Rage Across Gundam Seed

[DKnight54]

Drakensis,
I hope you're planning on expanding the part where Thorfinn takes over the Dominion(Hey, what's this ship doing out what 12+ episodes early anyway?) cause extenuating circumstances aside, taking out what amounts to an Admiral and his staff is not going to most of the ship's crew to open fire on the other ships in the fleet.
Even if the ship's captain(Natarle) goes along with Thorfinn, unless most of the crew is more loyal to Natarle than the Atlantic Federation, they are going to have a mutiny on their hands.

Be the Ultimate Ninja! Play Billy Vs. SNAKEMAN today!

[drakensis]

Shinn... is going to be interesting, I hope, once I get more of an idea about GSD. He's certainly going to have major roles in the story.
As for Cagalli, well if you're worried about events in the early episodes of GSD then there will be divergences, but they will also be much closer to the canon events than I'd anticipated until I actually start writing scenes.

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(Hey, what's this ship doing out what 12+ episodes early anyway?)

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Basically, desperation. The war is not going well for them at this point so the Dominion is deployed earlier than they really intended to make up for not being able to pry loose enough forces from elsewhere. There's also the intention of launching it off the ORB massdriver once the port is captured, so they want it on hand.

---

I hope you're planning on expanding the part where Thorfinn takes over the Dominion cause extenuating circumstances aside, taking out what amounts to an Admiral and his staff is not going to most of the ship's crew to open fire on the other ships in the fleet.
Even if the ship's captain(Natarle) goes along with Thorfinn, unless most of the crew is more loyal to Natarle than the Atlantic Federation, they are going to have a mutiny on their hands.

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There should be quite a bit more material to cover the day prior to the Battle of ORB. And let's just say that it's a good job that the Archangel-class ships can be operated by a small crew, because there Black Pearl has a much smaller crew than the Dominion had.D for Drakensis
Contagious, rampant insanity isnt against the rules.
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

[drakensis]

March 1st, C.E. 71
Nile Valley, African Community, Earth
The medical room of the Archangel was quiet when Andrew Waltfeld opened his eye. At first the harsh lights left him blinking, but a moment later there was another cause for tears, although he wiped them away hastily. There was a bandage over the left side of his head, covering his eye completely. His left arm didn't seem to be moving and he suspected that he shouldn't try anything with his legs either. He knew their numbness had to be due to heavy anaesthetic. "Aisha..." he muttered.
There was a groan from next to the bed and he turned his head to see a rather spectacular set of bedhead poke up above the edge of the mattress. For a moment he couldn't identify it, but then he recognised the shape of the face and Thomas raked back his hair into it's usual shape. He looked like hell, Waltfeld noted. Without a jacket it was possible to count his ribs through the thin material of his T-shirt and there were deep bags under his eyes.
"Ah," the man nodded to himself. "You're awake. I'd offer you a coffee, but it's lousy, and you probably couldn't keep it down anyway."
The Desert Tiger narrowed his eyes. "Lousy coffee?" he asked and was surprised by how weak he sounded. "Now I know I'm in hell."
Thomas laughed at that. "Not quite. In the hands of your enemies, I'm afraid. I wasn't planning to hand you over to Desert Dawn - they don't seem too fond of you for some reason, so I dragged the two of you aboard the Archangel."
"Two of us?" Waltfeld croaked, hope in his eyes.
The healer's lips twisted. "She's stable... not much more than that, I'm afraid, but stable." He gestured towards the other bed in the small room.
It was impossible to make out the identity of the person laid on the bed - she was heavily bandaged and surrounded by medical equipment - but Andrew's heart soared. Then he grimly bit down the joy. "How bad is it?" he asked.
Thomas rubbed at his beard. "Not great," he observed. "Neither of you will be making a full recovery. The brunt of your lady's injuries were against her right side and back - the internal damage is quite severe. Nothing that can't be lived with, but not something that can be entirely healed at this point. She lost a lot of blood, but she's responding well to transfusions. In your case, you have multiple fractures to your legs which will heal, given time, but your left eye is gone and I had to amputate most of your left arm."
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

[katreus]

A revolving door for Blue Cosmos leaders then. Combined with Sutherland dying and apparently a bunch of military leadership, the Earth Alliance forces seem rather impotent. I'll be surprised if they manage to pull anything off at this rate, which is a bit of a problem.
It also seems like Orb won't be overrun at all.
The EA will knock -themselves- out of the war out of sheer incompetence. This makes the coming battles... a lot less tense for me.
On the one hand, I love Natarle living and being on the Archangel's side. From a skill point of view, I believe Natarle is the best captain in the entire series, although I think she suffers from some preconceptions -- esp. in the beginning of the series. On the other, having just watched ep. 49, wow. That's an incredibly tragic and powerful scene at the end. As much as I dislike that they die, I love the way they do it.
Question: How did Thomas end up as the Captain? And Natarle in the CIC? That's... odd. And doesn't make much sense to me.
With the latest addition, meh. A lot of the deaths that made the series so poignant and drove character development seems to have gone poof. It's nice to see Andy -and- Aisha live but ... meh again. Just seems to have a different feel now and it's heading toward a bit too perfectly for the protagonists.

[drakensis]

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A revolving door for Blue Cosmos leaders then. Combined with Sutherland dying and apparently a bunch of military leadership, the Earth Alliance forces seem rather impotent. I'll be surprised if they manage to pull anything off at this rate, which is a bit of a problem.
It also seems like Orb won't be overrun at all.
The EA will knock -themselves- out of the war out of sheer incompetence. This makes the coming battles... a lot less tense for me.

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I don't plan for ORB to be overrun, and the Earth Alliance is coming apart at the seams. Which will lead to increasingly desperate measures on their part. ZAFT are going to have problems of their own, however at the moment they're doing better than in canon due to lower casualties at JOSH-A. That's going to change.
As for incompetence, well there is a noticable tendency for the EA to rely on numbers over quality. They're likely to take horrible casualties in anything they do. But they can afford this because they significantly outnumber their opponents. Once they get some momentum, they can and will roll over a lot of opposition.

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Question: How did Thomas end up as the Captain? And Natarle in the CIC? That's... odd. And doesn't make much sense to me.

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Basically, there were only a limited number of available crew on the Black Pearl - only a small number were willing to commit outright treason of this nature. As a result, there aren't enough people to staff all the bridge postions. Natarle is running the ship from CIC and Thomas is sitting in the big chair and giving general orders because he's the one with the plan. Natarle's still the captain and once they've a few more crew will go back to sitting up front with Thomas returning to the Archangel.

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On the one hand, I love Natarle living and being on the Archangel's side. From a skill point of view, I believe Natarle is the best captain in the entire series, although I think she suffers from some preconceptions -- esp. in the beginning of the series. On the other, having just watched ep. 49, wow. That's an incredibly tragic and powerful scene at the end. As much as I dislike that they die, I love the way they do it.
With the latest addition, meh. A lot of the deaths that made the series so poignant and drove character development seems to have gone poof. It's nice to see Andy -and- Aisha live but ... meh again. Just seems to have a different feel now and it's heading toward a bit too perfectly for the protagonists.

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That's a good point. I'll have to address that - there's probably more actual deaths in my version, but they're far more faceless. I'll have to see what I can to to tighten that up.
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

[ordnance11]

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Basically, there were only a limited number of available crew on the Black Pearl - only a small number were willing to commit outright treason of this nature. As a result, there aren't enough people to staff all the bridge postions. Natarle is running the ship from CIC and Thomas is sitting in the big chair and giving general orders because he's the one with the plan. Natarle's still the captain and once they've a few more crew will go back to sitting up front with Thomas returning to the Archangel.

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Drak, you may have to re-write the scene then if that's the case. By naval tradition, the person in the chair IS the captain. Not even Natarllie would go against that. I grant you the CIC is the best place to fight the ship, but that would be the XO's job.
If you want to resolve this issue, have a scene where Natarlie offers command of the "Black Pearl" to Thomas. That makes Thomas the CO for this operation.
Like having Doctor Beverly Crusher take control of the Enterprise.
Now, as to staging a mutiny...it might be only a small number of people..but if it's well-placed people then it can be easily done.
If Natarlie had come to the conclusion earlier that she's working for slimeballs who doesn't earn her respect and finds like minded people among the senior crew....you may have the beginnings of a cabal. Remeber, if you're the captain, you have access to all the ship's systems. 'sides, the idea of a captain hijacking a ship is ludricrous.
Think of it as contingency planning....if the place and oppurtunity comes along to break away from the alliance...
__________________
Into terror!,  Into valour!
Charge ahead! No! Never turn
Yes, it's into the fire we fly
And the devil will burn!
- Scarlett Pimpernell

[drakensis]

Good point, I've done a slight to rewrite their locations and precise statuses.
As for the mutiny... well, no, it was put together on short notice. Natarle didn't pick her crew, given the rush to launch the Dominon, it was pulled from the available personnel.
But with the death of an influential 'passenger' aboard, she had every excuse to do a security review and have a loyalty check on her crew... what she would do with those showing signs of disloyalty to the Earth Alliance wouldn't be quite according to regulations though. And Thomas can be... supernaturally... insightful in such circumstances.
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

[Valles]

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Buster only had one main weapon at the moment, although the base's technicians had at least managed to clear away the debris that had been the beam rifle's mounting. Aiming the remaining gun was much the same as targeting a mobile armor's weapons, a combination of physical manipulation of the controls and a clear, disciplined visualisation of what she wanted to happen, and, with her previous training at that, she had no problem with it.
The first shot caught one of the GINNs just inboard of its left shoulder and overpenetrated, easily carrying away both that arm and the portside thruster mount. GINNs were only marginally flight-capable at the best of times, and depriving this one of half the thrust that held it aloft sent it for a most unceremonious swim.
She'd taken that shot because the incoming suits had forgotten to add evasive maneuvers as they closed, but would correct that error as soon as the first attack was made on them. Since she'd only have had the one easy shot, and since taking down the phase-shift armor fitted to Duel or Strike would require rather more than that, they were completely ruled out... and there had been a GINN between her and the command suit.
Then the Strike surged ahead of the pack and she was tracking it carefully, resisting the urge to just spray her fire and letting Buster's targeting systems get a firm lock - staying calm like the gunnery sargeant who had been honing her marksmanship had told her to.
The striker pack the enemy machine was using didn't match any of the planned designs; probably all three of those were still stuck in the Morgenroete facility in Aube, waiting to be shipped to Panama.
Looking at it, the first thing that she noticed were the wings; the thruster wash was in the wrong pattern for the full Aile set, but it had the same four splayed vanes and made the Strike's flight seem almost effortless compared to the awkward way its companions lumbered through the air. It had shoulder packs, too - one, with the gatling and two cooling plates, from the Launcher set and the other, heavily armored and sporting what looked like one of Duel's beam sabers charging in place of the intended Midas Messer, from the Sword. The last component - the beam carbine it was aiming her way - likely had been meant for the Aile, but could just as easily have been slated for the Duel or Aegis.
Then the targeting computer's building tone sang solid in her ears. She squeezed the trigger - and felt her blood start to run cold in her veins. The two-thirds of the lower right wing that were pinwheeling away from the reeling mobile suit was considerably more visible damage than she had expected to do, but hse had been aiming at its center of mass and that shot had been on target.
He had dodged it. This college student, this boy with no combat record of any kind had not only known - somehow - the exact moment before her squeeze and the shot's discharge, but in only four days had been able to gain enough control over his machine to evade it, a degree of mastery that a veteran pilot like Lieutenant la Flaga was still struggling towards.
This would be rather tricky...
Even braced with both of the suit's arms the big gun lost acuraccy when fired too quickly, as the 'sabots', the driver rings that let the gun's electromagnets gain purchase on the non-magnetic tungsten composite of its ammunition's clustered darts, vaporised and melted unevenly from the power fluxing through it and the undissipated heat trapped in the weapon's bore, throwing its aim and impulse off of true no matter what the wielder's skill.
A volley of four shots didn't accomplish much save to send the Strike dancing all across the sky as it avoided them, but the fifth tha followed a moment later came as it was trapped in the middle of recovering its equilibrium and missed landing squarely on its center of mass only because of her weapon's building inaccuracy. A sixth likely would have missed entirely - that or finally melted something important - and anyway the Strike's pilot picked that moment to decide that she'd spent long enough making his life interesting and tat it was about time he returned the favor.
She had fired from behind one of the base's smaller buildings, a residential block that had already been evacuated now that the alert was up, and ducked Buster down and under its cover when she saw him bring the beam rifle around. With the enemy suit moving as high and fast as he was it would only take him a moment to gain an angle to shoot over it, but that was enough time for her wepaon to cool and for her to throw Buster the body-length or two needed to be out of his crosshairs when-
Natalie cursed as vividly as only someone raised around soldiers could when Strike came back into view - he hadn't been as naive as she'd expected, and had done the same as she had. That made it a race to see which of them coudl come on target first. With Buster's weight braced against the ground and with his better targeting systems, it should have been her advantage.
It wasn't. Whether it was luck or Coordinator genetics or more of her foe's unnatural skill, Strike's shoulder cannon came on target first, battering her armor with explosive shells from the two launchers and enough gatling rounds to make her power reserves dissolve in a manner alarmingly reminiscent of a sand castle trapped under a waterfall. Buster was lying on his back where she had dropped him, aiming up at the sky, and a frantic twist and a blast from redlined thrusters tore them out of the way just in time to avoid being caught as Strike's beam rifle came up and added its voice to the fullisade.
Feet braced shoulder-width apart as they came upright and the gun braced at the hip and swinging around and up to bear on...
The GINN that crashed down across Buster's shoulders and sent them hammering to the ground came as a complete surprise, and she screamed involuntarily as the cockpit straps dug into her wounds with no warning. A split second later she had recovered and shoved it off angrily and hauled Buster to his feed a second time, then glanced at her screens to reestablish her situational awareness and try to find the Strike. Lieutenant la Flaga was in the sky, dueling with that increasingly battered-looking CGUE, and the half-wrecked machine scuttling for the shoreline as fast as its remaining limbs could drag it was the only GINN in sight.
A third of the base was on fire, dormitories and warehouses sending a hellish pall of flame-shot smoke over the entire scene. She could catch glimpses of the Duel stalking through the clear patches within the holocaust, and as she watched, Ramius's suit seemed to drop out of one of the heat-shimmers surrounding it to trade three quick blows before stepping back and vanishing again. Her own opponent wasn't in sight, but had to be buzzing around somewhere below the level where the base's remaining buildings blocked her line of sight.
She and Ramius were more than holding their own, and the GINNs were gone and that CGUE couldn't possibly last much longer... "You've lost today," she said out loud, half to herself and half to the children in the ORB suits, and didn't realize she'd hit the 'transmit' key on instinct until a deep, smooth voice replied to the words.
"Have we?" the man asked harshly, and above her the CGUE swung away from its foe to glance down across where she and Buster stood. "Capturing this place and its people might be what we want, but destroying them is more than good enough!"
"Capture or not," Lieutenant la Flaga cut in, "if you had a nuke or an FAE you would have used them... and anyway, the data is duplicated elsewhere."
"As though we'd take your word on it!" the ZAFT commander sneered, until yet another voice joined the exchange.
"Voice-stress analysis shows a seventy-two percent chance he believes it," Princess Attha told her superior. "And anyway, he's right."
"So you're just going to let us go?"
"Possibly we shouldn't," la Flaga said, and she could hear one of his infuriating devil-may-care-but-I-sure-don't grins in the words, "but destroying those suits wouldn't be worth risking these ones... even if we were certain to win."
Stalemate, and then she heard Strike's pilot - who they still didn't have a name for - speak up. "Let's go. Cut our losses."
And then it was over.

---

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Some character stuff, next, like why Athrun's in uniform and why Cagalli's so obsessive in this timeline, then the liberation of Aube.
Ja, -n

===============================================
"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

[ordnance11]

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But with the death of an influential 'passenger' aboard, she had every excuse to do a security review and have a loyalty check on her crew... what she would do with those showing signs of disloyalty to the Earth Alliance wouldn't be quite according to regulations though. And Thomas can be... supernaturally... insightful in such circumstances.

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Ahh yess...promote the disloyal and brig the rest! Belisarius would approve!
__________________
Into terror!,  Into valour!
Charge ahead! No! Never turn
Yes, it's into the fire we fly
And the devil will burn!
- Scarlett Pimpernell

[Valles]

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"That uniform looks good on you, Lieutenant," said the man who had snuck in the open door of the small office on Jachin Due.
"Sir!" The office's owner glanced up in surprise, and was halfway through the process of shooting to her feet and saluting when the fact that she recognized the face above the councilman's uniform - nearly as well as she would have known her own - managed to penetrate her conciousness and override the relexes her training had implanted.
"'Sir?'" the chairman of the PLANTS Supreme Council teased gently.
Lacus Clyne, ZAFT Space Forces, giggled and came out from behind the cramped desk to give her father a hug. "It's good to see you, Daddy."
"That's better," he said, and kissed her on the forehead, then gestured her back to her seat and settled into the visitor's chair himself. "Daughter, before the business that gave me an excuse to se you... I don't think I've apologised for aski-"
She shook her head and cut him off softly. "You didn't have to ask. Once that awful man started making those accusations about the Council protecting their own children but... Once he tried to capitalize on those people dying like that... You're a good leader, Daddy, and Athrun and the others were right; we can't, I can't let people make me into a weapon against you like that."
"You're more like your mother every day," Siegel told his daughter softly, and his eyes seemed like they were seeing something quite other than her face.
"Do I?" she asked, then smiled, trying to reassure him. "Besides, it's not so bad, helping protect my home."
He shook himself free of whatever memory was in his mind's eye and smiled, himself. "You'll have to tell me about it."
"I will," she promised, "but first...?"

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Okay, disclaimer: My viewing was interrupted before I actually got to see how, or if, Lacus and her father interact in canon. This, and the pieces of their background, seem to make sense based on my reading of who they are, but if I missed - including terms of address - call me on it, okay?
Ja, -n

===============================================
"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

[drakensis]

If I find a single occasion in the series where Lacus and her father are in the same scene, then I'll look at their interaction. Don't hold your breath though - I can't remember any.
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

[katreus]

There's one where Kira is recovering and meets Lacus' father no? And then right after that they find out that they've been betrayed as to what the aims of Operation Split Break is.

[Valles]

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Most of the world's militaries regarded ZAFT as entirely disreputable - undisciplined, disorganized, and ill-trained, dangerous only because of the quality of its equipment and the natural abilities of its personelle.
This judgement had no small basis in fact - for all its firepower, the only armed force available to the PLANTS was, at heart, a militia organization - more civilian than military. 'Spit and polish' was entirely absent, political meddling and neapotism were rampant, orders were regularly ignored, and romantic relationships throughout the chain of command not only accepted, but flaunted!
The ORB Space Forces, fresh from a grueling series of training exercises with their orbit-bound allies, could, had they been so inclined, have informed their fellow soldiers that believing that any of these things made ZAFT less effective on the field was a quite fatal mistake. Its people knew their jobs, and performed them brilliantly - as was only to be expected, in the final analysis, from the best and the brightest of a society which had to be ever-vigilant against the deadly dangers of its surrounding environment - and its regulations and traditions explicitly trusted its personnel to have a better grasp on their own circumstances, duties, and neccessities than any other officer, however senior, who was not present.
So, when the ZAFT supply freighter Coelia had completed the burn inserting it onto its Hohmann transfer from L5 and PLANTS to low Earth orbit, its captain, Lacus Clyne, was well within her rights to decide to brief the commanders of the three combat Teams which had been stuffed into her command's cavernous cargo bays on far more than most militaries would have considered it their business to know.
"Completing this operation quickly is of the highest priority," she told them bluntly. "Our Earthside allies, especially the African Community and USSA, have already made irrevocable strategic decisions which commit them to open combat with the Eurasian and Atlantic Federations - on the understanding that extensive battlefield and logistical support would be available from ZAFT, they have undertaken to gain and retain control of the Victoria and Panama massdrivers.
"Most of ORB and Oceania's forces are also already deployed - for a blitzkrieg offensive against the Republic of East Asia."
Only one of the men listening to her actually had any experience in combat, but all three of them sat straight up when they heard that. "An offensive?" one asked, for the fact that any such thing was planned had been a closely held secret.
"But why aren't they already moving?" another brought up. "If they wait too long, the Republic will mobilize and the window for that will close."
"Because as things stand," Thoms, the veteran, concluded slowly, "the Atlantic Federation has a secure base and half its Pacific Fleet right in the center of ORB's territory."
Lacus nodded. "ORB can afford to fight the Republic straight up, if it has to. But they can't afford to let that lie - it would be suicide. Even just attempting this operation without pulling anything out of their ready forces is a risk."
The first commander let out his breath in a huff and nodded slowly. "Taking out the Republic in this phase of things could cut years off the war."
"And," Thoms pointed out, "Aube has, what, a quarter of ORB's industrial base?"
"Closer to a tenth, I think. But no, that's still nothing they can really afford to lose."
"So this needs to happen and happen now," the second man concluded firmly. "Even if the losses mean ORB has to borrow from Oceania's reserves to keep the place."
Lacus nodded, slow and grim, and the other two officers agreed also.

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Not that this is really the same Lacus; I don't think that any kind of military officer training regimen, especially one aimed at Coordinators, would leave a person nearly as naive as she was in canon.
Not to say that her principles will have changed or anything, but the rose-colored glasses are gone, and the velvet gloves maybe a little threadbare.
Ja, -n

===============================================
"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

[Valles]

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The pointer landed against the briefing screen with a hard, flat 'krak' of plastic on plastic, and newly promoted Lieutenant Commander la Flaga almost jumped as the noise jolted him out of the doze he'd fallen into while the pompous windbag up front went over information everyone in the room had heard half-a-dozen times already.
Yes, Aube was valuable as a symbol. Yes, it was a mid-Pacific base that the Atlantic Federation badly needed if it was to prosecute a war with ORB. Yes, it was critical to keep ORB from regaining access to the military secrets and unique technologies buried in Morgenroete's files and databases. Yes, this was an important mission they were being assigned now that their three suits were safely documented down to the last centimeter.
They'd gotten all that straight the first time, dammit! Along with the fact that, no matter how true those things might be, their superiors did not consider it important enough to assign more than token assets to reinforce their defenders.
His academy classmates might have said that he had a knack for making the impossible, possible, but the scale of this was a little outside his reach.
When the windbag was satisfied that they'd been sufficiently impressed by the importance of the task only he had been trusted enough to brief them on, he finally began to get to the point. "ORB has concentrated half their fleet around Segen," he said. "Including the Takemizuchi and several lesser carriers. We're not expecting them to seriously contest our control of the air during the first phase, but intelligence reports suggest that they may be planning to deploy as many as one hundred and twenty mobile suits in the primary wave. Since evacuation and relocation efforts are expected to have the city emptied by then, the 1st Mobile Suit Squadron is being deployed as a forward reserve for the infantry and armor assets being stationed there."
One hundred and twenty? That was a sizable proportion of ORB's overall strength - rather more than would have been left in this area after losing the forces actually stationed in the capital. "They finally broke out some of those 'Reaction Battallions' they've been hiding from us? Or did they pull troops from the north?"
"Neither," the windbag snapped, he evidently being the sort who resented interruptions. "The space monsters launched a heavy lifter from Jachin Due about two and a half days ago; thrust balance and acceleration are consistent with a full load of GINNs."
Any seasoned spaceman knew the Hohmann transit time for the Earth-Moon system, knew when and how to change the speed of their orbits and how long to spend coasting. Mu didn't even need to think about it any more. "That'd put them into Onogoro Spaceport around dawn tomorrow, wouldn't it?" If they went straight into reentry rather than taking an intervening orbit or two, which was likely given how much of a hurry ORB would be in.
The briefing officer was glaring at him, but Mu didn't give a damn, not after sitting through half an hour of redundant information that should never have taken more than three sentances in the first place. "Yes, Commander, it would. Encoded signal traffic between ORB and PLANTS has been considerable, and, though we haven't broken the code, would be consistent with their having their plans coordinated before that ship lands. If that's so, they could move almost within the hour of touchdown. Even if that's not the case, we expect the attack to take place within that same day.
"The first phase is expected to be a cruise missile bombardment directed at our defensive missile batteries. Once they have been cleared, the most likely first wave will be a party of mobile suits approaching the island submerged and only surfacing to clear a beachead for the rest of the invasion force..."

---

---

Ja, -n

===============================================
"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

[Valles]

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If Maria Ramius had been the sort of person to curse the incompetence of those around her or the unfairness of the universe, the air inside Blitz's cockpit would have been too blue to see through. As it was, their briefing officer's fatuous comment about 'terrain working in their favor' had her almost growling in frustration as she hunted the last survivor of the enemy unit.
ORB mobile suits fought in squads of six, four 'soldier' types, a commander, and a walking cannon. They'd killed two of the grunts and the tank column they were reinforcing had accounted for two more - while taking fifty percent losses - and la Flaga was dueling the leader at this very moment, which meant that the one approaching around -that- corner would be...
Her shot missed; it had been aimed at what should have been chest-level, but the ORB soldier had sent his machine past the corner like a runner sliding in to home plate and had already started swinging his suit's main gun down to bear on her the moment it cleared the building.
She brought her aim-point down with a hiss of mingled fury and sudden fear.
The Deimos' elbow slammed into the pavement and brought the cannon's fall up brutally short.
The beam rifle came on target.
The driver rails stored within the cannon's main housing - itself two-thirds as long as the suit carrying it and the same proportion of the 'stored' weapon's length - snapped out to full extension, almost doubling the length of its accelleration ladder.
They fired in almost the same instant. The particle beam burned a small crater in the ORB suit's thigh, but lacked the energy to fully penetrate the massive armor and destabilize the synthetic atoms making up the battery underneath.
The railgun's round missed entirely, which wasn't a surprise, since her own machine was safely hidden by its mirage colloid.
What -was- a surprise was when the High Explosive, Airburst round carried on comfortably past her to detonate ten meters short of the building that marked the end of the short cross-street.
It felt like a giant the size of a skyscraper had kicked Blitz in the ass.
The impact was enough to put stars before her eyes, and on the screens she could see the blast wave shatter windows and small buildings, and send dumpsters and parked cars skittering along the street like tumbleweeds. Needless to say, the carefully maintained envelope of nanomachines shielding her from her enemy's cameras vanished just as easily as any pane of glass.
Instinct made her stompt on the pedals and keep Blitz moving, and the suit's own computers, noting that their stealth ability had been lost, switched on the phase shift armor without needing any input from her, which between them meant that the armor-piercing round that followed only glanced off of its ankle, and not hard enough to detonate.
The Deimos pilot abandoned his weapon and rolled back out of reach as she brought the beam saber down, and by the time she had landed and taken the first step forward to come back on balance had slipped his suit's backup weapon, which looked incongrously like a combat knife built to scale, out from under the curved shields that were folded, beetle-like, close over its back. He lunged, driving the blade straight towards her cockpit, and she brought the saber back up in a backhand arc that caught his machine's leading arm just above the elbow, sending it and its weapon crashing to the ground as the smaller but heavier suit continued on and knocked her own machine sprawling.
Blitz was the fastest of the three stolen prototypes, and pushing off with its arms at the same time as she threw the throttles wide open launched it hurtling into the sky only a fraction of a second above her enemy's uncanny twisting kick. Theoretically, of course, there was no reason why she couldn't have done about the same thing with her own suit, but what she could envision and Blitz's hardware execute were both very different things from instructions she could convey to its operating system through the neural pickups built into the cockpit. Whatever method ORB had used to get around those inherent limitations of human minds - Natural or Coordinator - they seemed determined to keep as close to their chest as possible.
On the other hand, she thought as she rolled over near the top of that ballistic arc and cocked her suit's right arm and its beam saber back into position for a killing blow, while that trick of theirs might have increased the precision and flexibility of ORB's suits' movements, it couldn't do anything to actually make them faster. By the time the Deimos had come back upright and begun to step out of the way it was too late; a quick burst from the thrusters cut the time needed to fall the remaining distance by a factor of four, and sent the beam saber shearing down through the center of her foe lengthwise a split second before Blitz landed with enough force to crater the paving beneath it and snatch the breath from her lungs as the cockpit's straps punished her chest.
Once she had recovered her ability to think she cut the saber and hauled Blitz to its feet; there was still one suit left.

---

---

Ja, -n

===============================================
"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

[Elsa Bibat]

...for further details on mystery woman check my lj for further posts. The second part's already been posted before.
*******
An eternity and a moment before...
UC 0078
Doctor Rizak looked down at the young woman before him with a worried gaze. She was sleeping restlessly, mouthing strange words in her sleep.
The pressure door opened and Ensign Noah entered. The doctor nodded acknowledgment to the younger man's entrance.
"Hello, doctor." Bright glanced over at the room's only occupant. "Will she be all right?"
Rizak understood the worried look in the young man's eyes. A large bandage covered half the young woman's face and her fevered whispers could be heard over the medical equipment's continual beeping.
From what he'd heard, she was a hero. The image of a woman, bleeding copiously from one side of her face, was like an angel of mercy for many of the civilian refugees now making the White Base as their temporary home. She had organized a coordinated evacuation that quite possible saved a majority of civilians of Side 7.
However,her sudden appearance during the Zeon attack, her black and white militaristic uniform and the inability to identify her had made her suspicious. Thankfully, the pseudo-comatose state in which she had lapsed into after bringing a group of children on board had made it possible for her quarantine and containment.
"Can you understand what she's saying, Doctor?"
The white-haired doctor shook his head.
"A few words of OI English, a smattering of pre-UC Japanese are all that I could understand." Rizak looked to his new captain.
"She's angry, sir. Very angry. And she is no threat to us. That's what I understand."
The young officer nodded and asked. "Who is she angry at and why do you think she is no threat?"
An old tired smile on the doctor's face as he shook his head.
"She's angry with the world and from the words that I could understand she is no threat."
Bright was obviously puzzled at that. "What is she saying?"
The doctor's glance held sadness in his eyes as he put his hand on the young woman's own. He did not know why he did that. A tiny flash of intuition or the universe whispering in his ear, who knew?, but it had a visible effect.
"Words that a good doctor knows by heart, sir."
He smiled as suddenly the ragged endless whispers stopped completely and the bed's occupant relaxed.
"No one dies. Not today."
*******
An eternity and a moment later...
C.E. 71
"FUCK!!!"
Kira Yamato stared at the one-eyed woman as she started swearing up a storm. The tirade stopped as she roughly grabbed him and started dragging him away.
"What-"
"Shut up," snapped the older Coordinator - she had to be one with the unnatural reflexes she had displayed earlier. "We are walking _away_!!!"
"But-"
"Zip it, kid. This is for your own good." A click sounded from the woman's left arm and the gloved fist opened into something like a claw.
A primitive prosthesis.
Then she used it to wrench a titanium bulkhead out of the way.
Kira reconsidered the 'primitive' label and just boggled at the level of gene modification for strength like that.
"Let me explain." Her voice had that rough edge of someone having a very bad day. "That thing back there is called a Gundam. Do you know what that means?"
She continued her march as she answered her own question.
"They mean war. They mean a lot of people of dying. They're like fucking heralds of destruction - you just know humanity is about to kill a lot of themselves when they've managed to make one of those."
"So, kid, _we_ are going to get off this station and find somewhere to hide until all this blows over."
"And if those bastards think I'd be-"
That was when the men with guns came in and it all got very interesting after that.
*******
The woman was fast. Coordinator-fast.
No. Faster.
Lieutenant Tartingel was leading his squad to retrieve one of the targets when they were met by young woman and a teenaged boy. She was obviously dressed in a uniform, though he did not recognize the unit.
This was an Earth Alliance base and this was obviously an Earth Alliance officer and he raised his-
"Kid, down!!!" The woman had obviously figured out his conclusions faster than himself and had pushed the teenager down with a shove.
Something slammed into his collarbone and when he pulled the trigger, the frangible bullets hit the corridor walls. He suddenly found himself staring deep into a grim one-eyed stare.
Out of the coner of his eye, he saw Martinez retching on the floor, the sign of a hard solar plexus blow. The other members of his squad were still raising their-
His collarbone broke. He screamed and felt something sharp and jagged leave his flesh.
Falling to the ground, he could see two more of his men fall to what looked like quick kicks and backhanded slap that sent Killigan flying several feet back. Strength and speed like that wasnt normal. He tried to get up but something had locked his arms and legs, useless.
An eyeblink and his entire squad was down, either unconscious or moaning in pain.
The woman was standing before him and gazed down with her lone eye, a fire in it that hinted at anger.
"A secret Gundam development project on a neutral orbital colony and suddenly guys showing up trying to assault it. That sounds irritatingly familiar."
She knelt down beside him and picked out his medical kit. She slapped on a quick-heal bandage to his wound and grinned a nasty predatory grin.
"You'll be fine in a few minutes. Go back and tell your boss a message."
"No innocents will die today."
"Not this day."

[DKnight54]

Would help if you posted the address to your lj. Only one I could find with a bit of googling is elsab.livejournal.com/, but that doesn't have part two...

Be the Ultimate Ninja! Play Billy Vs. SNAKEMAN today!

[Elsa Bibat]

Sorry about that - I'm still finishing up on what I'll be posting.
The second part is kinda dangling and I'm working on that.

[Elsa Bibat]

Murrue Ramius knew she was dying.
The trouble with that state was the fact that it was taking too damn long.
She had blown the brains out of the commando, but he had managed to snap off two shots.
One missed.
The other one had slammed into her gut, the fragmenting bullet shredding into her internal organs. It must have been her imagination, or the delirium, but she swore she could feel her intestines being torn apart by the fragments everytime she drew breath.
Oh, God, I don't want to die...
There was moisture on her cheeks. She blinked back the tears and grit her teeth through the pain. Think of something else.
Think about the wound and what you can do about it.
Gutshots killed people slow. Murrue knew that.
That was all she knew.
Okay, bad idea.
Damn it, if I was just a second faster...
She shook her head, regretting it afterwards as the sensation added to her vertigo.
She felt the base shudder and heard an explosion from far away.
The young officer had enough strength to prop herself up against a nearby wall. At least she had a clear view of the corridor.
Hah, take that ZAFT! I can shoot anyone that comes by!
She chuckled under her breath and it _hurt_!
How long would it take for her to bleed to death?
Hours? Minutes?
She looked down at the gun she held weakly in her hand. It looked bigger, felt heavier and still smelled of cordite.
I'm dead already. She grit her teeth and made her decision.
Her hand trembled as she raised it up, slowly.
That was when she heard the running footsteps.
She stiffened. ZAFT?
A woman rounded the corner, short brown hair a mess, a black eyepatch covering one eye and dressed in a black uniform.
Reflex took over.
Adrenaline pumped through her as she turned her pistol on the stranger and started shooting.
The woman dodged every shot.
After every flash-and-crack the woman seemed to be in another place. The gun's recoil was hell but she couldn't have been aiming that bad.
Another shot and suddenly the gun was out of her hand. The woman had it.
"Well, that was a waste."
Murrue blinked. That voice...
Impossible, but...
"Thought you were dead," she rasped as she gave her old Captain a weak smile. "Sorry, didn't recognize you. Must be the eyepatch. And the haircut."
Captain Granger looked down at her with puzzlement and knelt down by her side. Murru noticed that one hand seemed to have been balled into a fist, unnaturally still. Prosthetic arm, must have lost it in the incident.
"Young lady, you seem to be in trouble. Let me take a look at that."
Captain seemed to be looking good; her hair was cut shorter than the last time they met, a few crow's feet in her remaining eye, but she looked pretty fantastic for someone who was supposed to have died a year ago. Pretty young, but everyone on the Patroklos called her "old lady" as part of the old seagoing tradition.
"Okay, this is bad, I don't--"
The Captain had looked up from her wound and looked into her eyes, when she saw something that made her stop.
"Fuck."
Whatever she saw in her eyes she didn't like it.
"Bright, what the fuck are you doing as a woman?!? And aren't you supposed to be-- shit!!"
Her old captain looked up at the ceiling and asked swore herself at some invisible audience.
Crap.
Obviously, her old captain had gone crazy and she was going to die because she was crazy. She was about to say something when Captain Granger returned her gaze to her.
The fire in those eyes made her shut up as the older woman put a hand on her wound.
"Okay. Okay. Now I know why they fucking sent me here. And not just Amuro either - fuck, I'll probably have to deal with the whole crew again! Shit!"
Captain Granger chuckled and looked at her again. There was amusement there, though it was the sort that she'd seen in old veterans.
"You're probably thinking I'm crazy, but, hell, I'm your best hope right now.
"Tell me your name again, by the way, I seem to have forgotten it."
Murrue looked at Captain Granger as she felt her abdomen to start getting warm, right around the spot where the captain had her hand.
"But--"
"Just tell me your name okay." A slight smile on her former commanding officer's face made her trust her.
"Lieutenant Murrue Ramius."
"Okay. Thanks."
"Now, Murrue, I'm going to do something - something that will stop you from dying."
Murrue's hopes started to lift but a sharp pain in her stomach made her wince.
"Yeah. It's gonna hurt. And you'll probably be out for a month - thread reconstructions are a bitch after all."
She didn't know what Captain Granger was talking about. But the warmth warred with the pain and she felt hope.
"I need to know one thing: do you want to live?"
Murrue just nodded as she felt a jolt of pain suddenly run up from her stomach, climb up her spine and into her head.
She slammed her head back into the wall and screamed.
Moments, or was it an eternity, later, she started to black out as she felt the warmth recede.
Words chased after her into the dark.
"Well, Murrue, you have to fight."
Then she felt something like a kiss on her forehead and she fell into sleep's embrace.
*************

[Norgarth]

hey Elsa? noticed a typo...
His collarbone broke. He screamed and felt something shard and jagged leave his flesh.
I assume you meant 'sharp' rather than 'shard'.
story looks good, but the only Gundam series I've seen are Wing and Seed, so I'm notgetting the background. I've heard Seed is basicly a retelling of the 1st Gundam series, so I'm assuming miss eyepatch is from that series.__________________
I feel like I'm diagonally parked in a parallel universe.
___________________________
"I've always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific." - George Carlin

[Elsa Bibat]

Thanks for noticing.
You've got the basic gist of it - but it's more like Steph's a dimensional traveller who's had experience with Gundam universes.
She's actually makes a few missteps because she assumes it's going to be a straight retelling of the first Gundam series with different looking characters rather than a remake, but she also does a few smart things because of her limited foreknowledge.
I'm writing this is the way SKJAM did his Ma Vie et Rose - winging it an episode a time. Steph will probably do a lot of stupid things in hindsight. ^_^

[Elsa Bibat]

Athrun Zala heard the comm unit beep on his belt.
Something was wrong.
Radio silence was supposed to be kept all through out the entire operation.
That was unless something really critical came up.
Holding up a hand, he gestured for his squad to stop and brought his comm up to his ear. All squad communications were to pass through him then relayed to Commander la Creuset to maintain comm security.
"Athrun here."
"Athrun, it's Nicol. We have a problem."
"What sort?"
"They've wrecked the Blitz."
"What!?!"
"Some sort of high explosive incendiary. Some Earth Alliance soldier must have threw it into the cockpit and closed the hatch. Lieutenant Tintagel, my advance squad leader, said something about some special operative. Took his squad out with her bare hands."
Athrun swore. He could only imagine the damage that would have caused to the piloting systems, not to mention the sensitive electronics stored within the cockpit section itself.
"I'm moving out and linking up with Yzak. Hopefully, they haven't done this with all five of them. Amalfi out."
"What's up, Athrun?" Rusty Mackenzie inquired.
"Earth Alliance is sabotaging the Gundams before we can reach them. I'll contact the commander on the way. Let's go!!"
With a new sense of urgency, the young ZAFT soldier urged his squad forward.

*******
Steph's taken Blitz out of the running. She really hates Gundams. ^_^

[Valles]

Just like it says; this bit was written out of order. It should go just before the attack on Aube.

---

---

"Hey, kid," came the voice again, and finally pulled Kira from his dismal contemplation of Strike's dull gray inactive profile looming across the hanger.
"Yessir?" he asked, as respectfully as he could but not really able to hide the fact that he'd very much rather have been left alone with his thoughts.
The older pilot - who couldn't have been more than twenty-five himself but whose shoulder bore the distinctive 'broken S' flash that Kira had been told was accorded to those who had distinguished themselves in the war with the Equatorial Union - walked over to lean against the wall and join him in looking at - or through - the mobile suit. "Conscience?" he asked.
That SAM site had nearly killed him; with a little less luck, or without Strike's phase shift armor, he'd have dodged down away from Buster's fire and right into a missile barrage powerful enough to destroy a battleship. As it was it had still had time to get off the first half-dozen of its ripple salvo before he could bring up the beam rifle and detonate the remaining missiles while they were still waiting in their bays.
Seeing that figure run from the control shack with the flames spreading across their jacket - burning alive - had been the first time it had really pressed home what his loyalty to his friends - to Blaze directly and to the others by keeping this nightmare away from their doorstep - was going to cost.
"Yeah."
He could see the veteran nod out of the corner of his eye. "Looked like it. A word of advice?"
"What?"
"There's only two kinds of things on a battlefield - targets and dead men walking. You can't go issuing pardons, kid. Only god himself can take a soldier off of death row, so don't even think you've got one to give. But every target you miss might cost one of your buddies his."
"I can't hit every one, all the time," Kira heard himself whisper.
"Dead men walking, kid. Nothing to do about it but win the war."

---

---

Hm. I just had a thought. I've been feeling almost since I started working on this that it was a little thin - stripped down to its barest bones, with no time or scene for anything but plot. I don't like that; I want to slow it down to a less hectic pace, get deeper inside the characters heads...
Problem is, I'm not sure where to start - maybe I'm just too close to the problem. So I thought I'd ask - what do you want to see? What scenes does it feel like it needs from where you're sitting? What - or who - are you curious about?
Lemme know, 'kay?
Ja, -n

===============================================
"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

[Rieverre]

---

What - or who - are you curious about?

---

A bit about the Astrays could be fun.
Hmm ... a peek at the Zala family, maybe?
More Murrue and Natarle, damnit!
*snicker* Hell, there's a distinct lack of good Kira/Natarle stories out there, and isn't it in-genre for a Gundam show to have the protagonist fall for someone on the other side of the War? If you could swing that, you'd be praised to the heavens by legions of fans. Or, y'know, one or two. One, certainly.
Guys? Back me up here?
-Griever
When tact is required, use brute force. When force is required, use greater force.
When the greatest force is required, use your head. Surprise is everything. - The Book of Cataclysm

[Valles]

---

A bit about the Astrays could be fun.

---

Serpent Tail and the Junk Guild may end up sporting cameos at some point. The mechs themselves are already plotted in for the future.

---

Hmm ... a peek at the Zala family, maybe?

---

Ooh, good idea.

---

More Murrue and Natarle, damnit!

---

Life and times of the 1st MS Squadron, check.

---

*snicker* Hell, there's a distinct lack of good Kira/Natarle stories out there, and isn't it in-genre for a Gundam show to have the protagonist fall for someone on the other side of the War? If you could swing that, you'd be praised to the heavens by legions of fans. Or, y'know, one or two. One, certainly.

---

Er. I think that that absence likely has something to do with the ten-year age difference. And it will continue to.
But I do have someone in mind for the good Ensign, and there will be cross-battlefield romance, though I'm not sure how well it will end, just yet.
Ja, -n

===============================================
"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"