I've been reading so much of Solid Snake's Gundam Seed fics lately that another idea for a story jumped and mugged me yesterday. Distracting me from all my other fics that need completing, darn it...
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January 25th, C.E. 71
Heliopolis
Andrew Fitzpatrick sat in the canteen and pulled an old hard-back novel out of his rucksack. The student had received the custom-printed item by secure mail only the day before - and almost a month after the Christmas that the gift was supposed to mark.
Not that he could blame his elder brother for the tardy arrival - the post was irregular due to the war and the postmarks made it clear that it had been sent almost TWO months ago, but to his parent's address and had had to be forwarded on to him. Obviously, the news of Andrew's scholarship to Heliopolis had not reached Martyn Fitzpatrick by the time he had sent the package - news, like mail, crossed the lines between the combatant nations slowly.
Opening the book, Andrew tried to fous on the words inside... and forget about the conflicting loyalties that had placed his siblings on opposite sides of the Bloody Valentine War. What side will I choose, he wondered.
Ensign Eleanor FitzPatrick looked around the stark structure of the factory. It was a grim setting she thought privately, to be the birthplace of hope for the Earth Alliance. Unlike most junior officers of the OMNI Enforcers, she knew the stark truth - the losses being suffered against the PLANTs were horrendous. Every mobile suit felled was costing the lives of half-a-dozen soldiers.
But if the Earth Alliance had it's own suits, in the numbers that their factories could produce, then even a Natural pilot would be far closer to the ability of the Coordinator soldiers... losses would still be serious, she admitted unflinchingly, but greater numbers would at last be enough to turn the tide.
She tried not to admit to herself that the thought of Martyn being able to come home was a welcome one. If ZAFT was defeated then he would have no choice... assuming he survived. But then, it wasn't as if he'd be allowed to serve in combat. With the best of the Coordinators available, her clumsy nerdish brother would have been shunted into a support role - probably shuffling paper somewhere.
And their younger brother... well, without the war, there would not be the parents and siblings of dead soldiers looking to avenge themselves on a convenient Cooordinator.
Martyn FitzPatrick sucked in a lungful of air once his GINN rocketed clear of it's mothership. The physical stress of launching - and of just about everything - hit him harder than most of his comrades.
It would have been easier for his little brother he noted without resentment, but unlike his quixotic elder, Andrew had had the sense to stay out of the war. He would be safe in ORB now, studying engineering in a neutral nation and preparing to rebuild the world once the war was over. Frankly, the news had been a weight off Martyn's shoulders - Blue Cosmos was virtually without a presence in the small Pacific nation, which would leave the FitzPatrick's only Coordinator far safer from prejudice than he had been in their hometown - whatever Eleanor might believe.
The blue and grey suit Martyn piloted was soon joined by others - but not as many as could be carried on the two warships of Team Le Creuset. Some of that capacity had to be reserved for the bounty that the five Elites had gone to fetch from the same 'neutral' nation that played host to the youngest of the three FitzPatrick children.
"What the hell!" Andrew muttered as the entire BUILDING shook. He dropped the book back into his bag and was on his way to his feet when the display screens suspended from the ceiling stopped displaying the latest idol singer and displayed the icon for a Public Service Announcement.
"This is Heliopolis Central Authority," came a voice that sounded rather less proffessional than the usual cultured tones of a government spokesman. "We are declaring a Hazard Level Five. All citizens should proceed to the nearest shelter with despatch. Unidentified Mobile Suits are entering Heliopolis. I repeat, we are declaring a Hazard Level Five..."
Andrew's jaw dropped and he pushed off from the table, slinging his bag over his shoulder. "Alright, you heard the announcement," called an older student. "Everyone out. The nearest shelter is out the main doors and down the stairs to your left - no pushing."
Despite the warmth of the day, Andrew felt a chill. Hazard Level Five was a 'no bullshit' warning, the lowest level where danger could be considered real... rather than a nebulous possibility. And while the mobile suits might be unidentified, only one organisation fielded them.
He followed his fellow students out of the door.
Eleanor groaned and pulled herself up from the floor. The explosion... or explosion? had bowled her over - which might well have saved her life, she noted. One of the gantrys had broken loose and landed across the two containers she'd been walking between. Both containers had been broken open by the falling metal, but the gantry had come to rest with it's edge held about three feet off the ground - low enough to have brained her if she hadn't already been on the floor.
"Are you okay?" asked another of the survivors. Like Eleanor, he wore one of Moergenroete's orange coveralls, but unlike her he was a genuine employee of the manufacturing giant, rather than being a wolf in sheep's clothing.
"Just shaken," she replied.
"Come on," the man ordered, grabbing her wrist. "They're sounding the evacuation alarm - we need to get to the shelters."
Dazed by the shock of the explosions, Eleanor let him draw her away from the factory floor before the badly abused roof gave way and collapsed.
The mobile armors that sallied had brave pilots but they were hopelessly outclassed. In the first moments of the battle, the three GINN suits wiped out every one of the Mistrials that were first to sortie, leaving only a pair of Moebius armors and a lone Moebius Zero to protect their mothership.
Three of the suits bypassed the still reacting defenders, entering the colony itself, leaving Martyn and his wingman Olor to fend for themselves against the armors.
*Three guesses who's in the Zero,* Martyn thought with a grimace. He'd never flown against the Hawk of Endymion - the fighting on the Grimaldi Front had been over months before he was through with flight academy, and he'd as happily have passed up the honor. But that wasn't the deal on offer and he'd just have to cope with it.
First blood was to ZAFT - one of Enforcer pilots was green enough to be sucked into close quarters and his armour was carved in half by Olor. The Hawk and his remaining comrade double-teamed the Coordinator in response and at almost the same moment, Olor's GINN exploded under fire from the Zero's kinetic cannon and the warship trying to leave the port lurched out of control as the M68 recoilless rifle that was Martyn's primary weapon blasted open a magazine and sympathetic explosions cascaded down the ship's structure.
The Moebius was the next to fall - Martyn might not wear the redcoat of an Elite (for the very good reason that he'd graduated at the absolute bottom of his academy class and the very bad reason that he was a Natural) but he had the advantages of more experience with a GINN's capability and a GINN that was better armed than his comrade. The kinetic rifle mounted at the mobile suit's left hip fired three times and the last shot tore through the mobile armor's cockpit.
"One on one..." the young man muttered, dodging the worryingly accurate fire of the gunbarrels. "Crap..."
Running out of the front door of the campus building, Andrew skidded to a halt as he realised that this route to the shelter wouldn't work out - the twenty-metre-tall giant robot using the street outside as a battlefield was in the way.
What sort of place was a college campus for a battle, anyway? he asked himself, momentarily overlaying onto the GINN's location a memory of a few weeks before when a crowd of students had occupied the same street so that they could whack each other with soft plastic replica weapons with abandon.
Four more students came out the door behind him - familiar to him from a few classes but only one of whom he knew in more than passing. "Sai!" he called. "What's the best way out of here?"
The older boy looked around and then pointed down the street towards the factory complex that the college campus overlapped in a few places. "There should be shelters that way!" he replied, shooting a worried look at the towering robot, currently focused on subduing the light armored vehicles that the ORB military had stationed on the colony, more security forces than combat units.
Eleanor was closest to the shelter's entrance when the control panel signalled that someone was trying to enter. "Who's out there?" she asked through the intercom.
"Kira Yamato and a friend," replied a young voice. "Please open the door."
"Two?" asked the Moergenroete who'd brought Eleanor to the shelter. "We're full - if anyone else comes in, the life support will be strained. They should try to reach the left block, there's another shelter there."
Eleanor nodded. "We're already at capacity," she advised Kira. "Is it possible to get to the shelter in the left block?"
There was a pause that left Eleanor wondering how bad it could be that the short distance to the next block could be hazardous, then Kira answered: "At least take one of us, a girl!"
"Okay," Eleanor agreed, opening the locks to the liftshaft. "Good luck."
When the one person lift opened, she wasn't surprised to see the girl was about Andrew's age - she was probably a college student - many of the staff at the college consulted for Moergenroete and it wasn't unusual for students to enter the complex for a firsthand look at the work being done. The young woman was obviously shocked by something and Eleanor gladly gave up her seat to her, sitting on the deck next to the chair, back against the wall.
Outside Heliopolis, a duel was raging between mobile armor and mobile suit - but it wasn't between Mu La Flaga and Martyn Fitzpatrick. The arrival of his commander's CGUE had allowed Martyn to break out of the fight and he had gladly accepted the order to leave the two of them to their duel and assist the ZAFT forces inside the colony cylinder.
Whatever was between La Flaga and Le Creuset, it was obviously a very personal match and Martyn was happy to out of it - he might not have any more insight into how the Hawk of Endymion managed to fight the gunbarrels remotely than anyone else did, but he suspect that the only reason that he'd survived fighting the Alliance's ONLY ace of the war, was sheer luck.
As he descended upon the lushly green terrain of Heliopolis, he saw that luck had not entirely gone their way however. Three suits were radiating the IFF signals carried by the infiltrating pilots to show that they had been captured... no, there was a fourth, off on it's own... but that left at least one prototype in the hands of the Alliance. "Martyn to Yzak," he radioed the lead machine of the little squad that was headed for the port and presumably for the waiting ships outside. "What's the situation?"
Yzak snorted. "Everything's alright at this end. Matthew and Miguel are nursemaiding us out of the colony - as if we need the help. Two suits are still at the factory - Athrun and Rusty went after them."
Martyn glanced at his display and changed course towards the lone captured machine that was just beginning to take off from the ground. "Understood, I'll go give him a little cover."
The sneer in Yzak's voice was quite evident, even over the radio as he signed off with a derisive: "Try not to get in his way, Fitzpatrick."D for Drakensis
Contagious, rampant insanity isnt against the rules.
D for Drakensis
You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.
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January 25th, C.E. 71
Heliopolis
Andrew Fitzpatrick sat in the canteen and pulled an old hard-back novel out of his rucksack. The student had received the custom-printed item by secure mail only the day before - and almost a month after the Christmas that the gift was supposed to mark.
Not that he could blame his elder brother for the tardy arrival - the post was irregular due to the war and the postmarks made it clear that it had been sent almost TWO months ago, but to his parent's address and had had to be forwarded on to him. Obviously, the news of Andrew's scholarship to Heliopolis had not reached Martyn Fitzpatrick by the time he had sent the package - news, like mail, crossed the lines between the combatant nations slowly.
Opening the book, Andrew tried to fous on the words inside... and forget about the conflicting loyalties that had placed his siblings on opposite sides of the Bloody Valentine War. What side will I choose, he wondered.
Ensign Eleanor FitzPatrick looked around the stark structure of the factory. It was a grim setting she thought privately, to be the birthplace of hope for the Earth Alliance. Unlike most junior officers of the OMNI Enforcers, she knew the stark truth - the losses being suffered against the PLANTs were horrendous. Every mobile suit felled was costing the lives of half-a-dozen soldiers.
But if the Earth Alliance had it's own suits, in the numbers that their factories could produce, then even a Natural pilot would be far closer to the ability of the Coordinator soldiers... losses would still be serious, she admitted unflinchingly, but greater numbers would at last be enough to turn the tide.
She tried not to admit to herself that the thought of Martyn being able to come home was a welcome one. If ZAFT was defeated then he would have no choice... assuming he survived. But then, it wasn't as if he'd be allowed to serve in combat. With the best of the Coordinators available, her clumsy nerdish brother would have been shunted into a support role - probably shuffling paper somewhere.
And their younger brother... well, without the war, there would not be the parents and siblings of dead soldiers looking to avenge themselves on a convenient Cooordinator.
Martyn FitzPatrick sucked in a lungful of air once his GINN rocketed clear of it's mothership. The physical stress of launching - and of just about everything - hit him harder than most of his comrades.
It would have been easier for his little brother he noted without resentment, but unlike his quixotic elder, Andrew had had the sense to stay out of the war. He would be safe in ORB now, studying engineering in a neutral nation and preparing to rebuild the world once the war was over. Frankly, the news had been a weight off Martyn's shoulders - Blue Cosmos was virtually without a presence in the small Pacific nation, which would leave the FitzPatrick's only Coordinator far safer from prejudice than he had been in their hometown - whatever Eleanor might believe.
The blue and grey suit Martyn piloted was soon joined by others - but not as many as could be carried on the two warships of Team Le Creuset. Some of that capacity had to be reserved for the bounty that the five Elites had gone to fetch from the same 'neutral' nation that played host to the youngest of the three FitzPatrick children.
"What the hell!" Andrew muttered as the entire BUILDING shook. He dropped the book back into his bag and was on his way to his feet when the display screens suspended from the ceiling stopped displaying the latest idol singer and displayed the icon for a Public Service Announcement.
"This is Heliopolis Central Authority," came a voice that sounded rather less proffessional than the usual cultured tones of a government spokesman. "We are declaring a Hazard Level Five. All citizens should proceed to the nearest shelter with despatch. Unidentified Mobile Suits are entering Heliopolis. I repeat, we are declaring a Hazard Level Five..."
Andrew's jaw dropped and he pushed off from the table, slinging his bag over his shoulder. "Alright, you heard the announcement," called an older student. "Everyone out. The nearest shelter is out the main doors and down the stairs to your left - no pushing."
Despite the warmth of the day, Andrew felt a chill. Hazard Level Five was a 'no bullshit' warning, the lowest level where danger could be considered real... rather than a nebulous possibility. And while the mobile suits might be unidentified, only one organisation fielded them.
He followed his fellow students out of the door.
Eleanor groaned and pulled herself up from the floor. The explosion... or explosion? had bowled her over - which might well have saved her life, she noted. One of the gantrys had broken loose and landed across the two containers she'd been walking between. Both containers had been broken open by the falling metal, but the gantry had come to rest with it's edge held about three feet off the ground - low enough to have brained her if she hadn't already been on the floor.
"Are you okay?" asked another of the survivors. Like Eleanor, he wore one of Moergenroete's orange coveralls, but unlike her he was a genuine employee of the manufacturing giant, rather than being a wolf in sheep's clothing.
"Just shaken," she replied.
"Come on," the man ordered, grabbing her wrist. "They're sounding the evacuation alarm - we need to get to the shelters."
Dazed by the shock of the explosions, Eleanor let him draw her away from the factory floor before the badly abused roof gave way and collapsed.
The mobile armors that sallied had brave pilots but they were hopelessly outclassed. In the first moments of the battle, the three GINN suits wiped out every one of the Mistrials that were first to sortie, leaving only a pair of Moebius armors and a lone Moebius Zero to protect their mothership.
Three of the suits bypassed the still reacting defenders, entering the colony itself, leaving Martyn and his wingman Olor to fend for themselves against the armors.
*Three guesses who's in the Zero,* Martyn thought with a grimace. He'd never flown against the Hawk of Endymion - the fighting on the Grimaldi Front had been over months before he was through with flight academy, and he'd as happily have passed up the honor. But that wasn't the deal on offer and he'd just have to cope with it.
First blood was to ZAFT - one of Enforcer pilots was green enough to be sucked into close quarters and his armour was carved in half by Olor. The Hawk and his remaining comrade double-teamed the Coordinator in response and at almost the same moment, Olor's GINN exploded under fire from the Zero's kinetic cannon and the warship trying to leave the port lurched out of control as the M68 recoilless rifle that was Martyn's primary weapon blasted open a magazine and sympathetic explosions cascaded down the ship's structure.
The Moebius was the next to fall - Martyn might not wear the redcoat of an Elite (for the very good reason that he'd graduated at the absolute bottom of his academy class and the very bad reason that he was a Natural) but he had the advantages of more experience with a GINN's capability and a GINN that was better armed than his comrade. The kinetic rifle mounted at the mobile suit's left hip fired three times and the last shot tore through the mobile armor's cockpit.
"One on one..." the young man muttered, dodging the worryingly accurate fire of the gunbarrels. "Crap..."
Running out of the front door of the campus building, Andrew skidded to a halt as he realised that this route to the shelter wouldn't work out - the twenty-metre-tall giant robot using the street outside as a battlefield was in the way.
What sort of place was a college campus for a battle, anyway? he asked himself, momentarily overlaying onto the GINN's location a memory of a few weeks before when a crowd of students had occupied the same street so that they could whack each other with soft plastic replica weapons with abandon.
Four more students came out the door behind him - familiar to him from a few classes but only one of whom he knew in more than passing. "Sai!" he called. "What's the best way out of here?"
The older boy looked around and then pointed down the street towards the factory complex that the college campus overlapped in a few places. "There should be shelters that way!" he replied, shooting a worried look at the towering robot, currently focused on subduing the light armored vehicles that the ORB military had stationed on the colony, more security forces than combat units.
Eleanor was closest to the shelter's entrance when the control panel signalled that someone was trying to enter. "Who's out there?" she asked through the intercom.
"Kira Yamato and a friend," replied a young voice. "Please open the door."
"Two?" asked the Moergenroete who'd brought Eleanor to the shelter. "We're full - if anyone else comes in, the life support will be strained. They should try to reach the left block, there's another shelter there."
Eleanor nodded. "We're already at capacity," she advised Kira. "Is it possible to get to the shelter in the left block?"
There was a pause that left Eleanor wondering how bad it could be that the short distance to the next block could be hazardous, then Kira answered: "At least take one of us, a girl!"
"Okay," Eleanor agreed, opening the locks to the liftshaft. "Good luck."
When the one person lift opened, she wasn't surprised to see the girl was about Andrew's age - she was probably a college student - many of the staff at the college consulted for Moergenroete and it wasn't unusual for students to enter the complex for a firsthand look at the work being done. The young woman was obviously shocked by something and Eleanor gladly gave up her seat to her, sitting on the deck next to the chair, back against the wall.
Outside Heliopolis, a duel was raging between mobile armor and mobile suit - but it wasn't between Mu La Flaga and Martyn Fitzpatrick. The arrival of his commander's CGUE had allowed Martyn to break out of the fight and he had gladly accepted the order to leave the two of them to their duel and assist the ZAFT forces inside the colony cylinder.
Whatever was between La Flaga and Le Creuset, it was obviously a very personal match and Martyn was happy to out of it - he might not have any more insight into how the Hawk of Endymion managed to fight the gunbarrels remotely than anyone else did, but he suspect that the only reason that he'd survived fighting the Alliance's ONLY ace of the war, was sheer luck.
As he descended upon the lushly green terrain of Heliopolis, he saw that luck had not entirely gone their way however. Three suits were radiating the IFF signals carried by the infiltrating pilots to show that they had been captured... no, there was a fourth, off on it's own... but that left at least one prototype in the hands of the Alliance. "Martyn to Yzak," he radioed the lead machine of the little squad that was headed for the port and presumably for the waiting ships outside. "What's the situation?"
Yzak snorted. "Everything's alright at this end. Matthew and Miguel are nursemaiding us out of the colony - as if we need the help. Two suits are still at the factory - Athrun and Rusty went after them."
Martyn glanced at his display and changed course towards the lone captured machine that was just beginning to take off from the ground. "Understood, I'll go give him a little cover."
The sneer in Yzak's voice was quite evident, even over the radio as he signed off with a derisive: "Try not to get in his way, Fitzpatrick."D for Drakensis
Contagious, rampant insanity isnt against the rules.
D for Drakensis
You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.