Amuro Quest: QQ edition (Gundam/Super Robot Wars OG)

Interlude 2: Closed World
Part 1​

An UCC hospital ship​

"What's the state of the patient, doctor?" asked the tall, blond man in UCC uniform with Colonel rank.

“He seems to be in good health, and the burn scar in besides the with scarring and old fractures consistent with a PT pilot... in fact quite similar to your own, right down to the tissue micro-scarring associated with repeated high-g maneuvers.” Said the doctor "I would had more to say if we could have examined the patient personally, instead of using remotes in an isolation cell."

"There is a reason for that, doctor. Did you observe any clumps of non-organic substance inside him?"

"We have observed him since you brought him yesterday, and we have observed no sign of anything like you describe." Asked the doctor "I'll understand if you can't tell me, Elzam. But if there is something that I should know about his state..."

Elzam von Branstein sat down and considered it for a moment.

"We found him in space, unconscious, surrounded by the wreckage of some kind of PT." Elzam finally said, leaving unsaid the circumstances that led to him to examine that particular area of space "We had to discard and destroy his flight-suit, there was... something growing on it, some kind of living metal. Jus afterwards we discovered that the same thing seemed to be growing in the wreckage surrounding him. We destroyed every trace of it that we could found, and we didn't observe anything of that... living metal on him, but we decided that it would be better to be sure."

"Well, we didn't observe anything of the sort in him, and as you requested we examined him down to the molecular level."

"Now that we know that he is safe, when can I talk with him?"

"As soon as he is awake, a couple hours most."

DC Oceania HQ. Wellington, New Zealand​

General Koch of the DC put a smile on his round face as he welcomed the personal envoy of Commander Bian to the base. Inside him, a bitter rage boiled. Didn't this prettyboy know that there was a war going on? Now that the Federation armies in Eastern Australia were in disarray it was the time to attack, not to play tea parties.

The fact that he accompanied his perfectly fitted and immaculate uniform with a non-regulation cape over teh left shoulder, that he was a handsome young man, and that his green-haired assistant couldn't look more foppish if he tried, didn't help either to ingratiate the young man with the rotund admiral.

"Greetings, Colonel. What can I do for you?"

The man looked at him as if he was looking at a particularly noxious insect and said.

"You can get into the plane that brought me here and get back to Aidoneus Island, General."

"What?"

"Orders from Commander Bian." Said teh aide in a oily tone, giving him a bundle of papers.

He quickly scanned through them, seeing that in effect he was dismissed from command... and this greenhorn was going to take his place. This had to be about Sidney, there was not other explanation.

"I..."

"You went against orders, using a MAPW on a civilian objective. This was the kind of atrocities that the Commander want to avoid, General."

He thought for a moment of resisting the order, but the bodyguards, feeling his reaction moved into a stance ready to shoot, if necessary.

"I'll need a moment to collect my..."

"We'll ship them to Aidoneus, the plane doesn't have a lot of space." Said the Colonel, unyielding.

Slumping his shoulders in defeat, the general walked toward the landing pad. The Colonel dismissed the bodyguards and took a lift to his new offices, accompanied by his aide.

"I trust that he won't reach Aidoneus."

"The plane will have an 'unfortunate encounter' with a Federation air patrol, Treize." Said the aide in a tone way less deferential than before "Ah, I couldn't tell you before because we had an audience, but my pet scientist is starting to make progress in the GN project."

"Excellent work, Ribbons." said Treize Khushrenada.

 

An out of the way island between the Indian and the Pacific Ocean​

The island had housed for a long time a couple strips to help with trans-oceanic flight, which now had been appropiated for the use of the DC Armored Modules, to harass any possible reinforcements coming to the Federation Forces in Australia.

“Lieutenant Lamarck, what the hell are you supposed to be doing?” said the squad commander as one of the AMs was trying to take off.

The cold voice of DC Lieutenant Lilith Lamarck, the best pilot of the squad, and one of the best ones in the DC, answered instantly.

“I’m deserting, Sam, and don’t even think about following me.” She said, and then added, with a faint note of amusement in her voice “Not that you are going to be able to do it, anyway.” A click was faintly heard over the radio just before all the other Armored Modules started to blow up one by one.

“Lily, damn it! Why are you doing this?” although he could guess what had led the Australian pilot to desert.

“Because my family lived in Sidney.” She said, confirming his guess. And she cut the communication.

The Commander cursed all incompetent glory-hound generals, as the AM, which was painted dark blue with a white side stripe, the lieutenant custom colors, took off and started to go in the general direction of the remaining Federation holdings in the Southern Pacific. He sighed. While he felt sorry for her, the fact is that they were at war, and she was trying to desert.

“Open a channel to the Kraken.” He ordered to the communication officer, swallowing his pride.

Soon enough the gating voice of the commanding officer of the only nearby DC submarine carrier was heard in the speakers.

“Why are you calling, Gorman?” said commander Ichiro Nizaki, a man whose rivalry with Sam Gorman went all the way back to elementary school “Did you get bored of talking to the crabs.” He asked jokingly before letting out a belly laugh.

Gorman counted silently to ten, gritting Shi teeth all the way before answering.

“And hello to you also, Nizaki. I’m calling you, asshole, because the best pilot of my squad is trying to desert with her Armored Module, after sabotaging all the others. “

For a moment there was only silence in the line, and when Nizaki answered it was a non-nonsense tone, one of the things that got him to the position he occupied right now.

“HER?”

“Yes, the Blue Bolt herself.”

“Goddamnit to Hell.” Nizaki said, his tone having changed into a clipped, professional tone “I’ll set our own AMs in an interception course, immediately.”

DC Headquarters. Aidoneus Island​

Adler Koch (no relation with General Koch), second in command in the DC, went to an out of the way lab where his colleague Aguilla Setme was examining her last acquisition, a young redhead woman who had been found washed ashore in one of the other islands of the archipelago.

“So what do you think of her?”

“I think that I can work on her.” Said the old hag. “The problems are the physical damage she shows.”

“Oh?”

“She suffered physical abuse, as well as multiple, aborted pregnancies. There are sign of having suffered also multiple STDs.” She said looking at the report “Probably she worked as a low-end prostitute for some time.”

“Okay. I’ll try to give you access to some regenerative tech.” Adler said, dismissing it with a wave of his hand. Regrettable, but the world was a bad place. “You mentioned something about her brain?”

“Surgical scars and signs of multiple operations. Some of them were similar, though cruder, to the work done on some of the pilots from the School and my own work. I think that I can use that as a base for my own conditioning.” Aguilla said, and then smiled “But what is more interesting is the ones that doesn’t correspond to our work. I think that this girl was made into some kind of artificial Psichodriver.”

“Very interesting. If that is true, do you think that you could replicate the process?”

“Of course.” She said, with a ‘who do you think are you talking to?’ “I’ll need six month to a year.”

“Excellent. I’ll make sure that the Commander doesn’t know about this.”



Author Note: Lilith Lamarck was originally conceived as the OG real robot protagonist of an standard crossover SRW story. As that story never got off ground, I decided to use her here. Don't worry about her staying and stealing the show, she is getting out of the story in a couple entries after the Interlude.

 

An UCC hospital ship​

The man in the bed awoke slowly. His last memories were of choosing self-sacrifice after the aliens had started to assimilate his Mobile Suit to give The Boy a chance to penetrate the mothership. He had survived... somehow. He tried to lift a hand to look at it, but he seemed to be tied to the bed. ‘Why?’ he wondered. Moving slowly his head, he saw that his hands were still his normal skin tone, so he haven’t been assimilated by the aliens.

He was so focused in musing about his situation, that he almost missed the sound of the door opening. Two men entered the room, both clad in an unfamiliar uniform, though the older of the two wore a white coat over it. A doctor, he imagined. The doctor made a quick check-up of him before saying.

“Everything look god. I’ll be in the other room, checking his constants. If you need something, colonel...”

“I’ll call the orderlies. I know the drill, doctor.”

The doctor nodded and left, leaving him alone with the colonel. He had to admit that he cut an impressive figure, tall with long blonde hair and blue eyes. For a moment he thought that he could hear some bombastic music, but it was probably only his imagination.

“I’m Colonel Elzam Von Branstein, of the United Colony Corps.” the colonel said.

“Major Graham Acker, Earth Sphere Federation Space Forces.” Graham answered, automatically, promptin an slow nod from Elzam, as if Graham’s words confirmed something that he had been pondering. But Graham hadn’t finished. “What is this ‘United Colony Corps’? And what happened with the ELS?”

“Before I answer your questions, I want to tell you how we found you.” Elzam said, “We, meaning the pilots under my command and me, were training in a sector of space far from the normal routes when we were blinded by a momentary flash several kilometers from us. When we arrived to investigate, we found a cloud of space debris and a man in a spacesuit in the center of it...”

“Me, I gather.” Graham said “But I don’t know what that has to do with...”

“Let me finish, please. After we rescued you, we observed a crystalline growth in your spacesuit and in some of the debris...” this words prompted a reaction from Graham, but before he could interrupt Elzam reassured him “Don’t worry, we disposed of it. It was too dangerous to keep something that it tended to... absorb whatever got in contact with it...” Elzam said, and then added darkly “No matter what some people thought about being able to control it.” He took a deep breath “Anyway, the analysis of the other debris showed alloys and components far in advance of anything that we have managed to do, not to speak that in one of the pieces somebody had stenciled a date, January 17 2314. And before you ask, I don’t remember the exact date as we use another calendar, but we are approximately in the mid-XXIIth Century... in what is probably an alternate Earth from your own.”

Graham didn’t answered, not wanting to believe it. The man sounded sincere, but...

“I see that you don’t believe me. It’s understandable.” Elzam said, “If the reverse was true, I would be probably feeling the same. But we are moving you from the isolation ward to normal lodgings in a few hours and give you access to the non-classified bits of the ship database. You’ll see then.”

Elzam started to leave, but then he remembered an intelligence report from one of the DC moles inside the Federation forces, the one, in fact that had led him to think about alternate Earths.

“Does the name Gundam means something to you?”

“If this is an alternate Earth, how do you know that name?”

“It seems that you aren’t the only person to be thrown in another reality, Major.” Elzam said. “An Amuro Ray piloting a Nu Gundam joined the Earth Federation Army yesterday, being apparently from another reality.”

‘Amuro Ray... A. Ray... like the man who was probably Ribbons genetic source, E.A.Ray... and we never found a trace of his body.' Graham thought 'Of course it all could be a lie, but what could they win with that? Play along and look for the trap.'

"I don't know about that particular Gundam or its pilot, but I'll tell you what I know."

A remote archipelago between the Indian and Pacific Oceans​

The situation was not good; two squads of AMs had sprung out on her before even she could get out of the small archipelago. And, of course, they had ordered her to surrender. She smirked, as she changed the flight mode from long flight to her own personalized mode, which performed more than 30% over specs, and answered.

“Sorry, mates. You’ll have to kill me, and I assure you, that it’s not going to be...”

She nimbly dodged the projectile that one of the Lions behind her had shot, and made a series of quick shots while spinning around, knocking down one and damaging half of the others, while the DC pilots didn’t manage to land any hit.

“...that easy. ” she finished.

‘Not bad.’ She thought to herself. Her speed and her favorite color had earned her the nickname of Blue Bolt in the training field, and she had performed well in their fist confrontation with Federation forces, yesterday. But taking down dummies and fighters was one thing; she was going against other AMs now.

Even if she survived, it was going to be a damned miracle if she reached Federation lines now. On its own twisted way, it was liberating, the situation being reduced to how many of those bastards were going down with her. She primed the railguns and started to shoot.

 

You find Kyosuke, Excellen and Tasuku in the hangar, and you see Bullet and Russell checking their respective machines.

"Where are Major Sanger and Lieutenant Tarask?." You ask when you reach them

"Here." You hear from behind you, they had apparently arrived just after you. After having your full attention, Sanger continues "The Federation have noted signs of fighting in an small DC base located in an archipelago not too far from here. We have been ordered to investigate."

Almost half an hour later you are sitting in Nu's cockpit, making the final checks before launching. The interface you and Tasuku built yesterday is working as intended with the Machine Gun that Nu is holding, and everything seems to be working. While you wait, you check some of the reactor specs to see if it would be possible to charge an e-Pac for a hypothetical beam rifle, by using the chargers for the beam sabers... Doable, but complicated, as you don’t know yet if...

You have been given the green light to take off. You crouch as the catapult start to move before saying to the comms.

“Amuro Ray. Nu Gundam. Launching!”

The island is covered with the wrecks of Armored Modules, and you see that there are three damaged Ams fighting a fourth... no, it's going down.

“Assault One, Unicorn here…”


[] …requesting permission to engage.”

[] …Orders?”

[] …where did those Armored Modules came from?”

[] Write-in