Admiral Endico – Silver Tiger, Unknown Airspace
Tension was running high on the bridge of the Silver Tiger, and Admiral Endico had found himself as the catalyst of it. He sat adamantly with his arms folded upon his admiral's chair, riskily stroking the scarred side of his face with the golden claw that used to be his right hand. It had become a habit as before the injury Endico had been right-handed, however afterward the admiral had been forced to operate mostly with his left. He painted invisible circles on his cheek with the bullion hook, staring toward the frontal viewport into nothingness. Whoever had sent the Silver Tiger on an unplanned trajectory through the outskirts of the Lylat had a certain degree of bravery, maybe even cunning, but most of all, Endico predicted, they were ludicrous.
"I've finished the report, sir" Bucky's voice came from the lower deck. Two black fists arrived at the top of the nearest ladder, followed by a stout body dressed in Cornerian red uniform. His eyes caught Endico's attention first, as they glowed like laser fire and could potentially burn holes in his concentration. Bucky's steps were delicate and soft as he approached the admiral, and handed him a datapad.
"Please, Vice Admiral, spare me the intricate workings of your report and simply apprise the general makeup of it" Endico said bitterly, threatening the datapad with a hooked hand. Bucky retracted it and nodded.
"Upon following Commander-In-Chief Marco's orders, the Silver Tiger was led to Area Six airspace, where the presence of Star-Fox seemingly sparked a battle between Cornerian and Venomian forces. When the Silver Tiger's fighters were dispatched and engaged the enemy, they were successful in pressing the enemy back - "
"Omit the battle commentary" Endico moaned in a sour sulk. Bucky paused, shook his head, and continued.
"Driving the Venomian flagship into a retreat, the Silver Tiger was caught off-guard to a cloaked medium-large modified cargo cruiser. A batch of nova missiles impacted on the port side, destroying our lateral controls as our shields were set to double-front in defense from the Venomian flagship. A hull breach was caused in the rear left quadrant, and subsequently there were a number of onboard mechanical fires. The missile barrage destroyed our trajectory toward Venom, and instead sent us on a route which propelled us away from Area Six, and into unchartered space territory."
Endico's reply was quick, almost as if he lacked care for the report that was being transmitted back to Cornerian Defense.
"Approved."
"Affirmative, sir" Bucky replied just before heading back down to the lower deck.
"Deck Officer, damage report" Endico called out. A female canine face bobbed up from the clustering bodies of the lower deck, amongst the console screens and flashing beacons. Isan's voice was firm but deprived of hope.
"The ship is in a stable condition, sir…"
He cut her off.
"Thank you Deck Officer. I imagine hull breaches and engine fires would leave the ship in better than stable condition" Endico bickered. Isan did her best to ignore the admiral's attack and instead came back with the rest of her analysis.
"Our main sublight drives are non-operational. We've also lost the X and Y axis controls. Our only steerage is left with emergency drives, but they are proving hard to handle with lack of systems we have left."
"Sir!" came another crewmember's voice. Endico couldn't see where the voice was coming from, but it was clear and male. "Frontal shields are also non-operational!"
Endico caught a look from Bucky down below which seem to reflect his disbelief. The admiral dipped his head and released a sigh.
Such a state of the art ship… and such a toll this scum has taken on us. He looked up again to address the crew with a satirical comment.
"This station is non-operational" he concluded cynically. He released a breath of air, with the intent that it would somehow remedy the aching pressure slotting in between the bones in his shoulders, and let the calculations floating in his mind fade into nothingness in an attempt to purge his head of thoughts, leaving it as an empty canvas. His fingered hand smothered his face as if the admiral was in agony, and became fused there.
What have I done to deserve this? Endico inquired to himself. A dreary cloud began to cushion his head as suddenly his neck muscles became weak. Endico allowed his head to roll forward further into his furred hand's grasp and warmth, and gently resisted the force of his eyelids snapping shut so he would loose control of his stability completely. It appeared that his short interval from constant thought and calculating had lured him into a sense of carelessness, and his body was giving out on him. Depressed voices and commands from crewmembers to one another on the lower deck soon became haze of lackluster drones, and soon the bridge seemed so far away from his clasp. His curious wonders about his son – the orders of Commander-In-Chief Marco – but presciently his son became more abstract, more out of the bounds of reality. It was called tiredness, and soon Endico found himself in a world of his own, though conscience of all the background noise. Suddenly there was a closer sound – not louder, but more direct than any other wandering resonance in the bridge.
"You've been awake longer than twenty-four hours" Bucky stated meters before the admiral. Endico figured his adamant desire of rest was more than obvious, and a stiffened neck adjusted its angle to provide a view of the vice admiral. Endico's digits faded from his unfocussed view and he spotted the distinctive coloring and shape of Bucky Badger. When Bucky had spoken, his voice was low, almost inaudible, but there was a strength there that prevented it from being a whisper entirely. He had used the environmental blare of voices in the Silver Tiger's bridge as a mask to keep his sentence personal. Endico couldn't appreciate Bucky's implication.
"With my son out there?" Endico mumbled as he looked up. His eyes were pained, his expression defeated and dour, with discoloration occurring on the furred half of his face, but remaining a deserted landscape on the other. Even through the charring and cavities rupturing the man's gray skin, the distressed lines and wrinkles were clearly visible. "To ask such a task of parent whilst the fate of his offspring remains completely unknown, is foul."
"Consider this" Bucky spoke back to him more clearly. Endico wasn't impressed with his tone and squinted. He suspected the vibes of malcontent toward the vice admiral were powerful enough to have an impact on him, but he did not see it on the subordinate's face. The badger continued. "You're weakened state is not a fit condition for handling what is most important at current. And those priorities are the crew on this ship, the remainder of the pilots who gave their lives at our run in with the Venomian Remnant and returning them safely to Cornerian airspace."
Endico's stance toward the vice admiral became more diplomatic as he refined his approach.
"You can not ask that of me, Bucky. You have no idea - "
"We all feel your grief about your son, Admiral, for you have displayed it very clearly on this bridge here in the last few hours, but there are more living beings here on this ship than in that freighter your son was piloting."
"We'll send a distress call and the CDF will rendezvous with us, returning home is not a difficult feat, Vice Admiral" Endico argued.
"Maybe not so, but if we are attacked out here in open space, which may be likely, how is this crew supposed to entrust their lives to you when you're in a state like this? You're feelings for your son manipulate your actions, as does your exhaustion. I strongly recommend you get some rest, Admiral, or this cruiser may require more adequate leadership."
Endico was overcome by the authority of his strenuous form, but the antagonism of Bucky's comment had infuriated him all the same. However, Endico was only able to resort to more basic reactions.
"Is that a threat?"
"Are you conscious enough to distinguish so?"
Endico fought his composed muscles with a launch upward from his chair. This brought him close to Bucky, and although the badger was much shorter than the admiral, the stirring emotion between them was all the same.
"The most important aspect to me in my life is at stake, and you threaten my command. If you crave it so badly Vice Admiral, that you cannot achieve promotion through standard procedure, but instead must slither your way through the ranks – then you can have control of the ship" Endico stated cruelly, his voice suddenly much more lively and powerful. It was possible the crewmembers had taken note of his statement, and it would have wounded Bucky's integrity, but for the admiral it did not matter. Bucky cautioned himself against further words, narrowing his eyes and considering the options. He said nothing however, and the cracking silence between the two authorities was snapped by Endico. "I'll be in my quarters."
Endico left the bridge unhurriedly, slipping past a sliding mechanical doorway, and vanishing from the crew's sight.
When Bucky turned around, he found the crew bustling with duties below him, consulting with computer screens and conversing with plum-colored touch-screen interfaces, but he knew they'd heard. The damage was done.
"Bridge commander" beaconed the communications officer, informing Bucky he was still needed regardless of opinion.
"Communications Officer" he replied. The sloth had one arm perched atop a console, while the rest of his body twisted in what looked like a very discomforting motion. Bucky's expression was grim as Communications Officer Sloan bushy brown structure shivered as he talked. It didn't improve with the young sloth's delivery of the message.
"I attempted to transmit the report to Corneria command as per requested, sir!"
Attempted? Bucky groaned inside.
"And?"
"We don't have external frequencies sir – it appears they've been damaged in the attack" Sloan said cautiously, worried of the vice admiral's impending reaction. He'd got it.
"Blast it!" Bucky yelled with a mouthful of teeth making their debut in front of the bridge crew.
The quarters were modest for someone portrayed as illustrious as Admiral Endico. The room was similar to most of the other barracks housed in the ships bowels, with the exception of having a small amount of valued space that was considered lavish in such an environment. Patriotic decorations that weren't the touch of Endico, but rather a compliment of the ship since its birth were spaced reservedly around the living quarters, which included a CDF framed flag, a collection of awards and trophies a top a beverage cabinet of sorts, Cornerian holograms sprouting in alcoves… Cornerian everything. Endico would suffice to say the room simply looked entirely Cornerian, and leave it at that. It was not far from the standard image most spawned in their heads when given such a description, and the coloring was certainly spot on. A blue stripe ran along the base of the walls and wrapped itself around the room, connecting on either side of the main doorway. The rest of the quarters were white and grey – giving it an illusion of long and wide dimensions, however rendering it boring to some. Endico, as he sat on the edge of his retracting mattress locked in position, didn't mind the plainness of the room – it was in his nature to have some type of order; a standard. Upon resting his aching bones and muscles, he thought of nothing but his son. No 'why's' or 'how's', they were beside the point and superfluous. He reached for a control panel just out of arm's length from his position, causing him to shift slightly. He dabbled with an interface lodged into the wall below the shiny pad of buttons, bringing up a hologram in the middle of the room. The type of projector that was built into the ceiling had a silver tint, making the colors of Monty Endico a little off, but still the image was enough to spur the admiral's emotion. Depicted here, Monty had just enrolled at the academy, standing with the famous General Peppy Hare, who was just out of frame. The whole hologram had included the general in his entirety also, but Endico had purposefully enlarged the outline of his son.
"What did I do? What are you doing?" Endico whispered to the hologram, half-expecting the still view to reply. The image rippled like it was in an encasement filled with water, but it was merely the effect holoprojectors created on three-dimensional images. The gaping hole of uncertainty somewhere between his chest and stomach seemed to broaden with the realism of Monty's picture, and suddenly Endico had regretted giving into the temptation of bringing the projection up. The old feline buckled over himself, reaching out sightlessly for the control panel to remove the projection from his quarters, and then arced into his mattress. Before any tears could come – before the grief-stricken admiral allowed the delicate shard in his throat burdened with his grizzly sensation to snap – there was a chime throughout the room, and Bucky's face popped up on the interface aligned against the wall. Endico hadn't quite lost control of himself, so he thumbed down the key which gave Bucky visual access to his quarters.
"Vice Admiral?" Endico spoke, uninterested in offering meaningless taunts.
"I need to talk to you" Bucky said.
"Of course you do. And you can. Later."
"Now… something else is wrong with the ship."
My favorite kind of visit, Endico sighed. He allowed the badger in with the flick of a switch, the silver plating that formed the door hissed open, and before seconds passed, the vice admiral came before him, standing straight, looking concerned.
"Communications are out. Nobody's coming for us" Bucky said straightly. Endico didn't reply, and instead threw a claw up in dismay. "I had the techs do an analysis… Just as I thought, we'd been hit by an electro-pulse blast. Not strong enough to knock out everything before our secondary generators kicked in, but strong enough to short-circuit anything it could."
"Mmm" Endico acknowledged with little sound.
"We're stuck out here. We're not getting home. Our trajectory sends us floating into the unknown regions. We have no direction" Bucky emphasized, not feeling the full implications of his words had sunk into the admiral. But they'd hit home well enough; what Bucky didn't understand, was that Endico's stance toward the Silver Tiger's situation was secondary to the fear of what might have been happening to his son.
"Thank you, Vice Admiral" Endico said.
"I assume you'll leave the ship in my command while you're resting."
Moments of wordless noise passed – the humming of the Silver Tiger's emergency engines hundreds of feet below them, clanking footsteps from the corridor outside as somebody passed, and the unfriendly whine of the room's air-filter system. Bucky flinched minutely, and Endico saw he was considering leaving, but he detected there was still much unsaid on the vice admiral's part.
"Do you have something more to say?" Endico encouraged. He noticed his voice had become a little hoarse from all his demanding and instructing at the ship's bridge, and he spoke with a layer of raspy whisper as well as segments of stabilized voice. Bucky waved his hands by his side a little.
"I didn't mean to offend you before, Admiral. I only meant to put things in perspective. I can't imagine what you're going through – I have no children of my own. I apologize for my behavior. But please, let's forget it, and move on."
"Oh, here it comes" Endico moaned. "As much as I feel like diving into the oblivion that my mattress can offer, kid, I can't. It's driving me insane. Monty's on Venom, with what can't be more than a handful of soldiers. There's not a soul on Venom that would want a Cornerian left alive in good health."
Bucky dipped his head, realization forming of what the admiral's suffering may have been comprised of, and offered a slight nod to speak for his thoughts. Endico understood what Bucky implied – he didn't understand the hollow and sickly feeling upon him, but he had left a bubble of space in his imagination. "Furthermore," Endico spoke up, "I apologize for how I responded. You said the same things I would have to my superior ten years ago. And for Corneria's sake, you're right Bucky… I can't do this on my own."
"It's in the past" Bucky resolved. He sighed at the direness of the Silver Tiger's realistic chances of being rescued by Cornerian forces, and the probability of the wounded ship coming under assault.
"What are we going to do, Admiral?" Bucky asked.
"The only thing we can do, Vice Admiral," Endico replied as he returned to formalities, "we wait."