June 29, UC 0087
Headquarters, 16th Mobile Battalion, somewhere north of Saigon, Vietnam.

"I hate my job..." Titans Lt. Col. Natalie Dolvich (right) thought sourly as she saw another pile of paperwork arrive at her desk. She'd been doing nothing but damn paperwork since she had "taken command" of the 16th Mobile Battalion two months ago. A battalion in name only that is. Except for her and her two veteran Titans pilots, the base was overrun with slovenly Federal troops who were practically on a six month paid vacation. Not that she really cared anymore anyway. For all practical purposes she had been sidelined. Sidelined just as a war that everybody knew was brewing since that '30 Bunch' fiasco had started in earnest at the old Federal Headquarters of Jaburo a few weeks ago...

Natalie moaned at her fate. Three years ago she had been a rising star among the Titans, looked up to as a model officer by the rest of the organization. Until they started acting like thugs that is. Unlike most other Titans officers who resorted to taking hostages and demolishing every bit of colonial infrastructure in sight, she had often taken measures to ensure the safety of innocent civilians and had never taken any unsavory measures to root out those rebels. And THAT was why she was damn ****ing fired by those idiots at high command. They didn't seem to want anything but racist ***holes in the Titans nowadays... "Fear factor is needed" they say...

Natalie then sighed as she shook her head. She shouldn't be thinking like this, she thought. She was still an officer, and a couple of generation's worth of military service in her family had just made her devotion to duty all the worse. Damn genetics. She had wished she wouldn't become like her now missing father, whose devotion to duty had cost her mother and her three brothers, but she was ending up just like him. But at least she didn't have a real family to worry about.

A knock on the door abruptly ended Natalie's train of thoughts, which was followed by a brisk, accented voice saying, "Major Hawkins here, requesting permission to enter your office, mam."

"Hawkins..." Natalie thought. "Oh great, why the hell did he just show up when I was thinking about..."

"CRAP!" she thought angrily at herself. Now was neither the time nor place to...

"Mam... if it is a bad time..." Eaton Hawkins started with a touch of concern in his voice.

"Come on in..." Natalie replied tiredly, as she rubbed her eyes. Maybe she was just drowsy, she thought, and she needed to get rid of it or he might notice and...

"Thank you, mam," Hawkins replied as he entered her office, "I was just about to report the safe arrival of a pair of Midea transports. It seems your request for replacements have been granted."

"Oh?" Natalie asked as Hawkins handed her a form. "Great... replacements," she thought. Another reason to remember her. For the past three years her best pilot... and her best friend, had been Cpt. Sylvie Greisser. Though never a Titans herself, Natalie had made sure that Sylvie's squad had almost always been attached to her unit during any major combat operation, and for good reason. Sylvie had been called the "Valkyrie of Revo" for her astounding piloting skills and for saving many of her men from certain death. Natalie herself had found herself being saved by her friend on four separate occasions during their time together. However...

"Mam, pardon me," Hawkins started politely, "But are you still thinking of our fallen companion?"

Natalie shook her head. She lied. Sylvie WAS the reason of the frown now growing on her face. Sylvie had always saved others, but could never find a way to save herself. Sylvie had already been an emotional wreck when she had first met her, but after that serious battle at Bunch 7 Sylvie had never been the same. In fact, she had almost gone from an emotional wreck to a SUICIDAL wreck. Natalie had tried to help her, but to no real avail, and now Natalie regretted that. Sylvie had taken her own life just three months ago after she was transferred under the command of a rather notorious Titans commander. Somebody who had probably hounded her to insanity and forced her to kill herself for being a spacenoid... Damn racist b******...

"God..." she thought to herself as she recovered slightly, "with all the evil thoughts I'm conjuring up maybe I SHOULD just get out of the ****ing military and settle down somewhere..." Her eyes suddenly met Hawkin's face.

"Ummm... Colonel, are you absolutely certain that you are alright?" Hawkins asked nervously as he saw his commander's face oscillate from depression to rage to surprise. But he understood her frustrations rather well. Probably too well. He HAD elected to stay with her even though it was evident that her career was going down the toilet after all... Along with that loyal Cpt. Ivan Romanov.

"I'm fine, Hawkins..." Natalie grumbled in reply, her angry thoughts still fresh in her mind, "Replacements eh? Fresh from Nijmegen?"

"Where else would they get fresh meat, mam?" Hawkins shrugged.

"Well... time to give them the standard welcome..." Natalie replied as she snapped her knuckles. A "standard welcome" to her meant an immediate combat training exercise. It was just the thing she needed to let off all that steam...
-----------------------------

June 29, UC 0087 -1800 hours Zulu-
Subic Bay Military Base, The Philippine Islands

The sun had nearly set on the Subic Bay base, yet only now did the base really seem to come to life. Once an outpost that had been built by Zeon to service its Pacific submarine fleet, the base now served as a amphibious mobile suit testing facility for the Federation. Security was normally tight on research facilities, even more so now after AEUG's drop operation at Jaburo. Two squads of GM IIs now guarded the outside perimeter of the facility, supported by a trio of Guntank IIs. Also in the base were several emplacements carrying the upper chassis of a mass-production type Guntank. Though no longer mobile, these units still carried a considerable punch, and were more accurate than the tracked version. But all of these defenses had one major defect: None of them pointed towards the sea.

And it was something Kalaba's Lt. Richard Honour was very pleased about. Commander of the tiny converted Prober class midget submarine he had named the X-7, he never thought that he would actually command a midget submarine as one of his ancestors had done at Normandy on D-day*.

The midget submarines, Honour knew, had fought a long and glorious campaign during that war, first being pioneered by the Italians and the Japanese who had used them to damage the battleships Queen Elizabeth, Valiant, Ramillies and West Virginia**, but it was really the British who had shown what these "Underwater Special Operation Groups" could do to change the course of the war...

Though previous midget sub attacks had caused serious damage, there was often little strategic advantage gained from these attacks. It was not so, however, of the British midget submarine attack on the Tirpitz in 1943. Sister ship of the Bismarck, one of the most dreaded adversaries pf the Royal Navy during the war, the Tirpitz had bottled up every convoy attempting to get to Murmansk to bring needed supplies to the hard-pressed Russians. Bombers and conventional submarines had proven useless against her, yet it only took the well-placed demolition charges of a single midget submarine, the X-7, to cripple her, and the results were spectacular. Within a short time convoys were back on schedule and re-supplying the Russians just in time for the great tank battle at Battle of Kursk, and equally importantly, the Royal Navy was now free to roam the Barents Sea to hunt down and sink the battle cruiser Scharnhorst and end the reign of terror Hitler's warships had been waging over the North Sea. Rarely had so much been owed to one single military operation, and Honour was truly hoping he could have the chance to be part of something like that soon, hence his name for his own midget submarine.

And he certainly did feel that he was getting his chance right now. The Titans had outnumbered them in almost all respects, especially after that idiotic Anaheim-sponsored attack on May 5, but for all their firepower the Titans seemed to lack a proper naval contingent capable of policing the world's oceans. Of course, there was hardly any sea borne threats after the war and the Delaz's rebellion, but it was part of Honour's job to change that little fact. Just as long as a certain Captain could do the job as she had promised...
-----------------------------

"Pretty, ain't she, Sir?" mechanic Scott Gusman observed as a Titans pilot entered his hangar to take hold of the new mobile suit. A mobile suit that had once been the Zeonic MIP company's finest aquatic creation, and now seen as the key to Federal naval superiority. The brand new Zugock-E2.

"Hmphh... No Zeon designed weapon could ever be pretty," the Titans pilot grumbled in reply. Unlike the mechanic, who was an employee for Anaheim Electronics, the Titans pilot found cannibalizing ancient Zeon designs disgusting. He hated how the Federation had been using Zeon-based Hizacks and improved Gelgoogs - known as the Galbaldy betas - for their own use, and now even the Earth's no pure oceans would be polluted once again by this colonial made monstrosity. Damn politicians...

"Yeah right... Up yours you racist b******..." Scott thought to himself but did not say outloud. The Titans would get what he deserved soon for insulting his creation soon enough. The Zugock had been unmatched in underwater combat during the One Year War in addition to being an excellent ground combat suit, but only now had the Federation saw fit to re-use this design from the old MIP archives. The E2, for the most part, was essentially a close copy of the limited production but extremely powerful Zugock-Es built near the end of the One Year War, but it was built with newer materials, a better reactor, more and deadlier weapons, a more streamlined hull, and at last, a shield. And he had NO intention of giving all those neat goodies for THIS particular Titans...

"Well, is the damn thing ready yet?" the pilot asked impatiently as he noticed nobody else was in the hangar other than Scott, "Because if it is..."

Suddenly, in less than a blink of an eye, he was down on the ground, a small, neat hole now implanted right on the center of his forehead. From the shadows, a female figure stepped forward into view, carrying with her a silenced pistol, smoke now rising from its barrel.

"Jeez... that was quick," Scott observed as he began to drag the body towards a crate that he had already prepared for this purpose. The woman merely shrugged before helping Scott carry the body to its new hiding place.

"Time?" the woman suddenly asked as she started heading for the Zugock-E2.

"1815 hours and 23 seconds," Scott replied, "Looks like I have under five minutes to hightail out of here..."

"Yeah, I know..." the woman responded as she began to climb up towards the Zugock's cockpit, "Be careful now. Just leave the rest to me."

"Yeah, I know..." Scott replied, already on his way out of the hangar, not bothering to take another look at the Captain. He's been an infiltrator before, and previous experience had taught him it was best to be out of the way as soon as possible... His job, as far as everybody was concerned, was already done...

But to Cpt. Yoko Nagato however, the job was only beginning. To her, it felt great to be back. Captured years ago in the same Philippine Islands while leading a failed assault against a Federal amphibious landing, she had thought that she would immediately find herself facing a firing squad, or worse. But she hadn't, thanks to a kind word sent in by that damn Gundam pilot who had defeated AND saved her, and had found herself being released from the camps after the war.

And though her efforts hadn't been enough to win the last war, she thought, she certainly wasn't going to lose this one. She checked the time. It was now exactly 1816 hours...

Author's Remarks:

Hehe, I decided to add up some midget sub history in ths chapter. I love those li'l subs. Though not as famous as the Wahoo or Skate, they did more than their fair share during the Second World War. The crippling of the Tirpitz had indeed been their "biggest catch", and the strategic advantages gained by the Allies were the same as Richard Honour had described. However I would like to mention in here that there were in fact three 'X-craft': (the standard British Midget sub) that attacked the Tirpitz, of which X-5 was sunk, and X-6 and X-7 had their crews captured. Of the three, only X-7's charges actually caused damage, but it wrecked the battleship's engine room and allowed the Tirpitz to be eventually finished off by a bunch of three ton bombs courtesy of RAF Bomber command. :D

- *One of the X-craft midget submarines guiding the assault on D-day was commanded by a Commander Honour, whose part in the invasion has been written in Cornelius Ryan's The Longest Day, which is also the basis for some of the names in this story.

- ** Queen Elizabeth and Valiant were both damaged in the most famous human torpedo attack of the war launched by the Italians against Malta, while the Ramillies was damaged by the Japanese Ha-boats as a diversionary tactic just before the battle of Midway. The attack on the 'West Virginia' was more controversial though. Though many still maintain that no midget submarines actually penetrated Pearl Harbor during the infamous December 7 attack, some evidence (including a rather convincing photograph) suggests that one midget sub did manage to enter the harbor, and had fired and hit both of her torpedoes at the 'West Virginia'. See the recent National Geographic feature on Pearl Harbor for more details :-).

Notice: This story and all related material is copyrighted by Thomas E. "Zinegata" Ting, no part of this story may be taken by any other person. If you wish to use any material, please contact me first. Gundam and all related trademarks are owned by their respective companies.