Zeta Gundam Fan Fiction ❯ Harbinger of Darkness ❯ Clash of the Titans ( Chapter 3 )

Naomi Sterling awoke with a start. It took several minutes for her to realise where exactly she was, but the seatbelt and lines padded chairs gave it away without too much difficulty.

"We're on a shuttle!" she gasped.

"Ah, so you have awakened." Her brother nodded smugly to himself from the seat next to her. "I'm glad. Now you'll be able to witness the true atrocities your Federation is capable of."

"What do you mean?" she asked, her voice becoming very shrill. "I want to get off! I have to warn the people!"

"Oh, it's far too late for that," Henry said mysteriously. "Just sit back and relax. We'll have a grand view a soon as this shuttle pulls out."

"But won't the guards order the spaceport locked down?" she asked, fumbling with her seatbelt, still. "We'll be shot down if we try to leave!"

"The guards?" he asked sounding for a moment genuinely perplexed. "Oh, the guards! Silly girl," he patted her on the head, and instantly her arms were frozen in place, "do you really think your brother would allow you to be hurt? Now just sit still and watch out the window."

As if on cue the shuttle began to pull forward, out of the hangar. The fuel lines were severed and the manoeuvring rockets fired for a slow clockwise rotation. After doing a 180^o turn inside the colony shaft, the main engines ignited and the shuttle shot out of the hangar like a bullet from the barrel of a gun.

As the thrusters ignited, Naomi saw another small shuttle immolated in the blaze. It exploded violently as the rocket fuel was touched off and much of the hangar behind them was destroyed in their wake.

"Something truly awful must be getting ready to transpire if they would execute such a dangerous lift-off," she said under her breath.

"Indeed, sister," Henry apparently had heard her, "indeed."

"Chemical warfare?" Johnny Wu's voice came over through Kiyone's headset, "damn, I never expected to be a part of something like this."

The three of them in their custom Hi-Zacks led a platoon-sized group of GM II's through the vacuum around the outside of the Colony. They were headed towards the ventilation system at the front and were armed with RPGs with warheads loaded with a mustard gas compound. No one expected any trouble, but just in case, four of the GM II's were armed with beam cannons.

"Kiyone, this feels really wrong." Mihoshi's voice now. "I don't think we ought to follow this order."

"Disobey orders with the top Brass breathing down our necks?" Kiyone returned, nervousness evident in her voice. "I don't like it either, but Admiral Jamitov himself is here to oversee this. If we screw up, we won't just be fired, we'll be sent before a firing squad!"

`Still,' she found herself thinking, `I'm just glad Ray is off on assignment in Hong Kong. I wouldn't want to risk him getting involved in this.'

Then she had another thought: `wait a minute, pretty much all of the soldiers are off on assignment right now! Even the colonial bigwigs-the Governor, the lieutenant governor, the representatives to the General Assembly-they're all off the colony too!'

`How much poison gas is in these things?'

Johnny had started speaking while she was lost in thought. When she began listening again, he was in mid-sentence: "…to only fire your canisters into the secondary ventilation shaft. This battleplan was drawn up by the Admiral himself, so no mistakes. That goes double for you Kobayashi."

"Shut up, Johnny!"

"You with us, Kiyone?" apparently he had noticed her silence.

"Yeah, sure." It was only halfway a lie; from what she had heard, she could make logical deductions about the rest, "Only in the secondary duct. That's the one that controls pseudoatmospheric conditions. The gas will mix with the rain supply and become diluted. That'll make sure that there's only enough gas that precipitates to leave the populace stunned."

"Exactly. If everything goes according to plan, we should only need three canisters."

"But what happens when the civilians wake up again?" Mihoshi asked. "They really won't appreciate what we did to them, and if word about this happens to get out…"

"According to Admiral Jamitov, we want word to get out," Johnny cut in. "That way it will serve as a message to those who might try and resist us in the future. I believe the name for the tactic is `Shock and Awe'."

"But-"

"No more `buts' Mihoshi!" Kiyone called out. "You've got to remember that we're being watched!"

"Okay." The undertone of doubt remained in her voice though.

"Good. Now, everybody look sharp; we're almost at the vents." Kiyone said.

She and Johnny steadied their launchers, taking care to aim precisely at the centre of the shaft. Firing and RPG in space was rather tricky; the lack of gravity and wind resistance ensured that the canister would fly in a perfectly straight line, but the force of the escaping gases caused it to spiral erratically. If care was not taken, the grenade canister might punch directly through the wall of the vent shaft and then all the air could be sucked from the colony.

Sweat beading on her forehead and matting her hair under her helmet, Kiyone steadied her finger on the trigger. This was going to be it, her payback on the Zeeks and their civilian flunkies for what they nearly did to her husband and her nephew, and even to herself. She was going to-

"Captain LaVans!" one of the GM pilots' cries over the radio quickly brought her back to reality. "One of the shuttles is departing from the hangar bay!"

"What?" she was shocked. The entire colony was supposed to be on lockdown. No one should have been able to get out.

"Do we need to shoot it down, Captain?" the soldier persisted.

"Damn!" she swore under her breath in Japanese. "No…Yes…no, we need to finish here. I mean…Mihoshi, take two of the GMs and get after that shuttle. We can't let them get away." The situation shouldn't have come to this. The strain of leadership, combined with executing such a flagrant violation of military honour made for conditions that were almost too much for her to think under.

"You sure you're okay, Kiyone?" Johnny asked. He didn't come right out and say it, but he knew as well as anyone that her second-guessing was not only unnatural for someone usually so confident, but had the potential to turn dangerous.

"Yes!" she shouted back. "I told you I'm fine, dammit! Go Mihoshi, what are you waiting for?"

"Okay." The other Hi-Zack turned and began pursuit of the shuttle, the two GMs in tow.

"Now," Kiyone said with much more confidence than she actually felt, "Let's get this shit over with. Fire mustard gas canisters on my mark: Three…Two…"