---A/N this fic has been building up to this moment. The most random Ball joke of all time. Also the battle of Heliopolis I guess.
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My day starts the same as any other for the past couple of weeks. Wake up thinking about how weird mobile suit design theory was before I started working, go TA for Professor Kato's advanced class, and then work on making sure our pre-production type Den'an Zon's were usable given what we were dealing with.
I call it a pre-production type because these are going to be made using standard foam metal like the Astray's were given. We don't exactly have the facilities to make gundarium or titanium ceramic composite armor. That was the only real compromise beyond us obviously not having enough helium-3 on Heliopolis to try making a Minovsky ultracompact fusion reactor. We had to use one of the other types available to us.
Said other type of reactor also meant we could change some of the plans the Balls were going to be using. Mainly because the other type of reactor was able to fit inside a Ball, so we could suddenly have a higher reactor output to put to use on our thrusters and whatnot. Only half the lot we made had them because they wanted to at least confirm that my reactor designs worked. They aren't directly available for our defense team as the design was made just to test the reactor's work in the first place. Why they didn't believe me when I pulled out the Gundam X I don't know, but they wanted to confirm it anyway.
I had considered making an integrated beam weapon for the design to be made right now, but making an assembly line for that would take more time and be harder than just going ahead with ballistic weapons derived from the Ball's cannon ala the Zanny. For now I both designed that gun and modified the hand plugs to use the current beam rifle design. We already have the infrastructure to make a ton of those rifles, so it's easier than waiting for the new beam rifles to finally be made.
The MAW-02a and MAW-02b Balls are being made right now to get rid of our aging Mistral line of worker pods with guns. I can't call them mobile armors with a straight face. We now have a contingent of Balls large enough to protect the colony. This was a massive improvement given the Mistral was never good enough to protect Heliopolis. I've heard that pirates and mercenaries have access to the GINN now, so why weren't there any here to protect us? Or even a single Izumo?
Orb has always been a big advocate of armed neutrality. It's what we practice near the homeland with our fleet. Why not do the same for our only civilian colony? We could have been attacked and have to wait days for support to arrive from Ame-no-Mihashira. Heck, that could still happen now, but at least we have 3 "functional" mobile suits and Balls to fight against enemies with. This doesn't include the couple of somewhat completed pre-production Den'an Zons we have here for frame verification. We haven't had time to fit in the beam shields and whatnot yet, but they have the beam sabers and can use the Astray series beam rifle, so they aren't exactly unarmed. The mainland even shipped us some of the Astray test pilots to have them test the units.
I feel bad for those test pilots. They weren't ready for a machine that could keep up with what they wanted. One of them crashed into a wall when testing the updated Astray OS from what I heard from the guys who keep in contact with the mass production team back in the homeland. Supposedly, the people back home have quite a few of those mass production Astrays which are going to be relegated to training machines for their entire service life if the Den'an doesn't have sudden problems in production.
If that happens, I can just use the early type Jamesgun. It's mechanically simpler, and is similar to the Astray in concept. It's only revolutionary size wise in comparison to having integrated beam weapons, having a beam shield, and being smaller than normal units. At least for the first models, the ones that were actually used in combat were changed to include beam shields and stronger reactors to compensate for the strain on the shields but on the original reactor design. I'm not counting the nuclear reactor as an advantage for the sake of argument, because otherwise you have the Zaku I be far ahead of everything here which is kind of wrong.
I guess I shouldn't be saying the Astrays are that terrible. They really aren't as bad as I make them out to be. Being fair to them, they have good performance for a first production machine. They skipped the machines which didn't have miniaturized beam weapons, and went straight to something that with a properly coded OS would be comparable to a GM Ground type. The Battery technology is impressive, and considering the amount of shock nuclear fusion caused people, a requirement following the N-Jammers. This was likely the best powerplant they could use which is honestly more impressive given the machine can run a beam weapon from its own internal battery. That's like running the RX-78-02 Gundam from just the beam rifles E-cap. It just doesn't seem that impressive considering I know how to make multiple different nuclear fusion reactors.
I was under the impression that fusion reactors were commonplace, but they clearly weren't and still aren't that common. Why they didn't figure out nuclear fusion is beyond me, but it's a thing for some reason. I wasn't even the one to discover it. I literally remembered the theory behind the Minovsky reactor right after I woke up one morning. I even remembered the full derivations of how Minovsky discovered his particle and how it was proven all the way to when the first reactors were made. I don't know how this is possible, but it's probably newtype space magic mumbo jumbo like all the other weird things in my life.
My life feels like it's ruled by newtype fuckery at this point. A couple days ago, I had to go out and buy stuff for dinner, and when I came home, time hadn't passed. Time hadn't passed when I was making the food either, but the minute I had finished cooking, time resumed. I only noticed because the market is an hour from my home, and I had to go and come back during the time right before the colony simulates night. It didn't change to night until I started eating. Time exists most of the time, except apparently cooking based on my testing.
I know from Anaheim's teachings that this isn't normal newtype behavior. We confirmed Newtypes under psychoframe boosting can manipulate time, but that mostly was reversal of time, and also possibly time travel based on some of the reports we received regarding the original RX-0's pilot. We assume psychoframe is speeding up whatever is supposed to come from newtypes, but I haven't been under any in my life. I own possibly one single piece of psychoframe, the key, but that shouldn't be powerful enough to cause this. Time distortion only occurred with full frame psycho machines like the RX-0 line, not small fragments. I'm not even sure the key is psychoframe either. I haven't had time to test what it's made of with all my work on our next generation defense technology. My existence raises so many questions that I am not prepared to answer.
The key forces me to ask other questions as well. I found an advanced processor fabricator in the space the key is connected to as well as a terminal which when I looked at it had data on a lot of random science by actual aliens. We knew that there was life on other worlds, but we hadn't confirmed that it was intelligent. Popular consensus regarding Evidence 01 was that the fossil was of some form of naturally occurring space creature similar to cows or whales. The database here was about an intergalactic empire which consisted of multiple species based on how there were multiple differing space suit designs, as well as an honest to god caste system based on some of the documentation on usage.
The database had a lot of technology as well, like ship designs, plasma weapons, infantry level railguns, some advanced cryogenics research and basically everything else you could ever really want. There were also some new mecha designs and an honest to god experimental antimatter reactor. Freaking insane stuff was in here. If we were having issues even producing beam shields, think about how long it would take to build the tools behind the tools behind the tools for the antimatter stuff. It just wasn't worth it at this juncture. Our production could only really take like less than one percent of the stuff here in a realistic timeframe. The current things being introduced were enough for now.
The weirdest part of the information in the database is that there is some stuff specifically designed for humans. As in, an intergalactic civilization had enough humans to design specific spacesuits for them. It's not even one of the previous members of the homo genus either. The data makes it explicitly homo sapiens. It includes a literal anatomic diagram of a run-of-the-mill human. The data doesn't label it as homo sapiens, but it is labeled human.
To add on to the mystery, humans are labeled as being primarily from a different galactic empire called the Imperium of Man. Of course the database didn't include much on them beyond the name being listed in some therapy documents as having traumatized people to run away from the empire made entirely of humans, and some notes about certain technologies being more effective on certain imperial weapons. There was also stuff relating to mind control to make the population compliant, so that is concerning and makes a lot of the therapy stuff suspect. I have to point out how the existence of this Imperium of Man is impossible. This planet is our homeworld, and we haven't even gotten past Jupiter yet. I'm terrified of the implications of this.
It gets even weirder though because there is a random shrine to the Machine God, and a quantum prayerbook. Said prayer book includes mentions of the planet Mars as holy. I'm also a qualified priest of this religion. I have cybernetics now. Kind of. It's complicated. It's like they are there, but they aren't apparent unless I think about it enough. Passively recognizing that I have bionic implants isn't enough to have them show up. It takes some significant conscious focus on them to force them to materialize. I've instinctually used one of the mechadendrites to get me a coffee without thinking about it, but when I tried to make my servo-arm pick up a large crate later it was apparent. I haven't tested if others can see them, but I'm willing to assume yes.
I only noticed them because the prayer book said stuff about replacing the flesh with mighty steel, and that all magi had implants which led me to realize I had cybernetics. I had to spend an hour calming down and reading some of the stories my family wrote in order to calm down. I realized I couldn't really feel the implants after that, so I thought they no longer existed. I had to be completely cognizant of how I had the cybernetics for them to be physical again. Most of the time they aren't there because you don't really think about how you have limbs that often.
I did have to upgrade my servo arm though. It had very little in the delicate handling department before I modified it. It was hard to do it because it was made of some stupidly strong material, but there were weaker parts made of steel so I managed. The upgrades boiled down to basically adding pressure sensors and modifying the way the arm changed the grip strength. The original intervals were, let's say excessively large. I also just added a third section when I realized that I could just add a finer arm instead. It came out less bulky and more refined than the other ones, but that also makes it somewhat against scripture. I painted it Rust Red to appease my religious leanings.
This is all mostly irrelevant to how today was going. Today, my students are still working on Kato's weird exoskeleton thing and trying to work on it.
I got here before everyone like usual. Then Professor Kato got here. He finally had come back a day or two ago. I was informed he had been working on the mobile suit technology, but he wasn't really that helpful from what I had heard. Probably because he taught classes instead of just being on the project. He hadn't yet shown up to any of my informal seminars either. He said something about some of his midterms requiring him to do extra research to determine if they were right. That complaint was common among professors who had a lot of coordinator students according to the other TA's i was acquainted with. I could agree with the statement, but it honestly felt the same as dealing with a really driven natural. Most of the coordinator students in the class I TA'd for were doing the bare minimum to have good grades like their natural counterparts. The only difference was how much effort constituted the bare minimum.
The Professor was happy with the progress our students had made on the exoskeleton, but he hadn't really discussed with me anything about the Astrays. He probably was just tired from all the proofs he had to grade and whatnot. I know I was whenever I had to grade stuff for his class.
Now we were stuck here waiting for the kids to show up.
Oh sweet, the door opened. Finally I can do something instead of just sitting here thinking about how strange my life is.
"Hey Kuzzey, you're the first one here." I said a little befuddled. Kuzzey is usually the last one to show up. He's the slacker of the group. "Go check in with Professor Kato and get to work."
I uhh, don't really know how to make this work with just him. Miriallia and Kira have most of the code on their laptops, and Tolle is the guy who pilots it. Kuzzey is a hardware specialist, and he has been done with his part of the project for a while. Kuzzey has been stuck doing maintenance for like a week. It's a shame he drew the short stick for who gets to be the guy in the suit.
"Professor what am I supposed to do?" Kuzzey said aimlessly looking around the room.
"I don't really know," I responded, scratching my head a little. "Go email Miriallia about if she can send you the code so you can do something. Or just mess around until she gets here. It doesn't really matter,"
"Thanks teach!" The shit eating Grin on Kuzzey's face told me all I needed to know about how much work he'd be getting done.
"Yo Kuzz, what's big in the gaming sphere recently? I've been swamped with work, so I haven't really had time to check on what's going on." I asked awkwardly trying to make small talk, he's not doing much else so we both might as well do something useful with our time.
"Nothing really new has dropped since Christmas to be honest."
"Damn, that sucks. Has anything really interesting happened since classes started up again?"
"It's the same as usual. People gossiping about who is dating who and all that jazz. The most interesting thing was a damaged pipe on the second floor of the chemistry building."
"Hey, that's something. Was it to the bathrooms?"
"No, one of the sinks just didn't work until they fixed it. Class ended early because of it." I said as I was interrupted by the door opening. Thank god, talking to Kuzzey is hard.
I turned around to go check who came in. As expected it was Toelle and Mirallia. The two were still in that cute honeymoon period where they did their best to be together as much as possible. I wish I had a relationship like that with Flay, but our majors are just too different to have that be feasible. She also doesn't wake up early enough for that to work either. I swear she sleeps like a cat or something.
"Miralia, you have the code right? I need you to pass it around so everyone else can work on it." She nodded, which was nice. Tolle and Kuzzey however both groaned simultaneously. "Guys, this project needs to be finished by March. We need it for that big engineering event. You are almost done, just suck it up for a bit."
The room had a bunch of extra disks to make hard copies of where we were now so it would be easier for us to hold onto. I thought it was a weird thing because emails existed, but who am I to judge the practices of the school? Copying the code took very little time, so we were mostly fine. Kira likely hadn't actually changed it since he left yesterday, so he was going to be behind on what it actually said. Miriallia actually works outside of class instead of watching the news all the time like some of the people in this project.
The codehad only slightly changed since I had gotten my abilities, but they had almost gotten it working fully, but they didn't need to know that. The sooner we are done the sooner I have free time. I was done with my version of a working code, but this was their project. I couldn't take away their achievements like that. Mine was only useful as something that could help me guide people to the correct version.
"Mirallia, how's it been?" I trusted her to have more information about stuff. She was social enough to not exclusively know about the people in this room. Mirallia also was close enough with Flay to know if she was doing fine or not. I honestly don't need to know about how Flay is doing, I could always ask her myself, but it's always awkward when we talk to each other. I think the whole being engaged thing is really messing with our ability to communicate.
"It's been going fine. One of my friends finally got asked out by her crush. It was agonizing watching the two of them dance around the question, but it's finally over!" She chattered enthusiastically. "There isn't any major homework yet either so this semester is going to be great!"
"That's good. It's the start of the semester though, so keep an eye out for when it does get harder. I know you'll do fine though. Tolle might be in for a beating though. Mechanical operations has a horrid spring semester for Freshmen." I said, causing Tolle to look over at me. "I think it has something to do with moving from simulators to actually using a Mistral. One of my friends had his unit break midtest last year. He still gets mad about it to this day."
"Relax. I did practice last semester. I made the whole squad do it and everything. You were there!" Tolle said butting into the conversation.
"I know. You almost hit like 4 separate asteroids. We weren't even that far from the colony." I said poking a hole in his confidence, to which he at least had the decency to look embarrassed about.
"That was because a ship had a cargo door malfunction. It wasn't my fault." He tried to bluster.
"I know, I'm just messin with you. You'll do better than most of your classmates. Now get back to work." I said putting the conversation to rest, of course I didn't want to mention the Ball because Tolle wasn't going into the military. I don't think we're going to be seeing civilian Ball designs for a while.
I got back to watching them do work. There wasn't going to be that much done compared to when Kira was here, but at this point I was fine with him being a little late. They were close enough to being done, I can spend a second working on my own project list. Mainly some aquatic units. I blanked out on those and just didn't make any. A simplified aqua-javelin would work. Converting the tech to work with the Den'an's design would be a challenge, but it's as good as I can do for now. Any other design would just not fit the MS doctrine I have advocated for.
"Mirallia, can you go get Kira? I need to talk to him about some work I gave him." Professor Kato said tiredly as he was grading the homework he assigned last week. I don't know why is asking the only person who's doing work to leave instead of Kuzzy and actually have him do something.
"Sure thing." Miriallia said as she walked back out of the room, to which Tolle left soon after that.
Which just left Kuzzey still working, which was a change of pace for the slacker but at least something was getting done.
"I'm going to a staff meeting in a minute. Sai, you're in charge. Before I forget about it, I need you to give this disc to Kira when he gets here. It's important."
I don't know what's on this and I don't need to know, it's between Kira and Kato so there's no need to be nosey.
"Man Kuzzey, why is everyone having to leave for a bit today?"
"I dunno, but it lets me slack off more."
"I'm going to ignore what you just said."
Someone else is coming in. Wait, this isn't anyone who should be in the room. This girl was clearly trying to look like the shadiest person in the world with that getup. Like really, a trench coat in brown and a newsboy hat? It's like looking at the world's worst spy.
I swear I know her from somewhere.
"Hey, why are you here?"
"I'm looking for Professor Kato."
"He's in a staff meeting. What are you here for?"'
She's shifting uncomfortably
"Uhh, class stuff."
"I'm a TA for most of his classes. You could ask me about it if it isn't about your grades." I had already moved closer to her, so that Kuzzey would be further away.
"Uhhh" she stuttered nervously, I could tell that wasn't why she was here. It's one of those newtype things. You could kinda feel people are lying even if they weren't newtypes. She also looked incredibly shady, so even basic intuition could see something was wrong. A student wouldn't be wearing this getup if they actually wanted to speak with him. For all I know, this is a spy probing for military secrets. "I know you're lying, why are you really looking for him.?" I am still moving closer and she was still fidgeting like this wasn't something she expected.
Wait, I DO recognize this person!
"Cagalli? What are you doing here? I thought you weren't going to technical college."
"I wanted to talk with the professor."
"Why? Is he involved in the drug trade? What business could you possibly have with him that couldn't be done via a conference call?"
"It's important, just tell me where he is. Wait, do I know you?"
"Cagalli we've known each other for 10 years and No I can't tell you. He's busy. and you look ridiculous. If you didn't want anyone to recognize you, you should have gone with an oversized hoodie and headphones instead of this mess. You stand out too much. Anyone who actually pays attention to the news or actually remembers that ORB has a nobility system would recognize you. You are incredibly lucky most people that would be going to this college don't care about that stuff, and that the majority of the people in ORB just forget we aren't their homeland half the time."'
"Wait, Sai? What are you doing here?" Cagalli asked, realization spreading across her face.
"I'm getting a degree in engineering. That and working here but I only started a couple weeks ago. I'm the one who is supposed to be asking questions here. I'm in charge, maybe I can help."
"I'm here looking into mobile weapons development…"
"You're here to talk about my Balls?!?!" As I said that, Mirallia, Toelle and Kira entered the room. "Wait, that came out wrong."
That sounded vaguely like an innuendo. I'm going to get my shit rocked and I can feel Kuzzey stare into the back of my head. There is no way I am getting out of this situation without either pissing someone off, or looking like I am in a relationship with someone. I've spent over a year carefully cultivating the image of someone who is single and unimportant. If Kira, the guy who spends time actually watching the news, notices who she is, I'm done for. Screw it, I can sacrifice the single angle to keep national security intact. My image is worth less than what is probably a military problem.
"So is this your girlfriend Sai?"
"Toelle, shut it."
That's about as evasive as I can be without explaining military stuff. I also am denying it which hopefully pacifies Cagalli, but will definitely confirm it from their point of view.
"Wait, she's a girl?"
Damn, Kira made the biggest mistake when dealing with Cagalli. Mistaking her for a guy. I swear I've seen her beat the shit out of people over it. Rest in peace. You will be missed. Well at least I don't have to worry about Kira recognizing her.
"Of course I am. What did you think I was?" Cagalli shouted indignantly, shooting him a scathing glare.
Luckily I have just the life line to save him from the mess he got into. "Kira, here is the stuff Kato wanted you to work on. I expect everyone to be working when I come back."
"Even more work? I barely finished everything yesterday."
"Kira, you are studying at a technical institute run by Morgenrote. This could be important."
"Like they would let teenagers do anything of value."
Oh, how wrong you are my friend. How wrong you are.
"I know, but take this seriously. You're probably going to get hired by Morgenrote post graduation, and this extra work is going to help your career. Do you have any idea what it is?"
"It's probably just a program analysis or something."
"Kira, I'm just going to warn you not to piss off that girl. I've known her for years, and she could very easily kick your ass." I whispered that to not attract too much attention.
He looked confused about why I was warning him, but that's fine. I have gotten the information across. "So anyway, I need to go finish my very important conversation in private. You people need to keep working while I'm gone."
Just move through the door and toward the weapons development stuff. I'm not entirely sure how she found out, but she could be working on behalf of her father, so I should be taking it seriously. The hallway, while not exactly secure, is practically deserted most of the time.
"If we are going to talk, can we at least use the other language and not Japanese? It's safer."
Back in the olden days, Orb was a thing that was separate from the rest of the world. It was never conquered, and no one really ever thought much of it. We had a unique culture and everything back then which included a language. You can generally track where and how the nobles of Orb came from in that era. Except for my family. We were always the Argyles, and just kinda showed up one day. It's weird.
This all changed a bit after World War 3. We had such a large influx of migrants from Japan we had to change the official language to it. A lot of that original culture got lost after that, but simultaneously Japan lost out on its culture to other things at the same time. The only people I know who still remember the old culture are the nobility.
"Fine. What the heck was with you going on about your Balls?" Cagalli snapped as she swapped to Orbian.
"You were asking about mobile weapons. I just designed one called the Ball a few weeks ago. I thought that's what you were talking about."
"No! I'm looking into ORB working on mobile suits for the Earth Alliance." Cagalli said, much to my bafflement.
Like, What? No really, What? Why on earth would we do that? The Alliance has no major technological advantage to offer besides the lightwave barrier stuff Artemis has, and that technology is somewhat considered a dead end. It's also the exclusive stuff of the Eurasians, and if they won't share that with their allies, why would they share it with us?
"That's fucking ridiculous. I'm working on our mobile suit development project, and nothing about it suggests we ever worked with the Alliance."
"So we do have a mobile suit development project?"
"Yeah, we technically already have a completed design. It's already being phased out for a better one called the Den'an Zon, but it's still in testing. It honestly shouldn't be, but for some reason no one ever trusts me when I say the design works and has been used before." Great, and now she is just staring blankly at me like I grew a second head. "Is it something I said?"
"Yes. Everything you just said sounds like a lie. There is no way you are working on top secret military projects."
"But I am. It's equally ridiculous that the equivalent of a princess made her way to a space colony just to check if her government was working with an alliance of nations and yet here we are."
"That's different."
"In what way is it different?" I responded indignantly.
"Weapons development is way harder."
\
"Yeah, but it's not like we are really developing anything new." I conceded. Hmm industrial constructor bits would be something new. Hmm "We are just kinda cranking out old designs with modernization."
"There aren't any old mobile suits. The earliest ones are like 5 years old."
That's both wrong and stupid, but whatever.
"Seriously, why didn't you just talk to one of the Sahaku's or something? They would know if this was happening or not. Morgenrote is the national arms manufacturing company. It would have taken like 5 minutes."
"I was literally told about the Alliance connection by the test pilots of the Astrays."
"You mean Juri and her weird friends? I literally worked with them on mobile suits, and asked them about the development of the Astrays. Why did they tell you and not me?"
"Because they are my friends, and they thought I knew about it already?"
"I'm literally their boss now. You don't leave your boss in the dark about important information like this. Unless they already expected me to know that stuff already…"
"So are we going to look for the Alliance Machines?"
"Wait, they are building their units here?!!?"
"As far as i know, yes that is what is happening."
"The fact we haven't been attacked yet is a miracle. Also no, we aren't. Alliance forces are trigger-happy, and we would be basically giving them high value political prisoners if we aren't shot on sight."
"So what should we do?"
"Take it up with Gina I guess? I'm going to push up some pilot training I'm supposed to be giving on mixed unit tactics. I have a feeling we are going to be attacked in the next couple of days."
*KABOOM*
"Or right now. Sure that might as well happen. We need to get outside."
"Wouldn't a building be safer?"
"If you want to get crushed by debris, stay here. That hallway should lead to the shelters in the factory district. I'm going to go get my machine to fight whoever is attacking us."
It's always annoyed me that the hallways leading outside the college don't have doors. I mean sure, it's convenient for students who are late to an applied engineering class, but there is always the chance someone would put a classified project there. Oh, that's where the alliance put their machines. Fun. How did I not know about this if their information security is so shit? So we reverse engineered the Astray from those units. I can see where we went wrong. We focused on stealing the one which looks under armed, but probably has optional equipment instead of what looks to be a transformable unit.
Why would they even design one right now? They aren't even fielding their own units, and they decided to make a transformable machine? Was it to easily transfer pilots from the mobile armor division to mobile suits? Heck that one over there has a bunch of nozzles all over the body to disperse something. Possibly beam chaff? Or maybe it's for that colloid stuff people have been passing off as a miracle technology. There could be potential in the Collid technologies. Whatever, just move away as fast as possible. Get somewhere else, and unleash one of my mobile suits, and defeat the enemy. Simple.
Oh great, and Cagalli decides now is the time to have a breakdown about us not being neutral.
"Cagalli, we need to move before they spot us. You'll have time to rue your father or whatever once we are away from here."
"Fine."
And so we moved away from the people packing up their equipment and went toward a more secure location. Said location was just a railing closer to one of the shelters built into the superstructure of Heliopolis which wasn't that far away from the open area that held the alliance mobile suits, but that's the Alliance's fault for having the shittest operational security i have ever seen.
"I'm so pissed I didn't know we were working with the Alliance. I could have better prepared us for a battle for an attack. I'm sure the Ball teams can hold the entrances to the Colony, but we don't know how many enemy forces have arrived."
"Can I have my breakdown now?"
"Yes. I'm going to summon my mobile suit"
"Your what?" I snapped my fingers as I focused on the image of the mobile suit as I Summoned the Jegan. It's not my most powerful Unit, and if we are about to fight a fleet or something I would prefer the Gundam X. It is too bad the Moon is on the other side of the planet, and I need a direct line for the Satellite Cannon to turn on. The Jegan however is meant for fighting around colonies, and has enough optional parts to overcome the enemy if i have to go resupply.
The snap wasn't required for the summon, but it looked cool.
The machine appeared with its cockpit open, and lucky for us the railing was the correct height to get onto the rope without any issues..
Was I entirely sure of how this ability worked given I just figured out this was possible? No, but this isn't the time for questions. It's the time for action.
Cagalli however, had plenty of questions.
"I… What… How?"
"Newtype bullshit."
"That explains nothing!"
"Ask me later when we aren't under attack. Go to a shelter or something. I don't remember you being qualified for vehicle combat."
"Neither are you."
"Actually, I am a qualified Mobile Suit Pilot and engineer."
I jumped to the rope and got inside my Mobile Suit. The best use of my time is going outside to take on the enemy trying to breach our defenses, but I can't be sure no one has infiltrated the colony and is trying to destroy the Alliance prototypes. However, these people brought war to my country. I'm not going to help them as much as they like.
Saving their asses might get us enough leverage to get the designs for the other prototypes. I want to know just how badly these people messed up the transformable unit. It can't be good given how my very casual look at some of the other prototypes tells me we corrected some of their flaws like the lack of beam sabers.
Now I just need to close the cockpit and get on with the battle.
"Wait your ass up."
"Why the fuck are you trying to get into my mobile suit???"
"I'm not fucking doing nothing while we are being attacked."
"Fine, get in the backseat. I don't have time to deal with this."
"This is Sai Argyle, Jegan, Launching!"
I've always wanted to say that.
"What do you mean Jegan? I thought the new model was called the Den'an Zon?"
"Yeah, this is a different machine. Much older."
"When did we build this? This isn't an Astray."
"No, it's the RGM-89R Jegan A type. Built by Anaheim Electronics way back in the day."
"Anaheim Electronics?"
"Yeah, the people who trained me in mobile suit design. They are based out of the moon."
She looked down like she was contemplating what I was talking about. Good for me as well so I can actively plan what I need to do.
I'm just going to go out there and disable the enemy ships. Getting prisoners is better than us just killing everyone. We get leverage out of the PLANTS for prisoner exchange, and if they ignore us… Well, Orb accepts coordinators as part of its population. Effectively flying around using the Jegan without really having to care if someone notices me is nice. My training of our current defense team has been going somewhat well, but I keep having to care if civilian traffic sees us. Sure, I've been using the Daughtress for the training, but it's nice to finally cut myself loose. I'm lucky that the colony doesn't really have large buildings or anything. Makes it very easy to maneuver myself through the sky toward the outside of the colony.
"Is this what being in a mobile suit is like?"
"Oh I would say the experience of a Jegan is like a six out of ten. It's no Gundam, but it's pretty ok. Especially for a sixty year old machine."
"A Gundam? Sixty years old?"
"The thing the Astray units were trying to copy, you uncultured swine. Read a history book sometime Also, i'm just talking about the design. This unit is a RGM-89R, so it's probably closer to thirty if this one isn't a refit variant."
"That doesn't inspire much confidence."
Great, she just had to start insulting my pride and joy. I mean I had time to paint the family crest on the shield and everything. That takes work.
"Zaku II's can last literal centuries with minimal maintenance, and this machine is much more economical than that. I also do vigorous maintenance with a giant water hose. Trust me, we aren't going to die in this thing unless I drop the ball and we die in the battle."
Ok, take stock of the current battle area. The Balls seem to be holding the GINNs off very well. It's nothing decisive, but it's clear we are holding ground. Must be the experience the GINN pilots have. A full year of combat does make you a competent pilot no matter how bad your machine is.
We are facing two ships, one Laurasia and one Nazca. I think that maps out to like twelve mobile suits total that our enemy can field. I'm only seeing three right now. Could they be trying to steal the prototypes? If so that knocks down the total number of enemies right now to four if they are trying to steal the Astrays as well, seven if we pretend they don't know about them.
Enemy mobile suits count up to three GINN and a CGUE that just got launched from that Nazca. That leaves the enemy either out of mobile suits or there are three enemy units that haven't been launched yet.
I guess if we want to consider anyone else as allies, we have a single Alliance Supply ship of a class I don't recognize, and 2 moebius's. Oh shit, there's also a Moebius Zero. Damn, that's wild. You don't see those that often.
The CGUE and Moebius Zero are busy dueling each other. I can safely ignore them. That supply ship is being focused on more than our people which is good I guess. No idea why it launched out of the Hangar, but whatever. Best course of action is to take out the Catapults. Make it harder for them to launch new units.
Damn, Comms are jammed. That's going to make things harder.
"Are you insane you're going to fight two warships with a machine gun?!"
"No. We've got a beam rifle, a grenade launcher, beam sabers, and missiles. Actually, you could look at it on the little screen next to your seat. It has labels for what we have on this suit. The screen is in training mode, so you won't be able to use the weapons or anything."
Just move with the flow of the Battle. Use the big beam saber, really mess them up. Ginn moving to intercept me. Okay, go for the head and arms. Keep as much of the enemy around as possible for interrogation or diplomatic favors. He's moving in with his sword. Good. Dodge the telegraphed swing, and use the upside down U slash to take out the arms and head in one motion.
One down.
I need to move on to the ships. You take out the motherships, you end the battle. The Crossbone Vanguard proved that decades ago. Take out the Nazca First, it's faster and could more easily run from this battle. It's where the commander of this operation probably is, and I need to take him down now. Force a cease fire before civilians get taken out. I don't have a bazooka or anything, but I do have a beam rifle. That's more than enough to take out the primary beam cannons. I can't leave those intact without risking some sort of suicide attack if the commander is salty.
*PCHEW*
*PCHEW*
Cannons down, now for the catapult. Removing the catapult gives more time to react to enemy machines which is very helpful given how green everyone around me is.
*BZTZ*
Shit, railguns. That was close. They almost hit me with that… Fine, I'll just go from underneath and take out the catapult that way.
*PCHEW. *
And that's a two for one special.
Next is the engines. I can't let these people get away. Funny thing about the Nazca class, two thirds of its primary engines are parallel to each other. Beam rifles are known to be extremely good at penetrating enemy vessels. Quick blasts here, here, and here. And now its thrust is crippled.
On to the Laurasia class vessel.
Laurasia's are just big gunboats that happen to have an MS catapult and storage location. I can tell the Ball team took great offense to the Laurasia attacking their home. It looks like shit. Multiple of its weapons are clearly no longer operable, the catapult is damaged, and I think part of the ship is venting atmosphere. I guess I can leave it to the Ball guys.
Ball team has finally cleared out the GINNs as well. I'm not seeing much on our side for losses which is nice. There's still a single CGUE out. Is it still distracted with that Moebius Zero?? God that is horrible. They've been fighting this entire battle and haven't done anything clearly relevant to this battle. Like how are they still around? Are these two newtypes? I can sorta feel them a bit, but it's faint. Yeah, I guess that explains how the CGUE guy is still alive. Newtypes are almost always good at piloting. And the fact he seems to just be dueling the Moebius guy which leaves the rest of the ZAFT force more or less undefended, and we clearly took advantage of that fact.
Honestly, it looks like the ZAFT forces were more occupied with fighting the Alliance forces than us. I don't know why, We are the bigger threat, but I guess they didn't know that. Rest in peace random Alliance Transport ship. You will be missed. Same as that one Moebius pilot. They could have waited and let us handle it, but clearly they didn't trust our top tier security.
We are still launching new Balls as well, so it's clear we are winning rather decisively at the moment. Some of the Balls are moving to take out the rest of the Nazca's weapons. I don't see the Astrays yet, but it could just be the communications jamming messing with our ability to organize.
Shit, the CGUE guy is breaking off from the duel. I think he's just realized his entire unit is either dead or about to be captured. And, of course he is coming for me. Great.
At least this one is trying to use a ranged weapon on me. Sure it's not apparent that my machine is a close combat specialist, but you would think these people would save fixing bayonets for when they run out of ammo. That's a lot of ammo he has. He keeps spamming it at me like that's going to significantly affect his probability of hitting me. He's clearly not thinking straight enough to properly lead shots on me or anything. Must be super angry his people got taken down by what must look like weird mobile armors.
I should probably start counter attacking or something. Letting him run out of ammo is fine and all, but I need to end this as fast as possible. I'm pretty sure they had people infiltrate the colony to cause those explosions, and we need to take care of them as soon as possible.
"Eat vulcan pod rounds." Are they good for taking out enemies? No. They are, however, good zoning weapons. I just need this guy to stay still long enough to stab him in his stupid face.
*Brrirring*
Oh sweet a newtype connection, I've never experienced one of these. I wonder what will happen
…
And he just got hit by one of the Ball cannons. It was only the close combat type, but it still fucked up the machine. This is the perfect time to swoop in and disable the enemy. Damn, Ball team is crushing it today. I shouldn't underestimate them as much as I have been recently.
"I'm going to try comms for their surrender."
"You should have done that earlier. You absolutely destroyed them. And you said this was an old machine?!? Since when have you been this good at fighting?"
"Are you going to surrender now? Your ships have been disabled, your mobile suits are trashed, and whoever is inside the colony will be found and captured shortly."
"This is Black Coat Fredrik Ades of the Vesalius. We surrender."
"Is the coat thing supposed to mean something? Are you the captain or something?"
"I am the second in command. The actual captain just got taken out while in his CGUE."
"That's good enough for me. The Orb Union accepts your surrender. You will answer for your crimes of breaking the neutrality agreement at some point to be determined later. You are to get your crewmembers to disarm and wait for us to board your vessels. If you try anything we will destroy your ships." I opened up a line directly to the people in charge of the colony. "Orb command, The enemy has surrendered. Someone go call up the space forces and bring them here. We don't have the facilities to hold all these people last I checked."
"This is going to get complicated isn't it?"
"Yeah think?!"
----Perks Obtained.
Workshop/3D Fabricator GUNNM
Powered tools for cyborg disassembly and repair. Bulky diagnostic computer, ten kilograms of miscellaneous spare parts, very rare compact 3D fabricator capable of milling custom components and printing or repairing circuitry.
The Dark Crystal (azeroth) 200
Draenei use crystals that are, possibly, native to their homeworld for almost all aspects of their daily lives. Even their technology, magic, and homes are made of these crystals. Certain Artificers are capable of 'Programming' these crystals to do certain things ranging from protecting an entire city in a shield or powering magitek spaceships that can travel the void of space. You now have their knowledge of these ancient arts and are capable of incorporating this magitek into your own technology or magic.
What's this Do? [200cp] (Discount Engineer)
The technology used in the frontier can be so complex and advanced it takes years for even the most<br />
brilliant minds to understand. Really now? That's good, you needed something to do after lunch today.<br />
Now, even if your in a dropship in the middle of a fire fight, you can decipher the inner workings of<br />
technology so long as you have the controls to scre- I mean analyze.<br />
Titan Hangar [Free]
A sophisticated auto-factory, this attachment to the warehouse will manufacture any Titan you have the plans for. The designator now causes one of these Titans to be deployed to the point you designate in a drop pod when used. Once deployed, another Titan won't be produced until you return it to the warehouse or it is destroyed.<br />
Additionally, a Titan is now constructed once a day for free, but if you want more than one Titan per day, it will still construct you more if you can feed it the necessary raw materials.
Constructor Drone and AI Kernel
This drone is an automated constructor unit, capable of building simple machines and buildings on its own and more complicated structures and technologies under your direct supervision, so long as it has materials to work with. Its tools can be easily customized or replaced with new or different technologies. Moreover, its software includes a kernel that can be used to grow specialized AI and VI systems optimized for various computational substrates and tasks that are always loyal to you.
