Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Artificial Life ❯ First Battle ( Chapter 2 )

Author: Deoridhe Grimsdottir

Email: deoridhe@arabia.com

Title: Artificial Life - Chapter 02

Rated: PG, so far

Pairings: None so far; eventual 1+R, 2+H, 3+4, 5+S, 6x9, 11x13

Archives: http://www.livejournal.com/users/usuyami/

Warnings: Spoilers for Episode Zero, eventual spoilers for the entire series and Endless Waltz

Notes: Most of the characters speak multiple languages, and I assume multiple languages are used throughout the series. The language I chose to use for general communication is English, so unless otherwise noted they're speaking English.

Thanks to: Annie for an excellent beta, and the series creators to give me something so fun to work off of!

***

When I was thirteen, I decided to run away from home. It wasn't a particularly well-thought out course of action, but I had become so tired of being on display. I felt like a toy poodle strutted out to demonstrate that Winner Enterprises wasn't going into the hands of some foolish woman, before being sent back to my kennel with a bone. I was tired of being a thing created by my Father to become his replacement. My tutor at the time, Michael Jenkin, was a toad of a man, but he was an acclaimed scholar and so my father employed him. I suppose, in some ways, you could blame Jenkin for my dislike of test tube babies - he was horrified by the idea of creating progeny through science, and though he didn't often indulge his dislike, when he did it was …memorable. Ultimately though, I have no one to blame but myself. Although I disliked my father for creating his army of Winners, I should never have held contempt for him.

I didn't know what I planned to do on Earth once I got there. I had put aside pocket money, so I wouldn't have been destitute. With the distance of age I wonder if Jenkin had actually meant to ransom me - certainly there were few other reasons to encourage me to run away from my wealthy and influential father. I had been so naive. That innocent sullenness was rudely interrupted by the Maguanac's hijacking of our ship to save that colony of people - I had met Instructor H there too. I don't think I'll ever quite forgive myself for not tying up the Maguanac traitor, though; it seems incredible that one of the Maguanac could act against his brothers, but OZ had somehow bribed Yuda to betray them, and by betraying them he betrayed us all. I hadn't even been able to keep him from shooting Rashid; the most I could do was pilot for Rashid since I'd only been hit in the arm.

Now, two years later, I'm running away from home again. I'm forced to wonder if I'll be in a similar situation two years from now, looking back on my past actions with shame instead of pride. I suppose only time will tell.

***

Entry to the atmosphere had been distinctly anticlimactic.

Looking out of Sandrock's screens at the bare sand dunes around me, I feel a sudden shiver of despair in the pit of my stomach. What if I had gotten it all wrong? For all I knew, from the view around me, I could be in the lifeless depths of the Sahara desert where I would not be found for ten thousand years when all that would remain is my mummified corpse in a giant, undamaged, gundanium shell.

Okay, now I'm just being stupid.

Flicking on the communication screens, I tap out a rapid message to Rashid in Arabic. "Land achieved. If Allah wills it*, I will see you soon." The reference to his god, whom he had spent numerous messages teaching me about, should make him smile and guarantee that he will believe the message is genuine. A few taps later and I find traces of encoded communication, presumably between whoever lived in this godforsaken wilderness and the now invisible satellites above us. They had barely bothered to encode at all, so I am soon rewarded by streams of Arabic audio. I never knew it could sound so sweet. I don't dare triangulate my position, but at the very least I'm near the northern part of the Sahara, where Arabic is still spoken freely. With luck, I'm in the Arabian peninsula and everything is going according to plan. The fact that I had lost all of the external cameras during freefall had not been part of any plan I had drafted, though, and the error continues to disturb me despite the apparent lack of damage done.

Quickly, I direct Sandrock free of his stone shell, noting as I do that all of the stone was worn off the surface of the gundanium inner sanctum my friend and I had resided within. Without paint or coloration, this revolutionary material blends beautifully into the golden-pale sand. Sandrock and I are significantly more noticeable. *beepblorg* My eyes snap to the communication screen and, after a swift verification, I open the channel.

"Master Quatre, it is good to see your face again."

Never has a single man's voice been such a welcome relief. Even if they weren't able to reach me soon, I finally have someone to distract me from the circling of my own thoughts. "Rashid! I'm on the earth now. It's incredible. How close am I to your base?"

"Thankfully not too close, Master Quatre," Rashid rumbled. "We're not alone; OZ is investigating multiple colony-to-earth satellites, and yours is one of them."

"What?" I scan through the communication channels in the area for OZ's signature, and find one all too soon. "How close are they?"

"Ten miles, Master Quatre. They're approaching from the southeast."

"Where are you?"

Another screen pops up uninvited next to Rashid's, and it takes all the nerve I possess not to jump. "Right here, Master Quatre!" Abdul's shining face is as welcome a sight as Rashid's was; the sight of his mobile suit on the dune next to mine is twice as welcome.

"Abdul! How did you do that?" I demand before backpedaling rapidly to greetings before Rashid can correct me. "It's good to see you again."

"Same here, Master Quatre. I piggybacked on Rashid's signal."

"We need to fix that," I muse, "but the enemy is on its way. How much of the Corps is here?"

"A quarter, Master Quatre, but the second group is only ten minutes away."

"And their forces?"

"Fifteen strong, Master Quatre," Rashid informs me quietly. "Here is the current situation." A window opens on my tactical screen and I study it a moment; the graphical structure is familiar to me, thanks to Rashid's communication. My own system had been quite different, but it is important to use a system that all participants understand, so I had set my way aside. "This is almost too easy. They can't have realized what I am."

"The media is reporting that five unidentified objects entered the atmosphere," Rashid tells me as

I study the configuration of green Maguanac dots, the dearth of red OZ dots, and my single white dot near the middle. Abdul's regiment is coming from the opposite direction as OZ, while Rashid's is coming in perpendicularly. One of the other regiments is actually behind OZ, so somehow the great and powerful mobile suit division doesn't have eyes. The third regiment is too far out to be useful unless something goes wrong, but it's reassuring to have that available.

"This is too easy," I mutter. "Abdul, direct your troops to surround me. I'll go behind the dune here," I mark the spot with a blue dot, keying in the coordinates without truly thinking about it. "Rashid, remain behind these dunes to the north," I mark the spot with an open circle, "and wait. Hammond should remain behind the OZ regiment and come in if we need the help, but we outnumber them." I'm amazed at OZ's complacency. "Are they just stupid, or are they really this ill-prepared for an actual threat?"

"I'll leave that for you to decide, Master Quatre," Rashid replies, which isn't an answer anyway - but he's like that.

"I'll get in position," I say, instead of arguing with him. There isn't much point in that, usually; Rashid is easily as stubborn as I am, and he has more practice in making that stubbornness stick. I follow the Maguanac example and begin shifting Sandrock down and out of sight under the sand, sealing the joints as I go. Luckily, Instructor H and I had planned for Sandrock to be a terrain-independent mobile suit, taking quite a few pages from the Maguanac book to make him both sand and water functioning, though he's slightly slower for that advantage. As an afterthought, I switch on the battle log that I had devised in my spare time; combining video and audio feeds, it should give me a good idea of what weaknesses we need to minimize in battle.

In silence, we wait for the mobile suit troop to come into range. I can feel the sweat congealing on my palms; in my chest, my heart beats a furious tattoo as adrenaline works its magic. Rashid's goggles seem suddenly too large, and I seem too small. I don't remember being this scared last time, in my first battle using a suit far too large for myself, but last time I had the sting of my shoulder injury to keep me grounded. This time it's just me. What if I fail?

The enemy is showing up on sensors now, though with the blowing sand they'll have difficulty seeing our corps. I take a moment to see if I can hack their communication channel, and am soon rewarded; OZ must have become truly complacent to be this careless.

"Are you sure this is where the enemy fell?" crackles an unknown voice in rough English. That must be the common tongue here.

"Yes," another voice answers, and I pinpoint that one next to the first. Must be their tactical contact. By the unusual markings around the heads of their mobile suits, those two must be the commanders. Sloppy, making commanders stand out. Their mobile suits perch awkwardly on top of the same shifting sands that we use as camouflage and protection.

"I don't see anything," the first replies, beginning to sound annoyed. I signal Abdul and the corps suits begin to shift upward, arming their weapons for attack.

"What is that?" the second says, as the suits' heat signatures apparently finally register on his sensors. The corps begin to fire on the vulnerable OZ mobile suits. It's less a battle, and more a rout, so I stay in position behind the sand dune to the south and wait for any sign that my presence is even required.

Another of the soldiers asks, his voice sharpened with concern, "What's happening?" Panic is rising off the enemy like heat waves, but both the Maguanac and the sun are pitiless.

"It's the enemy! Enemy attack!" The Maguanac corps is cutting the enemy soldiers down like so many tin cans; in my heart, I feel a stirring of pity for these young soldiers. How many of them chose this life and how many were forced into it?

"We're surrounded," the commander realizes aloud, attempting an escape down a sand dune toward the south, where a handful of corps members and I still wait. "It was a trap."

"Very good." It isn't until the words are ringing in my ears that I realize I spoke them aloud.

"Master Quatre?" I can hear an edge of concern in Rashid's voice.

"Stay where you are, Rashid. We won't need your assistance for this."

"As you wish, Master Quatre." Rashid's Arabic is overlaid by the commander's assistant's English wail of "Captain," when he catches sight of us waiting for them at the bottom of the sand dune.

I quickly switch my broadcast to the external speakers and their communication channel. "Drop your weapons and surrender. I have no intention of harming you." I can feel Rashid's disapproval without even hearing his voice or seeing his face, but I will not kill unless they give me no other choice. Too many people have already died because of OZ. Besides, surely they will see the peril of their position and surrender!

Even as I think it, though, the commander is already reacting - but instead of surrendering, as any sensible person faced with unquestionable death should, he cries out, "Fire! Fire!" There is a chance he didn't hear my words, but that doesn't matter now. I know what I have to do. I am a soldier, and a soldier's way is death.

Firing his auxiliary rockets, Sandrock glides smoothly forward to the last two OZ mobile suits standing. He raises his heat shotels as I ask him to, bringing them down to slice both suits in half. In battles between steel and gundanium, steel always loses. Even though I'm too well protected within Sandrock for the heat of their explosions to be felt, my cheeks are hot from the fire of their deaths.

"This is Quatre," I say, for the sake of the audio log, if nothing else. "The Commander's suit has been destroyed." I can hear faint cheering in Arabic, as my words carry through to the rest of the Corps, but it doesn't move me. Two people are dead by my hands, and a half-score more are dead by the hands of those I command. The reality of that is disturbing; I wonder if any of them had family they wanted to protect as much as I want to protect my family. I push Rashid's goggles up off my face, sweaty bangs flying upward.

"You should have surrendered," I whisper to the dead.

***

* Inshallah (If Allah wills it) is a common saying among Muslims. I had initially intended to retain it as Inshallah, but it looked silly so I didn't. Quatre is typing in Arabic, though, so he used Inshallah.