Starchild

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

Chapter Eighteen: Specimen Collecting

Dark and leathery, elliptical in shape, it brought to mind a deflated egg- or the egg case of a shark. A tremendous shark, for this casing could have held a small child. Eirika regarded it with a strange calm, for all that she was now certain that either she was unconscious and dreaming... or that the mission planners and her commander were all out of their minds.

"Whatever we do, we can't rupture the casing," Marth told her.

"Understood."

Slowly, carefully, they were able to get this... chrysalis... out of its tomb. Eirika wrapped it in one of the metallic tissue blankets they carried for protection from the sun's glare, and they took turns carrying the bundle on the interminable trip down the giants' staircase. At last they'd finished descending the tower, and Eirika loitered in its shade drinking her water while Marth carried the chrysalis out to the rover. It fit quite neatly in the rear basket.

"Let's get back to the base," he said, as though everything was proceeding quite normally.

Eirika fell back on her training then; she reported her geologic observations to the ground crew and chatted lightly with Roy whenever he happened to break in with a chipper transmission. The loneliest human was doing quite well from his vantage point above Luna; the thirsty and sweat-soaked moonwalkers had nothing at present to say to one another. Eirika and Marth unpacked the rover's gear in silence; she tended the smaller samples, including her green glass, and he dealt with the equipment... and the largest of their samples. The rover itself would remain there, another monument to humankind's first visit to what was very clearly someone else's home planet. Eirika ran her finger through the thick layer of dust upon the rover's headlamp.

"You were a good machine," she said to it. "I didn't need seat belts after all. Thank you."

The Eirika of earlier days would have devoutly thanked the designers and engineers for their efforts on her behalf. The Eirika Sieglinde who stood upon the dark ground of Luna was feeling disenchanted with designers and their grand designs.

-x-

After this excursion to the surface, Eirika knew she would never again see the face of the Moon Maiden as an image of purity. The moon was a place of dirt; they were covered in dust, fine dark dust that made the air inside the Heron smell almost like gunpowder once they'd closed the hatch and doffed their helmets. The once-pristine cabin of Eirika's pet craft was already streaked with filth.

Eirika chewed upon a fruit-and-nut bar while Marth gave his official summary on the day's events to ground control. He said nothing of cities, of sarcophagi, of shark-egg shellcases.

"Tell the Chief Designers that their work has brought success to Project Fire Emblem," he concluded as Eirika busied herself by polishing the control panels.

Then the transmission to Terra was over, and it was just the two of them- at least until the next interruption from Roy. Eirika was free to say exactly what she wanted to Marth, up to and including the words that good pilots didn't use.

"You knew that the mission objectives included tomb-robbing," was what she said to him. Quietly.

"Mission objectives included the retrieval of the sealed form of the Goddess of the Moon. If you want to call that tomb-robbing, fine."

"Why?"

"Because we couldn't take the chance the Lopts would unseal her first."

"Is this the fulfillment of Sephiran's plan?"

"Not exactly."

"Marth... can't you tell me what's going on? We're the only ones here, I'm not getting home without you, and you want me just to... play along blindly with something that- that isn't in any mission plan I've ever seen!"

She didn't want to cry. She was too wearied- and possibly too dehydrated- to cry. She ached from the arches of her foot to the sockets of her eyes, and now she could only rest her head against the fragile skin of the Heron and stare at her commander. For all the talk of virtues and the greater good, for all the gold and effort spent into the research component of the mission, the Human Spaceflight Programme was at its core a pure military operation. Send a man in to secure the target. Reach the target before the enemy could get to it.

"So that's all there is to it," she murmured to herself, not even aware that she'd spoken aloud until she saw Marth's reaction. "It's a war."

"I'm not going to make you any crazy-sounding promises, Eirika. I told you the goal of this mission was quite literally peace, and that's all I can say for now." He turned to face her, and she could see the smear of dark dust that marred one cheek. "If you don't trust me, there are a hundred different ways you can see to it that we never get back to Terra. Or that you're the only one that leaves Luna's surface."

He was absolutely correct; deep in the pocket on the left shoulder of her flight suit were the pills she'd been supplied with in the event the ascent engines did fail and left them trapped upon Luna. Eirika might easily prevent this "Moon Goddess" from ever reaching Terra. But if she were to take such drastic measures against the unknown dangers of this egg-case and its contents, the UFN had the crews and resources to smoothly dispatch a recovery mission to investigate. Eirika pictured, for a moment, how Ephraim might react to finding the scene of his sister's demise. She pictured Ephraim stumbling across the egg-case, or following the rover tracks to the remains of the dead city and becoming inextricably caught in the Chief Designers' plots.

This was the mission she'd been given. The mission the three of them had been given. Project Fire Emblem was not a burden that she could let slip from her own shoulders- not without facing up to the cold fact that someone else must surely come along and pick up that burden. Eirika looked at Marth for a long moment, taking in the solemn mouth and intense eyes, the long-lashed eyes set in a face so young that five days without shaving left him barely in need of a razor.

"I trust you."

She saw the way his shoulders relaxed, ever so slightly. So he hadn't been certain of her, not one hundred percent. Not until that moment.

Then the ground crew broke in on their conversation, reminding the crew of Peace that it was time to sleep. Eirika and Marth drew down their respective window-shades, unfolded their sleeping hammocks, and retired for the brief artificial "night." Eirika did not sleep easily or well; she sensed, somehow, that there were three of them in the belly of the Heron now.

-x-

The next "day" the shadows on Luna were a little shorter. If they'd ventured out again, they would have found it a slightly different, equally revelatory world... but there were no reserves of water or oxygen for a second expedition. It was time for the Heron to fly.

Eirika considered herself suitably refreshed by their brief rest, enough so to confront the remainder of her mission as a pilot and a professional. She was not Pilot 012, nameless cog in the great machinations of Sephiran and G and whoever else might be involved. She was Captain Sieglinde of the Magvel Air Force. Well, Major Sieglinde, now. She and Marth had received word of their promotions already from General Mycen; if they failed to return to Terra now, at least they'd enjoyed a few hours of their new rank... for all the good that did them at present.

After the latest revelation regarding Project Fire Emblem, the ascent of the Heron from the lunar surface held no terror for Eirika. The engines fired as they were supposed to, and the Heron rose above Luna's dust with its crew and collection of samples in good shape. Above them waited the Falcon III, whose pilot sounded blessedly undamaged by the hours he'd spent in solitude above a dead globe. As the Falcon gripped the Heron in a perfect docking maneuver, Eirika thought only of how Roy would react to the largest of the "samples" they'd acquired.

To Be Continued...

Author's Notes: Well, Sephiran did say back in Chapter 12 that the goal was to awaken the goddess of the moon...

Hopefully at this point some of the reasoning behind which characters were deployed where is making sense.