Perplexity Chronicles
Act 1: Siblings of the Stars
Prologue
1:1:0
"From the vantage point of a terrestrial being space seems so inviting, so full of intrigue and life to be sought. But when one gets there he cannot but grasp that all he finds is a soul-crushing vacuum populated by specks of frozen dust and waves of killer radiation and distances which at all angles seem insurmountable between countless dead worlds which could not possibly yield life.
And yet, facing these tremendous realities, life finds the strength to continue to find hope that, despite the fruitless efforts, somewhere out in the vast killer emptiness there is another child of the universe searching for it siblings of the stars. To explore such a frontier is the most dangerous prospect for one who lives, and it is the bravest amongst us who dare to accept these challenges the universe brings."
These words have been beat into the heads of the brilliant minds of the Cornerian Academy of Interplanetary Biology. And these words spoken many years ago by the leader of the Academy at the time and winner of the Theslar Prize of Genius in Physics for producing the methods by which faster than light travel could be achieved economically ring true even more loudly than they did when they were said. Missions this extensive had never been attempted in Cornerian history, and all of those placed on Project Exodus were sure that with the amount of resources being shoveled into this credit-heavy mission that the discovery of a new form of life outside of the Lylat system would be the eventual product.
The search for life after the long peace following the infestation of the Aparoid menace was mainly being funded by the massive amounts of resources left over by the salvaged remains of the dead Aparoid army. (Who knew such a tragedy could be so profitable? Such is the way of Capitalism.) That and nobody really seemed in the mood for fighting after getting a taste of death dealt by mindless machines. So, as one could imagine, people who still had the fight left in them were greatly appreciated…and well paid. It was this reason primarily that the Cornerian Department of Intergalactic Defense, quickly organized after the Aparoid invasion, had sent several of their finest mercenary teams with the Exodus Fleet to assist should any...violent interactions occur.
The Exodus Fleet was a total of four primary ships. One for planetary analysis with the best planetary sensors credits could buy, the second was a terrarium experiment ship for if/ when some form of life was to be discovered proper experiments could be performed, the third was basically a flying cryptological linguists college with the best minds on theoretical language synthesis and the social sciences working full time on producing outgoing signals that could be interpreted by any intelligent race with half a working cortex, and the final one was a fully functioning Military Carrier. The other smaller vessels were a handful of engineering ships, frigates, and mobile Agriculture Stations.
Many of the young and old scientists were very excited to know that there were multiple combat celebrities amongst them. Although the mercenary teams tended to stick to the Carrier, often some of them would get bored enough of sitting around waiting for some not-so-likely fight that they wanted to meander about the other ships to see what was going on. Confusion riddled them whenever they did decide to do this, except for Slippy Toad who usually spent the long hours being lost on one of the many fabrication decks of the largest engineering craft doing whatever it is tech-heads do when they have more materials and precision-tools than they need, but desperately trying to understand what the tech-heads were saying seemed better than the overall boredom of their cabins or risking the structural integrity of their spacecraft in sparring flights out in the vacuum of space.
Fox McCloud could be found in the seat of his Arwing, docked in a dusty hangar. He couldn't spend any time pushing blood from his brain to his paws by practicing maneuvers outside because they were scheduled for a total twelve hours of safe-thrust in light speed, which happily no longer made him feel like he wanted to throw up. The first time they did an extended light-speed thrust it was by about hour six Fox had made a hysterical display of how delicate his stomach was. It was then the geeks had something to tease the muscle heads about.
The unhappy reality that misery loves company happened to put a silk lining on the day; Fay was, for the first time in months, bored of rewiring her pet Landmaster's control systems and was keeping him company, fluffing her droopy poodle ears with a silver comb and drinking some sort of energy-sludge out of a packet she had snuck out of the emergency food storage.
"Fay, that Shit's going to kill you; are you aware it was made in case the crew needs to be awake for extremely long periods of time?" Fox asked, worried like a father for the young tech-genius who had joined the crew not long after graduating from the Cornerian Military academy.
"Oh, you're not my dad, Foxie," she said, predictably.
"Don't call me 'Foxie', Fay." He said, annoyed.
She huffed, "But Krystal and Falco call you that all the time; why can't I?"
"It's different between those two. One is a jerk I can't boss around and the other is, well…different."
Fay must have had a thick skull, because the continued on despite the delicate hint to shut-it. "Besides, how am I supposed to keep myself from wasting so much time? You know the average person spends one third of their life asleep."
Fox looked at her sternly through the window of his craft, "so?"
"SO, with all that extra time I can get myself ahead by doing way more than other people in my position. I'm so privileged to have gotten this spot and replace Slippy when he and Amanda leave for whatever he plans to do I want to be able to compare," she began another torrent of information and plans, speaking gradually faster as she went on, sometimes slurring her words into sentences that could only be vaguely interpreted.
"Fay, as your captain I'd rather have my crew operating at one-hundred percent two-thirds of the time than fifty percent all the time. If you really want to compare I want to see quality work out of your time, because as I remember the last trial run I made with that tank you worked on the left-forward axel exploded mid test," Fox said, lifting his eyebrow in an annoyed fashion. He couldn't remember last time he had a conversation like this with someone.
Fay was taken aback, "that…that was a fluke. I misclibrated the plas-fuel network, it happens all of the time."
"Slippy himself said it was a ridiculous mistake, one that could kill one of us in combat. He told me you seemed awful dark around the eyes that day. Please get some proper sleep before I have to order you to." Fox leaned back and closed his eyes.
"Yes, sir…" she said, grumbling a little under her breath.
It was quiet for a little while until the tension let up and Fay sat back up, turning the Comm-Unit back on. "Hey, Fox, do you think this whole thing is a waste of time?"
Fox chuckled. "Not really, we should feel lucky to have a gig right now that pays so well for practically no work at all."
"No," she continued, "I mean, this whole Exodus project thing." She pocketed her comb and tossed the drink-packet to the side. "The last Extra Lylatian beings we encountered were the Aparoids, and look at how that turned out. What makes anyone think another entity is going to be any nicer?"
Now, that was a serious thought from her, Fox considered. "I suppose there's risk in anything so unknown. But after that whole Aparoid thing people are looking for any other light in the darkness to call an ally. You know, like space-siblings or some other nonsense like that."
"So, what do you hope for then? You had us take this job for a reason I gather." Fay began reading some code from the Arwing's computer.
Fox breathed deep. "I guess I'm hoping there's some true goodness outside our little system. The Venomians are a waste of carbon and we already had that discussion about the Aparoids, so maybe there's another creature like us who's seeking out the unknown and DOESN'T what to KILL it. I'm certainly not looking forward to getting in a fight with an unknown enemy, that's for damned sure. They could have weapons that open black holes, split space-time, or turn our fucking ships into cheese for all we know."
Krystal's voice came over the Comm. "I think we'll find someone truly as unique as us, I have a good feeling about all this." The both of them saw Krystal had snuck into her Arwing while they were in conversation.
"Well, we both know not to disregard your hunches, Krystal," Fox said, giving her a wink through the glass. "When did you get here, anyway?"
Fay started in again. "You mean you're going to give every little hunch she has serious consideration; what's with that bias? I have hunches too, you know!"
He leaned back and popped his knuckles. "When you've worked with Krystal as long as we have you learn to trust those little hunches, her instincts have their place in our line of work."
Krystal chuckled and leaned toward Fox's Arwing. "Is it bad that we feel more comfortable talking to each other like this than in person?"
"I think it just means you're working too hard all the time, you guys need a break." Fay said, oblivious to what was going on between to two Vulpines.
He could see the inquiry in her eyes and Fay probably hadn't caught the hint. "Well, at least you've made that progress. Perhaps we can try it in private now. How 'bout some practice, eh Foxie?"
Fox began stuttering and running his palm across his throat. "Not with the kid around!" he said moderately-quiet through his teeth.
"See, she can call you Foxie!" Fay returned.
"It's different; leave it at that, kid." Fox said, distressed at the attention into his personal life.
"I'm not a kid!" Fay raised her voice, "I just turned 19, and I'm a legal adult! And why are you so sensitive about your shyness? It's okay to admit it, Fox Sir."
Krystal was perfectly entertained, giggling and winking back at him. "I guess you could say it's something like that. Anyway, I came down to say that the Lieutenant Captain is calling a meeting on the main flight bridge in exactly two hours starting…now, so you should try and make yourself look nice, Fay."
As it would suppose, Fay was waiting for an opportunity to not be bored so she rocketed out of the cockpit of the Arwing she was sitting in and took off towards the Cabin Deck. Krystal could sense the psychic 'thank you' a mile away from Fox.
Krystal looked at Fox after a short silence and they both got out and on their feet. She approached him, staring into his eyes. "You know," he began, holding her arms tenderly, "there are some days I wish I could see what you're thinking."
Krystal put her forehead to his. "There's nothing going on up here that you don't already know, love." She held him close to her, knowing no one but the cameras were watching. "When this is all said and done?" She asked as though it had been asked many times before.
Fox pecked a kiss to her forehead and hugged her tightly. "I promise."
There was some noise coming down another hallway which sounded like footsteps and it startled the both of them. "Hey, lovebirds!" a familiar tough-guy voice rang from outside the hangar.
"What is it Falco?" Fox asked, reluctantly parting hands with Krystal.
He stepped in, looking as though he had just rolled out of his cabin bed, in a terrible looking standard issue uniform the Project offered, compliments of the Cornerian Defense Force. Fox's best guess was that Falco didn't want to wear out his nice looking red digs by wearing them when nothing was going on. "Meeting's been moved forward. Apparently the communication ship thinks it's found something interesting, which is good news to me since it's been real boring this past month standing around spinning our wheels. So if you're done shacking up you'd better hustle."