Gundam Wing: Blaze Of Glory

Part 1: Entrance

By Justin A. Swartz (jswartz82@yahoo.com)

Disclaimer: Gundam Wing and its names, figures, places, and respective merchandise belong to Sunrise/Bandai and Yoshiyuki Tomino. The Ducat Vanguard and the original mobile suits described in this story are of my creation and belong to me. Any use of them without my permission is prohibited.

Space was cold, Quatre decided. Space had been very cold to him in the past, to all of the Gundam pilots. Now that he was out in it again, after being colony-bound for most of his recent years, he decided that he hated it. He hated what his world had become, he hated what he was doing, and he hated the people of Earth.

Or rather, he hated those from Earth who bore the name of Ducat.

Yes, it was all Ducat’s fault that this had started, wasn’t it? It had been nothing Quatre had done. He still wasn’t sure if he could have prevented it. It was that endless argument of whether war was inevitable or whether war was an after-effect of a person’s raging emotions. Ducat had sought to suppress those emotions, and Quatre was in the midst of what he hated most because of it.

Fighting this war was the last thing he wanted to do. He knew that statement had two possible meanings: it could very well end up being the last thing that he did in his life.

He tried not to think about it. Instead, he thought about space.

Space was cold, so very cold.

“Quatre?”

Quatre smiled into the monitor in his darkened cockpit. It was Trowa, his friend and surrogate brother.

“What is it, Trowa?”

“Are you ready?”

“No.”

“Neither am I,” Trowa said evenly.

Beyond the asteroid belt they were hiding behind was something that frightened Quatre. It was a mobile suit factory, a small one that was in the process of being upgraded into one of the larger Ducat complexes that housed all of their war technologies. It had taken four years for the Ducat Vanguard to build their weapons of war against the Earth Sphere, but Quatre reminded himself that he was sitting within four years of research by the Sphere’s top scientists.

The Guardian was Quatre’s specific mobile suit, designed to specifications supplied from their recent encounters after Ducat’s declaration of war against the Earth Sphere. There had been six struggles in all, with one continuing every day in lower Sudan, where resources were tight and Preventer agents were shrinking in number by the day.

Guardian was designed in the new Earth Sphere red-and-white color scheme, and resembled a slimmer version of the now-destroyed Wing Gundam, minus the transformation capability. Instead, it had been supplied with a backpack that had four rectangular protrusions from it, forming an “X” shape. Quatre ran a test on the strike pack and it returned green, reminding him that each bar of the pack held four small beam cannons inside of it, and that they could be combined into a beam shield as well.

Trowa’s mobile suit, the Defender, resembled an updated version of an older mobile suit from the early A.C. calendar years, the Guncannon. It used the same type of frame as Quatre’s, but was boxier, looking more like something out of a comic book. Trowa’s specialty had always been bombardment and heavy firepower, and the Defender supplied him with that, opting for two large beam cannons on the shoulders and small beam gatlings located within the assemblies of the left and right forearms. Hip-loaded missile launchers added to his long-range capability.

It was just the two of them, the two leaders of the Earth Sphere Red Blaze Army. They knew that real people would be inside these mobile suits they were facing…they knew that real people were inside that war factory. They had made a promise to protect peace after the Eve Wars of A.C. 195, and they would do it by any means necessary, even if it meant killing those that had initiated the downfall of the peace.

Quatre did an anxiety-inspired systems check. Yes, the Guardian was ready.

“Now, Trowa,” Quatre said firmly.

“Yes. Now,” Trowa responded.

The two falling stars propelled themselves over their asteroid cover and towards the resource satellite M.O.-Eighteen.

It was the start of the After Colony year 201, and for the people working on the Ducat War Factory on that satellite, it was the last year they would ever see.

The battle began with Trowa’s missiles, aiming at the octagonal automated defense pods. When the shrapnel from their explosions began to fly, the warning claxon blared inside and outside the factory. Security was light in lieu of the large upgrading machines; it was a mistake Ducat would curse himself for later.

The Guardian swung into position under a set of pods and wiped them from existence with its beam rifle, held in both steel hands. As the noble head turned with glowing ruby eyes toward the satellite, a troop of six Vanguard mobile suits emerged. They were the pentagonal-bodied Infiltrators, armed with small beam rifles and one with a large beam gatling.

The gatling weapon turned on Quatre, scattering azure rays in his direction. Using the small asteroids as cover, Quatre employed full power to the engines and darted between them, firing when he could and taking cover when he couldn’t. Trowa fared better on his demolition tumble: he had scattered the workers away from the brunt of his attack, which was focused on the hangar bays and main factories.

Quatre could feel his old instincts coming back, rising inside of him and feeding his starving mind and body. He activated the upper left strike bar, pouring beam fire on the remaining Infiltrators. Emerald lines of light pierced through the thin armor and detonated the reactors, making a cloud of orange and white light against the stars.

There was still the gatling one to deal with. Quatre saw the wrap-around cockpit image rotate as he moved the Guardian through a loop, then brought it head-on with the gatling weapon. He shuddered inside as he triggered all of the strike bars, and threw in his own beam rifle, reducing the suit and pilot to frozen ashes.

The cockpit rotated again, enhancing an image for him automatically. It was Trowa in his Defender, bombarding the facility with his cannons. Two escape shuttles zipped through the burning remnants of the hangar bay and out into the stars.

In different circumstances, Quatre might have fired on those escape shuttles.

Yes, space was cold to him, to everyone, but he was not that cold.

“Trowa, how do we look?” he radioed.

“Not bad,” his friend replied. “Only one more round and we should be done here.”

“Good. It looks like everyone evacuated.”

Trowa was silent for a moment. Then:

“There are still people trapped in the research domes.”

Quatre tapped the keypad to his left and enhanced the whole satellite image. Trowa was correct: there were several domes, some with power, some without, that were carrying on as if nothing had happened.

“Have they sent any emergency signals?” Quatre asked.

“Not yet, though I’m sure Ducat has signals we aren’t monitoring.”

“True enough. Let’s leave them alone then.”

The mission objective was to leave no survivors, but…Quatre didn’t agree with that. Never had, and most likely, never would. It came from his hatred for fighting. As much as he hated what Ducat had done, that hatred was directed toward the man himself, not the Vanguard or the researchers who worked for them.

There was a bright flash of light on the monitors, and Quatre saw the Defender pulling out from the satellite. The War Factory was demolished, the wreckage separating from the asteroid itself and floating into separate pieces in space.

“Mission accomplished?” Trowa inquired.

“Accomplished,” Quatre affirmed. “Let’s go home, Trowa.”

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