Peppy input Corneria's coordinates into the Great Fox, and let ROB do the piloting. The aging hare sat back with a small "harrumph", mug in his hand. Deftly with a hand, he beamed a transmission signal to General Pepper, all the while giving his coffee a sip. Slippy turned down the music on the radio as the signal beeped for a few moments. Fox eagerly stared at the overhead screen, kicking his legs back and forth under his chair with anticipation.
"What's the old coot doin'? Is it really more important than the heroes of the Lylat System?" Falco scoffed from where he sat in his chair.
"Oh be patient for once, Falco," Slippy scowled at him. "He's the General of all of Corneria plus all of her colonies. That's most of the Lylat System's population! Don't you think he's a bit preoccupied?"
"Bahhh…" Falco spat, arms folded about his chest.
A few minutes later and the General's face appeared on the overhead screen, a lollipop comically sticking out of the corner of his mouth. "Star Fox!" He sounded as jolly as ever, his drooping jowls scarcely able to contain his smile. "How have you been? Enjoying your recent paychecks?"
"Oi! What paychecks? My bank account is still empty as my stomach," Falco began but Slippy pulled him back into his chair.
"Errr, never mind him!" the toad said apologetically.
"General Pepper," Fox said as he stepped forward. "The Star Fox team is requesting a favor."
"A favor?" General Pepper raised his eyebrows. "Well, I can't promise anything, but I will do my best for you guys."
"We're looking to re-enter Venom's airspace," Fox explained, "It's… kind of a long story."
General Pepper's brows rose with intrigue. He jostled the lollipop in his mouth with thought for a second, in silent congress with himself. "You want to go back to Venom?"
"Yes, sir," Fox answered.
"Why?" General Pepper asked him, and Fox's ears flushed as his nerves rattled. He had known the hound would ask him—it was an odd request after all. Venom was known for its high amounts of toxicity in the air and water. Failed attempts at colonization had dubbed it the "Inhospitable Planet". More superstitious folk called it "the Cursed Planet", but Fox wasn't sure he believed that.
"During the mission on Venom, I encountered something odd as I was going into the planet's core. Or… well, what I thought was the planet's core," Fox explained, an anxious glance shot in Peppy's direction. The hare gave him a reassuring nod, and he continued after clearing his throat. "I saw an Arwing, sir. But more than that, I heard static over the radio. There was someone guiding me to where Andross was, sir. And I'd know that Arwing anywhere."
The General of Corneria did not even so much blink. Though glazed over his dark irises, and a distinct crunch of his lollipop could be heard from the transmission.
"Tell me about the Arwing," General Pepper said carefully.
"Mark I. Silver and blue. Some scratches and dings on the hull. I didn't get close enough to see the pilot," Fox said, "But there's only four Arwings in the Lylat System like that. Two of them are unaccounted for—Pigma's and…"
"Your father's," General Pepper munched on the lollipop, discarding the stick somewhere off screen. His expression was grave, but there was confusion in his features. The same questions that buzzed in Fox's mind were written in the hound's frown and eyes. "And you're sure of the two accounted for…"
"Mine is in the Great Fox as we speak," Peppy Hare chimed in, "And the fourth hasn't been used since Venom. I don't think it even has enough fuel cells to make it an hour in the air."
"And you're certain there's no way it could have been Pigma's?" General Pepper asked him.
Fox rubbed his chin. Could it have been Pigma's? It wasn't impossible—as far as he knew, Pigma still had his Arwing. But how would it have gotten to the core of the supposedly fake Venom? Who would have been piloting it that wanted Andross dead as much as the Cornerians did? Pigma clearly wasn't the one who had been guiding him to Andross… Their fight outside of the planet core's entrance had left him using his escape pod to flee for safety. It would have been impossible for him to find his Arwing and make it into the core, even if he had wanted to help Fox…
"Certain? I mean, looking at the facts, it seems certain to me that it wasn't Pigma," Fox said, thinking aloud. "From what I could see, it was identical to Dad's. It flew with the same expertise. And the voice through the static…"
I don't want to hope, but here I am, hoping and hoping that somehow he's still out there…
"I will get you access to the transporter device," General Pepper said after a moment of pensive thought. "If there's a way that James is out there…" His voice cracked, something that Fox had not heard since the funeral that miserable day in Corneria City. "… I want to bring him home."
"Thank you, General," Fox gave a quick salute. "We're on the way to Corneria as we speak."
It took some time for Fox to settle down as their voyage to Corneria began. Pacing the bridge of the Great Fox, he let his hands caress the railings, occasionally reaching out to touch the steel interior. His father had taken out loans to pay Space Dynamics for the construction of the ship—substantial loans that General Pepper had waived. Word had come back to Fox that the president of the company was not terribly pleased about it, but Pepper had told him not to worry about it. Sort of odd that Pepper could have that waived… it's a huge loan, after all. Something told Fox there was more happening there than what he knew, but he did not bother himself with those thoughts for the moment. If anything needed his attention, he was certain General Pepper would contact him.
Dad had a lot of faith that the team could pay it off with money from the missions. Maybe he wasn't wrong. Those paychecks for saving Corneria are going to be nice...
He walked past their dormitory area and towards the back of the ship. Sliding down the ladder into the hanger, he walked past the various Arwings docked, dormant and ready to fly at a moment's notice. The Mark I's were the planes of the first generation of the Star Fox team—nimbler and sleek in build with an outdated set of cannons and less storage for bombs. James had designed them himself, with the help of Slippy's father, Beltino Toad.
The Mark II's were their current planes—tipped with yellow at the wings and thicker, built sturdy for the thick of warfare. Slippy had made edits to the original Mark I, but the basis of their structure was found in James's old notes. Fox thought about taking his for a brief flight, but he decided against it; his vision was blurred from exhaustion and something about cruising the abyss of space held no appeal to him. The vulpine stationed himself at the window, pondering the stars as they flickered by.
I fought your war. It was all I could do to stay sane.
He wondered if it was a ghost of grief that was dragging him back to Venom. Aspects of adventure and camaraderie had given the mercenary life allure. Rigorous training on Papetoon had made his father's loss seem distant at times. Everything had become a process, listed in steps that Peppy had guided him through. Step one—become stronger, become better. Step two—when the time came, protect his homeworld. Step three… Step three… It was something he had known would happen with due time but it was still a void as vast as space itself. Whatever it was began on Venom and wherever it would take him, Fox did not know.
"Fox," Slippy found him staring holes through the window, his chin propped up by an open palm.
"Hey Slip," Fox said, breaking his gaze from the countless stars outside.
"Wanna help me tune some of the equipment on the Arwings?" Slippy asked him, and Fox agreed with a small nod.
He sat in the cockpit as the toad made his adjustments to the engines and targeting system. Fox watched the lights beam up… then fade back down into darkness with every poke and prod that Slippy made. Even though he had attended the same academy as his friend, his specialization had been space warfare, not engineering. The vulpine watched him with mild interest as he worked, lost in the engineering jargon he was spouting off, but occasionally nodding and giving his friend a soft smile. He really has come a long way since we were kids.
"Have you heard from Fara in awhile?" Slippy asked him after some time.
"Nah," Fox said. In all actuality, it had been bothering him how quiet their relationship had become. Fara had been most disappointed when the Star Fox team had refused to assimilate into the Cornerian Army as a specialized force. She had expected him to come home and to stay… But here he was, adrift in space with no true desire to settle back into the Cornerian lifestyle.
"Have you tried calling her?" Slippy asked him.
"I left a voicemail. I think she's doing some work on the Katina base so she may just be busy," Fox said with a small shrug. He caught Slippy's worried look but mentioned nothing of it.
They spent the rest of their time tinkering with the Arwings. Slippy mentioned he had sent a few rough drafts of Mark III's to be looked over by his father, along with laser upgrades to the current models. Some of it was theorized, he explained sheepishly, and wasn't entirely sure Space Dynamics technology could pull it off just yet. He had Fox convert the Arwing into its Walker form, and jotted down some notes before he declared their experiment completed.
"So, all of the calibration should be in order in case we decide to upgrade while we're in Corneria," Slippy rubbed his chin. "And if we get more money, I'd like to try having different types of Arwings."
"Slippy, we have a sub, a military tank, a gyrocopter, a hover-military tank… thing… And at least two different types of Arwings available," Fox sighed but glanced at the piece of paper the toad proudly held up.
"I call them the Interceptor-Class Arwing and the Defense-Class Arwing," Slippy said with a sunny grin. He gestured to the smaller, sleeker build. "This one would be faster than our current ones, built with twin laser cannons. This one…" he pointed to the thicker one, "Is bigger, bulkier, so it could take more damage even though it's slower. Some of our Arwings got scraped up when we went inside those Androssian carriers. I was thinking sturdier could be better."
"Hm, well I like our current models just fine, but maybe having specialized Arwings wouldn't be such a bad idea… but we'll have to wait and see how much cash we draw in from missions," Fox said with a shrug as they departed the hanger.
"Sounds good to me! I bet we'll get a lot of calls in no time," Slippy beamed. "And then we can have all the shiny Arwings we want."
"Yeah, well have fun getting help tinkering with all of them," Fox retorted with a snicker.
"Easy! I'll just ask Falco to," Slippy said nonchalantly.
"Ha! Good luck with that!" Fox laughed.
The voyage to Corneria took a day and a half. Telling time was hard to do in space, but Peppy had enough foresight to put a series of clocks on the lounge wall. By the time that the Great Fox entered Cornerian orbit, it was mid-afternoon and the Star Fox team opted to take their Arwings down. They left the Great Fox in the care of ROB64 and Direct-I and made their descent from the Great Fox's hanger into open space.
They flew in formation, something that they were simply used to, with Fox at the head of the diamond. Stars whizzed by as he pressed on the accelerator and Corneria grew until it was all he could see from the cockpit. Air control gave them clearance to land, and they did so with no incidents along the way. Fox was surprised to see a sleek Cornerian Army hovercar waiting for them in the terminal.
"Traveling in style," Falco grinned from behind his sunglasses.
The four clambered into the hovercar, and though there was ample space, Falco insisted on stretching out his legs and kept kicking Fox in the calf. Thankfully the drive to the Cornerian Military Headquarters was brief, and General Pepper was there to greet them upon exiting the vehicle.
"Good afternoon," General Pepper said to them, an escort to his left and right. "I hope you all had smooth travels on your way here."
"Quiet and peaceful," Fox nodded. The doors into the headquarters slid open and they were permitted inside, greeted by the cool blast of air conditioning. General Pepper led them past the front desk and to an elevator. The ride up to his office was crammed between the seven of them, but they managed without too many elbows into ribs.
General Pepper's office was large, overseeing the city and adorned with fancy furniture that Fox could only estimate how much it cost. The hound had prepared seats for them on the other side of his massive desk and so they all sat while the secretary fetched them all beverages.
"Well, there has been some progress with the teleportation device," General Pepper said. "As you are aware, Dr. Andross was in charge of the development during his time as the President of Space Dynamics. However, due to his crimes…" Fox felt the hound's eyes rest on him for a moment before returning to its sweep across the faces of the team. "… he was removed from the position, which was then handed down to his dedicated pupil, Yaru DePon. We now come to Space Dynamics today. Mr. DePon kept tinkering with the technology, and we now believe that stable teleportation gates around the Lylat System are a possibility."
"That's… Incredible," Fox's eyes widened.
"There are still difficulties that lie ahead…" the general rubbed his forehead. "But we want to begin construction of the first teleportation gate in the next year." There was something else drifting in the dog's mind, but he did not voice it. Instead, Pepper mustered up a smile and said, "Fortunately for you, we still have the teleportation device used during your assault on Venom."
"The fake Venom, you mean," Slippy pointed out and the general's brows rose.
"We did some note comparisons between when my father flew out to Venom and when I used the teleportation device to reach Venom," Fox explained. "And there's some inconsistencies. I noticed the interior of the planet did not remotely match the size of the planet either. It was like I was…"
"In another dimension?" General Pepper asked. "Yes… Hm that is odd."
"I've done some thinking," Slippy added. "Andross might have swapped the fake Venom for the real Venom, storing the real Venom in a pocket dimension like he tried to do with the fake Venom when our time was about to assault it. But the only way to swap the fake Venom into a pocket dimension without some noticeable effects in the area would be to replace the fake Venom with another object."
"I'm lost," Falco admitted.
"Are you suggesting he's just swapping stuff in and out of that same place? Over and over again?" Fox asked. "Why would he do that?"
"Think about it," Slippy rubbed his chin. "Everyone assumed Andross was on the real Venom. Well, he had enough to support to get him removed from the real Venom after awhile, right? I mean, he had spacefighters, carriers… he could've gone to any planet he wanted to. But what if instead of doing that, he decided to build his own planet. One with a teleportation device…"
"Go on…" General Pepper said.
"He could just swap the real and the fake Venom back and forth without much worry," Slippy theorized. "Orbital patterns of other masses would stay the same theoretically… if he was able to make up for the mass difference between the original Venom and the fake Venom, because from what it sounds like, they were two different sizes. If he managed that, which I'm not sure how to even begin doing that…" The toad began to sound uncertain of himself. "He probably could just flip flop a bunch of times."
"That's all well and good, but why didn't we see the original Venom when we were approaching from Sector Omega?" Peppy asked.
"A cloaking device?" Slippy postulated.
"Are you saying we were looking straight at the real Venom when we were fighting that annoying attack carrier?" Falco scoffed. "That's nuts. I don't think I buy that."
"It's possible," Slippy said.
"But we're missing what we came here for," Fox interrupted them. "I saw the Arwing in the fake Venom's core. That's only accessible by the teleportation device. We can get there from Corneria City, right, General?"
"It is possible," General Pepper sighed. "But unlikely at this point."
"What?" Fox's eyes widened.
The old hound gave a sigh, pulling out his stash of lollipops from his desk. He selected a blue one, delicately unwrapped it, and shoved it into his mouth, remorsefully dodging Fox's eye. "After your assault on Venom, a lot of Androssian forces surrendered. Thorough investigation of their base and equipment yielded interesting results. The weaponry the Androssians were provided had striking similarities to the weapons given to the CDF and CA. To make the short much shorter, the company producing Androssian weapons was owned by Space Dynamics."
Slippy's gasp tore through the room and Fox felt his heart sink down into the depths of his stomach. No way… "Space Dynamics? As in…?" The branch of the Cornerian military dedicated to the pursuit of technology advancement and weapons production.
"Yaru… Dedicated pupil indeed," Peppy spat bitterly.
"At first we thought it was a mistake. After all, Andross had once been in charge of Space Dynamics," General Pepper sighed. "But we discovered the culprit profiting off of it all was none other than President DePon himself. An arrest was made this morning and it has not hit the news."
"Then the teleportation device…" Fox began.
"It is still in Corneria City, but it is dormant. DePon put a passcode on it and we have not been able to break through it," General Pepper sighed again. "We're hoping he will talk soon. Until then, Beltino Toad has been named the temporary President of Space Dynamics and has a special team working to dig for possible passcodes in their company files."
Fox melted back into his chair, half-lidded eyes staring holes through the general. One step forward… another step back. Why can't things just be simple for once? "So is there really no way to get back to where Andross had stored the fake Venom?"
"I think you ought to ask that question to Mr. Slippy Toad, here," General Pepper gestured to the young toad.
"Me?" Slippy asked with surprise.
"Your theory?" the hound prompted.
"Oh! Fake Venom and real…" Slippy realized with another gasp, more hopeful in tone. "Real Venom! We could go to real Venom and see if Andross had a teleportation device there!"
"Yes. There are likely rogue devices that are unlocked and available for use… just not adequately tested by Cornerian military," General Pepper sighed. "But I know Andross. He was a perfectionist at his work—I say that begrudgingly, mind you. He was a terrible man, but his science was flawless. It is likely you can rely on the technology working, but sending you clear to Venom is a task that fills me with worry. They don't call it cursed for nothing."
"I'm not afraid," Fox stood up. "I need to know what I saw out there, General." It's my closure to this insane chapter of life.
"Then good luck, Fox, and I will keep you updated on the situation with DePon," General Pepper said with a small smile.
Fox barely noticed the drive back to the hanger. His mind bounced haphazardly between topics—Venom, then Yaru DePon, then to the corridor where he had seen his father's Arwing… and then back in a vicious circle. By the time they had reached their Arwings, he had realized he had neglected to even consider if Fara was around the city or if she wanted to see him. Maybe it's best if I don't. Their last talk had been brutal and he found himself unable to come up with a proper defense as to why he was acting this way to her. The wanderer's life called to him so much more than any life on Corneria did… He had abandoned that lifestyle long ago.
I'm sorry, Fara, I'll come back after this mission is done and we can talk then…
"You comin' Foxy?" Falco hollered and the vulpine realized he was dwindling behind.
"Oh… yeah!" Fox remembered himself and opened the Arwing cockpit, settling inside. There was solace in the snug seat, where the buttons lit up at his fingers and space awaited him. But he knew it would be short-lived. Once they were aboard the Great Fox, they would be strategizing and making preparations to land on Venom. He was not much of a praying sort, but he silently appealed to whoever was out there listening to him that their journey to Venom would yield the sort of internal peace he needed.
