Star Fox: Horizons
Author's Note: I present to you now the first episode of Star Fox: Horizons in the hope that you will find the story enjoyable. Horizons takes place on the Skies of Time timeline, after the events of Through Unheard Eyes, Defiance, and Black Skies. However, while it begins at a point after Black Skies, it does not continue on this timeline. Consider it an alternate universe, an offshoot of the main timeline. Thank you to my fans for helping me get to this point. I dedicate this piece of work to foxbird22 and Ice Fox 111 in the hopes that the Database Three project will continue to prosper. Thanks, you two.
Episode 1 Rampant Amok
Ahead through almost crystal-clear glass lay Solar, the celestial presence that had dominated the skies above Corneria for millennia. Even after all that time, it was much the same now as it had been then, a flaming globe of raw energy that was the very lifeblood of Lylat. It was a symbol of inexhaustible energy, of hope, cheer, and comfort. It was the guiding force of Lylat, which could give life to a planet, but take it away just as rapidly. Such had been the fate of Fichina, knocked from its orbit by an immense solar flare and doomed to die an icy death. The bones and frozen remains of the planet's original inhabitants were testament to that sad fact.
Yet today, Solar was a benevolent star, one that had hung bright in the viewpane since Beltino Toad had taken off in his cruiser that morning. He had woken up early that morning as the first golden rays of dawn and spilt into his room. As was his custom, Beltino had sat still in his bed for some time while his mind slowly shifted into wakefulness as he watched the sunlight slowly pan across the room, saturating the air with a rich, honeyed hue of gold.
He had passed by the old bedroom of his son, who was off with Star Fox conducting a diplomatic mission to Venom. Beltino's eyelid quirked ever so slightly at this- his son would never have considered taking a diplomatic career just ten years ago. Now, after battling through three wars, each of them a bitter, draining conflict spanning many months, Slippy had come to appreciate quiet and serenity. With Star Fox's reputation, they now worked as jacks-of-all-trades. As mercenaries, as diplomats, even as scientists. Most of the team had taken jobs at Arspace, as test pilots and concept scientists. Yet they all still retained their restless nature ingrained into them by the life of a mercenary, and more often than not, none of them would check into Arspace Headquarters.
Now, as his personal cruiser, Hopalong, rose through the skies, Beltino found himself reminiscing about years not long ago. Much had changed in the seven years since the Treaty of Lence was signed, ending the Grallian War- Fox and Krystal, along with Falco and Abbey, had married, and while neither couple had had children just yet, Beltino knew there would be some on the way soon enough.
Ahead of his sleek cruiser, which somewhat resembled an elongated Wolfen hull with two large engine pods mounted to either side, the skies began to deepen and darken, fading swiftly from the rosy hues of morning, to a cool cyan, to a dancing azure, and finally to the deepest hues of sapphire. At last, even this fell away to be replaced with the black emptiness of space.
Not that that wasn't of beauty either- Beltino looked around him and could appreciate, for the thousandth time, the wonderful, splendid array of the stars around Lylat, winking orbs of distant light that seemed to shimmer and pulse with a life of their own. A spray of white on a stellar scale, a work of art painted upon the cosmos.
An ethereal wisp of red flickered out from the surface of Solar, drawing Beltino's attention back ahead of him. His viewpane darkened, becoming indistinguishable against the void as a computer analyzed the intensity of Solar's brilliance and tinted the viewpane accordingly. Beltino's eyes slid from Solar, now erupting in tiny flares of orange and yellow, and to the cool, silver length of the Orbital Gate.
The station was freshly polished after a rogue comet had given it a good coating of dust and debris before it could be vaporized by the new Helios Laser, and the effects were dazzling. The gate refracted and reflected hues of light all over the spectrum, rainbow fire seeming to trace along its lines as the light of Solar enveloped it in its embrace. The spectacle was drowned out within a few moments once the viewpane adjusted again, but for that instant, Beltino had seen another masterpiece of the infinite.
The Hopalong came to rest with a smooth bump, landing gear scraping for a fraction of a second along the steel deck before it latched on with a dull clang. The canopy split into four pieces, both sides retracting downwards into the cruiser's sides, the front sliding in ahead of him and the ceiling rolling back into the panel behind him. A panel in the siding descended downwards, and Beltino, almost nimbly, hopped from his eat and to the deck.
The toad was almost whistling as he checked himself into his lab, going to work with more zeal then he had mustered these past few days.
For he was conducting not the research of peace that he loved, but development on another powerful weapon for Corneria's armed services. A new ship-mounted weapon that could level the odds between Cornerian and Grallian weaponry.
But Slippy was coming home today, and that cheered up the older Toad greatly. His eyes wandered down the long firing range his lab adjoined, and he turned back to his work with a small chuckle, paws deftly moving spare parts off his work surface as he rang for his assistants to haul in the prototype.
Some distance away, plying the silent sea of space, was the sleek, streamlined profile of the famed mercenary dreadnought, the Great Fox. Although its warp drive was, at the moment, being plagued by fluctuations that would drop the ship in and out of warp at irregular intervals, aside from these fleeting distractions, the mercenaries were pleased with another job well done.
Perhaps, mused Fox, not all of us. He reclined back into his command chair, a well-padded affair of the softest fabrics, the strongest steel, and a simple computer interface on both armrests. The vulpine's eyes flicked out, watching as Slippy began to slam his fists into a control panel in frustration.
"Something bothering you, Slippy?" he asked, his voice lazy. Slippy rolled his eyes at the wall before turning back to Fox, throwing his webbed paws into the air.
"Of course there is!" he fumed. "Stupid warp drive. Keeps ditching us every few minutes or so. And I can't find the problem!" Fox quirked an eyebrow.
"I thought you knew these engines inside and out?"
"We got repairs at Kelton Station, not too long ago," reminded Abbey, swiveling around in her chair and looking up at Fox. "They gave us a new drive, remember?"
"And you never gave me the time to pull it apart," finished Slippy, glaring at the truculent fox, who gave a shrug.
"As soon as we get back from this mission, then you can tinker all you want," replied Fox, attempting to placate his rather unpredictable friend.
Not impressed, Slippy gave a dismissive "Yeah, yeah," turning back to his work as he did so.
Fox was suddenly and inexplicably reminded of Sauria.
"Alright boys," said Beltino, clapping his paws together, "let's do this. Set up the target!"
"Target set!" called Jeremy, a mongoose and one of Beltino's closest friends.
"Balto, the diagnostics?"
"All good!" replied the black dog, looking up from his console. "Antimatter stream is stable, ready for firing!"
"All set then? Well, ahem, let's give it a shot!" Groans sounded around the room at this bad, and thoroughly unintended pun as the toad waddled up to the cannon, primed it, then stepped behind a blast shield.
"Fire!" he called, and the lab shook to the rising roar of gunfire and the sudden rush of flames. A scarlet-glowing round had been expelled from the cannon's maw, accelerating with a scream and a thunderclap as it breached the sound barrier. Crashing into the solid, duraluminum block, it exploded, antimatter reacting to the contact with a burst of raw energy.
Beltino raced out from behind the shield. A blackened hole had been blasted into the block, which looked as if a volcano had raised a fist and slammed it repeatedly with the burning rock from its core.
Beltino made an absent nod to another assistant. There was now a loud whirring as smoke was sucked from the room by powerful ventillation fans. The hum of machinery followed as a type-three plasma streaming cannon was lowered from the ceiling, along with a plasma cannon of the type used on the Great Fox. To complete the control group, a scavenged Mark IV Arwing's pearl laser was mounted up on a platform upon the floor. More blocks of duraluminum were trundled, in.
A signal was given, and a crashing, rolling knell rebrevated through the room, forcing many of th escientists to cover sensitive ears with their paws. When the last echo of th edetonation rumbled away and faded, Beltino walked out from behind the blast shield to observe the effects.
The streaming cannon had bored a cone-shaped hole into its block, which ran in deep but was not wide at the mouth. Smoke wisped up from the damaged metal.
The plasma cannon had simply punched a charred, scorched crater in the duraluminum, which, although not impressively deep, was widespread. Not an inch of the plating was not blackened by the intense heat of the plasma.
The pearl laser had scorched away a clean aperture in the metal, not deep nor wide, but with the gun's yield well under that of the other two, it was impressive nevertheless.
Beltino studied the damage for a few more seconds, then snapped his fingers. An assistant came up to his side.
"Get me General Pepper," he informed the aide. "I believe we've done what he asked us to do."
Cheers erupted through the room. Everyone had had enough of explosions to last them a year.
"We're about to enter Cornerian airspace," said Abbey, paws running over her controls. "Dropping from warp." The Great Fox shuddered briefly, as if passing through rapidly congealing watter, before it settled, banking in towards Corneria. A glint of light reflected off the Orbital Gate.
Slippy's face was suddenly creased in a frown. A pudgy finger tapped a button, bringing a diagnostic up on the screen. His eyebrows knitted.
"We're having a power fluctuation," he reported, watching a waving line dance on his screen. "It looks like auxillary power core three..." A second passed as new data entered the screen. Slippy suddenly shrieked.
"It's going critical!" Fox leapt from his chair pushing himself up to his full height.
"Eject it!" yelled the Fox, panic entering his voice. Slippy's fingers scrabbled all over his control board as Abbey rushed over to help.
Fox only wished the rest of his team were on the bridge right now.
On the port quarter of the Great Fox, a cylindrical object, nestled deep in a protective sheath, sparked, a rising scream ripping from its depths. Blue fire raced along power conduits, explosions tearing through hull plating and fires springing up to consume the wiring like some hungry beast.
Around the base of the power core, a ring of small charges detonated, severing the canister's connection to the structural girders and shooting the power core along a short tube. At the space-side aperture, two panels shot open with great speed as the failing power core was jettisoned upon a plume of flame into the void.
The core drifted in silence as the Great Fox roared away, sparks and blue fire running down its sides and flaring into space. Flashing, squarish indicator lights and crystal panels began to blow out, unleashing great quantities of vapor, flame, and electricity to rush from the opening and out into space.
White light spiked from blown panels, fading suddenly as a brilliant, fuchsia sphere enveloped the power core as it imploded. The spherical shockwave raced out, easily outdistancing the residual debris that was flung away from the ruined core.
The Great Fox's engines flickered and died, leaving the ship listing and tumbling out of control, its great mass plowing on through space and very nearly slamming into an unwary transport leaving orbit. The fuchsia shockwave went crashing into the transport as well. Its lights dimmed, flickered, and failed.
The Orbital Gate did not shake in the slightest as the wave ran over its length. For an instant, the station appeared untouched. Then it began to shudder and come apart as explosions tore through its armored plating, ripping chunks of metal from the station's surface and flinging it out into space.
As the lights dimmed, an explosive rumbling shook the ground beneath Beltino's feet. He realized what was happening almost immediately, and he lurched over the rapidly turning ground, paw stretching for the antimatter vent controls.
He never got there. Somewhere, many feet below the toad, a molecule of antimatter collided with the duraluminum of the station and exploded with brutal force. The lab above was incinerated instantly, the floor thrown into the ceiling as it cracked apart, flames licking up from the fractures to consume its victims.
The Orbital Gate broke apart, its great ring cracking and crumbling to pieces from within. Fire streamed out from hangars, casting charred hulks of fighters and cruisers out from their resting places, bearing them upon a tidal wave of crimson. The great, rumbling explosions of antimatter reactions drove the flaming wreck ever downwards, and it disappeared from sight in a blazing fireball as it fell into the atmosphere.
Corneria City was directly under the Orbital Gate when the ravaged station began its freefall. Fiery wings formed by broken debris slammed into Corneria Proper, obliterating the capital building and much of the business fronts, killing countless thousands.
The body of the station plummeted onto Army Headquarters. General Pepper was in his office, reading a report out loud to James McCloud and his team when the ceiling caved in, burying the foursome in a veritable rainstorm of metal fragments and corpses from levels above.
Power flickered back into the Great Fox, computers rebooting with chirps and whirs that completely defied the gravity of the situation. Fox took one look at Corneria City, far below. Even from this distance, the lurid, flaming wreckage of much of downtown Corneria was visible, and black, tarry smoke was already blanketing the region.
A whining tone sounded from Abbey's console. The otter hit the comm button.
The captain of the transport the Great Fox had nearly rammed took one look at the vulpine's stunned face and started to shout.
"What the hell have you done, McCloud!?"