Gundam Fire Still

There may be no more shifts next week, and this chapter will be ending soon, after which there may also be a period of slow updates between the end and the start of the next chapter.

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16.Covering the Sky (below)

The orange-painted quadrupedal MS was dragging sand and dust across the sandy sea, the dense rapid-fire projectiles splashing pillars of sand around it like columns of water stirred up on the ocean, but it didn't slow the pace of the MS assault in the least. The scorched black, barely purple-painted wreckage lay scattered on the surrounding sandy sea, probably having received a huge bomb, and the scattered steel limbs seemed to have been torn apart by some kind of giant beast, and could no longer be seen in their previous form. The burning smoke had been blown away by the wind caused by the high-speed movement, and the man holding the joystick knew very well that those were the bodies that once belonged to his subordinates, who had once raced thousands of miles through the desert all night long, sweeping away the routed enemies like a gale, but now, just like those enemies, they had disappeared from the screen one by one in the form of dots of light, leaving only these scattered fragments in the desert. The moment the rain of bullets splashed around stopped slightly, the beam cannon on the back of the MS plane spat out a continuous beam of particles, and although the beam cannon's aim was not in sight, his eyes could still catch the shadows of the shadows that had hastily disappeared beneath the dunes at the edge of his vision.

'Aisha, you can feel it too, right, an enemy like this is worth fighting'

Words were no longer needed as a tool, as the orange giant leapt violently off the ground, projecting the tank below, which had been hidden by the dunes, into view, green particle beams had already shot out, penetrating the large turret with desert paint. But there was no time to confirm the destruction, the fuselage was still in the air in the moment, there was already a shot coming from the side; while stepping down on the pedal and swiftly operating the knob on the panel, the posture adjustment nozzle on the wing behind the quadruped activated in a certain order, so that the live-fire sniper that could have hit the target that had no way to borrow power in the air missed from the front of the fuselage by a millimeter. The rotation of the four tracks on his feet flashed each of the three green particle beams.

"Cut," mouthed a meaningless noise, he had seen who his opponent was, he had investigated the white ship's data, so he knew that the strangely painted Ginn did have a good opponent sitting in his cockpit, the MS was running among the rocks, the once towering pillars of stone that had resisted the Thousands of years of sand and still standing, but in the last few minutes of fighting it had been reduced to debris, and the slightly thicker but not yet fallen stone foundations. The blue-white form was emerging from it on and off, occasionally shooting particle beams at the speeding machine at points, while disappearing behind the rock pillars before a split second, in movements that really didn't seem like something a mere natural could do on its own.

"Aisha, get ready." The Desert Tiger whispered, like the low growl a tiger makes when it pounces on its prey, and the orange MS leapt up on the sea of sand, then the jets on its back spewed out a fiery tail flame as the orange behemoth swerved nimbly in mid-air in another direction that looked like nothing; his target wasn't the Ginn that had deliberately appeared in his vision, able to survive the initial battle of the war and remain active in the The old man of the first line is not a generalist, and in previous battles, this opponent has shown that he is good at performing ranged attacks.

Then

In the predicted direction, even closer than he had expected, the orange MS landed heavily in front of an MS with a tank chassis, whose main gun was aiming in the wrong direction, but a rapid-fire weapon on the other "arm" was already firing wildly. The response was quicker than any natural human he could remember, but he didn't know if it was a human or a computer; the oncoming barrage of bullets clanked against the Lakou's frontal armor, and while these small caliber rounds seemed dangerous, there was no chance of them hitting the Baku head-on, let alone this upgrade. The trigger of the melee weapon, the 70-ton behemoth gripped a bright blade of light and rushed towards his opponent.

He subconsciously observed the zooming enemy aircraft in front of him, it could hardly be considered an MS, the mechanism that looked like an arm holding a weapon from afar was just a folding arm without a grip, the optics of the head did not in any way resemble the eyes or helmet that an MS should have, and the chassis, wait, he realized that the target was popping something out of the enlarged chassis in his vision, it was a The folded robotic arm, and at the end of it was...

The man who had been in battle for a long time drew a breath of cold air, and at the juncture where the two machines were about to intersect, he pulled the joystick to the bottom; dazzling arcs of light sliced across the screen in front of him, and in the next instant, it was desert again, but the glowing remnants still rested on his retinas.

In the intervening moments, he could see out of the corner of his eye that his own blade of light still took away all of his opponent's upper body, and the metal fragments that were moving in the same direction as his own were scattered in the air like slow motion, a sight he had seen many times before; but at the same time, the dazzling, last-minute arc made by his opponent's bouncing blade of light had permanently taken away a part of his own body.

The wing on one side, as well as the nozzle group on the wing, had been displayed in red on the main screen, and the hands that had long been accustomed to gripping the joystick could also feel from its inscrutable tremors that the airframe was no longer balanced. Even so, the airframe still didn't stop, but instead maintained its maximum speed, racing wildly across the sandy sea, knowing full well that when his opponent had a numerical advantage, he could only rely on his great athleticism to find opportunities.

The side of the screen suddenly projected the shadow of a smoking ship on the horizon, "What a mess." The man sighed quietly, the sight marked to him by Aisha in the front seat, his own flagship already burning in flames. The original plan of a lose-lose ending to even the worst case scenario was easily shattered by the United Eurasian Air Force that had come out of nowhere, and he had no way of knowing how those planes from Cairo, or even the Gaza Strip, had managed to find this small battlefield with their severely diminished radar and radio communications in a vast desert thousands of kilometers in radius and lacking obvious ground markers. The bombers' radars can't be much farther than the naked eye can see, and even the high-powered radars carried by early-warning planes have such limited range that finding the place is as difficult as finding just the right one from hundreds of photos.

But it had actually happened, and he could see in the open window a plane trailing black smoke and intermittent flames as it circled and shot its underwing weapons before swooping down hard on the ship; even without looking at the zoomed-in image from the camera, he could see the flash of light erupting from the distant horizon.

"Dakusta old boy," he half deliberately covered his eyes with the reflection of his helmet and opened the comm channel

"Captain?"

He could see the busy scene behind the adjutant, no, in fact it was lucky enough to see the adjutant standing here alive instead of a piece of bridge already engulfed in flames, and he could also see the fighting spirit in the adjutant's eyes... . and trust.

"Prepare to abandon ship," he instructed quietly, trying to hide the frustration in his voice

"What?" Dakusta drew a breath of cold air, incredulity evident in his eyes, disbelief that even a godly captain would say such a thing.

"The odds are stacked against us, gather the remnants back to base, contact Gibraltar or Victoria for support, or retreat over there if you can't, anyway," without finishing, he cut off the communication of his own accord. It was hard to tell if it was because he didn't know how to continue, or if it was because he had to dodge a bomb that fell from the sky and a barrage of fire, but either way, what needed to be said had been said.

=====

Hoffman was sitting on the bridge, staring at the nearest point of light on the radar. His once rapid breathing was slowly subsiding, and just a few minutes ago he felt like he could have jumped out of the command chair and run for his life at any moment when the huge 400mm gun of the opposite flagship opened fire on him, but he didn't do that after all, and the others on the bridge didn't have much time to notice the tension and trembling of the commander. But he held on after all, and when the air Eurasian combined air force covered the radar screen in a dense mass of air, he knew the odds were against him. Perhaps one man's battle could be the pivotal point that would change a battle, but a battle itself was never determined by one man, one plane, and he was sure that the one he was facing knew that as well. The ship that had appeared behind him, and the MS that had finally appeared on the other side, showed that the Desert Tiger was by no means an ordinary, Zaft commander who liked to pound away.

One of the "long legs" in front of the Archangel had been shot out of a twisted hole, damaging the MS ejection channel there, and the CIWS on the same side had been deactivated by a near-blast 400mm cannon, and judging from the sad face of the captain, who knew the ship better, the damage was quite heavy. If it wasn't for a good MS commander in front of her and a cunning Eurasian Union tanker behind her, she probably wouldn't have survived the appearance of reinforcements, no, in fact, the reinforcements were only contacted by that Eurasian Union Weasel scout vehicle, which risked losing communications and getting lost in the desert.

But now that both sides had turned over all their cards, the 400mm cannon of the other ship's giant cannon had gone silent, as had all its anti-aircraft fire, leaving only the lone, and at the same time powerful, MS still looming in and out of view. There was no record of Zaft's surrender yet on all the current Combined Forces combat records, and the last enemy on the screen, it was maneuvering and circling, it wasn't firing, and neither was the squad led by Carl, perhaps he was thinking the same thing as himself? That's more likely to be just an unrealistic fantasy.

But, before everyone could say anything, the wind shifted.

The vision was obscured by sand and dust for a moment.

"Holy shit." Hoffman shouted out, the yellow sand was wrapped in a gale that covered the view so hard, and it covered the view of all the units as well, he could hear someone cursing on the comm channel.

This was the desert, it was a perfectly natural phenomenon in the desert, there was sand, there was wind, there was a sandstorm; but why this time of year?

"All ground units on alert, do not pursue."

The opportunity was lost, and the round-faced commander shook his head with a grin as he looked forward at the yellow-brown-covered canopy of the main screen.

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17. epilogue - far from the end.

The large, oily chunks of meat were sizzling under the coals, and the heat of the fire, along with the desert sun, caused beads of sweat to ooze off people's bodies just as much as the grease oozing off the grilled meat. But the men gathered in groups were still grasping the hot food and feasting on it.

"It's been a long time since I've had a meal like this, though it's not a good one." The hooded man said as he used a sharp, sharp knife to slice off pieces of meat onto the plate below.

"This is good enough, man." The man in the uniform smiled as he took the plate with the meat, "It's been a long time since I've had food like this."

"Listen, these huge chunks of meat are made from bits and pieces of sub-par, marginal meat smashed up and mixed, it smells good though, yes it does, but the really good meat goes to those places!" The man pointed to the fancy restaurants that craned in the distance among the bungalows.

"Cut, everywhere we go, we're eating SPAM (spam lunch meat) while the generals in the back have steak and turkey. Mmm, have another piece." The soldier said as he stuffed his mouth with charred slices of meat.

"But the funny thing is, ah, I heard from my cousin who owns a shop in the center of town that the tigers like the civilian food too instead."

"Oh?" The soldier raised his eyebrows, "That's different from the usual PLANT people, but the tiger does have something special, so how's your cousin?"

"That unlucky guy? The last time the tiger was attacked right in front of his shop, the tiger was unharmed, but RPG shrapnel broke my cousin's leg." The man pulled off his hood in one hand and then took a swig of beer into his mouth, "Those Blue Perestroika idiots can't even shoot a weapon that a five year old can use like an RPG."

The soldier nodded silently, knowing that the other man's claim that a five year old could shoot an RPG was by no means an exaggeration, the place was never martial.

"Well grin," the man spread the thinly sliced roast meat on the pastry in a scattered pattern and handed over the wrapped burrito, "I don't know how that wasteland in Turkey came up with this, a way to make proper use of bits and pieces of meat as well. Also, better add a yogurt sauce so it tastes good."

"Hey man, I can answer that for you, kebap (barbecue) wasn't invented in Turkey, where there are plenty of big chunks of good meat to be had. It was invented by the Turks when they were working in Germany." Tariq, the gunner of the Eurasian Union, turned his face from a little distance, "In a way, it was invented by my ancestors." The German of Turkish descent from a few generations ago smiled and lifted his glass.

"So you're sort of complaining that my ancestors didn't give you enough meat to eat, are you?" Lieutenant Dawken, who didn't usually have much of a dramatic expression, also tugged at his lips, clinked his glass forward, and drank it all down.

"Hey, guv, I didn't mean it like that." The gunner suddenly realized that his captain was a guy with a German background, then muttered the next part of his sentence under his breath, "But hell, why am I working under you too."

"Where's your chief, why didn't he show up?" Sitting in the corner with a cup of black tea, Karl observed the crowd and, knowing he'd better be one of the ones who could keep a clear head when many were drinking, he asked a casual question to the partisan on the sidelines.

"Isn't that where Seb is? Wait, you mean the old man? He's a believer in the old religion, there's a bunch of taboos against drinking and such," the young warrior shrugged, looking hard to understand, "The old religion had a bunch of troublesome rules, and the old man is probably the only one who still adheres to those taboos."

"And the desert dwellers, the dirty, camel-driving guys in the desert, they believe in the Old Religion too." Another passing warrior interjected, "As for the town, after Alassad's time, there are fewer and fewer people who believe in the Old Religion."

"That's right, the cruel King Alastair, or at least he claims to be king, a stubborn old Christian who supposedly claims to be killing anyone who doesn't believe in the old religion and plans to get a big bomb from Europe to blow everyone up or something, hell, Tarsem, I'm terrible at history." The young man who'd had some wine looked like he was in the mood to talk.

"That's right, Saham, that's right, he was going to get a nuke and he got himself killed, there are rumors that the old man had something to do with it, so he always hid in a hole and didn't come out, probably because he was afraid of getting killed too? It is also said that he knows of secret warehouses where Alassad hides weapons in every town."

"I think he's just too old and lazy to move." The hooded young man sat down with a big grin, "By the way, Chisaka seems to be looking for you, the Earth Army, and if the ones from the sky are coming down, you seem to be an officer, maybe go talk to him."

"Chisaka? and names that don't sound like locals." Carl looked in that direction, the man known as Chisaka did look like a professional soldier, but the skin color and clothing also clearly showed the difference from these local guerrilla fighters.

"No indeed, it was with the tomboy and the new weapons, the boss wouldn't let us find out too much, but a tip said they were from Orb. Wait, isn't that tomboy here? She usually always shows up in the hustle and bustle. Hey, well, I really can't say too much about that." Looking at his companion who made some sort of gesture to indicate that he should remain silent, the young partisan shrugged his shoulders and began stuffing food into his mouth.

The guerrillas here are armed with weapons supplied by the ORB? That was unexpected, Carl had thought that the country that had been so stubbornly strict in its neutrality wouldn't do such a thing. He stood up and eyed the man who was a little further away.

"Yes, if you've heard something or guessed something, it's most likely true." The man with a dark, or rather healthy complexion opened the door at a corner and said, "I am indeed from ORB, for some sort of secret mission, and more than that I can only tell your high command, provided I can meet him if I can."

In the meantime, the Archangel comm room.

"Are you sure about this information?" The male on the screen looked serious, "The presence of important people from ORB is no joke."