VII
"If it ain't broke, break it 'til it is."
--Instructor Kan Ghibli, Principles of Sabotage, Trabia Garden

Three days later, Zell stared up at the ceiling of the hanger in the Ragnarok. Trabia Garden was outside somewhere, still effecting repairs and now had a team dedicated to fortify it. Quistis's findings on the Crystal Pillar had been pathetically few, and their next course of action hadn't been decided yet.

Zell yawned, stretching. He would have liked to be in his room at Balamb Garden, with his punching-bag in the corner. Or better yet, his room in Balamb with two punching bags.

"I still don't see why you haven't hammered him yet," Irvine said from the corner, startling Zell. "As far as I can tell, he's as big a jerk as ever."

"Seifer?" Zell snorted. "Because the last time I tried, Squall froze me in place for an hour and had Xu give me a lecture. I'm not about to see what Quistis might do." Zell swatted at a fly that had gotten in somehow. "This sucks. After all this running around, we just ran into a frickin' wall."

"Yeah," Irvine agreed. "What now? Back to Balamb?"

"Probably," Zell said. Standing up, he snagged a pillow with one finger. Moving over to the only other person in the room, he dropped it on his face.

"Snk...wh--huh? What? Is it morning yet?" Nida asked, pushing the pillow away and blinking. "Oh, great. Don't tell me I overslept again."

"Only if you consider one o'clock in the afternoon a bit late to get up," Zell said.

"Gimme a break," Nida mumbled, rubbing his eyes. "I was up until four in the morning helping out with Trabia's engines. Where are we going?"

"Balamb, most likely," Irvine said. "Nowhere else to go."

The door to the hanger slid open, reveiling a far-too-familiar white-clad person. He was grinning ear to ear.

"Good... morning, Nida," Seifer said. "Nice to see you're awake."

"The pleasure's all yours, I'm sure," Nida said. "I suppose it would be too much to ask you to jump off a cliff?"

"Really, Nida," Seifer said. "Be nice to people who bring good news."

"Good news? From you? Isn't that a contradiction in terms?" Irvine asked. Seifer threw something at him, and Nida barely managed to catch it. It was a peice of paper. Unfolding it, he read it aloud.

"It's a headline: 'Galbadian traitors turned in.' Says..."

He read it silently, and looked up at Seifer. Looking back at the paper, he read it more slowly.

"What?" Zell asked.

"It's a printout from Trabia's news program. It says that almost fifty Galbadian criminals guilty of varying counts of treason have been turned in, along with several civilians, who have been released. Listed among the civilians was someone named Dobe, former mayor of Fisherman's Horizon. The criminals reached Galbadia on a black boat, and were guarded by thirty armored men."

"So it's a good bet they've taken FH," Seifer said. "And that gives us our next destination. Helmsman Nida, plot the course."

"Sure," Nida said. Running a hand through his hair, he pushed past Seifer.

"Who made you the leader?" Zell grumbled.

"None of you were doing anything, so I decided to help out," Seifer said. "What, I suppose you don't want to go to FH? Not follow the one lead we have because it's my idea?"

"Never said that," Zell muttered. "I'd better go see if Nida needs any help. Didn't get much sleep, you know."

"Yeah, chi--Zell. Between the two of you, you might manage to get us all killed."

Zell snapped something indestinct, moving to follow Nida. It wasn't until he got to the bridge that he noticed that Seifer had stopped himself from calling him 'chicken-wuss,' and wonder what it meant.

"Whoa! What is up with that place?"

It's been occupied, Seifer thought, looking out the window. A veriatable fleet of the low, three-hulled ships was patrolling the waters around FH and along the Horizon tracks, and there was a black double-ring around the edge of Fisherman's Horizon that looked surprisingly like artillary.

"I'd take us in closer, but those weapons in the inner ring look anti-air," Nida said. "Tell the truth, I have no idea how much punishment this thing can take."

"Well, we just found their base. No what do we do?"

"We go down there and bust stuff up!" Selphie said, jumping into the air.

"Go ahead, if you want to get slaughtered. Or captured." Seifer shook his head. "We can't do anything yet."

"What?" Zell asked, spinning to look at him.

"What do you mean?" Quistis demanded.

"It looks like their main base. More spikes than a Cactuar," he said, motioning to the weaponry. "I don't think we'd be able to even land, much less invade."

"Soooo...?" Selphie asked.

"Back to Balamb. Now that we know where he is, he'll be easier to keep an eye on. And we can check if Xu's found anything with her background checks."

"All right," Nida said. "Setting course for Bala--"

The Ragnarok jerked underneath them, and Zell and Selphie fell to the ground. Quistis's head slammed against the wall, and she gritted her teeth painfully. "What just happened?" she asked.

Nida had turned back to the control panel, and was punching buttons. "Craap. Oh, craaaap. Why me?"

"What happened?" Seifer snapped, grabbing the back of a chair as the ship jerked again.

"Hold on," Nida said. Hitting the intercom, he yelled "Brace!"

The ship took a dive, and three sleek, metal objects whizzed above the cockpit. "We just got the welcoming reception," Nida said. Zell struggled up into the copilot's seat, grabbing the control panel as the ship righted itself, then shuddered and went into a dive again. The lift sunk and rose, and Irvine rushed over to the weapons console.

"Damn it! What happened?"

"Long-range missiles," Nida said. "EMP missiles. Our main thruster just cut out!"

"That's not good, right?" Irvine asked. "Sefie! Take aux. weaponry!"

Selphie swung up into the chair on the other side of the bridge, looking over the console. "What do we do?" she yelled, pounding the side of the display.

"We're heading right towards FH!" Nida yelled.

"Fire auxillary beam cannons!" Irvine yelled.

"How do you target? I can't target!"

"Just point and shoot, dammit!" Seifer yelled.

A line of fire appeared below them as the Ragnarok's weaponry hit the Fisherman's Horizon roads, and Nida managed to get the ship more or less upright. Pulling them into a steep climb, he felt himself pushed back into the chair as the ship went almost vertical.

"Stop it!" Seifer yelled. "The engine's going to stall!"

"It's a frickin' spaceship! It's supposed to fly upwards!" Zell yelled, but leveled the ship anyway. It immediatly went off-balance and headed downwards.

"We need to get out of here," Nida yelled. "Put as much distance between them and us as we can!"

Something detonated just outside the cockpit, showering the air around them with flak. Nida hit something on the console, and looked at Zell.

"We just lost backup thrusters," he said.

"Dive," Seifer snapped. "Take us under FH!"

"What, are you crazy? This this is a spacecraft, not a submarine! We could be crushed!" Nida tried to level out the ship, but it didn't work too well.

"Estharan tech, it'll be fine! We sure as hell aren't getting out of here without thrusters, and they can't target us under the city!"

"Quis--" Irvine started.

"Do it!" Seifer snapped. "Unless you want to be blown up!"

"...do it," Quistis said.

Nida nodded, glancing out the window. The ship went into a dive again, left rear engine actually scraping FH with a horrid, squealing noise. The view from the cockpit was obscured by whitecaps, then it cleared. Nida set the engine into reverse, and watched as the ship moved backwards. There was an ominous, gurgling noise, and they stopped.

"What just happened?" Seifer asked. Nida hit a few buttons on the pad, and turned to look at him.

"The engines are flooded," he said. Thrusters are overloaded, engines are flooded, and we're sinking to--"

There was a grinding noise as the ship shook. Then nothing.

"Make that we're at the bottom of the ocean," Nida said. "Geez. I have been in some rough situations since I joined SeeD, but I can't imagine ever topping this one."

"At least we're right-side-up," Selphie offered.

"At least we're alive," Seifer grumbled.

"This sucks," Zell complained.

"Hey, if we open the entrance, since it's on the bottom of the ship it shouldn't flood," Selphie said. "Then we could go fix the engines!"

"While what? holding our breath?" Seifer shook his head. "That's a saltwater ocean out there. Water cold enough to kill you. No one's going out there."

"As touching as this sudden concern for our welfare is," Quistis said, "I'd have to disagree. We have to fix the engines, unless we want to spend the rest of our lives down here."

"They must have maintenance suits around here somewhere," Nida said. "They'd be enough like diving suits. If the oxygen tanks are still full. If they're pressure suits. If--"

"Sure, fine, whatever. Let's find the suits," Seifer said, dismissing it with an offhand wave and heading for the back of the cockpit. Nida jumped up and went to the lift with him, unwilling to leave him alone. The platform sunk.

"Seifer, sometime in the near future I'm going to have to teach you the limits of this ship," Nida said. "That could have gotten us all killed. It still might, if we can't get out of here."

"Or, we could have stayed up there and gotten blown apart by the anti-air batteries. I'll take my chances with the fishies, thanks," Seifer said, voice heavy with sarcasm.

Nida moved to the hanger, where a door-sized patch on the wall proved to be a hatch. Inside were about eleven silver body suits, very much like the kind the soldier wore except with a heavy pack on the back and what looked like the bottom of a gas mask on the bottom half of the face. Nida pulled one out, holding it against himself.

"A bit too big, but it should work. Look like they're about your size, Seifer."

Seifer pulled one out, and looked at it. Opening the seal on the back, he looked at the inside. It was fuzzy, with covered wires running through it.

"...the hell?"

"Heating system, I'm guessing," Nida said, crawling into his and sealing it. "Fits well enough, I guess," he said through the helmet. Pulling the oxygen tank on, he heard it attach to the seal. Looking at a watch-like instument, he said "It says thirty-five slash sixty; Oxygen Supply. Probably thirty-five minutes left."

"Mine has forty-two," Seifer said. "Will it be enough?"

"How should I know? I just fly the thing, I have no idea about repairing it!"

Between him and chicken--ah, Zell...We are so doomed, Seifer thought exasperatedly. "Well, let's go see what there is to see. Follow me."

Moving back to the entrance, Seifer noticed that Zell had lowered the stairs. Due to the close proximity of the ocean floor, however, the ramp hadn't extended all the way. There was a two-meter gap between it and the ship, but that was all.

Seifer stepped into the water, and the coiled wire began to heat up. Forcing his way through the water around the ship, he dragged himself to the engines. Looking into one of the huge tubes, he checked to make sure Nida was coming and crawled inside.

"Hey, intercom," Nida said, voice faint but clear. "This suit's decked out."

"So how do we get the water out of here?" Seifer waved a hand through it. "I doubt they have a pump on board."

"We either blow it out, burn it out or suck it out until we can fire the engines, then it'll stay out by itself."

"Demi?"

"Might break the ship." He paused signifigantly. "That'd be bad."

"Firaga?"

"Doesn't last long enough."

"Why can't we burn the engines now?"

"Because they're flooded, Seifer!"

Ugh. I am not going to be stuck down here for the rest of my life. What can we do? "If we set off some Demi spells just a bit away from the engines then fired them while the Demi had absorbed all the water, would that work?"

"It might not draw out all the water." Nida looked at the back reaches of the engine. "Wish I had a flashlight." He looked at the oxygen monitor, which was glowing faintly. In fact, the entire suit was glowing faintly. "Thirty-one minutes."

"Hey, g-guys?" Another suit came into view. "Find anything yet?"

"No," Nida said, treading water to turn around. Selphie waved, in her hand was clenched some kind of white plastic sheet with blue writing.

"Kiros found this under one of the computers. He says he can't understand a bit of it, and to give it to you."

"Great," Nida said, swimming out of the engine. Taking the sheet, he looked it over. "Hmm. I see." scanning across it, he nodded. "...interesting. I still have no idea what to do."

"Let me see that," Seifer said, grabbing it. "Hmm... what the hell?" Seifer reread it. He guessed there couldn't be less than forty-two words over ten letters in the thing. "This doesn't help at all."

"No, it really doesn't," Selphie agreed. "But it's the only thing we have, unless you want everyone to get out and push."

"What would happen if we burned the engine while it was flooded, Nida?"

Nida spread his arms out and shrugged. "Dunno. I could check the specs on the computer, though."

"You do that. Selphie, how much air do you have left?"

Selphie shrugged, and Nida pointed at her wrist. Looking, she shrugged again. "Forty-seven minutes."

"Let's check the ship, see if there's any damage."

"And let you off by yourself?" Selphie asked. "You might blow something up!"

"I want to get out of here as much as you," Seifer growled. "Just trust me for once."

Nida swam away, and Seifer started pulling himself up, hand-over-hand, on the back of the ship. Heaving himself onto the hoodlike structure that overhung the engines, he paused.

A gargantuan, black object was approaching from up ahead.

Cursing, he swam towards the entrance. Pulling himself into the ship, he yelled "Selphie! Get the hell back inside!" into the suit intercom. Running up into the cockpit, he rushed over to the controls.

"Seifer! What are you doing?"

"There's something out there," Seifer explained to Quistis. "A submersible. It's coming this way."

"Can we move yet?"

"No." Seifer rammed his fist into the controls. "Dammit! I'm sure as hell not gonna die down here!"

Quistis turned, looking at the black shape approaching. "Squall might be on that ship," she said.

"Yeah, he probably is," Seifer said, still staring at the controls. "So wha--oh no no no, Instructor," he said, turning to her. "We are not--"

"We're going over there," Quistis said.