Gundammit

It’d been nice to see them again, Shinji thought. It’d been nice right up until the alarms began to wail. Shinji’s first hope that it was another one of the drills they’d been running had been dashed by Anika announcing that it most definitely was not a drill. It’d come like a rude, backhanded slap to the face. Someone was attacking.

The Roughriders training units scrambled in any combat spacecraft they could find, including some of the old choppers that’d still been left lying around. Leaving him, Chief of Security of Ultima station, on holidays at ‘home’ with nothing to do but listen to the radio chatter in the Control room.

He sat there listening for five minutes before screaming down to the landing bay on his Judy.

It was waiting there, shorter than an Evangelion but not by much, with the cockpit open to invite himin to sit. Pearlescent white armour sparkled in the overhead lights while a deep flat blue seemed to swallow the light. Red wings shielded jet exhausts mounted on the machine’s back. Glass eyes stared without life from beneath a yellow crest on the ‘helmet’. A small brass plate was affixed to the centre of the crest.

MZ-105X Aile Strike Gundam. Certified Replica Grade. Manufactured 2026. Morgenroete, 77 Frigga.

His comm still relayed the battle outside as he stared in at a cockpit. It’d been left behind because it wasn’t a combat unit. It was a one-off prototype. It was a failure. It’d nearly bankrupted its builders.

It was waiting. And it was his only chance. Shinji’d been told when he took his job that Command was more about making decisions than coming up with ideas. Well, now it was time for him to decide. Go out there and fight, or stay and watch?

In truth, he’d decided the moment he ran out that door leaving Anika speechless. He knew why we was doing it.

“Damn they’re persistant,”

He blinked, double checking his comm to make sure it wasn’t just an echo of his memories. And of course, that idiot Shinji was nowhere to be found.

“Never again,” he promised himself, under his breath, screwing his eyes shut to force back the tears.

Shinji climbed into the spherical cockpit, amazed to find that the controls were almost the exact same as his Judy. He was shaking inside as the hatch slammed shut, taking deep breaths expecting LCL to come flooding in. All he received was the scent of hot plastic and cold metal.

There was no synchronisation. No rush of becoming something else. Data flowed across the screens surrounding him as he gripped his hands on both throttles. Turbines wailed as they spooled up, indicators surrounding him lighting up green.

“I never thought I’d do this again,” he whispered. The displays flickered once more before settling on a full three-sixty display of the landing bay around him. The HUD picked out the landing bay, and the hardware still scattered around the bay. The parked Thunderbolt was highlighted green on the HUD, it’s IFF squawking as a friendly.

He keyed open a comm-channel.

“Control, this is Unit 01, online and...” he stopped, feeling just a little stupid. Force of habit

“Is that you Shinji?”Anika’s voice queried over the radio. She almost sounded relieved.

“Yeah... old habits,” he answered with a blush.

Yuu would think him crazy.

“Well, we could use some help. Your callsign is Archangel. Launch through main bay door.”

Beyond the bay door was the blackness of open space.  Something burst in a flash of hot gas just beyond, trailing embers. Beyond the bay door was open battle. And war. And killing.

He closed his eyes and punched the throttles forward, fusion turbines howling as they pushed the Gundam out into open battle.

----

“What is that?”

The Zig pilot checked his scanners a second time. His eyes golfballed at what he saw rising towards him riding a trail of hot blue gas.

“It’s a God-damn Gundam!”

Those were his final words.

-----

Target in the centre, pull the switch. The cannon thumped, a shock travelling through the mecha’s frame. Shinji felt the shudder through his seat. A moment later, the target spacecraft disintegrated into a puffball of expanding gas and debris.

It didn’t have time to register. Alarms in the cockpit  blared warnings at him. With a rebel’s yell he gripped at the throttles, jinking the mecha hard to his right. It’s engines howled. Starburst flares spat from launchers on the feet and on the wingtips. Missiles burst against the decoys, jinking and spiralling through clouds of chaff and debris.

A few made it through, tracked by the 105’s sensors and relayed onto the onboard displays.

A kick from the vernier thrusters turned the machine to his left, pirouetting in open space. Shinji brought the shield up. The remain missiles splashed against it, scorching the surface. The outer layers cracked and spalled off.

Shinji raised the cannon, aiming for the spacecraft that’d fired on him. It was squat and black, malevolent looking with a red glow from it’s engines. It was faceless and smoking, spitting sparks of bullets. He centred the targeting reticule on it.

Target in the centre, pull the switch.

This one spiralled, leaving a corkscrew contrail.

“Archangel one, Archangel one this is Brown Leader. We’ll keep those fighters off your back., Just concentrate on the leaders.”

“This is Archangel. I copy.”

Still 4:41 on the batteries. Twenty seconds had seemed like an eternity. Cockpit temperature was twenty Celsius and Shinji still felt scalding hot inside. It was already starting to climb. Radiator panels in the wings were already reaching the top of the green zone.

Shinji clamped his mask tight to his face, breathing deep of the refrigerated air.

Alerts flickered up on his monitor, warning of a jammed actuator in the right wing, sticking it at a positive forty-five degree angle to the usual horizontal reference line. Damage? No, probably just failed on its own.

A quick adjustment of the left wing compensated for the fault.

Another attacker dove on him from above, riding a column of arc-light as it accelerated towards him. Instinctively, he covered the mecha’s head with the shield. Coilgun darts splashed against it, armour layers abrading away. Stray rounds pattered against the shoulders and wings.

More alarms warned of coolant spraying from the right wing radiators and the permanently unused hardpoint on the right shoulder. He had just enough time to train his cannon on it before three missile slammed into his attackers fuselage. It cracked open like an egg full of white gas and tinfoil.

“Archangel, Brown Leader, Sorry we missed that one.”

“That’s okay,” Shinji managed to transmit back, before realising it didn’t sound very proper at all.

Everything was moving outside. Darting and diving. Pitching and rolling. Four big transports slogged along beneath a veil of CIWS and point-defence missiles, escorted by at least two squadrons of enemy fighters.

A fifth straggler was split through the middle by sustained gunfire. It buckled and crumpled, the atmosphere inside bursting out and breaking it’s back. Shinji recognised the stub wings and octet of thruster belonging to the Stingray driving straight through between both halves of the wreck.

“This is the Stingray. This is the Stingray. We got one of the transports but we’re out of missiles.”

Mackie’s voice. Shinji thumbed open a comm-link automatically.

“This is Archangel. I’m coming at you.”

“Just keep those fighters off our back for a minute. Try and draw them off the transports.”

He thrusted towards the cruiser. 4:23 left on the batteries. He saw an old Blackbird trailing smoke from one of it’s engines, being harassed by a single enemy Swordfish. Target in the centre, pull the switch. The Gundam’s software did the rest.

The attacker broke off with a hole through it’s wing trailing vapour.

“Good shooting!” someone called out over the comm-net. It brought a brief smile to his face.

Cockpit temperature was starting to edge above thirty degrees. Battery thermal gauges were well into the yellow zone. One of the field guide vanes for the vernier thrusters had taken a hit. It was still running, but was down on power.

The armour on the shield was depolarising in places. Some plating had come off his legs. The radiators in the right wing had drained entirely and one of his hydraulic systems was loosing pressure fast. There were still three other circuits, the port wing was undamaged. And that plating seemed to have fallen of on its own.

He was gasping for air, struggling to keep himself cool.  Space was whirling around him while alerts clamoured for his rapidly diminishing intelligence. He jinked the Gundam out of the way of another incoming salvo. Brown 3 killed the attacker. Another three were diving down from above...

Was it just him, or was everyone suddenly concentrating on him?

“Archangel, Archangel. Good work. Keep drawing their attention we’re making a run to capture the lead ship,”

Jet’s voice confirmed everything he suspected. He was too hopped up on whatever the artificial intelligence equivalent of adrenaline to care. This was a bad idea. This had been a bad idea.

Another round of missile warnings confirmed that suspicion too.

A quick glance at the display beside him told him what suspiciously apropos music the computer had chosen. It was 40 seconds into UNICORN.

He caught two missiles on the shield and one on the leg, and cursed. The shield’s armour depolarised and began its recharge countdown while for the first time in years he wished he’d been in an entry plug.

Another Swordfish was diving onto an attack run.

Target in the centre. Pull the switch.

The impact when it came, slammed his face onto the console in front of him. Momentarily stunned as his systems locked for an instant, his thoughts skipped a few seconds. The Strike smashed backwards through the orbiting hulk One-Night, splitting it in two.

“I don’t know who you are in that reject of a Mobile Suit, but behold the look of the true winner.”

Shinji glanced at the radio speaker beside him for a moment, then out at the displays in front of him. One of the panels had cracked, but he could still see what looked to be another mecha, bulkier and more rounded than his own. It was painted a deep green, with distinctive black and gold trim on the chestplate and forearms.

“I won’t let you hurt them,” he snarled.

He reversed his throttles, accelerating backwards away from an enemy armed with some form of massive sword. It jinked out of the line of fire, rushing in fast for another attack before Shinji could get the gun to charge.

He spun the Gundam out of the way, deflecting the axe with the shield. Hot, burning sparks flew, the impact reverberating through the frame of the Gundam. He threw a punch, hoping to catch the enemy in the head and push them off.  It spun out of the way.

Get range, get range, I need range.

“Falling into the cockpit doesn’t work in real life kid,”

The mono-eye loomed. Shinji pushed the throttles forward, inelegantly ramming into the Zaku-lookalike. Both machines slammed together, metal crunching beneath the force of impact. Both machines bounced off each other again, thrown wildly spinning by their own thrusters and the force of the impact.

There was one thing Shinji knew he could do better than his human opponent, and that was keep his orientation. His body was built with this in mind. His mind was wired up specifically to track and target.

“I didn’t fall into this cockpit. I chose to pilot this thing. To defend the people I care about. So they wouldn’t have to suffer because of me. Never Again!”

No more Asukas. No more torn to pieces because he was too afraid to hurt someone when he fought back. No more letting people he cared about suffer for his own cowardice. He was already bringing the cannon to bear on the target as it regained its orientation in space.

“You say you pilot that thing because your don’t want people to suffer. I’m sure that’ll comfort the families of the pilots you just killed, you little hypocrite.”

But maybe... he thought for a moment. He’d already killed people himself. The mere though chilled him to the bone.

“I didn’t come here to kill. I didn’t start this fight.”

“Neither did we. We didn’t commit the first act of war. Or is an embargo an act of peace? We’re defending our homes, the same as you.”

“You’re not the same as me!” A shot from the Gundam’s cannon obliterated an enemy Zig. The pilot died with a scream.

Blue sparks swarmed out of the shoulder parts of the mech, flitting around chaotically. One intersected a general-manufacture Valkyrie by chance, blowing it out of the sky. Three more swooped in to press the fight in battroid mode, gunpods spitting hot tracers.

Three more blew up in as many seconds. Cut to pieces by the combined firepower of a swarm of funnels.

“What is that thing?” Shinji thought aloud.

“This is no Zaku, boy. No Zaku. This is a Sinanju special order, easily outclassing the likes of that Cosmic Era trash. Give up, while I’m feeling merciful. I’ll let you live.”

That was what he was trying to do. Attack his confidence. Attack his will to fight. Attack his reasoning and his belief.  Paint him as the monster. Never again, he reminded himself. No more Asukas. No more Toujis. Not when he could do something about it.

Shinji grit his teeth. “And I am no Boy. I’m Shinji Ikari.” He flicked as switch on the control throttle. The track switched over. Char’s Counterattack, MAIN TITLE. Power gauges filled with green light. “Full Power!”

The funnels swirled around, surrounding him before darting in for an attack. Auto-systems took over as he dodged and ducked and weaved, tracking and acquiring the remote drones, before plotting a fire solution. Both Vulcan cannons on the Gundam’s head ripped through the funnels, the small remote gun-drones popping like balloons leaving puffballs of gas and debris.

Another impact rocked the mobile suit, answered a heartbeat later by the blare of a new alarm informing him of a fire in the right leg below the knee. Red indicators on the HUD One of the battery packs had shorted and ignited, dumping its energy in a brilliant electric blue fireball that formed a brand new sun on the battlefield for a few moments. Molten metal streamed out behind the wounded leg, actuators going inert as control cables burned through. More alarms announced themselves in a chaotic swarm.

Shinji triggered the fire suppression before returning his attention to the monitor just in time to see the enemy charging right at him with axe drawn for strike.

“This is the end for you!”

The enemy suit was centred exactly on the targeting reticule. Cold, calm certainty flooded him. In an instant, he knew exactly what had happened. The enemy pilot had tried to psych him out, then used the drones as a distraction, hoping to use to create an opening. Another moment and it might’ve worked. But he hadn’t counted on his opponent not being human....

The target was in the centre. Shinji pulled the switch. The Gundam’s cannon fired a microsecond later, a collimated fusion reaction accelerating the projectile down the barrel at five kilometres a second. It trailed a burning hot plasma behind it, streaking towards the target. In the last moment, the pilot seemed to anticipate the attack. The Sinanju’s pilot went shoulder first, leading with an arm mounted shield.

The impact was devastating. The round punched through the shield, severed the arm behind it between shoulder and elbow before smashing through the torso armour. Now sheathed in molten metal, it missed the cockpit by centimetres, tearing a gash in the outer pressure sphere as it ripped through the Sinanju’s frame before embedding itself in the battery pack. It didn’t have time to burst out the other side. 30 kilograms of high explosive triggered on cue, blasting the suit and its surprised pilot apart.

Shinji sat there staring for a few moments, his finger still hard down on the trigger, fully aware that he’d just killed another person. His breath came in ragged, short gasps. His body was burning hot inside. His eyes stared at his monitors and at the icons beyond trading weaponsfire. He could hear the voices on the comm barking orders, demanding help.... or screaming in rage. Outside his own personal war in the pocket, the main battle was beginning to turn their way.

Another enemy transport ship exploded under Veritech attack. A third was being bombarded. A Zig burned in space, cockpit blown open. Each fighter had had a pilot too. Each one had died. By his hand. He hadn’t even considered counting how many he’d shot down like clay pigeons.

If he’d been human, he was certain he would’ve thrown up at that point.

The thought was ended by another proximity alarm.

Two minutes remaining on the batteries. One leg down. Low ammo. Overheat warnings. And the entire enemy force had now decided he was the most dangerous thing on the battlefield.

At least the polarised armour had reset itself.


~***~