Technology & Combat Characteristics

The Gundam Astraea II is a test machine for the Double Drive System which utilized two GN Drives, resulting in the mobile suit having double the GN Particle output of a Gundam equipped with a single GN Drive. The Astraea II was designed to have the GN Drives installed in two places, on its back and on a adjustable frame attached to its left shoulder. While the name of Astraea II was taken from the Gundam Astraea, a 2nd generation Gundam that also served as a test model, both mobile suits were completely different machines in terms of design.

History

The Gundam Astraea II was developed by Celestial Being in AD 2308 to test the Double Drive System, but due to a lack of spare GN Drives, an attempt was made to activate it using two GN Condensers instead. Unfortunately, this failed. Sometime later in space, while Celestial Being was secretly rebuilding its strength after its defeat by the UN Forces, the Astraea II was successfully activated using a combination of a GN Drive and a GN Condenser. Gundam Meister Tieria Erde was then assigned to pilot the Astraea II, and tasked by Ian Vashti to collect resources from the base in the B13 area as well as to test the Proto XN Unit at the same time. Ian also instructed Tieria to forget about the resources and retreat if he encountered any enemy as they could not afford to lose any more of the precious few Gundams or Gundam Meisters they had left.

Upon arriving at the B13 area, Tieria in the XN Astraea II sighted from afar three enemy mobile suits, two red-colored units and one black-colored unit, approaching the base. Noting the two red units resembling the Gundam Exia and Gundam Dynames, Tieria wondered if the three enemy machines were made using data from Veda. He contemplated retreating as the enemies had yet to notice him and resources could be collected from other bases. However, while he felt battling the enemy machines to be pointless, he could not help but gave in to his rage and charged at the three machines. Evading attacks from the two red units, Tieria easily sliced them apart using the pair of GND Buster Sword III. After that he discarded the GND Buster Sword IIIs, which had consumed too much particles, and ejected the rest of the Proto XN Unit as well, reverting the XN Astraea II to the Astraea II form.

The Astraea II was only equipped with its GND Beam Rifle and a GND Shield, but Tieria found this was sufficient for fighting the final enemy unit. The black enemy unit fired its bazooka once at Astraea II and immediately retreated when the attack missed. Tieria quickly gave chase and fired several shots while evading the enemy's counterattack. After destroying the enemy's bazooka, Tieria took out the enemy machine with two shots, one in the chest and another in the head. While this battle would alert the enemy that stole Veda to Celestial Being's activity, Tieria reasoned that they would be fine as the enemy did not know where they are.