Chapter 10.
Final Countdown.
Falco swept his gaze across the room with a frown. The remaining enemy mercenaries sat on the ground, all with plastic cuffs around their paws. A few shot him nasty looks. Most just looked around, bleary-eyed. All of them looked exhausted, and most whispered when they talked.
Members of the security team stood at each corner of the room, guns slung over their shoulders. The whispering of the prisoners formed a kind of white noise, only interrupted by the occasional chirp of a radio.
Falco's gaze settled on a swift fox who made a point of glaring directly at him. Falco glared right back. An arctic fox leaned over to talk to the swift fox, but the fox never took his eyes off of Falco.
A frazzled-looking possum sat at the front of the group. She looked the most burned-out of them all, not even bothering to turn her face up to see her captors.
Falco perked up at the sound of a door opening, and watched as Peppy, Ray, and Rock strode in. Greene, who stood with one of the other guards, walked closer to stand by Peppy, who pushed a wheelbarrow with the boxy, rusted frame of a holographic projector on it.
Ray cleared his throat, and Falco scowled as he heard the ape speak.
"After a discussion with this base's leadership, we've decided on making an offer for you."
Peppy set the projector down, turned a dial, and the air above the projector flickered. The face of Fox McCloud slowly came into focus. A few of the mercenaries drew slow gasps, and many cursed, shocked, as they saw his face. Fox turned, looking down the line of speakers, then towards the crowd. The projection only showed him from above the chest. Fox looked exhausted, but he also had his jaw set, his eyes forward, and a focus that settled directly on the mercenary prisoners.
Ray waited for the hologram to come into focus before speaking more, "After some discussion, we've come to the conclusion that we need help. We face an enemy that has not only left you behind, but who also seems to want this asteroid, our home, to crash into Venom."
Murmurs rippled through the mercenary prisoners. Many of them eyed Fox's projection nervously. One spat. The possum watched Ray speak with glazed eyes. "We saw how they treated you, and we saw how they left you behind. We need people to defend our home. We are not soldiers, we are a fellowship of different religions who came here to make a new home. You attacked that home, and we know that you have lost people to us, just as we have, to you."
The murmurs rose to a dull roar when the prisoners heard the words different religions. Some looked confused, others screwed up their faces at this new information. Falco narrowed his eyes as he watched their baffled, surprised expressions. The possum, Riley, focused on him, the glaze over her eyes slowly fading away.
This time, Fox spoke, "From what I can tell, your employers lied to you. They sent you on a mission without explaining the details. They then left you for dead, hoping that you would cover their retreat while they took your carrier. If I was you, I'd be looking for a way to get back at them."
His gaze softened. "I'm also asking you to help us save millions of lives. Venom does not..." Fox paused, "...deserve to die."
The words stayed in the air as the pilots watched. The possum looked more focused, now. The arctic fox leaned forwards. The swift fox stared venomously at the face of Fox McCloud. If Fox noticed, he didn't show it. "...I know how this looks. But I'm asking you to help us...I-"
Fox paused, then lowered his voice. "We need you. Please."
For a while, no one spoke. The pilots looked around uncertainly. The swift fox bared fangs, about to speak when the possum stood. The guards watched her as she looked at Fox, more focused now. She spoke clearly, but with a rasp in her voice "Do we have the option to refuse? What'll you do with us when we're done?"
"We're prepared to offer total amnesty for all of you, and we will not compel you to fight if you do not wish to." Falco shot Ray a cold look when the ape answered. He argued long and hard against the idea, but he was up against a whole room of religious leaders and Fox McCloud. Fox wanted it clear that he didn't want to force them to fight, because of some pure baloney about properly treating prisoners. Falco fumed as he remembered the argument.
Ray added quietly, "Those who do not wish to fight do not have to. But we need every pilot we can."
The possum clicked her teeth once, tilting her head forwards. After a few seconds, she turned around. "So. Who's in?"
The arctic fox stood up. A few stood up after, then, slowly, every pilot got to their feet. The swift fox stood last with a resigned scoff, looking at the ground as he cursed.
The possum turned to face the assembled leaders and asked, "Where's Miyu? She's our best pilot. If we're going to do this, we need her."
Ray turned to Peppy with an apprehensive look, and with a deep sigh, Peppy answered, "She'll get the same offer as you."
Falco swore, loud enough to be heard, but not over Peppy's voice. He argued against this. But he had to argue against Slippy, Peppy, Ray, and Fox, and against those odds, he couldn't do anything but watch as they threatened to make the decision without him. Peppy argued pretty forcefully that every pilot shifted the odds away from millions dying, and Fox agreed. Even Rock eventually agreed after some debate with Fox, but only on the condition that she never comes back to Venom.
With that, Falco turned and walked away as the guards started to take the cuffs off the prisoners.
Miyu spent her entire time in her cell waiting, pacing, bouncing her leg, and trying hard not to think about what would happen to her. She tried to ignore the half-remembered horror stories of Venomian prison camps that haunted the egdes of her mind. She held onto the idea that this wasn't an official Venomian camp, but seeing the number of Venomians here gave her pause.
Her eyebrows shot up when she saw the hare step up with a wheelbarrow. She saw the projector on the wheelbarrow and her fears melted away, replaced by a new feeling of unease, since she expected several unpleasant scenarios, but not this one. Instead of an execution, a member of Star Fox decided to show up in her cell, looking unarmed, and with a holographic projector.
She sized up the hare, thinking about whether or not she could take him. Before she could come to an answer, the hare turned the dial on the projector and the face of the man she killed appeared right in front of her.
For a second, she wondered if it was a still image until the face turned, blinked, and focused on her with an unreadable expression, then she felt something like the trickle of ice water down her spine. She knew those eyes.
The fox spoke stiffly. "We have an offer for you."
Miyu's jaw dropped. For a few seconds, she said nothing as the face of the man she killed spoke to her. The hare shot her a wry look, curling his lip up in a half smile as he watched her reaction.
Miyu shot him a nasty look before refocusing on the face. The green eyes looked at her, not accusingly, or angrily, but with a kind of focus that made her feel like he was searching her eyes for something.
The moment lasted less than a heartbeat before she pushed all her fears to the back of her mind, and decided to meet his gaze. She unflattened her ears as the fox continued,
"We made an offer to the rest of your team. They're going to help us fight the Venomians, and to help us prevent this asteroid from hitting Venom."
Her blood ran cold as she felt her fur bristle. She didn't want to believe him, but at the same time, she already hated the Venomians for what they did, and wouldn't put it past them. She hated Star Fox, too, for shooting down her teammates. The two hates dueled in her head, and she wasn't sure if she wanted one to win.
Her lip curled, and she stayed silent as the fox went on. "They're going to try to prevent us from stopping this asteroid, and they're getting ready for another assault right now."
He looked at her, right in the eyes, speaking quietly. "We need your help. Your team says you're the best, and at this point, I'd like to put away any grudges we might have. But we need you to help us."
The moment he said grudges, Miyu felt a hot rush of anger run from her face to her fingertips. She felt like snarling and decking him across the jaw. He tried to kill her, and he called it a grudge.
The fox frowned, maybe because he noticed her expression. "We're trying to save people right now. If you want to say no, then fine, but we need everyone we can get. Millions of lives are counting on us..."
Hearing him talk, Miyu felt two things, slowly growing to overshadow everything else. She felt pissed. Pissed that the man who almost killed her was trying to make it sound like he's doing something good, all while having blood on his paws that he got from fighting her team, and this brazen pretending do-gooder asshole tried to kill her and made it sound unimportant. On top of that, she felt something else. She felt the smug satisfaction of making this condescending, patronizing asshole beg for her help.
He didn't have the right to do this. This was the purest bullshit. He had absolutely no right to sound this disgustingly self-righteous. He killed her people, and she fought back. Seeing him beg didn't just feel good, it almost made her want to throw his offer back in his face.
She poured all of that feeling into her next words. She let herself slowly smile back at him. "You hypocritical asshole."
The fox's eyebrows shot upwards. Good. She decided to go further. He deserved it. "You killed people I flew with, you didn't give them a chance. You came in, rolled up to us, demanded one of our people and then lied about how you'd let us all go if we did."
"It wasn't a lie-" The fox started, and Miyu interrupted just as fast.
"Where do you get off saying that?" She almost roared, and enjoyed watching the fox lean back a little, like she took a swipe at him. "You killed us, and tried to kill me. How am I supposed to believe that?"
The fox fell silent. She pushed some more, "I know what you are. You're mercenaries. Just like me. You don't have any right, any goddamned right, to judge me and act like you're any better than me. You're not."
She gathered herself and stood, and noticed the hare start to do the same with narrowed eyes. She snarled, "I'll help. You can all get launched into the sun, but I'll help. Just spare me from whatever it is that you're doing with this fake 'uhhh, we'll put this grudge behind us' garbage-"
The fox stared her down, leaning in, but never breaking eye contact. It got under her skin, and convinced her to add one more jab: "You don't get to pretend that you're being the good guys."
The fox's face darkened. Miyu smiled. The hit landed just the way she wanted it to. The fox spoke quietly. "So that's a yes?"
Miyu leaned back, basking in the fact that she got to him. "If that's what makes you feel better."
The fox sighed, turned to face the hare, and nodded. The hologram flickered off, and a second afterwards, the force field vanished. Miyu stood, striding past the hare when he spoke. "That's a funny way to respond to full amnesty."
She froze, and her anger finally reached its peak. They put her in a cell, and shot at her, and almost killed her, and here this hare was suggesting she should have acted grateful.
She turned to face him, slowly, letting the anger seep into her words. "You're not the good guys. You're not saying you are, but you're acting like you are, and that's garbage."
She turned fully to face him, feeling satisfaction behind the truth of her words, "And I don't feel bad for what I did. He tried to kill me, and I tried to kill him back. That's normal."
The hare met her gaze without flinching, and spoke as she started to turn away. "It's also normal for mercenaries to torture, airlock, or shoot people on the spot. We didn't do that to you. You're still right, we're mercenaries. But we chose to do something different, because we want to be better than people say we are."
"Whatever." Miyu growled as she walked away. As she turned a corner, she muttered, "Prick."
Miyu got to Fox, and that was enough. She took his hypocrisy and threw it right back in his face.
She didn't see it, but the hare's ears swiveled when she said it. He frowned, sighed, and put the projector back on the wheelbarrow.
Miyu glanced at her fighter's HUD. The shock of seeing the IFF color codes flipped around didn't even get her to blink. Now most of the people she fought from before got tagged with familiar, friendly green, and the Venomian fleet got tagged with hostile, angry red, and she barely even cared.
All the people she really liked either flew with her now or died in the days leading up to now. Glancing up, she could see McCoy's bomber, armed with nova bombs from the Great Fox.
She wondered how McCoy felt about this new mission, and smiled as she imagined him running off with their expensive, hard-to-replace bombs. A chirp from her HUD interrupted her thoughts, and a series of portraits appeared on a banner across the bottom of her HUD. She counted several faces from the clergy team, Star Fox, and her own mercenary survivors. She curled her lip as she saw the blue falcon and the fox right by Riley.
The hare spoke first, "Our first priority is to keep them away from the asteroid engines. That means having people on standby to intercept missiles, and a strike team to engage the main force. After some discussions with y'all's leadership, we have an idea on what to strike first. From what it sounds like, your former employer pretty much directs this whole operation. I'm a little skeptical of the idea that killing their leader would decisively tilt things in our favor since he's just one man, but after talking to some of y'all, it's become clear that he has some special sway over what the Venomians are doing."
Yeah, no shit. Miyu stopped just short of saying it out loud. The ferret killed one of her friends with a look and could direct a whole platoon of Venomian troops with a glance and a shake of his head. Of course killing him would tilt things in their favor, they followed him like they couldn't resist anything he said. Without him, their primary source of leadership would disappear. And he'd get what's coming to him, too.
That last thought bubbled up with the image of the ferret's almost-unchanging expression finally being lit up with shock as his bridge explodes from a direct hit. Miyu grinned inwardly as she hoped to be the one to send it.
"We also want to keep them away from the asteroid engines. Slippy and Fox will be in charge of redirecting the thrusters, but it's our job to make sure that the enemy doesn't get a chance to destroy them. That's our strategy. Destroy the leadership, and that should disorganize them enough to make defending against them easier." The hare finished, and the portrait of Fox McCloud glided over the others to take the center of the banner where the hare originally spoke from.
Fox spoke, never taking his eyes off of the HUD beyond the camera's point of view, "That just leaves the tactics of what we need to do. We've armed your bombers with our nova bombs, and we want you to make a bombing run on their main carrier. Falco and Peppy will lead the bulk of our forces in an effort to screen their fighters before they can get to our bombers, and if anyone breaks through, they'll have to get past the escort. Miss Lynx is in charge of that."
Miyu couldn't tell if the words Miss Lynx had any sarcasm behind them. She resented being placed in the same defensive spot again by the fox that tried to kill her, but this also meant she'd get to be part of the volley against the Venomian carrier. She flicked her ear and didn't say anything.
Riley's face replaced Fox as she reached past the camera for something out of view. "Alright, people, that's our plan. Remember to double check your IFF systems and call out any targets that head towards the engines. Make sure to follow Lynx and slap that ferret with enough ordnance to turn him into a fine dust. I want him gone."
Miyu nodded as she hit her master-arms switch. The portraits disappeared one by one, until only Fox remained. He stared into the camera for half a second before letting out a sigh as his portrait disappeared, too.
Her paw already moved towards her throttle. Now, she could put away all her thoughts about Star Fox, the asteroid, and the job. Now, turning the ferret into a scrap cloud became the first thing on her mind, and her fingers itched to get it done.
Then she could leave.
And put everything bad about this behind her.
I'd like to apologize for how long this took to put together. There's not much to say about this chapter, except for that one scene with Miyu and Fox. I really liked writing that one.
I should have another chapter done within a month. I appreciate y'all's patience, and especially y'all's reviews. Speaking of which, let's get to those:
Overture OTSW: As usual, thank you for the kind words! I wanted some high stakes for this story, and I think it worked.
Nail Strafer: You have some good questions, and I'll have answers for them in the coming chapters. There's a reason why the Venomians want the asteroid to hit Venom and why they aren't trying to communicate with the government there. And yeah, Miyu and the mercenaries got left behind as the Venomians retreated. I'm also thinking that I'll follow Elarix's suggestion about keeping it as one story, with the sequel chapters happening after this conflict's resolved. As usual, I appreciate the feedback y'all are giving me. I'm convinced it's why I have a better idea of where to go from here.
Elarix: My biggest regret with this story is how complicated it is, and I think that's because of the outline I wrote first. I put a lot of ideas into it, and putting it all together left me with some ideas that didn't fit and some that just made it too complicated to follow. I'll try something a little different next time, because I still like how the outline's keeping me away from writer's block. I like your idea about keeping it as one story, though. If I decide to keep it going, it'll be like that.
chaos Leader: It's good to see you back, and I appreciate your reviews! Yeah, I jumped right into the story without a lot of background or explanation because I'm a bigger fan of putting information into the background for readers to piece together. It's why I'm a fan of the 3rd person limited perspective, where I let readers know some of the characters' thoughts, but sometimes only leave them with actions, comments and expressions that they have to figure out. It feels more grounded, at least to me. I also appreciate the praise. This story means a lot to me. As for the critiques, I'll work on trying to ease people into the setting, and on describing scenes more clearly. I thought about the part when McCoy talks to Miyu, and I saw what you meant. I'll avoid that vagueness as I keep working on the story.
NadayNadie: I really like your reviews, mostly because you're going through all the background information and putting it all together. That's the kind of detective work that makes writing like this feel great, because instead of spelling everything out, I get to suggest or hint at things that I plan for the future. I understand the critiques about the intro not standing out too much, or me repeating the same words. I generally appreciate having my stories feel more grounded, which is why I opted for a familiar intro. I'll also work on repeating myself less.
Thanks, y'all! This story's already reached 1600 views, and it's my longest, most-reviewed story. I'll be back with chapter 11 soon.