Chapter 9.
He WHAT?
"He's making another pass!"
"How many can this guy take?!"
"Watch it, WATCH IT!"
The HUD blatted as a name on Miyu's squadron roster flashed once, then faded to maroon. She saw one of the Venomian fighters go into a chaotic spin as a missile slapped its engines off. Its momentum carried it right into a crater wall, with a sideways plume of dust marking where it landed.
"Alright, starting our run. Jammers are active, and we're arming torpedoes." McCoy kept his voice level. Miyu kept close to him, and watched as he and one other fighter-bomber opened their launch tubes.
A missile alarm grabbed her attention. Her heart flew into her throat as she wrestled between training, instincts, and the part of her hindbrain that screamed at her to save herself.
Miyu wheeled to the right and cut her engines, bringing her fighter's nose upwards towards the direction of the incoming missiles. She squeezed the trigger, sending a trail of cannon fire across one missile's path. One missile disappeared from her HUD. She kept firing, hitting a second one barreling towards her. A third missile struck one of the bombers in the engine housing, erupting it with a teal starburst.
The fighter that shot the missile appeared before she could even have the time to feel shocked. It fired, one cannon on its wing sending a stream of bolts directly towards the second bomber. Miyu returned fire and it backed off, wheeling away.
Her radio crackled as a breathless, terrified voice spoke. "Holy god, Miyu, that's him! That's the one who kicked our teeth in last time-"
A communications request chirped on her HUD from an unknown source. She stared at it, then glanced at the blue-and-white fighter circling back around towards her. Grant yelled before she could even decide what to do with it.
"Firing! Torpedoes away!"
Falco scowled at the message that blipped across his HUD. Communications request in progress. The mercenary fighter kept following the bomber.
A torpedo alarm flashed on his HUD, and his lower beak dropped. The bomber managed to send out a trio of torpedoes, marked with yellow triangles on Falco's HUD. As the bomber and its escort turned away, Falco gunned his engines, following the torpedoes and sending a steady stream of gunfire towards them as they barreled towards the hangar.
"Falco! They're launching torpedoes at the hangar-"
"I know, I know!" Falco interrupted Slippy the moment his face appeared on the HUD. Two of the torpedoes melted mid-flight, hit by his bolts. He held his breath as the last torpedo landed, slamming into the hangar's blast doors.
When the plasma starburst faded away, Falco spotted a single, white hot depression where the torpedo hit the metal door.
"Falco! Did it get through?! Falco!" Slippy's voice grated in his ears for a few seconds before Falco found the words to speak.
"It just...took the hit. It ate the whole friggin' torpedo." Falco squinted at the depression in the wall. "Looks like it left a dent, though. Another few hits like that, and it could break through-"
An idea interrupted Falco's thoughts. He turned to Slippy's face on his HUD with wide eyes, "Slip, could we break down the doors with more torpedoes? That way, we could get more of our people in the air! Maybe we could even get a signal through to them!"
Slippy just stared at Falco for a full second. Falco could see the very start of an objection on Slippy's face, and watched it die just as fast. The frog shrugged with a helpless stutter, "I-I guess?!"
"Perfect! We have a plan!" Falco pulled back on his flight stick and headed back into the fray before Slippy could change his mind.
"Venom? Why?"
Fox couldn't help saying it. The answer was so unexpected it disoriented him a little. He swallowed, trying to think of a reason, any reason for why Andross would do this. Glancing outside, behind the projection, Fox noticed Peppy working the edge of a combat knife into the seam between the ruby and the pyramid.
The projection smiled, slowly. "Because now I can put you in a very interesting position."
Fox narrowed his eyes and felt his heart sink as the projection spoke, "I had many, many projects. Some of the most dangerous ones lie buried in Venom. If any of them, say, broke containment, or were allowed to become tools for others with less restraint than I, or my creator, had..."
The not-Andross projection kept the smile through the whole statement, and let it get bigger at the end as the implication sank in. Outside, Fox saw Peppy lean into the ruby, jerking the knife from side to side as he worked it deeper into the seam. The projection didn't seem to notice.
The word containment shaped itself into a monster in Fox's mind. The projection bared teeth with his smile as he watched the red fox's expression change. "Yes, McCloud. Now you're getting it. I'm trying to prevent, retroactively, the chance that Lylat could end due to any one of my, Andross', projects. I'm trying to enact the fail-safe that he, in his final moments, chose not to activate. If those Venomian fools found me sooner, we could have even prevented this much death in the process."
Fox listened, mouth dry and speechless. The implications started to trickle, then stream, then flood into his mind. "There are millions of people on Venom. They're all going to die if the asteroid lands."
"Oh, and that's the most delicious part of this plan, McCloud." He leaned forward, staring into Fox's wide eyes. "I brought you here because I want you to know, and I want you to have the chance to stop it."
"I want you to know, as a world ends, that there's a choice between definitively ending it, or a chance at ending all of Lylat. And I want to see your face when you choose what to do."
The projection crackled, sputtering. If the projection knew what was happening, it didn't seem to care. It looked down on Fox, staring down his nose as the projection's face distorted, becoming grainier. Some spots of it froze in place as others still moved, and some changed into a mess of different colors. The expression never changed, even if the features did. As Peppy exclaimed with an echoing cheer, the ruby broke free and the projection sputtered into nothing.
Fox's paw immediately shot for the canopy controls. As it opened, Peppy jogged over, keeping the ruby tucked under his arm. He spoke urgently, "Fox, I tried to stop him as fast as I could. Did he hurt you, did he-"
Peppy's expression faltered the moment he saw Fox's face. The vulpine grabbed the front of Peppy's jacket, warping the leather badly enough to leave folds even when his paws slipped.
The words shot out of Fox's muzzle before he could even think about how to say them. "Peppy, you have to put it back in, I have to know how, I have to hear when-"
Peppy stared as the words tumbled out of Fox's muzzle. He interrupted, in a tone so quiet it you could've thought it was a breath, "Fox. What did he tell you?"
Fox let the words stop. For the first time today, he noticed his heart racing, along with a stitchwork pattern of pain needling along where his heart was. He tried to stop breathing heavily, and failed.
Peppy instantly dropped the ruby and the gun and immediately put one paw around Fox's side to hold him up, and put the other on Fox's chest. He searched Fox's features as he asked, very quietly, "Fox, you need to get back in the chair."
Fox let himself be half carried, half walked to his wheelchair. He refused to stay quiet, though. "We-we have to tell them."
Peppy glanced up at Fox's face as he started his thought, "We have to stop it, we have to stop the ast-"
The words died on his lips, and the full weight of Andross' plan sank in, pulling down on Fox's heart, his soul, his core, his spirit, or whatever else made up the absolute center of what made Fox who he is.
Because now, Fox knew how he would respond to Andross' choice, and for a few seconds he didn't know if that made him a good man or not.
"We tried to send someone in after you, but the passage sealed itself shut when the attack started. It only opened around the same time we regained control of our systems."
Fox glanced warily at Ray as he spoke. Ray's report sounded true, but it didn't reassure him. An ape nurse just finished checking him for any sign that his heart pain meant something worse than just exhaustion and raw fear.
"Andross set this asteroid up as a failsafe. He said he still had projects, several of them, and some of the worst ones are still on Venom." He glanced around at the assorted faces of the clergy leaders, technicians, and remaining security team. "He's sending the asteroid down, and he says that he wanted..."
He tried to keep his voice from wavering. He hoped he did. "He wanted me to choose between definitely sacrificing Venom or maybe dooming all of Lylat."
The silence almost lasted a whole second before one of the security team snorted. "That's a crock."
Fox felt the words like a bucket of ice water. Ray shook his head and Rock approached, gently putting a scaled hand on Fox's shoulder. "Fox, those rumors have existed for years, and both Corneria and Venom have combed the wastelands for just as long. If those weapons existed, they would've been found by now, or been activated. I think that projection just tried to scare you."
Fox immediately wanted to protest. The security guard, a tiger, shook his head, "He got to you. Look at you. You got the shakes, even."
A hot rush of panic and anger rose in Fox's throat, but it stayed there. Fox wanted to tell them they could be wrong, because he fought Andross before, and that this was exactly what he would do, and that yes, they should still save Venom but should still look for the projects, and so many other thoughts all crammed into his mind and fought for control over his fears as Fox felt, slowly, that maybe Andross did just try to scare him.
But why would the projection bring him all this way just to scare him and not kill him? The thought echoed through his mind as some part of him grappled with the hope that maybe the projects weren't real. That maybe, he didn't need to feel afraid this time.
He sat there, reflecting as Peppy cleared his throat and stepped forwards.
Lights bounced as the wires holding them up swayed, making shadows rock from side to side. Peppy spoke up, addressing the remaining clergy leaders and the remaining security as another rumble shook the ceiling, "Well, it's pretty clear that the asteroid is the most immediate threat. On the bright side, we now control the systems again, and we can work the doors. Although,"
Peppy glanced at the massive blast doors, and at the dent about the size of a swimming pool, and finished, "Maybe we might not want to."
"We can't get a message to our people fighting outside like this. They've destroyed our external communications again, and we can't get a message out as long as the doors are closed." One of the technicians, an ape, spoke as she kept glancing at the dent.
"There's also, uh, that problem." The technician nodded upwards towards a cable that dangled from the roof. The brackets that once held it in place led directly to the door. Fox put the information together in his head: without that cable, the door wouldn't move.
"Well, we need the doors open to talk and help the people outside-" Rock started.
"We don't even know if anyone's left outside." The tiger growled. Rock and Ray both shot him a glare.
Fox cut back in, "Well, we have to try. We have one Arwing that's repaired enough to fly. It's still damaged, but Peppy could take it and one Arwing makes a world of difference."
He saw some of the expressions. Most focused on him, but a few looked like they pitied him. He tried to ignore the looks as he kept going. "We need to find a way to redirect the asteroid before it hits Venom, and we need to stop these mercenaries from killing us before we do."
The fox tried to put away the persistent doubts about the projects. Whatever he could do about them, he could do it after this. It felt uncomfortable, trying to suppress the fear. It wrestled with him internally, pushing back at his rationalizations. That fight simmered in the back of his mind as he spoke, "Peppy can fly my Arwing, and when the door's open, he can shoot down anything that tries to hit us. We can use some of our missiles to break the door down."
A sound like a thunderclap rang through the hangar as the dent caved in deeper, and Fox's ears flattened at the sound. The crowd stared, wide-eyed as Ray drily remarked, "I think they already have that idea."
"Two for two, but I'm still not through. I think this thing's got multiple layers." McCoy sounded exhausted. Miyu didn't blame him. She spent most of her time protecting the swift fox's strike craft. The communications request kept chirping at her, and she kept ignoring it. She had a hunch about who sent it, but didn't want to find out.
Another name on her HUD turned a dark maroon. Another Venomian gone. Her frown deepened. She kept an eye out for more strike craft. Instead of fighting the bomber, the blue-and-white fighter spent its time picking fights with any fighter that tried to get close to them.
She glanced at her scanners, and noticed many of the fighters pulling away. It took a split second to realise which ones were being left behind.
As the Venomian strike craft pulled back, she heard her net light up with more chatter.
"Where are they going?"
"What the hell just happened?"
"Get back here!"
"Those chickenshits."
She recognized Grant's voice. He spoke acidly, "They're leaving us behind to cover their retreat."
The statement hovered in the air for a moment before Miyu's shock turned to rage. She threw her own voice into the net, this time hoping everyone would hear her. She cursed, pouring every ounce of hurt and fury into it.
Miyu didn't even make out her own voice among the dozen or so that got left behind. She didn't care. She wanted them to hear it. She wanted them to know that they left her behind and that she hoped they'd get shot and that they could all go fuck themselves.
A light bloomed on her screen from the hangar. The doors exploded, but she didn't remember McCoy firing again.
Then she saw it: the fighter she chased from before, the one she chased into the hangar. She knew, just looking at it, who it belonged to.
The universe stopped for her, and she felt her blood freeze. She knew what another one of those fighters would do to them, and how quickly they could die now that the Venomians left them behind.
She didn't even hear the communications request chirp at her. A storm of voices took over the net, and she only started hearing what they said when the she heard the last word.
"This is Riley, acting second-in-command. I'm going to surrender."
More voices joined in, and Miyu numbly reached to confirm a new communications request from a different source. A portrait of a stern-looking hare appeared on her HUD. She heard voices clamoring, exhausted, to surrender. Others cursed quietly. Most stayed silent. The hare spoke.
"Land every fighter you have immediately on the asteroid and shut down everything except for your emergency systems. We'll treat every effort to do otherwise as a potential threat, and we'll act accordingly. If you follow our directions, you will not be harmed, and you will be given shelter and accomodations according to international law. Repeat,"
The hare droned on, repeating the gist of the message. Miyu felt numb as she watched the hare repeat the orders. So this is how her fight would end. Some people raised their voices to negotiate, and fell silent when the fighters got close.
Her HUD chirped again, this time with a communications request from the same unknown source as before. She let it through, expecting more of the same. A face appeared on her HUD, and a blue falcon spoke,
"Not you, lynx. You land inside."
A tiger and a green falcon met her inside the hangar. The tiger held a submachine gun at hip level until her canopy opened. Then, he levelled it right at her face. She tried to keep her fur from bristling as she put her paws over her head.
"Keep them above your head and step onto the floor. Now." The falcon spoke with a voice loud enough to echo, and with the kind of confidence that made Miyu think that this wasn't her first time doing this.
Miyu stood up, stepping out of the cockpit, paws raised. When she reached the floor, the green falcon approached, patted her down, took a knife out of her boot and took her holster with the pistol still inside. The tiger gave her an appraising look, and Miyu met his gaze. He snorted, and before she could guess what he was thinking, the green falcon turned her around, put cheap plastic cuffs on her wrists, and marched her towards the hall.
The tiger spoke into the radio as he kept the gun trained on the back of her head. No one spoke after that. All three marched quietly, passing some wide-eyed technicians and one or two people in robes. One, an ape in dark green vestments coolly met her gaze, and never broke it until she was out of his sight.
A lizard in a teal robe saw her, and didn't make a sound until she passed. Then, she heard a noise like a throat clearing, right before hearing the smack of a wet glob of spit landing on the floor. She tried to avoid thinking about how she recognized the sound.
Her eyes widened when she counted the number of apes and lizards here. She expected hostility, but not from Venomians. For a second, she wondered if her employers lied about who they were fighting, too. That realization didn't shock her, but it did make her shoulders sag a little more. If they lied, it was just one more trick she fell for, and another reason to hate herself even more.
The walk ended a short while later, with her being roughly led by the shoulder into a hallway with rows of empty cells. She looked around as they took off her cuffs. The only things inside were a long table and a combination sink and toilet, with the sink located right above the toilet bowl. She only realized the table was a supposed to be a bed when she noticed the lack of a mattress anywhere.
A force field hummed, locking her in. For a second, she just stood there, looking around the seamless rock walls and at the guard walking away, and did nothing. And then, she staggered over to the table that was supposed to be a bed, sat down, stretched her legs and leaned back enough that her head bumped into the wall.
Miyu's eyes started to water. She rubbed it away the moment she felt it. She sat up straighter, exhaling sharply through her nose. Whatever happened next, she'd deal with it, somehow. But then she thought about what actually could happen next, and then a dozen scenarios involving death, pain, or eternity in a cell ran through her mind, and her heart quailed.
She bounced her leg, then perked an ear as she overheard people talking further down the hall. She leaned against the force field, angling her ears towards the sound. She couldn't make out what they said, but she recognized two voices: the falcon, shouting, and the hare, speaking with a voice so cold she bristled when she heard it...
"That's our prisoner-"
"And pray tell, what would you do with her?"
Falco and Ray stared each other down. Falco snorted when Ray asked the question. He shot the ape a cold, avian near-smile and shrugged, "Y'know, I dunno, but ask me later. I'm sure I'll come up with something good-"
"Falco." Falco stopped the moment Peppy spoke. He muttered something before taking a seat by a desk. Peppy shot him a cold look.
The falcon threw up both wings. "Am I lying? C'mon, Greene, tell me I'm lying."
The green falcon didn't even look up from her tablet. She didn't even try to join the discussion.
"You may be right, Lombardi, but it's also true that I have a moral obligation to prevent pointless, morally wrong bloodshed."
Falco coughed a one-note laugh. "What?"
Ray stared back. "I will not allow you to harm prisoners."
"'Morally wrong bloodshed.' Oh, my, God." Falco let his beak drop as he pointed with one wing right at Ray. "You absolutely do not get to tell me that. Not after all this."
"Lombardi, you need to cool off-" Ray spoke up.
Falco interrupted immediately. "Cool off? I'm just getting warmed up!"
The falcon swept his wing across Ray, Greene, and the one tiger guard sitting behind the desk. "You've kept us in the dark, and we had to get into a shooting war with complete strangers with Venomian tech to defend your 'former'" Falco's wings formed air quotes. "Venomian base. We've helped you, one of us got almost got killed, and we had to chase off these people twice, from a base that apparently had James McCloud's Arwing hidden in it, which answered only to Fox McCloud, and by the way,"
Falco leaned in. "It's also got hidden thrusters we didn't know about, and they're sending us to end a planet. Sorry! Our bad! We had no idea! Now let's preach to you about 'morally wrong bloodshed.'"
Falco leaned back in his chair. "Get bent. All of you."
A full second passed before Peppy sighed, "Are you done, Falco?"
"Check again in ten seconds and I'll have an answer for you, Pep."
Greene snorted. Peppy rolled his eyes before speaking. "We can figure out assigning blame when the threat's gone. The pirates could return, but for now, they have enough of a bloody nose to make them think twice about attacking. We're also still taking in prisoners and trying to figure out what to do with them. As for the lynx, I think we should be the ones responsible for her."
"Because you want revenge?"
"Because we deserve answers." Peppy snapped at the tiger the moment he asked the question.
After a few heartbeats, Peppy conceded. "She almost killed someone very important to us. If you're going to make the argument that this is personal, you're right. She made this personal the moment she decided to step out of her cockpit and try killing Fox in person, on foot, when she could've been satisfied with just knocking his fighter out of commission."
Peppy argued forcefully. He visibly relaxed after he let that comment sink in. "You have my word that we'll treat her like any other prisoner. We will not harm her."
Falco shot Peppy an angry look, but said nothing. Peppy continued, "When Slippy and Fox return from dealing with the thrusters, we can figure out how to deal with the prisoners. But we want to talk to her specifically about why she did this. I want to know why. That's all."
Ray stared hard at Peppy, shook his head, and sighed. "I'll allow you to talk to her when this is over. Until then, we still have to take in the other prisoners."
Peppy glanced at the hallway at another two pilots being escorted in. He nodded a little. "I'll help, then."
Falco shot Ray a hateful look. Ray met it without flinching or changing his expression. The falcon then stood, and walked away. Ray walked over to a seat, leaned against the wall behind it, then sighed for the full length of time that it took to slide down the wall and into the seat.
Fox surveyed the asteroid's horizon, then looked up towards the green expanse of Venom. He thought about how many people lived there, shivered, and then refocused on the the Great Fox's controls. He turned the pilot's chair towards an hourglass-shaped column of metal, topped with a plume of fire so bright that the reactive windows dimmed to shield against the brightness. He spoke into his headset. "So what's it look like, Slip. What are we up against?"
"Thrust vectoring nozzles extended from underground housings. They were...really deep." Fox watched as Slippy's Arwing hovered closer to the thruster and tilted downwards to see down the shaft around the engine's base.
"How'd they miss all this?" Fox asked.
Slippy's voice crackled through Fox's headset. "Hiding them underground would keep you from finding them with a surface-level scan, and making the doors that cover it thicker would protect you from a deeper one. But even then, a full survey would've probably brought something up, unless,"
The pause hovered in the air until Fox spoke. "Unless what?"
"Unless we're dealing with weird abracadabra magic here, too." Slippy sounded resigned.
Fox screwed up his face for a moment until he remembered the projection that spoke to him. Maybe Slippy sensed the pause when he spoke. "Yeah, yeah, I know, I'm the engineer here, I should know better, but...I don't know, Fox. Until I have the tools to understand what just happened with you and that ruby, I'm calling it magic."
The way Slippy said the word got Fox to imagine him wiggling his fingers when he said it. Fox smiled. Slippy was smart, but also smart enough to not try explaining things he didn't understand. Fox respected that, mostly because he knew people who would've spent hours trying to explain things they never studied by using what they knew to explain it. Sometimes it worked. Usually it just meant sitting through dozens of words of conjecture that didn't help. Slippy sidestepped that by shrugging, saying he didn't know, then working to find out how he eventually could.
Slippy already moved on to talking about the thrusters. "As it turns out, we can adjust the thrusters and give this rock just enough of a vector to redirect it away from Venom before it's too late. We can adjust them manually, but that takes time. We could also be more creative,"
"...Creative?" Fox stressed the word.
He could almost hear Slippy's smile. "Well, the way these engines are built, we could push the nozzle in the direction we want and it would still work."
"Is that safe?" Fox asked.
"...mmmmostly?" Slippy stretched the 'm'.
Slippy added more after a few seconds' pause. "We can do it the safe way until we think we're pressed for time. Don't worry, Fox. We can still save the world before dinner!" Slippy paused, then made a thoughtful hum. "I never thought we'd save Venom, though."
Fox looked up at Venom again, and said nothing. He just stared up at the green, hazy planet, thought about Andross' dilemma, and frowned.
The Great Fox's long-range scanners chirped. First slowly, then urgently. Multiple fighter signatures, and two cruiser-sized signatures appeared on his screen. Looking up, the HUD displayed the incoming ships as highlighted wireframes, tagged with distance numbers that all counted down.
His blood froze, but only for a second. Fox relaxed. He curled his lip and immediately relayed the information to the asteroid base. If they wanted another bloody nose, he'd give them one.
Remember when I said it would take another month to write a chapter? I was wrong. This took about a week and it still feels like a decent chapter. But now, I got something new to think about. We're around three-quarters through this story, and now I gotta figure out what to do when it ends. Would y'all like me to continue the story of the Star Fox team when I'm done? Let me know.
Nail Strafer: That's the one big critique I don't have a good answer for. A lot of this story does feel convoluted, and I'm trying to make it good in spite of that by working hard on the dialogue and the characters. The outline for this chapter didn't help with that, so I took out a lot of stuff that would've made the problem worse. Hopefully this chapter improves the story, overall.
Overture OTSW: The first thing I did when I started this was make an outline with a clear ending in mind, and you're right. It's helped a lot.
Elarix: Hopefully this chapter answers that question. I actually had a different idea for what this asteroid was for, but it ended up being so complicated that I replaced most of it with the explanation in this chapter instead. I think it's better, but I'd still like to hear readers' thoughts about it.
I'll start chapter 10 later this week. See y'all then.