January 5th, 0079
The training hall began to spin, and my feet once more pushed against the ground. There were about a dozen soldiers in the training hall, and most were doing push ups or running anti-spinward to increase the downward force.
Like many other things aboard the Nordhausen, standing in the training hall was surreal. It was essentially a big cylinder with an axle in the center around which the hall rotated. Whenever I looked up, I could see other soldiers in drab brown pants and white undershirts training on the opposite side of the cylinder.
Standing opposite me was Officer Vultee who held a training tomahawk in one hand, matching the one I carried. The prospect of training with tomahawks seemed to confuse him, but he listened to my request all the same.
"Go!" I shouted a moment before I stepped toward Vultee with my tomahawk raised.
Utilizing his superior athleticism, Vultee dodged out of the way of my first blow before moving to counterattack. I caught his wrist in my left hand. Seeing the opportunity, I drew my training tomahawk against Vultee's midsection where the cockpit would be on a Zaku. The fight was decided in less than five seconds.
"You got me, Lieutenant," Vultee said with a smile.
"It would have been a lot slower in a Zaku," I said, testing the weight of the tomahawk in my hand.
"Why are we practicing with tomahawks? Wouldn't rifle drills be more effective for training?" Vultee asked.
"No, we won't be using rifles for at least a month," I said, garnering a look of confusion from Vultee. I cleared my throat. "The next few battles will be against battleships."
"Sure, I understand that, but what does that have to do with tomahawks? We won't be using Heat Hawks against enemy battleships," Vultee said, unconvinced.
"In the future, our biggest threat will be enemy mobile suits," I said.
"Enemy mobile suits? But the Earth Federation doesn't have any mobile suits."
"If this war drags on for too long, they'll eventually make their own," I said.
"But…"
"Just do the combat drills, Vultee," I said, annoyance growing in my voice.
"Yes, sir," Vultee said, his desire to follow orders superseding his desire to know the truth.
Every minute of the next 24 hours that I wasn't asleep, I was either training with Vultee or reading through the Zaku user manual. I learnt that my Zaku was a model MS-06C, which meant it was designed to carry nuclear weapons. They were meant to carry these nuclear weapons in H&L-SB25K bazookas and were meant to be fired from the shoulder. It was suggested that the pilot keep at least a kilometer between himself and the target. Considering the bazooka's lack of accuracy, it could only really be used against enemy ships.
I was reading the user manual in the hangar when I got to the part about nuclear missiles. Realizing that the hangar was probably filled with nuclear warheads, I decided to finish reading the user manual in my room.
Passing through the ship's crew compartment made me a bit uncomfortable, since a large Principality of Zeon flag was clipped to the common room's wall. I don't really know how to put this, but the Zeon flag was essentially identical to the flag of the Third Reich, though the swastika was replaced with a different symbol.
Subtle. Looking around at the other Zeon soldiers, I wondered how none of them saw the parallels. The Third Reich exists in the world of the Universal Century. Did no one say, "That looks like a Nazi flag," at any point in the design process?
By that point, I had become comfortable with the fact that I was on the bad guy's team, but they didn't have to be so obvious about it. I mean, talk about a red flag.
In the time I didn't spend in the crew quarters, I was in the training hall fighting somebody else with a tomahawk. With each fight, I tried to visualize my Zaku performing the same actions. Melee combat was like a dance. There was a predictable back and forth to a fight, and I was going to engrave its melody into my very bones.
Around 2000 hours, I sat at one of the Nordhausen's observation decks as Island Iffish began burning toward the Earth. I looked out as the gargantuan projectile began speeding forward. It was strange that it took so long for Island Iffish to start moving. I could have sworn that it left after only an hour.
A voice came in on the intercom, saying, "Our fleet will escort Island Iffish to its destination. Prepare for acceleration in thirty seconds."
When the ship began accelerating to follow Island Iffish's path, I was pushed against the floor, giving the ship a feeling quite reminiscent of Earth's gravity. The acceleration lasted less than a minute, and we were soon back to normal zero-gravity.
At 2300 hours, I returned to the hangar where Vultee and Ramos were already waiting. Our Zakus were repaired and armed with mountainous rocket launchers. Looking at them in person, I understood that the designers wouldn't need to shrink the nuclear bombs down at all. The barrels of the Zakus' bazookas were so large that you could fit a bomber in there.
"Do you really think there will be a land invasion?" Vultee asked Ramos, and I could tell I was entering in the middle of a conversation.
"The Earth Federation is big," Ramos said, holding his hands out for effect. "Like, really big. Zeon was a small part of the Earth Sphere. Yeah, we've got Zakus, but they have bombs big enough to take out mobile suits."
"Look alive," I said, and both of my squad mates turned toward the source of my voice abruptly.
"Sir!" they both shouted at the same time.
"Let's survive the space war before we worry about the ground war."
We boarded our Zakus, and I was immensely grateful to have a working space suit once again. If my cockpit was breached again, I probably wouldn't die instantly.
After a long process that took more than thirty minutes, we left the Nordhausen and entered the cold vacuum of space. The process required me to enter a small Zaku-sized compartment, and the atmosphere in that compartment was then cycled back into the ship. It was painfully slow, but the ship couldn't afford to lose a building-worth of air every time a Zaku had to disembark. According to the user manual, the air would just be vented with the Zaku in an emergency.
As the air slowly filtered out, I wondered if the process would be that slow when the time for battle came. Either way, I soon disembarked and saw the Zeon fleet for the first time.