Defeat at Fortuna
Disclaimer: I do not own StarFox, or any other related characters, vehicles, planets, or evil insane monkey dictators. The characters used in this story are property of Nintendo and used without permission for the non-profit purpose of the entertainment of its readers. By reading this, you forfeit all rights to sue me for anything related to the reading of this fiction.
AN: For those SF64 fans that notice I "disregarded" some aspects of the Fortuna mission, most notably the part about Fortuna being under Cornerian control to start with rather than Venomian control, I did it on purpose. Also, I know that Fortuna in SF64 is technically supposed to be Fichina due to a translation error. Because this is a take on the SF64 battle, I'm sticking to the SF64 names. It makes the story more interesting. Also, those interested in the reasons I wrote this should check my profile page. Okay, enough jawin'. Let's get to it!
Lylat System, Venom
Imperial Palace
"What!?! How could four simple ships single-handedly destroy our occupying forces on Corneria? I stationed two commanders there to maintain order and they both get torn apart like rag dolls in a hurricane!!"
'The Emperor doesn't like this,' thought a one-eyed wolf to himself. The lupine was an imposing figure, tall and mean. Wolf O'Donnell was the leader of StarWolf, a mercenary squadron loyal to Venom. The Venomian forces had just been routed at Corneria by another mercenary squadron, Team StarFox. Wolf hated the leader of StarFox, Fox McCloud, with a burning passion that cannot be put into words, all because of an event long ago in both their pasts. But Wolf couldn't dwell on his blood-lust now: he had a seething monkey in front of him that wanted answers, and wanted them now.
"Perhaps StarFox is more of a threat than they appear to be," offered the wolf.
"Yes, I am sure of it," the Emperor responded after a pause he needed to soothe his nerves. "The young McCloud is much like his father. A great pilot, brave, overcomes all odds…"
The Venomian dictator drifted deeply into thought. Wolf was quickly tiring of standing at attention, something he had to do in a formal situation like this. Wolf usually didn't act like the member of a military force of his employer, but Andross paid well, and Wolf's team needed the money. He broke the awkward silence by bringing up the subject that he had come here for.
"Sir, in order for your plan to be successful, we must recapture Corneria. You asked us for our assistance. Just what is your plan, Emperor?"
Andross snapped back to the matter at hand, and immediately got down to business.
"We can assume that StarFox has moved to aid the embattled Cornerian Fleet currently engaged with one of our taskforces in the Sector Y nebula. That leaves the Meteo asteroid field and Fortuna, the main obstacles to Corneria on the other side of Lylat completely and utterly defenseless. Defenseless, that is, with the exception of the Cornerian Military Outpost and Observatory, abbreviated C-MOO in some circles, on the planet Fortuna. That cursed observatory reports our every action in all of the Cornerian-controlled section of Eastern Lylat. If we could capture it or, better yet, destroy it, then we would effectively open up a perfect route of attack directly into Corneria. I'll leave the logistics of this particular mission up to you. Dismissed."
Lylat System, Unknown
Team StarWolf Headquarters
"Pigma! Andrew! Wake up you lazy scoundrels! We have a mission, and I don't want to waste any time."
Wolf absolutely hated those two. The only reason they were on the team is because the Emperor needed a baby-sitter for his nephew and Pigma was famous for betraying the original StarFox team. Leon Powlaski, Wolf's best friend although he would never admit it to anyone, was the only decent reliable member of the team.
"What now?" inquired the reptilian Leon; Wolf's unruly wake-up call had caught his attention.
"Simple. Take out the base on Fortuna. Since the war has shifted to Western Lylat, defenses should be lower on the base than normal," replied the one-eye as a devilish grin spread over his toothy maw.
Pigma and Andrew had woken up and they walked over to where Wolf and Leon were standing. They had overheard Wolf's mission summary, and the pig spoke up first:
"Okay, so we level the place. Big deal."
"Yeah," added the monkey. "I can probably just sit this one out."
Wolf snarled at the two's incorrigible laziness.
"You ALL are coming, and expect to stay awhile. This is a perfect opportunity to extract my revenge on Fox McCloud. I will not have you utter idiots ruin this chance for me."
"Why do you need to involve them?!? This is a simple mission-don't overcomplicate it," Leon, the rational thinker, snapped at Wolf.
"Don't question my judgment!" Wolf snapped right back. "I have stored five collapsible drone fighters inside of each of your Wolfens. We will take the base on Fortuna by complete surprise, eliminating all prisoners we happen to take. Then, we'll plant a bomb on the wall right next to the core generator inside the base. We shall take the Wolfens into Fortuna's upper atmosphere next, relying on the heavy cloud cover to cloak our position. From there, all we do is wait for StarFox to come and investigate the "distress signal" that we will send out from the base. The drone ships will be launched as soon as StarFox is on the scene, and when they take care of the drones, they will surely land and enter the base to find the problem. As soon as they go inside, we'll detonate the bomb remotely, thus destroying the base, our chief opposition, and my greatest enemy!"
By now, Wolf's toothy grin had grown even wider-and darker. The three other pilots backed away from Wolf after he finished laying out the plan, because his normal evil aurora had grown to encompass the entire room.
"Uhhh….Wolf? Calm down a bit. I'm sure the plan will work out just fin-" Leon's attempt to break the awkward silence was quickly cut off by an angry Wolf O'Donnell.
"Silence! Everyone, report to your Wolfens. NOW!!!"
Lylat System, Fortuna
Cornerian Military Outpost/Observatory (C-MOO)
The base on Fortuna was a small one by Cornerian standards. It had three runways going into connected above-ground hangers. The majority of the structure was located underground, but the dominating structure of the base was the massive radar telescope that slowly spun on top of the hanger level. The officer in charge of the radar telescope never had a chance to react when the wolf clad in a special operations stealth suit busted down the door behind him. As he turned around to investigate the odd sound, he was met with a dagger to the throat, effectively silencing him. After turning off all of the telescope's functions except for the rotation, Wolf O'Donnell's earpiece crackled to life:
"This is Leon. All hostiles in the hanger level have been eliminated and the bomb has been placed. Reporting to my Wolfen in order to provide air cover."
"Good. Wolf here. The telescope has been taken care of. Pigma! Andrew! Report in!"
After an extended pause, the radio finally sounded again. A squeaky voice filled the airwaves.
"The lower levels have been secured. Can I go home yet?"
"No, Pigma. We still have a Fox to fry," Leon answered before Wolf could.
"Andrew has sent out the distress signal. What should he do now?" Andrew added to the conversation, exercising his annoying habit of speaking in the third person, a habit he must have picked up from his uncle, the Emperor.
"Okay, all is set. Pigma, you and Andrew get to your Wolfens and fly a holding pattern with Leon in the upper atmosphere. Use the clouds to conceal yourselves. I'll ready the drones in the hanger and set up a few camera towers to alert us when Foxie and his buddies get here for the party."
Pigma and Andrew were more than happy to get out of the base and back into the Wolfens: Andrew, because the Wolfens had a heating system, and Pigma, because his Wolfen had his extra rations in it. As those two happily flew up into the atmosphere to join Leon, Wolf was finishing up in the hanger. Earlier, they had unloaded the drone ships into the hanger bays. The base had three runways, each beginning inside the hanger and ending only twenty meters outside the base. With seven drones laid on two runways, and six on the other, all was set. Wolf made one final check on the one minute time-delay fuse on the bomb and, seeing all was set, walked over to his Wolfen. Once in the air, he radioed Leon.
"All is set. StarFox should arrive within the hour and then the game will be made."
"Wolf, allow me to review the plan," the reptile replied, ignoring Wolf's previous statement. "We hide out in the upper atmosphere, cloaking ourselves with the heavy clouds. We wait for the enemy to reach the base, at which point the drones will be launched. We allow the drones to be destroyed, and then we pounce!"
"Precisely." By now, the entire StarWolf team was in formation flying in a holding pattern, waiting. "This upcoming dogfight should prove to be most interesting."
Lylat System, Fortuna
Fortuna Orbit
Four Arwings streaked through the ebony nothingness that is outer space, followed by a large, Dreadnaught-Class Space Carrier struggling to keep up with the smaller ships. Team StarFox had just received a class "A" distress signal from the C-MOO base at Fortuna and had postponed their operations in Sector Y to investigate.
ROB 64, the robot in charge of piloting GreatFox, the StarFox mothership, broke radio silence with his monotone electronic voice.
"Now entering Fortuna atmosphere."
Fox spoke next, "Adjust the wings and G-Diffuser for planetary flight."
Falco Lombardi, Peppy Hare, and Slippy Toad all followed their leader's command without comment. Falco, at least, usually had something sarcastic to say about everything. But, this time, everyone was silent. No one wanted to comment on the sudden emergency at Fortuna, mainly because the entire team shared a common bad feeling about it. Fox figured that it was simply Venomian trickery, but his duty forced him to investigate it. He was warming up his lasers anyway. He looked behind him and noticed Falco was doing the same.
After about five minutes of this silent flying, Team StarFox reached the base. Wolf's observation towers must have been doing their job, because the drones began taking off as soon as the Arwings were in sight. They all found this to be exceptionally odd: Fortuna was supposed to be allied, wasn't it?
"Why are ships coming out of the base?" Slippy put everyone's thoughts into words.
When the drones moved into attack formations, there were no questions as to their intentions.
"All-Range Mode!" ordered Fox.
"Got one!" Falco cheered. In the time everyone else was preparing to attack, he had downed an enemy ship and was maneuvering to engage another.
As the battle spread across the sky, all the StarFox pilots were getting plenty of kills. Unbeknownst to them, however, four other enemy ships were converging on their position.
"I've got a bad feeling about this, Fox," Peppy stated.
As if on cue, ROB came over the radio with a literal bomb-shell:
"A bomb has been planted at the base."
Somewhere above the battlefield, one Wolf O'Donnell cursed his luck.
"Dang! That robot discovered our bomb! This isn't supposed to happen! Not to us! Leon, begin the detonation sequence!"
"Are you crazy, Wolf?!? If we're anywhere near that thing when it goes off, we'll be taken with it!" Leon did not fancy the idea of getting deep-fried when his custom-made thermo-nuclear warhead went off.
"Just do it!" Leon's commander ordered, screaming, foaming at the corner of his mouth.
Leon hit the button, and Teams StarFox and StarWolf now had sixty seconds to duel.
"A bomb has been planted at the base." ROB's words echoed in Fox McCloud's head. Time slowed down. All the members of StarFox were engaged with the strange drone fighters, but the question remained: Was anyone free enough to take care of the bomb?
"Geez, can anyone take care of it?" Fox inquired of his team. However, a new voice cut off any reply.
"Can't let you do that, StarFox," said a chilling voice with a slight accent. Simultaneously, the image of a grey wolf with one eye and a scar appeared in the communications system of every ship in Fortuna airspace.
"Andross has ordered us to take you down!" Leon spoke next, and now the quartet of four grey and red, four-winged ships were visible, bearing down on the battlefield form above.
"Peppy, long time no see," the porcine made his taunt next, alluding to his now infamous betrayal of the original StarFox team.
"Andross' enemy is my enemy!" The imperial nephew made a final jest and the four Wolfen fighters of team StarWolf broke formation to engage the four Arwings of team StarFox. Each StarWolf member picked his own target: Andrew took Slippy, Pigma fought Peppy, Leon engaged Falco, and Wolf O'Donnell dueled Fox McCloud. Wolf's chance at revenge had finally arrived.
"Just what I need to see. StarWolf," Fox responded to the previous taunts in a nonchalant manner, which only served to further enrage Wolf.
The all-out brawl between the two squadrons of aces began. For StarWolf, the pressure was already on because they knew that they had less than a minute to win. ROB then decided to spoil the surprise Wolf had so carefully planned.
"The bomb has been activated. One minute until detonation."
"What!?!?" Slippy blurted in shock at what ROB's sensor sweeps had discovered. In Slippy's moment of distraction, Andrew managed to get in close and let off a volley of lasers, shearing off Slippy's left wing and drastically reducing his shields.
"Fox! Get this guy off me!" screamed the mechanical whiz.
Fox was kinda busy with Wolf at the moment, but he knew he had to save the amphibian. Fox jerked his Arwing into a sharp vertical loop, pulling out pointed in Slippy's direction. This maneuver elected a frustrated and confused "What the heck!?!" from Wolf.
Andrew was so engrossed in keeping Slippy in his sights that he didn't notice the leader of StarFox get on his six. By the time Andrew noticed him, a blaze of blue hyper lasers disintegrated the majority of the ape's Wolfen, forcing Andrew to crash land in a snow drift, screaming "Uncle Androsssssssss!!!!" all the way down until he hit.
One down, three to go. ROB came over the radio with an update:
"Thirty seconds until detonation."
While Fox was busy barbecuing Andrew, Falco and Peppy were using team tactics to fight Leon and Pigma. They covered each other's six, landing the occasional laser every now and then, but time was running out. Then, Peppy saw Fox heading towards them after splashing Andrew. As Peppy was formulating a plan, Falco and Leon were in a war of words.
"Stupid bird, I am the great Leon!"
"Shove it, scale-skin!"
Leon absolutely hated all avians, Falco in particular. Falco never cared for too much for reptiles, and the green torture expert of StarWolf was no exception. Peppy had to interrupt the pilots' argument; Fox was getting closer and he had to put his plan into action.
"Falco, horizontal scissor maneuver, now!"
"Why? I'm doing just fine-"
"Just do it!"
Peppy and Falco pulled their Arwings into a criss-crossing maneuver, forcing Pigma and Leon to bring their Wolfens dangerously close together. Fox saw this weakness and silently thanked Peppy for his foresight. He then charged his lasers until a glowing green sphere of energy appeared at the tip of his Arwing's nose. He locked onto Pigma's ship and pulled the bright red trigger on the Arwing's flight stick, firing the orb of emerald light into the enemy Wolfen. Pigma's ship was utterly destroyed; the porcine ejected just in time to save his hide.
"My beautiful reward! Aggahahaha…." Were the last words anyone heard from Pigma Dengar for a long time.
Leon's ship, too, was crippled in the blast that decimated Pigma's Wolfen. He didn't have to eject, but he did struggle in the attempt to land his ship safely. As he crashed into the snow-covered plains of Fortuna, the last words he uttered in this fight were, "This can't be happening!"
Fox had gotten two Wolfens in one shot, but this distraction cost him. Wolf had come in behind the vulpine ace and was prepping his lasers. Before Fox was able to react, Wolf unleashed a shower of crimson bolts, crippling Fox's right wing and cutting his Arwing's shields in half. Fox countered by slamming on the airbrakes. As he expected, Wolf was unable to stop his faster Wolfen in time and overshot the Arwing. Just as Fox fired the booster to give chase, ROB provided another urgent time update:
"Fifteen seconds remaining until detonation."
Fox wished the Arwing would go faster. Wolf was gyrating his Wolfen in ways it was never meant to be maneuvered in a vain attempt to evade Fox's blazing blue hyper lasers, furiously tearing into the fuselage of his fighter.
"Ten seconds remaining"
Wolf gritted his teeth. This was not supposed to be happening. He should be firing the lasers, not dodging them! Gaahh! Fox just got in a lucky shot. Wolf's upper-right wing now resembled a cheese grater, not the stabilizer of a high-performance fighter.
"8…7…6…"
Fox had to hurry. That bomb was about to take out the entire base, and a good portion of Fortunian soil. ROB sent him the exact coordinates of the bomb's location in the hanger, just inside of one of the entrances. If Fox could fly in there with lasers blazing, he could probably hit the explosives pack and disarm it. Luckily enough, Wolf was flying towards the hanger with the bomb. Fox fired off a few more shots and, sure enough, he nailed Wolf's lower-left wing! This bit of destruction left the Wolfen hopelessly unstable; without a diagonal section of wings, the Wolfen went into an uncontrollable spiral into the frozen soil of Fortuna. As the ship rapidly fell, Wolf gave one last cry in his accented voice:
"This is not the end, Fox McCloud! Your blood shall be spilled by Me!"
Fox didn't have time to watch Wolf bail out before his Wolfen became a burning heap of scrap iron; five seconds remained before the base went up in smoke. He had to disarm the bomb in those five seconds; otherwise there'd be a nice little funeral for Team StarFox. He jammed the flight control stick forward and the Arwing dove down, making Fox float up in his seat due to the negative Gs the G-Diffuser system failed to counteract. The vulpine ace began fanning the bright red trigger on the flight stick that fired the Arwing's lasers as he flew the Arwing into the hanger with booster on full speed.
"3…2…1…"
One of the blue bolts exiting the Arwing's gun pods somehow struck the explosives pack, effectively disabling it with only milliseconds left before it would have destroyed the base. Fox's hunch that the bomb was resistant to lasers was dead-on. The bomb was engineered so that laser blasts wouldn't set it off, but Fox's lasers jarred it hard enough to disarm it. Fox did, however, have trouble successfully clearing the other exit from the hanger while screaming along at top speed. When Fox did streak out of the hanger, what was left of his right wing had been sheared off by the side wall of the hanger's exit.
But, he had done it! In less than sixty seconds, Team StarFox had defeated the four pilots of StarWolf, disarmed the base's bomb, and effectively saved all of Eastern Lylat from Venomian occupation.
As Fox brought his ship into open airspace, the other Arwings joined up on his wings in StarFox's signature formation.
"All ships report in!" ordered the Vulpine flight leader.
The blue avain responded first, "Falco here. I'm fine."
Next was the aged hare, "This is Peppy. I've taken a few hits, but I'm okay."
"My ship needs some serious repairs!" Slippy didn't identify himself, but his squeaky voice did that just fine.
"Well, at least you made it," Fox commented. "Okay, we're heading to Solar. Team StarFox, out!"
The four blue and grey Arwings jetted off into the wild blue yonder in unison, as is their style. Meanwhile, one livid Wolf O'Donnell gazed skywards, blazing with the want of revenge. All of the Wolfens had crashed fairly close together and their pilots, aside from the occasional scratch and bruise, came out relatively unscathed. As the four defeated pilots slowly trudged to the burning hulk that used to be Wolf's ship, Leon broke the silence.
"Well, that went well" Leon had the art of sarcasm down to a science.
"Just shut up," Wolf replied. He was in no mood to talk.
"We didn't even complete the mission of destroying the base. Leon told you to keep it simple, but NO, you had to go and—" Pigma's rant was prematurely cut off when Wolf grabbed him by the throat with one hand and proceeded to lift the 300+ pound pig off the ground, cutting off his airflow in the process.
Between Pigma's gasps for air, Andrew was heard to say, "Either way, Uncle Andross won't be too happy."
In response, Wolf merely chucked Pigma into the monkey. When Andrew fought through the piles of blubber and reached air, both were able to catch their breath. Andrew, having apparently not gotten the message that Wolf was not to be messed with, made another cheap threat:
"Owww! I'm tellin' my Uncle!"
Wolf just glared at Andrew in response, his one eye more than enough to unnerve the immature pilot.
"Wolf," Leon interjected calmly, breaking the tense silence. "We need to get off this ice box. Call in a transport to pick us up."
Wolf simply grunted, then used his comm-link to call in a Venomian Transport.
It was going to be a long ride home.