Disclaimer: FF:TSW and the related characters don't belong to me, if Square wants to sue, let 'em…I'm broke!
Author's note: Welcome to"Gaia's Gift V2.0." I changed some things around here and there, and deleted other stuff altogether. You veterans who have read the first rendition–written so long ago, it seems–will find that it now flows better for the overhaul. Newcomers, this is sort of a backstory to Convergent Paths, soenjoy!
Phantom Crater
The hawk gave a shrill cry as she circled in the cool early morning breeze. A flick of her tail feathers and she banked, giving wide berth to the ship hovering precariously close to the edge of a gaping fissure. Had the bird of prey swooped closer, she would have seen the small platform being winched slowly upwards. Nearer still and two figures would be seen as it emerged from the dark shadows of the crater below.
Aki felt the newly risen sun on her face, but she barely registered its warmth. Instead, her thoughts traveled back over recent events…the joyous discovery of the final eighth spirit; the lethal beam from the Zeus Cannon lancing down again and yet again as General Hein single-mindedly pursued his own mindless solution; the Quatro's crash-landing and the eternal blue light of Gaia itself. But now her brown eyes overflowed with tears as she held the silent, motionless figure in her arms. Gray had sacrificed himself so that humanity would survive. Now his body, an empty shell, was all that remained. Aki's shoulders shook with her sobs and she held him tighter, as if she could somehow wish him back.
The platform's upward travel slowed, stopping with a slight jerk before retracting into the loading bay of the Black Boa. The main hatch swung closed and Dr. Sid maneuvered the ship to a landing on firm ground again. Once down he left the cockpit and quickly headed aft. He entered the cargo bay, took one look at Aki's expression and knelt beside her, and his own eyes shared her sorrow.
"Gray…he knew what had to be done." Aki gently laid his head on the platform and stood, ignoring the pins-and-needles sensations in her legs.Only the greatest of effort prevented her from breaking down completely. "Let's get him to the sleep chamber." She grasped Gray's ankles as Dr. Sid slid his hands beneath his arms; together they carried the courageous captain into the small roomattached to the main lab andplaced him in the angled seat. Aki gazed upon him for a long moment before pulling the retractable straps across his torso. This done, turned to Sid and it was then that her self-control finally broke and her grief surfaced. She pressed her face against his chest, barely hearing the comforting words of her mentor, who embraced her and wisely said nothing, allowing his protégé to express her sorrow. After another more moment, she pulled away and hastily wiped at her tear-streaked face. "There's nothing left for us here now," she said dully. "Let's go."
Engines ramping up from standby, the Black Boa prepared for departure. In the pilot's seat once again, Aki powered up various systems and ran through her pre-flight checklist. Her movements were automatic, almost mechanical; her mind was filled with nothing but thoughts of Gray, and what he meant to her, now that he was gone. Physically and emotionally exhausted, she stared out of the portside window. Below, the Phantom crater was a huge empty eye socket, its malevolence gone now that the alien spirits it had once cradled had departed. Down in that impact site, somewhere, there remained the wreckage of the Quatro that Aki and Gray had utilized, and unless a salvage team was dispatched here it would remain undisturbed.
Dr. Sid contacted Houston, listening,and his mouth set in a grim line when he heard that the Zeus cannon was now nothing but a cloud of debris in low earth orbit. He didn't mind the fate of the station but the needless deaths of so many crewmen, all under the command of a brilliant yet mad general…he sighed, shook his head and acknowledged, relaying the news to Aki but she only inclined her head in a barely perceptible nod. If only Hein hadn't fired that orbiting abomination Gray would still be alive and with her now. She tried to contain the anguish within her, but it was hard, so damn hard to do.
"Are you ready?" Dr. Sid gently touched her arm and Aki turned her eyes to see him looking at her with concern.
She took a deep breath. "Yes. The autopilot is set to Houston Barrier City coordinates." She grasped the joystick, her other hand stroking the control keys, and increased power to the engines as she coaxed her ship upwards. The landing gear retracted as the vertical boosters went through their priming cycle and then fired. The ship turned westward, herpassengerspressed down into their seats as acceleration built, and then both the crater and the Caspian Mountains were rapidly falling away and slipping astern; the few morning clouds that remained had started to thin out as the day warmed.
Dr. Sid opened a common broadcast channel, and the cockpit was immediately filled with the babble of newscasts, which were spreading about what had occurred at New York. He listened for another minute and then rolled his eyes, grunting as he shut off the radio. He glanced at Aki again. The young woman sat slouched in her seat, her face expressionless. Sid frowned–he hated to see her like this, and he searched for something appropriate to say.
"Aki…Captain Edwards would not have wanted you to grieve so. He and his squad died protecting us. Had Hein succeeded with his plan, the entire planet would have suffered. As is stands, we have saved human civilization."
She sighed. "Yes, I know. But it's just that I…I pushed Gray away in the time following my operation, and I shouldn't have done that. He still loved me despite my condition. It's only now that I understand how much I'll miss him." Aki lapsed into silence; the only sounds heard were those of the soft chattering of the cockpit's flight systems. She was so uncharacteristically out of it that she almost failed to hear a series of faint beeps from the console before her. After another moment she did notice and irritably reached out to shut it off. But she froze in mid-motion, cocking her head. When she spoke, her voice held a note of bafflement.
"Doctor…did you shut down the scanners after we detected the eighth spirit?"
"No, I didn't have time. Why?" He noticed her manner and he tilted his own head towards the readout. Then his eyes slid sideways and met hers. "Hold on here…"
An idea began to form in Aki's mind. Her fingertips danced on the controls and she pushed the stick over. The vista outside slipped to starboard as the ship banked around and headed back towards the impact site. "Autopilot off-line. I'm taking her down. There's something else in that crater!"
Sid grasped the arms of his seat as the floor tilted away beneath him. "Now, wait, hold on. Are you certain that we're not just picking up the Quatro? Maybe a couple of the ovo-packs are still functional."
"No. It's something else…take a closer look at that display. The pattern…it's different from the other signatures we've recorded. Whatever the scanner has acquired possesses a faint trace of a human spiritual waveform! If this warrants an investigation, I believe that this is all the reason we need." Then her voice lowered to a near-whisper. "Whatever it is, it's not Phantom energy…"
Once again the Black Boa touched down,not more than a few meters from its original landing spot. Aki unfastened her safety harness and was out of her seat almost before the engines had spooled down. She hurried aft to the main bay, Dr. Sid following as quickly as he was able, and when he caught up with her, she was standing before a storage locker and had just finished strapping on her wrist computer. She reached into the open locker again and slipped on a shoulder pack, then checked the charge on her rifle, the same weapon she carried into the ruins of Old New York. She doubted there was no real threat, but nevertheless she had no intention of departing the Boa unarmed.
"Dr. Sid, I've got the head back down there," she said, securing her headset but not looking at him. "That energy signature may be more than just a mere power cell. I don't know how to explain my hunch…but I intend to find out!" She palmed the hatch switch and sunlight flooded the bay as the huge door hissed open. Sid watched the headstrong young woman and sighed. "All right. But I'm going to monitor you.I want you to remain in constant radio contact, is that clear?"
She nodded and boarded the boarding platform. As she did, she thought of Gray again and hope stirred faintly within her. She grasped the platform railing, hair stirring as the breeze outside picked up slightly, and looked back over her shoulder. Dr. Sid raised a hand.
"Be careful, Aki."
A faint smile crossed her face. "I will."
Minutes later the ship was once again hovering over the crater. The platform arm swung out,winch motors hummed, and Aki began her descent. Large slabs of dark rock began to rise on all sides. Memories rose unbidden, as, for the second time, she entered the lair of the Phantoms. But there are no aliens here now, she thought. No more Phantoms, just the Earth's Gaia, restored,thanks to our efforts...and Gray's. She switched on her com unit and spoke–she had to raise her voice over the howling engines of the hovering Black Boa. "Dr. Sid, do you read?"
A slight hiss of static, then: "Yes, loud and clear! Have you located the power signature?"
Aki wore a safety tether that fastened her to a mooring point on the platform, but the palm of the hand that tightly grasped her rifle was damp with anxiety. "According to my tracker it lies to the southeast, about fifty-two meters from my projected touchdown point. Can you verify?"
Up in the cockpit, Dr. Sid brought up a holographic display. The icon designating Aki's position was slowly dropping towards a large flat outcropping, a wide rocky ledge that formed part of a semicircle around a chasm of unknown depth. A larger symbol represented the Quatro, which was indeed not too far off the heading she had just radioed. "Confirmed. But some of those larger rock formations are showing signs of instability thatprobably occurred when the alien Gaia departed."
"I read you. Nearing the bottom…okay, I'm down." A momentary pause, and then suddenly there came a cry of surprise.
"Aki! What is it? Come in! "
There was a delay before she answered. "It's okay, I just slipped. I'm closing in on the power source now." Unsnapping her cable, she began to walk. A faint mountain wind howled its hollow idiot note in several narrow crannies, making a chill ran down her back. Shecontinued on, her boots crunching on small pieces of rock. She glanced up. Her ship floated far above, engines whining faintly, in a wide circle of azure blue that was crossed with mid-level clouds, but the immediate surroundings were ominous. She activated her headpiece light and eye scanner and the shadows near her evaporated; stony cliff-like structures loomed all around. She only now grasped the sheer power the massive alien Gaia had expended when it had headed deeper in its attempt to escape Hein's vicious attack. After a few more minutes of picking her way along the uneven cavern floor, Aki made another transmission. "The signature is dead ahead, just past a rock fall." She managed to find footholds in the small heap of broken stone, and she scrambled over. What lay before her brought her up short. "Oh, my God…"
Her earpiece clicked. "What do you see, Aki?"
For a brief moment, she did not reply as she took in the scene. She slowly descended the pile of rubble and approached the remains of the Quatro. Its drive units were crushed; two of its wheels lay askew and the globular passenger cabin was ruined. A small fire smoldered fitfully, casting a wan glow; smoke rose from the engine's ventilation grille. The forward fringes of her spotlight picked out faint marks on the ground. She turned the full force of the illumination on them, and shivered as she recognized them. They were the tracks made by the heels of Gray's boots; she had hauled him away as well as she was able, her grief lending her strength to drag his body back to the platform. With a real effort, she composed herself and spoke, her voice echoing around her.
"The Quatro is pretty much destroyed, doctor." she said as she neared the wreckage. She glanced at her wrist computer. "But the energy source is stronger–I'm getting readings from within the vehicle!"
She mounted the short stairway and ducked her head inside, coughing as she got a lungful of acrid fumes. Amid the debris scattered about she caught a glimpse of a discarded Nocturne. She remembered asking a protesting Gray for its ovo-pack, then patching it into the vehicle's shield generator and using its power to "download" the spirit that she had carried within her. The small unit on her wrist chirped. The source was very close by, literally within arm's reach. She cast about, searching…
Then she saw it.
Battered and dented, the Nocturne's ovo-pack lay half-hidden beneath the broken passenger seat, where it had slid to rest on the slanted floor. She reached for it, her hand trembling slightly. Then her fingertips were touching the metal case and she grasped it, noting with a shock that it was warm. Her pulse racing, she brought it up to her scope and gasped, for the tiny holographic had never misled her.
The ovo-pack was flaring with the blue glow of bio-etheric energy.