The New Misurugi Republic had just declared war on PLANT and expelled PLANT's diplomatic personnel stationed at the Star Palace Colony Satellite.
At this moment, foreign diplomats in Star Palace fell silent. Due to delayed intelligence, they had only just received instructions from their home countries regarding the New Misurugi Republic's Super Mobile Fortress—some protesting, some condemning, and some seeking cooperation.
However, all the diplomats ignored these orders. Those who had risen to their positions knew how to adapt to circumstances. These commands had been transmitted before the New Misurugi Republic went to war with PLANT and were now entirely outdated.
Sure enough, a day later, new emergency orders arrived. Diplomats from the three nations of the Earth Alliance approached Une, expressing their hope that the New Misurugi Republic would join the Earth Alliance.
This time, the Earth Alliance showed remarkable sincerity. A newly assembled fleet from the Moon had already set out, ready to aid the New Misurugi Republic.
Une naturally understood the Earth Alliance's motives. The three great powers simply didn't want the New Misurugi Republic's technology to fall into PLANT's hands.
In the eyes of the Earth Alliance's three nations, whether the New Misurugi Republic survived or not might not matter at all. In fact, they might even hope for its downfall—that way, they could seize Reid and bring him back to their own countries.
Thus, Une firmly rejected the Earth Alliance's invitation, declaring that the New Misurugi Republic would stand alone against PLANT. She even refused assistance from the Earth Alliance fleet.
Faced with this, the diplomats from the three Earth Alliance nations turned to Ange instead, only to receive the same answer.
As for Reid, who usually maintained good relations with these diplomats, he had outright vanished. Officially, he was said to be preparing a "surprise" for ZAFT.
The three Earth Alliance nations were left speechless. Were the leaders of these neutral nations all this stubborn? First Orb, and now the New Misurugi Republic—even in the face of a war of annihilation, they refused to yield.
However, unlike Orb, the Earth Alliance could accept Orb's demise. What they couldn't tolerate was the New Misurugi Republic—along with Reid—being swallowed up by PLANT.
So the Moon's fleet continued its advance toward the Star Palace Colony Satellite. Even if it meant descending into a three-way free-for-all, they had to ensure Reid Isaac wasn't taken alive by PLANT.
Meanwhile, the Earth Alliance spread rumors within the Star Palace Colony Satellite, attempting to use civilian pressure to force the government into joining them.
To be honest, the immigrant population in Star Palace Colony Satellite was panicking. They had moved there to escape war, only for war to follow them.
This was especially true for those recently rescued from Orb. In despair, they realized that war seemed to be chasing them. Barely days after fleeing Orb, the New Misurugi Republic was now on the brink of another conflict.
But just as the people of Star Palace Colony Satellite were gripped by fear, Reid began revealing his cards once more, delivering a much-needed boost to national morale.
Under the stunned gazes of the three Earth nations' diplomats, the Star Palace Colony Satellite suddenly opened over a dozen hidden port gates, from which no fewer than a hundred Constellation-class High-Speed Battleships and nearly two hundred Antietam-class Freighters emerged (not all carrying Mobile Suits—many were loaded with repair parts and ammunition supplies).
Then came several distinctly different new-model warships (Argama-class), which joined the super mobile fortress [Barge] to form a terrifying space fleet.
Meanwhile, the legendary 66-year-old Eurasian Federation General Brian Eno, who had been vacationing in the Star Palace Colony Satellite, declared that he simply had to lend a hand in the fight against ZAFT. He immediately came out of retirement to assume command of a New Misurugi Republic fleet division, silencing public doubts about the republic's lack of experienced high-ranking officers.
And that wasn't all. Reid deliberately had the [Barge]'s assigned Mobile Dolls, the Mass-Produced GM Astrays, fly directly from the Star Palace Colony Satellite into the [Barge].
Thanks to cost-saving Astray Gundam technology and the Factory Module, these Mobile Dolls—whose performance was barely better than the Strike Dagger, with only slightly superior armaments and detection systems (the advantage being their ability to equip bazookas)—had been mass-produced by Reid to the staggering number of over 5,000 units.
(Don't say it's too many—official sources have explicitly stated that the first war nearly wiped out an entire generation in PLANT. Even excluding warship and logistics personnel, ZAFT had at least 200,000 to 300,000 Mobile Suit pilots at minimum.
Also, Mobile Suits were never meant to parallel fighter jets but rather WWII tanks—a point Yoshiyuki Tomino confirmed in interviews, and Mitsuo Fukuda never contradicted this logic.
Factoring in late-war reinforcements, ZAFT's total Mobile Suit deployment at its peak easily exceeded 100,000 units. Spread across space and Earth's various strongholds, this made ZAFT's Mobile Suit numbers seem deceptively small.
The Earth Alliance's numbers were even higher, given Earth's population of over 15 billion and the fact that, in the space era, common metals were cheap. Estimating their production capacity using modern standards would be as absurd as using medieval metrics to gauge today's output.
Officially, PLANT's 60 million people had production capacity surpassing Earth's 15 billion—an illogical but canon fact proving space-era productivity was beyond modern comprehension.
For a rough estimate, use current global wartime production as a baseline, then multiply it by at least ten for the Earth Alliance (by SEED's later stages, military production had fully recovered, since large-scale laser nuclear reactors were still operational).
Then extrapolate Mobile Suit numbers based on WWII tank quantities, as Mobile Suits replaced tanks as the primary force in the Gundam universe.
Modern tank numbers can't be used as a reference because their battlefield impact pales in comparison to WWII, with nations now reducing their inventories. Mobile Suits, however, remained the absolute backbone—no one cut their numbers.)
Beyond the units directly assigned to motherships, over 2,000 additional Mobile Suits openly flew into the [Barge] in full view of everyone.
The residents of the Star Palace Colony Satellite were astonished by how the New Misurugi Republic had managed to conceal such massive efforts. Without anyone noticing any changes in their daily lives, this nation of less than two million people had somehow built an entire space fleet within just over a year.
Zhao Zhongjian, the East Asian Republic's diplomat stationed at Star Palace, suddenly realized the truth—when Reid had given him the Constellation-class blueprints, production had already begun. That kid had been using the East Asian Republic as a shield all along.
Diplomats from other nations shared similar thoughts—this fleet must have been under construction for at least a year, possibly since the republic's founding.
The only question was: where had the New Misurugi Republic secretly obtained so many resources?
While the materials for the [Barge] had been diverted from new colony satellite construction, what about the resources for these three hundred ships and thousands of Mobile Suits? Star Palace's mining operations in nearby asteroid fields couldn't possibly yield this much. Even with covert shipments from elsewhere, accumulating such vast resources seemed impossible.
After all, even the four major Earth powers would need to tighten their belts to field such a super fleet. Yet the militaristic New Misurugi Republic showed no signs of economic strain—instead appearing wealthier than ever.
But reality couldn't be denied—these ships and MS weren't holograms. The three Earth Alliance nations had to acknowledge that the New Misurugi Republic's fleet now appeared stronger than their own lunar deployment, giving them legitimate standing to challenge ZAFT head-on.
The Earth Alliance actually fared better—they were merely shocked, responding with renewed global investigations to uncover whoever was supporting the republic. Suspicion immediately fell on royal families, nobility, and ancient clans worldwide, as the republic's staggering wealth (and material resources) seemed only possible with backing from centuries-old superfamilies.
On the PLANT side, Patrick Zala received intelligence about Reid's sudden super fleet not with anger, but relief—"Thank goodness, what luck."
Patrick considered himself fortunate to have declared war early. If Reid Isaac had been given a few more years to produce seven or eight such fleets, PLANT would have been completely overrun.
Patrick didn't waste time wondering about the fleet's origins. In his view, Reid's supporters included PLANT's still-hidden internal factions, the Clyne Faction, unknown Earth forces, plus the East Asian Republic and Eurasian Federation from the Earth Alliance. With so many backers, assembling a fleet was plausible.
Thus, Patrick's only response to Reid's Bright Sword was to triple his attack fleet's size—from the single fleet he'd deemed sufficient against the republic's presumed strength, to three fleets approaching the scale of the Nova defensive campaign.
Yet unexpectedly, though PLANT had declared war first, it was the New Misurugi Republic that struck the initial blow.
After having the main fleet make a public appearance to reassure the populace, Reid immediately dispatched half of the Constellation-class battleships. Led by Brian Eno and commanded by Grodek Ainoa, these ships dispersed into smaller units along ZAFT's route to the Star Palace Colony Satellite to conduct guerrilla warfare.
ZAFT had mobilized three full fleets for this campaign, even drawing nearly half the forces stationed at the Boaz Fortress. Including various supply ships, the three fleets totaled several hundred vessels, making their route impossible to conceal.
Thus, Reid's dispatched fleet focused on targeting patrol ships. Given the speed of the Constellation-class, only ZAFT's Nazca-class could keep up. However, Nazca-class battleships carried only six Mobile Suits, while the Constellation-class could deploy eight.
ZAFT patrols typically consisted of no more than three ships, rarely deploying their advanced Nazca-class for such duties. Once ZAFT's fleets moved beyond PLANT territory, they found themselves under attack from all directions.
Moreover, Reid had instilled the guerrilla warfare principles of "When the enemy advances, we retreat; when the enemy halts, we harass; when the enemy tires, we strike; when the enemy retreats, we pursue."
These hit-and-run tactics were infuriating. When encountering MS patrols, New Misurugi Republic ships would launch sudden assaults, overwhelming the patrols with numerical superiority before swiftly withdrawing before reinforcements arrived.
After several such encounters, ZAFT reluctantly shifted to full ship-based patrols.
Then they discovered the New Misurugi Republic had altered their tactics.
Now the attacks began with volleys of seemingly endless missiles fired from extreme distances. The goal wasn't actual damage—at such ranges and with heavy electronic interference, ships could evade or prematurely detonate the missiles with maneuvering and machine gun fire.
But they couldn't simply endure the barrage indefinitely. With enough missiles, some were bound to get through by sheer chance.
Thus, attacked ZAFT ships inevitably returned fire—only to discover the problem. In missile exchanges, they had fewer launchers and were wasting ammunition. If the enemy couldn't hit them, neither could they hit the enemy.
If they gave chase, the enemy ships would flee toward asteroid fields and space debris zones—terrain the New Misurugi Republic had clearly pre-mapped. Within minutes, the pursuing ships would lose visual contact.
Attacked ZAFT patrols then faced two choices: either accept the humiliation and avoid the treacherous terrain to continue patrols (only to be ambushed again by other guerrilla ships), or pursue into the hazardous zones.
Those who chose pursuit would find themselves surrounded by pre-positioned remote-controlled space mines hidden among the asteroids and debris.
The New Misurugi Republic had even stationed Mobile Suits (AI-controlled Iron Balls concealed along escape routes, undetectable until point-blank range) to detonate the mines as ZAFT ships passed through.
By then, retreat became nearly impossible. Even if not destroyed outright, ships would be severely damaged, at which point the fleeing Republic vessels would turn back to finish them off. Most engagements resulted in ZAFT patrol ships being sunk at minimal cost to the attackers.
After suffering numerous such attacks, ZAFT learned its lesson. Whenever an assault occurred, they would simply refrain from pursuing New Misurugi Republic ships that fled into complex terrain. Even when giving chase, they had to deploy Mobile Suits ahead to clear space mines.
But what difference was there between such a cautious pursuit and crawling at a snail's pace? Moreover, the losses among mine-clearing MS units were enormous, making the effort entirely unprofitable.
In the end, ZAFT's fleets were forced by guerrilla tactics to drastically reduce their patrol range, only operating within zones where large forces could quickly reinforce them.
This directly resulted in ZAFT's expeditionary fleet to the New Misurugi Republic having to repeatedly confirm the absence of ambushes and hidden mines before advancing in full force on their way to the Star Palace Colony Satellite. A journey that should have taken no more than four days at the slowest ended up stretching beyond a week for ZAFT's fleet.
The first round of clashes between the New Misurugi Republic and PLANT could be considered a slight victory for the former, having destroyed over a dozen ZAFT warships and hundreds of MS while losing only a single-digit number of Assault GM Dominions and a few dozen Mobile Dolls (Iron Balls weren't even counted as losses).
However, ZAFT's three main fleets remained largely intact, and they had finally "crawled" their way to the space zone near the Star Palace Colony Satellite. The decisive battle was about to begin.
(End of Chapter)