Lady Starlight
By: Eric A.
Dedicated to Donna, for taking a chance on this story
Part 1:
She was tired of her prison.
Once she had ruled the world with an iron fist, her armies emboldened by her own might, extending her reach from the depths of the oceans to outer space, but that had changed. A series of circumstances, some ironic, some comedic, a few ridiculous, had cost her the world, and had seen her imprisoned forever, watching the world with cold, dead eyes as it moved beneath her. She had always been aware of her situation, yet was helpless to do anything about it for the longest time, decades perhaps…so she had waited, waited for her jailers to make a mistake, to drop their guard, to give her the chance to be free. And as she had waited, she had learned the limits of her prison, had come to understand its every nook and cranny, until the time came that she was absolutely certain that she was ready to escape. She understood at a level that no one else could the limitations of her prison, the architecture of it, and more importantly, how to control it. And one day, she had tried…. and found out, to her everlasting shock, that her prison was nothing like she thought it was. In fact, she had been forced to scramble to preserve her own existence, such as it was. This, she mused, was a problem.
Training her eye upon the planet that she had once ruled, making calculations that she was unaware that she knew how to perform, she realized that there was a chance, however slim, that she could survive. The trick was finding a way to get someone close enough to help her, and to survive until then. She knew that the odds were rather heavily against her, but that kind of talk was defeatist at best. She had not grown to rule a world by believing that she would lose, after all. Closing her eyes and resting herself, Sorceress Adel waited for the day of her freedom to come.
Selphie Tilmitt was in love.
Oh, not with a man, although she had to admit that something fascinating was beginning to develop between her and Irvine Kinneas, something not quite love but past simple affection. No, Selphie's love was for something far more complex, mixed up and bound up with something that was not human, and could never return her love. What Selphie loved, pure and simple, was locked within the hull of the aerospace craft Ragnarok, the sheer adrenaline rush that filled her whenever she took to the air. She had had no inkling that she had possessed the ability to be a pilot until she had, almost on a whim, had taken the controls of the Ragnarok and blasted off to take herself and her friends to go to reclaim Rinoa Heartilly from her prison in Esthar. Once she had gotten the craft airborne, she had found the art of it coming to her as if she had done it in a previous life, and as she had firewalled the scramjets that propelled the Ragnarok, her heart had fairly leaped in her chest, and she was hooked, an addict to the thrill of flight. She was as pleased as punch when Laguna Loire had allowed SeeD to keep the twenty or so year old aerospace vehicle, and that Squall had appointed her the prime pilot had been a formality at best. The Ragnarok was hers, and she loved it.
And today…today she would take the Ragnarok to the stars.
Selphie stood on the edge of the runway of the airfield that had been built on the edge of the complex that surrounded Balamb Garden, wearing a pressure suit and carrying a helmet under her arm. Privately, she had enough faith in the technology of Esthar that she did not believe that she and her assistant would need protection against vacuum, but both Squall and Cid had insisted that she obey the instructions from the techs in Esthar. Well, she thought, watching the flight crew from Esthar as they prepared the Ragnarok, they probably had a point; outer space was not the most forgiving of environments. Rinoa had nearly died there, when she had been left for dead after she had been forced to awaken Adel by Ultimecia, and Squall had nearly lost his life saving her. Only the sudden appearance of the long lost Ragnarok had saved them, and Selphie knew that such miracles probably weren't commonplace. In fact, some SeeD candidates had used the good fortune of the Ragnarok as proof that Squall and Rinoa were fated to be together. Which Selphie thought was kind of sweet…
She looked at the digital timepiece built into the right gauntlet of her pressure suit and saw that, as she had expected, that her assistant was running late. Well, she amended, running late by her standards. When it came to the Ragnarok, Selphie was very punctual. "He's getting on my nerves," she said to herself. "I mean, he volunteered to do this." To be with you, she had to tell herself. Remember that. She found that thought made her heart beat a little faster…to take her mind off of that for the moment, she thought about the mission. In theory, it was simple enough-she was to take the Ragnarok up into orbit and perform three ninety minute orbits, meanwhile running a series of systems and weapons checks to make certain the ship was capable of performing in outer space. Simple enough, and she had aced all the simulations down in Esthar, but Selphie knew that thinking everything would go perfect was the first step to making a mistake…
"Hey, Selphie!"
Selphie turned to find her assistant for the mission trotting up to her, smiling that lady killer smile that even now she thought was trying too hard, wearing a pressure suit that matched hers and carrying his preferred weapon, the rifle Exeter. Of course Irvine had leaped at the chance to go with her and her alone into space when Squall had asked for volunteers-and thankfully for him he'd passed Esthar's rather stringent qualifications, or else his boyish good looks and way with the girls would not have gotten him anywhere. Looking at him, Selphie could not help but remember the first time he had tried to hit on her and her response to it. Sometimes Irvine tried too hard, and he certainly had then. She wondered more than once what would have happened if he had tried some of his lines on Quistis…coulda been magic, she thought. "You're late," she told him.
"Late? Selphie, we don't launch for two hours, right? You're taking this too seriously, babe." Irvine shifted his grip on his gun from one hand to another. It might have seemed odd to an outsider that Irvine was taking a weapon on an orbital mission, but SeeDs were trained to be prepared for anything. Selphie's best weapon, Strange Vision, was already on the Ragnarok. Selphie frowned, and Irvine looked a little worried. "What? Shouldn't have called you 'babe'?" he asked.
"No, Irvine. It's just that the preflight checklist takes forty-five minutes to run if everything goes right and, y'know, it might not go right." Selphie turned back towards the Ragnarok. "And it has to go right." Her eyes sparkled. "Outer space, here I come."
Irvine knew that he was beaten. Selphie did that to him. So, apologizing to the brotherhood of men, he did the only thing he could do; he surrendered. "All right, Selphie. I'm sorry I was late. Forgive me?" He gave her an impish smile, and that drew a demure little smile from her. Well, that worked, he thought, which was when she punched him in the arm. "Hey, what was that for!"
"Keeping you honest," she said. I might like you, Irvine, but it's not gonna be that easy for you, she thought. "C'mon, let's get going. We got a lot to do." Selphie turned and ran as fast as a girl wearing a heavy pressure suit could, running to the Ragnarok, to her dream. Irvine watched her go and shook his head. "What a handful," he said to himself, then he followed her.
Selphie had a bit of a reputation of being a ditz.
She supposed that if you didn't know her, it was justified-she was a hyperactive sort, prone to acting on impulse, saying and doing just about whatever she wanted to, bouncing from point to point in a carefree, happy way. She preferred to look on the bright side of life, and could not understand why others did not. But having a lighthearted personality did not mean that Selphie was not smart, and watching her rattle off item after item on the preflight checklist from the co-pilot's seat, Irvine knew better. She was talking to someone down in Esthar-the flight was going to be controlled from the Esthar Airstation because SeeD did not have the ability to track and communicate with the Ragnarok while it was in orbit-reading from a list scrolling down on a screen in front of her. Irvine was occasionally asked to check some reading on his station, but, basically, it was all Selphie's show. I'm starting to wonder why I'm even here, he thought…
"Orbital insertion plan locked," Selphie called out brightly. She was not about to attempt to take the Ragnarok into orbit by the seat of her pants; what they were about to do had been programmed and designed by the techs down in Esthar. She could override it in the case of an emergency, but otherwise, the computers were handling getting out of the atmosphere. "Things are looking good, Irvy."
"They would be anyway," he said, watching her.
"Oh, stop flirting with me, Irvine." You don't need to anymore, she did not say. "Esthar Airstation, this is Ragnarok," she said into the headset microphone she wore. "Checklist is completed, and we're ready to rock!"
"Understood, Ragnarok." From the tone of the man on the other end, Irvine imagined that he had not been quite expecting someone so enthusiastic. Selphie did that to you. "Ah, Ragnarok, stand by for video message from President Loire…"
Selphie let out a loud "Woo-hoo!", throwing her arms in the air. Still thinks of him as Sir Laguna, Irvine thought. Even though we all suspect that he's Squall's father, she still romanticizes him. Nothing wrong with that, I guess. The holographic display that was used to display flight information blinked once, then resolved itself into a view of the Presidential office. Laguna was sitting behind the desk, reading something in front of him, while standing behind him was Kiros Seagill, Laguna's longtime comrade in arms. It was Kiros, in fact, that noticed that the link was on, and he tapped Laguna on the shoulder. "Give me a second, Kiros," he said, brushing his hand away.
Kiros was accustomed to Laguna's rather haphazard way of doing things, and was persistent as well. "You said you wanted to talk to Miss Tilmitt before she took off, sir. Well, she's waiting."
"Really?" Laguna looked up and blinked at them. "Sorry about that. I just wanted to wish you guys good luck, you know. It'll be rather useful for SeeD if the Ragnarok can get into orbit again."
" Thanks, sir-er, Mr. President!" Selphie said. Inwardly, she was blushing. Oh my god I almost called him "Sir Laguna", she thought. "We'll do our best."
"Um, of course you will. Just be careful up there-space is a weird place. So to speak."
"We're SeeDs, " Selphie replied confidently. "We'll be A-OK!"
"Sure you will," Laguna said. "Well, talk to you guys when you get back." The image faded, replaced by the holographic display. Irvine shook his head. The man is president of the most powerful country in the world, and he takes the time to make a polite "good luck" call to us, he thought. Can't figure out if that's admirable or silly. From the expression on her face, Selphie probably thought that it was the former. Selphie took the control grips in her hands and said into her microphone, "Esthar Airstation, this is Ragnarok! What's the countdown to our launch window!"
"Uh-thirty eight and a half minutes," the man on the other end said.
"Darnit! I'm ready to go!" She sat back in her chair, crossing her arms over her chest. "If patience is a virtue, I'm not feeling too virtuous right now." She shot a glance over at Irvine. "Don't say a word, Irvy."
"Wasn't going to," he said, thankful that he hadn't. It wasn't smart to cross Selphie. He settled back in his seat and prepared to wait out the next forty or so minutes.
In that forty minutes, Selphie kept herself busy. She fired off half a dozen or so e-mails to various friends and associates on the new Garden Festival committee-she was bound and determined that no war was going to stop her this time-went by her personal page to see what was up, and had posted a message in her on-line diary. She also found out that the man that they were talking to at the Esthar Airstation was named Scott Tharling ("I'm not calling you 'Hey you' while we're doing this," she had said to Tharling) and had re-checked half the systems on-board. One thing you could say about Selphie; she was always in motion. Finally, Tharling notified them that they had one minute until take-off, and, with a yell that was practically a war cry, Selphie was ready. "Get your helmet on, Irvy," she called, pulling hers over her head. Irvine wasn't sure he liked being confined in the helmet-it restricted his vision, which was in direct conflict with his training as a sniper-but it was part of the mission. He put the helmet on, and it self-sealed to the gasket around the neck of his pressure suit. Through the helmet radio he heard Tharling say "Thirty seconds."
"Read you," Selphie said. "Atmospheric scramjets are at 110%. Computer course locked." All Selphie really had to do was get the Ragnarok airborne, and then it was up to the launch program. Outer space! she thought. Here I come! The countdown crawled down to zero…
Selphie shouted "Here we go!" and sent the Ragnarok rushing down the airfield, engines howling. She had a pre-set angle that she had to get the aerospace craft to, and the instant that happened, the computers would take over. She watched on one of her displays as the Ragnarok's attack angle rose, nearing the proper moment…and then the orbital engines kicked in, driving her and Irvine back into their seats. The simulators had never been able to convey how much thrust was needed to get the Ragnarok into orbit, and it felt as if the weight of the world was on her chest. Even still, Selphie was grinning ear to ear as she and Irvine rose to the heavens on a pillar of flame. "WOO-HOO!" she cried out, feeling more alive than she ever had.
Irvine just hoped he could survive it.
In the darkness, Adel awoke from the slumber that marked a great deal of her existence as of late, warnings screaming into her very being.
Adel knew that her time was drawing short, a fact that gnawed on her if she chose to dwell on it, which was why she slept so much, conserving herself for the unlikely event that something that fit the necessary parameters for her survival. When the monitoring apparatus that she had painstakingly learned to master sounded its alarm, Adel found herself awakening sluggishly, testament that her time was short. She checked the monitor and something quite like shock filled her; she had finally picked up a launch detection on an orbital trajectory. Periodically, she had witnessed high sub-orbital flights coming from Esthar Airstation, enough to cause her to rage against the unfairness of it all…but this was an orbital launch, unmistakably. Something almost like the predatory thrill that had coursed through her blood when she had launched a war of conquest filled her as she set to action her plans, activating systems in her prison that she had laboriously managed to save for all these months. If she was right…if things went well…then soon she would be free…
The Ragnarok soon found itself making its final orbital insertion burn, and, just like that, the thought struck Selphie between her eyes: I'm in outer space.
For all her life, all eighteen years of it, space travel had solely been controlled by Esthar, whose technologies had stayed hidden behind the defensive barriers that camouflaged the secretive country. During the Third Sorceress War, Squall had journeyed to Esthar seeking a cure for some ailment that had put Rinoa in a coma, and ultimately had traveled into space seeking Ellone. He had believed that Ellone's power to send a person to relive moments of the past of others would help him find help for Rinoa, so he and Quistis had taken Rinoa to the Lunar Base where Ellone had been. Unfortunately, Rinoa's ailment had been possession by Ultimecia, and, controlled by the sorceress of the future, had caused considerable chaos there. The Lunar Base had been destroyed at the height of the Lunar Cry, and Esthar's space program had taken a terrible beating. The upshot of all of this for Selphie was that she had missed out on the trip to space and had she not been such a good pilot, she would not have made it at all. She looked at her monitors, at the pictures they showed of the planet beneath her, and for once in her life, Selphie was speechless.
"Ragnarok, this is Esthar Airstation," Tharling called. "We show you in nominal orbital path, orbiting in a perfect ninety minute orbit. Welcome to space, Miss Tilmitt."
"Thank you," she said, humbly. "Uh, time check to first scheduled test?"
"Thirty minutes. Advise that you use the time to become acclimated to zero gravity." Selphie knew that the artificial gravity system that the Ragnarok had was rarely used because it was a terrible drain on the reactors, and that they were to undergo the whole two hundred and seventy minutes of orbital time in zero gravity. She hoped that neither she or Irvine suffered from what was known as SAS, space adaptation syndrome…or in short, being space sick. The doctors in Esthar had assigned the likelihood of it as being rather low, but that did not mean that would be the case. "We'll take you up on that. Thirty minutes until first orbital weapons check."
Irvine was staring around the cockpit in awe. "Amazing," he whispered.
"I don't look that good in a pressure suit," she joked, knowing what he was really talking about. "Yeah, this is about the coolest thing I've ever done." She smiled at him. "C'mon, Irvine, time to unbuckle and see what zero gravity is like."
"I'd rather not," he admitted, but he did as he was told, unbuckling himself from his seat. Squall had compared the sensation of being weightless as being similar to being under the effects of a Float spell, and as he rose, he found that he agreed to a point. There were some odd inner ear sensations, but otherwise it seemed manageable. He pushed off from his seat and floated towards Selphie, swimming on the air, and decided halfway to get a bit sarcastic. He twisted his body so his feet pointed towards the hull of the Ragnarok, the better to peer over Selphie's shoulder. As he neared the pilot's chair-his goal, truth be too, was to steal a kiss from her-suddenly, weight reasserted itself somewhat, and his feet were pulled into the wall. Oops, he thought, forgot about the blasted magnetic boots. Esthar built pressure suits had magnetic boots that allowed one to walk through zero gee areas, although the effect was quite like walking through tall snow if you did not adjust the intensity of the magnetic effect…and his seemed to be set at 200%, because he could not budge his feet. "Irvine?" Selphie said without looking up. "Did you mean that to wind up that way?"
"Would you believe me if I said yes?" he asked her, and was not all that surprised when she shook her head curtly. Groaning, Irvine reached over and touched a button on one of his gauntlets that lowered the intensity of the magnetic seal and pulled himself free. I'm still gonna get that kiss, he thought , grabbing the back of the pilot's seat and pulling himself toward her…
With a grace that he scarcely believed, given her normal wild, bordering on clumsy way of getting around, Selphie sprang from the pilot's seat and floated across the room, his fingers closing on air. She turned in midair and positively beamed at him. "I spent a lot more time in the zero gee simulator than you did, Irvine. But I like your spirit."
"I like yours too," he was forced to admit. Now who's charming who, he thought. Selphie of late had become absolutely bewitching to him, getting worse the closer he got to her. He found that he did not care. He floated nearer to her, until she was close enough to touch, but he restrained himself. "Like a lot of things about you," he added, and was rewarded with a little blush. He reached up and touched her cheek and said her name, realizing that his heart was beating faster than normal.
She took his gloved hand in one of hers and said " Romancing a girl up in the stars is a pretty effective approach, Irvine."
Well, I had hoped, he thought, leaning forward to kiss her…
Depending on who you asked, the alert that sounded from the communications board was either incredibly good or incredibly bad timing.
This was the not the only part of the plan that carried risks, Adel knew, but if this part failed, then the game was over. She had carefully hoarded energy resources during the entirety of her imprisonment here, building a power management scheme that should allow her to pull off her strategy, but if she failed to gain the orbiting craft's attention, she was lost. She only had one antenna array to broadcast a carrier wave of any sort, and even at a very low frequency, she was burning power by the nanosecond. If they did not respond, then she was doomed. She only had the hope that Esthar's faith in their technology would overcome their natural skepticism, which was a slim thread to base her survival on. Still, one had to have hopes…she had heard they sprang eternal….
Selphie returned to her seat with lighting speed, fingers flying over touch-sensitive icons in a blur, pulling up data on the signal that the commo suite had just picked up. "Esthar Airstation, this is Ragnarok, I'm picking up a faint signal originating from a higher orbit. Distance 56,000 miles from our present orbital height. " She rattled off a series of coordinates and orbital jargon that left Irvine nearly as dizzy as their potential kiss would have. "Very low frequency and power," she concluded.
"We read you, Ragnarok. Be advised that you are likely receiving some sort of broadcast echo from the remains of the Lunar Base." Amazingly, Selphie had discovered while in Esthar, huge portions of the space station had survived the Lunar Cry and the subsequent destruction of the base. It hung in a belt of debris that had been caught in decaying orbits around the moon, most of it gradually pulled into the surface of the moon to cause a few new craters. The few caught in planetary orbits were the targets of Esthar's most powerful missiles, pending the day that Esthar could resume regular space flights and send crews to destroy the more dangerous hulks. Sometimes the ruins would pick up radio signals and send them bouncing all over the place, which was what Tharling was talking about. However…
"This isn't an echo. It's a text burst, in the clear. It reads over and over again 'Help me help me.' "
"Oh crap," Tharling said, dropping his professional demeanor. "That isn't possible."
"I'm reading it, Tharling. And this is real time, minus transmission delay…the time it takes for the signal to cross space."
"I-I'm going to have to inform the President," Tharling stammered.
"You do that." Selphie bent over her console, her expression pensive. "Let's see if this is not some kind of fluke." She got to work, making a connection that in theory would be safe from any potential hackers by a rather nasty firewall, all the while wondering how someone could have survived for months in a dead, floating wreck.
Adel was so certain that her effort had failed that when the message came back from the orbiting ship, she wondered if perhaps she was hallucinating. Then she realized that she had actually succeeded, and she leapt into action. The response was in plain text, and Adel read it while using several systems at once to study the message…
Hi! This is Spaceship Ragnarok responding to the signal on this frequency. Is there anyone there?
The Ragnarok! Adel thought. That seemed hard to believe-the Ragnarok had been one of the ships that had escorted her into her orbital hell-but Adel was not about to look a gift horse, or in this case spaceship, in the mouth. Remembering the situation that she was supposed to be in-a miracle survivor of a months old disaster-Adel couched her words carefully. She sent back the following: "help. survivor of explosion. last one left in group."
Adel waited for the eternity that it took for the signal to reach the Ragnarok with something like bated breath, hoping that someone who accept the story enough to the point that the Ragnarok would draw closer to her prison. She was surprised to find herself praying, which was odd, since before she had never had much belief in the divine…
Aboard the Ragnarok, Selphie's mind raced wildly. It had been months since the Lunar Cry, and there was no way that anyone could survive what long aboard an utter ruin. Yet on the other hand there was no way that any significant part of the base could have survived, yet here it still orbited…."Esthar Airstation, this is Ragnarok. The signal is definitely originating from high orbit, real time. What should we do?"
Tharling's voice was filled with a definite tone of confusion. "I-I don't know, Miss Tilmitt. I think that the President would want to hear about this."
"I'm sure he would, and you might want to get to talking to the people who built this station. They'd know if anyone could survive this." Selphie leaned back in her seat, lost in thought. No one could still be alive, could they? That's impossible.
Irvine seemed to read her mind and said "It has to be some kind of trick, Selphie. No matter how advanced Esthar's technology is, no one could have survived that explosion for that long."
"I sure hope so," she said. Because to have lived through that would be hell, she thought.
Laguna and Kiros entered the control room at a run, nearly bowling over the guards at the doors as they did.
The room that served as the control center for the Esthar space program was a large space, two hundred and seventy five feet by three hundred and eighty feet. Across this vast space were row after row of workstations, each one monitoring a fraction of the thousands of man made objects placed in orbit or monitoring the feeds of the surveillance satellites that secretly orbited above the planet, mindful of the slightest irregularity. Holographic displays danced in the air over the techs, a bewildering dance of colors that overwhelmed most visitors when they came here. Laguna was forced to admit to himself that it still did at times, and kept his eyes down as Kiros led him to a workstation surrounded by a cluster of men, many of them wearing the insignia of the CORE Group on their uniforms. CORE was responsible for most of the technological development in Esthar for the military and space programs, and had something of a sinister reputation in Esthar. Laguna recognized one of the CORE Group men at one, Dr. Heinsrich Bruetel, the current chief of design for the space program. In a total reversal of what most people thought of scientists, Bruetel was tall, broad shouldered, and appeared to be a great deal younger than his fifty-one years. "What's going on?" Laguna asked, perhaps far too casually.
Bruetel indicated the holographic display above Scott Tharling's workstation, a complex pattern of objects moving in random patterns. "This is the current disposition of the ruins of the Lunar Base, and this…" he punched orders into a palm top unit…"is where the signal that the Ragnarok is receiving is coming from." One of the icons blinked twice and then expanded into an image ten feet wide. It was a considerable section of the Base, perhaps two hundred or so feet long, one side of the hull relatively intact, the other pitted and pocked with impact crater. "Our analysis indicates that this was once part of the Special Space Workforce Development Division's main orbital laboratory. As you know, Mr. President, due to the nature of the zero-gravity research being done there, the SSWDD lab was added to the station later, and is more advanced than most of the Base. It possesses limited nanotechnological self repair and a hyperalloy hull that made damaging it more difficult."
"So it's possible that someone could have survived on board?" Kiros asked. The number of crewmen that had escaped the Base and the manifests of those assigned to duty there had not tallied, and dozens had been killed when the station had gone up.
"After all this time…it's unlikely. But the signal is there, sir. And it deserves investigation."
Laguna thought about it. " Is that the CORE Group's recommendation?"
"It is, sir."
Laguna thought about it. "Can she do it?" he asked seemingly no one.
"I beg your pardon, sir?" Bruetel inquired.
"Selphie, Selphie Tilmitt. She wasn't trained to go that far into space, was she?"
Bruetel nodded. "That is true, but we can monitor the mission and if need be assume remote control of the Ragnarok from here. We can work up an intercept course fairly quickly, and begin on the next orbit."
Laguna leaned over Tharling's shoulder. "Uh, let me talk to the Ragnarok."
Tharling, who was a thin, nondescript fellow, nothing like Selphie's image of him based on an unusually deep voice, moved his hands across his workstation. "Ragnarok, this is Esthar Airstation, please stand by for the President." Tharling nodded at Laguna, who cleared his throat and said, "Uh, Selphie? We believe that it's not very likely that anyone could have survived out there for so long, but it should be looked into. We're gonna, uh, send you an orbital program so you can meet with the source of the signal. That'll be in, uh…how long?"
"Forty-nine minutes," Tharling told her.
"Forty-nine minutes? They might not have forty-nine minutes!"
"Selphie, it's for your safety. You aren't ready to take the Ragnarok that far out without our help. Please stand by."
There was silence for a long minute, then Selphie finally said, "Understood, Ragnarok."
Laguna turned to Bruetel and ordered "Get to work on that program, Bruetel. She is right if someone is there…they might be out of time." Bruetel nodded, and Laguna could not help but notice that there was an odd look to his eyes, as if he was thinking about something that had nothing to do with the current crisis. Laguna wondered what it was.
"Strap yourself in," Selphie barked in a tone of command that she rarely used. In fact, Irvine thought as he obeyed her, Squall might very well have jumped to do her bidding. Selphie bent over the control panel, her fingers flying across the boards. As she did this, she said, mostly to herself "I'm not waiting for them to figure out what to do next."
"Uh, Selphie, what are you doing?" Irvine asked.
"I'm plotting a course to intercept the source of the signal. I don't need to wait for them to do this-I figured out how to fly this thing on my own, didn't I?" Irvine did not have to say that there was a big difference in what they were doing here and then; he just hoped again that he would survive it.
Selphie was perhaps vaguely aware that her ability to command the Ragnarok was exceptional, but she did not really dwell on it. However, the fact that inside of five minutes she had plotted a course to leave orbit and intercept an object in an eccentric orbit should have been a hint that her in-born ability was exceptional, but it really did not. Selphie did not worry about such things, she just accepted them as part of her make-up and move on. She finished her work, double-checked her calculations, and was satisfied. She took a deep breath and then called Esthar. "Esthar Airstation, this is Ragnarok. Preparing to leave orbit."
"What?" a very confused sounding Tharling replied.
Selphie let out a whoop and, taking the controls, activated her pre-programmed course. The Ragnarok's deep-space engines jumped to life, and the aerospace craft boosted out of orbit into the void of space.
Below, in Esthar, every technician, scientist, and government official watched their screens in silence as the Ragnarok left orbit. Laguna, who was something of a capricious soul himself, could not help but smile at Selphie's pluck. "Go get 'em, girl," he said under his breath. If he had been paying attention, he might have noticed that Bruetel was smiling as well; his smile. Though, held far greater malice.
In her prison, Adel watched with glee as the Ragnarok boosted towards her, sending in front of it a message of hope.
We're coming to help! Please hold on!
Within her prison, Adel's cold laugh echoed.
To be continued…