Operation Meteor

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Operation Meteor (referred to by OZ as Operation M) is the primary plot device in the Gundam After Colony alternate universe. It is a military operation whose original design is the brainchild of Barton Foundation leader Dekim Barton, but was hijacked by the scientists that created the five Gundam mobile suits because the original idea amounted merely to genocide.

[edit] The Original Operation Meteor

The original plan for Operation Meteor was an idea by Dekim Barton to exact revenge upon the United Earth Sphere Alliance for their perceived involvement in the assassination of Colonial pacifist leader Heero Yuy in the year AC 175. His opinion was that the Colonies had to take control of the Earth to make up for decades of oppression by the Earth Sphere government. Barton tracked down one of the scientists that created the revolutionary but dangerous Tallgeese mobile suit, which was armored in titanium alloy, and commissioned him and his four associates to work on five new suits. Each suit's construction would be directed by one of the doctors at the space colony clusters at each of the five Lagrange points. Some time before the ultimate launch in AC 195, five young men--including Dekim's son, Trowa--were chosen to pilot the new Gundam mobile suits.

The original plan for Operation Meteor involved the de-orbiting of one of the space colonies, dropping it on Earth. The impact would result in an extinction level event, undoubtedly killing billions both on Earth and on the colony used for the attack. Anyone that remained alive on Earth would then be killed by the five Gundams, leaving no survivors. Once the nuclear winter ended, colonial citizens would repopulate Earth and rebuild it, hopefully with Dekim Barton and his family as the ruling family. The scientists caught wind of this and managed to convince the pilots to change the plan by "stealing" the finished Gundams and invading Earth first simply to attack the organization that they (correctly) believed was pulling the strings of the United Earth Sphere Alliance behind the scenes: the Organization of the Zodiac (OZ). The objective would be to destroy OZ and disable their ability to produce mobile suits and other weapons, thus permitting negotiations between the UESA and the Colonies.

Three of the pilots--an unnamed boy codenamed Heero Yuy, Duo Maxwell, and Quatre Raberba Winner--agreed to the change. Trowa Barton, however, was more than willing to accept his father's original plan. For that reason, one of the workers of the Gundam Heavyarms, shot and killed Trowa. Another of the workers on the Gundam, a boy with no name, assumed Trowa's name and carried out the modified Operation Meteor. Chang Wufei objected to the original plan, as his colony was the one Dekim wanted to drop on Earth, in front of Master O and the Long Clan, believing that he should only strike at the corrupt factors in the Earth Sphere to bring about true justice.

[edit] Aftermath

The modified plan ultimately led to a series of events that brought peace between the Colonies and the Earth Sphere, though the Gundams initially failed to destroy OZ and Romefeller. During the Christmas Eve War of AC 195 between the Earth Sphere and the Colonial separatist movement White Fang, Zechs Merquise tried to finish the original plan of Operation M by dropping Libra, a massive space battle cruiser and White Fang's base of operations, on Earth. The plan failed, initially when the Gundam engineers sacrificed themselves to shift most of Libra away from the Earth, and then when Heero Yuy used his Gundam Wing Zero's buster rifle to destroy the last major fragment of the battleship before it impacted the planet. Eventually, after being betrayed by Romefeller, OZ leader Treize Khushrenada ended up reforming and taking leadership of the Earth Sphere United Nation, but he died during the Christmas Eve War in a duel with Chang Wufei. As peace came between the Colonies and the Earth Sphere, Treize grew to become a legend for leading a war, it was believed, to end all wars.

Main article: Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz

A year later, on Christmas Eve, AC 196, Dekim Barton formed the Mariemaia Army, with his eight-year-old granddaughter Mariemaia (also the daughter of Treize) as the mouthpiece of the organization. The invasion was thwarted in a massive battle with the Preventer Organization and the Gundam pilots over Brussels three days later. Dekim Barton was killed by one of his own soldiers when, in desparation, he shot Mariemaia and tried to kill kidnapped Earth Sphere representative Relena Darlian.