STARFOX: SUNRISE OVER LYLAT

By Eric "Erico" Lawson

CHAPTER ELEVEN: STARFOX REBORN

Smart Bomb Technology- Shortly before the Lylat Wars, a particular mineral was located in sparse amounts on Corneria by a geological surveyor codenamed "Destructor." It was found to have tremendous energy output potential, and scientists began to research military applications for the substance that had no name to begin with, but was eventually named Cornite. An early working version resulted in the first generation Cornite munitions: Nova Bombs. These were quickly deemed too powerful for general use, as the wide blast radius destroyed indiscriminately. The second generation of Cornite weaponry was far more successful, and while the payload was decreased, advances in shielding technology due to study of the SFX Arwing made it a feasible tactical device that kept the user safe from the heatflash and particle emissions. It was also given homing capabilities and tied into the Arwing's laserlock guidance system. This so-called "Smart Bomb" served the Cornerian defenders well during the Lylat Wars in the fight against Andross. Cornite was eventually discovered in other places around the Lylat System. The arms race hastened Corneria's dominance over its neighboring planets.

(From Wyatt Toad's Margin Scribblings)

"You know, Cornite's a terrific element. If you keep it at a low power setting, there's hundreds of things it can do. Too bad we'll never see them. You make a weapon out of something once…there's no going back."



Corneria

Geosynchronous Orbit

With the newly reformed Starfox team blasting down towards the battle kilometers below, the job of watching over the mighty spaceship Wild Fox sat on the shoulders of Wyatt Toad, his second-in command for engineering Ulie Darkpaw, and the rest of the Ursa Station crew that had been on Transport 1.

Thankfully, that crew had included the cargo pilot who flew them and some of the bridge crew.

The communications officer glanced up from his console and threw Wyatt, calmly sitting in the command chair, a thumbs up. "The team's away, Wyatt. They're entering the atmosphere now. Anticipate communications blackout momentarily."

Wyatt let out a satisfied croak and drummed his fingers on the armrest. "Any word from our troops on the ground?"

"I'm getting a signal from Cornerian Space Command…They're asking us if we're for real."

At his own station, monitoring the power levels of the Wild Fox, ROB calmly lifted his head up. "Curious. My estimates said there was a higher chance they would ask for help."

"You don't go resurrecting legends without there being some disbelief." Wyatt advised the old robot. He nodded to the communications officer. "Let'm know help's on the way." He glanced over to the lynx who'd served on Ursa's bridge. The sharp-eyed feline was standing by the weapons station, carefully scanning for danger. "Is anything else moving up here?"

"We took out their interplanetary transport." The lynx looked over to Wyatt and nodded. "Everyone they've got down is stranded there. Want me to open fire?"

"Yeah, planetary bombardment'd go over real well with them rooted over Corneria City." Another member of the Ursa crew half joked.

Wyatt croaked in agreement. "Stay on station. If anybody tries to escape, we'll blast 'em before they can break orbit. Until then, this is a job for the Starfox team."

"Think they're up to it?" The lynx asked. "They couldn't even defend Ursa."

Wyatt Toad gained a conspiratorial glint in his bulbous eyes and leaned forward in his seat. His webbed hands gripped the armrests tighter, and he expanded his throat pouch.

"There's a lot to be said about a name." The amphibian explained. "Right now, you have to ask yourself…Will they fly better because they call themselves Starfox, or will Starfox fly better because they're in it?"

He leaned back and pressed his fingerpads together. "Either way, it's their turn now."


Cornerian Upper Atmosphere

The four Seraph Arwings spun in towards the planet below, transforming into blazing fireballs as their shields fought off the heat of re-entry.

"Switch to optical communications!" Rourke barked out, moments before the ionization of Corneria's atmosphere turned their radio communicators to static. Until they cleared blackout, line of sight optical lasers connected the Starfox team.

"All ships, report in." Rourke said. The signal bounced from his ship to the next beside him and cascaded out, until all heard it over the infrared interlink.

"Dana here. I'm good to go."

"Milo. All systems green." The team's level-headed raccoon answered. "The shields are handling this pretty well."

"Terrany." The team's sole McCloud piped in, grinning widely. "Hell of an entrance, huh?"

"I guarantee it's the quickest way to bring the Primal fleet down on our heads." Milo mused. "They seem to have a special hatred for Arwings."

"They can try." Rourke hummed. He rocked his Seraph back and forth a bit. "The new wing's holding up beautifully. We owe a big kudos to Wyatt and his team."

"And the Wild Fox." KIT added, cutting in over the laser communication. Rourke chuckled.

"And the Wild Fox. Milo, what's our best approach?"

"Hang on, I'm checking it…" Inside his Seraph, Milo turned the squadron's most sophisticated sensor array down on Corneria City below. A few more seconds of descent followed in silence before he whistled loudly. "Damnation, that's a load of firepower!"

"AA guns?" Rourke asked, fearing the answer.

"That's affirm." Milo called back grimly. "A ring of them around the city perimeter. It looks like they've got a command ship over the capital spearheading the attack…My guess is it's set its sights on CSC HQ, by its angle."

"Space Command Headquarters?" Dana repeated worriedly. "If they take that base out, we'll lose all coordination with everybody in the Lylat System!"

"Then that command ship just became our primary target." Rourke groused. "Milo, what's our best vector?"

The raccoon didn't mince words. "Given the gun placements, I'd say Highway 60. We drop down and fly in on the main drag, we'll have a clear shot at the city center and that command ship. Loads of tanks and fighters on the way, though…I'd recommend two of us break off and make a circle to wipe out those AA turrets. If there's any reinforcements bound for the city, I'd hate to see them shot down."

"Two for the AA guns. That leaves the other two on a breakneck flight right down the middle in a target rich environment." Terrany grinned. "Put me in charge of that, Rourke. Kit and I are itching to give these bastards some payback."

The wolf mulled their options over for a moment. "Dana, you're with Terrany. Milo, I'll be your wingman for the gun sweep. We'll break off once we hit the city."

He got a series of mike clicks in response, and he realized that the burning red light of re-entry had faded around them. They'd switched back over…blackout was done.

Rourke turned his radio to normal mode. "Deploy wings to interceptor mode and level out at 150 meters, bearing 270."

"One last thing, boss." Milo chirped in again, as the squadron spread out and unfolded their wings from launch position. "Those tanks I mentioned? It looks like they've just about wiped out the defending cavalry. Some of them have started moving into the city, but the bulk of 'em are still in a column rolling down the highway. I'd wager they hung back while their shock force mixed it up. They're giving our boys a Hell of a time."

"Easy solution." Rourke grunted as what little inertia his Arwing's dampeners didn't nullify forced him against his harness. The fact they'd turned and were going into a near straight dive for the surface didn't help. "Strafe that line on our way in. Bombs are at your own discretion, but save one or two for that command ship."

"Aye-aye, sir!" Dana whooped.

Inside her own cockpit, Terrany tightened her grip on the control stick and kept her eyes focused on the HUD. "You've been in this situation before, haven't you?" Terrany asked, knowing KIT would hear her.

The digitized consciousness of Falco Lombardi couldn't contain the eager guffaw. "Sort of. Fox had us fly in from the mountains."



Major Boskins had watched as the 14th Cavalry Reserve was shot to pieces around him. Most of the men in his corps, or at least the ones in charge of the Landrunner Mk. 2 division, were veterans like himself.

Boskins was affectionately called "Iron Beak" by those who had fought under him in the Papetoon Insurrection, and had been born to command. Taking orders sometimes didn't sit well with him, especially the one he'd been given hours before.

Hold the line.

That line, battered for the better part of an hour, had given way 200 meters to the south of him. As determined and skilled as he and his men were, the Primal advance was too tremendous. Two tanks appeared for every one they blew apart. Their light armor made them vulnerable, but had given them advantage of numbers. It stood to the old hawk's credit that he refused to back down in the face of imminent defeat.

Cigar jammed in the side of his beak, he turned his sharp black eyes on the communications controller at the back of his Landrunner. "How many units do we have left, Sergeant?"

The harried ferret glanced up, one hand holding his headset against his ear. "Eleven…" An explosion rattled through his headset, audible to everyone in the Landrunner's crew compartment. The radioman winced. "…Ten, sir."

Major Boskins chewed his cigar harder. They'd lost two-thirds of their brigade. "Have the others form up behind us. We can't do anything about the ones that made it through already without getting our asses shot off, but we can by Lylus run and gun with that column. Holding action, my ass!"

"So we're ignoring our orders to defend the city?" The tank's gunner asked.

"We're not ignoring them. We're going to work the best way we know how." Boskins looked back to his radioman. "Get that message out already!"

The radio crackled again; broad-comm. Open frequency.

"It looks like you boys could use a hand down there on Route 60."

Major Boskins blinked. He stormed over two meters to the radio and took the microphone and headset from his subordinate. "Who is this? Identify yourselves!"

"Rourke O'Donnell, leader of the Starfox team." The calm voice called back. "Hold tight for a bit. We're setting up for a strafing run, and I wouldn't want you boys lining up in our gunsights."

Major Boskins blinked and took a step back.

"Sir?" The tank's gunner asked.

"It's gotta be some sick joke." Boskins crowed. He handed the receiver back over and tapped his wingtip on the side of his arm. "All the same…Do we have any aerial contacts on radar?"

"Four, sir." The helmsman piped up. "They just appeared five kilometers out."

Boskins' eyes went wide. "Shh…Order all tanks to hold tight and brace for artillery fire!"

"What?" His radioman blinked.

Boskins exploded. "Just DO IT!"

The radioman finally reacted, whipping his mike up. "All tanks, hold position and secure stations. We have inbound aerial support!"

The helmsman watched his radar in disbelief. "By the Creator, they're booking it! Three kilometers out…Two…"

Boskins opened the main hatch of their tank and popped his head out. He stared to the east, where the rolling column of Primal tanks was closing in. He glanced up…

And there, four silvery birds streaked in behind them. Boskins felt a smile come over him.

"One."

The four Arwings who had identified themselves as the Starfox team opened up, showering the column of tanks with a tremendous amount of laserfire. The thin armor of the Primal line offered little protection, and soon the heat and noise of their explosions washed over the Cornerian Landrunners.

The Arwings shot overhead, followed shortly thereafter by a concussive boom and the scream of their engines. Boskins let out a laugh as he surveyed the damage they'd caused.

Only a handful of Primal tanks remained.

Back inside the tank, the radio came to life again. "That got 'em. Think you can handle cleanup down there, fellas?"

Boskins quickly hopped down and leapt to grab the receiver his radioman offered. "Damnation! You guys are for real!"

"The jury's still out on that." The voice who'd identified himself as Rourke replied humorously. "Good hunting, boys. We've got a ship to blow up."

The Arwings aimed in towards the city and decreased their speed, leaving Major Boskins and the survivors of the 14th Reserve Brigade behind.

Boskins took his cigar out and knocked the ashes onto the floor of the tank's cabin. He jammed it back in his beak and smiled wider. "New plan, boys. Tell the tanks to rally as planned. First, we take out those surviving tanks. And then, we're moving into the city to beat the shit out of the ones that made it through."

"Yes, sir!" The gunner resecured his station and took aim again, firing off a thunderingly loud shell. It plowed through one of the surviving Primal tank's tin-thin armor and ripped the thing apart. He let out a whoop and grinned as the muzzle reloaded. "I've got a name for these things, Major! Why don't we call these tanks "Tinwheels?"

Boskins let out a satisfied puff from his cigar and nodded. "Graff, you get through to the rest of our boys?"

"Yes, sir!" The ferret snapped.

"Good." Boskins sucked in another deep puff of the life-shortening tobacco. "Prep a message to Cornerian Space Command; Let 'em know we're going to finish cleaning up these Tinwheels, and then we'll be rolling into the city."

The surviving Landrunners formed up and rolled out onto Highway 60, firing into the midst of the dead and dying Primal Tinwheels.


"Son of a duck, do you realize that none of you used any bombs on that strafing run?" KIT asked Terrany.

The albino vixen didn't break her eyes off the HUD. "I guess we didn't need them. I always preferred keeping them back for use on hardened targets."

"Now you're talking like Fox." Her AI complimented her.

Rourke didn't give them time to elaborate. "All right, people. We're at the city limits. Dana, Terrany, it's twelve kilometers to the city center and that command ship. You'll be fighting your way through. Any questions?"

"None here." Dana growled. "Back me up, Terrany."

"You've got point, roger." Terrany took a look at the radar display and shook her head. "Damn, they've got a lot of firepower…"

"Do yourself a favor and stay alive." Rourke advised. "Ready to go, Milo?"

"Breaking formation in two…one…"

Rourke banked left and Milo dove a bit before banking right, splitting off from Dana and Terrany. The remaining two Arwings set their bearings down a narrow corridor that would take them into the heart of the sprawling metropolis…a city now burning.

"Hell of a shooting gallery." Milo observed dryly.

"Then let's make a game of it." Dana replied. "Person who nails the most bogies buys the celebratory drinks."

"You're on!" Terrany grinned. "I'm going to smoke all of you!"

"Don't lose focus!" Rourke yelled at them, silencing their mirth in one quick second. "This isn't a game. They killed Skip, and if we don't watch ourselves, they'll kill us too." To accentuate the rebuttal, he angled his nose at a pair of snub-winged Primal attack drones and splintered them with hyper laserfire. "If you're good, you're good. If you're not, you're dead. And sometimes, being good even isn't enough to save you. So do us all a favor, kids, and stay serious."

Rourke's comm line chirped off and his Seraph boosted out towards the southern edge of the city and the waiting AA guns.

Exuberance deflated, Terrany flew on in silence.

They killed Skip.

Skip was dead.

She didn't want to believe it. Carl had been her big brother, the strong and silent protector. He'd never fallen before. She'd been denying it ever since she'd arrived at Ursa.

Now, the Primals had invaded Lylat. Most of the planets had fallen. Corneria lay in ruins beneath them. If they could do this…

Then Carl really was nothing more than space dust.

"Kid…you all right?" KIT asked quietly.

Lower lip quivering, Terrany hardened her heart and pushed the need to cry into the back of her throat and swallowed. She gripped the control stick tighter and charged up her homing laser.

A pair of hovering attack craft rose up from the city streets intent on meeting her. She locked on and fired, blasting them apart with energized green light.

"Terrany?"

"I'm fine." The last McCloud snapped, anything besides fine. "Watch the shields for me and keep quiet. I'm doing this mission on my own."

Safe within the memory banks of the first Seraph ever made, KIT mentally sighed and did as he was told. Terrany was like Fox McCloud had been on a bad day; brash, bold, and recklessly impulsive.

He only hoped that she'd find a way to focus all that wrath before she got them both killed.


Slippy Toad had seen many things in his long life, but the sight of four Arwings streaking in from the eastern horizon, blazing a path of destruction through the advancing Primal tank lines made his eyes well up.

He tried to convince himself that they weren't anything special; Probably some Model K's dispatched from some other base on Corneria to deal with the threat. He dashed his own hopes that by some miracle, they were the X-1 Seraph Arwings from Ursa Station.

But that was impossible. The CSC had dispatched a flight of Arwings to investigate, and they'd only found spaceborne wreckage…and the wing from a Seraph, ripped away while in Merge Mode.

And yet…Those four Arwings had appeared seemingly out of nowhere.

Right in the nick of time. Just like Fox always did.

"Just like we did." He spoke aloud, and blinked to hear his own scratchy voice again. He shifted his weight onto his cane and turned about on the rooftop of Arspace Dynamics' main building, watching the Arwings blaze in.

Two of them broke off and started their own low sweeps around the city's perimeter. The other two blazed on, burning a brilliant path of destruction towards the city center.

Arspace Dynamics' main building was on the eastern end of Corneria City. It was why, even with failing eyesight, Slippy had been able to watch the battle unfolding.

It hadn't been a battle before. It had started as a massacre. But four Arwings, the stellar silver-winged spacecraft that Arspace had made its reputation on, had turned the tide.

The last two flying on towards the center of Corneria City were coming closer. Their path would take them right by the Arspace building. Slippy squinted his eyes to focus through the milky particles that had begun to plague him for the last month and stared closer.

They shot by him, and one mental snapshot gave him the entire picture. His breath caught in his throat.

He'd looked at the wings. They had the grooves he'd painstakingly worked with Wyatt and the X-1 design team on…the grooves that allowed secondary wings to blossom from the dorsal and ventral sides of the angular razors the ship flew on.

They passed him, and the profile of the vanishing Arwings' G-Diffuser pods said it all.

"By the Creator." Slippy choked out, and tears finally came. "The Seraphs. They're alive. They're alive."

His phone went off. It picked up automatically and routed the signal to his headset.

"Grandpa Slip? You there? Please, tell me you're all right!"

"Wyatt." Slippy collapsed to his knees and let himself fall apart. "I…I thought you were dead. Creator above, I thought…"

"I'm all right. We're ALL all right." Wyatt croaked happily. He was starting to cry himself. "Everybody got off of Ursa before the Primals blew it apart. We did it, grandpa. The Seraphs work. They work beautifully."

"I'm glad." Slippy smiled and wiped his tears away. He struggled to stand back up, but did so after a few painful moments of creaking joints. "Where are you?"

"I'm up in orbit, aboard the Wild Fox."

"What? Wild Fox?" Slippy countered, pushing his cane hard into the rooftop to support his weight. "What's that?"

Wyatt chuckled. "Something you built a long time ago and forgot about. And you didn't tell me? Baaad grandpa. By the by, an old friend of yours named ROB wanted to say hello."

Slippy Toad felt a grin stretching from ear to ear. "You found the Mark 2 Great Fox?"

"It needed a better name." Wyatt said. "The word's out, grandpa. The Starfox team is back in action."

Slippy Toad smiled all the more and offered a word of prayer to all his old, dead friends.

A new team was flying under the banner.


The first of the antiaircraft hoverturrets tried to turn itself about to take aim, but Rourke had pushed his Arwing to breakneck speeds. It had only moved its cannons half the circumference before he riddled it with laserfire. The thing let out a few dejected puffs of smoke and fell to the ground below, exploding on impact.

"That's one." Rourke bared his fangs and barrel-rolled through the counterattack of a few nearby snub-winged fighters… "ODAI, mark those fighter drones as Snubs."

"Done." The somewhat sarcastic AI on his ship replied. Like the others, it had picked up its own behavioral cues from the pilot it had trained with, and had done a fair job of mimicking the surly O'Donnell's hot-headed mannerisms. "Hey, we've got a radio transmission from Cornerian Space Command. They're asking to speak to the leader of the Starfox team."

"That'd be me." Rourke looped up and behind the tailing Snubs and blasted them apart with a laserburst. He spun through the fiery debris and kept going. "Patch it through, ODAI."

"This is General Kagan, CSC. We got word from General Grey that you'd survived Ursa, but after our sensors saw a Primal ship gearing for Meteo Asteroid Field, we feared the worst."

"Sorry to keep you waiting, General." Rourke replied. "We had to stop for some repairs…we ended up finding some extra help."

"So we noticed." Kagan mused. "That ship in orbit's a beast. Is it the Great Fox?"

"We call this one Wild Fox, General. Didn't seem right to use the same name again."

"Well, keep it up there for now. How apprised of the situation are you?"

"Sergeant Granger and myself are clearing out the Anti-Air units right now. Terrany McCloud and Dana Tiger are closing in on your position to deal with that command cruiser."

Rourke winced; a thunderous explosion came through the voice feed.

"Good." Kagan hissed, probably through clenched teeth. "We've got our deflectors going, but they won't hold up forever. If this base falls…"

"Yeah, I know." Rourke grumbled. "I know. Hang tight. Help's on the way, General. Discom."

The communication flipped off, and his ODAI spoke again. "Hell of a day, huh boss?"

"You're telling me." Rourke blinked a few times, then swore and jerked his Arwing hard right.

A blistering particle beam blasted through the space he'd been occupying shortly after.

The next turret in line had drawn a bead on him.

"Hell of a day." Rourke growled in agreement, firing his boosters.


Doing a flyover of Corneria City had been a longtime dream of Terrany's, but she'd never expected to be doing it in the middle of a warzone. At least the constant laserfire directed at them kept it interesting.

Dana and Terrany swerved around opposite sides of an unstable building riddled with smoking holes, and Dana fired off an untargeted laser burst down at the closest squad of saucer-shaped attack drones that had decided to open fire on them. The skins of the aircraft bubbled and boiled before succumbing into dust and debris.

"So far, so good!" The tigress announced. "How are you holding up, Terrany?"

Terrany boosted through the fireball Dana had created and dove underneath a city cross-bridge. A shot meant for her struck the concrete roadway harmlessly, and she whirled her Arwing up, bringing the fighter dead in her crosshairs. Two shots reported out from her hyper laser turrets, dropping the fighter to the ground.

It wasn't the maneuver that left Dana speechless as much as the reckless ease that Terrany had performed it.

"I'm fine." Came the terse reply. "Did we get that mothership's attention yet?"

Dana checked her Forward Looking Radar. "No, it's still taking potshots at the CSC."

Terrany's Arwing rolled in a loop and shot down one of Corneria City's main streets. Skyscrapers towered above her, keeping her safe from artillery. At the speed she was moving, though, one error in judgment would lead to a very destructive collision.

It never came.

"Terrany, what are you doing?" Dana demanded. Her wingman offered no comment for several seconds, shooting down another drone and blasting one of the Primal's citybound tanks into a flaming wreck.

"Getting that thing's attention." Terrany finally snapped. She blazed a course through Corneria City, almost scraping the ground.


The Primal Siege Ship Sundown

The crew of the Sundown had watched helplessly as the transport cruiser that had brought them to Corneria was torn apart in a hail of laserfire, courtesy of a large attack ship that had emerged from a warp gate. As soon as the announcement, meant for their ears as well as the Lylatians hit the radio announcing the approach of The Starfox Team, their tension hit an all time high.

It had been the Lord of Flame's highest order that no Arwing was to survive. Now a full flight of them was fast approaching, and even their unit name, Starfox, seemed to cause every surviving Cornerian unit to fight twice as hard.

The war room bristled with frantic radio accounts. Drones were being shot down. The artillery positions were being compromised. The tank force sent to roll into the city was wiped out, and the ones already inside were being hunted down with impunity.

The one advantage the Primals had, their simian captain thought quietly, was that they still had their guns trained on the Lylatian's command headquarters. The bases' shields were already beginning to fail, and once they cut through and obliterated the facility, any chance of a meaningful counterattack would be done for.

"Enemy radar spike! Incoming projectile!"

The commander reacted on instinct. "Shields up! Brace for impact!"

A moment's delay would have cost them all dearly. Instead, their craft only shuddered as a high yield explosion rocked their deflectors. A momentary disruption in power flow made their turrets fade for a moment, and the captain growled loudly. "Where did that come from?"

"The angle suggests that an enemy tank was responsible." Their combat coordinator observed. He checked his readings and swore. "No! An Arwing!"

"What, here?" The captain shuddered incredulously. "Already?"

"We lost one from our tracking earlier. If they dropped low and came in fast, we wouldn't have seen them coming."

"Do we see it now?"

"Yes, it just flew up above the city's building level."

"Then fire!" The captain screamed. "Have all surviving anti-aircraft turrets zero in on it! The Arwings must not be allowed to interfere!"


You wanted their attention? You got it.

Terrany grunted as the excess G Forces strained her against her harness. The thing had turned around and fired every available piece of artillery it had at her. To make matters worse, the turrets around the city were apparently following orders. The sky above her turned dark purple with photonic microbursts, energy flak.

"Damn!" Terrany swore. "I can't get clear!" She spun about and angled her nose down into an inverted dive, but the turn came too late to stop her momentum completely. Flipped upside down, the thinner armor along the sleek fighter's belly bubbled and baked under the assault.

Warning lights flared, but in the place of a siren, KIT spoke. "Kid, I know you didn't want me helping, but…"

"I know!" Terrany yelled at her AI. "Rourke, you there?"

"I'm a little busy right now, McCloud."

"You were supposed to be wiping out all the enemy artillery! I'm getting roasted here!"

"You were also supposed to stay low! What happened with that plan?"

"Things changed!" A few shots from the Primal attack carrier flared against her rear deflectors before her dive finally took her back towards ground level. The top of a skyscraper exploded as laserfire meant for Terrany blasted the last five floors to ash.

She could hear Rourke sigh. "All right. Milo and I'll finish up here. You get to ground and out of that mess, you hear me?"

"As if I had a choice." Terrany cut the transmission off and leveled off over one of the main drags. She checked her HUD: 76 percent shielding remaining. Not bad, considering the firestorm she'd almost flown into. "Time to turn and burn, Kit."

Her radar beeped ominously at her. Terrany blinked as KIT threw it in the corner of the Seraph's display.

"Not yet, kid. We've got inbounds! Multiple missiles, and they look like doozies!"

Terrany's eyes went wide. "The AA installations?"

"Still active. We can't go vertical! They're playing battleship with us!"

Unable to go up above the city's building line, Terrany's mind clicked into the last option. She gripped the flight yoke tighter to stop her shaking and drew in a long breath of air. "Time to impact. Display it."

The missiles were tracking in on radar, aimed at her and all around her. A digital timer slowly ticked down the last seconds before destruction would fall all around her.


"Level everything! We'll drop this entire city on top of that Arwing if we have to!" The Primal commander was almost gleeful, hooting softly under his breath.

They had unloaded an entire missile bank, and the shots had been well placed. The first explosions engulfed the side streets and any possible escape with fire and noise. The next set ripped into the buildings just ahead of the lone fleeing Arwing, tumbling reinforced concrete, glass, and office debris down towards it.

The Sundown had created a corridor of death, and unable to go vertical because of the AA guns, the Arwing did its best to steer through the mess. Soon, the explosions outraced the aircraft, which bounced up and spun wildly about before it was swallowed up in a black and gray cloud of smoke and dust.

The Primal commander sneered. "Saturate the Arwing's last known location! I don't want any pieces bigger than a socket bolt surviving!"

The last of the carrier's fired missiles tracked in and made a fireball that rose one hundred meters into the air. Dust choked the air, masking the rubble from view.

Their radio intercept officer set their read from the enemy's comm circuit to the bridge speakers.

"Terrany, respond!" Came a panicked male voice. "Terrany! Say something!"

The primal commander nodded, well satisfied. "Have our ground forces close in to confirm the Arwing's destruction." He folded his arms. "Resume firing on the enemy's headquarters."


It was a testament to the durability of the Seraph Arwing's deflectors that no falling debris had crushed the ship into a pancake.

Terrany had swung the fighter in tight, quick yaws all over the street, suffering glancing blows from shattered buildings all over the place. It was one massive sheet of duracrete wall material that taxed the deflectors just enough to clip her port wing. The spacecraft had spun out end over end and out of control after that, coming to a jarring stop after crashing through the ground floor of a clearance warehouse. The engines had sputtered out barely a moment after the rough impact, bringing momentary quiet before a massive wave of explosions outside shook the ground.

The Arwing lay sideways on its scarred belly, one wing slightly bent against a large shelving display of holovision sets.

Silence came with a thin haze of dust that drifted into the superstore from outside. It was several seconds before the ringing in Terrany's ears slackened off enough so she could hear again. "Are we dead?" She asked hollowly. She doubted that was the case; her head was swimming from the collision and spinout, and her entire body screamed against the restraining harness. Her vision was just starting to hum back into focus.

"Almost." KIT replied, clearly perturbed. "The reactor went into auto-scram, the deflectors are shot, and our comm circuits were fused. That artillery warped our bomb launcher out of commission, your nose is smashed from the crash, and there's enough damage to the port wing that employing the secondary drive motivators is impossible."

Terrany popped the seal on her cockpit and opened the hatch. She choked on the dust in the air for a few seconds before she covered her mouth with the collar of her shirt. "That's all right." Terrany responded to the AI. "I didn't feel like Merging anyhow."

The albino vixen blinked her eyes to clear away the dust that had gotten caught in them, and tried to rise up. She winced, then stayed still. "It hurts to move."

"Then don't move." KIT advised her. "Chances are you got knocked around a bit in that spinout. I'm just surprised we didn't explode in the crash."

"You going to question it every time we come out alive?" Terrany asked. "These Primals don't exactly fool around. So are we done for, then?"

"I said this ship was beat to Hell. I didn't say we were done for." KIT harrumphed. "Give me a couple of minutes; the ships' auto-repair subroutines are kicking in. The radio's beyond fixing, as is Merge Mode, but it looks like we can restart the engines again."

"And the shields?"

"They had to buffer off a chunk of masonry the size of a small house. It'll take a while."

Terrany opened her mouth to say something else, but went dead quiet as her sensitive ears heard a noise approaching.

Heavy, rumbling machinery rolling over debris. A tank.

And there'd been no Cornerian tanks anywhere nearby when they'd crashed. She remembered that much from her last look at the radar.

"Define a while." Terrany grunted in pain and unstrapped her flight harness. "Do we keep a gun somewhere?"

"Shoot. Company?"

"You'll be able to pick them up soon enough."

"Second compartment on your right. Standard issue medium-intensity charging laser pistol."

Terrany reached her arm over against the screaming pain in her ribs and retrieved the weapon. A quick check of the power monitor along the side of the stock gave her a little bit of hope.

Fully charged.

"Keep repairing the ship." Terrany ordered her AI. She grunted in fresh pain as she climbed down the side of the Arwing and onto a collapsed shelf. Stepping past a row of holiday chocolates that had been knocked askew, she made it to the floor with minimal complaint. "And play dumb."

"Make it look like you abandoned ship and the Seraph's a piece of junk."

Terrany cocked her sidearm and continued to pace away from the ship. The tiny transceiver in her earlobe that Wyatt had made allowed her and KIT to speak. "It won't be that hard, I imagine."

"No."

The light coming in from the gaping hole outside was cut off; a vehicle had parked in front of it.

Terrany limped for cover, staring at the intruders through an overturned stack of stuffed animal figurines.

A squadron of five Primal troopers unloaded and headed inside, each carrying a vicious looking energy rifle with a bladed bayonet sharp enough to spill her guts across the floor.

Terrany gripped her laser pistol tight and made no sudden moves. Given how painful it was to move in the first place, playing dead came easy.

"Be careful, Terrany." KIT urged her, whispering. He didn't have to; the vibrations from the earring transceiver transmitted the message directly to her auditory canal.

As the first member of the patrol walked past her, not more than ten feet away, Terrany offered no answer to the hushed words of hope.

She could feel cold, bony fingers trying to rest on her shoulder.


"Dana, where is she?!" Rourke's voice was frantic. "Can you see her?"

Crushed, Dana finally made her way to where Terrany had last been seen on the radar.

No radio signal. No IFF signal. No radar blip.

Just Primals, sifting through the rubble.

Dana veered away as some of them got ideas and started shooting at her. She veered down another side street. "She's…She's down, Rourke. I'm not seeing anything." Dana wiped away fresh tears. "We've lost her."


Out on the edge of Corneria City, Rourke's heart suddenly rang hollow. Terrany McCloud was gone. Dead.

Just like her brother. Just like her father. Just like her grandfather.

This time, it was on his hands. He'd ordered her to split off and attack the Primal command ship.

"Rourke?" Milo prompted the O'Donnell. "We still have to take out the AA guns. This mission isn't over."

Rourke shoved his own grief away into a dark corner and kept his focus on the task at hand. His ODAI silently agreed; payback was due.

There were four AA hoverturrets left. They had been enough to pin Terrany down at ground level so the Primal ship could finish her off.

Two on his side. Two by Milo.

Rourke went low and cruised for the first turret. His Arwing's secondary stabilizers started to rise out from the top and bottoms of his wings, and the G-Diffuser/Negator pods opened up and separated into their four piece arrangement.

The change adjusted not only his Arwing's appearance, but its radar signature as well. The Arwing went from an arrowhead to an outright diamond on the screens of his teammates.

"Merge complete." Came Rourke's voice, calm and collected. Only his ODAI knew how angry he still was; the emotional backlash was accelerating the approach of Merge Mode's cascade limiter. Five minutes operational time to three.

His ODAI also reminded him that in spite of the null gravitational field from the now active G-Negator modules, there was nothing that could be done about the atmospheric resistance. The maneuverability given by Merge Mode had been designed for outer space, not planetside combat.

We'll adapt.

We'll have to.

A line of smaller gunpod drones lined up in front of the first turret and opened fire. Rourke spun just above their line of fire and twirled the Seraph like a top. Twin bolts of nova laserfire lanced out, demolishing each target with well-placed aim.

The hoverturret loomed into view. Rourke charged up to a multi-lock and fired. Five concentrated bolts slammed into the artillery and charred the metal to a burnished husk. The destroyed weapon fell to the ground with a heavy thump.

"That's one." Rourke said. Another targeted blip disappeared on the opposite side of the city not long after that.

"Two." Milo corrected him. There was no cheer in his usually charismatic tone.

The flight to the final artillery pieces was quiet. Their destruction carried only numbers over the airwaves.

"Three."

"Four." Rourke concluded. He relayed one last mental command and disengaged Merge Mode. His mind became his own once more, and the Arwing's senses faded away, leaving only the familiar display of his HUD in front of him.

"Dana, the skies are clear." Rourke informed their resident test pilot.

"Good." Dana chirped. "It's high time I gave these bastards a little payback."

"Dana, hang on!" Milo cried out. "Don't do this alone. Wait for backup!"

"Screw your backup." Dana snarled. "They took Carl. They just took out Terrany. This is personal."

Her radio went silent.

"Damnit!" Rourke swore. "This team's full of hot-heads!"

"The way we're flying, there's not going to be a team for much longer." Milo observed laconically.


CSC

"Internal power's starting to give, General!"

General Kagan drummed his fingers on his armrest. "How's the Starfox team faring? Have they taken out the Primals yet?"

"They just took out the last of the Anti-Air units. It's just the smaller skirmish aircraft, a few tanks spread out here and there, and that cruiser."

Kagan pursed his lips. "We'll have to risk it. Gentlemen, if any of you are particularly religious, pray that those Primals haven't taken down the power grid. Connect to the city's electrical grid and feed it to the shield emitters through the base reactor bypass!"


The Cornerian Space Command center existed within Corneria City, that much was true. A fact not commonly known to the population however, was that the CSC was powered primarily by an on-site nuclear reactor. Given the power needs for the command facility, especially its solid-state deflector shields, an independent power source from the city's main grid was a necessity. Even with this, however, the engineers had made it a point to route power relays to the CSC. Occasionally, the reactor had to be shut down for maintenance, and during those stretches, the reactor bypass relays allowed the CSC to continue its functioning of intelligence operations and command and control by drawing on Corneria City's network.

What had not been done, however, in all the years it had been in operation, was drawing on the grid while maintaining reactor operations. There'd been some talk among a fraction of the engineers who ran the reactor that it might lead to an overload.

With the deflector shields bleeding power from the siege, they didn't have much of a choice.

They needn't have worried.

Almost immediately, their weakening shields flared up with new life, gleaming defiantly as impact after impact found itself repulsed.

The Primal attack cruiser overhead was, for the moment, repelled.


The Sundown

The Primal captain let out an angry shriek. "Damn their eyes! Where's all that power coming from?!"

"I'm picking up significant electromagnetic flux in the surrounding area." Their sensor officer offered. He stared at his scope and let out a soft hoot. "It looks like they're using the city's power to reinforce their shielding. We won't be able to carve our way in now."

"Then trace that power source." The Primal captain growled. "We'll take it out and leave these Cornerian heretics to cower in their final moments. Where are those other Arwings, anyhow?"

"The two responsible for taking down our Anti-Aircraft turrets are closing in fast, and the third one…"

The ship was suddenly rocked by the explosion of a Cornite infused smart bomb.

The Captain fixed his hat and completed the sentence. "Was right below us, attacking from the streets."

"Yes, sir." The radar officer grimaced. "My apologies. Their radar signature disappears once they're below the skyscraper level."

"At ease." The captain remarked. He sat back down in his chair, and his eyes went hard. "They want to play it rough, do they? We can certainly oblige them. Set a course outside the city. We'll eliminate their skirmishing advantage by altering the terrain to our liking."

"Sir, I've got a fix on that power station!" The Sundown's sensor officer called out. "The city's main generators are located on the eastern side of the metropolis…twelve kilometers out, I'm afraid."

"Beyond our range." The captain mused. He thought the situation over and issued his orders. "Continue course north to engage the Arwings in open terrain. Launch our last squadron of aerodrone fighter/bombers to take down that power plant. We'll see to these Arwing flies ourselves, and then eliminate their command center with one decisive strike!"


McNabb Air Force Base

125 kilometers inland

Corneria's main military airport, Cornelius AFB, had been one of the first places hit. Orbital bombardment had turned the gem of the Space Defense Forces into flaming and broken buildings surrounded by smoldering skeletal airframes.

In spite of the rise in Cornerian military power in the Lylat System, it had been the main base; in many ways, the only base.

McNabb had been established fifteen years before as a hidden structure, one which would survive the worst case scenario.

The Primal Invasion was clearly that. McNabb took advantage of the natural caverns that permeated Corneria's surface. Since their civilizations' earliest days, Cornerians ran and hid in the caves when trouble came. It made sense that their last resort would follow the same logic…even if it only served as a storage depot for surplus aircraft and surplus pilots off the fast track.

Colonel Whitwood had been monitoring the radio. Minutes after their sudden and epic reappearance, the Starfox team had taken out the bulk of the Primal's tank brigade and shot down all their AA positions. They'd made it safe to fly over Corneria City.

Whitwood, a surly badger long delegated as an armchair commander, had had enough of sitting around and waiting. So had all his men.

They were done hiding.

The old badger reached a paw down and hit the P.A. mike in his office. "All pilots, prepare for launch. We're taking back Corneria City."

Even inside his supposedly soundproof office, he could hear the cheers echo about the caves. Colonel Whitwood allowed himself a grin when he released the squawk button. He stood up and walked out to the bases' command center: A transparisteel structure embedded in the southern wall of the main cave eighteen meters above the floor on support struts. The crew on duty glanced up at him, eager for orders. The badger snuffed his whiskers for a second before giving one out. "Open the hatch doors. Warm up the magrails. Prep for quick-launch procedures."

One of the youngest troopers in the room beamed widely. "Yes, Sir!"

It was almost a choreographed dance. Pilots rushed out to their Dynamo class atmospheric defense fighters, several degrees less complex than the high-performance and high cost Arwings. One by one, their delta-wing aircraft roared to life and taxied to the center of the base.

In a sight that would have made bystanders stop and stare in amazement, or remark that they'd seen too many movies with secret bases inside volcanoes, the roof of their well-lit cave began to open up. This was McNabb AFB's great secret. In an emergency situation, powerful hydraulic motors forced open the stone-covered reinforced roof of the base. In peacetime, they'd used it to bring in VTOL transports, but in times of war…as it was doing now…

It was how they launched all available aircraft in less than four minutes.

"Magrail deployment system ready. All nonessential personnel, clear the main chamber. All nonessential personnel…"

"Never thought I'd ever see this." Whitwood murmured.

The first two fighters took position at the center of the central hangar cave, directly on top of a well-marked metallic circle. It began humming powerfully, and the flight deck crew scrambled away from the platform just in time to avoid the powerful artificial gravity field the deck plate produced.

Now firmly rooting the aircraft to the spot, the central platform lifted up and swiveled back halfways, pointing the two fighters straight up through the central hole in the cavern's roof. Held in place by the artificial gravity, the fighters hung suspended like flies on the wall.

Their engines roared to life, belching flames down the hole that the hovering, self-sufficient platform had been covering. The reservoir to contain the flames redirected the hot exhaust through connected tunnels underneath the base, forcing the heat out and away. Some residual heat would rise up through the stone floor, giving all in the base a mild case of hot foot.

In the winter, Colonel Whitwood smiled, it was a terrific way to keep the base warmed up.

Right as the Dynamo fighters reached full thrust, the platform disengaged its hold on their airframes. They shot off like rockets, soaring through the cave's open canopy. The platform descended and took position for the next launch.

All twenty Dynamo atmospheric fighters only took five minutes and forty-three seconds to send off. Colonel Whitwood toggled the command room's radio to their frequency. "All right, men. Your former designations are temporarily suspended. Captain Bridges, you are Strike 1. All other aircraft will carry that designation in ascending numbers."

Strike 2 through 20 radioed their confirmations, and McNabb's radar soon read their new IFF tags when they switched over. Colonel Whitwood smiled, a dangerous thing coming from a badger. "Good luck, men. Go smoke some Primals for us, and back up the Starfox team."

He cut off the radio, and the crew in the command center gave him an odd look.

Their radar operator asked the unspoken question. "Why didn't you tell him the Starfox team's already lost a fighter?"

"Arwings are more than a plane." The Colonel remarked, moving to his seat. He eased himself into it with a sigh. "They're a symbol. If I told them the truth, they'd lose their will to fight, or they'd lose their cool. And right now, we need them fighting smart. Not angry."


Corneria City

High above Corneria City, riding the top edge of the planet's atmosphere, the Wild Fox watched everything below with an appraising eye.

It saw the Primal's desperate maneuver more clearly than the Starfox team could have on its own.

"Given the course of the enemy fighters, there is an 82 percent probability they are headed towards that power station." ROB reported calmly.

Sitting in the captain's chair, Wyatt rubbed at his throat pouch and frowned. "Why, though? It doesn't make any sense for them to break off the attack on the CSC…"

"…Unless the CSC is drawing power from the city's power grid to feed the shield." One of the military crewmembers piped up. The heir to Arspace threw a surprised glance at the rabbit, who shrugged calmly. "It's not general knowledge, but headquarters can feed off of local power reserves in an emergency."

"Well, that'd explain the jump in their power output." Wyatt grumbled. He thumbed his radio. "Starfox Team, this is Wyatt. Do you read?"

"We hear you, Wild Fox. What's the situation?" Milo Granger came back.

"The Primals just launched a set of fighters to take out Corneria City's main power station on the east end of the city's outskirts. If they drop it, the shield protecting Cornerian Space Command will die. Can you take care of it?"

"Damnit, we're spread too thin as it is!" Rourke snapped.

"Take it easy, hoss." Milo answered coolly. "I'm already on the eastern side of the city. You go ahead and fly to meet up with Dana. I'll keep the power station safe."

"Are you sure, Sarge?" Wyatt croaked. "I'm counting eight fighters headed your way."

"Then I'll need eight shots. Get going, Rourke. I'll handle this."

Wyatt leaned back in his seat and shook his head. "Eight shots? What kind of cocky, self-assured nut is that raccoon, anyways?"

Doctor Sherman Bushtail, the simian who'd served as the flight surgeon aboard Ursa Station, glanced up from his readings. "You don't know?"

Wyatt expanded his throat pouch and let out a loud warbling ribbit. "What, you think I'd know? I deal with machines, not people."

"Well, you knew he was regular Cornerian Army before he joined up, right?"

"Something that I never understood. What does a ground pounder have that makes him a perfect candidate for the next-generation Arwing?"

"Precision, grace, and focus." Dr. Bushtail declared ominously. "All traits he developed in his former career. There's a reason he said he only needed eight shots, Wyatt." The simian's bright eyes dimmed ever so slightly as he continued on. "According to his medical files, Milo Granger was the second-ranked rifleman and sharpshooter in the Regular Army." Dr. Bushtail paused, waiting for a sign of recognition.

He dropped the nail in the coffin. "He's a sniper. One shot…one kill."


He'd once been asked to describe the thoughts that went through his head when he pulled the trigger. What did it feel like to kill someone from two miles away?

Sergeant Granger had thought back to the Papetoon Uprising nearly 10 years before to think of how best to answer the query. It had been a bloodbath from the start; Papetoon, home to the Starfox team in the very earliest days of the Lylat Wars, had refused to sit under the authority of the growing Cornerian empire's flag. The planetary resistance had been crushed, thoroughly and utterly.

His official kill count had been listed as 23 dead. Milo's personal kill count spoke a different story.

32 Papetoon separatists had been blown away in the crosshairs of his scoped high-velocity laser rifle.

Milo's answer to that question then was the same as it was now.

He felt nothing.

That same detachment had bled into his ODAI. Every AI installed into the Seraphs picked up traits from their pilots. Rourke's had become snippy and prone to backtalk, Dana's had become a thrill junkie.

The ODAI aboard Milo's Seraph Arwing kept the same mechanical, monotone presence it had begun with. There was nothing different in Milo's approach for it to learn.

Milo felt his senses expand as his ODAI Merged with him. He felt the wings expand and the nova lasers power up, and quickly tapped in a specialized modification he'd been meaning to try out.

The nova lasers sharpened their focus, and channeled everything through his central buffer circuit. His primary nose cannon became the focal point for every bit of energy they put out.

A single beam of laserlight lanced through the sky from the hovering Arwing's nose, completely suspended in the G-Negation field…The perfect, motionless gun platform.

Everything faded out.

Nothing mattered but the shot.

The first focused blast screamed out, shooting forward like a javelin. It passed cleanly through one of the aircraft. Unlike the Snubs, these had pilots in them.

Or used to. Three milliseconds after the shot pierced clean through its fuselage, the first target disintegrated into a fireball.

"One." The Arwing's nose swung about ever so slightly and fired again. It covered the kilometers as fast as the last one, and shattered a second Primal fighter before the squadron had even reacted to the first kill. "Two."

The pack was beginning to take evasive maneuvers; closing the distance faster, they jinked and bobbed in a pattern that made it hard to gauge a clear shot.

Milo focused in on the lead plane and fired, aiming for where it would be not long after. His systems screamed a warning at him; firing his concentrated laser darts, something that his Arwing hadn't even been built for, was straining the buffer circuits to the breaking point.

The last shot missed the lead plane. It struck an unlucky wingman behind the flight lead, and a third target vanished from the scope.

Milo wanted to fire another shot. Even with them dashing in every direction, he was sure that he could have landed another hit, had his systems allowed it.

They were too low to launch a G-Bomb; the explosion would tear apart buildings and the ground below, sucking it all into the blast. He only had one choice left.

They closed in, five demons out for his blood and the death of the power station he'd moved to protect. He switched his lasers to standard operations and let the capacitors cool down from the overheating of three dart shots.

I am detecting a buildup in their weapons systems.

Good. I'd hate to think they'd make this easy on us.



The Primal contingent on the ground had fanned out. Two moved to investigate Terrany's Seraph Arwing, poking and prodding at the unresponsive controls in the open cockpit.

"These bastards keep poking my switches…I've got the ship in full lockdown. The only one messing around with any controls is me."

Terrany kept her ears flattened against her helmet. With two of them busy, that meant there were three she had to deal with immediately. How she was going to do that without being roasted or skewered was the real question.

Their search pattern gave her an opening, and Terrany made a dash further into the store. She was headed for the furniture department, by the looks of it.

Her hair stood on end right as KIT, ever watchful with the Seraph's cameras, sighted trouble. "Look out, kid! They've spotted you!"

Terrany threw herself into a crouching roll just in the nick of time. Laserblasts slashed where she'd been running and splintered a cabinet to sawdust. To stop moving would mean death, so Terrany didn't. In a moment of pure reflex, she came out of her roll and dodged past a standing display of bedroom cabinets, avoiding the rest of the scathing attack. Her chest screamed painfully at her again. Yeah, had to be some broken ribs there.

The McClouds had one trait above all others that made them ace pilots. They had a sixth sense about them when it came to dodging and weaving. The family mantra, appropriately enough, still applied.

Never give up. Trust your instincts.

She thumbed the trigger on her pistol, and felt the grip warm slightly as the capacitors began to build up a charge shot.

"Femnoor uz dat! Shredna ge's mal!" One of the Primals snarled.

Fighting off the pounding in her ears, Terrany managed to whisper a raspy message to KIT. "I didn't understand that, but it didn't sound good."

"Trust me, it isn't." KIT assured her. "The three closing in on you are splitting up. Two are coming…"

Terrany poked her head up just enough to see two of the armored Primal troopers closing in from her left flank. "I see them. And number three?"

"I lost sight of him, but he was ducking into…Terrany, behind you!"

Terrany whirled and fired on reflex, but the shot was well aimed. The charged pistol shot slammed into his armor and caused a personal deflective shield to flare up for a moment before the shot went through. A smoking impact point appeared on the side of his stomach plate, and the Primal fell to the ground, dead from the shock.

The attack only seemed to make the other two angrier, and a hail of shots landed all around her. Terrany swore and dashed further into the store. She passed out of furniture and through racks upon racks of clothing…clothing which soon caught fire as photonic discharges tore through them. One blast came close enough to singe the fur on the back of her hand, and Terrany took that as her cue to duck for cover. The burning racks of discount shirts and skirts did a phenomenal job of kicking up obscuring smoke, which made it both hard to see and breathe.

Eyes watering from the smoke, Terrany kept low to the ground. "I…I can't see…"

"Take it easy, kid. That's why you've got me." It was reassuring to Terrany to know that she wasn't entirely alone. "They're closing in on you, but it looks like they can't pick you out. The smoke's too thick for it."

"That doesn't…" Terrany coughed, and pressed herself lower to the ground. "…make me feel much better."

The smoke in the room finally rose high enough to trigger the smoke detectors, and a sprinkler system kicked on, dousing the entire warehouse with water and switching on every alarm possible.

"A fire has been detected. Warning; a fire has been detected. Please evacuate C-Mart in a quick and orderly fashion. We hope this experience will not keep you from visiting our fine stores in the fut…"

"Oh, tell me I'm not hearing an advertisement during an evacuation notice!" KIT snorted derisively. "Now I know Corneria's gone to pot."

The fires now extinguished, Terrany wiped her bloodshot eyes and gripped her pistol tighter. "No smoke means…"

The Primal troopers turned the corner of the smoldering clothes racks and turned their weapons towards her. She raised her pistol and fired, but without a charge, the shots bounced off harmlessly.

Like a deer in the headlights, Terrany watched as their rifles zeroed in on her.

"Terrany!" KIT screamed.

Terrany finished her thought, never hearing KIT's frantic cry. No smoke means they can see me just as well as I can see them.

The sound of two rifle-sized laser bolts screamed through the building.


The Sundown

"Sir, two of the Arwings have broken off from Corneria City. They're headed right for us! Time to intercept, one minute!"

The Primal Captain narrowed his eyes. A quick glance at the radar station told the story; the third of the surviving silver-winged ships was battling their last squadron and blocking the path to the power station. With the first two breathing down their necks, they'd run out of options. "Nothing else to do now. Open a channel, broad-frequency. I want those Arwings to hear me."

A squelch later, the captain had his wish. "Arwings of Lylat." He snapped. "If you wish to live for a few more days, turn around and come back the way you came, or else we'll swat you down as easily as we did your friend."

A snarling wolf's face appeared on their monitors in reply. "Not happening, you freak. That was our friend you took down. We hold grudges."

"You hold nothing that will help you survive."

Rourke started to snap a retort, then shook it off and smiled grimly. "I'll get back to you."

The Primal captain was left blinking as the communication line switched off. "What did he mean by that?" He muttered under his breath.

The tactical officer shrieked, snapping him from his thoughts. "Incoming orbital bombardment!"

"What?!" The captain finally realized the danger. "Damnit, their mothership! Evasive maneuvers, activate shields! And fire the Dispersal Charges!"

The lumbering Sundown slowly began to turn out of harm's way, but it did them little good. The first salvo of blistering rays cut through the atmosphere and sliced deep into the hangar, between the starboard wing and the main fuselage. Explosions tore through the ship's wiring, and the ship's systems flickered.

Back on the bridge, the Captain picked himself up off of the decking, nursing a monstrous headache. "Damage report." His voice cracked.

"They got our hangar. It's scrap now, it'd take us days to repair!"

"And our other systems?"

"Intact." His first officer noted. "The Dispersal Charges launched, and they've reached optimum altitude." He checked his viewer and smiled. "Charges successful. We won't have to worry about that mothership of theirs again."

"No, just the Arwings." The Captain growled. He sat back in his chair. "Convert the ship to attack mode. We're done fooling around."


Wild Fox

Cornerian Orbit

"We nailed 'em good, but they threw up some rockets. It's created a diffusive field of particles in the atmosphere above them." The lynx at the weapons station flicked his tail angrily. "Our shots aren't making it through! They hit the cloud and stop!"

Wyatt pounded the armrest of his chair. "Damnit. Out-thought again. They really came prepared! You get that last part, Rourke?"

"Yeah. Can't say I'm surprised, considering how they've had the edge on us since Ursa." Rourke kept his voice level. "Looks like we're on our own for this part. Thanks for trying."

"We did hit them, Rourke. Hopefully you'll have an easier time of it." Wyatt offered in consolation. "We'll hold station up here in case the Primals toss some more reinforcements our way."

"You have any on radar?"

"No." Wyatt expanded his throat pouch. "Doesn't mean there won't be. Good luck, Rourke."

"We lost Terrany, Wyatt. My luck ran out when she crashed."

The communications officer cleared his throat. "He closed the line."

The lynx at weapons control frowned. "You think she's dead?"

Wyatt took in a deep breath, then let it out slowly. "I don't know." He admitted. "Those Seraphs have a lot of next-gen construction in 'em, but Arwings have always been on the flimsy side. She might be dead. Fact is, the only thing keeping me from writing her off completely is that we didn't pick up an explosion when she went down."

"So she might still be alive?" The lynx brightened up.

It was Dr. Bushtail, the simian flight surgeon who put a damper on the room's tenuous hopes.

"I stopped receiving EKG and heart rate data from Terrany's medical transponder when those fireworks tore her Arwing apart. If she is alive…she's hanging onto a thread in the wreckage."


Corneria City

The surviving five fighters closed in on Milo's Arwing, the sole defender for the power station. The ship's systems lit up with radar alarms as they opened fire, thirsty for revenge.

His emotions in check, Milo let his Arwing take a sheer drop one hundred meters low. Every blast went far too high to hit, and before they could react, the nose of his ship began to spin about, tracking on the center ship.

All too easy.

The group split off into two groups, banking hard left and right. It did them little good. Firing normal nova laser bolts, Milo pivoted his Arwing on its central axis and lanced the lead ship and its wingman with charged energy. The two ships, smoking and disintegrating in midair, blew off their canopies and ejected two life pods.

Milo targeted the pilots' fragile ejection pods. The Arwing's forward-looking cameras had them well in his sights. He hesitated, thinking, for a full half second.

In Merge Mode, that half second was almost an eternity.

The Seraph's nose finally swung out around to the three remaining fighters. They had flew around him while he was occupied, and the ship's advanced detection systems screamed that they were painting the power station with targeting lasers for their munitions.

A thought charged up his nova lasers and engaged the multi-lock system. All three surviving ships were marked inside red boxes, and the nose of his ship glowed with a white hot fireball.

"End of the line." Milo said flatly. He fired.

The charged laser bolt flew ahead for forty meters, then split apart into three smaller shots. Each tracked in on a different target. At the last moment, the bombers had realized the danger and tried to disengage.

It did them no good. Each vanished in a glowing blast of white hot light, vaporized.

Milo shut his eyes, and let Merge Mode slip away from him. His secondary wings folded back into the main silver wings of his ship, and there was a slight jolt as the plasma thrusters reinitialized and fired, driving him forward again. The familiar wince as his consciousness was dropped back into his body passed quickly, and then ODAI's comforting voice spoke to him.

"All targets confirmed destroyed. Time of engagement: Seven seconds."

"I'm getting slow." Milo muttered. The raccoon opened his eyes and keyed in his mike. "This is Granger. All Primal fighters destroyed. General Kagan, warn the ground forces to be on the lookout for two Primal fighter pilots in the vicinity of the power station."

"Acknowledged, pilot." Came General Kagan's grateful voice. "You really saved our asses. I didn't expect there'd be survivors, though…Given what they did, I thought you'd relish blowing them apart."

"We're not animals, General." Milo replied, offering a small half-smile at the very dry joke. It faded quickly enough, and he swiveled his Arwing around. "Rourke, do you need me?"

"Get here as soon as you can, Milo. Things are going to get interesting."

"Roger." Milo opened up the throttle and activated the boosters, burning a course hard and fast northwest to the other two and the waiting Primal command cruiser.

It didn't stop him from glancing over his left shoulder and looking down into the city streets below, towards the area where Terrany's ship had last been seen. Smoke and fires rose up all around it.

"It is unlikely that user Terrany McCloud survived." His ODAI remarked blandly.

"For once, ODAI, I pray to Lylus you're wrong." The ring-tailed raccoon breathed.


The sound of two rifle-sized laser bolts screamed through the building.

The last McCloud ducked on what could only be instinct. They missed Terrany by such a narrow margin that the top of her helmet was shot off. What was left of it fell uselessly to the ground, and Terrany raised her pistol up and started firing.

Their personal shields flared to life, deflecting away the rounds that impacted against their heads and torsos.

Unfortunately, the shield did not protect their rifles. One well-placed shot buried itself into the charge pack of the left trooper's rifle, and a furious whine filled the air.

The Primal's eyes went wide as he stared at his weapon. "Fagh! To'mal re dafrey!"

Terrany didn't speak Primal, but she caught the meaning. "Oh, geez." She spun about and ran for cover. A tremendous explosion threw her the rest of the way and singed the hair on the back of her head; she could smell it when she fell on her side, where she'd twisted at the last moment to keep from landing on her already injured front ribs.

A flare of pain still claimed her vision for one long moment, and then KIT was in her ear again. "Kid! Respond!"

"I'm alive." Terrany answered sluggishly. She blinked a few times, licked her right paw, and pressed it against the back of her head. A hiss of steam cut out the flames burning away her headfur. "Their weapons can explode."

"Yeah, I kind of figured that part out." The AI snapped. "The good news is, that little stunt of yours took them out."

Terrany pushed herself up to her feet and set her pistol to charge again; she was done fooling around, and the way her body was screaming at her, adrenaline was going to stop helping her out in short order.

She glanced around a battered clothing rack and stared to where the Primal troopers had been standing. By the looks of it, they'd thrown the weapon down and tried to run.

What was left of them was sprawled out running in the opposite direction. Their shields hadn't been able to protect them from the overload.

"Yeah, it looks like." Terrany felt the edges of her vision go black, and she forced oxygen into her lungs, shaking against the pain. No, you can't fall asleep here. Not now… "Kit, I'm…I think I'm in…trouble here."

"You gotta hold it together a little longer, sport. Can you do that?"

Terrany's vision thankfully cleared up, and she could see the last two Primals charging over from her Arwing towards the source of the explosion. "Do I have a choice, Falco?" She snapped, turning about and making a slow retreat further into the store.

"We don't have that kind of luck."

Terrany made a sweep of her surroundings; Electronics department. Full of things that could break and crackle, but nothing that could explode with enough force to take them out again, and she didn't want to risk her neck on the chance that she'd make a lucky shot and hit their rifles again. After witnessing the explosion from before, they would likely be far more cautious. Probably chuck it at her as soon as a shot landed.

She didn't want to be on the receiving end of that, especially without a personal shield.

Fall back on your combat training. Outnumbered and cornered; making a stand's the stupid plan.

Deception, however…and traps…

Terrany glanced at a row of large flatscreen televisions on the second shelf of a display. Each had to weigh close to one hundred kilograms.

Her energy failing, Terrany slipped on a smile and lurched towards the TV's. A soft beep from the pistol in her hand told her that it had finished building up the energy for a charge shot. "Standby, Kit."

"What else am I gonna do, huh?" The AI scoffed.

The last two Primals in the building kept close by each other, moving slowly and patiently. Their weapons were kept in the ready position, and to their credit, they kept their fields of fire separate with only a bit of overlap. They were expecting Terrany to jump out at them.

When they reached a section of the store full of visual communications equipment, however, the Arwing pilot had failed to materialize. She was probably hiding, they decided…so silence and patient watchfulness would be their best chance of finding and destroying her.

Step by step, and with eyes scanning in every direction, they kept moving forward.

They heard the pained grunt just as both of them glanced something moving fast in the corner of their vision. A glance upward showed a massive television as wide across as four troopers starting to tilt forward off of a shelf, ready to fall towards them.

The troopers opened fire, pouring laser shots into the structure. It sparked, it smoked, but in a testament to its durability, did not give way. The device finally gave into gravity and began to fall.

"Tosh!" One of them screamed, and they both tried to lunge out of the way. One did…the other didn't. He was crushed under the weight, and his sparking shield sputtered out. It had been built to resist weapons fire, not a heavy piece of machinery.

The surviving Primal let out a scream and raised his rifle towards the hole in the display of TV's.

Terrany's pistol went off before his own weapon had even finished tracking in. The charged bolt slammed into the soldier's chest, burned the shield out, and roasted him alive.

Terrany McCloud slumped against the metal brace of the shelf as the last Primal fell backwards, a smoking corpse. "Done." She wheezed, feeling the word fall off of her like a tremendous weight. The pain from her injuries began to sink in, and she collapsed on the shelf, managing to land in a sitting position.

"You all right?"

"I feel like Hell."

"Yeah, you look like Hell from here." KIT chuckled. "Can you make it back?"

"Just…give me a moment…to catch my breath." She panted.

More noise interrupted the silence…A second Primal transport pulled up outside, next to the first.

Terrany stared at her pistol. Only a forty percent charge left. Not enough. She shut her eyes. "Kit, I…"

"I see them too."

"I think this is it. I can't take on another squad."

"You have to, kid. You gotta survive."

"Says who?" Terrany managed a weak, defeated laugh. "You know what they say about McClouds these days, Falco? We all die. We all die in battles just like this one. Outgunned, outnumbered…hopelessly outmatched. Grandpa died like that, my dad died like that…Even Carl."

"So you think you've got to be Number Four in the hit parade?!" KIT scowled. "That's a load of crap. You want to curl up and die, that's your problem. But if you go out like that, you're taking away all the courage and determination that made the Starfox team legendary. No McCloud has ever died defending Corneria from invaders, and I'm not about to let some whiny, weepy girl with insecurities start today!"

The last sentence was harsh, but it had the desired effect. Terrany's eyes opened back up, and began to burn. "Excuse me?"

"Oh, I get it. You're not as good as the others, huh? The subpar McCloud?"

"Shut up." Terrany snarled. She glanced at the second transport; the troopers inside hadn't moved yet. "You don't know me."

"I don't, huh?" KIT mused. "Prove me wrong, then. Get off your ass and get moving."

Terrany used a shaky arm and pushed herself off of the shelf. A short hop brought a flare of new pain, but she kept herself up on will alone. "You're a real ass."

"You should've seen me in my prime."

Terrany kept moving forward, trying to keep her upper body as stable as possible while moving step after step. "Any ideas?"

"You don't want to fight them, that's fine. Get to the ship."

"You've got it…ready?"

"Good enough. I can give us partial shielding, and the generator's charging again. A snap of my so-called fingers will get the thrusters burning."

"Weapons?"

"You're down to the nose laser. The crash did more damage to the interlink than I thought it had."

"It'll have to do."

Terrany ducked to the side as the first of the new wave stepped out from their transport. They had probably tried to contact the now dead squadron, and were coming in to investigate.

"Stick to the side routes. Once they realize you've abandoned the fighter, they'll follow the trail of bodies back to…"

A very loud rumbling came in from the building's exterior. The Primals began shouting, sounding panicked.

Terrany peered out from behind cover again just as the two transports were transformed into fireballs. The explosion rattled the building, and the Primal reinforcements ceased to exist.

The albino McCloud stared. "Mother of…"

"New contact outside…It's one of ours! It's Cornerian!"

A massive tank rolled over the wreckage of the small vehicles, and three Cornerian army reserve troopers hopped out and walked into the store through the gaping hole.

"Sir, we've found an Arwing! It looks like it crashed!" One of them called back outside.

"Rescue the pilot! We're not losing the Starfox team today!"

Terrany broke out into a relieved grin. "I don't believe it."

"Neither can I. But don't just stand there, get going."

Moving along as fast as her wounds allowed, Terrany made her way to her Arwing. The Cornerian military forces saw her coming.

"We've got her! She's injured, Major!"

Terrany kept smiling as the troopers-their troopers- surrounded her. "Take it easy, would you? I'm not dead yet."

The one closest to her looked relieved. "Good. When we heard an Arwing went down, we feared the worst. Are you…"

"Terrany Anne McCloud." She confirmed, lowering her pistol to her waist. "My fighter's in pretty bad shape; think you can tow it out for me?"

"Oh, no. No, you are NOT having these ground-pounders tie a hook onto this plane and…Terrany, I'm warning you!"

The last McCloud chuckled. "On second thought, just widen the hole. I'll fly out of here myself. But I could use one favor."

"Name it." The tankman slapped her on the back, and a fresh wave of stars passed over her eyes. She came to, only with the trooper holding her arm. "Are you all right?"

"I got banged up a bit." She finally admitted. Terrany felt her legs giving out under her. The trooper kept her up.

"Medic! MEDIC!"

Terrany felt the blackness coming back on the edges of her vision. "Call the others. Let'm know…I'm…ive…"

She felt very tired. The darkness was welcome.


Down, but not out. That was a very good way to describe the Primal attack cruiser. Hidden ports on the ventral sides of the ship opened up and sprouted a formerly unknown set of guns. What made it worse was that not all of them were the same…and the opening spray caught both Rourke and Dana off their guard. The first shots were avoided, but instead of trailing on harmlessly, they exploded behind the Arwings, showering them with scraps of hot metal that ate away at their shields.

"Jinking left!" Rourke shouted out, turning his fighter away from the trail of the followup shot. Dana took a bit more of a pounding before she too finally cleared out of the thing's gunsights. "Damnit, they're shooting flak rounds!"

"Flak?! Who in the Creator's green world uses flak anymore?!" Dana hollered.

"If it's not broke…" Rourke muttered, more to himself than for Dana's sake. "I'll go high, you go low. And don't take the direct approach if you can help it. Our shields can't…"

"I know, I know!" The tigress threw her ship into an inverse Immelmann and made for the carrier. "Charging lasers."

"Roger." Rourke made his own sharp banking turn and came down at the carrier from an angle. His early warning system detected a missile launch on the top of the ship's starboard side, and he thumbed the trigger for his munitions. "Firing smart bomb." The Arwing gave only the barest shudder as the launcher fired a red-hued Cornite charge into the fray. Rourke triggered the explosion early, about sixty meters shy of the ship, and roasted all the outbound missiles before they could track in. He also held in his gun trigger, and prepped his own green ball of laserlight at the nose of his Seraph.

Through the firestorm of his making, his sensors had no trouble locking onto the offending launch port. "Here's something for you!" The laserbolt tracked through the smoke and debris and exploded, slightly warping and discoloring the hull around the launch rack. It was definitely going to take some more punishment before it went offline. "Dana, go full fire. This ship was built to soak trouble." Rourke squeezed off a few bolts, then veered off behind the ship. It managed to fire off another salvo of missiles to trail in his wake, but a loop at the last moment made them sail off harmlessly.

"Nice dodge, Rourke!" Dana cheered him on, blasting her own section of the ship's weapons array with a full stream of hyper laserfire. Unlike Rourke, she waited until the last possible moment to turn away from collision. The risky maneuver paid off with handsome dividends...

…Because the port missile bank overheated and tore the ship apart. A rush of flame and pressure threw Dana's Arwing well clear and caused her shields to flare at the same time. When she finally balanced herself out, the damage was starkly clear; a gaping hole in the ship allowed her to see clear to the very bottom of the keel.

Dana Tiger banked her Seraph and stared down past her right arm to the maelstrom below. A cloud of smoke rose up, and she spun around it with a satisfied grin. "That hurt him!"


Primal Cruiser Sundown

They had long since shut off the alarms, but the fire control systems couldn't keep up with the acrid smoke. A thin mist of water mixed with the pollutant and made something almost like a thick black fog. Visibility had dropped to ten feet, which was enough for operations to continue.

"They took out our port missile bay! Casualties are tremendous! Our power grid is fluctuating!"

"It doesn't matter!" The captain snarled, coughing as he raised his uniform up to cover his mouth from the burning smells. "We have shot down one Arwing in the name of our Lord of Flames. All we can do now is destroy the rest, or die in the attempt!"

The bridge crew fell silent, save the captain's loud breathing.

"Fire everything. Fill the sky with our divine fire." He said. "There is no going back now. There is only death, and we will be welcomed when we carry the souls of our Lord's hated enemies behind us."


What was left of the enemy cruiser unloaded everything it had. Rourke and Dana both turned and furiously weaved as a wave of flak, missiles, and laserfire streamed out at them. The cruiser had turned itself around on sputtering engines, slowly leading its forward facing cannons at Dana.

"Rourke, I'm taking hits here!" The tigress yowled.

"Keep it together, just a bit longer!" Rourke urged her. He was already spinning around for another assault, and the missile bay was in his sights again. Another Smart Bomb took out the latest cloud of projectiles flying for him, and he flew through the hazy red smoke of the Cornite explosion. He unleashed Hell on the ship's makeshift weak point, and was rewarded with an explosion as large as the first. The ship lurched groundwards, and the stream of fire ripping into Dana's Arwing was diverted. "Okay, break off now!"

"This is Milo. You both might want to break off. I'm coming in hot and Merged."

Rourke glanced down at his radar display, and suddenly noticed that Milo's Seraph had caught up to them. True to the raccoon's words, it was in Merge Mode, and that meant…

"Bomb?" Rourke asked, already veering off.

"That's affirm. Get clear of the blast radius, this isn't going to be pretty."

"You're using a G-Bomb planetside?! We've never tried that in the simulators!"

"Well, they're getting a field test." Milo growled. The noise sounded eery, thanks to the reverberating background noise from his connected ODAI. "Firing in three…two…"

"Shit!" Dana screamed. She triggered her boosters, and she and Rourke flew in opposite directions away from the floundering assault ship.


The G-Negator had charged the bomb launcher's capacitors to full with excess power, pushing the Cornite munitions within the chambered Smart Bomb to threshold levels. All it would take would be just a few last ergs of electromagnetic force before it would reach critical mass, and that last part was given at the moment of firing.

Merged again, but still far from the five minute limiter, Sergeant Milo Granger lined up the reticle one last time with the Primal cruiser's center of mass.

"One."

He fired, and even suspended within its own specialized gravitational field, the Seraph Arwing shuddered at launch.

Milo de-Merged as soon as the projectile was away, and there was only a slight discomforting twinge from his efforts. He watched it track in, and marveled at the sight.

He'd never seen a bomb glow that shade of blue before.


The Gravity Bomb tracked in, and even though the Primal cruiser tried to avert, it did them little good. Milo had aimed the strike too true, anticipating their likely escape route.

There had been legitimate fear that use of the G-Bomb in atmospheric, planetary combat was too risky. The G-Bomb had been designed as a dual purpose weapon; draw in enemies, and then wipe them out in a massive explosion. It was the way it drew them in that had prompted so much worry.

Not many people in the R&D labs were thrilled with the idea of creating a micro singularity, even temporarily, within a planet's magnetosphere. There were countless doomsday philosophies posed from the topic, but none of them came true.

The G-Bomb worked exactly as advertised. Upon impact, an initial implosion created a powerful miniature nuclear furnace, the size and shape of a large inflatable beach ball. It immediately ate away and vaporized everything close at hand, chewing another gaping hole into the cruiser's superstructure.

Then phase one of the weapon kicked in, and for four full seconds, the fireball sucked in everything around it with a gravitational pull that thrusters could not deny. The Arwings of Milo's teammates were, thankfully, too far away by then to be affected, but the cruiser was out of luck. Its engines screamed and finally exploded from the strain of fighting against the pull, and the ship was shaken apart even more.

The radio crackled. "What have you done?!" The Primal captain screamed. "What kind of monsters are you?"

"We're Starfox." Rourke O'Donnell snapped back, tired, angry, and ready for the conflict to be over. "And you're space dust."

Phase two of the G-Bomb went off, swallowing the cruiser in Cornite fueled nuclear fire.

The screams on the radio, thankfully, didn't last long.

High above the fading maelstrom, Rourke leveled off his Arwing and slumped back into his seat. His hand came up and rubbed at his eyes. "All aircraft…report."

"Dana. My shields got a little baked, but…I'm fine." Dana Tiger pulled her own Arwing up behind Rourke's.

Milo took up position on Rourke's other flank. "Granger. No problems here. Surviving Primal aircraft are in retreat…" He paused, then chuckled. "Oh, you're not going to believe this. I've got a wave of incoming aircraft flying right for the stragglers. They're Dynamos."

The radio came to life again. "Starfox team, this is Strike Team Leader. Good job on the command cruiser. Leave the others to us."

Rourke thumbed the communicator in his helmet. "Strike Team, this is Starfox. They're all yours." He glanced out to the horizon, where the Primal fighters were retreating. A distant line of specks was closing in on them, hungry for blood. "That's it, then." He breathed, back on the team's private band. "We're all done here."

"Starfox team, this is General Kagan at the CSC. On behalf of the entire planet, I'd like to thank you. Your General Gray contacted us and told us your situation, but I didn't think you'd make it." The voice let out a relieved laugh. "This is probably the first time I've been glad to be wrong."

"Yeah." Rourke muted his connection for a bit. "ODAI, you there?"

"When am I not?" Came his AI's snippy retort.

"Set for autopilot. Circle the city."

"Roger."The Seraph Arwing balanced out for a moment, and then went steady in a barely noticeable turn. Rourke switched the mute off.

"Anything else we can do for you, General?"

"No, not for the moment. This city's in sorry shape, but we're still better off than the rest of the Lylat System."

Milo and Dana glanced through their cockpits to each other, sharing a look. "How bad is it, General?"

"We're still calculating. Our long range sensors got knocked out, so getting information is problematic. But based on what we do know…They've all but wiped us out. The 7th Fleet had been stationed above Aquas, and they were completely annihilated."

"The Seventh?" Dana repeated in horror. "That…That was Admiral Howling's. He was the best!"

"Emphasis on was." General Kagan agreed grimly. "Right now, Starfox…you're all the assets we have available. Cornelius Air Force Base took a beating in the first strike, but it should suffice for the moment. Go ahead and land. I've provided clearance to your mothership to follow you in. We're going to have repair crews working around the clock to get Cornelius up and running again. Creator damn it all."

Over their private channel, Dana sounded in. "I feel like we've just prolonged the inevitable."

"Hey, we gave Corneria a fighting chance." Milo reminded her. "That's something we didn't have before."

"There were four of us before." Rourke pointed out. His voice was tense with bitterness; Milo could hear it.

"Hang on, Starfox…We're receiving a transmission from our ground unit." The CSC was silent for a bit, and then Kagan's voice returned. "Apparently, Major Boskins and his men came across a group of Primals on the ground who were trying to loot a convenience store in the city. There was one item that they weren't able to check out. Two of them, actually."

"What was that?" Rourke muttered.

"A crashed Arwing in the store…and the pilot who flew it down. Terrany McCloud's alive. Injured, but alive. We'll get her to you at the Wild Fox when it touches down. Go ahead and land, Starfox team. You've earned a rest."

The channel with the Cornerian Space Command HQ squelched out, leaving Rourke, Dana, and Milo reeling in midair.

"She's alive?" Rourke uttered incredulously. "But…How?"

"There were four of us before, Rourke." Milo chuckled, breaking off from the pack. He boosted on ahead, and then turned for the ruined Cornelius AFB. "And there still are."

With the sun shining down on the wartorn Corneria City, the three Seraph Arwings turned and dove for their new terrestrial base.

It was good to be home.