Chapter 11 The Start of an Arduous Journey

Three Hours Later

"Are the ground service crews clear?"

"Yeah, everyone is cleared of the ship's perimeter. You have the green light for liftoff."

"Excellent…All crew members, this is Captain Carter, prepare for ground launch of our resident cruiser in 3, 2, 1." The massive Halcyon class battle cruiser lifted off the ground of the military base and began climbing through the atmosphere towards the void of space spread throughout the Lylat system. Everything on board vibrated and rattled as the ship's sheer power forced it to plow through the atmosphere. After about ten minutes of dealing with all the atmospheric pressures wreaking auditory havoc on the external of the ship, we reached the vacuum of Lylatian space. I then set the ship to autopilot on the predetermined course towards the planet Sauria, as I was told it was called, and left the bridge, being trailed by Fox, heading towards the armory where the rest of mine and Fox's team was at. Upon arriving in the armory, I glanced around and noticed that the Starfox members were each talking to one of my individual teammates. Slippy was talking to Mendoza about vehicles, Falco to Rawlings, Krystal, Katt, and Alex were all talking to Bradford, Norris, Espinoza, Jennings, Moore, and Lawson. As I walked in, they all noticed me and their conversations hushed as they expected me to say something. I took one last look around at all of them and began to give my instructions for my plan of a successful mission.

"Starfox team members, while in this armory you need to pick out two weapons that you would like to use on the ground. Rawlings, you are with Falco, teach him about his selected weapons. Mendoza, you are going to teach Slippy about our vehicles along with his selected weapons. Three more need to help Krystal, Katt, and Alex, I'll let you all decide that," I said as I motioned towards the group, "Fox is with me, he and I will review the recon Intel and come up with a battle plan and I will educate him on his chosen weapons. Any questions?" I looked back around the room and received an affirmative no from each individual as my gaze landed on them. I nodded and then asked Fox if he would go ahead and choose his weapons, he nodded and we both walked over to the weapons stash area.

"Okay, so what is this one?"

"That is an SA2-AM sniper rifle; it fires these very accurately, up to three thousand meters." I said as I held up a 14.5x114 mm round, he marveled at its size, remarking that it looked as if it could kill anything. But he was not done looking through the available weapons we had. He set down the rifle and walked over to a case with bulky looking types of weapons accompanied with boxes of red, maroon colored ammunition, each marked with 8 Gauge, Happy Hippo's. He looked back at me and without him even asking, I began to explain this weapon to him.

"That is called an M-90 shotgun. Do describe it, it uhh, fires a lot of little bullets at once, that's about all that I can describe it as." He nodded and proceeded to the next weapons case, full of M-7 SMG's. He picked one up, turning it over in his hands as he examined it.

"This somewhat resembles our version of a machine gun, what does it do?"

"Well it is not exactly a machine gun; it's a class lower than a machine gun. That is an M-7 submachine gun. It fires 5x23 mm hollow point rounds at astonishing rates, although even with its high rate of fire, it lacks serious stopping power because of the small caliber of round, but if stopping power is what you want, then I recommend this." I said as I picked up an assault rifle and handed it to him.

"What is it?"

"That is an MA5B assault rifle. It fires these at the same rate as the SMG but with much more stopping power behind each bullet." He looked over it a bit more and set it down, picking up a Battle Rifle and looking over its sleek, matte black design.

"Ahh, that is a personal favorite of mine, it is known as the Battle Rifle although its technical name is the BR-55HB. It fires the biggest round of a handheld weapon we have except for the mag-rail and sniper rifle." He nodded and set it back down to go and see what else we had to suit his combat needs.

"Well Fox, what types of weapons do you like?"

"Hmm, I kind of like machine guns, but I'm good with a sniper rifle as well, but if I had to say a certain type of weapon, it would be machine guns." I nodded and said, "Well, how would you like a weapon that has the versatility of a machine gun with the accuracy of a sniper rifle?" his eyes widened and ears perked up as he heard this.

"You all have a weapon like that?"

"Yeah, the battle rifle, the one you picked up earlier was not equipped with its standard scope attachment, here." I then handed him a battle rifle with a scope attached to it and said, "The versatility lies in this rifle's capability to fire a three round burst and in one shot, semi automatic modes." He smiled as he looked through the scope and realized that the 2x magnification provided more than ample viewing of a distant target.

"Would you like to go to the range and test it out, see if you like it after you find another weapon to suit you?" he nodded and went to pick up an assault rifle, holding each, he said, "So, where is this range at exactly?" I chuckled and replied, "Jus' follow me."

We arrived down at the in ship range, completely clear, devoid of anyone else, for now. I knew that the others would most likely be down in a while to try out their new weapons. Fox walked over to a steel table and set the rifles down on its shining surface.

"Okay Fox, first off, you need to load these weapons up, here are the bullets and magazines." I said as I set multiple magazines and boxes of ammo down beside the rifles. He looked at me puzzled and said, "What do you mean 'load them up'?" I chuckled saying, "You really haven't used anything other than plasma weapons have you?" He looked at me puzzled again.

"Okay, I'll show you the fast way to load the magazines. First you take a bullet like this and put it in this thing until it slides to the bottom and then…"

"Hold on a second, what is that thing that you are sliding the bullets into?"

"Oh this, it's called a stripper clip, it just lets you load up a lot of bullets really fast, now back to what I was saying, keep sliding the bullets into it until it is full all the way to the top. Once that is done, you should have twenty bullets in the stripper clip. After loading it entirely, you pick up a magazine and put one bullet into it like so. After that is complete, you might want to come over to this side of the table cause I'm going to sit on the table for a second." He walked over to the side I was on and kept watching what I was doing to load the magazine with bullets, I then hopped up onto the table, sat facing Fox, and placed the magazine in between my inner thighs, gripping it with my legs as I did so.

"Okay, once you're sitting like this, you then take the stripper clip and place this end of it, you see with the arrow facing down, at the back of the magazine with the bullets facing forward and once it's in place, you press down on the top bullet until they all go into the magazine." He watched in amazement as all twenty bullets slid into the magazine without so much as a simple snag, but did not come flying back out after I released pressure from the top one.

"You think you can do it now?" he nodded and I handed him the magazine with the stripper clip as well. He took them both and after about five minutes of fiddling around with it and pinching his fingers a few times, he got all sixty rounds loaded into the mag. He however did not know that sixty was the cut off point and kept trying to load more bullets in. I however explained to him that the magazine was already at max capacity and that it wouldn't take any more bullets without an extension mag attached. He nodded, still looking puzzled at what I told him, but accepted it and said, "So can I try and shoot the rifle now?" I nodded and picked up the rifle off of the table and walked over to an empty range station. He followed suit with the now loaded mag in paw, ready to shoot the new weapon. I stepped to the side and motioned for him to step up to the line and held out the rifle for him to take. He took it and began to ask how the magazine was to be put into the rifle in order to fire it.

"You try to figure it out first, if you can't, then I'll help." He nodded and began looking over the rifle, finding the ejection port and trying to put the magazine in it. I chuckled and said, "No, no that's where the mag goes, look at the underside of the rifle and remember, the bullets face forwards, just like when you were loading them." He looked to the underside of the rifle and found the magazine port.

"Is this it?" he asked pointing a finger at the rectangular hole at the rear of the weapon. I nodded and he hesitantly slipped the magazine into the hole until he and I heard a sound click and the round counter below the iron sights flashed sixty twice and then remained a solid blue color.

"It counts bullets for you?" I nodded and he remarked, "Damn, the Cornerian government has got to get some of these things for our military."

"Alright now, pull that thing right there back until it will not go any further." I said pointing to the bolt handle. He did so and when it would not go any further, I said, "Alright, now let it go." He let it go and the first round was chambered, ready to be fired.

"Okay, I'll be behind you in case you are about to fall from the compounding recoil." He looked at me somewhat shocked to hear this and said, "What did you say?"

"The recoil, plasma weapons don't have it so firing a weapon with recoil can cause people to fall over if it is their first time, don't worry though, if you fire in short bursts, the recoil isn't bad at all." He nodded and took a bit of a wider stance and leveled the rifle at his shoulder, just like he'd shot one all his life. He squeezed off a short burst and the sudden shock of the recoil caused him to shudder a bit and lose his aim, the rifles muzzle moving unpredictably up, down, side to side. He stopped firing and said, "Would you mind showing me the proper way to shoot this thing, cause I think I just did it wrong." I nodded and took the rifle from him glancing at how many rounds were left, fifty three. I took up my standing firing position and squeezed off a six round burst, aiming at the most distant target. Five of the six rounds slammed into the steel target, causing it to fall backwards, simulating a downed enemy. He looked on in awe as I downed three more targets within another two seconds. I depleted the mag and set the rifle down, announcing to no one in particular, "Range all clear." Fox's expression was that of intense awe at what he had seen.

"How do you fire it so smoothly, I mean without moving?"

"Practice." He nodded and looked back down at the range at the downed targets.

"Would you like to see a bit of what I will expect you to be able to do by the time I finish training you with these weapons?"

"Yeah, I think I would."

"Okay then." I went back to the table and grabbed a full mag out of an ammo can put it in the Battle Rifle and slipped one other into my left cargo pocket, walked back to the line, reset the targets, cycled the bolt once, and raised my lane bar so that I could go out onto the range.

"You can follow, but just stay behind me on the range please." He nodded and I stepped onto the line, switching the rifle from semi to burst mode and starting to jog towards the first cover, a steel crate. As I ducked behind it and peeked over, I saw a target start to rise up from behind another distant crate, but before it could even rise all the way up, three 9.6 mm rounds pounded into where its head was. I got up and while sidestepping, leveled other targets that were attempting to rise up from behind cover and from their seemingly invisible hide spot on the floor. My first mag emptied and I dropped it out while bringing up the second to place in the formers respective place, the originally locked back bolt cycling forward and chambering another round. I repeated the fire sequence until most of the targets were downed and my rifle mag was emptied again. Slinging the rifle to my back, I drew my side arm and began firing rounds off at the remaining four targets. Just as I was drilled to do in training, I aimed so that two rounds hit in the chest and one in the head, each of the four targets going down in the blink of an eye.

"So, what did you think?"

"What, I can't hear you my ears are ringing like crazy." He said in almost a yelling tone. I chuckled again remembering that this was his first time around gunpowder based weaponry. I shook my head and he said, "WHAT." At which time Falco, Marcus, Katt, and Krystal all walked in.

"Yo Foxy, what's all the yellin' for?"

"What, I can't hear you, my ears are ringing." He yelled out again. Mendoza then went over to the range's white board and wrote in big writing, WE CAN HEAR YOU, STOP YELLING. Fox seemed to look a bit embarrassed now and Krystal went over to give him a hug, while the rest of us had a good laugh about it.

"So Mendoza, you come down here to show Falco how to shoot?"

"Yep, but them two followed because of the yelling."

"Oh, yeah, they have apparently only shot plasma weapons, so uhh; take it slow with 'em."

"Got it Cap', you don't gotta tell me twice. Say when we going to get to kick some more ass, I want to get on the ground and blow up something."

"It's about a three day trip on this course. We'll be there soon enough, but just remember that all of the Starfox team needs to know the in and outs of our weapons."

"Alright, I'll start him up then, right away, the rest of the group wanted me to tell you that they are working with their Respective members as ordered." I nodded and he went to teaching Falco the way to use a sniper rifle and a rocket launcher. The rest of us sat down on the table to watch Falco try and use our massive sniper rifles. He stepped up to the line with a loaded mag and looked through the scope a target on the extreme far end of the range. We saw him steady his breath and I could barely see him squeeze the trigger. Half a second later, a massive boom was echoing through the range as the sniper round exploded from the barrel and cut through the air, leaving a white smoky vapor trail in its wake, it then slammed into the target being aimed at and pierced through the thin metal outline. Falco lowered the rifle, switched on the safety, turned around to face us rubbing his shoulder a bit, and said, "No offense Katt, but I think I'm in love." We all had a round of laughs at his comment and went on with weapons training. I knew that we weren't going to have to teach the Starfox team about combat tactics, but instead just how to use this new to them weaponry. I was certain it was to be a long three days.