Chapter Thirty-Four: The line is drawn; the crossing to Bahamut

They pushed the Strahl's engines to the limit to reach Rabanastre by daybreak, the news of the impending sky battle and the exorable progress of the Sky Fortress Bahamut having reached them late in the evening.

There was little talk in the cramped cabin of the Strahl. Under Basch's instruction the children and the Princess had attempted sleep, aided covertly by Sleep inducing spells.

Basch, with the long discipline of a career soldier managed some form of sleep without resorting to magick, leaving Fran and Balthier alone for the majority of their night flight.

'Don't say it, I know.'

Balthier muttered gruffly one hour from Rabanastre, the night sky thinning into early dawn tinted red.

Fran had known of course what had gone on, she knew him and she knew well his appetites. She had had no intention of saying anything, however.

She knew from experience she didn't have too. He always came to her for his punishment.

'You have been foolish.' Fran spared him nothing.

Though it had long puzzled her why he should use her to deliver the punishment he believed he deserved.

' I know.' Balthier admitted leadenly. Then he shifted and contrived to give her a pale imitation of his usual smirk.

' I am fairly confident however that we are all going to perish on this suicide run, so at least my foolishness shall die with me.'

Fran cocked and eyebrow, ' The Leading Man never dies.'

Balthier's smirk fell away and something clear and cool filled his eyes.

' True but I can endeavour to perform a passing imitation. It's just a matter of finding a sufficiently dramatic moment.'

Fran considered his words and the hidden meaning behind them.

' Free birds must fly unhindered. Death provides a more palatable separation than betrayal or abandonment.'

Fran murmured thoughtfully remembering their aborted attempt to escape the Princess and her mission on the Phon Coast.

It would be painful still, these humes were dear to them both, yet part ways they must.

' So you are with me?'

Balthier asked briskly; squinting as the dawn sun rose, pale lemon and gold in a sapphire and tourmaline sky, on the horizon.

'We find our moment and we fly?' Balthier turned to face her features intense.

Fran nodded once, ' I am with you.'

They had little opportunity to talk further, not that there was need for further words between them, for the Strahl's sensors picked up the presence of the Resistance fleet surrounding and above Rabanastre and the sound of open sky warfare awoke the rest of the party.

'Wow.'

For once Vaan's awed exclamation was accurate in both the sentiment and the description as the full breadth and spread of Ondore's Armada appeared before them.

Beyond the Resistance ranks Fran and the others could see the black funnel cloud, bright lights flashing as if lightening was caught in the maelstrom that was their target.

'Bahamut.'

Ashe breathed clenching her fists as a beautiful summer's day over her city was obscured by the futile and destructive ambition of one Hume.

'Places everyone, it's time we made our entrance.'

Balthier gave the order and the others obeyed taking their seats as without hesitation Balthier pushed the Strahl forward towards the fight.

' Manufacted Nethicite will be a hard scourge to lift from Ivalice after this.'

Fran murmured, barely heard over the gasps from the others in the cabin as they saw the three rear air carriers in the Resistance fleet reduced to little more than vapour by Bahamut's cannon.

'Ashe we're in communication range.'

Balthier snapped briskly, concentrating on easing the Strahl through the flaming wreckage and tucking in front of the flag ship.

Ashe seized up the communicator, 'Uncle it is I. We are crossing to the Bahamut to stop Vayne. You must assist our charge.'

It came as little surprise that Marquis Ondore resisted the command; his actions had oft been at odds with his niece's though never in opposition.

'Hey,' Vaan leaned forward in his chair towards Fran who was nearest. ' Is it time for plan B?'

'You had better, the Marquis reluctance we can ill afford.'

Fran pitched her voice low so as not to be heard across the communicator.

Vaan needed little further encouragement; surging out of his seat he closed his own hand around the communicator, flicking the switch as shown before they set off, 'Hold it! – I mean wait,'

He added as Ashe glared at him, ' This is Larsa Solidor. I'm going in with her so...' Vaan hesitated waiting for inspiration.

' I've got the Princess covered.'

Vaan blushed knowing his words were hardly convincing and Ashe closed her eyes in mute frustration.

Ondore, though sounding as if he believed the presence of the youngest Solidor not one bit, nevertheless bowed to Ashe's wishes sensing perhaps that there was little else he could do.

' We need you to provide covering fire. Give them something to think about.'

Balthier spoke directly to Ondore through the communication console relays in the control panel of the Strahl and surged the ship onwards.

The crossing was fraught, ships criss-crossed over each other's flight paths while yet more fell like flaming comets to the desert below.

'Careful.' Balthier muttered to himself as he dodged and skimmed the desert floor before ascending once more.

An Imperial fighter chased their tail. Fran tracked its progress on the monitors but Balthier had already detected it.

'Ah, so you want to dance, do you?'

He asked fiercely and Fran knew that the same surge of pure, ferocious joy that surged through her veins as another joined their dance was also in him.

'Then let's dance!'

'Another partner.'

She murmured her voice giving away nothing to indicate her inner rapture.

To be free and flying on wing and prayer, she had missed this sensation almost more than could be fathomed.

'It's not easy being this popular, you know.'

Balthier jerked the Strahl sideways at the last possible moment and the two enemy ships collided head on. The final approach and ascent to the top of Bahamut and her docking bays was relatively simple.

'C'mon, c'mon!'

Vaan harried them off the Bahamut with a mixture of excitement and terror as the enormity of their endeavour began to dawn on the youth.

Breaching the bulkheads was simple enough, the interior of the Bahamut an uncomfortable echo of the sterile, cold and unforgiving corridors of Draklor laboratory. Both works of the same twisted genius.

' We need not fight all the Empire, we must only get to Vayne and we can end this war.'

Ashe declared her certainty echoed enthusiastically by Vaan, they were all, Fran thought with an odd mixture of affection and quiet resignation, still children.

End this war they may, Fran conceded silently as they hurried as quietly, as swiftly, through the metal laced corridors as they could, but another conflict and another war would only succeed it.

An explosion to shudder the very core of the Fortress stopped the party in their tracks as they looked upon the huge cylindrical orange glowing core of Bahamut.

Fran turned to Balthier as they righted their balance on the steps.

'The Resistance plays its part well. We dare not falter, we dare not fail.'

His almost imperceptible nod of recognition was all she needed; he had no intentions of flying free of the Fortress before they had finished their task.

Penelo was questioning the magnitude of the task not just immediately before them but the one that faced Ashe should they succeed.

There was wisdom in the girl; Fran noted not for the first time, should she live long enough to cultivate it.

Ashe however had long been burdened with the knowledge of what she must do hereafter; ever more her life would not be her own.

'A queen may always seek to escape her charge with the aid of a sky pirate looking to raise his bounty a peg.'

Basch's dry assertion confirmed that he too knew of Balthier and the Princess' shared folly.

' I doubt our queen will need the help of any sky pirate.' Balthier rebuffed him with cool nonchalance while offering support to Ashe.

Fran wondered if Ashe knew that those same words were the closest to a goodbye and perhaps even an apology that she would ever receive from Balthier hereafter.

'You think me as strong as that?'

And to Fran the cool resignation in the Princess' reply was answer enough. She knew her future well enough and knew it held no place for pirates.

Fran suspected however that Ashe could not know what only Fran knew; that no life Ashe could live would ever hold Balthier to her.

He would fly from his own heart to preserve his freedom, just as Fran had done when she abandoned Eruyt.

Another hard and bitter severance awaited Basch at the controls to the lift.

His brother, his twin, his other self.

A shadow of a man who had clung to hatred and found it offered poor succour for the wounds rent by fate and the ambitions of power-hungry humes upon the soul.

Fran stood with Basch armed with her own Deathbringer sword as they did what they must, a fact of life that had delivered so much pain upon both brothers, until Gabranth fell.

Gabranth was left to live, for no one wished to strike down Basch's brother no matter the pain he had caused in blind adherence to his two masters, hate and the Empire, both equal in their vindictiveness.

' I want to hate him but I can't.'

Vaan whispered as he stood with Fran watching Basch try to offer redemption to a man who would gladly damn himself a thousand times over.

' Why can't I hate him? He killed my brother.' Vaan turned to Fran and she looked down upon him.

'Be thankful that such hate is not within you, lest you become as Gabranth, a slave to his hatred, dead to all else.'

Vaan, wet eyed, clenched his Save the Queen tightly turning his back on the brothers as he ambled over to the lift controls Balthier had re-wired.

'I guess you're right. It would be so much easier if I could hate him though.'

' Life is not easy for those who would live it well.' Fran tried to offer comfort though precious little was to be found.

Fran turned back once to look upon Gabranth as Basch, pale and grim, knowing well that his brother would either redeem or destroy himself and there was nothing Basch could do; went to his queen's side.

' It does no good to despise the hound for the master's cruelty, better to be rid of the master and free the hound.'

Ashe and Basch were both looking at Fran as she joined the group on the lift platform and Balthier punched in the commands.

' Vayne will be master here no longer.' Ashe whispered her voice heated ice. Turning she squeezed Basch's hand.

'This I swear. Today Ivalice will know an end to war.'