Zeta Gundam Fan Fiction ❯ Harbinger of Darkness ❯ Breakout ( Chapter 4 )

Antony Kaiser smelled the fumes before he saw the cloud. Almost instantly, his lungs, like those of all the other protestors began to burn and blister.

"Son of a bitch!" he wheezed. "It's the same as the fucking Zeon during the War."

The crowd of demonstrators erupted into panicked frenzy they scrambled over one another, each clawing at his or her own throat, fighting for a breath of fresh air.

Amidst the chaos, the Federation guards pulled out gas-masks and began hosing down the frightened civilians with their automatic weapons. Antony watched in horror as tens of his fellow protestors were gunned down in the streets like so many dogs. After the shots were fired, some protestors tried to fight back, and even managed to hit a few soldiers, but the air was so saturated by gas now, that they were coughing so hard they could not shoot straight. While they were hacking up blood, the soldiers advanced, slaying them with extreme prejudice.

Antony saw the worst of the slaughter before he too succumbed to the fits of hacking that crippled his comrades. He fell to the asphalt, and coughed up what had to be nearly a hundred ccs of blood before he noticed a downed soldier lying next to him. In a frenzy, Antony forced himself to crawl towards the soldier and tear the gas-mask from his face. He tried to get the mask over his own face, but the elastic band snapped back in his hand on the first try. Wheezing, his eyes blurred by tears, he tried again, and succeeded.

The result was almost as bad as the gas itself: the mask was full of stale air, much of which had already been tainted by the gas, so his lungs still ached. Also, wearing the mask produced a sense of terrible claustrophobia. He thought for certain that he was going to die in the next few moments. In those last few instances, he wondered what had become of his family.

His family? Of course! They would be waiting for him at the shuttle!

The only problem now was to actually reach said shuttle.

Antony Kaiser staggered to his feet, and began what was almost more of a limp than a jog, back toward the house where his parents and siblings were.

"We're going to make it out of here!" he said to himself, each word its own distinct effort. "We…we will!"

The gas was beginning to burn and irritate his skin when he arrived at the townhouse where he had lived all of his life. That was instantly forgotten, though, when he got close enough to see what had happened there.

The door had been kicked down, and hung crazily from its hinges, as two soldiers stepped forth from the darkened interior. These were not Federation Regulars, Antony realised, ducking behind a parked car on the opposite side of the street from his home, they were Titans officers. The blue uniforms and black greatcoats and helmets they wore were telltale give aways.

Even more of a giveaway was the fact that both of the barrels of their semiautomatic weapons were belching forth steam. They had been used, and recently.

Antony did not want to believe what was formulating in his mind. He didn't want to believe that all of his family had been ruthlessly slain by these two cloaked harbingers of darkness. He didn't want to believe that he was alone now, a fugitive in a hostile territory that had, not an hour before, been the place he had called home.

No, he would not believe it.

After standing by the door to the townhouse a few minutes more, the two officers strode jauntily through the mustard gas, laughing all the way about the fun they had just had.

Antony wanted to run after them. Wanted to grab each by the neck, tear off their mask and force them to breathe in the blistering agent that their comrades had unleashed on the people of the colony. He wanted them to suffer the way he had suffered, the way his comrades in the demonstration had suffered, the way his family had suffered. And as the two Titans officers struggled for breath, as their lungs became increasingly blistered and raw, he wanted to take their weapons and kill them. To gun them down like the cowards they were.

But he could only rise from behind the car, and walk numbly towards the house.

And as he crossed the threshold and looked around inside, all he could do was fall to his knees and scream.

"Now do you see, Naomi?" Henry Sterling asked, calmly, pointing in the direction of the colony they had just left. "These are the kind of ruthless people we are dealing with. Now you should understand why I-"

"No, I do not understand!" she cried with such fury that it surprised even herself. "Three million people, Henry! Three million! Three million bodies for you to walk over on your path to greatness. Those people were our friends! Our neighbours! Our employers! They did nothing to deserve being sacrificed like that! Not for your arrogant delusions of grandeur!"

"Think as you wish, Sister," he shrugged, "but let me ask you this, is it not worth the lives of three million to liberate the seven billion others who dwell in the colonies from terrestrial oppression?"

She sputtered for a moment, but then exploded all over again. "You make me sick! How dare you presume to play God in such a way?" She swung to slap him across his face.

He stopped her hand in mid-flight by grabbing her wrist. As he spoke, he squeezed it with unnatural strength: "You forget Sister, I do not merely play God, I am a god!" With little effort he cast her aside like a rag doll.

In the reduced gravity of the shuttle, she floated farther, but the shock of her impact was greatly reduced. Clutching her bruised wrist, she hissed, "Careful Icharus, lest you fly too close to the sun and melt your waxen wings."

Henry was about to offer a glib retort of his own, when the voice of the shuttle captain came over the cabin's PA system: "Ensign Sterling, we are being followed by a small detachment of MS from the Titans' garrison on 30 Bunch. What shall we do?"

"Continue along our present course," Henry said loudly, so as to be heard on the speaker in the cockpit. "We're to rendezvous with the Von Richthofen in approximately…" he looked at his watch, "three hundred seconds. If you can keep them off our tail until then, I can arrange for a full barrage of covering fire from the cruiser."

"As you command, sir," the captain spoke with what seemed to be a superfluity of deference for one of so low a rank as her brother, Naomi thought bitterly. "Seig Axis!" he concluded.

Henry made an effort to straighten the wrinkles in his uniform. "Please, Naomi," he acknowledged her presence, but not her injury, "do make an effort to look nice. We are going to meet with my superior officers and I would not have them thinking you blasé."

"You're going to pay for this some day," she said in a low and dangerous voice as she took her seat next to him again. "Mark my words, this thing is going to backfire on you so badly, it will ultimately bring about your downfall."

"That penchant for the dramatique, again, eh Sister? Honestly, you missed your calling, joining the army back then; the Stage seems a more suitable place for you than a mobile suit cockpit."

Naomi Sterling said nothing, but maintained her withering glare for a minute longer, then resigned herself to the view from the window.

"What the hell is going on in there?" Kiyone gasped as her Hi-Zack drifted past one of the massive windows on the side of the colony. The interior was shrouded in a yellowish haze, but straining, and under maximum magnification, she could make out the massacre of the civilians taking place therein.

Her stomach retched as she saw one elderly man who had bent to cough up more blood get messily blown apart by a machine gun-toting Titans infantry officer. The officer then kicked the corpse and marched off, searching for more civilians to slaughter.

"What have we done?"

"Chief?" Johnny asked, overhearing her worried thoughts. When she didn't answer, he tried again, "Yo, Kiyone, snap out of it!"

"What?"

"You're drifting again. Pull yourself together! We completed the mission, now let's get to the ship and forget about it. I believe the one we are to land on is the Dreadnaught."

"Right, Johnny, you're absolutely right." She shook her head as if to clear the images from her mind's eye. "I'm still a little jilted, that's all. I'll be fine in a few moments. Any word from Mihoshi yet?"

"Here I am," her subordinate's voice came over the radio, "we had some trouble trying to take down the shuttle, though. It was being guarded by an old Musai class cruiser and several Heavy Rick Doms. We took out the escort MS, but the cruiser nailed one of the GMs. I figured it was a stalemate and so we pulled back."

"You think they'll tell anyone about what went down here?" Kiyone asked Johnny.

"Hard to say," he shrugged, "which direction were they last heading, Mihoshi?"

"Farther out, away from Earth."

"They may be heading for Side Three in that case, or maybe to Axis. Either way, it doesn't seem likely that the story will spread too far. Side Three is under Occupation Authority so they'll be shot if they talk too much there, and Axis is all the way out in the asteroid belt and the only people there hate us all anyway so one more piece of bad news won't get them too worked up, I don't think."

"Okay then. Our job here is done, so everyone head for the Dreadnaught and prepare for debriefing." Kiyone said at last.

Antony Kaiser numbly stumbled over massive shards of charred metal in the spaceport of the colony shaft. After escaping the surface, he had ridden the elevator down to the spaceport, only to find it largely destroyed as if by some massive explosion.

He had torn off the suffocating gas mask and quickly put on a true normal suit before going out the airlock to look for the ship, a freighter called the Wyvern, he had been sure was there. Yet this wreckage from whatever had detonated down here made him uncertain about finding it.

He could hardly ask the port authorities either. They had not fallen victim to the gas, but they were still dead, bodies twisted and contorted at monstrous angles. He still wondered what in the world could have happened to kill them thusly, but that thought remained at the far side of his consciousness. The only things that mattered now were finding the Wyvern and getting off this accursed colony; dead authorities would be of no help to him in reaching either of those ends so he let them lie.

Suddenly, he spotted the ship. He kicked off a floating section of the fuselage of another freighter that had been blown apart by the blast, and soared towards the Wyvern. He did a quick once-over of the primary features of the ship, to be sure that it would fly; it was iffy at best. The right wing had been badly damaged and bits of debris had punctured the metal plating. Normally this would not have been much of a problem, as wings were somewhat of a superfluity in the vacuum anyway, but in this instance, such damage might be the difference between salvation and being stranded on this death-trap: the fuel cells were stored in the wings on this model of freighter. If they had been damaged…

Antony floated closer to try and get a better look, pulling the shards out as he went.

He swore. The primary fuel cell located at the centre of the wing had been ruptured. The hydrogen had already begun to leak, creating a steady stream of mist as it seeped into the void.

With this sort of damage, he would be lucky to get a hundred kilometres away from 30 Bunch before the engines gave out and he was left to drift. Of course, after that, it would only be a matter of time before the life-support gave out and he died of asphyxiation.

"What a mess," he said, sounding more resigned than he had ever remembered himself feeling in his life.

A bullet cracked past his head, causing him to jump and try and scramble for safety. Two more whizzed by as he ducked behind another section of debris.

"Come out and fight, Federation scum!" a female voice shouted. Apparently, he had not been the only one to make it to the colony shaft after all.

"Whoa! Calm down!" he returned, keeping his head down. "I'm not with the Federation, I'm a civilian!"

"Yeah, right!" she snarled and sent another bullet flying over his head. "If you're not with the Feddies, then you've got to be a part of the Titans, and that's even worse!"

"No, listen! My name is Antony Kaiser, colonist ID number 1-30-156-52-931. I live in a townhouse on the corner of Magnolia and 7th and work in the shipping yards her in the shaft!"

"Lies! I'll kill you for what you all did here today!"

With that, she leapt over the top of his cover and pointed the barrel of the gun right between his eyes. "You Titans killed everyone! Three million people dead! Most of them were civilians who had nothing to do with the protests!"

She was beautiful, he thought as sweat beaded from his forehead, or at least what he could see of her through the suit's visor. Of course, that had nothing to do with him now; it wouldn't have mattered if she was the ugliest girl on the colony-she was still about to put a bullet in his head.

"I know that!" he said in raw fury, the tears in his eyes blurring the image of the gun, "my family were among the casualties! Do you know what that's like to see your parents and siblings slain like that? Gunned down by the members of the government that was supposed to protect them?"

"You're serious." She was apparently taken aback by his display of emotion, as she lowered the barrel of the gun. With any luck she would believe him.

"Listen," he said in absolute seriousness, "if you're going to shoot me, then just go ahead and do it. I'm innocent, and unarmed, and all I want to do is get off the damned deathtrap, but if it'll make you feel better, by all means, go right ahead and blow my brains out. `Least that way-"he paused to try and collect himself, "at least that way, I can be with my family again."

"The gun slipped from her fingers as she stared at him. "I…I guess you weren't lying. Either that or you're a damn good liar. I suppose I can trust you; I'm sort of in the same situation. James-my fiancé-was shot and killed too. The Titans guy just came up behind him while he was coughing, and…" She abruptly changed gears, "well, come on now, you were looking at taking that freighter out, weren't you? Will it still fly?"

"Not very far. The fuel cells of the right wing were ruptured. I was just trying to do an assessment, and I figured it'd probably get about a hundred kilometres before it sputters to a stop."

"There has to be another way, then!" she cried. "I'm not about to sit here and die in this Godforsaken colony shaft! Let's look for something," she started off in the opposite direction.

"Wait up!" Antony kicked off the debris he had been using as a shield. "You probably won't find anything," he said when he caught up with the mysterious young woman, "there was a big explosion that destroyed most of the shaft, and the freighters and stuff at the docks all got banged up pretty bad."

"Don't get that kind of attitude with me," she snapped. "Dammit, I want to fucking live, and if there's a way out of here-any way at all-then I'm going to find it!"

"Okay. But you won't find any ships that way." He pointed in the direction that she had been going in. "See the scorch marks on the wall from the explosion? If you follow them back, you can see that that's the side of the docking bay that was hardest hit. Whatever went off in here did it over there."

"What are you, some kind of pyro-technician or something?" she shouted sarcastically. "Jesus! Then where do you think we'll find one? Or do the scorch marks not say that much?"

"Take it easy!" he put up his hands to fend off the verbal assault. Then he thought hard for a moment. "Wait a minute," he said suddenly, "I've got it! There's a repair deck below the main shipyard. If we can gain access to it, then maybe we can find a there!"

"All right!" the young woman cheered. "I knew you'd think of something! So how do we get down there? Is there like an elevator shaft, or staircase, or something?"

He pointed back towards the entrance of the shipyard, but the sight of movement made him instinctively grab her hand and find cover.

"The hell are you doing?" she protested as they ducked behind another metal panel.

"Quiet!" he hissed, "and keep your head down."

Antony then peered around the side of the panel. It was just as he had feared; two armed soldiers in the menacing blue and black normal suits had just descended the elevator shaft and begun to snoop around.

"What is it?" his friend asked when he pulled his head back.

He stuttered, fear gripping him, but finally managed to say "Titans!"

"Out there? What are they doing down in the colony shaft?" She cocked the gun, and flipped off the safety. "I'm going after them, you go find us a ship."

"What are you thinking?" he asked in shock. "How long do you think you'll last in a fire-fight against two armed soldiers with that little thing?"

"I don't care." Her eyes had the same look of resigned bravery that he was certain his had when she had aimed that same gun at him. The look that embodied the saying, "only one who has nothing has nothing to lose".

"I'm going after them," she said, voice cold as ice. "Those bastards killed my fucking fiancé, dammit. I was gonna be getting married this Saturday, but these sons of bitches had to come in here and ruin everything!"

"Hey, I've lost people too," Antony returned, "but I'm going to need you to help me start the shuttle. I can't do it all by myself!"

"But…well, if you say so." She sounded suspicious all over again.

The two refugees floated silently through the field of debris towards a secluded alcove on the starboard side of the port. It was a vicious game of hide and seek, for every time they thought they were in the clear, one of the guards would glance over his shoulder, and look over in their general direction.

Then, just as Antony was making the final break for the alcove, one of the guards turned and spotted him.

"Halt!" he shouted and shouldered his rifle.

"Shit!" Antony swore as he tried to dive for cover.

It was too late, though. The muzzle of the guard's rifle spat red flames, and a hail of bullets whined past his helmet.

When he found the courage to look up over the top of the chunk of metal he had hidden behind, he saw one of the officers charging his position, gun spraying hot death directly at him. Anony ducked, but heard a single crack from off to his left. He glanced in the direction of the noise, and saw the young woman he had encountered shoving another magazine into the butt of the gun, load and fire again.

Antony looked out again and saw the body of the soldier who had been approaching him floating awkwardly on one side, blood filling the interior of his head. He also saw the other soldier turn and make a break for the alarm.

"Hey!" he shouted, pointing in the soldier's direction.

She nodded knowingly, and sprung from behind her cover and took three quick shots, each striking him in the back, but not before he had a chance to yank the lever.

Instantly the room was flooded in red lights, and a loud klaxon began blaring across the frequencies of radio systems in the area.

"Shit!" Antony cried over the din, "That's the general alarm! We've got about fifteen minutes before every Titan and Feddie on the colony is down here at the docks!"

"Are you serious?" she asked, fear evident in her voice.

Antony had already made a break for the elevator. "That's right! And we've got to hope and pray that the elevator system still works."

The elevator to the repair deck had been protected from the brunt of the explosive force due to the triple-strength titanium reinforced doors that were designed to function as a sort of air-locking mechanism. Fortunately, the two refugees found that it was still in working order, but the length of time required for the doors to open and for the inside to become pressurised once more seemed to stretch for an eternity.

Finally, the elevator began to descend.

"That was too close," Antony said as he pulled off his helmet and took a deep breath of clean air. "They'll probably waste another twenty minutes searching the docks before they take any notice of this shaft."

"I hope so," his de facto companion said, wistfully as she removed her helmet too. She really was beautiful, Antony thought, now that he was able to get a good look at her. Hazel eyes that were slightly more green than brown, dark, shoulder-length hair, wan but not pale; he had to almost verbally remind himself that they were still in grave danger, and he had no time to be ogling her curves.

"What did you say your name was again?" she asked suddenly.

"M-me?" she had caught him off guard with her forwardness. "I'm Antony Kaiser."

"Antony? Not Anthony?"

He sighed. "My dad is-was-a big history buff. He thought it was a clever juxtaposition: Antony from Marc Antony, and Kaiser, which is German for Caesar, as in Julius Caesar."

She forced a smile. "That is cleaver. My name's Amanda Frost."

There was a loud ping as the elevator reached the designated floor. Antony and Amanda found that they were once again in artificial gravity, and so broke into a run to try and find a find a shuttle that was still in working condition.

"Hey, Antony!" Amanda called out after they had been searching the hulks of battered shuttles for a little over half an hour, "What about this one?"

He trotted over to see what she was looking at. It was an Anaheim model, obviously, but it seemed a little too small to haul anything. It was probably a transport of some kind, maybe someone's personal shuttle.

Regardless of what it was, Antony gave it a quick once over to check for structural damage. Finding none, he checked the engines. These had to be checked very thoroughly; he'd known a lot of guys who'd worked on repairs who had bragged incessantly about how many corners they could cut and still get a job finished. Fortunately this model seemed to be in working condition. Finally, he had to check the fuel cells. If they were all new, then they could get to the next colony without any sort of problem. If not…

"This one's it!" he practically cheered.

"Great!" Amanda seemed as relieved as he was.

"Okay, the last thing we have to do is get those bay doors open," he said pointing in their direction. "Do you think you can operate the opening mechanism while I make ready to launch?"

She nodded briskly. "Of course I can. Just give me a few moments to put my helmet back on."

As he took the controls and she flipped the switch to open the bay doors, there was a familiar ping behind them. The Titans and Feddie soldiers must've found out where they were!

As if to clarify that point, a barrage of pullets came tearing out from the direction of the elevator shaft.

"Amanda!" Antony had to shout to make himself heard over the rush of the air escaping through the doors, "You've got to get back her! You've got to get to the shuttle!"

Whether she heard him or she was just following common sense, Amanda bolted back towards the shuttle, ducking behind a crate here and empty oil drum there all the way until she had reached the cockpit. There, Antony grabbed her arm and pulled her up and inside next to him. He then slid the airtight cockpit dome back into place and punched the engines. The fire that spat forth from their afterburners was enough to scorch the interior of the repair bay in much the same way as the main spaceport had been.

Within seconds, the shuttle was out amongst the stars, tearing through the vacuum at an impossible speed.

"Do you think they'll follow us?" Amanda asked nervously.

"I think it's a possibility that we shouldn't rule out, but at this point it doesn't seem too likely." He nodded in the direction of the joint Titans and Federation blockade that surrounded the colony. "I also don't think that they would want to tear anyone away from that unless they absolutely had to."

Several moments of silence passed between them as the sheer magnitude of the hell they had just escaped weighed down on their shoulders. They each simply gazed out at the field of stars before them.

It was Amanda who broke the spell and spoke first. "You're pretty good at flying this," she said quietly.

"Thanks," he answered absently. "I've been working with shuttles down at the docks for over three years now, so I guess I am pretty good with them."

"Three years?" she asked. "How old are you?"

For a crazy moment, Antony thought about lying. He didn't want her worrying or thinking him too immature to fly (the fact that she had just complemented him on his skills had apparently not registered in his mind) or for any other things. In the end, though he decided against it: "I'm nineteen."

"Nineteen?" Amanda looked over at him astonished. Her eyes ran up and down his well-muscled frame and stopped at his face. "Yeah, I guess I can see that. I don't know, you looked a little older with your helmet on back there."

His face heated. "How about you? You're asking a lot of questions, but not really sharing much."

"I guess you're right," she looked away from his eyes. "It's not that I'm meaning to be secretive, it's just that there really wasn't much time for us to formally introduce ourselves with that nightmare going on all around. I'm twenty-one, by the way."

Another moment of uncomfortable silence ticked by.

"Have you-had you-lived on 30 Bunch long?" Antony asked, finally.

"I moved there not too long ago. James was a native though."

"Your Fiancé?"

Amanda nodded. "He…" she stopped suddenly. When he glanced over at her again, he was surprised to find her fighting back tears.

"I'm sorry." That was all he could manage. He wasn't very adept at handling emotional situations under even the best of conditions, and to try and help her cope while he was till struggling with his own losses was too hard for him to think of much else to say.

"No," she sniffed hard, and blinked back tears. "Don't worry about it. I…I'm just having a tough time believing that he's really gone."

"I know how you feel," he said. "Everyone I'd ever known died today. I can't believe they'd be so cruel."

"It wasn't fair!" Amanda shouted. " More than two thirds didn't even have anything to do with those protests! More than half of the ones who did were unarmed! God, he was just coming home from work, and they shot him! Shot him dead in the street!"

"You weren't protesting?" Antony asked incredulously. Everyone he had known, with the major exception of his family, had been out there at one of the many colony-wide rallies.

"We didn't have any quarrel with the Federation," she said, bitterly. "Not until today, anyway."

"But-"

"`But' what?" She cut him off and gave a suspicious glare. "Don't tell me you were out there."

Again, Antony considered editing the truth. Again he boldly decided against it, "Well, yeah. I-I wanted to be a part of something. I wanted to try and bring about change."

Amanda's sniff had nothing to do with sadness or frustration; he had clearly offended her. Apparently-hopefully, Antony prayed-she was just upset over her loss, and not considering the matter objectively. This young woman was the sole other survivor of the only world he had ever known; should she be angry at him or, worse yet, hate him, due to his course of action during the turbulent times just prior to the incident…That would mean that he essentially would be alone.

What should he do then? What should he think? What should he say? Should he try and placate her by downplaying his involvement in the demonstrations? No, for he had already expressed that he joined in of his on volition. Further, when he really examined the repercussions of his actions, he found that he really was not sorry that he had done it at all. Sure, had he sat out this particular demonstration, his hands would have been clean of responsibility for the ensuing blood-bath, but who was to say that the Titans would not have gone ahead and killed everyone anyway? Wasn't he alive right now because he had not been at home with his family? And since he lived still, could not he go forth and be the one to exact retribution for their untimely demises?

And even had there been no riot this day, who was to say that the Titans would not simply make up an excuse to liquidate the colony? Or any of the other thousands of cylinders that floated in the Earth Sphere?

"Look," he said, defensively, looking over at Amanda, "I'm not going to apologise for being out there and speaking on behalf of something I believe in."

"Even if your ideals cost the lives of your loved ones, and other innocents?" she asked hotly.

"Hey!"

She brought her knees up onto the chair and hugged them to her ample chest. "I'm sorry, Antony. I guess that crossed a line."

"You're damn right it did! The suggestion that I didn't care about my family-you're not the only one with feelings, you know!"

Amanda shook her head. "Jesus, I'm sorry Antony. I really didn't want to hurt your feelings. It's just…"

"Just what, Amanda?" he asked hotly. "You lost someone out there, but that really doesn't make you particularly unique in this situation. What, do you think you loved your man more than I loved my family? Is your loss greater simply because it happened to you? I mean, God, how can you be so petulant? So subjective?"

"Forget it. I shouldn't try and talk to you now; I'm too tired. We've both been through hell, and I'm floundering to try and find someone to blame for it." Amanda's eyes said what her mouth could have lied; the pleading look cut Antony to the heart and it would have taken a distinct effort to remain angry.

It would have taken a distinct effort to do anything much more than direct the ship

Looking down at her feet, Amanda continued, "'Course, if it was really anyone's fault, it was those mother fucking Titans. You and the others were within your rights to protest, I suppose, but they overreacted and killed a lot of innocents, James among them."

Antony was glad she had started thinking rationally again. "Okay, I suppose I forgive you."

She smiled, relieved that the only other escapee from 30 Bunch did not hate her for her lapse in courtesy. "I'm going to try and see about getting some rest. Wake me when we get to the next colony over."

"Sure thing," he replied, "Sure thing."