Dean Wesley Smith - Final Fantasy, page 1
For
Jim, Tony, Debbie, Chris, Melody, and Harry.
Thanks for all the great games.
chapter 1
The dream was always changing, even though it always felt the same.
Aki jerked awake, coming up out of sleep like a swimmer gasping for breath. She brushed her shoulder—length hair out of her face and looked around the lab, letting the familiar surroundings ease the tension. She was strapped in her lounge chair in the research area of her ship. She was in orbit, headed for the right time and spot for reentry into the atmosphere.
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. The dream felt the same, time after time, yet every time she had it there were subtle changes. Changes she knew meant something.
The dream haunted her like an echo as she tried to push the images aside. She reached for the holographic control panel over her chair. The display read:
Dream File Save? Yes? No? 12/13/2065
Aki punched Yes and the hologram disappeared. With a click, the scanning device retracted into the panel over her head and the magnetic connectors holding her in the chair deactivated. She floated upward in the zero gravity from the released pressure of her body on the chair.
The dream dug at her mind like a mole, trying to show her something. It always felt the same. Always. But she had decided to try recording them, to see what the differences really were, and if she could find out what they meant.
She pushed herself across the high-tech laboratory toward the window, letting the moment of floating in zero g ease her tension. Her quest had caused enough problems without her sleep being plagued by the dream. If the Council knew about her dreams, they would shut down her research, she was sure.
But she needed to know what the dreams meant.
She eased herself into an upright position near the port, grasping a handhold to stay in place as she stared at the blue and white of Earth hundreds of miles below. It was so beautiful, it calmed her even more, and set her resolve to understand what was happening.
She let the images of the dream come back.
An alien sun and a massive moon shone through a thick, dusty sky, at levels too bright for comfort. She was standing in a barren wasteland that was clearly scarred from a massive battle. Under her feet seemed to be a lake, yet she remained on the surface, her own image reflecting back at her, as if she was standing on a mirror.
She was waiting for something. She had no idea what.
Then, over the horizon, a light started to outshine the hot sun, adding to the feeling of intense heat.
She knew something was coming.
She could sense it, feel it in the shaking of the surface under her.
The air around her rumbled louder and louder; the dust, swirling like a breeze, was kicking it up. Yet she could feel no wind against her face, no movement of her hair.
Something big was coming.
Huge.
But she didn’t know what.
She just waited, facing it, wanting to turn and run, yet not doing so. She needed to know what it was.
She needed to face it.
The air swirled, the dust choked her. The surface under her feet shook as the horizon got even brighter.
The unknown came closer.
And closer.
Then she had woken up, the dream over.
Most of the dream was the same as other times, but this time it felt as if she was closer to understanding.
It frustrated her that she could not see what was coming at her over that horizon. She felt she needed to know what it was, but she could think of no way to extend the dream. She would just have to wait, let the dream explain itself to her.
But waiting was not something she did easily.
She shook off the feeling of dread and tried to calm her fast-beating heart. Just thinking about the dream got her upset. She desperately needed to know what it meant. And what she was waiting for.
She stared out the portal. Below her Earth spun slowly, beautiful from orbit. She hoped beyond all hope that she would be in time to save her wonderful home planet.
“Atmosphere reentry in fifteen seconds,” The Black Boa’s autopilot announced over the communication link, its metallic voice as calm as always. This was going to be a dangerous and tricky drop, and she needed to be clear and ready for it.
She pushed off the portal and floated up into the control cabin. Just as the chair there snapped her into position, the Black Boa bumped slightly and then leveled, the autopilot she had programmed taking her into the mission. Through the portal she could see red from the heat flaring off the hull as the ship sliced into the atmosphere. The pressure pushed her against the chair’s restraints, but she ignored it. Now she had to think about the coming mission.
She was dropping in over the Atlantic, hot and fast, just as she had planned to do. It was dark where she was heading, the morning still over Eastern Europe, a long way from the East Coast of North America. With luck she would be in, get the sixth spirit, and be out before anyone, or anything, could even move to meet or stop her.
The thumps of the atmosphere reentry eased and she took a deep breath, forcing herself to relax. The feeling of gravity reassured her as she eased the ship in toward the target. She just hoped the sixth spirit was still there.
“Thirty seconds to landing,” the autopilot said.
“Ready,” she said to herself, ignoring the fact that she was talking to her ship’s computer.
“Warning! This is restricted air space,” the computer said.
She tapped her control board, overriding the restriction, not taking her eyes off the ground rushing up at her.
“Fifteen seconds.”
She wanted to take the controls in her own hands, but it was now pitch-black outside the ship. It was better to let the computer land her, right where she had programmed it to.
“Five seconds.”
She could see something moving past the ship on all sides in the darkness, but the blast of the ship’s propulsion wasn’t enough to light up what it was.
The ship bumped and then settled, and the engines shut off.
“Landing confirmed.”
She quickly checked the details. The ship had brought her right where it was supposed to. Now, to get what she was here for and get out.
She snapped off the safety restraints of her chair and headed out of the control room. Stopping for only a few seconds in the lab to grab her equipment, she stepped toward the closed hatch and took a deep breath. She was going to make this work. She had no choice.
She tapped the control on the wall.
The hatch in front of her clanged and slid downward.
Nothing but blackness faced her. It was almost as if she were looking into the depths of space, without the stars.
The hatch snapped into a horizontal position, becoming a ramp as she stepped onto it.
She took the flare gun from her belt and aimed it up and away from the ship, then fired.
The orange and white light of the flare lit an incredible black world around her.
She knew it had been called Times Square.
She had seen pictures of this area in its heyday, long before her birth, when the parties celebrating the New Year would fill this area with millions of people. It had been an area of life, of activity.
Now there was only darkness and ruin. The sight hit her hard, right in the stomach, making her take a deep breath.
Crumbling buildings loomed over piles of brick, mortar, and rusted old cars. All the glass in all the windows was long gone, leaving the holes as empty, dead eyes, the blackness too deep to even think about. This was the same kind of destruction she kept seeing in her dreams. Only her dream was of an alien world; this was reality on her world.
She forced herself back to the task at hand, scanning the area around the ship for any sign of the Phantoms, lit up by the flare. Nothing.
She pulled out her gun, holding it ready as she moved down the last few meters to the ground. Dust and debris swirled away from her, caused by the motion of her feet. But even that little wind seemed wrong and out of place in this much death. She had no idea when the last time a human had been here was. Too long ago, that was certain.
With one more glance around the flare-lit ruins that
towered over her, she clicked on the scanner over her left eye. The faint beep seemed far louder in the dead—ness.
The flare died out and Aki fired another, aiming up between two of the tallest buildings. The flare exploded hundreds of meters above her ship, sending trailers of red and white. Her scanner confirmed no life-forms in the area, in any of the buildings at any level.
“All right,” she said aloud, taking a deep breath as the hatch touched down, She stepped off onto a rough pile of rubble. “Where are you?”
Her bracelet scanner blinked as she held it up and slowly turned. On the display it read, “No life-form.”
Turning degree by degree, she moved around, letting the scanner do its work. Then, as she faced to the south, the blinking increased and became steady.
“Got you,” she said, her voice smothered by the darkness as the flare went out.
She shot another flare into the air to the south and scanned the area to make sure nothing was coming at her. So far it was still clear. She climbed off the pile of debris, moving down what had once been the center of a very busy street, climbing over or going around debris as she needed to.
Her footsteps were the only s
This time the eye scanner caught something moving in the distance, down the street, as the flare exploded overhead.
Her heart seemed to stop as every nerve in her body froze. Suddenly the very dead city was no longer so dead. Out of open windows and shadows, her eye scanner showed her dozens of Phantoms, climbing into the street like animals coming from their dens.
She had seen Phantoms up close before. Invisible to the naked human eye, under the special energy flares they appeared. There were many kinds of Phantoms, but the ones she had just seen seemed grossly asymmetric creatures, translucent like glowing jellyfish. They had enormous heads and multi-tentacle arms. In the light of the flare they looked reddish.
They owned this old city.
She glanced back toward where the Black Boa was sitting, a familiar shape in the alien world of this ruined city. A half dozen of the Phantoms were coming out of holes between her and her ship.
She took a deep breath. She only had one choice, and that was to get the sixth spirit and get out quickly. She would never get another chance at it if she bailed out now.
With a quick check of her scanner to confirm where the sixth spirit was, she took off running, moving through the debris as fast as she could, her pistol held ready in case any of the Phantoms got too close.
As the flare overhead started to fade, she fired yet another, making sure she could see anything getting too close.
Ahead, in the open doorway of one giant building, a Phantom moved to face her. Her wrist scanner told her the sixth spirit was behind it, in that same building. She didn’t dare fire at the Phantom for fear of hurting what
she was here to find. Killing a thousand of these creatures was not worth what having the sixth spirit would be worth to humanity.
Suddenly a rumbling noise filled the dead canyons of buildings, and a bright light replaced the fading glow of her last flare. The rumbling got louder and louder, shaking the dust off everything around her.
She stopped and looked up. It took her a moment to realize what she was seeing-then she understood. It was a suborbital military transport ship coming in fast down one street, barely fitting between the tall buildings.
Clearly not only was she going to have trouble from the Phantoms, but from her own people as well.
Suddenly four soldiers in heavy armor dove from the transport as it flashed overhead, weapons held out in front of them as they headed for the ground.
Suddenly the four soldiers fired, and all around her high-density pellets hit the ground. Aki stayed still. She had seen this before, but never up close.
The pellets quickly exploded and spread, forming a thick cushion on the debris and concrete of the old street. She was completely surrounded.
The four came in hard and fast, rolling on the cushion as they hit and bouncing up, ready to fire.
Within seconds the cushion around them dissolved into thin air, quicker than it had formed. She knew enough about the military to know this was how they did emergency insertions. Diving from a fast-moving transport was not something they did lightly. They obviously considered her situation an emergency.
On the point man’s armor was the name Deep Eyes.
She figured that must be the name of their platoon, because under the words Deep Eyes was the name Ryan.
Aki glanced around as the soldiers framed her. One was named Jane, another Neil, and their leader had nothing on his armor.
Neil fired a laser-type rifle just past her, and she spun around to see a Phantom hit. When the energy from the shot hit the alien, it discharged, making the Phantom almost white and clearly visible to the naked eye. Then the shot’s energy caused the Phantom’s structural integrity to break down. In other words, the shot vaporized it.
The other soldiers fired, hitting advancing Phantoms in all directions.
She fired another flare up into the air so she could see the Phantoms.
As the three kept firing, holding back the creatures, the leader turned to her, his face covered completely in the metal-gray armor, his voice amplified slightly. “This is a restricted area. Your ship has been impounded. Do not move.”
“What’s she doing here, Captain?” one of the soldiers shouted between shots.
“I don’t know,” the captain said as he fired and killed the Phantom blocking her path in the doorway, “but we’re getting her out.”
She had no intention of going with these soldiers until she had what she had come for. And there was nothing they could do to stop her.
Two Phantoms emerged from the doorway to the leader’s left. “Behind you!” she shouted, pointing.
As the leader turned to fire, she sprinted for the now
cleared doorway, her wrist scanner showing her she was on the right track, her eye scanner telling her she wasn’t running directly into the tentacles of a Phantom.
Behind her she heard the captain shout, “Halt! Dammit! I said halt!”
She knew he wouldn’t fire on her, since she was the one they had come here to get.
She ducked through the doorway and snapped on a light attached to her eye scanner. Her light was enough to see the destruction in the massive space inside the building. This must have been a huge lobby at one time, with smooth floors and a vast ceiling three or four stories overhead. A large part of the building had broken away and fallen out to the west, showing the night sky above part of the room.
She fired a flare up into one corner. No Phantoms yet.
Outside she heard the captain shout, “Let’s move, people!” Then the sharp crack of more firing.
She moved deeper into the building, following the direction the scanner told her to move. Behind her, the soldiers came in as well.
“Two coming through the east wall,” one shouted.
She glanced to the right, seeing the two Phantoms as they were hit and vaporized just after coming into the huge lobby.
Suddenly the leader of the soldiers grabbed her arm and yanked her around. He’d come up on her fast and silent. “Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?”
She stared into the armor-covered face, feeling she should know who was behind it. “There’s a life-form in here.”
“There hasn’t been life here in years,” the captain said, clearly not believing her.
“There is now,” she said, indicating the blinking scanner on her wrist. “And it’s right in here, somewhere close.”
“Life-form or not,” the leader said as the other soldiers spread out around him, guarding all the flanks, “I’m taking you in.”
“Fine,” she said. “Take me, I don’t care. But not until I extract this life-form.”
She yanked her arm out of the soldier’s grasp and moved deeper into the building, following the signal on her scanner. She knew it had to be close. It was almost as if she was right on top of it.
“This is going to be one of those days,” the captain said behind her. “Flank us.”
Then, taking a position a half step behind her, he shone his brighter armor light ahead, staying with her step for step as they went deeper and deeper into the old building’s lobby. She was surprised at the help, but said nothing.
Then she saw what she was after.
For a moment she couldn’t believe it. At the base of what had been a large, clearly elaborate marble fountain, was her goal. It sat there, green against the gray and blackness of the old lobby.
She ran toward it, feeling more excited than she had in a long time.
“Captain,” one of the soldiers said, “the transport is circling. It’s not going to wait much longer.”
“I understand that,” the captain said, his voice echoing from right behind her.
She got to the edge of the fountain and kneeled down, while the captain shone his light on her find. It looked like a weed, growing up from a crack in the floor.
“It’s in bad shape,” Aki said to herself as she pulled out her extraction kit. She had known that the sixth spirit was going to be a plant, but until now she hadn’t known what kind or how big.
“Oh, please,” one of the soldiers said. “Tell me we’re not risking our necks for this plant?”
“I wouldn’t call it a plant,” another soldier said. “It’s more like a weed.”
