-Chapter One-

It started in stillness. Stars sat, like delicate grains of sand, amidst the colorless galaxy. It was a space that seemed to operate outside the hands of time. A space in which, the universe hung in the perpetual state of balance it had always known; every cause had an effect and every action a reaction. It was a pendulum, swinging one way only to return to the exact position it had begun in. A clock that would never ring, shrouded in indefinite silence as the many ticks of the macrocosm fired on, maintaining equilibrium.

And then, it was gone.

A flash seared the sky's surface. The tendons of the Apariod's planet stretched at a molecular level, far beyond their normal limits until finally ripping apart. Seconds later, a dismantling quake ruptured through to the surface shattering the planet as if it were a frail wine glass. All the cries let out by the homeworld, as it crumbled, were lost to a destitute vacuum. As is the way of the universe, it didn't take long for the balance to float back to normal. And, once again, the clock had reset itself.

The planet, a few moments ago, was a bastion to the Aparoids. The home of creatures who called for the extermination of all life was now a stilled graveyard. A claustrophobic sea of debris now filled the ambient space where it had once sat. The remints of the forlorn race now hung, inert, slowly churning in zero gravity. Meer miles away from the epicenter of the planet's wreckage sat five ships which, while motionless, were anything but inert.

They were survivors. Despite everything that had been thrown at them, every obstacle, every enemy, they had made it out alive. Mission accomplished. By once again surmounting the impossible the Star Fox team found themselves in a small moment of respite. And so, for the first time since the mission had begun, could once again rest easy.

"Fhew!" Slippy's voice rang out across all four of the communication lines. "I can't believe we're all still flying! Or alive."

"You said it, Slippy," chimed Falco from his ship. "Those aparoids are apa-destroyed!"

"Oh, Falco," Peppy added half-heartedly from the Great Fox. "Your ability to turn-a-phrase was what I was going to miss the most about you."

"Awe, and here I thought it was my winning personality." The avian pilot cackled to himself. "I do gotta say, though. That was a pretty tight maneuver you pulled back there. Didn't think you still had it in you, Gramps."

"You listen here now! I've had it in me since you were just a fledgling."

"That's right, Falco," Krystal's words carried a playful contempt. "Better not make him mad or next time it won't be a shield barrier he drops the ship on."

"Yeah, Falco!" sneered Slippy.

Their leader, Fox McCloud, shook his head, half amused with the banter now playing over the comms. It was warming to see all his friends together again. He let go of the controls of his ship as it idled in place. His hands were still stiff with the tension brought on by the past hours of fighting. He laid back in his seat and looked around at all the chunks of metal slowly drifting off in the distance. After a brief sigh of relief, Fox turned his head toward the Great Fox. The team's flagship had sustained a serious amount of damage during the fight. It was nothing short of a miracle that it was still flying. Dwelling on this, however, brought Fox's mind to a different place.

"Say, Peppy. What's the status on the Cornerian Fleet that came with us? I'm not seeing any of them here."

The rabbit took a long pause before answering. "Fox, I'm sorry, but none of the other ships survived the retreat. What you're looking at… well, we're all that's left."

"That means Wolf's team too… Peppy, I'm sorry."

"Fox, they all knew what they signed up for. And just look at what we've accomplished. Their deaths weren't in vain."

The vulpine nodded his head semi-reassuringly. Even if what Peppy said was true, that was still a lot of people who died in the line of duty. Thousands of Cornerian soldiers he never knew or met were now gone. Not to mention, there were the lives the of three pilots of Star Wolf who had unconditionally aided them throughout the aparoid invasion, for the most part at least. Fox couldn't help but think if he had destroyed the queen sooner things would have turned out differently. A voice suddenly caught his attention causing him to lift his head up.

"Hold on a second," Krystal began, "If they're gone then that poses quite the problem, doesn't it?"

"Yeah right," Falco scoffed "Since when has Wolf's team being iced caused us any problems?"

"No, not them, I meant the fleet. You said none of them survived."

The vixen's comment struck the other four with incredible weight. They all knew exactly where she was going when she said that. Originally, when the team had traveled through the Zypher Ring's wormhole they had been backed by five Cornerian dreadnaughts all of which had a special communication rigs that allowed for a point-to-point communication with the Orbital Gate. This allowed the researchers stationed there to effectively close off the wormhole from aparoid use. Once the fighting had subsided, any one of the five ships could then radio the gate and tell them to reopen it. Now, however, seeing as none of the five ships survived the assault, made this option no longer viable.

"Slippy," Fox called.

"Huh?"

"We need to contact the Orbital Gate. Your dads still stationed there, right? You must know what communication frequency they're using."

The engineer shrugged blankly. "Well, yeah but that wouldn't really help. The arwing's don't have the strength to broadcast a signal that far."

"But, surely the Great Fox can manage something." Krystal reasoned.

Peppy thought about it briefly from his spot on the ship. "Well, normally, The Great Fox boosts its signal through Laylat's comm buoy network. But chances are we're outside the range of those."

"And even if we were, and with all the destruction going on people will be making a lot of calls." Slippy added, "The bandwidth on those servers is probably occupied. Without military-priority, we'd experience some major latency."

"Would you cut the technobabble?" called Falco. "So, if we can't call them, how we supposed to get out of this dump, Slippy!?"

"Well, I mean maybe we won't have to. People will notice that the aparoids are shutting down… at least in the places we didn't clear out. And then they will reopen the wormhole, right?" Slippy asked unreassuringly.

"And what if they don't, Froggy? You expect us to just sit here like a couple of morons?"

"It might not sound proactive but it's an option, right? Or… well… I guess we could always try to travel to the nearest civilized planet. But who knows how long that could take?"

Fox took a moment to reconsider their predicament. It was like being marooned in the open ocean without any way to call for help. Except, here the stakes were higher. Every second they spent out here was precious. He knew Arwing's weren't built to maintain flight indefinitely. It would only be a matter of time before some technical malfunction caused one of them to breakdown. On the topic of malfunctions, the Great Fox had been stripped of all its thrusters and had no feasible way to move. With so much to focus on, it was better to start slow and gather information first.

"ROB, locate the nearest civilized planet." He ordered.

The robotic companion beside Peppy spring to life, imputing a series commands on the console that was nearest to him. Its mechanical appendages rhythmically tapped across the keys as the main display flickered to life. On the interface before them, a 3D model of the galaxy came into view. The image flickered in a semi-damaged state as the computer struggled to render an accurate approach vector.

Peppy adjusted his glasses as he tried to make out the waving image on the monitor. "Fox, I think ROB's voice-box is malfunctioning." Peppy called out over the communication channel, "The closest habitable planet is… Katina. Looks to be about, 6.8 parsecs away."

"7 parsecs, really? I'll just put my ship on auto, flip on a movie and will be there in no time." Falco laughed.

"This isn't like flying in the Great Fox, Falco," Slippy scolded. "Given the Arwing's thrust that would put us at… Mach 4.2…and then you have to convert it." The frog racked his brain trying to make sure he had done the math correctly. A cold realization overtook him when he finished the equation. "Um yeah, guys. That would be a-a seventeen-day flight."

The avian pilot grimaced in light of this new information. "In that case, someone better have brought a lot of movies with them."

[End of Chapter]