Starchild

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

Chapter Six: National Treasure

The chauffeur opened the door for Eirika and stood by, frozen in deference, as she stepped out. That the chauffeur wore an plain uniform instead of dress finery, the vehicle was humble Fleet-22, and there were absolutely no photographers waiting for her, all came as a relief to her exhausted senses. Star City functioned just as it had before Pilot 012 made her public debut.

The four months that followed the Gemstone mission made the mission itself seem like a relaxing vacation. From the moment she and Ephraim exited the capsule, cameras and microphones were thrust into their faces. First they were whisked back to Star City for a mission debriefing, then flown to the capital of the Magvel Union for a reception at Ivaldi Court, where Premier Sephiran presented them with the Hero of Freedom award. Then it was off to the National Assembly to receive lesser accolades, like the Star of Peace and the Order of Latona. At every stop, they encountered throngs of people waving both hand-lettered signs and mass-produced posters, and strangers called out their names.

Up to then, no one had even known the names of the eleventh and twelfth members of the pilot corps. None outside the Programme had- officially- known of their existence before Gemstone reached orbit, but during the mission, the Programme's public relations machine had been steadily spinning. Their names were revealed for the first time to the public and their faces made instantly familiar via postage stamps and television broadcasts. And now, they belonged to everyone.

Eirika and Ephraim were packed off on a goodwill tour of the United Free Nations- all four continents. First to the Eastern Islands, where President Hardin presented them both with the Order of Liberation. Then westward to Valencia, where the assembly gave Eirika a special medal for Women's Achievement. Then to Elibe, to be acclaimed Heroes of the Republic. In one day, they had lunch with the governor of Lycia, dinner with the governor of Etruria, and finished up with a candlelit parade through the provincial capital of Bern.

Of course, it was not enough to simply be seen or to thank their gracious hosts for the honors. They must bear witness to the significance of the Programme, bear witness to the reason that the free peoples of Terra reached lunar orbit before the Loptos Empire, for all the Empire's claims of advanced technology and superior knowledge. They must at all times be exemplars of human virtues- hard work, honesty, patriotism, and sound morals. They must remember, at all times, that the adulation was not for them as individuals, but instead belonged to those chosen to serve the free peoples.

Eirika found herself the spokeswoman more often than not. Ephraim mixed up his notes, addressed a crowd of Sofians as "people of Rigel," and let slip that the Programme was going to send a robotic probe to Luna to retrieve some soil samples. By the time they reached Elibe, his role consisted mostly of looking like a heroic space pilot and escorting Eirika through crowds.

"They love you, anyway," he said to her, not at all bothered by the reprimand he'd received for going "off message" in public. His mind was already on the flight simulators back at Star City.

Finally, it was home to Magvel for the most ecstatic reception of anywhere they'd been. After so many missions bearing foreign pilots to the stars, Magvel- keystone of the UFN and heart of the Human Spaceflight Programme- finally had a pair of native spacefarers to celebrate. When Eirika, a crown of roses on her head, was carried through the streets of the capital of Renais, set upon a dais and proclaimed Queen of Luna, she felt as though she no longer even was the person named Eirika, but instead had become something else, an abstraction of hope and inspiration. Her body might be grounded again, but a part of her being was still up there in the star-spangled blackness. If she didn't have her brother there, to remind who of who they both were, and always had been...

The people of Magvel didn't care that Eirika and Ephraim were- already!- no longer the Programme's newest heroes. While they were in Elibe, the Dawn mission had gone up and returned, "all mission objectives achieved." Now there were four humans living who had seen the far side of Luna in its tortured glory. But the pilots named Ike and Micaiah would receive no tribute from their homeland, not with the continent of Tellius serving as one of the pillars of the Loptos Empire. And Magvel, which gave a muted reception to other refugee pilots, withheld its highest honors from the Dawn crew.

The second mission to orbit the moon was... second. Now, nothing less than a landing, than a human footprint on the lunar surface, would generate such acclaim.

-x-

But now she was home. She was merely Pilot 012, one among equals, and not Lunar Queen Eirika. Though her photo of a crescent Terra now graced the walls of the dormitory atrium, inside the walls of Star City no one wanted her autograph.

As Eirika crossed the atrium she passed another in the pilot corps, headed in the opposite direction with a tray of the cafeteria's daily offerings balanced in his hands. He wore the same bluish-gray jumpsuit they all used when on duty, utilitarian and unadorned save for the three-digit number embroidered above the heart.

001

Eirika halted, and her hand automatically snapped upward in a hasty salute. Pilot 001 stopped as well, and the plates on his tray rattled.

"Congratulations," he said, and showed her a smile that Eirika knew from television before she'd even been accepted into the pilot corps.

"It was my honor to serve," she said, supplying the response made automatic through practice.

They exchanged a few sentences- he asked her about the spacewalk and the manual landing, and she gave answers on a level that another pilot, as opposed to an interviewer or diplomat, would understand. Through the conversation Eirika felt slightly distracted, as she often did when confronted by the solitary pilot from the Eastern Islands. He was so far above her in the pecking order that it felt wrong to even address him by name, and she had to force herself to say "Marth" instead of "Pilot 001" when they went their separate ways. Of all the pilots, he was the least known to her, in part because he was rarely ever at Star City. It was whispered- and Eirika saw no reason to disbelieve it- that after the Astra disaster, the Programme commanders had decided that their most famous face could not be exposed to the risk of another mission, and so Marth was not a fixture at the airstrip or at the flight simulators. He was usually doing what Eirika herself had just been doing- bouncing through the United Free Nations as the embodiment of humanity's most astonishing achievements.

What was it like, she wondered, to be the most famous person in the world? She'd had a taste, however briefly, of a life that consisted of being put on display in one city after another. A life where people tried to take the buttons from her jacket as keepsakes, where cuttings of her hair had the value of gold, where hundreds of people might cluster outside her hotel in hopes that she'd peek out the window and wave at them.

And yet, Eirika didn't expect her time in the spotlight to last, however high the praise for her, and for Ephraim, was at that moment. Once a human had actually set foot upon another world, merely flying around it wouldn't be so special. The Gemstone mission was but a stepping-stone to something greater, and the Dawn mission had, in a technical sense, already bested it, just as every mission had built upon the achievements of those that came before. Really, did the people of distant Elibe remember which pilot flew in Meteor and which had Valkyrie? Did the Valencians, who held the Nova mission in their hearts, remember what Hope achieved as opposed to Aureole?

Only one mission resonated equally around the world. Others might fly higher and faster, might spend weeks or months in space instead of a few hours, might accomplish feats undreamed of when the Starlight mission took flight. Many might share in the glory of the Programme... but only one of them would ever, would always, be the first.

And only one other, the first human to step onto the alien land of Luna, would understand exactly what that meant.

It had never occurred to Eirika to hope that she might be the first to walk on the moon. That destiny, in her mind, belonged to Ephraim, if all the cards went in their favor. So she never had contemplated the price of being first- not until becoming one of the Gemstone twins had transformed her from state secret into public exhibit.

Eirika still hoped, deep in her heart, that her brother would bear the honor of being First Upon Luna. Now she hoped, just as fervently, that she would not.

To Be Continued...

Author's note: Oh, hi, it's a plot complication.