Chapter Two
TW: MENTION OF DROWNING
As she settled into the empty seat they had already with them, Heron was able to get a proper look at her rescuers.
"I'm Aerrow." The red-head introduced himself, offering a long-fingered hand for Heron to shake. "You've already met Piper –" the woman waved "- and the idiot over there is Finn." Who gave her finger-guns and a wink. "Then we have Junko and Stork." The Wallop blushed slightly on eye contact, while the Merb just raised a couple fingers, staring into the firepit.
"I'm Heron." She properly introduced herself. "Thanks for thawing me out. How did you find me?"
"It was the Zeroes did that." Finn said with an almost dismissive wave. "There was a quake on Terra Blizzaris that opened up your little cave and they heard your beacon. Of course, they couldn't do anything without our help!"
"Finn!" Piper elbowed him, rolling her eyes. "You know they had other things to worry about! That quake knocked down half their village!"
Finn pouted, but didn't respond.
"So… how come you were… you know…" Junko asked awkwardly.
"That's a long story. Better told with or after food, I think." Heron said. She pushed herself up, followed by the young Wallop and Piper.
"We'll show you to the kitchen. I think we've still got some stuff left."
As they wandered through the metal corridors, Heron marvelled at just how young they all were. They couldn't have been older than 18, 20 at most. Piper walked smoothly and gracefully, her back straight and confident, while Junko walked with the slight hunch of someone used to being the biggest person in the room.
The kitchen turned out to be small, room only just large enough for the three of them if they didn't move around much. They rummaged through the cupboards as best as they could, gathering a small heap of packages on the island in the middle.
"Hmm… Gram crackers… half a bag of rice… shmallos… some chocolate… and about a third of a box of Atmos Spheres." Piper set the bright box of cereal back down and it toppled over, spilling its contents. "Make that an empty box of Atmos Spheres."
"We could make s'mores." Suggested Heron. The other two looked at her quizzically. "You've never had s'mores? Come on; you'll love them." She dug around the drawers until she had six skewers, then grabbed the crackers, the 'shmallos' and the chocolate. As she headed out, she grabbed a tray from its hook on the wall. The Hawks left behind looked at each other; Junko shrugged, then they followed.
Back on the flight deck, the boys were stoking the fire, adding a few more charcoal chunks.
"That was quick." Aerrow commented.
"We really need to do a grocery run." Piper answered, falling back into her chair. "Luckily Heron seems to have had an idea for what we had left."
Heron smiled, eagerly awaiting their reactions to what she was about to show them.
"Ok, gang, watch carefully." She pulled open the shmallos bag and impaled one on each skewer. She then used the tray to set up the crackers, each with a square of chocolate atop it.
"I think I see where you're going with this…" Piper mused as Heron handed them each a skewer.
"Now all you need to do is roast the mar- the shmallo as long as you like, then you smush it on top of the chocolate on the cracker and ta-da! You have a s'more. Ready for devouring!"
The gang eagerly stretched the skewers out towards the fire, watching as the fluffy, sugary treats browned in the heat. Stork removed his first, and after finishing construction took a tentative nibble.
"…hmm…" his reaction was reserved, but as the others tried theirs the night was filled with their delighted gasps and gleeful rushing to reload their skewers.
"These are the best thing I've ever had!" Finn cried, trying to shove his mouth full of s'more while simultaneously skewering a handful more shmallos.
"Slow down, Finn! You'll get stomach ache again!" Aerrow laughed. Across the fire from him, Junko let out a sad little 'oh!' when his shmallo caught fire and dropped into the coals.
A short while later, the group were sat, happy, sticky and sated, around a happily crackling fire. Even Stork was smiling contentedly.
"So, about that story?" Finn prompted, swallowing his last mouthful. "Where are you from? Why were you all frozen and stuff?"
"Um…" Heron hesitated, looking at her feet. "Isn't it a bit late already? It's a pretty depressing tale; I don't want to be giving anyone nightmares."
"Aww, c'mon! Please?" Finn said, ignoring Junko's tiny squeak and wince at the thought of bad dreams.
"Well, alright then." Heron shifted in her seat, then paused. "Where to begin…
"I suppose I should start with a little backstory." She said, gazing at the bright moon which had just appeared from behind a cloud. "You see, this isn't at all the world I remember.
"Before I was put into cryo, before this all began… The world didn't used to look like this." She gestured around them to the empty air. "There used to be land here. The Barrier Mountains in the west with the Great Plateau to the north of them; the great Saharr Desert in the south and the Tranquil Ocean in the south-east with grassy leas and the Amazon in between, and great caverns connected by many extensive crystal mines beneath it all. It was Pangaea, and I was the sky-knight of the Guardians, the number one squadron protecting it all from danger. We hadn't had a true threat in decades, of course. A flare-up of piracy from Muerk, or a spate of cloud-shark attacks along the mountainside shores of Lake A'Quinnas. Trade with Farside was going well – "
"You had contact with the Far Side?!" Interrupted Junko incredulously, before being shushed by an eagerly listening Finn, who was already on the edge of his seat.
"Despite the various mountain ranges surrounding Pangaea, we were able to set up a crystal tower relay that could send messages, news and entertainment shows across the whole world. Sharing media, crystals, even technology with Farside was considered normal even by my great-grandfather's time; we hadn't had a war with them for a good 300 years. We thought the peace would last forever.
"Then the quakes began."
Heron paused, gazing around at the five awed faces before her lit both orange by the fire and silver by the moon behind them.
"They started in the Xerxxxes Mountains, and were few enough, so naturally we assumed it was just normal seismic activity. Then the Barrier Mountains started shaking. It wasn't until the Barrier Crystal Mine cave-in that people began to get concerned and the government started to take notice. As time went on and the quakes spread into the lowlands, the scientists came to the conclusion that Pangaea was collapsing.
"The people weren't too worried at first; the government had promised them that everything will be fine and it would all be sorted soon. And we tried. Oh, how we tried! So many different solutions suggested, and all of them tried at some point. It started with the dismantling of the Slag Heaps, the great mounds of leftover stone from the crystal mines. At first the people complained – they were losing their livelihoods from farming on the grass that had been growing on them and from foraging the crystal shards that had been missed by the sorting machines – but they soon settled down when the stone was used to try to fill back in some of the tunnels. But it didn't work; it was too loose to effectively support the weight of the world above and the quakes continued. Small sinkholes were starting to form, but so far from habitation that they went near-unnoticed for some time.
"When 'Operation Backfill' failed… that's when people started to truly become concerned. And when Farside suddenly cut off contact, they began to get agitated. When it was discovered that Farside had collapsed all connections to their side of the world, they began to panic. People who had been hoping to escape to Farside to wait it out were now stuck here in our collapsing countryside. The government, who had promised that Farside would help with everything, were no longer trusted. Pangaea was literally falling apart on both fronts.
"That's when the scientists turned to preservation of the people over the land. No matter what, we would survive even if our home didn't. The Five Salvations began.
"The first was Project Noah: to send people out over the ocean in a great ark, in the hopes of being able to reach Farside from there. All seemed to go well at first; Ark One was launched and set off over the horizon. For a week we received happy messages from the crew and passengers, then suddenly nothing.
"The Guardians were of course mobilised, to go find out what happened. I remember as we topped off supplies on our airship at the Vapos docks an old fisherman casually remarking that the tide wasn't coming in as far as it used to, and that it seemed to be going out further each day too. But we were too worried about Ark One for it to really sink in until we spotted the first whirlpool five days out of port. It was small, but fast. And eerily reminiscent of a draining sink. Sure enough, after a solid 24-hour flight and really pushing our engines, we found, rushing around a huge whirlpool, the wreckage of the ark. And the bodies."
Heron paused again, pinching the bridge of her nose. The gang were silent; not even a whisper of wind broke the solemn aura that had settled on the deck. As if sensing the drama, the moon disappeared behind a cloud.
"Even as we returned to Vapos, more whirlpools appeared. The ocean was draining away, though to where no-one could say. As the days went on and the mourning for the ark continued, so did the Salvations.
"The next idea was similar to the first: Project Hannibal. If we couldn't use the tunnels, we'd just go to Farside the old-fashioned way; across the mountains. But, as it turns out, no-one was interested in escaping to Farside anymore. It was obvious to the populace that the great city was not interested in lending aid or refuge; why bother? A team did try to scale the mountains, of course; just to prove it could be done if necessary. But the Barrier Clan giants refused to allow them to pass through their territory, and a fight ensued. Only one survivor made it back down to Merbarius, and he refused to say much more about what happened other than to warn against further attempts in other areas, as the passes were rapidly being filled with landslides. It seemed even the earth itself didn't want us to leave. It wanted us to stay and endure the consequences of our greed for crystal power.
"The third attempt was Project Aldrin. If we couldn't send people to the other side of the planet for safety, we'd send them off the planet completely. Plans were made for another ark; this one a huge construction in space. I think this one was the most controversial – there were worries about supplies for construction and how much would be needed, about supplies for survival once built and occupied and how long it would be for, and how would we even know when it was safe to come back? But all arguments were put aside and the project went ahead.
The first few shuttles to go up went well; they docked with a pre-existing satellite station and began work on expanding it for wider use. Then funding was cut as materials were waning and the people were starting to protest – rumours had spread that that only the richer people were going to be allowed off-planet. False, of course, but that didn't stop the papers reporting it and the people's anger. The last rocket to go up was meant to decommission the station; Project Aldrin had already been deemed another failure and the astronauts were supposed to retrieve what crystals had been left behind. But something went wrong; I never found out what – the rocket, instead of taking off into the atmosphere, exploded on the launch-pad with no survivors. My – my father was one of them." Heron choked back a sob; the memory still recent to her. She took a couple more deep breaths.
"Project Howard was the fourth, and, it seems to me, the most successful. Many of the larger cities were, hundreds of years before, discovered to be built atop massive crystal cores to make better use of the energy they provided, I suppose. As more sinkholes opened, people started to realise that the land around these crystal cores seemed more stable than out in the countryside. The cities were crowded, packed to the brim and bursting with refugees, many of whom had already lost their homes in the quakes and various related disasters – tsunamis, wildfires, the like. So the government constructed massive bunkers under the capital and people flocked to take shelter inside. It was a truly magnificent sight, though: the people all helping each other to settle in and collect themselves, whether they were human, Merb, Wallop or Raptor. One particularly poignant image that made the rounds a couple of weeks before I went into stasis was of a human family all huddled around a tiny Raptor child to use their body heat for warmth while they waited for their friends to find her parents for her before they entered the vault."
There was a quiet 'aww' from Piper.
"Most successful?" Asked Junko.
"You're all here, aren't you?" Heron pointed out. "So obviously it worked to save the people who made it inside. Of course, it was such a massive undertaking, to save as many people as possible, it was still underway when Project Rogers was instigated.
"The point of Rogers was so that when the people emerged from the bunkers, and were able to revive us, they had a squadron ready to keep them safe as they rebuilt, and to train new recruits to rebuild the Sky Knights and their squadrons. Five locations were selected, one for each member of the Guardians. Because which better team than the best of them all? We each were given a very brief run-down of what to expect, but only the briefest idea where each location was; I don't think they'd fully decided on them all yet when I went under. It was very hectic; the quakes were mere hours apart now and the sinkholes were getting bigger and bigger so we were in a rush to get everything set.
"As the leader, I was the first to be put into cryo. Last I remember, Zartacla was all but gone and the team around me were speculating that there were only a few days left before everything completely collapsed. I don't know where my team is, or even if their stasis was successful."
