Chapter Text
Being a junker wasn’t so bad.
Ruby Rose reached into what had once been the rusty car’s dashboard — she’d removed the plastic top before she began — and pulled the last set of wires out. The car’s interior lacked pedals, a steering wheel, seats, or much of anything any more. It was now, officially, bare steel, ready to be crushed and brought to the recycling plant.
Recycling was important on a space colony — not needing to import steel, copper, aluminum, and all the other components of a car paid for itself on a long enough term. Not to mention that even five years later, you could still see the effects of the wartime supply shortages and rationing.
Ruby slid out of the car’s window before reaching in for her bag of scrap and pulling it out, above her head, and onto her shoulder. She clambered up the rungs welded onto the exterior of her mobile suit and slid into the cockpit with practiced ease, firing it up. It let out a burst of hot air as she shifted it up from a kneeling position to standing.
Her mobile suit was an old Zaku — well, it’d seen service in the war, which made it only six or seven years old at this point, but mobile suit technology was one of those things that was advancing by leaps and bounds every day. Zakus were bulky, like most Zeon suits, but they’d been mass produced and were easy to repair. It’d been incredibly damaged in battle and collected, which is how it ended up in Ruby’s hands after the chaos of the war. Whoever had “killed” it had severed the head and burned a hole straight through the original cockpit, so she’d ended up building a large open-air roll cage as a replacement cockpit.
Ruby had painted the mobile suit yellow with black hazard striping. It reminded her of her sister.
She put her hands on the Zaku’s controls. The mobile suit crouched down and picked up the husk of a car. It was a little less than half the size of the Zaku’s torso. She held it just below the suit’s cockpit, carefully pressing the right pedal to begin the mobile suit’s walk cycle. Without external cameras or the screens they would feed to in the cockpit, piloting would ordinarily be hard, but there wasn’t anyone around for her to trample, and most everything around her was destined to be scrap metal anyway.
Being a junker wasn’t so bad, but it was pretty lonely at times.
Ruby trudged over to the hydraulic car crusher and slid the car in, as if she were sliding a tray of cookies into an oven. She put her mobile suit into a crouch, its hand just under the cockpit so she could climb out and down to the crusher’s controls and slapped the automatic cycle. She climbed back up into the cockpit, grabbing her water bottle. It was vacuum sealed, but over the long day it had gotten fairly warm. She drank from it greedily.
Space colonies were climate controlled, but slight atmospheric differences and intentionally designed variances did make some days warmer than others. Today was, relatively speaking, a warm day. Not hot, like a real summer’s day. She’d never felt that sort of heat outside.
She watched the bottom of the crusher touch the car’s roof. It compressed the suspension, slowly caving in the roof supports, and compacted the car until it was less than half as tall as it had been. The crusher lifted and Ruby pulled the compacted car out and set it on a trailer atop the others she’d done today.
She checked her watch. It was too late for a run to the recycling plant — she’d have to wake up early and get it done first thing tomorrow.
She sighed, turning the mobile suit towards her home, just past the edge of the junkyard. As she piloted the suit over, the colony’s automated system turned the massive mirrors that reflected sunlight into the interior away, plunging the colony into the darkness of night at the same time that the streetlights flickered to life.
She clambered down out of the mobile suit as the mail truck arrived.
“Last stop of the day, Junker Girl,” the gruff mailman said, handing her a rolled up staple-bound magazine and a couple of items of junk mail.
“Thanks,” Ruby said excitedly. She threw the junk mail right into the garbage and hurried up to her front porch.
Ruby lived in a small three room cottage on the edge of the junkyard — the land was cheap, the commute was non-existent, and nobody ever bothered her all the way out here. She threw the magazine on the small bar in the wall between her room and the kitchen, washed up, and pulled a can of chili and a saucepan from the cabinets. She turned on the stove, dumped the chili in the saucepan, and stirred it.
Life had been like this for a while now for her. Ever since the war. It’d ripped away her family, left her drifting between colonies until she ended up here, on Atlas Colony, working a junkyard alone after the original owner died and left it in her care.
She reached over and grabbed the magazine, undoing the rubber band that kept it bound. Underground amateur magazines like these were rare — she got maybe one a month, if any. She remembered well reading them as a refugee, passing them around in the camps, desperately looking for her sister in the news stories of the White Base, the infamous “Newtype Unit” that had torn a path to victory for the Remnant Federation against the Principality of Zeon.
Her sister Yang had stumbled into the cockpit of the Federation’s prototype mobile suit, codenamed Gundam, five years ago. Ruby hadn’t seen or heard from her sister since, and even the underground journalists had given up tracking her down for an interview.
Ruby paged through the magazine as she stirred the chili.
It would only take the hint of a location. Ruby had enough saved for a shuttle down to Remnant, or to any of the other Sides. But until she knew where Yang was, she was stuck here.
It was morning. Ruby was back in her Zaku, clad in her mechanic’s jumpsuit. She pulled the large trailer, filled with stacks of flattened cars, behind her Zaku. It looked like a massive child hauling a wagon down the sidewalk.
She slowed as she approached the recycling plant. It looked completely shut down, and there was a group of police cars and military trucks at the gate. She recognized the insignia on the trucks, the bone white animal-like skull: the Grimm.
The Grimm were supposedly some sort of task force sent from Remnant to weed out the remnants of the Zeon military. The underground magazines were very clear about what they thought the Grimm’s real purpose was, however: the subjugation of the space colonies under Federation rule. And ever since they had started using Atlas Colony as a base, they’d harassed the residents constantly.
Now they’d shut down the recycling plant. Not only was it her main source of income, they were friendly. No, not just friendly. They were Ruby’s friends.
Ruby paled as the Grimm took notice of her. One of them grabbed a megaphone from a police cruiser and announced to her, “Step out of the mobile suit.”
She carefully set the mobile suit into idle and began climbing down off of it as Grimm officers and military policemen approached. One of the officers, very nearly a head taller than her, looked down at her. “Name?”
“Ruby Rose.”
The officer sniffed sharply. “And how long have you lived on Atlas Colony, Miss Rose?” He spat her name like it was an accusation.
Ruby took a deep breath. “Four or five years, since right after the war.”
The officer adjusted his cap, his eyes narrow. “A refugee, then. Occupation?”
“Junkyard worker.” Ruby flicked her gaze back to the mobile suit and trailer. “Just delivering a batch of steel to the recycling plant.”
“A likely story,” the officer said.
“Whoa,” Ruby said. “I’m just a junker, y’know. I scrap old cars and sell ‘em to these guys.”
“You’ve been selling your goods to enemies of the state,” the officer said, “which makes you equally suspect. Arrest this woman. We’ll question her, same as the others.”
“I didn’t know about any of that,” Ruby said, even as a pair of MPs flanked her. One pulled out a pair of cuffs; the other grabbed Ruby’s upper arm. She jerked her arm away and stumbled into the chest of the cuff-holding officer as the lead officer stepped up and punched her across the face.
“Add ‘resisting arrest’ to her sheet,” the man growled, cracking his knuckles. The men handcuffed Ruby and led her away to a waiting police cruiser.
The black one-eyed mobile suit descended slowly through space towards the colony — although, without gravity to anchor perspective, ascent and descent had little inherent meaning.
Atlas Colony was massive. It was two conjoined colonies, each of which was smaller than the norm, but together they were on the larger end. Someone who hadn’t traveled much would consider it rather impressive.
Blake Belladonna shifted slightly in the cockpit. This Rick Dias’s fully panoramic cockpit was nice compared to the mobile suits she’d piloted five years ago, but it did give one the sensation of being completely surrounded by the space outside — like only her normal suit was between her and the inky darkness of space.
No, there was something else — a strange presence on the edge of her thoughts. Was it her?
She shook her head and flicked on the comms circuit.
“Slow as we’re approaching the colony. Remember, short, controlled bursts on the maneuvering jets — these Rick Diases have stronger jets than GMs or Doms. If we’re gentle, we shouldn’t be spotted.”
“Copy, Lieutenant.” The red mobile suit above her gave a quick attempt at a salute — manned by Adam Taurus, a fellow ace pilot from the war. “Give me a couple days and I’ll fly circles around you, Blake.”
“That’s Lieutenant Kurosawa to you,” Blake replied, a chuckle on her lips. “Stay behind. The central block is zero-G, so I’ll make a quick flyby and take some pictures of this supposed Grimm base.”
“Copy. Keep in contact.”
Space colonies were cylindrical, with a trio of panels the length of the colony holding thousands of reflective mirrors all redirecting sunlight into the interior during the “daytime.” Most ships docked on the “front” of the colony, where the mirrors attached; Blake was approaching the “rear,” which housed the waste dump airlocks and larger cargo bays. She adjusted herself as she descended through the superstructure, using the jets to flip the Rick Dias so it was falling feet-first, hit one more burst of the jets to kill her inertia, and engaged the electromagnets on her mobile suit’s feet.
It touched down with a shudder through the frame and a loud thunk.
The magnets engaged and disengaged in sequence to let the mobile suit walk across the metal surface. She made her way to the airlock, flipping open the manual override and opening the door. It slid open and she climbed inside.
There were a pair of men inside — both in normal suits, tethered to a small panel in the wall they appeared to have been working on. Blake grimaced and pointed the Rick Dias’s hand at them as they turned to look at her. With the squeeze of a trigger, the knuckle of her mobile suit’s index finger flipped down and it dispensed a thick, viscous goo — intended for repairing starship hulls, but useful for pinning non-combatants. They both struggled as it stuck them to the wall.
“If you struggle too much, you’re gonna run out of oxygen,” Blake chided.
She knelt the Rick Dias slightly before powering it down. The panoramic screen faded to black; she pulled the twin-vernier maneuvering pack out and attached it to the back of her normal suit before the cockpit entry slid open for her. She kicked off out of the mobile suit with the grace of a swimmer and glided to an entry door.
She pulled a small electronic device to crack the door’s entry code off her belt and clipped its cable into the keycard reader. It flickered to life, running through code combinations on the tiny display before flashing twice. The door slid open for her.
She replaced the device and unholstered her pistol before venturing in, door sliding shut behind her.
She was still in the zero-G central block. These were maintenance corridors, kept relatively dark due to a lack of traffic. She kicked off, keeping steady against the walls as she rounded corners towards the colony interior.
Three locked doors later, security had caught on — not enough to send guards, but enough to lock the door into the colony. She huffed and pulled her other tool off her belt — a small plastic explosive charge. She set it and kicked off the door, catching herself on the corner of an intersecting corridor and pulling herself into cover seconds before the blast sounded.
Oxygen flooded the corridors, throwing the door open. Blake raised the visor of her normal suit and inhaled. It was the scent of space colony air — artificial, but tinged with plant life. She could smell something more industrial in it. She flipped back up into the corridor and kicked off, out into the colony proper.
Above and below were massive cityscapes, interspersed with large pseudo-natural parks and forests. It was the afternoon; she could see people eating lunch in the parks. And there, in the distance, was her objective, standing like a dark obelisk amidst the greenery and steel: the Grimm base.
She holstered her gun and used the vernier pack to maneuver closer. If someone was looking up from the floor of the spinning space colony, they would see a woman flying through the air.
She needed to get visual confirmation of the military presence on Atlas Colony — namely, their force strength and their new mobile suit: the Gundam Mark-II.
Gundam. The White Devil.
Five years ago—
She cut the thoughts there. She needed to focus. That Gundam was a pile of slag and the war was behind her.
She pulled out her camera, held it to her eyes, and zoomed in on the Grimm base. It was concrete and steel, taking up a large section of one of the three massive interior panels of the colony. She began to take photographs, snapping as many as she could.
There. The Mark-II was in a maintenance bay, flat on its back. It was painted in Grimm colors — black and red, with bright yellow paint around the exhaust vents and neck. She took more pictures.
The Grimm were further along then the A.R.U.G. thought, then. They weren’t fully established on Atlas Colony, but they’d brought fully armed and operational mobile suit prototypes. This would have to be reported.
Darkness obscured her viewfinder and she lowered the camera.
There, looming between her and the base, was another Gundam Mark-II, flying face up through the colony. Its eyes flashed, burning a bright green.
A mobile suit was ten times as large as an average human; Blake never felt as small as she did around an active mobile suit when she wasn’t in her own.
Blake flipped around, using the vernier pack to rocket away. The Mark-II pursued — and then, defying reason, the Gundam opened fire with its head-mounted vulcan gun. Blake winced, orienting herself so she presented as small a profile as possible for the Gundam to attack, and continued maneuvering towards her exit.
She stowed her camera as she ducked through the blown-open door, unholstering her pistol. She flicked her gaze back — half the Gundam’s face stared back at her. She dove around a corner as a security officer in a normal suit appeared. She unlatched her vernier pack and threw it backwards, catching him in the stomach as he followed her.
A trio of officers opened fire with small-arms rifles; Blake spun in mid-air and fired back. One of their bullets sliced into her normal suit and she winced as she sailed backwards through a doorway. She kicked back off the rear wall, landing next to the control panel. She jabbed the close button with her pistol and shot the panel just in case before she kicked off towards the airlock, sliding her normal suit’s faceplate closed.
She entered the airlock and kicked off towards the cockpit of her Rick Dias. Her normal suit’s wound would have to wait — she fired up the mobile suit and took off, right as her external cameras picked up the pursuing officers entering. They were thrown backwards by the thrust and she rocketed off into space.
“Lieutenant Bull,” Blake said into the comms as she cleared the superstructure. “Do you read?”
“Caught your little escapade on camera from out here,” Adam responded teasingly. “Got some good shots of the Mark-II.”
“Nice,” Blake grumbled. She resumed, in a more commanding tone, “Fire a flare. Let’s get the White Fang in here.”
“You have a plan?”
“What do you think? We’re gonna hijack the Mark-II,” Blake replied.
The cell was, by Ruby’s estimation, nine feet tall, eight feet deep, and twelve feet wide. It was a pretty good estimation, too, because she’d had nothing else to do but measure the cell pace-by-pace, calculating her shoe size compared to a foot, and then doing it all over again.
She was alone in the cell.
Further down the corridor, she could hear — and see, if she pressed her face against the bars — the crew of the recycling plant. Over the hours the Grimm’s MPs came in and retrieved people and took them down the corridor to an unknown fate. A few of them came back, speaking in hushed tones. Some cried. Some prayed. Others were silent.
Ruby thumped the back of her head against the wall as she leaned against it. She slumped down until she was sitting on the floor. She’d spent all her adrenaline panicking for the first hour, but she couldn’t fall asleep on the bare metal bench against the rear wall. Now she felt hollowed out, stomach rumbling.
She didn’t have all her documents in order — she hadn’t, not for the last five years. If the Grimm rooted around in her documentation, they’d immediately flag her as a war refugee. She’d heard the horror stories about the Grimm plucking people off the streets and shipping them to who-knows where.
She had to figure out something, and fast.
What would Yang do? Well, Yang would have probably punched the officer’s lights out before she got arrested.
“You, junker,” an MP said harshly, standing at the bars of the cell. Another stepped up alongside him. “Get up!”
Ruby put her feet under her, holding her hand against the wall as she stood. The MPs opened the cell door.
They handcuffed her before dragging her out of her cell, one MP leading, the other following behind her. He thumped his baton against the cell bars as they took her down the corridor.
This would be her best chance to escape — if she could find an opening.
They led her up two levels, the leading MP flicking glances over his shoulder all the way. Ruby felt certain that the roundabout path they were on was to make her more nervous for whatever dubiously legal interrogation they’d be performing with the added side effect of making it harder for her to figure out where they were in relation to the cell block.
At once, there was a rumbling and the ceiling cracked. Ruby shoulder checked the MP behind her as it came crashing down, the massive fist of a mobile suit crashing through the ceiling and pinning the man under concrete. The MP that had been leading whirled around, stumbling back as more debris fell.
Ruby could see through the ceiling. A mobile suit had crashed into the building — despite its dark colors, she recognized the distinctive V-shaped antenna atop its head. It was the Grimm’s new Gundam.
Ruby turned and ran down the corridor before either of the MPs could mount a pursuit.
Adam launched a flare from his Rick Dias.
Seconds later, the White Fang’s port beam cannon fired.
There were two ways for a mobile suit to enter a space colony. The first were the airlocks, like the one Blake had used — but these were easily controlled by the colony’s central computer, locking infiltrators in.
The second way was, of course, to blow a hole in the colony wall — which is exactly what happened seconds later as the beam cannon blast from the White Fang hit Atlas Colony’s outer wall, blowing it clean open.
Blake fired the Rick Dias’s thrusters against the rush of atmosphere flowing out of the colony and through the wall into the colony’s interior. Adam’s mobile suit was right behind her.
“They’ll be sending someone to check that out,” Adam said, flicking his gaze around as they flew through the colony toward the Grimm base.
“I’m not leaving with just pictures this time,” Blake replied. A trio of sparkles glittered in the distance — Blake opened a picture-in-picture zoom. Three mass-production GM units — post-war, but barely upgraded. “Twelve o’clock, GMs incoming.”
The GMs began firing their beam spray guns despite being out of range. They were probably inexperienced, Blake figured — the effective range of their spray guns was a lot shorter than specifications indicated, due to the short barrel reducing accuracy.
“This is where the fun begins,” Adam said. He hefted his Rick Dias’s Clay Bazooka off its backpack. “Just like old times, eh, Blake?”
“Break left,” Blake said, swerving down as the GMs advanced and pulling her beam pistol off the Rick Dias’s backpack. She flicked a switch and the top section of the mobile suit’s head hinged back to reveal its Vulcan guns. She fired on the lead GM. The shots splattered against the shield, knocking it aside so she could fire on the GM’s torso. It was a clean hit. The enemy mobile suit exploded, its remains falling down to the colony surface as Blake and Adam rocketed past.
Adam spun, firing his bazooka into the back of another GM. “They can’t keep up with such outdated mobile suits,” he said.
“You should be more worried about keeping up with me,” Blake said as another wave of GMs approached from the rear. She dropped altitude hard above a section of farmland, pulling up before she landed in the crops. One of the GM pursuers took the bait and smacked down into the ground in a mess of metal and fire. She swerved through a residential block with Adam following just behind, another GM crashing into a larger house behind them.
Blake looked ahead. Flying towards them was another unit — a singular mobile suit, painted black and red. The Gundam.
“Mark-II incoming,” Blake said.
The first problem was her handcuffs. Ruby ducked into a dark corner and pulled the multitool out of one of her jumpsuit pockets. She’d only ever seen this sort of thing done in movies — but they were cheap cuffs, and her left cuff popped open after some jiggling with the screwdriver in it. The right cuff was easier with her left hand free. She tossed the handcuffs under a shelf.
Ruby ran through the hallways — there were a lot of soldiers here, but most of them were more focused on figuring out what the hell had happened than stopping her. In her grease-covered jumpsuit, she looked like any other technician, and nobody questioned her as she got outside.
A crowd had gathered around where the Gundam had slammed into the building. They’d moved the mobile suit so it was flat on its back on the ground now, the hatch into the cockpit open. Ruby could see two Grimm pilots — one a short white-haired woman, the other a taller brown-haired man — in an argument, evidently over the crash.
Explosions sounded in the distance, and the crowd scattered. The white-haired pilot began barking out orders even as people ran for shelter — including the brown-haired pilot.
“You there,” the white-haired pilot said, spotting Ruby. “Mechanic! We have incoming hostiles! Run diagnostics on the Mark-II, and if it’s cleared for take-off, report to me immediately!” The woman flicked her gaze around. “Damnit, Winchester! Get back here!” She hurried off towards the other pilot.
Ruby blinked.
First they arrested her, now they were ordering her around? She clenched her teeth.
A horrible idea came to mind. Running wouldn’t work — but it would if she was protected by almost two inches of composite armor plating.
Oh, they’d definitely have reason to arrest her soon.
She ran over to the Gundam, climbing up the ladder someone had thrown down from its torso and stepping over to the hatch. She peered down into the dark of the cockpit before flicking a glance over her shoulder — the Grimm pilots were still distracted, arguing over something-or-other she couldn’t make out at this distance.
She climbed into the Gundam’s cockpit and sat in the pilot’s seat, facing up. At the press of a button the hatch slid down, completing the panoramic screen. She flicked on the Gundam’s central computer, powering up the mobile suit step by step. It was sort of like her cobbled-together Zaku, except the control layout was completely different. Still, everything checked out. None of the systems had been damaged in the crash.
It would be easy to leave and tell that pilot the Gundam was ready to go.
Ruby exhaled sharply. No, they’d just arrest her again. In here, she had a shot to get out of the base. She could get back home, grab her meager savings, and take a shuttle to the next colony while they were still figuring out what the hell had happened.
With another switch the screen activated and she was looking up now, through the Gundam Mark-II’s cameras, at the far side of the colony. The smaller screen directly in front of her informed her of her current armaments — an externally mounted Vulcan gun system on the head, and a pair of beam sabers. She flicked another set of switches to arm both.
She took a deep breath and pulled the control sticks.
The Gundam began to rise.
“Ah! It auto-balances just like a Zaku,” Ruby said to herself. She could see the pilots turn abruptly in shock at the movement as the Gundam stood, broken from their argument by the rogue mobile suit standing up.
Suddenly, a trio of mobile suits landed, sending personnel scurrying around their feet — another Gundam, just like hers, and two mono-eye mobile suits. One of them was black, and the other was red. Whoever they were, they’d painted their mobile suit to echo the stories of Zeon’s ace pilot, the Red Comet.
Her radio flared to life. “Cardin! Don’t just stand there, you ass! They want the Gundam!”
Then, another voice — a woman, saying, “Adam, that other one’s not fully operational. We’ll take the first one as planned.”
Ruby looked between them —the two unknown mobile suits, and the second Gundam. She tuned to the open channel and proclaimed, “I’m not your enemy!”
The other Gundam jerked back, seemingly involuntarily. “Who the— you’re not Cardin!”
Ruby launched, firing the Gundam’s jets. She felt thrown backwards by the force, but she crashed into the other Gundam arms-first, slamming it into the building behind.
“Get out or I’ll open fire,” Ruby ordered. She pushed the pedal down to flare her thrusters again, cracking the concrete behind them.
“This is Commander Ebi,” a commanding voice on a loudspeaker outside said. “Do as she says! You have no other choice!”
“Roger. I’m coming out,” the pilot of the other Gundam said. “Do you hear me, Unit 3?”
“Yeah, I hear you,” Ruby replied.
The enemy Gundam’s eyes fell dim and its joints fell slightly slack, like a marionette with the strings cut. The center cockpit access opened and the pilot climbed out onto the panel that had folded down to reveal the cockpit. He was clad in a full Grimm pilot suit with a helmet. “Now put me down,” he ordered.
Ruby grimaced but held out one of the Gundam’s hands. He hopped on. Ruby lowered him to a ledge and he hopped off.
“We can trust her,” the pilot of the black mobile suit said. “Adam, cover us. Gundam, pull the other one out. I’ll take the other side.”
Ruby pulled the other Gundam out of the wall and held it upright. The black mobile suit lumbered over and grabbed the other side.
“Ready for take off?” the other pilot asked.
“Ready,” Ruby replied.
Ruby wrapped the Gundam’s arm around its twin’s. The black mobile suit, holding the other arm, ignited its thrusters and Ruby followed suit after a moment to find the controls. They rocketed upwards and down the zero-G central block.
They passed over neighborhoods Ruby recognized, with a series of crashed GM suits charting the two monoeyed mobile suits’ path through the colony.
Suddenly there was Ruby’s junkyard. From above it seemed so small and meaningless, just piles of scrap metal. Was that all the last five years had been? She’d picked through trash hoping to save up enough to make it to Remnant, hoping to find her sister. Her entire life was down there, in neat stacks of flattened cars.
Now she was up here, and passing over it fast.
“Gundam, you with me?” the black mobile suit’s pilot asked. “You’re lagging behind.”
“Yeah.” Ruby looked one last time over her shoulder at the junkyard.
“Having second thoughts?” Adam asked.
“No,” Ruby said with a shake of her head. “I hate the Grimm.”
“Good,” Adam replied. “Keep your eyes open. We’re going to exit and accelerate to attack speed — those Grimm will be right behind us.”
They ascended further until they were, from a certain point of view, descending towards the colony floor on the far end. There was a hole punched straight through the floor — atmosphere continued to flow out of it, directly into the vacuum of space.
Ruby held her breath as they slipped out into space. Under her breath, she bid a farewell to her home for the past five years.
“Gundam,” the female pilot interrupted. “Adam’s going to take the lead here. Just follow him for now.”
“Right,” Ruby responded.
The red mobie suit drifted in front of them and began to accelerate. Ruby followed suit, the other mobile suit matching her pace.
“We’ve got company,” Adam said.
There, from the far end of the colony — four Hizacks, green monoeye mobile suits that continued the lineage of the Zaku. They bore down on the trio at attack speed.
“Can we outrun them?” Ruby asked.
“Not carrying this,” the other pilot responded. “Adam, I think now is the time.”
“Right,” Adam said. A pair of flares launched from the red mobile suit and exploded. “Gundam, continue moving on your present course — and don’t flinch.”
Seconds later, the space around them was enveloped in beam fire from a distant point. Ruby yelped in alarm as streaks of yellow light flashed all around the mobile suits. She flicked a glance behind — their pursuers had been struck, the Hizacks exploding behind them.
Ruby exhaled as the adrenaline began to wear down.
“How much longer do we have?” she asked.
“Our ship is a half an hour out,” the female pilot replied.
Ruby flicked one last glance to the colony before looking forward into the star-speckled darkness of space.