Operation Black Thunder

Michael followed the girls nod towards the mobile suits being unloaded. She wasn’t lying about the the fact that her suit was fresh from the manufacturer. He could see its shiny surface from here. His own was far less impressive, but carried a character in its worn exterior that Michael felt made up for its lack of luster. Michael watched as his Jegan was unloaded by a handful of crewmen, it’s dull metal surface reflecting little of the lights above it. It was an older model, and clearly one that had seen combat despite its many new parts and expert maintenance. It also bore a black and yellow emblem along its right shoulder, one that matched the unit patch on Michael’s own uniform.

He sighed slightly as he removed a pack of cigarettes from the cargo pocket on his shoulder.

“I suppose we should start heading over there. The last thing I need is for the ground crew to mislabel my suit and lose track of it.” stated Michael Martin almost incoherently as he fished a cigarette out from the pack with his teeth.

Misplacing a forty ton robot might have seemed odd to those unfamiliar with the UFA bureaucracy, but Martin had seen stranger things happen. Even if Michael could point it out in a row of other mobile suits it could still take days for a simple transcription error to be resolved, leaving him grounded instead of running diagnostics. It was the kind of delay he couldn’t afford, and one that was more likely to occur during a unit transfer like this one. That was the reason he had come early, to make sure any kinks were worked out before the unit started sending CONEXes full of gear along with the rest of their Mobile Suits.

He offered the young woman a cigarette briefly before returning the pack to its pocket, replacing it with a small black lighter he used to ignite his favorite indulgence.

After a few drags the Lieutenant began making his way over to the hanger with the his MS. It was still a hundred meters or so away, but it wouldn’t take long for the pair to arrive.

“I suppose we are likely going to be seeing quite a lot of one another. It’s a small base, and it doesn’t look like they have too many MS units yet.” He said casually. “Did your unit come here with you or did you get assigned to one of the local units?” he asked politely. Those were the most common reasons for a transfer like this, though not the only ones. For all he knew she was part of some black ops program he wasn’t supposed to know about.

With the arrival of more forces, their mission would likely be somewhat more difficult, luckily these new people were drawing attention which would help, but it also meant increased activity in the area. The engines from the transports were still running, as the things still had to taxi themselves to their own hangers, so Rygart hoped that would help cover any excess noise they might make.

If they didn't, transferring and working over their new machines would be plenty loud he supposed. Even though their target wasn't in the same hanger that the new machines were being loaded into, it was problematic how close they'd be to so much activity since all of the MS hangers were in the same area.

"Pick your targets and be ready to fire if needed, but for now keep it quiet and quick, we need to get into the target area ASAP." he said quietly into his headset, before he took a look at the group crowding around the newly received units, he wasn't going to raise his rifle just yet, but flicked the safety off all the same. As he neared the hanger, Rygart started heading for the corner of the hanger so that he could look inside with minimal risk of being spotted.

The primary lights were off in their target hanger, which was a good sign, but that didn't mean it was deserted, plus even if it was unlikely anyone at the other hanger would see them due to the contrast created by the active lights, even so he didn't want to take any chances.

If all went well, everyone around them would be too busy with their work to notice them, but as long as they stayed out of the light he was confident that they'd be fairly hard to spot regardless. They didn't have far to go now, and the closer they got without firing a shot the better, even if the enemy wouldn't be able to tell exactly where they were, they'd know something was going on after the first shot.

Once he'd looked into the hanger, Rygart didn't see anyone inside, and only saw the dormant machines they were here for, so he quickly moved in, sticking to the nearest corner rather than going into the middle of the hanger. There was enough light in the hanger to see decently enough, but even so he activated his NVGs so that he could see more easily, the low amount of light wasn't meant to illuminate the hanger, just to allow the crew to move without falling over everything.

"Rooster has reached the henhouse." he said to announce his team's arrival in the hanger. He new the new model that was stored was the priority, so they still needed to get that "elite" girl to her machine before they got into their "escort" units.

"That's the cue, move out!" Milinda ordered, at the same time the first Adele, its shoulder plate inscribed with a gigantic "01" activated, its main camera shone a dim red hue. Milinda had earlier disabled the super-command mode, preventing the UFA exterior consoles from retaking the Adele from the pilot inside. As the Adele slowly raised up from its sleeping posture, Milinda saw Nagase jumping into the second Adele and activating it as well. "Good, seems like he'll be just fine."

The servos hummed into action, the machine grabbing a beam rifle hoisted to the equipment rack nearby. As the Adele's hand grabbed onto the rifle the side-panel quickly showed the rifle's data, "Type-2 Plasma Rifle equipped? This is that new rifle?"

"Destroy anything we cannot retrieve." Milinda ordered, as she crouched down and aimed her rifle, switching the main camera to infrared X-ray operation as it 'saw through' the hangar gates. The Adele adjusted its aim, and fired one shot out. The rifle's beam spiralling out of the barrel, the dense plasma bullet easily penetrated through the cargo aircraft that was parked in the dead centre of the landing strip, the subsequent explosion throwing maintanance techs and various security troopers off while engulfing several MSes in fire from the jet fuel.

"Is your machine ready to go?" The first unit looked at the second, still prone and the cockpit door still wide open.

"Go ahead without me, I'll be ready in a second."

Fidelia felt slightly annoyed when, the man she had tried to show utmost respect to, failed to acknowledge her salute or even her own introduction. It seemed the guy was a bit oblivious to the people around him but that was foreshadowed by his cigarette which Fidelia absolutely despised the sight of. However, the two began heading over to the hangar where the mobile suits were being moved to in order to get them situated for the mechanics. This guy was oblivious alright cause he barely looked in Fidelia's direction. While they walked, the man took another cigarette out of its pack and lit the tip, the smell of the tobacco was enough to drive her mad if it could be helped but she was going to let it slide for now. When he offered her a cigarette, Fidelia simply waved and rejected the offer. “Please don't offer me that again.”, She thought.

When they got to the hangar, both Jegans were resting on their beds, lifeless for the most part. They were being hoisted up to stand upwards, the hangar staff would move to secure them in their standingstate once the hoists were removed. During that time, the man who she just met asked why she got transferred to such a location, that was a good question. “I don't know much of why I got transferred out this far south from the States but I do know they did it last minute.”, Fidelia replied. She was still a bit sour from the idea of a last minute transfer like that but it was already completed so there was no reason to complain now. She took a step forward to get away from cigarette smoke that lingered around as it obnoxiously filled her new acquaintances little area. “I'm sorry, but could you.....”, She was interrupted by sounds of explosions taking place outside.

The first one sounded close to the hangar rows, but then a second explosion could be heard further from the first one. What the heck was going on all of a sudden, the place was suddenly alive with action and no one could explain the situation. Fidelia ran to the opening of the hangar that was behind the rest and discovered smoke and flames in the air, was it an attack? “What the heck is going on?”, Fidelia yelled. She looked back at a tech, “Are we under attack?”

“I don't know! We normally don't get any fights like this because were so far off shore from the South American Mainland.”, the Tech replied.

“Fuck. Why now? I know we just arrived but I'm going to have to power that up!”, Fidelia said. As she bolted from the hangars small side door, she ran to the techs little lift and brought it up to the Jegan's cockpit hatch. “Lets get out there and see what the trouble is!”, she yelled. The hatch of the Jegan was shut just as quickly as she had gotten it to open and get in. There wasn't much loaded besides the head vulcas the left saber and the basic weapons. She readied her machine gun and shield and walked outside of the hangar to find out the problem. From what she could see, two transports had just gotten torched and from the surrounding area four mobile suits were standing about. Fidelia opened a channel and tried to make contact. “You there! In the Jegan, whats going on? Why have these cargo planes been destroyed?”, Fidelia asked. (Takumi)

---Milinda

"Keep the resistance to an absolute minimum." Milinda ordered, as she proudly walked out of the Hangar, an escort in tow operating a stolen Jegan by her side. Others on the same channel frequency had noticed she had said 'resistance', not 'fighting'. The interpretation on their part would be that all opposition has to be crushed.

On her part, the moment her Adele sturted out of the Hangar she began unleashing a torrent of vulcan fire onto the hangars, mowing down any infantry who attempted to get to their mobile suits and razing the entire row of fighter jets parked onto the side of the runway.

"Leave no trace we were ever here behind." She ordered, firing her plasma rifle at the communications tower and literally melting a molten hole in the dead center, its immense weight bringing the superstructure down after the reinforced metal girders keeping the antenna upright collapsed.

"Call for the Severstal. Arrange for fire support as well as the Recovery craft to be deployed." Milinda instructed, as she focused on eliminating all present threats.