_____"Murder implies premeditation," Revelle said. "Nothing in this war has ever felt planned to me; just a big, nuclear mess of ideas and kinetic energy." She grabbed rations and magazines from a table overflowing with ammunition and crammed them into her survival bag. They strapped heavy armored vests over their pilot suits, and then life-jackets on top of those. It was a stifling amount of equipment for pilots used to the cockpit of a mobile suit, even before they strapped on rifles with bulky sound-suppressors and the neck-bending weight of helmets with night vision devices.
_____They filed one-by-one into landing craft that looked like metal tubs, then felt the floor beneath them lurch as the cranes lowered them into the turbulent waves. One craft held the small team destined for the port, while the other held the rest of the team and a large group of marines.
_____Most of the coastline had been unguarded. California Base occupied an enormous swathe of territory, and it seemed that the Zeon forces had taken time to lick their wounds after a blistering-fast campaign to take the area. A squad of Federation marines marched in front of the pilots, pausing periodically to scan their surroundings on the mile-long walk from the coast. The heavy footfalls of Zakus echoed through the woods infrequently, and they would wait in the shadows until the sounds faded away before moving once more.
_____The depot was still pitch dark when they arrived at the perimeter fence. A marine knelt with a pair of bolt cutters and cut a square into the fence tall enough for the pilots to slip inside. The end of a cigarette flared about twenty meters away, illuminating the face of a Zeon soldier with a bandage over one eye. He spoke in hushed tones with another soldier before returning to a small campfire, the only source of light in the quiet depot.
_____The two Zeon soldiers were seated roughly in the center of a row of trucks, four of them in all. They were large, the type of heavy mover used to transport tanks or mobile suits. The first and second ones were covered with heavy tarps and sagged low on their suspension with some considerable amount of cargo, while the third seemed to be piled high with crates of supplies. The fourth had a smaller container in the bed covered with a tarp.
_____The small campfire with the soldiers was situated directly between the second and third large trucks. Beyond the row of vehicles, they could see the shape of what looked like the test hangars, half a kilometer away.
_____They waited for the Zeon soldiers to walk out of earshot before gathering at the fence. The marine squad leader waved the pilots through the fence and knelt in the cover of an over-turned container. "This is it. The skipper said you pilots call the shots from here; we'll do our best to protect you, but don't get my guys killed." He nodded to the faint flicker of flames in front of them. "Those two. Deal with them first. It looks like they gave you pilots silencers; the enemy will hear our guns right away, but you might be able to shoot those guards without being heard."
_____"We're here." Revelle said, peering through a window as the beams of spotlights waved across the harbor. Cania, Maoin, and Ibrahim were packed in with her, along with a trio of marines that had so far been tight-lipped during the voyage. The helmsman punched a practiced code into their transmitter, and after a moment the spotlight turned off, plunging the rest of their trip into darkness.
_____They stopped by a reinforced guardhouse, their small craft bobbing in the harbor. There was a large antenna array installed on the roof of the place, and a squat armored car sat on the nearby road. It was quiet save for the distant thud of mobile-suit sized footfalls.
The door cracked open, and a dirty, sweat-stained Federation soldier ushered them inside. "I don't know what they were thinking, sending such a small team," the soldier said, lit cigarette dangling from his lips. A cough came from a bundle of blankets and stained bandages on the floor. Another soldier stared blankly into the face of a long-range radio set. There were enough chairs and bunks around the guardhouse to have sat a dozen at some point. The few survivors shared the same empty stare that spoke to several days of vicious fighting. "How the hell are they gonna evacuate people on a little boat like that?"
_____"They're not," Revelle said softly. "... it's not the main reason we're here, at least. We need to get into the air field and evacuate any sensitive technology before the Zeon clean up here."
_____"Right," the soldier said, seeming even more haggard than before if it were even possible. "Good fucking luck with that. They have a Zaku just standing on the fucking airstrip, his only job is to blast anything that fucking moves. They already shot up the last team that tried to make a run for it. And our long-range comms," he said, pointing up at the ceiling. "We've been ordered not to transmit in case the Zeon take it as provocation to blow us to smithereens. Can you imagine it? The whole base. Asking for reinforcements. Evacuation. For fucking
hours. Can't do a damn thing about it, even if we had enough people to do it."
_____"I'm sorry to hear that."
_____"Yeah, of course you are. Welcome to earth, jackass."
_____Revelle remained impassive, waiting only for a moment before continuing. "You said Zaku. One mobile suit?"
_____"Yeah, one. They send out a new unit to relieve it every four hours, and then they pop off a few rounds our direction so we keep out heads down. It's been like that for the past day or so; you can hear them over the radio every hour, like clockwork."
_____"We deal with the Zaku, what else is there?"
_____He sighed. "Platoon of Zeon grunts, a machine gun or two. You could get through them in the armored car, but with that bastard in the Zaku you're not getting anywhere near the airstrip."
