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The Zinnia coasted through space, making good time on its schedule.At the helm, Roslyn O'Hara guided her ship with firm resolve. The lights of the bridge could be seen for miles. Unfortunately, they were seen by the escort units of the Luna II Defense fleet. A Salamis class ship came into view. It fired off a few flares, and the Zinnia grinded to a halt. The two ships held sychronous orbit, the earth silhouetting them in its cloudy blue visage. A small shuttle dispatched from the Salamis, sending a boarding party. A nervous EFSF ensign was leading a few marines. "License and registration." "Have I been speeding, officer?" The marines laughed, undercutting the ensign. With a stern glare he burned eyeholes into O'Hara. With a disarming smile, she handed over her paperwork. The ensign handed them to a marine without giving so much as a second glance. "You'll have to turn around." "What? But I gave you my paperwork!" "There is an error." Satisfied, the ensign guided the marines onto the shuttle, and they embarked to rendezvous with the awaiting Salamis. O'Hara was fuming. Ensign Ricky beamed. Roslyn O'Hara: 1 VP gained, nodamage Life in the Zeon Military Force was boring. You fly this way, you fly that way, you blow this up, you don't blow this up. Gunnery Officer Michaels was pretty much as bored as you could get. He was sleeping in his chair went the alarms for an enemy contact came in. He could hear mobilizations go out. Clearly, someone tried to intercept them before Jaburo. He snapped to attention, shaking off the cobwebs. When he looked through the sights of his mega particle gun, a truck was staring back at him. The Kara was filled with white carnations. A group of people had gathered together around it, chanting something. Michaels turned up the audio, and sure enough, it was broadcasting on his frequency. "THIS WORLD IS MADE OF.. LOVE AND PEACE! THIS WORLD IS MADE OF, LOVE AND PEACE!" A few Zeon marines had met the protestors. They seemed to be having a conversation. Suddenly, one picked up an iron bar and swung it across a Marine's face. He went down hard. The other marines grabbed him and made a run for it. Michaels had seen enough. He aimed, using the center of a peace sign as a bullseye, and let loose a mega particle shot. The shot cleaved through the truck, causing it to explode. There was not a single survivor. Satisfied, he leaned back in his chair. Garma stood behind him, ready to reprimand him for all those naps. Duncan Keystone was keyed-up, though not for the reasons that most people would assume, for an up-and-coming sergeant with Zeon's Terrestrial Assault Force. A new assault fleet had formed around him, on its way to the Federation stronghold; victory was in reach, but that was not the reason. He had been assigned a skilled Gallop battleship, two squads of Zaku cannons and a considerable number of Magellan tanks; he had enough artillery to blow many things up, but that wasn't it either. No, the reason Duncan Keystone was immeasurably excited was because he was now piloting one of four Goufs in Zeon's newly-formed Jaburo Assault Force Leo. FOUR GOUFS. He could hardly believe it when he'd received word of the transfer. It wasn't everyday that you were assigned three Goufs. He looked forward to speaking with the pilots, exchanging heated words about how they'd used their retractable heat rods, heat swords and heat-bringing 5-barrel 75mm machine guns. To all appearances, it was going to be a smooth, enjoyable ride to Jaburo. Unfortunately, appearances were, once again, deceiving. From the underbrush, clouds, pits of hell, and wherever else those Feddie units were said to spawn, came aircraft. Don Escargots, Dishes and Jet Core Boosters swarmed around them like flies on big fat pieces of meat - big fat pieces of meat covered in dangerous guns, with more gun-carrying pieces of meat inside. The initial missile barrage saw a few losses on both sides, though the Federation had the worst of it. The Goufs were out of the hangars faster than Keystone could shake a heat rod at them, machine guns blazing at the low-flying, poorly-armored Federation aircraft. Duncan whooped as his extended heat rod dragged a Dish to the ground. He had heard legends of a Gouf pilot who had swung his way around a city, using aircraft as anchors for his heat rod. It was his dream to meet this pilot, and emulate his actions. He was a little disappointed that the Dish crashed to the ground before he could get a good swing in. He flew through the air, tucking and rolling to minimize the damage to his machine. A missile hit him in the back, but as he turned to dispatch his attacked, he discovered that the offending Jet Core Booster had already been downed by machine gun fire from another Gouf. His embarrassment at having taken a hit was more than offset by the awesome battlefield awareness displayed by the Gouf and his pilot. The other Gouf pilots weren't as good as him, but they still performed beautifully; the shoulder-spiked mobile suits poured machine gun fire into the rapidly thinning Federation forces, and the planes that weren't brought down by their persistent fire quickly found shells from the Zaku cannons and Gallop battleships tearing their aircraft to shreds. Even the Magellans were doing a downright decent job. When the smoke finally cleared, Jaburo Assault Force Leo had put several miles between them and the battlefield, and sergeant Duncan Keystone had told several amazing Gouf stories to the fascinated pilots. Duncan Keystone: 6 VP Gained, Repairing 2 The skies were clear as Tony Knight zipped through the air in his Gelgoog Test Type, accompanied by three new transfers to his squad - three extremely hot new transfers, piloting Zaku I Bs painted red to match his Gelgoog. Tony thanked his lucky stars, wondering if his father had anything to do with the transfers and the paint jobs. Maybe he'd have time to show his team some maneuvers before the big thing at Jaburo. Tony Knight had a lot of responsibility, but as far as he could tell, that didn't mean he couldn't have a lot of fun. The Panama canal, that ancient testament to mankind's stubbornness in cutting pathways for profit through whatever stood in their way, loomed in front of them. Trade through the long waterway had continued even during the civil wars that had wracked the region, and probably was going on even now, during the great war on earth. Commercial ventures stopped for no war! In fact, Tony thought he spied one such commercial vessel making its way through the canal at that very moment, a large, blurry shape slowly cutting a path through the two continental masses. "Alright, girls! Let's show them the might of Zeon." Oh, how he wanted to show them his might of Zeon - but that would have to wait. A close flyby was always good for morale, in his experience. "Form up close around me, diamond formation!" He slowed so that the less-powerful Zakus could align themselves next to him, forming an unstable rhombus-like shape. The Gelgoog hummed beneath him; he could feel the unused power pulsing around him. A bit of showing off couldn't hurt, could it? "Follow me!" Tony Knight opened up the throttle, and the Gelgoog's nine thrusters roared as the mobile suit rocketed toward the ship - the ship that was now looking less like a large barge, and more like a battleship. A Federation battleship. A Federation battleship that was quickly filling the sky with anti-air machinegun fire, missiles, and cannon fire. Knight barely had time to yell "Go around it!" before pulling the Gelgoog into a tight spin, avoiding several missiles and pounding through a few more. The titanium armor held just barely against the machine gun fire, but he could feel the deep chunk-chunk-chunk as the rounds slammed into the mobile suit. More missiles appeared on his radar, and he tried pushing the mobile suit faster. The missiles gained. In desperation, he abruptly stopped, then threw the mobile suit beneath the water as far as it would go in the shallow canal. He hoped the Feddies would assume he had crashed, or disappeared. He hoped they didn't have any submarine units in the vicinity. He shot out of the water at the far end of the canal, leaving the crew of the Hillock-class Crag behind him. He tentatively opened up communications with his mobile suit team. "That was pretty intense, wasn't it?" There was no answer. Tony Knight made the rest of the trip to Jaburo in relative silence, saddened by the deaths of his teammates almost as much as by the exciting possibilities that had died with them. He would make the Feddies pay - New Trojan Horse or not. Tony Knight: 6 VP Gained, Repairing 3 |