The transition through the jump point from Qewev was textbook perfection. The Alliance popped into existence, followed at one-second intervals by a pair of Chivvay-class heavy cruisers and four Musai-class light cruisers. Each ship was almost instantly surrounded by patterns of fighters launched from catapults or simply flying out of hatches under their own power. The Alliance's fighters were noticiably faster to launch - their pilots having absorbed Roy's insistence upon lightning-fast launch procedures.
The small fraction who had been confident that they knew better than he did were now flying Phoenixs off the cruisers, and cursing their every antecedent right back to the evolution of the species for being stupid enough to think he was bluffing. The pilots swapped out from the cruisers to the Alliance had absorbed this lesson and were almost pathetically grateful for the chance to move into flying Valkyries.
The launch was, of course, quite unnecessary. The system they were entering was empty - it hadn't been colonised and there was nothing more hostile than an unmanned Enforcer sensor buoy with a single jump drone. That was all that there should be of course - unless the Confederacy had managed to develop a third-generation jump drive (possible but not likely), they couldn't have entered the system at all and if they had, the other sensor buoy would have sqawked a warning to this one, which would have sent the jump drone to warn the Qewev system that the system had been violated.
None of which made the precaution pointless of course. Things can go wrong with even the most secure of plans and if nothing else, it was good practise for the next jump, when the dangers would be very very real.
"All squadrons report no contacts," Claudia reported from her console on the bridge. "The system appears to be clear." Not that it was possible to be certain of course. Even the best shipboard sensors couldn't hope to reach any significant distance with any detail and star systems were much larger than most people realised. There were any number of places that a ship or fleet could have been hidden... the system boasted no less than five seperate asteroid belts and twelve dwarf planets in additon to the seven actual planets. Prime colonisation territory but a nightmare to fight in.
"Very good," Gloval said. "Update the buoy and recover everything but the standard patrols. We'll wait an hour to see if there are any reactions before we move to the other jump point."
"Does that mean you're going to tell us where we're going, sir?" Claudia asked sweetly.
"Claudia!" Lisa hissed at her friend.
Gloval nodded solemnly. "We're going to the other jump point in the system, Major Grant," he divulged in a conspiratorial tone. "Please don't let anyone outside the navigation officers know... it's supposed to be a secret." With some effort, he refrained from smiling.
Claudia rolled her eyes. "Sorry sir, I'll be sure not to intrude on your classified material any more," she promised.
"Very good," Gloval congratulated her, rising to his feet. "Actually, there isn no particular reason that I can't tell you now that we have entered this system, but I'll brief everyone at once. Set up a meeting tomorrow morning, Lisa. Have the department heads notified that it may take much of the day and to arrange their schedules accordingly."
The briefing room was crowded again the next morning when Gloval entered the room and took his chair at the head of the table. In addition to the senior officers aboard the Alliance, the six Lieutenant-Colonels commanding the cruisers of the escort had been invited aboard to attend the meeting.
"Ladies, gentlemen," he began. "Normally I would begin the meeting by reviewing our progress but I believe that we are all familiar with how we came here, so let us discuss the future of our little task force. To be precise, we will be enacting a plan that the High Command have eloquently titled Operation Bengal. Very shortly, a significant fleet of vessels will be following us into the system to set up jump point defenses and a forward base here. This base is to support Operation Bengal and any subsequent operations in a new theatre of the war against the Confederacy."
He activated the holo display and the map of the Forty-Two Worlds appeared. There were in fact forty-five systems displayed, three of them marked in the gold that signified a world accessible only by Class-III jump points. One of these flashed steadily as Gloval adjusted the display. "As you can see, we have entered this system from Qewev. Valuable as having a hidden system is, the key advantage that we have here is the second jump point, which leads -" A line appeared on the chart, linking the golden system to another. "- here. To the Ovluvizoe system in the Ukievoe cluster, three jumps behind the Confederate front lines and the only system in the cluster with any known jump routes to the rest of the Forty-Two Worlds. Seizing Ovluvizoe will sever the entire cluster from the Confederacy and do so at a time when the bulk of their Militias are deployed in the Ezoe cluster."
Around the room, everyone fixed their eyes upon the star chart, seeing that this was so. While the Ukievoe cluster was small, with only four systems, it was also one of the most secure in the Confederacy and by severing that connection all four could be taken away.
"Sir," asked one of the cruiser commanders. "I don't - aren't we a little short on numbers for this sort of operation? Taking a whole system needs a fleet, not just a task force, however well prepared."
"You're quite correct," Gloval said. "As it happens, just such a fleet is on it's way here, but as you can imagine, assembling such a force is not a swift endeavour. There was, I imagine, some concern over sending us in so hastily before a proper invasion could be mustered. The deciding factor lies here, in the Zoet system." Another system started to flash on the display, this one in the Ezoe cluster. "As you can see, Zoet is the only system that connects to Ovluvizoe and taking it would force the Confederation to defend much of the rest of the cluster, spreading their forces thinner. What is not yet displayed here is that it is also home to Morgenroete, one of the more innovative military manufacturers in the Confederation."
He brought up display of the Zoet system. "While taking out Morgenroete's Heliopolis factories would not damage the Confederacy's military manufactuing potential as much as attacking the factories of Zeonic Militiary Industrial for example, the High Command's intelligence places the cutting edge of the Confederacy's new mobile suit technology there. The suits prototyped there are not just a new class, they are a new generation entirely and must be considered a step at least as great as that between, shall we say, the Phoenix and the Valkyrie variable fighters."
Gloval paused to let that sink in. "Therefore, rather than directly attacking Ovluvizoe, our mission is to break through whatever picketing forces there may be between ourselves and Zoet and launch an attack on Heliopolis to capture the prototypes and as much design material as possible from the factories there. Once we have that technology, we can counterbalance whatever advantage the Confederacy will gain from them."
"Now," he declared. "This is our objective and it is our duty to devise a means by which we shall accomplish it!"
It was another beautiful day on the Heliopolis habitat and Kira Yamato, for one, was taking it for granted. The slim teenager was sprawled in the corner of a gazebo - one of several scattered across the lawns of the campus - a laptop workstation his lap, displaying news items about the ongoing war that Kira was ignoring in favour of working on his class assignment.
"So here you are!" came a call and he looked around to see Tolle Koenig and Mirialla Hawe standing at the entrance to the gazebo. "Professor Kato was looking for you."
"He said to drag you over once we found you," Mirialla added with an grin. The young couple were on the same engineering course as Kira and just as familair with his habit of using the students as assistants for his own research. "What is it that he needs your help with now?"
"Damn," Kira muttered and turned to place the laptop on the gazebo's table, the motion sending the small robotic bird that had been watching him fluttering into the air. "I haven't even finished the job he gave me yesterday!" He slumped down, letting the bird land on his shoulder.
"What's that on the news?" Tolle asked, looking at the screen over Kira's shoulder.
"It's about the battle last month at Alpha Iayuvi," Kira said. "A friend of mine sent it to me, said he was in it. I haven't watched all that much of it though."
"Really? Well, that's a long way away," Tolle pointed out. "And there's more danger from Professor Kato than there is in the war reaching us here. Let's go."
The Professor was working in his laboratory attached to the big Morgenroete factory complex, several miles along the colony cylinder, so the three of them headed for the taxi-rank nearby. As students, they could use the robotic taxis as public transport between approved destinations and unless the college let up on it's draconian rules against students owning private vehicles, it was the best way to travel.
There was already a cluster of students waiting and one of them turned to wave at them. "Mirialla!" called a redheaded girl in a pink frock. "Hi!"
Tolle watched Kira's face as the redhead pled with Mirialla for support against the other girls, all hungry for gossip about the letter she'd received from her boyfriend. It had been obvious to Tolle since the beginning of the semester that his friend had a thing for Mirialla's roommate Flay, and it was clear that the fact that she had a boyfriend didn't seem to have changed that, even though he still lacked the confidence to approach her. It was a bit weird - Kira wasn't exactly a nerd, although he was near the top of the class academically, but when it came to girls, he had no confidence at all.
They stepped aside to let the next group waiting for a taxi go past before Flay got tired of the ragging and haughtily took the next taxi, her friends scrambling to get in before it left. They could hear Flay directing the taxi towards the nearest shopping centre, and Tolle noted that from the look on Mirialla's face he'd better find some pretext to go that way with her soon, let her get some of those female shopping impulses worked out.
The taxi whisked them quickly to the checkpoints at the edge of the Morgenroete complex (Kira had been surprised at the security until Professor Kato told him that there were usually thirty or forty attempts a year to break in and make off with proprietory material before it was patented) and almost as quickly across the landscaped park that Morgenroete maintained between the perimeter and their actual factories, in order to maintain their share of the air maintenance requirements.
Only a few miles from these scenes of peace, something quite close to panic was beginning to take hold in Heliopolis Port Control.
"The unknown ships are still approaching!" called one officer.
"Repeat the challenge!" ordered his supervisor. "And see if you can contact the jump point traffic control station. They'd be taking a funny route but they might be coming in from Ovluvizoe."
"They're military!" another officer reported. "Long range sensors say it's Militia cruisers - two heavies and four lights. I'm not picking up an IFF signal though."
"Dammit!" growled the supervisor. "Those clowns probably aren't even listening to their radios. Get the local Militia post on the line as well. Maybe they know what's going on."
"I have a response from the jump point, sir," called the first officer. "There's an signal coming through but it's pretty garbled - looks like electro-magnetic interference."
"What? Are they being jammed?"
"I don't think so - there was an Electronic Counter-Counter Measures class a couple of years ago and this doesn't look like anything that they showed us."
The supervisor shook his head. "What are they playing at?" he muttered. "Adjust the sensor sweeps for mobile suits - if they're arsing about out there with ships there are probably suits there as well. It would be just our luck to have some idiot in a GINN blunder into - oh crap."
The screen in front of him lit up and it wasn't just showing the cruisers any more. Against sensors calibrated only for picking up ships, almost any suit could remain invisible at distances of more than a few hundred miles, and variable fighters were smaller and stealthier than most. Closing in rapidly on Heliopolis were dozens of them - a full wing if the supervisor was remembering the briefings he'd been given since the war broke out correctly.
"They're Enforcers," he said with calm that he did not feel. "Sound an alarm. Notify the civil authorities that we're under attack and punch a call through to the Kpove and Ovloe jump points. Someone has to get the word out and there's Militias fleet in Kpove."
The compartment was rocked by an explosion that sounded far too close and he closed his eyes. "Please tell me that that wasn't the main transmitter," he asked. It was the last thing anyone said in the compartment before two short-range missiles from the lead Valkyrie bathed the Port Control structure with plasma fires and killed everyone within.
The explosions trailed across the port as local forces responded. This far from the frontlines, all that that amounted to was a single squad of GINNs, piloted by those left behind when the pick of the Militias had deployed for the warzones. Outnumbered ten to one, they wouldn't have stood a chance against Phoenixs, much less against Valkyries armed with beam rifles as effective as their own.
The real action was inside the colony however. A squadron of Phoenixes had accompanied the Valkyries, all of them D-variant two seaters, and now they punched through the port and raced along the length of the cylinder towards Morgenroete, clinging to the sides to avoid anti-air fire from the concealed defense emplacements hidden around the factory. Even so, missiles lanced out and two Phoenixs died - one torn apart in mid-air and the other pinwheeling to the ground without a wing, carving a path of destruction through the apartment building that it struck.
The remaining ten raced over the perimeter, engines snapping down as they adopted gerwalk configuration and their cannon picked off guard posts and security stations. Three more were brought down by the defenders, one by a plucky guard and a portable anti-mobile suit rocket launcher, but their crews managed to bale out and the other crews set their demolition charges and joined them on the ground. All twenty were in black commando gear and sporting heavy submachine guns. Half of them were marines from the Alliance's onboard complement, and the others were the pilots - handpicked by Roy Fokker for the mission he was leading them on.
The goal was brutally clear. There were five prototypes in the factory, all of them operational. No matter what, five pilots had to reach the prototypes and fly them out to the waiting cruisers. Everyone else was expendable.
"There's convoy forming at Gate Seven," Rick Hunter reported as he reached the rest of them, his marine in company. "I saw three mobile suit carriers, all occupied."
"They must be withdrawing the prototypes to a more secure location," Fokker concluded. "Excellent." The last comment drew some peculiar looks and he grinned. "Well it's easier than having to look for them. Still, it could be a decoy. We'll split into two teams. Ace - I'll take half the group to check out the convoy, you take the other half into the factories to see what's still there."
Ace nodded. "Not a problem old chum. Smoke us some kippers, we'll be back for breakfast." He tapped four of the other pilots before leading them and five marines through the nearest door.
Roy watched him go and then shook his head in admiration. "What a guy!" he exclaimed, half in admiration and half in disbelief. "Right then," he told the other pilots. "Let's go see what's on this convoy then." The four pilots - Rick Hunter and his flight - followed him as he began to move through the parkland of the perimeter towards Gate Seven.
"What was that!" Kira gaped as he heard the sonic boom of the fighters. Before anyone in the lab could respond, klaxons began to sound.
"That's an evacuation signal!" Sai exclaimed unnecessarily - no one could live on an orbital colony without being drilled repeatedly on the meaning of the atonal wailing.
From the corner of the room, where the Professors two guests had been waiting for him since Kira arrived, there was a gasp and and a muffled curse. The shorter of the two, a sturdy looking youth in a heavy coat and flatcap covering short corn-blonde hair moved over to the window and then looked back at the slimmer girl who had gasped. Thats an Enforcer variable fighter, the visitor said with confidence. It looks like we arent the only ones to hear rumours.
Enforcers? Here!? Tolle exclaimed. Thats impossible! Theyre out in Etiyoke and clusters near them!
It wouldnt be the first time they managed to get around that, the youth snapped. And the factory here must be their target its the only thing on Heliopolis they could possibly want.
Her companion rose to her feet. We have to go. Im sorry we havent found what youre looking for Cagalli, but we cant stay in the middle of a battle.
There are shelters just across the block, Sai Argyle said, closing down his workstation. Dont take anything you cant live without because theyre going to be cramped. He matched action to words, taking only his jacket as he opened the door.
The others followed but the minute that she was out of the door, Cagalli darted away down the corridor, vanishing around a corner. "Cagalli!" exclaimed the girl.
Kira didn't hesitate before chasing after the youth. "I'll catch up," he called back over his shoulder, before turning the same corner. He didn't know what was going on, but he thought that Cagalli might. On the other hand, a stranger to the complex might well have difficulty getting to safety once their business was done. Assuming that the youth had the sense to realise that getting to safety was called for.
It took him a surprising amount of time to catch up with Cagalli. Kira suspected that there was a lot of Co-ordinator in his heritage a few hundred years back. Odd, since his parents didn't show any of the usual signs, but he was pretty sure that as an eye colour, violet was a sign of some genetic tampering back in his ancestry. He'd always been fast on his feet, but Cagalli was moving quickly and apparently certainly towards one of the factory blocks.
"Wait!" he called as he finally caught hold of the youth by the shoulder. Cagalli's hat went flying as the youth spun around and Kira was surprised to find himself holding onto a girl, rather than a boy as he had expected.
"What?" Cagalli snapped.
"What are you doing!" he hissed. "We have to get out of here."
"Why did you follow me then?" she demanded. "Hurry up and leave!" The building rocked under and impact and Kira could smell an oily fire somewhere upwind of them. Cagalli took the opportunity to pull away from him. "There's something that I have to find here."
Kira shook his head. "You need to get to one of the shelters." He caught hold of her again and started pulling her along a different passage.
"Let go of me, you idiot!" she protested. "This is important!"
"You can look for whatever it is when we're safe!" Kira insisted. "There should still be shelters in the next factory block."
The passage was poorly lit, but the light at the end suggested a larger, better lit chamber. The pair burst out of the passage, the light blinding them for a moment. As their vision cleared, they could see that they were on a gantry overlooking a huge open room that currently house only two huge trucks and an assortment of crates, over which a couple of dozen people in black battledress or coveralls were fighting.
Oh, and the contents of the trucks. Can't forget about those.
Mobile suits. Two of them.
"Is this..." Kira wondered. Morgenroete built all sorts of things here - Heliopolis was a major manufacturing centre in the system, but he'd never heard that they built military hardware.
Cagalli fell to her knees, resting her forehead against the railings. "Just as I thought," she half-wailed. "The Confederacy Militia's new mobile suits... Father, you traitor!"
The last was almost a shout and one of the black-clad soldiers turned and pointed his weapon at them for a moment. Before he could fire though, the man beside him glanced up, shook his head and pushed the weapon down.
Kira dragged Cagalli upright and set up off at a run hauling her behind him by one wrist. "It's no use crying!" he shouted. "Just run!"
Lieutenant Murrue Ramius flinched as another burst of machinegun fire hammered at the truck she was sheltering behind. She pulled a grenade out of her coverall's deep pockets, snagged the pin over a convenient hook and yanked it loose before snapping her arm around the corner, lobbing the explosive towards the source of the gunfire.
The gun fell silent, which might mean nothing, she knew. Some, at least, of the blackclad soldiers attacking the factory were almost certainly smart enough to play dead until she stepped out into their field of vision. She turned and started to climb up the side of the truck. Fortunately, the truck was a mobile suit transport and had been designed with the expectation that someone might need to get up on top, so the framework was pierced regularly to provide a ladder.
At least the attackers weren't going to get all the new suits, she thought. Three of the suits had already been loaded on their trucks when the sirens went off and she'd sent them off immediately to be hidden inside the sprawling city around the factory, while she stayed behind to load the other two. Murrue had no idea how Enforcers had managed to raid this deeply into the Confederation, but it could only be a raid - there was no way that any appreciable military force could have come this far without warning. And that meant that the chances were very good that they would have to leave before they could find the suits.
It was a comfort, small as it was, but she would have to take what she could because she didn't see much chance that her small command could stop them from taking the two suits remaining. As best she could guess there weren't more than a dozen of the commandos - probably less - but they were wearing body armour and armed with automatic weapons while the more numerous technicans had only coveralls and if it wasn't for the small store of grenades and carbines in the security post would have been armed with no more sidearms. As she swung herself up onto the top of the truck she could see people that she'd worked with for months now lying on the floor, dead or dying.
There was a flicker of movement from the other truck and she thought she saw the cockpit hatch close. It might be one of her people - the only chance she saw remaining was to get into the suits and try to escape with them under their own power - but it could also be one of the commandos. Then a black-clad form rose above the side of the her own truck and she threw herself to one side, trying to retrieve her sidearm from the holster although all her instincts told her that she couldn't hope to get it out before the man used the submachinegun that she saw in one fist.
Something came flying across her field of vision and cannoned into the commando's helmet. Startled, he lost his grip on the truck and began to fall backwards with an alarmed cry - the fall probably wouldn't be fatal but it would hurt a lot. He hadn't fallen far enough before Murrue's pistol came around to bear and red blossomed on his chest twice before he fell below the level of the truck's roof.
Looking for the source of the mysterious projectile, Murrue saw a teenager stood on the gantry at the side of the room, arm still outstretched as he recovered his balance from the throw. A kid? What the hell was he doing here, she thought in horror. He was going to get killed.
The thought was cut off as pain flared in her shoulder and she fell forwards onto the top of the mobile suit. Up ahead was the hatch into the cockpit... inside she'd be able to take sanctuary. Pulling out her last grenade, she yanked the pin out with her teeth and dropped it off the side where she'd climbed up. There was a satisfactory scream and the muted thump of a grenade going off far too close to a human body.
"Ace!" someone shouted from below her and she broke into a waddle across the top of the truck, hoping to stay low enough not to draw any more fire. The hatch slid open at her command and she looked up at the kid, who was crawling along the gantry towards an exit. Murrue grimaced. The block that the door led into was on fire already - he'd never get out that way.
"Kid!" she called, waving one arm at him. "Get over here!"
Kira stared down at the woman in disbelief. Did she think he was crazy? Why would he join her in the middle of a gun fight rather than getting to the shelters in the next block?
A bullet whistled above him and smacked into the concrete of the wall as attention was drawn to him. Another burst of shots rang off the door ahead of him and it swing open, releasing a wave of heat. Oh that was just great! This had to be the worst day ever. He glanced at the truck, and at the dark-haired woman who had descended halfway into the hatch into the mobile suit laid out on top of it. If he could just get along the gantry a bit.
Well, it wasn't as if he had a choice. He rose from the metal decking like a runner of blocks and sprinted desperately. Sheer surprise caught the gunmen off guard and their shots hit the metal and concrete well behind him. Coming parallel to the truck, he vaulted over the gantry's rail and hung in the air for a long moment, convinced that at any minute someone would manage to hit him.
Instead, his hand caught hold of a chain hanging from the ceiling - part of a crane, he thought - and he swung a short distance before releasing it. The brief moment on the chain had given Kira enough horizontal momentum to carry him across the gap to land lightly on the upper chest of the mobile suit. A mobile suit, he realised, that didn't look like any mobile suit he'd ever seen before.
The hatch was under the chin of the suit and he scrambled to join the woman inside. She was wearing orange coveralls stained red at her upper right arm by blood. From the way that she held her arm, it was entirely obvious that the blood was her own. "Stay behind me," she ordered. "And try not to touch anything."
She touched a control and the hatch slid closed, sealing them inside the tiny compartment. LEDs lit up, as did several screens, revealing a view of the factory floor that was right out of hades. The fire was spreading into this block and dead bodies were scattered across the floor - sometimes in pieces. On the main screen, a start-up cycle was obviously under way and Kira read the display curiously. "G-U-N-D-A-M... Gundam?" he asked, sounding out the new word.
"It's a new operating system," the woman said absently. "The programming for existing mobile suits just can't keep up with this one. Unfortunately, we haven't got all the bugs out of it yet."
Then the suit lurched and under her less than deft guidance, began to tear itself loose of the truck's restraints, drawing itself upright. The perspective of the screens shifted jerkily up until it displayed a view from some twenty metres or so above ground level, two-thirds of the way towards the ceiling of the cavernous bay.
In the space of time that it had taken for the mobile suit to power up, the other suit in the chamber had also risen and they watched as the red machine left the building by the simple means of battering down the doors and marching out. The pilot certainly seemed to be more capable than Kira's companion, for the machine moved fluidly while his own ride staggered under the turbulence as the red suit's thrusters blazed, driving it up and into the air.
"Dammit!" she muttered, walking clumsily towards the door. When she arrived, they did not see the red mobile suit, but two smaller suits were descending towards them. As they reached the doors, panels opened across the two suits and Kira gasped as hundreds of missiles slashed across the short space dividing them from their target. The suit was blasted back into the factory, falling to the floor under the hammer blows, but to Kira's eyes miraculously, did not appear to have been seriously damaged.
"This is a tough suit," the woman said in relief, "If I could just get it to move!"
Then her face tightened as the two smaller suits walked through the hole in the wall that had once been door and frame. "I don't know if we're that tough though."
The two enemy suits closed in as she struggled to stand, looming over her. Kira leant over her, grabbing hold of the left hand control yoke, driving it forwards and the back thrusters fired, hurling the Gundam up and forwards, its knee hammering into one of the smaller machines.
"What!" exclaimed the woman. "How did you do that?"
Kira ignored her question. "Move over please," he asked and she scrambled out of his way, huddling into the right side of the cockpit while he settled into the pilots chair and pulled down a keyboard. The two suits had pulled back momentarily, but he only had a few brief moments to complete the most urgent hack of an operating system he'd ever tried - and without even knowing the nature of the system architecture.
Murrue watched him in awe. She'd never seen anyone work so easily with an operating system - and unless there had been some massive breech of security, this had to be the first time he'd seen a G.U.N.D.A.M. operating system.
The two enemy suits split up, closing in on the enigmatic suit from opposite sides. First it staggers like a drunk, then it knocks one of them down effortlessly and now it was just standing there. The one thing that they could be sure of was that the black and white coloured suit must be one of the targets. And if they couldn't capture it then it would have to be destroyed.D for Drakensis
Contagious, rampant insanity isnt against the rules.
D for Drakensis
You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.
The small fraction who had been confident that they knew better than he did were now flying Phoenixs off the cruisers, and cursing their every antecedent right back to the evolution of the species for being stupid enough to think he was bluffing. The pilots swapped out from the cruisers to the Alliance had absorbed this lesson and were almost pathetically grateful for the chance to move into flying Valkyries.
The launch was, of course, quite unnecessary. The system they were entering was empty - it hadn't been colonised and there was nothing more hostile than an unmanned Enforcer sensor buoy with a single jump drone. That was all that there should be of course - unless the Confederacy had managed to develop a third-generation jump drive (possible but not likely), they couldn't have entered the system at all and if they had, the other sensor buoy would have sqawked a warning to this one, which would have sent the jump drone to warn the Qewev system that the system had been violated.
None of which made the precaution pointless of course. Things can go wrong with even the most secure of plans and if nothing else, it was good practise for the next jump, when the dangers would be very very real.
"All squadrons report no contacts," Claudia reported from her console on the bridge. "The system appears to be clear." Not that it was possible to be certain of course. Even the best shipboard sensors couldn't hope to reach any significant distance with any detail and star systems were much larger than most people realised. There were any number of places that a ship or fleet could have been hidden... the system boasted no less than five seperate asteroid belts and twelve dwarf planets in additon to the seven actual planets. Prime colonisation territory but a nightmare to fight in.
"Very good," Gloval said. "Update the buoy and recover everything but the standard patrols. We'll wait an hour to see if there are any reactions before we move to the other jump point."
"Does that mean you're going to tell us where we're going, sir?" Claudia asked sweetly.
"Claudia!" Lisa hissed at her friend.
Gloval nodded solemnly. "We're going to the other jump point in the system, Major Grant," he divulged in a conspiratorial tone. "Please don't let anyone outside the navigation officers know... it's supposed to be a secret." With some effort, he refrained from smiling.
Claudia rolled her eyes. "Sorry sir, I'll be sure not to intrude on your classified material any more," she promised.
"Very good," Gloval congratulated her, rising to his feet. "Actually, there isn no particular reason that I can't tell you now that we have entered this system, but I'll brief everyone at once. Set up a meeting tomorrow morning, Lisa. Have the department heads notified that it may take much of the day and to arrange their schedules accordingly."
The briefing room was crowded again the next morning when Gloval entered the room and took his chair at the head of the table. In addition to the senior officers aboard the Alliance, the six Lieutenant-Colonels commanding the cruisers of the escort had been invited aboard to attend the meeting.
"Ladies, gentlemen," he began. "Normally I would begin the meeting by reviewing our progress but I believe that we are all familiar with how we came here, so let us discuss the future of our little task force. To be precise, we will be enacting a plan that the High Command have eloquently titled Operation Bengal. Very shortly, a significant fleet of vessels will be following us into the system to set up jump point defenses and a forward base here. This base is to support Operation Bengal and any subsequent operations in a new theatre of the war against the Confederacy."
He activated the holo display and the map of the Forty-Two Worlds appeared. There were in fact forty-five systems displayed, three of them marked in the gold that signified a world accessible only by Class-III jump points. One of these flashed steadily as Gloval adjusted the display. "As you can see, we have entered this system from Qewev. Valuable as having a hidden system is, the key advantage that we have here is the second jump point, which leads -" A line appeared on the chart, linking the golden system to another. "- here. To the Ovluvizoe system in the Ukievoe cluster, three jumps behind the Confederate front lines and the only system in the cluster with any known jump routes to the rest of the Forty-Two Worlds. Seizing Ovluvizoe will sever the entire cluster from the Confederacy and do so at a time when the bulk of their Militias are deployed in the Ezoe cluster."
Around the room, everyone fixed their eyes upon the star chart, seeing that this was so. While the Ukievoe cluster was small, with only four systems, it was also one of the most secure in the Confederacy and by severing that connection all four could be taken away.
"Sir," asked one of the cruiser commanders. "I don't - aren't we a little short on numbers for this sort of operation? Taking a whole system needs a fleet, not just a task force, however well prepared."
"You're quite correct," Gloval said. "As it happens, just such a fleet is on it's way here, but as you can imagine, assembling such a force is not a swift endeavour. There was, I imagine, some concern over sending us in so hastily before a proper invasion could be mustered. The deciding factor lies here, in the Zoet system." Another system started to flash on the display, this one in the Ezoe cluster. "As you can see, Zoet is the only system that connects to Ovluvizoe and taking it would force the Confederation to defend much of the rest of the cluster, spreading their forces thinner. What is not yet displayed here is that it is also home to Morgenroete, one of the more innovative military manufacturers in the Confederation."
He brought up display of the Zoet system. "While taking out Morgenroete's Heliopolis factories would not damage the Confederacy's military manufactuing potential as much as attacking the factories of Zeonic Militiary Industrial for example, the High Command's intelligence places the cutting edge of the Confederacy's new mobile suit technology there. The suits prototyped there are not just a new class, they are a new generation entirely and must be considered a step at least as great as that between, shall we say, the Phoenix and the Valkyrie variable fighters."
Gloval paused to let that sink in. "Therefore, rather than directly attacking Ovluvizoe, our mission is to break through whatever picketing forces there may be between ourselves and Zoet and launch an attack on Heliopolis to capture the prototypes and as much design material as possible from the factories there. Once we have that technology, we can counterbalance whatever advantage the Confederacy will gain from them."
"Now," he declared. "This is our objective and it is our duty to devise a means by which we shall accomplish it!"
It was another beautiful day on the Heliopolis habitat and Kira Yamato, for one, was taking it for granted. The slim teenager was sprawled in the corner of a gazebo - one of several scattered across the lawns of the campus - a laptop workstation his lap, displaying news items about the ongoing war that Kira was ignoring in favour of working on his class assignment.
"So here you are!" came a call and he looked around to see Tolle Koenig and Mirialla Hawe standing at the entrance to the gazebo. "Professor Kato was looking for you."
"He said to drag you over once we found you," Mirialla added with an grin. The young couple were on the same engineering course as Kira and just as familair with his habit of using the students as assistants for his own research. "What is it that he needs your help with now?"
"Damn," Kira muttered and turned to place the laptop on the gazebo's table, the motion sending the small robotic bird that had been watching him fluttering into the air. "I haven't even finished the job he gave me yesterday!" He slumped down, letting the bird land on his shoulder.
"What's that on the news?" Tolle asked, looking at the screen over Kira's shoulder.
"It's about the battle last month at Alpha Iayuvi," Kira said. "A friend of mine sent it to me, said he was in it. I haven't watched all that much of it though."
"Really? Well, that's a long way away," Tolle pointed out. "And there's more danger from Professor Kato than there is in the war reaching us here. Let's go."
The Professor was working in his laboratory attached to the big Morgenroete factory complex, several miles along the colony cylinder, so the three of them headed for the taxi-rank nearby. As students, they could use the robotic taxis as public transport between approved destinations and unless the college let up on it's draconian rules against students owning private vehicles, it was the best way to travel.
There was already a cluster of students waiting and one of them turned to wave at them. "Mirialla!" called a redheaded girl in a pink frock. "Hi!"
Tolle watched Kira's face as the redhead pled with Mirialla for support against the other girls, all hungry for gossip about the letter she'd received from her boyfriend. It had been obvious to Tolle since the beginning of the semester that his friend had a thing for Mirialla's roommate Flay, and it was clear that the fact that she had a boyfriend didn't seem to have changed that, even though he still lacked the confidence to approach her. It was a bit weird - Kira wasn't exactly a nerd, although he was near the top of the class academically, but when it came to girls, he had no confidence at all.
They stepped aside to let the next group waiting for a taxi go past before Flay got tired of the ragging and haughtily took the next taxi, her friends scrambling to get in before it left. They could hear Flay directing the taxi towards the nearest shopping centre, and Tolle noted that from the look on Mirialla's face he'd better find some pretext to go that way with her soon, let her get some of those female shopping impulses worked out.
The taxi whisked them quickly to the checkpoints at the edge of the Morgenroete complex (Kira had been surprised at the security until Professor Kato told him that there were usually thirty or forty attempts a year to break in and make off with proprietory material before it was patented) and almost as quickly across the landscaped park that Morgenroete maintained between the perimeter and their actual factories, in order to maintain their share of the air maintenance requirements.
Only a few miles from these scenes of peace, something quite close to panic was beginning to take hold in Heliopolis Port Control.
"The unknown ships are still approaching!" called one officer.
"Repeat the challenge!" ordered his supervisor. "And see if you can contact the jump point traffic control station. They'd be taking a funny route but they might be coming in from Ovluvizoe."
"They're military!" another officer reported. "Long range sensors say it's Militia cruisers - two heavies and four lights. I'm not picking up an IFF signal though."
"Dammit!" growled the supervisor. "Those clowns probably aren't even listening to their radios. Get the local Militia post on the line as well. Maybe they know what's going on."
"I have a response from the jump point, sir," called the first officer. "There's an signal coming through but it's pretty garbled - looks like electro-magnetic interference."
"What? Are they being jammed?"
"I don't think so - there was an Electronic Counter-Counter Measures class a couple of years ago and this doesn't look like anything that they showed us."
The supervisor shook his head. "What are they playing at?" he muttered. "Adjust the sensor sweeps for mobile suits - if they're arsing about out there with ships there are probably suits there as well. It would be just our luck to have some idiot in a GINN blunder into - oh crap."
The screen in front of him lit up and it wasn't just showing the cruisers any more. Against sensors calibrated only for picking up ships, almost any suit could remain invisible at distances of more than a few hundred miles, and variable fighters were smaller and stealthier than most. Closing in rapidly on Heliopolis were dozens of them - a full wing if the supervisor was remembering the briefings he'd been given since the war broke out correctly.
"They're Enforcers," he said with calm that he did not feel. "Sound an alarm. Notify the civil authorities that we're under attack and punch a call through to the Kpove and Ovloe jump points. Someone has to get the word out and there's Militias fleet in Kpove."
The compartment was rocked by an explosion that sounded far too close and he closed his eyes. "Please tell me that that wasn't the main transmitter," he asked. It was the last thing anyone said in the compartment before two short-range missiles from the lead Valkyrie bathed the Port Control structure with plasma fires and killed everyone within.
The explosions trailed across the port as local forces responded. This far from the frontlines, all that that amounted to was a single squad of GINNs, piloted by those left behind when the pick of the Militias had deployed for the warzones. Outnumbered ten to one, they wouldn't have stood a chance against Phoenixs, much less against Valkyries armed with beam rifles as effective as their own.
The real action was inside the colony however. A squadron of Phoenixes had accompanied the Valkyries, all of them D-variant two seaters, and now they punched through the port and raced along the length of the cylinder towards Morgenroete, clinging to the sides to avoid anti-air fire from the concealed defense emplacements hidden around the factory. Even so, missiles lanced out and two Phoenixs died - one torn apart in mid-air and the other pinwheeling to the ground without a wing, carving a path of destruction through the apartment building that it struck.
The remaining ten raced over the perimeter, engines snapping down as they adopted gerwalk configuration and their cannon picked off guard posts and security stations. Three more were brought down by the defenders, one by a plucky guard and a portable anti-mobile suit rocket launcher, but their crews managed to bale out and the other crews set their demolition charges and joined them on the ground. All twenty were in black commando gear and sporting heavy submachine guns. Half of them were marines from the Alliance's onboard complement, and the others were the pilots - handpicked by Roy Fokker for the mission he was leading them on.
The goal was brutally clear. There were five prototypes in the factory, all of them operational. No matter what, five pilots had to reach the prototypes and fly them out to the waiting cruisers. Everyone else was expendable.
"There's convoy forming at Gate Seven," Rick Hunter reported as he reached the rest of them, his marine in company. "I saw three mobile suit carriers, all occupied."
"They must be withdrawing the prototypes to a more secure location," Fokker concluded. "Excellent." The last comment drew some peculiar looks and he grinned. "Well it's easier than having to look for them. Still, it could be a decoy. We'll split into two teams. Ace - I'll take half the group to check out the convoy, you take the other half into the factories to see what's still there."
Ace nodded. "Not a problem old chum. Smoke us some kippers, we'll be back for breakfast." He tapped four of the other pilots before leading them and five marines through the nearest door.
Roy watched him go and then shook his head in admiration. "What a guy!" he exclaimed, half in admiration and half in disbelief. "Right then," he told the other pilots. "Let's go see what's on this convoy then." The four pilots - Rick Hunter and his flight - followed him as he began to move through the parkland of the perimeter towards Gate Seven.
"What was that!" Kira gaped as he heard the sonic boom of the fighters. Before anyone in the lab could respond, klaxons began to sound.
"That's an evacuation signal!" Sai exclaimed unnecessarily - no one could live on an orbital colony without being drilled repeatedly on the meaning of the atonal wailing.
From the corner of the room, where the Professors two guests had been waiting for him since Kira arrived, there was a gasp and and a muffled curse. The shorter of the two, a sturdy looking youth in a heavy coat and flatcap covering short corn-blonde hair moved over to the window and then looked back at the slimmer girl who had gasped. Thats an Enforcer variable fighter, the visitor said with confidence. It looks like we arent the only ones to hear rumours.
Enforcers? Here!? Tolle exclaimed. Thats impossible! Theyre out in Etiyoke and clusters near them!
It wouldnt be the first time they managed to get around that, the youth snapped. And the factory here must be their target its the only thing on Heliopolis they could possibly want.
Her companion rose to her feet. We have to go. Im sorry we havent found what youre looking for Cagalli, but we cant stay in the middle of a battle.
There are shelters just across the block, Sai Argyle said, closing down his workstation. Dont take anything you cant live without because theyre going to be cramped. He matched action to words, taking only his jacket as he opened the door.
The others followed but the minute that she was out of the door, Cagalli darted away down the corridor, vanishing around a corner. "Cagalli!" exclaimed the girl.
Kira didn't hesitate before chasing after the youth. "I'll catch up," he called back over his shoulder, before turning the same corner. He didn't know what was going on, but he thought that Cagalli might. On the other hand, a stranger to the complex might well have difficulty getting to safety once their business was done. Assuming that the youth had the sense to realise that getting to safety was called for.
It took him a surprising amount of time to catch up with Cagalli. Kira suspected that there was a lot of Co-ordinator in his heritage a few hundred years back. Odd, since his parents didn't show any of the usual signs, but he was pretty sure that as an eye colour, violet was a sign of some genetic tampering back in his ancestry. He'd always been fast on his feet, but Cagalli was moving quickly and apparently certainly towards one of the factory blocks.
"Wait!" he called as he finally caught hold of the youth by the shoulder. Cagalli's hat went flying as the youth spun around and Kira was surprised to find himself holding onto a girl, rather than a boy as he had expected.
"What?" Cagalli snapped.
"What are you doing!" he hissed. "We have to get out of here."
"Why did you follow me then?" she demanded. "Hurry up and leave!" The building rocked under and impact and Kira could smell an oily fire somewhere upwind of them. Cagalli took the opportunity to pull away from him. "There's something that I have to find here."
Kira shook his head. "You need to get to one of the shelters." He caught hold of her again and started pulling her along a different passage.
"Let go of me, you idiot!" she protested. "This is important!"
"You can look for whatever it is when we're safe!" Kira insisted. "There should still be shelters in the next factory block."
The passage was poorly lit, but the light at the end suggested a larger, better lit chamber. The pair burst out of the passage, the light blinding them for a moment. As their vision cleared, they could see that they were on a gantry overlooking a huge open room that currently house only two huge trucks and an assortment of crates, over which a couple of dozen people in black battledress or coveralls were fighting.
Oh, and the contents of the trucks. Can't forget about those.
Mobile suits. Two of them.
"Is this..." Kira wondered. Morgenroete built all sorts of things here - Heliopolis was a major manufacturing centre in the system, but he'd never heard that they built military hardware.
Cagalli fell to her knees, resting her forehead against the railings. "Just as I thought," she half-wailed. "The Confederacy Militia's new mobile suits... Father, you traitor!"
The last was almost a shout and one of the black-clad soldiers turned and pointed his weapon at them for a moment. Before he could fire though, the man beside him glanced up, shook his head and pushed the weapon down.
Kira dragged Cagalli upright and set up off at a run hauling her behind him by one wrist. "It's no use crying!" he shouted. "Just run!"
Lieutenant Murrue Ramius flinched as another burst of machinegun fire hammered at the truck she was sheltering behind. She pulled a grenade out of her coverall's deep pockets, snagged the pin over a convenient hook and yanked it loose before snapping her arm around the corner, lobbing the explosive towards the source of the gunfire.
The gun fell silent, which might mean nothing, she knew. Some, at least, of the blackclad soldiers attacking the factory were almost certainly smart enough to play dead until she stepped out into their field of vision. She turned and started to climb up the side of the truck. Fortunately, the truck was a mobile suit transport and had been designed with the expectation that someone might need to get up on top, so the framework was pierced regularly to provide a ladder.
At least the attackers weren't going to get all the new suits, she thought. Three of the suits had already been loaded on their trucks when the sirens went off and she'd sent them off immediately to be hidden inside the sprawling city around the factory, while she stayed behind to load the other two. Murrue had no idea how Enforcers had managed to raid this deeply into the Confederation, but it could only be a raid - there was no way that any appreciable military force could have come this far without warning. And that meant that the chances were very good that they would have to leave before they could find the suits.
It was a comfort, small as it was, but she would have to take what she could because she didn't see much chance that her small command could stop them from taking the two suits remaining. As best she could guess there weren't more than a dozen of the commandos - probably less - but they were wearing body armour and armed with automatic weapons while the more numerous technicans had only coveralls and if it wasn't for the small store of grenades and carbines in the security post would have been armed with no more sidearms. As she swung herself up onto the top of the truck she could see people that she'd worked with for months now lying on the floor, dead or dying.
There was a flicker of movement from the other truck and she thought she saw the cockpit hatch close. It might be one of her people - the only chance she saw remaining was to get into the suits and try to escape with them under their own power - but it could also be one of the commandos. Then a black-clad form rose above the side of the her own truck and she threw herself to one side, trying to retrieve her sidearm from the holster although all her instincts told her that she couldn't hope to get it out before the man used the submachinegun that she saw in one fist.
Something came flying across her field of vision and cannoned into the commando's helmet. Startled, he lost his grip on the truck and began to fall backwards with an alarmed cry - the fall probably wouldn't be fatal but it would hurt a lot. He hadn't fallen far enough before Murrue's pistol came around to bear and red blossomed on his chest twice before he fell below the level of the truck's roof.
Looking for the source of the mysterious projectile, Murrue saw a teenager stood on the gantry at the side of the room, arm still outstretched as he recovered his balance from the throw. A kid? What the hell was he doing here, she thought in horror. He was going to get killed.
The thought was cut off as pain flared in her shoulder and she fell forwards onto the top of the mobile suit. Up ahead was the hatch into the cockpit... inside she'd be able to take sanctuary. Pulling out her last grenade, she yanked the pin out with her teeth and dropped it off the side where she'd climbed up. There was a satisfactory scream and the muted thump of a grenade going off far too close to a human body.
"Ace!" someone shouted from below her and she broke into a waddle across the top of the truck, hoping to stay low enough not to draw any more fire. The hatch slid open at her command and she looked up at the kid, who was crawling along the gantry towards an exit. Murrue grimaced. The block that the door led into was on fire already - he'd never get out that way.
"Kid!" she called, waving one arm at him. "Get over here!"
Kira stared down at the woman in disbelief. Did she think he was crazy? Why would he join her in the middle of a gun fight rather than getting to the shelters in the next block?
A bullet whistled above him and smacked into the concrete of the wall as attention was drawn to him. Another burst of shots rang off the door ahead of him and it swing open, releasing a wave of heat. Oh that was just great! This had to be the worst day ever. He glanced at the truck, and at the dark-haired woman who had descended halfway into the hatch into the mobile suit laid out on top of it. If he could just get along the gantry a bit.
Well, it wasn't as if he had a choice. He rose from the metal decking like a runner of blocks and sprinted desperately. Sheer surprise caught the gunmen off guard and their shots hit the metal and concrete well behind him. Coming parallel to the truck, he vaulted over the gantry's rail and hung in the air for a long moment, convinced that at any minute someone would manage to hit him.
Instead, his hand caught hold of a chain hanging from the ceiling - part of a crane, he thought - and he swung a short distance before releasing it. The brief moment on the chain had given Kira enough horizontal momentum to carry him across the gap to land lightly on the upper chest of the mobile suit. A mobile suit, he realised, that didn't look like any mobile suit he'd ever seen before.
The hatch was under the chin of the suit and he scrambled to join the woman inside. She was wearing orange coveralls stained red at her upper right arm by blood. From the way that she held her arm, it was entirely obvious that the blood was her own. "Stay behind me," she ordered. "And try not to touch anything."
She touched a control and the hatch slid closed, sealing them inside the tiny compartment. LEDs lit up, as did several screens, revealing a view of the factory floor that was right out of hades. The fire was spreading into this block and dead bodies were scattered across the floor - sometimes in pieces. On the main screen, a start-up cycle was obviously under way and Kira read the display curiously. "G-U-N-D-A-M... Gundam?" he asked, sounding out the new word.
"It's a new operating system," the woman said absently. "The programming for existing mobile suits just can't keep up with this one. Unfortunately, we haven't got all the bugs out of it yet."
Then the suit lurched and under her less than deft guidance, began to tear itself loose of the truck's restraints, drawing itself upright. The perspective of the screens shifted jerkily up until it displayed a view from some twenty metres or so above ground level, two-thirds of the way towards the ceiling of the cavernous bay.
In the space of time that it had taken for the mobile suit to power up, the other suit in the chamber had also risen and they watched as the red machine left the building by the simple means of battering down the doors and marching out. The pilot certainly seemed to be more capable than Kira's companion, for the machine moved fluidly while his own ride staggered under the turbulence as the red suit's thrusters blazed, driving it up and into the air.
"Dammit!" she muttered, walking clumsily towards the door. When she arrived, they did not see the red mobile suit, but two smaller suits were descending towards them. As they reached the doors, panels opened across the two suits and Kira gasped as hundreds of missiles slashed across the short space dividing them from their target. The suit was blasted back into the factory, falling to the floor under the hammer blows, but to Kira's eyes miraculously, did not appear to have been seriously damaged.
"This is a tough suit," the woman said in relief, "If I could just get it to move!"
Then her face tightened as the two smaller suits walked through the hole in the wall that had once been door and frame. "I don't know if we're that tough though."
The two enemy suits closed in as she struggled to stand, looming over her. Kira leant over her, grabbing hold of the left hand control yoke, driving it forwards and the back thrusters fired, hurling the Gundam up and forwards, its knee hammering into one of the smaller machines.
"What!" exclaimed the woman. "How did you do that?"
Kira ignored her question. "Move over please," he asked and she scrambled out of his way, huddling into the right side of the cockpit while he settled into the pilots chair and pulled down a keyboard. The two suits had pulled back momentarily, but he only had a few brief moments to complete the most urgent hack of an operating system he'd ever tried - and without even knowing the nature of the system architecture.
Murrue watched him in awe. She'd never seen anyone work so easily with an operating system - and unless there had been some massive breech of security, this had to be the first time he'd seen a G.U.N.D.A.M. operating system.
The two enemy suits split up, closing in on the enigmatic suit from opposite sides. First it staggers like a drunk, then it knocks one of them down effortlessly and now it was just standing there. The one thing that they could be sure of was that the black and white coloured suit must be one of the targets. And if they couldn't capture it then it would have to be destroyed.D for Drakensis
Contagious, rampant insanity isnt against the rules.
D for Drakensis
You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.