Mobile Suit Gundam Fan Fiction ❯ Seig Zeon! ❯ What If... ( Chapter 1 )

Seig Zeon!

Lord Nightmare

 

Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam. T'would be badass if I did…maybe then I could see about getting Silent Requiem published.

Bah, who am I kidding!

Gundam belongs to far better people than I. Namely the good folks at Bandai and Sunrise. Gundam is in their hands. All is Right with the World.

 

 

16 October UC 0079

 

An impact followed by a sound like the roll of distant thunder shook the light fixtures in hangar six of the Earth Federation's forward base no. 19. Of course, Sergeant Isis Delaney knew as well as any of the other soldiers scrambling into the warehouse that had been `appropriated' from the citizenry of Kiev, that it was not thunder, but the reverberations of the massive artillery barrage that was in the process of laying waste to the positions of the soldiers of the Independent Duchy of Zeon. The Zeeks were tough sons of bitches, though, and the screech of incoming shells and the much more violent rumbles of the explosions inside the city were proof positive that they were giving at least as good as they got.

The artillery duel, regardless of how intense it got, was not her most immediate of concerns as of now, though, and upon entering the hangar she rushed to the row of lockers that had also been unceremoniously `appropriated' for the war-effort. Isis shrugged off her fatigues and pulled her flight suit down from her locker, donning it with practised haste. The nylon-and-canvas jumper hung loosely from her slight frame and in some remote recess of her mind she wished—not for the first time—that someone would have had the presence of mind to get mech jockeys like her more form-fitting apparel than the baggy-getups that pilots still wore.

But that, like the phoom-skree-krupp that characterised the rain of shells outside, was hardly at the top of her mental agenda. What did concern her was the swarm of engineers still making last-minute tunings and tweakings on her weapon. On her baby. She smiled like a proud parent as she walked slowly across the concrete floor of the hangar towards the colossus of alloy and servos that was her RGM-79 GM.

The GM was the pride of the Federation's V-Project (well, the Gundam was the pride of the project, but its mass produced second-cousin, the GM was still up there). It was a bipedal weapons platform almost 20 metres tall that looked for all the world like a cybernetic suit of knightly armour. In fact, that description wasn't too far off the mark in terms of what the GM's function was on the battlefield.

Isis swept back a hank of her ebony hair as she pulled on her helmet, green eyes glittering. There was just something about the giddiness before a sortie that made her breath come short and her heart start to flutter.

`Alright people,' she shouted at the techs, `what've you got for me? We're making another drive towards Odessa today, and I need my kid in top fighting form today.'

`Jesus Christ, Sarge,' an engineer from one of the catwalks level to the GM's shoulder laughed. `If you love this thing so much, why don't you take better care of it? The cuts to the left arm and the shots to the upper torso were tough to fix!'

She smiled sheepishly, her teeth pale against her naturally red lips and honey-coloured skin. `I only do it because I have faith that she'll pull through is all. That and I've got the best damn crew of wrench-wielding, grease-slapping, rivet-jerking sons of bitches in the Ukraine keeping her safe when I'm not around.' She put a foot on the cable that would draw her up to the level of the cockpit.

`Shucks, Sarge,' another worker called, `you almost make it sound like you give a shit about us.'

That got a laugh, albeit a brief one. You had to laugh sometimes, especially before a sortie. Missions like this, storming forth against the Zeeks and banging on Death's door, could only be managed by a bit of gallows humour. Isis' fingers danced over the GM's control panel and she brought the behemoth to a full stand as soon as all the catwalks and cables were clear.

As soon as the systems were up and running properly and she had completed her pre-launch checklist, Isis marched the weapon—the mobile suit—down a cleared walkway in the centre of the hangar towards the weapons depot and the conflagration of war that lay beyond.

 

`Sarge!'

Isis slowly turned the mechanised titan's head in a panoramic sweep of the baroque skyline of old Kiev, searching for the other members of her unit. They were supposed to be following her at regular intervals from the hangar at a seven-minute stagger.

The city itself was a maze of narrow cobbled streets barely wide enough for a GM to walk down, and the shelling had decimated a number of the centuries-old homes and storefronts causing rubble to be strewn about further impeding progress. Nevertheless, there coming up the avenue was the first of her subordinates, Jerome Faulkner.

Note to self, Isis thought, send that memorandum to HQ and ask about giving these mechs a proper camo paint-job. This fucking red-on-white is so garish and you can see them coming from a good four-hundred metres! At night even!

`Acknowledged, Faulkner,' she said aloud into the microphone attached to her helmet, `watch the rubble and cars—we've got a long way to go tonight. Any sign of Vega or the LT?'

Inez Vega and Lieutenant Silvia Hines completed their unit, Aberdeen Battalion's 3rd MS team. The four of them were to rendezvous at Staging Point Alpha at the pontoon bridge running across the Dnieper River. Tonight's task was to cross over to the eastern bank of the river before proceeding 160 kilometres south, to the edge of the Federation salient in the direction of Odessa. It was standard faire blitzkrieg—move an armoured column as fast as possible deep into enemy territory towards the desired objective and worry about mopping up resistance after the fact. The Zeeks had employed a similar strategy nine months before (albeit on a larger scale) during the invasion campaign that had granted them control over much of the Earth's surface and brought them close to winning the war outright.

Of course, Isis mused as she and Faulkner moved steadily towards the rendezvous point, we Earthers aren't exactly the type to roll over and die in the face of a little adversity. We've got a long history of wars that went on longer than they should to prove that fact.

They had entered the industrial district and were pushing their way past the ruins of numerous old factories that had produced all manner of goods during their heyday. Most were now little more than blackened hulks with shattered windows and silent smokestacks reaching towards the inky black sky like so many mediaeval spires. It wouldn't be long until they reached the waterfront at this pace.

`Bloody good to be finally moving to give those Zeon buggers a kick in the ballocks, eh Sarge?' Faulkner's voice in her radio. He was just a kid—nineteen if he were a year; six years Isis' junior—and fresh from the training grounds at Torrington in Australia as a replacement for one of the 3rd's KIAs. He obviously thought the war was a game as all fresh-faced recruits did. Probably had that adolescent sense of invincibility too.

Isis felt that way sometimes too, especially after having received her transfer from armoured cavalry to the experimental Mobile Suit corps. It was damn hard to be humble in a GM, and all the more so after having seen what the enemy's MS could do to a standard type-72 tank. To have that much power on her side for once? More really, when you considered the massive advantages a GM had over a Zeonic Zaku. It almost did made the war seem winnable again.

Up ahead was a crater that had once been the district's power plant. The damage was too great to have been caused by a shell—that and amongst the crazily tilted steel beams and coils of dead electrical cable were chunks of scrap metal, glass and an odd tire or two. What little paint remained on the metal was Federation khaki rather than Zeonic drab. Ammo convoy Isis thought, shaking her head, damn shame. Must have been from back when the Zeeks first took this city. A curious way of underscoring just how tough things had once been.

She quickly regained her focus, though. There, at the far edge of the wreckage were the unmistakable silhouettes of two GMs. That would be Vega and Hines, unless some other team had really fucked up with their directions (not quite as unfeasible as it had once been given all this Minovsky jamming technology…). She gave the code over the radio and was greeted by Lieutenant Hines' implacably calm voice. That woman never let anything get to her and as such was notorious at card tables throughout the battalion.

After reiterating the briefing in a much abridged fashion, the team pushed forward towards the river. They would be the first of the nine MS teams to move out, a dubious honour if ever there was one, but it certainly spoke to the faith that the commander of the Kiev branch of Operations had in them. The Aberdeen's 3rd had been known as the Valkyries until recently—the all female GM assault team with an impressive thirteen sorties to their credit. That was before Atsuko Kawashima had been…well, the damned Zeeks had been lucky that day. Isis, Inez and Silvia didn't like talking about it and Jerome was smart enough not to ask about the woman whose shoes he was attempting to fill.

`Got that?' Silvia Hines asked of the soldiers under her command as she finished briefing them. There was the obligatory chorus of affirmatives and upon giving their weaponry a final check (beam rifle technology had come a long way since the prototypes given to the White Base contingent, but the mass-production models still had trouble from time to time), the team rose and began their long march south.

 

The crosshairs of Isis' GM targeting system flickered from green to red indicating a positive lock on an enemy unit. Fortunately the Minovsky particle density this far between Kiev and Odessa was quite low so the guided targeting system still functioned worth a shit. Visibility was still poor though even with the infrared scopes activated—she could barely see the Zaku from where it hid behind a grain silo that stood next to an abandoned farm. It was odd that any enemy unit would be this far forward of the line; especially a lone Zaku like this.

She shrugged to herself as her finger twitched behind the trigger on her control joystick. It was his own fault for being so stupid.

`Locked on, Lieutenant,' she said over her radio. `Can I take the son of a bitch?'

`It's rather odd, don't you think?' Silvia echoed her doubts in a musing tone. `Well, there don't seem to be any other units in the area—take him, but we're watching your back.'

`Roger that,' Isis smirked as she edged her unit closer to the farm. The bad thing about fighting in the Ukraine was that the ground everywhere was so fucking flat. There were no rises and only sparse stands of trees to give cover. Again she found herself wishing for more subtle colouration of her mobile suit—that olive drab the Zeeks were working with made for excellent camouflage in the failed light of 0200 hours. In fact, that was what had almost saved him. If Jerome hadn't been paying such close attention to the surroundings, they surely would have walked right past the scout or whatever it was.

Good job rookie, Isis mentally congratulated the 3rd's only male pilot again.

She got as close as she dared without looking overly conspicuous—surprise was still on her side and so long as the bastard didn't think he was actively being hunted he was less likely to try and make a run for it. For all he knew, he was still well hidden and just out of view of some nosey Feddie who happened to be poking around the farm. Isis considered using a grenade on him, but in the end, she decided to go with her beam rifle. It'd be cleaner that way and God only knew when she might actually need to use on of her precious few oversized potato-mashers to take out a fortified position or land battleship. Better safe than sorry.

The lock held as she got within range. Grinning a tigress' smirk, Isis levelled her weapon and fired all in one smooth motion not willing to give the enemy the luxury of time.

However, the Zaku pilot was on his guard and fired his thrusters just in time to dodge the crimson bolt of energy that streaked through the night and vaporized the silo.

`Fuck!' Isis swore and fired two more times in rapid succession hoping to bring him down as he made his booster-assisted jump. The first shot led him by too much and cut the air just above him, but the second seared the armour on his left shoulder. Jarred by the impact, but not by much, the blinding light of the thrusters faded to blackness and the Zeonic MS fell back to Earth a hundred metres in front of her.

Her infrared screen had bleached due to the sudden light but as the resolution cleared she saw her enemy clearly for the first time. What she saw made her gasp.

It was a variation on the standard MS-06f that she'd never seen before. It was much more heavily armoured—almost as much as a Dom she thought—but the armour looked hastily applied as though it was from a Dom that had been cannibalized for field modifications. It still had the asymmetrical shoulder guards with the spiked pad on the left and the shield flap covering the much of the right down to the elbow joint and the head was still the rounded dome with snout-like air-intake vent. It did look something like a Zaku…just a remarkably heavily armoured one.

If it looks like one of those stupid Cyclopes then it probably goes boom just like they do too!

She charged it, while screaming into her mic for Silvia, Inez and Jerome to get their fucking asses over there pronto. As she dove at the mysterious suit, she unsheathed her beam sabre from its charger on the GM's booster system on its upper back, and began hacking at it.

Now what're you gonna do, Zeek? You wouldn't want this fight to get in close, would you? Not when all you're packing is that Heat Hawk.

The standard equipment of the Zakus that Isis had encountered (and what Intel reports said they had) was a machine gun and a superheated tomahawk weapon that bore the ridiculous name of Heat Hawk. The weapon had been an afterthought—nobody had expected that two MS might actually get involved in hand-to hand combat.

At least, the Zeons hadn't. The Federation engineers had thought ahead—that axe weapon would avail a Zaku naught against a GM's beam sabre.

…So one could imagine the look of surprise on Isis' face when her enemy unsheathed its own beam sabre and parried her attack.

`What the hell?'

The Zeon MS backed away, with surprising agility and stalked about her looking for an opening. She would give him none and neither would her comrades. Multiple energy blasts blackened the Ukrainian soil near where the enemy mech was. It was quick enough to dodge all three, and then in its most terrifying display yet, it levelled its rifle and cracked off a shot at the approaching Feds.

When Isis saw the bolt of energy issue forth from the rifles maw she did a double take. What the fuck had just happened? A Zaku with beam weaponry? A bloody Zaku?

She had no time to try and put the pieces of the puzzle together, for although shot from the hip, the weapon had landed a shot directly in the shoulder of Jerome's GM. The kid's frightened shouts and Silvia's orders tangled up the communication lines. Isis was tempted to tear off the helmet for a degree of silence to organise the mass of information that threatened to overwhelm her, and only ingrained military discipline kept her from doing so.

Instead she sheathed her sword and fell back while firing (and dodging) to rejoin her comrades.

`Jesus fucking Christ!' Inez was shouting. `Isis did you see that shit?'

`Hell yeah I saw it. He's got a beam sabre too.'

A bolt from the enemy's weapon sent a gout of dirt into the otherwise still night sky. The GMs had no choice but to scatter rather than serve him as one lump target. Silvia shoved Jerome towards the farm while laying down covering fire. The not-quite-Zaku dodged her blasts (as well as two each from Inez and Isis) and jumped skyward again.

This is ridiculous! Isis thought. There is no cover out here. It's only a matter of time before someone gets killed and as much as I hate to admit it might be one of us!

`Isis.' Silvia's voice was as calm as ever, though it was almost drowned out as another explosion sent the soil of the steppe fountaining skyward. `If we rush him together, we might be able to take him. He may well have beam weaponry, but I'll be damned if he can take two opponents at close range. Inez, try to draw his fire away from Faulkner as we move to take his flanks.'

`Ma'am!' the two women replied at once.

Inez cracked off two shots at their foe who responded in kind before firing his thrusters to rush her. In his haste to take down at least one of the three remaining suits actively trying to kill him, he could not follow the other two GMs as the circled about to close in from his sides. It looked as if there was going to be a spectacular melee but suddenly, the Zeek stopped his charge, and did a shift manoeuvre to leap vertically leaving the three Federation soldiers looking question marks after him.

Suddenly…

`Incoming!' Isis screamed as her heads up display flashed red lock-on warnings. They barely had time to scatter before a rocket-powered bazooka round detonated amongst them.

The explosion was huge and Isis felt the ground buck beneath her suit through all the shock absorbers and metallic armour. The GM staggered, its mass-balancer offset, but thankfully it held its ground. This was more than could be said for the Lieutenant's suit which hadn't been able to escape the blast radius in time. It lay face-down in the dirt and turf, struggling to push itself up and over into a sitting position, but its left leg was a charred and mangled wreck. Inez had had earth forced into crevices in her armour from a fall that she had sustained but now she stood looking about for signs of the attacker.

And there it was—there they were to be exact. A trio of Doms raced across the steppe seemingly skating on the inverted force-fields generated in the soles of their feet. The unique propulsion system was based on the localised repelling fields—called I-Fields by the people in the know—that utilised a principle of Minovsky physics to negate friction. The result made for incredibly heavy MS that could attack at lightning speeds and deliver a powerful weapons payload of bazooka rounds before vanishing again just as fast. They were the pinnacle of Zeon terrestrial weapons and had a well deserved reputation for deadliness amongst Federation soldiers.

Of course, that was before this new beam-weapon monster had entered the playing field…

Must be the prototype's escorts come to help cover its retreat.

The Doms swept into the fray like avenging angels, weaving and firing with what looked to be reckless abandon but could not be anything other than extremely well organised assault tactics. Within seconds they had despatched of Inez's unit, blowing a ragged hole in its upper torso, and Isis' GM was felled with equal efficiency by a blow to the back that destroyed her thrusters and sent her face-first into the dirt. Silvia fired at them from her crippled suit, and actually dodged the initial attack by one of the three enemies by using her thrusters to kick up a weak smokescreen of pebbles and dust. It was just enough booster power to create the diversion, but not enough to actually lift her suit for anything more than a forward roll that left her kneeling behind her would-be assailant. The enemy slashed about blindly for her with its superheated sword (not a true beam weapon like the GMs but more akin to the Zaku's Heat Hawk) but her escape was aided by the dust cloud and still lingering darkness of early morning. She landed a killing blow deep into the suit's side with her beam sabre that caused the suit to twitch spastically as internal explosions rocked its body. Levelling her gun at a second Dom, she could not see the monster Zaku land behind her. It kicked her suit to the ground and stood atop it like a conquering giant before putting two energy bolts into it.

`Silvia!' Isis screamed helplessly.

`Sarge, we can't worry about that now!' Inez cried. She had already blown the hatch on her suit and was running across the steppe towards her remaining superior's. `Get out of the suit and hide someplace before they decide to finish you off too.'

It made sense to Isis, and she crawled out of the cockpit and slithered out from under her suit to meet Inez by the GMs foot. There they ducked into a shallow gully that was a footprint gouged by the manoeuvring she had been forced to do to try and dodge the attacks. The Doms and prototype were ruthlessly efficient in gunning down the suits to avoid any possibility that a survivor might report on their development project. Isis prayed that Jerome had had the foresight to ditch his suit too, but knowing the rookie, she wanted to make sure.

After two tries at raising him on the radio, she had all but given up hope. By then the Zeeks had vanished into the darkness to the southwest and she feared that he might have been taken down in a surprise move by the Doms when they were rushing to join the battle. As she was about to give up, though his voice came in at last.

`My God, Faulkner, you scared the shit out of us. Where in the hell are you?'

`I'm hiding in the barn. The Zeeks hit me hard and my helmet radio's been a little damaged.'

`That's good. Stay where you are. We'll meet up with you directly.'

The numbness of battle had begun to fade by that point and the magnitude of what had just happened—of Slivia's death, and what that prototype could mean for the course of the war if there were more like it—slowly began to sink in. It was a crushing and absolute defeat for the Valkyries and left Isis literally shuddering with fear as she and Inez walked slowly towards the old barn. As the first rays of sunlight crept above the horizon she found herself wondering:

It was so easy up until this point! Sure the Doms had been tough and there were rumours about the power of the Gouf suits, but here we were totally outclassed and outgunned. What does this mean for the offensive? We won't make it to the salient—how long will they hold out without support? Until the next team arrives? Hell, the next team won't fair any better than we did against that monster. And what if it's not the only one?

What if it's not the only one?