Lady Starlight Part 2:
By: Eric A.
This is still for Donna
Adel watched the Ragnarok race towards her prison with glee.
She had calculated that she had had maybe one chance in a million to be rescued, and that was probably being generous; she knew enough about human nature to know that suspicion and fear were as powerful a motivational tool as charity and concern, and it was as likely that her signal would be ignored as investigated. She had a limited ability to monitor the transmissions from the ground to the Ragnarok, and she had been shocked to hear that the Ragnarok was being ordered to investigate. When the Ragnarok had fired its boosters and exited orbit in a reckless yet well-plotted course, sending messages of hope, a dark joy had filled her soul. She was not just being rescued, but being rescued by caring, humanitarian souls. Those souls were the easiest to prey on, she knew from long experience. So she sent back messages begging for aid, using her crisis to hopefully blind the would be rescuers to the threat she posed. Soon she would have the means to return to the world she had ruled, and all that had wronged her would pay.
Adel's laughter filled the ruined remnant of the Lunar Base.
Irvine was beginning to wonder if there was nothing that Selphie could not do if she put her mind to it.
He had been with her on enough of her training for this mission that he knew she had not been explicitly trained to perform the interception mission that she had plotted into the navigation computers, yet here they were, rocketing into the void, much to the amazement of the control staff at Esthar Airstation. Tharling had periodically contacted Selphie, first expressing the worries of Laguna that she had acted so recklessly, then moderate amazement that her course was working. Through it all Selphie had sent message after message to whomever was calling them, adjusting their approach as they drew nearer, and being remarkably calm. Irvine had sometimes suffered from ill-timed bouts with a lack of confidence, and found Selphie's calm to be enviable. And they call her the ditz, he thought. Selphie was bent over the controls, watching her displays, her expression serious. "How we doing, Selphie?" he called.
"Fine. Our ETA is twenty minutes. Hope that we get there in time."
Irvine decided to play devil's advocate. "Selphie, suppose this is some kind of trap? Like, you know those monsters that Squall and Rinoa fought when they got on the Ragnarok? Somehow they figured out how to send a message?"
"The Propagators? They weren't that smart. I saw a report on the autopsy on one of the creatures that Squall and Rinoa killed. Their brains weren't built for that kind of logical thought. All they cared about was keeping themselves alive." She looked up at him. "Irvine, I dunno what's up there, okay? But if it is a human being, we have to help them."
"And if it isn't? "
"Then we leave. They can't get back down to the planet without the Ragnarok, right?"
Irvine mulled it over and made a decision. "I've been trained to do some zero gravity work, Sefie. When we get there, I want to go over and check it out."
"Irvine…" She felt a cold stab of fear in her heart. "I'm not letting you go alone, Irvine."
"Don't be silly, Selphie. I can't fly the Ragnarok as well as you can, and you know it." I want to protect you, Selphie, he thought. Can't you see that?
"But what if something happens to you?"
Irvine tried a smile that he hoped masked his nervousness. "Something happen to me, Sefie? You know that I can take care of myself."
"Sure you can, Irvine. It's just that…that…" Before she could complete her thought, the commo board called for her attention. "This is Ragnarok, Esthar Airstation," she said, a bit irked at the timing of the call.
"This is Esthar Airstation," Tharling sent. "Selphie, be advised that the object you are meeting is tumbling erratically in it's orbit. Your thruster control has to be very precise. Do you wish any assistance?"
"Ah, negative, Esthar. The time delay lag in the signal transmission would affect my control. I'll wing it."
"Read you, Ragnarok."
Irvine could not help but grin. "You'll wing it, huh?"
"That's done pretty good by us so far." Selphie wondered if she just meant piloting the Ragnarok or something else. "We'll be there soon. You need to get to the topside airlock before I start final maneuvers, so I'm not bouncing you all over the place."
Irvine nodded and carefully got out of his seat. The Ragnarok's forward thrust had given a slight semblance of gravity to the ship, but he still felt odd as he collected his helmet and Exeter from the weapons rack that had been added to the back of his seat when SeeD had officially taken over the ship. He wondered if it was the gravity or something else swirling around inside of him that bothered him. He looked at Selphie and so many different things welled up inside of him then that he felt as if he was about to burst. Finally, he said to her, "You be good Selphie."
Selphie gulped, then nodded. "You-you too, Irvine." When he left the cockpit, Selphie covered her hands in her face. "Why didn't you say something else, you little goof!" she berated herself.
Outside, Irvine sighed deeply and muttered to himself. "Brave guy. Couldn't even admit it to her, could you?" He shook his head and headed for the same airlock that Squall and Rinoa had used to enter the Ragnarok, all those months ago.
In the airstation, Laguna watched with trepidation as the blip on the holographic display above Tharling's head that represented the Ragnarok neared the source of the signal. He had never been comfortable with ordering men into situations where they could be killed, as a Galbadian soldier and as President, and this situation smelled the same to him. Selphie blasting off on her own did not change the fundamental fact that he had ordered her to do it anyway; she had just accelerated the timetable. It bothered him, almost as much as it bothered him that for the past thirty or so minutes, Bruetel and his CORE Group clique had been on the other side of the control center in some sort of discussion. Kiros wasn't too impressed either judging by his expression. "What's up, Kiros?" Laguna whispered to him.
"I'm not sure. Those CORE Group guys make Dr. Odine seem rational. Still, I think either they're up to something, or they know something that we don't."
Laguna considered this. "Well, whatever they could be up to, there's not much they can do from here. Selphie and Irvine are too far away for them to do anything to."
"True. But what if there's something up there they know about and we don't?"
Laguna frowned. "What could possibly be up there that we don't know about?" he wondered.
Kiros sighed. He sometimes despaired of getting Laguna to take some aspects of government seriously. "Laguna, the CORE Group operates under a black budget with no government oversight. All you cared about with the lunar base was that it kept Adel imprisoned. Who knows what they did up there?"
"I'd say we need to find out," Laguna said in his classically understated way.
Before either man could act, Tharling spoke up. "She's making her intercept, Mr. President."
Laguna and Kiros looked at the displays and both, in their own ways, wished Selphie well.
If you told Selphie the degree of difficulty involved in matching velocities with an object that was tumbling in an eccentric and decaying orbit was considerable, she might have been a bit concerned as she began her task. However, since Selphie was not one to worry about such things, she set about falling alongside the ruined hunk of the station with a casual ease that would have stunned her instructors back in Esthar. She adjusted the yaw and pitch of the Ragnarok with minute thruster burns that twisted and turned the ship in odd directions against its forward thrust and gradually brought the ship alongside of the hulk. She switched to the inboard commo circuit and said "You about ready, Irvine?"
"Course I am, darling. What'll I do?"
Selphie checked her screens. "I've lined us up with an airlock on the target, and the Ragnarok has the ability to magnetically dock. I'll try to get us into the magnetic field range."
"Sounds like fun," Irvine called. In the airlock, Irvine ran through the training he'd had in how to use the suit's thrusters to control himself through space, in the event he wound up floating in vacuum. He hoped that did not happen.
Selphie brought the Ragnarok within twenty-five feet of the ruin, and quickly saw that things weren't going to work. "Irvine, there must not be enough power onboard to power the magnetic seal on their end. I'm going to have to get you as close as I can and you do the rest. You…sure about this?"
Not really, Irvine thought, but there are worse fates. "Is the airlock hatch just like the one on the Ragnarok?"
"Ah…yeah. That means the hydraulic override will be in the same place."
"Good enough. You ready?"
Selphie was quiet for a moment, then she said "Opening outer hatch, Irvine. You be careful, hear me?"
"Goes without saying."
The air cycled out of the lock, and the hatch slid open, showing a view of a pitted, pockmarked surface, a circular hatch that greatly resembled in technology at least to the one on the Ragnarok. It hung about twenty or so feet away, the kind of distance that meant nothing to a high level, properly junctioned SeeD like him…back home. Irvine made certain that Exeter rested, slung over his back, in place, then he released the magnetic lock of his boots and jumped forward. He floated out into space and realized that he was moving a lot faster than he expected, and as he neared the hull of the ruin he hit his thrusters once. Which meant that he only had the breath jarred out of him as he hit the side of the ruin.
"Irvine! You okay?!" Selphie cried.
"Just…peachy…" he gasped. He reached over and tried the controls for the airlock, and was surprised when the outer hatch cycled. "Outer hatch opening."
"Read you. I'm boosting the signal to you so there's no interference from the structure." Selphie sent another text message to the source-"We're here, can you help us find you?"-yet got no answer. "Irvine, no one's answering."
Irvine has now in the airlock proper, the outer hatch closing behind him. He did not hear air cycling into the lock, and said "Selphie, there's no air coming in here. I'm going to try the manual override."
Not far away, Adel used some of her carefully marshaled resources to engage the air lock system, calculating that while it could raise suspicions it expedited matters. She checked the trap that she had set for this "Irvine" and waited.
"Uh, cancel that Selphie," Irvine called. "Air lock cycling."
"Keep your suit on, Irvine. That area's unsafe as hell."
"Didn't plan on taking that big a chance."
The hall outside was in zero gravity, pieces of debris floating in the air, panels in the walls open and wiring hanging from them. Irvine turned on the light mounted on the shoulder of his suit and panned it around as he made his way into the hall. "Selphie, this place feels dead…"
Adel smiled as she set her plan into motion.
She had control over four small servo remote drones, once used by the scientists of the CORE Group to transport materials from one zero gravity lab to the next. She had used those remotes to set her trap, modifying the wiring in the walls into a web that she unleashed on Irvine.
Ten wires shot out of the walls, propelled by compressed air, and they struck Irvine, each tipped with a contact electrode that sent a shock into Irvine's suit as they attached to him. Irvine managed to shout " Selphie!" before the shocks drove him into unconsciousness…
"Irvine!" Selphie screamed, her heart jumping onto her throat. She had been monitoring Irvine's medicals-pulse, heartbeat, and so forth-through her command interface, and she saw that he was still alive, his readings that of someone unconscious. Still, she called his name again as if her very voice could wake him up. Perhaps it could.
"Selphie! What happened!" Tharling shouted.
"Something…something happened to Irvine!" She stared helplessly at her controls. What happened to you, Irvine? Who's out there?"
Adel's servo remote drones were each the size of a medium sized dog, with six legs and four separate manipulator arms mounted on the top. They scuttled out of the walls and busied themselves with freeing Irvine's unconscious form. Adel did not view the SeeD-her sensors registered the unique energy of someone with multiple GF junctions, a trait of SeeD-as a threat, but rather as a weapon to use against the pilot of the Ragnarok. The drones picked up Irvine between them and began carrying him down a corridor that ran the circumference of the section of the base, bringing him to Adel. Once deposited in front of Adel, she set the last element of her plan into motion.
Selphie was on the verge of panic, of getting up and going after Irvine, when an alarm went off on her board. She was stunned beyond belief to see that it was a virus warning, an attack on the control cores of the Ragnarok. She pulled up the system file and saw that the virus had not yet gotten past the firewall she had installed into the ship, but it was looking for a way in.
"Someone has hit the Ragnarok with a computer virus!" she called down to Esthar. "I'm shutting down all my links to the ground so it won't infect your systems!" She had to keep a commo link open to Irvine, but thankfully that was a different, encrypted frequency. She was now alone, though, against whatever foe had drawn her and Irvine here.
Below, Laguna stared daggers at Bruetel, who was unable to hide the shock on his face. "Damnit, man, what did you let me send them into!" he shouted.
"I-I can't believe that it managed to survive the destruction," Bruetel said. "Or that the ROM construct approximation was that accurate…"
"You aren't making sense, Bruetel," Kiros growled.
"I know I'm not. What's up there…what Selphie Tilmitt is facing…is Adel. Or, at least, it thinks it's Adel…"
Selphie closed her eyes, forcing herself to be calm. She could not defeat the virus that was attacking the Ragnarok, let alone rescue Irvine, in a panic, after all. Underneath her attempts to remain calm, though, was a single thought, repeating over and over: I decided to come here so quickly. I did this to Irvine. "No," she said to herself, "that won't do Irvine any good." Her first order of business was finding a means to communicate with the ground without worry of the virus reaching the Esthar systems, because she could not do this alone. Okay, miss wizard; let's see how good you really are…
Irvine awoke slowly, vaguely aware that he was lying on his back, staring at an unfamiliar ceiling. What happened to me, he thought, trying to sit up-and feeling something holding him down. He turned his head and, through blurry vision saw some kind of legged mechanism pinning his arm to the ground with its manipulator arms. He surveyed his surroundings and saw two more of the remotes, one holding down his other arm, the other his feet. "What the hell is going on?" he asked aloud.
"My freedom," a voice spoke from nowhere.
Irvine scowled. There was something terribly familiar about the malicious voice that surrounded him, although he could not place it. His limited view of the surroundings told him that banks of computer terminals lined the room, though he saw no one operating any of them. "Who said that?" he asked.
"Your captor. The force that brought you here. I will have the Ragnarok and be freed."
Irvine struggled against the implacable grip of the remotes. "You leave Selphie alone, whoever you are!"
"Voice print analysis indicates that you are greatly concerned about this "Selphie' person, implying an emotional connection, high probability affection of a romantic nature." Who is this? Irvine wondered. Sometimes it sounds almost familiar, sometimes like a machine. "Is such affection returned?"
"Hell if I know," Irvine answered honestly. I know I love her, he thought.
"Well, you had best hope so, little SeeD. For if I have to use you, I will, to have the Ragnarok, and my freedom."
"It started ten years ago," Bruetel explained, pacing in a small circle. "A division of the CORE Group became interested in the psychology of sorcery, its mechanics, its pathologies if you would. We wanted to understand why so many sorceresses become malevolent and evil. And we had the perfect test subject in Adel, imprisoned in suspension in orbit. It was easy to monitor her brain wave patterns and if need be stimulate them to see what kind of response that we got."
"Do you know how dangerous that was?" Kiros asked. "You could have awakened her!"
Bruetel nodded. "We realized the danger, which was why, once we had established a proper database, we decided to continue our research virtually. We built a ROM firmware construct based on our database that essentially emulated Adel's thought processes and basically put it through a series of emulations."
Laguna, true to form, asked a simple question that had deeper meaning. "How do you know that's what's going on up there?"
Bruetel paled, realizing that he had perhaps said too much. "It's the only thing that makes sense, sir. The Adel project was conducted for the last few years in the Special Space Workforce Development Division's laboratory. The ROM construct could have survived-"
"You're lying to me, Bruetel, but I don't have time to pull the truth out of you. What do we do?"
"We order Miss Tilmitt to leave, to use the Ragnarok's weapons systems to destroy the lab. The loss of her comrade is regrettable, but…"
Tharling spoke up. "We can't communicate with her, and she said the Ragnarok was under attack by a virus program. How do we tell her and what if she's lost control of the Ragnarok?"
Laguna smiled, amazingly enough. "You have a point, kid."
Selphie was singing a cheerful song, which she realized was a rather feeble attempt at hiding her fears, as the virus ate at the ship's datacores and she programmed the means that would allow her to talk to the Airstation. She could see from his suit telltales that Irvine was alive, possibly conscious, but she did not dare talk to him, for a variety of reasons. She worked her boards desperately, hoping that the frequency skipping program would work well enough to keep the attacker from finding and pirating the signal. Hold on, Irvine, she thought. I can't lose you now.
Adel admired the skill with which her opponent was defending her viral attack, but not to the point that she was going to admire it forever. Her energy reserves, needed to keep the mainframe system that housed her core ROM personality, weren't unlimited, and too hard a battle would deplete them. The time had come to use her advantage…
Selphie was ready to test her program when the commo board called for attention, on the suit frequency. She stared at the board, hoping that Irvine was trying to talk to her, doubting it a great deal. The suit frequency was not strong enough to serve as a carrier wave for the virus, so that risk was minimal. She took a deep breath and touched an icon on the screen. "Yes?" she said jauntily.
"Are you the one called 'Selphie?' " a cold, flat and familiar feminine voice asked.
"Who are you?" Selphie cried. "What did you do to Irvine?"
"Nothing, yet…for now. And as to who I am, you can call me Sorceress Adel."
"Adel," Selphie whispered. That was impossible, she knew; SeeD had defeated Adel months ago, during the battles aboard Lunatic Pandora. "You can't be Adel."
"The reality of my existence is this: I am attacking your ship with a viral program that will give me control of the Ragnarok. I have the SeeD you sent into my hands, and I will kill him if you do not drop your virus protection and give me your ship!"
"I-I can't do that."
"Voice print analysis indicates that your stress and emotional levels, 'Selphie', are rather high, and in line with you possessing some form of emotional attachment to this 'Irvine.' You would not see him harmed, would you?"
Selphie knew that was the case, but SeeDs did not give up that easily. "I-give me a moment to think about it, all right? There's a lot at stake here."
"Indeed there is. I give you five minutes, Selphie. And then the next sound you will hear is that of your friend as he breathes his last." Adel signed off.
"Well, that was encouraging," Selphie said aloud. She activated her frequency-skipper and crossing her fingers for luck, called out "This is Ragnarok, do you hear me?"
"Mr. President, " Tharling called, "we're receiving a signal from the Ragnarok on an alternate, encrypted frequency. It's on the commercial frequencies, not military."
That Tilmitt girl is a miracle, Laguna thought. "Patch her through!"
"…Airstation, this is Ragnarok, do you read? This signal is designed to frequency-skip at a rate of .098 on the commercial wavelength every thirty seconds, do you read me?"
Tharling's hands blurred over his workstation, setting his gear up to match the skipping from channel to channel that Selphie's signal was designed to do "We read you, Selphie, go ahead."
"I don't have much time, but here's the story. Something calling itself Adel has hit me with a virus and says that it'll kill Irvine if I don't surrender the Ragnarok to it. Now just what exactly am I up against?"
Laguna spoke up. "Apparently, it is Adel-a program that is designed to act like Adel. Selphie, I'm sorry-I think some people here knew that it could be behind this before we sent you up there."
"Sir, apologize later. I need to find a way to save Irvine."
Laguna looked from Kiros to Bruetel and then back to Tharling's workstation. "There isn't a way. Selphie, you-you have to destroy the…"
"I will NOT kill Irvine, sir!"
Bruetel cleared his throat. "My name is Bruetel, Miss Tilmitt, and I have some knowledge of your situation. What you face is, effectively, a computerized version of Adel's intelligence. If it gets into the Ragnarok, it could utilize the nanocores-the self repair systems that we installed before this mission-to replicate an approximation of Adel's physical form."
Laguna stared wide eyed at Bruetel. "And just when were you going to drop this bombshell on us?"
"I just did, sir. Adel's ROM firmware construct was programmed with certain creative limitations, to keep it, as a creature of data, from actively taking over computer systems. While it could evolve past those limits, and seemingly has, we hardwired one absolute into the system: it cannot use the nanocore system. But if Adel transfers to the Ragnarok…"
"The behavior controls are physical, not data," Selphie finished. "The program will know it can use the nanocores."
"Precisely. Adel will be reborn as a creature of hyper-technology and sorcery, virtually invincible. You must destroy the lab at any cost."
Selphie was quiet for a moment, then she asked, "Why would you create such a thing?"
Laguna cut off Bruetel. "Selphie…I'm sorry. So very sorry."
"I'm sure you are. Ragnarok out."
Selphie closed her eyes, hands hovering above the weapons controls. She knew the kind of threat that Adel reborn would pose to the world, to SeeD, to everyone. She knew that SeeD existed to serve as a defense against the power of sorcery, above and beyond any mercenary contract, and she knew that defeating Adel was the only thing that should be on her mind. But she thought about how Squall had moved heaven and earth to get Rinoa back when she had become a sorceress, and of how that love had become something of a legend. And she thought about how little a person she would be if she left Irvine to die. So she put on the helmet of her pressure suit and entered a few commands into her controls, opening a few doors of all things, before she turned on her suit radio. "Oh, Adel?"
"Yes?" the malicious voice hissed.
"It occurs to me that I have something you want."
"That you do. Will you surrender the Ragnarok to me?"
Selphie entered a series of commands into the controls, and, one by one, the systems of the Ragnarok shut down. "No, I won't," Selphie replied. "In fact, I have just ordered the central systems to shut down-a full terminal shut down."
Adel's voice was filled with rage. "What have you done, girl!"
Selphie smiled. "I've just killed the Ragnarok. Nobody goes home now." She giggled, unaccountably. "Now we make a better deal, Adel."
To be concluded…