MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM RAGNAROK
Prologue – Wandering Minds
In the cockpit, there was silence. Inside, a figure sat, hands folded across his lap, watching the monitors in front of him, but at the same time not really watching at all. His dull grey eyes were looking well beyond the screens to his front and sides at something not at all physically there. A few thin strands of deep, forest green hair hung down in front of his eyes, but all the same he didn't notice them. He stared into his something unseen, and all around the silence continued. There was then a pop and a hiss, and the crackling of static thinly masking a man's voice.
“Alright, the plan is simple. We take out the ship while the escort has its pants down. Johann, Nina, that's your job. I don't care how, just make it stop moving. Once they snap to and actually get their suits out, the rest of us'll clean them up.” The man's voice was stern and resolute, and prompted an immediate affirmative response from the others. The pilot with grey eyes, however, remained silent, and continued to gaze distantly.
“Resistance should be nil. Standard freighters don't carry anything but a couple machineguns on them and for this kinda low priority supply run, the escort's only gonna be a few rookies who see this sort of mission as paid vacation. We'll be blindsiding kids who can barely lift a gun to save their lives. Regardless though, we're sticking with standard formation. No need to get fancy. Do you copy?”
“All ears, chief,” came the voice of a second man, Adrik. His tone was lighter, more nonchalant. As if the mission was of no concern whatsoever.
“Sasha? Do you copy?” again came the first man's voice. The grey-eyed pilot continued his silence.
“Sasha? Sasha. Sasha!” As if a light came on, his dull eyes blinked to life, focusing keenly on the screen directly before him. Accompanying the audio was a small window in the lower corner, where a older man with tied-back grey hair eyed him sharply.
“Sir,” came Sasha's belated reply. He quickly took a look around to re-orient himself with his surroundings.
“<Goddammit Sasha, not this again,>” the man sighed in a fluent and cutting Russian, hanging his head with a slow shake of frustration.
“Sorry sir, it won't happen again,” Sasha spoke in a low, indignant tone. With resumed composure, he took hold of the control grips in front of his seat and tried to focus himself on the task at hand. They had done this many times before, so he didn't bother to ask about what he missed.
“<'Ay Yuri, maybe if we get Sasha laid in port next time he'll stop dreaming about it during missions, ah?>” Adrik teased in his naturally sleazy accent. Sasha's brow twitched in annoyance.
“Can the chatter. We launch in five,” Yuri snapped to the both of them, raising his head. Immediately, the window in the corner of Sasha's forward screen cut out, and Sasha quickly shook his head to rid himself of the few lingering ghosts of his daydream that remained. On the screens in front of him, the outside world was completely visible, showing an expansive hangar opened out into the emptiness of space. A pair of long catapults sat perpendicular to the hangar door, and seated on both were a pair of stocky, humanoid machines. Mobile suits, just under eighteen meters in height and crouched in a takeoff position, kneeling down with one wide foot in front of the other and each cradling a large bazooka-like weapon in its arms. They were Gargoyle types, painted a dim grey with hints of an ornate black insignia on the right shoulder armor having been scraped off. Their single red camera-eyes focused ahead of them, whirring as the lenses adjusted into focus. Piloting them were Johann and Nina.
“Autolycus Class in visual range,” came a female voice, rough and masculine in tone. “They haven't spotted us.”
“If the crew actually did their job worth a damn they'd already be evading,” Yuri replied. “Of course if they want to give us an advantage, I suppose I shouldn't complain.”
As they waited, the large freighter lumbered into range. It was wide and boxy, numerous containers held in internal compartments over a small mobile suit hangar of its own. Larger in mass than the smaller and sleeker Antigone Class that Sasha and the others were stationed in, but almost completely unarmed, and helpless barring its mobile suit escort. On the side of the ship was an insignia. A black eagle, encircled by gold, vine-like bands that intertwined with one another. A beautiful, altogether ominous symbol, and one that this Antigone’s crew held no kind reverence for.
Nearing the point of ambush, the freighter slowed and turned slightly. In its path was a debris field, the decimated hulls of several similarly-sized ships left behind from a bygone conflict. The bulky Autolycus was far too ponderous to successfully navigate through the field, and its crew was forced to make their best attempt at skirting the outer rim of it before setting themselves back on their assigned path. They failed to acknowledge the possibility that there might be a smaller vessel laying in wait among the wreckage. Or that their turning to avoid the field might be the signal for them to be attacked.
“Nina, out!”
“Johann Goebel, heading out!”
With a pair of voices announcing departure, the Gargoyle units on the catapults suddenly shot forward, the screeching hiss of the catapults accompanying their departure. Leaping into space and springing to life, the two stocky units darted with surprising agility around the surrounding debris, heading directly for the freighter. With their approach hidden, Johann and Nina's target didn't even notice their approach until they burst into the clear space beyond the field, flying just over the freighter before making a quick turn to face it. Though its slow and ponderous pace increased somewhat, the ship's mobile suit deck and its defensive weapons remained silent. Its crew had been caught completely by surprise as expected, and Johann and Nina had already readied their weapons and began their initial attack run on the ship before the machineguns on its port side finally opened fire.
Putting the machinegun fire between them, the Gargoyle duo split up, Nina heading for the ship's rear while Johann made a break for the bridge. Weaving from side to side to avoid getting hit, Johann hefted the Gargoyle's bazooka weapon onto its left shoulder, and upon pulling up sharply to free himself from the stream of gunfire, let fly with a shot that landed just behind the ship's bridge, decimating the port gun battery. With one silenced, Johann hefted his suit over the top of the freighter with a half-cartwheeling motion and aimed straight down, putting a shell through the second battery on the stern side of the ship before it could even draw a bead on him.
“That's both defensive turrets down. Nina, how's it coming with the engines?” Johann said, re-orienting his suit to an upright position.
“Yeah, about that. I could use a goddamn hand here,” came Nina's reply through a haze of static. Out of the corner of his eye, Johann noticed the flash of gunfire emanate from under the ship.
“What's the situation?”
“They fucking placed another turret under the hull, that's what! Now get your scrawny ass down here and help me out, I can't get an aim with this thing shooting at me!” Nina spat. Wincing from the volume of her voice, Johann sighed and dove down along the ship's stern in order to get the jump on the turret from behind. As he dove however, he found himself nearly blindsided as he crossed the ship's hangar. Ducking, he just barely avoided being plowed into by a quartet of Gargoyles in standard beige-on-gunmetal paint schemes. After an unreasonably unprofessional delay, the freighter's escort finally sortied. They split in four directions, with two units entering the debris field, one moving to attack Nina, and another wheeling around to face Johann, training its mid-sized assault rifle on his own suit.
“<Shit!>” Johann quickly jerked to one side to avoid the enemy suit's opening salvo and reflexively fired a round back at the assailant. It was a near miss, and the enemy Gargoyle dove back and readied itself to fire again. As it did though, a flash of white-hot metal sprang from the debris field and shot straight through the suit's neck before burying itself in the hull of the freighter. It was a large combat knife, its blade heated to the point of glowing. Immediately, the Gargoyle's monoeye went dark, and its inexperienced pilot floundered desperately in space, now blind to the outside world. Taking the opportunity, Johann grabbed the knife out of the hull with his free hand and rushed forward, burying it in the disabled suit's cockpit. The suit went limp. Looking past it, he could see the occasional glint of gunfire within the debris field, and another Gargoyle—this one bearing friendly colours—approaching him.
“Johann, throw me the knife,” came Sasha's voice as he flew by. Pulling the blade from the downed suit, Johann tossed it to Sasha, who caught it without so much as a slowing in his speed before diving down below the freighter. As he passed, he caught sight of Nina desperately weaving in and out of machinegun fire from both the ship's defensive turret, and a curiously one-armed Gargoyle. Steadying his own rifle, Sasha fired a volley into the enemy suit's back, paralyzing its legs and prompting it to turn and face him. As it did, it caught a killing blow from Nina's bazooka, shattering the upper torso. The Gargoyle down, Sasha quickly jumped forward and strafed the machinegun turret, doing just enough damage to silence it.
“I'm to assume that Gargoyle lost its arm to you?” Sasha inquired flatly.
“Who else?” Nina smirked as she fell back and raised the bazooka towards the ship. With two shots to its underbelly, the ship lurched to one side and slowed to a crawl as it helplessly floated into several large pieces of debris. Its engine had been damaged beyond use, and the entire vessel was now a sitting duck.
“We've disabled the target. Yuri, where are you?” Sasha asked.
“Look to your right,” came Yuri's voice. As Sasha glanced over, he found himself passed closely on his right by a one-legged enemy Gargoyle being pursued by Adrik's personalized unit, larger thrusters roughly attached to the leg armor allowing him to quickly gain on the target. Dogging the enemy with machinegun fire, Adrik herded him around underneath the ship up to the port side, all the while expertly evading the enemy's return fire. Upon emerging from underneath the ship, the enemy unit was pounced from above by Yuri, who buried his combat knife into the suit's shoulder. The arm wielding the gun rendered limp, Yuri kicked off from the hapless suit and fired several rounds into its torso, destroying the Gargoyle.
“That's all of them, area secured. Good job, everyone,” Yuri announced to the others.
“What about the fourth escort?” Sasha spoke up.
“Let's just say he fits in nicely with the debris field now,” Adrik quipped with a smirk.
“By the way, Nina, you fared well out there, all things considered,” Yuri continued.
“Yeah? Well next time, sir, how about we make sure our targets haven't been refit with any nasty surprises before fucking with them,” Nina growled as she rejoined Johann in front of the freighter's bridge, assessing her bazooka's ammunition. Yuri simply shook his head and grinned.
--------
While the mobile suit pilots chattered on, another ship slid stealthily out of the debris field and made a semi-circle around the disabled freighter. It was the smaller Antigone Class, maybe two-thirds the Autolycus' size, and looking decidedly worse for wear with its fading paint job and occasional accents of rust across the hull. Mere cosmetic failings, to be sure however, as the ship operated as smoothly and efficiently as the day it first rolled out. Moreso even, through the efforts of its current crew. It was also much more heavily armed than the freighter, with a pair of massive beam cannon turrets on its bow now training themselves on the derelict Autolycus' bridge. Printed across the hull under the turrets, in faded Cyrillic, was this ship's name: Marzanna.
On the Marzanna's bridge, the lights were dimmed to near blackness, and the room was silent. All around, the vague silhouettes of crewmen sitting over computer consoles could be seen, illuminated only by monitors and what little residual light poured in from the outside. In the center of the small yet spatious room, a tall silhouette stood, faded grey coat masking a shapely, feminine figure. Her face could not be made out in the dark, but in her right hand could be seen a small transceiver handset, a cord on one end running off into the darkness in the general direction of a nearby console. As the Marzanna came to a stop alongside the freighter, she raised the handset to her lips, and broke the on-board silence.
“To those aboard the freighter,” her voice was deep and sultry, and thick with a Russian accent, “as I'm sure you're aware, your defenses have been routed and your engines have been incapacitated. It would perhaps be wise of you to thank the Gargoyle pilots directly in front of you, as it was purely at their discretion in putting a stop to your vessel that you have remained alive up until this point,” she said, nodding to Johann and Nina's units as they held their bazookas half-trained on the freighter's bridge.
“If you wish to remain alive,” she continued, “you would do well to lay down any weapons you may have and prepare to be boarded, and if called to do so, aid my crew in transporting cargo from your ship to ours. Complete cooperation will assure survival. That is all.” Pulling the handset away from her lips, she looked to her right and handed the object to a nearby crewman, adding, “Turn up the lights, we have no reason to remain hidden.”
“Yes, ma'am.”
Immediately the bridge of the Marzanna illuminated, revealing the woman in full. She was dressed in a peculiar combination of an expensive civilian blouse and what looked to be the remnants of a prestigious military uniform, yet it all looked decidedly aged and faded, much like the coat she was draped in. She also wore no makeup, but all the same she was stunningly beautiful, with infinitely deep grey eyes and flowing forest green hair that reached down to the small of her back. Her face wore a calm and unemotive expression as she watched the Gargoyle team board the Autolycus and prepare the Marzanna to take on cargo.
“Are there any other Imperial vessels in the area?” she asked, not once taking her eyes off of the ship ahead of her.
“No ma'am, we're in the clear,” a voice to her left spoke up.
“Good. We have plenty of time.” As she watched, her eyes began to wander. Slowly, her gaze became increasingly fixed on the black eagle crest displayed on the side of the freighter. The bird was splayed outward, contorted with its back arched and wings half-unfurled and circling its body. Its beak was partially closed, and seemed to her to carry a sick, mocking grin, as it gazed at her from within its golden halo. The woman's eyes narrowed. And slowly the world around her began to fade away. Only she and the eagle existed, staring at one another. Silence turned to a suffocating tone, and that suffocating tone gave way to a new sound. A beating—rhythmic—but at the same time wildly chaotic. She recognized the sound. Explosions. Gunfire. Cannon fire. These were the sounds of war.
Sound gave way to visual, and the woman was soon glaring well past the eagle to something horrifying just beyond. The eagle's black body began to writhe, and then break apart, as it became dotted with red lights. Mobile suits. Hundreds of them, eyes burning a bright red as they marched forward. Above them were battleships, a field of them stretching into the horizon, the black eagle marking every one of them. As they approached, another fleet of ships and mobile suits in regal blue and white passed over the woman's head and opposed this armada. She grit her teeth as the two forces met, and fire ignited between them. And quickly spread. But the black armada would not burn, and soon cast the white ships aside as gutted husks. The woman clenched her fists as wave after wave of white ships met the black armada and were torn down. With each wave, she saw faces. The faces of captains, pilots, officers, contorting in anguish and burning.
Eventually, the white ships stopped coming. Save for one. One ship left to face the black armada as it marched onward, unphased. All around this ship, things now burned. The hulls of other white ships, mobile suits, buildings, soldiers. And innocent people. Men, women, and children bearing no uniform. All were burning, and twisting in pain. Aboard the last ship, all alone, stood a single person, watching with horror as everything burned, and as the black armada now stepped over it all, marching upon the burning people and crushing them underfoot. The person ordered the ship to fire, but nothing happened. They ordered it to stand against the armada, but it merely floated in space, unmoving. The person screamed and swore in inaudible words, but it made no difference. The armada advanced further, and the ship did not fight back.
Something new caught the person's eye. Suddenly, an object, impossibly large, appeared between the lone ship and the armada. Its shape could not be determined, but immediately the person recognized it as it grew and fell towards them. The person screamed again, louder and now horrified, as the armada dissolved and wrapped around the object, covering it in a new and brighter flame. The object fell faster, and all around, the sounds of war were replaced by the screams of a million frightened people. Their cries grew in volume as the object fell, and the lone person aboard the ship soon joined their chorus. Everything was white now, as all that person could see was the object burning and overtaking them. And then...
“Chesna!”
Her body tensed and let out a sudden, audible gasp as a hand clapped down on her left shoulder. She was back on the Marzanna's bridge, the Autolycus now slowly pulling away from sight. Around her, the bridge crew continued to work, paying no mind to her sudden start. It was not the first time her mind had wandered on duty.
“<Goddammit, Chesna. It would be nice if you and your brother could avoid daydreaming for more than an hour at a time,>” came a stern voice behind her.
“Yuri...” Chesna exhaled as she pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to clear her head as she turned to face him.
“<Is everything okay?>” Yuri asked in a whisper, his agitated tone of voice quickly dissipating.
“<I'm fine, i-it's just...>” she trailed off.
“<That dream again,>” Yuri finished for her, low enough that the crew around them couldn't hear. Chesna nodded slightly, her head still bowed into her hand. After a brief moment, she let out another sigh and looked up sharply, her composure having been regained.
“I take it the cargo transfer is complete?” her voice was suddenly strong and commanding.
“Yes captain. It seems we won't have to worry about medical supplies for the time being, but the food stores were less than we anticipated, and we're still short on munitions.”
“Hm,” Chesna mused, “food can be attained easily enough in port, but it would have been nice if that ship was at least transporting some clips for the mobile suits' rifles.” She thought for a moment and shook her head, “I suppose it's a good thing we have such a talented team out there. Surely they can adapt to a tighter ammo ration for the time being?” she smiled a small, defeated smile and looked up at Yuri.
“We'll manage,” Yuri replied, answering her smile with a straight, but welcoming expression of his own. “We always do,” he turned slowly to exit the bridge. Barely taking a step, he halted in his tracks and turned back.
“Oh, right. Some of the guys down in the hangar are wondering if you wouldn't mind joining them to celebrate a successful mission. Care to?”
Chesna nodded, “Of course. Just let me stop by my quarters for a moment and I'll meet them in the hangar.”
“They'll be happy to hear that,” Yuri said with a quick salute and an even quicker grin. Turning again, he walked briskly to the door, and out into the hall. Chesna sighed, and glanced over her shoulder to one of the bridge crew.
“Keep the gravity on for the time being. We'll be having a slight celebration down below.” She turned slightly to face the others and continued, “Since we've nothing urgent to attend to, you're invited to join us if you'd like, but those of you on late shift damn well better be sober when you're done.” With that, she strode to the door and herself exited the bridge, a chorus of “yes, ma'ams” and “yes, captains” heralding her departure.
The captain’s quarters seemed utterly removed from the rest of the ship. Small and cluttered, but very stately, with a classical look to it that resembled an admiral’s quarters from an older era. Neglected military banners lay draped all around, either crumpled out of sight or left untouched under a noticeable layer of dust. Picture frames decorated the walls, displaying the faces of family and friends, with the familiar likenesses of the Marzanna’s crew putting in quite a few appearances throughout. The furniture—a desk, a small bed, and several cabinets and dressers—were carefully crafted from a dark, glazed wood, and looked incredibly expensive. It was altogether the epitome of antique.
Entering, Chesna quietly shut the door behind her and drifted to a cupboard at the far end of the room. Taking a half-filled liquor bottle and a rocks glass from the cupboard, she filled the glass a third of the way full and replaced the bottle, leaning against the wall nearby. She took a drink of the potent alcohol and hung her head, touching her fingers to her brow. She hated it. She hated the dream, hated having to go through this routine every time it reared its head. But most of all she hated the fact that she had brought the entire thing upon herself. And not just herself, but everyone aboard the Marzanna. It’s all because of her that the ship was the only thing they could call home. All because of her that they had fallen from lives of privilege to the level of scavengers. And all because of her that everyone they had known outside of the Marzanna had burned underfoot. She hated it, and couldn’t fathom how through all of it, after letting them down so much, they continued to trust her without question. Even Sasha, whom she had failed more than anyone. She wasn’t gifted. She wasn’t the prodigy. Why didn’t they see that, and see her for what she really was?
Letting out a long sigh, Chesna put the glass to her lips and finished off its contents. Inhaling sharply as the taste of alcohol burned on her tongue, she shook her head to clear herself of her self-loathing thoughts and set that glass back in the cupboard. She had stood in the face of Hell and fallen, but these brief private moments were all she allowed herself to reflect upon it. Break time was over. Right now, people were placing their lives in her hands, and though she felt it was undeserved, she planned to do everything within her power not to let them down any further so long as they continued to do so. She grinned. A devious and confident grin. A leader couldn't sulk in front of her subordinates; a leader had to be strong for them and look the part, and she was supposed to be the strongest of all. The Emerald Baroness of Vladivostok's loyal crewmen awaited their cunning and skilled commander, and turning on her heels, she marched to the door, and out to greet them.
At the time, she didn't yet realize that what awaited not even a day away would force her to confront the ghosts she now tried to bury. For now though, her pretend confidence could suffice a little longer.