3. Family Reunion
The journey into Wild Space had lasted two weeks, and had been surprisingly uneventful. The Eventide's prototype dimensional keel had performed as advertised, ably navigating them through the heavy currents that were a constant threat this close to the Wall. As such, there had been little for the crew to do other than dine, chat, gamble, and get pushed to the precise limits of their physical and mental endurance during Captain Takamachi's training sessions.
So far, Nanoha had reported satisfactory progress with most of the crew, though there were of course two glaring exceptions. The new logistics officers had become something of a running joke – Sergeant-Major Jones appeared to have an allergic reaction to the very concept of physical fitness, and whilst Captain Krebs at least kept himself in shape, his appalling aim at anything greater than melee range made him as much of a danger to his own side as to any theoretical enemy.
It was fortunate, therefore, Hayate mused idly, that they had managed to make themselves useful in other ways. Krebs had kept the ship clean, well-supplied and well-fed whilst expending a probability-defying minimum of resources to do so, and Jones had proven himself an invaluable source of information regarding the moods and opinions of the crew. Though Hayate prided herself on successfully maintaining an open, friendly style of command, there was still no conceivable way for her to keep track of the individual needs of over a hundred people, and certainly not from the position of an equal. That was where the pudgy, cheerful sergeant-major came in, and he fulfilled his role most ably.
Hayate checked the display again. There was a breach in the Wall – a vast, ugly rent from which seething madness spilled out. This was the result of the disturbance – this was what they had come to investigate.
"Take us in closer," she ordered.
The helm officer saluted. "Aye-aye, ma'am."
The currents strengthened, as if the Eventide was a true sea-vessel sailing through a storm. Hayate heard creaks and groans as the hull was placed under unimaginable stress, but paid them no heed. The ship had been designed to handle far worse than this.
"Colonel, we're getting something on the readouts, inside the breach," the sensors officer reported. "It's a solid object roughly the size of a planet... no, wait, it is a planet. A planet in Chaotic Space! It's got a crust, mantle, core, and everything!"
"Can you bring us into orbit?"
"Affirmative, ma'am. Looks like the space surrounding it is pretty calm, like the eye of a storm. I've... I've never seen anything like this..."
The creaking intensified, and little yellow bars danced up and down on several of the gauges in Hayate's command display. She watched them intently, prepared to order the ship to turn back if any of them exceeded safe limits.
None of them did, though. As they approached the impossible planet, the currents dropped away, leaving them in a patch of tranquillity that almost didn't feel like part of one of the most dangerous and unpredictable areas in dimensional space.
"Do we have a visual on the object?" she asked.
"That's another affirmative, chief. Should be on the main viewer... now."
The massive screen at the front of the bridge jumped into life, and they looked out on the world below. It had once been a lush, verdant planet – there were still signs of plant life here and there – but was horribly scarred by some natural or (more likely) artificial disaster. Craters kilometres-wide pocked the surface like a case of geographical blackheads, whilst a continent-sized arrangement of burns seemed to form a single, gigantic rune that hurt the eyes of those that looked upon it. The seas were blood-red in colour, clearly tainted by some pollutant, and the clouds sparkled with an oddly disquieting polychromatic light.
"I've seen more welcoming places," Nanoha commented from beside the command platform.
Hayate nodded. Quite apart from the blatant impossibility of its location, there was something very, very wrong with this planet.
"We're getting signs of sentient life," Sensors reported, "but they're really distorted. There's even an energy spike on the southern continent that looks a bit like the result of Mid-type magic, only... not. If there is a mage down there, though, they're triple-A at the very least. No way we could even stand a chance of detecting them otherwise."
"Understood," Hayate responded. "I'm taking a closer look. Magical Interface System, open."
The command desk slid apart, revealing two glowing hemispherical crystals, each about the size of a grapefruit. Hayate placed her hands on them, channelling her will.
The Magical Interface System was another innovation of the latest generation of TSAB vessels. It employed a complex crystalline network, effectively turning the entire ship into an enormous Armed Device for a brief period of time. With it, the ship's commander could channel their spells on a scale hitherto unseen. For wide-area specialists like Hayate, this was nothing but an advantage.
"Eventide, initiate Wide Area Search," she commanded, with an apologetic glance at Nanoha. The fact that a fair number of Hayate's spells had been stolen from her and Fate by the first Reinforce was something they preferred not to talk about.
A cluster of glowing spheres detached themselves from the Eventide and hurtled down to the planet below. It would likely be several minutes until they found anything of interest. Hayate removed her hands from the interface, and stepped down from the command platform.
"Keep us on high alert," she ordered. "I don't want anything sneaking up on us."
It was a full quarter of an hour before the search bore fruit. By that time, most of the officers had either found an excuse to be on the bridge or just sneaked on and hoped nobody would notice. All attention was focused on the main viewer, which showed a grainy, indistinct image of what appeared to be a young girl sitting on a rocky outcrop. She was pale, fair-haired, and dressed in black, and she appeared to have some sort of staff-like object held in one hand.
"This would be our mage, I presume?" Signum enquired.
"That's what it looks like," Hayate agreed. She gestured, and other, smaller pictures appeared around the central display.
"As you can see from these, she, whoever she happens to be, is located at a point on the southern continent several klicks from another energy spike, this time of completely unknown origin. This second site bears signs of recent fortification – someone down there is expecting a fight."
"You think they saw us coming?" Vita asked.
"Hard to be sure. We're certainly the most obvious threat given the planet's relative lack of population, but there's some sort of disturbance going on in the neighbouring realspace as well. We haven't investigated it in detail – dropping out inside the Wall is a risk I'm not yet willing to take – but it's something to consider. In the meantime, though, we'll employ as many precautions as we can. The transport chambers will be prepped for emergency evacuation, and the Arc-en-ciel aimed at the target site. Worst-case scenario, we can teleport out the expedition team and vaporise the site from orbit, though I'm sure I don't have to tell you that that's an absolute last resort."
Nanoha, meanwhile, had been studying the central image intently. "Fate," she said, finally giving voice to what the other Riot Force Six veterans were thinking, "doesn't she look like... well, like you used to?"
Fate nodded. "Yes. Very much so. It's probably a coincidence, but..."
The rest went unspoken. There had been a lot of strange coincidences on this trip. Perhaps too many.
There was a brief pause, and then the third Wolkenritter, Zafira, stepped forward, his tail swishing agitatedly.
"You mentioned an exploration team, Mistress Hayate," he rumbled. "Are we to assume, then, that some of us will be descending to the surface?"
"Indeed so. Sensors indicate that the atmosphere is breathable, if not exactly pleasant, and our transporters should be able to punch through the interference. It'll be a small group – I want us to look as little like an invading army as we can. Two forwards, and two backups in orbit."
"Requesting permission to volunteer, ma'am," Fate said a little too quickly.
"If she's going, I'm going," Nanoha added firmly.
Hayate smiled. "Agreed. Signum and Vita will be your seconds. We'll send you down in thirty minutes."
All four saluted, and left the bridge. Hayate pinched her temples. Fate, ever the calm, reliable voice of reason, was acting very oddly. And she'd called her 'ma'am', which was never a good sign. She hoped she'd made the right decision.
"Transport chamber checked and ready."
"Checked and ready, aye."
Nanoha looked around the chamber with detached curiosity. As a member of the Mid-Childan air force, she had rarely been on board a starship since the Scaglietti Incident, and that had been on the Arthra, a cruiser so elderly that it was retired immediately after the battle against the Saint's Cradle. This room was rather different from that old ship's basic transporter stage, two-tiered and surrounded with complicated-looking instrumentation. The technicians had informed her that not only could it teleport its passengers to any point on the planet's surface within line-of-sight with pinpoint precision, but it could also beam down their backups to their location without that restriction or even swap the forward and backup with a single action.
The forwards stood on the lower tier, the backups behind them on the upper. Signum was Nanoha's second, Vita was Fate's. Nanoha turned to her partner and gave her hand the reassuring squeeze that had become something of a pre-mission ritual for them.
The technicians looked up again.
"Transport in ten..."
"Nine..."
"Eight..."
"Seven..."
"Six..."
"Five..."
"Get on with it already," Nanoha heard Vita mutter under her breath.
"Four..."
"Three..."
Iridescent charging rings began to form around the transporter pads.
"Two..."
Both of the forwards engaged their Barrier Jackets.
"One..."
"Transporter engaged."
The walls around them blurred for a moment, and the bottom dropped out of Nanoha's stomach. She instinctively closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, she and Fate were standing in the middle of a blasted, rocky wasteland, the strange multicoloured clouds above them. She took a few experimental breaths, and tasted sulphur. Relieved that she hadn't immediately expired, she decided that the whole breathing thing might be a good habit to keep up after all.
There was movement ahead, and she saw the young mage who had appeared on the viewer. She was even paler than Nanoha had thought – her skin was almost colourless, and her hair was the very lightest shade of blonde. Even from this distance, though, her eyes burned with power. The staff turned out not to be a staff at all, but rather an enormous scythe made of bone and some greyish metal that caught the light strangely. A glowing purple crystal adorned the head, and she leaned heavily on the weapon as she stood up. She approached them with a curious half-walk half-run, and as she came closer Nanoha saw that her face was split into a huge smile.
"Little sister!" she shrieked, and hurled herself at Fate, arms outstretched.
Nanoha's jaw dropped. It was technically true that she had considered the possibility, but only in the way that an amateur astronomer might idly wonder about the notion of a meteorite hitting Earth only to wake up the next morning and find that a second sun had appeared in the sky. Either one of the most enormous coincidences in human history had just occurred, or they were both the objects of a very, very cruel joke, and Nanoha wasn't sure which possibility she preferred.
Fate was even more flabbergasted. "A-Alicia? No, no, you can't be... this isn't real..."
"It is real, Fate," said the staff in a voice from the two women's nightmares. "Your sister lives, and I... I am sorry for what I did to you."
"Mother?"
"Our new friends didn't like what she did to you, sister, so Mother got put in here," Alicia chirped, tapping the scythe playfully. "They've been ever so nice, to us, though – they taught me so many things! You can call me Ali, by the way."
"They have educated me as well," Precia Testarossa interjected. "I now understand that I have two daughters, not one, and I bitterly regret what I put you through, Fate. Can you ever forgive me?"
By now, Fate was as pale-faced as her sister, staring blankly at this nonsensical apparition. Desperately, Nanoha stepped between them.
"I apologise, Ali, but this is all a bit too much for your sister at the moment." Eventide, hot-switch on Captain Testarossa-Harlaown now! Get her to the infirmary!
On it, ma'am, one of the technicians responded over the telepathic link. Hot-switch coming right up.
There was a blinding flash of light, and Fate vanished, replaced a second later by the diminutive form of Vita.
"What's up, Nanoha?" she asked, a note of concern injecting itself into her habitually brusque tone. "Did something happen to Fate?"
"This young lady," Nanoha explained, trying to keep her voice steady, "claims to be her sister, Alicia. Her Intelligent Device, meanwhile, apparently bears the spirit of Fate's mother, Precia."
Vita processed this. "Oh. Um... wow. OK then. Hold on a second, though – didn't they both die?"
"I did," Precia acknowledged. "My body was torn asunder by the Warp, what you call Chaotic Space. My soul remained, though, and Alicia's stasis pod kept her safe. The gods rescued us, and restored Alicia. They are truly great and wonderful beings."
"The... gods?" Nanoha asked. Precia had not, to the best of her knowledge, been a particularly religious woman in life. Amoral mad scientists tended not to be.
Though she was of course expressionless, they could feel the dead woman's beatific smile as she spoke. "Tzintchi of the Nine Fingers. Asukhon, the Eightfold Victor. Reigle of the Seven Lives. Mislaato of the Six Wounds. Soon, the entire multiverse shall know their names, and soon the entire multiverse shall revere them as the saviours they are. Do you wish to learn more of them? It is a pleasure to enlighten others, especially friends of my daughter."
"That... might be a good idea," Nanoha said carefully. Raising Heart, I want this recorded.
Of course, my master, her Intelligent Device replied.
Author's Notes: ... Aaand showtime!
