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Mission No. 1
Venom
Andross's Stronghold
Prologue: The End of the Nightmare
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3 Months Ago…
The siege on the Empire's stronghold was nearly finished. With team Starfox's announcement that the Supreme Leader Andross had died, allied forces erupted in cheers. Their jubilation was immeasurable. In less than a year, they had gone from hunkering in Cornerian bunkers to storming the last fortress of their enemy. Andross's death signaled the defeat of Venom. Lylat could once again rest in peace. Millions of soldiers wistfully daydreamed about returning to their warm homes and loving families, relieved that they survived the most devastating conflict in Lylatian history.
Then Pepper urged them,
"A little more."
They were not done yet. Through a hole in the suffocating brown clouds, they could see sunlight; bleary eyes opened to daylight's beckon, but they still lay dreaming the closing act of a nightmare.
From bunkers in the jagged wasteland crags, Venomian forces vomited forth like plagues of insects. At first they maintained some form of military organization, but with their Emperor dead they were too shaken to hold formation. At the first sign of allied offence their ranks crumbled. It was like striking pillars of sand.
As the allies circled the wasteland several divisions of elite Cornerian forces descended to the surface. They had something better to do than round up escaping Venomians. A wealth of technological advancements and scientific breakthroughs now lay entombed beneath the cracked desert surface. That is, if any of it was left by the time they got there.
Through the central shaft Starfox had penetrated to confront Andross, black smoke billowed into the sky like ink blooming in water. Cornerian Central Intelligence warned that the Emperor's death would likely trigger an automatic self-destruct sequence in many of his labs, as well as a manual scorched earth operation carried out by his most loyal generals and scientists. Andross proclaimed the order in what he called the "Zero Decree." Nothing of value was to fall into Cornerian hands, even after his death.
This also applied to any off-world territory under Venom's control.
Joint groups of Cornerian shock troopers and bomb squads lead the way into Venom's heart. The soldiers stamped out enemy stragglers and arrested scientists while the bomb squads did their best to neutralize the self-destruct mechanisms. In many cases it was already too late. The squads would find themselves standing on ledges of gaping holes that opened back out onto the wasteland, or come up against dead ends in underground tunnels that had been caved-in.
They, of course, were the lucky ones.
The soldiers that found their targets often wished they hadn't. Many came back from Venom scarred from the unspeakable horrors they'd found beneath the surface.
At the head of one such group was Commander Bill Grey. He lead a landing party made up of personally-selected troops from both Husky and Bulldog units to scour the Eastern complexes for any salvageable tech. From his observations, most experiments had ceased before the final invasion. Save for a few unrecognizable corpses gutted on the operating tables. They didn't even seem Lylatian anymore.
And then Bill found him.
His visor's HUD identified the scientist as Dr. Werner von Liebegute. The baboon cowered behind a control panel, lying face down over the arrays of buttons and switches. He was…whimpering.
Bill approached the scientist, but froze when he noticed the broken safety glass and the doctor's clenched fist striking the large red button underneath.
The self-destruct switch! But why wasn't it working?
Von Liebegute let out a soulful wail, only weakly pressing the button now. With his men likewise frozen behind him, Bill decided to take advantage of the malfunction. He cautiously approached the doctor until he was upon him. The baboon hardly offered any resistance as he removed him from the panel and cuffed his hands behind him; he only sobbed freely.
"Patterson, Randal; trace the wires and find what went wrong. We need to make sure it's not just a temporary delay."
The two members of the bomb squad nodded and rushed over to the control panel, using their equipment to follow the electrical current. At least, what its path should have been.
Bill followed closely behind, looking over their shoulders. The two men swept their sensors across the floor and along the wall. Their short pilgrimage took them out of the systems room and down another dark, grime-covered hallway. Eventually, Randal stopped in front of a locked door.
"Sir, I found the explosives, but…there was no break in the wire."
"What? You better cut in there to make sure."
At his bidding, the two used energy saws to cut through the laboratory wall. Inside they located and removed a pack of explosives, carefully separating it from the trigger wires.
"There's no explaining it sir. By every right, the first time the baboon pressed that button, this lab should've been blown sky-high."
"Are you saying…?"
"It's nothing short of a miracle, sir."
Bill let out a fractured, shaky sigh, reeling from how close to he and his men had come to death. He scratched his chin and studied the door to the left of the explosives cache.
"Hack the lock. Maybe our answer lies behind there."
Once the door was unlocked Bill gestured for his men to wait outside. With his commando blaster raised to his cheek he rounded the corner and slid into the eerie darkness.
What he found in the ashes changed him.
Many of the men asked why they didn't just bomb the labs and be done with them. They shared the general feeling that Andross's work was inherently evil and should be left alone. The higher-ups explained that all of Lylat was in ruins, and Venom owed reparations. Anything that would speed along the reconstruction process. Lylat was hurting from its war scars, in danger of bleeding to death. Even with Andross's defeat, they were desperately in need of a healing savior, a person to lead Lylat out of the ashes of war.
Now, standing before a glass tank inhabited by a breathtaking, otherworldly vixen, Bill new in his heart…
…that he had found Lylat's savior.
Arc I: Lylat, From the Ashes
