Chapter 60

Highwind

Blackwater was one of several seaside towns on the stretch of inviting beaches lining Sarona's side of the Monterosa Gulf, its local economy strengthened by handy direct rail links to the Sarona holiday park. Like everywhere else in Sarona, it had a history; one written in violence. Since the Monterosa Plateau had been gifted to the Saronans, the harbour itself had been busy. At this hour, the west-facing promenade was mostly in shadow, and the current temperature was rather merciful compared to the unyielding heat the harbour would be enduring by noon.

'Have y'all been enjoying Blackwater?' Baldur asked.

'We've been making the best of it,' Raine said neutrally.

'Glad to hear it,' Baldur said. 'it's usually wall-to-wall out here, tourist season and all. My vehicle is just ahead.'

It was atypically scarce, due to the mass volunteers aiding recovery operations at Dollet City and the huge number of young men and women answering Argus' mass call-to-arms. As a result, the only people about were those walking or cycling to work at the nearby waterfront units, elderly out for their morning strolls and newspapers, or keen joggers doing their circuits before the sharply rising temperatures made exercise counterproductive to their health.

'You guys sure you're fine with the bags?' Baldur asked, receiving three firm nods in turn. 'Lemme know, if not.'

Baldur looked back at Battleship Island, which loomed in the harbour behind them. Any minute now, it would begin its departure north, to Lenown. Squall had gained permission from Argus to moor it at Blackwater all week, and any SeeDs or senior cadets had simply shown their ID tag at the port control for entry into the town proper. Baldur simply used a fob to circumvent access now, leading Raine's group by the checkpoint with a familiar nod to the morning guardsman. He had subtly adjusted his speed so that he was walking parallel with Raine.

'So, Battleship Island belonged to the Esthari, before?' he asked her.

'Years ago, yeah,' Raine answered. 'It was Adel's military research vessel.'

'Well, she's big, but she ain't as corn-fed as Garden!' Baldur exclaimed. When none of them reacted, he said, 'Wait. Y'all gotta be, what, late teens? Can y'all even remember Balamb Garden?'

The twins shook their head. Raine just said, 'Not really, sir.'

'Sorry, I shouldn't have asked,' he said sorrowfully. 'I saw it a couple of times. She docked at Dollet when she first went mobile. Everyone lined the waterfront, to get a glimpse of the heroes that swept the Gs from our streets! Then SeeD came back at the end of the summer, to purge the Gs' sorry asses from the plateaus! We had street parties 'til the chocobos came home!'

'Hey, you've got our mother to thank for that!' Zhang said happily, and he had a noticeable spring in his step since his new junction. 'She was commanding Garden then!'

'Xu?' Baldur asked. 'She was? I was just a kid. I always thought the Children of Fate came back around.'

'They were in Esthar,' Liu said quietly. 'Zell, Irvine and Selphie did scout the mountain route during the vacation here, though.'

'Stupidly, without approval,' Zhang continued. 'Zell got himself spotted. They said a Black Widow overturned and blocked the pass, and they didn't tell Squall about it until later. Zell and Selphie lost a SeeD Rank for that. Muqīn had more of a business head and less of a soft spot than Cid, but she would take any contract that would undermine the Galbadians at the time, not to mention Seifer. So, you've got her to thank for your freedom back then!' He shook his head. 'And to think Muqīn died defending Galbadia,' he trailed off.

'Bless your heart,' Baldur said. 'I was at the memorial.'

'Were you educated at Galbadia Garden, like your brother?' Raine asked Baldur.

'I sure was,' he said. 'Lots of us were, after the Humiliation. What better place to learn about the enemy? Only it turned out to be the wrong enemy. We should've been looking east, not west. The Supreme Leader knew that all along, and so did my brother.'

Humiliation. Raine had heard that term used with increasing frequency in Argus' rallying speeches from his bunkered location, just as he had been calling Ultimecia's annexation of Dollet two years before 'the Great Betrayal,' and her latest attack on their capital 'the Genocide'. The 'Humiliation' referred to the opening shots of the Second Sorceress War, where the Dolleans had been forced from their capital and into the plateaus within a matter of hours, crying out for SeeD's intervention.

Baldur and Jericho's father had been High Commander of Dollet's forces at the time, had been scapegoated, and his career had abruptly ended. Yet he had implored his children to join Galbadia Garden afterward. The Humiliation was spoken of openly now because it gave the collective Saronan identity a comeback story to be proud of. Furthermore, an impressionable and radical younger generation was believing every word of that story before it had been written, that Sarona would regain its former glory and play an important part in Ultimecia's downfall. Either way, Sarona would likely be the strongest nation on the Planet when the dust had settled.

'You like fishing?' Baldur asked suddenly, catching Raine off guard. His eyes were on her hat.

She shrugged. 'It was my old man's.'

'I've got a map showing all the best lakes on the Hasberry,' he told her.

'That's not what we're here for,' Raine said dismissively.

'Suit yourself,' he said.

They reached Baldur's car at an electric charging point. It was a black four-by-four with blacked out, bullet-proof windows and splashes of dirt along the bottom. Not exactly inconspicuous, but again, they were not undercover. The wheels were suitable for off-road terrain.

Baldur lowered the middle-back seat for the angling bag, and they placed their bergens in the boot along with Baldur's claymore. As Baldur moved to the driver's seat, Raine motioned for Zhang to ride shotgun. She took the seat behind Baldur's, with one half of her father's bag between she and Liu. It was rather comfortable inside, with adequate room for her lengthy legs behind Baldur. He had left the air conditioning running. As he thumbed the button for the radio, some country music quietly played from a national station.

'You guys mind?' Baldur asked politely.

She and Liu just shook their heads.

'It's your car, sir,' Zhang said.

'You ain't gotta call me "sir",' Baldur mentioned, and he left the parking space. 'You won't be answering to me.'

'Who will we be answering to?' Raine asked. 'Your Supreme Leader?'

He grinned broadly at her in the rear-view mirror. 'You'll find out soon enough. I can't wait to see the look on your faces!'

Some of the most famous Saronan country artists accompanied them on the road out of Blackwater. Baldur had said the journey would be about two hours, and they were heading south, following the signs to Jericho City. This meant they would not be going to the same mesa that they had sheltered in during the last Dollet mission, and soon enough, the mesa separating the Hasberry from the Monterosa appeared on their right. The northern mesa had been menaced by fearsome monsters such as Gargantua and Sepultura, and Raine wondered if the others were home to the same sort of breed. One hike atop those plateaus had been enough to make Raine a legend among the Saronans; she did not care to find out.

Raine remembered that the Monterosa itself was now Saronan territory. The agreement had been finalised with Martine and DiMarco, and Sarona's borders had been redrawn at the stroke of three pens. The Galbadians had returned to their homes there within the past few weeks, awarded provisional Saronan citizenship by default. The Monterosa had been all but emptied before Esthar's incursion, and both Eden and Brothers' attacks had permanently changed the landscape. The weakened rock between the crater and the canyon had crumbled, with the sea forcing its way through the gap, forming a lake that had not been there before. Yaulney Forest no longer existed by East Academy, the once stunning woodland now reduced to blackened husks that Argus had ordered removed, clearing the way for a six-lane road and new rail tracks to run all the way to Locomota. Galbadia Garden would not be returning to the area, with a new docking station to be built on the Great Plains.

'Have you hired anyone from Garland this time?' Zhang asked.

Baldur shook his head. 'Nope. We did want Deling, but his people are gonna need him when they march. None of the others are GF bearers, and the other two turned out to be a liability last time. They were used to get to Deling. Almost cost us the revolution, the Supreme Leader said.'

'That's not true,' Raine argued. 'Sieg and Nadia were a great help.'

Baldur shrugged. 'It's not up to me. Though I figure Garland is gonna need them, too.'

While Liu was staring silently to the east, Raine opened the third book of the Pupu e-book trilogy that Raijin had gotten her before his death. She was hoping to finish it before they got to their destination, even though her father had always said the ending sucked; she would find out for herself soon enough. Raine quickly lost herself in it, as Mog would alert her to danger on the road.

Before she knew it, the car slowed into a gravelly layby with a dirt road off-shooting from it, directly to the plateau. Baldur headed down it for several minutes until they could go no further. The vertical surface of the mesa loomed before them, an imposing wall of brown rock. There was long discarded mountaineering equipment here, and just to the south, steps were embedded in the rockface for less daring methods of ascent, with a broken path leading upward.

'We're not climbing,' Baldur informed them.

'We're not?' Zhang questioned.

He popped the trunk, and they all got out, retrieving their gear. With his greatsword back at his back, Baldur led them north without a word. Mog informed Raine that they were not at threat out here, the nearest monsters that could be sensed many miles away. Baldur then stopped abruptly, turning around, and Raine realised he was standing by a large door, painted the same colour as the rock and without a handle. There was a miniscule peephole, and Raine thought she could make out a camera lens embedded in shadow.

He knocked firmly, an even six times with the side of his fist, and Raine recalled that had been part of the 'who goes there?' for the Children of Sarona. 'The Paladin voyages to meet king and queen,' Baldur said suddenly, looking at the camera, 'and I've found three new seeds for daddy's patch.' One altered word would be a signal that Baldur was under duress, and they would be denied entry.

After a few seconds, they heard bolts and a handle being drawn back, and the door slowly swung inward. A massive Kakashbaldi man was on the other side. Towering and thickset, with braided hair and hard features, his dark face looking as though it had never cracked a smile, and his eyes like coals that had never known warmth. The curved, single edged blade of a polearm glinted over his shoulder.

'Howdy, San,' Baldur said familiarly. The guard just nodded. 'These are the SeeDs. Our heroes of the revolution themselves: Raine, Liu and Zhang.' A grunt. When the man-mountain looked at Raine, his eyes briefly flicked upward to rest on her cap. 'Guys, this is Dragoon Sanakht. And if you think he's certifiably corn-fed, you should see his brothers! Saronan born and bred, all three of 'em, raised by their momma out in sticks. All three of 'em could wrestle a wendigo into submission, and she made 'em good enough with the polearm for them to be offered a place with the Dragoons!'

'Pleased to meet you,' Zhang said obligatorily.

Baldur led them on, as Sanakht wordlessly slammed the door behind them. It was a warren of tunnels indistinct from the one Raine's group had sheltered in before, often used by the Saronans throughout their centuries of storied conflict, internally or otherwise. They went on for leagues and some of them extended deep into the Hasberry. If the Empire launched an invasion, it was from these networks that the Saronans would launch a counteroffensive, and it would be a highly effective one. Any imperial advance would be stunted long before its vanguard sighted the Tower of Owen.

Raine's smartwatch said they had been walking for twenty minutes before the caverns opened up. They walked into a similar mess area that they had become accustomed to in the northern mesas. A projector and a square of uncomfortable looking steel chairs facing a smoothly rendered wall for both briefings and recreation. Cleared areas for drills and exercise. Wide open, with joined tables and long benches as though in an old great hall, with hundreds of soldiers getting a face full of midday meal.

At one end of the nearest table had to be the Dragoons. There was an array of ranged weapons lining the walls by it, mostly spears and halberds, though there were a couple of polearms. Their uniforms were a fiery orange colour as opposed to the old, green Dollean ones. They were about twenty-five in number. Raine's eyes fixed on the largest, dark skinned and brawny men that were likely Sanakht's brothers, who seemed to be a bit more animated besides.

Only one of the Dragoons looked to be female. She had her back to them and was wearing an upturned dragon helm, the mouth reared back in a snarl, though Raine thought she could make out silver hair beneath. She turned when the rest of the Dragoons stopped talking mid-sentence, mid-mouthful of lunch, or mid-swig of tankard to acknowledge the newcomers. Raine could not make out the woman's face in the dragon's maw but had a feeling she knew who it was.

Could it really be? she thought with wonder, drawing breath.

'Captain Highwind!' Baldur called happily. 'I present to you the Prowling Toramas, and the Slayer of Sepultura!'

Aranea Highwind, direct descendant of Kain and Freya, took off her helm and placed it on the table, letting that silver hair cascade down her back as she stood. It shone like a sheet of moonlight in that dim bulb glow. With that entrancing smile they had all beheld on their televisions not a few days ago, she approached them. All of the Dragoons moved to reclaim their spears, taking a line behind her, and placing the tips of their weapons on the hard rock surface. They all saluted the Neo-SeeDs.

'By Hyne!' Raine exclaimed. 'I don't believe it!'

'Is it really you?' Liu said, betrayal his usual impassable reserve, then added, 'Ma'am?'

'It is,' she said, her voice soft and familiar, with no more of a drawl than she had on TV. 'The one and only.'

'But,' Zhang blurted, 'you're an actress!'

Baldur laughed. 'I said you wouldn't believe it.'

'I am,' Aranea said. 'Though I was forged in Galbadia Garden, where I was offered my place in Garland, like Baldur and most of the Dragoons were. Yet we had no desire to sell our souls to the Galbadians. Until the revolution, I pursued my love of acting.'

'The remake was awesome!' Zhang lauded.

'Thank you, Your Highness,' she replied.

'They let us watch us pre-release when we were deployed here before,' Zhang said. 'I've watched it three times, already!' Then he said, 'Oh, and it's just Zhang, by the way. Figaro is just a pile of blackened stone in the Dingo. The Dragoons made sure of that!'

'The Desert Kingdom may be gone, but the royal line persists, Your Highnesses,' Aranea asserted, looking between each of the twins. 'We can't bespeak our own history without acknowledging our old rivals of Figaro. It's a privilege to finally meet you two, and I wish I could have met your folks, too.'

She had to look up at Raine, as many women did. Not that Aranea was short, standing at about five six.

'Same goes for you, Lioness,' Aranea said. 'You're as fiercely beautiful as they said. I've had the pleasure of meeting your folks, when we were filming in Winhill a year ago.' Raine beamed at her, remembering Edea's signed headdress. 'Your sister is adorable, too!'

'Thank you, Aranea,' Raine said. 'And I have something that belongs to you. Some would say it's your birthright.'

She looked at Liu, who unshouldered the angling bag. Raine laid it out as she unzipped it, with the flap towards the Dragoons. They gasped collectively as she withdrew Dragonhair, presenting it Aranea by the middle. A replica, presumably Aranea's, was the only spear resting against the wall now.

'Hyne, I had no idea this was in SeeD's possession!' Aranea said, then mentioned, 'I thought the Praetorian called Kain still had it!'

'Kain was killed along with the marines at Balamb,' Raine told her. 'Though we've had it since Galbadia. My uncle, Commander Leonhart, wanted to return it to your people in good faith.'

'Then inform him that we are most grateful,' Aranea replied. 'Myself, most of all.'

'Well, well!' A loud voice carried across the chamber, hands clapping. 'Look who we got here!'

President Argus swaggered across the hall, flanked by a couple of guards wearing greatswords similar to Baldur's. Argus himself was in his officer's uniform, toting a couple of Anacondaur revolvers on each broad thigh, and he had a smaller broadsword scabbarded on his own back. He was far from all talk, as the Neo-SeeDs had seen him playing his own part in the revolution, albeit commanding from the rear.

'Welcome back to New Sarona!' he said, his voice not lowering the closer he got, and coming into the SeeDs' personal space the way he did. His hand clapped down on Zhang's shoulder. 'You really did a number of that son-bitch, Septimus, didn't you? There must've been some real gymnastics going on in that hotel room!' He laughed, and Zhang scowled. 'You wrenched his fat head around like a belhelmel's!'

'It's good to see you again, Mr. President,' Raine forced.

'You too, Lioness!' Argus looked her up and down. 'And you're looking lovely as ever!' His beady eyes lingered on her bare thighs before her father's hat, and he blinked as he read the embroidered words. 'Never took you as a fisher, though,' he commented.

She did not bother to correct him. Likely, Argus did not think such a pastime was lady-like. Let it give him an image to mull over, she thought, those of her callused hands full of a slimy, writhing carp.

'Anyway,' Argus said, looking between the twins, 'you two toramas will be on operations with the Dragoons, answerable only to Captain Highwind, General Vossler, or myself. But for now, the captain will get you feeling like a part of the team.' His eyes settled on Raine again. 'As for you, Lioness, we got a special mission for you,' he said cryptically, then gestured the way he had come from. 'If you'll just accompany me to my quarters.'

We're to be separated? Raine thought incredulously. For what possible reason?

The twins were like yin and yang, and she had long functioned as the one who kept them in harmony. Apart from Raine for a length of time, left among the Dragoons, would be uncharted territory for them. She figured Liu would retreat into his shell, and without her to intermediate, Zhang could easily grate on people he did not know. It would be testing for them, to say the least. Perhaps more so than Brothers' trial.

Argus led her down a hallway, stopping at some double doors. The two guards pushed them inward, taking up positions on either side and holding them open. Through them Raine could see an uncluttered put-up desk, with two steel chairs facing it, and a large map of the western continent on the wall behind it.

'Come on in and take a seat, honey!' Argus said.