Special thanks to wolf master97 for his contributions. Please review: feedback is always welcome.

Panther, Falco, and Miyu were crowded on the couch of the Great Fox II's den. Miyu flicked through channels while Falco and Panther were arguing about where to go first once they reached Darkstar. Meanwhile, Slippy was combing through the combat log footage from the battle on the mining station, attempting to make sense of the gear the enemy combatants were using.

Slippy wanted to know how to replicate those weapons for their own use. Their weapons, ion laser pistols, were ineffective against the alien, reflective armor used by Fox's captors. And slippy aimed to change that. Sadly, and probably expectedly, they hadn't used lethal weapons when fighting. Slippy had scanned over Falco's wounds as well as the shattered hull and diagnostics of the single drone that returned before their retreat. The wiring and motherboard were partially fried, and the hull, while shattered in places, was intact.

Slippy gently pulled off the upper shell of the drone, and set it aside for future analysis. He then picked up a pair of pliers. With his analysis goggles, he began to root around between the wires and motherboard, looking for debris. He retrieved a few large pieces of metal shards before finding something interesting.

He pulled out a small, ovular foreign object from the mess that was part of the RAM of the drone's memory board. It was almost an elongated egg shape, with a rounder back end and a pointed front end. It was a heavy metal, not lead, but titanium maybe, and it was heavily scorched. Almost as if it was pushed into the drone by some chemical discharge, like gunpowder or nitroglycerin. But that couldn't have been right: firearms that used solid shot like this were obsolete even by Cornerian standards, and slippy could barely recognize the tech used by the kidnappers.

But upon closer inspection, the scorch wasn't from a chemical discharge, but rather a rapid temperature change. Slippy couldn't find any evidence of chemical residue, which was guaranteed with combustion ammunition. Rather, it seemed that the scorch came from pure energy, which made more sense. A railgun maybe? Unlikely, the projectile would rattle and jam in the rails due to its shape. Railguns didn't work well with asymmetrical shapes. So Slippy was back at the drawing board.

He heard a knock on his workshop door. "It's open!" He shouted absent-mindedly. The door creaked open and Panther sauntered in. He began to awkwardly file with some of Slippy's less important accessories before noticing his aggravated expression. He picked up one of the other ovular projectiles slippy had pulled out of the drone and examined it with a raised eyebrow.

"I have seen one of these before, toad. An associate in Darkstar possesses some of these. I don't know exactly how they work, but they absolutely were projectiles."

Slippy gave Panther a condescending look. "I knew that, Einstein. It was literally lodged into one of my drones. What, you think it tap danced its way in there?"

"There is no reason to be hostile, comrade. All I am saying is I've seen these before. If you really want to know, I can take you to his forge orbiting desolation. I can try to pull a favor or two."

"You are awfully cooperative, Panther. That's uncharacteristic of you."

"You're getting help, so shut up."

"OK then, so do you have any idea how these worked or did you just happen upon one of them?"

Panther scratched his chin. "All I know is that it wasn't just a solid projectile. It was a hybrid shell, some sort of energy pulse pushed the solid slug."

Slippy squinted at the slug, and nodded. "Yeah, that makes sense. Especially if the barrel was tight and machined, unlike a railgun."

Slippy then turned on his fine grain plasma cutter before melting through the hull of the slug, revealing a hollow shell filled with what looked like a solid tungsten core. So definitely an armor piercing weapon.

Slippy pulled out a plastic back and put the two slug halves inside, sealing it and safely securing it within an organized drawer he kept his smaller experiments and pet projects before turning around in his swivel chair and removing his goggles. Panther was sitting in another chair, drinking from a liquor flask. Slippy shook his head before getting up and sitting across from him.

"So, where are we going once we reach Darkstar?"

Panther scratched his chin. "Well, desolation is the closest planetary body to our arrival, so we'll probably stop there and talk to Jaegersmith before we touch down on Charon City."

"What's Charon City?"

"It's a massive space station orbiting Apophis. Uses the radiation emitted from the black hole to hide its presence from the Lylat and to go dark when any uninvited guests enter the system. It's run by a bunch of gangs, merchants and crime families. Weirdest thing though is the station was built by aliens a long time ago, so it's still being restored to this day.

"What do you mean it was built by aliens?"

Panther shrugged. "A bunch of prospectors found it about a century or so ago, and it was explored a lot since then. All they really found out is that it's old, old as balls. It also had a bunch of tech so arcane that the freelancer scientists the big families hired had no clue what they were dealing with. All I can tell you is that neither Lylatians or Venomians built it. Jaegersmith can tell you more, he did some prospecting in the uninhabited zones near the station's core."

"What do you mean the core's uninhabited? The station is a city, they'd need all the space they can get for the proper life support systems to house a city."

Panther childishly spun in his chair. "Slippy, when I said it was massive, I meant it was massive. It makes the stations orbiting Corneria look like grapes in comparison. It's somewhere around a thousand kilometers in diameter and a hundred in height, so it's like a disk. Only the edges are occupied a few kilometers in, and beyond that is unexplored territory. Underground gangs, defense systems, decompressed and vented sections, all that."

"And that is where you think we'll find Wolf?"

"I'm not saying that we'll absolutely find him there. What I'm saying is that Charon City is the best place to start looking. I've got contacts there as well before I met Wolf. Some of them know him well. He was bound to have stopped to see a few of them before he disappeared. And they're bound to know what's going on outside the Lylat."

"I doubt there's that much going on outside of the Lylat, Panther. They're just pirates, maybe alien Pirates. Probably just another few planets with life on them. We already have the Lylat and Venom, what's another group of 'others'?"

Panther gave him a disappointed look. "I didn't expect you to be so stupid, Senor. To ignore the fact that the galaxy is much bigger than we first thought is foolish. Even before the Lylat became a dictatorship, they were censoring everything going on during the war. Why wouldn't they censor what's going on outside of the Lylat as well?"

"That's speculation, Panther. We both know that."

"It's a valid point. You just don't want to acknowledge that we might be biting off more than we can chew."

"What do you mean by that Panther? Are you regretting coming here?"

Panther stood up. "I'm just pointing out the possibilities here, Slippy. We could be falling face first into something bigger than we could ever imagine. Saving your friends is high on your bucket list for sure, but exercising caution is paramount."

"OK then, Panther. Please, enlighten me in why you think this is a massive deal. Why this isn't just a raid from some backwater alien planet."

"I crunched the numbers earlier, Slippy. There were thirty seven mining stations in that asteroid field. Each held about two or three thousand, give or take. That's over a hundred thousand personnel. Pirates aren't equipped to kidnap one hundred thousand people, Slippy. No group of pirates or slavers or even a Venomian Invasion fleet could capture and hold one hundred thousand Cornerians, especially to transport them outside the sensor range of Corneria. That's five hundred light-years to Darkstar at least. That's two weeks of feeding and containing one hundred thousand extra bodies. This was planned and coordinated by a group that has far more resources than even the Lylat and Venom combined."

"I doubt that, Panther."

Panther was starting to become more and more and more irritated. "Of course you can't accept that you're over your head, Slippy. You don't want to accept the fact that you might not have the power to save your friend, at least not yet. You can't even accept the fact that this is risky. You're so fucking stupid sometimes, your like Falco, but worse. You're just as pigheaded as him, no, scratch that, you're even more pigheaded than him, because you think you're smart and wise, so its harder to show you how stupid you are!"

Slippy stood up and got into his face, eyebrows narrowed and fuming. "If I'm so fucking stupid, then why are you still here, Panther? Why did you even agree to come here? If you really don't think this will work, I'll fucking drop you off on Charon with your Wolfen and you can bang your way through there while I try to save my friend. Why do you even want ANYTHING to do with this mission?"

"I have my reasons."

Slippy sneered at Panther. "Oh, I see. You want another swing at banging Krystal, huh? Jump in as the knight in shining armor for some tail."

Faster than a strike of lightning, Panther punched Slippy across the snout with the force of a locomotive. Slippy fell backwards on his ass as Panther practically steamed.

"Alright, listen here, you little self absorbed, stupid prick. I want nothing, and I mean NOTHING to do with Krystal. She spent the entire year of our relationship stewing in the bile and venom of her own jealousy and anger, and you want to know the worst part? My last job with Star Wolf, before Wolf left for Darkstar, we got our paychecks and I took her on a nice two week trip to the nicest resort on Aquas, five star dinners, clear beaches, jewelry. I spent tens of thousands showing her my affection so maybe, just maybe she would leave that hatred behind. You know what she had the audacity to do? The moment we returned to Corneria, she ended it there to try and get back with Fox. To toy with his emotions. She is scum and I hope she dies alone."

Slippy sat stunned at Panther's confession as he paced back and forth, running his fingers through his hair. "I came to find Wolf. To get some closure. He never stays silent this long, something happened, something terrible. And, as terrible as life with he and Leon can be at times, as difficult and grueling as living as a pirate in an asteroid field was, we were brothers. Life on that station was living. My life now is repetitive and unfulfilled."

Panther stopped pacing and gave Slippy a vile look, sighing through his teeth. "Are you happy, you little bastard?"

Panther didn't even wait for Slippy to respond before he stormed out of Slippy's workshop and down the hall, past a surprised Miyu. She gave him a flabbergasted look, obviously having heard at least the tail end of the commotion. She came into the workshop before rushing to Slippy's aid. "What did that bastard do to you?"

Slippy waved his hand in a dismissive way, trying to calm her down before wiping at his broken nose. "I pushed him too far and he snapped. Just leave him be."

"How the hell did you make Mr. Suave snap?"

"I brought up Krystal in an insensitive way and let's say I learned about a few more unsavory things she did. Really, don't worry about Panther, I caused this."

Miyu gave him a skeptical look before helping him up. "Right then, let's just get that nose checked out. R.O.B. reported were a few hours away, so you should get some sleep, you've been up for at least sixteen hours."

Slippy shook his head. "I'll be fine, Miyu, I just need some coffee."

She stopped him and looked him in the eyes sternly. "You need sleep. So sleep. From what Panther told me, Charon is pretty unsafe. He also said something about Desolation? Why are we going there?"

"Apparently, Panther knows a guy who can answer a few other questions. I intend to have those questions answered. It might help us find Fox."

"Alright then. Let's get you checked out. And please, Slippy. You've been combing through that footage for hours. Just promise me you'll sleep."

Slippy nodded. "Alright, Miyu. I'll get some sleep."

"Thanks, Slippy."

They walked to the medbay to splint his nose and talked about what they'd do on Charon along the way.

Desolation lived up to its name.

The planet's surface was a black mess of obsidian and basalt, studded with active volcanoes. The lava spewed out of the vents rapidly cooled due to the freezing temperatures, leaving a craggy, maze like surface. Rapid temperature changes created wind speeds of close to a thousand kilometers and hour.

Slippy had to admit, the high planet had an almost morbid beauty to it.

Jaegersmith's lab was a small station, about a quarter of a kilometer long, and nestled in orbit of Desolation just above the atmosphere, giving the inhabitants a prime view of the planet. The station was a messy thing, a mix of different metals and vehicles welded together and covered in a thick hull of titanium. An antenna stuck out from the upper deck, sending faint signals to and from Charon and beyond.

Jaegersmith was an equally scrappy individual, an ape with a bad attitude, a harsh case of scoliosis and a missing eye replaced with a cybernetic scanner. His stark white beard was long and braided into locks. He wore a chemical-stained lab coat over a greasy jumpsuit and a pair of black rubber work boots. A tool belt was tightly wrapped around his waist, holding everything from a plasma cutter to an absolute hand cannon of a laser pistol.

Jaegersmith eyed all of them with a bloodshot, scrutinizing stare, but his gaze softened when he had a look at Panther. He cleared his throat, holding a fist over his mouth more out of courtesy than anything else, and clumsily nodded.

"Panther, you never visit unless you want something, so what do you want?" Jaegersmith bellowed at him. Panther rolled his eyes and sighed. "I thought you didn't like visitors, old man."

"I don't. They're always peeking, peering." Jaegersmith eyed all of them wildly again before returning to one of his many overflowing workbenches. He picked up what looked like a gun and began to disassemble it. "But you aren't just a visitor, ya? So what can I do for you?"

Panther followed Jaegersmith closely, staying within his line of sight. "Well, first off, we wanted to know if you've seen Wolf."

Jaegersmith did another clumsy nod. "Two years ago. He wanted information, something to do with precursor computer sites, said the only one I knew was on the Scylla and Charybdis binary moons of Tarus. He asked about specific AI, I said he was on his own. I haven't heard from any of Star Wolf since."

"What can you tell me about Scylla and Charybdis?"

Jaegersmith nodded yet again. "About three hundred light-years from here, towards the edge of the star cluster. Scylla was destroyed about a year ago, Charybdis is still in one piece but from what I've heard, some suspicious things happened and now an alien fleet is orbiting the planet long term. Not much else I can tell you: Wolf went quiet."

"Why do you think he'd go quiet?"

Jaegersmith gave him an 'are you serious' look and shook his head. "I warned him. About the extreme danger precursor ruins posed. They're filled to the brim with every nasty defense system imaginable. And Charybdis was one of the worst. As far as I can tell, it was a valuable planet and it still is. Those computer banks could manage every aspect of Venom and Corneria combined without overheating even a little. Or at least that's what I've heard. My guess, Wolf and Leon finally bit the dust."

"I have a hard time believing that, old man. Wolf wouldn't just go down, not after all he'd been through. I think he's gone deeper in. Anything else near Scylla and Charybdis? Anything at all?"

Jaegersmith growled in frustration as he began to reassemble the firearm he was fiddling with. "I don't have time to deal with your inability to accept the truth, Panther. Everything points to Wolf being dead."

Slippy whistled condescendingly. "Oh, but I'm the one who's denying reality?"

Panther knocked him on his forehead with a balled fist without even looking before sighing. "Okay then, old man, we came for a way to meet a contact in Venom about, well, you know what? That doesn't matter. What

matters is we need to get into Venom without having bounties on our heads, well, they want too. Who can get us into Venom?"

Jaegersmith shrugged. "I'm not sure about the specifics, but there are ways of forging false identities. Smugglers do it all the time. I know you'll find a guy on Charon. Now, shoo. I have a very unpleasant meeting to partake in and let's just say I have to be ready to gun down my guests."

Panther raised his eyebrows. "That isn't very welcoming of you."

"It's Horace, I don't give a damn about hospitality. The galaxy would be better off without that waste of space."

Slippy cooked his eyebrow "Who's Horace?"

"A small-time racketeer who thinks he's a big shot gangster here on Charon. There isn't any police or government on Charon, so everything either comes out of pocket or is provided by the families. Racketeering keeps entire cities in line for exorbitant fees. Lately, Horace has been trying to get some of the tech on this station, thinking it'll give him an upper hand on the grand stage. He tried to scare me for it, I wasn't fazed and now he wants to 'trade', which is him trying to be discreet about storming this station and killing me. He isn't the brightest bulb in the bunch."

Before Panther could respond, a heavy clunk resonated from the other end of the station. Jaegersmith spun around, an alarmed expression painted in his face. Before any of them could react, the airlock door blew inward, flowed by a flashbang grenade blinding everyone in the entire room. Falco and Miyu instinctively dove for cover as Slippy covered his blinded eyes. Jaegersmith dragged him behind a table before flipping it on its side. Laser bolts stormed from the entrance.

Eventually, the blasters subsided and a small collection of heavily armed individuals entered the station. The lead was a six foot four boar with a set of thick jeans, combat boots, a white t-shirt under an armored vest strapped with a bandolier and a heavy assault blaster shouldered over his massive frame. Behind him was a bulldog and a rat, both similarly outfitted, the rat wearing an armored overcoat and holding a laser pistol and the Bulldog wearing a white tank top and green cargo shorts with a bandolier belt loosely wrapped through the belt loops haphazardly, the grenades jingling like keys with every step. But Horace was the real threat; he was muscles on top of muscles, and looked more like a giant than a Cornerian. His face was twisted into a vicious sneer, his jagged teeth jutting from his snout like thorns on a bush. His eyes were bloodshot in the way someone who just snorted two lines of coke would be.

"Dammit, it's Horace." The old ape groaned before drawing his gun and aiming at the boar. He fired several massive blasts at the boar, who dodged out of the way and opened fire. The furniture was torn apart by the spray of energy bursts as the team caught their bearings.

"Alright, old man, I see ya got guests. So i'll make this simple: hand over the goods and I'll kill you all quickly."

"Back off Horace, before I turn you into a grease spot on the floor."

The rat and the bulldog eyed each other, obviously taking his warning seriously. But Horace just laughed. "Your threats don't cut as deep as they used to, old man. I'll squash you like a bug. But before I do, you are going to tell me where you keep the files. I got buyers."

"I'll give them to you in hell.", Jaegersmith unloaded his pistol at Horace, who flipped over and hefted up a small steel table to use as a shield. The rat fired back at Jaegersmith, who was shot in the leg, but kept firing. Miyu and Falco fired back, assisting in suppressing Horace as Panther went after the two others.

Panther aimed his gun and fired, killing the rat with a beam to the head. Horace turned his attention to Panther and fired in his direction, allowing Miyu to kill the bulldog by gutting him with several beams to the stomach and letting his guts spill.

With a howl of rage, Horace flipped over the table Jaegersmith and Slippy were behind before grabbing Jaegersmith by the neck and lifting him up before forcing him against the wall.

"Where is it, you old fart? I need it!"

"Fuck you!" Jaegersmith grumbled between rapid breaths. Horace didn't like this answer apparently, and he slammed Jaegersmith into the wall. He grimaced and squirmed, but couldn't free himself from the crazed hog's grip. That ended quickly when Miyu shot Horace behind the kneecap, crippling him. He roared and slammed his fist into her face, causing her to reel back in surprise and shoot at Horace again, this time against his armored vest with little effect. Horace threw Jaegersmith on the ground and stomped on his abdomen, causing him to vomit blood. Panther shourted in alarm and tossed a bottle with unknown contents at Horace, which erupted into a steaming cloud and incapacitated him. As Horace screamed, the others began to fire back, unloading their clips into his back.

Jaegersmith pulled something off a table and slid it to panther, the weapon he had reassembled earlier, something that looked like a pump action laser cannon, but when Panther pumped it and fired, a large, yellow projectile flew across the room and detonated against Horace's back, erupting into a massive fireball. Plasma, but that couldn't be right: Plasma firearms were too dangerous to use.

But despite Slippy's disbelief, the weapon functioned flawlessly. Horace's entire back had melted off, revealing his spine and ribs. He howled in agony before Panther fired another blast, melting Horace's head into a pool of goop on the floor. His carcass tipped over and fell on the floor with a disgusting splat in his own melted body. Both Miyu and Falco looked like they were going to be sick, but Slippy being the resident medical officer (until they found a more qualified candidate) and Panther obviously having seen worse gave them stronger dispositions.

Jaegersmith pulled himself, or at least he tried too, before coughing up blood and falling back on the floor. Panther rushed to his side, cradling the old coot in his arms. "Well, that hurt." He said matter-of-factly.

"Yeah, I fucking noticed, old man."

"He crushed my intestines, my spine and a few other things, he was obviously high on something. Oh, God." He coughed up more blood

"We can get you on the med bay, old man. You can make it."

Jaegersmith shook his head limply. "I'd never walk again: that's no way to live. I've lived a good life. Just keep my work alive."

Jaegersmith pulled out a microchip and handed it to Slippy. "I heard you were the smart one, toad. Keep that safe. It's my life's work, everything I've learned about the precursor races and their tech. Use it, just remember to keep it from the wrong hands: I came to Charon to hide my work from tyrants, and I had every intention of this place becoming my grave. I'll have that wish granted today."

Jaegersmith turned his head to Panther. "I hope you find him. From what I've heard is going on, you'll need him."

Jaegersmith sputtered up more old before gasping. "Go, i'll take care of the station."

Panther nodded, and as they exited out of the airlock and onto their fighters, Panther looked back to see the old coot light up one last cigar, humming a tune he didn't recognize between puffs. Nobody saw it cleay, and Panther would deny it, but he shed a single tear for a friend that had helped him countless times. More tears fell when the station exploded from a self destruction sequence.