Sorry it has taken so long to update. The story sort of fell by the wayside then got buried under other things I had to do. Hope you enjoy please Read and Review.

Mobile Suit Gundam: The Axis Chronicles

Written by: Dickon "zakuboy" Barry

Chapter Two: In the Middle and at the Far End

Task Force 73: Just Past Mars

January 1, 0081

It was not a good New Year's Day for Christina Mackenzie. She was in her Gundam the only mobile suit on CSP at the moment. She was relieved to be alone. What she was doing now wouldn't really be called patrolling, she wasn't even moving in between the ships of the task force. She had been shot from the starboard catapult, burned just enough fuel to get into position above the bridge of the Reprisal and was cruising along on inertia.

All of her suit's sensor feeds were up and set to alert her if anything of note came into range of the Reprisal's passive sensors. She knew Admiral Von Kress didn't want to alert any Zeon ELINT (1) stations with the unique radar frequencies that the Reprisal's huge phased array radars produced. He had the entire fleet using directional communication lasers. The fleet would look like empty space.

"Elliott's got a hole where his heart should be," she sniffed as she curled up into a tight ball and pushed herself out of the pilot's seat to float around the spherical cockpit. She thought that this must be like being back in the womb. She felt warm and safe. And it was the only place that she could cry; sure that no one would hear her.

Why was she crying? Was she mad? Was she sad? Was she something else altogether? She really didn't know how to feel about what she saw and did the night before. She opened the facemask of her pilot's helmet, wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes and remembered what one of her instructors back during her time at Earth Federal Forces Mobile Suit Academy had said.

"Don't cry like a little bitch when you enter combat," the instructor had sneered, "you might drown yourself inside your helmet." Why had she thought of that? It didn't fit with the rest of the thoughts that were bouncing around inside her head. Maybe just the fact that she was crying brought it to the surface of her thoughts.

Despite what some macho male pilots said about her, said about all female pilots, she didn't cry often. According to her parents she hadn't been much of a crier when she was a baby. But now, in her twenty-second year she was feeling something that she hadn't felt …ever.

Her interest in the commander of the mobile suit forces, whom she had met for the first time as he climbed out the cockpit of his GM Sniper, had been growing since Task Force 73 had left the Earth Sphere. Until last night she felt his interest in her had been reciprocated.

A picture of the New Year Eve party of the night before rose in her mind. All the mobile suit pilots from the task force were in the Reprisal's Pilot Wardroom to celebrate. She could see Elliot making the rounds among the pilot teams, checking in with people to gauge their morale. Christina was surrounded by her teammates. The party wound down after the champagne toast at midnight. She surveyed the room, looking for a head with a distinctive shade of short brown hair. Commander Elliot. He was no longer in the room. She snagged Lieutenant Popov who said he had seen the Commander leave the party right after the Champagne toast.

"The Commander turned left out the door, so I assume he headed back to the gravity block."

Back to the suite he rated as the ranking mobile suit officer in the fleet, she guessed. She could see Lieutenant Harper going shot for shot with one of the GM pilots from the Midway. He was going to need help getting back to his bunk but she excused herself and headed for the ship's gravity block.

She couldn't imagine exactly what she hoped would happen. Maybe some stargazing from the sub-bridge, a nightcap, or maybe...? Her thoughts trailed off as she found herself staring at the spherical screen surrounding her. It sparkled with stars. Behind her, the red-orange glow of Mars growing ever fainter since the Task Force had flown a slingshot course around it a month before.

"Guess I was wrong," she sniffed and wiped her eyes again.

Despite her best efforts, her mind drifted back to the events of the previous night. She was in the gravity block and making her way around the inside of that spinning cylinder. The lights were on night cycle dim so she didn't see them right away. Elliott! Who was that with him? Shoulder length hair and close to her height, but she couldn't see the face which was hidden by Elliott's body as he leaned in… She froze, then, hands covering her face, she turned and ran to the room she shared with Heather, hot tears spilling through her fingers.

"Why?" she asked the cockpit. "What'd I do wrong?" She knew she hadn't done anything to push the man away. "I wonder if he just doesn't get it. I've been paying attention to him for months now!"

The Gundam's sensors beeped and she pushed herself into her padded pilot's chair, strapped in, and queried her sensors to see what set off the alert. On her screen, below and to her left, a highlighted green box was moving away from the Reprisal's port catapult. She pressed a button and her suit sent out an IFF request to the suit that had just catapulted from the port side of the gray assault carrier. A beep from her suit indicated that the other suit's IFF had responded and marked it as a friendly unit. Below the green box that highlighted the now maneuvering mobile suit, was its call sign.

Using the hat switch on one of her hand controls to enlarge the call sign, she checked to see who was coming out before the end of her patrol. "Scope MFC," she muttered to herself upon reading call sign. It was Commander Elliott the last person she wanted to have anything to do with right now. With a hard stomp on the thruster peddles she rolled her suit and blasted away from the patrol station she held above the bridge of the Reprisal.

Ignoring the "Hey, where are you going?" radio call from the GM Sniper II she maintained her trajectory, rocketing away from the spot that she had held. She didn't want to talk with him right now, even if it was only over comms.

"You want some practice, huh? Very well then." She didn't want to practice she just wanted to get away. She pressed the Alex to its full acceleration, 2.2G. Enhanced though it was, there was no way that Elliott's GM had any hope of keeping up with the accelerating Gundam.

Elliott watched as the Gundam rocketed away from the fleet. He lowered his thrust to zero and looped his GM Sniper II back towards the fleet.

"I don't understand women," he muttered to himself. His radio crackled and Admiral Von Kress' voice came over the speaker mounted in the GM's spherical cockpit.

"Where's Lieutenant Mackenzie going Commander Elliott?"

Elliott pressed the transmit toggle on one of his control sticks, "I think she just needs to blow off some steam. These patrols have gotten very boring and I think she just needed to push her Gundam for a while. She's got plenty of fuel now that we equipped the Alex with external tanks."

The external tanks, an idea taken from the design of the Gelgoog Jäger, was a wonderful concept, Elliot mused. The external tanks were a very recent addition to the Gundam backpack and hadn't been tested before Task Force 73 left the Earth Sphere. The Alex had been out of the patrol rotation the previous week while mechanics modified the backpack and installed the custom tanks that had been manufactured on the Task Force Delhi class construction ship.

He looked back at his monitor, where the long-range sensors still had a lock on the Gundam, "she'll be back." He moved his mobile suit into the same patrol position that the Gundam had occupied a few minutes before. He spent most of the remaining patrol time wondering what he'd said or done that pissed her off so much.

Fifteen minutes after she had rocketed away, Chris was back with the Reprisal. She landed on the starboard mobile suit deck and moved her Gundam back to its maintenance dock, stepped it backwards into the metal catwalk, powered down all primary systems, and popped the hatch. The walkway had already extended in front of her cockpit hatch and She pushed herself from the cockpit, and stopped her forward motion by grabbed the railing at the edge of the extended walkway as the low powered magnets in her boots anchored her feet to the metal decking. She wasn't keen on free floating inside the mobile suit hanger.

"Lieutenant Mackenzie, report!" boomed a voice from below. A quick look over the edge of the walkway verified the voice belonged to Admiral Von Kress, commander of Task Force 73. She suspected she was in trouble. His orders, normally accompanied by his piercing gaze, gave the Admiral no need to raise his voice. At least he was a just and reasoned commander. She hopped over the railing and pushed herself down to where the flag officer stood waiting for her.

She landed, as described in the EFF drill manual, precisely five paces in front of the Admiral, , and snapped to attention with a parade perfect salute. "Lieutenant Christina Mackenzie, reporting as ordered sir!"

After a pause, the admiral returned her salute in a relaxed manner. Chris cut her salute sharply and stood dreading a torrential dressing down.

"So how did the Alex perform with its new equipment?"

Christina blinked. She fully expected to be interrogated for leaving her patrol station. This question caused her temporary speechlessness.

"Well sir," she paused again and then continued, "the acceleration period has been greatly extended with the addition of the external tanks. If the Alex's computer calculations are anywhere near accurate, the total time I can burn at full acceleration has been almost tripled."

The admiral nodded nonchalantly in response to the report he received from his second ranking pilot.

"I need to check the thrust nozzles. The computer said that they weren't focusing quite right near the end of some long burns."

The maintenance chief, who had been listening nearby pushed off the deck and floated to the maintenance platform eight feet below the bottom of the Alex's main thrust nozzles.

"She's right sir," came a muffled affirmation from behind the massive Gundam's midsection, "the focusing ring has started to warp from the added heat of the longer burns." The chief came out from behind the mobile suit, returned, landing softly next to Chris who was still standing in front of the admiral. "We'll need to machine some new parts using metal with a higher temperature tolerance. The Delhi has a large supply of what we need. I'll have a parts request sent off shortly and we should have the parts here in two days. One full day of work will have the Alex will up to its max."

The admiral gave a slight nod, "carry on chief, lieutenant." With that he turned and pushed off, heading for the hatch that led to the central section of the ship.

Surprised he had hadn't even mentioned her little hissy fit, Chris stared after him, then turned, pushed off the deck, heading to watch a maintenance crew remove the main nozzle components under the chief's watchful eye. She hadn't been disciplined for leaving her patrol station. Still, she promised herself to work at keeping her emotions from affecting her work!

Admiral's State Room

EFSFS Reprisal

January 1, 0081

Otto Von Kress settled himself in one of the comfortable leather couches that furnished the common area of his stateroom. He leaned forward; picked up the steaming cup of coffee a mess steward had poured for him and leaned back into the leather with a contented sigh. Coffee, one of the few luxuries of his rank, he truly enjoyed. He had brought 10 barrels of the Jamaican Blue Mountain beans onboard before the Reprisal had left earth, two for his personal use and the other 8 barrels for sparing use by the crew.

Taking a second sip of the fragrant brew, he reviewed what he observed had just occurred between Commander Elliott and the younger Lieutenant Mackenzie. It was clear, to him that the Lieutenant was completely taken with the older officer. A small smile crossed his face. Commander Elliott's view was clouded. "The man has no emotional radar. I was like that at his age too. I guess I should keep an eye out for things like this."

He believed in a "families fight for each other" theory, which he felt was proven during his prior command in the One Year War. During the war he had encouraged open communications among officers and crews without losing a single one of his eight his Salamis class cruisers. Again, against the Federation military customs, he had relaxed the fraternization rules for his fleet to maintain moral during what was going to be, no, already WAS a long mission.

He continued to reminisce about the war that had ended a year ago. Many faces flooded his memory, faces of men and women he would never see again until he joined them on the other side. One, his wife, had been captain of the Port Royal. The ship's bridge had been hit by a burst of 120mm machine gun fire during the Battle of Solomon, killing the entire crew, including Amilie. She had taken the same risks that every Earth Federation service member does during the course of their service. She had given her all…and he still ached when he thought of her. "Oh, thank you Eliza," he started as his steward materialized in front of him and picked up the coffee tray from the table.

Petty Officer Eliza Lewis straightened, tray in hand. "It's not a problem Sir. Is there anything else you would like at the moment?"

Von Kress shook his head, "No that will be all Petty Officer."

Eliza turned and left the room. The Admiral resumed pondering. How well would his people hold up when they engaged the Zeon forces in the asteroid belt?

Mobile Suit Hanger #42

Principality of Zeon Asteroid Base - Axis

March 29, 0081

Her boots clacked on the hard metal hangar deck as she stalked toward the mobile suits. She was barely five and a half feet tall, with a body that men described as "shapely". Two piercing eyes, a shade of green rarely seen in the human genome, gleamed from her long oval face. Her single thick dark brown braid, bound with a red elastic band, ended at her lower back. Her name was Michelle Starling and, as the rank badge on her form-fitting uniform stated, she was a Captain in the Zeonic Marine Corps.

Assigned to the 3rd Marine Battalion, she was the Commander of its Bravo "Blackfoot" company. She stopped walking and looked up and left, to where her mobile suit stood in its maintenance frame.

Her suit was the 4th and final MS-06R-2 Zaku II High Mobility Type that the Zeonic Company had produced during their MS-11 Act Zaku project. The Zeonic Company had proposed mass-producing the suit before the Gelgoog project was online, but had been underbid by the Zimmad Company's space modified Rick-Dom. Her suit had been sent to Granada. From September until she acquired it in the middle of October 0079 the Zeonic Company used it to test modifications. First the developers installed a more powerful reactor so that the R-2 could test the design of a proposed beam saber. Thankfully they added more powerful thrusters and a better internal fuel supply to counter the added weight of the new reactor. As far as she knew her MS-06R-2 Zaku II was the first suit in the entire Zeonic military to be armed with a useful beam weapon unlike the useless scattering beam gun mounted on the Dom line. Her suit was the prototype design which led to the eventual production of the MS-18E Kämpfer.

Blackfoot was the only full strength company in the battalion after the Battle of A Baoa Qu. She was happy that all of her men had survived that hell of a day, but sorely they hadn't really been in the fight. Her company had been the battalion's QRF(2) and hadn't seen much fighting. The rest of the battalion had prevented the Federation massed GM units from breaking though the line and into the section of the fortress that her unit had been tasked with defending.

The only real fighting she saw was during the retreat from the fallen fortress. She, along with her 2nd platoon, a single Rick Dom II, a Zaku II FZ, and two Zaku II F2's, were acting as a rear guard for the rest of the battalion when they were attacked by a lone patrolling Salamis class cruiser and a dozen GM's. She personally downed the Salamis and five GM's. The four suits of the 2nd Platoon took out the other six hopelessly outclassed and inexperienced GM pilots.

The trip to the asteroid belt after the Battle of A Baoa Qu had been uneventful. There had been a shortage of spare parts throughout the fleet and the repair crews had had been focused on keeping the fleet in working order, leaving the mobile suits in the decrepit condition that they had been in since the end of the battle. She turned to look at the far side of the hanger where her 3rd and 4th platoon machines were undergoing maintenance. The various Zakus and Rick-Doms all had a multitude of minor damage, with a few having lost limbs in the last desperate fighting in the fortress. "Well there is no shortage of parts now," she said to no one in particular.

She was more than right on that account. During the war, workers living on Axis had been stockpiling raw materials and constructing manufacturing facilities. Those facilities were coming online now and starting to produce replacement parts needed by the bedraggled fleet that had arrived after the long journey. Among the recently arrived forces rumors floated that there were a few full mobile suit-manufacturing lines nearing completion.

She looked around the large hanger. It wasn't really outfitted to be a mobile suit hanger, but things were changing in that respect too. An Axis work crew was in the process of tearing up the deck plating in the middle if the hanger, so a catapult could be installed. Another crew worked to complete maintenance frames for the 17 mobile suits in her company.

"We'll go back and curb stomp those damn Feddies," she grumbled as she turned and strode toward her suit, the sound of her foot falls echoing off the rock walls of the hanger.

Maintenance personnel, attached to Blackfoot Company, swarmed over her Zaku, beginning repair of damage they had been unable to fix during the long voyage from the Earth Sphere to this… asteroid backwater. The Zaku's light gray and black paint scheme, which had helped earned her the nickname "Gray Ghost", was pitted in multiple places where 90mm rounds, fired by GM's, had found their mark. There was also a long burn up the length of the knuckle shield attached to its left hand.

The shield burn reminded her again of how she barely dodged a shot from the Salamis cruiser's number one turret but still launched a grenade from her MMP-80 machine gun into its bridge. The ship lost control after that and had been easy to finish off with several deep beam saber slashes around the engines and main reactor.

"How you doing today ma'am?" her crew chief asked as she stepped onto the lift in front of her Zaku. The kid was MAYBE seventeen and in charge of her suit's maintenance. This wasn't to say that he wasn't good at his job; he was a virtual wizard with the machine, keeping it running with will power and duct tape. The lift brought her level with the hatch and the kid palmed the control to open it. She scrambled in, plopped down into the hard pilot's seat and then leaning forward to flip on the master power. The MS-06R-2 Zaku hummed to life and diagnostic displays came up on the left and right screens.

"Uh ma'am?" came a questioning voice from outside the hatch. She looked up, saw her maintenance chief looking through the hatch and realized that she hadn't responded to the man's earlier greeting. "Oh sorry Sergeant didn't mean to blow you off there. Any day off that damn Musai is a good day. I like having something other than metal and vacuum under my feet again." The Sergeant grinned, "I hear that ma'am. I was going a little stir crazy, cramped into that tiny cruiser."

At that point the suit's OS finished booting up, the diagnostic program booted up with a few taps of a control panel and a read out came up on the right hand screen. A few areas in the suit's screen image were highlighted in red; with lines leading to text boxes that gave details of the damage afflicting the High Mobility Zaku. Outside on the lift the young Sergeant was holding a tablet plugged into the suit that displayed information identical to that on the mobile suit's diagnostic screen. "Well ma'am, nothing much has changed since the last one that we ran," he tapped at the screen a few times, "mostly the left arm is out of whack from that mega particle beam that grazed your shield. The energy discharge from the beam fried most of the circuitry in the arm, leaving it frozen. Good you got it back to the ship."

The Sergeant tapped a few more times on the screen of his tablet, "it seems like some circuits in the cockpit and torso were fried by the blast too." This made Michelle look from the screen to her right and out the hatch, "why didn't we catch this in all the diagnostics we ran during the trip?" The maintenance man flashed a grin and held up the tablet he had been tapping on, "the software engineers here on Axis are a clever bunch. This new diagnostic program they wrote is a thing of beauty." He flipped the screen around so that his company commander could see it, "it covers all suits in service. Now I don't need to switch programs. When I'm done checking over your suit I can just move on to the Rick-Dom down the line. On top of its user friendly design, it's much more accurate than the old one I used during the trip here."

He reached down, detached the cable that had been pulling data from the Zaku and coiled it up in his pocket. "We'll ma'am I've got to get to the next suit in the line, the repair requirements for your suit have been sent to a work crew." With a sketchy salute he jumped down from the lift platform and the asteroid's low gravity allowed him to land softly on the metal plated deck of the hanger. Michelle sat back in her pilot's chair and looked over the analysis of the new diagnostic. There were a large number of electrical components in her suit that had been damaged and were not functioning correctly so would slow down her suit's response time and its targeting abilities. She powered the suit back down, crawled out the hatch, closed it and took the lift for sedate ride back to the floor of the hanger.

Lt. Colonel Shaw Wise was a happy man; his battalion of Marines had performed well during the last battles of the One Year War and had emerged relatively un-damaged. That thought made him frown, relatively un-damaged didn't really mean his unit had come away unscathed. He had just finished visiting Delta "Dragoon" company that had only nine remaining mobile suits of its original seventeen. The commander of that unit, a bright young Captain named Gareth Von Leeb, was still dealing with the loss of men and women under his command. Wise had found his experience tested trying to keep the man from falling apart during the long trip to Axis. Currently, Von Leeb was doing better but was still showing unmistakable signs of severe battle fatigue. Wise was going to have to keep a close eye on him.

He pushed those thoughts to the back of his head to focus on the last company visit of the day. He had just entered the hanger where his Bravo Company was stationed and was making his way to the location where the company commander's MS-06R-2 stood in its maintenance frame against the rough rocky wall, when he saw the unit's commander exit the hatch of her mobile suit and step onto the lift. "Captain Starling," he called out raising his hand in a wave. The young officer looked away from the lift controls, toward the sound of the voice that had called to her, and locked her piercing green eyes on the approaching figure of her commanding officer.

"On my way down sir," she called from the slow moving lift. When it reached the bottom of its course she hopped lightly to the deck, came to rigid attention, and snapped off a parade ground salute. "Captain Michelle Starling, reporting as ordered sir." Wise himself came to attention and retuned the salute with one of his own. He cut his salute, "at ease Captain, just swinging by to see how your Company is settling in." He looked at the mobile suits lining each wall of the hanger. "Sir the men are settling in fine," she waved her hand to encompass the hanger, "and finally, the suits are getting the repairs they need. It's so nice to be at a place that has all the spares we need."

That made Wise grimace a bit, "well there is a reason your Company is getting such rapid treatment." This made Starling's head snap around, "what's going down sir?" He answered with a shrug, "I still have to check the details with High Command, but it looks like our Battalion is going to be tasked to the outer defense posts along with a few garrison companies to man the weaponry at each of the bases and maintain the facilities. We're going to be rotating our companies into these fortifications and yours is going to be the first one heading out to take over for the Axis garrison forces."

This news made Starling frown. "Sir this is some serious bull. We just got here and a lot of my men and women were hoping they would get some extended leave in the civilian blocks. They need a rest sir, they don't need to get cramped into some tiny asteroid base after spending over a year inside a bunch of broken down light cruisers." Wise knew she was right and wanted to give his Marines some time off from their duties, but the orders had been quite clear. He was to make his Battalion combat ready as soon as possible and divide the four Companies among the four small asteroid outposts which together comprised an outer trip wire for the Axis defenses. "Once we get your Company established at its new base of operations you can rotate some of your people back to Axis for R&R."

He could see fire seething in those deep green eyes. The defense assignment he ordered had angered Captain Starling. He decided he'd nip this resistance quickly although it would be painful. Like pulling off a Band-Aid…Do it quickly, his mother had always said. "Stand at attention Captain," he snapped in a precise, military voice. She automatically snapped to attention and Wise continued, "I am well aware that you and your men have just been handed a shitty deal, however, these orders were handed to me by Captain Enzo Bernini himself. Do you know who he is Captain?" "No sir!" she replied with parade ground thunder. "Well then I will educate you Captain. Captain Bernini is the personal defense coordinator for Admiral Karn. So think of any order coming from him as coming from the Admiral himself. Do you want to disobey an order from a FULL ADMIRAL?" he bellowed the last two words, their echo rebounding off the walls of the cavernous mobile suit hanger.

"No sir!" came the basic training reply from Captain Starling's mouth. "Very good Captain, I will have your full orders to you as soon as I get them. Now prepare your command for deployment. Carry on Captain," Wise turned on his heel, ignoring the salute that his subordinate offered to his retreating back. He hated to cut Starling off at the knees like that but he had orders and was compelled to follow them. Personally, he didn't like Bernini very much. He thought the man was a pompous ass with an overly developed sense of importance. However, he had just arrived at Axis and wasn't sure of the political atmosphere in this remaining Principality stronghold. He would follow orders until he had a better feel for things around this place. Once he understood the subtleties of the command structure he would dip his toe into the pond and command some real pull on this asteroid base.

Wise was so lost in thought, he failed to notice the corridor intersection until someone crashed into him filling his field of vision with a dark red- purple halo of hair. "Owwww," came a girl's voice from somewhere inside the mass of roiling locks, "that hurt." Wise reached out toward the body under its mass of hair to steady, the girl who had collided with him. He had grabbed her shoulder and felt lucky for not grabbing some other less respectable part of her anatomy. "Are you all right?" he asked in his best fatherly voice. Small girlish hands parted the unruly locks revealing the face of a beautiful girl in her early teens. A nervous smile appeared on the girl's face as Wise gently eased her to the deck. "I'm very sorry for crashing into you like that Colonel. I really need to start paying attention to where I'm going and not get lost in my thoughts as much." "I do that myself from time to time," he replied, "miss…?" "Oh my apologies Colonel," the girl said with another fetching smile, "my name is Haman, Haman Karn."

Military Block, Section B-34

Principality of Zeon Asteroid Base - Axis

March 30, 0081

Captain Enzo Bernini was very pleased with himself. The arrival of the Marine unit had been an unpleasant surprise, but it appeared that Colonel in command of the unit was a fool and would be very easy to manipulate. Just now Bernini issued a command, saying it was from the Admiral. The Colonel had swallowed the order for his battalion to man the outer defensive asteroid bases hook, line, and sinker. Excellent! This would keep the marines far away from S-Field where Bernini predicted the Federation's Asteroid Mobile Fleet would strike.

He really disliked Marines he thought as he stalked down a passageway. What he wouldn't admit to himself was that he resented his assignment on Axis. Stuck on this outpost, he felt his strategic abilities were lost to the high command and that was why Zeon had lost the war. During the war, the Marines had been fighting on the front lines, while he languished on Axis reading reports. He didn't like the Marines because their loyalty was to the commands of the highest ranking officers. Their loyalty might screw up his plans. Why if that Colonel in command of the Marine Battalion discovered that his orders had never crossed the desk of Admiral Karn? He might circumvent Bernini and get his orders straight from the Admiral. Bernini could not let that happen. If it came to an armed power struggle in Axis, he didn't want Marines anywhere on the outpost. They were more powerful than all the soldiers in Axis that were loyal to him.

"Well, they'll be out of my hair shortly," he muttered as he turned into his office for a meeting. "What was that sir?" queried his assistant. "Nothing," he said dismissively. He silently decided to focus on the pleasure he would get from seeing those Marines leaving. Then he would have more time to work on neutralizing the influence of that troublesome Char Aznable.

Mobile Suit Hanger #42

Principality of Zeon Asteroid Base - Axis

April 6, 0081

Michelle was much happier than she had been a week earlier, when she had received her tongue lashing from Colonel Wise. Oh she was still pissed about her Company being sent out to a tiny asteroid base but the week that had proceeded this re-stationing had been very relaxing. Colonel Wise had commandeered personnel from the Axis garrison to make repairs and upgrades on all the Blackfoot mobile suits. Then he authorized a five-day leave for every man and woman in her Bravo Company, including her.

She stepped through the hatch leading into the hanger where her Company mobile suits were stationed and stopped cold. Her suit was standing in its maintenance frame, all the visible damage repaired, so the suit looking as new as the day she first got it. New were two long cylindrical fuel tanks attached to the backpack. Each of the fuel tanks had a cluster of maneuvering thrusters at their ends to enable balanced maneuvering, even with the added mass of the tanks. She observed that her suit had acquired a second beam saber and both of the weapons were peeking out from where they were mounted, horizontally, on a single hard point near the top of the rear waist armor.

An Axis technician suddenly appeared at her side. "You like what we've done with it?" he asked with hope in his voice. He continued before she could get a word in, "The fuel tank's mass is balanced out by the addition of the maneuvering thrusters and the new nozzles we put on the backpack and legs increase thrust while decreasing fuel consumption, giving your Zaku longer endurance and a maximum acceleration of 1.47 G's." Michelle stopped gazing at the new silver colored nozzles sticking out of the leg skirts and turned to look at the technician who was standing, shoulder to shoulder with her, looking up at the gray mobile suit. "That's a huge boost," she said with excitement as she realized that she now had the fastest mobile suit in the Battalion.

"I hear your suit's even faster than mine now," came a voice with a Spanish accent. She turned her head and saw Major Robie Yanez, her Battalion's XO(3), standing a few paces to her side opposite where the tech was standing. She automatically dropped her duffle and turned to salute but he waved a hand to dismiss the need for the formality. "No need for that Captain. Right now I'm just another pilot come down to look at all the pretty mobile suits." They both turned back to look at the mobile suits that made up her Company. While hers was the only one appeared to have been modified, all the rest looked like they were fresh off the assembly line.

"I haven't seen my Company looking like this since I took command back in April during the war," she said with a slight hint of nostalgia. "I know what you mean Captain," Major Yanez agreed remembering all the destruction sustained by the Battalion during the first month of the war. The fighting, that led up to Operation British and more fighting after, had almost decimated the unit. They had been forced into a two month long stand down to rebuild the unit back to its fighting strength.

Michelle thoughts traveled back to when she had been a new Lieutenant, commanding a four mobile suit platoon patrolling the area around Side 7 and Luna II from their station on a Musai class cruiser. She earned her moniker, "Gray Ghost", while she was on a solo reconnaissance mission and encountered a Magellan class battleship escorted by a squadron of FF-S3 Saberfish attempting to reach the safety of the Federal Force's fleet base on Luna II.

At the time she was piloting a standard MS-06F Zaku II armed with a 120mm machinegun plus two extra drums and a heat hawk. The confrontation was no contest from the start. She hid in a small debris cluster and when it came into range, immediately raked the Magellan from stem to stern, focusing extra fire on the bridge tower. Her attack caused the powerful ship to burn out of control and crash on the surface of the massive asteroid.

The unexpected attack and rapid loss of the battleship threw the Saberfish formation into disarray; however it quickly reformed to hunt her lone Zaku. As it happened, her suit was painted a gray infiltration color so each time she darted through the Saberfish formation and picked off one or two of the fighters, her radio picked up fragments of the Federation pilots panicked exchanges about the "Ghost" decimating their numbers.

When she returned, awareness of those recorded exchanges spread rapidly from members of her Platoon through the crew of the Musai. She began hearing whispers of "Gray Ghost" and realized her new nickname stuck when her suit was not repainted the standard Zaku Green. Then, in the beginning of April she was promoted to the rank of Captain and given command of Bravo Company, 3rd Marine Battalion, reformed after its disastrous losses at the beginning of the war.

"Captain?" a voice jerked her from reminiscing and she turned to the Axis tech still standing next to her. "Yeah what is it?" she responded, annoyance leaking through her voice. "I need your signature on this before I can turn the suit back to you." He held up a tablet and a stylus, pointing where she had to sign with the tip of the writing utensil. "I want my mechanic to check it out before I sign anything," she said as she started to walk toward a wall mounted communications panel. "I'm right here ma'am," a voice from above responded. She turned back, looked up and saw her mechanic gripping the commander's antenna on her mobile suit's head, probably to keep himself from toppling from the force of the jump he must have used to get where he was.

"Don't fall off Sergeant," she called up. "I might need you in the future." That got a laugh from the young mechanic. "No worries ma'am. If I fell I'm sure you'd catch me." Michelle convulsed with laughter and after a few gulped breaths she asked, "Is my Zaku good to go?" "As far as I can tell, it's good to go ma'am. All my diagnostics say your suit is fully functional and super tricked out. All that it needs is a test flight and that's for you not me." With this vote of confidence from her mechanic she took the tablet from the Axis tech and signed her name "What's it called now?" she asked the tech as she handed him the tablet. "The MS-06R-2 Mod Ax, the Zaku II High Mobility Type 2, Axis Modification," he replied.

Having signed for the machine she walked to the lift and rose to level of her suit's cockpit hatch. She palmed the hatch control, it opened and she tossed her duffle in and followed right behind. With the large bag taking up space the cockpit was extremely cramped so she stowed the bag in the spare equipment locker behind her pilot's seat before sitting down and strapping herself into the, "Oh, they even re-stuffed the seat!"

Settled in, she conducted standard start up procedures, noting the added displays showing readouts of the fuel load in each external tank and the status of the thruster nodes at the tips of each tank. As soon as she completed her checks she looked up at the large screens that allowed her see out of the hardened steel shell of her mobile suit cockpit. All down the length of the hanger pilots under her command pilots were crawling into the cockpits of the assorted Zaku II's and Rick-Dom's, preparing their suits as ground crewmen scrambled over them making last minute checks.

"All personnel in hanger number 42 seal normal suits, seal normal suits. The hanger's main gate opens in two minutes." The cool, modulated female voice that the Zeonic military always used to make shipboard announcements brought back memories. How many times had she heard it she wondered as she switched her radio to the "all hands" frequency? Having set the radio frequency she sat back in her seat, with the button on her left control stick keyed her microphone and sent her voice booming out the suit's external speakers as well as to the cockpit speakers of the other mobile suits.

"Now hear this you lot. I know that most of you are unhappy being sent to a remote outpost so soon after our long voyage but understand that the mission we are being sent out to do is very important. "This asteroid of Axis is the only base left in our war for independence from the Earth Federation," she continued manipulating the right control stick so her Zaku's right hand gesture encompassed the entire hanger. "We must protect this base so that Zeon will regain its strength! Then we will return to the Earth Sphere, free our Side 3 and the other Colonies from the oppressive grip of those whose souls are dragged down by Earth's gravity!" Her mobile suit's right hand picked up the MMP-80 machine gun from its rack, and thrust the weapon straight up to punctuate her final words.

The suits in her company returned the gesture as cheers returned through her cockpit speakers. as the hanger started to decompress before the main hatch opened to space. As the commander she reserved the right to launch first and moved the suit out of its frame and moved it to the catapult. Carefully she stepped her suit's feet into the clamps and crouched the suit down. "Are you ready Captain?" asked the catapult chief, from his control room high in the wall of the hanger. "That I am," she answered. "Well then call the ball Captain." "Rodger that. This is Michelle Starling, Blackfoot six, Launching!" With that the catapult pressed a button and the catapult shot her high mobility Zaku II down the length of the hanger. The millisecond that the catapult reached the end of its run the clips released the suit's feet and her suit, sensing the micro deceleration from the end of the cat run, jumped out of its crouch and fired its main thrusters literally flinging the suit and Michelle inside of it, out into space.

It was almost like the first time she had piloted a mobile suit out in space. A pleasant tingle coursed through her as she felt the power and life of the metal around her. She started a series of complex maneuvers to test the specs of her upgraded Zaku and was amazed to find that what used to be a complex maneuver was easy now. She was about to try a more complex series of maneuver when her radio crackled with a transmission. "I like your suit Captain. I hope you are happy with the improvements that we built for you?" Michelle scanned her screens and noticed a Rick-Dom pulling up next to her Zaku. It wasn't one from her unit it was painted white. Michelle had heard a rumor while she had been on leave.

"Is that you Miss Haman?" she asked over the same frequency. A video line opened up and the face of the Admiral's teenage was displayed on a small sub-screen above the forward main screen. "Yes it's me Captain," a smile flashed across the young face. "So do you like it?" "It's very responsive Miss Haman. The engineers that worked on it have done a wonderful job." This elicited another smile from the teenager. "Well I would hope so Captain, as they are the same ones that did the upgrades on my Rick-Dom." That came as a shock to Michelle, who hadn't been thinking that her suit had received such top notch attention. Good yes but not that good. "Miss I wasn't even aware that you even knew who I was. If you don't mind me asking, why did you go to all this trouble for me?"

That caused the teen to laugh, "It is a pretty funny story Captain. I happened to be passing by your hanger about a week ago and literally crashed into your Colonel Wise. He was very polite and once he knew who I was he asked a favor. He wanted to know who the best mobile suit engineers on Axis were and who he would have to ask to get them to do some quick work. I asked who it was for and he told me about you. After that I simply mentioned it to my father and he borrowed a few of the techs that were working on upgrading Char's Gelgoog." This horrified Michelle slightly. "I hope this didn't inconvenience Captain Char." "No worries Captain. Char has been very busy with my father and his Gelgoog isn't even flyable at the moment."

"Well Captain, I have to get back to my test flight. I hope that your deployment is an uneventful one." With that and a quick wave of the white painted Rick-Dom's hand Haman was gone, using a maneuver that Michelle had a hard time believing, a Rick-Dom could do. She checked her sensors and was amazed to see that the entire Company was formed up around her. "All right guys, let's go," she said as she put her suit onto the planned course to their new home. A Papua class supply ship would follow a couple of hours later with a full load of supplies and the Company's support personnel.

Captain Michelle Starling's Quarters

Asteroid Base – Siegfried Two

May 5, 0081

There was a loud banging noise but she couldn't think where it was coming from. She was standing in a park in Side 4's Colony 22. There was that banging again. Now she saw protesters running, followed closely by armed Federal Forces soldier. More banging and the soldiers stopped and raised their rifles to their shoulders. She opened her mouth to scream a warning but no words came out, the rifles flashed and Michelle Staring sat bolt upright, covered in a cold sweat.

She realized that the banging was someone at the door to her small stateroom, the door chime was broken and that repair work was very near the bottom of the list of things that still needed doing. Whoever was at the door banged on the metal again. "YEAH I'M COMING," she yelled at the door and she swung he legs out of bed. She staggered across the room and remembered to grab her rob to cover up the panties and t-shirt that she liked to sleep in, before she went to the door and slapped the control to open it.

A Petty Officer stood at stiff attention in the passageway. "This had better be important," she grumbled as she returned his nervous salute. He handed her a message form, saluted again and almost tripped in his haste to get away from her.

She unfolded the yellowish piece of paper and mumbled along with the text as she read.

From: Axis Fleet Command

To: Captain Starling, Commander Bravo Company, 3rd Marine Battalion

Subject: Developments on Axis

Early this morning Zena Zabi, wife of the late Admiral Dozel Zabi and mother of Zabi family heir, Meniva Lao Zabi has died in her sleep. No action is required by your unit at this time…

She stopped reading at that point, as there was no reason to finish. "Crap," she grumbled to herself as she went back into her room and started to pull on a set of duty fatigues. She liked the baggy working cloths of the Zeonic Marine Corps, as they were far more comfortable to wear, than the more formal uniforms that seemed to permeate the other branches of Zeonic military. "All that gold lace and those little half capes are stupid." she grumbled to herself as she pulled on her boot socks and a pair of well broken in combat boots. Fully dresses and presentable she again left her room and headed for the lift that would take her out of the base's gravity block.

A few minutes later she arrived in the command and control room of the asteroid, located near what was considered the north pole of the asteroid. The room seemed too empty and she realized that she wasn't even sure what time it was. She looked at the watch on her wrist and realized that it was still the middle of the night, 03:24 according to her watch and there was only a night watch in the command room.

She walked over to the duty watch officer and returned the salute he snapped off. She recognized him as a Platoon commander from the garrison unit, but couldn't remember his name. "Report," she said leaning over the main tactical display only to see that it was as clear as every time she looked at it. "Nothing new to report ma'am, other than the message that I had sent to your room," he said as he leaned forward on the other side of the table like display. Michelle, satisfied with the tactical situation, stepped back from the display and sat down in the command chair that the younger officer had vacated when she had come it.

From the chair she looked around at men and women in the command room. She generally saw that people were depressed. Zena Zabi had been a popular figure in the Zabi family and the news of her death was already having a negative effect on those that knew about it. She, as the highest ranking officer, had overall command of the troops stationed on Siegfried Two and was responsible for their mental wellbeing as well as their physical safety. She knew the prescription for things like this, busy work. It would keep them distracted and turn their emotional attention towards their discontent with all the cleaning she was forcing them to do.

With a sigh she settled back in the chair and stared at one of the wall screens, which was flipping through feeds from observation camera's all over the outside of the asteroid. She suddenly saw a flash on one of the feeds just before the screen switched to a new one. She leaned forward, "switch the feed on the main screen back to camera N-26." The Petty Officer at the camera control panel punched in the proper commands and the feed came back up on the screen. The duty watch officer came up beside her chair, "you see something ma'am?" "Yeah," she replied, "a flash upper right of the screen." They both stared at the screen, but neither of them saw anything. "It might have been a star coming out from behind another asteroid ma'am. We see that all the time and it takes some getting used to." She settled back in her chair, thinking that it was going to be a REALLY long deployment on this stupid little rock.

EFSF Asteroid Belt Base - Normandy

Asteroid MA2356-8342

May 5, 0081

Christina Mackenzie nervously scanned the panoramic monitor that made up the cockpit of her Gundam. The fuel pod, that one of the Zucks had lost control of, had crashed onto the asteroid where they had just started to establish a base. Upon impact the pod had detonated causing a bright flash and that had everyone on alert. Axis was currently hidden behind another large asteroid, but no one knew how many observation posts the Zeeks had scattered around their last bastion of power. After several hours of watching everything with all eyes, work continued.

They had only been on station for two days, but already a large amount of the basic excavation for the construction of a base had been done and one work crew was already starting to assemble the prefabricated gravity blocks, which one of the cargo ships had carried in one of its massive holds. The commander of the engineers was sure that his men could have the base up and running inside a month. Admiral Von Kress had asked if that was too fast a pace for the engineers and their commander assured him that it wasn't. All the prefabricated sections made for quick assembly and all of these men had had experience in asteroid base construction from work on Luna II and the repairs on Solomon.

Other work crews were out, exploring neighboring asteroids and were finding huge amounts of useful materials that could be easily mined and brought to the manufacturing areas that were under construction back on Normandy. "How you doing Chris," the question came over her radio as a Lieutenant Commander Elliott's modified GM Sniper II pulled up to next to where Chris had her Gundam hovering on guard. "Fine," she said in the coldest voice she could muster. She just wished he'd go away, at least while she was on the ship she could avoid the ass and she couldn't wait for him to go away. At least in one month there would be operations to help her keep her mind off how much the man inside the high spec. GM had crushed her heart.

Author's Notes

(1): ELINT also known as SIGINT, Signals intelligence, is intelligence-gathering by interception of signals, whether between people ("communications intelligence"—COMINT) or from electronic signals not directly used in communication ("electronic intelligence"—ELINT), or a combination of the two. As sensitive information is often encrypted, signals intelligence often involves the use of cryptanalysis. Also, traffic analysis—the study of who is signaling whom and in what quantity—can often produce valuable information, even when the messages themselves cannot be decrypted.

As a means of collecting intelligence, signals intelligence is a subset of intelligence collection management, which, in turn, is a subset of intelligence cycle management.

wiki/Signals_intelligence

(2): QRF an acronym for Quick Reaction Force. This is a military force that is kept ready to react to unforeseen circumstances or enemy action.

(3): XO: An abbreviation for Executive Officer. This is the second in command of a military unit.