"Captain Fallyna; Ace Rimmer. There'll be time for explanations later, hop on."
Milia shook her head in disbelief as she hopped up behidn him on the bike. "What a guy!"
Ace zoomed away, the bike jinking from side to side to avoid more gunfire as the soldiers rallied. A few of the soldiers pulled more motorcycles out of the shed and gave chase. Ace fired two shots back, hardly seeming to aim, but two of the motorcycles came to crashing halts as their riders flopped lifelessly off them. That still left two riders, but Ace's pistol clicked dry. With a shrugg, he flung it over his shoulder and it smacked one of the soldiers in the face, knocking him off the bike.
"Hold on, Major!" he shouted.
"Under the circumstances, Ace, call me Milia," she replied, locking her arms around his waist as he steered towards a ramp that looked designed for loading shuttles. The bike rocketed up the ramp and into the air. As they reached the apex of the jump, something huge swept through the air above them and Ace released his hold on the handlebars to seize hold of it, letting them be carried away from the base.
The soldier following them had nothing to jump for and his own jump ended less joyfully, the bike cartwheeling prettily across the tarmac, sending sprays of burning fuel flying in all directions.
"Bet he's glad he wore his helmet," Ace shouted over the wind, nodding to where the dazed looking soldier had wound up, having bounced headfirst off the ground. Milia looked up and realised that they were hanging from the bottom of a GUUL. Standing on top of the GUUL was the familiar aqua-blue shape of the Gundam Calamity, probably being piloted by Max Sterling.
Down below, two soldiers stared after the departing mobile suit. "He got away!" exclaimed the taller of them. "I can't believe that he got away!"
"That was Ace Rimmer!" pointed out his shorter companion. "We're lucky to be alive!"
It was at this point that Snappy made his final landing, still wrapped around the dinner Ace had fed him, which had by now stopped moving. Unfortunately for the soldiers, they were not as lucky as they had believed, the half-tonne River Dragon flattening them where they stood as it slammed down upon them at the approriately large terminal velocity.
A third soldier, having been stood only a few yards behind them, was spared and looked down, then up into the sky where the GUUL was rising higher into the sky and following a somewhat erratic flightpath. For a moment he couldn't make out why and then he saw the smoke trail in the sky.
'Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast'.
The soldier's jaw dropped. "What a guy!" he said in an awed voice.
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.
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Re: NaNoWriCo
#21
*shatters*
Damnit, D, you broke my brain!
Your fans want to know more!
-Griever
When tact is required, use brute force. When force is required, use greater force.
When the greatest force is required, use your head. Surprise is everything. - The Book of Cataclysm
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Re: NaNoWriCo
#22
First chance I've had to read through the whole thing...
Alligator skyboarding fu. Brainmelting. [Image: smile.gif]
I really don't know who to root for here, which is probably what you intended. On the one hand, there's Kira and co. scaling their traditional heroic Gundam role up to entire star systems. But on the other hand... Roy Fokker and Ace Rimmer? I want to be on their team! [Image: smile.gif] The Alliance couldn't be any more invincible if they had Justy Tylor, Miles Vorkosigan, Monkey D. Luffy and Phantom F. Harlock on the bridge.
Not enough political details for me to pick a side that way either. I suppose what would really make me happy is for both crews to pull a Zeta and form the AEUGS. [Image: wink.gif]
--Sam
"Bound Doc?! Scirocco!"
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Re: NaNoWriCo
#23
Well, it's Gundam. Moral ambiguity is as much part of the setting as a red-white-&-blue gundam and an adversary in a mask.
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.
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