Silent Requiem, a fanfic by Nightmaresama, chapter 17

The blast of the mega-particle cannon raced across the void toward Duo's GM. He wanted to dodge, but the light was paralysing. He had images of a deer being frozen in place before the headlights of an oncoming Semi running through his mind, but he could not take his eyes off it, much less force himself to move. The light was so bright, he could feel the burn of it in the back of his eyes.

Duo felt the impact, but could not see from whence it came. He could not see, but he heard. He heard Alex grunt in pain as the entire lower half of his GM was ripped away by the blast.

"Alex?" he said tentatively. He still couldn't see anything and that was making him nervous.

"I'm right here. But it's still not safe. The Zeeks've stopped coming after us for the moment, but who knows how long that'll last. That bloody mobile armour of theirs…" anger filled his voice.

"No…everything's black. It's so damned dark!" He slammed a fist down onto the control board. He felt it give, but could not see the sparks that flew.

"Jesus!" Kiyone's voice. They had all gathered around his suit and he felt as though he was being pulled along.

"Hang in there kiddo," Karen told him. "We're going to take you to the nearest ship to get you treated. Kiyo-chan!"

"Don't worry about me commander. I'll link up with another unit and keep fighting with them."

"You're sure? No, you'd best to wait for Alex to get a fresh suit and the two of you go on ahead together. I've almost lost one already out here and I'll be damned if I'm willing to lose another."

The Xero wove its wove through flak from both Feddie and fellow Zeon rifles. Nimbus knew he was getting close, he could feel Yu's presence nearby.

"Hey shit-face, you gonna let me go, or am I gonna have to kill you myself?" That damn woman again. She had not shut up since he had first absconded with her.

"I don't know how far you think you're going to get with me," she continued. "Yu's probably on your tail right now, and you know your sorry ass doesn't stand a chance against his Blue Destiny."

Rachel Sawyer pushed her glasses up on the bridge of her nose. She had to get this song memorised before the transport ship docked at Libot, and that was only about a half hour from now.

This was it, her big break. Show business and stardom were within her grasp if she could just outperform the other seven contestants. Of course, she already had a slight head start on them, given her stint with ENN. She would already be a recognizable name, she just needed to prove that this popularity was justified.

She put the papers down in her lap and sighed heavily. With all the effort she was putting into her dream, she might come off as shallow and self-absorbed. She didn't want to think of herself that way-who did?-but that might be the way others saw her.

Rachel laughed internally at that. By worrying about whether or not people thought her shallow, was she not, in the strictest sense, being shallow?

But she wasn't shallow! Dammit, she wasn't doing this just for herself! She wanted to help her family back home. New Manhattan was a rough a place to get by in as any in the Earth Sphere and had been even before the war started. Her father, her stepmother, her two brothers, her half sister, and herself had all lived together in one small apartment on the lower west side of the colony.

She hadn't been afforded much schooling, but had made the best of what she had. By the time she was seventeen, she was working the jazz clubs and singing to supplement her parents income. Before long, she had become something of a small sensation on the club circuit and was even beginning to get some jobs in the upscale section and even a few deals with some hotel chains.

But Rachel's family had remained far from wealthy. The best jobs paid only fifty bucks, Fed, per-night plus tips, and one of those came along maybe once every two to three months. Yet, though she was poor economically, she had never had any shortage of familial support. She had also had a good many friends and was very well liked by her peers.

Perhaps that might have been why she worried so much about what others thought of her; she was so used to people caring and being nice to her…

Rachel had met Alex Kincaid while on a shuttle very much like the one she now rode in. Sure, it had been a little more dank and a little less polished than this, but by and large they could be thought of as equals. She had been searching for a place to sit for her first ride down to Earth, and the stewardess had just informed the cabin that the shuttle was preparing to take off and everyone had better take their seats. Rachel had glanced around again for a seat, but then misstepped and fell foreward, dropping her belongings.

By a stroke of luck, Alex had been sitting down in a seat just next to the asile and had been able to catch her bags before they hit (they had been falling slowly in the decreased gravity, and even had they hit, it was likely that nothing would have broken, but it was the thought that counted).

"Are you okay?" he had asked, helping her to her feet. She smiled as she remembered his accent.

"Oh, thank you very much." She had to've been blushing at that point as she took the seat next to him, "This is really my first time on a shuttle; I've never flown before."

"Yeah," her home colony had been one of the stops on the shuttle's flightpath down to earth.

They had continued making smalltalk for several minutes after the shuttle took off, and then their conversation had swung towards their respective hobbies. He had told her that he was going to be a writer, and she had confessed about her singing (he had been decent enough not to ask her for a demonstration). On the whole, they hit it off very well.

But then, as the shuttle landed and in the chaos of disembarking at the Barcelona Cosmodrome, the two of them had gotten separated before they had been able to exchange numbers and mailing addresses. That had hurt Rachel much more than she thought it would have. They had only spent a few hours together on a shuttle, why did she feel such a strong affinity towards him? She'd had more than a few touch-and-go relationships in her life, but none of them had so profoundly impacted her as this one brief meeting. But whom was she trying to kid? She had gone off to Odessa, and he had headed for New England. He had to have forgotten all about her.

Rachel sighed, remembering that Christmas night. She had wanted to say something to him; to say how much he mattered to her, or how she had been so distraught about not having the opportunity to see him in so many months. Yet, she had been unable to. What if he didn't feel the same way about her? Could she take being rejected? All her life, people had enjoyed her company, she constantly went out of her way to be amiable, but what if, for once, she failed?

Failure. Was that what this was really all about? Failing to achieve a goal? No, she would not believe it. She loved him; that more than anything else was clear to her. Even more so than her desire to perform and become an idol singer.

So, she needed to let him know this, even if it meant being hurt in the process. Rachel's stepmother had once told her that she would never succeed if she wasn't willing to risk failure. Rachel had always assumed that that was only advice for her dreams of singing, but now, she finally begain to see the deeper meaning in the advice.

Michelle Bannock anxiously wrung her fingers as she walked down one of the halls aboard the Kaiser II. Blood. It seemed to saturate her hands, and no matter how many times she washed them.

Why did that bother her? Why was she so averse to it? She was a doctor; blood was a part of her job!

An image appeared in her mind. Eleven months ago she had just got off for winter break from the Von Braun School of Medicine and Medicinal Science. Dark blotches had been under her eyes as she boarded the shuttle bound for Earth. She had just finished her exams and had pulled several consecutive all-nighters to be sure that she was prepared. With them out of the way, she could almost look forward to a relaxing trip home.

Knowing her parents, however, made that a very big 'almost'. They had no doubt already lined up several dozen internships for her to take for the month that she had off. They always did.

Yet, even before she got On Planet she knew something was wrong. It must have been her intuition, or something, but it was confirmed when the shuttle had to be diverted to the Canada Prefecture prior to landing. Something about an invasion force in Northern Europe.

Oh, she had heard about some war going on between the Federation and the colonies, but it had hardly been noticed amidst the backdrop of her studies. Such had the case for almost everything in her 'life' she thought bitterly.

She had wanted to change, God how she had wanted to change! She wanted to be close to someone, anyone! She felt so lonely. So alone. So terribly alone.

Yet the discovery she made after finding passage across the Atlantic to the Federation's Belfast Base in the Ireland Subprefecture, made her loneliness before that point seem pale in comparison: Bristol had been sacked by the Zeon.

The streets ran red with the blood of friends and family. It was spattered across walls and sidewalk. Homes were ablaze. Smoke clogged the skies.

She remembered up until that point, but the rest…no matter how hard she tried, she could not force herself to remember the rest. Her Introduction to Psychology class that she had taken while still in high school had termed what she was dealing with as Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome. Ever since she had had difficulty dealing with copious amounts of blood in her presence.

It was better now. A little. Admittedly, she had almost blown chunks with that last patient, but at least she was back at the point where she could perform an operation without fear of fainting at the table.

She did remember that, in spite of what she had told Alex at their first meeting, she had joined the Federal forces willingly, almost eagerly. In retrospect, she wondered why she had made up that story about being drafted at all. Perhaps she had been afraid that he would have found the idea of a woman joining the cosmo-arma of her own volition a turn offâ"€she had really wanted to make a good impression on him.

'No need to worry about that now,' she thought painfully. 'Rachel Sawyer has already made a pretty damn good impression on him'

But he had told her about that; Rachel was just a good friend of his. A good friend, but still only a friend. There may yet be hope for her in this personal war after all.

Still, since joining the Fed, she had seen some of Rachel's stories on ENN and she knew all too well that if Alex ever did have to make a choice between the two of them, Michelle Bannock would not stand a chance. She had thought that she was pretty more or less since high school; she might have thought herself a little on the short side, but it was nothing that a pair of heels couldn't fix. But recently, when she looked in the mirror, she saw only a very plain and un-extraordinary face staring back at her.

Rachel, though, Rachel really was beautiful. Her Roman nose, her hazel eyes, her swarthy, Mediterreanian complexion, not to mention her voluptuous figure and pert posterior. Not only that, but she…

A telephone rang in a room up ahead. It was one of the pilots' quarters, but the door had been left open. The phone rang insistently, though the owner was already out battling amongst the stars.

As she approached, the answering device clicked on. A cheery female voice began by saying, "Hiya Alex!"

She ducked into Alex's quarters as the message continued. Interestingly, though her words were perky, they seemed slightly forced, as if they held a covertly serious undertone. "Hey babe! I'm on my way to Riah right now. Like I told you, I've got a show at Libot in a few hours. Listen though, I heard that you guys are getting ready to attack A Baoa Qu, and I just wanted to, ah, to wish you luck. I guess you've already left for the battlefield. That really sucks, because I wanted to catch you before you left to tell you something really important. See…Alex, I…I…I think that I love you, Alex. You mean the world to me. Please, come back safely. I can't wait to see you at Libot.

"Oh, and before I forget, I did hear what you said that night at the Dragon Room, and you're right; I think it was love at first-"

Michelle slammed her fist into the monitor, wishing with all her heart that it really was that bitch Rachel Sawyer's pretty face. The screen exploded, sending shards of glass floating through the room and lodging several between her knuckles.

Yet her rage was such that she hardly even noticed. "'Just a good friend,' huh?" she screamed at the hole in the monitor. " How could you lie to my bloody face like that, you bastard? Was it just to put your mind at ease? Was it just to get crazy Michelle out of your face with a clean conscience? How could you?"

Damn, how she hated him! Damn, how she loved him! Damn this confusion and angst that so wracked her being!

Their unit was retreating back towards the fortress to attempt to find care for her, but with each passing second, Naomi's chances of restoring her eyesight slipped further and further away.

"Naomi, listen, I'm really sorry that that happened to you," Kelley commented. Guilt weighed heavily on his broad shoulders; had he not pulled the trigger again so soon, she might have still been able to fight.

"It's not your fault, Kelley," Gato said with his seemingly ever-present calm. "There was some suit that hit her and sent the KÃ¤mpfer into a tailspin." To Naomi, he asked, "were you able to get a positive identification on it?"

"Negative, commander. I felt the hit and the next thing I knew, I was facing directly at the glare of the beam."

Ironically, even though Naomi had failed to ID the suit that had delivered the blow, the KÃ¤mpfer's visual and impact-resonance computers had. Right before her burned out retinas was a diagnostic blueprint of the suit that had hit her; of Cima Garahau's Gelgoog Marine.

"Well, don't worry about it then. I'll get you back to the fortress safely. Kelley, break formation and try to link up with another unit."

"Your MA is still largely undamaged, and is heavily armed. Every second you are out of action is one that gives the Feddies a few more metres in their advance. Please Kelley, I'm not ordering you as a commander, I'm asking you as a fellow patriot; you must fight on!"

"If you say so, commander." The Val Varo peeled off and broke for the Fed lines once again. "Naomi, I truly am sorry," he said as he hit his afterburners, "It was a pleasure working with the two of you, and I regret it had to end this way. Sieg Zeon!"

"Naomi," Gato began after the massive mobile armour was out of sight. "I will not be able to stay with you once you've been interned at the medical clinic."

"I know, commander, and I understand. The Revolution is greater than any one of its members, right?"

He smiled wanly, "Ah, yes. That's right. I will try to see you again once the battle is over, win or lose."

She smiled back, "Liar. You don't mean that, I know you'll forget all about me after we've won our Victory. When you're the bigshot hero and I'm just another blind Vet, you won't even remember my name. I've served with you long enough to know at least that much."

"Yeah, well we've got to win first. Hold on a sec." He released the hand of her MS and unsheathed his sabre to dissect an oncoming GM.

"Feddie cannon fodder…" he said aloud, with his com link off. After switching it back on, he grabbed the arm of the helpless Naomi, he said to her "yeah, we've definitely got to win first…"

"Not that I mind or anything, commander," Leon began, "but where the hell are you taking us?"

The commander of the Blue Destiny Corps dodged fire from a passing Zaku, hardly even slowing down. He was so single-mindedly focused that he did not hear his subordinate's question.

The second attempt did break the spell that had bound Yu. "Huh? Oh, were on a search and rescue mission. There's a good friend of mine who is in a lot of trouble and we're going to help her out."

"Whoa, hang on a sec there, sir," Gene cut in, "That ain't in the mission directives; if Command back at the Azure Wind found out about this-"

"You think they don't know were off course already?" Yu snapped. "I don't care what mission command says, and I don't care how expensive these damn suits are. I do care that my friend is out there and is going to be killed if I don't do something!"

"Hey, you're the boss. I just want you to be fully aware of the court-martial awaiting us when we get back…"

Yu remained silent and forced his way onward, destroying any Zeek that was unfortunate enough to be in his path.

"Gene, I'm surprised that you were the one to bring up those points, but you've got to look at it from Yu's point of view," Leon tried to pierce the stifling silence that had fallen over the radio lines. "Someone close to him is in a dire predicament and he alone has the power to save her."

"Yeah, I understand that," Gene nodded but paused to shoot a Dom that was trying to split their formation. "I mean, I'd do the same thing if I was in his shoes, but why the hell is dragging us down with him?"

"Ah so instead you'd have Yu go off and fight that thing, and it's probably the same prototype from California, by himself?"

"What's your issue? You were the one so gung-ho about fighting it in the first place."

"Yeah," he began, but was cut off again by fire from tailing Zeeks. He turned an charged them, machine gun and vulcans blazing. When he caught up with Leon again, he had scratched another two Zakus.

"Fighting in space is a helluva lot easier than fighting on the ground," he said proudly. "Once you've mastered the control mechanisms that is. I've already beat my score from California by three."

"You were going to say something, though?" He could have been a prick and told him that the reason he was doing so well was because there were simply more suits out here and at this point, the Zeeks were scraping the bottom of the barrel to find pilots, but he let him slide, this time.

"Hell no I ain't scared!" He returned defensively. "It's just that, well, I found out that Hilde was staying aboard the Azure Wind, and there might be the slightest chance that she thinks a little more highly of me now, know what I mean? And if that is the case, then I sure as hell don't want to be ghosted fighting in an impossible battle that we can easily avoid."

They continued their flight path, following Yu's lead and destroying all Zeon opposition. Yu was almost beginning to wonder if he had just imagined Marian's image and the whole story. That would have been a fine kick in the ass; how would he explain that kind of error to his commanders?

It was just as he remembered it from California: huge, demonic-looking, and armed to the teeth with the nastiest assortment of weapons conceivable.

"All right, Nimbus!" he raged over the radio fully aware that the EXAM system was feeding on his emotions and amplifying Blue's combat abilities. "Here I am you son of bitch! You wanted a fucking fight? I'll be happy to oblige you!"

"I knew you'd show up Kajima," came the voice from the enemy suit, cold and calcuating on the surface but seething with undertones of insane fury. "You're so weak; risking your life for this woman."

"If you insist," he hurled the lifeless form of Amy's GM directly at Blue and let loose a maelstrom of bullets at the two of them.

Yu had to work quickly to move Amy out of the way. The armour that plated a standard GM was like cardboard compared to that of Blue. "You've got to get out of here!" he shouted over the clangs of the shells on his suit's exterior.

"No, Yu, I'm going to help you with this guy!" she took a few shots from her beam gun in a futile attempt to draw the Xero's fire away from Yu.

Gene and Leon also opened up with support fire and added to the barrage that the enemy had to face.

"You wanted another shot at this bastard, Gene, now go for it!" Leon remarked, deadpan even under fire.

Nimbus easily evaded their pathetic attacks. "You fools think that's all it'll take? Hah! Now it's my turn."

He charged them, relentlessly hacking away with the bayonets. Between every few thrusts, it would fire several rounds from the gatling cannons. Fighting thusly, it was able to splinter the resisting forces and single out Yu.

After half an hour of furious back and forth combat, Nimbus broke off an offensive and did a reverse thrust to position himself about forty metres away from Yu's Blue. It was then that he lowered one of the bazooka barrels and locked onto him.

Yu paused tentatively while Gene, Leon, and Amy took strategic positions and surrounded the Xero. "What are you thinking Nimbus?" he asked, dangerously. "We have you surrounded, there's no hope to-"

"Shut up, Kajima," Nimbus cut him off. "I'm in control here. You will not speak unless spoken to. In case you haven't noticed, I've got you at the proverbial gunpoint."

"Your shitty little cannons don't scare us ass-wipe," Gene chimed in. "These baby Blues are fast enough and armoured enough to shake even your ballistics."

Without even turning the Xero's head, Nimbus aimed a gatling cannon directly at him and fired several hundred rounds, causing Gene's Blue Gundam to twitch spastically with every impact. "You will not speak unless spoken to," he repeated, tightly.

"You bastard!" Leon shouted and made ready to go to his friend's aid, but another stream of shells whizzed past the face of his mobile suit.

Nimbus gazed steadily forward at the blue GM that had taken his life. At Yu, the little shit who had stolen Marian from him and the Iflyte.

"Before you do anything stupid, let me inform you that my payload this time is slightly more deadly than ballistics."

Yu paused for a moment, and let the EXAM system make some calculations. "My God," he said at last.

"Yes, Kajima, neutron bombs. I have two; the only two in existence. One is to fire at the heart of the Federation fleet, and the other…" his finger twitched on the trigger, "Well…I'll let you do the math…"

Sam's image popped up at the bottom corner of his visual screen. He was shaking his head, "Negative, sir."

"Shit!" Trowa swore. "They couldn't've just disappeared--where the hell did they go?"

This was getting bad. They had been searching the entire sector and not found even a trace of Amy or the Zeek that had grabbed her.

'Why would he fucking kidnap her in the first place?' Sanders wondered as he forced his GM onward. 'Why didn't he just kill her outright?'

None of it was making any sense. That thing was armed with neutron bombs, yet there had been no reports of them being fired yet. Taking a hostage would only slow him down (although it couldn't have affected him too much, he was still way faster than any Fed suit shy of the Gundam), so why risk it?

"Incoming bandit bearing seven-two-niner!" Sam's cry cut through his thoughts. "It's huge!"

"Is it a battleship?" he asked, quickly returning his mind to combat readiness. They would not have time to waste engaging a Musai, but its cannons could do serious damage if ignored.

"Negative sir! It's moving way to fast to be one of…holy shit!" A brilliant burst from a Mega-Particle weapon added further punctuation to the remark.

The soldiers scattered, and averted their eyes, but Trowa looked back just soon enough to see a massive red shape pass beneath him.

"A fucking Mobile Armour?" he asked in shock. "Dear God! The hell'd we do to deserve this kind of luck?"

The mammoth weapon had apparently noticed they hadn't been finished off. It turned sharply and began heading around for a second pass. This time though, the reapers were ready for it; as it charged, they all began opening fire from their weapons.

Incredibly, though, the rounds from Trowa and Sanders' beam guns bounced harmlessly off the Zeek as if deflected by some sort of barrier.

"What the hell is an I-field, sir?" Sam asked as he continued firing, explosions from the shells sparking off its armoured metal carapace. Although standard ordinance was supposed to negate the effects of an I-field, apparently the Zeeks also believed in principle of double redundancy.

"Fuck it! Just scatter again!" Trowa tried to dodge the oncoming Zeek, but just as he thought he had cleared the danger zone, a huge pincer-like claw swung from the Mobile Armour's underside. It grabbed his suit by the leg and slowed as it began to squeeze.

Metal screeched and crumpled and the leg of Trowa's GM was smashed like an empty soda can. He wrestled with the controls in vain as his two compatriots tried to divert the monster's attention with diversionary fire. Eventually, they succeeded; the mono-eye at the front of the MA swung in their direction, glimmering like an accursed jade sphere.

Three pods were deployed from the rear of the enemy and proceeded, self-propelled, towards the hapless Feddies.

'What the hell are those?' Sanders found himself wondering as he opened fire at one of them. Again, direct assault proved useless, and the pods continued towards the two GMs until they had situated themselves into a sort of triangle formation. Then they simply stopped moving.

He did not have a chance to answer before the pods burst open and began emitting bolts of electro-magnetic disruptors. Almost instantaneously, every onboard weapons system in both GMs exploded in a shower of sparks, and bolts of electric discharge coursed through both Sam and Sanders' bodies.

"Son of a bitch!" Sam tried to cry out. His jaws, like every other muscle in his body had clenched spastically.

Their struggle had now become noticed by both sides. Zeeks were coming to the aid of the mobile armour, while more GMs fought to try and free their imprisoned comrades.

'Damn, Amy,' Sanders thought as he wavered on the edge of consciousness, 'we tried to save you…'

"Colonel Schtazen!" Ritsuko's voice again. "Nimbus, I have orders to recall you immediately! One of our Mobile Armours is under heavy fire from the Feddies!"

He stabbed the blue Gundam through the shoulder with one bayonet and smashed it in the side with his knee.

"I said 'no' doctor!" Nimbus erupted, his attention divided between the battle and Dr. Akagi's voice. "I will not be called back by you, not this time!"

At that instant every fiber in his body grew taught. Intense pain threatened to split his head apart.

"I will not obey!" Nimbus roared in pain. "I am no longer alive! This battle is all I have left! "

The Xero stopped in the middle of its offensive and it threw up its hands to its head, mimicking the posture its pilot had assumed.

The Feddies were not so stupid as to miss an opportunity such as this. After a split-second's hesitation, all four suits opened fire on it simultaneously. Nimbus was in no position to even effectively defend himself, much less fight back.

"Nimbus, you're going to die if you continue to resist!" For once Dr. Akagi's voice held more than haughty arrogance. She seemed almost worried about him, and not just as an expensive test subject, but as another human being.

"I told you already, Ritsuko," he managed to say through the pain, "I…am…dead!"

Using all his remaining strength, he tore his body free from the cables and wires that perforated his skin.

"Okay, Kajima," he rasped, "Let's settle this once and for all, you bastard. Call off your flunkies; this is between you and me, and were going to do it up right: one on one."

"Cease fire, everyone!" Yu ordered his troops. "You're challenging me to a fucking duel?" he said to Nimbus, disgust saturating his reply. "You arrogant piece of shit, why the hell would I agree to that?"

"Because if you don't, I'll kill us all right here." He set his finger on the trigger of one of the bazookas as if to immediately dissuade any thoughts that he might be bluffing. "How do you like those odds, eh, Yu? Either you risk fighting me and one of us dies, or I fire off both of these Neutron bombs and blow you, me, and everyone within a hundred kilometre radius, straight to hell."

Yu already knew he was deadly serious; however, he also knew that, with so many lives at stake, his hands were most assuredly tied. "You are a sick, sick bastard," he resigned himself.

"Fine, we'll do this your way. Leon and Gene, take Amy and get as far away from here as you can."

The three other suits took off, the glare of their afterburners making them look like shooting stars.

As the light faded into the background, Yu returned to his conversation with Nimbus, the two suits looking oddly serine floating silently in the void amidst the swirling chaos of the war around them. "This makes two times that you've put Amy's life in danger, mother-fucker," he growled, barely able to hold back his rage, "I trust you remember the battle in the desert? Her failed kamikazi?"

"Certainly; but I'm not going to make it easy for you, that much I can promise you. This will be a battle you'll remember for the rest of your life."

Without another word, the two mobile suits flung themselves into a spectacular, no holds-barred storm und drang.

Silent Requiem This fanfic is complete.

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Silent Requiem

Chapter 17: A Baoa Qu: Destiny is at Hand