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December twenty seventh, Universal Century year zero zero seventy eight. The victory of humanity over the forces of war, disease and hunger has lasted three generations. Since the founding of the Earth Federation government mankind has moved to the stars, colonizing the moon, the five lagrange points in the Earth Sphere, and even such far off places as Mars, the Asteroid Belt, and Jupiter. While intercontinental trade used to dominate the world market, interspheral trade in minerals, gigantic asteroids and helium 3 are now driving the worlds economy. More than half of the population of mankind lives in space, and children are born, live and die without ever experiencing fully the sensation of Earths gravity. However, recently, this great peace forged by an age of exploration and expansion has become brittle. Children born in the space colonies now believe that their lives should not be dictated by beaurocrats on Earth. The Jovians have already broken off from the Earth Federation and started their own corporatized government. Opposite the dark side of the moon in Side 3, the revolutions of Contolism and Ereism have taken root. Through a pair of nationalistic revolutions, Side 3 and later Side 6 have successfully broken off from the Earth Federation government, forming the Republic of Zeon and the Riah Republic. While Riah has remained peaceful since the rebellion in April of 0077, it is no secret that Side 3 has built up its military, and many people on both sides are anticipating a war in the recent future. However, even by the most biased estimates, the Earth Federation military outnumbers Zeon in warships thirty to one. While the EFF has insisted on using diplomacy to the last, no one at this time believes the spacenoids of Side 3 could stand up to them in a full scale military assault. On this day, two days after Christmas, EFF ensign Jim Laird was doing a routine flight in his Torieres fighter, scouting the derelict Gray Dove space colony of Side 1. A reactor accident had destroyed this colony during construction. One of the very first, the damage to the colonies hull had been so severe it had been left to drift. Only one of the colony mirrors had been finished, its light glittering off the sun and reflecting pristinely on the burnt and charred hull, the nuclear explosion coring and gutting the inside so spectacularly it looked not unlike the surface of the moon, holes and warped steel mimicking craters and charred rock. The colony was open at both ends, a mere cylinder of steel with one shining wing keeping it afloat in a sea of stars. Jims patrol route took him close to the colony, situated just outside the main cluster of Side 1's sparkling, lively habitat. Side 1 housed just over a hundred colonies in bunch formation, each bunch looking at this distance like a pair of stars nestled in a nebula of glowing and darting lights. Despite the aggravation in the political mood of the times, Jim remained in high spirits, wondering how any humans could make war with each other after so many years of peace. "Patrol six, this is the Apollo. Please respond, over." Jim paused for a moment and looked at the picture taped to his starboard window. Lieutenant Jennifer Barley, the Apollo's comm officer and flight coordinator. Jim didn't know if he'd ever meet a bigger babe. The way her short red hair mingled with her brilliant blue eyes, the way her cheeks puffed up just slightly when she was angry, the way her breasts filled out the pink EFSF female officers uniform, and that skirt... "Patrol six, this is the Apollo. What's wrong with you Duster?" "Uhh, Apollo, this is Duster. Here to ask me on a date Jenn?" Jim snickered a bit, eyes more on the picture than his instruments. "Cut it out ensign! We're reading a strange radar anomoly in the area of the derelict, you're the closest so we want you to check it out." "Haha, right right. I'll give it a look through, just for you babe." Jim whistled a little as the laser link between the Magellan and his Torieres was abruptly cut. She must be in a bad mood, he thought, as he slowly sailed his fighter towards the derelict colony, its one mirror spinning slowly and brightly against a background of lightless black. As his small blue fighter floated towards the colony, Jim caught a flash of red light out of the corner of his eye, in the far side of the colony. Interested, he slowed his Torieres down to a crawl and turned on its forward floodlights. The fighter crept along the side of the colony wall, Jim gazing out at a path of steel grating and plates, some shining like new in their oxygen deprived tomb, others showing vivid reminders of the explosion that had destroyed the inside of the colony. After about half a minute of searching the colony wall, Jim decided he must have been seeing things, and looked down at his instruments to check the radar. But there was oddly nothing on the screen, not even the huge silhouette of the colony was coming up onscreen. I'll have to give maintenance a lecture when I get back he thought, smacking the side of the panel to see if he could goad it into working again. In that instant Laird caught a flash of color out of the corner of his eye, but he wasn't ready for what he saw as he turned his head. It looked almost like an ogre, a giant man in a menacing spacesuit. It had appeared from a hole inside the destroyed colony wall, and its metallic coating sparkled a dull black at the edges still touched by the small Torieres' floodlight. Jim couldn't see anything more past this small bit of metal and an outer silhouette, slightly off-black against the pitch black tapestry behind the colony. But then its single eye came into view, menacing and bright red, curving along the axis of the monsters face and pointing straight towards the tiny Torieres fighter. Instinct overpowered curiosity and fear, and Jim punched his throttle, the fighter blasting off quickly into the nothingness of space, towards the cluster of lights that was Side one in the distance. The Zaku trained its rifle on the fighter, its pilot aiming carefully at the Torieres which made no attempt at evasive maneuvers. "Permission to fire, herr Kauftman?" the man spoke low and flat, his monotone voice indicative of a very special training program. An equally emotionless voice responded on the comm, interrupted at some points by minovski induced static. "Negative Scharfuhrkkxksskk, his excellency wants us to avoid crexxkkskkskssss incidents. It is enough that we scared the Earthnoid away. Return to base." Without word, the red eye of the Zaku faded out of existance, the mobile suit sinking back inside the space colony. Jim Laird would later submit a report, sighting a monstrous new weapon found inside the destroyed Gray Dove colony, but no one at Earth Federation command would believe him, considering hallucinations from too much time on patrol more likely than a humanoid mobile weapon infiltrating so close to Earth Federation space. |