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The boat rocked and creaked more than would appear necessary on such a nice day, but still it did. And that did not reassure Arden as to the seaworthiness of the vehicle he had chosen to transport himself and his Gouf into South Africa. But then, it was the only one that he had been able to find, so he'd just cross his fingers and hope they made it and that his stomach would stop churning after the last session of emptying itself over the railing. One of the crew members grinned, and happily ate something that appeared less than edible, and Arden attempted to ignore the things seeing it was doing to his stomach. At least I'll be on solid ground again soon.. High above, Amy Bauer-Meister requested the unregistered ship below to identify itself for the final time, having not received a proper response. One of her new squadron members was already finishing up calling back to Kilimanjaro for permission to engage the ship, which normally did not take long. "Alright, ma'am. It's a go." the young pilot spoke, the Federal air ace still not used to hearing the new people's voices just yet, after the disaster with the Gaw fleet several weeks ago claimed the majority of her wingmates. "Roger that. Everyone else, hang back, I've got this one." Amy said, banking her Tin Cod into a steep dive. Silently, she wondered if she didn't pull up if she'd see her departed husband, Frank. But then, Yu would probably think her a coward, she should probably try to get in touch with him sometime, see how the Mobile Suit division was treating him. There was little warning for what happened, one moment Arden was once again emptying the contents of his stomach into the sea, the next there was an explosion and he felt oddly weightless before slamming into the salty ocean surface, oddly thankful that his stomach no longer wanted to run up his windpipe. When he resurfaced, he saw the flaming wreckage of the ship he was just on sinking below the surface. Above, a Federal fighter pulled up an away, rejoining several others moving back toward Africa. Arden attempted to swim toward the quickly sinking ship, but the intense pain shooting from his ribcage, either bruising or break he thought idly, made it torture. Instead, he grabbed ahold of one of the larger chunks of wreckage and pulled himself painfully atop it. When he didn't arrive in South Africa, one of his contacts would send out a search craft. With every breath sending fire through nerves, Arden fell into unconsciouness atop the gently rolling waves off the island of Madagascar. Arden Massenfer: 6 VP gained, 3 days injured, 1 day damaged When a desert gets hotter, everyone's misery increases tenfold. This week's heatwave is tough on machines and tougher on the crews who ride in them. Only the most steadfast, dedicated, and sometimes most stupid of combat soldiers would endure this for the chance of victory. Then there is Maurice Jackson. Despite the humming fans of the GM Custom's air conditioning system, the fighter pilot turn MS pilot scans the horizons. In the distance, a Type 74 and her crew listen to the whispers in the ground. In another, two GM Cold Climate Types crouch in hiding. Their minds are occupied questioning the decision of putting two arctic warfare mobile suits in a desert. During a heat wave, nevertheless. The six Dopps of the 4th North African Air Patrol practically floats on the heat rising from the African soil. The aircraft have little fuel to do a thorough search of the area. Therefore, they flew straight while the pilots look out the sides of their cockpit windows for enemy ground movement. A flash of light changes that. The pilot didn't even know that a beam hit him. The other Dopps did a dash to the deck as the bits of their vaporized comrade fell to the ground. Jackson trails the remaining Dopps from his hiding place. At that moment, twin streams of 90mm machinegun fire from the two GM CCTs reaches for the Zeon planes. One plane has its starboard wing blown off while the other has its cockpit separated from the main fuselage. The remaining three Dopps change their course in response to this new threat. This is where Jackson wants them and his GM Custom fires off again. This shot sends a Dopp spinning as it collides in a massive fireball against the ground. Being harassed by machinegun and sniper fire from hidden positions, the last two Dopps of the 4th African Patrols gun their fuel-guzzling engines to get away. Only one of them gain enough distance to escape before Jackson's beam sniper rifle claims another Zeon plane. Maurice Jackson 7 VP gained, no damage Trees were flying past Eric's eyes as the Efreet Custom maintained its maximum thruster burn, quickly closing the difference between him and the Zaku patrol with Earth's gravity helping him achieve a rather respectable speed. The captured Zaku II F-types, having been painted white by their Earth Federation captors, were easily spotted at the base of the mountain in a parallelogram patrol pattern. A circular gauge on the EXAM suit slowly began to creep up on the red line, indicating the still increasing velocity of the blue mobile suit. "Stay right where you are, Shore. Stay right where you are..." thought Eric Kyrion, still pegging the control sticks to its mechanical limits. His eyes darted around the cockpit, trying to visually grasp the speed that the his mobile suit was traveling at, but the brown and green scenery was becoming too blurred, and the test pilot knew that there were plenty other things on his mind that would be affecting his train of thought. The cloud of dirt being created in the Efreet Custom's wake soon caught the Zaku patrol's attention, and no sooner had they noticed the abnormality did their sensors verify that an object was approaching them at high speeds. Each of the Zaku's pilots froze for a second, seemingly taken aback by the sudden presence of a possible hostile, but their training quickly took priority over their instincts and they each spread out while aiming their weapons at the incoming custom mobile suit. Audibly distraught, the patrol's leader broadcasted to his teammates, "This one's fast. Everyone but Hurston lose the bazookas and use the machine guns," as he manipulated his own Zaku's controls, reattaching the 280mm bazooka to the backpack rack before wielding the drum fed Zaku machine gun. All but one Zaku followed suit, swapping out their slower firing bazookas for the machine gun, and immediately having done so, they began firing at the rapidly descending Efreet Custom. Realizing that he had been detected, Eric hastily forced the close combat mobile suit to jet into the air, only sustaining a single round into its right shoulder which shattered the spike and the area around it, but otherwise left the arm largely unharmed. But 120mm rounds continued to trace his path into the air, and while none of them managed to hit him, Eric was feeling a bit uncomfortable with being shot at with so much ordinance. To resolve the problem, he fired all of his leg mounted missile launchers at the land below, saturating the area around the Federation Zakus with high explosives, dirt, splintered wood, and other forms of vegetation. Desperately trying to regain his bearing, one of the Zaku pilots fought off his disorientation and looked skyward in an attempt to regain visual contact with the blue Zeon mobile suit. He would succeed in finding Eric Kyrion, but much to the Federation pilot's horror the mobile suit in question was falling right on top of him while firing its giant shotgun. Eric wasn't even looking when he fired shell after shell into his target, filling the white mono eye suit with numerous holes, one of which that entered the cockpit and severed the neck of its pilot as he was crying out in terror. Instead, Kyrion was already looking at his next target, turning his Efreet in mid air to dodge a bazooka round before touching the damp ground below. "Nothing too bad, I should be able to handle this on my own," he mumbled to himself, taking notice of a bobbing white head off in the distance. Working the foot pedals, he followed the moving Zaku for a scant few seconds before shooting several rounds into the forest, shredding the trees to pulp while damaging the unshielded portions of the mobile suit. Any hopes of finishing off the second Zaku were put on hold when the ground around him erupted in explosions, throwing the blue mobile suit off balance and causing it to come down crashing down onto the ground. The attack painfully reminded the Zeon pilot that he was still facing off against a numerically superior enemy, and that only their inexperience was preventing them from causing severe damage to him. Taking the opportunity of being lower than tree height to his advantage, Kyrion throttled his mobile suit into levitating off and skimming across the ground for a short period, knocking over a few trees in the process. A shiver ran down the test pilot's spine as he saw his previous location erupt in a giant fireball, and he silently thanked the additional thrusters that had been added to the Efreet Custom. The horizontal flight came to an end as he broke the edge of the dense foliage and happened to slam into an unsuspecting white Zaku, knocking the latter off its feet while causing the high performance mobile suit to come to a shuddering halt. Eric wasted no time in positioning the shotgun to point straight up and slightly to the side in anticipation of the Zaku's fall, and just as he predicted, his target fell right into the fire control system's crosshairs. His right thumb gave a quick jab at the fire button, firing the shotgun from a mere fifteen meters away which resulted in a tremendous wound across the Zaku's torso that barely failed to compromise its reactor. Nevertheless, a fire broke out in the white mobile suit, and the Efreet Custom tossed away its shotgun in an effort to use both its hands to push away the disabled Zaku. But as the EXAM mobile suit struggled to move inoperable object out of the way, a series of small explosions stitched their way across the ground in front of it. Clenching his teeth tightly, Eric struggled to move the disabled mobile suit in between him and the incoming rounds, using it as an impromptu shield. The 120mm rounds pushed the Efreet back a few meters despite its makeshift barrier, but a quick look out to the side showed the third Zaku boosting into the air while discarding its machine gun. The thought of melee combat somewhat enthralled the Zeon private, and he let his Zaku shield fall to the ground while taking out one of his heat sabers. The Efreet raised its left arm and pointed the entire appendage at the now descending Zaku, firing its two missiles at the third enemy mobile suit. The first missile barely missed the Zaku's head, but the second would find its mark and destroy its right arm, causing a now deactivated heat hawk to fall out of the sky along with an unarmed Zaku. Eric shook his head while letting out a sigh before meeting his enemy in the air with an activated heat saber and thrusting the bladed weapon into the cockpit area, instantly vaporizing the Zaku's pilot. The Efreet released its grip on the saber to allow the third destroyed Zaku to fall to Earth unimpeded, and it took out its second melee weapon to meet the fourth and last enemy mobile suit. However, he would instead be greeted by an eerie silence and a lack of movement around him. Tiny motors went to work to move the pink mono eye from corner to corner on the Efreet Custom's head, scanning the battlefield around it, but Eric could not discern the presence of a fourth white Zaku. Worried, he opened up a communications link with Specialist Shore and asked, "Do you see the fourth Zaku anywhere?" while continuing to look around the treetops. A short while later, the newly assigned subordinate replied, "I took out the last one, sir. And don't worry, I did not move from my position." "What? When? How?" Eric shot back, his heart still racing from all the adrenaline produced by his body. "When you shot the Zaku through the trees with your Jagdgewehr, sir. It stopped for a moment and so I took the shot. Two rounds from my Zaku machine gun, sir," Shore replied, somewhat eager to show Kyrion his prowess with the automatic cannon. The Efreet Custom's pilot took a moment to survey the damage he had done to the mobile suits and to the landscape, focusing on the fires left blazing in the forest. Letting a silent minute pass, Eric then turned his attention to the lone Zaku II up in the mountains, noticing it scanning the surrounding area for any Federation response to the recent engagement. "Alright, good job Shore. You handled yourself well. Now, let's go ahead and get out of dodge before their response teams arrive on station." Eric's commendation and orders were met with an enthusiastic compliance from the young pilot, and the more experienced Zeon pilot couldn't help but smile to himself. Eric Kyrion: 2 days damage; 7 VP gained Across the Saharan sands, Ion and her mobile suit team plodded, moving during the hottest hours to avoid Zeon patrols, who tended to operate less during the hottest hours of the day. Even with the air conditioning on, the inside of the GMs and Type 74 were almost unbearably hot. Even CC, which was the preferred name of Cecelia Cruz, the normally energetic and upbeat pilot of the GM Desert Type, was subdued by the overwhelming heat. "Hey Sis," Ethan Daniels spoke with the croak of a dry throat, "I know you want to get to Europe fast, but is this the best way?" Inside her GM Sniper, Ion simply kept her eyes on the horizon as her mobile suit continued walking foward. Inside the Type 74, the sonar operator dropped a piton into the sand and listened intently for any signs of enemy movement. Though the effectiveness was questionable in this environment, some warning was always better than none. In the far distance, Bishop Kratos sat beneath a temporary shelter, his Zaku II J equipping a salvaged 175 mm cannon originally from a Magella Attack tank. His fellow Schutzstaffel member, Steve Myer, had been attacking Federal targets with almost reckless abandon, and despite voicing objections against help, Kratos saw no problem with taking pot shots at Federals. And besides, if they happened to capture one of the pilots, he could probably "claim" them as his own prisoner. Sighting in on the distant glint, the Zaku II Js cannon barked and spat flame, shaking the cloth cover to his hiding hole. The only warning to Ion and her team had was the high-pitched whistle before the 175 mm shell exploding well ahead and to the left of their team. All three mobile suits dropped as another shell impacted, tracking slightly closer to the group. The young female sniper bringing the devastating Long Range Beam Rifle to point in the direction she assumed the shells were coming from, then tapped her mic open and contacted the Type 74 crew. "Any idea where it's coming from?" Ion asked as another shell, this one further away, impacted and exploded. "No ma'am, too far away for me to get an accurate reading. I don't think they have anything directing the fire though.. the shots move closer than further away. But I think I heard something else coming toward us." the sonar operator replied, brow dripping with perspiration as they focused on trying to follow the sounds returning in the shifting sand during the shelling. Unable to do anything else, the three GMs and hover truck moved foward carefully, not allowing the Zeon pilot a stationary target to zero in on, and waited for the attack to cease. After twenty-one shots, it grew silent. Far away, Bishop Kratos and his MS team retreated "Dammit.. I told them I didn't want their help..." Steve Myer muttered, the shelling had stalled his advance toward his target, one of the green types that carried the giant beam rifles. The same that had taken out his Gaw. He'd never been one to give in to frustration or despair, but that did not mean he would not seek retribution. Grabbing two grenades, the Schutzstaffel soldier tossed them ahead of his Zaku, the canisters releasing a quickly expanding cloud of smoke as he readied his MMP-80. The dull thuds of the grenades hitting the sand behind them drew the attention of the Type 74s ground sonar operator, followed by the thudding steps of a Zaku. "Behind us! We have company!" the operator shouted even as the Type 74 driver kicked the accelerator and the hover truck shot foward, away from the three GMs and there Zaku stalker. "CC, Ethan!" Ion barked, letting go of the powerful beam gun and producing a beam saber from the GMs knee compartment. Her two subordinates wheeled in spot and and aimed at the cloud of smoke, Ethan firing his 90 mm into the cloud while CC readied her beam spray gun. Myer's Zaku Kai burst from the top of the cloud of smoke, aiming his MMP downward, firing the attached grenade launcher at the grouped mobile suits, causing them to break. He followed the green one with the beam saber, chasing it with 90 mm machinegun fire as he descended rapidly. "The Glory of Zeon shall prevail!" Myer's shouted inside of his cockpit, tossing the spent machinegun aside and pulling his heat hawk and swinging it across his own chest in a vicious arc at the GM Sniper. Ion blocked the attack with her beam saber, gritting her teeth as she pushed her attacker back and thrust the beam saber foward, her two teammates both moving to position themselves where they could provide assistance without harming her. Her movements were steady and sure, the desert environment something she was more than used to, and soon the Zaku Kai was on the defensive. While Myer's initial attack had given him the advantage, the shifting sand prevented his Zaku from really pressing a strong attack, and his opponent was turning out to be much more skilled than he had assumed. Already his Zaku's armor was scored in several places the beam saber had brushed close, and the heat hawk was beginning to crack from the near constanct contact with the more advanced Federal melee weapon. With a singled swipe, the GM removed the left arm of the his mobile suit from the elbow down, and Myer decided it was time to retreat. Stepping back quickly, Myer raised his remaining arm and tossed the heat hawk at the GM Sniper, doing no damage but giving Ion reason to pause. Immediately after, he grabbed his final remaining grenade and rolled it foward, boosting away as several 90 mm shells impacted on his Zaku's right shoulder and left leg. Ion noticed the canister in the sand in time and backpedalled her mobile suit just as the grenade exploded, showering her suit with sand and shrapnel. As the sand rained down following the attack, her teammates approached her. "Sis, you okay?" Ethan asked first, CC simultaneously recounting the events of the battle as though none of them had actually just been in it. "Yeah.. let's get going before another one of them shows up..." Ion Bossa-Nova: 7 VP gained, 1 days damage Steve Myer: 5 VP gained, 3 days damage Bishop Kratos: 2 VP gained, no damage |