AGX-04 Gerbera Tetra

AGX-04 Gerbera Tetra (ガーベラ・テトラ) is a prototype general purpose assault mobile suit, it was featured in the anime Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory, the unit was designed by Mika Akitaka.

Technology & Combat Characteristics
In the model of AGX-04, the following plot has been depicted as how the unit came to be: ''As part of its military reconstruction following the One Year War, the Earth Federation Forces began its Gundam Development Project, the goal to produce advanced new Gundam-series mobile suit prototypes to test new technology and concepts. The intended fourth unit in this GP series was the RX-78GP04G Gundam "Gerbera". This ill-fated mobile suit design never saw the light of day, as its goal conflicted with its brother unit, the RX-78GP01 Gundam "Zephyranthes", since the full vernian parts were designed to adjust the ground use GP01 into a space use model RX-78GP01-Fb Gundam Full Burnern "Zephyranthes".''

The Gerbera was designed around the Zeon tactic (of which came great success against the Federation in the One Year War) to perform high speed assault with mobile suits. The Federation forces had little or no time to react before being attacked by large groups of mobile suits. The Federation recognized this as a superior tactic, and sought to produce mobile suits to do the same in return.

However, the Zephryanthes was also being designed around the same goal, just a ground used unit, and it made no sense tactically or financially to produce two mobile suits to do the similar task for ground and space, and chose to keep the weaker (yet more economical) design Zephryanthes instead of keeping the Gerbera. Anaheim Electronics was left with an almost completed prototype, and no one to sell it to. 

Continuing the plot on the official setting instead of the animated story, since the Gerbera was designed to be faster and more powerful than the common Zeon mobile suits of the time, it excelled at high speed assaults. The division within Anaheim Electronics that produced the Gebera was created from the Zeonic Company (which still had strong loyalty to Zeon) and was approached by the Delaz Fleet. By request, the division revised the design of the Gerbera and produced the AGX-04 Gerbera Tetra mobile suit.

The AGX-04 Gerbera Tetra features a simple armament, focusing more on speed than power. Unlike its Gundam "brothers" that were built for the Earth Federation, the Gerbera Tetra lacked the head-mounted 60mm vulcan guns. These were replaced with four 110mm machine guns, two mounted in each forearm. For melee combat the Gerbera Tetra was equipped with a pair of beam sabers. The Gerbera Tetra's most powerful weapon is a beam machine gun, a beam weapon with a much higher rate of firepower than standard beam rifles.

The Gerbera Tetra can be equipped with an optional sturm booster. This optional booster equipment mounts on the Gerbera Tetra's backpack and stores extra propellant, mounts additional thrusters and 2 electable external propellant tanks. Despite increasing its overall mass the sturm booster dramatically increases the Gerbera Tetra's speed and flight range

Armaments

 * 110mm Machine Cannon
 * The AGX-04 Gerbera Tetra is equipped with four 110mm machine cannons, two mounted on each forearm. These machine cannons serve the same mid-range defensive role that the 60mm vulcan guns serve on the Gerbera Tetra's Gundam "brothers."


 * Beam Saber
 * The name "beam saber" is somewhat of a misnomer as, unlike other weapons with the word beam, the beam saber does not use mega-particles. Instead, it emits high-energy Minovsky particles to form a blade-shaped I-field (via manipulation of electromagnetic fields), and then fills this I-field shell with superheated Minovsky particle plasma to produce an effective cutting blade. The Minovsky particles are stored by E-cap in the hilt of the beam saber, which is recharged from the mobile suit's reactor when the saber is returned to its socket. Once activated, beam sabers do not rely on the mobile suit's reactor and can be thrown or discarded as decoys.


 * The termination of the I-field along a solid contact surface allows the plasma to eat away at the offending material until the I-field reestablishes itself, allowing the weapon to "cut" through almost any target. Likewise, as the beam saber's I-field enclosure repels plasma, it not only keeps the blade's plasma in but also keeps plasma from another blade out allowing one beam saber to be used to block another. Since the containing fields can be formed into a variety of simple shapes, it is trivial to create exotic variants like the beam tomahawk, beam axe, beam naginata etc, even beam flag as a signaling device.


 * Beam Machine Gun
 * A standard hand carried ranged beam weapon is the beam rifle. Capable of firing concentrated mega particles, attacks from a beam rifle are can damage any ordinary armor that has not be specially treated to resist it. The beam machine gun operates on similar principles, but it breaks down the concentrated mega particles so that it fired a burst of smaller less powerful beams instead of a single large coherent beam. Each individual beam in a burst was less powerful than the coherent beam from most other beam rifles, however because of the immense power in standard beams this was an issue of little importance. The burst did allow for a spread of beams, similar to a beam spray gun, allowing for a greater chance of hitting a target, yet holds the same range as a regular beam rifle.

Special Equipment

 * Sturm Booster
 * The Sturm Booster is a large thruster component that can be equipped to the Gerbera Tetra to increase speed and flight range. Although it already possesses an exceptionally high base speed, with the Sturm Booster equipped the Gerbera Tetra was one of the fastest mobile suits of its era, with only a handful of unique units with battle-ship sized engines able to outpace it. The overall length of the Sturm Booster is similar to the height of the mobile suit, though it is much thinner. Its most prominent feature is three large thrusters and a pair of external propellant tanks.


 * Ejectable External Propellant Tanks
 * Because of its high performance the sturm booster burned through fuel quickly. To compensate the sturm booster is equipped with a pair of external propellant tanks to store extra fuel, thus increasing operational flight time. Once the propellant has been used the tanks can be ejected to decrease the mobile suit's mass.

History
In UC 0083, the Delaz Fleet launched Operation Stardust, an uprising against the Federation. Anaheim Electronics (playing both sides against each other to make a quick buck) offered to support to Aiguille Delaz when Vice-President O'Sullivan gave the completed Gerbera Tetra to Lieutenant Colonel Cima Garahau as a political gesture.

Some say that branch of the Earth Federation which later developed into Titans canceled the development in order to provide in secret this mobile suit to the spy Cima Garahau. Although highly possible, no actual record could be traced to support this argument.

During the last stages of Operation Stardust, Cima was killed (and the Gerbera Tetra destroyed) by Federation pilot Kou Uraki (piloting the RX-78GP03D Gundam "Dendrobium Orchis") when Kou impaled the Tetra on the end of its beam cannon and blasted the suit in half.

Variants

 * AGX-04A1 Gerbera Tetra Kai