Chapter 8

Krystal was free! She had escaped and immediately started flying back, just flying opposite the way the ship was facing. She smiled as she thought of the escape.

She had pressed the button. The world in front of her had seemed to erupt into a dazzling white light as the bomb was launched. It hit the doors almost instantaneously, and the she was immediately sucked through the ripped hull as if it were a black hole. Then her eyes gradually adjusted, and when she could see again she turned her ArWing to the bow of Scales' ship and jetted off.

She was awoken from her reverie when a light flashed and alarm sounded. Great, she thought. I finally have some hope, and then I'm low on fuel cells! If I can find a planet with raw fuel deposits, I can use that to refill the ship.

She brought up the scan screen, and set it for fuel. Strangely enough, the closest fuel deposit was right in her flight path. It was an unrefined asteroid, along with several other asteroids orbiting a small planet. Well, that's convenient. She set the ship on autopilot, and decided to take a nap.

* * *

Fox was, strangely enough, headed in the same direction, towards the same planet, on autopilot. But he was too worried about Krystal to sleep. Instead, he was trying to take his mind off things in a different way.

He was playing a game. Asteroids. What had to be the simplest graphics in the Lylat System, but the hardest to win. But he liked it because in his version, the little ship was modeled like an ArWing, and the other ships were Venomians. Even so, it was even harder than usual because Krystal's face kept popping up in front of his eyes.

He sighed as an alien once again destroyed his ship. Damn those aliens, he thought wearily, as the next life started. He was bored out of his mind. Thinking about Krystal, he remembered a conversation they had had soon after she joined them on the Great Fox.

"Krystal, what was your planet like?"

"Well, I don't remember very well. I was still only a kit when I had to leave. You see, something happened, some kind of attack, and my family tried to escape." Tears started to fill her eyes. "I was the only one that made it. They were able to store me in a cargo ship, but they themselves were not so lucky." Her voice broke, and she could no longer speak.

"So that's one thing we have in common," Fox said. "My mother and father were murdered as well. By Andross."

Andross. Andross was the cause of all this. If it weren't for him, James and Vixy McCloud would still be alive. If not for Andross, there wouldn't have been any trouble on Dinosaur Planet, which would mean no trouble now.

But, if Fox's parents hadn't died, then he wouldn't have the motivation and determination he did. The things caused by Andross hadn't been all bad. If there hadn't been trouble on DP, then he would still be in financial trouble in a run-down ship. And he wouldn't have met Krystal.

An alarm beeped, interrupting his thoughts. He was approaching the planet. The specs came up on it. Specs which surprised Fox.

Asteroids surrounded the planet. Not just asteroids, it appeared that layers of the planet's crust had been shattered from the surface several times. In fact, the layers were orbiting so perfectly that there were only a few times in orbit that a path through to the main planet could be flown. It was obvious that Fox would have to wait on the layers for the windows to open. He would be camping out again. What a stupid universe, he thought, while plotting a course for the outermost layer.