"What do you mean?" Officer Heinrich Vultee asked quietly.
"Hotchkiss is dead," I said firmly. "That shot must have killed him." It was easier to lie at the moment than it was to explain the truth to Vultee.
Vultee looked over at Hotchkiss's damaged Zaku and noticed the location of the damage. A pained choking sound emanated from my radio before Officer Vultee said, "We have to avenge him!"
"There would be no point," I said in the most commanding voice I could muster. "The gas will get to them before we could possibly reach them. Follow me."
I maneuvered my mobile suit out of cover and began walking back to my fallen rifle. After a few seconds of hesitation, Vultee followed me. "What are you doing, Lieutenant?"
"I've figured out the shooter's location," I said over the radio as my Zaku picked up its building-sized rifle. My HUD informed me that the top-mounted box magazine was almost empty.
"Then let's go get him!" Vultee shouted into his radio.
"The shooter is more than three kilometers away."
"What!?"
"The curvature of the colony ship gave the shooter the necessary elevation to target us," I explained. "He was only able to hit Hotchkiss because we were standing still for so long."
I piloted my Zaku back in the direction we came, and Vultee began following me a few seconds later. Speaking firmly over the radio, I said, "Our mission is complete. We're returning to base."
"But what about…?" Vultee began to ask a question, but I cut him off.
"Another team can recover Hotchkiss's Zaku later. Carrying a mobile suit will put us in danger of that sniper. For now, just try to keep yourself alive for the rest of this godforsaken war."
"Yes, Lieutenant," Vultee said, taking one last look at Hotchkiss's fallen Zaku.
Officer Vultee led us back to the city-sized airlock that we had used to enter Island Iffish, apparently. As we traveled, I used my HUD to send a call to my direct commanding officer: Commander Leopold Roth.
After a few seconds of empty air, an image of a blond middle-aged man in the stark dress uniform of the Principality of Zeon appeared on my HUD, and the voice of Commander Roth came through, saying, "What is it, Lieutenant? I'm busy."
"Sir, my squad's mission objectives were clear, but one of my men was killed," I said.
"That's unfortunate. His sacrifice will be remembered for generations," Commander Roth said passively, clearly not believing his own words.
"Thank you for your kind words, but that's not why I have called you. After seeing Island Iffish from the inside, it is my opinion that the colony will split into pieces during reentry into Earth's atmosphere."
"Your opinion is noted, pilot," Commander Roth spat. "All the greatest engineers of Zeon have assured me that Island Iffish will hold together in the Earth's atmosphere."
"I understand, sir," I said, trying not to offend the man too much. "All I ask is that my statement is put on the record."
"And when Operation British is an unqualified success, your words will be a mark against you. Now, is there anything else, Lieutenant?" Commander Roth said, reminding me of the differences in our ranks.
"No, sir," I said, and the call cut out.
After a trip through the cold vacuum of space that felt eerily nostalgic to my new body, my Zaku entered a Musai-class cruiser called the Nordhausen. I maneuvered my mobile suit into an open dock, and numerous small metal hands clamped around its joints.
My HUD lit up, and a red-haired man with thick glasses appeared on the screen. Under this image, the words "Engineering Ensign Alastair Donnelly" were written.
Immediately, the audio on my radio peaked as Ensign Donnelly shouted, "What did you do to my baby!?"
Evidently, my mechanic was one of these types. I honestly didn't think Zeon had any eccentric genius mechanics on their side. Typically, that was a trope reserved for the good guys.
"I had to make a choice between immediate death and shoddy welding, Alastair. I chose the former. Now come and get me out of this giant metal coffin."
"It's not a coffin, Lieutenant Dogwood! It's an amazing piece of machinery!" Ensign Donnelly shouted over the radio.
"Sure, whatever," I sighed into the radio.
Soon after, Ensign Donnelly retrieved some kind of heavy-duty blowtorch, and a hole was cut into the metal shield I had welded over my Zaku's damaged cockpit. The thick square of metal floated out into the hangar, and I followed close behind.
A man in a space suit holding his helmet under the bend of his arm floated beside the grimacing form of Ensign Donnelly. The man was in his early twenties, and he wore the stripes of a petty officer. Based on context clues, that man must have been Heinrich Vultee.
"You should really get to the med-bay, Lieutenant Dogwood," Vultee said with concern growing in his voice.
"Maybe I should," I said. "First, I need to get changed."
"Are you sure?" Vultee asked as I pushed off against my Zaku.
"Yeah, I need to see myself in the mirror."
I floated into the hangar-adjacent changing room, stopping my momentum by grabbing a thick metal sink built into the wall. My newly-acquired eyes looked into the mirror, and I saw the face of Lieutenant Sebastian Dogwood for the first time.
My face was covered in stubble, and medium-length brown hair ran down to the middle of my neck. If I were to guess, I was in my early thirties, which would make me relatively old for a frontline fighter.
I was the same age I had been before my arrival in this soldier's body, though my past life had been much less violent. Honestly, it was uncanny how similar Sebastian Dogwood's appearance was to my previous appearance.
That was a problem for later, of course. At that moment, the most pressing issue was the blood slowly trickling from my head wound. I floated into a stall adorned with a strange zero-gravity toilet that I didn't want to look at that closely and retrieved a long sheet of toilet paper. I pressed the toilet paper to my wound, and the blood stopped trickling into the air.
One problem was solved. Now I just had to solve all the others.