"Roberts, this is Hollister. Are you in position?"

"Affirmative, sir. Do you think these prototype beam rifles will really be able to take down a Gaw?"

"If they can't we'll find ourselves in a very ugly predicament very quickly. Avner, what about you?"

"Also in position, Lieutenant. If the flight path data is correct then we'll have a clear shot at the thing as soon as it crosses that ridge."

"Excellent. Mendez, the radar?"

"Showing a steady decrease in power. The Gaw is coming in just as the briefing suggested."

"Good. Maintain scanning and inform me of any deviations," Lt. Hollister remarked, leaning back in his GM Ground Type's chair and cracking his knuckles. He didn't like this plan. Kilamanjaro had intercepted Zeon communications indicating a Gaw assault carrier would be launching from Alexandria and crossing into Federation airspace. Allowing a mobile fortress of that sort to buzz around the vast expanses of plain and desert was never a good idea, especially considering it was likely packed full of Zakus and fighter aircraft. Brigadier General Kowen had thus dispatched Hollister's 24th MS Team, armed with extremely powerful but very tempermental prototype beam rifles, to intercept the incoming carrier. A wing of Fly Manta fighter-bombers, and Major Bauer-Meister's famous Desert Eagle unit, would assist in boxing in the Gaw into Hollister's kill zone: a complicated series of valleys surrounding the Meru mountains. The Gaw, flying low to avoid long-range radar from scanning locations at Mt. Kilamanjaro, would be hugging the ground. By the time they recognized Hollister's trap, his men would have already clipped the carrier's wings.

"...-elo, Hol-er, this - uer of the Desert Eagles, do you cop- er?" a female voice crackled over his radio.

"That you, Major? I do not copy, there's too much interference, over," Hollister replied. "Mendez, did you get that? Increase your transmitting power."

"On it, Lieutenant," the Type 74's operator replied, cranking up the hovertruck's radio amplifiers.

"Hello, Major? Do you copy? This is Hollister, over," he said again.

"Hollister, it's B- 're tracking the Ga- eavy air sup- than expected, over!" the voice came back. Hollister was sure it was Bauer-Meister's by this point, but what it was she was talking about... "Get yo- there, over."

"Damn... Major, I cannot read you, over," Hollister said. "You got anything yet, Mendez?"

"No sir. Interference is spiking, the Gaw must be getting close," he replied.

"I see. Roberts, Avner, get those rifles charged and get ready to paste the Gaw as soon as it's within the kill zone," Hollister ordered.

"Understood, sir!"

"Quite a view, isn't it, Andy?" The Griffin's senior officer, Lieutenant Dampier, remarked. Sergeant Andrew Vinsko nodded approvingly, gazing out the dual angular bridge windows at the panorama in front of them. The Meru mountains stretched off in either direction; they weren't quite tall enough to be snowcapped, even this late in the year.

"Nature can be remarkable when it wants to be, Charles," Andrew said, somewhat more laconic than usual. He still hadn't gotten quite used to saying the older man's first name in such parlance, but he'd have it down soon enough.

"Just want until you see Kilamanjaro," Dampier grinned. "It's a real spectacle." Andrew was about to respond when an unpleasantly familiar gravelly voice cut in.

"I'm sure there will be... plenty of time for sightseeing after the operation, Herr Dampier," SS officer Berthold Stulinger flatly stated. Andrew was getting decidedly uncomfortable with the coated blackshirt always a few steps away. There was something that was just universally unnerving about the man that always put him on edge.

"Well you're just all business, aren't you," Dampier chuckled. Andrew immediately shot him a dirty look - he was rather committed to not giving the SS goon any reason to talk about them unfavorably with his masters. Berthold gave the senior officer a glare out of the corner of his eyes and went back to quietly observing the view, mentally cursing about Earth in general.

"Sir! We've got a blurb from the Luggun!" the communications officer announced, looking back from his duty station.

"What?" Dampier inquired. "Well, what's it say?"

"Um, right. They're picking up a detachment of Feddie aircraft moving in our direction from the East. About a dozen, give or take," the officer reported.

"Hmm. What do you think, Andy?" Dampier asked.

"They were bound to find us sooner or later. Get the Dopps flying a combat air patrol," Andrew ordered, standing up and stretching. "Charles, I'll leave the fleet readiness to you."

"You got it, Andy," Dampier mockingly saluted his junior. "Right, reform into a staggered position so each vessel can cover the other. Make sure we have a constant laser communication with the Intrepid too, Myer needs to be on the same page as us. Let's see some action, people!" As the Gaw's bridge lights dimmed to combat conditions, the sound of a fluttering coat was plainly audible. Andrew turned around to see Berthold heading towards the bridge doors.

"Bert?" Andrew asked.

"I'm having my Zaku prepared. You should too," he bluntly stated. "This is their back yard. Remember that."

"Okay, Vinsko, let's see if your luck is better than mine," SS officer Steve Myer muttered, pulling on his operator's gloves. The gray Zaku Kai warmed up under him, and one of the Intrepid's deck crew flagged him on to the Gaw's release ramps. He'd previously attempted to breach the Fed air patrols, and the results had been less than spectacular. This time, with a much larger force and the arguably more-qualified Vinsko in charge, things might shape up differently.

"Ah, Mr. Myer, where should I go?" Corporal Steel remarked, looking a bit unsure of herself. Myer observed the portly Xamel that was occupying a good deal of the Gaw's main hangar.

"Just stay put, Susan. That pig of a mobile suit of yours won't be much use for antiaircraft duty," Myer remarked.

"...yes sir," she nodded, running over a combat checklist anyway. The rear doors of the Gaw opened and Myer's Zaku zipped out the back, immediately hitting its powerful jumpjets as soon as it cleared the fuselage. In moments it rose above the top of the carrier, coming to rest on its upper fuselage. He didn't much like the idea of being a glorified antiaircraft gun, but if it killed Feds... a few other mobile suits had ambled on top of their carriers, including another gray Zaku belonging to Berthold. Myer nodded at the superior SS officer, receiving a hi-sign in return.

"What's the plan, Sergeant?" Myer asked, opening a channel to Vinsko's Zaku.

"Shoot anything that isn't ours," Andrew flatly said in response, cocking the charging handle of his machine gun.

"Sounds like a good plan to me," Corporal Howe said, loading a magazine in his MMP-80. The portly Dom's body was acting as a wonderful air brake, so he'd taken a few steps to secure its feet to the Raven's fuselage.

"Contact is coming in hot," Dampier radioed to Andrew. "You ready, Andy?"

"Always," Andrew smirked, scanning the sky.

"Damn particle interference!!" Major Amy Bauer-Meister cursed, throwing her headset against the Tin Cod's cockpit in disgust. Four purple blobs were dead ahead, several thousand feet below their current altitude.

"Still can't get through to the ground forces, ma'am?" her flight officer, Jensen, offered.

"Ugh. They're only expecting one Gaw, not a damn squadron of them!" Amy cursed. "And it's not like we can do much to those monsters..."

"We'll do our best, Major!" Lt. Harris exclaimed, wobbling the wings of his Fly Manta. "Even if we haven't got any mobile suits..."

"That's good spirit, Lieutenant, but..." she sighed. "Alright, fine. Do what you can! Someone's gotta kick the fascists off Earth!" The pilots offered a "hoo-ah" to that, arming the missiles on their aircraft. "Eagles, form up on me, we're going to run interference on those monsters. Harris, you and your men work on the escorts."

"Understood, ma'am," Harris reported. "Fifty-third, get ready for air-to-air combat!"

"I don't get it, sir! With this much particle radiation it should be right on top of us," Mendez exclaimed, frantically trying to divine what he could from the hovertruck's readouts. The truck's driver looked at him with a worried expression; Mendez couldn't offer him any reassurance.

"Bet the intelligence was wrong..." the gunner muttered, loading a belt of ammunition into the vulcan gun in his open-topped turret.

"If only we had a Dish we might be able to sort this out..." Mendez waxed, rifling up the knobs to maximum sensitivity.

"Uh... uh... Lieutenant, sir!" Roberts exclaimed, his face draining of color.

"What is it, Rob?" Hollister demanded, on edge already.

"There's... there's more than one!!" the pilot exclaimed, centering his reticle shakily. Hollister and Avner both felt somewhat overawed as two Gaws crested the ridge of the valley, crossing into the GM's "kill zone". A third began emerging shortly thereafter. The sky was soon lit up by tracer fire as dozens of machine guns on the Gaws' fuselages opened up - the cloud of Dopps scattered as well, indicating the Tin Cods Hollister had been trying to contact had closed in.

"...fuck," Hollister managed. "...what are you people doing!? Target the closest one and get ready to fire! Hurry!!"

~

"Son of a bitch...!" Andrew seethed, tracking a Tin Cod with his Zaku's machine gun. The 120mm rifle roared, shell casings tumbling out of the receiver like rainfall, but the nimble aircraft seemed to be able to put itself a degree above or below his line of fire. "These aren't ordinary Feddies..."

"There's only twelve of them! Keep shooting!" Myer growled, ejecting a spent magazine from his MMP-80. The truck-sized metal box slammed into the Gaw's fuselage and bounced off like a football, tumbling towards the distant ground below.

"These people are aces, Andy," Vivian Martel muttered, reaching for a new ammunition drum. "Even if they're just fighters..."

"Well, so what?" Ross demanded, turning his machine gun sideways, allowing the recoil to carry it across the path of another Tin Cod. The shells simply refused to connect, drawing a curse from the older pilot. "Put enough lead in the air and you'll hit them eventually." Berthold ducked under a missile as a Fly Manta sailed over his Zaku's head, followed in hot pursuit by a trio of Dopps. The barrage was incredible: between the Zakus, the Dopps, and the Gaw's antiaircraft guns, the sky was a virtual storm of outgoing shells. A Dopp went down in flames as a Fly Manta overtook it, but the yellow EFA plane had its wingtip clipped by a tracer. Skilled as they were, the Federals would be boxed in sooner or later.

~

"Come on, you bastard...!" Harris growled, trying to line his reticle up with a Dopp's rear end. His men had an edge over the Zeon pilots in skill, but their much more maneuverable fighters and numerical superiority were obvious assets. "Gotcha!" the Fly Manta's twin machine guns blared, riddling the Dopp's fuselage. The green plane burst into flames and began spinning out of control; a burst of white smoke accompanied the canopy blowing off as the pilot ejected. Heheh, one more and I'll make ace! he grinned.

"I've got one on my ass! Help!" one of his pilots exclaimed, tracers from a Dopp nearly shearing off his Fly Manta's wing.

"Hang on, I'll nail 'im," Harris replied, flipping the switch on his control stick over to missiles. The IR-seeking reticle appeared, zooming in on the Dopp's red-hot engines. Four missiles rocketed towards it, leaving corkscrewing smoke trails behind them. The Dopp blew a burst of flares out of its fuselage, veering off to the right. Three of the four were fooled, but the fourth struck true, blowing the rear half of the Dopp apart. "Got him! Hahaha! Did you see that, Major?!" he exclaimed gleefully.

~

"That was my man, you little..." Andrew growled, watching the Dopp plummet out of the air. He gave the Fly Manta a generous lead and let loose with his machine gun. Come on...! the shells framed it and flew about, and then... sparks! A hit! The Fly Manta rolled over and began rapidly losing altitude, spewing a smoke could behind it. One of the Gaw's antiaircraft guns tore it to shreds. A proximity buzzer went off; Andrew's Zaku nearly fell over as he jerked to the side, barely avoiding two missiles from a Tin Cod that shot across the formation.

"That one's the unit commander!" Howe exclaimed. Berthold took a bead on it and depleted another magazine to no effect.

~

"Number sixteen is down... damage is superficial to our hull," the situation officer noted. Dampier furrowed his brow.

We're wasting Dopps at this rate... those little gnats couldn't hope to hurt us, he thought. He was about to countermand Vinsko's order when a panicked voice came over the comm system.

"Griffin! There's mobile suits down in the valley! They're lining you up right now!" it was the Luggun's pilot.

"What?! Where?!" Dampier demanded. A visual was sent by the Luggun, showing a blurry image of an orange-on-tan GM. The electronic map in front of them lit up with four indicators: three mobile suits and a sensor vehicle.

"They have beam weapons!!" the Luggun crew exclaimed. Dampier gulped. That, on the other hand, was something to worry about.

"Prepare the mega particle cannons! Flatten those Feddie bucketheads!" he exclaimed.

~

"Harris?! Harris?! Come in, dammit!" Amy yelled, watching his Fly Manta drop out of formation in a cloud of smoke. "Damn! Eagles, forget the Dopps! We're going after those-"

"Major, the Gaws! Look!" Jensen exclaimed. Bauer's expression turned sour as the huge hatches over their mega particle cannons began sliding open.

"Damn... they've spotted Hollister..." she muttered.Why hasn't he started firing yet! "Nevermind the mobile suits, stop those cannons from firing before we lose our ground support! Hurry!" Amy banked in her Tin Cod, lining up the closest cannon in her reticle and arming her last missile.

~

Berthold slammed a magazine loaded with air-bursting antiaircraft missiles into his Zaku bazooka and took aim at the lead Tin Cod.Out with the weak, in with the strong, Berthold thought, leading the plane and preparing to fire. Suddenly, a pink shaft of light shot up fromt he ground, annihilating the muzzle of his bazooka and nearly taking off the Zaku's hand. The projectile carried on, grazing the tip of the Gaw's tail.

"...that was a beam weapon!" Andrew exclaimed. The Gaws' mega particle cannons thundered, sending a few short of thirty salvos into the valley below.

"Brilliant deduction, Andy," Martel shot, deadly serious in spite of the joke.

"Damn it, Viv..." Andrew growled. "Charles, do you read me?! Launch the flares and drop altitude, hurry! I doubt they'll miss again!"

~

"Mendez!" Hollister exclaimed as the hovertruck was vaporized. The yellow lances of energy simply erased the vehicle's existence, along with all the terrain for yards and yards around. His face scrunched up in an expression of rage, trying to line up a clean shot with one of the humongous carriers. Landing a hit on the fuselage wouldn't be too difficult, but even that wouldn't produce what they were looking for. Punching a clean hole in one side and out the other might produce some superficial damage, but bringing down the Gaw would require smashing in its bridge or disabling the engines - much easier said than done. Avner fired his rifle, missing his target's engine cluster by a wide margin.

"Oh, come on!" Hollister spat, carving a trench in the Gaw's fuselage but failing to do any substantial damage. "What is wrong with you people?!"

"It's the beam rifles, sir!" Roberts groaned. "The condensers aren't working right, it's throwing the aim off!"

"They gave us faulty beam weapons?!" Hollister wailed. "Those penny-pinching top brass!"

"We haven't got anything else that can bring those things down, sir!" Avner noted, trying to size up another shot.

"...no, there is one thing," Hollister remarked. "We need to get up here and use the sabers!" The Gaws had dramatically shifted in altitude, looking like they were nearly on collision courses. "Get ready to use your boosters!"

"-ollister, look out!!" Amy's voice cracked over the radio, finally penetrating the interference.

"Major?!" Hollister exclaimed. "What i- shit!" He looked up to see a Zaku falling out of the air, about to land right on top of him.

~

"Damn... did the cannon get damaged?" Dampier growled, observing the hairline crack in the Gaw's bridge windows.

"No sir, we retracted them in time," the gunnery sergeant replied, wiping noticeable sweat from his brow.

"What pests," the senior officer remarked. "Line up a trajectory and get ready to start bombing! Those hooligans will think twice about shooting at my ship again..."

"Charles, you copy? Finish off those fighters, we're going in!" Andrew's voice broke over the intercom.

"Going in?" Dampier said, taken back. A shadow briefly fell over the Gaw's bridge as Vinsko's mobile suit abruptly dismounted, letting gravity do the rest of the work for him. The other mobile suits that had taken up topside positions followed close behind. "Andy, you lunatic..."

~

Avner got off one shot with his beam rifle, scoring a direct hit against one of Myer's Zakus as it descended, crippling the mobile suit and causing it to veer off trajectory and crash to the ground unceremoniously. Ross' Dom hit the ground nearby, releasing a panzerfaust at the orange mobile suit. The blast knocked it backwards, the Federal pilot struggling to keep his footing.

"I hope you like pain!" Ross barked, whipping out a heat saber as he tossed his machine gun aside and charged towards the GM. Avner tossed the faulty beam rifle, producing a machine gun and bringing up in Ross' direction. A blast of light emerged from the torso of Ross' Dom, obscuring his vision.

"Damn Zeeks!" Avner exclaimed, firing wildly in Ross' direction. One shot glanced off the shoulder of Ross' Dom, then the heat saber slammed through the GM's torso. Berthold landed nearby, unloading his machine gun on Roberts' GM with little effect as he descended. Grimacing at the lunar titanium armor, he switched over to the grenade launcher and fired, blasting the beam saber out of Roberts' hand that he'd just retrieved from the GM's storage rack.

For Andrew, however, this matter was significantly more personal. Unlike his SS shadow, he had grown extremely weary of seeing men under his command go down in flames, and these Federals would be on the receiving end of that retribution. The Desert Zaku's feet smashed into Hollister's GM's shoulders, immediately toppling it over and smashing it into the ground.

"Shit, shit, shit," Hollister cursed, ejecting a beam saber from its rack but unable to reach it. Why don't these GMs have vulcan guns!? he thought, his mind briefly visualizing some design staff fatcat cutting them out as a "cost-saving measure". He forced the Desert Zaku off him, Andrew rolling to the side and balancing off one hand to avoid falling over. Arms freed, he grabbed the beam saber and lit it up. "Die, you fascist!"

"Viv, do it!" Andrew yelled.

"Got it," his counterpart affirmed. Following directly behind Andrew, her Zaku's knee plowed into the GM's face, neatly decapitating the mobile suit. As Hollister struggled to regain his balance, Andrew ejected his heat hawk, wound up, and hurled it at the Federal officer, cleaving its torso partially in half. It hit the ground simultaneously to Roberts', Myer having delivered a point-blank shot from his machine gun into the GM's cockpit after Berthold had grappled it from behind.

~

Amy seethed. Harris was gone, Hollister was gone, she was out of missiles, and her Desert Eagles were running low on fuel. They'd broken even in Dopps, but without ground support, doing anything more than kamikaze runs against the Gaws would produce nothing.

"....Jensen, we're pulling back," she muttered.

"Understood, ma'am. Fuel's bingo anyway... all units, return to base! We've done all we can," he ordered, jettisoning his remaining missiles and hitting the afterburners. One last burst of antiaircraft fire crossed their path before they were clear of the combat zone. She caught a brief glimpse of the two Desert Zakus that had crushed Hollister's GM out of the corner of her cockpit.

"Watch your back, Zeeks..."