Mobile Suit Zaku

[Jackie]

Mobile Suit Zaku

Rio Grande​

Six days. It had been six days since they rolled into town, and nobody had done anything about it. Six days to make themselves at home and act like they owned the place. Border towns like ours didn't get any more attention from the government today then they did once upon a time when there actually was a border.

For what good one world government did for us. Our great grandparents could have told us it was the same now as it was then. We were out of sight and out of mind. We weren't as important to the Federation as New York would have been, and so we were on our own while five Zeke mobile suits made our home into theirs.

And I was tired of it.

I shook my head and bumped the throttle lever up and the engine in the tractor gave a rumble as it spun up to full power. Zeke's might have moved in, but life still went on. I slipped the clutch as I adjusted the hydraulics and as had happened probably a hundred thousand times before, the forks slid into the hay bale.

I carefully eased the control stick backwards and the hydraulics chugged, but the bale lifted up off the trailer deck. Tractor wasn't really big enough for the job but with a big enough counterweight on the three point it could pull it off. Border towns weren't exactly wealthy places.

The stick popped smoothly into reverse and I was getting ready to let the clutch out when a flash of movement off to my right caught my eye. A green Zeke suit was running past my house, right through my pasture. Every step tore a huge furrow through the grain that I'd spent my time, but more importantly most of my money cultivating.

I slapped the control stick forward and dumped the hay bale and side-stepped the clutch at the same time. The tractor lurched backwards and if I hadn't been strapped in I'd have gone right over the steering wheel. I was done.

I cut the wheel to the side and spun the front end around, then switched to high gear and tore off across the pasture towards the quonset hut. I might not have a mobile suit of my own but I had a few hundred pounds of stump remover that I could introduce that Zeke to.

My anger built with every step the Zeke took, the tractor couldn't go fast enough to satisfy me, but once I got to that quonset hut, oh there would be a reckoning, of that I had no doubt. If the Federation wasn't going to stand up to them, I sure as hell--

A pink beam of light struck the shoulder of the Zeke suit and the cylinders stored there flashed over immediately and a large explosion send the suit flying from its feet and in a lazy tumble through the air before it came back down again and dug a trench through the pasture that ended in the living room of my house.

I cut the wheel so hard the tractor almost flipped, luck more than anything kept it from going all the way over, and pointed it straight for the downed suit. I'd pry that hatch open and beat my satisfaction out of the pilot if I had to.

I cut the ignition and jumped out of my seat before the engine had stopped turning. My feet were on the ground before the wheels quit rolling. I shouldered my way through the front door and stomped my way up the stairs, tilted as they were.

There wouldn't be any fixing it, the house had been knocked clean off the foundation, to say nothing of the mobile suit sized hole through half of it. My dad would've been pissed if he was still around. I was angry enough for both of us.

The door to the spare room was torn off its hinges when I got to it, the chest of the mobile suit was sitting where the bed should have been and everything past that was completely gone. I didn't know if it was the impact that had done it, but the chest plate was folded up and away from the rest of the suit and there was a second hatch inside that had opened up.

I took a step closer and heard a raspy cough to my left: The pilot. He was wearing zeon green and had blood running out of his mouth, his leg looked broken. He wasn't going anywhere, not like that. No threat to me.

I looked back to the open cockpit and took another step towards it. The power was still on. I'd operated a mobile worker before. It couldn't be that different. Even if it was, I had to try. It took the Federation six days to show up and do anything about the Zekes, who was to say it wouldn't take even longer next time?

One last look at the remains of my house was all the motivation I needed; I jumped in.

The controls were largely the same as I had been expecting and it didn't take me long to close the hatch and bring the displays back online. The system warned of damage to the right shoulder but it looked like it was still operational despite that. The only real risk at the moment was that the Federation forces would fire on me as soon as I stood up.

But I'd come too far to stop.

I stepped into the pedals and rolled the control sticks and pushed the suit to its feet as the rest of my house started to come down around me. Whatever that meant for the Zeke pilot was no longer my problem. This was revenge.

The inventory system was pulled up on a monitor to my left and told me that the only weapon I had left was something called a 'Heat Hawk', located on the rear skirt armor. I twisted the controls to retrieve it and found that the controls were a lot lighter and more responsive than on the mobile worker.

That was fine by me. The screens showed the four other Zeke suits, which the sensor system told me were called 'MS-06J Zaku II', which meant that the unit I was piloting was a Zaku as well. Two more unknown types showed up and they were fighting the Zakus. Those would have to be Federation mobile suits.

Even if they had taken their sweet time showing up, I didn't want to get in a fight with them, because late was better than never.

The four Zaku IIs were ahead and to my left, the unidentified but most definitely Federation suits were further ahead to the right. They probably wouldn't shoot at me until they were done with the other four because I didn't have a ranged weapon and if their sensors were half as good as mine they'd know that.

The Rio Grande Valley wasn't completely flat but for a mobile suit it may as well have been, there was no terrain cover to speak of. There was no hiding, anyone with a pair of eyes in their head within ten miles could probably see us.

Hell, you gotta die of something.

I threw the Zaku into a sprint towards the nearest Zeke suit, the one second from my right, and readied the Heat Hawk. He had a machine gun and I needed it to be my machine gun instead. I tapped a control switch on my right stick and the external speakers showed as selected on the main MFD.

“I got your 'Sieg Zeon' right here!” I screamed out over the loud speakers as my axe came down into the Zeke's shoulder joint. The blade slid through the joint and halfway into the torso before it stopped.

I released the handle of the Heat Hawk and grabbed the severed arm of the Zeke suit. The machine gun came free with a relatively gentle tug and I had it raised and ready to fire before the other three Zekes could turn to fire on me.

Though I wasn't a soldier, I wasn't a moron either. I didn't stand still long enough for them to start firing. Instead I turned towards the Federation suits and returned to the Zaku to a top speed sprint, firing the machine gun towards the remaining Zekes as I ran.

I could have thought the plan out better, that much was true. I'd managed to take one of them out of the fight, so I'd at the very least avenged my house and pasture. I could probably sell the mobile suit and make more than enough to get all of that back.

The machine gun clicked empty by the time I reached the Federation forces and I dropped it. I'd neglected to grab any spare ammo, not that I'd really had the time for it. I still had my shoulder armor and my fists, that would have to do.

The cockpit jostled unexpectedly and I turned my head to see that one of the Federation suits had reached out and touched my armor. I started to wonder why when a comm window crackled open on my display and the pilot of the suit appeared in it.

“I was about to ask if that fall had knocked something loose, but I'm getting the impression you're not the Zeon pilot.” He sounded young, but I couldn't really tell with his helmet blocking most of his facial features.

“You'd be right. You boys took your sweet time getting here. Thanks for dropping this mobile suit on my house too, by the way.” Complaining, that's what you should always do when met with the military. Complain at them.

“Alright, well I'm not gonna turn down the help. Take this.” He said before reaching his suit's hand up and pulling the white stick out of his mobile suit's backpack and handing it to me.

When I closed my suit's hand around it, a pink beam of light erupted from the top of it. Unlike a beam rifle, the beam stopped after reaching a certain length and, while I didn't know what it was called, I didn't need to know that to know what it was for.

I twisted the controls and the Zaku held the saber out in front of it in an attack posture. I wasn't much of a swordsman, but I knew how to swing a club and I couldn't imagine it was going to be a whole lot different against someone who didn't even have a sword.

“So I'm just gonna go ahead and run back in there with this then, right?” I asked the other pilot with as neutral a face as I could mange.

“We'll cover you. You'll do fine.”

I changed my mind, maybe late wasn't better than never. Regardless, I stepped into the controls and threw my Zaku into a sprint into incoming machine gun fire, shoulder shield first. Large caliber rounds pinged off the shield and kicked down into the ground as I crossed the quarter mile into attack range.

My damage warning screen kept flipping more and more segments from green to yellow but I was too far to turn back. Two of them had stopped firing and had drawn their own Heat Hawk weapons. The third went up like a stack of dynamite without warning.

A lucky shot from one of the Federation suits?

Fifty feet, thirty, I crashed right shoulder first into the lead Zeke and slammed against my seat in the process. He stumbled back and crushed the neighbor's old grain silo when he finally fell over. Even from my own Zaku I could feel the ground rumble with the hit.

The damage screen flashed orange along the outer armor on the right shoulder, the controls got a little heavy on me and when I pushed the beam blade weapon down towards the Zeke the shield fell off completely.

There was nothing I could really do about it. I pushed the control stick forward and jammed the blade down into the chest of the downed Zeke. Right through the center of the chest armor. Right through the cockpit. The suit's arms dropped to the ground and the 'eye' in the head went dark.

An explosion to my left drew my attention and there I saw one of the Federation suits holding a beam weapon like the one I'd just used, standing over the bisected wreckage of the final Zeke mobile suit. The Federation suit looked like an avenging angel, standing over the slain demon and holding a sword of fire.

I wasn't sure what that made me.

I let go of the hilt of the beam weapon and the blade extinguished itself. The fight was over and I'd survived it. My house was a complete loss, but I'd survived, and my farm had more or less survived. Once I laid claim to the salvage of the two Zeke's I'd taken out and the Zaku I'd stolen from them I'd more than cover my damages.

“Now that that's out of the way, I suppose introductions are in order, eh? Have a step outside and let me get a look at you.”

I stepped into the pedals and twisted the controls to re-orient myself to face the suit sending the transmission. The Federation suit was walking towards me with his weapons stowed, the same suit that had handed me the beam weapon.

I reached up and started powering down the suit, then popped the hatch release. The screen in front of me folded up and out of the way and the hatch itself folded downwards, giving me a platform to stand on.

By the time I'd made it out onto the platform the other pilot was already waiting for me, but then he'd had a lot more practice at this whole mobile suit business than I had. He was a little taller than I'd expected from the youth in his voice, at what I guessed was around six foot even.

A fair bit above my own head, but that wasn't really an unfamiliar experience.

“Well that wasn't the most skilled fighting i've ever seen but it got the job done. Name's Kars Alexander, and you are?” He asked with a grin that conveyed a cockiness that I would absolutely expect out of a Federation soldier.

“Veronica Jackson. This is my farm, or well it used to be a farm. Damn Zekes have spent the last week acting like they own the place. Could have used the help last Sunday when they showed up.”

When confronted with the military, complain.

“Well Miss Veronica, I can't say you're what I expected to find inside this Zaku, but you don't disappoint. Why don't you give me a couple hours and I'll see if I can get some people down here to put things back in order, alright?”

I shrugged and held my arms out, “I mean, yeah that sounds good. You do that, but I'm keeping this Zaku and the ones I killed.”

Kars shook his head and laughed as he took a step back towards his cockpit, “Alright Miss Veronica, that is definitely a conversation we're gonna have.”

 

[Jackie]

Community

​

In the hours after the battle it seemed like everyone for twenty miles found their way to my ranch. Curiosity won out over caution and everyone was crawling all over the downed Zakus. The Fed pilots hadn't particularly appreciated the liberties everyone was taking, but they didn't seemed bothered enough to stop it.

It was only the third offer of a heavy duty tractor to get the wrecked mobile suits collected that it finally occurred to me that I already had all the help I needed. Three mobile suits could do more work than a farm tractor, no matter how big it was.

“Alright, this should be the last one.” I commented into the open line I had with Kars. The computer finally identified his suit as an RGM-79, after I'd told it the correct designation. From what information I had been able to get, the thing outclassed my Zaku II, even if it was the MS-06S Commander Type.

I pulled the controls and, together, both my Zaku and Kars' GM pulled the last Zeke suit, the one I'd killed last, out of the mudpit that had once been my pasture. The creaking of metal echoed through the cockpit as we gently carried the suit over to the concrete pad in front of the quonset hut.

My damage indicator panel was flashing red through several parts of the suit's right arm. I was pushing it, doing all of this without repairs. I'd fought like an idiot and it was probably only due to this suit's superior specifications that I was able to prevail against the other Zeke suits.

Still, even as damaged as it was, it was doing a job that probably couldn't be done without a crane and a half dozen trucks otherwise. With the right arms controls getting sluggish it felt like total control failure was just around the corner.

We were half way onto the concrete pad when my damage screen flashed red, then turned entirely black on the right arm. The control stick went stiff and the sound of rending steel echoed through the cockpit and I felt myself falling to the left.

The dead Zaku slipped out of my suit's left hand and crashed to the ground, still half-way over the torn up dirt of my side pasture. Out of the right side view screen I could see the damaged right arm laying in the mud.

“That's not good.”

I pulled the controls back and took a step away from the suit we'd dropped. Kars' GM had finally set down the end it had been carrying and taken a step back as well, as if to survey the carnage.

“I swear that's never happened to me before. You can fix that right? We can fix that. We've got a spare right here.” I muttered into the call with Kars. When met with the military, beg for assistance.

“That's not really... you know what? Yeah, why not. Meet me on the ground and bring friends.”

***​

The smell of diesel and machine oil was so thick on the air I could taste it and feel it against my skin. If my hair hadn't been pulled back into a ponytail it would almost certainly have been matted down to my skin and I would've loved a shower, but we weren't done yet. My house, also, was demolished, so my shower was in about thirty different pieces and no longer attached to running water.

But the town had really pulled together. I'd become a celebrity in what seemed like only hours. Three tractor mechanics, two electricians, and a handful of computer engineers were poring over my Zaku and the donor suit, disconnecting wires and armor plating on both units to prepare for the transplant.

Not that I could ask them what they were doing in any specifics, a half dozen tractors and a pair of heavy duty wheel loaders were pulling and lifting and pushing armor plates and servos and parts I didn't even have names for all over the property.

Could have been the novelty of it, could have been the sense of community. It could have been people wanting to have a hand in what I'd done after the fact. Might have been all three. The only thing I could hear over the engines and angle grinders and impact wrenches was the ever-present stomping of the second GM, which had made about four trips collecting discarded weapons and piling them alongside Kars' deactivated mobile suit.

“Hey there Veronica!” I heard over my right shoulder, before a hand clapped down on it.

I flinched and snapped my head around to be faced with a gloved hand on the end of the arm of a normal suit. Above that was a face, and one that I'd seen before too. “Kars? You might want to give a girl a little warning next time.”

He laughed and shrugged, “I don't know about that, but I did manage to get a prefab ordered for you, free of charge. It's not exactly the same as what you lost but it is what I could get.”

It felt like a punch to the gut. What he'd done for me was fine, I couldn't really have expected more. I'd been avoiding the house, or what was left of it. I was focused on the Zaku first, after that I could deal with the rest... but no prefab was ever going to truly replace the house my grandfather built with his own two hands.

“Yeah that'll just have to do I guess.” I answered without much feeling behind it. I found my eyes drifting over to the half collapsed remains of the house I'd woken up in that morning. It was difficult to accept the change when only mere hours ago there'd been nothing wrong with it.

Well, that wasn't true. It needed some foundation work because the kitchen door was hanging off center and the lock bolts wouldn't go into place anymore, but a hydraulic jack and a few wooden shims under a few of the pillars would have cleared that up. I'd have to cancel the appointment with the contractors at the end of the week.

It was just a house until it wasn't. It was only with its loss that I ever really appreciated what I'd had. More than the house, I'd had some semblance of peace. I'd been waiting for help, waiting for someone to come take care of the Zekes and my anger eventually meant that person was me.

But when I woke up that morning I hadn't yet killed at least one man, hadn't left another to die. As easy as it had been to pull the trigger, the opposite was true of dealing with what came after. It felt like my stomach was going to fall out through my feet, the world started to spin around me--

I found myself on the ground, half seated, half laying against something. Someone. “Kars?”

“You're alright, I've got you.” His voice was quieter, calmer. The bravado was gone. I was certain that if he hadn't been holding me up that I'd have ended up all the way down on the concrete.

I licked my lip and shook my head, I couldn't quite find the words to express, well, anything. That sick feeling kept growing and I felt like throwing up or passing out or jumping out of my own skin. Maybe even all three if I was lucky.

“I was hoping it would take longer for it to hit you. Just breathe, in, out. You didn't do anything wrong. You're okay.” He said, trying to soothe me. Part of me appreciated it but another part of me rejected the idea that a man at least a decade younger than me could help at all.

It would have been easier to deal with if I had done something wrong. I could accept it, revel in it. Cope with it by embracing the evil in it. Doing the right thing shouldn't hurt like this. “It doesn't feel okay.”

“It will. You just need to give it time.”

I clenched my hand into a fist to give me something to focus on that wasn't the sick-sour feeling in my stomach. “Do you think the Zekes are gonna let me have that time?”

He shook his head and helped me back up to my feet. “No, I don't think they will. Just take time whenever you can. That's all any of us can do.”

I let out a half a chuckle after my knees stopped shaking and looked up to meet his eyes. “You know, someone your age shouldn't have to be having this conversation with someone my age. At least, not in this direction.”

“That's war for you.”

***
​

Work had always kept my mind off things before and it so it stood to reason it could help me think about something other than a dead Zeke pilot. Keeping busy to keep sane, at least for now.

“Lift the forks a little higher-- yeah that's it!” I yelled to the tractor operator. I didn't know his name and I doubted he knew mine. Introductions fell by the wayside with how busy everyone had been. I'd learn his name later when it became important or... maybe I wouldn't.

The splintered wood of the collapsed roof of my house was held precariously aloft on a pair of hay forks that had never been intended to do anything of the sort, but we all had to work with what we had and not what we wanted.

It gave me enough of a gap to get inside, to try to recover anything that might have survived. After that, we could do a more thorough cleanup to clear the site for the prefab. Maybe one day I could rebuild, for the time being I still needed a place to live.

I snapped a chemlight and dropped it on the floor as I entered the wreckage. I had twelve of them that I'd been given by Kars, part of his mobile suit's survival kit, and I could use them to mark my trail. Breadcrumbs, since what was left of the house did not have the same layout as it had had when I was still standing.

It was stupid and dangerous but no more than jumping into a Zaku and going toe to toe with the Zekes had been.

The dull green glow of the chemlights helped me navigate through what used to be a kitchen and through a half collapsed doorway into what had at one point been my living room. The floor above had collapsed down into it and sloped towards the outer wall, or what had used to be the outer wall, at about a thirty degree angle.

The gun safe had fallen through from the floor above and crashed through my coffee table, though the door to the safe was nowhere to be found. I couldn't tell if it had been trashed when the Zaku fell into my house or when I'd stood it back up again afterwards.

I cracked another chemlight and tossed it into the safe. Most of the contents had been lost, either taken by someone who got there before me or spilled and thrown free when the safe fell through the floor. I didn't really have the time to go hunting through debris and there was a good chance I'd bring the house down if I tired.

An old thirty-eight caliber revolver and a handful of speed loaders were still tucked into a corner of the upper half of the safe and that was easy enough to retrieve and tuck into my pocket. I hadn't needed it before but the Zekes hadn't attacked before.

The only thing left in the lower half of the safe was an old lee enfield rifle that had been in the family for over a century, though even grandpa hadn't remembered where it had come from. The bayonet had fallen in front of it and snagged it, preventing it from falling out. Freeing it and the bandolier of cartridges was simple enough; brute force to get the bayonet un-bound from the safe's opening.

That didn't fit in my bag, but the sling let me throw it over my back which was just as good.

A loud cracking sound preceded the house starting to shift and collapse further down around me. The safe rolled away from me and through what was left of the floorboards and uncovered a much smaller lockbox that I'd had stored on top of it.

I knew what was in that case, and it was small enough to carry. Some rare coins, some old postage stamps, the deed to the property, my birth certificate, and some old family photos. It was advertised as being fireproof but it was nice to know it was 'mobile suit' and 'total structural collapse' proof as well.

Although, with the shaking and shifting around me, I wished I was inside the box as well, because I most certainly wasn't proof against a total structural collapse. I snatched the lockbox off the ground and ran in a crouch back through the doorway into the kitchen.

The entry that the tractor had made for me was collapsed, and the tractor was nowhere to be found. The window frames were too far gone to fit through, to say nothing about getting killed if the house came down while I was half way through.

“Oh shit.”

The words that left my mouth were about all I could express verbally. My eyes darted all over the far wall trying to find a gap or... something. Some way to get back outside. I thought about the revolver in my bag. If I fired a few cylinders through that, surely it would be loud enough to get some attention.

A thumping came through the floorboards and I braced myself. That would have to be the main floor beams failing, the whole thing was about to come down around my head and there was nothing I could do about it.

The sounds of wood splintering and tearing filled my ears and I threw my hands protectively over my head, for what good they'd do. A rush of cool air poured in and washed over me and I opened my eyes to a bright light.

I held my hand up to shield my eyes from the light and finally saw the source. My Zaku was standing in what had once been my front lawn, its hand extended out to hold the collapsing upper floor of the house away from me. The spot lights on the suit's head lit up the whole area around me against the setting of the sun.

“Hey! Guess I got here in time after all! The tractor just wasn't doing the job so I had to go get something bigger.” The voice was the same as the tractor operator, except this time it was booming from the mobile suit's speakers.

The repairs had clearly been finished, and quite well it looked like. Other than the slightly different shade of paint you couldn't really tell where they'd done the graft.

“Thanks, uh... what's your name?” I yelled up at the mobile suit. We might've skipped the introductions before, but given the present circumstances I had to know who to thank.

“Call me Dominic. You uh, you might wanna get moving so I can set this house back down.”

 

[Jackie]

Shooting the Messenger
​

I didn't feel entirely human when I stepped out onto the first step the next morning. I could convince myself I was on a vacation trip for the first thirty seconds or so, until the RV's hot water tank ran out and I finished my shower in cold water. Then I remembered why I'd only used the thing twice, and once was under protest.

But sleeping in the RV was better than a tent or in the cockpit of the Zaku and if I didn't feel like sleeping under the stars or in a barn those were my choices. A stainless steel cylinder beat a stainless steel hut any day of the week.

Probably.

The bed was a little too stiff for my liking but the blankets were warm and it was big enough. No, it was the cold shower and the dusty air, the cold floors, the drafty windows and the like that bothered me.

The sun rose before I did, but not by much. A cup of hot terrible coffee hung from my fingers and the cold steel of the last step before the concrete was under my foot. The property was busier than it would usually have been that early in the day but not as busy as it had been the night before.

If anything, it had calmed down from a frenzy into a slow but consistent buzz of activity. After the initial cleanup most people had left to tend their own homes and farms, compensated only with the promise of a cut of the proceeds from the Zaku wrecks.

Wasn't like they didn't know where to find me, anyway.

“Nice morning isn't it?” Dominic was waiting for me

I shrugged and took a sip from my mug. It tasted like battery acid and hatred but it was hot and full of caffeine. “View was better from my front porch.”

“View's not so bad from a mobile suit either.” he answered back.

“Been meaning to ask you about that,” I said as I turned to face him. “that wasn't the first time you've used a mobile suit, was it?”

I'd used a mobile worker before but even then I'd lucked out because the Zaku was already powered up. I'd had to read the manual to shut it down when I was done. It hadn't taken him five minutes to get it all going on his own, so he was either lucky or skilled.

He was older than Kars, older than me too. A little taller than Kars at probably around six even. Darker complected but still lighter than I was, probably around two hundred pounds but not fat. If I really wanted to scrutinize him I would only really be able to say his casual demeanor seemed a little put on.

“That's what I wanted to talk to you about, or well, that's what I needed to tell you about.”

I gestured that he should continue and nodded my head at him, “By all means.”

“Well, I happened to notice some active files when I started up last night. Federation might be interested in the data on that mobile suit's computer. Zeon would be interested too.” He explained without really elaborating. He'd earned enough goodwill when he saved me that I could let him keep any more to himself.

It wasn't like I couldn't check the computer myself.

“If the Federation wants it they can pay me for it.”

“They might. But if Zeon wants it they'll probably try to kill you for it.”

Mood killer.

“So what would you do?” I asked. He sounded like he was talking from experience and I had a pretty good guess as to where he'd gained it.

“You seem to get on pretty good with that Federation Lieutenant. If I had a mobile suit with valuable intel in it I might talk to someone I trust about it. Even better if my friend that I trust has a mobile suit of his own.”

I nodded and took another sip of coffee, “That makes a decent amount of sense. So what will you be doing while I'm talking care of all of this?”

He laughed, a real laugh like he heard a joke that I didn't realize I'd told. “I'll be taking care of me. You figure out what you're going to do and, well, if you need help feel free to ask but I'm not going to go out of my way to look for work.”

That totally wasn't a vague offer.

“Thanks?”

“Don't mention it. If you're gonna go looking for Kars and Thad you might start on the other side of the barn, looked like they had tents set up over there.” He waved his arm off towards the other side of the quonset hut and I had a pretty good idea of where he meant.

“Thad?” I asked.

“The other mobile suit pilot. Guess I knew something else you didn't eh? I've got some equipment to clean up so I better get to work. Enjoy your coffee.” He waved casually over his shoulder as he turned to walk away.

I stared down into my cup at what was probably the worst coffee I'd ever tasted. Apparently you had to clean coffee machines once in a while, and I hadn't used the RV in about six months so that explained a few things. It was thick too, probably could have stood up without the cup.

I took the final step onto the pavement and let out a yawn as I set the tin cup down on the picnic table I'd set up next to the trailer. Caffeine wasn't good for me anyway.

The land had been patched up well enough. Couldn't replace the crops nearly as easily but refilling the divots was a good start regardless. The crater left by the one Zaku's reactor going up wouldn't be quite as easily fixed, but I could use a new stock pond anyway.

My Zaku was kneeling down on the concrete pad with a GM on either side flanking it. As they were arranged it looked like they were protecting the Zaku... or holding it hostage. There were enough parts to make another complete Zaku, if someone was inclined to it and had the manpower to pull it off.

As it was, replacing just the right arm had taken a dozen men the better part of a day.

Drawing closer to the three mobile suits I was able to get a good look at the array of weapons that had been collected from the battle. Two machine guns, two more of heat hawks, and some kind of mobile suit sized rocket launcher.

The cockpit on the Zaku was open and the winch cable was extended down from the hatch. Just as well, I needed to look into this 'intel' Dominic told me about. I slipped my foot into the loop on the bottom of the cable and, despite my better judgment, rode it to the top.

Despite my best efforts, the fear of heights still kicked in and I was shaking, if only a little, by the time I set foot inside the cockpit. I would get over it, as I always did, but it would take me a moment to calm down.

“Guess I should power up and get the door closed.” I muttered to myself as I tapped my fingers against the control panel. It wasn't quite as simple as a toggle switch but it also wasn't much more complicated than one either.

There was a slight hum as the reactor spooled up underneath me and a few moments later the displays started powering on. Sensors, life support, movement systems. There were a lot of systems on-board that weren't part of the mobile worker, it seemed.

Mobile worker also didn't have a provision for storing personal data on the on-board computer. While I didn't know exactly where this would be on the Zaku, I figured a good place to start would be looking for things that the mobile worker didn't have.

Aside from the obvious, anyway. The worker didn't have an enclosed cockpit full of display screens either, but I could overlook that.

To my left there was a row of switches, each with a label describing their function and none of them seemed like they were what I was looking for. To the right, even more controls, as well as the power management console, that too was a no.

Next I checked overhead and found a handle in the top of the cockpit, which upon pulling brought a terminal console down in front of me. Pay dirt. There were a few active files and I opened up the first one.

Zeon deployment orders, it looked like. There was an attached map of the region with various towns and even empty areas in the middle of nowhere marked off with notes that referenced another document. I closed that, it might be important to the Federation forces, but I couldn't do anything with it.

The titles of the remaining active files looked like more of the same, with the exception of the final and newest file. Titled 'RX-78HV-1', it was the last file on the listing and the largest. I tapped on that one and a bunch of schematics that I couldn't quite make sense of loaded up on the screen.

It was a mobile suit, that much was obvious, but all the engineering jargon was way above my head. What felt like endless scrolling later I came across actual photographs and it became more clear what I was looking at.

The basic design looked a lot like the GM that Kars piloted, though far more intricate. The backpack unit looked larger, a higher output one based on some of the specifications that I was able to make sense of. It was mostly white with some light blue notes along what looked like extra thruster vents on the legs and along the forearms. Yellow marked off the vent grills on the chest and legs, as well as on what looked like extra plating, or maybe some kind of cover on the backside of the forearms.

Nothing was as striking as the head. Where the GM had a head that looked a lot like some kind of motorcycle helmet, the head on this new mobile suit reminded me more of a samurai with a large V shaped crest on the forehead.

It was a Federation mobile suit, of that there was no doubt. The data being stored on a Zeon mobile suit definitely explained why Dominic said what he had. Zeon would want it back and the Federation would want to make sure that never happened.

I pushed the console back up into the top of the cockpit and relaxed down into the chair. That data was going to complicate the hell out of my plans to keep the mobile suit for myself. Those spare parts were looking more and more like all I was going to get out of the deal.

My 'mission' completed, I reached over to start the shutdown when something on the left display caught my eye. Distance looked like, maybe a half a mile. A white dirt bike tearing its way through the thicket along the edge of my pasture. The rider was either amazing or lucky with how they managed to avoid hitting any of the trees.

I didn't have to wonder the reason for the reckless behavior as right behind the dirt bike, an armored car with what looked like a machine gun mounted to the roof blasted through the trees in pursuit. The Zaku's computer identified it as a machine that Zeon forces used, but that wasn't enough information to go on.

I was in a Zeke mobile suit, after all.

On the other hand, just going with the flow had worked out for me so far. “Time to see how far that luck will take me.”

I twisted the controls and my Zaku stood up. Another step into the pedal and it took off at a run towards the dirt bike and armored car. Both of them were faster than my Zaku if they wanted to be, but they were content to keep heading straight towards me.

That suited me well enough. The armored car kept firing at the dirt bike, but couldn't seem to finish the job due to the bouncing of the rough terrain. All they seemed to succeed in doing was urge the rider to ride faster and take more risks to try to evade them.

Or, maybe they were trying to herd the dirt bike towards me. Which only raised the question: were they Zekes who thought I was a Zeke too, or did they already know I wasn't a Zeke and that was why they were chasing it towards me.

Kars' GM would have made this a lot easier to figure out.

I pushed harder and sped the Zaku up to its top speed, distance was down to two hundred meters. Time to try something I hadn't before; I kicked the pedal and throttled my suit's thrusters up to full. I commanded and the suit obeyed and performed a rocket assisted jump over top of the dirt bike.

The sensors finally confirmed what I could see with my own eyes: the machine gun operator on the armored car was wearing a Zeke uniform. My mobile suit came down with a bang half a dozen yards in front of the armored car.

I twisted and pushed at the controls and the Zaku's right leg pulled back, and then snapped forward. The right foot collided with the side of the armored car with enough force to cave in the armored glacis and send the vehicle tumbling through the air.

Faster than it had been driving and faster than the Zaku could have ever run across the ground, the armored car crashed into the terrain and started to tumble along the pasture until it crashed into the thicket of trees it had burst through only moments before.

That must have been a hell of a surprise for the armored car's crew.

I spun my mobile suit around in place and looked down at the ground, down at the dirt bike. At this distance I could tell that the rider was female. Female and someone I knew. The Morrisons' daughter.

I kneeled the Zaku down next to her and opened up the hatch. Some things were better off face to face. Up and out, two steps and I was leaning out over top of her. “Brooke? What have you gotten yourself into?”

“Veronica?! What are you-- no, nevermind. The Zekes put bombs on the dam, you've gotta do something!” She yelled up at me. Her blonde hair was matted down to her face, that must have been a hell of a ride from the dam.

“What am I supposed to do?!” I yelled back. “I'm a farmer, not the bomb squad!”

She threw her arms up in frustration. “Well I don't know, you're the one in the mobile suit! Why don't-- Hey they might be able to help!” She finished while pointing behind and to my left.

I glanced back into the cockpit at the side screen and saw that the two Federation suits had started up. Rocket jumping and kicking an armored car like a football did make some noise, so at least it proved Kars and Thad had been paying attention.

I turned back to Brooke and pushed the button on the hatch to lower the winch. “Alright, get in. We're gonna go do something.”

 

[Jackie]

Showdown at Falcon Dam
​

I'd been through the woods south of my farm at least once a week for as far back as I could remember, but this was the first time I'd done so with a point of view above the tree tops. Each thump of my Zaku's feet against the ground made the trees shake and the leaves fall off and scatter to the ground. If it had been any other time of year I probably wouldn't have even been able to see the ground, but it was getting closer to winter and so the foliage wasn't quite as thick as it would have otherwise been.

Not that winters in the Rio Grande Valley were particularly cold ones.

“So, two Jims and a Zaku walk into the woods.”

“I think I know how this one goes.”

That was Thad. I hadn't really talked to him much, but he seemed like a good enough guy. Kars had been the social one, but that probably had more to do with him being the ranking officer. In truth, I hadn't even seen Thad, given we were using a voice only link.

Up ahead about two, two and a half miles out, the dam stood out from the rest of the surroundings. Most of it was an earthen berm raised up to block off the Rio Grande and form a small lake behind it. The Zekes probably targetted the concrete spillway in the middle that was used for power generation.

If they blew that, the soil erosion would bring down the rest, or enough of the rest. That would be it, mission failure.

“If that dam goes, everything down river is going to get flattened and everything up river is going to lose running water. I don't suppose either of you have come up with a plan in the last twenty minutes?”

“We could hold back, you're in a Zaku so if you approach alone they might not--”

The displays flashed white and then blacked out, cutting off Kars before he could finish. I felt the entire mobile suit shaking around me and held on for dear life as a great force brought it down onto one knee. A second wave hit us and the Zaku fell to its back, and Brooke fell against my chest.

Stars filled my vision as the air was forced out of my lungs and my hands slipped off the controls while the displays rebooted. “You're killin' me, kid.”

I slammed the side of my hand against the emergency hatch release and a wave of hot air rushed into the cockpit. That wasn't what I expected and it couldn't mean anything good. When I finally blinked the tears out of my eyes Brooke had climbed off of me and out of the cockpit.

I was a little slower on the way out due to a combination of age and injury, but I manged to get out onto the chest armor after a few false starts. The heat was incredible once I was out in the open, much worse than just what had made it inside the cockpit.

Hadn't been that hot even in the dead of summer.

The forest was gone. The trees looked as though they'd been scattered by the backhand of an angry god. The air was thick, humid, hard to really breath in. Not really the kind of weather I'd have expected in December.

“Are you alright? We've got to get out of here!”

I looked up to see Thad's GM standing above us, the right hand was extended towards my Zaku's cockpit. “What?” I asked, still dazed.

“That was a fusion reactor going up. The dam is gone, we need to get going before we get caught up in the flood waters.”

Flood waters? I rubbed my eyes and looked out towards Falcon Dam, or... or what used to be a dam. There was a crater where the spillway used to be and I could see it from this far without the magnified optics of the mobile suit. It was filling up with water and it wouldn't be long until what was left of the forest was filled as well.

A single glowing eye stood above the destruction, set into a large almost saucer shaped head on a bulky, bulbous body. A mobile suit, half way out of the water on the reservoir side of the what had once been the dam.

“Brooke, are you okay? Are you hurt?” I asked. She was about my height and about half my age. Red hair and green eyes and built like a dancer. She was not a fighter and she wasn't built to take a hit.

“Yeah... yeah I think I'm okay, what are--”

I cut her off and pointed at the GM, “Go with him. I'm not done here yet.”

I didn't wait to see if she listened. If I had been angry before, I had become blind with rage after the dam was destroyed. I could on some level understand the occupation; they needed supplies to continue their mission, fine.

Blowing the dam was pure spite.

I jumped back into the cockpit and landed back-first in the seat. The hatch slid closed a moment later and the monitors came back up like they'd never been down. The GM had taken a step back, so he must have had her. I pushed the controls and forced the Zaku onto its feet much more violently than I had the first time.

I didn't wait; I pushed the suit up to full running speed and performed a rocket jump to close the distance a little faster. Half a mile out the IFF tagged the suit as an MSM-04 Acguy. It was a little taller and easily out massed my Zaku and I didn't give a damn.

I disengaged the heat hawk from the skirt armor and drew it back as the blade heated up to white hot. I pushed the control stick and the Zaku threw the heat hawk just before I crashed into the water surface. I rolled the selector on the left stick and ejected the spiked pauldron from that arm.

A twitch of the right control stick and I had the armor plate clenched in the Zaku's right fist like spiked knuckles. I couldn't stop what had happened, but I could beat my frustrations out on the Zeke in front of me.

The Acguy burst through the water I'd kicked up and threw a punch with it's right arm and some angry looking spiked claws that I hadn't seen on the way down. Must have been retractable. I hauled the controls and ducked the Zaku under the swing and delivered a jab to the center torso.

I may not have been a mobile suit pilot for long, but I'd been in fights before. It was not my first rodeo.

The Acguy didn't even flinch under the blow and I delivered another one before jumping back and away from it. I didn't see any ranged weapons but that didn't mean it didn't have any. Even so, not getting hit by those angry looking claws was my first priority.

The elector on the right stick clicked over and the shield mounted to the shoulder ejected; a quick twist of the opposite stick and I had brass knuckles and a shield. That was more than I'd ever had before.

My heat hawk was stuck in the left side of the Acguy's head, but the pilot didn't seem to care. He swung at me again with those claws and I let the shield take the hit, then drove my spiked knuckles into the center torso again.

The cockpit had to be there, that's where it was on my Zaku after all. If I just kept hitting there, eventually I'd have to break through. One, two, three. I kept throwing punches while my shield kept his arm at bay.

Its left arm seemed to hang limp, and I wondered if that was damage I'd caused or damage it had taken somewhere else. At the very least it was one less thing for me to worry about. I didn't need the fight to be fair, I had no problem fighting someone with an arm tied behind their back.

The pauldron in my Zakus right hand collapsed under the strain and I dropped it. The front armor of the Acguy was dimpled like a golf ball but it was still fighting me, I'd have to try something else. I pulled back and let his swing finally land.

The force of the blow sent me sliding backwards, just like I needed. Thrusters at full power, my Zaku jumped up and came crashing down onto the Acguy's shoulders, one foot on each side of the huge saucer of a head.

I reached down and wrapped the Zaku's right hand around the 'muzzle' on the front of the Acguy's head and pulled back. The single optical sensor swiveled up towards me as I put more power behind the maneuver and I was rewarded with the sounds of rending metal.

The Acguy's one good arm reached up towards me, but a harsh stomp from my Zaku's right foot sent sparks flying from the other suit's shoulder joint and pushed the arm away from me. I rolled the left stick dropped the shield so I could free my suit's left hand to help.

Full power to the thrusters and both legs and with one final push I lifted away from the Acguy and took its head with me as a macabre souvenir. I crashed into the water with a splash and dropped the severed head into what was left of the reservoir.

I pried my heat hawk out of the Acguy's head and squared up with what was left of the enemy mobile suit as the blade heated back up. He could surrender or I could deliver the killing blow. I squeezed down the broadcast switch on my control stick so I could deliver the ultimatum that part of me didn't even want to grant the courtesy of.

“Open your cockpit and come out or I'm coming in.”

The armor I had dented on Acguy's center torso fell off into the water and under it the hatch opened up. A normal suit-wearing pilot stepped out and then in the same motion jumped into the water. I hadn't considered that as an option, but the water carried him away and there was no way I was ever going to catch up to him.

I clipped the heat hawk back against my Zaku's armor and slumped in the seat. I hadn't really fixed anything and to top it off the Zeke pilot got away. The dam was gone, the Morrisons' would've been the first farm swept away in the flood but they wouldn't be the last. My own property was far enough that it wouldn't be flooded, but water and power would be out for a while.

But it was starting to feel like I was going to be in this war till the bitter end.

My suit shifted with a metallic clang and a video link opened up. Contact comms. “There's nothing else we can do here. Thad took your friend ahead to look for survivors downstream. We should join them and see what we can do before search and rescue gets here.”

I found myself nodding in agreement and raised my suit's arm towards the Acguy. “What about that? We can't just leave it here.”

Kars' GM raised it's beam gun and fired a shot into the open cockpit of the Acguy and it caught fire and slowly tipped over into the water. “Problem solved. Let's go.”

I took a quick look around, but I couldn't see my shield or the dented pauldron. I would have to do without, it seemed. There were still spares back at the farm, so it wasn't the end of the world. “Alright, let's go.”

 

[Jackie]

Hell or High Water​

I knew that the suit wasn't rated for what I was trying to make it do, but I couldn't stop either. The controls were sluggish and I felt like at any time I would tip over and that would be it. The force of rushing water was like nothing I'd ever contended with before.

My Zaku was down stream of a barge that had broken loose in the flood and we'd made it into a make-shift rescue raft. No tugboat would have been able to fight the current, but eighty tons of Zaku II could hold the forces of nature at bay, at least for a little while.

Off to my right a small group of flat bottomed fishing boats were fighting the current and rescuing people off of rooftops that hadn't collapsed yet. As time went on, they were getting fewer and futher between.

I keyed up the external speakers as I started pushing the barge towards the group, “Bring any survivors over to the barge! There's a Federation evacuation team on the way, they can pick you up from here!”

As long as they trusted me, it would be a safe harbor for them. Even if I couldn't hold on, the barge was big enough that nothing the river could do would sink it. I hoped. If the water got too deep or too rough there were no promises and I wasn't sure how deep it was going to get.

The water had already reached the lower chest of the Zaku, any higher and I'd have to rely on the cockpit being waterpoof. They were made for outer space, but just because it could hold an atmosphere of air in didn't necessarily mean it could also keep water out.

A ping on my display drew my attention; a blueish-grey aircraft was approaching, fast. It looks like some kind of VTOL transport, with huge lifting disks mounted dorsally and a huge pot-bellied cargo bay slung underneath. It looked more Zeke than Fed, but it wasn't wearing the colors of either.

The rapid approach and descent conveyed a sense of urgency, whether that urgency was to deploy mobile suits or to assist in the rescue efforts--

“Veronica, is that you in the Zaku? Well, either way, I've brought some friends to help.”

That cleared up their intent. I recognized the voice that broadcasted over the loudspeakers even though I'd only heard it a few times before. It cleared things up almost exactly none, but it confirmed my suspicion that there was more to learn about him.

“Hey Dominic. As you can see, I've got my hands full.”

***​

In the end the Federation rescue team never arrived. They must have had something better to do. Kars and Thad had no explanation for their conspicuous lack of response. I suspected that the reason for their silence on the matter was more a lack of information on their part, than trying to conceal it.

We were going on day three of a civilian operating a mobile suit in combat while two Federation pilots backed her up and nobody seemed to be showing up to question it, or even just pull the plug and tell Kars to stop me. The silence was more worrying than anything else, really.

Dominic stood in front of me, just like he had when he'd greeted me the morning after he saved my life. I stood, once again, on the step to my RV. He'd saved me twice if I included the rescue at the barge. “So, Zeke?” I asked him, finally.

He hadn't told me before, but I'd suspected ever since he piloted my Zaku that he was one of them. Showing up in one of their transports was another mark in favor of that. But he helped me, he helped people the Zekes had put in danger in the first place.

So, what was he?

“Not since the third of January. Didn't really have the stomach for it any more.”

That wasn't something I could miss. The sky had been on fire, not the kind of thing you could forget. Everyone knew someone who'd died in what came after. If there was ever a time to burn your flag and turn pirate, that would've been it.

“So what about now?” I asked him as I took a step down onto the concrete, doing my best to look intimidating despite looking up to meet his eyes.

“I'm pretty curious about that myself. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the help, but I'm not into getting burned.”

I snapped my head to the right, Kars was standing between the sliding doors of the quonset hut and I didn't know how long he'd been standing there, but it had clearly been long enough. He was wearing a side arm on his normal suit and that set him apart from every other time I'd seen him out of his cockpit.

“I guess it's all caught up to me now, hasn't it? Wouldn't take a genius to figure out I'd been here and that I'd piloted that Zaku, and they'd assume I'd seen the little present stored in the onboard computer. You don't think the dam was just a target of opportunity do you?”

“So what,” I interjected “They blew up the dam to take out my Zaku? There are better ways to kill a mobile suit.”

“That's great, but what's on the computer that they want so badly?” Kars asked as he walked closer. He had a not-quite limp that I hadn't noticed before. Had he been wounded in the explosion at the dam?

“Well there's the troop deployment plans they probably don't want you to have, but the mobile suit plans are the real treat. I assume Veronica hasn't actually told you about them yet?”

“I've been waiting for the right moment. Been kind of a busy day.” I answered with a shrug. In truth, I hadn't been wanting to broach that subject at all. One more reason for them to take it away from me.

Kars seemed confused, “why would they have mobile suit plans stored in a random Zaku?”

“Because they stole them from Jaburo. They're Earth Forces mobile suit plans, not Zeon. For a Gundam. If they got those plans to Zeonic and started building their own Gundams... Well, I don't think I have to explain how that could go.” Dominic got quiet near the end. Given what he'd said only a few minutes before, I could imagine exactly what he was implying.

“So what's the plan then?” I asked with a look towards Kars. Between the two of them, I might owe more to Dominic but I still trusted Kars more.

“Blowing it up wouldn't stop them from coming after you. For that matter, we could probably use the Zeon intel stored on the computer but we don't exactly have a good way of extracting it.” He paused and leaned against the side of the trailer and rubbed his chin.

“Supposing I was going to go along with this, who could extract the data from my Zaku? If the data gets disseminated there's no reason for them to go after me and you guys can mop them up, right?” I asked with a glance over at my mobile suit.

The Zaku was standing next to the hut, as though it was standing guard over us. Replacing the pauldron and shield had been simple enough, though the paint didn't quite match between the parts any more. I imagined it had already exceeded the average lifespan of a mobile suit in combat, any time was borrowed, wasn't it?

Dominic suddenly stood up straight and took a step forward, snapping his fingers, “You know, I bet Anaheim could do it.”

“On the moon? That's a little bit of a trip, don't you think?” I asked him with a frown.

“No, no I think that would actually work!” Kars interjected excitedly, “The Salisbury is prepping for launch at Kennedy. We could hitch a ride up to space. From there it shouldn't be that hard to get to Von Braun City.”

“Thats a lot of land to cross with Zekes breathing down our necks.” I pointed out. “Three mobile suits does not an army make.”

“No, but six isn't bad. Two Fat Uncle transports and six mobile suits might not be an army but it's not toothless.” Dominic added with a shrug, “I'm already involved, may as well go all in.”

“I don't care what color they are, if Zeon transports show up at Kennedy they're going to get fired on.” Kars shook his head, “No, we've got to find another way.”

“Not if they're broadcasting Hatte Defense Force IFF. I think that might raise enough questions to get them to talk before shooting.” Dominic's voice hardened a little at the end. I could understand it. I'd lost people too.

“Why would you be doing that? That's not exactly--”

Dominic cut him off, “Because someone has to speak for the dead. If I don't, who will? This way, everyone will know exactly what I stand for.”

“The people who died when the Zekes dropped Island Iffish.” The realization took a minute, but I didn't think anyone would miss it when the shooting started. The message was a little too blatant for the Zekes to miss it.

“If we'd had more men with the same courage that Ramba Ral showed, maybe those people would still be alive. I can't think of any message that could more clearly broadcast that we're not with Zeon any longer.”

Kars took a step towards Dominic as if to size him up. “I can get behind that. Alright, we'll go with you and hope for the best. Our chances are better together and with the Federation forces being spread so thin I doubt I'm gonna get help from anywhere else.”

“So, an Ex-Zeke, two Federation pilots, and a farmer? I think I've heard this one before.” I joked. “Well, I guess I'm in. I would have been satisfied with an average boring life, but that was before they made that impossible for me. So let's saddle up.”

“Grab whatever you're going to bring and power up the Zaku. Given what Dominic has said, I don't think Zeon is going to give us much time before they attack.”

***​

The start up process had gotten quicker with practice. I had to wonder how many mobile suit pilots never managed to get as proficient as I had. I had to wonder how much of my own success was natural aptitude and how much was luck.

And if it was luck, just how far that luck was willing to carry me.

This time I had a loaded machine gun to go with my heat hawk. I was as ready as I'd ever be and I had to hope it was enough. Enough to pull off a plan that would only work if luck was still willing when it came time.

My revolver was tucked into the bag next to the seat, my Lee Enfield was slung over the back of it. Two guns and all that was left of my memories tucked into a sack. There wasn't much but land to leave behind, but it would never really be the same.

They could lay down a prefab housing unit and it would be livable but it would never be the same, especially after the destruction of the dam.

Even so, leaving still felt like goodbye.

“Veronica Jackson, Zaku II. I'm ready to go.”

“Thad has already scouted ahead with Dominic. The transports are waiting, they'll take off as soon as we get there. Didn't forget anything, did you?” Kars asked me over the laser link.

“Everything that's left of my life fits in a duffel bag. I'm good to go.” I answered with more sadness in my voice than I'd intended.

“As long as you're alive, you can always rebuild-- Minvosky particle density is increasing. We need to move quickly.” He sounded agitated, if not panicked. If Minovsky particle density was going up it meant more mobile suits.

I set off to the rendezvous point at about half speed, balancing my urgency against trying not to make as much noise and certainly avoiding the thrusters.

Minovsky particles, generated by the reactor of a mobile suit, interfered with radio waves and electrical signals. This meant that RADAR and radio didn't work when particle density was high enough. They wouldn't be able to see me on RADAR, but if I was loud enough they could still still hear me, and if I lit my thrusters it would be hard not to see them, too.

Though, to be fair, 'quiet' hadn't described anything I'd done with a mobile suit so far.

I nudged the ground speed up to three quarters and winced at the increased noise production. I didn't have the self restraint or the calm to stick with slow. The sooner I made it to the transports the sooner I was off the ground and away from anywhere the Zekes expected me to be.

Kars' GM was up ahead of me on the left, probably leading by a quarter mile. His unit was faster than mine, but it was lighter too which meant he could use that speed without drawing the same attention that I did.

Of course, hiding something twenty meters tall was only possible because of the hill that we were able to keep between ourselves and the farm. The present we'd left for the Zekes would hopefully keep their attention long enough to execute the second half of the plan.

The lavender-gray of the Fat Uncle transports at the bottom of the valley was a surprisingly welcome sight, that the engines were already running doubly so. A mobile suit of the same color stood in the doorway of the nearer transport and waved me in.

It looked similar to a Zaku with the same mono-eye sensor, but without any of the same piping on the head and likewise lacking the snout of the Zaku. As I drew closer the computer tagged it as 'MS-04 Bugu'

I wasn't a mobile suit historian by any means but the lower model number would logically dictate that the suit was at least two designs older than the one I was in, sub-models dis-included.

Kars stepped through the open hatch first and I followed behind, before turning around to face back out through the open door. With my suit's feet in direct contact with the hull I was able to open a communication link with the transport itself and every suit currently standing within it.

Dominic's face appeared on a screen to my right. “We're taking off now. The scouts spotted four mobile suits back at the farm. They took the bait, so now is the time.”

The Bugu picked a rifle up off the floor of the cargo bay and handed it to me. I twisted the control stick and my Zaku passed my machine gun to the other suit before obediently picking up the rifle. “Thanks?”

“Your farm. Your shot, if you want it.” Dominic answered, confirming that he was the pilot of the other mobile suit.

Which explained how he knew how to operate mine so well.

I'd been relying on someone else taking the shot, but he had a point and it would be appropriate if I was the one to do it. “Yeah, I'll do it. Let's go.”

I commanded the suit to shoulder the huge anti-ship rifle as the transport lifted up off the ground in a cloud of dust and fallen leaves. Altitude climbed rapidly, rapidly enough that I felt myself pressed down in the seat.

It wasn't even as bad as when I made the Zaku jump, but G-forces always seemed more pronounced when you weren't expecting them. Just like being the passenger in the car instead of the driver. Well, a really big car and a really big passenger. The analogy still worked.

We cleared the top of the hill and I zoomed in the optics. Three Zakus and something I couldn't identify that still looked Zeke. It was almost like a Zaku but a little more stocky, with a head fin just like mine. They were standing point around the Zaku wreck we'd dummied up to look like a complete suit.

Right in front of the Quonset hut.

They were all in range, so I focused the rifle's aim on my target and my finger tensed up on the trigger. There would be no turning back after this.

No, that was a lie. The point of no return was the moment I climbed into this cockpit the first time.

I toggled the external speakers up to full power and readied my shot. “Sieg Zeon!” I screamed and pulled the trigger.

The rifle kicked hard against the Zaku's shoulder and I thought I might fall over, but my aim was true and the shell impacted the roof of the Quonset hut a moment after all four mobile suits pointed their machine guns up at us.

It was important that they knew who killed them.

The Quonset hut evaporated a second later as six tons of home made ammonium nitrate fuel-oil explosives went up and destroyed what was left of my farm. I'd planned to use it against the Zekes, but not quite like that.

But four mobile suits for the price of an already destroyed farm was, if painful, a price I was willing to pay. The unit I couldn't identify managed, somehow, to remain standing after the initial explosion. A condition that didn't last as one of the Zaku's reactor went up and left no survivors.

Movement in the rear of my cockpit drew my immediate attention and I turned my head to the right as a hand came down on the arm rest.

“Holy shit!” The voice exclaimed.

I had similar thoughts, but not for the same reason. “Brooke!?”

 

[Jackie]

Onward
​

I could have asked her why she'd stowed away in my Zaku. I could have yelled at her. I could have screamed her up one side of the transport and down the other about the danger she put herself in. I could have done a lot of things.

I did nothing.

She wasn't mine. She didn't owe me anything and I didn't owe her a lecture when I hadn't done any better. I didn't need to ask her questions that she wouldn't want to answer and that I didn't want to know the answers to.

I knew where she lived, and I knew there was about thirty feet of water sitting on top of it.

So I didn't need to scream her up one side and down the other. Because if I did that, I might find out she came because she didn't have anywhere else to go.

I found myself sitting in the back of the transport's bridge sipping on coffee that tasted like it had been filtered through a sock. Bitter, nutty, and with just a hint of an unknowable musk. It was still better than the crap I'd been drinking at home.

With a crew on the bridge of about three it seemed like flying the transport wasn't anything resembling difficult, so I didn't feel guilty about bothering them with my presence. The truth was that I needed to spend a little bit of time away from all things mobile suit.

I had to get my head back into the game because destroying what was left of my home in a grand 'fuck you' to the Principality of Zeon had taken more out of me than I had thought it would. Whoever said revenge doesn't make you feel any better might have been on to something.

“So, where y'all from?” I asked in a conversational tone as I took another sip of likewarm ditch runoff.

“I'm from Side 3, Arlo, the guy at the controls, is from Side 2. Navigator, Elton, is from Idaho,” the heavy-set man in the command chair answered. He looked like he might have been older than my father.

Which made me wonder how he'd gotten so tangled up in all of this, though not enough to actually ask him.

“What about you?” The older man finally asked, breaking the silence caused by my lack of reply.

I looked up from my cup of hot bitter ditch water and blinked, “Oh, I'm originally from the Rio Grande Valley. Spent a few years in space operating mobile workers, then came home when my dad got sick.”

“On your way back up to space now, though, aren't you?”

I leaned back in the seat and shifted my focus towards the ceiling. “Yeah I guess so. As fast as this has all happened I haven't really had a chance to think about it. The way things are going I'm not sure when I'll end up coming back down here again.”

“Once the war is over I think I'll come back here to settle down, myself. Few acres, couple horses. Seems like a good way to retire.”

“My dad had the same idea,” I agreed. “I guess it's just as well he passed on before the war started.”

“Then the only thing left to do is end it” Kars' voice came from over my left shoulder.

He was standing in the doorway with his hand on the frame. He looked rough and I knew the feeling. There hadn't been much in the way of downtime or full meals since that first battle, and I had no way of knowing how long he'd been going before that.

It was no secret that North America on the whole had been a battleground between Zeon and Earth Federation forces and the scorch marks and scratched paint I'd seen on his GM in the cargo bay told me that this was far from his first rodeo.

I was wrong, he didn't look rough at all. He looked god damned pristine, considering what he must have been through to get here. I may not have been a soldier but it didn't take one to know that most front line troops didn't make it home. That was the nature of this conflict.

And I knew that as tough as a Zaku was, it wasn't the worst thing he had to face. I also didn't doubt that if he and Thaddeus hadn't been there I wouldn't have made it a quarter as far as I had.

“Well that's the point of what we're doing isn't it? Once your commanders get the information that's in my Zaku they'll be able to attack the Zekes where they're hiding, right?” I asked as I stood up. The coffee wasn't really doing it for me anyway.

“That's the idea, but I'm not going to put all my hopes behind it,” he answered, then shook his head, “That's not what I came up here for. What are we going to do about your stowaway?”

I shrugged, “I haven't really come up with an answer to that yet.”

“It's not like a battlefield is a safe place for a-- how old is she?”

I shook my head, “If I told you you wouldn't feel better, so leave it at that. It's not like it's a hell of a lot safer where we came from. Her house was in the flood plain when Falcon Dam went up and she was the only one who wasn't home.”

Kars leaned against the wall and made a fist, “Ah... shit.”

I nodded, “Well I'm not gonna tell you that we've got to take care of her but right now I'm not sure that she's got anyone else.”

“So being surrounded by mobile suits might not actually be the worst place for her.” Kars finished.

“There are worse places,” I agreed. “But if we're going to take her all the way to the Salisbury, she should ride with me. Zekes are going to want my computer intact to pull those Gundam plans off of it. That means they won't attack the cockpit directly.”

Kars shook his head, “no, she'll be better off with Thad. His mobile suit is faster than a Zaku and better armored. If it comes down to it the two of us can hold the line while he takes her and runs for the ship.”

“Well, for that matter are we even expecting a fight? Kennedy is in Federation territory isn't it?” I asked, reconsidering my own logic about the situation.

“It was when we left two weeks ago. But the Gundam plans in your Zaku's computer refer to a unit that's currently at Kennedy. There's a non-zero chance that Zeon forces know about it and will try to capture it.”

“That explains the spike in Minovsky particle density.”

The comment had come from the man at the controls. Arlo, he'd been called. A younger, darker complected man. He didn't really look like he was built for physical labor but he'd been handling the controls well enough.

“What?” Kars and I managed to ask simultaneously.

Arlo turned from the controls to address us and the old man in the captain's chair. “Minovsky particle density has been rising for a while now but it just spiked through the roof. We're either flying into a fight or we're flying into what is about to be a fight.”

The old man rubbed his temples and turned in his chair towards us, “We'll handle things up here. You should head down to your mobile suits.”

“You heard him, cowgirl. Saddle up.” Kars said with a laugh that betrayed a feeling of forced bravado. “There's fighting to be done.”

 

[Jackie]

Gundam Local Type

​

It was a word that had become synonymous with victory. The first close combat mobile suit the Earth Federation Space Forces had ever designed, the culmination of everything Project V had hoped to achieve.

Gundam.

When a Gundam entered the battlefield the number of soldiers on either side became irrelevant. The side that could field a Gundam was the side that would take home victory. Every mobile suit to bear the name 'Gundam' would find itself written into legend.

From the door of an ex-Zeon transport staring down the sights of of an anti-ship rifle at the V-crest of what could only be a Gundam, it wasn't difficult to see why.

It was a leaner, meaner RGM-79 just at first glance. It evoked an image of a samurai... or maybe a devil, depending on your perspective. But save for the visual similarity to the GM, the Gundam was something else entirely.

The grey and black shield was streaked with green and purple paint that it must have picked up as the Gundam carved a path through Zaku II and Dom mobile suits. A ruined hanger stood behind the Gundam and the remains of a destroyed Dom laid in front of it.

And its head turned to look up, directly at me. I shifted the controls to point the rifle wide and away from it, then extended my Zaku's left hand upwards into a palm out wave. I'm sure I looked silly, but it was the first non-threatening gesture to come to mind.

“Alright, jump.” I heard through the contact link with Kars's GM, and then the bottom dropped out as he shoved me over the threshold.

It took me a moment to catch my bearings, but I had six hundred or so feet before the ground to figure it out. I wasn't much of an aircraft pilot but the suit's automatics took care of most of it, it was a few easy control inputs to stabilize my fall, and then stepping into the thrusters just before impact softened the landing to 'survivable' if not comfortable.

Finding myself face to face with the Gundam I realized that this was not the Gundam I'd seen plans for. I also realized that 'survivable' might not describe my situation as completely as I'd have liked.

And I didn't want to fight the Gundam.

I opened up the cockpit hatch and waved at the other pilot. First, he'd see that I wasn't wearing a Zeon uniform. Second, opening up the cockpit seemed like the best way to show I wasn't interested in a fight.

Sure, there'd been a GM standing right next to me in the doorway, but that would only make him curious enough not to shoot us down. That wouldn't make him trust us, Zeon transport and all.

The decidedly feminine voice that blasted over loud speakers was not what I'd been expecting. “Hey you should button that back up before you catch a stray.”

Well then. She didn't have to tell me twice. I hit the switch and closed the armored hatch in front of me and felt a lot more secure about my chances. A thud next to me was followed by several more and a glance in the side monitor confirmed five more mobile suits.

The Gundam placed a hand on my Zaku's shoulder and a link opened up with the other pilot. “Don't worry about friendly fire. I'd recognize my brother's GM anywhere. I'm sure there's a hell of a story behind this but it'll have to wait till this is over. Can you fight?”

I blinked mutely, staring straight ahead at the forward monitor for longer than I was proud of processing the various layers and implications of her statement. Brother? No, not now. “Yeah-- wait. We need to get to the Salisbury, we need to get this Zaku into space.”

“Well don't you have the Devil's luck. She's fueling right now and will launch once the crew arrives. If you'd gotten here any later you'd have missed your ride.”

“That easy? Not gonna ask why?” I found myself questioning. I was the kind of idiot that couldn't just let a win be a win, that way.

“My brother's mobile suit has been giving me a 'thumbs up' since it landed. I'll roll with it for now, he can explain once we're all safe. You head for the ship, I've still got a few things to deal with out here.”

I nodded despite the fact that she couldn't possibly see me, and answered, “Yeah you got it.” I looked over at my anti-ship rifle and at the smaller carbine held by the Gundam. “Hey, do you need my rifle? Not gonna do me any good if I'm not going into the fight.”

I could almost hear the laugh in her reply, “Don't worry about me; Mine's bigger.”

The Gundam took a step away from me and then turned and ran towards the advancing Zeke mobile suits. The bright flash that followed took a moment to register, both in what it was and in how many flashes there actually were.

The second time I finally caught it; a beam rifle. Not like the beam gun the GM had, this thing was more like a battleship main gun. The Zaku that it hit evaporated in a reactor explosion an instant later.

Thank god she said hi instead of shooting at me.

She hadn't told me where the ship was, but there was only one 'ski jump' launch rail and so it stood to reason that the ship would be at the end of it that wasn't sticking up into the sky. I gestured towards the launch pad with my Zaku's free left hand and toggled the externals. “Shall we?”

Thad's GM took off at a quick jog towards the Salisbury, not so fast that I couldn't keep up, but pretty close to the maximum I could get out of the Zaku without using the boosters and using up propellent. He could save his speed for when he needed it, it wouldn't do him or Brooke any good to over-extend and leave himself outside of our ability to provide backup.

Kars could keep up with him without a problem, but the four of us in Zeon-produced suits didn't have the top speed to keep up if he'd decided it was a race.

I'd been here once before, before my father's age had caught up with him. Just out of high school, came to see the place where mankind had first started to claw their way to the heavens. That was when I'd first decided to go up to space, to follow where the old greats had lead.

Then we'd gone and turned it into a battleground.

I ran out from behind an assembly building a few paces behind Thad's GM and finally caught my first sight of the Salisbury. The stern looked like any other Salamis-class ship, but the similarities began to diverge around the base of the conning tower, with this ship being much longer and a bit stockier than the cruiser it resembled.

The intent was obvious even to a farmer; it was a mobile suit carrier. The 'chin' that extended past the bow must have been the catapult. That would be how we'd get inside.

Thad's GM boost-jumped the three or four body lengths straight up onto the deck and as I followed behind him I hoped my Zaku had the thruster output to pull off the same maneuver.

But you never knew until you tried. I slid the controls and stepped all the way into the thrusters and the Zaku took off like a cannon fired straight into the sky. I felt myself being pushed down into the seat almost as hard as a space launch and a moment later I was staring down at the recovery deck of the Salisbury.

The Zaku definitely had the capacity to pull off the jump. The descent was a repeat of the drop from the transport, though I was a little more graceful about it the second time. A few quick, yet strong, bursts of the thrusters and I managed to land without denting either the ship or my mobile suit.

My IFF pinged before I even looked up, a 'friendly' MS-07B 'Gouf' was tagged on my screen, holding a machine gun not unlike the ones I'd seen on Zakus. The muzzle was pointed at group of workers standing in a tight group in a corner of the hanger.

Thad was moving before I'd finished processing the situation. His thrusters ignited and his GM rocketed across the deck faster than I'd ever seen, his beam saber was in his hand but not yet ignited. His GM's left foot planted right behind the feet of the Gouf and I was certain the pilot would never know what had happened to him.

Thad's GM grabbed the horn sticking out of the top of the Gouf's head and wrenched the Zeke suit over backwards before he jammed his beam saber against the suit's backpack. An instant later the pink beam sprung out of the Gouf's chest and the enemy suit's arms went slack.

Thad's deep voice boomed through the hanger as he shoved the now cockpit-less Gouf into a mobile suit restraint. “Prepare the ship for launch. We've got Zeon forces closing in and they're not going to give up until we're dead!”

The crew that had been held captive were in motion before I was, but it didn't take me long to make my way to a free mobile suit bay. It looked like the ship had a lot more capacity free than filled and there would be enough for all of us.

I slotted my own mobile suit into a free space between what looked like a heavier GM, but with a cannon over it shoulder, and--

And a suit I'd seen before, but only in pictures. I'd managed to overlook it before, but there it was in living color. Gundam RX-78HV-1. It dripped of being built for speed, with a six thruster backpack and extra leg thrusters and shoulder jets.

As fast as the GM was, there was no way it was going to hold a candle to what this Gundam would do.

Still, the GM was a more advanced suit than the Zaku. Thad's GM was already locked down and powered off before I'd even started the process on my own mobile suit. He and Kars were standing on the deck in front of my Zaku for a moment before Kars ran off through a hatchway to my left, towards the aft of the ship.

The older, friendly, Zeon suits that had accompanied us lined up in the free bays to the right of the cannon-equipped mobile suit to my right and their hatches opened up shortly after. It was possible older suits shut down quicker, or perhaps they just had more practice at it than I did.

My suit was still holding the anti-ship rifle, but that was something that could be taken care of later, the hard part was done. From here I just had to wait till we made it to the moon. I started reading over the shutdown checklist since a full shutdown was a little more involved than the sleep mode I'd been putting the suit into the last few days.

A flash of light drew my attention away from the checklist, out of the right side monitor I saw the other Gundam crash into the deck and slide inside the hanger, trailing sparks and smoke as it fired machine gun rounds from its head at a mobile suit that took a moment to register on the IFF

MS-14A 'Gelgoog'. The left pauldron was torn away but the arm was intact and it was holding a lit beam saber.

I reflexively kicked my foot pedal and my Zaku jumped forward out of the mobile suit restraint, then immediately began to tip over forwards. I twisted the controls and brought the unit down on the left shoulder as the right arm lined up on the advancing mobile suit.

His thrusters lit and I pulled the trigger and as the shot erupted from the muzzle of the anti-ship rifle alarms started screaming in my cockpit. The impact tipped the Gelgoog over backwards and it slid backwards down the catapult until it fell off the front of the ship.

The warhead in the shell finally detonated before the mobile suit fell out of sight and the resulting explosion left no doubt about the Zeke's fate.

Damage warnings rolled down the status display almost faster than I could read them and it was nothing good. Red through most of the right arm and the left shoulder. She was down for the count, but not down forever. I'd leave it to the ship's crew to figure out what to do with it, as damaged as it was I didn't want to risk making it worse by trying to get back up.

And so I learned two lessons. The first: anti-ship rifles aren't to be fired one handed. The second: going through a reactor shutdown checklist is more complicated when you're laying on your side.

The thumbs up from the Gundam still laying on the deck, however, told me I'd made the right choice.

 

[Jackie]

Charity

​

The Gundam wasn't beyond repair by any stretch of the imagination. Sure, there was damage, but my suspicion was that it was the pilot that had been taken out of the fight. All of the damage seemed superficial as I climbed up the chest armor.

It had definitely taken a few hard hits, but all that made me wonder is what the other guy looked like. Guys, or at least the one I didn't shoot. I had a pretty good idea of what that one looked like.

The hatch release wasn't hard to find and it moved freely enough. It was clear that whatever metal this was, it wasn't steel. The sound was... off. A quick twist counter clockwise and there was a hissing of escaping gas as the hatch opened up and out.

The cockpit layout wasn't much different from the Zaku, though that wasn't a huge surprise. If something worked, why re-invent the wheel?

I noticed the pilot's blonde hair a moment before I noticed the smell of blood. She was definitely wounded. I took a step down into the cockpit and when my boot clinked against the foothold her eyes opened.

And then I knew who's sister she was, because she and Kars had the same eyes. “I guess I owe you one, huh?” She said with a pained expression. “Snapped my leg like a twig in that landing. I'm afraid I'm down until the medics can get this bone back inside where it belongs.”

I reached down to take her hand, “Do you think you can climb out on your good leg with some help? I don't think I've got the upper body strength to pull you out on my own.”

She nodded and took my hand, “I've already been into my first aid kit. Give me a couple more minutes and I won't be able to feel a damn thing. Yeah, let's do it.”

I braced my right boot against the control stand and my left boot against the foot peg and pulled with all of my might. She lifted out of the seat easier than I would have thought, not that I made a habit out of hoisting women out of mobile suit cockpits.

The source of the blood smell became apparent a moment later when her left leg came up past the control stand; her tibia was sticking out of her flight suit and it was... gooey. I tried not to think about it and instead pulled her arm across my shoulder and acted as a make-shift crutch to hoist her out onto the chest armor.

“Well, I suppose I should introduce myself,” She said as we stood waiting for the approaching cherry-picker to come pick us up.

“You're Kars's sister, right?” I asked with a half-smirk since I'd beaten her to the punch.

“That's right, Colonel Charity Alexander, Earth Federation Space Forces. And yourself?”

A Colonel? I would have pegged her as the younger sibling but apparently she was aging better than I was if she was a Colonel.

“Veronica Jackson, Civilian Farmer.” I replied with the same dignity as she'd introduced herself. It wasn't an officer rank in the military but it was an accurate descriptor nevertheless.

Her eyes widened a little at that revelation and she glanced over at my beaten-up Zaku. “Farming must be a lot more intense than I had imagined.”

I laughed at the joke, “Well, it has its moments.”

“Attention all hands. Secure ship for acceleration. We're launching in two minutes. Lock down all mobile suits and prepare for takeoff.”

“That sounded a lot like Kars.” I commented as I helped Charity onto the cherry-picker.

“That did sound a lot like Kars. I guess the command shuttle never made it. Use Helios to get the Local Type and your Zaku secured, they'll make a mess if we launch with them laying on the floor like this.”

I raised my finger and hesitated, “I have at least two questions, maybe three.”

She nodded, “Helios is the other Gundam. I would say use mine, but the foot controls busted when I broke my leg so it can't stand up on its own right now. There aren't a lot of other options right now but more importantly as Colonel I have the authority to authorize you to pilot it, so hurry up.”

Well, fair enough then.

I stepped off the platform onto the deck as it reached the bottom and took off towards the RX-78HV-1, Helios, as Charity had called it. The lift controls were simple, and I was pretty sure the exact same control panel was on the bale conveyor back on my farm, so it didn't take me long to be faced with the open cockpit of a Gundam I'd only seen diagrams of.

This cockpit was nothing like any I'd seen before. The seat and controls sat suspended in the middle of an empty sphere, a full panoramic display? It didn't matter, I'd figure it out. I stepped over the threshold and jumped into the seat. There were fewer controls than the Zaku, fewer things to handle manually. I could start it up just fine.

Only about a minute left till the engines got lit. I toggled the main power on and closed the hatch as the display lit up. In a moment I was surrounded by a full panoramic view of the mobile suit hanger. “This will do.”

I knelt Helios down next to my fallen Zaku and lifted it up and pressed it into the restraint latches in the bay I'd parked it in when I'd arrived. Despite that the Zaku had to weigh half again as much as the Gundam I had no difficulty in lifting it.

Helios was really something else.

The 'Local Type' Gundam was even easier to lift and get locked into place in the bay that I'd just vacated. That left me to pick up the rifle my Zaku had dropped and--

The rumble through the deck shook even my seat and that was my signal that the boosters had been lit. The doors in the front of the hanger bay slid closed and the Gundam started to tip towards the rear of the ship under acceleration. I could have stabilized it with the thrusters but firing them inside of a ship seemed like a bad idea, and so I let myself get dragged towards the rear bulkhead and braced the mobile suit against it.

I found myself clenching the control sticks in a death grip as the mass driver the ship was sitting on top of fired and half a dozen Gs slammed me back into the seat. It was everything I could do to keep the suit in place as the ship started to pitch up and the shaking around me intensified.

The supplemental solid rocket boosters kicked in a half a second later and my hands slipped off the controls. It had to be up over nine Gs at that point and my vision started to fade--I squeezed my legs together as hard as I could and my vision returned, I managed to get my hands back to the control sticks.

The acceleration dropped off sharply and it became a lot easier to breathe and see and think, even if I was still pretty heavy in the seat. The rear bulkhead of the mobile suit bay had become the new 'down' and so Helios had gone from standing up to laying down without moving a single servo.

I reached over to the side panel on the control stand and found the communications controls. They were a little different than the Zeon design but a radio was a radio and at the end of the day they couldn't really be all that different.

A little bit of tuning and I'd dialed my contact link over to the channel the bridge was using and a vid window popped up on the spherical display, in line with the radio panel. It was a pretty intuitive way to use a wraparound display.

“So it's feeling a little heavy down here, how much longer on the burn?” I asked, looking for an answer from anyone who might respond, not that I recognized a whole lot of the faces.

It looked, from the angle, like I might have been talking to an un-populated station. The seat I was looking at was empty but out of the corner of the screen I could see Kars sitting in what was most likely the captain's chair.

His eyes finally met mine with some confusion and then he twisted a knob on his arm-rest and I was looking at him from a much more direct angle. “Veronica? I'm sure you being in that Gundam is a good story, later though. We're running the boosters a little hot because the Zekes aren't making this easy on us. We've got pursuit chasing us up and a Musai-class waiting for us when we get there.”

Of course it wouldn't be easy. But... but maybe it didn't need to be easy. When you were in a Gundam you couldn't lose.

“How long?” I asked him as I started experimenting with the weapons inventory system. Not too different from the Zaku but there were really only so many ways to skin a cat, right?”

“Boosters are gonna burn out in about thirty seconds. Two minutes of coasting and then we'll have the main engines lit to circularize. The Musai will be on us about a minute after that based on what we can tell so far.” He was surprisingly calm. He must have been through worse on the ground.

Or, this wasn't his first rodeo in space.

Inventory came up empty, save for the vulcans in the suit's head and... and a pair of ninety millimeter gatling guns in the forearms. That was better than the Zaku had when its hands were empty and Helios didn't have empty hands. The anti-ship rifle and some machine guns? I could figure out the rest when it came up.

I rocked forward in my seat when the boosters cut out and Helios drifted forwards, slightly, away from the bulkhead. This was no different than back at the farm. I could do this because I needed to do this, because everyone else needed me to do this too.

I pushed off the wall and drifted forwards across the bay, to the two platforms at the end of the notch in the floor that lead up to the hanger doors. I knew what they were for, it would be hard not to. This was a carrier, and carriers had catapults.

The Gundam's feet clicked into place and I readied the anti-ship rifle.

“Veronica, what are you doing? Clear the catapult, we need to deploy suits as soon as we reach parking orbit.” Kars asked me, now I could hear some stress in his voice and I knew that there wasn't another option.

I wasn't the best choice, but I was the closest choice. If they launched me now, the Helios would have the power to keep up with their circularization burn and the Zekes would never see it coming.

I cleared my throat and put all on all the bravado I could muster. If I was going to play the part I had to act the part. I had to feel it. “I know. I'm gonna go out there and fight. In a Gundam there's no way I can lose. You saw what Charity did in her Gundam. You know how much stronger this one is.”

I felt my composure starting to crack as the stress of everything started to bubble up. “It'll... It'll be nice to win one. So... So let me do this, okay?”

He looked at me and for a moment his youth was gone, the facade had fallen. It was the eyes that gave away age beyond his years. I felt without knowing, without there being any way to know, that someone else must certainly have said similar words to him before.

He said nothing as he turned his head away from the screen and nodded to someone else on the bridge. In front of me, to the left of his vid window, the hanger started to open and the tree lit up red.

Then yellow.

I closed my eyes one last time, took a deep breath, and then opened them.

“This is Veronica Jackson in Gundam Helios. Taking off!”

And finally, green.

“Good luck.”

 

[Jackie]

Helios Rising

​

“You could have stayed in space. I would have understood. You didn't have to give up your dreams to come back here.”

There were so many last times, most of the time we were blessed not to know them. The last time he'd tuck me in bed. The last time he'd pick me up and swing me around. The last time I'd hold his hand.

The last time I'd hold his hand. It was upon me and he knew it as much as I did. So if this was the last moment, I'd make it last as long as I could.

I squeezed his hand tightly in mine and shook my head, “Of course I would come back. I've missed too much to miss being here with you, now. You know you were the only one who could ever make me cry, so don't start doing it again now.”

***​

Spoiler

I opened my eyes and felt a tear running down my cheek. It had been a long time since I'd thought about that day and right before a battle wasn't the best time to remember.

Or maybe it was.

“This is Veronica Jackson in Gundam Helios. Taking off!”

“Good luck.”
Thrusters on, the catapult fired and I was slammed back in the pilot's seat as the mobile suit rocketed out into space. The controls were light, snappy. I felt like I could run a ring around a beam of light and knock a hole through the sky. With a Gundam, maybe I could?

I pushed the throttle higher until it felt almost as rough as the first part of the launch into space had been, and then gave it a little more. Salisbury wouldn't be able to catch up to me, but that was fine. I'd get there first and plow the road for them. Despite the acceleration and G forces the Gundam was solid as a rock and smooth as glass.

This is what the world would be like if everything had turned out the way we'd dreamed when we were children. Maybe it took me a little longer the way I'd gone. Maybe it hadn't been on the same terms or for the same reasons and maybe it wouldn't end like I'd wanted.

But for the moment I felt like I was where I was always meant to be and tomorrow could be tomorrow's problem.

I couldn't spot the Zeke fleet on radar, but I didn't need to. Minovsky particle density might have been astronomical but I could see their drive flares with my eyes all the same. I'd been wrong before; they would definitely see me coming. All the thrust I was putting out, I would bear down on them brighter than the sun.

And it wouldn't make a bit of difference, because I was mighty.

The Zeon ship was right in front of me and just above my plane of travel. I cut my thrusters and rolled onto my back, brought the rifle to the Gundam's shoulder and lined up my shots. It couldn't link up with the targeting computers, the connections were too different, but a trigger was a trigger and I could still pull it.

Three seconds to closest approach. Two. One.

I snapped the trigger down three times in quick succession and the rifle locked open, empty. I threw it to the side and looked up through the top of the cockpit to watch the Zeke ship's skin ripple as the warheads I'd driven deep into the ship detonated. It might not have been a kill but they would definitely feel it.

My IFF started populating little pinpricks of light all around me as the computer registered all of the mobile suits surrounding me. Five, Ten, Fifteen? A Musai couldn't possibly have carried them all, could it?

The IFF pinged and re-flagged the ship. It wasn't a Musai. The system had re-flagged it as a Gwazine-class ship. Estimated length, four-hundred and forty meters?

I stood into the thrusters and cut my speed sharply, threw the controls and swung the Gundam around in an arc that took me right towards a Zaku positioned aft of the battleship. The G forces pressed me into the seat but I was getting used to it. A quick toggle through the weapon systems later I'd called up the ninety-millimeter gatlings.

Target locked, I squeezed the firing triggers and poured a torrent of fire through the middle of the Zaku's torso and out the other side. Another click and the guns retracted back into the Gundam's forearms.

An alarm chimed in the cockpit and I snapped my head upwards to see another Zaku charging me with a heat hawk in hand. I twisted the controls and rolled the Helios backwards, crashed feet first into the mobile suit I'd just killed, and then kicked off.

Throttle up, I crashed into the Zaku hard enough to bounce me off my restraints. Helios's left hand was wrapped around the Zaku's right wrist, blocking the swing. It wouldn't have the power to defeat a Gundam.

Throttle to one hundred percent and I felt myself being crushed into the seat so hard I thought I might bond with it permanently. I scrolled through the available combat options on the onboard computer as I held the attack at bay and we both streaked towards the Zeon battleship.

I should have read the manual, not that I had time. Menu after menu, nothing after nothing. The suit wasn't equipped for combat, not really, not yet. The built in weapons had ammo but nothing that wasn't an integral part of the suit seemed to be available.

Nothing at--

The control schema list had an entry at the bottom: 'B.O.X.E.R.' I selected it and the thrusters cut out all at once. The seat folded down out from under me and I found myself standing on the foot controls as a metal frame extended upwards behind me and metal bands began locking into place around my legs.

Progress continued upwards, with metal bands wrapping around me tightly, though not uncomfortably. One more strap around the torso right under my arms and then a pair of mechanical arms extended forward and I finally understood what this was.

Two glove-like devices terminated the end of the arms on either side of me and I reached into them before more bands locked my arms into place. I felt feedback through the rig as my limbs were positioned to match the Gundam.

Finally, a visor slid down over my head and my point of view became that of the Gundam and I found myself face to face with a Zaku. “You don't look so tough.”

With my left hand wrapped around the Zaku's right forearm my right was hand free to grab the 'snout' on the front of the mobile suit's head and twist. Sparks and oil seeped out through my clenched fist and into space as the red eye in the middle of the Zaku's visor went dark.

From there I delivered a knee to the cockpit and kept the Zaku's right arm as the rest of it tumbled away from me. I snatched the heat hawk out of the still clenched fist of the mobile suit's arm and re-activated it in my own right hand. The feedback was impressive, I could really feel the weight of the thing in the controls.

Thrusters to full for a quick burst and I popped 'up' in time to miss the wild swing of a beam saber through the space I'd just been occupying. A red mobile suit that looked like the one I'd shot off the deck of the Salisbury had its single eye locked on me. This one was a lot less dead than that one.

Nope.

I pulled back and let fly, throwing the heat hawk with all I could muster directly at the other mobile suit as I kicked the thrusters back in to pull more distance, firing the forearm gatlings as I retreated. My lack of any real threatening weapons was going to get me killed if I didn't get lucky and it felt like my luck was wearing thin.

I didn't like my chances if he landed a swing on my armor with that beam saber.

My shots peppered the Gelgoog's left leg and hip and the heat hawk found purchase in its right shoulder, but that didn't seem to slow him down as he continued to burn right for me. I fired a second burst that ended abruptly as the guns ran dry and retracted back into the Gundam's forearms.

That narrowed my offensive options down to punches, kicks, and harsh language.

I could still outrun him. I leaned into the thrusters and launched myself up and away at a not-quite painful level of acceleration and towards a small three man team of Zaku IIs. They were firing machine guns but they didn't seem to anticipate how fast I was actually going because they weren't leading me nearly enough to land hits.

I flipped and drove my Gundam's right foot straight into the chest armor of the unit on the far right of the formation and my momentum carried both of us past the the other two as sparks and a puff of atmospheric gas sprayed out of the damaged mobile suit. He was done, but I wasn't. I tore the shield off his right shoulder and took the machine gun he didn't need any longer.

I laid the shield backwards against my left forearm and held tight on the mounting bracket. Machine gun in my right hand, I couldn't help but think of the similarities to my fight with that Acguy. I'd won that fight in a Zaku II, in a Gundam I wouldn't have even broken a sweat.

The hate was boiling off of the two surviving members of the team but I didn't hesitate to empty the magazine of the machine gun. The gun shook in my hand and tracers lanced outwards towards the lead enemy mobile suit and tore holes from the skirt armor through the torso and finally the head. Sparks and arcs of electricity danced over the damaged suit for a moment before it exploded into a cloud of plasma and Minovsky particles.

Reactor hit. I was lucky enough that it had never happened to me.

A warning tone chimed in the cockpit and I kicked the thrusters again to dodge another attack from that red Gelgoog's beam saber. This guy was good, and there was no way I was going to be able to take him on alone. I probably couldn't have even pulled it off if I had a proper weapon to counter him. A machine gun and a Zaku shield weren't going to cut it.

He looked up at me again and I could feel his hostility rolling off the mobile suit. Or maybe it was just the intimidating nature of the color red. I could really have used a beam saber. Or a bazooka. Or a bunch of friends.

I threw the shield at him and boosted upwards again, firing the machine gun down at him until the magazine ran dry. He slashed his beam saber through the shield and that single eye stared up at me. It was starting to feel like a battle of who'd run out of propellent first.

My head slammed back in the suspension harness and I felt like I'd hit a wall. The arm binders got heavy and sluggish and I looked to my left to find a Gouf restraining me. To the right, a Zaku II was holding onto my right arm.

“This is as far as you go. We've got you now, Gundam!”

So they wasted the effort for contact communications? I started scrolling through the command sequences display and tried to keep my breathing calm. This wasn't enough to take out a Gundam. They were just two Zekes who thought they were hot shit.

I found what I was looking for and toggled the setting to the 'off' position. “No, I've got you and now we're gonna go for a ride.”

The Gelgoog would have to wait. I grit my teeth and leaned on the thrusters, well past the safety limits. Even with two extra mobile suits worth of mass, Helios took off like a shot. Six, Seven, Eight. The accelerometer pegged out into the red at nearly ten and I knew I couldn't hold onto it for long.

But I could hold onto it for longer than they could. I'd always been smaller than everyone else and that meant I didn't have the physical prowess of my larger companions, but as someone who'd always wanted to spend her life flying in space I knew that my size granted me some advantages that my larger peers did not have.

Like G tolerance.

I clenched my thighs together as hard as I could as I steered the three of us towards the big red Zeon battleship. Closing speed meant we'd kiss in less than three seconds, but I probably wouldn't need that much. As the blackness threatened to overtake me I let off the gas and tapped the brakes for a half second. I slid upwards in the harness and both mobile suits continued past me.

They weren't ready for that kind of stress and either they passed out, or their mobile suits just couldn't maintain their grip on me. But, unlike me, they didn't have the thrust output to avoid their fate. I stepped into the thrusters at full power for a quarter second and sideslipped around the ship as a pair of distinct explosions flashed around the edge of the hull.

I cut the thrusters and let myself drift for a moment. I might have fared better than them, but that didn't mean I was still at a hundred precent. My body was trembling and I felt like I was going to throw up. I switched the limiters back on as my vision started to clear. I knew I'd hurt myself, but I didn't know how bad.

But I could keep going.

Off to my right the Salisbury was firing its cannons at the Zeon battleship while little flashes of light at the bow told me that the catapult was firing mobile suits into space. I could definitely keep going if I wasn't going it alone.

A contact approached me from the same direction and after a few seconds I was able to make out a Bugu wearing Hatte Defense Force colors. It would have to be Dominic. Behind and below him the rest of his team was approaching, and behind them was the other Gundam and a suit that my IFF tagged as an RX-77 Guncannon.

Dominic's Bugu grabbed onto my shoulder as the other mobile suits started to open fire on the Zeke forces. I looked over to see his face projected in a 'hovering' window off in the direction of his suit. “Hey Dominic, I'm not feeling so great. Glad you guys made it.”

“Well, that's definitely a style of cockpit I've never seen before.” He raised his eyebrows and whistled, “That Colonel is a frightening woman, she saw who you were fighting and insisted on coming out even with her broken leg. You head back to the ship and resupply, we'll take care of things while you're gone.”

Who I was fighting? “Are you talking about that red Gelgoog? I was running more than fighting. I could feel the hostility just rolling off the guy, who was that?”

“They call him the Crimson Lightning. Don't worry about it too much, he's Colonel Charity's problem now. You did a good job, now go take a few minutes off while they re-arm your suit.”

I let out a sigh and nodded my head. “Roger that. Gundam Helios heading back now.”

 

[Jackie]

Respite
​

I flew the final approach in standard control mode. The B.O.X.E.R. System might have been unparalleled in combat but as worn out as I was I wanted to rely a little more on the automatic systems to manage my approach. That, and I'd never flown an approach of any kind before because I'd never operated a mobile suit in space before.

Baby steps.

I kept twitching the controls, sending minute pulses from the attitude control jets to keep my trajectory lined up on the catapult sled. Come in a little high and I could catch the crash nets, that way I could avoid firing retro inside of the ship and ruining someone's day.

One last retro burst and I was going slow enough that the impact wouldn't hurt, then I crossed the threshold of the catapult chin. The walls of the hanger drifted past at a walking pace and about fifteen seconds later I bounced against the netting.

A thunk against the armor and an open comm told me they'd fired a communication tether against the hull. Audio only, probably one of the ground crew. “Miss Veronica, we've got it from here if you'd like to disembark and get a little rest. It's going to be a half hour at least.”

I unbuckled myself and floated up out of the seat and let myself relax a little bit. “I'd love to but I'm not wearing a normal suit. I don't think denim and cotton are rated for a space walk. Might get a little cold.” I joked.

“Well Mom always did tell me Earth girls are crazy. We'll get a curtain set up for you. Just sit tight.”

I'd have to get that cheeky prick's name after this was done, then buy him a drink. I could always appreciate someone who didn't take everything so seriously.

While I waited for the curtain to get set up I floated in the cockpit and looked over at the mobile suit cradles along the side of the hanger. A few GM types were still docked and a loose backpack unit was strapped up in a vacant rack next to my Zaku. Must have come off the other Gundam.

For that matter, my Zaku's arms were stripped bare of armor and half a dozen technicians were grinding and welding away at it, likely using parts from the Gouf that Thad had killed. The Gouf was definitely the better mobile suit but fixing my Zaku's arms was definitely going to be an easier job than fixing the hole where the Gouf's cockpit used to be.

I was starting to feel like I was recovering from my overboost stunt, but the taste of blood was still in my mouth and I was pretty sure it wasn't gingivitis. I hadn't passed out yet, though, so it probably wasn't a hemorrhage. Internal bleeding in zero G had a way of killing people far more readily than the same in a gravity well, or under acceleration.

That didn't mean I didn't feel like throwing up, but I wasn't about to do it in the cockpit if I could help it. I couldn't imagine it would earn me any friends. Not that I imagined I earned a lot of friends beating the hell out of their Gundam.

A clunk against the armor drew my attention back to the front of the mobile suit, where I could see the workers connecting the curtain airlock to the hatch. I pulled myself back to the seat using the control console and saw that the seal was good, so I unlocked the hatch. A moment later a hiss of air accompanied the pressure inside the cockpit rising slightly, and I could see a couple of technicians in normal suits floating in front of me.

I kicked off the seat and passed through the open hatch into the portable airlock. Once inside I could see that the other end was linked to a hatch leading to the pressurized section of the ship. When I turned back around I saw both of the techs saluting me.

“I'm not military, you don't have to do that.”

The one on the left dropped his salute and looked to the one on the right, who nodded. Left turned back to me and saluted again. “Well, just the same, ma'am.”

Hell with it, then. I snapped off a salute in kind and the guy on the right ducked into the cockpit and, a moment later, closed the hatch. Left kicked off the armor and went past me to the airlock into the crew section of the ship and opened it up.

I took the invitation and followed him into the small room. There were handholds along the every surface of the room and normal suit lockers along either side, not that there was such a thing as up or down while in space.

The outer door closed and the inner door opened and I pulled myself through and into the ship proper. The tech followed me out into the hallway while I oriented myself to the ship's local 'down'. I heard the hiss of his helmet depressurizing and unlocking and turned around.

“So, the salute?” I asked him with a cocked eyebrow.

“We saw what you did for Colonel Charity with your Zaku before we launched, and there isn't a man among us who doesn't appreciate you going out to fight for us in the Gundam. The crew respects you, ma'am.”

I tried not to snicker. Me a ma'am. I stuck my hand out to him, “Veronica Jackson.”

He took it awkwardly, shook a little too firm for a little too long and then released my hand just as quickly, “Everyone just calls me Nils, ma'am. Captain wants to see you on the bridge if you're feeling up to it. If not, sick bay and mess hall are a bit further aft.”

“Captain?”

“Captain Kars Alexander, ma'am. He's the ranking officer in command.”

Food sounded good. Hell, a doctor sounded good, but I figured I owed it to Kars to check in with him, after I'd just taken their Gundam for a joyride. Being stuck on the bridge while everyone else was out fighting must have been hell for him. I know it would've been hell for me.

“Let's go see the captain.”

He held his hand out in front of him and towards the hallway that intersected the one we were standing in. “This way, ma'am.”

***​

I floated out onto the bridge in a normal suit and holding a sandwich. Go see the captain, sure, but refill the gas tank too. Plus, we were still in a fight and if someone put a hole through the ship I didn't want to die because I was the only idiot not wearing a normal suit.

Ham and provolone with mustard and a thin slice of onion on gently toasted wheat. It was a nightmare of a sandwich in zero gravity but that's what air filters were for anyway, right? If a hole got knocked in the ship it wouldn't really matter how many crumbs I created.

Brooke was sitting at a sensor console behind the captain's chair and that elicited a raised eyebrow from me. Must have really been struggling to staff the critical stations if they had her doing work. Then again, maybe she was good at it.

I tapped my foot on the floor and drifted up towards the left side of the captain's chair. Heads turned towards me as I drifted and chewed on the edge of my sandwich. The crunching was only a soft background note to all of the chatter and equipment noise, but I was still pretty hard to miss if you were looking in the right direction.

I hooked my foot on the platform holding up the captain's chair and used it to pivot myself to eye level with the occupant of the chair. “You wanted to see me?” I asked before crunching into the sandwich again.

The toasting made sense, despite the particulate catastrophe it created. The heat melted the provolone partially against the ham and warmed up the mustard to open up more of the flavor profile. The thin crisp of onions gave it just the right amount of bite--

“Are you eating—never mind. Yeah I wanted to make sure you were alright. I've never seen anyone fight like that before and you were really moving. I wanted to make sure you didn't get too banged up.”

I tilted my head and shrugged, “it didn't feel great but I'll live. It needed doing so I did it, you know? Come too far to hold back now... or at least that's what I was telling myself. We're all still alive though, right?”

He shook his head and tapped on the console set into his arm rest. “That part remains to be seen. That Gwazine-class could make short work of us, but the battle is keeping them from bringing their guns to bear. If we can keep accelerating out of this orbital plane we'll probably be fine. Whether all of our mobile suits are going to come back to the ship at the end of it, that's a different matter.”

“I hope what's in my Zaku's computer is worth the trouble.”

“Whether it is or not is beside the point, now. We have to face the trouble in front of us regardless. Try to get some rest. The Gundam isn't going to be ready again before we're clear of the battle and there's no reason for you to go back out anyway.”

I raised an eyebrow as a thought crossed my mind, “Are you saying I'm the Gundam's pilot?”

He paused for a moment before turning to face me, “Well I'm not saying you're not. You took it out and came back alive. That's a better success rate than most rookie pilots. It's either you or Charity, but it's really up to her once she gets back.” He shrugged and turned back towards the forward windows, “I was serious about that rest. Get going.”

I jammed the rest of the sandwich into my mouth and fired off a mock salute, “Yeth, thir.”

***
​

Rest. I needed it and he'd told me to get it and I didn't. I found myself back in the launch bay despite having no reason to be there. I had no where else to be and this felt more right. It felt that the place needed me as much as I needed the place.

I'm sure it's healthy to anthropomorphize a mobile suit hangar.

The Gouf in the corner of the bay was missing both of its arms and a majority of its chest. The engineers must have been wasting no time stripping it for parts, but in the middle of a battle I suppose it made sense. If Dominic's people came in with damage it made sense that a Federation ship wouldn't have spare parts for them.

On the opposite side of the bay, my Zaku was starting to look a little less broken. The right arm was already closed back up and the shield was re-mounted. The left arm wasn't quite so far along but it didn't look like it would take much longer.

Helios was in the middle of having a shield fitted to the left arm and the head and forearms both had a number of panels hanging open. Reloading ammunition probably, I'd run every gun on the thing completely dry of ammo. I spotted what looked a lot like a beam saber hilt on the inside of the shield.

That would've made my life easier.

Orange strobe lights started going off along the edges of the bay and nets raised up in the middle of the bay. Landing in progress, probably. I hadn't been paying much attention to the smaller details when I'd been landing, but the nets were the same.

A mobile suit, one of the H.D.F. painted Zeon suits, was coming in fast and trailing gasses. Probably propellant. It explained the speed. Didn't want to waste anything on retro firing until he was certain his flight path was perfect.

The suit crossed the threshold of the bay and fired a quarter second of braking thrusters before they cut out and it collided with the crash webbing. It wasn't a comfortable looking hit but it was definitely survivable.

It was Dominic's Bugu.

The hatch opened up and the pilot jumped out, up towards the railing I was standing at. The hatch back into the interior of the ship was right behind me, so that made sense, or as much sense as anything was making.

I stepped to the side and let him 'land' where I'd been standing. Of what I could see through the helmet of his normal suit, he looked a little banged up, maybe even more banged up than his mobile suit.

“How's it going out there?” I asked him.

He jumped, he must not have noticed who I was right away. He shook his head, “Not looking good. Retreat flares went up and we pulled out. Your friend Thad is using the Guncannon to everyone time to disengage.”

“Alone?” I found myself asking as my hand clenched around the handrail.

“His decision, not mine. The rest of my guys were tied up trying to rescue the other Gundam. I wasn't in any shape to keep fighting, myself.”

I pulled myself over the hand rail and I was drifting across the hanger before I really put any thought into it. It was really my fault. If I'd never stolen the Zaku and we'd never found the plans, we'd never have been here. Thad wouldn't be out there.

But Salisbury would still have been attacked, wouldn't it?

Call it a sense of honor or bull headed stupidity or the kind of courage that usually only came out of a bottle. I floated past the crash webbing and took a few moments more to reach the open cockpit of my Zaku.

One of the maintenance workers grabbed my shoulder. “Hey, you can't be here.”

I turned to face him and shook my head, “It's my mobile suit. I can be here. Get the workers clear, I'm heading out.”

In the end, I'd have to call it foolishness. Nothing else could explain why I kept giving Death new opportunities to catch up with me.

 

[Jackie]

Spoiler

Victory in A Minor Key​

Compared to the Gundam, the controls of the Zaku were downright sluggish but even so, I was home. I went out and came back alive, I could do the same twice. Right arm servos were green on the damage board, controls responded a little better than they had before. Probably the higher end parts.

Left arm checked out more or less green, there were some areas that didn't clear the check but it was good enough. It was at least as good as it had been for most of the time I'd had the mobile suit.

“We did what we could. I hope it'll be enough. I'm sure it will be enough, but if you find yourself without any other options, select entry seven beta on the inventory system. There's a machine gun waiting for you at the catapult. Unfortunately we don't have anything better.”

I shook my head and eased the controls forward, “Don't worry about it, I'm sure I'll figure it out.”

The Zaku stepped out of the restraint cradle and floated up and out. A few taps of the attitude control thrusters had me drifting in the correct direction for the catapult. Behind me, Charity's Gundam was locked into a restraint cradle and medics and maintenance workers were waiting outside of the chest for the hatch to open up.

The suit didn't look too tore up from the outside. If I had to hazard a guess, it would be that her existing wounds were too much for her to keep going. Given the trouble that red Gelgoog had given me it was a testament to her skill that she'd made it back at all if she was that hurt when she went out.

I felt a clunk under me as my Zaku's feet locked onto the catapult and I reached out with the suit's right arm to grab a machine gun being offered by a manipulator arm to my right. It linked up immediately with the onboard systems. It was made for a Zaku.

They must have gotten it from one of Dominic's people.

The tree flashed from red, then to yellow, and finally green. I lit the thrusters and the force of the catapult slammed me down into the seat as I was thrown from the ship. Acceleration was as I expected: a lot less aggressive than Helios.

I wouldn't be winning any races, but I could still fight. The heft of the machine gun in my Zaku's hands was reassuring as I closed in on the only pocket of fighting I could see on my sensors. I couldn't exactly make out who was who, but there was a beam weapon being fired and I couldn't think of anything except the Guncannon that would be using a beam weapon.

If I could fight, I could win. I pushed the throttle a little higher and while it was intense it was no where near as intense as the Gundam had been. I found myself wishing for the extra speed, if only so I could get there sooner, be done sooner.

Closing speed was up to three hundred meters per second and I cut the thrusters. I'd be harder to spot and I'd save fuel. If I was lucky, I could get the drop and score a few kills before they figured out where I was.

It was an eerie kind of quiet, sitting in the cockpit of the Zaku while it was motionless and yet barreling through space at speeds that would've made professional racers blush. Alone with my own thoughts and all of the anxieties they contained. Everything before had been the Gundam. Everything now would just be me. Alone with my thoughts and the hope that I would not be found wanting.

The targeting system chimed, I was in range on targets. One Zaku II, one Rick Dom, one Gelgoog, but not the same one I'd fought before. The Guncannon was in the middle of them and putting up more fight than it had a right to, but it was only a matter of time before one of the holes in its armor either lead to a critical system or the cockpit itself.

I set the target lead on the machine gun for the Zaku II and opened fire. The muzzle flash would have given me away, I leaned on the thrusters and kept my fire on target as I closed in at full power. Death or Glory, there would be no consolation prizes for fighters unwilling to commit fully to the battle.

The Zaku exploded before I reached it and I kicked the thrusters to redirect my inertia towards the Rick Dom. It looked heavier and slower than the Zaku, but I wasn't willing to judge it by what it looked like. They wouldn't have refit the things for space if they weren't going to outperform the Zakus, right?

I stowed the machine gun on my Zaku's back and drew the heat hawk instead. The blade heated up to a blinding red hot and I dove in for the kill. I was mid swing before he saw it coming, he dropped his machine gun and grabbed the pipe-weapon on his back.

I didn't even tap the brakes, I crashed into the Rick Dom with every bit of kinetic energy I'd built up. The impact slammed me against my crash harness, but more importantly, drove my heat hawk deep into the other mobile suit's torso. It's right arm stopped mid-swing and not a second too soon, if the angry red glow of the pipe it was holding was any indication of what it would do to me if it had hit.

With a twist of the controls my Zaku kicked itself free of the dead mobile suit it had become entangled with. The status panel was glowing a sickly orange color that told me that the impact hadn't come without consequences. I'd have to live with it.

I drew the machine gun back off of my suit's back with the left hand and kept the heat hawk in the right. I turned my attention to the Gelgoog, and he turned his attention to me. The Guncannon was drifting behind him but the core block looked like it was still intact, that meant Thad should still be alive.

The Gelgoog pilot would regret it if he wasn't.

The machine gun poured out a torrent of fire that peppered the armor of the other mobile suit and tore material out along the joints, but otherwise left the suit unharmed. I shouldn't have expected any different if a Gelgoog could give a Gundam trouble.

The double ended beam saber was menacing for sure, but I kept up my charge. Thad was counting on me. I drew the heat hawk back for the death blow—A flash of light erupted from the Gelgoog and it was on me faster than I could react. A flash of yellow light from the hilt of its beam saber and...

All I could do was throw up my hands in a vain attempt to somehow will the blade to stop. I felt the shock cooling of all of the air surrounding me suddenly dispersing and the sick spinning of the mobile suit. Any moment now.

I felt the jolt of a kick and then I was turning the other way again. After a few moments I was able to will myself to open my eyes and realize I was still alive. The bulkhead in front of me was missing, along with the forward view screen and everything forward of my feet. He'd gone for a kill shot on the cockpit but he'd somehow managed to miss me.

The lights were on, I still had power. The damage display was definitely unhappy but I was alive and the enemy pilot thought I was dead. My heat hawk was gone, as was my machine gun, but the arms seemed like they should still work.

By all rights I should have been dead, but then I should have been dead a few times over.

The shard of armor steel I found sticking out of the right side of my abdomen might have some words to say about my survival, but I could worry about that once it finally started to hurt. For the moment my normal suit managed to seal around the wound so I could deal with it later.

I gripped the controls and managed to stop the tumble and a few moments later was able to reorient myself enough to see the Gelgoog again. He'd given up on me after that last blow, he was facing the Guncannon again.

I had nothing else left, so I ejected the left pauldron and took it up in my Zaku's right hand. It was different than it had been last time I'd held it like that and I figured out what that technician had meant. No time to wait, I pushed full power to the thrusters even as the suit shook itself apart around me in protest.

I drew the fist back, everything I had left into this one strike and we could finally go home. It would be over. Alarms screamed in my ears as I drew closer. A few hundred meters to go, the Gelgoog turned. He realized his mistake, that he hadn't killed me after all.

He was in for a surprise.

The Gelgoog's beam saber telegraphed the pilot's move. He didn't need to worry if I knew what was coming because a Zaku didn't have any way to block a strike like that, not in the condition mine was in. He was going to go for an overhand death blow, cut the Zaku in half head to codpiece.

I twitched the control stick on the right side and almost had to shield my eyes as the bright pink of a beam saber blade erupted from the side of the pauldron armor. He would notice it, but it would be too late for him to change his mind. He was committed to his attack, the battlefield did not forgive half measures.

There were no consolation prizes for indecisive fighters.

I felt, more than heard, myself screaming as I threw the beam saber into an overhead block as we met. The blades clashed together in an almost blinding flash of light and I slammed the left control stick to the stops.

Through the hole in the front of my cockpit I watched my Zaku's left fist collide with the Gelgoog's cockpit hatch and then continue on into the other mobile suit. Damage indicators flashed up the left arm and sparks fired out of the console before the whole cockpit went dark and the controls stopped responding.

He wouldn't have survived, but I found myself floating in a battlefield without a functional mobile suit. I unstrapped myself from the chair and floated up and away from it for a moment before I grabbed onto one of the surviving handholds to reorient myself. Reactor shut itself down, so there was no risk of explosion.

My bag and rifle floated up over the seat and I grabbed both of them. The rifle wouldn't be much use but I wasn't going to leave it behind. The mobility vernier under the seat was next and I attached that to the back of my normal suit. I was ready.

I kicked off the seat and passed through the hole in the front of the cockpit and into open space. It was easy to feel mighty from the pilot's chair but once you were outside of the cockpit and floating next to a mobile suit their sheer size really showed how small a human being really was.

A burst from my pack had me drifting towards Thad's Guncannon and it took me only about a minute to reach the hatch. The controls were along the side, just like they'd been on the Gundam, so it didn't take me long to open it up and have a look inside.

Thad's suit wasn't punctured, but he wasn't moving. I hoped he was just knocked out, but I couldn't know until we got back to the ship. I reached down to unbuckle him from his restraints and then thought better of it. I had no way back just yet and he was safer in the cockpit than floating in space.

I climbed back out of the cockpit and kicked up off the armor a little bit, get some altitude and try to catch my bearings, figure out which direction the Salisbury was without benefit of a mobile suit's sensors to tell me.

I thought I might die a moment later, my head felt like it might burst, my insides felt like they were being turned into paste. Everything below my arms was firmly in the grip of a large hand and it was pushing the armor shard deeper into me.

My hand clamped down tight around the stock of my rifle, more as a pain coping mechanism than anything else but--

I bit hard on my tongue and shook my head. I was face to face with a Rick Dom's glowing eye. The taste of blood was thick in my mouth. It wasn't supposed to be like this. I didn't know what it was supposed to be like, how I was supposed to die, but it felt like it should have been different. Somewhere else, some other time. Not here and now.

I swung the rifle up against my shoulder and pushed the bolt forward into battery. Might not be useful for much, but I wasn't the type to go quietly. I squeezed the trigger and fired a shot that skipped off the Dom's head armor. Out, back in. One more round in the chamber, I grit my teeth, lined up the shot, and let fly.

That single menacing eye sparked once and flickered out. My shot had landed and it was probably going to cost me my life sooner than it would have otherwise but there was no doubt that pilot would remember me for the rest of his life.

A consolation prize for bold action.

I felt the pressure increasing on my body and then a flash of pink and I was floating free again. When my eyes finally adjusted I found myself floating a few feet from the severed hand of a Rick Dom. The rest of the mobile suit was drifting away from me at a decent clip without it's right arm. A beam of light came from behind me and collided with the suit and a moment later it no longer existed except as a cloud of expanding plasma.

Blood was pouring out of the hole in my suit. I didn't know I even had that much in me. I was sure I didn't have long. I let out a breath and let myself relax and roll backwards away from the Dom's hand. “I guess that guy won't remember me after all.”

I let my eyes close for a moment and then opened them again as I felt a shadow fall over me. White arms and legs? A mobile suit with white limbs, a red waist, and a blue chest. A mobile suit with a V-fin on its forehead.

It's left hand reached out for me and I got a good look at the English lettering on the left side of the chest: RX-78-2

As darkness started closing in around me, I felt a connection to the other pilot. We were members of the same fraternity after all. We were both Gundam pilots.

 

[Jackie]

Journey's End

​

The stars at night, are big and bright, deep in the heart of Texas. Everyone knew how it went, you couldn't live there without picking it up. It wasn't hard to find the spirit of poetry in the night sky, and yet those words couldn't do justice to what it was like to actually be up in there with the stars.

I couldn't have picked a better place to live and I certainly couldn't have picked a better place to die. Floating through the endless black didn't seem like a bad way to spend eternity, not with every star in the sky to serve as my companion.

But it wasn't time for that yet. I was still too... attached. Too connected. I wasn't really done yet, was I?

***​

I opened my eyes and immediately wished that I hadn't. The smell of alchol, blood, and medical adhesive was thick on the air and if there'd been anything at all inside of me I probably would have thrown up. If I could've gone back to sleep I would have but the headache that hit me like a truck lent more credit to the idea that it was less of a nap and more of a coma.

It was never good to make a habit of returning to a coma.

My brain felt fried, thoughts disjointed and disconnected. I'd been in a fight, yeah. I'd won, but... but not really, right? I looked down at myself and saw the bandages wrapped around my abdomen and remembered the shard of armor plate that had been sticking out of me.

I heard the sound of a chair scraping against tile--

Gravity? I was in gravity. Weak gravity, but still gravity. I wasn't on a ship, that much was certain. Chairs didn't scrape across the ground in zero gravity.

My eyes traced across the floor, lazily sweeping their way towards the source of the sound, and then up the pair of legs that had produced it. Federation officer's uniform. My eyes swung upwards and took in the slim yet strong-looking frame of a man who was over six feet tall if he was an inch. Short hair, dark skin.

Of course, I recognized him from the cockpit of the Guncannon. “Thaddeus?”

“Glad to see you're up. The nurse will be back in a minute. To answer the question I'm sure you want to ask, you're in an Anaheim medical facility on the moon,” he explained as he stepped closer to my bed.

“Wuh--” I started before a cough that made me feel like my stitches were going to rip open tore through me, “Why Anaheim? Didn't I earn an Earth Federation hospital?” I joked.

He shook his head and knelt down next to the bed, “No, it's not that. You've been out for the last month and a half. War's over but... Colonel Charity cut a deal with Anaheim, so it's nothing you need to worry about until you're feeling better.”

I laid my head back down on the pillow and closed my eyes, “You know when you say it like that it's hard to not worry about it. How badly did I fuck up out there?”

“You didn't. By the time we made it to Von Braun the war had ended and so the data in your Zaku was irrelevant. With nothing to show for it, command issued arrest warrants for most of us for 'stealing' the Salisbury and the Gundam.”

I opened my eyes and stared at the ceiling tiles. “Damn. That's heavy. So when are they gonna to kick the doors in and clap us all in irons?”

“We're all dead. We died when the Salisbury went down with all hands. As long as we all stay that way they shouldn't come looking for us.”

I laughed despite the pain it caused me and turned to look at him, “Guess I died after all, huh?”

***​

If I'd known what was in store for for me in physical therapy I probably would have jumped out of an airlock and saved everyone the trouble. It turned out that being crushed in a mobile suit's hand was one of those things that took a while to bounce back from.

But after eight months of therapy, sixteen surgeries, thirty seven titanium screws, six titanium plates, two titanium rods, a foot and a half of small intestine and one missing kidney, I was back on my feet. I wasn't exactly skipping rope and the doctors told me that I'd probably have the limp forever, but I was alive and walking and I wasn't in prison.

And I was about to go back into space.

“Hard to tell it's the same ship isn't it? But I guess that's sorta the point.”

I smirked and looked over at the woman piloting the shuttle I was sitting in. “Yeah I suppose so, but I like the new name. Did Kars come up with it?”

Charity shook her head, “No, Thaddeus was the one that picked it, and now I am the proud owner of the bulk freighter Rio Grande. At least, as long as nobody looks too close at it.”

I nodded, “And if they look too close they'll be astonished to find a gaggle of mobile suits.”

“A gaggle isn't exactly how I would have phrased it, but fair enough. Have you had a chance to look over your Zaku?”

Oh boy, had I. New reactor. New cockpit. New armor. It was definitely a Ship of Theseus situation. “I'm not sure I'd call it a Zaku just because it looks like one, but if it's mine I'm not going to complain.”

“It is yours. But I did hear that you're not coming with us?”

I shrugged, “I mean, I would. But Brooke and I are hitching along just to side one. There's an agricultural startup on colony thirty that needs 'brilliant minds' and it's not like I haven't farmed before. The stability will do her some good.”

“I guess Anaheim get that up for you?”

I nodded, “Well, you're the one who cut a deal with them, I thought it was your idea... but yeah. Still, if you need me, you know, don't. But if you really need me, you'll know where to find me.”

“Growing corn on a space colony. Guess Kars was right about you being a farm girl at heart,” she joked and elbowed me. Fortunately not on my right side, that was still a little tender in a way that seemed permanent.

I looked out the window at the name stenciled onto the hull of the ship 'Rio Grande' and my mind drifted back to the Gundam that had saved me from the Rick Dom. “I've been meaning to ask but I've been afraid of the answer. Did Amuro make it? I haven't seem him or Gundam on the broadcasts, I would have thought they'd have him front and center in the victory parades.”

Charity raised an eyebrow and glanced at me out of the corner of her eye, “I didn't think you were coherent enough when he fished you out to remember his name. Yeah, I hear he made it but the Earth Forces are keeping him out of the news. Scuttlebutt is that they're afraid of what he can do.”

“Until they need him again, right? I wonder if we'd have been as lucky if we'd pulled off our mission before the war ended.”

“Victory does indeed forgive a multitude of sins but command was always going to make me fall on my sword for losing control of Kennedy. I guess I just didn't care any more. But, hey, got my own ship now, right?”

I laughed and shook my head, “You know, I think you got the better deal out of this whole thing. Just make sure you keep an eye on your brother and his wingman. They like to pick up strays and I hear it causes them no end of trouble.”

The shuttle bumped against the docking port on the Rio Grande and I unbuckled myself from the seat. To my left Charity was doing the same. “I don't think they'll need as much watching once this last stray goes home. But I'll keep an eye on them all the same.”

I kicked off the back of the seat and floated up to the airlock. “So, tell me, since I might not get another chance to ask. Why did you give me the Helios, back when we first met?”

“That, huh?” She asked. “Well, not everyone would do what you did. Hell, a lot of people would have done better and even more would have done nothing at all but... But I liked the way you did it. No plan, just a gut feeling and action. So...”

“So?” I prompted.

She clapped her hand on my shoulder and grinned, “Well because I assumed what you ended up proving: you don't have any quit in you, and I figured that's what it would take to win.”

X​