"Fuck damnit!" Falco was always unusually articulate at times like these.
He and Fox stood in a clearing, combing their surroundings with their eyes. There were trees on all sides, forming a sort of wall that appeared as impenetrable as brick. Behind them sat their Cloudrunners, which seemed to emanate steam as the residual heat generated during reentry radiated into the humid air. The two pilots also saw each other, both with their headsets in hand. But it was what neither of them saw that set Falco to his haphazard use of expletives.
"They didn't show," Fox said. He had half-expected this, but wasn't as angry as Falco was. Quote contrary; Fox's expression was one of I-guess-we-had-it-coming.
"Dirty bastard. I'll bet he just sent us down here so we wouldn't get in the way while he jumped home."
"Krystal was with him too…" Fox reasoned with himself more than with Falco. "I'm sure there's more to all this than we can guess at."
"Whatever. The point is, that son of a bitch still has a ticket home, and we're still stuck on an unnamed planet." He turned on his heel and began walking back to his Cloudrunner. Fox lingered a moment, gazing into the black depths of the forest around them.
"I'll bet it does too have a name… we just don't know it," he muttered to himself.
Despite being thicker than the average automobile the trees each seemed to sway in the warm breeze like reeds. The effect was disorienting, and formed an unsettling backdrop to Fox's and Falco's grim circumstance. Wolf had done what he was always best at: leaving others shit out of luck. Fox had once again placed some small expectation on the man, and had once again been disappointed. However, the sting wasn't as severe the second time it was served, and for this he was thankful. Perhaps someday he would stop feeling surprise at the depravity of others.
There was something to be said for faith in your fellow man. But there was also something to be said for knowing in advance what to expect from those on whom this faith would be wasted.
"Bastard," Fox whispered. He was beginning to empathize with Falco. Wolf had ever been, and always would be, good for nothing.
Having barely turned around and started back for his spacecraft, Fox was stopped by what sounded like the whine of a g-diffuser.
Pulling his headset down over his ears, he asked Falco quietly, "Can you hear that?"
Falco replied after a moment, "It's a ship."
"A small one."
"Like the one Wolf and Krystal were in."
They exchanged expressions of incredulity as the sound grew nearer.
Then, bursting out from above the trees to blot out the stars with its wide visage, a large shuttlecraft came quite abruptly into view. But it wasn't the craft Krystal had commandeered earlier; rather, it was a…
"Captain's boat?" Falco asked no one in particular.
He and Fox backed away as the ship began to descend over the clearing. The gravity drives subtly warped their vision as it neared their eyes. It made contact with the ground, where its landing gear sank a few inches into the moist soil below it. When the airlock depressurized with a hiss, Fox, wary of who or what might emerge from the spacecraft pointed both his own blaster and Krystal's pistol at the unopened doorway.
As it began to move aside, Fox made incidental note of the portal's carefully polished steel frame, which glistened unnaturally in the starlight.
When he saw the silhouette of a shriveled man in a wheelchair, he fought the urge to let his guard down, keeping his weapons level.
"Powalski?" Falco cried from across the clearing.
But before the uniformed commander could answer, Fox's ears caught another noise approaching them from the forest behind them. He whirled, aiming his guns in the direction of the sound, despite the heavy presentiment in his heart that he knew who this fourth arrival would be.
Wolf O'Donnell emerged as if from nowhere to join the three already gathered in the clearing. He stumbled to a stop, his already tattered naval uniform stained by fresh sweat. His chest heaved, and as he caught his breath he looked in silence at the three other men seemingly frozen in place, Falco at his Arwing, Leon in the airlock of his captain's boat, and Fox right across from him, standing between them all at the center of the clearing floor.
A subtle scraping sound signified that Falco had drawn a weapon, perhaps smelling on the air the battle that was brewing. Another glance back at the airlock told Fox that Leon was fingering firearms of his own. He himself felt the heat that stirred the stillness of the night, the invisible fire that connected all of them in resentment and even hatred. Falco still glared daggers at Wolf and Leon. Leon still looked down on Fox with a fierce disapproval, and he viewed Falco with a sideways scowl. Wolf could even be seen to stare disgustedly at Leon. It seemed each of them had something against each of the others, and their enmity had spun itself in a tangled, senseless web of murderous contempt.
Converged on this spot as if guided there by forces beyond their grasp, they all felt the fear and confusion that leads so often to needless conflict.
But for all of their animosity, Fox was the first to set it aside.
He dropped his weapons to the ground, where they clattered noisily like so much discarded rubbish. Looking into the eyes of Wolf, the only one who was unarmed, Fox turning his palms up to solidify the unspoken truce.
After a few moments, during which Fox almost began to lose his confidence, Leon also tossed his weapons onto the ground before him. Falco could be heard returning his firearm to its place.
Four souls had been reconciled without a word, at least for one night.
The skies above them lit up, as if illuminated by fire.
"Micrometeors," Fox explained to the rest.
"This ship has a jump drive," Leon offered quietly.
Wolf staggered towards the open airlock, and Falco also abandoned his Cloudrunner to board the ship that would bear him and his comrades home at last. In an uncharacteristic display of goodwill, Falco even retrieved Leon's weapons from where they had been thrown, and delivered them back to their owner with a nod.
Fox felt that some sort of triumph had just occurred. Even so, he knew that a great many of their problems remained unsolved, and questions innumerable remained unanswered. How they had all come to the same clearing at the same time, for instance. More pressingly, Fox couldn't help but wonder where Krystal was. Presumably, she had jumped away with the ship she had taken now that she no longer shared it with Wolf. Where? Why? He could only wonder.
Such trifles aside, Fox knew that the present posed threats just as imminent as the ones the future held in store for them; first and foremost was the fact that a micrometeor storm was bearing down on them, forcing them all to either take cover under a common roof or die. Perhaps the fact that they had managed to gather under that common roof without tearing each other apart ought to be considered a monumental achievement.
"Fox, come on," Falco beckoned from the doorway of the airlock, with what appeared to be a trace of a grin. "We're going home."
Fox also allowed himself a grin. He bent to pick up his blaster, and returned it to its holster. He jogged back to the captain's boat, where Falco helped him up into the ship to join Wolf and Leon. Behind him he saw the fiery rain of meteors begin its ravaging reign over the forest. What a wonder that the trees managed to survive this pounding time after time.
The airlock door slid back into place as the raging din grew in volume. Through a porthole Fox took one last look out into the clearing. Through the chaos he saw the treeline, sturdy and immutable. The Cloudrunners remained where he and Falco had left them, forsaken by their masters to remain on the desolate planet's surface, perhaps for millennia. And Fox also saw that he, in his haste, had neglected to retrieve Krystal's pistol from the ground. It too would remain here with the Cloudrunners, Fox supposed. Even so, it looked so pitiable there on the ground, lying prostrate and helpless to protect itself as the sky literally fell upon it, bearing with it the fires of hell in all their retributive tribulation. The pistol, forgotten and alone, would take the beating whether or not it wanted to, and Fox doubted its chances for survival.
As the ship's engines spooled, Fox turned his back on the porthole, and looked at his new traveling companions, unexpected as they were.
"It's time to go."