Gundam Fire Still

VF/A-300 Warrior Squadron Leader Edward. Lt. Owen was in the cockpit, his hands on the joystick and interceptor brake steady. There wasn't a tremor, but his heart was beating faster, and he knew the moment he'd been waiting for had finally arrived.

Since being assigned to the Montgomery, the Warrior Squadron had been active on the front lines of the war against the Zaft, and after accumulating enough experience, and casualty figures, the squadron had undoubtedly been among the best in the Combined Forces. Lt. Commander Owen had been working with Remiret for a long time, and he and the squadron had gradually learned the young fleet commander's cunning, patience, and offensive spirit.

The Warrior Squadron was not on a straight course to its target, and to get to the NASCAR class that was its target by the shortest distance possible, the squadron would only have to cross the tip of the L4 satellite belt in a straight line. The squadron's veteran hand would not be afraid of the potential obstacle posed by the meteorites and debris in the satellite belt, choosing the circuitous route more for tactical reasons; he would need to use the edge of the satellite cluster to make an unhurried assault, allowing the cluster of debris to temporarily mask the fire and heat streaks as the squadron ignited its thrusters for acceleration, so that by the time the squadron appeared on the opponent's screen it had accumulated enough speed.

Debris and wreckage loomed over one side of his fuselage, the other side being the distant outer space facing neither the moon nor Earth, the positional adjustment jets on the side of the fuselage activating briefly to allow the fuselage to follow the contours of L4's turn.

As one of the gravitational equilibrium points of the Earth's moon, the abandoned L4 itself had produced a lot of wreckage, while trapping some of it in a small radius of rotation around this equilibrium point. Owen calmly watched the trajectory of the aircraft on the display below, the fleet was circling around the disk representing L4 to the other side, the side closer to PLAnt and the moon.

The position of the enemy ships hadn't appeared on the radar screen yet, and neutron interference still affected this area of the cosmos, but he knew there was a pre-placed communications relay node just a short distance ahead, where the formation could correct the target's position one more time. The green light for data link access came on, and he hit a button on his command panel, allowing the entire formation to begin calibrating the clock, confirming the missile fuses, and then setting the target selection scheme in the missile's guidance head. Updating the enemy ship's course didn't change, and with just a short more pass around the front, his own formation would appear to be diagonally behind the target.

Commander Owen had studied most of the Combined Force's combat scenarios during the war, and it seemed to him that the Combined Force's most prestigious units could be significantly improved upon; the long-range sniping and missile and artillery strikes of the Moon's Lena and her squadron were essentially a matter of ammunition and kill probability. Hit the big time and completely failed to take advantage of the ms as it should have; the 'Antimion's Eagle' Vlada's amazing interchange ratio was only because he relied on the line cannon to hunt separate enemies, but you can't always expect the enemy to appear alone on the battlefield; that blown-up young volunteer oRB was simply using the airframe performance and the physical prowess of the adjuster; and just a few kilometers away the supposedly adept team player, Squadron Leader Carl, was merely allowing himself or his teammates to sacrifice flank or concealment for the opportunity to fire on another teammate.

And his tactics were different from any of these, and, like most good pilots, he believed he was doing the right thing.

He took several sets of anti-G breaths and began to count the seconds slowly in his mind while a countdown number on the side of the main screen ticked in sync until the number jumped to zero.

The violent thrust pressed him firmly into his seat, staring ahead as the edges of his vision of cosmic space with the moon as a backdrop reddened slightly, and the improved Mobius trailed long ion trails around the edge of the debris to plunge forward into the battlefield of intersecting beams of light.

Not just one, but an assault wave sub-mA's trails like a dart from behind L4, inserted into the tense chase from an unnoticed side.

====.

On the bridge of the Eternal, the soldier in the radar position snapped his eyes open, but before he could cry out, a large, strong hand clapped on his shoulder.

"Don't panic," the entirety of Baltferrut's presence and his words together calmed the soldier, as if the man standing on the bridge was synonymous with composure at this moment. He also saw what the young man saw on the screen, an unusually sharp group of targets on both the optical systems and the heat sensors, who made no attempt to disguise their heat signatures, and which the radar systems easily identified as a group of improved Moebius belonging to the Combine. And they were still accelerating, going nowhere, and didn't seem to have the slightest intention of turning.

"Target batch one, number fifteen, Möbius, approaching at high speed!" The radar soldier reported, with a shudder in his tone, and the former Zaft soldier on this ship was well aware that he was not protected by any ms right now.

The main screen on the bridge zoomed in on the optical camera image, the missiles hanging from the Möbius' belly mounts grew larger and larger on the screen, and they seemed to be able to see some reflection of the helmets of the Union pilots in the cockpit.

Everyone on the bridge, no matter what unit they came from or when they had been involved in such a conspiracy, one thing was beyond doubt, they were all from Zaft's elite units, they had all had face-to-face encounters with the Combine, and they all knew exactly what the heavy torpedoes that an undisturbed Möbius could mount could do. Möbius had once been synonymous to them only with the number of hits, but now the hands of some of them on the console began to tremble slightly.

"Radar tracking, but do not fire." The man known as the Desert Tiger remained calm as ever.

"What?" Someone whispered to themselves.

"They're not coming for us." The soldier who voiced the question didn't expect to hear the familiar deep male voice give his answer immediately.

Not a commander who sat in the captain's chair all year round, Baltefelut was always moving around from console to console, invariably cheering up the soldiers at each console and at the same time passing on his composure and calm to the other members of the bridge.

"If I'm not mistaken, they're here to help us."

The adjuster on the weapons console resisted the urge to press the anti-aircraft missile launch button, he watched the trajectory that represented the enemy approaching the ship beneath him, the armor of the newer ship would be no better than paper before the heavy anti-ship warheads of the missiles mounted on their bellies, he rarely doubted his captain and hoped that for once he was right.

Balthazar Falut carefully measured the approaching trajectory of the combined fleet, they could have taken a better straight line towards the three NASCAR assaults behind them, but they didn't, they still made a small curve that continued the arc they had taken out from behind the satellite. He could tell that the commander of this team of Mobius was either a really reckless guy who didn't think anything of it, or, a very ghostly guy who had made his ship part of the attack trajectory; these Mobius that circled out from the side of the satellite had used the gravity slingshot of the L4 satellite to give the airframe extra speed, while the absence of a meteorite barrier on the satellite's outskirts hadn't allowed them to consume any more propulsion fuel. And now that these fleets whose trajectories were about to coincide with his own ships illustrated another conspiracy to have their thermal and optical images obliterated by the larger signals their own ships were generating, the radar crew on the NASCAR class behind them would see those otherwise clear target points masked under the larger targets of their own ships, discarding the trajectory tracking they had been maintaining for so long. Of course, there was a low probability that these Combines were coming for him, but he didn't think his opponent would make such an unthinking judgment, and as the battle continued, he could see the quality of the Combine commanders he faced improving rather than decreasing. So he realized there was a scenario where the Combined Forces commander could still use his cover more effectively.

"Meteor system ready, target NASCAR." He quickly issued his orders.

"Beam cannon no firing boundaries."

"Missiles only, anti-ms missiles loaded with armor-piercing warheads, anti-ship missiles standard anti-ship warheads, targeting NASCAR closest to us, fuse maximum delay, launch on my command."

Now that he was here, he'd just have to cooperate with them, Tiger smiled inwardly as he guessed what the JFC commander in the cockpit on that screen was thinking.

"Attention, cease acceleration, tight formation, initiate collision avoidance procedures, and don't hit that ship either." Edward. Lt. Commander Owen ordered over the squadron channel, the airframe panel was already suggesting that the current speed could already cause structural damage to the airframe; he needed to fire at the highest possible speed for the initial speed of the missile, but there was no need to damage the airframe for that.

"Prepare to stagger, don't crash into it."

"Launch immediately after crossing, disengage as programmed." The combined mA group shut down their engines and stopped accelerating.

"Orbital staggering in three, two, one..."

In the cockpit, a synthesized female voice began to read the seconds, meanwhile, on the bridge of the Eternal, the former Zaft members had passed so close to the Combine for the first time - and without firing, they could already see the rivets and seams on the other plane with their naked eyes, the head-banging Möbius skimmed just above the bridge, it even turned in a half circle, the cockpit located on the back of the fuselage facing the bridge, the bridge could even see the fluorescence of the dashboard and helmet displays, making one wonder if the pilot there was trying to peer inside.

"Now is the time, launch!"

A flower consisting of the trails of missiles blooms in the tail of the battleship, followed by the trails of the mA as petals gyrating backwards.

12.Cooperation and Rift.

"Quite a decisive command."

Zaft belonged to the bridge of the NASCAR-class Visalis, and the masked captain calmly watched the approaching missile swarm on the forward screen, and the mA swarm that swung away without more than a second's delay, activating its thrusters to display a clear tail-nozzle heat source.

"What should we do?" Aslan. Sara's avatar appeared on the comm screen.

"Don't ask me what to do, Captain Sara." Kruiser responded with a smile, words emphasizing the other's equal status as captain as well, "But my advice is to slow down first, don't rush in."

The three NASCARs began to slow down, while slightly sidestepping the ship and showing off their close defense fire located on the side of the incoming missiles. If they didn't change their stance, the frontal NASCAR class could put out only half as much intercepting firepower as the flankers.

Orange blasts of fire continued to light up in the void, and in between, the red battleship they were chasing could be seen from the bridge of the Nazca, driving deeper into the satellite cluster without slowing down, the people on the bridge looked regretful, but what they couldn't understand was that their usually unsmiling masked captain seemed, to be smiling.

Crozier was indeed smiling, as a man who liked to master intrigue, the situation that was beginning to get complicated was nothing less than a challenging stage for him, and he liked a challenge, carefully weighing in his head the possible moves that each piece in this Urantia field might choose to make.

A missed missile hit the side of the ship, bounced off the heavy armor, and then a near-fuze detonated the tnt inside the warhead, and amidst the violent shaking of the bridge, he came up with a plan, one that would allow him to accomplish many projects at once.

"Captain Sara, get the personnel assault craft ready so we can go in and scout the situation." It was still a consultative tone, but he was well aware that the teenager on the other side of the screen couldn't possibly refuse.

"Aye."

"And then just like in Heliopolis." The man under the mask nodded with a smile and cut the communication, knowing that he would once again awaken the boy's ambition for victory, reminding him of his first, most glorious victory and what it had brought afterwards.

On the other side of the black screen that cut off the communication, Aslan . Sara's face darkened as he inevitably thought of his old friend, and the ironic reunion, and the next few encounters, Captain Kreuzer had said so on purpose, his brain giving him an unmistakable answer, but why?

The teenager who had become captain himself didn't like what he'd seen in PLAnt before this attack, the strange oppressive and frenzied atmosphere, the hunt for Klein, the strange treason charges, and the ship's defection. As someone with the surname Sara, he was able to know more than the other pilots, and the more he knew, the more he felt the unnaturalness of the situation before him.

Somewhere along the line, he had developed some suspicion of his old boss. Still, he had given the order to prepare the assault craft, because he too was curious to know what was in the abandoned satellite cluster that was mentioned in the ill-worded order.

======

Meanwhile, in the satellite that was being watched by millions of people, a low Union Army infantry fighting vehicle was drifting against the shell of the satellite with two tiny thrusters on its tail.

At a particular coordinate, the infantry fighting vehicle opened the hatch below, and the Marine in the space combat suit knocked on the shell of the satellite below, and a metal plate that looked like nothing else in the area slowly moved away, revealing a large steel structure supporting each other below, as well as several other shadowy figures in space suits. The Marines fishtailed into the satellite, while the infantry vehicles continued on their way to find a suitable hiding spot.

Inside the satellite, somewhere in the open hall, as the overhead lights came on suddenly, the soldiers below in their combined and PLAnt space combat uniforms raised their guns and pointed at each other.

"I don't think there's any hope for unified command," Marine Corps Capt. George. Mattis didn't raise his gun, but stepped forward a little, "Don't point the gun at anyone, need I say it twice? Calm down, Marines, they're not the enemy."

The Marine who had lived in the Moonface metropolis of Copernicus for a few years had no ill feelings towards the Adjuster, but he had witnessed all the conflict and bloodshed that took place on the Moonface, and he was well aware that such conflicts existed, and the one thing that could now limit those dangerous outbursts of emotion was his own leadership and the strict discipline that the Marine Corps had always maintained.

"Same goes for you guys, the guys in front of you just defeated Blue Perestroika, and while we don't really understand what's going on inside the Earth Army, you better show some respect" the woman with the eye patch likewise stepped forward and motioned for the PLAnt personnel behind her to lower their guns, "Right. We will not surrender our command, and I am sure you will not agree."

"So the only way we can do this is if we each take charge of a portion of the channel, do you have an internal map of the satellite?"

"The waste merchants have them, I'll go get them."

The soldiers, not making any further hostile moves under their own trained and commanding authority, began to observe each other curiously, the Union being surprised at how little equipment the ex-Zaft soldiers carried, as if they needed only minimal support equipment beyond weapons and jet packs, while the ex-Zaft soldiers were equally surprised at the variety of equipment the Union carried around their waists and backs, some of which could be identified as grenades and booby traps, but more of which was not in their enemy equipment identification manuals.