Chapter 359: The Battle Begins Again (3)
The Calamity Gundam raised its plasma armor-piercing rocket launcher and fired several shots in a row at the Flight Armor Strike.
The Raider Gundam in MA mode also used its shoulder machine guns, spraying continuous fire at Tolle.
Tolle had no choice but to keep dodging and evading. The thrusters on the Flight-Pack flared to full power from time to time as he moved in irregular patterns, while aiming his shoulder beam cannons at the Calamity and Raider and launching a counterattack.
However, the Forbidden Gundam immediately rushed in front of them, raising its two newly repaired energy-deflection armor shields and twisting the direction of the beam-cannon attacks.
Then Shani, controlling the Forbidden Gundam, raised the heavy scythe and slashed toward the Flight Armor Strike.
Tolle immediately waggled the control stick, sliding sideways into a spinning turn to dodge the attack, then launched a rapid counterstrike—firing a chain of micro tracking missiles straight into the Forbidden Gundam's face.
"Damn thief! I won't let you get away with this!"
The shockwaves from the explosions of the micro tracking missiles blasted him away, sending him spinning several times before he finally stabilized.
Taking advantage of the opening created when the Forbidden was knocked back, Tolle raised his beam rifle, shield-mounted weapons, beam cannons, and micro tracking missiles, locking onto the Calamity and Raider and unleashing a full-salvo strike at them.
"Orga, their firepower is too intense. With you onboard, I can't dodge properly."
"There's no choice, Clotho. Then drop me on land first."
Clotho immediately maneuvered the Raider Gundam to evade, accelerating into a spinning flip and throwing the Calamity Gundam down onto Orb's coastline.
Although he dodged the four beam attacks, he was still caught off guard by the micro tracking missiles.
"Damn it! I still got hit. How annoying!"
Furious, Clotho immediately switched back into MS mode to stabilize the machine, then launched the wrecking-ball spike toward the Flight Armor Strike.
Meanwhile, after Orga landed on the ground, he looked up at the three machines tangled in combat in the sky and then fired the Calamity Gundam's twin long-range high-energy beam cannons at the back of the Flight Armor Strike.
But the beams were once again twisted aside by the armor on the Flight-Pack, and they nearly struck the Forbidden and Raider instead.
Orga said helplessly to Clotho and Shani, "Looks like beam weapons won't work. You two keep playing with him. I'll deal with the ground forces."
Shani, holding up the energy-deflection armor shield to block the warped beam attacks, said angrily, "I'm enough on my own. Clotho, get out of the way too—you're just getting in my way."
"All right, all right, I'll leave it to you. I'll go deal with those two big ships."
Clotho then shifted the Raider Gundam back into MA mode and charged toward the Archangel, attacking it with his shoulder machine guns.
Murrue was forced to shift the main firepower toward the Raider Gundam, diverting the guns that had been aimed at the cruise missiles.
But Clotho fired and immediately retreated. Relying on superior mobility, he darted over to attack the Huayan instead, constantly hopping back and forth between the two sides and carrying out harassment attacks.
Because the Three Aces were each tying down the main firepower of the defensive line, the Earth Alliance's MS forces encountered much less resistance as they advanced.
The three Blue Forbiddens in the sea also coordinated with one another, continuously firing supersonic torpedoes underwater.
Orb's naval forces were beaten into total disarray.
Then two Sword Calamity units and twenty Corpse-Armor Longblades rushed up onto the coastline, launching attacks against the M1 Astray units.
Forty Duel Daggers and over two hundred Strike Daggers followed right behind them, their thrusters blazing as they made short-range flight dashes toward the coast.
They held their shields up while raising their beam rifles, providing fire support for the MS assault units in front.
Many of the M1 Astray Gundams on the coastline were caught off guard by hundreds of beam shots. Even with PX System assistance, a large number of machines were still blown apart.
In the inland base, Asagi, Juri, and Mayura, who had not yet made it to the coast, immediately piloted their M1 Astray with Buster equipment, continuously alternating their left- and right-hand weapons to form anti-armor dispersal cannons and high-energy converged-beam rifles, launching counterattacks against the onrushing MS forces.
They likewise shot down quite a few of the Duel Daggers and Strike Daggers that had charged in.
On another front, Mu, Edward, John Kelly, Jean, Rena, and Barry—six of them—also piloted their machines into the battlefield.
They launched a fierce assault on the two Sword Calamity Gundams and twenty Corpse-Armor Longblades that had already pushed onto the coastline.
While piloting the Aerial Raider, John Kelly did not forget to try persuading his former comrades in the Corpse-Armor Longblade units to defect.
"Alliance Artificial-Coordinator comrades, I am John Kelly. Back then, in order to end this meaningless war as soon as possible, I had no choice but to abandon my homeland and join the Earth Alliance.
"But the current Atlantic Federation is no longer worth following. They've completely lost their sanity.
"Under the excuse of ending the war sooner, they carried out those inhumane human-experimentation projects on you.
"Those madmen created you in the first place just to use you as expendable war resources.
"Are you really going to keep not resisting, letting yourselves be used as weapons of war for your entire lives?
"And they don't truly want to end the war either. The higher-ups are being manipulated by the extremist group Blue Cosmos, which keeps profiting from the war.
"Even if the war ends, they will wipe out all of us Coordinators—men, women, and children alike—and that will definitely include you Artificial Coordinators as well.
"You might as well join us now, resist the tyranny of the Earth Alliance together, and overthrow Blue Cosmos's control."
As soon as he finished speaking, the attacks of the Corpse-Armor Longblade units began to slow. They started thinking.
"Heh, John Kelly, not bad. Very good, excellent. It was really the right decision to persuade you to defect back then.
"Azrael, I'll take these twenty Corpse-Armor Longblades as interest for you stealing my PX System and Intelligent Auxiliary System."
"Nami, immediately use the nearby Neo DG Cells to assimilate and brainwash all these Corpse-Armor Longblades. Oh, and don't forget to add the two Sword Calamities and three Blue Forbiddens as well."
"Yes, Master. Nami guarantees completion of the task."
While still entangled in combat with the Forbidden Gundam in the distance, Tolle had Nami manipulate the Neo DG Cells on the nearby wrecked M1 Astrays, sending them out stealthily toward the Corpse-Armor Longblades, Sword Calamities, and Blue Forbiddens to assimilate them.
Very quickly, all of those pilots were fully brainwashed.
Led by a captain from the Corpse-Armor Longblade unit, they immediately switched sides on the spot and turned their guns on the two Sword Calamity Gundams.
Edward also began persuading them, and soon the Sword Calamity pilots—now likewise brainwashed—joined Orb's forces as well, turning their fire on the Earth Alliance's MS units.
-------
[Support me and read more on Patreøn at patreøn.com/craxx_real.]