Starchild

I do not own Fire Emblem or any of its characters.

Chapter Three: Happy Thoughts

Eirika always lost at table tennis when she played against Lyn. The Elibean pilot was so quick on her feet that she seemed be everywhere at once, and the the ball went whizzing past Eirika's face more often than it contacted her paddle. She was chasing the ball down the pilots' recreation den when the doors to the den slid open, giving the ball a chance to escape into the hallway.

"Oh! I'm sorry." The sandaled foot of Pilot 003 blocked the ball.

Both Eirika and Lyn automatically saluted the senior pilot. Lyn had spent far longer in space, and Eirika's mission promised to be an astonishing milestone for the Programme, but deference to the Original Three was so ingrained in the pilot corps that even unruly Pilot 010 responded automatically to the sight of any of the trio.

"No, I'm sorry, Cellica. Let me get that."

Eirika cast a concerned glance at Cellica's midsection before she scooped up the ball. Nobody anywhere in the Programme wanted to place the world's first "space baby" in any danger. Not when Premier Sephiran himself had hailed the union of Pilots 002 and 003 as proof of the success and virtue of the Human Spaceflight Programme. Everyone from the generals and commanders to the premier took quite the keen interest in the personal lives of their pilots, and Cellica had come to see them for this very reason.

"There's to be an engagement party tomorrow night for Pilot 006," Cellica said, in the sweet, musical voice that captivated the free peoples of the world when they heard it beamed down from orbit. "All pilots in the area are requested to attend if they are not on assignment."

"We'll be there," Lyn said. "Even if I have to drag Hector out of the cockpit."

-x-

True to her word, Pilot 009 managed to get her Elibean comrade to the event, for all that Hector claimed he hated fancy parties with diplomats and the military brass. Eirika was less successful in getting her equally ceremony-averse brother to attend. Training, Ephraim said, was paramount. He couldn't let himself go with the mission six days away. All the other pilots were present to congratulate Pilot 006 on his upcoming marriage to Nanna Finnsdottir- except 001, who had the very good excuse of being on a goodwill tour of the Eastern Islands. Eirika hoped her brother's absence wouldn't be used as a reason to replace him on the Gemstone mission, and she glanced at the other junior pilots- 013 and 014, both in training for the Dawn mission- and wondered if they were thinking the same thing.

Didn't Ephraim realize that events like these were as much a part of the life of a "star-sailor" as was flying a fighter jet? He had to understand it on some level; he simply didn't want to.

Eirika tried to push these worries away and concentrate on goodwill and happiness for the newly-engaged couple. Major Leaf Faris was a handsome young man, notable among the pilots for his brown hair and eyes, and he and blonde-haired, blue-eyed Nanna looked perfect together. And yet, there was a hint of shadow to the festivities; all present knew that Leaf had suffered terribly from space-sickness during the Valkyrie mission, and while he hadn't been officially grounded, his chances of ever going into space again were slim indeed.

Chief Engineer Finn was there as well, and Eirika made sure to congratulate the rocket designer on his daughter's engagement. Rumor had it that the Programme intended to reward Finn for his years of work on the Pegasus rockets by granting him a seat on an upcoming mission; this rumor was not well received by the current group of pilots.

"He's so old," whispered Lyn.

"He's... thirty-six?"

"It's hard to work up there. Once you come down again, you don't feel right for days. How would he survive two weeks in the capsule?"

The Chief Engineer looked fit, to be sure- trim and slender, with good color- but his age showed in the lines around the his mouth and eyes. Eirika knew he'd lost friends, dear ones, in the pursuit of the moon, lost them in launchpad explosions and jet accidents. He'd been closely involved with the Astra mission and the loss of Pilot 004 had hit Finn hard; he'd been sent on an enforced forty-day "vacation" afterward.

Did he look forward at all to his supposed future as one of the star-sailors?

Eirika looked again at happy couple- so young, so attractive, with so much before them in life. Perhaps everything was well-aligned for them after all. If Leaf never left Terra's surface again, at least it meant that Nanna wouldn't be left a young widow.

To Be Continued...

Author's Notes: Remember, this is a cold war of the humans ("free peoples") against the dragons and their "beast" (laguz) allies. If Sephiran is the premier of the human government, something very weird is going on.

Finn's role here is somewhat based on the real-life engineer-cosmonaut Konstantin Feoktistov. And the matchmaking going on in the pilot corps has a real-life counterpart in the marriage of Valentina Tereshkova and Andrian Nikolayev, which allegedly was as much about propaganda as romance. So, yes, Eirika as a single female pilot is going to have a romance angle inflicted on her via the plot.