It was time for me to turn my attention toward the warships. My Vulcan Gun was half depleted, and I still had to expend six rockets before I could return to the Gidoru. Immediately, I turned and snapped off a rocket into the side of a cruiser. Several of the warship's decks erupted into a bright fireball as the rocket exploded.
I knew that firing the rocket wouldn't be sufficient to sink the cruiser, but it served the purpose of lowering my ammunition count. It would look bad for me to return to base before expending all of my rockets.
[READY TO FIRE]
As I evaded the turret fire of the cruiser and stayed in the blind spots of its particle cannons, I thought about the ramifications of what had just happened. My left arm was out of commission (at least I didn't need both arms to use my weapons), and Terry Sanders's Saberfish had been destroyed. I hadn't really had time to consider the effects his death would have while we were fighting, but his death would probably be good for me ultimately. One fewer pilot on Shiro Amada's team would increase the likelihood of the Apsaras's survival.
Curious, I turned my one red eye toward the wreckage of the two destroyed Saberfish. This curiosity transformed into a nagging feeling in the back of my mind as a few things suddenly started to bother me.
Since I had reincarnated eleven days before, I had taken a few named Federation characters off the board. Tianem was captured, Revil was officially declared "MIA" by the Federation, and now Sanders was dead.
That was good for me. Fewer Fed officers and pilots increased Zeon's chances of winning the war. Despite this, something was nagging at me. I had no evidence that those pieces would stay off the board.
Surely, Revil would stay dead. I had hit him with the biggest explosion ever created by mankind, yet I had not seen his body. This MIA business was really screwing with my head.
It wasn't just Revil. Admiral Tianem was in the same position Revil was in at this point in the war in the original timeline, and Revil was able to escape from prison.
I fired the second rocket of that magazine into the wide hole I had already dug in the side of the cruiser with my first rocket. This second blast damaged something deep inside of the cruiser, and a series of crackling explosions similar to popcorn in a microwave could be seen in the hole.
After a few seconds, the frequency of these explosions increased until it crescendoed in one big explosion that cracked the entire warship in half. I must have struck the part of the ship where it held its ammunition or fusion batteries.
While the cruiser cascaded and exploded, my mind was elsewhere. Was it possible that there was some force protecting the named characters? No, that was impossible. Well, it should have been impossible.
After spending so much time existing in the Earth Sphere, it was easy to forget, but Gundam was a fictional universe. Who was to say that it didn't follow a certain kind of logic that was alien to my original world?
With this nagging feeling in the back of my head, I burned to the location where I destroyed Warrant Officer Sanders's Saberfish. There were two destroyed fighters in close proximity to one another, and their debris had become entangled together. Using my Zaku's one working hand, I sifted through the debris, looking for the body of Sanders and this "Watanabe" figure he mentioned.
Inside of the debris cloud, I found the charred and bisected corpse of a pilot. I continued looking for another thirty seconds, but I absolutely could not find any evidence of a second body.
Grunting in annoyance, I grabbed the corpse and lifted it up to my Zaku's camera. Luckily, this area was clear of Saberfish and enemy warships after the last few minutes of combat.
I looked closely into the corpse's helmet and saw its face. The helmet had prevented the face from taking too much damage, and I saw that the corpse absolutely did not belong to Warrant Officer Terry Sanders.
Leaving the floating corpse there, I boosted away from the wreckage as I smacked the back of my head against my chair. If Sanders was dead, I should have been able to find his body. He must have survived the destruction of his Saberfish and escaped while my attention was elsewhere.
A new theory formed in my mind: important characters were protected by some unseen force. I had been able to alter their fates significantly, but I wasn't sure that any of them were actually dead. At that time, I didn't have enough evidence to substantively prove or disprove that theory, so the only thing I could do was return to the battle.
The next rocket went into the side of a Columbus-class supply ship. The internal cargo bay burst open, and the atmosphere contained within escaped into space.
[OUT OF AMMO]
I figured that would be enough to keep the supply ship out of commission for the rest of the battle, so I loaded the last magazine into my bazooka and began searching for another target.
[READY TO FIRE]
As I flew through the empty space between the Federation warships, a Saberfish turned hard in my direction and began accelerating at full burn. I destroyed it with a quick burst from my Vulcan Gun and sidestepped the burning debris like it was a charging bull.
In the expenditure of my last rocket magazine, I decided to play it safe. The bulk of my attention had to be spent on watching out for suicidal Saberfish pilots. My Zaku seemed to draw them like flies.
I put three more rockets into the upper portion of a Magellan-class battleship. The first two were used to eliminate the warship's upper guns, and the last one was used to destroy the bridge.
As the battleship burned in an uncontrolled conflagration, I tossed my bazooka into the emptiness of space and drew my 120mm MG from its position on the back of my waist. There was nowhere to place the bazooka with my Zaku's loadout, so I just had to leave it floating there.
It was +320 seconds since I gave the order to regroup in five minutes when I arrived at the designated position. I was twenty seconds late, but I had the excuse of being harried by a squadron of Saberfish.
Vultee and Ramos were waiting at the regroup point when I got there. Vultee's Zaku I was missing its right arm, and Ramos's custom Zaku II had taken wide-scale but non-crippling damage to most of its armor.
We were banged up, but we were alive.