XXV: Fork
"This is becoming tiresome."
"Well you couldn't have expected this whole thing to go off without a hitch."
"No, I did not expect that, but this...where are all of these leaks even coming from? I've done everything I can to make this air tight on my end, and now it seems like every time we seal off a crack, another pipe bursts open."
"Admiral Gage, Sir?"
"Don't pretend to have forgotten, Bishop; the whole deal with Rashik back in Sector Z. We had to sacrifice a cruiser and a frigate just to shut off that little valve. Do you realize how difficult it was to quietly transfer all the men on his list to those ships? Not to mention losing Hartford; that boy was a promising captain. And now this? This? Tell me Commander, why am I holding this piece of paper in my hands? Do I appear to be his errand boy? I am a Cornerian Admiral for Sol's sake..."
"..."
"I apologize...this is not your fault Commander. But if I was not convinced that this entire thing had to be done, I'm not sure I would even offer that man the time of day. He has no respect for the insignia of rank, or the capabilities of my men with these petty tasks he heaps on us. But...things could not continue the way they have been."
"I understand, sir. And if it means anything, I get the same vibe. But things being as they are, I'm afraid I need a response for his lieutenant."
"And now he's using one of my commanders as a messenger. Excellent. ...All right, tell him the strike will be carried out as he suggests. Lylat could do without one more mercenary-turned-warlord anyway. But tell him to contact me directly with these matters from now on. I won't have my top officers being put on courier duty."
"Sir."
"Oh I don't like this at all," Falco Lombardi said as he set the shuttle down in the Great Fox's rear landing bay. As soon as he felt the deck under the land gear, he quickly shut down the craft, disabling the cabin lights and replacing them with their dim emergency counterparts.
It was a tight fit in the small hanger, already occupied as it was by another shuttle. The second shuttle looked far more dangerous than the vessel currently carrying a good portion of the Star Fox crew. It was angled in the front, with the appearance of having a strong underbite, as well as sporting a stubby wing on either side of the hull. It was outlined with a faint halo of light, indicating a source of illumination on the other side of the ship, towards the hallway connecting the hanger with the rest of the Great Fox.
But otherwise, both ships sat quiet in the darkened bay.
"The door was open, the lights are out," Falco began again, spinning the chair around and facing the armed or arming passengers onboard of the newly arrived shuttle. "Smell like a trap to anyone else?"
"Reeks of it, birdie," Rhena Haggerty replied, checking the sight of a sub machine gun. She cast him a skeptical look. "But we don't have much of a choice, do we?"
"You couldn't have picked up some armor while you were at your friend's place?" Miyu asked Bill, poking through the half empty duffel bag the team had just retrieved their heavy arms from. "If they're waiting for us, we could be filled full of holes before we get two steps into the hanger."
"Didn't think to ask, to be honest," the hound replied, an image of his fiancé in danger briefly dancing before his eyes before he shook it clear of his mind. He had to stay in the moment, though it was much easier said than done.
"Alright, listen up," Fox said as the other four gathered around him. The low light of the cabin made it difficult to discern more than outlines, but it was enough to go by. "We don't know what we're getting into exactly, and I really, really hate going into things blind, but Rhena's right. We don't have much of a choice here. We have to assume that Link and Slip are captured, at best, so shoot anything that moves."
The outlines nodded in the low light of the shuttle's cabin.
"As soon as we clear the Great Fox, a couple of us will go help Katt. It's only been a few minutes; she could still be alive, and in a heap of trouble. She saved us. We owe her that much." Without waiting for his words to sink in, Fox nodded and hefted his rifle. "Okay. Let's go."
He flipped the 'open' tab on the shuttle door and activated the gangway, ducking back behind the hull as he did so. Instinctively the rest of the crew followed suit, Falco and Miyu on his side of the door, Bill and Rhena on the opposite. As an afterthought, he killed the dim cabin lights altogether, plunging them into a more perfect darkness.
A loud, labored hiss filled the silence as the threshold opened itself, sliding into the very hull the team was hiding behind. The gangway extended on rusty gears and ancient struts, whining with every meter it extended towards the deck of the Great Fox. When it finally touched down, it scraped along the metal for a bit before shrieking to a halt at about the same time the door disappeared completely into the wall.
"So much for the element of surprise."
Fox waited for the noise in the hanger to settle. Seconds ticked by like minutes as his ears strained for any possible indication of an enemy presence. When he could hear nothing but the breathing of his teammates around him, he twisted and leapt silently from the shuttle, shunning the gangway altogether. His eyes weren't particularly gifted towards night vision, but on the way to the deck, his quick mind didn't register any presence that he could see. His boots touched down with the faintest of footfalls, and he let his vertical momentum push him into a crouch.
He stayed down for several moments.
Nothing.
When the team heard no gunfire erupt or ambush sprung, they made their way off the craft via the gangway or jumping down, careful to minimize their noise as much as possible. As each hit the deck, they jogged towards Fox, who was carefully picking his way around the foreign shuttle. The vulpine's head was moving rapidly, twisting his sight between where he headed, and every exterior nook and cranny of the alien craft.
When they reached the front of the second shuttle, they stopped.
The source of light Falco noticed while landing turned out to be a flashlight on the ground, right on the hanger threshold. The door was open, and beyond it laid a dark, foreboding hallway. While any number of shapes and shadows occupied the space beyond, what occupied the foreground immediately stole the team's attention.
Four bodies, all lying about in different poses and positions, were spread out over a few meters, centered around the doorway. Faces were impossible to distinguish in the faint, eerie light of the discarded flashlight, but upon closer inspection, the team had little trouble discerning most everything else.
Falco and Rhena gingerly stepped around the bodies, weapons trained forward and scanning for any sign of movement from further down the corridor. Soon they disappeared into the hallway itself, leaving the other three by the foreign shuttle for a few brief moments. The sound of delicate movements and hushed whispers preempted Falco poking his head back into the light of the flashlight, giving the 'all-clear'.
While Rhena kept a watchful eye and a weapon's barrel out for trouble, Fox and his team began tying pieces together.
A tiny gleam caught Miyu's eye, and she bent down over the closest of the bodies, snatching a spare flashlight from the corpse's belt. After fiddling with the object looking for a switch, she thumbed the tab and a second beam of light burst forth. Sweeping over the body she had just looted, her breath stopped.
The puma was riddled with bullet holes. Blood stains spotted his fatigues around every bullet wound, each of which looked almost identical to each other. Two thoughts immediately jumped to Miyu's mind. The bullets were from the same gun. And they had all impacted the corpse at the same time.
Miyu caught Fox's attention and wiped her flashlight's beam over the corpse again.
"What the…" the vulpine whispered, trailing off. He stared at the body and couldn't stop the words from slipping past his lips. "Someone was a horrible shot."
"Maybe Slippy's alive after all then," Falco offered, picking his way over to the pair, gripping his weapon tightly. Though offered as a quip, Falco's words carried some hope with them.
A third flashlight sprang to life off to the side of the doorway. Glancing over, Fox saw Bill gazing down at another body.
The hound nudged the lifeless carcass with his boot. When it fell back to its original position, he applied more pressure, slowly and deliberately flipping it over on its back. When the body finally complied with a loud russle and clatter, Bill swore under his breath. He swept the body again with his flashlight.
"Same deal," he said in a hushed voice, "Someone must've put a whole clip into this gal."
"Guys," A whisper called urgently from the hallway, catching the attention of all four.
Without hesitating, they moved as quickly as they could to the doorway, their movement made a lot easier by the pair of flashlights they had found. Fox noticed in passing that the doors to the pair of small side rooms, just beyond the doorway to the hallway, were open. For a moment, the idea that they would make an excellent point for an ambush seized his mind, and his hands involuntarily tightened around his weapon. A brief sweep with his flashlight silenced his concerns though.
"Besides, if they were hiding, they'd have already sprung their trap by now."
When they reached her, Rhena was standing over a mound of bodies, staring down at them with a solemn expression. Her gaze never broke as they all came to a stop around her.
Their flashlights revealed what appeared to just be another dead intruder, face down over another corpse. The body's clothes, almost identical to the fatigues of the other would-be raiders, gave him away. A pistol lay just out of grasp of a lifeless hand, spun about as though it had clattered to the ground from higher up.
"Hey, 'nother one over here," Falco mentioned, kicking a previously hidden body behind them, slumped against the corner of the doorframe and the hallway bulkhead.
Fox turned his attention away from the pile towards Falco's find, bending down and examining it. "Yep, full of holes," he said quietly, lifting the masked head. It lolled back down again when he let go. He turned back towards the group. "That's five bodies now. Seriously, who could've done this?"
"She did."
In an instant, all five of them spun towards one of the open side rooms. The beams of light from the flashlights they had found converged, revealing the source of the words that none of them uttered.
"She did it," Slippy Toad repeated, his eyes locked a ghostly trance. His face was beginning to show signs of an ashen hue, and voice trembled as though in awe. He lifted a shaking arm and pointed behind them. "She did them all."
Fox's mouth moved to ask him questions, but he found himself unable to speak. Instead, he followed the toad's eyes with his own.
Rhena's got there first.
The pile. Beneath the raider. Another body. A slender wrist. A golden tail.
"Linka!" Rhena shouted, abandoning all sense of tactical awareness as she dropped her weapon and grabbed the top body, hurling it away with a grunt. Her breathing suddenly became erratic; her movements full of emotion. Her face contorted into some mix of excitement and fear. And then, just as soon as the flurry of motion began, it stopped.
Beneath the body, Linka Pyrokanzia lay on her back, a beacon of familiarity in a sea of inky darkness and black fatigues. A small pool of crimson fluid had gathered beneath one of her legs, surface tension shining in the pale illumination of the flashlights. Her old, cut up jumpsuit was disheveled by sweat and exertion, spattered as though by a paint brush with flecks of blood, not all of it hers. The young coyote's eyes were closed and her body was relaxed, and her face looked just off from serene, as though she were experiencing a vaguely unsettling dream.
Rhena sunk to her knees. Just above Linka's right eye, a neat little hole punctured her golden fur. It was hard to discern with all of the blood scattered around, but it was real. It was real.
"I-I thought I got him before…" Slippy piped up, gesturing towards the corpse that had previously been atop the coyote. Fox scanned the raider's body with his flashlight and spotted the telltale dark wetness around a hole in his temple. "Before…"
Rhena fell to the deck and slid behind Linka and gently lifted her head, cradling it in her lap. The coyote's right ear was now visible, or what was left of it. A second bullet hole emerged at the base of her ear, beneath the shredded flap of skin and tissue.
Bill couldn't stop staring at the wounds, trying to wrap his head around the trajectory the bullet must have taken. He only had limited experience with medical diagnostics, but enough to give him an estimated guess. It was as though the slug had punctured her skin above the eye, and then taken a right-angle turn upward to exit beneath her ear.
Linka's head lolled to the side, and her muzzle fell against the cloth over Rhena's leg, near one of the many unmended tears in the fabric. The wolf felt something warm. Linka's breath was warm.
Her breath.
"She's alive!" Rhena exclaimed, eyes wide. The wolf gently laid the back of her hand against the coyote's mouth to make sure. It was no more than a tiny puff of air, but it was there. It was real. "Goddammit, she's alive!"
"Goddammit, we're dead!"
An asteroid exploded meters from the windshield, rocking the fighter-turned-freighter and peppering its failing shields with debris.
Katt made her ship twist and soar, doing her best to throw off its pursuer, but she was running out of room to dance. The asteroid field was beginning to thin out, and she was rapidly losing opportunities to break line of sight. Pretty soon she'd be caught in the open.
The thinning asteroid field produced another side-effect, though she could've done without it. They had left the dead zone behind, clearing communications.
"Why are…helping these ma…" Josiah growled, his moving portrait flickering on her viewscreen. There was anger in his features. "Are…trying to take…bounty yourself? Is th…it?"
"Shut up! Shut up!" Katt snarled back in frustration. She threw her ship into another loop, hearing a yelp from behind as her passenger was once again sent flying into a bulkhead.
"Gah!" Jason moaned from the floor, holding the back of his head. He resolved this time to stay on the deck as Katt's nonstop maneuvers continued. It seemed safer. "I didn't realize dogfighting was a contact sport."
"Life's a contact sport honey," Katt shouted back, gritting her teeth, "Not my fault you forgot your helmet."
"Where are you Katt…," Fox murmured to himself, sharp eyes caught between checking the instruments of his Arwing and scanning the asteroid field outside his cockpit.
The vulpine found himself gazing out at the rocks more often though, thanks to the dead zone. The readouts of his sensor equipment were shaky at best, barely even picking up his wingmate not more than a few ship-lengths away. He and Miyu had planned out their rescue flight before launching from the Great Fox, but even so, it was endlessly annoying that he couldn't speak with her. Maybe he should have waited for Slippy to reapply that com bug…
The pair of fighters continued along the most likely escape route Katt would have taken. It took them further and further from the Great Fox, and consequently, the dead zone.
Fox was getting nervous. Asteroids were starting to get smaller. And according to one of the few constant radar hits he was receiving, they were getting closer to a nearby trade lane.
"…hear…ox?"
Fox couldn't make out a word she said, but it wasn't hard to tell that the voice belonged to Miyu. Their comms were returning.
"Loud and not so clear, Miyu," he replied into his wiry headset, knowing full well she probably couldn't hear him too clearly either. "Give it a second and it'll clear up."
"…otcha."
Faster than her voice though, Fox's instruments suddenly sprang to life. His radar detected a pair of ships nearby and threw them up on the HUD, tiny brackets highlighting their expected positions in flashing grey. They were unknowns engaged in combat.
Glancing over, he made eye contact with Miyu on his wing and waved his hand. Without waiting for him to start moving, she immediately banked towards him. Her instruments must've picked them up too.
Fox yawed the nose of his fighter towards the pair of dancing targets and engaged his boosters.
His Arwing ducked and weaved nimbly through the smaller asteroids. Miyu's fighter screamed after his, catching on to his wake and following his lead.
Tiny flashes and explosions began filling the bracket boxes as they neared, visual evidence of a one-sided battle. Then Fox's targeting computer made a match.
It was Katt.
"She's alive," he reported to Miyu, "Let's do this quickly."
"Roger," Miyu replied, her voice serious but her inflection hopeful.
They cleared a larger rock and suddenly Fox's targeting projectors audibly hummed to life. The digital lines and crosshairs filling his HUD shifted with purpose, sharpening with what could only be described as anger. Fox's practiced eyes easily scanned and analyzed the bits of information tossed at him. Lining crosshairs up on the aggressing fighter, the grey brackets flashed red.
Fox pulled the trigger.
Twin streams of searing energy leapt forth from both Arwings, zeroing in on the Blood Tip's engines and bringing its shields down before the pilot knew what hit him. Against the Arwings with the element of surprise, there was no hope. The doomed ship tried to break, and Fox thought he heard the pilot begin to transmit a message to him, but he didn't wait. His cannons kept firing.
The rear thrusters of the ship flared as the laser bolts slagged the thin armor and punctured the hull, burning brightly before an explosion tore the fighter apart from within.
Fox swooped through the expanding debris field, and latched on to Katt's trajectory. As he pulled even, her portrait zipped open on his HUD.
"Oh Fox," she said, laughing with relief. "My hero." She fluttered her eyelashes coyly before returning to a normal posture. "Also my thanks. Certainly took you long enough though."
"Hey, least we could do," Fox smiled, ignoring the light jab. He opened his mouth to continue, but spotted a grey fox struggling to his feet in the background of Katt's portrait. His head cocked to the side in curiousity.
"Urg," the fox mumbled, leveraging the back of the pink cat's chair to stand upright. He placed a palm on his forehead. Even through the com window, Fox could tell he wasn't doing too well; it looked as though the passenger had been in a fist fight. "Remind me to remind you next time that I get flight sick."
Fox heard Miyu chuckle, her picture briefly appearing and soon after disappearing above Katt's on Fox's HUD.
"How's that old pile holding up?" Fox asked, making a mental note to talk to Miyu about adjusting her com's sensitivity settings.
"She's certainly seen better days," Katt admitted, "A whole bunch of systems burned out and I'm not too sure about the engines. Inertial dampeners are on the fritz."
"Tackling a multi-ton space fighter will do that. It was a hell of a maneuver you pulled back there; I can't say I've seen too many kills chalked up via ramming."
In the solitude of her cockpit, Miyu winced.
"It was stupid is what it was," Katt replied, giving Fox a look. "With all the cargo modifications I made, there was no way I should've hoped to get away. And without weapons…well, this ship lost her fangs a long time ago."
"What were you doing trying to save us with an unarmed ship anyway?" Miyu wondered.
Katt sighed and rolled her eyes, visually agreeing with the validity of Miyu's inquiry. "That's a legitmate question, hon. Right after you guys left, Jason and I spotted those mercs with the red ears walking by your docking berth," she explained, "I thought it was a little too suspicious to leave to chance. When Jason told me he recognized them too, I knew chance had nothing to do with it."
Fox nodded, glad he wasn't the only one to pick up on the oddness of seeing the mercenaries on Shoana. "Well I appreciate it," he said genuinely. "You saved our hides back there."
Miyu nodded, making a noise of agreement.
A mild alarm sounded through the mechanic's shuttle as some system or another gave off a warning. "Don't mention it," Katt replied as her head snapped to look at something off camera, tapping a few keys on her dashboard and silencing the device. She hesitated to drag her eyes from the system readout as she continued, "But listen, there's no way I'm going to make it back to Shoana like this."
"Your reactor block looks like it's leaking something," Miyu added, glancing out her cockpit. A thin, vapory cloud was shooting out of an external tank beside the freighter's thrusters.
"Right. Well I guess that does it then. Hey hero," Katt went on with a smirk, "How about offering a girl an escort someplace safe?"
"Sure thing," Fox grinned, catching on to the running joke, "My gut's telling me this is no place for a lady. Lock on to my flight path and we'll get back to the Great Fox. Allow me to offer you an arm, madam."
The three laughed as their ships arced around, heading back into the asteroid field the way they came. The pair of Arwings took up flanking positions on either side of the damaged craft, lowering their speeds to match. "Much obliged, Tiger."
"Oh, so what, I don't count as a lady?" Miyu asked sarcastically.
"Didn't you read your fables as a kid? You've still got your fangs there hon," Katt replied with mirth, verbally pointing at the armed Arwing the lynx was piloting, "You're not exactly a damsel in distress."
"Rawr," Miyu opened her mouth and winked over her nose, letting her front incisors show.
"Vicious," Jason piped up from over Katt's shoulder, gaining enough of his senses to pay attention to the conversation just in time to see the lynx's teeth glisten.
Bill knew it was good for a surgeon to be detached from his work. Granted, he was no learned doctor, but he had enough field experience to make his elective medical classes in Flight Academy worthwhile. And one of the first things they taught students about field surgery was to drive away as much situational adrenaline and emotion as possible. While valuable for combat, it served no purpose when performing delicate operations; just the opposite in fact, heightened emotions often caused jittery hands and a distracted mind.
But the hound couldn't help but feel like something about his reason for detachment was wrong. Even as his medical scissors sliced through skin and sinew, separating what remained of Linka's ear from her head, all he could think about was his fiancé, Sophia. He could have been cutting construction paper for all his mind cared. His hands acted mechanically. Without thought. Without emotion.
The machinery hooked up to Linka's muzzle was in such disrepair, it squealed every time air was gently forced into her lungs. But it was working. Her chest rose and fell evenly as Bill worked. She still looked peaceful.
Bill struggled to get a bead on his abstract thoughts, but he couldn't. So much had happened so quickly, that he had trouble finding anywhere to start his mental train. Fear. Anxiety. Worry. Anger. They all clumped together into a knot, simultaneously tying up his mind and weighing in his stomach.
The doors to the room swished open, permitting Rhena entry. Bill welcomed the distraction.
Where anyone else would've cringed, Rhena just stared when she saw the scraps Linka's disembodied ear and blood soaked bandages sitting beside her. The coyote was going to be permanently disfigured even after she recovered.
"If she recovers," Rhena reminded herself.
"We swept the ship," The wolf reported, lingering on Linka's face for a moment before looking at Bill. "Slippy was right. All the intruders died up there in the hallway."
Bill nodded, unable to say anything else as he sutured the head-wound shut.
"And Falco said he just picked up a radar ghost from Fox and Miyu. Or at least he's pretty sure it is. We're moving out of the dead zone, but the sensors are still a little fuzzy. If it's them, it looks like they have a third ship with them. They should be back within a few minutes."
This time there was no response.
"How um…" Rhena began, trailing off. She got mad at herself. She didn't like being at a loss for words. "How is she?"
Bill kept working, showing no physical acknowledgement that she had said anything. Silence reigned for a few moments, almost prompting Rhena to repeat herself.
"I don't know," he finally said, just as the wolf opened her mouth. "I just…don't know. They don't have the equipment here to see how much damage was done to the skull when the bullet ricocheted off it. And even then, I have no idea how the blow would affect her; I never got that training. She could be brain dead for all I know."
Bill spoke with little emotion, allowing only a hint of frustration to show through. Rhena absorbed the words, but picked up on the lack of inflection right away. It didn't sound natural. Only she was supposed to sound so detached.
"How are you, sir?" she said after another moment of silence, crossing her arms.
The hound finally looked up, giving Rhena a chance to see his eyes for the first time since walking in.
They were bloodshot. And they stared past her. Through her.
Rhena had seen those eyes before, back while she was still a Flight Sergeant with the Cornerian Military. It seemed like a lifetime ago. But she had seen that thousand yard stare. When recruits in her squadron broke, whether from the physical training, lack of sleep, or being pushed too hard for too long in the cockpit, they all shared that same look. It was as though they could see their demise off in the distance. Once a recruit got that look about them, there was usually little anyone could do. They'd be removed from active service and rotated off base. They rarely came back.
"What was I thinking?" Bill said softly, finally breaking the silence. "How could I have thought that I could keep her safe, just leaving her to fend for herself?"
Rhena shook her head, trying to put as much empathy in her voice as she could. It wasn't easy. "Grey…you can't blame yourself for what happened here. Link asked to stay behind. She knew what she-"
"Not her," Bill cut her off.
Rhena's mind clicked. "Oh."
The coyote's assisted breathing ticked the seconds by as the only noise in the room. Bill turned away from the wolf, bracing himself on the counter behind him and closing his eyes.
Rhena stood still, watching her former commander.
There was no reason for her to say what she said next; no bind of rank tied them anymore. But there was a sensation inside her she couldn't recall feeling before. Seeing Linka on the ground back when they first arrived on the Great Fox, shot through multiple times and presumably dead, she lost something. Something holding back a strange warmness in her mind. It flowed out as water through a breeched dam.
It was this warmness that caused her to cradle the young coyote in her lap, like a mother would a child, even before she knew the girl was still alive; it forced her to react. At first she attributed it to a sense of duty, but later on, when she would look back on it, she would rule it out. The same sensation was suddenly coursing through her thoughts.
Her mouth seemed to move by itself, and her tongue and lips formed the words without input from her brain.
"We'll find her, sir," she finally said.
Bill looked up, but refused to turn back towards her.
"It doesn't matter if the others won't," she continued, taking a step forward. "In fact, they'll probably tell you not to do it. And I think they'll have some legitimate reasons as to why. But I think I know that that's not going to stop you; you're going to go looking for her."
The hound looked over his shoulder. Rhena's words were cutting through his mental fog. Still, something was holding him back. It wasn't hard to guess what.
"Don't worry, Link will be in good hands here." Rhena shrugged. "I had my reservations, but Fox turned out to be a competent leader, and a good man. I think Linka will be able to find the closest thing she can have to a home here, no matter what happens to us."
"Us?" Bill finally said, turning and looking the wolf in the eyes. It was no small feat, as even now, at her most emotional, the yellow orbs still burned with a strange, savage intensity.
"Sir, ah...Grey," Rhena continued, finally remembering what the hound had told her earlier about titles. She broke eye contact with him and looked down. The lupine took a breath. "…Bill. You already said you could appreciate the danger of what you're going to try to do. You know that they're waiting for you. I'd like to think that you'd have enough sense about you to not try this unless you really thought you could do it."
"Rhena, I-" he began, but stopped when she looked at him again.
"…And I think that you're going to need a wingman."
Fox knew the moment he saw the two CDF fighters soundlessly emerge from the Great Fox's main hanger that he wouldn't be seeing his friend for a while.
From the seat in his Arwing, swinging around an asteroid into view of the carrier, he didn't have to look to see if he could spot Bill's helmet in the cockpit of the lead ship. Com channels were still down, but even if they were in clear and open space, he wouldn't have tried to raise the hound.
During the silent flight back, Fox had plenty of time to mull over what Bill was going to do about Sophia. The vulpine tried using reason, but realized quickly that that particular concept didn't apply to the situation. He tried putting himself in the canine's shoes, but with a hint of sadness and longing found it impossible. In the end, he relented and finally listened to what his gut had been trying to tell him ever since Bill first told him what had happened. And his gut told him that Bill would be leaving the Star Fox team for a while.
"Good luck buddy," he whispered quietly to his friend, tilting his joystick to the side. His fighter followed instructions and gently drifted, lining up with the Great Fox's open docking bay doors.
"I can't wait to meet her."
Insert generic excuse about school work and whatnot here
I'm thinking of making the chapter lengths longer, so expect the word count to jump a little in the future.
chaos Leader and RedBay, I've read your reviews thoroughly and, as always, I appreciate the feedback. I apologize for not putting up individual replies, but unfortunately I've been quite busy recently. Thanks again for the critiques guys.
-Redd