The air in Thunder Bay didn't smell like the Great Lakes anymore; it smelled like ionizing radiation and the copper tang of blood. Kirk had sold us out, dangling our location to the Federation like a trophy for their "Armed Forces Day" spectacle. But the rot went deeper. Nox O'Niel Nielson hadn't just betrayed the mission; he'd executed President and Genevieve in cold blood. He claimed her redirecting military funds toward social initiatives and LGBTQIA+ programs was "treason" against the soldier class. Now, the city was a graveyard of colliding ideologies. The Federation GMs were tearing each other apart—half siding with the late Genevieve's loyalists, the other half falling in line behind Nox's radical coup.
Bridget was gone, chasing the rat Kirk into the city's smoking ruins. I was left with the butcher. Nox's Ground Type Gundam loomed over my Zaku II, its eyes glowing with a predatory blue light. He opened his chest-mounted Vulcans, a stream of lead chewing through the pavement. I slammed the thrusters, banking my Zaku into a hard lateral drift. The concrete exploded where I had been standing a split second before.
"Too slow, Zeek!" Nox roared over the open channel.
I flicked my output to the head Vulcans, return-firing a burst that peppered his chest plate. He didn't even flinch, raising his reinforced shield to absorb the impact with a sickening metallic clang. He reached for his beam rifle, the barrel glowing with lethal intent. A pink bolt of pure energy vaporized the corner of the building I was using for cover. I dived behind a heavy reinforced parking garage, the heat from the near-miss melting the paint off my Zaku's shoulder. I checked my sensors. My Zaku Machine Gun was low on drums, and against a Gundam, I was bringing a knife to a railgun fight.
"You think a few bricks will save you?" Nox's voice was distorted by rage. "I'm done playing soldier with a delivery boy! Do you think I only have a beam rifle?! Guess again, Zeek scum!" Nox roared.
The Gundam's backpack hissed, the weapon containers sliding open like a magician's trick from hell. He snapped a YHI FH-X180 180mm Cannon into his right hand and a 6ML-79MM Missile Launcher onto his left. He didn't aim; he simply began to level the block. He laughed maniacally, firing wildly into the cityscape to flush me out, showing no regard for the civilians trapped in the buildings around us. The 180mm shells turned the surrounding apartments into confetti. I saw silhouettes in the windows—civilians caught in the crossfire—disappearing in plumes of fire. I dashed through the wreckage, desperate to stay mobile. One direct hit from that cannon would tear my Zaku apart. I had spare ammo, but I couldn't afford to waste it on blind shots.
"Stop it, you lunatic!" I yelled, pushing my Zaku into a desperate dash through the smoke. "There are people in there!"
"Collateral damage for the greater good!" Nox laughed, a jagged, broken sound. "The Earth needs a purge, and I'm starting with you!"
I needed an edge. The Zaku's reactor couldn't power a beam rifle, and my machine gun was just scratching his paint. I scanned the wreckage of the street and spotted a downed GM Sniper II, its legs crushed but its arm still clutching a Hyper Bazooka. Nearby lay a discarded Bullpup Machine Gun. I cut my thrusters, dropping into a low-profile crawl. As Nox's missiles turned the street behind me into a furnace, I reached out, my Zaku's manipulators trembling as I snatched the Federation weapons. They weren't optimized for my OS, but they were loaded. Even if they weren't fully loaded, they were my best shot at disabling Nox's heavy ordnance. I scavenged the weapons just before Nox rounded the corner.
"Come out, come out, little mouse," Nox cooed, the heavy thud of his Gundam's footsteps vibrating through my cockpit floor. "The cat has a gift for you."
He rounded the corner, his cannon leveled. I didn't wait. I rose from the rubble like a ghost and squeezed the bazooka's trigger. The heavy shell took him right in the right shoulder. The 180mm cannon shattered, the ammunition inside cook-offing in a secondary explosion that staggered the Gundam. I didn't stop. I opened up with the Bullpup, the high-velocity rounds shredding his left-side missile pod. Two remaining missiles spiraled wildly into the sky before I detonated them with my head Vulcans.
I discarded the empty Federation guns and ignited my Heat Hawk. The blade glowed a lethal orange. I charged, the metal of my Zaku screaming under the G-force. Nox recovered, drawing his beam saber. The pink plasma met my thermal blade in a shower of sparks that lit up the cockpit.
"Is this the 'New World' you wanted?" I screamed, my face visible on the shared comms link. "Massacre? Chaos?"
Nox's face appeared on my sub-monitor. He looked haggard, his eyes wide with zealotry. "I know you. You're that delivery guy from Simpson Street. I never expected to face a Zeek scum like you!"
"Tell me! Is this your goal? To continue the war after Genevieve's regime falls?"
"Of course! Better than that fat cunt who cut our pay for her social agendas. Our mission is to wipe every last Zeek off the face of the Earth. Thanks to that coward Kirk, we've got a front-row seat to the show."
"And you're the one who told Kirk to kill the President?" I demanded.
"I ordered him to do it behind Genevieve's back. Since he was a traitorous Zeek anyway, I let him get his hands dirty so mine stayed clean. It was the perfect assassination."
"Tell me Nox! Was Genevieve not 'military' enough for you? You killed your own President!"
"Because he deserved it! He prioritized funding for the LGBTQIA community over military power! He didn't care about the cuts Genevieve made! I PLANNED THE DEATH OF THAT PRICK MYSELF! HE TREATED ME AND MY TROOPS LIKE WORTHLESS SCUM!"
He lunged. I parried, but he used the momentum to slam his shield into my Zaku's chest. The monitors flickered red.
"WARNING: STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY CRITICAL."
I fired my foot thrusters, performing a desperate backflip to keep from being pinned. I countered with a shoulder tackle, my spiked pauldron digging into his chest armor, crushing his own chest Vulcans. He tried to shoot me point-blank with his beam rifle, but I hammered it with my machine gun. The weapons collided, leaving both of us with nothing but melee options.
Nox had lost one of his beam sabers when I rammed him into a building. I drew my Heat Hawk. The duel had reached its climax. He stood there, a beast inside a machine, his Gundam's eyes glowing with bloodlust. I could feel his killer instinct. But I couldn't die here—not when my wife and my son, Jennifer, were waiting for me. I had to find an opening to strike the cockpit or the generator.
"I can smell your fear, Zeek!" Nox growled.
He came at me again, faster than a machine that size should move. He was a beast, a monster fueled by pure, concentrated hate. But I had something he didn't. I had Jennifer. I had a wife waiting in the hold of a submarine. I had a reason to go home.
Nox swung high, a killing blow intended to decapitate the Zaku. I saw the opening. It was suicide, but it was all I had. I didn't block. I moved into the strike.The beam saber sliced through my Zaku's left arm, cauterizing the metal instantly. But while his blade was buried in my shoulder, his torso was wide open. I buried the Heat Hawk deep into the Gundam's cockpit. The scream that came over the radio wasn't human. It was the sound of a man being erased by the very heat he'd unleashed on the city. The Gundam went dark, the Heat Hawk still wedged in its chest like a tombstone. I backed away, my one-armed Zaku hissing steam, leaving Nox O'Niel Nielson to burn in his iron coffin.
I headed toward Paterson Park to find Bridget. The city was still a war zone as the Federation factions fought one another. When I arrived, I saw two Doms in ruins. The one piloted by Kirk was a funeral pyre; there was no way he had survived—there was nothing left of the traitor but ash. I found Bridget in Her Dom was a wreck, its legs sheared off, sitting amidst a field of charred Federation wreckage. She was sitting on the ground nearby with only minor injuries.
"Sergeant Major Bridget Rhodes!" I called out, exiting my cockpit to run to her.
"Markus..." she coughed as I pulled her from the cramped cockpit. She was bleeding from a head wound, her uniform torn.
"It's over, Sergeant Major. We're leaving."
I wrapped my bandana around her wound to stop the bleeding. Moments later, two Luggun scout planes arrived for extraction. Bridget's Dom was a total loss, so she climbed into my Zaku's cramped cockpit with me. My one-armed Zaku grabbed the Luggun's tow handle, and we flew out of the burning chaos of Thunder Bay is burned behind us, a victim of a civil war that would haunt the Federation for years.
Hours later, we linked up with the Mad Angler in Lake Huron. After landing, I called for a medic immediately, ignoring Bridget's protests that she was fine. My wife and son were waiting for me, overwhelmed with joy that I had survived. I took Bridget's place on the bridge as we navigated the massive ship from Lake Huron to Lake Erie. We passed through Sarnia and under the Gordie Howe Bridge in Windsor under the cover of darkness.
For days, we played a deadly game of hide-and-seek through the Great Lakes. We pushed the Mad Angler through Lake Erie, sneaking past the lights of Windsor and Detroit under the cover of a massive storm. By the time we hit Navy Island near Niagara Falls, the sub's engines were screaming, the crew was exhausted and the engines were overheating. We dropped anchor to hide.
After dinner with my family, I visited Bridget in the infirmary. She was recovering well, and I told her I'd stay on the bridge as acting captain while she rested. We hadn't been spotted by news helicopters or Federation patrols yet, but the road ahead was daunting. I studied the map; the only way forward was through the falls. It looked like suicide.
"Can't sleep, Markus?" Bridget asked, entering the bridge.
"I have a bad feeling about Niagara Falls," I admitted. "The drop is too deep. Can we actually survive that?"
"We can't take her over the Falls, Bridget," I said, staring at the map in the bridge. "It's a suicide drop." Bridget, her head bandaged but her eyes sharp, shook her head. "We aren't taking her anywhere. This is the end of the line for the Mad Angler."
"What do you mean?"
"Change of plans. We're ditching the ship tomorrow morning. A Zeon officer undercover on Grand Island is sending transport to Buckhorn Island State Park to pick us up. I got the report while you were dealing with that Guntank."
"So... the Mad Angler is just a decoy?"
"Exactly. We'll set it on a collision course for the falls to create a massive distraction. While the Federation is focused on the wreck, we'll slip away. Go sleep, Markus. We move at dawn."
At 04:00 AM, we abandoned ship. I watched from the deck of a civilian freighter as the Mad Angler drifted toward the misty precipice of Niagara. When the Federation patrol boats closed in, the sub erupted in a blinding flash, a final middle finger to the Earth Federation. We arrived at Eugene's estate on Bedell Road in Grand Island. It was a massive, well-equipped facility. Eugene offered the crew jobs within his network, helping other Zeon remnants live as civilians. But my mind was made up.
"I'm going home to Cuba," I told him. "I was never a real soldier. I just wanted to help Bridget."
"Wait, Markus," Bridget said, stepping forward with the rest of her unit. "We're all coming with you."
"Are you sure, Sergeant Major?"
"I won't force anyone to stay, but there's a hidden HLV in Cuba we can use to reach Axis in space if things get too hot here. We're sticking together."
We traveled from Central Nebraska Airport to Miami, and finally to Gustavo Rizo Airport in Cuba. It was a long, tense 20-hour journey, but thanks to the chaos back north, the Federation customs didn't give us a second look. Looking out the plane window as we left, I saw a distant column of smoke rising from where the Mad Angler had exploded. They had taken the bait.
We made it to Cuba. For a while, life was quiet. We lived in Baracoa moved in near my mother-in-law's house and took over her catering business. running a small catering business. I traded my Heat Hawk for a chef's knife. Bridget stayed with us, acting as a "nurse" for my mother-in-law, though I knew she spent her nights cleaning her service pistol and watching the stars.
We found an old HLV (Heavy Lift Vehicle) hidden in the dense, humid forests of El Yunque. We spent years refurbishing it in secret, fueled by rumors of a rising tide in the stars. It was rusted from the tropical rain, but the crew began secretly restoring it—a lifeboat just in case another massacre like Thunder Bay came to Cuba.
Then came year 0083. Operation Stardust.
When the news hit that the Delaz Fleet had dropped a colony on North America, the world stopped breathing. The Federation's failure was total. The "Nightmare of Solomon," Anavel Gato, had ignited the spark and the Earth became too dangerous for us.
"It's time, Markus," Bridget said, standing in the clearing of the jungle. The HLV was fueled, its engines humming. "The Earth is a graveyard. Our future is at the Martian front."
We didn't look back. We boarded the HLV—my wife, my son Jennifer, and the remnants of our Thunder Bay crew. We broke orbit, meeting a Musai-class cruiser in the debris belt. Our destination wasn't Space colony. It was Mars.
There, a new conflict awaited. The loyalists of Gihren Zabi were forming ReZeon, a shadow empire in the red dust, locked in a brutal civil war with the "Zeon Mars" faction. The Gihren Zabi loyalists—led by Omega Zabi—established 'ReZeon' on Mars. They began a guerrilla war against 'Zeon Mars' for control of the planet. Bridget remains a loyalist, and I have joined ReZeon to protect my family.
I looked at my family as our ship burned toward the red planet. I was no longer a delivery boy or a reluctant soldier. I was a survivor. And on Mars, survival was the only law that mattered. This is the end of my journey on Earth, but a new one begins on Mars. Living with my family in a new world is a fresh start, even if the war never truly ends.
To be continued...