Crossover Fan Fiction / Gundam SEED Fan Fiction / Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Crossing Barriers ❯ Ambush! Two Winged Mobile Suits ( Chapter 16 )

Crossing Barriers

 

Gundam Wing and Gundam Seed are the sole property of their creators and distributing studios. I have no financial interest in either series. Nor am I receiving any financial gain from this fan fiction work. I do however own all plot elements not part of the original and all self-created characters. Thank you. Enjoy.

 

Special note: Yaoi (homosexual pairings) is a plot element of this story. There will be NO explicit material but there will be sections where it is reasonably clear that sex is happening or has happened.

 

Beta Reader: T'Amara

 

 

 

Ambush! Two Winged Mobile Suits

 

It had been a tense day. None of the pilots had eaten much and they drank only enough to keep thirst at bay. They had gone quiet, and very still. Even Duo wasn't talking the walls down like normal. All five of them spent the morning making sure their machines were completely combat-ready.

 

About noon the security scan had begun to pick up large drifting masses it couldn't identify. They settled in among the other large debris around both Curie and Goddard colonies. The best picture the cameras could give them bore an uncomfortably marked resemblance to the first shots the Mir girl had gotten of Terasawa's ships coming in to attack Endymion.

 

“How far out is the Foreign Minister's group,” Heero asked.

 

Zechs jumped, snapping around, a knife jumping into his hand in an automatic reflex born of the tensions of the moment.

 

“Damn it Yuy! Don't sneak up on me like that!” The former Oz Special snarled as he caught himself before he did anything he'd regret forever with that blade.

 

Flat Prussian blue eyes stared hard at the knife, then the head gave a tiny nod of apology. It was the best he was going to get from the man right now. Yuy was in full `mission mode' and his emotional responses would remain deeply suppressed until he came out of it.

 

Sometime during the night he'd made the decision he'd been avoiding ever since J had told them the Gundams had been restored. Heero would return to the battlefield. But he would only do it as the Perfect Soldier. He's bluntly told them all he didn't think his sanity could withstand doing it without that emotionless shield to stand behind. Quite frankly, neither did Zechs. At least, not yet.

 

He wasn't alone in that decision. Earlier that morning the Lightening Count had watched each of the pilots reach back for the emotional safety of those old wartime personas. It was Shinigami who had been doing final prep on Deathscythe's energy blade, not Duo Maxwell. The Silencer worked wordlessly loading the ammunition reserves on Heavyarms, Trowa Barton set in abeyance somewhere. Gentle Quatre Winner had been put aside for the Desert Prince who was fine tuning Sandrock's operating system. The Dragon was carefully capping the napalm tanks on his Altron. Preventer Chang Wu Fei no longer existed and wouldn't again until sometime after the battle was over. And the Perfect Soldier, back in black spandex shorts and a green tank top, had been grimly and methodically tightening the connectors on the controller of each and every thruster and vernier of his Wing Zero.

 

“The Foreign Minister?” Yuy repeated his earlier question.

 

“He's about thirty minutes out.” Dorothy replied from her seat at the board.

 

“Then we will be going out now.”

 

“Heero,” Zechs said quietly. “Take care please. Don't let yourself or the others forget that this is not our place or war. Remember that we've all agreed that we would only intervene if the colony itself was threatened.”

 

He nodded sharply, unphased by the reminder. “We will. Don't you forget to get your helmets on before the shooting actually starts either.”

 

Colonel Merquise smiled grimly at Captain Yuy. “No, we will go to sealed suits and helmets as soon as the attack begins.”

 

“Take care of her Zechs.” Heero whispered, then he turned and was gone.

 

“I will.” He softly promised the empty air where the younger man had been moments before. “I'll take care of all of them Yuy, but her in particular. She is my sister after all.”

 

He gave himself a small shake and slipped the knife back up his sleeve where it belonged. It really was silly to carry it today. It was going to be inaccessible quite soon, sealed away under his space suit. Still, some habits were very hard to break. He wondered how many similar blades the five pilots were wearing under their suits. Yuy'd had a fairly large one riding between his shoulder blades earlier. Zechs doubted he'd taken it off when he'd put that black and metallic cobalt suit on.

 

The restless pilot of the unavailable Epyon turned back to the boards to watch a battle he was not going to be able to participate in. Dorothy had the two main screens active now. One was split, showing those odd blobs they were sure were the enemy at both their locations. The other showed them the incoming ships of the Foreign Minister's party. The Alliance picket had joined them now as had the small ZAFT patrol ship.

 

“It isn't easy to see,” Dorothy remarked quietly, “but the enemy is starting to `drift' toward us. Heero did a bit of programming for me last night. Now, there are no colony security cameras except the ones I'm controlling from this console that can turn far enough to see any of the sections the boys will be crossing. And what those can see won't be recorded anywhere but here either.”

 

“I think the rest of it should be,” Mariemaia said firmly. “Treachery is happening right in front of us. Someone beyond those of us here should be able to learn about it too. It's their world after all. This shouldn't go unpunished.”

 

“Treachery goes unpunished all the time.” Noin pointed out unhappily. “Its one of the realities of life.”

 

“It's a bad reality,” the girl growled.

 

Suddenly Zechs grinned, a very nasty grin. “You're right Mariemaia! Everyone should know about this. Dorothy, can you access those cascade programs Yuy created to prevent cross links between the security cameras and the emergency network feeds?”

 

“Zechs!” Noin jerked to her feet. “Are you crazy? Do you want us to be found?”

 

“Not at all,” he replied, still smiling evilly. “Heero researched those episodes like he does everything he touches. He gave me his reports after he activated the cascade programs. There have been numerous incidents, some lasting up to an hour, that were occurring long before we arrived. This battle isn't likely to last long enough for a transmission to seem suspiciously extensive. Dorothy, can you get us in?”

 

“Of course,” she said, an equally vicious smile growing on her face. “Yuy left an obvious backdoor into the programs in case Duo needed to get in there quickly to make adjustments. Let me look this over for a few minutes and I'll be able to tell you if I can do it or not. Heero wasn't out to be secretive here, just efficient. I should be able to work with it.”

 

Relena silently slipped into the seat beside Dorothy and activated the third of the central screens. She found the cameras that were tracking the Gundams and put that up on the screen. Deathscythe was leading and Wing Zero was tail guard. They moved from covered spot to covered spot, not staying on the exposed surface of the colony one second longer than they had to. For all their caution, they were covering the ground quickly. They were already almost a quarter of the way around the colony.

 

Mariemaia impatiently reached over and tweaked the controls that managed the images of the incoming visitors. The picture instantly sharpened, the details of individual ships abruptly becoming visible. So did a number of small points of reflected light on either side of the flotilla.

 

“Oh, they have at least a few mobile suits flying escort!” she exclaimed.

 

“Yes, that will be Commanders Joule and Yamato by the ZAFT ships. I've no idea who got unlucky enough to be flying for the Alliance.” Noin said as she reached over Mariemaia's head and sharpened the picture still more. “Uhm, still too far out to get a good look at their suits though.”

 

She turned to the other screen and tightened that image up as well. But the enemy ships were still too far back to register as more than nearly circular blobs. Still they were close enough to count now and she had nine following the flotilla and twelve ready to block ahead. The attacker's ships were definitely not as large as that Agamemnon of the Alliance or the ZAFT Nazca. Even the Drakes were larger. They were going to try to make up in sheer number of mobile suits what they lacked in ship-based firepower.

 

If some of what they'd pulled out of the mainframe was accurate, it wasn't such a bad decision. The Drake's in particular seemed to be very vulnerable to mobile suit attack. Remove them and suddenly you had just the two battleships and a pair of picket boats left. The odds shifted drastically at that point.

 

“Wind! I'm in!” Dorothy cried. “What do you want me to do?”

 

“Can you adjust the programs to cause a cross link, one that can be held open until we decide to close it?” Zechs asked, leaning over her shoulder to stare at the data on her screen.

 

“Oh yes, easily. Yuy set this up to go both ways. That boy never forgets to be prepared to sabotage whatever he's working on.”

 

“Old habits die hard.” Merquise muttered, knowing he had more than a few of his own like that.

 

“Yes but this time it will be very useful.” Catalonia agreed with savage cheer. “Now, what do you specifically want me to do?”

 

“All right, I want you to set this up to start when I give the order but, I want it to go out on a three minute delay. Can you manage that?”

 

“Of course. But why would we want to?”

 

He sighed. “Dorothy, can you imagine the issues we'd have if this fed live and Heero had to step out there with Wing Zero to prevent the destruction of the colony? Especially if he actually fired that twin buster rifle of his?”

 

“Three minute delay for editing purposes coming up.” Dorothy agreed, eyes a little wild. But then, she'd been there when Heero had destroyed the last falling segment of the Libra and saved the world from the equivalent nuclear winter with one insane shot. She knew first hand what both pilot and weapon were capable of.

 

“Our team is at the scan horizon for the visitor's ship-based equipment.” Relena announced suddenly. “They report they will be shutting off all comm equipment now and everything else not essential to life support or movement. They expect to be in their final observation locations in five minutes.”

 

“Send them `understood' and close our line. It endangers them from this point on to leave it open. We won't reopen it until the battle is over or they have to break their cover.” Zechs ordered.

 

“Done,” she said moments later.

 

“I have the feed ready whenever you give the order. Do you think three minutes is long enough or should I set it to five?”

 

“You're right, five might be better if we have to erase the evidence of all of them from the images.”

 

“Then we are ready to go any time from . . . . . . . now!”

 

And now it was down to waiting. He hated waiting. Especially when he was doing it from a position of defenselessness. They were going to live or die largely on the skills and courage of alien pilots. For if these ships and mobile suits about to be ambushed here didn't fight like devils, and the enemy was who he expected it to be, then the destruction of the colony was very likely.

 

Time dragged by at the pace of a glacier moving on flat land. He did remember to order them all to seal their suits and saw to it that their helmets were on correctly and securely. That occupied him usefully for, oh, seven minutes. Then time went back to stop again.

 

“Zechs! The pirates have just accelerated!” Noin hissed. “They're coming in fast! Even if they wanted to, there's no time for that flotilla to turn around now!”

 

“Dorothy! Activate that feed! Make sure the pictures show the attack coming from both sides and that the ZAFT escort is trapped inside with the rest!” Zechs snapped into his mike.

 

“We're recording,” she laughed. “Broadcasting to begin in four minutes fifty-seven seconds. Oh, I just so love upsetting sloppy planning!”

 

Zechs watched the defensive reactions. The ZAFT ships had clearly been expecting something like this. One mobile suit shot for the bow of the Nazca and the other for the stern. The ship itself was launching more mobile suits within a minute of the alert. The three newcomers took up station amidships. They were joined by a fourth from the patrol boat, which was now tucked up fairly tightly to the battleship's keel. Both ships were slowly dropping toward the colony.

 

The Alliance ships on the other hand seemed to be caught completely flat footed. The ZAFT team was fully set up and had taken a station slightly below and ahead of them before they began to launch their first mobile suits besides the existing escort and pull in tightly around the Agamemnon class. Zechs just shook his head. What was the commander there thinking? He was covering too many of his own lines of fire! Then he realized what was happening. That damned politician was in charge.

 

He watched with sick eyes. The Alliance ships were doomed in that formation. And with their loss, the ZAFT pair would become lunchmeat. Then the first of the pirates came into range of the ZAFT ship's guns. Suddenly there were only eleven attackers. Well, well, make that tough lunchmeat. But when they didn't fire again immediately, Zechs knew the power cycle needed for those guns was too long to allow them to save the situation. The first of the pirates was already beginning to back out of its mobile suit carrier.

 

“And we are broadcasting!” Dorothy gloated.

 

* * * * * * *

 

“Any bright ideas here Yamato?” Yzak asked as he surveyed the attacking force in some shock.

 

“We kill them,” Kira replied, his voice dead. “We don't have a choice. There're too many of them for mercy today. And they won't give us any.”

 

“No shit!” Dearka spit.

 

“Dearka,” Kira spoke quickly. “Stay under the Colloid as long as you can. Move in behind Yzak right now and the two of you time your shots. Make it look as much as possible like only one weapon is firing. Lets keep the fact that we've got a third really powerful suit out here hidden as long as we can. Now, start killing things.”

 

The closest of the enemy ships suddenly slowed to pull out of his mobile suit carrier. Kira checked his range and found he could hit it. He shot forward, his targeting system picking up each of the mobile suits in their racks. Two seconds later, he whipped Strike-Freedom upright and fired one round with everything he had, including all eight DRAGOONs and the chest cannon. The carrier emerged from the resulting explosions as shattered scraps. None of the mobile suits had survived. The ship itself had a slightly cooked look as well. Good, any damage there was gravy. He fell back to the Irwin, sourly aware that he wasn't going to get many of those opportunities again.

 

The Irwin's guns tore space over his head and a second attacker simply vanished. Then he spotted another pirate who'd come too far forward before moving to drop his carrier. This time though, he was dodging enemy fire all the way in. He had to use the bulk of the ship itself to cut off the attacks before he could get off his own shot. The results though were the same. And this time he was close enough to stay the extra moments to take a second, quite deliberately aimed shot with the rail guns at the ship's bridge.

 

As he raced back to his station at the stern, the pirate was falling off to its own starboard, curving toward the deadly trash zone that lined the shipping lane. For a second he thought it would hit the end of the colony, then he knew it was far enough out to clear. Abruptly, it was plowing into the trash. It was on fire almost instantly. Hull breaches appeared in several places. Then it must have run into one of the long filament ties with serious mass on one or both ends because the bridge was suddenly sliced off neatly. The ship exploded seconds later. One more down, only nine to go!

 

He dropped below the picket boat's hull to see how the Alliance was making out with the ones coming in on their side. It looked like they'd knocked one down but hadn't taken out any of the carriers. And now the enemy mobile suits were dragging those carriers out of the way, leaving them to eventually bounce off the side of the colony. At thirty suits per carrier that made it two hundred and forty enemy suits on that side. The Alliance looked like it had put up about sixty off the Jan Smits and the Drakes. Well, they were trained soldiers; they should cut those numbers severely.

 

They were certainly trying to. Very heavy and unusually well aimed fire was ripping into the pirate ranks. Kira could see that the greater than normal accuracy was taking a noticeable toll. But the pirates were coming forward at full speed and the advantage of accuracy over distance was disappearing quickly.

 

“How's it look?” Dearka asked as Kira raced back to his station.

 

“Unattractive,” he admitted. “There are still eight ships out there and it looks like they got all their suits launched. Alliance has about sixty to meet them. They're putting up a vicious defense but it isn't stopping them. That's going to be a very ugly fight.”

 

“It isn't gonna be any bed of roses here either,” Elsman growled. “They've got eight left here and they got that many ship's worth of suits launched.”

 

“More shooting, less talk,” Yzak snapped, suiting action to words as he took out a mobile suit and lined up on another. “They're going to be in saber range too soon!”

 

Behind Kira Yamato's eyes, a lavender seed dropped and shattered. An eerily familiar calm settled over him. His awareness expanded, taking in the entire battlefield in front of him. Suddenly, he was setting up targeting on the most dangerous of his enemies, not necessarily the closest. Seconds later, he gave another demonstration of just how much firepower his suit really had. And then the DRAGOON units dropped off the wings once more. The damages rose exponentially.

 

It did not stop them. And there were too many of them. Even Kira could only kill so many so fast. Then the swiftest of them had managed to close the range and it was a saber battle.

 

He activated the left arm shield, drew a saber in his right hand and attacked. They were slow and clumsy next to him. But they had numbers on their side and they could and did force him back toward the Irwin. He called the DRAGOONs in for some very close order killing and the space around him opened up again.

 

He took the brief second the room afforded him to look around. There were only two GOUF Ignited suits left. Yzak was a silvery-gray streak of death out by the bow, leaving multiple explosions in his wake, some of which were undoubtedly the work of the still invisible Dearka. He was just in time to see Joule snap his guns together and fire the combined rifle right through the bridge of a pirate that had made the fatal error of giving him a clean shot. The disintegrating ship staggered toward the outer wall of the shipping lane and complete destruction. Yzak unsnapped the guns and killed two separate mobile suits who thought they were going to take advantage of his `distraction'. Kira snorted, Yzak didn't get distracted on the battlefield any more. Confident Joule and Elsman had their end under control; he turned back to his own zone of responsibility.

 

The ship's own point defense was chewing some holes in the dense ranks of the enemy as well. Over all, the result was still a standoff. Kira shook his head as he dived for the closest mobile suit, a Strike-Dagger with a lurid red skull painted on both shoulders. This situation was unstable as all hell. Something was going to break, it had to. One efficient slice bisected the Dagger, and he was already hunting a new target. One wasn't hard to find. He would keep fighting until that break happened.

 

An eager enemy was crowding in too close. The Irwin fired again. This time, the shot and resulting explosion destroyed two of the much smaller, too aggressive attackers. But the five remaining ships nevertheless continued to push in, shouldering aside the still-burning wreckage that the blast hadn't thrown clear.

 

Kira stared at them for a long second as the mobile suits suddenly dropped back a bit. This was wrong! They were almost close enough for point defense weaponry to reach them. And that was a stupid thing to do. Then one of them fell back slightly and dropped toward the colony. Instinct screamed a warning at him and he followed it. An instant later the universe erupted in beam weapons, more than one cutting through the space he'd just been occupying.

 

It was the bulk of the Irwin that saved them. The mass of the battleship had absorbed not only its own share of the beam attack but an additional savage physical pounding as all five Alliance ships exploded into shrapnel. The lightly armored Drakes, vulnerable to the attack of a single mobile suit let alone a mass firing of ship-based weapons, went first and the wreckage from them tore the heavily damaged Jan Smits apart. The little picket ship simply vanished into the fireball somewhere.

 

He was never sure but it was probably a chunk of debris that shattered the ZAFT patrol boat. Its defensive placement directly under the Irwin's keel, that has saved the small ship until this point, now proved disastrous for the larger defender. The patrol boat's engines exploded together. And the Irwin, already brutally beaten, simply broke apart into at least nine pieces. One of those pieces hit Strike-Freedom in a glancing blow before he could get completely out of the way and sent Kira wheeling across the sky, wildly out of control.

 

As he fought for control of his suit, Kira realized the enemy ships were also gone. There was wreckage everywhere and he was in deadly danger of hitting something more than large enough to kill him. The spinning began to slow as he fought the controls, and he discovered that at least one of the enemy had survived, although from the way it seemed to be drifting, the bridge crew was in bad shape.

 

“KIRA!” Dearka screamed. “Damn it! Where the hell are you? Yzak's hurt!”

 

“How badly?” Kira asked, as he finally managed to get the Strike-Freedom to completely stop spinning end over end. A fast look around showed him he wasn't far from them. The Blitz-Raider had dropped its invisibility and was holding a powered down Command Duel in one hand and the joined beam rifles in the other.

 

“I don't know. I'm getting life signs and basic life support is still on but that's it.”

 

“Head for the colony surface and see if you can find a place to duck out of sight.” Kira ordered. “I'll cover your retreat.”

 

“Is there anyone else left?”

 

“I don't know. I doubt it though. And we won't be if we can't get out of sight before what's left of those guys shakes the spots out of their eyes.” He recalled his DRAGOONs, and was both pleased and rather surprised when all eight returned to their places on the wing mounts.

 

Dearka headed down. They were lucky. The blasts had driven them fairly close already. They only had two or three kilometers to go to reach the very irregular surface of the half-dead colony. As they went, they both checked around themselves, trying to see what was left of both friend and foe.

 

They picked up no signals from any friends. Not even from any of the Alliance mobile suits. In a way, that wasn't surprising. The blast front when those ships exploded had to have been incredible. Mobile suits weren't built to withstand forces like that. If the Irwin hadn't been there to shelter them, they wouldn't have made it either.

 

They did discover there were two surviving pirates though. And they picked up signals from a dozen or more unfriendly mobile suits. So it was imperative that they find cover quickly.

 

It was Kira who spotted a massive, covered, cargo lift that seemed to be permanently stuck in the up position and hustled Dearka and the still powered down Command Duel into it. He realized as they settled the mobile suit onto the floor that both Yzak's beam rifles were gone and one of his sabers was broken. That wasn't going to make the man happy. Well, Dearka could tell him, he'd been his friend for years, and he'd take it better from him. Kira left the experienced blond to run his diagnostic on Joule while he addressed their hiding spot. This site was good but not perfect. Still, the means to improve it was lying around on the floor.

 

There already was a good, solid shoulder high divider set about three quarters of the way back and running most of the way across the space. You could get a mobile suit through the gap that was left if you had to, even one the size and breadth of Strike-Freedom, but that was not necessarily a bad thing. It gave them a back door. It also made a sturdy support for the Command Duel now resting against it. The Blitz-Raider was kneeling beside the damaged suit, the private line already connecting the units as Dearka began to get accurate assessments of the extent of Yzak's injuries.

 

Kira picked two pieces of long scrap up off the floor and set them together like an inverted tent, jamming the ragged ends into the first convenient holes in the side walls he found. They stood close to shoulder high on Strike-Freedom and completely hid the Command Duel and Blitz-Raider from sight even though they went barely half way across the space. Another piece, one with several holes in it, was leaned part way across the front and braced with a couple of big blocky chunks he grabbed from just outside. They had fresh, sharp edges; they likely came from one of the just shattered ships.

 

Now there was no straight line of sight into the elevator at all. And there was enough metal in the way to mess up all but the very best of the military sensor suites. Best of all, there were enough holes in this thing to let him look out just about anywhere. Which he did, very carefully and thoroughly, before he moved back to join Dearka.

 

“How is he?”

 

“Well, the onboard diagnostics say he's hit his head pretty hard and he may have a broken collar bone too. Normally, it wouldn't be anything serious. Stuck out here in a powered down mobile suit on the other hand, it could end up very serious.”

 

“Stop talking about me like I'm dead.” Yzak Joule's voice tried to snarl and failed miserably.

 

“We aren't, we're talking about you like you're injured,” Kira told him calmly. “Please don't turn anything back on by the way. We're hiding.”

 

That was met with several minutes of silence, then Yzak asked, “How bad is it?”

 

“The Irwin and the patrol boat are gone. The Jan Smits and escorts are also gone. There seems to be two of the enemy ships left, condition unknown, and an unknown number of their mobile suits. I've counted a dozen that were visible at any one time but I can't be sure that's all there are.” Kira reported. “Still, it was a very Pyrrhic victory for them.”

 

“On the positive side, my mobile suit seems to be undamaged as is Dearka's. Yours doesn't seem to be seriously damaged either. It's more the pilot being, ah, `dented' than the suit from the looks of it.”

 

“So the positive information is that we're hiding on the outside surface of a mostly dead colony with no backup, no communications, and no hope of getting to either in the near future, right?” Joule asked sarcastically.

 

“Yes, that about sums it up,” Kira agreed calmly.

 

“Yamato, if this is positive, I absolutely never want a negative report from you, do you understand me?”

 

“Whatever you want Yzak,” Kira agreed again.

 

Dearka snickered.

 

“Shut up Elsman, it isn't funny!”

 

In the poor light near the floor and in among the trash, none of them noticed the thin line that had very unobtrusively attached itself to the Command Duel. If they had, they would have discovered it ran under the heavy divider at the Duel's back. Had they looked over that divider, they would have recognized one of the two alien mobile suits crouched close to the floor on the other side.

 

* * * * * * *

 

“That Yzak guy's a grouch,” Duo snorted.

 

“He's injured,” Quatre pointed out. “How cooperative is Heero when he's hurt?”

 

“Well, ya got a point there,” Maxwell conceded. “I kinda like this Yamato's sense of humor though. And that's one seriously kick-ass mobile suit he's got there.”

 

“He handles it well too.”

 

“Oh, yeah, he does that,” Duo agreed slowly. “I hope someone inside is recording some of this because I'd really, really like to have a chance to go over some of his flying. I mean, he was better than good from the word go but there was that point in there just as they started to close in when he, I don't know, flipped a switch maybe? Anyhow, he was suddenly three levels better than he'd just been. It was kinda scary to watch him.”

 

“Oh, so you saw that too. Good, I was beginning to think I'd imagined it.”

 

“Not hardly,” Duo disagreed quietly. “This Yzak's a damn good pilot himself but there's something very different about Yamato. He can step beyond human.”

 

“Perhaps it has something to do with his being one of these Coordinators?” Quatre suggested.

 

“I don't know. I thought these other two were too. Unless he's something special in Coordinators? That might account for it.”

 

“02, 04, can you secure the survivors if necessary?” Yuy asked flatly.

 

“Negative, 01,” Duo replied. “We could manage the damaged unit and the other dark one but not the white and gray.”

 

“01, what is the situation at this time?” Quatre demanded.

 

“The enemy now consists of two ships, both showing some signs of battle damage, degree of severity unknown, and approximately eighteen mobile suits of four different designs. Five of those are confirmed as damaged, two appear to be serious. 03 is recording their arguments and trying to translate as quickly as he can but they appear to speak in a heavy regional accent and make extensive use of vocabulary we have not covered yet. 03 suspects most of it is non-vital profanities.”

 

“Well, yeah, of course it is! You ever known a sailor who didn't swear?” Duo asked.

 

“No,” Yuy replied shortly.

 

“People,” Trowa suddenly cut in, “we may have a problem. If I'm understanding this correctly, they're working on arguing themselves into destroying the colony! They seem to feel whatever is being found here will only benefit the Coordinators. They are feeling betrayed by whoever hired them as well. And there is a mobile suit they wanted to capture that they did not obtain, Commander Yamato's I believe.”

 

“Heh, yeah, like they're good enough to get that suit from that guy!” Duo snorted. “Sent four hundred and twenty mobile suits and twelve ships against him, two other superior suits, four good grunt suits, and a single capital ship. He came out of it intact. The other two superior suits came through and they lost eleven ships and four hundred and eleven mobile suits. They didn't bring enough guns to the party.”

 

“No, not quite,” Quatre agreed slowly. “But they came very close.”

 

“Do we destroy them then?” Wu Fei asked. “We are permitted to act if the colony is threatened.”

 

“Not yet,” Quatre replied crisply. “We must wait until it is certain that Commander Yamato and his friends are unable to destroy the enemy by themselves. We do not want them to find us either, remember?”

 

“Waiting,” Yuy agreed curtly.

 

* * * * * * *

 

From the moment the attackers began their move, had been clear to Zechs Merquise who was going to win the battle. The numbers were simply too overwhelming. The Foreign Minister's flotilla was doomed. And the formation the Earth Alliance portion of it drew into only made the situation worse for them.

 

Then the ZAFT battleship had began to alter the landscape of war. The first shot eliminated not only one of the attacking ships but its entire contingent of mobile suits as well. The Alliance battleship followed that with a very good shot of its own. It killed the enemy ship but it had already dropped its suits and most survived. Still, the unfortunately long recharge cycle of the beam guns would plainly limit their effectiveness overall.

 

Then what would prove to be the really effective element stepped forward. One of the ZAFT mobile suits darted forward at a startling speed. It snapped up into firing position and fired almost simultaneously. Zechs jaw dropped at the firepower that one suit released. It was spread across several weapons, but even so, it was the most powerful individual mobile suit he'd ever seen other than Wing Zero! There was nothing left of the pirate's mobile suit carrier or its deadly cargo and the ship itself had taken some damage. The ZAFT suit retreated to its defensive position as swiftly as it had come forward.

 

Although it took them far too much time to get set up, the Alliance mobile suits proved to be stubborn, skilled fighters when they finally got the chance to engage the enemy. None of their units were anywhere as good as the two spectacular suits ZAFT had. Nor were any of their pilots showing anything like the brilliance and expertise of the ZAFT pair. But they were killing their targets far, far faster than those targets were killing them. And they stood steadily in the face of those terrible odds. One could ask no more than that of line soldiers.

 

Had it remained a mobile suit battle, the Lightening Count was fairly sure the battle would have eventually gone to the defenders. The Alliance soldiers were destroying the pirates at a rate faster than the pirates were going to be able to get rid of them. The ZAFT suits simply were too much better than their attackers. Even their four more standard models performed levels above the pirates. The special pair though, they were capable of killing ships, and did.

 

“Wind, I think there's another mobile suit out there on ZAFT's side.” Noin said quietly as she and Dorothy hurriedly picked which camera views to shift among. “I've caught at least two beams coming out of nowhere now to kill enemy suits. They've got someone out there with Deathscythe's abilities or something very similar, I'm sure of it. He's acting as backup and guard for the silver and gray suit.”

 

“Colonel Zechs!” Mariemaia called. “Relena wants you to come see this! We don't like how the pirates are moving their ships!”

 

“I'll watch your evidence later.” He promised Noin who nodded understandingly.

 

He hurried over to his sister and the child, both of whom were keeping track of the battle in real time. “What is it?”

 

“Milliardo, why would such small ships want to crowd so close to such large and dangerous enemies?” Relena asked, forgetting in her anxious excitement that he'd asked her not to call him that.

 

His eyes widened as he suddenly saw what the fools were planning. “Those idiots! They're going to get themselves killed too!”

 

On either side of the attack, one ship Captain suddenly seemed to realize just what kind of suicidal stupidity he was about to commit. One abruptly rose off the plane the others were on, the other dropped below it. The powerful ZAFT mobile suit followed the diving ship, apparently intent on attacking it. The silver-gray one was already racing down after a pair of mobile suits.

 

Zechs shook his head slowly in helpless denial. They couldn't be that stupid, could they? The screen flared brilliantly with the dazzling light of beam weapons and weapons strikes. Yes, they were that stupid! His hand shot forward and he turned the light intensity of the screen almost to off.

 

It lit up like a good reading lamp anyway, although there were several flickers in it. Within seconds there was a new spike of light. A third followed less than a half minute later. Only when the screen faded to darkness and stayed that way for a full minute did he reset it to the standard brightness.

 

The space that had just been occupied by a desperate battle was almost empty. There were large and small chunks that had recently been spaceships moving in many directions, most at high rates of speed. A number of those were going to hit the colony. He could only pray it was still strong enough to withstand them.

 

The decking under his feet suddenly began to vibrate. The first of the major debris was already here. Zechs scanned the screen for survivors. He picked up a pair of fairly battered pirates quickly and identified them as the pair who'd had the brains to get off the plane of fire at the last second. The Alliance and ZAFT warships were just gone. So were all the rest of the pirates and the vast majority of the mobile suits.

 

But he did see the spectacularly powered ZAFT white and gray suit heading for the colony surface. A mottled black unit he'd not seen before was ahead of him, towing the silver-gray suit. So Noin had been right! There was a third ZAFT special suit!

 

“Milliardo!” Relena was clinging to the console with one hand and Mariemaia with the other. “What is happening?”

 

“Those idiots blew themselves and the trapped fleet up! The colony is being battered with broken pieces of ships and mobile suits. Don't worry. If nothing breaks now, it isn't going to. The self-sealing function is one someone restored in the last year or so. Its one of the very few fully serviceable things on this whole damned piece of scrap. And it will be all over in just a few minutes.”

 

“Heero! Heero and the others!”

 

“They're all smart enough to dodge. And are more than able to.” He reassured her, hoping he was right about that.

 

There were several sharp jars in the vibration, indications of significant hits. He didn't mention to his sister that there was now a considerable danger that the colony's orbit had been disrupted. He was going to have to check that quietly as soon as he got the chance to do it without witnesses. He didn't need panic.

 

The bangs stopped after about five minutes. Oh, there would probably be a late one or two but the majority had come, and gone. He reached over and activated a scan that would tell them if the colony had been breached, any where at all and by even so much as a pinhole. That would take a while to run; it was time to check on the Gundams.

 

Wing Zero was crouched in a broken doorway, the wings dragging back like the wreckage around it. If Zechs hadn't known what he was looking at, he'd never have seen the mobile suit in among the trash. He found Heavyarms and Altron standing together in another, much sturdier and deeply recessed doorway. But it was when he located the pickup that was focused on Deathscythe and Sandrock that he nearly burst out laughing. They were both hunkered down as far as they could get and were right up against a heavy looking metallic wall. Looking over that wall, straight at the camera, was the head, shoulders, and gray wing tops of the fantastic ZAFT mobile suit! Then it turned away and a few minutes later Duo and Quatre straightened their suits up a bit.

 

He gave the situation a quick thought and made a decision. “Dorothy, what are we broadcasting right now?”

 

“Uhm, the ZAFT mobile suits heading for the colony, why?”

 

“Have you allowed footage of the two pirates and their mobile suits to go out?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Then jiggle the picture for a few seconds, freeze it for five seconds and cut the cross link.” He ordered. “We want those three rescued. We will leave their friends with an undecided situation as incentive to move quickly.”

 

“Jiggling images now,” Catalonia replied calmly. “And freeze! One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Cut! We are out of the war broadcasting business.”

 

“Good! Now fix Yuy's program so he won't know you were ever in it! I don't want to have to deal with his throwing a tantrum because I let someone play else with his toys.”

 

“I don't want to find out how he defines `tantrum'.” Dorothy admitted as she began to carefully back out of the cascade programs.

 

Given that Yuy was operating in Perfect Soldier mode right now, Zechs wasn't all that anxious to see it either but he wasn't going to admit that. So he made no comment on her remark and let the subject die. Instead, he plugged into the now reopened channel that would allow him to listen in to the chatter, what there was of it, between the pilots.

 

He was just in time to catch Trowa's report of the new threat to the colony. He made himself sit perfectly still. Quatre was correct. The locals had to be allowed to try to resolve the issue first.

 

* * * * * * *

 

“Kira, what are you doing?” Joule demanded irritably.

 

“I'm making this shelter into a giant antenna,” Kira told him. “I want to know what those pirates are up to.”

 

He twisted the scavenged wires together and hooked them up to the surge protector and the modulator he'd taken from Yzak's broken beam saber, without telling him, that would let him fine tune the reception much like an antique radio. It was a primitive contraption but he knew it would work. He and Kuzzey Buskirk had built several smaller versions of this at school for that project in reproducing antique science. It had taught them all not to treat those old scientists with such disrespect just because they hadn't had the tools modern researchers had.

 

All right, it was ready. He began to turn the knob very, very slowly. Since he'd put this together using his Gundam, even the smallest turn could actually cover quite a bit of the radio spectrum if he wasn't extremely careful. Gundams had large hands after all.

 

“. . . . right Carter. You take in six suits and I'll take in six. The five damaged units we'll just abandon. That leaves us one good suit that we'll have to jettison.”

 

“Anyone volunteering?” The speaker sounded tired.

 

When there had been silence for several seconds he asked again. “We need a volunteer boys. Whoever it is will get their choice of the suits at Red Base.”

 

“Choice?” A gravelly voice enquired distrustfully. “What's that gonna be worth after everyone and his dog gets done `reserving' their specials?”

 

“Captain Napci is dead. None of his orders stand. We'll have to elect a new fleet leader. And in the mean time, as Fleet Second, I can promise you choice, no reserves allowed.”

 

There were several more seconds of silence, then the gravel voice spoke again. “All right Captain. You got yourself a deal.”

 

“Done Gorman. Everyone here stands witness. Ed Gorman is voluntarily giving up his working mobile suit due to space restrictions. He has first choice of replacement at Red Base, no reserves allowed. Is this heard?”

 

“Heard, witnessed and enforced with a blade!” It was a ragged chorus.

 

“Friendly bunch,” Dearka muttered.

 

“Trusting too,” Yzak added drily.

 

“Now load!” It was the first speaker again. “I want to shoot this wretched colony to bits and just leave!”

 

That brought another ragged chorus of agreement. Kira however, jerked to his feet. Quick strides took him to the edge of the doorway. He scanned the sky rapidly and his heart sank.

A slight trembling of the colony under him told him Dearka was coming up to join him. It took the other no longer than it had him to understand the situation.

 

“Shit!” Elsman swore softly.

 

“What's wrong?” Yzak snapped, catching the tone instantly.

 

“The ships are already about three kilometers apart. We're gonna have to hit each one individually.”

 

“It's worse than that,” Kira said softly. “We have to take them out on the first shot. If we don't, the one we miss will shoot the colony and all the researchers here will die.”

 

“We can do that.” Dearka said confidently.

 

“Blitz-Raider doesn't have the firepower.” Kira told him bluntly. “And you know it. You can kill a ship, but you'd need two or three shots. You aren't going to get them.”

 

“Then what do you suggest Kira? You can't split your shots, not and be sure you're gonna knock `em down!”

 

“No, I'm going to give them an alternate target. I'll get one for sure. Then it's a question of being able to dodge the other's fire long enough to get turned around to kill him.”

 

“ARE YOU CRAZY?”

 

“No.” Kira Yamato replied, voice stone cold. “Now be ready to at least try to get Yzak out of here if I fail.”

 

“Oh,” He reached out and jerked the joined beam rifles out of Dearka's hands. “I'll be needing this. You'll have your hands full with the Command Duel.”

 

He turned and kicked down the inverted v divider he'd put up earlier. “There. You can move him quickly now. Well, what are you waiting for? I'm going now!”

 

Strike-Freedom took three long strides and launched at full power. He went up from the surface like a rocket. And he was just about as hard to miss.

 

Dearka stood rooted in place. Seconds later, to his surprise, Yzak staggered over to join him. Together they could only stare up.

 

Behind them though someone else was on his feet even before Kira could launch. “04 to 01! Mission compromised! Colony endangered! He's only going to be able to get one of them! You must get the other!”

 

“Mission accepted.”

 

A split second later, a second rocketing mobile suit roared off the surface of Mendel Colony.

 

Speed, speed and surprise, they were all he had going for him. Kira raced for altitude. He needed to put himself directly between the two pirates, where they couldn't fire on him without hitting each other.

 

He was slightly closer to the one on his right. Fine, that was his first target then. He was locking all systems on before he was half way to the necessary height.

 

It was a slightly faster suit than his over long distances but he had launch boosters the other lacked. He would catch up. And he was reading the start of target lock. The other was taking the right hand target. Then he would take the left.

 

He was only a few dozen meters behind the other now. Deceleration! Firing altitude rapidly approaching! He'd caught up with the other suit!

 

Fifteen seconds to firing. Orient to face the target! Open the wings. Deploy the DRAGOONs. Bring up the sniper rifle. All locked on! FIRE!

 

Altitude achieved! Turn toward the target! Wings opening! Buster rifle locked on! FIRE!

 

To everyone watching from the colony, destruction roared out in two directions simultaneously. Multicolored, multi-sourced energies raged to one side, and the enemy in front of them simply shattered, breaking into a halo of fine fragments thundering outward on the wind of a fireball. A pure column of expanding golden light shot to the other side. Everything in front of it simply changed states, moving from solid to plasma instantly. It cut a path of cleared space that stretched almost to Goddard Colony.

 

When the light show ended there was nothing left but two winged mobile suits hanging, quiet and still, over the intact colony.

 

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