Boom!
Another tank turned into scrap metal, swallowed by flames and billowing black smoke.
A young girl who witnessed the scene could only stare at it blankly.
She had never imagined that a tank like that could be defeated in such a way.
The one who did it was a person wearing a combat suit that looked like armor. One person had beaten this base into total collapse.
Even with support fire from armed helicopters, tanks, heavy artillery, and other weapons capable of destroying mobile suits, none of it could stop his advance.
She watched him stab that chainsaw-like sword into a tank and split it open. She watched him turn the firepower in the sky into fireballs that came crashing down.
As for fully armed soldiers, no matter how heavily armed they were, they were not harder than steel. The instant they made contact, the Grim Reaper harvested their lives.
A scene of terrifying slaughter like this should have frightened the girl badly, but right now, she felt only excitement.
For one thing, she hated this base. She had originally thought coming here meant everyone would have a little more "free activity space."
In the end, it was no different from the old place. They had only brought her here for more training, and they even forced her to fight certain people.
On top of that, she still had to receive some kind of injections here, and they always made her suffer.
To survive, she had no choice but to obey. Otherwise, she would be punished.
For another thing, some of the earlier missile strikes had brought down a signal tower near her. It had nearly crushed her small body, but this person had saved her.
More importantly, this person seemed to know her. He had called her by name, and she had nodded in response.
It was also because he had spoken that she realized he was a person, not a machine.
At such close range, she had faintly seen a pair of eyes behind the somewhat transparent glass-like area over the helmet's eye section. He was clearly human.
After that, she had even asked something a little naive. No, something very stupid.
Had he come to save her?
And as it turned out, he had really answered.
If she was willing to leave with him, then yes, he had come to save her.
Yet that made her hesitate instead. She was still afraid that if she ran away, she would be caught and brought back.
By the time she came back to her senses, he had already vanished again.
As for the people he was killing, and this base itself, they were all things she disliked. Of course she was not afraid. She even hoped he would finish cleaning them up as soon as possible.
If he could go that far, then her chances of escaping would be much higher.
So as she watched this invader display such overwhelming strength and eliminate one threat after another, her desire to escape grew even stronger.
...
The Archangel was now within arm's reach of Orb's territorial waters.
The Earth Alliance warships pursuing them had now turned back.
With the pursuit gone, the Archangel slowed down.
"But..."
"No buts. That is an order!"
Cagalli was giving her own soldiers an order that put them in an extremely difficult position: go to the Earth Alliance base and demand the return of something that belonged to them.
Of course, her true objective was to confirm that man's condition and carry out a rescue.
"Captain, the high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft has found something. The Earth Alliance base seems to be under attack."
Something seemed to have happened on the other end of the communication, making Cagalli freeze.
Under attack?
That had to be him, right? Otherwise, he had somehow dodged the crash and survived.
"What exactly is happening?"
She pressed for details, and the captain on the other end transmitted the footage observed by the high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft.
In the image, a military base on a small island, something like a forward outpost, was suffering one explosion after another, with flames rising throughout the facility.
If the Archangel had a full crew and its full firepower available, then they really might have dared launch an attack on a base of this scale. Taking it down would not have been too difficult.
"What is this? Are they bombing their own base? Shelling themselves?"
The fires burning across the base looked as though the base's own weapons were destroying it.
"Can you get closer? Get a clearer view?"
"Sorry. If we get any closer, we'll enter the attack range of their air defense system."
Because they could not get closer, further zooming in on the base only made the image blurrier.
This situation lasted less than ten minutes before the base seemed to fall silent, leaving Cagalli deeply uneasy.
Before long, however, more bad news arrived. It seemed ZAFT's underwater forces had already been lying in wait nearby.
They launched a surprise attack on the Earth Alliance warships that had been pursuing the Archangel. After sinking them, their underwater mobile suits and troops began landing on the base.
The strange part was that during the landing process, the base showed no reaction at all. There was no counterattack.
Once ZAFT's mobile suits emerged from the sea and entered the base, the unclear footage suddenly showed the mobile suits opening fire as well.
For a moment, it looked just like earlier. Was the base turning into another chaotic free-for-all?
In less than five minutes, the base fell silent again.
"Captain Ramius, we can approach that base now."
"Huh?"
Murrue stared at Lacus Clyne in surprise. She was actually telling them to head straight toward that base now?
"That place contains evidence of the crimes committed by those operating behind the scenes, the ones who plunged this world into war and are driving it toward destruction."
That answer left Murrue stunned again. This was information that had not appeared in that PSP game.
She could not help but suspect that Mr. Kain's machine breaking apart and falling onto this base might not have been an accident or coincidence. It might have been part of the plan.
"I understand."
She immediately ordered the Archangel to move closer.
At Cagalli's urging, and after Lacus established a connection with Orb's leadership, Orb's warships moved with them as well.
"Sonar systems normal. No underwater threats detected."
"Maintain vigilance."
"Captain, look!"
A crew member called out, and they saw more than a dozen children near the port of the island, which was already quite close.
The oldest looked no more than fourteen. The youngest were probably around ten.
The Earth Alliance was not so short on soldiers that it would need to conscript children of this age. Combined with the way these children were dressed, an awful possibility surfaced in Murrue's mind.
Of course, beside those children stood a figure who drew even more attention from everyone.
It was a figure whose entire body was covered in what looked like a metal combat suit.
It looked very much like an idealized science-fiction powered armor.
"Uh... Don't tell me he used that to destroy this base's combat strength all by himself?"
One crew member said it as if joking, but no one thought it was necessarily a joke.
They had all seen the terrifying reaction speed that man had shown back in the colony, when he had killed several people in an instant.
If someone like him wore advanced powered armor, then cutting through an entire base did not seem completely impossible.
But still.
Even ZAFT's landed mobile suits could not handle him?
That was honestly still hard to believe.
(End of Chapter)
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