About the story:
Final Fantasy IX was released in July 7, 2000 for the Play Station by Squaresoft as the final Final Fantasy to be released for the PS1, and brought back memories of the original Final Fantasy's. The sub-title was 'The Crystal Comes Back', reminding us of the earlier quests.
This story is set about three-hundred years after the mist war, I will attempt to keep from spoiling the story, but it will pick up, chapter one introduces the main character, Tyr Redblade, and his background, chapter two actually dives into the story.
About the Author:
I used to write Final Fantasy fan fiction under another pen name, but forgot the password, and the e-mail. So I am going to be posting under this new one, and reposting my old stories after a few changes, as my writing style has greatly improved after 3 years.
The ship cut through the icy blackness of space, long in prow, its sharp, new-age design radiating the glory of a powerful, ruthless ship. The beauty was only skin deep… The H.M.S.S. Revelation was the last ship built of a failing nation; the Empire had steamrolled over the other three nations on its planet early on, long before the advent of space travel. Lindblum, Condie Petie and Burmecia, all found themselves part of the Imperial Empire of Alexandria. Now the internal divisions were tearing it apart…
Inside the weapons room, only the damned work, practicing the loading and unloading of the sensitive ammunition, whose temper would be quick and furious. The only humans in this section sat safely in the next room, watching from the safety of a reinforced security booth. Here was the dominion of the Qu, the genderless race who had submitted to the Alexandrian army nearly three centuries ago. Now they were deemed to be expendable, and found themselves working the nastiest shifts in the worst of conditions. Many had not received an education, and were paid 20 credits a day, something the lowliest non-commissioned human received an hour.
The Qu could not vote in national elections, own property besides clothes and food, and they did not qualify for government benefits. If one was to be injured, it would not receive a pension, and if it died it would not receive a burial… it would receive a kick out the airlock.
Up the social latter a rung sat the Condie Petians, the short dwarflike people who had also been 'integrated' during the Great War. They were often used as fodder in boarding parties, sent in as grunts to bludgeon their enemies with hand-to-hand weapons for fear that they might shoot themselves with a weapon of greater caliber.
They are paid only 30 credits a day, but often found themselves unable to spend the money, their death rate being at about 75. In fact, the government often received the money back only days after paying them, because when a Condie Petian was killed, its money and property were sent back to the government. This meant that frequently, the same amount of money was sent to several workers several times before being recycled back into the economy.
The Burmecians had it better off then most; they could own property, although they couldn't vote. They received 10 credits an hour, and sometimes held officer positions, depending on the captain, but were usually commanders of boarding parties. It was ironic that the Burmecian women (Alexandria being female oriented, with the women of the family being the most influential) had it off worst. Often finding themselves as maids, cooks, or 'company,' and making almost nothing in terms of relative wages.
The ship had been put on alert. The radar had picked up 'ghosts,' or what could be the shrouds of vessels in the nearby asteroid field. Actually, it could have been anything, misshapen rocks or derelicts; the radar was only sophisticated enough to pick out the metallic profile of the object, nothing more.
Tyr Redblade sat in his fighter, listening to the other pilots over the radio going over some new tactic or event in the empire. Taking off his oxygen mask, he turned around to check the rear weapon control console.
He was one of 14 Burmecian fighter pilots on the ship, a subordinate group of the 32 Human pilots. He was one of the lucky ones. The job paid well, all he really had to do was bring a book along and sit for the next 12 hours before the next shift came on duty. He was already 8 hours through, laying back; he tried to drift off to sleep…
Suddenly the ship rocked violently, red lights flashed down the launch bay and klaxons were going off in his cockpit. Switching on the main power and weapons, he felt the hum of the micro nuclear reactor, the feeling as the engines came alive when he pushed the throttle to the afterburners. The fighter sped along the guiding rails, ion engines burned violently blue, shooting it out the bay and into space.
"Two enemy contacts, Guerian in origin, engage and dispatch with the extreme prejudice." came the orders over the radio. The Guerians were terrorists, who sought to sacrifice as many lives as they could to their god, they would kill civilian, military, Human or Burmecian... Or so the empire's newscasts said… Bringing his fighter to bear, he saw two cargo ships headed towards the ship. They bristled with weapons of every caliber, most being older then fifty years old.
Flying toward it like a bat out of hell, he missed the wall of projectiles they shot up toward him. Bringing his ship around, he was granted an unobstructed view of the massive ship's stern. The engines were chemical engines, and took up too much space to allow for rear defenses.
Watching as the target indicator lit up a brilliant red, he depressed the trigger, and two missiles flashed from under his wing, and toward the ship. He saw the dorsal thrusters light up, and attempt to move the ship away, but to no avail. The twin fiery arrows pierced the nozzles of the engines, and lit up space with a fiery explosion of propellants and oxygen.
With half the ship in flames, and the other half drifting in space, he turned the fighter toward the second cargo ship. He spotted three small burning hulks, obviously the remains of some of the fighters who had not been able to dodge the murderous fire. With the port side of the second enemy ship in sight, he opened up with a hail of white hot machine gun shells, which pinged off the enemies' hull at odd angles, a few digging in with releases of air as the compartments inside began to depressurize. The ship's weapons trained on his fighter, and began to chase his fighter, Tyr was out of missiles, and looked like he was out of luck…
Suddenly, a brilliant flash emanated from the Revelation, a quick, decisive shot which slammed into the cargo vessel with such force that it penetrated through to the other side. Not to mention the fact that now the vessel was spinning at an odd angle, unable to bring its weapons to bear. Tyr could see the hole, a through and through job by the massive forward Magnetic Accelerator Cannon, which shot rods of steel at such velocities that they became semi-plasmatic in state, and penetrated almost any unprotected object.
He brought the fighter to a standstill on the Revelations landing strip a few minutes later, alongside three other fighters. A little more then 2/5 of their company now drifted in space alongside the countless other souls who had lost their lives onboard the other ships in battles both recent and long forgotten.
Waiting until the metal doors closed, and air pressurized in the bay, he opened the cockpit and jumped down. The outside of his fighter was burnt and several holes were oozing engine coolant. His left wing and left stabilizer had been nearly shot off. He had been lucky, if the shots had been two feet to the right, they would have passed right through the glass and killed him.
He heard a shout, and looked back in time to find himself in the embrace of his long time friend Ryara Trakerspeare, one of the ships engineers, and the only Burmecian woman to ever work the engine room. A happy personality combined with a 'give it your all' attitude had brought her up so high on the rather limited social latter.
"Move it, rat face!" someone from behind shouted, and pushed past them with a trolley of tools and fire retardants. He looked up to see the wing of one of the other fighters had caught fire; it wasn't a big deal, and the only thing actually flammable was the paint. All the fighters were nuclear powered, allowing for the more powerful, and yet more compact Ion engines.
"I was worried… two of the fighters were blown out of space right after leaving the bay. One more impacted on the ship which was destroyed soon after." Said Ryara
"I know, and I am fine. I've been in much worse. Remember the Teraguthi incident? We lost almost five times this many fighters. I am content with just keeping you and everyone else on the ship safe. This ship isn't a priority for the Guerians."
"We're the biggest target left, word just came in during the battle, the Ipson was destroyed earlier today, and the Omergon was destroyed yesterday. The Revelation is the last battleship in the empire." She said weakly.
The news hit him like a herd of Chocobos. The loss of one battleship was hurtful enough, 5,000 lives lost in one fight, but two was unthinkable… 10,000 military officers, civilians, and workers lost. Two fifths of them were probably Burmecian, which hit home even harder. The only remaining relative of his was his sister, Sierra, who was stationed on the Red Guard, a small cruiser that was part of the Gaian defense force. His other sister, Weyra, had been presumed lost when her ship was captured by the Guerians, and his parents had died when a terrorist attack blew apart a section of the metropolis they had been living in. These were things only a few of his closest friends knew; Ryara was one of them.
Nearby, the wife of one of the dead pilots was hanging off a nearby mechanic, having just now been informed of her husband's demise.
Walking down the corridor, they saw that the entire crews' morale was in shambles; a couple had drowned their miseries of lost comrades and family with whiskey and beer, and staggered back to their quarters, half walking, half crawling. The whole war was spiraling out of control, major battleships, blown out of the sky, with the officer pool dwindling. Many of them now received a one-month training course on their chosen field.
Stepping into Tyr's quarters, Ryara assisted him in cooking some semblance of a meal, seeing as his cooking skills extended to boiling water and Meals Ready to Eat. They had planned to move into either one's quarters, the pay would increase a little, and they might even be able to afford to leave the ship, and move down to a colonial planet, maybe Concordia or Tiamat V. There was always a demand for crop dusters, and Ryara had expressed an interest in some of the colonization duties. Life was better out on the rim, there was a semblance of social equality, and the pay wasn't bad.
Sitting down after the brief meal of rice and beans, they sat together for what could have been either hours, or days, discussing every detail, from maintenance to recent news among the crew. It went late into the night, and finally, they fell asleep on the couch.
Two loud pings announced the morning. Groggily waking, Tyr saw that Ryara was still fast asleep on the couch; her shift didn't start for another two hours, so it was just as well to leave her asleep for now. Showering, and changing into a clean uniform, he grabbed the fighter starter chip from his nightstand, and a set of tools. He would be repairing his fighter today.
The daily grind again, an ever circling regime, repairing leaks, extracting bullets, scraping burnt paint… This was what he was doing, pouring acid on the burnt paint before scraping it off, and repainting it again. He never understood why they had to repaint their fighters; they would just get the paint chipped off again next time. It was a well proven statistic, that by the end of a fighter's useful life, the metal skin would have been replaced over ten times, and the paint changed almost fifteen times that.
It was still early, and yet he was almost done with the first wing. If he was lucky, he could get off at 14:00, and go sleep the rest of the day. A Qu waddled over with a clipboard and a check list, and passed it to Tyr… He signed off on a requisition order for ammunition for his fighter, and sat down, watching as the creature waddled away. Cleaning his tools, he began work on the cockpit, which was in constant need of repair, the wiring in all the fighters was substandard, and was constantly coming loose.
Climbing back out of the cockpit when he heard the trolley of ammunition, he directed the loading of the missiles and ammunition belts. Passing the Qu a swift salute, he shut and locked the cockpit before packing the tools and leaving. On his way to the cafeteria, he saw several human officers stagger past, drunk, something that was becoming increasingly common among the crew.
Sitting down at a table, he opened up one of the sandwiches he had gotten from the counter, and ate it quickly. He wanted to get back to his quarters, and was soon underway again. It was 16:00 now, two hours after he had wanted to get off, but it was better early then not….
Clang! The klaxons were going off…
"General Quarters, all pilots to your fighters." The announcements came, two red lights shone above each door, signaling a Class 2 red alert. Running full sprint down the hallway, he reached the fighter bay in what had to be a record. Climbing in, he felt the ship slide onto the rail, and prepare for launch. The magnetic beams swept once across the bow of the fighter as soon as the cockpit was sealed, and it catapulted out into space.
There were four ships, capital ships, none of the refitted freighters they had been fighting before, but captured Alexandrian vessels; they had come at the Revelation with all they had.
"Squad leader, form up, alert fighters have launched from target Tango-Tango-Delta-Four."
"Rodger control, red wing, Bohr formation, on my mark, fire Anti Capital Ship missiles, Blue wing, provide cover for Red wing."
Tyr brought the fighter's nose to bear on the first target, an enemy fighter who had become divided from its wing. Peppering it with rounds from his cannons. Diving below the burning wreck, he caught a few shots in the wing before he pulled it away. Heading back to the Red wing, he saw a delta formation of the enemy fighters, it was a good move against bombers, but left them open to a rear assault… swinging the craft around, he flashed past the farthest wingman, and pulled a sharp turn so that he was behind the leader. Next to him, two other Blue wing fighters were forming on his wing, and preparing to open fire…
The missiles flashed from under their wings, and struck individual targets, the leader was struck by two, and disappeared in a cloud of fire. Three others spiraled out of control, two others were hit by the crippled fighters, and were themselves critically injured. With only four enemy fighters left, they light their afterburners, the enemy was nearing the Red team's exposed bombers, already, shots were pinging off the hulls, soon they would be in missile range.
Passing under the first enemy missile cruiser, he heard missile lock-on warnings ping in his cockpit. Instinctively pulling up, he saw the other two fighters beside him go up in a fiery ball of death. The missile passed under him, but did not loop around. Another lock-on told him he was being targeted again. He wouldn't be so lucky again, the missile struck his left wing, and exploded, shearing off much of it. He was crippled, and at the mercy of the cruiser only 300 meters away.
He could see the Revelation pounding her assailants with MAC slugs, but had sustained some damage, and now, all her fighters had been crippled or destroyed. The enemies were still moving in on her when the micro singularity formed in front of the ship to carry it away to safety. Tyr was relieved for a moment, before he remembered his situation… He was trapped, at the mercy of at least 3 very powerful cruisers, and he had no engine, no weapons, and a beacon that was sending off bursts of neutrinos to allow him to be recovered.
There was no chance of being saved, the ships would destroy all the fighters they found. Flipping up the safety catch, he pushed the cockpit open button to allow the sweet quick freeze of the vacuum of space to take his life. Lowering a finger to it, he depressed the button…
Chapter 1 is in the works, read and review!
Thanks! Drake