divergent strike          

Outside, on the upper deck of the Morgenroate factory, a young, platinum haired Coordinator turned to his companions. "It's exactly like Commander Klueze said," he murmered. The cold tone of his voice matched his icy expression. Yzak Jule was a first class ZAFT pilot -- constantly in competition with Athrun. Athrun, for his part, kept as much distance from Yzak as he could.

Next to Yzak, Dearka Elthman snickered. "If we poke them, perhaps they'll come running out of their holes." With straw colored hair and dark skin, the cynical, hot-blooded pilot made a good counter-balance for Yzak. Athrun got the distinct impression Yzak and Dearka made for a dangerous team.

The team watched as things became confused and chaotic down on the Morgenroate factory floor. Their ZAFT battleships must have been detected and caused the panic. They watched as the chestnut-haired female officer in a factory uniform gave orders. She motioned to a trailer loaded with huge containers.

"That's the one," Athrun said. "Our target."

Yzak smiled, "Naturals really are stupid, aren't they?" He pushed the transmitter button.

Athrun squatted beside Nicol Amalfi, fifteen years old (only one year younger than himself, but infinitely more fragile-looking) whose gentle features and quiet manner belied his incredible talents as a pilot. Athrun noticed his nervous gaze. He tapped Nicol's arm and the kid gave him a little grin.

Behind them, Rusty McKenzie teasingly jabbed Nicol in the back. They were all teenage boys, but as Coordinators with heightened abilities, they performed their duties like adults. This mission was no exception.

"It's time," Athrun said.

The counters hit zero - explosions ripped through the factory district - people and equipment were blown apart in the inferno. Secondary explosions tore through the walls. Bedrock crumbled inside the mine. Debris fell like rain. Mobile suits broke through the port and descended on Morgenroate. The killing machines gouged buildings with rifle fire and disintegrated passing vehicles. All hell broke loose. Countless blast tremors rocked the transport station as the new weapons convoy tried to navigate through the pandemonium.

Sensing the advantage, Athrun and his team moved in.

Athrun's team infiltrated the factory and headed directly to the transport exit. Three trailers that carried the Earth Force's new weapons were right ahead of them. Strapped down on those trucks were none other than Earth Alliance's first group of mobile suits!

ZAFT marksmen expertly took out the Earth Force soldiers guarding the suits. Yzak swiftly leapt atop the rear trailer and ordered, "Destroy anything you can't steal! There should be five mobile suits. Are the other two still inside?"

Taking the lead, Athrun said, "Rusty and I'll go check it out! You secure these three!" He signaled to Rusty to head toward the transport exit.

"I leave it to you, then," Yzak agreed. He turned to Dearka and Nicol, who were already climbing into the Earth Force mobile suits. "When you board them," Yzak warned, "make sure that you disable their self-destruct mechanisms immediately!"

A particle beam cut Athrun's answer short; it narrowly missed Kira. A voice shouted over the radio, "What do you think you're doing, Athrun?! What's wrong?"

Kira called up the mobile suit's data on his screen. "The X-102 Duel. An X Number." Of the five Earth Force mobile suits, the blue and white Duel had the most standard specs. Similar to the Strike, it also had beam sabers on both shoulders, a beam hand rifle, and grenade launcher. And it was fast. Very fast. The Duel chased after Kira, firing its rifle. "If this one's too much for you to handle, Athrun, then get going. I'll take it out!"

Athrun couldn't bring himself to intervene in the fight between Kira and his ZAFT comrades. He'd not been able to break through the Archangel's defenses, either. So it was a failure all around. He gaped at the battleship's amazing display of firepower, wondering how the Vesalius was going to escape this one, when a laser communique from the Gamow came over the radio waves, ordering him to retreat.

The entire situation was in shambles. He watched a signal flare shoot up from the Vesalius. The X Numbers were being recalled.

Yzak, piloting the Duel, wouldn't let up despite these orders. He rained fire down on the Strike obsessively. Poor Yzak didn't know that Kira was a Coordinator and that was why he could evade attacks so easily. Athrun knew the boy's pride was wounded, but still, it was his best friend out there.

"Yzak!" he admonished. "We've been ordered to retreat!" But neither Yzak or nor Dearka withdrew. Caught between the two X Numbers, the Strike couldn't approach the Archangel. Kira was trapped.

The color faded from the Strike's armor as the Phase Shift fell away. Of course, the Duel saw it and thrust ferociously with its sword. Kira froze - he was dead meat.

THUD!

Kira felt the G-force of sudden acceleration - his mobile suit was swept away! By the Aegis' taloned arm. Athrun had switched to mobile armor form, transforming into a transporter, grabbing the Strike in time to pull it out of harm's way. "Kira!" Athrun and called out.

"Athrun!"

Kira sat in the cockpit listening to the heated exchange on his radio. The ZAFT pilot of the Duel was chewing Athrun out. "Athrun! What the heck are you doing?!"

"I'm capturing this machine, Yzak."

"Our orders are to crush it, you moron!"

Athrun huffed. "It's better to capture it! Now, retreat!" The Aegis rushed on, the others ZAFT suits close behind.

Yzak flung Athrun up against the row of lockers in the shower room. His handsome face twisted in anger; he grasped Athrun by the collar. "You -- how dare you? If you hadn't butted in like a glory-seeking idiot! Thank to your blalant disregard of orders, the entire mission was a total failure!"

Dearka stood by, mumbling curses and egging Yzak on. Athrun remained silent and kept his arms slack. He and Yzak had never gotten along: Yzak held a long-standing grudge against him. Both Dearka and Yzak had strong ambitions and they regarded Athrun as their top rival. Athrun, in contrast, only wished to serve their cause and avenge his mother. He had no taste for uniform stripes and battlefield fame.

Yzak was about to lay into him again when the door opened. Young Nicol raised his voice. "What's going on in here? Yzak, what the hell are you doing?"

"We had four machines, dammit!" Yzak spat back. "And we couldn't shoot down a single Natural! Not once, thanks to him!"

Nicol responded sharply, "The battle's over. It's done. No use blaming anyone now." Despite his quiet exterior, Athrun had always known that Nicol was a brave soul. With Rusty gone, the role of mediator would most likely fall to the younger boy. Yzak glared at Athrun and then pushed him aside. He stomped out of the room, Dearka following close behind.

The Gamow's bridge overlooked Artemis. On board, Yzak, Dearka and Nicol were in a briefing meeting with the Gamow's commander, Captain Zelman. He was a classic military icon: trimmed beard, crisp uniform, straight shoulders, and a confident manner of speech.

Although he was a captain, military rank among Coordinators worked differently than in the Earth Alliance Force. There was no regimented heirarchy in the ZAFT Army. Posts such as Captain or Commander and so forth were broad-based. Each soldier had a high intelligence clearance and they never blindly obeyed an order. They worked within a system, certainly, but they were expected to be strategists and independent thinkers on the battlefield. Coordinators valued independence and equality.

Nicol stared at a graph of Artemis on a strategy panel. "There's just no way to break through the Umbrella," he said. "Not even with lasers. It's a real mess."

Dearka folded his arms. "You think the Naturals won't attack us again? What do you suggest - just wait until they feel like coming out?"

"Be serious, you guys," Yzak said harshly. "Do you want to send a report back to Commander Klueze, whose ship is out there, wounded, on the front lines, and tell him that we couldn't do a thing to help him? That would be a damned shame."

Nicol spoke up, "Hey. The Umbrella is always open, isn't it?"

"No," Dearka responded. "It's only activated against immediate threats. Most of the time, it's off - gotta save energy. But even if we try and approach while the Umbrella is closed, we'll be spotted well before we're within firing range and it will just come up again." Nicol looked thoughtful. "My machine," he said suddenly. "The Blitz. It might be able to get by without detection." Until now, the other pilots had ignored him, but they all turned their heads at that. Nicol smiled mischievously. "See, it has this cool feature, even better than the Phase Shift."

The Gamow had retreated from the Port of Artemis, but it was still well within range to detect the collapse of the Umbrella's intense energy signature. Nicol had been waiting; he launched the Blitz from the ZAFT battleship. Dearka shook his head as he watched from the deck. Yzak stood beside him. "The Earth Force put together quite a defense," he said. "But Nicol's Gundam will do the trick. Even if he is a little coward."

Just as Athrun's father was a member of the council, so too were Yzak, Nicol, and Dearka's fathers. The young soldiers excelled on their own merits, of course, but Athrun was always aware of the influence the pilots' families had on ZAFT.

On the Gamow's bridge, Yzak, Dearka and Nicol stood at a strategy panel, exchanging ideas. The Vesalius was on its way to return Lacus Clyne to the Lacony Fleet, which left the Gamow to trail after the Archangel. Nicol looked intently at the ship on the panel. "We can certainly persue the Paw - I mean, the Archangel - before it joins the moon base, but..." He made some quick calculations. "We only have about ten minutes before we enter the moon fleet's firing range.

"Then let's not waste those ten crucial minutes," Yzak said. Nicol looked away. "The coward's gone quiet," Dearka said.

Yzak ignored them both. "We have ten minutes to make something happen. Or we can sit here and watch our only opportunity get away."

"I second that," Dearka said. "We won't know if our surprise attack works unless we try it, right?"

Nicol stammered, "I know, but--"

Yzak interrupted, "The Vesalius will return home soon. They'll be greeted with the news that we've sunk the Paw." The boy's eyes lit up; he was thirsty for glory. With the Vesalius away, he could finally get out from Athrun's shadow. "Are you with me?"

"Absolutely!" Dearka replied. Nicol nodded weakly.

The Duel brandished its saber and sprung its Armor Schneider blades from its hips. Kira switched monitors and grasped the daggers jutting out from the Duel faster than the human eye could perceive. The blades had barely ejected before Kira grabbed them and thrust both into the Duel's punctured armor. Sparks jetted as Kira scraped the daggers down the Duel's fuselage. It was a motal blow. The Duel froze.

The Blitz rushed forward and carried the Duel out of range, sweeping the damaged Gundam away like a powerful tide. Nicol radioed from the Blitz. "Dearka! Withdraw! The enemy fleet is on its way!" Those ten precious minutes had long since been up. "Dammit!" Dearka cursed.

The Archangel had remarkable armor and held up better than anyone could have predicted. It found a way around the Blitz' Mirage Colloid with the shrapnel volleys. And the Strike... such mobility and reaction speed - Natural or Coordinator, that was no ordinary pilot.

"Yzak? Are you alright? Yzak?" Dearka called. The only sounds coming from the Duel were groans, followed by a furious whisper, "It hurts... it hurts..." as Nicol rushed them toward the Gamow.

The following announcement blared through the Gamow's speakers: "Seal all bulkheads. Three minutes before mobile suit launch. All hands report to your posts!" Yzak leaps from the infirmary doors. Half of his face swathed in bandages, he looked haggard and in pain. A medic followed after him. "You mustn't be up! You need to rest!"

"Shut up! Let go of me!" He shook off the medic's hold and ran feverishly toward the mobile suit hangar bay. The wounds on his face throbbed, but it was nothing compared to the phychological scars. When the Strike had dealt a blow to the Duel's electrical systems, it caused a small-scale explosion in the cockpit. The blast flew directly into Yzak's helmet, singing his flesh and puncturing half his face with tiny shards from his visor. Had the cockpit itself been cracked, he would have died immediately. Like it or not, he'd survived.

It tormented him that he couldn't dispatch one Natural soldier. It'd ruined his reputation as an ace pilot and he'd sworn revenge. Up until recently, he'd always been confident in his abilities, scoring numerous achievements in battle before. His previous failures to capture the Strike he'd been able to blame on Athrun. But Athrun wasn't there last time. The Strike had taken on the Blitz and the Duel simultaneously and nearly destroyed them both. It was unthinkable, an insult worse than death.

Yzak changed into his pilot suit and boarded the Duel. It was already repaired, outfitted with additional equipment from GINNs that surrounded his entire fuselage. Shoulders, arms, chest, hips and eyes were covered - he was literally armed to the teeth. His mobile suit was equipped with an Assault Shroud that would strengthen the Duel's firepower and propulsion. On its right shoulder hung a Shiva gun; on the left, a missile pod. From the bridge, a control officer beamed onto his monitor. "Stop it, Yzak! You're still too-"

"Just do your damned job!" Yzak screamed, advancing the Duel toward the launch pad. Klueze's smooth voice hailed all three mobile suits over the intercom. "Gentlemen, your target remains the Archangel. Do not waste your time on anything else." Yzak had no intention on wasting time. But he also had no intention of obeying the commander's orders.

The Vesalius sent out a laser communique to the X Numbers informing them that the Archangel was trying to descend. Yzak had just demolished two Moebiuses when he got the message. He ground his teeth. "I won't allow it!" He pushed the Duel through the dense vanguard; the three other Gundams followed close behind. They weaved past the destroyers' main guns, firing rockets at the engines and cutting holes into the broadsides of the ships. The Menelaos fired its main gun - BOOM. A deep, pulsing red splayed light, but the Gundams just kept on coming.

The Duel brought its beam saber down on the Strike; Kira deflected it with his shield and pushed back with all his might. FLying backward, the Duel continued to shoot. They flew apart, lit their vernier thrusters, and charged at each other again. Kira did a spinning kick, smashing the Duel's face down and sending the Gundam spinning. He retreated while the Duel regained composure. On the monitor, he saw the escape pod, which contained the Heliopolis refugees he almost joined, launch from the sinking Menelaos. It flew directly in between the Duel and the Strike. The Duel's rifle fired.

"NO!" Kira screamed.

Pushing his verniers, he rushed in, extending Strike's hand. He could see the frightened faces peeking out from the pod's windows - he could see the little girl who had given him a flower - he could see her wide eyes.

The rifle beam pierced the escape shuttle. The outer hull cracked and the pod bounded on the atmosphere like a stone skipping along a lake. Flames surrounded the fuselage; pieces of it flew off as the shuttle burned up.