Using the massive body of the Archangel as cover, the GINN quickly pulled away. Staying too close would interfere with the porcupine array's fire, and once he was clear of friendly fire, Siegfried finally had time to look at the two mobile suits chasing him. Buster and Blitz, and in Dearka and Nicol's eyes, a ZAFT standard unit charging out of an Alliance battleship crossed a line they could not accept. They even abandoned their primary target, "Long Legs," and chased the GINN with everything they had.
"Haro, can you find Hilde's signal?"
"Haro, Haro, too much interference, cannot analyze, cannot analyze."
Siegfried had completed his first sortie by unconventional means, circling back and forth while dragging Storm and Thunder with him. Storm was built for bombardment, and even keeping up with the GINN was already a strain, while Thunder was the only one that truly posed a threat. As long as it came a little too close, the 76mm assault machine gun would rake its frame with bullets, which could not break PS armor but still delivered violent impacts that made Nicol's face look grim.
"No news? That makes this hard." Siegfried had hoped that if Hilde had not gone far, then after Mu pulled off a successful strike at the rear, he could ditch Archangel during the ZAFT retreat and run. Having checked the routes through the Void Sector, he knew that Mendel and Archangel were on completely opposite paths.
Now he could not contact Hilde, and he did not know whether she was truly too far away or if the signal was just bad. In his heart, Siegfried did not believe Hilde would abandon him, even if she eventually reached Artemis or linked up with the Eighth Fleet. He kept believing that she would come to find him.
Still, the boy could not deny his unease. In more than three years together, Hilde had never explained the background of this world, nor why they were stranded in Mendel, nor why she was never surprised or curious about his arrival. The strange escape pod that had set Heliopolis as its initial destination, her description of "fragmented memories," and why SEED-related memories could be triggered while things like Getter, Mazinger Z, and Full Metal Panic felt familiar yet empty all weighed on him, along with her whisper-like source of knowledge.
The only thing he could truly rely on was what Hilde had promised before leaving Mendel. Going home had to be done together, and she could not do it alone. What steadied him now was her words, "No matter where you are, I will find you."
"Haro, you are really useless. How can you not find her?" He kicked Thunder away once more, checked his remaining ammo, and fired another burst to suppress Storm's coverage. The irritation in his chest refused to settle.
"Haro, Haro, space is too big. You cannot just find someone." Yes, Hilde had said she would find him, but space was vast and Earth was chaotic. Even if she knew the plot, how could she locate him so easily?
He had no time to dwell on it further. Using the brief opening, he patched directly into the bridge, skipped past Miri, and reached Badgiruel. Being chased for so long, barely able to fight back, and unable to find Hilde had turned his worry into sharp anger.
"What? Manual targeting? I am sorry, but after Captain Flaga launched, we no longer have that capability."
Siegfried's plan was simple in his own eyes. A mobile suit and a battleship should work together, and he had hoped to use the GINN's mobility to force a close-range exchange with Storm. If someone on the bridge could manually control the weapons, then once he disrupted Storm's balance, a round of battleship-level fire could cripple it even if it did not destroy it.
As for whether Tiaego might die, Siegfried did not consider it at all. Whether Nicol died or someone else did made no difference to him, and being beaten while holding back for the sake of "plot" felt foolish. Unfortunately, even though Badgiruel knew the idea had merit, there simply was not enough manpower.
A third of the bridge crew were fresh university recruits, and without Mu none of them could manually aim Gottfried or Valient. The lack of hands was the plain truth.
To Siegfried, dragging the enemy around in the GINN was the obvious choice. His weapons could not break their armor, so charging straight in would be suicide. To ZAFT, however, this behavior had crossed into open provocation and mockery.
The Alliance side did not know the story behind this GINN. ZAFT knew all too well that it was the machine left behind by Miguel. After learning of his friend's death, what Siegfried was doing now felt to them like dancing over Miguel's body in front of Nicol and Tiaego.
"Tiaego, block his route. Stop trying to score a direct hit." After another miss, even the usually gentle Nicol was openly furious. The GINN slipped and countered, exploiting the fact that Thunder and Storm lacked Vulcan Gun, roaming freely at their flanks and landing exactly six rounds each time.
That calculated humiliation twisted Nicol's once handsome face beneath the helmet. What Siegfried did not know was that his choice to stop after six shots, based on Haro's calculations and his remaining ammo, became the final trigger.
Inside Storm, Tiaego heard Nicol's demand, and even the usually carefree blond pilot was close to snapping. He fired the last of his 220mm missiles to seal off the GINN's movement, linked the scatter launcher and high-energy rifle, and switched to anti-armor shotgun mode.
Alarms blared in the cockpit as Thunder relied on PS armor to push through the storm of solid rounds and clung tightly to the GINN. After failing twice to shake the pursuit, Storm began preparing a second scatter shot in the distance.
Fortunately, Archangel still had a reliable ally aboard. Without facing two Gundam at once, Badgiruel had time to assess the field. The moment Storm pulled Thunder into its attack range, she knew the ZAFT unit had lost its composure and immediately ordered support for Siegfried.
"Laser lock X103, Valient fire." At this distance, standard missiles could not disrupt the attack in time, and Badgiruel saw that in linked firing mode Storm could neither evade well nor maintain movement. She chose the faster-adjusting Valient without hesitation.
The electromagnetically accelerated shell screamed toward Storm's Gundam. When the alarm sounded, Tiaego saw the GINN still tangled with Thunder and had no choice but to abandon the anti-armor scatter fire. With leg thrusters, he barely evaded the shot.
The main body escaped, but the extended scatter cannons in his hands did not. The front half of the weapon was nearly destroyed.