I put another battleship in the sights of my bazooka while moving a dial to adjust for its downward velocity relative to mine. Just as I was about to pull the trigger on the first nuclear warhead in my magazine, Admiral Kellerne's face appeared on my HUD.
The harried admiral, frantic and surprised, said, "Attack now! You may fire your nuclear warheads at will for the next 120 seconds."
It was a bit late for that. Most of the Zaku pilots had already expended their nuclear warheads firing at Hawkins Fleet.
Wasting no more time, I swiftly fired three nuclear warheads at the enemy fleet. All three made contact, but they were all glancing blows. I fired two warheads at a battleship, dealing damage but failing to completely disable it. My third warhead hit a Salamis-class cruiser's tail, causing it to begin accelerating at an odd angle relative to the rest of the fleet. The cruiser would probably need to sit out for the rest of the battle, but I couldn't accurately say I destroyed it.
[OUT OF AMMO]
"Rounds expended," I said into my commlink, sighing in disappointment.
The Federation was learning how to counter our tactics. If the bazooka-propelled nuclear warheads struck a cruiser's armor directly, that was enough to destroy it in one hit. If the shot was a glancing hit, the cruiser would be able to limp away. Somebody in the Federation forces must have calculated the best way to angle a warship's armor to survive a nuclear blast.
I groaned loudly in annoyance. At least one of my shots would have been a direct hit if not for the false start. Instead of all the mobile suit pilots firing simultaneously, there was a thirty second period of uncertainty where only a small percentage of the Zakus fired.
"I'm out! Loading conventional magazine!" Vultee shouted.
"Me too," Ramos said.
I slapped my second magazine into my bazooka. Based on the flashes emanating from the enemy fleet, most of the other squads had used up all of their nuclear warheads as well.
Looking at Hawkins Fleet, I was concerned by the number of kills our ambush had scored. We had fired thousands of nuclear warheads at the fleet, yet it was still operational. By my estimate, there were probably about three hundred warships in Hawkins Fleet before the attack, and there were about two hundred now. If not for that breakdown in communication, I was sure that more than half of the fleet would have been destroyed by that first salvo.
Was the ambush more successful in the original timeline? Has I somehow caused the communication breakdown with my own actions? I really had no idea. The specifics of the mission parameters and methods of communication used by Zeon during the Battle of Loum were not explained in Mobile Suit Gundam.
"What do we do now, Commander?" Vultee asked.
"We wait another ninety seconds until Kellerne's green light on nukes expires, and then we'll fly towards them. I don't want to get caught in a nuclear blast," I said.
"Yes, sir."
The ships in the Federation fleet began shooting blindly in all directions in an attempt to hit the mobile suits that were attacking them. Oracle Squad took evasive maneuvers to get away from our initial firing vector. One of the ships might have been able to trace where they were hit from and return fire in that direction, so I decided to play it safe.
I seriously doubt the Federation hit a single mobile suit in their blind firing into the invisible blackness of space. Even if they got lucky and somehow managed to spot a squad of Zakus, the mobile suits altered their vectors with enough frequency that the Feds would never be able to hit them reliably.
When we were only sixty seconds into the ambush, I spotted a streak of red light through the magnified eye of my Zaku. At that range, the Zaku was little more than a barely-perceptible blip of light, yet I knew who it was immediately. While we sat and waited for the sixty seconds to elapse, three battleships were destroyed by that single mobile suit.
Char didn't want to wait, apparently. As I watched, several ships turned their particle cannons toward Char's Zaku and fired. They missed completely, striking a friendly battleship instead. The Magellan-class battleship, maimed by friendly fire, burned for nearly fifteen seconds before detonating in a bright fireball. Char would go on to count that as one of his kills, but I thought it was very debatable.
"Who's that red comet?" Ramos asked. I knew that thousands of Zaku pilots were having the same thought at that moment, giving birth to Char's nickname.
"That is Sub-Lt. Char Aznable," I said, and I couldn't keep the tone of admiration out of my voice.
"He's not following orders," Vultee muttered. "Rear Admiral Kellerne told us to not charge for two minutes after the attack order."
As we spoke, my eyes were fixed on my mission clock. Just as Vultee finished speaking, the timer passed +120 seconds since the attack order.
"It's time. Advance to close range with Hawkins Fleet," I said to the others.
"Roger!"
"Yes, sir!"
We accelerated toward the Federation fleet. As we began burning, I saw as a thousand new stars lit up in the black tapestry of space around Hawkins Fleet. Nearly two thousand Zakus, all invisible just a moment before, activated their thrusters at around the same time and began flying toward the enemy fleet. I could only imagine how terrifying it was for them.
The fleet's lookouts now had a new problem. Their problem was no longer that they could find no targets. Now, their problem was the sheer number of targets. There were a thousand new enemies in the air and only two hundred ships.
Into this cloud of uncertainty, I accelerated at full speed. As I hit the accelerator, I began beaming a message back to the Zeon fleet on the wing command frequency. Under the stress of acceleration, I said, "Fleet command, the Ananke has been destroyed. I repeat, the Ananke has been destroyed."
I flipped off the channel without waiting long enough to confirm the Zeon fleet's reception of the message. I was much more focused on evading particle cannon beams at that moment.
Like that, more than a thousand Zakus descended on a completely unprepared Federation fleet.