Silent Requiem, a fanfic by Nightmaresama, chapter 16

"Hammer two-six-two, what the hell is your problem?" Karen's voice thundered over the radio, bombarding Duo's ears.

Immediately after their staggered jump, soldiers of the Hammer detachment had been in the thick of the already scrambled Zeek defenses. The Sickle forces had been able to meet them on even terms because they had both been launched from their respective sides at approximately the same time. Now, even with several Zakus already battering their lines, the Hammer forces had to fight their way out of their drop zones.

"Dammit, commander, it wasn't my fault! They got the drop on me right as I was--"

"Stow the shit, Duo; I don't want to hear about it! We've got a job to do and now we've got a hindrance!" She didn't have too long to worry about it though; two Zaku's rushed her on either side and began pummelling her suit's frame with shells. In frustration and ignoring the onslaught, she swung the barrel of her beam gun right into the face of one and fired in its face.

The Zeek spun backwards and landed right on the blade of Alex's sabre. His GM twisted the weapon and tore it from the body at the exact instant it erupted in flames.

"Good show, two-six-three," Karen remarked as she turned to face the second assailant. Much to her surprise, the enemy was already gone.

Then as she swept the area again with her visual sensors, she saw the enemy--or rather, what was left of it. Duo's scarred suit stood atop the wreckage, sabre in hand.

"Shut up, ass-hole, we're not done here yet," She led the troops onward towards the "beaches".

"Good job, though," she said on the private line between their two suits. His image came up on the bottom corner of her visual screen, and he shrugged haughtily.

She ignored his jibe, and instead asked, "How's Alex? That was a damn good move he pulled back there, is he back to normal?"

"Should be, but keep your guard up today. That bitch, Michelle, she was acting the double agent and now we've got a Zeek elite unit out for our heads."

"You're shitting me, right?" she meant to sound sardonic, but it came out sounding worried--how she really felt.

"Fuck!" she growled angrily. Resuming her composure, slightly, she continued, "stay on your toes then and let me know if you think it's them."

Then, as soon as his image disappeared from her HUD, she felt her stomach retch. She grabbed for the bag, but it was too late; she vomited explosively in the cockpit. "Ah, shit! I thought I had this space sickness beat!" she moaned to herself as she tried to grab the chunks up in the bag.

Karen was so preoccupied by her disgusting task that she did not see the Dom right in front of her. Her suit blindly slammed into its back.

"Commander!" She heard Kiyone's voice, but it sounded incredibly far away-she may have been calling her from back on Earth.

The enemy turned and quickly sized her up. Karen was paralysed by fear and could only watch as it swung the muzzle of its bazooka directly into her face.

There were two explosions, one right after the other. The first was that of the bazooka round striking her GM in the upper torso. That sent the suit spiralling and knocked a good deal of equipment loose in the cockpit, including a shard of glass that lodged itself in her shoulder almost slicing the tendons there in two.

The second explosion was that of the Dom itself. It was torn asunder by barrage fire laid down by the remaining members of the team. Karen watched proudly as her troops continued to fight off the other Zeeks in the area.

Her pride suddenly turned to pain and anger as her body finally registered that she had been impaled by a six-inch long shard of glass. "Fuck!" she repeated as she tried to dislodge it.

She could barely touch the jagged shard at first, without it feeling like a fiery knife every time she moved. On the third try, she finally managed to pull it free.

"Shit-ass-motherfucker!" Karen howled, and then the blood started oozing from the open wound.

"Cover me, guys!" she called to her team, all of whom were acting very well without having to be told. That having been said, she pulled out her personal first aid kit and began to retrieve the needle and thread.

"You doing okay comman-holy shit!" Kiyone gasped as she saw Karen sewing up the wound in her shoulder as calmly as if she was stitching up a whole in a ripped shirt. Tiny globules of blood floated freely about the cockpit as she finished the job.

"Not as good as I would've liked, but damn good for on the fly." Karen remarked as she observed her handy-work. She then zipped up her normal suit and put several strips of duct tape over the hole the glass had ripped in it. "Okay One-oh-seven! Let's get it together, now. We've got a war to win!"

"Damn skippy," Karen nodded with an imperceptible wince. "Now that's an order! Move out!"

The beam on Cima Garahau's dual edged sabre melted the outer carapace of the Zaku's body. "Au reviour, ami," she whispered dangerously as the suit from her own side detonated before her.

'I have indeed sunk to a new low,' she thought. 'But this is the only way…right?'

As if to even the score, she lashed at a GM which had stupidly come closer to investigate. 'Neither side is right in this…' she realised as the light from the explosion dimmed.

"Kelley! We're almost within range of the Federation ships. How much closer do we need to get?" Naomi called out as explosions lit the vacuum around her.

"This'll do," came the prompt response. The Val Varo slowed and the protectors that covered the main cannon opened to reveal the barrel of an immense mega-particle cannon.

Tiny bits of light danced before the barrel of the cannon, and a glowing light began to emanate from deep within.

"You all might want to look away," Kelley began, "from what they say, it's dangerous to look directly at the beam."

As they had finished uttering the last word, a brilliant beam of particles flooded forth from the mouth of the Val Varo, tearing across the void. The Feddie cruiser never knew what hit it.

"No," Sanders said emphatically. "A blast from their solar ray would've incinerated the remainder of the fleet. That had to be some kind of particle beam."

"Son of a bitch!" Amy's cry pulled their attention back to the here and now. She was engaging another enemy, but seemed to be having a great deal of trouble fighting it.

Her GM backed further away from the Zeek, firing the whole way with rounds from her machine gun. Yet, even though every shell connected, the barrage was hardly enough to even slow it down.

"What the hell is that?" Sanders asked himself as he took the other "Reapers" in for a closer look and to help their friend.

The suit was dark blue, and so, hard to pick out with visuals. Still as they got closer, Sanders could tell that it was a totally new type of enemy. It looked vaguely familiar only in that it looked like a cross between a Gelgoog and a Dom…

"That's right, scream," Nimbus thought as he continued his drive at the pathetically overmatched GM. "I remember you…you're the one from the desert. Yes, the fighter pilot. I thought you were dead, but if there's anyone to draw out Kajima, it would be you…"

He didn't know how he knew that it was the same girl, but the Xero had yet to lie to him and when it spoke, he listened.

Nimbus maxxed his jets and leapt forth, bayoneting the enemy just below its reactor, cutting all power to its legs. He then flipped around behind it and held it by the neck with Xero's other bayonet aimed directly at the cockpit.

He saw the remaining members of the MS team stop in their approach, and smiled darkly. "That's right," he said over the broadband, "not a metre closer, or she dies!"

"No closer!" Nimbus roared. "You don't think I'll kill her right here? You really don't think I would?"

"What the hell is wrong with you guys?" The young woman inside pleaded. "Just shoot for the love of God!"

At that, Nimbus lowered one of the shoulder-mounted bazookas and aimed it at the commanding GM. How fortunate he had been to persuade Dr. Akagi to load up neutron bombs into the canisters. It wasn't even a violation of the Treaty: Neutron bombs were terror weapons first theorised at the end of the Last Era that utilised subatomic particles without an explosion. When the bombs detonated, the particles (the neutrons) were expelled from canisters at incredible speeds and punctured human cells without causing any visible damage. Only two had ever been created because they were so deadly. Both of those two now rested in the barrels of the Xero's bazookas.

Nimbus related all of this to the Feddies with great relish. He imagined that he could actually hear the sweat beading off their skin with his enhanced senses.

"So do you really want to fire on me?" he challenged. "No? I thought not." He turned away from them and fired his thrusters.

"That bastard!" Trowa raged. "That…that…" he was so upset that he was actually speechless.

"What do we do sir?" Sam asked, nervously. "We are going to do something…right? We're not just going to leave Amy with that lunatic, are we?"

But what could they do? They couldn't risk informing the main fleet--not if they had no substantial evidence that he actually was carrying those superweapons. Sanders himself had had to pull a bluff several times and he knew how valuable they could be, especially for getting people off your tail. And even if he turned out not to be bluffing, a shot from one of the battleships' cannon might inadvertently release the deadly pent up particles anyway, causing more harm than good. Only in an MS battle could they safely be disposed of.

"Okay team," he said, an idea slowly coming to him, "the only way we'll successfully be able to do this guy is to tail him, wait for the perfect instant, and fire a shot from a beam rifle directly through the cockpit. After that, two of us will rush it from either side and tear off the two bazookas before the suit itself explodes and…"

"Sh-shut up, Trowa!" Sam returned, "You can't rush a situation like this! This could potentially turn the tide in this battle!" To Sanders, in a more subdued voice, he said, "What can we do with the bombs once we have them, sir? We'll have to get rid of them as quietly as possible so as not to attract attention from the other Zeeks or our own forces."

"That's right, but the only way I could think of to do that, would be to scuttle the MS carrying them. The two pilots will have to eject but fire the engines to break the gravity well of the planet. With any luck, they'll get lost in the void between the orbit of Earth and Mars and no one will find them. Do either of you have the propellant to make a jump like that?"

"I didn't think MS carried that much propellant," Trowa muttered under his breath. Aloud, he said, "I think I do; you're talking about one high scale burn for momentum and then continuous thrusts from that point on, right?"

"Good." Sanders was nodding to himself. It was a fairly good plan and should work. "This means you two will have to conserve every bit you can; we're done fighting this day. I hope you all didn't have plans of becoming decorated heroes." He steadied his suit and prepared to chase after the Zeek that had stolen their compatriot.

"Captain, sir, Ensign Hilde Schbeiker reporting." She stood before the captain on the bridge of the Azure Wind.

"Yes, ensign, I had heard of your arrival," he nodded pensively. "Do you have any idea that this vessel is carrying classified materials? It might not have been wise for you to come aboard."

She met his contemptuous glare with one of her own. "And sir, did you have any idea that I was running a crippled MS with no hope of survival if I had not landed here? My life support was already failing even as I entered your docking bay!"

"The loss would have been acceptable," he said coldly. "Now that you're here, we run the risk of having our restricted data compromised. I trust you'll understand that we cannot let you leave this bridge until the battle is over."

That set her blood to boiling. "No, sir, I will not understand! Look at my record! It's flawless! I would never betray the secrets of my country! You have to let me go out there and fight!"

"Sir." Military indoctrination was the only thing keeping her from going ballistic and telling him off right then and there. Instead, she did as she was told and found an empty seat next to an armourglass window.

She gazed out at the stars and the battle playing amongst them. It was almost beautiful from this far away; the dull glitter of the stars, the brilliant flashes of beam weapons…

But the beauty was all a lie. She knew. She had seen it first hand, and the revelation had cost her a leg.

Still, she felt so helpless pinned to the bridge. Duo, Trowa, Kiyone, Alex, Sam…Gene. They were all out there fighting their hardest to bring this war to an end, and she was totally powerless to aid them.

Kiyone's GM fired off another round at an oncoming Zeek. The Zaku's head exploded instantly but its torso, carried by the momentum of the still blazing thrusters, continued flying at her. She extended her suit's foot and sent the decapitated body spiralling off with a well placed kick.

'Damn, what a mess,' she thought to herself as she scanned the destruction playing out around her.

"I keep telling you all I'm fine, dammit, so let it rest at that!" came the gruff reply.

Three Doms suddenly appeared behind the members of the 107th and began battering their position with bazooka rounds. Everyone escaped the epicentre of the explosions, but the intense heat from one round partially melted the foot on Alex's GM.

Upon rallying, the four Feddie suits returned fire in an all out barrage. The enemy suits tried to outmanoeuvre the carpet of energy beams and machine gun rounds, but it was to no avail. Within seconds of the counterattack, two Zeeks had already been fragged and the third was crippled by a blow to the back-mounted thrusters.

"No time," Karen said, shaking her head. "We've been going at it for an hour already and we've barely cracked the first line! Just leave him."

"Your right it's-" Karen's voice faded and in her image on the monitor she shuddered violently in agony. One of her hands shot up to her shoulder.

'Not good,' The former officer in Duo said. 'If she's really hurting, our progress is going to be severely hampered.'

"Karen!" He shouted. "Karen! Are you there? Come on chief, you can't die on us yet!"

"S-shut up!" she returned, hoarsely. "I-" she winced, "I'm fine! I'm not going to die! Not yet!"

As if to prove her veracity, she yanked out her beam sabre and forced its blade through the cockpit of an oncoming Zaku. As the enemy writhed in violent death throes, she flipped around and pulled the sabre in an arc over her head, splitting the Zeek in half in the process.

Panting, she looked into the monitor at Duo's astonished expression. "I told you I was fine. Now, one-oh-seven, move out!"

"Another one?" Michelle Bannock asked as the orderlies rolled in a fourth injured pilot on a stretcher into the emergency medic's facilities aboard the Kaiser II.

"'Fraid so, Doc," one replied nonchalantly as he secured the stretcher into place for Michelle's procedure. "We're right on the front; way far ahead of any of the hospital ships. If somebody gets hit out there, it doesn't matter to them which ship they get to, just as long as they get to a ship. That's the reason engineering designed these types of emergency facilities on battleships and carriers too."

"Okay, okay," Michelle waved him off as she pulled a mask down over her mouth. "A simple 'yes' would have sufficed."

She took a deep breath as she prepared to look at the body, under the normal suit. This was another shrapnel victim: R. LaVans; male, twenty-four, 293rd space GM, lieutenant (jg); had taken two to the upper torso, one in the neck, and a really nasty one on his right arm, so the report went. Probably wouldn't make it, but it was her job to try.

She unzipped the front of the normal suit and peeled it down to the waist. Her stomach lurched, and she raised a hand to her lips (it would have sucked gloriously to have vomited into her mask, so she had to fight extra hard to keep it down). Blood gushed from the wounds on the soldier's chest, and the ragged hole on his neck.

After her initial gag reflex had subsided, Michelle set to work. The first task was removing the shards and applying pressure to the wounds. Using a thin, metallic clamp, she fished out an inch long shard of glass from the hole in the lower left-hand side of his chest. There was nothing in the wound near his collar bone; presumably, the shard had been large enough for the soldier to have pulled out himself. An object just grazing the area had apparently, caused the blow to his neck-again, there would be nothing to remove. This also seemed to be the case with the wound on the forearm.

'Oh, Alex,' she thought as she began patching up the soldier on the table before her, "I pray that nothing like this will happen to you…"

Yu Kajima let loose a maelstrom of bullets from Blue's head mounted vulcans into the face of an oncoming Zeek, letting the EXAM system guide his motions for perfect, deadly accuracy. The enemy's head exploded, but its momentum carried it forward still, directly at Blue. Unflinchingly, Yu unsheathed his blade, and side-stepped the headless corpse by just enough so that his sabre, held out at his side, caught it perfectly in the waist. The suit exploded thereafter.

In the fading glare of the explosion, Yu's ears picked up a faint cry. 'Marian?' he thought.

'Yu!' the voice caused the hairs on the back of his neck to stand on end. It was her alright.

'You must be extremely cautious Yu. Nimbus' new mobile suit has been armed with ancient terror weapons from the Last Era. If fired, these weapons have the potential to wipe out half the Federation's remaining forces!'

"I'll do it," he concluded aloud. "Change of plans fellas," he called to Leon and Gene, "we're going to play the knights in shining armour for once."

Cima screamed in wordless fury as she sent two blasts of crimson death at an unsuspecting GM. The crippled suit tried to locate her Gelgoog and return fire, but rounds from her forearm mounted machine cannon were quick to finish it off.

She forced her suit into a 180, and gunned down a retreating Zaku with the same cold-blooded efficiency.

Again she questioned her judgement in coming to this killing ground. She hated both sides but could do neither any great degree of harm. But if the Zeon High Command found out what she was doing, they would exterminate both her and the Lily Marlene, with extreme prejudice. She was risking lives with no possibility for any significant reward and every possibility for being shot down and possible being tortured and executed is she were caught.

Boom! Boom! Two more GMs gone in brilliant flashes of light; two more pawns for the accursed Federation evaporated forever.

'But in there place,' Cima thought darkly, 'fifty--no a hundred more will rise up to fight again another day.'

Still, she continued her rampage of wanton destruction and personal arbitration. Another Zaku down. Another Dom, another Gelgoog, another…wait a minute, what the hell was that?

Her fingers danced across the console to magnify the image of the object that had just flown past her. It had been big--way to big to be a standard mobile suit--but the way it moved, the speed, the grace…it could hardly have been any ship in the Zeonic fleet. That left only one other option:

'Mobile Armour,' she thought with a predatory smile. It was time to hunt some Big Game.

She would have to be discrete; attempting to attack such a target outright would lead to her discovery and the execution that would entail. The best move would be to silently pick off the escorts first, and then to go after the beast. But could she do it alone?

"I've got them sir!" Naomi cried out over the radio. "Four bandits bearing seven-three by two-five. Visual scanners confirm it: these are the blue and gold sons of bitches we've been looking for!"

"What about the thermal scans?" Gato demanded. "If you can't detect the nukes, than this group isn't worth our time."

"I…no…nothing on the thermals out of the ordinary." 'That's odd,' Naomi thought to herself, 'Shelly sounded pretty sure they were carrying nukes, but there's nothing out of the ordinary here.'

"Forget it then," Gato said, shaking his head. "We have to take out more of their capital ships, there's no time for a pointless battle."

"Hold up commander," Kelley cut in as the Gelgoog prepared to turn off. "You know as well as we do that the Feddies are sneaky bastards. This may very well be the unit and they've simply concealed the bombs very well. I think I can take them out in one shot and then well be off to fortify the defensive line again."

"Will do, sir." Again, the cover of the cannon swung open. Again there was the brilliant light as it began to charge up.

"Massive energy spike, commander! Two clicks starboard!" Kiyone called, fear evident in her voice.

"What the hell?" Karen looked at her readings and saw it too. "Everybody, scatter now! Converge on the source of the energy readings. Go!"

The soldiers of the 107th dove out of the way just in time as an intense beam of particles ripped through space where they had just been.

Cima dove at the blue unit with the twin shoulder-mounted bazookas and took a slash at it with her beam sabre. The glare of the sudden discharge of the particle cannon made her avert her eyes at the last moment, and she only succeeded in grazing the suit, and spinning it around.

"Damn!" she swore loudly as she tried futilely to rub the purple spots from her eyes. "I was sure I would get him!"

No point in worrying about it now, the mobile armour's display had convinced her that it would be foolhardy to try and bring it down now, even if she did succeed in attacking the two escorts. Perhaps one day…

"Cocky little shits!" Kelley raged and prepared to fire again. "You really want to try the Val Varo?"

He wasn't listening. The four Feddies were going to try and converge on his location, he was sure of that. Even they weren't so stupid as to not know how limited the short range arsenal of a mobile armour was. He would have to pick one and go for it. The best he could hope for was that Gato and Naomi could take the other three down before they got too close.

The KÃ¤mpfer stopped spinning seconds before Naomi had had a chance to check her sensors to find out what it was that had hit her. Whatever it was had done massive damage to the entire port side of her suit. The shoulder armour, the arm, the leg--how could she continue to fight like this?

What was worst of all, though, was that part of the canopy of the cockpit had been melted and torn away. Naomi, like so many other Zeonic pilots, had not been wearing a helmet at the time and was almost killed instantly as the air rushed out through the gaping hole before her. Working on nothing but instinct and nigh-Newtype reaction time, she had been able to snap it on mere seconds before the cockpit pressure had totally dissipated.

"Are you okay, Naomi?" That had to be commander Gato's voice, she thought just as his image appeared in the corner of what remained of the main visual monitor.

She looked up to answer him just as Kelley loosed another blast from the cannon.

Her entire field of vision went white as she gazed into the heart of the blast. It was so bright, even the tinting of the helmet visor could not totally block its intensity. Yet, much like a deer, hypnotised by the lights of an oncoming car, she could not bring herself to look away. Glare flooded the cockpit, filling her entire existence with its unholy whiteness. `Too bright,' she though, as she continued to stare, `far too bright'.

Brighter than a camera flash, brighter than a halogen lamp, brighter than the sun, brighter than…

Naomi's terrified scream reached Gato's ears first. It was like nothing he had ever heard in all his born days; more like the wail of a lost soul than that of a human in pain.

Silent Requiem This fanfic is complete.

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Silent Requiem

Chapter 16: A Baoa Qu Battle: Hymn of the Federation