[i]U.C. 0089 - Ten years prior[/i]

Left foot forward, three second pause, right foot forward. Left, one, two, three, right. The land convoy formation march of the EFSF had been drilled into the unit's brain for months, and even now Ensign Hepner found himself reciting the mantra mentally, but whether it was to keep his cool or concentration was unknown even to him. The Mobile Suit he found himself in the cockpit of was a salvaged and heavily-modified RGM-79R GM II, captured by the Neo Zeon and refurbished with an assortment of Earth Federation and Zeon technology. Hepner had been given orders to lead a token force of similar suits in a last-ditch ambush operation to attempt to cripple a crucial EFSF supply point. It was painted as the 'second wind' that would save the Zeon forces from defeat and turn the tide, but the ensign knew it was merely the dying gasp of a failing resistance movement.

Perhaps this is why he had arranged for what he did. The unit he led was expecting their arrival point to be a lightly-defended setup, essentially a glorified munitions dump. What they would get was a fully-armed compliment of elite Earth Federation mobile suits expecting their arrival. The goal was for Hepner and the EF officials to order the surrender and disarmament of his unit, just as his Earth Federation Intelligence handlers had directed him, but Hepner knew these men and women well enough that they would sooner see every single one of them killed. And he was right. The command for the false flag unit to surrender was utterly disregarded, and a brutal firefight ensued. Ensign Dren Hepner was the only Zeon survivor of a day that would haunt him every time he sat within the cockpit of a mobile suit.

[hr]

[i]U.C. 0099 - Present Day[/i]

"Black Thorn to all units, are we all ready to go? I'm standing by and ready to launch".

The voice over the comms unit shook Hepner from his introspection inside the cockpit of his mobile suit. Shaking his head and blinking his eyes a bit, he responded with a simple "Dren Hepner confirms, doing final systems checks now." Running visual confirmation over his suits instruments, another mantra from his years of mobile suit piloting came to the forefront of his mind. Reactor online. Sensors online. Weapons online. All systems nominal. Everything appeared clear, Dren gripped the controls, and the mobile suit catapult set him into the cold void of space once more. Making a careful sweep with his suit's rifle before taking up a position on the starboard side of the objective, his eyes carefully scanned both the sensors and the camera-displayed void of space for any signs of hostile activity.

Although this was a populated, Federation-tangent portion of space, that meant nothing when it came to the Zeon insurgents that had been plaguing the Federation for the last twenty years. Dren was all too familiar with the vicious tactics his kinsmen were more than willing to use against their hated foe, and his eyes, ears, and sensors were peeled for any resemblance to the tactics he was familiar with and had trained in. The attack could come from any angle, any direction, and take the form of anything spaceworthy. Even cargo ships had been used as ramming vehicles in the most desperate days of the Zeon rebellions. The thought of these crimes, one he himself had committed, made him sick to his stomach. This mission would be the first step to wiping that mistake from the annals of history.