Starchild
I do not own Fire Emblem or any of its characters.
Chapter Fourteen: Project Fire Emblem
The television in the common room now played an endless string of denunciations of the former premier and the ways he had ill-served the United Free Nations. Sephiran had expended great resources on secret projects that did not benefit the people. His covert agenda ran contrary to the purpose of the UFN. He had authorized terrible abuses of the free peoples, ranging from the inhumane conditions of the Elibean work camps to the "experiments" conducted at universities throughout the UFN. He used UFN nations as pawns in a diplomatic chess game, turning his head when the Eastern Islands were overrun by the Lopts. And he had placed non-humans and part-humans throughout the government, placed them in positions where they could destroy the UFN from within.
On a certain level, Eirika did not believe the accusations. She was all too familiar with the state's propaganda machine when it came to non-persons, and the horror tales regarding Premier Sephiran sounded too much like an amplified echo of the lies told about a disgraced comrade of her father's. But as she heard the denunciations, over and over again, Eirika had to admit the accusations touched upon so many of the issues she'd wondered over lately. Pictures and press releases, truth and fiction...
Star City pretended to be immune to the political turmoil outside, but within the temple walls of the pilot dormitory, things weren't especially happy. Pilot 008 was grounded; during a routine scan the doctors found a spot on his lung that looked to be tuberculosis. This, coupled with Lyn's announcement soon after her hasty marriage to Eliwood that the Programme could expect another "space baby," meant that the entire crew of Aureola was lost to the flight rotation. Eirika grieved the loss- even if Lyn and Eliwood weren't exactly who and what she'd assumed them to be, she'd known of them only (and always!) as decent people and loyal compatriots. And, after all, she'd no proof at all that Lyn and Eliwood had any part of these alleged frozen-cadet experiments at Aqu'lea- she had only rumors and one blurred photograph.
The generals already had enacted measured to fill the gaps in the corps; they'd admitted a new crop of pilot candidates, ranging from the expected (Chief Engineers Finn and Innes) to the novel (a female jet pilot from the Eastern Islands). Eirika would have liked to spend time with the newcomers, but training for Peace kept her too busy to see much of them. The Generals had the good sense to place Eliwood in charge of the newcomers' training; if he couldn't fly, he could certainly guide those who would. Still, even if these changes were positive, the Star City that Eirika had first known was slipping into history.
-x-
Eirika had to take out the dress uniform again for another funeral- this time, for one of the three shadowy Chief Designers. A, the mastermind of the UFN's robotic space programme, had died of natural causes after a long and fulfilling career. Now that Chief Designer Athos was safely deceased, his name and accomplishments were made public. His biography, on the other hand, came out only in elliptical fragments that added up to an odd picture indeed.
"These photographs... it looks like Athos was an old man at the beginning of the century..."
Eirika's Peace comrades looked at her with identical expressions of warning. That was all it took to confirm her growing suspicions. Athos, then, was one of these non-humans placed in a high position by Sephiran, either born of beast lineage or "modified" through the Lopts' own terrible experiments upon "lesser creatures." Non-humans had been deliberately admitted to the Human Spaceflight Programme, non-humans created the Programme itself... were the other Chief Designers likewise plants, pieces in Sephiran's strange game?
It was disturbing enough that she confronted Marth about it at the first opportunity.
"You've seen the other Chief Designers- they came to the Starlight launch."
"All the Chief Designers were intimately involved with the Programme at its start," he said. "The structure we have now didn't exist- they made it. G was the one speaking to me from the ground during Starlight; there was no one else trusted to do it."
Eirika flinched; she'd heard many times over the recordings of the man code-named "Shadow" speaking to Starlight, encouraging its young pilot as humanity broke free of the bounds of gravity for the first time in history.
"What is he?"
"I don't care what he is. What he's done has been nothing but good for us. Not just for me, for all of us."
As commander to pilot, he ended the conversation there. Even though Eirika sensed there was a great deal more that 001 wanted to say on the subject of the Chief Designers.
-x-
When the next envelope arrived from the Ministry of Truth, Eirika realized she'd been anticipating it. She slit open the envelope with something akin to excitement- only to be greeted by a photograph of some charred and twisted thing, the wreckage of some horrible disaster. She stared at it for a moment without grasping what it might even be, and when she did understand what it was, she didn't want to believe it. Eirika turned the photograph over and read the scrap of paper pasted to the back- a terse report on how Pilot 004 had been turned into a carbonized mass measuring 120 centimeters by 80 centimeters, with only a few bone chips to show that mass had ever been a human being.
"What's the point to all of this?"
There was something else in the envelope, another photograph. A snapshot of a very young Pilot 001 conversing with a older, bearded man. The man's face was blurred, and Eirika knew at once that he must be the mysterious Chief Designer G. But from the pose- the almost paternal way that G stood in that photo, the way the adolescent Marth looked up at G with what could only be called trust, the pair knew each other well. Extremely well.
What he's done has been nothing but good for us...
So why was this photograph of Marth and G juxtaposed with the dreadful remains of 004? If the intent of the "Ministry of Truth" were to erode Eirika's confidence in the Peace mission and her own safety, they were doing an excellent job of it.
-x-
Eirika and her commander had just finished another grueling set of tests in the lunar-landing simulator when Pilot 002 intercepted them.
"We're talking now," he said, characteristically blunt.
"I'd rather not," replied Marth, but Alm ignored him and appealed directly to Eirika.
"The engineers are saying you both have a nine in ten chance of not making it back to Terra. Nine in ten. That's the worst odds they've come up with-"
"Since Astra," Marth interrupted him.
"Exactly."
Eirika decided to attack this problem the way an engineer might.
"What's the weak point in the mission sequence, Alm? The landing?"
"Getting back off the surface. Those engines have never been fired in lunar gravity- we don't know how to simulate it. Even if you two make it down there in one piece, odds are you'll stay down there and Roy comes home alone. How's that sound?"
The Valencian pilot sounded passionate, even angry. He sounded even more angry when Marth switched to the Islands dialect, making the conversation incomprehensible to Eirika save for a scattering of words.
"Is that what you argued about at the wake?" she asked, after Alm had left- red-faced and shaking his head.
"Alm tends to get excited," Marth replied. "That's why Cellica is such a good match for him."
"What do you think the odds really are?"
"Of accomplishing the landing? Fifty-fifty." His voice betrayed no hint of dismay. "Of returning home? We're pushing experimental machines to their limits in ways that no one has ever tried before. Of course there's risk. It's why we exist."
He really did think of himself as a pilot as completely as any of the others did, Eirika thought. It just meant something else to Marth, and she was glad, really, that she didn't view piloting in that light.
-x-
Two weeks before the launch date, the Peace crew was sequestered in sterile quarters so that no head colds, no stomach viruses might disrupt the mission or cause a last-minute change in pilots. Eirika had to bid farewell to her brother, who went to live in similar circumstances with his backup crew. Ephraim was dry-eyed and a little distant, and only the warm touch of his fingers upon her cheek communicated to her how much this separation affected him. Of course, it might be a final farewell for them both, unless some stroke of fortune placed them in the Peace capsule together... or grounded both for the duration of the mission. Eirika didn't truly hope for some illness or freak accident, but some part of her still cherished the idea of climbing down the ladder of the lunar lander to join her brother on Luna's scarred surface.
She distracted herself from these thoughts by watching her comrades bid farewell to their fellow pilots. Marth's elder sister, who had joined the Programme as a flight surgeon after her release from a Lopt prison camp, was there to see her brother off, but Roy had no family present. It occurred to Eirika how isolated most of the pilots were from the world beyond Star City- how few of them had living parents or siblings, how the spouses and loved ones they did have all seemed associated with the Programme in some way. Leaf, for one, had been raised in the center of the Programme, and Eirika had heard that Celice and Roy were similar cases- orphans of martyred parents who had been co-opted into the "family" of the Human Spaceflight Programme years before Starlight ever launched.
She asked Roy about his orphan status that night, and he shrugged it off with something close to unconcern.
"My parents gave me up after I was born- or rather, I believe my mother died, and my father couldn't raise me alone. They were both soldiers in the resistance, and that's all I know. I've never learned their names."
"Did anyone step forward to... well, to claim you, after you landed?" After Hope, when young Major Roy Gilleroth was announced to the world as the Programme's latest achiever, surely some family member would have recognized him...
"No. I doubt they'd know me. 'Gilleroth' isn't even my family name, it's just the name I was given. It means 'red-haired' in the Lycian dialect."
He seemed remarkably unaffected by all this, so Eirika decided to let that subject drop. How fortunate she was, she reflected, to have been born on Magvel and not one of the continents that had suffered direct invasions by the Lopts. How fortunate she was to know the faces and names of her own parents- now gone, but fixed forever in her memory.
-x-
Pre-launch isolation was something of a joke, Eirika decided after several days in crew quarters. They slept in isolation, and took meals only from a special kitchen, but all three of them still had to venture out for additional tests on the simulators. As Eirika worked one night over a review of the things that had gone wrong in the landing simulator that day, a question she'd pondered for years finally crossed her lips.
"What's the significance of Project Fire Emblem? Why is that the code phrase for the Programme?"
"The government has set guidelines for how code names are formed," Roy supplied immediately. "The first word starts with an 'F,' which designates an Air Force project, and the 'E' in the second word denotes the level of classification."
Marth, though, shook his head to object to this answer.
"Project Fire Emblem isn't the code name for the Programme. It refers to the goals of the Programme."
"I don't understand," said Eirika, after thinking the distinction over for a moment.
"Project Fire Emblem is the end, and the Programme is the means," said Marth, though he wouldn't explain in any greater detail. Neither Roy nor Eirika were satisfied by this.
"So, what are the goals of Project Fire Emblem?" asked Roy.
"Our mission's call sign is Peace," Marth said. "I think that says it well enough."
That night, as Eirika lay in her bed, she recalled that photograph of Marth gazing up at Chief Designer G with trust reflected in his entire pose. For one moment of hypnagogic insight, Eirika thought she was on the verge of understanding why Pilot 001 had been placed where he was in both the flight rotation and in history, but before it all did make sense to her, she toppled over the precipice of sleep.
-x-
Two days before launch, Eirika and her commander were still grappling with the landing simulator as the Sim Crew threw one nasty set of errors after another at them. Once again, the screen in front of them showed the cratered field of Luna as they approached, once again, the data in front of them looked ominous. The information on their descent trajectory didn't make sense, a sign the transmission between the crew and the ground was degraded. Eirika's gut told her that they needed to abort the landing and get back up to rejoin Roy in the Falcon III, but the Sim Crew wasn't giving them the order.
She glanced at Marth, who continued to steer the lander according to the view out their simulated "window" in spite of the garbage data in front of them. Eirika bit her lip; wasn't Marth going to push the "abort" button? He was waiting, she realized, for the order from the ground- but it wasn't coming. Not in time, not with the two-second delay between Terra and Luna factored in to their communications.
"Peace, we recommend you-"
And the simulator screen froze. The data in front of Eirika's eyes indicated they'd dropped below the altitude of the lunar surface. In plain speech, they'd crashed and now were dead. To die in the simulator always rattled her a little, and she could feel the quiver in her voice as they agreed to try for another round.
Eirika expected this failure would be put down as "crew error," and she was just a little miffed at Marth for his refusal to take action in the face of such a crisis, his refusal to go against orders. When she voiced those complaints to Marth that evening in the crew quarters, his response left quieted her concerns... somewhat.
"That scenario wasn't testing us, it was testing the ground crew and their ability to make a call. It's just another learning experience."
In the space of a few days, there would be absolutely no room for "learning experiences." Eirika hoped they all would be ready for that moment.
To Be Continued...
Author's note:
So, we get ever closer to the mystery of what Sephiran and his Chief Designers are up to. As for Eirika, who has been treated pretty much like a mushroom (kept in the dark and fed #$%) by everyone in the Programme... well, she has enough puzzle pieces in front of her to figure something out, but it's not likely to be correct quite yet. The answer to all the mysteries is not merely "out there," but UP there...
This features the usual mix of inspirations from both the USA and USSR moon-shot programs- simulator shenanigans on one end, political quicksand on the other.