Z-Nebula
Fox sat at the controls of Fay's gunship, staring out at the glowing nebula that surrounded them. Waves of crackling light washed across billowing clouds of glimmering orange dust, swaying in the filtered light of the gasses. A vast, teaming sea, suspended in the void.
They had all decided it would be best to switch ships after the close scrape earlier, and had dropped out of warp just outside of Sector Z in order to transfer over. The switch had needed to be done before flying into the nebula proper since they'd be unshielded during the process.
Sector Z, or the Z-Nebula, was one of three nebulas just outside the Lylat system, each named for their general shape rather than their order of discovery. Technically not part of the system proper, the X, Y, and Z nebulas were each located just over one light-year outside of the last orbital body in Lylat, one on one end of the system and the other on the opposite end. Each emitted massive amounts of electromagnetic radiation that interfered with ship's sensors, engine components, and in the case of direct exposure to the hull they could turn a ship into a giant microwave oven. Shields sheltered most modern vessels from the energy storm, but even their protection could be overpowered. This made the nebulas dangerous, but also made them convenient for people trying to hide their trail. Since the advent warp drives and interstellar travel, the Nebulas had been the source of ghost stories and endless trouble for law enforcement. Fox had used this nebula often enough to be somewhat comfortable navigating the shallower clouds along its outskirts, but even he wasn't crazy enough to go too deep. The radiation in the more dense clouds had a tendency to unexpectedly spike, crippling any ship unfortunate enough to be flying though it at the time, and the havoc it caused on navigation systems made getting lost a serious threat. A lot of ships had gone missing in these Sectors.
According to rumor, the Z and X nebulas were supposed to be linked somehow. The radiation either cloud emitted was very similar, and each nebula shared a number of tell-tale characteristics. Some people said, as Fox himself believed, that the link was due to a pair of ancient jump gates made by a lost civilization, a rumor based on the case of the CFS Golden Bay. One of a number of military ships which had been retrofitted for deep exploration of the nebulas, the Golden Bay had been lost during an ongoing push to explore the Lylat System about sixty years ago. Ships like the Golden Bay had most of their weapon systems gutted to make room for more powerful shield generators and strong, direct pulse navigation systems which relied on nav. buoys. The big cruisers would maintain a direct pulse signal with a space station which remained well outside the Nebula, and would dive into the cloud towing a buoy until the signal began to show signs of degrading. The buoy would then be released as a permanent marker, and it would receive the nav pulse, magnify it, and pass it on. Once it was confirmed that the installed buoy could be relied upon, it would be used as the next anchor, and the ships would repeat the process in order to dive deeper into the cloud. The idea was to establish a network of these navigation points throughout the nebula in order to chart the expansive energy cloud and discover the source of the radiation, which was believed to be somewhere at the heart of each of the (at the time) two nebulas in Lylat. The third nebula, Sector Y, was a relatively new addition to the system, and hadn't yet come into existence at the time of the incident. The Golden Bay was lost when a particularly powerful pulse crippled her systems, severing all communication with the base station. Because she was lost so deep into the cloud, and because she hadn't yet established the new buoy she had been towing, attempts to search for her were considered too dangerous, and therefore abandoned. It was believed that, barring a collision in the cloud, the ship might have emerged on the far side of the nebula after a decade or so on its own propulsion, as she'd been flying on a vector that led into the heart of the cloud and away from the Lylat system.
Then, twenty years later, the Golden Bay was unexpectedly found, having emerged from, not the Z, but the X-Nebula, clear on the other side of the system. Its vector of travel was calculated to be exactly the same one it had been on before, but, because of its mysterious jump across the system, now carried it toward Lylat from X, rather than away and into Z. The cruiser was derelict at this point. Most of her systems had failed long ago. The ship's logs had been scrambled, its navigation systems were fried, and its crew were an assortment of blackened mummies. The official investigation said that they had asphyxiated when the life support systems had failed, and, sometime later, been cooked when the shields and nearly every other system had run out of power. Fuel rods could power a ship at sub-warp speeds for about five years back then, and theorists surmised that she had drifted clear of the X-Nebula on momentum alone. The question was, how had she jumped clear across the system without changing her vector?
The speculation about jump gates gained credibility at this point, but suggestions about renewed exploration into the nebulae were shot down by a number of government agencies which claimed that the Golden Bay served as an example that the X and Z Sectors were best left alone.
Now, some forty years after the recovery of the Golden Bay, the nebulas remained largely unexplored. Some thrill seekers were known to dive the shallower bits to find some of the old nav buoys, but nobody went for the deeper ones. The stations that sent them pulses had been shut down or re-purposed after the exploration attempts had ceased, so the buoys didn't function anymore. Going too deep without any means of finding your way back was too much for even Lylat's particular breed of thrill-seeking idiot… still it was interesting stuff.
"I never knew any of that," Fay said, walking into the cockpit a few minutes later. She was fully clothed, but still toweling off her hair.
"What?" Fox asked, confused.
"All that about the Nebulas and the Golden Bay," Fay said with pointed nonchalance, "Orian was relaying the story while I was in the shower."
"Was he?" Fox growled.
Orian laughed nervously inside of Fox's head. He was supposed to be keeping quiet so as not to disturb their guest.
"Ugh," Orian groaned, "It's just so terribly dull! I've been without good conversation for eons! I just wanted to have a chat, and, well, I thought that was all quite interesting and that Ms. Fay might think so too. I made sure to keep the volume at decibels that wouldn't carry outside of her showering compartment. And might I add that I object entirely to this forced vow of silence? It's unfair! I have given you every assurance that I am not who or what that man believes me to be! We have already established that my technology is likely linked to this 'Eye of the Makers' installation. The A.I. that Colonel Newman encountered was, in all probability, a less…ehm…mature version of my own program."
"I don't like the idea of you transmitting my thoughts like a damned radio program," Fox countered aloud so that Fay could hear as well, "and mature isn't the word I'd use."
"Oh, come now," she said, settling into the chair beside him with a playful smile, "it was positively riveting! Though the story could use a bit of flare, you know?"
Fox raised an eyebrow, but otherwise didn't rise to her ribbing.
She went on anyway, waving her hands out in front of her and making ghost sounds.
"The Golden Bay still wanders the nebulas to this day!" she said, with a theatrical flair, "her ghostly crew praying on the souls of those foolish enough to enter!"
Fox smiled despite himself, then said, "Well, the ship was recovered, so, not likely."
"What about the Y-Nebula?" Fay asked with genuine interest, "You said X and Z are linked, and I think Orian said that Sector Y wasn't there during this whole endeavor?"
"Sector Y was Andross's doing," Fox answered, saying the ape's name with special venom, "People think it was a prototype for the Bolse Space station. That it's core had a meltdown. The debris was irradiated and formed the Y nebula. It's similar to Sectors X and Z, but smaller and weaker. It's navigable, and there's no real mystery to it."
"It's still a whole nebula!" Fay protested, "He couldn't have just made that!"
Fox shrugged.
"He's done worse," he said, "but no, I don't think it was a prototype for the station. Personally? I think he was trying to replicate the gates."
"The gates that are supposed to be in the other nebulas?" Fay asked, "But those were never found, right? They may not even exist. Seems unlikely."
"Yeah, but I had this conversation with Slippy a long time ago, about how Corneria suddenly discovered gate technology after the war, and we came up with this theory, see-"
"What are you kids carrying on about?" the gruff voice of their guest cut in before Fox could explain his theory. He turned to look at the man standing in the door to the ship's cockpit, and appraised him. He was ruffled, and his eyes were a bit sunken, probably from the lack of sleep and, more likely, the lack of booze. He'd gone from hysterical, to embarrassed, then crotchety over the hours since his little episode, and Fox took his attempt at being sociable as an improvement.
"The Golden Bay," he answered, easing the man into the conversation. He was wary of the old man's intentions, but it wasn't like he could do much, and he'd been cooperative up to this point. The colonel could have made the transfer from the corvette to the gunship a real pain in the ass, but he hadn't. He'd just gone along with it quietly.
Newman looked out the front viewport and scowled at the nebula.
"Shit," the old man cursed, "I remember when that happened. Bad luck, bringing it up here."
The colonel eased himself into one of the two remaining seats and visibly shuddered.
"I was just a kid at the time, but it was still a popular story among the junior ranks when I joined up," he said, "A lot of her crew were prior Provisionals, volunteers given promises of commissions with the CFF for serving on those death traps. They don't tell you that shit."
They were quiet for a moment as the old man brooded, but he shook himself out of it and turned to Fox.
"So," the old Avian said, a little awkwardly, "How do you know about it?"
"Did a paper on it my first year in the Academy," Fox answered with a small shrug.
"Hmm," Newman managed, "Anyway, eh, how long we going to stay here? Damn place gives me the creeps, if I'm being honest, and I wouldn't be too sore to leave it behind…"
"We're here until we plan our next move," Fox said, "I still think we should try to find the Eye. There's a chance that the station went docile when we took out the Apariod Queen."
"And I still say that's suicide," the colonel countered, "Your better off leaving this whole mess alone, kid."
Fox scowled at being called a kid, and caught Fay with a little smile on her face.
"You don't really have a say in the matter, Colonel," Fox replied.
The old Avian's response to this was a roll of the eyes and, "Please, call me Roddick, and say or no, you don't have a snowball's chance in hell of even finding the place without that damn Cypher, am I wrong?"
Fox just grunted.
"There, see?" Roddick pressed, "It's a damn fool venture, and you're better off not knowing where that thing is."
Fox furrowed his brow as he thought of something.
"I don't know where it is," he said, "but I'm pretty sure I know who has it."
The old man's entire body visibly drooped.
"Vaccini?" Fay posed.
Fox nodded, saying, "Chasing the Cypher around hasn't given us much to go on, and that trail's gone cold anyway. I figure our best shot now is to go after that fat bastard instead. He'll know where it is."
"Would he be easy to find?" Fay asked, hopefully.
Fox sighed.
"Normally, sure," he said, "he's always been a 'hide in plain sight' kind of guy, but with all the heat surrounding the Cypher, he's probably gone to ground with an army of hired muscle. Still, he's involved in too much shit not to have loose ends, and people are always easier to find than things. I just wish Alexie was still around. Nobody could find people like that old crock...unless..."
Roddick groaned in his seat, massaging his wrinkled temples.
"Unless what?" the older man asked, sounding as if he didn't really want the answer.
"Leon Powalski?" Fox offered.
"What?!" Fay yipped, "Wolf O'Donnells stooge? You really want to go to those lowlifes after I just rescued you from them?"
Fox gave Fay a skeptical look, and said, "They were offering me a job, Fay, I wasn't exactly in need of rescuing."
Fay turned her nose up slightly and said, "Well then, by all means, let's run off to one of Lylat's lowest reprobates in our time of need. Who knows, maybe he won't stab you in the back again."
"I knew you'd come around," Fox fired back with a smirk.
"And it doesn't bother you at all that these men are on VENOM'S side of a quickly escalating WAR?" she asked, whirling in her chair to face him.
"Because I'm on such better terms with Corneria…"
Roddick buried his face in his hands and growled loudly, his beak poking through to say, "I…*sigh*…if you idiots are dead set on this, then I might have a compromise."
Fay pursed her lips and said nothing, but Fox posed the question, "and what would that be?"
The colonel draged his hands down his face before dropping them into his lap and staring at the pair of them.
"It's been a long time, but there was this guy the Cornerian spooks had an interest in. A trafficker that popped up on a lot of important people's radars not long after the war. He doesn't take sides, and he always delivers on what he's paid to do. I think I can get in contact with him. Been thinking about it for a while now. See if he couldn't find a way to get me out of my whole house arrest predicament."
"Who is he?" Fox asked, his interest piqued.
"Don't know much about him, honestly, except that he's pretty expensive," Roddick replied, "That's part of why I never actually contacted him."
Fay gave an impassive look and stated that, "Money won't be an issue Mr. Newman."
"Right," Roddick said, clearly eyeing Fay in a new light, "Well, like I said, I don't know very much about him, nobody does, but the guy goes by the name Horus…"
