Zeta Gundam Fan Fiction ❯ Harbinger of Darkness ❯ Jabrow: Opening ( Chapter 14 )

Disclaimer-- Gundam hain't mine!

 

A/N: My apologies. This story is really coming together piecemeal, but I have been working on it of late—here's hoping that over this December I'll be able to start really getting back on my posting and finalisation process. In the meantime, enjoy this excerpt from the Battle of Jabrow!

 

 

***

 

Tony caught himself gaping at it again. He felt foolish for doing so, but it was just so hard for him to avoid looking at it. It was Earth after all, the cradle of humanity before this most recent space age diaspora. And yet, as a third generation colonist, he had never visited the planet before. It captivated him in a most inexplicable way.

Of course, this would be no sightseeing trip. A quick survey of the claustrophobic cockpit of his MSA-003 Nemo emphatically reminded him of that. No, his descent to Earth would be a Baptism of Fire for this bid to conquer Jabrow was his first actual battle as a soldier of the AEUG.

Jabrow! Not only was he actually going to Earth, but he was going as a part of the largest mobile suit invasion force since the One Year War. And to be on the attacking side too! Jabrow had been the bastion of hope during the dark days of the War; his parents, the news, everybody, they all kept up talk about how the Federation would rally in so long as the subterranean citadel remained unbreached.

`Now, though, it's rotted to the core,' he murmured to himself, as he thought about the rampant and malignant spread of the Titans as they usurped more and more of the real power of the Federation.

`What's rotted?' Lisa asked, her face appearing via direct feed in a window on the main monitor.

`Nothing, nothing,' he said with a forced smile. `Just nervous chatter.'

She laughed, though it also sounded somewhat hollow. `I hardly believe that. Newtypes don't get nervous like the rest of us.'

`Hey!'

Jin chose that moment to cut in. `You guys remember where the rendezvous point is, right?'

The other two nodded after checking the readouts. Upon atmospheric re-entry, they were to proceed to a designated point about two kilometres northeast of the actual fortress. Unlike the Zeon invasion attempt during the war, the AEUG pilots had reliable Intel from Federation defectors as to the exact location of the caverns in which the complex was located. They'd not be poking about in the general vicinity hoping to locate it.

Theoretically, that ought to be helpful. However, if the resistance was to be as stiff as expected, it might not matter so much in the end. No doubt the Feddies knew that they knew where to find them, and in all probability, they probably planned their defensive array accordingly. It was only the very stupid who underestimated their enemy in warfare.

Upon completing his review of the briefing data, Tony reactivated the external feed to his monitors and gazed out at the massive blue disc below them. The Dämmerung, from his perspective, seemed absolutely motionless, but he knew enough about the dynamics of establishing an orbital trajectory that he'd feel just how fast it was moving as soon as these clamps loosed and he was in freefall down towards the planet below.

As Jin and Lisa chattered idly about the course of the conflict and about how much of a black eye they were about to give the Federation, Tony looked at his control console and the tiny glossy of Amanda that he had stuck there. He thought about just how much he had missed her over these past few months. About how he hoped that she was still thinking of him too. He wrote as often as he could, but…

Lisa had laughed at him about the picture. He still only thought of her ribbing as good-natured teasing most of the time, but it seemed like she did it so damned often. Like she wanted his attention or something.

Tony looked at her face as he saw it in the monitor. Really looked at her for a change. It was strange to think of how it was possible to spend so much time with someone and yet not have ever looked at them to notice the things about them. The fall of her hair when it was down, the way her green eyes sparkled with hidden warmth when she made a joke at his expense…

`The hell are you looking at?' she snapped as she turned to face him. She had been looking away at the screen with Jin's image coming through, but now she narrowed those Atlantic green eyes and glared at him.

`Nothing,' he said innocently. `I was just admiring the view.'

Lisa had been preparing another acerbic retort, he could tell, but that comment totally disarmed her and the words died in her throat. Tony thought he saw her cheeks and the base of her pale neck turn a couple of shades redder, but he wrote it off as a trick of the camera.

`The view?' she finally managed.

`Yeah,' he said with a wry grin, `Earth sure is beautiful, don't you think?'

`You douche-bag,' she grumbled, sounding oddly deflated for such a light-hearted joke. `You know you were looking at me.'

`Was I now?'

Exasperated, she cut the feed.

Before Tony had time to wonder what exactly that was about, the carrier's captain came in over the whole network. `To all of you who have chosen to stand and fight against oppression in the name of liberty and justice, know that the hearts and prayers of thousands of colonists are going with you as you sortie today. Our target is daunting, but our resolve is matchless. Godspeed and good hunting.'

Jin's excitement so well mirrored Tony's own as he glanced at his friend's image in the monitor. `Ready to blow these fuckers to hell and gone?' the Japanese asked him.

He nodded. `It's about time for some vindication.'

 

`Lieutenant Colonel Barton!'

Trowa glanced over his shoulder at the technician running up to him. He had been standing out on the tarmac evaluating the proposed defensive emplacements and waiting for the Hi-Zack, GM, and Guntank squads to begin rolling out. He had also been actively trying not to drench the fabric of his uniform with his sweat, but unlike his other duties, the Amazon humidity was ensuring that that effort was failing spectacularly.

The enlisted man who had called out his name had probably been in one of the air-conditioned Quonset huts until mere moments ago. Yet he too was already wearing a glistening sheen as he approached. This weather was unbearable.

`What can I do for you?' Trowa asked, looking away just as the first of the massive Guntank units rumbled out of its underground hangar.

`Dispatch from Dakar, sir,' the younger man replied, handing him a print-out. `They say that Operations are already well underway over there and they are anxiously awaiting the departure of the commandant and his staff on the Audhumbla and Sudori.'

Trowa nodded. `The last of the Garudas. I wish we could get them out of here before the fighting begins, but frankly, we need every man still here. We've got to put up some sort of defence.'

`So you think this will work? This game that His Excellency Jamitov's come up with?' The soldier asked. He shaded his eyes from the sun as he looked up at Trowa expectantly.

A nod. `I'd say so. Those ragtag clusterfucks won't know what hit them, even though you'd think that somebody in their Intelligence would have noticed what we were up to. It's not like this plan was carried out with the utmost subtlety.'

`But then, they are amateurs, right sir?'

Trowa laughed. `Give them at least a little credit, private. They might not be as well organised as we are, but don't think for a minute that they can't fight. They've definitely got spirit if nothing else.'

They both watched as the defenders of Jabrow strode forth down the sides of the airstrip. So many colossi, so many giant sentinels at their disposal, and yet, Trowa still felt nervous for some reason. Or was it really a matter of nerves? Perhaps it's simply jealousy, he thought with a secret smile.

Not that he could honestly deny that. He wanted to get back behind the sticks of a GM so badly, he could taste it. To finally be able to fight again!

Trowa looked back at the enlisted man. `Reply to Dakar,' he said, `tell them that the defences are readying themselves and should be in place within the next fifteen minutes. And also, have someone prep my suit for launch as well.'

`Sir?'

`Unless the commandant explicitly says otherwise, I'll sortie today as well.' No, those traitors won't know what hit them at all…

 

Duo Maxwell gripped the controls of the RMX-107 Thanatopsis with white-knuckled intensity. This machine was Hilde's design, Hilde's craftsmanship, and Hilde's dream. Sure the guys in Vienna had put it together, but this was her baby only a little less so than Gene and Annika were.

And now, this was all that was the tool that he would use to set her free.

Unmitigated wrath coursed his veins along with the pre-battle adrenaline. He thought about how he had been just too late getting to the Berlin branch office to rescue her before she and the kids had been carted off to the Peenemünde cosmodrome. From there, the AEUG guys had said, it would probably be to one of the Camps in Side Seven.

Now he found himself dragged back into the flames of war again. Standing in line to use the Uzume's catapult, he contemplated his situation. That Intel broad, Mishima, she'd said that she would help him track down his family should he be willing to lend his services to the AEUG. On the one hand, he'd been thrilled at the chance to exact some retribution in the Titans. Yet, on the other…

It was blackmail and he knew as much. He didn't want to fight anymore! He had done his part already seven years ago. Let this generation of dipshits grapple with each other over who was really more corrupt—he had just wanted to be left alone to raise his family in peace for Chrissakes!

Duo bit back the rising rage and steadied himself by looking at the magnetic sled as it retracted from firing the Nemo ahead of him onto the wave course of the atmosphere. It was the ultimate stroke of irony, launching to attack the selfsame capital he had fought for during the War.

`All right, Shinigami! Get your ass in gear,' the MS coordinator said over the radio, `you're next on the catapult!'

`Roger that,' he said flatly.

No, he didn't want to fight at all, but he was damned if he was going to sit around with his thumb up his ass whilst his wife and kids were starving in some damned…some damned concentration camp somewhere!

Fuck the Titans. Fuck the AEUG too for that matter. And that Mishima bitch could take all that idealistic tripe about fighting for lofty ideals and cram it up her pert little ass.

A single tear slid down his cheek as he moved the Thanatopsis onto the launcher.

`Duo; Launching now.'

 

Talia D'ark fired off several tracer rounds into the brush ahead of her. She was sure she had seen one of the Titan's Hi-Zacks lumber through the trees there.

She was more than a little relieved for her own GM II's greenish paint scheme. It was much easier to hide from her foes amidst the understory branches with a suit that was not so garishly coloured as the Goufs and mark I GMs (though the Hi-Zacks were another story; they don't call it `forest green' for nothing) that she and her comrades had faced thus far since dropping from the Karaba Gau not twenty minutes prior. Light only splattered through the triple layer canopy at the odd clearing now and again, so there was a pervasive gloom all about her. At any range greater than several dozen metres, the visibility was so poor that even a massive mobile suit could hide, had it the right colouration.

She remembered how Duo and Hilde had told her stories about their war experiences whilst she was growing up. It wasn't the sort of thing that they would bring up on their own, but if she asked, both had the tendency to become lost in the stories, almost to the point of forgetting that she was there and talking more to the empty room than to her in particular. It was sort of scary to see them like that, but now, as she found herself thrown into the flames of a full-fledged war herself, she could see how it might leave that kind of lasting effect on a person's psyche.

A shuddering exhalation escaped her lips as her eyes darted back and forth, surveying the green hell all around her on the panoramic monitors. It was the most peculiar sensation, this riding the razor's edge between death and life. Everything was so much more intense—the colours of the forest, the biting smell of her own perspiration, the crashing of other mobile suits on all sides of her…

On all sides of…

There!

Talia raised the GMs beam rifle and cracked of a few shots. The Hi-Zack took three direct hits to the torso and staggered out from its hiding place behind a copse of trees. The enemy vehicle was heavily damaged and would probably explode within moments, but the pilot forced it forward anyway, heedless of the danger and drew his beam sabre in an unmistakable gesture of attack. Talia froze as the wounded giant blundered blindly towards her, uprooting trees with its limping run and swinging its energy weapon in wild arcs hoping to take her down with it.

Terrified in spite of herself, she fired at it again and again closing her eyes and screaming as she did so. The next thing she knew, her GM was lifted bodily from the ground and thrown back about twenty metres by the force of the Titans suit exploding.

`Christ almighty!' Talia gasped.

`Hey! Good shootin' rookie!' Alan Grey, one of the other members of her unit said as he brought his own GM over to help her up. `Tough SOB wasn't he?'

`Yeah,' she said, voice still shaking a little.

`Well, I suppose we should expect as much from the Titans. Anyway, we've got about another two kilometres before we reach Jabrow proper. Stay on your toes okay? The fighting's liable to get a helluva lot worse the closer we get.'

As if to underscore his point, a massive artillery round burst in the forest not far from where they were. Talia felt the force of the blast reverberate through her suit's armour.

`Maybe we should press on,' she said.

`I think that that's the best idea I've heard in a while,' Grey acknowledged.

 

Kiyone LaVans sat in the office listening to the man-made thunder of the guntank teams laying down a multidirectional barrage in the hopes of staving off the oncoming rebels. It would be something of an understatement to say that she didn't want to be here right now.

The office itself was unremarkable. There we a couple of windows placed along the wall, but both opened out into the dark cavern that was where the brass had chosen to make the headquarters. It was almost stupid to have them there at all, for although there was lighting installed along the roadways and from high above on the ceiling itself, there would never be enough light to make for a view that anyone would bother to look at. Besides, with Major Tenkawa and his adjutant working the clock round every day, it was unlikely that, even were the base in the sun-drenched beaches of Fiji or Tahiti, they still wouldn't bother to look.

The major and captain Miller, however, were not working at this moment. Indeed, nobody in Jabrow was really working right now, for they all seemed actively engaged in packing things and loading them into the Garudas parked in the hangars topside. This struck Kiyone as particularly strange because those two had only been transferred here three weeks ago, shortly after she herself had been.

This could only mean one of two things. One, that the battle was going even more poorly than she'd imagined it would be, or two, that they knew something she didn't. Of course, the latter stood very much to reason—she was, after all, only a lieutenant. Yet, the stricken look on the major's face made her convinced that there was something darker afoot here.

Kiyone also wondered why she hadn't been given the order to sortie yet. As a pilot, she figured that she would have been sent out long ago to fight at the front, but here she sat in the lounge adjoining Tenkawa and Miller's office with seven other veteran pilots watching the battle play out on ENN. This was ludicrous!

`Hey,' she said just above a whisper to the closest pilot, another lieutenant by the name of Inez Vega, `do you know why they haven't given us the order to launch yet?'

Vega took a pull of her coffee. `You're the new fish here, right?' she said, glancing at her sidelong. `Yeah, we're the last line of defence so we won't be launching unless things start getting really ugly.'

`But…the invasion—' Kiyone said, startled.

`Think about who's standing against us out there, eh?' he comrade replied nonchalantly. `Colonists. And colonists that aren't very bright either, because otherwise they would have seen the futility in raising a hand against us in the first place. They're either idealistic punks or veterans who aren't trained sufficiently in the new style of combat.'

They both watched the screen intently for a few moments, the sounds of packing in the other room becoming more noticeable all the time.

`And what in the fuck are they doing?' Kiyone asked, turning around in her seat to look through the doorway into Major Tenkawa's office.

`Leaving, I'd suppose,' the sarcasm was evident in the other woman's voice. `People get transferred here a lot and leave just as quickly.'

`Yeah, but in the middle of a battle?'

`Hey, they're the real brass here; I'm not gonna question them and if you want to keep your commission, I'd suggest you do the same.'

Kiyone sniffed indignantly. Taking that as a sign that the conversation was over, she got up and walked to the vending machine to grab a candy bar. Ever since she stopped smoking, she'd get cravings for sweets at the most random of moments.

As she was walking towards the machine, she nearly collided with Captain Miller who had just dashed out with a box full of papers tucked under one arm. `Ma'am!' she said as an apology.

Miller waved it aside with her free hand. To Kiyone's surprise, though, the captain deigned to speak further with her. `I know you, right? You're…LaVans from Berlin.'

`Ma'am.' Kiyone said with a nod.

`Yes, that's right…Major Cassio told me a little bit about you. You and your exploits during the raids a few weeks back.'

Something about captain Alice Miller's eyes made Kiyone shiver slightly. Combined with the mention of what she had done in Berlin…

Nevertheless, she put on a professional smile and nodded at the recognition. `It's an honour to have been spoken about, I guess. Major Cassio was a tough soldier, but fair.'

Alice Miller cocked her head to the side in a moment of thought. `You'll come with me down to the car park?' she asked in such a way that allowed for no negative response.

`Yes ma'am.' Kiyone said and followed her to the elevator.

`There's nothing I can help you carry?' she asked as the doors slid shut.

`Shut up and listen to me,' Alice hissed, turning to face the younger woman. `Ramona Cassio told me all about you and your situation. Especially about that nasty bit of business with a certain colony in Side 1.'

Kiyone felt the blood drain from her face.

`I know about that and, I respect you for putting up the brave front in spite of that. Not too many people have the wherewithal to keep on soldiering after being forced to do something like that. That said, I am giving you a direct order to get your ass down to the mobile suit deck as soon as we get off this lift.'

`Why?' she still felt shocked and was only capable of asking that simple question.

`Because, there are two nuclear devices buried in this facility that are going to detonate in less than two hours, that's why! I want to give you a fighting chance to escape before this whole facility is vaporised.'

Now Kiyone found herself unable to respond at all.

`Haven't you wondered at all why things were so empty around here lately? For fuck's sake, LaVans, you are going to die here if you don't take out a suit and run as far as you can from here.'

`Why tell me, though? What about all the other veterans in the lounge up there?'

The elevator chimed and Alice Miller briskly stepped through and started walking through the forest of damp grey columns that made up the lower deck of the car-park. Kiyone followed in an uncomprehending stupor.

After dropping the box into the open bed of a personnel carrier parked not too far from the elevator shaft, Alice turned and looked at her. `I'm telling only you, because if I tell everyone else, there'll be a mad rush to the hangars and our troops will run away rather than stay and fight. If they start running, what do you think the AEUG, Karaba, and whoever the fuck else is out there banging on our front door will start to think? They aren't stupid, LaVans, regardless of what those racist, anti-colonist dipshits in there would have you believe. If our side abandons the base en masse, the rebels will know something is up and they'll break off the attack, thus negating the purpose of blowing this place up in the first place!'

`My God,' Kiyone said as the realisation came to her. `You're purposely leaving them here to die! Our own soldiers!'

`And what the fuck would you have us do, eh?' Alice snarled. `I don't like it any more than you do, but what choice do we have? If you want to make an omelette…'

`These are people, Captain!'

Those cold blue eyes narrowed. `What the fuck is wrong with you? I'm telling you so that you can save your own life, and you want to lecture me? Who the hell are you to come at me with that load of shit, you damned hypocrite? And I'll suppose those who died at 30 Bunch weren't people?'

Kiyone's hand dropped to the place where her sidearm would have been, but, remembering that the gun had been turned in way back when she first went to Kou for help all those lifetimes ago, she let it fall to her side. Instead, she looked away and said in a small voice, `you know nothing about that.'

Alice Miller, as jaded and bitter an Intelligence officer as she had once been, somehow felt a pang of sympathy for this confused young woman. That sense of not really knowing who the enemy was—it was something she had experienced herself just after her fiancé had defected to the Zeon just before the War. `LaVans,' she said at last. `Take my advice and get out of here. There's no sense in letting a good soldier like you die.'

Kiyone wanted to say more. She wanted to do something—anything—to try and save those other soldiers in the lounge from their own ignorance. She wanted to save all the soldiers who were still fighting here in what was ultimately the biggest booby-trap in history. But, it was a morality question that had no right answer. Even if she did let them know and thus give them incentive to escape, the fact that the AEUG rebels would survive unscathed from this trap would mean that the fighting would go on. The war would continue to drag on so long as those damned rebels kept preaching their delusional ideology of liberty without the necessary sacrifices of freedom.

Alice was still looking at her, trying to gauge her reactions but waiting for a response as she did. Kiyone met those blue eyes with her own green ones. `I'll go,' she said at last, `and, thank you.'

 

Leon McDaniels had to laugh. From GM to Blue Destiny to Hi-Zack to Gundam and back to GM. Sure the time and places of the battles had been different, but the fact remained that he'd fought in damned near every Federation mobile suit worth mentioning only to end up right back where he started from. More or less, anyway—the GM II had several advantages over its One Year War predecessor, but the fact remained that it was a significant downgrade from the Gundam mk.II he'd been working with back in Hawaii. Now that had been a piece of work.

Here, though, he was readjusting to the inadequacies of mass-production. Leading a team of suits through the inferno that had been peaceful tropical jungles not an hour before, he was ever on the look-out for the rebels. Some of the kids fighting with him might say that the enemy was just a bunch of undisciplined colonists who had happened to get their hands on too much good technology, but Leon knew better. These were people fighting for a cause, for an ideal—until their goal was met, they would fight with a resolve that would more than make up for their lack of formal training. So it was with zealots.

He led his team down to the edges of an Amazon tributary. Cautiously, he scanned about on all sides, checking with heat sensors and passive sonar as well as visuals. When all was in the clear, he gave the order for the unit to ford the river, he getting in last to cover their crossing. One by one, each of the four other suits stepped into the murky water and waded across.

As they did so, Leon chanced a look skyward. The sight was one he'd not soon forget. Inbound invasion forces battled it out with the Titans and Federation defensive forces in a pitched melee. The rebels had something of an advantage, however, in that they were piloting sleds which allowed their MS to fly under their own power. Meanwhile, his own forces had to rely on jump thrusters and a lot of luck to intercept them. That or the chance shot from Guntank ordinance.

It seemed as though more and more enemies were landing, bright red streaks across the otherwise cloudless noonday sky as they entered the atmosphere. The more Leon saw, the more uneasy he became. He knew about the dwindling strength of Jabrow's defence compliment and he wondered how in the hell the brass would expect them to hold the line against an attack of this magnitude.

Never a frequent churchgoer, Leon nonetheless remembered reading something in the Good Book about a command to make bricks without straw…

He blinked as he saw a bright flash of light through the trees in the distance and forced his suit into a dive that let him just narrowly avoid being hit by the blast of a Nemo's beam rifle. Swearing in a fit of angry helplessness, Leon forced his machine upright again and cracked off two retaliatory shots from his own gun.

`Hurry up and get the fuck across the river!' he shouted over the radio to his subordinates.

However, sparing a look in their direction, he noticed the brown waters of the river roiling and frothing as two of the GMs grappled waist deep with an AEUG Zaku that had sprung up from the depths to assail them.

It shouldn't have been a problem for them to take down a vintage Zeon suit like that, but the enemy pilot showed incredible prowess against the rookie Titans. Wielding a Heat-axe in one hand and an assault rifle in the other, the Zaku alternated lashing out with the melee weapon and firing with the gun. One of Leon's support units had sense enough to back away and use her shield to defend, but the other was not so fortunate. The AEUG pilot swung the axe below the water's surface with such force that he was able to slice off the GM's leg at the knee. As the suit fell, the enemy filled its chest and faceplate with the remainder of his clip.

Fortunately, before the colonist had a chance to enjoy his victory, one of the two other GMs in the squad splashed up behind him and plunged its beam sabre into the wannabe-Zeek's lower back. The ensuing explosion was tremendous and sent a gout of water and flame high into the otherwise clear sky.

Leon nodded at the skirmish's outcome, and surged his own MS forward to take down the Nemo that had initiated the ambush in the first place. Much sooner than he had anticipated, he nearly collided with the enemy suit as it crept cautiously around the tree to prepare for another exchange of shots. Say what you would about those next-gen GM look-alikes, but they were damnably fast. Well armoured too, he noticed as he let loose with a round of shots from his GM's forehead mounted vulcans. The rounds sparked off the other suit's metal hide leaving only the faintest of dents from such range.

The AEUG unit and Leon both took a step back, the initial surprise of their meeting wearing off quickly and replaced by fear-laden intensity. They both unsheathed their beam sabres and charged one-another in a spectacular display of mechanised fencing. But unlike a movie rendition of a swordfight sequence, there was no elegant choreography behind their movements—they were simply two people doing their best to kill each other. If it happened to look fancy, that was aught but a result of their respective mastery of the weapons.

It would be Leon who would take the day, though. A chance misstep on the part of his opponent caused the Nemo to stumble on an overturned length fallen tree. As it pitched forward, Leon rushed up to meet it with the tip of his blade through the upper part of its torso. Thus impaled, the suit began smoking violently, and Leon beat a hasty retreat before the immolation could engulf him.

As brutal a fight sequence as that was, in turning around, he noticed that he had not strayed too far from the riverbank in order to undertake it. Two of his subordinates were aiding their fallen comrade whilst the other stood guard on the opposite bank. The damaged suit would be in no condition to be going anywhere far, so the two hale ones dragged it back to Leon's side of the river and allowed the pilot to hop off.

`Are you going to be okay, Hunter?' Leon asked as the pilot popped the cockpit entrance and climbed out onto the supine MS' abdomen.

The soldier smiled and snapped off a salute. `I'll be okay, sir,' private Rick Hunter said sheepishly over his helmet radio. `I've got the portable anti-MS launcher from my suit's survival pack, and if I hurry, I can make it back to the way station we passed on our outbound trip.'

`Do it then,' Leon said, not unkindly. How could he be mad at the kid? It was as easy to get shot down as a veteran as it was for a fresh-faced recruit like Hunter was. Skill really only counted for so much in a battle like this. The rest was largely up to luck.

`And,' he added, `make it back alive, kid.'

Hunter nodded, small even in the MS' monitor's magnified image, and leapt from the suit to take off through the jungle.

Let's all make it back alive, Leon McDaniels thought with a precognitive chill.

 

Ryoji Kaji had not been a part of the drop operations to assault Jabrow directly, seven years ago. At that time, he had been on patrol duty as part of the carrier Graf Zeppelin's MS detachment in the Side Six vicinity. It had been a moderately active front; Federation ships often tried to slink into the `neutral territory' to escape pursuing Musais or Zanzibars. Back then, he'd been piloting the mighty Gelgoog Jäger class suit and had been the head of the ruthless Headhunter squad. In that area, his infamous red suit had been almost as feared as Char Aznable's or Johnny Ridden's (not that he had in any way tried to copy them, the unoriginal fucks. Red was a lot of people's favourite colour—they didn't own it).

Now, though, he was heading the first wave of Linna Yamazaki's Hatamoto, an untested combat unit scraped together by a charismatic but mousy politician/soldier. Sure, the guys in his first wave were all veterans like him, but they hadn't had a chance to really gel together as a team. Each soldier brought his own combat style into the mix and at times, during the practice runs, that had caused problems.

Kaji, for example, was still mightily irked by having to pilot a Marasai. Sure, it was the cutting edge of MS technology, and it looked vaguely like a Zaku (y'know, if you squinted and cocked your head to the side…) on the outside, but it was the inside that was the problem. Newfangled cockpit layout and all…it just bothered him. But Linna had insisted, and so, as her `pet', he had had to accede.

And it is incredibly powerful, he thought, a ghost of a grin forming on his lips. Way more so even than the Jäger.

That thought flickered through his mind as he locked on to a Hi-Zack that was currently engaging an AEUG GM II. The irony of that situation was not lost on him as he obliterated the Zaku clone to save what had been the enemy's workhorse back during the war.

`Damned good shooting, sir!' Vic Thorn, a former Zeon Lieutenant, quipped over the net as he stepped his own suit up to lay down covering fire for his commander.

Kaji shrugged. `I've had a little bit of practice.'

The seven suits of the Hatamoto pressed forward through the dense jungle, joining with other friendly suits as they did so. By the time they reached a clearing around a small Federation redoubt, their numbers were in the dozens.

Still, the trio of Guntanks and nine GMs and Hi-Zacks that were dug in around the fortified outpost gave Kaji pause enough to halt the advance just back of the treeline. True they had the numerical advantage, but the fact that the enemy had such solid cover in the form of concrete walls, trenches shored up by sandbags, and felled trees made him want to proceed with caution. This was one of the last lines of defence before their motley rabble reached Jabrow proper, so it would have to be taken one way or another; the enemy suits would break off and surprise them from behind if they simply tried to bypass it.

Fuckin' Guntanks.

Those were the real rub here. Those massive cannons—which were already speaking in their thunderous voices as the Hatamoto and their allies scrambled from position to position in the triple-canopy cover of the jungle—could disintegrate even the most heavily armoured of suits with a direct hit. Should they fire their rocket pods and cannons over open sights at an advancing column, even just three of them would be the equivalent of firing a machinegun at an advancing cavalry charge back in the old days.

Then a thought came to him and Kaji laughed in spite of the situation. `This is Kaji to the Asura,' he said over the radio. `You guys think you might be able a half-dozen unmanned sleds directly down on top of my location?'

`This is the Asura,' Dr. Akagi's voice speaking for the normal radioman, `The hell do you want us to do that for? They'll just get shot down before you can get to them.'

`Exactly. I need a diversion to be able to take that fort and those sleds will be just the ticket to get those Feddies all riled up and give us just the opportunity to storm it.'

`We've not got many sleds to spare, remember commander Yamazaki's unit is still—`

`Stow that shit, Ritsu! Drop the damned sleds or their won't be any chance of Linna's group making any meaningful headway regardless! Drop them and the fakes at the same time if you have to in different locations, but just do it! How much longer do you think we can hold up under this bombardment?'

`Right,' came the curt reply. `They'll be down in Ten.'

`Attagirl' he said around a grin. `I knew you'd see it my way.'

He broke contact with the carrier and immediately relayed his plan to the rest of the soldiers in the vicinity. They would be hard pressed to hold up for long under that kind of bombardment, but if they could keep moving and maybe spice things up every now and again with a grenade or two, they might just be able to last until the diversion could begin. Kaji wondered as to what course Linna and her wave of the attackers would take, and wished he'd had the foresight to ask Ritsuko as much, but as he thought about it, he realised that he would be much better off just concentrating on the battle at hand. Linna would let him know when and where she would be when she was good and ready to.

A shell from one of the Guntanks exploded not thirty metres from him, kicking up clods of dark brown rainforest loam and toppling several tress. Kaji forced his suit to back-pedal a few paces and then started running in the direction of the crater caused by the blast. Counting on the Titans artilleryman to not waste a second shot on an area that was seemingly devoid of enemies, he walked into the billowing plume of dust and smoke and let loose several rounds from his machine rifle in the direction the enemy had fired from.

The clangs of slugs ricocheting off the gunmetal grey Federation MS were audible even through the din of combat, but the fact that there were so many glancing hits on the thing's sloped armour made Kaji hasten to get out of there fast. This proved to be a very good idea, for within seconds, two rockets leapt from the pods mounted where arms should have been on a traditional MS and knifed through the void where he had just stood a few moments ago. They collided with more of the local flora not far away, sparking yet another fire in this part of the jungle.

Kaji swore at the closeness of the call, but soon changed the pitch of his vitriolic soliloquy as a Titans GM blindsided him from the forest to his left. The Earther had his beam sabre raised and only the swiftness of his reaction time and the Marasai's incredible responsiveness allowed him to block the forearm that swung the raised blade down at his chest. Yet, before he had a chance to counterattack, the Titans suit swung hard with its free hand and caught his own right in the face, a jarring impact that sent Kaji sprawling. He looked up just in time to see that blade again diving for him, gleaming hungrily.

But it never connected. The GM suddenly staggered backwards and fell to the ground. It took Kaji several seconds to notice the gaping holes in its torso and the smoke issuing forth from them. Looking about, he caught sight of Vic's Zaku reloading another drum magazine onto its machinegun. He sighed deeply.

`Nice save there, Thorn,' he said absently, bringing his MS back to its feet.

His subordinate laughed. `Well, sir, I have had a little bit of practice,' he echoed the squad leader's earlier caustic quip perfectly.

 

`Is Juliet Outpost still standing?' Trowa demanded, as he fired at the brush on the southern edge of the main runway.

`It's not looking good sir,' a voice from the command bunker responded. That detachment led by the black and red Marasai is encroaching steadily and the defences are falling back.'

Trowa still fumed at the fact that the enemy had somehow gotten his hands on one of the top-of-the-line Titans MS, but all of that was beside the point as of now. He had wanted Juliet to hold up for a while longer than it had. It was something of a test of the strength of the Titans forces for him—whether the recruits here were strong enough to stand in the face of a full-on AEUG onslaught.

They were in the process of disappointing him. Greatly.

Part of him wanted to go out and shore up the defences of the redoubt. He wanted to go and help the soldiers who were fighting (and dying he thought with a shudder) a losing battle to protect a strongpoint that, in less than an hour and a half would be vaporised by their own superiors anyway. To have them sacrifice so much whilst still under the assumption that this battle actually meant something…it was just too cruel.

But, he had his orders. The base commandant had only grudgingly provided him with one of the custom Hi-Zack models so that he might indulge in his desire to battle on the condition that he maintain the integrity of the Operation. Alerting the soldiers at Juliet Outpost and having them pull back would only make the AEUG and their allies suspicious and probably all the more cautious about approaching Jabrow itself. If this was really to be the hammerfall that the brass at Dakar were hoping it would be, they would have to mortally wound their adversary and almost totally deprive him of his ability to make war.

The sooner this mess is over with, the sooner I can get back to Asuka and having a normal life!

Another Nemo darted through the maze of trees just beyond the perimeter of the base proper. Trowa snarled and snapped off two shots in quick succession in its direction. The saffron energy bolts from his suit's 40mm beam sniper rifle lanced through the jungle, searing marks into the bark of any tree they happened to pass. Unfortunately, he was unable to hit the enemy, and moved a few steps to his right to try and track it.

It wasn't that Trowa didn't get the same thrill from riding the razor's edge of combat anymore. Christ, no. Otherwise, he would have been scrambling to get aboard the Audhumbla or Sudori like all the other officers instead of leading a detachment of soldiers in the defence of the south-eastern edge of the base. But…whilst he did still get that adrenaline high from being in the cockpit of a mobile suit, he wasn't a kid anymore. He had responsibilities to more than just himself now.

Gritting his teeth, he scanned the treeline again, this time pulling up the magnified images from the camera mounted on the rifle itself. The targeting system searched for any heat emissions that might come from an MS reactor, but the steamy humidity of the jungle did a pretty good job of masking the Nemo's trail. Fortunately, this was likely to be the first of the attackers to reach this side of the base—had the AEUG any real military know-how, they would have had their soldiers remain in one rendezvous point and then launch a concerted attack on the base, rather than this piecemeal way of doing things. They had a numerical advantage, but in a one on one fight, the average Nemo was only slightly more manoeuvrable than a Hi-Zack, and much less armoured. Single probes like this dumbfuck were like throwing eggs against a brick wall.

That black-and-red Marasai, though, he knew what he was doing. Had to be a veteran from the War, just like Trowa himself, if only evidenced by his tactics. Intelligence reported that the AEUG, though it was primarily made up of kids from the generation barely old enough to remember the Zabis, there was a sizeable minority of disaffected Vets from both sides of the War who rounded out their combat rosters. Those were the ones you had to watch out for.

It was bad enough that they were corrupting the minds of those kids with their warped ideas of justice and liberation, but that they were even able to persuade some of the Federation and Zeon veterans to plunge back into the fires of war for so stupid a cause? The AEUG was truly the worst form of terrorism in history, one founded upon the back of brainwashing people into taking up some noble crusade.

Lock!

Trowa fired a single blast that bored through the heart of a tropical tree, obliterating the MS that hid behind it.

He grinned in dark satisfaction. Juliet might fall, but the satisfaction of knowing that they were one step closer to finally expunging this cancer once and for all.

 

Kiyone was afraid.

She had forgotten just how frightening a real battlefield was, as she guided her Gouf class suit through the slugfest that was immolating vast swaths of heretofore pristine Amazon growth. As GM, Nemo, and Hi-Zack exchanged shots with one another, she knew full well that it was only through the grace of God (who seemed to have had a change of heart after spending the past several months laughing so mercilessly at her) that she had survived thus far without having been gunned down by AEUG soldiers. That or by fellow Titan pilots for Deserting.

All of that was terrifying, yes, but what really scared her was the fact that the longer she stayed with the Titans, more and more of her soul seemed to be slipping away. The 30-Bunch Incident, the Berlin Raids, and now, fleeing the field of combat without even having the decency to warn the other soldiers of the mousetrap set to spring on all of them? What kind of monster was she becoming?

And as much as she wanted to start letting people know, despite Alice Miller's warnings, she realised that taking such a chance could well get her killed. To try and hail another suit at random with a warning was to risk being overheard by someone who actually was in the know. If one of them should hear her spreading dissent within the ranks, she would be lucky if they killed her quickly by firing on her MS. If they were to capture her…

Images of the young Ms. Himmel flashed through her mind. To be on the wrong side of that kind of punishment…

She shook her head, dark hair whipping about as she did so. In her haste to launch the suit, she'd neglected to make much use of the ready-room, and was still only in her black-and-blues rather than a proper flight suit and helmet.

The Gouf charged through the forest as she mused. It dodged trees with an agility that belied its seven year obsolescence. The overhauling that the Federation engineers had given it had only enhanced the Zeon know-how that had made it such a formidable machine in the first place (hadn't Duo and Hilde told her a story once about fighting one of these things back in New England during the War?).

As fast as she had been moving, Kiyone'd not checked her headings since she'd scrambled off the base. As she noticed a thinning of the trees ahead of her, she glanced down at the map screen to confirm where her mad dash had taken her.

Juliet Outpost.

The fighting here was so intense that she had to stop and transmit the friend-or-foe sequence to avoid being blown apart by friendly Guntanks.

`Sorry about that Lieutenant!' one of the gunners that made up the two-man crew of the artillery suits gasped over the radio, `These fuckers have been giving us hell for the past twenty minutes! It's been all we could do to hold them off for this long—'

A wordless grunt punctuated his explanation as the pilot suddenly threw the machine in reverse to avoid an incoming grenade. Kiyone glanced sidelong through the trees to see if she could spot the assailant, and fired off several rounds from the Gouf's machine rifle at it. The Nemo, caught by surprise, began back-pedalling whilst firing at her. Kiyone dodged the energy blasts and dove into the clearing where two of the remaining Titans GM's rushed forward to cover her. She staggered to her feet behind them and made haste towards the cracked ferro-concrete wall that shielded the redoubt. A quick thrusters-assisted jump and she was behind ten feet of reinforced cover.

`This is re-fucking-diculous!' she screamed as she fired back in the direction of the enemies.

The battle was escalating to fever-pitch by that point. More and more suits were being brought in, in the form of both AEUG and Titans reinforcements, but the rebels still had numerical superiority. As much as the Commanders back in the caverns might want to stem the tide here at Juliet, they knew, as Kiyone did, that there were too many other fronts for the defenders to cover.

And just as it looked like things couldn't possibly get any worse, a general cry of despair went up from the soldiers on the Titans radio frequency. Kiyone flicked her gaze skyward just long enough to see no fewer than twenty sleds flying in on a course for the redoubt. She could feel her heart sinking in despair, but she like nearly half of the rest of Juliet's defenders aimed their weapons at the new enemies and unleashed a massive ground-to-air barrage.

It was risky—hell, borderline stupid—to take their attention from the assault that was already underway by the AEUG forces already in the forest, but they all knew that if the MS that were riding in on those sleds were to make it through, they could land right in the middle of the outpost and break their defences from the inside out. It was a situation of Scylla and Charibdis and there was a tacit understanding amongst the Titans that caused them to hedge their bets on the sleds as the greater threat.

Kiyone fired off a stream of slugs at the sled she had acquired a lock on. It made a slight attempt to yaw out of the way, but with minimal effort, she still managed to blow it apart. That's odd she thought as she watched the fireball blossom before finding another lock, yeah they're amateurs, but you'd think that even the greenest of MS jockeys could have avoided that.

Then she looked again at the sled she had already destroyed. `The fuck?' she said aloud as she realised what was missing from the picture: a mobile suit should have jumped from the sled as it caught the shells! Her blasts had been effective to rip through the craft's re-entry shielding and blow it up, sure, but they wouldn't have been able to actually hit an MS that had been riding the sled down from orbit. Unease rising in her, she scanned the rest of the incoming craft and her jaw clenched as the realisation hit her.

`The bastards tricked us!'

And indeed they had. The rouse had bought the invasion party enough time to storm the walls of the compound and begin systematically taking down the defenders. There was a thunderous explosion as one of the Guntanks brewed up and a series of smaller, rapid booms as its ammunition started to cook. One of the GMs that had covered her as she first made the `safety' of the redoubt, caught a blast from a beam cannon to the chest and went down too. Kiyone herself was backed into a corner by two Nemos as they fought her hand-to-hand with beam sabres. She gave ground as much as she could, wielding her heat-sword with reckless abandon and even managing to land a crippling blow to one of her enemy's knees, but she soon found herself at the connecting point of two edges of the concrete wall—very literally backed into a corner. As a last resort, she lashed out with the Gouf's whip-like length of electrified cable and decapitated the other suit. It stumbled forward blindly, but Kiyone knew that the battle was lost—other enemies were already swarming over the walls on either side of her and decimating her allies.

Above all the chaos that erupted around her, she saw a single black and red Marasai delivering death with a perverse sense of grace. Watching this obviously stolen or commandeered suit lay waste to her Titans comrades was like watching a car crash in slow motion; it was absolutely horrifying, but at the same time, so exciting that you really couldn't tear your eyes from it, no matter how badly your conscience might beg.

Ultimately, though, Kiyone was able to free herself from the spell cast by the enemy suit, and she blew the hatch on her Gouf. It was in no danger of exploding, so she extended the escape wire and slid to the ground as slowly and safely as she could. On the ground, she searched desperately for somewhere to hide.

A veteran of many mobile suit engagements, this was the first time she'd ever got a `human's eye view' of a battle. It was truly a scene from her darkest nightmares, as the massive machines clashed like so many enraged gods, cracking concrete with every step, and churning up waves of soil from the unpaved sections of the outpost. Kiyone screamed in spite of herself and ran full speed towards on of the hangars. Once inside, she curled up in a foetal ball and prayed, prayed that it would all be over soon.