though, I'm going to finish the trilogy, and here's Chapter 9. Look for the conclusion to the trilogy soon! As always, thanks for reading. Foxmerc]
CHAPTER 9
Stolen Fate
The next morning
Great Fox, recreation room
0927 hours
It was the training. It had to
be.
The morning after his party-crashing
on Macbeth, Gage acted as if nothing happened, though he had a slightly
deeper squint, a darker countenance. Fox expected him to brood, to stay
in the guest room and refuse to talk to anyone. He grimly remembered the
few days following Vixy's death, climaxed with him almost eating a bullet
by his own hand. No doubt that Falco, sitting across from him at the rec
room table, also remembered helping a certain intoxicated fox back to his
room. A certain "drunk off his ass" fox was how Falco put it.
But the captain didn't seem
drunk or suicidal as he strode purposefully into the room, took a seat
at the head of the table, and tossed his laser microphone onto the
table. The confused mercenaries stopped their discussion of how to handle
Gage if he snapped and stared at him, as if waiting for a second head to
grow.
Gage returned the stare and
raised his eyebrows expectantly. "What? Come on, play it. Let's see if
we got what we went for."
"You ok?" Fox asked, reaching
for the device.
Gage nodded, but Fox noticed
a hard swallow before he did. That's when he decided it had to be the training.
They're taught not to have emotions, just to do their job. Fox never had
that training. In this case, though, he was almost thankful for Gage's
lack of feeling, even if it wasn't one-hundred percent gone. Their time-frame
for finding Overlord was growing thin, according to Ike, and the last thing
they needed was Gage breaking down.
Figuring he should count his
limited blessings and not push it, Fox plugged the microphone into the
wall viewscreen audio input and set it to playback. Immediately a burst
of static filled the room followed by the bantering voices of the officers.
Fox took his seat and leaned back.
"—on schedule! My men are losing
morale with all this inactivity."
"Overlord IS on schedule, General,
as the commander said. Are you questioning his word?"
"I'm not questioning anything,
I'm just saying that the men need a victory."
"Well, maybe YOU would like
to attack Corneria with the forces we have? We don't stand a chance!"
Fox glanced over at Gage as
Ike spoke his first words, but noticed no change from the stone expression.
The calm voice of the traitor held just as much authority and sureness
as the night before, and Fox was amazed. It reminded him of Wolf O'Donnell's
style, but it had something else. Wolf seemed to do what he did out of
pure hatred, which didn't exactly harbor a slow temper. Ike knew what he
was doing and was in complete control.
"A frontal attack will not be
necessary anytime soon. Overlord is on schedule, I assure you all, and
there will be a demonstration next week. For this, I highly recommend that
none of you remain in this city. It's going to get a little hot…Overlord
is our key to success. With it, nothing can stop us."
"Now, if there are no other
questions about Overlord, we can move on. To close this topic, General
Harlan, you are to have two squads of your best engineers report to Rogara
Outpost no later then Thursday. We'll need them to help with Overlord's
little surprise. Is that clear?"
"Yes, Sir."
"Alright, now—"
The speech cut off abruptly
as a loud thud echoed through the room, followed by gunshots and shattered
glass. Then the audio feed cut off altogether.
Gage leaned back in his chair,
his poker face still on, and shrugged. "That last bit's new to me also.
I wasn't exactly paying attention right before I slipped."
"Good thing you kept it on,"
Fox replied, flicking the microphone off. "Alright, so now we know where
Overlord is being built. We also know we have six days to find it and throw
a wrench in the works."
"Great, so what are waiting
for?" Falco asked, half rising from his seat.
"It's not that easy," Gage replied
softly, his calm voice disturbingly similar to his brother's. He slowly
rocked in the chair and stared straight ahead as he spoke. "Fox will side
with me on this one. If there's one rule about weapons, it's that the next
version will always be superior to the original. Even if we do find it,
it'll be bigger, more armed, more protected, and more impossible to get
into. Not to mention the numerous civilians being used as labor who are
bound to be there. Not to mention this 'surprise' that Ike was talking
about. Not to mention that crazy bodyguard he has. Do I have to go on?"
Falco was stubborn for sure,
but even he saw the sense in avoiding Gage's impressive list of hazards
and took his seat again, folding his arms. Fox also wasn't too eager to
meet the cheetah again and hated to think that the rest of Gage's speech
was one-hundred percent true. Suddenly, his infiltration of the first Overlord
seemed in the same league as walking to the corner store.
"So what's our next move?" Fox
asked out loud, more to himself than his partners.
"First we call General Pepper,"
Gage replied, his empty gaze still fixed on the blank white wall across
the room. "Then we pay Stefan another visit, to see if he knows anything
about this surprise, or that cheetah."
Fox grimaced at the thought
of another pleasant chat with Stefan, but he didn't object. His qualms
for seeing Stefan didn't seem so bad when put up against Gage's current
conflict, so he decided to suck it up for one last time. Falco didn't care
either way; he knew he would be staying back to watch the ship again.
Fox unplugged the microphone
from the viewscreen and punched in Pepper's number. After one ring, the
general answered.
"Ah, McCloud, I was just about
to call you."
"Oh?"
"Yes," Pepper continued, glancing
at a piece of paper on his desk then looking at Fox in a slanted manner
that StarFox had dubbed the 'trouble look.' Once again, the theory was
proven right. "I received a report this morning from the Macbeth City police.
They say there was heavy gunfire in an office building, and then a tank
drove down the street and crashed through the building. You wouldn't happen
to know anything about that, would you?"
The last sentence wasn't a question,
but more of an explanation demand. Fox figured the general would forgive
him once he heard what they discovered, so he told the entire story of
the night before. Pepper listened with rapt attention while Gage sat and
continued his staring contest with the table.
"It was Ike…" Pepper breathed
with surprise when Fox concluded. "Are you absolutely sure?"
Fox nodded towards the sullen figure of Gage and
raised his eyebrows. Pepper nodded in understanding. If there was any prayer,
any hope that Gage could cling to that would make it all false, he would've
done it.
"Agreed," Pepper said after
clearing his throat. "Go see what else Chuzie knows. While you do that,
I'll scramble whatever forces we have in the Venom area and try to get
Macbeth City evacuated, though I don't see that happening without much
chaos."
"You're the general, General,"
Fox replied, reaching for the screen. "We'll be in touch."
Pepper nodded and Fox cut the
connection.
* * *
Later that day
Corneria City
1417 hours
Fox could barely remember the
last time he had gone to Corneria City for a reason other than visiting
his personal demon or breaking into an army headquarters. He used to love
visiting the city on weekend leave from the Academy, or with his parents
for shopping or such. Those were the days when he could take a second to
stop and look around, to appreciate the little things in life.
That all went up in flames along
with his mother's car.
Now, standing and waiting for
Gage outside a huge metal bunker-like building and watching the bustle
of city life, Fox longed for those days. Ever since he put on the mask
of the mercenary, every day could've been a fight for his life or the life
of someone close to him. Most fights he won…and some he lost. Thinking
back to Vixy made Fox realize that his last real good time in the city
was with her, when they went for groceries for the Great Fox and stopped
for dinner…his last expression of carefree love with the victim of his
most trying loss.
Fox's daydream was cut off at
the sound of the heavy metal door slamming behind him. Gage navigated the
flowing stream of pedestrians and joined Fox by the curb, shaking his head.
Fox noticed his partner was receiving quick glances from the passing civilians
because of his uniform; the urge to daydream of his Academy days, when
he was the recipient of those glances, was suppressed as Gage spoke.
"He's not here. According to
the guy in the prison, he had a meeting with his lawyer to seal the death-row
pardon. He should be back any minute."
Fox nodded. The entire process
with Stefan had gone smoothly; he had been transferred to the lower-security
prison in the city the day after their meeting. It made Fox bitter, made
him feel like he was the loser in their vendetta. But he supposed, in a
terrible way, it worked out for the best. After all, Stefan had probably
played a very significant role in saving millions of lives. Without his
information, Fox and Gage would still be in the dark.
Gage sighed and gazed up at
the skyscrapers. "I used to live a few blocks from here, in an apartment
above a corner store. Every day, the store owner would give me and Ike
a free donut on our way to school. Great guy…"
"Seen him since you left?" Fox
asked, mostly to keep conversation as a distraction from his own thoughts.
"He's dead," Gage replied bluntly.
"I was in school when the first attack came. Complete chaos, people running
everywhere, fighters in the sky, tanks on the ground. The building across
the street collapsed onto the store…with my mother in the apartment. Took
them weeks to dig through the debris."
"The building across the street
just collapsed?"
"No, it was pushed over, by
some kind of big red machine. Tank treads, drills or something for arms.
It was already to the next block when I got home. I got there just in time
to see it destroyed…by one of your team. Well, an Arwing anyway."
Fox nodded. He remembered the
metal beasts, powerful enough to knock over a building. "Too little, too
late."
"Yeah…" Gage's voice trailed
off as he continued his gaze.
After a few minutes, Fox glanced
over and saw that Gage's eyes had the same distant look as they had back
on the ship. They were the eyes of a virtuous man torn apart by a personal
evil. Fox never had siblings, but his teammates were as close as you could
get without being of the same blood…and he could never imagine having to
fight against one of them, turned traitor. The strong, stubborn, vigorous
Gage that Fox had the pleasure of meeting in the headquarters cafeteria
was all but gone, worn out by the pressure and torment of his situation.
It all seemed too familiar…
That's when Fox remembered the
note.
It was the only thing that kept
him going months before, the only thing that gave him new life and the
strength to finish the feud with Stefan. As his hand closed around the
folded piece of paper in his pocket, Fox muttered the words he had expressed
to Peppy and Vixy in his time of torment, his time of what Gage was feeling
now.
"Am I doing the right thing?"
Gage's head snapped up and he
looked at Fox sideways. "What?"
"That's what you're thinking
isn't it?"
Gage nodded and faced front
again. "Obviously, the right thing is to stop him from using the most powerful
weapon in the galaxy, but…but…"
"But he's your brother."
Gage nodded again and stayed
silent.
"I know I can't really speak
from experience, as far as brothers go," Fox continued. "But I do know
this. The fact that he's your brother changes nothing. He's still a dangerous
madman. Hell, he even tried to kill you, and he'll do it again. You said
it yourself; the Ike that was your brother is dead. Here."
Fox grabbed Gage's wrist and
slapped the note into his hand. "Read it when we get back to the ship.
It pointed me in the right direction, and it might do the same for you."
Gage looked at the yellowed
folded paper in his palm, shrugged, and pocketed it. "Ok."
After another minute of silence,
Fox opened his mouth to ask what time it was but was interrupted as Gage
pointed at the intersection a hundred yards away. An armored truck was
stopped at the light.
"Looks like your friend's almost
here."
Fox shook his head and sighed.
"Hope you're up to talking again, 'cause I'm not in the mood to deal with
this bastard. How did—"
His words were cut off as the
front of the truck erupted in a deafening explosion and the entire vehicle
was lifted in the air on a pillar of fire. It crashed back down on its
side among the fleeing civilians.
Fox gaped at the site while
Gage cursed and sprinted for the burning wreckage. Through the thick smoke,
they could see pedestrians running from the fire, abandoning their cars
and stumbling, wide-eyed, towards the sidewalks. But there was one who
didn't, one who went towards the truck…a cheetah in dark clothes, holding
a blaster.
"Fox! It's him! It's the cheetah!"
Fox squinted through the smoke
at Gage's call and saw that he was right. The same cheetah that had almost
done him the favor of ventilating his head was calmly walking towards the
truck. Fox ran and caught up with Gage as he neared the debris. Without
missing a beat, Charon flung the rear door open and fired three times inside.
"Drop it!" Gage shouted, his
blaster trained on Charon's head. Fox halted next to him and followed suit.
Charon faced them, seeming not
the least bit surprised to see them. He pointed his gun at the back of
the truck and spoke his first words to the duo. "You wouldn't have gotten
any more information out of him anyway. He was just a pawn."
"And what are you?" Fox growled.
"A prisoner," Charon replied,
his angry red eyes seeming to glow again. "But a useful one. I have my
own reasons for doing what I do, and it's none of your concern."
"I think Overlord is a slight
concern for us."
"Then do us all a favor." Charon
pulled something out of his pocket and tossed it at Gage's feet. "Kill
the commander."
"What?" Gage said, cocking an
eyebrow. "Why do you want him dead?"
"I told you, my own reasons."
Charon snapped his head to the side as police sirens began wailing down
the street. "And I can't do it myself; he's watching me too closely."
"Wait!" Fox shouted as the cheetah
turned his back on them, "Then why did you try to kill me? Two more inches
down, and…"
Charon half-turned with a humorless
grin and said simply, "If I wanted to kill you, I would have."
In the next instant, he had
vanished into the frantic crowd.
-Chapter 10 coming soon!-
